Althouse: At the Willow Café...

July 29, 2012

At the Willow Café...

... I've got nothing to say.

57 comments:

chickelit said...: I've got nothing to say

Wallowing in sallow?; 7/29/12, 9:33 AM
madAsHell said...: President Barack Obama was set to announce an executive order aimed at improving the performance of African-American students as he addresses the Urban League Wednesday night.

1. Inherently racist.
2. Reeks of desperation.; 7/29/12, 9:44 AM
ricpic said...: This is the tree under which the boy with the green hair hides,
Witching bitching willow where The Great Gildersleeve presides.

Hey, I'm writing poetry almost as godawful as that bitch that blew Obama.; 7/29/12, 9:44 AM
madAsHell said...: Oh, yeah..here's the link:

http://stream.wsj.com/story/campaign-2012-continuous-coverage/SS-2-9156/SS-2-36558/; 7/29/12, 9:46 AM
edutcher said...: "That's the kind of tree Adam and Eve must've met under".

Ann Althouse said...

I've got nothing to say

That'll be the day.; 7/29/12, 9:47 AM
Anonymous said...: The conversation can branch out in different directions!; 7/29/12, 9:55 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: If you see something..

Say something.; 7/29/12, 10:19 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: A tree that veritably cries

CLIMB ME !

Which of course, you oblige. You must. You just must.

But that leaves the dog behind.

Who barks and barks and barks and barks and barks and eventually you go, "well climb up then" and it does. The dog actually climbs the tree to be with you. And there you are stuck at the lower branches of a tree holding your dog steady because the dummkopf keeps trying to stand up. Doesn't get the whole crouch like a tiger thing.

Sometimes cottonwoods are dogclimbingworthy like that too.; 7/29/12, 10:23 AM
Hagar said...: I am thinking that Cherokee Liz went on a rant against "the rich," and it was a scripted rant.
Obama went farther than that and it was impromptu. Not just the text, but the tone seemed aimed at anyone "acting white," regardless of the actual hue of their skins. And this from about the "whitiest" "black" person I've seen.
I think this guy really must have problems with himself as much or more as with those "who think they are so smart and hard-working.".; 7/29/12, 10:24 AM
chickelit said...: AllieOop said...
The conversation can branch out in different directions!

Branched comment polymerization instead of linear straight chain catenation!; 7/29/12, 10:36 AM
Anonymous said...: Yeah, whatever you said!; 7/29/12, 10:37 AM
chickelit said...: @Allie: Sex, Blogs & Videotapes; 7/29/12, 10:46 AM
Robert J. said...: Anapestic dimeter.; 7/29/12, 10:47 AM
Paco Wové said...: Down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet.
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I was young and foolish, and with her did not agree.; 7/29/12, 10:54 AM
chickelit said...: Anapestic dimeter.

Anabaptist girth; 7/29/12, 10:58 AM
Lyssa said...: If we're having a girl, we plan to name her Willow. We find out a week from Tuesday!

(If it's a boy, Clark.); 7/29/12, 11:07 AM
rhhardin said...: The Willow Song

I don't see the Alfred Deller version.

This lady overpowers the lute a little, as if the song were about the singer. It's the soprano conceit.; 7/29/12, 11:18 AM
Robert J. said...: > Anapestic dimeter.
>
> Anabaptist girth.

Mormonian worth.; 7/29/12, 11:23 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: The Leopard slug sex thing linked on insty is not funny in itself. It's interesting but not funny. The comments go a bit awry. The page says, "more detailed information after the jump" but on my browser there is no jump, there is a link, but no jump under a fold, or 'more' or 'page 2' or 'view as single page', just a link. The link goes to another similar page with the same photograph except slightly larger.

The comments on the new page go as expected, much as the first but a little more amusing and more of them. But then comments go into a site-specific feedback thing where people rate by tagging the article from a set of responses. In facebook fashion, then internet banality takes over and you get a string of responses like this:

Tammy says Leopard Slug sex is EW
Donna says Leopard Slug sex is EW
Sandy says Leopard Slug sex is LOL
David says Leopard Slug sex is WTF
Wandas says says Leopard Slug sex is EW
Doug says Leopard Slug sex is EW
Andy says Leopard Slug sex is WTF

And so on for fifty such stock responses and the inanity of all that hit with the force of a mundanity-A-bomb that had me laughing so hard I could not stop. I do get hopeless sometimes giggling like a fucking idiot, I hate myself for that, but some things are just so stupid they're unspeakably hilarious and all those people being that exactly flat had me helplessly seized with the funneh.; 7/29/12, 11:39 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Pussy Willows, Cattails.; 7/29/12, 11:42 AM
Farmer said...: ricpic said... Hey, I'm writing poetry almost as godawful as that bitch that blew Obama.

You guys who are always complaining about the awful, hateful left: anything to say about this?; 7/29/12, 11:52 AM
MadisonMan said...: On a tree by a river, a little tom-tit sang

Willow. Tit-Willow. Tit-Willow.

And I said to him dicky-bird, why do you sit, singing

Willow. tit-Willow. Tit-willow.

(etc.); 7/29/12, 11:55 AM
Patrick said...: Great names, Lyssa.

You are much bolder than my wife and I. We'd chosen names for a boy and girl for each of our kids, but we told no one. We wanted no reactions (both of our mothers are adept at expressing disapproval without speaking). Especially for our 3rd, for whom we'd chosen an obscure old family name in the event we'd had a girl (we did not). The reactiosn we got when we told our families what would have been were quite funny!

Hope all goes well.; 7/29/12, 11:59 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I liked the movie Perfect Sense (2011)...

Its a look at what might happen when a love story couple is forced to cope with loss just short of the ultimate.

Without giving too much away.

Fat and Flour.; 7/29/12, 12:04 PM
ad hoc said...: Congratulations, Lyssa

I think Willow is a lovely name. And Clark is a great name too.

Best wishes.; 7/29/12, 12:23 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/29/12, 12:33 PM
KCFleming said...: Good luck, Lyssa, and the names are great.

"On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?"; 7/29/12, 12:36 PM
Anonymous said...: Chickie, that blog post of yours got me just a little bit hot.....

W/V no kidding, "kuchen". You know what happens when kuchen is served, dontcha?;); 7/29/12, 12:37 PM
Anonymous said...: What is a Will o' the Wisp? Lovely name by the way, Willow.; 7/29/12, 12:41 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I'm back.

Actually, I never went anywhere. But for about 24 hours I've been unable to comment. Something screwy with my computer prevented me from accessing any google site.

While not a problem for most things, the word verification pictures come from google. As such, instead of pictures I just saw the words Visual Verification. But it still expected me to type the words it thought it sent me.

So, please just pretend I added some incredibly witty comment to each of the posts for the last day, and we'll call it even.; 7/29/12, 1:22 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I was a willow last night in my dream
I bent down over a clear running stream
Sang you the song that I heard up above
And you kept me alive with your sweet flowing love; 7/29/12, 1:25 PM
chickelit said...: AllieOop said...
What is a Will o' the Wisp?

Sumpfurzen

Methane, phosphine (PH3) witha a little arsine (AsH3) for odor.

Your buddy Ritmo got me thinking about Will o' the Wisp once: link; 7/29/12, 1:32 PM
chickelit said...: "The Wind In The Willows" was highly underrated. Disney picked up on some of it (Mr Toad) and so did the Monty Python troupe; 7/29/12, 1:35 PM
jungatheart said...: Little Tommy Tittlemouse lived in a little house,
He caught fishes in other men's ditches.; 7/29/12, 1:41 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: A coincidence..

I was just mentioning the Perfect Sense (2011) in a comment above, when I thought I load some pics to my Flickr page... among them a screen capture of Mary-Louise Parker doing that thing she does with her eyes.... but I haven't saved the name of movie where she made the look that fascinated me to screen capture it... So, I go to her Netflix page but it turns out I've seen nine movies were she plays a role... so I thought, if tagging the pictures/screen captures is important to you, you got to do the work... I'm lazy sometimes.

So, by process of elimination - short hair and wearing a fur collar jacket I started playing the trailers.. it turns out the screen capture came from the The Fives Senses (1999)

Small coincidence.. I know.. but its huge when you live alone.; 7/29/12, 1:54 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I guess the trigger for remembering the Mary-Louise Parker screen grab was the how to bitchface post earlier today.

I dont like looking at people in the face... it might have to do a fear of what I might read in the face looking back at me... but I think I have to look at people in the face, otherwise... I dont know.

I'm trying to remember something rh said.; 7/29/12, 2:11 PM
Anonymous said...: Lem, I always wonder about those people who can't make eye contact.; 7/29/12, 2:15 PM
Saint Croix said...: I'm pitching an aborton book to Adam Bellow at HarperCollins. He's a cool guy. We've been going back and forth about a humor book I wrote called Right-Wing Sex. Unfortunately I wrote it in the Bush era so it's really out of date. Funny book, though. Anyway Adam has shown zero interest in an abortion book, but I keep trying. Here's my pitch. Let me know what you think! (And apologies for the length).

The Abortion/Baby Paradox

At the heart of our fight over abortion is a paradox. It’s in regard to how we talk about the unborn.

Are we happy about our pregnancy? Then we say “baby.” We call her Susie or Sam. We go to a baby doctor and look at a 3-D ultrasound and we marvel at our little one. We happily feel her kick in our uterus. We play Mozart for her to hear. We buy a baby crib and have a baby shower with all our friends. The baby hasn’t been born yet, but she’s already a part of our human family. She’s alive, she’s a baby, she’s one of us. We love her.

But what if we’re not happy about the pregnancy? What if the father has disappeared, and we’re all alone, and we want this pregnancy to go away? Then we say “fetus” or “embryo.” It’s an unplanned pregnancy. It’s a mistake. I’m not married and I don’t want to do this by myself. I want a do-over. In this situation, we deny the humanity of the unborn. We don’t want to feel any kicks or look at any 3-D ultrasound. We’re not having a baby shower. Nobody is getting married. And we certainly don’t want to hear any Christian talk about love. It’s my body, it’s my choice, it’s none of your business!

So that’s the dichotomy. This is the feminist choice that the Supreme Court has given us. We can choose option 1 or option 2. It is up to us. And yet, from the baby’s point of view, the paradox remains.; 7/29/12, 2:25 PM
Saint Croix said...: To protect our abortion choices, we have to accept two diametrically opposed realities. We have to accept that a baby in the womb is a baby. We congratulate the happy pregnant moms, and we buy them presents and help them think up names. Simultaneously, we have to tell our unhappy pregnant friends that it’s just tissue, it’s no big deal, and it’s a simple procedure to get rid of it.

Our abortion rules require us to accept alternate realities. Happy moms go to an obstetrician in a hospital, while unhappy moms go to an abortionist in a clinic. And the cognitive dissonance involved divides us as a society, and keeps our abortion law unsettled and unhappy.

Pro-lifers respond to the paradox like they are singing a Beatles song. “Love is all you need.” If we love our pregnancy and have happy feelings, then all the unwanted babies disappear. There are no unwanted babies, since we love them all. That resolves the paradox, does it not?

But there are, of course, other paradoxes. If the unborn is a baby, isn’t an abortion a homicide? And yet even a pro-lifer might imagine some abortions that would not qualify as a homicide. For instance, what about the IUD? Most of us think of an IUD as birth control. And yet if life begins at conception, then an IUD works like an abortion. It stops a pregnancy by stopping the zygote from attaching to the wall of the uterus. If a zygote is a baby, then this is an abortion, right? So are we supposed to define an IUD as a homicide weapon?

Or what about a researcher at a fertility clinic who accidentally drops a tray of test tubes? He has demolished hundreds of microscopic human beings. Should we charge him with multiple counts of negligent homicide?

Or what about rape? Pro-lifers routinely say that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape. But that makes no sense if the unborn is actually a baby. A baby is an innocent person. Did the baby rape you? No, the baby did not. A baby is not a rapist. Thus, if abortion is a homicide, you’re still killing an innocent baby. But if it’s not a homicide for rape victims to have an abortion, then it’s not a homicide for other women whose birth control has failed to have one. Is it?

Our abortion fight exists because of a paradox enshrined in Roe v. Wade. According to the Supreme Court, we just have to accept the duality of happy moms who love their babies while we also accept all the unhappy women who remove tissue from their uterus. We have to accept dual realities, even as they conflict and create a moral and ethical paradox for our society.

But what if there is a consensus to be found? In The Abortion/Baby Paradox, the pro-lifer Saint Croix will explore the paradox of abortion, and seek to find areas where there is agreement and consensus. For instance, the homicide issue is actually one of the easier disputes to resolve, since we have laws on the books in regard to when people die. And it’s the same rule in all 50 states. Yes, red states and blue states all agree in regard to when people die. So there is a consensus and agreement that might be found, if we care enough about the issue to look.; 7/29/12, 2:25 PM
William said...: If the Democratic Party were a tree, it would be a willow: more brances than roots......Willow is a fine name for a girl, but what if she doesn't turn out to be a slender girl with a wistful expression. Willow Abzug. Willow O'Donnell. Willow Albright. Willow Merkel. You see the problem.; 7/29/12, 2:31 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Lem, I always wonder about those people who can't make eye contact.

What do you wander?; 7/29/12, 2:37 PM
LordSomber said...: Willows make for mean switches.; 7/29/12, 2:39 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Just to be clear..

I didn't say I cant..

I said I don't like it.

I think there is a difference.; 7/29/12, 2:44 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: I decided that I love this tree.; 7/29/12, 2:48 PM
Anonymous said...: I always wonder about people who say they don't like making eye contact.

Just teasing Lem.; 7/29/12, 3:02 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: It's a pop-up card forest tree.

Anything could go on around a tree like this. Doors, windows, elves, mushrooms, gnomes, fairies, snails, lizards, fruit, Hobbits, doll house interiors, ICBM silos, Druids, Black Forest coo-coo clock birds, squirrels, insects, birds, reptiles.

I did one like this once, several sort of like this but one very like this, but didn't take it very far. I'm ashamed of that. Very little effort. Like calling it in. Just a tree and a bunny and a path drawn around it and birthday recognition, nothing at all to stir the imagination or even show any imagination, nothing to amuse, nothing.

This tree is better inspiration.

I took the idea and modeled my tree from a tree similar to this this on the opening pages ofBrava Strega Nona! In that tree, the branches are filled with doves and oval portraits of Nona's relatives. It's a family tree. But my copy compares poorly with Sabuda's excellent original.; 7/29/12, 3:12 PM
Kylos said...: I think strabismus may have something to do with avoiding eye contact. It can be physically difficult to maintain eye contact with strabismus.; 7/29/12, 3:17 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/29/12, 3:24 PM
AllenS said...: My first slingshot came from a young willow. Back then you could go to a gas station and get a used red tire tube. Those were the best, and a lot better than the black tubes. Slingshot in the back pocket, front pockets full of rocks. Probably can't do that nowadays.; 7/29/12, 6:09 PM
rhhardin said...: Bogus Bill Keller editorial, causing indignation at the NYT.

Both it and the real NYT are bores, but it's nice that they're upset.

Via Tim Blair.; 7/29/12, 8:02 PM
rhhardin said...: Doberman dogwatching.; 7/29/12, 8:21 PM
Penny said...: Awwwww, Vicki.

It's called temptation, and we can't give into it.

Or so says your dad. :(

Rh, you are one lucky son of a gun to have such a sweet girl.; 7/29/12, 9:08 PM
Saint Croix said...: Bogus Bill Keller editorial, causing indignation at the NYT.

That's pretty impressive-looking forgery, at least from the typeface. The editorial itself is sloppy and confusing, right from the first sentence.

AS rumors build about the potential financial blockade against the New York Times by Visa, Mastercard, and American Express for hosting U.S. government cables published by WikiLeaks

Huh? What rumors? What finanical blockade? What does it mean to "host U.S. government cables"?

The "Keller" editorial jumps around from issue to issue, like a journalist with ADD. Throughout the story the author assumes its readers have knowledge that many of us do not have. It's bad journalism and verges on a kind of incoherency.

I haven't read Keller much, so I have no idea if he writes like this. Apparently some people were fooled, including some New York Times people.

But what's the point? You want to destroy the reputation of the New York Times, by publishing a fraud in its name? Is that actually logical, or coherent?

If Wikileaks is innocent of any crime or bad behavior, engaging in a fraud on the public is an odd way to prove it. Why would you believe any fact that Assange has to say, about anything? Who believes Wikileaks now? They are officially synonomous with dishonesty. Whatever was left of the Wikileaks credibility is shot to hell.; 7/29/12, 9:28 PM
Penny said...: "But what's the point?"

Good question!

Course it sure is fun watching fact and fiction collide. Makes for some dynamite fireworks.; 7/29/12, 10:19 PM
Saint Croix said...: That's weird, the second half of my abortion pitch disappeared. Could have sworn I posted it.

Anyway, it's not really necessary to read the whole pitch. My real question is what do you think of my framing the book as a paradox? What I want to do is explore all the paradoxes in our abortion fight.

For instance, many pro-life people say that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape. But if abortion is a homicide, why would you allow that? The baby didn't rape you. The baby's innocent. So if we allow abortion in cases of rape, we must not think it's a homicide. That's a paradox for pro-lifers.

Or consider a pregnant woman who is attacked on the street. Her pregnancy is aborted by force. She cries out for justice. "My baby was killed!" Now it's the pro-choice side that is faced with a paradox. Do we acknowledge that a baby died? Do we call this crime "murder" or "manslaughter"? If you do, then don't you have to outlaw the killing of the baby when the mom wants to do it?

So pro-lifers struggle with allowing abortion in cases of rape, while pro-choice people struggle with the women who are forcibly aborted. Or even women who suffer a miscarriage. Should we treat a miscarriage like a death in the family? But if it's a death in the family, then doesn't that cause stress in the argument that abortion doesn't kill anybody? An abortion, after all, is a forced miscarriage.

To me, abortion is a paradox because of all the different standards we have in regard to the baby's status. And as long as the baby's status is unresolved, our abortion fights will continue.

Is she a person or property? Is it even fair to call a microscopic zygote a "she"? But of course as the unborn develops, and becomes more baby-like, the homicide argument becomes more and more compelling. And we go all the way to Carhart, and the infanticides that are unreported by our media. And don't forget the murder prosecution against an abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell, for killing newborns in his clinic.

Is abortion a homicide? How do we resolve that? How do we even think about it?

Of course I think one very helpful way is to look at our death statutes, which are our rules in regard to when people die. I love our death statutes, since all 50 states are in agreement. Yay, consensus! Red states and blue states, in perfect harmony!

So maybe we can find some consensus in our abortion fight, after all. I know that seems impossible, particularly when people (like me!) get so angry over the issue.; 7/29/12, 10:56 PM
Penny said...: Consensus sucks for just about everyone.

It's entire purpose is to release the extreme pressures of opposing forces.

And to allow us to talk about the weather again.

And I DO mean "weather"!

Not climate change. Cause that convo is gonna build up some pressure of its own. Some think "life or death".; 7/30/12, 12:00 AM
Saint Croix said...: And I should thank Althouse for her argument that it's a paradox for pro-lifers to want to punish abortion doctors, while they do not want to punish aborting moms.

She and Freeman have a good fight about it here.

Althouse writes...

Why won't she imprison the women? Under her reasoning, they should get life without parole or the death penalty. Nothing "disingenuous" about that. She challenges my position on the ground that if it's murder, it must be treated like other murders. If you hire somebody to perform a murder for you, you are as guilty as the person who wields the murder weapon. It's murder for hire.

It is a paradox. And there is a paradox on the other side, too.

The idea to frame an abortion book around the notion of a paradox just popped into my head yesterday. I didn't know where that framing for an abortion book came from. And I woke up this morning and I realized Althouse has been beating that drum.

So a big thank you to Althouse for the argument (and to Freeman for fighting back!); 7/30/12, 7:02 AM