Month: January 2006
Useless guide to NYC
Here’s the most bland, over-generalized, completely useless summary of New York City I’ve ever seen. According to this rubbish, the Upper West Side is east of Central Park and the Upper East Side is west of it. Check out this particular bit of brilliance, apparently written by a sixth-grader in Sowbelly, Arkansas, in exchange for…
Readers’ No. 1 Detective Agency
Maud has brought aboard a book detective. Genius. Now all those Ask Metafilter queries about books loved but lost in childhood can be resolved.
Where’s the rest of this information?
What possible use could a Google Print search result be without something more than a title of a periodical and page number? It’s not a single-edition book. Aviation Digest was published approximately from 1955 to 2002, but Google Print gives no year, volume, or issue number for the search result. Only the slimmest image of…
Leave off the last S for Baksheesh
“Customers would misspell the word mattress they were dialing ‘m-a-t-r-e-s-s’ so instead of calling us, they were dialing the Regency Hotel on 64th Street, around the corner from where we have a store now. So I offered to pay the front desk clerk at the Regency a small amount of money every month to be…
Wristcutters
My friend Tatiana Kelly is a producer of the movie Wristcutters, a selection of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Rule
Web sites which primarily offer text-based news should mark all video content with an icon so that those visitors who do not want to see the stone-ugly faces of print reporters, hear their swing-shift-at-the-morgue voices, or do not want to or cannot view video, can avoid clicking on the link. Bonus rule: know your readers.…
How to Be a Curmudgeon on the Internet
“My correspondent never wrote back. That, of course, would violate the rules for being an Internet pill, reprinted here in their entirety, courtesy of the Pills of the American Internet Neighborhood Society (PAINS).”
Where Smoking Is Still Allowed
A profile of one of the few businesses on the Lower East Side leftover from the days when it was the Jewish heart of the city. “Vargas was hired on when he was 17, shortly after emigrating from the Dominican Republic. He used to keep a small notebook in the pocket of his butcher’s coat,…
Imbecilic article protesting use of “-ese” suffix in describing nationalities
“Clearly, ‘-ese’ here relates to derogation and shows a low opinion of people.“ Good luck with that. You’ll get about as much traction as the pathetic “USian” in describing Americans.
What Do ‘Refugee,’ ‘Jump the Couch’ and ‘Spokesweasel’ Have in Common?
The Voice of America program “Wordmaster” spoke with me for a segment on the words of the year.