Brett Kavanaugh said this morning that he was not involved in “crafting” a program of enhanced interrogation techniques or its legal justifications. “Crafting” a program of torture: how polished, how urbane. If Kavanaugh’s use of craft doesn’t make someone, somewhere, reconsider using this vogue verb, I don’t know what will.
Related posts
Craft vogue : Words I can live without
[Maybe this post will.]
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Killing craft
Arial? Or Helvetica?
A quiz: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica? (via Michael Tsai).
[I scored 17 of 20. When I had to guess (all caps), I chose what looked better to my eye. And that turned out to be Helvetica.]
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Separated at birth
[Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II, aka Grampa Simpson.]
After watching the Brett Kavanaugh hearing for an hour or so today, I began to see a resemblance. Neither of these images is from today’s hearing.
Also separated at birth
Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : Ernie Bushmiller and Red Rodney : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Steven Isserlis and Pat Metheny : Colonel Wilhelm Klink and Rudy Giuliani : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny
[Grassley is older.]
Facebook fakes
An instructive New York Times feature: “Can You Spot the Deceptive Facebook Post?”
I went four for four. Gee, maybe I should sign up for Facebook!
Proust in cartoons
From Liana Finck, cartoonist: An Incomplete Biography of Marcel Proust (Paris Review). An excerpt:
Bonus trivia: the drooler is Madame de Cambremer, the same character whose head turns into a metronome when she listens to music.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
[Finck writes that her work owes “a debt of information to Edmund Wilson’s biography,” but she means, of course, Edmund White’s biography. I e-mailed to let her know. Now the first panel has White’s name.]
REAL ESTATE
[Hi and Lois, September 4, 2018.]
I am always happy to see signage in the Flagstons’ world moving in the right direction, or in the left-to-right direction. REAL ESTATE sure beats ETATSE LAER, ECNARUSNI, and KCIUQ TRAM. And in Beetle Bailey’s world, NUB N’ NUR.
There is though something in today’s strip that needs fixing — in addition to the cost of housing. The colorist must have run out of paint when nearing the end of the job. Here, I have a can and a small brush.
[Hi and Lois corrected, September 4, 2018.]
Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)
Bundyville
From Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting, a seven-part podcast series, Bundyville. I knew the story in outline, sort of. But I had very little idea what lies behind it — what it means, for instance, when a politician or talk-radio host says that the Constitution is “hanging by a thread.” Highly recommended.
Monday, September 3, 2018
A joke in the traditional manner
Why is the Fonz so cool?
No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments. My daughter Rachel strongly approved of this one. I think her humormeter is broken again.
More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : How do worms get to the supermarket? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What was the shepherd doing in the garden? : Where do amoebas golf? : Where does Paul Drake keep his hot tips? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?
[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the produce clerk, the amoebas, the worms, the toy, the shepherd, Paul Drake, the squirrel-doctor, Marie Kondo, Santa Claus, and this one. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them “dad jokes.”]
Pen, notebook, cursive
A.O. Scott, New York Times film critic, keeping it analog:
A few years ago, when I was struggling to finish writing a book, I decided I needed to tune out the distractions of Twitter and email and New York Times news alerts so that I could make my daily word count. I started leaving the house for a few hours with no laptop or phone — just a ballpoint pen and a 5-by-7-inch notebook, the same setup I’d been using for years to take notes in dark theaters.[Maybe it’s time for cursive camp.]
It works like a dream, and now I write all my reviews that way. It also works for poems, to-do lists, phone numbers and scraps of dialogue. The only problem is my penmanship, which almost got me held back in fourth grade and has only declined in the years since. Also it’s hard to insert hyperlinks in the text.
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