He's fully cognizant of Kyrzakhstan....
I'm adding my "the blog has a theme today" tag. See if you can guess the theme!
Showing posts with label the blog has a theme today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the blog has a theme today. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
In the Blog-Has-a-Theme-Today Café...
... it's just a feeling I have about the way things seem like they want to connect up in a sort of a head-bone-connected-to-finger-bone kind of a way.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
"I think there's a very fascistic thing under The Little Prince, you know.... I think there's a kind of SS totalitarian sentimentality in there somewhere."
"You know, there's something, you know, that... masculine love of a certain kind of oily muscle, you know what I mean? I mean, I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can just imagine some beautiful SS man loving The Little Prince. You know, I don't know why, but there's something wrong with it. It stinks!"
A quote from "My Dinner With Andre" that ties together this morning's 3 posts:
Talk about the sentimentality of fascists.
A quote from "My Dinner With Andre" that ties together this morning's 3 posts:
Andrew Cuomo's "muscular brand of politics"Is there a Chaplin/Little Prince connection?
Politicians, including Hitler, using children
Hitler's resemblance to Chaplin
Talk about the sentimentality of fascists.
Friday, November 16, 2012
The Other Side of the Erlenmeyer Flasks.
In case you were wondering what it looked like from the other point of view in The Wine Beaker Erlenmeyer Flask Café, you have to go to The Other Side of the Ocean (and scroll sink to the bottom).
Monday, October 15, 2012
At tomorrow's debate, Candy Crowley is "going to react organically to what’s happening."
She "understand[s] that [she's] there." She's "not a fly on the wall."
You got a problem with that? Apparently, both campaigns do. They were expecting a fly on the wall! They contracted for a fly on the wall.
ADDED: What does it mean to react organically? That's old hippie talk. There was a time when everything was "organic" or "so organic." Wow. No exclamation point after "wow." It was just... wow. It was so hard to think back then. When everything was... like... organic?.
But how does an organ react? The stomach aches, the heart attacks, the lung wheezes, the bladder loses control.
You got a problem with that? Apparently, both campaigns do. They were expecting a fly on the wall! They contracted for a fly on the wall.
ADDED: What does it mean to react organically? That's old hippie talk. There was a time when everything was "organic" or "so organic." Wow. No exclamation point after "wow." It was just... wow. It was so hard to think back then. When everything was... like... organic?.
But how does an organ react? The stomach aches, the heart attacks, the lung wheezes, the bladder loses control.
Friday, July 27, 2012
"RAT is an anagram of ART. Do you think that inspired them, perhaps subconsciously?"
Asks Dr Weevil.
"A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than 6 millimetres... and herbivorous." Sounds delicious!
Dr Weevil. A nice portmanteau pseudonym. Combines Dr. Evil with our theme-of-the-day: pests.
Let's listen to Tex Ritter and Mantan Moreland:
10 things I judge to be interesting:
1. The term "portmanteau" originated in "Through the Looking-Glass," as Humpty Dumpty explains "Jabberwocky," within which, for example, "slithy" combines "lithe and slimy" and "mimsy" combines "flimsy and miserable." "You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word." (The word "portmanteau" already meant suitcase.)
2. "Portmanteau" comes from French — combining words for "carry" and "coat" — but the French don't say "portmanteau" to refer to "suitcase words." They say mot-valise — which they came up with by making a literal translation of the English term "suitcase word." That makes "portmanteau" something that's called a "false friend" (a term I did not know).
3. Tex Ritter's real name was Woodward Maurice Ritter. You'd think if he needed a nickname, Woody would have popped up. Think of all the Woodys that that had to stretch to get to "Woody." Woody Allen, for example, was named Allan Stewart Konigsberg. I can't discern how he got to Woody from his Wikipedia entry, which says: "It the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen." That sounds like he was setting up a knock-knock joke: "Heywood who?"
4. Now Woody Guthrie got to Woody quite directly. He was named Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. Born in 1912. You might say: Woodrow Wilson! Woodrow Wilson didn't even become President of the United States until 1913. Yes, but he was Governor of New Jersey. No matter that Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. It would be like somebody today living in some state that's not New Jersey naming their new baby Chris Christie Smith or Chris Christie Jones or whatever.
5. Back to Mantan Moreland, the other guy in the Tex Ritter "Boll Weevil" video. Looking at his Wikipedia page, I see he was in a surprising number of movies, including many movies I'd never heard of like "Freckles Comes Home" (1942) and "King of the Zombies" (1941). "He is perhaps best known for his role as chauffeur Birmingham Brown in Monogram's Charlie Chan series. (The lyrics of The Coasters' 1963 song 'Bad Detective' are sung from the first-person perspective of Birmingham Brown, Mantan Moreland's character in the Charlie Chan movie series.)" There's some very heavy racial context here. Spike Lee's movie "Bamboozled" appropriates some things about Moreland. And the Beastie Boys sampled something of his about mashed potatoes, and you can listen to the original (NSFW) here.
6. Moreland "was briefly considered as a possible addition to the Three Stooges when Shemp Howard died in 1955." And he was in the 1957 Broadway stage production of "Waiting For Godot." He played Estragon, the role played by Bert Lahr in the original production of the play.
7. In the "Waiting for Godot" with Moreland, Geoffrey Holder played the character Lucky.
8. You may remember Geoffrey Holder from 1970s-era 7-Up commercials.
9. The New York Dolls recorded "Bad Detective" — replete with the opening notes that you may well recognize as the music that was always used in the past to signify: This is Chinese.
10. Mantan Moreland was known for his "Incomplete Sentences" comic routines. They went like this (from some Charlie Chan movies):
"A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than 6 millimetres... and herbivorous." Sounds delicious!
Dr Weevil. A nice portmanteau pseudonym. Combines Dr. Evil with our theme-of-the-day: pests.
Let's listen to Tex Ritter and Mantan Moreland:
10 things I judge to be interesting:
1. The term "portmanteau" originated in "Through the Looking-Glass," as Humpty Dumpty explains "Jabberwocky," within which, for example, "slithy" combines "lithe and slimy" and "mimsy" combines "flimsy and miserable." "You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word." (The word "portmanteau" already meant suitcase.)
2. "Portmanteau" comes from French — combining words for "carry" and "coat" — but the French don't say "portmanteau" to refer to "suitcase words." They say mot-valise — which they came up with by making a literal translation of the English term "suitcase word." That makes "portmanteau" something that's called a "false friend" (a term I did not know).
3. Tex Ritter's real name was Woodward Maurice Ritter. You'd think if he needed a nickname, Woody would have popped up. Think of all the Woodys that that had to stretch to get to "Woody." Woody Allen, for example, was named Allan Stewart Konigsberg. I can't discern how he got to Woody from his Wikipedia entry, which says: "It the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen." That sounds like he was setting up a knock-knock joke: "Heywood who?"
4. Now Woody Guthrie got to Woody quite directly. He was named Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. Born in 1912. You might say: Woodrow Wilson! Woodrow Wilson didn't even become President of the United States until 1913. Yes, but he was Governor of New Jersey. No matter that Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. It would be like somebody today living in some state that's not New Jersey naming their new baby Chris Christie Smith or Chris Christie Jones or whatever.
5. Back to Mantan Moreland, the other guy in the Tex Ritter "Boll Weevil" video. Looking at his Wikipedia page, I see he was in a surprising number of movies, including many movies I'd never heard of like "Freckles Comes Home" (1942) and "King of the Zombies" (1941). "He is perhaps best known for his role as chauffeur Birmingham Brown in Monogram's Charlie Chan series. (The lyrics of The Coasters' 1963 song 'Bad Detective' are sung from the first-person perspective of Birmingham Brown, Mantan Moreland's character in the Charlie Chan movie series.)" There's some very heavy racial context here. Spike Lee's movie "Bamboozled" appropriates some things about Moreland. And the Beastie Boys sampled something of his about mashed potatoes, and you can listen to the original (NSFW) here.
6. Moreland "was briefly considered as a possible addition to the Three Stooges when Shemp Howard died in 1955." And he was in the 1957 Broadway stage production of "Waiting For Godot." He played Estragon, the role played by Bert Lahr in the original production of the play.
7. In the "Waiting for Godot" with Moreland, Geoffrey Holder played the character Lucky.
8. You may remember Geoffrey Holder from 1970s-era 7-Up commercials.
9. The New York Dolls recorded "Bad Detective" — replete with the opening notes that you may well recognize as the music that was always used in the past to signify: This is Chinese.
10. Mantan Moreland was known for his "Incomplete Sentences" comic routines. They went like this (from some Charlie Chan movies):
"There may be blood-sucking monsters under your bed."
A screen-shot of this blog taken just now, after I put up one and then another posts about rats:
The web knows. It knows what you've been reading. It knows what pests really worry you. No, I'm not worrying about bedbugs out here in Wisconsin. But I am wary of them when I go to hotels... especially in NYC.
If you imagine yourself in the market for pest control services in the near future... what pest do you picture? And I mean some kind of animal (including insects and arachnids and so forth). I'm not setting up your lame political jokes.
The web knows. It knows what you've been reading. It knows what pests really worry you. No, I'm not worrying about bedbugs out here in Wisconsin. But I am wary of them when I go to hotels... especially in NYC.
If you imagine yourself in the market for pest control services in the near future... what pest do you picture? And I mean some kind of animal (including insects and arachnids and so forth). I'm not setting up your lame political jokes.
"[T]he only thing preventing these giant swamp rats from destroying all of Louisiana are our very own Rat B*stards and their crafty hunting tricks...."
It's the new reality show — "Rat Bastards" — with "larger-than-life characters in extreme situations, facing down these rodents with everything from hunting weapons to dynamite."
Can we get a reality show where Ray barges into that NYC art show "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch" and takes over the cooking and serving? Let it be one of the competitive shows where we eliminate contestants one by one. Each week the least interesting human being goes home. We could have a Heidi Klum-like arbiter of interestingness who, along with 2 other judges, would assemble the 3 least interesting contestants each week, critique them, and ultimately select one to be told "I'm sorry — you bore me — goodbye."
But who could be the judges of interestingness? Who specializes in that? I mean other than bloggers....
Nutria are considered such a problem in Louisiana that the state offers a $6 bounty on each tail. Ray said the money is nice, but he calls that program it waste of good meat.Here's Ray:
"I catch'em, kill'em and put them in the pot. They are darn good eating," Ray said.
Can we get a reality show where Ray barges into that NYC art show "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch" and takes over the cooking and serving? Let it be one of the competitive shows where we eliminate contestants one by one. Each week the least interesting human being goes home. We could have a Heidi Klum-like arbiter of interestingness who, along with 2 other judges, would assemble the 3 least interesting contestants each week, critique them, and ultimately select one to be told "I'm sorry — you bore me — goodbye."
But who could be the judges of interestingness? Who specializes in that? I mean other than bloggers....
Sunday, July 1, 2012
"I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called."
Wrote Fania Pascal, back in the 1930:
But Frankfurt's agenda is talking about bullshit, not analyzing the quality of a joke. She was bullshitting about how she felt by carelessly likening it to something overly specific — how a run-over dog feels. So Wittgenstein was essentially saying: That's bullshit. The key point — for "On Bullshit" purposes — is that Pascal doesn't care about the truth with respect to how the dog feels. So then Wittgenstein could be disgusted because of the way she didn't care about how the dog felt.
But it's not as though there were any real dog that had been run over. Pascal wasn't being callous toward an actual suffering being. The suffering being was Pascal, and the callousness, if any, was Wittgenstein's. On this theory, which hurt Pascal's feelings, he was saying, essentially, let's not talk about your mundane little tonsil surgery and its predictable after-effects. Let's talk about something philosophical, and the first thing that springs to mind is that dog you just mentioned. And he introduces the new topic. Ironically, the distraction into the random issue of animal feelings was much more likely to alleviate Pascal's pain that going on about the details of the surgery.
In Frankfurt's view — the context of bullshit — Wittgenstein is disgusted by bullshit, the laxity about what is true. I sidetracked the discussion into the question of concern about suffering. But the original topic — and the theme of the day here on the blog — is joking.
Joking has a lax connection to truth and to suffering.
I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.”That's quoted in Harry G. Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit." Frankfurt aptly wonders if that really happened like that:
It seems extraordinary, almost unbelievable, that anyone could object seriously to what Pascal reports herself as having said. That characterization of her feelings — so innocently close to the utterly commonplace “sick as a dog” — is simply not provocative enough to arouse any response as lively or intense as disgust. If Pascal’s simile is offensive, then what figurative or allusive uses of language would not be?Pascal needs to be more appreciative of having a friend like Wittgenstein. I'd say. But Frankfurt credits her with having this friendship and therefore with an aptitude for discerning whether Wittgenstein is cranky or nice. He decides to take her report as "sufficiently true to her idea of Wittgenstein to have made sense to her" and to "accept Pascal’s report at face value, supposing that when it came to the use of allusive or figurative language, Wittgenstein was indeed as preposterous as she makes him out to be." That is, Pascal — who might lack a sense of humor — now gets credit for having portrayed Wittgenstein as ridiculous, as if she'd made a joke rather than not getting the joke.
So perhaps it did not really happen quite as Pascal says. Perhaps Wittgenstein was trying to make a small joke, and it misfired. He was only pretending to bawl Pascal out, just for the fun of a little hyperbole; and she got the tone and the intention wrong. She thought he was disgusted by her remark, when in fact he was only trying to cheer her up with some playfully exaggerated mock criticism or joshing. In that case the incident is not incredible or bizarre after all.
But Frankfurt's agenda is talking about bullshit, not analyzing the quality of a joke. She was bullshitting about how she felt by carelessly likening it to something overly specific — how a run-over dog feels. So Wittgenstein was essentially saying: That's bullshit. The key point — for "On Bullshit" purposes — is that Pascal doesn't care about the truth with respect to how the dog feels. So then Wittgenstein could be disgusted because of the way she didn't care about how the dog felt.
But it's not as though there were any real dog that had been run over. Pascal wasn't being callous toward an actual suffering being. The suffering being was Pascal, and the callousness, if any, was Wittgenstein's. On this theory, which hurt Pascal's feelings, he was saying, essentially, let's not talk about your mundane little tonsil surgery and its predictable after-effects. Let's talk about something philosophical, and the first thing that springs to mind is that dog you just mentioned. And he introduces the new topic. Ironically, the distraction into the random issue of animal feelings was much more likely to alleviate Pascal's pain that going on about the details of the surgery.
In Frankfurt's view — the context of bullshit — Wittgenstein is disgusted by bullshit, the laxity about what is true. I sidetracked the discussion into the question of concern about suffering. But the original topic — and the theme of the day here on the blog — is joking.
Joking has a lax connection to truth and to suffering.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
"I broke my theme. Something made me laugh."
And Meade says: "Then you didn't break your theme. Something made you laugh. Something made you happy. Something made you smile."
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Friday, September 9, 2011
Getting attention/avoiding attention.
I'm just noticing that the blog — by accident — has a theme today. So far.
Are you trying to get attention or sneaking around?
Are you trying to get attention or sneaking around?
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
"Harmony, gee I really love you, and I want to love you forever, and dream of the never, never, never leaving harmony."
Today's theme song.
IN THE COMMENTS: c3 said:
IN THE COMMENTS: c3 said:
Professor: Your age is showing. 70's Elton John. Now I have to know which of his early albums did you most like. (This is not a trick question.)Frankly, Elton John is after my time. I thought when "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" came out that he was actually leaving — going back to his plow or whatever (hmmm) — and the career trajectory had arced and landed. Ha. But I did have a job back then — reading magazines! — where we played the radio, and I found some of his songs quite catchy. I liked the 3 albums I had: "Madman Across the Water," "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player," and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." I still recommend these. They're great fun. And if you buy any of that music using those links, you will be painlessly contributing to the Althouse blog. My favorite Elton John song is "Daniel."
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Theme days on the blog.
To do a theme day on the blog is a harsh discipline. And, no, the theme of the blog today is not "harsh discipline." This is not a theme day today. Yesterday was a theme day, and today, I am tired of doing themes. I want my freedom.
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