Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

So many bastards, so little time.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Thursday Morning Open Thread

Thursday Morning Open Thread

by | 32 Comments

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I have, to the best of my meagre ability, sent a one-line “Received – thanks!” reply to every pet-pic emailed to me or the Calendar 2012 address. Some of you probably got thanked twice, because there’s a total of more than 160 messages, many of them with multiple images. Beth is going to be spoilt for choice! If you sent a pic and didn’t get an email, let me know.
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Many people included stories about their beloved animal companions, some of which I’m planning use here on future mornings, because they’re too good not to share. From commentor Schrodinger’s Cat:

These are my kittehs Yogi and Inji. Yogi is the brown tabby and Inji is the orange one.
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Yogi is the first cat I ever had. He is my handsome boy. He is also known as Boss Tweed, since he is bossy, he clearly thinks he is the part of 1% and the rest of us exist only to cater to his every whim. He is very flexible and can contort himself in the weirdest configuration, hence his name Yogi, since he is a master at Yoga. For all his bossiness and cattitude, he is a lover boy, he sleeps on my shoulder every night and is a big lap kitteh. We have had him since was six months old. My neighbor in the married student campus housing was giving him away, since he was tormenting her geriatric cat. He has been with us through three moves and I cannot imagine my life without him. He has been with me through good times and bad for almost 9 years now.
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We got Inji, our ginger cat about a year after we got Yogi, Yogi needed a buddy to play with, he was lonely, when my husband I would be gone for the whole day. Inji is ginger in Tamil, that’s where the word ginger comes from. If Yogi is our boss kitteh, Inji is our Buddha kitteh, she never bites or scratches and is very loving. She does not have a mean bone in her entire body. I adopted Inji from a woman who worked at the grad school offices when I was student. We have had Inji since she was 8 weeks old, and fit in the palm of my hand, now she rivals Tunch in size. She is not a lap cat but she loves to sit next to you and purr. She also takes good care of me when I am sick.
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I can’t imagine my life without these furballs.

Reader Interactions

32Comments

  3. 3.

    Raven

    @JPL: Nope, but did you see the AJC on the collapse of the secondary ticket market for this game? The bcs has made it essentially meaningless.

  4. 4.

    Jenny

    Romney hits the panic button.

    Campaign says it will launch negative ad barrage on Newt.

    It won’t work. They tried it last time on Huckabee and Huck still won Iowa by a hefty margin.

  5. 5.

    ned

    At some point, Anne Laurie is going to reach complete blogging zen by posting an unintentionally racist comment about Charlie Pierce’s snarky reaction to having saved and adopted a three-legged dog which he found hiding in his tomato patch.

    I can’t wait.

  6. 6.

    WereBear

    Yes, Yogi does look so much like my foundling, Tristan, now 15 months.

    Tristan is the Brad Pitt of Cats

    Schrodinger’s cat remarked on the resemblance early on. This is the green-eyed brown tabby with masked black. It goes back to the dawn of time.

    And it lets you know why Early Humans took kitties home.

  8. 8.

    JPL

    @Raven: I just read the blog and the article on the secondary market for tickets. Alabama is sitting pretty even though they don’t play in the championship game which doesn’t make sense to me.
    For years folks have been talking about a playoff system but it won’t happen unless there is a monetary reason for it to happen. S.cks…

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Yogi and Inji are beautiful kitties, SC. And WB, it’s always a treat to see young Tristan.

    Can’t wait to see the new BJ calendar!

  11. 11.

    Southern Beale

    What handsome boys! Inji looks like my Juius. My mom always said orange tabby cats had the best dispositions, so that’s what we always had growing up. Personally I think she thought their hair blended in with the furniture.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    NY Times just went to a new commenting system.

    Oh Gawd. It looks horrible.

    They want your Facebook account in order to offer “trusted commenter” status.

    Good-bye anonymity.

    And I’ve seen on other newspapers: if you want to put up vile, insulting stuff under your presumed own name, you’re golden. Want to put up a reasoned, fact-based response under, say, Publius or Observer? You’re in moderation while the trolls go wild.

    And they’re threading (or nesting) comments. For me, that breaks up continuity.

    Seems to me that the NYTimes just fixed something that was not broken. I loved the long pages of reader comments that the reader could scan and sort by “recommended.”

    Funny, too: No comments on the new policy up yet. Although it looked like 249 had been posted.

    Gaw.

  13. 13.

    Ben Cisco

    @JPL: Unabashed Alabama fan here, and I hope that this year’s situation points more people in the direction of an actual playoff. The conference shopping/swapping/dropping musical chairs routine has made even more blindingly obvious to anyone paying any attention at all that it’s all about straight cash, homie.
    __
    Drop the pretense, quit kowtowing to the bowl “committees”, line ’em up and let ’em play, just like every other sport and every other football division. Enough is enough already!

  15. 15.

    Elizabelle

    It seems like the whole commenting system on The New York Times is down.

    Seriously, this new system seems like a great way to shut down commenting, especially if they insist on real names.

  17. 17.

    El Cid

    I’m sure it’s been posted, but let’s hear it for a basic measure of humanity / nervousness:

    Atlanta police & movers sent to evict a 103 year old woman and her 83 year old daughter here in Atlanta decided upon arrival that they wouldn’t do it.

    A 103-year-old woman facing foreclosure from her home will not be forced to leave the dwelling she has lived in for the past 53 years.
    __
    The bank administering a second mortgage on the northwest Atlanta house where Vinia Hall lives will work out an arrangement so that she and her 83-year-old daughter, Kathelyn Cornelius, don’t have to move. The bank, JPMorgan Chase, announced the decision Wednesday afternoon.
    __
    “We will work out a resolution to keep them in the home,” Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for the bank, said in an emailed statement.
    __
    “That’s a blessing,” Hall told Channel 2 Action News.
    __
    The bank’s decision caps a series of telephone calls and negotiations that involved a former Atlanta City Council member, a state senator and the office of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.
    __
    There were plans to evict the women Tuesday, but the movers and Fulton County sheriff’s deputies sent to the home did not remove them, Channel 2 reported.
    __
    Hall, whose 104th birthday is three weeks away, told Channel 2 that day that she was not worried about being kicked out of her Penelope Road home.
    __
    “No, I knew that they know what they were doing. God don’t let them do wrong,” she said.
    __
    The situation seemed to affect Hall’s daughter, who was rushed to the hospital, Channel 2 said.

    Though the (2nd) mortgage is from Deutsche Bank, all of these actions were initiated by the administrator, Chase.

    Chase – not Deutsche –should be negotiating with Hall, said John Gallagher, a spokesman for Deutsche. Chase administers the loan, and is responsible for settling it, he said.
    __
    “Deutsche Bank was not involved in any way in the decision to seek to evict Mrs. Lee and her daughter,” Gallagher said in an emailed statement. “As trustee, Deutsche Bank does not control decisions or actions related to foreclosures or evictions.”

    If Jimmy Carter and Barney Frank and the CRA hadn’t forced the bank to give a free house to this lady, we wouldn’t be having all these problems we’re having.

  18. 18.

    schrodinger's cat

    Anne Laurie @top
    Thanks so much for posting this! I sent this in late last night and was greatly surprised to find it on the main page. Boss cat is now famous on the intertubes, I am sure he will be glad, while Buddha cat will just take it in her stride.

  20. 20.

    schrodinger's cat

    @WereBear: Everytime I look at Tristan he reminds me of Yogi. He has mellowed quite a bit but was quite rambunctious as a kitten and a young cat.
    @Southern Beale: Inji is very saintly, Yogi bosses her quite a lot, but she does put her paw down when it gets too much.

  22. 22.

    imonlylurking

    There should be a book, spiral bound so the spine won’t crack, with pictures on one side and the stories on the other, with a section for memorials. The proceeds could go to rescue groups or spay-neuter programs.

    I would totally buy such a book.

  23. 23.

    schrodinger's cat

    @norbizness: We were actually playing Scrabble when Boss cat decided to join us. I am glad he didn’t sit on the board and bat all the tiles down, which he loves to do when we play Monopoly.

  24. 24.

    norbizness

    I remember the time a giant cat trampled Atlantic City (it will be in the 3rd season of Boardwalk Empire), which inspired the tiny hotels and houses in Monopoly.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    Sorry, went back to sleep. BECAUSE I CAN!

    Slow going. I’m in Dayton, could be in Atlanta in 9 hours from whatever time I pull out of the parking lot but I’m inclined to take my sweet time and get home sometime tomorrow. Cold but no snow, and roads yesterday were fine once I got on Interstate. How’s the weather in the ATL?

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    He is also known as Boss Tweed, since he is bossy, he clearly thinks he is the part of 1% and the rest of us exist only to cater to his every whim.

    Typical cat.

    Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.

  27. 27.

    Winston Smith

    Didn’t get a reply… I hope my pic made it.

    I was hoping that we’d see some online counterpart to the calendar. As I look through months of critters, I find myself wanted to know more about them — a name and a factoid even. Looking forward to more BJ-pet posts.

  28. 28.

    WaterGirl

    AL, I just sent a photo of my kitties from my iPad – maybe the first one didn’t go? Please confirm if you get it. Thanks.

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    Not sure where to put this error message (see below) when I sent email to the balloon juice calendar email address. It says the email account for the calendar has been temporarily suspended.

    So if anyone else sent their photo only to the balloon juice calendar address and did NOT receive a reply back from someone saying they have your photo, I suggest sending the photo directly to anne laurie’s email address.

    Beth, that means when you send me an email message, I get the error when I reply to it, so they never get through to you. Anne Laurie wrote to say she received my kitty photo, so I am sure she will get it to you. But her email to the balloon juice email won’t go through either, so I am guessing she has another way to reach you.

    :
    >IP address< failed after I sent the message.
    Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd This account has been temporarily suspended. Please try again later. – mta145.mail.ac4.yahoo.com

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