(2022) A lovely tool for a long vanished Mesopotamian technology, to impress cuneiform signatures onto clay cylinder seals, typically to authenticate legal documents such as contracts, receipts (as in a receipt for a shipment), deeds, wills and like that. Which is how far back paperwork goes, to the dawn of civilization. Except that it wasn’t […]
Franklin and Vine, 1890s, just a couple blocks north of Hollywood and Vine. Hollywood Blvd—then called Prospect Avenue, a graded dirt road—was already there, but nothing else made it past the 1920s, when Hollywood’s Arcadian past disappeared under studio lots and pavement. This view looking south was all city in a generation or two, the […]
Brick's Science 
From your previous posts, I know that you are in favor of this kind of “anarchy”. Frees up the language and all that.
I’m sure I’ve asked this before, but why the heck has the word “awesome” completely conquered the American language? It seems I can’t read anything — advertising, book, whatever — created in the last decade or so which is not infused with it, and I can’t hold even the briefest conversation with anybody — “I’ll have the broccoli cheese soup.” “Awesome.” — without hearing it multiple times. It baffles me. I can’t think of any word, with the possible exception of “OK” (which I insist should not be spelt “okay,” just as I cringe when I see “all right” spelt “alright;” and, yes, I am using the archaic “spelt” instead of “spelled” just to be an annoying curmudgeon) which has taken over human speech and writing. Certain other tendencies show up on my radar, such as “share” to mean “say” (just as young folks used to say “go” for “say”) but that one boggles my Twentieth Century mind.
The other trend which amazes me — ignoring the fact that everybody under the age of, say, twenty has a weird first name, or that so many people here in Dixie go by their middle names, a trend I’ve never encountered in any part of the country — is the fact that I see so many people, from sweet old grandmothers to middle-aged blue collar workers to hipsters, covered with tattoos. Personally, I can’t think of anything that I would want to permanently inscribe on my skin.
I’ve wandered all over the place here, but that’s anarchy for you.
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