"The family of writer Gore Vidal has hinted he had sex with underage men in claims that have surfaced as they contest his $37 million will."

What's the connection between the validity of a man's will and evidence of criminal sexual behavior? Gore Vidal left all his money to Harvard University and the family is irked. Now — after it's too late to punish the man for any crimes he may have committed — they're leaking this material?

I would infer that he did not do the things the disappointed, would-be heirs are talking about. Wouldn't he have been more likely to leave them money if he'd had a motivation to shut them up? He left them pissed and litigious. That speaks of a clean conscience!

I'm noticing this story this morning because of the way it's trumpeted in The Daily News, but the source is this far more sedate article from 3 days ago in the NYT. The NYT begins with the news that Vidal kept a fire burning even on hot days, because he had a titanium knee and had experienced hypothermia in the Army in WWII. The second paragraph details the decor of his living room where he died. We learn about the chair where he, in his elderly weakness, peed.

A pissed and litigious disappointed would-be heir is described as "not angry... but... bruised and resigned." Vidal's gift to Harvard is portrayed as the product of dementia. I see that Vidal did not attend Harvard. He went into the Army instead and later quipped: "What was the point of going into another institution when I had already written my first novel?"

Eventually, you arrive at the material the Daily News cherry-picked, about a nephew Burr Steers and his mother, Vidal's half-sister Nina Straight. Straight claims to have paid a million unreimbursed dollars into Vidal's lawsuit against William F. Buckley. Buckley had called Vidal "a queer," but why sue when, in fact, one is homosexual? Truth is a defense to defamation, even if the truth is stated nastily. Here's the buried story:

Mr. Steers said: “I know Buckley had a file on him that Gore feared. It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex. Gore spent a lot of time in Bangkok, after all. Gore also had a very weird take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests. He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals.”

Mr. Steers said: “I know Buckley had a file on him that Gore feared. It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex. Gore spent a lot of time in Bangkok, after all. Gore also had a very weird take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests. He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals.”

After Mr. Buckley died, his son, Christopher (who declined a request for interview) wrote of throwing, with “a sigh of relief,” a filing cabinet marked “Vidal Legal” into a Dumpster. Other friends of Mr. Vidal told me they doubted he had sex with underage men.

Those Dell laptops that smell like cat urine? Don't worry.

"The smell is not related to cat urine or any other type of biological contaminant, nor is it a health hazard."

Link goes to a BBC news item that ends "News of the issue spread after a link to the thread was posted to discussion site Reddit," which links to a Reddit thread where the top-rated comment refers to the BBC link to the comments thread and comments like "Clearly BBC journalists like to keep their fingers on the pulse of what's happening. Commendable attitude" and "Or they're desperately scrabbling for a source that isn't 'Marge from St. Ives said so' and don't think people will look too carefully..."

"A motorcyclist who authorities say was driving his bike at speeds that reached 140 mph told central Illinois police he was rushing because he needed to use the bathroom."

Noted.

IN THE COMMENTS: Dubiousness. From Strelnikov:

An obvious lie. Any man knows he can pull over and pee anywhere along the road. What kind of biker worries about peeing outdoors?

And from DanTheMan:

Back when I was a police officer, I heard this one a lot. It's part of the top 3 excuses:

1) Stuck gas pedal
2) Cruise control malfunction
3) Urgent bathroom emergency

If you gave me one of those excuses, you generally guaranteed yourself a citation.

Yes, they have Ikea in China, but it "is gripped by a kind of anarchy that would rarely be seen, or tolerated, in its country of origin."

"There are picnickers everywhere - their tea flasks and plastic bags of snacks lining the showroom tables."

Young lovers pose for "selfies" in mock-up apartments they do not live in. Toddlers in split pants play on model furniture with their naked parts coming in contact with all surfaces.

On a king-size bed in the middle of the largest showroom, a little boy wakes from a nap next to his (also sleeping) grandmother. When the old woman casually helps the boy urinate into an empty water bottle, dripping liquid liberally on the grey mattress under his feet, most passers-by seem not to mind or even notice....

Virtually every surface [in the bedroom and living room sections] is occupied by visitors appearing very much at home. Older people read newspapers or drink tea; younger visitors cuddle or play with their phones. Most, however, are sound asleep...

Read the whole thing. Ikea has accommodated Chinese ways, and it's now the largest foreign commercial landowner in the country.

"Tycho Brahe Died from Pee, Not Poison."

News from the 16th century. I know the linked story was published last November, and I'm sorry I didn't get it out more quickly, which is perhaps something Tycho Brahe might have said (in Polish).

Brahe was long thought to have died from a bladder infection after politeness kept him from excusing himself to use the bathroom during a royal banquet in October 1601, causing his bladder to rupture. However, scientists who opened Brahe's grave in 1901 to mark the 300th anniversary of his death claimed to find mercury in his remains, fueling rumors that the astronomer was poisoned. Some even accused [his not-yet-famous assistant Johannes] Kepler of the crime.

But the new results don't point to any such intrigue. While analyses of Brahe's teeth are not yet complete, tests on his bones and beard hairs show that mercury concentrations in his body were not high enough to have killed him....

Also discovered: Brahe's fake nose was probably made of brass, not silver.

Anyway, it was Kepler who gave the original the first-hand account of this story:

... Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette. After he had returned home he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain.... Before dying, he urged Kepler to finish the Rudolphine Tables and expressed the hope that he would do so by adopting Tycho's own planetary system, rather than that of Copernicus. It was reported that Brahe himself had written his own epitaph, stating "He lived like a sage and died like a fool."

I arrived at this story today because I was worried about people who might think too much about Rand Paul and take Gabriel Gomez's boast too seriously. 

Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez brags that he can go longer without peeing than Rand Paul.

This happened during a debate last night with his Democratic opponent Ed Markey, who had praised Senator Paul for filibustering.

Gomez responded that he could have gone longer than Paul, who spoke for nearly 13 hours without urinating.

“I’ve gone lots longer than that in my time on the SEAL team,” said Gomez.

Is politics a pissing contest?

A pissing contest, or pissing match, is a game in which participants compete to see who can urinate the highest, the farthest, or the most accurately.

That's a more exciting game than a how-long-can-you-go-without-pissing contest. "Pissing contest" is an old metaphor used "to characterise ego-driven battling in a pejorative or facetious manner that is often considered vulgar."

Dwight Eisenhower is reported to have said of Senator Joseph McCarthy that he wouldn't "get into a pissing contest with that skunk." Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, used the same phrase in 1958 when asked why he had not responded to a statement by the French foreign minister that the French government had not been consulted about a crisis in Lebanon....

Consider the potential metaphorical use of a how-long-can-you-go-without-pissing contest. I note that it may work better in 2013 than pissing contest, since the reference is to an activity that — something Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles probably didn't think about — gives women equal opportunity.

In case you have trouble picturing women in a non-metaphorical pissing contest, Wikipedia — at the second link, above — recounts some Irish folklore:

In the story Tochmarc Emire several women compete to see who can urinate deepest into a pile of snow. The winner is Derbforgaill, wife of Lugaid Riab nDerg, but the other women attack her out of jealousy and mutilate her by gouging out her eyes and cutting off her nose, ears, and hair, resulting in her death. Her husband Lugaid also dies, from grief, and Cúchulainn avenges the deaths by demolishing a house with the women inside, killing 150.

Is it ridiculous/unethical for a woman to wear glasses to look smarter?

This is a seemingly silly question asked of the NYT "ethicist":

I wear nonprescription eyeglasses on job interviews or when meeting new clients for the distinct purpose of gaining respect by appearing smarter and more credible. It would be unethical to use a wheelchair to gain sympathy by appearing disabled, so is this any different?

The letter writer is a woman, and the ethicist — a man — tells her it's not unethical and only an unintelligent person would think glasses make you look more intelligent. And: "If this fashion decision fools people, they deserve to be fooled."

I have about 10 problems with this answer:

1. There's an unexamined opinion that it's okay to fool people who are not intelligent.

2. There's the completely wrong notion that intelligent people have only rational, fact-based thoughts, not emotions and intuitions and sexual urges that influence what they do.

3. There's no attention to the analogy to using a wheelchair, which has many intriguing similarities and differences, such as the fact that a wheelchair only partly corrects a physical deficiency, but glasses presumably get you up to 20/20...

4. ... and the person in glasses is not trying to stimulate a feeling of warmth — sympathy — she's trying to avert feelings of warmth — sexual attraction — or avoid the appearance of warmth that may emanate from the unbespectacled face of a woman.

5. The word "fashion" is used to connote superficiality and light weight, but fashion is powerful in making impressions, and not just on fools. In fact, you're a fool if you think fashion has no impact on you.

6. Saying "fashion" implies the alternate analogy to clothing, but most of us dress in a special way for job interviews or to meet new clients, and we take that pretty seriously without assuming only a fool would be influenced.

7. The analogy to clothing is interestingly inaccurate, because glasses are needed — when they are needed — in a way that is different from clothing. We all need clothing to avoid being naked, but glasses are needed to get to an ideal level that some people have naturally. So wearing glasses contains this claim of physical weakness that the letter writer feels might constitute a lie.

8. Is unnecessary display of physical need wrong in this professional setting? We certainly — if we can — hide sexual urges and our need to urinate. Imagine what our clients would think if we made an outward display of those things. On this analysis, one could imagine thinking that people who need vision correction ought to wear contacts lenses.

9. This might really be about makeup. Studies have shown that it's contrast that makes a woman's face look more feminine — and women often use eyeliner, mascara, and eyebrow pencil to achieve this effect, but too much makeup may seem to send the wrong message. Glasses are a way to get some contrast onto the face.

10. Why do glasses work to turn Superman into Clark Kent?

"Sorry about the smell of cat piss. That's why we have to cover everything in plastic."

Says Patti Smith, leading the Guardian interviewer through her house, which "looks as if it's been squatted by a class of particularly manky art students" and is "dark and dingy and stinks of cat."

Excerpt from the interview, 3 reasons why she gave up music performance and recording in the late 70s:

In 1977, she fell off the stage, fractured her back in four places and broke her skull (she needed 42 stitches in her head). She was never as mobile again. Then she fell in love with Fred "Sonic" Smith and married him. Finally, she says, she found fame too corrosive. "I didn't have time to read, I wasn't studying, wasn't writing. I was basically promoting, going to radio stations, performing, battling bronchitis because there was so much smoke in venues. I thought, I see a lot of potential fame and fortune, but I don't see a lot of human evolution. Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune." How? "It doesn't do a whole lot for making you a better person. I found myself being more demanding, or spoilt." Was she horrible? She balks at the suggestion. "No, just impatient, agitated. The main thing was I didn't think I was producing anything of extraordinary worth."

As Smith talks, I notice she's eating a tub of something. It seems to have appeared out of nowhere. What is that, I ask. "Wakame. Basically seaweed and sesame oil." My stomach's rumbling. I could murder that cup of tea.

ADDED:

Would she like a new Mr Patti Smith? She looks shocked. "I would never have a Mr Patti Smith. To me, I'm happy to have the man as king. I would never consider a man in that position."

Now it's my turn to be shocked. After all, this is Patti Smith, rocker extraordinaire and feminist icon. "I wouldn't care if he was a gardener or plumber or physicist, he wouldn't be in second place in our household." She'd happily be subservient? "I don't mind. I have no problem with a man being in first place. I know who I am. If a man would need to be in first place, what of it?"

AND: I looked up "manky" in the (unlinkable) OED:

Brit. colloq. Bad, inferior, defective; dirty, disgusting, unpleasant.

In quot. 1939 mankey is a play on monkey (cf. monkey nut n.), and may not have any admixture of this sense.

[1939 J. Joyce Finnegans Wake 337 Your hahititahiti licks the mankey nuts!]
1958 F. Norman Bang to Rights iii. 124 He would have to have all his teeth out as it seems that they were all mankey.
1971 B. W. Aldiss Soldier Erect 121 Have you chucked out that dirty manky beer you poisoned me with last time I came?
1973 A. Garner Red Shift 14 That's your manky palate, lad. The dressing and the wine have to balance.
1983 J. Kelman Not not while Giro 163 Away you ya manky swine ye, cried Sammy.
1988 Coarse Fishing Handbk. June–July 48/3 In addition to one really manky dead rabbit, we also netted over 2000 small roach.
1993 Daily Tel. 4 May 14/8 We could have been back in the Seventies—the unfashionably flowing locks, the manky T-shirts, the tight trousers.

"What would Madonna say?"

Asked Irene at the Hydrangea Café last night.

Yes, why, exactly, did Madonna say she absolutely loathes hydrangeas?

“Hydrangeas are very romantic, feminine and maybe a little demur[e],” suggested Eddie Zaratsian of tick-tock Couture Flowers based in Los Angeles, Calif., who has worked with corporate clients like Chanel, as well as an undisclosed list of celebrities. “Madonna is known for her strength and confidence and so it’s only natural she would gravitate towards a bolder flower.” The elephant in the room: hydrangeas are working-class flowers, aren’t they? Somehow partially responsible for current economic crisis? Make your pee smell bad?...

To Zaratsian, who believes every flower to be a “gift from God”... it is the overall experience of receiving flowers that helps one formulate a memory, and thus create an opinion or preference to hold over time. “What [do] they take from that connotation of that flower? What is that memory of that flower for them?” he explained. Perhaps the larger question is: what did these innocent flowers ever do to you, Madonna? 

Have you ever been wronged by a flower?  What flower is on your shit pee list?

ADDED: If you're wondering about the pee, I'd elided the part about tea. Don't you know about hydrangea tea?

"It was black humor. It was in poor taste. We're not saying it was OK, but it was not desecration."

Said the lawyer for one of the Marine snipers who urinated on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

How did Rand Paul go 13 hours without a bathroom break?

"As he moved about the Senate floor, aides brought him glasses of water, which he barely touched. Senate rules say a senator has to remain on the floor to continue to hold it, even though he can yield to another senator for a question."

Continue to hold it is a good phrase, under the circumstances, but I assume he relied on Depends or something fancier (using his doctor skills).

"A woman reported receiving several texts with sexual content from an unknown person. She sent the person a text asking him to stop..."

"... but the person did not immediately stop, only ceasing later in the day. It was determined that the suspect was a friend of the woman’s friend. The suspect reported he thought he was texting his friend and agreed not to continue texting the woman."

That happened, in Montana. Also: "A man was caught urinating in a First Avenue East parking lot."

Is it wrong to tweet from the audience at the State of the Union?

Tennessee House Democrat Steve Cohen was only trying to send a private message, but — like your ordinary-citizen reckless idiot — he released it into his public Twitter feed.

Embarrassing.

But in the modern world, how can people today be expected to sit through a 1-hour speech and not fiddle with their electronic devices? Personally, I would lose my mind.

And by the way, how can all these people — some of them quite old — sit still for 1+ hours? They have to be in their seats in advance and remain there for a while afterwards, so the President can make his big entrance and exit. What percentage of them worried about having to go to the bathroom? How many of them took the precaution of wearing adult diapers? How many of them employed the convenience and relieved themselves?

I don't mean to be rude. I just think it's important to recognize our shared humanity. As Marco Rubio said the other day: "I needed water, what am I going to do? God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human." What about the other end of our hydration-related humanity?

Bob Dylan sang: "Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked." And I say: Even the members of the United States Congress sometimes must have to pee.

And tweet.

Matt Damon pledges not to go to the bathroom...

... until there is a toilet for everyone in the world:

"Of all the constraints imposed on us that restrict our freedom — constraints of morality and decorum, constraints of class and finance..."

"... one of the earliest that is forced upon us is the constraint of a language that we are forced to learn so that others can talk to us and tell us things we do not wish to know...."

The greatest escape route is not only humor, but poetry, or art in general. Art does not, of course, liberate us completely from meaning, but it gives a certain measure of freedom, provides elbow room. Schiller claimed in the Letters on Aesthetic Education that art makes you free; he understood that the conventions of language and of society are in principle arbitrary—that is, imposed by will. They prevent the natural development of the individual. ...

ADDED: Putting the tags on this post, including "poetry," made me remember a poem I read the other day that I'd been meaning to show you. It's in this "Good Poems" collection. The poet is Guy W. Longchamps:

O what a luxury it be
how exquisite, what perfect bliss
so ordinary and yet chic
to pee to piss to take a leak

To feel your bladder just go free
and open like the Mighty Miss
and all your cares go down the creek
to pee to piss to take a leak

Read the whole thing at the link. Just search inside the book for "piss," or if you're shy, just search for "bliss."