Come one come all

Ogg boot

A lingering half-demolished college dormitory is a metaphor for something, but I can't think what.

FIB food as metaphor

At 5 this morning I awoke in pain. There was a sharp throbbing in my lower right abdomen. I arose and staggered, gasping, into the study, then into the living room, then back to the study. I was doubled over. I briefly lay down on the sofa, but it didn't help. Then I made my tortured way to the computer, where a quick bit of research determined that I probably had either a burst appendix or a perforated colon.

Then I recalled my lunch yesterday: A Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich with hot peppers, from a new Library Mall food cart called FIB's. I decided the discomfort was probably due to not a colon or an appendix but a beef.

The pain gradually subsided. I went back to bed and read the new Melvin Laird biography until I drifted off.

Good word
(I promise this is the last New York Times columnist I'll quote for at least two days)

"Perhaps that’s why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright’s fiery claim that 9/11 was America's chickens 'coming home to roost.' That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America’s abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America's foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers 'agents of intolerance' and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006."

-- Frank Rich

Good word

"If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II."

-- Thomas Friedman