The actor Steven Weber, best known for his role on the sitcom Wings, weighed in recently on Paris Hilton. It is one of the… strangest opinions I’ve ever read. I couldn’t put a sentence together like that. Well, okay, maybe if I’ve been drinking really hard. Here’s an example: [S]he is like one of thoseContinue reading “On Steven Weber's Opinion”
Author Archives: Allyn
On the Stomach
Sunday evening my parents and I took my grandmother to her favorite restaurant for dinner, Bullock’s. It’s a family restaurant out near Westminster. The place has a buffet. The buffet table is a covered wagon. It uses a yellow fluorescent tube. Food looks… well, not like food… under the yellow light. There’s a model trainContinue reading “On the Stomach”
On Sudoku Puzzles
I have to tell you, this has kept me up nights with worry. The world is not going to run out of Sudoku puzzles. It’s an obvious worry. You go in the bookstore, and you see hundreds of Sudoku books, many of them written by Will Shortz. Surely, you think, there’s a limit to Sudoku.Continue reading “On Sudoku Puzzles”
On Redecoration
I’d felt the itch for a few weeks. I wanted a different look and feel for the website. It wasn’t that I’d grown disenchanted with the Tarski theme, as I hadn’t. Truthfully, I think it’s a fantastic layout and extremely extensible as long-time readers of this website know–using the same basic layout I’ve gone fromContinue reading “On Redecoration”
On Green Blood
It turns out that you don’t have to be a Vulcan like Spock or Tuvok to have green blood. No, you merely need to have migraines. A team of Canadian surgeons discovered during an operation that their patient had dark green blood. Why? Because of the migraine medication he was on, sumatriptan. The result? ThisContinue reading “On Green Blood”
On a Crossover I Want To See
I went to the BBC’s website yesterday and downloaded some desktop wallpapers for “Blink,”, this Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who. And I was looking at some of the wallpapers and their depiction of crumbling angelic statues and their blank eyes, the craziest thought came to mind. I want a Doctor Who/Hellboy crossover. Because those statuesContinue reading “On a Crossover I Want To See”
On Future Thinking
A quick warning. This post may strike some readers as being potentially morbid. I saw a car accident Tuesday evening. I’m not entirely clear what happened–I caught it in the rearview mirror while I was at a convenience store. A mid-sized car, an SUV, airbags deployed on both vehicles. When I passed back through theContinue reading “On Future Thinking”
On Testing the LJ Crossposter
And twenty-four hours later, the LJ Crossposter appears to be working again. We shall see. 😉 Now to see if editing a post breaks things… I put up the windows on my car. It’s supposed to drop down into the forties tonight. Put in the key, turn the ignition, and what do I hear? Nickelback.Continue reading “On Testing the LJ Crossposter”
On Narrative Conventions
About a week ago the Washington Post ran a feature article on Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. He’s released a new novel, Divisadero, and the article examines Ondaatje’s working methods: He begins with fragmentary images or situations — a plane crashing in the desert, say, or a bedridden man talking to a nurseContinue reading “On Narrative Conventions”
On Scooter Libby's Sentence
Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, was convicted earlier this year of perjery and obstruction of justice in stemming from the revelation of Valeria Plame’s identity as a covert CIA agent. Today, Scooter Libby will be sentenced. Twenty months. That’s my guess. ETA: And I was wrong! It was thirty months!Continue reading “On Scooter Libby's Sentence”