Legal humor here. All cartoons here. and here “Yeah, that was excessive. But somehow I don’t feel so bad.” “Technically, it’s legal. But Big Bill Bronson don’t do technical.” “A few broken windows I can ignore. A flipped car, not so much.” “This isn’t a cry for help. This is a cry for a butt-kicking.”…
Author: Alan Vanneman
James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide, Part 21
INTRODUCTION This is the 20th episode of “James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide,” a rambling consideration of Thurber’s works, examining his life and work in some detail. Generally, these appear every Friday. The links to the first part and the most recent part are given below. Part 21 continues the discussion of The Male Animal, Thurber’s…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. All cartoons here. and here “Hey, at least they got rid of the office cat. That was huge!” “If we don’t keep busy they’ll tap on the glass. And we both hate it when that happens.: “Listen, if I got upset every time Miley Cyrus ignored one of my mash-ups, I’d go…
Thomas Friedman, last seen doing a piss-poor job at self criticism
Over at Politico, Jonathan Topaz reports that Thomas Friedman recently told MSNBC “If there’s anything we should have learned from Iraq … it’s that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing,” Let me unpack that remark just a little, and give you the gist of what Tom is trying to say: “I am a…
New Yorkers find themselves unable to cope with conversations not based exclusively on the self-congratulatory repetition of thread-bare, left-wing clichés
In a long, desperate post, New York reporter Tim Murphy clues us into the intellectual crisis that’s halting conversations all across Manhattan and large parts of Brooklyn: In New York, folks don’t think twice about cheering gay marriage or abortion rights, but never know what buttons they’ll push among friends, family, or colleagues if they…
Ross Douthat’s Obama Outrage O’ the Week
I’m in the habit of reading Ross Douthat’s blog “Evaluations” at the New York Times, which, when he is not ruminating about the reverberative, not to say rebarbarative, phallocentricity of John Melius, is largely devoted to Ross’s mostly honest account of “thoughtful” conservatives like Ross to craft a domestic policy for the Republican Party that…
James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide, Part 20
INTRODUCTION This is the 20th episode of “James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide,” a rambling consideration of Thurber’s works, examining his life and work in some detail. Generally, these appear every Friday. The links to the first part and the most recent part are given below. Part 20 continues the discussion of The Male Animal, Thurber’s…
Brief Lives
As I announced two weeks ago, I have a new book out, Brief Lives, available both as an ebook and a print on demand paperback. Brief Lives is a collection of 32 short stories, many of them quite short, only a few pages, but some of them run on for a dozen or more. An…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “It’s a simple question, kids! Have you seen the White Whale!” “Go ahead and see him! Just remember, this thing started out as an ingrown toenail!” “Don’t act so stuck up! You’d be nothing without Harold Arlen and you know it!” “What do you mean it’s ‘wrong’ to ask for revenge? Is…
Marion Berry, still Marion Berry
Marion Berry, still Marion Berry Damn straight! Damn straight! No one, but no one, does it like Marion “Bitch set me up” Berry. According to the Washington Post, who makes it its business to know these things, DC’s former mayor for life had run up a tab of “$2,800 in unpaid parking and speeding tickets…