Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Second rate reporter says what?

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

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

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

This fight is for everything.

Bark louder, little dog.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Wee Hours Open Thread

Wee Hours Open Thread

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We went hiking this weekend through a preserve in Central Florida and stumbled into this real-life Monet painting:  We were surprised to see so few birds. But we did see a magnificent swallow-tailed kite soaring overhead. It seemed to make a special effort to fly directly over us and give us the eyeball. I wanted to take a picture but couldn’t take my eyes off it long enough to ready my camera.

Tonight, I went to bed at around 11 PM ET but woke up again about an hour ago, and I could tell immediately it was useless to try to go back to sleep, at least right away. I’ll try again in a bit.

In the meantime, there’s much stupid to catch up on in the media. Maybe that’ll bore me into a stupor that’s conducive to a good night’s rest.

Reader Interactions

32Comments

  3. 3.

    Major Major Major Major

    I’m gonna take this mood stabilizer as soon as anybody will hang out with me.

    Should anybody be in SF by the way I’m super happy to hang out.

    Had a fun moment with a chatbot on grindr just now too. http://imgur.com/NyOtHaY

  5. 5.

    JordanRules

    Looking for a movie I can fall asleep to. I fear this will be a night where my insomnia wins handily.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    @JordanRules: “The Dead Zone” is on Netflix, I think. God, what a terrible movie, and boring enough to sweep you off to Dreamland even though its subject is psychic visions of mass murder and nuclear apocalypse. It’s jarring to see a younger Martin Sheen as an evil wannabe president, knowing as I do that he grows up to be the wise and good President Bartlet.

  7. 7.

    JordanRules

    @Betty Cracker: Awww, I think I’m gonna watch West Wing now; reruns sometimes work for me. I can’t do mass murdery stuff even when happily awake at the right times. Not even tongue in cheek stuff. I’m a super wuss.

  13. 13.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Chris: Well, my reply was to Hillary running. However, either women don’t buy the premise of time travel(possible), are less violent(more likely), or just like their trains running on time.

  14. 14.

    joel hanes

    We were surprised to see so few birds

    Bug season is burgeoning up north.

    It’s a long way to the boreal forests and lakes and the muskeg and the tundra,
    but if your hatchlings need to eat their weight in insects dailly,
    it’s the best buffet on the planet for a few weeks each spring.

  15. 15.

    Aleta

    @sharl:
    A related study seeks to determine whether men are more likely to have experienced building time machines, ray guns, and periscope-equipped submarines out of cardboard boxes.

  16. 16.

    RK

    Anyone know why Sullivan walked away from his blog? Just curious because his reasons seem thin.

  17. 17.

    Marilynd..so

    Very few sugar ants have blessed my counter so far after a quite warm late winter….maybe the early spring freeze froze them off. And the Maple Beetles are in less abundance YES!! Not looking forward to a sweltering “dry” heat in So Oregon…dreaming of maybe celebrating my 70th year on this earth in the most treasured place of my childhood…Discovery Bay, Port Townsend, WA. Frightening pics from my friends in the Olympics of little to no glacial reserves….we got some late spring deposits on Mt Ashland and McGloughlin that usually make Angel Wings down the side until well past my BD….late cold spell could help that, fingers crossed!!

  18. 18.

    J R in WV

    So since I’m awake, and data is free from midnight to 6 am, I’m updating the computers, 2 of ’em. While that’s running, in the background I’m reading the blogs of tha’ innertubes. Happy to have companions across the world at 4 and 5 am.

  19. 19.

    sharl

    Some sad news from the literary world:

    Guenter Grass, author of “The Tin Drum”, dies at 87

    German novelist Guenter Grass, the Nobel Prize-winning author of works such as “The Tin Drum”, has died at the age of 87, a foundation in his name said on Monday.

    Grass, with his trademark drooping moustache, was born the Baltic port of Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland, in 1927 and much of his fiction was set in the city.

    For many, Grass was the voice of a German generation that came of age in World War Two and bore the burden of their parents’ guilt for the atrocities of the Nazis.

    (I believe the first name’s spelling is actually Günter, fwiw.) I can’t say I knew his work, though I certainly knew his name and a bit of his back story.

  20. 20.

    Phylllis

    Been up since 4-ish–sent hubs off on a work trip to two little towns near Big Stone Gap in VA. First day back to work for me after Spring break, and I’m totes not feeling it.

  21. 21.

    Valdivia

    @sharl:

    was about to post that and that misspelling of his name is all over twitter too, weird. Maybe they can’t do the umlat properly in some formats… His Tin Drum is an incredible book. I think there is a great interview with him in The Paris Review.

  22. 22.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Valdivia: It’s not a misspelling. Following a vowel with an ‘e’ is the standard way of writing an umlauted word in a typeface without umlauts.

  23. 23.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Aleta: Reminds me of the Cheapass Game “U.S. Patent #1.” The object of the game is to be the first to build a time machine and go back and get the very first American patent.

  24. 24.

    Mustang Bobby

    Up at my usual time this morning and now at work editing a paper that will be delivered this Saturday at the William Inge Theatre Festival’s scholars conference in Independence, Kansas. (Independence, Kansas — not to be confused with Independence, Missouri, a suburb of KC — is a small town about 75 miles north of Tulsa and the birthplace of the playwright that gave us Come Back, Little Sheba; Picnic; Bus Stop; The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and the Oscar-winning screenplay for Splendor in the Grass.) This paper is supposed to be twenty minutes long and now I have to cut it back. Maybe if I talk fast…

  26. 26.

    Keith G

    The patch of grass-like vegetation (not sure it qualifies as a yard per say) in front of my place looks a lot like that picture. Been raining for several days and will continue to do so for a few more. Highs in the low 80s, humidity continually pegged at 100. The move from spring to summer continues apace here on the Texas swamps.

    The good news is that as I stepped out of my door at 4 AM, I was greeted with a refreshing cloud of honeysuckle fragrance.

  28. 28.

    Cervantes

    @Valdivia:

    I think there is a great interview with him in The Paris Review.

    In 1991, by Elizabeth Gaffney, from which:

    GAFFNEY: Do you think your novel Die Rättin suffered somehow in English because the title had to be The Rat and therefore did not convey that it is a female rat? The She-Rat would not have sounded right to American ears and Rattessa is out of the question. The reference to a specifically female rat seems so fascinating, whereas the genderless English word “rat” conjures up everyday images of those ugly beasts that infest the subways.

    GRASS: We did not have this word in the German language either. I created it. I always try to encourage my translators to invent. I tell them, If this word doesn’t exist in your language, create it. Actually, for me it has a nice sound, she-rat.

    GAFFNEY: Why is the rat in the book a female rat? Is that for erotic or feminist or political reasons?

    GRASS: In The Flounder it’s a male. But as I get older I see that I’ve really given myself over to women. I will not change that. Whether it’s a human woman or a rat — a she-rat — it doesn’t matter. I get ideas, you see? They make me jump and dance, and then I find words and stories, and I begin to lie. It’s very important to lie. It makes no sense for me to lie to a man — to sit with a man, together, telling lies — but with a woman!

  29. 29.

    Cervantes

    We went hiking this weekend through a preserve in Central Florida and stumbled into this real-life Monet painting

    That was beautifully spotted, photographed, and written.

    Thanks!

  31. 31.

    workworkwork

    I was scheduled to go to a tech conference downtown tomorrow but it looks like I’ll have to cancel. Thanks to Netflix, I have too much on my plate with work deadlines today and tomorrow.

    I know, I should be more responsible but I really got sucked into “Daredevil”.

  32. 32.

    Amir Khalid

    @sharl:
    Günter* Grass was born with his drooping moustache? That alone should have made him famous.

    *Wikipedia confirms his first name is indeed Günter with a ü.

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