We’re in an apartment for the next couple of months. That sucks. What sucks even more is the Twilight:Breaking Dawn 2 party that Soonerdaughter is hosting in the glorified entryway that passes for a living room. My home office right now is literally in a closet. On the home construction front, we’ve passed plumbing and electrical inspections and we start insulating on Monday and we hanging drywall pretty quickly after that. We’re moving right along.
But things could be worse. I am not subject to the sequester because VA was exempted. But my sister and several of my friends who work for DoD, Interior, BoP, FAA, and the Marshal’s Service are bracing for a %20 pay cut to ensure that Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham get reelected.
What have you guys got going tonight?
kamalokitty
Dude that sucks so bad, I’ll have to have a 4th glass of wine to dull your pain. On the plus, drywall! Weathering my own severe sequestering at county superior Court. Cuts abound come March 15, and hope to be left standing. Okole maluna.
Alison
It’s MLS opening weekend, yay! The two teams I care about don’t play till tomorrow, though, but it was still good to see some domestic soccer again (even if Houston did win, yuck).
Hill Dweller
The public might not have been paying attention leading up to the sequester, but they are now. There are going to be stories about popular policies and government services being stopped/reduced every day. The pressure will just continue to build.
Boehner might have been feeling good yesterday, but that isn’t going to last. Try as they might to blame Obama, every day the Republicans don’t offer a solution the more obvious their support for the sequester.
Suzanne
Unrelated to the sequester, Mr. Suzanne is facing a pay cut because the school district he works for decided to no longer provide speech services in Spanish. Because who cares if brown kids can adequately speak their native language?! Teach ’em English!
Bastards.
Omnes Omnibus
Twilight party? You poor bastard.
Steeplejack
Just got home from doing my small good deed of giving a former coworker a ride home from work. She gets off about 11:00, and it’s hit or miss for the (somewhat unreliable) last bus. Now debating whether to go to bed, although I’m not very sleepy, or wait up and watch Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows on HBO at 12:30.
Eh, who am I kidding? I’m a night owl.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Gophers are 36-0. Outscored the opposition 197-29. The penalty kill is +2 on the season. Nora Rӓty now has 41 career shutouts, which is an entire season of 0.00 goals against. Megan Bozek now has the Gopher career record for points by a defenseman and Hannah Brandt the record for most points by a freshman.
Great, great team.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: The Train will be on TCM tonight.
Chris
That is so sick and wrong.
A girl friend of mine talked me into seeing the first Twilight and I’ve held a grudge ever since. It’s an AWFUL movie. To make matters worse, it was the same basic premise as Roswell (switch aliens for vampires), but inferior in all respects even you’d assume that a big budget Hollywood movie could afford superior actors, scriptwriters, directors, etc.
(Never read the books, so I don’t know if the entire franchise is that awful or just the movies).
Chris
@Steeplejack:
I liked the first one better, but Game of Shadows has its moments.
Hill Dweller
@Omnes Omnibus: West Side Story is on right now. The Jets are the least menacing gang in movie history.
Petorado
McConnell, Graham, and the rest of them are our version of Bashar al-Assad. Sure we’re not in outright civil war, but the Republicans have the same take on the well-being of the citizenry as Syria’s Ba’athists. And is it a weird co-incidence that Bashar is a doctor of Ophthalmology — just like you-know-who?
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack: Oh, watch Sherlock! It’s pretty good.
A rather more muscular rendition of Holmes, plus Robert Downey Jr is kinda hot if you’re a grrl, which you’re not, but anyway…..
@Omnes Omnibus: I might have to check out The Train,if I can stay up. ATM, it’s West Side Story on TCM.
eta: also, I love black and white movies. Something about the grain and the shadows.
Pinkamena Panic
@Chris: It’s all that bad. Stephenie Meyer cannot fucking write. Was at Failmart last night after work and saw a line of idiots all queued up to get their hands on that shitshow of a movie. Resisted the colossal urge to mock them as I walked by electronics and capture the moment on video to upload to YouTube.
Tonight’s agenda: Make a chicken-pepperoni-sharpcheddar pizza (done), watch Toonami, play recently-acquired old(er) video games.
MikeJ
@Alison:
Seattle down 1-0 to Montreal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hill Dweller: I’ve never been a fan. I do like Romeo and Juliet though. I think my problem is that I like Mercutio, but Riff just doesn’t cut it.
Alison
@MikeJ: I don’t know if you see that as a good thing or not, but I say HUZZAH. :P Forgive me, my best friend is a die-hard Portland fan.
gbear
I’m setting up the house to bring a new kitty home tomorrow. I just went through a four month trial with one kitty that couldn’t get along with my older cat, so I’m kind of edgy about bringing the new cat home, even though he was a total sweetheart when I visited the shelter today. I was going to bring him home tonight but I realized I had too many chores to do this evening and wanted to get the house set up before I go get him tomorrow morning. The cat that didn’t work out was named Edward. This cat is named Edward too. He’s got the most incredible gold eyes.
dance around in your bones
Watching Natalie Wood trying to imitate a Spanish accent is hysterical.
@gbear – good luck with Edward2 :)
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Great movie, but I’ve seen it so many times (and recently) that I should be on the commentary track. And I haven’t seen the Sherlock Holmes movie, so “new” trumps “classic.” I’m not expecting a lot; I’m just hungry for something I haven’t seen before.
Alison
As for what else I’m doing tonight…trying to decide if I want to keep reading. I try to hit a certain number of pages a day, but when it’s a Russian novel, that number can feel a bit lofty. But otherwise I’m just going to watch a bunch of true crime shit on ID until I’m convinced every one of my neighbors is a serial killer.
gbear
@Hill Dweller: But they’re cool. I saw the travelling NY cast of West Side Story when I was in grade school at the St. Paul theater. It was cool.
Chris
@Pinkamena Panic:
Ah, well. I can’t talk: I just finished Die Another Day, widely recognized as one of the shittiest Bond outings ever. I don’t know why, but not only can I not bring myself to hate it, I actually enjoy it. And I don’t love that franchise unconditionally – I groan at Diamonds Are Forever and Roger Moore’s worst moments just like everyone else. Ah, well.
MikeJ
@Alison: Seattle fan here. Sadly, MLS isn’t Premier League quality. Happily the MLS games don’t start at 4am.
dance around in your bones
@Alison: That true crime shit can really make you paranoid, no?
I watch it a fair bit (the reasons people kill other people are so banal) but always with a finger on the ‘previous’ button on the remote in case one of the grandkids come in.
Shit, the other day I was watching one of those Hoarders shows and had to try to explain it to numbah one grandkid. Tried to change the channel but he insisted he wanted to see it! At least it wasn’t one of those ones with the dead cats in the freezer or buried under the layers of trash.
Steeplejack
@Alison:
What novel are you reading?
Steeplejack
@dance around in your bones:
I saw the first one and liked it all right, although any kind of success seems to inflame Guy Ritchie’s worst excesses, so I could see this one sinking into “lad” humor. But Downey and Jude Law are pretty watchable in anything.
Alison
@MikeJ: Hey, some Premier league games aren’t Premier League quality. MLS is getting better and will continue to do so, IMO, so long as we have fans and support.
@Steeplejack: The Brothers Karamazov. It’s great, just, you know…Russian :)
Alison
@dance around in your bones: The worst are the ones about people slowly poisoning their SOs to death. And people wonder why I’m happy to be a spinster.
Steeplejack
@Alison:
Which translation? I’ve been thinking about reading some of the Russians (rereading, in some cases) in the modern translations by Pevear and Volokhonsky. When I was in college way back when it was pretty much Constance Garnett or nothing, and her translations were a bit creaky even then.
Joey Maloney
I have a completely off topic question: Has there been any good work done on the sociology of blackface performance? I don’t mean about modern-day idiots, I mean in its heyday as an accepted artistic style. I’d be grateful for any references.
MikeJ
@Alison:
Liverpool 4-0 Wigan was a complete waste of my time, and at that it should have been at least 6-0.
cckids
@Chris:
According to my daughter, the books are MUCH worse than the movies. She’s read them, tho she doesn’t like them, because her best friend is a fanatic & she wanted to keep up with the gossip. (She’s 18) When she first found out they were making them into a movie, she couldn’t believe it, she said then that they’d have to be snortingly funny. Though not in an intentional way.
Steeplejack
@dance around in your bones:
My brother’s partner (now officially married since yesterday!) is addicted to those true-crime shows–Wives with Knives (love that title), The Will, etc. He is convinced that America is a hotbed of serial killers. (He’s from Brazil.)
ETA: Which, apparently, it is. Didn’t I read somewhere that a huge percentage of all documented serial killers are from the United States? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
trollhattan
@Hill Dweller:
But, they’re not menacing FOR LIFE. So there’s that.
Which reminds me of the ’80s joke, “what wood does not float?”
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack: It’s really pretty good.
Watch it and tell us what you think!
(ATM, I am watching – no sound – the lamest dance-off in gang history on West Side Story).
Gozer
Watching a marathon of Mad Men on netflix. I’ve seen every episode, but want to refresh before the next season starts.
I basically spent the day eating Indian food, drinking beer, and watching TV. All in all…a decent Saturday.
Arundel
So, this “snake under the desk” sleaze Ernest Hewett helpfully explains:
“”I purposely will not have female interns. My intern now is a male. I want to keep it like that. I’ve had female interns in the past that sit in my office all day. I thought it was totally weird and I didn’t want another. As a matter of fact, I went four, maybe six years without having an intern at all because of stuff like that. I have a male intern, the last two I’ve had were male.”
He went on to say that he could not choose to hire only male interns, but would prefer not to be assigned females, because “that way that keeps me good and that keeps everybody else good.”
What a champ, someone give him a medal for not being a lecherous freak towards female interns. Seriously, he thinks he should be applauded for having only male interns, because he can’t control himself, and shouldn’t be expected to control himself, if there are comely young female interns around to harrass and exploit. He really wants a medal! What an awful creep of a person that thinks this way.
Robin G.
@Chris: The books are worse. I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Take the movies, then make them 400+ pages long apiece and add descriptors like “liquid topaz.”
(If you’re interested in milk-through-the-nose deconstruction of both plot and style, Reasoning With Vampires is a treasure.)
mouse tolliver
Maybe it’s because I’m drunk, but I can’t stop laughing at Jamie Lee Curtis’s indignant response to Seth MacFarland’s boob song from last week’s Oscars. It’s posted on The Huffington Post — your goto destination for nip slips and sideboob photos.
dance around in your bones
@Alison:
Oh yeah, that’s some nasty way to die/kill somebody. At least have some decency and do it quick, right?
@Steeplejack:
I’m kinda convinced that ‘Murka is a hotbed of serial killers, too. Not from Brazil, either! Congrats to the happy couple – may they live long and prosper :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Arundel: At least he is aware of his problem.
Alison
@Steeplejack: It’s the B&N Classics version, translated by Constance Garnett. I have no idea if it’s “good” or not, I had a 3 for 2 deal :P
ETA: LOL didn’t read your comment carefully enough to see the name, haha :)
PurpleGirl
@Alison:
@dance around in your bones:
I watch some ID shows too. The reasons people kill and the ways they kill can be so banal. What gets me is all these people are “good Christians” and live in “good Christian towns”. And things like these murders “don’t happen here”. Well, then where the f**k, do these murders happen?
Alison
@PurpleGirl: The “reasons” often get me, too. I mean…you’re gonna kill someone for like, 150k in life insurance? Which will be gone in probably a year or two, and then what? You’re a fucking murderer and have a nice car to show for it? People are twisted.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Steeplejack: Prolly not, it is a worldwide phenomena. Some of the worst are in Africa. And Russia may have us beat on that count. When those people go bad they go REAL bad.
Alison
@MikeJ: Could be worse. You could be a Newcastle fan.
Like me.
CRY.
*crosses fingers for Europa*
Suffern ACE
Can’t stand the twilight movies. Mainly because I can’t see picking Robert Patterson when Taylor Launter and Boo Boo Stewart are available. Sure he may be an impressive sparkly son of a doctor, but honestly, in the movie I saw, he was 400 years old and still living at home.
Steeplejack
@Alison:
I don’t mean to belittle Garnett. She was responsible for introducing many of the Russian masters to an English-speaking audience. But most of her translations are now around a hundred years old, and they are very much of their time.
I think Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation of War and Peace has a really good introduction in which they break down some of the issues and make the case for updated translations of the Russians.
dance around in your bones
@Alison: I love Russian novels. Read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Turgenev,Gogol (ok, etc & etc) when I was a precocious teen but one thing I will say is that you might want to keep a list of people’s names in the books….like right inside the front cover.
Those patronymics and nicknames can be a bitch until you get them sorted out.
I love how in War and Peace somebody getting shot in the war (Prince Andrei Bolkonsky? been a long time)can go on for PAGES and PAGES while he’s contemplating his existence.
Steeplejack
Okay, I’m strapping in for A Game of Shadows. Got a drink at hand, and I just deployed some hummus and crackers to sustain me.
Alison
@dance around in your bones: This one actually has that! A list of all the main characters and their various names. Definitely handy :)
Also too, Anna Karenina is one of my faves, read it as a teen, but yeah…I remember thinking WHY DO I NEED THREE PAGES DESCRIBING A DUDE GETTING DRESSED.
dance around in your bones
@PurpleGirl: Indeed. It’s always the “quiet” ones who murder, no?
@Alison: Excellent!
I remember keeping track of the characters in Shogun with written notes on the inside cover of the book, reading it while on the hippie trail to India. That book literally fell apart on me.
eta: the mini-series of Shogun with Richard Chamberlin was great. I learned a fair bit of Japanese watching it.
Also saw the Russian movie version of War and Peace in Kabul. It was so long we had to watch it in two parts, separated by a week.
ruemara
@gbear: Good luck! I really hope this one works out.
I’m relaxing. Made my peace with things. Got the official words that I paid off my student loans. Which is good, because I got some other official notices from my hospital visits. This is a very expensive confirmation of perfectly healthy except for mysterious issue thing. I’m contemplating selling nude cat pics.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Oh, it is obvious that he is incapable of doing his job. I just think it is nice that he is aware of that fact. Now, will he quit because he is incapable of decent behavior? No. Of course not. But that little squidge of self-awareness is more than most people like him ever show.
PurpleGirl
Re: Reading the Russians: I read Anna Karenina and the ending depressed me. The other Russians I tried always either bored me or were too dense. OTOH I loved Chekov, especially the one-act plays.
In senior year HS, I told one Rnglish teacher I would read The Brothers Karamozov and write a report on one character (Easter vacation assignment). I began reading it and it bored me. Just bored me, could not force read it. But I still needed to hand in a report on a classic novel. I re-read portions of Fieldings’ Tom Jones and wrote the report on Sophie Western. The teacher looked at me with a quizzical look on his face and I told him I’d read it once through (unabridged) and then portions for maybe 4 or 5 reports throughout junior and senior high. A few weeks later when I bought a stack of science fiction novels at a book fair, he shook his head in wonderment. (I loved teasing him that way.)
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara:
I will not make the 17 risque comments that popped into my mind when I read that.
unsympathetic
@Chris:
The only way to sit through Twilight and
maintain your masculinity is by watching the Rifftrax version. Rifftrax is what the MST3k guys are calling themselves now. And by far their best work is the first Twilight.
Anne Laurie
@Alison:
What I was told, when I asked the same question, was that every detail of the outfit & its donning helped pinpoint the character in a very specific way for its original readers. Same way we read a modern character differently depending on what brand (if any) of jeans he wears, or whether the question of such choice even matters to him. Tolstoy overdid it because Tolstoy overdid everyting, even by the expansive standards of Russian novelists.
unsympathetic
The only way to sit through Twilight and
maintain your masculinity is by watching the Rifftrax version. Rifftrax is what the MST3k guys are calling themselves now. And by far their best work is the first Twilight.
Anne Laurie
Soonergrunt, glad to hear that the Sequester will not impact your job (at least not yet).
As far as the new home, look at it this way: There should be a new supply of electrical workers & drywall hangers looking for work now, right? (sigh)
Helen
Speaking of novels and books I’ve got a question. I am down-sizing my apt (anyone want a one-bedroom co-op in Forest, Hills, NY?) and I spent all night deciding what to do with my hundreds of books. – OY Vey – one pile is for my neice, one pile is keep, one pile is for my young friends Megan and Devon, one pile is for my sister, one pile is toss, one pile is for the library. Mind you; 20 yrs ago I went to Europe for a year and went through the same thing – so here’s question. I bought a kindle last April. To date I have 72 books read on it. Am I a shut-in, just plain anti-social, or – is reading the coolest thing on earth? I vote for door number 3!!
ellie
My sister works for the VA and I was wondering if she was going to be affected.
dance around in your bones
@Helen: That’s the greatest thing about the kindle – the number of books you can keep on it.
I think I have about 550 books on mine. Lotsa free books out there (speaking of Russian novels!)
Although I miss the look and feel of actual books – the paper, the typeface, the cover (I refuse to buy cheapo versions, like “from the hit movie!” kind of crap)…..I buy most of my real-life books in thrift stores, however. ‘Cause I am a cheapo and basically poor.
eta: Gads! Will West Side Story never end?! Half an hour until The Train.
PurpleGirl
@Helen: Reading is the coolest thing on earth. Hands down. There’s fiction and history and science and history and on and on and all of it can introduce you to new worlds and information/knowledge. (I periodically go through my collection and see what I can cull.)
Alison
@Anne Laurie: That makes some sense, and also…I mean, what the fuck else did people have to do back then, right? That’s why all books were crazy long, all people did was eat, sleep, go to church, and read.
Alison
@Helen: READING IS THE BEST. There is no shame whatsoever in voracious reading. I read like a fiend because it’s what I *enjoy*. People act like “Oh but what about going out and doing x, y, or z” not getting that I don’t want to do those things. I want to read. That’s my entertainment, that’s how I keep myself sane, especially in the past couple years of my life.
Sure, I watch TV too, and I’m a soccer hooligan, but my first and foremost love is reading.
(Which, since I’m not an e-reader person, is immediately obvious to anyone entering my bedroom. And they don’t even know about all the boxes of books in storage!)
Forum Transmitted Disease
Sequester? I am fucked. Not if but when. Waiting’s the hardest part, of course.
Alison
And speaking of whittling down our overgrown collections, I have a stack of books I keep meaning to do something with – library, local shelter, ebay, whatever. Some I ended up with two copies of, some I was given and never wanted, etc.
One of these days…
Helen
@dance around in your bones: That’s interesting because that was my fear, and why it took me so long to buy a Kindle. I thought I would miss the feel of a book, but the second I had my kindle I LOVED it.
It was rather surprising to me.
dance around in your bones
@Helen:
kindles are great for traveling, or waiting for hours at the doctor’s office/clinic/hospital or riding on the bus or killing time with one eye on Balloon Juice and the other on the kindle.
They are easy on the eyes, too. I was bummed at first that it wasn’t back-lit because my husband used to complain about me reading with the light on (this puts me in mind of Rumpole of the Bailey who used to plaintively ask “She Who Must Be Obeyed” – i.e., his wife – to turn out the light and she would refuse) but that’s not a factor anymore.
I can read in bed all by my lonesome now, sadly.
But kindles are great! More books! Read!
OzoneR
@Hill Dweller:
That’s bad, because when people pay attention, they do so through the MSM, which has been blaming Obama non stop.
Hill Dweller
@OzoneR: They’ve been trying to blame Obama, but the only thing they’ve come up with is he should somehow force Republicans to compromise. He obviously didn’t want the sequester to happen. He agreed to the sequester with a gun to his head(figuratively speaking).
Furthermore, the Republicans can’t keep pretending they don’t like the sequester while never lifting a finger to stop it. At some point they’re going to have to at least pretend to propose an alternative, or risk even the ignorant electorate realizing they actually support it.
Yutsano
So my cousin didn’t make top 5, so my family pretty much bailed right after they announced the winner. The dress she chose was absolutely amazing however. And she has resolved to NEVER go through this again. Which I agree with.
@Hill Dweller: Tax cuts solve everything. Duh.
Anne Laurie
Y’all have inspired me to add a Book Post up top. Go there to make recommendations, or just mock my taste in reading material…
Steeplejack
Okay, finished A Game of Shadows and still managed to switch over to TCM in time for the big crash in The Train.
Now winding down for bedtime soon, although I’ll check the book thread upstairs. Housecat unusually calm, which is good. Usually at this time of night she’s acting like I’m personally responsible for her sleep-deprivation psychosis and loudly demanding that I turn everything off and go to bed. Not bad advice, actually.
Robin G.
@unsympathetic: Have you seen what the Rifftrax guys are trying to do? I kicked in ten bucks.
Del
Grunt, you’ve got my sympathy. My wife absolutely loves everything about Stephanie Meyers and Twilight, but from having to sit through every movie in theater and read the first book (I drew the line at reading any more) they’re all crap. I love y wife and went through hell to get us a real wedding, but I swear the woman’s taste in literature leaves something to be desired. Hopefully your daughter grows out of it and realizes that Meyer’s has all the writing talent of a high school book report.