Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Let there be snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

This blog will pay for itself.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

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

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90Comments

  1. 1.

    lamh34

    Now all I need is a mini fridge and a piss tube and I don’t need to move on Saturdays and Sundays during football season…

    Wow and some lucky girl hasn’t snatched u up huh…lol.

    “piss tube” ..ahahah

  2. 2.

    Morzer

    Now all I need is a mini fridge and a piss tube and I don’t need to move on Saturdays and Sundays during football season…

    You forgot the automatic cat-feeding system. If you expect Tunch to tolerate 48 hours without proper rations, you’ve got another think coming.

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    I want to make a piss tube/WV joke, but it’s been a long day.

    And if TX wins the WS I’m gonna hit the bottle.

  6. 6.

    cathyx

    How do you like your mini? I was thinking of getting one to replace this laptop that is on the fritz. It’s my cheapest option.

  10. 10.

    cathyx

    I kick myself everyday that I didn’t buy an iphone. Instead, I’m stuck with my Droid Incredible 2 which isn’t incredible at all, in fact, it’s very user unfriendly compared to an iphone.

  13. 13.

    different-church-lady

    So, Mr. Cole… I’ve just started exploring the world of blogging. (Kind of accidentally: I’m building a demo site of my media work and we’re doing it on WordPress. And let me tell you, I have a better appreciation for what Cole goes through now…)

    And I’m kind of wondering: emotionally what’s it like to have a whole bunch of people paying attention to what you write, and responding? Is there ego satisfaction? Pleasure at the attention? (I’m well aware that it’s quite aggravating for you at times, but I chalk that up to the fact that you’re running a politically oriented joint here and not so much because that’s the nature of blogging.)

    Right now my blog just sits there lonely and unattended. But that’s because I haven’t told anyone about it yet. I look at my first posts and already I feel the urge to be an attention whore coming on.

  16. 16.

    freddie

    Its called a Texas catheter, like a condom with a flow tube. The other way can be rather dicey.

  19. 19.

    different-church-lady

    @freddie: Is there something wrong with me that I looked at your comment and it immediately collided with the cat puke vacuum from the previous post in my head?

  21. 21.

    Roger Moore

    I hope you realize that Apple is not the only company that makes miniature PCs designed specifically to be hooked up to HDTVs. That’s not to say that the MacMini is a bad computer- I have to say I’m tempted to get one when it’s time to replace my current TV PC, but they’re not some “only from the mind of Steve Jobs” invention.

  22. 22.

    tBone

    Fanboi Cole!

    The mini’s a nice little machine, but I’ve never understood hooking a computer up to the TV for anything other than media playback. For couch-surfing/blogging, gimme a tablet any day.

  23. 23.

    flukebucket

    A catheter is the most under rated thing in the world. One of the most wonderful nights of my life was spent hooked up to a catheter and a dilaudid drip. My jaws hurt the next morning from smiling all night.

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    . Now all I need is a mini fridge and a piss tube and I don’t need to move on Saturdays and Sundays during football season.

    BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA AH AH

  32. 32.

    JPL

    @tBone: I don’t have cable and I can hook up my computer to the tv and watch espn3. Football games are better on a bigger screen.

  33. 33.

    freddie

    I had a case, the man had dementia. Nurses refused to bind his hands, out of kindness I suppose.
    Pulled his catheter out 3 times on my shift, I refused to comply after.
    The other end is the size of a LARGE Grape, it ends up in your bladder. Imagine pulling that out your tallywkacker.
    Bloody mess.

  34. 34.

    RSA

    Now all I need is a mini fridge and a piss tube…

    I’m looking forward to the introduction of the iPiss at WWDC 2012. A sleek, high-capacity device, I imagine, extensively tested for usability.

  37. 37.

    lamh34

    So my hospital where I work is going through some major regulatory and certification issues of late and the future of our medicaid/medicare funding is at risk.

    So for a while now, everything has been up in the air. The longtime CEO “resigned”, the hospital was given a number of deficiences and are in danger of losing medicare/medicaid funding if they don’t get their act together within a year.

    There is a point in one’s life(usually professional sometimes personl) where you realize that your current situation is going nowhere fast. You have to decide whether or not you’ve reach the point of no return. Most of us try to prolong the journey, but outside forces gives you a push and you just have to take a leap of faith across the guord of uncertainty and you just have to believe that you will land on the other side, on your feet and no worse for wear. The last time I reached this point, it was personal and it was casue of that bish named Katrina and my life and the lives of me and my family and my 9th ward hood haven’t been the same again. Well, I may have reached that point again today, but it’s decidedly lesst personal than last time.

  38. 38.

    fairfax

    Sounds like you’d be living the all American male dream! All you need now is your sweetie in arms reach. No I am not talking about the cat!

  39. 39.

    PhoenixRising

    piss tube, and I don’t need to move….

    Dude, you need quite a bit more fiber in your diet.

    That said, tell me more about that part that didn’t just make me wince: HDMI output? External monitor?

    Thinking about repurposing the kid’s Mini at holiday time when we replace it with a desktop. Fired Comcast. DirecTV could suck a bowling ball through a garden hose, as it turns out.

  43. 43.

    S. cerevisiae

    Hey John, you need a rig like they did on Home Improvement years ago – a recliner with a built-in toilet.

  44. 44.

    gelfling545

    @cathyx: My daughter, a photographer, uses a mini for most of her editing work & loves it. I’m thinking of getting one myself once the budget gets back into apple territory.

  46. 46.

    Jenny

    @cathyx: For people like me who use a regular flip phone for calls and texting, I’m curious, what do you use your smart phone for. I realize people like to check email, surf the web, even games with a smart phone, but is there anything else?

  47. 47.

    Roger Moore

    @different-church-lady:

    Don’t they usually wait until the 5th inning for that?

    No. A game is rained out whenever they decide the rain is too bad to play. In this case, it was about 8 hours before game time when they were told the rain wasn’t expected to stop today. If the game starts and then the rain gets too bad to play, it is suspended until the weather cooperates. If the game has been suspended for more than 30 minutes and the umpire decides the weather isn’t going to get better today, the game will be called (i.e. terminated early). 5 innings (or 4 1/2 if the home team is ahead) makes a game “regulation”, meaning that the outcome is official even though it was called. Games that are called before 5 innings are considered “no game” and don’t count in the standings or official statistics.

  48. 48.

    RossInDetroit

    @Roger Moore:

    I have to say I’m tempted to get one when it’s time to replace my current TV PC, but they’re not some “only from the mind of Steve Jobs” invention.

    Nonsense. We’d still be in the Neolithic if Jobs and Woz hadn’t started hafting the shaped stone blades we’d been using. It took a genius to look at that wedge of basalt and think “what this needs is leverage…”

  52. 52.

    JCT

    The new Minis are awesome — since I am about to go live in a freaking trailer for 8 months I have had to downsize from my MacPro to a new mini server + SSD and frankly, I’m not noticing a big difference, even with Photoshop and Lightroom.

    Several of my grad students have minis of varying vintages and they have been great. Virtually no upkeep even for students who are not gearheads.

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    @Jenny:

    I have a Droid Incredible, and, in addition to the things you mentioned, I have found Google Maps invaluable for navigation, both in the car and on foot. It is better than the dedicated GPS system in my brother’s new Audi, which doesn’t have a “walking” mode. I use that a lot when I take the Metro into D.C. Plus I can call up the nav function when I’m riding with people who don’t have GPS in their cars.

  54. 54.

    Jenny

    @jeffreyw:

    we have DSL now!

    This is one of the thing that pisses me off. Obama is spending $25 billion to extend rural wireless and broadband to 98% of america. It’s akin to LBJ’s rural electrification. Yet Obama never gets any credit.

  55. 55.

    Steeplejack

    @Roger Moore:

    If the game has been suspended for more than 30 minutes and the umpire decides the weather isn’t going to get better today, the game will be called (i.e. terminated early).

    Are you sure about that? Seems like there was a Yankees game a month or two ago that was continued on the following day, picking up right where they left off the night before.

  56. 56.

    cathyx

    @Jenny: I need email on my phone for my work. Otherwise, I just like having the internet handy, but it’s not necessary.

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    @John – A Motley Moose:
    They’ve actually changed the rules about ties, too. It used to be that a regulation game called with the score tied (delta all the complicated stuff about being called during an inning) was declared a tie and might have to be replayed later in the season. Now they become suspended games and are continued at the next convenient time.

  58. 58.

    Keith

    Apple is just amazing.

    If you’re impressed by a SFF PC running your TV, I can’t imagine what you’d think about Xbox 360 + Kinect once the TV update is released in another month.

  59. 59.

    schrodinger's cat

    I made some shallot and baby eggplant sambar (lentil and vegetable stew) this evening and it met my Tamil husband’s approval, so I say a job well done! The baby eggplant was delicious, I got it from the Asian Grocery store in town.
    I also got a bunch of Thai basil from there and I am thinking of making a Thai stir fry tomorrow, most probably with shrimp.

  62. 62.

    Xboxershorts

    Not sure how to break this to you John, but I’ve been using my Dell Laptop with the big screen TV now for about 3 years.

  64. 64.

    stivx

    JC, you gotta get one of those apple magic track pads, I just got one and its crazy good! Especially for the mac mini hooked up in the living room.

  65. 65.

    John Weiss

    @Jenny: If one lives in the foothills of the Cascades outside of Brookings, OR you get steenkin’ Charter Cable, Hughes or nutin’. Honey.

    Which is a pain in the butt.

    But you ought to see this place!

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @Steeplejack:

    Are you sure about that?

    I was giving the slightly simplified version. There are three things that can happen with a called game during the regular season:

    1) It didn’t make it to regulation. The game is declared “no game”, doesn’t count in the standings, and may be replayed from the beginning.

    2) It made it to regulation and one team has a clear lead (i.e. the visiting team didn’t just take the lead without the home team having its full part of the inning to get it back). The game is over and the team with the lead is the winner.

    3) It made it to regulation but the game is tied or the lead isn’t clear, or the game had to be called for some reason other than bad weather. In this case, the game is suspended and continued at the next available opportunity.

    There’s actually a fourth, extremely rare case, which is when a game that hasn’t reached regulation is called because of a field failure (e.g. lights can’t turn on) or when there are legal restrictions on turning on the lights. In that case, the game is always suspended and continued later, even if it hadn’t reached regulation. If you really want the gory details, you can look at Rules 4.10-4.12.

  70. 70.

    RossInDetroit

    @Xboxershorts:

    Based on someone’s recommendation here we bought a Kworld PCtoTV box to interface VGA to our old LOdef CRT set and we’re very happy with it. Cheap, too.

  72. 72.

    schrodinger's cat

    @jeffreyw: Indian food tastes and smells great but is not very photogenic. I will take pictures next time I make something interesting. BTW I love your recipe pics.
    How is the kittehs this evening?

  73. 73.

    sneezy

    @cathyx:

    How do you like your mini?

    I like mac minis and have used three. I have one at home, purchased earlier this year. It’s a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 8 GB of RAM. Works great. Before that, I had an earlier model.

    At the office, I just started using a current one, with a 2.7 GHz Core i7, also with 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD, hooked up to two 1920 x 1080 displays. It’s a terrific little machine.

    Note that both of these are maxed out at 8 GB RAM: I wish Apple would build them to support at least 16 GB. Also, the SSD is a terrific option (it’s fast) if you can afford it (mine was bought with company money).

    Last, the current minis do not have internal DVD drives. This isn’t really a problem for me, but it seems sort of dumb for a machine that people hook up to TVs.

  74. 74.

    JGabriel

    schrodinger’s cat:

    Indian food tastes and smells great but is not very photogenic.

    Heh, that was my thought too, when jeffreyw asked for pics. Not so much about Indian food in general, but sambar?

    Depending on how long you cook it, it looks like either lumpy mud, or watery mud with lots of tiny pebbles.

    .

  76. 76.

    kindness

    So John, are you watching the big screen with a split screen w/ the tv on one & the computer on the other?

    If so, you are gonna be a candidate for one of those monster screens.

  85. 85.

    RSA

    How do you like your mini? I was thinking of getting one to replace this laptop that is on the fritz. It’s my cheapest option.

    (I’m not John, but…) I’m happy with my Mac Mini; it’s a couple of years old, but it’s fast enough for what I use it for. It’s hooked up to our HD TV, and we use it for streaming Netflix and some kinds of Web surfing, at 1920 x 1080 resolution. (Apple hasn’t seen fit to allow arbitrary changes to the system font sizes, as far as I know, so it’s hard to use our set-up for conventional computing, what with the high resolution display being wasted on tiny text viewd from across the room.) We have a separate DVD player, so the lack of an optical drive isn’t an issue, though that’s typically seen as a missing piece. The Mini isn’t an obvious replacement for a laptop, though.

  86. 86.

    Scamp Dog

    @different-church-lady: Well for starters, put your blog’s URL into the Website box when you leave a message here. Then we can click it and see what you’re writing.

    I have a blog that I haven’t posted to in about a year; it was a programming blog that I never marketed enough. I’m thinking about giving it another go—we’ll see if it goes better this time.

    So if you’re interested in programming for OS X, iOS, or OpenGL graphics, click on my link and you can take a look at my blog. It does have some cool pictures, for those of you who aren’t software developers.

    Good luck, different-church-lady!

  87. 87.

    tBone

    @JPL:

    @tBone: I don’t have cable and I can hook up my computer to the tv and watch espn3. Football games are better on a bigger screen.

    Like I said – I can see using it for media. But browsing? Fucking kill me.

    Something about the idea of reading off a big screen from across the room like that really puts me off – I dunno, it seems too impersonal or something.

  88. 88.

    Cliff in NH

    TV as a screen and no cable since 2004, where you been?

    currently got 3 screens on, DVI HDMI and displayport on one comp and a dedicated ‘media pc’ (the 2004) with the 56″ and a internet screen, both on dvi.

    It’s not new tech.

  89. 89.

    Cliff in NH

    @tBone:

    you should try it, 56″ at 12 feet with wireless mouse/keyboard is far easier on the eyes than 27″ @ 2 feet.

  90. 90.

    Cliff in NH

    @Cliff in NH:

    but the 56″ is hard on the eyes for games due to the wobulation in the first gen led projection screen screwing up fast action, I can’t wait to get a 120 hz lcd as a replacement in a few years.

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