I think my favorite part of the President traveling to England is getting to see a lot of Richard Quest on CNN. The guy always cracks me up.
Now for some pet pics- I’ve really been slacking on this front:
A shiny new thread for a Thursday night. BTW- I have really grown to like the Stash line of tea. I like the caffeine free stuff because I really like having a hot drink at night, but the taste of coffee is too overbearing and too much (plus I think decaf coffee does not taste as good). I’ve been drinking a lot of the decaf mint tea, but tonight I am giving theChamomile a shot.
Andre
Richard Quest is the reason I first started watching business news on BBC World.
I don’t normally find arrests for crystal meth amusing, but in his case it just made so much sense.
robertdsc
Help a newb out. I bought an 8GB iPhone today. Aside from the wacky default methodology for receiving pictures in text/SMS messages, what are some good apps to have and things to do with this thingamajig? I’m an Apple guy through and through but this thing has me gazing in awe.
Andre
@robertdsc: iBoobs?
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
Don’t get me wrong–I like "herbal tea" (well, some of it) but how is it that the FTC, which forces companies to be so hemorrhoidally precise in some areas, allow them to call it herbal tea, when it has absolutely no tea (Camellia Sinensis) in it at all?
They let them call neutral grain spirits that have never been near a potato "vodka" too, but that’s another rant.
schrodinger's cat
The lemon ginger tea, Stash makes is good too. Strong ginger flavor and really clears up the sinuses, I add a tsp of sugar to it.
MikeJ
I’m ready to see the first dog, dammit. Obama should stop fixing the economy, come home, and show us all the dog.
Libby
Well I hestitate to break BJ protocol and b/w so soon, and you’ve all probably already seen the clip, but I started a Glen Beck pool and I’m willing to give up my never opened, George Bush "The Out of Office Countdown" 365 day calendar to the prize winner…
South of I-10
@robertdsc: Shazam is really cool and have used it more than anticipated. Use the Weather Channel app a lot. Totally hooked on Monopoly right now. Pocket God is silly but kinda fun.
Libby
Oh, and since I missed the thread, I loved the Tunch in a towel roll post. It’s so rare at my age to see something I’ve never seen before.
I’m still trying to work out what that says about his mental state.
joe from Lowell
My favorite part of the president traveling to England is when I read the reports about his performance and I don’t wince.
I love that.
Krista
Awww…spooning kitties.
I don’t know if they’ve been airing it in the States, but there’s a PSA on TV for PETA, and it’s against keeping your pet perpetually chained outside. It shows the cutest scruffy white dog, and he just looks so pitiful and lonely, and I want to adopt him and let him sleep at the foot of my bed every night.
Yes, I’m getting broody. I almost burst into tears at Babies R Us on Saturday.
Just Some Fuckhead
I drink a cup of chamomille tea every afternoon at work. After I’ve been there about five hours, I get really tense from having to interract with people. The tea calms me and keeps me from bolting out early every day.
Dennis-SGMM
@Just Some Fuckhead:
So you’re usually posting before you’ve had your tea?
Ash
@MikeJ: Don’t get your hopes up. I doubt they would let the girls just pick out a dog without the parents being there. Another broken promise, but are any of your surprised? Hope and change my ass. Just politics as usual. Way to go, Barry.
Cat Lady
Barack, Michelle and the sweet sleepy kittehs make me happy.
MikeJ
How about people mobbing the streets to catch a glimpse and they aren’t hurling insults or rocks or burning things or even flipping him off?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis-SGMM: Nah, I’m pretty much an after-tea commenter, with exceptions of course.
josefina
Stash is great but I really really love Republic of Tea. Good strong flavor in the herbal teas.
I was digging the dirt in my community garden today (Spring! whee!) and thinking about what kind of tomatoes I’m going to plant, so the kitteh picture reminds me powerfully of grubworms. Nice furry purring grubworms I’d never ever squish, but grubworms nonetheless.
The essential Roy Edroso has a round-up of wingnut response to the Obamas’ visit to Blighty. My favorite part is what "Stop the ACLU" has to say.
Libby
The pet pictures always make me wish I had a pet to photograph. They’re all really sweet.
And my favorite thing about this trip is that it finally makes the Bush years feel more like the past. It feels like the Obamas are erasing some of the ugliness with their graciousness.
The Populist
Well, we get all this good stuff coming back from the Obama Abroad Tour 2009 and then El Rushie needs to ruin it with this stupid comment:
What is with this guy and his anal fixation? Bending over and taking from the front/back and now this?
I am sorry Republicans. If you think this guy is representative of you I feel sorry for your kind.
Ash
@The Populist:
He doth protest too much……
ok, not really protesting or anything. But it’s obvious.
The Populist
I agree, he sure does protest TOO much.
The Populist
I take that back…Rush is a whiner and the GOP protests too much. In the end it will result in epic fail.
Mark my words.
Zam
So I was driving to have dinner with my parents and saw a new Palin 2012 bumper sticker. Apparently they are trying to immitate the Obama Hope stickers, wingnuts really need to get their own marketing campaign.
eemom
@Krista:
I hope that you will indeed consider adopting a homeless doggie if you are able to do so. There are so many, many of them out there.
I am a lover of all animals, but most especially dogs — it breaks my heart when they suffer, as the ad you describe shows.
Mark S.
Yeah, Rush is a real class act.
Speaking of right wing tools, did anyone catch Bill O threatening not to go to Spain? Why does he think anybody cares?
The Populist
Why not? They just prove how devoid of ideas they have AND how successful Obama was with it.
BUT it’s no different than the bootlegged designer jeans. They may fit well but they still lack the quality and charm of the original. Basically a bootleg, like a Republican stealing ideas from successful people, is a bad copy of a quality product.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
So from tea to teabagging to Rush to the rusty trombone in 20 comments? I love this blog!
Zam
@The Populist: Well they did try and add a little flair to it by having "You betcha’" underneath.
The Populist
I was thinking that myself, basically "who gives a fuck where you go, Bill – you loudmouth elitist!" but then I realized that he’s afraid they may arrest him for being the mouthpiece for torture.
We all know these fuckers are cowards. Anybody catch Hannity whining about deficits making it hard for his 10 year old kid to grow up to a prosperous future? Ha-ha…funny stuff. It’s kinda weird how A) Sean didn’t care how many trillions Bush rang up and B) his 10 year old will most likely be another shifty son of a famous idiot living off of the public’s good will and his trust fund.
Hehe
Bad Horse's Filly
@Just Some Fuckhead: I really could have used that advice today. I wanted to say "I quit" but remembered I still have to feed the pets (I could use to miss a few meals, myself). My go-to relaxation tea is valerian (usually in SleepyTime Extra). That and Jasmine are the only teas I like. But boy, oh, boy, did I find a great coffee – Lavazza, imported from Italy. So smooth. Mmmmm.
And is that a Great Dane? It’s hard to tell from that viewpoint, but the head looks right. BJ, my kind of people.
The Populist
Zam,
You betcha, also.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Do you take your tea with milk?
gnomedad
I do not understand why we are seeing pictures of Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich here. Are they Furminator "before" and "after" shots?
guest omen
guests enjoy tea.
Zam
Wtf Ann Coulter furry?
shortstop
The spooning kitties remind me of a friend’s line about his similarly arranged felines: "Comma cats or coma cats? You be the judge."
I liked Jason Linkins’s take on this, something like: "Spain has figured out a way to get some of the worst men in the world not to come to their country. I wish I could do something similar for, say, my apartment."
The Populist
C’mon guys, I don’t want that image in my head. Everytime I hear "Furry" nowadays, I flash to that weird female bikini shaver commercial where everytime a woman walks by one of these uncut, unkempt bushes they form various shapes that resemble a woman’s pubic area if she shaved using that specific razor.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: I like it that way at home but it’s too much trouble to keep milk at the office. Just a little bit of sugar to cut the unpleasantness but not take away the bitter.
dmsilev
@robertdsc:
Hmmm. Looking through the apps on my iTouch, here are some suggestions (search in the iTunes App store for the links):
Pandora is a really cool app if you like listening to music.
ebook readers: Classics, Stanza, and eReader are all good.
If you’re an academic or anyone who has to keep track of scads of PDF files, Papers is an unbelievably useful program. Think of it as iTunes for your PDFs. Both a Mac and an iPhone app.
If you give presentations, the iThing (as one of my coworkers calls it) is a pretty good remote control for a computer, advancing slides and holding your notes. I use an app called Stage Hand, which works with Apple’s Keynote, but there are similar things for Powerpoint.
For a relaxing puzzle game with incredible graphics, take a look at Zen Bound.
If you went to elementary school in the 80s, Oregon Trail will probably be a blast from the past.
If you like Tower Defense style games, give Fieldrunners a look.
If you’re a crossword fan, the New York Times Crossword app is a steal for $9.99, since it comes with a one-year subscription to the Times online crosswords. They normally charge $40 for that.
Edit: Bullet points FAIL
-dms
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Just get some non dairy creamer for work.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bad Horse’s Filly: Before my company had to downsize recently, had a big corner office to myself with cable TV, a fridge and assorted other amenities.
We closed that side of the building and I had to move in with a co-worker. She smells like a dirty bong because she smokes all day. She never shuts up and I lost my TV in the move. I’m not adapting well.
Krista
Definitely. My house will absolutely have a doggeh at some point, but what with the first baby on the way, now is probably not the best time. :) There will, however, be a dog at some point, and possibly more than one.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: I could do that I guess.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’m not adapting well.
Krista
And tea with milk just tastes really weird and yucky to me. I always drink mine black, or if it’s really strong, a tiny bit of honey to cut the bitterness.
Bad Horse's Filly
@The Populist: Thank you for bringing that up….are those not the most disturbing commercials?!?! Ugh.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: You know how happy George Benson makes me.
AhabTDefenestrator
Ssssssss. Never.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Just Some Fuckhead: Well that’s a bit depressing. I guess I won’t complain about my basement office and wrangling a bunch of guys who, while they’re all very nice, are a bit needy. They’re doing good things…but some days I feel more like they’re mother or teacher, always checking their homework.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
Bill-O’s Boycotting Minnesota, too, because of that "vile guttersnipe" Franken.
Terry Colberg
After my couple mugs of coffee in the morning, I switch over to caffeine-free tea for the rest of the day. I haven’t tried Stash in a while, but my go to brand is Celestial Seasonings — I like that you can either recycle or compost everything that you buy from them.
AhabTDefenestrator
Momo does her best impression of a Steinlen.
The Mad Cow
Hey! Fuck you, Cole!
I work my ass off, and here you come with you "non-dairy creamer".
Ain’t nothing creamy about non-dairy creamer!
Bad Horse's Filly
@Krista: You’ll be a great mom and pet mom when the time comes.
guest omen
non dairy creamer is mostly high fructose corn syrup.
are the dog and 2 cats tunch’s friends?
ThresherK
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
My wife, the tea drinker, calls it infusion, as seen on menus in Montreal. Tea people seem to understand, so she just keeps doing it.
MrPook
@Reverend Battleaxe
It was an April fools joke. Ha, ha…..?
Calouste
@Mark S.:
He’s probably afraid they are going to pull a Lord Haw-Haw on him, for spreading war propaganda.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@MrPook:
Oh. I guess I trusted the "not-an-april-fools-joke" in the title. Silly me. But then, why did I believe it so easily?
Tattoosydney
@robertdsc:
Another vote here for Shazam.
I haven’t found any real "practical" aps that make my life easier, but there are tons of great games – Hyrdotilt springs to mind, as does "Castle Wolfenstein" for that serious crap 80’s game nostalgia.
Left Coast Tom
Mint tea in Morocco was tasty, but I suspect that was because it’s really just fresh mint, hot water, and enough sugar for a can of Coca-Cola. What I really need is a better answer for coffee while backpacking.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
I’m pretending I didn’t read that.
Tea can be perfectly nice without milk, but if you are going to put milk in your tea, some goddamn cow better have gotten her goddamn tits goddamn squeezed along the way.
I once went to a Cincinnati suburb to teach for a week. Lovely people, great classes, and an altogether nice place, except that they forgot two things:
1) Sidewalks. No streets anywhere around my hotel or the training centre had sidewalks. You were expected to drive everywhere. When I asked the hotel clerk about the nearest grocery store within walking distance, she told me that I couldn’t walk there easily. It was FIVE minutes one way, even walking on the verge in order to escape certain death.
2) Milk and cream for tea and coffee. The offices where I taught had only that concrete dust they called "non-dairy creamer". Most restaurants nearby offered the same thing. When I went to the hotel restaurant for supper and a very badly needed caffeine fix, I asked for tea with lots of milk. The waitress came back with a tall glass of iced tea and a tall glass of milk. That taught me to always ask for "hot tea" in American restaurants, which seems as redundant as calling the game "ice hockey", but you do what you have to do for such lovely but surprisingly different neighbours.
Fuckhead, just bring a small thermos of cold milk to work. Sheesh.
Tattoosydney
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse:
Non dairy creamer:
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Ha, Tattoosydney!
Which remind me: there are some parts of Canada where evaporated milk is preferred for tea (which may be one reason why East-Coaster Krista doesn’t care much for it). My sisters both switched to canned milk instead of fresh, but because friends of ours also give evaporated milk to their cats, we call their evaporated milk kitty-cat milk, leading to the usual "how the hell do you milk a cat?" jokes.
The Mad Cow
Damn straight. You tell ’em sister. I didn’t give up my girlish figure for people to use powder. Save that for your coke.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yeah, I could keep some in the fridge in my office I guess. I tried it once before so I could eat my cereal or oatmeal at work and I kept forgetting about it and it would go bad. I can take or leave the milk in my tea so it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hassle. OTOH, I could keep a bag of those non-dairy creamers forever and mix it up occasionally.
Tattoosydney
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse:
I can do what we call "condensed" milk in tea, but it’s a very different drink to my preferred tea with skim milk…
Steeplejack
@Left Coast Tom:
Don’t know if this would work for you, but Trader Joe’s instant coffee is so good that I use it as my regular daily coffee. I don’t want all the hoopla of a coffee machine to make just one (big) cup. I tried a French press for a while and liked that, but, again, too much hoopla. Now I just boil some water in the microwave and pour it over a spoonful of the Trader Joe’s instant coffee in the cup. Very good, especially with a healthy shmitz of real cream. But maybe I’m not a real coffee gourmet. But I am a camper, and I think this would get you close enough.
Left Coast Tom
I don’t roast my own coffee at home, but short of that…I like coffee. But backpacking imposes a set of constraints…I’ll have to give Trader Joe’s a try.
PaminBB
I have to respond, those 2 kitties look so much like 2 of ours – cute!
Stash – Highly recommend you order through their web site and not just via the local store. Lots of options.
IMHO, milk in tea is icky.YMMV.
Steeplejack
@Left Coast Tom:
I like coffee, and I would love to have an excuse to make enough to run the coffee machine with some good beans, but it’s not happening now. I tried a lot of instant coffees, and the ones from the grocery store were uniformly awful. So if that’s giving you pause, yeah, check out Trader Joe’s. I was surprised at how good it is.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Please tell me this is spoof.
PLEASE!
Laura W
@Steeplejack: I’m sorry. I hate to go all OT here on this most fascinating dairy product vs. dried high fructose corn syrup solids thread, but I have my project complete.
But I’m too bleary to do it justice tonight.
HOWEVER, did you see this first part I posted days ago for you? The #1 Annie Lennox song?
OMIGOD. I just found this version, which I have never seen before. It totally ruined my entire choice, along with my entire life.
MikeJ
For a workplace with no fridge, get a school lunch size carton of UHT each day. Stores fine with no refrigeration, and with several tea/coffee drinkers in one office no problem with excess going to waste.
Brick Oven Bill
I really doubt that any cat torturers or farmers secretly lurk around Balloon Juice seeking technical assistance Laura W. Just try to imagine trying to tie a balloon around the tail of a cat that was routinely tortured by a cat torturer. This would not likely happen, when you think about it.
If a farmer or a cat torturer seeking technical assistance was to be secretly lurking here, and did manage to get a balloon tied around an abused cat’s tail, this would happen only once. This is because the cat would figure out what was going on and pop either the balloon or the circulatory system of the torturer in subsequent events.
Just saying.
asiangrrlMN
There is decaf green tea. There is decaf white tea. There is decaf black tea. I am for the basics. Then again, I drink ginger tea as well (good for the respiratory system), and I think it’s decaf. Dunno because my mom brings it from Taiwan, and I don’t read Chinese. I agree about powdered milk–not for hot beverages. Blech! Real cow or soy milk only (I’m lactose intolerant, so no cow milk for me).
P.S. Synchronized cat sleeping is the best!
J. Michael Neal
@Brick Oven Bill: Wait. Was that a sensible comment? DougJ, you reverse psychology spoofed, that, right?
YogSothoth
You can get some little pasteurized plastic cups (3/8 oz or so) of real half-and-half which don’t require refrigeration at your local URM or other store which sells to restaurants. It’s real half-and-half and will stay good for a long time.
After a while they will go bad; they won’t spoil as long as the package is whole but the milk solids will clump together. Still, if you use them on a semi-frequent basis you will use most of them before they do that, and a box isn’t that expensive.
The Populist
Bad Horse Filly,
Yes, they are. I am surprised stations run them for what they "suggest." I know some gals who didn’t pick up on it until I pointed it out (being the kinda guy who’d notice! – I know what an old perv I am, hehe). When I picked up on it the second time I saw it, I was like WHAT!?!?!!? I had to rewind it to see if they commercial was suggesting what I thought it was suggesting.
Wow, I found it to be disturbing in it’s bluntness as well as just over the top in a way that distracts from the product itself.
guest omen
you know, pesticides have been found in tea. go organic if that’s something you want to avoid.
Phoebe
It’s not Stash, but Roastaroma by Celestial Seasonings is my favorite no-caf drink for night-time, as it is very cozy.
Comrade Kevin
@robertdsc: The next version of the OS will support MMS messages, so that annoying way of getting pictures will end.
Comrade Kevin
As for tea, I really don’t like the herbal stuff, Earl Grey and Irish Breakfast are the way to go.
robertdsc
Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll do some digging now that I have some direction.
JL
@josefina: Safari Sunset, Red Tea is my favorite.
Krista
Vanilla Rooibos is a really, really nice tea.
And I don’t know anybody who uses evaporated milk in their tea — just plain old 2% cows’ milk. But I still just don’t like it. It just tastes really weird to me. The only tea in which I’ll put a little bit of milk is chai.
Librarian
Jon Stewart last night had clips of media idiots, mostly from Fox, repeating total bullshit about royal protocol-"You’re not supposed to touch the queen" and "You’re not supposed to turn your back on the queen"- both of which, especially the last one, are absolute total lies. These people just blatantly make so much shit up out of thin air, it’s just incredible. They literally have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.
ford powers
Snuggling kitties is the best thing I have seen all day.
I