Sublime

A moment later, wearing a corn-colored jacket over green velour pants and an orange-and-green-plaid tie, Jack Ashkenazy came in, followed by George Deasey, who, as ever, appeared to be in a testy mood. He was, as Anapol had mentioned, a graduate of Columbia, class of 1912. Over the course of his career, George Debevoise Deasey had published symboli

His name was even being bruited about as the next mayor of Los Angeles—though when asked to run, he responded with the famous demurral, “I would rather give birth to a porcupine backward.”

He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy.

it’s hard to know when a cartoonist is being serious and when he or she is constructing an elaborate practical joke. I’ve crafted pranks that spanned years, sometimes when no one was in on the joke but me. Some of those pranks are still percolating. I have posed as other people online and even in person.

“p is wrong, even though I believe p.” This is called “Moore’s paradox,”

(For example, can you name one good, practicing transvestite in the Senate?

“Paradoxes explain everything,” he told me. “Since they do, they can’t be explained.”