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A favourite short story of mine is "Jon" by George Saunders, which ran in the New Yorker a couple of years ago. He's had a couple of pieces run in the magazine since then, which have been okay, and I've read his published short story collections, which are highly recommended, though I don't know that any of the single stories were as good as "Jon". Or at least not as good as I remember "Jon" being, since I haven't read it in a few years. I was poking around the web for it a bit, and though the New Yorker 's online archives expire after a while, it turns out that it was published as part of a sci-fi anthology , which Amazon.com sells used. So I'll get my hands on that soon. Update: The Internet Archive 's Wayback Machine has a cached copy of the piece , so do go ahead and read it. I started thinking about Saunders again because he has another short story in this week's New Yorker (which is still available online ). The st...

Shut up, sea cow . (That was meant to be the post's title, but the anchor tag made it too long.) Two of my favourite cartoon series from the past are Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and The Tick . Dr. Katz never made it to DVD (I'm basing this on Amazon.com search results and the number of petitions there are out there to bring the series out; my guess is that "Kozaks Discount," which advertised a DVD of the complete series in my Google search results, is even more disreputable than the name would suggest. The Tick , while also not out on DVD (at least not the animated version), is now being shown on Toon Disney , which I happily get on my fancy-ass cable setup, and can TiVo to my heart's content. So that's a good thing.

Sometimes people forget their briefcases . And their chains. This was directly in front of my office; I made it in before they taped off the front entrance.

Times advertising advent of the day: "With the right scanning technology the produce could even be bar-coded with lots of information: where it comes from, who grew it, who picked it, even how many calories it has per serving," said Fred Durand III, president of Durand-Wayland. "You could have a green pepper that was completely covered with coding. Or you could sell advertising space."

If you walk out of my apartment and onto Bergen St., and then walk down Bergen St. a bunch, you'll get to the " The Pintchik Oracle " (or at least you would a year ago; I haven't checked recently). A hardware store on Court St., True Value Bruno's Home Center/American Houseware and Appliance Center (formerly a R.C. church, Our Lady of Excessive Naming Conventions), recently put up a sign of it's own. It has yet to say anything like "Borough President Marty Markowitz loves Brooklyn." despite the fact that Borough President Marty Markowitz's office is about a hundred feet away from the store. It really hasn't said anything cool in all the times I've walked past it; it usually displays the time and weather, which just reminds me of how I'm late for work and hot. My hope is that Bruno manages to recruit Jonathan Lethem or Paul Auster to do some oracular freelancing, and show Jonathan Safran Foer how we do it in Cobble Hill.

In what must qualify as something (irony? the telos of advertising? shamelessness?), MSNBC is running adverts for Tucker "Dick" Carlson's new show (yes, I'm hurting America by just linking to it) on The Daily Show . What do you make of that ?

This is the first chapter of the new Harry Potter book. It's the first book in the series not to be written in prose, I gather. Don't ask me how I got this–all I can say is it's good to be a former publisher. [Gargamel laughs and heads off to his castle carrying a big sack over his shoulder. Azrael the cat is with him.] Greedy Smurf: "Papa Smurf! Gargamel's stolen all of our food and I'm so hungry I could eat a house!" Papa Smurf: "I'll make something smurfalicous!" [Papa uses his magic to create four large containers of pasta.] Smurfette: "What smurfy magic! Look! New Smurf pasta from Chef Boyardee!" Papa Smurf: "It's smurfy good for you!" Greedy Smurf: "There's even Papa Smurf's Special Sauce!" Smurfette: "Wow! Smurfy shapes too!" Gargamel: "Oooh! Rats! Outsmurfed again!" All of The Smurfs: [singing] "Thank Goodness for Chef Boyardee!" Papa Smurf: "It's smurfy ...