Kinda Like A Leper Colony

Dina Martina, not Sarah Silverman, would be the funniest woman in America if only...

Leaves: Pure Poetry

A leaf is filled with chambers illuminated by gathered light. In these glowing rooms photons bump around, and the leaf captures their energy, turning it into the sugar from which plants, animals, and civilizations are built.
Chloroplasts, fed by sun, water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients, do the leaf’s work. They evolved about 1.6 billion years ago when one cell, incapable of using the sun’s energy, engulfed another cell—a cyanobacterium—that could. That cyanobacterium became the ancestor of every living chloroplast. Without their chloroplasts plants would be left like the rest of us, to eat what they find. Instead they hold out their green palms and catch light. If there is magic in the world, surely this is it: the descendants of tiny creatures in leaves, capable of ingesting the sun.

And we are stardust. (Well, I suppose, technically, so are they.) Anyhoo, from this.

Vote!

From Sarah Silverman, the funniest woman in America.
(Virtually the only reason to watch The Aristocrats, except for, uh, it's important to know the reference.)

Ted Hughes To His Son

Live like a mighty river.
I am glad to get the reminder today from Andrew Sullivan because I've been meaning to read about Hughes and Sylvia Plath, starting with Janet Malcolm's book, and maybe even approach his poetry. If it's anything like this letter, it's damned good.

I Made This Today

GIFSoup

I'm Back, I Think

I blame my absence on the slow news month — August after all — but it could just as easily have been just general alienation of the can't-give-a-shit variety. I was actually thinking of getting off Facebook and dropping my internet service.
Can you imagine? Apparently neither can I.
Romney's deep pile of doo-doo today gives me hope. I was actually considering various headlines such as "Romney Suspends Campaign, Blames Obama For Being Too Likeable." Subhead: GOP Nominates Fill-In-The-Blank.
I just heard a good one today, too. Apparently The Daily Show from Tampa was titled something like Road To The White House, Jeb Bush 2016!
Anyway I wanted to post a whole bunch of stuff on Facebook yesterday and had to also restrain myself from alienating all my remaining friends again today, so I figured it was time to come back here, where only five people know my name (I'm looking at you, Adele, R.P., Mardie, and ... who's that over in the corner? Looking for who? Oh, she's the next blog over.) Three then. So be it.
Here's the thing I never should have put on Facebook. It was when I knew I was going off the deep end. From now on, I pledge to post Ze Frank stuff for contrariennes only. Who is Ze Frank, you ask. And well you might. I'm really not sure. Google him.
Oh hell, that's right. That's what I'm here for. Without further ado, Ze Frank.
Okay, I don't know how to do audio embeds anymore, so here's the link, it's the  track toward the bottom of the page he says is his favorite, but not the finished track at the very bottom. Sorry. I'll do better.

For The Record

I feel like to day is worth noting, a harbinger of what's to come, a turning point, a tipping point.

Romney, Reid And...McCain

Talking Points Memo has been running informed commentary by a reader who has extensive knowledge and expertise in how Romney, thanks to Bain, may have paid little or no income tax for several years, just as Harry says.
Not directly linked to that commentary is the regularly surfacing fact that John McCain's campaign saw 23 years' worth of Romney tax returns when Mitt was under consideration for vice president.
So-o-o, why doesn't John or someone from his campaign speak up for Mitt and say, yeah, he paid income tax. Because he didn't, that's why.

Because I Can

Brown Bear & Salmon Cam - Brooks Falls - Bears - explore

Brown Bear & Salmon Cam - Brooks Falls - Bears - explore

Best Scene From Mad Men

Somebody who posted it called it that. I don't know, but it's pretty good.

I Really Love Lawrence Krauss

He's very entertaining. But a good case can be made that he's also full of shit, the shit being himself.
I get mad at Andrew Sullivan quite regularly, but who else would give me Ron Rosenbaum (I get mad at him, too) and Jim Holt, the greatest gifts of the day not including a sun emerging finally at 1:30 p.m.?
Why is there something, indeed?

Who's 'Unraveling And Desperate'?

So earlier today someone in the Romney camp said all the Bain hoo-ha — when did he officially leave, who'd he tell the truth to, was he retired or "on leave," who's your Daddy, CEO — showed the Obama campaign is unraveling and desperate.
I thought, oh, Karl, how often are we gonna pull that before it catches up with you. So, this afternoon, Romney is giving an unprecedented five, count them, five, interviews to TV networks to try to put the thing away. We'll see.
Polls show the Bain attacks were effective in the saturated swing states even before this latest round.

Literature

Amazon readers review the best. I laughed so hard at this that I  was crying and clutching my middle:

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
“Here’s the first half of the book: ‘We had dinner and a few drinks. We went to a cafe and talked and had some drinks. We ate dinner and had a few drinks. Dinner. Drinks. More dinner. More drinks. We took a cab here (or there) in Paris and had some drinks, and maybe we danced and flirted and talked sh*t about somebody. More dinner. More drinks. I love you, I hate you, maybe you should come up to my room, no you can’t’… I flipped through the second half of the book a day or two later and saw the words ‘dinner’ and ‘drinks’ on nearly every page and figured it wasn’t worth the risk.”

I think that is perhaps the best book review I have ever read, on a par with A.O. Scott, a nerdy NYT movie reviewer who consistently manages to pierce my armor with something pithy and worthwhile.
I also think the Morning News is worth a daily read.

Even They Think It's Crazy

I used to think all the space stuff was a big yawn. But I changed.

Mother's Milk

I want to read the new book on breasts (or at least look at the pictures), but The Guardian has a pretty interesting excerpt about breastmilk.

 In 1982, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery said "there is a substantial body of medical information and opinion … to the effect that [small breasts] are really a disease"

Mexico Has A New President

And Wonkette has the scoop.

First off, he’s a slut. Big deal. So was Bill Clinton (and John F. Kennedy, for that matter). But a slutty assassin and wife killer (MAYBE!) is a totally different story.

I confess I didn't read a single Mexican election story although I saw the headlines. But how can you resist now? I still don't know his name. Pena? Is that it?

In Other Art News

MOMA sends me monthly newsletters and this month they were featuring F-111, an iconic James Rosenquist work that takes up four walls. When I was in NYC in 2003 I saw the only Rosenquist retrospective ever including his 35-foot long Econo-mist before its shipment to the German bank that commissioned it. I had no idea who he was or what I would be seeing when I went there. I can say it's been a major influence on my dreams and, apparently, my life. It was stunning but I could not get a print of any part of it and had to settle for one of a water lily, which hangs on my living room wall next to Lichtenstein's Big Dog opposite the front door. That would be more impressive if I had a vestibule. Anyway, Rosenquist is 79 now and he lost his home, studio and work stored for upcoming shows in a fire three years ago. I would like to cover three walls in my living room with something like his work. But then I'd have to get rid of all the stuff and learn the basics of billboard art.

Climate Change Hero

His name is Lonnie Thompson. And he's been a man obsessed.

His West Virginia farm upbringing came in handy as he challenged Mongol porters to contests shooting wild game. Other times, he went hungry. Once, in China, dinner was a bowl of stewed camel paws.

One more time, just for the record. Stewed. Camel. Paws.
As far as I'm concerned, these people are all honorary contrariennes.

The Outsource, er Offshore President

From Vanity Fair.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.