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Monday, January 7, 2008 — It is the eve of New Hampshire’s much-ballyhooed First in the Nation™ Presidential Primary. Forty-eight hours from now a second set of digits will be associated with the names of the leading candidates, and the hirelings of the media corporations will go thundering off to the next arena. National interest in our state will vanish as surely and as quickly as this cheerful fellow. For the record, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit at noon today. Tomorrow the mercury is predicted to rise into the low 50’s. This morning’s indicators look ominous for the candidate of the Democratic party’s establishment. The …

Read moreWhere Are the Snowmen of Yesteryear?

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 — Wednesday, January 2, 2008 — Thursday, January 3, 2008 — Friday, January 4, 2008 — On this day some number of years ago, we resolved never again to make any resolutions on this day. Today, we break that resolution, and resolve to post every day. More regularly. A little more often. We must, however, caution the reader against expecting the sort of constant Bruckheimeresque commotion in which some websites traffic. We were stimulated to throw off our torpor by a metaphor, used in an article published Tuesday in the Boston Globe (see right) in which David Mehegan compares author Seth …

Read moreNew Year, New Habit?

Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — A reasonable person might well wonder just what’s going on around here. And we’re not talking about the somewhat unusual motor vehicle depicted above, we’re talking about this operation: the online presence of the nation’s most venerable newspaper. Sorry to disappoint, but the answer is, nothing to get excited about. We’re just bumping along, putting out the paper, and occasionally dropping the ball. Which is why we haven’t posted anything new since 11/11. We did put the paper out last Friday. Skeptics are invited to scrutinize the number and date on our banner, above. There’s a fairly scandalous story on …

Read moreWhat the … ?

Sunday, November 11, 2007 — On Veterans Day six years ago the remains of the World Trade Center were still smoking, and the war in Afghanistan had just begun. No one, outside the Bush administration, was thinking that much about Iraq. The idea of attacking Iran would have seemed even crazier than it does now. Lower Manhattan is more orderly today. Afghanistan is more of a wreck. Iraq makes Afghanistan look placid. And people who think attacking Iran would be crazy have only to look back a few years to realize that for some people, crazy is no obstacle. On Veterans Day six years ago, …

Read moreVeterans Day, 2007

Friday, October 19 – This space has been rather quiet lately. We spent about a week hammering on 1s and 0s to make our new Distribution map work. Then we had to scurry to organize a rather large number of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, photographs, and miscellaneous other components into something that vaguely resembles a newspaper. We’re pleased to report that the paper is now on the street, and in the mail. Among other things, it includes an account of the Flag Police’s encounter with the shamefully-tattered flag shown at right. They spotted it right across the street from The Clip Joint. The Flag Police …

Read moreMissions Accomplished

Thursday, October 11 — No doubt some visitors wondered if we’d wandered off and gotten lost in some dusty corridor, and become bemused by a dusty old volume of back issues from a previous century. No, not this time. We have been nudging tiny little patches of magnetism one way and another, making piles and stacks of them, knocking them over accidentally, spilling coffee on them, brushing them with our frayed coatsleeves, arguing with them, threatening them, bribing them, pleasing with them, nearly despairing of them, and, finally, somehow, coercing them, to organize themselves in such a way that they have produced this map, showing …

Read moreHere It Is