Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

No Justins, No Peace

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

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

No one could have predicted…

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The words do not have to be perfect.

The willow is too close to the house.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

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

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

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Xmas Afternoon Open Thread

Xmas Afternoon Open Thread

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marvel merry merry Matas
Thanks to faithful commentor Marvel

We’re off to the movies, and then dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant. How’s the day going in your neighborhoods?

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I’m still reeling from the latest drastic change in Vatican policy under Francis.

    Pope Condemns Persecution of Christians

  2. 2.

    burnspbesq

    Santa rocks. Blasting my way through the remastered Springsteen on vinyl, and loving every second.

  4. 4.

    Alexandra

    We’re off to the movies, and then dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant.

    Xmas in London is excruciatingly dull for those without family. Almost everything closed, no public transport. Guardian correspondents revelling in boredom.

    Wish I could go see a movie. Birdman has been getting quite good reviews.

    Yawn.

  9. 9.

    BGinCHI

    Beautiful day on the SC coast. Just had a great run on the beach. So nice to be away for the holidays.

  12. 12.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    The boy is going to his ladyfriend’s family’s house for dinner. Wife and I may go see the Hobbit.

    Obama is promising to respond “proportionately” to an attack that law enforcement blames on North Korea. “We’re not going to be intimidated by some cyberhackers,” he said.

    The president said the U.S. would examine the facts to determine whether North Korea should land back on the terrorism sponsors list.

    “We’re going to review those through a process that’s already in place,” Obama told CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview broadcast Sunday. “I’ll wait to review what the findings are.”

    JUST like Iraq or Tonkin.

  14. 14.

    TaMara (BHF)

    then dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant

    Don’t forget to have them cut off the goose’s head.

    Disclaimer: I may have watched Christmas Story a few times this last week.

  15. 15.

    Tommy

    Raven my parents got me like a $500 Bluetooth speaker as my gift this year. I can’t normally hear this difference in speakers. I can with this. Pretty sure the people that live around me can hear it and it is good sound. So I got that going for me.

  18. 18.

    jeffreyw

    For some reason or another I can’t get Firefox to run on the machine I’ve been using since the previous box blew cogs out the side, so I’m back to a new build that replaced that box. I think I have it tinkered back to about where it was before all the misfortune. Asus mobo replaced Intel board, went with 4th gen Intel core CPU, using all the same drives, ironed out the quibbles Microsoft had about the OS reactivation.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @raven:

    Nice vista.

    @Tommy:

    When I use the bluetooth on my phone to connect to various headphones and speakers, it’s always a little staticy, in that the signal cuts in and out. Do you have that issue? It might be my phone, which is a little older.

    ETA: Nothing bluetooth I have is close to $500.

  20. 20.

    Felonius Monk

    @raven:

    …no one much seemed interested

    Not true. I thought they were awesome shots. My words wouldn’t do them justice. But, thank you for posting them. Merry Christmas.

  22. 22.

    Tommy

    @Baud: I don’t.. Brother said get Bose but I have always heard they were over priced. My head-set is a kickstarter thing I bought into and they never cut out. Vizo on the speaker.

  24. 24.

    seaboogie

    @raven: I bet that house could tell some wonderful tales!

    I’m tidying my cottage for my cat-sitter before traveling to SW Ontario (Canadia) to visit my family tomorrow. It has been six years since I’ve been there, and it will be a mixture of sweetness and sorrow since my beloved step-Mom (the original Christmas girl!) passed away at the beginning of November.

    Just poured myself a glass of wine in advance of my Christmas call to the Momster.

    Also burning some delicious sandalwood incense that my wonderful landlady’s sweetheart brought back from India a couple of weeks ago – it smells very Christmas-y here now!

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Saw them on the earlier thread. They stand quite well n their own.

    Do like the house. Presuming it is occupied, as the roof and the flashing around the chimneys looks a lot newer than the rest of the place, and also the plywood (or cardboard?) in the one upstairs window appears recent.

  26. 26.

    jharp

    Does anyone know if any of the Medicaid expansion experiments are working better as hoped for?

    Like Utah? Indiana still has nothing so can’t tell here.

  27. 27.

    Tommy

    @seaboogie: My parents keep spending more time in my house. My cat is a rock star. Spends more time with them. She wants you to court her. Mom and dad are like your cat rocks. I am like yes and why I give a few bucks to rescue places. Cats rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    I came down with the flu yesterday & it is kicking my butt. I have slept 23 of the last 24 hours. Given the way I feel when awake sleeping is a good thing.

    Got to see pictures of the grandkids with their presents and we hit a homerun this year so that was good

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: I didn’t see that. Where?

    The wife and I, free of the encumbrances of children and grand child, went to Hahn’s Mill Shut-Ins Yeah, I know… The link says “Castor River Shut-Ins”. But when I first became acquainted with this location 30+ years ago, it was still known as Hahn’s Mill (the locals called it “Pink Rocks”) and it was still privately owned. Once MDC (MO Dept of Conservation) bought it, they renamed it and…. Fwck ’em. The Hahn family was there long before the MDC existed.

    Anyway, these are by far, for my money anyway, the most beautiful shut-ins in the state. Bonus points for the day because after a decade together, I finally showed them to her.

    Extra bonus points because she agreed: They are the most beautiful in the state.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Nice. Very nice. I took a killer portrait of the wife and the Woofmeister today. Others too. some day I’ll get a flicker account.

    Maybe.

  37. 37.

    mikej

    Good Xmas: received a gopro, very psyched for Tuesday night races to resume.
    Bad Xmas: power supply on my computer failed. Grrrrr. Digging through the attic to see if I have a spare.

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Haysoos Chrisco, just another boring day*** in STL. Stop making a deal out of it.

    The other day, my little bro was telling me about a Bosnian who got the crap beat out of him in Bevo by a bunch of black guys with hammers in front of the guy’s wife. Had him a little sketchy, after Ferguson. The cops classified it as a hate crime.

    I said “So? It’s Bevo, a drug deal gone bad. And yeah… it is a hate crime, drug dealers HATE not getting paid for their drugs.”

    I could have added that there has never been any love lost between blacks and Bosnians in STL, but it would have been lost that that fact had nothing to do with race.

    STL is losing perspective. ALL perspective.

  40. 40.

    shelley

    My dog Kate’s Christmas present, the usual stuffed toy. Thought it’d also be the usual ‘squeaker’ but it makes a pretty sophisticated barking sequence. The look on her face when she first heard it.
    Glad I made all the food gifts I wanted to give. Included a really tasty Sweet and Salty Walnuts flavored with fresh sage.

  45. 45.

    Goblue72

    The good news: Gift opening with the family commences in T-minus 60 minutes.

    The bad news: 99% certain it’s my father’s last Xmas on Earth.

    Looking forward to some spiked eggnog to deal. And praying for a Xmas miracle along the lines of Mitch McConnel keeling over on the shitter.

    Would stream The Interview but forgot our weed in Seattle.

  46. 46.

    Pogonip

    @Hungry Joe: Too late, the alarm went off and Grandma is on her way to your house to scold you.

    On the subject of Jews and Christmas, a round of applause for a group of Jewish gentlemen in Bexley, Ohio, who have a long-standing arrangement with the police and fire departments to handle non-emergency calls on Christmas Eve and Day, so as many dispatchers as possible can be off.

  51. 51.

    Cervantes

    @tybee:

    In the Ozarks and elsewhere, the term refers to a river that’s “shut in” by rock that is hard enough to resist erosion.

  54. 54.

    Denali

    @Cervantes,

    Thanks for the explanation of “shut-ins”. I was under the impression that Ozark was visiting the sick for the holidays.

  55. 55.

    lamh36

    So I took Maddie and her crew (my lil girl cousins) to see Annie. They all said they loved it. Maddie gave Annie an A+. I liked it but other than Jamie Foxx, nobody really sounded good. Me and my cousin, both agreed they should have just dubbed the voices. Still I liked it and the actors other than Cameron Diaz were good. And honestly, I could have taken the movie even with Cameron Diaz, but the sing really wasn’t up to what you’d expect from the Annie musical.

    Still, the appropriate age group loved it, singing or not!

    https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/548317908892647425

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    Just got home from a Christmas celebration with local relatives we don’t see very often. Got cash for Christmas, which is always nice, plus my nephew gave us some refrigerator art. I’m getting ready to put the harness on Charlotte so we can let everyone mingle for a bit.

  57. 57.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Dead thread, but this doesn’t fit with the NSA newsdump upstairs, so…

    We just got back from seeing “Birdman”. Really excellent acting, all around. The story was a little hard to follow early on, because we were expecting something else based on the TV ads we saw for it. If you ignore, or have forgotten, the ads, then you’ll do fine.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  59. 59.

    andy

    I went on a little photowalk today. this was my second brown christmas, so i strolled around the ‘hood looking for brown-ness and irony.

    i dunno- i personally like not having to deal with snow, but i know it’s all a sign of bad bad things happening. i’m 53 and we’ve always had snow, and then the weather got weird about ’98. I guess it’s easier to see climate change happening in places that do have winter, but i just do not get why people can’t admit something’s going on…

  60. 60.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @andy: Nice shots. Many of them look like central Ohio – there’s a midwestern vibe that many areas of the US have.

    The rapid climate change is a bit scary…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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