The former dictator Idi Amin has died in a Saudi Arabian hospital.
Here is a man who killed up to 400,000 people, plunged Uganda into chaos, and “disgusted the entire civilized world.”
And yet, I chuckle when I hear his name because of this song.
The former dictator Idi Amin has died in a Saudi Arabian hospital.
Here is a man who killed up to 400,000 people, plunged Uganda into chaos, and “disgusted the entire civilized world.”
And yet, I chuckle when I hear his name because of this song.
Google Maps is just the most fun way to waste time on a rainy Sunday. We all know that Apple’s HQ in Cupertino is located on Infinite Loop, but here’s a street that made me laugh: here in Alviso [more...]
Pepys’ Diary has met the blog. Phil Gyford is posting entries from the famous diary each day, as Samuel Pepys would have himself, had there been an Internet in the 17th century. Read the latest happenings in the [more...]
Being home during the day is an interesting experience. Today on Jerry Springer: the usual trashy suspects, with a stepbrother and stepsister who are having an affair, and their trashy parents who insist that they were [more...]
how i reacted to the song: oh, man, i need to be writing & singing political satire! brilliant!
Very nice. In an indirect way, it also reminded me of the Thomas Meehan short story, “Yma Dream,” in which the narrator recalls a nightmare: hosting a party where the sequentially arriving guests are such celebrities as Yma Sumac, Ava Gardner, Abba Eban, Oona O’Neill, Ida Lupino, Eva Gabor, etc. ad naus. — with the host obliged to introduce them all to each other, producing such lines as “‘Oona, Yma; Oona, Ava; Oona, Abba.'” (Or this: “‘Am I late?’ asks the actress Uta Hagen gaily as she comes tripping into the room. ‘No, no!’ I say, gallantly taking her arm and steering her at once toward the punch bowl and away from the others.”)
Christine Baranski did a screamingly funny reading of the story on public radio’s “Selected Shorts” some years back. Outside of the New Yorker (where the piece first appeared), the only place I’ve found it in print is _Fierce Pajamas_, a recent (and wickedly funny) anthology of New Yorker humor writing from Thurber and Perelman to the present day. (Also worth the price is David Owen’s post-dot-bomb item “What Happened to My Money?,” which puts the tech wreck in theological terms: “God has taken your money to live with Him in Heaven…. You loved your money very much, and you did not want God to take it away.”)
But I digress.