Andrew Northup of the Poor Man is blogging again, his hiatus mercifully brief.

And he's funny. Very funny.

Go over there for his take on shorter this, shorter that, including riffs on National Review, the Weekly Standard, The Nation, The Onion (surely the most overrated "humor" site on the web), "Scooby-Doo," Camille Paglia, Noam Chomsky, Joe Millionaire, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), and Natalie Merchant.

Okay, okay, a few teases. My two favorites:

Shorter Camille Paglia - I believe that Madonna is the most original philosopher of the millennium, for reasons so self-consciously contrarian that I must surely be the Smartest Girl In The Whole Wide World. My obsessive desire to draw attention to myself and approvingly recite my resume apropos of nothing speak volumes about my screwed-up psychology, much like the many volumes of Aristotle[,] which I have read in the original Greek.

Yes, I agree, Northrup is stretching it with that "original Greek" remark, but his point is well made and well taken.

Shorter Natalie Merchant - If my floppy dorm-room-tapestry dress and my limp New Age-y posturing wasn't enough of a tip-off, my latest album of Adult Contemporary-Core warblings about the fantastic wonderfulness of the eternal miracle of Me bares an explicit warning label from the Surgeon General about the dangers of aural estrogen poisoning.

Northrup's comments here remind me of a statement once made by my younger brother. Asked what he thought of the 10,000 Maniacs' performance the previous night in concert, he responded, "It was fine. Of course, I had forgotten my Natalie Merchant-decoder ring, so I had a hard time understanding the lyrics."

[Post-publication addendum: By the way, if you missed Northrup's take on public television last October, go read it now.]