I see the great uniter is threatening to stoke the hot coals of racism if his enemies (the citizens and their representatives) don't play by his rules and let him win.
(I am up because I was putting off updating a mailing list and getting some work done that needed to be done now, and putting it off on account of I can never remember where to find the mailing list in the mail program. Have I ever mentioned that I hate computers?)
I see Zimmerman was pulled over in TX for speeding.
No problem, just a warning.
JAL said...
Oh great.
I see the great uniter is threatening to stoke the hot coals of racism if his enemies (the citizens and their representatives) don't play by his rules and let him win.
3 1/2 more years of this.
This will not turn out well.
It usually doesn't. The Lefties only destroy.
The good news is Choom is as lousy a community organizer as he is at anything else.
b. The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
Is the Queen's speech a weird relic? No. It's a vivid, striking message of something we know that we know even if we mostly live as if we have forgotten: The core of human life is family.
Everyone understands the cliche as pawns. But only chess players know "Queen's gambit". And then the discussion spirals into the Nimzo-Indian Defense, Queen's Indian Defense, Bogo-Indian Defense, Modern Benoni, and the Queen's Gambit Declined. And honestly, how many of us really need to know about the King's Indian Defense or the Grünfeld Defense?
b. The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
I was about to 'comment' a mock apology, but then thought that it would be dumb to break my non-commenting-even-by-blessed-email-streak I have going on.
Unfortunately, the woman has turned out to be as arrogant as a tenured Wisconsin law professor would be expected to be. She's so fucking edgy!
I will, however, give her credit for the intent of creepy-ass cracker. I was wrong on that.
Her dedication to free speech was all a ruse.
It's that damn second x chromosome, I suppose, that houses the unending desire to control things which shouldn't be controlled.
A reader rarely reads closely. Usually he brings crates of foreign baggage with him, baggage that distorts the writer's work under its weight. He invents phantoms that are real to him. He relates the plainly separate. He infers what does not exist. How can one write for him?
The wise writer will anticipate the reactions of a wide range of readers and will address them accordingly.
If it is likely that someone will object on the merits, then the writer himself raises and then knocks down the objection. If a reader will doubt the accuracy of facts, the writer will provide evidentiary sources.
If some reader is likely to be an idiot who is determined to twist what is written and infer things that are not there, then the writer will very expressly state that what he means is X, and expressly state that he does not mean Y or Z or A or B or C. He will say that he says what he means and means what he says, no tricks, no hidden meanings, no passive-aggression, no "I'm just being provocative to stimulate a discussion" that too many claimed was what some law professor blogger did.
In short, the good writer will always cut the reader off at the pass, taking away any possible avenue that will lead him off the road.
I was about to 'comment' a mock apology, but then thought that it would be dumb to break my non-commenting-even-by-blessed-email-streak I have going on.
When I saw Pollos comment at top I thought... it's a good thing he can make moderate comments.
I, in the other hand, I'm an immoderate commenter.
I cant control my commenting. I got to stay away from that first comment.
The Situation is Inherently Cubist. Some Will Have Both Eyes on One Side of the Nose; Some Will Have a Distended Mouth. All Planes and Perspectives are On View in Totality: We Choose Where to Look. The Blue Guitar Will Supply the Mambo and the Tango and the Discordant Note.
The Cubist Blue Guitar Will Play the Version of "Auld Lang Syne" That Is Perfection to Each Listener's Ear; Some Listeners Will have Both Ears on One Side of Their Head To Better Hear.
The Cubist Blue Guitar Played By the Naked Bob Dylan Robot Is the Sound of a Train Navigating Diverging Tracks: Some Tracks to the Upper Left, Some to the Lower Right. Binoculars Hang From the Neck of a Mule With One Eye Below its Nose.
Darcy, Good morning to you Tiger fan. Good observation about women. The really controlling women are very unhappy people and make all those around them equally unhappy. On the other side, controlling men are fucking dangerous, and should be avoided by women by any means necessary.
Anyone who had kids remembering them constantly standing on the edge of the pool, in the backyard, on a playground slide saying, "Look @ me..look @ me." Well, that's Larry, plain and simple.
Darcy said... Yes, women have a desire to control. God made us that way! I believe men are supposed to be strong enough to say no.
This is easy to explain. God only provided man with enough blood to make his brain work or his groin. When the blood flows down to the groin all of the thinking is done down there.
You realize that back during the time of Adam and Eve, clothes were not invented yet. Adam had a hard time forming his thoughts.
I used to work the chess puzzles in the early pages of "Chess Review." It was frustrating because (A) I hadn't played chess long and (B) the answers were wrong or incomplete more often than they should have been.
Larry Evans, the #2 or #3 American player after Fischer in those days had a Q&A column in the magazine and in one issue he devoted his page space to telling all the readers who were bugging him about the Chess Puzzles that they were right and the Chess Puzzles guy was wrong and that they should stop sending him (Larry Evans) mail about it
One great thing about 21st century chess is that you don't have to wonder anymore about tactical puzzles. You just fire up your chess engine, input the position, and let it crunch away. Usually within seconds you get the right answer.
At this point chess engines are free or almost so. The source code for some of the top engines, which play at the grandmaster level, has been released to the world. The money these days is in the chess database software.
We do have a female chess grandmaster, Judit Polgar, who plays among the top fifty players in the world. She doesn't bother with women's tournaments and has never competed for the women's world champion title. She attained Grandmaster rank at a younger age than Bobby Fischer.
She has a curious story. Her father, a Hungarian educator, believed that any child could be trained to be a genius, and he decided to prove it with his three daughters. He chose chess as the arena for his experiment. Two daughter became Grandmasters, and the the third an International Master.
I'm leery of such experiments on children, but Judit and her sisters seem to be OK.
Suppose one of you has a hundred readers and loses one of them. Doesn’t the good writer leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost reader until he finds it?
It may not happen today. It may not happen even this month or this year. But at some point, Althouse is going to take all her readers, lock them into a thread, and force them all to listen to a well crafted spiel about owning a time share. Those who sign up will have permission to comment.
"If some reader is likely to be an idiot who is determined to twist what is written and infer things that are not there, then the writer will very expressly state that what he means is X, and expressly state that he does not mean Y or Z or A or B or C."
I don't know about that. Sometimes, sure, but all the time? Isn't there something to be said for letting the reader do some of his own thinking? And wouldn't that also dictate style?
For example, I like to go for terse. If I were to follow the rule you proposed above, I would have to follow a much more elaborate style, a style that I am not interested in cultivating for myself. (I know others, including my husband, who make use of that style very well.)
PaddyO, LOL!!!! I have never fallen prey to a timeshare pitch. I worked a case involving sexual harassment of a timeshare saleswoman. This was when timeshares just came into existence. Here's the case in a nutshell, so to speak!
There were ~6 or 7 salespeople who had just been given new info by their manager @ a staff meeting. The meeting ended @ lunchtime so they started discussing what to order out for lunch. The MANAGER walked up to the one female staff member, put his dick on the table and said, "How 'bout this for lunch?" That, and the flick, Glengarry Glen Ross convinced me to NEVER fall prey to these scumbags.
No, I take that back. It's perfect to inject Althouse there because there's a perfect example of what I was writing about in this thread.
I took her coffee comment to mean that perhaps her posts have the same tone as always and only seem darker because they aren't followed by light, witty comments anymore, comments that effectively lightened the tone in the past. That makes sense to me. Seems like a pretty innocuous thought too.
And yet, it has caused offense to some. How?
I think it is because we bring other things to what we read.
Controlling women was part of the thread, Freeman. PaddyO is a righteous person. Life is too damn short, precious, and unpredictable to have no sense of humor.
Freeman, It looks like we're all good. I didn't mention, it turned out the female salesperson was a former stripper. The defense thought they could use that for some leverage ala "Like she hasn't seen a dick before." However, a female attorney @ that law firm convinced them that could easily backfire. The case settles, as it should have.
I thoroughly suspected that my father had lost his mind when, at age 70 or so, he got his first tattoo, a battleship on his chest. He had enlisted in the Navy when he was 16, so he claimed.
Anyway, they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and I've been giving some serious thought, lately, to purchasing a compass, protractor and straight-edge, and teaching myself the geometry that I refused to learn back in middle school as a kind of atonement.
PaddyO, Your question about going after the one lost reader is a good one. You at least need to seek from the reader why you lost him/her. If I lost a good client I would really want to know why and would be willing to make reasonable changes to get them back. However, one must always assess motivation. Was the client/reader being manipulative and merely trying to get changes by virtue of knowing they were a good/client? That's where it gets tricky. Then, there are the horseshit clients/readers you lose. To those you say, "Don't let the door hit ya' where the Good Lord split ya'."
Terse is great but the burden is on the writer to make it work.
Althouse is in love with her terseness but she often pared the words down so much that the terseness didn't work or wasn't worth deciphering. Then she complained that readers weren't smart enough to understand or careful enough to follow.
Once that dynamic became clear, if I ran into a sentence I had to read a third time, I skipped it as bad writing.
Excellent writers can manage both, but most writers must choose between being clear and sounding impressive.
Spinelli, to your comment about the lost reader, that's a key point for any field. Sometimes the audience/client/customer is to blame. Sometimes it's not their fault.
Even when it is their fault, there's often something to learn about how better to communicate, or understand, or whatever. Sharpening the craft.
Reza Aslan claims that Jesus was most likely illiterate.
Part of his reasoning is the premise that a woodworker, back in those days, was merely a notch or so above slave or begger.
That blows my mind because I've always assumed, ever since Sunday school, that being a carpenter was a big deal and that you had to be smart to make finely carved hardwood furniture where there weren't any trees.
Real smart.
Like Norm Abram smart, the first Jewish carpenter since Jesus.
Althouse started out in the arts and she ended up a law professor. For 20 years or so she’s been standing in front of an audience of law students and performing the Socratic Dances. That’s a lot like being an actor (where one needs to be focused, narcissistic and competitive, to succeed) and the internet gave her the opportunity to present herself to a popular audience as an objet d'art , or as a diva-in-full, or whatever you’d like to call it.
She seldom writes to prove some proposition or another. You can take her at her word when she says she wants to live free in writing. She might pay the bills by being a staid law professor but in her heart-of-hearts she’s an artist. The internet is her medium.
The contemporary artist has much to say but is seldom inclined to say it expressly. It is the gesture of artistic expression, itself, that matters. The medium is the message. Woody Allen is famous for having said that.
Anyway, in the 1976 movie Stroszek, by Werner Herzog, the protagonist is a street performer, who is a sad kind of a guy, who takes one soul-crushing hit after another and eventually he gives up and commits suicide (oops, I mean self-murder) on a ski lift.
So, what’s the message? What does Herzog ultimately have to say to us about the circumstances this poor guy has been put through for the last cinematic two hours or so?
Reading Althouse this morning, I read this...a restatement from the policy information:
"Don't make any personal remarks and don't go back-and-forth with another commenter." That shows what's not wanted. Basically, the problem could be labeled: clutter. Also: bad faith.
It occurred to me then that this policy doesn't apply to principals of the Althouse blog when they visit elsewhere. I will grant that the performance has improved, measured by less sniping and uncalled for personal remarks.
If anyone checks my comments and position vis a vis the Althouse blog before the meltdown, they won't find a critical piece..in fact I got in to a debate of two with those who I thought we trying to hurt the blog, and then mocked for it, without anyone applying the aforesaid policy either, at least in those instances. Didn't matter back then I guess.
My distaste for Althouse grew out of the early visits by Meade here, and the outlandish remarks made. Meade said he supports his wife, so I assume she also supports him. With that in mind I may read once in a while, but I will never comment again, moderated or otherwise. As Meade has advised everyone here, my contributions to Althouse were mere chump change, as well as here. So be it.
I just find that policy statement odd given the record.
Terse is great but the burden is on the writer to make it work.
I don't know. Take rhhardin, for instance. TERSE. A lot of people don't know what he's getting at half the time, but should he change his style? Not a chance!
Althouse is in love with her terseness but she often pared the words down so much that the terseness didn't work or wasn't worth deciphering. Then she complained that readers weren't smart enough to understand or careful enough to follow.
And she was often right! Surely everyone has had that experience. You write something, and it's clear enough, and someone comes along and completely whiffs it on the comprehension side. (Surely everyone's been on the whiffing end too.)
Nobody's a perfect writer. Any of us can fall short of clarity now and then. But nobody's a perfect reader either.
Further, does all writing have to be written for the most casual reader? I say, no. There are readers who enjoying teasing things out.
Hey, maybe that's the answer to the question in my blog post. Who does the writer write for? The one who will get it.
Few people misinterpret Hemingway. However, since most women don't like him, and since mostly women teach English, each generation is slowly losing his genius. Yeah, Hemingway understood less is more, and that was what made me want to read. No one IMO has come close. Annie is the anti-Hemingway. Her writing is pretentious and stream of consciousness. Now, I have no problem w/ stream of consciousness if it's funny. I can't remember EVER laughing @ anything Annie wrote. Maybe I did, but I don't remember laughing.
Nick, then I would argue that the two of you are a bad writer/reader match. Althouse has made me laugh many times. There are commenters here who make me laugh everyday, but they don't do that for everybody. I'm sure there are people who've never made me laugh, yet others find them hysterical.
It's the same with movies. There are some movies that I know are good, and I don't like them. They're a bad match for me.
And then there's God, the only guy who's a match for everybody. But I digress.
Freeman, If I've learned anything in my 60 years it is that taste, be it food, music, flicks, writing, comedy or a myriad of other topics is individual. I know people who thought Richard Pryor was not funny. I know someone who HATES PIZZA. Now, I can pick out the folks who are being contrarian and merely trying to stick out. I don't like Annie. However, I have routinely given her kudos over the years for posts, opinions, etc. she expressed. I'm intellectually honest in that regard. I would not want to spend one day of my life surrounded w/ people w/ whom I agreed.
I don't know. Take rhhardin, for instance. TERSE. A lot of people don't know what he's getting at half the time, but should he change his style? Not a chance!
Freeman: If readers don't get what a writer on a blog is getting at half the time, I call that bad writing.
I'm not sure what rhhardin is up to. Usually I find him intelligible, but when I don't get him, it appears that the context is missing, not that he has shaved his words so close to the bone that the meaning is teetering on the razor blade.
So far as I know he never complains that his readers are stupid or careless. Althouse does.
It looks like a game that Althouse offers: heads she wins, tails you lose. Her writing is a long quest to demonstrate she's smart and you're not. Have you not noticed that theme? It's in her interest that people fail to get her terseness.
She can retreat into her misunderstood brilliant writer pose, but at times I thought her terseness was unsound or intellectually dishonest, that if you really teased it out, it didn't hold up or even fell apart.
I'm not a casual reader. I've wrestled with some thick books and hard styles. That's not my problem with Althouse.
I got so enamoured with the idea of chopping Black in half with 15 e6 I missed the obvious tactical follow-up a move later. And then I kept missing Qxh7. Oh well, it was fun anyway, despite the glaring tactical omissions. Funny for Black to win a piece and then realize he's the one in trouble, and by the way, your Q-side if DEAD! HAHAHA!
I have to agree with creeley. It reminds me of the many lefties who will say or write vile insults and then when called on it, attack the complaintant for failing to see that they were just being humorous or ironic.
Some people do these things willfully and others unconsciously. For Althouse I suspect it's the latter but it is still irritating.
If readers don't get what a writer on a blog is getting at half the time, I call that bad writing.
Yep.
I like H. W. Fowler's rule of thumb: "Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."
I'm not a casual reader. I've wrestled with some thick books and hard styles. That's not my problem with Althouse.
I didn't mean that anyone who wasn't a good match with Althouse wasn't a deep reader. I'm saying that casual reading can be an issue (and most people read casually selectively) and not being a good reader/writer match can be another issue.
What about Terrence Malick? Most people had no idea what he was getting at in Tree of Life except for a feeling they couldn't explain. But that movie is absolutely brilliant. If you are someone who comes from a place of common interest with Malick, his intentions are clear.
Does the fact that the movie is a bad match for a lot of people make it bad? I don't think so.
If half the people thought Richard Pryor was unfunny would that make him unfunny? No.
The thing is -- yes, often times (too often) you do need to spell it out in very explicit terms so even those idiot judges cannot get it wrong. If you write the brief or motion tersely, with the attitude of "you figure it out dumbass," then you are going to get a judge who twists it to whatever he wants.
But we really shouldn't expect law professors to know that is the kind of writing that is necessary. They can just breezily spout whatever comes out and demand that you figure it out.
There is a time and place for Malick (or 2001 or Lost, etc.), which leave a bit of mystery there to encourage you to ponder, and there is a time for plain speaking. When you want to actually communicate an idea, then it is incumbent upon the writer to put the idea in the form that the reader will understand it.
That is the whole purpose of these letter-combinations we call words. A writer doesn't simply write "werlkapsdflsk" and tell the reader it is his fault if the message didn't get through.
Not your blog Larry, nor is it your sugar momma's blog, so you have no cause to tell anyone here what to do.
And you have pissed on everyone who comments on this blog with the exceptions of Lem and Freeman Hunt. You have trolled these pages non-stop since the get go, telling everyone to either contribute money or that they should shut the fuck up and let you and Ann's sock puppet Fionamcgee have the floor to yourselves. Oh, I forgot, you have also sucked up endlessly and embarrassingly to Inga, of all people, so make that three people. (Which makes your comment that only two people here would be welcome back to Althouse a misstatement at least.)
Finally, your treatment of one particular contributor here was just simply disgusting. Do we really need to go back and find where you are calling someone a con man and a liar? No, we all remember it well enough.
Just a disgusting troll, no better than Mary. And your sugar momma is worse, as she hasn't had the guts to publicly do her own dirty work, but has resorted to sock puppets, lawn boys and email to stick it to people.
Meade said... "This comment has been removed by the author."
And there you have it - a record of comments so disgusting even the guy who wakes up next to that hideous drunken splooge repository Althouse cannot let them stand.
Larry, you are a "looser", to use your own retarded choice of a word.
She can retreat into her misunderstood brilliant writer pose, but at times I thought her terseness was unsound or intellectually dishonest, that if you really teased it out, it didn't hold up or even fell apart.
I'm not a casual reader. I've wrestled with some thick books and hard styles.
There is vanity writing. Writing on the internet for free to satisfy your own artistic pretensions and to just get something off of your mind. That's what I do on my blog. Dust Bunnies of the Mind. It doesn't matter to me if people read what I write. I'm pleased if they do and if anything resonates with them, that is a bonus. But....it is a hobby. ON the internet for free.
THEN there is the completely different venue of writing for a career. Writing for MONEY. People have to want to read you and like what you write enough that it is worth their while to shell out some hard earned cash. You can't be a diva. Be so obscure in what you write or insult your audience's intelligence or integrity by calling them names.
If anyone, Althouse, has pretensions of being an author, not just a blogger, but an AUTHOR, then they need to realize that is a completely different business. You CAN have an inflated ego all out of proportion to your book quality, IF you have built a reputation. Steven King is an example of this. But, he had many MANY successful book sales before he could let his ego outpace his plots.
Hey, that MRI was paid for by the useful idiots in WI, so let her have her head examined. They won't find anything.
Which leads us to Exhibit L - her "husband", whom she openly mocks as "Lawnboy" while posting videos of him mowing, what else - the lawn!
We know you feel inadequate, Larry, what with your lack of education, the fact that you married way above your station, the guilt that you feel for taking advantage of a besotted old biddy, but you really should stay home and fill that long empty professorial slot.
Sure, she has a history of marrying gay men, and producing gay offspring, but who knows, if you believe real hard, you fucking tinkerbell you, you might become a real boy.
Or not. In any case, keep trying. Eventually she will eat the poison mushrooms you prepare for her and you will inherit the vast Althouse estate. You will really be something then, that's for sure.
@ Mitchell I've been giving some serious thought, lately, to purchasing a compass, protractor and straight-edge, and teaching myself the geometry that I refused to learn back in middle school as a kind of atonement.
Gee, Lar, I remember when you were going to put me on the good faith commenters list. But now the scales have fallen from my eyes, so I guess I don't meet that criterion any more.
154 comments:
Oh great.
I see the great uniter is threatening to stoke the hot coals of racism if his enemies (the citizens and their representatives) don't play by his rules and let him win.
3 1/2 more years of this.
This will not turn out well.
The song was really pretty.
(I am up because I was putting off updating a mailing list and getting some work done that needed to be done now, and putting it off on account of I can never remember where to find the mailing list in the mail program. Have I ever mentioned that I hate computers?)
In other words, JAL... same old, same old?
"I've Already Heard Some Of That And I Don't Care,..."
That song was so overplayed when it first came out that twenty years later I'm still sick of it.
I see Zimmerman was pulled over in TX for speeding.
No problem, just a warning.
JAL said...
Oh great.
I see the great uniter is threatening to stoke the hot coals of racism if his enemies (the citizens and their representatives) don't play by his rules and let him win.
3 1/2 more years of this.
This will not turn out well.
It usually doesn't. The Lefties only destroy.
The good news is Choom is as lousy a community organizer as he is at anything else.
b. The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
Being serious is a way of being frivolous.
They're not opposites.
Good morning, sports fans!
The hot coals of racism aren't racism by whites.
The whites stopped caring long ago.
Obama doesn't want any blacks acting white.
The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
LOL how pompous.
Althouse is against using children as pawns.
Google : use * as pawns
Top cliche in google, unanimously against.
Queen's gambit is not considered.
I use dog toys as pawns.
The game of chess is impossible to play when children are used as pawns.
I use prawns as pawns.
Use children as bishops.
Children move most like knights.
Is the Queen's speech a weird relic? No. It's a vivid, striking message of something we know that we know even if we mostly live as if we have forgotten: The core of human life is family.
Unless you're a guy.
"Queen's gambit is not considered."
Everyone understands the cliche as pawns. But only chess players know "Queen's gambit". And then the discussion spirals into the Nimzo-Indian Defense, Queen's Indian Defense, Bogo-Indian Defense, Modern Benoni, and the Queen's Gambit Declined. And honestly, how many of us really need to know about the King's Indian Defense or the Grünfeld Defense?
That song was so overplayed when it first came out that twenty years later I'm still sick of it.
First time I heard it, I thought maybe some of the guys from Yes had gotten back together.
"The Burka Avenger wears a flowing black veil — only her brown eyes are visible..."
This protects us from hair-rays.
"Use children as bishops."
But are bishops ever sacrificed? Only to protect archbishops and cardinals and, of course, the pope.
Women are second-rate as chess players because they lack upper body strength.
b. The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
I was about to 'comment' a mock apology, but then thought that it would be dumb to break my non-commenting-even-by-blessed-email-streak I have going on.
Unfortunately, the woman has turned out to be as arrogant as a tenured Wisconsin law professor would be expected to be. She's so fucking edgy!
I will, however, give her credit for the intent of creepy-ass cracker. I was wrong on that.
Her dedication to free speech was all a ruse.
It's that damn second x chromosome, I suppose, that houses the unending desire to control things which shouldn't be controlled.
Onward to Althou.se!
Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.
The Japanese probably have a word for the girl who participates in that weird bukkake ritual but I don't know what it is.
I imagine the job is an entry-level position, and I imagine it pays pretty well, all things considered, but it must get old pretty fast.
"Women are second-rate as chess players because they lack upper body strength."
Below the waist, they rule. Checkmate.
Using children as high performance jet figher pilots is disgraceful.
A reader rarely reads closely. Usually he brings crates of foreign baggage with him, baggage that distorts the writer's work under its weight. He invents phantoms that are real to him. He relates the plainly separate. He infers what does not exist. How can one write for him?
The wise writer will anticipate the reactions of a wide range of readers and will address them accordingly.
If it is likely that someone will object on the merits, then the writer himself raises and then knocks down the objection. If a reader will doubt the accuracy of facts, the writer will provide evidentiary sources.
If some reader is likely to be an idiot who is determined to twist what is written and infer things that are not there, then the writer will very expressly state that what he means is X, and expressly state that he does not mean Y or Z or A or B or C. He will say that he says what he means and means what he says, no tricks, no hidden meanings, no passive-aggression, no "I'm just being provocative to stimulate a discussion" that too many claimed was what some law professor blogger did.
In short, the good writer will always cut the reader off at the pass, taking away any possible avenue that will lead him off the road.
Speaking of which, I wonder who the flying pilot was in the Southwest nose-gear deal. The first officer was a woman.
I am inclined to read the silence.
"Her dedication to free speech was all a ruse."
Oh really. To trick you into what? Listening?
Yes, women have a desire to control. God made us that way! I believe men are supposed to be strong enough to say no.
Which leads me to something I like to ponder - why didn't Adam knock that apple out of Eve's hand? I'm not blaming Adam. Just askin'.
You're cracking me up, rh.
"n short, the good writer will always cut the reader off at the pass, taking away any possible avenue that will lead him off the road."
A good and wise writer is a cowboy. Or a cattle dog. Because readers are just dumb steers. Or sheep.
Oh really. To trick you into what? Listening?
Ruse is the wrong word there. Sorry. That's not what I meant.
Free speech to me is a black and white issue. You can't support it half way. You have to take the good with the bad.
Yes, women have a desire to control. God made us that way! I believe men are supposed to be strong enough to say no.
That's because men are simpletons, for the most part.
Do I have money? Check. Do I have access to food? Check. Do I have sex on occasion? Check.
Life is amazing!
EMD said.
I was about to 'comment' a mock apology, but then thought that it would be dumb to break my non-commenting-even-by-blessed-email-streak I have going on.
When I saw Pollos comment at top I thought... it's a good thing he can make moderate comments.
I, in the other hand, I'm an immoderate commenter.
I cant control my commenting. I got to stay away from that first comment.
You're cracking me up, rh.
I would even say he is sharper today.
why didn't Adam knock that apple out of Eve's hand?
Because he would haven charged?
I guess.
rh: ass-cracking em up.
Yes, women have a desire to control. God made us that way! I believe men are supposed to be strong enough to say no.
And yet, when men do say no, women invariably up the ante.
It's a rule, I think.
LOL
Naked Picasso Robot says:
The Situation is Inherently Cubist. Some Will Have Both Eyes on One Side of the Nose; Some Will Have a Distended Mouth. All Planes and Perspectives are On View in Totality: We Choose Where to Look. The Blue Guitar Will Supply the Mambo and the Tango and the Discordant Note.
That did it.
Time a go.
Naked Picasso Robot says:
The Cubist Blue Guitar Will Play the Version of "Auld Lang Syne" That Is Perfection to Each Listener's Ear; Some Listeners Will have Both Ears on One Side of Their Head To Better Hear.
Naked Picasso Robot says:
The Cubist Blue Guitar Played By the Naked Bob Dylan Robot Is the Sound of a Train Navigating Diverging Tracks: Some Tracks to the Upper Left, Some to the Lower Right. Binoculars Hang From the Neck of a Mule With One Eye Below its Nose.
His master's voice.
Darcy, Good morning to you Tiger fan. Good observation about women. The really controlling women are very unhappy people and make all those around them equally unhappy. On the other side, controlling men are fucking dangerous, and should be avoided by women by any means necessary.
Anyone who had kids remembering them constantly standing on the edge of the pool, in the backyard, on a playground slide saying, "Look @ me..look @ me." Well, that's Larry, plain and simple.
Naked Picasso Robot says:
The Naked Bob Dylan Robot Is Tangled Up in the Cubist Blue Guitar.
Darcy said...
Yes, women have a desire to control. God made us that way! I believe men are supposed to be strong enough to say no.
This is easy to explain. God only provided man with enough blood to make his brain work or his groin. When the blood flows down to the groin all of the thinking is done down there.
You realize that back during the time of Adam and Eve, clothes were not invented yet. Adam had a hard time forming his thoughts.
Plus, Eve was formed from one of Adam's ribs. Little known Bible passage was Adam saying: "What next? Will she want an arm and a leg?"
I used to work the chess puzzles in the early pages of "Chess Review." It was frustrating because (A) I hadn't played chess long and (B) the answers were wrong or incomplete more often than they should have been.
Larry Evans, the #2 or #3 American player after Fischer in those days had a Q&A column in the magazine and in one issue he devoted his page space to telling all the readers who were bugging him about the Chess Puzzles that they were right and the Chess Puzzles guy was wrong and that they should stop sending him (Larry Evans) mail about it
One great thing about 21st century chess is that you don't have to wonder anymore about tactical puzzles. You just fire up your chess engine, input the position, and let it crunch away. Usually within seconds you get the right answer.
At this point chess engines are free or almost so. The source code for some of the top engines, which play at the grandmaster level, has been released to the world. The money these days is in the chess database software.
Wise words, Nick. I'm sure controlling women can be very dangerous too.
And haha, you guys. I loved the responses to the Adam/Eve question. It's a fascinating topic for me.
LOL, Allen.
Meade said...Below the waist, they [women] rule. Checkmate.
That's like comparing apples and pears, Meade.
San Diego’s new policy: Mayor Bob Filner can’t meet in private with women
Long ago my boss came in to discuss a complaint. I had mentioned kettle logic at the lunch table where a woman was present.
A discussion followed, with the boss feeling he was not getting anywhere.
Well, he said, rising to leave, don't talk to women.
Picasso used an asterisk for assholes.
We do have a female chess grandmaster, Judit Polgar, who plays among the top fifty players in the world. She doesn't bother with women's tournaments and has never competed for the women's world champion title. She attained Grandmaster rank at a younger age than Bobby Fischer.
She has a curious story. Her father, a Hungarian educator, believed that any child could be trained to be a genius, and he decided to prove it with his three daughters. He chose chess as the arena for his experiment. Two daughter became Grandmasters, and the the third an International Master.
I'm leery of such experiments on children, but Judit and her sisters seem to be OK.
"Or sheep."
Suppose one of you has a hundred readers and loses one of them. Doesn’t the good writer leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost reader until he finds it?
"To trick you into what?"
It may not happen today. It may not happen even this month or this year. But at some point, Althouse is going to take all her readers, lock them into a thread, and force them all to listen to a well crafted spiel about owning a time share. Those who sign up will have permission to comment.
A declined opportunity for a chess quip, if I recall correctly.
"If some reader is likely to be an idiot who is determined to twist what is written and infer things that are not there, then the writer will very expressly state that what he means is X, and expressly state that he does not mean Y or Z or A or B or C."
I don't know about that. Sometimes, sure, but all the time? Isn't there something to be said for letting the reader do some of his own thinking? And wouldn't that also dictate style?
For example, I like to go for terse. If I were to follow the rule you proposed above, I would have to follow a much more elaborate style, a style that I am not interested in cultivating for myself. (I know others, including my husband, who make use of that style very well.)
An aside: why inject Althouse into my blog post?
3 1/2 more years of this.
Damn, that's awfully optimistic on your part....
PaddyO, LOL!!!! I have never fallen prey to a timeshare pitch. I worked a case involving sexual harassment of a timeshare saleswoman. This was when timeshares just came into existence. Here's the case in a nutshell, so to speak!
There were ~6 or 7 salespeople who had just been given new info by their manager @ a staff meeting. The meeting ended @ lunchtime so they started discussing what to order out for lunch. The MANAGER walked up to the one female staff member, put his dick on the table and said, "How 'bout this for lunch?" That, and the flick, Glengarry Glen Ross convinced me to NEVER fall prey to these scumbags.
The game of chess is impossible to play when children are used as pawns.
Yeah, the little bastards just can't stand still.
No, I take that back. It's perfect to inject Althouse there because there's a perfect example of what I was writing about in this thread.
I took her coffee comment to mean that perhaps her posts have the same tone as always and only seem darker because they aren't followed by light, witty comments anymore, comments that effectively lightened the tone in the past. That makes sense to me. Seems like a pretty innocuous thought too.
And yet, it has caused offense to some. How?
I think it is because we bring other things to what we read.
Nick, yow!
Controlling women was part of the thread, Freeman. PaddyO is a righteous person. Life is too damn short, precious, and unpredictable to have no sense of humor.
Some cases of sexual harassment are a bit gray. And then there are others. Like that.
But are bishops ever sacrificed?
Everything but Kings get sacrificed in Chess. And even Kings if you get stuck playing Chuck Chess.
What are you talking about?
Freeman, It looks like we're all good. I didn't mention, it turned out the female salesperson was a former stripper. The defense thought they could use that for some leverage ala "Like she hasn't seen a dick before." However, a female attorney @ that law firm convinced them that could easily backfire. The case settles, as it should have.
The Googles tells me that there actually is such a thing as strip chess.
Fascinating.
Adam had a hard time forming his thoughts.
It's not much easier now that they wear clothes. Well, it wasn't when I was young, anyway.
This weekend in Arkansas is a sales tax free weekend for school supplies.
So I bought our school supplies today in relative peace.
What are you talking about?
Me? Or someone else? And what what are you referring to?
Beta -- how long did it take you to Train Yourself to Type That Way?
ndspin -- you know, we are still laughing at my house abut your female client who asked what they were doing in there ...
Freeman -- your terse is impressive. I wish I could terse better. I babble.
I thoroughly suspected that my father had lost his mind when, at age 70 or so, he got his first tattoo, a battleship on his chest. He had enlisted in the Navy when he was 16, so he claimed.
Anyway, they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and I've been giving some serious thought, lately, to purchasing a compass, protractor and straight-edge, and teaching myself the geometry that I refused to learn back in middle school as a kind of atonement.
Genetics is a bitch.
Experts believe the threat, which causes diarrhea, has passed.
Largest number of towels appearing in a single poem :
Forty thousand, in Pope's epitaph for Queen Caroline.
PaddyO, Your question about going after the one lost reader is a good one. You at least need to seek from the reader why you lost him/her. If I lost a good client I would really want to know why and would be willing to make reasonable changes to get them back. However, one must always assess motivation. Was the client/reader being manipulative and merely trying to get changes by virtue of knowing they were a good/client? That's where it gets tricky. Then, there are the horseshit clients/readers you lose. To those you say, "Don't let the door hit ya' where the Good Lord split ya'."
Terse is great but the burden is on the writer to make it work.
Althouse is in love with her terseness but she often pared the words down so much that the terseness didn't work or wasn't worth deciphering. Then she complained that readers weren't smart enough to understand or careful enough to follow.
Once that dynamic became clear, if I ran into a sentence I had to read a third time, I skipped it as bad writing.
Excellent writers can manage both, but most writers must choose between being clear and sounding impressive.
What?! Humor in the comments?!
Spinelli, to your comment about the lost reader, that's a key point for any field. Sometimes the audience/client/customer is to blame. Sometimes it's not their fault.
Even when it is their fault, there's often something to learn about how better to communicate, or understand, or whatever. Sharpening the craft.
Reza Aslan claims that Jesus was most likely illiterate.
Part of his reasoning is the premise that a woodworker, back in those days, was merely a notch or so above slave or begger.
That blows my mind because I've always assumed, ever since Sunday school, that being a carpenter was a big deal and that you had to be smart to make finely carved hardwood furniture where there weren't any trees.
Real smart.
Like Norm Abram smart, the first Jewish carpenter since Jesus.
"That blows my mind because I've always assumed..."
It should, and not only because of carpenters needing smarts. A person could be smart and illiterate.
A Jewish man in Jesus' day could not be illiterate.
there's often something to learn about how better to communicate
Split infinitive avoidance alarm!
dive! dive! dive!
PaddyO, Amen.
Althouse started out in the arts and she ended up a law professor. For 20 years or so she’s been standing in front of an audience of law students and performing the Socratic Dances. That’s a lot like being an actor (where one needs to be focused, narcissistic and competitive, to succeed) and the internet gave her the opportunity to present herself to a popular audience as an objet d'art , or as a diva-in-full, or whatever you’d like to call it.
She seldom writes to prove some proposition or another. You can take her at her word when she says she wants to live free in writing. She might pay the bills by being a staid law professor but in her heart-of-hearts she’s an artist. The internet is her medium.
The contemporary artist has much to say but is seldom inclined to say it expressly. It is the gesture of artistic expression, itself, that matters. The medium is the message. Woody Allen is famous for having said that.
Anyway, in the 1976 movie Stroszek, by Werner Herzog, the protagonist is a street performer, who is a sad kind of a guy, who takes one soul-crushing hit after another and eventually he gives up and commits suicide (oops, I mean self-murder) on a ski lift.
So, what’s the message? What does Herzog ultimately have to say to us about the circumstances this poor guy has been put through for the last cinematic two hours or so?
Here is how the movie ends.
If you get where Herzog was coming from, then you get where Althouse is oftentimes coming from.
My two cents.
Reading Althouse this morning, I read this...a restatement from the policy information:
"Don't make any personal remarks and don't go back-and-forth with another commenter." That shows what's not wanted. Basically, the problem could be labeled: clutter. Also: bad faith.
It occurred to me then that this policy doesn't apply to principals of the Althouse blog when they visit elsewhere. I will grant that the performance has improved, measured by less sniping and uncalled for personal remarks.
If anyone checks my comments and position vis a vis the Althouse blog before the meltdown, they won't find a critical piece..in fact I got in to a debate of two with those who I thought we trying to hurt the blog, and then mocked for it, without anyone applying the aforesaid policy either, at least in those instances. Didn't matter back then I guess.
My distaste for Althouse grew out of the early visits by Meade here, and the outlandish remarks made. Meade said he supports his wife, so I assume she also supports him. With that in mind I may read once in a while, but I will never comment again, moderated or otherwise. As Meade has advised everyone here, my contributions to Althouse were mere chump change, as well as here. So be it.
I just find that policy statement odd given the record.
V/R
Omega Male
"Split infinitive avoidance alarm!"
Note, there will not be any posts justifying split infinitives. Never an excuse for that.
C'mon, Paddy. Sans split infins we'd never have 'to boldly go where no man has gone before'. You'd abolish Star Trek?!
"Note, there will not be any posts justifying split infinitives. Never an excuse for that."
What?!
There is no logical reason to reflexively twist a perfectly capable language all out of shape so that it will satisfy latin grammar.
(HA! See what I did there?)
Also... while we're at it... that is nonsense up with which I will not put!
There are excuses for it! I'm very relieved and now feel like I'm in good company!
Terse is great but the burden is on the writer to make it work.
I don't know. Take rhhardin, for instance. TERSE. A lot of people don't know what he's getting at half the time, but should he change his style? Not a chance!
Althouse is in love with her terseness but she often pared the words down so much that the terseness didn't work or wasn't worth deciphering. Then she complained that readers weren't smart enough to understand or careful enough to follow.
And she was often right! Surely everyone has had that experience. You write something, and it's clear enough, and someone comes along and completely whiffs it on the comprehension side. (Surely everyone's been on the whiffing end too.)
Nobody's a perfect writer. Any of us can fall short of clarity now and then. But nobody's a perfect reader either.
Further, does all writing have to be written for the most casual reader? I say, no. There are readers who enjoying teasing things out.
Hey, maybe that's the answer to the question in my blog post. Who does the writer write for? The one who will get it.
Different writers for different people.
Who does the writer write for?
Who is the subject of that sentence?
Few people misinterpret Hemingway. However, since most women don't like him, and since mostly women teach English, each generation is slowly losing his genius. Yeah, Hemingway understood less is more, and that was what made me want to read. No one IMO has come close. Annie is the anti-Hemingway. Her writing is pretentious and stream of consciousness. Now, I have no problem w/ stream of consciousness if it's funny. I can't remember EVER laughing @ anything Annie wrote. Maybe I did, but I don't remember laughing.
Now, some commenters have made me piss my pants laughing.
Nick, then I would argue that the two of you are a bad writer/reader match. Althouse has made me laugh many times. There are commenters here who make me laugh everyday, but they don't do that for everybody. I'm sure there are people who've never made me laugh, yet others find them hysterical.
It's the same with movies. There are some movies that I know are good, and I don't like them. They're a bad match for me.
And then there's God, the only guy who's a match for everybody. But I digress.
Who does the writer write for?
The best write for themselves.
And then lie when asked that question.
Also, I would just like to say it is nice to see Garage and Inga and R&B comment here from time to time.
Sure, we don't often agree, but agreeing is boring.
Freeman, If I've learned anything in my 60 years it is that taste, be it food, music, flicks, writing, comedy or a myriad of other topics is individual. I know people who thought Richard Pryor was not funny. I know someone who HATES PIZZA. Now, I can pick out the folks who are being contrarian and merely trying to stick out. I don't like Annie. However, I have routinely given her kudos over the years for posts, opinions, etc. she expressed. I'm intellectually honest in that regard. I would not want to spend one day of my life surrounded w/ people w/ whom I agreed.
I know someone who HATES PIZZA.
*gasp*
I would run 4 miles for a pizza. I would say 5, but I've never run 5...still, a good pizza...I say give me that challenge.
Hungry now.
@Nick: Who does the bell toll for?
OK, I guess I'm Donne here.
I don't know. Take rhhardin, for instance. TERSE. A lot of people don't know what he's getting at half the time, but should he change his style? Not a chance!
Freeman: If readers don't get what a writer on a blog is getting at half the time, I call that bad writing.
I'm not sure what rhhardin is up to. Usually I find him intelligible, but when I don't get him, it appears that the context is missing, not that he has shaved his words so close to the bone that the meaning is teetering on the razor blade.
So far as I know he never complains that his readers are stupid or careless. Althouse does.
It looks like a game that Althouse offers: heads she wins, tails you lose. Her writing is a long quest to demonstrate she's smart and you're not. Have you not noticed that theme? It's in her interest that people fail to get her terseness.
She can retreat into her misunderstood brilliant writer pose, but at times I thought her terseness was unsound or intellectually dishonest, that if you really teased it out, it didn't hold up or even fell apart.
I'm not a casual reader. I've wrestled with some thick books and hard styles. That's not my problem with Althouse.
A funny chess game.
[Event "unrated blitz match"]
[Site "Free Internet Chess Server"]
[Date "2013.08.01"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Icepick"]
[Black "GuestFQCN"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "E64"]
[PlyCount "59"]
[EventDate "2013.??.??"]
{Blitz 3'} 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. c4 Bg7 4. g3 d6 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O c5 7. d5 a6
8. Nc3 e5 9. a4 Ne8 10. e4 f5 11. Re1 f4 12. Qc2 g5 13. gxf4 exf4 14. e5 g4 15.
e6 gxf3 16. Bxf3 Qg5+ 17. Kh1 Kh8 18. Rg1 Qh4 19. Ra3 Bd4 20. Ne4 Nf6 21. Nxf6
Qxf6 22. Rg4 Be5 23. Be4 a5 24. Rh3 h6 25. Rg6 Qg7 26. Rhxh6+ Kg8 27. Rxg7+
Kxg7 28. Rg6+ Kh8 29. Qd3 Na6 30. Qh3# 1-0
I got so enamoured with the idea of chopping Black in half with 15 e6 I missed the obvious tactical follow-up a move later. And then I kept missing Qxh7. Oh well, it was fun anyway, despite the glaring tactical omissions. Funny for Black to win a piece and then realize he's the one in trouble, and by the way, your Q-side if DEAD! HAHAHA!
Chess is a cruel game for cruel people.
I have to agree with creeley. It reminds me of the many lefties who will say or write vile insults and then when called on it, attack the complaintant for failing to see that they were just being humorous or ironic.
Some people do these things willfully and others unconsciously. For Althouse I suspect it's the latter but it is still irritating.
I would run 4 miles for a pizza. I would say 5, but I've never run 5...still, a good pizza...I say give me that challenge.
I am on Atkins. If five meant pizza right now, I would do it too!
If readers don't get what a writer on a blog is getting at half the time, I call that bad writing.
Yep.
I like H. W. Fowler's rule of thumb:
"Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."
I'm mostly low carb too, Freeman. I really miss pizza!
But it's "Bad eat, you!" (for me)
(I still eat it about once a month)
Have you not noticed that theme?
No.
I'm not a casual reader. I've wrestled with some thick books and hard styles. That's not my problem with Althouse.
I didn't mean that anyone who wasn't a good match with Althouse wasn't a deep reader. I'm saying that casual reading can be an issue (and most people read casually selectively) and not being a good reader/writer match can be another issue.
What about Terrence Malick? Most people had no idea what he was getting at in Tree of Life except for a feeling they couldn't explain. But that movie is absolutely brilliant. If you are someone who comes from a place of common interest with Malick, his intentions are clear.
Does the fact that the movie is a bad match for a lot of people make it bad? I don't think so.
If half the people thought Richard Pryor was unfunny would that make him unfunny? No.
"Bad eat, you!"
I should make a bunch of labels that say that and stick them on all the carby things in the house.
creeley23
intellectually dishonest
*******
Lying, excuses and rationalizations are always harder to read than the truth.
I would not want to spend one day of my life surrounded w/ people w/ whom I agreed.
Cheers to that.
Not that I've ever had occasion to test it.
chick, If there's a pun Hall of Fame you're in it.
The thing is -- yes, often times (too often) you do need to spell it out in very explicit terms so even those idiot judges cannot get it wrong. If you write the brief or motion tersely, with the attitude of "you figure it out dumbass," then you are going to get a judge who twists it to whatever he wants.
But we really shouldn't expect law professors to know that is the kind of writing that is necessary. They can just breezily spout whatever comes out and demand that you figure it out.
There is a time and place for Malick (or 2001 or Lost, etc.), which leave a bit of mystery there to encourage you to ponder, and there is a time for plain speaking. When you want to actually communicate an idea, then it is incumbent upon the writer to put the idea in the form that the reader will understand it.
That is the whole purpose of these letter-combinations we call words. A writer doesn't simply write "werlkapsdflsk" and tell the reader it is his fault if the message didn't get through.
TOP just put up a video where she got Louri to admit and apologize to something. this is big.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-ask-glenn-loury-if-he-thinks-it-was.html
Lem buddy what kind of dog do you have as avatar?
Is it a poodle?
(that was a joke for those of you who are comedy impaired)
Aridog said...
"As Meade has advised everyone here, my contributions to Althouse were mere chump change, as well as here."
You lie. I never said that.
(that is also a joke but strangely enough not comedy)
Lem--
Sorry!
I don't even know who this Louri person is.
She was one of the girls from Petticoat Junction.
Trooper York said...
She was one of the girls from Petticoat Junction.
*******
LOL!
I get that show mixed up with--
Little House on the Prairie...
"My distaste for Althouse grew out of the early visits by Meade here, and the outlandish remarks made."
What "outlandish" remarks? You should either cite them or withdraw your assertion and apologize for lying about me.
Larry - your mother is calling. Go trim her shrubbery.
Not your blog Larry, nor is it your sugar momma's blog, so you have no cause to tell anyone here what to do.
And you have pissed on everyone who comments on this blog with the exceptions of Lem and Freeman Hunt. You have trolled these pages non-stop since the get go, telling everyone to either contribute money or that they should shut the fuck up and let you and Ann's sock puppet Fionamcgee have the floor to yourselves. Oh, I forgot, you have also sucked up endlessly and embarrassingly to Inga, of all people, so make that three people. (Which makes your comment that only two people here would be welcome back to Althouse a misstatement at least.)
Finally, your treatment of one particular contributor here was just simply disgusting. Do we really need to go back and find where you are calling someone a con man and a liar? No, we all remember it well enough.
Just a disgusting troll, no better than Mary. And your sugar momma is worse, as she hasn't had the guts to publicly do her own dirty work, but has resorted to sock puppets, lawn boys and email to stick it to people.
Obviously, the trolls right here and right now are Sexy Grunt and Iceprick.
Meade said...
"This comment has been removed by the author."
And there you have it - a record of comments so disgusting even the guy who wakes up next to that hideous drunken splooge repository Althouse cannot let them stand.
Larry, you are a "looser", to use your own retarded choice of a word.
LOL, Sixty.
Turning Comedy into Tragedy-
(Louie Anderson, 1987)
Louis Anderson was one funny bastard.
Freeman: Here's a couple of Althouse quotes in my magpie file from just the past week.
I'd like those people to confess what they're so enamored about. I bet they won't, because it's nothing but stupidity.
Some people don't quite get the polls I put up around here
The stupidity of others is a major theme in Althouse. I'm not the only one who notices. Here's Bagoh from a week or so ago:
AA had a toolbox full of ways to say: You are so stupid, you don't even know how stupid you are...
Creely, are you one of those stupid people? No? Is bagho? If not, then she wasn't talking about you. And I'm sure she wasn't talking about bagho.
The correct spelling is "bagoh." He's a big boy and can take the insults head-on.
Is that your wife? She must have been a looker...before electricity.
Rodney Dangerfield. Just when we need a laugh.
Laurence
You are also misspelling creeley's handle.
I think the only people who have to care about what your wife thinks are unfortunately her pupils.
Otherwise who your wife thinks is stupid is of very little import.
Last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it.
This could have a profound impact on the lawn mowing industry.
Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?
I looked up my family tree. Two dogs were using it.
A brief physics lesson in the non-romantic sense:
One person cannot be the axis around which the earth revolves.
Even if she has a blog.
Ann said she had an MRI for anosmia. So she literally thinks her shit don't stink.
Are we all better now?
We are?
Good, let's finish off the bottle of absinthe.
And hallucinate pictures of no-carb pizza. And women running.
I'll put on some mood music.
She can retreat into her misunderstood brilliant writer pose, but at times I thought her terseness was unsound or intellectually dishonest, that if you really teased it out, it didn't hold up or even fell apart.
I'm not a casual reader. I've wrestled with some thick books and hard styles.
There is vanity writing. Writing on the internet for free to satisfy your own artistic pretensions and to just get something off of your mind. That's what I do on my blog. Dust Bunnies of the Mind. It doesn't matter to me if people read what I write. I'm pleased if they do and if anything resonates with them, that is a bonus. But....it is a hobby. ON the internet for free.
THEN there is the completely different venue of writing for a career. Writing for MONEY. People have to want to read you and like what you write enough that it is worth their while to shell out some hard earned cash. You can't be a diva. Be so obscure in what you write or insult your audience's intelligence or integrity by calling them names.
If anyone, Althouse, has pretensions of being an author, not just a blogger, but an AUTHOR, then they need to realize that is a completely different business. You CAN have an inflated ego all out of proportion to your book quality, IF you have built a reputation. Steven King is an example of this. But, he had many MANY successful book sales before he could let his ego outpace his plots.
Hey, that MRI was paid for by the useful idiots in WI, so let her have her head examined. They won't find anything.
Which leads us to Exhibit L - her "husband", whom she openly mocks as "Lawnboy" while posting videos of him mowing, what else - the lawn!
We know you feel inadequate, Larry, what with your lack of education, the fact that you married way above your station, the guilt that you feel for taking advantage of a besotted old biddy, but you really should stay home and fill that long empty professorial slot.
Sure, she has a history of marrying gay men, and producing gay offspring, but who knows, if you believe real hard, you fucking tinkerbell you, you might become a real boy.
Or not. In any case, keep trying. Eventually she will eat the poison mushrooms you prepare for her and you will inherit the vast Althouse estate. You will really be something then, that's for sure.
You'll be able to afford a riding mower. Hoowee!
@ Mitchell I've been giving some serious thought, lately, to purchasing a compass, protractor and straight-edge, and teaching myself the geometry that I refused to learn back in middle school as a kind of atonement.
Kahn Academy :- )
on terse -- most writers must choose between being clear and sounding impressive.
Freeman writes clearly. And that's impressive. :- )
Gee, Lar, I remember when you were going to put me on the good faith commenters list. But now the scales have fallen from my eyes, so I guess I don't meet that criterion any more.
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