OK, that’s not the only reason. Their bathrooms are so much nicer than ours.

Yeah. For one thing, the onion rings never actually appear on screen in the ad (they do in the Sopranos) , so she actually doesn’t really have any visual image to make that connection. So she must just have O=vagina on the brain. Her symbolic leap was completely self-generated.

Which is a little weird in itself, actually, since I’ve never really thought O=vagina in the first place, a visual for a vagina is more like a cleft or a slit or an oval or a funnel or a flower – NOT a circle. Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings aren’t about circles or rings, it’s a different image entirely.

I have, in fact, canvassed several acquaintences (well, one) whether they visualize the vagina as an O or circle, and they…um, he…say no.

I mean, if O= anything sexual, it’s more like an anus.

Back to onion rings – In fact, the Sopranos’ onion rings were smaller than most onion rings, being small enough for AJ to pop in his mouth (like a communion wafer, as Sopranos analysts have said). They were the rings made from slices of small onions, or at the root end of large onions.

But in an ad where onion rings are mentioned but never appear on-screen, the first image that would occur to me would be the archtypical 3″ circumference, 3/4 inch thick, too-hot, droopingly flexible, crispy breading falling off in chunks to reveal soft transparent striated onion beneath like you get at TGIFridays or ClaimJumpers – in short, something so totally NOT like any vagina in this world.

Event the artificial uniform prefab onion rings of the frozen foods section of the supermarket with their pale and frozen breading, baked instead of fried, don’t evoke vaginas to me.

So what the fuck is Ann thinking about?

And what happene dto the preview thing?

I could never top that sort of shit.

• The President and His Jar of Jelly Beans
• The President Who Choked on a Pretzel: Gauging the Gag Reflex in American Politics
• Ruth Cleveland and the Baby Ruth Bar: The First Daughter as Chocolate-Covered Phallus
• TR the Big Game Hunter: Did He Eat the Tongue?
• Nativism and the American Palate: Why Tom Tancredo Will Never Appear in Public Eating a Fish Taco

Because there are some forms of political arsewittery which have evolved not at all in the past 200 years.

I thought it was ‘The Wake of the Medusa’, as in

They marvel at the beauty
The horror and despair
At the wake of the Medusa
No one shed a tear

Then again, when Cadillac pimps a Pogues song that is about a Priest with the clap, then I am not sure what anybody means anymore.

Oh shut up. I am not.

Personal surveillance was conducted on [late columnist Jack] Anderson and three of his staff members, including Britt Hume, now with Fox News, for two months in 1972 after Anderson wrote of the administration’s “tilt toward Pakistan.”

Well, of course they will. I’m sure they have nothing to hide, and all that.

Other fun things the CIA now admits to doing:
* The confinement by the CIA of a Russian defector, suspected by the CIA as a possible “fake,” in Maryland and Virginia safe houses for two years, beginning in 1964. Colby speculated that this might be “a violation of the kidnapping laws.”

* The “very productive” 1963 wiretapping of two columnists — Robert Allen and Paul Scott — whose conversations included talks with 12 senators and six congressmen.

* Break-ins by the CIA’s office of security at the homes of one current and one former CIA official suspected of retaining classified documents.

* CIA-funded testing of American citizens, “including reactions to certain drugs.” (earlier in the article: “a series of “unwitting” tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.”)

Anyone remember Jacob’s Ladder?

This is a huge part of the reason I don’t read Aravois anymore. He misuses that phrase *all the time,* and then gets really snippy and asshole-ish when someone calls him on it.

I mean, I know he used to be a Republican and therefore cannot accept being told he’s wrong, but still.

I protest. I regularly use the word “penultimate” in class, just to freak my students out, and I use it correctly.

If we’re going to ban something, I’d like it to be “begs the question,” a phrase that has a specific rhetorical definition but that is misused 99.99% of the time.

But see, that really IS the penultimate shorter AA.

The Ultimate Shorter Ann Althouse is: I, Ann Althouse.

(Actually, this is the penultimate AA “shorter�. Feel free to use in any and all situations as you see fit.)

celticgirl,

If that is the next-to-last AA “shorter”, than what comes after it? I mean, I really want to know now.

Sorry, but seeing people misuse “penultimate” makes me froth at the mouth like Michelle Malkin when she sees a Mexican.

I will not be satisifed until the word “penultimate” has been removed from the lexicon. It is the most useless and most misused word in the English language.

Just remember, Penultimate Day is November 29 (the penultimate day of the penultimate month of the year). Don’t forget to buy a gift for the person you like 2nd least in all the world.