Overheard

[A caffeinated blowhard.]

“It’s really loosey-goosey, and it probably wouldn’t hold up in court, but —”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Shelley’s Jerry’s

A local pizza parlor was torn down, and all that remains on its large lot is a sign. I thought of lines from Shelley in which a traveler recounts what he read on the pedestal of a broken statue in the desert:

“‘My name is Jerry’s Pizza, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

My friend Rob Zseleczky would have gotten a kick out of this post.

[I follow many modern printings of “Ozymandias” by adding quotation marks around lines 10–11 for clarity.]

Berlin poster

[Poster for Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (dir. Walter Ruttmann, 1927). Georgii Augustovich Stenberg and Vladimir Augustovich Stenberg. Russian, 1928. 42 x 27 3/4 in. Click for a larger view.]

I am a camera — and other things. This film poster is a Cooper Hewitt Object of the Day. I wrote briefly about Berlin: Symphony of a Great City in this post. The film is available (without a musical score) at the Internet Archive.

Mongol Profile

[Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement.]

I had to do it. The 1988 Dewar’s advertisement I’ve spoofed appears in this post.

Related reading
All OCA Henry Threadgill posts
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

[Don’t miss the revised text, bottom right column.]

Dust storm

We drove back in heavy wind from the butcher’s this afternoon, on two rural routes, and found ourselves in a terrific dust storm, a wall of light brown, with just a few feet of road visible. I’ve seen photographs and film footage from the Dust Bowl years, and I know that what we experienced today was nothing comparable: no black clouds, and long stretches of clear air. But what we drove through was bad enough in itself, and we had never seen anything like it. We wondered how children coming home from school would fare in that wind.

What didn’t the president know and when didn’t he know it

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster: “The president wasn’t even aware of where this information came from. He wasn’t briefed on the source or method of the information either.”

Ignorance is strength.

Baby’s First Resist-Story

Fresca and bink have created an alphabet book with wash-away illustrations: Baby’s First Resist-Story.

A is for alternative facts. Look, look, look. The clock will soon be striking thirteen!

*

Later that same day: There’s now a key to the illustrations.

Recently updated

Elaine Fine on the airwaves Now with a link to an archived broadcast.

The perception of doors

[Hi and Lois, May 16, 2017. Click for a larger view.]

The wall line above Lois’s head in the second panel suggests that the Flagstons’ front door is located just a foot or two from the house’s corner. We know from exterior shots that the door will not be found there.

But what really delights me in today’s strip: those windows. They must switch places whenever the door opens or closes.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[Post title with apologies to Aldous Huxley.]

FSRC: annual report

The Four Seasons Reading Club, our household’s two-person adventure in reading, just finished its second year. The FSRC year runs from May to May. (The club began after I retired from teaching.) In our second year we made it through thirty books. In non-chronological order:

Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories, The Unknown Masterpiece

Willa Cather, My Àntonia, My Mortal Enemy, Obscure Destinies, One of Ours, O Pioneers!, The Professor’s House, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, The Troll Garden, Youth and the Bright Medusa

Beverly Cleary, Jean and Johnny, Ellen Tebbitts, The Luckiest Girl, Sister of the Bride

Hans Herbert Grimm, Schlump

Homer, Odyssey

Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Joseph Roth, Hotel Savoy

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Timothy Snyder, Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

John Williams, Stoner

Stefan Zweig, Chess Story, Collected Stories, Confusion, Journey into the Past, Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink, The Post-Office Girl, The World of Yesterday

Aside from a few uncollected stories, we’ve now read all of Cather’s fiction. We have much more Zweig to go. Onward.

Credit to the translators whose work gave us access to the world beyond English: Linda Asher, Anthea Bell, Jamie Bullock, Simon Carnell, Carol Cosman, Richard Howard, John Hoare, Benjamin W. Huebsch, Helmut Ripperger, Joel Rotenberg, Joe Sachs, Damion Searls, Erica Segretrans, Will Stone, and Jordan Stump.

A related post
FSRC: first annual report