"It's a vicious, stupid, and ultimately inapt title," writes Rex Parker, about the NYT Sunday Crossword, which is titled "Step on it."
Click to spoil the theme of today's puzzle.
"Why the &$#! are you stepping on bees? Or any insect, really. First of all, insects are living creatures, so leave them be. Second, stepping on a louse will do nothing. Like, if that is your method for getting rid of lice, I have Big News for you, and it's not good. Third, gnats? You're trying to step on gnats? What are you even doing? You look silly. The title is both casually and cruelly human-centered *and* stupid as hell on a literal level—even if you got your jollies squashing insects, a good hunk of these just aren't plausibly killable with your stupid foot. Just a terrible editorial decision, that title."
ADDED: Discussing the meat of the puzzle, Rex considers the clue on 104 Down: "Painter Edouard often confused with painter Claude":
Hmm. That reminded me of a question I saw recently at the Bob Dylan subreddit:
Interpretation is subjective. Much of what you see comes from your own mind.
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17 comments:
I asked a vegan what she does when she sees a roach in her house. "Ewww, I kill it".
So much for ethical scruples.
"If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?"
"You're so vain I bet you think this song is about you."
"When I think about you I touch myself."
Well, we pesky humans who got a bachelor of science degree instead of a BFA do get the names confused even when we can readily differentiate their styles. But we aren’t alone. This post prompted me to Google whether Manet ever painted water scenes (I don’t include “The Luncheon on the Grass” as a water scene despite the water in the background). The fifth or sixth suggested link was to a disquisition on why Monet painted so many scenes of water lilies.
(If anyone is interested, both did seascapes, which were popular in the 19th century.)
It's more likely that pussy what what he lost, not breasts.
So the crossword isn't about what tough guys used to say to cab drivers in the movies?
This procedure of describing sensations by referring in a certain way to common objects like haystacks ... is of great theoretical importance. A haystack, for example, is something about the description of which everyone could agree. A haystack is something which any observers could observe, and we should expect their accounts of it to tally with one another, or at least be capable of correction until they did tally. Its positions, shape, size, weight, date of construction, composition and function are facts which anyone could establish by ordinary methods of observation and inquiry. But more than this. These methods would also establish how the haystack would look, feel and smell to ordinary observers in ordinary conditions of observation. When I say that something looks like a haystack (though it may actually be a blanket on a clothes-line), I am describing how it looks in terms of what anyone might expect a haystack to look like, when observed from a suitable angle, in a suitable light and against a suitable background. I am, that is, comparing how the blanket looks to me here and now, not with some other particular glimpse had by me, or had by some other particular person in a particular situation, but with a type of glimpse such as any ordinary observers could expect to get in situations of certain sorts, namely in situations where they are in the proximity of haystacks in daylight.
- Ryle
The comparison with breasts would be of a lady on her back in Dylan's case, but there's no accounting for breasts sliding partly into the armpit, as haystack breasts would do (Paglia's observation). So it's likely that Dylan isn't associating them.
Haystack on a cliff edge would catch the comparison.
Ryle also uses haystacks as an examples of having no inside and outside.
I can't say she reminds me of Haystacks Calhoun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42jWxJvXzM
We need to consider Manet's "Olympia". Those are some mountains right there--or haystacks. She is even touching her mons Venus.
My first response was "step on it" as in get a move. Hurry. As in get off the damn bugs and come up with another analogy.
French impressionists? Do they have even have any comedians that can do impressions? Shit. Do they have comedians?
Huh. Apparently there is, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScbZimo0QU
Who knew?
"cruelly human-centered"
Nature doesn't deal in morality. Reminds me of something my high-school biology teacher told us: Everything in nature gets its own chance at survival. That includes you, the things you eat, and the things that eat you.
'Interpretation is subjective. Much of what you see comes from your own mind.'
Don't blame me, I'm not the one with all the dirty pictures...
You and Rex are in semiotic vertigo. Lie down until it passes.
It's more likely that pussy what what he lost, not breasts.
That is the next line, the "rivers that ran through every day" -- if you have to think that way. A lesser mind would have written "a river that never runs dry," but that doesn't get you a Nobel Prize.
Get a load of the haystacks on that one!
I was convinced that Rex Parker's parents must have named him after an old time comic strip. Actually, "Judge Parker" and "Rex Morgan, MD" were the long-ago newspaper comics.
And low and behold, they are each still going (if not exactly going strong) at 70 and 74. Wikipedia describes them as "soap opera-type" comics, but they have survived while most TV soaps have gone under. "Prince Valiant" is also still around at 85, and may survive the newspapers it's published in. Low production values, I guess.
Rex really is insufferable a lot of the time--but definitely not all of the time. I appreciate and am a regular visitor to his blog.
Crossword puzzles? That's right up there with playing solitaire on your computer.
I caught on to the gimmick early on, but was hung up at the end. Turned out I had a doubled letter in one of the rebuses. OMG, checking it out spoiled my "streak"!
>>Crossword puzzles? That's right up there with playing solitaire on your computer
Try some of the British cryptics. You might have a different view. I've been doing the ones from the Guardian for a couple of years. Can be quite challenging.
--gpm
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