Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

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

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Fight them, without becoming them!

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

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

This chaos was totally avoidable.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I don’t think I ever had rum but for sneaking rum and cokes at family parties when I was in high school. I always thought spiced rum sounded good.

    If you knew my family, you’d understand.

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am a big fan of dark rum. It works well with coke, ginger beer, tonic water, and Roses’ Lime. Also too, hot buttered rum is a fantastic winter drink – especially if you want to be an OG yankee.

  11. 11.

    Tree With Water

    Meanwhile, Down Under:

    “..A powerful cyclone roared ashore in a heavily populated area of Australia Friday with authorities warning of a “calamity” as howling winds and torrential rain saw residents hunkering down to wait out the terrifying conditions.

    Tropical Cyclone Marcia slammed into the Queensland coast just after 2200 GMT Thursday having been upgraded to a category five, the most severe..”.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @the Conster: These are questions the answers to which are beyond my ken. I can only say that they are not evidence of loving and merciful deity. Creepy fucks – every one of them.

  14. 14.

    BD of MN

    The specialty cocktail section of crappy chain restaurants are filled with various concoctions of booze and overly sweet fruity mixtures, so there’s undoubtedly a market for it… keep trying different variations of those ingredients, and after the hangover subsides to a tolerable level tomorrow (or Sunday), sell the recipe to Applebee’s or TGIFridays….

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Basically. I just tend to call a booze and mixer drink by its ingredient names rather than the made-up name for it. That way I get what I want in a bar. “A Myers dark and ginger beer with a slice of lime” ensures that I get that not someone’s signature take on a Dark and Stormy that involves chanting over the crushed basil.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yatsuno:

    Sometimes simple is best.

    Hello?… hello… hello… Echo… echo… echo… Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota… Mota… Mota…

  21. 21.

    max

    Wow. That was a whole lot of boy band.

    Gotta cure that.

    max
    [‘Why don’t they just say fuck it and rename themselves the California Raiders? (Or maybe the Southwest Raiders!) And then they can just play in any stadium that’ll have them.’]

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @the Conster: I go with Terry Pratchett’s explanation: Clowns exist so that even the lowliest & most miserable among us know that there’s someone having a worse day than you are.

    There are clown artists — I was privileged to see Grandma the Clown perform once or twice. But clowning is one of those arts that looks easy, so every spotlight-seeking loser figures he can paint his face and put on a show.

    Kind of like teaching, another performance art that every idiot who’s scraped through the fifth grade thinks they’re qualified to critique!

  24. 24.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Violet: Myers Dark is my dad’s drink of choice, so i associate it with him. As the elder son who share’s tastes with the old man it was only fitting. I was talking on the phone with my mom last Sunday night and I told her I heeded to get off the phone so I could watch the Great British Baking Show – she started laughing because my dad, who normally hates reality TV, is addicted to it as well. I am becoming my dad (not a bad thing; he is a pretty good egg overall).

  26. 26.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Tree With Water:

    Meanwhile, Down Under:

    Not only do we get a Category 5 Cyclone hitting just 500 miles north of me, we also get a Category 4 Cyclone hitting the coast at nearly the same time about 1500 miles to the north west, near Darwin.

    I think it’s the first time in the records that two such powerful cyclones have hit on the same day, let alone within hours of each other.

    I blame Al Gore.

  27. 27.

    srv

    You people are the real racists for your reactions to Rudy’s Obama Hates America:

    In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani dismissed the criticism and said he was describing the worldview that had shaped Mr. Obama’s upbringing.

    “Some people thought it was racist — I thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, and most of this he learned from white people,” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview. “This isn’t racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism.”

  32. 32.

    Jay C

    @srv:

    Again with the BS “anti-colonialism” gripe? You think Rudy 9/11 even has a clue as to what that even means as a concept of political thought or activity? Other than the simpleton definition of “hates white people”, that is?

    Dickwad,

  33. 33.

    different-church-lady

    At the moment, I’m eyeing off the spiced rum and wondering how it would go shaken up with some peach syrup, tequila and lots of ice.

    And?

  40. 40.

    JustRuss

    …I’ve used all my limes,

    I feel your pain. The beer and whiskey are gone, 9 days til pay day, and the lime I was counting on for my gin and tonic has disappeared–the joys of having a couple housemates. Fortunately I keep a bottle of of lime juice for just such emergencies. Not the same, but desperate times call for desperate measures….

  41. 41.

    Mike J

    Stupid network sitcoms may insult your intelligence, but they aren’t supposed to make you sad.

    On the stupid Big Bang Theory show, Howard’s mom died. Monday I’m supposed to take my mom in for an angio. They’re probably going to say that she’s fine, but they wouldn’t have her in if everything was fine.

    While I think she’s wrong on every possible policy question, I’m still not liking this whole mortality thing,

    Did I mention that Mom and Dad both go to the same cardiologist? And that Dad’s angio is 2 hours after Mom’s?

    I don’t think I’m fated to be a 40-something year old orphan next week, but I don’t have to like any of this.

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @JustRuss: Good god, that reads like the journal of the alcoholic Donner Party. “Day 27: The limes are gone. Roger Hobbits tried chewing the rinds and spitting then into the pitcher of G&Ts to no positive effect. Clem Sauerheimer suggested urinating into the pitcher, but we have not yet reached that degree of desperation for a bit of sourness in our drinks. Ths skiing is good and the boarding acceptable. YRS, Tobias Mellenhouse”

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @Mike J:

    The actress who played Howard’s mom (as an off-screen voice) died in real life, and I think they were uncomfortable with the idea of replacing her with someone else, so they wrote it into the show.

    I hope your mom is okay.

  44. 44.

    khead

    Anyone in the BJ crowd have experience with gall bladder issues?

    Mrs. Khead is currently in the local hospital after spending the last 18-24 hours throwing up. Docs think it’s a horrid virus – there were plenty of sick folks in the ER today – or her gall bladder. So, I’m wondering what the hell to expect if they come back in the morning and tell us it’s her gall bladder.

  45. 45.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @khead: My only experience with it is my dad having his out and me being thousands of miles away but worried as hell at the time. You have my good thoughts.

  46. 46.

    Yatsuno

    @Sarah, Proud and Tall: When I look at the ingredients available, I could see the peach syrup with the tequila for a bastard margarita that could fill in until actual limes could be had. But I have oddsfish taste buds.

    Wifey says hello. I may still try to lure her over here.

  49. 49.

    khead

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Thank you. I keep telling myself it’s a virus – my stomach doesn’t like me much right now either but I haven’t been puking for 24 hours. The doc freaked us a bit though when he decided to keep her overnight and do a CT scan on her GB.

  50. 50.

    SectionH

    @khead: If she hasn’t been having pain as bad as being in labor, my bet’s on the virus. (Yes, if she’s never had a kid, she wouldn’t be able to compare, but that’s how bad my gall bladder pain was.) And sure, I know that not everyone has that extreme a crisis. If it is her gall bladder, the laparoscopic procedure is the most common one now, and she’ll probably get to go home the next day. Best wishes for her quick recovery from whatever’s the problem.

  51. 51.

    Yatsuno

    @khead: The vast majority of gall bladder surgeries these days are minimally invasive. So if it is that then it may only be a couple days recovery needed.

  52. 52.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @khead:

    My co-worker had to have her gall bladder out last year. It wasn’t very fun, and she has to follow a restricted (mostly low-fat) diet for the rest of her life, but it all turned out okay. You can do just fine without a gall bladder — she’s currently pregnant with her second child and apparently there are no issues expected. It’s like your appendix going bad, or losing your spleen.

  56. 56.

    khead

    She has pain, but not quite labor pain bad. Doc poked her in the wrong place earlier today and I thought she was gonna stab him. Pretty sure that’s what triggered the scan. Y’all are making me feel a little better though. Plus, I figure she can’t be too bad off since she told me to “go home and feed the damn cats”.

  59. 59.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: Well, the bindings may take some adjusting. “Best of luck to you. And if you reach civilization or the native tribes, please ask for help as we are sober as hell to our moral detriment.”

  61. 61.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): The wife had her’s out 25 years ago, they took it out the old fashioned way(about a 3 inch incision). That was the year we also: sold my mom’s house, bought a house and got married.

  63. 63.

    Suzanne

    @khead: I had a coworker who had to have her gallbladder removed. Apparently drinking too many energy drinks is linked to fucking up the gallbladder. Anyway, it’s actually not a big deal to not have one. All will be well.

    So I got a major project for my company today. An unqualified win. I am so excited.

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @Suzanne:

    It’s also related to gaining and then losing weight, which is why so many women have their gallbladders go bad after they have a baby. It doesn’t even have to be a huge amount, just more than your body can tolerate.

  69. 69.

    Anne Laurie

    @khead:

    So, I’m wondering what the hell to expect if they come back in the morning and tell us it’s her gall bladder.

    If she’s eligible for laparoscopic surgical removal, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it from friends & acquaintances.

    Some 20 years ago, I was one of the last patients in Boston to undergo the old-fashioned full-abdominal-incision surgery, which put me in the hospital for five days & from which I didn’t feel fully recovered for several months, and it was still better than living with random attacks of uncontrollable vomiting.

    Theoretically, if one is young enough & committed enough to an extremely low-fat, low-calorie, high-fiber diet, one might be able to avoid future attacks. On the other hand, the younger one is, the fewer problems one is liable to have with anesthesia, and the quicker one’s probable recovery.

    If you have the insurance coverage, and there aren’t complicating factors, I suspect your wife’s doctors will advise removal… and not just because surgeons always think it’s better to yank organs!

  73. 73.

    Anne Laurie

    @khead:

    I keep telling myself it’s a virus – my stomach doesn’t like me much right now either but I haven’t been puking for 24 hours.

    If it’s been unstoppable projectile vomiting, and she can’t stop spasming even when she’s run out of bile fluids, that would explain why the ER doc wants to examine her gall bladder. The good news, as the old joke goes, is that doctors know how to cure gall bladder disease (unlike stomach virii).

  77. 77.

    Anne Laurie

    @khead:

    Doc poked her in the wrong place earlier today and I thought she was gonna stab him. Pretty sure that’s what triggered the scan.

    If the “wrong place” was too high for an inflamed appendix, right up under the diaphram, yeah, that’s a gall-bladder-gone-rogue indicator. Some of my attacks, apart from the projectile-puking part, actually felt like a heart attack — a heavy weight in the center of my ribcage that left me pale & sweaty.

    One reason the insurance company stopped stalling & authorized surgery, an urgent care doc told me, is that women tend to have very similar symptoms for those two very different problems, so it’s cheaper to “solve” the gall bladder problem than to pay for repeat it-might-be-a-heart-attack ambulance/ER visits. And that, as I said above, was before they’d had twenty years of practice on the laparoscopic version!

  79. 79.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):

    It’s also related to gaining and then losing weight, which is why so many women have their gallbladders go bad after they have a baby.

    Specifically, it’s related to changing the amount of fats your body is processing really fast — you can do it by losing-then-gaining as well as the other way around. (And I suspect that’s the energy drink connection; not what’s in the drinks, so much as the change in fat metabolizing they cause.) That’s also why it’s so much more common in women than men, blame estrogen & its related hormones.

    Also, not to get too gross, but living without a gall bladder doesn’t mean you have to give up high-fat foods… just that your body won’t process fats nearly as effectively, so you need to be prepared to deal with the side effects, if you know what I mean. It’s certainly an incentive to be mindful about one’s eating!

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @Sarah, Proud and Tall:

    Well, the Fortaleza region is apparently like the Alabama of Brazil, so the BIL gets accused by other Brazilians of talking with a heavy drawl, or Brazilian equivalent thereof.

    But, yeah, they uniformly snort in derision at Portuguese Portuguese. Go figure.

  82. 82.

    JustRuss

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Good god, that reads like the journal of the alcoholic Donner Party. “Day 27: The limes are gone.

    I’m sorry, but if the limes are gone, that’s not really much of a party. Although the peeing in the pitcher may have happened at some point in my murky past.

  83. 83.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    The local news sez that LA may get one two three NFL teams. Rams want to build at Hollywood Park, Raiders & Chargers want to build a joint stadium in Carson. I bet is their current locales will all cave and give them all what they want and we will remain with zero NFL teams. At least the prospect of building that moronic Farmers Field is becoming more and more remote.

  84. 84.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Anne Laurie: The wife had the same surgery you had. They say it’s almost worse than the gall bladder attacks, but at least it does stop them.

  85. 85.

    KG

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I’m so looking forward to having three teams that we all ignore. I really wonder if the nfl hasn’t figured out that after 20 years and Sunday ticket, nobody out here is going to default to rooting for the local team

  86. 86.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @KG: Tend to agree. Anyway we already have a pro team in LA, they play in the Mausoleum on Saturdays during the fall.

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @Mike J: Yeah, that would be disconcerting. Hang in there, and try to keep your imagination in check. Those “what ifs” can get out of hand if you’re not keeping them in line.

    P.S. I hate when TV shows do that.

    @Suzanne: Unqualified win! That’s so great.

  91. 91.

    RSA

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Good god, that reads like the journal of the alcoholic Donner Party. “Day 27: The limes are gone.

    I’m late to this thread, but I wanted to say that this is inspired.

  92. 92.

    eric nny

    Very fun music minus the “Join the NRA” banner that kept popping up. EVERYBODY knows guns and dance music don’t mix.

Comments are closed.