Althouse: At the Late Afternoon Café...

June 14, 2013

At the Late Afternoon Café...

... you can talk about anything you want.

68 comments:

Sigivald said...: How 'bout that local sports team?; 6/14/13, 4:50 PM
edutcher said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 4:59 PM
edutcher said...: Ooooh, interesting.

If that's fake (kidding), where did you get the materials?

Something else to make you feel good, Der Fuhrer also has the goods on your kids, too.

"He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."; 6/14/13, 5:01 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 5:03 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 5:06 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: After picking up all of the severed apple and maple tree limbs, rosebush cuttings and juniper tree limbs; pruning the suckers from the apple trees and loading into same cart, mowing the lawns and turning on the irrigation sprinklers throughout the property......

I am now relaxing on my deck in the shade under the wild plum trees listening to THIS through the wireless speakers, surfing the net and sipping some Glenlivit with just a tiny bit of ice.

Meanwhile cooking crockpot southern style ribs. Salad already made and just waiting for The Dumbplumber (my hubby) to come home and joine me.

Eat your heart out. Bwahahahaha.

}-D

Life is good. Enjoy it while you have it!!!

Shoot... can't make the links work on this laptop. Last try. I need a refill; 6/14/13, 5:09 PM
Mogget said...: Would love a recipe for crockpot ribs if you'd care to share yours.

Would also like to know if computers associated with the Romney campaign show evidence of intrusion and if the evidence is similar to that found on Atkinson's computer.; 6/14/13, 5:09 PM
edutcher said...: I'll bet they do.; 6/14/13, 5:16 PM
AllenS said...: If you're a female Marine from Camp Leatherneck, don't ever walk behind those bushes to relieve yourself. It't not the Taliban that you have to worry about.; 6/14/13, 5:20 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: It'd be fun to create a transparency layer for each bush then after refilling the space vacated in the original, manipulate them, copy them, resize them, move them around, and rearrange them into new sizes and shapes and a whole new botanical composition as if scale is completely flexible and mobility possible. Then run it in sequence and have a giant bug walk across pause and admire the new arrangement. In under twenty-five frames and 600 MB. Did I say fun? Yeah, fun. So do that.

But you know what? Lurvely as it is, it is so terribly composed. There is a heavy hand at that. I have an eye for these things you know. Comes from studying thousands of Takashi Amano style aquariums. And from living in Japan as a lad. The thing about them is that they are like above world landscapes depicted underwater using underwater plants and making that look natural. Japanese are very good at this sort of thing. The arrangement is lovely but I'm faulting it for being labored. It's a Western thing. Would you like to see? Would you, huh? Would you, huh? Would you, huh, huh, huh, huh?; 6/14/13, 5:28 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Extremely labored stones to appear spontaneous. It takes incredible preparation in appearing this random and spontaneous.; 6/14/13, 5:40 PM
mesquito said...: Stopped by the homestead after work Monday. Ma was vomiting and in great pain. She blamed a lunch she had on a shopping trip. After about thirty minutes she consented to be driven to the ER. A very long 50 miles, her moaning the whole way. Gallstones, and a 100 mile ambulance ride to San Antonio.

Stones extricated yesterday, gall bladder removed this morning. Enormous hospital. Dad, increasing befuddled, might find it if he went alone, but would get lost in its miles of corridors.

Siblings scattered across half a continent. Constant phone calls and text messages.; 6/14/13, 5:47 PM
rhhardin said...: Catbird singing (video) this morning.

The three mimics that have extended songs are the Catbird, Brown Thrasher and Mockingbird.

They strongly tend to repeat each mimic'd song once, twice and three times, respectively.

This guy does it once, and on top of it throws in a meow.; 6/14/13, 5:49 PM
ricpic said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 6:39 PM
ricpic said...: That Bower, It Needs...Something

When all the world is thick with irregular organic edges
The mind longs for the relief of flat planes, hard edges.
While others ooh and ah over nature's pristine station
Some secretly wish the scenery included...a gas station.; 6/14/13, 6:48 PM
Dante said...: I am now relaxing on my deck in the shade under the wild plum trees listening to THIS through the wireless speakers, surfing the net and sipping some Glenlivit with just a tiny bit of ice.

So how long can you stay in the mood? Sounds really wonderful, DBQ. Enjoy!; 6/14/13, 7:14 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I like Dennis Eckersley as color commentator a lot more than Jerry Remy.

I was going going going back back back back, never mind, to say its like the difference between Tim Russert and David Gregory but that would be wrong.; 6/14/13, 8:03 PM
harrogate said...: DBQ---Hells Yes to all of that!; 6/14/13, 8:14 PM
rcocean said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 9:20 PM
rcocean said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 9:21 PM
rcocean said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 9:22 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 9:23 PM
Anonymous said...: Had one of the best Wisconsin fish fries I've ever eaten in Black River Falls,WI. with a ice cold Sand Creek Brewery beer,mmmm.

I also am no longer a tick virgin, found one on the nape of my neck yesterday, this is tick country, so gross.; 6/14/13, 9:25 PM
chickelit said...: Inga said...
Had one of the best Wisconsin fish fries I've ever eaten in Black River Falls,WI. with a ice cold Sand Creek Brewery beer,mmmm.

Inga said earlier...
I do not drink alcohol, I drink coffee, sometimes I do take ice in my coffee, thanks.
4/19/13, 5:12 PM Link

I am so glad you foreswore those vows Inga...because, by God, a real German woman does not give up beer. :); 6/14/13, 9:38 PM
Tim said...: Giants shut out the Braves; Mad Bum throws seven innings, two hits, ten Ks.

Back on track?

Hoping so!; 6/14/13, 9:38 PM
Michael K said...: Winston had his ears cleaned and had a bath today. He was so eager to get home afterward that I have a bruise on my arm from the door handle on he vet's door.

Basset hounds have a lot of ear problems but his were pretty good.; 6/14/13, 9:48 PM
Anonymous said...: Chickie, it was a gluten free beer:); 6/14/13, 9:49 PM
chickelit said...: @Inga: OTOH, your stomach issues might have resolved which is cause for celebration.; 6/14/13, 9:51 PM
Anonymous said...: Yes they have pretty much resolved, thankfully.; 6/14/13, 9:58 PM
chickelit said...: @Inga: Gut; 6/14/13, 10:07 PM
Anonymous said...: Dankeschoen liebchen.; 6/14/13, 10:10 PM
pm317 said...: See, there was a story about an undisclosed affair rocking David Cameron and 10 Downing Street on Drudge I think, a few days ago. I saw it and thought, what is the point of this article.

Now Murdoch is divorcing his wife Wendi.

It seems Tony Blair is close to the Murdoch family and especially to Mrs. Murdoch, Wendi.

Now your turn to connect the dots.

I don't care what or who they are. Just putting together a puzzle that appeared somewhere that puzzled me.; 6/14/13, 10:11 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: "talk about anything you want" is incitement to treason after the rendering of conspiracy, is it not.

I ask again: IS IT NOT???

If capitals and three question marks won't break through to you nothing will.; 6/14/13, 10:14 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: "You got to learn not to talk to nuns that way" etc.

Jake. Elwood. That fuck town.; 6/14/13, 10:18 PM
Tim said...: This will be interesting. Accused bank robber wants NSA phone records for his defense.; 6/14/13, 10:22 PM
MadisonMan said...: Siblings scattered across half a continent. Constant phone calls and text messages.

mesquito -- I hope she has a quick recovery. Been through it with my Mom, although it wasn't gallstones.

Skype was a real help.; 6/14/13, 10:23 PM
Anonymous said...: So:

I Spent a large Portion of the Day Minutely Stitching Artificial Wings onto Wingless Flies. It Requires Incredible Focus, Both Mentally and Ocularly. The Flies Do Not Appreciate the Help: they have Accepted their Wingless State as a By-product of Nature, Wings Detached by Predators who Write Russian Fiction and Drink Tea with Silted Grounds.

Russian Writers Detach the Wings from Flies Because it is a Physical Metaphor for the Freedom they Believe they are Denied and the Societal Mechanics that Deny It. Russian Writers will Detach the Wings from Flies Physically, yet American Fiction Writers will Shy from such Commitment. American Fiction Writers will Write about those Who Remove the Wings from Flies and Place it in the Seventies: Nixon will be There, as a Radio Excerpt or an Afternoon Television Reference. They Cannot Imagine Themselves Removing the Wings from Flies but They Can See Themselves Killing Spiders: Spiders Keep a Natural Balance, Productive, Functioning.

The Choice between Killing Flies or Spiders Places One in a Specific Context, Culturally and Politically. Although Delicate on the Skin, Flies are Drawn to Decay: Spiders are Drawn to Life as Substance. How we Interact with Insects Tells Us about Our Souls.

Reference: "but she could see nothing through her tears, was crushed by
her shame, and felt herself, not Olga Ivanovna, not an artist, but a little insect."

Tiny Mites are Forever on the Skin of All of Us. We Choose the Insects we Will Reject by their Autonomy and their Persistence.

The Ant and the Aphid will Both Covet the Same Flower: the Russian Writer and the American will Choose Sides that Reinforce their View.

When Stitching the Wings of Flies onto Humans the Circle is Complete, and Requires a Minute Steady Hand.

The Fly's Wing is the Human's Eyelid: it Allows the Lift, and we Are Not Aware of the Flutter of Wing or Lid that allows us To Be Aloft.

Sewing the Wings of Crows onto Robins Suffers Much the Same Ambiguity, but the Thread and Needle are Very Much the Same.; 6/14/13, 10:29 PM
Anonymous said...: Lo, For I have Removed the Scales from My Eyes and have Painstakingly Stitched Those Scales into a Tiny Tiny Purse. Into This Purse I have Put my Moments of Shame and Regret and Fear and I have Fed this Purse of Scales to the Crows. Now the King Crow Understands Me, and We Make Eye Contact. This Eye Contact is But a Moment but is Forever in the Universe. The Crow Now -- sadly -- Understands doubt: this is The Crow that will Bring Weakness to Its Species.; 6/14/13, 10:40 PM
Anonymous said...: The Squirrel Paused on the Tree Branch only Understands in the Context of Fight or Flight: Doubt is Always Flight.

The Cat is Indoors, Watching through the Window.; 6/14/13, 10:43 PM
Anonymous said...: The Spider in the Bathtub does Not Fear the Cat, though the Cat will bring its End.

To Graft the Spider to the Mouse is the Endless Goal.; 6/14/13, 10:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Kerouac wrote "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

Spiders Explain Humanity by Scaring us About What is True.; 6/14/13, 10:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Ewing.; 6/14/13, 10:50 PM
Anonymous said...: It was the cat that brought the tick into the house on his long white fur, dropped it onto my neck when he gave me cat kisses.

I'm guessing.; 6/14/13, 10:52 PM
Anonymous said...: All of This might Make More Sense if you Have the Betamax300 Decoder Ring.; 6/14/13, 10:56 PM
Anonymous said...: The Fly with No Wings Meets the Fly with No Eyes with Ambiguity. It is Forever Thus.; 6/14/13, 10:59 PM
Anonymous said...: The More I Explain the More I Confuse: The Child Who Pulls the Wings from the Fly has Both Learned a Great Truth and has Taken On a Life-Long Regret. If We Lived Underwater many of These Fears would be Filtered Through Our Gills.; 6/14/13, 11:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Underwater we Would Not Care about the Russian Sister.; 6/14/13, 11:07 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Tonight's betamax comes to you via a generous grant from Nature's George Page.; 6/14/13, 11:10 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Can pollo do George Page?; 6/14/13, 11:16 PM
Anonymous said...: If the Althouse Amazon Portal Offered a Betamax3000 Decoder Ring I would Gladly Purchase it so that I Might Understand what I Write.

Thoughts are the Cat's Scratching Post of the Soul.; 6/14/13, 11:20 PM
edutcher said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/14/13, 11:20 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Let's play Johnny Carson.

Titus ... unfashionable twat ... ?; 6/14/13, 11:23 PM
edutcher said...: Ann should like this: 2 sailors may not be discharged in sex assault cases because of Choom's "unlawful command influence".; 6/14/13, 11:23 PM
JOB said...: Lawn Party: Evensong

All this fine, fair talk in the blue smoke
Of dusk –
With the voices of children before
A god’s image, we carry on a while,
And in careful hands, wine
Cupped in glasses, swirled, examined,
Gives us our richest emblems, a syntax,
Even the glimpse of our next sentence;
And nothing moves off base, except
We are confronted with heaven’s
Imperceptible slip – a light cough
Between thoughts to gather more from:
The coming stars, the livestock in the fields,
The appearance of fireflies, the invisible
Order of things only tinctured by time,
Mellowed though by the sweet hint
Of autumn in the air – smoke from leaves
Burning in plundered piles somewhere
Down the valley where our voices fall,
Drawn to their hidden distance, as by
An irretrievable certainty.; 6/14/13, 11:44 PM
bagoh20 said...: I was just looking back through some recent posts and took another look at that Rockwell painting. I noticed that the faces, the expressions, and the clothes are what get me, and what makes his stuff work so well. He had a way of creating iconic characters, I assume from scratch. Each character in the painting is so perfectly executed that we can almost instantly guess who they are as people, what they do, what their mannerisms would be, and even what their personality would be like. It's a story with character development all built right in and explained in an instant of time.

I'm no expert on art, so maybe this is common, but it's what I really get out of Rockwell, and I just noticed tonight why I like his work. I don't find it cliche, because it seems to me that he created these characters or at least gave them life in our culture rather than just placing them in his work. Some of the cultural archetypes that live in our minds were probably born through the ubiquity of his work in our media for decades.; 6/14/13, 11:48 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: It's Hip To Be Square.; 6/14/13, 11:58 PM
Mark said...: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/351121/trust-peter-kirsanow

Ask not for whom the black helicopter comes /
It comes for thee.; 6/15/13, 12:00 AM
bagoh20 said...: Nice, JOB.
~
Hey do you guys have fireflies in Wisconsin? We don't out here in SoCal, but I grew up with them in Western PA. After being away from them for so long, it's almost like a fairy tale that they even exist. What a magical animal. That's one of those things that recommends a God for an agnostic like me. Why would serendipity fall upon such a wonderful combination of chemistry, biology, energy, and beauty? And why would this mere accident always makes us smile, no matter if it was the first time or millionth time we've seen it?

That's pretty cool for an accident.; 6/15/13, 12:03 AM
Almost Ali said...: bagoh20,

Regarding Norman Rockwell's characters, they were physical composites of real people/models. I know this because my aunt posed for him several times, but you'd never know it was her in the final product. Maybe the hair, the nose, the chin, but another girl's eyes, cheek bones, and yet another girl's whatever.

Bottom line; he didn't want to make any one person famous, essentially because of the subsequent co$t$. So he kept everyone generic, and affordable.; 6/15/13, 12:11 AM
bagoh20 said...: And it's hard to deny there is a devil at work when kids like me and my friends would pull off their wings and wear their little glowing torsos like jewelry at night after a game of hide and go seek. A game that I played many many times, but never remember ever seeing one formally end. Sure at some point the most impatient one would yell "olly olly outs in free!", but it seems that there was never a game ended where everybody came back.; 6/15/13, 12:13 AM
a SWVA liz said...: Thank you Chip,super. Loved textured gardens. Love Japanese gardens, viewing stones. Love Huntington gardens, cacti gardens. Aquariums, terrariums. You Chip, Althouse, Gardens, all have soul.; 6/15/13, 12:15 AM
a SWVA liz said...: Thank you Chip,super. Loved textured gardens. Love Japanese gardens, viewing stones. Love Huntington gardens, cacti gardens. Aquariums, terrariums. You Chip, Althouse, Gardens, all have soul.; 6/15/13, 12:16 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Well other-than-last-off no beta would use "max" within proximity of usage were it, that usage, sound.

Self-refutation again fails to satisfy.

Ironically.; 6/15/13, 1:28 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Btamax wrote:
Kerouac wrote "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
That is some really bad poetry.
'falbulous'? So he needed three more syllables? And how were these roman candles fabulous?
Who knew that spiders explode?; 6/15/13, 2:39 AM
Saint Croix said...: This is like yin and yang.

Obama is asked a question about sexual assaults in the military. And he says...

“The bottom line is: I have no tolerance for this. I expect consequences. So I don’t just want more speeches or awareness programs or training, but ultimately folks look the other way. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this, they’ve got to be held accountable — prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”

Navy Judge Cmdr. Marcus Fulton ruled during pretrial hearings in two sexual assault cases — U.S. vs. Johnson and U.S. vs. Fuentes — that comments made by Obama as commander in chief would unduly influence any potential sentencing...

The judge’s pretrial ruling means that if either defendant is found guilty, whether by a jury or a military judge, they cannot receive a bad conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge.; 6/15/13, 3:59 AM
Phunctor said...: @bagoh20

The multiverse may usefully be cast[1] as a vibrating blob in which everything that can happen does happen. This view makes "why did this happen instead of that" go away, but "why is there something instead of nothing" remains. That something is a doozie though.

It leaves me smiling in just /that/ way. I call it a Samuel Morse moment: "What hath God wrought?"

[1] By which I mean nothing in this view contradicts observation..; 6/15/13, 7:23 AM
66 said...: Briefly interrupting this comment thread to rev up the paranoiacs a bit more. Has anyone heard of the Internet of Things? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things). Read the wiki entry. Prism is just the beginning . . .; 6/15/13, 8:40 AM
ken in tx said...: Bago, there was a Rockwell exhibit in Atlanta a few years ago. I really enjoyed it.

There are several species of fireflies and lightening bugs. Some of them are cannibalistic on other species. They imitate the mating flash of their prey and then attack. There is a rare species that only lives in one valley of the South Carolina Blue Ridge. They fly for only a few days in the spring. They fly in a flowing mass about one foot off the ground. It’s very enchanting to see.; 6/15/13, 11:09 AM