Potpourri

Today, once again, hard work of the real world variety forces me to leave blogging to the professionals, the dedicated and the insane. Not to neglect you, though, my Niceworkaholics, I will rummage about the ol’ Chuckle Bucket to find a variety of alluring items that I can spread before you.

• The fast-approaching premier of the movie Prince Caspian had not stirred any interest in these quarters. The general consensus was, “Oh, yes? Well, okay, fine.” That changed yesterday when we read the review on the Libertas blog. Now we’re all agog to see it. Panting. The review includes this great line:

“As in life, God is not a deus ex machina.”

• Did you know that the little backwards P symbol that designates “paragraph” is called a “pilcrow?” Well, you would if you made your weekly pilgrimage to World Wide Words, Michael Quinion’s website. And it’s not a backwards P, actually. No, it’s a C with two lines. Really. Look! There goes one now: ¶

• Manifesto. This piling on poor Starbucks by semi-connossieurs has got to stop! Sure, the coffeehouse chain has expanded so fast many cities have had to increase block-size by 5%, and, yeah, maybe they aren’t so wonderful as when they burst upon the scene. But that’s just it: they burst upon the scene. Thank Gob. I remember how it was, at least in Chicago, before that most welcome bursting upon. Pre-Starbucks there were no inexpensive places to hang out for a few minutes of footweary rest, unless you could bear smelling either beer or Ronald McDonald’s steaming abattoir. Back in the 80’s Starbucks was a godsend, an oasis. Smelled good, too. For that alone I still applaud them and will go on applauding them even if they start using burnt toast as coffee grounds.

• James Lileks on his Bleat website today (May 14) pays tribute to his favorite high school teacher. She taught speech, which lessons he’s put to good use since. The sentence which struck me most is this one:

“She gave me confidence and craft, without which energy and ideas just fizz away.”

• Netflix kindly sent us the DVD of the HBO series Rome yesterday. We watched about 30 minutes. Back it goes. It’s Deadwood in chitons.

Late Breaking News Update!

Chicago has lifted its ban on pâté de foie gras! Read about it here.