Opening Sentence:‘To explain evil,’ said Baudelaire in his Journaux intimes, ‘we must always go back to Sade – that is to normal man. Synopsis:The Marquis de Sade and his works – widely banned until the late 1960s – still have… Read More ›
New York Times
Student Found Guilty of Racism for Reading Book in Public
In 2007 a student working his way through college was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book in public. Some of his co-workers had been offended by the book’s cover, which included pictures of men in white robes… Read More ›
Joe Queenan in ‘Balsamic Dreams’
“Rejecting the verdict of society at large – let’s face it, everybody else hates them – the 75 million Americans born between 1944 and 1960 persist in the delusion that they are really smart, really good, really cool people…” … Read More ›
Debrett’s Etiquette for Girls by Fleur Britten
Opening Sentence:For many of us, life is just too fast to bother with manners. Synopsis:Etiquette is a revisionist business. New rules are constantly appearing and old ones evolving. A modern survival manual is called for, to lay out the new… Read More ›
Yes, these are real places…
Some Unusual US Place Names: Intercourse, Alabama Chicken, Alaska Surprise, Arizona Umpire, Arkansas Parachute, California Hourglass, Delaware Frostproof, Florida Thunderbolt, Georgia Fruitland, Idaho Oblong, Illinois Gravity, Iowa Buttermilk, Kansas Typo, Kentucky Waterproof, Louisiana Bingo, Maine Boring, Maryland Savage, Minnesota Enough,… Read More ›
Rafferty's Rules is Closing Down 