(Scott Meyer’s website)
.
Great Boomer line of the week, from Mr. Charles P. Pierce at his Grantland gig:
I can say I have lived from the time when museums put stuffed birds on display, through the time when they put actual birds on display, all the way to the time when kids play with animated birds on their telephones while the actual birds on display wonder whether they’re wasting their time flying around like that. It’s a wonderful world.
For further explication, you’re gonna have to click the link.
What’s on the agenda for the (official/ongoing) last weekend of 2014?
OzarkHillbilly
Oh yeah? Well I remember the first dirt.
Frankensteinbeck
@OzarkHillbilly:
And we were THANKFUL to get that dirt!
EDIT – I’ll be honest, I don’t remember museums putting live birds on display. Maybe I’ve been to the wrong museums. Or I don’t go often enough.
EDIT EDIT – Speaking of which, anyone ever been to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA? It’s so funny and interesting that you ask other people if they’ve seen it.
Baud
That’s probably the first Scott Meyer cartoon AL has posted that I didn’t completely hate.
satby
@Baud: Seconded. 1/2 the time I read the panels in the wrong order, then in the right order, and then realize it barely makes a difference anyway.
Phylllis
Off to Charleston SC with hubs and my stepson for a couple of days. Going to Fort Sumter today; will probably head to Patriot’s Point to see the USS Yorktown & the Medal of Honor museum tomorrow.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: @satby: I’ll admit that I just plain don’t get his humor. But then, I can say the same for most of what passes for humor these days.
Mustang Bobby
I have absolutely nothing I have to do until Wednesday at the earliest. So of course I will find something to do, like play with my imaginary friends. Or, as they say in creative world, work on my novel(s).
NotMax
Stupid, unfunny cartoon.
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes. It’s unadulterated fun.
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
I thought you were talking about us at first.
NotMax
@Baud
Gave up playing with my imaginary friends after they took their ball and went home.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I’m an imaginary friend. Some people imagine I am their friend.
Betty Cracker
I’m waiting for hubby to get up so we can continue our family-visiting circuit of North Florida. Next up: Grandma! Hubby is moving slowly today since he made the mistake of trying to match a particularly large uncle beer for beer and shot for shot last night. Oy.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I didn’t realize your husband was a college freshman.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
By North Florida, do you mean
redneck centralthe panhandle?OldDave
@NotMax: “The Panhandle: See L.A. (Lower Alabama)”
NotMax
So the weekend will be dedicated to perusing cookbooks and recipe files for nibblies to prepare for New Year’s Eve night party.
Hate to repeat myself with the same stuff year after year (except it wouldn’t be New Year’s without salmon mousse*). Any suggestions? Hot stuff more trouble than it is worth for an hours long gathering (strange kitchen, and cuts into drinking time to monitor the oven), plus there will be a ton and a half of other food there.
Have 2 new things already set aside as possibilities (crab and artichoke dip – yum, also espresso jello with fresh whipped cream), but could use a couple more for variety’s sake. Was going to put together an antipasto and stuff it into large pasta shells, but cannot find those shells locally anymore.
*also a tradition is the vegetarian mock chopped liver
Schlemazel
@Baud: @satby:
REALLY? I find him hilarious. There are usually four great panels that could each stand on their own for me. He does 3 a week and I never miss them. I’m surprised anyone wouldn’t t least like some of them. Oh well, different strokes I guess.
FridayNext
@Frankensteinbeck:
Some museums do have live animals. It is, was, quite the trend in natural history museums. Sometimes they are special exhibitions on, say spiders or venomous snakes. But then a lot of natural history museums do have butterfly rain forests (which usually contain birds) or just captive animals displayed zoo-like. (See Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia)
satby
@Schlemazel: I don’t hate them, I just think they’re just meh most times.
Schlemazel
@satby:
Thats fine, nobody has to like everything I do – YET – but most comics I like are a bit weird and I can see why many don’t see the humor but BI just seems so ‘normal’ to me, so everyday (except for the ‘rockethat’ bits, those are out there) that I assumed everyone would find something in them funny.
Anyone here read the comic curmudgeon? http://joshreads.com/
I used to read his site regularly but for some reason fell out of the habit. He pokes fun at the absurdities of many daily strips & runs a weekly caption contest for people to suggest better results. I’ll have to go over there & see how he is doing.
It is a whole lot more family friendly than the old spinweb ‘The Family Circus’ If you ever saw that one you know there were some seriously twisted folks creating hilarious captions for ol Bil’s dreadful dwrek. They took the site down after Bil called the site owner & asked him nicely but it my be possible to find archives of it buried deep someplace I bet.
rikyrah
This is absolutely pitiful
………..
Little College Guidance: 500 High School Students Per Counselor
By ELIZABETH A. HARRISDEC. 25, 2014
A steady stream of teenagers fidgeting with forms and their backpacks flowed through the Midwood High School college office one day this month, all with lists of questions on their minds.
But one of the school’s two college counselors was nowhere to be found. She had taken refuge in another office, a quieter spot where she tried to pump out as many college recommendation letters as she could.
“We take turns,” said Lorrie Director, the other college counselor at Midwood, in Brooklyn. “I write at home, at night and on weekends, I squeeze them in when I can, but even then it’s not enough.”
“There’s really no other way,” she continued. “I tell the kids, there are 766 of you, and there’s two of us.”
While small private schools can often afford to provide their students with tremendous hand-holding, large public high schools across the country struggle with staggering ratios of students to guidance counselors. Nationally, that ratio is nearly 500 to 1, a proportion experts say has remained virtually unchanged for more than 10 years. And when it comes time to apply to college, all of the students need help at once.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/nyregion/little-college-guidance-500-high-school-students-per-counselor.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0
mathguy
The CPP piece is, as usual, priceless. Can there be anything creepier that a “Bud Selig 3-d experience”? Nope.
Mustang Bobby
@Baud: I have a work that I stopped working on two years ago in the middle of a chapter — I have a vision of the characters in freeze-frame waiting for me. I just re-read all 400+ pages to catch myself up, and after a bowl of cereal, I’ll pick up where they left off.
I have a habit of doing that; it’s a plot element in my first off-off-B’way play.
Pogonip
@Schlemazel: I was reading him when he was having fun with how depressing Funky Winkerbean is. Then I kind of lost track.
WereBear
@Frankensteinbeck: Our natural history museums have live birds. They come from bird rehab, where their troubles are tangling with telephone wires or massive trucks, and some of them must stay bird ambassadors because they can’t make it in the wild any more.
It’s something to look at an owl the size of your palm and realize… it‘s real.
Last weekend of 2014? I’ll think we’ll bunker in and not go anywhere.
WereBear
@satby: I like him.
rikyrah
Traveling while black created a stir in China
By Dahleen Glanton
Chicago Tribune
During a recent trip to China, my family and I caused quite a commotion in the Forbidden City. It also happened at the terra-cotta warriors museum and again in Tiananmen Square..
In Beijing, we were strolling in the palace courtyard when suddenly we were surrounded by a group of elderly Chinese residents. They had abandoned their tour guide and formed a circle around us. And for several minutes, they blatantly stared us down from head to toe.
In some parts of China, it seems, African-Americans are a novelty.
Had it been the first time we’d encountered this kind of reaction by merely showing up someplace, we would have been self-conscious, maybe offended. But after more than a week in China, we’d come to expect the attention.
Our dark skin, our textured hair and our round facial features intrigued the Chinese people, particularly older ones from the rural areas. In a country where television and the news media are owned by the Communist government, it’s not every day that residents get to see people from other parts of the world.
For some, it wasn’t enough to walk up and take a good look at us. They also wanted to take a picture with us.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/travel/ct-talk-glanton-china-blacks-20141226-story.html
Schlemazel
@Pogonip:
Back in the 70’s I loved Funky, it was a very funny strip but then the paper stopped carrying it & I lost track. I was stunned to see how the guy had taken a light hearted & funny comic & turned it into a situation tragedy. I mean just ask Omnies, imagine how awful it must be if I find it dark & depressing!
rikyrah
White People=LARGE FIGHT
Black People=RIOT
See this headline….you best believe if this wasn’t Navy Pier and it was the South Side…the headline would be altogether different.
………………………………
One hospitalized, five arrested after ‘large’ fight at Navy Pier
Posted: 12/27/2014, 02:14am | George Slefo
pregnant female was hospitalized and five people were arrested after a fight Friday night at Navy Pier, officials said.
About 7:45 p.m, officers responded to the disturbance involving about 30 people at the popular tourist destination, police said. Five people were later arrested for reckless conduct, police said.
Fire officials said a pregnant female was taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t thought to be life-threatening.
No property was damaged and no gunshots were fired, police said.
Kushal Sharma, a Navy Pier worker who sells souvenirs, said he saw about 100 teenagers involved in about eight separate fights.
“It was like Braveheart,” said Sharma, referencing a movie about a medieval war.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/7/71/238217/officers-respond-disturbance-navy-pier
Eric
@Baud: we are not friends. ;)
Kathleen
@Mustang Bobby: I thought the operative term among the createarati is “projects”. I must be more out of touch than I realize.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah:
So, just a bunch of white people yearning for “FREEDOM!“
Kathleen
@Mustang Bobby: I really admire your discipline and focus with your writing. Would you please send some my way? Thanks!
Kathleen
@Mike in NC: I liked the word “disturbance”. White people create “disturbances”. African American people “riot”.
rikyrah
Judge Rules America’s Fastest Growing Industry Is Exempt From Minimum Wage Law
By: Rmuse more from Rmuse
Friday, December, 26th, 2014, 7:12 pm
The term wage slavery is a pejorative term used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification affecting large groups of a workforce. Wage slavery is a result of unequal bargaining power between labor and capital best represented by workers slaving for long hours and poverty wages in sweatshops. Republicans have given every indication that between their opposition to raising the minimum wage, and desire to abolishing it altogether, nothing would please them or their Chamber of Commerce and corporate funders more than a population earning slave wages.
It is likely that most big industries would love nothing more than having Republicans pass legislation exempting them from paying the minimum wage and, despite the nation’s labor laws, one of the fastest growing, lowest paying industries in the nation succeeded in not only winning an exemption from paying minimum wage, they were exempted from overtime laws. One law, 1974’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), requires American employers to pay their domestic workers at least the minimum wage as well as extra pay for overtime hours. Earlier in the year, the Department of Labor expanded FLSA to cover home care providers who were left out of minimum wage and overtime laws due to industry leaders designating their work as nothing but providing “fellowship” for elderly sick and disabled people.
The home care industry interpreted the exemption broadly to deny basic labor rights from all their employees who provide medical care, feed, clothe, and bathe Americans too sick to care for themselves. In 2007, the conservative Supreme Court ruled that an employer forcing a woman to work extremely long hours was within its right to refuse giving overtime pay because regardless the extent of the care the woman provided, it was designated “fellowship and protection.” The Department of Labor issued a new rule forbidding the practice beginning January 1, 2015.
On Monday, just in time to stop implementation of the Department of Labor’s rule change, a U.S. District Judge, Richard Leon, bowed to industry pressure and struck down the change that would finally give minimum wage and overtime pay protections to home care workers. While the Labor Department’s rule change was meant to protect worker’s rights, the Judge protected Home Care Associates, the International Franchise Association, and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice rights to make bigger profits. The rapidly-growing industry’s leaders convinced the judge that paying the minimum wage, and the outrageous idea of overtime pay, was an abomination and would have a “destabilizing impact” on the nation’s fastest-growing industry.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/12/26/judge-rules-americas-fastest-growing-industry-exempt-minimum-wage-law.html
MomSense
@NotMax:
How about mussels? I make some tapas mussels that can be prepared ahead of time and then kept cold. You can serve them in shells that are cleaned and placed on a tray. They look great and would be a seafood offering if you are looking to replace a salmon mousse.
rikyrah
@Mike in NC:
You caught that too.
So, the next time Black people ‘ riot’, they could just say that they are channeling Nat Turner and it’s a slave rebellion. …Ya know…trying to get REAL FREEDOM!
MomSense
@rikyrah:
That is infuriating. There is no possible way those counsellors can adequately serve that number of students.
Citizen_X
@Mike in NC:
Fixed.
Elmo
Another pretty day that I plan to spend in the basement. As soon as the miserable wet cold weather comes back, I expect I’ll have tons of energy and want to go outside.
My rhythms suck.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Can you bake ahead of time and keep warm there? My mother in law always made dates wrapped in bacon. True decadence.
Peale
Note to teenage nephews everywhere. The answer to the question “would you like to see something gross?” Henceforward is no.
Amir Khalid
@Peale:
My goodness. What did you get suckered into seeing?
Debbie
@NotMax:
This one’s the funniest I’ve seen (maybe because I’ve got three brothers), but I generally enjoy the observational irony. I don’t need to laugh out loud at everything, as long as it’s true.
Violet
@NotMax: The espresso jello sounds amazing. How about asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. Steam a couple of spears until cooked but still a bit crunchy. Cool. Then wrap one to however many (depends on how thick the asparagus stalks are) in a strip of prosciutto. You can add a sliver of parmesan for another flavor. Also fig or fig preserves. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of making individual packets, you can cool/cook the asparagus and layer with pieces of prosciutto in a casserole dish. Top with shaved parmesan.
PaulW
just to note Batocchio has the annual Jon Swift Memorial blog list up.
Balloon-Juice has multiple entries.
srv
I know you people think Pierce hung the moon, but honestly I think he’s a bit shrill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@srv: That’s nice. Would you like a parakeet?
different-church-lady
And it will be worth every penny, if you ask me.
srv
@PaulW: Holy Crap, there’s been a secret FYWP author path all this time?
https://balloon-juice.com/author/richard-mayhew/
Steeple must have spent days searching for all of dengre’s series.
OzarkHillbilly
@PaulW: And congrats to Mustang Bobby for making the list with, Give Us A Reason
Peale
@Amir Khalid: this is one of those situations where i juat can’t. Although your question leads me to believe you’d fall prey to it too.
Amir Khalid
@Peale:
I guess I would, at that.
OzarkHillbilly
@srv: You have to limit your sampling of him. Do that and he can be very funny.
Cervantes
@srv:
Does “shrill” imply you generally disagree with him?
Are there people you generally agree with who are also “shrill”?
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: I find him somewhat “shrill” as well, and I always agree with him. On the other hand, I have never found Rush Limbaugh “shrill”, but I do find him to be a whole host of things which are unprintable on a family blog, just not “shrill.”
Don’t know why.
WereBear
@srv: What the heck does “shrill” mean in that comment?
To Republicans, it means you are speaking the truth fervently. I’m all for that.
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
I find this interesting. Is it sort of like the older relative at Thanksgiving dinner who keeps insisting on telling the truth but so obnoxiously that you are embarrassed not for yourself but for everyone else?
To me the word “shrill” has two senses, the first purely acoustical and the other derogatory, so a comment like yours gives me pause.
Eric U.
@Peale: my family members that are old enough to know better have been posting disgusting vids to their facebook pages. I have known better than to look at stuff like that for 15 years or so. I know people that love it for some reason that I can’t fathom. In fact, the very existence of stuff that’s really disgusting on the internet means there is an audience for it.
Yatsuno
@Cervantes: I think he’s trying for his humourous troll shenanigans. Paul Krugman was once described as “shrill” for merely speaking the truth about a situation. IOW take what that one says with many grains of salt.
Baud
@Eric:
Hence, imaginary.
Violet
I feel crappy. I guess I pushed too hard through Christmas with all the baking and cooking and visiting. Ate too much rich food I’m not accustomed to eating. Haven’t slept well in a few days–waking up in the middle of the night for several hours with a headache or neck ache. I didn’t have any alcohol yesterday so it’s not that. I think I’ll eat carefully today and see if I can’t get to feeling a bit better.
srv
Bad day for the shrill
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Yatsuno: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Krugman R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!!
lamh36
So basically respect for the slain officer and his family meant noting ro these assholes.
And people wanted protestors to respect these assholes.
I sincerely hope someone is watching out for DeBlasio family other than NYPD assholes
Liberty60
@srv: Somehow the notion of Screech stabbing a man during a bar fight makes me think of “Does Wayne Brady have to choke a bitch?“
Mandalay
@Schlemazel:
“hilarious” is not the word I’d use, but there is a mountain of truth in that O/P strip about the bizarre greetings between men. I have encountered the fake boxing ritual many times, and I still don’t understand it. It is just plain weird, as are the pretend insults. I lived in Australia for a while, and being greeted as “you old c**t” was invariably a term of endearment, whereas the simpler “you c**t” might well be fighting words.
I wonder whether someone has done a dissertation on why so many men feel the need to jump through these crazy hoops, and why only certain forms of insult came to be acceptable.
Ruckus
@lamh36:
Respect is the least they want. Rabid obedience is their goal. They’ve decided that Orwell’s 1984 was an instruction manual.
lamh36
@Ruckus:
The police union single handedly turned the attention from the slain officer’s family grief to the assholishness of police union.
MomSense
Kids are playing a board game and I’m knitting and watching Harry Potter. My youngest all of a sudden perks up when he hears an ad with Elvis singing He Touched Me at which point he starts laughing and saying that Elvis really didn’t think through that song. Well then the ad goes on to How Great Thou Art and Someone is Bigger than You and Me. By the end of the ad we are all laughing. Some gospel songs do sound pretty creepy when you are an obnoxious pre-teen who doesn’t know the gospel genre.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
Sorry to deflate your righteous rant, but the District Court got it exactly right. DOL doesn’t have the authority to overturn statutes passed by Congress and signed by a President. The result is bad policy, but pro-labor forces in Congress tried and failed three times to fix it after the 2007 Supreme Court decision in the Coke case.
One more way that sitting out midterm elections leads to bad outcomes.
Link to opinion.
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2014cv0967-21
J R in WV
@FridayNext: The National Aquarium in Baltimore has (had at the time of our visit?) a great exhibit of tiny multi-colored poison dart frogs from the Amazonian jungles of South America (and perhaps Central America, not having perfect memory today).
The frogs had good common names like “Poisonous Frog” “Very Poisonous Frog” “Extremely Poisonous Frog” and “Don’t Even Think About This Frog It is So Poisonous!” – well, okay, I exagerated a little bit on the last name, but the others are either exact or really close.
These frogs come in unbelievable colors, too, makes birds look like colorless mousy little things. Gold, indigo blue, scarlet, moss green, all on the same little 2 cm frog. Warning every creature in the area not to Fuxx with the frog on account of long and painful death.
So there’s a “museum” with living exhibits. I guess really aquariums are intrinsically different from museums that way, in that nearly 100% of their exhibits are living in as nearly a natural environment as the professional staff can manufacture, and still show off the critters to the paying public.
Anyway, the frogs were great. The rest of the exhibits were good too, not all fish by any means, but all fascinating.
Pat me on the back, I’m having a birthday today! Hurray, made it another year!
Ruckus
@lamh36:
Well people who think they know what’s best for everyone else and feel it is their duty to make sure that everyone else knows it,
generallyare going to be assholes.You and I have many speeds, from half awake and trying to decide to go faster or slower, up to Katie bar the door I can’t stop now. Give them a break, they only have two. Dead or asshole.
skerry
@J R in WV: On my first trip to Australia, I saw a poster of local poisonous snakes. The one name I never forgot was called the “Common Death Adder.”
ETA: Forgot link. http://www.australianwildlife.com.au/COMMON_DEATH_ADDER.htm
CaseyL
I love Pierce, but I understand what srv means: Pierce’s gift for soaring malediction can get a bit much at times. He applies the same trowel to outrages great and small. Also, his macros (“the goggle-eyed homunculus” and “zombie-eyed granny starver”) were terrific at first, but repetition has reduced them to schtick.
Mandalay
@lamh36:
This woman might be unstable, but I think she has the right idea about what level of respect the police deserve right now:
Tommy
@J R in WV: Oh frogs and snakes. They amaze me. I am an active hiker and I’ve found that snakes, which used to scare me, don’t really want to bite you. If you pay attention to your surroundings and see them, take a step away, you are fine.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@J R in WV: Happy Birthday!
@efgoldman: You are mean. Funny, but mean. I foolishly disembarked.
SWMBO
@J R in WV: Happy Birthday!
rikyrah
@Ruckus:
uh huh
uh hu
beth
@efgoldman: If anyone wonders what trolls did before the internet existed we now have the answer. They worked for McCall’s recipe department.
hilts
Actor James Woods does not think President Barack Obama has done enough to debunk rumors of his secret Muslim beliefs… Woods suggested he may never work in Hollywood again because of his political beliefs: “I don’t expect to work again. I think Barack Obama is a threat to the integrity and future of the Republic. My country first.”
h/t http://www.mediaite.com/online/actor-james-woods-suggests-obama-hasnt-done-enough-to-debunk-muslim-rumors
satby
@rikyrah: as a natural redhead with very fair skin, that also happened to me all the time in India. I’m short, stout, and freckled and for a week I felt like Cindy Crawford as people crowded around touching my hair and taking pictures with me.
Especially funny because they ignored my tall, willowy roommate, who was tanned and had dark hair. She was not amused.
satby
@J R in WV: Happy Birthday JR!
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@hilts:
IOW, like most actors, Woods is getting less work as he gets older, but he’d rather blame the president than admit that he’s gotten older and there are fewer parts for men of his age.
Kind of reminds me of when Bo Derek claimed that she wasn’t getting hired because she was a Republican. Yes, Bo, it wasn’t the string of crappy soft core porn movies that your husband starred you in that made people reluctant to hire you — it was your political beliefs!
NotMax
@efgoldman
Oh, you rascal, you.
“1 packet of Hollandaise sauce mix”
How droll.
One thing kept an eye out for to cadge when packing up and moving Mom from the large house to her new place was the cookbook ubiquitous in the 50s with the red and white gingham cover (Betty Crocker?). The one wherein all the color pix were washed out and/or muddy, so much so that nothing looked in the least appetizing.
Turned out someone snatched it up at the tag sale she held before I arrived.
And thanks to those who provided suggestions above.
hilts
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): @efgoldman:
It’s sad to see someone with a modicum of acting ability who is getting on in years have to stoop so low as to blame his criticism of Obama for the reason why people aren’t beating down his door to offer him roles.
WereBear
@Violet: I’ve been there. It will take quite some time to recover from the extensive reserve-sucking you did.
Take care of yourself.
SWMBO
@NotMax: I collect and read cookbooks like some women do trashy romance novels. The Betty Crocker cookbook was one of the first I got and is still an old favorite. I’ve bought it in paperback too. It had some of the best recipes for a beginning cook and some inspiring ones for more experienced cooks. I loved the fact that it had pictures in the section in the back that showed you how things were supposed to look (and described how they were supposed to feel…gritty, smooth, etc.) It also gave lots of conversion measurements so you could convert teaspoons to tablespoons to cups to metric measure and back again. I still use some of the recipes I learned from it. Cornbread, pie crust, and applesauce cake to name a few. I gave a copy to my daughter when she left for college. My SIL cooks and loves it. lol
lamh36
@satby: Happened to my friend and me when we visited India. We’re both not small women and we’re both Black. We both have natural hair, mine is in a small afro, her hair is long locs.
So we got nothing but looks and she got a lot too. Someone even asked if she “washed” her hair.
The funny thing is there were actually people native to India who were of darker complexion than us.
So…yeah…
henqiguai
@lamh36 (#96):
I believe it has been stated (I recall reading the assessment in World Book Encyclopedia, I believe it was, many years ago) that India has populations with the darkest skin tones on the planet; not African populations, but Indian. Always found that fascinating
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
Happy birthday! Many happy returns.
satby
Remember the smear campaign against John McCain regarding his supposed illegitimate “black” child? It was his very dark adopted daughter from Bangladesh.
satby
@lamh36: but you and I weren’t Indian, we were novelties.