Swimming I love watching track because you can see the athletes’ faces and they look, well, much more visibly human than the swimmers, who resemble graceful aquatic mammals until they win, take off their caps, and suddenly it’s not a manatee or Aquaman but instead a large British child. That said, I fully love these swimming commentators. They sound like they’re having the GREATEST time and their pitch and speed increases so dramatically at the end of every race. And… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Blog
Olympic thoughts, Day 3
Gymnastics Rebecca Andrade’s floor music seems to be a Beyonce medley. Well, not seems: is. The availability of live streams for qualifying rounds is <choose one of the following cliches> an embarrassment of riches, a mixed blessing, likely to reduce both my socialization and my iPhone step count for the next few days. Yesterday I watched men flip for about 5 hours, mostly while I was soaking my foot in a tub of water because I inexplicably ground some glass… Read more »
Books that made me want to go to ________ // 01
Waterland by Graham Swift made me want to go to the fens, the flattest parts of East Anglia in England. The book didn’t make them sound particularly uplifting or physically beautiful, but it did make them sound magical. I read this book my senior year of high school and my English teacher told us that there was a famous writing program there, and that there was speculation that the flatness of the land (see also The Iowa Writers Workshop) had a role… Read more »
The Olympics
I’ll start by saying that I once climbed halfway up Mt. Olympus in an epic day/night that started in a grove of fig trees, traversed mountain, beach, and highway, and ended in a Greek heavy metal bar. But that…contained very few feats of athleticism, unless you count the record-setting number of cups and plates I broke the next morning while trying to wash the dishes. It feels gauche, or perhaps well beyond that, given the human rights violations, corruption, pollution, doping, and… Read more »
Queries
I used to read various slush piles in several past lives, and I kept a running list of some of the more memorable opening lines, final enjoinders, or premises for novels/books of nonfiction/short stories. (There used to be/still is an archive of an anonymous tumbler along these lines–though no longer active, it’s still funny: http://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/) Some people had questions or proposals for me: “Have you ever seen a book for lay adults about the human colon?” “We are in the… Read more »
Oddments
Things I can never keep straight in my head: Complementary vs supplementary Inductive vs deductive Miss America vs Miss USA Song lyrics by the opening act of a show I went to a few weeks ago: “I am sensation. You are sensation. We are sensation…” (and so on…) They later sang a song whose primary lyrics were “Who am I? Who am I?” Hello, you’re sensation. I like the conjugation of a verb as the primary basis for an… Read more »
Birds and Words, Bees and Keys
Somehow I woke up this morning with a song stuck in my head that I haven’t heard since I was maybe nine (though, I will say, I have thought about it pretty frequently). The conceit of the song is…I suppose it’s explaining, amusingly, animal mating and where baby animals come from. Sample lyrics: There’s two kinds of wombats Dad-bats And Mom-bats Dad-bats love Mom-bats And that’s why There’s wombats He (Tom Chapin, that is, and yes, Harry Chapin’s brother) goes… Read more »
Earsdropping
Guy walking down the street complaining to his friend: “Now she’s got some Eggos divorced guy with kids” Well, don’t blame him; his ex-wife got the waffle iron. Spam comment I received: “Crossants can make my small dog sick he vomit two times” I think “cross ants” are actually more likely to make a small dog sick than croissants are, so points for accuracy. Note I accidentally typed in my July budget tracking document: $7 – coffee and scorn Very possibly… Read more »
Language Bits
Watching Wimbledon makes me wonder why British English refers to “sport” versus American English’s “sports,” but the UK studies “maths” rather than “math.” Technically, there are multiple maths, but also multiple sports; on the other hand, “sport” and “math” both work as categories. It’s just curious that British English and American English evolved to have one of each. I was in a yoga class the other day and the teacher had a very interesting way of speaking–as far as I could tell… Read more »
At Home, at School, and on the Street
Sometimes when I visit my parents they indulge me by joining me in watching gymnastics on TV. And by sometimes, I mean the Venn Diagram intersection of “when I visit my parents” and “when gymnastics is on TV.” During the men’s Olympic Trials (parents will remain anonymous so they have only a 50% chance of bashfulness): On the men’s outfits: “Are those like footed pajamas? On the men’s arm muscles, and social media: Parent A: “It looks like a… Read more »
