"And it is a vicious cycle: the more women and non-binary people do the overwhelming majority of resistance work..."

"... the more men take in the wrong-headed message that this work is not for them...."

Writes Saul Austerlitz, author of "How to Assemble an Activist," in "How do we get more men to join the anti-Trump resistance? My activist group is about 80% women. Where did all the men go – and how can we get them back?" (Guardian).

My first thought was: Don't push the "and non-binary people" talk. But anyway isn't it funny that you're so vitally interested in the male/female split and simultaneously hot to insert "and non-binary people"? 

"My unscientific conclusion is that the men who have already drifted away, whatever their reasons, are unlikely to come back. Instead, now is an ideal time to extend an invitation to the men in our circles who hover on the edges, shouting fruitlessly at their TV screen or social-media feed, not knowing yet how much good they can do – or how much better they will feel

Why I don't have any hobbies.

I'm reading "Six Underrated Hobbies to Try Out/Picking up a new pastime is no small feat" (The Atlantic). "What is an underrated hobby that you love?" it asks.

I don't think I've ever used the word "hobby" to refer to anything I do. I don't relate to the idea of a "hobby," even though I like to do what I want, what interests me, and I have almost nothing but free time. I don't think of this blog as a hobby and might be annoyed if someone I knew called it that. But maybe I would be better off if I did something that genuinely deserved the label "hobby." I don't consider walking in the woods a hobby. Or reading. Maybe photographing the sunrise every day is a hobby, but this is the first time I've connected it with that word, which, to my ear, sounds diminishing.

So let's check out these 6 things. 1. Collecting animal figurines, 2. Playing video games (why not count watching TV?!), 3. Paraclimbing (climbing for persons with disabilities (I don't think sports are "hobbies")), 4. Boxing (another sport), 5. Making pizza from scratch (cooking can be a hobby), 6. Walking the dog and paying attention to the plants and animals that interest the dog (I'm intrigued by the idea of paying attention as a hobby).

Well, it's Labor Day, and I like thinking of my own personal freedom from labor. I'm not decrepit enough to deserve the word "retired" — if you want to think about words. That has to do with withdrawing or receding, retreating, or falling back. I'm reading the OED. Maybe paying attention to words and looking them up in the OED is my hobby.

Did you know that the original meaning of "hobby" is "A small or middle-sized horse; an ambling or pacing horse; a pony"? That goes back to the 1400s. The meaning we know — which begins in the early 1800s — comes from the idea of riding a toy horse — a "hobby-horse." It's "A favourite occupation or topic, pursued merely for the amusement or interest that it affords, and which is compared to the riding of a toy horse...; an individual pursuit to which a person is devoted (in the speaker's opinion) out of proportion to its real importance."

When do you look at your own activities and judge your interest in them to be out of proportion to their "real" importance? It seems that if you're going to call something your "hobby," you're embracing the idea that your love of it seems foolish when viewed from the outside. By the same token, if you decline to use the word "hobby" for what you do out of interest and love, you are deprioritizing what other people think.

"... a curiously undersung regional delicacy: the cold-cheese slice, whereupon a giant fistful of uncooked mozzarella is added to a plain slice..."

"... just as it emerges hot from the oven. Local legend has it that Little Vincent’s developed this innovation as a way to help overeager patrons, unwilling or unable to wait for their pizza’s heat to dissipate, avoid burning their mouths; whatever its true origins, it is perplexing that nobody else has thought to copy the idea.... A cold-cheese slice offers the thermal and textural contrasts that define the best kind of street eating...."

From "33 Eating Adventures/A Turkish feast among jet-skiers in Sheepshead Bay, dosas worth a drive to Jersey, and carnitas in someone’s Woodside backyard" (NY Magazine).

Wisconsin confuses outsiders.

I'm reading "Video of Wisconsin supermarket’s massive frozen pizza section goes viral: ‘What’s going on down there?’" (The Hill).

Down there? Sounds like you couldn't even point to us on a map. Unless you're in Canada. We are not down there. We are up here. And up here, we have a store called Woodman's. When I first moved here 38 years ago, I used to take visitors from New York City to Woodman's to entertain them in precisely the way this video is entertaining millions this week. I didn't have social media to share the fun at the time, but it's funny to me now that something I've known for 38 years — Woodman's is a very big store — is amazing millions in 2022.

I've got 11 TikToks for you this evening. Some people love them.

1. Being King is bollocks.

2. What's ironic about Jesus Christ becoming a carpenter.

3. In 1944, the NYT had to explain what pizza is. 

4. The chords the cat sings — so crazy!

5. Highlights of things working out for Daniel and David.

6. It's so hard to plug things in when you're not looking at the outlet, isn't it?

7. So, did anyone want to buy the Skin by Kim accessories?

8. The grandmother's diaries begin in 1931: Start here. Continue here.

9. Kanye West explains his "White Lives Matter" shirt.

10. Why is the judgmental chef asked to view a litter box?

11. That artwork of yours that you put on the wall and no one says a word about — what does it mean?

Just 5 TikToks for you today, but I've been highly selective, and I think it will be a challenge to identify your favorite.

1. The lizard's charming feast.

2. Staying in the hotel that is Frank Lloyd Wright's only skyscraper.

3. At the 7-Ele-en, a flattened "slice of heaven."

4. Just seeking a definition of "woman."

5. What is a vacation? What is a weekend?

"Despite the camp absurdity of her scenes, she is not a clown, and despite her nakedness, her work doesn’t straightforwardly concern..."

"... either masochism or self-love. Instead, fat stigma is toyed with, embodied, and satirized, sometimes through sexualized caricatures of gluttony. 'Good Morning' shows her—with her underpants pulled down and stuffed with a loaf (or more) of sliced white bread—holding a knife and a jar of Nutella.... A fat woman is by cultural default already an object of ridicule; inviting laughter by clenching a baguette between her legs, or ironing a pizza to her chest, could easily spin out of her control. Perhaps Susiraja’s blank affect is the key to her peculiar power to retain the upper hand. Indifference is one of the purest forms of defiance, but her disciplined impassivity, her refusal to cue the viewers’ reaction, is more than that. Her unwillingness to feed us meaning is more provocative, and disquieting, than an obvious dare, and it leaves a more lasting impression."

Writes Johanna Fateman, in "Iiu Susiraja’s Self-Portraits Are More Than a Dare/The photographer uses her own body without straightforward interest in either masochism or self-love" (The New Yorker). Lots of stunning/hilarious photos there. Perhaps a paywall will stop you, but here's her webpage. You can see the same photos there — and even more.

Wait. How do we know "she is not a clown"? It can't be the "blank affect." One of the prime ways of clowning is to do ridiculous things while maintaining a flat facial expression. There's a special and well-known word for it: deadpan.

The OED tips me off that "pan" was once American slang for "face" or "mouth." To quote "Great Comics" (1924): "Open yer pan afterwards about this and you'll be in stir for the next thousand years."

And I see that Nathanael West used "dead pan" in "Miss Lonelyhearts":

"So far, the sprawl of haute-suburban restaurants is limited to Manhattan and Brooklyn, and there is some nuance within the genre. They can take the shape of a 'classic American tavern'..."

"... a 'classic neighborhood tavern'... or perhaps a 'classic Midwestern supper club'... sold on the premise that it seems like the kind of no-frills local joints that once dotted the highway exits of Wisconsin.... I invited my friend from Madison to join me at Emmett’s on Grove.... When I asked if the restaurant resembled something from the Badger State in any way, my friend struggled to perceive any similarities, aside from the booths and the overall roominess. Nothing about the décor screamed 'Midwest' to me, but the ability to order a side of ranch with our pizza certainly nodded to the region’s culinary sensibilities. (This is not a criticism.) Our servers were also extremely polite, another midwestern trait, but that could have been our luck. We stayed true to the nostalgic vibe and split a simple pepperoni pizza, plus some arugula salad and — why not? — a baked potato because my friend’s mom eats one every day, and it felt like an authentic thing to do."

From "Haute Suburbia/Why do New York City’s hottest restaurants feel like they’ve been airlifted in from the Midwest?" (NY Magazine).

The headline and the text don't match up too well unless you stress "feel like" and take note of who's doing the feeling. But that's what restaurants do, create an ambience, and they're working with whatever's in the mind of customers who probably lack experience with the place the restaurant is purporting to evoke. 

The writer of the article (Tammie Teclemariam) orders pepperoni pizza and deems it "true" in some sense having to do with her own feeling of nostalgia, which seems attached to absolutely nothing except perhaps her own past experience with pizza-eating. Ironically, pizza is the most iconic New York City food. Then she adds a potato and deems it "authentic," but I've never heard of anyone eating potato with pizza. 

"Have you ever heard of 'pronoid'?" — I ask.

Meade says: "I've heard of 'noid.'"

I say: "What is that, some R. Crumb thing?"

Meade says, yes, and I look it up. 

I'm surprised. How could we both independently think "Noid" was an R. Crumb character and it not be true? "No, 'The Noid' was a character in old Domino's Pizza ads" — I say.

The slogan was "Avoid the Noid." In 1989, a man named Kenneth Lamar Noid, who believed the character had to do with him, took hostages in a Domino's restaurant in Chamblee, Georgia. The hostages survived, and Noid was committed to a mental institution. 

"Why did we both think of R. Crumb?" — I wondered. I google "noid" and "R. Crumb" and exclaim "Snoid!" 

Wikipedia quotes a description of the Snoid as "a short-statured asshole, and many people believe that Snoid, with his fetishes, sex cravings and disdain for materialism, is little more than an alter ego for Crumb."

Yes, but what's "pronoid"? It's the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day. It's a recent word, created as an antonym for "paranoid." It means: "Characterized by the belief (especially when viewed as irrational) in the goodwill of others or the pervasiveness of serendipity."

The oldest usage found was from 1982: "I am interested in the manifestations of pronoia and in the conditions that encourage or produce pronoid behavior." 

From the 1997 movie "Fierce Creatures":  "You've heard of paranoid, right? It means you think that everybody's out to get you. Well pronoid is precisely the opposite."

Vandalized stores on State Street.

Madison’s State Street. pic.twitter.com/nfrwvlmmHH

— Vicki McKenna (@VickiMcKenna) June 2, 2020

They got Ian's Pizza! The darling of the 2011 anti-Walker protests!

A closer look — "Nasty ass Pizza":

"How is this different to a million other things? Airlines, Uber, property. It’s called supply and demand."

One response, quoted in The NY Post, to Mayor Bill De Blasio's tweet, "Jacking up your prices on people trying to celebrate the holidays? Classy, @dominos.... To the thousands who came to Times Square last night to ring in 2020, I’m sorry this corporate chain exploited you — stick it to them by patronizing one of our fantastic LOCAL pizzerias."

A Domino's deliveryman was bringing pizzas out to the crowd in Times Square on New Year's Eve and asking and getting $30 a pie — about double the normal price:

[Deliveryman Ratan] Banik ran between the parlor and Times Square, balancing a stack of hot pies on his head while touting his cheesy wares — some hungry revelers tapping him on the shoulder to ask his price.

“Pepperoni, cheese, onion!” Banik called before being mobbed by starving tourists waiting in giant holding pens in Times Square, many having camped out overnight.

“He is our Santa,” said Amit Zanwar, 31, from New Jersey, who was with two friends for the spectacular and didn’t pack any food. “He came a little late [for Christmas], but we were happy.... It’s absolutely worth it. It was hot. It seems like it just came out of the oven... If he comes back, I will buy some more.”

The tens of thousands of tourists who decided to ring in the new decade in Times Square arrived as early as Monday evening and were not allowed to leave once they were in holding pens — meaning many were employing rather degrading tactics to last the distance....

Were the "fantastic LOCAL pizzerias" bringing pizza out to these people who were enduring the city's "rather degrading" detention of human beings in "holding pens"? If they were, were they charging less than an extra $15 for delivery to the site? De Blasio talks like a teenager. And he tweeted that from the official Twitter account of mayor of New York City.

"I don't have a Darrell Hammond tag and I'm not going to make one now, because if I do and he turns up randomly later this morning, I will have to reexamine my conception of reality."

I wrote in the comments to the previous post, in which I contemplated the reoccurrence of Sean Connery the second post of the day after he'd come up in the first post and I'd made a new "Sean Connery" tag.

So I didn't make that "Darrell Hammond" tag (yet!) but the threat to my conception of reality caused me to self-protectively do a Google News search for "Darrell Hammond." Is he lurking in the current news stories, about to pop out and scare me? I'll catch him first.

I find "The decade in Domino’s/Once a joke, in the ’10s the company became the biggest pizza chain in the world":

Domino’s Pizza used to be a joke. Consider the 2005 Saturday Night Live sketch in which Donald Trump (portrayed by Darrell Hammond), wears a giant pizza slice around his neck as he shoots a Domino’s advertisement: “Personally, I think it’s the highest quality pizza of the low-quality pizzas.” Sure, good shitty pizza may be better than some, but the point is that it’s still shitty....

All right then!



The world is bizarre, so much more bizarre than Sean Connery popping up twice in my morning's blogging. I feel safe and calm, knowing that I am not at the center of the vortex of bizarreness. That would be Donald Trump.

The stupid prisoner idea that they can talk in "code."

"I’m going to make sure something happens. I’m going to make sure I have a pizza delivered to him. He’s going to get that f------ pizza."

Said Billie Allen, quoted in "A prison gang member was overheard plotting a ‘pizza party’ for a prosecutor. He didn’t mean food" (WaPo).

Limited dance moves.

I've got to get around at long last to showing you this Yale News article, "A sports junkie who ate pasta with ketchup: Law school friends reflect on Kavanaugh’s time at YLS." My favorite part:

Kavanaugh was a “bland eater,” his roommate explained, who never ate his pasta with anything more exotic than tomato sauce or ketchup on top. At visits to Yorkside Pizza following late nights at Toad’s Place — the friends did not go often, Christmas said, as Kavanaugh had “limited dance moves” — the judge’s pizza had to be plain cheese, or sometimes just pepperoni.

A limited diet has been a mark of distinction for admired Justices: "John Stevens... was usually seen eating a plain cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off... Justice David Souter [ate] plain yogurt and the occasional apple."

But limited dance moves?! That's not good enough. Check this out:

"Clog life is not lived off the grid but grid-adjacent. It’s a fuzzy, fancy realm, littered with alpaca sweaters, Rachel Cusk novels, and trees that grow indoors, in charmingly primitive ceramic pots."

That's a little too close to where I live, except that I have no idea who Rachel Cusk is. I do have 5 10-foot tall avocado trees charmingly growing indoors, planted and tended to by the charmingly primitive ex-potter who shares my fuzzy realm. I wear sweaters. I've got enough clogs that I'd have to go count them to tell you the actual number, and I've been collecting them since right about when Dansko was founded (1990) and I first saw them in a CP Shades store, which... don't get me started on CP Shades.

The quote in the post headline is from "The Life-Changing Magic of Clogs" by Lauren Mechling (from January, in The New Yorker), which I'm reading because it's linked in "What’s the Next Status Clog?" (at NY Magazine)("Writer Lauren Mechling deserves credit for both coining the term clogerati, and confirming No. 6 as the current clog that confers status on its owner").

Okay, I looked up Rachel Cusk. I see there is a New Yorker article about her from last year, proving that though I subscribe to The New Yorker — it's the only! magazine I subscribe to — I don't even notice some of the articles:

In Rachel Cusk’s most recent novels, “Outline” and “Transit,” a British writer named Faye encounters a series of friends and strangers as she goes about her daily life. She is recently divorced, and while her new flat is being renovated her two sons are living with their father. There is something catlike about Faye—an elusiveness that makes people want to detain her, and a curiosity about their pungent secrets....

Don't you always feel like detaining a cat and telling it your pungent secrets?

“Consider the pizza,” [Cusk] writes. “It is like a smiling face: it assuages the fear of complexity by showing everything on its surface.”...

On certain birthdays, she told me, “I would get a call from my mom reminding me of the torment she had gone through on that date.” Cusk’s birth, in an understaffed hospital during a blizzard, was long and difficult. Cusk suggested that her father blamed her for the trauma his wife had suffered, because he always seemed angry with her. When she reached puberty, she began to feel that her developing body was “disgusting.” “I always felt repellent,” Cusk said. “That has come out in my work, unfortunately, as disgust for the repellent qualities of other people.”...

Her mother’s prudishness and conformity were, by Cusk’s account, stifling not only to the young Rachel. On the morning after she and Scamell-Katz were married—in “a fantastic party on the beach,” she said—“I met my father in the kitchen. ‘I didn’t realize there were men like that,’ he said of Siemon and his friends, who had been dancing wildly around a bonfire in knee-high boots. And he wished he could have been like them, boots and all. Because his own wildness had been domesticated by my mother.”

Men in boots and women in clogs. Get to know them. Eat smiling pizza, and tell secrets to cats.

"The N.F.L. has hurt us by not resolving the current debacle to the players’ and owners’ satisfaction. N.F.L. leadership has hurt Papa John’s shareholders."

Said John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John's, in a conference call with investors. He's stepping down as CEO because of that remark, according to the NYT. What was so bad about his statement? Isn't the point just that the TV ratings are down and that has hurt the advertisers?

Pizza is big business during football games, but the TV viewership has dropped from last season. President Trump has blamed the lower ratings on the anthem protests, and Mr. Schnatter said during the conference call that Roger Goodell, the league commissioner, should have handled the situation faster.

“Leadership starts at the top, and this is an example of poor leadership,” Mr. Schnattner [sic] said.

His comments about the N.F.L. protests won the praise of white supremacists, and Papa John’s responded by saying it did not want white supremacists or their groups buying its pizzas.

I guess one thing led to another. You don't want white supremacism on your pizza. There really shouldn't be any politics in food, but really not racial politics. Resonating with Donald Trump was already too much of a problem, but getting support from white supremacists is poison.

Oatmeal toenail.

What I googled — because the image lodged in my head — to get to that article I'd meant to blog and had lost track of: "PLEASE, GOD, STOP CHELSEA CLINTON FROM WHATEVER SHE IS DOING/The last thing the left needs is the third iteration of a failed political dynasty," by T.A. Frank.

You know, it's a good idea to put some very memorable and distinctive words in a piece of writing you want people to be able to figure out how pull up out of the internet archive.

Here's how Frank got oatmeal and toenail into his article about Chelsea:

What comes across with Chelsea, for lack of a gentler word, is self-regard of an unusual intensity. And the effect is stronger on paper. Unkind as it is to say, reading anything by Chelsea Clinton—tweets, interviews, books—is best compared to taking in spoonfuls of plain oatmeal that, periodically, conceal a toenail clipping.

That was easy to find. I'm surprised that anything else came up, but there was:

[Amyre Qualls] said all the photos were taken in the school cafeteria at Prince George High School and show food that is being served to students.

“Oatmeal, toenail clippings, cauliflower,” Qualls said. That’s what people told her the pizza looked like it was made with.

Greetings from Bryce Canyon.

We're holed up inside another national park... waiting for pizza in the nice little restaurant near the lodge. We walked the Navajo Trail which had some steep and muddy declines and uphill slogs and even some ice. This was quite scary to me because of the sharp drops off to one side, but I toughed it out and feel a little proud of myself. I haven't shuffled through all my photographs, but let me toss these up before the pizza arrives....

Edgar M. Welch came to Comet Ping Pong to "self-investigate" Pizzagate.

He fired a rifle...

People inside the restaurant fled, and the police locked down the area, ordering patrons of a nearby bookstore and cafe called Politics and Prose to remain locked inside. Officers with rifles and protective gear surrounded the restaurant and apprehended Mr. Welch....

The owner of Comet Ping Pong said:

“What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences.... I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today and stop promoting these falsehoods right away.”

The co-ower of Politics and Prose said:

"This is one of the things we feared... That this could go from a social media attack to something much more dangerous and physical."

This isn't just about Pizzagate. It's about all the crazy stuff people are cranking each other up about — including the freakout over the Trump election. There are unstable people out there who can get the notion that they need to take action.

AND: I'm not saying that good people have to tone it down lest they set off some nut. I'm for vibrant speech. Just think about the kind of person you want to be. If it's winding people up, ask yourself why.

Hangry!

The first minute of this is very funny:



The rest is too long and too damned jaunty, but it might work for you if you are strongly inclined to find young women as cute as they seem to think they are.

The topic of "hanger" — the word and the phenomenon — was explored on this blog 11 years ago, so for me, it's not a new word, it's an old word that tried and failed to go big and if you watch the whole video you'll probably see why that happened. Or let me just quote from my old post:

[A]bout this new social trend of adults excusing themselves for the babyish weakness of losing control when hungry... Oh, lord, these people sound annoying. Do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky when people impose too much information about their private physical needs on you?...

In general men do not seem to suffer hunger-related moods as frequently as women do, or at least they are not as likely to admit it....

[Blogger] Cherie Millns [writes] "My mother told my husband before we got married to make sure he always carried a banana with him, in case of a sudden cranky-pants emergency," Ms. Millns wrote. "It might just save his life."

"Cranky-pants"? Banana?... [W]hat's wrong with these people? It's one thing to get hungry and to deal with it by eating something, but it's quite another to make a conspicuous production out of it or, worse, to let it become a major issue in your love relationships. And to have your mother tell your husband how to care for you in the very way you'd care for a toddler? Is this really what's going on around America in 2005?