Just started cutting the meat away from the bone...
Wow! What a great guy!
November 24, 2007
"So then I realized I was in trouble."
Matter of fact recognition of what you have to do to survive.
Just started cutting the meat away from the bone...
Just started cutting the meat away from the bone...
A child's skeleton, masks made of human skin, stuffed animals, Nazi memorabilia...
Things Marilyn Manson bought using his band's money, according to a lawsuit filed by keyboardist Stephen "Pogo" Bier. Showing a tin ear for public relations — or a keen ear for what pleases a certain niche fan — Manson said:
Don't you realize that all this creepy stuff is the reason we've made so much money. Prove it's a waste!
Dead child humor.
"The fact that he's claiming that I've treated him unfairly, financially, is really ridiculous."
Don't you realize that all this creepy stuff is the reason we've made so much money. Prove it's a waste!
"And I would never spend my money on a Chinese girl skeleton. That would be crossing the line. It's a Chinese boy, for the record."
Dead child humor.
"You are sometimes on the point of saying that so-and-so’s thighs showed that he wanted to travel in India!"
Some critic said that to Leo Tolstoy. But, so what? Let's read "War and Peace" again: There's a new translation by the wonderful Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
If "every campaign is... a narrative," what's Hillary Clinton's narrative?
Mickey Kaus looks at John Ellis's idea, which he gleaned from the Nixon campaign. Ellis says:
She knows what it's like to get her head kicked in every day, day after day after day, for months and years on end. She endures....Ha ha. They need to explain to us how to vote for Hillary, even though we don't want to.
...I think her narrative is not "she's inevitable because she's experienced and the others are too light." I think her narrative is "formidable, battle-scarred, flawed, but important." I think [Hillary strategist Mark] Penn thinks he can micro-target to victory. I think they need a large macro theme that enables people to vote for Hillary, even though they don't want to.
It's obviously late now. This is work they should have done in 2006 and 2007: setting the context for "understanding" her candidacy ...
But I'm not really laughing. Actually, I picture myself doing exactly that. I don't like her, and I don't want to vote for her, but somehow, I assume that in the end I will. I'm resisting now — look at all my recent Hillary posts — but it's probably because I see myself ending up doing what I don't want to do.
So Mickey says:
(By the way, where the video of Rick Lazio invading Hillary's space in that old debate? Is it not available on line? If not, why not?)
So Mickey says:
Campaigning as tough, battle-scarred fixture, etc. would certainly serve Hillary better, should she lose Iowa and New Hampshire, than campaigning as "inevitable." It seems entirely possible... that primary voters might feel like resurrecting Ms. Durability after she's suffered a bit by way of a New Hampshire loss. (Making her suffer a bit might even be the point...) But there's no point in resurrecting a failed Ms. Inevitability. ...So "enduring" is the new "inevitable." It's all "inevitable" can be when you're not — you know — inevitable. Plus, "enduring" seems almost charmingly complex. Which has that pseudo-warmth that's as warm as you can be when you're ... Nixonian.
(By the way, where the video of Rick Lazio invading Hillary's space in that old debate? Is it not available on line? If not, why not?)
"Patronage does not mean giving a job to someone who supported you politically."
"It means giving a job to someone only because he supported you politically." So wrote Rudy Giuliani in his book "Leadership," quoted in this WaPo article, which airs the views of his critics:
Giuliani "had a blind spot when it came to people he knew well" and "very little respect for the vetting process," [said Jerome Hauer, who briefly headed the office emergency management.] "The competent people in the administration all tended to leave because they got tired of the borderline-incompetent people who got in. He ran off the professionals because they were difficult to work with. If they didn't do things the way he wanted or overshadowed him, he got furious."More in the article. This is an aspect of the Giuliani candidacy we need to study carefully.
Fran Reiter, a deputy mayor under Giuliani, said most initial Cabinet hires came via a "very extensive search process," but the mayor was more likely to emphasize personal ties when it came to public safety jobs. Giuliani wanted ownership over that realm because of his law enforcement background, she said. And he worried that department veterans who he did not have ties with would have more allegiance to the departments than to him.
"These were areas where he just really wanted people whom he trusted and who were not going to do anything other than what he wanted them to do," she said.
Giuliani's most ill-fated promotion, other than Kerik's, was his 1998 choice to run the city's Housing Development Corp.: Russell Harding, the son of the former head of New York's Liberal Party, whose backing of Giuliani was crucial in his election. Harding had no college degree or background in housing and finance, and was eventually convicted of stealing more than $300,000 from the agency and sentenced to more than five years in prison for the embezzlement and for possessing child pornography.
"These patients are still people, they are still emotional and they still need love."
The story of Justice O'Connor and her husband, who, debilitated by Alzheimer's, found a new love, makes us want to think more deeply about what it means to have a relationship with someone who can no longer remember you:
It happens that there is an excellent movie on the subject this year called "Away From Her," an adaptation of an Alice Munro story called "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" (available now as a separate book). I watched the movie the other day, then read the story. I wanted to read the story to understand more of something I thought I saw in the movie, but what I was interested in was not part of Munro's story at all. It was introduced by the screenplay writer, the film's director, Sarah Polley.
Early in the movie, the husband, Grant, tours the nursing home where he will put his wife, Fiona. We see that there are 2 floors to the facility, the first floor, where patients are continually involved in socializing, and the second floor, where they put more "progressed" patients. Grant refuses to look at the second floor or even to think of Fiona ending up there. Later, we see that on the second floor, there are simple rooms and no socializing.
Don't we all, always, move between the first and second floor, the life of socializing and the life of solitude? We have different preferences, and some of us are more introverted and choose to live on the second floor. I thought there was a larger concept to the movie, and I have to spoil the ending to say what I mean.
On the first floor, Fiona becomes attached to another resident, a man named Aubrey. She sits with him and watches him play bridge, and she tends to him. She's absorbed in him. Her husband tries to reach her, by bringing her books and reading to her as he had done in the past. (He was a professor of Icelandic literature, and she was of Icelandic ancestry, and the book is about Iceland.) She can't understand him, and she what she likes about Aubrey is that he doesn't confuse her.
When Aubrey leaves the facility, Fiona declines and, consequently, they move her to the second floor. Grant does what he can to get Aubrey back, but in the end, before Aubrey's return, Grant enters the room and finds Fiona reading the book about Iceland. She seems alive again, restored by reading, and she can, to some extent, recognize and love her husband again. She isn't confused by a book or a man who is devoted to books, she's reoriented.
I thought this meant something about solitude, reading, and the life of the mind. I thought the message was something like: We fall out of touch with our humanity, we lose our grip on our own identity if our life is filled with socializing. Or: Institutions are designed by extroverts, who think there's something wrong if there isn't continual social interaction, and an introverted person, who thrives in the life of the mind, is ruined in such a place.
I don't think Munro's story says anything like this, but I think it is the leavening that Sarah Polley — who is only 27 — brought to the story, giving it a much broader and more universal meaning.
Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, said new relationships among dementia patients can often be very hard on families....Is there any choice but to manifest acceptance of what has happened, to be generous to the person who is — after all — dying? The real pain and jealousy — if it exists — must be endured privately. But one need not tell the world about any of it, as Justice O'Connor has chosen to do. There is little point in her saying: Look what is happening to me and how well I am taking it. I'm thinking that, knowing this is common occurrence, she is offering some moral support for others who are facing what she is. It's a generosity extending outward, to strangers.
"The emotion center of the brain tends to be relatively well preserved in dementia patients, even as their memory disappears. ... The key to understanding these relationships is that that these patients are still people, they are still emotional and they still need love," she said....
It happens that there is an excellent movie on the subject this year called "Away From Her," an adaptation of an Alice Munro story called "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" (available now as a separate book). I watched the movie the other day, then read the story. I wanted to read the story to understand more of something I thought I saw in the movie, but what I was interested in was not part of Munro's story at all. It was introduced by the screenplay writer, the film's director, Sarah Polley.
Early in the movie, the husband, Grant, tours the nursing home where he will put his wife, Fiona. We see that there are 2 floors to the facility, the first floor, where patients are continually involved in socializing, and the second floor, where they put more "progressed" patients. Grant refuses to look at the second floor or even to think of Fiona ending up there. Later, we see that on the second floor, there are simple rooms and no socializing.
Don't we all, always, move between the first and second floor, the life of socializing and the life of solitude? We have different preferences, and some of us are more introverted and choose to live on the second floor. I thought there was a larger concept to the movie, and I have to spoil the ending to say what I mean.
On the first floor, Fiona becomes attached to another resident, a man named Aubrey. She sits with him and watches him play bridge, and she tends to him. She's absorbed in him. Her husband tries to reach her, by bringing her books and reading to her as he had done in the past. (He was a professor of Icelandic literature, and she was of Icelandic ancestry, and the book is about Iceland.) She can't understand him, and she what she likes about Aubrey is that he doesn't confuse her.
When Aubrey leaves the facility, Fiona declines and, consequently, they move her to the second floor. Grant does what he can to get Aubrey back, but in the end, before Aubrey's return, Grant enters the room and finds Fiona reading the book about Iceland. She seems alive again, restored by reading, and she can, to some extent, recognize and love her husband again. She isn't confused by a book or a man who is devoted to books, she's reoriented.
I thought this meant something about solitude, reading, and the life of the mind. I thought the message was something like: We fall out of touch with our humanity, we lose our grip on our own identity if our life is filled with socializing. Or: Institutions are designed by extroverts, who think there's something wrong if there isn't continual social interaction, and an introverted person, who thrives in the life of the mind, is ruined in such a place.
I don't think Munro's story says anything like this, but I think it is the leavening that Sarah Polley — who is only 27 — brought to the story, giving it a much broader and more universal meaning.
"Maybe yellow blotches, wrinkles, and phantom fetuses really get a pubescent neotenic mole salamander in the mood for love."
What's the web's most reliable source of amazing sentences? I think it's Go Fug Yourself.
November 23, 2007
How dare you question her! To question her is to wish my son had died!
Howard Kurtz notes that the candidates are using a type of ad that looks very mellow but is designed to inoculate them against future attacks.
Here's the Hillary ad he mentions:
UPDATE, Sunday, November 25: "Using a man to talk about trust — is that an admission that she has a problem with men and that she has a problem with the trust factor?" Tim Russert asks on today's "Meet the Press."
Here's the Hillary ad he mentions:
UPDATE, Sunday, November 25: "Using a man to talk about trust — is that an admission that she has a problem with men and that she has a problem with the trust factor?" Tim Russert asks on today's "Meet the Press."
How I know who the NYT wants to be President.
I looked at these 3 photos.
(Thanks to my son John for this insight. And here's an earlier post on the linked article.)
ADDED: Hey, remember "plaidgate"?
(Thanks to my son John for this insight. And here's an earlier post on the linked article.)
ADDED: Hey, remember "plaidgate"?
"The wind of freedom blows." "No, that slogan blows."
Think you've got a good college slogan? Think again.
Consider Cornell's motto, "rated No. 1 by Motto" (there's a Motto magazine for some reason):
The University of California has "Fiat Lux" — in other words, "Let There Be Light." A tad grandiose. On the "light" theme, but not mentioned in the article is the University of Wisconsin's motto: "Numen Lumen." What does it mean? It rhymes. It's fun to say. It sounds like a guy's name. (Newman Louman.) But what does it mean? I've never known — through all these 20+ years of reading it. And apparently, no one else does either!
Consider Cornell's motto, "rated No. 1 by Motto" (there's a Motto magazine for some reason):
It's a statement made by the university's founder, Ezra Cornell: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." Still, that mouthful leaves Scott White, who runs the Web site Brand Identity Guru, nonplussed. "Wow. Okay. I don't know what to say to that," he says. "I think that's just awful."
The University of California has "Fiat Lux" — in other words, "Let There Be Light." A tad grandiose. On the "light" theme, but not mentioned in the article is the University of Wisconsin's motto: "Numen Lumen." What does it mean? It rhymes. It's fun to say. It sounds like a guy's name. (Newman Louman.) But what does it mean? I've never known — through all these 20+ years of reading it. And apparently, no one else does either!
What Lola wants...
... is to be a star.
(And that first commenter over there is mean... and also uninformed about the significance of Frida Kahlo in the mind of Madonna.)
(And that first commenter over there is mean... and also uninformed about the significance of Frida Kahlo in the mind of Madonna.)
"Our prescribed drugs do extra duty as political sedatives."
Frederick C. Crews looks at the dynamics of "Big Pharma."
[T]he pharmaceutical companies haven't so much answered a need as turbocharged it. And because self-reporting is the only means by which nonpsychotic mental ailments come to notice, a wave of induced panic may wildly inflate the epidemiological numbers, which will then drive the funding of public health campaigns to combat the chosen affliction.
This dynamic also applies to a variety of commonplace if bothersome states that the drug makers want us to regard as chemically reparable. They range from excitability and poor concentration to menstrual and menopausal effects and "female sexual dysfunction," whose signature is frustration in bed with the presumably blameless husband or lover.... As patients on a prophylactic regimen, we are grateful for any risk reduction, however minuscule; but our gratitude leaves us disinclined to ask whether the progressively lowered thresholds for intervention were set without any commercial influence. In that sense our prescribed drugs do extra duty as political sedatives.
"Iowa is a state where, if you work very hard and are a very good speaker..."
"...you can get to speak at a gazillion small meetings and have a gazillion people say, 'Holy heck, this guy is really good.'"
People are trying to explain why Mike Huckabee suddenly appears to be doing so well in Iowa. He isn't using direct mail, he's just started with a TV commercial, and he has little money and few staffers.
People are trying to explain why Mike Huckabee suddenly appears to be doing so well in Iowa. He isn't using direct mail, he's just started with a TV commercial, and he has little money and few staffers.
The candidates and their food issues.
The NYT presents the full array.
Hmmm.... Barack Obama was "chubby" as a child.
Mitt Romney "eats the same thing every day."
Gerald R. Ford "bit into a tamale with the corn husk still on" in 1976.
Bill Richardson is "a veteran of the Atkins and liquid diets who wears a double chin despite daily workouts."
Mike Huckabee — the anti-Richardson — once lost 110 pounds and now says "If you’re really overweight, some people just look at you and immediately sort of write you off. They just assume you’re undisciplined.”
Big problem for everyone: They have to eat the local delicacies whether they like it or not.
This make me want to dredge up the old Bob Dylan rap song — "I Shall Be Free":
Ha ha. Very hard to understand that last word from the recording. I've listened to that song hundreds of times — mostly back when I let Bob Dylan rearrange all my opinions circa 1966. And right now, this morning, is the first time I've known what the word was.
ADDED: John IMs: "hm, I wonder who the NYT is supporting based on the photos they chose for that food article." LOL.
Hmmm.... Barack Obama was "chubby" as a child.
Mitt Romney "eats the same thing every day."
Gerald R. Ford "bit into a tamale with the corn husk still on" in 1976.
Bill Richardson is "a veteran of the Atkins and liquid diets who wears a double chin despite daily workouts."
Mike Huckabee — the anti-Richardson — once lost 110 pounds and now says "If you’re really overweight, some people just look at you and immediately sort of write you off. They just assume you’re undisciplined.”
Big problem for everyone: They have to eat the local delicacies whether they like it or not.
This make me want to dredge up the old Bob Dylan rap song — "I Shall Be Free":
Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote,
He's a-runnin' for office on the ballot note.
He's out there preachin' in front of the steeple,
Tellin' me he loves all kinds-a people.
(He's eatin' bagels
He's eatin' pizza
He's eatin' chitlins
He's eatin' bullshit!)
Ha ha. Very hard to understand that last word from the recording. I've listened to that song hundreds of times — mostly back when I let Bob Dylan rearrange all my opinions circa 1966. And right now, this morning, is the first time I've known what the word was.
ADDED: John IMs: "hm, I wonder who the NYT is supporting based on the photos they chose for that food article." LOL.
Come on, Democrats, please, attack Hillary!
Kimberley A. Strassel looks for weakness in Hillary Clinton's campaign:
Sorry, Hillary made me say that.
Mr. Obama has come the closest to delving into Mrs. Clinton's past, though you need an Enigma machine to decode it. His campaign slogan is "Change We Can Believe In." (Translation: If you elect her, don't be surprised what she discovers in a box under a table.) He's mused about "character and judgment." (Translation: I don't trade in cattle futures.) Freudian psychology this is, Mortal Kombat it is not. Yet while the squeaky clean Mr. Obama may be best positioned to make a moral case against Mrs. Clinton, his own "politics of hope" has made it difficult to pull out the brass knuckles.This made me want to go study the video myself, but I couldn't find it. Is it just me, or is that video hard to find on line? Does she really act "flinching" and "defenseless" after Lazio's idiotic invasion-of-the-space? In any case, her "repeat act" about "the boys" ganging up on her failed miserably, so what is Strassel's point?
The rest of Mrs. Clinton's opponents fear an attack on her ethics would backfire, allowing her to paint herself as a female victim. You can bet they've studied the video of Rick Lazio, Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate opponent, invading her debate space, and Mrs. Clinton's ensuing performance as flinching, defenseless woman. (Mr. Lazio sank like a rock.) She has suggested she's not above a repeat act, dispatching Bill to warn that "the boys" were being awfully "tough" on his wife.
Some Democrats seem to be relying on Republicans to raise the character question. But liberal voters aren't listening to Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney, and if they were, they'd view GOP persecution as added reason to vote for her. Mrs. Clinton thinks so, having just unveiled an ad featuring Romney and McCain attacks.Come on, Democrats, please, attack Hillary!
The Democratic debate has grown more personal in past days, with the barbs hitting ever closer to home. Whether this carries into a tougher discussion on Mrs. Clinton's character, who knows? It may just be inevitable.
Sorry, Hillary made me say that.
"At the moment, Giuliani and fellow moderate Mitt Romney are attacking each other for being insufficiently Tancredo-esque."
Writes David Brooks:
[T]hey are participating in the greatest blown opportunity in recent political history. At its current nadir, the G.O.P. had been blessed with five heterodox presidential candidates who had the potential to modernize the party on a variety of fronts. They could be competing to do that, but instead they are competing to appeal to the narrowest slice of the old guard and flatter the most rigid orthodoxies of the Beltway interest groups.
November 22, 2007
Leopard.
Ah! I'm so happy with Leopard, which I've just installed in my MacBook, and I can boil my reason for happiness down to one word: Buttons!
Since January 2004, when I started blogging, I have had to keep Mozilla/Firefox open on my computer along with my preferred browser, Apple's Safari, because, in Blogger, Safari wouldn't display a "compose window" with a set of button-icons for adding links, putting text in italics, blocking and indenting quotes, and that sort of thing. Getting buttons in Blogger was something that meant far more to me than any cool innovations like "Time Machine" or "Cover Flow."
All these years I have been keeping 2 browsers open when I used my computer. To use only Safari, I'd have had to type in HTML code whenever I wrote a post. You might think I'd have just used Firefox alone, since it had such an important advantage, but there has always been something different about the way web pages look in Safari that made the other browser insufferable. I can't pinpoint what it was — it was subtle —but I couldn't force myself to switch.
And the Safari that came with Leopard is even cleaner and crisper looking — a big aesthetic improvement over the old Safari I loved.
I also get pleasure from removing a program that isn't Apple. I enjoy the ideological purity, I have to admit. I deeply believe that everything will work out better if I stay within the tender confines of what Apple has decided is good for me (though I do make exceptions, for example, to get those buttons).
Now that I'm purging the invader Foxfire from my MacBook, I'm also going to oust my oldest invader species, Microsoft Word. I'm going to switch to Apple's word processor Pages. This will end a relationship that began in 1985, when I got my first computer, a Mac 512. (I never had the first Mac, the 128, and I distinctly remember the exact tinge of my jealousy when a colleague acquired a Mac Plus. I replaced the 512 with a Mac Classic, which I still have, and which I enjoy firing up now and then, just to reminisce about what life was like with that tiny black and white screen. It's still the best place to play Tetris.)
With that first Mac, I had the Apple program MacWrite, which seemed wonderful compared to a typewriter, but it lacked one thing that I absolutely needed as a legal scholar: footnotes. Microsoft Word for Mac came out in 1985, so I was there for version 1. That was back before people started hating Microsoft. I loved it, because it did those footnotes for me. There was no option to stay with an Apple product back then, and I got so accustomed to Word that I never wanted to look at anything else. Actually, I never much liked the bulky improvements that were added, but it was like being married to it. Word got old and ugly, but I had committed.
But now that I'm getting Firefox out of here, I'm kicking out Microsoft too. For months, maybe years, Word has been suddenly shutting down without warning, which is a really irritating flaw when you write a lot and often have deadlines, as I do.
So, I'm reveling in purification this morning.
That said, I did just order a Kindle, which — just look at it — is so not Apple.
UPDATE: Safari crashes constantly!
Since January 2004, when I started blogging, I have had to keep Mozilla/Firefox open on my computer along with my preferred browser, Apple's Safari, because, in Blogger, Safari wouldn't display a "compose window" with a set of button-icons for adding links, putting text in italics, blocking and indenting quotes, and that sort of thing. Getting buttons in Blogger was something that meant far more to me than any cool innovations like "Time Machine" or "Cover Flow."
All these years I have been keeping 2 browsers open when I used my computer. To use only Safari, I'd have had to type in HTML code whenever I wrote a post. You might think I'd have just used Firefox alone, since it had such an important advantage, but there has always been something different about the way web pages look in Safari that made the other browser insufferable. I can't pinpoint what it was — it was subtle —but I couldn't force myself to switch.
And the Safari that came with Leopard is even cleaner and crisper looking — a big aesthetic improvement over the old Safari I loved.
I also get pleasure from removing a program that isn't Apple. I enjoy the ideological purity, I have to admit. I deeply believe that everything will work out better if I stay within the tender confines of what Apple has decided is good for me (though I do make exceptions, for example, to get those buttons).
Now that I'm purging the invader Foxfire from my MacBook, I'm also going to oust my oldest invader species, Microsoft Word. I'm going to switch to Apple's word processor Pages. This will end a relationship that began in 1985, when I got my first computer, a Mac 512. (I never had the first Mac, the 128, and I distinctly remember the exact tinge of my jealousy when a colleague acquired a Mac Plus. I replaced the 512 with a Mac Classic, which I still have, and which I enjoy firing up now and then, just to reminisce about what life was like with that tiny black and white screen. It's still the best place to play Tetris.)
With that first Mac, I had the Apple program MacWrite, which seemed wonderful compared to a typewriter, but it lacked one thing that I absolutely needed as a legal scholar: footnotes. Microsoft Word for Mac came out in 1985, so I was there for version 1. That was back before people started hating Microsoft. I loved it, because it did those footnotes for me. There was no option to stay with an Apple product back then, and I got so accustomed to Word that I never wanted to look at anything else. Actually, I never much liked the bulky improvements that were added, but it was like being married to it. Word got old and ugly, but I had committed.
But now that I'm getting Firefox out of here, I'm kicking out Microsoft too. For months, maybe years, Word has been suddenly shutting down without warning, which is a really irritating flaw when you write a lot and often have deadlines, as I do.
So, I'm reveling in purification this morning.
That said, I did just order a Kindle, which — just look at it — is so not Apple.
UPDATE: Safari crashes constantly!
Happy Thanksgiving.
Yes, it's Thanksgiving. I hope you're geared up properly to observe the occasion according to your family traditions or your quirky innovations. Here at the Althouse house, we're doing things our way. I think you know what that means.
Hint.
Hint.
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