This is not a recent article, but I only read it a few weeks ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. This will probably rank as my strangest week ever. Here's the story of what happened. Posted by Blake Ross on Friday, April 22, 2016 I’m still reeling from this. I had actually had a conversation prior to this with someone who can’t picture things in his mind, but I don’t think I fully bought into it…I assumed it… Read more »
Posts By: Claire
Dreams
I’ve been having weirdly quantifiable dreams lately. Quantifiable isn’t the right word, but it feels right–that or codifiable. They aren’t like most dreams, wherein upon trying to describe them to another person you find yourself stumbling over the “then I was in my house but it wasn’t my house” and “so-and-so was there but then all of a sudden it was whats-her-name” and so on. These are more along the lines of: “I had to recreate the cover of Nirvana’s In Utero using… Read more »
Booklist
2018 started out slow, reading-wise. I’m lucky in the amount of free time I have and unlucky in the amount of commute time I have, so I’m not sure why this year has a lower book count than past years so far. Here are the first ten books I read in 2018: Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong: Technically I read most of this in 2017, but I finished it in January. It was pretty delightful. Kitchen/“Moonlight Shadow,” by Banana Yoshimoto:… Read more »
Topsy
I have a young student who has always had a particular comic style. The other day, she decided she’d had enough of the pedagogical balance and that she wanted to do more teaching and less student-ing. So I got a very detailed lesson on how to create headings for English essays, which I think I retained pretty well. After I had mastered formatting, she gave a little lecture on SOHCAHTOA…but first told me she didn’t like the mnemonic and had… Read more »
A catalogue of bruises
That’s definitely the group name of bruises. That or constellation, but maybe that’s better saved for freckles. I seem to be slightly anemic–vegetarian things–and I also walk into things more frequently than I would prefer, so I generally have at least three bruises at all times. Most of them are unremarkable, but I’ve had a few that were epic. After sustaining–not twin bruises, but definitely half-sibling or maybe first cousin bruises–on both legs when I walked into some sound equipment,… Read more »
Thievery
The only thing I have ever really had a serious itch to shoplift is fresh basil. Basil is one of the select herbs that just doesn’t translate at ALL when forced into dry form. It’s like a really ineffective shape-shifting superhero. Very powerful fresh! Very ineffective when powdered. Basil seems to only be sold in outsize containers of 50 leaves or more. Here is the number of leaves that I need in order to enjoy fresh basil in my farro:… Read more »
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
More subway thoughts: Both grilling (questioning intensely) and roasting (gently or harshly mocking) are terms we use about people – why are we comparing ourselves to food so frequently? And are grilling and roasting (food version) comparably similar/different to grilling and roasting (people version)? Why don’t we talk about boiling people, or baking them? I guess we do talk about getting baked. And hammered! And, come to think of it, nailed (and…banged? No; I don’t think people get banged. They… Read more »
Ignition (not remix to)
Yesterday I was on the train on my way home, though in theory I was on my way to yoga. Yoga would require getting off the train four stops sooner than I would if I were planning to go home, put on a panda suit and relax, which I kind of was. I knew that I would be glad *after* going to yoga, and that I would be content while there, but the idea of going was so much less… Read more »
Didgeri-dodgeri-do
The other night I came home to a noise emanating from either inside of our apartment walls or the apartment above us. It sounded like the middle part of a Venn diagram showing the overlap of rusty pipes, angry ghosts/bees/ghost-bees, and oversized appliances. If our apartment was a face, the alcove where the washer and dryer sit would be the mouth, and last night it would have been screaming. This was an especially unwelcome development because it was paired with… Read more »
Big ABCs
A few weeks ago I was passing the time by trying to glean a pattern from the letters that are often paired with “J” for nicknames (BJ, RJ, DJ, CJ). You might think it’s the “Eeeeee” sound, but a) that’s probably the most common characteristic for letters of the alphabet, period; b) then you get to “MJ” (And if you’re quicker on the uptake/more systematic than I am, you…get to “AJ first”) Let’s see: “A” and its rhymers: AJ, JJ,… Read more »
