“Four years is a long time in Beijing, a city frantically reinventing and rebuilding itself. The poplars have filled out into a wall of green that seems no more or less dishonest than the strips of woods I grew up with in America, concealing subdivisions and the interstate from one another.
The air has gotten cleaner, too — not clean, not even close to what most Americans would call clean, but not the unbroken, choking fug of 2004.”
A thick, close, stuffy atmosphere, esp. that of a room overcrowded and with little or no ventilation. Also fug-footer, -soccer, -socker School and University slang, indoor football.
1888 E. F. BENSON Sks. fr. Marlborough i. 16 Seating himself in the most comfortable chair, as a consolation for the prevailing fug. 1905 C. RANGER-GULL Harvest of Love i. 10 He met a group of school-house boys carrying a round football. They had been playing ‘fug-soccer’ in the racquet courts. 1914 C. MACKENZIE Sinister St. II. III. viii. 663 Nigel had booked himself to play fug-socker with three hearty Trindogs of Trinity. 1915 ‘BARTIMEUS’ A Tall Ship iv. 78 We get up quite a good fug in our case~mate at night. Ibid. ix. 171 ‘Pouf!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a fug!’ And elevated his nose with a sniff. 1923 U. L. SILBERRAD Lett. J. Armiter x. 214 Can you smell the cold damp fug of those wet Sunday afternoons..? 1925 Chambers’s Jrnl. 556/1 The ‘fug’ that could be got up inside these huts was sheer bliss to many a trench-weary soldier during the war. 1927 W. DEEPING Kitty xvii, It [sc. a sickroom] smelt like a greenhouse, full of soft fug. 1940 M. MARPLES Pub. Sch. Slang 85 Fug-footer (Harrow, 1884 +), indoor football. 1948 G. H. JOHNSTON Death takes Small Bites i. 29 The fug of the room. 1968 J. E. MATTHEWS Brew’s Youth & Youth Groups (ed. 2) x. 149 There are only three necessities{em}light,..warmth, and if we cater for boys this often means a ‘fug’{em}and comradeship.
Biggest story of the day for me so far is Google’s foray into venture capital. There’s a 95% chance we’ll run this story in The Courant for Friday. That’s the kind of power I wield!
I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to highlight Hitwise’s awesome blog, but it hasn’t come along just yet. For now, check out this post on using the search term “homes for sale” as a barometer for the housing market. Might end up in the pages of The Courant at some point.
The big dogs jump all over the story that China won’t bend its rules regarding Internet access during the Olympics. Post. Times.
Interesting breakdown of the abilities American readers by Cheryl Stephens, author of “Plain Language Legal Writing” over on the (New) Legal Writer blog.
Writing in plain English is something every writer should be doing all the time, regardless of readership or platform. There is no argument for otherwise.
Zooey Deshanel and M. Ward’s collaboration is refreshing in a time when most actresses think they can sing. Zooey has the pipes to pull it off, I think, although she’s going to need a while to smooth some things out. I also like songs with clapping. (See video below.)
The two played at Cat’s Cradle yesterday (good venue) and will play at the Orange Peel on Thursday (great venue) and the Wexner Center next week.
Also, amusing fact: The first paragraph of Zooey’s Wikipedia page hasn’t been updated to list “The Happening” as a movie in which she played a lead role. That is unequivocally by design. “The Happening” is the worst movie I’ve ever paid money to see.
Another busy summer weekend included a Friday night at the best bar in Hartford you’ve never heard about, the Bushnell Park Cafe at the Pump House; a Saturday afternoon at the Thomas Hooker Brewery in Bloomfield, Conn.; a Sunday afternoon at my roommate’s family’s lake house just over the border in Massachusetts; and a boring Sunday evening at work filling in to design Monday’s Connecticut section at the Courant.
One thing I’ve learned since my schedule changed this spring: Life moves much faster when you’re busy on the weekend. Summer is going by too quickly.
I’ve ruined some electronics because of water spills in my day, so this new product called Golden Shellback that can waterproof anything has me dismayed.
In Zimbabwe, it’s no big thing. Well, actually, conditions are so bad there, that’s not even the case. With inflation raging out of control, the country just issued a $100 billion bank note.
(One of the new bills is available on eBay for about $80 U.S., which is officially equal to about $1.5 trillion Zimbabwe, if you were wondering.)
When I first heard about this, my question was, “Why don’t they just lop off a bunch of zeroes?” Apparently they do.
When I was in Thailand in 2006, I thought the exchange rate of about 40 Thai baht to $1 U.S. was pretty crazy. We would exchange a $100 travelers check for 4,000 baht and pretend like we were millionaires. (Sure seemed like it, with street food often costing 10 or 20 baht.)
But there’s something surprisingly sad about about using a $1 million Zimbabwe note as toilet paper (see first IHT article). What’s surprisingly amusing is this official release by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe about its efforts to thwart “cash barons.”
