as the weekend approacheth

Who knew? The pressure to blog clamps the cranium like a vise-grip. No one's even reading the blog, so it's entirely solipsistic, but no matter. Minutes more 'til the end of the contract day. How will they be spent? Why, blogging, of course. Check out these snarky comments. In this case, they're all true. Especially "stale and tired."

pick-me-up or put-me-down?

Depending on your mood, Jim Romenesko's obscure store is either depressing or invigorating. I routinely torture my students with it--there's inspiration in nearly every story. Check it out.

speech is free...

...until someone is willing to pay for it. In an interesting turn of events, the student who was grilled by the Secret Service for his controversial art may now have his work show up on T-shirts.

Lesson to school administrators:

If you gotta call the cops, the artists have already won.

Lesson to the police:

If you gotta call the Secret Service, make sure your assassin-to-be isn't 15, and doesn't live thousands of miles from the White House.

Lesson to us all:

Art is dangerous, man. Dangerous.

ritrazione

Okay, so the Italians beat me to it. But I still like the word.

While you're at it, check out babelfish, the ultra-cool, ultra-cheap online translator from altavista. You can waste hours back-translating. For uninitiates, that means translating something into another language, and then translating *that* into English. Hilarity often ensues. Example:

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me;
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


into Italian:

le terre antiche del "Keep, vostre storied il pomp!" cries lei con i labbri silenziosi. "Give me il vostro tired, i vostri poor, le vostre masse huddled yearning respirare liberamente, i rifiuti wretched del vostro puntello di colatura. Trasmetta questi, il nomade, tempesta-gettato me; Alzo la mia lampada al lato del door!" dorato;

and back again:

the ancient lands of the "Keep, yours storied the pomp!" cries she with the labbri silent. "Give me yours tired, yours poor, your masses huddled yearning to breathe liberations, the refusals wretched of your support of filtering. It transmits these, the nomad, storm-thrown me; I raise my lamp to the side of the door!" gilded;

Sorry, Emma Lazarus.

let the good times roll

Sir Philip Sidney had it right: poets are liars, but lying is good. And improv comedy, my friends, is best.

depression

Looking for the blues? Visit your local Goodwill. Browse the stacks for paperback novels (25% off, today only!). Where else can you find signed first editions tossed deliriously into the recycling? Every single Danielle Steel novel ever published?

The Olympia Goodwill's book section is unsurpassed. They arrange titles by genre, which leads to confusion, since you can find Dune tucked neatly into "Mystery," right near The Book of Mormon.

I'm a devotee, for sure. I thought "Good Will Hunting" was about folks like me, who peruse their selection of cast-off dingbats and whatchamacallits in search of the elusive bargain.

Still hunting.

oh, the irony.

When unlimited love meets cold capitalism, you get something like this.

making history?

I'd like to welcome myself to the world of blogging, the internet's most useless timesuck. I've perused blogs for several months now, and only recently decided to throw my own voice into the ring. The choice of phrases is deliberate: blogs are a cross between ventriloquism and pugilism. (Mostly because they involve spats between dummies.)

The title: a word I've coined (at least, I think it's original to me--but one never knows, with memes). You know those chain restaurants--Red Robin, Chili's, Applebee's, whatever--that plaster their walls with fake old-timey posters, photos, and knickknacks? Decorative memorabilia. Decorabilia.

The title isn't significant beyond that. It's an original blog title, no more.

Oh, and I'm 25, and male, for the curious. Quite happily un-single, too.