"Who knows how many of [his] stories were thought up and written while Salinger sat on this throne!"

The uncleaned toilet of J.D. Salinger, on sale at eBay for $1 million.

That's almost as good as this:

"'Krush' (Karl-as-Rush) was the palest simulacrum of a Rush Limbaugh."

Writes Tunku Varadarajan about Rove's guest-hosting on yesterday's show.

Oh, but no one can step in and imitate Rush. With the exception of Mark Steyn, all of Rush's guest-hosts mostly make you think about how much better Rush is and: When is Rush coming back? (Steyn does his own thing, and it's brilliant. I prefer him to Rush.)

It would have been foolish for Rove to go all bombastic and over-confident on his first radio show, so Varadarajan's criticism is lame:

Rove, by comparison [to Rush], is a lightweight. What we learned today is that he does not have the voice for radio. By that I mean not just that his timbre is too thin, his tenor too brittle, but also that he has little oratorical or rhetorical structure, and no apparent ability to cast a spell over listeners. 

Ha. He's from Austin, Texas. He sounds like a character from the movie "Slacker." I found that charming ... disarming. Rush gets a lot of his oratorical power from his self-conception as an outsider — actively excluded from the power-elite in Washington. Rove is the opposite — so self-restraint is good.

Reading his weekly column in The Wall Street Journal, one was already aware of the modesty of his mind. In fact, his column has done much to baffle many Americans: How on earth did this man become the dark genius of the liberal imagination? Listening to him riff on the radio, one was filled with retrospective alarm: Was this the mastermind in the Bush White House?

Oh, Tunku! Do you really imagine the President, in his confidential, private conversations, listening to a Limbaugh-like blowhard overwhelming him with a big rant? Try to imagine why Rove's style works in the context in which he was highly successful. Gentleness and friendly, quiet, sound advice... is it really such a puzzle?

Things watched just now.

There's this really cool Mickey Kaus ad:



I found that via Mickey's Twitter feed, where he thanked Instapundit for embedding it, so why didn't I see it on Instapundit too? Must have been that, scrolling, I got sidetracked by the monitor lizard. Anyway, I was over on Twitter to write:

Got M to watch the movie "Slacker," which made us look up "Growing Up Absurd" in Amazon, which recommended we buy the movie "Slacker."

We almost never watch movies. We're too fragmented. But "Slacker" is fragmented, and, thinking we could put up with that, we ended up watching the whole thing. In the end of the movie — and I realize I've watched the beginning many times and the end only a few — the camera flashes on the book "Growing Up Absurd." We were trying to remember the author's name, and Meade got it right. We were talking about what a verbal tic it used to be to call everything "absurd."

There's not always a word for the thing you want to say.

But it's slightly maddening when you feel there's a word, and you just can't pull it out of your brain. A colleague of mine is looking for a word that expresses a phenomenon embodied in these 3 examples:

1. I go to the track and place a bet on a horse because its name is the same as my son's and the jockey is wearing #5, which is my son's hockey jersey number.

2. I can't decide what to order for lunch so I decide that I'll order whatever the person in front of me orders.

3. I'm not sure what color car to purchase so I decide to purchase the color of the next car that drives by my house.

Now, I think #1 is distinctly different from 2 and 3, because in #1, she knows what the answer is when she adopts the rule. In #2 and #3, she excitingly adopts the rule and locks herself into a result that is unknown. But all 3 are about adopting a rule to make a decision while knowing that there is nothing about the rule that will improve the quality of the decision. One could superstitiously believe that the rule would make the decision good or religiously believe — in examples 2 and 3 — that God knew you'd adopted the rule and was giving you a sign about what was the right decision. And one could think that the rule would generate randomness where somehow a nonrandom decision seemed bad. But basically, the decisionmaker is being playful or poetic.

So is there a word for this?

And do you have any good examples of using this sort of decisionmaking — colorful and exciting rules you've made for yourself? Obviously, there are a lot of standard ways approaches like rolling the dice or consulting the Magic 8 ball, but how about some weird stuff? Or why not make up a rule for yourself about something right now and do it? Got a decision to make? Make it based on something strange and as-yet-undetermined. And tell us about it.

***

This made me think of "Slacker" — one of my favorite movies. We see 2 women walking along the sidewalk. One says: "The next person who passes us will be dead within a fortnight." But that's not a case of the phenomenon my colleague means – not unless we're supposed to view the speaker as a murderer choosing a victim. The standard interpretation is that she's a psychic.

ADDED: Someone in the comments mentions Dadaism, and that reminds me of "A Book of Surrealist Games." I think example #3 could be seen as a sort of surrealist game. The more we talk about these examples, the more I think they are 3 different things. Several commenters have said that #1 is superstition, and I think it is either superstition — in the form of overvaluing a coincidence — or a sentimental delight in coincidence. #2 seems to be conformity or a rational bet based on a tiny amount of evidence. Someone who is eating here is eating that, so maybe he knows what's good. Only #3 is surrealist and dangerous — but nowhere near as much as if you'd chosen the color of your car based on something other than the color of someone else's car. Chances are it will be an ordinary car color, and at least someone else has seen fit to get a car that color. That said, I saw a bright purple car 2 days ago. It looked like hell. And I love the color purple. It just looks like hell on a car.

Christmas Eve movie decision.

The nominees are:

"It's a Wonderful Life"

"One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest"

"Slacker"

"Some Kind of Monster"

What did we choose?

ADDED:

"Your hand is staining my window."...

"I'm talking about form. I'm talking about content. I'm talking about interrelationships. I'm talking about God, the devil, Heaven, Hell. Do you understand?"...

"Play the game, Harding. Play the game. Play the game. Play the game, Harding."...

"I don't think he's overly psychotic, but I still think he's quite sick."...

"What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or something? Well, you're not. You're not. You're no crazier than the average a**h*le out walking around on the streets, and that's it."...

"Time spent alone only increases the feeling of separation."....

"The best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine."

Another face and some meandering about unreadable words.

Yesterday, we saw the Face on the Barroom Floor. Here's a face I saw today, stenciled on a curb. What does it say?



(Enlarge.)

I'm fascinated by the almost legible. Have you ever imagined there were words somewhere that you could almost read? That's a theme in the movie "Waking Life," by the way. Did you like that movie? Did you like it as much as "Slacker"? I ask, deviating from the theme in a Slackerish way. In "Waking Life," the subject is the way you can't read in a dream. If you try, you won't be able to make out the words.

Maybe if you're getting a bit psychotic — struggling with that brain asymmetry — or using some psychotropic drugs, you'll think you're seeing letters rising up out of textured surfaces like that curb. Don't lose yourself trying to read those nonexistent words.

This subject is making me think of "The Shining," where the little boy keeps trying to read a word on the wall until finally he can and it's very shocking. Good horror idea! There must be many other stories about mysteriously nearly readable writing.

Here's a picture of my ex-husband from long ago. He's reading a book, and you can almost read the title of the book. Why does near legibility make the book seem so important? Why such fascination with things we can't quite see or understand?

Is there a theme of the day on this blog??

"Slacker"--on DVD at last!

Ah! The new Critierion Collection DVD of "Slacker" just arrived! How exciting! How many times have I watched my deteriorating old VHS copy of this film, which I never saw in the theater. Nice packaging. Lots of extras. Why isn't this on the list of favorite movies on my profile? I'll add it.