Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Let there be snark.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

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

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Republicans do not trust women.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

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Another Late Night Open Thread

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We’re having the weirdest storm here- I was sound asleep on the couch with the piglets but woke up because Steve started to pace, and I sat up and heard this pounding on the roof. After pulling my shit together and getting my glasses on, I realized it was rain on the roof I was hearing. Went to the back door, and rain is coming down in buckets (locals call these storms gully washers, I always think of it as Forrest Gump rain), but there is no wind, no thunder, and maybe a little lightning to the southwest. Just a weird storm, because with this kind of downpour you expect some extras.

Here is an earworm I have had all week (it goes in and out):

Still one of my favorite driving albums. I can see myself in an Audi R8 blasting across Ohio and Indiana and all those other worthless god damned flat states at 120 miles an hour listening to that album at ear bleeding volumes (fuck you hearing loss, I don’t listen to people anyway). It would be awesome.

Until my mom called me to tell me something about the Pirates and I fumbled my coffee trying to hit the hands free button while turning down the volume and burned my crotch before hitting a telephone pole at 100 miles an hour. Which is why I drive a ’97 Subaru wagon which goes zero to sixty in about eight days.

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  2. 2.

    Roxy

    One of my favorite driving songs that I will turn up full blast is Rockin’ Down the Highway by the Doobie Brothers

  3. 3.

    Ruckus

    Cole, at least you understand your limitations and proclivities and can sometimes see that following one without thinking about the other can be dangerous.

  5. 5.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    I got caught in one of those downpours while collecting on my paper route in 1980. Just before the first drops hit, the sky was a light green. No wind, no thunder or lightning. I was soaked within seconds (midway between two customers’ houses on smallish lots). As soon as I got to that second house, the rain stopped. That was it. I was in the rain for maybe ten seconds, and it was as if I’d been fully dunked in Lake Michigan two times.

  13. 13.

    Chris

    OT (can one OT an open thread?) –

    I check PJMedia every now and then as one of my barometers for the wingnut memes of the day. I thought I’d seen it all, but the headline for today takes the cake: “Game Changer: Signs of an Assad-Al-Qaeda Alliance.”

    Yep, they’re back to “Saddam Was Behind 9/11.” Guess that’s how you square the “which Arabs do we hate more? ALL of them, Charlie!” circle.

    The reaction from the comments section… a few “I KNEW it! ALL those hajjis were working together!” and a few “nah, it’s a false flag attack,” but mostly a consensus that whether or not war is necessary, that girly man in the White House can’t be trusted to do the right thing.

    A couple gems –

    [regarding where this “intelligence” was acquired and whether it’s plausible] “If Muslims are involved, anywhere along the way, they’re lying about some or all of it.”

    Later on;

    “Sarah Palin had the right idea when she said, Kill ’em all and let Allah sort it out.”
    “She didn’t say “kill em all”.”
    “She should have. And that’s what we should be prepared to do.”

    Really… they’re just nice, concerned, patriotic citizens. You’re a horrible person for thinking that just because they’re prepared to make value judgments based on identity in a group of more than a billion people, they’re somehow bigots. You’re a horrible person for saying that just because they’re rooting for genocide openly and uncontroversially, it’s fair to compare them to fascists.

  14. 14.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chris:

    I check PJMedia every now and then as one of my barometers for the wingnut memes of the day.

    Have you considered cutting?

  15. 15.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    …and, for some odd reason, I find that this one does it while I’m behind the wheel, too. Weird, because it’s such a “heroin” band.

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Wonderful. My dad gave me a ’69 Fastback Mustang to drive in high school. In the mid-80s everybody had “new” cars. I hated it. Only later did I realize my fucking dad gave me a ’69, 289 Mustang. I still own it and folks just stop all the time and ask to buy it it. Oh all white.

  18. 18.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Tommy:

    Haha! My senior year (’82-’83) I was driving a ’75 AMC Hornet wagon. The cool kids were driving either later model Camaros and Trans Ams, or those ’68-’72 mid-sized GM cars (Skylarks, Chevelles, LeManses, Cutlasses, and the upgrades of those).

  21. 21.

    Alison

    For me, a good driving song is one I just love belting it out along with (especially since I can’t sing for shit, so alone in the car is the best place to do it), and as this one came on when I got in the car today, it’s the first one I thought of :) youtube.com/watch?v=lu3VTngm1F0

    Don’t hate.

  22. 22.

    eemom

    What was it John Lennon once said, that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus?

    Consider John Cole, whose every fart and earworm, never mind passing political, um, thought, is a multi-comment-generating genius of prolific half-assery. Biggerer than Jesus and the Beatles put together.

    Jussayinzall.

  23. 23.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Tommy:

    Funny…Someone owned one of those on the same street (it was a short street, too) I was on when I got caught in the green storm. Very nice car.

    Never saw an assload of classic ’50s-’60s Fords in this part of Michigan. GM had plants all over the state, but Ford didn’t have much of a presence outside of metro Detroit. GM pushed the “Buy new every two” meme on their employees, so there were a lot of used GMs around town.

  26. 26.

    jenn

    Holy crap. Speaking of storms – send some prayers/good thoughts Colorado-ward. It is ugly out there on the Front Range.

  29. 29.

    Mike s

    Hands free in nice cars turns down the radio automatically. Just sayin.

    Janes Addiction Trip Away from their Roxy album is my favorite. You drive anywhere from 20-120 mph and never really notice that it is happening.

  30. 30.

    hamletta

    @Omnes Omnibus: …sounds like drum.

    One of my most precious records from my late mom is National Lampoon’s Goodbye Pop.

    I majored in music biz, and we worshiped that album. Christopher Guest was about 60% of it.

    But Gilda Radner did a riff on an allegedly feminist anthem, and Bill Murray did a great late-night FM DJ, and some guy did a perfect riff on Neil Young: “I dreamed I found my cowgirl housewife; I was driving in my pickup through LA….”

    I don’t think it’s seen the light of day since it was first released, but it’s genius.

  32. 32.

    ? Martin

    My mom’s first car was a ’57 Chevy that my grandfather bought off of a coworker to give to her. When my parents married (’68, about 6 months before I was born), it was their primary car until it started breaking down and my dad didn’t have the mechanical skills (my grandfather was an engineer and could build/fix anything) or money to keep it running, so he sold it and got a Dodge Dart.

    Until the day he died my grandfather remained pissed at my dad for that more than anything else. There’s a picture of my mom standing next to the Chevy when she was about 19. I can totally understand why my dad knocked her up. Grandpa managed to get over that a lot faster.

  35. 35.

    jenn

    Flood stage on the Big Thompson now far higher than it was during the 1976 flood that killed 143 people.

  36. 36.

    Alison

    @Roxy: I am an ardent George Michael fan :) But I have a pretty wide range of musical tastes, so I’m sure almost anyone could find something they love and something they hate in my iTunes library…

  38. 38.

    James E. Powell

    @? Martin:

    My ex-father in law had a mint condition ’66 Impala SS convertible. The dark red with a black interior. He was the original owner. He had every receipt for everything and a couple of ledger books with every service he had performed himself. My then-girlfriend managed to put some serious gouges and dents in it. I don’t know how he stayed calm about it. I remember when we got divorced being very sad that that car would never be in my garage.

    I’m surprised your dad had to dump the Chevy. They weren’t that expensive or hard to fix in the late ’60s – there were parts around.

  39. 39.

    SectionH

    @? Martin: I still haven’t entirely forgiven my parents for not letting me buy a ’52 Jaguar, owned by an ex-roommate of my then BF – meaning it wasn’t a “gotcha” – for $500.

    ETA, not that there was anything wrong with a Dodge Dart. Ahhem.

    Well. the really early model wasn’t bad. The later ones, not so much. But that could be said about lotsa cars. Including Jags.

  40. 40.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @? Martin:

    How long did it take the floor of that Dart to rust apart from the rest of the body?

  42. 42.

    Roxy

    @Alison: I have the cassette tape of Faith and I would play that tape driving to and from work. Father Figure, One More Time, Faith, some great songs from that album.

  43. 43.

    James E. Powell

    While there are sure to be many strong opinions on this, I believe that there are few songs that are great driving songs in all circumstances. It depends on whether the driving is done day or night? Sunny or raining? Alone? With your SO? With your boys?

    These things matter.

  44. 44.

    hamletta

    @? Martin: That sounds like Big Daddy Syndrome.

    When I was in my 20s, my dad and I quit speaking. He’d provided me with a succession of worn-out land barges, but the last one died, so I bought a used Honda Civic.

    When we re-connected, he’d disparage my choice of car: Hondas were 60k-mile cars, and I would soon regret my purchase.

    I beat the shit out of that car, and wound up selling it to a girl whose boyfriend was a mechanic.

  46. 46.

    jc

    I drive for a living. Anything by the Pretenders, Allman Bros., B-52s, Stevie Wonder, Creedence, Bowie, Kraftwerk, Curtis Mayfield, The Jam – Weller. Also Reggae, Sinead O’Connor, The Clash, Talking Heads, Rod Stewart, James Brown, Pixies, Psychedelic Furs, REM, Sly Stone, Steely Dan, Wilson Pickett (Mustang Sally).

  47. 47.

    fuckwit

    @? Martin: My mom’s car was a 1964 (I think) Pontiac LeMans. My parents kept promising to give it to me when I turned 16 so it could be my first car. But it was old and had issues, and my dad had zero mechanical skills, so they sold it when I was like 12 or 13 and bought some stupid Buick. So my first car ended up being a peice of shit 1978 Buick sedan, utterly uncool and fucked up, instead of a perfectly awesome classic car that they had to go and sell. Yeah, I was bitter.

  48. 48.

    Another Holocene Human

    From the worthless flat states to the worthless mountain deathtrap failed experiment states, a hearty fuck you too, Cole.

    How much corn you grow on them sheer cliff faces, anyway?

  49. 49.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Chris: M000slims are the new black. Why, yesterday one of my coworkers was raving about Duck Dynasty and brought up some argle bargle about the network supposedly fighting with the family about showing them praying at the end of each episode. I feel skeptical about this entire story because why would the network dick around with such a popular show? But anyway, he immediately jumps to “It’s M0000slims” wanting Christians to stop practicing their religion, I mean obviously it’s not secular people of an ethnic Christian (or Jewish) background who are put out by Jebus talk and are concerned that it’s limiting their audience or just not done. I told ‘im I didn’t think there were too many Muslims in decision-making positions in LA entertainment business and he dropped the subject.

  50. 50.

    SectionH

    @jc: That’s a great list. But no love for Jackson Browne?

    We used do 50-60K miles a year for our biz. A lot of those years, it was in an ’86 Voyager – a 5 speed (700 total of those were ever made). It used to blow Valet guys’ minds… We mostly stopped driving that van after the trip to SF in ’93 – we turned 400K outbound somewhere in Kansas – but finally gave it (it was still drivable) to our car guy with 450K on it quite a few years later.

    We don’t even own a car right now – Mr Hertz keeps us in wheels at about the same price as all the actual cost of owning, and few of the hassles. We’re looking at city places where Car to Go or similar things are feasible.

  51. 51.

    Schlemizel

    @hamletta:

    Nat Lamp produced some real gems. The best known was “Radio Diner” with some really great pieces on it. I also have “The Nixon Basement Tapes” which is full of funny political bits, side 2 is the impeachment day parade & Billy Graham performing the swearing out ceremony. I used to listen to the radio program they syndicated, never a bad show.

  52. 52.

    Schlemizel

    On the subject of rain, no place has rain like Central Florida. When we lived there I grew to a better understanding of how Inuits could have 42 words for snow. I saw rain in every conceivable fashion including up! Just like Mr. Gump described it in the movie. Gentle trickle with huge lightning & thunder, silent gully washers where you couldn’t see 2 feet it was coming down so hard, horizontal, you name it.

    I remember coming home from work one day & going to change clothes. It started coming down in buckets so I yelled to shut the windows. The woman stupid enough to marry me yelled back “Why?”. It was still raining hard outside the bedroom when I walked out into the bright sun shiny living room. We could stand in the sun on our patio and reach out and touch the rain pouring on the one side of the house for several minutes. The other side was dry.

  57. 57.

    Donut

    Pretty sure I have logged more driving miles than all of you combined (former touring musician/professional hobo). The best music for driving is the “Texas Funeral” LP by Jon Wayne (sic). Well, that, and the entire catalog of Thelonious Monk.

  61. 61.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Fuck that Audi POS. I’ve just driven a Tesla. First car where I’ve ever been seriously worried that the motor could tear the tires right off the rims.

  62. 62.

    kindness

    Audi R8 – I was watching ‘How It’s Made – Dream Cars’ last night and they did the R8.

    That would be a sweet sweet 3rd car. But as a 2 seater it has no place for me until I get to the point of having a 3rd car, which I don’t really see. Why 3rd car? Because I need a 4 seater and I need a truck which we have. A little sports car would be fun but it isn’t a high priority.

    My favorite Dream Car of the series so far? The Ferrari FF. The Bentley is nice but the Ferrari….oh, oh, oh.

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