“I am pretty disappointed in this beta. This book just isn’t finished! Man, there was a part in Chapter 3 where every time I turned the page, it was the same page again, over and over and over… I kept having to start over from the beginning, nothing made any sense! The translation seems off, like they’re having trouble getting the words right.”
 — The publishing of books could ACTUALLY BE WORSE: they could be published like videogames.

by Anna Jane Grossman and Robert Grossman

On October 22, New York’s best-dressed dogs came to the 21st Annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade, held in the park’s dog run.

Ubaldo came wearing the neon green “mankini” thong made famous in the movie Borat. He debuted this outfit earlier in the year at the New York City Dachshund Meetup Group pageant. That event requires each dog have three changes of costume. This was his swimwear entry. “His coloring is just so perfect for Borat,” said Alyson Nehran, the international flight attendant who sewed the outfit herself. “Last year he was a Coney Island bather. This year, I wanted to do something really design intensive so that I could play with the concept.”

Amazing Grace, a chihuahua, won a prize for her hat — a dog-sized replica of the one warn by Princess Beatrice at the Royal Wedding. It was designed by Anthony Rubio, a school teacher in the Bronx who moonlights as a costume designer. Said Grace’s owner, physical trainer Summer Strand: “He’s the Alexander McQueen of dog fashion.”

Bailey is a five-year-old puggle-cum-panda. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this fact — his jacket-costume looked a little like the bear was eating him. “But I think he likes it — I mean, all his friends are doing it,” said his owner, Jon Zanoff. In previous years, Zanoff has dressed his dog as a hot dog and as a piglet. His friend said the panda was appropriate because it is the logo of an app Zanoff developed that lets people review bars. “You can rate how hot people are,” she said. Dogs don’t get rated.

Rosie, a 9-month-old pitbull, wore a pink child’s dress and a belt of spikes around her middle. Her 6-year-old owner, Isa, said she was supposed to be a punk rock princess. “It’s because she is a princess. She sleeps on the couch!” she said. Isa’s mom, Masha Schmidt, said that Rosie indeed has a punk side, too: “She likes to eat my makeup.”

Liz Mulgrew’s Bella, a Cairn terrier, also came as a punk rocker. She wore a pale blue shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. It’s part of Martha Stewart’s dog clothing line. Her face hair was spiked all around, like a starfruit. Mulgrew didn’t use any product. “Her hair is pretty moldable,” she said. “It’s easy to get it to go like that. But she usually wears it down.”

Holly, a Pomeranian, was the Hamburglar, a McDonaldland character. “She has this little mask around her eyes naturally, so she just needed the striped suit,” said Holly’s companion, Stephanie Radvan. Radvan got the convict dog outfit online. “But I wanted her to be a prisoner with some kind of flair,” so she pinned McDonald’s burger wrappers on Holly’s sides. “I went out and bought four burgers this morning. They’re still at home.”

“It’s his name, so he always wears this costume,” said Kendra Shea, of her dog Yoda, who was Yoda. His sister, also a pug, came as Leia. She wore an impressive homemade headband glued with yarn to look like two buns. She sat in a stroller that was decorated with cardboard to look like Princess Leia’s Speeder Bike. The whole project was conceived and executed in under 48 hours, said Shea.

“It was on sale,” said Anna DePalma’s of the costume worn by her Havanese, Louis. Louis was a ram.

“He’s an Occupy Wall Street dog, and I’m a cop,” said Christine Chiu, there with her Bichon, Oscar. She wore a blue police cap and had handcuffs clipped to her belt. Chiu was dismayed to learn hers was not the only dog to arrive with protester placards on both sides. “I always like to do something current,” she said. Last year, she is rather sure she had the only dog that came as an iPad. “I thought of turning that costume into an iPhone 4S. But Occupy Wall Street is more what people are talking about.”

Anna Jane Grossman is a writer and animal trainer in New York City. She is the proprietor of The Dogs, a website about dogs. Robert Grossman is an artist whose work regularly appears in New York, Rolling Stone, Gizmodo and the New Yorker.

“Texas transportation commissioners voted minutes ago to begin erecting Interstate 69 signs on a 6.2-mile stretch of U.S. 77 between Interstate 37 and State Highway 44 in Nueces County in south Texas near the Gulf of Mexico . The Texas segment of the 1,000-mile interstate is expected to eventually stretch from Texarkana to the border. Polk County Judge Judge John Thompson, chairman of the Alliance for I-69, hailed the decision in a press release issued by TxDOT.

Is It Going To Snow This Weekend?

You know, the first ten years of my life were a non-stop barrage of the word “potential,” and look at the sorry way I turned out. I wouldn’t worry too much about the snow just yet. We’re just gonna get stuck with rain and cold and darkness and the inexorable sense that life has been a series of missed opportunities and bad decisions and even though you know who you are it’s too late to do anything about it and soon — but not soon enough — you’ll be dead. I mean, there WILL be snow eventually. I think this winter’s actually going to be kind of brutal. It’s just not going to be this weekend. But I am confident in my forecast for gloom.

“Detectives at Miami International Airport busted a London teen who they say was carrying nearly 30 pounds of cocaine — stuffed in 24 boxes of cake mix. Ayesha Olivia Niles, a waifish 5-foot-4, 105-pound student, had arrived in Miami on a night flight from Jamaica, two suitcases in tow. The teen claimed she did not know what the substance was but admitted ‘she suspected that the activity she was involved in was suspicious but she did not question it,’ according to the report.”
 — Oh, girl, what did those boys in Jamaica tell you?

by Maud Newton

Would people stop calling me uneducated
it offends my muthafuckin alma mater Hunter College.Thu Oct 20 00:21:55 via Twitter for iPad

Ellen Barkin
EllenBarkin

Profanity is alive and well on Twitter, except in Utah, apparently. You’d expect heathen citydwellers to swear, and we do not disappoint, but the Bible belt is pretty foul-mouthed too (no word whether language there trended cleaner on Sundays). Thanks to tweets, blog comments and unlocked Facebook feeds, we know more than ever before about the way regular people — in New York, Detroit, Miami, Los Angeles, and the DMV — talk to each other, although everyone disagrees about the Internet’s effect on slang in general, and regional slang in particular.

So far studies have been limited, and findings contradictory. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon took a statistical look at language used on Twitter over the course of a month last year and concluded that regionalisms not only still exist but are continuing to develop. Northern Californians tend — no surprise — to be “hella” tired, while New Yorkers are “deadass” tired and Angelenos are “tired ‘af.’” “Y’all” is, of course, Southern; yinz is characteristic of Pittsburgh; and references to soda (general), pop (Midwest) and Coke (South) also conform to the Harvard Dialect Survey. But the abbreviation for cool in Northern California is written as koo; in Southern California it’s coo. And “suttin” — a new discovery — pops up in New York City and Boston.

Meanwhile, and conversely, a British sociolinguistics expert argues that social media is actually spreading (and thus diluting) regionalisms (such as Cornwall’s “dreckly,” to use an overseas example). “’Twitter, Facebook and texting all encourage speed and immediacy of understanding, meaning users type as they speak, using slang, dialect respellings and colloquialisms,’” said Dr. Erik Schleef. “’The result is we are all becoming exposed to words we may not have otherwise encountered, while absorbing them into everyday speech.’” A Guardian critic disputes his claim, ascribing the spread of Welsh terms to “old-fashioned television.”

Tracking regional slang and usage in any reliable way has always been cumbersome and time-consuming; the difficulty lies in “bring[ing] linguistic geography down to a human scale.” Entries in the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), for instance, “have a homespun texture, demanding [that readers] reconcile various types of information in order to understand what DARE has to say about a word or phrase. … A DARE entry might include any combination of quotations from regional literature, diaries, small-town newspapers, material from WELS, the various linguistic atlases (published and unpublished), other accounts of dialect in scholarly literature, substantial personal collections donated to the project by scholars at the ends of their careers … and, of course, questionnaire responses, identified by informant, so that the curious reader can refer to the ‘List of Informants’ to discover his or her community, community type, year of birth, level of education, occupation, sex, and race — all types of information that can be overlooked in other historical dictionaries.” The profusion of real-time evidence accumulating on Twitter and Facebook must be a treasure trove for linguists and dialectologists, or at least it will be once they decide exactly how to sift and evaluate it.

I’m no scholar, just a language enthusiast. I was born in Dallas, to a Texan and a Mississippian, and raised in Miami — which is a whole ‘nother country — and there was enough regional incompatibility between the way people spoke in my house and how they spoke outside it that as a child I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to erase any markers of what I thought of as hickishness from my speech. As I’ve gotten older, and more interested in talking the way I actually think, a slew of Texan expressions and indicators of Southernness have made their way back into my conversation, and I’m increasingly fascinated by accents, dialects and regionalisms.

Here in Brooklyn, where I’ve lived for twelve years, at least half the people I meet are transplants, and I’m constantly embarrassing my husband and friends by trying to guess where strangers are from. The more subtle the cues, the greater the fun.

Judging from my random wanderings on Twitter, this annoying hobby of mine isn’t as unusual as I’ve been led to believe. A vast cross-section of users are slang detectives — or police or thieves. Some taunt followers from other places who use unfamiliar words; some get annoyed when people elsewhere appropriate their regional lingo; some openly seek to fill out their repertoire, constantly picking up new words from their stream or their vacations. Others suffer from slang anxiety, and some of these seek advice, and they are in luck: people love to hold forth, with or without prompting, on all matters relating to language. Arguments erupt; proclamations are made; contempt and paranoia flourish. “Wondering how many followers are ‘eating’ off my tweets,” says Deshair, who remembers when “Urban slang took at least two years to go mainstream. By the time the mainstream got to it, Urban mouths were done with it.”

Here, loosely categorized, are some of my favorite regional slang tweets, collected over the past six months or so. I found all, or nearly all, of these by searching Twitter for anyone using the word “slang.”

HANDS OFF OUR SLANG

@Question210
QUESTION I find it hilarious that a bunch of these New NY rappers are using TX Slang..reminds me of all the TX rappers who used to copy NY slang lol
Sep 10 via EchofonFavoriteRetweetReply

If you’re not from here, you can’t say that, is a common refrain on Twitter, and New Yorkers may be the most possessive of all. Chelseas_Unique, for example, wants Californians to lay off her lingo. “Since when does ppl in LA say OD? That’s NY slang yo.” And a nostalgic New York expat wishes people in Florida would stop saying “corny & that’s poppin & you already… that’s ny slang.”

There’s plenty of attitude flowing back at New Yorkers, though; San Antonio hip-hop artist Question210 (above) isn’t the only Texan who’s touchy about New York City rappers using Texan slang. Houston/Missouri City writer _brandoc goes on a tear, arguing that “a Southern act rocking hoodies & timbs and jacking NYC slang, [we’d] laugh at him straight to the bank,” but when Northerners do it, “in the land of co-op (where everyone needs to be socialist to succeed apparently), nobody will call it for what it is”: “An act. Every act that comes to Texas will INSTANTLY adopt to Texan slang & culture to fit the f-ck in and we’ll let them run w/ it cause…” (next tweet) “’If they blow up, we blow up.’ No idiot, if you blow up, YOU blow up. They blow up because THEY blow up.”

And these aren’t just East Coast-West Coast and North-South concerns. “#PLAGIARISM,” qno_rico says, retweeting PrettyMoneyyy11: “I hate when Clarksville [Mississippi] people use Memphis slang. It’s awkward.”

“OMG,” DeliciousDai chides Ngallaway62, “please stick to your own wack-ass Michigan slang…. don’t try to jock our shit.” Which leads to the next category…

GET OUTTA HERE WITH THAT CRAP SLANG

@handsumdevil
Woody Goodpecker Can’t stand when niggas try and use East Coast slang over here! Go over there with that shit!
Apr 03 via Twitter for iPhoneFavoriteRetweetReply

People in this camp aren’t so much protecting their native slang as dissing somebody else’s. “Slurred?” a St. Louis girl says to Awe_Okay (who’s announced plans to get “sluuuurrrrred this weekend.!!!!!!!!!!!!!”). “Thas some Alabama slang? -____- yur stl card has been revoked.” “Alabama slang is really bothering me ijus cant get wit it,” says SLmChanceIFall, who’s “#GermanyRaised” but lists her location as “IDGAF Avenue, Atlanta.”

“I hate when Miami boys start saying bro… Using up north slang… Nigga you know we don’t call each other bro down here ‘that’s gay,’” beautiful_kj announces. (Actually, when I was growing up in South Florida, “bro” was everywhere, but then, I am old.) AyNnandi contends that “Ppl from jersey just shouldnt say jawn” — a term, discussed at length below, that most people on Twitter seem to associate with nearby Philly — “some slang is best left where its from & i SWEAR if NJ nigz start sayin ‘Joe’ im dippin to Cali.”

Kentuckian irishrover85 is amused by and a little disdainful of an acquaintance’s use of the word “reckon”: “ Maybe this goes to show he has been IN Tx too much…he’s starting to pick up the slang lol.”

When AllUpOnYoTL complains that “‘Nobody ever understands Louisiana slang,’” DdotBurns doesn’t have much sympathy; “nobodi understand crackhead slang,” he quips.

Sometimes people actually threaten violence. WCMurdaHD tells DeeGlow, “she sey one more english word .. matta fact even a GT slang.. mi ah go hold on pon she neck like a necklace.. #Fact…” And Michael Schaub is, as always, succinct and hilarious in this double-edged tweet: “Americans who use British slang sound like bloody wankers.”

SLANG ANXIETY

@missjure
Erica LeFemmeFlaneur Is “cuttin’” as it relates to coitus a Southern slang term? When I say it to people here in NYC, they don’t know what I’m talking about.
Sep 11 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

Being a neurotic person myself, I empathize with people like missjure (above) who want to be sure they’re not making asses of themselves — especially if they’re talking about coitus. And kissmybeautie’s complaint is fair enough. “I get so irked when the white kids at my school look/act funny whn I say a slang thy don’t know -___- like really, use context clues.”

Still, I was surprised by the high level of naked slang anxiety. “I need to catch up on this Philly Slang. I don’t understand half of the words yall be saying :/” confesses _BooTATlicious_. “Is #DMV slang really that hard to understand cuz people from other places be actin like I’m speaking Hebrew or something,” BreeDatDude jokes. ChellFromPhilly can relate: “Hate when people dont know what im talkin bout cuz of my ‘Philly Slang’. Lol im use to talkin like that i cant help it.” As can Memphisite ThatRudeChick, who warns, “If you stay in Memphis…don’t take the Memphis slang out of Memphis. TRUST ME, no one is gonna know what you’re talking about.”

IAmDeWitt has had enough of Baltimore. “Baltimore slang is so wierd. People keep asking do I want ’hacks..rosebuds…skittles’ lol I don’t know what to say. Lls I’m just like ‘ehh.’” Poor Denny2live suffers from multi-region exposure: “i kno i sound crazy wen i talk cuz i got memphis ,st. louis n philly slang in me smh.” And xXAEZillaXx has himself similarly all tied up in knots: “I just said ‘going ham’ in a sentence to myself and felt weird cuz I know that aint bay slang, yes im ignorant I can do that.”

Some tweets in this genre are difficult to parse. Neurosis, or humble-brag? “I’ma start using NY slang. It’s bad enough some of my local Detroit natives think I’m from there -___________-” “Textin @stillpopularcuh gotta remember not to use the #Detroit slang since he’s from #Vegas & #LongBeach nshit lol.”

Neurosis, or diss? “What on earth is a humdinger? Is this some sort of American slang I’ve never heard of?” “I wonder if the Ying Yang twins know that it’s actually YIN and Yang. Or is there some Atlanta slang I’m unaware of?” “’Tiny Dancer, where you at?’ I’m right here? (New Orleans businessman finds humor in my obliviousness to N.O. slang.)”

For Louisiana transplant iKeepYOUChipper, anxiety becomes triumph: “I love how when I first came here everybody got on how California people talk & our slang is ‘dumb’ but NOW muhfuckass’ using OUR shit smh.”

SLANG EDUCATION

@dylannave
Dylan Nave learning slang straight out of England. “Spit Roasted” means getting fucked from both ends… #WHAT
Sep 11 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

If you ask Twitter where a word originated — and even if you don’t — Twitter will tell you. Or try to. Take “jawn,” a noun defined in Green’s Dictionary of Slang (2011) — a book you can easily lose whole days in — as “an indiscriminate term, usu. used of something or someone that causes happiness, joy or excitement; also used as adj.” The supporting citation is a 2003 Urban Dictionary entry; usage is attributed to “U.S. campus.”

By general Twitter consensus, “jawn” is “super Philly slang” meaning “anything! a girl, song…anything loz or “a woman, place or thing.” The best example sentence I’ve seen is from tedwardhowell: “student, talking on phone in the hallway, just referred to an abscessed tooth as ‘that jawn I had before.’” There are dissenters from the broad definition, though: “Its philly slang means joint like that joint was poppin that jawn was poppin”; “I thought it was the sothern version of joint lol”; “Not from PA but its short for joint.”

So Twitter’s pronouncements are inconsistent and sometimes unreliable. But they’re still fun to read. “Derrty, word, chuuch, mo, goosin are all St. Louis slang.” “In my Miami slang: I’m so throwed. In my NY slang: I’m twistedddd.” “Bogan Ipsum: The much funnier Australian slang version of lorem ipsum dummy text.” “For those who don’t know ’buttas’ is Philly slang for Constructs also known as Timbs.” “‘What up doe’ That’s that Detroit slang all the way in the A!! Money Greeting.” “Eminem was the first to say, ‘Good Lowdy Whody,’ not Big Sean. They are both from the D, so I guess that’s Detroit slang.” A heavily-retweeted list of “DMV slang” includes “Moe, Dew, Slim, Fool, Holmes, Go Smack, Joan, Oc, Fred, Dead, Live, Crack, Son, Fire up.” “DC got the best slang. ‘Son. Moe. Kill. Young. Stamp. On Who. Real Live. Dats Dead. #teamfollowback #instantfollow.” “In Atlanta it’s ‘Rubber neckers,’ in Chicago, it’s ‘Gaper’s delay.’ Traffic slang!” “I need me a junt (memphis slang), a shawty (atl slang), a babooski (in my slang)… *sigh* WHERE YOU AT!” “Huff,” says Capt_Obvious, is Chicago slang “for wack, garbage, hella weak, etc.” “In miami we got crippie n chronic.” “New slang out here in Houston gnr RT @Sprincell What that mean RT @JDWeJam Just left paranormal activity…..”

And from the historical department: “an 1839 dict. of local slang has dropped on my desk. In the c19th North, twitter meant ‘to tremble’. In Craven, ‘uneasy’. So there you go.”

SLANG COMPETITION, ACRIMONY AND CONFUSION

@willacampbell
William A. Campbell Chicago = Miss.’s biggest city RT @kiko_styles: @me ‘…All outdoors’ is Chicago slang?! I’ve only heard ppl from the south say that..
Oct 18 via EchofonFavoriteRetweetReply

Slang talk gets exciting when people start arguing — not so much in the “we don’t use wack slang in Brooklyn” vein, but smack-talking of the “Silence i dnt even use words like ‘green’.. I dnt do that memphis slang. DETROIT BITCH yeeaa” variety.

And it’s even more fun when tweeps disagree about word origins. “Shut up yo. That’s east coast slang RT @VoCal_KiSS: Ppl from NY forever saying yo and ma, and kid. Who yall think y’all is? Lol #NYStandUp.” “Eh hem…sorry sweetie…can’t cosign that one. NY…YALL SEE THIS?? => RT @MzReminisce@RULERDIVINE I know but ‘nah mean’ is philly slang.” “That’s DC slang gurl.. ‘@AlannaDawkins: #thebait .. #lingo down here.. bait = hottie, attracts everyone.’”

Or authenticity: “If you’re using NY slang and you’re not from there, I won’t take you seriously.” “I’m glad I sound right when I curse & use slang because some of you be sounding so awkward it makes me uncomfortable.” “If you’re a Detroit nigga talk like one, if you’re a Vegas nigga talk like one…stop dicksuckin other peoples ‘slang’ .. tryna be cool -_-.”

A lot of these denunciations, passive-aggressively (or aggressively?) directed at entire Twitter streams, get no response. But it takes two for a misunderstanding. Here’s a lighthearted one between mikecane and JulietaLionetti that could’ve come from a Laurel & Hardy routine: “My foot. My foot. My foot. My foot. My foot.” “@JulietaLionetti Are you trying out American slang or have a podiatry problem?”

And here’s my favorite. Alas, Poor Roderick, she didn’t mean what he thought she meant: “we need to get up soon”; “we need to get up soon?? lol”; “yea as in meet up foo”; “oh ok must be that down south slang but yea we can do that no doubt.”

SLANG OPPROBRIUM

@NotRihanna
Kimberly Anderson I’m not ignorant enough to get Philly slang referencing the better race’s hair… Urban dictionary can’t save me either.
Sep 09 via Twitter for iPhoneFavoriteRetweetReply

Generally I disapprove of people who generally disapprove of slang, but some of the most cutting commentary on Twitter comes from this camp. My favorite example is above. More highlights: “scrap it? Dre you know I don’t bang with slang. lol.” “Some of this Atlanta slang is just so extra and y’all sound dumb talking to me like that.” “’Aye watch dis’ in the DMV means ‘aye im bout to do something ignorant.’” “Try going to a job interview talking in all DMV slang…good luck.” “Some west-country bumpkins on the train are talking using london slang about mugging me and stealing my laptop!”

And then, from time to time, there are converts. “I hate Philly slang ‘jawn’ this & ‘drawlin’ that,” said vivalacree_ just a couple days before trying it out for herself: “My new flat irons>>> them jawns is love! (Check me w/ my Philly slang ^_^).”

The best thing about the opprobrium camp is that it incites such great come-backs. “I may say some things in slang,” says TERMINATE_ALL, “but dont get things twisted I still have a very sophisticated vocabulary so dont play me like Im dumb.”

First prize goes to Bronx native (and Buckaroo Banzai heroine, and one of my personal heroes) Ellen Barkin, for: “Would people stop calling me uneducated it offends my muthafuckin alma mater Hunter College.” “Than stop using idiotic gansta wanna be dialect,” said follower blindedbyblonde of Austin, who groused, when people pointed out that the proper word is “then,” not “than”: “Trying to correct tweet composition is like a nun trying to virginize ho’s in a brothel.”

Maud Newton is a writer and critic best known for her blog, where she has written about books since 2002.

They call me “Two Soups.” Sometimes. And by “they,” I mostly mean one person. “They” call me this because I sometimes order two soups for lunch. Like, instead of “soup and a sandwich,” or “soup and a salad,” I’ll have soup and another soup. A different soup. I like soup that much. (I could perhaps marry Jennifer Coolidge in Best In Show and sit with her and eat soup and talk or not talk. She’d prefer the latter, I would bet.)

I’m thinking of having two soups for lunch today, in fact. This time of year, when the weather turns cold, this type of day, rainy and gray, is just screaming for soup. And there’s a place nearby that has excellent soups. I’ve been going there a lot lately. It’s called Karloff and it’s on Court Street in Brooklyn and it’s a nice, airy room to sit in and if you like soup, I’d recommend you go there, too. And order two bowls of soup.

Unless you’re worried that your friends might start calling you “Two Soups,” too. And you think that would bother you terribly. I don’t mind it so much myself. But I never wrote a symphony.

My favorite soup at Karloff is a puree of kale and broccoli that tastes better than that sounds. It’s full of ginger and garlic and paprika and tastes as bright green as it looks. It’s actually most like a more liquefied version of the dish you find at Indian restaurants called sarson da saag, which is supposed to be made with mustard greens and spinach, I guess, but is often thought of as just stewed greens of any kind and is often made with broccoli, too. That’s a favorite of mine, at Indian restaurants.

But Karloff is a Russian restaurant, as you might have guessed from the name, and my second favorite soup there (the other one I think I will order today) is the “dark chicken soup with meat dumplings.” The dumplings are a specialty of the house — vareniki, they’re called. You shouldn’t eat too many of them, but that’s hard because they’re totally delicious. On their own, they’re served with sour cream and apple sauce, which you basically ignore, except to maybe use as a palette cleanser between bites, and drenched in butter, or maybe it’s oil they’re cooked in, which you should definitely not ignore. In the soup, they combine with vegetables and chopped up chicken (all parts, careful of bones) to make for, yes, a much darker and meatier chicken soup than you’re used to finding. A better chicken soup.

Strangely, being that it’s a Russian restaurant, Karloff’s borscht is not so great. It’s glowing red, the way it’s supposed to be, but it’s for some reason blander and less substantial than the borscht at say, Veselka, which I prefer. It’s a little sweeter than salty, and it lacks large hunks of brisket. It’s probably healthier for you. So maybe get it for that reason, as a third option (we should call you “Three Soups”!) if you love beets, which are supposed to be so high in nutrients. But, wait, don’t get it if they’re serving the split pea soup the day you go. It’s not on the menu, generally, but they’ve been having it a lot lately. And I have, too. It’s about the best split pea soup I’ve ever had. Heavy on dill and scallions and what they call “New York bacon,” which I guess is local. Thick-cut and smoky and I’d better hurry up and go get some.

They serve the bacon with their breakfasts, too, and the breakfasts are also totally dynamite. If you go for breakfast, or opt for breakfast food at lunch (never a bad idea) you should get the potato latkes (another specialty of the house!) which will remind you of the first time you ever had potato latkes, when you peeled and shredded the potatoes yourself, sitting next to O.E. Hertler at the long table at Winding Brook nursery school, and marveled at how the thin little sticks of potatoes (like those you’d later love eating from those greasy conical cans, but softer) stuck together in the oil and egg, and how the ones in the middle, where the latke was thickest, turned creamy and sort of melted, while the ones on the outside, around the edges, got a crispier shined golden brown and crunched when you bit into them. Sorry for that silly bit of revery. But I’m telling you: these are the perfect potato latkes.

And here’s what you do with them: You order them with fried eggs and the bacon, and with your fork, you gently pull the eggs over the latkes. With the strip of bacon making for a mouth, this will give your plate the appearance of a face caught in an expression of wide-eyed surprise. The latkes being like frames for the fried-egg eyes with the yolks being the eyeballs. (If you happen to be dining with a 6-year-old, he or she will probably get some enjoyment out of this. But that’s not why you’re doing it.) Now, stab both eyes in the eyeballs with your fork. Hard, so the tines hit the plate below. Then let them sit for a minute. The idea here is to let the yolk drain through the holes in the eggs and seep into the latkes, making them even more mind-blowingly delicious. I suppose if you have a particularly enthusiastic expression on your face as you do this, you might terrify your 6-year-old, if your 6-year-old is particularly sensitive. But probably not. Six-year-old children are bloodthirsty little monsters, and most of them were likely imagining doing the same thing with their fork as soon as they saw the that eggs looked like eyes. They’re probably thinking of doing this to you and your real eyes when you sleep, too. Anyway, if you don’t do this to your eggs and latkes, I don’t know what to tell you. Try to enjoy them anyway, I guess.

I’d better wrap this up. But Karloff serves dinner, too. And while I’ve gone there for that a couple times, too, I haven’t tried everything on the menu. (I’d like to try the beef stroganoff.) There is a salad called a Tsar salad, which is grilled hearts of romaine and croutons and parmesan with a creamy dressing that does sort of make you feel like an emperor when you eat it. And a wide variety or blintzes and burgers. And the dumplings. But also, you could just get soup. Lots of soup. That’s what I’m going to do today.

Oh, and for dessert, they have incredibly good ice-cream that’s made “in small batches” at this place up near Hudson. (It’s served at a shop up there called Jane’s, too.) Lots of the flavors are fancy-pants style and too aromatic for me, with rosewater, orange blossom or lavender. They have beet and dill ice-cream, too, which I am sort of philosophically opposed to. (But which I have heard is good by more open-minded people who have tried it.) The peanut-butter fudge, though, is phenomenal. Like, as good as any ice-cream I’ve ever eaten. I was stuck on that stuff every single day for too long of a stretch this summer. But it’s too cold for that, now.

As America’s terminal decline gathers pace, the options for those of us in the 99% to procure even a little economic security grow slimmer each day. In fact, there is only one way now for anyone who does not work in the financial services industry to provide themselves with a shot at monetary mobility. That’s right: You need to make a viral video for YouTube. The question, of course, is how? Well, access to babies or cats is a big plus. But there’s so much more than that! Here are some helpful tips on merchandising, branding and the rest of it. Follow this guide to the letter and your clip could be bigger than Sylvia Plath’s utility bill. But should you fail, rest assured that, at most, there’s only six or so months left for society as we know it. After that you’ll be too busy running from your fellow marauding human beings to worry much about anything else. Or you’ll be a slave to the chatty babies above. Either way, you’ll have more pressing concerns.

“[N]ow publishing is awash with best sellers whose unprintable titles are, for the most part, being coyly disguised by asterisks and other symbols over select vowels on the jackets… Out this week: If You Give a Kid a Cookie, Will He Shut the — — Up? ($14.99) by Marcy Roznick, a parody, aimed at adults, of the 1985 children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie ….,” reports USA Today. This new trend, a legacy of the success of Go The Fuck To Sleep

, has indeed swept the industry. A quick look at some of the classic-inspired books coming out for the holiday season reveals, among others, the following titles: An Assload Of Cats; Sylvester And The Really Fucking Amazing Rock; The Pussy-Hungry Caterpillar; The Wild Things Are Over There, You Stupid Motherfucker; I Don’t Care How Fucking Inquisitive That Dickheaded Monkey Is, He Is Really Starting To Bug The Shit Out Of Me; The Giving Head Tree; Those Ducklings Better Move Their Asses Or They Are Going To Get Splattered All Over The Goddamn Road; Alexander And The Cocksucking, Motherfucking Piece Of Shit Lick My Ass Day; You Give Harold One Lousy Crayon And That Little Pissant Bitch Starts Scribbling Shit Pretty Much Everywhere; Lyle, Lyle, Pedophile; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (You Know What We’re Talking About) and a trilogy based on the works of Dr. Seuss, The Way That Fat Fuck Horton Sits On That Egg You’d Think It Came Out Of His Own Gigantic Ass, Oh, the People You’ll Fuck!, and Marvin K. Mooney Get The Fuck Out Of Here Already You Inveterate Assgrabbing Shitface. [Via]

Did you know that House Republicans are paying a single lawyer as much as $1.5 million to defend America’s “Defense of Marriage” Act? Your tax dollars at work! (There is, at least, a rationale for that: it is a law of America, and laws exist to be defended. But then lawyers argued against the 13th and 19th Amendments, too.) The lawyer is Paul D. Clement, and he represents everything else that is terrible, like Arizona’s immigration law, and he also won the Florida case against the new requirement that all Americans have health insurance. (He’s also the dude who claimed, to the Supreme Court’s faces, that we didn’t torture people… right before the Abu Ghraib pictures came out.) But he’s not a political operator, he says: “Mr. Clement resists discussing his own politics, and said he eagerly took work from wherever it came.” Oh, I see.