« Any crash you can walk away from... | Main | Mark takes a walk on the wild side »

Barge that tote, bale that lift

By Michael J. Smith on Saturday August 7, 2010 02:06 PM

This just in, from the DCCC:

Diane von Furstenberg designed Team Pelosi Tote Bag $65.00

Legendary designer Diane von Furstenberg has specially designed a signature tote bag to benefit Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats. The proceeds will go directly to helping elect House Democrats. Perfect for work, the beach or travel, this stylish tote is available only through the DCCC for a limited time. The bag measures 17"w x 14"h x 5"d. Union made in the USA.

You can't make this stuff up. Personally, I would be happy to buy the bag, and even pay more than $65 for it, if Ms Pelosi's bleached disarticulated skeleton were neatly tucked inside, each vertebra and phalange lovingly wrapped in organic silk spun from Marin County worms who heard nothing but Vivaldi during their short happy laid-back lives.

The party as brand -- you heard it here first, and some time ago, too.

"Union made in the USA." By the last union member left in the USA, who lovingly bit off the stray thread from each seam with her sole remaining tooth.

Then there's the whole Free Alterations Feminist angle -- this is the perfect accessory for exasperated executive-suite women who can identify with Nancy Pelosi.

People just don't understand the heavy responsibilities of management. One can easily imagine some poor drained VP of HR, just emerged from the ordeal of laying off a few hundred cubicle rats. She was careful to place a box of Kleenex in each exit-interview room, because she's a good-hearted person. But she has received nothing but abuse for her efforts. She catches an interview with Nancy Pelosi on NPR, or some such outlet, and thinks to herself, I feel her pain. These ingrates! We're trying so hard!

You won't be seeing many Pelosi tote bags at your local Wal-Mart, and considering how ugly it is, you won't be seeing many in Southampton either. But even so, Southampton is a better bet than any Wal-Mart in the land.

Question, though: What's this business about Diane von Furstenberg being "legendary"? I always thought she was an actual person.

Comments (26)

Michael Hureaux:

I'm constantly amazed at their ability to turn out piles of dogshit and put them on the seller's block.

What is the sound of one tooth biting?

MJS:

Okay, okay, her *two* remaining teeth.

Literalists. Sheesh.

Although I guess if you had just one tooth and a particularly callused horny gum.... but one doesn't really want to imagine these things too vividly.

You finks scooped me again! I was all set to write about the newly-shipped "PEACE" shirt where I'm temping. Damn thing looks like an aerial view of an oil slick with a rhinestone in the middle. No lie.

[stamps foot] You have upstaged me for the last time, you dogs!

op:

"What's this business about Diane von Furstenberg being "legendary"?"

this


http://blogs.glam.com/glamchic/files/2009/03/dvf.jpg


is now this

http://fashionista.com/_old/images/diane%20von%20furstenberg%20hears%20it.jpg

ts:

She's Barry Diller's wife and can scare the paint off a house.

op:

herr strether
i see by your blog comments
spurious blueberry cooments on your stuff

lure him over here so i can sock him
in the digital nutz

FB:

op

He doesn't just comment, he makes some spectacularly idiotic posts there too. I actually got banned from Corrente for making fun of him.

op:

mjs i think
you're afe from jon zendells quip

at any rate

since the koan oughta be
' what's the sound of one tooth gnashing'

biting into something can be achieved with one tooth
and make lots of micro sounds
so long as the opposing gum
can get a fair clamp on the biten into bugger's other side
despite no puncturing faculty

my father as i grew up went thru all the stations of this particular journey to
the final cross
of a full set of gleeming false teeth

all of it to my unending delight
if he couldn't chew his steak
i got it
more basically
having lived long among the 'esquimos '
it all gave he irrational projected
fears of the final ice cake

op:

fb

nothing i'd love more then to smash that
pompous parade float sized
newberry alarm clock

FB:

I love how he goes on and on about "currency" being different "money" in the most obnoxious way possible, as if no one gets his grand insight, when all he really means is the difference between nominal and real.

Then, when questioned on it, he just spews out streams of what he calls "econo/math weenie" gibberish assembled from odd bits of wikipedia entries that he does not understand.

FB:

He's almost as entertaining as hawk wind.

op:

i have hope for hawk wind
once he crwals out of his
lovely logarithmic spiral
wizard of snailville
shell of many hues

then again
he may be suffering
or is it inflicting
mc-ashburgers syndrome

a few too many slightly skewed lietmotives

Bonkers:

"mc-ashburgers syndrome"?

does that have anything to do with this concept?

http://blogvecindad.com/el-automovil-de-mc-escher/2008/06/26

Al Schumann:
I actually got banned from Corrente for making fun of him.

That's a real shame. His antics there have been ludicrous, this comment thread in particular.

FB:

Just don't mention that his stuff is in fact ludicrous or else your comments will disappear down the memory hole and your account will be shut down with no warning given. Apparently Corrente is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS, and Stirling Newberry is a first rate intellect who must be treated with the utmost respect.

Al Schumann:

I find it very hard to make sense of his stuff, when it comes right down to it. There's a touch of Larouche in his economics. He appears to find feckless naivete and violent inclinations in the MMT-supporting folks who, as far as I can tell, are keenly interested in gardening and a somewhat conservative form of deficit spending.

I can't understand why you were banned, and why the Correntians would do that. It's disturbing, even though I know of the Dark Oath taken by left wing economists.

Al Schumann:

On the other hand, if one takes the Walrusian Equilibrium into account, as formulated by the famous French economist, Cucu Cachout, then his economics make perfect sense. And, FB, I'm shocked, thoroughly shocked, that you would find it risible.

Re "legendary", the OED disagrees.

MJS:
Re "legendary", the OED disagrees.
Filthy capitulationists. Chip-eating surrender monkeys.

Looks like 'legend' in the sense of an ostensibly true story (I say 'ostensibly; we're talking saints here) predates potatoes (and so chips) in the Old World by a good hundred years. Fish, though....

MJS:

Ah, you mean as in "Legenda Aurea"? But that's just the literal Latin gerundive -- "things to be read." It's what the noun English noun "legend" comes from.

"Legendary", the adjective, as far as I know, shows up maybe late xvi s. with a very specific reference to mediaeval collections of "legends" like the aforementioned Aurea, the implication being that the matter is not to be regarded as history.

If there's a pre-xx s. cit. for "legendary" in the current cant sense -- synonymous with "famous" -- I'd be interested to see it. I'd be equally interested to see an old use of the noun "legend" to refer to an actual, contemporary person.

I'm starting with "legend"; first citation for "legendary" in this sense is a couple of hundred years later.


1.1 The story of the life of a Saint.

   c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints xiii. (Marcus) 108 To sancte march turnand myn hand, as I in his legand fand.    c 1386 Chaucer Nun's Pr. T. 301 In the lyf of seint kenelm, I rede‥ how‥I hadde leuere than my sherte That ye hadde rad his legende, as haue I.    c 1430 Life St. Kath. (1884) 65 Thys glorious virgyn seynt Kateryne had alle these ȝeftes as hir legende sheweth tofore.    1500–20 Dunbar Poems xxx. 21 In haly legendis haif I hard allevin, Ma sanctis of bischoppis, nor freiris, be sic sevin.    1597 Hooker Eccl. Pol. v. xx. §9 Legends being growne in a manner to be nothing els but heapes of friuolous and scandalous vanities.


The fictive sense comes later:

6. a.6.a An unauthentic or non-historical story, esp. one handed down by tradition from early times and popularly regarded as historical.

   1613 Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 506 That yee may know the Indians want not their Metamorphoses and Legends, that tell that a man‥had a daughter, with whom the sunne was in love.    1685 Stillingfl. Orig. Brit. i. 11 Having their minds naturally framed to believe Legends.    1687 T. Brown Saints in Uproar Wks. 1730 I. 77 The kingdom‥is ten times as populous as when the legend supposes you and your sister-trollops to have lived there.    1768 H. Walpole Hist. Doubts 84 note, It would have required half the court of Edward the Fourth to frame a consistent legend.    1838 Thirlwall Greece I. 89 To Æolus himself no conquests and no achievements are attributed by the legends of his race.    1860 Hook Lives Abps. I. vi. 323 The legend which would attribute to Alfred the foundation of the University of Oxford.    1900 G. C. Brodrick Mem. & Impressions 156 It was deliberately and skilfully employed to break down what has been called the Gladstonian legend.    1901 Spectator 23 Feb. 277/2 The voracity of the pike is the subject of innumerable legends.


The adv. comes quite late:


Hence ˈlegendarily adv., according to legend or popular report; famously.

   a 1961 in Webster s.v., Legendarily successful personality.    1978 Economist 22 Apr. 16/1 Neither he nor his legendarily chaotic staff has strong contacts with the various interests in the Democratic party.    1994 Daily Tel. 1 Aug. 13/6 Whooping cough, the legendarily awful disease of children's imaginations.

Hillary:

But the adj. is pretty early, no? I can't even read my OED anymore, my eyes are so bad and the print so tiny and the lighting in my apartment so poor. But I'm pretty sure I remember xvii-s uses, and think I remember xvi-s ones (Sidney? Hooker?) with the clear meaning of unhistorical traditional narrative.

Hils, the unhistorical sense shows up early 17C. The adj shows up roughly at that time, too. My sense is that the story-of-saints aspect emphasized miracles, which may account for the drift toward unhistorical.

(God bless OUP for publishing an electronic OED. I'm long past reading my compact editions.)

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Saturday August 7, 2010 02:06 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Any crash you can walk away from....

The next post in this blog is Mark takes a walk on the wild side.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31