A pocket notebook sighting

[From State and Main (dir. David Mamet, 2000). Click for a larger view.]

Joseph Turner White (Philip Seymour Hoffman) writes down a slightly altered version of something he heard a passing localite say: “Only second chance we get is the chance to make the same mistake twice.”

Slight spoiler: White will get a second chance and will not make the same mistake twice.

See also Sufjan Stevens, in the sidebar: “I’m not afraid to get it right / I turn around and I give it one more try.”

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All OCA pocket notebook sightings (Pinboard)

Dictating on Apple devices

From Apple: commands for dictating text in macOS.

The explanations of dictation for iOS andf iPadOS are far more casual.

[Alas, there is no command to make dictation get the words right.]

Newspapers and novels

Walter Benjamin:

One may, if necessary, read the newspaper while eating. But never a novel. These are two conflicting obligations.

From ”Reading Novels,“ in The Storyteller Essays, trans. Tess Lewis (New York: New York Review Books, 2019).

Dalmatian or sardine

Joseph Turner White (Philip Seymour Hoffman), novice screenwriter, has a question. Ann (Rebecca Pidgeon), bookstore owner, has an answer. From State and Main (2000), screenplay and direction by David Mamet:

“You ever wonder why the Dalmatian’s the symbol of the firehouse?”

“First organized fire department was on the border of Dalmatia and Sardinia in the year 642.”

“That’s why the Dalmatian?”

“It was either that or a sardine.”

Like Ann’s earlier avowal to an inquiring bookstore customer that Jesse James was Henry James’s brother, this one has no basis in reality.

Related reading
All OCA sadine posts (Pinboard) : Firefighting in ancient Rome (Wikipedia) : Dalmatians and firefighting (Wikipedia)

Recently updated

Separated at birth A reader suggests a missing triplet. The reader is right.

“Keys to the Past”

From the National Archives: Keys to the Past, an online collection of typewriter-related documents and photographs.

Time, it goes so fast

“What’s a BVD?”

[I.e., a DVD.]

Schaden meet Freude

The Washington Post reports that Project 2025 is ending its policy work (gift link). Why? The boss is angry:

Project 2025, a collaboration led by the Heritage Foundation among more than 110 conservative groups to develop a movement consensus blueprint for the next Republican administration, is winding down its policy operations, and its director, former Trump administration personnel official Paul Dans, is departing. The Heritage Foundation also recently distributed new talking points encouraging participants to emphasize that the project does not speak for Trump.

The former president has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025 after relentless attacks from Democrats using some of the 900-page playbook’s more aggressive proposals to impute them to Trump’s agenda since many of the proposals were written by alumni of Trump’s White House. While some participants in the project started avoiding interviews and public appearances, Trump advisers grew furious that Heritage leaders continued promoting the project and feeding critical news coverage.

And:

Vice President Harris’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said Democrats will not stop talking about Project 2025.

“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” she said in a statement. “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country.”

Keats or Shelley

Maureen Duffy, That’s How it Was (1962).

Is Keats ”greater“ than Shelley? I‘ll quote myself from a previous post:

As T.S. Eliot said in “East Coker” about the work of the writer, “there is no competition.” Or as the poet William Bronk said, in response to a survey asking for the ten best books of American poetry published since 1945, “Don’t ask me. I believe the arts are not competitive.”

But there‘s nothing wrong with having favorite writers.

Also from this novel
“Oh all the things kids do” : Growing

A giant pencil

News from New York State: “Ticonderoga unveils giant pencil sculpture celebrating graphite heritage.” The graphite in Dixon Ticonderoga pencils once came from the towns of Ticonderoga and Hague. Now it comes from Sri Lanka. The pencils haven’t been manufactured in the United States in many years.

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All OCA Dixon Ticonderoga posts (Pinboard)