Goodbye to commenter Michael K.

Other commenters mark his passing in the comments to Tuesday night's sunrise post and in this earlier post that day.

This morning I'm seeing Neo's blog post, "RIP commenter 'Mike K'": "RIP Mike K, and all the commenters here who may have died but all we know is that they disappeared never to return."

Yes, I've mourned the unexplained loss of Bissage for 15 years.

Bissage was a dearly beloved commenter on this blog who disappeared one day, when the uncooperative dear became uncooperative. I've tried to call him back: "Come back, Bissage. We're counting oranges again. Remember? 42. 42. 42..." To no avail.

I appreciate hearing the specific news that a commenter has died, like when Gahrie's brother's dropped into a comments thread: "Hello.... This is my brother gahries account, and it appears this post was close to the last thing he read/saw before he passed away Sunday morning sometime after 130am...."

I miss Gahrie and Bissage and Michael K and many others who died or drifted away and even some of those who left in a huff. They, unlike the dead, can drop back in. Why don't they? It's not for me to figure out. The blog, like life itself, can only move forward, and the day will come when we will all be left behind. So thanks to all — except the actual trolls — who walked along this way as far as they did.

Maybe Hillary's giant-gaping-collar costume was supposed to remind us of Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn.

That's Neo-Neocon's theory, and she's got the pictures to prove it.

Maybe that's what Hillary's stylists were going for, but it badly misses the mark because of the glossy fabric and the menswear collar. And because it's a blouse. Jackie and Audrey are wearing jackets — jackets made of stiff fabric, probably wool. There's no shirtliness about their garments. Jackie's neckline has the look of a folded-over cowl and Audrey's is as plain as possible, like a sliced-off pipe. Both women look encased. The neckline seems wide so they can retract their cute heads into the shell if they needed to for protection. It's darling (possibly) but not at all presidential.

"It pains me to admit it, but apparently, I have passed away."

"Everyone told me it would happen one day but that's simply not something I wanted to hear, much less experience. Once again I didn't get things my way! That's been the story of my life all my life... I apologize for making sweet Bonnie wear No Frills jeans when she was little and for 'red-shirting' Scott in kindergarten. Apparently each of these things was humiliating to them but both were able to rise above their shame and become very successful adults. I'd also like to apologize to Mary Ann for tearing up her paper dolls and to Betsy for dating a guy she had a crush on.... So… I was born; I blinked; and it was over...."

From the obituary of Emily Phillips, written by Emily Phillips, who died at the age of 69, 29 days after learning that she had pancreatic cancer.

ADDED: The obituary made Neo-Neocon think of the play "Our Town" — "It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another" — and a couple other literary things.

What's missing from Lena Dunham's new statement about her account of what she did to her baby sister.

See if you notice:

First and foremost, I want to be very clear that I do not condone any kind of abuse under any circumstances.

Childhood sexual abuse is a life-shattering event for so many, and I have been vocal about the rights of survivors. If the situations described in my book have been painful or triggering for people to read, I am sorry, as that was never my intention. I am also aware that the comic use of the term “sexual predator” was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well.

As for my sibling, Grace, she is my best friend, and anything I have written about her has been published with her approval.

Here's my discussion from this morning, "Within the speculum of things she did.," which ends:

And, since Lena too was a child, the contemplation centers on the mother — the "mother who didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina."

Neo-Neocon similarly focuses on the mother:

A seven-year-old child is very much under the influence of his/her parents... The child abusers [here] were the parents, although not in the technical, hard-core sense of rapists, but in the sense of a flagrant and deliberate flaunting of boundaries. In such an atmosphere, children often become both confused and hyper-sexualized. And I believe that’s what happened to Dunham.

Dunham's new statement does not mention her mother (or her father). It's possible that Dunham either intentionally or recklessly wrote her stories to wreak vengeance on her mother. In her memoir's voice, she can pose as the innocent child, recounting her memories such as they are, undefended, and it will be for readers to see and to process and, ultimately, to mete out whatever punishment and condemnation we decide her parents deserve.

"The female power brokers of Washington wear color like virtually no other group of working women."

Observes Robin Givhan, describing the absurdly bright colors worn by the female members of Congress at the State of the Union spectacle.

When will the gentlewomen of Congress stop feeling as though they must announce themselves for the cameras, their constituents and their colleagues? How many more women will it take in the upper echelons of Washington before they can all relax, suit up with authority — see Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) — and stop dressing like gumdrops?...

Congresswomen, there’s no need to peacock for the cameras.

Here's how I observed the same scene (in yesterday's post "10 things I might have live-blogged, if I'd blogged the State of the Union Address"):

Is every woman wearing bright red? As Obama squeezes in down the aisle, the backdrop of red looks like an array of military personnel from some European country, but it's just the congresswomen, bulging into the aisles. Of course, military personnel would clear a path, not make it more difficult for The Commander to walk by. The congressmen are less showily dressed. What choice do they have? If a male member wore anything other than a dark, neutral color, you'd think he's lost his mind, but the women seem to think they can't look crazy....  Incredible what women can do to themselves and still be taken seriously. Respect the women! You'd better. Or else!

Here's how Givhan describes what Michelle Obama wore:

And, of course, the first lady was the most subdued of all: She chose monochromatic, almost-black pine green, with a full skirt and cropped jacket... by Azzedine Alaia.... The signature cut, with its fitted waist and exuberant skirt, speaks of grace rather than power. Personal preference rather than politics.

Here's how I described the same outfit:

Michelle Obama... is wearing something that seems halfway between a 1950s little girl's party dress and an enlarged insect's carapace.

The First Lady knew the cameras would focus on her, so she was free to wear any color she chose, and she chose what Robin Givhan called almost-black pine green and what had me doing a Google image search for a bottle fly. The Congresswomen knew they would be dots in a crowd, and both Givhan and I spoke in terms of mental problems. You might think she sounds a lot nicer than I do, but she's the one who perceives the women as having a psychological deficiency that makes them overdo the demand for attention. I was talking about how the viewer accepts women displaying themselves so outlandishly without regarding them as insane.

Both Givhan and I talk about the difference between the way men and women dress. She is saying that the women seem beset by discomfort with the authority they in fact possess, and the arc of progress bends toward a day when, finally relaxed, they wear something more like what the men wear. I'm saying the men are more constrained, by strict fashion convention, by the judgment that would befall them if they deviated — we'd think them nuts if they dressed like Tom Wolfe — controlled for the expectation that they confine themselves to convention, and by the demand that they never let it show that they think the women look ridiculous.



That's Connecticut Congresswoman, Rosa DeLaurio. Respect the woman! You may not laugh! Behind her is Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In my "10 things" post, I wrote:

"Shirley Temple is there," I said, spotting Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and being unfair to Shirley Temple, whose ringlets — as I do an image search this morning — look artlessly subtle and not at all like Debbie's headful of boing-y springs.

My laughing at the woman, there, produced this long column from Neo-Neocon. Purporting to defend Wasserman Schultz, Neo-Neocon relies heavily on the belief that she probably didn't do much to her hair to cause it to look like that:

She’s probably desperate for an “artlessly subtle” look, but that’s probably beyond her powers, or would take so much “doing” for her as to be all-consuming. She’s lucky if her hair doesn’t frizz up into a big puffball or frizz down into a limp and wan collection of wires.

Why is it a defense to say that little work was put into the achievement of the look? Is that a special defense for women or can men get similar support? Seems to me the male members are poofing and puffing whatever they've got and adding fake hair too. In them, we look at the result, and pronounce it ridiculous when it seems ridiculous. We feel perfectly free to point and laugh at this:



Those few curls on a man make us think he's pretty wild. Too nutty to take seriously? What if he let it go a little farther into something more like this:



Mental?! Do you recognize who that is? He's not in politics. Here he is in a younger condition:



What if Rand Paul wore blond, brilliantined, biblical hair, like Jesus wore it (Hallelujah I adore it)? What would you think? You couldn't imagine that you could defend him by saying he wasn't putting much effort into the achievement of that look!

"The things I like about Walker (my front-runner so far) are his executive experience, his principles, and his guts and fighting spirit..."

"... as well as his success in a mostly-blue state such as Wisconsin countering whatever the left could throw at him. That is a formidable accomplishment," writes Neo-Neocon, comparing Scott Walker to Chris Christie. "His rhetoric and charisma, I suspect, leave quite a bit to be desired. But I don’t know how much they are lacking because I haven’t watched or listened to him speak all that much. I fear Walker will have too much of the blah-blah-blah factor, but I don’t know...."

Well, I sure have watched him and listened to him. A lot. I watched all the debates in the 2010 election and the 2011 recall election. He has a style that people outside of the Midwest might not get. But I'm thinking that we got such a rhetoric-and-charisma overload with Obama that people might find Walker's style refreshing and uplifting. Walker comes across as completely sincere and earnest. He's committed to his conservative principles, which is unnerving to those who'd like to shake him. He's unshakeable.

"PEEP SHOW: NYTIMES publishes nipple on front page..."

Says Drudge, with a photo of a sleazy guy in the doorway of a peep-show storefront. The link goes to this PDF of the front page of today's NYT which does indeed show nipple — the top third of one nipple, just below a 2-inch surgery scar. The story is "Push to Test for Cancer Gene Sets Up a Dilemma in Israel." The woman — whom we see only from neck to mid-breast — has a nipple-sized Star of David tattooed at clavicle-level.

Too sensationalistic? Does it stir up old suspicions that breast cancer is getting extra credit in the clamor amongst the diseases for our attention? Is the matter-of-fact(ish) inclusion of nipple a way for the New York Times to say: We're about New York, and New Yorkers are a cut above the rest of the world when it comes to maturity and sophistication? Or is it just the latest, most pathetic sign that the NYT is desperate for readers?

If the last, it worked. Drudge reeled us websters in, and one can only imagine the effect at the real-world newsstands.

IN THE COMMENTS: Brando says:

Forget about the nipple! Isn't there a rule in Jewish law against having tattoos? Or have I been misled?

Neo-Neocon has more on the tattoo taboo.

I like the old Lenny Bruce routine on this subject. He'd gotten a tattoo when he was in the Navy in WWII. When his mother saw it, she screamed: "Now you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery!" He said: "Its OK, Ma. I'll be buried in a Jewish cemetery. They can amputate my arm and bury it in a Catholic cemetery. It can wave to my body."

"Imagine, Mr. Speaker, a world without balloons."

Said Congressman Hank Johnson. "How can we make sure that the injustice of there being no helium for comedians to get that high-pitched voice that we all hold near and dear to our hearts."

He was, as the video at the link showed, mocking Republicans for wasting 2 days debating the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act (which passed the House on a nearly unanimous vote, 394-1). "Too often lately, this body has sat deflated — not for lack of hot air, mind you. But seriously, ladies and gentlemen, unlike a noble element, this House has failed to act on Americans’ real concerns."

Now, Hank Johnson is the Congressman who famously asked whether the island of Guam, if it gets over-populated, might "tip over and capsize":



On his Friday show, Rush Limbaugh played the old tip-over-and-capsize clip along with the new world-without-balloons clip. Rush derided Johnson for caring about helium as if he's some kind of nut:

Did you know that helium was endangered or threatened? What, is the Hunt family trying to make a run on helium like they did silver? Or maybe the Koch brothers? The Koch brothers are trying to corner helium. That's what it is, so that kids can't have birthday parties. That's what it is. The Koch brothers are doing it! The Koch brothers are trying to corner the helium market. And Hank here was saying that he supported the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act. He's from Georgia. 

Well, every single Republican in the House who voted, voted yes, and the vote was 391-1, so you might want to educate yourself about what this program is about. When I blogged a Washington Post item about it — "Congress finds it hard to let Federal Helium Program run out of gas" — I got called out by a number of commenters, notably Carl, who said:

The issue is not nearly as picayune as this asinine article suggests. In the first place, helium is essential stuff for a number of high-tech, scientific, and medical uses. I said essential, as in completely irreplaceable, at least with present or foreseeable technology.

Second, it is a weirdly irreplaceable resource. When your liquid He boils off, it makes its way to the top of the atmosphere and drifts off into interplanetary space, because the Earth's gravity is too weak to hold it. It's gone for good. You will never be able to recycle it, the way you might think of recycling iron from scrap heaps, or even reconstituting oil from the CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere after it gets burnt.

Third, the only conceivable source is the underground decay of uranium and thorium, which verrrry slowly produce helium over millions of years, particle by particle. There is no way to hurry the process up, and the supply is obviously finite and decreasing remorselessly every year.

Fourth, the economics are stupid, because the 1990s Federal law said to sell off the reserve as fast as possible, so the Federal government has been dumping He at far less than the cost to actually supply it for years and years. Not surprisingly, all these wrong economic signals have built up a whole economic structure built on them -- built on sand, so that once those signals reset to reality, you are going to have significant disruption.

That's the difficult issue. There may be broad agreement that economic reality should take over, and the signals reset, but how and when to do that is a matter of debate, as well it should be, and for the admittedly narrow segments of tech for which this is relevant, hardly trivial. It is by no means something Senators and Representatives shouldn't be wasting their time upon. The Post could do its readers a better favor by explaining why this happened, and the strangely unique nature of helium, than by phoning in a cheap mindless story about how government programs live forever ha ha ha.

But that's modern journalism. It has decayed to formula so absurdly that I wonder whether someone with an actual original thought or story line could survive. I suppose it is conservatism born of their shrinking bottom line. Reminds me of Hollywood, similar[ly] threatened by cable and the Internet, which can only make Spiderman 8 and Star Trek: The Fourth Reboot because is timidity won't allow for any bolder essay.

I am pushed back. What seems dumb may not be dumb. It may be dumb to accept the prompt that something is dumb.

And is Hank Johnson dumb? Surely, his world-without-balloons speech isn't dumb. He may be wrong to minimize the significance of the helium program, but Rush was deriding him for seeming to care about the program, which wasn't even what he was doing. Was Rush dumb to misunderstand the balloon quote and to present it along with the tip-over-and-capsize quote? Rush has his fun, but I don't think Rush knew much about the value of the helium program.

But if Rush has his fun, occasionally at Hank Johnson's expense, he (and we) ought to see that Hank Johnson also has his fun. Unquestionably, the world-without-balloons speech deploys sarcasm. It's time to ponder whether the tip-over-and-capsize question was deadpan humor.

This is a island that, at its widest level is, what, 12 miles from shore to shore, and at its smallest level, smallest location, it's 7 miles between one shore and the other.  My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and, uh, and capsize.

I say it was!

ADDED: Back in 2010, at the time of the "tip-over-and-capsize" remark, Neo-Neocon said it was "deadpan humor"... but she was doing a big old April Fool's joke.

"Cartoons were already my nemesis. I didn’t like them, although they were ubiquitous on TV...."

"Was that because I wasn’t interested? Or was it because I was repelled, or because I was particularly cartoon-challenged? Probably a combination of all three, because the phenomenon persisted into adulthood and involved even some cartoons whose content didn’t especially repel me....  Sometimes there’s too much going on visually in cartoons, too; I get distracted. I sometimes fail to get the joke in non-animated cartoon squares (like the ones in a magazine) because I focus on the wrong detail or misinterpret details in odd ways."

Ironically, I'm distracted by there being too much going on in this blog post. It combines the discussion of animated movies, single-panel New Yorker type cartoons, and comic strips. These are completely different to me.

The blogger (Neo-Neocon) has a special problem with the way panels in a comic strip tell a story. (She was once given a devilish IQ test that required putting scrambled panels in the right order.) It that is your issue, read "Understanding Comics."

And I don't like mixing up the topic of scoring on an IQ test with appreciating a type of art. The example of the IQ question at the first link is such an ugly example of a comic strip. In or out of order, it's repellent. It's like having to edit an atrocious sentence. What does it prove?

"In discussions of the film 'Groundhog Day' on this blog, I’ve noticed a couple of people questioning..."

"... why the Bill Murray character would find Andie McDowell’s Rita deserving of all those years of his devotion and energy. For example, '…[W]hat, exactly, made the lovely but, let’s face it, vapid Rita worthy of Phil’s centuries of effort?'"

Was it centuries? I haven't seen that movie since it came out. I didn't remember the extent of the time frame. I can't picture myself in the mood — ever — to rewatch that one, but I do have a special affinity for stories and, especially, humor that has to do with extravagant comparisons or variations in size. So, here, that would be what appears to be a day is reframed as a century. The single funniest thing I ever heard in my life was: I was cutting someone's hair and I noticed a bright red dot on his scalp. I said: "What's this red dot?" And he said: "That's my Santa Claus hat."

I wish I'd made a tag for this concept long ago, because it would have collected a lot of different things that are impossible to put together retrospectively. It's not like, for example, deciding after 9 years of blogging that I ought to have an Andie McDowell tag. I could easily do a search. Also, that tag could only have one possible name. This other tag... what would I call it? Size? That size thing I like? Size-osity? Big and small? I have a "light and shade" tag, so I think I'd do big and small. Too late now. But not a century too late. Only 9 years. Oh, what the hell. I'll start now.

That reminds me: Have you ever seen this? It's the best graphic representation of all time (and all space).

"If a woman’s hair is her crowning glory, Ms. Brooks’s is a particularly noteworthy diadem."

"It reminds me of nothing more than the coifs of the women beloved by so many pre-Raphaelite painters such as Rossetti, whose Helen of Troy is typical of the genre..."

"I had the thought last week that this entire thing is charade designed to sell a book."

Yeah, my thought too. That's why I didn't blog about "My Personal Credit Crisis" — by Edmund L. Andrews — when I read it last week. And it's a long article. It's very rare that I go all the way through a long article and refrain from blogging it. Normally, I taste things, and the decision to consume them in full is automatically a decision to blog them. But I felt aggressively hostile to giving Andrews any attention. It was a readable article. I'll give him that. But I wanted to smack him.

AND: Neo-Neocon wants to smack him too. In the comments, Beth said...

I read this with disbelief. This guy, after child support, was bringing home less than $3k a month, and his fiancee at the time had no job at all, and it made sense to borrow HALF A MILLION BUCKS???? He keeps saying how easy it was to borrow it, but until months after the bills actually start coming in, he never thought about how hard it would be to pay back. That's the kind of thinking I've seen in friends with manic depression, in a manic phase.

It seemed to me that the guy did whatever he could get away with. And now he writes a confessional memoir about his shamelessness with the NYT as his springboard.