Long Island’s citizens are getting restless without power — because it’s been like, WHAT, 48 whole hours. Who says Americans are spoiled? Well, everyone. But one lady on Long Island has had enough of her neighbors:

My favorite was the lady who asked “Who is going to reimburse me for the $500 worth of food I bought right before the storm that is rotting in my fridge?”

Ok, who is going to be the first for calling you a moron for buying $500 worth of perishable food right before a hurricane? ME! Let me call you a moron. MORON! You go out and buy food that won’t last without electricity and then you want someone to reimburse you for it? I’m sorry, but LIPA didn’t conjure up hurricane Irene with its apparent magical powers and they are certainly not to be held responsible for your stupidity.

Then there’s the lady on Facebook bitching that “I was driving to the store yesterday and I saw some LIPA workers sitting by their truck EATING LUNCH! THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FIXING OUR POWER NOT EATING ON COMPANY TIME!”

So these guys who are mostly working around the clock to get your power back to you were EATING? HOLY CRAP THEY TOOK TIME OUT FROM CUTTING UP TREES AND CLIMBING POLES AND REPAIRING WIRES AND RESTORING POWER TO EAT? OH MY GOD, FIRE THEM ALL.

Could be worse, whiners. You could be in Vermont.

New today, in colonial sound and vision, the video for Destroyer’s “Savage Night at the Opera.” (Toronto, so much to answer for!)

A couple of years ago I came home from a hockey game completely hammered, fired up the ol’ eBay and bid on a dozen outdated globes. I didn’t even remember that I’d done this until days later when my email dinged with a notice that I’d been outbid on one of them. Over the span of a week there were ten more notices as I was thankfully outbid again and again. What would I have done with a dozen globes? Where would I have put them all? Would I have had to move into a middle-school library? In the end I won just one of them, a 12″ Replogle beaut, and when it arrived there was no year marked alongside the copyright information that floats in the middle of an ocean (although the previous owner had helpfully drawn in an X to mark the point furthest from land). But I was still able to discern when the globe had been made. How? By checking the toponyms, of course! The best way to date an old globe (besides checking the National Geographic personals, har har har) is to examine the cartography for conspicuously dated place names. Every year of modern history has brought with it a reason to redraw the map of the world. Disputes over boundaries take place; territories switch hands; empires fall — and names change. Here are the stories behind a few of the curiosities you may find on your old maps.

Old Name: Dahomey
Dates of existence: 1958–1971
New Name: Benin
As a colony, the area had been known as French Dahomey. When the French Fourth Republic collapsed and the Fifth Republic was established by Charles DeGaulle in 1958, the colony gained self-governance. In 1960, the colony achieved formal independence and became the Republic of Dahomey. Fifteen years later the country threw off its final remaining colonial tie, its name, and became Benin. Adopted from the Bight of Benin, the bay that the country lies next to, the name also pays homage to the pre-colonial Benin Empire.

Old Name: New Hebrides
Dates of existence: 1906–1980
New Name: Vanuatu
Captain James Cook christened the Y-shaped archipelago the “New Hebrides” in the 1770s while sailing through the area. Apparently, something about the lush tropical paradise reminded him of… western Scotland? The islands remained largely undisturbed by Westerners until 1906, when the chain was divided between Britain and France, resulting in an Anglo-French condominium. With three governments simultaneously in power; one English, one French, one local; we can only assume some zany bureaucratic hijinx ensued (a mailroom boy appointed ambassador to Japan, a foghorn blast decreed as the national anthem, etc.). After decades of colonial tensions, Britain and France peacefully agreed to grant independence to the New Hebrides. The ruling political party at the time conceived the name from ‘vanua,’ which means ‘land’ in one of the area’s 500 languages; a syllable was added to make it ‘our land,’ Vanuatu. Awww.

Old Name: Gorky
Dates of existence: 1932–1990
New Name: Nizhny Novgorod
The “new” name actually isn’t new at all — the city was called Nizhny Novgorod when Maxim Gorky, a progenitor of Socialist Realism, was born there in 1868. Joseph Stalin renamed the city in the activist’s honor in 1932 and then closed it off to all foreigners, his reason being that the city was the center of Soviet military research and advancement. No street maps of Gorky were allowed. The city was reopened to outsiders on October 22, 1990, and officially renamed Nizhny Novgorod as a symbol of glasnost.

Old Name: East Gary, Indiana
Dates of existence: 1908–1977
New Name: Lake Station, Indiana
A classic case of the-grass-is-greener, the area to the, ahem, east of Gary, Ind., named itself East Gary in order to create ties with the bustling metropolis and draw wealthy executives from its steel plants. Sixty-nine years later, the fickle city of 12,000 reverted back to its former name, the more affluent-sounding Lake Station, to distance itself from now grimy and distasteful Gary. Go ahead, roll your eyes, I’ll wait here.

Old Names: Tanganyika and Zanzibar
Dates of existence: 1961–1964
New Name: Tanzania
Tanganyika and Zanzibar individually gained independence from the UK in the early 1960s. Fewer than five years later, in a move that was controversial on both sides but ultimately achieved without violence, the two joined together to form the United Republic of Tanzania (though all-islands Zanzibar remains semi-autonomous, and has recently started testing the waters for a completely independent state).

Old Name: United Arab Republic
Dates of existence: 1958–1961
New Names: Egypt and Syria
Syria, fearing a Communist takeover from within, merged with Egypt after the Egyptian president declared that joining Egypt was the only way to avoid the “threat” facing the country. The two non-contiguous lands held an unsteady bond as one nation for only a couple of years before pressure from Jordan, Iraq, and the rest of the Arab League became too much for Syria; it split off and, having successfully avoided the Communist threat, became autonomous once again.

And that old globe of mine (shown below, riding the metro)? It’s from 1965! Here’s how you can tell: Nyasaland became Malawi in 1964, which is correct on the globe. And Tanganyika & Zanzibar are shown as a united Tanzania: also 1964. But the Maldives are still listed as a British Protectorate — they didn’t gain their independence until 1965! Ta-da! (If you’d like to play this game yourself, Replogle offers this nifty chart to help.)

Victoria Johnson is a cartographer and this is her Tumblr.

Top image courtesy of British Empire.co.uk.

“The Philadelphia Muslim community has its own charm to it. They’ve got this in-your-face and unapologetic pride in being Muslim. What also stands out is the community’s heavy influence from street culture. It’s not uncommon to see someone with a long beard and traditional Muslim garb accessorized by gold teeth and an iced-out watch.”
 — New York blogger Aman Ali has observed Ramadan this past month by traveling the country with his friend Bassam Tariq, and documenting the experience for their blog project, 30 Mosques in 30 States. My favorite post is from Day 24, last Friday, when they accompanied one of my favorite rappers, Freeway, to an Indian grocery in his hometown Philadelphia. But there’s lots of interesting stuff here.

This excerpt from Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, which is published on September 7th, reads good.

North Williamsburg just got a whole lot more fun for pun enthusiasts. Please welcome the nail shop called… Finailly to the corner of Driggs and N. 11th. (FINAILLY!) Pedicures $22, manicures $10! I will be attending just because that is a terrible, terrible pun.

“Tango Till They’re Sore,” Tom Waits’ 22nd best song during the 1983–1987 era, is covered here by St. Vincent. It’s pretty great! She sounds a little like Madeleine Peyroux, but maybe everyone sounds a little like Madeleine Peyroux when they’re covering Tom Waits. Anyway, go listen. [Via]

In the spring of this year I wrote a piece about David Foster Wallace’s self-help books that was published here in April. It appears that all the books referenced in that piece have since been removed from the Ransom Center’s collection of Wallace’s papers. The collection, which used to contain 320-odd books, now contains 299. The remaining book list can be searched here.

It never occurred to me that Wallace’s estate would be in a position to rescind part of the sale of his documents to the Ransom Center; I wrote what I did under the assumption that these books would remain available to anyone who was interested in seeing them. I was very sorry — or rather, entirely freaked out — to learn that that will no longer be the case.

“His film has no distinctly audible dialogue so doesn’t need subtitles, and he doesn’t move his camera during the first half-hour. There is no music, just the sound of bells, of the wind in the trees, of the bleating of goats.”
 — Would you like to see a movie tonight?

Le Quattro Volte is playing at MoMA at seven. Fair warning: you could perhaps achieve the same qualities of stillness and reverence by staring at your bedroom wall. It’s only 88 minutes long — but my God, thirty minutes of unmoving camera! (Also, the title is not to be confused with the delicious four-cheese pizza. I’m hungry.)

Congratulations to Awl pal “’Awl pal’ Miles Klee,” who has sold his first novel to OR Books.