Bruner Blog

Pobrecito Jorge

Visiting my sister and her family outside of San Francisco. My adorable nephew, Little Ricky, is quite talkative, mostly in Spanish, thanks to his Mexican daddy. Over our shoulders at the computer screen of this picture of Bush, who fell off his bicycle and scraped his cheek (or was it another “pretzel” incident?), Ricky said, “El hombre tiene un booboo.”

Adi and I just got back from a glorious six days in the British Virgin Islands, celebrating our 10 years of marriage. I can’t say enough wonderful things about both her and the BVI. I took more than 300 pictures of the BVI and will get them up as soon as I can, but I’m not sure whether it will be before or after my trip to China next week. I leave tomorrow morning to San Francisco for a little less than a week, largely a working trip. Then off for 10 days to China through early June. Stay tuned…

I am delighted to note that I installed MT Blacklist yesterday, a tool for Movable Type users to fight the growing annoyance to bloggers and other web site owners of spammers filling your comments fields with links to their porn sites or penis enlargement pill sites or whatever. So far, MT Blacklist seems to be working well. (I also notice with interest its programmer is living in Budapest and regularly attending language classes there.)

As for the jackass who added right-wing hate comments to various of my posts in the last few days (such as this one with regard to my photo comment on the Iraqi prisoner torture scandal):

Fry that hooded son-of-a-bitch!…would love to see Bush pulling the handle! Actually, would love to that hood pulled off to reveal one Rick Bruner!

FCC you! Consider your IP address banned from this site. Figure out another way to post, and I’ll just delete your comments anyway, particularly as you’re too much of a chicken shit to attach your name to your disgusting opinions. But frankly I may go ahead and censor you even if you do own up to your sad identity because I just don’t like you, and it’s my blog, so get stuffed.

Tomorrow begins several weeks of travels — British Virgin Islands, San Francisco, China, Maryland (somehow Maryland doesn’t seem to meet the standard of that list, but whatever). Blogging will be sporadic at best during that time. Please find another way to entertain yourselves till mid-June.

Granted, I’m no Peter Maass, but I do keep my journalism career alive with occasional pieces in the NY Daily News, mainly for the fashion section, as I have a close friend who’s the editor there. So, for those of you (like my Mom) who likes to see my latest press clips, here’s a piece I wrote about Magic Johnson’s new clothing line, titled “Brand of Magic.”

I’m a winner! Actually, this is old news, but for some reason I never got around to mentioning it before. A while ago, a site called Blogstakes came up with an idea where they would do sweepstakes that co-opted bloggers by awarding prizes both to randomly drawn sweepstakes winners as well as to the blogger who pointed the contest that resulted in the click-through of the winning consultant. I blogged about it on MarketingVox (then Up2Speed), more as an interesting marketing idea than as something I really hoped to win. Anyway, turns out I did win — I was one of the referring bloggers

The prize was from Clip-n-Seal, a really clever product designed by a burnt out web developer that has refreshingly nothing to do with the web and everything to do with product freshness. Basically, they are a simple groove and rod system that seals bags air-tight, as shown in the illustration here. I have to say, they are a very cool and useful product. I liked them so much, I ordered more, and they just arrived, which is why I thought to blog about it at last.

I suspect this guy is going to get rich as soon as Ziploc or Glad buy him out. Meanwhile, I highly l recommend you buy them via his web site. Your cookies and cat food will thank you for it.

Provided we make it till Friday, Adrienne and will have shared 10 years together as wife and husband. Mostly, it’s been a great pleasure and privilege. In honor of the event (which will see us basking in the sun on a beach in the British Virgin Islands), I offer this poem:

I Do, I Will, I Have
by Ogden Nash

How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered
into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut and a
woman who can’t sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between
flora and fauna and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people
one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other
never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or
the gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate
or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the
windowsill, it’s raining in, and he replies Oh they’re all right,

it’s only raining straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it’s the only known example of the happy meeting of
the immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and
combat over everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,
particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

UPDATE:
Turns out, according to The Independent, Moore knew a year ago Disney had no intention of distributing the film, and apparently he won’t have any trouble distributing it. Just more Moore manipulation. Hmm. I’ve been had. Wasted moral outrage. Prick.

Original post:

I’m not a big fan of Michael Moore. I thought Bowling for Columbine was grossly manipulative and bad journalism and bad story telling. I think he’s a bully, a buffoon and a dishonest and regrettable poster child for the liberal political movement. I thought this February New Yorker profile of him pretty much nailed it.

That said, I’m outraged by Disney’s political censoring of his latest film (NYT | NPR), most-ironically (in light of these latest events) titled Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s totally inexcusable, and I really hope Disney gets the message from thousands, if not millions of Americans that we won’t tolerate political censorship from our media companies.

MoveOn.org has sent out an appeal to subscribers asking them to call Disney with your opinion:

We can’t let corporate favors for politicians dictate what movies we see. Tell Disney to show us Michael Moore’s documentary:

Louis Meisinger
Executive Vice President
The Walt Disney Company
Phone: (818) 560-1000

If the line is busy, call a Disney store near you. The salespeople aren’t responsible for this decision, but ask them to pass your concerns on to the manager.

I’d like to propose that we modify our vocabulary to use the word “FCC” in place of “fuck” in the the future. As in, “This is FCCing brilliant!” or “FCC Bush!”

For the second year in a row, the bicyclist won in a race among a bicyclist, taxi rider and subway rider from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side.

The race, organized by Transportation Alternatives, pitted bicyclist Paul S. White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, against taxi rider Jon Orcutt, Executive Director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and subway rider, Gene Russianoff, Senior Attorney for NYPIRG?s Straphanger?s Campaign, in a race from Junior’s Restaurant on Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues in Brooklyn to Columbus Circle in Manhattan. White arrived in 25 minutes, five minutes ahead of the taxi and 10 minutes ahead of the subway rider. Here’s the press release, and here’s last year’s.

May is, by the way, Bike Month in NYC.

Of course, speaking as an avid NYC biker, I see at least two flaws in this contest:

1. In a real-world contest, the biker would have had at least two minutes at either end futzing with the locks, not to mention helmet and other bike gear. (I’m always self-conscious of this when people are waiting for me to get ready to ride, all the gear involved in a bike ride.)
2. After a fast ride from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, you’re going to want a shower or at least a change of clothes before walking into a business meeting. When I was regularly bike commuting (last time I had to commute anywhere, as opposed to my work-at-home lifestyle today), I had a gym membership with NYSC, which has the most locations around the city, so I could take a quick shower and change before arriving to the office.

Other than that, I’m all for bike commuting!

Tig Tillinghast believes so.

On the comments thread of an earlier post about the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, StereoGum writes:

Which is the best (most helpful) of all these grammar books? I heard “Eats, Shoots…” is sort of lame

I started answering in that comments thread, but I figured I came up with enough titles, I may as well make a proper post of this, so more interested parties see read it. I’ll first disclaim that I haven’t made any effort to survey everything that’s out there by any means, and I’m just a nobody hack writer, so my opinion on this shouldn’t be taken with any great authority. That said, I’m enough of a word nerd that I’ve probably read more of these book than most people, so with that understood, here are some recommendations:

• Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White — There is a reason we all read this in 8th grade. If you read only one book on writing in this lifetime, make it this thin volume. Better yet, reread it every few years. It is hands down the enduring classic.
• The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon — As noted a few times earlier on this blog, these are my favorite word books. I first discovered them in high school. The best part about them is they are funny, with grammar rules highlighted by quirky, sardonic sentences (e.g., “Past Tense: She moped in the bistro. I moped in my boudoir. I moped for five days straight without touching my gruel. She fumbled with her string of pearls.”) Also great gothic etchings illustrate.
• Woe Is I by Patricia T. O’Conner — I have not actually read this or her other books, but she’s a regular guest on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show on the subject of language stuff, and based on that I have confidence that the book is good.
• Less Than Words Can Say by Richard Mitchell, aka “The Underground Grammarian” — I no longer have this on my shelf, but I remember it being both very insightful and fun to read (i.e., he’s bitterly sarcastic) when I read it in college.
• On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser — I read this when working at a PR agency, and it is a great guide, written as an expanded version of the Wall Street Journal’s in-house writing guide for their reporters and editors.
• AP Stylebook — as a journalist, this was my preferred reference for all sorts of usage questions. The popular alternative is The Chicago Manual of Style. Both are good and their differences are relatively minor, but two camps definitely persist, e.g., whether or not to use a comma before the conjunction in series (AP: no, Chicago: yes).
• Modern American Usage by Wilson Follett — I’ve had this on my reference shelf for years and occasionally refer to it, but it’s dry reading (more a reference than a book you read, in contrast to many of the others above). I also suspect it was “modern” quite a few years ago. I see there’s also something called Garner’s Modern American Usage by Bryan A. Garner that looks like it was actually written during our lifetime, so it may be preferred, I don’t know.
• Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words by Josefa Heifetz Byrne — pretty much useless, but great bathroom reading and revelatory about how truly vast and esoteric our language is. One of my favorite words from this book: “advesperate: v.i. to draw towards evening. (obs.)”
• A Hog on Ice by Charles Funk — Part of a series that also includes Horsefeathers, Thereby Hangs A Tale and Heavens to Betsy! which are all fun reads about the origins of curious words and phrases.

Those last two, by Funk and . Byrnes, I should note were called to my attention by my step-brother Jay back in high school. He’s a smarty pants, too.

I’d love to hear any others you folks can suggest.

But then, who doesn’t love Tina Fey?

Here are several recent interviews with her:

• NY Times
• Fresh Air
• New Yorker

Also, feast your eyes on FallonFey.com.

Shout out to Lindsay for the inspiration.

http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040517&s=jarvis