Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

People are weird.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

The words do not have to be perfect.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

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

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Home Crap Home

Home Crap Home

by | 210 Comments

This post is in: 

I’ve never been so happy to get back home. As soon as the conference ended, I didn’t stay around to shake hands, I ran to the parking lot and aimed the car north at 85 miles an hour. Got home and the dogsitter had left and the girls had to pee so bad they couldn’t greet me enthusiastically because it is hard to do a happy dance when your legs are crossed. Rosie had to piss so bad that when I opened the sliding door she ran into the screen door.

That was seriously the trip from hell. I got sucked into watching the soccer game last night at around 8ish and doing prep reading to prepare for the conference (I’ve only been on the planning commission a month) so I had to check out what was going on so I didn’t look completely clueless (this was the event I went to). I had eaten on the road and didn’t get hungry until about 9:30, at which point I realized the hotel restaurant was closed. So I called a cab, and then waited outside the hotel for a god damned hour plus for it to show up. By the time it showed up, I was well beyond a simmering fuss, attitude wise.

The cab shows up, and I tell him to take me to a restaurant in the area. He thought about it and said he thought he knew of some things that might still be open. We checked a few places, and, of course, they were not, and by now I have a 20 dollar cab fare and am still starving to the point it felt like my stomach was eating itself (which, given my girth, could have fed it for a couple months). Finally, I see a Taco Bell and tell him to just go there. I take my phone out of my pocket to grab my wallet and put it next to me on the seat. We get my food, which was in and of itself a god damned ordeal (fast food is a relative term the farther south you go), and leave.

At this point, the only way to describe my mood is volatile and filled with hate. I hated everyone and everything. The cab was fucking hot and the cabbie kept talking in his bluetooth ear piece and I kept thinking he was talking to me and he was too cheap to put the god damned ac on, and I hated him. I hated the cashier at taco bell. I hated the red lights we hit. If it was in eyesight of me, I hated on it. Hard. With a sun like intensity of concentrated hatefulness. My hate was focused like a beam of concentrated anger directed at anything and everything near me, like Cyclops from the X-Men.

We pull into the hotel, I pay the cab, and as I’m getting out, my taco hell bag breaks and shit goes everywhere in the parking lot. Despite this CLEAR FUCKING SIGN from ALLAH, I pick the food up, accidentally stepping on packets of hot sauce and shooting it all over my god damned socks. I go inside, inhale the crap that is allegedly my dinner, and go to bed at 12:30-1, thinking I have 7 hours in a freezing cold room to sleep and relax, and I don’t have to get up until 8ish for my free breakfast.

Oh, not so damned fast. At around 4ish, I wake up, sweating my ass off in a 65 degree room with the urge to vomit. So that happens, the whole time me worrying about things coming out the other end. We’ll just leave it at that. Somewhere after about hour three of doing that and going back to bed and trying to fall asleep only to repeat the unpleasantness, I went to find my phone and discovered it was gone. AWESOME.

But I made it to the conference anyway (a little late), it was worthwhile, and after a day of nothing but ice water and a packet of cheese crackers at noon, I am now about to sit down and try solids again. Oh, and the cabbie who I spent the entire ride hating on was such a good person that he dropped my phone off at the hotel front desk, making me both relieved that my phone was back and also feeling guilty that I had hated on him so bad and actually fantasized scenarios in which he died a gruesome slow death at my hands.

So I got that going for me.

Reader Interactions

210Comments

  2. 2.

    Josie

    Sounds like a perfectly typical out of town conference – which is why I avoid them like the plague.

  7. 7.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Sounds like you had a pretty uneventful trip despite your attempt to “Live Más”.

  8. 8.

    Corner Stone

    @Patricia Kayden: It actually used to be decent crap food. And by that I mean it was cheap food but not at all bad, really.
    But the last couple years it has become like a toilet serving wrapped packages. I stopped eating there for about a year and then foolishly had a craving one night and tried it again.
    Nope. Not ever again.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Glad your back, Cole. I have some complaints about the site redesign I wanted to discuss.

  11. 11.

    JWL

    You realize this post of yours will be entered into state’s evidence when you finally do snap, right?

  13. 13.

    ruemara

    Everyone has days, weeks or years like that. Welcome back home and at least your pets love you.

  15. 15.

    muddy

    My advice for eating at a hotel when it’s late is to order a pizza. Then enjoy the beverages with feet up in the a/c until it arrives. No cab, no getting dressed, no sweat.

  18. 18.

    Specialed5000

    That’s not Charleston, it’s in South Charleston (different town, next door). That hotel is wedged in between the interstate and the chemical plants, so I see where your post last night was coming from. Too bad you weren’t downtown, walking distance to good restaurants, including the brew pub that opened a few months ago.

  19. 19.

    lljones

    I love you! But that’s not original and is very boring. That. Is. All. And by the way, it is the first time I have ever responded to a blog.

  20. 20.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    We usually have roadkill if we’re staying overnight in West Virginia.

  22. 22.

    Corner Stone

    The cab was fucking hot and the cabbie kept talking in his bluetooth ear piece and I kept thinking he was talking to me

    I have always wondered about this. I would have asked one of them by now but I don’t speak cabbie.
    But who the fuck are they all talking to? Every single taxi I have been in the driver is talking non-stop to some other entity on the phone. Who the fuck is it? Is it their stock broker? Their family back home?
    Every time you get in a cab they are talking to someone. And it’s not like a gag so they don’t have to talk to me in the silence because I’m not trying to make small talk.
    It’s kind of like why does George Takei want to hurt Obama’s feelings? Just one of those universal mysteries, I guess.

  23. 23.

    MomSense

    @John Cole

    Oh, I am sorry. I do not miss the years I spent traveling and going to conferences and meetings. At least you didn’t forget your pants this time.

  24. 24.

    different-church-lady

    ‘eff it: I’m unilaterally treating this as the Stanley Cup Open Thread:

    a) Wow, so that’s what a real goaltender who isn’t named Tuukka looks like!

    b) What… a… pretty… goal…

  25. 25.

    ulee

    The person who rung up your meal hated you. The desk clerk hated you. Whover cleaned your room hated you. They hate you with the blazing inferno of a thousand suns.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    Chris Hayes just completely lost control of that segment. That crazy redhead from Tech Crunch was determined to get her words in edgewise.

  28. 28.

    Corner Stone

    @piratedan: No doubt. I’ve never been to Charleston. I would’ve been happy to have flown in so we could have dinner somewhere.

  29. 29.

    muddy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Actually I have ordered one there, the chains are the same crap as they are in every other town. But I ordered from something local and it was fine. I mean, maybe the salted possum substituted for anchovies was a little over the top, but still…

  30. 30.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I will always remember a memorable trip to the wilds of Missouri (Gainesville) we stopped at the grocery store to get some beer to discover that you can only buy beer at the ABC store in that County. So we decided to check into the only motel in town and found Nirvana. The Motel reception area was the only ABC Store and Pizza Place in town. It was like we had died and gone to heaven.

  35. 35.

    different-church-lady

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: When they “co-branded” with KFC in the ’90s, I kept thinking about the old Steve Martin routine, where “there’s a big vat of stuff” in the back, and little molds go by… “sppppppot”: taco! “spppppoot”: chicken drumstick! “sppppppot”: paper box! “sppppppot”: here’s your change, thank you!

  36. 36.

    Jim Pharo

    John, face facts. You’re a New Yorker. You should move here — you’d like it!

  37. 37.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @lljones:

    I love you! But that’s not original and is very boring. That. Is. All. And by the way, it is the first time I have ever responded to a blog.

    It might be your first comment but it’s THE MILLIONTH COMMENT ON BALLOON JUICE, you lucky bastard! You just won a chauffeured date with John Fucking Cole, blog proprietor. Do you like Taco Bell?

  39. 39.

    BruceFromOhio

    Man purse. Sure, they laugh, but warm-weather fashions don’t have enough zippered pockets.

    And pack your own Gaia-damned food if you’re gonna be such a fucking crybaybay about everything. A fifth of vodka, some almonds and an apple will save your ass every time while on the prowl for animal proteins.

    Glucose-low-rage should be a crime statistic.

    ETA: A good cabbie is like a sign from Gaia that you are loved. A bad cabbie is a sign from Gaia that you are a piece of shit and need some serious karma-improvement time, so get cracking.

  40. 40.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Corner Stone:

    I’ve never been to Charleston. I would’ve been happy to have flown in so we could have dinner somewhere.

    Charleston is a charming city if your idea of a good time is fucking your sister’s methmouth.

  41. 41.

    GxB

    So other than that, JC, how was the conference?

    Ba dum – tish! Thanks folks – try the halibut!

  44. 44.

    srv

    Would somebody write the screenplay for this and forward it to Linklater already?

    What would be a good title?

  45. 45.

    Comrade Mary

    I’ve had my share of cabbies who talked into their earpiece, but most of the ones here in Toronto are nice to chat with, even if we just end up sharing our complaints about everyone on the road who isn’t a cabbie or cyclist. A few years ago, on a trip from hell across St. Clair during major construction, I simmered down and learned a hell of a lot about Ghana, their naming conventions, and the kickass 50th anniversary celebrations they had a few years ago.

    Is there something different about Taco Bell in Canada? It’s not the greatest fast food out there, but I’ve eaten it a few times with no ill effects at all.

  50. 50.

    Corner Stone

    @Comrade Mary:

    Is there something different about Taco Bell in Canada? It’s not the greatest fast food out there

    Something I noticed before I stopped going there, was they had a timer clock in the drive thru window. So you could see how long your order was taking. And I thought that was the worst thing in the world. How fucking demeaning.
    TB has clearly gone downhill the last couple years, in terms of quality.

  53. 53.

    different-church-lady

    It is…. (((quiet))) in Chicago right now.

    ETA: Well, that changed quick!

  60. 60.

    Corner Stone

    Who the fuck elected that Joe Paterno clone wannabe in the Wisconsin State Legislature?
    That fuck slam his gavel at me a few times and I’d find some thug like Cassidy or Todd to go give him a serious beating, I would I would.

  63. 63.

    MikeJ

    @? Martin:

    Bottle of bourbon in there as well, I assume?

    Dry Fly, from Spokane. Which means it’s not technically “bourbon”, I like to support the semi-locals.

  64. 64.

    Kristine

    Back in school, every time I heard about someone on my floor getting food poisoning, they had eaten at a Taco Bell. Thirty-two years later, I have never eaten TB food, and I never will.

  65. 65.

    Anne Laurie

    Sent you an email, but for the general audience:

    Put a couple nutbars or small bags of trail mix in your glove compartment / laptop bag.

    Medical doctor told me this years ago & I have experimentally confirmed it w/multiple subjects since: One reason us “easy keepers” (fatbodies) pork up is, we don’t get good HUNGRY NOW or OKAY FULL signals from our guts, or don’t pay attention to the signals we get. So if we’re focused on something else — like getting to a conference — we ignore the “low blood sugar, stop & refuel soonest” warning lights until we’re stupid & desperate & mean & our hands are shaking & the world is out to get us.

    Put a couple hi-protein, fast-carb emergency snax in your car’s glove box, or your laptop bag, whatever goes with you everywhere. Even some horrible never-go-stale cheez&cracker packets. Doesn’t have to be something you’d *choose* to eat, just something that will keep forever that you can choke down in an emergency. Couple hundred quick calories can save you from another night of bad choices, anger & misery.

    Your friends & fellow conference-goers will be grateful, too also.

  66. 66.

    Felonius Monk

    Cole, you sure as hell know how to have a good time. I can hardly wait to hear about your next trip. I’m green with envy – not.

  68. 68.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    The best thing about having food poisoning is sleeping on the bathroom floor, although even that loses some its allure in a cheap motel or bathroom with a litter box.

  70. 70.

    askew

    That sounds like the trip from hell. You would have been better off going to a grocery store and just getting something off the shelf to eat. Taco Bell is poison.

    OT – Bill Clinton is now talking with John McCain about the need to intervene in Syria. Bill does realize he isn’t co-president right? How come Carter and the Bushes can shut up and let there only be one president, while Bill can’t?

  75. 75.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I just don’t my nose anywhere near Cole’s pits. Ever. For any reason. Just no.

    That’s why you don’t get a meetup.

  77. 77.

    The Friendly Libertarian

    So it looks like Snowden is going to be granted political asylum in Russia. I hope he has many, many more secrets to reveal about our tyrannical government while he’s safe and sound. At least there’s one government that refuses to be cowed by the greatest source of evil in the world today-the Federal Government.

  78. 78.

    Corner Stone

    @Burnspbesq:

    Del Taco is much better, but I don’t think there are any east of Las Vegas or north of Weed, CA.

    Not that I am aware of either. I had a good friend who used to live in Bakersfield, CA (yes, I know), and he’d always bring me Del Scorcho sauce packets when he came back to visit family. So, yes, Del Taco is certainly better.
    The sad news is that Taco Cabana also used to be pretty reliably good quality. But it is not that way anymore, either. If we can’t trust the fast food industry to provide us safe, quality meals, who the hell can we trust?

  82. 82.

    Comrade Mary

    @Omnes Omnibus: Heh. It’s all in the pheromones, I think.

    Which reminds me of this question and one awesome answer:

    Can I trust my spouse’s sense of smell to tell me I have B.O.? …

    [awesome answer] Your wife is unfairly biased in your favour. She chose to become your wife for many reasons, one of which is that she is genetically predisposed to like your smells, even those musky sweaty smells which may offend all others. Let me tell you a story.

    I had a roommate who stank up the joint- holy crap that woman stunk. She stunk so badly that friends who visited our home later raised their voices and actually yelled at me for being too cowardly to talk to her about it. She stunk so badly that my ex-boyfriend once called me, laughing hysterically, to say that while he was in the video store, he had identified her, sight unseen, while she was browsing several aisles away, because he smelled her. She stunk so badly that she was fired from a retail job for absolutely bogus reasons, which I interpreted to mean that she stunk too hard even for the job of working at Lush, of all places, which is probably the most odour-cloaking environment that has ever existed.

    The learning moment here comes from the fact that once I found a love poem from her boyfriend, which included a line about how her skin “smelled morning fresh”. Let me assure you that this could only be true in the “morning fresh hot garbage” sense of the word, but to him, it was sweet perfume.

    You probably smell. Don’t trust your wife. Don’t ask your coworkers. Please, that’s weird for them, and plus, they are socially obligated to lie and say you don’t, so it’s even harmful to your data set.

    If you don’t have at least 3 friends-you’ve-never-slept-with* whom you can ask, you should probably keep using deodorant, make some new friends while you know you smell OK, and then maybe try asking them for smell feedback when your friendship goes deeper than politeness.

    * (because people who have slept with you did it because they liked your smell, which does not mean you smell ok.)

  86. 86.

    beltane

    @Anne Laurie: Wow, that’s a great idea. Maybe it could help keep my husband from binging on Burger King when we’ve been in the car too long.

  87. 87.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Regarding ‘foreign’ food and illness: I just had dinner with my brother, wife and sister in law. He and I traded stories about being sick from food last week. He in China and I in Mexico. He got sent to the (Chinese) hospital so he had me beat.

    Now that I think of it, that conversation may explain the doggie bags that our wives took most of their food home in.

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    @lojasmo:

    I will gladly go 24 hours without food (and regularly do) than eat shit food.

    Have noticed all the people who tell me that in the meatspace have a history of “anger issues”. Not judging, just noting.

  93. 93.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Corner Stone:

    Believe it or not, when we visit our Mexican colleagues we’re expected to bring Dave’s Insanity Sauce with us from the US. They love it and can’t get it there. That’s just plain weird.

  98. 98.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Corner Stone:

    I can not believe you just openly challenged the Balloon-Juice Gay Lobby like that.

    The Fuckhead Lobby will crush them. We are Legion.

  104. 104.

    askew

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Can a motherfucking brotha get a little fuckin respect for once?!?

    Apparently not. It’s funny how Bill Clinton kept his mouth shut for most of W’s presidency but can’t resist publicly disagreeing with Obama. Damn, I am sick of the Clintons.

  105. 105.

    Mike E

    So, Miss E is a high school graduate, huzzah, but the day was the exact opposite of the one just described by our blogfather: after days of torrential downpours and graduation-induced car accidents, my little girl’s big day was nothing but sunshine and flowing traffic; all our out of town guests arrived early or on time; her dog got loose just as we had to get going but came right to me so I could carry her back to the house; the parking deck was not full(!); we got into the convention center without too much jostling, found seats 8 rows in back of the student section (50 yards from the stage, not bad among 3,000 or so); their ac was working and the ceremony was brisk; they called her name (praise Allah) amid 440+ students, and I was the first one to find her behind the stage where the actual diplomas were given out; and, the Lebanese restaurant we picked for lunch totally kicked ass. A totally glorious day!

  107. 107.

    lojasmo

    @Anne Laurie:

    People who tell you what? I have a hard time believing you have met several people who have told you they would fast for a day rather than eating toxic food.

    Not judging. Just saying.

    ETA: People who make me angry have a habit of calling me an angry person.

    Not angry now. I just am noting a pattern.

  108. 108.

    Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)

    From the thread last night, there is no Blacksville in Virginia. Were you talking about Blacksburg, Va. or Blacksville, WV?

  109. 109.

    ? Martin

    @Anne Laurie:

    Medical doctor told me this years ago & I have experimentally confirmed it w/multiple subjects since: One reason us “easy keepers” (fatbodies) pork up is, we don’t get good HUNGRY NOW or OKAY FULL signals from our guts, or don’t pay attention to the signals we get.

    A big part of my losing weight was a habit I needed to develop, to consciously tell myself before I start eating that “Being full is not the goal. Not being hungry is the goal.” I still do it before every meal. It helps a lot. If you feel full, you ate too much.

  111. 111.

    Michael G

    As a fellow fat man, I never travel without emergency food — Clif Bar, or equivalent.

    Make fun of me all you want, thinnies, but someday when I forget, and I get cranky, and we cross paths, you should know I will have murder in my heart.

  115. 115.

    Cacti

    @askew:

    It’s funny how Bill Clinton kept his mouth shut for most of W’s presidency but can’t resist publicly disagreeing with Obama.

    Bill’s wounded pride can’t let go of Obama getting the better of the Clinton machine in 2008.

    Sure, everybody says Hillary’s a lock for 2016, but she was supposed to be a lock last time, and she’ll be pushing 70 by then.

  116. 116.

    gbear

    Could the food poisoning have come from when you scraped the hot sauce off your socks for your tacos?

  119. 119.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Michael G:

    As a fellow fat man, I never travel without emergency food — Clif Bar, or equivalent.

    I travel with Clif bars at all times. It’s a fallback when the choice is bad food or no food. I can eat a couple of bars and skip a meal. No biggie. Veteran travelers will tell you don’t bank on being able to find a meal every time you need one.

  122. 122.

    askew

    @Cacti:

    Bill’s wounded pride can’t let go of Obama getting the better of the Clinton machine in 2008.

    Sure, everybody says Hillary’s a lock for 2016, but she was supposed to be a lock last time, and she’ll be pushing 70 by then.

    That’s my take as well. The disdain Bill has for Obama is very apparent in the Johnathan Alter book I am reading now about the 2012 election. Every time Bill is brought up it all about how he is shocked at how poorly Obama is presidenting, etc. Why someone thought leaking Bill’s disdain to a reporter was a good idea I’ll never know. I guess the Clinton machine thinks all Dems will fall in line with no questions asked in 2016.

  123. 123.

    bago

    HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ.
    I apologize, it’s just listening to congressional testimony on IT drives me to spit and I wish to keep my laptop.
    If we could just require each Representative or Senator to take a CS2 level intern onto their staff, and at least, our discourse would be enlightened. Mightily.

    Hang on.
    YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH my shift key hates me.

  125. 125.

    lojasmo

    @Corner Stone:

    Aw, you’re cute. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?

    In fairness, it’s easy to go 24 hours, because I always fast for 18 hours a day.

  126. 126.

    askew

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    @askew: Don’t even get me started, girl. How about when they compare Snowden to MLK? WTF?

    Yeah, Chris Hayes is going all in on that one. He’s been slobbering all over how great Snowden and Greenwald are all week. No wonder MSNBC’s ratings are in the toilet.

  127. 127.

    Cacti

    The Russian parliament passed a law yesterday banning gay pride parades, or speaking publicly in defense of gay rights.

    So, has Snowden responded to their kind offer of humanitarian asylum yet?

  128. 128.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @lojasmo: You sound nearly as fit and masculine as Cassidy. Can you share a pic? Maybe working out, sweating, angry-faced, screaming at someone, threatening to kill them? Something sexy like that.

  129. 129.

    Cacti

    @askew:

    Yeah, Chris Hayes is going all in on that one. He’s been slobbering all over how great Snowden and Greenwald are all week. No wonder MSNBC’s ratings are in the toilet

    I’ll never forget when MLK penned his famous “Letter from my $600 a night Hong Kong hotel room”.

  130. 130.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @askew: Why don’t they ever compare Snowden to Great Filipinos of History? Why is it always the brothers?

  132. 132.

    The Friendly Libertarian

    Snowden is more Alexander Solzhenitsyn than King, since he’s seeking asylum. Snowden is no different from a Soviet dissident.

  133. 133.

    Anne Laurie

    @lojasmo:

    I have a hard time believing you have met several people who have told you they would fast for a day rather than eating toxic food.

    I spent fifteen years in a midwestern college town before moving to the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. And I am fat. There are many, many, many people in college towns & MA who know exactly what everybody should be eating, and they do not hesitate to share. Especially with us fat people, who obviously have never been given the True Secret (no toxic food! vegetarian! vegan! paleo! South Atkins!… ) or we would stop being fat, right now.

    But then, I present IRL as a cheerful Granny Ogg type. Your mileage may vary.

  134. 134.

    Corner Stone

    @askew:

    No wonder MSNBC’s ratings are in the toilet.

    Because they angered the Balloon-Juice Gay Lobby?

  135. 135.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    When I get hungry, I’ll bite the inside of my mouth and drink my own blood for a half hour or so. Then my body goes into overdrive making new blood cells and I become even healthier.

  139. 139.

    Cacti

    @The Friendly Libertarian:

    Snowden is no different from a Soviet dissident.

    Snowden is most likely on the payroll of the People’s Republic of China, and snookered Glenn Greenwald into believing his cover story before heading back to his benefactors.

  146. 146.

    The Friendly Libertarian

    @Cacti:

    Aaaaaaaaaaaand the attempts of government bootlickers to smear the character of Snowden continues. How does boot leather taste, serf?

  147. 147.

    gogol's wife

    @gbear:

    And off the ground in the parking lot, if I read it correctly. But I might not have read it correctly, because it was the kind of text you have to skim.

  148. 148.

    Corner Stone

    God, who in the Politburo is holding a gun off screen to this poor girl’s head that Lawrence O’D is interviewing?

  149. 149.

    Mike in NC

    About 20 years ago my girlfriend and I ate lunch at a Wendy’s in RI that had a taco bar. We both got food poisoning and when I wrote to corporate about that, they mailed me a book of coupons.

  151. 151.

    Cacti

    @The Friendly Libertarian:

    Aaaaaaaaaaaand the attempts of government bootlickers to smear the character of Snowden continues. How does boot leather taste, serf?

    Too much Doug.

    Tone it down a bit or you make it too obvious.

  154. 154.

    ? Martin

    Break out the foam fingers!

    Timeless children’s favorite ‘Sesame Street’ – home to Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Elmo – is to start teaching young children about how to cope when their mom or dad is incarcerated.

    The long-running PBS children’s education show launched the ‘Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration’ educational program earlier this week.

    Organizers say the campaign is aimed at helping kids aged three to eight in the U.S., which has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

    America, Fuck Yeah!

    Very happy to see PBS doing this kind of programming. Very sad to see PBS needing to do this kind of programming.

  155. 155.

    CarolDuhart2

    @askew: Which is why I’m glad Hillary lost to Obama. Obama is in no hurry for another war. Hill might not have been able to stand up in hubby.

    80 degrees at 10 pm. And some say Climate Change is a myth.

  159. 159.

    Corner Stone

    @CarolDuhart2:

    Obama is in no hurry for another war.

    Well, to be fair, he’s got his hands full killing people in six other countries. That can take a lot out of your day spending that much time in the Star Chamber. Probably needs a Clif Bar or some peanuts.
    Give the guy a break!

  160. 160.

    askew

    @CarolDuhart2:

    @askew: Which is why I’m glad Hillary lost to Obama. Obama is in no hurry for another war. Hill might not have been able to stand up in hubby.

    Hillary voted for Iraq War and has still never apologized for it. She is a hawk. I have no doubt she agrees with Bill on Syria.

  164. 164.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mike in NC:

    About 20 years ago my girlfriend and I ate lunch at a Wendy’s in RI that had a taco bar. We both got food poisoning and when I wrote to corporate about that, they mailed me a book of coupons.

    Do you have allergies? Lots of high-histamine people get gut trouble when they ingest too many sulfite preservatives, which Wendy’s uses to an especially generous degree. (That “never frozen” brag? The meat patties get shipped in buckets of grease, with extra sulfites.)

    Salad bars in chain restaurants — where the ingredients are factory-chopped and shipped in bulk — also use mucho sulfites, to keep the lettuce & apples from browning at the edges. If you get the runs within two hours of eating at a salad bar, it’s not “food poisoning”, it’s probably sulfite flushing.

  167. 167.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Corner Stone:

    Well, to be fair, he’s got his hands full killing people in six other countries.

    So noble the way he reluctantly kills again and again.

  168. 168.

    Anne Laurie

    @Comrade Mary: Friday (hiya!), Scorpio, Goat, eldest.

    Married a Tuesday, Virgo, Rabbit, eldest.

    Just like the charts predicted, the rocks in my head fit the holes in his :) Thought it would be a one-night stand, but it’s been almost 35 years and still pleased with our bargain!

  169. 169.

    Mandalay

    Lawrence O’Donnell’s stunning and dazzling lead story tonight: interviewing a friend of Snowden between 2007 and 2009 who has not stayed in touch.

    There are a gazillion angles on this story, many of them raised here, and O’Donell interviews someone who hasn’t even been in contact with Snowden for four years.

    A new low in barrel scraping.

  174. 174.

    Corner Stone

    Screw this, I’m going to go get some Taco Bell before I get angry and go postal on somebody.

  178. 178.

    lojasmo

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Good catch. I was about 190# in that picture. At 5’8′ I was certainly overweight.

    All my candidates won that round. I am currently at a similar weight.

    I should probably be thirty pounds lighter, but am happy to just be active. I move around for about 450 minutes a week, mostly walking.

  180. 180.

    Suffern ACE

    @Mandalay: yeah. Well Atlanticwire or Reuters got some scoop that he worked for a website ten years ago and found pictures of the sensitive teen shirtless in bed with a puppy! A puppy!

    Focus media. Focus!

  181. 181.

    Ruckus

    @Mike E:
    Used to go to lunch with fellow workers when I was in town and every once in a while they would want to go to Awful House. I will say it wasn’t the worst food, just not very good.
    My horror story is MickyD’s. Got a horrendous case of food poisoning while on the road. Linda Blair style projectile vomiting, the other end flowing like the Mississippi, temp of 104+, for three days, stuck in a hotel room. Figured it was a one time thing, after all I had eaten at MickyD’s for years. Then about 3 months later it happened again. Different state, different menu item, results not as horrific. I’d rather will starve to death than set foot in another MickyD’s. I’m not particularly fat although there is some extra me hanging around and so I can live off the storage for a day if necessary.

  184. 184.

    Comrade Jake

    I think we have as many stories of food poisoning in this thread as there are fast food franchises.

    Jesus Christ people, don’t eat this shit!

  186. 186.

    different-church-lady

    @Comrade Jake: Not really… even before that last goal, Chicago was carrying the play.

    Just before the 3rd Chicago goal, shots were 33-20 Chicago, and the Bruins had blocked 24 shots.

  191. 191.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I recognize a distinction between food poisoning and mere exuberant colonization of the gut by a new microbe. Salmonella is food poisoning. You can pick up a new microorganism just about anywhere and have a kinda miserable time getting used to it.
    I worked for the same restaurant for 10 years. There were occasional complaints of getting sick from our food. The majority of cases were people passing through. Locals rarely if ever complained. We concluded it was likely that people just ingested an unfamiliar microbe that had to make itself at home, and made them miserable in the process.
    One of the advantages of a college town with a lot of Med students: stuff like that gets figured out over after-work beers.

  193. 193.

    Corner Stone

    @Comrade Jake: And I thought we truly had something special.
    I’m a little saddened by this but I’ll console myself with a couple crunchy burritos.

  197. 197.

    ellie

    What a terrible story! I travel for work all of the time and make sure my bag is filled with protein bars. Sure they are glorified candy bars but I have never succumbed to Taco Bell.

  198. 198.

    dance around in your bones

    The thing about food poisoning is that it can be a fantastic weight loss program, as long as you can put up with the ‘feel like I’m fixin’ to die’ part. I used to tell girlfriends of mine to forget about going to some pricey spa and just buy a ticket to Delhi or wherever and eat all the street food you want (which is delicious) and especially the ‘ice cold water’ for 2 paisa on the street corners. Then spend a week in your hotel room traipsing from toilet to bed to shower to toilet and back again…….voila! twenty/thirty pounds lighter.

    Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. ‘Course I was about 30 years younger when I did this (inadvertently) so I may be out of touch in these modern times. Never got sick from a Taco Bell, but then I haven’t eaten there in a trillion.

  201. 201.

    dance around in your bones

    @Redshirt: Yes, when you’re sitting on a toilet shitting your guts out and puking into the sink or bathtub at the same time, it kind of makes you ponder the meaning of existence. Like, am I alive? and WHY? Especially if you are racing the German guy to the shared toilet down the hall – who is most worthy? The one who gets there first, right?

    But the weight loss benefits are outstanding. Truly. And the food IS fantastic. I think it’s the water that gets ya.

  202. 202.

    Violet

    So sorry you got sick. That’s awful. Hope you are on the mend. Take probiotics to help your gut heal faster. Really works.

  204. 204.

    dance around in your bones

    @Redshirt: Well, it really makes you feel like an animal. Raw and totally not in your mind, but completely in your body. That’s an experience that many people never have.

    I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to leave my body and float up on the ceiling so much in my life as when I was experiencing gastrointestinal upsets in various climes. But – here I am! Not quite to Nirvana yet, but inching closer all the time :)

  205. 205.

    Yatsuno

    @dance around in your bones: I have no idea why you reminded me of this, but once I went into a short-term coma. When I woke up, I got into an argument with my mom about what day of the week it was. I just thought it was the next morning not two days later. Most surreal experience of my lifetime so far.

  206. 206.

    Death Panel Truck

    This Summit will bring together resource providers, funders, technical experts, and practitioners from across West Virginia who are working to address abandoned and dilapidated buildings in our communities.

    Torch ’em.

    End of summit. Who wants to get hammered?

  207. 207.

    Anne Laurie

    @Death Panel Truck:

    Torch ‘em.

    End of summit.

    Most of the local fire departments are probably volunteers, and certainly neighbors. You don’t want to kill a bunch of the reliable people in your town by thoughtlessly setting alight the local eyesores. First you have to check out engineering specs, Superfund records, site histories (was that an old manufactury? Meth lab? Garage saturated with unknown fuels, oils, etc.?) before you set the fire. Not to mention arranging Strangers on A Train – style alibis for each other, before the insurance inspectors show up.

  208. 208.

    JustRuss

    …accidentally stepping on packets of hot sauce and shooting it all over my god damned socks.

    That’s the best thing I’ve read all week.

  209. 209.

    Epicurus

    It could have been worse; imagine if the cabby insisted on playing the Eagles!!

Comments are closed.