Meade fells a tree.

"Hold It Against Me"...

... Marine version.

Once when I was a kid, my brother and I raked leaves for Uncle Henry, who then paid us $5.

I asked my father to split it for us, and he tore it in half. That made a big impression on me.

That memory came back to me when I watched this video clip from "The Office"...



... which somebody pointed out to me when I mentioned that I was thinking of buying a desk that has a push-button motor that raises it into a standing desk.

Movies with the name of a famous person in the title where the famous person is in the movie but isn't a main character.

The famous person plays the role of himself/herself in the movie. It's not an actor playing the role (although if you can think of anything in that category, feel free to mention it).

Help me make a list.

The favorite childhood joke of the brain scientist who focuses on the the perception of time.

A turtle enters the sheriff's office:

“I’ve just been attacked by three snails!” he shouts.

“Tell me what happened,” the sheriff replies.

The turtle shakes his head: “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”

Gov. Walker's Twitter feed reminds me of "Jim's Journal."

It finally hit me when I read the governor's most recent tweet: "Haircut then went out w/Alex who is driving (he is doing well)."

It's like "Jim's Journal"! Remember "Jim's Journal"? "I Made Some Brownies and they were pretty good." 

"Jim's Journal" was Scott Dikkers (the founding editor of The Onion) from back before The Onion got started... here in Madison, Wisconsin.

Recreating an old reality show, with actors playing the parts of the real people...

... who once lived their supposedly real lives in front of the cameras.

Is this something we want to watch now, or do we feel sorry for actors who are stuck with roles like this? Why not watch the original show, "An American Family," which aired in 1973?

HBO's "Cinema Verite" makes me feel the way I felt about the movie "Frost/Nixon." The original is still available. What's the point of actors imitating them? Presumably, there can be some different angles on what was really happening, but, most likely, we'll just be more aware of the phoniness of acting than we usually are.

Meanwhile, speaking of HBO, I'm struggling through the 5 episodes of the mini-series "Mildred Pierce." (I'm not watching alone, but I'm saying "I'm struggling," because I'm the one with the will to watch, and Meade mainly has this thing of hanging out with me when I'm watching one of my shows, which is something I also do for him sometimes (read:  sports).)

Now, "Mildred Pierce," isn't the recreation of something that happened in reality, but it is the recreation of an old and (for some people) very familiar movie. Kate Winslet is playing Joan Crawford. Now, it's not the same as watching Faye Dunaway play Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest," because both Joan and Kate were playing this fictional entity Mildred, but, come on. It was Joan Crawford. Winslet has the challenge of getting us to not think about Crawford.

Now, Kate's doing a fine job of not being Joan Crawford, but... the real thing here is melodrama, and Joan was more truly melodramatic, which means that Kate, by trying to be more authentically human, gives us a less genuine melodrama.

"Obama Raises Celebrity Cash, But Trip Goes Off Script."

NPR reports:

During a fancy breakfast at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel, donors at one table stood up and complained in song: "We paid our dues/Where's our change?"

... On Wednesday night at the big San Francisco rally, Obama said... "I know there are times where some of you have felt frustrated because we haven't gotten everything done as fast as we wanted"...

People in the audience started to shout: Gay marriage! Clean energy! Single-payer health care!...

"See there. Case in point, right? All right. See, I knew I'd open up this can of worms," the president said...

Why did Caitlin Flanagan write such a poorly supported article on fraternities and rape?

And why did the Wall Street Journal publish it? Was there a whole lot more material in the original article, which was then edited down to make Flanagan look utterly ridiculous?

It begins with the description of one horrible crime. It ends with Flanagan describing her own fear of men. It's lurid and emotional to tell us about one woman's victimization and another woman's feelings, but where's the support for Flanagan's proposition that fraternities should be shut so that women can achieve equality on campus? Here's the middle of the article, where the substance should be:

The Greek system is dedicated to quelling young men's anxiety about submitting themselves to four years of sissy-pants book learning by providing them with a variety of he-man activities: drinking, drugging, ESPN watching and the sexual mistreatment of women.

So... guys in college seek fun in addition to study. That's unremarkable. So do females. Characterizing study as inherently feminine — "sissy-pants book learning" — doesn't make the assertion any less shallow. It seems to me that many young males and females indulge in substances, sports, and sex. Those activities maybe be great fun or horrible (or something in between).

A 2007 National Institute of Justice study found that about one in five women are victims of sexual assault in college; almost all of those incidents go unreported.

How did they find it if it was unreported? Much of life is ugly but not criminal. If it's a crime report it. If it's not a crime, what was it? What are these statistics that get thrown at us constantly? I've been seeing them since 1988 when "I Never Called It Rape: The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape" was published. Over the years, college women have learned to call it rape, but why haven't they learned to report it, if it is rape or some other crime?  You can chose to think of something bad that happened as a crime but are you willing to hold your opinion up to the judgment of officials who have the obligation to treat the accused man fairly? Almost all of those incidents go unreported. Exactly why?

It also noted that fraternity men—who tend to drink more heavily and frequently than nonmembers — are more likely to perpetrate sexual assault than nonfraternity men, according to previous studies. Over a quarter of sexual-assault victims who were incapacitated reported that the assailant was a fraternity member.

Over a quarter?! Is this limited to the college situation? What are we learning from this flabby factual material? Young people drink too much.

It is against this boorish cartel...

Cartel? What cartel?

... that 16 Yale students and recent alumni asserted themselves in a Title IX complaint brought against the institution last month — a complaint that could cost the university $500 million in federal funds.

The claim concerns both the ways that sexual assaults are handled by the university and also the effect that various fraternity "pranks" have had on its female students. The last straw for the complainants seems to have been a Delta Kappa Epsilon initiation last fall in which a mob of pledges chanted "No Means Yes! Yes Means Anal!" and other enlightening slogans....

That was the last straw? A stupid chant? Why don't women use their immense power of being able to laugh at men? Give them the finger? Wasn't the idea of the chant to humiliate the pledges by making them say things that would make them look bad to women? Why don't women claim the power they have instead of running to Daddy (i.e., the government)?

The Yale complaint is a pathetic step backward for feminism. It is not empowerment.

***

Here's a book I read a while back: "Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus." By the way, for a few years in the early 90s, I taught law school course on rape and wrote articles on the subject.

"The sound of the mountains in the 19th century."

Hazel Dickens. RIP.

Paul Krugman says "So, let’s try another shot to the head."

I realize he's talking about a misconception, and he has designated the misconception a "zombie," and according to zombie lore, zombies are destroyed by shooting them in the head. But still. That's quite a violent way to talk about the thoughts in the minds of the people you want to correct.

And it was just last January that Kruman, responding to a terrible shooting, wrote:

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.

"You had a very specific vision for your work and for your life, and that vision included your death."

"It didn’t have to, but that’s how it turned out. I’m so sorry, Tim. The conversation we could have had about this crazy stunt of yours! Christ, I would have yelled at you, but you know that. Getting mad was how we kept each other safe, how we kept the other from doing something stupid."

Krauthammer says Palin and Huckabee will probably not run for President in 2012.

And it's too early for Paul Ryan. And Trump is "a clown." Bachmann's a long shot. The serious candidates are: Romney, Gingrich, Barbour, Pawlenty, and Daniels. According to Krauthammer.

If I wasn't one of the "conservative bloggers" that Kloppenburg was talking about...

... why doesn't the Kloppenburg campaign respond to my email and specify who they were? The idea that I was one of the bloggers is now an internet meme with some life to it. Here's Power Line, this morning. [AND: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.]

As I wrote in an update at the first link, above, I've been able to figure out that one of the "conservative bloggers" was Christian Schneider. Someone in the comments states flatly: "You were not one of the bloggers." Meade responds:

Who were the bloggers? Kloppenburg used the plural, so she clearly meant more than one. Or was she not accurate with her facts?

Also, why would her campaign not reply to Althouse?

Now that the question of Althouse being the "conservative blogger" is becoming an internet meme, it appears that the Kloppenburg campaign is incompetent and unprepared for the questions and scrutiny that lie ahead.

That "15 second" pregnant pause may be only the beginning of awkward moments for JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Indeed. I'm not being vain and narcissistic about the campaign's failure to respond to my email. I'm commenting on the meaning of the absence of a response. In my post, I note that Kloppenburg listed 4 reasons being suspicious of what happened with the reporting of the votes in Waukesha, but "2 of the items are the absence of anything." I added:

An absence of evidence might be probative of something that matters, but you have to build a foundation for why it matters.

Now, I'm talking about an absence: the failure to provide the names of the bloggers and the links to the blog posts that show the "prior knowledge" of the missing votes. And I have built the foundation for why this absence is probative of something that matters. The internet meme is hurting Kloppenburg's credibility and undermining the assertion that an independent investigation is needed.

My working theory at this point is that there was only one blogger, Christian Schneider, and the Kloppenburg campaign is afraid to admit that the plural "bloggers" was false.

Or they really were talking about me.

"MORE ON VIBRATORS, from Eugene Volokh."

Possibly the most absurd teaser ever from Instapundit. Anyway, Glenn's been going crazy with the vibrators lately.

Oh, my lord, I just looked over to see what Volokh is doing with the vibrators. He's got a 1357-word post! You know, if you guys can go on long enough, women might not need vibrators.

Now, I'll actually read what Volokh says:

This is... a family blog, and you can’t very well start a family if you’re too interested in your vibrator.

Well, hell! It depends on how you use it!

So here’s a circumstance I’ve wondered about. Imagine that a close single female friend (just a friend) mentioned to you that she has a vibrator that’s shaped like a highly stylized penis....

Oh! These lawprofs and their hypos! In this one, a female friend volunteers that she loves her vibrator. Volokh says most people would think that's okay. Then, he changes the hypo — this is what lawprofs do with hypos — and the friend expressing love for the sex appliance is male. Volokh says "many people will think it’s a bit icky, in some hard to pin down way." He then explores 5 theories. You can go over there and read them. They all assume solo use of the vibrator, so it's really more about why people would rather think about a woman masturbating than think about a man masturbating. That's a matter of the sexual preference of the person doing the thinking.

"Progressives are just looking to keep the pot boiling and their base excited."

Patrick McIlheran at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, speculating about the Kloppenburg recount here in Wisconsin. The recall elections are coming up, but the protests at the Capitol have cooled off and the actual Supreme Court election is/was over. This recount then is a way to keep people stirred up. Can't afford a lull before the big recall elections. Blech!