Domestic comedy

“I can’t believe you walked past that multi-tool display.”

“Where?! WHERE?!”

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All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Not really multi-tools, after all. Knives and flashlights. With this one, it’s probably easy to figure out who said what.]

Today’s Ticonderoga

[“Nervig Endings.” Zippy , December 24, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, cartoonist Conrad Nervig seeks a new career. Stand by for the Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2.

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All OCA Ticonderoga posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Scribbles & Ink

For kids and those who think like kids: Scribbles & Ink, an online game (or drawing environment, I’d call it) to go with the PBS Kids series of the same name.

If you like Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, you will probably like Scribbles & Ink. Be your own Harold!

Roz Chast, profiled

By Adam Gopnik, in — where else? — The New Yorker. An excerpt:

“Throughout my childhood, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted to be a grownup. Being a child was just not working for me. I didn’t understand little kids. ‘Let’s play! Let’s hit each other!’ Why do you want to do that ? Don’t you want to stay indoors where it’s safe, and read and draw?”

Our household is a Chast-friendly zone.

Related reading
All OCA Roz Chast posts (Pinboard)

Hallmark rising

The New Yorker looks at the Hallmark Channel(s): “How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television.”

Last Friday we tried about half an hour of Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy, the movie whose making runs through the article. Half an hour was enough. But I came away with a favorite line: “I was just leading a workshop on ornament making.” Sounds to me like the start of a John Ashbery poem.

You’re out

Yesterday our local paper published USDA guidelines for when to toss Thanksgiving leftovers. The USDA’s advice: leftovers can be stored in the fridge for three to four days, or in the freezer for two to six months.

We gave up on our local paper eleven years ago. I look at the paper online once in a while, but there is little news, which is one reason why we ended our subscription. When I look, I am sometimes baffled.

Robots writing

The Washington Post reports on Handwrytten, a robot-driven card-writing service. The article cites a user who finds the service “cheaper — and easier — than going to the store, picking out a card and paying for postage.” And, the user adds, you can schedule in advance.

I noticed Handwrytten in 2014 and am surprised, kinda, that the company is still going. It must serve a need. But you could also schedule in advance by writing in your datebook: “Buy and mail card.” Or you could schedule and send an e-mail — much cheaper and easier still than setting up an account to pay for robots. But cheaper and easier are not always the point. TV dinner, anyone?

*

I forgot: in The New York Times last week, a counter-narrative, in defense of handwritten notes and cards.

Land O’Lines

In The New York Times, Roger Cohen writes about missing the landline:

I remember my son asking me how I managed to meet anyone in the pre-cellphone era. I could hardly remember. I said you arranged to meet a friend at a certain place at a certain time and you showed up. He was skeptical.

In 2010, also in the Times, Virginia Heffernan wrote a wonderful elegy for the landline.

[Neither writer mentions what any dedicated user of the phone of yore will remember: waiting until “the rates” went down to make a long-distance call. And even then, the astonishing cost of the occasional forty-five-minute long-distance call.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I found today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, exceedingly difficult. It was a forty-six-minute puzzle for me, with an especially difficult northwest corner. I started with 8-A, seven letters, “Preparing to steal, perhaps” and 8-D, eight letters, “Out of sight.” Some gimmes helped:

33-D, eight letters, “Battle of the Bulge forest.” In the news, but also in my head from reading about J.D. Salinger.

39-A, five letters, “Whom Aristotle mentions in ‘On the Parts of Animals.’” Ancients? animals? Easy to guess.

56-A, seven letters, “‘Daughter of the wind’ plant.” Well, I think it’s a gimme. YGMV: Your Gimmes May Vary.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

14-D, seven letters, “New Yorker’s hero.” Clever, and for me at least, pretty arcane lingo.

17-A, seven letters, “Press passes?” Groan.

18-A, seven letters, “     weather.” Nicely dowdy.

24-D, eleven letters, “Kid’s art supply.” I just liked seeing this supply in a puzzle.

42-A, eleven letters, “Fog machine user of yore.” I will take the constructor’s word for it.

48-D, five letters, “Inedible spreadable.” Once again a Newsday puzzle chooses concision over farfetched cuteness in a tricky clue for a common word. Bravo.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

How to improve writing (no. 85)

An odd sentence from The New Yorker :

No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk his or her opponents quite like Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

I understand why the writer chose “his or her”: because both men and women are running for the nomination. But Pete Buttigieg doesn’t irk “his or her” opponents. “His or her” is an unnecessary complication. It makes me think Wait, what?  Follow the logic of the syntax:

No one irks his or her opponents like Pete Buttigieg [irks his or her opponents.]

See? Better:

No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk opponents quite like Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Maybe better still:

No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk opponents the way Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, does.

I’m not crazy about the gap between Buttigieg’s name and “does.” It might be better still to save the identifying phrase for a later sentence:

No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk opponents the way Pete Buttigieg does.

All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 85 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]