Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

This really is a full service blog.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Republicans in disarray!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / If You Need A Break (I Do)

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  4. 4.

    amygdala

    Cool and kind of spooky at the same time. Thanks!

    Here’s some Yo-Yo Ma. The Music of Strangers, a documentary about his Silk Road Project, is in now theaters. I caught it at a film festival last year and enjoyed it immensely. The musicians are such talented, generous, interesting people, and there’s footage from all sorts of interesting places.

  5. 5.

    LAO

    Artists like this make me wish I was creative. I can’t fathom how he thought up these seemingly magical “creatures” and then made them real.

  6. 6.

    Major Major Major Major

    Hattie: Enough talk. It’s time for action. I move that everyone come to my apartment to snuggle my cat.

    Scruffy: Second.

    Farnsworth: I move that your cat stinks and is ugly.

    Scruffy: Second.

    Hattie: I move that we vote on a new chief executive officer and oust this old creep. And also that make cat smells good and is pretty.

    Scruffy: Second.

  7. 7.

    Tom Levenson

    @bystander: Yes, and I’ll throw up a post on this later. But not here.* Just enjoy.

    *An exhortation, obviously. Not the law of the blog…

  8. 8.

    Mike J

    @bystander: Completely ignored Romans 13:1 too.

    Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

  9. 9.

    lamh36

    Been a long day at work (comment coming up about this in a minute)

    But first, watching my DVR recording of the Ali funeral/memorial.

    ESPN has been showing it all day. TVONE also.

    NBC national is showing it now as well.

    If anything else, that should tell you the impact that Muhammad Ali had on folks internationally.

    The all inclusive public ceremony was planned by Ali and his family for almost 10 years, according to reports. Ali apparently thought of it as an “educational” experience it’s multicultural, multi-faith, multi-political affair. Ali understood that this occasion may just be watched by millions and was an opportunity to teach.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @bystander:

    It is definitely news here in the sitting Senator’s home state of Georgia. I’ve heard at least three reports this afternoon on the local NPR station alone, and of course all my various Georgia Democrats FB pages are incandescent with outrage. Don’t know how much play it’ll get elsewhere, though.

  11. 11.

    Joe Falco

    Just checked into a hotel after the end of a 7 day cruise from Seattle to Alaska and back again. This has been the best weather I ever had for a vacation. It’s sunny in Seattle!

    Going back to Atlanta in the morning and then it’s time to decompress.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @amygdala:

    Looking forward to seeing that. I feel as though I heard (but I might be misremembering) that Yo Yo Ma will be interviewed about the doc tomorrow morning on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday. I have quite a few of the Silk Road Ensemble CDs, and the music they do is very innovative and, of course, meticulously performed.

  13. 13.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: Here’s a sample of the comments from the ATL paper:

    Waverly
    What is wrong with that? I have been praying for the bast**d to drop dead for the last 7 1/2 years. Every morning I check the news and, so far, have started the day semi-disappointed.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    Malia Obama graduates from high school today, may be why Bill Clinton is speaking at Muhammad Ali’s funeral today and not the president. Ali loved his own daughters deeply, so I’m sure he would have approved.

    Also, I love how the president makes sure to give credit to his mother-in-law for helping the family get through the last 8 years. She seems like a really great lady.

  15. 15.

    Brachiator

    If anyone is thinking about going to the movies this weekend, I recommend Whit Stillman’s “Love and Friendship,” an adaptation of an early Jane Austen novella, “Lady Susan,” and starring a delightfully naughty Kate Beckinsale. Here’s how one review describes it:

    “Lady Susan,” an epistolary novel that probably dates from the middle of the seventeen-nineties, has been transformed by Stillman into a brisk and cutting comedy of manners.

    But it’s not your typical tea and drawing room Austen adaptation. The sets, costumes and production design are beautiful (using stately houses in Ireland, I believe), but the tone of the piece is biting and more modern. Lady Susan is out for a benefactor for herself, a husband for her daughter, and protection for her friends, but she is the wittiest and the most delightfully conniving operator, without any hit of scruple about what she wants or how she will go about getting it.

    The main fun is in seeing her set her traps and reel in her prey. The obvious weakness of a story like this, and something that Austen clearly improved upon in her later, more mature works, is that Lady Susan is clearly smarter than any other character, which might make her victories seem hollow and soap opera-ish. But the level of the acting and the film making gleefully skirts these shortcomings. Best of all is the performance of Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin, one of the funniest amiable dolts to appear on screen in a long time.

    All and all, a nice alternative to political drama.

  16. 16.

    lamh36

    just fully watched that you tube video of Muhammad Ali on Candid Camera with the kids and it was lovely :-)

  18. 18.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    It’s just sick. And I suspect that comment may be among the milder ones. I refuse to wander into that slime swamp.

    And it makes my eyes prick with tears even now, after so many years of witnessing the hatred and bile directed at this good, decent man and his family. I honestly cannot fathom how the Obamas manage to keep their composure and dignity in the face of the never ending onslaught from … what’s the word again? … oh yeah, the Christians.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    And it’s Sasha’s 15th birthday! If only she was Messican instead of Kenyan Mooslim, she could have a nice quinceañera.

  21. 21.

    SFAW

    My regret: the strandbeests came to Massachusetts last fall — the MIT campus even! — and I didn’t manage to see them in action.

    I took my son to see the exhibit at the Peabody-Essex Museum. It was pretty neat, plus they had a demo. Glad I went.

    @Shell:

    Do they really only move thru wind power.? There was one that didn’t have any sails.

    For some of them, perhaps all of them, they need to get pumped up before being operated. As in, there are chambers that get pressurized, and that air pressure is the main propulsive force for the machine. I can’t remember if the wind can be used to pressurize (but just takes a whole lot longer), and I’m too lazy to look it up.

  23. 23.

    lamh36

    Today on As The Lab Turns..

    So I don’t know how much y’all know about the Micro lab but our specimens are basically Petrie dishes that are stacked in racks to be read.

    So I’m at my bench reading and then I hear this crash and “oh shit”. I look over and that new, rude, unprofessional supervisor lady had dropped her plates. ok it happens but you just pick them up quickly and put em back.

    But this bish walks away to presumably to put something up right quick…AND DOESNT COME BACK.

    I swear I sat there for a good 3 min trying to see if the bish was coming back. When she didn’t immediately come back I got up looked to the front of the lab and noticed she was fuqn talking to another tech cool as you please…and the plates were just sitting on the floor! BITCH!

    I swear to y’all I was gonna be Petty as fuq and leave them right on the floor…but then another tech came up and was “whoa, what happened” and started picking them up…so I went ahead and helped start picking up the plates.

    So we ended up picking them all up, and this bitch comes strolling from the front (mind u it had to be at least 10min after she dropped the plates) and literally looked down at the floor and just started talking!!!! Bitch didn’t say Thank you or “Boo the fuqn first” (that’s a NOLA saying, btw. no idea where it came from ?) just started back at her damn bench!!!

    YALL!!! YALL!!!

    I left for the day 2 1/2 hrs early. Finished my bench and “flexed” some time… got a 3 day weekend coming up and I was too through with that place for the next three days!

    YALL!!!!!!!

  24. 24.

    amygdala

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’ve been lucky enough to see them live several times. The range of pieces from central Asian folk tunes to music written specifically for the Ensemble is so fantastic.

    I’ll be interested in what you think of the documentary. He talks about his motivations for assembling SRP (by complete coincidence, not long before 9/11, after which the idea of bridging cultures along the Silk Road seemed much more urgent). He found himself wondering what more he should be doing in the world, besides music. All I could think was, “You’re Yo-Yo friggin’ Ma–that’s plenty!”

    But it’s cool that he’s trying to use his music for even greater goals. One of the Ensemble’s clarinetists is Syrian. He decided to gather up simple instruments and take them to the camps with other musicians, to teach kids to play, so that they’d have a small escape from the horror. He wondered if it was pointless and naive, but was at a loss for what else to do. Despite the grim conditions, the kids’ curiosity prevailed. No end in sight, though. Sometimes we really suck as a species.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Tom Levenson:

    So sorry, Tom. I responded to bystander (and then raven and I traded comments) before I saw your comment. Apologies for derailing this nice thread. (Edit: And feel free to delete my comments if you wish; I won’t be at all offended.)

    I do love the Strandbeests! Have never seen them in person, and would cherish the opportunity, but I have watched numerous videos of them over the past few years. They are not only nifty engineering design, but there is something just so darned cute and appealing about them. Thank you for putting up this post.

  26. 26.

    Shell

    Cool and kind of spooky at the same time. Thanks!

    I think its their insect-like movements that first give pause. But they are amazing.

    Side note- wonder what breed is that little dog thats in the video. He seems very adept at not getting trod upon.

  29. 29.

    Miss Bianca

    @lamh36: With regard to this gif and your bitchy boss…

    have you tried turning her off and then on again? ; )

  44. 44.

    Emma

    @germy: Thank you! I’m glad you saw my first message before I deleted it to replace it with some over-the-top-language about that verruckten senator. Which I then deleted too. *sigh*

  48. 48.

    Trollhattan

    @amygdala:
    We’re going to make the pilgrimage this summer, no matter what. My kid will go “But daddy” the whole way, but I’m expecting utter amazement at the sight.

  51. 51.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’ve been updating my 2016-17 calendar, plugging in all those Live in HD / direct to the cinema cultural events I so enjoy attending (MET Opera, Bolshoi Ballet, various theatre companies, classic films on the big screen, art and architecture documentaries, etc.) and suddenly realised that — by coincidence, I’m sure — there are three different versions of “Romeo and Juliet” on the schedule. The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company is doing the original Shakespeare play on July 7; the San Francisco Ballet is doing Prokofiev’s version on August 9; and the Met will transmit Gounod’s opera on January 21. I’ve long been fascinated by the myriad ways Shakespeare translates to other media, so this is catnip for me :-)

  52. 52.

    lamh36

    @Mnemosyne: the woman is a disaster. Never should have been hired and now I guess they can’t fire her, but she’s driving everyone crazy…smh.

  54. 54.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Waverly
    What is wrong with that? I have been praying for the bast**d to drop dead for the last 7 1/2 years. Every morning I check the news and, so far, have started the day semi-disappointed.

    @raven: This is great. The guy’s been miserable for nigh on eight years while his imaginary God scoffs as his desires.

    But I don’t know where these people get the energy. 24/7 hate. I can’t be pissed about anything for five minutes without needing to take a nap.

    Like everyone else here, I wasn’t George Bush’s biggest fan. But I never thought “damn it’d be great if that dude died in his sleep today” or “damn, I wish someone would drop that fucker” – I mean, he wasn’t a nice guy and if he’d been arrested and pulled out of the White House, awesome. But wishing him, seriously, dead? I don’t and couldn’t go there. I’m just not cut out like that, more the kind of guy where if someone handed me a pistol and a bad guy and says “do some justice”, I’m just going to dump the bullets on the ground and walk off. And I bet almost everyone else here is like that too.

    I’m an atheist and I don’t need a God to tell me that wishing someone’s death is wrong to the core. And yet, somehow, I’m the guy who needs the morality lecture.

    ETA: strandbeasts – I could watch them for hours. That guy is a fucking mechanical/engineering genius.

  55. 55.

    amygdala

    @Trollhattan: The new Exploratorium is pretty cool. Even though it’s in a shiny new site on the Embarcadero, with gorgeous views of the bay (fog notwithstanding), they somehow managed to preserve the dusty mad scientist vibe of the old Exploratorium. Whoever’s responsible should take a bow.

  56. 56.

    redshirt

    Cool wind sculptures.

    I need some. I live on the side of a mountain and the wind is a very big thing. Everything I do outside has to factor in the wind. Just yesterday the wind destroyed two robin’s nests, for the third year in a row – get a hint, robins!

    I had a couple of ornamental windmills that got chewed up by the wind, so I need something substantial. Anyone know of any good sites for wind ornaments, let me know.

  57. 57.

    The Golux

    @efgoldman:

    …come upstairs at Faneuil Hall for an all day…festival of great music.

    I’m only two hours away and I love Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall, but it’s tough to get away when there’s so much to do in the garden. Especially since last weekend was wiped out by a trip to Philly.

  58. 58.

    The Golux

    @amygdala:

    …they somehow managed to preserve the dusty mad scientist vibe of the old Exploratorium.

    We visited the old Exploratorium in ’89, when our kids were 4 and 6. I doubt they remember any of it, but I was blown away. Glad they got the new one right.

  59. 59.

    amygdala

    @Mnemosyne: It’s so interesting what’s funny, generally and at a given moment. I seriously had to put down my laptop and walk away for a few minutes this morning, because I could not stop laughing. Even hours later, that pr0n music parenthetical makes me chortle.

  60. 60.

    lamh36

    @Baud: I gotta say, I didn’t mind the talking on ESPN…yeah there was commercials, but I did like the folks who talked and shared stories.

    There is only so much watching you can do of a hearse driving down the road.

    I appreciate hearing how Ali impacted him

    Also if anyone watches ANY part of it, check out Billy Crystal’s eulogy.

  61. 61.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I picked a stupid beef at work today and caused trouble for an ally who supports me. I’m an asshole and I need to check my attitude. I was in the right, but being a jerk about it rather than calm and cooperative. Better use this weekend to calm the f down and start playing nice.

  63. 63.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @lamh36:

    check out Billy Crystal’s eulogy

    I heard it in the car and it made me feel unworthy, which I am. Plenty of people hated Ali but he seemed to love them all. Whatever his religion, he was a highly spiritually evolved human being.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @efgoldman: Sounds like the Nahum Tate version of King Lear, where Lear and Cordelia live, and Cordelia marries Edgar at the end, because OF COURSE those two goody-goodies are totally a couple!

  67. 67.

    bystander

    @efgoldman: I don’t think I could make it through R&J just to hear Je veux vivre. And if I have to sit through the opera version of Hamlet, Ambroise Thomas over Gounod every time.

  68. 68.

    lamh36

    Very moving memorial and tribute ceremony for Muhammad Ali. It’s a great thing the family did to allow fans and friends to share one final moment with their husband, father, grandfather…etc

    Planned or not…family’s still can get the last word even against deceased wishes.

    RIP Muhammad Ali

  70. 70.

    Trollhattan

    @Joe Falco:
    We don’t get the humidity here but triple digits have already descended this year–104 in fact. So not ready. Picked my first tomato this morning, though.

  71. 71.

    PurpleGirl

    @Trollhattan: Many years ago when IBM opened the office building at Madison Ave and 57th St they had an art museum space and conference room in the basement. The first exhibit they had was pieces from SF’s Exploratorium. I loved it, just loved it. I visited it so many times, I lost tracked of the number. (They had various other shows over the years and I was regular visitor. I was very upset when they began selling the corporately owned art work and then when they rented the space to non-IBM stuff.

    I love Dale Chihuly’s glass work. When he had an exhibit at the NY Botanical Gardens, I never managed to get there to see it. One of my bucket list items is to see Chiculy’s work space in Seattle. Especially the swimming pool he had built — at the very bottom of the pool he installed a bunch of his sea forms, then some water was put in (I believe0 but then they put in a glass ceiling/floor for pool. And when anyone swims in pools, they get to see the art glass below them.

  73. 73.

    Emma

    @efgoldman: Happened on the other side of the pond too. I read somewhere that at one point a London staging of Macbeth was given musical interludes. Now where did I read that?

  75. 75.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    I’m not sure whether this will be the same production they’ve had in the past several years, but if so it will be the proper (e.g., tragic) ending.

  76. 76.

    Origuy

    @PurpleGirl: I didn’t see his workspace in Seattle, but the Museum of Glass in Tacoma is amazing, and the Tacoma Art Museum is good, too. My sister used to work at the Indianapolis Art Center; he was there while the piece he did for the Children’s Museum was being installed. She said he was an asshole, but a lot of geniuses are.

  77. 77.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    Also, too, 19th century Paris has a lot to answer for. I am actually quite fond of much of the interpolated ballet music on its own, but it generally plays merry hell with the musical and dramatic flow of the opera.

  79. 79.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @bystander:

    The Met did the Ambroise Thomas Hamlet a few seasons ago. I had never heard it, and liked it very much. Great drinking song!

  80. 80.

    Mnemosyne

    @Emma:

    Depending on when it was, there used to be a weird regulation in London that only certain theaters were allowed to perform straight drama, so it was common for musical numbers to be added so the theater owners could do drama and stay on the right side of the law. I think that changed in the mid-1800s.

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    There are so many! Not to mention song cycles, ballets, incidental music, symphonic poems, film scores, Broadway musicals, jazz, and, well, pretty much every musical genre you can think of.

    Do you have a link to the LA Phil program? I’d love to see what they have planned. (I assume this is Dudamel’s baby? A few years ago he did an entire program of three Tchaikovsky Shakespeare tone poems: Hamlet, R&J, and The Tempest. It was the one season in which they broadcast live to cinemas.)

  85. 85.

    PurpleGirl

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    I’m an atheist and I don’t need a God to tell me that wishing someone’s death is wrong to the core. And yet, somehow, I’m the guy who needs the morality lecture.

    I’m sort of an agnostic, mixed in with a little wicca and you get someone who holds by the “law” of threefold return: Whatever you do to another, comes back to you three times.

  86. 86.

    PurpleGirl

    @Trollhattan: I heard him speak once when I was a member of the American Craft Museum. The museum has gone through any number of changes in 30-odd years. At one point they a building on 53rd St. and a Chihuly hanging in space of the 3-floor staircase.

    Anyway, some people seem to like to romanticize his eye patch. Sorry to have to tell them that he lost the eye in auto crash and his depth perception. As a result he sketches out the ideas for glass work, colors them as cartoons and then his hot room staff make the actual piece.

  91. 91.

    PurpleGirl

    @redshirt: Sort of self-enforced restriction on one’s own actions. It’s a view of spirituality that guides one’s own life. That’s why I put law in parens.

  98. 98.

    Kropadope

    OMG, my dad got a little one of those machines that walks kind of like a crab. So freakin cute.

  99. 99.

    Hunter

    The Strandbeests were here from the beginning of February to the beginning of May. I saw them twice.

    Verrry interesting.

Comments are closed.