Welcome to Snark Week 2017! “Dirty . . . disgusting . . . filthy . . . lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!” The dialogue comes from the Mel Brooks movie The Producers. The super of a walk-up is […]
Miscellaneous
Welcome to Snark Week 2017 A few years back, the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis asked a foolish question. A question best left buried in the deeper recesses of the mind, or thousands of feet below the ground, or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. And they sang it so casually, in a goddamned music […]
Were I to fall and die in my kitchen some unfortunate morning, my youngest dog, Geddy, would definitely eat my corpse. Maybe not that very minute, but pretty soon after I slumped to the floor he’d be nosing around, checking my pulse. He’d probably give me a couple of hours to rise up from my […]
2017 seems to be shaping up to be the Year of Fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of too much Donald, fear of not enough Donald, fear of economic collapse, Brexit, socialism, fascism, fanaticism, cultism, existentialism, euphemism. All of it is very scary and all of it deserves endless hand-wringing on cable news. And this week, […]
July 17-21, 2017 Ann is reading Colm Tóibín’s House of Names, and starts the week thinking about ancient Greece: I started to wonder about the strange discrepancy between these revenge-addled murderers and the rational, educated ancient Greeks who were the foundation of Western civilization; who founded much of our sculpture, architecture, philosophy, literature, math, and […]
I never knew it needed explaining until someone asked me — why is singletrack so much more fun than wider trails like double track or dirt roads? We’re talking here about mountain biking and the allure of the singletrack trail — a narrow path, usually 18 to 24 inches wide, that meanders through a given […]
July 10 – 14, 2017 Guest Elizabeth Preston’s baby — what’s she doing? what’s she thinking? Darwin had some ideas about that. Emma is in Tahiti — isn’t everyone? — and sees a flower so rare, so strange, so precious, that it has to be kept in a cage. If only mental illness were simple, […]
July 3-7, 2017 Legendary artifact collector Forrest Fenn has hidden a bronze chest in the wilds. More than one treasure hunter has died looking for it, but Craig has seen its contents with his own eyes. “Where’s my jetpack?” is the ubiquitous complaint of disillusioned mid-century science fiction fans. “It’s right here,” says DARPA, “But […]
