📺 Noted Video → Bob Odenkirk Was Banned From "Late Night With Conan O'Brien"
Every time I step away from the desk a new need pops up…and every one of those feels like a 5-minute job then turns into 47 tabs and a new cup of coffee.
“I don’t like podcasts.” “I don’t like TV.” “I don’t like music.” “I don’t like books.” “I don’t like reading.”
I don’t get it.
Fam. The Spear-Danes in, like, pre-Boomer days
And the kings who ruled them served courage and greatness, straight facts.
We have heard of these princes’ GOAT campaigns
—Opening lines of Gen Z Beowulf [archive]
Yes, these tweets are jokes. But also, my first thought was, dude, your name has literally been in use since the Bronze Age. Alexander has been a commonplace name across cultures since Alexander the Great in 300s BC, and it far predates that with examples such as Alaksandu King of Wilusa in 1200s BC. Why wouldn’t there be a Paul in the future? Names can last a long time.
The second tweet—by a random user, so I’ve blocked the name—is even more off. In the Dune universe, “spice” is just the nickname for the substance called “melange.” But that’s exactly how language works! In 2024 we are transported around in vehicles that are powered by petroleum that we all call “oil.” Oil also comes from ancient Greek, via Latin, from olive oil. According to Etymology Online, “[i]n English it meant ‘olive oil’ exclusively till c. 1300.” At some point, humans decided flammable liquids looked kinda like olive oil and started calling those substances “oil.”
Source: Dune Names Are Good, Actually - by Lincoln Michel [archive]
📺 Noted Video → The Smile - Friend Of A Friend (Official Video)
DJotD 20240315
Two goldfish are in a tank, one turns and says to the other, “I’ll man the gun, you steer.”
📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00332 ◊ Cell Block on Chena River ◊ dg nanouk okpik
Cell Block on Chena River
First: Brother, remove the tool marks on your scathed skin, brush your tattoos with
nettles, smear bearberry juice in the gashes. Crack open the jail-seed.
Second: Tear away the bars which restrain
your lean, spare life. Bend your curves in a knot. Brother, smudge your
saw-tooth edges.
Third: Cut red seaweed to conceal your gray cadaver;
start wetting your skin down; after scraping,
drip your bowels of blood, change into wolf.
Fourth: The savannah sparrow flies north.
In speech, smell fine-grained hawthorn.
Collapse your voice into bark and howl.
—dg nanouk okpik
—found in corpse whale (2012)
A disappointing day of baking. The shokupan came out relatively well, though I spaced out and shaped it like a regular sandwich loaf, but both the pumpkin pies and chocolate peanut butter pie are disappointments. This after the sad biscuits yesterday! My list of errors is too long to recount.
DJotD 20240314
As your father, I feel compelled to share some important information with you on Pie Day. Right now, a slice of pie costs (on average) $6.50 in Jamaica, $10 in Aruba, but only $5.50 in the Bahamas! Those are the Pie Rates of the Caribbean.
DJotD 20240313
I just realized I’m really familiar with only 25 letters. I don’t know why.
Some see the way Arc browser is removing features as a positive, and they sure try to spin it that way, but I disagree. When you start removing things that actually distinguish Arc from other browsers (obviously to focus on AI), my interest quickly wanes.
📜 New in the Commonplace Communiqué → 00063 ¶ from Prophet Song ¶ Paul Lynch
I managed to get a letter as primary carer for my father, Eilish says, but it took me a while, he’s in decline and has no awareness of his illness, sometimes it seems that he suspects something is wrong but cannot see his own mind so he turns that suspicion outward, if he’s not false then it is the world that is false, there is always someone else to blame. Carole looks up as the waitress steps towards them with a tray and places the drinks on the table then smiles and steps quickly away. You look as though you haven’t slept in a week, Eilish says, are you sleeping at all? Sleep, Carole says, her voice distant, far off in time, she looks across the table at Eilish without seeing her. I don’t sleep much at all, she says, I dream each night of a soundless sleep but that is impossible now, it took me some time before I understood that I was already asleep in a manner, you know, that I was sleeping all the time I thought I was awake, trying to see into the problem that stood before me like a great darkness, this silence consuming every moment of my life, I thought I’d go mad looking into it but then I awoke and began to see what they were doing to us, the brilliance of the act, they take something from you and replace it with silence and you’re confronted by that silence every waking moment and cannot live, you cease to be yourself and become a thing before this silence, a thing waiting for the silence to end, a thing on your knees begging and whispering to it all night and day, a thing waiting for what was taken to be returned and only then can you resume your life, but the silence doesn’t end, you see, they leave open the possibility that what you want will be returned some day and so you remain reduced, paralysed, dull as an old knife, and the silence does not end because the silence is the source of their power, that is its secret meaning. Eilish folds her arms and leans back in the chair, watching Carole reach into her bag, she brings a folder to the table. It is clear now they’ve been lying to us all along, Carole says, that the silence is permanent, that our husbands will not be coming back, they will not be returned because they cannot be returned, everybody knows this, even the dogs on the street know it…
—Paul Lynch
—found in Prophet Song (2023)
📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00331 ◊ Song ◊ William Logan
Song
Her nose is like a satellite,
her face a map of France,
her eyebrows like the Pyrenees
crossed by an ambulance.
Her shoulders are like mussel shells,
her breasts nouvelle cuisine,
but underneath her dress she moves
her ass like a stretch limousine.
Her heart is like a cordless phone,
her mouth a microwave,
her voice is like a coat of paint
on a sign by Burma-Shave.
Her feet are like the income tax,
her legs a fire escape,
her eyes are like a video game,
her breath like videotape.
True love is like a physics test
or a novel by Nabokov.
My love is like ward politics
or drinks by Molotov.
—William Logan
—found in Night Battle: Poems (1999)
Coming March 26 (after, what, a decade since his last special), Dave Attell: Hot Cross Buns 📺
📜 New in the Commonplace Communiqué → 00062 ¶ from A Sport and a Pastime ¶ James Salter
…There’s a comfortable feeling of delivering myself into the care of those who run these great, somnolent trains, through the clear glass of which people are staring, as drained, as quiet as invalids. It’s difficult to find an empty compartment, there simply are none. My bags are becoming heavy. Halfway down the platform I board, walk along the corridor and finally slide open a door. No one even looks up. I lift my luggage onto the rack and settle into a seat. Silence. It’s as if we’re waiting to see the doctor. I glance around. There are photographs of tourism on the wall, scenes of Brittany, Provence. Across from me is a girl with birthmarks on her leg, birthmarks the color of grape. My eye keeps falling to them. They’re shaped like channel islands.
At last, with a little grunt, we begin to move. There’s a groaning of metal, the sharp slam of doors. A pleasant jolting over switches. The sky is pale. A Frenchman is sleeping in the corner seat, blue coat, blue pants. The blues do not match. They’re parts of two different suits. His socks are pearl grey.
Soon we are rushing along an alley of departure, the houses of the suburbs flashing by, ordinary streets, apartments, gardens, walls. The secret life of France, into which one cannot penetrate, the life of photograph albums, uncles, names of dogs that have died. And in ten minutes, Paris is gone. The horizon, dense with buildings, vanishes. Already I feel free.
Green, bourgeoise France. We are going at tremendous speed. We cross bridges, the sound short and drumming. The country is opening up. We are on our way to towns where no one goes. There are long, wheat-colored stretches and then green, level land, recumbent and rich. The farms are built of stone. The wisdom of generations knows that land is the only real wealth, a knowledge that need not question itself, need not change. Open country flat as playing fields. Stands of trees.
She has moles on her face, too, and one of her fingers is bandaged. I try to imagine where she works–a pâtisserie, I decide. Yes, I can see her standing behind the glass cases of pastry. Yes. That’s just it. Her shoes are black, a little dusty. And very pointed. The points are absurd. Cheap rings on both hands. She wears a black pullover, a black skirt. She’s a bit heavy. Her brow is furrowed as she reads the love stories in Echo Mode. We seem to be going faster.
—James Salter
—found in A Sport and a Pastime (1967)
📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00330 ◊ Seattle Residents Baffled by Bright Object in Sky ◊ David Kirby
Seattle Residents Baffled by Bright Object in Sky
“Others called the Fire Department, even though it was the sky that was on fire. They had to call somebody.”
– The New York Times Magazine, April 18, 2021
It’s just a rocket, its parts ablaze,
but it’s a comet to some, a meteor shower to others.
To many, it’s a fleet of alien starships,
sailing past us because our airport is too small.
Some glance up and go their way,
late for work already or taking a child to the ER.
What they all see are themselves:
rational, thrilled, too busy to care.
Some call the Fire Department,
even though it’s the sky that’s on fire.
At the other end of the line, the dispatcher
says What is your name and What is your location
and Tell me exactly what happened and then
Now you belong to the heavens.
—David Kirby
—found in Delta Poetry Review (Summer 2023; Vol. 5, Iss. 14)
Why does Hugh Grant have to keep turning up like a bad penny in otherwise good—or potentially good—shows?
I’ve not been doing well with the ol' Wordle lately…
Wordle 997 6/6*
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