Keep Door Closed

[from RiotClitShave]

Extremists

Lousy environmentalists! They went too far, as extremists often do, with their technological meddling and ended up causing what they intended to prevent. Now it's summer all year round and my snowshovel business has gone bankrupt.

Today's Drink Specials at the Hipsterama Club

Living in New York, especially off the L train, makes it not entirely possible to avoid the contention between hipsters and normalfolk. Feigning obliviousness is usually the wisest tactic should a tense situation arise and an escape route not prove immediately possible. Sometimes ignoring differences is the most effective way of rendering those same differences inconsequential. Remember, you cannot capture stupidity by assigning it a category. It's like grabbing a fistful of smoke.

I can sympathize with the aggravation of having to tolerate those who are so easily definable by their very resistance to being defined. But, to be honest, were I to find myself trapped on an endless cross-country roadtrip with one faction or the other, I would gladly take the hipster's album collection of Brooklyn-based art rock and seventies-era obscurities over mainstream's obnoxiously bland chart-topping dance hits any day.

Colson Whitehead Goes To BookCourt

Colson Whitehead strolls into the BookCourt in checkered trousers. He is an Author. One with talent, published works, acclaim, admirers, an iPad, and an exciting hairstyle. He offers a trajectory of his existence as a writer. His description of himself suggests that you and he are kindred spirits as antisocial introverts. But you have your doubts. He clearly knows how to work a crowd. As he reads from his latest novel, Sag Harbor, he holds the audience at rapt attention. They laugh and cry in the appropriate places. Surely he is not familiar with your utter ineptitude for social interaction.

Here is a figure who knows the Answers which you so desperately seek. What you want is to approach in so incredibly witty and profound a manner that he will eye you with reverence, as one genius recognizes another. "Why, how incredibly witty and profound," he will say. "Come, sir, join my inner circle. We shall have incredibly witty and profound conversations till the morning hours in secluded taverns and ice cream parlors of literary yore. And if you kindly buy another round of absinthe, or rocky road, perhaps I will slip you a few of the Answers."

Instead, of course, what would happen is you would sputter, "I liked your book," or "all that pop culture stuff about New Coke and stuff is funny," or "I liked the font. It's really... crisp." Your attempts to be clever don't go over so well either. "It's like Ray Bradbury wooing Beatrix Potter... in John Cheever's woodshed." What?

Face it, you have nothing of interest to offer him in return for what he has given you. So you keep your distance to preserve your feeble dignity. As usual you remain an observer rather than a participant. But if becoming a writer is your ambition, perhaps this isn't so bad. It's entirely possible that, despite appearances, Colson Whitehead may not possess all of the Answers either, or at least they may have been gradually acquired, not inherent from birth as you had assumed. Didn't he even admit to once being a writer who hadn't written anything? Which means there's still hope for your sorry ass, and still a chance, however slim, that someday that may be you up there in the checkered trousers.

Lost Duck

I hope whoever lost their duck finds it before it is claimed by the treacherous streets of Gotham.

The Unlawful Pickle

Highlights from Fifty Bizarre U.S. Laws:

I'm probably responsible for at least six of these crimes against humanity. (Though I must say North Carolina's sounds pretty reasonable to me.)

Alabama
It's illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church.

Arkansas
It's illegal to mispronounce the name of the state of Arkansas.

California
You may not eat an orange in your bathtub.

Connecticut
A pickle cannot actually be a pickle unless it bounces.

Florida
If you tie an elephant to a parking meter, you must pay the same parking fee as you would for a vehicle.

Illinois
It's illegal to take a French poodle to the opera.

Indiana
The value of pi is 4, and not 3.1415.

Iowa
One-armed piano players must perform for free.

Massachusetts
No gorilla is allowed in the backseat of any car.

Minnesota
It's illegal to paint a sparrow with the intent of selling it as a parakeet.

North Carolina
It's against the law to sing off-key.

Oklahoma
It's forbidden to take a bite out of another person's hamburger.

Rhode Island
You may not bite off another person's leg.

South Dakota
It is illegal to lie down and fall asleep in a cheese factory.

Tennessee
Selling hollow logs is strictly forbidden.

Texas
You may not shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel.

Wyoming
Unless you have an official permit, you may not take a picture of a rabbit from January to April.

Heart of the Nation

The geographical center of the U.S. contains a utility pole and an abandoned basketball hoop? It's like peering into the nation's soul.

[From Images from the Center of the Contiguous United States]

Famous Last Words

"I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis." - Humphrey Bogart

"Where is my clock?" - Salvador Dali

"I just wish I had time for one more bowl of chili." - Kit Carson

"That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted." - Lou Costello

"I am dying. Please... bring me a toothpick." - Alfred Jarry

"Born in a hotel room, and goddammit, died in one!" - Eugene O'Neill

"Don't worry... it's not loaded..." - Terry Kath

"Codeine... bourbon..." - Tallulah Bankhead

"Die, I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him." - John Barrymore

"Van Halen!" - Dimebag Darrell

"Get my swan costume ready." - Anna Pavlova

"You got me." - John Dillinger

"I've never felt better." - Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

"Applaud, my friends, the comedy is finished." - Ludwig van Beethoven

"Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here." - Nostradamus

"I can't believe, after all this time, it was a bloody banana that killed me." - Ivanka Perko

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." - Pancho Villa

"I did not get my Spaghetti-O's, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this." - Thomas J. Grasso

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dis--" - General John Sedgwick

Orpheus

"Mirrors are the doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life, and you'll see death at work, like bees in a hive of glass."

- Jean Cocteau, Orpheus (1949)