November 21, 2012
Disusage presents the contradictions and foibles of usage manuals, style guides, and the quirky folks who love them. This week: Black Friday is not named for retail’s big profits.
Read More
Disusage presents the contradictions and foibles of usage manuals, style guides, and the quirky folks who love them. This week: Black Friday is not named for retail’s big profits.
Read MoreSights, scenes, and sounds from San Francisco's Mission District. This week, two young neighborhood newbies notice Oakland exists.
Read MoreIf brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's a selection of our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.
Read MoreLike most of you, I read the scathing New York Times review of Guy's American Kitchen and Barwith scarcely containable glee. My restaurant was featured on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives in 2008; Without fail, at least once a weekend, we get the same question...
Read MoreHeadline v. Headline pits the idiosyncratic slants of different global news sources against each other. Since the Israel-Gaza conflict erupted last week, nearly every country has taken a side.
Read MoreDisusage presents the contradictions and foibles of usage manuals, style guides, and the quirky folks who love them. This week: elegance — variously a virtue and a vice.
Read MoreIf brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's a selection of our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.
Read MoreSome say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
―Robert Frost
On the 14 Mission bus, two young dudes sitting in the back seat discuss a certain popular Madison Avenue-based cable television program.
MIRRORED SUNGLASSES DUDE: Dude, did you see Draper last night? When that old British dude just wailed on that other British dude with his cane? That was his son, yo. Like it was an ordinary thing to do...
Read MoreWhat was it like breaking into the "boy's club" of cartoonists at Rhode Island School of Design and the New Yorker?
Read MoreWell, actually, I had more of a struggle at RISD then I did in New York. In many ways — I've had this conversation with my daughter who goes to school for liberal arts — there are really great things you learn at art school and one of them is that you're not the only talented person.
A Black Balloon Publication ©