Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

T R E 4 5 O N

I really should read my own blog.

In my day, never was longer.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

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

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

People are weird.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

White supremacy is terrorism.

In after Baud. Damn.

The words do not have to be perfect.

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Reader Interactions

98Comments

  4. 4.

    abscam

    Glad to hear it. I, too, am on a bottle…of Berkshire Brewing Company’s Drayman’s Porter. And the bottle is good.

    Abscam +4

  7. 7.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    We made a booze run into northern Cali today so we’ve been flying the B-52 tonight. Bombs away!

        +4        +10
    (bombs)/(bongs)

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    @Comrade Mary: I dated a Canadian for awhile and we even discussed the whole marriage thing for quite awhile. One of the rationales was he was worried about me being gay in America, but also because he wanted me to get on the BC health care system ASAP. I’m okay as far as insurance goes right now, but it was kinda sweet of him really.

    @asiangrrlMN: I make cookies does that count as a bennie? Course if you call me a surrogate wife it may not be pretty.

  11. 11.

    gwangung

    West Coast laggard, watching the Olympics.

    While I like watching some of the less traditional events, I still enjoy the big events like skiing. Watching the Super G…really impressive watching athletes push the edge (particularly when some go flying over it….).

  12. 12.

    Jude

    Mr. Cole–the bottle stands by you sir.

    Yeah, that means you pass it around, everyone gets drunk, and you sing sea shanties.

  13. 13.

    booda

    Cheers John and Tammy! The bottle over here is a nice California table red. The dogs are lazy labs and the entertainment is season 3 of Mad Men. Hope your bottle is good enough to make the shoulder better for a while…

  14. 14.

    Sanka

    They told me that if Obama became POTUS, justice would be restored:

    Washington (CNN) — Bush administration lawyers who wrote “torture” memos have been cleared of allegations of professional misconduct after a Justice Department internal investigation, which recommends no legal consequences for their actions.

    There goes one of the three table legs of progressive nutrootsian angst.

  15. 15.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Fire and Rain is a masterpiece. Most people do not know this, but Taylor’s friends decided to surprise him and send the girl he loved to see his concert in a distant town. She got into the airplane which crashed. He was devastated and delayed the concert by a day.

    In this day, he wrote the song, and opened with it the following day.

    Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone. Susanne the plans they made put an end to you.

    I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song. I just can’t remember who to send it to.

  16. 16.

    eemom

    99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer…..

    b’lieve it or not, kids aren’t allowed to sing that on school property these days.

    Or to wear hats to school — hats of any kind, including Santa caps at Christmas — because hats are associated with GANGS.

    Maybe it wasn’t so bad growing up in the boring old 1970s after all.

    eemom + lost track

  17. 17.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Here is an open thread for you all. My surrogate wife, Tammy, took me out for the evening, and we had some food and are now on the bottle.

    And the bottle is good.

    That was great. Read sort of like Hemmingway, if he wrote science fiction.

    Woody Allen did a great parody of Hemmingway years ago in his stand up routine.

    Found it. Good god you really can find anything online these days.

    (Scroll down to “The Lost Generation”)

  18. 18.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    Today I fell in love with a 7-year old black Great Dane, with beautiful white markings on her face and chest. She was released by her family because of financial hardship. I thought she and I would be a perfect fit, until I came to my senses and remembered that my current living situation would offer too many physical challenges for a soon to be geriatric Dane.

    Now I’m sad. I know I’ll have to be dog-less for just a bit longer. But I am impatient.

  24. 24.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun.

    Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around.

    Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come.

    Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

    Tragic genius.

  25. 25.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Woody: The Vodka Ad (excerpt)

    I consult with my spiritual counselor, who in my case is my rabbi. I called him on the phone and laid the proposition on him, and he said “Don’t do it, ’cause it’s illegal and immoral to advertise a product that you don’t use, just for the money.” And I said “Okay”, and I passed the ad up and I must say, that it took great courage at the time, ’cause I needed the money, I was writing and I needed to be free, creative. I was working on a non-fiction version of the Warren report.

    A month later I’m leafing through a Life magazine, and I see a photograph of Monique van Vooren in a slim bikini bathing suit, and she is on the beach in Jamaica, and there, next to her, with a cool vodka in his hand, is my rabbi.

  26. 26.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Yutsano: That looks yummy!

    I took my pics of my Tunchie swag, but it’s hard to get good pics of oneself. I will see if any of them work out, otherwise, I will enlist help from a friend to take better pics.

  27. 27.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    @General Egal Tarian Stuck: Thanks. I don’t know why, but the last couple of months have really been hard. The house is too quiet without one of those lumbering beasts sharing my space. But I have to do what’s right for the big puppy and not something entirely selfish.

    Here’s a picture of her: Big Dogs-Huge Paws

    I was really surprised by how many Danes have shown up since Christmas. They were down to about 3.

  29. 29.

    Wiesman

    Something I learned from Conservatives this week

    I learned that if a college student hates a war his country is fighting in and decides to destroy some government property, while trying to avoid hurting anyone, then that person is a terrorist who should be so ostracized that even forty years later anyone who “pals around with him” should be automatically disqualified from public service.

    However, if a guy gets fed up with paying taxes and big government and decides to fly an airplane loaded with fuel into an IRS building in an attempt to kill a bunch of IRS workers, then that person is just misguided and actually makes some good points.

  34. 34.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @metalgirl:

    If I were in Mr. Cole’s shoes I would be politely asking for a carefully done upper back/neck massage. My neck has been opened up three times so I have a good idea what John is going through (pain-wise). When you are in pain you don’t realize how sore and tired you get just from the ‘bracing’ your body does in response to it. That’s a large part of the reasoning behind pain medications and it’s surprising how few people realize this. They aren’t to make you so numb that you don’t feel anything but too many people think that’s how they work. I am very well versed in pain management due to the numerous arm/hand/elbow and neck operations I have had (seventeen so far) and one doc who knew how to deal with pain and communicated that to me.

    I wanted to understand what the painkillers do and how they could best benefit me. Luckily one of my docs was a top-notch Mayo Clinic trained surgeon who was an expert in pain management. The key focus in post-operative healing should be staying as comfortable and relaxed as you can to allow your body time to heal. If you are wincing from pain you tend to ‘pull yourself inward’ with your muscles. You are cringing from the pain and in doing so you create more pain by stressing/tensing the muscles in the areas that are healing. This tensing also restricts circulation around the wound which further inhibits healing. In some cases the pulling can be so strong that it actually reopens the wound.

    The key to healing is to take enough painkiller to take the edge off of your pain so you can relax and then maintain that level of medication religiously for a short period of time. Not mind-numbingly stoned, just enough to take the edge off of the pain. It takes some figuring to get the amount right but I broke tablets up to get the dosage I wanted rather than just taking a prescribed amount (just make sure it isn’t a timed-release tablet!). When properly dosed with a painkiller for a period of time you will adjust to the regular dose and the comfort level. As you heal you should start to ‘forget’ doses as you start to forget to take it at the set time. You will also feel more comfortable and able to do small things. That’s when you need to start tapering off and not just cut it off. It’s a balancing act but it’s worth it when done properly.

    My big mistake with this plan was that it worked so good at first that I skipped out on the resting part and tried to get my type-A ass to doing things again. Big, stupid mistake on my part and I figured it out real fast while talking with the doc about it. He pointed out that when you are properly dosed with a pain med you will  feel like mowing the lawn. That’s what happens when pain is properly managed and you are not overdosed, you feel like you are great! No you’re not, you have to give yourself a chance to heal after an invasive operation, especially when it involves your spine, neck or limbs. No free lunch! ;)

    Back to the massage: When you have been ‘fighting’ pain your muscles tense up and you ‘draw into yourself’. Heat and a gentle massage will help you relax and allow better circulation, which makes for faster healing. As much as you are chomping at the bit John (and I understand that!), you need to let your body heal. When you are in pain it’s trying to tell you something.

    Listen to it! :)

    /slightly tipsy advice

  36. 36.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: I have to admit the crush he has on Rachel makes me laugh to no end. She is very happily espoused to her long-time girlfriend (I realize this slightly bums you out as well but need to make the point here) so barking up the wrong tree is a bit of a mild metaphor. Or I’m just easily amused one of the two.

  37. 37.

    Comrade Luke

    Quite the Bill Moyers tonight. He interviews Justice Kennedy, who is very much against money in elections, particularly judicial elections.

    Oh btw, the interview was 10yrs ago. Last month he wrote the majority decision in the Citizens United case.

  38. 38.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @JG:

    Old J.T. himself got a bit sick of it from the sound of it, going by lyrics in a more recent song:

    Fortune and fame, such a curious game, perfect strangers call you by name, and pay good money to hear “Fire and Rain”, again and again and again….

  40. 40.

    AkaDad

    Today I fell in love with a 7-year old black Great Dane…

    See what happens when you allow gay marriage?

  42. 42.

    asiangrrlMN

    @AkaDad: That’s just damn funny.

    OK. I am not one to bitch about what the Olympics choose to show, but the compulsories of the pairs figure skating? Really? Not a lick of curling or hockey? Seriously? That’s just wrong.

  43. 43.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Why do I find myself defending James Taylor on Balloon Juice? Not sure, but the man is brilliant.

    + Too many

  44. 44.

    Morbo

    @asiangrrlMN: Curling is on CNBC, has been for the last 3 hours. I had forgotten how slow curling is live with them doing so many of them taped. Team Denmark is quite good looking. Oh, it has been a great match, too.

  46. 46.

    Boudica

    @asiangrrlMN

    Ice dancing not figure skating……..you can see curling at 3 am, like I did last night when I woke in the middle of the night.

  49. 49.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Brick Oven Bill: Defending him from what?

    Debunking of some apocryphal story about one song of his that you had bought?

    I used to love his stuff, haven’t listened in a while. Around the album with “Mexico” in it, whatever that was, great stuff. The one about Rio also. Great voice leading. He’s a terrific musician, as well as song writer.

  52. 52.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: To be honest, for a traditional Asian woman, that reaction is quite…progressive. I guess you should be grateful for that at least.

    I was actually going somewhere different with the joke though. Great Dane, big Dawg, wink wink nudge nudge say no more. Granted he’s not black but still…

  54. 54.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: Nephew is way different from a daughter though. It seems to put a direct responsibility on the parent. Trust me I went through all this with mine. They do eventually get over it supposedly. At least my youngest brother got married so it takes some of the grandchild pressure off me.

  55. 55.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Yutsano: Well, in addition, my mom doesn’t get the bi thing. She gets gay, but not bi. She just likes to pretend I’m not. Then again, she also pestered me to have kids until just this past year, and she’s still pestering me to get married. And she already has grandchildren.

  56. 56.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: It took my mom forever to finally give up pestering me. My big excuse now is I can’t afford them (which is true) and that seems to be holding. Hell she wanted me to pop one out even after I told her I liked men. Notice that I have NOT told her the ballad of the gay Wyoming cowboy. :)

  57. 57.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Yutsano: Your mom sounds like my mom. My mom even said I could adopt a black baby to match my cats. She was only half-joking. I think it’s just because my ovaries are too old that she’s given up on the kid thing. Like I said, getting me married off is her new quest.

  58. 58.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: We’ll just have to make sure they never meet each other. The last thing my mom needs is any kind of reinforcement of the ideas she has about her children.

  60. 60.

    JGabriel

    Yutsano:

    We’ll just have to make sure they never meet each other.

    Sounds like they’d probably just arrange a marriage between the two of you for appearance’s sake.

    .

  61. 61.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: I’ll be honest: I’d let you marry me in Taiwan just for the health benefits but otherwise we’d be pretty open. I don’t think you’d mind that as long as you got your boot knocking opportunities (and I did too!).

    @JGabriel: If my parents were to ever arrange a marriage (and they’re not above doing so) they would do it with my younger brother who they know for sure is straight and also is single.

  62. 62.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Yutsano: That’s true. A marriage of convenience? You would cook, of course. Not bad. Sadly, I am not a Taiwanese citizen.

    By the way, you know what’s better than punching hippies? Punching icicles. VERY satisfying.

  63. 63.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: Icicles are fun to play with. They make great murder weapons too. You’re better off not asking how I know this. :: whistles innocently ::

    I was wondering if you had a dual citizenship thing going. Ah well such is life.

  65. 65.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: I actually found out a couple of years ago I could claim Canadian citizenship by virtue of my being Quebecois. I’ve never pursued it although I seriously considered doing that. I have another positive there with a college degree, the only restriction is I’d have to live in Quebec, and if I recall correctly I don’t get to choose where I live. If the election had gone another way I may have pursued it much more seriously.

    Oh and we had an accident when I was in high school involving an icicle and a chicken. Impaled the poor girl perfectly, and then melted away into nothing.

  71. 71.

    Yutsano

    @freelancer:

    You have a masterful ability to make the simplest of sentences completely amusing.

    It’s more of a sickness than a disease. Don’t worry it’ll come to you.

    Oh and the homophobe thing? Words. Fucking. Fail. But yeah the whole thing in italics is fantasy. NO gay man would EVER say something like that and mean his sexuality.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    @Boudica:

    [. . .] you can see curling at 3 am, like I did last night when I woke in the middle of the night.

    Which is exactly my situation. Worked a rare day shift today–Friday–was lying down just to rest up until the Olympics came on NBC at 8:00 p.m., then the next thing I knew I was drifting in and out of sleep until I finally woke up for real in the last hour. Fortunately I don’t have to go back to work until 4:00 p.m.

    Man, what did people do before cable TV?

  74. 74.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: We never had cable until I was in high school (back then it was very expensive and we were poor Navy folks) and it pretty much sucked ass. Now cable is my Internet and my parents have satellite. Life has changed a lot.

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack

    @Yutsano:

    Actually, I’m old enough to remember what life was like before cable (and the Internet). I just don’t remember all this being up in the middle of the night so much. I wonder how much having stuff available to do at all hours has contributed to the erosion of the “normal” day.

  79. 79.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: I honestly don’t know how people did the night shift back in the day. There was literally zero entertainment going on. Of course now it’s mostly infomercials on after a certain time so I’m not sure we’re better off for that.

  80. 80.

    Gravenstone

    I’ve been working nights nearly 20 years. Now I sit and surf, before I listened to the radio and/or read a book. Of course, every now and then I am expected to do my damned job as well.

  81. 81.

    Yutsano

    @Gravenstone: I surf in between calls at work, although that may be ending soon. They keep making us do more and more with no change in compensation. I’m thinking I might just go job hunting if this situation doesn’t improve.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    @Yutsano:

    My epiphanal realization that I was a night owl came at the end of college. I was a journalism major and did an internship on the night shift of the city paper my last summer. (I finished college at the end of the summer.)

    Went to work about 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., got off about 1:00 or so in the morning. A group of us would go bowling, then end up at Denny’s or IHOP for an “early” breakfast. Or I would go home and putter around most of the night. Then I would sleep from 7:00 to 2:00 or so. I loved it. And was horrified that I loved it, because even then I knew this could be an inconvenient lifestyle for anyone outside New York City. And I didn’t live in New York City.

  83. 83.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: I’ve known I was a night owl forever. The thing is my wall is 2 Am. After that I’m a useless zombie. Hell being honest about that fact just cost me a promotion. But like I just mentioned there are a few other things happening beyond that that I’m finding myself not in agreement with. I may have to get the resumé dusted off a bit more here when I get back from Arizona in April.

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    @Yutsano:

    I knew you were up for a promotion and that you would find out about it last Monday. And then I saw a brief mention that you didn’t get it but the person who did was all right, but I missed the specifics in the middle. How did it go down? And were you bummed, or was it a fair deal?

    (Or you can just point me back to the relevant thread.)

  86. 86.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack:

    I’ve known I was a night owl forever. The thing is my wall is 2 Am. After that I’m a useless zombie. Hell being honest about that fact just cost me a promotion.

    That’s a fairly decent synopsis of how it happened. The funny thing is that if I had lied I probably would have been chosen. That exposed a rather nasty side of my workplace I was either willfully ignoring or somehow unaware of after a year and a half.

  88. 88.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: The shift they were hiring was from 7 am to 4 am, but they basically wanted me to be a puppet on a string and work whatever time they chose with little to no say in the matter for me. Knowing that was the condition that killed me really got under my skin, because it had zero to do with my qualifications and skills and everything to do with how much dicking around they could do with me tolerating it.

    BTW my current schedule is 12-9 Sun-Thurs.

  89. 89.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I’m sort of night owl bi. I can do the day shift thing, and have done it for long stretches in my career, confining the night-owl action to the weekend. But working and being active at night is fine with me, and I used to be mildly surprised that it wrecked so many people.

    What I am finding in my current situation–which is (not enough) freelance software work combined with the retail gig at the Big Box Bookstore–is that I need some level of consistency. Before Christmas I was almost exclusively closing at the store, starting sometime in the afternoon and going to about 11:00 p.m. Maybe one day a week I would fill in for someone on the day shift or the midshift (about 10:00-11:00 to 7:00-8:00). That mostly left me the morning and early afternoon to work on software stuff and do “normal” things. And I would do the night-owl thing after coming home from the night shift.

    But since the holidays my schedule has been really messed up. This week (Tue-Sat) my schedule has been 8:30 a.m., 4:00 p.m., 11:00 a.m., 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. (Saturday). This has totally fucked up even my exotic circadian rhythms. Me no likey.

  90. 90.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Steeplejack: Yup. I hear you. Consistency is key. Like I said, I was slowly working towards a more normal schedule until I went to Taiwan. Now, all bets are off. Feh. It’s my own damn fault, though, because I set my own schedule.

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Do you want to have a more normal schedule? I know sleep (or lack thereof) has been a problem for you. Do you think a more normal schedule would help that.

    I have been seeing–but cannot track down–references to studies that allegedly show that being asleep between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. is really good for you. I am sure there are people who are exceptions to that, but it makes you wonder. Could there be a link to depression or other conditions?

  97. 97.

    Cain

    @Bad Horse’s Filly:

    Today I fell in love with a 7-year old black Great Dane, with beautiful white markings on her face and chest. She was released by her family because of financial hardship. I thought she and I would be a perfect fit, until I came to my senses and remembered that my current living situation would offer too many physical challenges for a soon to be geriatric Dane.

    I fell in love with the Great Dane in the movie “Seven Pounds”. (A decent movie.. I liked it)

    cain

  98. 98.

    Dr.BDH

    Renounce Ronald Reagan, John Cole, or live forever outside the pale.

    Never forget how that man screwed over America. Never forget and never forgive.

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