Unforgivable

In downstate Illinois, a county fair refused to allow a pop-up site for COVID-19 vaccinations. Says Bill Alagna, president of the fair board: “That’s not the business we’re in. We’re in the county fair business.”

Here is a photograph of Alagna with a horse. On the left, the horse. On the right, a horse’s ass.

Salinger’s voice

Weirdness in the news: Betty Eppes, who in 1980 secretly recorded twenty-seven minutes’ worth of conversation with J. D. Salinger, says that the tape will be cremated with her.

Without a Paris Review subscription, you can read at least the start of Eppes’s account of meeting Salinger, published in 1980: “What I Did Last Summer.” The account is anthologized in If You Really Want to Hear About It: Writers on J. D. Salinger and His Work, ed. Catherine Crawford (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006).

The Eppes–Salinger conversation is funny and sad:

“Is it true that you’ll eat fried foods only if they’re prepared in cold-pressed peanut oil?”

“Yes.”

Related reading
All OCA Salinger posts (Pinboard)

On Louis Armstrong’s birthday

[“Musician Louis Armstrong signing autographs for neighborhood kids.” Photograph by John Loengard. Queens, New York, 1965. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901.

What I love about this photograph: the food (is that red beans and rice?) and the Coca-Cola must wait. The kids come first.

Related reading
All OCA Louis Armstrong posts (Pinboard)

Stand down, Andrew

Stand down, Andrew. Stand down, please.

[Andrew Cuomo (precorded) was on TV just now, denying and lying his ass off. With thanks to the English Beat.]

A Sebald biography

“What lay behind his writing was this great trauma that he was expressing and suffering,” says Carole Angier, who has written a soon-to-be-published biography of W. G. Sebald. The Guardian has an article about it.

Related reading
All OCA Sebald posts (Pinboard)

Exams in the mail in the news

A professor of business law is suing her university after administrators changed the grade she gave a student.

A practical suggestion to that professor: If you’re going to ask students to mail in their final examinations, set a date by which exams must be postmarked, not a date by which they must be received. You might save yourself a great deal of trouble.

That this professor used nothing more than a final examination to determine course grades reminds me that people approach the work of teaching in many ways.

Squirrels?

[Beetle Bailey, August 3, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Beetle Bailey: “Normally, I don’t mind guard duty.”

If there’s any doubt that the hand(s) behind this strip are phoning it in, consider those “squirrels.”

Related reading
All OCA Beetle Bailey posts (Pinboard)

“qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4, e.g.”

The clue for 19-A in today’s New Yorker crossword: “qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4, e.g.”

The answer: STRONGPASSWORD.

Well, yes. I checked with several password checkers, one of which estimates that it would take four hundred billion years to crack qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4.

But that password might take just as long to memorize. I’m reminded of an xkcd strip: “Password Strength.”

[As for xkcd’s correcthorsebatterystaple: that memorable password would take 100 quadrillion years to crack.]

Rewriting

The New York Times reports on Republican efforts to rewrite the events of January 6: “The message is clear: Adherence to facts cannot overcome adherence to the party line.”

Cf. George Orwell: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

[The long strange URL? I’m using the new NYT option for subscribers to share ten articles a month. Shared articles don’t count toward the ten free articles a month available to non-subscribers. Details here.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, August 1, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

SPISH? Really?

Two panels later, Ditto’s cannonball makes a SPLASH. All in today’s Hi and Lois.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)