Author: jbenton

mazie project up to 28

The Mazie card count is up to 28, with only four days left to go. It makes her so happy to get these cards; she calls me like clockwork every day around 3:00, right after the mailman passes, to give me the update. (She was particularly excited about one from Japan today.)
One odd thing: the Mazie Project page doesn’t make any reference to my gender, and I suppose loving your grandmother is construed by some to be a female characteristic. As a result, she’s now gotten three cards saying something to the effect of “I saw your granddaughter’s web page…”
I’m surprising her by taking a day off this weekend and driving down to see her for her birthday on Saturday. The only potential problem: I normally leave Dallas after work when I drive home, which means I get to Rayne around one in the morning. That’s fine when she’s expecting me, but I hope I don’t give her a heart attack by walking in at that hour.

mlk day

Feeling existential and angsty today, for no apparent reason.
Of course, if should be a glorious day, since it’s a day off. Much better than my last place of employment, where our MLK holiday was exactly one half-hour long. Seriously: they told us all to take a 90-minute lunch instead of an hour.
After all, isn’t Dr. King’s greatest legacy a less-rushed return trip from your restaurant of choice?

nyt corrections book, guardian too

Someone’s assembled a compilation of the most embarrassing corrections run by the New York Times over the last 20 years. Some excerpts:
A review about “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,” by Kiran Desai, misspelled the name of the novel’s hero. It is Sampath, not Sanpath. The same review incorrectly identified the character who falls into a vat of broth; it is a spy from an atheist organization, not a monkey or Sampath in the form of a guava.
An article about decorative cooking incorrectly described a presentation of Muscovy duck by Michel Fitoussi, a New York chef. In preparing it, Mr. Fitoussi uses a duck that has been killed.
A caption misidentified a drag queen shown standing behind Quentin Crisp. The performer was Brandywine, not Lady Bunny.
A theater review about the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Tempest” misinterpreted a gesture. The actors’ intent was to portray 18th-century gentlemen taking snuff, not cocaine.
In yesterday’s issue, The New York Times did not report on riots in Milan and the subsequent murder of the lay religious reformer Erlembald. These events took place in 1075, the year given in the dateline under the nameplate on Page 1. The Times regrets both incidents.
But personally, I’ll wait for the Guardian’s equivalent book, due out in March. They seem to have more fun with the form:
We spelt Morecambe, the town in Lancashire, wrong on Page 2, G2, yesterday. We often do.
In “A (very) occasional series on praise of the sub-editors craft,” we repeated a seven-line section practically word for word. We did not notice but you did.
A caption in Guardian Weekend, page 102, 13 November, read, “Binch of crappy travel mags.” That should, of course, have been “bunch.” But more to the point it should not have been there at all. It was a dummy [placeholder] which we failed to replace with the real caption. It was not meant to be a comment on perfectly good travel brochures. Apologies.