It’s rhythem.
N.B.: no misspelling can be called “minor” when it’s on a thirty-foot-tall guitar. Or, for that matter, on any guitar.
Related reading
All OCA spelling and misspelling posts (Pinboard)
Friday, June 22, 2018
A misspelling in the news
By Michael Leddy at 4:13 PM comments: 0
“Pepper sardines”
Sardines are not a reason to watch The Other Side of Hope (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 2017). There are many others. The story, which brings together a Syrian refugee and the owner and employees of a little restaurant in Helsinki, is an exceptionally timely reminder about the possibilities of human goodness and hospitality. Not that such things figure in this scene. Click any image for a larger view:
I especially like the non sequitir “We serve fusion cuisine.” But I think I like the pepper shaker more.
Related reading
All OCA Aki Kaurismäki posts
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 8:25 AM comments: 0
“Against aspiring authoritarians, and wolves of all kinds”
Cass Sustein, writing about accounts of “ordinary life under Nazism”:
Nearly two centuries ago, James Madison warned: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.” Haffner offered something like a corollary, which is that the ultimate safeguard against aspiring authoritarians, and wolves of all kinds, lies in individual conscience: in “decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large.”[Sebastian Haffner: pen name of Raimund Pretzel, journalist and writer. His memoir Defying Hitler (1939) is an eyewitness account of Hitler’s rise to power.]
By Michael Leddy at 8:08 AM comments: 1
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Two words
Definitions from Merriam-Webster:
migrant: one that migrates: such asWhich word more accurately characterizes people leaving Central America and seeking asylum in the United States?
a : a person who moves regularly in order to find work especially in harvesting crops
b : an animal that shifts from one habitat to another
refugee: one that flees; especially : a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution
I started to type fleeing for leaving before realizing that I was giving away my answer to the question. We are prosecuting refugees.
By Michael Leddy at 8:29 PM comments: 6
20,000 children
From The New York Times:
The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday asked the Pentagon to make preparations to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on American military bases, a United States official said.“Zero-tolerance” policies never work well. These preparations bode a humanitarian nightmare — something like a junior version of Guantanamo Bay.
*
June 22: For clarity: these children will be “unaccompanied” because they will have been separated from their parents.
By Michael Leddy at 3:59 PM comments: 2
Zippy Lupino
[Zippy, June 21, 2018.]
Zippy must be thinking of the 1953 film The Hitch-Hiker. Ida Lupino directed. William Talman hitched. Elaine and I watched this film on YouTube just last week. But how did Bill Griffith know that?
Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 8:09 AM comments: 2
A summer salad
The first day of summer: Persian salad season begins. The link goes to a post with the recipe. Simple to make, goes with almost anything.
By Michael Leddy at 8:04 AM comments: 2
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Flip-flop
Aaron Blake, writing in The Washington Post about an impending executive order to end the practice of separating parents and children at the U.S.–Mexico border:
Rarely has the White House so tacitly and unmistakably admitted to overplaying its hand. And rarely has it so blatantly copped to its own dishonesty about its actions. [Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen, in particular, has a lot of explaining to do. But this whole thing is an extremely ugly chapter. And it makes clear that, from Day One, this was a political gambit to force an immigration bill through. It didn't work.
By Michael Leddy at 12:44 PM comments: 2
“The guts wobble and lurch”
Franz Biberkopf at lunch: “he slices and squashes and bolts and snuffles and gulps and swallows.” And then the stomach gets to work:
Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz. 1929. Trans. Michael Hoffman (New York: New York Review Books, 2018).
Compare the “Lestrygonians” episode of Ulysses. As Mary Roach observes (without reference to Döblin or Joyce), “you too are an organism, a chewing, digesting sack of guts.”
Related reading
All OCA Döblin posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 8:16 AM comments: 2
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Recently updated
A “government handout video" John Shimkus, now with a position, or an evasion, really.
By Michael Leddy at 3:23 PM comments: 0