Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Let there be snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

After roe, women are no longer free.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / The *Official Saturday Night* Open Thread

Reader Interactions

118Comments

  1. 1.

    wonkie

    What a sweetie.

    Lily, too.

    Our new dog Jodie, a German shepard/collie mix thinks she’s a lap dog.
    The view from my lap is like the second picture only with the dog head taking up the entire shot.

  14. 14.

    jl

    This boy and dog love story is touching. Seriously, it is sweet. I am glad that there is a grownup like Tunch around to keep an eye on things while you two are out playing fetch and what not.

    I guess Sonny Boy Williamson singing My Babe with the Animals fits somehow or other.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwc-uR2NA1g

    Williamson II singing ‘The Goat’ might be better, but I don’t think it is on youtube.

  19. 19.

    scrubadubba

    Try this again…

    This is not going to be news to anyone who’s read BJ for any period of time, but This American Life has to be one of the most fantastic pieces of jounralism/story telling ever produced.

    It’s been off and on of my podcast list for a while, but I subscribe to a ton of them, and listen to very few of them. So on my three hour traffic laden trip from Pasadena to Santa Ana today, on a whim I popped on the latest one: “Return to the Giant Pile of Money.” Fantastic.

    The replay of “The Fix is In” was equally enthralling.

    Oh and I flew Virgin America today. Also a fantastic experience. My new favorite airline.

  21. 21.

    bago

    So. For people that listen to music made in the last quarter century, here’s the report from San Francisco love parade. Lots of people, lots of stages, but they all seemed decibel capped. You had to get within 30 feet of a stage to hear it clearly.

    Next up, Deadmau5 after party.

  24. 24.

    geg6

    That Lily is one adorable doggie.

    In addition to playing mom with my niece this weekend, I am also playing mistress to the family dog, Purdy. She is a female German shepherd and is 12 years old. You would never guess she is that old. She is a perpetual motion machine and has only just settled onto her doggie bed after spending all day running on her run and then, when I let her inside, dogging my footsteps and bumping my hand to scritch her head as she circles the lving room. This is not some sort of separation anxiety, by the way. This is how she always is. She really is sweet and has aged much better than I have. Other than her hyperactivity disorder (can dogs have such a thing?), she is probably the best behaved dog I’ve ever come across.

  29. 29.

    JK

    Perfect Timing Award goes to Valerie Jarrett

    Seriously, someone needs to tell Valerie Jarrett to STFU. Obama is already getting pounded by wingnuts who are portraying the IOC decision as an epic fail and she has to start talking this bullshit:

    “The intelligence that we had from the U.S. Olympic Committee and Chicago bid team was that it was very close and therefore well worth our efforts,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House advisor. “The message was that . . . a personal appeal from the president would make a huge difference.”

    h/t http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-obama-olympics4-2009oct04,0,836075.story

  36. 36.

    jl

    Sonny Boy Williamson II: The Goat

    http://www.last.fm/music/Sonny+Boy+Williamson/_/The+Goat?autostart

    Dedicated to TUNCH.

    Lyrics
    There was an animal called a goat, he butted his way out of the Supreme Court
    Said, “Let him go”
    Yeah, said, “Let him go, because he butt so hard till you can’t use him in our court no more”
    Judge give him five hours to get out of town, he got five miles down the road and committed another crime
    That’s when the high sheriff happened to be coming along, and caught the billy goat eating up an old farmer’s corn
    High sheriff taken the billy goat to the county jail, but the desk sergeant cant said that “I’ll go his bail, let him go”
    A medicine doctor bought the billy goat, had a great big stage show
    The billy goat got mad and butt him right down in the lonesome floor
    So let him go, please, please, let him go, because he butt so hard till I can’t use him in our court no more

  37. 37.

    Midnight Marauder

    From the “I Am Shocked That There’s Gambling In This Casino” Department:

    Will California become America’s first failed state?

    From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kenneth Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: “California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America.”

    A very good read if you want a primer on just how fucked California really is.

    Also, my sincere apologies to anyone who takes offense. I was simply posting fast.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I know you are all sick of hearing about my dog

    Really, John. That’s just shameless fishing.

  41. 41.

    ninerdave

    …because it’s music related.
    …because Cher started it and T-Pain made it famous
    …because it was a closely heald industry secret for years.
    …and because most of the bands in this thread never used it…
    …and lastly because Neil deGrasse Tyson rules…

    How vocal auto tune works.

  45. 45.

    Jules

    I never get tired of seeing others pets.
    None of them look as nuts as mine.

    Lily looks like the sweetest dog in the world….
    I’m not sure about Tunch, but he reminds me of the Cat Goddess that rules our house and lets the rest of us live there.

  50. 50.

    Shell Goddamnit

    @Polish the Guillotines:

    Cmon man, the previous thread contained funk, country, hip-hop and … I dunno, something.

    AND IT ALL WORKED!!!1!

    bless yer heart, polish & Polish is the oldest trick in the book – ahem.

  56. 56.

    JK

    @Twisted Martini:

    Where’s your evidence? The Raiders haven’t been relevant in ages.

    @AnneS:

    Wow, that is so win. You’ll receive a limited edition goldleaf BJ lexicon in vellum with a leather carrying case.

  57. 57.

    Shell Goddamnit

    Shit, when will I have time to go through these threads and actually listen to these stellar **stellar I tell you** entries?? Cause that seems like an important part of the process ya know.

    Speaking of stellar I just want to mention this here Polish vodka.

  61. 61.

    eemom

    I would totally steal that Lily doggie if I could. She is just my type.

    Our Maggie would chomp any competition, though. She’s highly neurotic — beautiful and intelligent, but neurotic with aggression issues. She’s been on doggie Prozac for years now. A huge hassle, but we love her dearly.

  65. 65.

    ellaesther

    @madmommy: The thing I think I love most about the pants is the paradox inherent to any item that is soooooooo wide and roomy at the bottom, and soooooooo tight and confining at the top!

  67. 67.

    Shell Goddamnit

    just a damn question – has anyone mentioned A Taste Of Honey boogie oogie oogie? too Boogie Nights? but then the 70s were like that, that’s the fucking point, right?

  68. 68.

    madmommy

    @ellaesther:

    Not to mention the complete inability of the fabric to breathe. Like going out for the day wrapped in a trash bag.

    Which is why there are no pictures of me from the 70’s. Sure it was elementary school, but we were rocking the polyester bellbottoms and crocheted vests right along with the DFH’s.

  69. 69.

    scrubadubba

    @bago:

    Virgin rocks. I flew them today as well. My plane was named “midnight ride”. Did you catch the name of your plane?

    No, didn’t know they named their planes. Did take advantage of the $50 upgrade to First Class though! Free booze, swanky seats (with massage) and plenty of snacks. My only complaint was the flight was too short to finish watching “The Hangover”…which is hysterical, suspenseful and well done. Now I just have to wait for iTunes or NetFlix to release it so I can see the end.

    Oh yeah, they serve absinthe drinks….I was a bit heated when I got off the plane. Public Transit at airports FTW.

  71. 71.

    Shell Goddamnit

    “Not to mention the complete inability of the fabric to breathe. Like going out for the day wrapped in a trash bag.”

    Now, this is a feature-not-bug thing – I spent a week sleeping on an uninsulated fiberglas boat in NOVEMBER. In MICHIGAN. In a pair of long johns and a dacron staysail – and it was comfortable. The best heat-catching quilt I have is the one my gramma made out of her doubleknit polyester dresses and my grampa’s doubleknit shirts.

  72. 72.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Damn, the Huskies lost to Notre Dame and I had another goddamned POS Seagate drive fail on my RAID. This is the fifth drive failure I’ve had with a Seagate drive this year, on one of my personal systems. I don’t know how many I’ve had fail on me at work. Seagate = Epic Drive Fail. Summary: AVOID. Go with Western Digital Caviar Green drives for desktop systems and Western Digital RE or Samsung F1-RAID drives for RAIDs. It’s sad because Seagate drives used to be rock solid, now the company has completely gone to shit.

  73. 73.

    madmommy

    @Shell Goddamnit:

    Well, yeah. In that climate it’s definitely a feature. For any other daily experience, not so much. There’s only so much Brut and High Karate available, it can’t cover the stink of wearing polyeter in the summer.

  74. 74.

    Polish the Guillotines

    @Wile E. Quixote: Wow. Was this one of the terrabyte drives with self-bricking firmware? I’ve been big on Seagate for a long time, but yeah, something’s not right with them these days.

  75. 75.

    burnspbesq

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    I don’t know who makes the drives that are inside the Buffalo RAID array that I use as my music server, but it’s the first time I’ve bought anything other than WD, and every WD drive I’ve ever owned was completely reliable. They just didn’t have a 4TB product when I needed it.

  76. 76.

    jl

    @Midnight Marauder: Will California become America’s first failed state?

    Become? That is optimistic. Maybe I will read it, I need cheering up about the old wreck of CA.

    One half of my family had ancesters in this bizarro state since it was a state.

    The miners came in 49
    The w h * r e s (moderation bait?) in 51
    Then they got together
    And they made a native son.

    Some one will have to make a new version, about bankruptcy.

    I dunno, let’s try.

    The progressives came in nineteen ten
    and they made a modern state
    Now their rich man GOPer sons
    Will lose it in probate.

    Or, something. Help me with this, we need a new version for old time Californians to sing, weeping around their campfires, out in the wilderness.

  77. 77.

    Obama Death Panel Chairman (formerly glocksman)

    @WyldPiratd:

    Indeed.
    The more I learn about people, the more I love my dog.

    That said, there are people whom I could love, but they aren’t in love with me.

    An example would be one of my co-workers whose reaction after describing a fight between him and his wife shortly after his marriage (he was crying outside the door to their apartment unknown to his wife, who called me in hysterics because I was the only person she knew in town) was ‘that’s so beautiful’.

    This woman is someone I could ‘love’, but she is in love with another so I wouldn’t dream of trying to interfere.

    Perhaps my position is the way it is because of my own history.
    My father divorced my Mother when I was eight years old.
    He fled to Canada with the intent of avoiding the child support order issued by the county court.

    According to family legend, the Canadian courts were perfectly willing to enforce US child support orders, so he moved back to the USA and obtained a city job with good benefits that’d cost him little compared with the cost of ignoring the court orders.

    True or not, my personal opinion WRT who’d betray their families is by and large that death is too good for them.

  78. 78.

    Shell Goddamnit

    @madmommy:

    I’m just sayin. I’m in TX now and shit, what am I going to do with this quilt? I just talked to my dad in MI they’re starting the “Fall Series” sailboat races this coming weekend. This is the context – 56 degrees and there you are. Or someone is. But I ain’t there, neener. :D

  79. 79.

    burnspbesq

    @jl:

    I’d like to dig up Hiram Johnson’s bones and piss on them. Initiative and referendum were his idea, and they are killing California, sure as shit.

  80. 80.

    jl

    Arnold is a big fat fraud. He got is movie star ass elected mainly on the plank of solving CA’s long term budget problems. That is one thing he has not done one dang thing about. Not one thing.

    He said he was done with gimmicks or ‘kicking the can down the road’. I heard two gimmicks just today. First, the courts decided that the CA state government’s clawback of local and regional transportation funds is illegal, someting like taking money that is not really theirs, see, like um… stealing. (See, since prop 13 the state government has often been balancing the books by taking money from the localities). As far as I can tell, the state is saying that ‘yeah, I guess that’s right, but we should only have to pay back what we stole this year, not for the last three years.

    And then, we get to keep the state parks open, most of the time. At least no park will be closed permanently or year round. It will be paid by, wait for it, deferred maintenance, which is not kicking the can down the road, because we need something to get us through the night, see, so that just cannot be kicking the can down the road.

    Some folks will whine and cry about high state employee salaries. But I got two things to say about that. I know CA state salaries in some fields (like the pricon correctional officers) are out of control. But CA has a small state workforce compared to other states. When you add up state and local employees, the ratio of employees to pop, and compensation wage bill to state GDP is just about average.

    And second, even if CA has high costs, it is because it was, at one time long ago, supposed to provide a lot of services to its residents. Frinstance, the CA state plan for higher education. The state employee wage bill has been quite stable. The cost of things like prisons, and the tax giveaways to wealthy homeowners and corporations have not been stable.

    It is like a guy buying a fancy house that requires a large mortgage. Then this idiot guy starts throwing money around, and not keeping track, goes broke, and blames his high mortgage. IMHO. And who would do something that stupid… oops. Well, I guess a lot of people.

    Whatever, it is a mess.

  82. 82.

    Jay in Oregon

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Same here. I got nothin’ as far as music goes.

    Today was a mixed bag again. She seemed to open up to me earlier today (we actually did something that could be construed as cuddling!) but something I did later seemed to annoy her; she was moody for most of the rest of the night.

    So I gave her some space — ran some errands. We’ll see what happens when we’re ready for bed.

  84. 84.

    Morbo

    @Wile E. Quixote: Washington was in the endzone on that one drive in the 4th quarter from the 6. Granted it’s their own fault that they had 7 plays to score a TD and couldn’t, but they were in. It’s funny; both the Michigan game and the Notre Dame game featured the team I wanted to win making a last minute drive to tie, and both featured those teams losing in overtime.

  85. 85.

    ninerdave

    @Polish the Guillotines:

    You do realize that you’ve essentially violated the “Magician’s Oath” and the RIAA will be knocking on your door tomorrow. The RIAA can’t have everyone knowing that pop stars “just fit the suit”

    Oh noes! Soap box ahead!!!

    In my not so humble opinion…

    While the music industry has always been about selling image, with the advent of tools like Auto-Tune, they’ve realized that they can sell only image and the music is not even a second or a third thought…they can just pluck some piece of ass (male or female) off the streets, hire some song writers and doctor the shit out of the resulting recording sessions and volia! mass produced music. Before that there was this annoying thing about Artist Development, damn that sucked and was expensive, and well shit, sometimes the Artists they tried to develop didn’t pan out. The bottom line JUST CAN’T HAVE THAT!. Today’s music has more in common with mass produced food than it does, well, music.

    They have essentially commoditized art. You just have to look good, or be a trainwreck in front of a camera and you too can be a rock star!

    However they sure fucked up, when they didn’t see digital media and the Internet coming. Because of their tactics, music became White Bread…something with no nutritional or societal value (actually I think White Bread contributes more to society that mass produced music). Then along came digital media. Great they thought, a way to make it even cheaper to mass produce, their shit.

    Here’s where the ADMs of the music world fucked up. They were blindsided by the fact that their white bread cheap to produce product could be copied exactly and transmitted exactly across some copperwire for free to some other person miles away (I’m going to gloss over the mp3 sound quality factor here). No need to buy a $20 CD for that one or two songs you liked backed with 8 tracks of filler! Nope you could get those songs for free over the ‘tubes. Instead of being introspective and thinking (to quote David Byrne) “Oh my god, what have I done!” They started to sue and lobby for that wonderful DCMA (tyvm Clinton). While they should have been looking at other avenues to pursue their mass marketing (I’m looking at you live shows) they clung to their YOU MUST BUY MY $20 CD of 2 good songs and the rest filler model of doing business.

    This is the story of what happens when you commoditize something and are too short sighted to see the ramifications of your actions. I say this as someone who works in the industry (as does Polish the Guillotines, hope he doesn’t mind me calling him out!). Commoditization works in the short term, but in the end, is cannibalistic in nature.

    In short, fuck the major record industry.

    I now step down off of my soap box and return to my beer.

  86. 86.

    jl

    @burnspbesq: It stopped the Southern Pacific RR from running CA. I think CA initative/referendum process does need substantial reform. So I wouldn’t kick Johnsons ass, he has been dead for a bit. I would kick the ass of interest groups that are blocking reform of the state government.

    I probably sound like an anti-market s o s h u l i s t, which I do not think I am, but I believe that the ‘recent’ (actually decades long) public finance problems in CA spring from an early example of the evils of a asset bubble economy. Here is my take

    Step one: 1960s real estate boom in CA
    Step two: tradition of wide descretion of residential property tax assessment left to local governments led to abuse and fraud
    Step three: state gov solved assessment scandal by placing strict controls on assessments, based on market values
    Step four: more property boom, fixed income people could not afford property taxes
    Step five: Democratic legislators could not figure out what to do next, and just sat there with their hands up their asses
    Step six: opening for tax revolt, which was co-opted by big business and reactioanary GOP crazies
    Step seven: thirty years of stalemate, thanks to 2/3 rule in leg for budget, and prop 13 restrictions on tax increases.

    A mess.

  89. 89.

    Polish the Guillotines

    @ninerdave: What you said. In triplicate.

    All I have to add is, if the RIAA thinks “sue kids for downloading music” will prove to be a successful business model, then they deserve to perish in flames.

  91. 91.

    burnspbesq

    @jl:

    Hiram Johnson made Howard Jarvis possible. That settles it for me. Simplistic, I know, but there it is.

  93. 93.

    ninerdave

    @jl:

    Autotune? Is that like that awful talkbox thing?

    Probably what you are thinking of, but you should still watch the video. :)

  98. 98.

    Martin

    Frinstance, the CA state plan for higher education.

    The state plan has benefitted the state more that it cost it (relative to other states). The education plan is part of why California held onto the defense industry, why Silicon Valley developed, why the state has such a strong biotech industry, and why CA is likely to drive the green economy.

    That’s seriously at risk now, though. The state once had a solid long-term outlook but now, with a handful of exceptions, is just moving from short-term opportunity to short-term opportunity. The only way this state can get back on track is with a new constitution.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    @ninerdave:

    While they should have been looking at other avenues to pursue their mass marketing (I’m looking at you live shows) they clung to their YOU MUST BUY MY $20 CD of 2 good songs and the rest filler model of doing business.

    To suggest that musicians a supposed to live primarily on the revenues of live shows because the InterTubes lets people steal their music strikes me as perverse.

    People still movies, too. Are folks supposed to look out for a live production of “Transformers” to supplement pirated movies?

    “Free music” stolen from the InterTubes debases the value of copyrights, and also leads musicians to in turn debase their own music, by whoring it out for use in commercials and lame ass TV shows, as background themes for sports shows and a gazillion other over-uses.

    The funny thing is that people have been stealing art and music for a long time. It’s not just about turning music into a commodity. Maybe people have a hot itched to be entertained and want it so bad that they will take it if they can.

    So people would scribble down Elizabethan plays, reprint them and of course never pay the authors any fees (this was pre-copyright). Centuries later, Americans would steal and re-publish the novels of Dickens, again not paying him a dime, but oddly enough sparking the rise of lending libraries in America. Dickens had to resort to live reading to make up for the loss of revenues before international copyrights became enforced.

    The Hong Kong film industry was almost destroyed and India’s Bollywood took a big hit as people said, “Screw it, I don’t care if buying pirated movies makes it impossible for producers to keep making the big budget movies I like. If I can get a cheap DVD, the hell with them.”

    And the supposed download speed increases available with USB 3.0 should be scaring the daylights out of all kinds of media companies.

    By the way, live shows will be hit big time by pirates recording it and putting the entire show on the Web for free.

    And so it goes. No easy answers here at all.

  101. 101.

    bago

    Love Parade afterparty update. 85$, but Fischer Spooner, Deadmau5 and Groove Armada. Worth it. Getting free VIP upgrade didn’t hurt either.

  103. 103.

    JGabriel

    I was kind of hoping, by starting an Atrocities of the Seventities! contest in last week’s thread, that we would have all gotten the seventies out of our system once and for all.

    I see that I was mistaken.

    I see that it is time to bring out the BIG guns. Because I’ve never been to me.

    .

  104. 104.

    JGabriel

    That song really should be an internet meme for every time a Republican criticizes someone that does the same exact things they’ve done.

    .

  105. 105.

    JGabriel

    Atrocities of the Seventities!

    Because it’s really not the 70’s without a horribly embarrassing typo …

    .

  106. 106.

    J.

    WHAT ABOUT THE CAT?!

    It’s never “I love my cat.” It’s always “I love my dog.” Feh.

    No wonder Tunch wants to scratch Lily’s eyes out.

  110. 110.

    Skepticat

    Never sick of Lily. Never sick of Tunch. Never sick of anyone’s pets. Fed up to the gills by what’s going on in this country and angry to the point of nausea, but always happy to see fur people.

  113. 113.

    CynDee

    Will NEVER get tired of seeing your dog and cat, John. Never. In fact, this is a brand new view of Lily. I don’t think I’d know it was she if I hadn’t been told. She’s all one color from the back, and her ears look waay different from this angle. And what s sturdy little back.

    I love the view of the back of a dog’s head, because there’s a real creature thinking in there, and they’re thinking appropriately, unlike many humans.

    The thought of that active doggie grey matter plus, the little hairs sticking out from the side of the neck, makes us love every little movement of our doggie’s beautiful life. It’s wonderful. Thanks so much; this type of view is one that a lot of dogcat people love and remember, especially those of us who don’t get to have a doggie or kitteh at home with us right now. . .

  114. 114.

    Wormtown

    I visited friends last night. There was a new doggie. They said he was a beagle corgi mix…..he looked a lot like your pictures of Lily. I think about the same size, as well.

  115. 115.

    Jay in Oregon

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I’m actually doing pretty good right now.

    I’m almost back to a regular sleeping schedule and my appetite has returned. I don’t feel the extreme emotional swings that I have the past few weeks.

  117. 117.

    John O

    @John O:

    The Tunchinator, too!

    I dunno, but how people view their pets tends to reveal a lot about them, at least to me. It’s not always good, but yours is all good, John.

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