The mysterious orange goo found in Alaska is... eggs!

But what creature's eggs, we don't know.

The eggs were found on at least one roof and in buckets set all over the village to collect rain water. City Councilwoman Frances Douglas said the gooey, slimy substance was widely spread in streaks along the Wulik River and the lagoon, which is a half mile wide and six miles long. Orangey water was reported from as far away as the village of Buckland, 150 miles southeast of Kivalina....

Even village elders don't recall anything like it, said Douglas, who has lived all her 44 years in Kivalina. She remembers temperatures were colder in her childhood, gradually rising over the years. She wonders if that has anything to do with the invasion of the eggs.

"With climate change, anything can happen, I guess," she said.

No, I think it sounds more like aliens. Come on. You're the one that said invasion. Unless! Unless! Aliens are causing climate change!

"Protesters Destroy Recall Petitions Against Wisconsin Democrat."

More strange ideas of — to use the Wisconsin protester's catchphrase — "what democracy looks like."

New horoscopes by Anna...

... hmmm. It seems I'm Bag.

"Heathers," etc.

1. The Daily News has a where-are-they-now photo essay on the various actors from the great 1989 movie "Heathers."

2. I didn't know Jennifer Connelly turned down the Winona Ryder role, though I did know that Ryder has done nothing of note since her 2001 arrest for shoplifting. That poor woman paid such a heavy price for her crime. Come on, everyone. Forgive Winona.

3. I didn't know Kim Walker/Heather Chandler died of a brain tumor in 2001. (Classic "chainsaw" video clip — language alert.) ("Please send Heather to Heaven.")

4. I was happy to see that Glenn Shadix/Father Ripper is still a busily working actor. ("I love my dead gay son.")

5. And look what became of the nerdy boy.

6. "Betty Finn" was a real Estevez.

7. They're working on the Broadway musical version of "Heathers." The new Veronica Sawyer might be Kristen Bell. What do you think of the idea of "Heathers," the musical? Is the movie popular with Broadway fans? Sort of like "Hairspray"? I loved the movie and I loved the original movie "Hairspray," but I had no interest in seeing the show "Hairspray" or the movie made from the show. But that's just me. I guess I don't want to see any Broadway shows made from movies, though I did see "Nine" many years ago... when Raul Julia played Guido.

8. I miss Raul Julia! But what the hell was going on here?

"I have a crush on Jimmy Carter. I admit it. He has an extraordinary mind. He's an exceptional human being."

"And he writes poetry, for crying out loud. He's all good things."

A paean to the inauguration: "Hallelujah... for being smart again. And sexy again. And optimistic again."

This is one of those Maira Kalman illustrated essays in the NYT. I don't want this much sugar in my morning coffee. So let me just say... "sexy"? Is it the government that is sexy now or the people who are enthusiastic about the government who are sexy? Or are you saying you feel sexually attracted to Barack Obama? Or do you just think all the sexy people are liberals or — no one could possibly be this silly — all the liberals are sexy people?

So those are some questions for you. Now, I will answer one question that you raise:

And a woman named Renata asked: "Why [take the oath] on the Bible? Why not on the Constitution?" And I think that is a Very Good Question.

It's a very easy question. The President must swear to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." There would be no safeguard against lying if you swore on the document you were swearing to uphold. If he doesn't intend to respect the document, he has his hand on a document he doesn't respect.

"Is Barack Obama.... deliberately using the techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a covert form of hypnosis...?"

"A fundamental tool of 'conversational hypnosis' is pacing and leading—a way for the hypnotist to bypass the listener’s critical faculty by associating repeated statements that are unquestionably accurate with the message he wants to convey."

That assertion is failing to bypass my critical faculty.

UPDATE: LOL! Rush Limbaugh is talking about this theory in the first segment of his show today.

What are some irrational things that's intelligent, educated people believe in?

For example, I know law professors who believe in astrology.

Why men shave their heads.

Christina Reihill writes:

While the idea of the modern man as a hairless metrosexual more interested in manicures than motors challenges my notions of a heterosexual man, I'm more interested in the state of play between the sexes in our hyper-sexualised, pornified culture.

As young girls are told that it's empowering to pursue men aggressively and young men are learning to lie back and take it, I wonder how these acts of aggressive connection affects the psyche....

On Freud's map, this redefining of male sexuality could be seen as men searching for the mother in them and/or acting out their sexual envy towards woman.

Just as women express penis envy, is this men saying we're not lying back and taking it?

What are we watching and possibly not seeing in the bald head, bullet-proof imagery in today's "anything goes" culture? What is the symbolism in men shaving their heads?

Staying with Freud and his symbolic grammar -- the head represents the penis, while head hair is recognised as semen.

Extending the logic of these associations, long hair expresses unrestrained sexuality, while hair removal makes a statement around sexual restraint, as in celibacy or castration.

What is restrained about exposing the penis? You had to do that hair=semen move to make this theory work.

You don't have to be afraid of the TV. You shouldn't let poets lie to you.

Listen to Bjork. And look! It's like a little city in there.

"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"?

"Clintons are lizard people and they are punishing Obama."

Links mentioned:

David Icke's theory of the lizard people

Skeptoid on Reptoids

Is Obama the Anti-Christ?/Is CNN crazy?

TPM clipped that together, so I don't know how ridiculous CNN actually looked, but it sure looks crazy in that montage.

Snopes investigates the Anti-Christ "rumor" here and declares it false. Thanks, Snopes.

The Democratic Party's email attacking Jerome Corsi (author of the #1 selling anti-Obama book).

Yesterday, we were talking about the Jerome Corsi book on Barack Obama. Looking at a NYT article that seemed critical of the book without providing much evidence of anything wrong with it, I wondered what happened to Obama's idea that he'd respond very quickly to criticisms. So here is the Democratic Party's email attacking Corsi. It's too long to print in its entirety as a blog post, so I'll pick out some things that seem most destructive to Corsi. The email isn't a systematic response to the Obama book. It's effort to discredit Corsi for various things he's written over the years — mostly not about Obama.

From a 2004 AP story:

"Anti-Kerry Book Author Apologizes for Slurs." "One of the authors of a new anti-John Kerry book frequently posted comments on a conservative Web site describing Muslims and Catholics as pedophiles and Pope John Paul II as senile. In chat room entry last year on freerepublic.com, Corsi writes: 'Islam is a peaceful religion - just as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels are killed.' In another entry, he says: 'So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it'." [AP, 8/10/04]

If that is a reason not to read Corsi's book, we shouldn't be reading Christopher Hitchens either. What exactly is wrong with being outraged at the scandal of child molesting priests?

From the Washington Times, evidence that Corsi believes a wacko conspiracy theory:

"The real reason behind President Bush's push for immigration reform, says author Jerome R. Corsi, is to unite the United States, Mexico and Canada by erasing borders and creating a 'North American Union.'... Government officials say the idea is no more than an unjustified conspiracy theory spread through the Internet.

Corsi also wrote a book that rejects "the fossil fuel theory--that oil comes from dead plants and dinosaurs. He believes it comes out of the ground naturally, and that there's more coming up all the time." Weird. I've never even heard of that theory. What does he think creates it? Eh. I don't want to know.

There are also a lot of Corsi quotes — taken from his Free Republic postings. The worst ones are about Islam. Example: "Islam is like a virus -- it affects the mind -- maybe even better as an analogy -- it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects. A throwback, Medieval, anti-modern, anti-science, anti-knowledge doctrine."

So, has Corsi been thoroughly discredited, or will anyone defend him?

"We are generally powerless to interpret reincarnationspeak and yogababble."

You can't just ask Language Log anything. Or is it you just can't ask Language Log anything? Or is it you can't ask Language Log just anything?

Anyway...

A reporter from the New York Daily News called to ask me about some things that former yoga instructor Rielle Hunter had said, about former Democratic politician John Edwards being "an old soul" with a "special energy" who could be a truly "transformational leader" if only he would use his heart more and his head less; and about her purpose on this Earth being "to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves." The reporter wanted to know what this meant — what becoming a better reflection of one's true repressed self would amount to, in precise terms. Doesn't it suggest that one's real self is trapped inside, he asked, and one's apparently real self that walks around among us, and eats breakfast, and experiences temptations regarding sexual relations with blonde videographers, is merely a reflection of that inner reality? Is this not, he went on (having apparently majored in philosophy at Columbia), a remarkable inversion of the way language is normally employed by philosophers talking about the self? Has Ms Hunter not got the outside inside and the inside outside?

What becoming a better reflection of one's true repressed self would amount to....

But there really is a linguistics question there! It's about screwing up the meaning by putting the adjectives "true" and "repressed" together. I think Language Log was manifesting some repression about sex and therefore failing to get to its true interest in linguistic. But it was nevertheless very funny, which is always good.

The complicated story of Rielle Hunter and Jonathan Darman, the Newsweek reporter.

Jonathan Darman has his claws out:

The first time I laid eyes on , I could tell she was a story. She had frizzy blond hair with DARK roots, wore bright nail polish and moved like someone who knew how to work a room.

Huh? This made me a little suspicious of Darman. So what if her hair was frizzy and she wore bright nail polish? Lots of boring people do. And there's nothing amazing about dark roots. Why do you appear to be FREAKING OUT about it?

She was on a cramped commuter flight and she was flirting with a candidate for president of the United States. It was July 7, 2006.

I'm still not seeing it. Women flirt with the male candidates all the time.

Most of the other passengers seemed to have no idea who Edwards was. But this blond woman, putting away her bags, was visibly captivated by him.

One person recognizes a celebrity and others don't. The one that does is way more excited than the others. But in fact, Edwards and Hunter were already having an affair, and Darman is showing off — now — that he smelled something fishy back then. But give the man credit. He noticed, and he talked to her:

She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she'd previously had "many lives." She'd worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She'd been a New York party girl, she'd been married and divorced, she'd been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.

All right, then! We know a little more about John Edwards's judgment.

She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy."

Blech. Energy. The buzzword of idiots.

Four months later, Rielle emailed Darman offering him a story. They meet for lunch at a restaurant in NYC and — shocking! — she's into drinking wine and is being smoochily friendly.

She told me that she'd felt a connection to me when we'd first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle.

Oh, did it? Sounds like one of her lines — along with what's your sign, sensing your energy, and feeling a connection.

At this point, I go looking for a picture of Darman. Well, damn! I feel a connection, sense his energy, and — sure — detect that he's an old soul. Let's meet for lunch and wine in SoHo, Jonathan.

Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon—human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

So I guess we know the seduction routine she aimed at Edwards — who perhaps got to thinking that Elizabeth was a blockage.

Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "He has the power to change the world," she said.

To feed his ego and serve the world. Ha. Note how that chimes with Edwards's self-analysis (in the "Nightline" interview):

Ego. Self-focus, self-importance... a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want. You're invincible. And there will be no consequences. And nothing, nothing could be further from the truth.

But the frizzy-haired energy lady said I could remove blockages, release my old soul, and serve the world....

Back to Darman:

"Do you talk about this stuff with the candidate?" I asked. "All the time," Rielle replied. "I'll lecture him on it when he's getting too much up in here," she said, gesturing toward her head.

And not enough down here, she said, pointing to her crotch. (Kidding!)

"He'll see a look on my face and say, 'Yes, I know, Rielle, "Power of Now" says …' " Rielle wanted me to know all these things because she wanted me to write about them.

Oh, yeah, I forgot. There was no confessing to the sexual relationship here. She was trying to get the news out to the world that John Edwards would make a great President, with his old soulfulness and his ability — encouraged by Hunter — to get through the blockages and release his powers that are somewhere other than in his head.

Even if they didn't have an affair, we should question his judgment in wanting to put up with listening to this bullshit and, certainly, in wanting her to film a documentary about him.

After Hunter is fired, she tells Darman she's working with novelist Jay McInerney "on a 'genius' idea for a television show about women who help men get out of failing marriages by having affairs with them." She also says she's in love but won't say with whom. When the National Enquirer starts writing about the affair, she calls Darman for advice and seems to be trying to pressure him to think that he can't use all the material she'd given him. He refuses — it was never off the record — and she stops talking to him. Darman opines that she must have been "saddened" to realize he'd always been a reporter when she thought he was her friend — I'm sure he's read "The Journalist and the Murderer" — but I would guess that she was using him as a media connection all along and that she was now, on stern advice from Edwards, doing what she could to keep him from writing anything that would corroborate The National Enquirer.

So now I have "a 'genius' idea for a television show about a woman" who has an affair with a presidential candidate and who befriends a reporter — leading to all sorts of complexities about whether the woman is falling for the reporter, looking to him as a friend, or — most likely — massaging him into writing stories promoting the interests of the candidate. The woman travels with the campaign in the guise of a film documentarian, so our show can use her badly done and embarrassingly revealing video clips as a narrative device — in the manner of "The Office" or "The Comeback." And maybe her real job — for which she deserves the money that seems thrown away on her as a filmmaker — is to hand-feed favorable stories to reporters. Our adorable reporter tries to do his job as he teeters between falling for her and figuring out what is going on.

Email me, Jay. Lunch in SoHo?

UPDATE: The complicated story continues.

If the Olympics are "soft porn" and you are "concentrating" on the female gymnasts....

... didn't you just confess to pedophilia?

Worst pop culture curses.

Campbell's Chunky Soup?

ADDED: I've fixed the link. And I'm still laughing at the complete wrongness of the accidental link, which was something I'd copied when I was going to so something more on this post. The struggle to understand this post in the comments is really funny — especially the effort to "kozinski."

"Morally speaking, what [Bob] Novak was doing here is no better than walking down a crowded street with his handgun, firing off .22 rounds at random."

Says Matt Yglesias — about Novak's hit and run accident today.

ADDED: Above the Law's "Lawyer of the Day" award goes to David Bono, the law firm partner who bicycled after Novak and blocked his escape. You can see him on video here. He must have been agile on his bike, and I like his verbal agility as he says — responding to Novak's claim not to have seen the struck pedestrian — "There was a pedestrian splayed on his windshield. I don't think there's any way you could miss that." A perfectly upstanding, observant, and articulate witness. Tough luck for Novak.

IN THE COMMENTS: Seven Machos:

The important thing here is that an evil person did an evil thing and that a good person (on a bicycle! which is quasi-sainthood) stopped it.

We can't let common sense get in the way of the narrative.

AJ Lynch:

Yeah he was splayed on the windshield then he just slid off like one of those mishaps you see in a cartoon on TV.

There's not always a word for the thing you want to say.

But it's slightly maddening when you feel there's a word, and you just can't pull it out of your brain. A colleague of mine is looking for a word that expresses a phenomenon embodied in these 3 examples:

1. I go to the track and place a bet on a horse because its name is the same as my son's and the jockey is wearing #5, which is my son's hockey jersey number.

2. I can't decide what to order for lunch so I decide that I'll order whatever the person in front of me orders.

3. I'm not sure what color car to purchase so I decide to purchase the color of the next car that drives by my house.

Now, I think #1 is distinctly different from 2 and 3, because in #1, she knows what the answer is when she adopts the rule. In #2 and #3, she excitingly adopts the rule and locks herself into a result that is unknown. But all 3 are about adopting a rule to make a decision while knowing that there is nothing about the rule that will improve the quality of the decision. One could superstitiously believe that the rule would make the decision good or religiously believe — in examples 2 and 3 — that God knew you'd adopted the rule and was giving you a sign about what was the right decision. And one could think that the rule would generate randomness where somehow a nonrandom decision seemed bad. But basically, the decisionmaker is being playful or poetic.

So is there a word for this?

And do you have any good examples of using this sort of decisionmaking — colorful and exciting rules you've made for yourself? Obviously, there are a lot of standard ways approaches like rolling the dice or consulting the Magic 8 ball, but how about some weird stuff? Or why not make up a rule for yourself about something right now and do it? Got a decision to make? Make it based on something strange and as-yet-undetermined. And tell us about it.

***

This made me think of "Slacker" — one of my favorite movies. We see 2 women walking along the sidewalk. One says: "The next person who passes us will be dead within a fortnight." But that's not a case of the phenomenon my colleague means – not unless we're supposed to view the speaker as a murderer choosing a victim. The standard interpretation is that she's a psychic.

ADDED: Someone in the comments mentions Dadaism, and that reminds me of "A Book of Surrealist Games." I think example #3 could be seen as a sort of surrealist game. The more we talk about these examples, the more I think they are 3 different things. Several commenters have said that #1 is superstition, and I think it is either superstition — in the form of overvaluing a coincidence — or a sentimental delight in coincidence. #2 seems to be conformity or a rational bet based on a tiny amount of evidence. Someone who is eating here is eating that, so maybe he knows what's good. Only #3 is surrealist and dangerous — but nowhere near as much as if you'd chosen the color of your car based on something other than the color of someone else's car. Chances are it will be an ordinary car color, and at least someone else has seen fit to get a car that color. That said, I saw a bright purple car 2 days ago. It looked like hell. And I love the color purple. It just looks like hell on a car.