Purchase of the day.

From the February 16, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Mario Kart Racing Wheel for Wii (2pcs Bundle) (Bulk Packaging) by Ebest (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $0.97)

85704 Campus.org Poly Color Jackets - 6 Pack, Assorted Colors by Smead (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $0.45)

LifeStraw Personal Water Filterby Vestergaard-Frandsen (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.84)

ch ching:

T-fal Actifry Low-Fat Multi-Cooker (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $16.72 )

Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 (1PC/1User) [Download] (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $17.60)

Hoover Linx Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $11.92 )

... and 28 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers. Or as Barack might say, "Nothing about using the Althouse Amazon portal tonight should increase your family budget deficit by a single dime."

Only I'm not even lying.

So suck it up, load it down, fry it deep, sip it slow. If you like it, you better put a jacket on it. And WEEE!!! Thank you.

"I had been reading about the color indigo, how it had been introduced into the spectrum by [Isaac] Newton rather late..."

"... and it seemed no two people quite agreed as to what indigo was, and I thought I would like to have an experience of indigo. And I built up a sort of pharmacological launchpad with amphetamines and LSD, and a little cannabis on top of that, and when I was really stoned I said, 'I want to see indigo now.' And as if thrown by a paintbrush, a huge pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo appeared on the wall. Again it had this luminous, numinous quality; I leaped toward it in a sort of ecstasy. I thought, 'This is the color of heaven.' ... I thought maybe this is not a color which actually exists on the Earth, or maybe it used to exist or no longer exists. All this went through my mind in 4 or 5 seconds, and then the blob disappeared, giving me a strong sense of loss and heartbrokenness, and I was haunted a little bit when I came down, wondering whether indigo did exist in the real world."

Oliver Sacks, in his new book "Hallucinations," discussed in a nice interview on NPR today.

Sarah Palin is "scary thin"...

... and she's writing a fitness book. 

Celebrities have got to keep moving, looking for an open niche.

Her tips, by the way, are newly frosted, and her nails appeared to be a shade of silver-blue.

"Tips... newly frosted" apparently refers to the highlights in her hair. Highlights are done in strands, right down to the roots and not on the "tips." If there's a space between the scalp and where the light color begins, that means the highlights are not new. The hair has grown. (I know, because I get lowlights.)

As for the silver-blue fingernails, it seems that Michelle Obama got there first, and Ann Romney got there third. But for some reason, light blue is the fingernail color of choice for political ladies this fall. Do they want to avoid the aggressiveness of classic (but blood-like) red? Or do they like the cyanotic look of impending death?

ADDED: Apparently, "frosted tips" is a hoary trend for men:

Boy band members of ’90s and the early aughts were the biggest proponents of “frosted tips,” but no athlete, actor or bank teller has been immune to this god-awful style and its powers of douchebaggery over the years. Do frosted tips transform someone into a terrible human being, or do terrible human beings opt for frosted tips? Let’s find out.

29 frostedly tipped male celebritneys at the link.

"The most intense color in the biological world..."

"Iridescent blue and metallic, it literally outshines any other plant or animal substance in the world...."

The plant itself is called Pollia condensata, and researchers have now explained the material magic underlying its marvelous hues: layers of cells that refract light in a manner usually seen in butterfly wings and beetle shells.

"Structural colors come about not by pigments that absorb light, but the way transparent material is arranged on the surface of a substance"....

Structural colors....

The law-and-fashion news.

"Designer Christian Louboutin can claim trademark protection for the red outsole on his women's shoes, but not if the rest of the shoe is also red, a federal appellate panel ruled yesterday, allowing rival Yves Saint-Laurent to continue selling an entirely red shoe."

Louboutin's iconic high-end, red-soled shoes, introduced in 1992, have been spotted on celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, Victoria Beckham and Rihanna. The shoes sell for up to $1,000 a pair.

YSL's shoes are entirely red, including their outsoles, and are part of a line of similarly monochrome shoes, also in purple, green and yellow....

[The district judge had said] that a color, being an essential element of fashion design, could not be trademarked, despite the strong connection in the public mind between red soles and Louboutins. The judge compared the suit to Pablo Picasso suing Claude Monet to assert a trademark for a particular shade of blue....

However, the [appellate] panel found that the "evidentiary record further demonstrates that the Louboutin mark is closely associated with contrast," not just the red color, and that the trademark must be narrowed to cover only situations where the red sole of a shoe contrasts with a differently colored upper part.

So maybe you can have a trademark in a particular color. (I note that Tiffany, which has a particular shade of blue, filed an amicus brief supporting Louboutin.) But Louboutin didn't own red or even red soles. What distinctively said Louboutin was red soles contrasting to the rest of the shoe.

The Louboutin side of the argument thus won something important upsetting the trial judge's per se rule against fashion-industry trademarks in a color.

"Michelle Obama remained true to her patriotic fashion theme today in a dazzling white top and skirt for this evening's events in London."

So begins the Daily Mail:

The U.S. First Lady, who has stuck to a palette of red, white and blue since she arrived in the city this morning, opted for an ensemble from the resort 2013 collection of American label J Mendel for an early evening reception at Buckingham Palace.

Oh? But what's this, further down:

Mrs Obama performed a further outfit change right before the Opening Ceremony began. She was seen viewing the dazzling spectacle (above) wearing a lime green blazer over the top of a simple white blouse.

Lime green! Lime green, you say? Unpatriotic!

Speaking of fashion colors and the opening ceremony... why was the Queen of England wearing black gloves? (Photo at the link.) She had this brocaded pink/peach-colored dress and a matching feathery hat, but black gloves. In summer! She also looked incredibly grouchy. I found it hard to enjoy the show, myself, because I was constantly distracted by thoughts about how the Queen must feel about it. All those people, all those flashing lights, and loud music, including Queen blasting "just gotta get out... just gotta get out..." And then those black gloves. It's as if she thought the place was going to be grimy — too dirty for her — and the gloves were a precaution against the attachment of any commonness.

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral gets 4-and-a-half stars on Yelp.

"How can you not give a Church 5-stars - maybe it's just the Catholic guilt in me but if you go to Church, even if only once a year, you should give it 5-stars :-)"

I never noticed Yelp had ratings on churches. Fascinating. I was Googling St. Patrick's Old Cathedral — which is in Little Italy in New York, prompting one Yelpist to say "it's funny when the patron saint of another country is in the wrong ethnic neighborhood." She gives 4-and-a-half stars, and perhaps that half-star deduction is for ethnicity mismatching.

I was Googling on the occasion of Alec Baldwin's wedding, which the Daily Mail has celebrated with an array of photographs of quite a few remarkably unattractive celebrities. Remember when "Baldwin" was slang — in that movie "Clueless" — for a really cute guy: "Okay, okay, so he is kind of a Baldwin." This is no longer apt.

A comment at the Daily Mail: "A bizarre looking lot. And why do churches allow themselves to be used as mere props for nincompoops who only regard them as a backdrop?"

I was Googling to try to get a closer look at the painting above the altar depicting Jesus floating above an open tomb. Ah, here's the lovely website for the cathedral. Here's a recent NYT article about it, noting that the area isn't so much "Little Italy" anymore:

"In recent years, the area has been transformed by the arrival of fancy boutiques, specialty shops, multi-million-dollar apartments and, from [the] perspective [of  Msgr. Donald Sakano], a new generation of souls.

“Now we are surrounded by young people,” Monsignor Sakano said. “It’s a young, vibrant, trendy area.”

Hipster souls... and flaccid celebrity souls... including Woody Allen's soul and Robert Kennedy Jr.'s soul. Souls galore. Just waiting for salvation.

Is "flaccid" the right word or does it make you think only of genitalia? The OED definition is: "Wanting in stiffness, hanging or lying loose or in wrinkles; limber, limp; flabby." That — and the following examples — makes me it is the right word:

1620   T. Venner Via Recta v. 87   The one it maketh flaccide, and the other subiect to putrefaction.
1660   R. Boyle New Exper. Physico-mechanicall iv. 46   The sides of the Bladder grew flaccid.
1705   F. Fuller Medicina Gymnastica 37   Yet are the Muscles not Flaccid, but Tense and Firm.
1751   Johnson Rambler No. 117. ⁋8   The flaccid sides of a football.
1848   Thackeray Bk. Snobs in Wks. IX. 385   His double chin over his flaccid whitey-brown shirt collar.
1848   Thackeray Vanity Fair lxi. 554   The flaccid children within.
1879   J. A. Froude Cæsar xv. 234   His hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid.

My favorite phrase there is "flaccid whitey-brown shirt collar." If only I could write more like Thackeray! There were some flaccid whitey-brown folks at the Baldwin wedding.

But the OED says "flaccid" is "Chiefly of flesh and similar structures: rarely of a person." Rarely. It was a rare occasion. A wedding. A wedding attended by many conspicuously divorced persons... including the groom... a bloated 54-year-old man, a Baldwin, marrying a 28-year-old woman named Hilaria.

In ancient Rome, Hilaria were "festivals celebrated on the vernal equinox to honor Cybele." It's a plural noun, really. Not that many names for individuals are plural, but a young woman may have many dimensions. In marrying a man, however, she is one of the two who become one.

Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

At the House Paint Café...

... you don't have to be superficial.

I'm now getting somewhere on my project of erasing on the 9 defunct Macs...

... that have piled up at home and in the office since 1991 (when I got my first computer with a hard drive). Man, have I been putting off this task. Thanks to everyone who chipped in with tips on the previous post. But no one talked about the new paint colors on the second post.

Here's another shot:

At the Invalid Argument Café...

... we're having a colorful conversation.

"Angelina Jolie has reportedly expressed desire to direct, while 'American Psycho' author Bret Easton Ellis began lobbying to write the screenplay..."

"I’m putting myself out there to write the movie adaptation of 'Fifty Shades of Grey,'" Ellis tweeted. "Hope EL James doesn’t think I’m being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream..."

Everyone's gone mad for sado-masochism and that grisaille billionaire.

Red states and blue states.

A helpful depiction, which appears at the Wikipedia article "Red states and blue states," which I was reading in an effort to determine whether it's true — as I'd long assumed — that Republicans got the color red because if red had been assigned to the more leftward party, it would insinuate Communism. I read the entire "Origins of the color scheme" section, and there's a complicated story going back to 1888. ("Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison used maps that coded blue for the Republicans, the color Cleveland perceived to represent the Union and 'Lincoln's Party,' and red for the Democrats.") Apparently, things have gone back and forth, and the current fixed color assignment dates back to the post-Election Day squabbles of the year 2000:

In the days following the 2000 election, whose outcome was unclear for some time after election day, major media outlets began conforming to the same color scheme because the electoral map was continually in view, and conformity made for easy and instant viewer comprehension.

Ha ha. Love the super-bland Wikipediaese. Whose outcome was unclear for some time after election day... The election results were so confusing, that MSM decided to bestow some clarity upon us. At least we could understand one thing: Blue means Democrat. Red means Republican. And we gripped tight to that childish simplification ever after.

SNL's Darrell Hammond "was a victim of systematic and lengthy brutality."

"My mom did some things which have cost me dearly."

The actor is well known as the funnyman who graced "SNL" to spoof celebrities like Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Sean Connery. He said there was a darker side that played out in his life, before he became known for those roles, and then later on, backstage before he went out to perform....

Hammond says he was medicated almost all of the time he performed on "SNL" each week, but that wasn't all that was happening behind the stage doors.

"There was cutting backstage," he said, adding that one time, he was taken from the studio to a psychiatric ward because of his actions. "In fact, the week that I did the Gore debates, I believe I was taken away in a straitjacket."

Here's an older clip of Hammond explaining how he worked out his impersonations of Bill Clinton and Al Gore and how he thought in terms of color, for example, picturing both Ted Koppel and Dick Cheney as — for some inexplicable reason — "plush blue." (Like this?)

"Are carrots orange for political reasons?"

Possibly!

"How well do you see color?"

Test yourself.

(Via Drawn.)

You can have any color you want as long as it's...

... not black.

"I know Arianna doesn’t like it. But I like taupe."

Obama stands up to his critics in the press.

"Andre Jones and Richard Wise have a 700-gallon trank suspended from the ceiling of their West Village town house apartment."

"The filled tank weighs more than 6,000 pounds and has cost the couple some $200,000 in equipment and service."

How much would it cost to get rid of it? Because that's the calculation I'd do if I were buying that place.

Oh, here's the next picture. Caption:

Mr. Jones, left, and Mr. Wise sitting next to their suspended fish tank. "At night, we sit in the living room and sort of get lost in it, instead of the television set," Mr. Jones said of the tank.

I love the tagged-on  phrase "of the tank." Like there was ambiguity before. You might have thought they got lost in their living room. And I love the implication that this home Sea World makes them superior to peons who watch actual television. Because... why would that be? You can get a big flat screen TV and play a DVD of fish swimming. It looks pretty much like that fish tank these guys have. And you'll have at least $180,000 left to buy 60+ years of cable service.

Then there's this couple, the Wilzigs, who have an aquarium with a lighting device that allows them to choose any of 64 colors to reflect off the colorless fish inside. Posing with his wife on a white settee, Mr. Wilzig said:

"The whole essence of the house was to be push-button color-changing. The apotheosis of that was to take the fish themselves and have them be swimming in whatever color you want."

I was going to say this article should be blogged over at Stuff White People Like, and then I thought about how the Wilzigs, when they had their white friends over, could use their push buttons to make them any color they want. Come on! That would be the apotheosis.

(By the way, Mr. Wilzig looks like a character in one of Eric Bogosian's performance pieces.)

ADDED: "Trank"?

IN THE COMMENTS: Sixty Grit said, "There was a line in BttF2 about 'tranks' and other drug users. Or maybe they spelled it 'tranqs.' Do not know. But I think it is a city thing." Found!

(The police car arrives. The signs outside say "Hilldale - The Address Of Success" but have been altered to say "The Address Of Suckers". The car lands outside a house and the officers open the door.)

Reese: Hilldale. Nothing but a breeding ground for tranqs, lobos and zipheads.

Foley: Yeah, they ought to tear this whole place down.

(The officers press Jennifer's thumb to a panel next to the front door, and it opens.)

Voice: (v.o) Welcome home Jennifer.

(Jennifer is beginning to wake up.)

Jennifer: What?

Reese: You got a little tranked, but I think you can walk.

Well, it makes sense. The fish are presented as tranquilizers. So get a fish tank and get tanked. But that's so lowly. In NYC now, you can get a fish trank and get tranked!

Colors that affected us recently.

There was that acorn that made you want to repaint biggest room in the house...



There was this...



... which made me fantasize that I was a contestant on "Project Runway" and the challenge was to design a dress it inspired...

And this...



... which made me think of the old days when I painted with real paint on canvas. What was that red? Alizarin?

I was asked to explain why I've made so many of my Tea Party photographs black and white.

The subject came up in the comments to this morning's post, which had 3 black and white photographs. Let me post a few more, and then I'll give my answer.















So, what am I doing with black and white? I'll copy my raw musing from the comments at this morning's post:

Why black and white?

I experiment, tweaking each picture in different ways. Sometimes I like what black and white does.

When does that happen?

1. When the color elements are random or distracting or loud or inconsistent with the mood/theme of the picture.

2. When the shapes and forms are good and you want to give them maximum prominence.

3. Sometimes cutting out the color seems to unify everything.

4. Cutting out the color can give the picture a timeless or historical look or a profundity that works.

I'm drawn to black and white in these pictures as a way of eliminating the casual "picnic" feeling and making things seem more serious and significant.

By the way, my Tea Party pictures are notably neutral. I'm not promoting or criticizing these people with my photographs. I'm observing them and presenting them for what they are. I hope you appreciate that.

That's written more roughly than what I put on the front page here generally. I hope you understand.

Here's an interesting comparison between black and white and color: black & white and color. It makes a big difference, doesn't it?