(Scott Meyer’s website)
__
And (speaking of John Wayne Gacy) why does every article about Zynga’s Mark Pincus make him sound like a creepy Borg-wannabe imitation of a human being? Is it just jealousy, or are the beings behind Facebook just that weird?
__
So… apart from buying fun over the internet, what’s on everybody’s agenda for the evening?
Reader Interactions
129Comments
Comments are closed.
TenguPhule
The goat had to be silenced, lest it spill who was blowing it.
stuckinred
Treme on demand! 10pm is too late on Sunday!
ruemara
trying to write an op-edish letter to a local gov that’s about to fire people and then spend the savings on pet projects, contractors and probably gum. Wisconsin, it’s getting closer to home all the time.
I also wrestled this most excellent jalapeno pork bits into my belly. I believe it counts.
BGinCHI
This evening I am going to be composing haiku (whatever the plural is) to the theme:
Mitch McConnell Is a Dick.
stuckinred
BGinCHI
At first I thought you said “composting”!
jeffreyw
Working up a shrimp/crab mornay.
kdaug
Waiting for it to drop below 98 degrees so I can go out and mow.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I have a date with my rowing machine and Rachel Maddow turned up really loud. But it’s not evening here yet.
shortstop
Please to enjoy these fine photos of (mostly Dem, naturally) Congressladies kickin’ it on teh diamond. And note that Lynn Sweet’s stance is as tortured as her prose.
Phyllis
Watching the Gamecocks beat Florida in the College World Series.
BGinCHI
Phyllis, have some good friends that teach at USC.
I’d say “Go Cocks,” but I don’t want anyone to mistake my enthusiasm for GOP support.
lamh34
I’m supposed to be washing and folding every piece of clothing in my house and separating them based on if they fit or not, and finally putting away my winter clothes.
I’m also supposed to be picking out the clothes I’m gonna bring to wear on my trip home to NOLA. I’ve got the washing part down, but as for the folding and separating…
right now, I’m sitting on the sofa, watching the new Looney Toons Show and surfing the net…
MisterMattguy
If anyone is in a charitable mood this evening and interested in tormenting some poor saps playing Mario Bros. games, check out http://www.mariomarathon.com
A charity event to support Child’s Play (they provide games and toys for children in hospitals around the world), they have raised over $80,000 this year, and with enough donations they will be forced to play the dreaded Super Mario Sunshine blue star levels.
lamh34
O-bot signing in…I thought this was a cute story.
Justin Bieber meets fan, thanks to Obama
Phyllis
@BGinChi: I think you’re okay with Go Cocks. Now if you were saying ‘Go Dicks’, that might cause some confusion.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
For one of the must gobsmacking takes on the whole Prosser choke-out deal, Greta van Sustern covered it, and her response? Chief Justice Abrahamsson must go!! You know, for failing to lead in a way that prevented her justices from throttling one another!
EDIT: Derf, silly me, wrong link.
Catsy
@BGinChi:
It scans really well when followed by, “E-I-E-I-O.”
Martin
Gotta give the GOP some credit here. When they threatened to shoot the hostage in the govt shutdown negotiations, they got rolled by the Dems who refused to call their bluff. They learned and realized the debt limit was even better – now they’re threatening to shoot Jesus. I still think they’re going to get rolled mainly because the GOP thinks they’re playing chicken with the Dems, but it’s really Wall Street that may blink first, and if they do, well, the GOP will take any deal the Dems put before them.
arguingwithsignposts
@liamh34
Two style points on that Politiho story: Her father *died,* she didn’t *lose* him like a pet or a favorite locket. And he died on Sept. 11, *2001* – there’s a Sept. 11 every year.
Fuckin’ copy editing, how does it work?
BO_Bill
Nice evening planned. Work out and tri-tip barbeque with my friend the boxing coach. This guy is really talented and experienced but he likes to drink and has a temper. He also outweighs me by about 30 pounds and was some sort of Marine Corps boxing champion. The problem is that if he has been drinking and I land a solid hit, he can go South Boston flashback. I recently had a rib broken in this manner and several bloody noses. Not this bad but still it frickin’ hurts and you get a headache.
There are a lot of life-lessons that can be learned by practicing this art. And you never know when you might want to go to McDonalds or a street festival.
Lysana
It’s not jealousy, Anne Laurie, Pincus and his company are like that. Very dog-eat-dog in their hierarchy. Sure, you can rise up there faster than in many other companies. But as soon as your project is on the skids, unless you’re damn lucky and position yourself to be riding the next wave, you’re toast. And there are WAY too many chiefs. You also have to figure things out without anyone helping you understand the zeitgeist. Either you get it or you don’t, and you’re gone even faster if you don’t.
Studly Pantload, a full-service troll
One thing I will not be doing is commenting on how Michelle Bachmann is so crazy-stupid, she can’t differentiate between an iconic actor and a serial killer. Wake me when she actually blurts out, “I wanna live in the America of John Wayne, where boys are killed and stuffed into various cubbies about the home!”
Don’t get me wrong. She is crazy-stupid. But she seems to at least have the capacity to dress herself and things of this nature, for FSM’s sake.
Linda Featheringill
I have a new toy: a food dehydrator. When we went to the grocery store yesterday, we picked some veggies to try drying in an effort to match those really expensive bags of veggie chips. Yesterday, we tried rutabaga. I didn’t like it, daughter loved it. Today we tried parsnips. Not bad, from both of us.
In the instructions found everywhere they tell you to blanch and then oil and then . . . Well, I had some room left on a tray and took a cucumber and made a few slices, with the skin on, and with a little salt sprinkled on.
I love the cucumbers! And I didn’t do a darn thing to them!
I don’t know how long they would keep. Probably about 37 minutes around here. :-)
Matthew Reid Krell
@8: You, too, are a rower? What side? Where? Other personal questions that I shouldn’t ask someone who I know as only a name on the intarwebs?
Studly Pantload, a full-service troll
@BO_Bill
Your schtick (I can’t buy a thing you post, exceptin’ maybe that you like to cook outdoors) is a fascinating mix of the really, really dry and the absurd. Like what “Twin Peaks” might have been like if NPR had produced it.
Maude
Bachmann got 2 out of 3 on the John Wayne. She’s doing better.
Violet
Those Facebook people are weird. Why do they think everyone wants everything about themselves made public? So weird.
As for tonight, waiting for it to cool down, then I’m going for a bike ride.
Dennis SGMM
@BGinCHI
McConnell seems more suited to limericks than to haiku.
There once was a McConnell named Mitch…
Catsy
ICC issues arrest warrant for Gadhafi
Neocon war cheerleader has a sad:
Rubin then went on to add(*), “Besides, I can’t admit the legitimacy of the ICC because they might one day prosecute Bush administration
war criminalsfreedom fighters.”(*) Not really. But he thought about it really hard.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Matthew R K: Nah, I only row things that are sitting on dry land. I got into the rowing machine because it’s a good hard full-body workout and the ones at the gym are almost always free. Real rowing looks like masochistic fun, but it always seems to occur at absurdly early hours in the morning and I can’t get into that.
As for Facebook: however much fun/use people get out of it, it’s worth remembering at all times that it was designed to collect personal information and redistribute it, and it is operating as intended.
gbear
And so here I follow up with the perfect single: ‘Hey Cecelia’ by E I E I O
BGinCHI
@Dennis SGMM
Who had an inveterate twitch,
jeffreyw
Tell ’em what yer gonna do, do it, show ’em what ya done did.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@jeffreywhotormentshungryBJerswithfoodporn: HO-LEE … gimme some of that. That looks amazing. Is this the recipe from your blog?
SiubhanDuinne
Georgia (the state) is having an online competition to choose the design of our next license plate.
There are eight proposed designs, every damned one of which involves a peach. Fair enough. Boring and obvious and unimaginative, but fair.
THREE of the eight designs include the motto “In God We Trust.”
If one of those makes it through the final vetting process, I wonder if Georgia’s highway accident rate will improve.
BGinCHI
@SiubhanDuinne, I’d vote for “Sucks Less Than Florida.”
Dennis SGMM
@BGinCHI
The words of Obama caused him such trauma,
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Fortunately, I keep reading that President Obama has them right where he wants them in the historic Debt Ceiling Negotiations. The guy is a one-man Republican Wrecking Crew.
.
.
jeffreyw
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I kinda just wing that recipe anymore. It’s been a while but I think there is a recipe at W4D somewhere. I may put some pics up there in a minute and see if I can’t link to it.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@SiubhanDuinne: When it comes to driving, “Wisdom, Justice, Moderation” sounds like pretty good advice to me, but if I saw it on a Georgia plate I’d probably start laughing so hard I’d crash my car.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Isn’t that Mr. Cole’s ZIP code?
.
.
AAA Bonds
Saw a new one today:
“our pro-life freedoms”
Compare to K-Lo’s
“false sense of freedom”
referring to gay marriage in NY.
It’s an interesting dichotomy that’s been set up here, while liberals were busy satirizing and then getting sick of satirizing the abuse of the word “freedom”.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Fuck.
This is getting ugly.
Obama has lost the Black vote.
http://tinyurl.com/3rc92by
JPL
SiubhanDuinne @ 34 .. I almost wrote a reply on Galloway’s blog when I saw that but decided not to. That site brings out the crazies. I might have to buy a vanity plate.
Edit.. Would the eagle or the pink ribbon plate have in god we trust on them.. That doesn’t seem fitting at all, also, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice #39:
It’s funny enough on the state seal/flag. Of course, IGWT is on there also too.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Just remember, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you aren’t going to wind up with a better license plate than New Mexico.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike Kay #43:
You scared me there for half a second, but now I’m all “awwwwwwww…”
@JPL #44:
I was thinking exactly the same thing when I saw it today! Do you suppose they’d let us use a picture of Tunch instead of a peach? Your plate can say OBEY and mine can say FEED.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore #46: That is a seriously beautiful design. Love the colours, love the simplicity, love the total absence of ingodwetrustitude…
lamh34
Not that any seems to care, but I really enjoyed the footage of FLOTUS and the WeeMichelles in South AFrica and Botswana.
If you care do check out the videos available of the FLOTUS’s trip @ whitehouse.gov and on the WH you-tube channel.
Also check out the speech she gave in South AFrica…it was really moving, IMHO
SiubhanDuinne
Uh, what happened to the Edit function? Did it run off and elope with Reply?
Felanius Kootea
@Mike Kay
Yeah it’s heartbreaking. And there’s nothing he can do to get it back, if that picture is anything to go by.
ETA: I still see it.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
And the best part is that the design is also the State Flag. It’s basically an unbeatable design.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@SiubhanDuinne: They were last seen heading for New York.
Actually, I’ve had Edit show up and then disappear randomly all day. I’ve been using the Link workaround for Reply.
Edited (because I can) to add: Edit’s working fine with Firefox.
andy
You might be interested to hear that a Minnesota Anarchist group has endorsed the MN GOP’s effort to trigger a state shutdown here.
The bestest part:
jeffreyw
Here ya go, Comrade.
JCT
@andy
Kropotkin? Sounds like he’s straight out of “Love and Death”
Chukwu
Hows this?:
There was a McConnell named Mitch
Who called taxes “robbing the rich”
His pockets were laden
With odes to St. Reagan
And plans on reviving the lich.
Felanius Kootea
@andy
The second-best part is their name: CRAP (Coalition for Restoring Anarchist Principles).
ruemara
Mike Kay and they’re sending mini-domestic hug bombs to squeeze him to the left.
slag
@50
The Reply function…now THERE was a really useful feature. I didn’t realize quite how useful until it went away. Which is how, I suspect, many will feel after all of their government services disappear. Ahhh…Reply function/Medicare/Social Security…we hardly knew ye.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@jeffreyw: Thanks! I think I’ve got the ingredients at home already, and since my husband and son are out of town, it’s MINE, ALL MINE!
@andy: Tee-hee. “Coalition for Restoring Anarchist Principles.”
Djur
P.A. “Pete” Kropotkin
That’s adorable.
Spaghetti Lee
Re: The Anarchists, smells like troll to me. No way a quote that perfect gets made on accident.
And for Georgia’s license plate slogan, I humbly suggest “WEEEE-OOH!” (Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat)
JPL
SiubhanDuinne God’s winning. The AJC has a poll up for your favorite plate and one of the peachy god plates is ahead.
It’s your civic duty to vote against god…
BGinCHI
OK, maybe this:
There was a McConnell named Mitch
Who drove us all into the ditch
He tried blaming blacks
For the jobs that we lacks
While the Koch brothers’ make him their b(i)tch.
Spaghetti Lee
And as for Mark Pincus, I think a lot of those Silicon Valley young guns are creeps. That’s part of why I never got on board with Facebook in the first place.
Djur
smells like troll to me
Either that or we’ve got a zombie problem.
Amir_Khalid
@andy #54:
This PA Kropotkin guy says he’s speaking for a group called the Coalition for Restoring Anarchist Principles.
It occurs to me that someone might be — as I once heard a British football commentator say — “extracting the Michael”.
ETA: Has it occurred to the Minnesota GOP?
stuckinred
JPL –
crap, that means they’ll hit me up for my vietnam vet plates again!
JPL
stuckinred you just have to put IGWT on them and it will be fine.
jl
@55 jeffreyw
Looks delicious.
Did you kill the pasta, cream sauce, and tomatoes with your bare hands too?
stuckinred
IDWT
woof
stuckinred
Creative Loafing has better comments!
re:
“I used to be a boozing, philandering, blaspheming dreg of society. Then one day I saw “In God We Trust” on a license plate and decided, as a result, that Jesus truly was my personal savior.”
stuckinred
or this”
“I think they should put Ray Charles on the next plate. It would honor a native son and give out-of-staters a general idea of how people drive around here.”
slag
@65
Limerick. Limerick is the word you were looking for.
Roger Moore
@stuckinred:
IFSMWT
stuckinred
Wow Lawrence O’Donnell just showed a clip from “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead” with Philip Seymour Hoffman yelling “It’s not fucking fair”! freak out
JPL
Every time I’m on the GA highways I often mention god and his son, so maybe the license plate is appropriate.
Ken
About five minutes into The Social Network, I’d begun mentally ticking off the autism-spectrum diagnostics in the date scene (“You’re angry. I’m sorry.”) when it occurred to me that Facebook is designed for people who want to reduce all social interactions to a choice of ten canned responses from a pulldown menu.
The creepy thing is that this remains true of the software, even if The Social Network is otherwise inaccurate.
Brian R.
A lipless old maid,
As sweet as he is pretty:
The Church Lady lives.
stuckinred
Roger Moore
Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco?
slag
That’s only because God cheats. Although, you can’t blame it. What deity wouldn’t want to have its name one a license plate?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
stuckinred- I caught that too. I had to think about what channel I was watching.
CNN will probably lead with this important story. Will O’Donnell have to resign? Or merely apologize?
jeffreyw
@jl: I was up till the we hours picking the linguine, it has to be pulled in the moonlight, but you knew that. The cream was pretty easy, just dipped it from the well in the dairy. The tomatoes I cleaved with a dagger made from Valerian steel. Only way to be sure.
stuckinred
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hear you, I was about to switch on Treme.
stuckinred
jeffreyw
night ambush huh?
Brian R.
Mitch McConnell looks
And sounds exactly like a
Shriveled old nutsack
Brian R.
Kentucky is known
For bourbon and the Derby
And whiny douche pols
JPL
Jim Foolish, does that mean they will delete it before I get to watch it online..
I am curious how the film clip fit into whatever he was talking about.
Brian R.
Old Mitch McConnell
Has the jowls of an aged sow
And the smarts to match.
slag
@90
Now that’s a haiku.
Brian R.
Taxes on the richest?
Over Mitch’s cold dead body.
(He only looks dead now.)
Matthew Reid Krell
@30 Colette and other stuff:
That is for damn sure. The ergs are never occupado at the JCC. Unfortunately, that also means that I don’t have anyone to help fix my technique.
And water rowing is supremely awesome and cool and totally not masochistic at all (indoor rowing is FAR more masochistic – you’re not even going anywhere!). You should do as I did and get coffee on your way to the boathouse.
Brian S
Before we elected Rick Scott, I’d have argued with you about that.
cckids
Violet @ #27:
What is this “cool down” of which you speak? It will still be several thousand degrees here at 10 pm or so. I feel like one of the Stark clan, except for us, summer is coming is the epithet.
jl
@84 jeffreyw,
thanks. I’ll remember your tip to pick the pasta by moonlight. Of course, a flame war will break out on this thread, opening up the old debate on whether organically grown pasta from Italian pasta trees, or pasta dug from the mines, is better.
cckids
jeffreyw @ #33: can I just say, you inspire me? I like to cook/love to bake, but this time of year, can actually manage it maybe 4 nights per week. It just seems to be too hot to mess with anything. The other nights, I turn the teenagers loose to scrounge leftovers or cook. They are aces at quesadillas.
But your efforts seem, in addition to looking completely delicious, to also be labors of love. Kudos to you!!!
*also, you have a truly adorable kitty.
jl
As for too much information from social media tycoons, maybe it is a form of guerrilla marketing, if no commenter above has mentioned that.
I won’t fall for it. My grandma taught me well: just because a billionaire can act weird, does not mean you can act weird too.
RossInDetroit
Just got my copy of Omega the Unknown, a graphic novel written by Jonathan Lethem* and originally published serially. I will be kicking back to enjoy this.
*Not Franzen.
MikeJ
RossInDetroit: I’m a big fan of Lethem. Picked up Gun With Occasional Music when it was brand new in hard back and have followed every release since.
But I do like Franzen too.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
arguingwithsignposts
September 11th needs to be retired like the names of famous hurricanes. It will always mean exactly one point of time in US history – a fixed point in the Doctor’s language. Maybe we should give it a name, like Twin Towers Day or something.
scav
Belafon. Should we go with Sept 10 and Sept 10.2 every year? I could live with that.
ETA: 9/10.0/?? and 9/10.2/?? should clear up what I’m thinking.
burnspbesq
@BG in Chi:
There is only one USC, and it is located in Los Angeles. There is only one “Carolina” (thank God!), and it is located in Chapel Hell. That school in Columbia is properly referred to as “South Carolina.”
stuckinred
RIP Lorenzo Charles.
burnspbesq
@Mathew Reid Krell:
I imagine Hell as a big room full of Concept IIs.
RossInDetroit
I finished reading that Saturday. It’s weird in a way that reminds me of what I liked about science fic and speculative fiction when I first started reading them.
I read This Shape We’re In yesterday & liked that as well.
jeffreyw
@cckids: Golly Gee, CC, I’m blushing.
Studly Pantload, now with enhanced schmuckosity
@JPL #89
The clip was part of a retrospective montage of Sidney Lumet films (some damn great ones, at that). O’Donnell can’t be held responsible if someone simply forgot to hit the *bleep* button. Unless, that is, his directed it not be bleeped on “artistic” merits, in which case I’m sure he cleared it with suits up front (since cable is not subject to the FCC nannying that over-the-air broadcast networks are).
I waited till after the comm. break for his “oops!”, but so far, nothin’.
Ben Cisco
Poor Mitch McConnell
Looks like Cecil the tortoise
But isn’t as smart.
eemom
so — is there any reason to care about the Blago verdict?
My money’s on no, but I was wondering what Illinoisians think.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Well, if you’re wondering whether Preet Bharara is the right guy to be running SDNY right now, another big win by Fitzgerald isn’t going to make you wonder less.
Studly Pantload, now with enhanced schmuckosity
@eemom I think Dems should applaud this deliverance of justice. Better we should note, “what you tried to use your power to do was disgusting, good riddance, dirtbag,” rather than spend half our day pointing and laughing at a trivial Bachmann “slip up.”
stuckinred
As an Illini ex-pat I say, what else is new?
PurpleGirl
Before closing the computer for the night… I’m off to continue reading in Robert A. Heinlein (Volume 1, Learning Curve | 1907-1948)(the authorized biography) by William H. Patterson, Jr. [Authorized by Virginia Heinlein]
Valdivia
@lahm34 that Bieber story was nice even if it was Politico.
MikeB
Ian Murphy strikes again…
http://www.buffalobeast.com/?p=6460
Matthew Reid Krell
@106 Mr. Burns:
As long as they’re Model Ds or later, I’m…still not okay. Like I told a friend of mine, “If I want to get into S&M, I’ll get into S&M; I don’t have to call it a workout to feel good about it.”
Anya
Has the world gone mad while I was at the dentist? I just saw this headline at Steve Benen’s (alway wonderful) site: Bachmann Looks to Emulate Serial Killer. Is that not a headline worthy of a News Corp? Why is this insignificant slip making, usually measured people, lose their shit? Am I missing something?
eemom
dunno, perhaps we oughta be bitching at those jurors about why they weren’t at the Hague finding Dick Cheney guilty of war crimes.
Studly Pantload, now with enhanced schmuckosity
@Anya Best I can make of it is – it fits the emerging template that’s being created about Bachmann (with ample assistance from the House Member, herself, of course). Granted, Bachmann herself if generally starkly cartoonish. But in this instance, it’s much of the coverage that is being starkly cartoonish.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
@eemom : Exactly. Why aren’t the poutrageous throwing a hissy fit screaming IOKIYAR and how Dems need to rally behind other Dems (unless they’re named obama)?
Sharl
So I’m listening to Warren Olney‘s To The Point, with E.J. Dionne vs. career democracy-hating liar Hans von Spakovsky (also, too), a leader in the campaign to disenfranchise large segments of traditionally Democratic voters – poor folks and students, by and large. (Of course, the odious and more experienced disenfranchisement WSJ propagandist John Fund is still slithering about as well.)
Dionne is holding his own pretty well, but to the listener not versed in this particular GOP initiative, I’m afraid The Liar may have a built-in advantage, just by ‘throwing chaff’ and working the clock, if nothing else. Particularly for those of us who are among the socioeconomically privileged – a major demographic of public radio listeners, I suspect – it’s far too easy to overlook the kind of folks being disenfranchised. Hopefully enough people will make the effort to get educated on this, and perhaps we’ll get a little help from the goopers overplaying their hand, as is their wont.
Sharl
BTW, Olney has shown a disturbing trend toward a greater frequency of senior moments lately, but fortunately, tonight he seems to be more on his old game.
Lojasmo
I fell with my bar end in my belly while single-tracking today. Preferable to reading anything in the lamestream media, much less k lo.
AAA Bonds
It’s pretty LOL that Dick Cheney is a criminal and you all agree to that but you think it’s cool that he gets off scot free and filthy rich, at the risk of our national integrity and, ultimately, stability
But go on, there’s important shit to worry about like THAT WAR IN LIBYA!
Don K
BGinChi
Well, actually, there is no plural form of nouns in Japanese, so haiku is the plural.
Now, back on topic, John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, which is in the same state and everything as Waterloo, although not all that close geographically. And Winterset is in Madison County (as in “Bridges of”), for its other claim to fame.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
burnspesq @ 106. Wow, you got that exactly right. Hell is a room full of Concept IIs with someone hollering at you for a Power 10.
Heaven, on the other hand, is pulling an 11-foot oar in a mixed 8 at sunset in Baltimore Harbor. You get exercise, you’re on the water, and you’re hanging out with interesting people. Killing three birds with one stone.
Now that the kids are grown, maybe I should try getting back into it again.
Ruckus
Burnsy
Hell to me is a large room full of concept II’s and people too big around to use them. Although I do get your point of it being a reasonable facsimile of a self inflicted torture device.
Ken
eemom @111: This Illinoisian, and those I’ve spoken with, are all fine with the Blago conviction.
To me the only negative was the national news report which said something like “Blago joins a long list of Illinois governors and public officials who have been sent to prison.” True, but the phrasing makes it sound like our public officials are more corrupt than those of other states; I prefer to believe it means our prosecutors and courts are less corrupt than elsewhere.