I went and saw Title Tracks at the Backstage of Black Cat last night, which, for those who’ve never been, is a venue that is approximately the size of a large closet. After several weeks of straight touring, they were focused and tight. I’ve seen them half a dozen times or so live now, and [...]
Archive of entries posted by admin
covert reading ops
I’ve been reading a lot lately (more on that later), so I’ve been frequenting the Prince George’s County Memorial Library in Hyattsville, Md. I fondly remember going to the C. Burr Artz Public Library in Frederick with my parents and brother as a kid at least monthly. I’m not sure that I read even half [...]
kornheiser suspended, world rejoices
The Washington Post reported today that Tony Kornheiser was suspended from the air by ESPN for making unflattering comments about his colleague Hannah Storm’s wardrobe. (I consider myself unqualified to make such a sartorial criticism.) Lately I have gotten into the habit of watching him and Michael Wilbon on PTI each evening, so I find [...]
undies
If nothing else I am known as a man with umpteen pet peeves. One of them is CAPTCHA. (It’s an acronym–I won’t provide the full expansion here for fear of barfing on my keyboard out of its sheer inanity.) I guess it’s great that it reduces comment spam and mass bot purchasing on Ticketmaster, but, [...]
photographic redunancy
My roommates and I hosted a party on Saturday night. The attendance was zero. Being the irrepressible scamps that we are, we partied by ourselves and took pictures anyway. Here’s a poorly Photoshopped one of me regaling me with a rather ribald anecdote that cannot be repeated here due to my intractable sense of public [...]
etymological redundancy
From last month’s Washington Post:
“Metro Transit Police say they have a new unit working to deter terrorists from targeting the transit system.”
Deter is from the Latin de (from) + terrere (to frighten), which is also the origin of terrorist.
They used two words in a row that share a common derivation of a Latin root. How [...]
figures of speech, part two of ∞
Eunoia is doubly interesting–first, as a curiosity in being the shortest English language word to contain all five vowels, and second, as a figure of speech. From the Greek for “well mind,” it refers to the concept of benevolent goodwill. I read today’s op-ed in the Times about Microsoft, and it made me think that Bill [...]
white supremacitibank
Starting tomorrow, Citibank will charge me a $7.50/month service fee to keep my money if I don’t maintain a $1,500 average balance on my checking account. (I imagine that the other national banks will follow suit soon.) I plan on closing my account and switching to my free, local credit union. But in case I don’t [...]
later, panda
Tai Shan is being deported to China on February 4. Rather than getting misty-eyed about his impending departure, I say, good riddance. That’s right–I’m anti-panda.
The Supreme Court recently affirmed personal freedom of speech rights for corporations. I’d like to think that if there actually was a prosopopoetic corporation, he would sound like the stiff at [...]