The Lincoln Memorial is exactly as you expect it to be. He sits there in his big high chair looking grand yet kindly. There was a pigeon on his head. There is always a pigeon on his head. I wondered idly if the pigeon thought that all the people who came every day were there to look at him.

-Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent

Elocutionary titan. Today on Car Talk, the Magliozzis were discussing the merits of filling the bed of a truck with water and allowing it to freeze, thereby providing for enhanced handling characteristics on icy roads. The concept was presented by a caller, and was immediately embraced by the brothers, but Ray suggested the use of loose sand or another substance which could not become, in a moment of inertial crisis, a "unified monolithic projectile." The man did not fire this one off with any unusual emphasis - it simply rolled out in the middle of a larger bloc of spoken words, and thus received no special recognition from those present. I hereby salute, formally, one of my favorite users of the English language.

An unexpected duck-scovery. My former grocery store, which is the kind of high-priced, high-brow affair you'll find in certain metropolitan areas, has a modest shelf near the deli which is occupied by various pâtés and non-dessert mousses. [From reading Bourdain, I've developed an amateurish, half-assed interest in French cuisine, and have sampled a few of these items.] I dropped by the old place the other day and encountered something quite unexpected on this shelf - an unassuming, black-and-white box labeled foie gras de canard. [It was a product of Les Trois Petits Cochons, which is fun to say with a heavy French accent, try it with me - lay TWA pe-TEE coo-SHONE.] Along with the vaunted truffle [a single truffle sold at an auction last year for the equivalent of $160,000], foie gras, which is the liver of a controversially force-fed duck or goose, is the absolute apex of delicacies in French cuisine. It was cool to see foie gras at the grocery store, but I did not, nor will I, buy it there - I can barely make a bowl of cereal, let alone prepare fine French cuisine, no matter how simple. Oh, and then there's the cost. Six ounces of fatty duck liver at your local grocery store: $36.99.