Althouse: At the 2 Dogs Café...

February 28, 2014

At the 2 Dogs Café...

... you can talk all night.

29 comments:

Heartless Aztec said...: @Meade - Rig your Go Pro up on Zeus's head so we can get his close to the ground view of haulin' ass, snaggin' a ball, sniffin' some ass. A Dog's Afternoon if you will from his point of view. Do a ball throw fake so we can follow his view as his head snaps back and forth...; 2/28/14, 7:38 PM
Big Mike said...: Romney and Palin right about Detroit, Russia as our geopolitical adversary, and Russia encouraged to invade the Ukraine by our perceived unwillingness to act decisively. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are wrong, along with the entire mainstream press. Or, as Molly Hemingway puts it "most reporters are too ignorant to handle the job."

When Hillary gave that (in)famous "reset" button to the Russians, did she realize that they would reset all the way back to the late 1970s and the time of the Carter administration?

Though, frankly, if this administration evaluated unemployment and inflation the same way today as they did back then, we'd realize that we're in almost the same economic predicament as the Carter era.

Regarding the Obama administration, Linda Ronstadt put it succinctly.; 2/28/14, 7:42 PM
Meade said...: Funny idea, surfed, but I don't think Zeus would go for that. He doesn't even like having the top of his head petted. Maybe I can rig up the GoPro to his collar.; 2/28/14, 7:53 PM
traditionalguy said...: Just saw American Hustle. It's a 2 hour acting tour de force and a great story with a 70s songs musical score.

Best movie since Blue Jasmine...in fact twice as good.

Christian Bale gives an Oscar performance and a half. What a man. Jennifer Lawrence is as good.; 2/28/14, 8:41 PM
Anonymous said...: D_g_ __ve a Ma_ic _owEr tH__ Transcends _nder_tandi_g.; 2/28/14, 9:04 PM
Anonymous said...: Fo_ _houSands of Ye_rs D_g_ Have _een O_r Fri_nnd_. Tr_at _hem wi__ Ma-est_.; 2/28/14, 9:06 PM
Anonymous said...: I Am Not Breaking With i am breaking through.

____v_ __ _ep.; 2/28/14, 9:08 PM
Anonymous said...: 25 or _ to 4.; 2/28/14, 9:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Legalese Reads Like Title Case, Distancing, Removed. Title Case Reads Like Legalese, Distancing, Removed. Has My Inner Pretzel Not Been Found Out?; 2/28/14, 9:15 PM
Anonymous said...: It Has Been a Long Run and I am Tired. Law is Law. Title-Case is the Undertow of Law: Upper Letters Insinuate truth. Truth. tRuth. trUTh. trutH. Pick a Law, aNy laW.; 2/28/14, 9:19 PM
Anonymous said...: The Ghost of Jimi Hendrix Asks:

Manic Depression is a Frustrating Mess.

Manic depression is a frustrating mess.

manic depression is a frustrating mess.

Where do I Put the Guitar Solo?; 2/28/14, 9:28 PM
PB said...: How does one really teach the law to law students with a straight face, knowing all the perverse attitudes about the law emanating from the very top law enforcement folks in the country.; 2/28/14, 9:29 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Well, that's kinda sad. The power is out in my neighborhood, but the blog and my access to it are good. Sad.; 2/28/14, 9:29 PM
Anonymous said...: I will leave it at that.; 2/28/14, 9:29 PM
Anonymous said...: I Am the Walrus.

i am the walrus.

yellow matter custer

dripping from a general's eye.; 2/28/14, 9:32 PM
Saint Croix said...: I saw the most awesome Powell/Pressburger movie last night.

I Know Where I'm Going!

It's about this woman who is about to marry the richest man in England. Only she can't get across the damn loch to the island where her rich fiance is waiting for her. So she's praying to God. "God, help me get across this stupid loch so I can marry the richest man in England." She is so willful. She just wants to get her own way all the time.

There's a fog, and then there's a huge storm. So her marriage is delayed. And she finds herself falling in love with this other guy. It's wrecking all her plans. And she's so pissed. Her emotions are getting away from her and her life is spinning out of control.

Powell and Pressburger do all these amazing movies about women and passion. Religious passion, artistic passion, sexual passion. It's about human desire, the will to control our universe, and the fight we all have with God.

Really amazing work of art. Maybe one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. And it's so subtle you might not even notice God. Amazing.; 2/28/14, 9:45 PM
Anonymous said...: How Does One Disappear on the Internet? Stop, But it is Still There. Drunken Words, Sexually frustrated Words, Angry Words: Still There. The Internet Does Not Allow You To Have a Past That Fades; You Can Move to a New Town, a New State, But You Will Never truly be able to Start Over: Each Keyboard Click is Pinning You Like the Proverbial Butterfly to the Paper. You Will Always Be That Butterfly, Forty years Later, the Words Still Fresh as if They had Just Been Written. Freeman Hunt Did Not Write This.; 2/28/14, 9:51 PM
Anonymous said...: Given Enough Time, I Will Regret Everything I Have Written on the Internet.Apologies For Whatever Comes Next.; 2/28/14, 9:56 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Beta,
I used to think you were a manic satirist but you're actually a Beat poet, aren't you?; 2/28/14, 10:06 PM
kentuckyliz said...: I saw Pink Martini and the Von Trapps (grandchildren of Kurt from the Sound of Music, they're 18-25 years old), with the Univ of KY Symphony Orchestra. Jolly good show. Go if you get the chance.

Kudos to my sister who turned me on to Pink Martini in the first place, and urged me to go.

China Forbes (lead singer) has my dream job.; 2/28/14, 10:29 PM
Rusty said...: OpenID betamax3000 said...
Given Enough Time, I Will Regret Everything I Have Written on the Internet.Apologies For Whatever Comes Next.

Just don't quit writing.

Art doesn't require apologies.; 3/1/14, 6:43 AM
Ann Althouse said...: @betamax You asked — here — "Should Betamax Keep His Idiosyncratic Grammar, or adopt a more conventional approach?" I took your question seriously and gave you an honest answer. Now, you seem to be acting butt hurt, perhaps to be amusing.

The capital letters are speed bumps. You can say you have an artistic justification for them, but it parallels the justification for speed bumps. When people have other options, they don't pick the route with speed bumps. You can say, but they will if the rewards on the speed-bump-y route are worth it, and the speed bumps force people to slow down and appreciate these rewards. But the speed bumps are still annoying, and if you really trusted people to see what was good down your route and to slow down and appreciate it, you wouldn't bug us with the bumps.

Now, if you want to be the street that we drive by, glance down, and see that it's pretty and studded with bumps — yeah, there's one of those streets again — you can, but then it doesn't much matter what you actually write.

Your words are then like the fine-print on an unread document (making it look legal) or the block of footnotes underneath the text in an academic article (giving the appearance of support).

It's up to you to decide what you want to do artistically, but I think I'm giving you accurate information, and I am oriented to helping you.; 3/1/14, 9:54 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I read this novel by Andrea Dworkin, where the first person narrator was a sexually abused woman, and Dworkin used the device of not breaking the text up into paragraphs (or even sentences, if I remember correctly). This was supposed to communicate whatever -- the suffering, the disordered thinking. I can't remember. I read it (or "read it") 20+ years ago.

I know James Joyce wrote a really long sentence at the end of "Ulysses" to convey the female character's thought process.

When you make artistic choices like this, you have to ask yourself, essentially, am I succeeding, a la Joyce, or am I Dworkining?

And you realize, when you make these choices that burden the reader, you are signaling to them that you think you are great, which increases the risk that you are Dworkining.; 3/1/14, 10:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Althouse: "I took your question seriously and gave you an honest answer. Now, you seem to be acting butt hurt, perhaps to be amusing."

I indeed took your answer honestly, and appreciated it. Not 'butt hurt' -- I was indeed attempting to be amusing: the idea that changing text format could be an existential crisis of the soul struck me as funny, a vanity bonfire as it were.

One of the things I enjoy about commenting is playing with the contexts of intimacy and distance that internet communication provides in equal portions, which explains many of the 'robot' and 'ghost' configurations I tend to employ.

Title Case started as a way of creating that distance that allowed self-conciousness to step aside, then became such a part of identity that it seemed normal -- in the course of hundreds of comments I came to type that way without thinking about it. As a side note: I also thought it was funny that I wrote in title case but didn't bother to capitalize the 'b' in 'betamax3000'.

The peculiar thing with identity is you never truly know how it looks from the outside. That was the semi-serious thing about the poll question: exactly what does it look like out there? Will I recognize any part of me? Do I even want to?Self-examination: is it time to give this particular facade a rest?

The subsequent posts were done in the spirit of HAL9000 desperately trying to reprogram himself, blips and blurps as banks are taken out and rearranged. The comment "Apologies For Whatever Comes Next" was a hint that a time for change may be occurring. Perhaps long overdue.

I also like the phrase "Dworkining".

-b3k; 3/1/14, 10:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Perhaps I should come out of the Title case closet in a cafe. I will pretend there is cake and balloons.; 3/1/14, 10:58 AM
Anonymous said...: You can let me know the appropriate cafe.; 3/1/14, 10:59 AM
rcocean said...: Let Betamax be Betamax. Damn the Capitalization, full speed ahead.; 3/1/14, 11:44 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Not 'butt hurt' -- I was indeed attempting to be amusing: the idea that changing text format could be an existential crisis of the soul struck me as funny, a vanity bonfire as it were."

Yes, I get that, but when you write things like "Given Enough Time, I Will Regret Everything I Have Written on the Internet.Apologies For Whatever Comes Next," I have no way to know how irrationally despondent you might be. I can believe it's probably humor but also think: How do I know whether this is a suicide threat? That wrecks the humor for me.; 3/1/14, 11:56 AM
Anonymous said...: @Althouse: Point understood. Did not mean to cause concern.; 3/1/14, 12:04 PM