More Cranky Valentine's Day Sighting Shots

Owlish links to a pair of curmugeonly articles on the subject exposing the dark underbelly of the FTD/Hallmark/Zales Beast.

And lest any of you think I'm shortchanging the Missus, let me be quick to assure you that she feels the same way as I do about being hustled into purchasing $60 dozens of roses.

Scheissefraude

I'm sorry, but I think Drudge's pics of the Olympic pigeons crapping on Katie Couric are pretty funny.

Bet they wouldn't do that to Melissa.

"Behold This Land! And We Shall Call It...'This Land'!"

A little local knowledge blegging:

Some people I know are planning to move to the Greensboro/High Point (NC) area. If anybody out there knows anything, well, useful about the place that I could pass along, consider yourself invited to shoot me a line to the Tasty Bits (TM) Mail Sack.

Yip! Yip!

Cartoon Jihad

As long as everybody seems to be in the mood to ban certain cartoons from the papers, can we pleeeeeease add Close To Home to the no go list?

I don't know if this strip's wretched art work and cheap Far Side rip-off humor violate the teachings of any of the great monotheistic religions. If not, they certainly ought to.

Just sayin'.

Fun and games with Professor LLamabutcher

Today in Legal Theory and Public Policy we were working on Lon Fuller's failures of legal systems, using our own honor code as an example to (unfortunately) explain each of Fuller's eight points. We started class with the random idea I had on class Monday, of using the lyrics of Folsom Prison Blues and Lincoln's Second Inaugural to illuminate the concepts. Having the kiddies read them out together, particularly how these two moral concepts are related in terms of the expectations we place on ourselves, but also the expectations placed on others, was pretty cool.

Civil Liberties seminar after lunch we are continuing our Civil Liberties during War theme by doing the Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer case, often known as "Steel Seizure." Monday was the Civil War era Prize Cases, and Friday is US v. US District Court, the decision on domestic surveillance that led to FISA. It was nice Jimmy Carter made such a big deal yesterday about the surveillance of the Kings by that evil John Ashcroft and Chimpy Mc Hitleralliburton---oh wait, it was Saint Bobby Kennedy..........warning, danger danger, does not compute does not compute....

This afternoon in The Rivalry that Shaped America (the senior seminar) we are doing the second half of David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, looking at patterns of English immigration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its affect on American political culture. Fischer concludes the book with some interesting looks at American political trends in the 20th century, up to the election of 1988. We're going to take it through the election of 2004, particularly the role of "NASCAR Dads" and "Security moms" and to what degree Fischer's type of political cultural analysis really holds water.

LLAMA PSA

Following a google search here for dangerous llamas, I came across this interesting article on Dangerous Behavior In Llamas by Alvin Bean. Given all the Valentine Llama crap that's started to appear, I thought this would provide some useful counterbalancing information.

I'd say that Bean knows her stuff:

The Aggressive Llama

This llama is usually an "over-handled" llama who is intact (an un-gelded male), has often been bred, and has received no training or intervention. However, in our experience, we have seen llamas who had no prior history become aggressive later in life without obvious provocation except for management changes. Behaviors include:

- screaming at people on sight
- spitting on people on sight
- charging fence lines and attempting to bite or spit on people on the other side, and/or attempting to jump over or get through the fence

If people should enter the enclosure the llama may:

- charge at full gallop and hit the human with chest and knees
- bite
- rear
- stomp

Usually this results in minor or major human injuries (although no deaths from this type of behavior have ever been documented).

Sums us up pretty well, dontcha think? [But Sooper Sekret Message to Alvin - there's no documentation because we're also experts at hiding the bodies.]

Just don't even ask about "Berserk Llamas".

Birthday Round-up

This sort of thing is supposed to be Robbo's gig, but since he was all a swoon what with Odana Matthews and the Giant Gestapo trying to pry loose his phone number so to be able to track with their rogue NSA satelites his avocado and pinot noir purchasing habits, he missed that yesterday was Laura Ingalls Wilder's 139th birthday.

Fortunately, Melissa was on the job and gives us the full round up.

A Little Learning Is A Dangerous Thing

The eldest Llama-ette and her best friend have been studiously researching Germany for "Thinking Day" at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method. In her studies, she stumbled across "Der fröhliche Wanderer" ("The Happy Wanderer"), the song with the chorus that goes:

Valderi! Valdera!
Valderi! Valdera ha ha ha ha ha haa!

Of course, she immediately taught this song to her sisters and all three have been belting it out with vigor. Now I can't get the damned thing out of my head. How about you?

Share and enjoy!

Random Commuter Observations

Have you ever been driving down a perfectly familiar stretch of road, one you've travelled literally thousands of times, and suddenly, for a split second, felt that you didn't have the faintest idea where you were? It's something that happens to me every now and again and is really quite unnerving.

I've never really thought about the fear associated with more extended bouts of memory loss, but it must be absolutely terrifying.

Nobody Ever Said This About INDCent Bill!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Ten Fingers, 6 Strings, who says of us Llamas:

If you can make it through any of their posts without laughing, then you have no soul.

Thankee kindly! Yip! Yip!

[Sooper Sekret Message To Those Of You Who Prove Soulless: If you happen to run into Sarah Michele Gellar, um, say 'hi' for us, okay? Thanks!]

UPDATE: Welcome INDCent Bill readers! Have to admit, Billikins, that one was pretty good.

Gratuitous Cranky Grocery Store Blogging

I can understand Giant (pronounced "Gee-aunt" around here) flogging their bonus card, but what I cannot understand is their flogging it to the point of brutal obsessiveness:

Cashier: Do you have a bonus card?

Self: Um, no.

Cashier: Well, can I try your phone number?

Self: No, really. Don't worry about it.

Cashier: (Sniff.) Well, you really should have a bonus card. Look! You could have saved 59 cents this evening!

Self: Yes, well let me worry about that, thank you.

Cashier: [As if I had just announced my intention to eat the Baby Jesus] Suit yourself.

I'm still puzzled about the business model of the whole thing. The possession of a Giant bonus card has no impact whatsoever on what items I buy or the quantity thereof. In fact, I ignore the whole card hoo-haw for the very reasons that a ) a few cents one way or the other do not matter to me and b) I hate the extra fuss at the cash register. The only reason I can think of that would explain Giant's excessive hawking of the bloody things is that they expect me to change my purchasing habits to conform with whatever supplier bonuses they receive for hustling the damned things so aggressively. Well, bugger that.

Ah, well. It could be worse. A few years back, Safeway decided it would try to bolster customer relations by instructing its cashiers to become extra friendly with people checking out. I distinctly remember one cold, wet evening when I'd written a check for whatever it was I was buying and handed it to the cashier. I was exhausted and in no mood for intimacy:

Self: Here you go.

Clerk: [Looking at check] Thank you, uh....do you prefer Bob or Rob?

Self: It's not important.

Clerk: But which one do you prefer?

Self: [Tight-lipped] I prefer Mr. Llama, thank you.

Clerk: [Taken aback] Uh...alright.

I didn't especially mean to smack down the poor woman, who was only doing her job, but it slipped out. Evidently, I was not the only one to resist, however, because the entire program ended not long after. Which is just as well - if there is one thing I cannot stick, it is uninvited familiarity.

Oh, well. I've got nowhere else to go with this post except to say that I wish Gee-aunt would just accept that some of us are not interested in its cards and leave it at that.

WELLSTONE MEMORIAL, AGAIN

The libs will not miss an opportunity to turn a memorial service into a political rally. This, courtesy of Drudge.

More Cranky Valentine's Day Sighting Shots

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am no fan of Valentine's Day. While I don't much go in for conspiracy theories as a rule, I see this as nothing more than a plot by the Hallmark-FTD-Kay Jewelers' Axis of Evil and all their hangers-on to hoover our wallets.

But what really gets me is when we Llamas get dragged into things. This report, sent in by Dorkafork and longtime commenter RBJ, now puts us in the Lake District:

A charity with the slogan "get calmer with a llama" is offering romantic country strolls for the lovelorn, leading a llama together around the picturesque Lake District in north-western England.

"Chatting over a llama is certainly a novel way to meet people in a relaxed environment, and participants can enjoy a romantic picnic afterwards - carried by the ever obliging llamas in their backpacks," said owner Mary Walker.

Ms. Walker evidently is living in the Bizarro World:

Walker, whose Lakeland Llamas charity helps the disabled, is keen to assure lonely hearts that contrary to their bad press, the South American relatives of the camel do not habitually spit at or bite people but are in fact friendly and docile.

Yeah, right. Toss a wicker basket on my back in the name of a massive consumer shakedown smothered in ersatz romanticism and see what happens.

UPDATE: Professor Chaos sends in the same article, hoping for citation credit. You want a link? Dance, my friend! Dance!

Gratuitous Llama Book Review (TM)

Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell.

Young Mr. Sharpe takes to the high seas, trying to make his way back from India to join up with the 95th Rifles and finding himself right smack in the middle of Nelson's great victory.

I really don't have that much to say about the book. If you like the Richard Sharpe series, I see no reason why you wouldn't enjoy this one as much as any of the others. Just a few observations, then:

- After reading this and a couple other Sharpe novels this weekend, it occured to me that for a troubled loner, Sharpe certainly racks up the Frequent Babe-age Miles.

- As a sea story, this is not too bad. Certainly not in the Patrick O'Brian class, as I've said previously, but nonetheless a pretty good account of ship-to-ship action from a deck's-eye point of view.

- I don't want to accuse Mr. Cornwell of anything, but I've seen some of this before. The Mysterious Murder of a Threat down the hold bears a suspicious similarity to a critical event in C.S. Forester's Lieutenant Hornblower (granted, this time it is successful whereas there is was not). Also, I know I've read a description of the incongruity of a pair of cannon with the otherwise luxurious domestic appointments of the Captain's cabin either in Forester's or O'Brian's work.

- On a very technical point, ships firing salutes or signals would use blank charges and would not waste shot. Cornwell knows this to be the case on land. I'm surprised he let it slip here.

Other than that, anchors away!

(As an aside, some strange Voice has been muttering in my ear the last few days to toss a couple of A&E;'s Hornblower dramatizations into my Netflix queue. I dunno what the Voice thinks it's doing, since I'll only wind up comparing the flicks to the books, something the Voice can't stand. Still, that's the Voice's lookout. Now that the idea has been implanted, I think I'll follow up on it.)

Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

W.A. Mozart. No, he really looked nothing like Tom Hulce.

From my sickbed testerday afternoon I watched my Netflix DVD of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), Mozart's first major attempt to establish himself as an operatic composer in Vienna. (The piece premiered there in July, 1782.)

A "Turkish" flavored piece with lots of cymbals and bells, the story concerns the efforts of Belmonte to save his beloved Konstanze from the Pasha Selim, who bought her after her ship had been captured by pirates and seeks to make her love him. Belmonte is aided from the inside by Pedrillo (his former servant) and Blonde, Pedrillo's sweetheart, both of whom were also bought by the Pasha. Osmin (the Pasha's overseer) hates Pedrillo, wants Blonde for himself and is instantly suspicious of Belmonte when he appears at Selim's country estate (disguised as an architect) to attempt the rescue. (Here is a fuller synopsis of the opera.)

Not even the most blind admirer of Mozart is going to argue that this is his best piece of work. It isn't. There are all sorts of dramatic problems with the opera and now and again Mozart himself drives it into the ditch. However, the music is generally very pleasant and also contains some genuinely sublime passages. Further, there are all sorts of tantalyzing hints of things to come - ideas that Gangerl seemed to be trying out that would have their fruition in his later operatic masterpieces.

This particular recording was made in 1987 by Sir Georg Solti and the Royal Opera House Orchestra. If you've never seen the opera before, it strikes me as an excellent place to begin. And if you're familiar with the work, I think you'll like it as well. Some people don't care for Solti's conducting on the grounds that it is too rigid. I've never thought that way, instead admiring his crispness. And here, he delivers the two elements crucial to any performance of Mozart: clarity and grace.

As for the singers, I thought them pretty good as well. The sole exception as far as I was concerned was Lillian Watson as Blonde. She was appropriately lively and snappish, but had a tendency to sing sharp sometimes and also to shriek some of her top notes. Inga Nielson as Konstanze, on the other hand, had a beautifully round and clear voice that lost none of its quality in the higher registers. (I could easily see her singing the Queen of the Night.) And by golly does Mozart put her through her paces: Konstanze has brutal back to back arias in Act II ( "Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose" and "Marten aller Arten") that together must run for better than twenty minutes and contain just about every dirty trick a composer could pull on a soprano. By the time Nielson collapsed in grief at the end of the scene, she was heaving like she'd just run the Derby.

As for the male parts, Deon van der Walt did fine as Belmonte, although he looked exactly like Eric Idle's Bertholt from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and his acting consisted of not much more than putting his hands to his head to register surprise, grief or joy. Lars Magnussan, as Pedrillo, looked like Pat Sajak's little brother. Also, his collar must have been too tight because his eyes bulged alarmingly. The comic foil Osmin was played by Kurt Moll, who I've seen sing the Commendatore in Mozart's Don Giovanni (also with Solti). This part is one of pure silly caricature and Moll played it to the hilt - oversized, flowing robe, hideously dyed red beard, and lots of learing and bellowing. (He was also making cast members giggle with his ad-libs.)

The only weak point I could see in the singing was in some of the ensemble passages. Pedrillo and Osmin galloped through the wine duet way too fast (this was Solti's fault) and the couples just didn't seem to mesh that well when singing in quartet. This might have been the fault of the sound recording, but every now and again they simply seemed a bit off key.

Lastly, there was Pasha Selim himself, easily one of the most interesting operatic characters who never actually sings a note. (This piece is not pure opera but instead what is called a singspiel, with spoken dialogue intermixed with sung parts. Mozart did not provide any music for Selim's part.) As played by Oliver Tobias in orangy-brownish face paint, he looked like a moody, broody George Hamilton. The Pasha, we are given to understand, is a renegade, a person with one foot in both the Christian and Muslim worlds, and appreciative of the best both worlds could offer. Often Selim is decked out in the most lavish Turkish costume imagination can contrive. Here, on the other hand, he wore European coat, breeches, neckcloth and wig and was surrounded by plenty of servitors in similar clothes. At the same time, he had Moorish guards, Turkish menials and a harem of burqua-clad women scurrying about the place. It matched nicely with his spoken part, which blends Enlightenment concepts of integrity, mercy and respect, proffers of love to Konstanze and outbursts of stylized Turkish ferocity. Indeed, the most fascinating part of the entire story is watching Selim's development as events unfold - his ultimate nobility in letting the two couples go at the end really comes across well. (In contrast, Belmonte - the stock hero of the piece - looks utterly foolish next to him.)

The sets and costumes were no-nonsense period pieces - with a few tweeks, the Pasha's country estate could easily double as Dorabella and Fiordiligi's sea-side house in Naples. The only blemish was the curtain, which was painted in vivid abstract patterns for reasons that escape me.

This was a live recording, but the audience never intruded on the performance. Furthermore, the camerawork was very well done. The DVD quality was fine, except that there was an odd chirping sound on occassion. Where it came from, I couldn't say.

Overall then, if you enjoy Mozart (and I doubt you'd be reading this far if you didn't) I'd recommend checking this performance out.

Random Commuter Observations

What exactly is a "honky-tonk bedonk-a-donk" anyway?

Discuss.

UPDATE: Good discussion. For those of you who don't know, I happen to listen to a good bit of what passes for country music these days. (I hate pop, am sick to death of "oldies" rock and my car makes too much noise for classical, so it's my drive-time preference.) I don't much like the rock/pop crossover stuff. Instead, gimme some of that ol' George Strait, Alan Jackson and Randy Travis, to name a few.

And while we're on the subject, am I the only one bothered that Keith Urban is one of the most popular country singers these days despite the fact that he's Australian? No offence to the Bruces and Sheilas out there, but that just doesn't seem right.

I Just Wish I Hadn't Drunk All That Cough Syrup.

I thought I was getting better this morning after being down 72 hours with the stomach flu but I come here and see nothing but weirdo pastels and flamingoes.

I must be sicker'n I thought...

UPDATE: Just in case you're interested, the four year old, who brough the bug into the house last week to begin with, seems to be almost mended. The Missus is suffering from a low-grade version, which probably means she'll have it longer. I'm struggling back but still feel awfully weak. Meanwhile, the eldest Llama-ette was up hurling at three ack emma this morning, so she seems to be our next lucky contestant. Only the six year old has remained unscathed so far (touching wood).

Yup, the family that prays to the porcelain god together spends a lot of time fighting over who's going to clean up the mess.

Forget Heather Has Two Mommies

Maybe they should rename it Jack Black Had Two Mommies or, even better, Sure, What the Hell, Start a Polyandorous Marriage, But You Get Jack Black as a Child.

RTV, RIP

And there was much snarky rejoicing.

Fun and games with Professor LLamabutcher

This morning in Legal Theory and Public Policy, we were doing Lon Fuller's The Morality of Law, and to illuminate Fuller's distinction between morality of duty and morality of aspiration I used a series of Johnny Cash lyrics, which somehow got across the whole issue of morality of duty being tied to the acceptance of consequences of actions versus the morality of aspiration's desire for righteousness, tying the whole thing together with Lincoln's Second Inaugural address.

This afternoon in Civil Liberties we did The Prize Cases, juxtaposing Justice Greer's assertion of presidential authority with the Carter-esque position of Justices Nelson and Taney in their extreme hobbling of the presidency, noting that had Nelson and Taney gotten a fifth vote the decision would have been ignored, as was Merryman. We played with the problem of the Emmancipation Proclamation last week as justified by the president's war-time authority--that was a lot of fun.

For their first moot court I am really playing with the idea of doing something based on the recent Cartoon War Riots: creating a scenario where a group of Muslim students on a college campus burn a Norwegian and a Danish flag, and are arrested for violating the ban on cross-burning. Kind of a RAV v. St Paul meets Texas v. Johnson in a post-modern melange of PC tuna melt.

Image shamelessly stolen from Everyone's Favorite Commie.

Chester Arthur, RIP

He was certainly the grandpa of all Reconstruction-era presidential impersonators.

Hopefully, this is a joke

Otherwise I might be in the mood to go burn down a Danish embassy or something.

What are you, a wuss?

From LLamabutcher En-Why-Cee Correspondent KeithS:

Gents, my blog dreams are put on hold due to imminent baby arrival, but will let you know, will retain correspondent status in the meantime.

No fribble for you, one year.

Happy Birthday Steve-O!!

As some of you may already know a Great American Institution and Steve-O both turned the big Four-Ohhhhhhhh this weekend. Since it wouldn’t be a complete birthday celebration without the ritual tweaking of the Llamas we've rolled out "LLama Vice" skin for your viewing pleasure.

Don't worry Steve-O old pal, some day the 80's will be fashionable again and you can break out your white lenin suits and pastel tee's.

Happy Birthday Steve-O!

Note: If you aren't seeing the redesigned layout select LLama's Vice and hit the Change Style button in the Get Some Skin section.

YIPS from Steve: For the love of all that is holy that is one loud shade of Teal.

I humbly thank you for making me be the Sonny character, and look forward to our classic Battlestar Galactica skin.

Best pshop parody of the Cartoon War

From Wuzzadem, of course.

Man, are we racking up the Mitzvah/Karma points for this one

Yes indeedy, we're #6 on MSN for:

What can we say, we're polymaths. Which is probably why we are # 4 on Google (out of 240K+) for

Just so you know when these modern Carrie Nations get the evil bean criminalized who you can beat into a vente skinny foamy pulp.

Paydirt for the Crack Young Staff

The HateMongers Quarterly launches its Sunday guest gig at Wizbang---hopefully this will bring some much deserved attention their way, as they are consistently the high-end funny on our end of the blogosphere.

Today's topic? Sex, coffee, and female arousal.

But you have to say it like you're in the Wizard of Oz: "Sex and coffee and female arousal OH MY!"

Follow the flags

JT at Wizbang has an interesting thought about the cartoon riots.

WELL, BOY HOWDY! Leave it to Everybody's Favorite Commie to find the one circumstance in which American Liberals will tolerate cross-burning....

Worst. Super Bowl. EVER.

Gawhd, that sucked.

I feel like going out and buring down the Danish embassy.

UPDATE: About the only good thing you can say about that game is that it is over, and now, with the Super Bowl over, the gardening season officially begins. Beth jumps the gun by a couple of hours speculating about her impending War of the Roses. Me, personally, I'm like Marshall Peitan, trying to have to figure out what to do after I totally surrendered to the diving Stukas raining down crabgrass seeds on me last year. Yes, technically that's a lawn not a garden issue, but it's going to be the irrefutable fact framing the garden paradigm this year.

Time to curl up with some nice flannel sheets, a fragrant candle or two, and the Burpee catalog.

MORE GARDENING PORN:

Would you just check out those luscious orbs?

(Insert Homer Simpson drooling noise here)

APROPOS OF NOTHING DEPT:

I don't know why I get a kick out of stuff like this, except it makes me smile. Here's our traffic map from the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl:

There's something mesmerizing about the sitemeter traffic map. It's told me a few things: we have a regular reader on the Mauritias Islands, and we get a lot of traffic from the Middle East who google us up looking for various permutations of Arab porn, savory and rather, umm, unsavory.

Must be because we are camelids and proud.

TIME TO CALL JACK BAUER

When Newsweek has to ask such a question.

YIPS from Steve: What a stupid story---file it under the not enough probable cause to arrest Mohammad Atta on September 10th category of asshattery.

Super Bowl Predictions

I've got the Seahawks by 10 points.

And a distinct possibility of the exposure of Mick Jagger's left nipple.

To amuse myself, I pshopped the cartoon of Muhammad's head with the bomb turban onto the body of the parapalegic in the Tom Toles cartoon from this week. It was kind of the singularity of cartoon bad taste, and for the first time ever, even too much for me to post.

It must be because I'm getting old. Excuse me while I head out to the early bird buffet at the Sizzler.

DEFIANCE

A Gunney you should know. Surf over to The Ex-Donk and scroll down. You will not be sorry.

MCPO AIRDALE, THIS IS FOR YOU

The Navy is opening helicopter and some P-3 flying billets to warrant officers, giving enlisted personnel the chance to get on the WO/CWO track and earn their gold wings. This is a good thing. Most of the army's pilots are warrant officers and I prefer to have them in the cockpit over commissioned officers simply because the warrant officers have far more blade time.

Tomorrow, a great American Institution turns 40

And so does the Super Bowl.

Yes, ladies and gents, the rumors are true: tomorrow I turn 40.

I know, I know: as those who know me well know that I've been XL for a long, long time.

Other than increasingly feeling like Mr. Hand, there is no noticeable difference. Our program coordinator at work got me the greatest birthday present I've received in ages: a Napoleon Dynamite talking key-chain. So I've been padding around the house making various noises all day. Needless to say, The Dear One wasn't too impressed when I kept pushing the button that said, "I like your sleeves---they're real big."

Anyhoo, the Cranky Factor has been pegged at maximum. I'll let you know how tomorrow goes.

(And yes, The Cranky Factor would be a good name for a blog).

Well This Is Going To Be Interesting...

Our Dee Cee Blogerpalooza jam fest is in a couple hours and this stomach bug that's been hanging around Orgle Manor seems to have really fastened its hooks into me. Any other activity, I'd unhesitatingly duck. But Cranky NeoCon Gordo is coming all the way down from the wilds of Pennsylvania for it and I've already blown him off one time. If I do so again, he might hurt me.

A distinct possibility, therefore, that some of our blogfriends will get to know much more about me this evening than they are counting on. Tango Mike India, indeed.

UPDATE: Well, it didn't quite come to that, although it was a close run thing. (Rocket Ted doesn't yet know what an alarming effect the sight and smell of his plate of appetizers had on the ol' Llama tum.) I had to bail before the dinners got to the table.

My apologes to everybody who was there for seeming to be such a lump. Not that I'm not usually like that anyway, but this time there was a medical reason for it.

Google baiting

Don Surber decides to take Google Chumming---something we here at the LLamabutchers are proud to be pioneers of---to an all new level by assigning point values to linked references:

First, the best sentence in a news story this week:

Lyonne also allegedly threatened to sexually molest her former neighbor’s dog during a 2004 altercation.

We’re talking Natasha Lyonne of “The Slums Of Beverly Hills fame.

Threatened bestiality? 5 Google Bait points. Beastiality for those who cannot spell adds a point. Another point because she was in “American Pie.”

Blue Star Chronicles has fun with “Brokeback Mountain.” After seeing it, Blue Star sings, “Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.”

The prequel and sequel in one: "Brokeback to the Future."

Oscar favorite: 3 points.

Goth calls the kettle black! Kelly Osbourne says Paris Hilton is a bad influence on girls. That explains the sudden surge in sales of night-vision video cameras.

Paris alone is worth 10, so add 10 points.

Further proof that David Hasselhoff will be the next fuehrer: The Ooga Chakka video.
2 Google Köder points.

Britney Spears will appear in a “Will & Grace” episode as NBC not only cancels the show but punishes it as well.

In the episode, when “Out TV” is bought by a Christian Television Network, Spears is brought on to be Jack’s new religious co-host — until Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack loosen her up.

Didn’t Jm Bullock and Tammy Faye Bakker already do that in real life?

Of course, last week's carnival may have gotten her knocked up, as rumors swirl about a pregnancy. Hey, say what you want about her, at least she is making her own and not raiding Third World countries for them.

10 points for Brit, 1 each for Jm, Tammy Faye and pregnant.

To boost ratings, the American Family Association is protesting the Britney episode.
1 point for stupidity.

This week's quote from in Rosie O’Donnell's blog, kel "lets the dogs out." Leave it to Rosie to answer the age-old question: “Who Let The Dogs Out?”

3 points for the song title.

24 is 16 with a bullet.

4 points for the Jack Bauer mention.

Jessica Simpson got a job at Pizza Hut. Nice how the writer decided to downplay the ex-Mrs. Nick Lachey in the story, only to have Jessica's picture appear -- surprise, surprise -- prominently on the Web site.

7 points for Jessica Simpson, another 4 points for any Simpson mention. O.J., Homer, it doesn't matter.

Sing-along time:

Do you know the way to eBay?
Jordan’s got some tits, she will sell, they lost their fit.
Do you know the way to eBay?
I'm going there to buy some thirty-two double-Fs.

3 points for each breast.

OK, Google Baiters, add up the points. Now double them with this word: Naked.

Tune in next week for the next Carnival of the Google Bait Celebrities. Send entries to donsurber@yahoo.com. Deadline is Friday 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Linked to The TTLB ÜberCarnival and Stop the ACLU and Samantha Burns and Wizbang and Basil's Blog and bRight and Early and Jo's Cafe and Point Five and Conservative Cat

See, this is what is wrong with the degenerate Empire that is AmeriKKKa---links to Paris Hilton, The Hasselhoff, and Rosie O'Donnell together with bestiality and Pizza Hut! For the love of all this is holy this is NOT what Google exists to do! Churning up your traffic by trading off the cheap and tawdry desires of geeks punching up Juliet Huddy and Alexandra Steele Weather channel babes naked nekkid pics is one thing, but how can you choose to denigrate the holy name of Pizza Hut so, Mister Surber?

I'm declaring a jihad on all things Surber for violating the third commandment (Thou shall not profane the Pizza Hut).

Welcome to the Blogroll!

Ladies and gents, our newest blogroll member:

Life at Full Volume

We're at the point where we are going to need a new category just for momblogs. Anyhoo, SarahG.'s writing is sharp and funny, a master of the genre pioneered by Curmudgeonry.

Robbo already linked earlier in the week to Jordana's post about her son the Lady's Man. Let me add my two bits about Mr. Skinny and Mr. Small. Mr. Skinny, who is in first grade, has a great thing going at the pool in the summer with the college girl lifeguards---he's already mastered the "Hi, my name is (Mr. Skinny). What's your name?" It's hilarious (if not completely alien to my own experience) watching them fawn all over him. Mr. Small, however, is the King: at 10 months, he had all the college girl waitresses cooing and awing at him, as he sat there pawing away. I would tell you something skipped a generation, but if you ever met my Dad you'd realize that wasn't the case. Maybe there was something inherently studly about my gramps that I never knew about.

Llama Robbo's Schizoid Neflix Movie Queue

I have two Netflix pics in house for tonight's movie night, both of which I really want to see:

The first is the 1987 Royal Opera House production of Mozart's Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail, conducted by Georg Solti.

The second is Porky's. God help me but this is a funny movie.

Decisions, decisions......

UPDATE: Yeah - "A-WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Saving the Mozart for when I don't feel so craptabulous.

WE'RE THE LLAMABUTCHERS, AND WE GET RESULTS, DAMMIT!

Sadie over at Agent BedHead has instituted our suggestion for the "Ask Agent BedHead" column. Go over and stuff her inbox like a RedLobster $5.99 shrimp sampler with all your Olson Twins fetishes and the like.

Via Sadie we get the link to THIS, which appears to be the actual blog of one Ana Maria Cox, aka The Blogger Formerly Known As Wonkette.

Here's today's entre:

Greetings and apologies for the absence. I would say that I have been gathering my wits but heaven knows that doesn’t take long. So, the truth: I’ve been sleeping until 10, puttering around, and drinking several martinis in order to get through the evening news and quiet the voices in my head. People have asked if I miss blogging at Wonkette, and the short answer is “no.” The long answer is that there’s so much great material I do sometimes get itchy keyboard fingers, though my thoughts hardly seem worth the grand $12 per post Wonkette paid. But, hell, you aren’t a slut if you’re giving it away for free, right?

Hmmmm, $12 per post at Wonkette, eh? Unfortunately, that creates WAAAAAY too much of a vision involving Wonkette, a Shoney's parking lot in Indianapolis with the back lamps conveniently shot out, the front seat of a Subaru pick-up, and my first appearance on "COPS."

No word on whether her new blog will bring about the long-awaited blogging/amatuer porn singularity.

In better days....

More Llama And Albatross Posting

Although the four year old was peppier this morning, she seems to have had a bit of a relapse this afternoon - her fever's back up a bit and just now she said she wanted to go back to sleep. This is fine by me, except that we begin to get into that whole if-I-let-her-sleep-now-she'll-be-up-all-night calculus. Given how punky she still looks, I think I'm just going to risk it.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure she's not going to anybody's birthday party tomorrow.

Hell hath no fury

like your high-school ex finding your wedding page.

Really, James, you are being far too nice with this situation.

Brawney - The Sensitive Picker-Upper

This is quite funny: Innocent Escapes - Build your own Brawny Paper Towel Guy cheesy fantasy! (Sooper Sekret Message to Bill: make sure to clean off that screen when you're done.)

Note that this is Georgia-Pacific's own site. Imagine that - a corporation with a real, live sense of humor!

Yips! to Dave Barry.

Light Fuse, Stand Back

Ann? Meet my friend Marjorie.

Once Upon A Time....

Here is a compilation from the American Book Review of what are claimed to be the 100 greatest first lines from novels. Heaven only knows what the criteria were, but the selection seems to be all over the middle-brow dartboard.

I'd thought of turning the list into a meme, bolding the ones I had read, for example. (At a glance, I'd say I've read about half of them.) However, this turned out to be a bit too unwieldy. Just go on over and browse if you're interested.

Yips! to Mixolydian Don.

In praise of Chris Elliot

The Colossus has a long piece on the work of Chris Elliot. I didn't mention him yesterday in my paen to Groundhog Day, because that's another dimension to the movie which makes it so enjoyable: the distinct feeling that you are watching what would have happened to David Letterman if, instead of jumping to network tee-vee in the late 1970s, he had never made it out of being a weatherman, only making the journey from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh.

The day they tore ol' Red Ensign down

The Crack Young Staff at the HateMongers Quarterly take on Canada.

Needless to say, it's not a fair fight.

Final score:

HMQ 1
Degenerate Moose Orglers 0

Kathy drank the Pumpkin Juice

And now she's gone all Harry, all the time.

It's Friday, so a little Theuriau Lusting (TM) might be in order

Courtesy of Phin.

UPDATE: The Irish Elk wants to know if Melissa can skate?

I don't know, but the Elk has some reasons to follow Olympic women's ice-hockey.

In college, I used to go to all the women's ice hockey games, particularly senior year when we lived right next to the rink. It was great entertainment for a number of reasons:

1. No security = being able to bring in exceptional amounts of liquor, even by late 1980s standards. Nothing quite like watching a hockey game with a keg in the stands.

2. No security = being able to smuggle in large amounts of contraband to throw on the ice after goals, even again by late 1980s standards.

3. Some really good games. Basically, you'd have 2 women on each team who played some really serious hockey growing up, and about 9 others who were either good figure skaters fallen on hard times or were enamored by the ideological zeal of the whole thing (I'll show THE MAN what I think of his patriarchial oppression of wimmin folk everywhere----I'll play ICE HOCKEY!) As you can imagine, jailarity ensued, given that there was usually only one ref on the ice at a time to enforce the no checking/no slashing etc rules. Within the fifteen foot ambient sensory zone of the ref, there would be some pretty clean and decent (albeit verrrrrry slow and rather polite) hockey going on; outside of that 15 foot zone, for the love of gawhd it was Thunderdome, with some of the most vicious off-puck hooliganism I have ever had the good fortune to witness. There was nothing quite like the thrill of watching some Wimminist House Resident with long Steinam tresses hanging down from the back of her helmet discovering the power in being able to use the stick to completely slash out the back of someone's knees, only to watch her get completely blasted laterally into the boards by the other team's enforcer with absolutely no hope of the ref seeing it and issuing a penalty. Add that together with the vast quantities of beer and the contraband and you've got a wintertime party worthy of the Hanson Brothers.

4. The guy who drove the zamboni was also the guy who was the rigger at the boathouse, and was quite amenable if you brought a case of Canadian beer over to let you drive.

Nothing beats blowing off studying for an exam because you are DUI in a zamboni.

LB Buddy can back me up on this one (if memory serves, Mrs. LB Buddy was on the women's ice hockey team for awhile....)

DEATH TO FRANCE

I'm more of a "Pave France" sort of guy myself, but when I saw this over at everybody's favorite commie, even I had to say, "WTF?" Why are they attacking France for this act of courage? It was the Danes, for goodness sakes.

Wake up call in France for the reality we've been screaming about for five and half years now? Probably not.

UPDATE: I didn't have a chance on Wednesday, so this afternoon I'm bringing by a nice big copy of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons (in color no less!) to my good friend the anti-AmeriKKKan librarian whose office door is an immense shrine to all things Chomsky and Ellen DeGeneres. Which wouldn't be a thing, except her office door is right next to the check out desk in the library, in the main lobby, so there is this nice big reminder (perfectly impartial, of course) to all things "I Hate America in all its evil vileness" every time you go in. Fortunately, our library really sucks---the librarians are great, but the collection is a freaking joke, so I never have to go over there except when I want to visit Chai-Rista and Pep.

Anyhoo, I'm bringing her a copy of the cartoons to see if she'll put it up on her door---whether she's a fearless fighter for ALL free expression, or just that which advances a slender world view. Update later.

Here are the cartoons by the way.

Welcome to Bizarro world

John at Wuzzadem channeling Julian Bond at Starbucks. The Nazi grande Blueberry muffins were to die for. Literally.

Which was eerily reminiscent of a time a couple years back standing behind Mr. Bond in line at the drycleaners in Charlottesville....

Watch out Hamas...here come the LLAMAS!

From LLamabutchers Foreign Correspondent Keith S (who is supposedly starting a blog soon---when you've got it going, give us a shout out, will ya?)

JERUSALEM (AP) -- It can't shoot and it can barely follow orders, but it's the newest recruit to the Israeli military: The llama.

According to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on Friday, two elite units recently began using the llamas in exercises and operations on Israel's northern border to navigate heavy loads of 60 kilograms (132 pounds) or more through difficult terrain.

The military tried using mules for similar tasks, but although they could carry heavier loads than the llamas, they behaved badly -- at one point, staging a "mutiny" and fleeing, the newspaper said.

According to Brig. Gen. Itzik Ben-Tov, llamas are well-disciplined and move quickly.

They also have highly developed senses of smell and hearing, are nimble, and only eat once every two days.

I would add that they are quite cranky and taken to long breaks in the afternoon for nap time (at least those with tenure). That, and internet access.

Gratuitous Cranky Domestic Posting (TM) - Lifestyles Of The Rich And Foolish Division

So there is some talk of my possibly joining the board of one of the local community orchestras. There certainly are some advantages to this. Getting involved in music, for one. Community participation, for another. And it would be an excellent opportunity for making what Meyer Wolfsheim called "gunnegshuns" in anticipation of that time in the future when I give Father Justice the bum's rush and head back into private practice.

On the other hand, at least judging from the conversation I had with one of the current members last evening, a primary function of the group seems to be to act as an excuse to show off one's own home and snoop out everybody else's:

Self: [After listening to extended explanation of the cocktail and fund-raising circuit] "So what performances do you have coming up?"

Member: "Oh, we're doing a tribute to novels this year. The next concert will feature "Romeo & Juliet".

Self: [Strongly resisting urge to point out that R&J; is not a novel] "Oh, that's interesting. Personally, I'm not all that moved by Prokofiev, but every now and again it's good to hear his music."

Member: "Yes. Well, anyway, we had our last meeting at So-and-So's - they built over in Such-a-Place..."

And so on.

This got me stewing about McMansions in general and their typically basketball court-sized kitchens in particular. These have always irked me as the very pinnacle of the pretense behind these places. It's not as if the owners actually cook in the Julia Child sense of the word (they typically cater when entertaining and, I strongly suspect, subsist on take-out when dining alone). Rather, they need all that space so that everybody can cram in to see all the gee-whiz technology and luughzery appointments of the room. Which are really only there for prestige purposes to begin with. In effect, it's not actually a kitchen, it's a kitchen showroom.

Feh. I loathe this brand of conspicuous consumption. Unlike my friends across the political aisle, I don't believe that people who indulge in it should be either guillotined or taxed back to the Stone Age, but Lawd Almighty I do believe they should be mocked.

If I do join up (which I probably will, if invited), just think of the material I'll have to work with!

(BTW, I read somewhere once that the French root of the word "prestige" actually has connotations of deciet rather than high standing through merit. People enamoured of Madison Avenue's use of the word "prestigious" ought to keep that in mind.)

Carnival announcement

Uber-neighbor Melissa is announcing the formation of the Carnival of Children's Literature. Go to it, folks! (And no, that doesn't include the large font, pencil drawn picture versions of The Road to Serfdom; although in college I did have a copy of Hayek for Children given to me by a very dear professor who thought he'd "help" me with my difficulties in understanding certain aspects of Austrian school economics. Ahhhh, that old school "educatin' by humiliatin'".....)

Exterminate....Exterminate!

Lynn S. links to a post ranking the 50 Best Robots (fictional and real).

I don't recognize a quarter of these machines, but I notice that both Daleks and Cylons (70's version only, please) are absent. And ought'nt there be a special mention of Evil Otto from the old Berzerk arcade game?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Jonah Goldberg

In an article today reminiscent of his G-File glory years, Jonah sticks it to the con game that is the rap music industry. Money quote:

We hear so much about how kids today are cynical, skeptical, media-savvy, and so forth. But if they're buying this hooey, they're idiots.

Yo! Yo! Fizzizzle!

Or something.

The Llama And The Albatross

After staying home sick Wednesday, the four year old made it through school yesterday but then managed to ralph up her chocolate milk last evening just as I was walking in. I've been right on the verge of knuckling under to the same stomach bug and at the sight of this damn near joined her.

Anyhoo, she woke up this morning feeling fine - and without much of a fever. Unfortunately, this sets up the battle royale: We think she needs to rest for another day while she thinks she should get back to her usual bouncing off the ceiling activities. The only leverage I have is the threat that if she doesn't take it easy today, she can't go to her friend's birthday party this weekend.

Gonna be a looooong day.

UPDATE: WitNit has a coffee-through-the-nose inducing list of pre-parental practice techniques. A sample:

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: first buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

Go read the rest.

Yips! to Rachel.

UPDATE DEUX: Just checked up on the Llama-ette, who's flopped out in front of the tee vee. She's watching Franklin, a cartoon about some touchy-feely turtle. As I came in, Franklin was swimming. The gel looked up and said, "I see you under water, Daddy! And there's a shark! He's eating you up! He has really sharp teeth! Oh, ha ha ha!"

This is vintage humor for her. Definitely on the mend.

Casanova Jr.

Jordana's boy apparently likes the ladies. A lot.

Pursuant to Section 1.2(a) of the Dads of Girls Security Code, he's just been automatically added to my Watch List.

This Is Interesting News

It seems John Boehner has upset Roy Blunt to take over as GOP House Majority Leader.

I confess that I haven't followed the race too closely, except to believe that the election of John Shadegg would have sent the clearest "reform" signal and that the election of Roy Blunt (a fomer DeLay deputy) would have been bad news.

Call this a qualified win, I suppose.

Of course, The Corner is all over it.

Cogito Ergo MEEEOOOOOWWWW!!!!!

Behold the Cat Gun.

This little gem recently was given me by my cousin as a birthday present. And I've been mulling trying a philosophical experiment with it.

You see, I've always been extremely partial to the Platonic idea that material objects around us are simply flawed expressions of their true being. I also believe that our own creative expressions add layers to this relationship. So, for example, I might paint a picture of a tree. The painting is a flawed expression of the physical tree I see which, in turn, is but another flawed expression of the perfect essence of tree-ness.

So I got thinking- the Cat Gun shoots imperfect representations of cats. If I were to use this gun to shoot such ammunition at real cats, themselves only a higher level of flawed expression, would this possibly start a chain reaction that could go all the way up the existential ladder to destroy the ultimate essence of Cat-ness?

In the name of philosophy and dog lovers, I think it's worth finding out.

Aslan Is On The Move - Again

Our pal Lintenfiniel Jen links to a story reporting that production will be starting later this year on Prince Caspian, with a possible Christmas '07 target release date.

I'm very curious how they're going to go about fiddling with the chronology. As Lewis fans know, this time around the Pevensey children fall into Narnia in the middle of Caspian's story (and only after he summons them). The narrative then has to backtrack to the beginning of that tale, come forward to the point where the children appear and then move on from there. As I've said several times before, I've always found this to be a somewhat awkward arrangement. It would be even more awkward on the screen, I think. Somehow or other, the writers are going to have to balance the two stories in a manner that doesn't get confusing, yet at the same time does not leave either Caspian or the Children out of the picture too long.

Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

I read with interest the reviews of the current London production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, handily rounded up by Jessica Duchen (who plans to post her own review next week).

In particular, I was intrigued by what seem to be some contrasting interpretations of the social dynamics of the piece by of a couple of the critics.

First, there's Richard Morrison writing in the Times:

The action is updated to the 1830s. That is vital: the servants can be far less deferential. And in Tanya McCallin’s vast chateau set, servants are everywhere: spying, overhearing, conspiring — in fact, more or less running this enclosed world from the overture’s first bars. It’s Gosford Park — the Musical.

Faced with this lot, Gerald Finley’s terrific Count is like a cornered dinosaur who senses the impending Ice Age but can do nothing except seethe impotently.

There is a terrible temptation in staging Figaro to read more revolutionary spirit into it than I believe Mozart and Da Ponte had in mind. Indeed, in the J.E. Gardiner video I have, the chorus of peasants turns threatening - waiving pitchforks and scythes at Almaviva after he slides out of marrying Figaro and Susanna early on. While there is indeed an important spirit of social progress in the story, Morrison's simile suggests falling into the trap of believing the story foreshadowes (or advocates) the extinction of the Count's very existence rather than a curtailment of his traditional power.

Fortunately, as Tim Ashley notes in the Guardian, David McVicar is well aware of the more subtle political dynamic of the piece:

David McVicar's new production transposes Mozart's comedy from its usual 18th century setting to a French chateau on the eve of the July 1830 revolution that saw the restored Bourbon monarchy replaced by the liberal bourgeois era of Louis Philippe. The events of that summer were famously commemorated by Delacroix in Liberty Leading the People. The production charts the transformation of Figaro, gloriously incarnated by Erwin Schrott, from naive, liveried flunky to a politically engaged figure who belongs on Delacroix's barricades.

.......

In a programme note, McVicar argues that the opera has less to do with the 1789 revolution than we assume and that its values are those of the "emerging bourgeois class" to which Mozart belonged. Accordingly much is made of the contrast between bourgeois marriage, grounded in the free assent of both parties, and the emotional catastrophes attendant on aristocratic codes of sexual behaviour, with their emphasis on proprietorial masculinity and female submission. Dorothea Röschmann's Countess, in anguishing over her husband's infidelity, is also rebelling against such values, and at the end sweeps, like a grand society hostess, into the debris-strewn garden to initiate a new order by confronting and forgiving Gerald Finley's aggressive, insidiously attractive Count.

Ashley questions the effectiveness of McVicar's attempt to pull this off. However, I think McVicar's intentions are absolutely correct. Le Nozze is not about toppling the old order. Rather, it's about modifying it, making room for the rising bourgeoise and their values. And while Mozart fully explored the painfulness of the process, I think he would have been horrified at the suggestion that he was advocating revolution.

The Neo-KHAAAAAAAAN plot rolls on

Straussians take over Canada: Gordo the Cranky Neo-Con last seen heading to Vermont on a Greyhound intercity in lace stockings and a poncho, clutching a dog-eared copy of Natural Right and History and a copy of the Greatest Hits of the Mackenzie Brothers.

Grumpy Pre-Valentine's Day Sighting Shot

No. Absolutely not. Wanna trek Surrey in winter? Use your own damn legs. Romance in the English countryside? Get a room. I don't wanna see it.

In praise of Groundhog Day

Because a certain unnamed philistine who is the coauthor around here saw fit to denigrate one of the truly great movies of the past two decades below, I felt the need to ride to the defense of Groundhog Day.

I will confess that this movie turned February 2nd into one of my favorite days of the year: it's the non-holiday holiday, the otherwise completely ordinary day of the year where the possibility of redemption and renewal are completely and utterly within grasp. Nothing seems quite as impossible to accomplish, as long as it is something to recapture a sense of wonder of the goodness capable of being found in the extremely ordinary.

Here's Jonah's review:

Here's a line you'll either recognize or you won't: "This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather." If you don't recognize this little gem, you've either never seen Groundhog Day or you're not a fan of what is, in my opinion, one of the best films of the last 40 years. As the day of the groundhog again approaches, it seems only fitting to celebrate what will almost undoubtedly join It's a Wonderful Life in the pantheon of America's most uplifting, morally serious, enjoyable, and timeless movies.

When I set out to write this article, I thought it'd be fun to do a quirky homage to an offbeat flick, one I think is brilliant as both comedy and moral philosophy. But while doing what I intended to be cursory research — how much reporting do you need for a review of a twelve-year-old movie that plays constantly on cable? — I discovered that I wasn't alone in my interest. In the years since its release the film has been taken up by Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement. Meanwhile, the Internet brims with weighty philosophical treatises on the deep Platonist, Aristotelian, and existentialist themes providing the skin and bones beneath the film's clown makeup. On National Review Online's group blog, The Corner, I asked readers to send in their views on the film. Over 200 e-mails later I had learned that countless professors use it to teach ethics and a host of philosophical approaches. Several pastors sent me excerpts from sermons in which Groundhog Day was the central metaphor. And dozens of committed Christians of all denominations related that it was one of their most cherished movies.

When the Museum of Modern Art in New York debuted a film series on "The Hidden God: Film and Faith" two years ago, it opened with Groundhog Day. The rest of the films were drawn from the ranks of turgid and bleak intellectual cinema, including standards from Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. According to the New York Times, curators of the series were stunned to discover that so many of the 35 leading literary and religious scholars who had been polled to pick the series entries had chosen Groundhog Day that a spat had broken out among the scholars over who would get to write about the film for the catalogue. In a wonderful essay for the Christian magazine Touchstone, theology professor Michael P. Foley wrote that Groundhog Day is "a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim's Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos." Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment, has cited Groundhog Day more than once as one of the few cultural achievements of recent times that will be remembered centuries from now. He was quoted in The New Yorker declaring, "It is a brilliant moral fable offering an Aristotelian view of the world."

I know what you're thinking: We're talking about the movie in which Bill Murray tells a big rat sitting on his lap, "Don't drive angry," right? Yep, that's the one. You might like to know that the rodent in question is actually Jesus — at least that's what film historian Michael Bronski told the Times. "The groundhog is clearly the resurrected Christ, the ever-hopeful renewal of life at springtime, at a time of pagan-Christian holidays. And when I say that the groundhog is Jesus, I say that with great respect."

That may be going overboard, but something important is going on here. What is it about this ostensibly farcical film about a wisecracking weatherman that speaks to so many on such a deep spiritual level?

THOROUGHLY POSTMODERN PHIL
A recap is in order. Bill Murray, the movie's indispensible and perfect lead, plays Phil Connors, a Pittsburgh weatherman with delusions of grandeur (he unselfconsciously refers to himself as "the talent"). Accompanied by his producer and love interest, Rita (played by Andie MacDowell), and a cameraman (Chris Elliott), Connors goes on assignment to cover the Groundhog Day festival in Punxsutawney, Pa., at which "Punxsutawney Phil" — a real groundhog — comes out of his hole to reveal how much longer winter will last. Connors believes he's too good for the assignment — and for Punxsutawney, Pittsburgh, and everything in between. He is a thoroughly postmodern man: arrogant, world-weary, and contemptuous without cause.

Rita tells Phil that people love the groundhog story, to which he responds, "People like blood sausage, too, people are morons." Later, at the Groundhog Festival, she tells him: "You're missing all the fun. These people are great! Some of them have been partying all night long. They sing songs 'til they get too cold and then they go sit by the fire and get warm and then they come back and sing some more." Phil replies, "Yeah, they're hicks, Rita."

Phil does his reporting schtick when the groundhog emerges and plans to head home as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a blizzard stops him at the outskirts of town. A state trooper explains that the highway's closed: "Don't you watch the weather reports?" the cop asks. Connors replies (blasphemously, according to some), "I make the weather!" Moving on, the cop explains he can either turn around to Punxsutawney or freeze to death. "Which is it?" he asks. Connors answers, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking." Reluctantly returning to Punxsutawney, Connors spends another night in a sweet little bed and breakfast run by the sort of un-ironic, un-hip, decent folks he considers hicks.

The next morning, the clock radio in his room goes off and he hears the same radio show he'd heard the day before, complete with a broadcast of "I Got You Babe" and the declaration, "It's Groundhog Day!" At first, Connors believes it's an amateurish gaffe by a second-rate radio station. But slowly he discovers it's the same day all over again. "What if there is no tomorrow?" he asks. "There wasn't one today!"

And this is the plot device for the whole film, which has seeped into the larger culture. Indeed, "Groundhog Day" has become shorthand for (translating nicely) "same stuff, different day." Troops in Iraq regularly use it as a rough synonym for "snafu," which (also translated nicely) means "situation normal: all fouled-up." Connors spends an unknown number of days repeating the exact same day over and over again. Everyone else experiences that day for the "first" time, while Connors experiences it with Sisyphean repetition. Estimates vary on how many actual Groundhog Days Connors endures. We see him relive 34 of them. But many more are implied. According to Harold Ramis, the co-writer and director, the original script called for him to endure 10,000 years in Punxsutawney, but it was probably closer to ten.

But this is a small mystery. A far more important one is why the day repeats itself and why it stops repeating at the end. Because the viewer is left to draw his own conclusions, we have what many believe is the best cinematic moral allegory popular culture has produced in decades — perhaps ever.

Interpretations of this central mystery vary. But central to all is a morally complicated and powerful story arc to the main character. When Phil Connors arrives in Punxsutawney, he's a perfect representative of the Seinfeld generation: been-there-done-that. When he first realizes he's not crazy and that he can, in effect, live forever without consequences — if there's no tomorrow, how can you be punished? — he indulges his adolescent self. He shoves cigarettes and pastries into his face with no fear of love-handles or lung cancer. "I am not going to play by their rules any longer," he declares as he goes for a drunk-driving spree. He uses his ability to glean intelligence about the locals to bed women with lies. When that no longer gratifies, he steals money and gets kinky, dressing up and play-acting. When Andie MacDowell sees him like this she quotes a poem by Sir Walter Scott: "The wretch, concentrated all in self / Living, shall forfeit fair renown / And, doubly dying, shall go down / To the vile dust, from whence he sprung / Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung."

Connors cackles at her earnestness. "You don't like poetry?" She asks. "I love poetry," he replies, "I just thought that was Willard Scott."

Still, Conners schemes to bed Rita with the same techniques he used on other women, and fails, time and again. When he realizes that his failures stem not from a lack of information about Rita's desires but rather from his own basic hollowness, he grows suicidal. Or, some argue, he grows suicidal after learning that all of the material and sexual gratification in the world is not spiritually sustaining. Either way, he blames the groundhog and kills it in a murder-suicide pact — if you can call killing the varmint murder. Discovering, after countless more suicide attempts, that he cannot even die without waking up the next day he begins to believe he is "a god." When Rita scoffs at this — noting that she had twelve years of Catholic school (the only mention of religion in the film) — he replies that he didn't say he was "the God" but merely "a god." Then again, he remarks, maybe God really isn't all-powerful, maybe he's just been around so long he knows everything that's going to happen. This, according to some, is a reference to the doctrine of God's "middle knowledge," first put forward by the 16th-century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, who argued that human free will is possible because God's omniscience includes His knowledge of every possible outcome of every possible decision.

THE METAMORPHOSIS
The point is that Connors slowly realizes that what makes life worth living is not what you get from it, but what you put into it. He takes up the piano. He reads poetry — no longer to impress Rita, but for its own sake. He helps the locals in matters great and small, including catching a boy who falls from a tree every day. "You never thank me!" he yells at the fleeing brat. He also discovers that there are some things he cannot change, that he cannot be God. The homeless man whom Connors scorns at the beginning of the film becomes an obsession of his at the end because he dies every Groundhog Day. Calling him "pop" and "dad," Connors tries to save him but never can.

By the end of the film, Connors is no longer obsessed with bedding Rita. He's in love with her, without reservation and without hope of his affection being requited. Only in the end, when he completely gives up hope, does he in fact "get" the woman he loves. And with that, with her love, he finally wakes on February 3, the great wheel of life no longer stuck on Groundhog Day. As NR's own Rick Brookhiser explains it, "The curse is lifted when Bill Murray blesses the day he has just lived. And his reward is that the day is taken from him. Loving life includes loving the fact that it goes."

Personally, I always saw Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return of the same in this story. That was Nietzsche's idea — metaphorical or literal — to imagine life as an endless repetition of the same events over and over. How would this shape your actions? What would you choose to live out for all eternity? Others see Camus, who writes about how we should live once we realize the absurdity of life. But existentialism doesn't explain the film's broader appeal. It is the religious resonance — if not necessarily explicit religious themes — that draws many to it. There's much to the view of Punxsutawney as purgatory: Connors goes to his own version of hell, but since he's not evil it turns out to be purgatory, from which he is released by shedding his selfishness and committing to acts of love. Meanwhile, Hindus and Buddhists see versions of reincarnation here, and Jews find great significance in the fact that Connors is saved only after he performs mitzvahs (good deeds) and is returned to earth, not heaven, to perform more.

The burning question: Was all this intentional? Yes and no. Ultimately, the story is one of redemption, so it should surprise no one that it speaks to those in search of the same. But there is also a secular, even conservative, point to be made here. Connors's metamorphosis contradicts almost everything postmodernity teaches. He doesn't find paradise or liberation by becoming more "authentic," by acting on his whims and urges and listening to his inner voices. That behavior is soul-killing. He does exactly the opposite: He learns to appreciate the crowd, the community, even the bourgeois hicks and their values. He determines to make himself better by reading poetry and the classics and by learning to sculpt ice and make music, and most of all by shedding his ironic detachment from the world.

Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin, the writer of the original story, are not philosophers. Ramis was born Jewish and is now a lackadaisical Buddhist. He wears meditation beads on his wrist, he told the New York Times, "because I'm on a Buddhist diet. They're supposed to remind me not to eat, but actually just get in the way when I'm cutting my steak." Rubin's original script was apparently much more complex and philosophical — it opened in the middle of Connors's sentence to purgatory and ended with the revelation that Rita was caught in a cycle of her own. Murray wanted the film to be more philosophical (indeed, the film is surely the best sign of his reincarnation as a great actor), but Ramis constantly insisted that the film be funny first and philosophical second.

And this is the film's true triumph. It is a very, very funny movie, in which all of the themes are invisible to people who just want to have a good time. There's no violence, no strong language, and the sexual content is about as tame as it gets. (Some e-mailers complained that Connors is only liberated when he has sex with Rita. Not true: They merely fall asleep together.) If this were a French film dealing with the same themes, it would be in black and white, the sex would be constant and depraved, and it would end in cold death. My only criticism is that Andie MacDowell isn't nearly charming enough to warrant all the fuss (she says a prayer for world peace every time she orders a drink!). And yet for all the opportunities the film presents for self-importance and sentimentality, it almost never falls for either. The best example: When the two lovebirds emerge from the B&B; to embrace a happy new life together in what Connors considers a paradisiacal Punxsutawney, Connors declares, "Let's live here!" They kiss, the music builds, and then in the film's last line he adds: "We'll rent to start."

Yips! from Robbo: Denigrate? I was denigrating my own philistinism, not the film!

Around the World with Mr. Putty

Melissa the Home Schooling Guru has a hilariously simple idea.

Much more edifying that "Where in the world is Matt Lauer."

For some reason (okay, for the reason that I'm a slothful toad) I've been meaning to add Melissa and her husband Scott's blogs to the blogroll---they live right around the block from Rancho non-Sequitor, and are a lot of fun to boot. There's not much in the political world that Scott and I agree on, I think, but as I like to tease Moonbat Mad Scientist LB Buddy, I need to keep folks like that around in case I'm completely wrong. But the way I see it the two guys who the neighbors look at askance because we hang out in our basements and write all night long need to not let a little thing like the sharpest political divisions since the Civil War divide us.

We need to save that for something real, like the historic discrimination and second class status heaped upon Aquaman.

Dee Cee Bloggerpalooza

As our pal Princess Cat notes:

For those readers in the DC Metro area that haven't heard yet - blogmeet ... Saturday... email me for the details.

Agenda for the evening: Plans - Taking Over World

You wouldn't want to miss out on this ground floor action, would you?

Fashion Notes with the Macktabulous Chai-Rista

Librarian by day, fashion maven by night--Chai-Rista is all that.

Today's fashion advice for the slightly clueless college gals:

Note to anyone considering a facial piercing - do NOT adorn your ugliest feature. An ugly nose with a gilded booger is now an ugly nose no one can ignore!

Although, now that I think of it, I think the Gilded Booger was the name of the Dutch ship my sainted cranky Hugenot ancestors arrived in New Amsterdam aboard....

FURTHER FASHIONISTA INSANITY: Aaron muses on playing i-Pod pocket pool.

"And There Was Much Rejoicing"

Tee Bee has Pythonesque questions about Puxatawney Phil's shadow-spotting this morning, as in, "Whaddaya mean, six more weeks? We haven't really had any yet."

True. True. We had unusually early snowfalls in Dee Cee this year (at Thanksgiving and before Christmas), but it's been relatively mild since then. In fact, today's high is supposed to crack 60.

Guess we won't have to eat Sir Robin's minstrels......

UPDATE: NRO is reposting Jonah's review of Groundhog Day from a few years back. This is one of Jonah's all time favorite flics. I have to confess that, although I've seen it three or four times and enjoyed it, I have yet to make it all the way through without dozing off. To this day, I haven't the faintest idea how it ends.

UPDATE DEUX: And before you start pelting me with rocks and garbage, let me just assure you that my dozing off had nothing to do with the quality of the movie but rather, in each case, was due to some combination of wine and the lateness of the hour.

Mmmm....Peggy.....Mmmmmm....

Peggy Noonan rips into WaPo tee vee critic Tom Shales today:

On the subject of political passion Tom Shales, longtime TV critic of the Washington Post and possessor of occasional eloquence, wrote a piece this week that deserves comment. I don't mean his State of the Union review, which began, "George Bush may or may not be the worst president since Herbert Hoover . . ." I mean his attack last Monday on "Flight 93," the A&E; television movie on that fated 9/11 flight. Mr. Shales said it was shameful that vulgar dramatizers would "exploit" the pain of those on the flight and those they left behind. Or as he put it, he had, innocent that he is, thought it "unthinkable" that "even the sleaziest producers" would "exploit any aspect of a nightmare that the nation had witnessed in horror."

By exploit I think he means "remember." There is nothing vulgar, low or unhelpful about remembering the particular heroism of Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and dozens of others. Their action--they stormed the cockpit that day, forced the plane down and kept it from hitting a Washington target, presumably the Capitol or the White House--was a moment of courage and sacrifice, and we all owe them a great deal. Imagine if the particular wound the hijackers meant to inflict had been successful that day. Imagine how much worse it would have been,

Remembering the men and women of Flight 93 isn't a self-indulgence but a duty. One senses in the Shales review the sneaky little suggestion that those who would remember, and who would tell this story (based by the way on the surviving telephone and other harrowing tapes of that flight) are in fact being political. But one suspects it is Mr. Shales who is being political. Maybe he fears those stupid Americans will get all emotional if they revisit part of the horror of that day, and go out and do something bad. Let's not speak of it lest the rabble be roused.

What a snob.

You wonder at the intemperance of angry young lefties and then think of the example set for them by exhausted old lefties.

Hear, hear. Purely by accident, I happened to catch "Flight 93" the other night and thought it very well done. I saw no signs of either hyper-sensationalism or any kind of perceptable political slant. Indeed, as far as political slants go, I think Peggy nails Shales' fat backside right to the wall.

Remember.

UPDATE: Gary the Ex-Donk focuses on another section of Peggy's column, which I passed over largely because I had already said the same thing yesterday. However, his invocation of Prof. Wagstaff is too good to pass up. Heh, indeed.

UPDATE DEUX: Lawren K. Mills relays some very high audience numbers for "Flight 93".

DLC - Political Cassandra

While I don't usually agree with their positions, I've long thought of the Democratic Leadership Council as the rational wing of the Donk Party. Their analysis of Dubya's political signals in last night's SOTU is pretty good:

In reacting to the president's address, DLC chairman Gov. Tom Vilsack compared Bush to a football coach who is so confident the opposition cannot stop a particular play that he is happy to signal it in advance. That's exactly right. Like the Pittsburgh Steelers running Jerome Bettis right up the middle so long as he continues to gain yardage, the GOP is going to run the national security play right at Democrats until they prove capable of effectively defending it. And this is basically what Bush's offensive coordinator, Karl Rove, told the Republican National Committee week before last.

So the challenge is very clear. Democrats must not only find a way to effectively critique the administration's stewardship of national security between now and November, but must also restore their own strength and credibility as smart and resolute warriors in the fight with jihadist terrorism.

Sound advice. And personally, I would be very happy if the Donks were to take it and put forth a viable candidate who genuinely possesses the strength and credibility spoken of here.

But that would mean the Party abandoning the tongue-swallowing, spittle-flying, vein-popping rhetoric of the Moonbat Left, that basically says the jihadist threat is nothing more than a bogey-man cooked up by HitlerMcShrimpyHalliLiarInChief as an excuse to unleash his sturmtruppen on Grandma while setting up as Alexander II and lining his pockets with ooooooooooooil revenues.

I think it unlikely that this will happen. Not only will the Moonbats not listen to the DLC, sooner or later this kind of suggestion may well convince them that the moderates are nothing more than a pack of weak-kneed turncoats. Then the knives will come out.

Yips! to Shay over at Dean's World, who has more thoughts on the subject.

Ever Wonder What INDCent Bill Does When He Vanishes From His Blog?

This may explain a lot. (I'm guessing Bill's the one with the glasses. The other one looks like yet another Bill Clinton half-brother.)

Yips! to the Pious Agnostic.

24 - The List

Top Sixty Facts about Jack Bauer.

I've never even seen the furshlugginer show and I thought this was hysterical. You 24 junkies out there ought to love it. Enjoy!

Yips! to Dave Barry.

UPDATE: Aw, Jeez.

YIPS from Steve: My favorites:

It took Jack Bauer two minutes to beat a confession out of OJ.

Sun Tzu once wrote, "If your enemy is weaker, conquer him. If he is stronger, join him. If he is Jack Bauer, you're fucking dead."

If Jack and MacGyver were locked in a room together, Jack would make a bomb out of MacGyver and get out.

Jack Bauer got Hellen Keller to talk.

And my personal favorite:

Jack Bauer got Hellen Keller to talk.

If that doesn't qualify you as a certified badass in Chimpy McHalliburton's Amerikkka, then I don't know what does.

The Lunch time link of the day

That is, if you want your yogurt on your computer screen, via your nostril:

Want to know what Cindy Sheehan's flavor of Ben n Jerry's ice cream is?

(From Wuzzadem, but of course!)

Happy blogday, X-Donk!

May another full year of Diane Lane themed orgling continue!

Meanwhile, Gary noted an interesting historical twist from yesterday's Alito vote: he was confirmed 58-42, the same margin that Bork lost by in 1987.

O tempora, o mores.

Read it and weap, INDCent Bill

We're #6 on Google for

pink fuzzy robes

No stopping us now, baby!

Curiouser and Curiouser

Our pal Kathy the Cake Eater and her sister lay into the ominously p.c. reworking of Curious George about to hit the movie screens.

I've got my own doubts about the film - in one of the extended theatrical trailors, Ron Howard more or less confesses that there's not near enough comedic material in the books for a full length movie, so they had to make a lot of things up. One cringes in advance.

Oh, and the poster for Curious George at my Metro stop reads, "Show Me The Monkey!" Perhaps it's just my own depravity coming through, but that slogan doesn't conjur up exactly the image I think the marketers had in mind.

SOTU Reactions

I hadn't meant to watch the speech last night but after talking politics on the phone with our Llama Military Correspondent just before it, I found myself saying "Oh, why the hell not."

In general, and contrary to everybody else who works inside the Beltway, I don't pay much attention to the details of these things. Rather, I listen and watch for overall tone. On that basis, I was quite pleased. Especially with respect to the war, Dubya didn't give the impression he was planning to back down a single, solitary inch. Bully for him, says I.

The other thing I like to watch is audience reaction. It strikes me that it has become something of a game among nooz producers to try and catch senators, congressmen and invitees in various embarrassing moments. Has nobody coached these people yet that they must assume the eyes of the world are fixed on them the entire time? Heh.

Anyhoo, I have no real inclination to analyze the speech or divine What It All Means. Perhaps LMC or Steve-O will do so. Also, if you've got a post on the subject, feel free to leave a trackback.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I did not see Kaine's response. But the libs in the office are making fun of him this morning, if that's any indication of how it went over.

UPDATE DEUX: Yup, Goldstein is Da Man.

UPDATE TROIS: By the way, a lot of buzz seems to be focusing on whether Dubya plans to try "confrontation" or "conciliation" with the Donks rolling into the next couple election cycles. I don't think that's the right way of looking at it. Instead, I think the tactic will be to maintain an air of sober maturity and leave the Donks, held hostage by the Moonbat Left, to act out the role of spoiled brat children in full meltdown mode.

Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM)

The four year old seems to have picked up the stomach bug going around, barfing up her dinner and running a temperature all night. She staggered downstairs this morning and curled up on the library sofa. As I put a blanket over her she was so groggy, so sweet, so pliable....the thing that came immediately to mind was that Calvin & Hobbes episode where Calvin gets similarly sick and after an uncharacteristically well-behaved trip to the doctor's, the doc remarks, "Nothing like a little flu to take the edge off a kid."

Call me heartless, but my sentiments exactly.

Clouds In My Bloggy

Lifted from Red, it's a word-cloud generator thingum.

Watch us now rocket to the top of google searches for "Naked Nelson".

Freedom of speech: use it or lose it

This has got everyone's shorts in a twist?

Good thing they never saw that movie where Richard Pryor was God, giving man the finger....

Bunyan Blogging

Sure. I'll try anything once.

Somebody googled in here looking for Pilgrim's Progress Musical. I was all set to do something snide and snappy on this idea when I noticed that damme if there isn't really such a show.

Well, perhaps it's because I was noodling over 1920's musical comedy this morning (see below), but I can't help wondering what Apollyon's Song must sound like:

Oh, I'm gonna STRA-dull!
Yes, straddle!
(I said straddle!)

Oh, I'm gonna STRA-dull!
Right!
Across!
The Waaaaaaaaaay!

Well, okay. Maybe it has some promise at that.

By The Book

Virginia Postrel links to a WaPo article about the explosion in popularity of scrapbooking. The Missus happens to be a moderately fervent scrapbooker - we've got about half a dozen albums primarily documenting the Llama-ettes and various stockpiles of Creative Memories stuff. (While she regularly complains about being behind on her materials, no she does not go to scrap-meets.)

It strikes me that there is something vaguely supercilious about the tone of the piece, faintly condescending toward these legions of empty, deluded hausfraus who have nothing better to do with their time than construct false histories for their future consolation. I also think the piece perhaps over-analyzes the behavior patterns involved. Sometimes a family album is just a family album.

One thing that struck me as amusing was this bit:

"I jot down whatever is going on in our lives that month," said Jennifer Henson of Ashburn, a director with the company. "Then I'll do what a typical day is for us right now."

She'll take photos not just of her family but of the street, of the cars, of the gas station around the corner or else note the cost of a Big Mac. Including the ones she is working on, Henson estimated that she has about 100 scrapbooks.

Although some women suffer what they call "scrapper's block," others battle the opposite issue: They begin to see the world as a fine, double-page layout.

"It's so strange because you'll be out somewhere, and literally the title of the page will come into your head," said Sara Schermerhorn of McLean.

At a recent trip to the zoo, she kept seeing the title "Going Bananas!" hovering over her children. As many mothers have, she has taken her kids to a pumpkin patch, she said, because it would make a good layout.

Michelle McVaney, who runs Get Crafty, a scrapbooking retreat in West Virginia, said that some women wheel in suitcases of photos and crop for 24 hours straight, without sleep. It is easy, she said, to fall into an obsessive mindset, to believe that something is lost forever if it is not scrapbooked.

Now, after you're done tut-tutting, go back through that quote and substitute the word "blog" for the word "scrapbook" and ask yourself if you're really so very different.

SO LONG SANDY (Some of us will certainly miss you!)(AND SOME OF US WON'T)

Justice Alito's confirmation this morning and his swearing-in this afternoon have ended the uninspiring jurisprudence of one Sandra Day O'Connor. SDOC was a baby-splitter who could not be counted upon to provide a consistent approach or analysis for the cases which came before her, be it abortion, affirmative action, etc. I wish her well in her retirement, made all the more burdensome by a husband with Alzheimer's, but I doubt many lower court judges or lawyers will miss her.

YIPS from Steve: Couldn't. Disagree. More. O'Connor was one of the greats of twentieth century America, history will show. Without a doubt.

MORE LMC YIPS: Sorry, Steve-O, it will not if it is written by lawyers who had to read her opinions or the lower court judges who had to follow them. SDOC will be remembered as the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court and for the occasional flash of brilliance. J.A. Crosan is probably the case that will stand the test of time but not much else.

SPITTING YIPS from Steve: I'd say that NY v. US from 93, and the federalism revolution it unleashed, has had a modicum of an impact. And her fingerprints on the Bush v. Gore per curiam opinion are important, even though my hunch on that I've gone on the record was that was Kennedy.

But this would make a good long bet: I'd wager $50 that ten years after her papers are opened fully to scholars, solidly done biographies done by legal scholars will place her in the top four justices nominated between 1950-2000 in terms of influence on the development of American law as a judge (and that the other three will be Warren, Brennan, and Rehnquist). Her papers---and when Rehnquist's papers are eventually opened, assuming there will be even limited public access--will tell a good tale on how the modern Supreme Court works, and how to build a coalition of 5. I don't think we fully appreciate the significance yet of the Court that passed today with O'Connor's official retirement. A contortionist who is able to consistently get 5 votes over time and push the law in a particular way (or prevent it from being pushed another way) accomplishes a heck of a lot more than the ideological purist who is the lonely dissenter or iconoclastic concurrer. And I also think her Kelo dissent will eventually become law, if not in the federal system certainly by a whole heck of a lot of state court systems disgusted with Stevens' blithe decision.

Any takers?

Flying into Phoenix last week, it struck me that there is a cool comparative biography to be written examining Barry Goldwater, William Rehnquist, and Sandra Day O'Connor (something like The Three Amigos from Arizona)(okay, the title is a joke but the sentiment is real).

Sigh.......
EVEN MORE LMC YIPS I will take your bet, Steve-O. O'Connor may be remembered among the political science types who see the Court as a political institution and marvel at her ability to build a coalition of five votes. She is not known, and will not remembered, for her legal scholarship. Rather, she will be remembered for the confusion created for the lower courts--recall her 8th Amendment standard-"evolving standards of a maturing society"; the "undue burden" of her abortion jurisprudence, or the twenty-five year sunset she would impose on affirmative action--none of which have any basis in the intent of legislature or the Framers. A quarter-century from now, Scalia will be better remembered for his strong scholarship, the clarity of his opinions, and for the emphasis on original intent of the Framer and the legislator, rather than the policy preferences of the judge.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the fighting midget Elvis tatoo

I think I need a Clorox pre-frontal enema to try to rinse this from my brain.

Thanks to Chai-Rista for this one. Personally, I haven't laughed quite as hard as I did while looking at the "Tramp Stamp" section than I have in a long, long time...

Justice Scalito

He's in.

Good thing I bought coat-hanger futures. To hear tell, I'll be able to retire by next week!

YIPS from Steve: Heh. And so begins the Great Fillibuster Purge of Oh-Six. Off with their heads!

MORE from the other Steve: Let the games begin.

Plum Blogging

I'm just finishing up a new-to-me P.G. Wodehouse novel, Jill the Reckless, published in 1921. I can only say that if you've never read Plum's stories before, for Heaven's sake don't start with this one. If you are familiar with his writing, you might be interested in it for academic reasons, but if you're like me you'll have a hard time enjoying it.

The genius of Wodehouse was that when in form he crafted his stories with such exquisite balance, such perfect timing and such snappy dialogue that they appear to be absolutely effortless. (Thinking about it, the same thing can be said of the music of Mozart.) Here, the fact of the matter is that Wodehouse was trying too hard and it shows - patches of dialogue that turn into long speeches, intra-scene emotional swings in characters that seem forced and an absence of the musical-comedy-without-the-music structure and sense of proportion that Wodehouse consciously aimed for. The story isn't really all that off. But compared to the perfection of so much else that Wodehouse wrote, its shortfalls are that much more glaring.

Furthermore, once one becomes aware of Wodehouse's effort, the magic is lost. Plum's plots depend tremendously on coincidence and comic timing. While we float along in the dream of one of his masterworks, we don't mind this - we simply accept it as another one of the delights of the story, laughing at each unexpected encounter and its resultant plot twists and not worrying about it. But when Plum starts pressing, as he does here, it becomes difficult if not impossible to maintain this critical state of suspended disbelief.

It doesn't strike me that the relative flatness of Jill the Reckless is simply the result of Wodehouse's youth and inexperience in novel writing at the time it was published - I thoroughly enjoy other books of the period such as Uneasy Money (1917) and Indiscretions of Archie (1921). Instead, I think it's the product of an uncharacteristic earnestness which permiates this book and does not sit well with Wodehouse's style. The story concerns a young woman, Jill Mariner, who owing to one of Fate's banana peels, falls on hard times and must pull herself back up, both romantically and financially. Most of the floaters seem to occur when Jill or somebody else is speaking of her inner circumstances, of what She Truly Needs in terms of her self respect and her relationships with others, as if Wodehouse was overly anxious that we get it. Interestingly, the only other time I've really been aware of this kind of earnestness in Plum's work is in another heroine-beats-the-odds story of the period, The Adventures of Sally. Why it appears that Wodehouse loses some of his touch when he chooses a heroine as the center of the story instead of a hero, I leave to the trick-cyclists.

One other point of note. Much of the action takes place behind the scenes of a musical comedy being produced in New York. Wodehouse himself was quite heavily involved as a theatrical writer at the time and he takes the opportunity to showcase his insider knowledge of (and cynicism about) the inner workings of Broadway. Furthermore, the main hero of the story, Wally Mason, is a Broadway librettist of some repute. Wodehouse describes him as large and rather homely, but kind, sincere, humorous and energetic. In all my reading of the Old Boy's books, I don't believe I've every come across such an obviously self-referential character.

So there you have Jill the Reckless. In my opinion, a book more interesting than entertaining.

CSI: Frostbite Falls - Update

Yesterday I noted that the eldest Llama-ette and her best friend were planning to investigate the demise of a squirrel in the friend's back yard.

When I picked her up last evening, the Llama-ette reported that the squirrel's body had vanished before she and her partner were able to examine it in detail, but that they had been able to make out a solitary track in a nearby patch of mud. By means of further research, the girls determined that the track was most likely that of a fox.

Based on these leads, police have issued the following suspect sketch:

New Tasty Bits

Ya know, there's nothing quite so pleasant to me about blogging than seeing an unfamiliar site name show up in the sitemeter stats. Sorta like meeting new people - some of them may turn out to be nothing more than a "Hi, howareya". But there's always that possibility of an eventual Rick/Capt. Renault relationship.

With that in mind, I thought I might start doing a new regular feature: Llama-Noo-Too-Mee Blogs. And the inaugural sacrifice candidate? Chess and Lena.

Yip! Yip!

Go For It!

Cindy For Senate has a one-click on-line petition to get Mothern Sheehan to go after Diane Feinstein's senate seat.

Go and vote for her right now!

Yips! to the Sinner.

Well That Explains It

Our pal Chai-Rista links to a coo-el British Isles surname locator thingummy that pinpoints concentrations of one's family name on maps for both 1881 and 1998.

Well, being a Scot by extraction, I was interested to see that the heaviest concentrations of my clan appear to be located in the Western Isles (including the Isle of Islay) and along the Coast. This must be why I love Island Malts so much, including Laphroaig, which continues to stand at the pinnacle of my preferences. (BTW, two word review of the Oban I tried this weekend: Not bad.) Och, thet peaty taste is in me blood. Now move yer gargantuan cranium!

The Interconnectedness of All Things

Here's how it works:

Earlier today, in comments to this post about Patrick O'Brian and Bernard Cornwell, the Random Penseur recommended that I might be interested in checking out the novels of Allan Mallinson, who writes a series of stories about the British Cavalry of the Napoleonic Era.

A little while ago, the Missus called and said that she'd ordered up a number of books for the Llama-ettes from Amazon, that they were in our account shopping cart and could I go ahead and buy them.

Asserting a kind of Daddy Surcharge, I included Mallinson's A Close Run Thing and A Regimental Affair on the list before pointing and clicking.

And thus harmonic convergence is achieved. Oommmmmmmmm.........

Of course, I'll let you know what I think of them. (The books, I mean. You already know what I think of the Llama-ettes.)

Wellington Had His Playing Fields of Eton

Andrew Phelps, the RPG Dad has his playing fields of Hrothmarr the Doom-Walker:

Consider the following: You are awakened to the sound of a screaming child through the sound of a small speaker near your bed. “DADA!” she bellows. “PLAY CHOO CHOO!” Right away, you have a choice. Do you stay in bed, knowing that with each passing moment the frustration will build into a catastrophic meltdown of tears and screams? I didn’t think so! Out to face the world!

Ha! Prof. Phelps, you obviously haven't heard of my Level Six Secret Weapon: The "Helmet of Feigned Deafness". +12 points against all child demands.

Yips! to Dean.

Best Law-geek limmerick. Ever.

From the Volokh Conspiracy:

There once was a man from Nantucket Who bought sperm oil by the bucket, And tried to evade A contract he made But the court did not let him duck it.

Lady Adams’s arrival just might
Not have provoked such a fight
But the parties did wrestle
Over whether the vessel
Must be anchored or only in sight.

And yes, I linked that because I'm a law-geek, but also because of what fun having "sperm oil by the bucket" would do for us in the twisted universe of Google.

Random Commuter Malevolence

The Cell Citation. Designed for the LIRR, but would be just as useful on the Dee Cee Metro.

Yips! to Rachel.

GREATEST PSHOP. OF. ALL. TIME.

Over at Wuzzadem:

That, plus gaycowboypalooza.

WAIT, DON'T ORDER NOW: Check out the Gitmo 'Terro-gator--it actually works! (I used the Ned Grimley loop to drive away a number of students who wanted to come in for office hours).

Heh Khaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!

UPDATED AND BUMPED:

Okay, I started out this morning pleased with the idea of snuggling with Melissa.

What I didn't realize was that it was a trap and that I am now in Build-A-Bear hell.

UPDATE: (Echoing through the surface of the asteroid): Khaaaaaaaan!!!

UPDATE DEUX: (View of Khan's semi-orgasmic reaction):....aaaaaaaan!!!

Gratuitous Llama Netflix Movie Review

An interesting choice of viewing this past weekend: The Draughtsman's Contract, a tale of lust, greed, intrigue and murder set amongst the gentry during the reign of William & Mary. This movie was recommended to me by one of you after I griped about what a dud Restoration turned out to be. Thanks, whoever it was!

Unlike Restoration, TDC is a genuine period piece, the sort of thing one used to see on Masterpiece Theatre all the time before it decided to get "relevant". The story starts when an arrogant young draughtsman agrees to draw twelve views of a country estate in exchange for twelve sexual favors from the wife of the owner of the place. I went into it thinking that this was going to be something along the lines of "Emmanuelle Does Dutch Billy", but it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Instead, it's a very crafty, difficult murder mystery that goes very deep into the motivations of the various characters involved. It is impossible to let yourself get lazy for an instant, as clues and insights are being batted about almost constantly. Furthermore, it never dumbs itself down. (For instance, part of the tension of the plot turns around Anglo-Dutch and Protestant-Catholic animosities in English society during the reign of W & M, but it never stops to explain them.)

Visually, it's a great movie if you like that sort of thing. The sets (on location in Kent) and costumes are terrific. The only thing I found annoying was the music. (No, it wasn't historically misplaced, but rather composed for the movie itself.) It was both dull and repetitive and soon got to be distracting from everything else.

The one thing I did not get about the film was Naked Statue Guy. If somebody else who has seen this film can explain to me who he was and what his significance might have been, I'd appreciate it.

UPDATE: A good explanation of Naked Statue Guy in the comments. Dunno why I've never come across this phenom before. Probably just as well, given my mime allergies.

Anyhoo, while poking for more information on living statues, I came across this site devoted to the films of Peter Greenaway, which has an interesting review of TDC and a better description of it than I have managed to produce:

The only Peter Greenaway film designed to specifically evoke a certain British time period, The Draughtsman's Contract appears on the surface like some twisted Restoration comedy filled with scheming aristocrats and clever turns of phrase. One of the most enthusiastically received and controversial feature debuts of the early '80s, this remained Greenaway's most high profile effort for eight years until The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover firmly secured his position in the art house pantheon. However, Draughtsman actually has much in common with his later work, ranging from the bizarre background details, such as a nude living statue, to the brutal, jarring twist ending.

At a gossipy dinner party, an arrogant young draughtsman, Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), is enlisted by the middle-aged Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to execute twelve drawings of the Herbert estate as a surprise gift for her loutish husband, who is usually away on business. In exchange, Mrs. Herbert will go along with Mr. Neville's sexual demands, once for each drawing. Mrs. Herbert's daughter (Anne-Louise Lambert) becomes more than a little intrigued by the arrangement and enters into a similar bargaining position with Neville, whose fussiness with the layout of each drawing compels him to chase sheep away from the scenery and demand passersby to wear the same clothing each day. However, some inconsistencies in the day to day arrangement of seemingly familiar objects, such as linen and open windows, cause Neville to wonder whether Mr. Herbert is actually away on business... or perhaps is no longer among the living.

As with many Greenaway films, all of the characters are more pieces of a diabolical mind puzzle than living, breathing human beings, bereft even of first names, and the cast gamely acts accordingly. As Neville, Higgins (also in Vampire Circus and Flavia the Heretic under the name Anthony Corlan) has one of his most memorable roles and finds the humor in an essentially repellent character. Without giving too much away, the various layers of the narrative may prove off-putting to viewers who expect to find some redeeming qualities unveiled at the end of the film; there will be no redemption or clever moralizing here. As a document of a historical period, Draughtsman is remarkably convincing, particularly considering its virutally nonexistent budget. The costumes, scenery, and stylish lighting manage to equal Barry Lyndon with a fraction of the resources, while Greenaway's intricate and biting script should keep English majors chortling with delight. Interestingly, his original festival cut of the film ran a full three hours and reportedly contained a number of crucial plot points and explanations which would up on the cutting room floor, including a rationale for the living statue. Unfortunately, this version has not been screened since 1982 and may have been lost forever (if it doesn't exist in one of Greenaway's vaults somewhere).

Emphasis added. So I suppose I'm not alone in not quite understanding how he fit into the plot.

This is just wrong

I've never even seen this show...

You scored as Babylon 5 (Babylon 5). The universe is erupting into war and your government picks the wrong side. How much worse could things get? It doesn�t matter, because no matter what you have your friends and you�ll do the right thing. In the end that will be all that matters. Now if only the Psi Cops would leave you alone. Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 94% Moya (Farscape) 88% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 75% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 75% SG-1 (Stargate) 75% Serenity (Firefly) 75% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 75% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 63% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 50% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 50% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 50% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 44% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

The correct answer was "SG-1" but I think it was insufficient in my trust of the government.

CSI: Frostbite Falls

I just received instructions to pick up the eldest Llama-ette from her friend's house this evening after school. Apparently, a squirrel met a rather grisly end there this weekend and our two sleuths are going to see if they can identify what did it in via footprints and so-forth.

If and when warrants are issued for Boris and Natasha, I'll let you know.

Sooper-Sekret Message To Hamas:

Thhhhhppppppffffttttt!!!!!!!

Well, one of two things in gonna happen in Palestiniana. Either Hamas is going to grow up in a hell of a hurry or the Israelis are going to pound the living crap out of it.

UPDATE: The Crack Young Staff at the Hatemonger's Quarterly gets to root causes:

So who, you may or may not be asking yourself, is to blame for Hamas’ triumph? Why don’t we ask the Paper of Record? The J[anuary] 27 number of the Gray Lady offers a staff editorial that addresses this very question. Entitled “In the Mideast, a Giant Step Back,” the piece excoriates Mahmoud Abbas for his ineptitude and “Israeli hard-liners” for their irksome insistence on the existence of Israel.

Are we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” the only ones who note that The New York Times left some people out? How about those peaceable Palestinians, who seem to adore terrorism even more than Ray Nagin likes dark chocolate?

Ah, but we wouldn’t want to commit a cardinal sin among our left-wing pals. No, not “blaming the victim.” We’re referring to “treating Arabs like human beings.”

Ask Agent Bedhead

Sadie with some sage advice for Jennifer Love Hewitt.

And yes, I think "Ask Agent Bedhead" needs to be a regular feature over there.

Gosh, I HEART science

From the genius logic that gave us the atomic bomb:

That's because it's impossible to test people without their consent, he said. Subjects have to cooperate so fully _ holding the head still, and reading and responding to the questions, for example _ that they have to agree to the scan.

"It really doesn't read your mind if you don't want your mind to be read," he said. "If I were wrongly accused and this were available, I'd want my defense lawyer to help me get this."

So maybe the technology is better termed a "truth confirmer" than lie detector, he said.

..."My hope," George said, "would be that it might make the world operate a little bit more openly and honestly."

Which is what Torquemada was after too.

So, therefore, if you have nothing to hide why would you object to having your brain scanned to see if you're telling the truth, eh?

Where Was Robbo?

Numerous (really!) readers have emailed in this item:

Montgomery County, MD) -- A wayward llama was the focus of a police search in Montgomery County last night. Officers spotted the animal walking near Darnestown Road and Haddonfield Lane in the Darnestown area. A camera crew from WJLA-TV managed to roll some videotape as the speedy Llama darted back and forth across streets and lawns. Drivers in Darnestown are urged to be extra careful today with the Llama remaining at large. So far, no one has come forward to say they're the Llama owner.

I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with this! Why, why....I was sitting at home the whole evening! Yeah, that's the ticket! Sipping Scotch while designing rabbit IED's for my garden and reading up on the influence of Assyrian epic poets on the writings of P.G. Wodehouse. Or something.

BTW, I don't know why police are urging Montgomery County drivers to be extra careful. That would imply that they maintain some level of care to begin with, which we know is not the case.

Simpsons Bleg

I made the mistake of rubbing my eyes at exactly the wrong instant last evening. When Bart was writing lines on the chalk board, I only caught "...wasn't dumped - the feeling was mutual."

Who wasn't dumped?