[Henry, December 15, 2017.]
This comic strip does not predate the invention of the winter coat: plenty of Henry people wear coats, just not the protagonist. I like the scarf and the scarf rack, the wintry weather in the window, and the concessionaire’s uniform. Henry would have been better off sans scarf: an irked moviegoer will soon be using it to tie Henry’s mouth shut and silence his popcorn.
Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)
Friday, December 15, 2017
The boy with the orange scarf
Sunny Murray (1936–2017)
The drummer Sunny Murray has died at the age of eighty-one. The New York Times has an obituary. I know Murray’s music mainly from my small cache of ESP-Disk LPs. This one, for instance. And this one.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
PDB
A long feature in The Washington Post: “Hacking Democracy.” An excerpt, with my emphasis:
U.S. officials declined to discuss whether the stream of recent intelligence on Russia has been shared with Trump. Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.Yet another indication that our president is virtually a non-reader.
Russia-related intelligence that might draw Trump’s ire is in some cases included only in the written assessment and not raised orally, said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter. In other cases, Trump’s main briefer — a veteran CIA analyst — adjusts the order of his presentation and text, aiming to soften the impact.
A related post
Donald Trump’s spelling
At the Manor
At a nursing home called Princess Manor:
Alice Munro, “What Is Remembered,” in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (New York: Vintage, 2002).
Also from Alice Munro
“Rusted seams” : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling” : “A radiance behind it” : Opinions
Quilted steel
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Heavens, gosh, shucks
From a 2011 Time interview with John Ashbery:
Q: Do you currently make a living off your poetry?Related reading
A: Heavens, no. I mean, gosh, no. Or shucks, no. [Laughs.] No, not at all.
All OCA John Ashbery posts (Pinboard)
[Ashbery worked as a copywriter and art critic and taught at Brooklyn College and Bard College.]
About last night
I checked Twitter last night to see what Donald Trump had to say about Doug Jones’s defeat of Roy Moore:
I’d feel confident wagering that Trump did not write this tweet, for two reasons:Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017
~ The restrained tone. A true Trump tweet would focus on the Fake News and what it did to poor Roy Moore. A true Trump tweet would not focus on a opponent’s win, much less ennoble that win as “a hard fought victory,” much less delight in the ongoing ups and downs of politics (“It never ends!”). This tweet expresses the sentiment of a good sport, someone willing to congratulate an opponent and celebrate the electorate who voted for that opponent. But Donald Trump is not a good sport, and I doubt that he can even pretend to be one. I can find no comparable Trump tweet of congratulation to Ralph Northam when he defeated Ed Gillespie last month in the Virginia gubernatorial race.
~ The utter absence of eccentric capitalization, punctuation, spacing, or spelling. I’m especially focused on the startling hyphen in write-in. Where did that come from? I don’t think that iOS dictation accounts for it: my phone, again and again, comes up with “right in votes.”
Last night’s tweet does contain two bits of standard Trump phrasing, which anyone familiar with his diction will recognize: “very big factor” and “a very short period of time.” But then anyone attempting to channel Trump’s voice — Dan Scavino? — could make use of such phrasing.
I have to add that I love the attempt at analysis and explanation: “the write-in votes played a very big factor.” That’s like saying that the votes of people who refused to vote for a candidate contributed to that candidate’s loss. Yep, a tough break. If I weren’t for the people who voted against you, you would have won! The feeble logic makes me suspect Kellyanne Conway as the writer.
This morning’s tweets suggest that the president himself is back on the Twitter, claiming that he knew Moore could never win “the General Election” and complaining about a stacked deck, “Fake News Media,” “Mainstream Meadia,” and the need for “GREAT” candidates. And the problem of “razor thin margins in both the House and Senate” — notice, no hyphen.
In my imaginary White House this morning: a cracked television screen, and a dented six-pack of Diet Coke on the floor.
Related posts
Donald Trump’s spelling
Who’s tweeting?
[Meadia: not my mistake.]
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
M-W sentence challenge
Fresca made a suggestion in a comment: write a sentence using Merriam-Webster’s nine runners-up for Word of the Year. The runners-up: complicit, recuse, empathy, dotard, syzygy, gyro, federalism, hurricane, and gaffe.
Mine:
“In the name of federalism, show some empathy, or at least some syzygy, you complicit gaffe-prone dotard,” the hurricane warned, “before I turn you into a gyro platter and recuse myself!”Want to play? Leave a sentence as a comment, or write one in a post of your own and I’ll link to it.
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