"Things I Learned in My Twenty-Four Hour Althouse Comment Withdrawal."

From betamax3000 (at 12 midnight):

• the Shakes -- they Get Real Bad;

• Twenty-Four Hours is A Long Period of Time When You Deny Yourself;

• the Baby Spiders are Real;

• I Love the Commenters: Read All the Posts, All Day, Tongue Bound, and Realized in Retrospect that -- Perhaps -- I Occasionally Suck Too Much Oxygen From the Room;

• Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

• the Scientology "No Fear' Paradigm Crosses Neuropaths with Cruel Neutrality: when I get it Down to Four Paragraphs I Will Thrust it Sideways Into a Thread about Gabe Kaplan;

• it -- Technically -- is Not a Burning Sensation.

I do not discount the role of  El Pollo Raylan's summoning: "Beta come back!" — which took us to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.

Lem sighed relief:

I think I can say tonight that we are in Betamax debt. From now on it will be possible to risk loosing wifi knowing that it is a survivable non-event thanks to the courage and determination of one man. and his name is Betamax.

And:

Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

Its like Althouse politics, I think.

That's exactly right. And then betamax3000 said:

At the Metaphorical Althouse Denny's I want More hash Browns and Non-Dairy Creamer: I am building a Mountain.

And I say: This means something. This is important.



Loose the WiFi!

"Tiny mites crawling unnoticed over Our Skin. Small nibbles, less then the slightest pinprick..."

"... Baby Spiders while you Sleep. Bowels full of half-digested Cheerios. Microscopic Creatures swarming In the Bathroom, Always, and You With your Pants Down. Sweat pressed into the Bed Sheets in which you will Cover Yourself Again. Drool on the Pillow. Cat Drool on the Pillow. Wash your Hands with the Same Bar of Soap That Someone has Used to Clean Horrible Things from Their Hands. Toothbrush unprotected in the same Room with the Toilet. The Plunger in the Corner, with Memories of What Has Been Plunged. Dry off from the Shower with the Towel from the Day Before, tiny flakes of Skin now Damp and Reapplied. Washcloth. Public restaurant with Sneezed Microbes Hanging in the Air, Settling on your Dinner Plate. Don't Even Think about the Horrors hiding in the Food on That Plate. A Solitary Hair from the Cook's Beard, the Second-Hand Steroids in the Beef. Not Every Employee Washes their Hands. The Guy in the Kitchen washing the Silverware in a Sink of oily brackish water, perhaps with the Faint Residue of the Drain Cleaner used to clear the Reoccurring Clogs. Band-Aid on the Finger loosening in Same Water. Table considered clean by a Quick Wipe with a Dish-Towel Wet From the Tables Wiped Before. Air Ducts lined with Dust and Daddy-Long Legs. More baby Spiders."

A comments contribution — from betamax3000 — in yesterday's "Healthing" post (which was about the delusional spraying of disinfectant all over the house).

El Pollo Raylan offers the Rod Serling reading here.

"I love when you talk dirty!"

A dialogue between 2 men in last night's open thread "At the Saturday Peony Café":

Palladian: A few years ago, "peony" was a very popular note in perfumery. Many perfumes used this note, which was generally done as a big, fluorescent, loud, fruity-flower odor of no particular interest. Givaudan makes 2-cyclohexylidene-2-phenylacetonitrile, an aroma chemical they call Peonile, which I always find hilarious. Say it: Peonile.

El Pollo Raylan: The name is apt. I see lots of structural rigidity in the linear nitrile portion which has a nitrogenous lone pair at one end. Then there's the cyclohexylidene portion which is quasi-floppy, but made stiffer by attachment to the olefinic core. The phenyl is of course rigid except for its rotational degree of freedom.

Palladian: I love when you talk dirty!

Also in the comments, a dialogue between 2 women:

Freeman Hunt: We had some new tile installed in our kitchen this week. One afternoon the installers washed their tools outside and left without coming back in. Because they did not come back in, they forgot to turn off their radio. The radio was across the newly laid tile that we were forbidden to walk upon. So we listened to popular, contemporary country music all that evening and for three hours the next morning. Heh. (That story is much funnier to people who know me in real life. I don't listen to anything in the background. Ever. No television. No music. Nothing. I only turn something on if I want to listen to it actively.)

Synova: I don't listen to "background" anything either. I can see you standing at the edge of the tile... yearning.

Freeman Hunt: "yearning"... Perfect word.

Intruding on this perfectly female dialogue was the aforequoted Palladian: "That's what a handgun and good aim are for."

Also in the vicinity was another man, Lem. Unlike Palladian, he wasn't commenting on the music and yearning, at least not directly. He just told his own story — "We went to see a new friend perform at a local establishment and I took a picture of a sign near the entrance" — and showed us this:

"[P]eople who are infatuated with government... have no realistic idea of what an awful husband the government really is."

I said at the end of that post about how the government should pay people to stay home and cook "wholesome, healthy meals" in a program funded with a tax on "harmful foods." I'm starting a new post to highlight some of the great comments.

BDNYC said:

If your wife doesn't fuck you enough, there should be a government program, financed by taxing prostitutes and pronographers, which encourages marital sex by paying wives to have sex on a nightly basis. It will make marriages happier, which will help the economy. There will be a multiplier effect. Or something.

Mogget said:

How do you tell the government you have a headache when it wants to fuck you?

El Pollo Raylan said:

Government is a terrible husband because:

(a) He's a polygamist: e pluribus unions are the norm: he's not looking out for you but your neighbor as well.

(b) He's a terrible lover: his IRS has an anal fetish.

(c) He's a pedophile--unabashedly interested in your kids at ever earlier ages.

(d) He can't control his own urges which means that another government will ultimately have to control him.

(e) He is a gun nut, buying and hoarding ammunition like it's going out of style.

ADDED: betamax3000 has a series of comments about "Government Husband." Here are a few:

Government Husband says you Look Sexy Tonight: let's make Sweet, Sweet Taxes.

Government Husband will Tell you What you are Making For Dinner tonight.

Government Husband looks like Harry Reid, Naked. Give Government Husband a Little Sugar.

Government Husband didn't Mean It, baby. He just gets Angry at the Middle East.

On occasion Government Husband likes to have Anonymous Sex with Foreign Governments in the Public Restrooms at Parks. Do Not question Government Husband's Needs.

Government Husband thinks it is Cute when you and your little friends play 'Democracy.'

Insincere "Jesus."

A topic this morning at Meadhouse is the insincere use of "Jesus" in pop songs circa 1970.

1. "Jesus Is Just Alright."

The song's title makes use of the American slang term "all-right," which during the 1960s was used to describe something that was considered 'cool' or very good. The song has been covered by a number of bands and artists over the years, including The Byrds, Underground Sunshine, The Doobie Brothers, Alexis Korner, The Ventures, DC Talk, Shelagh McDonald, and Robert Randolph (featuring Eric Clapton).

2. "Spirit in the Sky."

[Norman] Greenbaum... was inspired to write the song after watching Porter Wagoner on TV singing a gospel song. Greenbaum later said : "I thought, 'Yeah, I could do that,' knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes." "Spirit in the Sky" contains lyrics about the afterlife, making several references to Jesus, although Greenbaum himself is Jewish.

3. "One Toke Over the Line." ("One toke over the line, sweet Jesus...")

The catchy single, "One Toke Over the Line," peaked at #10 (#5 in Canada), garnering notice from Spiro Agnew for what he saw as its subversiveness. Ironically, the song was performed (by Gail Farrell and Dick Dale) on The Lawrence Welk Show, which billed it a "modern spiritual."[2] The song is notably mentioned in the opening of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and was notably "sung" by Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) in the film of the same name. "

Any more examples? Help me out here. The topic is: Insincere (or arguably insincere) references to Jesus in popular songs in the days before Christian rock was a thing.

I know there's also "The Christian Life" on the Byrds album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," — which came out a year before the album with "Jesus Is Just Alright" — but I'm not putting it on the list, because I don't think it was played on the radio. The Byrds suddenly switched from psychedelic rock to country music, which was a strange thing to do at the time and it didn't feel like a bid for another hit record.

"'Christian Life' was performed tongue-in-cheek," said [Chris] Hillman. "After Roger [McGuinn] sang it, he admitted to going overboard with the accent. Roger was from Chicago and here he is, doing this heavy, syrupy country twang."

My buddies shun me since I turned to Jesus
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun
I live without them and walk in the light
I like the Christian life

MORE: Maybe it all started with the Paul Newman movie "Cool Hand Luke" — "I don't care if it rains or freezes/Long as I have my plastic Jesus/Riding on the dashboard of my car...":



IN THE COMMENTS: Fr. Denis Lemieux cites "Suzanne," by Leonard Cohen:

"Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower, and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said all men shall be sailors then, until the sea shall free them...'

Not exactly insincere... more a use of Jesus outside of orthodox Christian theology, I guess. I find this a fascinating topic, though - intersection of faith and culture.

I agree that this is not insincere. It is mysterious/mystical... and that is religious. Suzanne herself explains:

BBC's Kate Saunders: Could you describe one of the typical evenings that you spent with Leonard Cohen at the time the song was written?

Suzanne: Oh yes. I would always light a candle and serve tea and it would be quiet for several minutes, then we would speak. And I would speak about life and poetry and we’d share ideas.

Saunders: So it really was the tea and oranges that are in the song?

Suzanne: Very definitely, very definitely, and the candle, who I named Anastasia, the flame of the candle was Anastasia to me. Don’t ask me why. It just was a spiritual moment that I had with the lightening of the candle. And I may or may not have spoken to Leonard about, you know I did pray to Christ, to Jesus Christ and to St. Joan at the time, and still do.

Saunders: And that was something you shared, both of you?

Suzanne: Yes, and I guess he retained that.

And El Pollo Real prompts me to include Bob Dylan on this list, but I refuse, because I don't think Dylan was insincere about Jesus — not on "Slow Train Coming" and not on earlier references: "Even Jesus would never forgive what you do" ("Masters of War" on "Freewheelin'"), "Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss" ("With God On Our Side," on "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), "You know they refused Jesus, too" ("Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," on "Bringing It All Back Home").

"Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara."

"Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society."

What would have happened in Egypt — today's "History of" country — and in the rest of the history of the world, if those early people had controlled their greedy grazing and not anthropogenerated the Sahara Desert?



IN THE COMMENTS: chickelit said:

Grass guzzlers caused the Sahara. Got it.