And so we find ourselves at the end of the week, looking at the boxes, judging the time by the boxes ticked off. I did most of them. So there’s that.
I slept last night, so apparently insomnia is not an issue: good.
Friday is shaping up as a clusterfarg: sigh. But that’s by the definitions of my easy life; it’s not as though I’m slated for midnight patrol in a warzone, or have to get up at 4 AM and pump diesel into trains.
Just cleared some comments. Some items that seemed to be spam:
haha I totally am in love with Justin Bieber!
And good for you. I’m sure that was completely on point for a discussion two weeks ago, but I am loathe to approve the comment, as your email goes to a .info site about women’s clothing. Next:
Wow! Thanks! I always needed to write down in my web site one thing like that. Can I take a part of your post to my weblog?
Since you, sir, have an email and trackback website whose name obviously sells a particular kind of office machine, you may have your duodenum gnawed by zombie beavers in hell. Have a nice day.
dispenses utilize a fantastic webpage decent Gives thank you for the hard work to help out me
You, if I read your information correctly, are selling industrial machinery. I understand the difficulties the modern economy presents the makers of heavy goods, but if you want to use my website to “help out me” you might want to first stick your head in this box, which is full of bees. Thanks you fantastic utilize.
Finally:
I’ve helped people in the past make chicken coops, just take a look at my site and you will see.
You may not believe me, but this was posted in a thread that did not involve, discuss, or admit the existence of chicken coops. In a way I feel bad about not approving this one; someone might be desperate to learn how to built a chicken coop, and spend endless hours reading message boards on unrelated threads in the hope someone broached the topic. Nevertheless, sir, I would prefer you eat expired eggs and aspirate your own vomit.
Or is that just too vulgar? Orson Scott Card has read my books, and regrets sending them to mom:
The reason I have to apologize to my mother is Lilek’s smart-mouth, often obscene, and always vulgar commentary. Don’t get me wrong — it’s funny. Extravagantly, ornately savage. But he draws from a vocabulary my mother would not love.
And yet half the value of the book comes from Lilek’s nasty wit. So … Mom, it was a mistake to send you that book! No, I don’t think you’ll like it, but I didn’t know at the time — I bought it sight unseen, online! (I’m not sure that’s actually an excuse, but it’s all I’ve got.)
Meanwhile, all my old friends from the college drama department, you’ll like these books! (That is, unless you’ve grown up and become staid.)
I think there’s one big hard cuss word in the first one, which I regret. Believe me, I appreciate the pub and the qualified thumbs up, but “always vulgar” just pains me. I will email the fellow and ask him to give me a list of specifics that justifies the assertion. It will be interesting to see the response.
Links? LORD AMIGHTY yes. (Links open in new windows.) There’s a 100 Mysteries you can probably skip, because it’s one of those crackly talky 30s duds. HERE, if you must. The revival of the Gallery of Regrettable Food sails on, with the reworked Sad Vegetables site, HERE, and a brand-new site devoted exclusively to covers, HERE. NOTE: click on the image to advance to the next page. That site will roll on for a while, with fifty more pages to come. Bleatplus is HERE – part one of a Gene Autry 1943 rodeo program guide. 1930s ads examines the return of beer, HERE. Tumblr is loaded and ready to roll with four posts, HERE, starting at ten AM. PopCrush resumes Lindsay Lohan BS at 9 AM, HERE. The StarTribune column, of local interest, is HERE. (Scroll down, no live link at the moment.) I will probably post something at the civil & friendly center-right site Ricochet, HERE.
In other words: boxes, checked. Hey! Thanks for dropping by this week. Next week: more of the same, link-wise, a new banner – I’m sick of Happy 50s Couple – and the usual stew of gripes and glee. As ever, I appreciate your patience and patronage. Have a grand weekend.
Pass it along, if you wish
80 Responses to Vulgar Me
Host with the Most
// insert obligatory demand for apology to poop and vomit for comparison to awful recipes here //
I too am curious about what exactly offended the lady. For instance the “weenies in beans” invites phallic humor. My experience is that women, cruel little critters they are, always find penises and testicles funny.
When you see a picture of six inch hot dogs embedded upright in aspic with chunks of celery and other vegetables floating among the, er, cylindrical shapes, you need a writer with some sharpness to his prose to give the picture the caption it so richly deserves.
Our genial host is anything but vulgar. I would call him incisive and witty. His words are perfectly composed to enhance and illuminate the displayed pictures.
If asked to caption photos of quilts, Lileks would undoubtedly bring me to tears with his heartbreaking, luminous prose. He’s done it to me before, discussing family and life.
For wieners embedded in aspic, he brings another of his gifts to bear. Mr. Card, you done the man wrong.
The idea of those Baby Ruth cookies sounded pretty good, especially the fact that they provided DEXTROSE for energy.
Lord knows even though our body converts everything we eat into dextrose, we can never get enough!
People who want Orson Scott Card to apologize or have said he was out of line: stop. He never said HE dislikes the humor, he specifically says he enjoys it.
His mother didn’t care for it.
Reading comprehension, people.
always vulgar commentary
I think this is what people are focusing on Brisko, unless I read it wrong.
What’s with Orson’s “mother” fixation anyway? Dude sounds like Norman Bates.
Full disclosure: I, too, am a Mormon.
I wouldn’t say I feel like a Jew at a Mel Gibson fan site; maybe I feel more like a conservative at a Journolist party. No – still too dramatic. Let’s say I feel like a Mormon who walked in on his friends as they were telling rounds of “Mormons are [insert pejorative here]” jokes, which is always an awkward moment.
And now it’s happened here, with people I thought were more or less above this kind of silliness.
Ah, well.
That being said, let me state: love James’ books, and I’ve been enjoying the site since 2002.
Rest assured, if I had any way to offer you all some nice baked casserole and some punch, I’d do it, partly because it would be ironic, but also because it would be a nice gesture anyway.
should I repeat that I usually defend Mormons and my mother, a late convert, was treated kindly by the church (temple) and they helped with a memorial service after her death. Sorry for any offense.
Here is an agnostic joke for balance: Here about the dyslectic, agnostic insomniac? He laid awake at night contemplating the existence of dog.
“hear about” grumble, grumble.
As an agnostic, bgbear, I laugh at your joke and take not even the slightest offense.
Hear (tee, hee) is another:
An agnostic is rowing his boat on Loch Ness when he spots the infamous huge monster moving straight at him. As Nessie towers and lunges at him, the agnostic shouts, “Please God, help me!” Time freezes. A voice from heaven asks, “Why should I help you now? You didn’t even believe in me five seconds ago.” The agnostic replies, “Hey, give me a break. Five seconds ago, I didn’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster, either!”
hear, hear. (random grumblings, mutterings, an occasional desk top slams as the House of Commons continues to make it impossible to hear, hear the speaker.)
speaking of Mel Gibson targets: Isaac Felsenstein watches the lottery for 40 years. prays to God about it. “Oh, Lord, the things I can do for your people if I win. It’s big this week. I can endow a new ark. I can build a water system. Let me win this week.”
week after week… no win.
Isaac dies, standing at the desk, when God walks by. “Lord, how come I never won the lotto?”
“Isaac, did you ever buy a ticket?”
Have a good weekend, everyone! … Genial Host, I look forward to more “often obscene, always vulgar, ornately savage” blogging next week. (Lenny Bruce, eat your heart out!)
@Brisko: “His mother didn’t care for it.”
Not exactly- Mr. Card goes out of his way to apologize to his mother for sending her a book, saying Mr. Lileks uses a vocabulary “my mother would not love.” We are left to assume that ‘his mother didn’t care for it.’ – this may very well be the case, but other mothers (such as Cameron Wood’s, my mother, etc.) found it humorous.
Essentially, Mr. Card found it humorous, too (or so it would seem), but felt a need to warn others that may be sensitive that they may not like the language, by publicly apologizing to his mother. Rather a roundabout way to review a book, but I’m not an author, so I may not be as able to construct a review.
The BleatPlus “Baby Ruth” cookie recipe, updated to our Brilliant More Enlightened “Healthy” Times:
1/2 cup butter, or other shortening [YIKES! - Omit]
3/4 cup white sugar [YIKES! - Omit]
1 egg [YIKES! - Omit]
1 1/2 cups flour [YIKES! - Omit]
1/2 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp salt [YIKES! - Omit]
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 Curtiss 5cent Baby Ruth bars (in small pieces) [YIKES! - Omit]
Sooo, Mix vanilla and soda, then bake in a 375 oven for 10-12 minutes. Eat. Healthy AND Delicious! (And you’ll Live Forever, because your “cookies” had no Unhealthy Stuff!)
I think it all comes down to what “vulgar” means. Literally it means “common” or “popular”, but that is obviously not the usage here.
For a writer (one I love) Card may have been imprecise. Since I’m not a writer, I’m not sure what the correct word is, but I have sometimes had the feeling, reading Lileks’ books, that I would be careful to whom I would recommend them. I wondered how he might explain a word like “bukake” to certain people. Like “MILF”, it is a term that I hate to see mainstreamed.
I’m not a prude. I love Lileks’ books and own them all. I love Dave Barry and his booger jokes. But I will defend to the death OSC’s mom’s right to be offended by them.
I have read and enjoyed all of Our Host’s books, and am a dedicated Bleatnik. It’s absurd to say that his writing is ALWAYS vulgar. Occasionally or infrequently vulgar, maybe, but certainly not always.
It might be pointed out to Mr. Card that, since Our Host’s name is not James Lilek, but James Lileks, “Lilek’s” is not the correct possessive, “Lileks’” is. Things like that always irritate me.
@hpoulter: what have you got against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front? (I know the vulgar acronym- let’s not belabor it…)
Earlier this week in another Bleat comment stream, others took offense to certain words and attitudes expressed in “Huck Finn.” Perhaps in a later age, someone will take offense to “The Gallery of Regrettable Food” or “Ender’s Game” and work to get them banned, like some people do now for “Huck Finn.” Time will tell if they become as iconic as “Huck Finn,” but the dismissal of either work for vulgarity or themes, as far as I can see, is not warranted. Each book is also not for everyone.
@yanczos: soda? sodium!!! yikes, OMIT!
vanilla? alcohol!!! yikes, OMIT!
new dessert idea: lick the tofu wrapper. eat tofu wrapper. bite dining partner. run into backyard and gobble down squirrels, raw. run screaming into the full moon on the horizon… .
or cut the grass, have a couple scoops of black cherry ice cream. it’s DIE with a T, is what it is!
You know “bukkake” just means “to splash”, you could leave it at that and then move on to why people snicker when someone says “come”.
@ bgbear.
No, no, no. I will NOT launch into an elaborate Dean Martin song parody. No, no, no.
THAT would be vulgar, Mr Card.
Mr. Card, eminent writer though he may be, can go pound sand. I consider his contorted, unencumbered-by-logic rants on homosexuality just as vulgar as any four-letter word committed to paper by our gracious host. Tit for tat, as it were; but I’d rather read Lileks’ riffs on aspic recipes than Mr. Card’s lunatic ramblings on my “sinful” lifestyle.
If his mother is so frightfully scandalized by these books, I hereby offer to relieve her of them for a very modest fee.
I think I had relatives like Orson’s mom when I was growing up. There were certain things one just didn’t talk about in front of them. They were always being scandalized by the conversations of others. Whole realms of topic were taboo.
In retrospect, they were just boring.
So, is that right that there are just two beer ads? The links at the bottom of the second one don’t work, so you can go no further. Anyone else notice that? Seemed a little abrupt.
it had been noticed. where there is a 6/html, put a 7/html. beers up!
I love Lileks and bought two of his books, but I remember finding Interior Desecrations (I think it was) coarser than I was comfortable with giving to my teenager. Hey, some of us are modest. But lovable nonetheless.
You have to taken into consideration Utah culture when reading Mr. Card’s criticism. Uptight Mormons of a certain generation might have a problem with “potty-mouths”, But perhaps OSC feels his mom might be offended by the ridicule of what would be considered Haute Cuisine in Happy Valley Utah. “Funeral Potatoes”, green bean casseroles and green Jello with shredded carrots (aka “salad”) are to be found at every potluck.
I have Mail and neither Obama or Palin came up with any spelling correction. Now palin did while obama did not but then so does this website…