Horrifying the neighbors.

Link.

They don't want you to go as Brett Kavanaugh either, but they tell you just how easy it is to do: You just wear a suit and carry a calendar.

And they don't want you to go as Kanye, but they give you the idea: Just wear a MAGA hat. Note: Only works if you're a black male — because you'll ruin your entire life if you wear blackface — but if you are a black male kid, you have the information here that you can horrify the hell out of people just by wearing MAGA hat. And isn't that what Halloween is all about? Horrifying the neighbors?

“It was [Adi] Shankar’s intention to crowdsource a script that 'in a clever way subverts [Apu], pivots him, writes him out..."

"'... or evolves him in a way that takes a creation that was the byproduct of a predominately Harvard-educated white male writers’ room and transforms it into a fresh, funny and realistic portrayal of Indians in America.' Shankar’s primary hope was that Fox would produce the script as an episode of 'The Simpsons,' but now that he has found what he calls the 'perfect script' and announces the winner of his contest, he told IndieWire that he has heard from people who work for the show that 'The Simpsons' is eliminating the character."

Metafilter.

I don't know how perfect that script really was, but by just eliminating the character with no explanation, it remains possible to bring him back whenever they want and explain it when the time comes.

Compare Roseanne. They eliminated her by killing her off, and now she can never come back... not without a really weird explanation anyway.

You could say "The Simpsons" isn't even giving its Indian character the dignity of needing his absence explained. He just becomes unseen, which is the way pop culture in the old days treated minorities. They're just not there. No explanation needed.

That's what deserves the label "microaggression." And my tag "seen and unseen."

When we sat down to watch the World Series last night, I said I wanted it to end in a specific way...

... and that's exactly what happened:



Love that he fell down on his knee in that dramatic last strikeout.

Background on my loathing of Manny Machado: "Fraternizing with the enemy" (October 16), "'Anne, you are funny. The things that rile you. That's why we love you. But 'dirty?'" (October 17).

"'He was a very, very strange man'... With his piercing eyes and jutting forehead, he could make a rough first impression—like 'a proud Calabrian bandit'..."

"... 'withdrawn, unsociable, taciturn, skittish, susceptible, distant, shy.' He was said to be 'catlike and solitary.' He 'lived in a kind of haughty misanthropy, behind a rampart of irony.' He had a tendency toward mendacity in his professional and personal relationships. He was conscious enough of his limitations: 'Those around me persist in not understanding that I have never been able to live in a real world of people and things.'... When confronted with the fundamentals of harmony and form, he asked why any systems were needed... Familiar chords appeared in unfamiliar sequences. Melodies followed the contours of ancient or exotic scales. Forms dissolved into textures and moods. An academic evaluation accused him of indulging in Impressionism—a label that stuck.... ... Debussy took up a second career, as a music critic, delivering a stream of prickly, contrarian opinions that seemed almost designed to increase his isolation. Beethoven wrote badly for the piano, he proclaimed: 'With a few exceptions, his works should have been allowed to rest.' Wagner was a literary genius but no musician. Gluck was pompous and artificial. There was a method to this crankiness: Debussy was attacking the tendency to worship the past at the expense of the present. In a later interview, he said that he actually admired Beethoven and Wagner, but refused to 'admire them uncritically, just because people have told me that they are masters.'"

From "The Velvet Revolution of Claude Debussy/How a reclusive Frenchman created some of the most radical, beautiful music of the modern era" (The New Yorker).

"The buyers who seek out serial killer art don’t fall into easy categories."

"William Harder, who’s run Murder Auction from Fresno, California since 2005, says his customers aren’t just creepy murder fetishists. 'They’re regular people,' he says. 'I remember this contractor guy I sold to. He built houses and decks and stuff, and he came to me looking for something subtle. He told me, I thought about getting a Gacy, but I’m afraid that’s just going to attract too much attention. So he bought something by Charles Manson, but nothing you’d recognize as a Manson unless you looked closer and saw the signature.'... Murderabilia is in many ways a contradiction. The dealers and even the murderers themselves ask us to separate the art from the artist. Their creative ambitions aren’t an extension of their crimes; the two things, they insist, are unrelated."

From "Blood on the Canvas: The Lucrative, Controversial World of Art Made By Serial Killers" (Observer).

The horror of efforts to connect the Pittsburgh massacre to Trump.

I will just give one example of the kind of commentary that feels like an immoral elevation of politics over humanity: "Trump’s Response to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting and His Obsession with the Word 'Frankly'" by Katy Waldman in The New Yorker. First, overuse of a word, a verbal tic, is not an "obsession." Second, 11 people were shot to death; who cares about Trump's repetition of a word? I like to do language analysis, but 11 people were murdered. What seems like an "obsession" here is the desire to get after Trump with anything and everything that comes up. Can you just stop for one day?

I'll just quote the fifth of the five paragraphs in the linked piece. Was this worth saying? Does it even make sense?

Before opening fire on the Tree of Life congregants, Bowers posted a message to Gab, a right-wing social network that, like other online forums for extremists, casts itself as an embattled bastion of free speech. “Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,” Bowers complained on the site. “There is no #maga as long as there is a kike infestation.” The gunman’s accusation evoked a riff-cum-vocabulary lesson from Trump’s rally in Houston on Monday. “A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much,” the President explained, before asserting, “I’m a nationalist.” The “frankly” in this case—meant to expose the dirty truth about globalists, and to preface Trump’s oath of fealty to tribal politics—reads as far more honest than anything the President said on Saturday. He is frankest at his rallies and on Twitter. There is a difference, of course, between saying what you mean and saying what is true. Trump is not practicing frankness when he deplores hatred. He is being frank when he foments resentments that are phantasmal. For him, falsehoods carry the weight of facts, whereas reality is “truly unimaginable.”

You can connect anything to anything if you want, and when it's that hard to do, you must really want it. Did Katy Waldman look back on that paragraph and think, God, am I smart. What a language master I am, unlike Trump who keeps saying "frankly"?

"He is being frank when he foments resentments that are phantasmal" — I can't believe she didn't get out the thesaurus and find a synonym for "resentments" that began with an "f" sound. Let me try... He is being frank when he foments fuckeries that are phantasmal.

IN THE COMMENTS: Amadeus 48 said:

A frank assessment of the functional flim-flam of this over-exposed flunky writing for that fortress of fatuousness, fripperies, and follies, the New Yorker, fatigues and, frankly, frightens me, fragile flower of fortune that I am.

A frank fermentation of the functional flim-flam of furious florid flunky Flair flicks...

News from the future: "However the Midterms Go, the Republican Party Is Going to Get More Extreme."

That's Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine, and I've selected that to link just as an example of the kind of thing I have an aversion to right now. Chait doesn't know enough about the future to tell us what will happen in the midterms, but he can assert that the Republican Party will get more extreme, because there won't be a specific event next week that will say in hard facts whether he's right or wrong.

If Democrats win the House but not the Senate, they will be working with an even more hardened foe: The Republicans who will have lost, or who are retiring, are those most vulnerable to outside pressure; the surviving core, from the reddest districts, will be the most Trumpian....

In the event Republicans retain full control of Congress... the transformation would be even more dramatic. The American people would be led not by a party learning to accommodate its unhinged leader but one trained by him....

Imagine Republicans waking up after Election Day and discovering their aging coalition has been given a new lease on life.... What would stop them from launching the full-scale assault on the welfare state that Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan never mustered the courage to fully enact? Why wouldn’t they go through with abolishing Obamacare and slashing funding to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?

Because as soon as the 2018 elections are done, they'll be focusing on winning in 2020.

ADDED: Take out the drama, and what Chait is talking about is what Scott Adams has called "Two Ways to Win, No Way to Lose."

At the Sunday Night Café...

... the topic choice is all yours.

"Brazil on Sunday became the latest country to drift toward the far right, electing a strident populist as president in the nation’s most radical political change..."

"... since democracy was restored more than 30 years ago. The new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has exalted the country’s military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive into exile his political opponents. He won by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in Brazil — a country whiplashed by rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil — and by presenting himself as the alternative.... Hundreds of supporters gathered outside Mr. Bolsonaro’s seaside home in Rio de Janeiro, jumping and hugging each other when the results were announced. As golden fireworks lit up the sky, they chanted 'mito,' or legend, paying homage to their president-elect."

The NYT reports.

ADDED: Drift?

Wow! It takes the NYT an incredibly long time to answer its question "Why Is CBD Everywhere?"

Subtitle: "Cannabidiol is being touted as a magical elixir, a cure-all now available in bath bombs, dog treats and even pharmaceuticals. But maybe it’s just a fix for our anxious times."

I know I'm annoyed by the new ubiquity of CBD, but I'm also annoyed by the notion that we're in some special "anxious times."

By the way, the word "fix" to mean "A measure undertaken to resolve a problem; a solution, a remedy" is only a proposed addition to the OED. (It's U.S. slang going back to 1882 ("All that is necessary is to dig a round pit or cistern... With such a simple fix, it is an easy matter to distribute the liquid.")) "Fix" meaning "A dose of a narcotic drug" is officially recognized by the OED — also U.S. slang — and it goes back to 1867 ("Claret-cobbler..eye-opener, fix-ups, or any other Yankee deception in the shape of liquor").

Which meaning did the NYT intend when it wrote "just a fix for our anxious times"? Are we going to "fix our anxious times" by repairing them using CBD or are we dosing them with a narcotic drug? Well, it's not the times that will get "a fix," but, it's the people, but then they are the ones with the anxiety. Are users of the substance trying to get their anxiety repaired or simply numbed?

Anyway, the article eventually settles into this pop psychology notion that every era has a signature psychological woe and a drug to go with it:

The jittery postwar era, with its backyard bomb shelters and suburban fears about keeping up with the Joneses, gave rise to a boom in sedatives, as seen in the era’s pop songs (“Mother’s Little Helper,” by the Rolling Stones) and best sellers (“Valley of the Dolls,” by Jacqueline Susann).

The recessionary 1990s gave rise to Generation X angst, Kurt Cobain dirges and a cultural obsession with newfangled antidepressants (see Elizabeth Wurtzel’s “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”).

The defining sociological condition today, especially among millennials, is arguably anxiety: anxiety about our political dysfunction, anxiety about terrorism, anxiety about climate change, anxiety about student loan debt, even anxiety about artificial intelligence taking away all the good jobs.

Anxiety about anxiety.

A lot of this article is about the commercial ventures that are taking advantage of the seeming/semi- legality of a product that isn't the famous illegal product so many people want to use. These businesses look very aggressive...

...like the James New York-Nomad hotel, which offers a room-service CBD tasting menu featuring CBD-infused meatballs and sriracha-mayo House Tots. Or the Standard hotel outposts in Miami and New York, which sell $50 blood orange-flavored gumdrops by the upscale CBD brand Lord Jones in its minibars. Such sumptuously packaged, premium-priced CBD products appeal to trend-conscious consumers....

Among beauty products alone, CBD has already achieved cliché status, popping up in blemish creams, sleeping masks, shampoos, hair conditioners, eye serums, anti-acne lotions, mascaras, massage oils, soaps, lip balms, bath bombs, anti-wrinkle serums, muscle rubs and a Sephora aisle’s worth of moisturizers, face lotions and body creams. Even the bedroom is not safe from the CBD invasion, to judge by the spate of CBD sexual lubricants on shelves....

Now, let's get some gender analysis:

As an alternative health regimen, CBD holds particular appeal to women, said Gretchen Lidicker, the health editor of Mindbodygreen.... “Women have long felt ignored and dehumanized by the medical and health care industries,” she said. “They experience longer wait times for treatment. Their pain and suffering are more likely to be dismissed as anxiety or hysteria.”

"Their pain and suffering are more likely to be dismissed as anxiety or hysteria" — Wait! Isn't that the theory of this whole damned NYT piece? CBD is for anxiety. Seems to me, placebos are especially effective if the malady is anxiety. But Lidicker is calling out the sexism of diagnosing women's ailments as anxiety.

I have discovered the dissonance at the center of this NYT article. And now I have to wonder if it's sexist to embrace the theory that the "defining sociological condition" of our time is "anxiety." It's the era of women, and it's the era of anxiety.

Even as we come to the fore, we are diminished.

"Gab’s affiliation with Mr. Bowers has already cost the company dearly."

"On Saturday, the company’s web hosting provider, Joyent, moved to shut the site down, according to an email posted by Gab on Twitter. The payment processing platform Stripe, which Gab has used to receive fees for its paid Gab Pro membership level, and which froze Gab’s account this month for violating its terms of service, said it was suspending transfers to the company’s bank account pending an investigation, according to another email posted to Twitter by Gab. PayPal, another payment processor, canceled Gab’s account, saying that it had been closely monitoring the site since before Saturday’s massacre.... Gab... was started in 2016 by a conservative programmer, Andrew Torba, who was fed up with what he saw as Silicon Valley’s left-wing censorship.... [T]he platform’s intentionally slim rule book attracted a crowd of extremists, including white nationalists and neo-Nazis, who had been banned from other social platforms. Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart writer whose harassment campaigns got him kicked off Twitter, signed up for an account. So did Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi publication Daily Stormer, and Richard Spencer, the well-known white nationalist. Within months, Gab had become a last refuge for internet scoundrels — a place where those with views considered too toxic for the mainstream could congregate and converse freely....  Despite its claims of pan-partisan appeal, Gab’s most popular posts espouse far-right ideology... Posts by the site’s members in recent days include a torrent of anti-Semitic cartoons, conspiracy theories, and denunciations of liberal censorship...."

From "On Gab, an Extremist-Friendly Site, Pittsburgh Shooting Suspect Aired His Hatred in Full" (NYT).

This is why...

This is why killer/slasher movies starring black folks aren’t made. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/OXU3C3cjr5

— Reggie Cunningham (@kidnoble) October 27, 2018

Baseball, the metaphor.

Watching the Dodgers/Red Sox final innings. It is amazing how a manager takes out a pitcher who is loose & dominating through almost 7 innings, Rich Hill of Dodgers, and brings in nervous reliever(s) who get shellacked. 4 run lead gone. Managers do it all the time, big mistake!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2018

ADDED: Based on the comments, not everyone sees what I think is the obvious metaphor. Trump is talking about himself. He's Rich Hill, in some kind of trouble, but it would be a big mistake if the manager — We, the People — were to take him out. We need to reelect him, because a "nervous reliever" — anyone else we might put in — will "get shellacked." It's just a baseball way to say stay the course or — the usual old-time-y metaphor — don't change horses in midstream.

What's the origin of the phrase 'Don't change horses in midstream'?

From an 1864 speech by Abraham Lincoln, in reply to Delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate. 'An old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams."

As for stay the course...

"[S]tay the course" allegedly originated as a nautical metaphor on maintaining a constant, unaltering course while navigating.... Citations from the late 19th century... show the phrase describing horses having the stamina to remain on the course of a racetrack...

The phrase gained a central place in rhetoric due to the publication by journalist Stewart Alsop in his 1973 memoirs of a conversation with Winston Churchill. Alsop related that the British Prime Minister had pondered at the close of World War II, "America, it is a great and strong country, like a workhorse pulling the rest of the world out of despond and despair. But will it stay the course?"....

"Stay the course" was later popularized by Ronald Reagan while campaigning for Republicans during the 1982 mid-term elections, arguing against changes in his economic policies.....

His Vice-President, George H.W. Bush, would later pick up the phrase as an argument for his election as President, both during the primaries and general campaign. His over-use of the phrase was parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch.

The mouthfeel of an integrationist coffee break.

I've constructed a post-title out of words/phrases that first appeared in print the year I was born.

Go to the link, pick your own year, and construct a title for your own blog post or memoir.

Mexico offers the Caravan the "You are at home" plan, and the Caravan says no, we'd rather walk a thousand miles to a home in the U.S., which isn't even offering to make us feel at home.

The NYT reports:

Several thousand Central American migrants have turned down a chance to apply for refugee status and obtain a Mexican offer of benefits, vowing to set out before dawn Saturday to continue their long trek toward the U.S. border.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced what he called the "You are at home" plan, offering shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs to Central Americans in Chiapas and Oaxaca states if they applied, calling it a first step toward permanent refugee status. Authorities said more than 1,700 had already applied for refugee status.

But after one of the caravan's longest days of walking, the bulk of the migrants were boisterous Friday evening in their refusal to accept anything less than safe passage to the U.S. border.

Years ago, the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, was diagnosed with "esophageal cancer, an often-fatal form of the disease that Evers has said he thought would kill him."

"Radical surgery in 2008 to remove Evers’ esophagus and part of his stomach caused him to lose weight and permanently changed his eating and sleeping habits. But now he has been cancer-free for a decade...."

From "What would the next four years bring under Scott Walker or Tony Evers?" (Wisconsin State Journal), where we also hear that Scott Walker is "A preacher’s son and Harley motorcycle rider who touts his daily lunch ritual of ham sandwiches and cranberry juice."

In the melodrama of politics having no esophagus and only part of a stomach beats eating the same thing for lunch every day.