On four occasions, most recently last week, I have given a client a copy of the Devil’s Dictionary.
Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Category Archives: Books
The Wrong Path
A well-meaning but clueless relative gave Mini__B a book:
It looks cute, but it’s like giving a child encouragement to become a junkie. Why?
Also, I find it impossible to pronounce the title as anything other than “Iggy Peck, Architeck, Tee.”
Under The South Pole
The Russians have done it: twenty years of drilling and they’ve reached a lake buried under Antarctica’s ice for millions of years.
Never Trust A Writer
There’s a landmark building on Staten Island: the Ichabod Crane House.
Crane was an army officer and led a relatively uneventful life, devoid of headless horsemen and Johnny Depp. He did, however, once meet Washington Irving.
Dreams versus Reality
Every so often, maybe once per month on average, I’ll have a dream so realistic and so mundane that I confuse it with waking life. This morning I realized that it had happened again, and something I’ve been chuckling over for a few days didn’t happen.
I was sitting in a conference room while a man was giving a presentation on urban renewal. The presenter had three slides using illustrations from The Little House to make a point about the effect of elevated railroads on property values. The only reason I’m certain this didn’t happen is that I haven’t sat through a PowerPoint presentation in months.
Either this some deep meaning that is escaping me or my subconscious is extraordinarily boring. Both are depressing possibilities.
Like, Deep, Man
This came up in the Times yesterday: “The City” by C.P. Cavafy, which is about Cairo a hundred years ago, is broadly applicable today.
Look, a prediction for me:
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
On edit: iTunes just kicked up “Baker Street.” Heh.
Seeing Things
I’m currently reading a novella by Charlie Stross called “Palimpsest.” Every time I look at the title, my brain interprets it as “Palinpest.”
Perfection
I am reluctant to tell where the following piece of writing comes from, since the context will only distract you from the most perfect sentence fragment I’ve read in years:
…among numerous indignities through history, the Roma suffered the obscure nuisance of vampire watermelons…
Can knowing where this came from possibly improve on it? I think not. Spoiler below.
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“Twilight of the Vampires” by Téa Obrecht, in the November 2010 Harper’s.
A Lack of Forethought
For some years, the MTA – proprietor, owner, and malevolent household god of the New York subways – ran a series of placards with quotes from poems in the ad space above the subway car windows. This program, known as “Poetry in Motion” – a name for which someone should have been executed – began with famous and innocuous poems, but reached its logical conclusion when it included a portion of Canto I of the Inferno. Unfortunately, the translation used was one I found particularly infelicitous. The way I first read it and remember it:
In the midst of life I found myself in a dark forest where the straight and narrow path had been lost.
That, in summary, is the Broadway Junction station.
A Conversation
Scene: A street, near the corner of Wall and Broad. A man with a book in his hand is looking for sales.
Salesman: You, sir! Have you read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? It could change your life!
Me: What’s the title?
Salesman: “THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE.”
Me: Yeah, I heard about this…masturbating in elevators, right?
Salesman: No, that’s not one of the seven habits of highly effective people.
Me: Oh, so it’s just something they do for the hell of it?
Salesman, turning 90 degrees: You, ma’am! Have you read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? It could change your life!
Dialog
From “Halting State” by Charlie Stross…
A mob of LARP zombies has assembled and chants:
What do we want?
BRAAAAAAAINNS
When do we want them?
NOOOOOOOOW
Real life can be so boring.
