So for lunch today I walked down University Avenue to Carribean Spice, went in and said, “Jamaican meat patties?”
To which the proprietor replied, “Why, yes I am.”
.
.
.
Sorry about that. Shelley’s board is closed and there will be overflow.
So for lunch today I walked down University Avenue to Carribean Spice, went in and said, “Jamaican meat patties?”
To which the proprietor replied, “Why, yes I am.”
.
.
.
Sorry about that. Shelley’s board is closed and there will be overflow.
Now I’m the first to admit that I don’t know from world affairs. My perspective and information is more local.
But to sum up the situation in Iran that’s (allegedly) driving gas prices even higher, the key facts are these:
So here’s my idea.
We offer to build and operate the nuclear power plants, and refine and transport the nuclear materials ourselves, in exchange for oil, which Iran has aplenty.
If they decline, they’ve lost credibility with the court of public opinion, which frees us to deal more sternly with the issue.
If they agree, we get:
Iran gets
Sounds to me like everyone wins.
I’m still looking for the “It’s a great thought, but it could never work because…” aspect and I can’t see one. Anyone, feel free to correct me.
As one gets older, they say, the memory is the second thing to go.
The first thing to go, of course, is the memory.
So I’m having a conversation with my friend Eric. The topic is (surprise) Marx Brothers movies, specifically some of the later ones, and I’m looking for a certain descriptive word, and unbidden, from deep within the “These Words Aren’t Even On The SAT Anymore” vault, here it comes:
“Pastiche”.
He stops.
I stop.
“I think that’s the right word,” I say. We both go to the dictionary to look it up.
As it happens, it was exactly the word I’d been looking for, down to the shadings and implications. We’re talking dead center of the bullseye here.
If someone had asked me what that word meant meant five minutes before our conversation, I couldn’t have told them.
And now I am most fraught.
How did I know that word? And what the hell else do I know that I don’t know about?
And do I really not know these things, or am I just keeping them a secret from me?
The best version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” ever written is a barbershop arrangement that can be performed by any capable quartet. I kid you not… you will hear the song as for the first time and you will have goosebumps.
And best of all, everyone can sing along. I take some issue with artists (the quotes are implied) who try to explore the limits of this simple melody like an excited puppy on an elastic leash. I often sing along when such artists perform the song. To the sideways perturbed glares I sometimes get, I reply, “I was just helping her out… apparently she forgot how the song went.”
This witticism (the quotes are implied) usually fares badly amongst the glarers and quite well with everyone else.
Even talented artists like Whitney Houston have to face the personalization issue. Singers are told to “make a song their own”. But this song belongs to every American, so I just can’t enjoy her rendition.
Sure, I can appreciate her technique and effort and talent and training, in the same approving way you might say to yourself, “Hey, this guy is GOOD!” while being beaten up by a really skilled karate expert.
But as far as I’m concerned, you don’t turn a Whitney Houston loose on an old British drinking tune for the same reasons you don’t drive an Indy racer to the grocery store– it’s inappropriate.
Forcing “God Bless America” on an unsuspecting ballpark crowd doesn’t work either, though. I’m getting to the point where I don’t care if I ever hear that song again. And anyway, what are the agnostics supposed to sing? “Unspecified diety bless America”? Doesn’t work, see, the fluglehorn is going to be in phased tempo with the contrabassoon on the semi-quavers.
I hate it when that happens.
Is housing exempt from what we consider “inflation”?
Because once housing went up, say, 30%, one would have expected the Fed to slam the brakes on the problem by kicking the interest rates up a point or so.
Now housing is up 300, maybe 400%– maybe higher– and “overvalued” doesn’t even begin to describe the market. Massive numbers of apartments have been converted to condominiums. And tax revenue expectations, as I mentioned in a previous article, are far higher that the realized taxes are going to be, depending on how many houses were purchased by investors and how many of those investors end up declaring bankruptcy. Quite a few communities, jumping at the perceived opportunity for solvency by encouraging (or at least failing to stop) unbridled new construction, may end up owning more property than they care to.
I myself used to think that lower rates from the Fed were unilaterally a good thing. Now I see why that’s not entirely true.
I can’t help but feel that all this combines into a serious economic problem, especially as rising fuel costs dip further into people’s budgets.
Whatever the result is, hopefully we will have learned a lesson clearly enough to articulate.
Chances are, though, that we won’t be able to articulate it more clearly than the first line of I Timothy 6:10.
:)
I noticed another light that seems to have lost its mind: SW 2nd Ave, between the law school and Wilbert’s.
Can I get an “Amen” from the choir? And don’t get me started on Williston Road and 34th.
Here’s a question that ought to throw the DOT into a scurrying panic:
Exactly how long must a motorist sit at a light, with no traffic flowing in any direction, before the light can be considered “malfunctioning” and the motorist may proceed with caution after determining that the intersection is clear?
I often hear a certain axiom misquoted, to wit:
An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would eventually create all the works of Shakespeare.
The axiom is designed to force one to consider the nature of infinity. The permutation reflects our reluctance to do so.
Let’s correct this, shall we?
“An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would immediately create all of the works of Shakespeare–
—and every other piece of writing that has ever existed, or ever will exist (as long as it’s created with, or translated into, the typewriters’ character set) —
–in the minimum number of keystrokes required to do so—
–and each work would be produced an infinite number of times.”
See if that doesn’t clear a little space in the ol’ attic.