February 26, 2009
In which someone did not scoop the poop
... oddly reminiscent of the chalk body outlines from homicides — only more blob-shaped.
This morning I saw this sign. More.
February 18, 2009
In which the economy is touch and go
Greg Kot reports on the shrinking indie-rock giant Touch & Go. Here's a little Shellac to ease the pain:
and some more:
In which I could not keep from smiling
Just as Death Cab for Cutie sang, so Brooklyn fills in Coney Island:
We might be looking at vacant lots for a long time to come,” said Charles Denson, executive director of the Coney Island History Project. “Everybody’s broke. These massive plans, these visions, don’t usually work. But I hope for the best.”
They sang: "I can hear the Atlantic echo back roller coaster screams from summers past.
And everything was closed at Coney Island, and I could not help from smiling.
Brooklyn will fill in the beach eventually and everyone will go except me." The developers are singing the same song, and I will fondly remember the first time, every time, and the last time I visited Coney Island.
February 13, 2009
friggatriskaidekaphobia
friggatriskaidekaphobia describes an irrational fear of Friday the Thirteenth. Also paraskavedekatriaphobia. The Phobia List has more.
February 12, 2009
pentimento
pentimento describes the underlying image in a painting, often indicating that the painter changed part of the composition. Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait is a famous example.
The word comes to English directly from the Italian term for "correction", which itself comes from the Latin verb pēnitēre, to repent. This is telling! It brings to mind penitenziagite, famously used in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. The heretical monk Salvatore uses this vivid term as a rallying cry. Lillian Hellman chose "Pentimiento" as the title for her collection of autobiographical essays.
February 6, 2009
graupel
The Utah Avalanche Center's online dictionary provides this definition for graupel:
Graupel is that Styrofoam ball type of snow that stings your face when it falls from the sky. It forms from strong convective activity within a storm (upward vertical motion) caused by the passage of a cold front or springtime convective showers. The static buildup from all these falling graupel pellets sometimes cause lightning as well.
Graupel may come from German, but I do not know whence.
February 5, 2009
In which the veil lifts
It was the fenugreek! The New York Times's City Desk has the update, including the steps taken by the city's crack detectives:
On Thursday, the city announced that the mystery had been solved. The source of the odor was a plant in North Bergen, N.J., which processes seeds of the herb fenugreek to produce fragrances.“Let me say at the top that the smell that everybody reported and has been reporting for a long time, from back, one of the earliest times was four or five years ago, has never been a health hazard,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said. “In this day and age, we must take every possible threat to our safety seriously no matter how innocuous it might be.”
He added, “It wasn’t exactly akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, but a smell over a very large area.”
The city even revised its protocols to respond to such “maple syrup events” to improve response times; it analyzed winds, tides and atmospheric conditions.