Square Pegs

For a long time, we assumed we couldn’t write such things because we weren’t clever enough. This theory has not been laid to rest, but we now see it’s more than cleverness: it’s the fact that we failed miserably in our musical education. If only we had stuck out the piano lessons despite a lack of talent — it is notable that we possess a prodigious ability for self-deception (hence sticking with softball for so long because we enjoyed the fantasy world wherein we could hit and catch; reality was somewhat different, though we did possess the advantage of a […]

Last night, we got into the car to hear “Blietzkrieg Bop.” It was still playing as we parked at the grocery store. When we started the engine again, it was to the tune of “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” By the time we heard “We Want the Airwaves”, we knew something was up. Though rumors of his illness taking a turn for the worse persisted, Johnny Ramone continued to make the local scene, popping up on our local radio station regularly. He wanted to live. We doubt we need to tell anyone how to celebrate the life of any Ramone…just

At the risk of offending John Grisham fans (which is not our intent), we have to wonder: what is the point of sending a potentially explosive device? What sort of message is to be inferred by the author from a failed attempt like that? It makes no sense at all. We are slowly coming to the conclusion that maybe there is something to this dueling* thing. Cowardly fighting (and we classify using the mail to hide one’s dirty work as cowardly) is so last century. If you can’t face the object of your anger directly, and give them a chance

If anything, their opposition to the Patriot Act (or parts thereof) will change the world’s bizarre perception of librarians. They are not meek, they are not mild-mannered, they are not mousy. Librarians are highly educated individuals. Working in a quiet place does not mean you’re a doormat. We are hoping this changed perception will extend to fictional librarians — no more gray suits with racy underwear underneath, please. It’s been done to death. Thank you. A friend recently had a rash of interesting traffic to her website. Now it’s possible that her research on the Internet lead her down some

We’re quite excited about this — it was just yesterday that we reminisced about our childhood, and Judy Blume certainly played a big part in molding the person we became. Hmmm. We suspect she would immmediately disassociate herself from anything having to do with affecting the person we became. Nonetheless, she played a part. It may not be a point of pride for her, but we would like to note that we do not possess a criminal record and we pay our taxes. We also stop for pink lights. Judy Blume to receive National Book Award

We want to live in a world where this type of sentence is never necessary: For the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has chosen a woman as president: Emily Kernan Rafferty, the Met’s current senior vice president for external affairs. We also wouldn’t mind the end of all sentences containing the phrase “for the first time since…”, unless a millenium or so has passed since the last time the event occurred. Hmmm, even in that instance, we advise caution (comets that only come around once every hundred years or so, yes, it will be the first time, but,

How would you like it if everywhere you turned, people were discussing you in the past tense. Sort of like, ah, the World-Wide Web, I knew it well, that sort of thing? We believe the death knell for the Web has rung many times (no, you have to do some research on your own; we do not want you to become dependent on us), usually by those who have something to gain from a new, improved system. We’re not naming names, but we recall a certain software giant mentioning the very same thing not too long ago. The cool thing

We celebrate the (apparent/reported/beyond-rumor-stage) acquisition of a major motion picture studio by our former employer (also a major motion picture entity) with a little finance related posting. But first, we’ll take a brief moment to gloat. When we were assured by our former co-workers that this acquisition would not go through, we said (and we paraphrase), “But we read it on the Internet. It must be true.” It is always delightful to be right — especially since we know the additional work will not affect us in our life of leisure*. Now that the confetti has settled, let us say