June 25, 2013

"Things I Learned in My Twenty-Four Hour Althouse Comment Withdrawal."

From betamax3000 (at 12 midnight):
• the Shakes -- they Get Real Bad;

• Twenty-Four Hours is A Long Period of Time When You Deny Yourself;

• the Baby Spiders are Real;

• I Love the Commenters: Read All the Posts, All Day, Tongue Bound, and Realized in Retrospect that -- Perhaps -- I Occasionally Suck Too Much Oxygen From the Room;

• Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

• the Scientology "No Fear' Paradigm Crosses Neuropaths with Cruel Neutrality: when I get it Down to Four Paragraphs I Will Thrust it Sideways Into a Thread about Gabe Kaplan;

• it -- Technically -- is Not a Burning Sensation.
I do not discount the role of  El Pollo Raylan's summoning: "Beta come back!" — which took us to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.

Lem sighed relief:
I think I can say tonight that we are in Betamax debt. From now on it will be possible to risk loosing wifi knowing that it is a survivable non-event thanks to the courage and determination of one man. and his name is Betamax.
And:
Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

Its like Althouse politics, I think.
That's exactly right. And then betamax3000 said:
At the Metaphorical Althouse Denny's I want More hash Browns and Non-Dairy Creamer: I am building a Mountain.
And I say: This means something. This is important.



Loose the WiFi!

29 comments:

edutcher said...

Certainly cuts the number of comments in the quieter posts.

Quaestor said...

Thanks. Now I'm forced to re-watch UHF before doing any work this morning.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I had a thing for Teri Garr.

Expressive features, probably.

Ann Althouse said...

Can't. Delete. Spam.

gerry said...

This thread reminds me of the days when I understood Protein Wisdom.

I hear the baying of the hellish Wi-Fi in the ether-fog of the blogging bog, and find only a boot remaining where once a man had fallen.

The hellish beast was merely a phosphorescent dog!

Quaestor said...

Perhaps Althouse should subtitle her blog the Grimpen Mire.

Nathan Alexander said...

That's Victoria Jackson, not Terri Garr.

Unless you are just naming a random female celebrity you like, in which case, carry on.

ricpic said...

Still don't get Central Time.

It's like boundless, man.

Quaestor said...

That's Victoria Jackson, not Terri Garr.

(Rising to my hind legs in defence, adjusting the wig a bit) M'lud, what the Prosecution doesn't understand that the video clip in evidence is a parody of a famous scene in an American film called "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" featuring a Miss Terri Garr as the wife of a woe-begotten former power company worker played by a Mr. Richard Dreyfus.

Quaestor said...

Please excuse my poor parody of Rumpole.

Unknown said...

Time zones make perfect sense to me but the international date line still blows my mind.

Original Mike said...

Central Time is the one true time. Just look at the name. Central. The point to which all other times are referenced.

That would be Central Standard Time (CST), of course. Central Daylight Time is an abomination in the eyes of God.

Icepick said...

I love Victoria Jackson. I just do.

traditionalguy said...

I thought Greenwich Mean Time was the way to count. It all gets started by a mean person in Greenwich Village. As for the international date line, that is a ponzi scheme if ever there was one.

Ann Althouse said...

I think betamax -- in real life -- is probably more like Weird Al than like Richard Dreyfuss.

Methadras said...

Victoria Jackson was really cute back in the day.

Unknown said...

Betamax is probably also Ritmo. Two sides of a single shattered personality.

Anonymous said...

Nah, I doubt he's Ritmo.

Unknown said...

I was joking of course, but it would be fun if it were true.

Anonymous said...

Not Ritmo.

For all the accusations of sockpuppetry I've seen here, I remain unpersuaded. (I'm not counting those who have changed their username and not concealed it.)

I imagine it has happened but not as much as some think.

Anonymous said...

Beta reminds me loosely of a guy I knew on a pre-web site from the dial-up days who was quite bright and was friends with the founders of the site but he had gone literally mad.

In his madness he still loved to write and he composed long streams of disjointed though harmless comments and posted them online, which of course disrupted the ordinary flow of conversation on that site, so the founders spawned a private false version of the site where he could roam at will and comment as he pleased but no one else would see what he wrote.

This worked except occasionally he would find some chink in the false online world and start posting in the real online world. Participants would get angry at him and complain and he would respond in his obtuse harmless way that was sort of charming except after a while you could see how broken the guy was, yet still so intelligent.

Then the administrators would fix the hole in the system and herd him back to his fake universe, where I suppose he continues to sing his broken songs.

Unknown said...

creeley
Sounds more like Ritmo to me.

Anonymous said...

Beta reminds me loosely...

Ritmo is all shark and no charm. Beta has a sense of humor, even if I find it tedious, and he isn't grinding an axe.

But most of all Beta goes on and on thoroughly clogging comment threads, as my mad acquaintance did.

traditionalguy said...

IMO Betamax3000 is nothing like the magnificent Ritmo. Both are special talents indeed.

But Betamax has a great wit like young Will from Stratford once had. Ritmo is more of a warrior of renown.

Anonymous said...

RE: " I think betamax -- in real life -- is probably more like Weird Al than like Richard Dreyfuss."

I think I am More Like Dreyfuss Making Mashed Potato Mountains than Weird Al Doing the Same. I Am Cognizant of Other's Incredulity, but I am Convinced the Mountain Needs to Be Made, not simply Referenced. Weird Al would see the Shark and Know That it is a Movie: Dreyfuss would see the Shark and Know That it's 'The Goodbye Girl.' Is not the Story of "the Goodbye Girl" you Have to Keep Moving Moving Moving or You will Die? You can Only Stroke the Skin in One Direction without Being Abraded?

I Believe Humans Like to Divide things into Threes: Cold, Nice, Too Hot. Even Numbers allow too Many Split Decisions -- which Is Why I will Salute the Canadians and their Three-Period Hockey: no Quarters, no Half-Time, the Game Continues. Hence: Goldilocks was Canadian. And a Scientologist, too , but That is For Another Digression.

Divided into Threes, Males Most Likely all Fall into the Three Stooges Triptych. Note that the Marx Brothers had Four, But One was Mute: also note that People Remember the Three Stooges and -- maybe -- Groucho. Say "Zeppo" and People Think you are Talking about an Italian Led Zeppelin Cover Band: Fiat Car Grafitti.

I Will Posit that the True Desired Male Triptych is that of "Jaws": Dreyfuss, Roy Schneider or Robert Shaw. Single Obsessed Scientist, Family Man Cop, Hemingway Hero. On the Little Boat of Fate -- when the Big Shark of Consequence Swims Toward Us -- We Become One of the Three.

I Will Note that there is the Ineffectual Undesired Male Fourth -- Murray Hamilton as the Mayor -- But He is Not on the Boat. The Fourth Male NEVER gets on the Boat. No One Would Claim to Be Him. He Will Always Have Plausible Deniability of Responsibility and Manliness.

Notice that 'Star Wars' Did Not Have a Strong Third Man of the Same Approximate Age: Obi Wan COULD be Robert Shaw, but Shaw was Still in His Hemingway Bad-Ass Days, Not an Elder English Gentleman with a Cool Light Sword. If Obi-Wan had been Portrayed by Robert Shaw (or -- say -- Richard Burton, or Richard Harris) there would Be No Ewoks, No Jar-Jar Binks. No Need for a Third Movie: We Got it Done in Two. I Drink Carbonite on the Rocks, Doubles. And Princess Leia Would've Been a Young Elizabeth Taylor: International Velvetwalker.

I was Starting to Make a Point.

Anonymous said...

And I am aware that Nomennovum has Jaws-era Robert Shaw as an Avatar.

This Proves the Pint I was Starting to Make, If I Made It..

Anonymous said...

"This Proves the Pint I was Starting to Make, If I Made It.."

This Would've Been a Great Freudian Slip if I Were One to Drink Pints of Beer.
As Opposed to Pints of Vodka + Candy Cigarettes.

Anonymous said...

I seem to Hit My Stride when Everyone Has Left the Room.

Anonymous said...

I am Particularly Proud of the Jaws Male Identity Triptych. Sad that it Will be Lost to the Land of the Unseen Comments.