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Last week, Little Steven read Al Aronowitz’s “August Blues”:
August is the month when wars start. It’s when the water dries up and the spirit begins to wither. Insomniacs pull down their shades and lock themselves in their rooms in August. Lifelong friends have fist fights. People feel like they’re going to burst. Sometimes they do.
World War I started in August, or just about. The Austro-Hungarian Army began bombarding Belgrade on July 29, 1914, not quite August, but then August sometimes begins early. World War II didn’t quite start in August either. A German pocket battleship anchored alongside the harbor fortifications while on a good will call to the Polish port of Gdynia let loose with a broadside at dawn of Sept.1, 1939, but then August sometimes lasts for weeks after you’ve ripped it off the calendar. It drags on and on like some kind of insanity that can only be snapped away by the first crisp shock of autumn. …
August seems to be ending on time this year, but you never know. (You can read the whole thing here.)
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Why is Jeff Passan, baseball columnist for Yahoo! sports, bothering to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of a .149-hitting backup catcher by the Double-A Williamsport Bills?
Because 20 years ago last Friday, Dave Bresnahan pulled the greatest hidden-ball trick ever.
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Since we found ourselves discussing the mythological “ticking time-bomb scenario” the other day, let me belatedly link to Belle Waring’s authoritative staking-through-the-heart of this muddling distraction: “By the Power of Stipulation: I Have the Power!“
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Meet Dr. J. Matthew Sleeth, a medical doctor, a born-again evangelical Christian, a climate-change activist, a simple lifestyle advocate and the author of Serve God, Save the Planet.
Interesting guy. Here, via the latest issue of Creation Care magazine, is his list of the Top Ten Creation Care Technologies:
1. Keeping the Sabbath; 2. No television; 3. Clotheslines; 4. Compact fluorescent light bulbs; 5. Farmers’ Markets; 6. Bird feeders; 7. Low-flow shower heads; 8. Bicycles; 9. Front-loading washer; 10. Cloth shopping bags.
(Now I’ll have to check out the book to see why Dr. Sleeth views bird feeders as a useful technology to combat climate change. How do fatter squirrels help stop global warming?)
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Andy did you hear about this one?
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I don’t know where, exactly, my copies of The New Yorker are printed, but I imagine it’s pretty far away. Yet somehow, each week, the magazine travels from the printer, to the warehouse, to the post office it is shipped from, then to my post office and, finally, to my personal mailbox. And then always, each week, as I take the new issue out of my mailbox, two subscription blow-in cards fall out onto the floor of the lobby.
I cannot figure out whether: A) the cards somehow know they’ve arrived at their final destination and refuse to fall out before then, or B) The New Yorker initially stuffs my magazine with dozens of these blow-in subscription cards and the others have all fallen out en route.
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Credit/blame to damnedyankee for the link here, but after browsing through the 350+ comments in the previous thread, this song came to mind …
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