Ever wonder what the world looks like through Trump’s eyes? Me neither. But the NY Times took a stab at it. Here’s one of his impressions: “People don’t realize Canada is very nasty.” Yup. He nailed those bastards.

You know those countries like North Korea or Russia where every corner of your life is infested with the government, so, e.g., if you do anything to criticize Putin, like in a text or a post, you’ll get hauled in to some dank prison? How did things develop to that degree? How did it come to be that the entire population is under the boot like that?

Well, here’s the lead paragraph from the lead story in the NY Times yesterday:

“The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.”

Yup. That’s how.

Owl Chatter’s response: You’ll never take us alive!!!

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You won’t see the F word in a NY Times XW. But they came damn close yesterday. The answer at 6D was SHAG. Now, it could have been clued in a way that related to the carpet or the haircut. But they went overseas instead and the clue was “Screw or nail, to a Brit.” So it’s f*ck, as clued, right?

I posted the following comment: My British friend got a shag haircut and shagged his partner on a shag carpet. That’s meshaga.

There seems to be a blurring of lines between the shag or shaggy haircut and a bedhead. I guess they are not mutually exclusive. Phil liked how it all worked for this young woman, but he’s a sucker for those big glasses.

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Patrick Prior shared this story with Metropolitan Diary today, which I can certainly relate to:

Dear Diary:

I was visiting my uncle for the first time in 15 years. I took the Q to Brooklyn, and we went to lunch at a diner on Kings Highway.

He ordered a hamburger. I had a turkey club. We discussed our relatives and the complications of getting older. He had stopped riding his bicycle only six months before, at 79.

There was a small commotion at the back of the restaurant. A steady drip of water was leaking from the ceiling. Two customers changed tables. The drip soon became a stream.

We watched for a few minutes as we ate and speculated as to the cause. Then the sprinkler came to full life. The kitchen staff tried vainly to capture the flow with a five-gallon bucket.

We rose from our table and left the room. Before long, the floor was covered with two inches of water.

My uncle asked the manager whether he could retrieve the rest of his lunch, but we were told to stay out of the flooded room.

He dashed in anyway to save his half-eaten burger.

[OC note: Half-eaten burger is how the pessimist sees it. To the optimist it’s a half-uneaten burger. There’s no indication in the story whether the uncle’s beer glass was half-full or half-empty.]

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Today’s puzzle was one column wider than usual: 22 instead of 21, for a Sunday. (Sundays are normally 21×21 and weekdays 15×15.) It had to be that wide to accommodate the “revealer” running across the center: IT’S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE. Then, for seven theme answers, the last four across letters were HERE and the answers dropped down to be completed. What?? For example, the clue at 24A was “Completely destroy with a blast,” and the answer was BLOW TO SMITHEREENS. But the final three letters (the ones after HERE), had to be filled in going down. Get it? — Downhill from “here.” And the puzzle title was “Good to the Last Drop.”

As I was completing it, I picked up fairly quickly the dropping down business, but I never saw that every theme answer had the letters HERE in it immediately preceding the drop. That was neat.

I posted the following for the gang: In Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint a young man commits suicide. His mother finds him with a note pinned to his shirt that says: “Mrs. Goldberg called. She wants you to bring [something] to the mah jongg game tonight.” And Roth wrote: How’s that for good to the last drop?

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Yesterday, at 28A the clue was “Tree of life, in Norse mythology,” and the answer was ASH. Several erudite commenters noted that the tree is called Yggdrasill. I added (loosely defined) the following to the discussion: Never mind Norse mythology. In Yiddish mythology it’s the “Tree of Oy, You Call This Living?”

Most depictions of it (the Norse one, not the Yiddish one) are pretty creepy. This one’s not bad.

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Bud Cort passed away on Wednesday at the age of 77. He’s the actor who played Harold in “Harold and Maude.” The character was depressed and staged fake suicides, and he falls in love with Ruth Gordon’s Maude, who was life-affirming. In one scene, a therapist asks Harold if he stages the fake suicides for his mother’s benefit. Harold replies “I would not say ‘benefit.’”

Harold was 19 and Maude 60 years his senior at 79 (see below). It’s off-beat, a dark comedy, but it was serious at its heart IMO, which you may learn from a shot near the end of the film showing a concentration camp number tattooed on Maude’s arm. It never comes up otherwise.

Cort was born Walter Edward Cox, and he took the name Bud Cort to avoid confusion with the actor Wally Cox, whom some of you may recall as a great character named “Mr. Peepers.” Cort also starred in “Brewster McCloud” with Shelley Duvall, below, but his career otherwise floundered. He earned a reputation for fighting with directors. Rest in peace, Harold.

Shelley, you’re gonna have to put that cigarette out here: we canceled our fire insurance. You like Diet Pepsi? [Shelley Duvall also passed away, back in 2024, a few days after turning 75.]

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As baseball begins to emerge from hibernation, it was nice to see a little discussion arise today among the Commentariat. For the answer RBI, the clue said, “It must result from a sac fly.” Some folks thought the sac fly operates like a sac bunt, i.e., that the batter will get credit for a sac fly simply for advancing a runner, without regard to whether he scores, e.g., from second to third. But this is not true; a run must score for a sac fly to be awarded. And I learned (and shared with the gang) that if the fielder drops the ball, the batter can still be awarded a sac fly by the official scorer if, in his opinion, the runner would have scored had the catch been made.

Let’s close today with this important post by Harry Finan of the Dull Men’s Club (UK):

I noticed that the wife stirs her cup anti clockwise, whereas I stir clockwise just using wrist action, when she stirs all her lower arm moves, we are both right handed, I wondered if in general right handers stir clockwise and left handers anti clockwise although as I said she’s right handed, I’ll wager that proportion in this group is about 50-50, with left handers in the minority, the proportion of left handers in the uk is only about 10%

Tim Robinson: Left hander here. I stir from the wrist but always both ways, alternating so as to create the maximum turbulence.

Roger Collier: I have no idea which hand or direction I use. I’ll have to look next time I have a hot drink.

Roger (again, a follow-up): Can’t do it left handed. Right hand and it seems to be random whether I go clockwise or anticlockwise, much like a microwave turntable.

Debbie Vogel: I am right handed, but my mother was left handed. I remember her telling me as I was beating eggs with a fork that I was doing it backwards. She went anti-clockwise, I went clockwise. I still do. As long as the eggs get beaten, what difference does it make?

Chris Bater: Shaken, not stirred.

Tim Bucknall: She’s a witch. Burn her.

Gina Zeelie: Regardless of direction, I was taught that it is improper for a lady to “whisk” her tea with a wrist action. The stir should be gentle, from the elbow, locked wrist, and not create a vortex in the cup. Did your wife have a very well-mannered mother/grandmother?

Kirsty Redhead: I don’t stir tea or coffee because I don’t put sugar in them, but when stirring other things, I use either hand (I’m ambidextrous) and invariably stir anti-clockwise. It’s mostly involuntary – that’s just how I do it, without thinking – but if I think about it consciously I definitely do it anti-clockwise just because it annoyed my mother so much (she said it was “the sign of the devil”, but apparently many things were, I couldn’t win that war).

Brian Morrison: When I was a kid, I knew this guy, who I thought was really cool, well he had to be cool, he was a pilot. He stirred his coffee backwards and forwards across the cup, in a straight line, at high frequency. I practised for ages and, seventy years later, I still do it and I still think it’s cool.

Avi Liveson: Are you comma-tose? Does your keyboard not contain a period?

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See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping by.