Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

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

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

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

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / And That Started With a Bang

Reader Interactions

121Comments

  5. 5.

    Seanly

    it can take a little while to adjust to the bifocals especially progressives.
    Fudge, another Steelers fumble!

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    Finally got a chance to sit down and watch “The Wiz.” No complaints at all about the performances, but I wasn’t all that fond of the camera choices and where they placed the numerous commercial breaks. I also wonder if they should try a live audience for the next one — I think the pacing suffers otherwise.

    I especially don’t get the people who complained about Mary J. Blige, who was obviously having the time of her life hamming it up as the wicked witch. Have they never seen live theater before?

  9. 9.

    The Sailor

    “BTW- my body is rejecting my bifocals.”

    That’s normal, John. The older you get the more your lens hardens and makes it more difficult to accommodate. IOW, you need an eye exam and new glasses. (I love my progressive lenses.)

  10. 10.

    pat

    If you have progressive lenses, go back and get real bifocals, with the lower (bifocal) part as large as you can get. You will be amazed at the difference.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    Took me awhile to get used to my progressives (got ’em a couple of years back), but now I love them.

  15. 15.

    Suzanne

    Cole, you sound like those old ladies who snivel and moan about their various ailments all day. Good Lord.

  16. 16.

    peej

    I love my progressive lenses. But I have regular bifocals with my computer glasses and I hate them.

  18. 18.

    Gravenstone

    As others have said, progressive lenses tend to have a user break in period. When I first got mine, everything seemed okay – until the first time I turned my head while I had a horizontal surface in view (specifically a table top). The resulting surge of vertigo as the straight surface suddenly swooped and curved in my vision damn near dropped me to my knees.

  20. 20.

    RandomMonster

    I’m older than you slightly, John, and I got used to progressive lenses in about a week. Granted, it was a week of slight headaches, but eventually my brain sorted it out. Just saying, give it a little time…

  21. 21.

    D58826

    I’ve worn glasses all my life. I need them for distances like driving. As I got older I found it was easier to take my glasses off and just read without them. When I asked the doctor he just shrugged his shoulder and said that’s why its the art of medicine.

  23. 23.

    Corner Stone

    @princess leia:

    Took me two weeks to get used to my progressives- now I totally love them.

    Weren’t you like a General in the Rebellion? How much more progressive does it get? And they have robotic replacement arms and synthetic breathing apparati, but no corrective vision for Force users?

  26. 26.

    lurker dean

    I recently got a new pair of progressive lenses and it took me a couple of weeks to get used to them. Even though I’ve had progressives for a number of years now. It seems like on these new lenses the area of perfect focus is tiny, and if my head isn’t exactly perpendicular to thing I’m trying to see, the thing isn’t perfectly focused. My eye doc skipped straight to progressives so I’ve never tried regular bifocals, kind of wish I had.

  27. 27.

    Gvg

    Everyone is different. I had no problems with progressives. My aunt couldn’t adjust and took hers back.
    Hmm. The post before hitting send is in tiny font. I wonder how it will turn out. Something has changed again.

  29. 29.

    JMG

    I’ve had bifocals for years, and no problem. But now I realize I need a new prescription, as the seeing past my nose part is getting less effective. So we’ll see what the doctor recommends. Can’t get an appointment until after Christmas, of course.

  30. 30.

    Scout211

    Getting the correction in the right place in blended bifocals can be very tricky. I have worn them for many years and have to have them made at the optometrist’s glasses shop because they hand measure and then make them to the measurements.

    I have found that I absolutely cannot wear blended bifocals made in a high volume shop like LensCrafters or Costco. They make them by machine and don’t take into consideration things like differences in each eye. I had one pair made by Lens Crafters that I brought back two times for them to remake one of the lenses. And they still were not great.

    Apparently my eyes are quite different from each other and I feel dizzy if the prescription isn’t made correctly for each eye. Plus, I can’t see if the correction for each distance is not right.

    John, please go back to where you had them made and make them remeasure and refit you. They usually give you 30 days.

  32. 32.

    Petorado

    The Steelers fumbled the opening kickoff. Awesome.
    You have my deepest sympathy, says an interminably-suffering Browns fan.

  33. 33.

    Mike in NC

    @Iowa Old Lady: I was sweeping leaves in my driveway the other day when suddenly I turned around and saw a dead mouse. Figured it must have been dropped by one of the hawks that are constantly circling overhead. Another time it was a small fish.

  34. 34.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Mike in NC: There’s a field behind us, and mice from it come into our garage every fall when it turns cold. We leave poison out for them. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one in the house though.

    And I’ve never had a fish dropped anywhere near me.

  37. 37.

    Wag

    Give the bifocals a month. It takes a while for the brain to adjust. And be careful going down stairs. I still look under my glasses going down stairs after 10 years.

  42. 42.

    magurakurin

    @pat: My bifocals are awesome. But they are Japanese bifocals, they are way ahead over here(vague Taxi Driver reference). I have lenses for far at the top and near at the bottom and there is a gentle transitional zone in the middle. There are no lines of any sort on the lens. I was a little dizzy the first week or so, but now my eyes never seem to look through the “wrong” part of the lens. But my farsighted vision has worsened and the reading portion is getting to be too weak. damn. more money, more money…

  44. 44.

    scav

    @Mike in NC: One year, I kept finding mice trapped in my mailbox — my set-in an in interior wall mailbox. I found them frequently enough that I started, well, checking the mail at least once a day whether mail was delivered or not (after the first ill-omened weekend). They would generally just launch themselves out of the box at eye-level and, on a good day, frantically run into several walls before finding the front door I was simultaneously holding open for them. Weirdest game of pinball it’s ever been my good fortune to participate in.

  45. 45.

    geg6

    @Hawes:

    I agree. I detest, really, really detest my progressives. I literally never use the part of the lenses meant for use with my computer. I’ll take them off rather than use them. Biggest waste of $$ ever. Torture devices.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    As I have noted before, when I need reading lens (and the time is coming), I will get a dedicated pair of readers and a dedicated pair of distance glasses. I wear my distance glasses maybe 20% of the time. I would never adjust to progressives of bifocals.

  48. 48.

    geg6

    @Scout211:

    Both pairs I’ve had were hand measured. They still sucked giant donkey dicks. Never again. I’d rather have eye strain from my computer screen than get another pair. Horrible.

  49. 49.

    seaboogie

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    There’s a mouse in my laundry room.

    I had that problem too – in fact it was multiple generations of mice by the time that I got it resolved. Once I found how the mice were getting in and out I blocked all of the holes with steel wool and metal plates and then got busy with an humane live trap baited with raw shelled sunflower seeds. Pretty much every morning around 3 am I’d hear the scritching of mice caught in the trap, get dressed, and march them down the road and set them free in the woods.

    Then I got busy cleaning up their mess. They had been secreting cat kibble (my kitty is elderly and cannot be bothered to catch mice any more – she’s pretty chill with having rhodents around) AND the cat’s corn based cat litter everywhere in pretty impressive quantities.

  55. 55.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @seaboogie: I had mice a few years ago, I used the traps with a very sticky surface. Not pretty but it eventually worked after a month or so.

  56. 56.

    PurpleGirl

    I tried bifocals about ten years ago. I couldn’t get used to them — just couldn’t adjust to how to hold my head or where to see through the top part and the bottom part for reading. So I get two separate pairs of glasses and it works out better for me. I think everyone is different and we should go with what works for us.

  58. 58.

    Scout211

    @geg6:

    They all appear to hand measure, but the high volume places then place them on a machine grinder and may or may not grind them according to your specific measure. One lens was always wrong for me because they were ground exactly the same and my eyes measure differently.

    But yeah, some people never adjust. However, I do wonder how many of those people just weren’t properly fitted.

  60. 60.

    seaboogie

    On the progressive lenses front:

    My first pair was from a local optometrist, and was of the conventional progressive sort that I never got used to.

    I got my second pair from a middle-aged whiz of an optometrist who wears thick glasses himself – so he obviously gets the issues involved from a personal perspective. They were digital progressives that have a really smooth transition that fans out naturally in all directions. When you hold them up to the light you can see little laser-inscribed ovals with various correction values. Mine also had to be “indexed”, because one eye is significantly worse than the other, and the difference in thickness of the lenses would be quite noticeable otherwise.

    From the minute I put them on, they were a total breeze to use, and required no adjustment period at all. Plus, the optometrist guaranteed the lenses and would adjust them as necessary at no additional cost to ensure they were just right from the start. It was about $600 for the lenses alone, and worth every penny.

    Four years later, I need a fresh prescription, so that is going to be $1,000 including exam and frames – and totally worth it once I get the scratch together for them.

  65. 65.

    magurakurin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Indeed. People differ. Some are like my wife, they just simply deny that they are myopic. She’s been pretending that she can see perfectly well for all of the 20 years that I have known her. She pulls her eyes back tight at the corners when reading signs. I say, “wear your damn glasses,” her reply is always, “I can see just fine.” Whatever wiggles your waggle. But Cole probably should go back to the shop if he still has trouble a couple of weeks after he got the new glasses. I can’t imagine it should take that long to get used to glasses.

  66. 66.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @magurakurin: My point is that people like me who are and will be part time glasses users for the foreseeable future are not good candidates for combo lenses.

  69. 69.

    Original Lee

    @Iowa Old Lady: We had a mouse nest behind our dryer once. We put a sticky trap at each side and in the front (where we wouldn’t step on them by accident), and our border collie at the time came and got us every time one of the babies stumbled onto a trap. Maybe you could borrow a border collie for trap duty, although not one of ours, because the current ones are more likely to adopt the babies than watch them get caught.

  70. 70.

    Original Lee

    @Scout211: This. I have progressive trifocals and have to have them made by some outfit the opthalmologist uses for special orders. Took me a while to get used to them because I wear my computer glasses so much, and those are single focus.

    ETA: I intend to get implants at some point, probably in the far distant future when I need cataract surgery. My doc says Lasik can complicate removal of cataracts, so I’m staying away from that procedure for now.

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    Now we’re watching the American rip-off of “The Great British Baking Show, ” which is “The Great Holiday Baking Show.” It’s pretty identical so far — they even got Mary Berry to be one of the judges.

  72. 72.

    magurakurin

    @Omnes Omnibus: You are lucky. I can read with my glasses off, but with only corrected lenses, I can’t read at all. Zero. I wear contacts for surfing, and when I come out of the water I cannot read at all. The bifocals are good for my general life since they let me read without tipping up the glasses. When I just sit down to read, though I do so without any correction. So, I guess I am lucky in that regard. Then again, you say you only need glasses 20% of the time…my wife says shit like that…;)

  73. 73.

    Suzanne

    Seriously. Cole is like this hilarious black cloud of constant negativity. GET OFF MY LAWN THESE KIDS TODAY WHERE’S MY MUSTARD MY ASS HURTS DAMNIT CAT.

    My pottery instructor, who I adore, has a personality similar to how I envision Cole. Every once in a while when he’s being particularly ornery, I laugh directly in his face. He loves me anyway though, because I bake awesome cookies.

  74. 74.

    Mike J

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    Now we’re watching the American rip-off of “The Great British Baking Show, ” which is “The Great Holiday Baking Show.” It’s pretty identical so far

    Complete with sheep shots.

    The British papers tried to come up with reasons to hate it, but most of it was the equivalent of the designated American hater I find in ever office I consult in.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @magurakurin: I can legally drive without my glasses. I qualified as an expert with a .45 in the army without my glasses. I wear them for driving at night and for watching movies. Would my vision be better if I used them all the time? Sure. But I use them when I feel I need them. I’ll do the same with readers. Is it vanity? Maybe. I can live with it.

  76. 76.

    PhoenixRising

    Oh, Cole.

    My brother-in-law got bifocals 7 years ago, when he was your present age. When he’d been wearing them for 3 days, he got my niece’s kite out of the tree…but then had to use bifocals to estimate distance to the ground. Yes, you guessed it: Jumped out of the tree he’d just climbed up into, breaking 7 bones in his ankle.

    All I’m saying is, don’t get a kid’s kite down for her until you adjust. You’d end up in traction.

  77. 77.

    Suzanne

    @PhoenixRising: Cole would not survive that. He can barely negotiate his front steps and mopping his damn floors. Climbing a tree with bifocals is a suicide mission.

  78. 78.

    magurakurin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Like I said, you are lucky. You can see. I can’t see shit without my glasses. I envy people who can see well or even just okay without glasses.

  79. 79.

    Gvg

    I do recall my sister saying optometrist lab made more precise glasses than the one hour/day places. So I paid mine and didn’t try the online ordering. I paid around $400. This next time I may also get a pair of sunglasses. Glare bothers me more than it used to.

  82. 82.

    John Revolta

    @efgoldman: I do the same thing………..I have three or four strengths of glasses I use for different stuff and maybe two or three pairs of each going at a time. Works for me.

    BTW, what does your wife play?

  83. 83.

    seaboogie

    @Original Lee: Sticky traps are heinous – the mice/rats chew their legs off to get free – that is fucking torture! Even the guys at the hardware store agree on that. If you want to kill them – get the basic snap trap. Sticky traps strictly for Republicans who also believe in water-boarding!

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    Inadvertently put this OT in a serious thread earlier. Meant to compose it, copy and then paste later on, but hit Post button from force of habit instead. Sorry ’bout that.

    For any sitting on tenterhooks (as if :) ) regarding the comedy of errors outlined a couple days ago that was my purchase of a tablet, just today got an e-mail from Amazon that they have processed a refund for $20 more than I paid, and I get to keep the incorrect tablet.

    When the credit shows up on the card, shall believe it. Up until now it has been one puzzlement after another, via both phone and by e-mail. Amazon rep on phone yesterady said she had never dealt with anything as screwed up as this has been, to the point that she was confused too.

  86. 86.

    seaboogie

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Nobody is setting any mice free here. If they wanted to live, they shouldn’t have come into my house.

    They came into your house because they want to live – seasonal changes, and all. If’n you want to kill them, cats and snap traps are most humane. Me – I raised gerbils as a kid, so I kind appreciate the cute little ones who are at the bottom of the food chain. When I released my field mice, I wished them a happy life, knowing that the foxen or hawks or cats would get ’em eventually.

  87. 87.

    different-church-lady

    @seaboogie: Agreed — one live mouse squeaking and struggling away within my field of vision was enough for me to say never again. I was thinking, “Well shit, now I’ve got to finish the thing off myself. How the hell am I supposed to do that?.” I wound up taking it out to a field and dowsing it in citrus-based glue dissolver, which for all I know was more deadly than the trap thing itself, but at least the damn mouse got free.

    Pro tip: the best bait for mice is peanut butter.

  91. 91.

    Satby

    @lurker dean: it may be that the pupil distance was set wrong, or too low or high, or if you have astigmatism the axis could be off slightly. Take them back to the doctor and have him check.
    That goes for anyone having adjustment problems with most glasses. A mistake in the PD or axis can make a new pair of glasses seem worse than not having any. Labs make mistakes.

  93. 93.

    Lizzy L

    Sympathies, Cole. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was eight. I’ve tried several times but have never been able to adjust to progressive lenses. I wear distance glasses for driving/walking around/basic living and I have a pair of reading glasses which I also use at the computer. After my cataract surgery — sometime in my future, the doc says — it’ll all change. Oh goody.

  94. 94.

    max

    @danielx: Colts truly suck this evening. That is all.

    WOW DID THEY EVER. Almost as bad as the Eagles last week.

    max
    [‘I’ve seen an astounding amount of crappy football games in the last two weeks.’]

  95. 95.

    max

    @Suzanne: Seriously. Cole is like this hilarious black cloud of constant negativity. GET OFF MY LAWN THESE KIDS TODAY WHERE’S MY MUSTARD MY ASS HURTS DAMNIT CAT.

    Can you imagine chirpy happy Cole? Oh God. ‘Wow I’m just hanging out here in the mountains pickin’ and grinnin’. Look at those trees! West Virginia is God’s green earth!’

    Then someone would have to go over to his house and put him out of our misery.

    max
    [‘It’s better this way. Also: funnier.’]

  98. 98.

    seaboogie

    @John Cole:

    You never make me cookies.

    Careful, John – you are going to trip over that pouty lip – especially with your crappy new lenses….

  100. 100.

    Eric U.

    I have progressives. I just bought some safety glasses with bifocal lenses instead. My progressive lenses are really nice, but I decided I wanted to go back to bifocals for the safety glasses because I want to know when I’m looking through the reader portion. And the progressives bend lines too, so that isn’t good for the kind of detail work I do. I could have gotten them for $200 with the progressive lenses, but they were only $100 with bifocal lenses.

  102. 102.

    lurker dean

    @Satby: I did have them check and recheck and was told they were to spec. They noted my axis had changed, and suggested that was probably the reason they seemed different. I don’t notice the “have to be exactly perpendicular” effect any more, so they may have been right. I’m just generally annoyed about getting old and needing bifocals of any type at all! But definitely good advice to get a double check if the lenses feel off.

  105. 105.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne:

    And they’re on sale!

    That makes them $750 cat scratching trees!

    C’mon, be realistic. Wean the man onto relatively cheap, replaceable furniture that’s a few steps up from his current stuff, and then get artsy with the end tables.

    (Says the woman whose tastes are for Craftsman/Art Noveau, but whose house is furnished in Steelcase/Bush-in-a-box.)

  107. 107.

    Suzanne

    @Anne Laurie: Hey, I didn’t say I could afford them, either. But I figure Cole makes bank from this blog. I’m sure we all spend fucktons on Amazon to avoid leaving the house.

    Here’s something more durable and more moderately priced. Also has that West By God Virginia aesthetic.

    I really want Cole to get new end tables. The ones he has look just like the ones in my furnished student apartment circa 2000.

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @efgoldman:

    We have several pieces in this style from Cost Plus. They’re actual (if soft) wood, not pressboard and look pretty nice. The downside is you have to assemble them yourself, but the instructions are pretty good. But, then, I find IKEA furniture easy to assemble, so YMMV.

    And, as I always mention, if you find IKEA stuff hard to assemble, never, ever buy anything from Target. They had by far the worst instructions I’ve ever seen.

  111. 111.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne:

    Clutter = death

    Silly person, clutter is what separates us from the other animals.

    Cats — and chimpanzees — never bothered to develop advanced narrative skills because they never had to ask each other “What the hell was Grandma thinking, when she acquired that OBJECT in the first place?”

  112. 112.

    Nancy

    @Scout211:
    The bifocals:
    and the lack of empathy for the new user:
    I would criticize the critical except for my memory of being that judgmental in my younger, healthier days. It is hard to imagine what another person is going through, easier to relate if it has happened to you/me/us.
    And I discovered that I have to wear regular reading glasses for looking at and reading on desktop computer screens. Progressive bifocals make me dizzy and uncomfortable, reading glasses do not.
    Granted, I paid a lot of money to have glasses that I wouldn’t have to take on and off all the time. Well, that’s how it is. Reading some of the suggestions above, maybe I’ll try to get them adjusted a bit.
    Finally, if someone doesn’t like to read complaints about life and stuff, maybe read other things on the site. We will all get older, some of us sooner than others, and most of our eyes and memories will work differently as the pieces age.

  113. 113.

    WereBear

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Make sure you read up on good candidates for Lasik (are you one?) and the actual level of side effects. For instance, it’s a very high level of chronic dry eye, which sounds trivial until you try to live with it.

    I got progressives several years ago, for computer work on various monitors. I liked it sitting at the computer. I had to take them off for walking around. Now I slide them down my nose so I can look over them, like when I’m on the iPad and we are watching a movie.

  114. 114.

    WereBear

    @magurakurin: I wasn’t about to get all tortured and squinty for hours a day. By the time I figured out my eye strain issues it looked like I was using beet juice eyedrops.

    Not to mention the crow’s feet issues.

  116. 116.

    Original Lee

    @seaboogie: They only chew their legs off if they are left alone long enough to do so. Our border collie at the time would come get us when one was in the trap, and we would pick up the trap, put it in a paper bag, and finish the creature with a hammer. Now you can say, ewwwwww. I grew up with my dad using regular traps, and have had too many nights of lying in bed listening to the flop-flop-flop of a mouse with its back broken in the wrong place.

  117. 117.

    Scout211

    @Nancy:

    I am not sure what you are meaning by this criticism of the “critical” but you linked to my comment.

    I have nothing but empathy for people who get dizzy, nauseated and can’t see with their new blended bifocals. I have been there many times.

    I was offering a possible solution to the problem. At least for me, the solution was going back to the place who made the lenses and having them redone.

    Sorry if you assumed that there was no empathy in my comment. I guess I wasn’t clear.

  118. 118.

    Nutella

    re: bifocals

    I found it too big a jump to go from near-sighted-only glasses to progressive bifocals so I got the old-fashioned non-progressive kind. I found that the border was in the wrong place for me because I had to push the glasses down on my nose when driving so I had the optician order me a set with the border lower. It really bugs the optician to put it there but it works for me.

    I still had a transition period where I continued looking under the glasses to read. What pushed me to get used to them was a long train commute where I shifted frequently from reading a book to looking out the window.

    Those were good for a while and now I have trifocals with the middle section pretty much plain glass for looking at the computer screen.

    I never tried progressives again because I’m happy with seeing the border lines.

    I think most people have to experiment to see what works for them.

  119. 119.

    Lizzy L

    @efgoldman: Yeah. I’m told implant lenses are the bees knees. I have severe astigmatism, so I’ll need toric lenses (cost, $2400, which Kaiser won’t pay for.) But I am NOT complaining. Everyone I know who’s had the surgery (except one person who couldn’t tolerate the lenses) has been very very happy.

  120. 120.

    Nancy

    @Scout211:
    Actually, no, I linked to you because you were empathic and I suspect I was contrasting your comment to other less so comments, but obviously not doing that as clearly as I thought I did. I have a tendency to vertigo due to Meniere’s disease anyway, then add the bifocals on top of that, oh what fun.
    I am trying to recall that I was not empathic before deterioration and Meniere’s.
    I wish John Cole well with his difficulties as welll as wishing him some compassionate, helpful responses like yours. Maybe it was too early in the morning for me to try to function.

  121. 121.

    Denali

    Cataract surgery really solved the bifocal issue! I do need reading glasses now, and have adopted the granny look with my glasses holder attached to my body. Also, keep a spare near the computer.
    Used the lineless glasses before, and had several falls(also have the habit of not watching where I am going. Things have improved in that area.

Comments are closed.