The Colorless Color.

Maybe it’s the inescapable daily deluge of inane political and business news, or maybe it’s having to go to too many meetings of upper management decision deflectors in starched white shirts with blue collars, striped yellow ties, Italian leather loafers and $300 brushed suede iPad covers—but whatever the cause, the effect is lingering nausea that seems to increase in direct proportion to the number of white people in the room.

"Irony deficiency is directly proportional to the strength of the political commitment or religious fervor. True believers of all persuasions are irony deficient..."

 sorry, can't find the attribution

Scanned the pages of the publishing phenomenon Fifty Shades of Gray.  If this is a sign of where fiction is going, then by 2020 there won’t be anything left to read except the self involved musings of women with the maturity of  neurotic pre-pubescent girls with daddy fixations who crave sexual subjugation at the hands of priapic power hungry narcissists.

In my subjective opinion…such redundancies as the one that began this sentence are particularly annoying to those of us who harbor no doubt as to the subjectivity of our opinions.

Speaking of redundancies.  “He was brave and courageous…”  is how I began a sentence while describing a character in a historical fiction account that I was pitching to a network executive.  No wonder he never got back to me.

Short attention span History Lesson  summarizing the Civil Rights movement and legislation during the 50s and 60s from Supreme Court justice CLARENCE THOMAS…

“Unfortunately, the reality was that, for political reasons or whatever, there was a need to enforce antidiscrimination laws, or at least there was a perceived need to do that.”

Additional quote providing confirmation (did I choose that word unconsciously?) that the dishonorable Mr. Thomas is out of touch with reality…

“I have to admit that I’m one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle. “

Izzy Stone on Washington lobbyists…

 “Rich people march on Washington every day.”

Above, courtesy of Bob Mankoff, New Yorker cartoon editor and quite a wit himself, and the guy who also penned:

and the classic:

But getting back to the crossword puzzle theme, here's a little gem from another great cartoonist, Roz Chast.  She was the guest presenter of awards at last year's 34th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and the following is the text of her short address prior to announcing the winners:

(got a sneaking suspicion that I posted this previously, but there's no way I'm going back through the many posts to check...besides, if it's good, what's wrong with repeating it--like a good song...or so I rationalize to my lazy self...)

I have to tell you that I was not the first choice for being the presenter. Alan Alda was, but he was on vacation, climbing an arête in the Ural Mountains. They tried to get Eero Saarinen, but he had fallen on his épée, and got a stoma. Luckily his amah had some aloe with her in an etui. Erle Stanley Gardner fell down an adit. And Esai Morales broke his ulna and his tibia while he was in China researching the Chen, Qin, Zhou, Ming, Song, Tang, Qing, Qi, Sui, and Yin dynasties for an epic opera in which he’s going to sing an aria.

Even though I wasn’t the first choice, I’m not at all irate, because I get to stand up here and tell you a little bit about myself. I love Nature. Recently I was on safari and I saw an ecru and onyx oryx, although it may have been an eland or an okapi. I’m not sure. I don’t want to err, or I’d have to atone. I also saw an egret, an emu, and an erne who was building an aerie. The food was a little eerie. We had an olio of dal, agar, eel, and taro. An emir on the trip complained because the poi had been in the oast too long, and an imam cried because he missed his esnes. Afterwards, we traveled to the Aral Sea and took a proa to Etna. I wore a boa. The tsar upped the sartorial ante with his Eton collar. It was aces, but by the end, I couldn’t wait to get home, put some Edam on crackers, eat Oreos, and play Atari. Well, I think that’s enough sharing. Please forgive me for any mispronunciations. I’ve never really heard any of these words before. And now I’d like to announce the winners.

And more from Ms. Chast Apropos...

And I leave you with some random silliness from the Drifter files: