Author Archives: Brendan

“Ha ha! I can see his arse!”

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Dear Lord, I love British people: We live in serious times. … [And] this seriousness is being compounded by an intensifying national determination to behave terribly seriously about it. … This aversion to levity certainly infused the [U.K.] election campaign. But there was a funny bit and most of us missed it. When Gordon Brown got in his car and… Read more »

Alan Sullivan “sliding to the end”?

If I met Alan Sullivan, a.k.a. “Seablogger,” on the street — or at a Tea Party or a Sarah Palin rally, perhaps — I’d dismiss him as a right-wing nutjob. And perhaps I’d be right to do so: he does believe some things that I find profoundly wacky, indefensible even. As I wrote in a never-published draft from September 2009,… Read more »

Fun at Fenway

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In case anyone’s wondering why the blog has gone even deader than usual, it’s because we’re back east, visiting my folks. We had a great time in Boston today — Becky, the girls, my parents and me — including at Fenway Park for the Red Sox-Blue Jays game. We had been worried about rain, but in the end, we got… Read more »

Million, billion, what’s the difference?

[I’ve bumped this post up, because it got quickly drowned on the homepage yesterday by U.K. election coverage. -ed.] Thursday afternoon’s stock-market PANIC!!!!! may have been caused, in large part, by a trader typing “b” (for billion) instead of “m” (for million). Charles Fenwick suggests a Budweiser commercial based on this event: Real Men of Genius Here’s to you, Mr…. Read more »

Times Square evacuated (again)

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Auto-tweets are turned off right now, but CNN just sent out a Breaking News Alert staying simply: “New York’s Times Square evacuated.” What now??? UPDATE: “Times Square has been evacuated because of a suspicious package. Watch live: http://on.cnn.com/cnndcl1.” “Suspicious packages” usually turn out to be nothing, but we’ll see. P.S. LOL: “You have to wonder about the folks who are… Read more »

PANIC!!! UN-PANIC!!! RE-PANIC?!?

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Party like it’s 2008! The Dow Jones Industrials briefly dropped 998.50 points this afternoon, then recovered within minutes to a loss in the 400 to 500 range, and is now… well… see for yourself where it is now, since anything I type will be obsolete by the time I hit “Publish.” Needless to say, during the crazy moments between, like,… Read more »

Railroad, steamboat, river and canal…

Two in the middle and I can’t catch Cameron. Two in the middle and I can’t get around. Two in the middle and I can’t catch Cameron. Goodbye, Gordon Brown. [/obscure Chad Mitchell Trio reference that only my parents will get] Uh, so there’s an election today across the pond, over in the U.K., or as Wonkette and other snarky… Read more »