At the Ice Skate Café...

... slide in here if you want to talk about anything other than the Oscars. (The Oscars post is here.)

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."

That's today's "Gatsby" sentence.

Amount/can challenge/what. That's the subject/predicate/object. The most important word is heart. The heart is modified by ghostly. It's a man's ghostly heart which is a storehouse — a storehouse invulnerable to new things. New things come in the form of the opposite of stored-up ghostliness:  fire and freshness.

A ghost is the opposite of a living person. What is perceived here is the impossibility of living. (The impossibility of living once you have lived.)

"Live-Snarking The Oscars."

Nikki Finke.

(Me, I'm not watching. I just completely do not care. I used to care, but I don't anymore. I value my time in a way that doesn't leave a place for going to the movies, let alone watching the awards show. I really don't care who wins anything at all.)

Purchase of the day.

From the February 23, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

OXO SteeL Garlic Press, Stainless (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.60)

... and 50 other items purchased through the Althouse Amazon portal.

Thanks to all you stinkers who read this blog.

"Sephora is a smoke monster, a rainbow, a Mobius strip of promises. There's no getting a grip on it. There is no end."

"There's only more. You can chase the dragon of self-improvement slash self-enhancement slash self-acceptance until the day you die; there's always a new fragrance, a new lip color, a new miracle cream right around the corner...."

You go in for a lip balm and come out with body polish, dry shampoo, BB cream, and Kat Von D's "Sinner" smoky eyes palette. (The are over 100,000 videos titled "Sephora Haul" on YouTube to watch should you have any doubts.) Oodles on display, a myriad of options, infinite possibilities. When you think you've finally found the solution, the crutch, the key, either you run out and need more; they stop making it and it vanishes like so much sparkly Guerlain Terra Cotta dust; or you find that what once satisfied you no longer does the trick.

100,000 videos. I tried watching one and got a couple minutes in... about 20% through. It really is a form of madness. You need to be careful going in. It's quite bizarre. You've got to admire the design of the place. A shop is a psychological manipulation and it's impressive when it's done well, but — as I said — you need to be careful.

"There are signs that this is the dawn of the new masculinity."

"Some recent news about men who are chucking their own careers to support the dreams and hopes of the women they love..."

The signs are a big law firm partner who quits to become "a supportive husband and do all I can to help [his new wife] achieve her mission to improve the world through music" and a new magazine — "Kindling Quarterly" — for stay-at-home fathers.

The Ladies' Home Journal in 1963.

 

Encountered searching for something else just now. I'm putting this up because I like how it looks simultaneously so old and...



.... so current. 

"The Arabs invaded Cyprus in force in the 650s, but in 688, the emperor Justinian II and the caliph Abd al-Malik..."

"... reached an unprecedented agreement. For the next 300 years, Cyprus was ruled jointly by both the Arabs and the Byzantines as a condominium, despite the nearly constant warfare between the two parties on the mainland."

In Cyprus, today's "History of" country.

"Alongside that do-gooder instinct is a strong desire for fairness because, being out in the world, reporters encounter a great deal of unfairness."

"We want to expose that and even rub your noses in it. In a way, we’re shouting, through our stories: 'This is unfair! Somebody do something!' Conservative and liberal journalists alike feel this way...."

That’s why many journalists have a hard time giving much voice to those opposed to gay marriage. They see people opposed to gay rights today as cousins, perhaps distant cousins, of people in the 1950s and 1960s who, citing God and the Bible, opposed black people sitting in the bus seat, or dining at the lunch counter, of their choosing.

Says Patrick B. Pexton, the Washington Post ombudsman.

Ted Cruz's office says "in the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of 'critical legal studies'..."

"... a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism – and they far outnumbered Republicans."

That's in response to a New Yorker article quoting something Cruz said in a speech 3 years ago. (What Cruz said back then, at an Americans for Prosperity conference, was that when he was at Harvard Law School "There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.")

The Cruz spokesperson called it "curious that the New Yorker would dredge up a three-year-old speech and call it 'news.'"

Curious... there's a noncommittal word. I don't see anything wrong with digging stuff out of old Cruz speeches. He's a new character on the national stage, so it's not like old territory is being reworked. It was an inflammatory statement, and he needs to stand by it (and back it up), defend it as hyperbole, or concede he was wrong.

"The best in business is on 'Argo' right now. She’s like Rahm Emanuel."

A non-random sentence from an article with the first sentence: "Political movies are expected to rake in the trophies at Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony."

So... "political movies" is supposed to refer to movies with political subject matter, but they win awards because people wage a political campaign for the award.

Too much politics! Remember when it seemed like movies were counterculture or art or something like that?

The "she" in the quote in this post's title is Sasha Stone, who's quoted predicting the award winners this year won't appropriate the occasion and make political remarks: "You don’t want to turn off half of America by making jokes about Republicans."

"Border collie Zoe & AMAZING dog tricks!"

"Americans are always talking about the American Dream."

"They refer to it in all their books and the concept has become a symbol of American culture. This is what made me want to read more about it. Can we apply its principles in Saudi Arabia and how can we achieve a better way of life?"

I was already in the middle of blogging this Saudi Gazette opinion piece by Samar Fatany, when I got about 2/3 of the way into it and saw:

Since the 1920s, several authors, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, have ridiculed the chase for the American Dream. In his book "The Great Gatsby", Fitzgerald, reflects upon the American Dream’s demise, and the pessimism of contemporary Americans.

Gatsby! He's everywhere!

"Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop"... "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis"...

"How Tea Cosies Changed the World"... "How to Sharpen Pencils"... "Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts"... "Was Hitler ILL?..."

I'm going to recommend "How to Sharpen Pencils," which actually has a subtitle, so it's "How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants."

You're probably thinking what's the point?, but go to the link and check out the table of contents. I, for one am pleased to see a separate chapter on the wall-mounted, hand-crank pencil sharpener (though as long-time readers of this blog know, my personal "wall-mounted" pencil sharpener is mounted on a horizontal surface, so I'm concerned about whether the author recognizes that what he terms "wall-mounted" can indeed be rotated for attachment to a shelf or table-top)).

Also, there's an appendix: "Wines That Taste Like Pencils."

(And by the way, Hitler was not mentally ill and therefore fully responsible for his actions, according to"Was Hitler ILL?: A Final Diagnosis.")

(And here's "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis." Excerpt (displaying fact-filled but awkward prose): "The classical Roman term for penis was mentula, which one might think had a certain resonance equating as it does to 'little mind.' But eighteenth-century wordsmiths preferred the idiomatic penis, meaning tail, not just to mentula but to the most popular Roman slang of gladius, or sword — which as vagina meant sheath or scabbard, fitted nicely.")

You need to wear your comfortable jeans today.

(Yes, I've blogged this before, but you know you've worn your "Randy Normal" jeans before.)

"The worst-case scenario for us is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens. And Republicans say: See, that wasn’t so bad."

Says a Democratic lobbyist, causing Instapundit to say: "So I guess we can expect the Administration to make it as bad as it can."

That's about the size of it. That's why I haven't been blogging the pre-sequester hysteria. It's less amusing than the Mayan apocalypse.