Purchases of the day.

From the February 18, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Cottonelle Fresh Care Flushable Moist Wipes - 294 ct. (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.51)

(2) GE 12983-6 25 Watt Globe G25 Light Bulb, Crystal Clear, 6-Pack (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.12)

ch ching:

Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts / New York Philharmonic (1961) Bernstein (Actor), New York Philharmonic (Actor) | Rated: NR | Format: DVD (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $26.84)

aden + anais Cozy 4-Layer Sleeping Bag-Star Light (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.60)

Hamilton Beach Stovetop Slow Cooker - Black/silver (6 Quart) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $4.21)

Fitbit One Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Tracker (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $7.99)

... and 80 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — all of which convey the unmistakably soft cozy slow dreamy flushably warm harmonic message: Blog on, Wisconsin blogger. Blog on.

Thank you.

Matt Damon pledges not to go to the bathroom...

... until there is a toilet for everyone in the world:

Ultra Soft... Ultra Suave... MEGA!

Plunging into the Amazon Associates Earnings Report today, category "Health & Personal Care, I see someone — anonymous, of course — purchased THIS.  Hey, what a great idea!  A commonly used everyday item.  And at no additional cost to the buyer, this blog receives $1.80 from Amazon.

So it got me thinking and I went over to the SiteMeter to see that the blog had approximately 25,000 visitors today.  And I thought — what if just 10% of those 25,000 visitors were to regularly, so to speak, in the privacy of their own homes, meet their Quilted Northern needs via the Althouse Amazon portal?  I'll let you do the math.  But let's just say it would leave the Meadhouse, well, flush.  And of course a flush blogger… is a blogger who feels well-appreciated.  So thanks, anonymous and everyone else who used the Althouse Amazon portal!  May you ever experience great softness, comfort and convenience. 

Meanwhile, yesterday, we were talking about clown suits and trillion dollar platinum coins and I see Slate put out a call for ideas on designs for the proposed imagined magic coin.  My personal favorite design idea:



Well done! Let's see... can Charmin be purchased on Amazon?  Why yes, yes it can!  Ultra Soft... Ultra Suave... MEGA!

Used toilet purportedly clean.

Email from the neighborhood listserve:

Our new neighbors across the street replaced their toilets.
They have a fully functional Mayfair toilet for anyone who is interested.
It is very clean, since it was transported in their vehicle!

If you are interested please contact...

Black licorice! Potty training! Emily Dickinson!

Now that I've wandered over to the San Francisco Chronicle web page — I was looking for info on that "Star Trek" doodle, I find some intriguing headlines:

1. "State expands warning on eating black licorice." (A particular brand has lead in it. It's not the old story that glycyrrhizin is dangerous.)

2. "Photo of mom potty-training kids at restaurant table sparks outrage."

Kimberly Decker [who took a photo and posted it on Facebook] says the mother in question lugged portable potties into the restaurant, placed them on chairs and sat her children down on them. At first Decker thought the potties were booster seats but when the mother stripped off her children’s clothes, she realized the twins were going to the bathroom—in the middle of the restaurant in front of other diners.

“She had to undo the jumpsuits, and take them all the way down so they were completely nude, with the jumpsuits down to their ankles just eating their chicken nuggets, sitting on little toddler potties”...

You have to question whether Decker made the right choice in posting the photo online.

3. "Scholars may have 2nd photo of poet Dickinson."

Kelly said perhaps the best evidence [that it's really Emily Dickinson] is an ophthalmological report that compared similarities in the eyes and facial features of the women in the photos....

That could shift some perceptions about the Amherst native...  For instance, a book in the 1950s was the first to propose Dickinson had a lesbian relationship with [the other woman in the photograph, Kate Scott] Turner....

"This is a store that sells 300 rolls of toilet paper at the same time."

"And I say any customer that buys 300 rolls of toilet paper deserves a funny book to sit on the toilet and read."

Joan Rivers protests Costco, which banned her book, supposedly because of 2 "parody quotes" from Marie Antoinette and Wilt Chamberlain.

Is this like the fake Bob Dylan quotes that led to the publisher's pulling copies of Jonah Lehrer's "Imagine"?

But a comedy book is different from the kind of nonfiction pop science stuff that's written by semi-serious authors like Jonah Lehrer — the Malcolm Gladwell-type book. Comic writers make up quotes all the time. Is the Onion in trouble? They're always running with fake quotes, like, for example, Michele Bachmann expressing relief that "not a single American died" in the recent temple shooting. It should be okay in the realm of comedy. People get what comedy is, especially when there's a well-known it's-a-joke brand like "The Onion" plastered on it. Except they don't.

People can be pretty dumb. Should we set up the world for the safety of the dumb?

"It’s too bad this is such a big deal."

"It’s too bad our society isn’t further along."

The CBS News reporter Diane Sawyer asked [Sally Ride] to demonstrate a newly installed privacy curtain around the shuttle’s toilet. On “The Tonight Show,” Johnny Carson joked that the shuttle flight would be delayed because Dr. Ride had to find a purse to match her shoes.

ADDED: "The pioneering scientist was, a statement from Sally Ride Science announced, survived by 'Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years.' With that simple statement — listed alongside her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin and nephew, Whitney — Ride came out." Link.

"The pancreatic cancer community is going to be absolutely thrilled that there's now this advocate that they didn't know about. And, I hope the GLBT community feels the same," Bear Ride, who identifies as gay, said....

Of Sally Ride's sexual orientation, Bear Ride said, "Sally didn't use labels. Sally had a very fundamental sense of privacy, it was just her nature, because we're Norwegians, through and through."

"My fish died when I wasn't home. Asked my cousin to give him a proper flushing.."

"She sent me this."

"Slaughterhouses are so filthy that more than half of all meat is contaminated with fecal bacteria."

The message on the toilet paper supplied — by PETA — to the city of Trenton, which, in a budget crunch, was running out.

4-year-old boy who loves toilets gets the gift a dual-flush toilet from Kohler Company.

Front-page news in Milwaukee.

Jim and Michele Kruse first noticed their son's admittedly unusual interest when he was about 18 months old and, having spotted a line of portable johns, wouldn't leave until he had inspected each one.

The parents, understandably, had reservations about this new enthusiasm. But they decided to go with the flow. They used portable toilets to help teach Dustin his colors. Michele encouraged his interest in reading by scouring libraries for books on toilets....

Blah blah blah... free toilet... famous at the age of 4 for loving toilets. (Incredibly cheap PR for Kohler, which would really like you to watch the video of the child who loves their toilets.)

Steve Jobs's feet.

From the Walter Isaacson biography "Steve Jobs":

He was still convinced, against all evidence, that his vegan diets meant that he didn’t need to use a deodorant or take regular showers. “We would have to literally put him out the door and tell him to go take a shower,” said Markkula. “At meetings we had to look at his dirty feet.” Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his colleagues.

***

To produce the fully packaged Apple II would require significant capital, so they considered selling the rights to a larger company. Jobs went to Al Alcorn and asked for the chance to pitch it to Atari’s management. He set up a meeting with the company’s president, Joe Keenan, who was a lot more conservative than Alcorn and Bushnell. “Steve goes in to pitch him, but Joe couldn’t stand him,” Alcorn recalled. “He didn’t appreciate Steve’s hygiene.” Jobs was barefoot, and at one point put his feet up on a desk. “Not only are we not going to buy this thing,” Keenan shouted, “but get your feet off my desk!” Alcorn recalled thinking, “Oh, well. There goes that possibility.”

Giant rolls of toilet paper clog a river in Idaho.

Great example of an article that would be so much better with a picture.

"This is the last bathroom in the city anyone would ever want to use..."

The "Drug Loo."

"Don't squish it and after it's dead, flush it down the toilet."

"Hey, and flush it a couple of times."

(Movie scene alluded to this morning.)

Rand Paul is pro-choice... about toilets and light bulbs.

Via this collection of essays in the NYT called "The Politicized Light Bulb: Why are some Americans upset with attempts to encourage more energy efficiency in their homes?" I've skimmed the essays, and they seem pretty worthless. None of the writers seem to get why I am upset about losing access to the light bulbs I like.

"Get Up, Stand Up," stand up to go to the bathroom.

Hey, that's sexist! Don't give up the fight, indeed!

Althouse sighting at the Wisconsin Capitol protest today.

Did Meade bring me here for a reason?



"Let's go in."

We find the line and question a man who went through it: "Was it worth it?"



"I'll use the Port-a-Potty from now on."

ADDED: Somebody emailed to say they wanted to know what boots I was wearing. Also: "There is a guy in the background saying: you want to meet somebody? Another male voice: ya with your fists? Then a loud audible Shhhhsssssh! which sounds female." Hey, you're right! The things that get picked up on audio.

95 things kids are afraid of, including the PBS logo...

... and lots of things that might crawl up out of the toilet.

"Does that not just sound like an NPR report, to do an in-depth report on the word of the year, 'no.'"

Says Rush Limbaugh, about this NPR segment, which I tried to listen to. Man, NPR is slow. Unless you're driving in traffic trying to create the illusion that you are going quickly, I don't see how you can listen to that. But there's a transcript at the link, and you can read it so much faster than the 5 minutes it takes for Geoffrey Nunberg to perform the text on the audio. When he finally gets to the point that the word of the year is "no," he says:

That word usually gets a bad rap in public life; it's never a compliment to call somebody a naysayer. So Democrats obviously meant to put Republicans on the defensive when they began to call them "the party of no" for opposing the stimulus bill in early 2009. As The New York Times' Ben Zimmer pointed out, that phrase has often been used by the party in power to label the opposition as obstructionist. Ronald Reagan branded Democrats as the "party of no" in 1988, Bill Clinton did the same thing to Republicans in 1994, and Tom Delay turned the phrase back on Democrats in 2005.

Here's the part Rush played:

What was different this time is that after some early defensiveness, a lot of Republicans embraced the label and even ratcheted it up a notch. "We're not just the party of no," Rush Limbaugh said, "We're the party of hell, no!" — and Republican leaders quickly adopted the line. That extra word shifted the meaning of the phrase — it no longer suggested just opposition to particular bills and programs but unapologetic and resolute defiance.

That stance clearly resonated with a lot of voters.

Rush stopped his playing of the clip there, but it continued like this:

"No" has a great power to bring people together, precisely because it doesn't have to be pinned down. A child has a much harder time mastering "yes," which is always the response to a specific prospect — "Do you need to go potty?" Whereas the child's first "no" comes earlier, as a pure eruption of willful refusal. And the word retains that capacity, even as we learn to intone it to convey despair, anger, defiance, fear, astonishment, disappointment or resignation.

And that's how NPR sees you voters: You're children. You're resisting potty training. Your Tea Potty Party is mindless emotionalism. You're — as Andrew Sullivan would put it — intellectually inert brats.

That's what makes these choruses of negativity so hard to read, whether they're coming from unhappy voters or tired preschoolers in full shutdown. Everybody is sounding the same plaintive note, but it isn't as if there's any single juice flavor that will make them all happy again.

Hard to read?! Is conservatism a foreign language to Nunberg and the NPR slow-listeners stuck in traffic? Juice flavor? It would be a punch line for me to call that a punch line — juice ≈ punch — but why is that a punch line? Maybe Nunberg plied his intellectually inert brats with juice — I'll get grape, because grape is a little more favorite — but what does that mean about what he (and NPR) think government is supposed to do? It's supposed to give us yummy things to make us feel good (and compliant). No wonder he can't read these choruses of negativity.

As the male ousts the female from the Speaker's chair....

... he chivalrously provides all the ladies of the House with  very important seats.

Toilets.

But I'm sure Nancy Pelosi has her own private bathroom and wouldn't stoop (or squat) to use some shared bathroom.