"... with his left foot. He was pulled deeper into the water and onto his knees. Then, in a move he described as 'half-accidental,' his teeth caught on the animal's leathery eyelid. 'I managed to have a bite,' he said, adding: 'I jerked back on his eyelid and he let go.'"
I'm reading that because it comes up in the dialogue between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, a regular Monday morning feature in the NYT. Collins brings up the crocodile story because it reminds her of the GOP presidential candidates who are stuck fighting Donald Trump.
Collins, like a lot of people in elite media these days, are pushing the idea of Nikki Haley as the one who ought to take on Donald Trump. But why?
The Collins/Stephens dialogue begins with Stephens saying he's been "devoted almost entirely to outrages and tragedies in the Middle East:
But I couldn’t help smiling for a second when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” at last week’s G.O.P. debate, after he raised the subject of her daughter’s use of TikTok.
Maoming has some of the country’s largest crocodile farms, with crocodile skin manufacturing facilities in nearby cities. Crocodile meat is also a local delicacy. The farming and trade of live crocodiles is allowed under Chinese law, and cases of farmed reptiles running loose are not uncommon in the country....
"When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up."
It's interesting, the differences that matter to people, the endless quest to distinguish alligators from crocodiles and psychopaths from sociopaths, but what I wanted to know was the difference between vandalism and terrorism.
The Princess liked to one-up. I have heard from a variety of people that she would engineer the conversation around to the subject of children’s first words, asking each of her fellow guests what their own child’s first words had been. Having listened to responses like ‘Mama’ and ‘doggy’, she would say, ‘My boy’s first word was “chandelier”.
Three syllables. Chandelier... crocodile... what's the difference? The difference is what the "spare" chose to do with her/his life.
Headline at Fox News. The woman is okay now, so you are free to joke about sharks and crocodiles working together. Also the woman did something very stupid (and she admits it was stupid — “completely my fault... just a blonde doing a stupid thing"):
[Melissa] Brunning told the West Australian that she didn't realize she shouldn’t hand feed a shark, until the animal became "like a Hoover," sucking her right index finger into its mouth full of rows of razor-sharp teeth.
“I think the shark was in shock as much as I was ... the only way I can describe it is this immense pressure and it felt like it was shredding it off the bone,” she told the paper. “I came up and I was like, ‘I’ve lost my finger, my finger’s gone.’”
The shark also pulled her into the water of Dugong Bay, which is inhabited by saltwater crocodiles that can grow up to 23 feet long and weigh more than a ton, according to Sky News.
"It’s not the shark’s fault at all, but it could have been a lot worse,” she told the paper, adding, "I’m not a shark victim .. I have full respect for sharks, I think they’re incredible. I’ve always had the opinion that when you’re in the water, they’re top of the food chain, it’s their domain."
Respect... and keep your distance. Don't hand-feed a shark.
By the way, there is video of the attack at the link, but I won't watch it.
Also, the shark was a tawny nurse shark, which does sound rather sweet. But don't try to nurse one!
American elites don’t have a strong personal interest in trying to stigmatize pornographers (instead of being amused by their antics), or in allying with anti-obscenity crusaders (instead of making fun of them). But I think there’s a pretty good case that they should do it anyway, because other people’s children, further down the ladder of education and income and prestige, might stand to gain from a less pornified society. That would be a kind of noblesse oblige, and it would be admirable and welcome.
Douthat was talking about actual pornography, but that's not what's going on in the new column by Bret Stephens (the other conservative columnist in the NYT). Here, the word is used metaphorically — and ironically titillating us — in "How Twitter Pornified Politics."
This is the column in which I formally forswear Twitter for good.... Why now? Because... it occurred to me that Twitter is the political pornography of our time: revealing but distorting, exciting but dulling, debasing to its users, and, well, ejaculatory. It’s bad for the soul and, as Donald Trump proves daily, bad for the country.
Stephens says he was influenced by this New York Magazine article — "Pornhub Is the Kinsey Report of Our Time" — which has this quote" "Pornography trains us to redirect sexual desire as mimetic desire. That is, the sociological theory — and the marketers’ dream — that humans learn to want what they see."
Stephens explains:
That is what Twitter has been for our politics... If pornography is about the naked, grunting body, Twitter is about the naked, grunting brain. It’s whatever pops out. And what pops out is altogether too revealing.
That's what I like about Twitter and perhaps why my favorite thing about Donald Trump is his tweeting. I want the nakedness of the mind. Trump is great at tweeting, so to continue the metaphor, I wonder if Stephens's withdrawal from Twitter is like a guy deciding to abstain from sex because he's not up to the high-level antics he sees in pornography.
Is the analogy imperfect? When you have sex you're not (usually!) making pornography, but everyone who tweets is just writing a few words on Twitter. What the President of the United States does is, in form, exactly what any one of us can do — write a few words. The President just happens to be brilliantly effective at it. But as Stephens sees it, Twitter fits Trump's "style of crowd politics: unmediated, blunt and burst-like." It's "the reptilian medium for the reptilian brain."
If all that haughtiness and puritanism about terse speech and porn is making you want a laugh at Stephens's expense, let me show you what I encountered scrolling through the last few days of Stephens's Twitter feed:
The reptilian medium for the reptilian brain... indeed.
The video shows the nature of the movement — vigorous walking through fabulous museum rooms with stops for jumping and stretching movement at the feet of grand statues. It's pre-opening, so no one stand in the way of this exercise-focused, seemingly art-oblivious group:
But the video does not include the voice that the museum-goers are hearing. Maira Kalman — who is an interesting author/illustrator — is saying lord knows what. I can only guess from the hints given in the article:
Her narration proffers personal thoughts about art and unexpected aphorisms on mortality.
Tell me one!
And the video plays only one song, "Stayin' Alive." That has some "aphorisms about mortality" in it: "Life goin' nowhere/Somebody help me, yeah." More importantly, "Stayin' Alive" mentions the New York Times: "We can try to understand/The New York Times' effect on man."
And woman, it's only fair to say, as this marchin'-through-the-museum bunch is overwhelmingly female.
You know, you can also get an early-morning NYC workout by walking briskly outdoors...
To work on the upper body, carry a paint can.
Paint, ah... Back to the museum.
I'm saying that the video of the museum workout is unlike the real experience described in the text because it lacks the voiceover narration and because it plays only one song. It does appear that "Stayin' Alive" is the kind of song that is played: Elton John is cited in the text.
I don't know which Elton John. One of the peppier ones, I bet.
Maybe: "Crocodile Rock." Maybe "Crocodile Rock" as they are passing one of the museum's many representations of crocodiles, though the article never suggests that the music lyrics are keyed to the visual experience.
Quite the opposite:
The workout, with its pop-rock playlist and jazzercise-y moves, successfully removes any pretense or affected erudition. For one, talking is prohibited. (Kalman, at one point, narrates, “I really hate talking about art.”) And the constant disorientation disallows for higher cognitive thought to occur.
So the one quote from Kalman — "I really hate talking about art" — undercuts the promise of "unexpected aphorisms."
I don't really mind people walking briskly through the vast spaces of the Metropolitan Museum. It's good to get the message out that it's one of the best places in the world to take a long indoor walk.
You don't have to look at the art, except in passing, the way you glance into shop windows when you power down the sidewalks. Big museums get very tedious if you think you need to pause and gaze reverently at every piece of art.
I don't mind if the museum lets some people for special off-hours activities. It needs to build its audience and to remind us to come back and relive its grand spaces.
You could make the Metropolitan Museum of Art your regular "workout." A long, brisk walk is good whether you're in some special organized group or not.
Just don't bump into people. Don't annoy people.
And don't knock into the art. When I saw this article, that was my main concern. You shouldn't be thinking I'm getting a workout! while barging around and swinging your arms in the vicinity of artworks.
This stupid vandalism took place in Australia, but it's getting attention in America, including a substantial article in the NYT. Presumably, we're supposed to be amused. But why?
1. Crocodiles are scary. But if you watch the video, you'll see that they are tiny crocodiles, and you'll hear that they'd been out of water for a long time and were actually in bad shape and suffering. The story isn't really about scary animals — at a distance, for our safe horror — but animal abuse, and abusing animals isn't funny.
2. Humpty Doo is a very funny name for a town. I'll give you that.
3. Half-naked men. It sounds racy at first, but wait a minute? Which half is naked? These are just men without shirts. These are men in shorts.
ADDED: Wikipedia says the name was originally Umpity Doo, perhaps based on "umpty" used by the Army to mean a Morse code dash or a corruption of an Aboriginal original word "Umdidu," but if the "h" was always there, the name could be slurred pronunciation of the English word "two" as "doo" and the idea that this was the second of more than one hump, and "humpty doo" might have been slang for "upside down." The Wikipedia article on Humpty Doo doesn't mention Humpty Dumpty, but he's a character in a nursery rhyme that's been around since at least 1797:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.
That's not the version we're familiar with, just the oldest. Some people think Lewis Carroll created the character, but he just appropriated and repurposed him. "Through the Looking-Glass" doesn't come out until 1872. Humpty Dumpty appears in a great little vignette, a favorite of lawyers and law professors. I'll boldface the part most likely to be quoted and cited in a law review article or judicial opinion:
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"
"You can only get there by ferry, and there are signs there saying watch out for the bloody crocodiles. If you go in swimming at 10 o'clock at night, you're going to get consumed.... Let's not start vendettas [against crocodiles]. People have to have some level of responsibility for their own actions."
"I wasn't sure what I should present to her when she came in on the afternoon of Saturday July 20 so I showed her some bags from the Jennifer Aniston collection. I explained to her the bags came in different sizes and materials, like I always do. She looked at a frame behind me. Far above there was the 35,000 Swiss franc crocodile leather bag.
"I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags.... She looked around the store again but didn't say anything else. Then she went with her companion to the lower floor. My colleague saw them to the door. They were not even in the store for five minutes."
Now, I think this relationship got off on the wrong track when the sales clerk read the customer as best suited for the Jennifer Aniston collection. This would annoy me. You're steering me toward the Jennifer Aniston?! Why! But Oprah can't go to the press with that, because it doesn't say I was racially typecast. What does it say? You look like a middle class American. That's annoying, but not a topic for outrage. So Oprah points at the most out-of-reach item, figuring it's super-expensive, which it is.
"I got my head above water again and this time I was swearing and saying get this thing off me. I was just screaming for help. I couldn't feel any pain but I could see his teeth sinking into my leg. I thought I was going to die. I could only see about four centimetres of the top of my leg and the rest was in the croc's gob."
Well, clearly she survived, since we have that quote, but how did she survive? (The saltwater crocodile was 3 meters long.) Her friend on the shore — Al Sartori — went in:
"I jumped into the water and on to its back and stuck my thumbs into its eyes until I felt it start to slacken off.... I picked up the croc and chucked it back into the water and it came back at me. It was pretty heavy."
The student's mind must be prepared by rigorous study, with the use of koans, and the practice of meditation to concentrate the mind, under the guidance of a teacher.... Chinese Zen master Wumen Hui-k'ai (無門慧開)... struggled for six years with koan "Zhaozhou’s dog"...
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
Shelter from the Storm begins with four seconds of unaccompanied acoustic guitar strumming, lively, purposeful, and then it is joined by the voice. “’Twas in another lifetime,” Dylan begins, “one of toil and blood,” immediately establishing this song as one cut from the same musical cloth as the traditional folk tales, gospel songs, and murder ballads Robert Zimmerman was learning before he “came in from the wilderness,” only not as “a creature void of form” but as “Bob Dylan”. It is a song that, thirty-five years after its original release, remains both contemporary and as timeless as one of the most basic archetypes of human experience: the hunter.
History and myth reveal three basic types of hunter: first, the hunter/gatherer who operates strictly to sustain life on either a personal or group level; second, a warrior whose primary motivation is destruction; third, a seeker whose interest lies in finding Holy Grails or a heart of gold.
The hunter in Shelter is ... a seeker with no interest in destruction but reconnection. Despite being “burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail, hunted like a crocodile (the hunter becomes the hunted), ravaged in the corn”, this quest will continue until she is found or the hunter is dead. “Nothing really matters much,” the narrator in Shelter states, “it’s doom (destiny, fate) alone that counts.”
I made fun of the mixed metaphor — I had the ridiculous image of somebody raping a crocodile in a cornfield — and you defended Bob. That was in another lifetime, it seems.
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