"If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be... a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea."

A line that explains the movie title "I Want to Be a Shellfish." I'm reading the plot summary of this 1959 movie...

On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation by GHQ, Toyomatsu "attemped to kill a US prisoner," which was nothing but an order by his superior and failed after all with hurting the prisoner by weak Toyomatsu. Also, Toyomatsu was driven to corner at the trial by the fact that he fed the US prisoner some burdock roots to nourish him. Toyomatsu believes nothing but being not guilty, but he is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to the execution, Toyomatsu writes a long farewell letter to his family, the wife and the only son: "If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be...a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea."

... because I saw the puzzling title in the NYT obituary, "Shinobu Hashimoto, Writer of Towering Kurosawa Films, Is Dead at 100." Hashimoto wrote the screenplay for the Kurosawa movies "Rashomon," "Ikiru," "Seven Samurai," "Throne of Blood," "The Hidden Fortress," and "Dodes’ka-den." I've seen all those films. Have you? "The Hidden Fortress" story was the basis for "Star Wars." "Rashomon" was the basis for a million invocations — something I wrote about at some length in 2000:

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.

Lent over, blogging cockroach reemerges.

With Easter greetings:

happy easter
i love easter it s so hopeful
and the food isn t bad
mom and dad here at the house
are having some friends over
for easter dinner yay crumbs
and maybe lots of other goodies if mom
is sloppy as usual i adore hollandaise sauce
one of mom s good friends who s coming
is jewish and her husband is oirish
from the old sod plus there are the
mexican chinese jewish polish couple
and remember mom is french so
welcome to cambridge
which is identity enough for all the kids
who happily say grace over dinner
and love to hunt easter eggs
while i m under the fridge waiting
for hollandaise sauce from heaven
hoping they don t decide to look
too carefully for those eggs

"If you're going to try Brussels sprouts, you might be more likely to climb a mountain the next time you're on vacation."

Inane advice for women — from Laure Redmond, author of "Feel Good Naked." That book is from 2001 — a year when how to feel good naked was a pressing concern. Now Redmond is a "self-esteem coach." Hey, what do you do when you're a self-esteem coach who feels bad about herself for being a self-esteem coach?

IN THE COMMENTS: Who needs a self-esteem coach? We've got a self-esteem roach!

blogging cockroach types:

hi professor
if you re doing cuisine posts you know i just had
to say something altho i draw the line at the
mexican soup maker so does mom here at the
house who is french and can t stand mexican food
but dad and tommy like it so what to do
but i ve begged tommy not to tell anybody about
this story as it would be the end of the little
tolerance mom has left for mexican food
which she thinks lacks subtlety and that je ne sais quoi
i bet there were lots of je ne sais quois in that guy s soup
b t w tommy is the boy whose computer i use
in case you re new around here
anyway mom makes these killer brussels sprouts
something like barts recipe above but mom puts in
some tiny bits of canadian bacon or pork yum
i really like that mom usually spills some of the
sauce with the bacon bits ooh double yum
i haven t climbed any mountains as a result of
brussels sprouts but i have climbed the side
of the stove which makes a lot more sense
because who ever heard of spilled bacon bits
in butter beer sauce on the top of the matterhorn

as for naked women i was pretty used to those
in my last life which i think is why i am a cockroach
this time around plus not having those hormones
i almost spelled it whoremones
it s all just a memory that nowadays makes me wince
along with the chile verde dad dropped behind
the stove last week

As Andrew Wyeth slips away into the next life, the blogging cockroach waves a poetic antenna.

Yesterday's post marking the death of the popular painter lured the little insect — who's very popular around here — out of the woodwork and onto the keyboard:

you know i have this human soul
and i can still remember last time
before i was reborn as a cockroach
i was a 12 tone composer and music professor
at a 3rd rate state u but now i live near harvard u
which is probably comeuppance for my last life
anyway when i was in a human body
and believe me i was in as many female
grad students human bodies as i could be
which may be one reason i m a cockroach now
i remember that only abstract expressionism
would do over at the art dept
just like only 12 tone or serial music was
if you were a composer and no matter what
you had to like it if you were a serious modern
person at all but i don t think that applied to
cockroaches which is one benefit of my current status
yes abstract expressionism and serial music went
hand in hand at the college of arts and god
help you if you had any other ideas i know i sure didn t
so if you were a studio art student and painted
an actual picture of something you might as well
have composed a piece of music in g major
oh the shame

abstract expressionism and 12 tone music also
had a lot of trendy leftish ideas stuck to them
like mold on an overripe fruit ready to drop into
somebody s hands except if you were
an old fashioned communist you had a problem
cause stalin liked mickey mouse and minuet in g
and zhadinov would send you to siberia for
bourgeois formalist tendencies if you thought
jackson pollock or anton webern were cool
ah the rat maze of politics and art
except most of the rats i know these days
are smarter than that which is another problem

bourgeois was the catch all epithet
used against art like andrew wyeth s
i bet you thought i d never get to the point
and i ve got to tell you i still get a little queasy
at christina s world because it was part of the air
i breathed that stuff like that was stupid
and sentimental bourgeois illustration
dark and humorless as it is
i remember this visiting french art professor
and several of us going to a wyeth exhibit
in town for a good laugh
except he was a little dark and humorless himself
and used to puff his cigarette between his thumb
and forefinger with his hand turned toward his face
and say ah you amerwicains you are so bourgeois
you theenk a fire burning in ze fireplace is expressif
what is expressif is a fire burning ze house down
i think he was a structuralist
he would sit in his cafe on the rue de bac thinking
and then amble over to the universite and teach
for which the republique francais paid him enough
to sit in a cafe on the rue de bac in paris thinking
i was luckier because the state u where i taught
paid me enough to not have to think at all

no tenure for poor wyeth and no cafe sitting either
he had to paint pictures and gasp sell them
so the non trendy ignorant bourgeoisie
could gape at them not understanding
the slightest thing about art
except you can see the grass blades
oh the shame

I'm quite serious about replacing the depressing Father Time/Baby New Year with the New Year's Tick.

I like to frontpage comments, you know, and now and then, I need to frontpage my own comments. This is one of those times.

There was that "tick" post on New Year's Eve Eve (i.e., last night):

"New Year to arrive a tick later."

Oh! A tick!

Ricpic waxes poetic:

The New Year came in wobbly.
A tick or two behind.
It threw off lonely sticklers.
The rest? They didn't mind.

And Stephanie says:

?retal kcot a evirra ti t'nseoD

(Wait a sec, I have to do this.)

Then blogging cockroach says...

tou ieduv siht kcehc einahpets yeh

... and links to this:



That drives reader_iam to poesy:

i do love the backwards elements of the cockroach nature
as don't we all
or at least should
if not ought

Blogging cockroach responds in kind:

that should be tuo
which proves i ve had too much
spilled cheap merlot tonight
to be hopping around backwards
lookout when the champaign flows
tomorrow night wheee
which i hope doesn t turn into
eeehw
anyway here is tick tock gone bad
and too long
but you can stop it when it
ceases being funny about 40 seconds in
hey they can t all be gems
and i promise never to trip
trippingly to reader s ear
a cockroach doing that would
freak some people out
but just don t sleep on the kitchen floor
and we ll all be fine

Chip Ahoy says:

.diputs era stac yhW

dnuora gnifoog tsuj s'ti swohs swollof taht oediv etunim 4 ehT .yllaer toN

The cockroach continues to inspire reader_iam:

ah but cockroach
your trips are tweets to the ear
like birds in dawn of spring s own dawn
here here see here they sing
back again as always are we
so wake up
if only, and to ...

The cockroach skitters on across the keyboard again:

not having the vers libre poet in me
i fear my prosaic nature sometimes
misses the subtleties of
dear reader s lovely lines
which is not to say
reader should not write
a lot more of them
because you always want more
when someone doesn t quite
write enough rather than when
they write too much
which is also true about food
but i m not as appreciative when
the cook has cleaned up
too well afterwards

Then, when everyone is nestled all snug in their beds, I am awake. It's 2:23 a.m.:

And where is everyone? Last night, you guys were talking all night, and now here I am with insomnia and no one is around.

Were you afraid of the tick?

Thanks for all the poetry, but it was all before midnight. If you can't stay up until midnight tonight, how do you expect to celebrate New Year's Eve tomorrow night?

I think I'll try to draw a picture of the New Year's Tick. Or see if I can get people to send pictures of the New Year's Tick. And I'm going to push for the adoption of the New Year's Tick as the new New Year's mascot, replacing that stupid — and frankly depressing — Old Man and Baby mascot. Or the Ball. What the hell kind of symbol is a Ball?

I hope that doesn't offend blogging cockroach. You must understand that we can't have a cockroach as a holiday symbol. Not for New Year's anyway.

This insomnia is giving me grandiose thoughts, but I really think this New Year's Tick thing can catch on. Perhaps if we draw it the right way. I think Santa Claus wasn't such a big deal until those Coca Cola ads got the character drawn just the right way. People loved him once his attributes became appealing and standardized.

Help me do that with the Tick.

Also, that "Night Before Christmas" poem helped with the popularization of Santa Claus, so maybe some of you poets can write something similarly beguiling about the annual arachnid.

Inside the kitty cat wall clock he hid/Our eagerly awaited arachnid.

See? I can't do it!

An arthropod/From God/Trod...

No... I need help with the poem. And with the drawing. And with the sleeping.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds/Not knowing the Tick crept so close to their heads....

(Links added.)

In the cold light of morning — and it's 0° — I can see these are not mere insomniac ravings. I really do want drawings — or photoshoppings — of the New Year's Tick. I will reward you with frontpagings and tags. More poems too. I love the poems and the depictions of ticks — detickshuns, if you will.

We went out in the icy snow and celebrated last night. Tonight we stay in. I'll be live-blogging New Year's Eve, so please join me. I will reward you profusely with frontpagings and tags... and ticks.

Cockroach Christmas.

Our favorite insect, blogging cockroach, skittered through the Red Clock Café a few minutes ago:

hi professor
sorry i haven t been around much
tommy s computer was broken
tommy is the boy whose computer i use
anyway computer trouble was only for starters
grand mere showed up from france
you know mom here at the house is french
well the very formidable grand mere blew in
complaining about everything americain
but grand mere took a spill in this fancy
cambridge food store that tries its best
so much to be french that julia child used
to shop there anyway grand mere is in hospital
and won t be out until christmas quel dommage

then we ve had snow snow snow and 2 out of 3
of tommy s christmas concerts were cancelled
that make money for his school quel dommage
which is actually a choir school where they sing
in latin if you want for weddings and funerals
quis a misericordia

well this is the first year everybody didn t
go to france for christmas er noel
so i was looking forward to grand mere s
french christmas cooking because if she s
anything like mom she s real sloppy
which is the first thing i look for in a cook

usually it s real quiet here during christmas
and i have a chance to meditate
on my having the transmigrated soul
of a composer and music professor
which is a little odd to be able to
remember but maybe i didn t get my
dose of the soup of forgetfulness
which proves that the cosmic cook
was probably a little too neat in my case

i have to admit that being a cockroach near harvard u
is pretty good comeuppance for a reborn
asshole prof at a 3rd rate state u
maybe it was 2nd rate but don t make me
a worm next time for bragging
you know i only wanted to get by last time
and what better way than cooking up
academic crap music that was only trendy
at 3rd rate state u s where the deans thought
they were being so avant garde
while they really were wearing no clothes
and no one would tell them
but at least i could hit on grad students
with nice legs
they had to have nice legs
and we got to the no clothes part asap
but now look at me
i ve got lots of legs these days

anyway i use this time to contemplate
how i got here and have resolved to be
a better sentient being if even an insect this time
because i now have an inkling of how
you can blow it if you re a jerk or even
if you re wasting your talents on useless crap
which i now think is a sure path to
invertebratedom in the next life

but this is all so hard to figure out and
it doesn t help that i only have 960 brain cells
although you would be surprised that
consciousness has less to do with the
hardware than you might imagine
so think about that the next time
you squash a cockroach
merry christmas

IN THE COMMENTS: Sir Archy -- our "Ghost of a Gentleman dead these 260 Years and more" -- stops by, with a response on the subject of reincarnation:

I may tell you that upon my Death I had expect'd to be sent to Heaven, or, Hell, or, perhaps, to have been Transmigrat'd into some other sentient Being, as the Hindoos teach and you have experienc'd. You may imagine my Mortification at finding myself remaining a disembody'd Spirit all these Years. I should have been happy even to have been plac'd in the Body of a miserable Cockroach, such as yourself. I endeavour'd, as much as any Sinner, to live a virtuous Life, and have thus always regarded my disembody'd Existence a most unfair Sentence; but, our Situations shew how hard 'tis to comprehend the Will of GOD, or, as some would have it, the Workings of the Universe. In this, the teachings of my Calvinistick Religion would seem to be vindicated; yet, as a Ghost, I may tell you that the Doctrines of neither Geneva, nor, Rome, nor, Benares, nor even, Lahsa are adequate to the Matter....

But this post is already long, so I must send you inside to read the rest.

"I think most of the commenters on your blog have a more 'male' vibe to them."

A reader writes:

I read your blog once in a while. I've a small question.

Do you have a sense of whether more males read your blog than females? I'm just curious. You post a range of topics though which should appeal to both sexes. But I think most of the commenters on your blog have a more "male" vibe to them.

Do you mind running a poll to find the male/female readership of your blog?

No, I don't mind:

You are:
	Male
	Female
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: If you don't think the poll is sufficient proof that the readership here skews male -- 77% of you voted male -- you should see the comments. (Here and on the poll page.)

It gets to the point where Palladian says: "It's beginning to smell like a wrestling mat in here." He's right.

Then Joan says:

I skipped reading the rest of the comment thread -- no apology offered for that -- I just wanted to say the that the 3:1 male-female ratio here explains a good deal of why I spend so much time here. Every so often I make the rounds of the Mommy blogs, but they just don't appeal to me.

This is what comes of growing up with four brothers and a dad who controlled the tv...

The stink continues, and someone mentions rotten fish. That brings out blogging cockroach:

fish
did someone say fish...
i adore fish
but i don t adore this thread
i have been away a while because tommy s
computer has been broken
tommy is the boy whose computer i use
anyway i had 3 or 4 funny things that
occurred to me as soon as i saw this post
i was organizing them in my little mind when
wham bam
fights broke out
can't think straight with all that going on
weird fights broke out
now i can only keep so much in my brain
which has only 960 cells or so
so i ll be back when i can find some
better space for my material
you know how i am so picky

A stink so noisome the cockroach is disgusted.

"so far it s been a pretty good thanksgiving"

blogging cockroach said...

weird but pretty good
you see mom here at the house is french
dad is american
their son tommy
whose computer i use
is very confused
that didn t stop tommy from making a very good
pumpkin pie which i just sampled yum dessert
anyway you know the french don t eat early
so mom s idea of thanksgiving dinner is 6 pm
that s super early in france
that s super crazy over here
dad says thanksgiving is the only day
the americans eat better than the frence
mom says merde
but mom did get talked into making a dinde
that s turkey in french
with the usual fixings
but how do you explain stuffing to the french
not to mention creamed onions
but mom did her best with dad s help
and it all worked out
though they got into a bit of a dustup
the biggest problem was the wine
why am i not surprised
dad had this bottle of puligny montrachet
picked out and mom says it s all wrong
dad says ok we ll drink the mondavi
you ve been cooking with if that s how
you re going to be and mom says you need
a nice cote du rhone but not chateauneuf du pape
more something like a cornas
and dad says but that s red and i drink white
wine with turkey and mom says your palate
isn t educated so go open one of those bottles of
05 cornas in the basement before the
damn dinde drys and i get angry
so they had a slightly sulkey dinner with dad
coughing and making faces at the wine
and mom reminding tommy that the pilgrims
and the indians probably didn t have any good wine
but some people never learn to appreciate such
things and it was just as well they drank
beer and dad says he could use a good beer
about now

well this went on and given the late start
and the bickering over wine things didn t wind up
until very late when it was too hard
to really clean up well which is fine by me
as you know i like to dine fashionably late too

Cooking a sausage.

A Russian technique, apparently:



IN THE COMMENTS: This picture is bringing out some... male anxiety. And -- unexpected bonus! -- the blogging cockroach:

ooh i love sausage
but i m not getting anywhere near 219 volts
tommy tried this trick cooking
a hot dog the other week
tommy is the boy whose computer i use
who is 12 years old
he learned it from his science teacher
who is 57 years old
and very weird
anyway tommy used two nails
hooked up to wires from an old cord
stuck the nails into the hot dog
plugged that sucker in
humm bzzz frap pow
smoke and steam poured
out of the hot dog
then it exploded
but not before it blew the circuit breaker
mom was just saving an important edit
she had done on a job
that had to go out that day
an hour of work vanished
about like the hot dog
except i found some yummy bits
of hot dog stuck to the wall behind
the curtain rod in tommy s room
no such luck for mom

Then former law student said:

The Presto Hotdogger used the same technique as the Russian process, applying 120 VAC directly across up to six hot dogs. The salty dog is a high resistance conductor. And long before Presto turned this technique into a product, techie types I knew would electrocute dogs using two nails and a suicide cord.

But the LEDs' tapping into the current flowing through the dog to light up is a neat feature.

The cockroach replied...

fls

nails and a suicide cord
is exactly the technique
tommy used to explode his hot dog
some dogs seem to have more
resistance than others
because tommy s drew more
than maybe 10 amps
and with everything else
on the circuit
pow
the breaker blew
maybe it was the aluminum
nails he used
plus it was a hebrew national
hot dog and you know how
they re connected
to a higher power

Chip Ahoy animates blogging cockroach.

Commenter Chip Ahoy responds to this post about the commenter known as blogging cockroach. He's adapted and animinated the beautiful "archy and mehitabel" drawing by George Herriman.

Now, of course, our blogging cockroach has the relative comfort of a computer and is not stuck with an old-fashioned typewriter like the archy in Herriman's illustration. It's already in the original post, but let me repeat the adaptation of the drawing by our commenter Palladian:



Krazy! What commenters!

ADDED: A reader notes a misspelling. I should have written: Krazy! What kommenters!

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!

   

I got so mad at George Packer last night.

As expressed in this post and its comments. Here I am in the comments:

I don't mind people attacking me for doing that post itself ["[I doubt that] Obama wore an earpiece that was clearly visible on HDTV"], which was done at the end of a long session of live-blogging. But what angers me are these broad statements about how insular and narrow-minded I've been, when I have spent the last year (and more) being incredibly balanced, to the point where my readers really didn't know which candidate I was going to vote for. [Links added.]

You know, I'm going to vote for Obama (94.67% chance), but these assholes make it a really distasteful exercise.

Later, I added: "Now I feel like voting for McCain... and pushing the inside the ear transmitter theory..."

That was after reading this, from Original George:

Before dismissing the idea that Sen. Obama was wearing or does wear a hearing device, in less than 60 seconds on the net, I found many, many websites advertising CIC hearing aids. Go here.

They fit entirely inside the ear canal. They cost about $1,000. They're the size of a large seed or piece of corn. Probably sold by every audiologist.

So....could there be a radio receiver that size? Why not?

And, lo and behold, another five seconds on Google, and up come many in-the-ear-canal radio receivers...like here.

The mistake the Professor made, if she made one, was not to invest a few minutes research. Best thing to do would be to call two or three manufacturers of these gizmos and see what they think.

Heck, if I were running for President, I'd use a radio so I could be fed reminders and tips, and I'd be gobbling Provigil. Anything for an undetectable edge. Lifts in the shoes, hair dye, Wheaties, whatever.

A night's sleep put me at some distance from my rage so that, even with harassment from the excessively early-rising marching band, I was feeling cool-headed enough. And then, reading more deeply into the comments, I was cheered by our little friend, our favorite insect, blogging cockroach:

i don t know about sir archy or even titus
but i am a 100 percent sorta brown blooded
american cockraoch born right here
in cambridge mass if you want to count
that as america which i am sure some of you don t
and i ve got to say i think that hatchet job
done to professor a was terrible
that s the trouble with blogging
it s supposed to be easy and breezy
but there are people who deconstruct every
breadcrumb that gets stuck under the letter r
for example that really happened and i couldn t
write a damn thing with r

railroad crossing look out for the cars
can you spell it without any r s...

anyway soon people started to say
i broke my right front leg off and other
stupid theories and my blog went to hell
until tommy came back from camp
and fixed the keyboard

tommy is the boy whose computer i use

anyway tommy and i took the blog private
and maybe i ll start again
but this sure is a cautionary tale

i have a confession to make
tommy subscribes to the new yorker
oh the shame
he s very bright and sophisticated for 12
hell he s bright and sophisticated for 34
so he started reading the new yorker
in the office of his fancy private school
and next thing he had to have a subscription
mom and dad got him one for his birthday

i m glad that hit piece is only online
as i would have to find and eat the page
if it were in the magazine
so tommy wouldn t see it
and while there are some magazines
with yummy casein coated glossy paper
i only eat the new yorker as a last resort

The Needles Vlog.

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

"you know i have the transmigrated soul of a composer" writes our favorite insect, blogging cockroach.

Yesterday's last post, with its showy outdoor insects -- bee and butterfly -- lured the cowering, timorous bug from the shadows. It's not easy hopping about on the keyboard, and these days there are new dangers. Here then, in full, is what blogging cockroach had to say:

ooh that is such a beautiful picture



brings a tear to my beady eyes to think
of a world of light and air and pretty flowers
while i'm stuck under the fridge in the dark
except when i can get to tommy's computer
--tommy is the boy whose computer i use--
and all that beauty makes me think of music too
--you know i have the transmigrated soul of a composer--
and i do wish tommy would put on the music i ask for

now, what music does that scene remind you of...
me, i think of a bartok string quartet
tommy's usually playing the ramones

anyway, speaking of air
tommy's mom got a new macbook air
you know the one you could wrap fish in
if you're not careful
tommy wants one too
says it will eat less space in his back pack
only trouble is i watched mom snap that thing shut
--whap--
i asked tommy how could he make sure
he wouldn't just slam that sucker shut when
i'm in the middle of a comment
he says there's lots of room between the keys
sorta like an old typewriter my great great great, etc.
grandfather had to hop around on,
but could also hide in when the time came
no room to hide near modern technology i'm afraid
my only hope would be to flatten myself out
next to the command key, which has a flower on it

anyway, i told tommy he could just leave me the fish
after mom mistook the computer for a freezer bag

she was wondering if she could get a glass of sancerre
to calm her nerves at the genius bar

I'm touched by the solace of the non-flower on the command key, and I wonder what a tear would look like in beady eyes of a cockroach. How can I show my feeling? I've added a thumbnail of the picture that moved the little beastie and a link to help readers understand his ancestry. A here's one more thing, evidence that I did trouble myself, yesterday, to look into the eyes of the insect...



... with apologies that it was an outdoorsy fellow, with a real flower.

ADDED: Yes, that's a moth, not, as I wrote, a butterfly. I talk about this mistake -- and blogging cockroach -- in the new vlog.

"Scientists invent microscopic operating table for 1mm worm."

The answer to the question: What's in worm news today?

IN THE COMMENTS: blogging cockroach types:

damn
i was hoping they would have developed
a little operating table for me
i think i need surgery on my right rear leg
after that accident under the fridge last summer
ive been in chronic pain ever since it happened
i am on aspirin with the help of tommy
--he is the boy whose computer i use--
he grinds one up every week and puts out a little each night
it helps
but if they could develop
an operating room for a miserable worm
they could certainly build one for all the sick
and injured cockroaches out there
tommy says the vet wont touch me
id have to be some madagascar hissing cockroach
to get any medical care
its size discrimination i tell you
sizeism pure sizeism

Contemplate — with a plate — the difference between a cockroach eye's view and a cockroach's eye view.

Commenter-blogger XWL tries to figure it all out.

And did you know we have a cockroach as one of our commenters here? Blogging Cockroach — right here — responds:

hi xwl

nice work
although the iphone field of view is too narrow
and it just doesnt have that fish- or bug-eye thing
that althouse paid a lot of money to do on her nikon slr
which would be closer to my way of seeing things

anyway its hard to test cockroach vision
i mean there arent too many cockroaches who are going to sit there
and tell the optometrist which way the letter e is pointing
and what they can read in 9 pt type in that little mirror

but us cockroaches do see in color
yes we do
just not the colors you see
our vision goes from what you call green
into the ultraviolet
so i can see at least three colors
of ultraviolet light
ha ha you cant see them
and what you call green looks pretty grey to me
thats your basic night vision perfect for kitchen floors at 2 in the morning
plus--and here is where it gets weird--
i can tell which way light is polarized too
thats so i can tell direct light from light reflected off water
extremely handy to keep from falling into a toilet bowl
or a sink full of water
when what im really looking for
are the crumbs on the cutting board
plus i would never be fooled by a mirage in the desert
i mean how many cockroaches in little foreign legion uniforms
have you seen in movies dragging themselves over the sand
going 'water water i see water...'
never has happened for good reason

anyway its all a matter of perspective
you think you see the world the way it is
let me tell you there are alternative views
but this comment is getting too long
and although i live near harvard u
im not getting paid to teach cockroach epistemology
not to mention metaphysics
which has been in a bad odor for a long time anyway
speaking of which
something tells me me
theres a piece of foil with camembert stuck to it
that slipped off the counter last night
which really deserves a little visit
adieu mes amis
je vais a la gloire

Insect philosophy! I've never thought about it. But I have thought about insect politics!

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I! Insects don't have politics.... they're very brutal. No compassion.... no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first insect politician. I'd like to, but.... I'm an insect.... who dreamed he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake."

"I don't want to host a party in which a small vitriolic minority consistently tries to ruin the event for everyone else."

Harvard econprof Greg Mankiw turns off the comments function on his blog and explains why: "To put it simply, this blog is a hobby.... The comments section has been, for me, a source of both fun and frustration.... I just don't have the time to police comments and enforce good behavior...."

Glenn Reynolds comments: "Let 'em get their own blogs."

Since I have comments and they don't, you'll have to talk about the controversy here. Unless you want to do it Glenn's way and write on your own blog.

I take it some people like the feeling of a back-and-forth dialogue and the sense you get that this is a place where you can go. Glenn's idea is that the whole internet is that place, but I think a comments section works in a different way. Is it really true that somebody is always ruining it? Is the community so fragile? I know a lot of good commentators have left in a huff... or wandered off silently. Sometimes they come back, and there's always a chance for someone new (and nice) to crawl out of the woodwork — like, recently, "blogging cockroach."

A good commenter isn't just a would-be blogger. He's not just mooching off someone else's hard-won traffic. A commenter may find inventive ways to play off the material in the post. Or, like a cockroach, the commenter may thrive in the background and want only the occasional crumb of attention.

And a blogger who thinks it's worth it to host a comments section — as I do — gets creative stimulation knowing a discussion will flow from the post. I love starting something.

Here are some extra questions to show how much I care:

1. Who are the commenters here that you enjoy? Would you like them better if they set up shop on an individual blog or is there some way that they operate well specifically as commenters?

2. Who would you most like to see expand into blog writing?

3. Why do you comment instead of writing over on your own blog? You could link to these posts and write about the subjects raised here. Why don't you?

4. If I closed down the comments, would you shift into blogging? Would you miss the place that is the comments, or would this blog seem much the same?

***

And let me say — I've said it before — for me, blogging is not a "hobby."

IN THE COMMENTS: Revenant answers question #3:

I tried blogging and it seemed weird. Comments sections feel like a conversation. Blogging feels like shouting in a large, empty room... which of course it pretty much is, until you get some readers. Plus, there's the pressure of having to come up with something to write about every day.