February 17
Clearing files from your computer can become an impressively nostalgic way to spend time, I’ve discovered; sure, there are the files you remembered existing and the ones that you have no attachment to — I am both impressed and appalled at how many of my everyday work files that I have somehow managed to accidentally squirrel away in places that surprise me — but there are also the things that you’ve entirely forgotten about that bring back a flood of memories: Here’s the non-disclosure agreement I signed for that review that never ran! I think, or Here’s that audio file where the guy I was interviewing just said something so sexist the piece got shut down! I write enough different things every day (Usually at least six stories for various outlets, and this as well) that I forget what I’ve done almost as quickly as it’s finished, so it’s weirdly amusing and wonderful to get to go back and remember these things. And then put them in the little trash bin icon, and click “empty trash.” Goodbye, weird life.
Michael Bolton, 33, who had gone to Fifty Shades with his wife Yvonne, 32, said: “Besides being the worst film I have ever seen, three women were getting arrested and put in a police van when we arrived.
“A woman came out the theatre and said that a guy had been glassed.
“One woman was in handcuffs and another two women were in tears.
“She said that three or four girls had been very loud and were shouting. The man had asked them to shut up and he was glassed.
“It’s a cinema where you can buy drink.
“Only in Glasgow are police called to the cinema. This type of behaviour happens at pubs and nightclubs – but you don’t expect that at a cinema.
The fact that the man quoted feels the need to diss the movie before talking about what actually happened is so, so great. (From here.)
February 16
There’s a new baby on the block — so new, in fact, that he doesn’t have a name yet, although his five-year-old sister told me very sincerely that “Burpkins” was in the running, adding that he’d be called “Burp” for short — who arrived this weekend. To the surprise of few, he was the talk of the neighborhood this weekend, with all of us marveling in his very existence, or at least the speed of his birth (Labor lasted an impressively short amount of time, under an hour). While we’ve been breathlessly sharing stories and speculation about his arrival, his potential name and everything else about him, meanwhile, his parents have been slowly recovering from his arrival. Watching them look (understandably) sleepy and dazed about the entire experience, it struck me that while the news of Burpkins’ arrival is a communal experience, the reality of it is an intensely personal thing that we can’t really share in. The difference between a minor meme and a human being, perhaps.