John & Belle Have A Blog

Say it with frogs

DRE: When you look at a frog, do you see it as the way you later draw would draw it? Or is it later when you go, “It’s time for me to draw” that the frogs come out that way?

JW: Well, if you notice there are no human beings in that book. I tend to use frogs as stand-ins for human beings, because when it comes drawing people for symbolic pictures, I never quite know how to go about doing it. If you draw them so that they’re like portraits, then the picture becomes about that personality. But if you just draw placeholders the figures tend to be very minimalist. They don’t have a lot of personality. It’s hard for me to know how to draw people, so I draw frogs because to me they’re kind of stripped-down versions of human beings.

DRE: What do you see in frogs that others don’t?

JW: I’ve always been fascinated by frogs and I’ve always loved to look at them. They’re good food for thought. I guess in France they’re just good food. They have a lot of interesting attributes. If you have a spiritual event; they’re amazing because they’ll just sit still as if they’re meditating for a long period of time, but they’re never out of it. They always notice when a shadow approaches and then they move like greased lightning. They live on the land and in the water. That amphibious quality is something you can compare to the way people live in both the animal and the spiritual world. They’re strangely anthropomorphic. They almost seem to have hands. They have faces you can read expressions in more readily than you can read them on the faces of other animals. I don’t know what it is but they’re easier to figure out than people. I guess the reason why I don’t draw people very much is because I don’t understand them. I don’t understand us so I never quite know what to show. It’s easy for me to draw people in deplorable circumstances doing terrible things subject to abominable forces. But I don’t want to just do that all the time; I don’t want to heap another log onto the fire of “Here’s what’s wrong with the human race.” So I sidestep it by doing it with frogs.

Link. (via boingboing, which has a fine frogpic.)

Do you think it's wrong to introduce Violet to Jim Woodring before the age of 2? (Click for a larger image.) She's reading Pupshaw and Pushpaw, not that new book. That's her in the background. Mirrors.

Friday Random Thoughts

Is it fair that, though I am the only mom around with a jack-o-lantern cake pan (it makes an upright, 3-D cake) and the willingness to decorate it, Zoë has insisted on having a skull cake with "real eye sockers"? I have baked an oval cake, and will trim the bottom to skullishness, and then split it in two horizontally, and cut two eye holes and a nose out of one layer and then put ganache on the bottom layer and the layer with holder over that, and then I am going to cover it with marzipan. Jesus. I think I'll forego the royal icing, although I bet I could build up some nice cheekbones. This was that other cake pan's moment! It lives all year for this, waiting, waiting at the back of the cabinet with the lamb cake molds. And the Boba Fett mold.

Today Violet learned to say something she will no doubt have many opportunities to use: "she hit. oooow. nooo." She has an inexpressibly gentle voice, very quiet, and she puts her fat hands on top of her head to indicate the place she was hit, and her silly arms can hardly get up there. Zoë was startled when this happened. The days of getting away with stuff: looking numbered.

Uncle Kvetch Is Right

Uncle Kvetch has a legitimate complaint in comments to the previous post:

This isn't about "debating gay marriage." This is about ostensible supporters of SSM who are so frustrated by the inability of the anti crowd to come up with a reasonable argument that they feel compelled to do the job for them.

I'm trying really hard to imagine a supporter of civil rights in the '60s coming up with "The segregationists haven't managed to come up with an argument that doesn't boil down to 'I don't like n****rs'; let's see if we can help them out."

Is it beyond the pale to think that maybe Maggie Gallagher & her friends haven't come up with a better argument because there isn't one to be made?

Ouch. OK, it's not right to sharpen my wits on a serious civil rights struggle that personally affects many of my friends and readers, and which I whole-heartedly support. This is not high school debate club, so I'm sorry. My smart-assery and my frustration at kicking around piles of straw rather than having a proper argument has gotten the better of me. In my defense, I would offer three things.

First, although I am a committed feminist, I was divided between writing this post and writing the potential one Kieran alluded to in comments, in which I would try to make Leon Kass have some anti-feminist arguments other than saying "people shouldn't eat ice cream on the street" in a Grandpa Simpson voice. The same reasons motivated me, namely, a sense that there is something argumentish floating around here if we can dig it out of the crazy. In Kass' case it is the argument that the sexual and social changes caused by women's liberation are not an unmitigated blessing for society; the liberty gains for individuals should be balanced against some real harms to the community. (Needless to say I don't believe this either.)

Secondly, to the extent that I am flip or blasé about the gay marriage question, it is because I think it is totally inevitable, and soon, too. The Gallaghers of the world have already lost this battle. Gay marriage will be a reality and many people now opposed to it in principle will be reconciled to their actual neighbors. Not that there's nothing to be worked for on this front, but I regard it as obvious conservatives will lose. The tide of our culture has turned against them, and it's not turning back.

Finally, though I would say the vast majority of anti-SSM people are motivated by simple prejudice and hatred of Teh Gay, there are some people of good will who do not think gay sex should be illegal, who even support civil unions, but who still think that the institution of marriage is an important one and radical changes to it should be regarded with extreme skepticism. This skepticism stems in part from what they see as the real disaster of no-fault divorce, as I tried to bring out. Russell Arben Fox, who comments below, is a person like this; a lefty, committed Christian who doesn't hate gay people. What might these people have to say, and how would I go about convincing them? Well, I wasn't going to learn from Gallagher, so...

In the end, it's also worth noting that my argument is, while better than others I've seen, also very bad. Not good, in short. It's a better anti-divorce argument. It has only two compelling points, and maybe I would have done better to state these baldly and forego the rhetoric.

1. The change SSM advocates propose is a radical one, and we can't be sure exactly what will happen. The last time a radical change to marriage was enacted on the grounds of maximizing individual liberty and happiness it turned out to be a disaster from a broader point of view, and especially for children.

2. Progressive reformers may rightly oppose slippery slope arguments on the grounds that we won't slide all the way down to the bad result. However, the only plausible societal mechanism to stop us is...handwaving Burkean conservatives. Thus progressives must accept as a logical point that these people will at some point be right. Thus we must consider their hand-waving thoughtfully, even though it lacks argumentative merit in many ways. So, do not immediately discount "arguments" of this non-argument sort; you are yourself committed to a view on which at some time this check on the slope should actually work to stop a proposed change.

So, there you go, less inflammatory, but I didn't get to talk about Moloch. Sorry readers.

Bizzaro World Belle: She Compellingly Opposes Same-Sex Marriage

You know, every now and again I start to feel sorry for Maggie Gallagher. I think, well, people of good will can be opposed to gay marriage; it's not their fault that Gallagher is incapable of mustering any premises, or conclusions, or even any convincing Burkean hand-waving. It's wall-to-wall camel snuff porn. So, a little early Fitzmas present for Gallagher and co.: the best arguments I can muster against same sex marriage. (Needless to say, I favor same-sex marriage. Actually, if we're being honest here, I don't much care about the legalization of polygamy. Insofar as I oppose polygamy, it is on the grounds that the societies which practice it are profoundly anti-feminist (is that strong enough to say about southern Utah or Saudi Arabia?) and regard young women and girls as property. If this could be solved, and men and women wanted to enter polygamous or polyandrous marriages free of any coercion, then, big whatevs. The "it would be too complicated for the courts to unravel" argument can be refuted as follows: tax law.) That said, let Bizzaro World Belle convince you that same-sex marriage is a bad, bad idea:

UPDATE: I have responded to commenter Uncle Kvetch's quite legitimate complaint above.

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

On TV the other day there was a show that mentioned Abraham Lincoln, "The Great Emancipator", and in the course of explaining why he was so great I had to explain to Zoë about chattel slavery, and how if you were a kid you could get sold away from your mommy and never see her again, and so forth. She looked thoughtful for a minute, and then asked, "Why did they think that was OK?" Why indeed?

Come back to the Raj, hunk honey.

So Belle and I snarked out to "Lives of a Bengal Lancer" - Gary Cooper, 1935, Henry Hathaway directs. Original tag lines:

1750 to 1! Always out-numbered! Never out-fought! These are the Bengal Lancers...heroes all...guarding each other's lives, sharing each other's tortures, fighting each other's battles...

It's far less OMAC than that makes it sound. What I want to know (and this may sound naive): how can you tell the difference between genuine homoeroticism and just a bunch of guys living together, just plain acting strange? You assume I'm joking but I don't think I am. Not entirely.

Infinite Crisis Chat

Sort of funny.

BUG: Well, there was SuperOldie, from an alternate earth where everyone has greying temples. There's Red Afro Lex from Earth Disco. There's SuperSlim from Lo-Carb Earth. And Purple Dress Lass from a land where everyone must wear a purple dress, or as I like to call it, Uncle Phil's place; where as I child, I was not allowed to visit.

VROOM: Wait a second. You're telling me that was Lex Fucking Luthor?!? Uh-uh. No way. What kind of twisted-ass reality has a Lex Luthor that looks like a Ren-Fair version of Napoleon Dynamite? I feel sorry for that world. "Otis, I need you to bring my red Kryptonite to school. Gosh!"

Friday Random 10

God, the temptation to massage these things is just overwhelming. I will remain pure, even if an Oingo Boingo song comes on (that's John's, btw.)

1. Reader Meets Author/Morrissey, 9/10
2. Dia 36/Os Mutantes, 7/10, Os Mutantes can't go wrong
3. Let Me Take You Home Tonight/Boston, 5/10; it's teh rock
4. Intergalacticthrowdown/Nightmares on Wax 4/10, let's all mellow out at Ibiza
5. Wash The Rain/The Bees, 7/10
6. Grumpus/Lambchop 4/10, not bad; let's simmer down
7. Moogie/Earnest Saint Laurent 6/10, moogtastic
8. Baby Blue/Badfinger, 8/10, this song totally rocks
9. Kitchen/The Lemonheads 3/10, some weak power pop. Did I even tell you I stood in line to buy dope with Evan Dando one time? At the Laundromat? And Courtney Love was there?Shit, this song is still weak.
10. Take Care/Big Star, 10/10; don't fuck with Third-Sister-Lovers. It doesn't get any better.

Total: 6.3.

UPDATE: the next song was Beck's "Girl"; 10,000 bonus points! Out of the park.

Thai Fish Cakes (Tod Man Pla)

I made these today for my mother's group (along with vietnamese spring rolls (the cold kind), prawn crackers with dipping sauce, pineapple in lemongrass syrup, persimmon-cashew cupcakes, and a chocolate pavlova. Yes, people do agitiate that I should host more frequently.) The real Thai way is to reduce the fish almost to a puree in the blender or food processor (OK, the real Thai way is to stand there mincing with a curved cleaver till the same result it obtained, but you know what I mean) and then knead the mixture very thoroughly. Proper Thai style fish cakes have a bouncy, sproingly texture. Mine didn't turn out like that but I liked them even better; it's up to you. I doubled the stated recipe, and you should too, because these things go like hotcakes. Um, fishcakes. (I mean, the amount I have given is already doubled.) Once fried, they hold well in the oven at a low temperature, so they make a good party food.

Gay Marriage: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

I'm sure you've all been following the train wreck that is Maggie Gallagher's stint at the Volokh Conspiracy "arguing" against gay marriage. (It's particularly funny to watch Orin Kerr be politely astonished at her stupidity. His elaborate gestures towards the possibility that he has just "not understood" the argument are either understated irony of a sublime kind, or...I won't speculate.) I don't know why I keep going back, especially as she consistently refuses to engage with either her commenters or co-bloggers; I just think, wow, those last three posts have consisted solely of dubious assertions, but there's got to be some argument coming along one of these days! Relatedly, I saw Jill at Feministe displaying unwarranted optimism:

So now that we’ve shown, as Amanda said, that “traditional marriage is dead” and this is a good thing for all involved (I think most conservatives would agree that the wife-as-chattel model isn’t the greatest), why agitate against gender-neutral marriage?

Oh, you thought conservatives would agree with you there on the whole chattel-not-the-hottest thing? Think again, babe. In order to get even any "argufments" against gay marriage you have to read the Volokh comments, and there I found this gem:

Angus wrote:

Who today defends the laws, ubiquitous not long ago, that declared husbands immune from prosecution for raping their wives?

That's actually one of these recent re-definitions I'm wary about. Yes, husbands couldn't rape their wives, because the definition of rape recognised the intrinsic difference between sex within and sex without marriage. The immorality of rape consisted in the arrogation of intercourse with someone you could not have legitimate intercourse with, in the desire for a goal that is intrinsically immoral. Since intercourse with one's wife is legitimate, this defintion could not be met within wedlock.

This, of course, has never meant that husbands were free to use physical violence to force their wives into submission. The goal of the action, intercourse with one's wife, was legitimate, the method of achieving it, coercion and battery, was just as illegitimate as in rape properly so called.

For this reason, I agree with the traditional judgement which rendered fornicatious rape a more severe crime than coercion within marriage. IMHO, the modern redefinition with its emphasis on consent damages the unique reality created between two bodies through the institution of marriage in the same subtle, cultural way that SS"M" would.

Read 'em and weep. It's weird, but my desire to hit someone in the nuts with a 2 by 4 has just gone up 1000%. I can't think why, honestly. I reproduce my comment on the thread below the fold; god knows few of you are going to have the stomach to wade for it.