Tea with Larry...

It's a no-news Saturday, the day after the day after Christmas.

"A bothy is a basic shelter, usually left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge."

"It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are found in remote mountainous areas of Scotland, Northern England, Ulster and Wales. They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands, but related buildings can be found around the world...."

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Bothy," after encountering this word, which I don't remember ever seeing before, in the London Times article "Have William and Kate fallen for ‘west coast bothy frenzy’?It’s never been more fashionable to hole up in the Scottish isles like the Waleses, says Victoria Brzezinski."

Ben Pentreath, head of the architectural and interior design studio of the same name, is widely reported to have assisted the Prince and Princess of Wales... has had a connection with the Scottish west coast since he was a teen.... In 2018 Pentreath and his gardener husband, Charlie McCormick, bought a teeny pair of buildings (a Victorian two-roomed cottage and a much earlier stone bothy) on a sea pink-covered estuary in the far west coast of Scotland. “It really does feel a long way away,” Pentreath says. “Bothies really can’t be more than one or two rooms. And I think we all find romance in living in small places — for a while!”

"[T]he Ladies Lounge of Australia’s Museum of Old and New Art... a conceptual artwork, is decorated with Picassos and other expensive adornments..."

"... and is separated from the rest of the museum with opulent green curtains. A staff member is posted outside to prevent the entry of any visitor who does not identify as a woman, and guests can indulge in a $325 high tea service featuring fancy finger food.... The American artist behind the lounge, Kirsha Kaechele, who is married to the private museum’s owner, told the tribunal that the practice of requiring women to drink in ladies lounges rather than public bars only ended in parts of Australia in 1970 and that in practice, exclusion of women in public spaces continues.... But she said she 'got a rise' out of the discrimination complaint and was 'pretty excited' when she learned it had been filed over her work. 'It carries it out of the museum and into the real world.'... Kaechele attended the tribunal Tuesday flanked by 25 female supporters dressed in pointedly court-appropriate attire — think pearls, suits and stockings...."

From "She made an artwork that excluded men. A man sued for discrimination" (WaPo).

Here's the museum's website for the artwork. Sample text: "The lounge is a tremendously lavish space in our museum in which women can indulge in decadent nibbles, fancy tipples, and other ladylike pleasures.... [Y]ou are a participant in... the art itself, part of a living installation."

I wonder if the lawsuit, too, is part of the art itself, the living installation. 

You'd think just having a $325 high tea service would be enough to keep the men out. The product itself is exclusionary — exclusionary of everyone who doesn't love stuff like that. But they had a guard to actively exclude any man, and that made a point: See how you feel when the tables are turned? But the point is only made at the men who are not stereotypical men, the men not put off by the service of $325 high tea.

"I skip all of these stories because the bottom line is always: 'XYZ supplement may have some benefits, but they are unproven.'"

Comments Binx Bolling of Palookaville on the shamefully bad NYT article "Is Matcha Good for You?/The brightly colored powdered green tea has become popular among health-conscious consumers. Does it have any nutritional benefits?"

I know, I'm only encouraging them by linking, but I liked "Binx Bolling of Palookaville" and the comment was spot on.

"This establishment is not black-owned, but you're stealing black culture... Trap Tea... You're thieves, Asian people, stealing black culture, once again...."

"You’re thieves! Asian people stealing black culture once again.”

A strong, black Muslim woman went inside the new Trap Tea business in Aurora, Colo. on Friday and confronted the staff. A black customer tries to defend the business & is called a racial slur by her. pic.twitter.com/uejQ6nC8cr

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 23, 2020

I had to look up "trap" in the Urban Dictionary. I see the top-voted definition is a type of anime character, but there's also a secondary meaning, a place where drugs are sold.

The slur the woman uses against the black man who intervenes is "coon": "When used by blacks its describing an uncle Rukus type character. A black person who is ignorant to white discrimination and unknowingly suffers with self hatred."

ADDED: Here's their logo, which uses a font that I would characterize as an effort to signal Asianness:

"I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences."

"It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident...."

Said Henry Kissinger, quoted in The Financial Times, which picks out a different quote for the title, "Henry Kissinger: ‘We are in a very, very grave period.'"

The FT editor talking to Kissinger is Edward Luce, and he sets the scene:

By now we are on to the coffee. Mine is a double espresso. Kissinger has mint tea. ... 

He paraphrases his own questions, then gives a verbatim quote from Kissinger:

You are worried about the future. However, you believe there is a non-trivial chance that Trump could accidentally scare us into reinventing the rules-based order that we used to take for granted. Is that a fair summary?

“I think we are in a very, very grave period for the world,” Kissinger replies. “I have conducted innumerable summit meetings, so they didn’t learn this one [Helsinki] from me.”

It is clear he will not elaborate further.

Is it a very, very grave period because of Trump or is Trump the hope of getting out of the grave circumstance?

I ask him which period he would liken to today. Kissinger talks about his experience as a freshly minted citizen in US uniform serving in the second world war....

I just have to say that if I were editing this article, I'd never allow the phrase "freshly minted citizen" to appear so close to "mint tea." "Mint" is a word at the unusualness level where you can't reuse it to refer to something else. The mint tea was real, so that's the "mint" that should stay. The "mint" in "freshly minted citizen" is a metaphor, comparing a human being to a coin and evoking an image of stamping that person into a new form. I wouldn't write that even if Kissinger had sipped camomile tea.

At the Hot Tea Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(And if you're shopping, please remember to use The Althouse Amazon Portal. If you want a tea glass like the one in the picture, here it is.)

Commenter — without realizing it — takes my side in what has been a 2-day debate between me and Meade.

In the comments to yesterday's post about "Captain Fantastic," robother said:

I read the end of the movie as pure fantasy in his head after leaving Albuquerque. If not, The Man is far more benign and forgiving than Chomsky, Mortenson's character or even I imagine.

Thank you! And spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie. (You can stream it from Amazon, here. Please do that first, then join this discussion.)

The tea/sex analogy.

An animation from Emmeline May and Blue Seat Studios (note: language warning):



I found that after seeing this version — with a British voiceover — by the Thames Valley Police:



I found that via Metafilter, where people seemed charmed by the Britishness... even though Blue Seat Studios seems to be located in Providence, Rhode Island.

"Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence."

"Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: 'The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,' Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. 'It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.'"

From "A Lesson In Hate/How an Egyptian student came to study 1950s America and left determined to wage holy war," a 2006 article in Smithsonian, which I'm reading this morning as a result of the conversation we were having about "You Hate Leaf Blowers, Your Neighbor Uses Them: How One Town Seeks Middle Ground." I won't bother you with the logical links that connected these subjects.

"Health Benefits of Tea? Here’s What the Evidence Says."

I'm linking to this (in the NYT) because I love the illustration.

Meade said: "I hope it doesn't give people seizures."

IN THE COMMENTS:  Adam said:

That illustration is of the world's most famous teapot!

Wow! That blew my mind. The link goes to "Utah Teapot":

The Utah teapot or Newell teapot is a 3D computer model that has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community. It is a mathematical model of an ordinary teapot of fairly simple shape, that appears solid, cylindrical and partially convex. A teapot primitive is considered the equivalent of a "hello, world" program, as a way to create an easy 3D scene with a somewhat complex model acting as a basic geometry reference for scene and light setup. Many programming libraries even have functions dedicated to drawing teapots.

On clicking the link, Meade — who used to make teapots — said: "That's an ugly teapot." Then: "The 'actual Melitta teapot' is actually pretty good. It's a good form."

At the Ocean of Mercy Café...

... there is tea and food and water and the platitudes are few.

"What is it about porn stars that bothers you so much? Why do you hate us? What is it about us that you don't like?"

Says porn actor Conner Habib, who professes to dread the question — when he's out on a date — "What do you do?"

Well, I said to Alex, I'm a porn star.

Let me stop you here, Conner. You just called yourself a "star." If you were a "star," Alex wouldn't have had to ask. What's with porn actors always being referred to as "porn stars"? Actors in conventional movies aren't always called "stars," even when they actually are so well-known that if we had the chance to converse with them, we wouldn't resort to the old "What do you do?" small-talk staple.

Quite aside from that, you're suddenly conveying the information that you have sex with other people and you're going to continue to do so because it's your job. That affects the other person's idea of you as relationship material. Note that the 2 men were on a relationship-y type of a date at "this bourgeois tea and food place," with "a statue of Buddha," a menu that was "all platitudes," and teas with "names like 'Goddess of Wisdom' and 'Ocean of Mercy.'" Conner sounds awfully judgmental about the things Alex likes, Alex having ordered the Oceans of Mercy and Conner having limited himself to a glass of water.

Robot says hi to tea.

A photo from yesterday. This morning, I'm saying hi to new snow on all that beyond-the-window scenery.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH says, referring to my idea for a new product:

Robot thought bubble: Whew! I'm so glad you "have a mug of hot liquid [to] hold onto it as needed" instead of "smooth metal devices that fit comfortably into various bodily orifices."

And I say:

Actually, that double-wall glass is bad for hand-warming. I recommend a nice ceramic mug.

Maybe the devices for orifice warming should be ceramic...

And then I think about Meade's handiwork. You saw it here in May 2009, on one of those beautiful days before we were married, when I visited him in his little house in Ohio, the one with what Bissage called the "nicely scrubbed stove top." It looked like this:



Reminisced about here.

Yes, they have Ikea in China, but it "is gripped by a kind of anarchy that would rarely be seen, or tolerated, in its country of origin."

"There are picnickers everywhere - their tea flasks and plastic bags of snacks lining the showroom tables."

Young lovers pose for "selfies" in mock-up apartments they do not live in. Toddlers in split pants play on model furniture with their naked parts coming in contact with all surfaces.

On a king-size bed in the middle of the largest showroom, a little boy wakes from a nap next to his (also sleeping) grandmother. When the old woman casually helps the boy urinate into an empty water bottle, dripping liquid liberally on the grey mattress under his feet, most passers-by seem not to mind or even notice....

Virtually every surface [in the bedroom and living room sections] is occupied by visitors appearing very much at home. Older people read newspapers or drink tea; younger visitors cuddle or play with their phones. Most, however, are sound asleep...

Read the whole thing. Ikea has accommodated Chinese ways, and it's now the largest foreign commercial landowner in the country.

"What would Madonna say?"

Asked Irene at the Hydrangea Café last night.

Yes, why, exactly, did Madonna say she absolutely loathes hydrangeas?

“Hydrangeas are very romantic, feminine and maybe a little demur[e],” suggested Eddie Zaratsian of tick-tock Couture Flowers based in Los Angeles, Calif., who has worked with corporate clients like Chanel, as well as an undisclosed list of celebrities. “Madonna is known for her strength and confidence and so it’s only natural she would gravitate towards a bolder flower.” The elephant in the room: hydrangeas are working-class flowers, aren’t they? Somehow partially responsible for current economic crisis? Make your pee smell bad?...

To Zaratsian, who believes every flower to be a “gift from God”... it is the overall experience of receiving flowers that helps one formulate a memory, and thus create an opinion or preference to hold over time. “What [do] they take from that connotation of that flower? What is that memory of that flower for them?” he explained. Perhaps the larger question is: what did these innocent flowers ever do to you, Madonna? 

Have you ever been wronged by a flower?  What flower is on your shit pee list?

ADDED: If you're wondering about the pee, I'd elided the part about tea. Don't you know about hydrangea tea?

"[A]n apple and a thermos full of tea — the same sustenance Jimmy Stewart brought to the Senate floor in the movie 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'"

What Senator Mark Kirk brought to Rand Paul in the 7th hour of the filibuster.

The Rush Limbaugh show is on in a few minutes. I'm live-blogging it.

11:06 CT: "I knew it was getting bad..." He got a busy signal trying to call himself to cancel his own advertising for his Two If By Tea product. He begins with a joke. Then gets serious. He's going to explain what the apology really means. And people haven't understood it. His error was "becoming like" his critics by using "those 2 words." He tries to "maintain a very high level of integrity," and those 2 words were "uncalled for... and I, again, sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke." He never thought she was "either of those 2 words." He never uses those words, he asserts, and by using those words "I descended to their level." If you descend to the level of your opponent, he says, "They win." "There was no ulterior motive... no speaking in code... That's why I apologized."

11:10: At this point, Limbaugh details the the time line of the controversy, beginning with Issa's hearing. "Democrats tried to play a game" with that hearing. The hearing was originally not about contraception, but because Obama has a problem with women voters, Democrats decided to make the hearing about contraception and therefore to replace their male witness with the female Sandra Fluke (in violation of the committee's rules), Limbaugh said. This led to the spectacle of Fluke's exclusion, and then the Democrats' subcommittee staged testimony with Fluke, which, Rush asserts, showed her not to be the kind of expert who belonged on Issa's panel. Fluke "gave vague examples based on unnamed friends."

11:18: Georgetown is a Catholic University, Limbaugh says. Fluke didn't need to choose to attend that institution. "Why are you really there? Actually, they know what they're doing. They intentionally" choose institutions like this in order to work within them, trying to change them, he says. And Obama is trying to force these institutions to pay for birth control, over their moral objections. And the Democrats used Fluke to advance their agenda, he says. He wishes he'd said that last week. He focused on the idea of her having frequent sex because he's trying to be entertaining and it was relatively easy to do. That was the wrong focus. "I acted too much like the leftists who despise me.... It's way beneath me. It was wrong. I apologize — because I succumbed."

11:27: "The left... the media... giddy that some advertisers are leaving the program." But these advertisers have "done very well" through using his show to reach his audience. "They've decided they don't want you.... This show is about you, not the advertisers." He knows he's successful because of the listeners.

11:33: Intro music to this next segment is "Higher Ground." The previous segment began with "She Bop." Rush says he rejects millions of dollars in advertising because he puts the audience above the advertisers. He rejected GM, he says.

11:35: "The advertisers who don't want you — fine, we'll replace them." He criticizes those "on the left" who pressured the advertisers. That's not something he and his people do.

11:37: "I'm not waiting for apologizing from people on the left" who say "despicable" things. He mentions Bill Maher and Sarah Palin. "Don't expect apologies." He's portraying himself as on a higher level — "Higher Ground" — than his critics. He apologizes (for sinking to their level), and they don't apologize (it's their level). And they don't respect you, the people who make up his audience, who mean so much to him.

11:38: He quotes Tocqueville: "It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants." That sets up a more general attack on Obama and the Democrats.

11:52: I won't live-blog all 3 hours of the show, but I'll listen to the rest on podcast later. To sum up:

1. Rush emphasized his high values and his apology for falling from them.

2. He characterized the left as consistently behaving at the level that he unfortunately descended to and as never apologizing for that behavior.

3. He wishes he'd emphasized what really matters, which is how the Democrats played Issa's committee to try to help Obama with his problem appealing to women voters. [ADDED: I note that he helped the Dems win at this game.]

4. He loves his listeners and does the show for them, not the advertisers, of whom he has plenty champing at the bit to get onto the program.

The recall Scott Walker election will cost the state $650,000 — "with potentially millions of dollars more in costs for local governments."

They don't have the signatures yet to force the election, and the question of the cost of the election has probably just about zero effect on whether anyone signs the petition:

Top Republicans say they're assuming recall organizers will get the signatures they need and are putting their energies into winning the recall election that would follow. They said Walker and Republican lawmakers solved a $3 billion budget gap over two years without relying on tax increases and shouldn't lose their offices to a "baseless partisan power-grab."

The linked article (in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) describes the signature effort, which includes a "group of about 80 volunteers... working in shifts of six to eight people to collect signatures on a series of high-traffic Madison streets that are wide enough to let a steady stream of cars pull over." They pull in an average of 400 signatures a day, we're told. My arithmetic says that "steady stream" is 1 car every 10 minutes... not counting the cars that stop but don't sign. Apparently, some pro-Walker drivers stop to waste the volunteers' time, yell at them, and even — in one case — rip up a petition. (Ripping up a petition is criminal, and the volunteers take down the license plate number and report the crime to the police.)

Meanwhile, some anti-Walkerites are worried the signature drive will fall short.

I fear the recall is going to fall short. People are not outside in public areas in cold months. People stay home, or they drive to grocery stores, theaters and shopping malls. The problem is that this is private property, controlled by generally pro-Walker business owners.

Maybe a door-to-door effort will be necessary. But that is unpleasant, hard work.

Unpleasant, hard work? Why?

The best hope, as I see it, is door-to-door. But that takes great courage, this is a volatile issue. People in smaller cities will be reluctant to rock the local boat. There are violent threats in seemingly safe public spaces, better bring some security door-to-door.

Bring some security?! Over at the link — at the Isthmus — Meade writes:

Security? What?!! You mean like you're going to show up at my door with two big bruisers standing behind you? Wait. Believe me - that will not get you invited in.

Look: just ring my doorbell politely. I'll ask you to come in. We'll sit down by the fire and I'll brew a big pot of tea. I'll bring you your nice cup of tea - Red Zinger, Sleepytime, whatever you choose - and then I'll listen very politely as you answer each and every one of my questions.

Of course, it's the Isthmus, Madison's weekly tabloid, where the assumption is that anyone not on the left is stupid, so Meade's humor goes undetected:

You can hardly expect a group of people to spend time with you, they have to keep moving. Try Dane County Social Services if you require a case worker.

Meade:

I know, I know - time is money.

*sigh*

Back in my day, we took the time to dialog with people. And share feelings. That was back when we got Clean For Gene. I know - a long long time ago.

Rush Limbaugh presents his new product — bottled tea — as a political argument for entrepreneurship.

"What I wanted to demonstrate was that even with the obstacles that we face, like Obama out there, that jobs can be created and that growth or jobs can be saved, to use his vernacular, and a new product can be brought to market."

The label is political: Check it out.

Did anyone tell Sarah Palin that Limbaugh was going to be exploiting the Paul Revere image? Or did she just happen to step on his roll-out of new merchandise?

What do you think of Rush Limbaugh portraying himself as Paul Revere and putting the American flag on the label?

If I were to drink this, it would most likely be...
	... because it's the best tea at the best price.
	... to tweak and annoy liberals.
	... to horse around and get a little attention.
	... to make an unspoken argument in favor of traditional values.
	... to help Rush prove that private entrepreneurship is the way to save the economy.
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