"For some reason, I'm dedicating my pre-6-a.m. writing to arguing with chickelit."

I write, just now, deep in the comments thread for "What if the only people who took advantage of an unlimited leave policy were women?"

1. "'2 Thessalonians 3:10-13 is as good a retort as any to the "question" posited by Althouse.'" [Link to St. Paul's epistle added.] "Surely, Paul considered taking care of the household and the children within it as work! You think the reference to 'work' means holding down an income-producing job in the modern sense? That would be a nutty thing to believe."

2. "'Ritmo goes full Titus.'" [Reacting to this.] "No, Titus in his fullness would break free of whatever political obsession had its grip on the thread and give us real relief. You need a wild sense of fun and abandon to begin to replicate Titus."

"The comments by 'titus' on this post are offensive but important."

Says a commenter on a Facebook post that links to that post of mine about the gendered complexities of makeup.

I'm just guessing that longtime readers of the comments section on my blog would be amused to see someone noticing Titus for the first time and pronouncing him offensive but important.

I was going to invite readers to attempt to say something offensive but important, but immediately realized that was not a good idea. You need offensive + important + ??? + !!! to = Titus. And until you figure out the ??? and the !!!, the offensive + important formula is incomplete.

"Scientists at Harvard have spent the past five years building robot bugs..."

"... that can move with the same dexterity and speed as real-life insects."



This post is for betamax3000, who said, in last night's Koi Café:

I Am Going to Try an Experiment to Determine the Depths of My Althouse Comment Addiction: I Will Not Post a Comment for the Next Twenty-Four Hours. God, Give Me Strength. And -- Please -- No Robot Posts.

And I said:

But I have a Google alert on "robot."

And as long as you're over there rooting around in the Koi Café, I'm seeing Titus's list of what's hot this summer in Ptown, which he says "will arrive in Jesusland, in approximately 9 months," which makes Inga say "I got the no bra and kale thing, woo hoo! I'm ahead of the game!" and Palladian says "Kale? Varvatos? LOL. Poor Titus, about 2 years behind the trends. What a drag it is getting old."

And Meade says "Ha ha. Cool woud be growing ornamental kale in an old pair of Varvatos boots you bought in SOHO a dozen years ago. Hot: Italian wedding soup." I extract the information that it was Varvatos boots that Meade acquired — on the advice of his Cincinnati-based style consultant — to look good enough for me the first time we met, in January 2009, which was 4 years ago.



Now that you've got your shoes on...

Release the robot insects!

RELOCATED FROM ALTHOUSE2: "So, your blog goes down right after being reported as a cesspool of [misogyny] and homophobia? Hmmmmm . . ."

Says LawGirl, over in the "weasel" post.

The anonymous professor who emailed lawprof Brian Leiter to attack my commentariat said "She has the free speech right to run whatever cesspool she wants, but is she prioritizing her desire for a widely read blog over her obligation to be a responsible member of academia?" — which is quoted by Freeman Hunt, who laughs, calls it the "quote of the day," and paraphrases it: "Free speech is incompatible with academia!" Freeman adds: "Free speech areas are cesspools. Restricted speech areas are responsible academia." Yeah, but can you really expect law professors to drape their brains around that?

Maguro said: "The email is so prissy and self-important that Leiter almost certainly wrote it himself. Anonymous colleague, my ass." Well, let's be fair. Professor Anonymous does call the blog comments here a "festival of misogyny and homophobia." Palladian said: "I hope there's an open bar at your festival of misogyny and homophobia."

Roger J. said:

Professor A: unless I have completely misread you over the last five years, I am thinking you arent going down without a fight--(just dont ask me for money however, my principles arent THAT strong :) )

Hey, good idea. Please! Encourage me:

I need some love!

dbp said:

An interesting logical loop here: Brian Leiter's blog posts an anonymous comment, which presumably is in agreement with the blog's editor. The comment is actively put forward by that blog, unlike at Althouse where comments are all posted and hardly ever deleted.

Both blogs contain what could fairly be described as scurrilous comments. The difference is that Alhouse neither approves or disapproves of the comments while Leiter clearly takes an editorial ownership.

"She has the free speech right to run whatever cesspool she wants, but is she prioritizing her desire for a widely read blog over her obligation to be a responsible member of academia?"

This had got to be the most lame use of a question mark in history. Oh, I make a big long ugly accusation then make it all right with a meaningless squiggle on top of the dot.

If the Leiter post led to the removal of the Althouse blog, then is there a case of slander here?

Good point. But it's not slander. If it's in writing, we lawyers say libel, not slander. But it's not libel. It's just opinion. Lame ass opinion from a lawprof who — in my opinion — envies my readership, which is bigger than his.

***

Now, maybe you're wondering just what the hell was in those terrible comments — that supposed "festival of misogyny and homophobia." You try the link at Leiter's, but it gets you nowhere, because Blogger removed my blog. But here's the cached version of the page the Leiter blog links to. Check out the comments and see if you can tell what's really upset the people who are on my case. There are only 32 comments. They are easy enough to read. I pick out a few.

Maguro said:

[The 3 candidates] seem notably lacking in victim-group credentials. Are any of them gay, trans or gender non-conforming?

This is a criticism based on one commenter's sense of what law schools do.

gutless said:

Is Margaret a lesbian? One imagines so in that her background doesn't seem competitive and yet, here she is. If so, she has the job. If not ,she is merely window dressing and the less offensive of the other two gets the nod.

That's obviously another criticism of law schools, reflecting an assumption that law schools make choices based on diversity factors. I'm sure the criticism hurts some people, but it doesn't say there's something wrong with being a lesbian or that the candidate is a lesbian. Maybe a nervous reader could take that the wrong way, in which case, I'd say: that festival of misogyny and homophobia is in your head. Good thing you hid your name!

Thorley Winston said:

I think it’s generally a bad idea to announce the “finalists” when conducting a job interview, particularly for the top position. IMO there shouldn’t be a public announcement until they’ve made their selection.

I agree, but the Law School chose to put the names and their credentials on its official website, obviously inviting public comment. I linked, opening it up to the comments. You know we are a public law school, and it's appropriate that people around the state receive information and have an opportunity to speak. And yet, feelings can be hurt. People in legal academia like to think that their feelings are righteous indignation having to do with women and minorities... but are they really? Think carefully!

Titus said:

If the woman candidate has big tits I say hire her. Otherwise, go with one of the men.

You can't go wrong with big tits.

tits...yum

All right, that's absurd and over-the-top, by our dear, treasured Titus — a gay man. He's been talking like that on this blog for years. The regulars know him. And they know I love him. If that's what Leiter and the Anonymous Professor feel such angst about... it's because they don't understand the community here. They're like Sean Hannity fretting about Common in White House.

What Alfred Hitchcock tells us about whether Obama should show us the bullet-ridden head of Osama bin Laden.

Here's the fantastic "I think you're evil!" clip from Hitchcock's "The Birds":


I Think You're Evil! by movieclips

I looked that up because Titus invoked it in the thread about whether the bin Laden death photos should be shown: "I want to see them and he better look like Suzanne Pleshette in The Byrds." Titus is a comic commenter who says all manner of outrageous things (and misspells to amuse us). (By the way, did you know that the rock group The Byrds came out around the same time as the Hitchcock movie, and they adapted the movie slogan: "The Byrds is coming"?)

Anyway, if you've seen "The Birds," you have the feeling that you stared straight at a stark depiction of the character Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) with her eyes completely plucked out. With the clip at your control, you may have to go back a few times before you can be sure how much you really saw. I mean, I think I went back about 10 times, and I'm still not sure! But you see almost nothing. Similarly, in "Psycho," you feel you see the knife cut into Janet Leigh multiple times, but, in fact, you never see that.

The vivid, lingering image of the eyeless Pleshette is a product of imagination, and in our imagination we already have the picture of Osama's blasted face. Why should we prefer the opportunity to stare at the destruction? If "The Birds" were made today, we probably would get a long look at gruesome special effects, and it would, undoubtedly be a much worse movie with far less emotional impact. We might even laugh at it. How would we react to the real photo of bin Laden? I don't know. Maybe we'd feel a thrill, followed perhaps by shame at our brutishness. More likely, we'd stare to the point of familiarity and arrive at some clinical distance.

Why would Obama want that? Like a remake of "The Birds," it's beyond unnecessary.

The Good Habits of an Ideal Boy.

Titus emails this photo of a poster on a shop door in Brattleboro, Vermont.

(Click photo to enlarge and read.)

Obama drops to 49%.

"Of the post-World War II presidents, Obama now is the fourth fastest to drop below the majority approval level, doing so in his 10th month on the job. Gerald Ford dropped below 50% approval during his third month in office, and Bill Clinton did so in his fourth month. Ronald Reagan, like Obama, also dropped below 50% in his 10th month in office, though Reagan's drop occurred a few days sooner in that month (Nov. 13-16, 1981) than did Obama's (Nov. 17-19, 2009)."

IN THE COMMENTS: Titus says:

Normally I don't believe polls because they are liberal and biased but this one I definitely support.

thank you and good day fellow republicans.

"I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill, with..."

I'm listening to the old Dion song this morning:

No, it's not because I'm trying to come up with a verse about Teddy Kennedy... or that I picture him — accompanied by angel-harp music — walking into Heaven with various beloved dead political heroes. (Get a grip, people, Teddy lived to a ripe old age and died in the normal course of things, which is the best any of us can hope for. He was not cut down in his prime like Abraham, Martin, John, and Bobby.) It's because I need to pull this comment just buried under the "Third Man" post and elevate it to the heaven of today's front page. It's a comment about lost commenters — a song parody. And please, write new verses for that song. The collection of beloved old commenters who have wandered off is longer than Trooper, Titus, and Palladian. And they haven't died. I'm picturing them not in Heaven, but drinking and talking late into the night in some bar over on Atlantic Avenue.

"Man cave."

It's the July 23, 2009 Urban Word of the Day. Here's definition #1, with 831 up, 51 down votes:

A room, space, corner or area of a dwelling that is specifically reserved for a male person to be in a solitary condition, away from the rest of the household in order to work, play, involve himself in certain hobbies, activities without interuption. This area is usually decorated by the male that uses it without interferance from any female influence.

Definition #2 is similar. But watch out for Definitions #3 and 4, which have been strongly disapproved of by Urban Dictionary voters.

So do you have a man cave? Tell us about it. And I mean that in the Definition #1/2 sense. I know you've got one in the Definitions #3/4 sense, and you probably haven't got anything entertaining to say about it (unless you are Titus).

IN THE COMMENTS: Howard said:

Another depressing example of the continued sissification of America. Giving a special cute name to normal quiet behavior and/or a garage screams of estrogen.

If you have a garage band in that garage, you can call it Screams of Estrogen. And write a song called "Normal Quiet Behavior."

Are you annoyed at the way the death of Michael Jackson has overshadowed the protests in Iran?

This may help.

IN THE COMMENTS: Titus says:

I am annoyed the way Michael Jackson's death overshadowed Mark Sanford.

I want more Mark Sanford.

I want more previous video clips of Mark Sanford moralizing and passing judgment on others. I want 24 hour Mark Sanford and I want it now....

I want to hear Mark Sanford bitching about not taking stimulus money but than using tax payer money to fuck in Argentina... with someone other than his wife.

Hey! I didn't know...

... that the old Audible Althouse podcasts were still accessible on line. Just happened to go looking after what Reader_Iam said in the Tick Flick comments. Lord knows what all is in there!

Keep reading from that second link and you'll see that Titus throws down the gauntlet about gay men in Madison, Wisconsin. And then Chip Ahoy gets going on the subject of ticks, politicks, and — why not? — dung beetles, culminating in this:

An outrageous question gets an outrageous answer.

Titus asks.

Meade answers.

For Althouse blog insiders only.

"Treacle, we'd like to introduce you to our very good friend Titus."

Hey, Titus came back.

Somehow, the death of Bea Arthur brought back our long lost commenter. Did her ghost nudge him over here?

About my proposed Titus recording.

So I said I wanted to record — and sell — a CD of me reading some of my favorite Titus comments. I hadn't decided if I'd actually do this, so your reaction to the proposal matters to me.

Chuck b. said:

Oh my..!

I would of course include selected tracks in the music program that I play during the cocktail hour before all my dinner parties.

Like everyone else in the world is going to do once this gets in circulation!

Everyone one the coasts, I mean.

Your level of celebrity is about to tick up a notch.

So far, so good. Chuck is with me!

Palladian said:

This is a terrible idea. I can't think of anything more repellent than having to listen to Titus's comments.

But this is the way the wind is blowing around here. Apparently someone's endless commentary about their excrement and their fictive sexual encounters and their ugly dogs is what passes for interesting conversation these days.

Will you include the parts where he insults other commenters? How about when he sexually harasses female commenters, asking about their tits? What about his unfunny faux-conservative rants? Will these all be a part of the collection?

Bleh. Better to make a best-of cd of your late podcast or sell prints of your photographs or squirrel mugs or simply as for donations like Andrew Sullivan used to do?

Uh oh. I don't have Palladian! Why doesn't he appreciate Titus's absurd writings? You won't be listening to Titus. You'll be listening to me. Whatever is repellent about Titus's voice will be transformed. It won't be an attempt to impersonate him, but purely me. I think I can help you see what is so funny about it. As for prints of my photographs, anyone can download the original files and print out whatever they want under the Creative Commons license I have displayed at Flickr. As for donations, my post worked as a request for donations and I got a few. (Thanks!) I'm not desperate for money. That's not my purpose here. I really am in it for the laughs. I was reading some Titus comments aloud — the thing about the sock — and I laughed into hysteria. I'd have a lot of fun making the recording, and I only want to share the fun.... with those who find it fun.

Skeptical said:

I know why Althouse likes Titus's shtick.

Even the lame crap that Titus serves up over and over becomes performance art through his sticking to it over the long haul. When one thinks of the narrative strand that is Titus's 'I squeezed out a loaf this morning, and it had two heads,' etc., picturing it extended in time, itself like an endless loaf shat out of Titus, it has an aesthetic appeal that none of the individual loaf comments even hints at individually. So when Althouse laughs at Titus's loaf remarks, she is laughing at it not on its own, but only as a loaf-moment, if you will, in the unending loaf.

Ha ha.

John Stodder said:

I think the guy's hilarious.... [T]here is something so decorous about the way Titus expresses pride in his creations, I can't help but laugh. There's a generosity about his whole approach here. Obviously, he's one of the commenters who disagrees with the majority, but his stings are gentle and sometimes clever....

But, professor, wouldn't it just be easier for you to write a damn book? You're a pioneer blogger, a pioneer bLAWger, and a pioneer woman blogger. I'm also convinced that you've got one of the few big blogs with political content that isn't essentially dishonest.... Why don't to write a book about this blog, why you do it, what it has added to your life and career, what it's taught you?....

This is something I thought of doing and, in fact, worked on — 100 pages worth — in 2005. I abandoned the project because I didn't like the way it felt to be on the outside observing the thing I was actively doing, as if it had already occurred. To blog is to be constantly in the middle of things. I want to be the blogger, not the memoirist observing me, the blogger. That's not bloggy. This blog may seem to be about me, but it's not. You may be able to see something of me in it, and I know it feels personal. But the fact is, I don't blog about myself. I blog about whatever interests me at any given moment, and I'm not self-absorbed. I want to look out, not in.

Onparkstreet said...

I have to admit, I scroll past the Titus comments because I find them a little bit gross.

And, the funny thing is, I'm trained as a pathologist.

Ha ha ha. That is funny.

Palladian again:

Titus is not just a harmless minstrel in a faggot costume debasing himself for the pleasure of the straights. If you have read enough of his comments (and there are certainly a lot of them), you'll have noticed that there's a deep nasty streak underneath all the "namaste" crap. The titus project is to disrupt any attempt at reasonable conversation and drive away the intelligent commenters and readers. It hasn't totally worked fortunately, but I have to say that my interest in reading the comments on a post drastically diminishes when I see his alias...

"Always wondered why Titus was tolerated."

Unfortunately Althouse's commendable respect for free speech in her comments has allowed some bad-faith commenters to do a lot of damage to the community.

I don't understand the attraction Althouse has for titus's writing. I mean, the first few times he talked about his vapid life and his "rare clumbers" I thought it was amusing. But it quickly got old and quickly became apparent that his intentions were not good-faith performance art....

To me, titus is like a blackface minstrel amusing a crowd of upper-class white people. I'm not entirely comfortable with his clownish and repulsive depiction of a gay man. And I'm still not convinced he's not an entirely fictitious character.

So if I'm amused, then I'm not politically correct, gay-wise?

Jason (the commenter) said:

Always wondered why Titus was tolerated.

I always wondered why Palladian was tolerated. I bet they are the same person!

The plot thickens. But I know Palladian. He couldn't be playing such an elaborate prank on me.

Theo Boehm said:

When Titus writes about some place or thing I know about, it's inevitably misapprehended and cartoonish. It seems, as Palladian points out, as if he's toying with the suckers. His putative sexual escapades are along the same lines, again, per Palladian....

Part of what Titus is about, as has been said, is the making of everything he tells into clownish and unappealing grotesquerie. Althouse reading [some other commenter's porn] would certainly attract attention, but it wouldn't have the same underlying dark and hostile humor, if you want to call it that, of Titus' offerings. The point of porn is to attract; Titus' goal is to repel. I do think, however, there's something to learn in the process.

Althouse has in the past attracted to "comic" characters... who were classic long-range trolls, and whose goal was disruption exactly as Palladian describes. I think Althouse's commitment to free speech assumes that openness toward, and even, in the case of Titus, a co-opting of hostility that is the best way to handle it. She may have a point and a lesson to teach here. Or she may be incredibly naive about the motivations of disruptive people.

Among the many things I have learned in this blog these past years is to never underestimate Althouse, especially in her longstanding role as teacher.

That means a lot and emboldens me.

Penny said:

Two thumbs up for Althouse, two thumbs up for Titus and two thumbs up for Palladian and all the rest of you.

The beauty of Ann's blog is its diversity. She has created an exceptional oasis here, where those who have very different sensibilities can come for a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

I love politics and law. I love art and photography, and humor, and commenting on headlines. I could go on and on. The best thing that Ann has brought us ALL, is a place where we can virtually sit down and hash nearly ANYTHING out, and nearly always without making those not-like-us our enemies...or worse yet, buffoons.

Face it. Most of us head out on the internet every day for hours. Some might like to spend most of their time listening to those who say EXACTLY what they are thinking. Some take some time to check out msm links, or even the political "opposition". But where the heck do we choose to plop our asses down at the end of a hard day, or a boring day or a so-so kind of day? Right the heck here at Ann Althouse's place.

And why is that? I suggest it is because Ann is OPEN to all of us being EXACTLY the way we are. It is her "gift", and our good fortune, to have found her in this world that is becoming increasingly intolerant.

Please don't screw up what our hostess, Ann, is bringing to the internet.

This fine lady will become famous for opening up her "living room" to all of us. ALL of us.

Count me as one who will be searching out Titus, right after I give Ann a great big hug for keeping us all human.

Money follows value, my dear. And YOU, Ann Althouse, are more valuable than you know.

Aw. Cool. Thanks.

Ralph said...

"Sex and the City" proved there's a market for women talking about dicks. Perhaps Althouse wants to prove there's a market for women talking about shit.

And hog.

Palladian said:

Good Evening fellow republicans and lovers of the Bush Doctrine. Here's my attempt at a titus audiobook. I took all the comments he made in yesterday's "Mauve Cafe" post and performed them in the closest approximation of my impression of titus that I could throw together in 5 minutes. I did a bit of digital post-processing to "enhance" the performance and added an appropriate backing track.

Am I a bad person if that made me laugh until tears ran down my face (even though you tried to make me feel guilty about laughing by using that "gay" voice that only homophobes are supposed to laugh at)? By the way, Palladian left out the funniest part of the sock story, the part that nearly killed me.

Jason (the commenter) said:

Palladian,

Althouse MUST do this!

I never knew you had such a sexy voice. I always read your stuff (out loud to my friends) in a monotone.

Palladian said:

Well... uh, thanks I think. But that's not really what my voice sounds like, the pitch and speed is digitally altered and I was laying on the stereotypical faggotry pretty thickly. But my voice is quite animated and modulated, not a monotone at all.

Darcy said:

Palladian, with that bit of genius, you do realize you probably just guaranteed Althouse doing this, right?

Palladian said:

My God! What have I done!?

Oh, by the way, I am The Arm, and I sound like this...."

[cough]

Jason (the commenter) said...

Palladian,

You're real voice sounds cute! You could have read what Titus wrote with your normal voice and it would have been just as funny.

Clearly, Althouse should do a compilation.

It would be amazing if Matmos could make it into a song, like Tract for Valerie Solanas.

This also shows the genius of Titus. He's growing on me.

Palladian said:

Just like tinea cruris...

Here's my LuckyOldSon/Michael voice.

Penny said:

Althouse is a leader, and shaping us all, simply with her presence.

The fucking beauty here is that she is not shaping us all in her own form.

To whoever up above asked where I came from? Same place as you. I hit a link that FINALLY makes some sense to me.

Philosophical "warrior" in need of some middle place...and YES...even better, a sometimes silly place to set my ass down when I have had enough of "all that".

Thank you, Ann, for allowing my butt to rest here.

So? Does this site make my ass look big?

TitusFreezeFrame said:

Palladian that was brillant.

Wow, the time and energy you have devoted to this is remarkable.

More please!

I laughed my ass off!

Palladian said:

Took 5 minutes each, darling.

TitusFreezeFrame said:

Regardless of how much time it took it was terrific.

I bet you even got a little chuckle doing it, didn't you?

That voice, which I know is embelished, is the voice of my comments.

I love how you pronounced burgurs the same way I spelled it. Amazing....

All and all there is a lot of love here.

And hate I guess-150 comments on me? One commenter was right I don't give a shit...obviously.

What I do think is amusing is if anyone tried to share this with someone outside of this blog.

So there is a commenter who comments about pinching loaves. I am thinking of putting it on a CD (Althouse). I am actually going to tape some of his comments in a very queeny voice (Palladian). Try explaining that to someone at your next company staff meeting.

Also, this place would be boring without me. Just another voice bitching about liberals. Ignore me, although it seems to be hard for some.

And I actually do talk to my friends like I talk on this blog. I think I have mentioned this before but I actually leave recordings on my friends voicemails of me pinching loaves with grunts and groans and everything. They in turn forward them to other friends. I have also called them when I am having sex and let them listen. The trick doesn't know but it is my little way of sharing my life with my friends.

Now I feel a virtual group hug coming on. Don't you?

An Althouse blog fund-raiser.

I write this blog for pure love and expression, as you must know by now, but, nevertheless, I think it's good for writers to be paid. Everyone seems to love to quote Samuel Johnson's line "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." It's a good way to tweak writers, and, really, why not tweak writers? Most of us are full of ourselves. Why do we think the world owes us because we give verbal form to our thoughts? You've got thoughts too, and we ought to be grateful that you are reading at all.

You could hit my PayPal button and make a donation, but that rarely happens, and I can't conceive of badgering you to just give me money. I could write a book or do a photography collection and push it to you, but really, time has proved that I'm not going to do that. My energy is in writing the blog, and I'm not going to do anything that dissipates that energy.

But last night I got an idea for a fund-raiser. I was reading the comments on "At the Mauve Café" and I nearly died laughing reading the stuff Titus wrote. I said, I should make a CD of me reading Titus comments — from that post and others, the funniest stuff, which I'd select. Price of the CD to be determined Now, Titus did the writing so I need him to willingly, eagerly, and open-heartedly donate the license to me to use his comments this way, in support of my writing on the blog. Okay, Titus?

The Purpler Tree and the things you talked about last night.

Last night's purple tree opened a flood of conversation. Curtiss said:

Purple is the color of death.

But you know that, don't you?

I said:

I think men don't like the color purple. Women love it to excess, and men don't really understand. Death, indeed!

Palladian said:

I don't like anything Alice Walker ever wrote.

Instead of transcribing my laughter, let me give you a newer and purpler version of the tree that opened the canyons of your minds:



When I stopped my starry-eyed laughing, I said:

But quite apart from [Alice Walker], I think visual perception is partly deeply biological and there's serious sexual discrepancy about purple.

Then Meade said:

"I think men don't like the color purple. "

The professor speaks truth. And she does so in a most colorful way.

I, however, as a man am an exception to the rule: I love purple. In fact, I wear a purple hat and a purple scarf. Men leave me alone while women can't seem to keep their hands off me. That is, as long as I wear the hat and scarf.

Meade inspired me to make the new tree the color of his scarf. And to give him this advice — in case we should ever meet IRL.

Subsequently, Meade asks the guys a great question, and Curtiss gives a great answer. You'll have to go in there and find those things, but don't trip over the things Titus says he's having trouble finding.

Professor Palladian had to step back in and cool us off with this historical lecture:

The word "purple" comes to us from the Greek (via the usual circuitous route through Latin and Old English) πορφύραν, porphura, of the mollusk that produced the only bright, deep, color-fast purple dye available in the world until the mid-nineteenth century. Walk through any art museum and you'll see no bright purple color in any painting produced before then. The color to which the name "purple" referred has changed many times depending on the time period and the culture being discussed. The "Prince" sort of purple that most people think of is not the color of the purple of antiquity. The ancient purple, Tyrian purple, is more akin to the color of a fresh Welch's grape juice stain on a white cotton shirt, only much more intense. Tyrian purple is made from the fresh mucous secretion of a big sea snail that is variously known as Murex brandaris and Haustellum brandaris. It requires harvesting and killing 10,000 of these gastropods to produce one gram of the dye, hence the astronomical price and rarity of the color.

I have a sample of the dye, about 50 milligrams, which cost me nearly two hundred dollars. To put that in perspective, an extra strength Tylenol pill contains 500 milligrams of Acetaminophen alone, not counting the weight of the other ingredients.

As I said, there was no other bright, color-fast purple dye or pigment available to artists until the 19th century. The use of Tyrian purple pretty much died out by the 11th century in the West. Artists could mix purple hues by glazing blue pigments with red pigments, but as there were only three bright red pigments available to artists until the 19th century, two [1; 2] of which faded rapidly and one of which is both too opaque and too orange to actually produce a mixed purple, not many artists bothered.

What changed everything (and by extension, the world as we know it) was W.H. Perkin's discovery and production of the world's first synthetic organic dye: 3-amino-2,±9-dimethyl-5-phenyl-7-(p-tolylamino)phenazinium acetate, or Mauveine, later known as the color mauve. Perkin was, on a challenge from one of his professors, trying to synthesize quinine and failed, producing a black lump. While he was trying to clean the lump out of his flask, he discovered that a portion of the lump dissolved in alcohol and produced a bright purple. Voilà! The first aniline dye, which changed not only the world of fashion and art, but as I said before, changed the entire world. It was through Perkin's discovery and subsequent manufacture of Mauveine and the resulting proliferation of aniline dye research and industry that the first antimicrobial drugs, the sulfonamides (the early examples of which were dye-based) were invented. Not to mention Tylenol, Polyurethane and the whole synthetic chemical industry.

Not bad for a chemical that started as an accident involving a substance (aniline, phenylamine) that stinks of rotting fish. An apt smell for the chemical that was responsible for the rebirth of purple in the modern world, the olfactory memory across the millennia of those vast piles of dead, rotting mollusks that yielded the color of Emperors.

Sex, science, and art — all night long, all because of purple. And trees. You know I'm an Ann Arborist. Here in Madison.

"Speaking of Japan my neighbor was in Japan and everywhere he went Japanese people yelled Yes We Can at him."

"I guess because he is an American. He said this lasted an entire week. Restaurants, stores, on the street, everywhere, Yes We Can. How scary."

So says Titus, who lies some unknown percentage of the time. Truth or lie, that's hilarious. Any other reports of Americans abroad receiving "Yes, we can" greetings? If so, surely, it must have fallen out of fashion by now.

AFTERTHOUGHT: The day may/will/has come when "Yes, we can" is a sarcastic taunt.

IN THE COMMENTS: Awesome said:

This explains it:

Wow!

Titus says:

This I actually did not lie about. This is the neighbor that I hate and resent because he is richer, cuter and younger than me. But I would do him except for the fact that he is straight. Remember I wrote about his 6 week "holiday" during Christmas.

Well, that certainly substantiates your story!

"Check Althouse's comments if you want sex talk..."

Conservative polisci prof got himself into a bit of a jam with his readers and now tries to talk his way out of it.

And besides, as noted yesterday, Althouse is a notorious breast blogger, and she's instigated some of the web's greatest flame wars with...

Ha ha. I'm not going there again.

Note: Regular Althouse readers will be amused — I think! — that he quotes Titus (and my response thereto).

We were talking about khat, and Kev said...

"I thought khat-blogging had kind of gone out of style lately."

I thought I'd do a post with a LOLcat, saying something on this theme, so I went to Flickr to find a picture of a cat, and I got pleasantly distracted by this comment on the photograph that I blogged yesterday. Screen grab:



See? The commenter — jjmadison — has a cat face avatar and his comment — "wow, all that on two packs of Splenda??" — continues the drug theme. Ah! My drug of choice is synchronicity. I'm high on it now. I'm even singing: Oh! Oh! Oh!

Not really, but I do have to shout above the din of my Rice Krispies.

Now, somewhat giddy, I do still want to make that LOLcat, and I search my Flickr photographs for "cat." But I haven't been good about labels over there, and the collection of "cat"-labeled photos seems a bit absurd. There's a latte with a foam cat face. A picture of a poster that says "Don't Shoot the Cat." There's the very young me with a cat and my same-age son with a cat:



[ADDED: Yes, Chris is holding a "Hilter cat" and we were just talking about Facebook groups like "G-D BLESS HITLER," but stay away from the Nazi synchronicity. The brown-shirt acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good.]

There are the pages from my Amsterdam sketchbook about the Cat Museum — the Katten Kabinet. There are some bat orts.

Most absurd, there is a set of LOLcats, made from photos taken of paused — pawsed — frames from the movie "La Dolce Vita."

What was that all about? Don't you remember back on August 11, 2007, when TRex said "Every time I look in over [at Althouse], something so weird is going on that I feel like I just bumbled on to the set of a Fellini film," and I was all:

"Im in ur hair/Lickin ur i"
"Im ur soul/gettin outta heer"
"Ur head/my roller coaster"
"Im ur/windsheeled wipurrz"

But these Rice Krispies were enough, and I don't want an egg at this hour. So I look to you, dear readers, to pick up Kev's khat-blogging theme and make some LOLcats. You can make them here, and you can email them to me at annalthouse (at) gmail (dot) com.

I'd love to pass out some of the Althouse blog drugs: frontpaging and tags.

And I'm hoping TRex will bumble over here and see that something weird is going on. And also that something crawls from the slime at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake.

UPDATE: From Lem:



AND: From Zachary Paul Sire:



AND: From Palladian:



From Kev (who started all this):