Balloon Juice has earned a lot of Nevermoor Points(tm) recently.
In the sports world, Mauer has earned a lot of bank account points recently. Hank Greenberg (probably) lost a lot of home run points a long time ago. Tango has earned a lot of credibility points recently. Slusser has trolled for a lot of unicorn points recently. And the A’s might wind up with some bullpen arms soon.
Basically, yesterday was the best political moment of my lifetime. I’m in a good mood.
Glenkenny Glen Kenny shares one of my elder-hot obsessions
His focus and his ability to save something that appeared completely dead were both impressive. He might actually turn out to be the person who I voted for.
TWIWT
Well, you were an A’s fan from 2000-2006, right?
It was never dead.
In their zest to out-preen one another, finger-in-the-wind pundits, triumphalist tea partiers, and lefty bloggers with an affinity for righteous doomsaying zoomed past the fundamentals of the situation. It reminded me of the breathless kvetching that often permeated the discourse during the 2008 election, along the lines of Obama not being “tough enough” or needing to “show strength” and “lead”, lest the whole enterprise go up in flames. Funny how those things seem so true, right up until the point they’re not.
If HCR success hinged on courage or ethical considerations, I would have been worried. Happily, members of the House and Senate had only to remain faithful to their political self-interest, and that is always a safe bet.
Panic infected a few mediocre Congressional minds in the wake of the Massachusetts election, but most everyone understood that acquiescing on this would be electoral suicide. Each and every one of them would have been for it before they were against it. The idea that Democrats are hapless failures who squandered their majority would have become received wisdom. GOP strategists across the land would no longer have needed deviant porn to achieve orgasm.
At the bottom of all the kerfuffling, that was the dominant, guiding truth, one that Pelosi and Obama quite clearly recognized.
I think you’re too far the other way (but you’re right it was never dead). There was a real risk something tiny called HCR was passed. Or it was “tabled” to talk about jobs. Or whatever other nonsense.
Disagree. That would have been the case if the Massachusetts election had preceeded the Senate vote, but once they crossed that threshold there was no turning back.
I think a lot of the haggling you saw was just a heightened, lengthier version of what would have happened during the House-Senate reconciliation process regardless. They were always going to argue about the taxes. Stupak was always going to be a hurdle. Going from 60 to 59 made the degree of difficulty higher, but the leadership really had no choice but to go forward full bore.
This meme that passing HCR is going to make November tougher for Dems is inane; precisely the opposite is true. Reporters and pundits don’t appear to grasp this, but I guarantee Pelosi does.
Totally agree on your last point. The fact that GOPers are concern trolling is proof. As for the rest, I hope you’re right but I’m far less sure.
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha:
More entertainment potential
I’m calling it now: Huckabee will be the nominee, assuming Jeb Bush waits until 2016.
I had forgotten this.
He had far and away my favorite candidate domestic platform.
This band of miscreants, this very evening, interfered with a lynch mob in the performance of its duty.
Hope they enjoyed being politicians.
Lynch, def. Arcuri, debatable.
Arcuri’s primary challenger is likely to be endorsed by the region’s doctors. Whether or not a Democrat wins the election, I think he’s toast.
BING!
(and, not to brag, but there are many, many things I could accomplish in this world if I had my own midget)
insert “sal is so short…” line from Matchgame ’75.
He ain’t lyin’!
So I’m working on a theory you may find interesting:
Aliens came and abducted and replaced both Coen Brothers around 2001-2. I liked The Man Who Wasn’t There and think it fits their genre love. But after that…
There’s got to be a way to explain No Country, like it was a scripted idea from the nineties that the aliens just turned into a film.
My friend has been saying since ’96 that there are the Coen Bros., and then there are those guys who directed Fargo.
Fargo was awesome, Blood Simple was awesome. Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing, Hudsucker, Big Lebowski, O’ Brother Where Art Thou?–these are all awesome.
They in no way reflect whatever The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty, Burn After Reading are. All three of them are fine movies–they’re simple little things–not too complicated, not too messy. And also completely forgettable.
They spent from ’84 to 2000/01 making incredible movie after incredible movie. Then they decided to start making boring, plain ones. It makes no sense.
I think it’s clear now that these models of decorum were simply shouting “Neugebauer.”
I was going to link the same thing, but only because of the b-s cover story:
This is a bullshit confession. It is not against his interest to “confess.” He wins money and fame because of it. One GOP’r is going to be designated for the next few SOU or any big house vote to scream something dumb. That person will then get a bump in fundraising from the teabaggers.
PS: I think this last week in bob stupak was totally orchastrated by the house leaders. Without dogged pursuit of the status quo, he and other anti-choice dems don’t have the cover to vote down the republican amendment.
PPS on my firefox at home FK is in an unreadable tiny font. What can I do?
Unreadable tiny font?
The view menu has zooming options, but that’s a really weird one. Is it just FK?
Also, I agree about the first paragraph. I think it’s hilarious that the GOP got to the “benefit from disruption” realization before Dems, since protests are our thing, but they did and it’s not going away.
I’ve been having trouble of late w/FK as well — home (both Firefox on my desktop and Safari on my laptop) and work (Firefox). Oddly enough, my mobile experience has been fine.
Interesting theory on Stupak. Not entirely impossible — I mean, especially since nothing he said was true. He even duped Cao (R-LA).
Our host has had some more hardware issues (if that’s what you mean).
I don’t know if I’d go as far as orchestrated (I think they were prepared to proceed without his bloc), but the executive order deal was definitely 100% about saving face for Stupak.
Basically, what Yglesias said:
About.pucking.time!
Excellent news.
Breaking Bad: not a very good episode.
I decided I’m only watching episodes with Saul in ’em.
(Actually, we just canceled our cable a couple weeks ago. Imma wait for FKonsensus on their worth before ordering eps from iTunes.)
no A’s games?
Contemplating mlbtv. Can I have $105?
Completely worth it, especially if you spring for a Roku as well.
Cool. Thanks for the ref.
And mikeA, please note that it seems as though mk is saying that your giving me $105 would be completely worth it.
If you do that, you should get a permanent fake ip address unless there’s some other way to defeat the blackouts.
Yeah. Forgot about that. Years ago, I think it was enough to just use a credit card with an out-of-area billing address, but no more.
Wouldn’t you be blacked out?
Ah, yes, that’s what it looks like. Score another big win for the web-savviness of the marketing MBAs at MLB!
Like the MLB marketing gurus, I’d assumed you’d be watching the Yankees and Red Sox.
That’s sad. I really like that show, but was worried about its direction.
Last year’s cliffhanger was awfully sharkjumpy.
I felt it was decent. Not sure what cliffhanger the monkey was referring to, but they more or less wrapped up last season’s events and were starting anew. Aside from Walt’s beard, I think their direction is a reasonable one.
I did think the way they handled the Jesse-in-rehab situation was poor.
Oh yeah, I’m not sure if it was my own lack of knowledge, but the whole yellow-filter desert scenes were beyond me.
yellow filter desert was just setting up a new plot for this season. It is possibly going in a good direction but I thought this particular episode was hackily done.
I beg to differ. Last night’s episode was completely gripping.
I assume the scenes from the desert will be like the swimming pool scenes were last year, with little bits revealed over the course of the season. (And hopefully a more realistic resolution.)
Goodman on s3e1: Spoiled Bastard postscript, review from Friday’s Chron
I’ll read and respond once I’ve seen the ep. Hopefully that’s tomorrow.
**spoilers below**
I thought it was great. Not up to the peak of the series (S2, episodes 7-8, imo) but up there with the other episodes from S2. I loved the opening and the school assembly scene.
The only part I didn’t care for was cool guys don’t look at explosions.
I was not familiar with Santa Muerte (like Jesus Malverde last season), and the Wikipedia page doesn’t mention this, but I found an article on the crawling via Google.
I also don’t think the show jumped the shark at all with the S2 cliffhanger. One, obviously it’s supposed to represent all the people harmed by Walt’s decision. Two, they explained how it was possible when Walt talked to Jesse. Three, it’s not unheard of for dudes named Walter White to cause for mid-air collisions.
Also I’m not the only one who sees the Coen bros everywhere
I don’t necessarily see Coens everywhere, but I do see Sopranos. The episode from season two, “Four Days Out” was almost the sam episode as “Pine Barrens” episode where Paulie and Christopher get accidentally stranded in very rural New Jersey.
Also, the tension between Walt and Skyler is almost a direct copy of Carmela and Tony, even in the wife breakdown over discovering the breadth of the husband’s evil-doings and having an epiphany and throwing his ass out.
And that’s really lame….
Agreed, but a Walter White really caused a mid-air collision, that is so awesome that it makes it okay.
**spoilers below**
I’m coming down as good-not-great. I don’t like the silent cousins. I don’t like the changing clothes but keeping weird boots. I don’t like the taking-mass-transit-and-killing-everyone.
I do like Jesse (and anticipate that therapy won’t stick. I think they’ll do a good job with his character as he goes through some tough times. I also like Flynn and everyone else picking the wrong side in the separation, but Skyler not telling them.
I’m certainly looking forward to the season, but I’m going to need more on the Mexican assassins angle before I’m ok with it.
Maybe the guy really likes his boots. In any case some random farmer probably wouldn’t be the right shoe size.
They were not planning on killing everyone, they only did it because that guy bragged about knowing Mexican gangsters and then noticed the boots.
Which is why you don’t wear the boots (if you must keep them, put ’em in a bag)
One more thing, why are you so sure they’re “assassins”?
I don’t know if they thought things through to this extent, but Santa Muerte’s robes are either blue or purple…
Wikipedia: “Blue garb indicates wisdom, which is favored by students and those in education. It can also be used to indicate health. Brown robes are used to invoke spirits from beyond and purple robes indicate the need to open some kind of pathway.”
Walter finally has some time away from his family, I’m hoping Walt and Jesse go to Mexico this season. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up, with all the shit going on down in Ciudad Juarez right now. And doesn’t Hank have to return to El Paso eventually?
They put his picture up, and have already racked up a significant body count.
Did Michelle Cottle just call Eric Cantor a dildo?
But what was Cantor wearing?
{snerk}
That’s pretty great. At least we can all now agree there was no content worth reading on the website.
I knew I liked him.
Trying to guess w/o clicking/mousing … Grayson? Too young, I think. Big Dog?
Yep. Hunh. He’s usually not so candid with the attacks like that. Guess Cheney attacks can be considered fully triangulated/median at this point.
Ah. Gridiron. Scripted, a few mean-spirited jabs part of the genre.
Yep. This was a winner too:
He always was funny.
re. Megdal’s Greenberg article:
That’s a difference of about 5 or 6 walks over the month. It’s also about 1 standard deviation, which means that someone with a consistent walk rate of around 15% should expect to have a calendar month with a walk rate of 20% roughly once a season.
I suppose to really answer the question you’d have to look at the pitchers faced. And, of course, you’d be left with SSS issues no matter what you do.
That said, the numbers support the accusation to the extent they do anything.
The numbers are far enough down in the noise that the extent to which they do anything is basically zero.
I guess my first question is how noisy walk rates are. I thought they were pretty quiet.
y-y vs m-m
I don’t know. Even if you accept that the accelerated September walk rate is fishy, how could you ever know what portion of the difference between 15.9 and 20.4 to attribute to anti-Semitism? His walk rate during April and May was 21.1%. June through August, it was 14.9%. You can contrive a lot of stark-sounding comparisons with the aid of arbitrary dividing lines.
9/1, zero walks. Anti-Semitism not kicked in yet. Probably because he only had 46 homers at that point. I mean, no use expending unnecessary hate. Gotta save that for crunch time.
But wait! After an off day on 9/2, he walked 9 times in the next four games. And still, only 46 homers. Were the White Sox and Browns pitchers walking him just to be on the safe side? Banking wasted PAs in case he got hot later in the month? Diabolical, sure, but I wouldn’t put anything past those racist fucks.
Then he hits a shitload of homers between 9/9 and 9/27, putting him within spitting distance of the record. Honestly, I blame this development on inattention to detail on the part of the anti-Semites. They only walked him 16.2% of the time during this stretch! Maybe the memo didn’t circulate quickly enough (no Internet back then, after all).
So. They got themselves into this predicament, now they’d have to get themselves out. Clearly, with a Jew only two homers shy of the record with five games to go, a racist walkathon would be forthcoming. Except it wasn’t: he walked 4 times in 22 PAs.
He stayed stuck on 58, nevertheless I have to conclude that the anti-Semites bungled their plot, or at least chose an odd, front-loaded scheme.
At least it’s an ethos.
Good points. I’ll admit I was too strong in my link above. I could, I’m sure, craft a story explaining all of that but it would also be hindsight-based bullshit.
See how quickly we resolved this argument about baseball?
Whoa. Reid just told McCain to stuff it.
Give ’em hell, Harry!
I hope you are right for once in your life, Mark Steyn!
If I was a blogger, this is the sort of thing I’d keep in my back pocket for fisking on slow days. Subject to change of course, but I think my headline would be “Steyn: Health Care for Poor People Sows Global Chaos”.
I love that it doesn’t occur to him that our “global military capability” is the thing that is unsustainable/unaffordable/unnecessary. Just doesn’t cross his mind. Beautiful.
Speaking of, McCain probably should never say this:
I mean…
Dukeshire: 4 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 1 K, 0 R
I disagree with this post about baseball.
I disagree with this prost about baseball.
I slightly disagree with this post about baseball, but I bet andeux and I can reconcile our differences in three comments or less.
Take another look at my comment.
I disagree with this Proust about baseball.
I remember when Duke and I first shared that Madeline…
I don’t understand why a guy would get all worked up over Kim Novak when Barbara Bel Geddes was right in front of his nose.
You and me both, brother.
Now, the one band name I actually would use (had I any actual, you know, talent and/or discipline) is The Sad Carlottas.
In college, I banged the skins for Tuna Industry Payback.
TWSS
MikeA approved violence. Although the facts are distinctly unimpressive.
Tea baggers versus mimes.
Hmmm.
I’d be okay with both just getting bitch slapped.
Jeebus, if anything sums up the level of political discourse in this country that may have just done it. Frakking mimes.
Left one hit, right one falls down
I expected that to be a link to a “Truth About 9/11” website.
LOL. Nicely done.
Someone needs to incorporate Lucasfilm/ILM into the Conspiracy.
iFSU, this got we
The gist of this article on women in science is:
1. Girls are fast catching up to boys in math.
2. Still, ingrained sterotype reinforcement causes women to perceive themselves as less capable than men at math, even though they’re not.
3. Once women enter science/engineering/technology fields, they get screwed over.
I know nothing about the subject, though I am inclined to believe the “soft bigotry of low expectations” aspect. Holy God, I just quoted George Bush (well, Mike Gerson anyway).
In any event, I’m curious if this matches up with andeux (you’re a tech person, right?)/gso/sal’s experience in their respective fields (sal – did your wife ever feel she was at a competitive disadvantage due to institutional sexism, or would she scoff at the conclusions in #3 above?).
One thing that we definitely see in hiring is the gender (and cultural) difference in cover letters and research statements – to zeroth order, white male postdocs present both their own accomplishments and the overall difficulty and/or value of their entire research domain much more aggressively. We try to calibrate for this (like a park factor) when deciding who to call to interview, but it’s tricky.
This is a pretty well-discussed issue in academic circles.
I don’t know what is considered institutional sexism, but hard sciences are dominated by males and what you would typically call male characteristics: aggression, direct confrontation, competition. Many women that I know, including my wife, simply don’t care for that working style and so grow disillusioned with science as a practice. In mrs salb918’s case, it certainly wasn’t for lack of brains, that’s for sure.
Many of the women that I know who have been successful scientists espouse a lot of what are considered male characteristics. It’s rare to find the nurturing scientist, although Uri Alon is a favorite example of mine.
The tenure process selects against people with spouses, children, lives outside of work, a normal sense of human decency toward students, etc. So it’s natural that women are less likely to pursue jobs in academia and less likely to win tenure if they do become academics. It is also possible that they are selected against in the interview process implicitly (or explicitly) because they are not judged to appropriate personal characteristics it would take to succeed as an academic.
[Oddly, the three scientists I would consider my most important mentors are all women.]
All that said, it’s not at all clear to me that making science more woman-friendly will lead to better science. Sure, you might increase the innate brains in the talent pool, but almost certainly at the expense of “how-much-am-I-willing-to-kill-myself-for-a-job” in the talent pool. And, from where I stand, it’s the latter that is the prime determinant for who is a successful academic scientist and even who gets the “genius” label. Out here at four standard deviations, that’s the only way to really distinguish yourself in academia.
It’s particularly bad in the physics, chemistry, and biology. My experience with engineering is that there is no shortage of women getting advanced degrees in engineering (my incoming class was about 40% female). They do tend to opt for private industry over academia for the above-stated reasons. That’s an easy (and expected) leap for engineers, but not so much for scientists.
You’re hitting on some pretty core issues for me here, surprisingly.
I loathe that way of running just about anything, whether it be an office or a cohort or…well, anything. The only thing that aggression and competition will bring out in me is complete shutdown. I realize they work and work very well for some, but I fall in with Mrs. salb918 there. The best way to get me to flourish is through nurturing and idea-sharing, as happy as that may sound to some of you. It is only through the spirit of cooperation that I actively participate.
My vast experiences at institutions of higher learning suggest I’m nowhere near alone. I do think that John Dewey, bell hooks, et. al., are onto something when they discuss varying methods of learning and communications.
While we can break it down according to sex, we don’t necessarily need to break it down according to sex, though providing a “male” and “female” method of communication and organization does provide a sort of communicative shorthand. It does not break along sexual lines, however, as I strongly lean toward “female” methods, and have dated several women who communicate along “male” lines.
I think there’s something to a vertical structure and a horizontal one, and, as men in our society, we tend to continually want to rank everything. While this makes our social structures less messy (and, speaking as a former case counselor in a group home, significantly easier to control), it also completely or partially stifles every voice that is not the alpha dog. There are, certainly, advantages to this sort of structure, but simply because it is the prevailing method does not by any sense mean that it is either the only way or the best way.
re: breaking it down by sex, yes, it is an easy communicative shorthand.
I really want to agree with you, but I’m having trouble picturing a different way working at Sal’s 4th standard deviation.
let me know if you find out.
I really love science, but I’m just not cut out for being an academic research professor. I want to watch a baseball game from time to time. I want to spend time with my wife and kids. I want to work hard on my own terms. Even at the tier of university where I think I could get an assistant professorship, the demands on pre-tenure faculty are just out of control ridiculous.
Thing is, there’s a steady supply of people willing to do that work who are as smart and smarter than I am, and they will almost certainly be more productive. So I don’t begrudge them one bit.
I think national lab research science is much less stressful (although you don’t end up with tenure).
That is why I am applying to your esteemed facility. Any tips for my research statement?
I’ll happily take a look at it.
(no surprise, it was a very lucid, compact description of exciting work)
The closer I got to academia, the more I realized that tenure corrupted. Archaic and corrupted. Great mix.
No kidding about being archaic – in what other discipline are they still wearing robes and participating in the medieval claptrap that is called commencement?
English legal practice.
Appreciate the input.
I thought it sucked.
almost certainly at the expense of “how-much-am-I-willing-to-kill-myself-for-a-job†in the talent pool. And, from where I stand, it’s the latter that is the prime determinant for who is a successful academic scientist and even who gets the “genius†label.
We tend to think of “drive” as an unmitigated virtue, but quite often it is a synonym for unhealthy single-mindedness. I think it is probably very difficult to give yourself over fully to a job, sport, or a field of study without sacrificing relationships, perspective, understanding of the world around you, etc.
Yves Smith:
From the I-bankers that I know, that sounds pretty much true. And it’s a similar single-mindedness with most academic scientists, a leap that I have neither the resources nor the inclination for (yeah I ended that sentence with a preposition).
If the goal is to maximize some kind of gross national scientific output, then I don’t know why we would change the model (and necessarily leave behind a population of talented scientists, many of whom are women).
I will take issue with sacrificing understanding of the world around you. Many of the successful academic scientists that I know are hyper-aware of the world around them within the context of their expertise. That is, they are constantly being bombarded by ideas, internally, of how they can improve/change/monetize the world around them by using their particular expertise. This is a useful skill for their career, but also for society at large. I am certain that somebody like Robert Langer draws his inspiration from the world around him, and society is better for it.
Ditto on the first line.
I also agree with mk that, for the individual, it is probably unhealthy.
That said, there’s a reason corporations are accused of wringing the life out of their employees and then discarding them: it’s the best thing for their bottom line. Most I-Bankers quit after a couple of years, but when they do there’s a line out the door to replace them.
Similarly, scientific knowledge seems to me to have expanded to the point where a Ben Franklin-esque generalist just isn’t going to learn enough about specific areas to be useful. Dogged single mindedness might suck for the scientist’s family life/happiness/etc, but it makes it more likely the actual problem gets solved.
re: sal’s first line
Eh, all the i-bankers went to frats. The life of a junior analyst/banker is basically like 9-12 months of forced binge drinking and scrubbing bathroom floors with a toothbrush.
My impression is that the demand for white collar generalists is shrinking overall, not just among the hyper-achiever set. For most corporate jobs, I’d still argue that “smart, good at various things” is more valuable in practice than “clearly qualified to do this one thing”, but the latter is definitely more likely to be hired.
Anyway: I actually think a lot about the tension between expertise and generalism (for lack of a real word), though not in relation to science and not in the implications-for-society context Sal describes. My concerns are, as ever, more focused on my own navel.
I’m an inveterate dilettante, and as such possess a little knowledge about a lot of things, but not deep knowledge about any one thing. Consequently I sometimes daydream about being really great at something, or laying claim to real, rarified air-type expertise. What if I knew everything there was to know about philosophy of the mind, or SQL Server, or agriculture subsidies? That would be awesome!
Alas, the hard truth: I don’t want to learn the thing, I want to have learned the thing. I can’t bear the sacrifice inherent in the process. Not sacrifice in terms of effort. Rather, sacrifice in terms of time not spent collecting bits and pieces in dozens of different areas. As it is, I always feel like I’m missing something (when I am in a particularly melodramatic mood, I blame the Internet for this).
I also would not want to turn into (for example) MGL, so obviously accomplished in one area, yet so cringe-inducingly naive/blind/wrong whenever he ventures outside that zone of expertise.
I’m not sure which temperament – dabbling fiddle farter or laser-focused striver – is preferable with respect to my Personal Happiness Quotient, conversational chops, value to society, etc., but given the cards I was dealt, I have opted for a three-pronged strategy:
1. Cave utterly to my nature (fiddle farter)
2. Make fun of everyone who is not like me (strivers)
3. Secretly envy the people I am making fun of
(i) Where does the popularity of Gladwellian faux-generalists fit into your thesis?
(ii) I’m sure it must be obvious, but MGL?
Mitchel Lichtman
(i) What is a Gladwellian faux-generalist? If you are thinking of linking something by way of explanation, you should know that I would rather eat glass than read a Gladwell article.
I’m thinking of the fêting and fellating of superficially polymathematical pseudoparadoxicalist windbags like micro-G and the Freakonomists.
I went to grad school in pure math. It is a lot like sal described the other sciences, with some minor differences. Most of the people in math do have those stereotypically male characteristics – wanting to solve every problem, ace every test, and compare themselves against the rest of the world by how well they can do those things. But it’s also a field where no one really gets rich or famous, which selects against the people who are careerist dicks. (There are still some dicks of course. There are always some dicks. But mostly they are not careerist dicks.) So on the whole you have a bunch of people who are by nature competitive, but more collegial and less cutthroat than in some of the other sciences.
People in math also tend to be pretty liberal politically, and there is a lot of awareness of the lack of women and various efforts made at recruiting and mentoring. Anecdotally, of my close friends from grad school, the one who has been most successful is a woman. She just got tenure at a pretty good university.
Since being paroled, what I do is some combination of math/programming/engineering (my card says “Senior Analyst”). I can’t say how our female engineers are treated compared to the males, as we don’t have any.
For a while, NASA’s cosmology program was overseen by a division called “The Universe”, which meant that there was a woman at NASA HQ whose card said “Director of The Universe”.
You should read Against the Day, if you haven’t already. If the math makes you break out in hate sweat (me), the experience of the book alternates from frustrating to incredibly frustrating. If you get the math (you), probably the whole thing goes down a lot easier.
I want to have read Against the Day. Pynchon’s shorter novels have a pretty strong .750 average in my mind (liked Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice, found V. rather impenetrable), but I’ve never tried to tackle the three longer ones.
(I should also read Mason & Dixon since my job involves making surveying equipment. Only my prosaic name prevents me from being a character in a Pynchon novel.)
You and mk can be the Sample brothers: Brobdingnag (alternately “Bro” or “Nag”) and Blefuscu (“Fu(s)cu”).
And you come from a family of chocolatiers.
And you’re assimilated ethnic Laputans.
I read the last three to four hundred pages out of spite, almost. You couldn’t break me, Pynchon. I finished your fucking book.
(Re-reading the following, uh … it’s possible my complaints betray an unwarranted bitterness. In other words, I hated it because I didn’t get it. So I will give him a few backhanded compliments as recompense: It is an oppressive, ego deflating experience to spend a month with such a prodigious intelligence. The bad parts pissed me off. The good parts – and there are many – made me feel cowed. The man has an enormous brain, and he lays down some crackerjack prose. And at times, he is pretty damned funny.)
Here is a review that made me feel as though I was not alone in the universe:
He seems temperamentally incapable of lingering anywhere long enough to cultivate the reader’s involvement. It’s always this new thing, that new thing, another new thing, and another and another and another. More characters, complications, settings, interludes, crazy names, chance encounters, madcap banter. And math. Always math. It is exhausting. As soon as you settle into anything or start to give half a shit, it’s on to some brand new fantastical sequence with a whole new slate of players. It’s beyond exhausting, actually. It’s dispiriting. Like he is trying to break your will.
At a certain point, I was begging him, out loud, not to introduce any more characters or make me read another equation.
He’s so restless to invent, bursting with arcana he can’t help but teasingly semi-elucidate. So he skips from one character to the next, using the (ostensible) protagonists as segues to the gags/ideas/chaos that – for the moment – command his attention. It’s breezy enough in the beginning, but the purposeful alienation (of the reader, by the author) works on you, makes you less interested in turning the page. I guess if Clever splits your gut and you get all the references, a thousand pages of this is a fascinating adventure. Otherwise, it’s an epic fucking struggle.
The book is threaded through with a fixation on doubles, oppositions, multiples of self, duality: brothers, companions in crime, ravishing women of the same name, a different ravishing woman split off into multiples by her magician husband, anarchists & oligarchs, eternally youthful quasi-real adventurers and their eternally youthful quasi-real brides, Earth itself (there are – maybe! – two of them, with – again, maybe! – separate though similar realities). The book begins, in fact, with the collision of dime novel myth (the Chums of Chance) and capitalist underbelly (Chicago slaughterhouses).
Incessant winking drains the themes of potency, though. It’s all played for laughs, in one way or another. You slog through 1,100 pages totally lacking in forward momentum, and in the end, you have no idea how seriously you were supposed to take any of it. I always find this sort of affected ironic sophistication cruel and condescending: “that was fun and all, but don’t be a rube, it was just a bit of roguish messing about.”
I would say that mimicing genre styles is like eating thirty cartons of Milk Duds or balancing a flower pot on your head – impressive, but not obviously meaningful.
/end rant
Nicely ranted, Bro. I still haven’t finished it. (The Pynchon, that is, not the rant.)
I like books that are well written and make sense. Eat it LB and Pynchon.
I’m not a huge Pynchon fan.
But duly noted.
I, for one, am glad you read it.
David Ortiz creams Coco Crisp.
rubber linky.
what in great god’s name does that mean?
I’m not sure I want to know.
Well, I’m not sure but the link isn’t working for me.
The link worked for me, once I got up enough courage to click it.
I seriously love you.
I still have something that I mean to send you for your birthday. Something small and insignificant, yet apparently too large and complicated for me to actually put into an envelope to be addressed and mailed. Don’t take it personally, I do this with every birthday-related thing I ever send/give. I’m not postally punctual.
me neither. I sent Don a Christmas card this year in late January.
Every year, we consider making cards or writing a Christmas letter, and then all of a sudden it’s March.
I can beat that. This year we ordered 100 cards and then sent out about 20 of them (sort of late).
Poppy Jr.’s high school graduation announcements and senior pics are three years overdue to be sent… although I did open the box to get one out so I could hand-deliver it to my mom. I think I also hand-delivered one to my niece in Chico. So I might be driving to Florida to give LB his teeny present, since self-adhesive stamps are still just too difficult.
Don’t forget your diapers.
And the dry ice.
And yet, whenever Ellis is denigrated, you are punctually postal.
I haven’t happened to visit AN since MaEl’s hammies tightened up, so I haven’t seen anyone using the (other) “f” word on him yet this year… ;)
Jesus. Somewhere on the Peninsula, a drifter is missing his vital organs.
Poppy can’t say anything, it would be a HIPAA violation.
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Huh, that’s weird. It was there for me before, gone now. That was some random picture that a guy on BTF linked to, so it’s presence or non-presence is out of my hands.
Trust me. It was funny.
could you draw a non-hierarchal-based picture for me?
If only I could figure out how…
Still works for me. I’m special.
Gaudin waved. It’s hard to believe that he’s only 27 years old; he’s already played for six different teams.
Over the last three years, he has a 92 ERA+, 7.5 K/9, 4.2 BB/9. CHONE predicts much of the same for next year. There’s probably 15-20 teams that could use a guy like that.
He’d pitch up to his potential if he’d only stop spending time with his kids and taking in the occasional chem lecture.
You. To the back of the room.
That’s scary enough to scare the Christmas out of any kid.
Christmas, what a Ratz-Pope
I just thought someone should wave back.
I can’t find my giant snowzilla.
TWHS
Is that Popeaclaus?
I thought it was the Santa Emperor from Star Wars.
It’s what the parents of Whoville scare their children with – Nazi Pedophile Grinch
That should be a fucking teeshirt. Seriously.
Nazi Pedophile Grinch.
Or at least a sign.
TWsomeoneS every time Gaudin gets waived or traded.
Well, when it stops being true it will stop being said.
Now?
zzzzzzzzzing!
You sonofabitch.
“What a charlatan this man is,” the judge said.
I am *sorely* tempted to violate my no-sig policy for that quore.
Natural selection.
Wait, why do you have a no-sig policy?
He’s afraid of BPA
::shrugs:: Dunno.
That’s good enough for me.
Look out, filter ahead!
Always remember that even core conservative talking points are bullshit:
Comment at 10:30 or so:
And yet…
That’s less clear. This would be straight up “please invalidate this law because we don’t like it”
That’s true. But, as luck would have it, there will be an essay question about judicial review on my midterm tomorrow and I can probably schmooze some bonus points for actually paying attention to current events. So, sue away, wingnuts!