The statement “I am one of the happiest people I know” had, in retrospect, made her cringe. “Please specify,” she added, “that this may be because I don’t KNOW anyone else.”

from a New York Times Magazine profile of Debra Winger by Mark Harris

"For the uninitiated, '46' is the worst thing anyone can say to you at JFK. It means: Pack a rucksack, bring a machete, pack a lunch, hire a Sherpa, bring a hand-held-GPS, and before you set off for the gate, make sure your affairs are in order. I've seen some of the best minds of my generation wasted in pursuit of Gate 46. It's so far away, it's actually in Montauk, at the tip of Long Island. You can feel the seasons change while you're walking there. Babies are born, governments fall, Madonna changes her look.

Brian Williams on his blog The Daily Nightly

"Work is work. Otherwise it would be called "super-wonderful-crazy-fun-time"."

- That 70's Show

"Deutschland ist das neue Brasilien."

a friend after Germany won 4:0 this week.

"I am floating, I am floating,
with my eyes closed with no sails.
I am soaking; I am weathered
by the winter of mixed drinks."

Living in Colour by Frightened Rabbit

"Those in favor of Chlamydia, raise your hand."

discussion in class yesterday

"Princeton is our fascinating neighbor."

website of a quilt shop in Pennington, NJ

"Though Oprah is arguably the most powerful woman in America, I find it hard to believe that more than one or two of her millions of audience members would run out and buy syringes to start injecting their hoo-has with estrogen just because someone on the Oprah show recommended it."

from a piece last year on Slate's XX Factor about Oprah's guests' controversial medical advice

"Dear Concerned,
What a coincidence—this email, dated April 2020, just landed in my inbox:"

from Dear Prudie's advice to a woman about to marry a man with a serious alcohol problem

"A purchased a flatpack liberal democrat party from Ikea but when I got it home I found it was missing its nuts and the instructions were in French."

comment on the Guardian's Digital Election 2010 coverage

"The changes in the University have brought new challenges to us all. The beginning of this year has been hard but our personnel have praiseworthily had the strength to carry out their actions."

work-related email received this week

"I don't believe that less is more.
I believe that more is more.
That less is less, fat fat, thin thin,
and enough is enough."

quoted in a New York Times feature on the home of Duane Hampton

“There was a Russian joke in the 1950s, during the cold war. It claimed that America had 2 classes of people… the optimist and the pessimist. The optimist was teaching their children how to speak Russian… and the pessimist was teaching their kids Chinese!”

comment on the February 7th Room for Debate feature on Americans learning Chinese in the New York Times

"He looked homemade. As through his wife had self-consciously knitted or somehow contrived a husband when she sat alone at night."

The Key by Eudora Welty

"Live in the sunshine,
swim in the sea,
drink the wild air."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If I were a boy
I would turn off my phone
Tell everyone it's broken
So they'd think that I was sleeping alone"

If I Were a Boy by Beyonce
(great grammar example)

"- I got a hundred dollar check from my grandma and my dad says I need to put in a bank so it can grow over the years.

- Well, that's fantastic. A really smart decision young man. We can put that check in a money making mutual fund and we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest aaand IT'S GONE.

- What?!

- It's gone. It's all gone.

- What's all gone?

- The money in your account. It didn't do too well. It's gone.

- What do you mean? I have a hundred dollars?

- Not anymore you don't. Poof."

Stan from South Park learns what a bank is for.

"Save Milk, Drink Beer: Swiss Philosophy"

on a postcard received this week

"How do you know [if you're a techie]? Take this simple test. Do you use BitTorrent? Do you run Linux? Do you have more e-mail addresses than pants? You’re a techie."

David Pogue in the New York Times

"He has an empire of semi-shitty websites that make a shitload of money."

phone conversation with a friend

"With George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp reportedly interested in playing Blomkvist, you can pretty much count on a more active male lead, along with Tinseltown's customary subtle approach to moral questions and a decrease in cultural authenticity.

A cold case in a frigid landscape, in other words, will likely get hotted up. Unless you have moral objections to subtitles, that argues for catching the Scandinavian original."

end of the NPR review of the film 'Man som hatar kvinnor'

"Do you have any hand-written letters belonging to former President George W. Bush for your readers to critique? How about a Post-it-Note?"

comment on a NYTimes City Room blog post about a stolen Lincoln letter (and a grammatical error therein)

"In anticipation of his visit, we hoped to schedule an Electronic Enlightenment webinar..."

snippet from a forwarded email

"The first evening I thus fell asleep on sand with thousand miles of any inhabited ground. J' stays much more insulated qu' a shipwrecked man on a raft in the middle of l' ocean. Then you imagine my surprise, at daybreak, when funny of small voice m' awoke. She said: - S' you like it… draws to me a sheep!"

Babel Fish translation of:

"Le premier soir je me suis donc endormi sur le sable à mille milles de toute terre habitée. J'étais bien plus isolé qu'un naufragé sur un radeau au milieu de l'océan. Alors vous imaginez ma surprise, au lever du jour, quand une drôle de petite voix m'a réveillé. Elle disait: -S'il vous plaît... dessine-moi un mouton!"

from "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéy

found in a New York Times feature putting Google Translator (and two competitors) to the test

"It's common sense. We are now looking for everyone who is a man, a woman, an American, an African, a Middle Easterner, an Eastern European, a Western European, a blond, a brunette or between the age of 20 and 49, which by my calculation leaves only one being on planet earth above reproach... and that is Alf."

- Rachel Maddow on her show talking about the government's new approach to identify terrorists.

"'Most professors, even at their youngest, they're in their 30s,' she said. 'They don't understand how much it's become a part of our lives.'

Professors say they do understand -- all too well."

Washington Post article about rules banning student laptop use in class

"Jesus hatte auch nur 12 follower, wird aber bis heute retweetet."

- zitiert heute auf dem BarCamp des DJV

"'God, I miss Allechka,' I said to Misha. 'Can you smell her?' I asked, holding the skirt up to his nose.

He leaned in and smelled the proffered green corduroy. 'I never knew her,' he said, shaking his head in regret."

from "Alechka" by Deborah Kaple, runner-up in the first round of NPR's Three-Minute Fiction series

"Men are simple."

- my friend defining the difference between men and women with basic words

"'It's not fair for you and your children to pay $10 million for some crazy people who are just eating gold,' fellow demonstrator Grimur Gunarson added, referring to a story widely reported in Iceland that one of the bankers who brought Iceland to its knees ate flakes of pure gold sprinkled into a risotto."

NPR coverage of Iceland's Saturday referendum vote

"What will survive of us is love."

- Larkin, quoted by Helen Dunmore in the Guardian article about writing

"Learning a language sometimes seems as difficult as dieting. The solution is to figure out how to stay interested after the novelty wears off."

from a NYTimes article on Rosetta Stone

"Ich nehm dann die linke Titte!"

- Gesprächsfetzen aus einem Telefonat auf der Straße

"The first 12 years are the worst."

Anne Enright's first of ten rules for writing fiction as published in The Guardian

"Das frühere Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur hat eine Ausstellung über Friedrich Schiller im 4. Stock der Fabrik geöffnet."

opening of an email received today

"In 1832, a student named Jonathan Pearson wrote in his diary that the city was 'only fit for hogs and Dutchmen' and complained: 'Why are the ways and walks never cleaned? Why never repaired? Oh, what a world of filth.'"

New York Times article on town-gown relations in Schenectady, NY

"Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises."

Elizabeth Zimmerman, master knitter

"One wonders where our nation would be if we all bailed out of imperfect institutions."

letter to the Editor of the New York Times on Evan Bayh's retirement

"Ducks are mean."

Slate's Brow Beat Blog's How I Met Your Mother Shame Index

"...pink has a decidedly masculine, even butch side: At different points in history, for different countries, it has served as the color of imperialism, speed, and strength in many forms."

Slate slideshow essay on the color pink

I was the daughter of a clergyman
a suffragette
a teacher
a Girl Guides’ leader
interested
in nursing
books and horseback riding
a religious idealist

I loved an artist
left with him
lived through 4 wars
worked hard
for the meatballs of life
gave birth to 3 wonderful
fantastic children
so this really
hasn’t been
too bad.

Ham

poem in the style of the Spoon River Anthology by Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, mother of Tove Jansson

"After running out of more creative ideas for my presentation, I ended up choosing Finland's largest mattress manufacturer, Unituli Oy, as my topic."

from a student email

"Barney. Doogie. Average names elude me."

Six word memoir by Neil Patrick Harris

"It started with, 'How do we give the visitor a big hug in each room?'" said Magnus Danielsson, president of Touring Exhibitions, the company behind ABBAWORLD. "This is going to be more like going to 'Mamma Mia!' than going to an exhibition. We want people to sing and dance."

AP article on the opening of ABBA World in London

"Ratio of Finns to saunas in Finland: 4:1 " January 1991

"Number of people per sauna in Finland: 2.5" November 2003

Harper's Index

"Chances that an American thinks the United States has a “mainly positive influence” on the world: 2 in 3

Chances that a Russian thinks that Russia does: 4 in 5"

Harper's Index May 2007

"One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now."

Lifehacker post

"Vi är en natt med en tyst minut,
en turkisk film med lycklig slut."

"We are a night with a silent minute,
a Turkish film with a happy ending."

from Undantag (Exception) by Bo Kaspers Orkester

"To counter boredom, online language programs have introduced crossword puzzles, interactive videos and other games to reward users for making progress."

NYTimes article on Rosetta Stone and other computer-based language learning products

"The scale, the endurance, the adjectives! The specialized ingredients and gear! Now that men are starting to take over the kitchen, cooking has become a kind of extreme sport, involving wild game and feats of endurance. And like every other specialized hobby, “manly cooking” now has its own magazine."

XX Factor article on the new German Magazine, BEEF: Für Männer mit Geschmack!

"Maestro, should this be red? Yes. Green? No.
More extras? Yes. More lipstick? No.
Yes. No. Yes. No. That's directing."

Judi Dench's character in the trailer for Nine

"Or as my genius friend the textile designer says, she asks on first dates or [when] meeting men in bars, ‘Do you have a passport and a library card?’"

New York Times article on newly released census data on marriage

"I move on to the potatoes. I know I'm in trouble when Julia says that 'the cooking is rather exacting.' 'If you were living in France,' says Julia, 'you would buy smooth oval potatoes 2 to 2 1/2 inches long, with yellowish flesh, pommes de terre de Hollande.' Well, we're none of us in France. So instead I spend the better part of an hour cutting new potatoes into 'elongated olive shapes all the same size.' I 'cut them smoothly, so they will roll around easily and color evenly when they are sauteed.' Julia doesn't mention the bit about the vodka tonic, but I find that it smooths the process a bit."

from The Julie/Julia Project

"I know the bad's gotta fix itself
correct over time
And I know cause I've got the cure,
I've got the cure for your crimes

[...]

I know the world's been mean to you
I've got a cure, hold tight
I know the world's not fair to you
I've got a cure for its crimes"

from the song The Cure by Tegan and Sara

"The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read,

never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones."

from the poem Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

"Forget Gum. Walking and Using Phone is Risky."

New York Times headline

"Ich kann Ihnen da ne kleine Anekdote erzählen."

- Referent für Journalistenseminar (ungefähr 10x innerhalb eines Tages)

"It has been quite a journey for Ted Olson. He’s gone from being the conservative lawyer who helped crown W. by winning the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, to being a lesbian."

Maureen Dowd on the California Prop 8 debate

"Ich will nur so tun, wie als würd´ ich arbeiten, ok?"

- Ilias (Moritz Bleibtreu) in Soul Kitchen

"Opinion is divided on whether winter is getting colder in Delhi or slightly warmer, or whether the cold is lasting longer or ending sooner. But everyone agrees that it persists in showing up. B. P. Yadav, a weather forecaster, said average temperatures in January ranged from lows of 44 degrees to highs of 68 degrees, or sunbathing weather in Finland."

New York Times article on a cold snap in India

"Fernsehen macht dick und ernst."

- eine Kollegin beim Fernsehexperiment im Journalistenseminar

''If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence of trying."

New Year's Resolution

"Take for instance this Web site text advertising the antidepressant Paxil: 'Just as a cake recipe requires you to use flour, sugar and baking powder in the right amounts, your brain needs a fine chemical balance in order to perform at its best.' The Western mind, endlessly analyzed by generations of theorists and researchers, has now been reduced to a batter of chemicals we carry around in the mixing bowl of our skulls."

The Americanization of Mental Illness by Ethan Watters in The New York Times Magazine

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Michael Pollan

"Earlier animated series, notably 'The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show' and 'The Flintstones,' worked on two levels, but 'The Simpsons' works on one more: children, adults, and adults who read a lot."

NYTimes article about the 20th anniversary episode of the Simpson airing Sunday 10.1.10

"Now that we've made it through the experience of the last decade, we can wonder how that experience shaped us."

introduction to a piece on Morning Edition featuring book recommendations from Tina Brown of The Daily Beast

"While no other country saw fit to follow suit, the Georgians were left with huge stockpiles of both superb and, more often, cheap and substandard wine developed specifically for the indiscriminate Russian market."

article on Georgian wine from The Wine Issue of the Travel section of Washingtonpost.com

"Social workers and religious leaders have urged tighter gun laws, more vigilance of Internet sites and more social bonding in this small Nordic nation known for its high suicide rates, heavy drinking and domestic violence."

New York Times coverage of 31.12.09 Espoo shootings