My 15 yo minimised his computer screen when I walked in his room.
To hide the fact he's doing his girlfriend's science homework for her.
"Book ... good" - John Self
I love it when a blurb reads like a prepared hostage statement. “My captors are… treating me… well”
Are your two twins?
Kin to a sly hokku of Bashō’s, possibly rendered thus:
No, I assume it was a series of photos taken as part of a photo shoot (the boy may not have been a real newspaper seller) and they were trying different looks and poses.
Comments disabled. Weird!
Problem is our local Slim Chickens is next to a Five Guys, and Five Guys always wins.
Sticking with the Coens then.
Post a favourite final shot from a film:
These are great, esp the rolling-up-her-sleeves one. I might even be inspired to try MY first Slim Chickens.
We need to update "a fool and his money are easily parted", it's not strong enough for the modern age www.ft.com/content/af1f...
Agree the US cover is much better. Even in layout terms the UK one feels unbalanced, that the photo has been squashed in as an afterthought.
Interesting that the UK and US editions of Colm Tóibín's new book, The News from Dublin, use slightly different pictures of the same boy selling newspapers on the same day.
Kids today, eh?
If you google bogart it might help.
which line is that?
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful of what we pretend to be - Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
I was born into no true class, and it was my decision, early in life, to insinuate myself into the middle class, like a spy, so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I seem now and then to have forgotten my mission and to have taken my disguises too seriously.—Cheever, notebook
A Connections game where you have to be an American drug user to get the easy level. Magnificent work. #stupidgame
Connections
Puzzle #1008
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Our gym showers were freezing cold for months and after many, many complaints, they are now too hot.
I’ll save you a click it’s public speaking
"There’s a sense of glee, where suffering goes out the other side and comes back as exuberance, throughout."
Me on Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur's 1989 novel Women Without Men (tr. Faridoun Farrokh), which has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize:
'There is some very thin fare here. A declaration such as, “This morning I had the water meter checked and the septic tank cleaned” will not quicken even the keenest reader’s heart, nor will, “I heard that tomorrow, it will rain.”'
Me on Han Kang's book of essays, Light and Thread:
My interview with Anna Burns from my new book, A Hosting: Interviews with Irish Writers 1991-2025, out on April 16th. Anna talks about being evacuated to Finner camp in Donegal in 1969 after loyalist attacks; the murders of close friends and her father getting shot
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
Yes, I did consider adding that line!
It’s also, I think I read recently, the only well-established social media site to be growing in active users rather than shrinking.
‘Han has a method‑style writing approach: she would “lie under my desk, curled on my side, to try to experience the interior of a hole in the ground”, for example. A dedicated approach, to be sure, even if the sceptical reader might wonder why Han couldn’t simply use her imagination.’
Haircut!
