Domestic comedy

“She’s some kind of a star.”

“That must be why we’ve never heard of her.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Dictionaries rising

Jesse Sheidlower, lexicographer: “Right now there are a lot of questions about what is true. We want clear statements about what things are, and dictionaries provide that.” And: “In times of stress, people will go to things that will provide answers. The Bible, the dictionary, or alcohol.”

From the Fashion and Style pages of The New York Times, a report on increased interest in dictionaries.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)

Ties, misspellings, typos

Richard Thompson Ford wonders:

Mr. Trump’s tie symbolizes one of the central questions of his candidacy, and now his presidency. Is his seeming ineptness genuine? Or is it part of a contrived performance, designed to deploy the symbols of power while rejecting the conventions of civility that have traditionally defined and constrained them?

I’ve wondered in the same way about the seeming ineptness in all those misspellings and typos. Are they genuine mistakes, or are they calculated distractions meant to incite mockery and thus make Trump’s supporters feel that they too are being mocked? I can imagine what someone might say: “You know what? I don’t spell so great either.” Snooty elites!

But I’m probably overthinking. When I read about aides who cannot figure out how to turn on the lights, I tend to think that the evidence of ineptness is genuine — and sad. Dunning K. Trump: sad!

Related posts
“I’m not running on a platform of correct grammar”
Jon Stewart’s “super-long tie”

“Not even the President”

Bob Ferguson, Washington Attorney General, commenting on the decision of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not to reinstate the president’s travel ban: “No one is above the law, not even the President.”

Just three weeks, and it already feels like Nixon days.

[I heard these words on All Things Considered last night, as a comment on yesterday’s decision. They also appear in a tweet from February 3. I embedded the tweet before realizing that the date was too early.]

Do Androids dream of Perry Mason?

A new use for an old phone. Thanks to Ian Bagger for the link.

Related reading
All OCA Perry Mason posts (Pinboard)

Gaslighting, moonlighting

It looks like our president is moonlighting. A genuine Lifehacker headline:

“When It’s Too Late to Stop Fascism”

George Prochnik, writing in The New Yorker about Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday and “When It’s Too Late to Stop Fascism”:

The excruciating power of Zweig’s memoir lies in the pain of looking back and seeing that there was a small window in which it was possible to act, and then discovering how suddenly and irrevocably that window can be slammed shut.

Related reading
All OCA Stefan Zweig posts (Pinboard)

“Foreigners”

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Related reading
All OCA George Orwell posts (Pinboard)

Svend Asmussen (1916–2017)

The violinist Svend Asmussen has died at the age of 100. The Washington Post has an obituary.

Svend Asmussen swung.

A YouTube sampler
“Hallelujah! I’m a Bum” : “Scandinavian Shuffle” : “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” (viola) : “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” : “June Night”

“They simply swallowed everything”

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Related reading
All OCA George Orwell posts (Pinboard)