Photo: Alonso Nichols

THE EDITORIAL WE

Open Diary

Some writers jot down their musings in a little book. If they can afford it, they carry a Moleskine, a notebook with paper so creamy and inviting that if one were completely illiterate one would learn to spell and cipher just for the pleasure of using it. For those who have no shame, there is Twitter, which, among other functions, serves as a public forum for private thoughts. Here, courtesy of @HeyLookAtMeme, I expose some stray observations of my own.

17 Jul The flexible are the natural victims of the rigid.

17 Jul Past fifty, you realize why the middle of the night is called the wee hours.

21 Jul “It is what it is” = “I know it’s crap and I don’t intend to do a damn thing about it.”

30 Jul Weight loss secret: Gradually slide your feet toward the edges of the scale and watch the pounds melt away.

2 Aug Cop who clocked me at forty-one in a twenty-five m.p.h. zone: “No tickets since 1990!” Me: “And you wouldn’t want to—” Cop: “Oh no, sir! Have a nice day, sir!”

6 Aug Beyond small talk: nano talk. “Honey, tell the Hendersons about that lightbulb we changed last month. Do you remember the wattage on that?”

7 Aug If you know one side of the story, you know less than nothing. You know minus one.

10 Aug There’s nothing friendly about a “friendly reminder.” Bureaucrats forget that it is not a synonym for “hello.”

10 Aug A new record: NPR’s Morning Edition went twenty-seven minutes without pronouncing someone or something “iconic.”

23 Aug I drove to work behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. In fact, I was behind all of its wheels. Sure was pretty, though.

5 Sep Thought upon visiting Gillingham & Sons, in Woodstock, Vermont: If you can’t find what you need in a general store, your needs are too specific.

6 Sep Reading a book in translation is like eating a dish for which every ingredient in the recipe has been substituted with something “close.”

4 Nov The sign outside the farmhouse read: “BLIND DOG 2 M.P.H.” I thought, That’s pretty fast for a blind dog.

4 Nov I’m voting Counterfactual.

22 Nov If one can’t always be fulfilled, one can at least be full.

14 Dec Gotta love those Geminids. Lawn covered with steaming meteorites, in pairs.

12 Jan In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is considered an overachiever.

—DAVID BRITTAN
EDITOR