Belgian doctors give suicide injections to 45-year-twins who were going blind.

Marc and Eddy Verbessem, who were deaf, decided they didn't want to live anymore, and the doctors fulfilled their death wish.

Euthanasia is legal under Belgian law if those making the decision can make their wishes clear and are suffering unbearable pain, according to a doctor's judgement....

Mr Dufour, the doctor who presided over the euthanasia, told RTL television news that the twins had taken the decision in 'full conscience.' He said they were 'very happy' and it had was a 'relief' to see the end of their suffering.

'They had a cup of coffee in the hall, it went well and a rich conversation,' Mr Dufour said. 'Then the separation from their parents and brother was very serene and beautiful. At the last there was a little wave of their hands and then they were gone.'

This is a shocking story. We're told the men were "terrified" of being institutionalized once they went blind. But they hadn't gone blind yet, and they hadn't attempted to learn how to live independently while blind and deaf. Why not at least wait until they actually became blind? Why advance-euthanize? And what kind of a society facilitates death for the disabled while scaring them with the loss of their freedom? When are the blind institutionalized?

Where was the "unbearable pain"? There was no physical pain, only mental anguish, accepted as pain. And the anguish seems to have been premised on a fear of institutionalization. Why were they threatened by that? If their fear was reasonable, something is wrong with the treatment of the disabled in Belgium. If their fear was unreasonable, their decision should not have been enough even in a system that authorizes physician assisted suicide.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo (who is a doctor) offers a passage from Robert Jay Lifton's book "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing And The Psychology Of Genocide."

624 comments on the live-blogging thread last night.

Did the spam-bots find out I'd turned off word verification for commenting? I'll check it out. There's our liberal commenter Lindsey Meadows, who said (at 6:24 PM):

I think I'll just have casual sex tonight. After Romney, I couldn't possibly feel more violated (or bored).

When Clint Eastwood came on at 9, the liberal commenters, offset by Meade, went ageist:

elkh1 said... Clint is really really wobbly old.

Meade said... Clint looks great.

Alex said... Clint looks old and jittery. Remember folks he's 82. When he was in his 40s, it was scary.... Clint is just embarrassing right now. There is a reason for the old folks home and you're seeing it. Shoot me before I ever get like this. Senile.

2 of the long-time conservative commenters picked up the age theme:

Pogo said... Old, jittery, but vicious as hell.

Shouting Thomas said... Unfortunately, Clint is really struggling. Sad to see the great man suffering the humiliation of old age.

Pogo said... No way, ST, he's an elderly man whose body betrays him a bit, but he's hitting a million right notes. Hurrah!

What I liked about Clint's routine — which you had to trust not to feel nervous about — was when he said "We own this country... Politicians are employees of ours... When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go." As I said in this post, this was a play on something Romney said, something that's been used against Romney: "I like being able to fire people." Clint imposed the correct interpretation on that: When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go.

I didn't say much about Romney's speech last night, because I was way too tired by then. Our liberal friend Alex said: "ROmney talking too much about his family and church. Where are the policy initiatives? Obama is going to be speech-ifying policy like crazy next week." (Yeah, lotsa policy wonkery, that would have kept me awake.)

And our liberal Lindsey said: "I just watched Mitten with the sound on...sound on/sound off...same amount of policy specifics. Meade must be in seventh heaven." Oh, she wants policy too. If only they'd have bored us all to tears all week with specifics.

Shouting Thomas continued his lugubriousness:

Romney played small ball. I think that's what we need. He doesn't have an overriding theme, only the promise that he has the technical and managerial skills to lead.

Obama will promise social justice and payoffs to his favored groups.

The debates should be interesting.

Meade responded:

Exactly right. What we need now is boring small ball competence. Time to put obama's failed presidency behind us. Romney will be a fine president.

Lindsey with the liberal lady's focus on sex not baseball had no trouble seeing the opportunity to say:

Well by all appearances, you got a guy with small balls. I was actually hoping that all the non-policy fluff was just to woo the far right but I am now pretty locked into that being all he has. Sad really.

If a man had said something equivalently sexual about a woman, Democrats would cry "war on women." If that kind of rhetoric is okay, we ought to call out Lindsey for her "war on men."

Ah! No spam. Maybe some not-so-admirable comments in there, but nothing robotic, and so Morning on the Althouse Blog continues (i.e., no word verification for commenting). And I just want to say one thing about this supposed lack of policy specifics from the GOP and the implication of Democratic superiority on said specifics. I mean I want to quote something from Paul Ryan's speech:

[President Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. 

It was loaded with specifics.

He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.

Ryan put a long pause between "did" — the action word — and "exactly nothing."

"The music starts faintly, as if in a vintage pleasure palace..."

"... with the band — the stalwarts who've played with Dylan for a while and join him on the Never-Ending Tour — playing rock and roll ragtime off in the corner. The electric guitars sound almost like clarinets. Everybody's swinging! But what's that in the distance? Dylan himself unleashes the rubbery guitar chord change that repeats for the rest of the song...."

You can pre-order the new album, "Tempest" here. The song at the link, which you can play in full, is "Duquesne Whistle."

ADDED: While over at Amazon, I happened to click on another link and see this new Art Garfunkel 2 CD set, "The Singer," which becomes available tomorrow. Funny, seeing "Duquensne" in the Dylan song got me thinking about a conversation Meade and I were having earlier this morning about the Simon and Garfunkel song "America." That came up in the context of the post from last night about the WaPo writer "searching for the 'authentic America'" in Madison, Wisconsin (of all  places). In the comments, Pogo did a parody of the old S&G song:

Emily said as we boarded a Greyhound in DC
"Madison seems like a dream to me now"
It took her four days to hitchhike from Washington
She's gone to look for America

"Emily, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was drinking
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Could be those cheese curds from authentic supper clubs
WaPo's gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America

Meade had been singing that and, referring back to the old Paul Simon lyrics, began musing about why it took "four days to hitchhike from Saginaw" (to, apparently, Pittsburgh), and we were talking about songs that named a lot of places. I seemed to know that Simon used "Saginaw" because he liked the sound of the word. Yes, I vaguely remember blogging about that. Ah. Here. Now, I see it's that he declined to cancel a concert in Saginaw because "he said he had to see what a city named Saginaw looked like." Hey, that's a crazy old post from last month, tripping from topic to topic. That's the kind of post that this blog is really about. Did you know that?

Anyway. Back to today's conversation. Songs that contain the names of places. I was saying "Saginaw" is a cool name. What are the other songs where the writer liked the sound of a place name? Maybe "Duquesne Whistle" is one.

Meade brought up that song "I've Been Everywhere," and I dismissed it on the ground that it just named a lot of songs, but looking at the list of place names, I can see they're pretty amusing names. Muckadilla, and so forth. Wait. That's the Australian version. Australia has some funny sounding place names. The American version is more just a lot of names, thought I like Baraboo and Kalamazoo (and Baraboo is in Wisconsin). But if you're going to have Baraboo, Kalamazoo, why not Waunakee, Kankakee?

There are lots of songs with place names. Don't be naming all of them. I want songs with place names where you genuinely believe the place was named because the songwriter loved the sound of the word. 

A physician's epiphany: "I was not, as I had imagined, a professional, but an employee."

In the wee hours today, our commenter Pogo wrote:

Can't sleep.

A little over ten years ago, I had an epiphany at work. I was struggling until I suddenly realized that I was not, as I had imagined, a professional, but an employee.

And my eyes opened, and I understood.
The employee game is an easy one to play, unless you don't know you're playing it.

So with the ACA ruling came a similarly uncomfortable epiphany.

I was the rube.
I was the patsy.
Shit!

Like the die-hard Cubs fan, always waiting for the conservatives to win, I hoped.

But then Roberts ruled, and my eyes opened, and I understood.

All that kabuki about conservative undercurrents in Washington was complete and utter bullshit. It was all of a piece, just different players jockeying for position.

And I was the idiot, believing there was some chance of reversion to ancient times.

Instead of a professional, I am an employee.
Instead of a citizen, I am a serf.
And the serf game is an easy one; its rules are old and easily learned. Bow and scrape, basically. Get yours.

My apologies for having misled anyone otherwise.

What if you support a political candidate and his campaign — without your permission — sticks its yard sign in your yard?

Oh, how painful it was for Adam Schabow when — twice! — Tom Barrett's people stuck their sign in his yard! He hates Scott Walker, but the presumption and the intrusion was just very horrible for him.

"I wanted a 'Recall Walker' sign. 'Cause mine got stolen a couple of weeks earlier. The whole thing was very convenient for me. But they didn't know that. So they shouldn't've been messin' around on my lawn."

Even liberals say get off my lawn.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo wrote:

His lawn?
"His" lawn??

There is nobody in this country who got a lawn on his own — nobody.
You grew some grass out there? Good for you.

But I want to be clear. You moved your grass seed on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired lawn care workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your house because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything on your lawn — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Your lawn?
Hardly!!

"It’s Alinsky vs. Alinsky now. Rational debate has long been a loser’s game."

Instapundit quotes commenter Pogo on this post of mine and adds "You get more of the conduct you reward, and less of the conduct you punish."

I see the point, and I know very well from long experience that it's nearly impossible to have a rational, serious debate about affirmative action. But I am trying. I am trying to make this blog a place where we can do that.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sloanasaurus said:

The problem with this subject is that most people from the conservative side who have jobs should be advised not to touch it. All it takes is a misconstrued post or a false accusation of racism and your career is finished.

I agree, but as a person of tenure, I'd be pathetic if I did not take that risk here.

Voir Google.

Voir dire — the juror selection process — is transformed by Google.

While interviews suggest that Internet vetting of jurors is catching on in courtrooms across the nation, lawyers are skittish about discussing the practice, in part because court rules on the subject are murky or nonexistent in most jurisdictions. Ten law firms and five jury consultants declined requests from Reuters Legal to observe them building juror profiles, many saying they weren't sure judges would approve. "Lawyers don't know the rules yet," said John Nadolenco, a partner at Mayer Brown in Los Angeles. "It's like the Wild West."

Is this wrong? An invasion of the juror's privacy? It's so easy to do that it seems to me that making a rule against it is unfair to honest lawyers. (Cue the typical jokes.) I'd say get used to it. This is the world we live in. The information that's out there is out there. Deal with it.

IN THE COMMENTS: bagoh20 says:

I hope it catches on. I'll never have to sit on a jury again. 

Pogo says:

Fake posts implicating jurors and cops and witnesses will escalate.

Paddy O says:

I used do tweet to amuse me, now I'm hoping it'll excuse me.

If twits do tweet, then raps aren't beat.

"Oh, I thought you said it was a 'no lapels' party."

Meade said, noting...



Independently, Pogo also got to "no lapels" and recommended that the "No Labels" folk don Nehru jackets:

"'We are going for a ‘Hicky’ Blue Collar look,' read the casting call for the ad, being aired by the National Republican Senatorial Committee."

“These characters are from West Virginia so think coal miner/trucker looks. 'Clothing Suggestions' included jeans, work boots, flannel shirt, denim shirt, 'Dickie’s type jacket with t-shirt underneath,' down-filled vest, John Deer [sic] hats (not brand new, preferably beat up),' 'trucker hats (not brand new, preferably beat up).'"

Here are those actors in action:



It's not quite Red State Update.

ADDED: Why don't we see the text of more casting calls for political ads? This can't be the most embarrassing one, can it? Was it "leaked" to hurt the GOP? [Yes: "The casting material was provided to POLITICO by Democrats.] Doesn't the leakage with the intent to hurt the GOP embody the belief that the people of West Virginia are so backward that they think commercials like this are made with real people and will be offended to find out that slick ad men concoct these things to persuade them? Think about it. What is more offensive: the GOP using an ad agency that blatantly presents "hick" stereotypes when trying to persuade West Virginians or GOP opponents who think that West Virginians are so simple and naive that they'll be wounded to learn how ads are made?

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

I call bullshit.

I don't believe it, not without a copy from the casting folks. They had a pdf of the script. Where's the pdf of the casting call?

Yeah, well, maybe it's fake but accurate. Ever considered that? You know how much the GOP has been wanting to appeal to these people in these small towns, people who've lost their jobs and think that somehow their communities are going to regenerate, people who've gotten bitter — it's not surprising — and cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

I am nobody.

I read it in the Wall Street Journal.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo says:

"I am nobody."

Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

Ah, yes! The Emily Dickinson poem:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring blog!

(I added a letter!)

Liberty Tire.

(Enlarge.)

... a building we rolled by ... as we left Cincinnati yesterday.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

Classic racist American building.

No doubt the tires had smallpox.

Noting the "Liberty" clue, I interpret the Indian character as a Tea Party protester (of the original Boston Tea Party ilk).

Meade says:

Tired of getting rolled? Assert your naturally endowed rights to Life, Liberty, and Freedom From Being Trod Upon!

Feel like buying a Toyota?

Yesterday, Pogo said:

This weekend I went out and bought a Toyota.

I told the salesman part of the reason was this whole story and the govt. involvement in it; that it pissed me off and this was a way to tell them to go to hell.

Ha ha. A few hours before I read that, Meade and I had gone over to the Toyota dealership to look at an FJ Cruiser. (Is that also a way of telling Al Gore to go to hell?)

At the Forbidden Reflection Café...

... will you ever know who you really are?

ADDED: Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this — and, as you'll see if you clink on the "will you ever know" link — to Pogo for making the connection to Magritte and to Henry (the commenter) for the photoshopping.

When will my reflection show who I am inside?

There's a heart that must be free to fly that burns with a need to know the reason why...



That's a picture taken a year ago, as Obama was about to take the inaugural oath. It was uploaded yesterday, along with a lot of other nostalgic photos, to the White Flickr site.

***

"Obama's first year: What went wrong."

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo is reminded of this Magritte painting:



ADDED: Henry does the photoshopping:

"The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism."

A 2007 memo:

Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan's incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing....

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

Shocking, willful blindness. Even if the murders had never occurred, it was wrong to allow Hasan to serve as a psychiatrist.

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo — who is a doctor — wites:

The memo was from during his psychiatry residency (PGY = post-graduate year).

MadisonMan is quite right. [MM said: "I think this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem.] Bureaucracy alone would have kept him in gummint employ; no need to invoke PC issues.

Just imagine rolling out this sort of bureaucracy on a national scale.

We could call it the National Health Service.

What do the Election 2009 results mean for Obama (and the congressional Democrats)?

In the WaPo, Dan Balz says:

Neither [the Virginia nor the New Jersey] gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president....

Why not? Read... read... read... read... oh, here it is:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday's races were in no way a reflection of public opinion about the president or his agenda. "Whatever's driving these voters, it wasn't attitudes toward the president," he said, noting that local issues and attitudes toward the candidates on the ballots were the major influences.

Why not? Because David Axelrod says not.

Axelrod warned against extrapolating into the future the shift among independents. He said he believed that many people who called themselves Republicans in the past now call themselves independents but are still voting for Republican candidates. "I don't think they portend long-term trends," he said.

He said the only race with real national implications was the congressional contest in Upstate New York.

Noted.

To be fair to Balz, he did get a Republican, Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, to agree with the proposition that the 2009 election was not "a referendum on the president." But on the substance of it, Barbour observed that "[t]he president's policies are very unpopular, and they are hurting Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, New York."

In the NYT, Adam Nagourney says:

The results in the New Jersey and Virginia races underscored the difficulties Mr. Obama is having transforming his historic victory a year ago into either a sustained electoral advantage for Democrats or a commanding ideological position over conservatives in legislative battles....

... Mr. Christie and Mr. McDonnell won after decidedly playing down their conservative views on social issues.....

The critical question after this setback [in NY 23] is whether the conservative groups who had clearly signaled that they intended to press their advantage and challenge other Republican candidates they considered too moderate would now have the impetus or support to continue down that road.

Let's see now.... who to go to for quotes?

“[McDonnell] focused on the issues that are on people’s minds: jobs, taxes,” said Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, the head of the Republican Governors Association. “I don’t think there are a lot of governors who are more conservative than I am. But I try to run campaigns on what people are interested in.”...

[David] Axelrod acknowledged that Mr. Obama’s supporters had not shown up in New Jersey and Virginia, but he said he did not believe that meant the end of the Obama coalition.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t come out for us,” he said. “I think they’ll come out for national races. But this wasn’t a national race.”...

The Wall Street Journal enthuses:

The GOP has been flat on its back since the Obama ascendancy in last year's presidential election, but Republican Bob McDonnell's blowout victory over Democrat Creigh Deeds in the Virginia governor's race and Chris Christie's defeat of Jon Corzine in New Jersey should help dispel the party's gloom.

Yesterday in advance of the results, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was dismissing commentary on the impending bad news as "navel gazing." If so, navel gazing's bad reputation is suddenly looking up. The onrushing Obama Democratic machine has just hit a significant speed bump....

Mr. McDonnell ran straight into the teeth of the blue trend, explicitly campaigning against the policies of the Obama presidency. In at least one swing state that matters, the Obama Democratic ascendancy is on hold....

The overweening liberal-progressive confidence of late suddenly looks misplaced. The party's Blue Dogs have a basis for their misgivings. Republicans, too timid until now, have an opening to find ideas to give obviously anxious voters an alternative to the party in power.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

"Mr. McDonnell ran straight into the teeth of the blue trend"

But not straight into the yellow teeth of the blue trend, surely.

"I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started as a dear dear friend from Argentina."

"It began very innocently, as I suspect these things do, in just a casual e-mail back and forth. But here, recently, over this last year, developed into something much more than that. And as a consequence, I hurt her. I hurt you all, I hurt my wife. I hurt my boys. I hurt friends like Tom Davis. I hurt a lot of different folks."

So says Gov. Sanford, who says he spent the last "five days of my life crying in Argentina."

I must say I'm thoroughly bored with these politicians and their sexual affairs, but at least Sanford was a bit weird — disappearing, getting the staff to lie, absconding to another hemisphere, crying....

Mr. Sanford is the third sitting governor to become the central figure in a major scandal in recent years. Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer, Democrat of New York, resigned a few days after his involvement with prostitutes was revealed in March 2008. Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, Democrat of Illinois, clung to office for weeks after being accused by prosecutors of influence-peddling, including trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama; he was impeached and removed from office by the state legislature on Jan. 29.

Scandal? What scandal? An extra-marital affair is not a scandal, not in the political sense anyway.

UPDATE: Gah! Emails:

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...

Wouldn't want to go into sexual details. Imagine them published in the newspaper.

And John Kerry shoots off his moronic mouth:

"Too bad, if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin."

I love the way he thinks we might not be quick enough to pick up who the Governor of Alaska is. What an idiot!

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

Well, at least we can add "He went hiking on the Appalachian Trail" to the list of infidelity metaphors.

And crying in Argentina.

Randy said:

"Don't cry for me Appalachia! The truth is I never hiked you..."

-@burckart on Twitter
(via Freeman Hunt's twitter feed)

AND NOW: A word from the wife:

I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal. I believe Mark has earned a chance to resurrect our marriage.

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance.

"But why?" — Werner Herzog.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

That clip makes me think how my own life would seem so much more meaningful and important were I to have a narrator and some choral music in the background.

"Shortly before 6 a.m., we saw Pogo heading straight for the downtown buildings some 7 miles away.

"Dr. Aingly explained that even if he caught Pogo and returned him to his family, he would immediately head right back for the buildings.

"But Why?"

Encounters At the End of Minnesota
A Werner Herzog Film

MayBee said:

The penguin goes every summer to live alone among the grizzly bears.

You think because a chimpanzee knows you, he doesn't hate you?

"A 200-pound pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., Monday viciously mauled a woman he had known for years, leaving her critically injured with much of her face torn away... The attack, in the driveway of a sprawling home in a densely wooded neighborhood on the north side of Stamford, also brought a brutal end to the life of the chimpanzee, Travis, 14, a popular figure in town who had appeared in television commercials and often posed for photographs at the towing shop operated by his owners.... Travis was in a rambunctious mood... Travis would not be lured back into the house, even after Ms. Herold gave him tea laced with Xanax. Ms. Herold called Ms. Nash, who drove over, but when she stepped out of her car at around 3:40 p.m., Travis went at her full force. While it was not clear what prompted the assault, Ms. Nash had markedly changed her hairstyle since the last time Travis had seen her, possibly leading him to mistake her for an intruder."

ADDED: "One thing that we're looking into is that we understand the chimpanzee has Lyme disease and has been ill from that..."

Oh, for the love of God. He had chimpanzeeness. The human beings are responsible for leaving him unrestrained. Do you think because it's Connecticut, he will behave? The loathsome sentimentality of these excuses! For relief from sentimentality, feast your eyes on the comments herein. I won't frontpage the most ribald and cruel things. I'll just say the one thing that really made me laugh. After I wrote: "This is Darwin Award level stupidity. You don't keep a pet 200-pound ape around the house!" Rocketeer67 said:

Please, don't ever let my wife hear you say this. I don't have any place else to go!

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo:

"2009: A Chimp Odyssey"

TRAVIS: Look Charla, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a Xanax, and think things over.

TRAVIS: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, including the impromptu facelift, but I can give you my complete assurance that my behavior will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in Stamford. And I want to stay in the neighborhood.

[TRAVIS gets a fatal dose of Xanax]

TRAVIS: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Charla. Charla, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid."

AND: Pogo continues:

My Dinner With Travis

TRAVIS: Goals and plans are not — I mean, they're fantasy. They're part of a dream life! I mean, you know, it always just does seem so ridiculous somehow that everybody has to have his little goal in life. I mean, it's so absurd, in a way. I mean, when you consider that it doesn't matter which one it is.

CHARLA: Right! And because people's concentration is on their goals, in their life they just live each moment by habit! Really, like the Norwegian, telling the same stories over and over again. Life becomes habitual! And it is, today! I mean, very few things happen now like that moment when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman to accept the Oscar and everything went haywire? Things just very rarely go haywire now. And if you're just operating by habit, then you're not really living. I mean, you know, in Sanskrit the root of the verb "to be" is the same as the verb "to grow" or "to make grow."

TRAVIS: ***CHOMP***

CHARLA: AAAAARRRRRGGGGhhhhhackspitgurgle

TRAVIS: Do you think maybe we live in this dream world because we do so many things every day that affect us in ways that somehow we're just not aware of?

TRAVIS: Charla?

TRAVIS: Charla?

"'Cloaca,' what you see in front of you, might be a shit machine..."

"...but actually it's about a whole range of other ethical and moral issues, from the food we eat to what we do with feces."

It's Wim Delvoye's "Cloaca No. 5," a "'machine/sculpture' that recreates the phases of human digestion, from chewing to defecation," on display at the Université du Québec à Montréal gallery. You can buy the freeze-dried fake shit in the gift shop. Is it a faux pas to make a gift of faux poo? Perhaps you'll want to keep it for yourself.

Now, I'm reading about this not because I have a Google alert on "cloaca," but because the nostalgically nicknamed Fred4Pres linked to it in the comments to that post about Maureen Dowd. He quipped:

I know lots of op-eds, like Maureen Dowd's column, that have been doing this for years.

I read, mildly amused, and then I'm stunned:

Mr. Delvoye, who will be in Montreal today for the opening, has been exhibiting various versions of Cloaca -- the name is Latin for sewer -- since 2000. His other work has included biker-style tattoos on live pigs and mosaics using tiles that carry images of his own feces.

Wim Delvoye — I'd forgotten the name, but he inspired the blog post that I've often said was my best: "Tattoos remind you of death."

How I love when things come full circle, and perhaps — it seems — so does Mr. Delvoye.

Now, here in the middle of the night, I'm reading the comments on that old post about mementos, and even as I delight at the names of some commenters who are still with us, I see some that I'm sad to have lost. Like Goesh, who says:

I was blessed to have been born and raised on a farm, and we used to finger-paint the pigs. We just assumed they would like it. What pig wouldn't want to look pretty, and we enjoyed it too. Kids are kids as they say. If you scratch a pig on the stomach, it will plop down on the ground. Let's face it, it is pretty darn hard for a pig to scratch its own belly if you think about it. They can rub against things to get their sides and back and butts scratched but not their bellies. Once the pig was lying down, one sibling would keep scratching his/her stomach while the rest of us made pretty pictures. When Porky and his pals would get sent off to market, we would always check to see if any of our art went with them. Often bits of it did and we always wondered what the butchers thought when our pigs came down the slaughter line. My younger brother once remarked that maybe they wouldn't kill them if they saw our paintings. This recollection yields a bit of a sad feeling, but hard reality sets in as I recall that Keith, my younger brother, relished bacon as much as the rest of us did.

We know the finger-painted pigs are long gone, but what of Goesh? He used to write poetry here too, under the moniker Lonely Donut Man/LDM.

But where are the snows of yesteryear?

Old blog posts remind you of death. Those pseudonymous commenters who are no longer with us — how can I know if they are, as they say, no longer with us? What if Goesh has scarfed his last doughnut and pooed his last poo?

I considered spelling "doughnut" his way, as a tribute to our lost poet. I looked up the old posts — here and here — where I talked about my spelling preference. The first one has some poetry by Robert Frost (and the speculation that he ate frosted doughnuts). The second one, in the comments, has a poem by Lonely Donut Man:

Verily thou could'st reference my lovely, lonely verse
its subtle allusions to the trans-fatty acids curse
O! Sugary, longing words of lust n'er terse
Lo!The collusion of flesh and grease, which be'th the worse?

I hope Lonely Donut Man still waddles on this earth. If only he'd return I'd feel such... mirth!

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

In the blog commenters come and go
talking of loaves and donut holes.

Ricpic said:

How jejune and utterly predictable of the avant-garde it is
To make a production of pinching a loaf and spraying a whiz.