Althouse: "If it weren’t for global warming, we’d be under an ice sheet a mile thick right now."

May 18, 2015

"If it weren’t for global warming, we’d be under an ice sheet a mile thick right now."

"He gestured toward the mountains. 'But look at us. Earth as far as the eye can see. I love global warming! And I love you!' Something about the implied comparison made me nervous. I was pretty bad as wives go. Where Stephen was concerned possibly epoch-rending, world-destroying bad. But without me he’d be under an ice sheet, so maybe I was doing him a favor. It was plausible. It was also not enough. I said I wasn’t ready. But I had sex with him, feeling like a very dutiful wife."

From Nell Zink's novel "The Wallcreeper."

17 comments:

Jaq said...: If it weren't for the "blade" on the "Hockey Stick" we would be well into a little ice age right now.

Look, it was just getting colder and colder.; 5/18/15, 8:17 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: Bad dialog created only to set up a metaphor the author obviously thinks is insightful.

After dialog like that I would expect a pizza guy to show up. A very horny pizza guy.

"Here's your pizza, and here's your Global Warming (zipppp)."

Like I saw in a movie once.

I am Laslo.; 5/18/15, 8:17 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: It's striking how people can achieve the insight that they are rotten shits, yet can't take the next step and improve.; 5/18/15, 8:50 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Some favors are better than others.; 5/18/15, 10:07 AM
Robert Cook said...: "It's striking how people can achieve the insight that they are rotten shits, yet can't take the next step and improve."

Most rotten shits never achieve the insight that they are rotten shits, and those that do who don't change probably don't care...or they're aware all along they're rotten shits and are quite pleased with themselves about it.; 5/18/15, 10:34 AM
Jaq said...: What if they never achieve the insight that their rotten shit ideology is the cause of scores of millions of deaths and untold dislocation?; 5/18/15, 10:54 AM
deepelemblues said...: The awful prose of modern fiction makes me hate myself even more for not writing the next Great American Novel by now. That is some horrible writing there.; 5/18/15, 12:30 PM
Robert Cook said...: "What if they never achieve the insight that their rotten shit ideology is the cause of scores of millions of deaths and untold dislocation?"

I don't know...you'd have to ask those who still assert Bush's wars were necessary and/or a good thing (rather than war crimes)...and those who assert the Vietnam War was a necessary and/or good thing...and those who assert that going to war against Iran would be a necessary and/or good thing...and so on.; 5/18/15, 1:41 PM
Fen said...: Cook: you'd have to ask those who still assert Bush's wars were necessary and/or a good thing

You should start with all the women liberated from all of Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers.

When you get to 1,000 you can come back and lecture us about Bush's "war crimes"...; 5/18/15, 3:04 PM
Robert Cook said...: Let Iraqi women speak for themselves about the war.; 5/18/15, 4:45 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: You're not running the conversation Cook. You still have all of communism's horrors to explain or justify or regret.; 5/18/15, 5:32 PM
Jaq said...: Really Robert, what made you jump to that? Were you feeling defensive or something about fascism and communism?; 5/18/15, 5:40 PM
jr565 said...: "Let Iraqi women speak for themselves about the war."

Is that speaking for all Iraqi women? Or just the ones who had negative opinions about the invasion and who were interviewed for the story?; 5/19/15, 2:55 AM
Robert Cook said...: "You're not running the conversation Cook. You still have all of communism's horrors to explain or justify or regret."

No one is running the conversation. That's why it's a conversation and not a monologue.

I don't justify any of the horrors perpetrated by the regimes of Soviet Russia or Red China, particularly those of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China. You apparently have me confused with some other entity of your own imagining.; 5/19/15, 6:49 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: course you do, you piece of shit. Feel me rejoindre today that's no true Scotsman, or rather, no to communism. Oh no you own all of that everyday all day forever. You bought it you paid for it you own it its yours. Love it, live it, be it. As for owning the conversation, the original topic was some neurotic moron life change for the rest. how did you turn that into a diatribe on Iraq? You could no doubt turn the topic of weather onto Iraq. You really need to know your limitations. Android voice to text and I really can't be bothered.; 5/19/15, 7:05 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Is that speaking for all Iraqi women? Or just the ones who had negative opinions about the invasion and who were interviewed for the story?"

I can't answer that, of course. It speaks for some Iraqi women, at least. It also serves to counterbalance Fen's presumption--with zero basis--to speak for all Iraqi women, to assert that Iraqi women are better off by far than during Saddam's regime.; 5/19/15, 7:12 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: I'm sure Poison Gas Bertha and other regime apparatchiks were greatly harmed by the overthrow of Saddam. Not sure I care. Oh wait yes I am. I don't.; 5/19/15, 7:24 AM