Monday Morning Olio, Here's Your Pope Hat, What's Your Hurry? Edition

• Not that I could possibly have invested any energy in it, but I did technically have a dog in last night's Grammy hunt for the first time since, well, ever.  Youngster name'a John Fullbright.



So, of course, "Americana" was awarded off camera, because most "Americana" artists do not do much unison strutting, being connected to instruments an' all, and the winner was Bonnie Raitt, because of course it was. And I like Bonnie. Even if I didn't I wouldn't say so, because I sleep soundly and my Poor Wife is still able to lift a cast-iron pan.

• Congratulations, sir, on the Jennifer Rubin endorsement:

Others in the wake of CIA director nominee John Brennan’s confirmation hearing have lost it. A gross executive overreach! Find a court to tell the president whom to kill ! You really would have thought that Abraham Lincoln needed court approval for Sherman’s March to the Sea or that Harry S. Truman needed to check with Congress before dropping the atomic bomb on Japan that could well have killed some Americans.

An historian and a legal scholar! And every bit as good at the one as the other. One of the basic requirements in choosing the four targets for the two atomic bombings was that there be no known Allied prisoner of war camps in the cities.  [Nonetheless, twelve American POWs died at Hiroshima, and eight Allied prisoners (British and Dutch) died at Nagasaki. That's the two cities where the bombs were dropped, Jen.]

Truman had an actual declaration of war in hand. Lincoln did not, because doing so would have been a tacit admission that the Confederate States was a separate political entity, thereby nullifying the whole point of the exercise.

We can go from there to note that no one was arrested, convicted, or killed by noose or drone, due to "treason" in the American Civil War. One William Bruce Mumford was hanged by Ben Butler's men in New Orleans for tearing down an American flag, but he was charged with violating Martial Law. The conspirators in Lincoln's assassination were, but that was after the war. No one has ever been charged with "aiding the enemy" when there wasn't any enemy declared. Authorizations for executive action do not reach the level.

Which means that if you wanna start frying people indiscriminately for "enemy" actions, it's all very simple and straightforward: declare war. Like the Constitution and the Bible have it. Then it's clear-cut. Then you don't need no fucking memo. (You'd still need one for that little torture program you liked so much, because that violates American law.)

Do me a favor and explain this to John Yoo next time you see him.

• This is why we can't have nice things:

It is no secret that young voters tilt left on social issues like immigration and gay rights. But these students, and dozens of other young people interviewed here last week, give voice to a trend that is surprising pollsters and jangling the nerves of Republicans. On a central philosophical question of the day — the size and scope of the federal government — a clear majority of young people embraces President Obama’s notion that it can be a constructive force, a point he intends to make in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Surprising pollsters! Because the "central" philosophical question of the day is supposed to pit them against the Freeloading Olds, and never a thought for the fact that they themselves might be afflicted with Old someday, or disabled in the next two minutes. Why, Paul Ryan himself says so. And he should know. He wears his hat backwards.

Christ on a cracker. Speaking of which, isn't it about time we had a woman Pope?

Friday Olio: We're Arguing About What's Truly Fake Now? Edition

• No surprise that Slate rises to the defense of Poor Sarah Palin So Unfairly Attacked By Joe McGinniss, since subtracting "double reverse surprise contrarianism with a backward twist" from both sides of the equation yields "defending really stupid shit". As usual, this blog refuses to make "poking fun at The XX Factor, and Rachael Larimore in particular" anything more than a semi-annual fungo shag, but, c'mon:

Unfortunately, whatever meritorious reporting there might be on Troopergate or legislation she worked on as governor or her expertise or lackthereof on energy issues, it has to compete with [McGinniss'] anonymously sourced musings on Palin’s parenting skills and his sympathy for Levi Johnston’s mother.

1) How many Hillary Clinton books are there, again? 2) Palin and her brood have now been artificially-colored, may-contain-nuts media products for twice as long as she was governor of Alaskahoma. Th' fuck should a Sarah Palin book be about? Her contributions to the language? and 3) "lacktherof"?

Weigel, at least, is smart enough to term some of the Prairie Snooki stories "outrageous" without explaining which direction the outrage is supposed to be coming from, but then he has a vested interest in Palin staying out of the race so Michele Bachmann can continue to impress.

• SAT scores plummet to their lowest level in forty years, which, since the test was dumbed down in 1995, essentially means lowest level ever.

This is after fifteen years of school reform, and a decade of high-stakes testing designed to focus 90% of school-day energies precisely on those subjects the SATs evaluate.

Once again: how long does this reform shit get to fail before we focus on its failures?

• CERN: Higgs boson 'God particle' likely does not exist. So it's exactly like God.

• NASA brainiacs nickname planet with two suns "Tatooine". And we're talking about de-funding the Post Office?

• Finally, a reason to own a teevee: Fred Dumbo Thompson, shilling a reverse mortgage plan when he should be planning his re-election campaign, emphasizes that reverse mortgages are government insured.

Thursday Olio: Circle Jerk Edition

• S'funny, but since Clark Kent got contacts five years ago he's started to look more and more like Superman: Weigel notices that The Teabag "Party" "has been" "adopted" by the GOP, making it unlikely "it" will duplicate its roaring successes of 2010, when it swept nearly a dozen House Republicans out of office and replaced them with other Republicans. (If you correct for Sarah Palin endorsements it's even more impressive.)

The kicker in this is the analysis--from no less a source than Erick Erickson; Weigel is nothing if not well-informed--that Indiana Sesquicentarian Senator Richard "Dick" Lugar is the ripest Teabag target for 2012, which is like saying that Dell is poised to take over Apple. Weigel replies with the rumor that Indiana State Senator and Perennial Crackpot Mike Delph (R-Corporate Pockets) is set to join State Treasurer and Perennial Crackpot Richard Mourdock in challenging Lugar in the primary, thus "splitting the 'conservative' vote" and handing the nod to the longest serving elected official in Indiana, or world, history. Phew. Close escape.

For some reason--possibly the same spineless acquiescence he's demonstrated toward the anti-fluoridationist Right his entire public career--Lugar, or his caregivers, seemed to take the Mourdock threat seriously for the fifteen minutes of the Great Debt Ceiling Revolution, buying up ad time so he could take a couple of free swings at his old Senate protégée and Doppelgänger Barack Hussein Obama. The spots seem to've disappeared since. Say, has anyone ever actually seen Dave Weigel and Kreskin together?

Look, I'm from Indiana, home of the Mitch Daniels Economic Miracle, so I'm through asking if there's anyone out there of voting age stupid enough to swallow this shit. What you will never convince me of is that there's someone out there intelligent enough to string together back-to-back sentences obeying the compositional laws of English who nevertheless believes that The Teabag Party was some sui generis uprising which, as luck would have it, has now been co-opted by the Wholly Unrelated Republican Party suddenly adopting its Tenets of Frugality, crafty devils, just in time to possibly win an election in 2012, after which, curse the luck, it'll devolve back into the old Republican Party, and the bright Randian promise of a world without taxes, except on the Poor, will be doused with the cold bilge water of fat cat deals, pork barrel politics, and a plague of weasels of Egyptian Captivity proportions. You really think Rand Paul replacing Jim Bunning represented a sea change? More like swapping pathological symptoms.

• I am not going to be the 1157th person to say "Governor Perry? Fred Dumbo Thompson on Line 2" in response to his zooming to the head of the Dingbat Parade. Because it isn't true. Thompson was a turd in a punchbowl of a candidate. Perry's more like a free-range turd, for a Republican electorate now convinced that the only reason it's not a permanent ruling party is that it hasn't been shit crazy enough to this point. Perry's going to have to wreck himself. Thompson didn't need to, which was fortunate, since his campaign wasn't really about Activity.

The closest the Republican field gets to sanity is Jon Huntsman, who might as well be Dennis Kucinich; the closest it gets to sanity in a major contender is Mitt Fucking Romney, who'd pander his way out of it if he could. Romney's got no room to maneuver. Perry's low-hanging fruit, but Mitt doesn't dare swing at it; the more he does the more unpopular with Republican primary voters he becomes. It's the same position Mitch Daniels found himself in with Sarah Palin: you can't out-crazy 'em; you can't move to the Right of 'em, because the base doesn't cotton to rhetorical flourishes; all you can do is hope they out-crazy themselves, and with an electorate mostly restricted to self-appointed Republicans, good luck with that.

And Mitt ain't gonna get the help of Daniels, Barbour, or Pawlenty; this is the fucking party which sat still for Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, and it's not gonna suddenly crank up the self-reflection routine. The Republican soul takes what the Perfect Market is passing out at the moment, and schemes about stealing the rest later. That's the Republican brand on view on Your Grocer's Shelves, bub. If the public wants hand-crafted beer, make yourself a new label, slap it on, and give the manager a new set of clubs in exchange for prime shelf position.

And I don't care; at this point my main interest is that 2012 is shaping up to be the election which determines which side will start committing suicide in droves. The thing that interested me is how Perry's announcement appears to've cost Romney five points. Who are those people? Why did half the Giuliani supporters decide to jump ship, assuming one can jump a ship that's already sunk? Do the 10% losses for Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin mean that Republicans are sexist against 'conservative' women, just like liberals are?

And how does a Ron "Invisible" Paul jump of 33% get termed "slight"?

•

I'm not bisexual, except for that one time*, but that isn't why I wasn't gonna say "Well, d'uh!" or the "No shit, Sherlock" of my youth and current preference, since it's more literary.

Because it's the sort of thing Science does, and its also the sort of thing the Social Sciences do when they want to look Sciencey.

And somebody amends a forty-year-old experiment to include bisexual men, it might get picked up for the sensational headline. No offense intended, by the way; it's the sort of thing the social sciences do, amending old data in terms of current ideas, and not unmeaningful of result.

But it not only points out what sort of stuff gets picked up by the mass-market Press, but also how the social sciences manage to march backwards. By testing what is no more than a temporal political tic. Yes, we know there are bisexual males because, as there always has been, there are bisexual males. And we know you know there are bisexual males, so save the routine. You guys, after all, are the inventors of "sexual addiction". Tell us why there are still so many Victorians in 21st century America, and why on earth you'd pander to them. Tell us why the US torture program was designed by two accredited psychologists. Tell us why people fall for the bullshit of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Perry. And tell us what to do about it. Then you'll be telling us something.


___________

* joke **

** overcompensation

Tuesday Olio

• Anybody seen the Inhofe family lately?



I do hope they're enjoying their summer.

• Yeah, it's been hot here, too--it's the fucking end of July, fer chrissakes--and it's supposed to get hot again, which is good, because the local teleprompter readers were really in their element, and it seems a shame to interrupt. Last week Channel 8 ("Your 24 Hour News Source") had a dietician on two days running to explain which fruits and vegetables ("watermelon") contained a lot of water, evidently for the benefit of the people who knew they needed to hydrate ("not a word"*) but don't like the taste of the stuff.

No doubt you've endured this sort of thing, too, and if so, thank Richard Nixon, since all of this traces to the Happy Talk format bullshit of the early 70s, when White People, as defined by Which Cracker Ass Yelled the Loudest, grew weary of all the bad news, as defined by anything which made White Cracker Ass politics look bad. So now, not only would the local hairdos rather talk about Nothing, most of 'em don't remember a time when that wasn't the accepted practice. So large amounts of money change hands for advertising slots during a ninety-minute festival of people talking about the weather, which you can get for free from any cashier, barber, or salesman in town. You would imagine that in the intervening forty years at least one college-educated news producer would have edged a cautious toe in the direction of a different pool, but no. Somehow it occurs to no one that for a solid week eighteen of every twenty-two minutes of local news was devoted to advising people who were hot to look for shade.

Not to mention that the advice comes from people whose only non-air-conditioned moments in summer are when they get sent out to do remotes on how hot it is.

• Republicans are recalibrating on social issues, Part 4,763:

Two of the most prominent social conservatives looking toward the 2012 presidential election -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann -- now have suggested deferring to the states on marriage laws. That stance meshes somewhat with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's view, and he is perceived to be the most socially moderate candidate in the GOP field. For a party that has in the past remained adamantly opposed to gay marriage, the coming presidential race may be the forum where that position gets a fresh look.

Y'know, a year ago all Mitch Daniels had to do was stand up (okay, and prove to voters he was standing up) to brush aside the Palinistas; today the entire Republican field is one big religious mania, and the rank and file is desperately hoping that Rick Perry will join in. It is abso-fucking-lutely clear that no candidate will be tossing the Religious Right overboard, certainly not when every last one of 'em is trailing Obama by somewhere between six and infinity points.

Saying "Waall, if'n New York wants queers to marry I guess we cain't stop 'em" doesn't exactly seem a reformulation of the GOP brand to me. Not that it seems like a rallying point, either, and we might act like we've all been to a Republican rodeo before. The minute this attitude hurts Bachmann or Perry in the slightest it'll be adjusted right quick. Or, more likely, they'll just deny they ever said anything so darn foolish. When there's no more political mileage to be squeezed out of the thing, that's when the Republicans will "recalibrate". And you'll know the time has arrived, because it'll be accompanied by an insistence that gays are the real homophobes.

__________
* at least not to me; "hydrate", as an intransitive verb, means "to cause to undergo hydration", meaning, to combine with water, which is not what you do when you drink a glass of the stuff, but saying it that way makes you sound all scientific an' shit.

Happy Birthday, Murica

WE'VE had our own Missing Blonde story here the past month, an IU student who disappeared of a 4 AM about a month ago. One of the last places Lauren Spierer was seen in public was a Bloomington bar. Lauren Spierer was a year short of being there legally.

This didn't rate much more than a mention on the timeline with the locals--cynics of my height and shoe size occasionally note that commercial enterprises that cater to middle-class pursuits rarely do--until the official search was more-or-less called off, when the Indianapolis Star noted the bar in question was the source of a notable percentage of the underage drinking citations issued by State Excise.

And here's the thing, Murica: that story brought a predictable number of the Star's commenters (caution: don't go there) to insist this amounted to some sort of war on Freedom. Freedom! The freedom to drink if you please, the freedom to sell liquor to people the law says are minors. This is a change, Murica, and not for the better. Listen, you and I know that on occasion my willfulness trumps your ordinances, and did so to a greater extent when I was that age. But I always knew where the line was before I crossed it, and I didn't use any Randbabble to excuse myself. (For that matter, th' fuck did I want to pay to drink in bars? When did being impoverished stop being part of the college experience?) This sort of crap is recent, it's the direct result of facile libertarianism (pardon my redundancy) being manipulated by the Republican party. You may recall, Murica, that we had this conversation a few years back, when every pundit who pockets teevee money fell all over himself excusing the Bush Twins for being nabbed with fake IDs, on the scientific grounds that Everybody Does It, a standard previously applied only to scrupulousness of tax preparation on the part of corporations and persons in the punditological tax bracket. It sure didn't catch on as a general maxim after that. No "Everybody Says Racist Things" or "We've All Texted Photos of our Junk, Haven't We?"

Where did the distinction between Freedom and License go, Murica? The same place honesty and fairness went? Y'know, if you manage to blow out all 235 candles today…

Olio

• Posting will be light:


Max.


• Brave Indiana Blogger Doug Masson brings us word of this L.A. Times piece on the ongoing disaster of Daniels & Henchmen's FSSA privatization, as well as word that the operator of the Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years may be turning belly-up (that's despite tolls having doubled, and being scheduled to increase again July 1).

You can couple that with the fact that Illinois is having an actual debate on the creation of coal gasification plants--which sailed through the Daniels-Statehouse Republican graft trap earlier this year--going so far (at the lobbyists' bidding) as to actually rewrite legislation to protect ratepayers--known to Hoosier Republicans as "Who?", if they're known at all--from astronomical rate increases, and you wind up with Daniels' only positive legacy being the two months people with nothing better to do imagined him running for President.

• Michele Bachmann Is So Smart! Block Captain Dave Weigel defends her getting her John Waynes confused by pulling out some other hack's artificial resuscitation. And in doing so manages to get John Wayne Gacy's hometown wrong.

Bachmann's problem, if we even want to call it that, is that she's been hopelessly defined as a gaffe-machine who flubs silly things.

Well, for one, it sure seemed to be a Problem If We Want To Call It That back when everyone with a Republican media sinecure was trying to debunk it by proclaiming her brilliant by acclamation. So you're not really permitted, ten days later, to pretend you didn't know what was going on. It would also seem to be a bit of a problem if we imagine that a hopeless gaffe-machine shouldn't be identified as such (though it's fine to insist on the opposite against all evidence) simply because she's a Teabagger, and they don't like it. Too fuckin' bad. This is why you shouldn't climb out on a limb that's already been sawn through. Something you learn in a small town, Dave.

Does it matter? Not in the particular, much, except to note that she can't put a campaign staff together capable of keeping her from sounding like an idiot, when that would appear to be Job One. And in a larger sense, yes, because a lot of us ain't gonna buy Michele Bachmann, Intelligent by Fiat. Or Sarah Palin. Or George W. Bush. It's beyond time for one of those declarations to get backed up by some actuality, instead of being shot down within thirty minutes the next time the statesman in question opens his or her mouth. Would this sort of gaffe mean anything if it came from someone who was intellectually qualified to be President? No. And that wouldn't keep Peggy Noonan or David Weigel from making a big fucking deal of it if they chose.

There is no longer a default position of Reasonableness in the national debate. I remind you, in case you've forgotten, that this condition obtains entirely at the whim of the American Right, which has been on the wrong side of rationality for thirty-five years, and richly rewarded for it. If you chose to defend Michele Bachmann's smarts, or Mitch Daniels' effectiveness, or Newt Gingrich's morals you are entirely on your own these days. Be thankful for the twenty minutes when only the knowledgeable realized how full of shit you were, Dave. Y'know, sooner or later a Republican candidate has to stop talking only to Republicans. Y'all've finessed this by limiting yourselves to "swing voters", who are just as gullible but not so ideological. It has not worked. You win elections but accomplish nothing. You keep hoping you can do so, somehow, without dismantling that alternative news universe you've been living in since 1980; this was the attraction of Mitch Daniels' artificial accomplishments. But it doesn't work, and it's never gonna. Bachmann has zero appeal outside of the lunatic fringe that drives your party. Maybe that's enough, God help us. It doesn't mean she's not a lunatic.

Olio: Shut Up And Buy The Fucking Light Bulbs, Lady Edition

• Newt Gingrich's staff quits en masse over vacation time? What did they think he was running for, again? Forget the Party of Lincoln; these guys can't even live up to being the Party of Reagan.

• Oh, Christ: Virginia Postrel, "Need a Light Bulb? Uncle Sam Gets to Choose: Virginia Postrel. By Virginia Postrel. June 10

Reader, I'm assuming you're an adult, which means you're just as flummoxed as I by the phenomenon of people over 25, with IQs at or above bathwater, openly proclaiming themselves libertarian. I'm assuming you're aware that every man-made object you've touched today involved some degree of regulation by government, and that you probably understand why, and perhaps are even conversant with 19th century fatality rates from railroad and industrial accidents directly attributable to laissez-faire. Or, if you've only been paying attention since the dawn of the 21st century, you might recall how large-scale domestic processors of meat, eggs, spinach or peanuts have behaved when they thought no one was watching, let alone how the Chinese believed a soupçon of automotive solvents added that certain something to pet food.

What I'm saying is there is no way you can believe this shit and claim to've thought anything out. And in a country which has seen armed international conflict over the shooting of a pig, mass panic over a science-fiction radio broadcast, injury to hundreds of its citizens who thought a picture of a lemon on a free sample bottle of dish soap meant it would zest up a glass of iced tea, and the career of Sarah Palin, the Great Light Bulb Rebellion is absolutely the stupidest political movement of all time.

However, we're nothing if not a resourceful race, and there's nothing so dire, misinformed, or risible that mentioning The Ol' Perfesser can't make worse:

One serious technophile, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, spent much of 2007 flogging compact fluorescents on his popular Instapundit blog, eventually persuading more than 1,900 readers to swap 19,871 incandescent bulbs for CFLs. To this day, the Instapundit group is by far the largest participant at OneBillionBulbs.com, a bulb-switching campaign organized by the consulting firm Symmetric Technologies. But Reynolds himself has changed his mind.

“I’m deeply, deeply disappointed with CFL bulbs,” he wrote last month on his blog. “I replaced pretty much every regular bulb in the house with CFLs, but they’ve been failing at about the same rate as ordinary long-life bulbs, despite the promises of multiyear service. And I can’t tell any difference in my electric bill. Plus, the Insta-Wife hates the light.”

In my youth I would regularly run into calendar illustrations, magazine fillers, or textbook padders entitled "Can You Spot The Mistakes?", a sort of Ur-Where's Waldo? where some bucolic scene would be rife with pictorial inconsistencies: a rope swing would be suspended from a branch but not tied to it, a passing auto would be missing a wheel or the town clock a hand. Often the publisher would provide an official count, or there'd be a legend on page 125 you could turn to for closure. What do we make of those two paragraphs? "Serious technophile Glenn Reynolds"--how many mistakes is that? Reynolds flogging CFLs; Reynolds disappointed in CFLs, just so soon as the barking right seized upon them. The anecdotal failure rate (I been usin' 'em for three years or more, now, and I've replaced two: the one in the basement I hit with a broom handle, and the early, slow-to-light 15 watter I put in the foyer which proved inadequate), the advanced technophile who wonders why his electric bill hasn't been slashed. Insta-Wife. The clown isn't wearing any pants.

On a scale of 1 to 500,000,000, just how important was "the warm glow of incandescent bulbs" to the Delightful Mrs. Insty before the chilling, Orwellian nightmare that is CFL invaded her life, do you think?

Four million injustices, large and tiny, pass under our noses every waking minute. It's not just telling that the libertoonians in this country choose to focus on how easily one can forget to remove the safety seal before attempting to squeeze some ketchup on his fried okra, or the frustrating thirty seconds required to correct the situation (1. return bottle to upright. 2. put bottle down. 3. unscrew cap. Hey, who decided that had to be counter-clockwise, huh?); they have to choose to defend the free market imperatives of the very people who invented planned obsolesce in the first place. Edison's light bulb still burns. Assholes. Nobody got to vote on that, either.

(This just happens to be the day that Roy writes "I grow more convinced every day that libertarianism only exists to give young Republicans something marginally less repulsive to call themselves when they're trying to get laid." I checked Postrel's c.v. at the Wikithing, and was amused to find, yet again, the handwork of whatever dedicated Wikiaste who seems to follow every mention of someone's libertarian leanings with "or classical liberal". So I'm suggesting that "classical liberal" is what you call a libertarian who can't get it up anymore.)

• By the way, I liked the insta-punditry which claims that Gingrich's staff desertions clear the way for Rick Perry. First, because it's the sort of analysis that only analysts could believe; remember when Haley Barbour's insufficiency of belly-fire was going to benefit Mitch Daniels? Second, because of the "he's a Southerner" routine; there are plenty of reasons to disparage Southern politics without needing to invent any. Has Newt Gingrich ever won an election outside his home district? And, finally, the idea that there's some similarity between them other than Republican scumbaggery and the moral compass of a wharf rat. Perry may run--he may have already decided to run--and he might win--fuck, somebody has to--but if waiting for Newt Gingrich's staff to become available was part of that equation this couldn't have sped up his decision by more than a fortnight anyway.

This Week On Doghouse Riley's Doggone-Good Foodie Blog ™

OKAY, for the record: my Poor Wife watches Glee, but I still love her. So; I'm not gonna slug it out with somebody over "foodie", but I'll be happy to get down in the mud, or the Jello, or the Green Tea-infused Mango-Blueberry Chutney, and rassle around a bit. Preferably the mud, in case I have to eat some.

First, "food" comes from the Indo-European root Pa-, from which we also get, via the Greek, Fodder, Foster, Pastor, Pasture, Repast and, from Latin, via panis, bread, Pantry, Company, and Companion; that is, much which is basic, nurturing, nourishing, comforting, and consoling. Had our ancestors not been adept above all in its procurement we would not be around today to turn it into a art form, to put our resources into providing it for the world's poor, or watch Iron Chef America. So mixed bag, is what I'm sayin'.

On the other hand, the diminutive "-ie" comes from the sort of gurgling sound adults make when confronted with someone else's infant. It designates the uncomprehending. We talk to doggies and kitties, and shun Trekies. We do not have Lities or Painties, or Songies, and we put Bookies in jail where they belong.

People with a sense of proportion call Citizen Kane a great film, Jean Renoir a Titan of the cinema, and the collected works of Rob Schneider movies.

And bubbling alongside the objection about trivialization and standards-free pretense of expertise I made yesterday is the distinct impression of anti-intellectualism. Foodie, it always seemed to me, is the coinage of some middling adolescent who didn't want to be a Frenchified gourmet, and of course had no awareness that that term is inevitably misused (gourmet being a wine term; gourmand is the food equivalent ). Gastronome and epicure were sitting there all but unused, though they too connote some level of expertise rather than the unstinting hedonism of the chronic enthusiast. Nothing wrong with aristologist a little work-out wouldn't fix. Foodie comes to us because there's a certain class of teevee viewer who wouldn't be caught dead saying "connoisseur" in mixed company, even though "foodies" are, by domestic definition, at any rate, fussy. They are welcome to the term. But they should not be encouraged by their brethren with triple-digit IQs.

For that matter trencherman, with its hint of the knife and fork replaced by mattock and shovel, seems an almost perfect fit to me, though I suppose it would be rendered trencherperson before nightfall.

A couple other details (there was such a wealth of raw ingredients from Megan yesterday that one could hardly sift through them): first, I'm slightly flabbergasted to hear Narya say she was taught the water displacement method. But I think the real question is why. It makes sense as a holdover from someone churning his own; it makes technical sense to weigh, rather than measure, in that the water content of butter varies a good deal. I admire frugality, competent husbandry, and scientific notation, but I question whether that was going on very much by the time the Fifties rolled around. Urban dwellers ("urbies") had their butter delivered, and variation in quality, like variation in weight, soon became conveniently forgotten. I buy quality butter, but I don't ever consider how the water content might vary. And a packaged one-pound block is pretty easy to cut accurately into fourths.

As for the use of a duster, well, no doubt many were used as Megan incompetently demonstrated, but her point was the remarkable superiority of the machines invented in anticipation of her own birth. If I'm sifting 3-1/2 cups of flour I use a sieve the size of a colander, and I'm done in less time than it takes to open the bag. And I didn't mention (embarrassment of nouveau riches, again) that you're supposed to measure after you sift, so a quick spin in the processor requires you to figure out a way to pour it into a measuring container somehow. I'll race her any day.

And then there's this, which I specifically ignored yesterday:

At least I use my pricey equipment: although my husband may be the world’s leading expert on frozen chicken tenders, we do eat something cooked from scratch more nights than not.

and which is, I think, the crux of my argument: the convenience of frozen chicken is not in the preparation, but in having the ingredient around with a more-than-three-day shelf life. Chicken tenders take fifteen minutes from scratch, if that. Ain't you gonna make a salad or something to go with those frozen deals? Slice two chicken breasts, flour 'em--don't use that sifter--and saute for ten minutes.

I don't spend more than thirty minutes in the kitchen very often. Fish cooks in minutes; tilipia is farm-raised and amenable to just about anything you'd like to do to a filet. I've done it a dozen ways, and buy it whenever it's on sale; what's left over from fish tacos one night is a cold salad ingredient two nights later. Pork roasts take an hour, and the most you have to do is marinate and brown first. Roast chicken takes 2-2-1/2 hours, but it's five minutes trussing time, and, if you're obsessive, three or four bastings in the final hour. And then you've got three meals and a couple lunches. Stir fry. Main-course salads. Imagine™ organic free-range low-sodium chicken stock is as good as what I can make. Onions, garlic, fresh tortellini, and some fresh spinach and you've got a soup that's a meal. The no-cook lasagna works perfectly.

Megan's kitchen, if that is Meagan's kitchen, looks more utilitarian than fancy-schmantzy, and good for her. But she doesn't know how to cook, and she ought not to be adding to the wealth of disinformation and unfortunate eyeglass choices already out there. You're not going to learn to cook from The Food Network. You're sure not going to learn to cook from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, because you're going to bog down rapidly. If you'd just study the Introduction you'd come out ahead, but without recipes. And recipes is what the illiterate cook is all about. Technique and preparation is what a good cook is all about. You're a good cook when you can open your refrigerator at five-thirty and produce a good meal at six-fifteen. And when you don't have to justify the cost of your knives.

Olio: Vowel Sounds Are The Horrible Mutated Amphibian Epidemic Of Our Mental Ecosystem Edition

• "This is the first we've heard of it."

--Mike "Choirboy" Pence, yesterday, responding to the question of a reporter who accompanied the cameraman who'd been taping him on the dais at some sort of Dr. King Was Actually A Conservative Day function or other. Pence was responding to a question about yesterday's announcement of a national Pence for President Petition Drive. We were reminded of nothing so much as the surprise Courtney Cox displayed when she was spontaneously selected to dance with Bruce Springsteen.

(He's going to consider it, humbly. Just in case you'd started holding your breath already.)

• Indianapolis Star*: Lugar votes party line less often these days.

Yeah, he's down from 91, as a freshman, to 84; at this rate he'll be an actual moderate in 2096.

If you'd like to know what's changed in the years since he was Nixon's Favorite Mayor, let's let one of the local Teabaggers whose impotent challenge Lugar might face in 2012's primaries give you the scoop:

Hoosier Patriots co-founder Greg Fettig, who is among those working to mount a primary challenge to Lugar in 2012, said it's specific votes Lugar has taken that concern him, not how often Lugar has voted with the party overall. Fettig, whose group is aligned with the tea party movement, cited Lugar's votes to ratify a nuclear weapons treaty, to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and to help some illegal immigrants who came here as children obtain a path to citizenship.

"I think he's been in Washington, D.C., too long," Fettig said. "When you've been inside the Beltway all those years, you get infected by the liberalism that's prevalent in Washington."

• I walked through the room where my Poor Wife had local teevee news playing four times this AM, and three times (story, twice, teaser once) heard the remote reporter tell me a victim was shot in the had.

Is this the same everywhere, now? Where does it even come from? It's not a regional accent. As far as I can tell it's nothing but a second-generation Clueless impression. It's like turning on your teevee and finding that everyone born between 1972 and 1985 is speaking Scouse.

It's not the speech itself, of course. Although I find it about as unpleasant as an American accent can get, I can't think of any set of circumstances which would require me to listen to, let alone care, how Young Urban Careerists talk in real life. It's the fact of its professional deployment that's troubling. It's coupled--inevitably--with an assault on the pore unfortunate -ing form which, apparently at random, turns the ending to ANG or EEEN as though the speaker had been subjected to electroshock therapy designed to eliminate the dropped G and wound up with a vocal tic and the attitude of the whipped dog. God, if it only ended there! instead of hitching that to the Incontinent Mono-stress/War on Schwa business which produces sentences like:

STU-DANTS are STUD-EE-EEEN for FI-NALLS.

before putting their hads down on their dasks, presumably. Except to this is added the Clueless Permanent Interrogative, so it comes out:

STU-DANTS are STUd-EE-EEEN? for FI-NALLS?

Which, first, I find damn near unlistenable, even if these people were imparting information I needed, which they aren't. It makes me wonder how they got through high school, let alone earning a major in Personality at some four-year college. When the Republican party stops hating teachers long enough to use this, and reality teevee, as evidence that public education is a dismal failure this blog will lurch rightward so fast you and your chaise lounge will be in the drink before you know what hit ya.

But there's more, for me, and maybe worse: name a profession that's more image conscious. I'm guessing that the lowliest cub reporter on local teevee is given his or her own image consultant at signing. I doubt there's a tie, or a hat, seen on-air that hasn't been vetted; I'd bet that 90% read at least one self-help book per month (and that 50% of those read nothing else). But the speech pattern isn't just wrong, or ersatz, it's mealy and benighted. It takes sides in the Great Anti-Intellectualism Debate in this country (assuming we're still having one, and it's not just a few of us yelling at the now-ex-girlfriend as she drives off for good) without admitting it does so. People who are paid to read English are no longer required to make a reasonable attempt to do so properly. How much less of an effort do they make to understand the shit they try to sound out? Who's going to say an administration should be honest, a legislature accurate, or a general forthright when he makes a tidy living for having substituted hair care for comprehension?

• At some point over the weekend I caught the locals teasing their upcoming two-minutes-per-hour national and international news coverage:

"Coming up at Six, the Republican leadership is finding it difficult to deal with the enormous Federal deficit."

Which I guess is intended to convey "It's not as easy as they said it was," but which, in fact, conveys Just How Little You Fucks Pay Attention, and How Easy It Is For Right-wing Talking Points To Dominate Your Coverage.

Did we do some sort of Dallas shower scene and erase all memories of the Bush administration earlier this season?

• I spent a couple hours yesterday moving A/V equipment around, and when I turned the system on to see if everything was connected right, Rachel Ray was on the box. She was telling her audience of unfettered manics what she was going to make For the Holiday, which I took to be Dr. King Day, as rerunning last year's Valentines Day program would have been a bit slovenly. And she's going from 0-60 in about 2.8 seconds on this, except it's teevee, and it's Rachel Ray, so she's going from 90-9000.

I was operating a different remote at the time; I couldn't just shut her off. And she screams something like "I going to do…MY Famous…MEXICAN MEATLOAF!!! or something, and the crowd goes nuts. Again, assuming that's possible.

I'm not sure what the "dish" was, exactly, but "Mexican" was definitely appended to it. This is not actually my point; I suppose someone at the production meeting had enough sense to 86 the Soul Food idea. Or maybe Jennifer Hudson cancelled. It wasn't the weird juxtaposition, it was the lunatic fucking screaming that got me. Honestly, if we'd been at Thanksgiving dinner at my inlaws', and I'd heard someone yell, "I'm making…MY Famous…CAJUN CASSEROLE!" I'd have turned to my Poor Wife and said, "Just think; six years ago doctors said Austin would never achieve articulate speech!"

________________

* In recognition that the Star has made an actual attempt to clean up its comments section, we're going to quit calling it the Racist Beacon. It's still a poorly-written, evidently unedited right-wing screedfest and panting Republican demirep suitable for lining birdcages, but then, we don't expect miracles.

Olio

•Bay District, Florida - A gunman interrupted a school board meeting with a bad temper and a gun Tuesday.

The video is disturbing.

Afterwards, witnesses said the man had a borderline personality.

Yeah. Not to mention a gun.

I had to get up early this AM to take my Poor Wife downtown, because she got called for jury duty during Finals Week and would not take the only avenue available for putting it off temporarily--claiming illness--because "that would be lying." I tried to explain to her that giving that answer was, itself, prima facie evidence of a disqualifying mental condition, or, at the very least, proof that she belongs to no American's peer group. She went anyway.

And I got to watch the crack of dawn news so I could see the video of the Bay District Shootout roughly seventeen times before my second cup of coffee. And I remarked to my Poor Wife---who was in no mood for my political commentary, not that that's ever stopped me--"Y'know, if he'd threatened the Board with a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV or Synthetic Marihuana, Popularly Known As 'Spice', the teleprompter readers would have been demanding it be banned before sundown. But he whips out a roscoe, and the attitude is, "Crazy people really ought to think twice before they point one of those at somebody. Good thing it ended happily."

• "Opposition to Health Law Is Steeped in Faux Tradition".

The opposition stems from the tension between two competing traditions in the American economy. One is the laissez-faire tradition that celebrates individuality and risk-taking. The other is the progressive tradition that says people have a right to a minimum standard of living — time off from work, education and the like.

Both traditions have been crucial to creating the most prosperous economy and the largest middle class the world has ever known. Laissez-faire conservatism has helped make the United States a nation of entrepreneurs, while progressivism has helped make prosperity a mass-market phenomenon.

Yet the two traditions have never quite reconciled themselves. In particular, conservatives have often viewed any expansion of government protections as a threat to capitalism.

Even though, of course, it's never proven to have been so. Meanwhile, do these two unreconciled tendencies actually cancel themselves out? Not only have progressive programs served as the bedrock of the improvement in the quality of life since 1800, as we explained to Mr. Brooks yesterday, but is there any sense in which "creating a nation of entrepreneurs" actually responds to "mass-market prosperity" and a reasonable social net? I mean, maybe what you have here isn't really a philosophical debate with roots extending all the way back to the beginnings of Ronald Reagan's second career as a B-actor. Maybe what you have her is one side being so fucking dishonest and obtuse that the debate goes on forever with no rhetorical justification whatsoever.

• "Fox News email shows network's slant on climate change."

Fox News Channel's top Washington editor ordered the network's reporters to couple any mention of global climate change with skepticism about the data underlying such a scientific conclusion, according to an e-mail released by a liberal media-watchdog group Wednesday.

Well, one, this is right up there with the shocking news that diplomats give each other the razzberries behind their backs, and that Saudi Arabia runs whatever portion of our Middle East policy isn't already set aside for Israel. I mean, I'm all for releasing this stuff, however obvious, but let's consider what it would take nowadays to find a target which could feel shame. And second, when somebody figures out a way to make Americans think that doing whatever their economic superior orders is anything other than the highest moral standard mankind has ever achieved, lemme know.

Electric Olio

• Roy brought us such a collection of hopeless pseudo-historical sludge yesterday that I'm still wrapping my head around one sentence from one example ("Today we also know that Sacco & Vanzetti were guilty, as were the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss.") which does have the benefit that I get to post W.T. Vinson's Ethel and Julius, after Norman Rockwell from the National Lampoon's Bicentennial Calendar. And thanks, Mom, for buying me the scanner.

I took some small pains in comments to explain that "we" don't know this, that in fact conventional wisdom now exonerates Vanzetti; recognizes that not only was there no case against Ethel Rosenberg, but that the government knew this and executed her anyway, ostensibly to protect the existence of the Venona Project, but more likely as a high-stakes game of Chicken with Julius, who refused to blink; that Hiss was convicted in the second of two perjury traps, on the testimony of an admitted perjurer, and his modern-day "guilt" is the product of some willful, and disputed, analysis of Venona. (In much the same way the "proof" of Sacco's guilt requires the bearer to simply ignore the rusted chain of evidence which, even if accepted, is equally suggestive of a police frame-up.)

This took enough time that I didn't bother considering Th' fuck this is supposed to prove, anyway? Sacco and Vanzetti were railroaded; that's as despicable with guilty suspects as with innocent. Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted (took three attempts) for being married to a guy who might've been a Soviet courier. Hell, he shouldn't have been executed. The Hiss case wasn't about anything he'd actually done (and certainly not anything he was ever charged with) but "rescuing" the reputations of McCarthy and Nixon and other Cold War dipsomaniacs. Which were, and still are, tattered husks anyway. So people objected at the time. I'd object today, and still do; th' fuck's that got to do with Leftism? And I'd like to hear Ms Now I Too Am Outraged By Chappaquiddick defend the idea that Dalton Trumbo should have died in the joint for malicious screenplayery.

• We sat in agitated horror for ten minutes yesterday afternoon while Colts receiver Austin Collie lay motionless on the fucking field after a helmet-to-helmet hit. That is, we would have sat, and in silence, if CBS didn't continue, inexplicably, to employ one Phil Simms, onetime professional quarterback, now professional language butcher, as "Vanilla Jim" Nantz' color man on CBS's marquee game, meaning Colts fans get subjected to the sumbitch a half-dozen times a season.

Like I say, Collie is stretched out flat, surrounded by the medical staffs of both teams. He hasn't moved since he hit the ground. And Simms spends the entire ten minutes, less exhortations for Miller Lite and Cialis, essentially saying the whole thing was Collie's fault, that he'd had two steps with the ball and thus "become a runner" and had ample time to protect himself. The man's feet are sticking out of a crowd of medical personnel. Somewhere out there his wife, or his parents, or his pastor is listening to this millionaire hillbilly jabber away while Collie may lie paralyzed for life. Thank God he reportedly suffered only a concussion. But, y'know, yeah, there's some dispute about "taking the violence out of the game". And, yeah, the hit may've been something between a helmet launch he happened to get knocked into and One of Those Things. But that wasn't the time to debate it. (Hell, Simms was talking so much he flat out missed the official's call.)

Of course Simms wasn't gonna criticize the NFL (not directly), which diddled for years before deciding a few weeks ago to join the 21st century medical understanding of concussion. It's bad enough listening to people use a supposed technical understanding of the rules (which they don't really have, because the real rulebook is kept secret from everyone but the NFL brass and the officials themselves) to whine that their enjoyment of seeing a man paralyzed for life is being compromised. I hope the league will look closely and fairly at whether Coleman was illegally leading with his helmet or simply playing his position, assess penalties, if any, correctly, and explain itself clearly. But, without question, CBS should be fining Simms for conduct unbecoming a sentient being. Unless that's actually a loophole.

• Ross "You Still Here?" Douthat, inherent electoral superiority once again reestablished by The Base, gets to go back to pretending to blame The Base:

The modest Mr. Boehner leads a party with much to be modest about. Gingrich could brandish an agenda because he had an agenda — a raft of conservative policy proposals, on welfare and crime and taxes, that couldn’t get any traction in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Today’s Republicans, by contrast, know what they’re against (the health care bill, tax increases, cap and trade) but have a world of trouble saying what they might actually be for.

Anybody old enough to remember that Gingrich "agenda"? Any one still prescient enough to recall what, if any of it, rose above a litany of Things The Right Is Against, Or Was At That Moment? Slashing Welfare payments does not become a policy argument just because you say it'll cut illegitimate births among the coloreds. Tort "reform" which consists of making it tougher to sue negligent corporations is not a policy argument just because you think they've got better things to spend the money on. Boehner and McConnell don't have Newt's abilities as a peddler of patent horse liniment. This does not retroactively heal any nags.

Olio

• Credit Where Credit Is Due: Bob Somerby, all this week, on education. There is sense being made in our educational "debate"; it's just not being made in our politics, or our newspapers, or on our teevees. And we repeat: Somerby has a blog. Kathleen Parker has a Pulitzer and a teevee show.

The only thing I can add is this: it's our debate on Education, supposedly driven by Our Utter Failure, and the goddam thing is stupid on the face of it. Say it again: if people really were this stupid we'd have hundreds of deaths from shaving accidents every morning, and half again as many babies dried off in microwaves. Not to mention that all these people would've died broke, because they gave all their money to the Sham-Wow! guy and the first company to break the Hundred Blades on a Razor barrier, once thought impossible.

• Partial Credit Where Partial Credit Is Due: Mitch Daniels fires David Lott Hardy, Esquire, his chairman of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, in the aftermath of the revelation that Scott Storms, the Commission's erstwhile general council and chief administrative judge, was taking to Duke Energy about a job (one he eventually took) while he was overseeing cases involving Duke. Hardy knew about it and did not require Storms to recuse himself. For its part Duke has put Storms and its Indiana president Mike Reed (former IURC executive director) on paid administrative leave, apparently because it only became aware it had hired two IURC officials it had negotiated with while they worked for the state when the news hit the papers.

Why partial credit? Because Daniels has refused to vacate the Duke-related decisions Storms was involved in, instead ordering them to be reviewed, and his office announced the firing was a result of a "verbal report"--verbs being considered an inferior part of speech, I guess--and not a full internal review. On the plus side, Daniels does seem to have remembered the Governor's Personal Grand High Inquisitor the Republican-controlled legislature created for him in Aught Five, and which immediately set about looking for criminality in previous Democratic administrations. [So far, as I recall, anyway, they've found a lottery clerk who swiped some scratch-offs, and learned that the late Frank O'Bannon once got a haircut on company time. Meanwhile the billion-dollar Family and Social Services Administration fiasco, the Incredible Shrinking Major Moves Fund, and the thousands in unreturned Tim Durham contributions ("That money has already been spent") have been ruled, I believe the legal term is, none of your fucking business. You didn't think I'm letting that malignant toad off easy, did you?]

• Remedial Reading: I was at some pains at The Aptly Named World O' Crap to explain how it is the Big Gay Cupcake Scandal did not, in fact, involve cupcakes; curiouser things have followed. Briefly: woman calls a shop named Just Cookies to order some quantity of rainbow-iced cookies for Coming Out Day. Woman says that when Voice on the Phone (in fact, the owner) learned of the destination of said cookies, and Just Who might be licking his icing, he informed her of his moral objections, told her he had two daughters he was trying to Raise Right, and hung up on her. Complaints ensue.

Now if you happened to be a male of my approximate height watching Channel 8 "News" that evening, or the next, or whenever it is they latched onto the thing, you heard one of those Tales from the Teleprompter which have any number of elements resembling actual ("verbal") language, in which nouns were, and verbs did, but which had no connection to the way things behave in real life. And this was because the folks at 8 had decided to bend matters to the standard script, or else they've forgotten how to tell a story from beginning to end, probably from long disuse, the verbal equivalent of bedsores. Or maybe Honor has broken out among Public Christians. At any rate, they seemed bound and determined to convey that The Gays were Filing a Complaint because That's What All These Special Interests Do, even though it was a clear case of misunderstanding. Which is where the cupcakes came in: at one point we were informed that the store doesn't even sell cupcakes! And it doesn't do Special Orders, at least not often.

Oh, golly, there's that damn prickling in my thumbs again. So, first, you only have the idea that Special Interests and Sodomites get to file official complaints about every slight they encounter in life if you're a fat and satisfied semi-burgher living in the suburbs who never experiences anything like it. It seemed almost certain there was something more to the story; it seemed even more certain that the Wholly Logical Reasons why the order couldn't be filled ("Who orders cupcakes from Just Cookies? They were looking to cause trouble!") came direct from the shop owners post facto and might not have revealed the entire landscape of the event. It took me a couple days to discover the What in what had happened.

Seems a woman from the Social Justice Education Office at IUPUI had called to order rainbow cookies. And when the owner found out who they were for he explained to her that filling the order would prevent his young progeny from growing up as morally superior as he is, and hung up on her. The cupcakes are what they wound up ordering from another, less moral, bakery.

The shop rents space from the city-owned City Market; Mayor Gomer got involved, mostly because in 2012, or never, the city will be hosting Super Bowl XLVI: The Super Bowl That Might Not Happen, and its quarter-million LGBT spectators and participants.

Tony Dungy was unavailable for comment.

And the desperate weirdness continued when, last week, William Phillips, a Greenfield Police officer, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run motorist while on a bicycle training run. The accident occurred after midnight on US 40; the natural assumption was that the driver was drunk.

That turns out not to've been the case, apparently, but even before that was known the thing had taken on almost mythic proportions. At one point on Day Two I heard that police were looking for the driver who'd "killed the beloved father and husband". Ummm, tasty. Could I please have another trowel full?

Then came word, through the county prosecutor or the Greenfield PD--not exactly disinterested observers--that an attorney had contacted them, saying his client was ready to turn herself in. Much, if not all, Hell broke loose.

Apparently one, if not the major point the attorney was trying to negotiate was the avoidance of a media circus, something which should also be in the interest of law enforcement. Well, it didn't quite work. Tuesday evening, when it was widely expected that the woman was to show up for questioning, Channel 8 had a chopper overhead, and gave us five minutes of "a vehicle a man and woman had exited a half-hour ago. Of course, we don't know whether this is the woman, but…" Really. Why, to see inside we'd need some sort of infrared scanning device. So, let's turn it on.

Lemme just note here that as a long-time bicyclist I want nothing whatsoever to do with the roads anywhere from Gathering Dusk to Dawn's Mid-morning Light, and as little as possible to do with them otherwise. I ride a mostly-empty parking lot in bright sunshine and I'm still obsessive about knowing what's going on with every car on the lot and everyone on the street nearby. And I've almost been hit twice now. They say the officers were wearing safety clothing and were well-lit. But it's still and always the case that if you get into an altercation with a motorized vehicle, or even another bike, you're going to wind up the loser no matter who's at fault.

Some of the coverage--by Day Three the casual viewer might have imagined Phillips had died in a gun battle with Osama bin Laden, or that Hero was his middle name--seemed suspiciously designed to remove any questions about what he and other officers were doing training in such dangerous--and rather unrealistic--circumstances; Hendricks county does have motorized police vehicles with lights and sirens and two-way wrist radios, just like the civilized world, and these, presumably, are what they send out when someone needs to cover 12 or 15 miles in the dark. It worked. And some of the tone seemed designed to compensate for last-month's revelations about the drunken Indianapolis metro policeman who killed a stopped motorcyclist, and badly injured two others, while on duty. And the pent-up opprobrium for the driver abated only slightly when she turned out to be, not a Sterno bum with no license and a jacket the size of the phone book, but a middle-aged nurse who was driving her three children home from her parents house, who says she was distracted by the autistic one acting up. No record, unless you count the fifteen-year-old parking violation Channel 8 dug up.

And somebody had a poll the other day, asking if lawyers should be able to negotiate with police for their clients. 'Bout 80% against, as you might've guessed, unless you guessed 100. Seems like the News ought to be prohibited from encouraging public stupidity when it so obviously has a vested interest in perpetrating it.

The Cerebral Ganglia Of The Beast

I AM the executor of my mother's estate. She died a few weeks ago when dementia took from her the memory of what to do with food. Condolences are not in order; the disease took her identity years ago, and death took away the disease. Dealing with dementia is much worse than dealing with death.

That's just set-up, of course: I mentioned a while back that posting here would be as light in quantity as it is in quality for a time. I didn't want to write about it then, and I don't now, not out of some personal or emotional tangle, but because writing is hard, while being a smartass is easy.

So this finds me not at the cemetery, nor watching the river flow (no water in it these days, anyway), but on the 17th floor of Indianapolis' City/County building, which the City Fathers erected in the early 1960s. I was so young I have but vague recollections of it being built, but the optimist in me has always chosen to believe we did so to stop people calling the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, aka the Circle, the ugliest edifice in the history of architecture.

It's an intensely uncomfortable building made much worse now that its welcoming atrium bears the twin scars of a Liposuction of Freedom, the crawling security lines where I was forced to disrobe. This, in turn, informs the wait for the elevators, which must've been insufficient by 1965, though if you knew Indianapolis in the 50s you wouldn't really blame the architects for figuring that within a decade at most the place would be all but deserted. There are maybe thirty people crammed into the hallway, migrating en masse like a hopeful covey as the electronic elevator scoreboard handicaps which descending carriage is likely to arrive next. (Fortunately their number grows slowly, since most people choose to put their clothes back on before continuing.) I managed to catch the third car, which I thought was probably pretty good for a rank amateur.

The trip up, naturally, reminds you that you share a country, not to mention the occasional confined space, with the sort of person who thinks nothing whatsoever of pressing a button to halt a roomful of people in order that the buttoniere may ride one or two floors to his destination. And, also naturally, that the very people who do this not only could've climbed the stairs between those floors in one-quarter of the time but, generally, could really have used the exercise.

Got there, found my lawyer, got in to see the judge. My sense of discomfort in such situations is profound. I sit making professional small-talk with His Honor, which is designed for him to decide if I am mens sana while I, entirely out of self-interest, pretend not to know that's what he's up to. It's like being the Washington Generals. I'm nearly overcome by the urge to grab him by his insurance adjuster's tie and yell, "You've got a lot to atone for, buddy." I manage to resist. He approves me. I can tell he's actually figured me for a potential tie-grabber, but the alternative would mean more paperwork.

On then to where the real work is done, the secretarial pool, where we witness a full quarter-hour of document stamping. Real document stamping, not virtual document virtual stamping. I wonder if I could have gotten coffee past Security. I marvel at the sweeping view of the city, dotted with taxpayer-swindling arenas and centers and malls and attractions hatched in this very building, back when all you could've seen from there was train tracks and warehouses and a block of 19th century department stores. The stamping resonates with that, a time when we did things with steel, and steam, and brawn. A time when we did things because we thought they were worth doing, not because they increased your odds of getting on teevee. Then on to another office, and more stamping. (This time, though, the fancy computer thing came into play, because my attorney failed to tell me I should bring a copy of the death certificate, or, alternately, memorize my late mother's Social Security number, and he had to sweet-talk the supervisor into looking it up for us. I had one in the car, a few blocks and seventeen floors away, but if I'd'a had to go through that line again they would have had a security problem.)

It was interesting, really, that when it comes to important stuff, like divvying up a dead person's possessions, we rely on people and paper and eyeballs and ink. I mean, it's not like we were just there voting or something.

That Thing In My Pants And Other Dangers

APOLOGIES for a less-than-sparkling interest in politics this week; it is the Dog Days, after all, and I missed all the really funny bloggers explaining to the Netroots how to keep saying "Fucking Lying Shitheel Acephalic Racist Fucks" every day and still keep it fresh. I'm not sure where our governor is summering, but I wouldn't be surprised if he and the boys are working on alternative explanations of how he turned the state's $500,000 deficit (dollar amounts adjusted according to how big you need it to be to make a point) into a half-million dollar shortfall and counting. Just in case "it wasn't my fault" doesn't soar like a turkey buzzard. Things are so bad economically that not only did he send out the Indiana State Auditor to do his 'splainin'--no easy task, since he had to create the position first--but he's had Lt. Governor Becky "GED" Skillman doing all the ribbon cutting this summer, celebrating more of those vaporjobs we'll be getting in 2013. And we hadn't seen Becky in so long I typed "Stillman" before I caught myself. Daniels missing a ribbon-cutting opportunity to claim credit for someone's employment is like Payton Manning missing a snap. He once turned up at a new Starbucks, fer chrissakes.

Mostly I've been rediscovering the joys (and perils) of riding a bicycle that actually goes forward when you pedal it, mostly, as well as something of the challenges faced by the recently awakened long-term coma sufferer. Supposedly dangerous toe clips, which I've cycled in for forty years without incident, have been replaced by pedal-and-special-shoe-interlocking propulsion systems, which prevent injury by making riding prohibitively expensive; everything on the modern bike can be repaired with an Allen wrench, meaning you can't buy a cycling multi-tool for your emergency bag that doesn't contain seven items your tenspeed relic doesn't need; and bike mechanics are all too young to drive. So far I've spent about what I bought the bike for in maintenance and safety--that's without fixing the brakes, yet, but I really don't use 'em--which led to the following:

DR: Forty bucks for a helmet! I rode for thirty years without ever thinking of a helmet!

PW: You weren't fifty-six years old then.


There's plenty that's good, and cool, as well, and the internets are full of helpful advice and amateur repair theatricals, but clothing, fer fuck's sake, you cannot buy a cycling jersey that doesn't look like the hood of Dale Jr.'s Sprint Cup car. Or "cor", as they say in the announcer's booth.

And the roads and the traffic are worse, or I'm much older, or both. The tally so far is two flats, neither really explained--I have learned to repair and remount a tire, which may not seem like much, but try doing it in the grip of congenital schlemielity--two permanently tingly thumbs from riding over cobblestones disguised as asphalt roadways, and a taste of sidewalk the other afternoon which I tried to blame on my Poor Wife stopping short in front of me, but was actually poor braking technique combined with no brakes. Not even enough rash to wear as a badge. But it reminds me that this is the coolest tattoo I've ever seen:

So yesterday, after flat #2, I went looking for bomb-proof tubes, which none of the local shops stocked on the grounds, I guess, that it reduced the number of flats they get to repair. And I didn't find any ("We can order 'em for you," said one young shaver. "Thanks, I don't know what I'd do otherwise," I muttered.) so I bought a standard tube and came home and went to replace it, which is when I discovered that the bead jack I avoiding buying was absolutely essential on the grounds that my bike now uses tires which are the teensiest bit small, thanks to all the modern inconveniences such as the goddam Balkanization of tire sizes I'd missed out on up to now. So I went back and got one, and came back home. I was set up to do this from the living-room couch. My Poor Wife sat down beside me, because, speaking of tingly things, she just really enjoys watching sweaty and swearing men accomplish things with their brawny arms, another reason, if one were needed, to question how she wound up with me. And the bead jack didn't know anything about my Karma, apparently, because it performed flawlessly, and the thing was done in like two minutes. I set the wheel aside, and had a sip of coffee, and heard a weird sort of noise coming from my nether regions. This, lamentably, is not really all that odd. I thought at first it was just a peculiar stomach rumble, but there was a weird sort of squeaky component, a sort of rubbing leather or plastic sound, and I checked my belt, and the contents of my pockets, but couldn't find anything. I stood up and shook myself. Nothing. I sat back down and it started up again. I'd sort of decided to just ignore it. Had another gulp or two of coffee, stood up, and out a leg hole fell a Great Black Wasp, S. pennsylvanica, aka a Cicada killer.

It's "non-aggressive", says WikiAnswers. Like you gotta tell me that.

Olio

• I'm one of the maybe two dozen living Americans who listened to Nick Drake while he was alive, and I spent the next twenty-five years like some gormless junior-high swain, pushing his stuff on anyone I thought would listen. (In fact, I didn't actually see the Pink Moon Volkswagen ad that kick-started his career until much later; the first notice I got was an email from someone I'd turned into a fan years before, who wrote to ask how Nick could've turned into a sell-out (!), to which I had to point out that his death twenty-six years previous was the likely cause.)

So, of course: that new AT&T ad, which not only abuses Nick but the recently bereaved Christo into the bargain. And, y'know, Art has always been co-opted, and sometimes even advanced, by rich shits and their stolen loot; I thought the VW ad did well by the Estate, and I'm glad more people found out about him. But the AT&T ad hacks "From the Morning" into a sound effect. Fucking unlistenable to anyone who knows the song, which, I might add, was the last any of us got to hear from him while he was alive, as it's the last cut of Pink Moon.

And yet that beautiful soul, painful and anodyne at the same time, still comes through. But whoever's responsible for that cut should be cast adrift. In the Gulf.

(Joe Boyd, whose memoir White Bicycles is a worthy read, had a clause in his contract requiring Island Records keep the Drake catalogue in print. Imagine such stupidity these days.)

• Eric Lipton, "With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion".

Jesus wept.

• If All Your Friends Jumped Off A Cliff, Would You Jump, Too? State Senator Mike Delph (R-Carmel) will introduce a proposal to empower anyone with Indiana police powers to enforce immigration laws. As though it hasn't been against the law since the 19th century to drive, stroll, or remove oxygen from The Alabaster City while colored. I suppose the good news is we don't really have anything for anyone to boycott.

• Speaking of America's Third-Worst State Legislature and its unfortunate habit of meeting, State Senator Luke Kenley, whose standing Senate committee on Government Finance, Daniels PR Damage Control, and Covered Per Diem Expenses is now in permanent session, found hisself an actuary willing to claim that Indiana's share of the Obama/Hitler Healthcare program will be twice the national average, provided you approach it with that result in mind. This, of course, led local teleprompter readers to read this off their teleprompters as though the results had been carved in stone by Cecil B. DeMille.

Kenley, whose sad descent into Wingnuttery has been traceable by the hour over the past three-four years, suggested that as a result Indiana should withdraw from the Medicaid program, thereby eliminating all healthcare costs for everyone who remains in the state. Save, of course, footing the bill for state legislators.

• Speaking of which: last Friday afternoon I developed a pain in me guts, which only got worse, and after an early bedtime I woke in the middle of the night, stood up, and discovered I had a fever and the sort of chills generally associated with epidemics stemming from 18th century hygiene practices (which, with any luck, Indiana's Republican majorities will be reinstating in January 2011). This meant one thing: my first diverticulitis attack in three years. I slept away 22 of the next 24 hours, waking only long enough to ponder the fact that what I needed were antibiotics, and that what I was likely to get from a visit to clinic, or direct to the emergency room the clinic would have directed me to after extracting $200 for its trouble, was a date with MRI, an effort to keep me there for 72 hours, and another opportunity to be reminded that Medical Insurance Accounting is a far more creative activity than I imagined back on Senior Careers Day. And I'm one of the fortunate who has sufficient insurance to prevent penury in case of catastrophic illness. Unless the insurance company gets involved.

Because, of course, it was a weekend. Now, if what I'd needed was access to fireworks and/or liquor...

A couple things are worth mentioning here. One, Indiana has limited medical malpractice awards since the mid-70s reign of Governor Otis R. "Kindly Doc" Bowen, the Unindicted Bremen Physician, so I am presumably benefitting, cost-wise, from all the inattention I can stand. And so the incontinent testing is either a) excessive caution; b) a professional tic; or c) pure profit. Take your pick. The other thing is that I shelled out $600 my cost for some Glamor Shots of my damaged knee a couple years back, and the surgeon still found some surprises once he got inside; this is the same industry which informed us that my severely demented Mother was "just a little blue" and probably needed a dog or something. Though this does lessen the threat of Indiana's impending return to leeching and Humour Balancing, at least somewhat.

Reasons To Just Stay On The Futon

1. Because Roy and R. Porrofatto handled this Brooks excrescence, a helluva lot quicker than I ever would, the latter by the simple expedient of pointing out how recently (say, during the nomination of Sam Alito) Brooks was part of the vogue for Gray Organizational Mantypes.

2. Because somebody's gonna invite Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction and Mitch Daniels Luggage Assistant Tony Bennett to Washington, specifically to the House Committee on Education and Labor, so he can say this:

Our greatest challenge is to unite aggressively against all forces working to oppose reform that benefits school children. In Indiana and states across the nation, the most striking, most powerful impediment to improving instructional quality and school leadership has been those organizations charged, principally, to protect the integrity of the teaching profession: teachers’ unions.

Y'know, it's funny, but Bennett, who's been increasingly at odds with Indiana's teachers ever since Mitch Daniels decided he'd run for President a little--"at odds" here being defined as "refusing to talk to, then blaming them for their lack of communication"--doesn't actually talk like this for local consumption, even though his position as Daniels torpedo is well understood. He didn't talk like that during the 2008 campaign (the position used to be appointed, but The Bantam Menace found himself saddled with an Uppity Woman, albeit a Republican one, and the World's Third-Worst State Legislature™ obligingly changed the rules so the all-important "ability to pander to campaign contributors" was added to the list of qualifications). In 2008, for some unknown reason, the big Daniels Team theme (throw in the Attorney General candidate) was some vague weirdness about Defending Teachers Against Nuisance Assault Charges For Telling Children To Sit Down, something which became part of the landmark Omnibus Educational Sassmouth legislation passed last year.

And Bennett doesn't seem to've done much reforming back when he was Superintendent of a public school district, though he did have his hands full making sure the Greater Clark County Schools continued to underperform on state proficiency tests. In fairness, though, I guess that's how you learn.

3. Because this:

unfortunately, is the link to the article, not the whole thing.

More Matters Of Taste Phrased As Royal Decrees

• Tarragon is a happy partner in an omelette grand-mere, with parsley, chervil, and chives, in minute amounts, and should not be forsaken; such might be a solution to the cilantro question, excepting that it is apparently impossible for anyone who favors the stuff to use less than the Standard Equine Toxicity Level (SETL), so we'll never know.

• Coriander, on the other hand, is part of God's Own Bounty, indispensable to the sausage maker and damned near so to the preparer of any pork dish worthy of victuals.

• Putting two Homer Simpson stamps on my bloated Indiana state tax return (it's a state which eschews tax progressivism, but the goddam paperwork runs to ten pages) almost made up for needing a second stamp.

The Bloodshot Eye In The Rear-View Mirror

• We Don't Do Shorters David Brooks: "Did you know there were elections last Tuesday? And some Republicans won? You did? Well, here's the notes for the lecture I'd have delivered to a roomful of bored community college students only taking my stupid Sociology 101 class because it was supposed to be cake anyway".

• This is the only way I can think of to make the bullet line up:

I don’t think he’ll change—at twenty-one or twenty-two so many things appear solid and permanent and terrible which forty sees are nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can’t tell twenty about this; that’s the pity of it!

Thus Booth Tarkington, in The Magnificent Ambersons. Similarly, Michelle Bachman is smarter than you! This would scare you into permanent mazed silence, if you weren't stupider than Michelle Bachman.

• I promise to stop typing and start writing some time soon, but as for now I was up in the middle of the night baking treats for the generous, if workplace-ordered, volunteers for Community Service Day who're planting trees at my Poor Wife's school. I'm not sure how it is that she wound up shepherding the thing, except that I know that school administrators are very, very, busy people. This is the exact same reason why she agreed to teach one more class than she's contractually obligated to do: because school administrators are very, very busy, even in summer, when you think they'd be taking the time to make sure student schedules aren't a freaking catastrophe for once.

And this is the attitude I take with me when approaching the continuing attempts by Mitch Daniels' Education Ramora, Dr. Tony "Not That One" Bennett, to find just the spot for one of those Force 10 From Navarone trickle bombs to destroy teacher's unions. He and his boss are currently on Plan B or C, which involves showing the Liberal Education Establishment what's what by requiring candidates for teaching degrees to "get" more "credit hours" in "the subjects they teach", and fewer taking education courses. This is the secret of the Republican party, by the way: making statements that appear to have some merit unless you actually think about them.

Now, perhaps you are a Concerned Parent, and think Little Carson or Rachille or Zachariah would be learning his or her times table that much faster if Teacher had just had an extra semester of M347, Transformational Non-Euclidian Geometries or something; I happen to think it's more likely he'd have said, "Fuck this, I'm taking six more math hours, earning a major, and finding a decent job". And Indiana already has one of the most stringent specialization requirements in the country for secondary teachers, though, under the typical political-football-dribbling of the past few decades there's now an out for licensed teachers to teach in areas they aren't licensed in while they seek one. My own opinion, born of long observation, is that prospective teachers would be much better prepared if they were required to minor in "Working for Officious Careerists With No Particular Qualifications". But, then, 1) wouldn't we all? and, 2) living in Indiana and observing what passes for governance ought to qualify you for a Life Credit.

• The Indianapolis Racist Beacon somehow managed to assign much of the credit for Tuesday's Wishard Hospital bond vote to Accidental Mayor Gomer F. Ballard, USMC, for "coming out in favor of it early". By which they must mean "at 4 AM on July 5th", because I sure missed the guy who ran as the Great Teabagging Hope urging Hoosiers to vote for increased tax liability.

• The week would not be complete without finally getting around to the latest George Eff Will think piece on Afghanistan, which bravely mentioned George W. Bush once, or precisely one more time than his celebrated call for Barack Obama to withdraw and take the blame a couple months back. And mentions him as the guy who introduced Karzai as the interim leader of Afghanistan in his 2002 State of the Union.

Interim no more, he has won -- or at least secured -- another five years in office.

Not a word about how he lost the "Interim" in 2004. Karzai is now Obama's creation, apparently.

If you suddenly See the Light on Afghanistan, doesn't it at least imply that you realize how we got there in the first place? And how the getting there is what keeps us there, over and beyond cheap political grandstanding?

• This, from Pierce:

Of all the shoddy reactions to last Tuesday's orgy of marginal significance, this (John Cornyn's declaration that the party won't spend money on contested primaries) this may be the most IMPORTANT. If you're keeping score at home, the national Republican party just sent a message to the nutters that, any time they can muster up a candidate from the Island Of Misfit TOYS, the party will take a pass on the race. Now, if you think Cornyn's a little smarter than I think he is --and I think he's pretty much a blockhead--you could argue that he's giving The Base just enough rope to hang itself. (The establishment candidates who get crisped as collateral damage--Hi there, Charlie Crist!--are just SOL, I guess.) However, if you are burdened with common sense, it's plain that the national GOP is scared right down to the tassels on its loafers by what's going on in the hinterlands, its trembling exacerbated this week when Congresswoman Batshit J. Crazee called for direct ACTION. They may learn to channel all this by 2012; the redoubtable Digby OPINES that the whole business is just the same old plutocratic weasels sub-contracting the job of rebuilding their movement. That may be, but, for now, and for whatever reason, one of the country's two major political parties has surrendered itself utterly to the monkeyhouse. While undoubtedly entertaining, this is in no way a good thing.

And look, I think Cornyn's dumber'n a Winona Forever tattoo; this (getting the foot soldiers to do the bleeding, and paying off the survivors in script) is institutional memory at work, and apparently nothing but the Grave will ever erase those golden months when feebs like Cornyn thought Reagan was gonna get them laid. Gorging the Base on cheap organ meats is a long-term losing proposition. You've been doing it for thirty years, and where's that Permanent Republican majority from any of your--how many was it, again--Revolutions?

Olio

• The remains of the Sunday Indianapolis Racist Beacon are five columns wide, still include a Metro section (but not, my Poor Wife moans, Femme Fare, the fondly, if perhaps slightly emotionally and occasionally crankily remembered collection of advice columns, wedding announcements, and hamloaf recipes aimed at The Distaff Side), which itself still includes Behind Closed Doors, a page-dominating guided tour of Insider Indiana poop.

And perhaps they were fresh out of poop at the close of August, because this week the thing--which barely extended below the fold, to begin with--featured a four column, 5-1/2 x 7-1/4 inch picture of Mitch (The Spork) Daniels, fist resting pensively on his enormously productive cranium. The picture accompanied the story--it was not the lead story, by the way, and there were only two--that Mitch Daniels hadn't done anything that week.

I am not making that up. "Just a Quiet Week for Daniels". Two paragraphs were taken up by quoting from the series of platitudes he'd hurled at state employees being honored for spending thirty-five years on the public dole, during his one public appearance of the week. Two more graphs set up the Mark Sanford joke at the end. The Mark Sanford joke. I'm not making that up, either.

Daniels appears to have been sitting in a wing-back chair, so even his Homo floresiensis-scale forearm seems squeezed in at an odd angle, like he asked the photographer to hold off while he selected a pose from his repertoire of two (Pensive Brainy Guy, Rage-Fueled Brainy Guy), decided on the former with slight overtones of the latter, and tried to work it into position. The arm of a full-grown human would have passed completely behind the head with the fist sticking out the other side, like he was doing Yoga, which, I believe, still tests poorly with likely Republican Presidential primary voters.

[UPDATE: I finally gave up looking online and scanned the thing, as seen below. For tech heads eager to learn how this is accomplished: 1) crank up old G3 Mac; 2) load Photoshop; 3) pull down File/Import menu; 4) remember the reason you're using the old G3 Mac is that the scanner doesn't work with OS X; 5) restart with System 9; 6) relaunch Photoshop; 7) scan; 8) remember that the G3 quit accepting hot-swapped USB connections, like the memory stick you need to transfer the thing to your desktop, in late Fall, 2006, which is why it always starts up in OS X, because you're always switching back; 9) save scan, restart in OSX; 10) remember, too late, that you can never find the System 9 desktop, which is where you saved the thing, while in OS X; 11) manage to find it; 12) Voilà! Plug and play.



It should be noted that the above is still faster than using the Racist Beacon's "search" feature, which is not simply the absolutely worst one on the internets, but a stunning rebuke to any and every mention of the efficiencies of outsourcing, privatization, specialization, and the theoretical possibility that literacy levels can decline. Though I have to admit it is a perfect accompaniment to what is quite possibly the world's worst commercial website. Matt Tully has been the Racist Beacon's political columnist since 2005, having joined the "paper" in 2002. Aside from those rare occasions when his column gets a home-page blurb, I defy anyone to find it in less than three clicks. And when you finally give up and try the search box, it asks you--after a suitable wait reminding you what it's like to be placed on Hold by the world's most understaffed Tech desk--whether you meant Matt Dully.]

• Meanwhile, on Monday night the World's Worst City-County Council east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio voted to prohibit holding signs or speaking to drivers within 50 ft. of a stoplight or stop sign, a matter squarely aimed at Panhandlers and other Unsightlies, and almost certainly in violation of their First Amendment rights. Although if I see 'em frog-marching the guy in the chicken suit from in front of the Chick-fil-A on 82nd St. I may have to rethink my absolutism.

But two things, here: one, the measure had been brought back to life after a woman claimed she was carjacked by a guy at an intersection while she was trying to give him a sawbuck. We have no reason to disbelieve her, though it should be pointed out that she looked capable of beating the shit out of a phalanx of deadbeats with only her rolled-up copy of Jailhouse Tattooing Quarterly. And, two, the Racist Beacon saw fit to inform its readers that the 15-13 vote was "mostly along party lines" without bothering to mention the, you know, exceptions. So I went searching, wound up at the Council site, which didn't have details, either, but which was busy touting the $300,000 it had saved the City last year by not meeting. Which I'm all in favor of, but they might wanna get it back to cover the cost of the litigation they just committed us to.

And I clicked the link, being an inquisitive sort, and learned that, among other cost-cutting measures:

Equipment was purchased to perform previously outsourced work in-house

This from the same bunch which just voted a 10% cut in the Parks budget, which will partly be made up by outsourcing work perviously performed in-house. I wonder if ad-men every worry that they're overestimating the intelligence of the public?

• 14:58…14:59…

Former Miss California sues over firing

By ANTHONY McCARTNEY, AP Entertainment Writer
Mon Aug 31, 5:58 pm ET


LOS ANGELES – Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean sued pageant officials Monday for libel, slander and religious discrimination, accusing them of telling her to stop mentioning God even before her controversial remarks against gay marriage.

Oh, do tell!

Upset, too, that somebody revealed the California authorities had paid for her God-given breast implants. Not enough to sue The Donald, though. (That's the sort of priceless legal advice she could have used before the pageant.)

And, look: we don't care about Ms Prejean & Associates; we think her First Amendment rights should be no more abridged than anyone else's, and we think she has every right to sue if she feels she's been wronged. The fact that we find her a tiresome, small-minded opportunist of the common sort is no more material than the fact that if she were merely stating her grievances by sign, rather than suing for an unspecified dollar amount, within the Indianapolis city limits she could wind up in the pokey.

Nah. I just wanted to steal the comment from World O'Crap, the one whose author I forgot to note and am now too lazy to look up, to the effect that we shouldn't let the fact that it travelled past capped teeth and a re-sculpted proboscis, with the assist of lungs slightly impeded by the Maxim-aired sandbags bolted atop them, blind us to the important point she makes about God's natural law.

• Alex Koppleman, "The Beatles Rockband: finally, a video game even old people can get excited about".

Y'know, sonny, if I gave a shit about you, what you say, video games, or crap-flavored crap in general, I'd beat you to death with my fucking cane. If my prostate would allow me to get out of the chair fast enough.

And good luck with that Aughts nostalgia thing when your time comes. The Sarah Palin full-function home android should be a real hoot. And the Blu-Ray nostalgia shops.