Miscellaneous Debris – Archive

A Chinese man, hardly any English to his name, took the bunk I originally confiscated on the flimsy claim that he was, in fact, there first. Above him, a forty-ish man in semi-ragged suits and red trousers spends his time, wearing a lapel pin passed in his family from his great-great-great-great-uncle, an aide to General […]

In Boston, we could smell it coming from street-level apartments, wafting through the windows. In Montreal, where it’s legal for medicinal purposes, you could smell it on the streets of the trendy Latin Quarter. It’s illegal to smoke anything indoors these days, but as long as you’re standing outside the pub, you might as well […]

(Sorry for the delay. Never got around to this one) In Montreal, on every fair-weathered Sunday, people congregate at the foot of Mount Royal (and isn’t it strange to have that in English, in Montreal of all places?) for the Tam Tam. As the name implies, much drumming is involved. People come around with their […]

בשלב מסוים, דברים מאבדים את המשמעות שלהם כמסומן והם נהיים לחלוטין מסמן. בשלב הזה הוא כבר קיבל קיום עצמאי משלו, ויכול כבר להיות מסומן ע”י מסמן חדש לחלוטין.  

(This entry was originally written as a comment in someone else’s blog. This may explain stylistic inconsistencies as I try to clean it up, stretch it out and generally make it more palatable than the food it describes) The following statement will shock and surprise no-one: Cheap restaurant food is extremely greasy. Seriously, if you […]

Seattle’s Metro bus company provides a helpful tutorial, including a 16-minute video, of how to ride the bus. It starts with the basics – “Go to your closest bus stop”, moves on to useful everyday tips – “When the bus approaches, check the route number and destination (shown above the front window) to be sure […]

You can usually tell quite easily where different immigrants settled in the United States. The east coast is full of New Yorks and New Hampshires, Belfasts and Dovers galore. Louisiana has its Lafayette and New Orleans. Over in California you have your various Sans and Santas, and so forth. And in the north? You can find New […]