Purchase of the day.

From the February 14, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

"Bats - Creatures of the Night" (All Aboard Reading: Level 2: Grades 1-3) [Paperback] Joyce Milton (Author) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $0.60)


(image from Wikimedia Commons)

... and 55 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — that all together put a lovely smile on the blogger's beautiful face.  Many thanks!

"See No Evil, Say No Evil, Hear No Evil."

Embryonic bat version.

Halloween greetings.

(Animation of Meade's photo by Chip Ahoy.)

"Windmills to shut at night following demise of rare bat."

It's so sad when goodnesses collide.

Can't we just make bats evil again? So the windmills can save us?

Bat on a Plane...

... a plane leaving Madison.

What Madisonian vampire do you think was trying to light out of here on recall evening?

You can be a great lawyer when the judge doesn't have access to the case law.

"A BAT who fell upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded to be spared his life. The Weasel refused, saying that he was by nature the enemy of all birds. The Bat assured him that he was not a bird, but a mouse, and thus was set free. Shortly afterwards the Bat again fell to the ground and was caught by another Weasel, whom he likewise entreated not to eat him. The Weasel said that he had a special hostility to mice. The Bat assured him that he was not a mouse, but a bird, and thus a second time escaped."

That's an Aesop fable. The official moral is: "It is wise to turn circumstances to good account."

A psychologist at University College Cork is subjected to a "a 2-year period of intensive monitoring and counselling after discussing a scientific paper with a colleague."

The paper was titled "Fellatio in fruit bats prolongs copulation time," and Dylan Evans is accused of sexual harassment.

"There was not a shred of a sign of offence taken at the time," Evans says. "She asked for a copy of the article."

A week later he got a letter informing him that he was being accused of sexual harassment. Evans says the whole case is "utterly bizarre". The complainant's side of the argument is that she was "hurt and disgusted", and asked Evans to leave a copy of the paper with her as way of cutting short the meeting.

Sports headlines toy with the brains of nonfans.

I've long been annoyed by the NYT blog called "Bats." I was bitten by a bat once and had to get rabies shots. And I've had other run-ins with the leathery-winged fiends. Actually, I love them when they are outside, eating mosquitoes and so forth. I might like reading a blog about bats. But Bats is not about bats. It's about baseball. (Maybe if I cared about baseball, I'd still hate the blog title "Bats," either because it disrespects pitchers or because I would still think it was about bats.)

Now, today, The Washington Post has a front-page teaser: "Do Juicers Belong in the Hall of Fame?" And I'm thinking, so there's an Appliances Hall of Fame? Where is it? What was the first inductee? Refrigerator! I'll bet it's refrigerator! But I click to the article —which is (obscurely) re-titled "Do Juicers Belong in Canton?" — and see that it's about drug users and the Baseball Football Hall of Fame. Oh, I don't know. But if there's an Appliances Hall of Fame, it's scraping to low too let in the juicers.

"Is the Mothers of Invention’s exuberant 'Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance' a song of joy or a song of comfort?"

"Is Meat Loaf’s 'Bat Out of Hell' a love song, or does its cautionary motorcycle-crash conclusion make it a song of knowledge?"

Questioning Daniel J. Levitin's theory that there are 6 kinds of songs. The types are: songs of friendship, songs of joy, songs of comfort, songs of knowledge, religious songs and love songs.

What about songs of mockery, which is how I always heard "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance"?

"When I was driving to work I felt a slight vibration but I thought it was just my mobile phone in my jacket pocket."

AHHHHHHHHH! OH! A woman realizes that odd feeling she's had in her bra all day is a.... bat!

***

I did not create the "bats" tag for this post. I have a history with bats.... that added some real dimension to this story for me.

UPDATE: The young woman milks her 15 minutes of fame.

Madison panorama.

Bat, man, man.

Stone carvings in Brooklyn Heights.

Bat trouble chez Althouse.

That hits a little too close to home.

"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service.... I was punished for political reasons."

"Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different." LSD folkhero Owsley speaks. More:

"I never set out to change the world," he rasps in recalling his early manufacture of LSD. "I only set out to make sure I was taking something (that) I knew what it was. And it's hard to make a little. And my friends all wanted to know what they were taking, too. Of course, my friends expanded very rapidly."

By conservative estimates, Bear Research Group made more than 1.25 million doses of LSD between 1965 and 1967, essentially seeding the entire modern psychedelic movement....

He found the recipe for making LSD in the Journal of Organic Chemistry at the UC Berkeley library.

So some library nerd started it all!

Bear [AKA Augustus Owsley Stanley III] has always lived in a quite particular world. "He can be very anal retentive, on a certain level, on a genius level," says Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. "I've seen him send his eggs back three times at Howard Johnson's."

His all-meat diet is a well-known example. When he was younger, Bear read about the Eskimos eating only fish and meat and became convinced that humans are meant to be exclusively carnivorous. The members of the Grateful Dead remember living with Bear for several months in 1966 in Los Angeles, where the refrigerator contained only bottles of milk and a slab of steak, meat they fried and ate straight out of the pan. His heart attack several years ago had nothing to do with his strict regimen, according to Bear, but more likely the result of some poisonous broccoli his mother made him eat as a youth.

He's meticulous about what he ingests. On a genius level.

As a sound mixer, Bear holds equally strict viewpoints, insisting that the most effective rock concert systems should have only a single source of sound, his argument quickly veering into the realm of psycho-acoustics.

"The PA can only be in one spot," he says. "All the sounds have to come from a single place because the human brain is carrying around the most sophisticated sound processing of any computer or living creature. It equals the bats that fly by echo. It equals the dolphins. It equals the owls that hunt at night without any daylight at all. It is a superb system for locating and separating one sound from everything else."

I love reason. Especially, on the genius level. I may not understand it, but I like the way it emanates from a single point. Helps me keep my bearings. It's just one guy saying things like that.

Bear left Northern California in the early '80s, convinced that a natural disaster was imminent.

He predicted at the time that global warming would lead to a six-week-long ultra-cyclone that could cover the Northern Hemisphere with a new ice age. Determining that the tropical northern side of Australia would be the most likely region to survive, Bear made a beeline for Queensland and says he felt at home the moment he set foot on the new continent.

"I might be right about the ice age thing," he allows. "I might be wrong."

He might be wrong.

"There will always be a tomorrow, whether on this Earth or not."

Says Jeanna Giese, the Wisconsin girl who survived rabies. She just went to the prom and graduated from high school.

On Sept. 12, 2004, the then-15-year-old was bitten by a bat after picking it up by its wings inside St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fond du Lac....

More than a month later, Giese was admitted to Children's Hospital with a fever of 102 degrees, double vision, slurred speech and jerking in her left arm.....

In the fall, she will be a freshman at Marian College, where she plans to major in biology with an emphasis on zoology. Her goal is to work with large cats at a zoo.

Giese says the bat bite has only strengthened her desire to work with animals, which she does daily with her own pets - Pepper the rabbit, pheasants Chicken and Duckie, dogs Maggie and Peanut. If she has her way, she'll soon have a goat and baby duck.

Beautiful. Great perspective. She hasn't turned against the animals (or, I assume, from the church).

"American Idol" -- the winner is (I hear) announced... and the theme is: cruelty.

"But I'm only human..." Did everyone in America crack up simultaneously when Phil sang that line in the top-6-guys rendition of the Smokey Robinson song "Ooh, Baby, Baby"? It had to be a cruel trick to assign that line to him, after all the snarking about him looking like Bat Boy/Nosferatu. Hey, Smokey's here! I love him. I saw him in person one time, in one of those Las Vegas performances. It was nice seeing Sanjaya again. Nice seeing Chris Sligh too. Inspired me to start blogging.

The show so far: Jordin and Blake sang a Beatles song ("When I Saw Her Standing There"), No Doubt, Kelly Clarkson, and a horrible "Best Presentation" award that went to a kooky fat lady who -- in keeping with tonight's cruelty theme -- tried to crush Ryan to death.

Now, Ryan acknowledges that people are pissed that last night Blake got cheated out of the chance to beat-box, which is what he does best. They bring out Blake with -- we're told he's legendary -- Doug E. Fresh to do a big beat-box number together, and he shows off nicely. And it's more than impressive, it's genuinely entertaining, unlike nearly everything else on this damned show.

They give a vocalist award to a bad singer, and then they ask him to sing "Silent Night," which he sings with the line "All is prom..."

Now the top 6 "girls" do "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and Gladys Knight comes out and joins them. This must be fun for Jordin, who totally knows she won. In fact, I think Blake had a lot of fun in that beat-box number because he didn't have to worry about the possibility of winning. It's really cool to see Gladys with LaKisha and Melinda singing "Midnight Train to Georgia."

Tony Bennett sings "For Once in My Life." We see Paula -- the show's embodiment of all womanly emotion -- swaying ecstatically. But guys love Tony too. In the audience, we see Justin Guarini and Smokey Robinson, beaming nuttily.

A best duo award. Among the nominees, Simon and Ryan, and they have a montage of all the rather lame humor about whether they might be a gay couple. The award goes, quite rightly, to Jonathan and Kenneth, two young men who seem perhaps mentally disabled. Funning with them was deemed by some to be cruel, and maybe they'll think it's cruel to bring them back and give them an award, but who are you to say they weren't into it and aren't having a great time? Ryan asks Kenneth how he felt about Simon's insult -- "bush baby" -- and he says at first he was hurt, but he's gotten famous over it, so he forgives him. Fame conquers all. He says, "Lighten up. I have." Hear that America? But that doesn't me you can all go out and mock the disabled, because you don't have fame to bestow in exchange. They display a picture of a bush baby, and it really does look like Kenneth. "I'm just being honest" is one of Simon's favorite sayings.

Ryan awards Jordin and Blake the keys to new Mustangs and Blake does a Borat imitation: "High five! I like that!"

TiVo'd past: Carrie Underwood, doddering, blabbing Clive Davis, African children's choir. And now, a special tribute to Sanjaya. He performs with Joe Perry (for some reason). "You Really Got Me." Crying girl is in the audience.

TiVo'd past: Taylor Hicks. Next: Jordin sings with Ruben Studdard. Next: Bette Midler???? Yikes! "Wind Beneath My Wings." Well, that expresses the "American Idol" aesthetic. Ugh! Who canceled and left her in this spot?

Hmmm.... another Beatle thing: a tribute to "Sgt. Pepper." (Must mean next season will have a Beatles show or two.) It's Joe Perry playing guitar and Kelly Clarkson singing the title song... quite rousingly. Then, Taylor Hicks doing "Day in the Life." Carrie does "She's Leaving Home." The first two are very nicely down. Carrie kind of scares me though. Makes me want to run away from home myself. I suddenly realize Paul should be there, like Gladys and Smokey. Ruben sings "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." There's a group sing of "A Little Help from My Friends." I get ALL excited over the impendingness of Paul, and Paul never arrives. So, I guess Paul canceled, which is why we got Bette.

Something truly screwed up happened here!

Tons of commercials, and we're getting perilously close to the end of the TiVo recording, despite the added on 3 minutes. Here they are. Ryan blabs about how many votes there were. And the recording ends.

So, great. 2 hours, and I didn't get to see the few seconds that matter. As if I don't know Jordin won. Well, I said the theme was cruelty. Paul wasn't there. Bette Midler was. The TiVo misses it.... grrrrrrrrrrr......

ADDED: A distant saying from the past reasserts itself: Paul is dead. If he's not, I'm sergeantly pissed.

"American Idol" -- the "most shocking" result ever.

It's a two hour show tonight, but it's helping poor people, if you call up and make a donation. There are a lot of extra celebrities to keep you entertained... and to tell you to call up. But they also tantalize us with the news -- delivered by Ryan Seacrest -- that tonight's results are the "most shocking" ever, in all the seasons of the show. So what could that be? More shocking than Tamyra Gray going out in fourth place? Here's what I'm guessing, and I'm going to be pissed if it's true. I think they are going to say it was somehow a tie and no one is leaving tonight. Maybe two will go next week. Or that two are leaving tonight. Because I don't see how any one person leaving could be the most shocking thing ever. But they may think it is so if the loser tonight is Melinda Doolittle. And that definitely could happen. Checking "DialIdol," I know everyone is really close.

As for the charity event, how painful to see the incredibly rich Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell commiserating with a 12-year-old African boy who breaks down in tears over his dead parents. They present him as a hero for being the father of the house in a hovel in a shantytown the size of Central Park with over a million people, many of them parentless children. They are using the boy to encourage the audience to give money, but it just seems so crazy to me that the two millionaires won't just hand the boy the amount of money it would take to rescue him and his sister. Maybe they did when the cameras were gone.

MORE: But Melinda is safe. And so is Blake (my favorite). And Phil (AKA Bat Boy). And LaKisha. So it's either Chris or Jordin. But the only shocking result could be: Jordin!

Anyway, there are two weird pairings. We see Kelly Clarkson and Jeff Beck. Jeff Beck! Jeff Beck! Kelly is brilliant, as expected, but: Jeff Beck! What can I say? I'm very touched to see Jeff Beck. Then we get an Elvis impersonator and Celine Dion. Whatever.

YET MORE: Oh, no, it's Madonna, asking us to save a life by giving money. I want to know how much she gave. Because this is a PR opportunity for her. She's showing she cares. But she's fabulously rich. How much did she give?

AND: Oh, I predicted it! I said:

I think they are going to say it was somehow a tie and no one is leaving tonight. Maybe two will go next week.

That's essentially what they did. They don't proclaim a tie. I think they indicate that the lowest vote-getter was Jordin. And, changing the rules midstream -- I'm pissed! -- they say they can't send anyone home on "charity night," but they'll accumulate the votes from this week and next week and send two home next week.

EVEN MORE: Some good points are raised in the comments, so let me respond here.

I'm not impressed that they raised $30 million. There were 70 million votes Tuesday night, and how much did they invest putting the show together? How much ad money did they earn with this 2 hour display of nonentertainment. And all those celebrities participating? Yeah, Ellen gave $100,000, but did the other celebs cought up an equivalent portion of their great wealth?

It was a big PR thing, raising a paltry amount of money for all the parading of human suffering. And only $5 million from the corporate sponsors, purportedly based on the number of phoned in votes but capped at $5 million? I am not impressed by this stunt, which was all about the "American Idol" image. Better to give the money quietly, out of the vast sums they make on the show.

I'm told that really was Elvis in some some computer-generated gimmickry. Yawn. He wasn't too wonderful. I guess I averted my eyes. I paid little attention to any of the musical performances, except Jeff Beck.

As to the non-results. I can see that Ryan's statement that he was going to announce things randomly suggests that Chris and Jordin were not the actual bottom two. But what a stupid ordeal to put them through. Or did they know all along? That's even lamer. We were tricked into watching that gruesome PR.

It was really bad to have no results, and I definitely suspect them of saving someone they didn't want to lose. I'll bet if Phil or LaKisha had been last he/she would have gone.

"American Idol" -- the final 9.

Tony Bennett is the guest celeb and the songs are the old standards. We're watching from a hotel room overlooking Town Lake here in Austin, Texas. At some point it will be sundown from the point of view of the bats that roost on the underside of the bridge over there -- Congress Avenue Bridge -- and I plan to dash out onto the balcony and see what that's like. Meanwhile, I'll be checking out "Bat Boy" (Phil Stacey) and the rest of the kids.

1. Blake Lewis sings "Mack the Knife." The 80-year-old Tony Bennett tells him, "This song is pretty rap." He gets through the lyrics and makes it acceptably snazzy if slightly tentative.

2. Phil Stacey is doing "Night and Day." Tony assures us he's a "good singer." He slows it way down. He's trying to convey meaning. There's a hungry burning, yearning inside of him, and he wants to spend the entire 24-hour period of every day for the rest of his life having sexual intercourse. It's an interesting proposition. Randy doesn't feel any passion. Paula needs him to have more joy. Simon: "It had all the joy of somebody singing in a funeral parlor... completely and utterly gloomy and really dark." Oooh, Bat Boy's bald head is gleaming with sweat as he assures us he was focusing on his wife.

3. Melinda Doolittle sings "I Got Rhythm." She's got daisies in green pastures. She does the song in three distinct phases, each more exciting than the one before. She ends really big. As usual, they love her.

4. Chris Richardson picks "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." Tony's advice is: Remember the lyrics. "You came out there with a vengeance... that was very cool and young and hip," says Randy. Paula -- as she's been doing all night -- repeats Randy's points. It was young and hip.

5. Jordin Sparks sings on key, which Tony Bennett really loves. She's doing "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever." Terrific, I think. "Some fire going on here... You're like a pro and you're 17," says Randy. "You really are this magnet of joy," says Paula, who's "proud of" her. Simon notes that unlike Chris, she failed to make it young. He didn't "like it as much as Squidly and Diddly over here."

6. Gina Glockson is singing "Smile." She's the one contestant who seems deeply moved at meeting Tony Bennett. And Tony Bennett talks about the song, which he says makes him think about 9/11 and the soldiers fighting in Iraq. "Smile through your fear and sorrow...." Paula praises her for being "sentimental," which she thinks is a compliment.

7. Sanjaya Malakar has the goal of making us see that he really can sing. The song is "Dancing Cheek to Cheek." The hair is slicked down and sleek (rhymes with "cheek"). He dances with Paula. Randy: "You've turned into a great entertainer." Paula: "I get why people love you." Simon tries a different tack and says it was great. [ADDED: The point is, Simon doesn't like Sanjaya, and in past weeks he's told us so, yet Sanjaya has stayed on. To try to oust him, Simon is praising him. But since he's tipping his hand, it's not a serious strategy. Just some humor.]

8. Hayley Scarnato does "Ain't Misbehavin'" kinda atrociously. Surely, this is the performance that deserves the phrase -- used every week -- "all over the place." But she's got a pulchritudinous dress. That's got to have some effect. Simon's opinion of the performance is: "I think you've got great legs."

9. Saved for last and thus presumably the best, LaKisha Jones. "If she hits that big note at the end, it will be good," says Tony. The song is "Stormy Weather." She violates his advice and does a fancy thing at the end. "A sassy, great performance," says Simon.

Well, we didn't really get to see any bats. They seem to be off on migration. I take it as an omen that Bat Boy will be gone too. They made the poor boy's head sweat.

Austin images.

There's some desperately bad graffiti under that bridge (the one with the bats):





Man, that second one is so bad it makes me want to crumple up into a helpless ball of emotion and whimper "Hold me!"

Let's go to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and do the "Jesus Christ Superstar" singalong:



There's some sort of Cows on Parade type thing with guitars going on in Austin:



This one somehow represents Billy Bob Thornton.



If my eyeballs had the wings of an angel.

"American Idol" -- tonight's show: The British Invasion.

Okay, this is the perfect show for me. The songs are the British Invasion songs, with Peter Noone tutoring the boys and LuLu for the girls. I love Peter Noone, let me say, so I'm really happy. I'm unashamed to say I was a huge Herman's Hermits fan. LuLu, I couldn't care less about, but in the first segment, we see her helping Hayley Scarnato, giving her really precise, quality instruction.

1. Simon leers horribly at Hayley, who's wearing heels, hot pants, and a silky backless top that's attached to her torso with a wacky amount of double-stick tape. She sings "Tell Him" and stomps all over the stage, up and down the stairs. She does not trip and fall, so okay.

2. Chris Richardson sings "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying," and follows the melody -- the great melody -- the way Peter Noone told him to.

3. LuLu looks like my sister. I was trying to figure out who it was she reminded me of. And Stephanie Edwards reminds Lulu of Beyoncé. Stephanie sings "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." It's hard not to think about how beautifully Dusty Springfield sang this song. By contrast, Stephanie's singing is clunky and heavy-handed. But they're praising everyone today, and I'm sure they'll like her too. They've revealed that tonight is especially important, because they're eliminating the eleventh person, and the top ten get to go on tour. Actually, they are hard on her. Simon: "I think you are losing your edge... you're losing your soul."

4. Blake Lewis -- my personal favorite -- sings a song I love: "Time of the Season." He sings it much like the Zombies original, and the beat box thing imitates the original instrumentation. He gets a ton of praise for making the song sound contemporary, which just mystifies me. It was just like the original, but not as good.

5. LaKisha Jones sings a crappy song: "Diamonds Are Forever." She's a good singer, but she didn't belt it out like Shirley Bassey, and she didn't do something else interesting with it. Simon complains that she looks 50 years older than her age. Her problem is already that she seems old.

6. Phil Stacey wails "Tobacco Road" and seems kind of Bo Bice-y. But not as profound. [ADDED: And he reminds us of Bat Boy.]

7. Jordin Sparks emotes "I Who Have Nothing," a melodramatic song I've never liked. Tom Jones did it, and it really is more of a man's song, all about how the other guy buys "you" diamonds and takes "you" to fancy restaurants, while the singer just has some big love to share. Or so he claims.

8. The incredibly cute youngster Sanjaya tells Peter Noone he's torn between two songs. One is "You Really Got Me," and there's just nothing at all better than the early Kinks. But the other is Herman's Hermits' first hit "I'm Into Something Good." It's inexpressibly adorable to see the kid Sanjaya sing Peter's own song to him. Peter says Sanjaya looks more like one of Herman's Hermits than one of the Kinks, but advises him to go with the Kinks and "really get into it." He picks the Kinks. They keep showing a 12-year-old girl in the audience who's crying like a Beatles fan at "The Ed Sullivan Show." He's sort of shout-singing and running all over the place and at one point he just completely shouts "You got me so I can't sleep at night!" and it's really quite perfect. Simon: "I think the little girl's face says it all." Ryan sends Sanjay down to give the girl a hug. Very sweet!

9. Gina Glocksen is asked how she's holding up, and she talks about the stress, including "critiques that we see on blogs and everything." (Hi, Gina! Have I said anything mean about you?) The song is "Paint It Black." LuLu gets her to raise the key a half step and advises her to "devour" it. Gina really is the best rocker chick they've ever had on the show, and I'm not just saying that because I think she might read this. I said it before.

10. Chris Sligh is doing "She's Not There," one of the very best 60s songs. (Only The Zombies get picked twice tonight.) He enters walking through the audience and really obviously fails to interact with the girls reaching out to him. He practically brushes them away. I think the tone is not that pretty and he's not soulful enough. He needs to be better.

11. They save Melinda Doolittle for last, which signals that she's best. I'm tired of the way they keep presenting her as the best. It's too unsubtle. Let us decide! She's doing the musical comedy song from "Oliver!": "As Long As He Needs Me." This is famous for being just about the least feminist song ever. She's sitting on the edge of the stage, which, in the language of the show means, deep and meaningful. She sings the first line so it sounds like "as long as she needs me." There's also that line "I'll Klingon steadfastly." Man, I hate this song. Have you seen "Oliver!"? The character is an abused woman, manifesting the ultimate in Abused Woman Syndrome. And couldn't you have found a real British Invasion song instead of this mawkish, politically incorrect showtune?

So who might go home? Maybe poor Gina. Possibly Chris or Phil or Stephanie. It would viewed as upsetting if LaKisha got the boot, but, really, if it happens, it will be because of that draggy song and the way too old-looking bright green cocktail dress. If I had to bet on one person to stay though, it would be the supremely adorable Sanjaya (even if he's actually the worst singer).