October 18, 2017

At the Accomplished Writer Café...

DSC08285

... accomplish whatever writings you want.

And if you have any shopping to accomplish, please accomplish it through The Althouse Amazon Portal.

I accomplished that photograph in 2010. The future that cookie predicted is now.

63 comments:

buwaya said...

You still have a way to go.
You could easily pull a Paglia if you wanted to.
You just need a thesis I think.

rehajm said...

I’m a numbers person but y’all should keep trying.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

..in bed.

tcrosse said...

First in a new line of Cruelly Neutral Fortune Cookies. These things don't write themselves.

Hagar said...

It appears Jesus Campos, the Mandalay Bay security guard, "went missing" while his agent negotiated a deal for his first TV interview - which went to Ellen DeGeneres.

Hagar said...

Samantha Power emphatically denies requesting 264 "unmaskings" - claims someone else must have done it in her name.

So now I am really worried - the United States Government is really that haphazardly run that that could happen?

Ann Althouse said...

"No one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with."

Should I try to write more like that?

Ann Althouse said...

Looking at that fortune today, I feel like that cookie is bossy.

Michael K said...

"claims someone else must have done it in her name."

Yes, she is either protecting someone by lying or she had security practices worse, if possible, than Hillary.

The criticism of Trump being constantly in the news ignores such things as the front page of the LA Times in which every Washington story has Trump in the title. Except for one Weinstein story and I don;t see the connection to Washington in that one. No doubt Trump is mentioned in the story.

buwaya said...

Fortunes were traditionally messages from the Gods, so bossy is exactly right.

Hagar said...

IT IS A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times
Welcome to the final show
Hope you're wearing your best clothes
You can't bribe the door on your way to the sky
You look pretty good down here
But you ain't really good

We never learn, we been here before
Why are we always stuck and running from
The bullets? The bullets?
We never learn, we been here before
Why are we always stuck and running from
The bullets? The bullets?

Just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times
We gotta get away from here
We gotta get away from here
Just stop your crying, it'll be alright
They told me that the end is near
We gotta get away from here

Curious George said...

Nice to see a fortune cookie actually have a fortune.

Matt Sablan said...

Speaking of fortunes, gods, etc.

I had an argument with my literature teacher; I said Oedipus cannot rightly be considered a tragedy since he was fated by the Greek gods to do what he did. He had no real freewill. It was a sad story, but it couldn't be counted as a classic tragedy. He vehemently disagreed with me, but let me make my case. I still got an A on the paper, even though he noted he disagreed, because I was able to make a coherent argument.

I'd never have tried that in my political science classes. Those were strictly "color in the line" classes.

tcrosse said...

Looking at that fortune today, I feel like that cookie is bossy.

It's one tough cookie.

mockturtle said...

Ann is more than an accomplished writer. She is a highly skilled and talented writer. Certainly a better writer than most of the editorial writers for the NYT and WaPo. We're fortunate to be able to read her every day. And free, at that!

Unknown said...

I wonder if there's a market for misfortune cookies?

pacwest said...

I am predicting that the Althouse Blog will become even more recognized and influential in the coming few years. Her subject matter has always been about the cultural, and we are entering a phase where culture wars will be the main aspect of American society. Good luck to her keeping a cruel neutrality during these trying times.

john burger said...

My cookie read, "He who puts faith in cookies' messages is doubly lost". I thought that was rude.

jvb

rhhardin said...

This is the writer of our discontent.

rhhardin said...

Artaud is the go-to guy for cruel neutrality.

rhhardin said...

You must accept cookies to get your fortune.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Curious George said...
Nice to see a fortune cookie actually have a fortune.

10/18/17, 11:32 AM

I once got one that said "You like Chinese food."

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

I shake my fist at the commenter who posted the link to the opening of "Branded" in one of the HW threads. I made the mistake of clicking on it and I've had "All but one man died, there at Cripple Creek...." in my head ever since.

tcrosse said...

Viral on the internet is the fortune cookie that says "That wasn't chicken".

robother said...

Ann must go to better class Chinese restaurants than I. My fortunes have gotten lamer and lamer the last 10 years: Chinese fortune cookie cutters.

Bay Area Guy said...

Clinton pal, Hollywood writer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, lowers the boom on Harvey and Hollywood.

Yes, late. But better late, than never.

David said...

"No one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with."

Should I try to write more like that?

Please no.

Michael K said...

"Ann is more than an accomplished writer. She is a highly skilled and talented writer."

I have gotten interested in the "Outlander" series of novels.

There is an interesting story about the author.

She was a very accomplished person, sort of like Ann.

Gabaldon grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. She earned a bachelor of science in zoology from Northern Arizona University, 1970–1973; a master of science in marine biology from the University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1973–1975; and a PhD in behavioral ecology from Northern Arizona University, 1975–1978.

Gabaldon was the founding editor of Science Software Quarterly in 1984 while employed at the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University. During the mid-1980s, Gabaldon wrote software reviews and technical articles for computer publications, as well as popular-science articles and comic books for the Walt Disney Company. She was a professor with an expertise in scientific computation at ASU for 12 years before leaving to write full-time.

In 1988, Gabaldon decided to write a novel for "practice, just to learn how" and with no intention to show it to anyone.


Her fortune must approach that of JK Rowling by now.

How about it, Ann ?

tcrosse said...

Yes, late. But better late, than never.

Never is a rather low bar.

rehajm said...

Clinton pal, Hollywood writer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, lowers the boom on Harvey and Hollywood.

She's the one who taught the Clinton's to never apologize. Never.

rhhardin said...

How about it, Ann ?

Ann will get stuck on a hot button. No development.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

How about using a pen name (yes, that is sexist) and write a scary detective novel series set in Madison, Wisconsin among the College Professors. The heroine faces down all kinds of creeps, but finally outwits the Dairy Farmers by using her secret blogging power.

Fernandinande said...

The fortune writer shoulda said

"You will become an accomplished writer...like me!"

Bay Area Guy said...

@rehajm,

Clinton pal, Hollywood writer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, lowers the boom on Harvey and Hollywood. >

She's the one who taught the Clinton's to never apologize. Never.

__________________________________________________________________

Did LBT give advise to Bill when Juanita Broaderick made her rape claim?

RNB said...

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and her hubby are the cronies Hilary destroyed the White House Travel Office for and tried to get Billy Dale thrown in prison.

JOB said...

The Reader

In the chore of reading - each unread page that spills before me
Is part of heaven’s impossible body of knowledge, by sheaf and ream
Full of language’s drifting constellations (the intrigue of texture)

A galaxy of tongues, all the revolving systems of story, the moons of Epos,
Vast supernovas of inflection, elusive comets of connotation,
Unmoved sounds of words pushing back and forth against the universe.

Tongue in ear to ground and tongue in cheek to jowl, tongues of fire and ice,
These and an infinite shelf of Caesars, Chief Seattles, scarecrows, saints –
Luminous nights above open fields of science and art; arcana and minutiae

Providing the workbook of life’s scintilla I will never count enough.
Let each volume come down written, plummet to earth by its own accord,
Fall in my lap and flash open in a sudden breeze to my own name

And let each page be read thoroughly of its life, to its end, a burnt leaf,
A platted palm of ash waiting for wind to take it in a gentle winged hand
Waiting for memory’s fire to extinguish itself in gutters and marginalia –

Glosses blaze each page’s strict squared edge in searing amber lines,
A sunset smoldering gold through an angry storm front, a fuse spelling out
The bristling tinsel of sound, spitting sparks toward its final syllabic blow…

In the silence and the loss of chronicle, in the long chapters of sleep,
In the silence and the loss of eclectic gods to apocalypse and colophon
In the wind turning pages of a book forgotten in the grass,
In the pages of a book, remembered by the wind, turning in the grass.

Etienne said...

"Used Rarely. fortune cookie is in the lower 50% of commonly used words in the Collins dictionary"

"gâteau de la fortune" - Fortune cake

"La fortune sourit aux audacieux" - Fortune favors the brave (audacious) - proverb

"Quit your day job, and work on your blog" - Fortune for the brave

eddie willers said...

I have gotten interested in the "Outlander" series of novels.

I've enjoyed tham greatly as well. And the Starz adaptation has been very good. (I assume you saw the Print Shop scene last episode)

One unfortunate thing though: When I bought my first Kindle, I had just read the first three "Outlander" books from the library and Kindle had the whole series on sale for $5. I bought them all.

Since then, my Kindle's "suggestions" has been almost all been "bodice rippers" or Harlequin novels with Fabio type abs and long hair staring at me, even though most subsequent purchases have either been histories or hard-boiled detective mysteries.

AI ain't so intelligent.

PS. I have never had to look up words via the built-in dictionary as I have with Gabaldon. Maybe having two hundred years of words to choose from has something to do with it.

William said...

I read the article that Bay Area Guy links to at 12:21. It's interesting and informative, but the writer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, helped craft Bill Clinton's spology for lying and states that we had no business looking into his affairs. She says many might think her hypocritical. Well, yeah, that's what happens when you're hypocritical........She makes the interesting point that there was a male on male rape in Deliverance. Other than that no more such rape scenes in movies. She compares that to the hundreds of other rape scenes featured in major movies......I understand that there was widespread sexual abuse of the female gymnasts. I'm just now reading about this, but some well known people were tried and convicted. Compare this to the Sandusky scandal. You would think that the exploitation of some well known gymnasts would be far more newsworthy than Sandusky's crimes, but you would be wrong. Apparently NBC and perhaps the other networks didn't want to discredit the sure fire ratings grabber of woman's gymnastics. They had no such inhibitions about the PA football program.......The levels of hypocrisy, complicity, and mendacity are stunning to contemplate.

Ann Althouse said...

“How about using a pen name (yes, that is sexist) and write a scary detective novel series set in Madison, Wisconsin among the College Professors. The heroine faces down all kinds of creeps, but finally outwits the Dairy Farmers by using her secret blogging power.”

If I were to write a novel it would not be a genre novel. It would be a literary novel, and because of my reputation among liberals as a conservative, it would be excluded from consideration as anything worthwhile. I’m not going to divert my blogging energy into such a doomed project. No one wants it, not even you readers as you goad me, which I think you do only because you think novels are real writing and blogging must be only a steppingstone. It is a steppingstone, but we live in days, and I will keep stepping.

Ann Althouse said...

“"Quit your day job, and work on your blog" - Fortune for the brave.”

No bravery needed with a fine pension. The danger is only that I am too free to understand life among the human beings.

William said...

"It is a stepping stone, but we live in days, and I will keep stepping." That's a terrific line, but immersed within the ephemera of a blog, it will bubble once and pass away. Blogging may very well be an art form, but it's as transient as chalk paintings on a busy sidewalk.

Michael K said...

not even you readers as you goad me, which I think you do only because you think novels are real writing and blogging must be only a steppingstone.

No, I have thought of trying to write a novel but I don't think I can write dialog. I have published two non-fiction books that provide a small (very small) income but dialog stumps me.

You'll never know unless you try. The woman who did the "Outlander" books put an excerpt on a "Compuserve" news group, like those I used to read. Someone read it and got her an agent.

Bad Lieutenant said...


Blogger William said...
"It is a stepping stone, but we live in days, and I will keep stepping." That's a terrific line, but immersed within the ephemera of a blog, it will bubble once and pass away. Blogging may very well be an art form, but it's as transient as chalk paintings on a busy sidewalk.



All these blog posts...lost in time...like tears in rain.

mockturtle said...

Maybe Ann should write an exposé of the university system. In other words, bite the hand that fed her. We could certainly use a few exposés. Or develop a fictitious university into a novel which everyone will assume, rightly, to be autobiographical.

tcrosse said...

Blogging may very well be an art form, but it's as transient as chalk paintings on a busy sidewalk.

Fred Allen wrote a book about writing for radio, called Treadmill to Oblivion.

tcrosse said...

Maybe Ann should write an exposé of the university system

Call it Lucky Ann.

buwaya said...

"All these blog posts...lost in time...like tears in rain."

Thats most of us really, with the exception of our children and maybe our grandchildren.

In truth, even with her ephemeral craft, Althouse is less ephemeral than most.

rhhardin said...

Math is a permanent sort of contribution.

Ann Althouse said...

“Maybe Ann should write an exposé of the university system. In other words, bite the hand that fed her. We could certainly use a few exposés. Or develop a fictitious university into a novel which everyone will assume, rightly, to be autobiographical.”

I don’t have the material because I have always been bored by the topic.

FullMoon said...

Michael K said... [hush]​[hide comment]

not even you readers as you goad me, which I think you do only because you think novels are real writing and blogging must be only a steppingstone.

No, I have thought of trying to write a novel but I don't think I can write dialog. I have published two non-fiction books that provide a small (very small) income but dialog stumps me.


Hire Laslo to do the dialog for ya.

mockturtle said...

I don’t have the material because I have always been bored by the topic.

And yet you seem to be ever fascinated by Harvey Weinstein and sexual harassment, both topics having been wrung out to the point of evaporation. I'll bet there are many untold tales of intrigue and corruption in any university for a writer to exploit.

Sebastian said...

"because of my reputation among liberals as a conservative, it would be excluded from consideration as anything worthwhile. I’m not going to divert my blogging energy into such a doomed project." Let me get this straight: a project is doomed if it is "excluded from consideration as anything worthwhile," and it is so excluded when one has a reputation among liberals as a conservative?

The real reason Althouse doesn't write a novel is that she has only one character. But that one she writes very well.

Michael K said...

"provide a small (very small) income but dialog stumps me.

Hire Laslo to do the dialog for ya."

Not that kind of novel.

William said...

What the world really needs is a novel about the petty intrigues of the academic community. That's never been done before.......I just finished reading a biography of Somerset Maugham. He used to write for three hours faithfully every morning. Really churned it out, Never heard of writer's block. On a per capita basis his most lucrative success was "Rain". This was a short story that he wrote in two hours. It was made into a play and several movies. It made him millions...... When he went to Tahiti to research a novel about Gauguin, he discovered a place where the artist had stayed and left behind a couple of paintings. He bought those paintings for a couple of hundred dollars. Maugham had an eye for art. He lived in the south of France in the same neighborhood as Cezanne. He bought a painting from him to brighten up one of his rooms for a few thousand dollars. I suppose his art collection would be worth billions in today's money.......People still read his novels, but his greatest accomplishments were in wealth management and art collecting. He lived a long, bitchy life in a villa in the south of France surrounded by great art. An accomplished writer.

mockturtle said...

What the world really needs is a novel about the petty intrigues of the academic community. That's never been done before......

That's what I suggested to Ann but she said the subject bored her.

Bix Cvvv said...

Ann - while I profoundly disagree with you (and with Scalia, too, for the record - he was right on Roe v Wade but often wrong elsewhere) on the dormant commerce clause controversies, and on other more important moral questions that many of us (not me) like to think of as merely constitutional - I do enjoy your writing, and I consider it often even to have a certain level of enchantment (Nabokov liked to talk about enchantment, but he got that wrong more than once - - to be slightly unfair to him, he comes across as thinking enchantment was what people who competently study comparative literature talk about when they talk about good writing - whereas all it is (enchantment, that is) is no more and no less than describing the world as someone with compassion understands the world, talking about those for whom they feel compassion, or talking about the beautiful world that makes us happy. Anyway, God bless you and Meade, and those you love. That is my fortune cookie for you. (I haven't posted here much, just a few comments here and there in seas of tens of thousands of comments - and won't post here much in the future ... so, that being said, from the crowd: a human voice from the crowd: God bless you and those you love.) So yeah, I can go along with the word accomplished.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

What the world really needs is a novel about the petty intrigues of the academic community. That's never been done before......

The mass of scholars rippled, murmured-and stilled, as a yellow-haired woman marched out onto the floor, the tapping of her tile-braided hair clearly audible in the sudden silence.

Deliberately, she stepped into the rectangle, pulled the blade from its place in her sash and brandished it dramatically over her head.

"I, Leman chi'Farlo, Seated Scholar and Third Chair of the Department of Interdimensional Statistics, challenge Kel Var tay'Palin to defend his Thesis Number Twenty-Seven, in which he avers that the value of Amedeo's Constant as reflected in N-space is a contingent process and is not an ordered process." Her voice echoed weirdly, which Jela took to be an affect of a wide-area amplifier.

"What's this?" a scholar some places to Jela's right whispered to the scholar next to her. "She challenges him on work he published before he was seated?"

"It's allowable," her mate whispered back. "Bad form, but allowable."

The first scholar sighed lightly. "Well, it is chi'Farlo, after all."

"Come forth, Kel Var tay'Palin," a voice boomed across the hall-likely originating, Jela thought, in the shielded command room. "Come forward and defend your work."

And here came the lean figure of the Prime Chair, walking carefully, his knife held business-like. It was, Jela saw, a well-kept weapon, the edge so sharp it shone like an energy blade. He stepped into the rectangle, and bowed slightly to his opponent. She returned the courtesy, lunging out of it low and vicious, going for the belly.

Prime Chair twisted; his opponent's blade sliced robe, and in the moment it was fouled, he chopped down at her exposed neck. Unfortunately, the yellow-haired scholar was more nimble than she looked; she tucked and dove, freeing her knife with a wrist-wrenching twist. There was a clatter of tiles as a severed braid hit the floor.

Scholar tay'Palin spun, a trifle ragged, to face his opponent as she came to her feet and danced forward, knife flashing, pressing him fiercely.

And that tactic, Jela thought, was likely a winner, given that knife fights were never certain. No question tay'Palin was the better fighter, but he was wounded and weary while she was fresh and energized, and that more than balanced her relative lack of skill.

The blonde woman thrust, tay'Palin twisted-and went down to one knee. She pressed her advantage, going for his eyes now, his throat, his face, working close, giving him no opportunity to gain his feet.

Still, he fought on, grimly, blood showing now on his sleeve-which was, Jela thought, the old wound, torn open again-and down the front of his robe from his numerous cuts.

All at once, the woman twisted, feinting; the scholar on his knees realizing the deception too late-and that quickly it was over, the blonde woman's knife was lodged to the hilt in tay'Palin's chest.

Exuberant, she turned, raising her hands above her head. And as she did, the mortally wounded scholar raised his arm, reversed his blade-and threw.

The victor staggered, mouth opening in a silent scream-

And fell all at once, blood streaming. Scholar tay'Palin lay on his side, eyes open and empty, his blood pooling and mixing with that of his opponent.

"Scholar tay'Palin," the disembodied voice announced, into the absolute silence of the lobby, "has successfully turned the challenge. Let his grudents amass his work and publish it wherever scholars study. Let his name be recorded on the Scholar's Wall."

There was a murmur of approval from the assembled scholars.

"Scholar chi'Farlo," the voice continued, "is found to have wrongly issued challenge. Let her office be purged, her files wiped and her name struck from our rolls."

"Well deserved," whispered the scholar to the right.

rehajm said...

Moo?

mockturtle said...

Unknown, your worthy comment may go unread due to your choice of screen names. 'Unknown' happens to be anathema here due to its use by a persistent troll.

Freeman Hunt said...

The blog is always superlative, and sometimes, like lately, it is sublime.

Freeman Hunt said...

Why would a commenter suggest that a favorite blogger write something besides a blog? Where is your self interest?!