"The streets are paved with pudding-pies/Nay, powdered-beef and bacon/They say they scorn to tell you lies/Who thinks it is mistaken?"

"The lofty buildings of this place/For many years have lasted/With nutmegs, pepper, cloves, and mace/The walls are there rough casted/In curious hasty-pudding boiled/And most injenious carving/Likewise they are with pancakes tied/Sure, here’s no fear of starving/The captain says: 'In ev’ry town/Hot roasted pigs will meet ye/They in the streets run up and down/Still crying out: "Come eat me"'/... The fountains flow with brandy/The rocks are like refinèd gold/The hills are sugar-candy...."

So goes "An Invitation to Lubberland," a 17th-century ballad, discovered this morning after observing that the sunrise looked like a strip of bacon:

That got us talking about the vision of a world made of food in the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain." What a delight it is to the hobo who tells the story. He's hungry now, but if everything were made of food, it would soon become a horror show. There'd be nothing but food. 

There's a lake of stew

And of whiskey too

I like the sunrise reflected on water. On stew? Not so much.

Wisconsin breakfast.

Why Jerry Seinfeld doesn't use Twitter to tell jokes.

"I don’t hear the laugh. Why waste my time? It’s a horrible performing interface. I can’t think of a worse one. I always think about people that write books. What a horrible feeling it must be to have poured your soul into a book over a number of years and somebody comes up to you and goes, 'I loved your book,' and they walk away, and you have no idea what worked and what didn’t. That to me is hell. That’s my definition of hell."

From a little interview in the NYT that he's doing to promote the new season of "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" (which I think you can only watch on Netflix now).

BONUS: "Ranking Every Episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" (Vulture). Excerpt:

43. Jerry Lewis... Lewis’s breakfast order just sums up the man he was: “I’m gonna have three fried eggs up, and a large order of very very very stiff bacon.”

"My first job, believe it or not, was canning bacon for the Vietnam War. We would wrap the bacon up in little cans so they could ship it overseas."

"It really was a family company then. Oscar was still there. My father worked at Oscar Mayer. My father-in-law worked here. Two of my brothers. It’s like that with everybody. We were all family."

From an article in Isthmus about the closing of the Oscar Mayer plant in Madison, Wisconsin.

The fate of what will happen to the Oscar Mayer site is still unknown. Buckley hopes another employer takes over the facility.

“I’d love to see another company come in that would give people a living wage and benefits again,” Buckley says. “It was the people who made this place, and any employer would be lucky to have them.”

Here's an article from a couple years ago in Fortune about why Oscar Mayer closed "the site of the 132-year-old meat company's first expansion and, for the past 58 years, its headquarters—not to mention the home of the Wienermobile."

It’s hardly news that yet another old American factory is closing down, particularly one that makes processed meats, which have declined in popularity as millennials look for healthier options....

It is also less-than-shocking that Kraft Heinz, the food giant caused by the merger of Kraft and Heinz earlier this year, is closing yet another plant. This, after all, is what 3G, the Brazilian investor group behind Kraft Heinz — along with Warren Buffett— does, generally to the delight of its investors.

Oh, New Yorker....

In the sidebar at The New Yorker at a link I opened yesterday:



Maybe this sort of thing is getting you a lot of clicks, but have some self respect and show a little depth for those of us who are not eating up junk food like this.

From the article at that link, "THE MOON JUICE GOSPEL OF SELF":

“There is a cosmic calling and powerful movement here to push us forward as a race. . . . That’s what Moon Juice really is—not just a product or a place but rather a healing force, an etheric potion, and a cosmic beacon for the evolutionary movement of seeking beauty, happiness, and longevity.”

Not long after I read that passage, it became clear that Donald Trump would win the Presidency. Coastal élites went to bed, resigned. I kept reading: about the restorative powers of mesquite and reishi, and the benefits of coconut fat. I have never felt so radiantly out of touch with America... What place would Green Shakes, “moon-dusted” with cordyceps, have in the new America?...

I think with shame of myself a few weeks back, biking home from yoga, eleven-dollar juice in the basket, willfully editing out the Trump sign on my neighbor’s lawn. As the election has taught us, personal bliss does not trickle down; it’s a pool we gaze into till we drown.

What place do New Yorker readers have "in the new America"? If only the election had gone the other way, you could have kept searching for your own personal bliss in the lightweight nonsense of food sprinkles? You could have still kept smug over ripping out other people's lawn signs? At least you admit you have a problem, and thank Trump for that.

ADDED: The author of the quoted New Yorker article is Dana Goodyear, but the author of the quote within the quote, the owner of Moon Juice, is Amanda Chantal Bacon. I'm amused that the line "a cosmic beacon for the evolutionary movement of seeking beauty, happiness, and longevity" was written by someone named Bacon. From Bacon to beacon, and maybe we need to get back from beacon to bacon.

The discovery of bacon.

The federal government just stopped serving pig products in federal prison — no more pork, ham, or bacon for 206,000 inmates.

You might instinctively cry: Must all go without because some have a religious scruple against eating pork?!

But the government says it's because a survey shows the prisoners don't like pork.

“Why keep pushing food that people don’t want to eat?” asked Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the prison bureau. “Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years"...

“I find it hard to believe that a survey would have found a majority of any population saying, ‘No thanks, I don’t want any bacon,'” said Dave Warner, a spokesman for the Washington-based trade association, which represents the nation’s hog farmers.... 

Warner said pork is healthy and economical.... "Not to throw beef under the bus, but we cost a lot less than beef.”

Why don't they just admit they're doing it to accommodate religion and it's easier to have one rule that works for everyone than to bother with the complexity of alternative meals for the minority who must avoid pig products?

"We try to get people more aware of the importance of having disabled characters on television, and changing the mind-set of how you see disability."

"We’re trying to bring normality to what it is, and bringing truthful and honest characters to the screen."

Said R.J. Mitte, who played Walt Jr. on "Breaking Bad," in a lecture here at the University of Wisconsin last night. Mitte has cerebral palsy.

Here's a scene with him from the show (complaining about veggie bacon).

ADDED: Video taken out because it wasn't just the scene but some other comic stuff that isn't good enough. Watch the first 35 seconds to see the relevant part, here.

The Madison Mini-Marathon came right through our neighborhood today.

It was about Mile 10 when we saw them:



Notice all the green:



It's school colors. These kids came over from Memorial High School to cheer and hand out water.



"Run like you stole something."



"Run faster... I just farted."

ADDED: A few blocks up, there was a group of little girls who were offering the runners bacon.

Ted Cruz would really like your attention.

He's making bacon with a machine gun...



Via Talking Points Memo, which is duly disgusted.

Kevin Bacon is everywhere.

(Via The Telegraph, whither I sojourned to read "Marvin Gaye's daughter says court ruling 'is a miracle,'" because of The Volokh Conspiracy's "Blurred lines and copyright infringement.")

Are you excited about the "Breaking Bad" spin-off "Better Call Saul"?

Here's a taste:



I'll keep my mouth shut about whether that's promising, since my initial take on "Breaking Bad" was — after a 22-minute taste — was that it fit the interests and emotional needs of people who are not me.

[Walter White is] an entirely listless, enervated man with nothing to live for, utterly empty and bland and beaten down with no love for anything (except maybe chemistry)... He's had it with his bland old life which wasn't worth living even before he was dying. He's energized to go bad. He's finally alive.

This is a classic melodrama plot point: man who is about to die finally learns how to live.

He's been emasculated and suddenly he embraces manhood, which is saying "no" to all the crap he's had to eat, like vegetarian fake-bacon strips that taste like Band-Aids.

"He despised canned cranberry sauce, wearing shorts, cigarette butts in his driveway, oatmeal, loud-mouth know-it-alls, Tabasco sauce, reality TV shows, and anything to do with the Kardashians."

From an obituary for Raymond Alan "Big Al" Brownley, sent to me by a reader familiar with my long-term "men in shorts" theme.

... Big Al had many loves, too. He loved his wife... He also dearly loved his children and grandchildren... He also loved milk shakes, fried shrimp, the Steelers, the Playboy channel, Silky's Gentlemens Club, taking afternoon naps in his recliner, hanging out at the VFW, playing poker, eating jelly beans by the handful, and his hunting dogs — his favorite being Holly Hill Rip Van Winkle, a loyal beagle that answered to the nickname of Rip.... His fondness of spaghetti Westerns was only surpassed by his love of bacon, beer and butter pecan ice cream. He fondly reminisced about good friends, good drinks and good times at the Tri-Valley Sportsmens Club in Burgettstown. He was a long-time member of the Elks Club in McKees Rocks where he frequently bartended and generously donated his tips to charity. Quite a teller of tales, Big Al's elaborate stories often were punctuated with the phrase, "And that's when I kicked his ass." He enjoyed outlaw country music: Waylon, Willie, Hank, Johnny. He was also on a first-name basis with the Four Horsemen of liquor: Jack, Jim, Johnnie and Jose....

Read the whole thing. And goodbye to Big Al, who was 82.

A fire destroyed one-and-a-half tons of potato salad...

... that was on its way to the Toledo area German American Festival.

How flammable are potatoes? And wouldn't the mayonnaise act as a fire retardant? Ah, but German potato salad is the kind without mayonnaise. It's full of bacon fat and vinegar... is that like lighter fluid on potatoes?

Anyway, don't feel sad about the festival. Volunteers stepped up to the task, and it all worked out nicely in the end.

"I will not sleep with you until you stop talking about bacon."

"I'd never sleep with a woman who thinks talking about how much they love bacon is cool or funny."

Seriously, it's been at least 7-8 years of this bacon obsession. Do we need bacon underwear? Bacon peglegs? Bacon wrapped tampons? So what, bacon tastes good. So does chicken fried steak. You don't see hipsters running around with ironic chicken fried steak shirts. If you're going to be a mindless follower, fine. But don't expect to bed down with me....

Bacon.

I'd said I was going to to step away from the computer to cook up a second pre-breakfast. Tank said: "Second pre-breakfast?... What are you a Hobbit? Or perhaps feeling a little eleven o'clockish? (It's always eleven o'clockish somewhere)." And I said:

I read Phil Robertson's autobiography.

1. Here, you can buy it on Amazon, as I did.

2. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I know that the GQ article calls it "a ghostwritten book he says he has never read." I assume he talked to the ghostwriter and didn't check the ghost's work by sitting down and reading through the book. I'd be interested to know what books Phil does read. He reads the Bible. I got that. Phil purports to be such a godly man that I feel entitled to believe the book is accurate, but it has the feeling of PR, and I took it in that spirit.

3. My favorite part of the book was the first chapter, his boyhood, especially all the stuff about living off the land:

"But as you sit there sipping wine and eating pork belly, watching a marathon of The Sopranos — which sounds like a very nice evening..."

"... keep in mind that the distance between you and some imagined figure pounding Mountain Dew and Quarter Pounders while watching hours of Pawn Stars is not so vast."

Willa Paskin, tweaking the snobbish consciences of Slate readers who may have lost touch with old-fashioned it-will-rot-your-brain snobbery about watching too much television.

"My favorite scientist? No question, it’s Tesla. Tesla is for the win. Simple as that, my man."

"He’s win and Edison is fail. If Edison was around today, I’d kick him in the dick. I hate Thomas Edison and love Tesla because of some insanely freaking epic webcomics I’ve read, where he’s riding a dinosaur and just doing altogether random shit. Tesla much? He’s epic as hell, which, by the way, is where Edison is. Or he would be, if hell was a real place, which it’s not. That reminds me, you see that image macro about how stupid those failshit Christians are? Bacon for the win...."

Getting sharp and sophisticated from the internet, as dramatized by Boring as Heck.

Via Metafilter, where the comments start out with the dumbness of people who didn't read it, which is another internet thing that's fucking awesome, especially when someone finally nudges them that it's satire and then that guy gets 13 "favorites."

We're all going to be just fine....

(Adding tags to this post, I discover that I have at "Tesla" tag but no "Edison" tag, because that's what the internet does to you. And, in fact, I have a "bacon" tag.)

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/All hail to our old gold and black!"

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/Our friendship may she never lack/Ever grateful, ever true...."

On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the UW marching band can be heard practicing, which includes practicing the opposing team's fight song, and Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette — provides the lyrics, about gold and black and friendship and gratefulness.

I ask Meade if it's okay for me to blog that and he says, "I think you've already done it," which makes me think I'm being accused of posting first and asking permission later, but he really means I've already blogged — in some past year — about his singing along with the UW marching band playing the Purdue song. I go looking into the archives, and find, first, a post from April 2008, which can't be right, because I didn't meet Meade until January 2009, and the post in question shows New York City, where I was living at the time. The post, called "Morning fog update," shows what was my view of Manhattan. Meade arrives in the comments:

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

There's a gap in the conversation where a commenter expunged her own comments, but apparently she said something that referred (possibly disparagingly) to things that could be photographed in Madison. And Meade says:

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I find the old dead rat post — "Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently" — where there's a discussion of how to buy a light bulb in NYC and a couple of commenters who never comment here anymore are advising me about shops in town, and there's Meade:

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

I resist my future husband:

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

Meanwhile, Meade responds to a commenter who said "Yes but do you have swarthy olive skinned counterm[e]n to flirt with attractive visiting professors. Telling her how she would light up when the proper bulb is inserted in her socket. So to speak." With the metaphor in play now, Meade writes:

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

("Unambiguously gendered links" refers to another commenter's wisecrack that some NY hardware store employee is "AC/DC.")

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

The other commenter says: "Yeah, but [can] you get a link drunk and walk her home and talk your way into her main frame?" And Meade says:

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

And here's a post from August 2009, the month we got married, noticing Meade's comments in a July 2008 thread:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Fry up some bacon... provide the vocal track when the UW marching band plays the Purdue fight song....

ADDED: Meade reads this post and admires his selection — back in April 2008 — of the Purdue song lyric "Where the Wabash spreads its valley/Filled with joy our voices raise." Subtly erotic, he observes now. Less than a year later, I would meet him in that Wabash valley....