Read Hayes, a research scientist and criminologist at the University of Florida and the executive director of the Loss Prevention Research Council, said it was possible that Mr. Augustine’s use of uncooked pasta — which he described as “off the charts” — was meant to simulate the shifting sound of the pieces inside the box.
So this guy was able — at least 70 times — to return boxes and get a refund without it being noticed that the box did not contain the original Legos? It was enough that the box sounded as though it contained Legos. This worked 70+ times?! And the police act like it's cute and make puns.
I liked: "Fans have created playlists of music he’s referenced and published cookbooks based on the food in his novels. There’s even an account on X dedicated entirely to mentions of spaghetti in his work."
I clicked that spaghetti link: "So I can't talk. The spaghetti will be ruined"/"As a rule I cooked spaghetti, and ate it, alone. I was convinced spaghetti was a dish best enjoyed alone"/"Spaghetti strands are a crafty bunch, and I couldn't let them out of my sight"/"Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I tossed one handful of spaghetti after another into the pot"... It goes on and on.
And it's easy to find those playlists. Here's my screenshot from Spotify:
That's just what I could fit on a screen. There were 2 more screens full of music playlists. The ones that look like audiobooks are actually playlists of the songs mentioned in the book.
Is music important for a writer? HM says, “I’ve learned so many things from good music: steady rhythm, beautiful melody and harmony, free improvisation from jazz.”
Everyone can cook spaghetti and listen to music at home. It's easy to live like Murakami. "Lately, Murakami has been happily enmeshed in his usual routine, waking up early to write, doing chores like washing dishes and ironing, and running."
1. "One thing about which I have not yet been 'disenchanted' in fine dining restaurants is a seat."
2. "I use a walker and anyplace I go must be accessible. This is a huge nope. Next."
3. "That's one way to ensure a young clientele...."
4. "That might be a violation of the ADA...."
5. "Wow. This business seem to have a lot of contempt for its customers. No chairs? Restrictive hours? No pasta outside??? No pasta for TAKE OUT? Good grief. I would never go there."
I'd say as long as people have a lot of choices of places to go, it's good to experiment, and I think it's nice to make a thing out of getting excellent pasta and moving along quickly, not sitting around. For people who want something else, there are all the other restaurants.
"Couric admits that during her time at TODAY she was unwelcoming to other women because she felt like she needed to 'protect my turf.' She writes that she was aware that 'someone younger and cuter was always around the corner' and singles out Banfield as an example. Couric writes: 'For a minute there, Ashleigh Banfield was the next big thing; I'd heard her father was telling anyone who'd listen that she was going to replace me. In that environment, mentorship sometimes felt like self-sabotage.'"
"Sometimes you discover a sentence like that and say, 'I’m gonna put that on the top of a poem and see what happens.' Sometimes the epigraph is not just some cute afterthought but the reason why the poem started."
From a 2018 "Conversation with Billy Collins" (Booth), found because I was making spaghetti and remembering the epigraph, which I'd just encountered at the top of the poem "Vivace!"
I don't want to reprint an entire poem on my blog, but I will link to this other blog that did see fit to do what I won't do. You'll find the full text of "Vivace!" in a blog post titled "I Figured Out the Perfect Evening Activity."
Weddings, planned in advance, always "happen to coincide" with world events that pop up spontaneously.
Mr. Soros and Ms. Abedin announced their engagement last July. They initially planned to elope, Vogue reported on Saturday, but they changed their minds after an engagement party co-hosted by Mrs. Clinton in December, where attendees pressured the couple to hold a more traditional celebration.
“I think she deserves it,” Mrs. Clinton told the magazine. “She deserves to have that kind of moment.”...
If only we could all have what Hillary Clinton thinks we deserve.
The moneyed scene was especially striking given the Democratic Party’s raging debate over how to improve its historically low standing with voters and win back working-class Americans, with whom it is widely seen as having lost touch....
Here's how I'd spin it: It was so out of touch it was in touch. They were in touch with their out of touchness.
"You think about it, it's a guy who not even a year ago, nearly took a bullet in the process of campaigning, went back on the horse the next day. And if you look — obviously I'm biased — but you look at what we've done on the border, you look at what we've done with trade — fighting back against a generation of theft of the American dream, which is what the president's trade policies are starting to do. I just think you've got to have some respect for him and say, look, yeah, we don't have to agree on every issue I'm talking about. If you're Elon Musk, you don't have to agree with this on every issue. But is this war actually in the interest of the country? I don't think so."
Said JD Vance, talking to Theo Von. Audio and transcript here, at Podscribe. YouTube here.
"... extra booty was comforting and reassuring. I miss that. The voluptuousness, being able to lean up next to her and feel her, for lack of a better word, draping over me or onto me. That’s no longer an option.... I’ve told her: 'I don’t recognize you. I need a road map.' I think she’s become a different person."
When I clicked to read this article, I assumed it was going to be about the loss of sexual desire as a side effect of the drug. I was surprised to see that it was about the loss of desire in the partner who was not the one taking the drug.
But wait, the drug-taking partner is part of the problem (which is that they haven't had sex since she started the drug). She's finding it "easier to say no" to what she doesn't want, but purports to "want to want to have sex."
If the drug removes the desire for food, why wouldn't it also affect that other physical desire? How closely related are these desires?
"This is a political rather than a legal struggle.... It would succeed only in a different environment than we have.... The real question is what political message is being sent."
From the article: "Proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment have long made it clear that their strategy is primarily a political, not a legal one. Their goal is to dare Republicans to challenge the legitimacy of sex equality, and of moving to nullify something as simple as equal rights for women."
I don't think Biden even purported to "do" anything. He merely stated his legal opinion. Given the well-known deterioration of his mental capacity, who cares what he thinks?
Anyway, as you endeavor to maintain your own mental sharpness, take note of what's happening in the twilight between law and politics.
AND: Tribe's line "you throw at the wall whatever you can" seems to relate to the old expression "throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks." How did that get started? Grok tells me about a 1946 cookbook callled "You Can Cook If You Can Read." It says you can test whether spaghetti is done by throwing it against the wall. I don't know if that's the origin of the expression. I always think of Walter Matthau throwing the spaghetti linguini against the wall in "The Odd Couple":
My colleague thinks Tribe is contradicting himself: first, Tribe said it was law, and then Tribe said it was politics. My response is that saying it's law is doing politics. You decide: Is it spaghetti, linguini, or garbage?
“I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous,” Obama said as he took to the stage to promote Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. “But I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem.... I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting,” Obama rapped as the crowd cheered. “Love, love me some Eminem,” he added.
I'm not sure who he hopes to influence with that, but what do I know? I'm only an undecided voter in Wisconsin. I'm not awed by celebrities, and everyone acknowledges that Kamala is the candidate with the most celebrities. Does it augment or diminish her?
But I just want to say that I do not like the picture of mom's spaghetti vomited onto Obama's sweater. I can barely picture Obama wearing a sweater — as opposed to a beautifully ironed shirt with a casually unbuttoned collar and rolled up sleeves.
And I don't like thinking about spaghetti-vomit on that sweater. I get Eminem's lyric about his pathetic self, who's not only vomiting onto his bad clothes but stuck eating his mother's home-cooked food. I saw the movie "8 Mile" when it came out. I understand the context of the lyrics
But Obama is not so in thrall to Eminem that the thought of encountering Eminem would physically overwhelm him. Obama was President and had to go head-to-head with Putin and Xi, and he's supposed to be vouching for Kamala, who's asking to do the same, so I don't want to hear about his getting weak-kneed over a pop star.
And most of all, I don't like "mom's spaghetti" as a marker of wretchedness. Many of us are bereft of a mother — including you, Barack Obama. To have mom's spaghetti, even upchucked, would be to experience one's mother alive in the world again.
7. Don't watch this one unless you have breasts and they are bothering you. Note: It's an ad! Some people love it. I'm seeing commenters who say it's the best ad they've ever seen.
"[Deborah] Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn’t even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening.
That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok.
The call, three days after the decision eliminating federal abortion rights, encapsulates the overwhelming sense of frustration among Democrats with Biden. It offers a new window into what many in the President’s party describe as a mismanagement permeating the White House...."
Nicolas Cage just did what some say was the best Ask Me Anything ever. Here's the whole thread at Reddit.
Asked "What's your favourite pasta shape?," he said:
I once went to an Italian restaurant in San Francisco about 25 years ago with Charlie Sheen because they had square tube pasta and he was very interested in trying square tube pasta and we did and we loved it so much we went back the next day to try it again.
Yes. I would have to say they’re my favorite insect. They make us honey. Bees, and then the firefly. And ants are interesting. Bumble bees are quite adorable. Don't get me started on the praying mantis.
I told David Cronenberg once that the praying mantis was the most ferocious of the insects and he so said no, and I said what is, and he said the dragon fly larvae and he said that the beast in the Alien movies was designed after the dragon fly larvae because it shoots its teeth out and when it attacks.
And somebody said, "I think we might need to put 'Don't get me started on the praying mantis' on the banner of the subreddit."
Asked a more apt question for actor — "Who is your favorite character in all of literature and film?" — he said:
That is so hard to answer. I will say that James Dean’s performance as Cal in East of Eden is largely the reason I became a film actor. His role in that is one of my favorite characters in cinema. But then we can go all the way to Rasputin...
I presume he meant Raskolnikov...
... or we can go to Dmitri Karamazov. Dmitri Karamazov is one my favorite characters in literature. I love him so much because he’s so happy and he has no money. He’s just living it up. He spent all his money trying to get the girl. I did the same thing once. I was very Dmitri Karamazov in high school. The most beautiful girl in high school who was a grade older than me invited me to the prom but I had no money. My grandmother gave each of us a little bond. My older brother bought a car. My second oldest brother bought some stereo equipment. And I splashed out on a chauffeur-driven limousine, a tuxedo and a four course meal at Le Dome on Sunset blvd. The car was $2000, the stereo was $2000, and my prom night was $2000 and man, that was money well spent. THAT’s Dmitri Karamazov.
"... in an enduring television commercial for Prince spaghetti, playing a boy who is beckoned by his mother’s cry, 'Anthony! Anthony!,' died on Sunday at his home in West Roxbury, Mass. He was 63. His older brother Andy said the cause was still undetermined. He said Mr. Martignetti had been awaiting treatment for severe sleep apnea. In 1969, Anthony and several fellow preadolescents were approached in Boston’s Little Italy by three men looking for Commercial Street. His friends replied rudely; Anthony, angelic and ingenuous, offered directions. The men were smitten. They turned out to be scouts for an advertising agency seeking a realistic location to film a pasta commercial and credible nonprofessionals to act in it.... When the men from the ad agency went to Anthony’s home to explain the particulars to his parents, who spoke little English at the time, his brother Andy volunteered to be the interpreter, a job that conferred some literary license. 'I tried to beat him out of it,' Andy Martignetti said in a phone interview. 'I said I can eat a lot more spaghetti than Anthony. But he was just such a cute little bugger.'"
In 1988, Clevelanders erected a statue to Christopher Columbus in Little Italy.... It is allegedly a monument to a legendary Italian explorer and a symbol of Italian-American pride. Except it isn't. Columbus is not someone we should celebrate. He was a racist monster who initiated the genocide against indigenous Americans.... He was, as historian Patrick Wyman put it, "a dogshit person even by the standards of the late 15th century." We don't even know if Columbus was Italian...
If Italian-Americans in Cleveland want to celebrate one of their own, they need look no further than the iconic Ettore (Hector) Boiardi, AKA Chef Boyardee. Born in Piacenza, Ettore immigrated to the U.S. at age 16 in 1914. He eventually moved to Cleveland, where he opened a restaurant, Il Giardino d'Italia, that was so popular people asked him to bottle his sauce for them.
Boiardi and his brothers built a canned food empire from the ground up....
"Since leaving the vice presidency, Biden has rented the McLean home and purchased a $2.7 million, 4,800-square-foot vacation house near the water in Rehoboth Beach, Del., to go along with his primary residence, the nearly 7,000-square-foot lakeside home he built more than two decades ago in Wilmington, Del..... Biden released his tax returns in the past but has not done so since 2016, his last year as vice president.... The tax returns showed they had almost no investment income, and they often reported few charitable contributions.... Although Biden’s campaign said his paid speeches amounted to less than 50 since he left the vice presidency, it would not provide a list of them.... At the University of Buffalo, where he was to appear as part of a series of guests, emails show a request from a Biden representative that 'vice president' precede his name on the series poster, even though the title was also below it. None of the others — including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice — had titles before their names. 'Just between you and I, it’s just something that his team feels strongly about. Sorry if it’s a pain,' wrote Romen Borsellino, Biden’s representative from the Creative Artists Agency. 'Ok — not a good look but will do,' responded William Regan of the University of Buffalo."
He still retains the common touch: He's got a Creative Artists representative who writes "Just between you and I."
This is WaPo's idea of an exposé... for a candidate who is a Democrat.
Before clicking through to the comments, I predicted that the highest-rated ones would swivel directly to an attack on Trump. Sure enough, here's #1: "WaPo, instead of worrying about Joe Biden, how about some articles about how Trump and Kushner are enriching themselves IN office."
It's Anthony Weiner, half free now, and never to be free of the jokes about his name
"'Hold on a second here. Hold on a second. They’re in here?' Weiner grilled the deliveryman around 2 p.m. after he was handed a large pizza box and brown paper bag with straws poking out at the door of the GEO Care Inc., facility in Fordham Heights."
I guess "in here" and "straws poking out" are additional penis jokes.
"After grabbing his food, Weiner couldn’t beat it fast enough." See what I mean? That kind of thing will go on forever.
Kavanaugh was a “bland eater,” his roommate explained, who never ate his pasta with anything more exotic than tomato sauce or ketchup on top. At visits to Yorkside Pizza following late nights at Toad’s Place — the friends did not go often, Christmas said, as Kavanaugh had “limited dance moves” — the judge’s pizza had to be plain cheese, or sometimes just pepperoni.
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