Month: April 2011

Thursday

There’s not a whole lot to say about today, really. It was pretty much just your typical, run-of-the-mill Thursday.

It poured rain in the middle of the afternoon, bucketing down just minutes after I’d wandered back to the office after lunch. Which was lucky, because I’d left both my umbrella and jacket behind at my desk. It had quit raining long before it was time for me to actually leave for the day.

And that, honestly, is about the closest I came to excitement today. They were filming something up the block from my office, or seemed to be, but I didn’t see what. It was a block away, the street was blocked by police, and it was going to rain. It’s possible it was location shooting for Glee, which I’ve seen but don’t watch, but I say that only because there was some chatter on Twitter about them filming for it elsewhere, nearby, in the city. I didn’t actually see anything definitive.

And that was Thursday.

Thursday various

  • English Teacher Writes Racy Novels. Which…what? Should be grounds for firing the teacher? It’s not as if she assigned the novels as readings for her class, or even mentioned them to her students; by all accounts, she kept her writing life very separate, if not secret, and I don’t see why this should be anybody’s business, much less a problem.

    “Now my son knows so how is he thinking when he’s sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side,” said parent Wendy Apple.

    To which I say, maybe it’s time you and your son both grew up, then. The woman is allowed to have a personal life, and has committed no crime or obvious impropriety. And, honestly, if you’re trying to get a 10th-grade boy to quit thinking about sex, whatever the circumstances, you’re fighting a losing battle. [via]

  • Oscar Wilde takes on Jersey Shore. Does exactly what it says on the tin.
  • TSA security looks at people who complain about…TSA security.

    “This violation of my Constitutional rights in the service of fear-mongering and creating the illusion of safety is really — oh no! They’ve caught on to my nefarious plan!” [via]

  • When words change meaning. [via]
  • And finally, because it was only a matter of time, Infographic of Infographics [via]

Shorts Night

Tonight, I went to this, “Magical Realism: The World of Marvelous Stories with Neil Gaiman,” a night of four stories hosted by Selected Shorts on NPR. There were two stories by Gaiman, the first read by the author, a story by Kat Howard from Gaiman’s co-edited collection Stories, and one by Jorges Luis Borges. (Any discussion of magical realism is, by law, required to include Borges, though Gabriel Garcia Marquez will probably do in a pinch.) I had a really great seat, fron row center, and enjoyed myself quite a bit. I thought actor Marin Ireland, apparently making her debut on Selected Shorts, was particularly good. I didn’t stay for the book signing.

And, as I write this, I’m waiting on my train home.

That was my Wednesday. How ’bout you?