"My mother is a fish" (my 2014 review of the movie adaptation of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying)The Powerful Prose of Cormac McCarthy (excerpts from Blood Meridian)
The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, says that four of its tribal members were recently detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis.OST President Frank Star Comes Out issued a statement Friday saying ICE agents detained four men who are homeless and living near the Little Earth housing project in south Minneapolis. The statement continues to say that another OST tribal member witnessed their detainment and was able to confirm their tribal affiliation...It comes amid an ongoing occupation of the Twin Cities by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has escalated under the auspices of targeting undocumented immigrants and fraud, but is increasingly seeing U.S. citizens detained and residents of the Twin Cities profiled based on their appearance or accent...An incident that went viral on social media saw a Somali-American man working as an Uber driver at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport pulled over by CBP agents who demanded he prove his immigration status, with one agent saying: "I'm an immigration officer, I can hear you don't have the same accent as me ... I want to know where you're born."
I wish we could resurrect Dorothy Parker. She was a widely quoted author in the 1920s, known for her wit. A collection of her work was released in the United States in 1944 under the title The Portable Dorothy Parker. Parker's is one of only three of the Portable series (the other two being William Shakespeare and The Bible) to remain continuously in print." I'm sure she would have some choice words to offer regarding the current situation in the U.S. Here are some of her famous quotes:“I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host.”
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”For her epitaph, she suggested 'Excuse my dust.' Ironically "her ashes remained unclaimed in various places, including her attorney Paul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet, for approximately 17 years." I've requested The Portable Dorothy Parker from the library.
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
“What fresh hell is this?”
“Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa.”
“This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”
“I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen.”
“So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'" (Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in "The Naked and the Dead.”) Addendum: Note this is possibly a misattribution, perhaps said by Tallulah Bankhead (hat tip to reader Michael Skeet).
“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”
Dorothy Parker died in 1967 at the age of 73. She left no family and directed that her estate and any future royalties go to a man she had never met but admired, The Reverend Martin Luther King; and on his death, to the NAACP.
She designated that her friend, the playwright Lillian Hellmann, be her literary executor. But Lillian Hellmann thought that Dr. King was a pompous stuffed shirt, and she didn't think much of the NAACP.
Seemingly out of spite, [Hellmann] made it difficult for those who wanted to reprint Dorothy Parker's poems or turn her works into plays and movies.
Marion Meade has written about the saga of Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellmann in the April-May issue of Book Forum magazine. She joins us from our studios in New York... [continues at the link]
Reposted again to highlight the "What fresh hell is this" sentiment.
"A woman peddles bouquets of flowers outside the ruins of the passport office in Aleppo. "Photographs from Syria, January 2025, by Victor J. Blue.
"Take this seriously. If your iPhone does not have Apple’s new update, you must install it now. We know attacks on iPhones have started. We have been warned the threat will extend well beyond those highly targeted initial attacks. And hundreds of millions of iPhone users are also now facing down an unwelcome surprise.The last available analyst data says hundreds of millions of iPhone users with devices eligible for Apple’s current iOS 26 firmware have yet to upgrade. Those users had expected to be offered the update to iOS 18.7.3, avoiding iOS 26 for a little longer. But Apple withdrew that update for all but iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR.It’s now a choice between upgrading to iOS 26.2 or no security update. A quick scan of online forums a week after all this was confirmed is a nasty surprise. Plenty of users say they intend to stick with iOS 18.7.2 and avoid the update altogether. That’s bad news...Do not run your iPhone without these critical WebKit security fixes. “Users should urgently update all their impacted Apple devices,” James Maude from BeyondTrust told me. “Even though this only appears to be linked to a small number of targeted attacks it will quickly become a must have exploit for a range of threat actors."..Check your iPhone. If you’re running iOS 18.7.2, you should update to iOS 26.2 assuming iOS 18.7.3 is not available. The period of maximum risk for vulnerabilities is the time between public disclosure and extensive patching. That’s right now."
"There is one other important difference that was not mentioned. During colonial times in America, New Year's Day was legally celebrated on March 25, not January 1, though many celebrated in January. This was also true in Great Britain and the rest of the British Empire. This was an additional change in 1752, not noted in the article, when Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar.For those who research cemeteries for genealogy, you'll often see a date engraved on a grave marker such as 1722/3, reflecting this, for a date between January 1 and March 25."
"Since ancient times, England had used the “Julian calendar”, instituted by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. The Julian calendar followed a solar year of 365 days, but had a somewhat inaccurate method of calculating leap years, which over the centuries led to the addition of too many extra days. Originally, January 1 was the date of the new year in the Julian calendar, but after the fall of the Roman Empire, the date gradually changed in various parts of Europe to March 25, to conform with Christian festival of the Annunciation. England adopted March 25th as New Year’s day in the twelfth century.
"Between 1582 and 1752, not only were there two calendars in use in Europe, but there were even two different starts of the year in England. The official start of the year was March 25, but many people celebrated January 1 as the “New Year’s Day”, following the continental example, and January 1 was often cited as such in almanacs. Therefore, a system of “double dating” was often used in English and colonial records. For dates falling between the new “New Year” (January 1) and the old “New Year” (March 25), the year could be denoted as two years separated by a slash. For example, “March 18, 1642/43”. In the absence of double dating or other evidence, one may not know to which year a document is referring, according to modern reckoning."
I have not located any photos of American colonial gravestones displaying the split date; if anyone knows of such, please leave a comment.
Addendum: A grateful tip of my blogging hat to an anonymous reader who found a video that discusses similar unusual gravestones in an English cemetery (from whence the embedded screencap at the top).
Herewith, selections from a "comprehensive guide to the terms gen Z is using to talk about romance, sex and the pursuit of both." These are the ones I found most interesting:
Bird theory – A TikTok trend loosely based on a test developed by couples researchers Julie and John Gottman, in which you point out something trivial – for example, “I saw a bird today” – and note whether your partner’s response is inquisitive or dismissive. If they do not want to hear more about the bird, you two are doomed.Choremance – A date where two people bond while running errands, such as walking the dog or grocery shopping. In other words, how broke twentysomethings do affordable dating in a post-“$5 beer and shot combo” world.Freak matching – When you find someone who’s just as obsessive about documentaries about the second world war or DVD collecting or collaging or whatever it may be, as you. Or, conversely, finding someone who hates the same things or people that you do (nothing builds intimacy faster than sharing a nemesis).Kittenfishing – Catfishing-lite. Or, not exactly lying about who you are, but maybe using older (better) photos of yourself on a dating app profile, or making your job sound more important than it is. Also known as putting your best foot forward.Monkey branching – A subgenre of microcheating, this means having someone ready in the wings to swing on over to, making a breakup easier. A rebound you tee up before things are officially over.Orbiting – When a partner ceases communication, Ã la ghosting, but stays around like a phantom by keeping tabs on your digital footprint. As in, they’ll suddenly like an Instagram post after years of no contact, retraumatizing you all over again.
