Opportunistic

My favorite sentence (so far) from Trevor Day’s Sardine (London: Reaktion, 2018): “Sardines are opportunistic.” Which means that “they feed on phytoplankton or zooplankton, or both, depending on which is abundant at the time.” Phytoplankton are plant-like organisms. Day characterizes zooplankton as “drifting animals.”

Opportunists and drifters: it sounds like ocean noir. Sooner or later, someone will be caught in a net.

Sardine is a volume in Reaktion’s Animal series, beautifully printed, with many drawings and photographs.

Thanks, Heber, for pointing me to this book.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

His ’n’ her resignations are in order

I have learned that “my” representative in the Illinois House, Chris Miller (R-110), husband of Mary Miller, attended the Washington, D.C. rally that was the prelude to last Wednesday’s attempted coup. He was streaming from the scene:

“We’re engaged in a great cultural war to see which worldview will survive, whether we will remain a free people, under free-market capitalism, or whether they will put us into the tyranny of socialism and communism and the dangerous Democrat terrorists that are trying to destroy our country.”

Chris Miller was most recently on my radar in August, when he denied the reality of the pandemic. As a photograph in Business Insider attests, he keeps his mask under his nose. Christ, what an airhole.

There’s a petition.

Related posts
January 5 and 6 in D.C., with Mary Miller : The objectors included Mary Miller : A letter to Mary Miller : Mary Miller, with no mask : Mary Miller, still in trouble

Mary Miller, still in trouble

Representative Jan Schakowsky (D, Illinois-9) will introduce a measure to censure fellow representative Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15). On January 5 Miller told a Moms for America rally in Washington that “Hitler was right on one thing — that whoever has the youth has the future.” She’s “my” representative in Congress.

Previous Miller posts
January 5 and 6 in D.C., with Mary Miller : The objectors included Mary Miller : A letter to Mary Miller : Mary Miller, with no mask

Small pleasures

I rarely watch the TV screen during commercials. Thus the first seconds of music in this Disaronno commercial tricked me into thinking that I was stepping into an episode of Golden Girls. I count two pleasures here: 1. the trick, and 2. my relief that I wasn’t in fact watching Golden Girls.

[No. 2 in a series. Here’s no. 1.]

Monocle, fluttering

Here comes Robert de Saint-Loup.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Readers of Swann’s Way will remember the narrator’s interminable lengthy descriptions of individual monocles and their wearers, as seen by Charles Swann.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Keeping it local

From the Queens Daily Eagle, “Queens man impeached — again:

A Queens-born real estate developer made history Wednesday when he became the first U.S. president ever impeached twice by the House of Representatives.

The newspaper did a fine job with Trump**’s first impeachment:

He is the third president to be impeached in United States history — and the first from Queens.

Styling the name

On my blog he’s Trump*.

When he’s impeached a second time, he’ll be Trump**.

If he resigns, he’ll be          **. Self-erasure.

If removed, he’ll be Trump**.

If only the damage he’s done could be so easily erased or struck out.

Living, breathing

“Donald Trump is a living, breathing impeachable offense. It is what it is”: Hakeem Jeffries (D, New York-8), addressing the House minutes ago.

Outside and inside the Capitol

Here’s a photograph from Lauren Boebert’s Instagram account, said to have been posted on January 5. That’s Boebert (R, Colorado-3) front and center. Notice the four circled figures: I don’t need to explain their hand signal. See also this Washington Post article about what Mikie Sherrill (D, New Jersey-11) saw on January 5.

*

The Boebert photograph is not from January 5 and not from Washington. But it is a picture of Boebert with supporters, at least some of whom identify themselves as white supremacists. I trusted that Aaron Rupar’s (now-deleted) retweet of the photograph was evidence for its authenticity.

Evolution

A little context: The Princess of Luxembourg has come to spend a few weeks in Balbec. She’s a friend of the Marquise de Villeparisis, who herself is an old friend of the narrator‘s grandmother. When Mme de Villeparisis introduces grandmother and narrator to the Princess, the Princess looks at them with “loving sweetness.” The narrator feels as if he and his grandmother are about to be patted, like “a brace of docile animals poking our heads through the railings at the Zoo in the Bois de Boulogne.” The Princess buys candy and a loaf of rye bread, “the sort you feed to the ducks,” from the hawkers on the esplanade to give to her new acquaintances. And then the Princess offers her hand, to show she still has the common touch, and her expression is aimed “at not quite so lowly a level in the hierarchy of creatures.”

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)