Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans in disarray!

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

This blog will pay for itself.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

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

You cannot shame the shameless.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

The words do not have to be perfect.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Color Purple (Open Thread)

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

    (Though Keats might have benefited from knowing more about how to kick that cough)

  4. 4.

    hedgehog the occasional commenter

    Thanks, Betty and jeffreyw. After this horrible week I needed that.

  5. 5.

    Mnemosyne

    @BGinCHI:

    I don’t know if you saw, but we did get a chance to drop by Glencoe Roast while were in the area. Their banana syrup is delish — I had a Banana Hot Chocolate. Thanks again for the rec!

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    @jeffreyw: Dear god, are those pickles on that pizza? I’ve never been a pizza purist, but you’ve gone too far, my good sir! ;-)

  19. 19.

    Suzanne

    So this is my last afternoon at my job. Come Monday morning, a new adventure awaits. Happy to go, but sad to leave.

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mnemosyne: Heh heh!

    @Suzanne: Good riddance to bad boss though? (Forgive me if I’ve mixed your employment situation up with another commenter’s…)

    ETA: And ending one job Friday and starting the new Monday! How industrious!

  29. 29.

    srv

    In other important news:

    Chevrolet has slowly been releasing information on the all-new 2015 Corvette Z06, from its incredible power ratings to its release date. This week, the automaker announced that the newest addition to the Corvette lineup will start at $78,995 for the coupe and $83,995 for the convertible model (prices include destination fees).

    I just don’t like the colours.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    Those are pretty.

    I went crazy with calendula this year. I have four varieties all over the beds in back yard in the vicinity of the vegetable garden and around the birdbath in the center of the vegetable garden. The different varieties range from orange to yellow to an orangey-red. There was a “cream” but they came up and petered out early. They drop seed like crazy so I’ll have them next year too.

    I went thru a phase like this with snapdragons then cosmos then zinnias :)

  32. 32.

    Major Major Major Major

    Well I was *going* to post the Douglas Adams quote about truth and beauty–had it all lined up and everything–when the power went out.

    Anybody in SF wanna grab a beverage? I am useless at work without wifi.

  38. 38.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: Yes, you got in before. LOL. (I recently woke up from a nap and I should be getting ready to go to dinner with some old SF fan friends. Lucky for me the restaurant tonight is local to me (5 blocks away.)

    Betty: Thanks for the pretty purple flowers. We do need pretty and nice things because the real world is damn grim right now.

    The kittens at John’s place are cute. (All kittens, though, are cute.)

    Have a good evening everyone! I’ll be back around 10 pm or later from dinner.

  41. 41.

    kindness

    It’s that time of the year. Out in the neighborhoods you can smell fresh skunk. But it isn’t.

  42. 42.

    dmsilev

    Hot and sticky weather, ugh.

    Guess I should be “grateful” that I’m going to be in my nice climate-conditioned office pretty much all day tomorrow?

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @efgoldman: I’ve never cared for Jello but can’t quite imagine a world without it. The Jello people need to figure out a way to make it retro cool again. Like PBR. The fact that someone managed to pass that nasty wombat piss off as hipster tells me that nothing is impossible, marketing-wise.

  45. 45.

    shelley

    Cooler colors are always so welcome in the heat of the summer garden (tho it’s been a pretty temperate summer here.) So many flowers are hot reds, oranges and yellows.

  46. 46.

    Anoniminous

    @efgoldman:

    I can still taste orange jello with grated carrots and those little white marshmallows embedded in and Cool Whip slathered on top after all these years. Absolutely gut-wrenching disgustingly awful.

    ETA: vibrant colors, tho’

  47. 47.

    WereBear

    I am so grateful it’s going to be a quiet weekend; I worked last weekend and it turned out to be too many in a row for my still fragile recovery… had to take off sick yesterday, worked today, and under strict orders to rest all weekend.

    Fortunately, I have Netflix, Kindle (blessings on those who tipped me off to all the Travis McGees turning up on eBooks) and our semi-new kitten!

    All I need, really.

  48. 48.

    Mandalay

    I think your “vine with purple flowers” is Morning Glory (Ipomoea). I bought one in a three gallon pot for $8 three years ago. It has now completely covered a tree in the back yard. Doesn’t bother me, but it will spread and grow like crazy if you leave it alone.

    If only it rained more in the Middle East we could use it to defeat ISIS.

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    @srv

    Hertz, at the local rental lot here, offers a constantly changing handful of Corvettes for rent.

    Reason the selection is constantly changing? Generally takes about a month after they get one in for a renter to total it.

    @jeffreyw

    Yellow mustard? Barbarous. Deli mustard, man, deli mustard. And caraway seeds worked into the crust.

    Personally, think the whole thing would work much better as a calzone, thus allowing one to stack the pastrami and keep it moist rather than crisp.

  52. 52.

    Lizzy L

    I also think the vine is Morning Glory, which grows like a weed around the SF Bay Area. Local gardeners warn against planting it because it takes over everything. (“Henry, didn’t there used to be a fence there, under those purple flowers?”)

    I like it, but I really prefer the red and orange flowers. One of my neighbors brought me an armful of sunflowers 3-4 days ago. One corner of her yard is Sunflower Heaven. 8 feet high and climbing, OMG, they are so beautiful.

  53. 53.

    Anoniminous

    Here’s something cool. The Scientific American posted a visual of the known genetic differences between the Hominidae. (Except the orangutans get dissed again.)

    @Mnemosyne:

    IIRC it was called Ambrosia Salad. Because it had uncooked carrots in it?

  55. 55.

    Steeplejack

    I’m in the throes of mild pre-trip jitters. Leaving at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow for three weeks in Las Vegas to house- and dog-sit for my wingnut brother, who is going on a motorcycle trip in South America. (Slightly weird, but I don’t have all the details on that yet.) I’m actually looking forward to it, after the first couple of days and I get the wingnut on his plane. My mom lives in Las Vegas too, as well as a long-time friend dating back to college, so I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with them and seeing Las Vegas in a more leisurely fashion than my usual hurried four- or five-day visit. I’m not big on the glitzy side of Vegas, but it’s got a hell of a lot of great restaurants, and there’s a lot of outdoorsy stuff in the vicinity. Plus I’ve always felt an affinity for the desert (formative Boy Scout years in west Texas).

    As a veteran but currently infrequent flyer, I hate flying in the post-9/11 world of security theater and every flight packed to the rafters. I logged onto the airline’s Web site moments after the 24-hour-ahead deadline, checked in and got my boarding pass, and I’m still in boarding group five. ¡Caramba! Small mercies are that I’ve got an aisle seat with a little extra leg room, and it’s a nonstop flight. I’m checking my suitcase and carrying on a small bag with laptop, camera, Nook and Nexus 7 tablet. The stuff I don’t want the TSA baggage goons pawing through and “losing.”

    I’m a good traveler, and I do like to travel, but my Achilles heel is the few days leading up to departure, when I get pangs of “I don’t want to go” and start obsessing about all sorts of tasks (real and imagined) that I need to get done before I leave, even if I haven’t touched them or thought about them in months.

    The biggest relief is that I found good arrangements for the housecat. She’ll get to stay here in our rooms in Threadkill Lane, and a friend (and major cat person) is going to look in every day to feed her and spend some quality time with her. The housecat is retired and sleeps most of the day anyway, so I hope her routine won’t be disrupted very much. But I know she’ll miss me puttering around in the background.

    Okay, back to pointless sawdust-sawing on my preflight checklist. It really takes me only about ten minutes to pack; the rest is just stress relief.

  57. 57.

    Anoniminous

    @Lizzy L:

    One of the few benefits of leaving the Bay Area is there are long stretches of the year when one does not have to eat zucchini with every meal.

  61. 61.

    shelley

    One of my favorite “Simpsons” lines:

    One of mine is ‘Let’s go crazy Broadway style!’

    On my bucket list is wishing to find myself in a situation where that’s the first thing I want to shout.

  62. 62.

    lamh36

    Well damn, Don Lemon really ain’t gonna shut up now. .

    “@jonswaine: St Louis cop who pushed Don Lemon: black people “perverts”, gay people “sodomites”, Obama an illegal immigrant http://t.co/oxYzFYb2zk“

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    If it’s any consolation, some airports are experimenting with “express service” that means you don’t have to take off your shoes (!) and can leave your laptop inside the bag. We got that at LAX (Los Angeles) on our way to Chicago and it was definitely much faster. So it’s possible that you may get lucky on one leg of the trip or the other and the TSA where you are will do that.

    We paid an extra $89 each to have Main Cabin Select on Virgin America, but it was worth it — not only did we get a little extra legroom, but we didn’t have to pay luggage fees for our 1 bag per person, we got free food (and could have gotten free booze if we wanted some at 9:30 a.m.) and free movies. So it was pretty much worth it to us.

  68. 68.

    tybee

    we have, in our yard, some sort of large red ants. about the size of those black carpenter ants one will see in old oak trees or, if unfortunate, in one’s house.

    these red ants will live in a hollow tree, an upturned flower pot, a yard ornament abandoned in the bushes and other sheltered voids.
    every once in a while, during late summer, a long column of several hundred red ants pours out of some corner of the yard, from a burrow entrance we’d never noticed before and stream across the yard with a destination in mind.

    they’ll trek several hundred feet and then disappear down another burrow, only to return shortly carrying ant pupae/larvae/embryos. i can’t tell the difference from my height and have been unwilling to kill a few to find out exactly what they “steal”.

    it’s not war as one would expect as the invaded burrow is lightly guarded by other red ants who don’t resist much. i have seen a tussle or two at the entrance but not a fight to the death as one might expect from an invasion by enemies.

    when the “invaders” exit the invaded burrow carrying their booty, they boogie several hundred feet back across the lawn and take their new acquistions down the original burrow.

    i dunno what’s going on.

    any myrmecologists in the house?

  69. 69.

    Mandalay

    @lamh36: More from the cop who pushed Don Lemon:

    I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord savior, but I’m also a killer. I’ve killed a lot. And if I need to, I’ll kill a whole bunch more. If you don’t want to get killed, don’t show up in front of me, it’s that simple. I have no problem with it. God did not raise me to be a coward

    Also:

    Page says on the video that he is a former Green Beret who did nine combat tours and took early retirement from the military because he refuses to take orders from “an undocumented president.”

    Why was this wacko allowed to perform crowd control in Ferguson? He shouldn’t even be a cop.

  75. 75.

    Iowa Old Lady

    The vision in my left eye has been blurring, so I went to the eye doc today expecting him to tell me I have a cataract. Instead, he said it’s just dry eyes. Also ahead of time, they warned me to allow two hours for the appointment and I was out of there in one. So double win.

  76. 76.

    wmd

    Joseph McNamara has a fine column on Ferguson. He needs to be encouraged to stay engaged on this.

    Just a few days after I took charge, on a crystal clear day in 1973, a uniformed officer responded to a daylight break-in of a home. The officer raised his shotgun and fired at a youth running away. He killed Rory Lark, age 15, unarmed and slight, at 115 pounds.
    …

    Kansas City’s black community wanted to know, Why had this boy died for a nonviolent crime? My police department responded quickly: He should not have been fired upon.

  77. 77.

    burnspbesq

    @lamh36:

    And this surprises you why, exactly? Have you never been in a workplace where “we take care of our own” is Rule 1?

  79. 79.

    SatanicPanic

    @Mike J: No way dude, not clicking that.

    I have heard enough and will take your word for it that worse things are being said

    ETA- just mousing over the link was horrifying enough

  80. 80.

    Mandalay

    @Mandalay: And here’s some more from that cop:

    Later in his remarks, Page told a questioner in the audience: “Policemen are very cynical. I know I am. I don’t trust anybody. I hate everybody. I hate y’all, too. I hate everybody. I’m into diversity – I kill everybody. I don’t care.”

    I’m not a psychologist, but this guy sounds really disturbed. He shouldn’t be a cop, and he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a gun.

  81. 81.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Mnemosyne: TSA PreCheck? It’s a new thing the TSA started last year with the carriers during check-in, where (unless you paid for the full service) you can be randomly selected for it. So far I’ve been 66% lucky.

  83. 83.

    Felanius Kootea

    Oh my God, what is going on with cops in this country? I just read this from Jezebel and I’m heartsick wondering how many women were afraid to come forward because they didn’t think anyone would believe them over a cop.

    This is utterly terrible: an Oklahoma City police officer has been arrested for sexually assaulting at least seven women while on patrol duty. All of his victims were black women ranging in age between 34 and 58, and the assaults occurred over a period of five months.

    According to the Oklahoman, police began investigating officer Daniel K. Holtzclaw on June 18 after receiving a complaint from one of his alleged victims, a 57-year-old grandmother who claims she was forced to perform oral sex on him during a traffic stop. After contacting other women who had also been stopped by Holtzclaw, the police discovered six other victims. They anticipate that there may be more whom they have yet to identify and contact.

  84. 84.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Howard Beale IV: TSA PreCheck is different. We went through DCA a few weeks ago, leaving from there to BTV. We got to the security line, the TSA people just waved us up to the belts and the mmwave scanner. We didn’t have to take off our shoes, belts; didn’t have to take out the 3-1-1 bag; didn’t have to take out computers; etc. It was almost like a pre-9/11 screening. It was nice, and didn’t cost extra.

    Here’s hoping it’s rolled out to other airports quickly, and that it continues to be good enough.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  87. 87.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Howard Beale IV: Yeah, but you have to apply for TSA PreCheck in advance, and often pay a fee. Not so here. Everyone got the same treatment.

    :-)

    One thing I neglected to mention was one of the TSA agents was taking random palm swabs, so they apparently realized that is as effective as inspecting everyone’s smelly shoes in their X-ray scanners…

    Of course, if they have any sense, TSA PreCheck (and similar things) is a beta version of a nationwide security-theatre-free airport passenger screening program.

    Fingers crossed.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    JCT

    @Felanius Kootea: But wait – I thought the wingnuts said we are supposed to do whatever the cops tell us to do and we won’t get hurt…

    @lamh36: Whoa, some police force they have there. This terrible shooting seemed so extreme, maybe they were just “lucky” up until now that one of these nut cops hadn’t gone off yet. Can’t wait to see the official response. Will probably involve “sensitivity training”. Hopefully with a cattle prod.

  89. 89.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mandalay:

    I’m not a psychologist, but this guy sounds really disturbed. He shouldn’t be a cop, and he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a gun.

    Jesus, ya think? What the fucking fuck?

  90. 90.

    Mnemosyne

    @Howard Beale IV:

    I don’t think it was. I think it was called “TSA Express” or something like that.

    They also had a super-chatty TSA agent in the middle of the line talking casually to people. Which is, like, actual good police work (helps relax innocent people while allowing the agent a better chance to spot the suspicious/overly nervous). A little odd in retrospect to see good police work at LAX followed shortly by the shittiest of police work in Missouri.

    ETA: As Scott said above, we also got our palms swabbed. So I think it may be a different thing.

  91. 91.

    trollhattan

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
    IF the airline participates (e.g., Hawaiian) you don’t have to pay for the privilege as a passenger–you either get the fast line or you don’t. It’s very amusing when one gets waved through with the kid, and the suspicious-looking spouse has to go through the regular line.[fume-fume-fume]

  93. 93.

    scav

    @JCT: The Guardian has some basic details, he’s been put on desk duties and they’ll be an internal investigation (e.g. his name and nothing else will be entered in a form?). Some of his buddies are defending his statements made in April-ish

    “He’s been up to his eyeballs in a riot for about two weeks, dealing with rioters in 100 degree humidity. It’s rough. It’s a warzone,” said Moore. “He’s been working 12-hour shifts with no access to proper rest, proper food.”

    Poor poor dears.

    I lose coherency about here.

  94. 94.

    Howard Beale IV

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: That used to be the case if you wanted to pay to have the $85/5 year privilege. You can still do that if you want, but starting last year, the TSA and the participating carriers have been randomly selecting people who didn’t pay the fee to go thru the PreCheck process.

  96. 96.

    Mandalay

    @Felanius Kootea:

    I’m heartsick wondering how many women were afraid to come forward because they didn’t think anyone would believe them over a cop

    I’m a man and do not presume to know anything about why women do not report rape, other than to point out that is not the only reason that women do not come forward. Sullivan posted a gripping first hand account from a female reader who was raped. The article is long and detailed, but this seems relevant to your post:

    Rather than openly confront what had happened, I tried to bury it. I couldn’t say anything. I wasn’t worried about what would happen to him; I was worried about what would happen to me.

  97. 97.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax:
    It’s considered helpful to remove all firearms from the beard before precheck. Except Texas, there you add more.

  99. 99.

    Barbara

    Back to jello: Yellow and green jello are a big part of my standard day-before-a-colonoscopy fare (for you non-initiates, you’re not supposed to eat anything with red food coloring the day before). But I can imagine it would be a challenge to design an ad campaign around jello being a permissible food during the colonoscopy prep period.

  107. 107.

    scav

    I’ll backtrack and say I don’t think that vine’s a morning glory, at least not one I’ve ever seen. flowers not round enough with and I’ve never seen one with serrated leaves. I’m wondering a bit about Thunbergia laurifolia although I’m still not sure about the leaves . .

    still incoherent and kicking things

  108. 108.

    Plantsmantx

    @scav:
    It’s Thunbergia grandiflora. It’s commonly grown around here (SE Texas). T. laurifolia has leaves with smooth edges.

  112. 112.

    Amir Khalid

    @jeffreyw:
    It’s usually not the imam who calls you to prayer, but the muezzin. (The muezzin is also known as the bilal, in honour of Bilal, the freedman who was the first muezzin.)

  113. 113.

    Gvg

    In think the vine is sky vine and the purple is some kind of tibochena. Sky vine gets huge and is perennial is warm climates.

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