The General Situation

I Want This

Via MondoBlogo.

Unclear on the Concept

Me: I mailed your birthday gift today. It's wrapped, so you can open the outside box.
Mom: What is it?

(To be fair, the email could have come from my dad, because they use each other's accounts interchangeably—and without ever identiftying who's typing.) Nope, it was Mom.

Well, It Beats Chicken Bones

There's no restaurant on this block (or the blocks on either side).

Stormy Weather

I shot this video in Litchfield, Conn. I managed to capture the trellis in the garden slowly toppling over. Unfortunately, I stopped right before a massive thundercrack made me leap away from the window and possibly scream.

Sleepbarking

It looks like the hiccups, but it's not. Or maybe he was singing along to Iron & Wine?

Do I Look Like a Two-Buck Whore?

Salesclerk: Oh! Your receipt is special. Not everyone is selected. Just call this number [highlights phone number on receipt] and you'll—
Me: Don't bother. I'd never do that.
Salesclerk: Really?
Me: Never.
Salesclerk: Not even for two dollars?
Me: [Raises eyebrows.]

Back home, I realized it wasn't even for cash; it was for a coupon.

I'm Just Saying...

• The last spoonful from the dog-food can is the worst. (I don't mean to eat; I just mean to deal with.)

• Isn't it time we all admitted that we don't like polenta?

• "Tootsie: The Musical."

• When a critic praises a Woody Allen film, you have to wonder whether he or she is simply relieved it doesn't out-and-out suck.

• Dead royals will always be more interesting than living ones.

• I'd eat white bean paste all the time if I could buy it in a jar.

• Spellcheck should have a back button. [Update: Thanks to Michele, I now know it does! Undo = back.]

• Twenty years from now, do you think we'll still have to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'"?

• Facebook seems to make people forget that they never liked each other.

• If everyone's a winner, no one's a winner.

• Why don't celebrities sell the TV rights to their weddings?

• How come elevator buttons can't be unpushed?

The Apple of My Eye

Me: What did you have for dinner?
Adam: Eggs and a bagel.
Me: Did you have an apple?
Adam: No. I don't eat apples unless you slice them for me.
Me: [Pause.] I'm pretty sure I didn't hear you correctly.

What I Learned in the New York Times (May 2011)

• 5/31: Dogs, like cats, drink by forming a column with their tongues, pulling up a long column of liquid and ingesting it before gravity drags it back down.

• 5/30: Bored young men in Libya engage in a sport called drifting—i.e., making their cars skid and slide.

• 5/29: There are wines being marketed as Mommy's Time Out and MommyJuice.

• 5/28: Musician Gil Scott-Heron died.

• 5/27: According to a new study on seafood fraud, the rates of some mislabeled species run as high as 70 percent.

• 5/26: Director Kathryn Bigelow is planning a film on the killing of Osama bin Laden.

• 5/25: President Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Puerto Rico since John F. Kennedy in 1961.

• 5/24: Fingernails grow about three times as fast as toenails, and the dominant hand's nails grow faster than the ones on the other hand.

• 5/23: Lance Armstrong is under federal investigation for fraud, conspiracy, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

• 5/22: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has never held public office.

• 5/21: The designer of Mike Tyson's face tattoo is suing the producers of The Hangover Part II for using the design.

• 5/20: A college student threw eggs and a shoe at the architect of China's strict Internet controls; the eggs missed but the shoe did not.

• 5/19: San Franciscans will vote on whether to ban male circumcision.

• 5/18: The dollar, weighed against a basket of other currencies, hit a 40-year low this month.

• 5/17: Texas is close to enacting a law that would require voters to show photo ID.

• 5/16: New York State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister vehemently opposed to gay marriage, has a gay granddaughter.

• 5/15: Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has been hired by Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops that will conduct missions inside and outside the country.

• 5/13: Websites are liable for advertising that breaks federal criminal law.

• 5/12: The new taxis in New York will have "low-annoyance" horns.

• 5/11: Google is lobbying Nevada to allow its driverless cars.

• 5/10: In the 1970s, the British government administered "virginity tests" to prospective female immigrants.

• 5/9: Around 30 states have passed laws allowing companies to set up special insurance subsidiaries called captives, something that only used to be allowed offshore.

• 5/8: According to one of his sons, Osama bin Laden loved nature.

• 5/7: Shania Twain lost her ability sing after discovering that her husband was having an affair with a close friend (whose ex-husband Twain ended up marrying).

• 5/6: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will vacation in California this summer.

• 5/5: North Korea is estimated to be holding 200,000 political prisoners captive.

• 5/4: To improve "social management," China's top internal security officer called for a database containing information on each of the country's 1.34 billion residents.

• 5/3: U.S. special forces' code name for Osama Bin Laden was Geronimo.

• 5/2: Tilapia has far lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids than most other widely eaten fish.

• 5/1: Muammar el-Qaddafi's youngest son and three of his grandchildren were killed in a NATO airstrike.

Hello, My Name Is Kirk

There's a nice (or nice-seeming, since I haven't met him) guy who has emailed me many times regarding Tribeca Citizen. A photographer, he gave me some of his excellent images to run. In the first seven emails he sent me, he called me Kirk. I made sure to sign off every reply, but still, Kirk. So I pointed it out, because I would want someone to do that to me if our positions were reversed. And yet the emails kept coming to Kirk. Today, he emailed a question, starting it off with "Hi Kirk." I answered, we went back and forth, and then he wrote, "Thx Erik (not to be confused with Erik that I constantly call you by mistake)."