Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Come on, man.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

You are here: Home / Sports / Steelers Open Thread

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  4. 4.

    khead

    I pity the poor bastards at this game. Just a straight up shitty evening here in the MD/DC area.

  6. 6.

    JK

    Looking forward to Oct 25th, when the Steelers will hopefully give Brett Favre such a brutal ass kicking that he’ll decide to retire again.

  8. 8.

    mai naem

    Do you really think Lily needs a bib like a 6 month old baby or something? Lily comes across as a perfectly behaved young lady who never spills food on herself and she certainly doesn’t roll around in icky smelling crap at the park.

  9. 9.

    Comrade Mary

    Lily knows that this means that the next pile of dead shit she rolls in will be the biggest ever. Quid pro quo and all that.

  14. 14.

    Laura W

    Oh Christ, John!
    It’s a Super Hero Cape, not a freakin’ dog drool bib or therapeutic neck brace.

    You need to watch Project Runway, Season 6, on Lifetime TeeVee.
    You clearly have no fashion sense whatsoever.

  15. 15.

    Andy K

    Packers defense has just forced the second Bills turnover in two possessions. This could be a seriously good D this year.

  16. 16.

    Bort

    I’m glad someone finally found the perfect use for Steelers memorabilia. Catching dog drool. Don’t let me down Lilly!

  19. 19.

    khead

    My wife wants to put a “Princess” sweater on the new cat (yeah, good luck with that). I told her no F’in way but I might could do that bandana thing.

    Steelers or Hokies.

  21. 21.

    Laura W

    @Max: That is one adorable dog in a perfectly fitting kerchief.

    I’m thinking Lily’s might be a size too big?
    If John porks her up in the next year like he’s porked Tunch up, it’ll probably be just right too small for her next season.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    Poor Lily! John’s tied a “pile of dead shit” around her neck, so now she’s waiting to be dunked in the cold river again.

  23. 23.

    Mark S.

    Man, ignore these haters. Lily looks adorable.

    I’ve seen this study linked a couple of places, and I still can’t believe more than 50% of those surveyed claim they don’t know any gay people. How is this even possible?

  24. 24.

    Joshua Norton

    Anyone get the feeling the main reason John wanted a dog was so he could dress her up in Steeler’s swag?

  27. 27.

    General Winfield Stuck

    I can’t get the Browns/ Lions game to come up on the ATDHE.NET channel. A Twitter screen chat box covers over the game play. Anybody know wtf that is about?

  29. 29.

    Max

    @ John Cole – It’s a little weird that every single picture of Lily or Tunch is taken on that futon thing.

    Is that the only place they are allowed, or is the futon the only insight into your life that you are willing to share with us?

    P.S. – Outside of the outdoor Lily shots, I do like those.

  30. 30.

    shelley matheis

    Love that slightly raised left paw, as if Lily ‘s about to make an emphatic point. “I’ve got something to say”

  33. 33.

    Andy K

    Now it’s 3 Bills’ turnovers in 4 possessions. Damn!

    For the fantasy football players: Remember Packers’ TE Jermichael Finley. He might have a very, very good year. Maybe not Antonio Gates territory, but only because Rodgers has more options than Rivers.

  34. 34.

    John Cole

    @Max: No, it really is as simple as the fact that every time I think to take a picture of them, I am on the computer in the office. And since no matter what time of day it is, if I come into the home office, one of them follows me in, I turn around, take a picture of whichever one is there, turn back around and plug the camera in, and it is done.

  38. 38.

    Max

    @Andy K: as a fellow Bills fan, I’m glad you are watching the horror, so I don’t have to.

    Also, we don’t have that game out here in the Bay Area. I’m subjected to Raiders @ Niners on both Fox and CBS.

    Yuck!

    Thankfully, new episode of Color Splash. I LOVE that cutie David. Sadly, he doesn’t play for my team.

  39. 39.

    Andy K

    @Max:

    Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I’m a Packers’ fan. Maybe I should have written it “Dayum!”

    Not much good happening for the Bills right now, sorry to say. Packers are clicking in every facet of the game, except for the offense not picking up a 4th and 1 on the first possession. Bills are awfully buttery compared to the Pack’s hot knives.

  41. 41.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Max:

    I LOVE that cutie David. Sadly, he doesn’t play for my team.

    I don’t think designer skills are transferrable to football.

  43. 43.

    The next-to-last samurai

    What will Lily’s Halloween costume be? For that matter, what about the rest of you? I am usually a witch; I have a giant silly witch hat–with feathers!–that seems to delight all comers every year.

  46. 46.

    Andy K

    @Max:

    True….But 3 turnovers forced in 4 possessions with the first stringers going head-to-head makes me very happy.

    :P

  48. 48.

    The Saff

    Lily is just precious. Every picture of her is the picture of a happy, content dog. And Tunch is fab, too.

    Good work, John Cole.

  49. 49.

    jl

    Every try to put something like that on Tunch (who is named for the Steeler’s announcer? I still don’t think he would put up with it).

    I would be interested but there is no pro football in Northern California anymore, so I lost interest. I’ll watch Bolt’s 200 meter run again, I guess.

  52. 52.

    madmommy

    The Saints are beating the Texans, and by the sound of it, there’s more Saints fans in the stadium than home team fans. I’d get more excited about winning, but they’ve done well in pre-season before, only to stink up the joint when it actually counts for something.

  54. 54.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Well, finally we are getting some mucho needed rain. It’s poring and there’s one little hummingbird hanging on the a feeder for dear life. Soppin wet.

  57. 57.

    John Cole

    Lily and I actually had a good day- we walked several times, then went to the local pet store and visited and picked up food for the next month, then we went to the grocery store and picked up bags of food and went to the no kill shelter and dropped them off, and then while we were there, she got to play with a bunch of doggies and we went for some walks with them.

    She is completely passed out on the living room couch again. I’m going to have to wake her up for her 11 pm bedtime potty.

  61. 61.

    jacy

    Greeting, Juicers, and let me preface by saying I’m a bit tipsy, although by saying I’m a bit tipsy, it’s like saying the birthers are a bit unhinged.

    Tonight I have finally mailed off the publisher-requested rewrite of the first book in a mystery series to my agent in New York. The signs are all positive, the publishers were kind of gushy, but wanted some material changes. I still think of it in my head as Lucy with the football.

    Also, I got a call from my second oldest child, informing that he is awaiting news of his Marine unit’s deployment to Afghanistan.

    Needless to say, if there was a choice, I would choose never publishing another short story or book if it meant that my son comes home safely.

    So, while you’re out and about, wish us godspeed. Even though i don’t contribute much, reading Balloon Juice is one of the few things that keeps me sane each day. Bless you all, even the occasionally annoying ones. And thank you, John, for this space.

    Jacy + one bottle of California’s cheapest nice white zinfandel — the one you keep in the fridge for unexpected dinner guests — and cautiously eyeing the unopened bottle of Kahlua in the cabinet where I keep that catfood, and trying to figure out how much milk I have…..

  62. 62.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Is it strange that I have no desire to ever go to a Golden Corral?

    You too?

  63. 63.

    John Cole

    @AhabTRuler: No. I have no desire to ever go to one. However, I was talking to a buddy who has two kids, boys age 12-14, and he explained the appeal- “You have no idea how nice it is to go some place, no one cares about noise or crazy kids, the kids serve themselves and eat for a set price, you don’t have to wait and deal with whining teens, and you can get in and out and go home. There is appeal in this.”

  65. 65.

    khead

    Forget the desire to eat there.

    After seeing that stupid Golden Corral commercial (TROUBLE!) 1,000,000 times in the last week I am heartily rooting for their bankruptcy.

  68. 68.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @jacy:

    Though I am sure there are others here who feel the same way, please know that there is one Juicer that greatly appreciates what your son is doing. I’m fairly doubtful we can do much for that country after GWB had his way with it, but we helped break it and maybe we should do our best to fix it, if that is possible.

    Here’s hoping your son stays safe.:)

  69. 69.

    Demo Woman

    @jacy: Look this is the place to come for prayers. We might not be Gov. Christ and be able thwart off hurricanes, but we can offer hope, bitching, and occasionally some common sense ideas. Take care.

  73. 73.

    planetjanet

    Trigger says, “Hail to the Redskins. Hail Victory. Braves on the Warpath. Fight for ole DC.

  75. 75.

    jacy

    Cripes, we used to drink the coronas with the lime in the neck and think we were cool, way back in the ’80s — Of course, that was Wyoming, which is like a time machine to the past anyway — with our member’s only jackets and feathered hair. Ah, to be young and undiscerning again.

    Jacy + I can’t currently remember.

  76. 76.

    Yutsano

    @jacy:
    Concerned mom + copious amounts of adult beverages = perfectly rational reason to get verschnickered. Also, there may yet be hope, doesn’t Wyoming have a Dem governor?

  77. 77.

    John Cole

    @AhabTRuler: Not wanting to drink corona ever is perfectly rational. That having been said, if the options are Bud, Bud Light, Miller, and Corona, as it often is here at BBQ’s and what not, I’m rolling with the Corona.

  78. 78.

    SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta

    Haven’t had a chance to read through the thread, but just wanted to say that picture of Lily in her Steelers scarf bumped me up a notch out of a very grouchy mood. I love her.

  80. 80.

    Yutsano

    @AhabTRuler: Awww dude. Rolling Rock was what we splurged on when the financial aid checks arrived at the start of the semester and we felt like fucking millionaires. For some reason those were always the good parties too.

  81. 81.

    Yutsano

    @AhabTRuler: Awww dude. Rolling Rock was what we splurged on when the financial aid checks arrived at the start of the semester and we felt like fucking millionaires. For some reason those were always the good parties too.

  82. 82.

    AhabTRuler

    That having been said, if the options are Bud, Bud Light, Miller, and Corona, as it often is here at BBQ’s and what not, I’m rolling with the Corona meltwater from the bottom of the cooler.

  83. 83.

    steve s

    @Demo Woman:

    Take it from a Floridian, Charlie Crist is widely considered by the conservatives here to be a commie-loving RINO traitor Obama-lover appeaser homo. The stuff he said about Jesus was just a casual bone thrown to the wingnuts to try to reduce support for Rubio.

  84. 84.

    tripletee

    @jacy:

    with our member’s only jackets and feathered hair.

    No parachute pants?

    Best of luck to your son, btw. My brother-in-law just got back. It’s always a nerve-wracking 7 months.

    And let us know when your book hits the racks so we can go out and bulk-buy. Why should Regnery Press have all the fun?

  85. 85.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Went to a Crosby Stills & Nash concert last summer and they were selling Coronas without limes. That was some nasty shit.

  87. 87.

    4jkb4ia

    (Please, please do not say that in honor of Brett Favre there was Trash Talk and I didn’t have to bother John with the wrong sport. In other news the Cardinals’ magic number is 33 and Carpenter has a 3-run lead.)

  88. 88.

    jacy

    It’s funny about Wyoming — when I was a kid, Gale McGee was a senator and he was really good friends with my grandpa, who was Goshen County commissioner at the time. He’s considered the “last” democratic senator from Wyoming. We used to get his kids’ hand me down clothes, so when I was like seven, I was wearing velvet dresses hand stitched from Washington, DC. Very posh.

    Later on, when I went to UW, Dick Cheney and Alan Simpson would be regular guests at the Block and Bridle Club’s to-dos, which was the Ag student’s club. I was Molecular Biology and Immunology, which fell under the Ag college umbrella. So I met each of them maybe five or six times on a handshaking basis. Even then Alan Simpson seemed like pretty nice guy, but Cheney was always kind of hunched in the corner by the punchbowl. Even then, he always seemed like the pedophile uncle that everybody made a circle around. So whenever somebody says that Cheney changed after 9/11, I call bullshit. He was always uncomfortably creepy.

  89. 89.

    steve s

    Corona is gooooood. I can’t agree with you haters. Not every beer has to be a Dutch IPA Quadrupel-Bock coriander microbrew with special hops added precisely 17 times by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.

    I’m a bit of a foodie too. But different contexts matter. Obviously if I go to The French Laundry and they bring me charred spam and a corona I’m coming back at 4 a.m. with lighter fluid and a zippo, but in a couple hours when I finish The Thomas Crown Affair (the original) and have had a few shots, charred spam and a Corona are going to sound kinda tasty.

  90. 90.

    steve s

    BTW finished Torchwood Season 3 today.

    I liked it. It wasn’t great, but it was good, and different. You don’t see much stuff like that on network tv.

    Just watched the first 3 eps of Mad Man. I’m kind of a fan of the style of the period, so that’s fun, but it hasn’t caught me yet.

  91. 91.

    planetjanet

    Is it too early to Hail the Redskins again? No, it is not!

    Hail to the Redskins, Hail Victory. Braves on the Warpath. Fight! for ole DC.

    Redskins 17. Steelers 13.

  93. 93.

    Demo Woman

    @steve s: When I read Charlie’s crap about saving FL all I could think about is Katrina and Andrew. Those folks prayed also.

  95. 95.

    tripletee

    @steve s:

    The Thomas Crown Affair (the original)

    I’m not watching the original again until they digitally insert Rene Russo walking around topless for half the movie.

  100. 100.

    Steeplejack

    @John Cole:

    Ditto for aged, dotty mothers-in-law, finicky eaters, people who cannot be on time for anything ever, etc. The spectrum of food on offer is so wide that you can always find something palatable–the salad bar is usually very good, at the minimum–and if you time your food trips adroitly you can minimize your time at table with the less than congenial dinner companions.

    Admittedly, at some point you will inevitably have a moment where you stop and think to yourself, “God, I’m actually eating at Golden Corral. Where did my life go wrong?”

  101. 101.

    jl

    @AhabTRuler: Oh, it must be horrible then. Any beer that is not above average really stinks. Noted. Thanks.

    My perspective may be influence by the fact that I have lived in areas with extensive home brew activity. Which left some scars. If you can sell it, it can’t be too bad.

  102. 102.

    Yutsano

    @John Cole: Using that example, if you could take Lily and Tunch to a restaurant like that, you’d be at the very least a weekly customer.

  104. 104.

    Max

    I like Corona Light with lime. It goes great with fish tacos on a hot summer day. I also like Pacifica. But then again, I’ll drink PBR if its around and cold.

    When I first moved to the Bay Area, everyone tried to get me to drink Pyramid Hefferweizen (or however you spell it). I believe you serve it with a meyer lemon or an orange or something. I do not like it.

    Feh to all you beer snobs.

    P.S. I’m watching Obsession. It’s not horrible.

  105. 105.

    asiangrrlMN

    @jacy: Good luck to your son. I will send some positive vibes his way. Thank him for defending our country for us, will you?

    @General Winfield Stuck: Libby is a hella cute dog. Man. Just magnificent.

    @Max: Max’s neck scarf fits, though. It makes him look quite dashing.

    Cole, is that a bib or a diaper? Poor Lily. However, her beauty still shines, no matter what you make her wear.

    @JK: Pittsburgh v. Vikings? Oh, that’s gonna be a gooooood one. Come on Steel Curtain! Knock Favre out for the rest of the season (with a minor, but sustained injury).

    Oh, and Troy P. is teh hawtness!

  106. 106.

    asiangrrlMN

    Too many replies. I gotta remember that. Damn moderation.

    @jacy: Good luck to your son. I will send some positive vibes his way. Thank him for defending our country for us, will you?

    @General Winfield Stuck: Libby is a hella cute dog. Man. Just magnificent.

  107. 107.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Max: Max’s neck scarf fits, though. It makes him look quite dashing.

    Cole, is that a bib or a diaper? Poor Lily. However, her beauty still shines, no matter what you make her wear.

    @JK: Pittsburgh v. Vikings? Oh, that’s gonna be a gooooood one. Come on Steel Curtain! Knock Favre out for the rest of the season (with a minor, but sustained injury).

    Oh, and Troy P. is teh hawtness!

  110. 110.

    jacy

    G’night all you lovely people. Have a happy, happy what’s left of Saturday and a peaceful Sunday.

    Off to clear off the DVR with my sweet baboo and the dogs and cats. It’s nights like these the S/O is convinced we should have got a California King.

  111. 111.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Damn, the Browns kicked some serious ass tonight on Detroit. Look out Steelers, we’re a comin’ for ya.

  114. 114.

    Little Macayla's Friend

    Lily’s long-suffering expression looks like she’s perfectly aware of how she will end up looking in the (excellent!) photo.

  117. 117.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Steep, where ya at on the east coast? I had ya on my map in Cali but then I saw a comment where you indicated you were on the east coast.

  123. 123.

    Steeplejack

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Based on my close textual analysis of the Balloon Juice threads, I think you are in North Carolina?

    I have long suspected that you and Laura W have a non-BJ–i.e., real-world–connection.

  124. 124.

    Linkmeister

    @Steeplejack: Thanks for the preparation. That lead-in is pretty distinctive.

    I always used to confuse “Time of the Season” and Donovan’s “Season of the Witch” until I heard the first few bars of either.

  126. 126.

    gwangung

    @Steeplejack:

    Yowzer. That’s some hot shit. Absolutely perfect for a Saturday night.

    Right now, I’m plumbing the iTunes library for material for my group’s 80s retro sketch comedy show. Unfortunately, my tastes atrophied sometime in 1981….

  129. 129.

    Steeplejack

    @gwangung:

    Hey, my memory of the ’80s is that it was the ultimate decade for one-shot hits. You couldn’t find a group that could string together three hits in a row to save your life, but there were always great songs coming out of nowhere.

    Greatest song of the ’80s. (Great video, too.)

  133. 133.

    Steeplejack

    @Linkmeister:

    I grew up with a father in the Air Force, so we moved around a lot too.

    When I first came up here I lived in my brother’s house in Sleepy Hollow (!). Close to Holmes Run.

  138. 138.

    Neddie Jingo

    I’ve seen “Time of the Season” cited as the source of the phrase, “Who’s your daddy?”

    What’s your name?
    Who’s your daddy?
    Is he rich like me?

Comments are closed.