God, that post bugged me too. Maybe because you like mocking Democrats, Ann. Could that be it?
Speaking of infernokrushing, TMV is at over 7000, with Althouse somewhere in the 3000s.
Be sure to click over Ann's audio blog, sure to make you appreciate her even more.
I still think this is an incredibly petty exercise Labs. I should write a computer virus and spam blast it around the country so that tens of thousands of computers automatically log in and vote for Althouse at the stroke of midnight. Just to thwart you. If only I knew the first thing about programing.
1: No, that can't be it. That would be partisan and Ann is not partisan. She's so not partisan, she's attending a conference of conservatives by invitation. But that just proves how nonconservative she is.
Brock, if you learn how to do that I will learn to write a virus that gets your computer to get songs in your head at inappropriate times, and then we will have to fight to the death.
But Althouse is still in second place, and the gap between the top two and the others is pretty wide. Can we make it so that Althouse doesn't even finish second? Maybe it's time to throw support behind one of the other blogs.
No JM, we haven't reached the point yet where we can be that confident. Look at the Republican congressmen from Texas who thought they had ensured a majority by making each of their districts 51% Republican.
But TMV has twice the votes of AA at this point. And it would be so very amusing if AA failed to come in at second, or even third place. Humiliations galore!
Is that a podcast, or is her cat just wearing a wire?
Oh yes, Audible Althouse is a podcast about the odd last few days on a blog called "Althouse". You know, I'm actually really, really busy, and I feel more pressure about work because it gets dark so early. I just feel like the day is shot. I'm always complaining about the darkness, aren't I? Do you think I have "Seasonal Affective Disorder"? Not really! I don't get depressed, I just get a little nervous that I can't get anything done. It just constantly seems like sleeping time.
So I shouldn't be podcasting. I should be getting down and doing the several tasks I absolutely have to get done in the next, about 48 hours. Less than 48 hours. A lot less than 48 hours. Yeah. I'm feeling a lot of pressure.
But I'm going to stop just for a moment and talk to you podcast listeners, because, you know, I just love podcasting. I feel a sense of responsibility about it, especially on Sunday nights, if I haven't podcast yet, [unintelligible] on Sunday. Or so. And so I'm going to drink coffee. Now, I usually like to have a glass of red wine when I podcast, but I've got coffee. Coffee and milk. So I will get through the podcast, and somehow get over the fact that it's too dark here in Madison, and be able to write the two things I need to write tonight. And I also have a lot of reading I need to get done.
You know, school is out, it should be easier. But the thing about classes is that you think they take up a lot of time, and they take up a lot of mental space, so when you see classes coming to an end, you're already pushing projects into the space after the class, so then when classes are over you just hit all those projects you were pushing to the point beyond the classes, so. I sort of have a 45 day break, but I also sort of have a lot of things I need to do, especially in the next less than 48 hours. Lets just say 36 hours. [Unintelligible, sounds like "happy enchantler".]
So, time to space out--[laughter] what am I saying? Time to find the space, the mental space. That's not what "space out" means. How did "space out" come to mean "going into this sort of tracelike situation"? When did that start, "space out"? Sometime in the 60s, I believe. But I'm talking about finding the mental space to feel that I can get the things I need to get done, the first of which is this podcast...
Isn't it just "Ann"?
Uh, Google-proofing?
Gah. I hate how she talks about Wisconsin as a remote barren outpost. Every time I'm in Madison, I think I'd love to live there.
She feels "a sense of responsibility" to podcast *this*?
21.--She repeatedly describes it as "lonely."
I don't think she's talking about Madison.
I'm starting to come around to Jackmormon's view of Althouse's psyche.
(This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make her cry.)
Stipulate that she's lonely. Doesn't loneliness, in other persons and places, sometimes or even often eventuate in all kinds of behaviors not obviously mean-spirited?
Ogged, have you heard the part about how her critics think that if they're mean to her they'll get what they want, which is for her to go away? "They don't think I should be allowed to blog this way...they think they can make me go away..." It's an eye-opening misreading.
I haven't heard that (I listened to an older podcast), but it does accord with her belief that "her critics" "hate" her.
eventuate in all kinds of behaviors not obviously mean-spirited
Yeah, absolutely, which is why we should try to make her cry.
25.--See, this is why I'm so fascinated in Althouse as a character.
I'd feel bad for Althouse if she ever once showed remorse for the victims of her own hit and runs...
My point was, there must be more going on there than just loneliness, that's all.
Oh, I thought you meant that she's mean-spirited, nevermind whether she's lonely.
There's also a kind of damaged, fitful narcissism there.
I *do* think she's mean-spirited; I just mean the loneliness doesn't explain it.
So I said, that was kind of cool, Bob opines and Glenn agrees that my way of blogging is psychologically healthier. I wonder if they know that I am called "batshit crazy" virtually every day in the blogosphere. You might wonder, "Why is Althouse called 'batshit crazy' virtually ever day in the blogosphere?'" Well, it's tied back to that thing that I was just saying, you know, that they think if I--they don't get my sense of humor, really is a big part of it. They don't get my sense of humor. They don't get the style of writing with a light touch, and then occasionally digging in with a sharp edge. That's what I do.
Absent further evidence, I would dispute a characterization of her as "crazy." But I'm not a devoted reader like Labs.
I'm fascinated. If you want to lose weight, why not just subsist on lemonade?
Does this comment box make me look fat?
Oh, she's particularly empathetic when dealing with questions of weight.
Seeing these statements in isolation, apart from the usual context of a poorly reasoned, mean-spirited attack, I have to admit, there's a real pathos to Ann Althouse. I'm sorry, Ann, for hating you. I no longer want to vote against you for the sole purpose of seeing you lose. I hope that if one day I find myself, sad and weird and lonely, snarling at people like an injured and crazy animal, people will treat me with some kindness and a little understanding.
JM is making me feel bad for Althouse. Make her stop.
I am selective about what I write about. I write about things that strike me in a certain way, that just intuitively feels bloggable to me, and then I usually do things with a "zinger" or a "shot", or a wisecrack of some kind. Or something enigmatic, you know? There's a thing to keeping it short, and keeping it--giving it some style, you know?
And these people who write long, ponderous essays for every post, that go on and on, and don't try to be funny, and don't try to be sharp--well, I don't like reading those blogs at all, but those people really don't share my sense of style and humor. And for some reason, what I do freaks them out, because they just don't think I should be allowed to blog like this. But it's my blog! I can blog however I want!
they just don't think I should be allowed to blog like this
Weird.
Ann Althouse: it takes a nation of millions to hold me back!
I write about things that strike me in a certain way, that just intuitively feels bloggable to me, and then I usually do things with a "zinger" or a "shot", or a wisecrack of some kind.
Martian comrades: our operative has given herself away, and must be terminated.
Ogged, this podcast ends with a gunshot, doesn't it?
41.-- I do read her as something of a moral object lesson. That is, I can understand altogether too well the character flaws that lead a person to become what she apparently has. I'd feel a lot more sorry for her if she were capable of remorse and self-reflection.
Britney's crotch is as plain as the nose on your face; plus, a bonus linguistic insight. Film at 11.
I'd feel a lot more sorry for her if she were capable of ... self-reflection.
I was going to say something like this, but then I thought, you know, as the aforementioned transcripts show she is capable of and indeed revels in self-reflection; she just gets it wrong. Or rather, I think she gets wrong what "those people" make of her.
Self-absorption is different, slol.
No! You have penetrated my Madison, Wisconsin fortress of solitude!
Well.
Some people just don't understand my way of repelling intruders. First, I lull them into a false sense of security with some chit-chat about Glenn Reynolds, and then some other stuff (actually I hate the word "stuff"). But skip all that, finally I pick up one of these "bullets", or "paperclips", and I kind of throw it at them. But they never--they don't run away. Is that weird? It's weird.
I just spend some of my life listening to Ann Althouse read from the dictionary. Time to reflect a bit on where I've gone wrong.
It's us. You wouldn't be doing it if not for us. We've led you astray. Go play an etude.
She really is a very strange character. It might be just that she doesn't make or grasp the distinction between interactions on blogs and in real life, and thinks that Labs urging people to vote against her is roughly equivalent to someone saying that she's a bad teacher in a faculty meeting. In the latter context, I can see feeling persecuted, or coming to believe that people "hate" you. But the rest of us seem to realize that there's very little you can do to someone in blogland that would justify using words like "hate."
56: Gawd, if that's true, I'm really feeling bad. Typical. On the one day I actually vote for TMV, I regret my vote.
I have spent a really ridiculous time writing lengthy evaluations of graduate papers, interspersed with reading what you all have to say about Althouse. Where have I etc.
12: so funny.
13 et al.: I had to force quit FF to make it stop. It's rather sad, but also irritating; like listening to one side of a cell-phone conversation on the train, where you (or at least I) want to snatch the phone out of its owner's hand, hurl it to the floor, and stamp on it until it's a little pile of plastic crumbs, while screaming "just shut up, shut up, shut UP, OK?"
Um, maybe the cool kids were right.
She's blogging under her real name and seemingly trying to create a little Glenn Reynolds-like blog empire. I think that's part of the reason for her mixing up real-world- and blog-world-appropriate emotions.
And as fascinated as I may be by Althouse, there's just no way I'd listen to one of her podcasts.
The happy enchantler keeps a list of the vigilant conservative bloggers, and at Christmas comes up their waste pipes to reward them appropriately.
Someone do something with "Handled and Enchandled" and make it about Matthew Perry.
46: Ann Althouse and Chuck D, together at last?
One of these days I have to transcribe the part of the post-Boobgate podcast where she explained that the only straightforward explanation for NARAL's house blogger being invited to a meetup by Hillary Clinton's blog liason is that the whole thing was an elaborate ruse to get Bill Clinton laid.
If I had my druthers about me, I'd write that virus I've been meaning to that says "Just like a Christianist" on every new post. Well, if I could program.
they just don't think I should be allowed to blog like this. But it's my blog! I can blog however I want!
It's easy to see how someone with this sort of outlook -- that criticism is nothing but an attempt to destroy what you're criticising -- would be a sympathetic follower of George Bush.
But it is hard to see how someone with this outlook would be a college professor. When she gives someone a bad grade on a paper, does she think of that as her way of telling them they should quit law school? Does she give her students A's if she doesn't want them to drop out?