Stuff From Smart People ...

These days I spend many, many hours researching stuff. And it reminds me that sometimes (well, usually actually) other much more talented people than I think up much more interesting stuff than I do. But I have my own special talent in appreciating such wit. And with the advent of The Blog, I can share it ... so, a few little nuggets I discovered in the past few days ...

From someone at work, talking to another someone about that someone's love life:
"I am not going to facilitate a transcontinental voyage of the heart."

From Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal:
"The young are told, 'Be true to yourself.' But so many of them have no idea, really, what that means. If they don't know who they are, what are they being true to? They're told, 'The key is to hold firm to your ideals.' But what if no one bothered, really, to teach them ideals?"

From Justice Scalia (of course I had to include some bit of law this week):
"Giving 'bear Arms' its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war -- an absurdity ... Worse still, the phrase 'keep and bear Arms' would be incoherent. The word 'Arms' would have two different meanings at once: 'weapons' (as the object of 'keep') and (as the object of 'bear') one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying 'He filled and kicked the bucket' to mean 'He filled the bucket and died.' Grotesque."

And I saved the best for last (and believe me, this will show up again here ... likely on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November). This comes from President Truman in 1948:
"It is not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It is the hand that casts the ballot." (As Congressman Cannon learned this week...)

New York, New York ...

Last week, J., L. and I came to a startling (well, to me) conclusion: I am the most pro-establishment person alive. I generally trust our elected officials, I like to eat at McDonald's and if given the chance I would readily move to Disneyland. Oh, and vanilla ice cream is my favorite, although I usually lie and say peppermint just to seem more interesting. So, predictably, when I do New York, I do it like everyone else ...

I take pictures of the skyline ...

I pose with my friends ...

I go to Times Square ...

I eat hot dogs from the street vendor ...

I go to Serendipity ... and order frozen hot chocolate ...

... and have a fabulous time ...

Pop Quiz ...

Last night I went to a violin/piano concert at the National Gallery of Art. I liked the concert. But I really loved this sentence in the program: "Offerto starts like a trembling hand writing an obituary in dry sand." That made me think of some other things that remind me of a trembling hand writing an obituary in dry sand. And it made me think of those incredibly insightful, telling quizzes that reveal the true Disney princess, famous city, color or Friends character hidden deep inside ... so now, just such a quiz, Capital C style ...

"A trembling hand writing an obituary in dry sand," makes me (this means you) think of:
a. A lonely terrorist scrawling his memoirs on the walls of his cave as he patiently waits for The End.
b. My (this means your) love life, starting out tentatively only to be blown away with a tiny gust of hot air.
c. The plot to my (this means your) new book, with the hero stranded in the desert with nothing but an old carpet and a rusty lamp.
d. Nothing. What a stupid thing to do.

This means that you are really:
a. Barack Obama. Those misunderstood characters in the Middle East just want to be left in peace, so we should do that.
b. George Clooney. And pretty much everyone I know. Well, all the single people I know.
c. J.K. Rowling. At it again, making more money than the Queen and Oprah combined.
d. Boring ...

Huddled Masses ...

New York Times photo of Puerto Rican Day Parade

Today, my pals J. and L. saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time, perhaps at the exact same moment I sat at my little desk doing a bit of fact checking about Lady Liberty. (Not a lie. I really did such research today. By assignment. Interesting.) Yesterday though, I really learned about it. Yesterday, I became one with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Literally.

Imagine the scene above with about a million more people, all of them wearing some sort of Puerto Rican flag apparel and not much else. All of them cheering and sweating and imbibing. Imagine it to be obscenely hot and humid. Then remember that I have very little street cred on the streets of SLC, and absolutely none on the streets of NYC, especially while wearing a bubble-gum pink t-shirt and denim skirt to my knees and holding a map of the Met that proves I wandered into the crowds of the Puerto Rican Day Parade absolutely accidentally. Unfortunately, one cannot wander out quite so easily. Yes, waiting behind a police barricade for 15 minutes just to cross the street, squished and smashed against a whole throng of sweltering, swearing people and trying to avoid stepping in horse manure certainly breathes new meaning into yearning for freedom ...

P.S. Yes, my own photos of NYC to come soon ...

A Fish Called FLOTUS ...

Our office now has a fish. I did not bring it, so maybe it will live. But I did vote for the clever name my coworker suggested: FLOTUS. (An acronym, for the uninitiated. I really love Laura Bush ...)

So Elementary ...

I just discovered Sherlock Holmes. How could this be?! How has no one introduced us before?! I mean, obviously, I had heard of Sherlock Holmes. But no one told me that I should actually read Sherlock Holmes. For that, I am mad at you all. Luckily, M. recommended it. A little sampling:

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilled workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones! 'But the Solar System!' I protested. 'What the deuce is it to me?' interrupted impatiently: 'you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.'"

So, I will be spending a few weeks with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson. I should note however, that thus far I have only read one story in the collection, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle seems to have subscribed to the above theory ... the story I read included a plethora of outlandishly ridiculous (and thoroughly entertaining) ideas about Mormons ...

Go Fish ...

Last year I killed two goldfish. That would be Josh Lyman, who died after a mere seven days of life in a lovely bowl in my basement apartment. That would be the time my poor roommate woke up one morning to find me holding said fish bowl, dead fish still inside, sobbing uncontrollably for no apparent reason (because really, a week-old fish would not be an apparent reason for such behavior from a stoic like me). She hugged me, we flushed him, and I suppose I recovered. Until the next month, when John Roberts (the fish, not the Chief Justice) entered my world to fill the void left by Josh Lyman. (Not just Josh, for the record. Always Josh Lyman.) But alas, John Roberts (same story) began to be obviously ill after just days in my care. (And by obviously, I mean blood oozed out of his eye. Sad, I know.) A few days later he too suffered a tragic death. Now, I am not a murderer, or even an apathetic owner. I fed both fish the prescribed amount, looked at them more than a normal person should, and even bought the annoying little air pump that supposedly oxygenated the water and caused a buzzing sound that could be heard throughout the house. (OK, not difficult in that tiny place, BUT STILL.) I know no one else who loved their fish quite that much. Now, why, you ask (if still reading, which I doubt) would I relate such fishy tales today? Well, because this week my superiors at work (by which I mean people who actually receive a paycheck for their labor) decided that the interns should bring a fish for the office. As a hint, they put a fishbowl on my chair. Then they sent emails with fish photos. Then they filled the bowl with water and left it on the cabinet. I tried to explain that I am death to fish. I pointed out that the metal detector scanner security conveyor belt thing would probably fry the poor things. But no one would listen. So today I brought them fish.

And they ate them. All of them ...

... and I did not even cry ...