"I wanted to see how green I could be, how lightly I could tread on the earth."

Living in 144 square feet — and trying to prove the point that that's all the space anyone needs. Indeed, if you've got more, maybe you're "paralyzed" by all of your "stuff."

Though I think Elizabeth Turnbull's house is scary small, I'm intrigued by small houses. So much depends on a pleasing layout, views of the outdoors, and editing one's possessions. And then there's the question of why you are doing it. Are you being austere to save money or because you think it's wrong to consume too much? Is it fun and aesthetically pleasing? Or are you tending to your soul in some exciting/lofty way?

"Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table."

At the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, Obama tells jokes. Obama's jokes — unlike Bush's — have semicolons in them. He's so smart!

The featured comedian was Wanda Sykes, who talked about the President's nipples:

"It's funny to me that [photographers] have never caught you smoking," Sykes told the president, "but they always catch you with your shirt off. I know you're into this transparency thing, but I don't need to see your nipples."

"A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong, and they are being unfair to her."

Said Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia's grand mufti.

From an article about the court's refusal to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl on the petition of her mother, who is separated from her father, who arranged the marriage to a 47-year-old man to whom he was indebted. The man has agreed not to consummate the marriage until the girl reaches puberty and the girl is permitted to seek an annulment herself at that time.

"Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers."

Now, there's an ambiguous headline, and the meaning I assumed is not at all the one in the article.

So Hillary Clinton gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a large plastic button with the word "overcharge" on it.

Oops.

Got to give her credit though. She was drastically ill served by her people. What? Did they Google for a translation (of "reset")? Yet she handled the screwup gracefully:



I'd love to see her behind the scenes afterwards with whoever came up with that stupid button.

And then there are those screwups she can't blame on anyone else. "High Reprensentative Solano" and so forth....



AND: Don't touch it! It's the history eraser button!



IN THE COMMENTS: Peter V. Bella said:

Hillary's people screwed up? She gives the guy a stupid button like some college kid would do? She screwed up and big time.It is her fault. She is way out of her league. This is more serious than serving tea, being Bill's doormat, and being a junior Senator.

This is some administration. The Prime Minister of England gets some cheap DVS and the Russians get a stupid toy button. I wonder what Oprah got from her visit?

You're right. The button is incredibly stupid. I wrote this post in the middle of the night, between sleeps, and I was impressed that she weathered the incident at all. But in the cold light of morning the stupidity of it all is glaring.

AND: They should have asked Volokh:

Unless I'm unfamiliar with some alternative meaning — and one that the Russian foreign minister was unfamiliar with, too — "peregruzka" doesn't remotely mean "reset." "Gruz" means "load," and "pere-" means "over-"; "peregruzka" means "overload." (I take it that "overcharge" is used in the story to mean an excess of an electric charge, which is to say an electrical overload, not "overcharge" in the more common English sense of charging too much money.) Doesn't the State Department have fluent translators to do such things?

We see this one mistranslation. How many unseen mistranslations are there? Is it the same as the ratio for vermin sighting to vermin population? Or is it much, much worse? And also, why hasn't nuclear war killed us all yet?

"You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called 'change,' it’s still gonna stink."

Said Obama, and speaking of stink, it's raised quite a stink.

Now, I didn't blog this yesterday, because frankly, I considered it absolutely nothing. "Lipstick on a pig" is an extremely common expression, and it doesn't become taboo because somebody else made a wisecrack about lipstick on another animal or because that somebody else happens to wear lipstick.

And I don't like seeing a lot of men jumping to Sarah's defense over some other man's possible sexist slur of her. Excessive chivalry doesn't advance feminism, and women themselves, as Palin famously said, have "got to plow through." No whining.

But I'm putting this post up for 2 reasons:

1. I can see from comments on various other posts that my readers want to talk about it.

2. There's one thing I haven't seen anyone else say that I think needs to be said. Obama did not just mention a pig. He immediately mentioned a fish. That's 2 animals in rapid succession. And both of these animals are frequently used in sexual insults referring to women. The reference to the pig also has it wearing lipstick, which is obviously a female image. And the reference to a fish also has it stinking, which is exactly the aspect of fish that is used when fish are invoked to insult women. I still think it's nothing, but if you think it's something, fairness requires you to consider the remark in context.

In our Palinsanity, we need a Palindrome: Harass Sarah.

I'm up way too early this morning, not because I personally am tossing and turning over the Palinsanity that has seized the blogosphere, but I can see that you people have been up all night, and every night since Friday, commenting feverishly throughout the night, pushing my traffic up threefold and more.

This morning I take a glance at the NYT -- "Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process," "In Political Realm, ‘Family Problem’ Emerges as Test," "Palin Daughter’s Pregnancy Interrupts Script" -- and Memeorandum -- "The Palin Meltdown in Slo-Mo," "Pool: What Day Will Sarah Palin Drop Out?," "Face It: They Didn't Vet Her" -- and I see that the press and the blogosphere have rolled out their attacks for the first working day after the McCain's game-changing announcement.

So it looks like another big day for the craziness that, last night, I called Palinsanity.

In the comments -- and there are tons of comments -- Madison Man said (I've added links):

You need to make a Palindrome.

Amba said:

Welcome to the Palin-Drome.

Now let's have some palindromes to let off steam.

Or is a palindrome like a syndrome? Is it getting you Down? (wince)

But it was chickenlittle who discovered the perfect Palin Palindrome:

Harass Sarah.

And we all smile at chickenlittle's bon mot and hope the sky is not falling.