My god, why have I never seen this? The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest.

On Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times, a major go-getter and networker. The article is almost three years old, but it fascinates me. (How’d I find this random piece? I looked her up on Wikipedia after reading the beginning of this article about Malcolm Gladwell.)

And Mike knows her, if I’m not mistaken.

Here’s a video of every utterance of the word “Buffy” during the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy via South Park: I don’t know why I’ve never seen these before.

I keep forgetting to do this. Everyone should go over and take a look at my friend Aaron’s new blog, Anything But Poetry. Aaron is a New York City poet whom I’ve known for more than five years now. (Has it really been that long?) I rarely get to see him, but fortunately we can stay in touch through our blogs.

It’s great to finally see him blogging.

As Matt points out, today is the third anniversary of our first date. We’ve decided to celebrate by doing something low-key – we’ll order in some food and watch some good shows on TV.

Which is, of course, totally different from what we do most other nights.

R.I.P., R.W. Apple.

Three years ago, the New Yorker ran a terrific profile of Apple by Calvin Trillin. It’s not online, but I’m sure it will be soon.

[UPDATE: I was right – here it is.]

A Small, Belated Step for Grammarians – The New York Times

An Australian computer programmer says he found the missing “a” from Neil Armstrong’s famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard him say, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” …

Some historians and critics have dogged Mr. Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, “One small step for a man.” Without the missing “a,” critics say, Mr. Armstrong said the equivalent of “One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind.”

Is this really that big a deal? “One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind” would be just a poetic in its own right. It still means that one particular thing is both a small step and a giant leap.

(This concludes the least consequential blog post ever.)

My grandmother died early this morning. She was 93.

In April 2005, she suffered a massive stroke. Since then, she’d been confined to a bed in a nursing home in New Jersey, barely able to speak, unable to eat solid food, barely able to move one side of her body.

This was a woman who – although she was often a pain in the ass – was always very much alive. She was stubborn, very smart, much too overweight, loved food, never forgot a name or face, constantly interjected comments into conversations whenever she felt like it (particularly when she felt ignored), and engaged in selective hearing.

But she was my grandma and I loved her. And I know she adored me and my brother. And it was sad to think of her in the condition she was in.

I visited her last Saturday during Rosh Hashannah. She was in the hospital because she’d developed a blood clot in her leg and had needed surgery to relieve it. It was only the second time I’d seen her since the stroke. She looked about as bad as I’d expected. But she was aware. I stood by her head and stroked her hair. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. I kissed her forehead. I felt bad that I hadn’t visited her in so long.

Two or three days later, she had to go back into the ICU because her body was weakening. The oxygen levels in her blood were not where they should be, her heart rate shot up, and her body kept going into seizures. We knew she was rapidly deteriorating, and she died around 3:00 this morning.

Ever since she had the stroke, I hoped she wouldn’t last much longer. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her for the past year and a half. It wasn’t really a life.

So while I’m sad that she’s passed away, I’m also glad that she doesn’t have to suffer anymore.

My grandpa died at 94, and my grandma lived to be 93. So my dad’s got some good longevity genes. I hope he passed them onto me.

My grandma survived lymphoma, she survived a stroke, she survived numerous trips to the hospital. She lived into her nineties despite having chronic high blood pressure.

As my dad said to me on the phone this morning, “She was a tough old lady.”

Indeed she was.

One of my favorite political photos: five presidents and five first ladies.

Regarding the proposed anti-trans-fats law for New York City’s restaurants:

Mr. Bookman said he expected the limit to be particularly disruptive to some of the nation’s largest restaurant chains, like McDonald’s, which use trans fats in highly standardized recipes that could not easily be changed for New York City.

He said a legal challenge might be made on the grounds that the local restriction violates federal rules on interstate commerce, since some of the chains prepare their French fries and other menu items in other states, using trans fats in the process, before freezing them and shipping them to restaurants in New York.

“I don’t believe New York City has the authority” to interfere with the interstate food chain, Mr. Bookman said.

That’s total bull. The proposed regulation might violate libertarian principles, but in no way does it usurp the federal role in interstate commerce. A state is perfectly free under its police powers to ban the sale of trans fats within its borders. If Bookman were correct, a state couldn’t ban anything at all.

The headline of this story is so good and random it deserves to be quoted in full:

Kristin Chenoweth Tells The New York Dog Magazine She Wants Her 10 Percent from Ex, Aaron Sorkin

Kristin Chenoweth has revealed to Leslie Padgett, editor of “The New York Dog Magazine,” that her ex-boyfriend Aaron Sorkin, creator of “The West Wing,” used “pretty much verbatim” dialogue from arguments they had during their relationship in the script for his new TV show.

Pop-u-ARF!-lar, you’re gonna be pop-u-ARF!-lar…

Related to my earlier post: Why candidates aren’t talking about what to do in Iraq.

The main reason is that nobody knows what the hell to do about it. And unfortunately, our political environment hinders any real discussion: almost everyone, Democrat and Republican alike, is afraid of being tarred as a weak-willed terror-lover. That Slate piece describes some of the ideas that people have come up with.

That said, maybe Mike’s right and we need to just get the hell out of there.

Eh, I don’t frickin’ know. If I knew, I’d be president.

From a comment on the blog Balkinization:

This is the fear that permeates the Democratic party — and everyone can smell it. You don’t win by being mealy-mouthed and afraid that Hannity and Rush are going to distort what you say. This is really my point: they are going to distort what they say and cudgel them with it no matter what they say or do. Therefore, stop trying to tailor what you say and do based on the fear that it will be distorted and used against you.

Amen! Amen! Ding ding ding ding ding.

Now if only most Democratic politicians would learn this.

David Ignatius writes in a terrific piece in the Washington Post:

This should be the Democrats’ moment, if they can translate the national anger over Iraq into a coherent strategy for that country. But with a few notable exceptions, the Democrats are mostly ducking the hard question of what to do next….

I wish Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) were asking this question: How do we prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state? Many critics of the war would argue that the worst has already happened — Iraq has unraveled. Unfortunately, as bad as things are, they could get considerably worse.

I think a lot of people see the Iraq situation as a bad one, but not one that they’d actually like to fix. We probably need more troops there, not less, but we’re out of troops – yet most people would oppose a draft. We probably need to put more money into fixing Iraq, as long as it’s spent wisely – yet most people would probably oppose a tax increase to pay for it.

Most people see Iraq as a big nuisance, something bad that they see on TV, something to get angry about but not something that actually affects them. That’s true about many things in the news – stories create a negative emotional response, but it’s a distant response, blocked by the barrier of the TV screen, the computer screen, the newspaper. It’s not something that actually affects most of us in a concrete way, so we feel as bad about it as we feel about seeing a favorite TV character put in a bad position. We root for things to get better, but we don’t really have anything invested in it except our emotions.

I think that’s how most of us feel about Iraq. “Damn shame. It makes me so angry. Now what’s for dinner?”

The New York Times obituary editor answers readers’ questions. This is great timing for me, as I’ve just borrowed from the library The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, by Marilyn Johnson. (I’m a bit of an obituary geek.)

A tidbit from the obituary editor’s responses: There are about 1,200 advance obituaries on file. The oldest advance obit on file is from 1982 – 1982! – and the subject is still alive. “The subject, it seems, has also refused to budge.” The writer of the obit is dead, though.

(The Times has run advance obits written by dead people before; the obit editor specifically mentions the obits of Bob Hope and James Van Allen, of Van Allen Belt fame.)

I wonder what my obituary will say.