Robin, meet Bucky

"You're the sidekick for me, you know. I'm the leader of you. You're good luck for me."

-- overheard on the playground

Getting up the wall

"This is really driving me on my nerves!"

-- My daughter, age 7

Goonie Goo Goo

The first time i saw Eddie Murphy Delirious was on Betamax at John Hockenberry's house. I laughed so hard i nearly fell off the futon. I watched it again later, and still thought it was pretty funny, although i started to have doubts about the attitudes displayed towards gays, women, and pretty much everybody else (Bigfoot still seemed like fair game).

A third viewing had me convinced that, although there was some fine, funny material encased within the crude, obscenity-laced performance, as a whole it was an outrage, too full of gratuitous profanity and casual bigotry even for hardened criminals.

A fourth viewing, many months later, had me laughing so hard i nearly fell on the floor. Again. (While recognizing that it was just awful of him to say those things, and that my laughing made me complicit in the awfulness and....)

Oh. He got me.

I recently watched it for the first time in 26 years, and i wondered what my reaction was going to be this time. It was pretty much the falling-off-the-futon-laughing thing, except the futon is now a rocking chair. Eddie still says the F word 230 times (per IMDB and Wikipedia), and it's still offensive. And it's still funny.

Please give generously

What with Juan Williams getting a new $2 million dollar contract from Fox News, he should be able to make a nice contribution to his local NPR station.

I'll just stand over here, if you don't mind

There's more than one way to skin a cat, but I'd rather not be the cat.

Workplace description

A friend described her place of work as "perfectionism meets suppressed estrogen rage".

Getting older

As Jim got older, he switched from Johnny Walker to Johnny Wheelchair.

Books I haven't gotten around to writing

Epistemology For Dummies

The Entomologist's Cookbook

Hagiography For Fun And Profit

Chicken Soup For The Atheist's Soul

Headlines you don't see

Mother Of 3 Arraigned In Slaying Of Drifter

Classical music

I'm working on a piece called "Trio Sonata for Bagpipes, Banjo and Accordion".

Proposal for a new holiday

National Sleep-It-Off-At-Work Day

From the mouths of babes

"Don't tell me what to do! That's Mommy's job!"

-- my daughter