Attention all unannounced POTUS candidates. We still have SUN,TUES,FRI open! Taken: SAT(O'Malley),MON(Graham),WEDS(Chafee),TH(Perry).
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) May 29, 2015
Eastern Massachusetts was three inches short of rain for the month of May, till the weather gods decided to dump most of that on us during the last half-hour. So we’re not at the garden center, buying more potting mix, or in the garden, filling planters.
Apart from downpours, what’s on the agenda as the weekend winds down?
geg6
Just finished cleaning and laundry. Relax an hour or two and then dinner is a Tuscan-style grilled pork loin with red pepper rice, grilled zucchini and summer squash, salad from the garden, leftover almond cream cake and a nice crisp Italian Isanzo del Friuli. Some summer storms expected, so I can cook the pork loin in a cast iron pan in the oven if need be.
Anything on tv tonight?
Botsplainer
Just concluded the YMCA, now home to vacuum, change bedsheets, etc.
shell
Getting a downpour right now…..dog is hiding in the bathroom.
We had such a snowy winter, then a lengthy, wet spring, it floored me when they started talking this week of New Jersey heading into a drought!!!
Germy Shoemangler
Rotten smell emanating from the outside of the refrigerator. Not the inside, the outside. I cleaned the top, sides and bottom thoroughly with alcohol and cloth, and then again with clorox wipes. Took everything out of the freezer and cleaned in there. Same with the fridge. Still smells.
Googled it. Some of the info I saw was rather troubling. Dead mouse in the works a possibility?
Come to think of it, I do recall the little lady cat sitting for an hour a few months ago staring intently at the fridge. At the time I thought it was cute, but now I’m wondering if there’s a rotting corpse up in there somewhere.
I may have to buy a new fridge. Works fine, but the thought of a decomposing rodent is taking away my appetite.
Smells like salami. But we have no salami.
Valdivia
@geg6:
I vicariously enjoy your dinner menus :)
nothing major for my sunday night: got a swim in this am, then work, now sitting on the balcony enjoying a breeze before the storms arrive.
debbie
@geg6:
I guess you never just grab something and eat it standing over the kitchen sink? ;-)
shell
@geg6: Breakfast At Tiffany’s on LogoTV, at 7 and 10pm. Shaun Of The Dead on BBCAmerica at 8.
Germy Shoemangler
Last night our local PBS station featured a Doc Martin marathon. They played the last three shows of season five (or six? I don’t remember). Last show of the season is when the pharmacist with the permanent neck brace steals his son.
The last shot of the show is a close-up of Doc Martin and his love, and then it pans back, and back and turns into a wide aerial view of the island they’re on. I wondered how they got such a dramatic shot. It had to be a drone… no crane could go that high.
gogol's wife
@shell:
Yes, my husband just left on a work trip, and I’m looking forward to Shaun of the Dead. I’ve never seen it, but I adore Hot Fuzz. And I can’t wait to see Isobel Crawley fight zombies!
the Conster
@Germy Shoemangler:
While I wasn’t paying attention last week, the cat brought in dead baby bunny 1 and left it for me where I would see it, but stashed barely alive baby bunny 2 behind the planter all night, where I didn’t see it until he went on full alert in the a.m. I would never have found it if he had a better selection of hiding places. I snuggled all night with a baby animal torturer.
gogol's wife
@the Conster:
I used to feel like Norman Bates’s mother, screaming in horror at the blood trails and body parts in the house. Now I have indoor cats. Much better, in that regard.
Germy Shoemangler
@the Conster: If our cat would only kill the intruders. Instead, she sits and stares at them. They go into hiding, get themselves stuck, and then die.
Several years ago I came downstairs and found her in the gravyboat position, staring intently at a mouse who was flat on its back. I thought it was dead; it wasn’t moving, but there wasn’t a mark on it. I picked it up by its tail and tossed it outside. It shook itself off and ran away.
Our cat doesn’t resort to violence or torture. She prefers to stare them down and induce a form of mouse catatonia.
I’m not 100% sure there’s a dead mouse up inside the back of our fridge. I haven’t seen anything. But google put that thought in my mind, and now I want to vomit.
rikyrah
Does anyone else watch TURN: Washington’s Spies on AMC?
the Conster
@gogol’s wife:
At one point I was tending to 4 ferals on my property, and was often rewarded with “gifts”. When I mowed the lawn, there were always clumps of feathers, fur remnants, innards that I would have to deal with in order to mow. I guess I understand the killing and eating, but cats actually seem to delight in prolonging the inevitable death. If it was a person doing it, they’d be one of those sickos on Criminal Minds.
Myiq2xu
Is anybody watching the Patriot Act kabuki? That used to be a big deal around here.
Germy Shoemangler
@the Conster: I’ve had cat haters tell me that’s the reason they hate cats. Because they torture, rather than kill quickly.
I reply that it isn’t sadism, it’s incompetence. A cat that doesn’t kill immediately with a clean neck bite is merely an inefficient hunter who didn’t learn better from its mother.
But after defending the cats, I go home and wonder to myself, like a defense attorney thinking about his scary client.
geg6
@debbie:
LOL, not really. We both love to cook.
@shell:
Thanks. I’d love to watch Audrey but my John probably won’t sit still for it and I know I won’t sit still for the other. We’ll find something, I guess.
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy Shoemangler: Once while we were away on vacation, a mouse crawled into my car’s ventilation system and died. I know that because whenever I turned on the fan, the smell jumped out and punched me in the face. The dealer said they’d charge something like $500 to disassemble things or I could wait for the mouse to rot away enough that that the smell died too. I did that, but it took a couple of months at least.
Tree With Water
“Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar will be interviewed by Megyn Kelly next week about revelations that their son, Joshua, sexually molested young girls, including his sisters, while he was a teen”.
Those poor children are being raised by monsters, that they may be exploited by other monsters. Shame on them all.
Germy Shoemangler
@Iowa Old Lady: I wish mice would wander far off into the wilderness to die, rather than getting stuck in things.
muddy
@rikyrah: I do.
A guy
pirates will wind up series in San Diego tonight. I’ll be watching if I stay awake
rikyrah
@muddy:
I really like the show. I didn’t think I would.
I like the casting of George Washington.
love seeing the turning of Benedict Arnold – him going down this road.
Suzanne
At Costco, which is so crowded that I want to cry. But it’s already so damn hot that I’d rather be in here than out there.
I want to go home and have a salad.
gogol's wife
@Suzanne:
The NYTimes had a feature on upscale backpacks:
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/leather-backpacks/
ruemara
I’m fuming at this borrowed camera, but it’s my fault I’m not happy. I should have taken the bigger cameras. The image quality of this nikon footage is vomit. I’m going to have to hustle to make the past 2 days worth of footage worth using and I’m still not sure if we should even be doing something this over the top when the specification is simple. Waking up with headaches and feeling generally crummy for a week makes me ultra pissed.
SiubhanDuinne
@Germy Shoemangler:
I know cats, and I know gravy boats, but I don’t know this expression. Can you elucidate, please?
Germy Shoemangler
@SiubhanDuinne: Sort of like a little sphinx. Can’t see the paws or tail.
It’s her default position for quiet watchfulness.
Also known as the bread loaf position.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: Good show and the actor who plays Washington is excellent.
JPL
@Germy Shoemangler: If you have a tray under your refrigerator, pull it out and clean it. Then you can use a flashlight to see if it is underneath.
PurpleGirl
@shell: NYC is getting rain and thunder right now. When the greyhounds were in Peekskill, one of them (Sardy) hated thunder and she’d shake and shake, panting, just having a hell of time. One of us would get down on the floor to hold her and pet her and try to calm her. Damn hard thing to do.
the Conster
@Germy Shoemangler:
I call that “being uploaded’. I’ve had this theory since my first cat that cats were sent by, and are creatures of, aliens. In order for aliens to truly understand what humans and nature are about, they need to infiltrate our wild spaces and our private space without us knowing and freaking out, and what better to use than cats? So, cats do what they do – they watch, then they go into that trance state when all the data they’ve collected on us goes… to the mother ship somewhere. Undoubtedly to enslave us, with the payoff for cats being they’d get to have more staff.
PurpleGirl
@shell: Thanks for the heads up. I love Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And two showings, back to back. Tomato’s tomato pinched by cops, one of the greatest lines ever.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: Rowdy (cat belonging to the Peekskill friends) once brought me a dead bird. He sat by it, staring at the bird and looking at me, with a wide grin on his face. I got some newspaper and picked it up and took it outside to the trash can. I also told Rowdy he didn’t have to bring me any more presents but I knew he was just showing me he liked me. He never did bring me another catch. Rowdy was the neighborhood mouser and neighbors were sad to see my friends moving to Florida and taking Rowdy with them.
gogol's wife
@efgoldman:
Oh, come now, it’s a classic! “They’ve got a little blue chair for little boys, and a little pink one for little girls.”
Steeplejack (phone)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Or the meatloaf position.
SiubhanDuinne
@Germy Shoemangler:
Ah, okay, thank you. I’ve always called that the Meatloaf pose, after the classic Kliban drawing.
Edit: The drawing that Steeplejack linked to at #37.
Tree With Water
@efgoldman: To this day I’ve never seen the movie, but once jokingly referred to a kid as a bad seed and got shot a dirty look by the kid’s mother for the effort.
EZSmirkzz
We broke the sky.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Germy Shoemangler: Expired rodent under or behind was my first thought at “smell outside refrigerator.” Cat on watch makes it more likely.
ThresherK
@Germy Shoemangler: “Come to think of it, I do recall the little lady cat sitting for an hour a few months ago staring intently at the fridge”
Same presumption as many others.
Our fierce tabby and our other cat once both stared at an air duct in our previous home. Dead of winter, and about the closest register to the furnace. Turns out a mouse got into the heating ducts, somehow, followed it up to the slanted register, and then perished.
I only discovered it after it started smelling, and until then hadn’t had to think about how to take apart the register, which I discovered was painted shut.
ThresherK
Oh, and once my cat chased a little mouse to under the fridge. I got out the flashlight, pulled off the fascia, and had a look. The fridge cycled on, and the little thing looked like it was in a wind tunnel.
J R in WV
One of our cats spends about 20 hours a day outside when the weather is nice. More like 4 or 6 hours in the cold or wet days of winter. She had caught and eaten several little rodents in a night, judging from the gallbladders she removes and leaves. The dogs always go right to the Koolaroo where she eats in the am to sniff and see what was good last night.
But I’m grateful for what she does, and the dogs, who also eat rodents. We would be sinking into a sea of rodents, as we live in the forest, surrounded by tiny critters. There is population pressure forcing excess rodents into the circle where our cats and dogs hunt, and this is why they continue to catch mice, and moles, and voles, the occasional rat, and (sadly) quite a few chipmunks. Very few birds, though!
At one time we had a 6 foot black snake living in the house. We found peeled skins shed by snake on top of the HVAC ducts in the ceiling of the basement that were at least that long. They shrink some after the snake sheds them Snake was obviously catching enough bugs and mice to get that big. We would hear a rustle from time to time in a wall.
Once one of the cats was looking under the bedside chair very intently. We had only been in the house a year or two. He was more active looking than “breadloaf” position, but motionless and intent.When I leaned over and looked, there was a tiny garter snake (I assume, there are so many species of little brown snakes, and I didn’t look him up)!
I got gloves and picked him up, and tossed him off the back porch into the dark. I’m sure he did fine after his adventure.
chopper
just came down to portland from seattle. wife is interviewing for jobs in both cities. would prefer portland but I’ll take what I can get.
Suzanne
@gogol’s wife: DAMN. Those backpacks are BEAUTIFUL. Outside of my price range, to say the least. But awesome. THX for the link.
Tree With Water
@ThresherK: A Gary Larson cartoon has one dog saying to another dog, as their owner sits in a chair watching TV (paraphrase): “Watch me spook him by staring at the closet door and growling menacingly”.
Monala
This is a follow up to the TLC/Duggar article last week. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but we have basic cable because my daughter wants to watch Disney, Nick, and Cartoon Channel, and my husband likes sports, the History Channel, and shows like Storage Wars and Deadliest Catch.
So in the Duggar article, commenters were talking about how trashy TLC, Discovery and History have become. Again, I wouldn’t know, since I don’t watch. But I found myself with a rare afternoon with nothing to do, and hubby had the History Channel on. Nothing about Sasquatch and aliens (as others described the content of the channel on that thread). Instead, I watched a show about Robber Barrons (very thought-provoking, seeing the parallels between them and the Wall Street meltdown, as well as seeing the origins of Ayn Rand’s tripe). I saw an ad for a show about the founding of Texas. Is this lineup unusual?
gogol's wife
@Suzanne:
Yes, they’re beautiful but obscenely expensive! But I thought they might give you an idea.
Kathleen
@Germy Shoemangler: My brother who lives in Dallas smelled a terrible odor in his car, and when he turned his air on he heard a thumping noise. His repair person informed him a rat had crawled into the car’s heating/ac system and died. His house near a creek so he sees his fair share of critters. He’s a regular Dr. Doolittle.
satby
OK, OT a bit but does anyone remember the name of the Bed and Breakfast Cole’s friends opened? I have friends who are thinking about heading to WV and I wanted her to see their web page.
Tree With Water
@Kathleen: I once sold tires for a living, and would pick up my paycheck at the department store’s car repair shop. One time after a day of trout fishing I dropped by, immediately after the entire crew had been reamed by an irate customer who had dragged the store manager into the beef. Those mechanics were pissed off, but when they saw my string of fish their eyes lit up. They demanded and got one. Within the few minutes remaining before the customer drove off, and while the manager was profusely apologizing to him, they unscrewed a side panel in the car, put the trout in, and buttoned it back up. To this day I don’t know if the customer’s anger was justified, and it might have been. But those guys got the last laugh.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: Ugh, that happened to a car I had once. I guess the mouse was attracted to the warm, dry place. Horrific odor.
Another Holocene Human
@debbie: me! me!
Steeplejack
@Monala:
The History Channel might be the least trashy of the three channels, but that’s not saying much. They typically kick it up a notch on the weekend. If your random afternoon viewing were tomorrow, for example, you would see a seven-hour block of American Pickers, about “antiques collectors who travel the U.S. looking for rare artifacts and national treasures”—most of it overhyped shlock, from the (admittedly few) episodes I have seen. If you last until 5:00 p.m., you’ll see a 12-hour block of that “show about the founding of Texas” you saw advertised. It’s Texas Rising, and, oh, yeah, it’s fiction, and it has received mostly mediocre reviews. And those 12 hours consist of one new episode and reruns of that and two other episodes.
Tuesday? Big block of Modern Marvels, a relatively inoffensive but lowbrow show about manufacturing and engineering. Wednesday? American Pickers again. Thursday: Pawn Stars, self-explanatory sister show to American Pickers. Friday: America Unearthed (sample episode: “Custer’s Blood Treasure”) and then—bingo!—Ancient Aliens from 2:00 to 10:00 p.m., followed by Hangar 1: The UFO Files.
Next Saturday appears to be military-porn day—another staple of the History Channel: Ten Days to D-Day, D-Day in HD, Ultimate WWII Weapons, Third Reich, Third Reich: The Fall. Then an episode of Texas Rising and a block of Pawn Stars to finish the evening.
Sorry to go on at such spittle-flecked length, but I took a look at the channel guide to refresh my memory, and it’s actually worse than I remembered. I’m not even gonna look at the other two channels.
Steeplejack
@satby:
I believe you mean Barn with Inn, Wellsburg, West Virginia.
Tree With Water
@Steeplejack: Suffice to say, if that channel wasn’t part of a take TV or leave it package, it would likely go under.
Another Holocene Human
@Monala: Discovery and History still have good shows (although Discovery can be “rah for industry” without considering other viewpoints and I find History’s history too dumbed down). But it does seem like some times you turn on the TV and it’s nonstop Pawn Stars (retch), Storage Wars (stupid filler), and [Expletive] Dead-[expletive]-est Catch [Expletive] [Expletive]. Like seriously, they run this shit for 2-3 hour blocks. Usually at shit times which is exactly when I might be trapped at work with the ubiquitous TV blaring.
Another Holocene Human
@Steeplejack: I forgot about that godawful American Pickers show … and does anybody actually watch Ancient Aliens? Racist, shit stupid, and apparently boring as fuck because I’ve never seen it on the TV at work … 2 hours of Maury, yes, “I’m not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens” guy, no.
I’d rather watch Lockup Raw than American Pickers. Better yet, take the TV off the wall with a sledgehammer, sweep it into a Rubbermaid Roughneck, and set it on fire. Then you can have some real reality TV when the fire dep’t gets called.
Another Holocene Human
@Tree With Water: Cable (the content people and the actual providers) are going to be fucking sorry they didn’t let people pick channels. HBO is ahead of the curve here.
Steeplejack
Speaking of “anything on TV tonight,” I discovered last night that all 12 episodes of the new NBC miniseries Aquarius, which just started last Thursday night, are apparently already available for streaming, on line with the NBC app and in the on-demand section of my cable system (Cox). I was talking on the phone with a friend who asked me if I was watching it, and I said I had recorded the first episode but hadn’t watched it yet. She said, “It’s pretty good, but I had a problem with episode five”—and I was like WTF?! She said, yeah, she’s binge-watching it on her iPad with the NBC app.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the show being available as soon as possible, but all the promos I saw made it seem like the usual big-budget network (slow) rollout, one episode a week. Wouldn’t this cut into the “live” audience and affect the value of NBC’s advertising? And does NBC assume (probably correctly) that there’s some huge segment of their audience, probably old and out of touch, that’s going to sit around waiting on tenterhooks for “next week’s episode”? Maybe NBC is making it up with ads in the streaming version.
satby
@Steeplejack: Thanks! That’s what I mean.
Another Holocene Human
In the interests of fairness, on Discovery, I had forgotten this:
Discovery Channel’s show Sons of Guns star Will Hayden was arrested for aggravated rape of a minor who turned out to be his own daughter. Later his other daughter said she was molested by her father as well. Show was canned.
The commenter went on to list FOUR TLC shows with “stars” who raped or sexually assaulted children, the most recent being Josh Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack: I read somewhere that it’s an experiment see how it works, if people will continue watching as a weekly serial or watch it all at once.
I watched 4 episodes and it’s kind of a mess, it could be really good but I think they’re trying to do too much with not enough directed storytelling.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
Okay, that sounds like a reasonable experiment.