IN RE: CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION: A fun post about the linguistic-theory difficulties with a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode; but I was struck by this comment: “Perhaps more lawyers need to see this episode, for the Tamarian language is exactly what we sound like to laymen. We communicate with each other by shorthand references to complex legal doctrines that are, without a fairly full explanation of context, misleading when reduced to a short summary.” ETA: I also liked some of... Read more

IN WHICH A NATURE DOCUMENTARY COUNTS AS “AVANT-GARDE” FOR SOME REASON: Thoughts on Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and ’30s: Disc One. This is the remainder of the first disc. As before, no accent marks. Brumes d’automne: Same guy as “Menilmontant,” but only 12 mins long. Does what it says on the tin. Falling leaves; parallel between fire and rain. He leaves her, she burns his letters, she stares soulfully, she walks through fallen leaves. Blur effects felt kind... Read more

MAN RAY? I’LL WAIT UNTIL THEY MAKE A WOMAN RAY…: I’m watching a Netflixable thing called “Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and ’30s: Disc 1.” It’s three hours long and you couldn’t pay me to watch that much indie-film at once, so I’m taking it in bits and pieces. Here are some thoughts on the first six movies–all but two highly recommended. I make no attempt to provide accent marks, because “that’s the way Dad did it, that’s the... Read more

UMBERT THE UNHEIMLICH: If you spend a lot of time in Cat’lick pro-life circles, you may well run across a cartoon strip called “Umbert the Unborn.” In this thing, a charmin’ little guy hangs out in his (never-pictured) mother’s womb, offering uplifting folk wisdom about the funny little things in life. You… can probably tell from that description that this strip is way too Bil Keane for me to understand its virtues. Apparently at least one other pro-life Catholic has... Read more

CONTEXTUALISM: Readers have questions about my epic American Constitutional Society panel post! You got questions, I got answers. (Or… I got replies. “Answers,” not so much, this ain’t Ann Landers, bud.) reader #1 (I will add names if I get permission): I’m a lawyer, and I saw your comment that you have “found the Sotomayor hearings a farcical exposure of the weaknesses of the ‘originalist’/’just read the text’ position.” I wouldn’t let the ham-handed, grandstanding questioning by the Republican Senators... Read more

Holding the mask is like handling a pair of handcuffs: you can’t help wanting to try it on.—Father of Frankenstein Read more

L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO ON OSCAR WILDE. I am contractually obligated to provide you with this link! (…I wouldn’t wade into the comments if I were you.) Read more

BRIDE OF THE REFERRER LOGS: Search requests which have brought people to this catty corner of the Internet. In chronological order. As always, if you send me something related to one of these search requests and it makes me laugh, I will post it here, and you will win a fabulous sparkly No-Prize. jewish nazi eskimosharold bloom lesbian eskimosresentments and resentmentsivy league privateer eve [How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!]punches the alienferocious namesakepoem hound of heaven Alfred Lloyd... Read more

Whale looks out the window, desperately needing to see something on which he can lock his mind and stop its slide into absurdities. And he sees a spaceship. A great disk like a slow spinning top reclines against the sky, as big as a house and orbited by tubes that must be neon lights at night. The monstrosity stands over a ring of parked cars where a bare-legged girl on roller skates waltzes out with a tray of paper bags.... Read more

…AND TOUCHED THE FACE OF GOD: Megan McArdle on the cultural significance of the moonwalk. (On the actual moon, not Michael Jackson’s.) I don’t know why this doesn’t resonate with me. Some of it is doubtless temperament. But a lot of it is that my very first “public memory”–the first memory I share with most people my age–is the white clouds spiraling down from Challenger. “Obviously [there’s been] a major malfunction.” I remember when that tanked series, Enterprise, started up,... Read more