Here’s a prophylactic open thread, guarding against future lack of openness, with a song that’s been stuck in my head recently. And, to guard against a lack of topics to discuss, does anyone know what she means by a “foot balloon” in the lyrics to this song, as in “the other girls tell me that you eat at the old buffet downtown, with the foot balloons”.
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JGabriel
mistermix:
I’m guessing, but I think it’s literal — balloons on the floor like they used to do at old dance halls (and still do for dances in high school gyms?).
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Barry
I’m guessing morbidly obese people with swollen legs (diabetic).
scav
Given the seeming French connection, it could be balloon ball confuzzlement but that still leaves it charmingly meaningless. I think it means they actually read this blog and are signalling to mistermix.
Bill E Pilgrim
The only thing that occurs to me is that “ball”, as in football, is “ballon” in French.
So “foot balloon” would translate to “foot ball” in English, er sort of. Just given their French theme and all. Who knows.
Sports cafeteria? Hmm, maybe not.
Padded foot rests?
harlana
Ask David Brooks, I’m sure he would know. Or was that Friedman? I get my condescending assholes mixed up.
WereBear
Deciphering song lyrics is a never-ending quest. Wooly bully!
Now, ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy.
Cat Lady
@WereBear:
There’s the bathroom on the right.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Cat Lady: Football loons.
Best one ever: My friend asked me, “in that song “What a wonderful world” what does it mean “the bright blessed day, the dogs say goodnight?”
cleek
maybe it’s in a cleanroom, and everybody has to wear those little clear plastic booty things.
t jasper parnell
Maybe it is a reference to Bals Musette, which in its primitive form involved some kind of a musical balloon thingamabob tied to one’s leg.
scav
@Bill E Pilgrim: or my friend, after a year in a French lycée studying the second world war, asking who this Aldelphi Clair guy was? (you may be the only one to get this. My personal mangling of Roland-Garros was at least explicable)
handsmile
What an absolutely astonishing week this has been! I can’t remember the last time I have felt so utterly whiplashed by the unfolding of each day’s events.
Two long-time autocrats have been deposed (Berlusconi, Paterno); the campaigns of two contestants in the GOP “presidential” sweepstakes have effectively collapsed (Cain, Perry); and the sputtering fire of progressive hopes for the 2012 election cycle has been rekindled by Tuesday’s victories in Ohio, Maine, and Arizona.
And then, of course, there’s the startling opinion upholding the ACA’s individual mandate provision issued by the nation’s most prominent conservative jurist not on the Supreme Court, Laurence Silberman of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Why the conflicting parliamentary testimonies of James Murdoch and former senior executives of News of the World (one of them’s lying!) in the phone hacking scandal barely registers attention.
This Guardian article/video clip of a man successfully riding a 90-foot wave off the coast of Portugal may be an appropriate metaphor for what it’s been like following the news this week:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2011/nov/11/garrett-mcnamara-surfs-90ft-wave-video
Cat Lady
@cleek:
That’s totally it! Duh.
lamh35
So aside from the scandal was the game today between penn state & Nebraska supposed to be a big deal?
Anyone else think the ratings for this game will be larger than initially expected? At least the first 30 min to an hour b4 the start of the game?
macbob
My first thought was pumped up kicks but considering the demographics of old buffet diners, I’m thinking the better guess is catheter bags.
Gary
As a child I thought that Hanukah and Tchanuka (accented on the second syllable) were two different Jewish festivals, until I figured out that I only ever heard of one, and only ever read the name of the other.
Cat Lady
Foot Balloon courtesy of teh google. Why they’d be at the old buffet downtown is a mystery I’ll let the more creative types here cogitate on. Also.
Poopyman
I don’t suppose the Penn State kids are going to start occupying the football stadium for any extended period? “Occupy Beaver” just has that certain je ne sais quoi.
Svensker
@scav:
Or the Canadian radio announcer who introduced, crisply and with faultless enunciation, the famous Irish song “London Derriere”.
cathyx
@Svensker: There’s a term called mondegreen. Mishearing song lyrics.
Villago Delenda Est
@cathyx:
“‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy!”
“And for the Republic of Richard Stans…”
The Ancient Randonneur
@lamh35:
Only if NAMBLA is sponsoring the half time show.
MagicPanda
Surely foot balloon == way to steal food from an all you can eat buffet?
Bill E Pilgrim
@scav: Ah, ol Adolph Eclair. What did you do to Roland Garros?
@cathyx: I sent the Mondegreens guy (Jon Carrol) the “the dogs say goodnight” one and he wrote back.
“and laid him on the green” —~~~~>>> “and Lady Mondegreen” is the origin of the phrase for anyone wondering.
Violet
@lamh35:
Is the Penn State-Nebraska game being shown on TV today?
Raven
@Violet: Yes, ESPN noon.
Violet
@Raven:
Thanks. I just searched my TV schedule for “Penn” but it didn’t come up. And I do have ESPN. Weird.
scottinnj
Here is the latest from the incomparable Garfunkel and Oates:
Save the Rich (NSFW-language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_M8fOwHnwg0
JPL
@Raven: How close do you live to the stadium?
RSA
@scav:
When I was working as a software engineer in Germany, I was involved in interviews with a local expert on radar maintenance and repair. After one interview, I asked one of my colleagues, “Why does he keep saying ‘forty-one’?” My colleague was puzzled: “Einundvierzig?” Eventually he figured out that I was mishearing “an und für sich“, which means “actually” or “in and of itself”. He got a huge laugh out of that (but I suppose you had to be there).
Bill E Pilgrim
@RSA: You’ve probably seen this but just in case.
Raven
@JPL: 2 miles. The bride will drop my buddy and me and I left my truck fairly close for the escape. My friend is from way back in the Champaign days and and has never been here so we’ll walk all over gods green acres before the game.
RSA
@Bill E Pilgrim:
No! Thanks, that was pretty funny (guessable, but it was well done). My introduction to German was a four-week course at Berlitz, in sessions that lasted… I don’t remember how long, but it felt like hours at a time. Fun but exhausting.
muddy
In h.s. my Spanish teacher told us this pun joke about a Spanish speaking guy in a department store, asking for calcetines, and department after department they lead him to is not the correct thing.
(Of course) lastly they go to the sock department, and he says, Eso si ques es!! The store people say, Why could he not have spelled it in the first place?
This ancient hoary joke has been immortalized in my house with shouts of, Socks! when you find what you seek.
dmsilev
Nate SIlver wrote a piece yesterday about the Newt Surge ™. I played around with the data a bit and found something absolutely hilarious. The candidate that’s most on the rise in the GOP polling is “None of the Above”, currently sitting at 17% and rising fast.
I broke my long-standing ignoring of dKos and put up a diary with a couple of graphs for everyone’s amusement. The graph, without the diary, can be seen here:
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h272/dmsilev/Graphs/R2012.png
Bill E Pilgrim
@dmsilev: Ah I thought I recognized your name from GOS. My UID is just a few hundred earlier than yours. Not this name, a different one. Haven’t logged in for ages.
Ben Cisco (mobile)
@cleek 9: Plastic booty things? I do not think those go where you think they do.
bemused
Andrew Sullivan was on Real Time last night. Sullivan was arguing with Keith Ellison on deficits when Bill Maher said to him, “You’re trying too hard to be a conservative, (couldn’t make out Bill’s mumble). No one’s buying it. Might as well try being a straight man. It’s not working”.
schrodinger's cat
@bemused: Sullivan’s latest fetish seems to be the tax code, it is complicated, scratch it, he says. Since he is so innumerate I don’t at all take him seriously on this issue.
Lynn Dee
@Gary:
Ha! I had that same experience with “a-certain” (which I’d read) and asser-TANE (which I’d heard).
Anybody else?
Cat Lady
Tom Levenson must have had something to do with this. We haven’t heard from him in a couple of days.
jeffreyw
Nice one.
Raven
@jeffreyw: I had no idea about the deer in Illinois until I learned that my mail man goes up there to hunt. Said they are huge compared to Georgia deer.
Southern Beale
Should the 99% be voted Time’s Person of the Year?
Vote and let ’em know …
So far it’s 78% yes.
Brachiator
@Bill E Pilgrim: This reminds me of a comedy bit about the problems that voice recognition technology has with Scottish accents (and it’s not just Apple’s SIRI)
Voice Recognition Elevator
passerby
@handsmile:
It’s astounding, isn’t it. You’ve made a good start on a list of the chaos buzzing around us. Add to the list the slo-mo global financial collapse.
Juxtapose that surfer’s experience. I watched him making that amazing ride yesterday and the comment that he made afterwards, the expression of the beauty and wonder of something so simple and pure, it brought me to tears. Man, those were beautiful waves. I’m looking for more of these transcendent moments that never make the news. Sublime stuff.
p.s. Reminder: Please feed the birds.
Raven
The Nebraska and Penn State players have gathered mid-field to pray for the victims.
JPL
@Raven: That was an interesting opening to a football game. It was nice to see the Nebraska team gather with the Penn State players though.
jeffreyw
@Raven: I have no idea on the size ranges but I have heard the southern deer were on the puny side.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Brachiator: Excellent.
scav
@Raven: Prey first, pray later. Excuse me for not being entirely won over. Also, it’s metastasizing (On Campus, a Law Enforcement System to Itself). And, to be very clear, while I have every respect for any individuals players private prayers or thoughts or whatever (ideally accompanied by actually doing something), this public shit is just PR.
JPL
@scav: A student group at Penn State has already raised over 200,000 in a few days for victims of child abuse. Don’t let the monsters win.
scav
@JPL: Exactly. That’s more the idea.
JPL
@scav: The players and the students aren’t the monsters.
The idiots that rioted are just that idiots.
scav
@JPL: I’m not saying the students are the monsters, OR the players. I’m objecting to the public use of religion as PR cover by University and Sports authorities.
JPL
Did anyone else hear that the Grand Jury report was released because of a “computer glitch”. That means those that abetted the alleged rapist would be on the sideline today.
JPL
@scav: true..
Gex
@schrodinger’s cat: All our laws are complicated. Let’s scrap ’em.
I hate that. Things are the way they are for a reason. Just as we are beginning to relearn the value of FDA regulations as more and more of our food is killing people and pets, we come to understand that there was a REASON for the regulations we had in the first place.
Why everyone on the right wants to scrap everything and have to start learning again the hard way, I don’t understand.
Yutsano
@JPL: Sounds like CYA to me personally. But grand jury records are public unless a judge seals them.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: It sounds to me like it was about to be released anyway, as the grand jury officially presented their findings Friday, and it was posted publicly on Friday. Maybe they were just trying to wait until Monday to go public, but as a result they had to issue their first statement Saturday. It’s not sounding like a huge deal.
Kathleen
@bemused: Sullivan was a total jerk last night.
Suffern ACE
@Yutsano: One of those lawyerin’ questions that would be good to know. Is the grand jury investigation over or does it continue? If it is still going on, I don’t think the records are actually supposed to be available yet, since the workings of a grand jury whilst it is in progress is not public. But what was released wasn’t the record of the procedure, but the findings against Sandusky.
Cat Lady
@JPL:
The NYT article on Governor Corbett today seems to indicate that while he was Attorney General he investigated PSU and has been working behind the scenes to get the trustees to move, which he can do now that as governor he’s also automatically a trustee. He seems to be part of the solution and not part of the problem anyway, hopefully. The trustees must all be shitting in their pants about now as the conspiracy unwinds. Wheeee!
puddle
gerry and the pacemakers ~~
ferry ‘cross the Mersey
Have to fess up: I always heard this as: Mary, Crust of Mercy. . . .
Svensker
@Brachiator:
I love that. Saw it a few weeks ago and laughed til my eyes ached from being squinched up.
jurassicpork
Fox News At Its Finest, Part XV: Supersized Occupy Wall Street edition, now with over 100% more captions & 50% more snarky commentary.
Mr Stagger Lee
Saw J Edgar last night, it was ok, not enough for paying $8 for a matinee, looks like it will be a long time before I go to a cinema.
Calouste
@Southern Beale:
I’d say Mohamed Bouazizi, even though he only lived 4 days into the year.
The Arab Spring achieved something. The 99% movement so far has only achieved being in the news.
Calouste
@Gex:
Living with the exisiting rules, regulations and experience means acknowledging that someone, somewhere, at some point in time might have been smarter than you. Can’t have that. The right’s War on Education is another facet of the same phenomenon.
Yutsano
@Calouste: I’d argue that neither event is even close to over yet. I do like your suggestion though. The myopia of the media can’t even recognize the spark for all these events was a frustrated fruit seller in Tunisia.
joel hanes, sp4
@Gex:
Things are the way they are for a reason.
Exactly.
In software we say “under every patch you’ll find a bullet hole”.
I would argue, though, that while under many of the contortions of our laws you may find a bullethole, at the back of many of the most egregious is a lobbyist with PAC funding.
trixie larue
Did anyone mention gout?
eemom
@Yutsano:
I thought it was St. Julian, le Libertarian de l’Assange, and his consort, the horseback-riding trustafarian tweenie from Colorado.
Death Panel Truck
“And there’s a wino down the road…” — Stairway to Heaven
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
“Disappearance squads” in Libya? Pfft.
.
.
Bill Arnold
@Bill E Pilgrim:
For whatever it’s worth (very little), if you use google translate to translate “foot balloons” to French and back to English you get “balls off”.
Bill Arnold
and…
the full phrase, from english to french and back with google translate, becomes:
“The other girls tell me that you eat the little old center, with the balls off.”
Beauzeaux
foot ball loons
Obviously.
Jebediah
When I was a kid, I read “miniseries” with the second “I” long and as one word, not “mini” and “series” put together. Did the same thing with “biopic” – short “o” and didn’t notice that it meant “biography” plus “picture.”
Yutsano
@Jebediah: I never answered your question last night!
My absolute fave is this gem which has an amazingly adult perspective on the relations between men and women. In a show for kids!
Jebediah
@Yutsano: Oh geeze I had forgotten that one – it really is a gem!
Even better, P&F is on the tube as I type this…