Which evokes the inevitable anthem:
Which is to say: please don’t mistake any of your relatives for flying rats, no matter what the post-holiday temptation may be.
This thread. Open, it is.
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Which evokes the inevitable anthem:
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Soylent Green
Wake me when the primary is over.
SiubhanDuinne
Don’t know at which end the trouble originates, but in place of what I assume is a video, I get:
I’ll try again in a few minutes and see if it’s better.
Marc
Had a relative give me a broadside about the VA when I’d mentioned I’d seen my new doctor there. I knew the comments were from Fox, or somewhere similar, but I didn’t have enough at the time to give a good rebuttal. Last night, while checking on some economic blogs, I found this:
http://tinyurl.com/hxm84n3
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Soylent Green: hear, hear. I see over on the right hand side, Cole is seeking refuge from his twitter-fueled rage in a nap. He’d be better off deleting his account
Mai.naem.mobile
I know this might date me but this year is a total ‘calgon take me away’ election.
Punchy
Cleaned out the basement after suffering from an invasion of 6 (that we know of) newly deceased mice. Holy. F#cking. Crap. They piss and shit on everything, eat through plastic and nylon just for the hell of it, get into luggage not zipped up, and did I mention….they shit 1000000-fold, everywhere.
At first I thought a mouse or 2 would be interesting/amusing (like a un-pottytrained houseguest), but after seeing the damage they forment, I’m going nuclear in my mouse eradication efforts. Pretty sure we’ve won at this point, but they’ll be back, in bigger numbers (cue Obi Wan’s voice).
different-church-lady
I think I got poisoned by a bad deviled egg. This is affecting my ability to concentrate. Stomach bone connected to the brain bone…
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Punchy: Yup. They’ll eventually attract snakes, too.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Twitter seems to be even worse than blogs for reinforcing bubbles and skewing perspectives.
Face
@Punchy: Eff you and your “mouse eradication” efforts. Mouses are joyful. You’re probably just another stupid Jew.
Yours–
W. Disney
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I just love Propane Jane on twitter – she’s fileting the #BernieMadeMeWhite idiocy. Some people were born to run – she was born to tweet.
Mnemosyne
@Punchy:
The most important thing to do is to have an exterminator figure out how they’re getting in. Once they’re in, they’re a pain in the ass to get rid of.
If you don’t have a cat (I don’t think you do), I have a weird suggestion: ask a close friend or relative who does have one to save some soiled litter for you and put it in the basement near where you think the mousies are coming in. The smell of a cat nearby should start to drive them away until the exterminator can block their entrances.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: You know when you have a thought, and then you have a second thought and decide not to share the first thought?
Twitter was invented to eliminate the second part.
Amir Khalid
Here’s a song that makes me think of spring, although it’s not as delightfully tart as Tom Lehrer’s:
Morning has broken
redshirt
One of my favorite sensations is a spring temperature of around 50 but a strong sun. It’s simultaneously chilly and warm. While you can have a similar effect in the fall, it feels different than in spring. Maybe it’s psychological but I can feel the impending blooms of spring, and the impending death of fall.
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
In a nutshell, si vous plait?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
… and I just got my first Bro FB feed article saying that Hillary should concede to Sanders. Yeah. No.
schrodinger's cat
@Punchy: If you can see 6 there are at least 36 mice.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@different-church-lady:
The media reporting the lack of PoC in color in the Sanders wins because of exit polls, and PoC who voted for Sanders thinking they’re being dismissed, so something something something. Like I said, idiocy that Propane Jane has bothered to think about.
Amir Khalid
Party poopers.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@different-church-lady: How #BernieMadeMeWhite became a rallying cry on Twitter
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: How is tag being used? Sincerely or ironically? By Sanders supporters or mocking Sanders supporters?
Punchy
@Mnemosyne: I did figure it out, albeit slowly. The bastards chewed an entrance from the garage to the basement in an area very hard to access (and see). Found it; nailed a huge board to block it. The bastards chewed a new entrance hole. Found it, repeat. Then we went no-holds barred with the poison and traps and more traps and more poison and more traps, and now we’ve found enough corpses (and empty traps) to surmise we’ve got them all.
But yeah, discovering how so many appeared to be getting in took too long, and allowed them unfettered access to soil my dive gear, softball equipment, etc.
SoupCatcher
Obligatory link to information on LA Pigeon Ranch.
Bonus detail: when my dad hired on with the Southern Pacific in the sixties, one area of Taylor Yard was still referred to as the Pigeon Farm, decades after it ceased to exist
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
They’re no fun at all since the Tyrant in Chief made them quit with the hooker-and-blow parties. A republican president could fix that. I can see the hats now: “Make the Secret Service
GreatFun Again.”Mnemosyne
@Punchy:
You may want to get hold of some used litter and lay it down in that hard-to-reach area in the garage just to discourage them from chewing through again. They’re stubborn little bastards.
Punchy
@schrodinger’s cat: We found 6 dead ones over the course of 10 days, but we’ve quintupled the # of traps and Decon and havent seen anything for ~10 days. If there’s still 24 more mice, they’re either allergic to peanuts or decided to move out when they saw what happened to their buddies.
More importantly, there’s no evidence of them (no poop, urine, chewed objects). I’m going to declare “victory”, after throwing out about 30% of all my stuff I had stored in the basement…
AnotherBruce
Shots fired at US. capitol, according to TPM
trollhattan
@Punchy:
They can fit their tiny mouse bodies through unimaginably small openings–basically anything not smaller then their tiny mouse skulls.
My issue is rats that travel the neighborhood trees and wires and then get in via the roof, somehow. Which seems like an easy enough problem to suss out unless one has a tile roof.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
President Trump will personally recommend the very best hookers and blow, and even pay for them himself.
Shell
@Punchy: Hell, my mouse invaders managed to burrow their way thru solid brick.
trollhattan
@AnotherBruce:
Ugh. BBC says it occurred at the Capitol Visitor Centre[sic], there’s a wounded police officer and a gunman in custody.
One learns with time the first reports are usually not accurate, so who knows what’s really going on?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also from TPM
sounds like it was in the Visitors Center. I’ve never been there, I don’t know about the security or where that is?
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
It will all be very classy!
Has he proposed the new WH color scheme yet?
Gin & Tonic
@AnotherBruce: Reuters is saying the gunman has been captured and one cop was wounded.
Shell
In some good news, Georgia governor vetoed that ‘religious liberty’ discrimination bill. Would be nice if he did it in the interest of equality but Im sure losing all that nice corporate cash thru those threatened lawsuits had something to do with it.
Peale
Is Congress even in session? Would we even know if they were there?
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne:
Works on woodchucks too.
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I had trouble playing the video but I finally got the sound but not the picture.
I remember seeing Tom Lehrer on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson era). It’s always a good thing to see/hear a Lehrer song.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know if it works, but people also recommend planting mint outside, or cotton balls soaked in mint extract inside
AnotherBruce
What I think I’m hearing on MSNBC that the gunman was the only one injured. I’m not totally sure, but I hope that’s right.
different-church-lady
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: thanks. So what I glean from that and a quick look at Propane Jane’s feed is that various people think “non-white” and “minority” and “black” are all the same thing.
Major Major Major Major
@AnotherBruce: Collective right-wing hategasm if the shooter’s a Muslim, just another day in America if it’s some white dude, lefties are the real villains if it’s some anarchist type.
@Betty Cracker: Twitter is the worst invention of the 21st century. Worse than …everything.
LAO
@trollhattan: One spring I went to my folks house to borrow a car since I don’t have one. It had been a cold winter, and I went to start the car that my parents kept in their driveway but the engine wouldn’t turn over. I opened the hood, thinking I would have to jump start the car– and about 50 fucking mice ran out of the engine block.
It was so gross — most of them were babies.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
He’ll have to get a new colour scheme done. Obama leaked the original one at that White House Correspondents Dinner years ago.
AnotherBruce
Sounds like the gunman suffered wounds, but not fatal ones.
Frankensteinbeck
@different-church-lady:
I have seen it once. The context was from Sanders supporters declaring that the narrative that minorities support Hillary has been disproven by Hawaii.
Iowa Old Lady
@LAO: I believe I’ve told the story of how when we in Europe, a mouse crawled into my car at home and died, so when I turned on the fan, a horrendous smell jumped out and punched me in the nose. The dealer said disassembling the pieces to find the body would cost at least $500, so my husband decided we could just let the body disintegrate. My car.
different-church-lady
@PurpleGirl:
There was that time an acquaintance decided he and and a friend should sing “National Brotherhood Week” at an open mic night at a cabaret with a significant gay clientele. The Leher irony was unappreciated, and mostly undetected by an audience that consisted almost entirely of those who were strangers to his oeuvre.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“apparent mental health issues”
Thank god it was a white man and not a terr’rist!
ETA: I turned the TV on in the next room to see what facts are known…. it sounds like Brian Williams is talking about the cherry blossoms. ETA, A: good thing they got rid of all those silly liberals and brought in a real journalist.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Terrorists don’t have mental health issues. It’s why they’re willing to kill themselves for an invisible sky wizard.
LAO
@Iowa Old Lady: My personal nightmare scenario after encountering “an engine full of mice.”
Although, almost as disgusting — as a kid we had a Labrador that was a mad hunter but he wasn’t very bright. He killed any animal that had the nerve to show up in his backyard. One summer he killed a rabbit and managed to sneak it into the house. He “buried” the dead animal in the winter coat/boot closet, then promptly forgot about it. Took my parents about 3 days to figure out where the smell was coming from.
qwerty42
@Shell: No matter. At least he did it. Unlike the NC Gov.
Punchy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Done and done. Thanks for the ideas. Whatever it takes to 86 these furry shitmachines and their insatiable appetite for rollerblade foam padding.
different-church-lady
@Frankensteinbeck: The desire for a reboot of the Sanders franchise is something to witness. If it’s not “Sanders will be the real choice of the people if he polls better after most of the country has voted,” it’s “Hawaii proves Sanders doesn’t have problems reaching all those black people who already voted for Clinton.”
Karen
I didn’t know if you know this but the US capital and white house is on lockdown after a shooting. The shooter is in custody and I think that if someone in Congress was hit we’d know by now but who knows?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: I thought some of those tweets were pretty funny, but the new Sanders-Devine proposals to play Calvinball with the delegates are obnoxious. “Bernie voters count more because their hearts are pure!”
Frankensteinbeck
@different-church-lady:
I sympathize with the non-white Sanders voters who feel erased by the simple statement ‘Sanders has a problem with minority voters’, but the demographic gap is real and is making a big difference in the course of the nomination. I’m not sure how else to describe it.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And he was probably on a mission from God, to take out the Terrist in Chief.
Either that, or a false flag operation to allow the Fecklass Tyrant, a/k/a the Terrist in Chief, to further destroy our freedumbs and wipe his @$$ with the Bill of White Rights
different-church-lady
@Frankensteinbeck: You hardly ever run into True Scotsmen anymore.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@different-church-lady:
How would we ever know what people really think?
This screen cap from 2011 just popped up on my twitter feed from Trump’s twitter account:
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Congratulations, Mr. Trump, on connecting the dots!
AnotherBruce
Apparently a female was injured by shrapnel. Let’s hope that’s the extent of it.
piratedan
@Karen: it’s not as if a brain scan of most of the GOP members of the house would show any brain damage considering their lack thereof….. I guess you could check them for surface wounds….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Just heard “apparent mental health issues” from the next room again. How the hell do they know?
berliner2
A whiff of Vienna. Here’s Georg Kreisler’s German/Austrian original:
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hence, “apparent”.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
I find it interesting that, so far, Clinton has won the majority of the states that vote and Sanders has won a majority of the states that caucus. As an introvert, I know I would loathe being forced to participate in a caucus, so I’m not sure how well they reflect what non-extroverts would want.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s a white guy, not a Muslim or a Black guy. Therefore, mental health issues are the go-to explanation instead of Terrorist or Thug.
Gravenstone
@Punchy: It’s an appetite for bedding/nesting material. I used to keep my guest bedroom closed off during the winter because of drafty windows (since replaced). One spring after opening things back up, I went to pull back the covers and I found a mass of pink foam that should have been inside the mattress piled up along the corner of the pillow. The little fuckers had taken advantage of the months without human activity to burrow down through the sheet and mattress cover into the mattress interior where they made a nest. That was the final straw that overcame my reluctance to get cats. Now if I could only get the cats to be a bit more aggressive about their duties. They’re as likely to play with occasional the mouse until it dies of exhaustion as they are to actually kill it outright.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
From the descriptions I’ve read, caucusing seems so archaic. It seems best suited to meetings of small groups whose entire membership can attend in person, rather than to communities of thousands of people, where not everyone is free or mobile enough to show up. Why still do it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amir Khalid: the explanation I heard from Nevada is that states (Taxpayers!) pay for primaries, parties pay for caucus.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne:
If however he is a member of a union, by definition he is a thug.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Which is why, I am sure, that despite all the yapping about how much everyone hates caucuses, etc etc, CO is not going to be switching back to primaries any time soon.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Part of it is, I think, a sentimental throwback. Funny, though, that here in New England, where “town meeting” is still an actively practiced mode of governance (for 2.5 centuries, in many cases), national candidates are chosen using primaries, not caucuses.
Ruckus
@Marc:
My experience at the VA is like yours and your link. Nothing is perfect and the VA is no different. But the changes made after 2009 are significant to the overall level of care. If my prior care in the public sphere had been as good. At the VA the care is more dependent on the system, rather than on finding the best primary care doc(who may not see you), and all the best specialists(who may not have time for you) and having your insurance be willing to pay for them. The talk of getting an appointment is one thing, the wait to find out if your insurance will pay for that life saving treatment or even testing is the real problem, let alone the copays and deductable.
AnotherBruce
@Mnemosyne: Well, MSNBC interviewed a law enforcement guy. The LEO said that it could have been an act of stupidity.
I like that explanation. You almost never hear it on cable TV, even though their is an ocean of stupidity out there.
Ruckus
@LAO:
Had a golden retriever who was about a dumb as a box of rocks but who was fully equipped with all retriever traits. Would catch our pet duck and bring him up on the back porch. Didn’t hurt him or even ruffle his feathers but the duck sure didn’t like it. Then she took to retrieving skunks onto the back porch. The skunks seemed to mind a bit more than the duck. At least they made their dislike well known. To the entire neighborhood. Cleaning up that was fun.
LAO
@Ruckus: LOL. When Shadow (very original I know) got older he had more difficulty catching and killing animals. By the time he was 13, he lost his sense of smell. I’m sure you know what happened next. Lots and lots of dead skunks. My mother would have to go the store and purchase cases of vinegar douche (this predates the internet) to bathe him. Fun times — thankfully, I was in college by then.
Glad she didn’t hurt the duck, the image is very amusing.
Brendancalling
@Punchy: I have a cat that needs a forever home. Excellent mouser.
Mnemosyne
@AnotherBruce:
So it could have been an idiot who dropped or otherwise accidentally triggered his own loaded gun and injured someone else?
Sadly, that’s very plausible.
Paul in KY
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Cats too!