The Wand of Narcissus

The Wand of Narcissus

A “selfie stick” if you haven’t heard, is something like a monopod and something like a cry for help. These gizmos, used to take photos of oneself and one’s friends (if one has any) at greater than arms-length, are apparently all the rage and...
The Callipygian Explosion of 1835

The Callipygian Explosion of 1835

Let’s not dwell on why I was looking up the word callipygian, or, for that matter, why I checked the Google books ngram graph for it. Let us instead wonder, who, or maybe what, a century and change before Minaj, before Kardashian, even before Mix-a-Lot, inspired...

Nous Sommes Charlie

The trouble with setting your clock radio to the news is that you wake up thinking you had a bad dream only to discover it was the news seeping into your groggy head. Truth is sometimes more awful than fiction. As you may have heard, 12 people in France were murdered...
PO’d at the proselytizing PO

PO’d at the proselytizing PO

I got to the post office early to buy stamps. I knew the windows would be closed but was planning to buy stamps from the machine. A week after Christmas, here were my options: How many Christmas stamps would you like? Zero is how many I would like. No other options,...

A gob in search of a smacking

From Welcome to Germany comes today’s word of the day, Backpfeifengesicht. And what a welcome it would be: The word Backpfeife means “punch/slap” (on the cheek/face) and Gesicht means “face” So a Backpfeifengesicht is pretty much a face...