My daughter has had her driver’s license for exactly one year and two days, and she has already been in two accidents. Thankfully both were just fender benders, and no one was hurt. Neither accident was her fault.
The first occurred when some idiot inexplicably peeled out of a parking lot and smashed into the side of my kid’s car while she was stopped at a traffic light. Today, some moron turned around to shush a baby in the back seat and rear-ended my kid’s car.
The first nincompoop had no insurance, so the poor kid is driving around with unsightly dents and scrapes on one side of her car. The woman who rear-ended her today does have insurance, but the damage is so negligible compared to the scars from the first wreck that I’m not sure we’ll even bother fixing it; it’s a beater anyway.
But damn, I wish people would quit running into the poor kid. It makes us all very nervous.
It’s been raining heavily all day here, which has made everyone sleepy — humans and beasts alike. I’m the only one still awake and am streaming the Ken Burns program about the Roosevelts. We’re on the FDR segment.
I didn’t know FDR’s 80-something mother got out of France just a couple of days before Hitler invaded Poland. I also didn’t know that FDR’s mother looked like FDR in drag, but she did — the resemblance was uncanny.
That’s all I know. What are you thinking about tonight? Open thread!
Mike E
FDR was channeling TR, and that seance save the nation.
/shorter Ken Burns
Pogonip
You need a debate topic? Here’s one:
Resolved: Thurston should have his own bathroom, where he can tear up toilet paper in peace without some crazy fat guy jumping up and down, waving his arms and yelling.
Discuss.
Mike E
If you employ a time machine to assassinate Hitler, you will invariably take out Eleanor Roosevelt instead.
/shorter Futurama
Mike E
A bird in hand is better, far far better, than 4 more years of Bush.
ms_canadada
@Pogonip: That’s a splendid idea, as long as he doesn’t eat it. My old dog Bernie, who passed away a few years back, was a notorious Kleenex eater. As he aged and developed lumpy skin, we’d explain the lumps as his Kleenex humps. I don’t think it was good for him, especially knowing how toilet paper and Kleenex is made (bleach!) Oh, and Bernie loved to sing, (especially with Magma and Jimi).
ms_canadada
@Mike E: Brilliant!
A Ghost To Most
Sorry about the kiddo and the car.
We have a road here in Denver (I-76) we now avoid after having 3 incidents on it in 6 months; got rear ended, flying table leg into radiator, flying two-By-four into windshield.
Betty Cracker
@Mike E: I liked that Burns had George Will comment on the New Deal programs. You could tell he was struggling not to go all Old Bilbo Baggins-when-he-sees-the Ring while spitting out the words about the welfare state.
Kristine
Should be working. Watching JOHN WICK instead.
Love that movie.
Tree With Water
I’ve been in a few fender benders. On at least one of those occasions I took comfort in some words-of-wisdom Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) one spoke, in fact on the very day her home in Mill Valley, Ca. burnt to its foundation. She was quoted in the paper as saying that she had learned long before to “never cry over anything that can’t cry over you”. I was impressed, to the point I’ve never forgot the words. That noted, it (of course) remains entirely appropriate to cry over any subsequent rise in your insurance rates.
hitchhiker
My (25-yr-old) kid — speaking of kids — has been knocking around eastern Europe for the last month or so. She’s on a flight home right now, and I CANNOT wait to see her face and hear about Sarajevo and Albania and Istanbul. ETA 12:20 am Seattle time. :) Love that girl.
ruemara
Aww man, that sucks. I’m sorry she’s having accident magnet woes. I’m going to drink some tea and enjoy a quiet evening.
sacrablue
What am I thinking about tonight? I’m desperately trying to get jury duty out of my head. I can’t seem to shake it. We reached our verdicts on Monday, but the stress of the seven week ordeal is still draped around me and I can’t shake it off.
Gravenstone
I’ve only had two accidents, the first was hitting a deer (that I came within inches of managing to swerve around, that still did more damage to my car than I’d paid in premiums to that point in my life). The second was some moron in a parking lot who managed to swing around and hit me. I should mention that it was just the two of us in the parking lot. And that I had come to a complete stop when I saw him start moving. First thing the officer asked when he pulled up was if I’d smelled alcohol on the guy’s breath? (I hadn’t). He claimed his foot slipped because it was wet from mowing the lawn. Fortunately he was insured so I got reimbursed for my deductible.
/shorter: people are fucking morons sometimes
Mnemosyne (tablet)
I am very frustrated with my West Coast sister in law right now (hereinafter referred to as WC). My nieces are out visiting and staying with her and my brother. I wanted us all to go to the Science Center and Natural History Museum today, but WC didn’t show up to my place with the kids until 1:30, we didn’t get to the museum until 2:00 but of course no one had had lunch yet, so we ended up with only 2-1/2 hours to try and hit the highlights of two museums.
And when I asked her tonight what we were going to do tomorrow, she said, I’m not a planner. Yeah, I know, and that’s why bullshit like this happens. The kids spent more time in the goddamned car than they did doing anything fun, FFS. But we can’t have a plan because she’s “not a planner.” Which means that, once again, I will spend an entire afternoon sitting on her couch waiting for her to “spontaneously” never make a decision so we never go to frickin’ go anywhere. Which means that we did, in fact, fly these kids out from Florida to California so they could sit on her couch and watch TV for two weeks. Fuck.
Pogonip
@sacrablue: 7 weeks? Wow! I hope your employer pays you while you are on jury duty.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Can you say something like ” Tomorrow I’m going to pick the kids up at nine and take them to the Cole Mustard Museum, I hope you’ll come too.”?
Mike E
@Betty Cracker: Gawd, what a phoney Will is… he knows he has to be the “sane” face of conservatism, but his lot wants to somehow get back at the Class Traitor that was FDR; dig him up, perform an exorcism and grind him to powder, the only way to be certain that no more progressive acts can be committed by anyone ever again.
Two awesome quotes from the series… a newsman on TR: He bit me, and I went mad!
FDR, when asked in ’35 during the Great Depression if he thought he would be remembered as the greatest president or the worst: I don’t care, as long as I’m not the last president.
lamh36
Came out of the grocery store and damnit, something or Somebody scratched/scrapped my damn rear passenger side door handle…fuckers!!!!
As some may remember I just got the care in Jan…brand new…now I gotsa scratch…ugh…fuckers!
opiejeanne
We bought my son a tank when he got his license: a 55 Chevy. It was gun-metal gray, had about 60k miles on it; It really was owned by a little old lady from Pasadena, the wife of a Nazarene minister so it didn’t have a mirror, but it had every other bit of chrome and electronic goodies that you could buy in “55.
About a week after he got it a woman turned left from a stop sign onto a four-lane road and hit his car; he had the right-of-way because he didn’t have a stop. He was in the fast lane of the road, saw her coming and moved over to the slow lane to avoid her. He was 17 and she was in her late 70s and bull of self-righteousness from having virtuously visited the “elderly” in a nearby retirement home. She got out of the car and started yelling at him, and luckily there were a lot of witnesses who pulled over and gave him their contact info. It was also lucky that a friend was in the car at the time who helped him stay calm and reminded him of what to do.
We gave the witness contact info to our insurance company and the old lady’s agent called us and apologized for her behavior, and asked what the damage was to our car. None. It scuffed thwax slightly, I was able to rub out the mark. Her passenger door had a big dent in it, probably $700 in damage back in 1987.
Tree With Water
@Gravenstone: My foot did slip, you idiot ha-ha. My uncle had his front tire tear loose on highway 29 in Napa county, and as he skid to a halt he watched it take these huge bounces as it propelled forward towards oncoming traffic. God took pity on the poor slob speeding towards a bullseye collision course with the errant projectile, and the tire bounced just high enough for the guy’s speeding car to pass underneath it. My uncle then changed the tire, and went home and opened a bottle of wine (I assume).
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, I only saw a few episodes of the documentary, but I do remember seeing George Will show up and being like “who the FUCK thought it’d be a good idea to interview him about President Progressive Era and President New Deal?”
sacrablue
@Pogonip: No, I’m unemployed (retired). I will more than beak even for gas and lunches. But it won’t cover the necessary brain bleach.
Mike in NC
We finally finished ‘House of Cards’ and are now getting into ‘Last Tango in Halifax’ on Netflix.
mtiffany
Never saw that Burns documentary so when I read that sentence the first thing that came to mind was of FDR made up to look like Bianca DelRio. Thanks for that.
Mike in NC
@Chris: Glenn Beck was unavailable.
opiejeanne
@Pogonip: I was thinking the same thing. WC can either join the party or stay home and do whatever.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Pogonip:
Tried that. She wants to get to do the fun things, too, so she won’t let me take the girls without her, but she also won’t commit to a time to do the fun things, so we end up not doing anything because of appointments she forgot, housework, etc. But don’t do anything fun without me!
I came very close to going over the edge yesterday after I picked (with her approval and consent!) Tuesday as the day for all of us to go to Disneyland, booked a hotel for Monday night (the night before) so she wouldn’t have to drive two hours and then prod the kids out of the car, and she then announced that she has to drop her stepkids off at karate at 7pm on Monday. So, uh, what time were you planning to leave your apartment for the 2-hour drive to Anaheim, exactly? Oh, yeah, that’s right …
(I have decided that G and I are going to go down to Anaheim on Monday afternoon, check into the hotel on everyone’s behalf, and have a nice dinner. She and the kids will get there when they get there, not my problem.)
Also, please note — this visit was planned around her and my brother’s schedule. They picked the dates. I am working around HER schedule at every turn and she still can’t make a fucking decision.
sacrablue
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I think you should just go pick up the girls, hand WC your plan for the day and invite her to join you when ever she is ready. It’s about spending time with the girls, not her.
lamh36
Betty Cracker
Damn. Winston Churchill was more of a lush than I knew if this documentary is to be believed! He was a guest in the White House for three weeks and had sherry with breakfast, scotch and sodas for lunch and brandy and champagne with dinner.
srv
And you people thought it was over with Sarah:
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: AllPar won’t let me see the photo unless I do a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do.
The ’57 Chevy was a really pretty vehicle, and is somewhat more collectible than the 55. The ’56 is the least interesting of the three years.
We had a ’57 Ford that my parents kept until 1970. That thing just ran and ran. They wanted me to drive it but I never convinced Dad that I could handle a stick, and it was probably for the best anyway because I couldn’t see over the steering wheel because the springs in the bench seat were shot and I’m short. I could only see by looking under the wheel and over the dash. Not ideal. It was a pretty thing, white and light blue two-tone, I think it was a Custom. I know it wasn’t a Gala because it didn’t have as much chrome. Mom said she saw a newer car get a hole poked in the rear panel by the fins on a ’57 Chevy.
mtiffany
@opiejeanne: In response to your question from an earlier thread that I never did answer… yes, I was joking about dialectics and blood sugar.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Three weeks??? I can’t imagine staying that long as a guest unless I was paying.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: William Manchester’s bio of Churchill would support that general theory, but he says that Churchill simply nursed a weak Scotch and soda through the late morning and lunch.
BillinGlendaleCA
@sacrablue: A seven week trail is extremely long. Most of the criminal juries I’ve been on have only been a few days. The one civil trial jury I was on lasted a few weeks but it wasn’t continuous, on one day off another while the attorneys appealed the judges rulings. One funny moment in that trial was when the judge’s ear fell off(he had a prosthetic ear).
@Pogonip: They ask how many paid days you get from your employer for jury duty on the summons. The judge won’t make you serve on a long trail if you won’t get paid by your employer(if you’re employed).
BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: My first car was my mom’s ’59 Chevy Parkwood wagon. When I went on the hike with the kid there was one in the observatory parking lot.
Pogonip
@efgoldman: That sounds worth a try.
opiejeanne
@mtiffany: I figured it was a joke, but I have heard otherwise intelligent people make comments like that because they were tired, or because they have a gap in what most of us think of as common knowledge. It’s kind of surprising what other people don’t know.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
If she didn’t live 45 minutes north of me in the opposite direction from the majority of fun things to do around here, that would be a lot more viable.
Example: my nephew (her stepson) has a haircut scheduled for 12:30 pm tomorrow. Nothing else can happen — no plans can be made — until after that happens. She refuses to even think about what to do that afternoon until the haircut is done. Because SPONTANEOUS!
Meanwhile I in my middle age have long since come to the conclusion that spontaneity is vastly overrated, and that if you don’t plan to have fun, you’ll never get around to doing anything fun. I may overdo it in the planning department sometimes but, fuck, pick something when I offer multiple options to you!
I would be less frustrated if the kids seemed fine with it, but they keep asking me what we’re doing and I have to tell them I don’t know because WC has to decide. I feel really bad, because we all (kids and me) thought we would be doing fun things, but Ms. Spontaneity wants to be free be not have to make a plan.
Tree With Water
@efgoldman: I’ll always be be grateful that I had a friend in high school (circa ’72) that had a ’58 Chevy, and that I got to cruise around in it. Strange to say, even though it was only 14 years later, not all that many were on the road by then. Or so I remember it. It was like driving around in a spacious clubhouse, relative to the tighter squeeze feel of a typical 1960’s sardine can of a car.
Timurid
@efgoldman:
The craziest accident like that I’ve heard of happened to one of my former co-workers.
He totalled his new BMW 325i when he hit an old Steelcase desk on a freeway at about 75 mph. It was after dark and the thing blended into the pavement almost perfectly. Until the very last moment he thought it was a patch on the road. It went through the engine compartment like a torpedo. The engine block was actually split in half. Fortunately no debris made it into the passenger compartment; he wasn’t hurt.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): She’s stupid and selfish. Can you speak to your brother and point out the problems with her “spontaneity”? So Cal has lots of fun stuff to do, but almost all of it should be planned a bit because of traffic and just using your time intelligently.
Me? I’d be near my melt-down point right about now.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I thought you said they were in 1000 Oaks, that’s west of you(even though it’s north on the 101). I’m pretty much a planning nazi for initial stuff, but I’m spontaneously flexible after that.
srv
@opiejeanne: To be a tank, it has to be able to take a licking.
Bench seat 1971 Chevy Impala. It was in 5 accidents. It was not moving in any of them. It tore the side off of a 75 Cougar (bent one fender guard), was rear ended by a K-Car (engine went into K-Cars passenger seat – cracked a right brake light), and rear ended by an 80s F150 (NYE drunk, left the bumper, grill and part of the radiator behind – gave the Impala a menancing tail lift).
Mom would not let us paint the kills on the left fender.
BillinGlendaleCA
I just finished putting together my new desk chair, it’s quite comfortable. I may again attempt to head up the Los Flores Motorway to Mt. Thom and Tongva Peak north of central Glendale.
Mary G
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Hope you can maintain your cool in front of the kids – as one of them, I can remember a friend being horribly embarrassed by her mom when we were two hours late because she was aimlessly running around in circles for no apparent reason. I was just as embarrassed by my mom – although she never
“said” anything, the heavy sighs, rolling eyes, and passive-aggressive comments about what we had missed because we had got there late spoke volumes.
sacrablue
@BillinGlendaleCA: We had a judge that tried his best to be kind to the jury. He knew we were going to see and hear things that were really disturbing. We had almost thirty witnesses and lots of evidence to ponder. There were ten felony charges along with five agreements to go with several of the charges. We did have several days off and lots of the jurors were government employees, so they couldn’t claim hardship and had to serve.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
Also, too, complicated family dynamics are complicated, and taking the kids without her going or at least agreeing would cause a shitstorm with my brother. She is not my favorite person anyway, so there is existing tension that would be exacerbated if I acted alone.
Other complicating factor: my other niece and nephew (her stepkids) are at the apartment this weekend, and I can’t fit all of the kids all into my sedan. I can’t deliberately leave my local niece and nephew out because it would hurt their feelings. So I’m screwed.
Gravenstone
@Tree With Water: I got kissed on the front fender by a runaway wheel on I-94 in downtown Milwaukee. Fortunate that it only scuffed the paint, rather than bouncing high enough to hit the driver’s side window.
I also had a moron mowing the field grass along the ditch pitch up a couple of fist sized rocks (no discharge chute on his beat up riding mower). That one was sort of surreal, as time went into slowdown mode and I could watch them fly all the way in to my SUV. The smaller of the two lost enough energy and skittered to the road, but the larger (complete with a notch chipped out by the mower blade) slammed into my rear driver side door. Quite the impressive dents where it bounced twice along the side of my vehicle. Never filed on that one as the damage wasn’t much more than my deductible.
BillinGlendaleCA
@sacrablue: I once got called into a courtroom for juror questioning, the judge was named Wopner. Before he dismissed us, he said, “yes my dad was the tv judge Wopner”.
Gravenstone
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Tell WC that this isn’t about her, but about the kids. And that her appointments can be broken and remade because she’ll still be there, but the kids are only with your family for couple of weeks. Get her to try putting them first,
mtiffany
@Mnemosyne (tablet): If WC were spontaneous she could still have a list of things or at least an idea of she wanted to do without necessarily having to have ‘a plan.’ So she sounds less like she’s spontaneous and more like she’s, how do I put this delicately(?), a whack job. Could her kids stay with you a night or two so you don’t have to wait for her to find her head to screw it on each day?
Edit: Missed the comment about the additional kids in the picture: wow, you are loaded down with the youngsters.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@opiejeanne:
Believe me, I’m pretty close. There’s other shit going on (a meltdown via phone by the kids’ mother (aka Devil Woman) that I can’t even go into just yet) that has WC stressed out, so pushing too hard is just going to lead to a nasty fight in front of the kids. I think part of this is WC showing me that I’m not the boss of her even though (maybe because) the DW’s meltdown was because of a dumb thing WC did.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@mtiffany:
Oh, I wanted to take the kids for a couple of nights. My brother (her husband) suggested it, too. She refused. She has issues. I can usually deal with her issues, but I’m starting to feel like she’s impacting the kids’ vacation.
(Are you getting the feeling that she and I are in a competition to be the Most Fun Aunt? I sure am, and I didn’t even fucking realize I was supposed to be competing.)
magurakurin
Barney Frank: not feeling the Bern
Why Progessives Shouldn’t Support Bernie
Over at the Great Orange Satan they are throwing Barney Frank under every bus they can find. Gonna be amusing when Senator Warren eventually endorses Secretary Clinton to be the nominee. How Bernie Sanders goes about garnering much support from the party leaders of the party he basically feels isn’t good enough for him to join, remains a great mystery to me.
sfinny
Drove into Wash DC and NYC and parked last week. They did the review of the vehicle for damage and I was surprised to see the what they picked up. Mostly just scratches but one dent that I had never noticed. The car is an 2011 purchase so it is a good show so far (crosses fingers).
sacrablue
@BillinGlendaleCA: At least, it might have been entertaining if he ran his courtroom the same way as his dad.
? Martin
@Mike E: Actually, if you invent a time machine to go back and kill Hitler, you then become the guy who killed Hitler, which means you become Hitler.
Don’t be Hitler.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Well, I’ll agree that your rather selfish sister in law is seemingly taking great pride in ruining the kids’ vacation. Yes, this is a slam on her personality. No, that is of lesser importance than the kids enjoy themselves. Though if there was a way to put the kids in shifts….
BillinGlendaleCA
@sacrablue: He was pretty businesslike. The one that was funny was the judge whose ear fell off during witness testimony. He didn’t realize it, one of my fellow jurors raised his hand and said, “judge, your ear just fell off”. Court recessed for the day. The next morning, before we continued with testimony, the judge said to us, “How do you like my new ear”.
catclub
@Chris: On the one hand, Ken Burns documentaries are groundbreaking. No one else has done anything like them. ON the other hand, the hacks he has as authorities are extremely bad choices to anyone who knows anything about the subject matter.
George Will on Baseball and Roosevelts. Doris Kearns Goodwin and Shelby Foote on the Civil War. The Jazz one left out huge swathes of jazz types. ONly one type of jazz fan ( I forget which) would consider it even close to complete or balanced look at jazz. I wonder what got left out of the National Parks. I imagine DKG is on FDR as well. Because reasons.
Mike E
@? Martin: Too late! Damn you, O Promise of Technological Advancement!
catclub
@? Martin: Red Dwarf episode. They go back and convince Kennedy to kill himself.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@gwangung:
I think she’s overwhelmed but doesn’t want to admit it, because then somehow she loses face with her stepkids’ mom. The compulsion to be Supermom is always unhealthy, but it’s even weirder when the person trying to prove that they’re Supermom is really Stepmom.
I think we have complementary styles, and if she would let me be Action Aunt while she’s Nurturing Aunt, the visit would be going a lot more smoothly. But, nope, she has to be all things at all times and God forbid anyone else does anything.
I don’t think the kids’ vacation is being totally ruined, but I think we’re all definitely frustrated right now when we didn’t have to be, and I think it’s because she feels like she has to prove something to some imaginary Council of Perfect Mothers somewhere.
Mike E
@catclub: Meh, he put in Pops so the Jazz docu worked for me…fuck George Will with a rusty toupee.
opiejeanne
IT’S RAINING!!! HALLELUJAH!
(Just east of Seattle)
Librarian
@catclub: What was wrong with Shelby Foote?
Tree With Water
@sfinny: I’ve always been a truck guy. The first one I ever bought brand new shone like a diamond in my eyes. I didn’t want it dinged, but even on the first day I knew it was just a matter of time. I even relaxed a little bit when it finally happened, when its diamond days were over and it became just another truck. Same thing happened with the second one I bought, and it will probably happen with the third.
BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Hot and getting drier here.
Tommy
@magurakurin: I left the Great Orange Satan for a specific reason. I was a frequent poster. Well known. But I didn’t at times agree with whatever powers that be. Honestly, that didn’t work out so well for me in the community.
I tend to take a different than many.
As I said in other comments today, Barney IMHO has earned the right to say pretty much anything he wants. I might not agree but the dude was being in your face liberal before I bet most of us.
Mike E
@Librarian: Too Sutherin, other than that, nothing.
sacrablue
@BillinGlendaleCA: We had one prospective juror that was 73 and had never served on a jury. After answering several questions that showed he really wasn’t up to the task, the judge excused him by telling him he wasn’t going to be able to cross this one off his bucket list this time around. They excused 52 jurors before I got selected. I was juror #12.
sacrablue
@opiejeanne: It is never gonna rain here again. My lawn is extra crispy.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Okay, the screw-up — WC let my 15 YO niece get highlights and my 9 YO niece get a pink streak in her hair without speaking directly to their Devil Woman mother to get her okay. Even I, the aunt with no children, know not to mess with a kid’s hair without the mom’s explicit permission. This then turned in FOUR HOURS of nonstop phone calls and texts from the DW demanding that the DW be allowed to scream at my brother about this even though he didn’t know anything about it until the DW started sending crazy texts to his phone. This happened last night (Thursday night).
So, yeah, stress level at 11, so I can’t push too hard. The wound is still too fresh. WC brought it on herself, so now she feels even more of a compulsion to hoard the kids for herself.
sfinny
@Tree With Water: Totally get that. Must admit that I was distressed by the marks that I hadn’t even noticed. Given that the car is more than four years old, and that I haven’t had an accident, I should be happy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: People aren’t saying that Sanders can’t/shouldn’t say what he wants. People who are central to the Democratic coalition were saying that the Democratic Party has been soft pedaling their issues for years.
Those people were/are correct,
Tommy
@Librarian: Well I don’t know other than my father has a PhD in Civil War military history. His major professor T. Harry Williams.
Tried to show him Ken Burns shows on the Civil War and he couldn’t get past Shelby Foote. Said he was a hack. I had no clue what he was talking about. Stormed out of the room at even the sight of him.
I say this as a dude where most kids went to Disney World on their holiday breaks. I went to Civil War battlefields. Mom likes to joke I am the most photographed child in the world on said fields.
My father is about the most laid back person you will find.
Being on those fields he’d get animated and almost dance around telling me how things unfolded.
Dad is also not a violent person, but thinking if put in a room with Shelby Foote punches would be thrown. Best I can tell there are only a handful of experts on said topic and not all of them are in agreement nor like each other.
Ruckus
@sacrablue:
Got to be one of the alternates on a 3 day trial. Guy gave up a career as a doctor to bulk up with steroids. Wrote phony prescriptions for them. When the trial was over and the regular jury came back into the room the judge told us about some of the evidence that didn’t make it to testimony. If it had the deliberations would have lasted a lot less than the hour they did.
Then was on call for what was expected to be a drawn out murder trial. The judge told us the case would last weeks. The guy coped an hour before selection started.
opiejeanne
@BillinGlendaleCA: I think at this point we’ve had fewer rainy days since April or maybe even March than you have, but you have my sympathy.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Winnie did like his hooch.
Later in life, it is said, he had custom tailored one piece zippered suits made, to allow undressing while inebriated to be accomplished without any fumbling with buttons and buckles.
@catclub
Oughtn’t that be “convince Kennedy to smegging kill himself?”
;0
catclub
@Tommy:
I think there are LOTS of experts, but Burns makes it look more like there is only one expert and only one view. The impression I got from “Many Rivers to Cross” was how many experts there are and how many different opinions they have.
Also, since Foote has died, I hope your dad does not beat up corpses.
Origuy
I’m at O’Keefe’s in San Fransisco listening to an Irish sesiun. Anybody in the city come down. They’ll be here for a while.
opiejeanne
@sacrablue: Where are you? Near Sacramento?
Most of my lawn is very crispy and we noticed today that part of a hedge is dying, possibly because of the lack of rain, and we’re starting to worry about our trees; we have a long line of birches across the front of our property, and even though we started watering them two weeks ago, it may be too late.
This is the PNW, dammit, but it’s been more like SoCal this year. If this keeps up I will want to plant a jacaranda.
catclub
@NotMax: Yes. Ratoot, hureek, hununga.
Mike E
@sacrablue:
Wow. Sux.
I served on a civil trial, was never asked a single question during selection… By the end, our panel would’ve been satisfied if the whole lot of them (plaintiff, defendant, lawyers, judge) got eaten by ravenous wolves. We literally lost faith in the system by how stupid that house-flip-went-wrong suit was. We split the baby with extreme prejudice.
Librarian
@Tommy: He probably didn’t like Foote because he was a novelist and not a professional historian. I have some graduate training in history, but Foote not being a historian didn’t bother me a bit. I vastly enjoyed “The Civil War” (his books) and thought he was great in the documentary.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: I can’t say the exact thing about rain here or there where I live. But it seems to me our rain is getting to be close to perfect. I say that because of my garden. I used to use my rain barrel to water it.
Not a single time this year, well twice, where we didn’t have rain and I thought to myself I need to water my garden. It just seems to rain logically.
Mike E
@Tommy: Foote did say on camera during the Civil War docu the two geniuses of the conflict were Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Yikes.
Betty Cracker
@Librarian: Nothing was wrong with Shelby Foote. He was awesome in that series.
sacrablue
@Ruckus: This guy was a cop accused of raping a 75 year old stroke victim more than once. Needless to say it was extremely intense. I think there was lots of evidence that we never saw. There were frequent sidebars and we were sent out the the room several times. Nobody from the the trial is permitted to speak to us until after the sentencing. We were even warned not to talk to anyone that may want to pay us to tell them what we discussed yet. The law says they have to leave us alone for 90 days.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike E: Forrest was damned good as a soldier. The appellation of genius does not imply moral approval.
sacrablue
@opiejeanne: Yep, northern Sacramento county. The only things that get watered are the veggies that my son is growing in containers.
Mike E
@Omnes Omnibus: He was sucking up to NBF’s descendant, admittedly. She responded, “We do not mention him (Lincoln) in our home.”
Tommy
@catclub: Didn’t know he passed away. Not asked him, I don’t have to, dad would not be happy the man passed away.
@Librarian: Nope. He didn’t like a person saying stupid shit. Growing up I had to always be at the dinner table at 5:30 PM. Dinner with the family, all four of us. We talked about our day. We could say whatever we wanted as long as it was factual.
Thinking if I tried to say some Foote stuff we’d still be at that dinner table …….
sacrablue
@Mike E: The defendant’s attorney was a complete trip. She spent most of the time trying to confuse the hell out of us. It didn’t work.
Origuy
I forgot to mention that the sesiún has a mandolin as well as an uilean piper and the usual fiddlers.
Mike E
@Omnes Omnibus: I suppose murderous racists make great soldiers, too. Fuck’em.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike E: No argument from me. Genius can be evil.
Tree With Water
@Tommy: My favorite memory of Appomattox was telling a souvenir shop owner that if I’d been there in April of 1865, I’d of been wearing blue. He gave me a mean little smile, but there was no smile in his eyes. If you know what I mean. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
Suzanne
I got in a great fight on Facebook this morning with some ammosexuals. Later, I schooled some jackass who thinks that Joe Rogan is brilliant about mental illness. Then I just watched the video of Barney Frank making an ass of Sippy Cupp. I am FIRED UP AND READY TO GO.
Quick, someone, piss me off. I feel like contemptuously mocking some Government-out-of-my-Medicare types.
sacrablue
@Suzanne: I think all the trolls went to bed already.
Cmm
I hope one of y’all has better Google-fu than me. I read an article a while back that profiled a retired black police officer talking about the recent police brutality incidents. The article mentioned him either starting or participating in an organisation for police who were advocating for better policing, and I got the impression that this is a newish organisation. I’m looking for some kind of organisation specifically for law enforcement officers who want to work against a lot of the violent behaviour and racism in law enforcement. I’m just sickened by story after story about this stuff, and I can’t be the only one. If you remember the name of this organisation or can do a better job of finding it vis search engine, I would appreciate any leads on this. I’m looking specifically for an advocacy group for law enforcement people, not anything like Copwatch or the ACLU (nothing against either group).
Mike J
@Suzanne: Earlier I was talking to somebody who was upset about people protesting somebody (Target? I dunno.) and thinks stores should sell whatever they want. I told her I agree, stores should sell whatever they want, but she was being a PC thug trying to stop anybody from expressing any disagreement. Political correctness run amok!
Not the way I would normally have made the argument, but great fun at the time.
Tree With Water
@Mike E: I read a story a few years ago written by a guy whose civil jury sat for 11 months. I remember he bicycled to and from the courthouse. Days before it was scheduled to conclude, the parties settled. He said his last bicycle ride after being dismissed was driven by pure adrenalin-like rage, he was so pissed off. He got home in no time flat that day.
Suzanne
@Mike J: Sometimes it’s such a blast to fuck with people.
Tommy
@Tree With Water: How about it. I live where my family has lived for almost 200 years. We didn’t get into war. We didn’t own slaves. The Civil War was/.is a hard thing to write about, why I think my father got his PhD in said war.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: That’s what it usually does here every summer, up until August and maybe September, and then it just rains forever.
This year a rain barrel would have been used up in March, and it mightn’t have done the entire garden on the first pass. The property is just under an acre, the front lawn is large and the total lawns take up probably half an acre, and which we do not water. With two of us watering everything by hand it took us about 2 hours to do everything except the lawns and the trees and hedges. We have started watering the trees and hedges because those birches are beautiful and we don’t want to lose any of them. One on the end died last year, but because it’s on the end of the line it doesn’t look like anything is missing.
birches in snow
sapsucker on birch
opiejeanne
@Tree With Water: My first cousins who live in Missouri did not know, until I told them, that our great great grandfather had been a Union soldier. They seemed a little shocked.
I have not yet told them that his father and his father-in-law each owned a couple of slaves. They’d probably wet themselves. It was strange, when I found the slave census that listed their names and those of their neighbors. It was as if someone had gone through the area dropping off children, one here, two across the way, etc. Almost no adults or teens.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Mike E:
The one time I got on a jury (as an alternate, not even a real juror), it was a case involving a law student who had a knife in her bag that they found when they screened her bag at the courthouse while she was there to do research. She said she had forgotten it was in her bag. The DA’s claim was that women always know what’s inside their purses or backpacks, so she must have tried to bring the knife in on purpose.
I think it probably took longer to fill out the paperwork to acquit her than it did to find her not guilty. You could see every juror’s jaw drop when they realized that the (male) DA had apparently been raised without ever meeting or speaking to an actual live woman and had some pretty weird notions about what most women’s purses and bags look like on the inside.
(Also, if you’re wondering why the hell this case was even prosecuted rather than having the charges dropped — can you guess the race of the defendant? Fortunately, she was a highly regarded student at Loyola Law School and her boss found her a really good defense attorney.)
SWMBO
@Mike J: @Suzanne: Next time they ask if stores should be allowed to sell anything they want to, ask them if they would sell RU486 or Plan B over the counter.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: What do you mean? No one in your family was in the Civil War? And they were in Illinois for nearly 200 years? Hard to believe. And of course they didn’t own slaves if they were in Illinois.
My grandmother’s family lived in Downers Grove and the Underground Railroad ran through there; I’m betting that because the family name was Lovejoy they were involved, but not many involved talked, even many years later. Elijah Parish Lovejoy was a martyr to the cause in 1837, long before the war.
Most of my family were Union, a handful in North Carolina were forcibly enlisted into the Confederate Army. I only know about it because of the family diaries that have been made available.
Marc
I used to drive an armored truck. It is amazing how much faith other drivers have in the air brakes of a 25000 lb vehicle. There were stories passed around about what area of town had the worst drivers. Sun City got the most votes (due to the golf cars on the roads), but there were other areas around Phoenix which routinely had accidents. The common question we kept asking ourselves was “How do you NOT see an armored truck?” I had a Mustang back into my truck one day, and joined the club in pondering that question…
opiejeanne
@Marc: My mantra when driving our pickup was “BIG RED TRUCK!” as people would start to pull out of a side street without looking.
People are blind.
Origuy
@opiejeanne: I’ve done a fair amount of digging into my family tree and only found one ancestor who was in the Civil War, and they were all in the US at the time. Mostly they were too young or too old during the five years of the war. The only one I’ve found is a 3 greats grandfather in an Indiana regiment, which was mustered up in February 1865, two months before Appomattox. He was 28 at the time, so I wonder why he waited so long to enlist. His unit spent most of the next year guarding railroads in Georgia before being discharged
J R in WV
@sacrablue:
One of the most stressful things ever is serious jury duty. One session I did two first degree murder cases, first one I was foreman, second one someone suggested I be the foremen, and I said “I’ve done my share of foreman, someone else’s turn tonight!”
And then I wound up helping talk one guy from holding out to prevent a mistrial. We found both cases not guilty, one was construable as self defense, and the second one was some kind of odd accident, or completely confused, not a conviction in either case.
If you can’t figure out what happened after 2 weeks of expert testimony….
But a one day grand jury handing up indictments was the worst, because we handled probably 30 serious crimes in 7 or 8 hours. Mostly child abuse of the worst kind. Photos you can’t unsee. Stories you can’t unhear from young cops trying to take it as professionally numb as they could, fooling no one.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: Sippy Cup? Is that his “real” show business name (and does he perform with Ox E. Moron?). What is he, a rapper? Rappers seem to be good at coining fun, offbeat stage names.
Pogonip
@BillinGlendaleCA: ATTORNEY: “Your Honor, please lend an ear to my motion to dismiss…”
HeartlandLiberal
I still mourn my 1979 Datsun 280ZX. My son had borrowed it. He was crossing an intersection, legally and with the light in his favor. An elderly woman ran the red light and broadsided him on the passenger side, thank goodness. Can you say totaled? I knew you could.
satby
@Pogonip: S. E. Cupp, right wing younger Anne Coulter wannabe.
Denali
@memeosyne,
Family dynamics can be so stressful. Try to take a deep breath or several and just enjoy the kids and your time with them.
lurker dean
@Cmm: i’m not sure this is what you’re looking for but maybe?
NCLEO4J
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cheryl-dorsey/retired-police-officers-a_b_7026726.html
Marc
@opiejeanne: In Sun City I would expect someone not to notice a BF Truck as they collided with it, but I was nowhere near that area, and the driver of the Mustang was early 20’s. So elderly vision problems were off the list of reasons for not seeing the BF Truck. Of course, the damage to the truck was some paint transferred from the Mustang, while the physical damage to said Mustang was a bit more pronounced.
shell
@Betty Cracker: There was one BBC drama about his wilderness years (before WWII) and showed him being served a glass of champagne with his morning bath. I think he was the poster child for Self-Medicating.
PaulW
I am working at Bartow Library today, the rain has been non-stop since exactly 9 am when we opened the doors for Saturday service.
the baseball field and park across the street are now lakes.
this IS a day that deserves a sh-t ton of naps and yaaawwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnn doing nothing but… yyaaaawwwwwwwwnnn I gotta work. Currently on my lunch break…
Also, my damn desktop computer simply WILL NOT take the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 upgrade, which is needed for the Win 10 update, and the news about Win 10 is good enough that I want to risk that update while it’s free for the one year. I don’t want to do any system restore lest I lose a lot of stuff I’ve installed since 2011… what are my options?