Purchase of the day.

From the February 13, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report.

Pentalic Sketch Book, Hardbound, 8-1/2-Inch by 11-Inchby Pentalic (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.10)

 Honorable mentions:

BILT Tornado Waterproof Textile Motorcycle Gloves - 2XL, Blackby Bilt (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.20)

Nautica Cologne by Nautica (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.06)

"Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day" [Paperback]Jonathan Bergmann (Author), Aaron Sams (Author) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.09)

... and 62 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyer — that all just seem to keep Althouse... in the mood.

It's "Grande Conservative Blogress Diva" time again.

And once again I'm on the list. You may say, but how can Althouse be the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva when she voted for Barack Obama?

1. I voted for Barack Obama because John McCain was not conservative enough. If we are to have a liberal President, it's better for it to be Obama, for so many reasons.

2. The concept of "Grand Conservative Blogress Diva" is explicitly defined in a way that you know includes me: "She need not be conservative herself (at least three of the nominees below are not), but must by the the power of her prose, the eloquence of her expression and the intelligence of her ideas have earned them the enmity of the angry left and so endeared her to gay men like us who admire strong women who speak their mind, even at the expense of encomia from those in the entertainment industry and the MSM."

3. Since this is about being a diva, your quibbles mean nothing to me.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

How many of the other nominees have gone perfume shopping at Barney's and Bergdorf Goodman with me, this blog's smartest, funniest and best homosexual?! That has to count for something!

AND: Peter Hoh says:

Hey, who anointed Palladian as "this blog's smartest, funniest and best homosexual"?

Oh yeah, Palladian.

Just like Caroline. I'll have none of it.

I'm calling for a special election.

Hmm. So just as Gay Patriot sets up a vote for "Grande Conservative Blogress Diva," you want a poll for "Smartest, Funniest and Best Homosexual of the Althouse Blog"? Really? Is this something that can work as a poll? Well, I don't think polling works in the "Grande Conservative Blogress Diva" process, since diva status is not susceptible to democracy. Anyone is allowed to vote! How is that a test of who's most "endeared... to gay men"? But it's not diva-like to seem to care. It's not diva-like to beg for votes, which is why it's not diva-like to win the contest. And yet you think we should have a democratic process for "Smartest, Funniest and Best Homosexual of the Althouse Blog"?

Still, I might do it. Nominees?

"It was the olfactory equivalent of a Coen Brothers' film."

"It was a flop, perhaps (but not necessarily) because it was essentially unwearable, with hints of burning rubber, smoking tar, the pitch in fresh asphalt and charred guiac wood."

Chandler Burr writes perfume reviews. I admire that capacity. To perceive odors and to put it in writing. Impressive! The quote above is about M7. Here's what Burr says about Déclaration:

I smelled it again recently and was shocked by the degree to which it is, in fact, a hard-core French masculine. It’s a tiny bit X-rated (the sensual, unwashed-armpit thing; this is simply a serious dose of cumin, which smells like sweat) and elegant in the way that Frenchmen can be elegant: rather strong come-on, slightly overpowering, narcissistic, but alluring if you’re into that sort of thing.

Suddenly, I am!

"'Sometimes funny has a sexual character.' Sometimes? Nearly always, according to Sigmund Freud."

"The whole point of humor, Freud thought, is to get around our inhibitions."

Jim Holt — author "Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes" — reacts to the story of Judge Alex Kozinski, his personal (but on-line) porn, and his wife's defense of it ("Alex is not into porn — he is into funny — and sometimes funny has a sexual character.")

The very ability to enjoy such humor means that you must be investing a good deal of energy in keeping your animal side in check. You are at least trying to be civilized. A dirty joke is an uprising against the bourgeois morality that enslaves most of us most of the time (and a good thing too). We can rejoice in its defeat only because that defeat is brief and inconsequential. In fact, our laughter itself brings the little uprising to an end. As most of us have discovered, laughter's a pretty strong anti-aphrodisiac.

Holt goes on to discuss sex humor in ancient Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, and Shakespeare. (For some reason, there are were no paragraph breaks in his longish column, so you'll have to overcome your resistance to reading a long block of text.)

He quotes George Orwell:

"The modern emphasis on what is called 'clean fun' is really the symptom of a general unwillingness to touch upon any serious or controversial subject."

So should we be suspicious of people who don't laugh at sexual humor?

There are two other classic theories of humor in competition with his. One of them is the "superiority theory," propounded in various forms by Plato, Thomas Hobbes and Henri Bergson, which says that laughter is a way of crowing victoriously over the humiliation of others. This theory works well at explaining the appeal of ethnic and racial jokes, of jokes about gays and drunkards and henpecked husbands and lawyers and women ("Why do women wear perfume and makeup?" goes a classic of this genre. "Because they're smelly and ugly.") The superiority theory sees mockery, hostility and aggression at the root of all humor. Morally speaking, it puts sexual humor in a pretty bad light, making it tantamount to verbal rape.

"Verbal rape" sounds bad, but don't forget that comedians love to say "I killed" when they made people laugh. So that would be verbal murder.

I think some mockery, hostility and (verbal) aggression is a good thing. And it's funny. The real question is who are your targets? In other words, what ideas are you expressing? You deserve to be judged for that, not the mocking aggression per se. Judged... and then, perhaps, let off the hook. Because you were joking.

The other time-honored view of humor has a rather sweeter flavor, and a more intellectual one. It is the "incongruity theory," versions of which were held by Blaise Pascal, Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, which says that we laugh when the decorous suddenly dissolves into the absurd..... One of the images on the Kozinski website that the judge said he planned to delete -- it was "degrading," he said, "and just gross" -- was a depiction of women as cows. That's pure superiority theory, and as obscene as it is banal. But take this joke, reputedly a favorite of George H.W. Bush: "How do you titillate an ocelot? You oscillate its tits a lot." Ostensibly, it falls into the category of raunch, with its use of the not-ready-for-prime-time word for breasts and its winking allusion to bestiality. But it is essentially sheer nonsense, a sonic jeu d'esprit.

That reminds me, nobody supplied the comic answer to the George Carlin question I typed up for you last night (when I was watching hours of the HBO Carlin marathon). Carlin has a nice mix of wordplay and sex, and sometimes it's very funny just because the expected wordplay isn't there at all and it's just flatly sexual. But that the dissolution into the absurd that Blaise, Manny, and Artie were talking about, right?

Yves Saint Laurent.

RIP.

ADDED: The official YSL website is extremely impressive. You can view designs going all the way back to 1962 and avant.

MORE: Robin Givhan writes:

In the 1960s and '70s, when he was at the height of his influence, he brought popular culture, a mannish swagger, sexual power and ethnic awareness to fashion. He gave women a wardrobe that spoke of confidence and authority. He didn't give them armor for the boardroom as much as he gave them the sartorial equivalent of chutzpah, tough talk and bawdiness. He gave dames and broads their costumes.

AND: I've never had any YSL clothes, but I've worn this perfume for years:

"The Spinach Brownie."

That could be the name of a "Seinfeld" episode where Jerry's new girlfriend is a cookbook author and...

[Jessica] Seinfeld's new "Deceptively Delicious," about hiding healthy ingredients in foods children will eat, is already the best-selling book in the country, with print runs of 2.5 million through January.

But chef and baby-products mogul Missy Chase Lapine came out in April with a book, "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals." Lapine baked her spinach brownies with Al Roker on the "Today" show; Seinfeld shared her spinach brownies with Oprah on that show last week.

Oh, of course, it's Roker. He'll do a cameo, for sure. He was in "The Cigar Store Indian" episode, which had one of the great "Seinfeld" book plot lines:

JERRY: Thanks, because I would really like... (distractedly puts coffee cup back
on the table)

GEORGE: (screaming) Aaahh!!

JERRY: Alright, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. (picks it up again)

GEORGE: But Jerry, this is not coming out!

JERRY: Just put a coffee table book over it.

GEORGE: My parents don't read! They're gonna wonder what a book is doing on the
table!

KRAMER: Hey, hey, hey, hey. You know what would make a great coffee table book?
A coffee table book about coffee tables! Get it?

And speaking of stealing an idea... remember when Kramer had an idea for perfume that smelled like the beach:

KRAMER: You smell like the beach. What's the name of that perfume? you're wearing.

TIA: It's Ocean by CALVIN KLEIN.

KRAMER: CALVIN KLEIN? No, no. That's my idea. They, they stole my idea. Y' see I had the idea of a cologne that makes you smell like you just came from the beach.

JERRY: I know look at this [shows ad]

KRAMER: Whooo, ... That's you! What is going on here? The gyp(?) he laughs at me then he steals my idea. I could have been a millionaire. I could have been a fragrance millionaire, Jerry. ... They're not going to get away with this.

The transcriber seems to want to get Michael Richards in trouble for more politically incorrect language. The name of the character who steals the idea is Steve D'Jiff — not "the gyp" — as you can see from the episode "The Pez Dispenser" — my favorite episode — where Kramer first gets the idea for a perfume he called The Beach.

"The Spinach Brownie"... it practically writes itself:

Seinfeld and Lapine both have recipes for mashed potatoes with hidden cauliflower, grilled cheese with secret sweet potatoes, green eggs made with pureed baby spinach, and carrot-laced tacos....

[Seinfeld's publisher, Steve] Ross did admit that Lapine's agent had submitted her book to them "in May of 2006, but it was rejected."...

Oh, I can just picture the scene where Ross rejects the book. He acts so disgusted by the idea of slipping spinach into kid's brownies. Here's some inspiration from "The Pez Dispenser":

KRAMER: Go ahead smell, smell

STEVE: Yeah, so?

KRAMER: Do you recognize it? ... The beach.

STEVE: What are you talking about?

KRAMER: Oh, I'm talking about the beach.

STEVE: What about it?

KRAMER: You know the way you smell when you first come home from the beach?

Well, I want to make a cologne that captures the essence of that smell.

Oh yeah.

STEVE: That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard.

KRAMER: Oh, wait, Did you here what I just said?

STEVE: Do you think people are going to pay $80 a bottle to smell like dead fish and sea weed? That's why people take showers when the come home from the beach. It's an objectionable offensive odour.

KRAMER: So you don't think it's a good idea?

And poor Missy Chase Lapine — love the name! — is crushed. Meanwhile, Ross find the glitzy wife of some filthy rich comedian to put her imprint on the same idea. Does Mrs. Filthy Rich Comedian even cook?

As for whether [Jessica] Seinfeld actually toils over a hot stove, Ross said: "Well, I can tell you that she cooked [mac and cheese and meatballs] for us, and it was delicious. And we've heard from Jerry that he's been a guinea pig."

A spokesman for Seinfeld said, "She admits she didn't invent pureeing. But she never saw the [Lapine] book. And she worked really hard on hers."

Of course, she never saw the Lapine book! Does she even read?

"Oh, let me think, let me think, what can I do? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no."

Remember... loving the Shangri-Las? The lead singer -- the coolest girl group singer ever -- is back. Good luck to Mary Weiss on her new album. But let's talk about the Shangri-Las:

The Shangri-Las stood out from their contemporaries. The melodrama and desperation in their voices — not to mention their tight leather pants and leather boots, a drastic departure from the formal gowns favored by groups like the Supremes and the Chiffons — defied the girl-group category in which they’re often thrown “for lack of imagination,” as the music writer Greil Marcus put it.

“This was storytelling, this was creating characters,” Mr. Marcus said from his home in Berkeley, Calif. “There was a cinematic sense to the songs where you could visualize them as you listened to them. Their records left wounds in their listeners.”

Whenever the song "I Can Never Go Home Anymore" comes on the 60s channel, I get caught up in the words, and even though I know it's utterly cheesy and manipulative, it makes me cry (while driving!). Here, check it out, someone made a YouTube video that just shows the single playing on a record player. That's really sweet.

Here's Mary Weiss's MySpace page. Here's a nice interview thing. Here's a cute tribute video with lots of pictures. Here's an album (click on it and buy it):



Look at the way Mary looked then! Good Lord, she was only 15! She had the perfect tough girl image. Hers was a look that in those days -- where I was anyway, in northern New Jersey -- we called "hoody." It was the alternative to the mod look, which I personally favored. I knew one girl, a friend of my sister's, who had the Mary Weiss look. It was sort of the dark side to the candy-colored mod/psychedelic style that I believed would conquer all. But this other thing! It came from the wrong side of town. My sister's friend scared me a little. She didn't live with her parents. She was from over in Boonton. She wore Tabu perfume. Really, I would never wear Tabu perfume. It's unbelievably sweet and strong. But I'd love to have some to dump into a handkerchief to inhale while listening to old Shangri-Las records.



"Oh, let me think, let me think, what can I do? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no."

Weeps uncontrollably into Tabu-soaked hankerchief.

"But let's reserve the word 'anti-feminist' for our real enemies."

So says Erin Matson, the co-chair of that National Organization for Women Young Feminist Task Force, commenting on the on the breastblogging controversy I caused a few weeks ago. This quote appears in a piece written by Liz Funk (over at Huffington Post). Funk is fairly balanced in her analysis -- although I find it rather unfair that there is no link to my blog. (The other blog, Feministing, is linked twice.)

Funk seems to confirm my observation that Feministing uses breast imagery to attract an audience:

If Feministing is in fact using sex to attract readers, they aren't alone. From female celebrities sporting minidresses on the cover of Cosmopolitan, to risqué perfume ads, to commercials for tampons, many media outlets geared towards women (and many of which are intended to empower women) use women's sexuality to attract women readers. Sex sells... and women buy it.

Sex is almost always needed to market to younger people. As young feminist interest seems to be dwindling in traditional women's organizations, Feministing lures readers with politics and social commentary-made palatable. Putting the term "subverting the dominant paradigm" as a blog post title would not draw Gen Y readers; "'Cause calling girls slut is always funny" relates the same message of gender equality, with more sparkle.

Yes, of course, but if you're going to be a feminist, you need to do a feminist analysis of that move! So you want to get your message across? But you have to ask yourself whether you've changed the message. This is such a glaring question that it's mindboggling that you think you'd escape this critique.

But feminists aren't what they used to be. They shrink from an intense debate with each other. Here's Matson's point in context:

"This controversy is a rehashing of a very old debate within the feminist community: is public sexuality empowering or harmful to women? It's a complex issue and it's good to keep the discussion going... some feminists may disagree with the stance taken by many of Feministing's writers, but let's reserve the word 'anti-feminist' for our real enemies. To slap the same label on Jessica Valenti and Anne [sic] Coulter is completely ridiculous."

"Our real enemies"? Oh, yes, feminism has gotten rolled up into the conventional left-right of American politics. Ever since feminists chose to subordinate themselves to the interests of the Democratic party to help Bill Clinton with his problems, the feminist discourse in this country has been lame. It's a means to a political end, and so you always know who your "enemies" are. Fifteen years ago, feminists critiquing each other was an important part of feminism. Now, doggedly serving liberal partisan politics squelches everything that could become vital.

Maybe if feminists had the nerve to engage in real debate about feminism they could get some young people excited about real ideas. But go ahead, tart up your website with boobies for now. It's helpful that you make your desperation so clear.

UPDATE: Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for linking. If you're not familiar with the original controversy, here is my key post touching things off, and here and here are later posts responding to it.

"The Apprentice."

Spoilers follow, of course!

So, our dear boy Adam is gone, and for the first time no white male makes it to the final episode. No white male makes it to the semi-final. Adam was always at a disadvantage, being so terribly young (22), and he should feel great that he made it as far as he did. I think he knew that. In his taxicab confession, he presented his resume for all his future contacts. Smart! They should all do that, rather than rip the other contestants.

Adam remained, every step of the way, a decent, diligent, good kid. And wasn't it cool of him that he didn't make that boring? We felt for the kid. In the clip show that aired on Wednesday, we saw extra footage from the show where they did the education program about sex in the workplace. The expert they brought in to help them asked "Who here has had sex?" He thought that, of course, everyone would raise their hand and then they'd laugh, and it would be an ice breaker. But Adam couldn't raise his hand. Who in the history of the world has had his virginity exposed so blatantly, to so many people? But Adam kept his nerve. He stood up for himself. He's a great guy.

A toast to Adam!

But this week's task? It was a great task. You have all this advertising wrapping, and you're supposed to find something interesting to wrap. But the winner would be chosen by the number of people who call a phone number for a free sample, not by executives judging the quality of the advertising, presenting a new brand to consumers who would pay money for the product. The product was perfume, named after a star, Shania Twain. Having an army of temps with sandwichboards and megaphones was a horrible association for a perfume. But the contestants were right to ignore that, and ignore the creative task of finding something cool to wrap. They concentrated on how they were to be judged: by the number of phone calls. I cringed at the hucksters on the street, who had a negative impact on the brand. It's perfume! The quintessential luxury item. They were hawking it like a strip club!

I loved the way Rebecca and Randal pulled together and won. And I loved the way Trump did something new, sending Alla back to safety and pitting Felica and Adam against each other to debate for their lives. Both of them did a fine job. Never on the show have I seen such an even match. The editors let them have it out for a good, long time. Imagine if job interviews were like that and you had to go head-to-head with one other candidate, pitching yourself as the better of the two!

Did "Real Time With Bill Maher" just get a lot funnier?

A side effect of my oppostion to the Miers nomination: It made "Real Time With Bill Maher" get a lot funnier. All those jokes premised on Bush's incompetence? Suddenly, I found myself laughing. Ann Coulter was laughing too. Well, I mean, she's always laughing -- that's her gimmick -- but she was laughing at Bush.

And I loved the ad in the beginning for the perfume "Harriet," with the tag line, "I can be anything you want me to be."

The panel last night was Andrew Sullivan, Ben Affleck, and Salman Rushdie. About midway through the discussion, everyone chez Althouse agreed that it was amazingly easy put those three men in order of their intelligence. I'll just say, in the order I wrote the names two sentences ago, no man is in the position he ended up on our in-order-of-intelligence list.

Andrew Sullivan got very impassioned -- by the subject he came to get impassioned about: torture. I can't remember how he got that to be the topic, because Maher tries hard to get the panel to subjects people can laugh about. Sullivan, like Coulter, laughs continually while speaking, but unlike Coulter, never seems to be at all fun-loving. In fact, he seems to lack a sense of humor, especially about religion, which Maher considers an immense humor target. I'm not really sure what function the Sullivan Laugh serves. It usually seems to convey a dismissive mockery, usually of the moral inadequacy of others.

Searching for suicide bombers.

Here's a NYT op-ed that makes a compelling argument for a very specific kind of profiling:

[C]ommuters need to be most aware of young men praying to Allah and smelling like flower water. Law enforcement knows this, and so should you. According to a January 2004 handout, the Department of Homeland Security advises United States border authorities to look out for certain "suicide bomber indicators." They include a "shaved head or short haircut. A short haircut or recently shaved beard or moustache may be evident by differences in skin complexion on the head or face. May smell of herbal or flower water (most likely flower water), as they may have sprayed perfume on themselves, their clothing, and weapons to prepare for Paradise." Suspects may have been seen "praying fervently, giving the appearance of whispering to someone. Recent suicide bombers have raised their hands in the air just before the explosion to prevent the destruction of their fingerprints. They have also placed identity cards in their shoes because they want to be praised and recognized as martyrs."

The op-ed writer, Paul Sperry, says that once you're on the train and see someone like this, it will be too late. It's necessary for the police to stop the man from boarding the train.

Currently, the official search procedure is to randomly select one person out of five -- the old as well as the young, females as much as males. Actually, I find it hard to believe that they aren't also noticing men with recently shaved beards and smelling of flower water. But isn't it better not to mention they are?

"It’s feminine, the smell of death."

Perfumers at work (via A&L Daily):

The group walked around Aswan. The markets were full of spices, and Ellena smelled lotus roots; when macerated in water, the root produces a smell halfway between peony and hyacinth. He also found some jasmin sambac, which is full of indoles, molecules that smell overwhelmingly animalic. Feces are rich with indoles, he explained to Gautier and Dubrule, and so are decomposing bodies. It’s feminine, the smell of death. Calvin Klein’s Eternity is a heavily indolic perfume—the name must have been ironic, he joked.

Priceless, ultra-expensive extreme heat.

Is this product just a little too weird and scary?

Priceless, ultra-expensive Tourmaline jewels are infused into the plate and the heater ... Iron heats in seconds! Adjustable temperature heat control, 410° maximum. ... Steaming sound from the iron while in use is simply water hitting extreme heat...

I know they are trying to say it's quite something, but it seems awfully extreme for something to clamp onto your hair.

Nevertheless, I'm buying it!

And consider this:

Sensual Rice Steam Perfumed Ice Cubes For The Body

Made of plant water and extracted from the heart of the rice plant without using chemicals, it's rich in essential oils, trace elements, and mineral salts. Ice cubes become a creamy, milky fluid and release the perfume built on the fragrance of rice steam. Try this sensual treat.

The things they make for women are just very, very strange!

Shopping.

So, as I said, I was down in the outskirts of Chicago yesterday shopping. I can't help it, but I like the Oakbrook Center, with its nice mix of stores, including an Apple Store, an Eileen Fisher, a Sephora, Crate and Barrel, a Restoration Hardware, Tiffany's, Brooks Brothers, that sort of thing. It's a non-enclosed mall, with outdoor plazas and walkways, with flowers and fountains. Too pretty, if anything. Not gritty or at all hip. Upscale, modern .... I'm sorry, I like it. It's a serene promenade through tasteful merchandise. I don't really like to go shopping. Shopping is often confusing, physically uncomfortable, unaesthetic, and a waste of time. But at Oakbrook, we had a rational and efficient shopping experience, as well as a nice little lunch at Antico Posto.



The two hour drive is a minus, but that was offset by having my son John in the car reading to me the entire time. He likes to read out loud, and I'm happy driving a long time if I can hear something worth thinking about. John came with me because the main goal of the trip was to buy him a suit and various accessories at Brooks Brothers. Now this had loomed as a big chore, but the idea was that BB would simplify the task, and it did. Our saleswoman Helga, with 20 years of experience, can look at a customer and know what size he wears. She's very good at this, she says, but she gets it wrong in the case of her own children, because she sees them as smaller than the really are. Which I thought was sweet. She led us from jacket to pants to shoes to shirts to ties to socks. We put together the whole outfit as the decisions seemed to fall into place inevitably. There's something really rational and sensible about buying men's business clothes. And doesn't a man look fine in a suit? I find myself saying: why don't men wear suits all the time? It's such a simplified approach to personal appearance, and it makes you look great.



Helga got the tailor to do the alterations that afternoon. We went back out to shop around. and she called my cell phone within an hour to say the suit is ready. John tried it on, and I said again what I said when he first tried the jacket on: you look great! It's quite a pleasure to see your own son dressed perfectly in a nice suit!



I bought some soft sweaters at Eileen Fisher, which is as rational a women's clothing store as I have ever seen. And I wandered around Sephora for a while, which is surely less rational, but isn't it amusing to see all the unusual makeup displays, find the Philosophy products charming, try on six perfumes, and be waited on by numerous beautiful salespersons? Well, you can decide for yourself. I think it's a brilliantly designed store.



I noticed how many of the stores play Big Band music--not all, not Sephora. Is there something about Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald that enhances merchandise? I remember my father telling me so many times, back in the sixties, that Big Band music would come back. Oh, how wrong you are, old man--was my attitude at the time--rock and roll had forever conquered your square music! No, he thought rock was a transitory trend, a novelty. It would have to die. But "Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay," rock has been singing about itself since the fifties. I suppose that my father must have admitted to himself before he died that Big Band music was not coming back. But now, whenever I go shopping, piped into the sleek, fashionable environments of today is the music my parents loved, sounding eternally young and fresh and inevitable.



Ah, I suppose I also believed, back in the sixties, that men were about to toss aside their business suits for good! Didn't we, the know-it-all baby boomers, see the folly of those uptight clothes? Neckties: what were they for? No one would dress like that in the future. But now, I'm shopping for a suit with my son, respecting the rationality and clarity of the traditional men's store, and I'm genuinely impressed by how great a suit looks.