"10 Artworks Made with the Artist’s Own Bodily Fluids."

Yes, yes, ho-hum. We've heard it all before. Yawn. That's where I was until I got to #9.

Tiger Woods, expelling bodily fluids in the wrong place again.

This time, it's spit.

"I am working to make a delicious Wisconsin human cheddar."

"I purchased the milk from [a woman who] shipped it to me in ice, from Wisconsin... I found [her] on an online marketplace for breast milk – where women regularly arrange to sell and donate their milk. It’s pretty interesting, women set the price of their breast milk depending on if they provide blood work, and also the health of their diet."

Via Metafilter.

This remind me of Ricky Gervais and that rice pudding. From his Newsweek list of things that annoy him:

People who think they're "eccentric." What does that mean? You wear lots of different hats? You ride a funny-colored bike? That makes you eccentric? A friend of mine moved out to the country, and the woman next door came round; she was sort of hippie-ish, very long hair, back to nature, all that stuff. And she says, "I've made you a rice pudding, and I've made it with breast milk, because, you know, waste not, want not!" So my friend took it, threw it away, washed the dish and gave it back. He said to her, "Thanks, that was great!" I couldn't believe it. I told him that he should've said, "No, there is no way I'm eating that. Definitely not. Do not bring me any other bodily-function puddings."

That's the cleaned-up-for-Newsweek version. Get the podcast, Series 5 Episode 2. I don't have a complete transcript, but Wikipedia quotes:

Ricky: Surely you draw the line there, of a stranger’s breastmilk.

Steve: Oh yeah yeah, no absolutely… any kind of jizz flan....

Ricky: Here’s a cum sandwich. It doesn’t matter if it’s natural, it’s fucking disgusting.

ADDED: The A.V. Club says:

Of course, anyone looking to whip up some human cheese should definitely hit up the Dairy State for the breast milk, but that’s not the argument here. No, the real question is: Is cheese really the best place to start the “human milk” dairy product revolution?

"The False and 'Seedy' Claim That Obama Is Muslim."

Get it? "Seedy"? The Nation quotes Franklin Graham:

“I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim. His father gave him an Islamic name. Now it's obvious that the president has renounced the Prophet Muhammad and he has renounced Islam and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That's what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn't. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said.”

When religionists talk about semen...

Personally, I’m stuck on the word seed. Graham meant it in the Biblical (or Koranical) sense, but when I hear about a “seed passing through” in the context of an American president, I can’t help but see Monica Lewinsky and her “semen-stained blue dress.”

Regardless of what the Muslim world may or may not believe, this whole seed fixation is profoundly un-American. It says that genealogy is destiny, that a man is Muslim regardless of what he espouses or believes. It’s all about descent—and nauseatingly close to the “one drop rule” of the post-Reconstruction South. That rule held that if a person had any African or Indian ancestry whatsoever, he or she was classified as “colored” and subject to anti-miscegenation laws, voter disenfranchisement, and segregation at large. At least eighteen states adopted some form of the rule; Virginia’s 1924 law, for instance, was called the Racial Integrity Act.

Is the author of this piece — Leslie Savan —paying enough attention the the way she is expressing contempt for Muslim beliefs? I didn't know you could do that in The Nation. I mean, I agree that religion originates within the mind of a human being (and not in some guy's testicles!). I agree with James Madison:

... "... religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction..." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man...

This is one of several arguments for freedom of religion and the separation of church and state that were influential in the development of rights in America.  It isn't the way everyone in the world thinks about religion, but it is presented by Madison as "a fundamental and undeniable truth." Of course, under that truth, you are free to believe that religion arrived via semen. And we're also free to laugh at such a ridiculous belief.

***

Another point. Graham didn't "claim that Obama is a Muslim." So ironically, it's false to say that he did. If you want to write an article lambasting people for making false claims, be careful that you don't make any false claims. (Savan has a grievance against whoever wrote that headline.)

And I'm wondering who did say Obama's a Muslim? But no one has to say it for people to come to think it. So it's fair to say that statements like Graham's have a causal relation to what people will answer when a pollster asks them "What is Obama's religion?"

So... is anyone doing anything bad? I think so, but you talk now. I'll come back to this discussion later.

The Emily's List "Mama Grizzlies" ad — is it funny/good/accurate?

Ace hates it, but Ace is not in the category of people/bears the ad is trying to win over. I thought the ad was charming and well done. Ace does a "Top 10" list of problems the ad, and the #1 thing wrong with the ad is: "Wicket just emailed me to say only one was worth 'nutting on.'" Nutting on, i.e., ejaculating on. Yeah? That's how you criticize women? They aren't good enough for you to ejaculate on? Despicable.

ADDED: Ace participates in the comments and is very gracious about it:

I can't say the Wicket joke was *funny.* It was obligatory, and it had a funny set of elements behind it, but in the end it was... not a good joke. Best I could do. (I had to do the whole list in 10 minutes ....)

So I concede it wasn't a strong joke....

But despicable?

At some point I think the objection here is something that can't even be expressed without sounding lunatic -- the idea that men cannot take notice of women as sexually desirable, at least not publicly, even as a joke, even as an *Ewok* commenting upon another *Ewok's* sexual desirability.

And because that idea is so transparently absurd as to dissolve upon first contact with sunlight, it's hidden within the conclusory word "despicable."

Lots of commenters seemed to think I didn't get the Ewok joke, but did they get my Daffy Duck joke? I'm kidding, but really: Guys, when women don't get you and your explanation has "Star Wars" in it, you probably should think again about making wisecracks about women not being sexy enough.

Drudge digs in, and The Smoking Gun has the transcript depicting Gore as "a giggling 'crazed sex poodle.'"

Drudge. Smoking Gun:

In a bizarre statement to police, the Oregon woman who claims that Al Gore fondled and groped her during a massage session described the former Vice President as a giggling "crazed sex poodle" who gave a "come hither" look before pouncing on her in a Portland hotel suite. In a taped January 2009 interview with cops, the 54-year-old woman, a licensed masseuse... detailed her alleged October 2006 encounter with Gore at the Hotel Lucia.... It is unclear why, two years later, she approached Portland police and sought to memorialize her allegations against Gore, who she portrayed as a tipsy, handsy predator who forced her to drink Grand Marnier, pinned her to a bed, and forcibly French kissed her. The woman's statement--which could be mistaken for R-rated Vice Presidential fan fiction--describes Gore as a man with a "violent temper as well as extremely dictatorial commanding attitude besides his Mr. Smiley Global Warming concern persona." After fleeing Gore's suite, the woman returned home to discover, a la Lewinsky, "stains on the front of my black slacks." Suspecting that the stains were Gore bodily fluids, the woman made sure not to clean them.

Raisins, orgasms... what's the difference?

Here's another big NYT Magazine article for women that I didn't want to read, but I'm reading now to use in a Bloggingheads episode. It's been on the most-emailed list all week, this "Women Who Want to Want" business. I looked at it when it came out and the intro about staring at raisins really irritated me. I felt like I was reading the 1969 bestseller "The Sensuous Woman" again. 40 years later, I still remember the advice — for women in search of an orgasm — to get an ice cream cone and pay a whole lot of attention to every detail of the thing. But jeez, at least you got an ice cream cone. Orgasm or not. In 2009, it's a damned raisin?!

"I’d like you to start by examining your raisin... Study its shape, its contours, its folds. Touch the raisin with a finger. Look into the valleys and peaks, the highlights and dark crevasses. Lift the raisin to your lips."

This is going to help you want to have sex — to "want to want"? When I read that, I want nothing. Nothing at all. And get that raisin out of my face.

But I will go on, because I said I'd talk about it. Get past the raisin.

[Lori] Brotto is careful to keep in mind that not all women who feel erotically uncharged are desperate to change. Some may not be dismayed in the least.... [B]etween 7 and 15 percent of all young and middle-aged women... feel distressed over the absence of desire....

So you could either find a way to feel sexual desire or get over feeling bad about the way you really do feel.

Brotto is now studying... a sample of 70 women who... are sent home with assignments — to observe their bodies in the shower and describe themselves physically in precise and neutral language, in phrases that hold no judgment; and, after another session, to repeat over and over, “My body is alive and sexual,” no matter if they believe it. They are taught about research that shows that belief doesn’t matter, that the feeling will follow the declaration. And they are instructed, in their sessions, to place the raisins in their mouths, to “notice where the tongue is, notice the saliva building up in your mouth . . . notice the trajectory of the flavor as it bursts forth, the flood of saliva, how the flavor changes from your body’s chemistry.”

Back to that raisin. Is there a fruity nugget in this big bowl of oatmeal? Is it that women really have sexual feelings, but they emerge during a sexual encounter and may go unnoticed because we aren't good at noticing them? Or is this mainly about defining mental disorders in the D.S.M. — there's something called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (H.S.D.D.)? I'd like to hear less about raisins and Buddhist — it's always Buddhist — techniques of mindfulness or whatever, and more about who's channeling money where....

As is so often true in the poorly financed realm of sex research....

Yes, it was a wet dream — wet with John McCain's sweat.

Remember that hate email I got yesterday?

it was pointed out to me that you have wet dreams of Obama... now I understand the brain dead posts on your blog...

I now see where the emailer got that "wet dreams" idea. Over on Conservatives4Palin, there's a post that tries to deal with my "Sarah Palin is dumb." It flails without landing a blow, then dissolves into an inane rant about Kathleen Parker (who?) and how my real goal is to get on MSNBC and meet Keith Olbermann (huh?). Nearly at the bottom, right before the advising me to "pick a side of the road to drive on" — they know nothing of the joys of cruel neutrality — it has:

One more question, Ms. Althouse... Are you still seeing Barack Obama in your dreams? I am just curious.

That links to this old post of mine, from just before the 2008 election:

Have Barack Obama and John McCain turned up in your dreams? I've had one dream about each candidate now. A while back, Obama turned up in a dream. He was just a nice person who said hello. Last night, McCain finally turned up. He was wearing a thin, sweat-soaked shirt, and he angrily challenged me with a question about the war -- did I think it was almost over? -- and when I answered -- yes -- he stomped off and loudly declared that I had proved his point that everyone was getting that question wrong.

So there you have it. It was a wet dream. Wet with the sweat of John McCain.

"New York magazine derided [Dash Snow] for making art by ejaculating on copies of The New York Post...."

"... he blew up that section of the article, ejaculated on the copy and displayed it at an art show in Los Angeles."

Dash Snow, dead of a drug overdose, at 27.

His sadness and his money and his drugs were a powerful dynamic, said Jack Walls, a close friend of Mr. Snow’s who is a former lover of the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe: the sadness was abetted by the drugs, the drugs abetted by the money.

Mr. Walls distinguished Mr. Snow from working-class addicts like William S. Burroughs, Herbert Huncke — and himself. “It was like his money never ran out,” Mr. Walls said. “When it came to doing drugs, he could do these marathons for days and days on end. In my day, in Huncke’s day, in Burroughs’s day, when we wanted a fix, we had to go work — we couldn’t just sit around getting high for three straight weeks.”

"You can assess the true position of women in society by looking at its toilet queues."

Wednesday is World Toilet Day.

"He's just a nerd with natural Xanax in his blood."

Andrew Sullivan, awed by the marvelous -- and not cool! -- calm of Obama.

ADDED: My take on this has long been that Obama is phlegmatic.

"Natural Xanax in his blood"... it's the modern -- pharma-doused -- version of the old-school belief in the four humors.

Xanax ≈ phlegm.

"I thought the 'vomit' tag was a joke, but you actually have dozens of posts tagged 'vomit." Was 'bodily fluids' too generic?"

Asked Michiel, in the comments to this post. And indeed, the answer is yes. There's a limit to how many posts Blogger will show on the front page when you click a tag, so I've been working on subdividing some of the bigger tags, and "bodily fluids" was one of the oversized categories. The first subcategory I broke out was vomit, because I knew there was some good stuff in there, including the time when I went out of my way to vomit-blog.

And actually, there are too many in the "vomit" category now, so one of the best ones wasn't appearing: the vomit miracle. I need to subdivide "vomit"! That's disturbing.

Now, with Michiel's prodding I did 3 more subcategories.

1. Saliva... because I got my original mainstream-media recognition when I debate-blogged back in 2004 and noticed a little something.

2. Blood... because blood is the greatest bodily fluid. It's #1. I mean, if you were on "Family Feud" and the question was "Name a bodily fluid," you'd say "blood." Blood has murder, menstruation, art, rage, law ... everything. Go ahead, click.

3. Urine... because ... well, I knew it would amuse Trooper York. (And that's another thing about tags. I'm gradually making tags for my favorite commenters.)

IN THE EMAIL:

In case you'd like to see a 60-second clip titled "Vomit Tag!", here's a comedy video me and my friends made. It's the outdoor fun time activity that's taking America by storm.

I'm afraid to look! You look.

AND: Please, don't be making video clips for urine tag and sending them to me.

The internet is a series of tubes.

Fallopian tubes.

"He has to urinate against gravity, which is not good for the kidneys."

David Blaine is annoying everyone again, yet we're supposed to sympathize.

Why men shave their heads.

Christina Reihill writes:

While the idea of the modern man as a hairless metrosexual more interested in manicures than motors challenges my notions of a heterosexual man, I'm more interested in the state of play between the sexes in our hyper-sexualised, pornified culture.

As young girls are told that it's empowering to pursue men aggressively and young men are learning to lie back and take it, I wonder how these acts of aggressive connection affects the psyche....

On Freud's map, this redefining of male sexuality could be seen as men searching for the mother in them and/or acting out their sexual envy towards woman.

Just as women express penis envy, is this men saying we're not lying back and taking it?

What are we watching and possibly not seeing in the bald head, bullet-proof imagery in today's "anything goes" culture? What is the symbolism in men shaving their heads?

Staying with Freud and his symbolic grammar -- the head represents the penis, while head hair is recognised as semen.

Extending the logic of these associations, long hair expresses unrestrained sexuality, while hair removal makes a statement around sexual restraint, as in celibacy or castration.

What is restrained about exposing the penis? You had to do that hair=semen move to make this theory work.

We enjoyed the tasty new blood that was Sarah Palin's, but now her blood is just as vile as the old blood we were drinking.

Everybody at Arianna Huffington's blood-swilling party is sick of Sarah Palin now, says the hostess, reapplying her lipstick.


Photo by 96dpi.

Biden "has been absolutely butchering Senator John McCain across the Rust Belt this week."

According to Mark Leibovich in the NYT. The evidence? You got me. I read the whole article. Didn't notice any butchering.

Yet Joltin’ Joe has also become a fascinating Off Broadway spectacle in his own right. He is a distinctive blend of pit bull and odd duck whose weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything — “gaffes,” out-of-nowhere comments (pivoting midspeech to say “Excuse my back!” to people seated behind him), goofy asides (tapping a reporter’s chest and telling him, “You need to work on your pecs.”)

Mr. Biden’s role is red-meat serious: to pulverize Mr. McCain, lend foreign policy heft to Senator Barack Obama and be his campaign’s main ambassador to two at-risk constituencies: former supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and blue-collar Democrats. He speaks to working-class voters in the harsh language of their economic trials, and summons easy rage at ear-splitting volumes.

Huh? So he's supposed to "pulverize" McCain. That's his role. But what did he do? What is the this "harsh language of their economic trials"? He recounts the story of growing up poor? How does that become "harsh language"? He "summons easy rage at ear-splitting volumes." What is "easy rage"? Completely relaxed, yet mad as hell?

Leibovich is stretching for vividness, and a lot of it just doesn't make sense. Is Biden effective? I feel like he's not but Leibovich wants to say he is.

Anyway, Drudge linked for the "You need to work on your pecs" thing. That was funny.

By the way, Biden makes Rush Limbaugh positively giddy and giggly. Example here. Oh, that link fortuitously has something I wanted to quote:

...I should have pointed this out to you last night on the plane, Snerdley, but Karl Rove literally skinned Alan Colmes alive.

Literally. Yikes! At least Leibovich didn't have Biden literally butchering McCain. Politics is quite the blood sport these days.

MORE: Here.

"One can cook really delicious things with [breast milk]. However, it always needs to be mixed with a bit of whipped cream..."

It's on the menu in Switzerland, thanks to a loophole in the law.

The food control authority in Switzerland was initially confused by the apparent loophole in local legislation regulating the use of human milk and it was not clear whether Mr Locher could actually be banned from serving his specialities.

"Humans as producers of milk are simply not envisaged in the legislation.

"They are not on the list of approved species such as cows and sheep, but they are also not on the list of the banned species such as apes and primates," Rolf Etter of the Zurich food control laboratory said.

As I say in the sidebar: I'm a law professor, and sometimes I write about law. To that I add: Sometimes I blog about breasts. And sometimes I blog about breasts and the law.

***

You know, Justice Scalia was just bitching about law school courses like "'Law and Poverty,' or other made-up stuff." I'd just like to point out that one could do a course called "Law and Breasts." There's this topic of whether a restaurant can serve breast milk, but there are all sorts of other things. I can easily find many things in my old blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

***

If you think the subject of food made with breast milk is funny -- or if you have any sense of humor at all -- you should buy Season 5 of "The Ricky Gervais Show" (the podcast). There's a bit where Ricky is thoroughly disgusted by a hippie woman who brings a housewarming gift of rice pudding and informs the recipient that she's made it with her breast milk.

Now, what's the right way to fix a baby's hair?

Palinsanity.

I'm just coining a word. It means the way everyone went nuts after Sarah Palin made her entrance on the national stage. What are the symptoms of this mental disorder? Help me enumerate them. One certainly is the desire to comment on blogs, so have at it. Another is the obsession with the female body. Yes, let's talk politics -- let's talk about wombs and protruding abdomens and lactating breasts.

Palinsanity. You know you have it.