Priorities and People

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Saturday January 03, 2009 · 5:23 AM PST

2009/01/03 · 05:23

Yesterday evening, I realized the mayor was coming.

It wasn’t hard: Department of Sanitation workers were cleaning the sidewalks in front of my house, my neighbors’, and across the street. Normally, that’s left for us homeowners to do. That, coupled with signs stapled to trees and posts stating "No Parking Saturday –Police Department," made it clear that something unusual was happening.

This morning, the engines were out of the firehouse across the street, replaced by rows of blue chairs, and large tents were going up out front. I can’t see what’s beneath them, but I assume it’s more chairs. There are other fire trucks parked around, tow trucks blocking access to streets along with police cars, emergency vehicles on the sidewalks, and sanitation trucks disgorging workers to clean up any garbage that has blown onto the street since yesterday. People in uniforms mill everywhere.

All in all, it’s quite a production.

AaronBa

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Monday December 15, 2008 · 8:52 AM PST

2008/12/15 · 08:52

With apologies to the Byrds and their song "Take A Whiff (On Me)":

Throw a shoe, throw a shoe, throw a shoe at me
Oh Iraqi, throw a shoe at me
Hey Iraqi, throw a shoe at me.

AaronBa

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Saturday December 13, 2008 · 12:55 PM PST

2008/12/13 · 12:55

When times are good, when everyone seems to be making more than last year, the abundance seems so extensive that we don't really notice when certain people begin skimming off more than their share. When the growth, in general, is so much greater than can be reasonably expected, it's hard to imagine that it might even be greater, were not someone sneaking away with a part of what we know, in our hearts, is undeserved gain, anyway.

AaronBa

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Friday October 17, 2008 · 6:22 AM PDT

2008/10/17 · 06:22

We’ve been through the "e" craze (ecommerce, etexts) and the "i" craze (ipod). Now look for the "o" craze—if Obama wins this election.

Looking back at the debates, and we will hear of "oPoise." The White House Press Corps will be producing "oNews."

Oh rily? Yabetcha!

AaronBa

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Monday October 06, 2008 · 7:49 AM PDT

2008/10/06 · 07:49

This is getting to be depressing. Maybe it's time to go back to Mali, to Tombouctou—for the next month, at least, until after election day. After all, it's not too hot there right now, and the Niger River is still high enough for the riverboat to make its way from Mopti to Gao, a leisurely trip with not a lot to do but watch for Tuarags over the sand dunes along the riverbank. There, perhaps, Sarah Palin's dishonest, deceitful, and decadent (yes, decadent) head wouldn't be haunting my waking hours.

AaronBa

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Wednesday September 24, 2008 · 6:51 AM PDT

2008/09/24 · 06:51

OK, all of us create typos, misplace punctuation (or omit it), and spell certain works idiosyncratically. Let's face it: the "rules" of English do little to assist us and much to maintain confusion. Still, we shouldn't abet the loss of specificity and function (let alone meaning) of written English. Especially not if we work for The New York Times. Especially not if we are op-ed columnists. Especially not if we have considerable writing skills of our own and access to the best editorial apparatus in the country.

AaronBa

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Thursday September 18, 2008 · 5:28 AM PDT

2008/09/18 · 05:28

It's been too long since I've done one of these, but I used to post parody poems with some frequency.

Below the fold is one dedicated to Wall Street:

AaronBa

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Monday September 08, 2008 · 6:27 AM PDT

2008/09/08 · 06:27

Maybe it’s simply a case that the rich don’t get it. Never have, never will. Well, the born rich, at least. People like David Frum, whose father made millions in real estate and whose mother was successful in journalism, now Frum’s own field. People who, as Jim Hightower once described George Bush 41, were born on third base and think they’ve hit a triple.

Frum has an article in this week’s The New York Times Sunday Magazine entitled “The Vanishing Republican Voter” in which he argues that inequality (gasp!) is reducing the pool of Republican voters.

AaronBa

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Wednesday September 03, 2008 · 5:38 AM PDT

2008/09/03 · 05:38

My disdain for a certain class of American conservatism comes simply from the fact that they talk their talk, but rarely walk their walk. They make claims, for example, about being good Christians, but conveniently ignore the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. They talk a good anti-drug line, but aren’t averse to smoking the occasional jay or doing up a little meth. They talk about the importance of family, but cheat on their own.

AaronBa

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Tuesday September 02, 2008 · 5:18 AM PDT

2008/09/02 · 05:18

One small pleasure of mine is careless language. "A canary in a minefield," "a hard road to hoe," and "to all intensive purposes" can always make me chuckle, no matter how often I hear them. In addition, I love the dying metaphor, described by George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language":

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

The sloppiness of dying-metaphor use was illustrated yesterday by The New York Times columnist William Kristol in the very title of his op-ed "A Star Is Born."

AaronBa

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Thursday August 28, 2008 · 8:11 AM PDT

2008/08/28 · 08:11

This will be short, for I haven't diaried for a while, nor have I created a parody recently.

But I'm beginning to thing that Macbeth holds more for us in the current situation than I might have thought:

AaronBa

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Tuesday July 08, 2008 · 7:05 PM PDT

2008/07/08 · 19:05

There's an article in today's The New York Times that has me seeing red. It's entitled "Restless Pioneers, Seeding Brooklyn" and was written by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.

Now, before I get to just what so upset me on reading the piece, I should point out that my store and cafe, Shakespeare's Sister, is often credited for "starting it all" in Cobble Hill, with being the first upscale hangout in what is now one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. And I have lived in Brooklyn for about twenty of the last forty years, primarily in places that had not yet been "discovered." I know something about urban change, having seen it happen. And I know something about the people the change "happens to."

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Priorities and People

Throw A Shoe (At Me)

The Economy, A Girl, and Her Dog

The “O”s Have It?

If It Walks Like a Duck, It's No Maverick

A Loosing Battle

With Apologies to Percy Shelley

Duh

Palin As Sit-Com

"A Star Is Born"?

Macbeth/McCain

Seeding On Top of the Unseen