Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

You cannot shame the shameless.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

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

Let me file that under fuck it.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

You are here: Home / Music / Don’t Even Think About Being The Coolest Person On (Above) The Planet…

Reader Interactions

68Comments

  2. 2.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    There you are, Tom. Thank God. I was just about to send out an alert.

  3. 3.

    Yatsuno

    RedKitteh just posted that. I still wanna know how he smuggled a guitar up there. The cargo weight restrictions are pretty stern.

  6. 6.

    Comrade Mary

    I love this video so, so much.

    @Yatsuno: The guitar wasn’t smuggled. (Warning: video will auto-play when page is launched.)

    Guitar: $1800 (this includes the official spare left on earth)
    Shipping: $100,000
    Video: priceless

    Also note how relatively thin and lined Hadfield’s face looks like on earth versus space. A zero G environment tends to puff out the face.

  7. 7.

    ulee

    Ground control to General Stuck, your circuits dead, there’s something fucked. Can you hear us General Stuck?

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    How ’bout this being a “why can’t we all get along” open thread, OK?

    Screw you.

    (I’m only surprised that I’m first.)

    ETA: Softened my obscenity ’cause I’m a chicken.

  12. 12.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Tom Levenson: Don’t be obtuse, Tom. People are vanishing. Steeplejack went looking for Atuck last night and he disappeared too.

  13. 13.

    Comrade Mary

    I’m got some soothing bedtime reading for you right here, Fuckhead.

    I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

    I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.

    I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.

    The names don’t matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.

  15. 15.

    Corner Stone

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Steeplejack went looking for Atuck last night and he disappeared too.

    Good God. Did Annie get Steep too? You know that blitheringly idiotic GBCW posted by AWS was a cover by Annie. She got him to help her hide Stuck’s body and then stuck a fucking scalpel in his jugular while he was patting the earth down.
    I don’t think she can be stopped.

  16. 16.

    ruemara

    I had no idea caring about another person you’ve interacted with was so mockable. I had no idea that basic compassionate response is worthy of derision, for days. Way to go.

  19. 19.

    Suffern ACE

    I guess we can all get along. But can we come to enough of an agreement long enough to order pizza without punting and ordering by the slice?

  20. 20.

    raven

    Hey Tom, thank for the tip last night. I woke up at 4:30, it was raining like hell, I was right next to the airport so I burned my FF miles and came home.

  21. 21.

    Steeplejack

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    How synchronistic.

    * General Stuck Update *

    Today I called the phone number in New Mexico that might be General Stuck’s that I got from eemom. I received a message saying that the number is “no longer in service.”

    There were some other “possibly associated” numbers given at the Web site where eemom did her research. I called those three numbers, but all are “unallocated” or just “not a valid number.”

    So that’s where things stand. I don’t know if there’s anything else that can be done. Anyway, it feels right to have made this small effort. The Balloon Juice community is unique, in my experience on the Internet, and it always felt wrong to me to just let Stuck’s disappearance go unremarked. It never felt like a simple “I’m tired of this blog” thing, and it still doesn’t. I hope he’s okay, wherever he is.

    Let me wrap this up with one of his last quips: “Dining with clowns is easy, managing the circus is hard.”

  24. 24.

    Steeplejack

    Going through my Balloon Juice notes and links file, I found this other Stuckian gem.

    General Stuck on getting older: “Cheer up, the good news is, while the body falls apart, the mind is set free, unless you get dementia, then it is really set free. So many things you thought were important or stuff you missed out on, all that shit fades away to, I exist, therefore I yam.”

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: Which one? I have so many.

    Oh, and hey? I’m not the pathetic fuck trying to call someone I’ve never even met on the internets by third party snoopvestigation results.
    As far as I can tell, he didn’t ask you to contact him upon his absence, nor is there a god damned thing you could do to help him if he was unable to help himself.
    It just sounds incredibly fucking misguided and overly weird to me.
    Dude’s either done here, like matoko chan, or he’s figuratively/literally dead etc.

  28. 28.

    SatanicPanic

    Jeez what the hell is happening at this blog? I’ve got enough drama in real life. FWIW I hope Stuck is doing OK and I don’t see anything wrong with trying to track him down if all the info is gathered from Google anyway. Anyone more malevolent than BJers is going to have more sophisticated methods than just the Google anyway.

  30. 30.

    Corner Stone

    Bunch of creepy ass stalkers. There’s a reason Cole deleted Soonergrunts post that one time about IP addresses, and now there’s a reason Annie’s post about Stuck’s real name disappeared.
    In case people have forgotten it, Cole vowed to go to jail before ever divulging someone’s private info.
    Of course he blew through that with the artist who did his Greatful Dead work, but hey, it was the thought that counts, right?

  31. 31.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Back to the video, my wife and I both found it very moving.

    Thanks to whoever originally posted it.

  32. 32.

    beltane

    Checking in after a day of receiving Mother’s Day tributes. I’ve got to say I really like the way the blog looks. Did something happen over the past 24 hours to make Cole and a lot of other people pissy?

  33. 33.

    RobertDSC-iMac G5

    Dialing in a new/old iMac to replace the one that went kablooey when I fried the old machine with a FireWire drive.

  36. 36.

    Redshirt

    It’s gotta be bittersweet, those last hours in space after so many months. Sure, you’re eager to get back, but, space! You may never get back.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    Lurve the vid, well done sirs, well done.

    Back on planet, WTF New Orleans, WTF?

    A Mother’s Day second-line shooting on Frenchmen Street in the 7th Ward, on Sunday about 2 p.m., left about 19 people injured, according to the latest NOPD numbers. Earlier Sunday afternoon NOPD Superintendent Ronald Serpas said that about 12 people had been injured, but the toll now has grown to 19 people with the NOPD explaining that some victims initially hadn’t reported being injured and more people continue to come forward.

    The shooting occurred in the 1400 block of Frenchmen Street at the intersection of North Villere Street.

    A girl, who was 9 or 10 years old, reportedly was grazed on her side by a bullet. She appeared to be in stable condition, NOPD spokeswoman Remi Braden said on Sunday afternoon.

    http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/05/mothers_day_second-line_shooti.html

  38. 38.

    beltane

    @cathyx: The last post I read here yesterday had Cole feeling guilty about his impatience with some woman at the grocery store checkout. Now he is insulting everyone’s mother. Could he be going through menopause?

  39. 39.

    eemom

    @Corner Stone:

    Don’t worry, asshole. Ain’t none of us gonna be “stalking” you, should we ever have the good fortune to see you disappear.

  40. 40.

    Corner Stone

    @Just Some Fuckhead: No such luck, amigo. I’ve already assigned teams consisting of variously talented/pathetically disheveled internet Palumbos and/or Poirots to come after your ass.
    You should warn the missus now. There will be phone calls.

  42. 42.

    Corner Stone

    @eemom: Well, I understand you’ll be too busy munching on the bones of dead Palestinian children and all. So thanks for nothing, and all that. But others may decide to make sure I’m actually dead, and provide me with a Thatcher Shower one last time.

  45. 45.

    Heliopause

    I saw something about the mass shooting in New Orleans and changed the channel to CNN, MSNBC, and even FOX News and they didn’t seem the slightest bit interested. Anybody have any further info, other than, multiple gunmen shot dozens of people and it’s no bigee on the news channels?

  46. 46.

    danielx

    Recovering from attending my niece’s commencement at Purdue – her triumph and great day, but I’ve had root canals that were less excruciating. #1 pain on the menu: listening to Purdue University president Mitch Daniels blathering on about the portion of the deficit being inherited by this afternoon’s graduates.

    That would be GEORGE W. BUSH’S FORMER BUDGET DIRECTOR MITCH DANIELS. You know, the guy doing the figures when we started with a $200 billion surplus and then put the deficit on the E train headed for fucking Mars. My mouth literally dropped open – I was hard put not to stand up in the second balcony and scream “you malicious little fuck, why aren’t you a shitpicker in Gas City?” That locale being the butt of any number of Indiana jokes (an Indiana girl’s dream – a double wide in Gas City). My 21 year old nephew told me he couldn’t understand how this “smarmy little fuck” got elected governor…twice. I told him it was the smarm that did it, that and sounding like an ordinary corporate Republican – which around here practically qualifies him as being the reincarnation of Saul Alinsky these days. He sounded relatively reasonable by comparison with Deacon Pence and some of the 2010 crop in the legislature…

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @beltane:

    Did something happen over the past 24 hours to make Cole and a lot of other people pissy?

    You know who’s to blame, of course.

  50. 50.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Heliopause:

    Anybody have any further info, other than, multiple gunmen shot dozens of people and it’s no bigee on the news channels?

    Gunshots and screaming is the sound of freedom.

  51. 51.

    gnomedad

    @danielx:

    listening to Purdue University president Mitch Daniels blathering on about the portion of the deficit being inherited by this afternoon’s graduates.

    I’d have popped a blood vessel or two attempting to endure that. My sympathies.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    @Steeplejack:

    Thank you, Steeplejack. I hope we hear from Stuck soon. I do miss him and used to see him on other sites–which is how I first discovered Balloon-Juice.

  53. 53.

    Corner Stone

    @MomSense:

    I do miss him and used to see him on other sites–which is how I first discovered Balloon-Juice.

    You stalked him from other sites back to here?

  56. 56.

    Heliopause

    5:30 PM on the left coast and ABC Evening News spent fifteen seconds on it. Whoever those people are I guess their lives and security don’t mean much.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Big fan here of Commander Chris Hadfield. I’ve followed him on Facebook since the start of this mission. He has taken, and posted, scores if not hundreds of gorgeous, amazing, detailed photos of various places on Earth, taken from the ISS– cities at night, the entire British Isles in one shot, rivers in South America, glaciers melting away inside the Arctic Circle, the Greek islands, Asian and African deserts — it’s a stunning collection, and his commentary is often very moving, even poetic. For that reason alone, I’m truly sorry to see his command come to an end.

  58. 58.

    Calming Influence

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    I’d like to request not to be found in the event I disappear.

    As for me, if I don’t comment here for three days (in a row, JSF), I’d really like it if you all sleuthed out my name and address and informed my local police that I was barricaded in my house with enough armament for WWIII.

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    @lojasmo: Oh God, no. I’m sorry if I’ve angered you in any way. Please don’t hunt me down and kill me and my family like you’ve threatened your coworkers with before.
    Don’t “go postal” on me, please!
    *Sobs!!*

  63. 63.

    Tehanu

    I signed up for the NASA “Spot the Station” e-mails so I can see the ISS when it passes overhead every so often (dawn & dusk are when it is visible). I swear, even though it’s just a moving spot of light, I feel like a character in a good Heinlein novel every time I see it, and grateful that in a world full of awful things that we humans can still also do great things.

  66. 66.

    daveNYC

    @NotMax: All you need to do is design containers that are shaped like the outer edge of a donut, build out the glass around the circumfrence of the circle, attach something to get the thing spinning around the axis and let the centrifugal force keep the water in place. Just need to put two spinner moters on there going in opposite directions so that you don’t end up with the whole damn mess starting to rotate.

Comments are closed.