Archive for the ‘Old Fartdom’ Category
Suppressing Votes
Despite McCain's being the old farts' candidate, I won't be voting for him. McCain looks old and ill to me. He seems to have no circulation under his papery white skin. He always looks like he is suppressing a fart. [Erica Jong:, "Is John McCain Really Our Friend?", Huffington Post, 8 October 2008.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Old Fartdom
The Doubleday Fart
I am fascinated to learn (via Brainiac, "Fact of the Day", who heard it from the NYTimes, "The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors" by Al Silverman): Doubleday, a proudly "middlebrow" company, was founded by Frank N. Doubleday, who suffered from flatulence. As a result, […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Old Fartdom
A Decade Without TV
I find that I get unusually irritated by admonitions that assume I'm not already doing what said admonition would like me to do. Such presumption! There's a road sign I curse routinely that says "Slow Down!" when I'm already going the speed limit. Back in the Carter days it was "Turn Down Your Thermostat!" (in […]
Running Man
Sometime a few weeks ago I was reading some novel — I'm afraid I don't really remember what it was, but it almost certainly was a modern crime/mystery novel — when one of the characters made a passing reference to Paul McCartney & Wings, and their long-ago hit song "Band on the Run". "Band on […]
Feeling Presidential
I don't know whether I've mentioned before that around our house noises made by the body are held in high esteem. Well, if not high esteem exactly, at least we recognize that many odd and entertaining sounds emit from our bodies, often without warning. In particular, I have a certain reputation for farting a lot. […]
Old Fartdom
So, I read about this poll about "profanity": …the AP-Ipsos poll on attitudes about profanity. The results are taken from a poll of 1,001 adults…* Not surprisingly, Two-thirds said they think people use profanity more now than they did 20 years ago. Of course, there's the relativity of what it is that people think is […]