January 2010
70 posts
Me: I'm gonna zone out once I'm on that plane.
Him: I hope you crash.
Me: [wide-eyed]
Him: What.
Me: [slack-jawed]
Him: OHMYGODSLEEP I MEANT SLEEP
Me: [cries a little]
In Search of Isolation
Me: Do you think I could write in Berlin?
Haze: It worked for Christopher Isherwood.
— From Melbourne, soon departing.
Can’t wait to see you London!
Jambalaya, by The Crowd Pleasers.
My friends in...
Sleep Talkin' Man. →
A wife compiled the best musings of her sleep-talking husband in a blog.* I’m only skimming through it now, but here are some of the ones I like best, so far:
You can’t be a pirate if you don’t have a beard. I said so. MY boat, MY rules.
Your mum’s at the door again. Bury me. Bury me deep.
Flap’s on fire. Your flap’s on fire! Chili in the vagiiiiina....
Easy laugh for the Telegraph.* →
The cheeky Telegraph reports that the floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Sweden “collapsed under dieters.”
Seriously, Telegraph?
— From London.
* And easy rhyme for me.
“I *must* take up smoking sometime, it sounds like *such* fun.”
– My boss, quipping to himself upon hearing a colleague coughing up his lungs, and making me smile quietly.
— From London.
Haitians to blame: Robertson →
Can you believe this??
US EVANGELICAL preacher Pat Robertson has levied blame for the devastating earthquake in Haiti on Haitians themselves, saying that the country ”swore a pact to the devil” at its creation.
— From Melbourne, grizzly at ignorance and stupidity.
“The customer really isn’t always right.”
– Lydia Esparza who, with her husband Nick Lessins, owns Great Lake in Chicago, a tiny little shop that, after receiving a rave review from GQ, frustrated new prospective patrons by only opening four days a week for a few hours, not delivering and not expanding. They won’t even raise prices and...
“If we take Voltaire seriously, the only proper responses to an earthquake are...”
– Andrew Brown today quotes Voltaire’s Candide to illustrate that “philosophising in the ruins of an earthquake is grotesque,” as is invoking religion.
— From London.
Première Urgence for Haiti →
My friend Gurval works at Première Urgence, a non-religious, non-political organisation based in Paris. They are part of the many NGOs intervening in Haiti, helping dispatch food and meds, rebuild health centers, water supplies, infrastructure in general.
I’m sure many of you have already donated money, probably to associations in your country, but if you are based in France, or have...
Shut up and donate, says PZ Myers.
To Pat Robertson, who said Haiti brought it upon itself for making a deal with the devil so that he would rid them of the French, PZ Myers says shut the eff up and please donate.
Preferably to secular NGOs, he said, like the Red Cross and Partners in Health. I could add Doctors Without Borders, who are also out there right now.
— From London, dismayed.
Haiti Prime Minister Says ‘Well Over’ 100,000 May...
That’s roughly 1 percent of the population.
— Via CNN, from London.
“There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who let...”
– My Spanish beautician Adriana, who met her husband 17 years ago in San Francisco and married him 12 weeks later at City Hall, tells me exactly how they did it.
— From London.
What to do when you're cold
Last night, like every night in the past few weeks, I froze. My flat is small, with very high ceilings, and poorly insulated. In other words, it’s impossible to heat. So most of the time, I can be found as a big blue bundle of Snuggie™ on my couch or in my bed, incapable of moving for fear that my whole body will suffer the same fate as my (long) nose, punished for sticking out with...
“Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other...”
– James Russell Lowell.
— From London.
“Eric Rohmer was so cagey about his life that, according to legend, his mother died not knowing that her schoolteacher son Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer (his real name) was a film director of some repute.
One of the founding fathers of the “Nouvelle Vague” (New Wave), the movement that revolutionized French cinema in the 1960s, Rohmer died yesterday in Paris at the age of 89, Le Monde reported,...
“May our tongues be gentle, our e-mails be simple and our Web sites be...”
– Rev Canon David Parrott, of St Lawrence Jewry, blessing yesterday his parishioners’ laptops, iPods and mobiles in a modern-day celebration of Plow Monday (which traditionally marked the return to work after the Christmas break, a day when farmers took their tools to be blessed by their...
“Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.”
– George Jackson.
— From London.
Hey, all of you wonderful dads out there? Just... →
— Thanks to my mother, from London.
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
– A gentle reminder from Harry S. Truman.
— From London.
The Australian city of Melbourne used to be called... →
Wikipedia adds that it has also been called Bearbrass, Bareport, Bareheep, Barehurp and Bareberp.
— Thanks to the QI Elves, from London.
Bloodlines
Curious about my family history, I created a family tree on Genoom, added and invited my parents and siblings. I just received an email from my dad:
I’ve added your grand and great grand parents in and will add further into the family tree, possibly 12 generations up, back to the start of 1400s when your ancestor, King Ho Qui Ly, King of Annam (ancient name of Vietnam) from 1400 - 1403,...
Redefining "absurd" (and pissing me off in the...
Yesterday, French newspaper Le Monde reported the death of the double hyphen.
Only ten years ago, the French government (probably fancying itself as very forward-thinking), began to explore the idea that parents should have the ability to give whichever surname they preferred, the mother’s or the father’s, or even both surnames in the order they chose (how magnanimous), announcing the...
Snowed-in spouses 'turning to adultery' →
The Telegraph reports:
Spouses forced to work from home in swathes of the country where snow has brought transport to a standstill are flocking online to search for new romances, according to the website IllicitEncounters.co.uk.
They’re blaming it on boredom. Apparently the site has had to hire people to cope with the increase in applications.
Quiet Dorset, turning...
“Being a reporter is 184th best job, WSJ says. Repairing shoes is 174th.”
– Colleague’s comment accompanying the Wall Street Journal’s 2010 ranking of the 200 best jobs in the U.S.
— From London.
