Dear New Yorker

Dear New Yorker,

I have enjoyed every issue of your magazine since I began my subscription about 16 months ago. Your measured prose and distinctive intellectual style have always found a place in my schedule and on my nightstand. It is because of my fondness for your publication that I find it so disheartening that you have chosen a theme for your cover this week that gives me great pause and apprehension, particularly in these sensitive times.

I realize it's a cartoon, and that your intentions were to satirize and make light of what in any other context would be an absurd, over-the-top situation, but my concern is that there are certain people out there who will not appreciate the subtle, high-minded Absicht that your artist intended, and will instead take the content in a more literal, sub-rosa capacity.

While I enjoy humor in all its wonderful forms, one has to ask, point blankly, what were you thinking? I mean, red wine with lobster?

The Gentleman in the Water

From NYT:

A 32-year-old man competing in the New York City Triathlon died Sunday after being pulled unconscious from the Hudson River on a day when competitors battled heat, humidity and stinging jellyfish along the course.
[...]
“Other swimmers noticed the gentleman in the water, and they were actually waving and signaling for the nearby jet boats to come assist them,” Burke said.

I enjoy a good swim myself... and I enjoy a good drink at a bar.. This story made both of those activities intersect in my mind in the sense that every now and then while in the game the arbitrating authority (bartender / referee) is asked to take a player out due to inability.... but rarely due to death.

A Badge of Honor

vive la difference (zakaria / obama style)

ZAKARIA: Tell me, what is your first memory of a foreign policy event that shaped you, shaped your life?

OBAMA: A first memory. Well, you know, it wasn't so much an event.

I mean, my first memory was my mother coming to me and saying, "I've remarried this man from Indonesia, and we're moving to Jakarta on the other side of the world."

I think it's awesome that the names pertinent to this interview are ZAKARIA and OBAMA.