Owl Chatter congratulates Janet Protasiewicz who won a fiercely contested race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday. In a state renowned for extremely close elections, Ploprazyiwcs won by an impressive eleven percent. The win by Prepotwizzes means the dreadful gerrymandering that gave the GOP a stranglehold over Wisconsin elections can be overturned. Judge Pleepzoowies has also made it clear she is a strong supporter of abortion rights.
In an unusually gracious concession speech, Daniel Kelly stated “I wish that I’d be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” and labelled Judge Pnewlersippie’s campaign as “beneath contempt.” As of this writing, Kelly has not called Peeprewzitsy, although, in his defense, this may be due to an inability to pronounce her name.
Way to go, JP! OC loves the pearls!
Acerbic comedian Marc Maron is in the puzzle today! Hey Marc — we’re a big fan. Watched your series a while back. Good stuff!
Maron was born in Jersey City and will be 60 in September. He’s Jewish (voo den?) and his dad was an orthopedic surgeon. He was married twice for about 4 years each time, the second time to very pretty humorist Mishna Wolff, pictured below. And he dated Moon Zappa for five months, Frank’s little girl, who is only five years younger than Maron, and whose birthday is just one day after his. Here’s Mishna.
Here are some quotes:
I’m not for everyone. I’m barely for me.
Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.
Maybe depression is the most reasonable response to all the crap around us. Maybe it’s the happy people who need medication.
That’s the big challenge of life—to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friends with your whining.
Buying my wife a gun is sort of like saying, “You know, I kinda want to kill myself, but I want it to be a surprise.”
And for Owl Chatter readers curious as to what Moon Unit Zappa looks like, take a peek:
Can you see her dad in there? Hi Frank! Saw you over 50 years ago in Central Park — great concert! Moon Unit is an actress, singer, and author and is doing okay. She is divorced and has one daughter, Mathilda Plum Doucette.
According to The Writer’s Almanac, it’s the birthday of English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, born in London in 1837. His cousin said of him: “He was strangely tiny. His limbs were small and delicate; and his sloping shoulders looked far too weak to carry his great head, the size of which was exaggerated by the tousled mass of red hair standing almost at right angles to it. Hero-worshippers talk of his hair as having been a ‘golden aureole.’ At that time there was nothing golden about it. Red, violent, aggressive red it was, unmistakable, unpoetical carrots.”
At Oxford he was a good friend of Dante Gabriel Rosetti. They were roommates and kept a pet wombat. (Not kidding.)
Here’s Rosetti’s painting of Swinburne. Yup, there’s the hair.
3D today was “It may be bottled for a caretaker.” Tough clue. Ten letters. Give up? BREAST MILK. It led LMS to post the following before sharing a short Borat scene with Bob Barr.
“I’m a bit buttoned-up, so BREASTMILK makes me feel embarrassed. I can’t explain it, but someone starts talking about their BREASTMILK, pumping, nursing what not, I just want to crawl under the couch.”
Another clue was “What a pocket protector may protect against,” and the answer was INKSPOT. Again, here’s LMS:
“What a pocket protector may protect against” – dating? Just kidding. I embraced my inner nerd in 10th grade and have never looked back.
Her stories about her students never fail to resonate. There was an answer today GAME ON, and she shared the following. (Note the word “hoodla” at the end as a plural form of hoodlum.)
Yesterday I had a new kid. But when he gave me his name, I realized he has been on my roster all semester but has been suspended. (Since it’s been so long, I had asked about him and was told that he had tried to sneak a knife into school, and he’d be out for the rest of the year.) So hearing his name startled me and I surreptitiously considered him more closely. Just seemed like a normal kid. As we chatted, I picked up on a twinkle in his eye and realized that several times he was pulling my leg with some outrageous story. I told him that he didn’t really know me but that he couldn’t have chosen a more deserving teacher to “have on” because I spend the majority of my day pranking kids. I deserve it. But then I leaned over and said, Be warned, Mister. GAME. ON. Who knows what the truth is about his lengthy suspension. All I know is that most of the kids at my school are bright and delightful, not the hoodla everyone expects of alternative school populations.
Who says the puzzle isn’t timely, or, in this case, untimely? 41A today was “Diaper bag supply,” and the answer was TALC. And it was reported today that J&J reached an $8.9 billion settlement in the lawsuits over the talc-cancer link. Ouch!
OMG! Get this, readers!! A comment by Barbara S. today on 1D blew my head open. The clue was “Faline’s sweetheart in a Disney classic.” So that’s impossible, but it turns out to be BAMBI. Very few of us had heard of Faline. In any event, in discussing it, Barbara S. referred to Bambi as “he.” What??!! Bambi is male?? No way, right? So I googled it and, sure enough, Bambi is a young male deer!! Bambi’s appearance in the film leads us to believe Bambi is female, but the novel makes it clear Bambi is male. Any of you out there know about this before? Is it just me, living under my rock?
The poem of the day from the Poetry Foundation ends on such a pretty image. It’s by Ha Jin and is called “Ways of Talking.”
We used to like talking about grief
Our journals and letters were packed
with losses, complaints, and sorrows.
Even if there was no grief
we wouldn’t stop lamenting
as though longing for the charm
of a distressed face.
Then we couldn’t help expressing grief
So many things descended without warning:
labor wasted, loves lost, houses gone,
marriages broken, friends estranged,
ambitions worn away by immediate needs.
Words lined up in our throats
for a good whining.
Grief seemed like an endless river—
the only immortal flow of life.
After losing a land and then giving up a tongue,
we stopped talking of grief
Smiles began to brighten our faces.
We laugh a lot, at our own mess.
Things become beautiful,
even hailstones in the strawberry fields.
Thanks for dropping in! See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 