Friday, February 29, 2008
Overhead
They'll Have Their Own Reality Show within a Year
Black lady: Listen, you camel jockey, I don't care what you say, you was wrong to do that!
Middle Eastern man: Oh, shut up, you stupid nigga! I'm tired of hearing your shit! Go fuck yourself!
Black woman passerby: Oh my god, who the hell are you to be talking to my beautiful black sister like that?! You ain't got no right to talk to anybody black like that!
Black lady: Bitch, who the shit are you? Don't be talkin' to my husband like that!
--W 4th St station
Overheard by: Mawg Spawn
Not Having to Think Frees Up a Lot of Time for Watching Reality TV
Dude with clipboard to couple passing by: Excuse me, you two! Sign this! It's your independent right as an American.
Guy: No, thanks. I hate rights.
Chick: Yeah, just being told what to do rocks.
Guy: Conforming is sweet.
--Bleecker St
Guess That Explains the Spiked Collar
Six-year-old boy: Can I pet your dog?
Hot girl: Sure, but she's a little crazy.
Six-year-old boy: Ahhh, so is my sister [points to four-year-old]. Maybe they're related!
Four-year-old sister: Grrr...
--14th & 7th
Overheard by: dan finnegan
It Had Boobs Painted on It
Woman: You don't remember me, do you?
Older man: Your face looks familiar...
Woman: You saw me running down the street naked last weekend.
Older man: Why would I remember your face, then?
--Ditmars Blvd, Astoria
Overheard by: Lauren
Black lady: Listen, you camel jockey, I don't care what you say, you was wrong to do that!
Middle Eastern man: Oh, shut up, you stupid nigga! I'm tired of hearing your shit! Go fuck yourself!
Black woman passerby: Oh my god, who the hell are you to be talking to my beautiful black sister like that?! You ain't got no right to talk to anybody black like that!
Black lady: Bitch, who the shit are you? Don't be talkin' to my husband like that!
--W 4th St station
Overheard by: Mawg Spawn
Not Having to Think Frees Up a Lot of Time for Watching Reality TV
Dude with clipboard to couple passing by: Excuse me, you two! Sign this! It's your independent right as an American.
Guy: No, thanks. I hate rights.
Chick: Yeah, just being told what to do rocks.
Guy: Conforming is sweet.
--Bleecker St
Guess That Explains the Spiked Collar
Six-year-old boy: Can I pet your dog?
Hot girl: Sure, but she's a little crazy.
Six-year-old boy: Ahhh, so is my sister [points to four-year-old]. Maybe they're related!
Four-year-old sister: Grrr...
--14th & 7th
Overheard by: dan finnegan
It Had Boobs Painted on It
Woman: You don't remember me, do you?
Older man: Your face looks familiar...
Woman: You saw me running down the street naked last weekend.
Older man: Why would I remember your face, then?
--Ditmars Blvd, Astoria
Overheard by: Lauren
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A Little Help for His Friends
Congress is looking into the decision by the United States attorney for New Jersey, Christopher Christie, to hand former Attorney General John Ashcroft a hugely lucrative job monitoring a wayward company.
In this particular case, Mr. Christie arranged for a medical supply company accused of fraud to hire his former boss to monitor its activities for a payment between $28 million and $52 million. There was no competitive bidding. If Mr. Christie runs for elected office in the future, Mr. Ashcroft could be an important supporter and fund-raiser. This isn’t the only time Mr. Christie’s appointment of a monitor has raised questions.
The Ashcroft appointment came in a “deferred prosecution agreement,” a fast-growing arrangement ripe for abuse. Rather than file criminal charges against corporations, federal prosecutors — looking to dispose of cases efficiently and to avoid damaging companies needlessly — increasingly are striking deals. These agreements are done without court supervision and sometimes in secret.
United States attorneys have traditionally played an important role in rooting out patronage and corruption. Congress has to ensure that the prosecutors charged with stamping out these practices do not engage in them.
New York Times Editorial (excerpt)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
page A18
additional information:
Ashcroft agrees to testify on his role in no-bid contracts
In this particular case, Mr. Christie arranged for a medical supply company accused of fraud to hire his former boss to monitor its activities for a payment between $28 million and $52 million. There was no competitive bidding. If Mr. Christie runs for elected office in the future, Mr. Ashcroft could be an important supporter and fund-raiser. This isn’t the only time Mr. Christie’s appointment of a monitor has raised questions.
The Ashcroft appointment came in a “deferred prosecution agreement,” a fast-growing arrangement ripe for abuse. Rather than file criminal charges against corporations, federal prosecutors — looking to dispose of cases efficiently and to avoid damaging companies needlessly — increasingly are striking deals. These agreements are done without court supervision and sometimes in secret.
United States attorneys have traditionally played an important role in rooting out patronage and corruption. Congress has to ensure that the prosecutors charged with stamping out these practices do not engage in them.
New York Times Editorial (excerpt)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
page A18
additional information:
Ashcroft agrees to testify on his role in no-bid contracts
Monday, February 25, 2008
Dumb & Dumber
The 50 Dumbest Things George W. Bush Has Ever Said
"I'm confident we'll hold the White House in 2008."
U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH predicting a Republican win in the November presidential election
bonus round:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas silent as Supreme Court talks on and on
links via Dust Congress
"I'm confident we'll hold the White House in 2008."
U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH predicting a Republican win in the November presidential election
bonus round:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas silent as Supreme Court talks on and on
links via Dust Congress
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Two for Tue.
One morning he wakes up and . . .
As the sun rises over the city, ten thousand people yawn and take their toast and coffee. Ten thousand fill the arcades of Kramgasse or go to work on Speichergasse or take their children to the park. Each has memories: a father who could not love his child, a brother who always won, a lover with a delicious kiss, a moment of cheating on a school examination, the stillness spreading from a fresh snowfall, the publication of a poem. In a world of shifting past, these memories are wheat in the wind, fleeting dreams, shapes in clouds. Events, once happened, lose reality, alter after a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant, when the sun streams over the Bernese Alps and the shopkeepers sing as they raise their awnings and the quarryman begins to load his truck.
excerpted from Einstein's Dreams (page 171)
A Novel by Alan Lightman (copyright 1993)
published by Warner Books (1994)
As the sun rises over the city, ten thousand people yawn and take their toast and coffee. Ten thousand fill the arcades of Kramgasse or go to work on Speichergasse or take their children to the park. Each has memories: a father who could not love his child, a brother who always won, a lover with a delicious kiss, a moment of cheating on a school examination, the stillness spreading from a fresh snowfall, the publication of a poem. In a world of shifting past, these memories are wheat in the wind, fleeting dreams, shapes in clouds. Events, once happened, lose reality, alter after a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant, when the sun streams over the Bernese Alps and the shopkeepers sing as they raise their awnings and the quarryman begins to load his truck.
excerpted from Einstein's Dreams (page 171)
A Novel by Alan Lightman (copyright 1993)
published by Warner Books (1994)
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Typo (too)
He stands up from the boxes and looks out the window. To the east, in the distance, rises the steeple of a chapel, fragile and faint. The light changes. A cloud drifts over the sun. Then the sun is uncovered again, the little room fills up with light.
He lets down the blinds but keeps the slats open. Strips of light slide from the wall to the floor. He returns to his boxes, unpacks. A set of keys. A faded photograph of a young woman with auburn hair. Two old letters from John. These last things he puts carefully in a drawer. Most of the boxes are books. He stacks them against the wall, the muscles flexing in his arms. The room darkens as another cloud passes over the sun, lightens, darkens again.
Now he lies on the upholstered couch in the corner. He begins writing. He writes on a white pad of paper, wavy lines and strange signs, mathematical symbols. He closes his eyes for a while, begins writing again. Someone knocks at his door, but he doesn't hear. He imagines corrugated surfaces, magnified again and again. He calculates and imagines, while the room glows and dims and the sun slides slowly across the floor.
Dr. Lang, let me say again that it's good to have you on the faculty, says the dean. Bennett smiles. The dean, an historian, is small but long, with a thin, tubular neck that protudes far beyond his collar. His eyes lie close together. He has the manner of an animal accustomed to darkness and damp.
excerpted from Good Benito (pages 3-4)
A Novel by Alan Lightman (copyright 1994)
published by Warner Books (1996)
He lets down the blinds but keeps the slats open. Strips of light slide from the wall to the floor. He returns to his boxes, unpacks. A set of keys. A faded photograph of a young woman with auburn hair. Two old letters from John. These last things he puts carefully in a drawer. Most of the boxes are books. He stacks them against the wall, the muscles flexing in his arms. The room darkens as another cloud passes over the sun, lightens, darkens again.
Now he lies on the upholstered couch in the corner. He begins writing. He writes on a white pad of paper, wavy lines and strange signs, mathematical symbols. He closes his eyes for a while, begins writing again. Someone knocks at his door, but he doesn't hear. He imagines corrugated surfaces, magnified again and again. He calculates and imagines, while the room glows and dims and the sun slides slowly across the floor.
Dr. Lang, let me say again that it's good to have you on the faculty, says the dean. Bennett smiles. The dean, an historian, is small but long, with a thin, tubular neck that protudes far beyond his collar. His eyes lie close together. He has the manner of an animal accustomed to darkness and damp.
excerpted from Good Benito (pages 3-4)
A Novel by Alan Lightman (copyright 1994)
published by Warner Books (1996)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Incomprehensible Handwriting of the Greats
Critics charge that editor Robert Faggen's The Notebooks of Robert Frost attributes to the poet (pictured here in 1941) hundreds, if not thousands, of mistranscribed words.
While deciphering handwritten manuscripts, letters, and journals may challenge fewer and fewer editors as we move forward into the age of new media, there’s still plenty of head-scratching going on in the present day with regard to the notebooks et al. left behind by the greats of bygone eras. In an article published in Slate last week--with a focus on an edition of Robert Frost’s personal notebooks published last year--Megan Marshall writes, “When you're reduced to ‘counting humps,’ as documentary editors refer to those moments of despair when they find themselves decoding words letter by letter, you know you’re in trouble.”
info via Free Library Blog (Philadelphia)
Monday, February 11, 2008
Say What?
"Letting the Bush tax cuts expire will be one of the largest money grabs in American history, and we must not allow that to happen."
Vice President Dick Cheney addressing a packed room at a Pennsylvania Republican Party fund-raising luncheon.
Vice President Dick Cheney addressing a packed room at a Pennsylvania Republican Party fund-raising luncheon.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Waiting for It
"Technology is speeding everything up. So why does it still take so long to publish a book?"
Essay by Rachel Donadio
Essay by Rachel Donadio
