I have am in the end of the year blogging doldrums.
Jeebus, you pedantic sobs.
by John Cole| 90 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I have am in the end of the year blogging doldrums.
Jeebus, you pedantic sobs.
Comments are closed.
LiberalTarian
You might enjoy this one from Hunter … I know I did.
Will Hunting
Gators or Sooners? This Longhorn fans wants the Gators as much as Tim Tebow bugs me…
I want another sour puss Bob Stoops post-game press conference.
Joshua Norton
I imagine that this is how a convict feels as he nears the end of an 8 year sentence.
Ed Drone
Correction: "I am in the end-of-the-year blogging doldrums."
The doldrums are a region of no wind, of no propulsion for sailing ships. You don’t have doldrums.
/pedant mode
Ed
Comrade Stuck
@Joshua Norton:
Until you walk out the prison door and find everything you remembered had turned to shit.
cay
cheer up! you’re here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw
love, an astronomy teacher in santa monica.
Zuzu's Petals
Well, has anyone announced the big Palin news yet?
Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston is born.
Laura W
Kitties?
Puppies?
Doldrums antidotes, you know.
No?
Where’s my French speaking copier kitty link?
Punchy
Only on BJ does the host get clowned for misusing the word "doldrums" on a late-nite open thrizzle. Tough crowd.
demkat620
Don’t you mean John has beclowned himself?
demkat620
What happened with the block quote I used?
This thing is broken.
Tsulagi
Since it’s an open thread, and it might help with your doldrums, go see Slumdog Millionaire. Wife, kids, and I saw it this weekend. Can’t think of a better movie I’ve seen this year or one that comes close. It is excellent.
Good date movie too as on one level it’s a chick flick. Don’t want to give any spoilers, but the part of what one slum kid did, his determination, to get a movie star’s autograph really, really cracked me up.
TenguPhule
Send in the Clowns!
Brick Oven Bill
My topic is organic chemistry and the Saudis.
The American presidency is influenced to an unhealthy extent by the Saudi royal family. This influence is achieved in two ways. First, by spreading money around. And second, by convincing leadership that the West is dependent on their Dictatorship’s oil. We got a glimpse into Clinton’s library funding. The Bush financial ties are probably far worse.
The largest hydrocarbon is called Kerogen. Kerogen molecules are all different, but are all big. Dying is bad if you believe in global warming as your flesh is oxidized and your carbon energy released as CO2 into the atmosphere.
Kerogen is that percentage of living tissue that is not oxidized, but is instead broken down in the absence of Oxygen, in a process called diagenesis. This happens most typically in sediment. Most of the world’s Kerogen is located in North America.
JugOPunch
Via the internet anagram server : Nap Edict.
I think, therefore, I
haveam.KCinDC
Should be "SOBs" in that last sentence.
demimondian
@TenguPhule:
Fixt — and they’re coming on stage on 1/3/2009, just a few days from NOW! (And, in their grand tradition of screwing everything up from the get go, they actually don’t meet until 1/6/2009.)
demimondian
@Brick Oven Bilge: Look, Nazi-boy…go peddle your wares elsewhere.
demimondian
Oh, look, the retifism of the moderation filter has cropped up again.
What, exactly, is wrong with the four-letter word for footwear, John?
KCinDC
God help him. He has about as much chance of turning out sane as Carter Allan England. Is the other grandma out of jail?
D-Chance.
Don’t forget… the 2008 Weblog Awards!
I guess the Resident Pee-on, aka the Lesser Blogger of Balloon Juice, forgot his pimping duties this year…
The Moar You Know
TL; DR
What’s a sob?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Cheer up! At least you’re not a unicorn.
burnspbesq
So, the lovely left sidebar tells us that the annual CPAC meeting is in late February.
One wonders whether Ms. Coulter’s jaw will still be wired shut at that time.
Admit it, you’d love to hear her take on the first 30 days of the new Administration. It’s certain to be a Laff Riot.
skippy
sad news for music fans…
delaney bramlett, of the hippie group delaney, bonnie & friends, has passed away.
tho most of us know him from the piddling little ditty "never ending song of love" from the late 60’s/early 70’s, delaney was truly a powerhouse among musicians whose influence affected the greats of his time, from joe cocker thru dave mason to george harrison.
skippy’s alt-folk buddy robert morgan fisher tells delaney’s story, and we add a couple of relevant youtubes in memoriam…
Bad Horse's Filly
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse: And people say Tunch is fat!
gnomedad
Can someone illuminate the Kerogen-Nazi connection? Not that the original post made any sense to me.
Comrade Stuck
Personally, I prefer Anal. It’s got a non elitist Bohemian aura about it. And "sops" has a more realistic connotation than "sobs" which who knows WHAT that means means, humph, me thinks. Am I being Pendantic, er Anal enough for ya.
Comrade Stuck
@skippy:
Delaney was the ultimate party animal traveling music man stoned Hippie. I feel old.
Brick Oven Bill
Demimondian is a dogma culturalist. Nah.
This is an interesting conspiracy theory about the true reason for the invasion of Iraq. It seems possible to me, but unlikely. The Bush Administration does not seem to be smart enough to pull this off.
But Peak Oil is a big deal. A global depression might push off the effects for ten years, but there are only so many conventional oil reserves. There is no replacement for the internal combustion engine. In the future, we might be able to perfect the nuclear power – electricity – liquid hydrogen – fuel cell technology, but we are not there yet.
Following diagenesis, the next step in the petroleum cycle is catagenesis. In catagenesis, heat is applied to Kerogen and breaks it into large chunks. Traditionally, the heat has been provided by the earth. The Russians use a kiln. These large chunks are called bitumen, and are the basis of oil. Most post-catagenesis Kerogen has been removed from America and the bulk of the remainder is now found in the Middle East, Russia, and other volatile regions of the world.
The Nazis liquefied coal gnomedad. I don’t know either.
The Other Steve
It seems to me that giving your child four names is rather elitist.
Real Americans have only three names,first, middle and last.
The Grand Panjandrum
Doldrum cat!
robertdsc
I have no stake in OK v. FLA, but it would be nice to see Tebow add something else to his mantel, a national title.
gnomedad
Track? Trig? Tripp? What’s next? Trog? Truck? Troll? Let’s hope she has girls after this.
p.a.
I’m not pedantic, and as soon as I can find my self-published Dictionary of Me I can cite you a dozen reasons why I am not.
Rosali
Can you do a post on the top 10 funniest moments of 2008? There were so many that it would be difficult to narrow down the list. I’m sure everyone here can nominate some good moments.
Zuzu's Petals
@gnomedad:
Right. They get named after planes and snow machines.
The Other Steve
John McCain picking Sarah Palin.
p.a.
Mad Money Cramer whining on TV about how his Wall St. buddies are hurting and losing their jobs and the Feds should dooooooooo something… (snif)
LiberalTarian
@Brick Oven Bill:
Kerogen is everywhere. So is humic matter. I don’t really get your point, but you obviously aren’t a soil scientist.
Rosali
Pat Buchanan on MSNBC saying McCain couldn’t pick Palin because she was not qualified. This was 5 minutes before McCain’s VP choice was announced.
Brick Oven Bill
The best Kerogen originated in the ancient fresh water sea over Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. It is the richest deposit in the world by far. Fresh water algae.
Back in the day our group of friends had a term called ‘sloppy seconds’, a practice of which I did not indulge. The petroleum analogy is that if catagenesis is the act, metagenesis is the process of obtaining sloppy seconds. Via metagenisis, the bitumen is further ruptured down into smaller and smaller hydrocarbon molecules, also by the addition of heat.
The results are small, mobile molecules, probably with lingering self-esteem issues, that we call natural gas. In Britain, ‘experienced’ Islamic women often have an operation to tighten up their goods before a traditional marriage.
The petroleum analogy to this tightening operation is compressed natural gas, or CNG. Instead of the sloppy gaseous molecules, the fuel density is tightened up with the addition of energy, so you can put this fuel into your gas tank. This is what T. Boone and his buddy are advocating on TV. It is a good idea in the short term, especially with long-haul trucks. But ethically, we really should save natural gas for fertilizer production.
gnomedad
The Walter Reed Middle School backdrop for McCain’s speech.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brick Oven Swill:
Rather amazing how you can make almost any topic disgusting.
bago
Trucknutz!!?eleventyone!!!
ninerdave
You’re the communications guru, shouldn’t you know this stuff?
Rosali
@ gnomedad
Walter Reed middle school was hilarious. I wonder if someone lost his job over that incident.
Zuzu's Petals
@Rosali:
All of the Palin/McCain stuff on SNL, but especially the Palin rap.
Of course it was on-purpose funny. Not like Palin or McCain themselves.
Comrade Kevin
Why was BOB un-banned again?
Zuzu's Petals
@Rosali:
That and the fact they STILL managed to put him up against a green screen.
Reverend Dennis
@skippy:
Saw Delaney And Bonnie and Friends Back in the late Sixties. Excellent band.
The bad news is that those days are all starting to kind of run together in my memory.
The good news is that they now look much better than they probably were.
Rosali
The skunk furry who was taken down by Obama’s great uncle.
Delia
I just got back from taking my daughter to the Amtrak station where she’s bopping down to Santa Rosa to visit friends before flying back to Toronto. The train was only three hours late tonight, as opposed to Christmas week when it was two days late due to snow pack in the Northwest Corridor. I have just vowed to vote for the next politician who promises to make the trains run on time.
Also, I am taking up a collection to strand Dr. James Dobson in the Eugene, Oregon Amtrak station. They have a nice little neon red and green sign that flashes "Merry Christmas," and I think he would enjoy the experience, especially after the third or fourth hour of staring at it.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Palin’s first grandchild is doomed to star in a remake of Three’s Cmpany sometime in 2038. Poor tyke.
So do you think this birth announcement will finally get Andrew Sullivan to shut up on this topic? No, me neither.
Zuzu's Petals
@Delia:
I guess I feel better. I’d thought about taking Amtrak up to Portland (from Sacto) for Christmas, but even the coach seats were sold out. So I’ve waited to fly up for New Year’s instead.
Sounds like I didn’t miss anything.
Brick Oven Bill
But, in the end, everybody respects a beautiful virgin. And beautiful virgins are abundant in the United States of America. Probably seventy percent of Kerogen hydrocarbons are located in North America. This is hundreds of years’ worth of fuel at current rates of domestic consumption, most south of the ‘border’. Shell says that they can be extracted for $25/bbl. Now we just need to get the Congressional ban on oil shale exploration lifted. The environmental issues are entirely solvable, but we are banned from exploring them.
And my diatribe returns to the subject of unhealthy amounts of Saudi influence on government. The nice thing to know is that, when the SHTF, the energy is here. I was invited to a beheading in Jeddah once, and chose not to go. Every Saturday, IIRC.
Hyman Rickover was probably the brightest mind of the 20th Century. He wrote a paper on energy, recorded here. Hyman Rickover was like Al Gore, but with a brain, and without a carbon credit business.
ninerdave
@Brick Oven Bill:
Seriously what in the fuck are you talking about? Actually scratch that I probably don’t want to know, but you can pass whatever you’re on over here, because it sounds like some righteous shit and I had a bad day.
Rosali
It’s late. Good night everyone.
Comrade Stuck
The GOP Circular Firing Squad shot of the day
Splat! Followed by a double tap.
Zuzu's Petals
@Comrade Stuck:
Which reminds me again of the only Dennis Miller joke I ever really liked:
"Bush will surround himself with smart people in much the same way a hole surrounds itself with a donut."
MikeJ
Where I’m from, people are named "Trip" only as a nickname, and only if they are the "third"(the son of Jr.). I.E., you’d call Levi Johnston III "Trip", but no sane person would actually name a baby Tripp.
mapaghimagsik
End of the year comic doldrums as well, with the first casualty being a consistent style
ninerdave
@MikeJ:
one of my good friends growing up was about two seconds away from being named Ace. They settled on Edward.
demimondian
@ninerdave: Oh, yeah, that Ventura kid.
Punchy
Who the fuck names their kid Tripp? Was "Fall" too corny? Isn’t that exactly how Linda spellz her last name? How convienent. This kid’s gonna receive more name-related beatings than a guy I went to skool with, Ed Dick.
bago
Abundant virgins? WTF.
R-Jud
Ah, baby names. It’s been on my mind lately. While nothing beats "Bronx Mowgli", which I think Jessica Simpson’s little sister came up with before the epidural wore off, there are some really good bad baby names at this website.
In deciding on the name for our kid I have been trying to keep two things in mind:
1) Babies grow up and have to be adults who are independent of you. Unlike, say, Dixie, your teacup poodle. Therefore the name should suit a woman or man as well as a little girl or boy.
2) Ideally, the name should plausibly fill in the blanks in the following sentence fragment: "Today in Washington, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Commission, [FirstName] [LastName]…".
But not this one: "Waukesha County Police arrested meth addict and former exotic dancer [FirstName][LastName] today after her attempted armed robbery of a lakeside bait shop went hilariously awry…"
That’s why we’re naming our daughter Hillary-Olympia Kennedy Nighthorse. Monogramming the towels will be a bit more costly, but we figure with a name like that, our future filibusterette can’t go wrong!
Comrade Kevin
She could have named the baby Moon Unit or Dweezil.
R-Jud
@Comrade Kevin:
"Diva Muffin" was always my favorite Zappa spawn name.
TenguPhule
BOB wants a Pony!
Yeah, explain how heavy crude is so much better then that light stuff we get from the Middle East.
Joshua Norton
The McCain supporter who spelled the letter "B" wrong – on her face.
AnotherBruce
So we all we have to do is give 25 billion to the oil companies so they can blow the Rocky mountains to shit and "presto" cheap oil for the next 100 years! Such a deal, who’s with me on this?
Reverend Dennis
Sarah Palin’s interview with Catie Couric.
Delia
@bago:
Um, yeah. Like Sarah Palin’s children, for example. They’re abundant and at some point they were virgins.
TenguPhule
One of the conditions for the money is that said oil executives and their shills will be strapped to the mountains at the time of the blast.
Montysano
John McCain, after being asked about his vote in which he declined to force insurance companies to cover birth control. At first viewing, I thought it was spoof.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Eh John, you and your partner in crime are up for an award.
Laura W
Crazy McCain Rally Lady, either the real one or the SNL skit. Both equally couch-wetting funny. My favorite SNL parody of the season.
In particular her fear that Obama will turn the White House into a pyramid.
Wow. Brings a smile even in the imagining…
ET
You could post pet picture contributions (hint, hint) – those should pull you out of the doldrums.
4tehlulz
@ninerdave: He wants to rape the Rockies in the ass and leave the bodies in the valleys below.
Oh yeah we might get oil exported to China out of it.
greynoldsct00
Post some pets John, that always helps
South of I-10
@R-Jud: Oh, baby names. I applied the Judge/Senator test and came up with something appropriate. While scanning the birth announcements in the paper for good names, I came across Diamond Jewel and Precious Angel, neither of which pass the Judge/Senator test. One other favorite – while working I came across someone named Regional. Did his parents just look out the window at the hospital sign?
Montysano
IMHO, cursing a child with a bizarre name is the height of egoism/stupidity, like the moran who named his child Adolph Hitler Campbell. As much as I like Frank Zappa, would his child really rather not be Diva Muffin?
Krista
Looky there, he’s right. Best Major Blog…not bad, not bad! I also noticed that FiveThirtyEight is up for best political coverage, and I really hope they take it. Nate was absolutely kickass during the primary and the election.
WRT names, yeah…it’s difficult. You don’t want to give your kid the same name as everybody else (like the current glut of Aiden/Jayden/Kayden boy names), but you don’t want a name so weird that the poor kid has to go around spelling it for everybody for the rest of his or her life.
We’ve got a few names percolating around, anyway. For a girl, we’re leaning towards Claire, Brooke or Alexandra. For a boy, we have Jack or Ian. Is it just me, or is it a LOT harder to find a nice name for a boy? There just seems to be a real dearth of options, especially as so many boys’ names have been co-opted by girls (Beverly, Ashley and Kelly used to be guys’ names, remember?)
South of I-10
@Krista: Definitely more good girl names than boy ones. My husband had to go through all the names and make sure they didn’t make for really easy insults. I liked Robert Andre for a boy. I also liked Jake, but that was the name of my brother’s dog, which could be problematic.
Xanthippas
Anybody ready for another article from the NY Times in the ongoing series of "lives of assholes the rest of us can’t relate to?"
Original Lee
@Krista:
We had similar problems with boy names. Girl names were fairly easy, or at least until my last trimester, when I had a nightmare about being evacuated and dreamed I needed two names for each gender before I could get on the train, in case I was carrying twins. (In case nobody has warned you about this yet, the dreams get really strange the closer you get to evicting the tenant.)
Anyway, we foundthis website to be very helpful – we started around #20 and worked downwards until the names started getting ridiculous. Our working assumption was that around #20 you are still in reassuringly ordinary but not overwhelmingly common territory, and that seems to be still holding true for both kids.
Original Lee
Incidentally, WRT to little Tripp Johnston:
the top 100 baby names in Alaska in 2007.
R-Jud
@Montysano:
Yeah, a weird name almost always tells you the parents think of their kid as a lifestyle accessory rather than a temporarily small person who is eventually going to grow up and file tax returns and shave off unwanted body hair and fall in love and whatnot. Your job is to train them to take care of themselves and behave decently, not just accessorize them, for chrissakes.
Our kid’s a girl and we’re calling her Eve, since she’s the first member of her generation on both sides of the immediate family. Like Krista, we had a hard time coming up with decent boys’ names, but my husband eventually took a shine to Tom, which we’ll keep in reserve for the future.
mere mortal
Well, to double down on pedantry, since this is your site, and the doldrums are happening here, it might be fair to say that you have the doldrums.
So, for example, I am in my house, and I also have a house.