Cat brain.

Oh, dear.
Well, if pet cats had wild-size brains, life in an apartment would be intolerable. They suffer enough from boredom as it is.https://t.co/eiqoX8vAyl

— Annie Gottlieb (@amba12) January 28, 2022

Speaking of cats, I see Biden got a cat... brought a cat into the mix of mammals prowling about the White House.... maybe not getting quite so bored as a cat in your apartment....

“Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks during a campaign stop,” wrote [Jill Biden's Michael] spokesman LaRosa in a news release. “Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden.”

How small does your brain need to be to buy that tale of cat lov

A 7-point sequence beginning with the assertion that adults getting offended by language isn't a thing.

1. Scott Adams blogged: "Let’s stop pretending that other adults are offended by language. That isn’t a thing. We are offended ON BEHALF of people we imagine would be offended. But those people do not exist. Stop imagining offended people."

2. Meade said: "My 90 year-old greatest generation wise beyond her years mother is offended. My mother exists. My mother grew up on a cattle farm in central Indiana. Manure. Blood. Dirt. Guts. Varmints. Sex everywhere you looked. None of that offends her. But Trump does.... She isn't offended on anyone else's behalf. She isn't offended by any of his words. She's offended by Trump. She has voted Republican her entire life. But she's offended by Trump."

3. At the last debate and in the press conference with Ben Carson that followed, Trump introduced a new elegant, calm, presidential tone, which I blogged about here, causing R. Chatt, in the comments, to ask: "What does Meade's mother think? Is she persuaded by Trump's less offensive demeanor?"

4. 4 minutes later, Meade said, "I'll call her and get back to you."

5. About an hour and a half later, Meade came back with: "@R. Chatt, I finally got a hold of her. She said she spent the morning out on her front porch in the sun watching cement trucks moving around and she forgot to take her phone with her.  Quotes: 'Oh, I hated seeing the doctor [Ben Carson] line up behind Trump,' 'Ben might be able to keep Donald in line.' Asked about her opinion of DT's behavior during the debate last night: 'Better than usual. Trump seems to appreciate the doctor.' 'It will be hard for [Trump] to change his me, myself, and I attitude and his being money hungry because he's too old to change.' Mother said she will 'hope for the best' and will 'pray' because 'even though prayer doesn't always give us what we want, it never hurts to pray that God's will be done.' When I told her that you were interested in her opinions, she said, 'Oh, well, isn't she NICE?' By the way, I've never known my mother to use sarcasm."

6. 2 days after that, amba said: "Meade should start a blog called 'Shit My Mom Says.' She's very wise."

7. I remember the old "Shit My Dad Says" twitter feed, which recorded the things comedy writer Justin Halpern's dad said. The dad really did use words like shit (and worse). Example: "1st amendment doesn't protect assholes from criticism. The right to act like an asshole and be called an asshole's the same fucking right." That's from 3 years ago, so don't think it's Trump-inspired, even though it's Trump-applicable.

8. But, of course, Meade's mother would never use words like that, as amba necessarily knows, which is why we found her comment so amusing and I'm writing this list.

"The Obama admin hoped the Times Square bomber was a R-wing extremist. Rush hoped the oil rig was sabotaged by environmentalists."

The audacity shame of hope...

November sunset.

IN THE COMMENTS: Amba said:

That thing in the sky looks like a Blakean comet that has something like this in it.

Too many bees.

"$1200 obo this has been a good truck for me but i have to sell it because i cant ever get to it with all of the bees around it they have been in and around it for almost 2 months now and i havent been able to get near 5 feet or else i get stung and im sick of it i still have welts from months ago stingings and i cant even get to work because i cant get to my truck so i have to sell it test drives at ur own risk i cant go with you too many bees."

(Via Jac.)

IN THE COMMENTS: This post brought out the best in the commenters. I feel like front-paging the whole thread. I will limit myself to part of what blogging cockroach said...

and that poor truck guy
probably stung too many times
to be able to type at least i have
an excuse but you won t find me
moving into a pickup truck no sir
i m holding out for a b m w

... and add a photoshop request for a picture of a BMW crawling with cockroaches...

... and amba...

Found poetry!

... and add a request for more poetry in the Too Many Bees style.

Watching the press conference, racking my brain trying to think of who Obama reminded me of.

Something about the singsong rhythm and the complete absence of emotion. Then it hit me: Michael Dukakis!

ADDED: Amba notes that last September, Christopher Hitchens wrote a piece called: "Is Obama Another Dukakis?" ("Why is Obama so vapid and hesitant and gutless?... By the end of that grueling campaign season, a lot of us had got the idea that Dukakis actually wanted to lose—or was at the very least scared of winning. ... [H]aving suddenly got the leadership position, [Obama] hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it.")

IN THE COMMENTS: Amba says:

The absence of emotion! The way Dukakis didn't react at all to the hypothetical of Kitty being raped is the same way Obama had trouble being human about Neda!

More than twice as many 15-year-old German boys belong to neo-Nazi groups...

... than are active in mainstream politics.

IN THE COMMENTS: David said:

I wonder how American boys would stack up on this test? How many 15 year old boys are active in mainstream politics? Run the USA comparison based on street gangs vs. mainstream politics and we will look like Mad Max's utopia.

Amba said:

Yeah, since when were 15-year-old boys active in mainstream politics? They can't even vote yet, and there's no forbidden, secret-society fun in it. Stupid statistic.

"Take a moment... take an hour... to try to revive and savor the antiquated pleasure of writing someone a letter."

"And then come back and say what it was like. Did you feel fidgety and impatient? Did writing feel too slow for your thoughts, or did it slow them down in a pleasurable and even fruitful way? Holding a pen to me is like holding an eager dog on a leash. Has your handwriting deteriorated from disuse, too?"

Well, I'm not going to do this, because everyone I know would either think it was crazy to write and mail a paper letter or feel oppressed by the implication that now they need to handwrite a letter.

But I do still use handwriting, and I often prefer it when I'm writing notes for my own private use — that is, not composing something for readers. I prepare for class by writing notes in the margin, and I teach the class using those notes along with the assigned text. I feel that the handwriting has a spirit to it that helps me a lot. It's not something I use to show my personality and feeling to another person, though I understand why handwriting conveys that. It's something that, for me, remains more closely interwoven with my continuing thinking about a subject. It's less final and it works better to keep me connected with the original text. Marginalia — it means a lot to me.

"I tend to think technology addiction has to do with fear of, or aversion to, direct human contact."

"It allows you to seem to relate to others while actually staying inside your own head and keeping control of the encounter as if it was only your fantasy. Yes, porn, but that's only symptomatic, or emblematic."

Something Amba wrote in the comments back here that disturbed me. Now, come on into my comments and have an experience with me.

"I bet Barack Obama yearns for the days when he was only *running* for President."

"That's what he was good at. He'll have to reach much deeper into himself to find leadership, if it's there, and not just the idea, the mirage of it. It's scary and funny to see him so shaken by trying to ride the jackass bronc of Congressional Democrats and the mad bull elephant of House Republicans. Now we're getting somewhere. I don't think he'll completely fail, but it will be an unnerving while until he finds his seat."

***

Obama is giving soooooo much raw material to his opponents, who have — from Day 1 — been trying to frame him as a miserable failure — which exactly what Bush's opponents did to Bush.

You know what's really funny? That term — "miserable failure" — that was pinned on Bush so relentlessly? Do you remember who started that meme?

Tom Daschle!

Karma.

ADDED: Upon the suggestion, in the comments, that Richard Gephardt called Bush a "miserable failure" before Tom Daschle, I did a methodical search and found this from December 9th 2002:

"Their trickle-down economic theories have been a miserable failure, and this is an admission of that miserable failure," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle told CNN.

The earliest Gephardt example was from January 21, 2003. To be accurate, I did find this earlier quote:

The absolutely miserable failure of this administration on economics is what brings us to this point.

That's from November 7, 1991. It's about Bush all right. Bush I.

"Let's listen to Crack Emcee's playlist and then come back and discuss."

Amba lays down the challenge — to Crack Emcee. The question is which rapper could have filled the poetry slot at the inauguration.

Presumably if they had chosen a rapper, he'd have written something suitable for the occasion. The best of them are poets.

Anyone can respond. Please, don't bother to say it's just a terrible idea and no rapper could have done it properly. If that's your objection, it's noted in advance. This is a serious question addressed to readers who think there is someone who could have done it brilliantly. Don't just give names. Provide links and make arguments. Project what sort of lyrics would have been written for the occasion.

Any praise for "Praise Song for the Day," the inaugural poem by Elizabeth Alexander?

In TNR Adam Kirsch says:

Alexander was an inevitable choice to be Obama's laureate. Like Obama, Alexander is an establishment figure-a professor at Yale, a Pulitzer Prize finalist--who is very conscious of the ways she does not fit the usual establishment image--she is a black woman in a field once dominated by white men. Like him, too, she has challenged the establishment by joining it, rather than fighting it....

But poetry is a matter of having your own words, not of having words for others; and the weakness of Alexander's work is precisely its consciousness of obligation. Her poetic superego leads her to affirm piously, rather than question or challenge. This weakness is precisely what made her a perfect, an all too perfect, choice for inaugural poet....

[I]t was no surprise to hear Alexander begin her poem today with a cliché ("Each day we go about our business"), before going on to tell the nation "I know there's something better down the road"; and pose the knotty question, "What if the mightiest word is ‘love'?"; and conclude with a classic instance of elegant variation: "on the brink, on the brim, on the cusp." The poem's argument was as hard to remember as its language; it dissolved at once into the circumambient solemnity. Alexander has reminded us... that the poet's place is not on the platform but in the crowd, that she should speak not for the people but to them.

So the whole idea of an inaugural poem is bad because a poet must be a rebel artist? Or was it just the combination of the inaugural platform and the choice of a poet by paper credentials and diversity factors that have nothing to do with whether the person can transport the throng with spoken word?

Yesterday, live-blogging since 6:04 a.m., I abruptly shut the television off after a few lines of the poem. I'd put up with a lot of talking heads blathering, crowds of people standing or walking around, dignitaries getting in and out of cars, but I couldn't put up with that.

12:28: "Someone is stitching up a hem"... someone is inflicting poetry on us.

That was it for me. In the comments, Amba said:

I really wish they had had the balls to choose a rapper to deliver the inaugural poem. It took me a long time to get used to it, but now I think rap is where the living poetry's gone. (Only 2 decades late, me. LOL.) Of course a lot of it's bad or gross, but some of it is really, really good, forceful and inventive. I don't know rappers well enough to say who it should have been, but imagine -- it could've been memorable.

I agreed. This — not something from Yale — is the poetry real people — in crowds — listen to today. It would have been exciting, surprising. It would have thrilled us or at least amused us with humorous rhymes. We did get the Reverend Joseph Lowery inserting a little, very simple, rap-like poetry into his benediction:

when black will not be asked to get in back
when brown can stick around
when yellow will be mellow
when the red man can get ahead, man
and when white will embrace what is right

But those weren't startling rhymes. We were just startled to hear them in a prayer.

Now, Rush Limbaugh thought Lowery and Alexander were the highlight of the inauguration. Surely, Lowery's poem-within-a-prayer was the most memorable thing we heard yesterday, but how could that thudding poem have delighted him?

ALEXANDER: Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other's eyes, or not, about to speak, or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

RUSH: Boom box? Boom box at a presidential inauguration? Snerdley, this is not torture. This is not torture. This is hilarious. Somebody, somewhere, thought this was exceptional. You have to understand, somebody thought that this was brilliant. It's a code. I don't understand it. [ADDED: At this point Rush adopts Alexander's serious- academic reading style.] Today there's a street outside. On that street are cars. And in those cars are people with music on their iPods. And they listen. And the children in the back of the car, who are also on the road, may or may not be in their child safety seats, in which case the driver will be arrested and the child taken away. When the car gets to its destination, it may run out of gas. If it runs out of gas, it's obviously a gas guzzler, and if it's a gas guzzler, then we need to harness the energy of the sun and punish the SOB driving the gas guzzler. If the car gets to its destination with plenty of gas left in the tank, we give it a bonus of additional markers at Walmart for the day after Christmas, which is how today was planned. And after we go to Walmart and pick up some of the lead paint that is made with our children in mind, imported from China, we will then have a meeting with the Iranians, who will love us, and they will get in their car, will also be on their road, and their road shall never end until they have nuclear weapons. I'm sorry. If I can do it, it isn't art. Here. We got another bite.

ALEXANDER: A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin." We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider. We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side. I know there's something better down the road."

RUSH: And when we get to the end of the road, with the person driving the guzzler, with the perhaps or not perhaps child safety seats in the back, we will then know the answer to the question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? And why did the egg cross the road to see something better down the road. But could the egg have crossed the road without the chicken? These are depth questions. And only President Obama has the answers. Cookie, get me more of this. Two sound bites from Elizabeth Alexander are simply not enough. Get me more.

Ha ha. That was the funniest thing I heard all day yesterday. Don't you think more than half of the people listening to Alexander read her poem started thinking: Why did the chicken cross the road?

New comments post for the inauguration.

Talk about the address, etc.

IN THE COMMENTS: amba said:

I really wish they had had the balls to choose a rapper to deliver the inaugural poem. It took me a long time to get used to it, but now I think rap is where the living poetry's gone. (Only 2 decades late, me. LOL.) Of course a lot of it's bad or gross, but some of it is really, really good, forceful and inventive. I don't know rappers well enough to say who it should have been, but imagine -- it could've been memorable.

I agree. The real vigor of poetry is rap. It has a powerful hold on people. That means something. How cool it would have been if Obama had dared to go there. But, no, we had to have a decorous, "diverse" woman. Too predictable.

AND: Simon — charming but grudging — said:

You're President enough, Barack.

Sir Archy, archy, and blogging cockroach.

In the early morning hours yesterday, this blog received a visit from our ghost commenter Sir Archy -- dead these 260 Years and more.

As a ghost, he had something to say about Barack Obama's first press conference, in which the prez-elect claimed to have spoken to all the living Presidents and quipped "I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances." (That quip -- for which Obama's had to apologize -- would surely have inspired warm chuckles in a law faculty room.) 

In the comments, Amba said about Sir Archy: "I get him mixed up with the cockroach." By "the cockroach, she means our delightful insect commenter blogging cockroach. (Click the "blogging cockroach" tag below to see old posts with writings by the industrious arthropod.)

Amba adds: "I wonder if they aren't the same person, though, and 'Archy' is a clue." She's thinking -- I happen to know -- of archy of archy and mehitabel, the literary creations of Don Marquis:

Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past -- she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life.... "expression is the need of my soul," declares Archy, who labored as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis' typewriter to describe a cockroach's view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It's difficult enough to operate the typewriter's return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy's dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter. "boss i am disappointed in some of your readers," he writes, weary of having to explain the mechanics of his literary output. " ... they are always interested in technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is literature or not."

Marquis' George Herriman's ink drawings are sublime. See, here is archy putting in the immense athletic effort needed to type a short column: 

Now, blogging cockroach is surely a tribute to Marquis' archy, and we appreciate his explanation of the the mechanics of his literary output by computer even as we contemplate whether the stuff is literature or not. (Perhaps someone can make a drawing in the Marquis style of blogging cockroach at the computer or photoshop this drawing somehow.)

But Amba's question is whether Sir Archy is named to connect him to the cockroach. (Bonus points if you you do that drawing/photoshop and replace mehitabel with Sir Archy.) Are these writers one and the same (and, if so, are they also anybody else that we see around here)?

Well, the cockroach saw Amba's musings and dropped by the comments thread. Here is what he wrote:

well all i can say is that there are some advantages to being a cockroach one of them is i don t have to worry about my hair or clothes anymore having the transmigrated soul of a composer i can look back at all the troubles i had when i was a music professor to buy the right suits and keep my shirts ironed etc in those days they paid us a pittance and so i drove a 56 studebaker but had to wear a suit on campus every day which cost me as much as the damn studebaker i hated clothes not to mention haircuts i was actually kinda glad to go bald except maybe for the combover which frightened away my female students damn but now i don t worry about any of that and other than molting now and then life is simple and i sure don t want to mess it up with a powdered wig but having spent a little time on the astral plane myself i can tell you archy s right about seances etc you just settle in and some idiot comes and bothers you about something really stupid reminded me of office hours anyway one day my ex wife showed up wondering where the key to the safe deposit box was now some exes hire private detectives but mine hired a medium tells you a lot anyway i screamed let me out of here let me slouch somewhere to be born and presto the next ticket said cockroach cambridge mass so here i am maybe i ll tell you about the safe deposit box next time

So here's another clue for you all:

Plus, cambridge mass... Harvard/MIT? Some bald professor with a penchant for nudism?

ADDED: And at last night's Crossroads Café, Chip Ahoy said:

What I know about the Kennedy administration was learned by reading. Smithsonian used to be so interesting. My favorite part was letters from the readers remarking on articles. What an erudite bunch. It ran a couple of pages. Then they got another new editor who cut that section back to just a few letters and to about half a page. That told me all I needed to know about the new editors attitude toward his readers. Then they ran an article in relation to the John Kennedy assassination anniversary. Readers were asked where they were when the event occurred. That series of letters then ran for several pages. All the remarks were about how glorious the age of Camelot was, how idealistic, youthful, energetic, positive, and optimistic everyone was. How amazing incredibly beautiful the time was. Every single one glowed with praise and rued a lost past. Except for one. A response from Tom Clancy. He had a wee on their little party. He remarked the administration wasn't all that remarkable. He reminded readers of several notable failures and obvious shortcomings. He suggested had the administration lasted, it would not be remembered so fondly. This caused me adore Tom Clancy, even though he's a schmuck. I was so put off by the whole thing, the rebuff to the readers, the hard leftist turn, the ceaseless pontificating, the whole desktop publishing look, I ended the subscription I held since junior high school. It occurred to me though, reading through all those responses, those writers, were recalling an idealized, sanitized youthful optimism -- their own youths. Their optimism was entirely of their own making and had little to do with facts on the ground. As is their present pessimism. And now, I'm seeing that phenomenon occurring again right before my eyes. I'm going to enjoy this. As an observer. But this will not affect my own naturally occurring cheerful optimism nor my own self-indulgent satanic pessimism. I'm just going to watch my wonderful country, the less wonderful world, willfully create their own optimism. Myth making. That's what is happening. Observe a new myth. This is how it's created. Begin by overlooking faults, dismissing them, excusing them. Next exaggerate any gain, whatever actual good there is, suddenly is really REALLY, REALLY everlastingly good. Yay! Dance! Glee! Canonize! Deify. Mythologize. Expect comparisons to Camelot, and know then you're in the arena of myth. But know also, this is all occurring within the minds of the mythologists. But know also, optimism is very real. Just as real an uplifter as pessimism interprets into very real and actual drag. Therefore, I choose to enjoy the optimism in my fellow Americans, no matter how ridiculous it is. I could go for another Camelot myself, even though I know it's all occurring entirely within the minds of all you silly dumkopfs, present company excepted, of course. I vastly prefer my fellow citizens as silly little shits, than as obnoxious unbearable cnuts. <--- a="" about="" and="" before="" company="" completes="" delusional="" did="" different.="" disguises="" entirely="" even="" for="" href="http://bour3pages.blogspot.com/2008/11/hummus-on-romaine.html" i="" in="" it.="" letter="" mixed="" my="" mythos.="" now="" one="" optimistic="" polite="" remarks="" ridiculously="" s="" see="" self-constructed="" something="" than="" the="" there="" this="" transposition.="" unacceptable="" what="" word="" worse="">Here's what I made for lunch.

Sorry you couldn't be here, I'm sure you'd have been wonderful lunch dates.Go to Chip's lunch link for all the steps, but here's his last pic:

That brought the cockroach over:

yes chip ahoy that was a beautiful lunch i adore hummus if you don t eat those lettuce leaves completely and leave the remains on the plate or better yet drop one on the floor well i ll have a beautiful lunch too now about the beautiful kennedy administration i was a young grad student when camelot happened the main thing i remember is seeing kennedy getting off an airplane looking really snappy or hot as they say today and thinking man that guy must get some action then i thought naw he s the president of the u s that s really sick to think those thoughts hoo boy was i wrong

And here's what Tom Clancy wrote:

I never voted for the guy. I was only 13 when he got elected. I was a junior in high school when Kennedy got whacked. I was in the Waverly Theater on Green Mount Avenue in Baltimore watching Shirley MacLame and Jack Lemmon. I had a half-day of school. It was a Friday. I heard it on the way coming out of the movie. The ticket-taker said the president got shot. Then followed four days of nothing but a dead president. They didn't even show the Colts play. He was the president of the United States, so I didn't want him murdered. I wanted him to lose the next election. I mean, what did he accomplish? He has been canonized by the media, which I think is a bit unseemly. He was a handsome guy. He had great style. He meant well. It was Lyndon Johnson who got the civil rights movement rolling. He was a patriot and he put his life at risk in World War II, and that's something to be admired, but I don't see anything historically significant that he did other than the space program. For the space program, I'd buy him a beer.

ADDED: Thanks to Jeff with one "f" for correcting me about the ink drawings. I love George Herriman -- and even blogged about him back here. Mehitabel's resemblance to Krazy Kat is clear... clearer than Sir Archy's resemblance to blogging cockroach.

AND: Dear, sweet Palladian has sent me the illustration I wanted!