At long last, a Triple Crown!

Not since 1978....

"A neighborhood father tossed out all of his kids’ toys after reading that American kids were 'overstimulated.'"

"He then gave them a 'toy' he’d seen kids play with in Africa — a plastic milk jug with a rock inside. Still worried about overstimulation, he gave away all their books but two."

From "Cucumbers: The New Birthday Cake?"

(By the way, I agree that children are overstimulated, and I think they'd be better off with only one toy... but not a rock in a plastic milk jug!)

I love this: "Plastic Surgery With Magazines"...

... by Metra Bruno and Laurence Jeanson. I'll give one example, but they're all quite amusing:

"When Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin throws his leg across his beloved Harley-Davidson Road King for a celebration of motorcycles and Iowa pork on Saturday, the political symbolism will be as thick as the smoke from the roasting pits."

Really intense first sentence of a NYT article titled "Scott Walker Riding With Joni Ernst in Iowa as Rivals Give Chase," which Drudge is linking with the teaser "Leader of the Pack."

This post gets an epic trio of tags: meat, metaphor, motorcycle.

ADDED: The WaPo headline is: "Scott Walker is the only potential presidential candidate who can go to a biker rally and mean it."

This makes me think about a decisive moment in the debate last fall between Scott Walker and his Democratic opponent Mary Burke. As I observed it:

There was one "fun" question, asking them what they'd do if they had to go a day without campaigning and would surely take to their preferred 2-wheeler, Burke on a Trek bike and Walker on a Harley.

Burke's family founded the Trek bicycle company and Burke's campaign relied heavily on her experience as a Trek exec.

Where, exactly, would they go, and who would they go with? Walker gave the precise route, complete with route numbers and turns, and said he'd go with his usual "buddies" who motorcycle with him. Burke seemed nervous and said "um" a few times as she claimed she'd go back to her hometown and spend time with members of her family. Meade was heckling, saying that everyone knows that Mary Burke isn't much of a cyclist. Ah, but what was she supposed to do? The questioner imposed the assumption that if she had time off, of course, she'd bicycle. It would be awkward to refute that! Just because my family is in the bicycle business doesn't mean that when I get some time, what I want to do is bike. If her family were in the dairy business, would they assume that in her spare time, what she likes to do is drink milk?

"This appears to me to be a case motivated by professional jealousy. You have a young hotshot..."

"... who does something really original, gains notoriety, then gets set upon by a bunch of nitpickers who focus on details to the exclusion of the big picture. There should of course be scrutiny, but sifting through every single detail as if she should have operated under the highest journalistic standards seems excessive. Sure, she may have made some mistakes and cut some corners, but they do not seem to discredit her essential achievement, for which she deserves praise and study. As the article says, let's move on and learn from it."

The top-rated comment at a NYT article titled "Alice Goffman’s Heralded Book on Crime Is Disputed."

At the Curious Poses Café...

"Mr. Huntington built the treehouses over several months last year with the help of what he called a 'bronado' of friends."

"He hired contractors to build the skate bowl at the same time. The treehouse crew slept in a bunkhouse on the property, or else in tents or in their trucks. When they weren’t sawing and nailing boards, they loaded up bows and shot arrows; they skateboarded; they swam and fished in the Columbia River; they got stoned and raced motorbikes. One night Mr. Huntington slaughtered a goat and gave a big barbecue for the crew. 'I think of it as a big-boys’ camp,' said Tucker Gorman, a buddy of Mr. Huntington’s [and] a treehouse expert. 'It’s very much like Neverland up there,' Mr. Gorman said."

From a NYT article (with great photos) titled "Escape to Bro-topia/Foster Huntington was an up-and-comer in the New York fashion industry. Then he ditched it all and built his own personal paradise in the sky."

"Bronado" and "Bro-topia" are (unfortunately!) the only "bro-" slang in the article. "Bronado" has been in Urban Dictionary since 2008, when it was defined as "A large gathering of males, drinking and doing nothing." The current top definition is "When a group of bro's begin to fist pump so hard that a whirl wind begins to form and then from that, a Bro-nado rips through the party."

"Brotopia" (without the hyphen) has been in Urban Dictionary since 2007, when it was defined as "A place in which brothers (from another Mother) can bro-lax and or bro-chill in perfect harmony with one another. Although it is believed that a brotopia does exist one has yet to be found." The current top definition is "A totally non-queer land filled with all your favortie [sic] bros."

"There are also voice coaches who teach how to speak like a woman without sounding like Mrs. Doubtfire..."

"... or how to speak like a man without sounding like a bad impersonation of Johnny Depp. Kathe Perez, a speech pathologist in Denver, has built a career on feminizing voices. She has launched two voice-training apps and plans to unveil a third this month. Her customers frequently discover her through YouTube, where hundreds of channels show off the results of trans surgeries or helpful tutorials. (Pro tips: 'Watch soap operas with the sound off to see how women move their hands' and 'men use fewer words in their sentences.')"

From a Washington Post story — "Learning how to be a lady? For the transgender market, coaches help" — about all the ways to make money from transgender people.

Those "pro" tips about acting like a man/women are repackaged sexist stereotypes: Women talk too much. Women talk with their hands. Suddenly, instead of being an insult, it's marketable advice, suitable to the aspirations of males who want to seem womanly.

Drudge eggs us on with oviform images.

The O — emphasis on O — bama balloon. The horse — PharOah — 's eye. And an actual story about eggs — "Egg rationing in America has officially begun...."

Or is it just me? I'm not eating eggs this morning. I breakfast on peanut butter and sesame seeds. But I'm in the middle of a long email conversation about eggs (in which the question has arisen: Is the medium-boiled egg the height of perfection on soft-to-hard-boiled continuum?)

MEANWHILE: In Milwaukee: "'Focus on Jobs, Not Vaginas' Deliver Their Eggs to Scott Walker."



IN THE COMMENTS: Eric the Fruit Bat said: "The hard-boiled egg is God's way of telling anybody who will listen that you don't have to be a fat fuck anymore. Ever sit down and eat a bag of Doritos? Cookies? M & Ms? A six pack of beer? Of course you did, you fat fuck. But nobody, ever, in the entire history of recorded time, has ever plopped his sorry fat ass down in front of a TV set and scarfed down a dozen hard-boiled eggs. Nobody." That got me looking for the "I'm gonna eat 50 eggs" scene from "Cool Hand Luke":



And — while we're on movies — Saint Croix said: "Hitchcock hated eggs. He was a total egg-o-phobe. When feminists say he was a misogynist, I say, no, he just hated eggs. In To Catch A Thief, Grace Kelly's Mom stabs an egg with her cigarette. Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud!"



(That last image is one of Martin Sichetti's paintings of stills from Hitchcock films.)

"Since I will not be imbibing, you can expect me to refrain from many, if not all, of the behaviors that make you so eager to hang out with me...."

"Who’s going to want to talk to me — a guy who isn’t slurring his words, who respectfully listens to other people’s opinions, and who, worst of all, is wearing a shirt? I’m humiliated just imagining how much I won’t be embarrassing myself. No yelling, no fighting, no flirting with your girlfriend. No spilling, no rambling, no drinking your beverage when you’re in the bathroom. I’m going to look like such an ass. And I just don’t know how I’ll ever be able to make that up to you. Maybe I could finally replace that vase of yours that I broke a few months ago while performing my smash-hit party trick of turning anything into a hat? The one that everyone kept calling an 'earn?'"

From "Sorry for Not Partying," by Alex Watt.

"Justice Scalia Blows Creationist Dog-Whistle During Graduation Speech At Catholic High School."

A Think Progress blogger (Ian Millhiser) feels the need to ignore the humor and lightness of spirit on a little speech given at the Justice's granddaughter's high school graduation:

“Class of 2015, you should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented,” Scalia said, adding that “Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.”

Meanwhile, at The New Yorker, there's a new short story by Jonathan Safran Foer ("Love Is Blind and Deaf") that begins:

Adam and Eve lived together happily for a few days. Being blind, Adam never had to see the oblong, splotchy birthmark across Eve’s cheek, or her rotated incisor, or the gnawed remnants of her fingernails. And, being deaf, Eve never had to hear how weakly narcissistic Adam was, how selectively impervious to reason and unwonderfully childlike. It was good.

They ate apples when they ate and, after a while, they knew it all. Eve grasped the purpose of suffering (there is none), and Adam got his head around free will (a question of terminology)....

What say you?

"Is hillaryclinton.com turning into a couchsurfing site?"

John asks.

"Columbia sex-attack accuser, who carried mattress around campus to protest against her 'rapist', creates new work 'renacting' violent sex called: 'This is not rape.'"

"Emma Sulkowicz's new work, 'Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol' or 'This is not a rape', shows the 22-year-old engaging in consensual sexual contact with an unidentified man before it takes a dark twist."

As predicted, many of the commenters on the piece slammed her for her decision to make it, saying it was in poor taste. 'Why did you have to go and ruin a man's life if all you wanted to do was make porn?' one quizzed.

But others jumped to her defense, with one writing: 'Don't listen to the haters Emma. We believe you. This is just another case of straight white males denying women's lived experiences.'

"The shoot was spontaneous, decided in a late-night conversation between me and Björk while we had 360-degree gear with us in Iceland..."

"... the cyclical format was perfect for the circular fugue structure of ‘Stonemilker.' We spent the early morning moving our crew and equipment onto the island where she wrote the song, being mindful of the tide, which only left us a two hour window to shoot the film."

Animals strike curious poses.

Today, at the Henry Vilas Zoo.

Betting on Rubio.

Coburn's apt analysis.