Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

No one could have predicted…

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Let me file that under fuck it.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

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

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Consistently wrong since 2002

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

The lights are all blinking red.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

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Reader Interactions

114Comments

  2. 2.

    El Caganer

    I recommended it on my FB page as a good gift for people with SAD. The few comments I got were not encouraging.

  3. 3.

    Cassidy

    I got a pair of pajama pants, shorts, and gym pants from both my parents that are about 10 sizes too big. They’re divorced, so they both, seperately, thought I was a 46 waist.

  7. 7.

    patrick II

    My teenage nephew has a pickup truck that he loves to keep in tip-top shape. When I asked what he got for Christmas, he told me he got “lots of cleaning products” and seemed happy about it. That would not be a good gift for me however.

  11. 11.

    quannlace

    Contracting the anus, eh? Is this how you get rid of the Depression? Expelling it like a mischeavous imp?

  14. 14.

    PaulW

    One Christmas… was it 1996?… I got seven green shirts from various family members and friends. The sad thing wasn’t the realization that I was no longer young enough to get at least one toy… it was that my friends and family didn’t coordinate to make sure they didn’t overlap on gifts. I mean, not one book for a librarian here?

    Sigh. And my favorite color is blue.

  15. 15.

    Starfish

    I remember that book when it was a twinkle in the eye of its author. He came to usenet asking for ideas. He took many of the comments that he received from various people and included them in his book verbatim.

    The things that were written in reply to him were somewhat like Doug J’s attempts to troll various bloggers, but the author did not have enough of a grasp on the English language to appreciate the humor.

  16. 16.

    Ronzoni Rigatoni

    One reviewer says, “several days after I started this practice, I experienced what was probably the largest bowel movement in my life.” I am laffing too hard right now, but somebody offered the classic ripost, “and I bet your pants fit a lot better after.” hahahahaha

    Think I’ll wait til Books a Million gets the leftovers.

  17. 17.

    Tokyokie

    @Starfish: My experience from living in Japan is that the Japanese have no understanding of sarcasm. I’d routinely say something intentionally ridiculous, like many Indonesians only have one name because it’s a poor country and they can’t afford longer ones, and the response was generally, “Honto?”

  22. 22.

    Quicksand

    Are you kidding? That would be the BEST present ever. I would display that book proudly on a bookshelf near the entryway. Or possibly leave it around the house.

  25. 25.

    Paul in KY

    @quannlace: Maybe the ‘depression’ is small potatos after constricting (and thinking about constricting, and getting ready to constrict) anus 100 times in a day.

    P.S. Don’t forget about post-constricting!

  26. 26.

    El Caganer

    NOT that I am conspiracy-minded, BUT….aside from the title of this book, when was the last time you heard the word “malarkey?” Wasn’t it when Joe Biden used it in the VP debate? Coincidence….or something much more sinister? We report, you decide.

  27. 27.

    red dog

    My pooch left a few presents in the back yard for me to scoop. I think the he may have tried that stress relieving technique.

  28. 28.

    rb

    Can’t top it, but got a funny one this year: mom sent me a giftwrapped power cord/adapter for a dustbuster. She’d somehow stolen it from our place. The enclosed note read: “Don’t ask. Love you.”

  29. 29.

    meander

    If you’re not yet done with your charitable giving for 2012, I’d like to recommend two charities that fit right in with some of the main themes of Balloon Juice:

    1) Freedom Dogs. Their webpage summarizes their mission: “Freedom Dogs offers custom-trained specialty service dogs to wounded members of the military returning from armed conflict. It is reported that 40% of all returning troops suffer from PTSD. Many of these returning men and women are so mentally, physically or spiritually broken that they have little hope of returning to mainstream life.”

    2) Pets for Vets. Their webpage summarizes their mission: “Our goal is to help heal the emotional wounds of military veterans by pairing them with a shelter dog that is specially selected to match his or her personality. Professional animal trainers rehabilitate the dogs and teach them good manners to fit into the veteran’s lifestyle. Training can also include desensitization to wheel chairs or crutches as well as recognizing panic or anxiety disorder behaviors.”

    I made donations to both groups earlier in the year, after seeing one of them on a PBS special about rescue dogs finding new lives, and after hearing the other on a NPR show (Fresh Air, I think). It’s amazing how much the animal and human get out of the partnership.

  30. 30.

    RSA

    @Ronzoni Rigatoni:

    “several days after I started this practice, I experienced what was probably the largest bowel movement in my life.”

    That was my favorite review, too. As for a worse Christmas present, it’s a hard book to beat. But I’ll suggest one of these books from Amazon: their most expensive offerings in English. For example, at #9, there’s Justus Von Lengerke (1854-1929): A chronicle of his life by Justus Von Lengerke (1996), for $1,699,000.00. Not just anyone can publish an autobiography 67 years after his death.

  35. 35.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    I bought our son a new internet-enabled DVD player for Christmas. It’s wireless and damned if I didn’t manage to get him on our home network on the first try. No mean feat that because I use old-school UNIX style passphrases and typing in the wireless network one with the remote was a definite journey.

    Other than my previously mentioned Christmas eve visit from the cops, and being threatened with arrest, I didn’t get anything.

  39. 39.

    Mustang Bobby

    In 1979 I got a set of jumper cables that were thick enough to be remnants of the Atlantic cable. I lived in northern Michigan and had a ’74 Jeep Wagoneer, so it made sense. But from my grandmother? That may not be the worst, but it was the most unexpected.

    This year at the office I got an “all natural nail care set.” Okay, yeah, I’m gay, but I’m not nellie, and besides, everyone knows that the best nail polish is Superglue. It has a nice shiny gloss and your nails do not chip at all. (Found that out purely by accident.)

    Re: anal constrictions 100 times a day… sounds like something John Boehner needs to do more often.

  41. 41.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    I did a tour in that other-other war and though there were plenty of times when you couldn’t have got a straight pin into my anus I was still depressed.

  44. 44.

    martian

    Go ahead and laugh, but I just now bought that book for my cousin. Combined with the Angry Mob Playset I already have for him (torch and pitchfork wielding figurines – it’s pretty awesome), I think it will be a very cheering gift.

    Thanks, mistermix!

  45. 45.

    Another Halocene Human

    Well, I had somebody give me an item that would have been useful, except it was made out of this nasty, Chinese outgassing plastic that nearly made me pass out. I couldn’t in good conscience give it away, so I wrapped it tight and put it in trash to be turned into methane at the ‘fill.

    All I want for Xmas is EIC, child credit extension, and VAWA.

    Can we declare the first week of January “Rape A Native Woman For Free” Week in honor of Eric Cantor and promote it widely until Cantor refudiates his sincerely held positions?

  47. 47.

    elmo

    Many years ago, my then-boss (to whom I remain very close) cautioned me that he didn’t do “girly” presents, that he preferred practical gifts, and he hoped I wouldn’t mind. I assured him that I also preferred practical gifts.

    No really, he said, this is totally not anyone’s idea of “nice,” or fun, or anything. But it’s really practical!

    I assured him again.

    He then presented me with one of my favorite gifts of all time: a portable emergency car battery charger. He was seriously almost apologetic about it, and I was seriously over-the-moon delighted. I finally managed to convince him that I wasn’t just being polite, that I really was pleased, and we’ve continued exchanging “serious” and “practical” gifts ever since.

    This year? He got me a treadmill. Dude is the best. Santa. EVAR.

  48. 48.

    gelfling545

    I don’t know if it’s worse but one year I got a statue of Moses dashing the tablets against a rock. I have no idea why it was thought I might like that but it wasn’t a gag. Then there was the year my mother, who was losing her vision, was into macrame.

  49. 49.

    MikeJ

    I got a new stand mixer (my old one like to walk around the counter and the bowl would pop out at random times, which was rather messy) and Thomas Keller’s new Bouchon Bakery cookbook.

  52. 52.

    Southern Beale

    Perhaps this is a book about economics. Perhaps “Depression” is meant in the economic sense. And we need to constrict anus. What is our political anus? The GOP.

    I think this is a FABULOUS book.

  55. 55.

    quannlace

    P.S. Don’t forget about post-constricting!

    Isn’t that what happened in the Southern states after the Civil War?

  59. 59.

    Another Halocene Human

    @PeakVT: Love this article. First, then get a juicy dig in at Amtrak’s Silver service, which takes 9 hours longer than a shorter Chinese line. (This is because there has always been a recession in the third world country we call the South, and Florida is a fleabag shithole kleptocracy with crappy infrastructure.) Then the talk of China’s “faulty signally system” which surely made everyone at USDOT feel good today, as much of the very high cost of HSR in the US are advanced signalling requirements. (The other cost is train weight, much higher than most of the world, and with increasingly little evidence that this is significant for safety.)

    Then there’s the fact that China is engaging in stimulus spending, successfully (hmmm) but tempered with “concerns” about debt.

    Another takeaway to me is that corruption looks to be a barrier to TODs. Wow. Corruption by local officials is nothing new in China, but it is interesting to read that regardless.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    @Peregrinus:

    Reader review on your suggested book:

    I bought How to Avoid Huge Ships as a companion to Captain Trimmer’s other excellent titles: How to Avoid a Train, and How to Avoid the Empire State Building. These books are fast paced, well written and the hard won knowledge found in them is as inspirational as it is informational. After reading them I haven’t been hit by anything bigger than a diesel bus. Thanks captain!

    Do you think this book even exists?

    Had you all seen the NYTimes article on how Amazon is purging some reader reviews?

    They’re trying to do away with manipulated reviews. Amazon won’t allow reviews by the author’s relatives, which would seem to be better solved by requiring relatives to disclose the relationship clearly at the outset.

    Meanwhile, someone who reads ten pages is permitted to put up a glowing or blistering review.

  66. 66.

    askew

    One year my father got a book called “A Coffin with no handles” for Christmas. How depressing is that?

    Why is no one talking about the farm bill expiring Dec 31st? It’s a much more immediate problem than the farm bill. Is it because the media can’t figure out a way to blame this on Dems?

  68. 68.

    Peregrinus

    @Elizabelle:

    Well, it does seem to be a book – one person on Goodreads said he had a hell of a time acquiring it but finally tracked down a copy (through a regional library system) and found it entertaining.

    Also found a forum thread with people asking if anyone had actually read the book and whether it provided good advice. One guy said “it boils down to three things” but I’m not sure if he meant the book or, y’know, how to actually avoid huge ships.

    @MikeJ:

    The English teacher in me demanded it.

  69. 69.

    rda909

    Top that? How about a Daily Kos “membership.” We could use fewer places that freak-out and immediately turn on the President at the first sign of things getting tough. And do I, a life-long liberal, really need another former Republican telling me what it means to be a good liberal? Oh, wait…

  70. 70.

    Todd

    @Elizabelle:

    They’re trying to do away with manipulated reviews. Amazon won’t allow reviews by the author’s relatives, which would seem to be better solved by requiring relatives to disclose the relationship clearly at the outset.

    You could set up a drinking game to the first five reviews of any new kindle offering, there’s so much publisher uniformity.

  71. 71.

    taylormattd

    I think I can.

    My mother, who is a staunch democrat and who knows I’m a rabid liberal, bought me Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, by Bill O’Reilly.

    Me: “Mom, this book is written by Bill O’Reilly.”

    Mom: “Oh, I know he’s terrible, but an actual historian helped him write the book, and I did some research on the internet, and it seems accurate.”

    Me: “I don’t think I can have this book in my house.”

  73. 73.

    gbear

    Best and worst gifts were both records.

    Worst was “It’s A Magilla Gorilla Christmas” when I was expecting something rock and roll (I was about 10 years old in 1964). I almost cried.

    Best was when my really un-hip mom gave me a huge box set of Little Richard’s best recordings because she saw it on sale in the Publisher’s Clearing House catalog. I was floored. It’s an amazing collection.

  75. 75.

    Amir Khalid

    @Elizabelle:
    As long as they leave the mocking reviews alone. Those are great entertainment.

    I once reported to Amazon a review of a Bruce Springsteen CD that was written by someone going by the name “Patti Scialfa”. It seemed very suspicious to me.

  80. 80.

    Schlemizel

    I know my depression would be greatly reduced if every member of the DC Kool Kids Klub would constrict their anus.

    Given that their heads are so far up their asses the constriction would strangle them all & the world would be a happier, better, place

  81. 81.

    Elizabelle

    @Amir Khalid:

    Way cool.

    Now I’m worrying what Amazon is going to suggest for me next, after cruising a few of the related products.

    It’s been bad enough seeing “Concealed Carry” magazine and knives when we talk about Newtown.

  82. 82.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I wound up on the some of the nutter’s gun sites yesterday thanks to this site and now get to see a shoot the zombie ad. These ads that cater to where you visit is completely creepy. I want the ads of the nerdy girls with nice boobs back. FWIW I got a great pair of shoes and comfy slippers from the wifey. My feets are all set for the foreseeable future. And my stupid brother in law and his girlfriend got us the most unique present of the day. The stool I put the hound’s food on was pretty ratty and they gave us a new one with our dog, Yeller, painted on it. It looks just like him.

  84. 84.

    PeakVT

    @Another Halocene Human: I’ve only heard about excessive signalling costs in the US on “The Peninsula” because Caltrain is basically insisting on developing its own world-class mixed-traffic signalling system from scratch. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a system that can be bought off-the-shelf (ERTMS), and that will likely be replaced once CHSRA starts building its own signalling system (once again, ERTMS) on the San Jose-San Francisco corridor.

    The FRA’s ridiculous buff requirements, OTOH, are a limiting factor on just about every passenger rail project. The FRA is so boneheaded I think that that FAA should take over regulating all HSR projects. If that were the case, then at least the first response to an accident wouldn’t be to make the vehicle heavier.

  85. 85.

    Schlemizel

    @taylormattd:

    My MIL ‘gifted’ me with a copy of “A Purpose Driven Life” a few years ago. I put that in the same category as what my cats ‘gift’ me with occasionally. Smelly, slimy and you really don’t want to pick it up with your bare hand

  86. 86.

    Another Halocene Human

    @meander: But are these animals service animals according to VA rules? You may not be doing that vet a favor if the dog is barred from VA property, housing, etc. While rules for service animals are very lenient on public transit, for example, the VA rules are pretty strict.

  87. 87.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Anyone else recall this spurious story about a huge ship;

    This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.
    Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a Collision.
    Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
    Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
    Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
    Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States’ Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that’s one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
    Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

    It isn’t true, but it is funny.

  88. 88.

    Ash Can

    If by “constricting anus” you mean “wrapping hands around asshole’s neck and choking him/her,” hell, if I did that a hundred times a day I’d feel terrific.

  90. 90.

    martian

    It wasn’t this Christmas, but I once received a 99 cent packet of potpourri from my brother and sister-in-law that they picked up from a truckstop gift shop on the way home to visit. The price was on it. My friend who was visiting with me received, if I recall precisely, a video of classic Spiderman cartoons. I was the comics collector – particularly Spiderman. They said they didn’t know what to get me. Most passive-aggressive gift tandem EVAR.

    They’re divorced now. Heh.

  91. 91.

    Another Halocene Human

    @PeakVT: the car end of DOT is infected with the same virus.

    The way I heard it, there was a nasty rail accident in the 70s with a mixed consist of aluminum and steel Budd passenger cars. During the crash, the steel cars crushed the aluminum ones like aluminum cans … with people inside. The rational response would not be to run mixed consists, but they went one further and made all the cars heavier. Because the only part of physics class they got through was the Newtonian force equations.

    Do you know it was only in the last decade that they’ve put out locomotives with crumple zones so locomotive engineers don’t get decapitated in crashes? I mean, what’s heavier than a coal train–by NHTSB logic that should be the safest vehicle on earth, right?

    The US has really suffered badly through disinvestment (which means loss of skills) and not having the best and brightest in the field, as compared to Western Europe and Japan.

    We can’t have tiny cars like in Europe b/c of DOT regs/fear/dogmatism. SUV drivers don’t seem to have a good survival rate in SUV vs. tractor trailer crashes, yet this idiotic common wisdom persists.

    In fact, a great deal of what goes on in the transportation engineering field is just plain stupid (and uninformed), long before the politicians get involved to muck things up further. (Actually, due to community activists, the politicians these days have a salutory effect on the process.)

  92. 92.

    PsiFighter37

    @taylormattd: I once shook hands with O’Reilly at, of all places, and Earth, Wind, and Fire concert at Radio City. It was a bit surreal to see that asshat demonstrating quality taste in music.

    I wish I had something witty to say, but unfortunately I did not. Maybe next time…

  94. 94.

    LanceThruster

    And remember, when judging these horrible gifts…it’s the thought that counts. Even when no actual thought went into it.

  98. 98.

    gogol's wife

    @Schlemizel:

    One of the few books I have ever taken in my hands, walked outside with, and put into the trash can. I was in a church group and somebody had the bright idea that we should all buy it and read it.

  100. 100.

    LanceThruster

    @Schlemizel:

    I put that in the same category as what my cats ‘gift’ me with occasionally.

    Learned a great new euphamism from “The Fairly Oddparents” the other day —

    “Santa’s got to drop a few presents down the chimney…if you know what I mean.”

  102. 102.

    Suzanne

    One of the best and worst gifts came the same year from tthe same people. My mom got me my first CD player, so my grandparents wanted to get me some CDs for it. I was twelve. They got me R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People” and Amy Grant’s Christmas album. Apparently they asked my mom what CDs to get and she suggested the Amy Grant thing as “appropriate for grandparents to give a granddaughter” and the R.E.M. as “something she’ll actually like”.

    That was twenty years ago yesterday. “Automatic for the People” is still in my top ten albums of all time. The Amy Grant thing got traded at Bookman’s ASAP.

  105. 105.

    eyelessgame

    My wife’s family are awesome, loving, generous people. And they’re incredibly hard to shop for – “oh, I don’t need anything”, and in general (they don’t realize it) not being very appreciative or demonstrative for presents they do get.

    My sister-in-law’s husband issued what might be a credible threat yesterday. “Next year, anyone who doesn’t give me an idea of what they want for Christmas? I’m buying them an NRA membership.”

  106. 106.

    Elizabelle

    @Southern Beale:

    OMG, huh?

    That’s an acronym for Oversized Male Genitalia.

    I know, because Amazon has a book up entitled “My Pen i s is too big”, allegedly by an Asian studies specialist and a Catholic priest.

    John Trimmer’s readers have been looking at that one too.

    (I was surprised to find out JT was real. I was afraid it was some term you could find in the Urban Dictionary.)

  107. 107.

    Peregrinus

    @Paul in KY:

    It was, but then he, in the words of Dickipedia, “inexplicably confused ‘loofah’ with ‘falafel.'”

    From Newsweek:

    “I sensed a subconscious desire on O’Reilly’s part for cleanliness and maybe some neurosis about the female body since the first thing he would want to do was clean it with a loofah, which he then, steeped as he is in reporting on the Middle East, mistakenly called a falafel, according to Mackris’s suit.”

  110. 110.

    eclare

    Didn’t happen to me but a friend of mine was an “orphan” staying with distant relatives, so they gave her what any single 35 year old female would want: a canned ham. Bonus, it was from her Uncle Dick.

  112. 112.

    Catsy

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    Anyone else recall this spurious story about a huge ship

    Pretty sure I remember that going around way back in BBS days, well before the cited date.

    Hell, it probably hearkens back to Readers Digest or something.

  113. 113.

    SFAW

    This book may be second only to “Jimmy James: Macho Business Donkey Wrestler” for colorful phrasing.

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