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Entertainers bring Mayflowers
Cool things with words:
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time_shark has been interviewed at Enter the Octopus.
John Stuart Mill did many more awesome things than be particularly ill on half a pint of shandy, especially the way Adam Gopnik writes about him.
That someone who up through college stuttered so severely that he was nicknamed "Dash Biden" not because he was lightning on the field but because that's how you spell out "B-B-B-Biden" can grow up into a politician whose prevailing silly faults are rambling on like there's no tomorrow and a tendency to blurt out whatever drops into his head as though he has no brain-to-mouth filter? Hell, yeah, and God bless Demosthenes' pebbles. Not to mention handing the governor of Alaska her hat, her head, or her ass, complete the metaphor of your choice. Obviously, the next step is to get him to speak at the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children.
time_shark has been interviewed at Enter the Octopus.John Stuart Mill did many more awesome things than be particularly ill on half a pint of shandy, especially the way Adam Gopnik writes about him.
That someone who up through college stuttered so severely that he was nicknamed "Dash Biden" not because he was lightning on the field but because that's how you spell out "B-B-B-Biden" can grow up into a politician whose prevailing silly faults are rambling on like there's no tomorrow and a tendency to blurt out whatever drops into his head as though he has no brain-to-mouth filter? Hell, yeah, and God bless Demosthenes' pebbles. Not to mention handing the governor of Alaska her hat, her head, or her ass, complete the metaphor of your choice. Obviously, the next step is to get him to speak at the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children.
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Yes exactly! I didn't know that about him... thx for the links as well.
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Prior to tonight, almost the only fact I knew about Biden was the family tragedy—this because my mother had mentioned it to me—and that it should be hoped he said nothing dramatically stupid in the course of the debate, because outside of his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, I had heard him quoted mostly in contexts that made him sound like the Baptist at the second coming of Dan Quayle. So when not only did he avoid dramatic stupidity, but came across as someone who had all his facts at his finger's ends without needing to cram for them (even if he fudged a few of them, which I could have done without), could contradict Palin in the tenor of restrained anger rather than persnickety hedging, and knew how to tell stories about and against himself without sounding programmed into them, I became curious. Also, while I admire the fact that he does not drink (he explains) because there are so many alcoholics in his family, what genuinely impresses me is that he apparently never has—as an Irish Catholic, it would practically have been de rigeur for him to deal with his wife and daughter's death with a prolonged bottle crash. I actually respect that he didn't. In short, while I do not feel confirmed by God that he's the best vice-president since John Adams or the automated bread slicer, it's nice to have a present-day politician that I find weird enough to read up on. I think my metaphor meter has expired.
thx for the links as well.
Welcome!
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automated bread slicer.... I think we need a meme about what appliance you not only never want, but would abhor... I think for me it would be the bread maker. The whole point of fresh bread, for me, is that you get to make it.
(I wouldn't mind a bread slicer, though)
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I am basically nocturnal. Every now and then I wonder what would happen if I moved to Kyrgyzstan, but I suspect I'd only readjust.
I think for me it would be the bread maker. The whole point of fresh bread, for me, is that you get to make it.
I'm not so enamored of the automatic spellchecker. Which is not really an appliance, so let's insult the ice cream maker—we always make ice cream in the summers, mostly strawberry, always churned by hand. Just leaving the device to chug away on the countertop for an hour, without salted ice melting on the front steps and streaks of heavy cream on people's palms, is nowhere near as fun.
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Oh, and leaf blower: LEAF BLOWER! A more stupid appliance I never did see. Why substitute a quiet, calorie-using (and therefore healthy), effective method of gathering leaves together with a noisy, smelly, gasoline consuming method? I ask you???
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We still do. It was last used on the Fourth of July. It's whiskey-barrel ancient and sounds like quern-stones grinding and will probably someday soon fall apart completely while in use, rather to the detriment of the ice cream inside, but I love it. And it's pretty awesome ice cream, too.
Oh, and leaf blower: LEAF BLOWER! A more stupid appliance I never did see.
Someone on my street when I lived in New Haven had one and always turned it on around seven in the morning; I couldn't even sleep through it with earplugs in! Amen!
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Also, the Mill article totally ate my morning.
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When did you first start to hear of him? He's been completely under my radar.
Also, the Mill article totally ate my morning.
Is it not awesome? First I want to read the biography; then I want to read more of the reviewer. And somewhere in there, probably some John Stuart Mill.
Personal Revelation Alert. Non-Biological TMI Ahead.
I've been aware of Biden as a presidential contender (he's been a perrenial) since '88; politics for me was the last custody battle, and that was the one my mother (fire breathing liberal, part-time semi-militant feminist, took open delight that my initials are ERA) won.
To that point, I was well on my way to inheriting either my dad's "well my parents were republicans and Nixon put an end to that stupid war" sort of center-rightness, or my stepma's "ZOMG Black people are going to take my money!" conservatism (which probably would have made me a converted democrat circa 2004, but what the hell). Thing is, once my mom set me straight on a couple of issues by actually explaining how the things I was parroting (sans explanation) from my stepmother were bullshit, I started paying attention.
I felt a damned fool once I understood the implications of what I'd been saying, and I hate being a fool when I can help it.
That was 20 goddamn years ago.
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You're welcome! Now I'm sorry there aren't any more vice-presidential debates . . .
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I'm really glad to hear that!
It was at least reassuring to watch how badly Palin failed in attempting to play her hard-luck parenting credentials against Biden's.
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John Stuart Mill did many more awesome things than be particularly ill on half a pint of shandy
Ill on a half-pint of shandy? I'm not sure I've heard of this before. It strikes me as a difficult feat, without the aid of some illness or allergy.
(And what did they make shandy of, in his time? I could see some sort of lemon-lime beverage existing, due to the presence of ginger beer in Tom Brown's Schooldays, but I don't believe lager-brewing was done in the UK until after his death.)
I didn't watch the debate, but am glad Biden handed her whatever he handed her. I'm a bit fearful it'll not make a difference with too much of the electorate.
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Monty Python, "The Bruces' Philosophers Song": John Stuart Mill, of his own free will / On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill . . . It may be a calumny, but it's a catchy one.
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*slaps forehead*
Of course! I only ever remember the first few lines of that one. Should've realised it, all the same.
I can sometimes be very literal-minded, in case you've somehow not noticed before.
It may be a calumny, but it's a catchy one.
Indeed. And the gentlemen in question are mostly of no disposition to object, so.
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