A bit Tulfoesque, but it could work. Remember when traffic cops with megaphones insulted people who were jaywalking? Was that effective?
Pavement driver ordered to wear ‘idiot’ sign in Cleveland
BBC News, 8 Nov 2012
A judge in Ohio has come up with an unusual punishment for a dangerous driver.
Shena Hardin will have to hold up a sign saying “only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus” after she did just that.
Witnesses say she used to routinely drive on the pavement to avoid waiting for the school bus as it stopped to pick up and drop off children in Cleveland.
The incident was filmed by someone on the bus using a mobile phone.
Hardin will also lose her licence for 30 days and pay a $250 fine.
Our Cloud Atlas. When it first came out we were looking at the hardcover edition when this stranger said, “An intellectual, ay?” We backed away from the book and didn’t buy it till it appeared in paperback. Read most of it during a six-hour train ride. That was a great time.
Putting Words in Halle Berry’s Mouth
by David Mitchell in the NYT
“So how does it feel?” is the question you hear when your book completes the long ascent from production purgatory to movieplex. Well, first there’s a primal kick: actors speak dialogue you wrote years ago, and all those nonexistent people are now real. They find flashes of humor or menace you never spotted, and soon all memory of how you imagined the character before the actor muscled in is gone.
But what is he really saying about the Wachowskis/Tykwer adaptation of his novel?
A. He loves the movie.
B. He doesn’t love the movie but is too polite to say so. (Don’t knock big bucks.)
C. He hates the movie so he dances around the truth by pointing out the differences between novels and cinema.
D. Something else
Speaking of Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead is Fifty Shades of Capitalism.
Our favorite books of 2012 that were published in (or around) 2012
This year has seven weeks to go, but by now you should have a good idea which books are your favorites for 2012.
We want to know which 2011/2012 releases really hit the spot. What books published within the last 18 months do you love/possess ten copies of/wish to be buried with?
Post your lists (You can name as few as 5 titles but not more than 20, please) in Comments and we’ll publish the survey results in three weeks. At the end of the survey we’re raffling off gift certificates from National Bookstore—just in time for the holiday shopping frenzy.
Each time we see the trailer for the last Twilight movie the same thought pops into our head: Holy crap she’s a superhero now. So the Washington state vampires and werewolves alliance goes to war against the Italian old school vamps and it’s like the Pelennor Fields without cavalry, orcs, or anything we care remotely about.
Of course we’re going to watch it, and we hope it’s even more terrible than we imagine.
Here’s a poem by Baudelaire to remind us that literature about vampires used to be an estimable enterprise.
As you know Twilight has spawned another bestselling juggernaut: the Fifty Shades series, which started out as Edward-Jacob-whatshername fan fiction. Last week we stopped by the newly-opened National Bookstore in Glorietta 2 (next to the spot where it stood for many years)—the shelves aren’t fully stocked yet, but we were pleased to see so many dedicated to Fiction. (If you’ve been looking for Swamplandia or Ender’s Game, they have several copies.)
In one aisle there a woman hunkered on the floor, reading a book in an attitude we can only describe as furtive. What was she reading? Well she was kneeling in front of a shelf bearing many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey, and the book she was holding was of the same color. Whenever she saw someone approaching she would straighten up and act like she was looking for something on the shelf.
We understand the secrecy: we’re exactly the person you do not want to run into while holding that book. It’s like meeting Judge Dredd while you’re covered in another person’s blood. You will be chastised, not by us but by the voice in your head.
There’s only one way to deal with this: Brazen it out. Stand up straight and hold the book in front of your face for everyone to see. Contort your face in an expression of horror, as if the asinine prose is giving you acid reflux. Then titter theatrically, and if your acting skills are up to it, read a particularly idiotic passage out loud to show your disdain for the material.
The other customers will think you’re nuts, but your taste will not be impeached.
Dangerous liaisons: French President Francois Hollande (center), his ex and mother of his children, the Socialist politician Ségolène Royal (left), and his current partner, the journalist Valérie Trierweiler (right).
The women are fabulous, the man campaigned as Mr. Boring. After Sarkozy the French demanded boring.
Eyeglasses by Maria Nella Sarabia, O.D.
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