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Sammy said on August 10, 2008 at 11:36 am
S. Q. U. I. R. R. E. L.
Hey, Spriggy! Hey, Nance!!
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nancy said on August 10, 2008 at 11:44 am
This is going to be dangerous, this technology.
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coozledad said on August 10, 2008 at 12:21 pm
That’s a chicken chaser if I’ve ever seen one. We’ve got a Jack Russel/beagle cross, and it’s my first experience owning a terrier. I thought it was hard-wired for bird destruction until I watched it run up against a Toulouse goose. The terrier fared about as well as I do against them.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 10, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Whoosh — now, when they come out with a TI-84 that has a camera that you can post straight to the internets . . . i’m in.
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kayak woman said on August 10, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I was fussing to myself “how the heck did she post that picture” for about three minutes. And then I remembered (duh) about iPhone applications!
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Catherine said on August 10, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Marvelous picture and technology!
Do I have to wait until Monday to rant about Maureen Dowd comparing Obama to Mr. Darcy? Would someone just get a hook and get Maureen & her incoherent thinking off my editorial page? I know a much better columnist who could replace her…
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nancy said on August 10, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Go ahead and rant, Catherine, but you’re a week behind on that column. This week offers a fresh Dowd atrocity. Guess what she called John Edwards “The Silky Pony!” Isn’t that a hoot? Isn’t that new and fresh?
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Catherine said on August 10, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I read that whole thing (through gritted teeth) and I still don’t know what her point is. John Edwards has pretty hair and I’ve always said so? It’s bad that he cheated on his wife? My freshman English comp teacher would have a field day if he were still alive (RIP, Mr. Garis). I’m sure Jane Austen will have a few choice words in the afterlife. Does Maureen even re-read, let alone edit, before she clicks send?
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brian stouder said on August 10, 2008 at 4:34 pm
This week offers a fresh Dowd atrocity. Guess what she called John Edwards “The Silky Pony!” Isn’t that a hoot? Isn’t that new and fresh?
Well, I cannot find where she called him a “silky pony”, but she DID repeat the Ken doll name that he himself reiterated, on one of his Rielle videos (see below)
Catherine and Nance, honestly – educate me, here. What was so ‘atrocious’ about Ms Dowd’s column?
I think her point was simply – John Edwards wanted everyone to take him very seriously (seriously enough to hire him as President of the United States), and now, in this past news cycle he has said several very bizarre things….certainly the word “atrocious” might apply to his bizarre self-diagnosis and his twisted mitigating factors (such as that his wife was in remission at the time, and that he didn’t ‘love’ the woman he was bedding, etc)
I especially liked this “atrocious” passage –
In the Hunter video titled “Plane Truths,” Edwards is relaxing on his plane, telling the out-of-frame director: “I’ve come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I am, who I really am, but I don’t know what the result of that will be. But for me personally, I’d rather be successful or unsuccessful based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll that you put up in front of audiences.” Ken couldn’t have said it better.
Back in 2002, Edwards sent me a Ken doll dressed in bathing trunks, Rio de Janeiro Ken, with a teasing note, because he didn’t like my reference to him as a Ken doll in a column.
In retrospect, the comparison was not fair — to Ken.
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crinoidgirl said on August 10, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Sweet old man! Our Jack Russel cross is about 3X Spriggy’s size.
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nancy said on August 10, 2008 at 5:38 pm
You’re right, Brian. It was the “Breck Girl” thing, not Silky Pony. Equally clever and fresh.
Here’s what bugs me about the crowing over Edwards: It’s just so irrelevant. The guy’s offstage and likely not coming back. Disclosure, icky as it is, is one thing, but the touchdown dancing seems over the top, given that there’s a dying woman involved, not to mention several children. As usual, I’m appalled by his choice of on-the-DL playmate; as a friend once said of Clinton and Monica: “Is there some shortage of beautiful, sexy, thirtysomething, discreet adulteresses in Washington these days?” A showbiz hanger-on with no fixed career — or name — is just…gross.
This is why the most important hiring decision any manager can make is a good second-in-command. Don Corleone knew the worth of a good consigliere. It’s why I’ve never gotten along with bosses who surround themselves with ass-kissers. It’s just not smart. Edwards needed someone to shoulder women like this out of the plane, not give them vague work contracts.
Also, finally, why do people keep replaying that “I Feel Pretty” video? Is there something that special about combing one’s hair before going on national television?
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nancy said on August 10, 2008 at 5:40 pm
As for Spriggy the chicken-chaser: That’s bred in the bone. When the AKC finally recognized the breed and they made their first Westminster appearance, the WSJ ran a story on them. There was an anecdote about a gamekeeper in Africa who had to get rid of his pair of JRTs, because they wouldn’t stop hassling the elephants.
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coozledad said on August 10, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Nancy; I think our dog Lou-Lou only backed down because she was feeling her age. She’d go for the elephant, too, if it would oblige her by staying still.
Maureen Dowd is mighty old for the pre-orgasmic shit, isn’t she? I would have thought the blackmail she’s collecting from Pinch would fund a shopping spree for the latest in cutting edge electronics. I’m sorry, but she’s emotionally retarded.
Well, on the positive side, this should pretty much end the McCain sex life reportage holiday. It should really open the floodgates for old McStumpy, especially since he’s essentially done the same stuff, with an Asian twist, no less. I’ll wager there’s a sea of camp followers, hangers on, cleaning women and dare I say, farm animals, queuing up with stories of a thousand and one nights of premature ejaculation. Maybe they’ll even start to call him Jiffy Pop.
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brian stouder said on August 10, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Here’s what bugs me about the crowing over Edwards: It’s just so irrelevant.
Granted – and agreed; Edwards was a one-trick pony (if not a silky one). As was said (incorrectly)about Obama – Edwards presidential aspirations really did stem from one good speech, or rather, one clever turn of phrase (“Two Americas”). He hit his zenith when Kerry picked him as his running mate, and then began his ultimately permanent descent when he couldn’t even help that ticket win his own state.
But, for the record, in my opinion the ‘irrelevancy’ of the Edwards story doesn’t exceed that of a Louisiana senator who fritters away his future with prostitutes, or an Idaho senator who engages in toe-tapping networking in airport mens’ rooms….and yet, I recall that those stories were (gleefully!) treated by the Proprietress, at the time, as highly indicative of just how hypocritical and intellectually bankrupt the Republican Party is. “Touchdown dances” are practically the only trick Tbogg the firedog (et al) has, when some hapless GOP-labeled frail human being gets pulled into the gears.
By way of saying – I don’t believe that any party has a lock on all virtue and integrity; certainly not the GOP, nor the Democratic party.
Hell, come to think of it, for the first time ever I am a declared, official, voting and money contributing Democrat myself! (Good God!)
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nancy said on August 10, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Brian, I just punched “Larry Craig” into my search engine, and came up with three posts where his name is mentioned. In one, I wrote:
What could make this morning worse? I dunno, maybe reading about Larry Craig’s bathroom habits. (Did the “wide stance” detail turn your stomach, too?
In the second, I wrote:
Actually, I was thinking about Larry Craig again, as much as I’d like to put him from my mind. I was thinking back a few years, when conservatives were simmering with anger over where Bill Clinton was putting his dousing stick, and claiming that, because of him, they had to explain oral sex to their children, who then went right out and practiced on one another. Well. Because of Larry Craig, I now know more about foot-tapping signals and wide stances than I ever, ever wanted to know, and I’m a gay-friendly sort of gal. Can I blame this on Craig? Because I want to.
And in the third I passed along a link to Mrs. Craig’s Super Tuber recipe. I think your mem’ry’s faulty. But that Super Tuber recipe is positively…Freudian.
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coozledad said on August 10, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I have to apologize. I was fresh in from chasing the bull around the yard and back into his fence again, after I’d prepared to sit down this evening and meditate on vanishing agrarians (Is that a sure fire sign you’re bereft of ideas?). Oh well. I’ve had to run a little bit now and I’m a sort of walking mix of stress hormones and endorphins.
It was cruel of me to suggest that Modo has never gotten her rocks off.
My bull is a sexist prick.
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brian stouder said on August 10, 2008 at 7:15 pm
I think your mem’ry’s faulty.
Oh – OK! You’re right again, and I am wrong. (interestingly, in 15+ years of marriage, I think I have always ended up wrong, when I pick a spot and make a stand versus the intellectual juggernaut that is Pam; doesn’t matter the subject – family history, which way we should turn, who was in what movie, etc etc)
I went and conducted the same search (AFTER making the remark!) and the “glee” is in the comments section, and not from the Proprietress.
Doggoned professional journalists and their fact checking, anyway!
(I originally wrote the sentence as referring to glee “hereabouts”, and then went back and zeroed it in on “the Proprietress”; punchier and more pointed is a good thing, yes??!……which is why I ain’t a writer!)
edit RIP Isaac Hayes
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 10, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Cooze — steal from Wendell Berry, you can’t go wrong. Nance, i’m a Jungian, not a Freudian, which is why i can’t help a certain karmic delight in having a tall, lanky, semi-inexperienced senator from Illinois running for President 200 years after Abe’s birth, even if i suspect that he’s not the worker the old railsplitter was. They did say of Lincoln — his friends did! — that his ambition was an engine that knew no rest, so the whole remarkable parallel works to Obama’s advantage. And this 150 years to the week after the Lincoln/Douglas debates began, with a shorter, better-known establishment pol winning the election but not the war which was to come.
But I’m still enough of an old-line conservative to appreciate the both/and/but in George Will’s column today (see wapo.com or slate.com for link).
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coozledad said on August 10, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I really admire Wendell Berry. Especially his work with the Land Institute. I illustrated one of his stories for a gardening magazine eons back, and didn’t even begin to do it justice. I doubt he’s even seen it, though. It was probably the fifth or sixth reprint of that particular story.
Gene Lodgson’s no slouch either. The Contrary Farmer is one of the principal books that convinced me to strike off in the loony direction.
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Catherine said on August 10, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Brian, I don’t have a big problem with the dancing on John Edwards’ political grave. It’d be nice if it didn’t have to affect his wife and children, but that’s politics and Elizabeth certainly signed up for media attention. And, no, I’m not saying she signed up for being cheated on.
Here’s my problem with Maureen Dowd: she can’t freaking make a relevant, interesting point. Or maybe here IS her point: It’s all about me. I have a romantic fantasy about Mr. Darcy. And John Edwards sent me a Ken doll. Kind of ironic in a column about (and I use that term losely) someone else’s narcissm.
As Nancy says, it’s the irrelevance. If you had a national weekly column, what would you have chosen to write about this week? Health care? Nah, that would be boring when we have the Breck Girl to pile on and personal reminscences to share.
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brian stouder said on August 10, 2008 at 9:16 pm
If you had a national weekly column, what would you have chosen to write about this week?
Catherine – This Russian war has me a little spooked right now – the column would be headed Georgia on my mind. It is tempting to avert one’s eyes, and think “it will soon be over” (given Russia’s huge numerical and material superiority) – but “The Guns of August” have a way of going terribly wrong.
Aside from that, a hearty “AYE” to what Jeff TMMO said, regarding that latter day lanky presidential candidate from Illinois.
The 23rd annual Lincoln Colloqiuim will be held in Galesburg Illinois on October 11, and will revolve around the aforementioned 150th anniversary of the Lincoln/Douglas debates (one of which took place in Galesburg). The forum will feature lectures by Douglas Wilson, Rodney Davis, Allen Guelzo, James McPherson, Garry Wills, and David Zarefsky…. a veritable All-Star cast of Lincoln scholars (and a longtime Friend of NN.c, Gerry Prokopowicz will also be there, if not on the dais)
Pam and I have a room reserved and I eagerly look forward to it, especially as it will come to pass right in the heart of our current presidential race.
http://www.knox.edu/x21517.xml
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jcburns said on August 10, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Nancy, it worked fine except for some sort of random glitch that put a picture of an annoying dog right in the middle of your post. I’ll try to find a workaround…
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moe99 said on August 11, 2008 at 3:23 am
Brian,
James McPherson is kind of a personal hero for me. I hope you report back on the panels. I just remember in high school US history at DHS, Mr. Gordon (we called him ‘chrome dome” behind his back–go figure) plying us with the idea that the Civil War was more about states’ rights than slavery. McPherson blew that one out of the water. It was a revelation to me, and was the catalyst regenerating my interest in US history (I majored in medieval history in college).
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John said on August 11, 2008 at 8:59 am
Brian,
John Edwards is an asshole, slime ball, self-promoting, sleazy, scum-sucking bottom feeder who should have the common decency to slither off to some place we never have to read about him again.
Is that better? Or do we need to beat him up every time he is in the news? Either way is good with me. But if we start beating up politicians who were out boffing the help while their wives were being treated for cancer, then there will be additional names added to the list.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 11, 2008 at 9:57 am
Newwwwwwt. (eeeccccchhhh.)
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brian stouder said on August 11, 2008 at 10:06 am
I just remember in high school US history… plying us with the idea that the Civil War was more about states’ rights than slavery
I got that same foundation in high school (30 years ago…egad!)…and then the Ken Burns opus opened my eyes (Barbara Fields, in particular) and ignited within me a strong and continuing interest in US history and that definitive, cataclysmic war in particular. After reading Shelby Foote’s trilogy (and his novels, too!), and then Grant’s and Sherman’s memoirs (Grant’s are better), and several books about particular battles and campaigns, I found that all the most interesting roads lead right back to Lincoln. Garry Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg is a very thin book – and it’s ratio of insightfulness to word count has got to be very high. Douglas Wilson’s recent book about Lincoln’s writing style and work habits would serve any writer (or non-writer, who wants to at least step up his game!) …and Lerone Bennett offers a fine bucket of iconoclastic cold water about Lincoln the “trimmer”, the flawed man who was a product of his times, and who was “Forced into Glory”. After reading lots of war-related books, and then lots and lots of Lincoln-related stuff, one is drawn to read the Reconstruction stuff (Eric Foner wrote a marvelous – though heartbreaking – history of reconstruction). I have found that an understanding of US History is a huge force-multiplier when trying to understand current events – especially when one ends up in a discussion with another, whose point of reference is a talk-radio lip flapper.
By way of saying – as Nance succinctly put it the other day – everything old is new again
PS – alas, my post high school education amounts to two years at ITT Tech – a diploma in electronics that literally was only used once (it impressed the guy who hired me 22 years ago, since he, too, was a graduate from there). Your medieval history education sounds interesting – what is your opinion on Hollywood’s unending fascination with Ann Boleyn and Henry the VIII (et al)? They seem to have moved past the rotund King with a big piece of chicken in his mouth, and toward a slim and sexy feller, at least on Showtime!
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moe99 said on August 11, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Brian,
It’s funny but there are two sci fi/fantasy books that truly express my feelings about medieval history. The first is a classic: A Canticle for Leibowitz, which perfectly to my way of thinking, describes the medieval mindset…the monks copying endlessly the paper contents of Leibowitz’ briefcase because it, to them, represented knowledge. And the second is The Domesday Book by Connie Willis, who also wrote a book entitled Lincoln’s Dreams that is more about Lee than Lincoln, but still intriguing. The Domesday Book is about a graduate student in history at Oxford in the way future, when, to get a Phd, you have to agree to be sent back in time to do one small thing. The protagonist volunteers to go back to England in the mid 1300’s but there is a problem at the control panel when the machine is set, and she ends up sent to the year the plague strikes. The middles ages was both better and worse than historians and popular media such as the movies portray it. And to be honest Henry VIII is sort of moving away from what is generally defined as the middle ages and into the Renaissance, which gets me into periodization in history which I wrote my senior thesis on, but have blissfully forgotten most of it.
Anyway to finish: Lincon’s Dreams, which I read probably more than ten years ago, led me to the realization that for folks in the Pacific NW, the Civil War really is like an old movie. Their forebears didn’t live through it, or if they did, it was part of forgetting on the move westward. There were no battles to indelibly stain the soil and consciousness of the area. And I found that to be a loss.
Thanks for the recommends.
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brian stouder said on August 11, 2008 at 1:36 pm
moe –
I will seek out The Domesday Book and Lincoln’s Dreams.
You make an interesting point about the remoteness of the Civil War in the consciousness of the Pacific NW.
Honestly – one of the most striking things to me, when I first visited Gettysburg, was wandering the hushed fields where monuments for boys from Indiana and Wisconsin and Michigan and Ohio and PA and NY and IL, etc. stand on one side, while, in the distance, monuments for boys from North Carolina and Georgia and Tennessee and Virginia and TX and LA and MS, etc, stand on the other. Good God, one thinks; how did it ever come to this?
But indeed – as a hoosier, it has more immediacy!
Interestingly, the National Miltary Park at Gettysburg has been working to get beyond the “who shot who, where” history, and address the ‘Why?’ part….which is attacked as “revisionist history”…as if unrevised history must be the truest!
anyway – I’ll use up more of the proprietress’s electrons after the colloquium, and give a full report!
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brian stouder said on August 12, 2008 at 12:19 am
The young folks and I went to the genuinely world class main branch of the Allen County Public Library this evening, and while they went off in search of things, I asked a librarian at the help-desk for Lincoln’s Dreams, and he filled out a slip and directed me to where it would be….and I found a well-worn copy of it, and I have proceeded to get pulled into it, and now have read about half of it! Good stuff! (and I had to chuckle, two other hand written slips were in the pages of the book from previous seekers, and one listed several more Connie Willis titles that the reader was looking for)
And – the 1987 book is funny for what is now “dated” in it; the tape recording phone answering system must appear on every other page; the author spends much effort keeping the protagonist up to date as the plot unfolds, calling into/erasing/recording phone messages…almost all of which would be on his own cell phone, or in his e-mail, nowadays!
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