You may have noticed the new comments policy around here.

My new message above the comments composition window is:

I value all comments made in good faith. Try to understand this concept. It's not about your point of view or your mode of expression. We love disputes and diversity. But I won't allow bad faith commenters to leverage their destructiveness on my commitment to free speech.

Following this new policy and with Meade helping me, we've been deleting commenters we believe are writing in the comments with the purpose of wrecking the forum and driving away the people who enjoy the comments section as a place of free expression.

It's hard to draw this line, and it's possible that we're seeing some commenters the wrong way. The message at the comments window also says "If your comments are deleted and you don't understand why, write to Meade, who is helping me with this," but Meade tells me no one has yet emailed him, so I tend to think we've identified the "bad faithers." Meade says "There are about a dozen. Call them 'The Dirty Dozen.'"

Now, we can also err the other way. There might be a commenter who impresses us with a clever form of expression, even as he hurls insults. My orientation toward free speech has made me very tolerant of people like that, even when they attack me and the commenters here. I've gone very far defending edgy and harsh expression. That's part of why my new policy is about the good faith/bad faith distinction. That distinction depends on the writer's purpose, and purpose can be hard to discern, especially in clever writers.

In this context, there was a commenter who offended a lot of people, but he crafted his comments quite creatively. We delete him now as one of the bad faithers, but there are some ex-commenters who — elsewhere on the internet — excoriate me for leaving his comments up as long as I did. I'm not going to link to these folks whose idea of a good time is attacking me. I'm just going to invite them — and anybody else who's been following this dispute — to click "more" and see a comment that should take them aback.

"A-Rod must go!"

Says Trooper York:

A-Rod struck out with the bases loaded. He struck out to end the game. He failed miserably as he has done for most of his career. Did you see his face when he struck out with the bases loaded? He was a tight lipped tight assed mess. He froze. He choked. His disgraced the uniform. He might have Hall of Fame numbers but he is a drag on the team. As he has been since the day he got here. We would have been a lot better off without him. His bloated salary and his off the field antics have only brought trouble to the Yankees. He is a disgrace to the uniform.

IN THE COMMENTS: Maguro says:

Don't hate on ARod, the man has a painting of himself as a centaur hanging behind his bed. You gotta respect that.

He links to an article that doesn't have an image of the painting. I'm forced to do an image search. Hmmm. There's this. Or is it this?

ADDED: Here he is with Madonna.

"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.

Bob Dylan, unrecognized, took an ordinary tourist tour of John Lennon's childhood home.

"He could have booked a private tour but he was happy to go on the bus with everyone else."

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some talk about running into celebrities and Palladian says:

I once ran into Woody Allen. Literally. He was coming out the in door at Lincoln Center and I smacked right into him. He was wearing Woody Allen clothes, his trademark glasses and a fishing hat. I didn't knock him over or anything but he was obviously shaken up. The funny thing was, I automatically, instinctively reacted to him in a Woody Allen way. I started mumbling and saying "My God! I'm... I'm sorry, I'm really... My G-god, are you alright? Wow, I'm... shocked... shocked? I'm... surprised. I-I- are you ok? I mean, can I... can you... are you alright? Geez!" He mumbled right back in a Woody Allen way as he composed himself and then he took off into the plaza. It was really, really surreal because for a brief few moments I was basically in a scene from a Woody Allen movie.

Then this Trooper York comment slips in next:

I do think it is a shame and a crime that he has not yet been elected to the Overrated Hall of Fame.

Well maybe the veterans committee will correct that injustice.

He adds:

Oh and that goes for the Woodsman too.

And Palladian's all:

It's the Academy of the Overrated, along with such notables as... Gustav Mahler and Carl Jung and Isaac Dinesen... and Van Gock.

With video:

Eurotard.

Eurotard! LOL.

knox said...

"Eurotard": officially my new favorite slur.

IN THE COMMENTS: Some inapt ravings from link nonclickers. To them, I say, if you were born in July, you are a Leotard.

"This... is Quentin Tarantino." "And this... is 'American Idol.'"

I'm live-blogging this one, kids. Quentin Tarantino is guest-judging. I loved him in '04 — "JPL, you are the geekiest rock singer since Freddie and the Dreamers--all right?--but when you get into your geek mode--all right?--there's no one quite like you" — and I'm thrilled to see him back tonight.

7:01: Kara DioGuardi doesn't know what "provocative" means. And — wait — Tarantino isn't a guest judge. He's somehow "guiding" the contestants.

7:06: "The idea is to direct them."

7:07: Allison Iraheta is singing "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." (The theme is music from movies.) Q thinks she's gonna do a great job. She shrieks about watching "you" sleep. The judges talk about spicy sauce (because she's Hispanic?). Simon says she's the girls' only hope, disrespecting Lil.

7:15: Anoop Desai does "Everything I Do I Do For You," and I realize I've long thought of it as the same song as "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." Just move the words around a little and get your instant movie generic love song. Q wants Anoop to growl out the words. Q punches the air to demonstrate and, with that big jaw of his, he looks like Popeye. Anoop has a nice tone to his voice and he's modestly soulful.

7:20: Q only "got a taste" of Adam Lambert, who's doing "Born to Be Wild," and he's excited about tasting the whole thing. Adam is going to take the world in a love embrace. I just love this guy. Very thrilling and cool performance. (Hey, did I ever tell you I saw Steppenwolf in concert in 1970?) Simon tries to criticize him by saying "It was a little like watching the 'Rocky Horror' musical in parts." And Adam's all "I love that musical!"

7:29: "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman." Incredible. I've also long thought of that as the same song as "Miss a Thing"/"Everything I Do." Is everything by Bryan Adams? Matt Giraud, the boring guy who's supposed to remind us of Justin Timberlake. Q tells him to enunciate. He's pretty bad.

7:39: Danny Gokey is doing "Endless Love" and Q's advice is to put his hands in his pockets. Which he isn't doing. Blah. I hate this. Maybe I just hate everything now that Adam is gone. Simon gives him a boost by alluding to Gokey's dead wife — the song must have been "hard" for him to sing.

7:49: Kris Allen is doing some song I've never heard of from a movie I didn't quite catch the name of. Something about a sinking boat. Q has nothing interesting to say to him. The judges are judging 2 at a time, which means we only get to hear from Simon with every other performer. I guess it would be too mean to just kick Kara off the show, but that would be a much better way to save time.

7:59: Lil Rounds — who I said they were overpromoting — is given the finale spot, and she's singing "The Rose" — which Trooper York said Allison should sing. Q tells her to commit to both parts of the song, not just the gospel half. Tedious. Simon tells her she's "getting this completely wrong." And he's been telling her that over and over and he's "getting frustrated." Lil talks back. "I put it in there" she raves as the TiVo times out. So that's the last thing a lot of people will hear. Maybe some will like the feistiness, but it's dangerous to sass the judges on this middle of the road show, even when what they're telling you is — as Simon said just now — that you're too middle of the road.

8:02: I'm predicting Matt is out.

2 good dogs.

Photo (and post title) by Meade.

IN THE COMMENTS: Trooper York said:

Oh crap not another Blogging Heads!

Ha ha. Funny, the dog on the right is actually named Mickey!

Tweeted out.

Tired of Twitter. I find I haven't tweeted in a while, and I'm not going to force myself. This was probably my last tweet:

I think I may have stopped tweeting. I'm a blogger not a tweeter.

Responses:

OrinocoPat@annalthouse Obviously

drawncutlass@annalthouse Shades of Dr. McCoy! Damnit, Jim, I'm a blogger, not a tweeter!

rhymeswithwhen@annalthouse Truly a distinction, I think. I can tweet all day long, but blogging wears me out.

Lawyer_Tom@annalthouse Quitters never win, Ann. We are like your tweets. Don't go!

I'm not a twitterer. I'm a quitterer.

And what do you mean, you are like my tweets? You are infrequent and short? Sporadic and stingy?

To blog is to create a place for people to visit. I love that feeling. I have many visitors. Come into this room that is my new post and say what you like. Be interesting. Hang out with us!

On Twitter, there's just an endless trickle of trivia and that vague feeling of obligation to dribble into the trickle from time to time. But what is it to me? It's not a place where I am. It's that thing over there.

I want to be here.

ADDED: "The trouble with Twitter":

James T. Kirk: SPOCK! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!

Spock: It appears that your computer has been infected and overrun by twitters.

Dr. Leonard McCoy: What in blue blazes is a twitter!

Spock: It was a primitive form of communication in the early twenty first century normally engaged in by adolescent boys in the basement of their parent’s homes....

More at the link.

About those Cincinnati sandwiches.

Trooper York has quite a picture — in a post that's about the Althouse Cincinnati meet-up (which I talk about minimally, with pictures, here). In Trooper's comments:

An Edjamikated Redneck said...

Now dag nab it Trooper; I ate the Hot Brown (which was actually more like a Hot White -- being chicken & all and not the original Roast Beef -- but the chicken is healthier, not that I'm worried about my health, but... Where was I? Oh, yeah).

(Ha ha. Hot White. Here's my pic of the Hot (supposedly) Brown.)

Any way, it was not a crap sandwich as you have portrayed (yeah it did look pretty wild when it came out of the kitchen with a knife stuck in it -- and this was a classy place; well classier anyway -- I mean it is usually the dives where something comes out of the kitchen with a knife in it- and its usually the cook... Where was I? Oh, yeah).

It was a pretty good sandwich (I mean the comments over at Althouse; Heart attack on a bun! It was CHICKEN for cryin' out loud! It’s the original white meat! Not like it was pork or something… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

And I was with some classy folks (not that I would meet and tell you understand, but you know Althouse was there; how much classier can you get? And the place actually served long neck PBRs! Do you expect a place like that to serve a crap sandwich? I mean hell, it’s not the Congressional Dining Room for Pete’s sake! I mean there they KNOW a carp sandwich when they serve one… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

Carp sandwich?

So, I want y’all to lay off my dinner; it was a great place and a helluva good time (you know the place has been open since 1861? My Great-Granddad ran a hotel on that block in the 1870’s; most likely he probably had at least one beer there himself, back in the day. He was German ya know we seem to have some sort of reputation as beer drinkers… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

Redneck responds to Darcy's request for details about the meet-up:

Any way Darcy, as much I would like to accommodate you and spill the beans on last night (now there’s a meal that would deserve comments! What if I would have had a plate of beans and rice? Not like a place classy as that, and on the northern side of the river would even serve beans, but… Dag nab it; did it again! Where was I? Oh, yeah).

A gentleman never tells the details. We had a good time, ate a good meal and all parted amicably.

One detail I will spill; Not only did I get to meet Althouse; I also got to meet Silvio.

And he took me at the light. I got to admit THAT was not the highlight of the evening (no redneck, even us edjamikated ones, like to admit that we lost a drag race, but her ‘chauffer’ caught me flat-footed trying to retune the radio when the light changed. First I knew the light was green was when I heard the roar of an Audi’s exhaust… Where was I? Oh, yeah).

The End.

Ha ha. Makes me think of this:

Gratuitous bathtub scenes.

Back on December 15th, I wrote:

I'm slightly obsessed with the prominence of bathtubs in the movies. You'd think the most interesting thing in the world was a woman in a damned bath. "Australia" has the conventional lead actress taking a bath for no good reason. Hmm... 2 characters have to have a conversation. Let's put the woman in the bathtub. Depending on what rating you want, it will either be a bubble bath or it won't. It's embarrassing.

Ever since then, Trooper York has had a daily gratuitous bathtub scene. And, really, I'm flattered. But how does he get all those hilarious photographs? I tried a Google image search for "bathtub," and got a lot of empty bathtubs. So I tried a search for "bathtub woman" — yes, I know, not very creative — and this came up first. I mean, come on!

What's the trick? "Bathtub movies"???

""My wife’s dead' 'Oh yeah well my eyeballs are dead.'"

The "American Idol" "tragedy off"... and other things.

I can barely force myself to watch AI anymore, but reading descriptions of the show is great fun. Yes, I know, maybe you had fun reading my descriptions of the show in year's past, but the problem there is that I have to watch it, and my current watching involves the kind of fast-forwarding that compresses a 2-hour show — why the hell is the show 2 hours?! — into about 15 minutes. I'll hear 2 seconds of a singer and know it's too horrible to watch. Even the good ones are annoying me now.

The link above goes to Trooper York. I also like Jacob at Television Without Pity. When I was trying to actually watch the show, I thought Jacob's recaps were ridiculously long and meandering. Well, the solution to that is not for Jacob to rein in his effusions and digressions. It's quite simply for me to stop watching the show and read Jacob (who absurdly gives every episode an A+):

First up we're going to group sing -- mostly seated, because of the Scott [blind guy] factor -- a Katy Perry song, "Hot & Cold," which is the third Katy Perry single that has to do with boys and girls and boys who like girls who do boys like they're girls and reinforcing gender stereotypes while congratulating itself on not doing that. Let's talk about Katy Perry for a second. I actually heard this cover of "Electric Feel" that she did, and it was totally lovely. She has a wonderful voice under all that bullshit, which makes me hate her more and not less. It's not even the horrific Diablo Cody/Betty Page cute/burlesque crap, although they do contribute to the overall '90s-ness of her, which is admittedly yucky.

The problem is that, just like this show is not so much about selling your soul as speculating against the real estate market of the place your soul would normally be located, Katy Perry took a pretty face and a fantastic voice and leveraged them against this stupid-ass dead-end offensive gender stuff: "You change your mind like a girl changes clothes" tells you everything you need to know about Katyworld, where men have minds and girls have clothes, and girls only kiss girls to impress guys because they are drunk. It's not even a one-trick pony, it's just a trick, and a cautionary tale for these kids, who have not even begun to sell out yet. Katy Perry is to sexuality what Gwen Stefani is to racial equality.

"This year’s hippie chick also blew and she didn’t make it as they took another nondescript gay dude with a hat."

Trooper York summarizes "American Idol" so I don't have to.

"Meat Loaf was devastated by this defeat."

Results.

Do people become famous because their heads are large, or does celebrity actually cause the head to enlarge?

Over in last night's "American Idol" thread, Trooper York wrote:

The girl that sang "At Last" has an extremely big head. Which is very good since most popular actors have heads out of proportion to their bodies.

This reminds me of something that I read a while back in Tina Brown's excellent book "The Diana Chronicles":

What struck me at lunch was how much celebrity itself had transformed Diana's appearance. I have come to think that being looked at obsessively by people you don't know actually changes the way your face and body are assembled — not just in the obvious ways of enhanced fashion sense or tricks of charm and self-possession, but in the illusion of size. The heads of world-class celebrities literally seem to enlarge. Hillary Clinton's, for instance, has grown enormously since she was the mere wife of the governor of Arkansas. It nods when she talks to you like a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The years of limelight so inflated the circumference of Jackie O's cranium, it seemed her real face must be concealed by an oversized Halloween mask. If you looked into her eyes, you could see her in there somewhere, screaming.

The Needles Vlog.

I'm not needling you. I'm thanking you.

Live-blogging the VP debate.

7:31, Central Time: I'm here, eating strozzapreti with burned tomato sauce, counting the last few minutes before the grand showdown.

7:39: Strozzapreti? "Priest choker"!

7:55: Are you going to watch on CNN, with the uncommitted viewers' reaction lines undulating at the bottom of the screen? Wow. That's crazy! I can't tolerate that distraction, and the "persuadable" voters they've assembled are... not people I feel like monitoring on a real-time basis.

7:58: What are you looking for, mainly? Honestly, I'm mainly looking to see if Sarah Palin can sound reasonably competent.

8:02: The 2 candidates stride out, both dressed in black. "Hey, can I call you Joe?" we hear Sarah say. Palin looks tiny behind her lectern. She's behind her lectern there, and here's where I am, chez Althouse:



8:06: Palin's flag pin is way bigger than Biden's. Biden has a brown dot on his forehead. Palin refers to "the fundamental" of our economy. She's speaking too quickly, sounding nervous.

8:09: Whose fault is the sub-prime mortgage meltdown? Palin says the moneylenders have taken advantage of people, and she mentions "hockey moms" a second time. Biden blames Republican deregulation. Biden's forehead wrinkles only way over on the side, while the whole center is smooth and flat. What do you think? Botox?

8:13: Palin says she might not answer the questions the way the monitor wants, but she's going to talk straight to the American people. She reveals her overarching strategy. And I note that she's speaking clearly and confidently. There is no stumbling or fear, as far as I can see.

8:19: Joe Biden is going to "eliminate those wasteful spending."

8:27: I'll bet a lot of people are tuning out about now, satisfied that Palin is competent and smart, but pretty bored.

8:29: I'm reading Andrew Sullivan: "Biden is just dreadful. He speaks in Washingtonese. She just issues the soundbites and wrinkles her eyes and tells stories. And that works. The speed and chirpiness she delivers overwhelms one's ability to even quite absorb what she's saying. And it has put Biden off-stride. It's Biden who seems over-crammed." It seems to me that both of them are spewing policy (and it's getting tiresome). "Chirpiness"... I don't know, Andrew... that reads as sexist to me. Why is she overwhelming your ability to absorb what she's saying? Is she working some voodoo on you... and on Biden?

8:34: Palin said "Senator O'Biden."

8:35: Palin razzes Biden on clean coal. Is he for it or not? Biden says he's for it, and his rope-line comment was about his support for exporting clean coal technology to China. That doesn't seem to fit the text of his remark (which he claims was "taken out of context").

8:37: Biden passionately expresses support for equal treatment for same-sex couples, and Palin opposes same-sex marriage, but says that in all other ways she's completely tolerant of adults forming their own relationships. Biden then is given the opportunity to disavow gay marriage, which he eagerly does. Okaaaay.

8:40: Palin is praising the surge and insisting on victory in Iraq. "It would be a travesty if we quit now." Biden complains that she didn't state a plan. On the split screen, when Biden is speaking, Palin looks like she's brimming with ideas she's just waiting to express. When she gets her turn, she says Biden's plan is a "white flag of surrender." She reminds Biden of how much he supported McCain and how he said Obama was not ready to be President.

8:49: Biden is mugging and scratching his neck in an exaggerated way. I think he was trying to signal his objection to the things Palin was saying about Obama's willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad.

8:51: Biden's heating up! Is he losing his temper?

8:55: At Drudge:



8:57: Well, let me ask:

Who's winning?
	Palin.
	Biden.
	It's not about winning and losing in the debate.
	Shut up! It's not over.
pollcode.com free polls

9:03: Palin enthuses over her Washington outsider status as she claims to hear Biden saying, essentially, I was for it before I was against it.

9:09: "Palin: 'Oh, man, it's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and just not used to the way you guys operate!' And then, Biden pats down his brow. On sheer theatrics, Palin definitely won that moment." LOL. That's Jac (my son), who's also live-blogging.

9:11: "There you go again. Say it ain't so, Joe." Palin was waiting to say that. Biden's error? Linking McCain to Bush. Palin seems supercharged. The question is education, and she's praising teachers and winking at her dad in the audience.

9:13: Palin gets a big laugh saying that she and Biden made "lame jokes" back in the beginning of the debate when they avoided answering the question what they wanted to do as VP. Clearly, she's really relaxed. The end is in sight, and she knows she's done well. She's stood her ground next to Biden. She hasn't stumbled, and he's seemed a bit boring.

9:25: Asked what he's changed his opinion about, Biden says he came to realize that judicial ideology matters. (Which is why he opposed Bork.) Palin says she's never had to compromise.

9:29: We've reached the prepared closing statements. So Palin has survived... more than survived. She won, I think most people will say. Now, she's able to say she likes to do these unscripted things. She quotes Ronald Reagan (again) and mentions "freedom" (again and again).

9:31: Biden gives his closing statement. He seems like a nice man. Did he ever attack her?

9:34: Huge crowd of family on the stage.

9:36: The final poll:

It's over now, so who won?
	Biden
	Palin
	Neither
pollcode.com free polls

POST-DEBATE: Let me highlight some comments. Stupe said...

Althouse can't just eat normal foods, she needs trendy.

She doesn't go to chain restaurants, and her cuisine needs to reflect her offbeat, edgy, urbane, t[r]endy life.

Is burning the sauce now a trend? Or do I create the trend? If so, I can't help but be trendy. Is there a strozzapreti trend? I just picked the pasta that had a shape that appealed to me. So just be yourself, Stupe, and believe it's all very trendy, and that might make you happy. Don't think about me. Or, hell, think about me until it drives you crazy.

Ruth Anne Adams said...

The hair in [Sarah Palin's] eye is bothering my husband.

Ha ha. That was bugging me too. I was distracted thinking about whether she was distracted thinking about whether it would be more distracting to disentangle her bangs from her (false?) eyelashes than to allow the bangs-eye combo to continue as a single unit.

Lisa said...

So far, she sounds smart, sane and Republican.

The left will hate her. The right will agree with her.

(Lisa said baby on a night like this...)

vbspurs said...

Does Palin have ice water in her bloodstream or is it me?

She's almost too un-nervous. It's making me nervous!

LoafingOaf said...

What a twitchy, nervous wreck Palin is!

Palladian said...

Sarah Palin's pussy is gnawing at LoafingOaf's brain again.

vbspurs said...

OOOOOOH. A little lesbian tension between Palin and Ifill just now. HAWT.

(It's late-night Althouse.)

Michael_H said...

I don't want to channel surf--anyone know the Brewers/Phillies score?

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Gwen's questions SUCK! Too complex. Easily ignored.

Trooper York said...

Phillies won 5 to 2.

Go 2 up on the series.

Michael_H said...

Ifill keeps cutting Palin off, then letting Joey Plugs run as long as he wants.

Really?

vbspurs said...

The 'Mos are getting their questions now. Surprising nod to Palin by Ifill.

I smell a skunk. Or a fish taco.

!!!

ex-prosecutor said...

If these were two lawyers, arguing, to a jury, she'd be killing him.

palladian said...

God, the only thing more boring than a Vice Presidential debate is baseball. I'd rather listen to Joseph Biden filibuster than listen to people talk about baseball. I'd rather watch "An Inconvenient Truth" 100 times than listen to people talk about baseball. SHUT UP ABOUT BASEBALL.

vbspurs said...

Nice! "Not sane or stable" about Dinner Jacket.

THE CASTRO BROTHERS. She just won Florida, que rico!!!

lem said...

Gwen went off the script to help Joe!

michael_h said...

Love the way Palin smiles as she's making notes while Joey Plugs speaks.

chip ahoy said...

No fair! They televise the back of Biden's head to show all the work was done in the front.

lawgiver said...

Cuda is landing some major body shots now. Joe's eyes are glazed, he's going downnnnnn!

john stodder said...

Palin is just so damn normal.

On TV it looks weird to be normal.

goesh said...

500+ comments - holy wow

Palin's faster pace makes her come across as very competent/intelligent, a bit smarter than Biden - she sure the heck exudes confidence - what happened to the dummy from up north???? gone, gone, gone

palladian said...

I love the milling around parts of C-SPAN broadcasts. So much better than listening to talking heads blabber.

ricpic said...

Sarah's happy.

Lefty freaks can't stand happy.

But normal human beings love happy and love Sarah.

joan said...

Karl Rove just ticked off 10 major gaffes by Joe Biden. It was hysterical.

schorsch said...

Regardless of who won, Biden's tactic failed. He was there to debate Bush and McCain, and to ignore Palin as if she wasn't worthy of his attention. She engaged him, specifically, and was therefore the only person in the debate that was actually occurring.

MORE FROM THE COMMENTS: patca said...

I am soooo relieved--and very happy. She was fabulous.

I feel like smoking a cigarette.

"I thought the 'vomit' tag was a joke, but you actually have dozens of posts tagged 'vomit." Was 'bodily fluids' too generic?"

Asked Michiel, in the comments to this post. And indeed, the answer is yes. There's a limit to how many posts Blogger will show on the front page when you click a tag, so I've been working on subdividing some of the bigger tags, and "bodily fluids" was one of the oversized categories. The first subcategory I broke out was vomit, because I knew there was some good stuff in there, including the time when I went out of my way to vomit-blog.

And actually, there are too many in the "vomit" category now, so one of the best ones wasn't appearing: the vomit miracle. I need to subdivide "vomit"! That's disturbing.

Now, with Michiel's prodding I did 3 more subcategories.

1. Saliva... because I got my original mainstream-media recognition when I debate-blogged back in 2004 and noticed a little something.

2. Blood... because blood is the greatest bodily fluid. It's #1. I mean, if you were on "Family Feud" and the question was "Name a bodily fluid," you'd say "blood." Blood has murder, menstruation, art, rage, law ... everything. Go ahead, click.

3. Urine... because ... well, I knew it would amuse Trooper York. (And that's another thing about tags. I'm gradually making tags for my favorite commenters.)

IN THE EMAIL:

In case you'd like to see a 60-second clip titled "Vomit Tag!", here's a comedy video me and my friends made. It's the outdoor fun time activity that's taking America by storm.

I'm afraid to look! You look.

AND: Please, don't be making video clips for urine tag and sending them to me.

Men in shorts.

The evidence.









Discuss.

(The photos are all from the Venice Beach "boardwalk." I'm from New Jersey, and I happen to think a boardwalk has to be made of boards. This is mainly a post about whether men should wear shorts, but you can also talk about whether "boardwalk" is a misnomer, when a potbelly on a man is charming, and — special to Trooper York — the glory of fleshy women.)

Important pens. Important insects.

You can't bring a camera onto the golf course when you're a spectator at a PGA event, as I was last Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So I brought a little sketchbook and pen, thinking I might be moved to record something of what I saw and heard, in the style of my old "Amsterdam Notebooks." But ever since the fountain india ink fatally clogged my favorite Mont Blanc pen, I haven't been able to recover the old sketchbook spirit. My passion died with that pen. Here's all that went into the book I carried this past weekend, this little dialogue between my sister and me:

There's a mosquito on that guy's shirt.

If he was cuter, you would help him.

Yeah.

***

Now, I'm mourning once again not only for the Mont Blanc pen that died of fountain india, but the Pelikan pen that I used in law school to take all my notes and write all my exams. I am utterly sure that I would not have done so well without it and that it therefore determined the whole course of my adult life. You can see the beloved Pelikan in my hand here.

And what of that mosquito? Had it landed on a more attractive man, everything would have been different.

There are many pens and many mosquitoes. Most are just another pen or just another insect. But some!

IN THE COMMENTS: Trooper York discovers the theme of the day, and it inspires hysterical laughter.

"What Not to Wear" is not the kind of reality show I would normally watch.

It's a "how-to" reality show, to use the Television Without Pity categories. The reality shows I enjoy are nearly all in the "competitive" category: "Survivor," "America's Next Top Model," "Project Runway," and — though "enjoy" isn't really the right word — "American Idol." I used to like "The Apprentice" and "Top Chef," too, but I don't want to watch any more seasons of the thing. I've had enough. The other category of reality show is "candid," and I love this category when it's at its best, like the first season of "The Osbournes" or the third season of "The Real World." The first season of "The Newlyweds" was good, and I don't mind stooping to some really trashy things sometimes, like "Wife Swap" and, in its day, the Anna Nicole Smith show — was it called "The Anna Nicole Smith Show"? But how-to? I don't want anybody telling me what to do, so why would it entertain me to see some purported experts telling somebody else what to do?

But I watched the new episode of "What Not to Wear" because part of it was filmed at a cool Brooklyn shop called Lee Lee's Valise:

This place is run by the wife of one of our very best commenters here on the Althouse blog, Trooper York. And he tipped me off that they were filming the episode, so I came down to the shop that evening after my class. The filming was over, but the stars of the show were there along with their how-to victim, and I wanted to photograph the store.

I wasn't trying to photograph the characters from the show or even act like I noticed them. I talked to the guy a little at one point, but just in the way that a shopper would chat with another customer. I didn't want to bother them, and I certainly wasn't going to act like a fan of the show, which I'm not. In fact, I still don't know the man's name. I'd have to look it up even now. Trooper York showed me a lot of merchandise and explained his theory of the place, which was very well worked out to appeal to young women who need large sizes but don't want to be hit in the face with the fact they they are shopping in a large-sizes store. The place is at the intersection of Court and President streets, which is easy for law types to remember — 2 out of the 3 branches of government.

Anyway, I just watched the show, which made over a 29-year-old woman who is a student at my old law school NYU. They converged on her at some law lecture and, horrifyingly informed her that they'd been secretly filming her to get footage of her wearing terrible clothes. They must get some kind of advance approval before they start the filming, right? If someone did that to me without my prior approval, I'd want to sue them. It's stalking!

So then they have to tell her everything she thinks is wrong, even when it isn't. She wears black skirts. Yes, most of them are too large, but the woman has lost a 100 pounds and is still in the process of losing weight. But the basic idea of wearing black skirts is obviously a good one, and the experts insist that it's not, and then they have to backtrack and say that actually it is. They are shocked that she wears black knee-high hosiery instead of full tights under a long skirt, but why? It's comfortable and invisible unless you yank up her skirt — which the fashion experts did, for the amusement of TV viewers.

She had a nice, neat black jacket that was just way too large, but instead of talking about how she needed new clothes because she's lost so much weight, the experts showed her a completely different style of jacket, a gray plaid thing that they insisted was "young" and "professional" because it had wide, high lapels and buttoned up tightly under the breasts. There was no acknowledgment at all that the jacket won't look right or feel right buttoned up like that when she's sitting down, which she will be nearly all of the time working as a lawyer.

They showed her a gaudy dress and contended that a loud print camouflages the shape of your body. This seemed insane, and it was also inconsistent with another one of their theories — that you should love your body as it is and show off the shape you have.

They spent some time doing the young woman's hair and makeup. Since she really needed a good haircut and wasn't wearing any makeup, this made a big improvement, but it had nothing to do with "what not to wear." Nor did it teach us anything useful. You already know you need to get a good haircut, don't you? And what woman doesn't realize she'd look better with some foundation and a little eye and lip makeup? That's not hard.

The show ends with everyone celebrating the amazing changes in the woman's appearance. You have scenes where everyone claps and cheers and the makeover target twirls around in her new clothes — which look ugly to me — and professes to be transformed. We're assured — typical woman's TV pap — that the young woman was always a wonderful person and now her exterior matches her wonderful interior.

Blah! I'd rather see a show where philosophers descend on a woman with a perfect exterior and rip into her for her intellectual and spiritual failings, put her on some kind of internally transformative regime, and turn her into a human being of substance. Can we get that?