I hope they'll get to put About pages up too.
Molly and I have been making bets. It's like speculating on the final cylon.
4 is great. THERE ARE ONLY 12 BLOGGER MODELS.
You laugh, Boballa, but you are a prime suspect. Have you been hearing Dylan songs that no one else can?
The important thing is that we get a stable of bloggers that looks like America.
Admit it. You're selling the blog to Nick Denton.
I am excited to see what kind of posts bpl, Fleur, and Bitch's bf are going to make!
instead letting them make the entrances they see fit once they heal from the elaborate initiation rites get back from being dropped off naked with only a dime somewhere in Afghanistan Kentucky.
I wonder if it is like Survivor or the Great Race. Are they in teams? Who is paired together?
Are they having hot monkey sex ala BG's dream??
15: They're divided into teams by race: Caucasian and Other.
Yes, but who counts as Caucasian? How impure does one have to be?
FYI, I am reading Dreams from My Father. Anyone who hasnt read it, should.
12: what about BR, what does she have planned?
Wait, I know, all of the children of the regular bloggers have been promoted. Expect posts on public policy from Newt and Sally, and Keegan linking to things that are NSF Middle school.
Since I'm privy, I'll go ahead and spoil the lineup: all McArdle, all the time!
FYI, I am reading Animals Of The Ocean, In Particular The Giant Squid. Anyone who hasn't read it, should.
17: I jest, of course. There is no Other.
20: SWEET.
I've been reading Young Stalin which is pretty amazing.
21 is correct.
I also recommend reading Fear and Loathing to one's 12 year old child aloud as well.
BR has all kinds of great drug posts ready!
"Diabetes management!"
"Will's Crazy ex!"
"Will is Crazy!"
"Sometimes autistic kids run around naked!"
It doesn't count as trolling the blog to give the keys to McMegan, but I like the notion, and I bet McMegan would to. It runs along the lines of InBev's hostile offer to Anheuser-Busch.
I have received the revelation and I know the final n. Only n - 1 will be revealed to you, though.
23: I've never found the Young Stalin Adventures as compelling as the classic original Stalin trilogy.
Is it true that Unfogged and Bitch's blog are merging?
From Andrew Nagorski's review of Young Stalin: "In this age of terror, it's also a timely reminder of the terrorist origins of the Bolshevik revolutionaries who would soon unleash mass murder on a previously unimaginable scale." They should give twofer deals on Bolshevik and al-Qaeda action figures.
If enough people comment on this thread, we can work it out by elimination. I can't wait to see who the current bloggers think are the best.
5- I can't wait for the wine and finance model.
I'm hoping for some West Coast representation.
Okay, okay, I'll admit it, it's me. Ogged came up to me and said "We need you, man," and I said "Not without McManus," and he said "It's a deal!" Next: nonstop direblogging!
So I've been really happy with wines from the Yakima valley. Cheap, too.
New bloggers:
Twisty
Amanda Marcotte
M. leblanc
Anne Althouse
Camille Paglia
Let the discussion begin!
PGD and stras have both been blogging for weeks here, but their posts cancel one another's out.
Ooh, new parlor game: who else's posts would cancel each other's out?
Other guesses:
• Dave Eggers
• Camile Paglia
• Sasha Frere-Jones
That's two suggestions of Camille Paglia in two minutes. With such a groundswell of support, it has to be happening.
Obviously, David Brooks will be coming on board so that we no longer have to argue about what white people like.
I was serious about the n - 1 thing.
40: Seriously, Kraab, I'm not being defensive. I just don't think Brooks is very funny. WHY CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT???!!!1!!!?
Now let's have a five hundred comment thread on whether or not David Brooks is funny!
Since I'm privy, I'll go ahead and spoil the lineup: all McArdle, all the time!
Since zombie stras has gone ahead and spoiled the surprise, I'll go ahead and make my inaugural post. (By the way, have you ever noticed that the same leftists who are so eager to impose their consumption choices on the rest of us through government fiat are the ones who show the least self-discipline with respect to basic social courtesies like politesse and personal hygiene? My hypothesis is that they see they are projecting their own lack of self control on the rest of society and long for the nanny state to keep them in line.)
It's becoming clear to any close observer that the main brake on economic growth right now is the housing sector. But not in the way most people think. Vulgar Keynesians focus their attention on the impact of the mortgage crisis on consumer spending, neglecting thereby the real driver of economic growth--investment and entrepreneurialism, which is being held back by uncertainty about how long it will take for the glut of unsold housing inventory to clear the market.
As is so often the case, when you look hard enough, you find that the real culprit is regulation and liberal hand-wringing. Particularly harmful are the rules that string out the foreclosure process for months. Not only must the creditor observe statutory notice periods and wait, it must wait, often weeks, to get a notice of eviction served by bureaucratic county sheriff's departments. There is zero doubt that private suppliers would spring up to offer a cheaper, more expeditious eviction service, if only regulations didn't stand in their way. And then there is the additional time lost to doing a thorough search for tax liens. Just think: creditors in desperate need of cash to remain solvent have to delay the sale of an asset to which they have a proper title just in case the IRS might want first dibs on the proceeds. To make matters worse, the Fed has foolishly jumped in to browbeat lenders into freezing foreclosures for 30 days, granting debtors even more time to run up further arrears before the inevitable reckoning.
If we conservatively assume that misguided regulations make every foreclosure sale take three months longer than necessary, and assume $500 billion in value tied up in properties under foreclosure (I'm too lazy to look it up), that's $60 billion in cash flow that the government is taking off of the accounts of shaky lenders--quite possibly enough to solve the mortgage crisis.
And don't forget that every family squatting in a house awaiting foreclosure is one potential buyer who isn't out there stimulating the rental market.
David Brooks and E.J. Dionne will be here every other weekday to discuss the latest in horse race claptrap.
Other regular contributors will be Paglia on Sunday, Christian Lander on Monday, Buck Angel on Tuesday, Dinesh D'Souza on Wednesday (filling the quota of Mexicans), Caitlin Flanagan on Thursday, James Lileks on Friday, and the Saturday all-day McManus-O-Rama.
Oh man, now I kind of actually want McArdle posting here.
I kind of actually want McArdle posting here
Does McMegan not understand that heightening the contradictions is out goal?
re: 28
Heh. The book paints him as a pretty interesting and charismatic figure. Really not that much like the orthodox perception of him at all.
Was 45 taken from an actual McMegan post? It was too well done.
Or, mo petically,
Since the beginning of time, liberals have yearned to destroy the sun.
Was 45 taken from an actual McMegan post?
Alas, I must acknowledge authorship of 45.
Technically, I'm a Crustacean-American.
Sir Kraab is white?!??!
Only where it counts.
Kraab is the other other other white meat.
The pale crabs are facing reverse racism these days.
45 was totally KR, because he's the other parodist, and I didn't write it. And I see on preview that I am pwned, which is what I get for answering my e-mail.
44: Thankfully, as bad as we are, we aren't that bad. Even the Unfogged commentariat couldn't drag that conversation out that long. Right?
...
Right?
55: damn, I was going to guess Ben w-lfs-n.
55: Dammit, I had to do actual work between loading this thread and reading it, so I couldn't out you first!
KR putting up the occasional blog entry would be pretty awesome (even though I know that's not how the Unfogged overlords roll).
Technically, I'm a Crustacean-American.
Sure, wrap yourself in the mantle of minority status and victimhood. Everyone knows that, outside of America, there is no shared "crustaceon" identity. Within the subphylum of Crustacea, malacostraceans like yourself are the oppressor class, lording it over the truly victimized classes like the branchiopods and the maxillopods.
mmmmm Kraab is good. Add a little Old bay (aka m/tch) and deliciouso
Everyone knows that, outside of America, there is no shared "crustaceon" identity.
Sure there is. Unfortunately for the crustaceans, that shared identity is rooted in being delicious with melted butter.
The pale crabs are facing reverse racism these days.
The pale crab has a sad but judgmental expression, like a big-eyed child.
Anyone remember the link to sex with crabs, from a year and a half ago or so? I forget whether there was actually a picture, as there was to a whole chicken. Post title was something like "This is for John Emerson."
29: Well, we haven't heard from bob, AWB, Sifu, PGD, Katherine, soup biscuit, BitchPhD, m. leblanc...
Unfortunately, I think bob and Katherine are mutually exclusive. And it just feels unlikely that we'd get someone who already is a front-page poster on another blog, especially if it's their own blog. I know there's no reason it can't happen, but I doubt it.
Has anyone seen read lately?
They had a couple of people handing out samples of Old Bay on the street corner the other day. WTF? Crab season's way over. Out-of-touch carpetbagger marketers.
Also, crabs are creepy. Like spiders with more meat.
45: wizard cocksucker. I was wavering in doubt for seconds there...could it be...?
She would definitely fill the trolling-the-blog hole left by Ogged's retirement.
58: Kraab is the other other other white meat.
65: mmmmm Kraab is good.
These speculations are anti-semitic and I want something done about it. Magpie understands in 71.
72: I acknowledged authorship of that one with the same weird admixture of pride and revulsion that one feels when one leaves behind a 10-inch seamless turd.
73: aaah boy that would be too bad. I'm optimistic her Atlantic contract forbids it.
They had a couple of people handing out samples of Old Bay on the street corner the other day. WTF? Crab season's way over. Out-of-touch carpetbagger marketers.
Old Bay and vinegar is fucking delicious on french fries, hater.
76: Please tell me that writing for the Atlantic won't prevent Caitlin Flanagan and Christopher Hitchens from blogging here as well. As well as Sandra Tsing Loh, who grabbed from the recently retired Rick Reilly the title of "most predictably annoying writer on earth".
Also, crabs are creepy. Like spiders with more meat.
Harrumph.
75: revulsion? I run out of the bathroom signaling a touchdown.
That is unfair. How about "writer who most predictably annoys me, personally."
Sorry, but we couldn't afford David Brooks. We had to go with Gregg Easterbrook instead, who we got for practically nothing.
Even after he gets an approving link from Yglesias? Where's the justice.
80: He wasn't talking about leaving one in the bathroom, FL.
If you can't get Frank Easterbrook, consider Frank Brooks.
Crabs are aristocrats od the deep. The real pariahs are priapalids (heh) and tunicates:
The tunicate Styela plicata is, in the eyes of most people, a singularly unattractive organism. They are often found on fouling assemblages on the pilings of piers (and, in some instances, perhaps, even on peers). In the raw, that is, when not covered over by all sorts of surrounding organisms, they look like warty, pink chunks of brain ranging in size from about an inch to the size of a human fist.
Better Gregg than Frank
Amen. Gregg is one of those writers who can be good on certain subjects and whom you've got to learn to avoid on others. Two Washington Monthly pieces he did nearly thirty years ago, one on the inherent dangerousness of the Space Shuttle, one on the Key West Agreement between the Army and Air Force which has led to generations of suboptimal and dangerous attack helicopters, remain classic and far ahead of when others took up those issues.
We had to go with Gregg Easterbrook instead, who we got for practically nothing.
A bad trade at any price. The latest insights from punditmetrics prove that "on column percentage", or the percent of time that a pundit achieves a coherent point from a promising first paragraph, contributes more to winning percentage than the more commonly cited metrics of "original thesis percentage" or "biting wit average".
88: so, he was good on those subjects he wrote about 30 years ago, and has been bad on all subjects since then? I can get behind that.
88: Yes, this is so right. Let's hope the latest generation of TWM editors doesn't follow the same trajectory as Easterbrook and Kaus.
37: I don't know whether I should be flattered or insulted that I'm in that list.
Two Washington Monthly pieces he did nearly thirty years ago, one on the inherent dangerousness of the Space Shuttle, one on the Key West Agreement between the Army and Air Force which has led to generations of suboptimal and dangerous attack helicopters, remain classic and far ahead of when others took up those issues.
This is true! Easterbrook was the best writer out there on NASA issues. And yet his science writing ever since has shown that he convincing rhetoric of someone working his way through an alt.talk.atheism bad arguments checklist with the deep insight of a college freshman who just bogarted your joint and wants to know if when you say "yellow" you really mean, you know, yellow, man. Also: hur hur, cheerleaders!
I run out of the bathroom signaling a touchdown.
Indeed. I've built a career on less impressive accomplishments.
92: I don't know if it helps, m., but I got the "One of these things is not like the others" vibe off that list.
And, to an extent, Marcotte.
94: Indeed. I've built a career on less impressive accomplishments.
Few people have a superior bowel movement more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by doing it once or twice a week.
--George Bernard Shaw
a superior bowel movement
I wonder what criteria are used to rank them.
Before I read it, I would have bet even money on 55 being the case.
Apo, I suspect that you and I could have a long conversation about this, but I'm not sure that's in the blog's best interests.
Kobe has superior bowel movements, but they're no Michael Jordan movements.
Size, weight, tone, texture, odor.
Brock, I disagree. I value structural integrity a lot, for example.
103 is what you would get if the DeBeers marketing department were charged with this exercise.
Labs, the judging is divided by structure. So yes, there is a class of solid, single-piece movements for which structural integrity is key, but there are many other categories that lack structural integrity by definition. Don't let your subjective preferences get in the way here. Superior movements occur across the field.
104: All well and good, but it's the opinion of the Romanian judge that matters.
But it's really just like diving right? No matter what they say it comes down to minimizing the splash.
the narrator in ada has a 'perfect, cruciform' bowel movement on the day before he has that stupid duel, and is still thinking about it like 50 years later. but I'm sure we all nurture some memories along those lines, like the time I expressed a huge perfect tapering cone of sebum, oxidized to clarity at the end closest to the skin, from a blackhead in my ear when I was 15.
107: Would a competitor be disqualified because he/she had a prosthetic anal sphincter?
Nobody else has alphabetized photographs?
Oh man. The crap-talk sort of grosses me out, but I can talk popping zits all day and all night.
I've been working on my armstand back double somersault tuck.
the time I expressed a huge perfect tapering cone of sebum, oxidized to clarity at the end closest to the skin, from a blackhead in my ear when I was 15.
Ooooh, I can't stand it when you talk dirty to me like that, Alameida.
"The ideal poo is a pillowy soft, singular bolus of stool that exits the body with minimal effort," says Sheth.
105: debeers is a powerful cartel and all, but I don't know that even they could pull off the rebranding required. "how else can you make 3 square meals last a lifetime?"
"Sheth, along with other collegiate pastimes, developed what he calls the PQI, or Poo Quality Index, that he and fellow students would use to compare the superiority of their bowel movements. "
I think the full PQI may be proprietary, so we can only make an educated guess.
79: Crabs are creepy. Kraabs are not creepy.
Size, weight, tone, texture, odor.
Tone?
Yes, Magpie, tone. Again, from the link in 114:
"Because of its textbook-perfect hue -- no alarming green, red or yellowish tinge..." Tone matters.
Good lord. I thought I was joking. Then I went to flickr and typed turd. Scheisse returns less alarming results. What's the more colloquial but kind-of-straghtfaced term in German?
103 is what you would get if the DeBeers marketing department were charged with this exercise.
Unfogged: Diamonds and Shit
45 was totally KR, because he's the other parodist
I take umbrage on Emerson's behalf.
Okay, I'm ready to go back to White People threads.
Sandra Tsing Loh:Caitlan Flanagan::Saruman:Sauron
That's right—analogies are back, baby!
On the superior movement:
"This poo can turn an atheist into a believer and is distinguished by the sense of euphoria and ecstasy that you feel throughout your body when this type of feces departs your system," write the coauthors. "To some, it may feel like a religious experience, to others like an orgasm, and to a lucky handful it may feel like both. This is the type of poo that makes us all look forward to spending time on the toilet."
it comes down to minimizing the splash
CANNONBALL!!!!
70 How do you do, Mr. Cyrus!
if you were inquiring after me, and i hope you were i'm not sure coz sometimes my reading comprehension tends to confuse me and if there are two verbs in their different forms written together and one of them happens to be my handle i read into it that one mentioned me
sometimes even without additional verbs though
i've been mourning ogged's leave all over the posts yesterday evening and i'm afraid i'm still in that mode and will be for quite some time
seriously how people can be so cheerful to talk about bowel movements and zits in these times of troubles is beyond my comprehension etc
in The magic mountain i'm reading this week people eat 5 square meals a day, so far no description of their bowel movements
isn't that how we got protestantism?
each of us mourns in her own way, read. enjoy reading the magic mountain! five nourishing meals a day at the international sanatorium berghof... I read it for the second time on the beach at koh tao in thailand, a pleasantly discordant experience improved by some thai stick so fucking strong I worried I was going to fall off my chair and had to lie down in the hammock. believe you me, I am not the sort of person who goes around falling off chairs. I mean, not even at the time when I might plausibly have done so. I have always been justly famous for my ability to speak coherently and stay upright in the teeth of ferocious chemical headwinds.
126: If my memory serves me well, you are going to be disappointed, read, for as long as the novel is, Mann somehow failed to include any description of bowel movements.
yeah, soo funny a book
and i'm so glad to find it
better late than never
108: the narrator in ada has a 'perfect, cruciform' bowel movement
In Al Franken's Why Not Me (a book he is probably not emphasizing much in his current campaign, it recounts how he runs for President with Joe Lieberman as his VP!—written in the 90s) he has a bowel movement in the shape of question mark, but can't interest anyone in admiring it with him. In the end:
Tried to save shit but question mark shape started to deteriorate by lunchtime.
Would a competitor be disqualified because he/she had a prosthetic anal sphincter?
Actually, it might confer an unfair advantage to a swimmer. The neosphincter (its name, seriously) is a rather ingenious and extremely profitable inflatable device. By providing extra flotation in the rear without changing a swimmer's profile in the water, it should help keep the hips upright in the water even as the swimmer gets tired. This should supply an advantage similar to that of the new Speedo suit.
(Oh god, some knowledge is never desirable.)
There's quite a literature coordinating mental health and happiness with digestion and excretion. Mark Twain was trying to be funny, but Bertrand Russell and Nietzsche were serious; Shaw was probably both.
The primary hydraulic theory says that wars are caused by sexual frustration, as if guys had gallons of semen pent up in their little sacs, but the secondary hydraulic theory held that constipation causes wars.
If women were though to cause wars, it would be because menstruation. I've never seen or heard that theory.
126: Heh, yes, I was inquiring after you, but I was mostly joking. In 29, asilon suggested that the mysterious new bloggers would be current commenters and that they won't comment in this thread, to keep it a secret I guess. So I was just trying to name the regular commenters who hadn't commented here yet. Since I wrote that several of them have popped up, so either there are a very few possibilities left or I missed someone* or asilon was wrong.
* This is entirely possible. There are a few names I know I didn't write, but partly because I can't remember if they're actually distinct people or just old handles for people who are still around.
Have to say, the Easterbrook column Yggles linked to on killer asteroids almost makes me forgive him for the last twenty years. If he helps SAVE THE PLANET by bringing attention to this problem, then that would pretty much cancel out "Tuesday Morning Quarterback". Mostly.
they won't comment in this thread
Unless they're trying to throw you off the trail.
134: Shaw was probably both.
Oops, if that is in reference to my Shaw quote above, that was a bogus quote modified from one where he claimed to have made it big merely by thinking once or twice a week. I am a lazy idiot should have done the strikethrough thing.
I never read Easterbrook's sports columns. I remember him mainly as TNR's house "liberal who hates liberals" on environmental issues, bitching for years about how global warming wasn't real.
There's quite a literature coordinating mental health and happiness with digestion and excretion. Mark Twain was trying to be funny, but Bertrand Russell and Nietzsche were serious; Shaw was probably both.
And Aldous Huxley, in jest, which seems typical somehow, but I can't remember the book. Maybe Chrome Yellow.
133: ,i>By providing extra flotation in the rear without changing a swimmer's profile in the water, it should help keep the hips upright in the water even as the swimmer gets tired.
Yep:
...found that in comparing bodysuits to "conventional suits," "the bodysuits were found to move the center of buoyancy closer to the center of mass in most swimmers (compared to the conventional suit)
Which in turn requires less work to keep the legs from dragging (for almost all people they naturally sink). Who needs ogged to bore the crap out of everyone talk about swimming.
Maybe Chrome Yellow.
If your poo is chrome yellow, that's definitely the wrong tone.
Okay, either someone needs to post a new thread or I need to kill the poop people.
Actually, I rather like superior bowel movements.
I need to kill the poop people.
Everyone poops, stras.
If your poo is chrome yellow, that's definitely the wrong tone
Hm. Mine is A 440. Is that healthy?
I never read Easterbrook's sports columns.
Oh man, I'm not sure if I can even properly express the tone. Imagine if you were watching a series of DVDs with commentary commentary tracks that started off with some guys telling occasionally funny jokes and offering some interesting thoughts about the ways in which the movie was made behind the scenes. By the third DVD, they're just referencing jokes from the first DVD, saying how much they hate Steven Spielberg, and making slobbering comments about Helen Mirren's tits. And then you realize that there are six DVDs to go and the commentary track won't turn off.
I remember him mainly as TNR's house "liberal who hates liberals" on environmental issues, bitching for years about how global warming wasn't real.
Climatologists say that the earth is getting warmer, but they think it's craaaaaaazy to say that God made the world in seven days in 4004 BC! Why won't liberal scientists admit that they hate small-town America?
By the third DVD, they're just referencing jokes from the first DVD, saying how much they hate Steven Spielberg, and making slobbering comments about Helen Mirren's tits. And then you realize that there are six DVDs to go and the commentary track won't turn off.
Admittedly, if you added swimming posts (RIP) and 400-comment discussions of whether swipple is funny, you'd have Unfogged.
and making slobbering comments about Helen Mirren's tits
I like tits as much as the next guy, but I found Easterbrook's whole cheerleader lust thing offensive on so many levels. What of the poor fellow's wife? What kind of cad advertises his wandering eye like that? The whole "Hey, look, I may be a nerd, but I know something about football, and hey, check out those gazongas!" shtick was so overwrought that it veered close to closeted homo territory.
Me, I know that real men advertise their masculinity and heterosexuality by purchasing power tools.
TMQ was actually interesting when he first started publishing it, but as snarkout says, it's pretty much faded into complete self-parody now.
re: 149
And grooming products.
I know that real men advertise their masculinity and heterosexuality by purchasing power tools.
No, that's well established to be closeted signaling, KR.
No, that's well established to be closeted signaling, KR.
Really? Dammit! What if I stuck to rough carpentry stuff and didn't get any sissy cabinetry tools like joiners and doweling jigs? Or an arc welder! I could buy an arc welder! Surely the homos haven't colonized that.
Mine is A 440
I prefer A=443, but really, your shit shouldn't be vibrating.
Way back at 41: I was serious about the n - 1 thing.
Yes, it's true: the new bloggers are Keith Gessen and Benjamin Kunkel.
KR, auto junkyards will always be macho. It can be your safe, homo-free place. Your neighbor will love it, too.
Everyone poops, stras.
That book will be rendered obsolete by the Robot Revolution.
But the real proof is in the pudding, as it were.
45 was totally KR, because he's the other parodist, and I didn't write it.
There are more than two, you know.
Mine is A 440
Better flat than sharp in this case, I think.
So, how often are you guys refreshing to see if a new poster has put something up?
I mean, RSS, sure, but sometimes it's slow!
What if the new posters simply took over the pseudonyms of the old posters? How long would it take to notice? (Aside from the fact that some of the posters would be posting for the first time in years.)
i'm sure no one would notice
no one remembers the styling of how i wrote
golf is exciting i think
170: But you expressed a preference for the sharper tone, which I disfavored. WMYBSALB?
I was joking before in the other thread about nominating myself. I am one of the new front-page posters. I'll be posting under the new pseudonym Matthews O'Reilly. I have a bunch of posts almost ready to go. Thankfully, no SWPL blogging, but these are some of the posts you'll be seeing:
1) Sexism is a quaint, twentieth-century notion. The twenty-first century belongs to sexyism.
2) Obama's supporters really are whirly-eyed youngsters who think gullible is not a word in the dictionary.
3) Now that Jessica Beal is rumored to be pregnant, is her ass still awesome? You be the judge.
4) The only thing that can save us from global warming? More analytic philosophy.
So what's the over-under on the new posters ruining the blog?
I have it from inside sources that a certain individual was persuaded to drop out and endorse her opponent only on the condition that she be given a more prestigious if somewhat less powerful position. The announcement is being delayed while she gets a crash course on computers and the web.
So what's the over-under on the new posters ruining the blog?
Can you spell this out a little more? What would the over/under be relative to?
I mean, the odds are high, of course—the last non-ruinous addition was Alameida.
Maybe if there were an index of ruination, or something. You could have an over/under on the delta.
What would the over/under be relative to?
Baseline.
So, how often are you guys refreshing to see if a new poster has put something up?
I mean, RSS, sure, but sometimes it's slow!
Often. You new posters are killing me.
177 (& 179): Baseline.
Define your metrics.
This thread could productively be incorporated into the predictions blog, by way of new blogger identities, effect on pacing, impact on baseline quality, etc. I too expect that regular commenters have been promoted.
I assumed it would the over/under would be measured in days from first post to final ruination, but I suppose I should let JRoth say.
There aren't really any new front page posters, are there? This is all a big scam.
You're all giving the new posters an early quailing introduction to blogging on unfogged: put up a post, put up a post! Well? Well (stamp foot)?? I hope it's good! I'm waiting!
Jeepers.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Now? Now?
7.3 minutes -- or was it 3.7 minutes, or 6.2 -- whatever it was, may be the average, but I think we eventually agreed that it really was no rule of thumb at all.
It's sad that a blog community can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.
It's sad that a blog community can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.
You know, that analogy ban had a lot to recommend it.
You know what would be anawesome feature, though it might be a pain to implement: a way to look at all of a particular author's posts chronologically. I was just thinking that I'd like to look at all of alameida's posts, and I'm not sure of the easiest way to find them.
On the internet, no one knows you're a pack of wild dogs.
185:
Split personalities are persons too, it's right there in the word.
The new posters are proving that the most effective hiatus is the unannounced hiatus.
Just, no dorks please. That's all I ask in the new posters department.
Don't worry, PGD, we didn't ask you.
Why is everyone so eager for the new posters? They're just going to be fools who are wrong about everything, that we're going to have to spend hours every day correcting. Just like the current posters.
197: No, maybe they will post only once every three weeks, like alameida, whose posts are met with universal huzzahs.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Some cliché like that probably applies.
As long as we're on blog fixes, is there some reason why the preview box shows up at the top of the thread? It would be some much handier down at the bottom, so you don't have to jump all the way down to see how badly you've been pwned.
Steps to reduce pwnage should not be a priority! That's what makes things tick around here. The quest for superiority over our fellow man.
200 is right. 190 is already done by pretty much all other group blogs, right? I think this might be the lone exception.
I think the strategy should be to figure out what would make the blog more like "TPM Cafe", and then do the opposite.
I think the preview box should appear at the bottom of the thread to make it easier to say something that's already been said.
I think Kraabs might benefit from refreshing sometimes instead of previewing.
I think I should go buy some ice cream.
I think the blog needs t-shirts.
205: I do, I do! But I preview if I'm including a link or some kind of fancy formatting. Because I care about the other commenters, heebie.
I think Brock Landers should go buy some ice cream.
Damn it! But at least I provided links.
I think the preview box should appear in a secret location, such that the would-be commenter has to hunt for it, like treasure.
I think there should be a captcha that doesn't actually do anything.
And its name should be "Kate Captcha", and it would be a terrible wet blanket in an otherwise good adventure movie.
I think the blog should wear the comment box like a hat.
I think the
comment box
should be a trapezoid.
Concerning the impending destruction of Unfogged, I made my peace during the outage a few weeks ago, having assumed Labs finally received tenure.
Is there a way to force
comments to be in haiku
at least until fall?
190 gets it exactly right. Also it is a pain in the ass to find for example all the recipe and book recommendation threads. Of course after the fact indexing of the archives requires way too much work, but a multi-sexed person can dream.
I suggest at least one new poster experiment with emoticons.
I think the blog should be fitted with dual Mercury HP1200 SCi outboards and used to smuggle very dangerous drugs into south Florida from the Bahamas.
218 cont'd: so, e.g. 218 would be banned?
Only the force of your example, Sifu. You might also threaten peoples families.
How about an Emoticon cap-and-trade program. And one for analogies.
||
Downsides of an undergraduate education heavy on medieval philosophy: when stuck on my dissertation trying to respond to objections, I have a tendency to think of them in the style of Summa Theologiae.
It would seem that Objection X is the case. Blah di blah di blah.
Respondeo....
All I need are some good sed contras and I'm set.
|>
multi-sexed person
I thought you were a snail. People are not tiny.
Then what about Tiny Tim, smartass.
We have collapsed to the cannibalism phase surprisingly fast.
I am reading Dreams from My Father. Anyone who hasnt read it, should.
Agreed, I just finished it yesterday morning.
Ssssshhhh, Holy shit, shutup Piggy! Mom just came in.
I'm wondering if Lord of the Flies has been dropped from its near-universal presence in high school reading lists in the last few decades. Neither of my kids read it, and I must say that that's fine with me. Also A Separate Peace, gone longer I think. If I'm right, whenabouts were they dropped?
I read Lord of the Flies but not A Separate Peace.
In my experience the books most universally read in high school among my cohort are:
1) The Great Gatsby
2) Lord of the Flies
3) Red Badge of Courage
Everybody gets references to those first two books.
(everybody born circa 1982 in Pennsylvania or New York, anyway) It's harder to remember what goes in in Red Badge of Courage.
I never read either of them. My sister read Lord of the Flies for school just a couple of years ahead of me. I saw the movie.
.-_|\
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Perth ->*.--._/
v <- Tasmania
Please join me in petitioning the blog to support the HTML <pre> element so I can once more live on the Internet.
237 to 235. I also didn't read Red Badge of Courage.
By omission, eb reveals that he did read The Great Gatsby. My claim is still valid!
everybody born circa 1982 in Pennsylvania or New York, anyway
My kids, now grown or almost, were born in the early nineties. If the change happened at all systematically, it was probably in that bracket, i.e. high school in the late nineties.
It's harder to remember what goes in in Red Badge of Courage.
It's pretty much walk, bleed, walk, bleed, if memory serves. A Separate Peace, by the way, is the worst book I have ever been forced to read. I honestly feel a little surge of fight-or-flight response when I think of it and I can't even remember anything about it.
235: Not entirely gone, of my sample size of three, one had A Separate Piece and either two or all three had the beastie boys. The absence that I noted was Catcher in the Rye. (And yes, at least two of them got a glimmer of the green light.) The most disturbing was one class where my daughter got both Tuesdays with Morrie *and* Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
242: A Separate Peace, by the way, is the worst book I have ever been forced to read.
Hated, hated, hated it. Recall arguing with the teacher, "So, he bounced the branch and made him fall off, big deal; who hasn't?"
At any rate, I was in high school in the late '80s and early '90s and had all of those mentioned.
My son read the Great Gatsby. I read it with him. He didn't seem terribly interested. I tried to point out to them that they were doing the same goddamn thing, falling in love with unapproachable girls that came with nice houses. Water off a duck's back. I tried, the school tried, Fitzgerald tried. Daisy and Tom always win.
"Them" = my son and his friends. Editing error.
So where are the new posts already? The new bloggers ought to be fired. Especially if one of them is B -- it's not like she has anything better to do.
236 sounds about right, except that I'm not sure we were assigned RBoC. I read it, but only because I was a masochist. Also, Huckleberry Finn, which I think every 9th grader in America has to read.
You know what book makes like absolutely no sense when you're 14? The Old Man and the Sea. 80 pages of total crap. What the fuck, high school teachers.
They're perfectionist motherfuckers, unwilling to put up shitty posts. As if the classic Unfoggetarians didn't.
219: Also it is a pain in the ass to find for example all the recipe and book recommendation threads
I suggest bookmarking them. For easy reference. It's kind of a do-it-yourself place around here, it seems to me.
I hold the firm conviction that the sheer act of making a book required reading removes a substantial amount of the pleasure and joy of discovery, and often creates actual animosity.
Down with required reading!
one class where my daughter got both Tuesdays with Morrie *and* Jonathan Livingston Seagull
That is so, so wrong.
235: I had to read A Separate Peace but not Lord of the Flies, in high school in the late 90s. I remember very little except how the class tittered at the scene in the movie version where everyone breaks out into song about how Hitler only had one ball. Also, the teacher acting embarrassed when talking about some people think the two main characters might have been... [long pause... quiet voice] gay.
How I feel during this wait for the new posters reminds me of how I felt during the Florida recount battle. Not only has certainty been ripped away from us unexpectedly (those of us not in the inner circle, that is), but we don't even know how long we'll have to wait for our future to be revealed.
The Old Man and the Sea. 80 pages of total crap. What the fuck, high school teachers.
Agreed.
This "movie version" of Lord of the Flies -- what is this absurdity of which you speak? (don't answer that)
Down with required reading!
Huh?
No, the movie of A Separate Peace. At any rate there are at least two film adaptations of Lord of the Flies, neither of which I've seen.
Huh?
In case this was a real question and not rhetorical: I don't like required reading. I think it often fails to accomplish its supposed goal of familiarizing students with content, and moreover it creates resistance and drag (passivity) in students.
It's another manifestation of formal education's valuing of extrinsic rewards and punishments over intrinsic motivation. Or, more accurately, formal education's lack of faith in intrinsic motivation.
Aren't you glad you asked?
The new bloggers ought to be fired. Especially if one of them is B -- it's not like she has anything better to do.
I'm supposed to be writing a blog post about teh gays, actually, which was due yesterday.
But you can't seriously believe that I'd be a new unfogged blogger. Even from the grave, Ogged's enmity is forever.
I am sorry, folks. I had thought that mentioning those artifacts from my hs days forty years ago would put them in a class with the other ancient things I learned in school, like writing with a straight pen, hand riveting and soldering from a fire-heated iron, and programming in fortran.
I really didn't expect the same damn curriculum.
258: is the goal to "familiarize students with content"? In my better high school English classes the goal was to have interesting discussions and learn how to analyze and think about literature; if you don't have everyone reading the same book, that's pretty difficult. (There were, unfortunately, the classes where one had "what color was Bob's car?"-type tests on the book. Then, even Nabokov asked questions like that....)
Nabakov especially asked questions like that. Gregor Samsa wasn't a cockroach, he was a beetle, and Vlad knew exactly which species.
258: I can construct reasons against it: certainly intrinsic motivation is undervalued.
I'm not sure I understand the supposed goal of familiarizing students with content.
This would seem to be a case of students young enough to (arguably) be wandering aimlessly, and direction is surely a good thing. Perhaps you would suggest something like a self-designed reading list, subject to approval (in order to rule out ridiculous reading)? There is supposed to be some sort of training going on.
on preview: pwned by essear.
the goal was to have interesting discussions and learn how to analyze and think about literature;
I think this goal is less common than the one I cited before. But more to the point:
if you don't have everyone reading the same book, that's pretty difficult.
Eeeehhh...first off, there are ways to have a group of people reading the same book and yet not have one person dictating what that book should be. Secondly, there are ways to think about and discuss literature that do *not* include everybody reading the same thing. Imagine a class on dialogue in which everybody goes out and finds their own example of dialogue that they think is particularly notable.
(Ignore pronouns, please; I was not an English major.)
4) The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Everybody hated it. Female students thought the main character was selfish and unlikeable and not deserving to be seen as groundbreaking or historically important, and male students thought the main character was selfish and unlikeable and, since we were to identify with her, therefore the author probably was selfish and unlikeable too.
I have met so many people who read Kate Chopin's The Awakening in high school, and they always think theirs was the only school to include this book, which they always complain about.
262: your comment provoked me to look again at thediscussion of Kafka in the Lectures on Literature, where I find that Nabokov said, beautifully: "He asked his friend Max Brod to burn everything he had written, even published material. Fortunately Brod did not comply with his friend's wish." Amusing, in light of recent events.
Witt's high school apparently had a smaller proportion of total dumbasses than mine did. I'm fairly certain that if my high school teachers didn't dictate our reading material, we'd have spent about half of high school years reading the Babysitters' Club serial, and the other half reading R.L. Stine.
There is supposed to be some sort of training going on.
This is the part that I think tends to be exceptionally under-examined. Training for what? Is it compliance behavior, so that everybody will obediently read the same material and be prepped to talk about it? Is it the ability to think critically or conduct analysis (in which case my objections/suggestions in 264 stand)? Is it in becoming fluent in a body of knowledge or jargon that is the foundation for a profession?
I still remember the absolute horror with which I realized a professor was serious when she apologetically said that she was "only" assigning six books in a six-week summer course and that she had checked with a colleague to make sure this was "OK." For a 40-something woman to be worried about whether she was requiring enough pages to be considered a legitimate English class was just stunning to me.
I still regard it as a remarkable illustration of the flaws of formal education. If you can take a thoughtful, experienced instructor and threaten her sufficiently that she does not trust her own judgment in how best to go about facilitating the class which you have hired her to teach -- that does not say a lot for your system, in my book. So what if she had wanted to teach JUST ONE BOOK for six weeks? Or 12 books, for that matter?
jms, be happy that I am sparing you my rant on why people are unfairly prejudiced against genre fiction.
Short version: You can learn a lot from the Baby-Sitters Club.
"The Old Man and the Sea. 80 pages of total crap. What the fuck, high school teachers."
I third this. I also really disliked Red Badge of Courage & Wuthering Heights, which reduced me to Cliff Notes & a comic book version, respectively.
I think my hs English curriculum was pretty standard except: (1) for some reason we read both "The King Must Die" & "The Bull From the Sea", which are not Western canon type books but I guess they thought it was an accessible way to do greek myths. (2) a lot of Eastern stuff my senior year--Epic of Gilgamesh, I Ching, Bhavagad Gita, etc.
I like "The Old Man and the Sea."
I find "The Awakening," like a lot of classic womens/feminist literature, tiringly pedantic; a measure, I suppose, of how far we've come, or something.
Not only has certainty been ripped away from us unexpectedly (those of us not in the inner circle, that is)
Just imagine ogged's inbox, chock full of scorned lurkers letting him know that just this once they do not agree.
2.5) Of Mice and Men
3.5) John Steinbeck's "The Pearl"
And I can't resist quoting again: "Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.)"
Um, right, back to the topic. Witt, I sympathize with 264; certainly my worst high school English class could have benefited from an approach like that. But my best high school English class was positively exhilarating, and I can't imagine any way to improve on the model of a room full of people who are all immersed in one text, being excited about all the things they can find in it together, under the guidance of an enthusiastic teacher.
I just thought of a research project. I would love to know whether high school reading lists go heavier or lighter on war fiction in times of war. I'm going say that there is less.
This isn't quite as off-the-cuff as it may sound. I'm thinking about what I've seen lately among the young people I know and it's not Catch-22 or Tim O'Brien.
I dunno; I'll willing to be proven wrong. Where is some enterprising grad student when you need one?
Uh, I'm willing to be proven wrong.
And I apparently cannot write in English. Back to work.
269: I don't have a problem with genre fiction. But a lot of kids are too busy or too uninterested to look after their own educations, and they're better off with some structure than left to their own devices. I wouldn't have minded reading the occasional Babysitters' Club or Sweet Valley Teens book, but if my HS reading list had been up to my classmates, that's all I would have read, and I would have minded that, very much.
Sure, I had to read a lot of boring stuff in HS that I'd rather have skipped, but there's also a lot of stuff (Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens) I wouldn't ever have took it upon myself to read at 14, 15 or 16, and I'm glad I had to do it. I also had pretty good 10th and 12 grade teachers, who had us read a lot of stuff (Achebe, Anaya, Morrison) that I simply wouldn't have known about at the time, had it not been required.
268: Training for what? Is it compliance behavior, so that everybody will obediently read the same material and be prepped to talk about it? ... Is it in becoming fluent in a body of knowledge
Yes, it's compliance behavior, in order to become fluent in a body of knowledge and ways of speaking.
I still remember the absolute horror with which I realized a professor
You sound like you're talking about college. We're talking about high school.
I'd read every post Witt would write.
Just sayin.
Daisy and Tom always win.
Truest thing I've read all day.
In other news, I'm in DC this weekend. Anyone?
I've never read Lord of the Flies (I actually finally googled the Piggy reference to learn exactly what it was beyond what I've been able to glean from context, i.e., someone died, this afternoon), but A Separate Peace was read in my tenth grade English class. He jounced the limb! He JOUNCED the limb! It is the only reason I know the word 'jounce!'
I read The Red Badge of Courage, but it wasn't assigned to my class in school. A lot of those books weren't in the advanced track. Catch-22, too. In the normal track, but not the honors track. Most of them I read when copies were left accidentally on the deak.
Is it in becoming fluent in a body of knowledge or jargon that is the foundation for a profession?
Cultural literacy, I would think. I also think that the most reliable way to become a competent writer is through reading good books.
I am reading Dreams from My Father. Anyone who hasnt read it, should.
Agreed, I just finished it yesterday morning.
Bizarre people wouldn't have read this yet. No wonder there was so little appreciation of my incredibly insightful posts about Obama. That is the best and most revealing book written by a politician since Grant's autobiography.
I hear he also wrote some very good short stories during the time he wrote "Dreams". Love to read those, but they are apparently lost.
I also think that the most reliable way to become a competent writer is through reading good books.
I completely agree.
Don't worry, PGD, we didn't ask you.
I'm not a dork, I'm a troll, goddamnit.
A dorky troll is droll.
Vaclav Havel wrote some good stuff. So did Pablo Neruda.
Does anyone else think PGD and Witt would make a cute couple?
This is not a mystery: Witt is contesting the received notion of what constitute good books, and by extension, questioning the value of cultural literacy as currently defined. I believe we have been over this territory, alas. It'd break down between realists and idealists, however sophisticated the arguments might appear to be. Which rather sucks.
I really didn't expect the same damn curriculum.
The best ever thought and written doesn't change quickly.
Probably Read does, but she's an incorrigible matchmaker. The anti-me.
If A Separate Peace is the best ever thought and written, then God help us. It's all about how the preppy kid dies, right? And while we're on that subject, you know what else sucked? Bridge to Terabithia. Fuck that book.
In my high school no one was actually required to read books. It wasn't a hippy HS, it was a farmer HS. No artisanal latte pseudo-intellectual book shit for us.
I had a class where, along with required reading, we also spent some of the semester doing:
1. Bring in a poem you thought was interesting, read it, and talk about it. The teacher canceled this assignment partway through for some reason, so I never did it. It wasn't worth much, unless you think high school kids with short attention spans can learn from sitting quietly while another kid talks about a poem few others have read.
2. Split up into groups, each group chooses a book - there was an approved list - groups do various projects together and present something to the class. On an individual level, I don't see how it was any better or worse than a normal classroom situation. I didn't get anything more or less out of the small group situation.
I managed to avoid A Separate Peace, though I did have to read Beloved. I don't think, in that case, that my dislike had anything to do with its being required, though the amount of my dislike (in that I wouldn't have read the whole thing were it not required) is related.
Bridge to Terabithia. Fuck that book.
We read it in 7th grade and were assigned to write a short piece from the perspective of one of the characters. I wrote from the perspective of the dog, who wished fervently that the stupid human children would fall off the log and die already.
Thinking more about it, I think I liked most of the books I was assigned in high school. The Scarlet Letter I hated, but plan to read again. I was also not a fan of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, which was one of the books we got as part of an attempt to be non-canonical.
Thinking more about it, I think I liked most of the books I was assigned in high school.
Me too. I even liked The Scarlett Letter.
The Scarlett Letter is a great book: passion, guilt, consequences, secrets and scorn all add up to some genuinely great reading in high school.
The Scarlett Letter sounds like a sequel to Gone with the Wind.
I especially liked the Scarlet Letter. The message is nothing like what people assume it will be, and most readers never finish it.
During my HS reading of "Crime and Punishment" my English teacher re-enacted for the class what she called "the existential scream". This was an ear-piercing shriek that lasted about one minute at top volume. It replicated Raskolnikov's horror at the violation of his humanity. She was a classic small-town repressed HS English teacher who could herself have been a character in a novel. Very good teacher in her odd way, though.
Does anyone else think PGD and Witt would make a cute couple?
I think we both have extensive social science backgrounds, so we could have long intricate conversations that would be fascinating to us but bore everybody else around. I think this is almost a pre-requisite for a cute couple.
I am annoyed that neither Dostoevsky nor Dickens were on my high school reading lists. What's that, I could have read them on my own? But I didn't want to until later. And, to be honest, I don't like A Tale of Two Cities, which is what some of my friends read with different teachers.
In other news, I'm in DC this weekend. Anyone?
sure, email me. Others too (eb, minivet?)
Obviously I have ScarJo on my mind.
Dickens wasn't on my HS reading list, either, but I do now want to read Bleak House and Great Expectations, which I started at some point in my youth but never got very far into (far enough to get Havisham references, though).
I am no longer in DC.
The lengths people will go to avoid having a drink with me.
Great Expectations is an incredible book. Really haunting symbolic power. (With phrases like that you know I loved AP English).
Great Expectations was assigned in 8th grade and I loved it. The Havisham scenes/storyline are really powerful.
Great Expectations was another Dickens a friend of mine read with another teacher. I haven't read it still, but I've read Bleak House and liked it a lot.
It's nice to read Dickens when you're young, because his way of merging physical symbolism and narrative meaning -- sort of almost cartoonish, but raised to this very high level -- is so resonant when you're young. There are all these images from "Great Expectations" almost burned on my brain. Miss Havisham's dress. The convict ships. So cinematic.
I hated Great Expectations when I read it in high school. Then in a Lit and Politics class in college, I read Hard Times and hated it even more. Imagine my surprise when I LOVED Bleak House in my senior college seminar and then wanted to get married to Our Mutual Friend in grad school. OMF is OMFGsogood.
Is Our Mutual Friend the one that starts of with a long, rambling digression?
I can't imagine why, but I want to read that one.
295 is hilarious.
I really, really liked Beloved,* athough I was a bit bemused by how carefully the timeline was drawn out for us by the instructor. Um, yeah, it's not actually that confusing, folks.
I dunno, maybe it was reading all that Faulkner that prepared me. Although we were given a step-by-step handholding through the "confusing" names/characters/timeline of Wuthering Heights too (different instructor) and I didn't get that either.
*And it was required reading, too!
Now I am remembering that one of the funnier things I've read is an essay on Beloved as a banned book that somehow failed to mention the sex-with-animals part. I still cannot fathom how that made it past the editor. A five-second Google search or a cursory reading of the Banned Books Week handout would have gotten you the info, and yet this makes it into print? Oy vey.
We got a little timeline thing for the Benjy portion of The Sound and the Fury, which we read immediately before Beloved.
I preferred Beloved to Sula, but I'm not sure I really liked it, as opposed to just liking it.
We read Faulkner only in short story form.
314: Uh, it starts with a scene on the Thames about refuse and dead bodies, but it's important later. Mostly, yeah, it does look like long, rambling digressions. It all comes together, though!
315: I do ask my classes who's finding the characters in WH confusing, and it's actually a good way of figuring out who actually did the reading, because if you've only read the first twenty pages or so, the names are really confusing. Hard to imagine anyone finishing the book without figuring that shit out, but I still see papers at the end of the semester mixing up Hindley and Hareton.
Faulkner is someone else I hated in high school (A Light in August), disliked as an undergrad (Sound and the Fury), and then LOVED in grad school (Absalom, Absalom! and, to a lesser extent, As I Lay Dying).
I do ask my classes who's finding the characters in WH confusing
To be clear, I actually think it's fine to ask, and probably even fine to provide the little handout. I was just surprised by the seemingly blithe assumption that of course we were thoroughly confused.
On the other side of things, I do have kind of a pet peeve about authors who name characters with the same initials (especially first names) for no apparent reason. It's reader-unfriendly to make someone's cognitive brain have to kick in to track that stuff when they should be relaxing into the marvelous narrative.
OMF was not the book I'm thinking of. The book I'm thinking of begins with the narrator explaining his birth (born with a caul!) and then says, "not to go off on a digression, but ...", and then tells the curious tale of some woman who loved tea from India but thought no one should ever go abroad by water.
320: I read all of those (and two other) in a month and a half! Talk about OD'ing. Gah. Not recommended.
My high school teacher referred to the Quentins as Quentin I and Quentin II. I really liked Faulkner.
I'd like to admit somewhere that I taught a couple of classes today while woefully underprepared (teaching six hours a day---half a novel in the morning and half a novel in the afternoon will do that) and every time I hit stride during an analytical riff, I blushed furiously and felt suddenly hysterical and covered my mouth with my book. I need a nap so fucking badly.
I was just surprised by the seemingly blithe assumption that of course we were thoroughly confused.
Likely the influence of experience, that, one imagines.
I think I've mentioned before that the class for which I read the Faulkner and the Morrison was (Morrison's inclusion notwithstanding) was really good.
One of the assignments was, over the spring break, after we had read Waiting for Godot and, I think, The Bald Soprano, to write our own extremely short "absurdist" plays. I remember that my first idea involved citing sources for every single word or phrase of dialogue, down to the articles and conjunctions, but that didn't pan out. The only thing I can remember about what I did write was that it involved some extremely circuitous prose.
Good thing I got that tendency out of my system!
Chapter 1. I Am Born. O sancta simplicitas!
Faulkner is someone else I hated in high school
me too. As I Lay Dying. Miss Kassberger was too ambitious for us with that one. I never had the post-HS conversion experience though.
One of the assignments was, over the spring break, after we had read Waiting for Godot and, I think, The Bald Soprano, to write our own extremely short "absurdist" plays.
This reminds me of a similar experience I had, in which we were asked to write "surreal" stories after having read Kafka. I, meanwhile, had been reading Labyrinths on my own and duly produced a Borges pastiche that impressed my teacher quite a lot. I miss how easy it once was to be (or to be credited as being) precocious.
Try reading the Snopes trilogy, PGD; very accessible.
This week I am being the opposite of precocious and only just finally reading Pnin for the first time.
335: Then follow it up with Gass's The Tunnel!
You want everyone to read Gass' The Tunnel, AWB.
Also: spontaneous combustion.
Yes! The Victorians were so much weirder, and so much more interesting, than the stereotypes to which they are now reduced.
Also, David Copperfield is truly wonderful. Mr Micawber's "Welcome misery," and Mrs Micawber always nursing those twins. Also: "Barkis is willing."
335: Then follow it up with Gass's The Tunnel!
Heavens, why?
One more voice for the greatness of OMF. All the strands come together. I couldn't stand The Tunnel, didn't finish. Gaddis' A Frolic of his Own is my favorite recent ambitious American novel.
281: He jounced the limb! He JOUNCED the limb!
Right, right, very good. Good detailed memory.
The Sound and the Fury was an absolute revelation when I read it in high school. I went on a Faulkner tear that summer similar to Witt's. God did I love that shit, kind of worked my way out of it by taking a college seminar on Faulkner a few years later. I did reread Absalom, Absalom last year, very painful, but I do want to give the Compsons another whirl and As I Lay Dying holds its interest for me. (I also love that Faulkner drew that great map of Yoknapatawpha County. He was also QB for a year on his HS team, but it was not the key position back then that it is now.)
338: seconded. HEEP! You HEEP of infamy!
Don't get MC started on the Victorians please.
Customers on Amazon who bought A Frolic of his Own also bought titles of basically equal snoot.
Wilkie Collins is another good Victorian. Roughly coeval, but different because of alarming coffee consumption, is Balzac. His Comedie Humaine is enormous, intertwined characters, some bathos on a par with Dickens,' more real malice to his characters, and like Dickens, always has accurate floor plans in mind. Undemanding French, as well. Maupassant is later, but his novels are IMO underrated by English readers. Bel-Ami is really good.
I fully recognize that I didn't "get" some D.H. Lawrence story we read in HS, but a lot of us were offended when our teacher concluded it was "too deep" for us.
331: Chapter 1. I Am Born.
I do think it has one of the best set of opening lines in English literature. I particularly like the the echoes of Tristram Shandy.
I'm sure that Collins and Balzac differ not just in, and not just because of, coffee consumption.
Unless you meant to compare Dickens and Balzac, but even then, my surety, mutandis, if we are lucky, anyway, mutatis, would be none the lessened.
Don't get MC started on the Victorians please.
You only say that because you're an Edwardian, of course.
Am I allowed to mention Trollope?
DH Lawrence is lazy emo. The Smiths before hair gel.
I tried to read "Wieland" a couple months ago, on AWB's recommendation. Nope, completely impossible to read. Paragraphs too long. Sentences too long. Written too long ago. Not possible to read.
I bought it at the Salvation Army, though, so no big loss.
Kant was a fan of Wieland the poet.
Maybe it would have been possible to read if it had been written in the third person.
351: The Smiths are emo? I thought they were too tongue-in-cheek for that.
Also, as good a place to ask as any: which Gaddis novel should I read first?
The first-person thing is really helpful for its gothic-ness, I think, but if you're not into terribly obscured painful narrations of reluctantly remembered shit that was confusing for the characters to experience in the first place, but that totally pay off wicked awesome in the end, well, then, sir, it is possible that Wieland is just not for you, as it were.
Also, as good a place to ask as any: which Gaddis novel should I read first?
The Recognitions, of course.
For one thing, unlike all his other novels, it contains nontrivial stretches of narration, instead of being 99% dialogue.
Of course, I haven't read either A Frolic of his Own or JR, so.
Damn. I downloaded Adam Bede so I could troll the valve reading group, but haven't started it yet. I am good on genre painting, but I was told there is untranslated greek in it, which tends to make me feel inadequate and guilty.
And I have an urge to explore Ian McEwan after a Dana Rodrik post. Damn.
357: I don't have any actual advice, but I'm very interested in other people's answer to this.
I read A Frolic of His Own a couple of months ago, and I enjoyed it. Currently, I'm reading The Recognitions.
I'm finding it a bit above my level, but pleasantly so.
I may never finish Wieland, having started it last year and restarted it once or twice since then, but it certainly seems readable enough.
You might find these annotations helpful or of interest, feldspar.
If you, like me, are prone to confusing Joseph Tabbi and Matt Taibbi, reading secondary literature on Gaddis can become somewhat confusing and amusing.
359:JR wasn't so hard, and got reasonably funny after a while. Didn't have much substantially new or interesting to say though, unless the style was a statement.
A lot more love of school and its assignments here than I ever felt. Arrowsmith, which was summer reading before 12th grade, was something I remember liking then. I almost misspelled it like the heavy metal band just now.
353: See? Trollope is hott. And the more so for being thoughtful and intelligent, not to mention wryly, dryly humorous. Also, his mother wrote that book about "the domestic manners of the Americans," which book was not only keenly insightful but also downright and outright hilarious.
Of course you should read Adam Bede, McManus. And also Scenes of Clerical Life, whenever you get around to it.
363: Oh, the pompositude!
my page/line references correspond to every edition of The Recognitions except for the Avon, a textually corrupt edition that should be shunned by Gaddis scholars
Should it be shunned by readers too, or just scholars?
363: I make extensive use of that site.
If it weren't for that site, I might not realize how much I'm missing.
Well he can still put up a basketball post
For crying out loud, in the ogged days Boston's merciless domination of LA would at least have been noted. This is awesome.
Ogged is probably putting up a post or two right now, iykwim.
And you know, I don't have a clue what we were assigned to read in HS English. Complete blank.
TR is a young person's book, the Van Eycks and comparative religion are prominent. JR is a satire on business, in dialogue, funny more often than TR. A Frolic of his own is about law and aging. I'd say pick the one with a center that interests you most. Try a few pages of the dialogue to see if you like it. JR begins with a couple of elderly minor characters talking, it gets easier. Don't look to JR for a thoughtful exploration on the separation of ownership and control in the corporation, though. I liked Frolic best.
I know we're past Red Badge by now; however, while I don't particularly care for the book, I do delight in the old "The red sun was pasted in the sky like a fierce wafer" bit (apparently there's some editorial faux-controversy surrounding it?).
Also, I think the high school curriculum should feature Jude the Obscure. Always good for some laughs, that Hardy.
Jude the Obscure couldn't be in the same year as Ethan Frome, though. Too many suicides among our already-mentally-addled teens.
There's an outrigger canoe race in DC on Saturday. I think I have an extra ticket to the Nats game on Sunday, if anyone knows anyone who might be interested in going.
We read A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Mayor of Casterbridge in mine.
375: That's the problem with kids these days. No backbone.
The basketball game is certainly something.
Do kids still read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
Oops, like like I jumped threads. Anyway, LA faces crushing defeat, so right-thinking people can sleep the sleep of the just at least for one night. 104-70. Beautiful.
New bloggers will use pseudonyms:
1 harm reduction,
2 reciprocity and fairness,
3 purity,
4 respect for authority, and
5 in-group loyalty
For when that wears out, Jeff Yang and Steve Sailer are on deck.
I had to give up on JR because I found it so sexist, the female characters so thinly and unconvincingly drawn vs the male characters, that I said fuck it.
HS reading was unusual. We had combined english/history classes, double-length, double-taught, and as a result read an unreasonable amount of historical fiction. The Mask of Apollo, endless amounts of James Michener, others I've since forgotten. Fuck Michener in the ear.
Balzac. His Comedie Humaine is enormous, intertwined characters, some bathos on a par with Dickens,' more real malice to his characters, and like Dickens, always has accurate floor plans in mind.
Balzac is great once you give in to the mediocre writing and let him draw you this giant map of how French society hangs togethe. Back in the 19th century plot and character really mattered because if you made weak moves at the wrong time you could seriously starve to death. Rich people have more time for the niceties of style.
I almost threw a copy of Cousin Bette off a bridge in Paris, but it was crowded and I was too self-conscious so I didn't. I'll probably read it and Lost Illusions some day. As far as long 19th century series go, my only goals are the Pallisers and the Rougon-Macquarts.
I nearly threw a book-on-tape copy of Crichton's Prey out of a car, mostly for various non-plot-based gratuitous falsehoods (e.g. apropo of nothing, stating that tea had more caffeine than coffee).
In retrospect, I should have done it. It was a horrible book, even when you take in to account the Crichton effect.
re: 266
I've handled all those original Kafka manuscripts, in my day job. Everything is written in little gray school jotters.
OK, I'm going to bed. I'm setting my alarm for 7:30 PDT. There better be a post up by a new blogger by the time I amble over to the computer or I want my money back.
382 -- Yes to Cuckoo's Nest, to the great game, or to going to the Nats game?
Man alive, this is a convoluted literature discussion. To the original point: I read Red Badge of Courage in 3rd grade, Lord of the Flies in junior high, and have never gotten around to reading Gatsby (prophet in his own land, etc. -- I also own no Prince.)
Re: 275, war reading: It seemed to me that, when I was in HS, during and after the First Gulf War, that people I knew were reading a lot of war literature on their own, but that very little of it made it into the actual curriculum.
It should be noted, however, that I had almost 2 years of HS English classes with the same teacher, who was still teaching from a much-battered and beloved set of Adventures in English Literature, a textbook my parents remembered fondly from their late-1960s HS experience. Also, I only read Beloved because I took a college lit class in my senior year of HS. Otherwise, very low on assigned multicultural readings, despite the deservedly liberal reputation of my HS.
If it were up to me, all HS students would be assigned:
1. Howl and America
2. Some Audre Lorde
3. Some Nanao Sakaki
4. Things Fall Apart
5. The Master and Margarita
6. The Monkeywrench Gang
7. You Can't Win
8. We
9. Ringolevio
10. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather suggest things that are much better read (at least for the first time) when in HS, rather than later.
I had to give up on JR because I found it so sexist, the female characters so thinly and unconvincingly drawn
Not all females are as plump and convincing as you are, Ala.
BTW, these "new bloggers" are looking more apocryphal with each passing minute.
I don't have a clue what we were assigned to read in HS English
I remember hating A Tale of Two Cities with every fiber of my being. Beyond that, all I can really recall is Grendel, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, and The Great Gatsby. Surely there were others, but I'd have to be specifically reminded at this advanced age.
We did the usual stuff, I suppose.
Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, a load of Shakespeare, etc.
Also, some quite idiosyncratically Scottish stuff. Iain Crichton Smith's Consider the Lillies, which I remember hating.
392: Yes to Cuckoo's Nest, to the great game, or to going to the Nats game?
I just assumed that it was a general "Yes" to life. And that Ben will be redoubling his efforts here to exhibit that he has the Serenity to accept the things he cannot change, the Courage to change the things he can and the Wisdom to know the difference.
i remember i tried to read 'Catcher in the rye' once in translation and there was a description of one's unclean hair or toothbrushes, i forget, at the beginning of the book
my fastidiousness took over and i didn't read it further, maybe i'll try it again sometime
i endorse 286 though my initial guess was PGD&BG, Witt&CN, so wrong
School reading:
Junior Cycle (first 3 years but I think we didn't start the novels until 2nd year)
Pride & Prejudice & Great Expectations
Short story collection divided between Irish and other authors. Poetry anthology, ditto. Prose anthology. (These were called Exploring English 1, 2 & 3)
Romeo & Juliet
Senior Cycle (4th & 5th years, but I did the 4th year twice otherwise I would have been going to college at 16)
First time - Hard Times & the "modern novels" - a bunch of shortish modern classics which included The Pearl, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, The Old Man and the Sea, and probably some more.
Macbeth & Philadephia Here I Come. Poetry anthology - Soundings
Second time - Persuasion & the modern novels.
Hamlet & Death of a Salesman. Same poetry, though we didn't have to do the whole book so there were some variations- my teacher chose to do Paradise Lost Book 1 as the alternative to doing the rest of the Milton poems. That was great.
Somehow, and it may just be him, ttaM seems to reflect a society where good education is widespread and available without much finagling to those who respond to it, and that therefore he can react naturally to what's good and bad and merely indifferent in it. Here, it seems to me, it becomes the focus of much more anxiety, and those who succeed at it tend to be partisans of it, whose identity is wrapped up in being good at school.
And people were and are sorted, by themselves and others, on the basis of this affinity. This tendency, which leaves out and alienates many people of genuine intellectual bent, was already palpable when Emerson and I were in school, but if anything seems to have only grown more intense.
393: Particularly good choice on Things Fall Apart.
rather suggest things that are much better read (at least for the first time) when in HS,
Tom Robbins!
"Dune"!
Kurt Vonnegut!
(OK, I still like ol' Kurt, shouldn't lump him in)
The Master and Margarita
I just love this novel to pieces. I need to read it again soon.
I just skimmed this thread, but I just wanted to point out that 258 proves that Witt is a hippie, and must be shunned.
I find "The Awakening," like a lot of classic womens/feminist literature, tiringly pedantic;
If it was good, it wouldn't be "classic womens/feminist literature", it would just be classic. There are plenty of feminist-type themes to be found in "Middlemarch", but the book has entered the canon.
An admirable attempt to troll at this late date, PGD.
I try, I try.
You'll be glad to know that "Kobe is overrated" is no longer a troll, but a truism.
I'd read every post Witt would write.
I agree with Napi. At least two votes for Witt.
411:
Blood can be shed in the name of democracy or in the name of a junta.
If Witt is one of the newb-loggers, I might be able to take a generation or two off the curse.
I, for one, would welcome Witt as a blogger. But the power of the commentariat is weak.
The blog technically still has 6 active bloggers. I would think this might theoretically be enough; I've heard there are blogs out there run by as few as two bloggers (or perhaps even fewer).
I am so sorry I missed the limb-jouncing section of the thread. After reading A Separate Peace in high school, a friend and I manage to knock each other down by jouncing the floor wherever we were: cafeteria, chorus, waitin' for the bus.
Also Simon Pegg's SPACED series has some good limb-jouncing bits in it that like many good bits in that show go under-remarked.
We were promised additional bloggers, Brock.
Also, not replacing Ogged would be evidence that not only was he replaceable, he didn't even need to be replaced. Not only Ogged, but his mother, all his other antecedents, his descendants, and the whole Lur nation would be shamed by that.
405 gets it exactly right.
You know how some businesses claim not to be closing down until after it becomes obvious that they're remaining open solely to sell off whatever is left and and still salable of their supplies and infrastructure? ...
I had the image of the businesses that are always promising that they are going out of business, yet they are not.
Oh, Will, you'll like the Zohan movie.
No, because there's an electronics store called "Going Out Of Business".
That too.
