Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

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

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

White supremacy is terrorism.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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

Come on, man.

You are here: Home / Music / A Remedy For Monday

A Remedy For Monday

by | 92 Comments

This post is in: ,

A friend sent me this over the weekend.  I saved it for start-the-week duty.  Enjoy:

On the ongoing series, “I am fail” — since the latest site “upgrade”* I haven’t figured out how to post videos to the blog.  This only appears courtesy of Anne Laurie (thanks, AL) — and I can’t figure out how to hide the code.

My 12 y.o. can replay the Battle of Bunker Hill in a video game, record it, and post it to his social studies class blog.  Me? I am so last decade. Feh.

Point and stare here, and, what the hell — time for an open thread, no?

*cue Vincent Price hollow laugh.

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    Nutella

    @zunguzungu says “David Brooks is always more like David Brooks than you ever dreamed was possible.”

    Here’s Brooks’ syllabus for his course on humility. (He’s qualified to teach it because he’s got a lot to be humble about.)

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @Nutella:

    Humility means never holding one side responsible for their actions, unless the Democrats are responsible, in which case, please take next semester’s course on Accountability.

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne

    Back from my root canal with good news and bad news:

    Good news — My jaw doesn’t hurt as much as it normally would after a root canal.

    Bad news — This is because he was only able to do about half of the procedure because the tooth was so inflamed, and I will have to go back again in a couple of weeks to have him complete it. You don’t want to hear your endodontist say, “I think we’re gonna need to drain it.”

    But as far as the actual root canal goes, I highly recommend my endodontist if you’re in the Los Angeles area. He’s very brisk and very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, which I like, and he believes strongly in anesthesia. It’s a good thing when your dentist uses terms like “profound local anesthesia” to describe what he does.

  10. 10.

    ruemara

    I did some research today since I’ve gotten progressively worse since receiving a new prescription. Turns out I just got a new ACE inhibitor. I’m black. Can one of you smarty types create a big old repository of Black Medical Stuff where doctors can just look shit up, where ACEII are listed under “Shit that doesn’t really work for Black folks, so please stop prescribing them”? Turns out 50% of my prescriptions are as effective on me as sugar pills. Does none of my jewish ancestry count at all in my genes?

    On a positive note, it is good that we have the internets, without which we’d all be poisoned by our doctors.

  11. 11.

    Poopyman

    Wikipedia:

    In November 2011, Ilhama Gasimova released her first single Bei Mir Bist Du Sheen featuring DJ OGB, a modern version of the popular 1932 Yiddish song.[7] The video clip for the song became the sixth most sold on iTunes.[8] She announced her plans to release an album which would include remix versions of the songs from the 1930–50s.

    Huh. Never heard of it before.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, if I may whine a bit more, always remember to check your rear view mirror before illegally using your cell phone while driving. Otherwise, there may be a CHP officer driving behind you on the 405 who will catch you and make you prove you were only making an illegal call and not illegally texting.

    It especially sucked because I started crying in front of her when she gave me the ticket to sign. Fortunately she was CHP and not LAPD, so she was totally professional.

  15. 15.

    WaterGirl

    @ruemara: Am I crazy? Didn’t you think yesterday that you were finally on the right meds and you just needed to figure out the dosage? Mostly just asking to make sure I’m not crazy.

    But yay for you on your discovery! Major boo to the medical community for not knowing what the fuck they are doing half the time.

  17. 17.

    Narcissus

    @Nutella: This syllabus reads less like a study of humility and more like a program on how to be David Brooks.

    Which is certainly something.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @Baud:

    :-p

    I was actually trying to call my endodontist and tell them I was running late, which I had time to do while I was waiting for her to make sure I wasn’t a wanted criminal and write up the ticket. At least I had a good excuse for being half an hour late.

    Also, now I know to pay attention to Google turn-by-turn when it tells me not to take the 405 at 10:00 in the morning. I did it anyway and paid the price (literally!) because it took 20 minutes just to get onto the transition from the 101 to the 405 South.

    If you drove down that transition road around 10:45 am today and saw someone crying as CHP wrote her a ticket on the shoulder, that was me. :-s

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @WaterGirl:

    I tried, but it didn’t work. (I was actually on my way to it and was able to show her the appointment card.) It’s my bad luck that if I do decide to do something illegal, I always manage to do it right in front of a cop so they have no choice but to pull me over. That’s how I got my one and only speeding ticket, too.

  20. 20.

    ruemara

    @WaterGirl: Nope. No you’re not. I thought so. I felt great yesterday. I figured the higher readings were just part of the acclimatizing process. Then as night fell, I started feeling crappy. And this morn I woke up with that “uh oh” feeling. Stopped a nosebleed and started googling when things did not settle down with the morning cocktail. I want to be ok for work tomorrow, which is why I wish to strangle the merciless fuck out of the on-call guy who has not called me in over an hour to tell me what the fuck to do as far as what to take. Doctors. I want medical mj.

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    Okay, post a third comment in a row to say that I searched all of today’s threads for “Gex” and didn’t find any comments from Gex. i am kind of worried.

  22. 22.

    low-tech cyclist

    My 12 y.o. can replay the Battle of Bunker Hill in a video game, record it, and post it to his social studies class blog. Me? I am so last decade. Feh.

    I was keeping up with the new stuff pretty well until somewhere around 2006, give or take. Then I stopped. Techwise, I’m totally stuck somewhere around that year. My wife has an iPad, and other than games, I’m not sure what I’d do with it. I have no idea what I’d do with an Android. I have a very un-smart flip phone that I can make phone calls on, text with, and take a photo with if I don’t have an actual digital camera along, and that’s about it. I prefer LiveJournal to Facebook.

    I’m a relic, and I’m happy that way.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:

    I’m sad for you, too! It sucks to have to check up on your doctors. Internet research was how I figured out that the tri-phasic birth control pills that every doctor puts you on at first were causing major depressions for me. I had to do all of the research myself and demand the brand names that I decided would probably work best so they wouldn’t give me another bad one.

  24. 24.

    Napoleon

    In case no one noticed, Obama proved on Sat. what an incompetent he is a negotiating anything.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @ruemara:
    I think you’re partly answering your own question when you point out your Jewish ancestry: African Americans don’t really form as tight a genetic group as you’d think. You almost all have a fair number of white ancestors who may or may not have given you other interesting genes. That means you can’t really come up with a list of stuff that won’t work on black people because there are too many exceptions of black people who it will work on. Not that this is really much of a difference; no medicine works the same for everyone. You’d think that doctors would have learned that by now and would carefully monitor all their patients after they’ve prescribed something new.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    Fortunately she was CHP and not LAPD, so she was totally professional.

    If she had been LAPD, she couldn’t have given you a ticket for doing anything on the 405; only CHP is allowed to give tickets on state highways.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @Mnemosyne:

    Glad you weren’t checking BJ. Trying to respond to trolls while driving will give you road rage.

    I’m a big fan of Google navigation. I just got an Android phone and really like that feature.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    It was meant more as a comment on the relative professionalism of CHP vs. LAPD. I’ve had experience with both and I’ll take CHP every single time.

    I was definitely glad I’d remembered to stuff my insurance card in my wallet a few weeks ago — I usually forget and I woulda been screwed.

  31. 31.

    Raven

    @Mnemosyne: I was having some severe tooth pain about 6 months and went to my dentist. He just said, we need to clean that out. After 30 minutes of grinding we took a break. I said, “hey, is this a root canal”? He smiled.

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also, now I know to pay attention to Google turn-by-turn when it tells me not to take the 405 at 10:00 in the morning on a day ending in “y”.

    FTFY. How long have you lived in Los Angeles without picking up that the 405 is a bad bet at any time of day or night?

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @Raven:

    Hey Raven, glad the heart attack you suffered from the Falcoln’s game wasn’t fatal. Congrats.

    Since he didn’t respond, my answer to your question is “no.”

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @Raven:

    Most people can have theirs done by their regular dentist, but apparently I have roots that go in bizarre directions, so I have to see an endodontist so he can use all of his cool microscopes to suss them out.

    It’s now about 5 hours after the procedure and I’m starting to get some feeling back in my right ear. And the tooth that was worked on was in my lower jaw.

    This is why I drive 60-90 minutes and risk traffic tickets to see this particular endodontist — he has a very generous hand with the novocaine.

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    @Raven:
    It’s just part of the local dialect. Freeways must be specified using the definite article. Also, too, some of them should be called by name rather than number in a way carefully calculated to confuse outsiders. Why is it the Pasadena Freeway rather than the 110, but the 405 rather than the San Diego Freeway? Enquiring minds want to know.

  45. 45.

    Raven

    @trollhattan:

    Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail
    Those test tubes and the scale
    Just get them all out of here
    Is there gas in the car
    Yes, there’s gas in the car
    I think the people down the hall
    Know who you are

  47. 47.

    Raven

    @Roger Moore: My sis lives in Hawthorne, brother in Sherman Oaks. We move to LA from Chicago in 1957. They were just getting it rolling.

    eta Here in Georgia they LOVE to have counties and towns woth the same name but in different places! Madison County is north of Athens and Madison is in Morgan County to the south.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    We call it “the 110” hereabouts, but that’s because we’re generally going southbound.

    Chicago is actually worse for names vs. numbers. Traffic reports sound like political news since they talk about what Eisenhower, Dan Ryan, and Edens are doing that morning, and God help you if you can’t remember that the Eisenhower is I-290 when you’re trying to give directions to an out-of-towner.

  49. 49.

    JWL

    You will have this conversation with your son within the next 20 years:

    Ring, ring…. “Son”?

    “Hey, dad. Yeah, it’s me. How you doing”?

    “Well, not so good. I can’t get [insert computer device] going. Can you walk me through it”?

    [Son, to himself: “Fuck, not again”].. “Well, I can try, Dad. Is it powered up? I mean, remember the last time” [to himself: “And the time before that, and the time before that..”].

  50. 50.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Mnemosyne:

    You know I find the dental system in the US completely confounding. My boss is seeing two different dentists right now trying to fix one problem which appears to me to be fairly straight forward. The mouth and teeth are relatively a simple system of teeth, roots and bones why do we have to have an ultra specialized system that just costs the patient twice the money? There are some dentists around here that have to refer you to another dentist for an extraction. What the fuck use are they if they are not even qualified to pull a damn tooth?

  52. 52.

    quannlace

    Finally put my Christmas tree out, before it became too much of a fire hazard. Not really, it actually held up pretty well and was sad this year to take it down. Very grey, gloomy weather here for the past few days; coming down with a cold ( first afraid it was the flu) so some pretty lights would be nice.

  53. 53.

    Raven

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Shit, you should see what my bride is going through on her spine problems. I spent an hour and a half with her Osteo and we’re probably more confused than we were even though he was really good.

  57. 57.

    ranchandsyrup

    @dmsilev: you’re right, i’m not sure which one is worse. I clicked through some of the people on the atlasdating site. Quite the morose bunch. Sample: Likes: being rational. Dislikes: altruism.

  59. 59.

    gene108

    @Roger Moore:

    Also, too, some of them should be called by name rather than number in a way carefully calculated to confuse outsiders.

    Ain’t that the truth.

    When I moved to South Jersey, it took me 10 months to figure out what local dialect, with regards to roads.

    None of the nicely numbered roads in Philadelphia had signs that made any reference to what the locals called them.

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:
    The names actually make some kind of sense when you’re a local. Freeways that pass through downtown are given different names on opposite sides according to their destination (e.g. Santa Monica vs. San Bernardino for the 10), so calling them by name gives you more specificity. Most other freeways are called by number rather than by name. The only exceptions are ones where different stretches of the same named freeway are given different numbers (e.g. the Ventura, Hollywood, and Foothill Freeways) or where the same highway number is a freeway in some stretches and not in other stretches (e.g. CA-2 is the Glendale Freeway where it’s a freeway but has other names for other stretches).

  61. 61.

    gene108

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    What the fuck use are they if they are not even qualified to pull a damn tooth?

    It’s not the extraction of the tooth that limits them from my experience.

    It’s there qualifications to apply anesthesia to patients.

    A dentist can shoot your jaw full of Novocaine. He/she may not be qualified to apply general anesthesia to you and “knock you out” for the duration of the procedure.

  62. 62.

    MazeDancer

    @ruemara:

    Blood pressure medicines are so difficult. And, yes, you have to research every one.

    Beta blockers made me sobbingly depressed. Which fortunately I recognized as not the kind of sad I might have normally, but some strange misery. Google informed me, well, yes, they do cross the blood brain barrier, and do depress people. Stopped cold. Happy two days later. So beware beta blockers.

    Everyone is different. Many people swear by the ARB’s – Avapro, Cozaar, Atacand, Benecar. But they make many people too dizzy. Millions of people can’t find a bp medicine that works without side effects. People that can take one pill don’t have much sympathy. But Google searching to try and find one without side effects produces no results other than miserable people and knowledge that everyone is different.

    Trying magnesium, exercise, and meditation now. And hoping that the huge Cochrane study released this summer saying mild bp is over treated is right. (Not endorsing or suggesting anyone else should consider this choice either.)

    Much luck to you.

  63. 63.

    MikeJ

    I just had new neighbors move in. I ought to drop by and give them bad local info. “Yeah, take the Natalie Wood to Bellevue and go north on the 405…”

  64. 64.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Mnemosyne: In the New York area, before I was old enough to drive, I was always intimidated by the traffic report. There would be a backup on the Gowanus, rubbernecking delays on the Major Deegan, lane closures on the Tappan Zee, and alternate-side-of-the-street parking in effect. Just an avalanche of arcane knowledge.

    @WaterGirl: I was wondering when I should get more concerned about that myself…

  65. 65.

    ruemara

    Well, that sucks. I’ve been waiting for feedback on what I can take to get things a little more even keel and they went ahead and closed without returning my call. Doctors=awesome.

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    I was going to make a joke about British dental care, but I will refrain. ;-) (I know, I know, it’s not as bad as its reputation.)

    I think gene108 is right about the anesthesia thing — my dentist tells me that it’s very easy to nick the wrong nerve when you’re doing novocaine if you don’t know what you’re doing and you suddenly have a patient with a permanently paralyzed facial nerve. Add in the procedures for which you need to put people into monitored twilight sleep (which is general anesthesia), and you definitely want someone who knows what s/he’s doing.

    But it’s also kinda like how my dad had one doctor for his kidneys (a nephrologist), a different one for his lungs/COPD, a different one for his cancer, and a GP who was supposed to coordinate everything. Your regular dentist is supposed to be the equivalent of your medical GP and if you need specialty care, you go to the person who specializes in it.

    Frankly, it sounds like your boss just has a bad dentist. G found his (now our) current dentist because he needed to have his wisdom teeth taken out, got a recommendation for an oral surgeon from someone at work, and then asked the oral surgeon to recommend a dentist. (They were a little puzzled, because it usually works the other way around, but they referred him.)

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    On this particular speck of land, roads are always referred to by a name. Seriously doubt if as many as 1 in 10 residents could correctly identify any road on the island by number.

    Tourists asking “How do I get to [insert number]” are met with blank stares.

    It’s a fairly straightforward road system.

    1) For all intents and purposes, there are no alternate routes.
    2) If you drive into the ocean, you’ve gone too far.

  70. 70.

    ruemara

    @Mnemosyne: You know, I’m the only person I know who likes going to the dentist and is not afraid of novocaine. Thanks for ending that, hah.

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    @FlipYrWhig

    Been a long, long while since I lived in or drove around the NYC area, but one thing one learned then was to avoid the BQE, which was always more congested than a hypochondriac at a pollen festival.

    The old Cross-Bronx Expressway could be a nightmare as well.

    And spent many an hour in epic back-ups on the Belt Parkway.

  73. 73.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:

    If your dentist is a cheek-wiggler (ie, s/he wiggles your cheek while administering the novocaine to distribute it better), you’re probably fine. I thought it was a bizarre thing to do when I first started getting regular dental care again, but it really does seem to work better.

    But I’m a giant wimp and I make them numb my gums up with the cherry-flavored topical stuff before they can start sticking needles in there, so YMMV.

    (I was only given nitrous oxide (laughing gas) once and I can report back that, for me, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the actual pain, but it made me not care if I was in pain. Like, “Oh, they’re sticking the needle in my gum. That kinda hurts. Interesting.”)

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    When G and I visited Kauai, we loved having a GPS just so we could hear it stumble over all of the names of the streets.

    (And, overall, we just plain loved Kauai. We really want to get back sooner rather than later.)

  76. 76.

    General Stuck

    @ruemara:

    I’ve had a time over the last ten years trying to keep my bp stable, with any number of meds in combo. Though recently, I was put on a diuretic (in addition to a calcium channel blocker, and low dose of beta blocker, and at the same time, completely kicked the tobacco habit (snuff the past ten years), so one of those things or maybe both have my bp down to 114/76, which is unreal for me.

  77. 77.

    mainmati

    Absolutely bizarre version of “Bei mir bist du sheen” what with Laurel and Hardy but really entertaining. Obviously done recently, who’s the singer?

  82. 82.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937

    @Nutella: I’m conflicted. Brooks? but he’s requiring Dorothy Day’s autobiography, which I really think is great. I love her writing and her life experiences.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @WereBear:

    It was weird, because I haven’t been pulled over in at least 15 years, so I was like, “Wait, is she turning her lights on for ME?!”

    Yep, she was. I’ll probably have to do traffic school to keep it off my insurance, but I think California will let me do it online since it’s a misdemeanor.

  87. 87.

    WereBear

    @Mnemosyne: Well, I hope so. I’m sure you have had the experience of Other Drivers going all kinds of mayhem in front of you (oh, didn’t you just power over that chipmunk while talking on your cell, you A-hole”) so it’s very annoying if you can’t work it off…

  91. 91.

    Groucho48

    We will survey episodes from the lives of George C. Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower and various “Wise Men.” We will pay special attention to those who attended elite prep schools and universities.

    Because, after all, they are the only ones that matter.

  92. 92.

    Lojasmo

    For hypertensives here;

    If you are on three agents, one being a diuretic (water pill) and still have blood pressure 160 systolic, there is a new trial of renal artery deenervation called SIMPLICITY.

    Check it out.

Comments are closed.