Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

“Squeaker” McCarthy

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

In my day, never was longer.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Peak wingnut was a lie.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

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

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / I Can’t Even…

I Can’t Even…

by | 203 Comments

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9205027_GSo I woke up to this controversy today:

“I’m challenging all great Americans and Christians around this great nation, go into Starbucks and take your own coffee selfie. … Let’s start a movement and let’s call it, I don’t know, hashtag Merry Christmas Starbucks,” said Feuerstein, who also said in the video that he wore a Jesus Christ shirt and took a gun into Starbucks with him, “since you [Starbucks] hate the 2nd amendment.”

Thanks Arizona.

Open thread. I’m off to work. Hi-ho, hi-ho.

 

ETA: I see Anne Laurie beat me to it, but you needed an open thread anyway.

 

 

Reader Interactions

203Comments

  2. 2.

    JPL

    Nothing says Merry Christmas more than finding something to bitch about. It’s not just for Thanksgiving anymore.

  10. 10.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Can’t they just pretend the woman in the crown is Mary and look at the red green and white color scheme (which screams Christmas) and like, not bitch? They could probably do all of that if they wanted to, except not bitch, because they absolutely have to have something to bitch about.

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: Um, it’s the color of Communism. You fools can’t see the Red takeover of America as it happens before your eyes. What was Saturday’s date? Huh? Onward to victory, comrades.

  14. 14.

    benw

    I, too, hate the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment and enjoy drinking coffee from red cups.

    #MerryChristmasBenw

  15. 15.

    Starfish

    @Tommy

    There is a Zales ad that is ruining the Mobile version of the site. The thing says that the ad cannot open, and there is a “Go to Site” link that takes you to the Zales site instead of back here.

  16. 16.

    Hal

    Feuerstein looks like Kevin James in his video. I was confused the first couple of seconds when I only saw a still of his face. My favorite part about this protest is the idea that any minimum wage barista at Starbucks in anyway, shape or form cares that he’s wearing a Jesus Christ t-shirt or that he has them write merry Christmas on the cup. Though I know if I worked there I’d no doubt get a headache from rolling my eyes every time on of these idiots came in and ordered.

  17. 17.

    maya

    Whoa! What happened to the T-day turkey cups? Isn’t Thanksgiving a time to celebrate coming to America, legally, to practice religious freedom whilst figuring out the best way to steal the land from those godless savages?

  19. 19.

    NonyNony

    I love it. Instead of proposing a boycott he’s proposing that people with grievances a) go to Starbucks, b) give them money, and then c) give Starbucks free advertising by posting a picture of them buying coffee to YouTube. (I could do without the “take a gun to the coffee shop” bit, but it’s Arizona – what are you going to do?)

    This has got to be the most 21st century suburban America “protest” possible – you do something I don’t like, so I’m going to buy more of your product and bitch about you on Facebook. That’ll show ya!

    Also – is it perhaps time to just replace the entire 8 weeks between Halloween and Christmas with a celebration of Festivus? We get two months of “airing of the grievances” right now and I’d really like to see them move on to the feats of strength

  20. 20.

    Germy Shoemangler

    This is somewhat off-topic, but I remember an amusing anecdote that Paul McCartney once told about John Lennon’s poor eyesight.

    Teenaged John was too vain to wear eyeglasses. Only wore them if he had to. He used to walk to Paul’s house so they could practice guitars together and write songs. Then he’d walk back home. One day, during the Christmas season, he told Paul about a “daft” family who played cards in their backyard every night. John said he’d see them outside, hunched over their game every night while he walked home.

    Finally one morning, Paul walked the route and realized what John had seen.

    It was a nativity scene.

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Fifty years ago today was the Great Northeast Blackout. My then husband and I had moved to New York only a few weeks earlier. My most vivid memory is walking down 40 flights of stairs in the Union Carbide Building at 270 Park Avenue (no working elevators, of course) and, hours later, doing something that horrifies me in retrospect but which was just part of the odd “new normal” of that dark night: accepting a ride from a perfect stranger to my building in Queens, and then climbing nine flights to my apartment. Never saw or heard from the driver again, and he wouldn’t take a dime. (I was not his only passenger, I should hasten to add, and there definitely was a festive “let’s all help each other get through this” atmosphere.)

    Anyone else around these parts who (a) is old enough in the first place, and (b) actually lived in the affected area (parts of eastern Canada and most of the northeastern US) on November 9, 1965? What are your memories?

  25. 25.

    RSA

    @Phylllis:

    Also, Charlotte’s SouthPark Mall forced to change its Christmas display. Because Christmas-Jesus is all about a pagan tree & Santy Claus.

    Gotta say, though, that is an amazingly ugly design. “Let’s go visit Santa sitting under that giant robot tongue.”

  28. 28.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @SiubhanDuinne: I was very young, and I remember being disappointed that I could watch the Superman tv show. But our house being lit by candles was spooky fun for me.

  29. 29.

    The Other Bob

    I agree to put the Christ back in Christmas right after the so-called Christians put the Christ back into Christianity.

  31. 31.

    NonyNony

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    they absolutely have to have something to bitch about.

    It has taken me almost 4 decades, but I’ve come to realize that for some people the “bitching about Christmas” portion of the season IS the Reason For the Season. If they had nothing to complain about they would complain about not having anything to complain about.

    Honestly I think that’s why the War on Christmas propaganda works so well with the Christian Right. There are a number of them that hate Christmas, but know that hating Christmas is a horrible thing to feel. So they can externalize that hate into the War on Christmas and vent their hatred of the season that way.

    (I used to hate Christmas, but once I realized that mostly what I hate about it is related to family-related stress and not the holiday itself, I’ve learned to love the holiday. I even now enjoy hearing Christmas music the day after Halloween – something I wouldn’t have thought possible even a decade ago.)

  32. 32.

    benw

    @NonyNony: maybe he’s just being practical. He knows that his target audience would never actually give up their daily Starbucks, even in defense of their lord and savior Jesus Christ that they supposedly worship, but they *will* post a hashtag/selfie on FaceBook. Even Karl Marx understood that the revolution had to start somewhere!

  33. 33.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @beltane: I thought they’d be satisfied after the Starbucks logo lady got her nipples removed. I thought that’d be enough to placate the religious right, but.. no!

  34. 34.

    Jean King

    If somebody else has not already pointed this out, you are in serious need of a butthurt Christians tag. Assholes is far too broad a category for this subset of jackasses.

  39. 39.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @benw:

    Even Karl Marx understood that the revolution had to start somewhere!

    The revolution will not be Frappuccino sized.

  40. 40.

    Snetzky

    Hi Everybody,
    I’m out in the wilds of Central Iowa where Kim Weaver is working to send the odious Steve King (R-Loonyville) back home to marry his lawnmower.

    She could use some fundraising help right now, so if you get a chance, hop over to her website and toss in a couple.
    What’s in it for me? I live in Steve King’s district and don’t want a bigoted waste of food and oxygen as my Congressman. I know Kim personally, she’s very good people.

  42. 42.

    NonyNony

    @benw:

    He knows that his target audience would never actually give up their daily Starbucks, even in defense of their lord and savior Jesus Christ that they supposedly worship, but they *will* post a hashtag/selfie on FaceBook.

    That’s what makes it such wonderfully passive-agressive 21st century suburbanite “activism”. It requires absolutely no sacrifice by the folks involved in it while allowing them to publicly denounce the thing that they don’t want to give up. It’s great – if it weren’t for the bit about the gun I’d suspect that the guy was a paid plant by Starbucks to gin up some free outrage advertising for themselves.

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    to my building in Queens,

    Out of curiosity – where in Queens?

    I remember being at the dinner table with my family (on Long Island), seeing the dining room lights flicker and dim for a second, and then a few seconds after that, everything went dark. Don’t remember much else about it, don’t remember if I was waiting for Superman (hi, Germy) to come on, no recollection at all. So I can’t even regale my kids with tales of terror from the Great Blackout. (Well, not true ones, that is. I guess I could always make shit up.)

  46. 46.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @beltane: Starbucks should introduce a new flavor called “Blood of Christ” just to egg them on.

    It would taste like burnt offerings, like their coffee.

  50. 50.

    SFAW

    @beltane:

    Starbucks should introduce a new flavor called “Blood of Christ” just to egg them on.

    And with each order, you get a Carr’s Table Water Cracker?

  51. 51.

    burnspbesq

    Nordstrom will be the next target. Not putting up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving? Infidels!

  59. 59.

    Tommy Young

    wore a Jesus Christ shirt and took a gun into Starbucks with him [….]Wear what every shirt you want. I could care less. But for the life of me I will never understand when going down the list of things you need, like your wallet, a gun somehow gets on the list.

  60. 60.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @SiubhanDuinne: For some reason my parents had a ton of candles. I have no idea why; they were thrifty (depression-raised) and there was really never anything in the house.

    But the candles came out. I was disappointed I couldn’t watch Superman. It was my first experience with losing electricity.

  62. 62.

    burnspbesq

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Thanks to PSE&G, we never lost power out in the wilds of Bergen County. All the New York radio stations were off the air, so I think I ended up listening to CKLW (a station from Windsor, Ontario that was the Detroit market’s answer to WABC) while doing homework.

  63. 63.

    PurpleGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne: I remember it. I was at the dentist, just finish with the dental work when the blackout hit. I was just a few blocks from home and we lived on the third floor. Now, during the August 2005 blackout, I talked myself into a car going up Third Avenue. The two young ladies had been shopping and were now driving home to Long Island. They planned to pick up the driver’s father in the 50s. I just asked for a lift to 60th St for the bus but when Mr. Abba asked where I lived and it was on their route home, he said they’d take me home. As we approached my street on Queens Blvd and he saw streetlights and the buildings with lights, he wondered where the lights were getting the power from. I told him — that’s Nig Sic Towers and we have our own power plant. (I didn’t have to climb to the 17th floor to my apartment.)

  64. 64.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Worked for Starbucks back at the beginning of this fine century for about a year or so.

    1. Best co-workers ever.
    2. Horrendously dysfunctional company culture that borders on wanton cruelty to their front-line employees.
    3. Worst customers ever. I thought a decade of working in bars as a musician had prepared me for anything. It had not. About 5% of my Starbucks customers were the nicest, no-bullshit people. The other 95% permanently ruined my faith in humanity, no lie. Starbucks is where I learned to hate people, as a species.

  66. 66.

    john b

    @Phylllis: The display (pre-Christmas tree) was also ugly as sin. I think they should have changed it, but not because it wasn’t Christian enough, but because it looked awful.

    Edit: I see that’s already been covered by others. . . Carry on.

  68. 68.

    benw

    @The Other Chuck: you’d expect each addition to the Wingnuttery to be smaller than the last as they approach the asymptote, but, like Trump, it just keeps getting yooger. I conclude that this means we are either far away from the asymptote or that the Wingularity is more like the concept of infinity, in that no matter how much derp you pile on, you’re still infinity away from the peak.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    Sanford Avenue, Flushing. From our living room window, we could see the lights from the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow. We had moved to NY just weeks earlier, and the Fair was about to close down for good after a successful two-year run, but we took advantage of proximity to visit twice. Seemed more important than unpacking moving boxes.

  70. 70.

    jeffreyw

    I occasionally see a reference to Law and Order: SVU but due to a touch of dyslexia I read it as Law and Order: SUV and envision a show much like Airwolf , featuring a stealthed HUMV manned by cynical and wisecracking troopers in an apocalyptic wasteland.

  72. 72.

    randy khan

    @SiubhanDuinne: We lived in the New Jersey suburbs, about 50 miles from New York. It being 1965, Dad was at work in the city and Mom was home with us. We knew something was going on when we turned on the TV for whatever show it was we watched at 4:00 (Romper Room, maybe? Not Captain Kangaroo, who was in the morning) and got static, but sort of miraculously (at least from my 5-year old perspective; today I know why) could get the Philadelphia stations, although they didn’t have whatever show it was we usually watched at that hour. I seem to remember my Mom calling my Dad in his office. He did get home that night, although I suspect it was later than usual.

  73. 73.

    MattF

    @benw: Ah, it’s like measuring the speed of light. Any local derp measurement gives the same result regardless of the derp of the source.

  74. 74.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Cultural conservatives continue to screech that the world has left them behind and demand, absolutely demand, that they be treated as the norm.

    @Tommy Young:

    But for the life of me I will never understand when going down the list of things you need, like your wallet, a gun somehow gets on the list.

    It allows you to display which side you’re on, defy the other side, feel safer from all of these scary black men you see everywhere these days, and provides the warm glow of intimidating other people. You may have noticed how conservatives obsessively try to interpret opposition as being afraid of them, then roll around in that thought and squee.

  75. 75.

    elmo

    @SiubhanDuinne: I was born in 1966, but my parents used to tell the story of emerging from the Holland Tunnel on their way out of NYC after visiting relatives, and my Dad looking in the rearview mirror and being utterly stunned at the city being, from his perspective, just *gone*. The lights had gone off while they were under the river.

  76. 76.

    Tommy Young

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: I have always wondered what it was like to work there. To say I am a coffee snob would be an understatement. The amount of money I spend on coffee and how I make it would stun most people. I find Starbucks to be an affront to good coffee. But if I am on the road clearly it is a better cup of coffee than say a gas station, so I’ve been to one more than a few times.

    I always thought it had to be a terrible place to work. I also notice how many customers are total dicks. There are not a lot around me because I live in the home of Panera, although called the St. Louis Bread Company here in their home town. The one Starbucks by me is busy beyond words. And customers are total dicks. If somebody had to wait a single second to get a drink they seem to flip out.

  77. 77.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    Manhattan was genuinely eerie. Pretty much the only lights were from car headlights — no traffic signals, no streetlights, no illuminated shop windows, no interior lights from the skyscrapers.

  78. 78.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Don’t recall how many times we went to the World’s Fair, but it was more than a couple. I especially enjoyed the NYC Pavilion – the ride around the model of the city was pretty fun. I think I also enjoyed the AT&T pavilion, plus the cutaway model of the Saturn V rocket. I still keep looking over there when I take the 7 line or the LIRR into Manhattan. Of course, Shea is missing, so it detracts a little, but still …

    But, my apologies for not waving to you when I went, that was rude of me.

  79. 79.

    gene108

    @Phylllis:

    Because Christmas-Jesus is all about a pagan tree & Santy Claus.

    My middle school German teacher, who was from Bavaria, said the Christmas tree was invented by Germans to liven up the otherwise cold dark stretches of late December in German households.

    I don’t think the tree is pagan per se. It just is not a universal symbol of Christmas and comes from northern European traditions.

  81. 81.

    Gex

    I have pretty much had it with the kind of religiosity that demands that they be able to force everyone else to do what they say. You can’t get married. You have to say Christmas, not holiday. You must put a fucking reindeer or snowflake on disposable cup holding a $7 coffee. Da fuq does that stuff have to do with Christ anyway?

    When I was younger, I loved Christmas and was neutral on religion. Now I am really beginning to loathe both things.

  82. 82.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @elmo:

    Wow! That has to have been one of the freakiest experiences I’ve heard about. Dystopian.

    My cousin reminded me that there was an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery in which Joan Crawford plays a not-nice blind woman who’s had surgery. They’re taking the bandages off just as the power goes out. She has a moment of light, then blackness, believes it didn’t work and stumbles out onto her penthouse balcony and over the side.

  83. 83.

    Tommy Young

    @Frankensteinbeck: My state had to be told by the Supreme Court to allow carry permits. Illinois might not have as strict of gun laws as say NYC, in fact we kind of let you buy anything you want. We just didn’t see the need for you or me to carry one in public. I feel good about this because I have not seen a single person carrying a gun in public. Frankly it would kind of freak me out if I did see it so happy I don’t.

  85. 85.

    PurpleGirl

    @The Other Chuck: Think of a graph with an X and Y axis. An asymptote is a line whose value never reaches zero and never crosses one of the axis. It gets closer and closer but never reaches that 0 value.

  86. 86.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I always wondered where L.A. Law got the inspiration for the Diana Muldaur elevator shaft scene. I had forgotten that Night Gallery episode (yeah, I saw it too).

  90. 90.

    tinare

    Didn’t the cups in the past have snowflakes, or reindeers, or ornaments on them? What do any of those things have to do with Jesus? I just do not understand the mentality of the War on Christmas folks because they seem to be outraged over all the stuff that Jesus would probably hate about the Christmas season. The stuff they yell about is secular crap. Did I miss the parts in the Bible where it says stuff like: go forth to Macy’s and wish everyone Merry Christmas; buy a lot of overpriced crap for your spoiled family members in memory of me; thou shalt have a Christmas Tree? Why can’t they just go to church and STFU? THEY make me hate Christmas.

  92. 92.

    Roger Moore

    @Tommy Young:

    But for the life of me I will never understand when going down the list of things you need, like your wallet, a gun somehow gets on the list.

    It’s there in case they encounter uppity people who need to be put back in their place. If they carry openly, they know that Those People are a lot less likely to act uppity in the first place.

  94. 94.

    benw

    @SFAW: we’re people!? I thought we were a pack of soulless slavering jackals. After exposure to our rampant assholery, integration back into humanity should be easy.

  96. 96.

    Lamh36

    This is a good summary of the story from the beginning, google it ya damn selves for the link

    University of Missouri president resigns over racial turmoil

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @tinare:

    Didn’t the cups in the past have snowflakes, or reindeers, or ornaments on them? What do any of those things have to do with Jesus?

    You mean you don’t recall the part of the Bible where it talks about Jesus flying his reindeer-pulled sleigh, through the snow, to the Last Supper where he can deliver Chanukah Christmas ornaments to the Apostates Apostles?

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @elmo:

    There is a semi-urban legend that when we had the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, people called 911 because they weren’t sure what that big bright cloud in the sky was — it turned out to be the Milky Way, which is normally invisible in So Cal unless you drive pretty far out into the desert to get away from the light pollution.

    It’s usually told as Hur-hur, idiots don’t recognize the Milky Way, but if you had just run out of your violently shaking house or apartment at 4 am and discovered that there was no light for 30+ miles around, you’d be pretty goddamned freaked out, too.

  101. 101.

    PurpleGirl

    @gene108: Actually we get the Christmas tree from Germany by way of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort. The British did not have Christmas trees and she allowed him to have one since it was something he grew up with. From the royal family, it spread to the middle class and then to US.

    British traditions involved holly and ivy and burning Yul logs.

  103. 103.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    I loved the AT&T Pavilion! All these futuristic communication things, like a little television screen in your (big, clunky, attached to the wall by a cord) phone so you and the person you’re talking to can see each other! Even better, being able to send someone an “electronic postcard” and have them be able to read it within minutes!

    It was incredibly moving to see Michelangelo’s Pietà. Moving, literally, as they had us stand on a moving platform which took one slowly past the sculpture. Probably smart to avoid human traffic jams, but we weren’t allowed more than about 20 seconds to view it. If you wanted more, you had to make a return trip and go back to the end of the line — and it was a LONG line!

    But maybe the best thing about that Fair was the introduction to the United States of the wonderful Belgian Waffle. I can’t remember how many of those things I ate! Talk about return trips….

  105. 105.

    Goblue72

    @Phylllis: that mall is owned I think by a national chain. They rolled out that Glacier holiday display nationwide. One in Long Island (Roosevelt Mall) got similar complaints.

    Personally, an immortal gift giving creature with flying animals, an “elven” slave force, and the ability to freeze space-time one evening a year while walking through chimneys kinda sounds like a space alien to me.

  108. 108.

    Paul in KY

    @tinare: And lo, dideth Jesus take his holy snowflake shaped throwing star and did smite the moneylenders and baristas, consigning them forever to the pits of Hell, so sayeth the Lord.

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Lamh36:

    Once I saw that the faculty was starting to rebel as well, I knew it was only a matter of time. It was good work by the student activists to get both the football and the academic sides of the school to unite against the administration.

  110. 110.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Unfortunately, I don’t remember many details (if any) about being in the AT&T pavilion, I just have a vague recollection that I liked it a lot.

    But I do remember seeing the Pieta, and remember the Belgian Waffles. Also went up into the NYS Pavilion, even though I didn’t like heights. (I did not see Vincent D’Onofrio there, however.)

  112. 112.

    Tommy Young

    @tinare: I am not a fan of x-mas. I am also an atheist. No the two are not related if you wonder. That people think there is a war on Christmas is news to me. Try being an atheist and not liking Christmas. Pretty sure there is more of a war on my thoughts than those that feel a different way.

    BTW: I don’t like Christmas for many reasons. At the top of the list I don’t like a day where I am supposed to give people a gift. I love giving gifts. I take great joy in it. But I do it throughout the year when I feel like it. I don’t need a “special” day to do it.

  113. 113.

    PurpleGirl

    @SFAW: You are probably right. I don’t really know advanced mathematics but I was very good at typing it. I could spell asymptote and stochastic when one professor who used those terms profusely never spelled them correctly. (The work that got him a MacArthur award was modeling blood flow through the heart using PDEs.) Everyone I typed for thought I understood the work because I made it look so good.

  115. 115.

    Roger Moore

    @tinare:

    I just do not understand the mentality of the War on Christmas folks because they seem to be outraged over all the stuff that Jesus would probably hate about the Christmas season.

    It’s based on a misunderstanding of Matthew 5:10-12 (and the similar passage in Luke 6:22-23):

    10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

    11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

    12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

    I think they see that as a limiting thing- that only people who are persecuted for their beliefs are blessed. Since Christians obviously aren’t being persecuted today, they are disappointed and need to come up with a way of feeling persecuted so they can show their righteousness. Some of them act like total assholes in pushing their beliefs on everyone around them and interpret the pushback as persecution. The ones who lack the guts or free time to do that just exaggerate every case where people don’t kowtow to their Christianism as persecution.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:
    The customers had been denied coffee (because they couldn’t be bothered to make their own at home) and then had the indignity to have to stand in line with other people and fucking wait their turn.

    Two weeks in boot camp just to have to stand in line for bad food might have helped them learn waiting for coffee isn’t the end of the world. (neither is boot camp, btw)

  117. 117.

    Cervantes

    @PurpleGirl:
    @SFAW:

    Yes, a curve can have an axis or some other straight line as an asymptote. It can also have another curve as an asymptote.

    Curves and their asymptotes can, in fact, intersect — many times.

  118. 118.

    Tommy Young

    @PurpleGirl: LOL. Funny on many levels. My father did not know how to type so mom typed my farther’s dissertation, all 700+ pages of it multiple times. When she goes to events with him people start to quiz her on said dissertation like she somehow knows anything about it. Mom and I have tried to read it a number of times and can’t get past the first few pages. To say it is boring, dense, unreadable by anybody that isn’t a scholar would be an understatement.

  120. 120.

    PurpleGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne: It was a Sunday afternoon thing for my father to drive to certain spots on the highway and take pictures of the construction progress made that week. I have no idea how often we went to the Fair. I liked the IBM pavilion, and the Disney show. Yes, the It’s a Small World song was a ear worm but the audioanimatronic Lincoln was incredible. Most of the foreign pavilions were built by the Fair because the foreign governments didn’t want to deal with Robert Moses. The NYC model was updated from the 1939 Fair and is still there and open for viewing, IIRC. I loved staying late to see the fireworks.

  122. 122.

    Tommy Young

    @Ruckus: Yes what you said. I only have one Starbucks by me that isn’t in a Target. It takes some time to order something. I am rarely in the place but always stunned how rude people are. As the huge coffee snob I am, well I did this strange thing. I bought this really expensive thermos that when I am out of the house and away from being able to make a cup of coffee, I can travel with it.

  124. 124.

    Scout211

    @Snetzky:

    Good luck to your candidate.

    I grew up in Iowa but it doesn’t seem like the same state that I left in the 70s.

    But man, how about them Hawkeyes! Woot!

  125. 125.

    japa21

    If I was working in a Starbucks and one of these idiots came up to me and said their name was Merry Christmas I would be sorely tempted to say “Sure, I’ll do that for you” and look for their reaction when they read Mary Christmas. Not sure how many of them would even get it.

  126. 126.

    Tommy Young

    @PurpleGirl: World Fair’s rock. My favorite thing about St. Louis is Forest Park. The largest city park in the nation. It has an art gallery, science center, natural history museum, outdoor concert hall, zoo, golf course, you name it. It is all there because of the 1904 World’s Fair we had.

    Almost brings a tear to my eyes. We did something amazing with the World Fair and some smart people, lost to the history books, said you know this is kind of cool. Why don’t we keep it. So we did!

  127. 127.

    PurpleGirl

    @Tommy Young: There are rules for typing mathematics — where you can break an equation and start the second line; the height of expressions, where bounds can go; how fractions are spaced, etc. Many people were tempted to crowd the mathematics and that could make the typed equation look wrong. I used a generous amount of white space and that meant my work showed the mathematics correctly. The professors liked that. (I was typing on an IBM Selectric and using carbon paper to make a copy they could use for proofreading. Sometimes I typed on stencils so copies could be run off for a professor’s class.)

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Roger Moore:

    Yep. The Bible verse is basically what everyone’s mom told them — They’re only bullying you because they’re jealous! — but it’s like the Christianists took that advice as meaning they should deliberately try to make people jealous because that proves their righteousness.

  130. 130.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
    We had plenty of light outside our window during the quake, all the transformers and wiring blowing up. It was bright enough for me to see under my ex as she was being thrown a foot off the bed.

  133. 133.

    Wally Ballou

    @burnspbesq: Speaking of WABC, I assume sure you’re familiar with the famous aircheck of Dan Ingram doing his afternoon drive-time show just as the electricity starts to, as he puts it, “slow down”? Great stuff, especially since the station’s signal conks out for good just as they’re leading off a newsbreak with what had been the day’s top story: the self-immolation of antiwar protester Roger LaPorte in front of the U.N. that morning.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djqVA6ZL7Ro

  136. 136.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @japa21:

    If I was working in a Starbucks and one of these idiots came up to me and said their name was Merry Christmas I would be sorely tempted to say “Sure, I’ll do that for you” and look for their reaction when they read Mary Christmas. Not sure how many of them would even get it.

    Personally, if I were taking the order and someone said their name was “Merry Christmas,” I would SO enter the name as “Holly Happydays.”

  137. 137.

    Tommy Young

    @raven: I hope you got some kudos for that. There is no reason you can’t write something that is both scholarly and readable. LSU’s publishing house has been asking my father for the better part of 40 years to rework his dissertation as a book. I hear if written as a novel and not a 700+ page bore it is interesting.

    @PurpleGirl: I would think your ability to do that was in high demand. I am terrible at math, but did have to take a few stats classes. This was before computers were everywhere. I turned in my work in pencil. Not even sure if the symbols I needed to use are on a computer keyboard :).

  139. 139.

    lamh36

    media mad cause Mizzou students not talking to reporters.
    Can you blame them? So usual harrasers and troll start digging up dirt?

    They do still have to live and go to school there…so why have their names out for harrassment? They are still the minority of students there right? And we all know that not ALL of the majority feel as they do…and just itching for names to harass.

  140. 140.

    Ruckus

    @Tommy Young:
    I used to work and travel occasionally with a friend who just had to stop at Starbucks every morning and get her coffee. She is however a very gracious and kind person at all times. She would get her huge insulated mug filled up, think it cost like a buck more, so she would never run out. What I’m saying is, she’s a caffeine junkie.

  141. 141.

    Wally Ballou

    I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: growing up in the ’80s and having some exposure to the evangelical subculture of that era, the biggest – in fact, the only – “anti-Christmas” people I knew were extreme, unhinged Bible-thumpers who condemned the entire holiday as unbiblical and paganistic and Popish. One utterly joyless, batshit-insane of aunt of mine could be counted upon to ruin any family get-together she attended by ranting and raving about how devil-blinded we all were for putting trees up, wishing each other merry Christmas, singing Christmas carols, etc. I’d love to know what she would say to the “War on Christmas” types if she were around today.

  143. 143.

    Tommy Young

    @lamh36: I live in IL but all my media (radio, newspapers, TV stations) comes from MO. Almost feels like many days I live in MO. Not what you’d call a liberal state. At times I think they are trying to fight with Kansas to be more bat shit crazy. But Columbia, as with many college towns, is an island of blue in a sea of red! They will to what is right.

  144. 144.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:
    An armed society is only a polite society if you consider it polite to threaten people with grievous bodily harm for failing to follow their fucked up version of social norms.
    Fixed it for you.

  145. 145.

    gelfling545

    I’d say that whining about a disposable coffee cup that will end up in the trash is an attack on Christianity. It makes their “Lord & Savior” look like a moron.

  147. 147.

    beltane

    How come these wingnuts aren’t getting their knickers in a twist over all the other Christian holidays? Are they even aware of them? I bet if, on January 6th, you wished any of them a happy Epiphany they’d look at you like you were crazy. In other countries, these holidays are a big deal. Here, Christmas has become just another ax for these bitter people to grind.

  148. 148.

    Tommy Young

    @Ruckus: I often, time and time again note here I live in a very rural area. It is not uncommon for me to see somebody with a deer on the hood of their car. People here have guns and they use them. Heck I live on the end of town, 10,000 acre field within 10 yards of my house. A gun club just a hop and skip away. I go to a lot of meetings in my town and NOT a single person has asked to be able to carry a gun around in public. Not a single one. I don’t know who these gun nuts are. I really don’t.

  149. 149.

    beltane

    My coffee solution is an old-style stovetop espresso pot and Lavazza beans bought by the case. A triple shot of this in a mug of hot milk is enough caffeine to last for 24 hours and has pretty much killed my taste buds for anything else.

  150. 150.

    Ruckus

    @gelfling545:
    I’d bet their lord and savior thinks they are morons.

    Is it possible that the bible humpers are pissed because they know deep down they aren’t going be saved because they are such assholes?

  151. 151.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Wally Ballou:

    Kind of like the fact that almost nobody knows, or remembers, that both Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963. Sometimes events just take over.

  154. 154.

    Renie

    @Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: That one I remember. It was also the time of Son of Sam killings so we stayed far away from the city and only went to clubs on Long Island. My husband lived in Brooklyn at the time and remembers how cool it was being on the rooftop of his friend’s apt bldg. that night.

  156. 156.

    raven

    @Tommy Young:

    Dancing with Professors:

    The Trouble with Academic Prose

    Patricia Nelson Limerick

    Professor of History, University of Colorado

    In ordinary life, when a listener cannot understand what someone has said, this is the usual exchange:

    Listener: I cannot understand what you are saying.

    Speaker: Let me try to say it more clearly.

    But in scholarly writing in the late 20th century, other rules apply. This is the implicit exchange:

    Reader: I cannot understand what you are saying.

    Academic Writer: Too bad. The problem is that you are an unsophisticated and untrained reader. If you were smarter, you would understand me.

    The exchange remains implicit, because no one wants to say, “This doesn’t make any sense,” for fear that the response, “It would, if you were smarter,” might actually be true.

    Great piece, you’ll love the part about the crows in Hud!

  160. 160.

    Ruckus

    @Tommy Young:
    I think they are the same people who purchase a fwd pickup, spend another 4-5 grand on getting it jacked up/big wheels and never ever take it off road. These are the same people who think we should send someone to every hot spot in the world (or even make up some if we can’t find any) to shoot everyone but would never ever think of going or sending their kids. They are the guys at the VFW who served but were stationed in Texas at a supply depot and talk about their war exploits. (Hint – if you hear someone talking about their time in the shit and acting all bravado about it, 99.9% chance they weren’t there. People that were there want to forget about it but can’t. They live with it every day and wish people would just shut the fuck up) They were the bullies in HS that everyone now just walks away from. Rinse, repeat.

  163. 163.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:
    I was fortunate to be far enough from the quake- and on a campus with its own power system- so that our power stayed on. Once it was obvious that the quake was over, I went back to bed.

  164. 164.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    Before I retired (and before the Harper Government killed the entire academic relations program, but that’s another rant entirely), one of my jobs at the Canadian Consulate General was reviewing applications for Canadian Studies research, teaching, and conference grants. My personal rule of thumb, at least while doing the first pass through of summaries and narratives, was that if the applicant couldn’t make me understand what they planned to study/teach, I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to penetrate their dense prose.

  166. 166.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @misterpuff:

    The nearest Starbucks to me serves wine, cheese trays, and a menu of savoury treats, after 4:00 p.m. every day. Not all stores do.

  168. 168.

    Tommy Young

    @Ruckus: There is a lot of what you said and not sure how to unpack it all. I will just say this. I bought a FWD vehicle. My dad is like so where are you going to take it off road? Why do you need it?

  169. 169.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Ruckus:

    It would explain why they’re so terrified of dying that they had to make up an elaborate fairy tale about how they’re going to be assumed bodily into Heaven to prove once and for all that they are The Elect.

    Though, given the asshole God that they’ve constructed, I can’t entirely blame them of being afraid of the afterlife. I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with that jackass, either. See also The Rapture, with Mimi Rogers. It looks like fundie propaganda at first, but the ending will punch you in the gut.

  172. 172.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:
    I went to work to find that I’d lost tens of thousands of dollars. Work in progress lost cost me $1100 per second of the earthquake. About half of that again in additional cost to put everything back together. Fortunately the house was OK. One neighbor had to rebuild their entire downstairs. All you could see of the first floor was the studs, second floor looked fine. Half a house, on stilts. I believe it cost about $150,000 to fix. Best friend’s house burned down, which was OK as almost no one had earthquake insurance but did have fire insurance. Lost everything but the cats. They got a new place. Many not so lucky.

  173. 173.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Wally Ballou:

    Speaking of WABC, I assume sure you’re familiar with the famous aircheck of Dan Ingram doing his afternoon drive-time show just as the electricity starts to, as he puts it, “slow down”?

    I remember his theme song jingle: “The Dan Ingram Showwww!” They’d play it constantly.

    He’s still alive, by the way, and I think still going strong.

  175. 175.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:

    An armed society is only a polite society if you consider it polite to threaten people with grievous bodily harm for failing to follow their fucked up version of social norms.

    The problem is that the repressive, fucked-up version of those social norms quickly becomes the standard because people are too afraid to resist it. It’s the opposite of what we have now, where less repressive versions of social norms gradually become standardized.

  176. 176.

    leeleeFL

    @SiubhanDuinne: i was 14, in my doctor’s office for a school physical. My Mom pulled me out to the waiting area and called my Dad. Lots and lots of babies the next August.

  177. 177.

    jibeaux

    I decided I wanted to be less hopeless at technology and that I should learn some beginning coding, so I made an account at codeacademy. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to keep the site in English. It wants to give me everything in Spanish, and I can change the language at the bottom of the page but as soon as I change pages, it’s back to Spanish. I never told it I wanted anything in Spanish. I feel like this does not bode well for my inauguration into becoming more tech-savvy.

    EDIT: I may have figured it out by changing my profile. It had defaulted to Spanish for me even though I’m not in Latin America. Weird.

  178. 178.

    Ruckus

    @Tommy Young:
    Nothing wrong with FWD where you live. I lived in snow country for a decade and had FWD because I used it. Didn’t absolutely need it but it made life better/easier. I now live in southern cal in an urban area, in a five story apt building. I need FWD like a hole in the head. But I see jacked up FWD around here, loud pipes, big tires and shiny paint all the time. People have issues and need to tell everyone else about them. BTW when I lived in snow country I didn’t see trucks like that, why would you spend money on a truck that was going to get ruined by salt?

  183. 183.

    leeleeFL

    @SiubhanDuinne: i remember that one. I tell people about the Ruchard Kiley piece. He is an escaped Nazi who is recognised by one if his victims. He spent lots of time in a museum, dreaming about escaping into a beautiful painting. When he is persued, he begs the universe to put him in the painting. When the lights come on, he’s hanging on a cross…a painting of a camp victim who was crucified. Serling knew his stuff.

  184. 184.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Just saw a report go past that the Mizzou president has resigned. I’ll look for a link when I’m back at my desktop.

  187. 187.

    Tom

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    3. Worst customers ever.

    This is my main problem with Starbucks. Plus, I hate coffee so the only reason I go in is because my wife is addicted to skinny vanilla lattes and I love her dearly enough to put up with hipster douche-bags.

  188. 188.

    delk

    They covered the ‘war’ on the news this morning. The reporter who was barely trying to stop rolling his eyes at the whole stupid thing said, “I just bought this at Starbucks this morning”. He then held up a rather large, tree shaped, Advent Calendar.

  190. 190.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @NonyNony: I, too like Christmas. If it weren’t for the stress of gift giving it’d basically be a christian-based solstice celebration full of music, charity, good food, and cheery lights at the darkest time of year. I like my family so getting together with them isn’t stressful, but having to shop for all of them is, and they’re not people with high expectations so even that aspect is not as bad for me as it is for a lot of folks.

  191. 191.

    JaneE

    Jesus said that Christians will be persecuted, so these guys think they must be persecuted. If they can’t actually find anything that normal people would consider persecution, they need to make up something, otherwise they wouldn’t be real Christians. It makes perfect sense if you drink the right-wing Kool-aid. Because anything that doesn’t say “Jesus” can’t symbolize Christmas. Never mind that symbols are supposed to be evocative, not a two-by-four to the head.

  196. 196.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @leeleeFL:

    I had forgotten that one!

    Kiley was a fine actor. I was very fortunate to see him in the original Broadway run of Man of La Mancha. That is one of my all-time best theatre experiences.

  198. 198.

    Tom

    @SiubhanDuinne: Our first big family trip was to the 1964 World’s Fair.

    We kids had never been in an elevator or used an escalator before.
    I remember using the videophone in the AT&T pavilion to talk to my mom.
    For kids from a small Michigan town, it was mind-blowing.

  199. 199.

    revrick

    I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but the celebration of Christmas was banned in Boston for 22 years and its celebration was generally frowned upon throughout New England until the 1850’s. You can’t beat those Puritans in the War on Christmas!

  200. 200.

    Heliopause

    Somebody somewhere needs to do an ethnography explaining how Starbuck’s became the Right’s totemic symbol of liberalism.

  201. 201.

    Satby

    @SiubhanDuinne: I was 10 and already read the Chicago Tribune every morning before my parents woke up. I remember the pictures more than details about the blackout, and I remember all the follow-up stories 9 months later about the blackout baby boomlet.

  202. 202.

    LauraPDX

    @PurpleGirl: Several years into our marriage, my husband and I discovered we had actually been visiting the fair on the same day! He was visiting from Maryland with a church group; my family was visiting from California. We saw many of the same exhibits, and always wonder if we were at any of them at the same time.

    Besides the seeing the Pieta and eating many Belgian waffles, my favorite exhibit was the GE Carousel of Progress. I also got a penpal from New Zealand at the Parker Pen Pavilion and she and I wrote for many years.

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