Ramzi Yousef, convicted after the 1993 WTC bombing, sues for relief from solitary confinement.

He'll never get out of prison, but — after 15 years — should he get out of solitary confinement? But that's not the question asked in a lawsuit. To win the lawsuit, a court has to deprive government of the choice to treat him like that.

Colin Dayan, a humanities professor at Vanderbilt University who has studied solitary confinement in Arizona, said many prison administrations use isolation without regard to psychological damage to inmates.

"You no longer know what's real," she said. "You can't speak to anyone; you can't touch anyone: your senses no longer have any outlet. You have delusions and become psychotic. Your mind deteriorates."

After his arrest, Yousef — who expected the death penalty — told FBI agents that he had intended "to topple one tower into the other, and cause a total of 250,000 civilian deaths."

"When Sad, Single People Get Together And Eat Only Black Food."

"Black Day" — in Korea, where "there are roughly 13 holidays devoted to love."

On the death of Barney the dog, George Bush reveals a portrait he painted of his "faithful friend."

"Barney was by my side during our eight years in the White House... He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend. Laura and I will miss our pal."



I like the "43" signature. Did you know the Bush had taken up oil painting? I'd missed the snarky notes about it last summer, like this from ArtFagCity:

This is all the information we have: at a hospital fundraiser in Memphis Monday night, former President George W. Bush mentioned his new hobby, oil painting. He told the crowd he’s “kinda stuck” to painting dogs. Tragically, there are no pictures. [The Daily Beast] Relatedly, we’ll totally pay you if you find pictures of George W. Bush’s dog paintings.

I guess Bush knew his dog was dying — it was 12 years old and had lymphoma — and he intended to show his first artwork when the time came to announce the dog's death.

And then there was this, last October: "George W. Bush Painting Dogs All Day, Becoming ‘Agoraphobic,’ Is Skeptical Of Romney’s Chances, New Profile Of Bush Fam Reveals."

The mag describes a Bush that is hiding away from the public eye, with one unnamed person observing: “He’s become increasingly agoraphobic… he doesn’t like people, he never did, he doesn’t now.”

The profile also says: “The most unpopular president in recent political history, W. left a record of big-government spending and intractable wars that remains difficult even for allies to defend … W. remains convinced history will vindicate him...."

He doesn’t like people, he never did, he doesn’t now.... So says an unnamed person.



A hug for President Bush today. And I think the painting is very good. Of course, there will always be Bush haters. Can't stop the Bush haters from hating their Chimpy McHitler.

You know, Hitler painted.

Steven Tyler appears in drag on "American Idol" and quotes Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues."

He came out as if he were the last contestant and maybe it took half a second to recognize the big rock star (who was on the judge's panel last season). The news reports of the little stunt emphasize the drag and the (miniscule) surprise, but even where the lyric is quoted, the attribution to Bob Dylan is missing. Here's the NY Daily News:

"What the, what?" Randy Jackson said when he got a first glimpse of his former co-star on stage.

"My name is Pepper. I'm going to sing a song called 'Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa, Our Love Going to Grow, Wah Wah,'" he joked to judging panel. "But before I do I'm going to judge you all (bleeps) first."

I'm not finding any news reports that place the lyric — which I have engraved on my brain — in the old Bob Dylan song. "Talkin' World War III Blues" has 12 verses of Bob talking his way through a dream he had about walking through post-nuclear NYC, with all the people gone from the "lonesome town." Here's the 9th verse:

Well, I remember seein’ some ad
So I turned on my Conelrad
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill
So the radio didn’t work so well
Turned on my record player—
It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa
Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”

Tyler said "Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah," by the way, just like Dylan, not "Wah Wah," as the Daily News would have it.

Now that you get the reference, is there anything to be made of it? Maybe Dylan was making an in joke at the time and Tyler was referring to that joke. Maybe Tyler wanted to alert us to the threat of nuclear war. Maybe Tyler wanted to wink at Dylan fans. But the best clue I found — as I did a Google search to see if anyone had recognized the Dylan quote — was an article from back in November about  friction between Tyler and current-season judge Nicki Manaj. Tyler had said in an interview:

“If it was Bob Dylan, Nicki Minaj would have had him sent to the cornfield! Whereas, if it was Bob Dylan with us, we would have brought the best of him out, as we did with Phillip Phillips....”

Manaj thereafter tweeted:

“Steven Tyler said I would have sent Bob Dylan to a cornfield??? Steven, you haven’t seen me judge one single solitary contestant yet!”

And:

“I understand you really wanted to keep your job but take that up with the producers. I haven’t done anything to you. That’s a racist comment.” 

Racist because it's against her... or because sending someone "to the cornfield" is a reference to slavery?

“You assume that I wouldn’t have liked Bob Dylan??? why? black? rapper? what? go f— yourself and worry about yourself babe.”

To quote Bob Dylan — especially while dressed in a garish blonde wig and big inflated breasts — is to tweak Nicki. Talking blues is related to rap, somewhere in the ancestry. The quoted line, which is talked, is about singing, singing like a rockabilly guy — "Rock-a-day Johnny" — and Tyler was acting as though he were going to sing the song Bob Dylan heard. Dylan is all alone in his dream, looking for company, and in his desperation, he turns on the radio, and then puts on a record, and it's this pop culture idiot, singing nonsense — ooh-wah, ooh-wah —but it's very poignant, because, after the war, Bob is longing for any kind of a voice. In the 10th verse, he calls the telephone number where a recorded voice says the time, and he listens to that voice, repeating the same time — 3 o'clock, the time the war started — for over an hour.

So Steven Tyler had a lot to say, if anybody wants to notice. He's saying we don't get artists like Bob Dylan anymore. The music industry — like NYC after the bomb — is devoid of real people. We're desperate for a human voice. And Nicki Manaj is the embodiment — for all her voluptuous physicality — of emptiness. He was spoofing her, critiquing everything, crying out for real human art, which — for him — Bob Dylan embodies.

But did anyone hear him? He pranced out as a clown. He was dressed as a woman. It resonated in the hollowness that has always been television. In drag, with that wide smile, he even looked like Milton Berle.



IN THE COMMENTS: In this post where I chide others for missing the Dylan reference, Mumpsimus dings me for missing a reference:

"To the cornfield" refers to the SF/Horror story "It's A Good Life" by Jerome Bixby. Or, more likely in this context, to the Twilight Zone episode based on that story.

Dust Bunny Queen links to this TZ clip.

Obama's "acting alone" fallacy.

"The idea that you're 'alone' unless you're being directed by the government strikes me as dehumanizing and almost abusive."

"Ode on Solitude."

Alexander Pope, 1735:

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.
Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mix'd; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

"My mother was an isolated and intellectual person."

"She was so driven by writing, it was quite limiting. She lived on her own, so everything she wrote came from within herself. In the last year, as she was contemplating death, she even saw that as writing material."

Said Orlando Figes, quoted in the obituary for Eva Figes, "a refugee from Nazi Germany who became an acclaimed novelist, memoirist and critic best known for an influential feminist treatise, 'Patriarchal Attitudes.'"

"When we travel, though, we are asking for hospitality. There’s great vulnerability in this."

"It also requires considerable strength."

To be a good guest — like being a good host — one needs to be secure in one’s own premises: where you stand, who you are... Travel is a search for meaning, not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of others. The humility required for genuine travel is exactly what is missing from its opposite extreme, tourism.

Vulnerability? Humility? And — at the same time — it's supposed to be loftier than mere tourism?

The kind of travel to which we aspire should tolerate uncertainty and discomfort. It isn’t about pain or excessive strain — travel doesn’t need to be an extreme sport — but we need to permit ourselves to be clumsy, inexpert and even a bit lonely.

I used to throw myself out of my own country like that. Buy tickets to somewhere and then have to go. I wished I could back out. I was lonely when I was there. I spent a lot of money. I'm actually not a good tourist at all. It was always some kind of spiritual journey for me, a pilgrimage. So I don't identify with the tourism the linked authors sniff at. But I have become very skeptical of the notion that we are supposed to travel for lofty purposes. Is it humble to believe you're above those other tourists and somehow able to commune with foreign locals?

Somebody in the comments at the link quotes Thoreau: "I have travelled a good deal in Concord." That's what crossed my my mind too. Some years ago, I traveled, alone, to Amsterdam, and the book I read there was "Walden." I felt so lonely, and wrote down the quote: "Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"

I got to that first link via Nina, who has traveled a good deal in Europe. She's comparing showers in France, Spain, and Wisconsin. In Spain and France, the public beach showers are out in the open. At Devil's Lake State Park in Wisconsin, they are in the bathroom, and when ladies are in them with the curtain closed, they expect you not to peek, even if they are taking too long.

I thought about this for a minute. Privacy. Our big entitlement. Mine, mine, not anyone else’s. It struck me that if someone screamed at me in this way in, say, France, I’d have to think that there’s pent up anger seething there, among the people....

So I wondered if maybe we are a nation of very angry people. As the media broadcasts our general dissatisfaction (with Congress, with each other), as opportunities for expressing anger flourish (blast away at the person you don’t agree with – it’s your right!), maybe we let it all out at the expense of looking for something less... well, loud?

Wisconsinites do have this sense of entitlement, and they shout in your face about it when they feel righteously angry. Remember the Rotunda. And they do mix up the concept of having rights with the problem of deciding when and how to use them. But privacy is a big one. And women can feel quite vulnerable, especially when taken a shower. There's a reason "Psycho" is judged the scariest movie of all time.

And, by the way... that article? The one promoting "vulnerability" in traveling? It was written by men. Of course. You want to stretch yourself beyond the usual realm of everyday life and what you come up with is vulnerability? Chances are you are not a woman.

86-year-old man living on an island with 120 giant tortoises.

"I don't know what kind of nerve, ferocity and stubbornness got 86-year-old Brendon Grimshaw to buy an island in the Indian Ocean, replant it with 16,000 trees, grasses and then lure a bunch of giant tortoises... to live with him...."

"I don't use or accept money or conscious barter - don't take food stamps or other government dole."

"My philosophy is to use only what is freely given or discarded and what is already present and already running (whether or not I existed)."

All right, fine for you, Daniel Suelo. Live that moneyless life. But this video about you, connecting you to larger economic issues, with an insufferable music track, is just awful:

Suddenly, the problem is supposed to be that people are reading and writing too much.

MIT psych prof Sherry Turkle frets about "The Flight From Conversation":

At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done....

Toward the end, she takes a completely different tack. It's not that we don't do live conversation, it's that we don't know how to be alone:

[I]n our rush to connect, we flee from solitude, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves. Lacking the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people but don’t experience them as they are. It is as though we use them, need them as spare parts to support our increasingly fragile selves.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely.

If you don't need people to be really here to be with them, then you don't ever have to be alone. Almost everyone now has — without particularly trying — become the kind of person who would say things like I'm never alone when I have a book, and that used to be an oddball, a possibly admirable oddball, or an genuinely admirable intellectual. But now that it's everybody, it's a problem. Everyone's reading and writing all the time.

"Indian Man Single-Handedly Plants a 1,360 Acre Forest."

"It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was interested."

"He appears to be part of the new generation of Islamic terrorists who act alone..."

"... abetted by jihadi Web sites and their own anger."

Compare to:

"Don’t worry, folks, he’s just a lone wolf like Major Hasan and Faisal Shahzad and all the other card-carrying members of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves. All jihad is local."

Will living alone — without "social checks and balances" — make you too eccentric?

This is one of these NYT lifestyle articles with anecdotes about women who do things like leaving their bra on the kitchen table. Then there's the woman who wears "this pair of white flax bloomers that go down to my knee. They’re like pantaloons. They’re so weird." She never lets anyone see them. "No, no... That would be the height of intimacy..." And yet, she's telling us all about them. She also "grazes on nuts and seeds."

What emerges over time, for those who live alone, is an at-home self that is markedly different — in ways big and small — from the self they present to the world. 

Until they're interviewed by the NYT. Then they present that self to the world.

Oh, well... anyway... I enjoyed reading this article, because I had this attitude myself as a woman living alone, and it's an attitude that curls back on itself and makes you think you have these special freedoms that would hurt too much to sacrifice. Here I am, expressing myself on the subject in the summer of 2008:



In the summer of 2009, I would get married, after learning that I really can be myself and be free in the constant presence of another human being. I had no idea!

"He’s not excusing Loughner, just describing what an isolated lifestyle in Arizona can do to people."

"The state ranks 48th among places where 'people trade favors with neighbors' and 45th among places where people eat dinner with their families.... The murders make Arizonans wonder if they’re leading mean, unexamined lives.... Isolation is slowly ruining Arizona, and ruining the rest of the country at a slower pace."

Link.

Football is better on TV... watched alone.

Asserts Luke O'Neil, whose friends "don't enjoy my company."

Now that a personalized, crystal-clear picture is at everyone's fingertips, it is pure torture to let someone else man the controls. Watching my friends operate a DVR makes me feel like a nervous backseat driver. When I'm at my in-laws’ house, for instance, I have to watch the Patriots game in a separate room because my father-in-law will inevitably flip over to golf during commercials. Personally, I like to pause the action every time there's a stoppage in play or when, say, the damn Patriots defense allows yet another third down conversion. (That happens a lot.) After I hit pause, I'll walk around the house a few times grinding my teeth. If I did that with company around, it would inevitably lead to someone complaining about being behind real time and somebody else whining that he can’t check his fantasy numbers without spoiling the game that’s now on pause. And they would be right to complain, if those hypothetical people still came over to watch football. Thankfully, I’ve scared them all away.

"The Occupy Wall Street protesters are confronting a classic Manhattan problem: lots of people, not a lot of space."

"So they're solving it in classic Manhattan fashion: arguing about it, making deals and building upward."

The move toward larger tents has some protesters worried. They prefer the privacy of individual dwellings.

"I don't mind them in and of themselves, but if they begin moving up by claiming eminent domain, it would be hypocritical and ironic," said Brian Thomas, a 32-year-old from Maine. "[Larger tents] are sturdy and more handy, but I think it's going to take away people's personal space and that will exacerbate the already rising level of tension."

The individual and the group.

ADDED: This feels like verse 2 of "Like a Rolling Stone":

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

The finest-school kids encounter the mystery tramp and the deal is a real estate deal.

"When I was lonely, I hid my emotional reality and lied outright."

"I fudged facts and did everything necessary to make my isolated life look full. I hinted that I hadn’t been single for as long as I had. I worked as a lawyer, and if someone at the office suggested I looked tired, I pretended that a busy social life was leaving me drained. I thought I was alone in doing this, but other lonely people I spoke to did the same thing."

Best paragraph in the obituary of the 104-year-old heiress Huguette Clark.

"For the quarter-century that followed [her mother's death], Mrs. Clark lived in the apartment in near solitude, amid a profusion of dollhouses and their occupants. She ate austere lunches of crackers and sardines and watched television, most avidly 'The Flintstones.' A housekeeper kept the dolls’ dresses impeccably ironed."

Howard Stern excoriates Kathy Lee Gifford for tormenting an autistic boy.

Kathy Lee somehow managed to produce the most unbearably tasteless display I've ever seen on television, and Stern lets her have it. Language alert on the second link, but the first link is much more offensive.

[Second link was wrong before. Fixed.]