AdamSmith

Oh, God. Derrida Derrida Derrida. Nought, in the end, but a very weak misreading of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Even that is to give Dr. Laura too much credit. I imagine a smell more like machine oil.

LOL Reminds me of one of the funniest things to come out of the '60s: A Child's Garden of Grass

Seems I remember an escort posting on the other site that a female friend clued him in to using roll-on deodorant down there, to quell the post-shave itch. I think he said it worked. That said, I am with BiBottomBoy. Why bother? One of my pet peeves is that so many guys over-groom themselves these days. (Girls too -- as confessed, I like beaver but that animal is supposed to have fur on it.)

"Imagine"? "Might"? "If"?

The thing about Emerson is that you have to read him just one sentence at a time. Taken as a whole, any one of his essays is an intimidating mishmash of too many ideas flying at you all at the same time, like some lethal fusillade of lawn darts. But his individual sentences make surprising sense. Such as (particularly appropriate for an escort-hiring forum): "Nothing is got for nothing." And so forth.

P.S. Just stumbled across this bizarre thing about relationship of Nabokov to Robert Frost ("our dullest great poet," in the dead-on assessment of John Ashbery ): http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/socher.htm

This seems as good a place to post this as anywhere. Celebrated critic Frank Kermode dies aged 90 Prominent for more than half-a-century, he combined an eminent scholarly career with popular success Alison Flood guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 August 2010 12.22 BST Widely acclaimed as Britain's foremost literary critic, Sir Frank Kermode died yesterday in Cambridge at the age of 90. The London Review of Books, for which the critic and scholar wrote more than 200 pieces, announced his death this morning. Kermode inspired the founding of the magazine in 1979, after writing an article in the Observer calling for a new literary magazine. Prominent in literary criticism since the 1950s, Kermode held "virtually every endowed chair worth having in the British Isles", according to his former colleague John Sutherland, from King Edward VII professor of English literature at Cambridge to Lord Northcliffe professor of modern English literature at University College London and professor of poetry at Harvard, along with honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He was knighted in 1991, the first literary critic to be so honoured since William Empson. A renowned Shakespearean, publishing Shakespeare's Language in 2001, Kermode's books range from works on Spenser and Donne and the memoir Not Entitled to last year's Concerning EM Forster. His publisher, Alan Samson, at Weidenfeld & Nicolson said Kermode would probably be most remembered for The Sense of An Ending, his collection of lectures on the relationship of fiction to concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis, first published in 1967, as well as for Romantic Image, a study of the Romantic movement up until WB Yeats. Samson published Kermode's most recent book, Concerning EM Forster, last year. Forster, who also died aged 90, gave the Clark lectures at Cambridge in 1927, which led to his seminal book of literary criticism, Aspects of the Novel. Kermode delivered the Clark lectures 80 years later, in 2007, and worked with Samson to turn them into a book. The pair had been discussing a further title, about TS Eliot, following a lecture Kermode gave at the British library, but "now this will never happen, sadly", said Samson. He called the literary critic "a one-off". "He's probably the greatest literary conversationalist I've ever known - it wasn't just the lectures and the monographs and the books, it's the fact that just talking about a writer he'd say incredibly pithy, intelligent things which would prompt you to go and read them again," he said. "He knew he had exceptional gifts, but there was a modest manner about him. He knew he was smarter than everyone else, but he was this pipe-smoking, beguiling man who listened to what you had to say ... It's the wreath of pipe smoke, and the benign smile and wisdom, which I'm really going to miss." The range of Kermode's gaze is shown by his book Pleasing Myself, which pulls together his literary journalism, reviewing everything from Seamus Heaney's new translation of Beowulf to Philip Roth's "splendidly wicked" Sabbath's Theater. He fundamentally changed the study of English literature in the 1960s by introducing French theory by post-structuralists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, and post-Freudians such as Jacques Lacan, into what Sutherland described as "the torpid bloodstream of British academic discourse". Speaking to Sutherland in 2006, Kermode admitted that the move had "attracted quite a lot of opprobrium". Although he later moved away from theory, he told Sutherland that the time considering it was not wasted. "One of the great benefits of seriously reading English is you're forced to read a lot of other things," he said. "You may not have a very deep acquaintance with Hegel but you need to know something about Hegel. Or Hobbes, or Aristotle, or Roland Barthes. We're all smatterers in a way, I suppose. But a certain amount of civilisation depends on intelligent smattering." Kermode was also an acclaimed reviewer. John Updike said that his conclusions seem "inarguable – indeed just what we would have argued, had we troubled to know all that, or goaded ourselves to read this closely", while Philip Roth admitted that although he dislikes reading reviews, "if Frank Kermode reviewed my book I would read it". The American writer will no doubt have been pleased by a 2008 review of his novel Indignation in the LRB, in which Kermode wrote that "he is a writer of quite extraordinary skill and courage; and he takes on bigger enemies in every book he writes". His most recent article for the London Review of Books was published in May this year – a review of Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Speaking to the Guardian in December last year, Kermode said that it was "pure chance that one isn't either dead or useless; I don't think either of those things is true, yet, of me". http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/18/frank-kermode-dies-aged-90

Now THIS is the way to write a political editorial. First 100 days: David Cameron and Nick Clegg lose buddy movie script Hollywood double act starts to flag as Lib-Dem leader's star slips Marina Hyde The Guardian, Wednesday 18 August 2010 Can it really only be only three months since David Cameron and Nick Clegg gave that wisecracking joint press conference in the Downing Street garden, catapulting their take on bromance into the mainstream electoral landscape? "Prime minister," inquired a reporter that day. "Do you now regret that when once asked what your favourite joke was, you replied 'Nick Clegg'?" "You said that?" Nick queried. "I'm afraid I did once," played up David. "I'm off," Nick deadpanned, pretending to stalk away. "Come back!" bleated David stagily. Mmm. Half close your eyes and you could have been watching one of the great buddy movies. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Road to Morocco. Tango & Cash. Earlier, as they passed over the threshold of No 10 together, Cameron had put his hand on Clegg's back with an amusingly proprietorial air, only for Clegg to deploy the move right back at him, before glancing round to check the photographers had caught the moment. It was all adorably reminiscent of the scene near the end of Top Gun, where Maverick and Iceman have just won world war III somewhere over the Pacific, and their previous animosity has graduated into a near-flirtatious camaraderie. "You can be my wingman any time," smiles Ice. "Bullshit," grins Maverick. "You can be mine." Alas, poor Cleggeron (the PM and his deputy were duly bestowed with their own Brangelina-style joint handle). It would not be long before alternative movie comparisons were being made. In the dog days of July that archetypal metrosexual Tory David Davis was in a Southwark bar called the Boot and Flogger – well of course he was – where he was overheard describing Cameron and Clegg's relationship as the "Brokeback Coalition". Primarily, given that Davis was apparently repeating a Lord Ashcroft line, the vignette functioned as a reminder that some senior Tories still operate on a wit setting one notch up from honking "THEY R GAYLORDS LOL!@!!%!" But if even the terminally artless wing of the Conservative party are now viewing the coalition through the prism of Hollywood movies, the rest of us will be miles ahead. We can see that what we are dealing with is a malfunctioning buddy movie. Like it or not, polls indicate Cameron has improved in stature, while Clegg – the breakout star of the election – has failed to grow into his role after playing that impossible hand to parlay his party into government. It's a bit like in Star Wars, when Han Solo ends up stealing the movie off that nebbish Luke Skywalker, despite George Lucas clearly not having meant him to. No one could deny Clegg has made obvious attempts to carve out a niche for himself in the set-up. For a while, he seemed to be affecting the pose of the crazy one in a buddy cop film. This guy literally doesn't care! He's going to stand at the dispatch box and pin an illegal war on Jack Straw's ass! Unfortunately, while these kinds of unconventional methods work well for Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, in Nick's line of work they required the scrambling of civil servants to explain he was speaking in a personal capacity, with Downing Street declaring tightly: "These are long-held views of the deputy prime minister." Which is Whitehall for: "Goddammit, Clegg! I am sick of defending your screwball antics to the commissioner! You're on traffic duty!" Ultimately, though, Clegg's apparent maverick strategy has failed because Cameron has doubled down on him in the brash young hothead role. Pakistan? Two-faced exporters of terror, according to the PM. Britain? Junior partner to the United States in the fight against Jerry, even before they'd entered it. Gaza? A prison camp. Iran? Packing a nuclear weapon. Who's Axel Foley now, Nick? Perhaps most excruciating was Clegg's outing in Nick Robinson's documentary about the making of the coalition – a behind-the-music look at events of 37 minutes ago (I paraphrase slightly). As Clegg sloppily revealed he'd tricked Cameron into misleading his own backbenchers, one could only imagine a bemused Hollywood producer demanding: "Wait – why are people supposed to root for this guy?" If he ever started out as the Sundance Kid, Clegg has ended up the unintentionally irksome comedy sidekick – the coalition's Jar Jar Binks. The most recent YouGov poll placed Lib Dem support at 12%, while this week Clegg failed to pull off insouciance as he blustered: "I'm not acting prime minister … I'm holding the fort for a couple of weeks." An antsy distinction which somehow contrives to place the stewardship of this country at the level of Gareth Keenan's ill-disguised anxieties about his role in The Office. He likes to think of himself as "assistant regional manager"; the actual boss regards him as "assistant TO the regional manager". But what of Downing Street's regional manager? Well, with that same poll placing support for his party at 42%, he won't just be feeling slightly more relaxed as we move into the next reel. He'll be convinced he can carry a movie on his own. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/18/cameron-clegg-buddy-movie

TY, thanks so much! What was the process to age-verify these pics? And to lurker, likewise: Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!

Isn't that what I said? Without, of course, going too deeply into the definition of 'I'. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain...

Bravo! For some reason, although I can't quite fathom what it is, the ostensible subject of this thread makes me think of Ogden Nash's 'The Wombat.' The wombat lives across the seas, Among the far Antipodes. He may exist on nuts and berries, Or then again, on missionaries; His distant habitat precludes Conclusive knowledge of his moods, But I would not engage the wombat In any form of mortal combat.

Please define: (1) 'write' (2) 'Shakespeare'

Any possible discussion of this has already been precluded by Kinbote's critical apparatus about, implicitly, same. Which impossibility only furthers his point.

Dang. Here I was hoping it was the royal we.

Now this is the way to have a poetry slam.

Ditto. Again, apologies.

I for one think I was taken. I apologize.

Re 'Daddy's' (?) thread title here, I apologize for being an 'inferior intellect.' I find it difficult to imagine management of this site referring to anyone, named or anonymous, as 'inferior intellects.'

Sorry to be slow. With age, the mind goes. Viz. my current avatar. Or else NYC & its denizens have me so mesmerized that I can no longer focus on anything else! (For the puzzled, the line quoted above was added to my post by the all-powerful Moderator here.)

How could I have not noticed this until just now?! You can imagine the self-restraint I am having to exercise. The arrow found its target, finally.

Not to wrap ourselves completely in cotton candy, but still: One of the best things about this site, and something we have all remarked on since its inception, has been the feeling of personal welcome extended by management to all of us who try and contribute. (Not to mention management's respect for contributors, something not always abundantly evident elsewhere.) In this instance, I'm grateful for Lucky's efforts to keep things lively here. I think what OZ and TY did to acknowledge that is neat.

Exactly. I always scour the room before leaving, both for chargers and other gadgets that would be a nuisance to have to replace, and to pick up any condoms, etc. littered around. Disgusting for housekeeping to have to pick up that crap after me. One compulsion I have is to always look under the bed, both for sex debris and for anything valuable that may have gotten shoved under there in the throes of the evening. One time I did find a vibrator -- a previous guest's -- which I elected not to disturb.