#266: Nut Exp

Missouri, Route 266

Also known, in its non-cropped version, as the Chestnut Expressway. This two-lane highway that leads out of Springfield was part of the original Route 66. The rolling green hills and gently winding roads that meander through the Ozarks make this a flat-out beautiful drive.

#267: Sunny Shadows

Gowanus, Brooklyn

This one was hidden behind a locked gate, obscured by iron bars, making it near impossible to get a good shot. I was angling my camera, kneeling and shifting and hemming and hawing, about to give up when the door serendipitously opened and one of the apartment's residents stepped out. People tend to react in one of two ways when I ask if I can photograph their house numbers: with frank suspicion or with a sort of surprised flattery. This neighbor was one of the second category, and graciously offered to open the gate nice and wide so I could get my #267. I thanked her, slipped my lens cap back on, and set off into the sunny afternoon.

#268: The Return of Snorlax Rotunda

New Haven, CT

Here on the Island of Misfit Fonts, there exist some typefaces so gloriously skewed and bizarrely hand-crafted that even the finest font-finding apps of the world can't identify them. Fortunately, I have a assembled a team of experts (that's y'all) to assist in the classification process. Last time I posted this number, the suggestions for font names started rolling in, inspired by the weird Pokemon-shaped #8. We got Pokemon Gothic Flourish (Thanks, designslinger!) and Snorlax Rotunda (via the great Ray Gunn). With friends like these, who needs a font finder?

#269: Shades of Gray

Garment District, NYC

There are days when reading The Guardian and chortling over Irish blogs really messes with my American brain, and the word "gray" is a case in point. I can't type certain words anymore without a flinching feeling that I'm spelling them wrong. The evidence is confounding. I drink Earl Grey tea, don't I? Yet I was born and raised in a country where the color of the Crayola crayon is spelled, beyond the shadow of a doubt, g-r-a-y. It wouldn't be so bad if we were at least consistent about it. But board a bus at Port Authority and it's a Greyhound, not a grayhound. What's a girl to type?

Is the crayon's color gray or is the crayon's colour grey? Am I a traveler or a traveller? Will I organise my schedule today or organize my schedule? I can't keep it all straight. It's gone beyond spelling now and seeped into my vocabulary. "Here, bring me that beer mat," I'll say, when what I should say is "Bring me that coaster." I'll order "takeaway" instead of "takeout." Usually it doesn't cause any real confusion, but there are times when the phrases that roll off my tongue don't translate right away, and as everyone knows, there's this thing called a New York minute where people just don't have time for you if you don't translate right away.

If I'm on the downtown F train and I hear a thick Brooklyn accent say "Clear (mutter mutter) closin'" I will know to "Stand clear of the closing doors." It's second nature. But when I shouted to a bartender at a New York bar, "Thanks very much indeed" (a simple pleasantry you hear about four times an hour in Dublin), he yelled back at me angrily, "What did you say?" I repeated: "I said 'Thanks very much." His face took a moment to unknot itself. "I thought you said, Thanks, you're a slut," admitted the bartender sheepishly. "No, indeed," I said, before remembering that New Yorkers don't say indeed, and shuffling off in confusion.

I don't mean to be eccentric. It's just that certain words look or sound better in one "language" to me. It was a great point of connection for me and my Girls Write Now mentee, a well-travelled (ahem) and bright native New Yorker teenager when I saw her novel draft peppered with "grey"s and "colour"s. It seems she's solved the problem quite nicely. She just clicks the Union Jack and types in "English UK" all the time. Why? It's her favourite, of course.

#270: The Eyes of Dr. DJ Eckleburg

DUMBO, Brooklyn

Like popcorn and whiskey, I've always appreciated an inspired ill-pairing. A bluegrass version of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" shouldn't work, but it does. (Luther Wright & The Wrongs' "Rebuild the Wall" is what I'm talking about, and if you haven't heard it -- "Are there any deer in the theatre tonight? Get them up against the wall! That one in the headlights, he don't look right to me" -- it's well worth the hour of suspended disbelief.)

So if Sean Donnelly, AKA MC NxtGen, the singing binman from Loughborough, can rap about the National Health Service, surely there is room in the world for Dr. DJ Eckleburg, Dumpster-diving DJ to the literati. He raps about Gatz, he drops beats about Keats, he gets everybody in da house to put their hands up in the air for J-Franz, and I found him -- right here in DUMBO.

Dreaming up fake MC names is almost as fun as making up roller derby names, and while I've no skillz with two turntables and a microphone, it doesn't stop me from thinking of what I'd call myself and what I'd rap about if I had no shame at all. Just wait till -- in the guise of MC SMLXL -- I drop my album "Rapping About Architecture." (Anyone got a good rhyme for "Mies van der Rohe")? Or better yet, I can just set down my t-square, jump ahead to "The Blueprint 4," and beat Jay-Z at his own game. I may do it myself, I'm so Brooklyn.

#271: Verdigris

West Village, NYC

#272: Slanted & Enchanted

San Francisco, California

#273: Freaky Chinatown Rebus

Chinatown, NYC

I'm not sure exactly what this awning wants me to think, feel, or for that matter, buy, but maybe something's been lost in translation. Any insights?

#274: Your Moment of Zen

Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

#275: At Swim-Two-Seventy-Five-Birds

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien: Dalkey Archive Edition

In honor of April Fool's Day -- and to balance out all the math-bashing from earlier this week -- I've dug deep into my archives to procure today's #275. It's a page from of one of my favorite books, Flann O'Brien's At-Swim-Two-Birds, a supremely odd comic tome ripe with tricksters of all stripes. Did I say "dug deep into my archives"? Make that "dug deep into my bookcase." All right, I didn't dig deep at all. This book is always in easy reach.

Yes, as I retire to my typing-chair, nearly everything I need is assembled beside me, each item situated well within an ergonomic 135 degree reaching radius: books authored by Flann O'Brien, a rectangular box of Girl Scout Cookies, a cold and brimming pint of Stone IPA, the closest thing available to a pint of plain. To summon the words for this post, I close my eyes and retreat deep into my interior blogosphere -- I'm getting in character, you see, to match the book's supremely lazy narrator, a jobless layabout with literary pretensions and severe logorrhoea (an excessive flow of words; prolixity; wordiness; tumidity -- see also verbosity) who can't seem to get a straight sentence out of his mouth. Wanna see what I mean? Check out the first line:

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.

This is, as Sheila has pointed out, "a masterpiece of self-consciousness," a completely ridiculous opening to both a book and a character. (Please go check out her excellent and exhaustive post on Flann O'Brien. A great introduction to his work, if you haven't read his stuff before.)

As for the author of that convoluted sentence, what can I say? I do have designs on our friend Flann, and for me to try to bowdlerize his humor and sheer weirdosity into an off-the-cuff column such as this feels a disservice. Let's just say that if I ever go back to school to fetch that Ph.D I've been blathering about for I don't know how long, I'll try to reconcile my brevity, but for now, there's O'Brien on the o'brain, and a quick homage seemed fitting and fun.

Here's the man himself, looking every bit the grumbling Dublin writer:

The hat, the overcoat, the pose: I love it. Though I've often wondered if the "DUBLIN DIVERSION" sign was his idea or if he's standing there in mortal agony, aching for a pint of Guinness, feeling like one of William Wegman's dogs. (Anachronism, I realize: let it stand.)

Nothing warms my swiftly-beating Brooklyn heart quite like grumbling Dublin writers, especially ones who make me laugh. I love the writing itself, but I'm also a fangirl for the whole O'Brien/ O'Nolan/ Myles (another of his alter egos) weird different personalities dealie-deal. Like, I want there to be a WriterCon so I can go dressed up as Flann O'Brien. (Can someone please get on this?) In the meantime, though, one might say that his influence has rubbed off on me.

Flann O'Brien (real name Brian O'Nolan) died on April Fool's Day forty-five years ago today. Happy April Fool's to the only man I know who can turn a phrase like this one: "Come away with me, says I to Slug and Shorty till we get our stolen steers."