This seems to be the final blog post of the charming, inventive blogger Chip Ahoy: "I am in hospital. Intensive care..."

"... for right now. Little problem with heart, lungs, kidneys. They all failed together. Heart surgery tomorrow. I told the ambulance crew, the emergency crew, the intensive care crew that I am terrified...." 

It's not for me to make announcements of facts I cannot check. The blog doesn't even say "Chip Ahoy" on the front page, and there's no public announcement that relates to this pseudonym. 

Chip Ahoy was a highly valued commenter on my blog in the years 2007 to 2013 — especially for his animations of photographs that I had posted. Like this:

Click on the tag "Chip Ahoy" and keep scrolling to get to many more.

I don't have comments anymore (though you can comment by emailing me here). The last time I used the "Chip Ahoy" tag was the time I ended comments in 2013 — "The comments vacation." Comments came back eventually, but I never heard from Chip again, unfortunately. We've missed his light touch and warm charm.

The comments vacation.

We've closed the door to comments... for a while at least, but there is still a backdoor, manned by Meade.

Will the comments section ever reopen, or is this a permanent vacation? I expect to reopen, well refreshed, and with some new ideas about how to make the ongoing experience rewarding for commenters of good faith.

ADDED: A reader emails:

Just a note from the peanut gallery that's been around since at least the Bush/Kerry election and a non participant in the comments section (I think I've commented 3 times in the history of the blog.)

I preferred the no comment policy.

At the Underwater Egyptian Café...

Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw/You were drawing water for your husband, you were suffering under the law...

(Thanks to Chip Ahoy for rearranging me in that photograph by Meade.)

At the Movingly Succulent Café...

... please settle down.

(Motion added to my image by Chip Ahoy, who explains it here.)

Ready to make some waves?

Last night's "Fluffy Cloud Café," reacted to by Chip Ahoy, who said:

Para bailar la bomba se necesita un poca de gracia, pero agitar la mar se necesita un chuchara de madera muy grande.

You can stir things up all you want over an dover but it just keeps returning to normal.

And did:

About those picnic tabletops...

... and the young women of the Memorial Union Terrace....

Chip Ahoy has animated his commentary into my photograph.

Treillage, take 2.

Chip Ahoy monkeys around with my picture from the Treillage Café:

Chip's dog GIFs.

First, "At the Yellower Café," Chip — opining about Zeus — says "He's a bit of a modeling primadona."



Second, on the subject of George Bush sending Laura stick figure drawings. ("At the same time, George had gotten an app on his iPad where he could draw pictures. And he communicated with me if I was on the road, or with Barbara and Jenna, with these very funny stick figure drawings of him in bed with Barney: 'Good night.' Then, the active stick figure in the morning: 'Good morning.'")

Chip says "What? Like this?



"Yo no lo comprendo. Well find me an art instructor."

"As the viewer is struck with eggs spilling out in all directions twisting like an egg tornado and wondering how all that was packed into a flat card..."

"... and further how in the world will all that mess ever close back, depicted in black and white and in a smaller scale behind all of that, Jesus of Nazareth ascends in triumphant pose presiding over all, but his astonishing Earth-shattering demonstration of survival of the death experience goes unnoticed because attention is misdirected to the movement of colorful eggs."

"I know what you're up to. This is the strange Lutheran thing, isn't it?"

"Stranger even than what the Mormons get up to. It's why you guys are oddly so cool and taciturn about this time of year, the most joyous of all for the promise it holds and for its demonstration of life eternal."

That's Chip Ahoy, in last night's Glacier Café, the one with this picture:



Chip's riff:



If you don't recognize the image within the image, it's from yesterday's "What does Jesus look like?" post, the one that began with a discussion of a leaflet illustration of (supposedly) Jesus, the one where Meade said "If Chip Ahoy had a son, he'd look like Jesus." Because Chip Ahoy really does look that Jesus. Not the guy-that-got-thrown-out-of-the-darts-tournament Jesus, the Jehovah's-Witnesses-leaflet Jesus.



Especially this pic (nicked from the sidebar at Chip's here):

"Psychiatric Help 5¢."

Chip Ahoy riffs on that "frank and candid exchange of ideas" photograph we were talking about yesterday.

At the Where's the Ball Café...

... keep looking.

What did Jesus write in the sand? (Or: things I should have learned in church that I figured out from the Althouse comments.)

Yesterday, when many blogs were talking about the Islamist Facebook page with a cartoon showing how to stone a person who had committed adultery, I added the New Testament story, from John 8, in which Jesus said: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." Jesus had just been teaching some people, and the scribes and the Pharisees, looking for a way to trip him up — they wanted to bring charges against him — present Jesus with a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and remind him that the Law of Moses commanded that she should be stoned. "So what do you say?" Instead of answering, Jesus bends over and writes in the dirt. They keep pushing for an answer, and it's only then that he says: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

I didn't include the next few sentences, but the story was very familiar. After Jesus makes his brilliant remark — which finds a new way into the question — the crowd disperses and Jesus tells the woman to "go and... sin no more."

Some of the commenters focused on what it was that Jesus wrote on the ground. I'd always assumed that what Jesus was writing was irrelevant and that he was simply gesturing I'm not going to talk to you. He invoked his right to remain silent, as we say in the United States of America. He knew whatever he said would be used against him. Later, when he arrives at the New Testament doctrine — the higher law — he speaks up and articulates it pithily. He doesn't write it. Jesus isn't the put-it-in-writing type. The scribes are the bad guys here, and he's about talking to the people. The Word is spoken. (It's only written down later.)

But, reading the comments, I see interest in the subject of what Jesus wrote.

"I have completed the task the Lord hath assignedeth me of creating the templates and instructions for a simple Valentine's Day pop-up card."

"So now I am released of my duty to humankind," says Chip Ahoy in yesterday's café, The Faithful Dog:

The templates are so simple it's embarrassing.

Nevertheless, here are some 30 or so photos that show a step by step process any child can follow. The 3 little files are png files to drag and drop. They fit an 8.5 X 11 sheet of card stock, to print, but you will not need the templates, just use the idea instead. They are put there for your human comfort.

And I tell you what, if you were to take a moment and fashion such a card for your sweetie, it will be the best card they ever receive and I'm not kidding. It will be treasured, I learned, and saved. Forever. When the person dies their survivors will go through their things, and go, "no wait, what? what? this person got Valentines cards like this when they were alive? That's awesome! Man, I wish I had friends who gave me cards like this."

And it's a simple one too. Part 2 Doubles the awesomeness of this card, and Part 3 intensifies that!

The super-clear photo instructions are entertaining even for those of us who would never hand-make a card, even for those who don't send cards of any kind, and even those who have a Valentine's-equivalent-of-Scrooge-like attitude about Valentine's Day.

"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath..."

"... his mind would never romp again like the mind of God."

That's a challenging one, today's sentence in the "Gatsby" project (wherein we examine, each day, one sentence, out of context, from "The Great Gatsby").

I'm seriously intimidated, because I can't bust out of the sentence to get a grasp of how it can be that his mind is, pre-kiss, romping like the mind of God. Oh, but suddenly it's clear! If he kisses her, he enters the concrete word, where one specific thing after another will happen. But before he takes that action, he exists within imagination — his unutterable visions. There's so much to gain and so much to lose. Within imagination, he is like God, fully free. Anything — everything — can happen. You throw that all away if you kiss her. To kiss her is not to marry her, but there is a wedding: of the mind to the body, the perishable breath.

And quite aside from the man and the resisted kiss, there's an assertion about God. God has a romping mind.

ADDED: Chip Ahoy animates the sentence:

"I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon.

This is the picture  — I assume — that F. Scott Fitzgerald had in his head...



... when he wrote that sentence, which is today's sentence from "The Great Gatsby." (Every day we isolate and talk about one sentence from "The Great Gatsby.")

El Greco painted that "View of Toledo" circa 1600. That seems too long ago for a man to have been painting like that. It's hard to understand how that could have happened. But maybe you are thinking: Toledo!? Was that part of the Ohio Inquisition we were just talking about?

At the Dog Fight Café...

... get scrappy.

At the Alien Abduction Café...

... pay attention.

(Animation of my photograph by Chip Ahoy.)

"When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us..."

"... and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air."

To diagram that sentence — today's sentence from "The Great Gatsby" — begin with: brace | came. The subject of the sentence is brace, and the predicate is came. You've got a long clause beginning the sentence which has 3 parts to it — one with a we | pulled subject and verb, one with snow as a subject and the verb began tied to stretch and twinkle, and one with lights and moved. There is also a pair of "into" phrases — "into the winter night" and "into the air" — near the beginning and at the very end of the sentence.

You could easily get on the wrong track reading this sentence and think the real snow is part of what we pulled out into, especially with no comma after night, but the real snow, our snow is the subject of the next phrase. We don't pull out into the snow, only into the night. The snow then takes over the action, stretching out beside us. That's a little sexy, like the snow is in bed with us. But then we see that we must be on a train and the snow is out there in the night, on the other side of the windows. The snow twinkles against the window. It's a kind of light, twinkling. It's tiny lights that mingle with dim lights, the tiny lights of small Wisconsin stations. The stations move by — that's the illusion as we move forward on this train into Wisconsin, into the real snow, our snow, the snow that's like a lover in bed with us, with tiny twinkly lights all around.

Did you get that thrill? It was a sharp wild brace that came suddenly into the air. Orgasmic!

ADDED: Speaking of thrills, here's Chip Ahoy's animation of the "Gatsby" sentence I revealed to be my favorite, 3 days ago:



"A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble."

"That's how you laughed in the middle of the night."

Said Meade, and I said: "Then Chip Ahoy must have been in my dream."

Because I was just reading his comment: "Melody and Rose broke up the Sweedish contractors and threw change in the tip jar and put on her warm magic apron."

And I laughed not because that is nonsense, but because it's a quite brilliant contribution to a conversation that was pretty far along at that point, including betamax3000's extended interpretation of "The White Album." Beta had said:

Like the White Album perhaps Althouse is telling us there are secret messages to be found, backwards.

"Sweetly up broke voice, her rose melody."

"Upon magic human warm her of little."

"Out tipped change."

It all began with a sentence from "The Great Gatsby," which was about — not a woman laughing — a woman singing. But women laugh all the time in "The Great Gatsby." For example: "She looked at me and laughed pointlessly."

"These 'Gatsby' posts are becoming the new café around here" — "café" posts are open threads  — I say as I drink my coffee and contemplate today's Gatsby sentence, which I'd said will be "I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee."