Mike Stipe. Gettin a sandwich.

My brother was traveling through Toronto airport last week, and was running a little late. But he was also hungry, so he stopped to get a sandwich. The guy in front of him in the queue took a very long time to order. He began counting out his change very slowly. He asked things like “Is this a quarter?” My brother, increasingly impatient and not in a charitable mood, thought maybe it’s the guy’s first time in Canada, or maybe he’s just an idiot. The guy had an odd bag at his feet that was a mixture of leather panels and silver-lined parachute material. He wore an Irish flat-peaked farmer’s cap of the sort which, when seen on someone under the age of sixty, is guaranteed to annoy Irish people everywhere. These facts lent support to the second theory. Finally, the guy finished counting out his money, slowly gathered his food and his silly bag and turned around to leave.

It was Michael Stipe. My brother said hello. Stipe said hello. Off he went. My brother said the only other thing that it occurred to him to say at the time was “Hey, how’s Thom Yorke? When’s the next Radiohead album coming out?” But he felt this might not have been an appropriate question.

Lifted from Crooked Timber.

Lemony Snicket 12

The snicket website has updated with the new book, but the title is lost or "art to awful to show." To join in the search, one can go here.

Sticks and Stones

The Washington post has a hysterical article about racist incidents at the University of Virginia. The Post describes the events thusly:

Just a few weeks into the school year, U-Va. has had at least nine racist incidents -- slurs shouted from cars, ugly words written on message boards, a racist threat scrawled on a bathroom wall. And students, parents and alumni are demanding change.

Buried in the two pages of angst is this little gem of reality:

Some students said privately that the incidents had been overblown, that they were probably the work of a drunk townie, not someone on campus, and that it was better to ignore it than to give the perpetrators attention.

Let's assume it is a student. How serious is this? I'm not saying what's going on is nice, but the fact that after nine incidents no one has been identified as the culprit says to me that this person(these people?) are being fairly coy about it. The idea that this could become a campus wide social issue over the actions of a few idiots shows what an over-delicate hypersensitive society we live in.

The King, am I

Link via Boortz.

Fun with Photoshop

I'm just linking their photo: