If ever there was a story tailor-made for Owl Chatter . . .
From the Associated Press:
An Orthodox Jewish passenger says a United Airlines pilot forcibly removed him from an airplane bathroom while he was experiencing constipation, exposing his genitalia to other flyers during a flight from Tulum, Mexico, to Houston.
Hard to “unsee” something like that. (When many dems were trying to ignore the polls that showed Kamala was in trouble, James Carville said it was like accidentally seeing your grandmother naked — hard to “unsee.”)
Needless to say, the poor fellow, Yisroel Liebb, is from Jersey. He had been in the restroom, fruitlessly, so to speak, for over 30 minutes. After repeatedly assuring the pilot he was “finishing up,” the pilot lost his patience, broke the lock on the bathroom door, and hauled Liebb out with his pants still down. He was “helped off” the plane in handcuffs “lent to him” by Homeland Security folks and missed his connecting flight. He’s suing the airline.
Liebb! — you need more fiber, boychik. Your mother never told you about prunes?
United eventually booked him on a flight home for free, but he did the math and complained the cost of his hotel and food for the overnight stay exceeded the savings.
Oy, Liebb! Let it go. No wonder you’re all in a knot.
Craven GOP Congresspersons are not just fearing being “primaried” if they show a little spine and oppose Trump’s methodical, illegal, and immoral dismantling of the government. They (and federal judges) fear that they and their family members will be killed. There’s an underlying mob element to the current goings-on. (Hang Mike Pence!) Remember the attack on Nancy P’s hubby? It started before Trump, IMO. Remember when a violent mob attacked the location where Florida officials were counting Gore v. Bush votes and successfully halted the counting? Trump has just embraced that approach and made it more vicious and personal.
This is Jessica Aber. She was 43.
She was a brilliant U.S. Attorney, in charge of a staff of 300 in the Eastern District of Virginia. She was appointed by Biden and confirmed unanimously by the Senate. A rising star, she resigned her post the day before Trump took office. She was found dead in her home yesterday. An investigation is underway. In, we hope, unrelated news, Trump has terminated the security the government was providing for Kamala and Hilary. What took him so long? The savings will help pay for his golf outings, which already cost over $18 million since he re-took office, setting a pace that will exceed the $152 mil spent on golf during his first term. Of course, Biden’s inflation is responsible for some of the increase.
With just three days more I’d have just
About learned the entire score to Aida.
That’s a lyric from the song “Verdi Cries,” by 10,000 Maniacs. The woman is on vacation and every day hears the opera music that emanates from the hotel room next door. AIDA is the “Doomed Ethiopian princess” who was in the puzzle today at 6D. It’s a good tune. She steals the guy’s pastries!
The folks in Crossworld I’ve run across at the few tournaments I’ve attended and through “the commentariat” for Rex’s blog mostly seem very nice. Mensches and menschettes. Several have put together a fundraiser you can learn about at the following site: https://fund.nnaf.org/campaign/these-puzzles-fund-abortion-5/c661718. For a $25 donation, you receive a bunch of puzzles. Check it out.
A new feature of Owl Chatter: Portions of poems that did not get past the gate (i.e., OC rejects):
This way of seeing
senses cave,
where darkness, backlit,
hisses sparks over
ash-hued crow
wings peaking
sickle sharp,
from river glyphs
[It lost me early, but “river glyphs?” Isn’t a glyph that thing with a node you don’t want the cancer to reach? Why is it in the river? Wait, is that “glymph?” That’s even funnier. Maybe lose the “g”? Never mind.]
From today’s Met Diary in the NYT, by Oona Pritchard.
Dear Diary:
After days of going back and forth with the Postal Service about the whereabouts of a package I was expecting from my mother, I went to the post office at the corner of 11th Street and Fourth Avenue just after it opened at 9 a.m.
As I waited empty-handed in line behind several people who were holding packages, a middle-aged woman in a postal uniform approached me.
“Baby, are you picking up a package?” she asked.
I nodded.
She motioned me with her finger out of the line, and we walked toward the back of the post office.
“Package pickup isn’t usually until 10 a.m.,” she said, looking at my confirmation slip. “But let me see what I can do for you.”
She walked off and then reappeared two minutes later with a large brown box.
“Here you go, baby,” she said, handing me the package. “You have a good day now.”
I thanked her and turned to leave. As I did, I heard her speaking to another person in line: “Baby, you picking up a package?”
The novelty of Rex’s blog (Rex Parker Does The NY Times Crossword Puzzle) is that it views the puzzle as something to be assessed like a novel or other creative work and not just to solve and discard. The creativity that goes into the construction of a puzzle is unique and, in the hands of the better constructors, brilliant. Rex has his own curmudgeonly approach to the puzzles, and then the commenters chime in. Here are some thoughts two commenters posted yesterday.
Kitshef noted: One of my least favorite classes of comments are of the form of “anyone who knows anything about [insert subject] will know about [insert name or thing].”
They tend to go wrong in one of two ways. Either the subject is laughably obscure (“anyone who knows anything about European calligraphy traditions will know about insular script”). Or the subject is well-known but the assertion is questionable (“anyone who knows anything about baseball will know Glenn Gulliver”).
And pabloinnh quipped: Well said. This is a variation of the “I know this and everyone else should too,” which is of course ludicrous, unless the person who knows it is me.
Attendance was up for today’s Sirens game vs Ottawa at the Prudential Center in Newark to close to 5,000, but the Sirens lost the second of two must-win games and their playoff hopes are pretty much doomed. Wait till next year girls!!
Abby Roque had a good game, scoring one of our goals in the 5-2 loss. Abby is a Michigan girl by birth, although she earned her marketing degree at Wisconsin. She is a member of the Wahnapitae First Nation and was the first indigenous person to play for the U.S. women’s national ice hockey team.
Don’t let that sweet punim fool you. She’ll knock your teeth out with a stick without a moment’s hesitation.
Wayne Stallwood of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted this just about an hour ago so there are no comments yet. (Can’t wait! Will report back.)
Take the walk from Liverpool St Station Tube station entrance to The Elizabeth line and you encounter a set of escalators.
The handrails on these move slightly faster than the steps. About an arm’s length on each over the duration of the ascent/descent
What’s with that? It’s a gear ratio and should be fixed right…how can it be wrong?
I’ll take better measuring equipment on my next journey, but it seems to me that one of the things I’d concentrate on getting right if I was building an escalator, is making the handrail move at the same speed as the steps.
[Yeah, me too. If I was building an escalator. “Better measuring equipment.” You mean, better than your arm?]
See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 