Somebody on a bus asks a friend, "How about that banal market?" The response: "Unbelievable." Caribbean vacationers lounging poolside analysis their Blackberries for banal prices. Suburban gym associates babble about the latest bazaar assets during their morning workouts.

... one room no longer pay attention to the bomb going off next door, so to speak. I’ve heard it called “residual violence” and “the irreducible minimum”, but never banal. The brutalising impact, of course, remains just as deadly as ever. As long as the madness continues, the nation will not heal. Hence, it’s not so much a question of why the Arabs and the Kurds ...

... beside the point. The point is that the NY Times published an article on the increasing usage of the word on network tv. Don't bother reading more than three words of the article, because it's incredibly banal. Thanks, NY Times. You're like the time my dad wanted to be awesome by buying a hypercolor MC Hammer shirt. I had to throw out all 8 of my own.* *This never happened. To his ...

In light of the Escalation Speech from the Anti-War Peace Prizer, and alongside the Serious, Respectable, Pragmatic Media assailing the human mind on a daily basis: Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell, 1946 "In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing ...

BBC Radio Scotland is having its annual 'no music day' on November 21st, which is the day before Benjamin Britten's birthday. 'No music day' is an interesting concept, but I have a better idea. BBC Scotland's sister network BBC Radio 3 should have a 'no presenter day' when they play music without the classical jocks in between. I guarantee Radio 3's audience ...

With the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, many who lived under the communist regime of East Germany have taken the opportunity to go to the state archives and view the files which the Stasi secret police kept on them. Stasi files were not kept only on spies and political dissenters, but on ordinary people whose "offenses" were almost shockingly mundane, and whose ...

After a rough few days of reading as fast and carefully as I can, of putting a massive mess of papers in my apartment into working order, and, of course, of returning more library books than I can carry comfortably in exchange for an even bigger heap, I was ready for a treat. I was all set for that treat to be one of these, but I was feeling lazy. (Call it the 'Lack Initiative to Make Cake&# ...

16:34 This defensive driving course is SO BANAL # 16:36 "In this video, we are going to explore the fascinating world of visual perception!" cue lousy animation which seems drawn by a 3rd grader # 16:44 It makes it more torturous to suffer through something alone that is a practical goldmine of comedic banality. #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

It's National Cliché Day. This is the raddest day since National Talk Like a Pirate Day, especially since pirates are such a cliché. Spinner has published a list of the top ten music cliché, a device which is itself a cliché ... sigh, I can't control myself. That's what she said. Here's the list. 10. The Post-Retirement Comeback (with reference to ...

I kept not publishing this b/c I had wanted to post a vid of Bobby Goren (cat not L&O:CI character) with it but for some reason it wouldn't post and so I saved this and have never got back to it until today and since I am not yet ready to start all my work on Blackboard and especially since some of you might be suffering HOV withdrawal, here's something to do when you have 5 minutes ...