this is what concerns me:

If you’ve led a life like mine, rich in shame and filth, there are few opportunities for being sanctimonious and you have to seize those that offer themselves quickly.

– Another journo goes vegan and rails about how tough his life was without bloody shanks in perhaps the douchiest display yet (think: Bourdain forced to eat curry for a week and then waxing whiny about it to some 150 wpm assistant); but perhaps because he’s British (and employed by the Guardian) the humor makes up for some of the whine. Still, dude could use a cookie.

I had the fortunate occasion to overhear both of these gems today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A mom to her 4-year-old boy in the Africa & Americas galleries: Joey, listen to me, all right? There are some places in the world where people aren’t ashamed of showing their penises.

A mom to her 8-year-old girl, on Sol Lewitt’s 13/3 sculpture: You could build that with your Jenga, couldn’t you?

I also saw two different security guards leaning against walls taking naps — perhaps to lull passersby into a false sense of security about their embarrassing snippets of conversation. Very clever.

This week’s installment of Harper’s Findings is pretty sexy. (This is their science column, not to be confused with the weekly news report.)

Half of all women were estimated to have no G-spot … An Australian study reported that college students make up 40 percent of Melbourne’s prostitutes … A sex hormone was found in the drinking water of San Francisco, and anti-anxiety medications were found in the drinking water of Southern California … A Scottish study determined that roughly half of a person’s happiness is due to genetics … Honeybees can recognize individual human faces.

It must be swarming season!

The Harper’s Weekly Review newsletter always brightens my mid-week. This is just a taste of why, from the May 20th edition:

A 19-year-old college freshman was elected mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma. “Right now I’m between girlfriends,” said John Tyler Hammons, who is president of both the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats at his university. “I’m looking to fill that position.” … The Vatican’s chief astronomer said that it’s not a contradiction of faith to believe in aliens and that we may have intelligent, God-created “extraterrestrial brothers.” … U.S. Air Force pilots were testing the Advanced Mission Extender Device, the result of a $5 million program to replace unhygienic “piddle packs” with a system that converts urine into a gel. Los Angeles was considering whether to turn its raw sewage into drinking water.

All right, move along, back to work.

My dad on IM:

you wouldn’t do well, there isn’t much respect for vegans here
I learned that China has a national pork reserve
in deep frozen caves, like our national oil reserve
they keep adding to it, doomsday pork
they love their pork
the students all rush up and ask me to draw pigs for them
I ask why always pigs?
They say, we think pigs are funny.
(and tasty)

On his process: “Sometimes I just sit on the couch, and if I look out the window and see a fat guy with bloody knuckles and curlers in his hair spitting, I start to think, ‘Wow, what does that guy do for a living? What do his kids look like?’ It just happens like that.”