Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

People are weird.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Everybody saw this coming.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Let there be snark.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

When I was faster i was always behind.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

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Open thread

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I’m preparing for my last night for a while of karaoke tomorrow. My planned songs: “Rock This Town”, “Use Me”, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”, and “Under My Thumb”. Any other suggestions? My karaoke friends want me to do “It’s Raining Men”. Does this mean that they think I’m gay? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I might mention that most of our conversations are about songs from West Side Story and Grease, and that I’ve become a sharp dresser who shops for shoes online in my office (great Allen Edmonds sale going on right now).

Talk about whatever.

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    Brian R.

    Barry White, “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe”

    Merle Haggard, “Mama Tried”

  5. 5.

    Mark S.

    If you’re picking from Grease, you can’t go wrong with “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.”

  9. 9.

    Egg Berry

    Maybe you could to some Rage Against the Machine in honor of your favorite congressman.

  13. 13.

    JGabriel

    I can’t consistently carry a tune, so the few times I’ve done karaoke I’ve always chosen rap — which I am in fact pretty good at, or used to be anyway. It’s been a while.

    .

  16. 16.

    DougJ, Head of Infidelity

    @rikyrah:

    I’ve done Desperado. It’s a little too high for me in the karaoke arrangement, which was about a third higher than usual.

  19. 19.

    JGabriel

    Is there some rule where we only recommend karaoke songs that are over 30 years old?

    Sticking with the over 30 motif, I imagine “Sweet Jane” or “Walk on the Wild Side” would both go over well at a karaoke party, if they’re available.

    .

  20. 20.

    JGabriel

    @Cassidy: Hey, don’t mock. I’ve gotten standing ovations for my karaoke renditions of “Stan” and “Rapper’s Delight”.

    .

  22. 22.

    danielx

    When your day starts with being caught in the bathroom when…

    1. one of the cats is chased into the garage under a garage door open about six inches
    2. by a pit bull
    3. who then hits the door going out to the garage, which is right by the bathroom
    4. and is sticking his head through the cat door through which the cat has come in while moving at roughly Mach 1
    5. while his dipshit owner is calling the pit bull, who of course is not on a leash
    6. and is completely ignoring the owner in favor of trying to eat the cat, who spends the next twelve hours cowering under a bed
    7. pit bull then tries to shove his way past you into your house when you crack the door to the garage so you can see what the fuck is happening…

    Second time I’ve had an encounter with this pit bull being out of its yard, off a chain and off a leash.

    Well. You just know the day has nowhere to go but up from there if you’re an optimist, or that you’d better get with the program and start embracing the suck right away if you’re a realist.

  24. 24.

    Jon O

    Don’t do “It’s Raining Men”. Not because it’s the dreaded gay, but because it’s just cheesy. Like people who do Bohemian Rhapsody or anything from Grease. Have some dignity. Or at least do “I Will Survive.”

  29. 29.

    trollhattan

    @Jon O:

    It did, however, provide one of the killer lines from the prez’s speech at the Correspondents’ dinner. But yeah, meta in a Mobius strip kinda way–so out it’s in. Or something. AKA, it’s shite.

    I vote for “Wang Dang Doodle.” The Koko Taylor version.

  30. 30.

    Mark S.

    Why doesn’t National Review just hire Pam Geller if they’re going to publish crap like this? She’s a hell of a lot better looking than Daniel Pipes, and could give little Richie his starbursts. My favorite line from the hit piece:

    2012: The revelation that the New York Police Department had conducted surveillance of Islamists in the New Jersey towns of Newark and New Brunswick prompted not gratitude but outrage from Christie, who termed the action arrogant and paranoid while mocking NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly as “all knowing, all seeing.”

    Gratitude?

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    They’re threatening to have a karaoke machine at our next office party and I’m leaning towards “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” Assuming I’m drunk enough, that is. My boss’ husband is mixing margaritas approximately the strength of the waste water at Fukushima, so I’m guessing that I’ll have a microphone in my hand after about two sips.

  38. 38.

    danielx

    @Yutsano:

    Oddly enough, the dog is friendly enough to humans. I should have said “she”, it’s a female. I did call the cops in lieu of animal control the first time it showed up on the deck in back, it wanted to come in and hang out on the back porch with us. But…pit bull, you know? Its owner showed up about five minutes later that time, and I presume the cop had a discussion with the owner about keeping the dog secured.

    This time though…after the owner got the dog to come out of the garage, I went out to have a word with the owner about how it might be good to keep the fucking dog on a leash. To my complete astonishment, she (the owner) started to give me some noise about how the dog was just obeying its instincts, this before I even got a word out. Obeying its instincts indeed, when it chased one of our cats, on our property, into our garage, squeezing under the garage door in the process and hitting the door into the house with a loud thump while trying to get through the cat door. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

    I have to admit I got just slightly bent out of shape at that point. I told the owner that if I saw her dog on my property again I’d call animal control instantly, and that if it showed up in my garage again chasing one of our cats that I was going to shoot it and then call animal control.

    And yes, the owner appears to be dumber than one of the loads her dog leaves in her neighbors’ yards. You don’t let a pit bull run loose in a neighborhood with kids, cats and other dogs, and I don’t care how nice a dog it is.

    Okay, have blown off steam and shall climb down from my soapbox. My soapbox of course being just exactly the same as Fox News, and I know this because George Will tells me so and George Will is never wrong.

  39. 39.

    BD of MN

    Find the Sonic Youth cover of “Superstar” by The Carpenters and get inspired to sing it yourself…

    Or, “Brandy” by Looking Glass, always a crowd pleaser…

  41. 41.

    schrodinger's cat

    Bohemian Rhapsody, and you have to do better than the Canadian drunk. Please post the video, also too.
    Why is it necessary that any well dressed man be gay? Nothing wrong in taking a little pride in your appearance, is there, whether gay or straight.

  42. 42.

    Yutsano

    @danielx: I’m half-amazed she didn’t call the police after that. This is not a pit bull thing: a dog out of control off a leash is DANGEROUS PERIOD. Breed is irrelevant. And the owner just proved herself grossly irresponsible. She may have to learn this lesson the hard way, because I can guarantee you you are not the first person on your block to have a problem with this dog.

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    @danielx:

    Yikes! Sounds like you’d better try to keep your kitties inside for a while and maybe warn your other neighbors with cats and/or small dogs to do the same.

    ETA: Yes, the dog was obeying its instincts but that’s not an excuse for the owner to allow it to kill the neighbor’s pets, FFS!

  44. 44.

    Suffern ACE

    Well, if you really want to confuse your friends into thinking you’re gay, show up to karaoke with a Hollister store bag. But instead of “It’s raining men” sing “Legs” by ZZ Top. That should keep them wondering for awhile.

  46. 46.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Yutsano: And what sucks is it’s not the dog’s fault. It’s fault of an owner who’s clearly dumber than a bag of hammers, and putting her poor untrained, loose doggie on a slow road do the canine gas chamber. Pibbles are incredibly friendly dogs (when not mistreated so as not to be) but they have a very strong prey drive – hence the serious cat chasing.

    Of course you know all that. I’m sorry danielx had such a sucky start to the day.

  48. 48.

    Cassidy

    @Steeplejack:

    Quotes go outside commas and periods.

    It looks silly and I refuse to do it. Punctuation deserves dignity.

    @JGabriel: Not intending to mock. Just reminded me of my favorite part of that show. If you haven’t seen that episode, explaining it doesn’t do the funny justice.

  49. 49.

    danielx

    @JWL:

    Kind of like that Bart Simpson line: “I’m not saying you’re a liar, but…I can’t think of a way to finish this sentence”.

  50. 50.

    Anne Laurie

    @danielx:

    And yes, the owner appears to be dumber than one of the loads her dog leaves in her neighbors’ yards. You don’t let a pit bull run loose in a neighborhood with kids, cats and other dogs, and I don’t care how nice a dog it is.

    This, ten thousand times. The polite way of phrasing the issue is “Just for your dog’s safety, people are so paranoid about pit bulls, if you let the poor thing ‘follow her instincts’ somebody is liable to do something terrible to her. Or, she could get kidnapped by gangbangers — even if she’s the sweetest thing in the world, she could end up in the ring or worse.” (Which, incidentally: true. “Nice” family pets work great as ring bait, or for breeding, since it’s unlikely her idiot owner has bothered to spay the poor animal.)

    Probably too late for you to try this tack, but maybe one of the other neighbors can get through to Idiot Woman…

  52. 52.

    fnook

    For karaoke I recommend Beast of Burden. It goes on for too long, but you get to sing “you’re a pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty girl ooh hoo ooh wee,” which is fun.

  53. 53.

    danielx

    @Anne Laurie:

    I know, and I’m a little sorry – very little – that I got in her face as much as I did, because based on the previous experience it’s actually a sweet dog. However…we’ve had two cats up and vanish over the years, and the cats don’t roam – they stay right around the house when they’re outside. We do get coyotes passing through, but on the other hand somebody’s Labrador that had dug under a fence came right through one of the screens on our back porch trying to get one of our cats that was on the porch…with us sitting there. So I get a little testy about dogs running loose…I had the Lab’s owner say, well, your cats are running loose. To which my rejoinder was, well, yes, but they’re not coming on your property trying to kill your dog.

  59. 59.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Jenny (867-5309)

    “I got it! I got it! I got her number on the wall!”

  60. 60.

    Jennifer

    I’d scratch It’s Raining Men and go with Stand By Your Man instead. That one is always pretty fucking funny when a guy sings it.

  62. 62.

    gwangung

    I do passably OK at karaoke. Not as well as my musical theatre friends, who are, understandably, quite good at it, but I run with them. Which shows you the chutzpah I have.

    I have a list of song, mostly old songs. Nothing newer than 20years old, though, unless I listen to my friends’ songs every night we go out….

    (You can hardly go wrong with Buddy Holly or Johnny Cash; I can only do the slow version of “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” on good nights, though).

  68. 68.

    Yutsano

    @Mnemosyne: Feature, not bug. :)

    And just for kicks, I looked at a job at Revenue Canada. I was actually qualified except for the citizenship part of it. And it was even in Surrey. Oh well.

  71. 71.

    smintheus

    Allen Edmonds went all in for George W. Bush in 2004, invited him to tour a factory, gave him red/white/blue dress shoes. When I wrote the president to say I was disappointed in their show of partisanship, he responded with a snide email to the effect that Democrats are whiners.

    I love Allen Edmonds shoes, but I’ll never buy another.

  74. 74.

    presquevu

    Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Come
    Elvis’ Big Hunk O’ Love
    Jimmy Johnson’s Good Timin’
    Skyliners’ Since I Don’t Have You

    A couple of karaoke versions of covers that are interesting:
    Ozzie’s Mississippi Queen
    Fleetwood Mac’s Black Magic Woman
    Sam Kinneson’s Wild Thing
    The Ramones’ Wonderful World

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