Anti-Blogwatch

There is something patronizing about the praise for the guest post from the nude model at 2 Blowhards, from people like Terry Teachout who know better. Degas! Titian! Whimsical Thurber-like sketches! And all from a bimbo! Apparently you meet a lot of weirdos and perverts doing nude modeling, which I never would have guessed. Nude models writing are like women preaching who are in turn like dogs walking on their hind legs: it is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all.

Blog Posts I Never Finished Reading: “‘I’m reading Michael Woods The Road To Delphi: The Life and Afterlife of Oracle now; theres a lot of meat to it.” “Regarding Robert Bartley, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, you might be interested in this long, detailed article from the Columbia Journalism Review about the trustworthiness of the Wall Street Journal editorial page under his leadership.” (Yeah, I’m all over it.) “I am about to hire a programmer to write some code for me that will help collect data for my research.” “Although its great that Ted and Henry get to point out whats wrong with the likes of Instapundit’s take on the Plame Vanity Fair story…” All this and much, much more sleep-inducing material on Crooked Timber, which is in grave danger of dropping off the blogroll, and I know the boys will be all busted up about that.

A.C. Douglas recommends Dale Peck’s half-apology for his literary criticism in The New Republic. Don’t do it. If Portrait of the Artist killed the novel, then sentences that begin “semiotically, syntactically” and end “language waters the seeds of its own failure” will surely kill criticism. Note to A.C.: Sentences like this may kill blogging too: “More prosaic, I, at the first damp and drizzly November day of each year, account it high time to plunge once more into the pages of Melville’s enduring masterpiece, there, for a time, to sweetly perish deep sunk in its overrich language, crowded detail and incident, and mystic and metaphysical loomings as would Tashtego have sweetly perished deep sunk when falling head first into the great Heidelburgh Tun of a beheaded sperm whale had not that leviathan’s capacious case been almost completely baled of its pure, unctuously rich, sweetly fragrant spermaceti.” Melville never actually wrote that way. For excellent reason.

Under no circumstances should you read this comment thread. Except the last one; read that and skip the rest. And please slap me if I write about Clinton ever again.

(Update: The temptation proved too great. Now you have to read the last three comments.)