In this space, I was going to post a hilarious video my daughter made by strapping a GoPro camera onto one of the dogs and letting her (the dog) run amok in the yard. You’d see terrified lizards fleeing, alarmed chickens retreating from the fence, a close-up of the other dog’s butt and more spills, thrills and chills than a Hollywood epic.
But first, the GoPro crashed my daughter’s laptop, and then it crashed mine. We didn’t think to film the curses, screaming and hair-pulling that ensued. And all you get is this lousy open thread. Sorry.
Villago Delenda Est
Dang. That sounded really entertaining, too.
Well, I guess we’ll just have to find some Rethuglican dumbshit to point to and laugh at.
Tenar Darell
@Villago Delenda Est: Are there any left that don’t have at least “a little thug” in them?
monkeyfister
I blame Kim Jong Un.
Pogonip
I went on a Patience binge recently, and I would like to know why it’s so difficult to win when the cards in your initial layout are either all red or all black. It seems like at least sometimes the cards you draw or flip over should come up mostly the other color, but that never happens. Is there a mathematical reason for this or do my cards just happen to fall that way?
Corner Stone
I, for one, think it’s interesting to consider that if we had followed Cole’s advice re: Ebola quarantine status we would essentially be following Gov Christie’s implemented plan.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tenar Darell: The scum has risen to the top and aggressively attacked the cream.
Mustang Bobby
I’ll wait until it comes out on cable.
Felonius Monk
The description sounds pretty funny. Video at eleven?
NotMax
Swear that coffee companies are mucking about with the product.
Forever and a day, used X number of scoops to brew a potful. Now all of a sudden it takes X+1 scoops to get the same strength coffee.
JPL
Earlier today the President spoke about ebola and I paraphrase but he said we are not a nation of fear but a nation that deals with facts. I called a friend and said the tea party is right, he’s not from here. She mentioned that she wants to live in the country that he’s from ..
Trollhattan
My new favorite headline: “‘Hello Kitty’ arrested on drunken driving charge”
Trollhattan
@JPL:
Slate has a great piece today comparing Obama and ebola with Reagan[pbuh] and AIDS.
I blame it on Nancy’s astrologer and Nooner’s manicurist.
Also, too, Newsmax headline one column over: “9 Reasons to Fear Ebola”
PhoenixRising
I too crashed a camera filming dog antics.
For the past 6 weeks or so, there has been a mystery afoot: Sometimes when I walk into my home office, there is a light coating of Great Dane coat on…everything. At all heights I am tall enough to see. This despite my 3xweekly swifferage of the area, which includes the largest memory foam dog bed you can buy at the warehouse store. Oddly, this bed (probably 15 lbs) will be in the center of the room instead of tucked under my desk.
So a few hours ago, as I was engaged in the document I was editing, I saw something large and gray begin to slink through my office door. To my amazement, the big dog leaned away from her bed, grabbed a corner with her front paws, pulled it to her mighty jaws, and began to shake and twirl about.
Yet no matter how she rattled and rolled, my daughter’s 11 month old kitten (also about 15 lbs) held onto the very center of the bed, all 4 paws and his jaws engaged in the problem of keeping himself installed.
The dog stopped after about 10 seconds, gave me a sideways glance, sighed heavily and stomped off to the yard. She is quite rightly afraid to try to remove the kitten, and he quite accurately understands that he is training the dog.
mai naem mobile
@JPL: ive been listening to alan colmes on the radio and hes gets a lot of “I saw it on the internet” idiots who don’t have a bs detector. That’s why you have those idiots on the radio selling oregano oil and apple cider vinegar for everything. And Formula 345 for losing 50 lbs without changing your diet or exercising!
J.
Would love to see that video. Hope you can upload it eventually.
In the meantime, here are my candidates for The Worst (or Most Offensive) Halloween Costumes of 2014. Feel free to add to the list.
gogol's wife
@Pogonip:
I had no idea anyone played Patience since the days of Jane Austen. That’s sweet!
Baud
@JPL:
If our people would turn out for the midterms, we could have that country.
KG
@Pogonip: most likely it is just random chance, the shuffle of the deck. it may also be due to the limited number of moves you can make when all of your shown cards are the same color
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: This is NOT the “Home of the Brave”. It’s the home of pantsshitting cowards The reaction to Ebola illustrates this….and there are no greater cowards than Cuomo and Christie.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@NotMax: Quality of the product has gone down. Demand is sky high and has been for years – you don’t hear about coffee going unsold anywhere, right? So the push is on for maximum yield over quality (unless you’re lucky enough to live on the Big Island and have a buddy with their own farm who does it for shits and giggles) and the product is suffering accordingly.
Plus, hate to tell you this, but you build up a tolerance, like with any other good drug.
I’m a survivor of Starbucks (one of the few, the proud, the “partners” – shit fucking job that was/is) and the closest thing I’ve ever seen to opening time at a Starbucks was when I used to live in San Francisco and rode by the methadone clinic in the morning. Same kind of people jonesing for their fix so they could get right and get on with their lives.
The fucked thing nobody tells you about coffee is that, like other good drugs, there is withdrawal if you decide to quit. Oh, that’s fun. Sweats, shakes and rage.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I just talked to the person I’m working with on the job. It looks like it’s getting pushed back a week and they still want to have me do a phone interview. But I’m feeling pretty confident.
Felonius Monk
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh yes there are. Make room in the Ebola Clown Car for Gov. Dan Malloy (CT-Shithead).
gogol's wife
@Felonius Monk:
Easy there on Malloy, he’s in a tight race with a Republican ACTUAL s–thead, and we need him to win.
Villago Delenda Est
@Felonius Monk: I sit corrected.
Malloy should be shipped to Liberia for a vacation in a cage.
Wonkette also has this: We Could Quarantine Stupid, New Jersey Wouldn’t Have A Governor
Felonius Monk
@Villago Delenda Est: I saw that earlier and couldn’t stop laughing.
d58826
@Corner Stone: While Cole’s ‘better safe than sorry’ is not a bad approach, there is also the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix’ approach as well. Knowing when to apply each takes common sense and respect for the facts. In the case of Ebola, the NY Times is reporting that approximately 100 people a day arrive in the US from West Africa. The article did not give a breakdown of medical vs non-medical travelers. Still over the past 6 months or so that is close to 200,000 people who have arrived in the US and only 2 have been sick. I think the CDC/MSF guidelines are working, so why make major changes. Given its proximity to Africa I suspect that the numbers are the same or greater in Europe and they are not seeing sick people dropping dead all over the continent. Now the one change that was made – if a person has had contact with contaminated material – then they will be treated as a higher risk. That seems like a reasonable approach. Of course we could follow the example of the school district in Oklahoma that will quarantine a teacher for 21 days upon her return from Rwanda. Never mind that Rwanda has had 0 cases of Ebola and is half a continent away it’s still in AFRICA. We are all going to die.
Hal
@JPL: The politicization of Ebola by Republicans in this country is disgusting. Rachel Maddow made a point on her show recently that other public health outbreaks were treated as medical issues to be taken care of for the public good, not more ammo for people running for office to use a cudgel.
The funny thing is that Obama’s response to Ebola is probably only going to put a further dent in his ratings. I am seriously loathing this country this past couple of weeks.
Doug r
I guess we’re all stuck with sniffing each others butts. Metaphorically that is.
Villago Delenda Est
@d58826:
Darkest Africa.
We’re worried about Darkest Africa here in post-racial (John “Taney” Roberts assures us!) America.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hal: Well, as Slate points out, Obama reacting to Ebola demonstrates much more bravery than the shitty grade-Z movie star did when reacting to AIDS.
d58826
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep Lord Ronulus ignored it for almost seven years. He finally had to face facts when his friend Rock Hudson was dying with the disease.
Real profile in courage.
The degree to which ebola is scrambling the political landsacape can be seen when I agree with something Limpdick has to stay. Limdick thinks the GOP should quarantine Christie. Excellent idea. And like the stopped clock even Limpdick can be right twice a day (I’m being generous with that).
mai naem mobile
@d58826: perhaps we need to discuss limdicks habit of goong going down to Honduras and how ISIS are going through Honduras carrying Ebola! on their way to the US so should limdick not be quarantined?
d58826
@mai naem mobile: I would put both Limpdick and Christie in the tent recently vacated by the nurse. While the conditions were inexcusable for someone trying to help others, they seemed more than adequate for the two blowhards.
MomSense
Whew, just came home from chaperoning a field trip to Plimoth Plantation, the Wampanoag Homesite and the Mayflower II.
It was a crazy, exhausting, silly, and fantastic day. I really needed to go play and be a big kid again. The weather was incredible and the gardens were still going strong. Their season is much longer than ours.
Pogonip
@JPL: How long has he been here? This is no longer the country that put men on the moon, that’s for sure.
Pogonip
@gogol’s wife: I think it’s still pretty popular, there are a zillion computer versions. Mine calls the game Klondike.
NotMax
@CONGRATULATIONS!
What I was referring to was the strength, not necessarily the taste.The traditional X scoops now produce a product which looks like tea rather than coffee, so have to use X+1 scoops to get the same result as previously.
Have been drinking coffee for over half a century (black, no sugar or anything else, thank you very much) so any tolerance peaked long ago. And on days when don’t have any, have never ever noticed any ill effects. Indeed, don’t particularly notice any effects from drinking it, either (don’t get jittery, doesn’t keep me awake, etc.). I drink it because I like the taste and, as have eschewed eating during daylight hours since 1964, it satisfies (for me) the body’s expectation of something in the mouth and the stomach during that time.
Tried a straight black coffee from Starbuck’s exactly once (someone brought it to my then workplace as a present) and found it undrinkable, over roasted swill.
Do have a friend here who grows some coffee in his yard, and once in a while he will dole some out. There’s also commercially available Maui-grown beans as well.
As always, YMMV.
MomSense
@NotMax:
I buy coffee from a local roaster and haven’t noticed a change however I have noticed big changes with the quality of black teas. Even doubling or tripling the amount of tea results in a beverage with no flavor or oomph. It’s not just that the strength has changed, the flavor is all wrong.
A friend brought some tea back from India and it tasted so good–like tea is supposed to taste.
Hal
Antares rocket exploded 6 seconds after takeoff. Apparently no casualties on the ground.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/science/dp-nws-orb-three-launch-cover-20141028-story.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo
NotMax
@Mom Sense
Interesting, in that the adulteration is noticeable in other brewed beverages.
Personal preference – I do like iced tea (unsweetened) but have never found any type of hot tea satisfying*. Way, way back in the years of college, the then new Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger herbal tea was a ‘thing.’ Presume that fad has long since passed.
*Although when very ill and with scratchy throat, strong hot tea with a dollop of booze and/or honey is both soothing and helps to cool down body temperature.
Mnemosyne
@d58826:
I actually heard morning show deejays going, Huh, it looks like Ebola isn’t all that contagious after all on the radio this morning. Hopefully that means the word is starting to get out that panic isn’t really the best response.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I buy most of my tea from Adagio and haven’t noticed any problems. I tend to buy really strong teas (like lapsang souchong), FWIW.
Pogonip
@KG: Having played 9 zillion games over the past few months, I can tell you the keys to winning are–look carefully so you don’t miss any moves, don’t waste your time on an all-one-color, and if you have the computer version, do not use the cards with the adorable white kitten on the back. You will NEVER win with that critter. The golden retriever puppy, the Bernese mountain dog, and the orange kitten are pretty good bets.
Computer Patience is a great invention. For centuries, people wishing to waste time playing Patience, or any form of solitaire, had to sit at a card table. Now you can lie on the sofa. Science marches on!
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I prefer the strong teas like lapsang as well. I just checked out the website and I am going to try some of the Earl Grey and Ceyllon. Thank you for the tip!!
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: I hate that stuff. To me it smells like wet bandaids.
I mostly drink green and oolong tea and have noticed no changes.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Any news about the news out of Georgia? That shitbag secretary of state who wouldn’t register the voters who had turned in registration forms?
Trollhattan
@Hal:
Somewhere, Elon Musk is having that third beer.
Good thing they had the range safety incursion scratch yesterday.
Elizabelle
Four-star TCM horror movie tonight at 8 Eastern. Dead of Night, from 1945. Never heard of it, but sounds good.
I have stuff to do, but guess I will be doing it in front of the TV.
Howard Beale IV
@Hal: That sucks-it was an ISS resupply mission.
WereBear
@Elizabelle: When they play Curse of the Demon, check it out. A favorite.
catclub
@NotMax:
And it could not be dead taste buds?
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Dead of Night is great. It has the original “bad ventriloquist’s dummy” story in it. And, as WereBear said, Curse of the Demon (sometimes aka Night of the Demon) is well worth seeking out — it was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who was one of Val Lewton’s directors, and is very Lewtonesque. Karswell is one of the greatest smooth villains in horror films, IMO.
Also, three, The Haunting will be on The Essentials this weekend, which is one of my all-time favorites, and directed by Robert Wise, another Lewton alumnus.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Oh yes, The Haunting is flatout marvelous.
NotMax
@catclub
Dead taste buds would not make the end product a watery pale brown instead of a dark, rich black.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Have you ever seen The Body Snatcher, with Boris Karloff? If you like Curse of the Demon and The Haunting, you would like it. One of Karloff’s very best performances.
Another great Karloff performance: Michael Curtiz’s The Walking Dead. “Why did you have me killed?” It’s a typical Warner Bros. gangster picture of the era, but with “science” and a walking corpse bent on revenge.
lamh36
Tonight’s Finding Your Roots on PBS should be good. Guests tonight: the rapper Nasir Jones, Angela Bassett, and Valerie Jarrett
Nas has 5 generations of his NC family named Little who married another person namd Little. Come to find out, his family were owned and given as property when the slave owner died. So really they only had first names and took the name of Little after the slaveholder.
NotMax
@WereBear
In a distinct minority, but find The Haunting plodding, tedious and decidedly devoid of chills. May stem from a distaste of interior monologue narration in general.
Karen in GA
@Mnemosyne: @MomSense: @Pogonip: I know nothing about tea, other than that evidently the teabag-in-a-hot–cup-of-water thing is bad, bad, bad, and there’s a right way of brewing tea that most people in the US aren’t aware of. Does it taste that different?
A shop just opened in the mall near me with all sorts of tea-related items. I’d like to check it out, but I have no idea what I’m looking at.
Is there a “Tea for Dummies” website or something anywhere?
lamh36
The records found for Nas are down to the slave papers and lists how much cotton each slave picked. One of his ancestors was listed as picking about 200 lbs of cotton a day!
#FindingYourRoots
Angela Bassett great-great-grandfather George was “bequeathed” to the slaveowner’s son at his death, and her great-great-grandmother was “bequeathed” to the slaveowner’s daugther at his death. they grew up together on same plantation and had Angela Bassett’s great grandfather…
Notice that that’s NOT too many “great” between Angela and the enslaved ancestors.
Her great grandfather was sold at 3 years old. And records weren’t found for him until 11 years later.
PurpleGirl
@d58826: Only if we can quarantine him in the same tent they used for Ms. Hickox, with a portable toilet, no shower or means to bath, no radio or TV.
lamh36
Wow.
“the white Bassetts”…Henry Louis Gates just showed Angela Bassett the picture of the man and woman who owned her great great grandfather, mother and great grandfather…whoa.
I can’t imagine looking at those photos.
#Finding Your Roots
NotMax
@Karen in GA
Perhaps they offer a package of tea samples you can try. Partial myself to a hinged spoon infuser (teaball), like this one, which are dirt cheap and a snap to clean.
lamh36
Wow, they found a written receipt for the sale of Nas’ great great great grandmother Pochahontas at about 15 years old. She was bought for $830. Nas answer “I have more than that in my pocket”!
And they found the pic of the slave owner. the plantation burned down and it’s now a forest.
Nas says “I’m thinking about buying that land”
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Curse of the Demon will be on TCM at 10:00 p.m. EDT this Friday.
The Haunting is on at 1:00 a.m. EDT on Friday (Thursday night, really).
I have to put in a word for the Japanese ghost movie Kwaidan (1964), which will be on TCM at 12:15 a.m. EDT tonight.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
You are dead to me.
@Steeplejack:
True story: the first gift that G ever gave to me was a letterboxed copy of The Haunting (taped off TCM because it wasn’t commercially available yet) along with Peter Jackson’s fake documentary “Forgotten Silver.” And he’s been caught in my clutches ever since. ;-)
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
They seem to be able to do better at identifying people in slave records, in part because of the hard work of Gates and his students of finding surviving supplementary records that can help pinpoint people a little better.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Good catch!
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: true. Normally they caution against trying to match slaves to slaves records, but Gates and his people have soo much corraborating information, that the patterns fit
I’m calling this the best ep so far and they’ve had some really good ones. It’d be interesting. Next week will be Jewish Americans..Carole King, Tony Kucshner, and Alan Dershowitz
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack:
Oh yeah. Totally thinking of catching Kwaidan. Lady of the Snows, right? Saw it a few years ago, and it’s very good.
Meanwhile, the ventriloquist’s dummy is up.
@Mnemosyne: Caught The Haunting a few nights ago. Quite good, and still chilling.
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Dead of Night is very good.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack:
I liked the story about the mirror. Kind of drifted during the story about the golfers.
Karen in GA
@NotMax: Thanks. I’ll check them out this weekend.
The Other Chuck
@Karen in GA:
Teabags are fine now as long as they’re not, oh, Lipton. A century ago, tea in teabags was invariably cheap crap, but now you can get higher-end brands. Said brands usually refer to them as “sachets” though, can’t use that declassé word after all.
As for The Secret Method, it’s “don’t leave the damn teabag in there for an hour”.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Karen in GA:
I had a friend from Singapore who took me around to Southern California’s surprising number of British tea places and I tried a bunch of stuff.
I really do recommend Adagio Tea — you can buy nice sampler packs that help you figure out what you like. Plus they have movie/TV themed tea packs — who can resist the Dr. Who tea tins?
Tree With Water
“..the GoPro crashed my daughter’s laptop, and then it crashed mine”.
Just to make sure, ask someone else to open it on their laptop. If that one crashes too, well, there you go- that’s your problem.
Elie
Yeah– this Ebola is emblematic of the malaise we have nationally and internationally. There is no trust in major institutions of government. It must just be frustating and surprising for Dr. Frieden at the CDC to realize that the few missteps (which were in no way a repudiation of the basic facts of the disease and its transmission), have provided an opening large enough for several state Governors to chuck science in favor of jury rigged policy. Besides the nurse in Maine in NJ quarantine, apparently there is some other poor guy who did software work in Liberia who though he had diarrhea, has been twice tested negative for Ebola. He remains, despite the test, under hourse er – arrest/quarantine! He did software. It appears now that after years of climate science denial, spurious vaccine autism links, etc, we are in the Dark Ages alas. Science is no longer trusted. I spent many minutes sharing facts about Ebola, what is can and can’t do to bunches of people commenting on the NY times who supported the quarantine of the two Govs. They just denied any information that conflicted with their assertion that they were at risk when they were explictly NOT.
Where can we go from here? Its a frightening look at my fellow citizens. And its not limited to the US, unfortunately. Australia, a country I used to really like has “sealed their borders” neither offering any assistance to Africa in the way of care givers and preventing all travelers from Western Africa from entering their country. Sad.
On the good side, Amber Vinson was released today and looked happy and healthy… bless her. I don’t know how much time is left but we have to be close to the time when the remainder of the Texas contacts can be considered Ebola free.
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack:
Watching Kwaidan right now!
And anticipating my best friend in the whole world’s arrival at the SB airport tomorrow evening, She’s from Canada, so we only get together once every year or two – but we have been best friends since 1978 or so.
We fled Afghanistan in 1979 just before the Russians invaded. With my 7 yr old kid in tow. It was too dangerous anymore, and the American ambassador (Adolph Dubs, who lived right across the street from us) had been murdered on Valentine’s Day in 1979. We had to pick up our kid from her school, and we huddled on the floor in a taxi as we motored to a friend’s house.
Many people gathered there that afternoon, and we all spent the night. We all listened to the radio, drank a lot, and took Val.ium to sleep.
Bart
@Pogonip: Check http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solitaire : they might have already solved that question. Or you can also ask it if they haven’t.