Marlow’s Listener

Couldn’t Mecca, I asked the royals, be opened to non-Muslims during the off-season? The phrase off-season, as it turns out, is not conducive to an interfaith dialogue.

the deal would be remembered as a public acquisition ‘as monumental as the creation of the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.

I don’t know where chickens developed a taste for cooked pig.

Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, an eatery where the right-on, “yes we can,” ACORN-loving, public-option-supporting man or woman of the people can tuck into a nice table d’hôte menu of scallops, guinea hen, and tarte tatin for a modest 95 clams—wine, tax, and oppressively sanctimonious and relentlessly conversation-busting service not included.

When I was in [...]

This film goes so far as to explain, in a helpful montage set almost a decade ago, exactly how snail mail works: You put your envelope in a mailbox—or give it to a fellow soldier—the envelope goes to a post office, a machine sorts it and then sends it on its way to the addressee [...]

Here, unlike when I am in England–and escaped from what Robert Louis Stevenson called ‘the Bastille of civilisation’–I find it no hardship to rise with the sun and pick my way through the boobyalla for a barefoot tramp on the sand.

“Boredom presents itself as a trivial emotion that can trivialize the world,” Spacks writes. “It implies an embracing sense of irritation and unease. It reflects a state of affairs in which the individual is assigned ever more importance and ever less power.”: “

This vile, narrow strip of crumbling asphalt zigzags uphill like an amusement park thrill ride, rising from the cool Pacific Coast over steep mountains and into hot, dusty highlands.

Taurus muscle car? As in 0-60 in 5.2?

What does it actually mean to be a holy man or a Jain nun, a mystic or a tantric seeking salvation on the roads of modern India, as the Tata trucks thunder past?”

People have always sought salvation in times that were modern to them.