Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

T R E 4 5 O N

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

“woke” is the new caravan.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Everybody saw this coming.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Reader Interactions

196Comments

  3. 3.

    Joshua Norton

    Could you also do something about the way the icons on my tool bar keep changing and moving over to the right whenever I add a new one? It’s very annoying.

    /I keed. I keed.

  4. 4.

    Michael

    Hey, so long as you’re not passing me any hoax Antivirus Soft malware, like I suspect I may have gotten from the GOS, you’re doing good.

    OT, I’m wondering about how long McDonnell voters (not to mention those who put him up to give the “State of the Confederacy” speech) are going to be happy when he undoubtedly signs this signature piece of legislation:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020903796.html?sid=ST2010021000012

    The House of Delegates is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a bill that would protect Virginians from attempts by employers or insurance companies to implant microchips in their bodies against their will.
    ….
    It might also save humanity from the antichrist, some supporters think.
    ….
    Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), the bill’s sponsor, said that privacy issues are the chief concern behind his attempt to criminalize the involuntary implantation of microchips. But he also said he shared concerns that the devices could someday be used as the “mark of the beast” described in the Book of Revelation.

    “Hee Haw” was supposed to be only a short comedy variety show, not a template for a political ideology.

  6. 6.

    Jude

    I can’t believe you people would be so insensitive to the feelings of apes.

    I, for one, demand that Rahm Emanuel be fired for this slight.

  8. 8.

    beltane

    If you post a comment, the site works fine. The same thing happened here last year. The moral of the story is that you’re all better off posting a comment than lurking.

  10. 10.

    Punchy

    Sumpin else to note: the site is the suxxor when loading on certain mobile devices (i.e., Palm Centro). All the cool blogs load immediately, so it aint a Sprint thing; only when I attempt to fire up this PITA do I hafta do about 7 things to get this beeyotch to fully come up.

  12. 12.

    Comrade Dread

    God bless the internet.

    I love how I can carefully deconstruct a wingnut’s talking point using reason and logic and they reply with another stupid talking point completely ignoring how I just destroyed their last one.

    It’s like arguing with a bot only programmed to respond in non-sequiturs

  13. 13.

    beltane

    @Michael: Isn’t God supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient? Why does he need a frigging microchip to identify people.

    The thing that bugs me the most about these fundies is that the entity they worship is so small, so stupid, and so nasty. Sort of like what they see when they look in the mirror.

  18. 18.

    Ash Can

    @Michael: Oh, God. When I see this, I genuinely worry about this nation’s future. This nation might truly be too fucking stupid to survive.

  20. 20.

    Mark S.

    John Mayer, as well as being a terrible songwriter (“Your body is a wonderland,” sorry I just puked) is also a dick, a white supremacist dick:

    My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

  24. 24.

    Chat Noir

    I haven’t had any problems reading or commenting on Balloon Juice. Would like to see more Tunch/Lily/Smudge/Charlie/Max/other pets howevah. Just sayin’.

  26. 26.

    flukebucket

    It may be meaningless in the grand scheme of thing but I have not been able to get Balloon-Juice to update on my Kindle either.

  27. 27.

    slag

    For the record, I do not think apes are ugly. But I will still gladly assume that you are on it. Not that I care. Google Reader!

  31. 31.

    Geordie3

    Several people have said that posting fixes the access problem, so I thought I would try it.

    John, I hope that you are feeling better.

  32. 32.

    Michael

    @beltane

    The thing that bugs me the most about these fundies is that the entity they worship is so small, so stupid, and so nasty. Sort of like what they see when they look in the mirror.

    Exactly – as an divine entity, It is nonsensically vicious.

    I think the best portrayal of this was “The Rapture”, a movie that had Mimi Rogers in it about 15 years ago.

    It did a pretty good job of presenting the End of Days in true American fundie form, making everything as petty, cheesy and pointless as a Sunday goober extravaganza at a Southern church.

  33. 33.

    James Hare

    @Michael:
    I’ve been thinking about leaving Virginia for some time. As the Commonwealth sinks deeper and deeper into madness, those plans get far more involved. I initially thought Obama’s election was a sign that our country was turning around. After the last year, it’s hard to believe we ever will.

  34. 34.

    Woodbuster

    @Michael:

    ““Hee Haw” was supposed to be only a short comedy variety show, not a template for a political ideology.”

    Hah! Consider this stolen and plagarized profusely!

    At least this one wasn’t in South Carolina, thank Jeebus.

  35. 35.

    bystander

    Hmmm. The last time I had trouble like this with a site, I was advised to try clearing my cache. So I cleared the works; history, active logons, cookies, the whole enchilada. That fixed the problem right up.

    I didn’t have trouble accessing Balloon Juice until I cleared the works again last night. Not sure what I messed up in the process. I came in through Google’s cache, and have been advancing forward with the -> and <- arrows at the top of the page.

    Will take the advice of the person who said, “try posting a comment.” Tally Ho!

  38. 38.

    t jasper parnell

    @Michael: Thanks to the good Lord for Virginny; lestwise the antichrist and obama, who are actually the same thingy, would be putting the microchips under our skin and keeping all the microdip for their own selves. Also.

  39. 39.

    licensed to kill time

    I’ve had no problems at all (FF 3.6). I access BJ through the RSS feed, maybe folks having trouble could try that?

  40. 40.

    Geordie3

    Well, posting something worked, and I can access the site again.

    Is this a subtle ploy to bring out the lurkers…?

  42. 42.

    Michael

    @Ash Can

    Oh, God. When I see this, I genuinely worry about this nation’s future. This nation might truly be too fucking stupid to survive.

    Why do you hate Sweet Baby Jesus and the Troops?

    The only people expressing such Communistical Socialist Kenyan Marxist Usurper thoughts like that are dastardly evil librul Democrats who want them goddamned negro and ay-rab terr’ists to win.

    Del. Robert H. Brink (D-Arlington) said on the House floor that he did not find many voters demanding microchip legislation when he was campaigning last fall: “I didn’t hear anything about the danger of asteroids striking the Earth, about the threat posed by giant alligators in our cities’ sewer systems or about the menace of forced implantation of microchips in human beings.”
    ….
    “We’ve got a $4 billion hole, and we’re spending time on microchips,” said Del. Albert C. Pollard Jr. (D-Northumberland). “At least when Nero fiddled, they got good music.”

  44. 44.

    Michael

    @Ash Can

    Oh, God. When I see this, I genuinely worry about this nation’s future. This nation might truly be too fucking stupid to survive.

    Why do you hate Sweet Baby Jesus and the Troops?

    The only people expressing such Communistical Soc!alist Kenyan Marxist Usurper thoughts like that are dastardly evil librul Democrats who want them goddamned negro and ay-rab terr’ists to win.

    Del. Robert H. Brink (D-Arlington) said on the House floor that he did not find many voters demanding microchip legislation when he was campaigning last fall: “I didn’t hear anything about the danger of asteroids striking the Earth, about the threat posed by giant alligators in our cities’ sewer systems or about the menace of forced implantation of microchips in human beings.”
    ….
    “We’ve got a $4 billion hole, and we’re spending time on microchips,” said Del. Albert C. Pollard Jr. (D-Northumberland). “At least when Nero fiddled, they got good music.”

  45. 45.

    twiffer

    @Michael: what the fuck? why can’t people just think it is a bad idea for someone to be involutarily implanted with anything? i don’t need religion to tell me that no one should be able to implant microchips in me without my permission.

    also, how is this not already covered by existing laws?

    aside: no tech issues for me, running IE7 on XP Pro SP2 (work machine)

  46. 46.

    Ash Can

    I’m liking the Boeing ad I saw in the margin a minute ago, about “taking a stand for real American tankers.” There’s a “fuck you” in Richard Shelby’s face.

  51. 51.

    Morbo

    I’m having no problems, except that the icon chosen by Opera is the Rumproast icon instead of Balloon Juice’s. Stick that in the bug report.

  54. 54.

    schrodinger's cat

    We need a Tunch photo or better still a Tunch action cam to fix this problem. Tunch is mad and he broke the intertoobz.

  55. 55.

    Kit Smith

    Sorry, didn’t mean to add to the Chinese water torture. Front page is working just fine from work today.

  56. 56.

    Sentient Puddle

    I’m doing the “never had a loading problem” dance right now. In my cube. And people are looking at me funny.

    But random, non-helpful advice for fixing this bug. People are mentioning that commenting fixes it. I started commenting a few months back when there was another bug that commenting fixed. Those who didn’t comment didn’t have a cookie, and those without cookies did not properly load the CSS. So…a cookie problem, maybe?

  59. 59.

    licensed to kill time

    This is going to be another cookie monster thread? That was fun last time. Lurkers, come out come out wherever you are!

  67. 67.

    wrb

    @Michael:

    It has long puzzled me why with all the gods out there they pick that one. Compared with, say, his contemporaries over on Olympus he’s small, mean and nasty.

    I prefer Offler because he’s lazy and so less likely to mess with you- and you do get the sausages- but still, there are a lot of other appealing choices

  68. 68.

    Martin

    @Michael: Government is too big, and interferes too much with the free market, except when we need it to protect us from the microchip fairy!

  73. 73.

    Michael

    OT for the Open Thead, but all I can say is fuck me – some things just make me wish that there was a real Dexter out there doing justice.

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/02/john_thain_symbol_of_wall_st_e.html

    John Thain, the controversial former head of Merrill Lynch who helped make that company’s acquisition by Bank of America happen but was forced out soon afterwards, has been named chief executive of CIT.
    ….
    Thain became a symbol of Wall Street’s excesses because of his demand, later dropped, for a $10 million bonus in 2008 during a time when Merrill was imploding. Then there was his rushing through of about $4 billion in bonuses to Merrill executives before the completion Bank of America’s completion of the Merrill acquisition at a time when Merrill was booking huge losses.
    ….
    And as if that weren’t enough, Thain really stepped into it with the $1.2 million refurbishing of his offices, including a $35,000 commode, a fancy word for a toilet. Thain later apologized for what he called a lapse in judgment.

    Anybody got this fucker’s address and a really big roll of shrink wrap?

  74. 74.

    Comrade Darkness

    JOHN, there is circumstantial evidence it is a trailing slash issue.

    https://balloon-juice.com is not actually valid in world wide web land, the server has to make repairs and redirect. It is possibly not doing this the way things are configured, either because of WP or because of Cpanel. Rewrite engine can fix that. Could also be the caching function. If you haven’t tried restarting the apache server, I’d try that first. Harmless and if it’s a memory issue with the caching, that should fix it (at least temporarily). Unless that’s a separate service. in which case restart THAT one instead and not apache, just for debugging purposes.

  76. 76.

    Comrade Darkness

    @wrb: These were Jews picking, keep in mind. They were already biased by the biblical guy and not so interested in the titans or their upstart soap opera offspring.

    Frankly, there is some evidence that the Eleusinian Mysteries were a promise of life after death, which was absent in Olympus mythology except for a few heros getting elevated to “heaven”. Christiandom has that lure, and to a tired people, that can be a pretty compelling lure, and the price of entry is set pretty low.

  78. 78.

    atlliberal

    I heard if I post a comment, I’ll be able to get back in, so here it is. I have nothing really to say, just miss your pearls of wisdom.

  80. 80.

    atlliberal

    That $35,000 commode was probably an Italian inlaid wood chest or sideboard. I used to sell such things back when I was working.

  81. 81.

    Michael

    And in case any of you were wondering, CIT is the commercial lender that nearly went tits up just about every day for the past year.

    I’m sure that Thain will do as well there as he did at Merrill Lynch.

  84. 84.

    Blue Raven

    @beltane:

    Isn’t God supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient? Why does he need a frigging microchip to identify people.

    The Antichrist’s people do the embedding, not the agents of teh Loward.

  85. 85.

    J. Michael Neal

    Back from my job interview with the pleasant young woman at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Went well, I thought, but it was mostly answering canned questions that she sends on to headquarters. Only two things I wish I had a chance to change:

    1) It was probably a mistake to be honest when she asked me what accomplishment I’m proudest of. The answer I prep for that question is that I went back to school twelve years after I dropped out. (Failed out, actually, but they don’t need to know that, though they might guess from the transcript I sent them, which has about four straight quarters of nothing but Fs from 1989-90.)

    However, I obviously felt a little too comfortable and off guard, because the truth slipped out before I could stop it. I told her that my greatest accomplishment is overcoming depression. Once it was out, I tried to make the best of it. Who knows.

    2) I never found a place to slip in that my sympathies are with the regulators rather than the bankers, and would rather be working for the Feds. The closest I came was answering the question about where I see myself in five years. I told her that I see myself taking the exams for the promotion to Commissioner within the OCC.

    Still, I feel pretty good about it. They’ll let us know who is getting a second interview sometime in mid-March. Sigh. I hate waiting.

  91. 91.

    Carrie

    Oh heck, let’s all email JC anyway…just for the hell of it.
    I heard he likes that kind of thing.

  99. 99.

    Sentient Puddle

    The Palin gaffes continue. Do you remember her wearing a black bracelet similar to those Livestrong bracelets in her speech on Saturday? Did you wonder what it was? answer:

    …it is a memorial bracelet; something familiar to veterans who have lost friends and family in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
    …
    The name on her black memorial bracelet — one, like the gold star, a demonstration of a friend or associate who was killed in action — is that of her oldest son, Track.

    Track Palin is still alive.

  101. 101.

    Elie

    @jeffreyw:

    These are just fabulous… I love hawks and Coopers are so beautiful. One of our locals stops by to check out our feeder’s regulars from time to time… they are so beautiful!
    How did you catch these shots?

  104. 104.

    Elie

    @J. Michael Neal:

    Best to you, friend. You will do fine.

    My hubby is struggling with under employment — he is just doing some part time stuff and where we live makes it hard for him – his expertise is health services research but we live in an area with somewhat limited needs for that. We moved here eight years ago on a lark to do more climbing and outdoors activities and both of us have struggled with employment, thankfully, not at the same time – so far anyway. We probably need to move but also love the area so much. Damned painful.

    Anyway, keep on keeping on. My thoughts and good vibes are with you —

  116. 116.

    jeffreyw

    @Elie: Well, it comes down to luck mostly, but I am learning the camera controls a bit better. Getting a good focus is hard, but chances improve the deeper your depth of field. I boosted the minimum ISO speed to 1000 and set it for aperture priority with the aperture set fairly small, F11 or so, the higher ISO gives me a faster shutter. The rest is just waiting for a shot, and reflexes, 5 shots per second setting for a button push helps a lot. The rest is the fast auto focus and the brains in the camera. For every pic I post on Flickr there may be 20 that don’t make to cut, out of focus, subject out of frame, etc. I’m learning a lot just “pokin and hopin”. Any pros out there that want to help me out, feel free!

  120. 120.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Carrie:

    Oh heck, let’s all email JC anyway…just for the hell of it.
    I heard he likes that kind of thing.

    I don’t think it’s so much that he likes getting emails as much as it is that he loves answering each of them, individually, no matter how long it takes him to find exactly the right turn of phrase for each of his correspondents. Not to mention attaching all those Tunch and Lily pictures. And all this with a clipped wing!

  121. 121.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Michael:

    This sounds like something Demo Woman was mentioning in an earlier thread. Similar legislation is also being debated in Georgia, apparently (DW is way more up to date on this than I am). I’ll try to find that comment; maybe she provided a link.

  123. 123.

    mapaghimagsik

    Dear John:

    GET / HTTP/1.1
    Accept: image/jpeg, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/x-ms-application, application/xaml+xml, application/x-ms-xbap, */*
    Accept-Language: en-US
    User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727;
    Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
    Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
    Host: http://www.balloon-juice.com

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:19:33 GMT
    Server: Apache
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
    Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
    Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate
    WP-Cache: Served supercache file from PHP
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
    Content-Length: 0
    Connection: Keep-Alive

    GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1
    Accept: */*
    Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
    User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727;
    Host: http://www.balloon-juice.com
    Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:21:28 GMT
    Server: Apache
    Last-Modified: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:24:47 GMT
    ETag: “d068013-1019e-b2284dc0”
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate
    Expires: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:26:28 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
    Content-Length: 65950
    Connection: Keep-Alive

    Blank Page on IE8. had same problem with firefox, but strangely enough, a post seemed to fix.

    My email is linky — or not, added it to comment. Let me know if you need and I’ll email you further info from my yahoo account

    Wuv,

    Map

  126. 126.

    Ash Can

    OK, FWIW, I have had zero problems loading the front page on either IE8 or Firefox, as long as I do it on my laptop. When I try to access the site on our other computer, a POS dinosaur running Windows 98, I have the same access problems everyone else has, whether I use IE or Opera (no Firefox on the old computer; it can’t handle it). That doesn’t really tell me anything, but it may be useful information for someone more tech-savvy than I.

  127. 127.

    williamc

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    You are right. I read about it here in ATL in the new Creative Loafing out today. The great minds in the state Senate passed it overwhelmingly already (think there were only 2 no votes) think the chip has something to do with…Satan, or the Anti-christ or Libruls or somethin…

    This is a test…I can haz front page?

  129. 129.

    mapaghimagsik

    For those leaving comments on the main page. Magic!

    Hey John, pass this along to your web folks

    Watch this:

    Without posting first:

    GET / HTTP/1.1
    Host: http://www.balloon-juice.com
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
    Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
    Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
    Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
    Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
    Keep-Alive: 115
    Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
    Content-Length: 2

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:31:10 GMT
    Server: Apache
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
    Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
    Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate
    WP-Cache: Served supercache file from PHP
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
    Content-Length: 0
    Connection: Keep-Alive

    = FAIL (Blank page, with the fav.ico returning the actual page content)

    However:
    GET / HTTP/1.1
    Host: http://www.balloon-juice.com
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
    Accept: image/png,image/*;q=0.8,*/*;q=0.5
    Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
    Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
    Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
    Keep-Alive: 115
    Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
    Referer: https://balloon-juice.com/
    Cookie: bb2_screener_=1265845099+161.209.206.1; __utma_a2a=1.2145241236.1265838274.1265844797.1265845078.14; comment_author_8eb61f2233b3e728f3ec7ea20244d052=mapaghimagsik; comment_author_email_8eb61f2233b3e728f3ec7ea20244d052=***redacted***; comment_author_url_8eb61f2233b3e728f3ec7ea20244d052=http%3A%2F%2Fmapaghimagsik.comicgenesis.com
    Cache-Control: max-age=0

    works and returns the page as expected

    I re-tested removing all comment related information, and the error repeated.

  137. 137.

    mapaghimagsik

    @mclaren:

    yeah, just to kill this line of thought. I can reproduce the issue on Ubuntu. This is definitely the web server not serving up what its supposed to. Firefox 3.5.7 btw

    I’d be curious to proxy safari though, to see if there is already the comment cookie there, or if it is following up with a different request.

  139. 139.

    Don K

    It works! Thanks whoever found this fix first. (And John, please no nastygram for e-mailing you…)

  141. 141.

    Donald G

    Test test. Commenting didn’t work this morning in fixing the problem. Let’s see if it works this time.

    Seemed to work this time. Let’s see if I close the browser if I can get back in.

  144. 144.

    Comrade Darkness

    @mapaghimagsik: Do you still have the response header from that second successful transaction?

    Oh, hell, I guess I can go make my OWN successful response header, can’t I?

    This worked (normal request):
    Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:37:38 GMT
    Server: Apache
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
    Set-Cookie: bb2_screener_=1265848658+74.106.201.236; path=/
    Vary: Cookie
    X-Pingback: https://balloon-juice.com/xmlrpc.php
    Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=98
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Transfer-Encoding: chunked
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    200 OK

    I deleted domain cookies only but left cookies enabled overall and it still worked:
    Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:38:45 GMT
    Server: Apache
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
    Vary: Cookie
    X-Pingback: https://balloon-juice.com/xmlrpc.php
    WP-Super-Cache: WP-Cache
    Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=97
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Transfer-Encoding: chunked
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    200 OK

    Disabled ALL cookies and yup, it fails:
    Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:40:57 GMT
    Server: Apache
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
    Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
    Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate
    WP-Cache: Served supercache file from PHP
    Content-Length: 0
    Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    200 OK

    The WP-Cache response is different in all three cases although only the last delivers no content. AND in fact the header say Content-length: 0. So it doesn’t think it has anything to deliver. I still would waterboard the caching service until it talks.

  147. 147.

    Comrade Darkness

    Okay, yet another case. Everyone having fun with this frog dissection of the intertubes? Can’t you just smell the digital formaldehyde?

    With cookies still disabled, this url works with this response header

    https://balloon-juice.com/?p=0

    Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:47:40 GMT
    Server: Apache
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
    Set-Cookie: bb2_screener_=1265849260+74.106.201.236; path=/
    Vary: Cookie
    X-Pingback: https://balloon-juice.com/xmlrpc.php
    Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=93
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Transfer-Encoding: chunked
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    200 OK

    Boy, it looks like there are three different services responding, depending upon the circumstances.

  153. 153.

    Darkness

    From the wp-super-cache docs:

    WP Super Cache
    …
    This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
    …
    The static html files will be served to the vast majority of your users, but because a user’s details are displayed in the comment form after they leave a comment those requests are handled by PHP. Static files are served to:
    …
    1. Users who are not logged in.
    2. Users who have not left a comment on your blog.
    3. Or users who have not viewed a password protected post.

    I think we have a culprit

  154. 154.

    mapaghimagsik

    @Darkness:

    Nicely freakin done! I think this agrees with what I’m seeing as well.

    kick that caching service in the junk until it cries!

    And yeah, there’s not enough digital dissection in my life these days. Too much CISSP.

  155. 155.

    guhm61

    Declared victory too soon. On Safari getting a “…web server isn’t responding…” message. Went back to Firefox – no luck. So back to accessing site via Google then via the February 2010 Archive files

  158. 158.

    Comrade Darkness

    @mapaghimagsik: I’ve got more than that, actually, but I assume the webmages do as well.

    content-length occurs in one and only one place in all of the super cache code.

    In wp-cache-phase2.php

    if ( !headers_sent() && isset( $wp_cache_gzip_first ) && 1 == $wp_cache_gzip_first && $wp_cache_gzip_encoding && $gzdata) {
    if ( isset( $GLOBALS[ ‘wp_super_cache_debug’ ] ) && $GLOBALS[ ‘wp_super_cache_debug’ ] ) wp_cache_debug( “Writing gzip content headers. Sending buffer to browser”, 5 );
    header( ‘Content-Encoding: ‘ . $wp_cache_gzip_encoding );
    header( ‘Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie’ );
    header( ‘Content-Length: ‘ . $gzsize );
    return $gzdata;

    tracking down $gzsize, it’s coming from . . .

    if( $gz || $wp_cache_gzip_encoding ) {
    if ( isset( $GLOBALS[ ‘wp_super_cache_debug’ ] ) && $GLOBALS[ ‘wp_super_cache_debug’ ] ) wp_cache_debug( “Gzipping buffer.”, 5 );
    $gzdata = gzencode( $buffer . ““, 3, FORCE_GZIP );
    $gzsize = strlen($gzdata);
    }

    Gosh this code is messy. I don’t even see where this thing reloads the gzip file back in to serve to the next customer. I only see it saving it.

    I’d call it a bug. Possibly one that could be solved by turning off gzip in super cache, at least to see if that helps.

  159. 159.

    mapaghimagsik

    @Comrade Darkness:

    That’s wordpress lib code, right? PHP is not my fu, more a .. well nevermind. But my exposure to WP code and PHP in general is that cleanliness isn’t as culturally enforced as other languages, mostly because you can get the job done so quick and it does seem readable at the most basic levels…but I digress.

    I’m using BURP Proxy to decipher what I’m seeing. Its more a black box move, so I’m glad someone is white boxing this thing.

    If there’s a cache in the way, I think there’s something weird with it, fav.ico was returning a full blown page, which is just darn odd.

    Oddly enough, my last run and record indicated fav.ico wasn’t spitting out crap, so I suspect code or configuration is changing out from underneath us.

    Odd to be communicating via the web site you’re diagnosing.

    Any bets there’s a ‘dev’ or ‘qa’ site? Anyone?

  168. 168.

    Comrade Darkness

    @mapaghimagsik: It’s a third party module that is WP compatible. It is sloppy, although, it’s not doing really all that much, so it doesn’t have to be nasa spec or anything. It does look like it could use a major cleanup by the author.

  170. 170.

    Jude

    Leaving a comment to see if it works…

    I keep finding the front page by clicking on ‘cache’ in a Google search for this site.
    Well, it was time to comment anyway. I love this place!

  172. 172.

    Jude

    It worked. How strange.

    WordPress sucks. My site got hacked so badly through WP. It became a portal and server to some porn junk and I eventually had to start all over again. Hopefully the issues here are much easier to deal with!

  173. 173.

    gardengirl

    Love the site, been lurking for a while. Hope posting works for me as well.

    Did anyone else laugh at the weekend’s headline
    “Snow Paralyzes Washington” I thought the Republican’s in the senate were going for that distinction.

  175. 175.

    mapaghimagsik

    @Comrade Darkness:

    If its responsible for this miserable state of affairs, the author needs to be kicked in the junk repeatedly.

    Or, it could be configuration. Still, its not good software until the authors of offensive bugs have been kicked in the proverbial junk.

    No junk was hurt in the creation of this post.

  180. 180.

    Ron

    Bizarre. It works fine when I use firefox, but comes up blank when I use Chrome. Sounds like a truly bizarro issue.

  187. 187.

    Brendan

    Been locked out of the front page of balloon-juice for what seems like a week or so (perhaps I’m overreacting due to the blizzard). Anyway, trying the post-comment trick…

  192. 192.

    frosty

    Just a comment for comment’s sake. And to see if this gets me back to the front page.

    Carry on.

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