Inspirational nostrils of dead celebrities.

Everyone loved Don Knotts, except the most vicious partisans. Good night, sweet Fife, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. His antics make me weep with helpless laughter even now.

The secret to Knotts's success was of course his nostrils. This is entirely proper. All the best dead celebrities had wonderful, flaring, majestic nostrils. Here let me present a parade of nostrils of dead celebrities. This is the first Altmouse dead nostril parade! What a hoot!



Look at how the nostrils distend! That is comedy. But also, strangely... wisdom.

And then we must contemplate the mighty face caverns of Darren McGavin. How they glisten!



But of course the sublimest dead nostrils of all are those which adorned the front of William Rehnquist's lawerly skull.



These nostrils are fascinating. The eyes may be the windows to the soul, but the nostrils are the doorways of the brain. Look at Rehnquist's mighty visage. Could one but extend one's middle finger -- reverently, of course, humbly! -- can one even imagine the wealth of legal genius and history one could but briefly touch? Of course you would have to push in pretty far. I would recommend applying plenty of petroleum jelly first.

It would be a wonderful and rare treat to so pick the brains of our dead legends.

Denmark, heroin, religion, menstruation, the Olympics.

I disagree with the violent protests against the cartoons published in the Danish newspaper. The Muslim world looks very partisan. Why can't they see that? They should not be so partisan. Instead, they should be nonpartisan. I don't know why incisive commentary like this has not as of yet solved the problems that seem to plague Islam. That is just sad.

H. L. Mencken was very crusty. Oooh. Crusty Mencken! His nostrils are fascinating. Give them a good hard look. I did!

Does anyone else think this lump on my toe looks infected?

Let's talk about the outfits of the Olympic figure skaters! I was away from the Internet all day at a conference hosted by the entirely nonpartisan Federalist Society. All I could think of while I was there was the figure skater costumes. What kind of figure skating outfit would Antonin Scalia wear? Scalia will lead us into the future. And when he does, he should be wearing an oufit like this:




UPDATE: What's the deal with this guy? HE linked to ME. How shockingly partisan. I'm tired of these nobodies trying to boost their hit counts by linking to me.

Law review articles are not nearly bloggy enough.

David Ogden Altmouse Steirs drew this cartoon of me at the last Wisconsin Oktoberfest. It is a good likeness, except for some obvious differences! Can you spot them?

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal finally catches up with Altmouse! Ten years ago I wrote a law review article about how law review articles weren't very good and that nobody read them. Of course, nobody read my article. They were too partisan back then!

I do not like law review articles. They are incredibly self-indulgent. The lawprofs who write them like to ride their own strange hobbyhorses. They are obsessed with trivia. The writing wanders off on inexplicable tangents and the authors never seem to engage with serious legal issues. It is almost as if law review articles are a giant vanity press!

The cure? Blogging.

Obviously.

UPDATE: Why do skaters like Sasha Baron Cohen wear these silly outfits?



With those flesh colored tights, it is like we are seeing her sanitary napkin over her crotch! This is disgusting. I did not always think so. However, a skating expedition with David Ogden Altmouse Steirs when he was small, and when I was having my "woman time," convinced me otherwise. Only partisans refuse to learn from their mistakes.

To this day, though, he dislikes Smucker's Preserves. How fascinating.

"Right now everyone is offering me certain things, but I know the show I want to do."

It seems that Richard Simmons is going move to the TV screen:

Fitness guru Richard Simmons, who has been offering guidance to the out-of-shape masses on his Sirius Satellite radio program of late, reveals, "Now we're going to turn it into a television show. Right now everyone is offering me certain things, but I know the show I want to do."

I have always been a big Richard Simmons fan. But I do wonder if now is quite the time for him to be leaving KISS. They have had several very interesting tours lately.

UPDATE: I am moving soon. Does anybody have any interest in buying our 1600-pound ball of used Band-Aids? David Ogden Altmouse Steirs and I have been building it since he was very small. I am sentimentally attached to it, but it will not fit into the new condo.

Here is a picture of the view from my new window. Those sorts of explosions happen all the time out in the old pasture. Very odd.



And here is a picture of the local cafe, with some of the "regulars." That fellow there works for NASA!

Getting back to business.

I have not posted in a while because I have had a very partisan ear infection, and also because I have been buried in grading bluebook exams from 1998. The students are not doing very well and I am giving lower grades than usual. But I have no choice, as in many cases their answers are completely out of date.

This is an interesting way to spend your time if you are ill. I like to pretend I am a little Sam Alito ship on the bottom and that I am cleverly dodging the evil questions of the alien Judiciary Committee. Whee! Phreeow! Boom! What a hoot.

The squirrel-y nuts of Kos.

Armanio over at Daily Kos is making vicious fun of beautiful nonpartisans like myself in a very clumsy way, calling us the "theoretically not stupid folks [who are] wondering what hit them in the Left Blogosophere." I wondered for minute what a "blogosophere" was for about fifteen minutes until I realized I had dribbled Diet Coke on my sweater and a fly was stuck in my left nostril. What a "buzz"! But what sort of a word is "blogosophere" anyway? When I grow up I want to be a "blogosophile" and live in "Blogosophopolis" and eat "blogospholopochips" with "sour cream and onion blogosopholopidip." Ha ha! What a hoot....

Do you ever wonder why squirrels are talking about you behind your back? I do. That is why I always hide my acorn collection in my cheeks when I walk across campus.

Sigh...

UPDATE: Oh yes, Ariosto from Daily Kos. He wonders why I believe that Democrats need to follow the sound advice of the nonpartisan site Red State and stop being mad at the very moderate decisions of the Bush administration. As if that is such an absurd proposition.

All he can do is sneer and explain why he is mad at Bush. Oh yeah? Oh YEAH? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Well you answer this. I represent every vote you need to win. Not only do I have my own vote; I also have the command of an army of renegade but extremely nonpartisan squirrels who will push whatever lever I command because I am the Mistress of Acorns. Does Arbusto from Daily Kos not know that a moderate nonpartisan like myself is essential to any election because of our command of the acorn vote? How does he mean to persuade us with the tone of bitter nuttiness that pervades every post that he makes? Does he not fear my use of italics?

I watch the Colbert Report every night, and only the squirrels and I really understand the joke! Why is this not convincing proof of my nonpartisanship? The fools! THE FOOLS! Why can they not see how very necessary I am?

Arguendo simply cannot comprehend the threat posed by my acorn-frenzied squirrel army. It is a mystery why so many people on the Left are so blinded by partisanship that they cannot appeal to the reasonable center, as so perfectly represented by myself.



UPDATE: I'd thought a link from Kos would increase traffic stats. It hasn't. This has caused me to lose interest in the entire disagreement with Orlando. How was I to know he wasn't Kos just because his name was different and he didn't link from the Kos main page? The conclusion is inescapable: Kos is avoiding me, just as does Atrios, who never links here. Cowards! I will argue with Monsanto again when he kills Kos and seizes control of the blog. And NO he may not rent out my squirrel commandos for this purpose. They are nonpartisan, after all.

UPDATE: I am unsure of whether or not to disagree with this guy because I do not know how many hits he gets. All I know is that his life must be very boring because he has nothing better to do after watching the first third of a movie except watch the rest of it. How dull! His imagination must be very stunted, probably because he was abused as a child, perhaps because of an acute bowel disease. That is I suppose what would make him never miss a chance to insult someone like me, someone who has never insulted him and is totally neutral when it comes to politics.

UPDATE: Did I mention I always watch The Colbert Report? I'll also laugh if you make an obscene gesture at Dick Cheney, because I am hip and "with it." But it will not win my vote because I value civil discourse. That is clear.

Kos and Atrios are clouds like dark Heffalumps.

I was shocked to learn that the very nonpartisan site Red State has been tricked into citing the words of someone who has been making fun of this blog for a while now. This person is a pathetic nonentity who would never make it in law school. But look at how ludicrous the parody is:

"In the year that I've been blogging I've taken a lot of different positions, some left and some right. What I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times you've written posts that take their side. . .

I'm just saying that I'm struck by the way the right perceives me as a potential ally and uses positive reinforcement and the left doesn't see me as anything but an opponent - doesn't even try to engage me with reasoned argument. Maybe the left feels beleaguered these days, but how do they expect to make any progress if they don't see the ways they can include the people in the middle?"

My nonpartisanship is here the "target" of alleged "satire."

When would I ever write a post taking the side of the partisan Left? They are too partisan! The Left should stop attacking me because if they were not so rabidly partisan, they would admit that I am always right.

But it is a good question: how does the Left hope to win any elections without my completely passive, nonpartisan help? It is my job to sit like a placid, perfect, white-fluffy cloud over the blogosphere. Will I be wafted by the gentle zephyrs of the Right? Or will I be buffeted by the tempestuous, sullen thunderheads of the angry Kos Left? Where, O! where, will I drop the gentle, nourishing rain that is my vote?

Or... maybe I am just disguising myself as a raincloud in order to get some honey. You will never know! I am very clever that way.

UPDATE: It is true though that the Right uses "positive reinforcement." Glenn often sends me the most delicious little bone-shaped biscuits! And honey. I like to eat honey with my lawprof paws. Once, of course, I ate too much and got stuck in his blog, but that is another story.

No lack of Brokeback jokes because the movie is very gay.

Here is an amusing article about all of the jokes that people are telling about Brokeback Mountain, a movie about cowboys in Wyoming who are gay and have gay sex with their gay partners in a very gay way.

Is some of the joking offensive? Maybe. But I would sternly warn gays not to make a big partisan stink about the "Brokebutt" jokes. That would be very dorky and not cool or hip, because right now the Muslim world is incensed by cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper. The connection between the two phenomena is crystal clear. Nobody wants to see gay Wyoming cowboys burning down the Danish embassy in Cheyanne! What dorkitude and geekiness that would be! So "uncool."

To sum up, gays should not be upset by gay jokes. That would be so totally.... gay.

UPDATE: By popular demand, here is another picture from David Ogden Altmouse Steirs. He says it is he and his mommy visiting Brokeback Mountain for Valentine's Day! What a sweetheart!

The ridiculous ridicule of the ridiculous.

The Muslims reacting in outrage to the Danish cartoons are being ridiculous! If they fear ridicule, they are not making the ridicule ridiculous, and ridicule should always be made ridiculous, or else the ridicule is itself ridiculous. That is clear.

UPDATE! Look at this lovely picture David Ogden Altmouse Steirs drew for me! That is a keeper for the refrigerator for sure. Your grown-up children will appreciate the games they can play at Noggin too!



UPDATE: David Ogden Altmouse Steirs tells me that the object on the right is from a dream he keeps having where I attack him with hedge-clippers and his teeth fall out. How strange.

Liberal partisans and their non-arguments.

This blog has been innundated with several new classes of readers lately. This always seems to happen when the reprehensible, vicious partisan Atrios links to Altmouse in a desparate attempt to pump up his artificially inflated hit count. According to SiteMeter, Atrios only gets 10 hits a day from a single user in the Phillipines. I have far more readers then he does!

I run an open forum where all comments are welcome, even critical ones, though these will be deleted. However, I am sick and tired of the non-arguments of posters such as the egregious Nim and his "side-kick" Phila, to whom I refuse to link because they are reprehensible, vicious partisans and I refuse to link to sites like that, ever.

Some of these people should learn what a non-argument is. Of course, it is difficult to explain this difficult concept in a brief blog post or even a law review article. I read many law review articles in Starbucks while I grade last semester's blue books. However, by merely shifting a vowel, it is possible to quickly illustrate the concept of a "nun-argument."



No more need be said. The "arguments" of partisans like Phila and Nim are "lighter than air" and very weak because they emanate from their "habit" of partisan thinking. You can't have a conversation with them!

I hope this settles the issue.

UPDATE: Is it possible I am misunderstanding how SiteMeter works? Somehow, I doubt it.