Orange parking art

[“As seen in Illinois.”]

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange batik art : Orange bookmark art : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange dress art : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange soda-label art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

Diane Schirf’s pay phones

Variations on a theme, or items in a series: “Pay phones I have known,” photographs by Diane Schirf.

Pogue’s Basics: Life

The Subliminal Mr Dunn wrote a post recommending David Pogue’s Pogue’s Basics: Life  (New York: Flatiron Books, 2015). The book’s title makes for the same awkwardness I encounter whenever I write about Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage . I bought a copy anyway.

Pogue’s book collects tips and shortcuts about cars, travel, food, clothes, and (as they say) much, much more. As with any such collection, some bits will seem obvious (to unlock all car doors, press the button on your electronic key twice, duh); others, not so much. Two tips (paraphrased) that, for me, have made the book worth buying:

To avoid being blinded by oncoming headlights on a two-lane road, look at the white line to your right. (It works.)

The order for setting cutlery is alphabetical: fork, knife, spoon. Fork to the left (four-letter words), knife and spoon to the right (five-letter words). Who knew it was that easy to remember? Not me.

Thanks, Barnaby.

Not good for the United States, but good for CBS

Leslie Moonves, CBS executive chairman and CEO, likes the idea of a Donald Trump candidacy. From The Hollywood Reporter (not The Onion ), and picked up by Fortune :

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race. . . .

"Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? . . . The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going,” said Moonves.

Even the famous misquotation “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country” at least purported to align corporate and national well-being. Moonves is more honest: what’s good for CBS is good for CBS.

Thinking about Leslie Moonves, I can only invoke the words of Edward L. Norton: “A pox on you and all your ancestors.”


[Leslie Moonves, before and after karmic retribution. Click for a larger and more fiery view.]

From a Van Gogh letter

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, July 23, 1882:

So you must picture me sitting at my attic window as early as 4 o’clock in the morning, studying the meadows & the carpenter’s yard with my perspective frame just as they’re lighting the fires to make coffee in the yard and the first worker comes strolling in. A flock of white pigeons comes soaring over the red tile roofs between the smoking black chimney stacks. Beyond it all lies an infinity of delicate, soft green, miles & miles of flat meadow, and a grey sky, as calm, as peaceful as Corot or Van Goyen.

That view over the ridges of the roofs & the gutters with grass growing in them, very early in the morning, & those first signs of life & awakening — the flying bird, the smoking chimney, the small figure strolling along far below — that is the subject of my watercolour. I hope you will like it.

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh , ed. Ronald de Leeuw, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Penguin, 1997).

Also from Van Gogh’s letters
“Admire as much as you can”
“It was a bright autumn day and a beautiful walk”
“Lately, during the dark days before Christmas”

A text for the day

With his broad
and hairy face,
to Ireland a
disgrace.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939).

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

[The name Leddy is Irish.]

Illinois primaries

One bright spot for me in yesterday’s voting: it appears that Illinois voters don’t think much of Bruce Rauner. The best discussion I’ve been able to find is in the pages of CSU Faculty Voice, a blog written by Chicago State University faculty. This post reads yesterday’s tea leaves.

Our governor appears to have a special animus against Chicago State, a school with a difficult recent history. Kudos to CSU faculty who have been courageous enough to call out malfeasance at their school and in state government.

Buzz-phrase generator

From Sir Ernest Gowers or a second- or third-generation reviser:


The Complete Plain Words , rev. Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut (Boston: David R. Godine, 1988). Click for a larger view.

In 2016, one word that seems needed is strategic . I think it would go best in Column 2, where would yield, say, “overall strategic flexibility,” a bloodless euphemism for cuts and layoffs. I am thinking grimly, in a dark time in Illinois.

In the late-twentieth century, I saw the lingo of “strategic planning” make its way into academic life. But really: is there any worthwhile planning that would not by definition be strategic? Aimless, purposeless planning?

Also from The Complete Plain Words
“Falling into incongruity”
Thinking and writing

NPR, sheesh

On Morning Edition earlier today: “Last night’s results means that he’s not unstoppable.” If you have Adobe Flash Player, you can listen here. The mistake comes at the 4:22 mark.

Results is a plural noun, not a collective noun like faculty or orchestra. And results is not a plural that applies a unit of measure to a whole. An example from Garner’s Modern American Usage : “Two pounds of shrimp is all I need.”

More to the point: substitute other singular verbs for means and the results are (not is ) perhaps more glaringly wrong: “The results convinces me”; “The results is not good.”

And speaking of not good: c’mon, NPR. Do better.

Related reading
All OCA NPR posts (Pinboard)

[I will soon have to revise my keyboard shortcut for GMAU . Garner’s Modern English Usage , the re-named fourth edition, will be published next month.]

Handwritten prescriptions

In New York State, March 27 will mark the end of handwritten prescriptions:

Gone will be doctors’ prescription pads and famously bad handwriting. In their place: pointing and clicking, as prescriptions are created electronically and zapped straight to pharmacies in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

The change is meant to reduce fraud and misreadings.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)