Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

White supremacy is terrorism.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

In my day, never was longer.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

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

75% of people clapping liked the show!

You cannot love your country only when you win.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

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

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

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

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

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Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    Phylllis

    Off to Aiken, SC for the day. The rain from Beryl was followed by a cold front, so temps are in the mid-80’s and the humidity is non-existent. Sitting on the porch now finishing our coffee and enjoying the morning.

  2. 2.

    mistermix

    What a coincidence – you posted about chickens, and I posted about chickenshit, almost at the same time.

  7. 7.

    hildebrand

    Settling into our flat in Florence, Italy, for the month. I am teaching Study Abroad students from my university – History of Florence.

  8. 8.

    harlana

    bok, bok, bo-o-ok!

    we had a crazy cousin we’d see once a year, who used to go around imitating chickens

    we used to say “do the chicken, Reed!” and he’d, ya know, do the chicken.

    that was our idea of entertainment, back in the day

  9. 9.

    harlana

    wow, i’m just noting the start contrast between my comment to the one preceding it and i feel profoundly, embarrassingly inadequate as a human being.

  10. 10.

    Linda Featheringill

    Nice photo of a chicken!

    There is an artist [Dotson?] who paints realistic portraits of chickens but has them wearing jewelry, etc. Some of these paintings are quite lovely. I looked for an image online but failed to find one.

    Anyway . . . that photo reminded of those paintings.

  11. 11.

    Linda Featheringill

    @harlana:

    Don’t worry dear. I can sing like a contented chicken, too. And I do once in a while.

    Not much demand for that skill in the big city. Hmmm.

  13. 13.

    jo6pac

    Getting the firewood spot ready for next weekend delievery. Then some more work in the greenhouse and garden.

  14. 14.

    PurpleGirl

    Donnah: I like both the Olympic athlete and the chickens. Is the chickens piece done with strips of fabric — it looks like folded strips instead of yarn.

  15. 15.

    Gozer

    I stayed up all night trying to resolve a networking issue (fucking Airport Extreme doesn’t want to play nice with the existing network) and trying to look for an el-cheapo (yet reliable) wired router. My venerable and bullet-proof WRT54GL with custom firmware is handling all the DHCP/routing functions so I might just pick up another one to act as a repeater where speed is not an issue.

    But now I think I’ll go into the sunroom and nap on the couch. Life’s simple pleasures and what not.

  16. 16.

    donnah

    @PurpleGirl:

    Thanks!

    They’re actually hooked rugs made with stips of flat, dyed wool. The strips I hooked the chicken rug with are about a quarter inch wide, while the strips I’m using on the gymnast are one sixteenth. Pretty skinny!

  17. 17.

    harlana

    @Linda Featheringill: i feel a little bit better. i also sing to my cat songs i’ve made up about her off the top of my head. but, you know, if you ever saw her, you’d understand.

  18. 18.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Wow, that picture makes it really clear that birds are lizards plus a bit of evolution.

  20. 20.

    MattF

    @Gozer: Also, a rabbi once informed me that the chicken preceded the egg, according to the Bible. I think he was joking.

  22. 22.

    smintheus

    Rhode Island Reds? The best chicken ever.

    I’m still putting in the garden, half of which is still covered in weeds. The 35 tomato plants and 160 potatoes took at lot of time that I should have been devoting to broccoli, fennel, basil, and melons. And spraying my grapes.

  23. 23.

    harlana

    i was about 6 y.o. when a chicken ate my pet frog, “Nosey.” i was just introducing them to each other, and you know, GULP! my whole family still laughs about the expression on my face.

  24. 24.

    gaz

    hehehe. I read “chicken cow” instead of “chicken chow” at first glance and I was reminded of Wesley Willis. =)

  28. 28.

    HRA

    I just finished the 5th dessert to take to a suprise birthday picnic party for a relative. Skies predict rain, wind gusts and temperature is 54 without the wind. At least we’ll be in a shelter at the local county park. Will certainly put on a fall/winter coat. What can I tell you -it’s Buffalo, NY.

  29. 29.

    hildebrand

    I am envious of all the folks who are putting in gardens – the soil and climate in Deep South Texas, while fine for big agri-business because they are constantly irrigating, is not quite so conducive to small family gardens. You would need to be a full time farmer to get anything to grow in even a little back yard herb garden. Nine months of 90 degree days might be fine for citrus, but it is hell on basil and chives if you don’t baby them every bloody day.

    I imagine that my kvetching rings hollow after my previous note about teaching abroad – but I am envious, I miss the gardens we had when we lived in the midwest, and now must live vicariously through all of you, at least gardening-wise.

  30. 30.

    smintheus

    @hildebrand: Presumably you’ve tried deep mulches (leaves, wood chips)? Have you thought of stretching white row cover fabric in a frame held a few feet above the ground to provide filtered light and some shade?

  31. 31.

    g

    Oh, Betty – beware of predators. My next door neighbor just lost 4 of his 13 backyard chickens to coyotes who slipped through the fence.

  32. 32.

    Yutsano

    CHICKIES!!

    I somehow got left to my own devices at the ranch. My sitter is two border collies, and only one of them are in my room. Took the morning round of drugs, now calmly waiting for…something.

  33. 33.

    hildebrand

    @smintheus: I have not tried the cover fabric, that may be the trick, at least for the direct sunlight and heat.

    One of the real problem we are confronting is the fact that so many of our plants grow so fast (with all of that lovely sunlight and warmth) that they never produce decent root structures. They grow straight up, as quickly as you can imagine (tomatoes are the worst culprit for this), but then are so spindly they cannot support anything if it does actually happen to come to fruit, or simply cannot sustain long-term growth (for herbs and such) because the roots are stunted. All of the energy seems to go to stem growth, and we are left with very tall, spindly plants – the garden equivalent to Manute Bol, exceptionally tall but essentially useless when it comes to production. Any tips? It doesn’t seem to matter how good the soil,or how deep the mulch layers – my wife labored for quite some time creating the perfect beds, it didn’t seem to make a whit of difference. Either we are cursed, or we are missing something painfully obvious.

  34. 34.

    wmd

    I had some predation last night, lost my sole Barred Rock. Not sure what got her or when, I suspect it was before I closed up the coop at around 10:30. Carcass was missing breast meat, past raccoon raids focused on livers.

    Will be setting a trap tonight. Restringing electric fence wire is also on the agenda.

  35. 35.

    smintheus

    The Boston Herald’s attempt to destroy Elizabeth Warren takes an even more bizarre turn today. It accuses her and her family of (gasp) profiting from buying cheap houses, fixing them up, and reselling them for relatively small profit margins back in the ’90s. At the end the Herald tacks on the info that her nephew is a contractor. But not before insinuating that she took advantage of…well exactly whom is unclear…by “flipping” houses (in some cases years after they were bought). I guess this is supposed to mark her somehow as unscrupulous for buying a couple of foreclosed houses, or maybe the idea is she’s part of the parasitic class that destroyed the housing market? It’s just incredibly lame stuff. Maybe it’ll now become so ridiculously transparent that the right-wingers are desperately dredging up anything to fling at Warren that the MA public will completely turn against them?

  36. 36.

    smintheus

    @hildebrand: Too much sun might cause that problem, I don’t know. We create a lattice frame for things like tomatoes and try to get them up off the ground. But too much growth with little fruit set, esp. on tomatoes, often is caused by unusually large amounts nitrogen in the soil. A lot of manure added to the soil would cause that condition. You could test for that.

    Anyway, it should be possible with enough of the right kind of fabric to create less intense sunlight and heat on your plants. Or just build a massive grape arbor spanning your garden and let the grape leaves shade it.

  38. 38.

    eye strips

    I’m currently in Brazil, meeting many of the musicians here in Sao Paulo. I don’t think there’s been one singer or musician who has not mentioned Tom Ze as one of their primary influences. The guy is a force of nature!

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