"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