Nobody Asked Me, But...
A weekly collection of curiosities in homage to the great sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, who kept his eyes open.
Everything went downhill when “consumer” replaced “citizen.”
He really said it. “We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space.” Jeff Bezos, July 20 in an MSNBC interview after his space flight.
The suburban patch of lawn is a dead zone, says entomologist Doug Tallamy. Birds rely on fat, soft caterpillars for 85% of their food, but caterpillars don’t cotton to grass. I dearly love a lordly sweep of green, but the sounds emanating from the little suburban patches aren’t birdsong but the roar of smoky gas-powered mowers.
An awful lot of animosity and legal fees get spilled out here in suburbia over fences and property lines. My new backyard neighbor worked herself into such a frenzy over a vine that was peeking over her fence that, without ever having met me, she came over and threw the trellis on the ground. I thought at first it was the wind, so I kept putting it back up — until one day she attacked my pepper plant with a T-bar. I realized what I had on my hands, wrote her a sweet letter, and moved the vine.
Here’s a short video about a horse who comforts humans. He visits nursing homes, where he chooses whom to see.
I want a device that lets me perceive the physical pain of others.
Victor Frankel, a concentration camp survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, said there are only two human races: the decent and not-decent.
I don’t know why people think the Bible isn’t worth reading. It’s full of scandalously funny takes on human nature. Take Noah, the one guy God figured was worth saving from the flood. Afterward, Noah gets roaring drunk and … well, read it for yourself. Imagine how God felt. Oy vey! And Jonah, when he finally gets out of the whale and goes to Nineveh to warn the citizens they’d better change their evil ways, they actually shape up. After putting so much effort into doom, Jonah gets mad at God for sparing them. In retaliation, God withers a vine that Jonah liked sit under for shade.
Here are five areas I bet you don’t put sunscreen but should, speaking from personal experience: the tip of your nose, the bridge of your nose starting at the brow line, your neck, the tops of your ears, and your eyebrows. And don’t forget the sunglasses.
I just made up a blender drink. A handful of mint, a handful of ice, juice from a lemon, some water.