Before the search engine

When I first discovered the internet, it was described to me as a library in which all the books had been taken from the shelves and tossed onto one pile in the middle of a room.

D. T.

D. T. had a roller coaster life before the boss picked him up off the street, cleaned him up, and made him sports editor of his small daily newspaper.  If I ever hear of you taking a drink, you're out of here, the boss said.  I was on the city desk next to D. T.'s making me the closest to his breath.  For months, he seemed clean and performed well until the state high school track finals in the Spring.  One night he asked me for a ride home.  His breath smelled of Listerine.  As we headed down Bell Street, he asked me to stop at a liquor store and wait for him while he picked up a package.  I can't do that or I'll get fired, I said.  His tone was subdued, smooth at first.  Just a pint to get him through the track meet, the boss doesn't need to know.  Can't do it, I said.  He raised his fists and smashed them into the delicate dashboard of my Renault Dauphine.  The second blow left the dash a splintered mess.  I took him to the liquor store, then drove off.  D. T. was never seen again in the newsroom.

Best comedy movie

At coffee today Marty asks the five us what's the best movie comedy of all time, then said, before the rest could weigh in, his favorite was Airplane.  A couple nodded in agreement about Airplane.  Here's the final list (someone apparently named two):
Three Musketeers
Blazing Saddles
Dumb and Dumber
Young Frankenstein
Roman Candle
Caddy Shack.

They elope

Long ago when drought and unemployment darkened America, a youthful Minnesota electrical engineer and cornetist eloped with a small town college girl and joined a vaudeville troupe in Kansas City.  After several performances, the troupe set off on an eastwardly-bound train, doing one night stands along the way.   By the time the train pulled into Pennsylvania Station, the bride was pregnant with me and the groom entertaining doubts about whether or not show business was an appropriate profession for a young father.  They settled in Brooklyn and I was born on Navy day.

Train story

When the train slowed to a stop, a passenger door opened and a man with a baby in his arms boarded.  After a minute or so, the door closed and the train moved quietly out of the station and on to the next station, a village 10 miles away.  At that station, the passenger with the baby realized the baby was gone from his arms.  He looked under seats, queried the few passengers in the car, before bolting out the car door and onto the station platform.  He heard distant baby cries, garbled, as if they were from the cornices and ledges of the waiting room.  A woman offered to help find the baby, but the cries became more faint until they disappeared.  The man collapsed to the floor, screaming inconsolable gibberish.

"We will always have Paris."--Rick

2 October, 1662/1012

With Sir Wm. Pen by water to Whitehall, being this morning visited before I went out by my brother Tom, who told me that for his lying out of doors a day and a night my father had forbade him to come any more into his h

ouse, at which I was troubled, and did soundly chide him for doing so, and upon confessing his fault I told him I would speak to my father. At 7 Elephants I with Misters Andrews, Davis, Liebermann, and Frohip who debated the use/uselessness of musick and Presbyterian/deposed President a Woodrow Wilson while consuming scones and a dish or two of meat, and his purser that was with him. After dinner I and the my Wife to Atwood for a screening of The Band’s Visit, where I met with professor emeritus Myron Anderson who recently returned from Crosby & Ironton and was forced to wait Mrs. Sherarts while she registered her opinions with the eminent kino professor Costaglioli. After that to the Abbey to for vespers. There I found but a thin congregation already. So I see that religion, be it what it will, is but a humour,1 and so the esteem of it passeth as other things do. From thence to home and a new thermostat with which very well pleased we went to bed.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1662/10/02/