OK.
It’s been too damn hot, and I’m written out for the day, and it’s time for the first adult beverage of the evening (still no club soda dammit! No mojitos for you!). And I’ve got a really depressing little item to toss your way (if one of the other FPers doesn’t get there first, of course) and I’m just too outraged out to deal with it just now.
So how about something purely fun…no strike that. Purely gorgeous covers the case a bit better. Check out this teaser for a movie I am surely going to see. More than once:
Just about defines awesome, doesn’t it?
The blog with peeks into the making of the film is pretty cool too.
Over to y’all.
burnspbesq
This piece about anti-fracking activists in the Marcellus Shale region of New York and Pennsylvania is interesting both for its own sake and as a reminder of the level of commitment that it’s going to take to preserve the right to vote.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20130707/65363fc6-69e7-46d6-8671-300a6e11d64a
Just Some Fuckhead
Lemme guess, Universal?
Yatsuno
Timmeh, of course, will tell you that all the pictures are fake and therefore NASA is lying to us and ZOMG WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!
I get to drive back to what will be a chaotic situation over the next couple of months. Should be fun.
Violet
We were promised rain today and have had none. It’s been cloudy but not a drop of rain. Depressing. I didn’t water because we were supposed to get some sort of deluge. Ha!
maya
Why stand on a sweaty line to see a movie when you can gather all your loved ones, or relatives, together around the dining room table and play this fun game.
rikyrah
the person who came up with the idea to put Coca-Cola in ICEE form deserves every bonus he/she got.
LOVE IT!
Litlebritdifrnt
Reposting this from downstairs, broke my heart
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-rural-tennessee-a-new-way-to-help-hungry-children-a-bus-turned-bread-truck/2013/07/06/c93c5eec-e292-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Honestly, that Obama doesn’t keep one.single.promise.
ruemara
I’m fairly annoyed. I think I shall have to show my interview presentation to the ex just so I can get some feedback in a swift amount of time. Which ticks me to no end, because I’d really like to not involve him at all, but he’s the only one with nothing to do but read something of mine. gah.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet:
I hate it when that happens, all my containers look like shit and I purposefully do not water because the minute I do the heavens will open. However, we have had nothing but rain for the past two weeks so I have actually had to tip over the containers to drain them as all of the plants were drowning. If it is not one thing it is another.
ETA I picked a good three pounds of maters today and used one in my greek salad which I ate with my quiche that I made the other day. Bliss.
JPL
One of my son’s came over and we grilled hamburgers in honor of the fourth. It hasn’t rained since noon. Wahoo!
BTW I live in GA and my air conditioning hasn’t come on in days. It’s one of the few times that I’m glad that I live in the south.
SiubhanDuinne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Read your link downstairs. You’re right, it is heartbreaking. I remember driving through Appalachia nearly 50 years ago and wondering how such inequity could exist in a country like this. So tragic that it hasn’t changed, except maybe even to get worse.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL: Hmmm. It rained in Duluth/Johns Creek for a while this afternoon.
Violet
@SiubhanDuinne: Ha!
@Litlebritdifrnt: I know! My water bill is crazy this summer as I just try to keep things alive. My containers look pitiful and I’ve held off watering because we were supposed to get a bunch of rain for the next couple of days starting overnight last night. We’ve had nothing. Of course it’s about 85% humidity, so that just adds to the fun.
SiubhanDuinne
Tom @ top:
Maybe this will cool you off. Or not.
Luna Sea
Am I the only one that gets a little weepy watching something beautiful and cosmic like that? Thank you for the much needed perspective after a pretty sucky week.
Litlebritdifrnt
@SiubhanDuinne: It makes me so damn angry, it really does, this is the richest country in the world, people should not be going hungry. Shit people shouldn’t be going without healthcare but as far as the right wing is concerned it is okay for the US taxpayers to pay for universal health care in Iraq but if you try it in the US it is somehow sochulism or something.
@Violet: That is exactly the bait and switch that the weather channel throws me, they show me nice pictures of green radar above my area but somehow it avoids my house. I swear sometimes it is raining across the street and not it my yard. Of course I could be paranoid and sort of sensitive about this stuff, but I know they are out to get me!
? Martin
Teresa Heinz Kerry in critical condition.
Obviously John Kerry poisoned her on the yacht to distract from his lack of attention on Egypt.
Shut up, you know it’s coming…
Yatsuno
Of course you’re not answering the most important question Tom. How is Tikkakitteh doing in the heat?
@? Martin: Ugh. I would rather not.
(I just noticed your alien head changed. When did that happen?)
some guy
am I the only one who finds it hilarious that Senator Shouts at Clouds goes on the Sunday shows and explains that under existing US law we should cut off said to the Egyptians since their military just overthrew a democratically-elected government, and the reaction by the rest of the Beltway is absolute horror? How could a military that arrests the President, throws him in jail, and appoints a new President ever be considered having run a coup? it’s not like they used tanks in a sudden, violent seizure of the government, , err,…I mean it’s not like they jailed politicians, err…I mean it’s not like they ….trust us, the Egyptian military’s sudden and violent seizure of power is NOT a coup, despite what that dictionary defines a coup as. Trust us!
too funny. Existing US law, it truly is for the little peoplez.
burnspbesq
This is a very important paper that should be required reading for the Cult of Taibbi.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2289510
Mark S.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It infuriates the fuck out of me, as does the fact that Republicans were trying to cut $20 billion off of food stamps and they weren’t then crucified along the banks of the Potomac. I hope they all fucking rot in hell.
I didn’t feel very patriotic this 4th of July.
Keith
Came home from seeing “Man of Steel” on 3D Imax. I was shocked – shocked – to read that it only had about a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. There wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t like about the film (a rarity). It was epic, had the American Way uplifting thing going on, and was more of a sci-fi film than anything else, which is a plus in my book. And I cannot stand to even watch the Christopher Reeve movies, unless Terrance Stamp or Richard Pryor is on screen.
Alison
Anyone else watching the Gold Cup? Wee little Martinique just pulled off a win over Canada with a goal in the literal last seconds. Pretty cool! I mean, I was already impressed that they’d held them to a 0-0 draw through the match.
Mexico vs Panama now, and obvs as a USMNT fan I must say, go Panama! :P
quannlace
Ha, for me it’s so often the opposite. Dealing with a very storm-sensitive dog, I mean. There’s been so many nights when I’ve woken up to a cloud-burst and a very sensitive dog pacing the bedroom in a panic. Turn on the Weather channel and the whole northern part of NJ looks clear. Except for a teeny-tiny orange blob. Which looks like it’s right over my house. I say to poor Katie, “is there a bulls-eye painted on our roof?”
gogol's wife
Aleksei Navalny made his final statement in court today, before he (probably) gets put in prison for six years:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/world/europe/text-of-navalnys-closing-remarks-in-russian-court.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Certainly in my Top Ten list. Has anyone since W. S. Gilbert penned cleverer lyrics than “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”?
JPL
This afternoon during our July 4th grill fest, I played the Boston Pops version of I’m Shipping up to Boston. We had a discussion about my growing up middle class in MA and I mentioned that I would have considered Mark Wahlberg a hood. I was met with a stare and finally said, okay a punk. I then explained that when I was growing up a punk was a slow match intending to light a fire or grill and a hood was a hood. OMG…. I’m old.
He then told me that I’m Shipping up to Boston is punk rock which originated in Ireland or England which of course made me feel older.
edit.. Was hood a generational term or regional term? The same question goes for punk.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Topsy Turvy is great!
rikyrah
Rep. John Lewis optimistic Congress will pass new Voting Rights Act
07/06/2013
States have been swift to take action on new voter suppression measures in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that effectively gutted the Voting Rights. After less than two weeks, already six states have moved forward with new voter suppression measures, but that action has also inspired a renewed push for voting rights from the civil rights community in the wake of the Court’s decision, and few may be more passionate about the cause than John Lewis.
The Georgia congressman was a freedom rider who was beaten within an inch of his life as he marched in Selma, Ala., in support of voting rights for all Americans.
“I truly believe that what the Supreme Court did was to stab, to put that dagger deep in the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” he said on Saturday’s PoliticsNation from Essence Festival in New Orleans.
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/06/rep-john-lewis-optimistic-congress-will-pass-new-voting-rights-act/
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Agreed! And I have a very warm spot for Gilbert & Sullivan in my heart anyhow, as I would literally not have been conceived if not for them. My parents met doing a performance of H.M.S. Pinafore in 1940 (my mom singing the soprano lead, my dad conducting his first orchestra) so I cut my musical teeth on G&S and have adored the operettas all my life.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman: Tough tune. Beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but some challenging intervals.
RepubAnon
If you get a SodaStream machine, you’ll never run out of sparkling water.
? Martin
@Yatsuno: A few days ago. I can’t post from my old account. I suspect Cole banned it, but have no way of knowing.
JGabriel
Beautiful, Tom. Thank you for pointing that out to us.
SiubhanDuinne
@? Martin:
I can’t think of anything you might have said that would cause Cole to ban you. I suspect you have fallen prey to the dreaded Yutsano/Yatsuno cooties, which activate FYWP mechanisms while nobody’s looking.
JPL
@efgoldman: I graduated from high school in ’67 so it does sound generational but since we are from the same region who knows. Do you remember the term punk for long sticks used to light sparklers and grills? Anne Laurie needs to chime in.
Yatsuno
@SiubhanDuinne: I of course blame Tunch, PBUH.
@JPL: I remember calling the smouldering firelighters punks. They were little sawdust-tipped sticks that looked like sparklers but not as much fun.
ruemara
@rikyrah: I think Representative Lewis is a little too optimistic.
quannlace
“Do you remember the term punk for long sticks used to light sparklers and grills? ”
&&&&&&&&&&&
Sure, they looked like little, skinny cat-tails. And burned with a funky, vegetal like scent.
Still bummed that they got banned here in NJ back in the 70’s. Okay, I can understand fireworks. But punks and sparklers? I really miss sparklers.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yatsuno: Tunchbait, FYWP, what’s the diff really?
@JPL: I am from Chicagoland, seven years older than you, and we always had punk on the Fourth. I mentioned it the other day to my (much older) cousins and (much younger) guests, and none of them knew the term at all.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yatsuno:
@SiubhanDuinne:
I have Absolutely.No.Idea why FYWP/autocorrect decided to turn “Tunch” into “Tunchbait.” That’s just stupid and weird.
? Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: Perhaps. It was one of those days when Cole was getting a bit weird about Snowden and I posted a bunch of stuff. I thought the first one went through, and then I couldn’t post anything after that, and the first post vanished. I figured he was having an emo day.
SiubhanDuinne
@quannlace:
I always liked the aroma.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Did you have a group of students that you might call hoods in school? If you could see the puzzlement on my son’s face when I used that term, it was hilarious.
SiubhanDuinne
@? Martin:
My sense of Cole is that it would take a lot more than that to cause him to bring out the banhammer. But I wasn’t there, and he’s as entitled as anyone to an off day….
Yatsuno
@SiubhanDuinne: The ways of the Tunch are indeed mysterious to those subjected to His rule.
raven
@JPL: I do, class of 67 but into the Army in 66.
? Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: I would think so too. But it’s his blog. We’re the same age. I certainly have my days when I’d ban people for little reason. No big.
catclub
@quannlace: Dog that needs a thunder shirt?
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin:
What? A day that ends in a “y”?
Using chrome(for the benefit of trollbegone) on a PC, I haven’t noticed the change; it’s still a little square. It does show up on IE10 and IE11 though, but no there’s no trollbegone for IE.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Absolutely! They all wore their hair in greasy D.A.s (anyone remember what that means?) and wore black leather jackets and tight jeans and swaggered down the halls. Never appealed to me (I liked the bespectacled Jewish intellectual types) but they were definitely a Presence.
One of them showed up three years ago at my class’s 50th reunion. He was every bit as repellent in 2010 as he had been in 1960. Once a hood, always a hood, I guess.
JPL
Teresa Heinz Kerry has been moved to MA General. It bothered me, that she wasn’t stable enough to be moved sooner, so I’ll take this as good news.
max
John Lewis lived through all those marches. It makes sense that he’d be an optimist. And he’s earned the right.
I suspect he’s wrong, but I hope my suspicions are incorrect.
But if you want to move to the UK, here’s the new citizenship test!
max
[‘Swot up lads.’]
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
That sounds like a good sign. Thanks for the update.
NotMax
@quannlace
One of the revelations of childhood was the learning of how to arrange a single re-use of sparklers.
After they burned out, dip them in flour and shake of the excess. They then could be lit and function just that one more time.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Abbreviation referring to a certain waterfowl’s posterior.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
My h.s. had a VERY strict no-smoking rule, with serious repercussions, so even the Hoodocracy would have thought twice about displaying their cigs in any way, at least within a two-block radius of the building. But The Fonz was, indeed, the beau ideal of the type.
Heywood J.
Hey folks, I’ve been at it again with my little gee-tar books. The latest and greatest takes the “Presto” movement from the Bach Violin Sonata #1 in Gm and provides full tabs, musical analysis, and dozens of technical exercises derived from the music. Free downloads through Monday. Your patronage is always much appreciated.
We’re house sitting in Windsor, CA this weekend, and soon as I can get a snap of one or both of the elusive kitties here, there will be photos at The Hammer. Thanks again!
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax: Got it in one.
Jamey
Cool. It’s no Apollo 18, though…
SiubhanDuinne
@max: I could be a British citizen this very minute! Only thing I got wrong was the age for jury duty, which was a wild guess and which I guessed wrong.
NickT
A grim, but excellent cartoon about the great state of Texas:
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/files/2013/07/TexasFootwear-NickAnderson.jpg
SiubhanDuinne
@NickT:
Very fine.
JPL
@raven: The term came up during a discussion about Mark Wahlberg and his accomplishments and the road he traveled. The same might be said about you because you achieved academic success, after a rocky start. Take a bow. Have you ever thought about talking to high school students?
edit.. (not to infer that you were arrested dozen of times by the time you were thirteen but you get the point)
NickT
@efgoldman:
The NSA notes your loyalty with approval. Your status has been reevaluated to “person of interest Grade 2”.
Litlebritdifrnt
@max: I got 10 out of 10 but then I’m a Brit so I should be expected to. I can go home any time I want, which to be honest is getting more and more likeable as North Carolina becomes more like the Taliban every day. I refuse to live under Evangelical law.
The Sailor
@SiubhanDuinne:
Maybe Sammy Cahn & Sylvia Fine in The Court Jester.
NickT
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/report-califnornia-prisons-sterilized-nearly-150-female-inmates
This is beyond horrifying.
Mike in NC
@Litlebritdifrnt: This sad state is definitely in a downward spiral thanks to all of the idiots who neglected to vote in 2010. People say that 50 years of progress are being wiped out almost overnight, thanks to all of the elderly white men elected to go to Raleigh. Abortion will be soon outlawed and all sorts of voter restrictions implemented.
Personally I’d move back to New England or California in a heartbeat if I could.
SiubhanDuinne
Finally just watched the trailer (was out in public earlier). Oh my, I certainly do want to see that next year. Hope and assume that the Fernbank (Atlanta’s science-museum-cum-IMAX) will be showing it.
/mouth watering
bago
@SiubhanDuinne: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxrO5-HPIAw
Alien Gilbert and Sullivan.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Hey hey hey! I might have been a Roosian, a French, or Turk, or Proosian, or p’raps Eye-tal-eye-an.
mai naem
I just read a blurb on TPM about Teresa Heinz Kerry being in critical condition in the hospital. Apparently she arrived at the Nantucket hospitalin critical condition and was stabilized and moved to Mass General later. I hope everything turns out ok. I didn’t realize she was 74.
Diana
@quannlace: “punk” is Shakespearian for rotten, as in rotten wood. Since there were actually forests in Shakespearian times, rotten wood was punkwood: “Found in the middle of rotten logs, punk wood is in the process of rotting but hasn’t turned soft. It can be obtained by knocking or kicking apart rotten logs. It can be broken with the fingers but doesn’t crumble. Punk wood is very light in weight, but still fairly firm. If dried out, it will light very easily since it is already well mixed with air.”
Eventually, anything that could easily burn was punk. Hence sparklers.
Meanwhile, along a different language track, anything that was rotten was punk: kids, clothes, their music. Hence CBGBs.
hope this helps…
Redshirt
@Keith: Amen, man. I loved the movie, especially the sci-fi focus. Best Superman movie ever, easily.
SiubhanDuinne
@bago: Wonderful!
@efgoldman: Also wonderful!
I live for patter and internal rhyme.
JoyfulA
@burnspbesq: Ha! Fracking job creation. Pennsylvania’s gone from something like #6 in creating new jobs to #47 in the fracking era.
Any new jobs in fracking that developed went to experienced roughnecks from Oklahoma and Texas, in rural parts of the state with no rental housing.
Keep it up, New Yorkers!
Tom Levenson
@max: 10/10 here. Cheating, perhaps, given me owld Mum were English.
Tom Levenson
@NickT: That was the story I was referring to in the post. Awful. Evil.
Heywood J.
@NickT: Someone’s probably going to get their ass sued for it, but “beyond horrifying”? In the California prison system, this probably isn’t even the fiftieth most “horrifying” thing. It’s a gulag, no doubt.
The full CIR article gives plenty of good detail, and if their own examples are indicative of anything, the doctors were “targeting” women who already had many children. A car thief with five kids, a drug-addicted burglar/forger with seven kids. And at least one woman in the article was asked, and declined, so the “coercion” wasn’t exactly forcible. (And yes, it if no male prisoners were “invited” to get vasectomies, then it’s sexist. Shocking, I know.)
Playing devil’s advocate here, but at what point is a (possibly multiply) convicted felon’s right to have infinity children for society to support trumped by society’s right to not keep paying for said children? Which is the greater moral and societal cost?
Heywood J.
Also, too, kitteh foto, as promised.
The Sailor
@efgoldman:
Yep! And “I Made A Fool Of Myself”.
NickT
@Heywood J.:
If you are seriously trying to find a way in which this was acceptable, I hope never to be in the same room as you.
Heywood J.
@NickT: No, it’s definitely unacceptable, but there are much worse things going on throughout the CA prison system routinely, that are more worthy of the principled person to plant their moral flag. “Coercing” (and taking no for an answer) a felon with a half-dozen kids to quit while they’re behind already is not exactly the second coming of Josef Mengele.
I read the CIR article in full and pretty thoroughly. Some of these women were probably deceived and feel bamboozled now, but even the article doesn’t say they were forced.
West of the Rockies
@Luna Sea: I get pretty emotional, too, Luna. I’d love to see that movie in an IMAX theater — I don’t think there’s one near me though. Watching such footage makes me feel like I’m about 13 again, staring up into the stars on a summer night.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: hey neighbor! (I live close to JCHS)
nemesis
George Zimmerman will be aquitted. The prosecution had a damn hard case to win and thus far they have not won the day, sadly. Zimm will be if he isnt already, a rw hero of mammouth porportions.
Pococurante
Tom, I’m genuinely surprised you haven’t spoken up on Egypt and Syria. From your other ME comments I genuinely thought you’d be all over those stories, applying the same standards.