The thing I admire most about Coates is that while he sometimes calls things out and then steps in them anyway, if someone thoughtfully (and correctly) points out what he just stepped in, he will generally think a bit and then agree that the commenter has a point, and apologize for it.

I still don't get what he meant by a "bad nut." If a nut was rotten, you wouldn't have an allergic reaction to it unless you ... were allergic to it, in which case you shouldn't be eating good nuts either.

Maybe he is allergic to peanuts and was eating walnuts but there was some peanut in there he didn't know about? That sort of thing happens, I expect.

I suspect he meant a nut of the sort to which he is apparently highly allergic that wasn't supposed to be where it was.

Right - bad as in "bad nut, why are you in this bag of pretzels!" not bad as in rotten.

[Or more likely "Bad almond, why are you in this bag of peanuts?"]

I am just really, really glad my very favorite American writer survived the nut's sneak attack. He's too important to die, damn it!

flea, my grant writing metaphor would be finding shoes -- there's the fit part, then the appropriate to the purpose -- snow boots for the beach, or running shoes for a formal wedding do not meet the purpose and then finding a high quality pair without obvious flaws and errors.

But that's because I like my metaphors weird and not super obvious.

I am teaching a unit on style analysis using Tim Burton films. I had an argument with my students that Nightmare Before Christmas, while written by Burton, is not completely his. There is this lovely scene with Diane Keaton in Edward Scissorhands where she is walking up the steps in the mansion and it looks just like Sally going up that amazing staircase. Who stole from whom, I wonder?

Except, who's the shopper and who's the shoes? I would say the funder is the shopper, really. The grantwriter is making the shoes.

I just spent the last couple of hours peeling 10 oranges, removing the pith from the peel, and then alive ring the peel. This is in prep for the Persian feast K-Bug and her best friend (my other daughter) are cooking tomorrow. Persian food is nommy, but the prep is a killer.

alive ring the peel.

I don't know if this is a Persian food thing that I'm not familiar with, or autocorrect.

I hope it's the first.