I know finding hypocrisy in Republican arguments is an utter waste of time. I'm deleting a post that boiled down to the observation that cutting corporate taxes and cutting social spending is impractical as well as inhumane.

Instead, finish the sentence:
Finding hypocrisy in Republican arguments is like:

Turgid Jacobian, Bonsaisue, and two infant/toddler offspring are in NYC Memorial Day weekend, and have expressed interest in a meetup. I'm a little stymied, because Fresh Salt seems to be off the table (and I'm not sure that I'm going to be in town -- our plans for the weekend are still in flux).

Any NYC locals interested in a baby-friendly meetup? Any ideas on what that might be (Central Park Zoo?)

Update: seems to be on for 3pm at a beer garden in Fort Greene on Sunday.

So, I just went running, and while I was out, an oncoming Corvette went past me with the top down, followed by a whoosh of cold air, indicating the driver's cruising around town with the top down and the air conditioning on.

Since I had headphones on, I didn't catch what kind of music he was listening to, but I'm imagining it was something that really puts the cherry on top of the Asshole Sundae he seemed to be enjoying.

My housemate's cat just returned with a lizard that turned out to be very much alive. The little squirmer escaped back behind some shelves and then to who-knows-where.

Despite growing up keeping and handling anoles, I got a little squicked when I tried (and failed) to pick up the creature. It's definitely larger than an anole.

So now I'm doing some mental bargaining, trying to assess exactly how comfortable I am with the lizard of unknown species that's taken up occupancy in our house crevices.

This type of thing has happened memorably before, e.g. the woman who blogged the giant "I KNEW IT!" post in response to the Onion article about the woman throwing herself an abortion party, and with foreign governments sometimes marveling in the depravity of Americans that they've uncovered in Onion posts.

Still, I never get tired of it. Here's a whole tumblrful. I hope it grows and gets some more diverse suckers, though.

PS: Don't try to dig up a link to the first example - anti-abortionist perverts have covered the relevant posts with super gruesome fetus pictures. What perverts.

Ajay and Dsquared present:

My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just some unisex clothes and an empty packet of Quorn.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Storm."

He tormented my grandma and both of my aunts
By refusing to say what I'd got in my pants
And writing "n/a" in the "Gender" space on the form;
He said it was only right and fair
To let me decide how to wear my hair;
It's no joke bein' an androgyne named "Storm".

Well, I grew up to be a mean child-of-a-bitch
'Cause it looked like I batted both ends of the pitch
And broke damn near every societal norm;
But I swore I'd search every health food store
From Marin east to the Cape Cod shore
And find the goddamn fool who named me "Storm".

It was Williamsburg in mid August
And I'd just arrived, on the other bus
I thought I'd better find some place to keep warm
At the yoga center, cool as you like
Sittin' on the seat of his fixed wheel bike
Was the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Storm"

Well I knew at once that he was my dad
From the three tattoos that I knew he had,
Two tribal ones, and one (ironic) nude;
I kicked his bike out from under his ass
And I threw it right through the window glass
And he just smiled and said "Whoa, you've got issues, dude."

Well I ordered a coffee and drained the dregs
Then I punched him hard, between the legs
He kicked me with a ballet shoe and called it savate
I threw my man-purse into his face
And we crashed through the wall and out of the place
Kickin' and a-gouging in the mud and the blood and the latte.

I'd say that I've fought tougher guys
But that would be just a pack of lies -
They don't have many bar fights at Fresh Salt.
Still, I gave him one almighty smack
And I heard him groan and his iPad crack
And he wiped the foam from his face and called a halt.

He said "Son [or daughter] this world is rough
And if you're gonna make it, ya gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to give ya correction.
So I called ya Storm to keep ya sparky
And strike a blow at the patriarchy
And muck around with their gender preconceptions."

Well what could I do? I knew what I oughta
I called him my mom, and he called me his daughter
And I came away with a different cultural norm.
I think about him, time to time
Whenever I subvert the dominant paradigm
And if I have a son, or daughter I'm gonna name hir ... Jazz! or Kio! Anything but god damn Storm!

How are unlifted types like A Midsummer Night's Dream?

They have no bottom.

Does LinkedIn have some actually useful purpose to some professions? I'm guessing it must but kind of boggling at which professions those might be.

The origin of my question: someone who is in fact a professional contact of mine is trying to get me to sign up, and I'm wondering whether I can simply ignore the request (probably rude) or just say, "Dude, we're already friends on the Facebonk" (probably what I'll do).

Plus I felt bad for not having fed the blog in a while. Sorry, blog.

Oh, for pity's sake.

But the email sent recently by Kathy Witterick and David Stocker of Toronto, Canada to announce the birth of their baby, Storm, was missing one important piece of information. "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now--a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)," it said.

That's right. They're not saying whether Storm is a boy or a girl.

There's nothing ambiguous about the baby's genitals. But as Stocker puts it: "If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs." So only the parents, their two other children (both boys), a close friend, and the two midwives who helped deliver the now 4-month-old baby know its gender. Even the grandparents have been left in the dark.

People only care about your newborn baby's genitalia because otherwise all newborns are identical. This also goes for telling people your baby's name. Your baby is boring, you blowhard. Just play along with some standard conventions and we can all survive the workday.

The couple's other two children, Jazz and Kio, haven't escaped their parents' unconventional approach to parenting. Though they're only 5 and 2, they're allowed to pick out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores and decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.

Wheras this is not unconventional at all. This is totally reasonable and on the liberal end of mainstream.

I never did answer what I daydream about, despite everyone burning with curiosity and giving me the total third degree. Oftentimes I daydream about design and interior decorating. Possibly that's just while we're renovating.

Anyway, dear design websites: DIY shit usually looks like DIY shit. Sorry about that.

If anyone has been tying their shoes correctly, it's you guys. But I for one am thrilled to learn there's a satisfying way to beat those round-laces-coming-untied-blues. I'm not kidding at all, actually.

(Three minutes long. Don't be scared.)

1. Haven't used soap or shampoo in one week, except washing my hands to cook. Skin: normal. Hair: Feels like there's the world's most flexible product gumming it up. Brush it straight up? It will stay put. Brush it down? It will lay down flat. Feels weirdly thick and still gummy, plus a little dandruff along the part. This week involved jogging twice, one soccer game, one trip in the river, and temperatures in the 90s.

2. We are successfully in the habit of cooking dinner about 3 times a week. The key was that we needed to develop the supporting meal planning habits. So for about a month, we had two meals that just involved dumping a can of this, a bit of that into a bowl, while we got used to planning a shopping list over the weekend and preparing meals in the 20 minutes when we first get home.

Since then, the local grocery store started carrying organic meat, so we've got a lot more meat in our diet. Also I still hate chopping. Now we've got about 6 meals in rotation - 3 with fixed recipes, and 3 with loose templates where you dump in a bit of whatever you've got on hand.

While the most hilarious element of Scalia's dissent in Brown v. Plata is undoubtedly his statement that, of the prisoners to be released, "many will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym", the lead-off, which is attracting only slightly less attention, is also something else: "There comes before us, now and then, a case whose proper outcome is so clearly indicated by tradition and common sense, that its decision ought to shape the law, rather than vice versa." (Given its placement and its content, this seems to be a statement at some degree of abstraction from the content of the case in all its specificity.)

I, after all, would have thought "don't bite off more than you can chew" to be an article of common sense, and a commonsensical enough remedy for having bitten off more than one can chew is to remove the excess from one's mouth. Perhaps this is looked down on by etiquette books, which frown on the removal of partially-masticated foodstuffs, but proper care would have prevented one's ingress into this embarrassing situation in the first place—those foodstuffs only being partially masticated through a previous error of one's own—and once in it, it is not surprising that one cannot extricate oneself without some further deviation from what would be the case in the best of all possible worlds. It is well known that those who are not virtuous (or polite) occasionally have to do things that the virtuous (or polite), precisely because they are virtuous (or polite), do not have to do. It would be absurd to suppose that because, once one once has erred, making up for the error would cause further unpleasantness, common sense would say that one should persist in one's error; common sense is rather more stringent than that and tends to say things like, "you shouldn't have acted thus in the first place then—you made your bed, now reap in it". Common sense is a bitch.

My basic understanding of the dynamic in the case is that, as California did not have facilities adequate to the number of people whom it imprisoned, it should not have imprisoned all of them, and the situation is to be remedied by having some be released from prison. Scalia notes that the decision involves releasing convicted felons, which is true enough, but, had California conducted itself in a manner befitting its resources, the people in question would not be convicted felons at all. We may not like the release of intimidatingly muscled prisoners back into society but, you know, tough noogies.

Note that I have not, technically, drawn any analogies here.

Let me also say that Scalia seems to be working with a peculiar theory of when it is that someone is denied medical care, according to which only someone currently ailing can be denied care, but someone who is presently healthy but who would, should he ail, not receive care is, at present, not denied it. [Somewhat tangential comments about Pettit on being under another's power [not his terminology] predacted.] Naturally he does this without arguing for it (though insofar as he's quoting a previous decision, it's possible—barely—that it was argued for there):

And we have said as much in the past: "If ... a healthy inmate who had suffered no deprivation of needed medical treatment were able to claim violation of his constitutional right to medical care ... simply on the ground that the prison medical facilities were inadequate, the essential distinction between judge and executive would have disappeared: it would have become the function of the courts to assure adequate medical care in prisons." Lewis v. Casey , 518 U. S. 343, 350 (1996).

Well, ok, but the question is, does that inmate suffer no deprivation of medical treatment simply in virtue of currently being healthy, supposing that the medical facilities are in fact inadequate? We shouldn't allow "needed" there to color our interpretation, suggesting as it might that no healthy person could possibly be deprived of needed treatment, no treatment being needed. (We could also interpret it as referring to, for instance, the treatments needed, in the main, by prisoners, as opposed to those needed, in the main, by, say, infants.) It is not absurd, after all, to think that if no medical care is to be had, not even for ready money, then I have been denied medical care, even if I am presently in the pink of condition. (Next: Scalia maintains that only when a doctor is doctoring is he a doctor.)

I can't say I want to read it, but I love the title of this book: "Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan" by Jeff Greenfield.

I'm just so impressed that his research turned up such stunning scenarios.

How difficult would you find playing tic tac toe verbally (nothing written down) to be? How about three dimensional tic tac toe? (ie 3x3x3 grid, any three in a row wins.)

How difficult do you find memorizing a block of text? Would you see the text? How do you organize it in your head? I don't even know the right follow up questions to the text question, since that task is so impossible for me. And don't tell me I could do it with practice, because my senior English teacher valued the practice and I spent hours and hours weekly, only to fail the quiz every Friday all year long. I do think it's a useful skill, but I'm totally lacking the capacity.

Do you memorize phone numbers by seeing the pattern on a keypad, or by recording the numerals?

I'm just nosy about how your brains work, you smart people. I'm having trouble coming up with non-visual based questions, since that's my brain. But I'm curious about the analogous question for other types of brains.

If you're killing time in a situation where you don't have access to a pencil, paper, or internet/reading material, where does your mind go? What problems do you tackle? Or what topics drift to mind?

I don't even understand why a Republican would pardon a guy with this disgusting a molesty flavor of disgustingness. But Daily Kos is saying Tim Pawlenty is sunk for 2012 because of it.

This is not photoshopped.

E. Messily asserts that the mineshaft discussed the time when the Florida police blew up a toy pony. Now these British are caught up in a similar scare, except this one is way more exciting, because a toy tiger is on the loose.

"After a brief stalk through the Hedge End savannah, the officer realised the tiger was not moving and the air support using their cameras realised there was a lack of heat source," the spokeswoman said.

"The tiger then rolled over in the down draught and it was at that point it became obvious it was a stuffed life-size toy." It is understood that the tranquilliser dart was not used.

I have to rank the Brits over the Florideans here. First, the tiger looks more realistic than the pony. Second, a tiger is more dangerous than a pony. Third, THEY BLEW UP THE PONY. Why would you ever blow up a pony?

Obviously via E. Messily

Update: It has been brought to my attention that they thought the pony was a bomb, not a real pony. It is understood why a tranquilliser dart was not used.