(via The Cut, NYMag)
Derby’s a cool dude. I’m not sure there’s enough bitter apple in the world to discourage my idiot little dogs from treating prosthetic limbs as chew toys!
Earlier versions of Derby’s prosthetics shown here.
Apart from feeling good to watch a dog smile, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the “holidays” and prepare to buckle down for 2016?
Tommy
Starting the day with a few cups of coffee (beans from a co-op farm in Ethiopia) and the holiday episode of Sherlock.
Then once the sun comes up it is cleaning, cleaning my carpet downstairs, where I had more than a little water get into my “finished” basement last week. Well hundreds of gallons actually. But a lot of folks near and/or around me had it much worse so I can’t complain. All the water is gone after days of work, but the smell, well the smell kind of sucks. I think I’ve saved the little carpet I have (most is custom tile), but again the smell has to go.
I am sure many of you have seen all the news reports from MO and Southern IL about the flooding. I don’t think many of them do justice to what is going to be known as the “Flood of the Century.”
Here is some drone footage some dude took from last week outside of my town. There was a day or so my town became an actual island and if I wanted to leave town, well there wasn’t a road open where I could have done so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ng_FiURc20&sns=em
Time for my first cup of coffee and Sherlock!
Tommy
Just catching up on the crazies out west taking over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which after Googling it appears to be yet another just staggering beautiful place in these great states of America. Not even sure what to think, but this comment I saw kind of sums up my thinking:
That pretty much says it all IMHO.
Elizabelle
@Tommy: LOL. Love that comment re the bird sanctuary.
Welcome back and happy new year. I am still hopeful of catching a little more sleep, but may join you in coffee swilling before too long.
ThresherK (GPad)
Just awake for little reason, concerned I may have caught something.
Dinner party last nite where the food fun + friends were in ample supply. I brought dinner rolls (scratch) to go with hostess’ ham corn + sweet potato chowder. I gotta have that recipe, I sez to her, and I don’t do that out of politeness.
Cats hadn’t seen us for 2,1/2 days so my Jazz is still in the sorta cling (for her) stage.
Tommy
@Elizabelle: Happy New Years right back at yeah.
No more sleep for me today. Awake and too much stuff to do. But good news on the sleep front. I’ve made like 10-12 little changes in my life in the last month and my insomnia has gotten better. Much better. From an average in the last year of 2.8 hours of sleep a night I am now getting close to 6.
I almost wish I would have made the changes one at a time so I could have a better idea what is helping. But my gut is it isn’t one or two things, but the combo of a lot of them all working on basically doubling my sleep.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Happy New Year, Tommy. I was wondering how you were faring in your neck of the woods, Ozark Hillbilly has been letting us know how things are on the other side of the river(it wet there too). Good to hear that you’re able to get some more sleep, not sleeping sucks and is really bad for you.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Happy New Year to you as well. The YouTube video I posted above kind of says it all, taken less than a mile from where I live.
As to sleep I can’t say I really enjoy sleeping more, and at least some of the current research I’ve seen is there is a “you don’t need a lot of sleep” gene (mainly done in Japan BTW — I do read about this topic a lot). But it has just been such a short time I am going to keep up with these new habits and even try to expand on them. A few are just good in general, like I’ve cut my smoking from 25+ a day to well under 10 (7 yesterday). Of course working for zero, but taking it slow since I am NOT using the patch or mints or gum. And I’ve gone from at least 7,500 steps a day to 15,000 and working towards 20,000.
What I don’t like is when I slept less than 3 hours a night when I woke up, at whatever time that was, I woke up wide awake. Couldn’t go back to sleep if I wanted. I didn’t need coffee or a shower to get started. I literally hit the ground running.
Now after say 6 hours of sleep I wake up, well still half asleep and it takes more than 30 or so minutes to get “up to speed.” This may sound strange to “normal” sleepers, but for me it is a side effect I don’t like!
Gimlet
Sunday homily from Judge Scalia
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCALIA_RELIGION_SPEECH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-01-02-15-30-00
METAIRIE, La. (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country’s constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.
He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is “no place” in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.
“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?” he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?”
He also said there is “nothing wrong” with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.
Scalia said during the Sept. 11 attacks he was in Rome at a conference. The next morning, after a speech by President George W. Bush in which he invoked God and asked for his blessing, Scalia said many of the other judges approached him and said they wished their presidents or prime ministers would do the same.
“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Gimlet:
Scalia’s gone the Full Bobo on this!
Baud
@Tommy: Hey Tommy. Water in the basement is the worst. Hope the rest of the year is better for you.
Satby
Tommy, if you had drywall down there that got soaked you may have to pull that out too; otherwise you could get some long range black mold problems. We had to do that when we had a pipe break once.
Baud
@Gimlet:
I believe it.
Zinsky
So, sorry to hear about Tommy and others water problems with this massive flooding of the Mississippi River. I lived in Des Moines in 1993 when the Raccoon River flooded and wiped out the water treatment plant – we didn’t have fresh water for 10 days, in addition to having a foot of smelly river water in our basement. Bad times.
Concerning that professional dipshit Antonin Scalia – when is that fat ignorant fuck going to either get impeached or drop dead from a heart attack, the bloated pasta-filled puke bucket? God, what a sickening, delusional man….
His quote – “I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor”. Oh really, Fat Tony? Like when we committed genocide against the American Indian and stole millions of acres of their land? How about when we incinerated 200,000+ innocent Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Was that “doing him proud” or do we get two Mulligans for that? What a stupid, vile piece of shit.
Botsplainer
@Gimlet:
God is really a passive aggressive prick, isn’t he? “Praise me, or I’ll fuck with you”.
Baud
@Zinsky: When he says “us,” he doesn’t mean them.
Botsplainer
A couple of thoughts on a sleepy Sunday.
As for water shortages and the West, it’s the timeless tale of Western expansion, generation after generation – get some free land, fail. Move West because the government is giving out more free land for white people to fail again. Have a relatively sustainable period due to Federal water projects, at least until the water table collapses. Now there is no more free land to give out, and any more suitable land for farming or cattle back in the underutilized, wet East would have to be paid for.
The bootstrappiest bootstrappers that ever bootstrapped really received a lot of largesse from Uncle Sucker – largesse that black folks were mostly shut out of – for many generations. Failure was rewarded handsomely with new opportunity for white folks – read, for example, the maudlinized tales of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Pa was a loser).
These militia idiots are acting out the fiction of rugged individualism and Exceptionalism that they’ve been fed over, a fiction that the Texas schoolbook people are intending to perpetuate.
The mythology they keep absorbing is a lie.
geg6
Drinking coffee, hoping for a win for both the Steelers and the Bills (yeah, I know) and waiting with bated breath for the premiere of the final season of Downton Abbey. Love me some Downton Abbey.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Good morning. We should start a pool on the date when the militia types declare a moral victory and surrender. Without power, I give them a week. It’s pretty frikkin’ cold there in January.
This morning Mrs. Thunder and I will view the space movie in 3-D at a theater in our area. I will get an immediate and persistent headache. She will be happy. Sometimes that’s what it takes.
Schlemazel
@Tommy:
For some reason I thought you were one of BJs Florida contingent, no idea how I got that impression. Well flooding sucks & the clean up is a pain so I wish you the best. Not sure what your lower level looks like but you may have to rip out any sheetrock that got wet to avoid mold problems later. Probably not what you want to hear but better to over do it now than to have to do it again later or get sick from mold,
The coffee sounds good, enjoy it & have a good day
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy:
Have to say, I doubt it. The flooding will get worse and worse due to the unique combination of Global Warming and American Stupidity. Expect the next “hundred year flood” in about 8 years.
Glad to hear you managed to keep your head above water. A little surprised we didn’t here more of you flatlanders on the other side of the river. I know you got almost as much rain as we did, and out there in the plains it doesn’t have much of anywhere to go. Our biggest deal was I had to cancel a Doctor’s appt because damn near every road to STL was under water.
F
https://www.oathkeepers.org/the-hammond-family-does/
The Oath Keepers are apparently voicing reason, which puts in the stupidity of the members of Occupy Malheur in perspective.
debbie
@geg6:
Me too. I’m just finishing up rewatching Brideshead Revisited for about the billionth time. I cannot believe how well that almost 35-year-old series holds up. I hope Downton’s last season is just as good.
debbie
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Just heard Bundy’s son on the radio, insisting he would defend the town against the government. From what I can tell, no one’s asked him to and no one wants his help.
Germy
@debbie: interesting that they had no problem with the government between 2001 and 2008.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tommy:
Tommy;
I used to work custodial and have remediated submerged rooms. The carpet can be saved. cleaning it involves not so much soaps and solvents as getting clean water into it and fully extracting it over and over to dissolve and remove the solids and organics. When that’s done, extract all possible water, then set blowers, or better yet, a dehumidifier to get it as dry as possible quickly. It’s work, but it can get the job done. Unfortunately in your area you’re not the only one with this problem and suitable equipment is going to be scarce. You may have to improvise. If nothing else is available a big wet-vac and room fans will work. Running the air conditioning will help dry things out.
I don’t envy you at all. It’s a bad spot to be in, and you have a lot of work ahead. Good luck.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
Yeah, defending the town from his command post 50 miles away in a bird sanctuary. It’s leadership like that we have come to expect from this delusional band of misfit morons.
Steeplejack
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
From my own experience and from what I’ve read, 3D doesn’t really add much. It was added in post-production and really figures in only one scene. So you might be able to make a case for 2D. But if the missus is a 3D zealot . . .
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Steeplejack:
It’s her call. She saw Thor in 3D and liked it. I’m the one with the headache issues. It seems like a gimmick to me. Remember when 3D TV was going to be the Next Big Thing and that totally flopped? But I’ll go along to make her happy.
Peale
It’s sunk in now that I have to get over my jet lag, because I won’t be returning to the nice hotel in Japan tomorrow, but instead will be retraining to an office full of many things to do. Also, I had some awesomely delicious eel a few days ago and I am sad that I can’t have more.
Steeplejack
It has finally turned cold here in NoVa. It’s 27° now, going up to about 50° later today. But it’s sunny and looks nice outside.
I went to bed early (for me) last night and so was up early this morning. Even surprised the housecat by putting out her predawn breakfast before she started bitching about it.
Just finished my morning crosswords and switched on Crystal Palace vs. Chelsea to go with the last of my coffee and catching up on Balloon Juice. No big plans today.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ultraviolet Thunder: When I was still a kid, I was working such in restaurants when a sprinkler main froze and burst at 2 am. Water water water everywhere, coming from everywhere and going to everywhere. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen considering the look on the managers face.
Elizabelle
@Schlemazel: I am enjoying that these loons have flocked to a bird sanctuary. And self-incarcerated.
Now to keep their cage from getting too comfortable for them …
Steeplejack
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
The only movie I can remember where 3D really enhanced it was Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s documentary about the prehistoric cave paintings of Chauvet. Most of them suffer from that “poke out the viewer’s eye” syndrome, although that has gotten better. But it still seems gimmicky.
tybee
so a BundysReich, eh?
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: The whole ‘hundred-year flood’ concept is dubious. First, as statisticians know, very small probabilities are almost always underestimated. There are technical reasons for this, but civilians need to understand that the difference between ‘hundred-year flood’ and ‘ten-year flood’ is small. Second, any specific rare event is rare, but events in the class ‘rare events’ are not so rare. Third, any statistical estimate comes with an error– and an estimate of the frequency of a rare event will (necessarily) be based on a small amount of data; therefore its error will be large.
Estimating probabilities is hard, even if you’re smart.
Elizabelle
Don’t you think that, once the briefing was concluded, President Obama had a long, deep laugh over this?
I mean, no one has been injured yet, and the militia has taken itself hostage.
I guess the TV media could still blow this up, but who’s watching them anymore?
Twilight Zone marathon concludes about lunchtime. Last episode is “The Bewitching Pool”, written by Earl Hamner, Jr. who later did “The Waltons.”
Schlemazel
@Elizabelle:
In a way it’s a shame that the government will block new arrivals from joining them. It would be more fun if we could get hundreds of them gathered there and sit and freeze. Plus it would let the FBI get a good list of domestic terrorists.
I have read that the
Mouth-breathing MoronsPromise Keepers have issued a statement that they are not going to be joining. Either the Bundys are too crazy for them or the promise can be broken by a little cold weather.Germy
they say they’re prepared to stay put for YEARS. So if HRC wins she’ll inherit this mess? And if Cruz wins, they protestors will all get up and go home?
geg6
@debbie:
Review I read this morning says fans will be satisfied by the ending. I sure hope poor Edith finally feels happy for once in her life. And there’s a certain wedding between some people my age (old) that I’m very much looking forward to.
Schlemazel
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, well maybe it will be worth watching anyway.
Germy
So much of TV and the movies are written by committee. It’s been this way for decades. Is Downton the only show written entirely by ONE person, the show’s creator? I don’t know of another example of this.
debbie
@geg6:
I want to know what happens to Tom. And Maggie Smith.
debbie
@Germy:
Mad Men for one, but I’m sure there are many.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: A “hundred year flood” is defined as “a flood that has a one percent chance of happening in any one year”. It has always been misinterpreted because people are lazy/myopic/innumerate. That said, when they start happening once every 20 years, it is safe to say that the chance is no longer 1% per year.
Major rain events are going to (already are?) become more common due to GW and the race to have the highest levee on the river has done nothing but insure higher and higher river levels. As stated in the article I posted yesterday, in a rain event such as the one we just experienced where an area receives as much as 12 inches of rain, it is to be expected that smaller rivers such as the Meramec, the Big, and the Bourbeuse, would flood. That this local rain event would then cause a major river such as the Mississippi to flood (Cape Girardeau is forecasting a record high) is indicative of something seriously amiss. Mainly, our mistaken desire to turn flood plains into something, anything else.
Elizabelle
James Fallows: Obama doesn’t watch TV news. Good.
Fallows inserts a great reader’s comment, that could have been penned by multiple people here.
Now, Fallows:
The permanent-emergency chatter is not good for the rest of us either. They don’t call it an idiot box for nothing. It’s markedly worse in the past 15 years.
Elizabelle
@Germy: Will the protestors be able to receive absentee ballots at the bird sanctuary? I think not. They can’t even vote against Hillary.
I loved whoever said in the overnight thread that anyone showing up to join the renegades should be frisked for food and sent right on in.
Germy
Everyone wins except the poor birds.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, the Feds should consider hosting an annual “Overthrow the Federal Government” event in the middle of nowhere each year. Kind of like a Burning Man for militia types. Let them do the work of rounding themselves up.
Randy P
@Germy: My bet is, as others are saying, “last for years” means till they get cold. Although probably they’ll first add to the rap sheet by burning some government property to stay warm.
In Jack London stories these “stuck in a frozen cabin” situations never end well. Either somebody takes an axe to everybody else or wolves eat the lot of them. Or both.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Love this. What a visual!
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy: @debbie: Personally, I doubt very much that just because one person gets the credit, only one person did the work. I worked for a guy for years and heard him say time and again, “I built this.” when he never drove a single nail on that project. Remember when the GOP had their great flip out over “You didn’t build that.”?
geg6
@debbie:
Didn’t hear anything about them, but word is Barrow somewhat redeems himself. Possibly at a new job.
Elmo
@Tommy:
My wife and I bought our house in Maryland in July of 2013. The finished basement was a big big part of the draw. So the following spring we got 6″ of rain in a couple hours, and of course the basement completely flooded.
We had to tear out all the carpet and half the drywall, so now it’s only a partially finished basement. I have the skill to put up more drywall, but neither the budget nor the time. So it’s bare cinder bloc all round.
Satby
@Randy P: Well, I’m rooting for the wolves. Especially since ranchers were hunting them into endangered status.
Steeplejack
@Germy:
It’s more common in British TV, I think. Anthony Horowitz created Foyle’s War and wrote 23 of 28 episodes (according to IMDB). Can’t think of another specific example right now, but I know there are series where one person or a small group has written all or most of the episodes.
OzarkHillbilly
OK man shoots teen in the back after he’s caught playing ‘ding-dong ditch’ — and cops don’t arrest the shooter
Add trespassing to the list of capitol crimes.
Germy
@geg6: It’s still feels strange for me to see the Downton actors in the little PBS documentaries about the show. Out of period costume, they all look twenty years younger. Carson’s hair is longer, shampooed, conditioned and blow dried. All the ladies wear their hair down. I know it’s fiction, but there must be a tiny part of my visual brain that believes they live in 1925.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: How can this people have so much venom in them? I kind of understand people who hate people better than people who just destroy nature for no reason. Don’t that have that instinctive, atavistic response?
eta: if the state police treated them like black motorists in older vehicles they wouldn’t be so eager to do that. “Obviously, sir, you are under the influence of intoxicants, so I’m going to have to confiscate your property while we search your car … oh, looks like Ozzie got a hit, we’ll need the car too. You ever wonder why the K9 is named Ozzie?”
Belafon
@Gimlet: So Scalia’s “originialism” doesn’t include the Founding Fathers.
Edited.
Amir Khalid
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Sorry to hear that. Some people just can’t process artificial 3D. I’ve always had problems with analogue 3D, which for me tends to drift in and out of spatial resolution. But I think your wife will appreciate the difference between digital 2D and digital 3D: properly used, the latter does add depth and texture to the image.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I remember some reporter talking about getting a ride around Texas with LBJ at the wheel. Johnson said, “I built this road.” and the reporter asked what bill it was that he got passed. “No, I built this road, I was on the paving crew.”
He apparently knew the difference.
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy: Happens to me too.
D58826
@debbie: Well I can understand why they were heavily armed when they took over the bird sanctuary. Some of those sparrows can be really mean. Maybe this is a time to enlist the Donald and have him build one of his real big fences around these guys to protect them them the Feds. The Feds can then cut off all services to these hardy rugged patriots and we’ll see how long they last on MRE’s and melted snow.
Schlemazel
@Belafon:
Exactly! It goes back to the Old World & the reason so many where induced to escape to the New World. That sort of religious intolerance is what built American!
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA: And bad for your cognitive abilities and bad for your mood…
debbie
@Germy:
Even better was when Mary, Tom, and Lord Grantham assumed American accents on Colbert’s show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElbSFWgseA
Brachiator
@Germy:
J Michael Straczynski wrote 92 of the 110 episodes of the TV show “Babylon 5.”
The Downton Abbey float in the Rose Parade was a fun tribute. The mansion made out of flowers. Elizabeth McGovern rode in the float.
@Schlemazel:
RE: Last episode is “The Bewitching Pool”, written by Earl Hamner, Jr. who later did “The Waltons.”
Hamner wrote 8 TZ episodes, including “The Hunt,” a charming tale about a man, his dog, and the Devil.
ETA: I hate insomnia. I chalk it up to a bad cold. I wake up congested as hell.
WereBear
Republican voters, are they?
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: “No, I built this road, I was on the paving crew.” Obviously not a Republican. All snark aside, I doubt we’ll ever have another President who could say the same
OzarkHillbilly
@D58826:
I wonder if they have any Holy Hand Grenades in addition to their AR-15s.
Elizabelle
@Schlemazel: Not to mention transporting convicts (looking at you, Georgia) and exporting the surplus population, including indentured servants and ambitious younger sons. Europe truly was exporting its criminal class, although “some of them probably were good people.” Maybe just hungry. Problem solved on both sides of the pond.
It weren’t all about religious freedom. Atall. Despite what Scalia and other conservatives would have you believe.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: Hope you feel real better real soon.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
One day we’ll have a president who can say, “I wrote the code for that.”
ThresherK (GPad)
@Germy: Fawlty Towers was the work of John Cleese and Connie Booth, wasn’t it?
The first series of 6 they were one couple, the second series of six they were divorced, if memory serves.
The Brits have a much better track record of TV shows with a beginning, middle and end. And given how domestic servantude was losing its appeal to the workers I see a real ending for the show.
(One survey reported that from 1900-30 about 30% of British personal servants quit that industry. The opportunities, freedom, privacy and pay, and the idea of more than one day off now and then, in other lines of work, started to look better and better. Plus the number of soldiers killed in WWI reminded people that life was too short.)
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Nice use of Trumpism.
D58826
@Baud: Some of the people were exported based on trumped up charges. Sorry couldn’t resist!!!!!!!!!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Ha!
Germy
Does anyone here remember “The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin” with the same fondness that I do?
Schlemazel
@Elizabelle:
I’d add debtors prison also. If you couldn’t pay your bills you might end up in the colonies, either as an indentured servant or on the run from that end. The place was built by religious nut balls and criminals and I think it explains some of our schizophrenia.
Nice use of the Tumpsterism!
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
True, and the nation is poorer for it.
OzarkHillbilly
So how did ABC characterize the Oregon yahoos actions on twitter? Peaceful protest followed by Oregon wildlife refuge action:
Both sides, I guess.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle: Thanks. It helps greatly to have the holiday weekend to try to rest.
Schlemazel
@ThresherK (GPad):
I agree about the Brits having limits on shows that don’t exist in the states. Dr. Who is the exception but many of their series begin already knowing their end. The good side is that it often means the stories are all in the hands of the originator and don’t flounder by committee. The sad part is there are some that I wish we could have more of.
There was a series I can’t remember the name of but it involved a German soldier that ballooned to England during the war & ended up as a gardener after the war. It was bizarre and hilarious but only ran about 8-10 episodes. Would love to have had more of that.
Steeplejack
@Germy:
Loved it! I even bought the series on DVD.
Elizabelle
Some of the Twilight Zone themes are so timeless. This show about Mr. Whipple: it’s about how you treat company employees; how much do you replace them with machinery? Yesterday had a few speeches about being forced into obsolescence; concerns about technology.
Which have come true today. Inserting a downer into this thread, because it’s an important NY Times article, and needs to be part of the debate.
Over 50, Female and Jobless Even as Others Return to Work
Over 1,000 comments.
This is systemic. It’s not the fault of individual women, or individual any type of worker, of any age. And it’s waiting for the bright young things that are employable, in fewer years than they think.
This needs an honest discussion, and who knows if we will get one in 2016. Easier for the GOP and corporate media to throw fear of ISIS and terrorism at us. Blame Obama for everything, everything.
A terrorist may or may not come over and kill some Americans. A corporate HR department is planning to downsize some jobs and thwart all manner of qualified employees seeking jobs. Right now. [I was a little surprised that no commenter so far has explicitly mentioned computer hiring algorithms as one source of being screened out.]
Corporations and wealthy people are sitting on cash. They’re screaming about the deficit and the possibility of inflation. We could do something about this situation, if we aimed attention at the correct actors.
Therefore: ISIS! Terrorism!
Elizabelle
@debbie: Good morning.
It’s probably unfair to many of our feathered friends.
I also wonder how long the bird watchers of rural Oregon are going to put up with their unwanted nesters. Or if the town is thinking about how much paying for law enforcement for this little rebellion is going to run them.
bemused
I’m not surprised that some residents living near the Malheur Wildlife Refuge are not thrilled with these militants lecturing them about how they, brave militants, are supposedly standing up for the locals’ rights, especially outsider militants.
I live in northern MN hunting country, small town, rural with federal parks such as the BWCA. There are still locals that deeply resent the banning of motorized vehicles in the park, boats, snowmobiles, ATV’s but most recognize we gain a lot of tourism and dollars to the area. One thing most long time residents have in common though is suspicion and resentment of outsiders coming in potentially mucking up their lives.
MomSense
Last night was the last night having all my he kids together. I think they ate pizza about 2 am. The washer and dryer have been running constantly and I’m really enjoying all the noise and commotion. Of course the dog is stealing all the socks and underwear. She’s not going to miss out on all the fun.
Germy
@Steeplejack: I literally haven’t seen it in decades. Reginald Perrin was consistently hilarious, and the saga took bizarre turns.
TaMara (BHF)
Awesome post Anne Laurie. Thank you.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator:
And, really, he probably shouldn’t have. Some of his episodes are brilliant, but it seemed like he stretched himself pretty thin.
TaMara (BHF)
@Tommy: Oh, Tommy that’s so awful. My little city was turned into an island two years ago and we’re still recovering. I hope it all goes well for you and you can get everything cleaned up ok.
redshirt
@Elizabelle: Interesting post. I feel the same way.
I know it’s fiction, but remember the beginning of the movie “Independence Day”? It has the President and his staff constantly fixated on cable and TV news, to the point where it seemed they were molding their reactions to the what the news was saying. I’ve always assumed this White House was loosely modeled on the Clinton White House given the year it was made.
It makes me chuckle, because cable TV news did used to seem very important to me, too. Now, I would actively change the channel or look away if it were on tv. I’ll get my news elsewhere.
Matt McIrvin
@Ultraviolet Thunder: My family usually see movies in 2D because we’ve all decided that 3D gives us eyestrain for anything longer than an amusement-park ride-film. But I’ve noticed that for big spectacular movies like The Force Awakens, the local movie chains still seem to be overestimating the demand for 3D showings: it’s usually slightly harder to get seats for the 2D version. (I assume they’re showing the movie in 3D for every theater that has the equipment installed, so there’s a certain technical inertia at work.)
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin: RE: J Michael Straczynski wrote 92 of the 110 episodes of the TV show “Babylon 5.”
Probably largely a matter of necessity. The show was part of the fledgling and short-lived UPN network, budgets were always tight, and I don’t think that JMS ever had the luxury or the security of sufficient time to prep and hire many other writers.
Given rise of well-done limited series coming from Amazon, Netflix, HBO and others, a Babylon 5 reboot could be quite interesting.
Baud
Completely OT, but this news shouldn’t go completely unnoticed.
Matt McIrvin
@Tommy: Several years ago, before Waze/Google Maps could give you reliable and detailed traffic reports, I decided to drive to work in the midst of what turned out to be general flooding around the Boston area. I was living in Arlington, Mass. and trying to get to Burlington up Route 3. I stupidly followed the traffic creeping in that direction only to find that it was a dead end: the road became impassible from flowing water around Woburn.
So I pulled into this Bruegger’s Bagels, intending to try to get some information, and while I was there, the water rose around the Bruegger’s parking lot and turned it into an island. Outside, some firefighters were in the process of rescuing a guy who had driven his car into three feet of cold water and seemed to be in danger from hypothermia. A scary scene. I’d probably have gotten waterlogged myself if I’d been slightly more foolhardy or less lucky.
I had to wait there on Bagel Island for an hour or two; it wasn’t so bad, because the place had power, heat, bagels and coffee. Eventually the rain tailed off and the water started to fall a little, and I started hearing word of mouth about an open route that would at least allow me to get back home.
That’s the worst I’ve been personally caught in… and it wasn’t much at all, by the standards of real flooding. But the feeling of being stranded is a powerful one.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
3D movies shouldn’t be priced any higher than 2D. But multiplexes (well, the ones in KL) charge a premium for the former. They should make 3D glasses an optional extra. If you already have a pair, you shouldn’t need to pay for another. I turned a pair of 3D glasses into clip-ons, which is so much more better than having to wear two pairs to see a 3D movie.
ThresherK
@Germy: Oh, good gawd, yes. It was my introduction to the weird world of British character comedy. I was probably already a Monty Python fan by then, however Reginald Perrin showed me how they could be just as off-kilter with recurring characters and long story arcs.
I might just have been a teenager. It warped me in the best way, and since then I’ve given anything with Leonard Rossiter or Geoffrey Palmer a shot.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: When I saw SWFA last week, there were more showings of the 3D version than of the 2D– and in the early afternoon, when I saw it, only 3D was showing. So, you can see what the pricing strategy was– and it worked.
Schlemazel
@Schlemazel:
It took me a bit but the show was called Blott On the Landscape
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: They charge extra here too. And, I think, more still for 3D IMAX, which the local place has going on one or two screens.
The first time Sam and Jorie saw a 3D movie, there was nobody at the door handing out the glasses and they didn’t seem to have any child-sized ones, which was an additional problem. (Also, I suspect 3D movies cause worse eyestrain for little kids because they’re shot/rendered/processed assuming an adult’s eye separation.)
Elizabelle
President Obama Town Hall on Gun Violence, this Thursday night at 8:00 p, CNN, being held at George Mason University in Fairfax VA.
NY Times:
130 dead in Paris. 14 dead in San Bernardino. Over 40,000 dead by guns (many suicides, no doubt) in the US since September 11.
Priorities, peeps.
debbie
@Baud:
Between ending this and speed traps, how will the police survive???
ThresherK
@Schlemazel: Okay, now I gotta find that.
Tangentially, whenever someone asks me why I like British TV comedy on an almost default setting, I remind them that there were two attempt to make an Americanized version of Fawlty Towers, each of which failed ignomiously. And the stars were John Laroquette and Bea Arthur, two Americans who can bring the unsympathetic comedy protagonist in spades.
The wheel slowly turned; Dabney Coleman as Buffalo Bill, then The Office US and Arrested Development. But let’s face it, there’s a lot more experience in this thing on the other side of the pond, which only leads me to believe that there’s more of an audience for it going back generations.
MattF
@ThresherK: Well, John Cleese is a special case.
Schlemazel
@ThresherK:
I don’t know about Netflix but ther is no US version on DVD. I have found it on youtube though & am looking forward to finding time to rewatch it.
ThresherK
@MattF: But is he an “out of nowhere” case in England when it comes to having creative control? The American stars could have carried those shows, I submit, if the whole vibe of them were in place.
I know that’s a nebulous thing to say. I can’t come up with something better to explain it. Perhaps too much network and executive meddling in the US attempts?
A good showrunner with the proper amount of control over “my baby” is important. If committees write crummy comedy, it goes double with unsympathetic protagonists, and it took American networks some time to realize that.
One might go back all the way to Norman Lear and his characters of Archie Bunker (AITF was an adaptation of an English show), Maude, and George Jefferson. At some point Lear knew how to get them unsympatheticness mixed with a touch of humanity, not drowned in frosting.
redshirt
@MattF: I’ve yet to see a 3D movie that made 3D worth it. It’s usually a very small part of the film, almost always special effects, and while sometimes it is very cool, it is so brief and really not part of the film, it’s not worth it. There were a couple of cool shots in SWTFA, but not worth it, I’d say.
If it was an entire movie filmed in 3D, maybe that would be different.
Matt McIrvin
One of the reasons Cameron’s Avatar made so much money (for a film that seems to have had little lasting effect on popular culture) was that it came out right in the wave of one of the popular resurgences of 3D (granted, one that seems to have stuck longer than the many previous iterations) and there was a claim that it was one of the few movies really made from the beginning with 3D in mind. So you had to see it in 3D, as an exemplar of what the technology could do, and people paid the surcharge.
But few filmmakers since then seem to have bothered to do this.
Scapegoat
Enjoying a toasty fire while moving back into our old house. Our tenants unwittingly shut off the gas and we won’t have heat or hot water until Wednesday — so it’s a balmy 62F inside.
My eight month pregnant wife has been a real trooper. Scoring a beautiful crib and dresser for the billy goat yesterday for 60% off (yay, floor model sales!) was a great boost to her spirits, along with returning to our beloved house.
Headed to pick up our two kittehs tonight and remaining necessities. All smiles here.
Satby
@Scapegoat: congrats! And welcome back home.
Scapegoat
@Satby: Thank you — It’s been a long ten years!