“Let’s think more deeply about the meaning of carrots”?!?!!11 That’s priceless; that’s Althouse distilling herself to a quintessential headline. She’s an outsider. She’s went to art school (where she got her law degree, obviously). She’s non-partisan; she’s thinking more deeply about the meaning of carrots.

Apparently she got a BFA at UM before moving on to law school. Ghoddess help us all, it would appear that her blog is an act of performance art… aka, “acts forced upon an unwilling public by people lacking both talent and humor.”

The only thing more pathetic than a bad lawyer who dreams of being an artist is a bad artist who dreams — succeeds! — at being a lawyer. And people tell Garry Trudeau that J.J. is too broad a character!

Shorter Ann Althouse: LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!1one!eleven!!

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

AA,
1. If NO ONE gets your joke its not THEIR fault…

2. Telling the same joke over and over again by only changing the adverbs doesn’t make it ‘fresh’.

3. Finally Ann, It really stops being a “performance” when you start screaming at everyone for laughing AT you…

“Sometimes I think it’s like talking about color to someone who’s color blind or melody to someone who’s tone deaf. ”

…or maybe – just maybe! – they really do understand your point, because it’s not nearly as insightful, creative or profound as you think. And despite grasping the full nature of your “genius,” still think you’re a vapid bore.

Maybe Occam can help out here. Is the entire universe of blog readers made up of philistines and cretins, who don’t understand art, law, politics, culture, or simple King’s English? And are they congenitally incapable of understanding the sublime insight and fourteen layers of meta-humor involved in yakking about American Fucking Idol, or a Freudian deconstruction of onion rings?

Or maybe – just maybe! – it really is vapid and condescending tedium that isn’t clever, regardless of whether it’s sincere or somehow hyper-ironic.

It’s not a very sophisticated rhetorical trick there, La Althouse….”if you think what I’m writing is stupid, it’s because YOU’RE the ones who are too stupid to understand it! Zing!”

Them UW law grads are mighty lucky they don’t have to take the Wisconsin bar exam….

I am thankful that Sadly No! is the only place I ever encounter this odd lady.

Shorter Ann Althouse: LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!1one!eleven!!

(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.

Let’s just stick to ne plus ultra, shall we?

“I went to art school” reminds me of Glenn Plummer telling Elizabeth Berkley “I studied in New York with Alvin Ailey! You burn when you dance!“

Pen Warrior,

But see, that really IS the penultimate shorter AA.

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

Warrior:

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.

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.

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.

OT, but I wonder if the Faux Newsies will retain their love for illegal wiretaps now that it’s been revealed that frickin Britt Hume was once a CIA target: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19360920

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?

Am I the only one who thinks those onion ring towers look like a halo of dildoes? With the New and More Stable Wooden Base, for Her Convenience?

Oh shut up. I am not.

Gav-

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.

1, 2, 3!

Some details of the incident that inspired Gericoult’s Raft of the Medusa: http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/medusa/

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

Keep up the good work, Professor Althouse. Your research is on the cutting edge, and I strongly encourage you to make it into a series. Some suggestions for future installments:

• 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

If ‘penultimate’ is the extreme of verbal uselessness, ‘antepenultimate’ must be the penultimate.

Her blog is like someone who’s color blind talking about color or someone who’s tone deaf talking about melody. Saying “onion rings symbolize vaginas in Hillary’s ad” is not having “a more artistic take on the political landscape,” it’s apophenia.

See Chris “Jesus” Ferguson chop carrots with playing cards! From the other side of the room!

You know why I gave up Altmouse?

I could never top that sort of shit.

Her blog is like someone who’s color blind talking about color or someone who’s tone deaf talking about melody. Saying “onion rings symbolize vaginas in Hillary’s ad” is not having “a more artistic take on the political landscape,” it’s apophenia.

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?

Whenever I think of onion rings, it’s the kind made of Play-Doh and bacon.

I swear, sometimes I wish that I were a woman so that I could coax Ann out of the closet and stop her obsessing.

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

i’d rather Bobby Mapplethorpe’s “Piss Crucifix” any day of the week:)