"Following the E. Jean Carroll trial feels like watching one 80-year-old woman realize there is just nothing she can do to rid herself of this omnipresence..."

"... and then realizing that we are, all of us, that 80-year-old woman. That we have been, for some time, subsumed and consumed by one man and his very strong MAGA base. In the future when sociologists and historians study this period of time, I wonder if this will be the most lasting psychological stain. Not any specific acts, but the general weight, the inescapable pull, the black hole, the fog, the fug, the reality that our atmosphere is coated in a thin, smoggy layer of Donald Trump...."

Writes Monica Hesse, in "E. Jean Carroll used to be somebody/Once you enter Trump’s world, your own world evaporates" (WaPo).

Trump is responsible for whatever bad acts he's committed, such as, if Carroll is right, raping a woman in a department store dressing room, but subsuming and consuming the entire world and coating it with thin smog... that's something that you're doing to yourself.

"The entire place, in fact, has a time-warped quality. It is reminiscent of college or summer camp — but for people who..."

"... no longer have to worry about what they’re going to be when they grow up or what their political choices will bring. For Villagers, the future is less of a concern than living their best life. Right. Now. Here, baby boomers still reign supreme, in a place that caters to some of their most self-absorbed, self-indulgent impulses. The culture, like the overwhelmingly conservative politics, can feel like a scrupulously maintained bulwark against the onslaught of time and change.... Crime, inequality, homelessness, climate change, racial strife, the high cost of child care and college — these are challenges for other communities to grapple with.... Early one evening, I settle in near the Sumter Landing bandstand to watch the Hooligans, a local favorite that plays all the classics — Pink Floyd, the Clash, the Police, Rod Stewart. At one point, a trim, relatively young woman sporting short dark hair and a golf visor wanders over to ask if I’m the band’s agent.... After quizzing me about who I work for and what I’m working on, she introduces herself succinctly: 'Brenda. Strong conservative and strong Christian.'... [S]he drifts back into the sea of seniors swaying as the band belts out Radiohead’s 'Creep': 'What the hell am I doin’ here? I don’t belong here. …'"

From "The ‘Disney’ for Boomers Puts Hedonism on Full Display" by Michelle Cottle, opinionating from The Villages in Florida for the NYT.

That went up a few days ago, but I noticed it just this morning, when a lot of "To the Editor" letters went up. (The original article lacked a comments section.) Most of the letters complain about the bias and snobbishness. But not all. The last letter in the series says: 

"What the hell am I doing here?/I don't belong here..."

Ada Vox/Adam Sanders on "American Idol" last night:



"Creep" is kind of an "American Idol" tradition, notably from Jena Irene in Season 13:

"Technology does cut two ways: it facilitates a weird and sometimes useful intimacy, sure, but it also teaches us to conflate a curated identity with a real one..."

"... and, moreover, to work on perfecting our systems of curating rather than our actual selves. This becomes important, politically, when we can no longer read or understand the human character. Our present cultural climate discourages empathy—a stay-in-your-lane policing has been afoot for a while now—and demands the performance of absolute authority. The idea that a person could work to understand another, to assume their struggles and their triumphs, to question them, and to love them regardless, is the crux of any spiritually functioning civilization. Yet this seems to be Radiohead’s real anxiety: that we are all forgetting how to know each other, and how to be properly alive."

Last paragraph of a New Yorker article Amanda Petrusich — author of “Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records" — about how the band Radiohead had suddenly "bleached its Internet presence—its Web site faded to white; its Twitter and Facebook pages were scrubbed of content—a move so blatantly counterintuitive that acolytes knew to recognize it as a portent. "

"It is a very strange moment for Mr. Obama..."

The NYT editorial on Obama's Syrian difficulties. It's against a military strike, I think, but in the most invisible possible way.

Let me paraphrase the 10 paragraphs:

"The other day I gave her mash and fishfingers for dinner — something quite boring — and her response was 'That’s impressive,' so she has a sense of humor, too."

An English dad describes the experience of living with a 4-year-old genius. 

ADDED: Confession: I had to Google to make sure "mash" referred to potatoes. The process of doing blog tags confronted me with the part of my brain — of whatever size IQ, I don't know — that has been dealing with English food. Long ago, "mash" got mushed with "mushy peas," and I'd never had the push to straighten that out until just now. But, thanks to Wikipedia, I've set my head straight. "Mash" is just mashed potatoes. And "bangers and mash" — which sounds dirty — is just sausages and mashed potatoes, which I think are "impressive."

The term "bangers" is attributed to the fact that sausages, particularly the kind made during World War II under rationing, were made with water so they were more likely to explode under high heat if not cooked carefully; modern sausages do not have this attribute.

Wikipedia kindly includes some pop culture references, including Peter Sellers singing to Sophia Loren, about how he's unsatisfied with her "macaroni" and would like her to "give us a bash at the bangers and mash me mother used to make," which you can listen to on one of those YouTube videos where all you look at is the record spinning. Sellers and Loren do their best to exclude any double entendre that those lyrics may seem to convey in writing.

There's also a Radiohead number called "Bangers + Mash," which has lyrics that begin "You bit me, bit me, bit me, ow," which is something Peter Sellers never sang to Sophia Loren.

Times change, which reminds me of my favorite "banger" song: "Lieutenant Custard & His Banger of Time," which involves a time-travel sausage. Please be careful with this!

"I’m special."

"I’m not like the average inmate... I have spent my life in prison. I have put five people in the grave. I am a very dangerous man."

Everyone thinks they're special.

Song lyric: I wish I was special... What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here.

"A group of Radiohead fans went to a recent show in Prague 'on a mission to capture the band playing using as many different angles as possible.'"

"Radiohead found out about this and provided the audio so that the fans could piece everything together into proper videos."

Beautiful! I love when artists respond to the work of their fans like this.

Music to read by: the suggestions.

Today, my iPod Shuffle arrived, and I adore it, as blogged here. You may remember I bought it to fill with music that would help me read and study without distraction, and I solicited advice from readers about what they thought would fit this need. I've already noted some preliminary suggestions, including a warning against classical music, the theory being that it's too complex and interesting, which makes it distracting. Clearly, you don't want to study while listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but I think there are some good classical choices. One reader writes:

In response to your e-mailer who suggested that classical music is too distracting to read by: presumably that depends a great deal on the individual reader/listener. I, personally, am distracted by schlocky music. Most contemporary movie soundtracks would have me yanking off my earphones and begging the barista to chat me up. The thing I love about Chopin (for example) is that, while it has a deep, complex musical structure and emotional texture, it doesn't have any of the insistent qualities that demand that you focus your immediate, conscious attention on it at every moment (like a driving beat, or an incessant rhythm or lyric, or a rigid structure). Last week in the library I read two books and skimmed three more in two and a half hours while listening to Rubinstein play Chopin, and my concentration never wavered. I can rarely sustain that level of concentration for that long, and I credit the music for helping to maintain my interest and focus.

In fact, I have this CD already, and I put the only the slower pieces on my "Reading Music" playlist. Here's another email with classical suggestions:

My taste might be more vanilla than you're looking for, but I often study listening to Chopin's nocturnes, Schubert's impromptus, and Vanessa-Mae's classical work. A good Chopin CD is Jean Yves Thibaudet's "The Chopin I Love"; there's quite a bit on that CD, including the E-flat major nocturne, which is my absolute favorite. For Schubert, the Wanderer Fantasy CD is very nice, especially if you can find the one played by Leon Fleisher. Actually, most of Leon Fleisher's piano work is wonderful. And Vanessa-Mae--her Original Four Seasons CD is very nice. It has the Vivaldi pieces but also her own work, the Devil's Trill Sonata, which is fantastic. Her CD Violin Player is also probably good, but I don't have that one. I do have Storm, which is interesting--she is a beautifully talented violinist who likes to fuse classical music with more modern work. She combined Bizet's Can-Can with a driving techno beat, and that worked quite well. But some of her other pieces on that CD are a little annoying--Bach just shouldn't be combined with a synthesizer or electric guitar line.

Here's another:

I find that the Hilliard Ensemble's "Morimur" is great to read to. (It's on ECM New Series.) The recording was inspired by the research of Helga Thoene, a musicologist who argues that Bach alluded to chorales in the Chaconne from the second partita for solo violin. So the recording presents several chorales (in German) and the partita, followed by a reconstruction of the Chaconne with singers emphasizing the chorale melodies. (Of course, you can't go wrong with Bach for stringed instruments, either: the 'cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the lute music -- there is also a very fine, recent release of Segovia Bach transcriptions on Deutsche Grammophon.)

I have a lot of Bach on CD and am putting a good portion of that into the Shuffle. Someone recommended Schubert's "Wanderer Fantasy," which I had.

Another of the "preliminary suggestions" noted in the earlier post was movie soundtracks. As that emailer above indicates, many film soundtracks are bombastic and inappropriate for my purpose, but from my existing CD collection, I chose the Philip Glass soundtrack from "Kundun." Although I haven't ordered any of these, here are some specific soundtracks that were recommended: "Ghost in the Shell 2," "The Last of the Mohicans," "Cinema Paradiso."

Another recommendation noted in the "preliminary suggestions" post was Brian Eno's ambient music, particularly "Music for Airports." I've ordered that, along with Eno's "Ambient 4: On Land" -- a classic example of making a second purchase to earn the free shipping.

Now, for some extra stuff. One emailer pointed me to this list of music featured on The Weather Channel. A couple people recommended Sigur Ros -- which sounds great. Another interesting idea is "True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead" ("Radiohead consistently produces very complex melodies and this works surprisingly well. Classically they fall into the 'Romantic' camp. Very Debussy.") One emailer suggested Miles Davis, specifically "Kind of Blue" and "Sketches of Spain." Someone recommended Aphex Twin. Someone recommended Ottmar Liebert. ("He plays 'nuevo flamenco,' some of the most beautiful and interesting classical guitar you’ve ever heard. Perfect background for reading or just thinking. Or in my case, for coding :)")

From my CD collection, I pulled out a lot of early music. I have had very good reading success with this CD in the past, so it went right in. And I had these two Hildegard von Bingen chant recordings. I put in some Monteverdi.

One more email:

It may be rather SNAGy (Sensitive New Age Guy) of me to mention this, but there is, in fact, a lot of so-called New Age music that is not overly cheesy and quite relaxing. I read and write to George Winston, Michael Jones (solo piano), David Lanz and/or Paul Speer (they collaborated), among others. A lot of it is the sort of pretentious 'Toltec Magician' (I kid you not) crap, but there are also some halfway decent composers out there. I subscribed to Real's Rhapsody service, which is pretty cheap for streaming audio, and they have a New Age stream where I get some ideas. A bunch are available on iTunes.

Anyway, that's enough for now!

Top ten cars lists.

Stephen Bainbridge approves of my car choice and is impressed that I didn't buy any of the cars on the Top Ten Cars For Women Executives or the Top Ten Cars for Soccer Moms. I've never been either an executive or a soccer mom though. (I've never even been to a soccer game.) Where's the Top Ten Cars for Women Law Professors? I agree with Bainbridge that most of the cars on these lists are boring. But then most cars are boring.

Tomorrow, I'm picking up my car, and I plan to have some nice photos of it. One of the errands I need to do once I've got a car is to drive over to Schmidt's Towing and get the last few things out of the old car. There are some maps I might as well salvage, and somewhere on the floor are Tonya's good sunglasses. Also, there are six CDs in the CD player, but after the accident the button that ejects the cartridge stopped working. Any idea how to get it out? Is it acceptable to break it out with pliers or something? Well, how valuable are the CDs? Two are from the audio book "Peace Kills" by P.J. O'Rourke. The others are the four CDs we put in to drive to Milwaukee a few weeks ago: Stevie Wonder, Prince, Radiohead, and Green Day. I would like to get them out, but I don't know how. Anyway, I want to take a couple pictures of the wreck. I took a good look at it before they towed it away, but I was kind of in a daze at the time, and I'd like to see just how far in it crumpled.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Let me invite you over to my blog's home, where you can scroll down to Sunday, January 23, and read about the accident, then scroll up through the week, for quite a few car posts.

Why Norah Jones? I was sitting in the cafe at Border's yesterday, and not surprisingly, they were playing the new Norah Jones CD. It's excellent music to play while people are trying to read, because it just couldn't be less irritating. But, really, what's the big deal about her? Are people hypnotized somehow? This music is so soft and so slow that it makes me wonder what is happening to people.

There is a way that music can be fascinatingly slow. I'm thinking of that really slow Portishead song that was popular years ago and "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead. But when I hear Norah Jones, knowing how incredibly popular she is, I worry a bit that the world is falling asleep. Yet, she's perfectly pleasant and I'm glad Border's is playing that and not something distractingly peppy, which is often the case.