Sunday Morning Book Thread 01-05-2014: Patterns [OregonMuse]

This Painting Is Full of Homoerotic Imagery. Can't You See It?

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the award-winning AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Everyone is Gay, Especially Famous Dead Guys

OK, so there's been some brouhaha going on this week over Norman Rockwell, American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, a newly published biography of the American artist by Deborah Solomon. She manages to find homosexuality, pedophilia, or some other repressed sexual subtext underneath everything Rockwell ever thought, wrote or drew in his entire life. It's like finding animals in clouds or patterns in Rorschach ink blots that say more about the psychology of the observer than snything else.

For example:

Her take on Freedom of Speech is that the man standing is ‘unattached and sexually available. Unbuttoned and unzipped.’

Yeah, right. Solomon probably just should have titled her book, 'The Queering of Norman Rockwell', and be done with it, but that would have narrowed its appeal down to only a handful of moonbat academics and killed any sales potential. It's so bad that the family of Norman Rockwell has issued a statement denouncing Solomon's book as the work of an ignorant hack:

She has neglected or misused the sources which she cites. Her use of Norman Rockwell's autobiography, My Adventures As An Illustrator, is highly selective. As Professor Patrick Toner of Wake Forest University states in his online review on First Things.com, ‘Solomon has a pronounced tendency to either distort or simply ignore evidence to the contrary’...sex is a major theme of the book and her phantom theories color and distort everything, including Rockwell’s entire character and her interpretations of his art.

It was too much even for Garrison Keillor, whom you might think would be sympathetic to this sort of thing. Apparently, not this time. In a mostly positive NY Times review, he observes:

And This Guy? Totally Gay

[Solomon] does seem awfully eager to find homoeroticism — poor Rockwell cannot go on a fishing trip with other men without his biographer finding sexual overtones...In “Girl at Mirror,” a young girl in a white slip studies her own reflection — “Actually,” says Solomon, “seen from the back, she could be a boy.” And the girl’s doll, tossed on the floor? “A bizarrely sexualized object.” Really? “With her right hand buried in her petticoats, the doll could almost be masturbating.” Well, I suppose that Michelangelo’s “David” could “almost” be masturbating. So have we all sometimes almost.

Note to Solomon: when even the reliably progressive Garrison Keillor can't wrap his head around your thesis, maybe you should get a new one.

Finally, an Amazon reviewer notes that if art is an expression of the artist's repressed sexuality, then Andy Warhol was clearly a closeted heterosexual. After all, look at all of his paintings of Marilyn and Jackie. The man was clearly obsessed with female bodies.

Books I Should Read, But Haven't

Here's a biography that's actually worthwhile: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin. It's one of those books that's just sitting there on my shelf, and I keep saying I need to read it, but somehow I never can get around to it.

The Christian Science Monitor calls it one of the first self-help books:

For many, it is the life story of Franklin – who started as an apprentice to his older brother, a printer, and rose to be one of the most famous statesmen and writers in the world – that is inspirational. Franklin is not shy about praising himself (some readers have noted with amusement the number of times that Franklin praises his own humility) but for others his discussion of the virtues likely to lead to success in life comes across as instructive rather than braggadocious. Many readers over the years have also expressed appreciation for the degree to which Franklin comes face to face with his own errors as he tells his story...However, many are also attracted to the degree to which Franklin seems practically engaged with the business of self-improvement. The book includes a section in which Franklin makes a list of 13 virtues he wants to emulate and draws a box for each for each day, putting a black mark in a box if he did not succeed.

Franklin truly was a remarkable man. There are many great men who were not good men, but I think Franklin was a little bit of both.

Copyright News

The entire Sherlock Holmes canon has been in the public domain in Britain since the end of 2000. However, here in the United States, it's not that simple:

On Monday, December 23, 2013, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled on the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment against the Conan Doyle Estate in a case involving the literary figures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. The Court’s ruling states, in brief, that creators are free to use the characters of Holmes and Watson without licensing them from the Conan Doyle Estate. The Court cautioned that new stories about the pair can’t use elements that appear exclusively in the ten post-1922 stories by Conan Doyle (those that remain in copyright). However, elements from the fifty pre-1923 stories are in the public domain.

So if you attempt to make use of Holmes material published after 2013, you could be hit with a lawsuit from the Doyle estate. Except if you're in Great Britain, in which case you can tell them to bugger off.

So, you may not freely describe "Dr. Watson's own athletic background, the juicy fact of his second marriage or the circumstances of Holmes's retirement", as those derive from Arthur Conan Doyles's post-1923 Holmes stories.

You got that?

OK, I guess that makes sense, if you're a lawyer. It's seems a little weird to me, though. I think that either the character is either in the public domain, or he isn't, but what do I know? Fortunately, this all becomes moot in 2022 when all of the Holmes stories will be in the public domain.

Perhaps the Doyle estate should hire the same lawyers that the Walt Disney company uses. They've successfully litigated to keep Mickey Mouse under copyright for, like, ever. In fact, I think it's still an open legal question as to when exactly the Mickey Mouse copyright actually does expire, and nobody wants to take on the Disney corporation in court to find out.

Books By Morons

The Thank You Angel, an illustrated children's book, is by longtime AoSHQ reader Ann Trenton, who e-mailed me earlier this week. It's her first Kindle book, and it's about a little girl who learns about the joy of saying "Thank You" from her grandmother and the Thank You Angel.

___________

So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as I keep saying, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:04 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 1st!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 05, 2014 11:06 AM (QBm1P)

2 Mickey Mouse's copyright will expire, except that every time he comes close, Disney bribes congress to pass another "Copyright Extension Act."

By the by, Milton Friedman co-authored an Amicus brief about the last one of those (or a previous one I forget how many there have been). In it he noted that copyright was good for a relatively short term, then actually bad after that.

We'll well past that short term. And part of the reason you can't find some books is because they're still technically under copyright, but the publisher doesn't feel like releasing them.

Posted by: tsrblke, PhD(c) No Really! at January 05, 2014 11:13 AM (GaqMa)

3 I finished the MHI trilogy last week, and got #4 yesterday. While I've enjoyed them all, I must confess to skimming parts of #3, because I just don't like Earl Harbinger all that well.

I also can't stop making the connection between Earl Harbinger the werewolf leader of MHI, and Kodlak Whitemane the Harbinger (leader) of the Companions in Skyrim, also a werewolf until the Dragonborn "cleanses" him.

Posted by: Empire1 at January 05, 2014 11:17 AM (U9hUF)

4 Release the books, they want to be free!

Posted by: Ribald Conservative riding Orca at January 05, 2014 11:18 AM (dCwZe)

5 Nice book thread OM....

and it ties in with my ranty rage at PIV Girl....

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:20 AM (TE35l)

6
Franklin was a HOMO!

Posted by: Deborah Solomon at January 05, 2014 11:21 AM (MaP11)

7 Finally, an Amazon reviewer notes that if art is an expression of the artist's repressed sexuality, then Andy Warhol was clearly a closeted heterosexual. After all, look at all of his paintings of Marilyn and Jackie. The man was clearly obsessed with female bodies.

Brilliant! Almost Alinsky-esque.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 11:21 AM (sdi6R)

8 Everyone will be gay for 15 minutes, retroactively.

Posted by: Kreplach at January 05, 2014 11:22 AM (Xkr8I)

9 >>>This Painting Is Full of Homoerotic Imagery. Can't You See It?

It is an upskirt... But she has her knees too close together. Just not enough sunshine on the subject.

Posted by: Anon Y. Mous at January 05, 2014 11:23 AM (IN7k+)

10 2 tsrblke, PhD(c) No Really! at January 05, 2014 11:13 AM (GaqMa)

Correct and a good point. Uncle Milty was what made me a non-pirate but a believer in "abandonedware." The copyright owner should at a minimum be required to execute and show use of the copyright to a certain density in some set period to exert CR IMHO.

No offense to the Doyle Estate but Holmes is not theirs anymore than whichever lumberjack first spinned a yarn about Paul Bunyan owns the Brawny Lumberjack image for maluse.

It is surreal that England is more free market than we are on this and is in fact on the verge of perhaps following Canada in welfare state reform.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:24 AM (TE35l)

11 The PIV flack and the Rockwell book hack should get an apartment together and co-intellectualize their mutual pathologies.

Posted by: --- at January 05, 2014 11:25 AM (MMC8r)

12 There is nothing decent and normal that liberals won't try to corrupt.

Posted by: PabloD at January 05, 2014 11:26 AM (aZzjF)

13 Don't you think of anything but sex?

Posted by: Todd Rundgren at January 05, 2014 11:26 AM (0HooB)

14 Never go into a gay bar and order a "Rockwell".

Um, a friend told me that.

Posted by: eman at January 05, 2014 11:26 AM (EWsrI)

15 I think the only subtext to the picture of the young girl above is that she is moving from childhood to adolescent adult, and she has symbolically discarded her doll.

There are probably sexual subtexts to a lot of art. If you walk through the Louvre in Paris, there is a tremendous amount of sexual subtexts to a lot of the older paintings. It's like our ancestors actually knew something about sex.

But this Solomon person is typical of revisionists, in that she is trying to redefine the past to justify the present and future and her underlying arguments. And it is impossible to her and to modern relativists and revisionists to imagine a time when people were not always obsessed with their sexual parts and thoughts.

Revisionism is the great cause of the Left in evaluating history, as there always has to be a steady march in the direction that is "on the right side" of history, or actually on the Left Side of history. It's why Lincoln has to be re-invented from time to time as something he was not.

There is a somewhat wry historical book I read in college called "Getting Right with Lincoln", which describes this phenomenon, and humorously pointed out how Democrats began to claim Lincoln as their own during FDR's "New Deal" era, and also Truman afterward.

Posted by: Ribald Conservative riding Orca at January 05, 2014 11:27 AM (dCwZe)

16 Just cracked open the mighty VDH's "The Savior Generals", and jumping ahead to the section on Petraeus.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 05, 2014 11:27 AM (QBm1P)

17 12 PabloD at January 05, 2014 11:26 AM (aZzjF)

Tell me about it...

//Jesus watching Defoe in Last Temptation of Christ

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:27 AM (TE35l)

18 Sven, just emigrate already.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 05, 2014 11:28 AM (QBm1P)

19 I just finished Innocence by Dean Koontz. The protagonist lives a very lonely existence, because no one can stand to look at him. Doesn't sound like the story line for an interesting book, but it was quite good. Some interesting views on prejudice, but doesn't necessarily head the direction you expect. Quite good and enjoyable - in typical Koontz fashion, it is very easy to read.

Posted by: Billinois at January 05, 2014 11:29 AM (BttDX)

20 Everybody has AIDS!

Posted by: Gary Johnston at January 05, 2014 11:30 AM (Ua6T/)

21 "Girl at Mirror" is my favorite Rockwell. I used to sit or dance around in my slip after church and wonder if I'd ever grow up and be pretty, too...

Rather amused to see that author put such a naughty spin on it, as it's innocence and uncertainty personified. What a maroon.

Posted by: elaine at January 05, 2014 11:31 AM (GNZ0/)

22 Um, the context I see is that the doll represents America under the Obama regime, bent over, waiting for another.

Posted by: Hugh Jass at January 05, 2014 11:31 AM (6S4Ai)

23 All Hail - I found Savior Generals to be fascinating. Petraeus was actually the least interesting of the lot.

Posted by: Billinois at January 05, 2014 11:32 AM (BttDX)

24 The way you can tell when you've really made it, that you are truly a cultural force to reckoned with, is when these silly people claim that you are gay.

Posted by: Mindy at January 05, 2014 11:33 AM (Bs5ky)

25 The PIV flack and the Rockwell book hack should get an apartment together and co-intellectualize their mutual pathologies.

Posted by: --- at January 05, 2014 11:25 AM (MMC8r)

Once upon a time people kept their personal insanities out of the public eye, and I think it is about time for a revival of that behavior.

Posted by: Mikey NTH -Have a Querulous New Year from the Outrage Outlet at January 05, 2014 11:33 AM (gmoEG)

26 That Norman Rockwell stuff is total crap. It reminds me of a "controversy" over a new soccer stadium in Dubai: It's a curvy, organic design, and the muzzies are all upset because if you squint real hard, it looks like the primary female sex organ. Sigmund Freud was correct about one thing: Sometimes a cigar IS just a cigar.
Dirty minds never rest...

Posted by: Brave Sir Robin at January 05, 2014 11:33 AM (XLoA6)

27 I bet she absolutely flipped her gourd at "No Swimming."

Posted by: --- at January 05, 2014 11:34 AM (MMC8r)

28 I just started to go through some of my old college text books.

Calculus of a single variable reads pretty much the same today as it did 25 years ago, and no gay to be found in any chapter.

Although Descartes was French and you know how libertine the French can be.....

Posted by: Kreplach at January 05, 2014 11:35 AM (Xkr8I)

29 Would it be a stretch to surmise that this Solomon gal hates the Dong?
Also, I would be in favor of returning to 30 years for copyrights.

Posted by: Darth Randall at January 05, 2014 11:35 AM (Zswg6)

30 Started on "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" by Thomas Sowell. Good read so far. I reread the Violinist's Thumb recently too; love it. Although the picture of the baby with a tail is creepy.

Regarding copyright, was it here that someone linked to the free sci fi story online about copyright?

(I wrote a paragraph describing it and then found it online anyway after a flash of inspiration about the title... here it is: http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm and will link it in my name too, hope it works).

Posted by: GalaKitty at January 05, 2014 11:36 AM (KT2XH)

31 So if I understand correctly 100% of men are either homosexual or repressed homosexuals. Alrighty then.

Posted by: Northernlurker at January 05, 2014 11:36 AM (BLAfs)

32 25 Mikey NTH -Have a Querulous New Year from the Outrage Outlet at January 05, 2014 11:33 AM (gmoEG)

Ve concur, vunce upon a time ve vould haf keppt Sven in der attic...

//Olaf Nilsson Vater uf Sven

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:36 AM (TE35l)

33 Morning all. Been trying to get into a book, any book, but can't seem to find one that captures my attention. Kind of a dry spell for me, I usually don't have a problem finding something to read.

Posted by: ka at January 05, 2014 11:37 AM (GDUJK)

34 Happy families eating a turkey together at Thanksgiving are ghey

Posted by: TexasJew at January 05, 2014 11:38 AM (U+u4A)

35 Copyright (and patent) law is out of control in the US.

Posted by: --- at January 05, 2014 11:38 AM (MMC8r)

36 31 Northernlurker at January 05, 2014 11:36 AM (BLAfs)

That would be correct, I think the allegation in the piece on Rockwell when coupled with PIV Avenger means that at some point the XY conspiracy destroyed the artificial womb and insemination machines that have existed on Earth for all time.

With all these historical figures that were gay I am amazed the human race managed to sustain itself prior to the rise of these "clear thinkers."

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:38 AM (TE35l)

37 So if I understand correctly 100% of men are either homosexual or repressed homosexuals.

According to PIV girl, all women are lesbians, too.

Funny... I really like the dong, but I'm sure it's just because psychology brainwashed me. Or something. ;-)

Posted by: elaine at January 05, 2014 11:39 AM (GNZ0/)

38 I think the only subtext to the picture of the young girl above is that she is moving from childhood to adolescent adult, and she has symbolically discarded her doll.

That's what you see. That's what I see. That's what everybody sees who has ever looked at this painting except, apparently, Deborah Solomon.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:39 AM (fd0Pp)

39 Kids saying the Pledge of Allegiance are ghey.

Posted by: BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at January 05, 2014 11:39 AM (0HooB)

40 Warhol just wanted to be Marilyn - actually he thought he was. The part we r not supposed to know is the self-hatred and self-denial inherent in ... some people who want desperately to be what they are not

Posted by: BlackOrchid at January 05, 2014 11:39 AM (EZNxq)

41 Yesterday I was reading a WUWT post about the icebound ships in the Antarctic, and one commenter mentioned this book: "The Last Voyage of the Karluk" by William Laird McKinlay.

http://tinyurl.com/n2ej2ox

I haven't read it, but here are a couple of blurbs from Amazon:

An astonishing narrative of disaster and perseverance, The Last Voyage of the Karluk will thrill readers of adventure classics like Into Thin Air and The Climb. In 1913, explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson hired William McKinlay to join the crew of the Karluk, the leading ship of his new Arctic expedition. Stefansson's mission was to chart the waters north of Alaska; yet the Karluk's crew was untrained, the ship was ill-suited to the icy conditions, and almost at once the Karluk was crushed-at which point Stefansson abandoned his crew to continue his journey on another ship. This is the only firsthand account of what followed: a nightmare struggle in which half the crew perished, one was mysteriously shot, and the rest were near death by the time of their rescue twelve months later.

...

McKinlay's first-hand account of the Karluk debacle is Shackleton's Endurance story in reverse: what happens when an untrained, ill-matched crew meets disaster and barely rises to the challenge. Leaderless and despondent, the stranded resorted to treachery, lying, cheating, and pure folly. Karluk is a story both unbelievable and familiar, and it is convincingly told: how ambition and poor planning lead to spectacular disasters from which only sheer will or luck can offer salvation.

So I guess you could say that it was the polar opposite of the Shackleton story.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 11:40 AM (sdi6R)

42 34 TexasJew at January 05, 2014 11:38 AM (U+u4A)

If you think my therapy bills are high you should look at Tom Turkey's...

//The Chicken

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:40 AM (TE35l)

43 I haven't listened to Keillor since the 80's. Since his review of the Queering of Norman Rockwell is "mainly positive," I take it Lake Woebegon is now a place where all the men are ghey, all the women are ghey and all the children are ghey above average and they all shop at Ralph's Pretty Good Homo Grocery?

Well, they are all Scandis, after all. What can you expect from Vikings fans.

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 11:40 AM (R3gO3)

44 Someone send Deborah Solomon a strap-on

Posted by: TexasJew at January 05, 2014 11:40 AM (U+u4A)

45 It's simple, really: for decades the cultural elite despised and denigrated Normal Rockwell for, y'know, painting pictures of people rather than abstract blobs or doing "installations."

But his work is getting valuable. How can the art world profit from someone they spent so much time bad-mouthing?

Answer: he's gay! And therefore a victim! And therefore can be rehabilitated.

It's not even satire any more. We really are living in the fucking Soviet Union.

Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2014 11:41 AM (BqW72)

46 ...and who is this "PIV" person that everyone is mentioning?

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:41 AM (fd0Pp)

47 41 rickl at January 05, 2014 11:40 AM (sdi6R)

Reading that book, "Into the Wild" and Shackleford's expeditionary notes would be illustrative.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:41 AM (TE35l)

48

I've got a print of the hilarious "Gossip" Rockwell painting. Always give me chuckle. A gay chuckle, evidently.

The latest Sherlock episode is all about gay, too. (and disappointing imho)

Everywhere, everyone is gay. Even if they adamantly scream they aren't (the doc). Because, even if you're not, it's okay that you won't admit it, we understand that you really are...

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at January 05, 2014 11:42 AM (IXrOn)

49 Am reading books about the non-douchetastic wizard named Harry ... Harry Dresden

Recommend highly! Fun

Posted by: BlackOrchid at January 05, 2014 11:42 AM (EZNxq)

50 Although Descartes was French and you know how libertine the French can be..... Posted by: Kreplach at January 05, 2014 11:35 AM (Xkr8I)

Rene Decartes was a drunken fart,

"I drink therefore I am!"

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 11:42 AM (R3gO3)

51 ...and it's a great looking building too, va-jay-jays aside.

Posted by: Brave Sir Robin at January 05, 2014 11:42 AM (XLoA6)

52 OregonMuse, thanks for your book threads every week. I love to hear what literary treasures you've found.

Posted by: Mindy at January 05, 2014 11:43 AM (Bs5ky)

53 Please no one tell OregonMuse what PIV woman is

Posted by: BlackOrchid at January 05, 2014 11:44 AM (EZNxq)

54 I wish I didn't know!

Posted by: BlackOrchid at January 05, 2014 11:44 AM (EZNxq)

55 PIV=Penis in vagina

Some radical feminist twit got linked this week because PIV is always rape, okay?

See twitchy for links to her blog.

Posted by: elaine at January 05, 2014 11:44 AM (GNZ0/)

56 Leaderless and despondent, the stranded resorted to treachery, lying, cheating, and ~~pure folly~~ gay sex. Lots of gay sex.

Fixed to conform to the standards of modern scholarship.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:44 AM (fd0Pp)

57 The Whisperers, about life in the Soviet Union.

Posted by: Dan at January 05, 2014 11:44 AM (R8QvG)

58 Mirror Girl has giant Hobbit feet.

Rockwell was a halfling-chaser.

Posted by: Taro Tsujimoto at January 05, 2014 11:45 AM (celt+)

59 Ack! Sorry, BlackOrchid.

OregonMuse... don't look! You'll lose at least 40 IQ points reading her blog.

Posted by: elaine at January 05, 2014 11:46 AM (GNZ0/)

60 46 OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:41 AM (fd0Pp)

I don't have the link handy, but there is some psychopath woman who has taken the "all sex is rape" mania in a new and exciting direction.

Her allegation is that in addition to innately being rape because of the inferior bargaining position of the female of the species as Hyper-Feminists claim that all humans are in fact homosexual and there is a conspiracy of Heterodynamic Patriarchy in subverting our natural homosexuality as a species.

More distressing than her idiocy, which can safely be dismissed as the rantings of an unquiet mind is the fact that she has vocal backers in the comments section of said piece.

The victims studies hivemind assholes are probably going to destroy this nation.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:46 AM (TE35l)

61 It's 'deconstructionism.' It's 'critical' theory.

It's digging to further your agenda, and to diminish the actual work, and the societal values associated with it.

It's rife throughout academia. It's the work of practically every teacher Obama's been tied to. Skip Gates, Derrick Bell and their 'critical' race theory. 'Critical' gender studies. The 'Patriarchal Milk Theory' Idiot. Now 'critical' art criticism. The only thing that elevates it is that academia pretends that open exchange of ideas means you can't call horseshit horseshit.

Posted by: --- at January 05, 2014 11:46 AM (MMC8r)

62 Read "A Prayer for the Devil" by Dale Allan based on a recommendation here. Very good read and a killer ending.

Still reading Washington's Secret Six and find it interesting and fairly well written. Scary times those with the British monitoring the comings and goings and writings of the populace. Hmm wonder why that seems so familiar?

Posted by: Hrothgar at January 05, 2014 11:47 AM (o3MSL)

63 53 BlackOrchid at January 05, 2014 11:44 AM (EZNxq)

Oops too late, heh looks like the commentariat got ahead of the Cobs on some inside baseball cant o'er the yule I guess.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:47 AM (TE35l)

64 Gay is a social construct. If the appropriate gay philosophers ever recognize this, all 41 dimensions of the Universe will collapse immediately into a cosmic 1950s Dairy Queen...

Posted by: M. Murcek at January 05, 2014 11:47 AM (GJUgF)

65 46 ...and who is this "PIV" person that everyone is mentioning?

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:41 AM (fd0Pp)

She is batshitcrazy. Google witchwind blog. I warn you....you'll be sorry you did.

Posted by: The Barrel at January 05, 2014 11:48 AM (bCEmE)

66 Some radical feminist twit got linked this week because PIV is always rape, okay?

OK, thanks. Of course, this is nothing new. Look up Susan Brownmiller's book 'Against Our Will' where she develops the 'all sex is rape' thesis. I believe it was published sometime in the 70s or early 80s.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:48 AM (fd0Pp)

67

The Tao of Gay

Posted by: religion is gay at January 05, 2014 11:48 AM (IXrOn)

68 Hi Rons, I hope all my Book Nerd friends are swimming in awesome sauce.

Anyway. Golden Angel has crested 50K words. Getting easier to write. I'd like to thank my doctor for the adderal scrip.

Read three books this week. The first was a chick book with supernatural overtones far outside my literary box called Night Machines by Kia Heavy. I really enjoyed it. Great writing, awesome. 5 Stars.

The second was a book written by a friend from Goodreads, It's called Regular Guy Syndrome. Well written, good character development, actually saw a little of myself in the guy as I am sure most men would. First quarter of the book is awesome then it devolves into a male porn fantasy. If you like theater of the mind porn and a neat little story about a thirty something finding his mental, physical, spiritual and political self. This is for you. I in the end did not like this book, but I know there are people who will love it.

The third book was a Flynn and Clancyesque book called State of Honour. This is a book that helps you to understand why Flynn and Clancy were worth the millions they made. It's not a bad book but you see how difficult the Genre is to write. The story marches down the proper road, kidnapped sec state, guilt ridden leader of her detail, lots of special forces shoot em up action with some deception and a few twists. I give it 3 1/2 stars. I recommend this book because once this author gets the bugs out, he's gonna write some good stuff.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 11:48 AM (XIxXP)

69 Robert Scott's tragic last expedition to the North Pole was a disastrous affair
Amundsen and his amazingly well trained and planned Norwegian expedition kicked his ass

Read " The Last Place on Earth". from the 80's

It's the best of all the Polar Expedition books

Posted by: TexasJew at January 05, 2014 11:48 AM (U+u4A)

70 Book rec: The Black Room by Luke Smitherd.

It's a series of four short novels.

Very well done.

Posted by: eman at January 05, 2014 11:48 AM (EWsrI)

71 Off sock...

Posted by: Tami at January 05, 2014 11:49 AM (bCEmE)

72 Here you go, OregonMuse:

http://tinyurl.com/m8lrwpd

I'm a giver. Don't say you weren't warned.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 11:49 AM (sdi6R)

73 72 rickl at January 05, 2014 11:49 AM (sdi6R)

Yeah...wash your hands and eyes before going.

I am DESPERATELY having to fight the temptation to go engage her.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:51 AM (TE35l)

74 It's 'deconstructionism.' It's 'critical' theory.

Spot on. Also notice how that piece is propped up for public consumption and who is doing the propping.

Why is this happening? If the answer isn't a calculated, organized program of destroying the country's mores and values, then what is it? Normal people don't think that way. Everyone isn't obsessed with sex.

Posted by: BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at January 05, 2014 11:52 AM (0HooB)

75 Shackleton fucked up
He pushed ahead, his ship, put his men in terrible danger and was unbekievably fortunate that they all didnt perish
British explorers were headstrong romantics and frankly fairly stupid

Amundsen, the great Nansen and the later large American expeditions are the gold standard of well planned exploration.

Posted by: TexasJew at January 05, 2014 11:54 AM (U+u4A)

76 Think about it. His name was NorMan. He was a repressed gay trying to pass for heterosexual, i.e. a NORmal MAN. Get it?

Posted by: Intersex gender queer human at January 05, 2014 11:54 AM (/cUUk)

77 Speaking of homoeroticism, I have been listening to Atlas Shrugged in my car. There have been many passages that have struck me as, well, odd, but the one that makes me laugh the best is when Hank Rearden sends Dagny a note from Galt's Gulch: "I have met him. I don't blame you." What in hell is that supposed to mean? Not to mention the serious bromances, and how the really super-duper-super men have apparently sworn that if they can't have Dagny, they won't have anyone else. I would swear that I heard Francisco take an oath of celibacy at one point, since Dagny is off-limits.

Posted by: Tonestaple at January 05, 2014 11:54 AM (B7YN4)

78 74 BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at January 05, 2014 11:52 AM (0HooB)

well my parents both are ramped up in their carnal motors or rather were in the case of mom....

the thing is we used to grasp you did not want your public persona to be the pursuit of "parts" or something....

Somehwhere along the way we jettisoned the intimacy of the activity I think as a culture and are on the cusp of making "the American view" of sex not homosexuality on a grand scale but "all sex is masturbation" to whatever degree.

Anyway this movement is beyond my comprehension.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:55 AM (TE35l)

79 73 72 rickl at January 05, 2014 11:49 AM (sdi6R)

Yeah...wash your hands and eyes before going.

I am DESPERATELY having to fight the temptation to go engage her.
Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:51 AM (TE35l)

Well then, Iguess I raped my wife of 20 years just this morning. I guess those funny noises she was making followed by the blank eyed distant stare were claery meant to exoress pain and agony, "Sorry Honey, just didn't know."

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 11:55 AM (XIxXP)

80 To the moron looking for a book to get into:
The Cormac McCarthy border trilogy is riveting, and will take you through the winter.
Also, "The Pugilist at Rest" by Thom Jones is pure awesome. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. It's a collection of short stories by a guy whose resume reads: "Thom Jones has been a Marine, a boxer w/over 150 fights, a copywriter, and a janitor."
Good shit.

Posted by: Brave Sir Robin at January 05, 2014 11:55 AM (XLoA6)

81 "The Pugilist at Rest"

That one hit my curious bone. I will load that onto the Kindle.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 11:57 AM (XIxXP)

82
Wait....hold on a sec....TIMEOUT!

Posted by: Andy Reid at January 05, 2014 11:57 AM (MaP11)

83 "Just cracked open the mighty VDH's "The Savior Generals", and jumping ahead to the section on Petraeus.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 05, 2014 11:27 AM (QBm1P)"
David P. Goldman likens Petraeus to to Gen Wallenstein of The Thirty Years War.

Posted by: Grampa Jimbo at January 05, 2014 11:58 AM (V70Uh)

84 Had some good motion in the reading realm this week.

I finished American Lion by Meachum (http://tinyurl.com/pw9xrg7). I still think that man was pretty crazy, but I respect him a fair deal now. His Indian policy (most particularly removal) was an abomination and a true black mark on America's past, but his path to a solution in the Nullification Crisis was very even handed diplomatic.

I re-read Ender's Game (http://tinyurl.com/n7szcl7), and it was as good as ever. Absolutely fantastic coming of age story in a sci-fi environment. I ended up loving the movie too when it came to theaters a few months ago.

I also started World War Z (http://tinyurl.com/m8gxzh3). Very interesting and rather fun. I like how it's essentially a short story collection. Each is related to the overall story of the "Great Panic", and there's some interlocking mechanisms between the different stories such as characters, social movements, and geopolitical events. It's fairly obviously written from a leftist angle (the leftist characters get the most eloquent passages while the right wing characters, the few that there are, are either constantly apologizing for mistakes or not particularly intelligent), but that doesn't really dampen on the books entertainment value.

Posted by: David at January 05, 2014 11:58 AM (6Oj/Y)

85 75 TexasJew at January 05, 2014 11:54 AM (U+u4A)

That's certainly not an invalid way of analyzing Shackleton, the reason I chose him and not the Scandi was he made it even if by the skin of his teeth.

In a saner world and definitely the world the AGW cult professes wanting(a greened world without the ability to mount these rescues) Chris McCandless didn't and the Aussie on the SS Chilly Willy would not.

One has to have respect for the world you face, not pretend the world is a disney cartoon.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:58 AM (TE35l)

86 Uh, "thanks", rickl. Sheesh, what a loon. Not you, witchwind. But as brain-damaged as she is, some of the comments on that thread really bring out teh stoopid:

I'm done with the notion that piv should be used for reproduction alone, if practiced at all on a female. There's just no need for it. Our bodies weren't made for that

The female body was not made for reproduction? Really? That whole womb thing with the ovaries and all, not made for reproduction? What are you, high?

This person probably votes, too.

The good news is that this person is not going to reproduce, so she will not propagate teh stoopid. So there's that.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:59 AM (fd0Pp)

87 The problem that Ms. Solomon and her ilk foist upon the rest of us is this: No matter how much they force other people to celebrate their insanities and perversions they will always remain unhappy.

Posted by: Mikey NTH -Have a Querulous New Year from the Outrage Outlet at January 05, 2014 12:00 PM (gmoEG)

88 "Pivot" by L.C. Barlow-- kindle and cheap-- one of the creepiest horror novels I've read in awhile-- this is her first book in a series and if the series is anything like what I saw in the first book, then i'll be back!-- good stuff...

Posted by: tomc at January 05, 2014 12:01 PM (avEuh)

89 The good news is that this person is not going to reproduce, so she will not propagate teh stoopid. So there's that.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 11:59 AM (fd0Pp)

Did you see all the comments agreeing with her?

Posted by: Tami at January 05, 2014 12:01 PM (bCEmE)

90 Still reading the book "S" by JJ Abrams. It's a really unique book with the story itself about of a man with amnesia, trying to figure out his identity and past in a shady world. The fictional author of this story is unknown and full of mysteries that scholars have been attempting to figure out, including two students at a fictional university. They have never met but leave the book in the stacks for each other and write tons of notes about the book, the mysterious author, themselves, etc, so that it's a story within a story. The book is also filled with their postcards, documents, and letters that they leave each other. I'm a third way through but it's a cool, unique thing and I'm enjoying the experience of it all.

Posted by: Captain's daughter at January 05, 2014 12:01 PM (xBYS9)

91 Everyone in the world is gay h8trs!!!1!!!!

They only have sex with the opposite sex occasionally due to boredom and to remind themselves of how icky it is.

Oh and JESUS? Totally gay.

Posted by: Bitter Clinger and All That (Unexpurgated Edition) at January 05, 2014 12:02 PM (LSDdO)

92 Did you see all the comments agreeing with her?

Maybe they won't be reproducing either.

Posted by: BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at January 05, 2014 12:03 PM (0HooB)

93 She manages to find homosexuality, pedophilia, or some other repressed sexual subtext underneath everything Rockwell ever thought, wrote or drew in his entire life.

This is your typical liberal piece of shit not having a clue about the innocence that is traditional Americana. Some may argue that our idealized vision never really existed. I say the snapshots of it that have at one time or another appeared in all of our lives, is what rockwell captured, and captured well. Liberals try to destroy what they can't understand.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:03 PM (XIxXP)

94 The good news is that this person is not going to reproduce, so she will not propagate teh stoopid. So there's that.
Posted by: OregonMuse

"Think of it as evolution in action". That's a phrase out of book by Niven and Pournelle.

Posted by: Ribald Conservative riding Orca at January 05, 2014 12:04 PM (dCwZe)

95 While Scott and his men were freezing to death in a tent down in Antarctica ( due to scurvy and poor planning), Nansen was screwing Scott's wife at her house in England.

Norwegians 1
British 0

Posted by: TexasJew at January 05, 2014 12:04 PM (U+u4A)

96 Maybe they won't be reproducing either.

Posted by: BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at January 05, 2014 12:03 PM (0HooB)

Someone produced them, so I think we'll have plenty of stock for a while. Especially considering colleges promote this crap.

Posted by: Tami at January 05, 2014 12:05 PM (bCEmE)

97 While Scott and his men were freezing to death in a tent down in Antarctica ( due to scurvy and poor planning), Nansen was screwing Scott's wife at her house in England.

Norwegians 1
British 0
Posted by: TexasJew at January 05, 2014 12:04 PM (U+u4A)

LMAO

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:05 PM (XIxXP)

98 The Gay Mafia wants every single important person in history to be a closet fag.

Posted by: Uniden at January 05, 2014 12:05 PM (13G+x)

99 I had a college professor in an American Literature class that basically discussed how every novel in the syllabus was about homosexuality. For example, she described dozens of examples of anonymous gay sex that occurred in The Great Gatsby, a book everyone in the class had read back in middle school. Some students tried to argue with this moonbat, but the majority of us just rolled our eyes and chuckled at her revisionist views. Hell, this woman who wrote this Rockwell book might have been that professor.

Posted by: geeves at January 05, 2014 12:05 PM (MFuKa)

100 79 Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 11:55 AM (XIxXP)

Quite my wife laughed her ass off that this weak liberal bint thinks she, a US Army Senior NCO is being cowed or bamboozled into liking the dirty hula.

On topic and of a more worthy nature to ponder is the surprise I had at the quality of Harry Turtledove's Give Me Back My Legions! an offering by Dr. Turtledove that is of the historical fiction rather than alternate history genre.

http://tinyurl.com/q5qsvgg

I had had it laying around and decided to consume it as the hotel reading material on my lap around the east. It is not long, and the dialog is a bit repetitive but the POV of the Roman Governor and the main Tribal leader on their way to Teutoburg Forest was well done.

http://tinyurl.com/5r9r48

About the only criticism I can levy is I wish Dr. Turtledove had gone into more detail on the Roman logistical net, and the difference in the understanding of militaria between the Legion, the Auxillas, and the Barbarian Horde.

If anyone uses the review to pursue it, I hope it is to your liking and my analysis was correct and helpful.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:06 PM (TE35l)

101 Funny how they always pick (dead) great Americans as being gay, such as Lincoln and Rockwell (who unironicly depicted decent, regular American folks). Anyone theorize that Mao, Lenin or Jack the Ripper were gay?

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:06 PM (POpqt)

102 Liberals try to destroy what they can't understand.

Liberals try to destroy what is against their interests. And intact, 'heteronormative' families that work and pray and go to church are very much against their interests.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 12:07 PM (fd0Pp)

103 Speaking of children's books, I'm reading through the ebook version of small-goverment and liberty minded children's book I helped Kickstart, "The Secret Under the Staircase by I.M. Lerner, Catherine L. Osornio.

The book was promoted as a way to introduce kids to economics but that hasn't come up in the first third of the book.

Posted by: BornLib at January 05, 2014 12:07 PM (zpNwC)

104 Someone produced them, so I think we'll have plenty of stock for a while. Especially considering colleges promote this crap.

A good, if somewhat depressing, point.

Posted by: BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at January 05, 2014 12:08 PM (0HooB)

105 One of the problems faced by academics is a very basic one: thousands of academics before them have already picked over Shakespeare, Dickens, da Vinci, Beethoven - the entire canon of Western Civilization -and analyzed their work - every word, every line, every note. And most academics are not bright enough to add anything that's truly original and profound.

So the schub sitting there trying to come up with a grad school thesis who hopes to make a name for him/herself as an authority on something has 2 options now - you can declare that all those dead white men are no good anyway and focus on some obscure or not so obscure minority or pop star or fashionable feminst and declare that Toni Morrison or JayZ are far worthier of study than Shakespeare. Or else you can take one of those dead white males and make him "transgressive" Making them queer is a goldmine because once you start seeing teh ghey everywhere, it means that even someone like Dickens, who fathered a zillion kids, can be forced into your theory. Hey, did you know Fagan and the Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist were really lovers? Madame LaFarge was a man in drag! Little Nell was a lesbian!

And best of all, Dickens (and Rockwell, and whatever dead white male you're dragging through the mud) can't defend themselves, so you can say any old crap you want and other "intellectuals" will take you seriously.

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:08 PM (R3gO3)

106 96
Someone produced them, so I think we'll have plenty of stock for a while. Especially considering colleges promote this crap.

Posted by: Tami at January 05, 2014 12:05 PM (bCEmE)

Considering that the only job a degree in "Critical ______ Studies" prepares them for is teaching the same, they'll be "reproducing" in that way.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 12:08 PM (sdi6R)

107 One has to have respect for the world you face, not pretend the world is a disney cartoon.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 11:58 AM (TE35l)

That'll be a $1.50 for mentioning "disney" and "cartoon" in the same sentence in the same century.

Posted by: Huey, Dewey and Louie - Disney Law at January 05, 2014 12:08 PM (LSDdO)

108 I am reading the Encyclical Letter "Charity in Truth" by Benedict XVI. I am only halfway through. So I will hold off judgement. But here is a gem"

"Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a mean for pursuing justice through redistribution."

Posted by: Grampa Jimbo at January 05, 2014 12:09 PM (V70Uh)

109 I also put aside other books to finally start Elizabeth Haynes' latest called "Human Remains". I read "Into the Darkest Corner" by chance when I just grabbed it off the shelf at the library and it was absolutely the very best suspense novel I've read in maybe forever. This new one is shaping up nicely.

I have so many books started that I have lost track and I absolutely have to set the Kindle books aside and plow through some of the stuff from the library, still an awful lot of it on socialism.

Posted by: Tonestaple at January 05, 2014 12:09 PM (B7YN4)

110 Andy Reid's random timeout calls in various threads never cease to give me a chuckle.

Posted by: Taro Tsujimoto at January 05, 2014 12:09 PM (celt+)

111 The book was promoted as a way to introduce kids to economics but that hasn't come up in the first third of the book.
Posted by: BornLib at January 05, 2014 12:07 PM (zpNwC)

I know I may have mentioned this book before, but the Wall by Peter Sis introduces children to the evils of communism through pictures and few words. This man lived behing the iron curtain as a child and understood the need to express it.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:09 PM (XIxXP)

112 Just started "Sharpe's Gold".

Posted by: Mikey NTH -Have a Querulous New Year from the Outrage Outlet at January 05, 2014 12:10 PM (gmoEG)

113 I spent a good deal of the week reading "The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose" by Alice Munro, a collection of interconnected short stories which were all published previously and collected here. First of all, I'm a big fan of short stories which aren't everybody's cup of tea. Second, this was a choice of somebody in my book group; not sure why this one was chosen. These were written in the late 70s and are very much part and parcel of a trend then to examine critically the dark underside of small town existence, as if everybody wanted to one up Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio". Having said that, these are very well written stories which take place in the fictional location of Hanratty, Ontario and West Hanratty where all the poor protagonists live. Munro must write as an insider because she's very sympathetic to her characters even while being somewhat critical.

Also read a bit in "Glittering Images" where Camille Paglia writes about works of art through history up to the current time. With all the dreck passing as "art", Camille is extremely good at writing about the background of historical works in a way easy for the reader to appreciate. Too bad more libs aren't as erudite as she is, despite their inflated opinion of themselves.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:12 PM (N0FA7)

114 107 Huey, Dewey and Louie - Disney Law at January 05, 2014 12:08 PM (LSDdO)

Ah Zombie Walt sent the legbreakers...

thank God you guys don't give a damn about protecting Miley Cyrus' CR anymore...

"here you go"

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:13 PM (TE35l)

115 I used to be an avid book reader...until I found this damn site. You're obviously mocking me with these "book threads".

Posted by: Icedog at January 05, 2014 12:15 PM (uZ6Ul)

116 I'm audiobooking Too Many Women, a Nero Wolfe novel. I've almost exhausted his ouvre. I like the patois of the forties, fifties, sixties. In other news, I just spent 150 bucks on a cat litter box. Finally succumbed to the "automatic" litter box trend. Hope the damned thing works.

Posted by: Lincolntf at January 05, 2014 12:15 PM (ZshNr)

117 Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:12 PM (N0FA7)

Paglia is quite the walking contrdiction, partly truth and partly fiction.

I, like you, appreciate some of her work. Rush spoke of having dinner with her at a large event put together by media types. They sat them together hoping for fireworks but in the end, they became friends and still are.

What you will never see is a Liberal admitting to enjoying a conservatives work. They aint built that way.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:16 PM (XIxXP)

118
For survival stories, I read "66 Days Adrift" years ago. A man and his wife in a leaky raft on the open sea. Pretty harrowing.

Posted by: Guy Mohawk at January 05, 2014 12:17 PM (MaP11)

119 Let me sum up her writings in easy-to-follow format for morons:

"I'm six figures in debt from my worthless degree and I have to justify it somehow."

Posted by: NR Pax at January 05, 2014 12:17 PM (ODsL5)

120 I just finished "The Day The World Discovered The Sun." It's about the international science project to observe and record the transit of Venus in 1761 and 1769, which let us figure out the size of the Solar System. (Before that they knew the relative distances of the planets, but not the actual dimensions.) It involved various Enlightenment-era savants going to the ass-end of Norway, the ass-end of Baja, and Captain Cook going to Tahiti. (The British were smart people back then.)

It's a pretty quick read, and has some jolly good anecdotes in it. The only flaw is that rabid Hornblower/Aubrey fans will probably spot some nagging errors in the author's use of nautical terms. He thinks "gunboat" means the same as "warship" and doesn't get why the head was at the front end of a sailing ship.

Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2014 12:18 PM (BqW72)

121 Noticed the article about the library that has NO books.

Yep. All ebooks.

Is it just me or is this being carried too far? Are we wise in putting everything into ephemeral digital bits that can disappear forever just because the power goes out?

It this way more ancient civilizations don't show on the archeological time line because they LEFT NO EVIDENCE of their existence?

I know I'm borderline curmudgeon and stuff but I really don't like the trend of cars that can only work via computer and books that can only be read on a proprietary piece of gear that uses batteries like a meth head uses ephedrine.

There's other examples of this sort of thing and it bothers me.

Maybe because I understand on a gut level how ephemeral anything electrically driven can be. When the electrons stop moving, everything comes to a halt. No juice no use. You go back instantly to 1890 or so.

It's why the possibility of an EMP should be scaring the kcuf out of people in DC.

Posted by: Bitter Clinger and All That (Unexpurgated Edition) at January 05, 2014 12:18 PM (LSDdO)

122 Almost finished with The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at January 05, 2014 12:18 PM (u82oZ)

123 New hash test.

Posted by: andycanuck at January 05, 2014 12:19 PM (puxT8)

124 J.C. Leyendecker was the Rockwell of the pre-Rockwell age. Here is a sample:
http://tinyurl.com/qcgyazy

He was probably "gay"; Norm, probably not. But you know, if Leyendecker and Rockwell represent the "gay aesthetic," my argument is going to be, OK, "gays," how come you can't do what they did? Because the pitiful little flakes cannot, flail as they may.

The "self-help" reading of Franklin's autobiography was drummed by D.H. Lawrence, obviously a moral giant, to mock him.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/lewiss/lawrence.htm

But if you read the whole little book, Franklin beats him to the punch by two centuries, by making fun of himself first. It was a phase he went through, like sun worship. He's pretty frank (heh) and graphic about his other phases, like being just lucky to avoid VD, and the grey cats in the dark business. The booklet is full of social drollery, such as commentary on Indian rum-n-fire treaty parties and the Quakers sending a secret emissary to buy lottery tickets from Ben's armaments committee.

Also, great and knowingly hypocritical business advice, such as pushing your own wheelbarrow to pick up printer's supplies, and making sure you do it at an hour when everbody on Walnut Street will see you do it. If you can read between the lines enough to get the jokes in Poor Richard, you'll see this as a work of comic genius easily in a class with Twain, O'Rourke and Dave Barry. Not to mention, the advice all works.

Franklin wasn't always old and fat. He and a buddy (gay context warning) toured Europe as professional exhibition divers in their youth, making Ben the first professional athlete to ever serve in Congress, hmm. And he wasn't just a printer: he retired early to do experiments because he franchised a chain of print shops, with indenture contracts to help with the turnover problem. Damned sharp businessman. You can't fit him into any boxes we can imagine.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at January 05, 2014 12:20 PM (xq1UY)

125 Wrap your head around my thesis.

Posted by: Deborah Solomon at January 05, 2014 12:20 PM (9W1fA)

126 It's why the possibility of an EMP should be scaring the kcuf out of people in DC.
Posted by: Bitter Clinger and All That (Unexpurgated Edition) at January 05, 2014 12:18 PM (LSDdO)

I understand, I think the way you do about some things. But those guys with the horses and buggys hated those noisy dangerous horseless carraiges. I keep reminding myself that so I can move forward without the nagging fears or sense of loss.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:20 PM (XIxXP)

127 I took an English Lit. class in junior college where the instructor did the same thing: She found sexual imagery in everything ever written. I dropped the class pronto.

Posted by: Socratease at January 05, 2014 12:21 PM (1jViy)

128 Another thing, after reading that 'witchwind' piece and the comments agreeing with it, I thought, 'what a bunch of narrow, crabbed, joyless, life-hating miserable sourpusses.'

Wait a minute, this is the progressive caricature of Christians, but it lives in their backyard, not ours.

Projection...

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 12:22 PM (fd0Pp)

129 105 One of the problems faced by academics is a very basic one: thousands of academics before them have already picked over Shakespeare, Dickens, da Vinci, Beethoven - the entire canon of Western Civilization -and analyzed their work - every word, every line, every note. And most academics are not bright enough to add anything that's truly original and profound.

So the schub sitting there trying to come up with a grad school thesis who hopes to make a name for him/herself as an authority on something has 2 options now - you can declare that all those dead white men are no good anyway and focus on some obscure or not so obscure minority or pop star or fashionable feminst and declare that Toni Morrison or JayZ are far worthier of study than Shakespeare. Or else you can take one of those dead white males and make him "transgressive" Making them queer is a goldmine because once you start seeing teh ghey everywhere, it means that even someone like Dickens, who fathered a zillion kids, can be forced into your theory. Hey, did you know Fagan and the Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist were really lovers? Madame LaFarge was a man in drag! Little Nell was a lesbian!

And best of all, Dickens (and Rockwell, and whatever dead white male you're dragging through the mud) can't defend themselves, so you can say any old crap you want and other "intellectuals" will take you seriously.
Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:08 PM (R3gO3)

Tiny Tim's other line: "I was in the pool!"

Posted by: eman at January 05, 2014 12:22 PM (EWsrI)

130 117 Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:16 PM (XIxXP)

It's the end result of their "no enemies to my left" mindset. They are in bed with psychotics like PIV lady and "Rockwell was t3g Ghey" who will attempt to excoriate the wayward lib in a hive of flea bites. The intellectual ego of the nuts is 15 tons alanced on a millimeter of worth any shift in the lunatic left's balance means the thing collapses.

If Paglia admitted liking any of Limbaugh's work hell even simply his pomp and delivery as a master radio voice she would suffer the fleabites.

It is not enough that we are wrong in the application of data, that we may in fact be drawing incorrect conclusions from a sound mind to the liberal POV they have to attempt to dehumanize and discredit us as being unable to think and of no worth as craftsmen lest they have to reflect on who they are in bed with and what they are empowering.

You know what it reminds me of?

Jake Spoon from the literary Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry whereby Spoon a man who is similar but not the same as Gus and Call slowly but unerringly becomes a Brigand by just trying to get to the other side of the Comanchero spread and never reflecting hard enough on his trailmates actions.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:22 PM (TE35l)

131 I'm reading Dorothy Dunnett's "Race of Scorpions", which is the third book in the House of Niccolo series. It is as excellent as the first two. Her "King Hereafter", about MacBeth of Scotland was masterful. I am also eagerly awaiting the release of "The Pagan Lord" by Bernard Cornwell.

It appears I am stuck in the 15th century and cannot bring myself to leave it except to go further back in time.

Posted by: huerfano at January 05, 2014 12:23 PM (bAGA/)

132 Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:16 PM (XIxXP)

Camille was one of Rush's biggest defenders when the JEF started calling him out, correctly identifying it as the state coming down hard on an entertainer. Unfortunately she was still in the "Gaylord Focker just has bad people around him" mode, which wasn't without an element of truth but it missed most of the story.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:24 PM (N0FA7)

133 Did you read that article about Susan Brownmiller? It seems that for all the talk of "sisterhood", most of those feminists wound up old and alone at the end. Of course Witchwind and her ilk never consider what sort of lives they will have.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2014 12:25 PM (Lqy/e)

134 It appears I am stuck in the 15th century and cannot bring myself to leave it except to go further back in time.
Posted by: huerfano at January 05, 2014 12:23 PM (bAGA/)

It's not a bad placed to be. Simplifies troubles by keeping you at the base of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:25 PM (XIxXP)

135 I cant wait for Deborah Soloman's white paper on Andrew Dice Clay's body of work.

Posted by: Count de Monet at January 05, 2014 12:25 PM (BAS5M)

136 "She manages to find homosexuality, pedophilia, or some other repressed
sexual subtext underneath everything Rockwell ever thought, wrote or
drew in his entire life."

The culmination of a trend which originally began in Hollyweird.

Starting in the 1990s, the pink mafia began to shove homosexual content and storylines into film and television story arcs, even when that didn't make much sense. It was "narrative shaping", for political ends, consistency of storyline be damned. Everything had to have its Recommended Daily Allowance of queer.

But that has gone so far now that everything newly produced in the entertainment sphere is completely saturated and dripping with mandatory gayness.

So the next step was to go back and start to retroactively crowbar in homosexuality everywhere in literary, dramatic, film and TV history. Even where that plainly clashes with original creators' intent.

And now that the entire world of fiction has been crudely retconned into pink political correctness, all of nonfiction history must similarly go under the knife.

Just a tiresome and shopworn gambit at this point. Yet showing no signs of yielding to reality. That dead horse will surely get up if it's beaten a bit more.

Again, as always: I don't care who sleeps with whom, as long as all involved are competent consenting adults, as long as all downside risks are accepted and honestly borne, and as long as kids are insulated from both the acts and the consequences thereof.

Posted by: torquewrench at January 05, 2014 12:26 PM (gqT4g)

137 The "this famous writer/painter/artist was actually homosexual!" meme? I remember a lot of "Hemingway was homosexual, but HE never admitted it!" shiite, as far back as the late-'60s.

I notice that this meme works best when the newly-discovered gay celebrity is DEAD-- you know, when those silly, old-fashioned LIBEL LAWSUITS are no longer a concern for the publisher. ("Libel" is a "personal action" that dies with the person.)

re: book recommendation

"The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark, about the historical background that made WW I possible. I mentioned it last week at the end of the thread. The book explores HOW, not WHY. And it starts with the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871-- and NOT with the damn diplomatic crisis of 1914. (Picking up the story with the '14 crisis is like starting Super Bowl coverage at the 2-minute warning.)

There. Did I catch replace all the ampersands?

Posted by: mnw at January 05, 2014 12:26 PM (68RU9)

138 I can't listen to audiobooks. If I'm driving, I have to pay attention to what I'm doing and can't follow the thread of the narrative.

And if I'm not driving, I'm reading or doing something, which means I can't pay attention . . . or if I'm just sitting there listening I fall asleep.

So until I go blind (not an impossibility), audiobooks aren't for me.

Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2014 12:26 PM (BqW72)

139 121 Bitter Clinger and All That (Unexpurgated Edition) at January 05, 2014 12:18 PM (LSDdO)

No you don't instantly go back to the 1890s you pray you climb out of the 1500s back to the 1890s QUICK.

I have reviewed it before in the book threads of your but I will reiterate if you are NOT reading One Second After on the matter of sudden resets you're doing it wrong.

http://tinyurl.com/m7leaxq

Yes the efficacy of the EMP in totally blanking all extant tech is likely overstated by a margin but the breakdown of the logistical grid and our 72 hour nation is not.

Happy reading.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:27 PM (TE35l)

140 Did you see all the comments agreeing with her?

Posted by: Tami at January 05, 2014 12:01 PM

The hubris of this time amazes me. To hear these fools talk this is the first time in the world's history that people had sex, thought about sex, talk about sex, write about sex, and generally know anything about it according to them. They also think other people give a crap what they think or are doing with sex. Their self absorbtion and narcissism is boundless. The world and human thought began with them. And they are as dumb as rocks and twice as ignorant.

Posted by: Lester at January 05, 2014 12:27 PM (2UPXV)

141 >>Maybe because I understand on a gut level how ephemeral anything
electrically driven can be. When the electrons stop moving, everything
comes to a halt. No juice no use. You go back instantly to 1890 or so.

I'm reading "Cyberattack" right now and this is exactly what happens - China starts systematically targeting various electronic systems, starting with things like the USPS and trains, so people just assume "glitches" until it's too late.

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:27 PM (POpqt)

142 Not really reading-related but my wife has a few writing bits coming out this month. Any big fans of The Encyclopedia of Religious Pilgrimages? I think that's one of them. Probably just half a column or maybe page. Still, I have to admit I'm impressed when reference book publishers call my wife for definitions/explanations. When the Encyclopedia is asking YOU questions, that's winning.

Posted by: Lincolntf at January 05, 2014 12:27 PM (ZshNr)

143 "If Paglia admitted liking any of Limbaugh's work hell even simply his
pomp and delivery as a master radio voice she would suffer the
fleabites."

----------------------

She does, and she has. Luckily, she doesn't care.

Posted by: Taro Tsujimoto at January 05, 2014 12:28 PM (celt+)

144 121
Maybe because I understand on a gut level how ephemeral anything electrically driven can be. When the electrons stop moving, everything comes to a halt. No juice no use. You go back instantly to 1890 or so.

Posted by: Bitter Clinger and All That (Unexpurgated Edition) at January 05, 2014 12:18 PM (LSDdO)

Stalin had to employ photo retouchers to remove the images of Party members who had fallen out of favor. In 1984, Winston Smith had to retrieve physical copies of newspapers from the archives, cut out offending articles, and consign them to the "memory hole".

When all information is in the form of electronic bits, just imagine how much easier it will be to revise and "correct" history.

That worries me a lot more than an EMP.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (sdi6R)

145 132 Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:24 PM (N0FA7)

Ms Paglia is as has been noted an odd(and beautiful in her day) duck...

Chris Matthews is a Limbaugh fan, he admitted it until after 9/11.

Think he'd hype it now?

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (TE35l)

146

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (sdi6R)

147 If Paglia admitted liking any of Limbaugh's work
hell even simply his pomp and delivery as a master radio voice she would
suffer the fleabites.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:22 PM (TE35l)

She openly admits finding him entertaining. She doesn't care what the libs say about her.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (N0FA7)

148 Dunno how I avoided The Barrel, but I did.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (sdi6R)

149 The first cited work is why Freudian interpretation of art literature should be treated with extreme skepticism, even when the interpreter isn't an obsessed harpy. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

I remain amazed that the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is not required reading in American schools. Old Ben lived the American Dream; rising from humble origins, he used education and hard work to become successful, gain a good public reputation, and ascend to the corridors of influence, only to have the doors to smoke-filled rooms slammed in his face by those who didn't want ignorant rubes from the sticks running the country. His revenge was then to help found a nation where people like himself would be commonplace.

Posted by: exdem13 at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (lJaja)

150 Paglia is a mix of sense and nonsense. The annoying thing is that she sees the problems with the Left very clearly and knows how f'ed up they are, but she remains on the Left because she's stuck on being a card-carrying member of the radical '60's generation (whenever Paglia starts a sentence with "My generation of the '60's.." I always roll my eyes, because it is inevitably followed by self-flattering bs about how they broke on through to the other side, yeah). She can't seem to see it's her fellow '60's radicals who ruined higher education and politics in this country. (She says the ones who went into academia weren't really radicals.)

Because she has that disconnect, she's stupid about politics. She loved the Clintons when they first appeared on the scene - and then realized Hill and Bill are power-mad scum and became disillusioned. She did the same thing with Obama. She fell for all his bs and then realized he's a phoney. She hates Ocare - but voted for some obscure socialist in 2012.

She has more respect for conservatives than most academics do - but that doesn't translate in admitting that ordinary people saw through the Clintons and Obama long before she did.

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:30 PM (R3gO3)

151 143 Taro Tsujimoto at January 05, 2014 12:28 PM (celt+)

Correct which is why I used the analogy admittedly inelegantly.

The reality is these "good liberals" are not really vulnerable to rebuke by their lunatic fringe IMHO.

I wonder if they are silent as we are calumnied because they enjoy the power of a whipped up leftist mob or they have fooled themselves into thinking their fringe is really that powerful?

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:31 PM (TE35l)

152 >>Stalin had to employ photo retouchers to remove the images of Party members who had fallen out of favor...

Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" covers this well. Read it about 25 years ago and it may be time for me to revisit it. Kundera sure saw the evils of communism.

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:31 PM (POpqt)

153 Hi book thread lovers. The Sherlock Holmes birthday party preparations are proceeding apace. Tomorrow is his presumed natal day (1/6), but that's a work day, so we celebrate today. Thank you Tami and FenelonS for your suggestions last week.

I was reading over the canon for the nth time. There's a lot of food and drink (and smokes) in there. Holmes does not discuss cases over meals, and there are no recipes, but there are many suggestive passages in re food and music. E.g., in Sign of Four, Athelney Jones is offered eels and whisky-and-soda.

So today's menu is inspired by Holmes, Victorian cuisine and my own limitations: roast beef, roasted potatoes, onion pie, marinated cucumbers, green pea salad, oranges with fennel and pomegranate. Dessert is almond junket (in honor of the British Empire, but Chinese because I dislike Indian dessert) and bread pudding. Before dinner, mulled wine. After dinner we'll have the toast to the woman with tokay.

If I can get Mr SinMi on board as "range officer" out our back door, we'll have a few 'V R's shot onto paper targets, or pictures of the Mahdi, for decor.

I wish Holmes lovers among you would come. Next year?

From just outside the People's Republikkk of Ann Arbor.

Posted by: sinmi at January 05, 2014 12:32 PM (+UD5P)

154 I have recommended this book before, But if you want to understand literary crazy and those of us that try to write. Read Writers between the covers, the sex lives and relationships of famous writers and poets.

You have to have lived a big or at least unusual life to write with any authority or credibility. These asshole academics never really leave the campus, physically or mentally. That's why they have to make things up, be edgy and controversial. They have nothing of value to offer.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:32 PM (XIxXP)

155 That Norman Rockwell guy was perverted.

Posted by: Andres Serrano at January 05, 2014 12:33 PM (XGNb9)

156 That Solomon thing? Sad and pathetic.

Two observations:

1. Back in the dark ages- (1977 or so) I took a literature course in undergrad. The professor was a nondescript woman in her 60's, and she loved her some Hemingway bashing. Every tree, ski pole, banana, pen, pencil, lamppost, broomstick and fire engine was a phallic symbol in this poor woman's worldview. Sad.

2. I work in a Pediatric specialty. No doubt in the twisted world of Ms. Solomon's psychosexual worldview that would qualify me as a pedophile. The reality is much simpler. I empathize and relate to children. Children are much more guileless and honest than adults.

It must really suck to be trapped in a mind of such narrow constraints.

(new old post up at my blog- in nick)

Posted by: Seamus Muldoon at January 05, 2014 12:33 PM (g4TxM)

157 Chris Matthews is a Limbaugh fan, he admitted it until after 9/11.

Think he'd hype it now?

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (TE35l)

Matthews used to be entertaining up until he made the Faustian bargain of supporting Slick against his Monica situation. He's been a complete fucking idiot since then. I suspect he needs a twelve step program.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:33 PM (N0FA7)

158 147 Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:29 PM (N0FA7)

Yeah I acknowledged later I was inelegant in my delivery by typed thought.

Paglia is an odd duck, and the flea bites are the likes of Jharles Chonson.

In honesty Paglia handles it correctly who the hell should give a damn what Jharles says?

Look at how often we on the right continue to consume leftist entertainment and produced items.

We engage in good American civics the left...not so much. I am a voice that says in response we should probably meet the Center-Left of the nation in the middle and start using our cash and commerce as a weapon but I am not thrilled about it. Doing so means a cession of a cornerstone of what brought us into a genuine Republic.

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:34 PM (TE35l)

159 Susan Sontag, like Paglia, was another lib with a stubborn streak of intellectual honesty nonetheless. Sontag had no use whatsoever for Stalinists or their fellow travelers, and man, did she ever eviscerate some of them.

Posted by: mnw at January 05, 2014 12:35 PM (68RU9)

160 OK, so here is the book I've been reading, the historical mystery.

It's called "Dead Mountain", by Donnie Eichar. It's the story of a Russian group of nine hikers, who in 1959, go out on a hike and don't return. They are University students who are in a hiking club, which apparently was all the rage at the time. All well seasoned, experienced. A massive air-land search is set out for them. 10 days after they were supposed to have returned, searchers find their tent. All their belongings are neatly inside, including, incredibly, their boots and most of their jackets! As the days pass, the bodies are found one by one. Most had frozen to death, some of them with broken bones. Later evidence shows that cuts at the back of the tent they were in were made from the inside.

So all anyone could say was that they had fled their tent, and died outside. But why? No known large animals in the area, no signs of people anywhere near (closest village about 50 miles away). Stories circulated for years about weird lights in the sky around that time, evidence of radiation on some of the bodies, and just plain odd demands from some of the local Communist governing bodies.

What makes the book really interesting is that the final hike was well documented. Since these students wanted to move up from a level 2 club to a level 3, they had to document the tough hike they were undertaking. So most of them had cameras, and many had diaries or journals.

Other great thing is the author, who travels to Russia several times, and even re-traces the hikers route during the same time of year. Oh, and he meets with the one hiker who had turned back before the final journey.

So it's a real page turner, jumping between 1959 and 2012. I very much recommend it, plus, like I said, it has lots of pictures.

Posted by: HH at January 05, 2014 12:35 PM (XXwdv)

161 "Think of it as evolution in action". That's a phrase out of book by Niven and Pournelle.
Posted by: Ribald Conservative riding Orca at January 05, 2014 12:04 PM (dCwZe)

Oath of Fealty. I read it a month or two ago but I didn't really get as much out of it as I had anticipated.

Posted by: BornLib at January 05, 2014 12:36 PM (zpNwC)

162 Replace Martin Luther King Day with Benjamin Franklin Day. The effect of kids imitating his conduct would be better.

Posted by: Chromoly Man at January 05, 2014 12:36 PM (dRz+o)

163 Replace Martin Luther King Day with Benjamin Franklin Day. The effect of kids imitating his conduct would be better.
Posted by: Chromoly Man at January 05, 2014 12:36 PM (dRz+o)

Typed a book there.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:37 PM (XIxXP)

164
I put Paglia in the "brilliant mind lacking common sense" category. Excellent insights and then the opposite conclusions to those insights.

Posted by: Guy Mohawk at January 05, 2014 12:37 PM (MaP11)

165 150 Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:30 PM (R3gO3)

Nice summation. She is definitely cyclical on her thought on the Democrats. She refuses to face her service to evil intentioned authored ideology.

I look at her and Horowitz and have always valued Horowitz because he acknowledges, "these are evil people."

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 12:38 PM (TE35l)

166 "So today's menu is inspired by Holmes, Victorian cuisine and my own limitations: roast beef, roasted potatoes, onion pie, marinated cucumbers, green pea salad, oranges with fennel and pomegranate. Dessert is almond junket (in honor of the British Empire, but Chinese because I dislike Indian dessert) and bread pudding. Before dinner, mulled wine. After dinner we'll have the toast to the woman with tokay."

Yum yum, now I'm hungry. Let's all go to dinner at sinmi's :-)

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:38 PM (R3gO3)

167 Paglia is a mix of sense and nonsense.

This is an excellent description of Paglia. Both her sense and her nonsense stand out in glaring, sharp relief.

Me, I stopped reading her ages ago. The nonsense part was getting to be overwhelming and getting to the sense just wasn't worth the effort any more.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 12:38 PM (fd0Pp)

168 Wasn't Sontag the one who said "The white race is the cancer of civilization?"

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:39 PM (R3gO3)

169 Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting" covers this well. Read it about 25 years ago and it may be
time for me to revisit it. Kundera sure saw the evils of communism.

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:31 PM (POpqt)

Kundera writes well about life under communism in his other books: "The Joke", "Laughable Loves", "Life is Elsewhere", "The Farewell Party" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (there are others but these I've read). All of them are written in a deceivably light manner which exposes serious truths underlying everything.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:40 PM (N0FA7)

170 The next time I hear, read or see anything related to gay will be too damn soon. Even if it's 20 years from now.

Posted by: Meremortal, sick of it at January 05, 2014 12:41 PM (1Y+hH)

171 I know I may have mentioned this book before, but the Wall by Peter Sis introduces children to the evils of communism through pictures and few words. This man lived behing the iron curtain as a child and understood the need to express it.
Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at January 05, 2014 12:09 PM (XIxXP)

If you mentioned it before I missed it. Thanks for the rec, adding it to my want2read list.

Posted by: BornLib at January 05, 2014 12:41 PM (zpNwC)

172 Yeah, I've read Kundera's "The Joke" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," but I couldn't finish "Immortality."

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:43 PM (POpqt)

173 It's all about crushing the American Revolution.

It's the war between the Freedom Meme and the Control Meme.

That's why all things things on the Left take the form of a religion.

Control.

Posted by: eman at January 05, 2014 12:43 PM (EWsrI)

174 "Arthur and George" by Julian Barnes is an interesting novel in which Arthur Conan Doyle is a principal character-- it is closely based on a real lawsuit controversy in which Doyle took part.

Posted by: mnw at January 05, 2014 12:45 PM (68RU9)

175 Surprised no one has mentioned in regards to Solomon the book by Roger Kimball - The Rape of the Masters - How Political Correctness Sabotages Art.

http://tinyurl.com/k5zoofa

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at January 05, 2014 12:45 PM (J96yq)

176 Last January I started an Excel log of my reading. I was forgetting what I had read so figured running a log from now on would be interesting. Not as a brag, but I ended up at 78 books and about 30,000 pages. That surprised me. So as a comparison with fellow morons, am I about average?

Posted by: Todd Wiley at January 05, 2014 12:45 PM (lrkg9)

177 Replace Martin Luther King Day with Benjamin Franklin Day. The effect of kids imitating his conduct would be better.

Posted by: Chromoly Man at January 05, 2014 12:36 PM (dRz+o)

Don't get too carried away with that. Franklin was a pretty shitty husband and father.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:46 PM (N0FA7)

178 Donna V, your picture of homoacademia was poetic in its intensity. I like that.

To academia, this "all through one keyhole" approach is not new with homoconcern. In the classical education era (over longer than we admit), there was a great deal of aesthetism and political-science. The ancients were read with an eye to those angles, and not much else. Then came the Great Books era, which most of us me too remember as classical education, and there was a very great deal of aesthetism to that too: Oohing and aahing over Beauty, schmoozing past the brutal realities. Then came Naturalism, brutal reality to the exclusion of all else, Marxist keyholing, Freud and sex, Jungian dreams and types, the brief but broad Withcraft and The Occult era -- all of which ripped the guts out of content and intent, in the service of keeping the students (or the educator's idea of what the students ought to be) "interested."

The Marxist-literates are in charge now, and they are in fact fuckups. It's frightening to think what the Homo-academics will do before they pass on, destructive and dismissive as they are, but they will in fact pass from the scene. They may well bring down the institution of the university with them when they go, and we need to get past a puke-inducing level of bias to think clearly about whether that's really a good thing or not.

You know, there's a lot of fart jokes in Shakespeare and Chaucer. Pythagoras too. I'm a little weak on Milton, so, help me out here. If Morons ran the colleges, it would be all Engineering in Shakespeare, and fart jokes.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at January 05, 2014 12:48 PM (xq1UY)

179 My son has no interest in fiction, so most kids books like Harry Potter are out. He's interested in real crime and military stuff, and recently became interested in 9/11. I wanted to make sure he didn't get sucked into the truther stuff and stumbled across a graphic novelization of the 9/11 report (excerpts the actual text, verbatim). Pretty cool.

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:49 PM (POpqt)

180 The paint brush!

It's a PENIS!!

You hegemonies!!!!!

Posted by: New Yawk Times Art Critic at January 05, 2014 12:49 PM (RJMhd)

181 "Arthur and George" by Julian Barnes is an
interesting novel in which Arthur Conan Doyle is a principal character--
it is closely based on a real lawsuit controversy in which Doyle took
part.

Posted by: mnw at January 05, 2014 12:45 PM (68RU9)

Barnes is a very good writer; I really enjoyed "Flaubert's Parrot".

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:50 PM (N0FA7)

182 Franklin was also inept enough to retain a whopping big British spy as his private secretary while he was ambassador to France. As a result, the British read everything Franklin wrote in real time, long before his American employers did.

Posted by: mnw at January 05, 2014 12:50 PM (68RU9)

183 I put Paglia in the "brilliant mind lacking common sense" category. Excellent insights and then the opposite conclusions to those insights. Posted by: Guy Mohawk at January 05, 2014 12:37 PM (MaP11)

Last week, there was a very good interview with Paglia in the WSJ. Paglia praised the masculine virtues, said society will die if we do not have masculine men, spoke of how boys are made to behave like girls, etc. Excellent. A few women in the comments pointed out that it's great for Paglia to say all those things - but Paglia and her former lesbian lover have a 10 year old son they are raising together. So - boys need dads and all that, but it's OK for Camille and her old girlfriend to have a turkey baster baby and then break up, a boy who is being raised in 2 different lesbian homes.

Posted by: Donna V. at January 05, 2014 12:51 PM (R3gO3)

184 Speaking of taking books about famous Americans off the shelf and finally reading them...

Inspired by repeated viewings of Spielberg's movie "Lincoln" (Santa Claus kindly gave me the DVD for Christmas), I finally started reading Richard Striner's "Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery." I simply cannot recommend it highly enough. Striner makes a convincing case that Lincoln truly was primarily motivated by his passion to end slavery, and that things he said or did that have been interpreted to indicate otherwise were actually evidence of his political shrewdness. Lincoln was a genius on many levels, and one of them was political cunning.

While the history is fascinating in its own right, I have repeatedly been struck by similarities to our own time. For example, Lincoln and others commented on the perversity of the South in not only clinging to their evil institution, but in INSISTING THAT THE WHOLE REST OF THE COUNTRY ENDORSE/SUPPORT/AFFIRM THEIR EVIL. The Southern slave powers were not content to be left alone -- as most Northerners would have gladly done -- but would not rest until the whole country AGREED with them that slavery was morally good.

Substitute "abortion" and "homosexual behavior" for slavery and Lincoln could be describing our current politics.

Posted by: Kathy from Kansas at January 05, 2014 12:51 PM (afLO3)

185 Doesn't this mean that the Left will have to find strange new respect for the white bread, bourgeois "illustrator", Norman Rockwell???

Posted by: andycanuck at January 05, 2014 12:51 PM (puxT8)

186 Well if the concept of 'any publicity is good publicity' then Deborah Solomon is swimming in publicity. She has more than doubled her reviews on Amazon - Rockwell at 45 and Pollock + Cornell at 16.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at January 05, 2014 12:52 PM (J96yq)

187 There's a reason why a lot of the authors I read are dead, the things they wrote will stand the test of time.

Deborah Solomon's work may last about the length of time it takes for me to flush a toilet.

Posted by: Gmac-Pondering the coming implosion, and hoping its 404care at January 05, 2014 12:52 PM (IanLz)

188 "Reamde", Neal Stephenson. Good terrorism/spy/technology (as in online gaming technology) thriller - but went on far too long. I read "Anathem", which also suffered from the length problem, but that had such a slam-bang ending it was worth it.

So, Neal Stephenson novels, IMHO -

Cryptonomicon - 4 stars
Snow Crash - 5 stars
Anathem - 3 1/2 stars
Reamde - 3

Posted by: West at January 05, 2014 12:52 PM (gtiZk)

189 185 Doesn't this mean that the Left will have to find strange new respect for the white bread, bourgeois "illustrator", Norman Rockwell???
Posted by: andycanuck at January 05, 2014 12:51 PM (puxT

*******

NO!!

Je dit NO! encore!

How dare you!!!

Posted by: New Yawk Times Art Critic at January 05, 2014 12:52 PM (RJMhd)

190 " It's all about crushing the American Revolution."

Yes, like the lefty who told me that the American colonists were terrorists because they fired at the British from behind walls and stuff.

Posted by: Meremortal, sick of it at January 05, 2014 12:52 PM (1Y+hH)

191 My steam punk science fiction all time hero is: Alastair Reynolds

Best fantasy fiction writer since Tolkien: Robert Gemmell (too bad he drank/smoked himself to death after only producing 33 novels)

Carry on.

Posted by: tangonine at January 05, 2014 12:55 PM (x3YFz)

192 83 David P. Goldman likens Petraeus to to Gen Wallenstein of The Thirty Years War.
---------------------
Marrying into an influential family? Victory, then subsequent fall from grace with TPTB? Interesting comparison!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 05, 2014 12:56 PM (QBm1P)

193 185 Doesn't this mean that the Left will have to find strange new respect for the white bread, bourgeois "illustrator", Norman Rockwell???
Posted by: andycanuck at January 05, 2014 12:51 PM (puxT

Heh.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 12:56 PM (sdi6R)

194 Where's the GD football thread?

Posted by: Albie Damned at January 05, 2014 12:56 PM (cGaCp)

195 I wanted to make sure he didn't get sucked into the truther stuff and stumbled across a graphic novelization of the 9/11 report (excerpts the actual text, verbatim). Pretty cool.

Link?

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 12:56 PM (fd0Pp)

196 Patton Oswald tried to say Glenn Ford's bad guy character in 3:10 to Yuma was gay.

Posted by: concrete girl at January 05, 2014 12:57 PM (LhAqq)

197 Apparently Steven Speilberg is a big Rockwell collector. And Streisand collects a lot of early American art - and there's a great portrait of George Washington at Mount Vernon that she owns, but loans to the museum. I don't get it.

Also, anyone familiar with Jarvis Rockwell? Norman's son is an "artist" that specializes in making diorama-type pieces using dolls/mini-figures. Saw some of his stuff at Mass MoCA that involves various party scenes using ewoks. Not kidding.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/n7vrtbk

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 12:58 PM (POpqt)

198 Shakespeare also has a cunnilingus joke in "Taming of the Shrew"-- somehow this joke never makes it into high school productions of the play!

The joke concerns Kate's tongue a wasp's tail:

"Why, who does not know where a wasp bears it sting, Kate?"

Kate: "In my tongue!"

"What, then, Kate? My tongue in your tail? Nay, Kate, I am a gentleman!"

(approx., from memory. Shakespeare tells it a bit better.)

Posted by: mnw at January 05, 2014 12:58 PM (68RU9)

199 9/11 Report Graphic Novel link:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/mpylyqk

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 01:00 PM (POpqt)

200 Calculus of a single variable reads pretty much the same today as it did 25 years ago, and no gay to be found in any chapter.

*****

I found it quite derivative.

Posted by: Seamus Muldoon at January 05, 2014 01:01 PM (g4TxM)

201 At last I finished "In the Garden of Beasts" - Erik Larson's novelistic account of William Dodd's tenure as American ambassador to Germany between 1933-38. Posted a review here at Chicagoboyz - http://tinyurl.com/m8y28rg

" The senior Nazi party press attaché, the American-educated Ernst Hanfstaengl described Dodd as, “a modest little Southern history professor who ran his embassy on a shoestring and was probably trying to save money out of his pay … he teetered self-effacingly as if he were still on his college campus.” In any case, there may very well have been American diplomats, either amateur or professional, who would have done a more vigorous job when it came to protecting American citizens abroad, informing the US State Department and FDR regarding what was going on in Germany and in providing a means of escape for German Jews and other anti-Nazi dissidents. Likely such an ambassador would not have lasted any longer than Dodd, and the odds are at least as likely that another diplomat in that position would not have done any better. Dodd came to detest the Nazi régime, and upon resigning from office for reasons of ill-health – spoke publicly about the dangers posed by it. He felt himself to have been a failure at effecting any change in German policy during his tenure, but the consul general who worked most closely with him, George Messersmith, felt that very few Americans realized so thoroughly what was happening in Germany – and that Dodd’s own horror at it essentially paralyzed him."

And it didn't help that his twenty-something amoral idiot of a daughter apparently held the Berlin concession for boffing high-ranked Nazis, just as Unity Mitford held the Munich concession.

Excellent book. Now I'm alternating between Bill Bryson's "At Home" and Charles Mann's "1491".

Posted by: Sgt. Mom at January 05, 2014 01:01 PM (Asjr7)

202 There are a lot of good things about living in Assholia, but there are times - such as now - when I wish I could hang with morons and celebrate Holmes' birthday and have a literate conversation... sigh.

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at January 05, 2014 01:02 PM (vHRtU)

203 "I'm reading 'Cyberattack' right now and this is exactly what happens
- China starts systematically targeting various electronic systems,
starting with things like the USPS and trains, so people just assume 'glitches' until it's too late."

I suspect that if the balloon ever goes up between the Chinese and US militaries, one of the very first things to happen (likely pre-emptively and preparatory by the Chinese) will be that the entire GPS constellation will go away.

Not by cyberattack, but by the simple and impossible to defend against means of American satellites being popped on-orbit by the already demonstrated Chinese ASAT capability.

I have yet to meet any currently or recently serving American military professional who thinks that their service would retain any significant combat effectiveness if GPS were suddenly unavailable. Both the systems and the personnel are fatally reliant on it.

"We stopped getting map-literate and map-trainable kids more than a decade ago," was a frequent refrain. Not to mention that the goddamned maps may not be there either.

Also: civilian navigation without GPS? With Loran gone away, and VORs going away? Yikes. Whole lotta stuff in the larger economy is going to grind to a halt. No massive _One Second After_ scenario required. Just loss of sat signal.

One guy I used to know was a former USAF navigator. Trained in the era when that meant manually shooting sextant from an overhead star hatch on the flight deck of a KC-135. Mildly resenting his career path having been made largely redundant by technology. He would be amused were he to be hastily recalled to service. Come back! All is forgiven!

Posted by: torquewrench at January 05, 2014 01:02 PM (gqT4g)

204 200 Calculus of a single variable reads pretty much the same today as it did 25 years ago, and no gay to be found in any chapter.
*****
I found it quite derivative.

But it's an integral part of a solid curriculum.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 01:03 PM (fd0Pp)

205 And thanks for the link, Lizzy

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 01:04 PM (fd0Pp)

206 Anyone got an idea where I might get copies of stories from the early Childcraft book set (1940 era)? Gutenburg does not seem to list them.

Posted by: Hrothgar at January 05, 2014 01:04 PM (o3MSL)

207 200 Calculus of a single variable reads pretty
much the same today as it did 25 years ago, and no gay to be found in
any chapter.

*****

I found it quite derivative.

But it's an integral part of a solid curriculum.

Posted by: OregonMuse at January 05, 2014 01:03 PM (fd0Pp)

I read it with unbounded enthusiasm!

Posted by: Hrothgar at January 05, 2014 01:05 PM (o3MSL)

208 Smithsonian magazine had an article covering the same topic as this lady's book; falls short of outright declaring Rockwell gay, but treads right along that line by laying out a case for why you could argue he was. This is going to be the current theory for a while, methinks, poor Rockwell. My fave painting of his is the one of the truant kid attempting to run away, with the cop at the counter talking him out if it. I suppose i am supposed to see hints of pedophilia in that, if I am serious about art? Don't answer that.

That dinner sounds lovely sinmi! Finally I am caught up on the BBC Sherlock, saw the empty hearse episode (3.1). Lots of lovely meta bits from the actual canon tucked away in there, and the mini Christmas episode released online. Moffet is the buggest troll whatever trolled. Am going to reread some of Conan Doyle today, then watch 3.2 tonight. Always good to revisit old literary friends! (Who, to tie it back into the main theme, people have also done their best to retroactively paint as gay, because of course.)

Posted by: LizLem at January 05, 2014 01:06 PM (Jelfu)

209 mnw, "I say the earth did shake when I was born."

"the teeming earth is with a kind of colic pinched and vexed by the imprisoning of unruly wind within her womb..."

Queef joke. Henry IV Part I.

Bring it on. He war somedeel squeemish of farting.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at January 05, 2014 01:07 PM (xq1UY)

210 I have it on good authority - GLAAD - that Mrs. Hudson was a tranny...

Posted by: Reggie Love at January 05, 2014 01:08 PM (vHRtU)

211 Sonofabitch! I'm kinda glad I missed this thread because, right off the bat, I got pissed off while reading it.

I wrote a post at my old log about how it took seeing a Rockwell in person to appreciate his work. He was more than just an illustrator and his Capracorniesque work captured a side of America that those in the big cities fail to appreciate even today.

To look at that painting of the little girl, with the photo of a beautiful woman in her lap, and not see the obvious is idiotic. To try and milk something darker from it is revolting.

Ckuf Solomon.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at January 05, 2014 01:09 PM (DmNpO)

212 >>Posted by: torquewrench at January 05, 2014 01:02 PM (gqT4g)

That's sad and scary! I did a lot of orienteering in the mountains when I was a kid (girl scouts, summer camp) but I don't know what I could pull off now decades later. That's kinda why we've never gotten a GPS for our car - my family took a lot of road trips growing up and we all got good at reading maps. I'd like the traffic updates but I just don't like the idea of listening to some gadget's directions - I prefer exploring. Crazy, I know, because I've become so dependent on the internet for other stuff.

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 01:11 PM (POpqt)

213 Just wait until Deborah Solomon writes about Varga.

*thud*

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at January 05, 2014 01:12 PM (J96yq)

214 213 Just wait until Deborah Solomon writes about Varga.

Now THATS funny!

She will nod doubt claim they were all post-op trans...

Posted by: Reggie Love at January 05, 2014 01:13 PM (vHRtU)

215 Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 12:12 PM (N0FA7)

I am a big fan of short stories. Not an author I would recommend, very lib NYorky, Grace Paley, shot out of her cannon with a collection called The Little Disturbances of Man. I always liked the title.

One short story that has always stuck with me is Arcturus, A Hunting Dog, by Yuri Kazakov. Kazakov, post Stalin, Soviet writer.

There are so many good short stories. What an art.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 01:26 PM (rznx3)

216 103 Speaking of children's books, I'm reading through the ebook version of small-goverment and liberty minded children's book I helped Kickstart, "The Secret Under the Staircase by I.M. Lerner, Catherine L. Osornio.

The book was promoted as a way to introduce kids to economics but that hasn't come up in the first third of the book.
Posted by: BornLib at January 05, 2014 12:07 PM (zpNwC)

An update, this current chapter is about redistributive justice and the inherent wrongness of it.

Posted by: BornLib at January 05, 2014 01:27 PM (zpNwC)

217 Franklin's Autobiography is available for FREE on Kindle

Posted by: Filly at January 05, 2014 01:29 PM (gr/p1)

218 Each year I get a calendar from my local beer distributor. They're always Norman Rockwell paintings. Most of them seem to be his earlier work, because they're somewhat cruder and not as well-detailed as his more mature work. Maybe that has to do with copyrights; I don't know.

January 2014 features an older man and woman. I assume they're husband and wife, but what do I know?

Anyway, the man is sick. He's wrapped in a blanket and he is soaking his feet in a bucket of hot water. The woman is spoon-feeding him medicine, with a concerned look on her face.

There's obviously an Oedipal subtext there.

February 2014 shows two old men playing a game of checkers. One of them is close to winning, and has a look of triumph on his face.

Yep, definitely an allegory for dominance & submission.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 01:34 PM (sdi6R)

219 Yep, definitely an allegory for dominance & submission.

***

Imagine if they'd been playing chess!

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at January 05, 2014 01:36 PM (DmNpO)

220 If Franklin were alive he'd be self-published on Kindle.

Posted by: exdem13 at January 05, 2014 01:36 PM (lJaja)

221 182 mnw at January 05, 2014 12:50 PM (68RU9)

Our success on this front rested on two points, one Mr. Franklin though a founding American never ceased being an Anglophile-unlike your current President he grasped that we and you are if not Mother and Daughters or Siblings Cousins and two I invented the art.

//Sir Francis Wallsingham esq

Posted by: Sven10077 at January 05, 2014 01:37 PM (TE35l)

222 Enjoying the math puns here.

Posted by: Mindy at January 05, 2014 01:39 PM (Bs5ky)

223 If Deborah Solomon were to claim they were post-op, well many of Hollywood's starlets like Linda Darnell or Shirley Temple would be tarred.

That would be funny to watch if she did try that angle on Varga.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at January 05, 2014 01:40 PM (J96yq)

224 Mindy, I think we have derived a limit to the puns.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at January 05, 2014 01:42 PM (J96yq)

225 The Shadow stories were all public domain and than Conde Nast copyrighted them again.

Posted by: steevy at January 05, 2014 01:44 PM (zqvg6)

226 One short story that has always stuck with me is Arcturus, A Hunting Dog, by Yuri Kazakov. Kazakov, post Stalin, Soviet writer.

There are so many good short stories. What an art.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 01:26 PM (rznx3)

Thanks much for that rec; I'll check it out. I heart Rooski writers. Here's one for you: "The Pedersen Kid" by William H. Gass from "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country ampersand Other Stories". Absolutely fucking brutal. Also anything by Raymond Carver, particularly his earliest stories before he met up with that ditzy third rate poet skirt Tess Gallagher, his version on Yoko Ono.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 01:45 PM (N0FA7)

227 NDH:
"Capracorniesque" should definitely be a word. It's a perfectly cromulent description of Rockwell.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 01:46 PM (sdi6R)

228
This Painting Is Full of Homoerotic Imagery. Can't You See It?

Heck, no. I've got a raging boner after looking at that and I'm straight as an arrow.

Posted by: Roman Polanski at January 05, 2014 01:48 PM (eIZld)

229 I like Grace Paley too. I started reading her years ago when I was much, much younger. :^)

I agree with the Ribald Conservative and they they stated it very well. The subtext in the Rockwell picture is a girl is moving from childhood to young adulthood. She's looking at a picture of movie star ? in a magazine and has discarded her doll. But nooooooooo....s its homoerotic because from the back the girl looks like a boy?. LOL. It seems to be quite a trend in some writers to discover that almost everybody was gay- being gay is the new "in" thing apparently. Norman Rockwell was gay, Emily Dickiinson was gay, Lincoln was gay except there is no real evidence to support this and the family of Rockwell,vehemently denies it. If the historic figures were indeed gay and they didn't want to come out of closet, why should we obsess about and force them out after they were dead when they can say anything about it? I mean, Walt Whitman was gay; So what? Meh. He was a good good and a caring men who remarked a lot of the lot of soldiers in the Civil War. I'm glad Solomons obsession got taken down by various folks.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 01:50 PM (7kkQJ)

230 Re 212: Teach you rkids to be gamers. All DD players know how to read a map!

Posted by: exdem13 at January 05, 2014 01:54 PM (lJaja)

231 "She's looking at a picture of movie star ? in a magazine and has discarded her doll."

Looks like it's a picture of Jane Russell, from what I can tell.

Posted by: HH at January 05, 2014 02:03 PM (XXwdv)

232 Thanks, Maet-

I always so appreciate your hard work on the book thread and the interesting comments you and other people make, but I always get here late because my Sundays are taken up with other things. :^) I hope that you are considering what we might have as a read for a book club. That would be great.

I am still ploughing through Diary of Divine Mercy by Saint Faustina. It's 600 words not including footnotes and I don't read as fast as I did when I was younger. What a wonderful Spirit she had. Suffering with TB over a number of years and dying at age 33, she was still faithful to God and her Confessor in writing of the revelations she believed she was given by Christ about divine mercy-God's love for everyone: (From Jesus) "If souls would out themselves completely in my care,, I would undertake the task of sanctifying them and I would lavish even greater graces on them." Truly a remarkable woman who wanted to to become a Saint and indeed she did become one -canonized in 2000.

I am also re- reading "Why Is This Happening to me?" by Wayne Monbleau. He has a radio program Called "Let's talk About Jesus" and his website "Loving Grace Ministry" transmits his messages. Wonderful Christian man and preacher. The subtitle of the book is "How God can bring blessings from our pain?" and from a Christian perspective it's one of the best books I've read about ways in which a Christian can respond to suffering and difficult situations their lives. Its helpful for some of the people in the church I serve (I have given them copies of the book) who have been going through various hard things.

I decided as a spiritual discipline to only read the Bible or devotional books during the Advent/ Christmas season (and it's been wonderful for a spiritual uplift) but now that it's the end of the Christmas season I can go back to reading other things. :^)

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:12 PM (7kkQJ)

233 "If souls would PUT themselves completely in my care" Not OUT. Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:13 PM (7kkQJ)

234 Read Stephen King's 'The Stand'. Really enjoyed the apocalyptic first half, enjoyed the latter third but felt the middle was a bit padded. I enjoyed King's simple, plain style of writing but at over 1300 pages it was a lot of words. Glad I read it though, know who Trashcan Man is now.

Posted by: waelse1 at January 05, 2014 02:14 PM (5S02w)

235 Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 01:45 PM (N0FA7)

Thanks for the rec. I will check out "The Pedersen Kid". New for me.

I spent years on a short story binge. Love Carver. I heart Rooski lit and short stories. Part of my educational background and I got hooked. Here's something that might be interesting. I like anthologies for when I am restless and lazy. It's good to have them in one place. A little suspicious because of the editors, still there's probably some good stuff in here. Pricey.
http://tinyurl.com/lkktsux And of course, Chekov and Gogol.

Off Russia, one of the classics, Shirley Jackson, The Lottery.
*******
Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 01:50 PM (7kkQJ) Yeppers. I kept the title, and lost the stories to the past.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 02:14 PM (rznx3)

236 Yep, definitely an allegory for dominance & submission.

BWAHAHAHAHA. Good one. The only thing to do with Solomon's obsessive stupidity is to mock it.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes there is no subtext to a painting.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:16 PM (7kkQJ)

237 I see that Instapundit has linked Michael Belfiore's review of Rand Simberg's new book on spaceflight safety, "Safe is Not an Option":

http://michaelbelfiore.com/2014/01/safe-is-not-an-option.html

I should be getting my signed copy shortly, since I participated in Rand's Kickstarter project.

Posted by: rickl at January 05, 2014 02:17 PM (sdi6R)

238 Let's imagine you spend $1.2B developing a new drug, and you file a patent. You and your extremely expensive attorneys fight with the patent office for 6 years over patentability, and you finally win your patent. Congratulations! You now have 14 years to recover your development costs, patent costs, opportunity costs, manufacturing costs, marketing costs, and hopefully make some money.

Now imagine you are a performance artist, smear shit on a piece of paper, and put a copyright sign on the bottom (or not).
Congratulations! Your work is now protected from infringement for 70 years after your death, or if the shit was created by a corporation, 95 years.

What a silly, frivolous country we have become.

Posted by: motion view (@motionview) at January 05, 2014 02:17 PM (e6TyM)

239 I like Raymond Carver very much and the short stories of the Russian author of plays including "The Cherry Orchard" I swear I must be developing Alzheimers. I can't remember names worth a flip.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:18 PM (7kkQJ)

240 One guy I used to know was a former USAF navigator. Trained in the era when that meant manually shooting sextant from an overhead star hatch on the flight deck of a KC-135. Mildly resenting his career path having been made largely redundant by technology. He would be amused were he to be hastily recalled to service. Come back! All is forgiven!

Posted by: torquewrench at January 05, 2014 01:02 PM (gqT4g)

We tried to teach fieldcraft and traversing terrain the...."old fashioned" way to 'cruits. Intersection, resection, terrain identification and association, etc...etc...especially at night.

Were basically told that that was unnecessary, because .....GPS. The old salts understood, but merely resigned themselves to the advance of the inevitable and lack of precious training time.

GPS is pretty cool, no doubt, but yeah, those satellites are vulnerable and then what the fuck you gonna do?

Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Rounding Error Extraordinaire at January 05, 2014 02:18 PM (JcBdH)

241 Thanks, Maet-

I always so appreciate your hard work on the book thread....

=====

It's OregonMuse.

Posted by: Tami at January 05, 2014 02:21 PM (bCEmE)

242 Yes, THAT's his name. Chekhov. I missed it the first time I read your post.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:22 PM (7kkQJ)

243 Oh. I'm sorry. I thought Oregon Muse and Maet were the same person. Thanks for the correction. Then I appreciate your hard work, OM.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:23 PM (7kkQJ)

244 the short stories of the Russian author of plays
including "The Cherry Orchard" I swear I must be developing Alzheimers. I
can't remember names worth a flip.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:18 PM (7kkQJ)
Anton Chekhov. Happens to me all the time.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 02:23 PM (N0FA7)

245 Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 02:14 PM (rznx3)

I used to read the "Best Short Stories of Year XXXX" all the time for ideas on who to check out. Even though the collections are almost always done by libs, they have to be on their best behavior as far as not recommending any dogs. Plus publishers know that libs are very very cheap.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 02:27 PM (N0FA7)

246
Re: The bookless Texas library

Photo slide-show of the inside. Very depressing. Just like the "library" in Rollerball.

So, that's the future we ended up with.

http://tinyurl.com/kd88tlh

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at January 05, 2014 02:30 PM (kdS6q)

247 The picture of the movie star is Jane Russell, methinks.

Posted by: Bookaday at January 05, 2014 02:36 PM (+HEUC)

248 Todd Wiley:
Due to people moving back into my house I had to pack up my library and it is in the attic, however my husband keeps close watch on the budget and states that I am up to 49 kindle books purchased, (he doesn't know about the freebies evidently lol) plus I go up and rummage from time to time, just pulled down Anne McCaffrey and David Eddings for fun so yeah I am probably up there with you.
I love this thread every Sunday and have taken more than a few recommendations, THANKS!

Posted by: FCF at January 05, 2014 02:47 PM (Khja4)

249 FCF, reading Restoree or The Mark of Merlin by McCaffrey?

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at January 05, 2014 02:53 PM (J96yq)

250 Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 02:27 PM (N0FA7)

True 'dat.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 02:53 PM (rznx3)

251 Posted by: FCF at January 05, 2014 02:47 PM (Khja4)

Just one observation. If your attic is not connected to the rest of the house in terms of ventilation, heat, etc. it is a bad place to keep your books. Heating and cooling leads to condensation, which will, over time, lead to warping and/or mildew or, in extreme cases, pages actually sticking together.

Personally, I'd put the books back where you had them and put the relatives in the attic. But that's just me.

Posted by: HTL at January 05, 2014 02:54 PM (QV8Gr)

252 Anna Puma:
The petaybee series just to check out for grandson for the moment but Restoree is in the mix, thought I would head for dragons next for same reason. (A very adventurous 8 year old who just finished the Narnia series)
HTL:
Reference books and leather bound/collectibles are not in the attic they are in my bedroom, but the thought of the switch has come to mind lol. Unfortunately grandkids are involved and I am a hopelessly smitten grandmother

Posted by: FCF at January 05, 2014 03:01 PM (Khja4)

253 What really stinks is the fact I waited till two kids were grown and I had the chance to use one of the rooms as my library, ah well life goes on.

Posted by: FCF at January 05, 2014 03:05 PM (Khja4)

254 Sontag also got out there and defended Salman Rushdie. This when too many people on the "respectable" right as well as left were blowing the Ayatollah. (I won't forgive Roald Dahl, in particular.)

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at January 05, 2014 03:06 PM (Xfl0F)

255 <246

My only objection is the notion that anything futuristic must certainly be sterile and laminated - with an overtly bright-cold laboratory feeling to it.

What if the architectural features are skinned in dark red mahogany paneling with steampunk styled tarnished brass rimmed viewscreens - lined by rows and rows of uncomfortable rigid-backed wooden chairs?

The reality will be this; an old retail store converted to i-library, finished with water stained drop ceiling tiles, scratched rickety tables, folding metal chairs - all lit by long runs of flickering florescent light-tubes.

Posted by: 13times at January 05, 2014 03:24 PM (fGPLK)

256 233 "If souls would PUT themselves completely in my care" Not OUT. Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh.
Posted by: FenelonSpoke at January 05, 2014 02:13 PM (7kkQJ)

I lol'd at the Freudian slip, even if through autocorrect. It reminded me if some theories about Jesus out there, in relation to John the beloved, that seeing as it is Sunday I am not even going to dignify.

Boulder, what's the story with Roald Dahl??? I have a feeling you are about to put me some kniwledhe that will make the foundations of one of my literary idols crumble, he was my fave author as a kid. But better to know than be kept in the dark.

Posted by: LizLem at January 05, 2014 03:25 PM (1tsbS)

257 83.. Not sure how long it will last, but VDH's Savior Generals in $2.99 on Kindle as I write this. Thanks for the suggestion!

Posted by: Charlotte at January 05, 2014 03:29 PM (u1eI9)

258 "Put me some knowledge," I meant. i have no clue what that word is my iPhone keys spat out, lol.

Posted by: LizLem at January 05, 2014 03:29 PM (Hslsk)

259 LizLem - Dahl in a public letter to The Times threw Rushdie so far under the bus you could see his shoelaces hanging out the exhaust pipe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/arts/04iht-15donadio.6482640.html

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at January 05, 2014 03:31 PM (Xfl0F)

260 GPS is pretty cool, no doubt, but yeah, those satellites are vulnerable and then what the fuck you gonna do?

Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Rounding Error Extraordinaire at January 05, 2014 02:18 PM (JcBdH)

Combat Tracking, by John Hurth.

not the best. actually poorly written and 50% is irrelevant to those that know better. But there's not exactly a line of books on combat tracking so it's a start.

Posted by: tangonine at January 05, 2014 03:35 PM (x3YFz)

261 Thanks Charlotte! I love VDH and don't have that one yet.

Posted by: Captain's daughter at January 05, 2014 03:36 PM (xBYS9)

262 I am working through Quiet Dell which I think was suggested here. It's OK; I'm skimming a lot of the more flowery, lyrical passages. I'm a no-nonsense kind of reader.

I also read--cover to cover, bitchez!--Miss Kay's Duck Commander Cookbook and Entertaining in Texas: A Cookbook from the Junior League of Victoria, Texas, copyright 1984, both of which were Christmas presents. And both of which featured squirrel recipes. But for both instructions on how to prepare armadillo and rattlesnake, I had to turn to Country Cookin': The Senior Citizens of Medina, Texas, copyright 1976.

I'm not the only one who reads cookbooks, am I?

{praying I don't break the blog with my italics tags}

Posted by: Republic of Texas 2: Electric Boogaloo at January 05, 2014 03:37 PM (Gk2GE)

263 {didn't break the blog. It just ignored my italics.}

Posted by: Republic of Texas 2: Electric Boogaloo at January 05, 2014 03:38 PM (Gk2GE)

264 250
Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 02:27 PM (N0FA7)

******

In the Heart of the Country...available only third party. Out of print I think and gynormous prices. My library system does not have it.

Suggestions for affordable place to get the book or just The Pedersen Kid.

I'll try to track it down used or alternative sites. Thx.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 03:57 PM (rznx3)

265 What really stinks is the fact I waited till two
kids were grown and I had the chance to use one of the rooms as my
library, ah well life goes on.

Posted by: FCF at January 05, 2014 03:05 PM (Khja4)

I have limited space for books and a friend had a clever suggestion. If you have a walk-in closet, arrange it so the short clothes, shirts, for example, hang in one section and put a short bookcase under that area. I got two shelves hidden away that way, with the books two deep on each shelf.

Posted by: Retread at January 05, 2014 03:58 PM (cHwk5)

266 >>I'm not the only one who reads cookbooks, am I?

Nope, I love to read 'em, too. Found an old junior league-type cookbook in a WV antique shop that had recipes from the civil war era women (think it was printed in early 1900's), including Gen. Lee's wife. It had recipes for squirrel and all sorts of other stuff. Didn't include much detail on cooking temps and time (obviously), but it was interesting to see how they managed without modern conveniences, such as chicken salad with a dressing that included mashed boiled eggs instead of mayo. Gave it to my brother, who's a chef, but it was a fun read.

Posted by: Lizzy at January 05, 2014 04:00 PM (POpqt)

267 Retread:
Have done something similar using any available space. Thanks for an idea though! (Pondering)

Posted by: FCF at January 05, 2014 04:08 PM (Khja4)

268 From that article you posted Boulder:

"The author of dark children's books and stories for adults (who himself once had police protection after getting death threats) also advocated self-censorship. It "puts a severe strain on the very power principle that the writer has an absolute right to say what he likes," he wrote. "In a civilized world we all have a moral obligation to apply a modicum of censorship to our own work in order to reinforce this principle of free speech.""

How crazy is it that we are still fighting this battle today? I am sure there is an article about Phil Robertson out there promoting this very idea. Rushdie might be a bit of a prat, but even prats have a right to be heard. Amazing how breathtakingly tone deaf Dahl was, to contradict himself so soundly in one sentence. Sad.

Posted by: LizLem at January 05, 2014 04:28 PM (mKRyJ)

269 "The Doctor." Google that image. Case closed.

Posted by: Frank Lloyd Wright at January 05, 2014 05:02 PM (borYX)

270 Billinois, I'm on VDH's chapter on General Sherman and you're right, it's even better. This section is as much about the precarious position of Lincoln's presidency and the survival of the Union as it is about America's premier werewolf tactician (look at his pic and tell me I'm wrong).

Dear God, we're lucky we've made it as long as we have.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 05, 2014 05:13 PM (QBm1P)

271 Finished a great book this week - The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. It's about a plain Jane orphan who works as a stenographer and typist for the NYPD in 1925. Then a new typist is hired, a rich glamor girl who befriends the plain Jane narrator. But all is not what it seems.

The library copy of the book had several glowing author blurbs on the back cover, which made me very suspicious, but this is a real page-turner that will leave you wanting to reread the book as soon as you finish so you can figure out exactly what is real and what isn't.

Posted by: biancaneve at January 05, 2014 05:30 PM (2sR50)

272 Found an old junior league-type cookbook in a WV antique shop that had
recipes from the civil war era women (think it was printed in early
1900's),

If you like old cookbooks that have usable recipes, try Maryland's Way, published by the Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, MD. You can find copies on eBay, or at the H-HH site (more expensive), or on Amazon (really expensive). There are several editions but they all are essentially similar: colonial era recipes teased from Maryland sources and so includes things like terrapin soup. Each recipe's source is identified and has enough information inserted to translate to modern measurements, cooking temps and times. I regularly make some of the pies and cookies.

Posted by: Retread at January 05, 2014 05:57 PM (cHwk5)

273 In the Heart of the Country...available only third
party. Out of print I think and gynormous prices. My library system does
not have it.

Suggestions for affordable place to get the book or just The Pedersen Kid.

I'll try to track it down used or alternative sites. Thx.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 03:57 PM (rznx3)

Ouch. I had no idea I had such a rarity on my hands. Mine is a 1981 edition on Nonpareil Books; I'm positive I got it remaindered from Daedalus books in Hyasttsville, Maryland sometime after that, but still in the 80s.

The only thing I can suggest is to check if your library does intrastate loans from other systems (I know our county library system does even though I don't know exactly how to use it; out of sheer laziness on my part) which might have it. Gass will be 90 later this year and doesn't have a new fangled website. I don't know if I'd call him reclusive because he seems to interact with other writers but for sure he doesn't actively court publicity. The first story he did which piqued my interest was collected in one of those Best American Short Stories in either the late 70s or very early 80s; it was a story called "Wood" which I don't think has been subsequently published in any collections but I thought it was very good. Best wishes in finding it.

Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 07:11 PM (N0FA7)

274 I have to go to work, but his must be asked. Whey the hell are these people making good people like Rockwell into homosexuals when there is an obvious homosexual right there in the White House?

Posted by: Erowmero at January 05, 2014 07:25 PM (OONaw)

275 274
I have to go to work, but his must be asked. Whey the hell are these
people making good people like Rockwell into homosexuals when there is
an obvious homosexual right there in the White House?

Because he's not an obvious good person?

Posted by: Anachronda at January 05, 2014 07:28 PM (U82Km)

276 Posted by: Captain Hate at January 05, 2014 07:11 PM (N0FA7)

******

A rarity indeed. Anyway thanks for the rec. I did a little checking on him and the story. I am interested enough to do the hunt. It will be fun.

Posted by: gracepmc at January 05, 2014 08:46 PM (rznx3)

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