After my apartment became an OSHA violation – as in, that same day, about eight hours later – the dryer tried to set my clothes on fire. This wasn’t surprising in general, because the washer and dryer have been in the apartment far longer than I have and, to my knowledge, no one has ever serviced them (yes, this is a failure on my part. I know. I understand that avoiding eye contact with people is one thing and avoiding… Read more »
Posts By: Claire
Mercureek
As much as my OCD has been mitigated by Zoloft and therapy, contamination fears still do their worst with me from time to time. Today the landlord sent someone to replace light bulbs that were too high for us to reach without a proper ladder, and in the course of his doing so two of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs that had been in there broke, scattering little pieces of glass AND ALSO MERCURY OH DEAR GOD I’M GOING TO DIE… Read more »
Books of 2019, Part 8
The Day the Sun Died, by Yan Lianke: I was initially distracted by some stylistic devices that never ended up working for me (repetition, ironic insertion of the author/his other works into the story). The repetition and some of the other verbal tics may be mainly a translation issue – not an issue with the translator but an issue inherent in translation – but my Mandarin is nowhere near good enough to say, even if I had access to the… Read more »
Halloweaned
I’ll go on the record stating that the most important all-purpose ingredient for a Halloween costume is dental floss. Floss has many excellent qualities: you probably already own some (convenience!), it’s cheap, it’s strong. It’s almost certainly a better plan to use dental floss to hang something around your neck or dangle it from your wrist than it is to attempt shenanigans with tape, glue, or safety pins. The first time I discovered the critical importance of floss was when… Read more »
App-titude
Questions: Which of the apps that I use actually accomplish what they purport to do, and which apps don’t claim to advance a user’s skills in any particular way but actually do? Considering the first question… Duolingo: The premise: advance your knowledge of a language or learn a new one. The process: short lessons comprised of a mix of vocabulary, forming sentences using a word bank, translating written sentences into English, and transcribing spoke sentences into the language you’re studying…. Read more »
Attempt at Live Blog: Difficulty rating 5.4
This time I’m ready with tab open for writing down all of Olly’s puns (I’m…fighting an impulse here. You can fill in the blanks, I’m sure) and probably even inventing some where they don’t exist! (Such as: yesterday the other commentator, Dr. Lisa Gannon, referred to a male gymnast’s dismount as “the culmination” of his high bar routine, and I was certain she was hiding a pun on “Kolman-ation” in there (Kolman is a very difficult but fairly common release… Read more »
Books of 2019, Part 7
Conversations With Friends, by Sally Rooney: It’s sometimes hard to read a book objectively when it’s been so widely discussed/acclaimed (I haven’t researched too deeply, but my assumption is that Sally Rooney’s other book, Normal People, is much more recent and came out to huge praise, and that that caused everyone to go back and read this first one (or I’ve been living in a tiny hole far away from the rest of the reading world, but it definitely seems… Read more »
The Ballad of Judy Loman
Or more accurately, the ballad for Judy Loman. Most accurately, it wasn’t a ballad; it was a piece commissioned by – who? I can’t find it online. It’s probably in a paper program somewhere deep in a box, part of my relentless archives. Some websites say Loman retired in 1991 – she would have been in her mid-fifties. Other sources say she was the principal harpist for the Toronto Symphony until 2002 – mid-sixties. I heard her play live only… Read more »
Lingoist
Duolingo finally listened to (half of) my pleas and added a Latin course! I’m not currently tutoring any students in Latin, but enough schools in NYC require it of their 7th and 8th graders that I hope the chance will arise again. So far I’ve only worked through a few of the most basic lessons, so I can’t say how effective or comprehensive the course is. (I can say that I can tell it’s new/in beta because, as compared to… Read more »
Eyes and Ears and Mouth and Nose
What causes that occasionally morning eye pain, the chlorinated feeling after being nowhere near a swimming pool? Is it closing your eyes too long? Not shutting them for long enough? It happens infrequently enough that I find myself weaving through the same thought process each time. I worry more about my ears than I do my eyes. Every time I see a show I wear earplugs – sometimes I wear earplugs in loud bars or restaurants, and always when I… Read more »
