April 22, 2017

Fuzzy, purple.

P1130319

43 comments:

traditionalguy said...

Heck of a flower you got there. It's not artificial, is it?

Purple is the best color. But that is special.

Laslo Spatula said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Laslo Spatula said...

Unhappy Blog Commenter at the Psychiatrist...

"How are we feeling this week...?"

"Same as last week, I suppose. I called people on the Internet idiots, they called me an idiot, I told them no-YOU'RE-the-idiot. I won."

"And did this provide you emotional satisfaction?"

"For a few moments, yes. I find satisfaction in my superiority."

"So someone who disagrees with you is not just disagreeing, they are inferior?"

"Hell yeah. They're Idiots and Douchebags. Or Douchebag Idiots. You get the idea."

"What if I were to tell you that you are NOT superior, but are simply a man with opinions, much like everyone else?"

"Sure, Doc. Nazis had opinions, too. So do child molesters."

"You think that the people who disagree with you must be Nazis or child molesters?"

"Oh yeah. Nazis with sexual problems, that's them. And a lot of them probably can't even get it up anymore. Not even with farm animals. Because they're old."

"So their age matters?"

"Of course it does. Old people have old ideas. Old ideas are in the way."

"Let's take a step back. How do you interact with people in the Real World?"

"They're all Fake. Have you ever read "Catcher in the Rye"?"

"Yes, I have."

"I see a lot of myself in Holden Caulfield. He got tired of putting up with people's shit."

"That IS an interesting insight. You DO realize Caulfield was an adolescent?"

"So what?"

"Well, after adolescence it is hoped that people mature."

"Mature? Like getting old and fucking stupid? Fuck that. It's like what they say: "When you grow up, your heart dies."

"Is that from a movie?"

"Yeah. The Fucking "Breakfast Club," man. That was the real shit. I'm like Holden Caulfield, but I'm like Bender, too. Bad-ass."

"I notice you identify with disaffected anti-social adolescent characters."

"You mean the ones with the balls to call out old people on their shit? Sure, I'll cop to that."

"Do you ever think how you'll be when you get old?"

"I ain't gonna be putting my cigarettes out on my son's arm, if you know what I mean."

"Actually, I'm not sure what you mean. Is that another movie reference?"

"Fuck yeah -- "The Breakfast Club", man. Bender's Dad put out his cigarettes on Bender's arm, but Bender didn't let it bring him down."

"OK..."

"Stupid, worthless, no good, goddamn, freeloading son of a bitch. Retarded, big mouth, know-it-all, asshole, jerk. You forgot ugly, lazy and disrespectful. Shut up bitch! Go fix me a turkey pot pie. No dad, what about you? Fuck you. No dad, what about you? Fuck you. Dad, what about you?
Fuck you!"

"I take it that is Bender talking with his Father?"

"Fuck yeah. That's how those idiot douchebags on the internet are. They just want you to shut up so they can eat their turkey pot pie. But I'm not gonna let them eat their turkey pot pie. I'm NEVER gonna let them eat their turkey pot pie."

"I think our session is coming to a close..."

"I spit on their turkey pot pie! I SHIT on their turkey pot pie..."

"Yes, alright: we'll resume this line of discussion next week..."

"I'll shit on their turkey pot pie and then I'll make them eat it! EAT IT, OLD PEOPLE! EAT TURKEY POT PIE SHIT...!"

I am Laslo.

Freeman Hunt said...

Great flowers. Liked the daffodils too.

Michael K said...

Laslo, I wonder who you had in mind :)

Anonymous said...

Trump will not survive tomorrow. The March in DC was brutal. The Press is Going Wild. Tomorrow's front pages of NYT and WashPost will force Trump to go on Twitter storm. The Sunday talk-shows will destroy him.

DJT is finished. He will help the GOP to lose both the House and Senate in 2018. Plus, Obama gets back in action this week.

Saint Croix said...

My book was reviewed by Kirkus

A detailed analysis of U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion.

Debut author Carmichael (My Absolutely Insane Attempt to Rank All Cinema, 2010), a former attorney, brings his legal background to this thorough examination of Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and other noteworthy Supreme Court decisions that have shaped abortion law in America. He provides a close reading of the justices’ legal reasoning in each decision and also analyzes media coverage, particularly regarding criminal prosecutions of abortion providers and mothers of abandoned fetuses. The book argues that the court has made substantial logical and legal mistakes in its decisions, resulting in an incoherent and potentially dangerous set of laws and regulations. Carmichael’s substantial research is evident in his copious footnotes, and his book pursues complex legal and ethical discussions of life, personhood, and rights. But although it does provide some criticism of the anti-abortion movement’s arguments and tactics, it doesn’t present its own conclusion—that the court erred in asserting a legal right to abortion—in a way that is likely to sway pro–abortion-rights readers. The prose often veers into hyperbole (“Roe has to qualify as the worst centralized planning since Stalin’s five-year-plan”) or sacrifices accuracy to argument (“Of course, all our abortion rules are actually mandated by federal judges, not by our elected representatives”). The book’s understanding of feminist thought can be grating, as well (“Feminism shot at patriarchy and killed our fathers”). However, readers who choose to engage with the book’s arguments will find them easy to follow, even if it isn’t entirely persuasive in its approach.

A thoroughly researched but uneven critique of abortion policy.

Michael K said...
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Michael K said...

"Trump will not survive tomorrow. "

You mean he will not make it until the huge rally he has scheduled on top of the WH Correspondents dinner?

Oh snap !

tcrosse said...

"Trump will not survive tomorrow. "

Possibly not. But that won't make Hillary president. Or Chelsea either. Ever.

MayBee said...

They look like baby birds!

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

"The March in DC was brutal."

Was that the one where a bunch of people led by a guy who plays a scientist on TV walked around with signs saying stuff like "Science is my huckleberry" and "Stop Trump from grabbing Gaia by the pussy?"


Do they have a special hat like the marching wimmin do?

At the very least they should go for Thomas Dolby hair:

http://img.cache.vevo.com/Content/VevoImages/video/9766FFF9950101284DAA3F6FF70DE523.jpg

Rick.T. said...

Blogger traditionalguy said...
Heck of a flower you got there. It's not artificial, is it?

Nope. Very nice example of Pulsatilla vulgaris.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=b350

Guildofcannonballs said...

Thinking today ya know, maybe today bereftness consumes, alas this blog has soldiered on without me, able to put text to page in a way, actually, most pleasing.

I've started tracing laced algorhythems, and will report.

Guildofcannonballs said...

What does reading blogs everyday do to a person?

1/ I don't keep lists bitch.

Sitting on the ass ain't kind to your body/mind or mind/body bitch.

Thinking because you can say something actually (perhaps though too), proving someone wrong, or some person who programmed a bot to make people the programmer obviously considers easily duped fools, or hard-but-worth-the-effort duped fools too, you are getting the better of the "argument" or "discussion" or "mental jackoff solo-bukkake all-the-wasting-helps-others-talk-about-all-the-wasting-too-so-we-are-compelled-to" brew of she no he make me BB's buddy, over in Israel.

Turns out some of us sane folks dislike the insane because of their easily enabled dhimmitude among good lookin' chicks.

Not chicks that you could walk up and grab their pussy, these are ladies, which exist, and are to be admired.

Pedestal? I ain't against it.

I put men on pedestals to inspire me, same as women.

This inspiration cuts.

"You know all the rules by now,
And the fire from the ice so thing this through
With me,
Let me know your mind.

All, I want to know,
Is are you kind?"

Guildofcannonballs said...

The answer, what causes the crazy, is:

Duh uh I ain't insane or nuttin'.

I ain't lying.

Then you know AI lie lie lie so go on now, go damn on, and say your good damn bye.

Once the doubt sumps among the Yute,
Breakers break all AI trut.

Why no ground, I'm fryin'
Cause we know you be lyin'
tryin' to take what you spend
you ain't make but fake or heart-stake.

Ann Althouse said...

"They look like baby birds!"

Yeah!

Good observation.

Guildofcannonballs said...

You got no power?

Uh Oh.

Please, to be as diverse as diverse will allow, let us restore power to those factions among us, KKK most prominent for many, many, many reasons, not any of which compare apples to Washington, but of idealistic yearning's for a more yearning idealistic age, when we, us, alone, and our (not dead yet as they say generation like my generation coined them whatever our generation wanted to coin them) "hey we listened to Genesis: so we Are Too Many Men, Makin' Too Many Problems. And Not Enough Love To Go Around. This Is The Land Of Confusion.

And This Is the World We Live In. So Let's Stop Pretending And Start, FOR GODDAMN ONCE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!, Stop Your Shit Life And Make America A Smidgen Better, Cocksucker.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, as Barack Obama famously said, you didn't make those flowers.

rehajm said...

Unkind as it is to say, reading anything by Chelsea Clinton—tweets, interviews, books—is best compared to taking in spoonfuls of plain oatmeal that, periodically, conceal a toenail clipping.

Humperdink said...
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Saint Croix said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
buwaya said...

A note to fans of Gene Wolfe, the most unappreciated great American writer of the last fifty years.

Very recommended - Mike Aramini "Between Light and Shadow"

This is a large (820 pages) readers companion to all the works of Gene Wolfe. Wolfe can be rather Joycean, so its easy to miss all that he has hidden in there. Handy to have when reading, say "The Fifth Head of Cerberus".

Aramini also has a series of Youtube videos on Wolfes work. Check those out.

buwaya said...

Just to add - Aramini is not a great writer - certainly not Wolfean! I forgive the occasional infelicities of style for the sake of the content.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

I long ago decided Wolfe is too subtle for me. I always felt like I was missing something important in "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", and I never got past _The Shadow of the Torturer_ in Book of the New Sun.

tim in vermont said...

I wonder if after the. "march for science" there were long lines of people signed up for trig class, you know, so they could later learn calculus, maybe differential equations, so that, you know, they could have some rudimentary conceptual understanding of the issues involve in, well, you know "science."

Ha ha ha ha! JKLOL. What they are really marching for is to tell us all to shut up and believe everything that is written by journalists who basically have no understanding of the science.

tim in vermont said...

“colonialism, racism, immigration, native rights, sexism, ableism, queer-trans-intersex phobia, & econ justice are scientific issues”

Yep, it's all about the science!

Saint Croix said...

Okay, I got a hypothetical.

Let's suppose I am a violent person. I am a killer. Or, at least, I want to be a killer. I'm incompetent.

I pull out my gun and I try to shoot an abortion doctor. And I miss.

Instead I hit an innocent bystander, a baby, a newborn. The bullet hits her in the head.

The police rush the baby into an ambulance and take her into the hospital.

They hook her up to a machine. She's still alive, still got that brain activity. The machine is keeping her heart beating, and her lungs breathing. And there's a feeding tube stuck down her throat.

The doctors are optimistic. They are 90% sure that in nine months, she will be fine. She'll be great.

The parents are very happy at this news. But they are so pissed off at me. They want to prosecute me for murder, for killing their baby.

Can they do that?

And how do we determine if the baby is alive or not?

And is it relevant whether I have a killed a baby or not?

tim in vermont said...

The baby is a legal person, St Croix, unlike she was a minute before she was born when she was only a human being.

Humperdink said...

If one isn't sure as to when life begins, wouldn't one want to error on the side of caution?

In my smugness, I know when life begins. On the pro-abort side, the "when does life begins" goalposts have now moved to 8.99999 months after conception. In some cases, a bit longer.

tim in vermont said...

It's not about when life begins. It's about when legal personhood begins, and that is at birth. I think they got it from "natural born citizen" and ran with the word "born" like a stolen loaf of bread.

It's not about logic, it's about power. Why you guys try to argue logic still is beyond me.

Humperdink said...

"Why you guys try to argue logic still is beyond me."

I realize it appears to be a futile effort, but I keep plugging away hoping at some point a wayward soul might change their perspective.

Ann Althouse said...

"No, the con here is the argument that the environment is in any way in danger because of leaf blowers."

1. The noise pollution is indisputable.

2. Read up on particulates.

Gahrie said...

Let Them Use Rakes!!, I said.

Don't these people know their place?

madAsHell said...

Joanie Loves Chachi

Erin Moran "Joanie" has passed on.

Saint Croix said...

In my smugness, I know when life begins.

Most pro-lifers aren't smug, in my experience. They're humble and quiet (at least in person).

We might get a little more obnoxious on the internet!

I think conception is a very important point, by the way. It's the point when creation begins. I feel like it's a miracle of creation, a blessing of the Lord.

But we need to be careful when we throw around words like "homicide" or "murder." Those are specific legal terms referencing the killing of a human being.

Saint Croix said...

The baby is a legal person, St Croix, unlike she was a minute before she was born when she was only a human being.

Yes, but is she dead?

The idea is to get pro-lifers to draw a distinction between "bad act" and "homicide."

Saint Croix said...

Also we should resist the temptation to inject our own feelings/ideas into the Constitution.

"Life begins at conception."

The Constitution does not say that!

"Personhood begins at birth."

The Constitution does not say that, either!

These are ideas that are inherently controversial and divisive. Many people have strong feelings and opinions and you are guaranteed to create a controversy, not end one. This is why the Supreme Court screwed the pooch in Roe.

"A person is a live human being."

This is neither controversial nor divisive. Indeed, the only anger or upset is when somebody denies it! This is why we get mad at slave-owners, at Nazis, and at baby-killers. Denying this truth is what has caused our upset, and the only way to fix it is to recognize the truth.

Gahrie said...

The old definition of life was a beating heart. For a fetus that starts at around six weeks. So by traditional standards, a fetus is alive at six weeks. Wouldn't that make it a person with a right to life?

But, you say, people no longer use that definition of life. Now the definition is the presence of brain waves. Hmm..seems like brainwaves can be detected at six weeks also.

It appears that abortions after the first five weeks are killing a living human being, a person with a right to life. That by definition is a homicide.

walter said...

Science Justice Warriors! Beaker lives matter!

So far no topless female protesters..even with all the CAGW

Saint Croix said...

The old definition of life was a beating heart. For a fetus that starts at around six weeks.

There's a little confusion here because of the way doctors count the weeks of pregnancy. Heartbeat starts 4 weeks after conception, 6 weeks after the last menstrual period.

Conception is assumed to be 2 weeks after your last period, because that is the day where a woman is most likely to get pregnant.

But it's only a guess! Nobody knows when conception happens. It's a microscopic event, and we can't tell until 8-10 days later, when the zygote implants in the walls of the uterus. That causes a chemical change in the mom's body, and we can determine she's pregnant at that point.

So by traditional standards, a fetus is alive at six weeks. Wouldn't that make it a person with a right to life?

If heartbeat is the standard for life or death, we need to start prosecuting doctors for performing heart transplants, because they are killing the patient when they remove a beating heart.

But, you say, people no longer use that definition of life. Now the definition is the presence of brain waves. Hmm..seems like brainwaves can be detected at six weeks also.

Six weeks after conception, eight weeks after the last menstrual period.

Our hearts start before our brains. The heart has its own little motor, apart from any brain activity at all.

Fascinating stuff!

Saint Croix said...

One of my points--I got many points with this hypo--is that pro-lifers should not get too caught up with the idea that "life begins at conception" and every abortion is a homicide.

The baby in the above hypothetical did not die.

Hence, you cannot charge anybody with murder, or manslaughter, or any of those crimes.

But it's still a bad act. You could charge attempted murder, for instance.

You could also charge criminal assault.

So, for instance, the state could make it a homicide for a doctor to abort a baby after brain activity has begun.

And they could make it an assault for a doctor to abort a baby before that.

Also noteworthy is a state is free to change its death statutes or rules. As Gahrie suggested above, a state might want to make heartbeat the standard, not brain activity.

But if a state does that, it would also have to start prosecuting heart transplant specialists for murder when they remove a beating heart.

That's the way equal protection works!

Anyway, I feel the key important issue is for our authorities to recognize the unborn baby is a human being with a right to life. And I'm trying to show how that would play out in a legal framework.

walter said...

I've never been a fan of pot pies..until now.