Thanks to a podcast, I found the answer to a random question I had wondered about — what baseball league do the Lake Wobegon Whippets belong to? I didn’t know, and it occurred to me one day that the Lake Wobegon Whippets could — and perhaps should — play in the Green Grass League againstContinue reading “A Baseball Mystery Solved”
Coldplay: Kaleidoscope
I’m underwhelmed by Coldplay’s new Kaleidoscope EP. A companion, I suppose, to A Head Full of Dreams, Kaleidoscope comprises five songs that feel like odds and ends the band had around, rather than a proper album. The opening track, “All I Can Think About Is You,” is pretty good, though it seems to have beenContinue reading “Coldplay: Kaleidoscope”
A Distant Family Tragedy
People wrote differently a century ago than we do today. I do not mean the mechanics of writing, though yesterday’s manual typewriters and and fountain pens worked differently than today’s word processors and predictive text and text-to-speech. We write faster than our ancestors did because our technology has improved. What I mean is that theContinue reading “A Distant Family Tragedy”
Drinking with Papa
I would not have been able to hang with Ernest Hemingway when it comes to drinking. A few years ago I picked up a recipe book of Ernest Hemingway-inspired cocktails, To Have and Have Another. Some of the recipes are things that Hemingway is known to have enjoyed, other drinks are based on his work.Continue reading “Drinking with Papa”
Returning to a Cemetery
Thursday I got the Beetle back. It had been in the shop for a week and a half, after I had broken the key off in the ignition. It should not have taken that long, but the newly cut key Volkswagen sent wasn’t cut properly — keys for the Beetle are laser-etched, for security purposesContinue reading “Returning to a Cemetery”
Greeted by the Moon
My alarm clock is set for 6:15. It’s a good time to get up. Sometimes for my bladder, 6:15 is simply too late. Twenty or thirty minutes before the alarm clock goes off, my bladder will be insistent that now is the time to get up. “Now!” it screams. “Now!” This was one of thoseContinue reading “Greeted by the Moon”
The Best Week Ever
I broke my key off in the Beetle’s ignition lock last night when I left the office. The Beetle has always had, shall we say, a “sticky” ignition. Sometimes it takes a little fiddling in the lock to turn. I’d actually found that the easiest way to turn it was to turn it from theContinue reading “The Best Week Ever”
The Avengers of Pre-Human Prehistory
A Legend to Last a Teatime
Indiana Jones and the Hills of White Elephants
This afternoon novelist Una McCormack retweeted a link to a McSweeney’s Internet Tendency piece by Rachel Klein titled Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” from “The Girl”‘s Point of View. I don’t read McSweeney’s as often as I feel that I should, so I was glad that I read this. Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills LikeContinue reading “Indiana Jones and the Hills of White Elephants”