When I posted a few days ago that I felt I needed to provide entertainment and distraction, I’m glad you guys took me seriously and sent me some fun things to post! Here are a few submissions:
Bystander sent a cute picture of Buster, who just turned 11:
Our Buster turns 11 on Monday. So we are celebrating with a few salmon roe along with this month’s flea/tick/heartworm treatment. Buster is not a natural for the camera, hence no modeling career. Cheers, bystander
And Laura sent a few cute pix, here are two:
And finally, I saw this yesterday. Swan man to the rescue:
Send me more stuff, I’ll post it. I also received some great recipes, so I’ll put this out there again:
if anyone wants to send me recipes and info on different holiday celebrations, please do. I would love to post about that – include photos!
Open thread.
Baud
Hi TaMara.
Buster seems like a natural to me.
Felanius Kootea
Loved the swan story and glad Papa Swan didn’t do too much damage.
gogol's wife
Buster is the greatest dog who ever lived. He will save us all from Trump.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
Some days only thing reminding me that there’s good in the world is people I’m following on tumblr surfacing this kind of thing.
Czego szukasz w Święta? | English for beginners.
ETA *sniffle* WARNING
jayjaybear
Swans are deceptive assholes. They…no, that’s too easy…they glide around like God’s ballerinas, looking beautiful and graceful, like their life soundtracks were written by Strauss, but they’re stone-cold bastards. Avian Bill Sykeses. Sooner break your arm as look at you. Miserable creatures.
Baud
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones): Sweet.
jeffreyw
Betty, your dog is ready… paging Betty Cracker..
amygdala
No animal pics or videos, alas.
Just finished getting a dozen batches of holiday cookie dough in the freezer for next weekend’s baking frenzy. This is the week every year I hope like hell the power doesn’t go out for an extended period.
On to the holiday cards.
trollhattan
Unflappable Brit works on at least two levels. I’d wear a helmet at the least, dad not pleased.
jonas
In a sign that sane grownups are still in the majority in some European countries, the Austrians seemed to have looked around at Farage, Trump, and Putin and said, um, nein, danke.“. The Austrian presidency is more a ceremonial than a serious political office, but electing the excreble Hofer would have been a huge setback for any hope of a non-asshole-dominated Europe.
Mnemosyne
@jayjaybear:
It’s scenes like that that make me wonder why it took scientists so long to figure out that birds are actually living dinosaurs. They so are often fierce little bastards.
bystander
We love our Buster, aka The Mayor of 88th Street. Thanks, TaMara.
Swans are meant only to be enjoyed at a distance. Ask Leda.
Gindy51
@Mnemosyne: I had a nesting box trail up on our property and would get dive bombed by flying “dinosaurs” every nesting season. The bluebirds were wimps but the tree swallows were just vicious bastards. I took to wearing a bright umbrella hat with eyes painted on it to make sure my head would not get cut up from beaks.
L Boom
Not my usual kind of thing (as if I post enough to have a usual kind of thing), but since this is an open thread … here’s a link to a GoFundMe page for a friend’s mother. She fell behind on her insurance premiums, then got incredibly sick out of the blue and was hospitalized for several weeks. She’s been released from the hospital and her son quit his job to take care of her, so the need is very real and the help would be deeply appreciated.
Tazj
Buster is wonderful. I love his ears.
Larkspur
I used to house sit for two Jack Russell terriers who had a nice securely fenced back yard. Thank goodness, because beyond the fence was some acreage on which emus were raised. Those emus would come strolling over to the fence and the dogs would go nuts. The emus were impressive as hell: they made this distant-thunder noise that rumbled up out of their chest and gullets, and their eyes were blood red.
I kind of loved them. The dinosaur force was strong in them. They looked at me like they wanted to say, “O puny little humans: back in the day you would have been mere playthings in our beautiful oozing primeval world”.
Every once in a while they’d get close enough to the fence that one of the terriers would nab a mouthful of feathers and be so happy.
Hal
So Trump is apparently looking at Jon Huntsman for SoS. Huntsman would be a fool to consider. I have doubts Trump will have a second term, either by his choice or everyone else’s and Huntsman could actually be one of the sane competitors in 2020 or 2024.
Keith P.
I keep watching the latest Trump SNL skit. the part that is sticking with me more than any others for some reason is the date where the woman goes “You look exactly like your Twitter profile pic”, and the guy is bald with angry eyebrows, and tactical glasses propped up on his head. That is so dead-on, but kind of subtle…how many people have noticed how common that look is -shaved head, tactical items as fashion, propping the glasses up on the head. Too funny.
Roger Moore
@Hal:
I don’t know how bad an idea it is. I think any remotely sane Republican who gets into Trump’s cabinet and helps to minimize the damage he causes will wind up looking good rather than bad.
Another Scott
@L Boom: Done. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
L Boom
@Another Scott: Amazing, thanks so much!
dr. luba
@jayjaybear: There once was a swan on a lake in Michigan that would attack jet skis. People from other lakes wanted his offspring……
bystander
@Keith P.: I’m no fan of SNL and I find the prospect of President Pu$$ygra&&her too horrifying to ever laugh about it. But as a barbed skewering of PP, the skit was pretty spot on.
bystander
@Tazj:
After 11 years, Buster can still surprise me with a new positioning of his giant bat ears. He has amazing auricular muscle control.
J R in WV
My folks were on a driving vacation years ago, and visited a park-museum in Delaware, once a duPont estate, with long winding road past swans on ponds. They stopped to take a picture of the beautiful swans when one began to approach the car.
Mom said,”Honey, maybe you should put your window up!” and Dad did so, just in time for big male swan to crash into the window HARD… leaving a splash of swan spittle on the window, which lasted their whole trip.
Swans are mean dinosaur remnants, very mean. I wouldn’t go near one.
In the UK, all swans belong to the Queen. All of them. So, is it her fault if one is attacked by a swan? Probably not.
gogol's wife
@J R in WV:
There’s a great swan storyline in Hot Fuzz.
RaflW
Thanks for the swan video. Nice to see kindness in daily life.
J R in WV
@gogol’s wife:
I think I heard an audio clip from the movie the other day… “Swans?”
It was pretty funny.
prob50
Since this is an “Open Thread” let me just say that Speechwriter Barton Swaim is an asshole. He has an Op-Ed piece in the LA Times today where he posits the Donald Trump and Obama share “a searing contempt for their critics”. He uses many examples that were simply Obama promoting his vision of a forward-looking better future as opposed to the obstructionist negativity his detractors have traded in for his entire tenure. Swaim closes with “But his offense isn’t so much rhetorical as attitudinal. The contempt in his discourse signals the hubris in his outlook.”
Of course, Swain WAS the political speechwriter for slimy Mark Sanford, the form South Carolina governor who claimed he was hiking this Appalachian Trail when he was actually sneaking off for a little boot-and-butt-banging workout with his secret mistress, so I guess he feels qualified to speak to matters of contempt and hubris.