Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

We still have time to mess this up!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Ah, the different things are different argument.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republicans don’t trust women.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

T R E 4 5 O N

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

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Reader Interactions

78Comments

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    AHA! FIXED! Job well done sg. Now if only the rest of our problems are fixed so easily today.

  3. 3.

    PurpleGirl

    Sooner — There is a posting and the comments are working. This is a test (of sorts).

    ETA: I take it that there were problems overnight?

  8. 8.

    Soonergrunt

    I just don’t know what the hell happened. I think the quick post feature is broken and you have to use the full editor. More likely, I’m simply incompetent.

  13. 13.

    jeffreyw

    When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now
    Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
    If I’d been out ’til quarter to three, would you lock the door?
    Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m sixty-four?

    Another year older and deeper in debt…

  16. 16.

    Steeplejack

    @jeffreyw:

    Happy birthday, I presume?

    If so, you’re in good company with Ty Cobb, Betty Grable, Ossie Davis, Jacques Pépin, Keith Richards, Steven Spielberg, Ray Liottta. Brad Pitt, Stone Cold Steve Austin, DMX, Katie Holmes and Christina Aguilera.

    Oh, yeah, and Stalin.

  17. 17.

    danielx

    Another year older, and time for the interminable end-of-year and best-of-year lists. One list that won’t be appearing, unfortunately, is the Golden Winger Awards, sponsored by The Editors at the much missed Poor Man Institute.

    Kind of a tossup as to which nominations I enjoyed most: the Purple Teardrop with Clutched Pearls Cluster (for greatest butthurt) or the coveted Palme D’Haire for biggest wanker of the year. Although it must be said that Louie Gohmert has staked a claim to permanent ownership of the latter…

  18. 18.

    reality-based

    I did not win the mega millions.

    However – yesterday, on a busy 2-lane blacktop state hwy here in North Dakota, I hit invisible black ice on a curve, spun out at 60 miles an hour, miraculously did not hit any oncoming traffic, and came to rest jammed up to the door handles in a snowy ditch.

    did not roll, because of the snow. Car appears to be also miraculously unhurt.

    When I stopped shaking, found the cell phone where it flew, called the wrecker – and the nice county sheriff deputies put me in their warm car while they helped the wrecker driver dig and pull me out, while waiting for state hwy dept to get some sand and salt on those curves.

    Driving for 45 years, 20 of them in North Dakota, and this is the first time I’ve ever been in a ditch – much less spun out at 60. Scared me to death.

    So I’ve already had more than my share of luck this week. Don’t even care I lost the Mega Millions!

  19. 19.

    PaulW

    I didn’t win the jackpot. I have to see if I won the lesser prizes.

    Is it too late to mention to anyone and everyone getting an ereader device or tablet for Saturnalia this year to BUY MY EBOOKS! …hey, I didn’t win the lotto, so I need the extra income over here… Ow ow ow stop hitting me with a banhammer OOOOWwwwwwww…

  21. 21.

    imonlylurking

    Finally getting over a bout of what I am calling food poisoning even though my roommate ate more of the same thing and didn’t have a problem. I need to start packing, though-I’m going to Sydney for two weeks and I fly out on Friday, and I am so not ready.

  22. 22.

    JPL

    @reality-based: Fortunately, John Cole was not a passenger because the end result would be different. I’m glad u are okay.

    The mega-million ticket was sold about fifteen miles away from me and only a few miles from my son’s house. Close doesn’t work though, it might as well been sold in Indiana,

  23. 23.

    Hill Dweller

    Those evil geniuses at megamillions changed the already impossibly long odds of winning their jackpot(1 in 175,000,000) to 1 in 289,000,000, while making the lesser prizes easier to win. Consequently, there will be a lot of huge jackpots going forward, roping in the occasional players for their scam. I won’t be surprised to see a billion dollar jackpot at some point.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @reality-based: They have curves in N Dakota???? Wow… who’da thunk it. Glad you survived with all your parts and vehicle intact. A few years back I hit a patch of black ice and rolled my van, full of tools. It was totalled and I had a broken thumbnail. Don’t know how I didn’t end up with a hammer in my skull. Worst part? I was just 1/4 mile from home.

    ps: in Arkansas they have a common road sign that says, “Crooked and Steep next (#) miles.

  27. 27.

    cmorenc

    Well, I did have one of the six numbers in each of two of the three tickets I bought. As entertainment, a MegaMillions lottery ticket is a terrific bargain, enabling you to entertain a delicious fantasy for a day or two that has some (albeit very small) chance of coming true, unlike a more expensive movie ticket where you have absolutely no chance whatsoever of sleeping with the to-die-for leading actress. As an investment, it’s one of the stupidest possible in terms of likely return. I always limit my purchase of MegaMillions tickets to no more than three $1 tickets for any given drawing (cheaper than a movie ticket, a bit more expensive than a RedBox DVD rental), and don’t lose any more sleep skipping drawings than I would postponing going to a given movie. It’s just entertainment.

  29. 29.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for the earlier tip. I hoped to use the lumber I took down to build a new deck but now it will be another year. There are a lot of nails and screws in the stuff but I really don’t want to trash stuff like 2×10’s.

  30. 30.

    Steeplejack

    @danielx:

    Acting is a very insecure profession, so you almost can’t fault them for picking up the easy money when they can. It always reminds me of Bill Murray doing the Japanese whisky ads in Lost in Translation.

  33. 33.

    Steeplejack

    @Gin & Tonic:

    You cain’t win if you ain’t in! I can see buying one ticket just to put up the lightning rod in case the impossible happens. What I don’t get—and what you always see on the breathless TV news stories when the lottery gets huge—is people buying 10, 20, 50 tickets.

  34. 34.

    JPL

    I seldom buy lottery tickets and still am ignorant to all the various games they have. Since we still have x-mas stockings, Santa leave a few scratch off thingys in the stockings. The lottery did save me thousands and thousands of dollars, since GA has the Hope scholarship.

  40. 40.

    Belafon

    @Belafon: (FYWP -I wanted to add):

    Though it is interesting that in the two I have seen, one is a black man, and the other is a young Asian looking woman.

  41. 41.

    reality-based

    @Linda Featheringill: that’s the weird thing -this happened on a sunny day – middle of the afternoone – the roads seemed clear, although it was ground-drifting, so hard to tell – but everybody was passing me, as I tootled on down the road at 60 mph, to go to the county seat -town for groceries and cat litter.

    Now I’ll be driving 50 mph, instead of 60 – no risky stuff here!

    (When i get my car back – i drove it back to town, seemed, fine, but it’s in my mechanics garage, getting all the snow packed in the wheels and engine compartment thawed out of it. )

  43. 43.

    Mathguy

    In the man bites dogs category today, Maureen Dowd actually wrote a decent op-ed in the NYT. Forgot that she was a capable writer.

  44. 44.

    reality-based

    @OzarkHillbilly: where i spun is one of only two or three sets of curves in the whole county – and its flat, just curving around a slough – – but the road is engineered wrong, and gets notoriously slippery in the winters – for years, I’ve driven past cars in the ditch on those curves, wondering why the fools didn’t slow down.

    Now I’m the fool!

    last winter, the curves iced up quickly, and there were 15 cars in the ditch on the mile-and-a half stretch – including the snowplow!

  45. 45.

    Karen in GA

    @Steeplejack: Edward Norton is doing a phone ad. I saw it and wondered, why him? Any decent lesser-known actor could have done it. Edward Norton is a decent actor, but if you’re going to get an established actor to sell something, shouldn’t it be someone the average person would want to emulate? Ray Liotta might least have some Goodfellas/Scorcese cred left, maybe. But do people want to be like the guy who did the reboot of The Hulk? I actually liked Death to Smoochy.* But I don’t need Smoochy’s phone.

    I’m thinking way too much about this. Slow morning at work.

    *Yeah, I said it.

  47. 47.

    Amir Khalid

    @Karen in GA:
    There was a time — the 1970s and early 1980s, as I recall — when Hollywood A-listers would go to Japan and do commercials for that market because advertisers there could afford to pay them, and because they were fairly confident no one back home would see the commercials. It ended when word finally did get out.

  48. 48.

    Corner Stone

    @Karen in GA: First of all, Ed Norton is a freakin genius actor. I’m having trouble wiping the spittle flecks off my monitor after reading him described as “decent”.
    And that phone commercial is awesome. “I believe that ferret belongs to me.”

  52. 52.

    Steeplejack

    @Karen in GA:

    I was actually thinking about Edward Norton and that ad when I wrote above. I’m pretty good at picking out celebrity voices, and when I first heard that ad I thought, “Edward Norton? Really?” Good actor, but he doesn’t sound like a go-to voice to me.

    Trending: Ty Burrell (Phil Dunphy on Modern Family) is getting a ton of voice work now.

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    A lot of them had it in the contract that the ads wouldn’t be used outside the Japanese/Asian market.

    ETA: Sort of pointless now, in the Internet age.

  55. 55.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    You’re reminding me that I was thinking of the wrong ad. There is another ad that uses only Norton’s voice. It may be for a truck, now that I think about it.

    The ferret ad is pretty cool, although kind of stupid. It’s hard to tell which Droid model he’s using, and the “movie trailer” aspect distracts from whatever the hell is being advertised until you’ve seen it a few times.

  56. 56.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: I stop and watch that ad every time it’s on, even though I have no intention of buying a droid.
    But the fact that the karaoke he’s doing is, “If I Could Turn Back Time” is about the most awesome part of it.
    “We found a key in your stomach.”

  57. 57.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: And also, you bastard, you have failed me yet again.
    You were nowhere to be found when I had a matter of urgent grammatical pedantry to resolve.

  58. 58.

    Karen in GA

    @Corner Stone: Whoa, hold on to the spittle. “Decent” in the context of that sentence was “Yep, not bad at all.” “Decent” in the context of the following sentence, “Any decent actor could have…” was “Anyone competent, didn’t have to be great.” Yes, contradictory. Poor wording. I plead sleep deprivation.

    And it’s “I believe that ferret’s mine.” /ahem

    I just don’t understand the decision to cast him in particular, other than for the novelty of “Hey, look who it is,” which wears off quickly. And I just don’t see him being the right celebrity to sell a product. The idea of celebrity endorsements is, “Celebrity X uses that product, I wanna be like Celebrity X, so I’ll use that product.” Who wants to be like Edward Norton?

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    @Karen in GA: I’m usually chuckling out loud by that part. I mean, he’s playing Connect Four with some kind of gold coins for discs!
    Although, upon reflection the commercial should kind of creep you out. It essentially recorded everything he did for the last 48 hours.

    ETA, and he’s playing bouncy with Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club, and in real life he dated Salma Hayek, sooo there’s some points on his side of the ledger.

  60. 60.

    CaseyL

    The Ed Norton ad for Droid confused me the first time I saw it, because I didn’t realize it was an ad for the phone; I thought it was movie trailer. A pretty interesting movie, at that. I still like it as a micro-movie.

    Nissan used to make amazing TV ads: Barbie leaving Ken to run off with GI Joe in his Nissan jeep, and the sleepwalking human taking his dog for a ride and picking up all the dog’s friends, to name two. Now their ads are indistinguishable from any other car company’s.

    Those and other really creative commercials died out after studies revealed people remembered the ads – but not the product they advertised. So now we get boring, and boringly similar, ads focusing hard on the product. The Droid/Ed Norton commercial is refreshing because it’s a throwback to that brief golden age when ads were interesting in and of themselves.

  61. 61.

    handsmile

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Observing those who stand in long, snaking lines outside of every corner “convenience” store here in the urban hellhole, it seems to me that deficiency is math skills is not the only way in which life has short-changed them. Don’t ever play myself, but will definitely be stealing your pithy definition.

    Re the hotly-debated Ed Norton question

    Confess to being an agnostic on the subject of his acting skills-set, but did dearly love his performance, cast against type imo, in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. And from a recent trailer, I see that he has a role in Anderson’s upcoming film, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

    Don’t believe I’ver ever seen his Droid ad, which may very well settle my opinion on the matter once and for all, dammit!

    @MomSense:

    (‘cuz possible misunderstandings with those I respect bug me…)
    While readily conceding my comments last night may not have been amusing, I hope you know they were intended as a mere gentle gibe. Believing your account was never in doubt.

  62. 62.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    My apologies. I’ve been slacking on Balloon Juice because of a combination of holiday dyspepsia and a lingering cold that I caught when I went up to New York last month. Everything irritates me, nothing cheers me—not even cheesy ’80s music threads—and I start obsessing (more than usual) about various commenters’ free-form, libertarian grammar and punctuation. (I even spent a few minutes refreshing myself on whisky vs. whiskey in my comment above.)

    I have been sort of reading the threads, haphazardly and usually late. I hadn’t seen you in a while and wondered whether you had done a Stuck, but, knowing your wishes, I was too polite to suggest a search party.

    The other part of the ferret ad that always gets me is the swaddled body being tossed out of the car. A great one-two punch with “I think that ferret’s mine.”

    Just watched the long(est) version of the ad, and there are some other gems in there, e.g., navigating underwater and “C’mon, baby!” (in the plane).

  64. 64.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack:

    I hadn’t seen you in a while and wondered whether you had done a Stuck, but, knowing your wishes, I was too polite to suggest a search party.

    This was, indeed, the other great failing. After you promised, you freakin promised me, you would hunt me down in any unfortunate event I see you are not the hero I once placed upon a pedantic pedestal.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @CaseyL:

    Some of the recent Subaru commercials have been really good. My favorite is the guy whose wife buys him an easel and painting set, they drive to all kinds of beautiful locations (in their Subaru, of course) so he can paint them, and the big reveal is that he paints like a kindergartener. Makes me laugh every time.

    @Steeplejack:

    “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” is one of the Kindle Daily Deals. Douglas Adams is generally a balm for a dyspeptic soul. And if it’s the holidays getting on your nerves, “Bad Santa” can be a healthy purge.

  70. 70.

    handsmile

    And on the subject of Western celebrities appearing in Japanese commercials, the definitive example for me (as a card-carrying art historian) was a 1976 whiskey ad featuring the legendary and influential German performance artist/sculptor Joseph Beuys:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARS3TO9r_z4

    The marketing research that would have led to his selection absolutely baffles me. Just what was the niche market sought here?

    “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” was more Beuys’ forte than pitching consumer products.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys

  71. 71.

    MomSense

    @handsmile:

    No worries! I was teasing, too. ETA Wait, except that did happen and everyone thought I was French! They used to waive me into the EU lines all the time and I would have to insist on going into the other line and flash my US passport. I was always too afraid to just go through the Eu line even though they were much faster.

  72. 72.

    handsmile

    @MomSense:

    Adherence to passport controls notwithstanding, I suspect there are more than a few “international incidents” in your travel portfolio.

  73. 73.

    JGabriel

    Soonergrunt @ Top:

    Edit–so who among you won the MegaMillions lottery?

    ME! I won! I’m rich, I tell you, RICH!

    I won eight bucks.

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    @handsmile: Speaking of passports and international incidents, I’ll quietly leave this here:

    (Reuters) – An Indian diplomat arrested last week for allegedly committing visa fraud and underpaying her nanny was strip-searched, the U.S. Marshals Service Office of Public Affairs confirmed on Tuesday. The case of the diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, has become a diplomatic incident between Washington and New Delhi, where police have removed concrete security barriers in front of the U.S. Embassy in apparent retaliation for her treatment. (Reporting By Chris Francescani)

  76. 76.

    WereBear

    I have always loathed the sound of Bing Crosby’s voice, ever since I was a child. This was waaaaaaay before the child abuse stuff came out.

    But since it has, I cannot bear it! And now, it’s Christmas, and every other song is that voice, dripping with sanctimony and hypocrisy and oily selfishness.

    GAH!

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