Althouse

In the middle of the night, I thought I'd have a fit
When my old lady got up to a-have a shit
By the way side high diddly aye do.... 

Children, children, bring the looking glass

Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's arse
By the way side high diddly aye do

Children, children, did you hear the grunt
Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's cunt
By the way side high diddly aye do.... 

The 1925 Harvard Press edition of Montaigne's essays (translated by George Burnham Ives) was published without the essays pertaining to sex. 

A Boston-area ban on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! – owing to a short motel sex scene – prompted the author to assemble a 150-copy fig-leaf edition with the nine offending pages blacked out as a publicity stunt. 

In 1938, a jazz song "Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)" peaked at number two on US charts. The original lyrics were sung with the word "floozie", meaning a sexually promiscuous woman, or a prostitute, but record company Vocalion objected. Hence the word was substituted with the almost similar sounding title word "floogie" in the second recording. The "floy floy" in the title was a slang term for a venereal disease, but that was not widely known at the time. In the lyrics it is sung repeatedly "floy-doy", which was widely thought as a nonsense refrain....

The list ends with the recent idiocy aimed at Roald Dahl’s books (in which "sensitivity readers" endeavored to ensure that the books could "continue to be enjoyed by all today").

"... around their caudal peduncle – the tail stock – causing it to necrotise... a horrible slow death...."

Says Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan," quoted in "Save whales or eat lobster? The battle reaches the White House/Fishing gear used by Maine lobstermen is killing right whales. Will boosting a $1bn industry trump protecting an endangered species?" (The Guardian)(The White House served lobster at a recent state dinner).

In his effort to stir up an appreciation for whales that outstrips our taste for lobster, Hoare stresses their "very long sessions of foreplay of three or four hours." 

Males possess the biggest testes of any animal on the planet, and the mating often involves several males and a single female – a “socially active group” in scientific terms. “You see them rolling around in shallow water in a very sensual way, stroking each other with their flippers. There are a lot of animals involved, and it’s clearly erotic. They seem so caught up in the moment.”

When you think about how far you would go sacrificing your own interests for the sake of saving an animal from suffering and needless death, how much are you counting their sexual performance? What counts more — the size of their testicles, the amount of time devoted to insuring that the female has an orgasm, or the extent to which they seem to be having what the humans call "fun"?

1. Some have FOMO, but a lot of us have FOPU.

2. A lobster has been seen in real life.

3. Kayak camping and the coconut crab.

4. The L.A. conversation.

5. What does Dolly Parton think about prostitution? 

6. I remember when I lost my mind.

7. When David Bowie shouted out "It's great to be in Cincinnati..."

8. The different generations react to they/them pronouns.

9. Unclogging the drain.

1. Your brain would just like to go over a few things.

2. Prompting the AI image generator with nonsense words like "plism sprute."

3. Ricky Gourmet reveals where he got his VibeSmith certification. 

4. A young woman finds it hard to believe the harsh reality of adult life: You have to register your car. Every year.

5. "I'm like: What has Leon the lobster got going on?"

6. She's tried to be normal, but will now be as weird as possible.

7. The TikTok algorithm — thinking this man is a woman — has revealed to him the secret knowledge of what women want.

8. How do you explain the Upper Peninsula? Did Wisconsin lose a war?

9. Russell Brand contemplates heroic sacrifice.

An ostracon (Greek: ὄστρακον ostrakon, plural ὄστρακα ostraka) is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeological or epigraphical context, ostraca refer to sherds or even small pieces of stone that have writing scratched into them. Usually these are considered to have been broken off before the writing was added; ancient people used the cheap, plentiful and durable broken pieces of pottery around them as convenient places to place writing for a wide variety of purposes, mostly very short inscriptions, but in some cases very long....

In Classical Athens, when the decision at hand was to banish or exile a certain member of society, citizen peers would cast their vote by writing the name of the person on the shard of pottery; the vote was counted and, if unfavorable, the person was exiled for a period of ten years from the city, thus giving rise to the term ostracism....

What's going on here? The etymology of "ostracon" (from the OED) explains it: 

Etymology: < ancient Greek ὄστρακον earthen vessel, potsherd, hard shell < the same Indo-European base as the word for bone (see osteo- comb. form), with an -r- suffix (shown also by ancient Greek ὄστρειον oyster n.).

And I watched President Obama last night, and I watched him talking about everything, and I had to put it out. I said, yeah, but he spied on our campaign, and he got caught. That’s about as bad a thing as you can imagine. If that happened to another campaign on the other side, they would have had 25 people in jail for many years already. Many, many years. It’s a disgrace....

At stake in this election is the survival of our nation. It’s true. Because we’re dealing with crazy people in the other side. They’ve gone totally stone cold crazy.... These people have gone insane, and they’re radical left, and you look at some of the things happening in these Democrat-run cities, which we could solve in two minutes....

Joe Biden is a puppet of the radical left movement that seeks to destroy the American way of life....

If you want a vision of your life under Biden presidency, think of the smoldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your town and every single town in America. You’re not going to have law and order. Do you notice? And I shouldn’t say it because he’ll put it in his speech, if he can read it, which I doubt....

There’s only one thing standing between your family and the radical left wing mob, and that’s your vote this November. This is a very important … I feel like I’m a wall. You know, we built the wall on the Southern border.... If you want mobs and criminals, you got to vote Democrat. Look, because that’s what it’s about. They don’t talk about law and order. Now, I’m bringing it up now, but they haven’t, I haven’t seen anybody get up....
But if you want law and order, and I can say it, sometimes they’ll say, sir, say it gently. People want to hear gentle. They don’t want, say it gently. Don’t say law and order. Say, if you’d like law and order and safety. Nah, I can’t do that. If you want law and order, you’ve got to have law and order. You can’t have what’s happening in Portland. Did you see the kid get whacked the other day? Just whacked, like he was a piece of garbage? I mean, who could take it? We don’t want that, and pretty soon we’re going to have to send in our people because we’re supposed to wait to request? Now, I don’t know if they’re embarrassed or what, but these Democrat cities, they’re out of control. They have none. Look at Seattle, where [the mayor] said, no, we want a summer of love. I mean, this woman is crazy, and they would have never taken back Seattle except they knew we were going in the next day. That’s the only reason they even did it.

So tonight we have slow Joe will speak at the Democrat Convention, and I’m sure that he’ll just knock them dead. And he’ll remind us that he was born in Scranton. But you know, he left like 70 years ago, right? He left a long time ago.... But he loves Scranton. I mean, he keeps talking about, I was born in Scranton. I lived in Scranton. Yeah, for a few years, and then he left for another state. You know the state.

But this Scranton stuff. That’s why I figured I’d come here and explain to you one thing. But I think you people know it better than I do. He left! He abandoned Pennsylvania. He abandoned Scranton.

He was here for a short period of time and he didn’t even know it. And today it’s amazing. It goes around in a circle. He still doesn’t know it.

But he spent the last half century in Washington selling out our country and ripping off our jobs and letting other countries steal our jobs, Mexico, China, all of them stealing our jobs....

A lot of Republicans don’t want me to say that, but I’ll tell you, unions are fine... And you have unions here. You have non-unions. What I talk about is the worker. They treated our workers horribly..... But these guys right here, are you all union people? I can tell. Are you union? It’s good, right? It’s fine.... American labor will vote for Trump Pence in 2020. They’re all saying that. And this area is going to be an incredible area. This used to be all Democrat until I came along. Until I came along, this was Democrat. This was heavily union. It was Democrat. It was everything. But they liked Trump and I’m going to never let you down and they will let you down. They will let you down.... 

After eight long years, Joe Biden and Barack Obama left America weak, disrespected, and endangered. We are respected again. We are a respected country again. They said that one of the leaders called up, top top leader of one of the countries. He asked me to call President Erdogan of Turkey, who I get along with very well. He said, “Sir, please, would you do me a favor? Call Erdogan.” I said, “Why can’t you do it?” He says, “You’re the only one he respects. You’re the only person he respects.” I tell you this story. I like telling very personal stories. But they did say that. “You’re the only one he’ll listen to.” I said, “Is that because of the United States?” They said, “No, it’s because of you.” So that’s not so bad. I might as well. I might as well tell you the stories because they won’t.... 

We withdrew from the disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal, a horror show. The ISIS caliphate was destroyed. The founder and leader of ISIS, the animal known as Al- Baghdadi is dead. The world’s number one terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, is dead. Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq. I kept us out of new wars. Everyone said, “Oh, Trump, it’s his … He’ll be in a war his first week.” Instead of that, I got you out of wars. We’re down to a minimum number in Iraq. Afghanistan will be down very shortly to 4,000 troops and that’ll come back shortly too. Syria, we took them all out other than where we kept the oil if that’s okay with you. We kept the oil. We have some back and keeping the oil. We should have kept the oil in Iraq too. Remember, I used to say, “Keep the oil. Don’t go in.” I’d say, “Don’t go into Iraq.” But I was a civilian. Nobody cared. I was like you. So nobody cares.

I want to get that mosquito out of here. I don’t like … They’ll say it’s cruelty to animals. I don’t know. No, it’s true. They were saying the other night, the shark. They were saying, “Oh, sharks. We have to protect them.” I said, “Wait a minute. Wait.” They actually want to remove all the seals in order to save the shark. I said, “Wait, don’t you have it the other way around?” That’s true. I’m not a big fan of sharks either. I don’t know how many votes am I going to lose? I have people calling me up, “Sir, we have a fund to save the shark. It’s called Save the Shark.” I say, “No thank you. I have other things I can contribute to.”

In every action, every moment, and every decision I’m fighting for you. I’m fighting for Pennsylvania. A lot of people got rich and got powerful at your expense. Now these same liberal hypocrites want to open up borders and let violent mobs rule the streets while they live in Waldorf compounds in communities. They want to defund police while hiring private security. They want to let rioters burn churches while jailing you for praying in your church. They want to abolish school choice while sending their children to the best private schools in the land. They want to cancel you. Totally cancel you. Take your job, turn your family against you for speaking your mind, while they indoctrinate your children with twisted, twisted, worldviews that nobody ever thought possible.... 

Joe Biden is the candidate of these privileged liberal hypocrites who hold you and your values in disdain.... Pennsylvania is the state that gave us the Declaration of Independence, Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and generations of American patriots. Just like you. You’re patriots. You love this country. That’s why you’re here. You’re sitting in this boiling, crazy hot, sun. But you’re smarter than me because with you it’s on the back of your head. With me, I’m going to go home and my wife is going to say, “What happened? You look like a lobster.” Look the sun. This is great. I want to look like Lou, nice and dark. Right Lou? But with Lou it’s a little easier I think.

Together we’ll unite citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed, as one people, one family, one glorious nation under God. That’s another word they don’t want you to say, God. You know that, right? Did you see they were doing something last night that was extremely basic, and always has had the word God in it, and they decided to take the word God out. But this is where they’re coming from. They’re coming to get you....

At 55, in clear-framed spectacles and a head of curls, Mr. Gladwell still has the spindly, featherweight look of someone who can break a five-minute mile on a casual weekend run. He lives in a two-story townhouse apartment in the West Village, brimming with books, vintage furniture and a set of eclectic paintings of the Ethiopian Army. We sat at a heavy wooden table as 90-degree August soup poured through the open windows....

Books take years to complete, but thanks to [podcasting], Mr. Gladwell’s typical reader — whom he has described as “a 45-year-old guy with three kids who’s an engineer at some company outside of Atlanta” — can partake in a virtuous cycle of Gladwell programming. The podcast teases interest in a souped-up “Talking to Strangers” audiobook, which builds an audience for more speeches, which stokes advertisers for the podcasts....

Here come a flat-top, he was moving up with me
Then come waving goodbye in a little old souped-up jitney
I put my foot in my tank and I began to roll
Moaning siren, 'twas a state patrol
So I let out my wings and then I blew my horn
Bye-bye New Jersey, I've become airborne

Parapraxis, the clinical terminology for “Freudian slips,” as the episode explains, means abnormal acts in speech, memory, or physicality....

Gladwell focuses on the parapraxis that seemed to occur during performances in the late 60s and early 70s of Elvis’s song “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” which contains a minute-long spoken-word section aimed at a long-lost lover. Though Elvis performed the song many times, he consistently tripped over the interlude. His final sweat-soaked performance of the song is iconic for all the wrong reasons: the words are almost all gone . . . replaced instead by maniacal, uncontrollable laughter.

The spectacle is hard to explain....