Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.

I'm just reading the comments on yesterday's carrot post. ("Shed a tear for the orange and its desperate problems.")

Campy started us off at a high level by referencing one of this blog's most controversial posts:

Carrot sticks! Where are the onion rings?

So, yes, we know what the carrots are.

Mr. Forward introduced a classic "orange" subject:

Nothing rhymes with orange.

Hector Owen responded:

I suppose, if one were to make a ceramic porringer, and glaze it the color of those carrots, and set it on the table with other things that did not include carrots, or yams, or (of course) oranges, that one could then proudly say, "Nothing is oranger than my porringer!"

Still, nothing rhymes with "orange." Now, if that porringer had a flange … no, the "a" would still be different.

I thought the right answer was "door hinge."

Lucid sledgehammers the meaning of the post:

This is clearly a very penetrating (???!!!!) photographic comment: While women (pink) are to be carefully considered, the photographer also feels concern for the tribulations of men and their special appendages.

Freeman Hunt provides an amazing list of things that an orange ribbon is supposed to reflect/create awareness of — according to this creepy awareness site:

Agent OrangeCultural Diversity
Feral Cats
Hunger
Leukemia
Lupus
Melanoma
Motorcycle Safety
Racial Tolerance
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome
Self Injury

Not prostate cancer, though. Prostate cancer gets light blue. Get it?

Freeman Hunt had an afterthought:

Why is there a ribbon for feral cats but not feral dogs?

I think it's more important to be aware of feral dogs because they could kill you.

Feral cats, not so much. You could probably throw a crazy cat away from you if it attacked you. Man > cat.

Ironrailsironweights said:

Self Injury...

Somehow I never thought of that as a "cause" requiring the ribbon treatment.

Maybe these people crave (carve) attention.

Michaele said:

There's some sad orange wearers right this minute 'cause University of TN just missed knocking off #1 Alabama...the score was 12 to 10 and UT had a chance at making a field goal in the last couple of seconds.

Knox(ville) — who "just ordered myself a black 'Amish Support' ribbon car magnet!" — said:

Yeah, yeah, keep it to yourself.

Oh, who am I kidding, I don't give a sh*t about football.

You are talking about football, right?

Leland said...

Texas A&M, in the[ir] hatred for University of Texas and all things orange, learned how to grow maroon carrots.

 Libhom said:

This post is as senseless as everything else on this blog.

Chip Ahoy said:

This post has no meaning!

Just like everything else on this blog -- meaningless.

Just like my life has no meaning. Except for the meaning I give it by spending time here noting your abject absence of meaning and returning regularly and reaffirming that observation and then setting aside my other meaninglessness to take the time and effort to remark on your meaninglessness, even so far as to bother with a CAPTCHA to do it. Yes, that's right, my remark on your meaningless blog does have meaning although I assert your blog that I make the remark on does not.

But then I wouldn't recognize meaning if it jumped up and bit my penis. I do not understand photography or art or getting out and seeing my city or recording it with my own unique eye and through my own lens, or forests or farmers market or flower boxes, animals or odd things in nature or within human constructions. They're meaningless to me! Now, start being meaningful Goddamnit! And give me something meaningful to foul.

Then my other self says,

I once had a careless carrot patch. There was loose tilled dirt directly under an air conditioner that dripped steadily throughout the hot summer directly onto that patch of dirt, so watering was automatic. I had a packet of carrot seeds that I broadcast into the soil and, being an ordinary kid, didn't pay much attention to them thereafter, just checked back occasionally. The plants are beautiful at every stage of development, more so because they were not arranged in tight farmerly rows. At first the foliage looks like delicate little green feathers, then lacy ferns, then they expand, fill in, and strengthen to proper deep dark green carrot tops. The bright orange carrot roots were delicious.

LoafingOaf said:

These are gross looking carrots. They look like fucked up fingers or pathetic penises or something. Ick.

Uh, yeah. Have you no pity! Why are cancerous breasts a big warm fuzzy cause, but a pathetic penis is just something against which to hurl contempt? Sexist. You must wear a light blue ribbon for penance. Penis penance.

And yet the Oaf continues:

I have a question. Why is everything that Obama says or does horribly wrong to Althouse and her commenters, yet Dick Cheney is such a hero the Althouse world wants to build him a statue in Madison? Is Obama really that awful and Cheney really that righteous? Or is this blog getting carried away by the right wing?

(Link added.)

Bissage said:

I find myself disappointed that Loafing Oaf didn’t post a link to his blog where we’d all find his twelve point plan specifying what each and every one of us should do to make Althouse so very much better than it is.

Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.

"The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole."

"And digging our way out of it will take time, patience and some tough choices."

Obama has such a wry sense of humor!

IN THE COMMENTS: Knox says:

This is exactly the sort of statement I was referring to in another thread: immature and unPresidential. Grow up, you big pussy. You wanted the job, now quit whining and do it.

(Sorry for the language, I just watched Gran Torino last night.)

And Sy said:

I guess Obama have not heard the old adage ...if you are in a hole, stop digging.

Yeah. How do you dig your way out of a hole?

Eurotard.

Eurotard! LOL.

knox said...

"Eurotard": officially my new favorite slur.

IN THE COMMENTS: Some inapt ravings from link nonclickers. To them, I say, if you were born in July, you are a Leotard.

Karl Rove... "The wounds I received I got in a job I love."

I see that quote in the WSJ's email teaser for a Karl Rove column and click over thinking maybe this will be Karl's musings on all the hate that's been aimed at him over the years. It's not:

During my White House years, I came to know of the heroic actions of the Seals and other special operators in the global war on terror. These men willingly follow evil into dark and perilous places. They volunteered to be on the front edge of the conflict whose outcome will shape this century....

I met [a Seal who had] been shot eight times in Iraq and had undergone nearly two-dozen operations. One bullet had taken off part of his cheek and nose. He was destined for reconstructive surgery in a few days.

Yet he didn't feel sorry for himself. He was full of charisma, confidence, cockiness and joy. After all, he confided, when you're a wounded Seal, the world's best doctors want to operate on you so they can brag about it. Besides, he explained, he was just showing that a Seal really could catch bullets with his teeth....

The next day, I got an email from the retired Navy Seal buddy who'd talked me into speaking at NSWF. He shared a picture of the sign the wounded Seal put on his Baghdad hospital door.

On it, the Seal had scrawled that visitors shouldn't "feel sorry" for him. "The wounds I received," he wrote, "I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough." And on his sign he promised "a full recovery" and wrote that his hospital room was a place of "fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, GO ELSEWHERE." He signed it "The Management."

IN THE COMMENTS: knox said:

There's a wealth of material in the stories of our special forces. Too bad Hollywood ignores them all... there's got to be hundreds of great action/war movies just begging to be made.

Pogo said:

Well, at least we have a good movie about gay rights and other one about/not about pederasty, plus a Hitler movie and a Nixon movie (not the same film, BTW).

Larry J said:

My SEAL story is from October 1975 when I was in Jump School. SEALs go to Jump School after their much tougher UDT training. To them, Jump School is a vacation.

I heard a lot of commotion when falling out for noon formation one day. From what I was told, one of our SEAL students had just jumped from a 3rd story window, did a parachute landing fall, and entered formation saying, "This shit bores me."

I didn't see it happen so I can't swear it's true but it would be typical of SEALs. They're genuine bad-asses not to be messed with.

"99.9 percent of the callers who called in to that show just talked about me like I was a dog."

"What mattered is that there was somebody out there in that audience who was listening — who needed to hear it was OK. And that was the only person I was worried about."

IN THE COMMENTS: knox said:

I suspect Althouse is contrasting this gentleman's behavior with that of gays protesting Prop 8?

Whatever, it's a nice story. A brave--and generous--thing to do, engaging with a hostile audience like that. He deserves props. No pun intended.

Bissage said:

I don’t pretend to be very sophisticated about the merits or politics of same sex marriage and I don’t intend to ever do the work it takes to get sophisticated.

And I don’t feel very strongly about the issue, one way or the other.

That said, I’m sure that if I’m ever standing in a voting booth and I’m thinking of Mr. Brown, I’m going to vote in favor of same sex marriage.

If I’m thinking of some of the more virulent characters who advocate the cause of same sex marriage, some of whom comment here at Althouse, I’ll probably vote no.

I’m sure there are enough people like me out there to make the difference; people disinclined to reward hostility.

I’m sure that makes me an ignorant bigot to some people.