A song from the great 1969 album "Streetnoise," called to mind this morning on the occasion of spell correct. I've known for a long time that my last name, should I be so weak as to mistype it, spell-corrects to "alehouse," and that has me hearing the voice of Julie Driscoll singing "Right out of the alehouse and into the jailhouse."
I didn't slip so low as to typo my own name this morning. I typo'd "Meadhouse," my name for Meade and me, when we do something together:
Republicans blocked Democrats’ efforts to subpoena documents and seek testimony, including from John Bolton. Witnesses could still be summoned later.
Chief Justice John Roberts admonished the House impeachment managers and President Trump’s lawyers to “remember where they are.”
At Davos, Trump Scoffs at Trial and ‘Prophets of Doom’/President Trump appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on the day his trial began.
Impeachment Trial Begins in Acrimony/Republicans made last-minute changes to their proposed rules to placate moderates, but they held together to turn back Democratic proposals.
The headlines kept changing on me, and I don't think "Acrimonious" and "Acrimony" were up at the same time, but I infer that they wanted a negative word to describe the emotional atmosphere and they converged on "acrimony."
Since Mr. Sanders endorsed Mrs. Clinton in July 2016, the acrimony between the two camps has lingered. Mrs. Clinton and her former aides maintain that his endorsement came too late and was too lukewarm to truly unify the party. Some supporters of Mr. Sanders still argue that the Democratic National Committee “rigged” the rules to help her secure the nomination.
1. Actual sunrise time was 7:10, which did not look that different. It was another one of those days when nature seemed to present me with the "subtle nuance" challenge.
2. The light of the state capitol dome predominated, and I thought about the balance between the government and nature — order and chaos. But which one is order and which one is chaos? You could take either side of that debate.
3. In the comments to yesterday's dawn-run post, Susan in Seattle said: "I visit here every day but am mostly under the radar ('lurking' sounds a little creepy). This post in particular, I really enjoyed; it's been rolling around in my head since I read it in the early morning hours today." I said: "Thanks, Susan in Seattle. It’s my favorite kind of post to write." So I'm doing it again.
4. I love repetition. The run to see the sunrise is a daily repetition, and the 9-point (will it be 9?) list could be a repetition as well. But this is only day 2 of that repetition, and 2 times is no kind of pattern. Got to have at least 3.
5. In yesterday's comment thread, Mr. Forward said: "I was training for the Birkenbeiner and I had a playlist where 'Cannonball' by the Breeders would kick in at the top of the hill and with the right snow would synchronize with the topography of the downhill plunge. Transcendent or close enough." Today, I asked Siri to play a running playlist that I've used a lot over the past 3 months and — just by chance — I got hit with "Cannonball."
6. I had my AirPods in so I thought Meade was howling because he heard a coyote. I ask him now, and it turns out he wasn't howling, he was hooting. He heard an owl.
7. Was he trying to convey the message to me that the sounds of nature are superior to the podded-in music? I ask him, and he says, "No, no, it's not all about you. Get over yourself." You have to imagine the tone, which is humorous and a denial of what would be ever so slightly oppressive: hooting as a way to disparage listening to music.
9. Why write lists that go to 9? William said yesterday, "A list that stops at nine leaves a vague sense of not being quite complete." I said, "I stopped at 9 because I was writing within John Lennon’s universe." Point #4 had something to do with the song "Across the Universe," and "Revolution Number 9" is another John Lennon song: "Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer's testing voice saying, 'This is EMI test series number nine.' I just cut up whatever he said and I'd number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn't realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying, 'number nine'; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that's all it was." Order and chaos! Owls and coyotes!
Wrote Chip Ahoy in the comments to last night's post "Fox news," about our sighting of a fox running across the frozen Lake Mendota. Chip added, "Still, whatever it is, clearly between wolves, coyotes, bobcats, and humans, it is bobcats that pose the greatest hazard to survival in the wild." He linked to this:
Now, Chip Ahoy is an amazingly great commenter. We are blessed with his exalted presence. But there was another commenter who impressed me greatly yesterday. It was Mr. Forward, who invented — as far as I can tell — a whole new commenting game. He wrote:
One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests, Fox News utters a bizarre sentence played over the years, "We can not afford to indulge this madness, everything Mark Twain wanted to eat when he arrived home at Meadhouse."
Apologize, atheists, accusing others of taking pills at the Snowhill Cafe. It's completely bizarre, a symbolic victory, one year ago today.
Do you get it? He's pasted together bits from my blog posts of the last few days into a fanciful vignette. I'd love to see more of these, I thought, and then I did. For there was Chip Ahoy, in the very next comment — 3 hours later, in the middle of the night — and he's all:
Mr. Forward introduced a classic "orange" subject:
Nothing rhymes with orange.
Hector Owen responded:
I suppose, if one were to make a ceramic porringer, and glaze it the color of those carrots, and set it on the table with other things that did not include carrots, or yams, or (of course) oranges, that one could then proudly say, "Nothing is oranger than my porringer!"
Still, nothing rhymes with "orange." Now, if that porringer had a flange … no, the "a" would still be different.
I thought the right answer was "door hinge."
Lucid sledgehammers the meaning of the post:
This is clearly a very penetrating (???!!!!) photographic comment: While women (pink) are to be carefully considered, the photographer also feels concern for the tribulations of men and their special appendages.
Freeman Hunt provides an amazing list of things that an orange ribbon is supposed to reflect/create awareness of — according to this creepy awareness site:
There's some sad orange wearers right this minute 'cause University of TN just missed knocking off #1 Alabama...the score was 12 to 10 and UT had a chance at making a field goal in the last couple of seconds.
Knox(ville) — who "just ordered myself a black 'Amish Support' ribbon car magnet!" — said:
Yeah, yeah, keep it to yourself.
Oh, who am I kidding, I don't give a sh*t about football.
You are talking about football, right?
Leland said...
Texas A&M, in the[ir] hatred for University of Texas and all things orange, learned how to grow maroon carrots.
Libhom said:
This post is as senseless as everything else on this blog.
Chip Ahoy said:
This post has no meaning!
Just like everything else on this blog -- meaningless.
Just like my life has no meaning. Except for the meaning I give it by spending time here noting your abject absence of meaning and returning regularly and reaffirming that observation and then setting aside my other meaninglessness to take the time and effort to remark on your meaninglessness, even so far as to bother with a CAPTCHA to do it. Yes, that's right, my remark on your meaningless blog does have meaning although I assert your blog that I make the remark on does not.
But then I wouldn't recognize meaning if it jumped up and bit my penis. I do not understand photography or art or getting out and seeing my city or recording it with my own unique eye and through my own lens, or forests or farmers market or flower boxes, animals or odd things in nature or within human constructions. They're meaningless to me! Now, start being meaningful Goddamnit! And give me something meaningful to foul.
Then my other self says,
I once had a careless carrot patch. There was loose tilled dirt directly under an air conditioner that dripped steadily throughout the hot summer directly onto that patch of dirt, so watering was automatic. I had a packet of carrot seeds that I broadcast into the soil and, being an ordinary kid, didn't pay much attention to them thereafter, just checked back occasionally. The plants are beautiful at every stage of development, more so because they were not arranged in tight farmerly rows. At first the foliage looks like delicate little green feathers, then lacy ferns, then they expand, fill in, and strengthen to proper deep dark green carrot tops. The bright orange carrot roots were delicious.
LoafingOaf said:
These are gross looking carrots. They look like fucked up fingers or pathetic penises or something. Ick.
Uh, yeah. Have you no pity! Why are cancerous breasts a big warm fuzzy cause, but a pathetic penis is just something against which to hurl contempt? Sexist. You must wear a light blue ribbon for penance. Penis penance.
And yet the Oaf continues:
I have a question. Why is everything that Obama says or does horribly wrong to Althouse and her commenters, yet Dick Cheney is such a hero the Althouse world wants to build him a statue in Madison? Is Obama really that awful and Cheney really that righteous? Or is this blog getting carried away by the right wing?
(Link added.)
Bissage said:
I find myself disappointed that Loafing Oaf didn’t post a link to his blog where we’d all find his twelve point plan specifying what each and every one of us should do to make Althouse so very much better than it is.
Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.
Aw, leave Michael Phelps alone! What's wrong with drinking in a club? If you go out dancing, why not dance like "a loon"? Let him drink from a bottle of Grey Loon and dance like a goose if he wants. What business is it of yours?
[T]he athlete skeeved out onlookers when he persisted in PDA-ing with his girlfriend, cocktail waitress Caroline (Caz) Pal.
"They wouldn't stop making out! They were literally sucking face, and not caring that anyone was watching," says our snitch, who added that Phelps danced up such a storm that he briefly went shirtless, changing out of his T-shirt in the club and putting on a zip-up hoodie with nothing underneath.
Literally sucking face, eh? Who are these people who go to clubs and are nevertheless susceptible to the skeeves?
You know my position on public display of affection:
So just yell — good-naturedly — "Get a room!" and go find a love of your own. Or sublimate usefully.
IN THE COMMENTS: Mr. Forward has a poem:
Swims like a fish Dances like a loon Drinks Grey Goose Sings off tune Affection in Public Isn't so wrong At least he wasn't Kissing his bong.
Here. It's a tad "inside Althouse" but very charming (to me, anyway):
Althouse's favorite commentater Lives under the refrigerator. He appears as a ghost when he bothers to post, Admits "it's the only way I could date her."
AND: Psychedelic George follows on:
A mere common tater, a tuber who wishes he knew 'er.
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