Guerrilla gardeners.

"They garden in public places with, and sometimes without, permission. Without permission, it could just be 'John,' the William...

"Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down."

"The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most neede...

At the Iris Café...

... there's an edge of violet.

"It gave me pecs, gave me definition, it gave me confidence."

Spanx for men. Fabulous, for the unnaked man.

"I can't say this is true yet, cause I don't know. Next year they asked me to possibly be the judge on 'American Idol.'"

Do you want Bret Michaels to replace Simon Cowell?

"Facebook has no charms for me. It looks inward. Twitter looks outward..."

From an essay by Roger Ebert about how the internet rewires our brains . A lot of the essay is about the importance of stepping away from th...

"My boyfriend is a super cleaner."

"Not only does he clean, but he cooks. Am I turned on by it? Of course. He's taking charge, he's taking responsibility. And tha...

Perfect game.

Roy Halladay.

Poppies.

The Rule of 3.

After Art Linkletter and Gary Coleman departed, the Rule of 3 demanded one more celebrity move on to the next world. And though he wasn'...

Dennis Hopper has died.

Cancer. He was 74. Talk about your favorite Dennis Hopper movies . "Easy Rider," "Blue Velvet," "Basquiat," ...

"And I said, ‘Why did you let me marry this idiot?'"

"He said, ‘I thought you liked him! You look so happy. Your dress was so beautiful. I don’t know. Let me go!’ And I said, ‘Michael, how...

Malawi yields.

Pardons gay couple.

"Is there the slightest possibility that SATC2 is actually satirizing the shallow absurdity of its protagonists..."

"... but a large fraction of its audience has not realized that they are the target of its mockery?" Answer: no .

Cat party.

And real cat wants nothing to do with it.

The unnatural complexities of marriage and motherhood.

A new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's "Second Sex" is reviewed by Francine du Plessix Gray. Here's a paragraph about ...

"In an idyllic world, getting rid of 'don't ask, don't tell' and saying 'Everyone here is welcome' is great."

"But the policy actually allowed for a lot of protections.... Getting rid of it completely without modifying it is kind of worrisome. T...

"Which 'Hoity-Toity' Author Wants 'Chick-Lit Love'?"

"Feuds involving people named 'Weiner.'"

"As we mix the clay, the clay mixes us."

Clay-stomping (and artist-philosophy) for schoolkids.

A cool scene from that movie that led to Werner Herzog eating his shoe.

It's just this woman talking. Barely moving, but talking. She grew up on a farm... The movie is "Gates of Heaven," a documenta...

"I think it's this long-term, intense loneliness that many people don't understand."

"They don't realise that loneliness can come alive, that it can start to snap and hound at a life." Emily White — author of ...

"Our minds are quite scattered with planning and remembering and tracking and we don't live much in the present."

"We can be so lost in our minds that we don't see the sunset over the Pacific, we don't see the eyes of our children when we co...

"When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable."

Said Art Linkletter to Richard Nixon, who responded: "That's right, that's right. A person does not drink to get drunk. . . . A...

P.J. O'Rourke wants newspapers to publish pre-obituaries for the not-yet-dead.

So they can have their feelings hurt. The main advantage of the Pre-Obit over the traditional obituary is the knowledge of reader and writer...

"We are not living off the grid as much as we are creating a new grid, a more wholesome grid."

Conservative Christians drop out. "We are following a different path that we think is healthier, promotes better families, and better c...

Obama "tells us he thinks that if he somehow gets people to think about him and how much he's thinking about what he thinks they think he should be thinking about"...

... he's done his job. Now is that fair? He said: My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is ...

A Madison bratscape.

( I have bratblogged before. )

The 1-word exam.

A tradition at Oxford, scrapped.

Sestak... Plame...

Discuss!

NYT: Rahm used Bill Clinton to ask Sestak to drop out of the Senate race.

According to a "briefed individual": The White House did not offer Mr. Sestak a full-time paid position because Mr. Emanuel wanted...

Why is President Obama skipping the traditional Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery?

You'd think with the criticism he's been getting lately — the meme is he's disengaged and doesn't care — that he would do th...

The Sistine Chapel.

An amazingly complete photographic view. (WARNING: some nudity.)

Rush Limbaugh: "I know I am a target and I know I will be destroyed eventually."

"I fear that all I have accomplished and all the wealth I have accumulated will be taken from me, to the cheers of the crowd. I know I ...

Female legal secretaries critique female lawyers.

Lawprof Felice Batlan surveyed 164 legal secretaries: Legal secretaries said they preferred to work for male associates and partners. In wri...

Subliminal sex on Drudge.

Clipped from the screen of Drudge, just now. The link goes to news of Obama's press conference: ... Obama said the gulf is the first th...

At the Pink Peony Café...

... a toast!

Do you have to plan? But then if it's all planned...

[Redacted] Guy wants to have sex in a public place just once before he dies. But he has 4 fears...

The Obama press conference.

Here's the NYT live-blog. So far, it's all about the oil spill. Is this his Katrina? He declines to say. ADDED: He's asked about...

Russ Feingold 46%, Ron Johnson 44%.

That's "virtually even." ADDED: George Will writes his column today about Ron Johnson: This 55-year-old manufacturer of plasti...

Where to eat in Madison, Wisconsin.

As recommended by the UW Law School faculty and staff.

"I know enough about a lot of things to be interesting, but I’m not interested enough in any one thing to be boring."

"I’m like everybody’s next-door neighbor, only a little bit smarter." That sounds like something a blogger might say, but it was A...

Bears...

... in your backyard — in southern Wisconsin.

Songs that equate the feeling of love to the symptoms of illness.

Help me compile a list of songs that compare the effects of love (or sexual feeling) to illness. I've been struggling with a virus — it...

Willie Nelson cuts his hair...

... but not enough. I'm not enjoying the jaunty bob on an old man.

"Top kill" stops the BP leak!

Great news at last. I hope it's true.

"Pregnancy is an extremely contested area of human relationships."

"It’s likely that there are women who try to get pregnant on purpose in order to maintain or change a relationship. But now we can also...

"There I was, former president of the United States, with a plastic bag in my hand, picking up what I had been dodging for eight solid years."

George W. Bush makes a poop joke.

At the White Peony Café...

... be delightful all night long.

Kagan: 41% favorable, 47% unfavorable.

Why? She's the President's pick, an apparently highly competent and amiable person, and she's not on record with much of anythi...

And the blue-eyed boy beats the single mom.

America picks Lee.

In the garden...

Iris... Peony... Everything...

"And it just looks like he's not involved in this! Man, you have got to get down here and take control of this!"

"Put somebody in charge of this and get this thing moving! We're about to die down here!"

"By structuring Race to the Top in the guise of a competition, Obama cleverly gets states on board with his formulas for school reform they would have otherwise resisted."

"Even if a state doesn't get a dollar of federal funding, the competition is making it easier to start new charter schools, subject...

"They were only in study groups together. They weren't friends. Yet he now goes on TV every night yammering on about her."

The NY Post reports what "one source" says about Jeffrey Toobin and Elena Kagan. IN THE COMMENTS: danielle says: this snippet is l...

"And when in doubt, go with the particularly American feelings about gender that would rather see Martha Stewart go down than Lee Iacocca..."

"... that would choose almost anybody, for any public office, over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sarah Palin's entire narrative is based ...

"What makes Rand Paul’s position... noteworthy is that it’s a pure, unadulterated expression of Lockean anti-statism with little admixture of Hobbesian sentiments at all."

"Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice tha...

"Police chiefs from about a dozen cities are scheduled to meet with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday to talk about concerns they have with Arizona's new immigration law."

"The chiefs will tell Holder that they worry the new law will 'drive a wedge' between the community and police, and damage the ...

"So, putting on the shorts and tank top to catch that too-brief northern summer sun and placing a giddy Trig in his toddler backpack for a lawn-mowing adventure..."

"... I looked up in surprise to see a 'new neighbor' overlooking my property just a stone’s throw away. Needless to say, our ou...

"The more he talked, the more he got upset... He needs to take a valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans..."

"... and just calm down, and don’t take anything so seriously. If you disagree with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re attacking their mo...

"My wife calls me Mr. Clueless."

Says Justice Scalia, sitting next to Justice Breyer, who seems quite a bit less clueless.

"My gut feeling here is that Sestak is holding this alleged proffer of a job over the White House's head to try and make sure that the West Wing does everything it can to support his candidacy."

"That's bothersome, because it means that someone believes they can use an allegation to divert the attention and resources of the ...

"One of the things that I find really cool about her is what I consider her caginess."

"And I think maybe the mystery surrounding her, and that sort of silence that she decided to maintain with the media, that becomes par...

PocketJustice.

A free iPhone app: PocketJustice brings the U.S. Supreme Court down to earth through abstracts of the Court's constitutional decisions a...

"6 Ways Rand Paul Is Like Sarah Palin."

Collected by Max Fisher: Troubled 'Great White Hopes' of Hard Right... Hostile to Media... Their 'Artless Honesty'... Use ...

"I kind of see myself as a man of God and being like Joseph."

"In a sense, I feel like a bear, coming out of hibernation. Like, they come out to eat, mine would be coming out to enjoy what I have m...

"Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?"

" Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature...."

"Watch J.J. Abrams Say 'Lost' Is Not About That Thing It Turned Out to Sort of Be About."

"We're sure in the weeks to come, there will be lots of discussion about the distinctions between 'purgatory' and 'heav...

"Dear Lord: As You probably know, because I guess You sort of know everything, I’m thinking about having a mini brow lift..."

"... lipo on my neck, waist, hips, and thighs; a chin reduction; an ear job; fat injections in my cheeks, nasolabial folds, and lips; a...

"I'd also like to know whether Paul really believes in a conspiracy among the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments..."

"... to turn North America into a 'borderless, mass continent' bisected by a 10-lane superhighway. Because that's what he s...

"Now, Limbaugh has a mantra: 'Real conservatism wins every time it's tried.' "

"By 'real conservative,' he means Reaganite conservatism. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen. But it looks to me...

"Years ago, I watched an array of law students lingering in a hotel lobby, waiting to be interviewed by visiting firms."

Writes Wendy Kaminer : The men were completely, conventionally covered by their suits; the women seemed half naked by comparison, in fitted ...

Older entrepreneurs.

When you're 55+, maybe it's a good time for adventure and risk-taking.

As "American Idol," the season, comes to an end tonight, we've got to wonder if "American Idol," the series, is also dying.

It's fallen in the ratings, and this season seemed wan... Lead judge Simon Cowell is fleeing to bring Fox his own show next year, the Br...

9/11 and the death of unborn boys.

This is strange: A study in BMC Public Health found 12% more male babies were lost in September 2001 after the 20th week of pregnancy than i...

"What is going on at the deep level of the brain is pretty much the same everywhere."

"But of course how we talk and think about it, what we do to show it to others, etc., may well be shaped by culture."

"Merton told me he could be perfectly faithful to Christianity, yet learn in depth from other religions like Buddhism."

"The same is true for me as an ardent Buddhist learning from the world’s other great religions."

At the Dog Love Café...

... we're always here. For you.

The nuclear option... in the Gulf of Mexico.

Quite aside from that madness — it is madness, isn't it? — how can President Obama go on and on waiting and blaming BP? There’s no dou...

"I can't seem to get a strike to save my soul..."

"... but, fortunately, the salvation of my soul doesn't depend on my getting a strike." Recognize the artist?

"Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are..."

"... and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world. It i...

"If you are building a business model that says that people can only copy things with your permission..."

"... your business is going to fail because whether or not you like it, people will be able to copy your product without your permissio...

"David Byrne Sues Florida Gov. Charlie Crist For $1 Million."

Crist used the song "Road to Nowhere," without permission, in a campaign ad. "I was pretty upset by that," says Byrne, ...

Sometimes I struggle over the appropriate taste level for the Althouse blog.

I was considering blogging this . Help me out: Is that suitable for the Althouse blog? Sure! No way! I'm on the line, so maybe link but ...

"What do you think is interesting about the visual effect of the drug?"

"It makes people look very sexy – a lot of it is to do with the dilated eyes and increased sensual awareness the chemical causes."...

"Althouse ends up more or less agreeing with us, so of course we more or less agree with her."

Says James Taranto. He concludes: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, subject of the current national conversation about race, was necessary not ...

Iggy Pop says law is for "for hideous bald fat dead people. The living dead."

"In America, in school... I learnt creative writing, I learnt advanced algebra and geometry, but I didn’t learn there was such a thing ...

"The rather scathing portrayal of Muslim society no doubt will stir controversy, especially in a frothy summer entertainment..."

"... but there's something bracing about the film's saucy political incorrectness. Or is it politically correct? 'SATC 2...

Being Prime Minister was Tony's idea first!

A hilarious use of YouTube (found via Drudge ). I'm jumping over the first minute or so to make it funnier, but feel free to drag the sl...

What Venus wore.

I question the hat. ADDED: The most shocking picture has been relocated. It's here . It looks NSFW, and since NSFW is really only about...

"Little Dog Eats Fat Juicy Water Bugs at Sewer Air Vent."

A recent post on a photoblog that ended last Tuesday, bringing perfect meaning to its name, Neither More Nor Less , since there will be no ...

Christopher Hitchens admits that he's one of "those men who were never really in battle and wished they had been."

His wife said that, back in 2006, adding: "There's a whole tough-guy, 'I am violent, I will use violence, I will take some of t...

"[W]hat if we could just be China for a day?... You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions...."

"... and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment.  I don't want to be China for a ...

What did Mark Twain write...

... that he insisted we wait 100 years after his death to read?

At the Unpopped Iris Café...

... you can pop off about anything.

"In the photographs of Kagan sitting and chatting in various Capitol Hill offices, she doesn't appear to ever cross her legs."

Robin Givhan, the WaPo fashion critic observes that the Supreme Court nomineee sits "with her legs ajar": Her posture stands out b...

If you're going to criticize the new social studies curriculum adopted by the Texas Board of Education, you'd better quote it.

Or at least link to the text. And if you choose to paraphrase and not even link, and I have to look up the text myself, and your paraphrase ...

At the Living Roof Café....

... you can come alive.

"You will be better off looking for the future."

I see that in that last poll, I wrote, as the third option: "you will be better off looking for the future and not dwelling on the past...

Should Elin settle for $750 million from Tiger...

... if it includes "a lifetime 'confidentiality clause' that would prevent her from writing a book or doing any interviews abou...

You're all sinners/You're all racists.

We're all sinners, the preacher tells us. We get what that means, don't we? Why then don't we understand the idea that we're...

CNN is clinging to women readers.

It's so pathetic and obvious. Here's a screen grab of the center of the home page at CNN : What makes people happy? Engagement... un...

"I don’t see Judge Weinstein as a judge."

"I see him as my father. He helps people. He doesn’t destroy lives the way the prosecutor has. He’s the one who is going to set me free...

Mystery photo.

Taken by me, today. What is it?

At the Woodpecker Art Café...

... you can hole up as long as you want.

"I am shocked and disappointed at the news of Bradford resorting to suicide..."

"... as I looked forward to facing him in the court room this Fall, and now feel as though I was robbed of that opportunity."

"Those offended by Kehowski's ideas should engage him in debate or hit the 'delete' button' when they receive his e-mails."

"They may not invoke the power of the government to shut him up."

"We have ridiculed Hitler in a way that invites young people to create their own style and not to be influenced by their peers."

An ad agency tries to convey the fuzzy thinking about nonconformity behind this 18-foot-high poster: