Muss My Hair

The motto says it all. On Fulton Street near Broadway. Source of some excellent overstock paper cups.

Mangoes, 69 cents each. I put these on my cereal each morning. At the Trade Fair on 30th Avenue.

Presumably designed for helicopter airlift...?

A click on the random button at wikimedia brought up this fine example of what turns out to be an idea with both a history and advocates.

From some concrete in Queens.

A 28-year-old agave plant decided to suddenly flower and busted out a greenhouse pane to do it.

Had this at Spuyten Duyvil on Sunday. A nice wit, needed the sediment to push it from “yeah, good” to “mmm.” From Belgium.

A reassuring message from the MTA. Or from the Matrix.

Maybe this only happens in Astoria. Oh wait, there’s more.

I love this saying and have been using it more frequently in the last few months, or at least have more frequently noticed that I use it. And now I know where it comes from.

lurch |lərtʃ| |ləːtʃ|
noun (in phrase leave someone in the lurch)
leave an associate or friend abruptly and without assistance or support in a difficult situation.

ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (denoting a state of discomfiture): from French lourche, the name of a game resembling backgammon, used in the phrase demeurer lourche ‘be discomfited.’

The other meaning of lurch has an interesting derivation too:

lurch |lər ch |
noun [usu. in sing. ]
an abrupt uncontrolled movement, esp. an unsteady tilt or roll : the boat gave a violent lurch, and he missed his footing.

verb [ intrans. ]
make an abrupt, unsteady, uncontrolled movement or series of movements; stagger : the car lurched forward | Stuart lurched to his feet | figurative he was lurching from one crisis to the next.

ORIGIN late 17th cent. (as a noun denoting the sudden leaning of a ship to one side): of unknown origin.

Ah, but there’s more; it may be related to the word for lax, or to lurk (as in ambush)–but are the two meanings related to each other?

The NYTimes has a nice slide show and article about Shawn Rocco, a professional photographer who has made an out-of-date cell phone camera his only outlet for his creative work (he also does journalism, and uses a regular camera for it). He’s got a good blog, too.

Was really into this show as a kid. And like the rumors that one day you see Zoltar with no mask, turns out there was truth to schoolyard rumors: the Marshalls do escape (sort of). In this case we can thank the science fiction writers (Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, and Norman Spinrad, ….Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana…and [head writer] David Gerrold) who actually took time to have some sort of sense and arc underneath all the crap and cheesy acting/sets/costumes/models/and so on…

There are a couple ways to approach the palindrome in film, I think this one is excellent.

via Waxy

A new category of cloud is proposed by the Cloud Appreciation Society to a panel of meteorologists from the Royal Meteorological Society. Fine and well, but what we’re here for is the gallery.

via the BBC (who have larger versions of some of the photos)

(hilarity thanks to Ed)

One of the original premises of this blog was trading amateur reviews of affordable wines. So let me recommend this bottle, only $8 on sale at my local liquor shop.

Last weekend you may have missed the opportunity to watch people kill themselves in pursuit of a wheel of handmade double Gloucester cheese.

Here are some earlier attempts (it’s documented to be at least a 200-year-old tradition). The official site has a good picture from the top of the steep hill and entry forms for 2010.

From I Am Bored.

Why can’t they make the maps on the plane interactive? I don’t care about the global view or the temperature and local time where I’m headed: I just want to look at the closest most detailed map they have.

I recently passed a bar in Manhattan — looked like a normal dive, on a bus-choked side street. But the aging awning featured a string of words that promised oh so much more:

POOL TABLE * POOL * FREE HOT DOG * POOL * DART’S * BIKINI

I am getting tired of cleaning out registration spam (they don’t comment, but they do create tons of fake registrations), so I’ve added a new captcha thing to the commenter registration. It seems to work fine, and those of you already registered I don’t think will have to do it again. Registration remains pretty easy, folks, so don’t hold back (so long as you aren’t a spammer).