Sunrise — 6:32, 6:38, 6:42, 6:56.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Well well well, if it isn’t gender-affirming care for straight folks."

That's the top-rated comment on the NYT article "'I’d Like to Be Normal': Can Height Surgery Make Them Happy? Limb-lengthening can add inches to a person’s stature. But its risks have made it controversial."

Hangings.

Yesterday, I was reading the Nicholson Baker essay "The History of Punctuation" (in "The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber" (commission earned)), when I came across a passage about John Lennard’s "But I Digress," which is, we are told, "gracefully written and full of intelligence, decked out with a complete scholarly apparatus of multiple indices, bibliographies, and notes, whose author, to judge by the startling jacket photo (shaved head with up-sticking central proto-Mohawk tuft, earring on left ear, wilted corduroy jacket, and over-laundered T-shirt bearing some enigmatic insignia underneath), put himself through graduate school by working as a ticket scalper at Elvis Costello concerts. (A discussion of Elvis Costello’s use of the parenthesis in 'Let Him Dangle' figures in a late chapter.)"

I would buy "But I Digress" so I could quote the part about "Let Him Dangle," but though Amazon shows 13 Kindle books titled "But I Digress," none are by John Lennard. I did find a hardback edition, but it's $239.00 and out of stock. So I can't tell you precisely what it has to say about the parentheses. 

So here's Elvis, doing his song, which is about Derek Bentley, who did dangle (for having uttered the ambiguous words "Let him have it"):

Did you notice the parentheses? It's a song! We'll have to look up the lyrics. The parentheses are in the bridge:

"The Reverend Jesse Jackson is Dead at 84. I knew him well, long before becoming President."

"He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and 'street smarts.' He was very gregarious - Someone who truly loved people!"

Writes Trump at Truth Social.

Trump seizes the opportunity to take credit for himself: 

"Knowing Trump responds best to visual stimuli, [Charlie] Kirk had coached [TikTok] to spin up four pages of infographics, 'Trump on TikTok'..."

"... showing his campaign's tens of billions of views on the now-threatened app. A chart... on the first page jumped out at Trump, who had backed a TikTok ban in his first term. 'I'm more popular than Taylor Swift,' he crowed. Many in Trumpworld heard he quickly called Barron, his youngest son, to savor the stat...."

From "How Trump saved TikTok: Backstory of a 2-year campaign" (Axios).

"Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there."

"But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"

I'm reading "Aliens are ‘real,’ Obama says, as Washington shrugs/The former president appeared to confirm decades-old conspiracy theories, but then he walked back his podcast comments" (WaPo).

And so I feel vindicated in putting "Obama and the aliens" on yesterday's "5 things I've been finding unbloggable."

I'm blogging it now because the new news confirms the unbloggability of the original story, which was that Obama had said “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them." That sounded, to some people, as though he might have information that we don't have. But he didn't. He was just doing that utterly banal thing of deducing that there must be aliens because the universe is so darned huge. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm not impressed by that reasoning: "I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."

Anyway, here's Obama, getting people who are not me excited and then making it clear that he was just bullshitting in the universe-huge-must-be-aliens-somewhere way that just about everyone else does:

Goodbye to Jesse Jackson.

"Jesse Jackson, a leading African American voice on global stage, dies at 84/As a civil rights activist, he joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and Memphis. He later launched two historic presidential campaigns" (WaPo)(gift link).

Here's Meade's video of him, from 2011, at the Wisconsin protests:

And here's my photo of a button that I still have right here on my desk and that I wore in 1988:

Discussed in an old diavlog, here, back in 2007, when Obama was first running for President.

From the Washington Post obituary: 

Sunrise — 6:35, 6:58, 6:58, 6:59.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Goodbye to Frederick Wiseman.

"Frederick Wiseman, 96, Penetrating Documentarian of Institutions, Dies/He exposed abuses in films like 'Titicut Follies,' a once-banned portrait of a mental hospital, but ranged widely in subject matter, from a Queens neighborhood to a French restaurant" (NYT)(gift link).

And though he denied that his movies had any political agenda, he was no stranger to controversy. His directorial debut, “Titicut Follies” (1967), a harrowing portrait of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, remains the only film ever banned in the United States for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security.... 

Goodbye to Robert Duvall.

"Robert Duvall, Chameleonlike Actor of Film, Stage and TV, Dies at 95/The Oscar winner was known for his ability to disappear into roles, playing a wide range of characters in films such as 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Godfather,' and in the television series 'Lonesome Dove'" (NYT)(gift link).

Why there he is:

ADDED: "I don’t try to be a hard guy to work with.... But I decide what I’m going to do with a character. I will take direction, but only if it kind of supplements what I want to do. If I have instincts that I feel are right, I don’t want anybody to tamper with them. I don’t like tamperers, and I don’t like hoverers."

5 things I've been finding unbloggable.

1. Nancy Guthrie, still missing.

2. Bondi yelling at congressfolk and getting yelled back at by. 

3. Millions of Jeffrey Epstein papers, full of names names names. 

4. Marco in Munich. 

5. Obama and the aliens.

"The once ubiquitous bird has suffered a catastrophic decline.... As many as 98 per cent disappeared from some states."

"Rats and feral dogs flourished in their place, spreading diseases, including rabies. As a result, the human death toll rose significantly. And further to that, Schama adds, an ancient cultural ritual risks being lost. Zoroastrians, no longer able to perform their traditional 'sky burials' — in which corpses are carried to a 'tower of silence' to be picked clean by vultures — are forced to consider cremation instead. 

This chain of collapse between human culture and the lives of birds set me thinking,' Schama says...."

From  "Simon Schama: 'Our fascination with birds is rooted in envy'/The historian has curated an exhibition that explores the relationship between birds and humans" (London Times).

"'What are they, these creatures, two-limbed like us and yet nothing like us at all?' he wonders. 'Human culture is arranged around the perfection of the human,' he says. 'We are seen as God’s greatest works. But one thing we have not been able to do is fly.' Our fascination with birds, he suggests, 'is based around a sort of envy.' Because what we call flying is not really that, it’s just 'sitting in a metal tube with the blinds shut looking at old movies.' It is not about the glorious freedom that we dream of, about the transcendence we desire, the celestial state that we yearn for. That freedom of spirit will always elude us.'"

"She does not feel self-conscious when she is on stage. It is only when she returns to the wings that she feels a little shy."

I'm reading "Why I’m performing Wagner naked at the Royal Opera aged 81/Illona Linthwaite won’t let being nude in front of 2,200 people stop her from defying the ‘bad press’ given to older women" (London Times).

“The curtain goes up and there’s nothing happening, it’s just me. I thought that was really frightening and then when it happened, I thought, actually, this is brilliant,” she said.

The role is Erda, in "Siegfried."

Erda is usually “frocked her up to the nines” in gossamer gowns, Linthwaite said, but Barrie Kosky, the director, wanted the octogenarian’s body to symbolise nature and remind the audience of their mortality.... 

That's the director's view — an old woman reminds you of death — not the old woman's. She thinks she's there to remind you of life: 

She thinks her performance is something of a political act in a country she views as “spiritually arid” for its lack of empathy towards older people. Ultimately, she wants the audience to look at her and see the future not as a tragedy, but an adventure. She wants people to feel: “Hey, I’m looking forward to 80.”

I asked Grok: "If you saw Erda in 'Siegfried' portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?" [ADDED: The actual full question was "What views are attributed to the character Erda in 'Siegfried' and if you saw her portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?"

Answer:

Least NEW! thing promoted as "NEW!"

As is my wont, I'm scanning headlines at Memeorandum this morning, and I came across this:

I'm not clicking on that. I'm just blogging to say that I graduated from law school in 1981, before the Federalist Society was created to deal with the problem that law schools only presented what the NYT would now like to repackage as an alternative. This "alternative" was mind-crushingly pervasive back then, and those who made that so are responsible for the reaction they caused. I went to law school believing I'd have the opportunity to participate in a rich debate. That didn't happen.

I see the author here is Jeffrey Toobin. I know you must say the Toobin-specific things that you always say. That's already an entry in my Dictionary of Received Idea. 

Sunrise — 6:37, 7:01, 7:04, 7:09, 7:27.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"I just love to love. If I cut somebody’s hair, they’re feeling good. They’re loving it. If I give somebody some braids or a toupee..."

"... they are loving it. So I thought, that’s a good way to spread love. I’ve been cutting hair for a few years. It’s hard work."

Said "Jaden Carter, 17, reading the Bible in Takoma Park, Maryland, on the campus of Montgomery College," quoted in "'What are you reading?' I asked. Here’s what six strangers told me. Even in the cold, book readers were out in force around town — on trains, waiting for the Metro, at the gym and walking down the street" (WaPo)(gift link).

Come on and find it.

ADDED: I have never been able to understand the words to that song — "Come and Get Your Love." I'm reading the words today for the first time, and I still had trouble understanding it. "Get it from the main vine"? Meade thought it was a drug reference — like "main line." And I thought it was phallic.

But Grok says: "According to explanations tied to the band—particularly co-founder Lolly Vegas (who sang lead on the track)— 'main vine' is a metaphor rooted in the band's Native American heritage (Redbone's members had Yaqui, Shoshone, and other Indigenous ancestry). It symbolizes Mother Earth or the primary, fundamental source of life, love, and spiritual connection."

The line I used for the post title is: "What's the matter with your mind.... Nothing the matter with your head, baby, find it/Come on and find it...." The chorus makes it clear that "it" is love. Whether that's sexual love or something grandly spiritual is in the ears of the listener.

"Since becoming a parent, I’ve gotten used to scrolling past videos of babies gnawing on everything from bone marrow to full-size steaks."

"But lately, the babies on my feed are munching on a new snack: whole sticks of butter. On TikTok, parents are handing their 1-year-olds blocks of Kerrygold to gnaw on while they grocery shop and freezing sticks of butter to help with teething. To hear these moms tell it, butter from grass-fed cows is 'the best snack for babies no one talks about' and a miracle food that can supercharge their brain development. In one video, a mother films herself putting a pat of butter directly into her infant’s mouth. “My kids love butter and I let them eat as much as they want,” she wrote in the caption. After cutting up slabs of butter as a late-night snack, another mom yells to her kids, 'Come get your treat!'"

From "Parents Are Feeding Their Babies So Much Butter" (NY Magazine).

I was there 40 years before it was trendy. See "Back in the days when boys ate butter like it was candy."

Trump sought to influence Bill Maher and he's now going to complain that he didn't get as much favorable press/comedy as he thinks — or pretends to think — he deserves.

"Sometimes in life you waste time! T.V. Host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, also a friend of mine, and I agreed," said Trump (at Truth Social).

He came into the famed Oval Office much different than I thought he would be. He was extremely nervous, had ZERO confidence in himself and, to soothe his nerves, immediately, within seconds, asked for a "Vodka Tonic." He said to me, "I’ve never felt like this before, I’m actually scared." In one respect, it was somewhat endearing!"

Trump seems to enjoy diminishing Maher, but I suspect Maher adopted this "little me" pose to disarm Trump. Obviously, Maher was bullshitting. There's no one who has never been scared. It's a joke. He's a comedian. And so is Trump.

Trump continues: