It's finally here.

It's finally here, folks! It's Wisconsin Kringle Day!

So, pick up a Kringle—or two, t'ree to share—and celebrate this iconic Wisconsin delicacy. pic.twitter.com/lUV0zZ9arR

— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) June 30, 2026

Every woman is some man's daughter.

Link.

"The artist Michaela Stark, who is known for binding her own flesh so that it spills over, confronting those who see it with their own idea of what is considered beautiful..."

"... and who also posed for a Met mannequin — put it... bluntly: 'It institutionalizes the idea that bodies are different.'"

From "The Met Makes a Statement With 9 New Mannequin Bodies/The latest Costume Institute exhibition expands its ideas of who, exactly, belongs in fashion. Will the gala follow suit?" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the artist's bound flesh spilling over and the quite interesting mannequins in their fashions).

"Stark [said] that the images that come out of the gala matter, especially now. 'Who’s on that red carpet and what their bodies are like is a political statement,' she said. To really inspire change, she said, the party needs at least some 'fabulous fat women wearing fabulous gowns.' 'If it is watered down to an Ozempic-fueled event of skinny girls wearing paintings on the red carpet,' she said, 'that’s an active denial of what this exhibition is really about.'"

The idea of "wearing paintings" relates to the theme of the Met Gala this year, which is something about the way fashion has channeled fine art. We'll see how literally the gala-goers take it. I hope nobody uses the idea of walking about inside a picture frame. 

AND: The Gala is tonight, so watch for the picture frame idea. It's on my bingo card. So is a "Starry Night" star on each breast.

"Pittsburghers take pride in their practical solutions, especially the quirky ones, such as the 'Pittsburgh chair'..."

"... that we use to save the parking space we shoveled out after a snowstorm. There are folding chairs, barstools, even an occasional upholstered chair — whatever your choice. The chairs are sacrosanct, and they help avoid neighborhood disputes. Or the 'Pittsburgh toilet' that stands alone and unobstructed in the basement of many older working-class homes — porcelain artifacts of when the mills were booming. It made practical sense when the men returned from the mills to wash off the grime in the laundry tubs and finish their business in the basement before going upstairs for their meal. But there has been no easy solution for keeping schools open when an expected 500,000 to 700,000 visitors attend events...."

Writes Duquesne lawprof Joseph Sabino Mistick, in "Schools are closing for the NFL draft. What does this teach students? Pittsburgh prides itself on showing up and working hard. Students should, too" (WaPo).

"Mid-Lent is like punk rock — it was against the established order. We still do it because it’s really cool that our grandparents did it."

"Today, we don’t have to observe Lent, but they had to, and so Mid-Lent was a form of resistance."

Said Nicolas Harvey, 39, a high school history teacher, quoted in "Halfway Through Lent, a Small Quebec Island Celebrates With Masks and Jigs/Few islanders still observe Lent, but they cling to a tradition once seen as defying the all-powerful Roman Catholic Church" (NYT).

I'm out of gift links for the month or I would give you one. There are lots of nice photos of these islanders of the  St. Lawrence River.

Is it odd to carry on the traditional rebellion when you're no longer subject to the authority that inspired the rebellion? Or is it actually typical of our annual festivities? (I'm thinking of Halloween, Christmas, and the 4th of July.) 

"At the moment, [Saturday Night Live UK] has a grinning, whooping, gurning American mania to it."

"... [W]e and our US cousins have wildly differing senses of humour.... Much of the best British comedy relies on understatement, subtle wordplay, self-deprecation, self-mortification. It’s why Larry David is the American many Brits find most funny: he, like us, understands that life is a vale of tears, suffering and torturing yourself over mild social awkwardness...."

Writes Charlotte Ivers, in "Saturday Night Live UK review: Britain is funny but this isn’t yet/There’s talent in the cast — shame this Sky One debut was four parts American gurning, one part Princess Diana" (London Times).

A description of the "cold open": "Keir Starmer... and David Lammy... are psyching themselves up to phone Donald Trump, with the help of their 'Gen Z adviser.'... Keir: 'Oh golly, what if Donald shouts at me?' Gen Z adviser: 'You’re looking for more of a special situationship.'"

Also: "In a sketch parodying news headlines, the question is asked whether, once Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is in prison, he will 'be able to keep his mouth shut.' This is followed, I regret to inform you, by the punchline: '"I hope not," said his cellmate’s penis.'"

I don't see what's American about those jokes. And I don't see why the SNL format forces writers to use American-style humor! Worse, don't excuse your bad jokes by claiming they are American. The SNL format — cold open, monologue, sketches, Weekend Update, music performance — is an empty shell into which writers can insert whatever humor the producers want. Take responsibility. Or withdraw into the vale of tears and suffer and torture yourself. Apparently, you find that amusing. 

As for the "grinning, whooping, gurning American mania" — I only know the word "gurning" from the perennial reports of the World Gurning Championships. I see the NYT had one last year: "In This Pageant, the Ugliest Face Wins/The World Gurning Championships in northern England celebrate the centuries-old art of face-pulling."

That's been going on for years. I remember reading about the World Gurning Championships in LIFE magazine in the 1960s:

Here, you can buy that issue of LIFE on eBay. It was March 14, 1969. The cover story is "The Daring Contraption Called LEM." Inside: "The Race for the SST." And here's an ad: "McDonald's introduces Big Mac/A meal disguised as a sandwich." And: "Why is the Camaro the pace car again?/Because it's the Hugger."

That's all so American. And the American point of view was that gurning was a British oddity.

ADDED:

More clips from the show: here.

It's this blog's 22nd anniversary.

22 years of doing exactly this. Year 23 begins today. 

The bloggiversary arrives 2 days after my birthday, but I didn't blog about my birthday — though I appreciated the birthday wishes that popped up here and there in the comments section. And it was one of those big birthdays, the 3/4 of a century mark, 75.

Here on the blog, it's the bloggiversary that matters. This is the milestone I choose to highlight. I'm delighted to be here to blog another day, Day 8,037.

Thanks for reading!

Ponderous performance.

A fake candlelight vigil for a made-up holy day. And then they sang...this is the modern Democrat party. pic.twitter.com/jvbzutnRqn

— Kira (@Kiradavis) January 7, 2026

"All warfare is based on deception and the American people have had war declared on them."

Said Jake Angeli — AKA Jacob Chansley AKA the QAnon Shaman — to the London Times, which, like other news outlets, is looking for a way to commemorate January 6th — AKA today.

From the home page of the London Times:

Who cares what this guy thinks? But:  "What I’ve come to understand more than anything, dude, is that the Trump administration just lies, bro, because they’re Israel First, just like the Biden administration just lied because they were Israel First. We don’t have our own government."

They're already 5 hours into the new year in Thailand.

Happy New Year 2026 Thailand 🇹🇭 pic.twitter.com/tc4oJkEMYt

— Pretty Cities (@PrettyCitiesX) December 31, 2025

It is 2026. It's okay to go to bed now.

"I’ve been saying for a while that the gender-neutral 'they/them' was going to become even more widespread. As a linguist..."

"... who studies the ways language changes, I noted the rise in people resisting the gender binary and got caught up in — and perhaps even biased toward — what I processed as a pronominal revolution. But surveys show that the number of young people identifying as nonbinary has decreased considerably over the past two years. Binary genders are on the rise again, and therefore so are the pronouns most closely associated with them...."

Writes John McWhorter, designating "He and she" as item #7 of the "Words and Phrases" list in his section of "The Year in Lists."

And that happens to be my last gift link of the year from The New York Times, so enjoy reading all the items on all the lists.

Jennifer Weiner has "9 Retrograde Moments for Women." I guess there were only 9, because if you'd had a 10th, wouldn't you go for the cliché of a 10 item list? And yet Weiner made a single item out of Erika Kirk and Usha Vance. Was it "retrograde" to put them together? Yes, but it wasn't Weiner's doing. Some people on the internet did it: they talked about JD Vance divorcing Usha and marrying Erika Kirk. Was that important enough to repeat? Weiner only purports to give us "moments"....

"Who'd want to harm this beautiful bird?"

Sorry but we’ll never have this much fun ever again
pic.twitter.com/959k1V1Gky

— Arynne Wexler (@ArynneWexler) November 25, 2025

I love Trump's body language, and Melania seems genuinely amused.

Look back on the 20 best of the year on this, the 6th anniversary of the sunrise project.

In chronological order, with a few notes, including my choice of the best single image from the year.

September 13:

September 14:

September 22:

October 23:

Meet the new boss.

Happy birthday Pete. Who’s the new boss? Is he like the old boss? Have you met him yet? Say hello to Roger.

— Bob Dylan (@bobdylan) May 19, 2025

"Who made you feel seen when you were growing up?"

One of the questions proposed in "25 Questions to Bring You Closer to Your Mom" (NYT).

When did people start saying that they need to "feel seen"? I don't remember that from the period when I was growing up — the 1950s and 60s. Was there something else that we said that meant "feel seen"? Or is the desire to "feel seen" something new and perhaps transitory?

I did a "deep search" on Grok looking for the origin of the phrase and the closest thing I found to an answer was that it became a common phrase in the last 15 years, perhaps connected with social media. For example: "21 Painfully Relatable Memes That'll Make You Feel Seen" (Cheezburger).

ADDED: "I need to feel seen" strikes me as such a beta thing to say. I told that to Grok, which I'd accidentally left in "deep search" mode, and I think I got man-shamed:

The user’s observation that "I need to feel seen" strikes them as "beta" reflects a specific cultural lens, particularly within internet slang where "beta" is used pejoratively to describe behavior seen as weak, submissive, or overly sensitive, especially in contrast to "alpha" traits like dominance or stoicism. This perception is rooted in certain societal norms around masculinity, particularly in online spaces where traditional masculine ideals are valorized.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kirk Parker said: "The first recorded usage is in Genesis 16:13." I look it up: "She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.'" "She" = the slave Hagar, mother of Ishmael.

"I told them not to worry, nobody does self-deprecating better than I do."

Said Donald Trump at the Gridiron Dinner in 2018. Supposedly, there was worry that he might not be able to fit the tradition of Presidents being self-deprecating.

Last night was this year's Gridiron Dinner, and he wasn't there at all: "At Gridiron Dinner, Jokes About Trump, Musk and Russia Abound/But President Trump wasn’t around to hear any of the barbs thrown at the annual D.C. event" (NYT). I read that NYT article so you don't have to. Sounds like the NYT is also tired of it:

Even after all these years, jokes about Mr. Trump and Russia still play with the official Washington crowd. Those in the Hyatt basement, which was packed with reporters, editors, television anchors and ambassadors, laughed along.... The PBS journalist Judy Woodruff opened up the room with jokes about Mr. Musk’s fathering so many children and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s drinking....  One of the less successful acts centered on two men pretending to be the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Mr. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, covered in leaves. “Lost in the woods” was the chorus. (“No one cares about your pronouns when you’re lost in the woods.”).... Another act had a mock Usha Vance singing about being a phony populist....

I couldn’t understand Kendrick Lamar’s words but it seemed like a statement of anger against America — not really the "meaning" of the Super Bowl, whatever that's supposed to be.

Kendrick literally protested, and taunted America in front of the president during America’s biggest sports event. Chefs kiss. pic.twitter.com/5xmcQsIuuu

— Joy De’Angela (@joydeangela) February 10, 2025

Was this a metaphor? Divide the nation with rap music or something? I don’t get it. What was the assignment?

— 😵‍💫 (@Joshdr) February 10, 2025

Speaking of social media, today is the 21st anniversary of the first day of this blog.

And yes, it continues to be true that I have blogged on every single day of those 21 years.

And not just to keep up the record! I've loved it continuously from Day 1. It's been a pleasure. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, even if it hasn't been for the entire 21 years. You're here today, and that's the most bloggy thing.

They say it's the "season to be jolly" and Santa is praised as a "jolly old elf," but I've known a couple people who were jolly...

... and I think people found it annoying and wish they'd settle down.

I presented my musing to Grok and received this distinctly non-jolly response: 

The notion of "jolliness" during the holiday season, particularly around figures like Santa Claus, is indeed a cultural expectation that doesn't always align with personal experiences or preferences.... The idea of being "jolly" during the holiday season is deeply ingrained in many cultures, especially those influenced by Western Christmas traditions.... This image has been perpetuated through various media and commercial representations, setting a somewhat unrealistic standard for holiday cheer.... 

Your experience of knowing people whose jolliness was perceived as annoying might reflect a broader sentiment where excessive cheerfulness can seem forced or out of touch with one's actual mood or the realities others might be facing.

"Going to a party and thinking about what others are thinking about you is a pretty surefire way to have a terrible time."

"It’s such a reliable way to feel terrible that social psychologists in the ’70s and ’80s used to have people sit in front of a mirror and think about themselves when they wanted to study how negative moods affect behavior."

Said Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science, quoted in "How to Get a Party Buzz Even When You’re Not Drinking/These tips for sober socializing may not have you dancing on tables, but they’ll help you have plenty of fun" (NYT).

Thinking about yourself while looking in a mirror is a pretty distorted form of thinking about yourself. And I'm not even sure what "they" means in "they wanted to study." Is it the "people" or the social psychologists? When I first read that, I thought the subjects — the "people" — were receiving therapy and being taught that they look worse when they're thinking about themselves. So quit focusing on yourself and you will do better in social settings. But then I saw "social" before "psychologists" and realized this isn't individual therapy. The "people" were subjects of a study, and they were looking in the mirror... why? To ensure that they were thinking about themselves? Or was it to produce "negative moods"? Doesn't seem like a well-designed study!

Anyway, do you go to parties and think about what other people are thinking about you? Are there any mirrors around? Are you able to dance without drinking?

ADDED: I'm having a very interesting discussion with Grok about mirrors. At this point, it's pretty much written a complete book for me. I'll just show you the cover: