Bluegrass

If you like tuning an instrument more than you enjoy playing one, then the mandolin is definitely for you. If you don’t give a rip whether your instrument is in tune or not, then you were born to play the fiddle. Pick up the guitar if you like the idea of random strangers borrowing your instrument to play better than you ever will. But if the guitar confuses you and you enjoy moving bulky unwieldy packages, get a bass. Finally, if you’re lonely and have a hard time making friends, take up the banjo. Then at least you’ll have enemies.

Forfend. Approbation. Look 'em up.

Believing that you should run the world is good evidence that you should not. If I was to find myself (heaven forfend) in a position of power and authority and also (which should go without saying but is often, it seems, neglected) responsibility, among the first things I would attend to (after decreeing that bagels in the break room would henceforth be an everyday thing [to universal {and well-deserved} approbation]) would be to hire some people whose entire job would be to keep tabs on what I was saying and doing and to let me know when I was wrong.

incorruptable

The English spy novelist Len Deighton died earlier this year and since he did so at the age of 97 it’s not remarkable that he would do so. He kept putting it off, I guess, before finally getting around to it. He wrote good books, but what I want to relate is how he refused a knighthood in the most badass way possible by saying: “To allow someone to give you a knighthood is to admit that there is someone who is allowed to appraise you on a scale which you are going to agree with. The audacity of it!”

Numbers don't lie, but they sometimes blather.

The odds of being killed by a bear are one in 2.1 million, twice as likely as a fatal shark attack. That’s why smart swimmers always carry bear spray. Statistics, am I right? It occurs to me without even checking that you’re safer in a racing car than an old folks home. And the average person has about one testicle and half a uterus. By this metric, that average person would be vanishingly rare. Or, if you want to feel superior, contemplate the very high probability that you have more than the average number of legs. But that’s just typical.