Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The lights are all blinking red.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Books are my comfort food!

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

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Reader Interactions

111Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    making it impossible to tell where his head or feet are. He’s a freaky little critter.

    Can’t tell his head from his asshole? What district does this Republican Congressman represent?

  4. 4.

    Karen in GA

    Spiny Norman!

    I just put together a case of laminate flooring to see if I want it in my living room. Yes, laminate. No, it’s not real wood. Yes, it sounds sort of clicky when the dog walks on it. But I can do the whole house for relatively little money, which takes the edge off the “tacky and fake” thing. And it beats the carpet we currently have. Boy, does it beat the carpet we currently have. You have no idea how hard it beats the carpet we currently have.

  7. 7.

    Pogonip

    @Karen in GA: I hate carpets. They’re dust, dirt, pollen, and flea traps. Carpets were useful before central heating; until central heating becomes prohibitively expensive, they’re an anachronism.

  8. 8.

    David Koch

    Betty,

    I don’t know if you’re an Atlanta Braves fan (a lot of Floridians are), but Chipper Jones is an Alex Jones kook who thinks Sandy Hook was a hoax.

    So the FBI comes out and confirms Sandy Hook was hoax! Where is the outrage?

  10. 10.

    Pogonip

    I was reading another site about a university firing a professor about a run-in with a graduate student. I was inclined to side with the college–they’d already told the guy twice to stop doing this sort of thing so he shouldn’t have expected them to keep on paying him if he kept doing it. However, my opinion is uninformed. Could those familiar with the tribal customs–which seems to be most of you–please explain what exactly a graduate student does and what exactly are the duties of tenured professors toward same?

    The Kerfuffle occurred at Marquette University, which I associated with what is reputed to be an excellent nursing school. But it seems they have a Department of Kerfuffling as well. It’s also a Jesuit school, which, I would guess, means there’s no place for Christianity on the premises. :D

    Did you know the exorcists in the incident dramatized in “The Exorcist” were Jesuits? The order did a complete turnabout in less than a century.

    And speaking of evil: oh FY Autocorrect, spawn of Satan, stop trying to change “were” to “we’re”!

  11. 11.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    That is one adorable critter.

    When looking through this pronunciation list I found a gem:

    John Cowper Powys (cooper poh-iss)

    Marcel Proust (proost)

    Ayn Rand (well-fare recipient)

    I laughed so hard I scared the dog.

  12. 12.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Pogonip:

    Grad student duties can vary. Some of them are teaching assistants; some are research assistants; some are neither. My experience was in the English Department where teaching assistants don’t “assist” a professor. Rather they teach their own sections, usually of first-year composition. They were all supervised by the same faculty member. If you weren’t that faculty member, you obligations were to teach your classes and direct whatever dissertations or theses you took on. The students didn’t work for you.

    In departments with large lecture classes, the TAs can run recitation sections and grade papers and exams. In departments where faculty get grants, the RAs conduct the research under the grantee’s direction.

  13. 13.

    Cervantes

    @Corner Stone:

    What district does this Republican Congressman represent?

    Unlikely to be a Republican..

    In the US, hedgehogs are immigrants, frequently from North Africa.

    Where they are native, hedgehogs are sometimes eaten and provide a nutritious meal; Republicans have no such redeeming value.

    Hedgehogs are blind at birth but do not remain blind for long.

    And finally, while hedgehogs frequently succumb to cancer, Republicans, well, you know.

  16. 16.

    Pogonip

    @Corner Stone: How to distinguish the species: Hedgehogs are cute. Congressmen normally aren’t ( although the aptly named Congressman Weiner seems to have thought otherwise).

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    a couple of things from twitter

    Ryan Grim @ ryangrim · 3h 3 hours ago
    This has now gone all the way around the bend: Anti-Defamation League Urges Netanyahu To Cancel Congress Speech
    LOLGOP @ LOLGOP · 1h 1 hour ago
    BREAKING: Brian Williams to take a “brief leave.” He becomes the first person ever to be punished for lying about Iraq.

    as to the first, apparently Repubilcans are expecting the American people to rise up in support of Bibi because Biden and a few others are skipping his speech. I would be against that, but we’ll see

    ETA: “Foxman is the quintessential establishment Jew,” beat me to it. I thought Foxman was pretty well to the right?

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @BBA:

    I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see people other than the usual liberal suspects react to the latest overreach.

  23. 23.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Baud:

    That’s sad. I know there’s no relationship between baseball talent and rationality, but it’s still sad.

    #LOLschilling

  24. 24.

    Cervantes

    @Pogonip:

    please explain what exactly a graduate student does and what exactly are the duties of tenured professors toward same?

    Leaving aside any attempt at humor: What graduate students do varies widely by field, by department, by school, by inclination, and by need. Professors who supervise — or even just interact with — graduate students are obliged to keep those students’ educational needs in primary focus. I have a sinking feeling that your story involves the latter duty not being honored.

  25. 25.

    Pogonip

    @Iowa Old Lady: So if Professor Grumpy had a beef with Grad Student PC, he should have taken it up with her boss, Professor Whomever?

    Also, what about the grad students who do not teach or research? What do they do? Is it true they get paid? If so, how much? I was once in a class with a grad student and his wife, who taught elementary school, and got the impression she was getting damn tired of supporting him while he played with bokken, so either he didn’t get paid or he was blowing what he did get paid.

    Also, how do you get to be a graduate student? If one can lead a life of leisure, like Don did, it might be a pretty good gig.

  26. 26.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Pogonip: I thought the thread on LGM explained it pretty well.

    Grad student slave labors are flunkies and factotums for the profs. These people are trying to write their own thesis and get a degree and they are reliant on the prof for research projects/direction, getting their stuff into shape (you know, training and learning), continuing to receive their shitty stipend (if any) and you know the general help up the ladder to continue in academia if that’s their track. Basically profs can ruin grad students if they want to and some do. It’s actually worse than undergrad vs prof because many undergrads have rich parents who can make the call to admin and make their problems go away. Or just drop and take another class. Grad students can’t just “drop”. Unless they drop out.

  27. 27.

    gogol's wife

    He reminds me of the hedgehog in the evidence room in Hot Fuzz (just watched it again last night).

  28. 28.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Pogonip: Yeah, and it was taken up with the grad student’s boss.

    Professor Grumpy was told twice already, most recently in 2011, to STOP PUBLISHING NAMES AND DEETS OF STUDENTS omg NOW, because he has a legion of flying monkeys on his blog.

    So he goes and DOES IT AGAIN. One of his flying monkeys had a death threat hand-delivered to the “target”, the school had to POST SECURITY in her classroom and she ended up transferring to a school in another state.

    HIS ASS GOT FIRED. The end. Oh, and libel, stalking, harassment, and incitement are not Freeze Peach. Not the end, because certain animals on the right refuse to accept this and end their bullying ways. Because that is who they are.

  29. 29.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Pogonip: Depends on what the beef was. If it was, say, something in Professor Grumpy’s class, then Grumps was right to take it up directly with the student. Otherewise, probably not.

    Assistantships are ways of funding grad students. A student without one might have a scholarship or might be paying his or her own way. When I was a master’s students, I had scholarship that covered everything. When I was a PhD students, I was a TA.

    You get to be a grad student by completing an undergrad degree and then applying for a grad program which will lead to you getting a master’s or PhD. The program will specify what qualifications you need to be admitted. You take classes, then write a thesis (for a master’s degree) or dissertation (for a PhD). It’s a ton of work. My doctoral program was the one time in my life I had migraines.

  33. 33.

    Pogonip

    @Cervantes: Well, you can find the details on the American Conservative site in the Rod Dreher blog. I haven’t figured out how to make links without a mouse, sorry. Anyway, briefly: GS PC makes Student Conservative mad in her class. He records the squabble and takes it to Professor Grumpy, who blogs it with everyone’s real name included; this is what got him in trouble, as he’d been told twice to stop doing that. You can get all the tedious details at the site. Dreher sided with Grumpy, most of the readers sided with the college, for the same reason I did. Even if you don’t know specific tribal customs, you ought to know that if the chief says, twice, “Stop doing that,” you stop doing That if you wish the tribe to keep on paying you . I would say it shouldn’t take a college professor to figure that out, but we all know how many educated fools there are these days.

  35. 35.

    MattF

    @BBA: The article goes on to say that ‘retreat is not an option’ for Netanyahu, so I don’t see a result, besides everyone being very pissed off.

  37. 37.

    catclub

    @Betty Cracker:

    I had no idea he was a kook. Good ball player.

    I think it will be easier to assume all pro ball players are kooks until proven otherwise. Willie Mays and Henry Aaron
    might be exceptions. Baseball players are famously superstitious. Absurdly talented in one field makes you likely to think it carries over to other things.

  38. 38.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Pogonip:

    Also, what about the grad students who do not teach or research? What do they do? Is it true they get paid? If so, how much? I was once in a class with a grad student and his wife, who taught elementary school, and got the impression she was getting damn tired of supporting him while he played with bokken, so either he didn’t get paid or he was blowing what he did get paid.

    No. No, they do not get paid.

    If you are an RA or a TA you get paid very little and then have to pay fees out of pocket at many institutions. The courts have limited the ability of grad students to unionize so they get, excuse me I’m going to give some tumblrites the vapors here, fucked right up the ass. That’s why they’re called “grad student slave labor”. That’s why when they have university functions with food grad students will magically percolate out of the labs and eat it all.

    Some RAs who work in fields that “industry” is super interested in get decent stipends, civil engineering maybe, and there are others. Engineering also has co-op programs so you can go to school and get paid at the same time. Engineering is unique in that it’s hard to get ahead but if you do it right at least you don’t get behind.

    Many long-term PhD students are not taking classes any more or teaching, they are working on the thesis and it drags out forever, hence the “Phinally Done” jokes. There’s not a lot of support, institutional or emotional and certainly not financial as they pump out too many English PhD’s anyway since the schools are, going back to the beginning, dependent on grad student slave labor for basic teaching of undergrads.

    Sciences ALSO pump out too many PhDs, they do this thing called “post-doc”, you’re not a prof, you’re not tenured, you’re not paid much of anything, but you’ll work in our labs and make us prestige and money.

    US academy has just turned into toil, exploitation, and waste (of people’s lives), meanwhile admins get bigger and bigger and richer and more out of control and out of touch oh and we have a new football stadium.

  39. 39.

    Pogonip

    @Another Holocene Human: Maybe YOU can put in heating pipes. I wouldn’t have a clue how to do that, and probably couldn’t afford to pay someone.

    In an unheated house, slippers, while better than nothing, still let most of the cold go right through. I found 2 or 3 pairs of socks were wetter.

  42. 42.

    Cervantes

    @Pogonip:

    Also, what about the grad students who do not teach or research? What do they do? Is it true they get paid?

    Some students are in graduate school in furtherance of their careers and their employers’ interests. In business school, for example, it is not unusual for such students to still be on the payroll of their employers.

    In general: no, graduate students are not getting paid to do nothing. If living the life of Riley is your ambition, graduate school is unlikely to be the fount or the elixir.

  43. 43.

    raven

    Afternoon thread at 5pm! It reminds me of the nice crossing guard lady who pets the dogs and says”Ya’ll have a good evening”!

  44. 44.

    Corner Stone

    @Baud:

    That’s sad. I know there’s no relationship between baseball talent and rationality, but it’s still sad.

    Baseball players, maybe beyond all other pro athletes, are significantly more prone to being absolute wingnut jobs. Because it all comes down to superstition. Their talent, their streaks, their performance, etc. It can’t rightly ever be explained. So they all, all of them, revert back to voodoo to justify why they are in a slump or why they are in a streak. They won’t shave, they won’t wear a different helmet, they wear the exact same socks without washing them – as long as it’s “working”.
    So, most of the top level ball players believe God himself is intervening in their day to day life, and that is why they are better than all the other talent they saw fall just short of God-like success and money.
    And in a lot of cases they were always the BMOC so they never had to actually challenge any thought or belief. So they are significantly under-educated to begin with.
    Pro baseball players, for the most part, are kooky ass nuts. NFL players just thank jeebus they didn’t get their blocks knocked off that game. MLB players would sacrifice their kids to Jobu if they thought it would help them at the plate for a few games.

  45. 45.

    raven

    @Pogonip: When I was in grad school I was in a program that did not have an undergraduate component. I coordinated a statewide teacher training program for six year while I did my doctoral work.

  46. 46.

    dmsilev

    @Pogonip:

    So if Professor Grumpy had a beef with Grad Student PC, he should have taken it up with her boss, Professor Whomever?

    Her supervisor first, and possibly the chair of her department if the issue is serious enough. There’s a hierarchy of admins above the chair level, but it’s hard to imagine a grad student doing _anything_ that would get even the most assholish of professors to complain at the dean or provost levels.

    Also, what about the grad students who do not teach or research? What do they do? Is it true they get paid? If so, how much? I was once in a class with a grad student and his wife, who taught elementary school, and got the impression she was getting damn tired of supporting him while he played with bokken, so either he didn’t get paid or he was blowing what he did get paid.

    A student who doesn’t teach or do research _might_ be getting some sort of fellowship (a scholarship award, basically), but often what happens is that you have someone who is nominally a student who has finished all of the course requirements and such, but hasn’t finished their dissertation and they just sort of drift away from grad school and do other things. If you’re getting paid, the money is coming from somewhere, and whoever oversees that account will want something to show for it. If it’s the department, they’ll want a TA. If it’s faculty grant money, that professor will want to see work on research.

    Also, how do you get to be a graduate student? If one can lead a life of leisure, like Don did, it might be a pretty good gig.

    You apply and are accepted into a program. Unlike undergraduate, you apply not just to a university but to a specific department/program within that university. And it doesn’t pay much, so if you don’t have an obliging spouse it’s not exactly an invitation to spend several years in a life of leisure.

  47. 47.

    Pogonip

    @Another Holocene Human: That was my opinion too. They tell you twice to quit doing that, you can’t expect them to keep paying you if you keep doing That.

    There are people who get a perverse kick out of breaking taboo. Prof. Grumpy sounds like one of those. Granted sometimes it pays off big (see Serrano, Andres) but more often it blows up in the taboo-breaker’s face.

  48. 48.

    Mike in NC

    @Karen in GA: Seems everybody we know is getting laminate flooring. Only a matter of time for us. We spent the better part of last weekend moving furniture and steam cleaning the carpeting in every room, then moving the furniture again when everything dried. What an ordeal.

  49. 49.

    Eric U.

    @Another Holocene Human: I’m reading between the lines, but it looks like the grad student was targeted because some right wing undergrad thought she was being disrepectful towards people that didn’t want marriage equality. And complained to professor grumpy. I’m sure everything the undergrad said was true, because reasons.

  50. 50.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Pogonip: Uh, you have to dig up the foundation. I mean when the house is built. :)

    And bad stuff can happen and the pipes freeze.

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    @Cervantes: Ha. I think that’s what makes them the perfect hypocritical Republican. From somewhere else but desperately want to pull up the ladder right after they get here/make it. Could be useful to others but exhibit IGMFY to the extreme. Blind to begin with but only ever after see exactly what they want to see.
    Sounds like I’ve heard these before.

  53. 53.

    Cervantes

    @Pogonip:

    Even if you don’t know specific tribal customs, you ought to know that if the chief says, twice, “Stop doing that,” you stop doing That if you wish the tribe to keep on paying you . I would say it shouldn’t take a college professor to figure that out, but we all know how many educated fools there are these days.

    Except that one of the tribal customs is academic freedom, where so-and-so does not get to tell you to stop saying what you want to say.

    (Just a general remark; no idea if it’s relevant in your story.)

  54. 54.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Eric U.: Also apparently broke the law by taping their conversation (laws on that vary from state to state). The thing is, who even cares what the kid did. Grumpy was told not to doxx students and he doxxed a student. With predictable results.

    I thought Aimai made great points on LGM about Marquette’s Christian mission. Grumpy claimed to be the “real xtian” by culture warrioring about SSM but completely failed as a xtian in every way that mattered. I really recommend reading her comments on that thread.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    Douglas County Sheriff’s Lt. Glenn Daniel said authorities received a 911 call Saturday reporting a shooting in Douglasville around 3 p.m.

    Daniel said five people were killed, including several children.

  57. 57.

    Pogonip

    @Another Holocene Human: If they also have to pay out of pocket, no wonder Mrs. Don was getting annoyed.

    Ok, so if I want a life of leisure grad student is not the way to go. Thanks! They can’t automate my work–they tried and wasted several hundred million dollars, ha!– but they can certainly ship it to China or India and probably will within the next ten years, so it’s never too early to start considering what’s next.

    And thanks to you, giving me the crucial piece of info–it don’t pay!–I no longer need to read tedious grad-student stories like the Marquette one. Bless you.

  59. 59.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Cervantes: Yeah, that was Scott Lemieux’ take the other day but I think he got pretty effectively curb-stomped in the comments on that.

    He wasn’t talking about his views and opinions or research or whatever, and even if he wanted to bitch about the academy in general he could have done that without naming the grad student.

    He has a pattern of behavior of harassing female grad students in this way (some said also minority and gay students). As some in the thread pointed out, it’s actually a case of a professor attempting to curtail the academic freedom of the grad students, which, as a professor, he has a great deal of power over.

    Just as we would condemn admin censoring or firing a professor for exercising their academic freedom, I think a professor certainly deserves the same scrutiny w/r/t grad students, who they technically have even more power over than admin has over tenured faculty.

    Also, tenure doesn’t mean you can never get fired. It means admin has to prove their case.

    Their case looks pretty damn good to me.

  63. 63.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Pogonip: I did once know a PhD student who did minimal work and still magically got funded. It’s a gift, I guess. All good things do come to an end, of course. (We used to have fun comparing her to the stapler guy from Office Space.)

    Vast majority of PhD candidates are living in poverty, some more genteel than others, and many will never complete their degree.

    The money in sciences is NOT in academia which is not really a good thing for our society as a whole. (Quants on wall street or sellouts to big pharma, for example, or working for Samsung to make a thinner flatscreen instead of working on new prosthetic limbs or less polluting construction materials, just is not the best use of our resources. The free market is not magical.)

  64. 64.

    David Koch

    Hahahahahhahahahhahah

    I love it when the rats turn on each other

    Netanyahu is now saying he was misled by Orangeman and he has begun laying the ground work to cancel his speech.

  65. 65.

    pat

    @David Koch:
    Evidently he later apologized and said that someone else had told him, but it is not true.

    bet I’m not the first one to point this out.

  66. 66.

    Cervantes

    @Another Holocene Human:

    Their case looks pretty damn good to me.

    With regard to the current Marquette case, you may well be right. I have not looked at it in any detail, therefore cannot usefully comment.

  67. 67.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Another Holocene Human: English depts. also use a huge number of adjuncts, typically in an exploitive way. Part of the problem there is that there’s a huge surplus of literature PhDs, so it’s easy for universities to hire them for peanuts. And the reason there’s that huge surplus is that professors want to teach grad students, so they keep running programs and admitting students who have no hope of getting a tenure track job.

  68. 68.

    Pogonip

    @Another Holocene Human: They probably also, rightly , fear a lawsuit if the flying monkeys injure or kill someone he identified. Another reason I think the college was within their rights to unload him.

    And now, thanks to all these great answers to my questions, I can write off grad student as a possibility and move on to something more interesting. What’ll it be? Pets? Recipes? Weather? Dog poop?

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    @BBA:

    Foxman is the quintessential establishment Jew, the voice of the synagogue boardroom. He can’t go five minutes without finding an “anti-Semite” to condemn. So when an Israeli PM loses him, he’s fucked up big time.

    Foxman is blaming Jon Stewart for turning “the whole thing” into a “circus” — which might be funny, except that “the whole thing” is a carnival of horrors far worse than any mere circus.

  80. 80.

    Karen in GA

    @SiubhanDuinne: This is where being a NY baseball fan comes in handy — I never liked the guy.

    (Actually, it’s more like “We have our own problems, so who has time to worry about an Atlanta Brave,” but the end result is the same. Or something.)

  83. 83.

    raven

    @David Koch:

    My apologies for my Sandy Hook tweet yest. I had heard something from someone which I thought to be credible and tweeted w/out researching.

    — Chipper Jones (@RealCJ10) February 7, 2015

    It was irresponsible of me to do that and will not happen again. Please accept my heartfelt apology to those who were hurt or offended.

    — Chipper Jones (@RealCJ10) February 7, 2015

  85. 85.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    Jenner was being chased by up to five paparazzi when accident occurred.

    This reminds me of Princess Diana. Paparazzi gotta paparaz, I guess, but you’d think they might show a little restraint …. naaaah, who am I kidding?

  86. 86.

    Karen in GA

    @raven: Ha indeed. A few weeks ago I decided to finally do something with the barely-used 10′ x 10′ back bedroom, thinking it would be a nice project over a couple of weekends. Did some research, found out I could re-do the room for just a few hundred dollars, then decided that the flooring I wanted to put in that room would work in the rest of the house too, and I’ve been wanting to get rid of the carpet anyway. But wait, before I do new flooring in the rest of the house, I really should paint. But before I paint, I’ve always hated that dining room wall that really doesn’t need to be there and just makes the house feel more closed in than it is. So now it’s painting, knocking out part of a wall, then having flooring installed throughout the whole house — all because of one 10′ x 10′ room that nobody even uses anyway.

    By the way, I have everything I need to start on that back bedroom, which I decided I would definitely do this weekend. And I’m commenting here instead.

  90. 90.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Karen in GA:

    This is where being a NY baseball fan comes in handy

    I love you, I love Brian, I love Iggy and your kitty, I love your banjo and your penny whistle and your photography, but I cannot love your taste in baseball teams (despite having lived in NYC for several years).

  91. 91.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Karen in GA: By the way, I have everything I need to start on that back bedroom, which I decided I would definitely do this weekend. And I’m commenting here instead.

    Hey! That’s just the method I’m using to get my house cleaned and my taxes done!

  92. 92.

    Tree With Water

    @Pogonip: You tell that to people who have just installed expensive wood flooring (and it’s always expensive) and you’ll be horse-laughed out of the room.

    And, come on, fleas? What kind of flop house were you raised in? [he counted his own blessings after writing that, lest he offend a righteous god or some other such cosmic force).

  93. 93.

    shelley

    Betty, isn’t this the second hedgehog photo you’ve posted? They must like your area’s vibes.

  97. 97.

    Pogonip

    @Karen in GA: Maybe we should call this the Congressional Method of dealing with work? I believe they pioneered it.

    All together now: “It’s Obama’s fault I’m not getting my work done!”

  98. 98.

    Pogonip

    @SiubhanDuinne: Probably, but, thanks to Juicers who gave me the info I needed to decide the grad-student gig is not for me, I don’t have to read it!

    (If I am considering something, I first read up on it; now I no longer have to read articles that contain “grad[uate] student,” lest I miss something. Of course if the grad student does something interesting–” THE Ohio State University Bob Brainy today revealed his new perpetual-motion machine that runs on balloon juice”–I’ll read it, as I always have. What I’m trying to say, in my long-winded yet charming way, is that I no longer need to pay special attention to the subject.)

  100. 100.

    Josie

    @Karen in GA: I had laminate flooring in the house before this one. I loved it – very attractive and so easy to keep. It’s the only thing I miss about that house. You won’t be sorry.

  101. 101.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    Also, for whatever it’s worth, baseball is the least college-oriented (and most “blue-collar”) of the major sports (in the U.S.). Chipper Jones was drafted right out of high school and spent his entire 23-year career in the Braves organization. Not saying every college grad in the NFL or NBA is a scholar, but a few years at college has got to take some of the rough edges off.

  103. 103.

    Jay C

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I used to live in Malibu many moons ago: the Pacific Coast Highway was, at best, a dangerous deathrace for drivers back then, I gather that the passage of a few decades hasn’t improved things very much. I emailed a friend who lives in Mailbu a little further out about the crash: her response:

    Jenner moved to Malibu to get some privacy. Guess that didn’t work.

  104. 104.

    Pogonip

    @Steeplejack: I was pretty sure that cutie was a pet. Albinos tend not to last long in the wild because of their weak eyesight. If I remember right there are other medical problems associated with the syndrome as well.

    The other night, when my neighbor’s Siamese’s eyes flared red in my headlights, I got to wondering if albinism is a maladaptation of other coloring patterns,Iike Siamese-ing. Has anybody read up on this? I’ll try to find time. If you want to begin your inquiry with cats, I’d start with Messybeast.com . Only their Creator knows more about cats than Sarah, and she doesn’t charge to read her site.

  107. 107.

    Karen in GA

    Moderation hell. Replied to too many people. Anyway:

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Pogonip: And I’ve finished painting the back bedroom and pulled up the carpet! I’m sitting here congratulating myself on a job well done, not taking a break before getting the ladder so I can start taping the trim and prepping to paint. At 9:00 at night. No. I am, instead, done. Looks damned good, too.

  108. 108.

    Karen in GA

    @Josie: I’m looking forward to it. I got the one box today and put it together to see whether I liked the color — then it took a couple of hours for me to even attempt to judge the color on its own merits, because I couldn’t get over how much I love the laminate compared to the carpet it’s sitting on top of.

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