Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

In after Baud. Damn.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

šŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockinā€™ šŸŽµ

Wow, I canā€™t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

When someone says they ā€œlove freedomā€, rest assured they donā€™t mean yours.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Let there be snark.

No offense, but this thread hasnā€™t been about you for quite a while.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Their freedom requires your slavery.

In my day, never was longer.

People are weird.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

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152Comments

  4. 4.

    Ridnik Chrome

    “99 Luftballons” always makes me sad. Yes, the music is catchy, but everyone dies at the end…

  6. 6.

    Mnemosyne

    Our usually timid middle cat, Annie, is feeling a little feisty tonight. She’s playing with All The Things and daring the other cats to stop her.

    I may have to play with my adult coloring books tonight after reading Adam’s post and all of the comments.

  13. 13.

    Botsplainer

    My nightstand has the following upon it, I just looked:

    -The War That Ended Peace – accounts for all the bad decision making among European leaders in the Rubio to the Great War, puts a great focus on the erratic, self-serving narcissism of Kaiser Wilhelm

    – Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

    – A Canticle for Leibowitz

    – Bridge of Spies

    – Bombs Away and Fallout – Harry Turtledove’s 2 volumes of alternate history of the global nuclear war that comes about after MacArthur convinces Truman to use atomic weapons to slow the Korean Communist supply chain during the Korean War

    See if you can gauge my mood by those titles.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Tim F.: I’m not going to post a quiz or anything! I think its excellent. Gets at the strategic miscommunication problem, as well as questions of strategic decision making.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @schrodinger’s cat: I have not. Given that time period, it does not surprise me at all. The CI side of things has gotten more diverse, it had to, but overall the FBI is overwhelmingly white, male, and plurality Catholic.

  33. 33.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Adam L Silverman: The CI staff is incredibly insensitive to the sole woman(who is a secretary) in the department and the only person who seems half way competent is a black guy but also at the receiving end of clueless put downs. Thoughtless more than cruel but if you are at the receiving end, it makes little difference.

  34. 34.

    JPL

    Shortly before the song became popular here, my son who was working in Brussels at the time, met a friend in Germany who was buying a BMW to ship to the U.S. The song came on the radio and his friend translated it for him

  36. 36.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Adam L Silverman: The CI staff is incredibly insensitive to the sole woman(who is a secretary) in the department and the only person who seems half way competent is a black guy but also at the receiving end of clueless put downs. Thoughtless more than cruel but if you are at the receiving end, it makes little difference.

    ETA: Reposting because in Soviet Balloon Juice comment moderates you.

  38. 38.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: Do you think it’s Bolton, who has convinced him that this the correct strategy? Netanyahu is suppose to meet with him, because the Iran deal is so bad, in his opinion.

  40. 40.

    Luthe

    For those looking for TV recommendations: Madam Secretary. Just enough heft to be interesting while also mostly optimistic about the world. A lovely contrast to the actual world.

  43. 43.

    SgrAstar

    Netflix has the first three installments of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q series, beginning with the superbly sinister The Keeper of Lost Causes. For aficionados of Nordic Noir and handsome Danish detectives, a must!

  44. 44.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne: Totoro! Totoro!! TOTORO!! Must watch!!

    btw – completely off-topic (on an open thread?), and in reference to something you said on another posting – but you could have an aunt/confidante who is *also* a werewolf/ghost. You know, just to mix things up. Or am I saying this just because I just watched The She-Wolf of London?

  45. 45.

    PsiFighter37

    Hell of a season finale to Westworld…kind of wonder what they can possibly do for the follow-up.

    I also did none of the work I had intended to do over the long weekend, but it’s so close to the end of the year that I’m kind of out of fucks to give. I really do need to re-dedicate myself a bit, though. It’s been a long year, and post-election has felt like an eternal nightmare running in the background.

  46. 46.

    burnspbesq

    @Mnemosyne:

    Maybe animation? I am sadly deficient in my watching of Studio Ghibli films.

    “Spirited Away.” I prefer it, by a narrow margin, over “Howl’s Moving Castle.”

  48. 48.

    danielx

    Speaking of catchy music, was fortunate enough to catch Joe Bonamassa last night. He didn’t play Woke Up Dreaming (unfortunately), but if you ever have the chance to see him – go. His playing could raise blisters on a Georgia highway in July.

  49. 49.

    burnspbesq

    Reading the House Ways & Means Committe “Tax Blueprint” to prep for a presentation I have to give this week. When you strip away all the lies, all that’s left is a big, fat fucking nightmare.

  50. 50.

    Blue mouser

    @Mnemosyne: if you like shows that use puppetry have you seen Thunderbolt Fantasy? It feaures Taiwanese glove puppetry, gorgeous sets and the story was written by Gen Urobuchi. It’s like Michael Bay meets Thunderbirds meets Wuxia on crack. Some of the scenes are so lovely I just want to pause the show just to appreciate the artistry

  51. 51.

    opiejeanne

    I’ll say it again:
    “Hinterlands” (y Gwyll) police detective procedural set in Wales, in the area around Aberstywyth. There are two seasons available on Netflix. We watched the first two episodes yesterday, 90 minutes each. Originally shot in Welsh, then shot again in mostly English but with bits of Welsh now and then.
    We watch it with the subtitles on because of the accents, but the transcriber for the second episode had a terrible time figuring out the dialogue but gets most of it. One of the main characters is named Sian, pronounced “shawn”, and it’s spelled both ways in the subtitles.

  52. 52.

    mkro

    Fake news was obviously a big story in 2016. But I honestly didn’t give #pizzagate much thought. It just seemed so ridiculous that even the Natl Enquirer would have passed on it. There was no backing story, no evidence, no nothing.

    But apparently, lots & lots & lots of Trumpkins were dumb enough, lacking enough critical thinking, to believe it.

    A nutjob with a gun actually went into that DC pizza shop today to “self-investigate” the made-up child molestation charges.

    We are a really, really dumb country.

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mkro: My mom, who was a dedicated teacher, has often noted that a lot of us don’t realize how dumb average is.

  55. 55.

    opiejeanne

    @burnspbesq: My daughter tried to have me watch Howl’s Moving Castle but it just did not appeal to me. Then I read the plot description of the original novel and the film was nothing like it, missed the entire point of the book, and just seemed to wander off in weird direction of its own.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    We were talking about Holiday the other day, which I haven’t seen in a while. I can’t stand Bringing Up Baby. Maybe put Holiday, His Girl Friday, and one other film up for a vote?

    And if anyone wants me to do a special holiday post about The Shop Around the Corner, just say so. We watch it every year on Christmas Eve.

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    @schrodinger’s cat: Actually that’s moderation comments on you.

    I freed it your comment by the way. And what you’re describing is not surprising and most likely an accurate representation from that time period.

  58. 58.

    opiejeanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Especially if we hang out with people of similar intelligence to ourselves and don’t run into the less intelligent on a regular basis. It’s kind of stunning when you do finally notice.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @Miss Bianca:

    It’s funny — I love horror and supernatural movies, but I can’t write horror or supernatural. I really suck at it. But if you want to put a werewolf ghost aunt into your book, feel free to steal it!

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: As I wrote in a comment in my earlier post, Trump has held these views since the 80s.

    I did a post on it back in the late Spring/early Summer, but during the Reagan Administration Trump took out a very expensive (about a $100K ad buy) full page ad in the NY Times criticizing President Reaganā€™s foreign policy and American involvement in NATO and other alliances.

    http://www.politico.com/magazi…..gan-213288

    The gadfly was Donald Trump, writing in his book The Art of the Deal. But it wasnā€™t just a glancing blow; to promote the book, Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reaganā€™s record, including his willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union. Advised by the notorious Roger Stone, a Nixon-era GOP trickster, in 1987 Trump took out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post blasting Reagan and his team.

    In the text, which was addressed ā€œTo the American people,ā€ Trump declared, ā€œThereā€™s nothing wrong with Americaā€™s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone canā€™t cure.ā€ The problem was Americaā€™s leading role in defending democracy, which had been fulfilled by Republicans and Democrats all the way back to FDR. Foreshadowing his 2015 argument that would have Mexico pay for an American-built border wall, Trump then said that the United States should present its allies with a bill for defense services rendered.

    The ads, which cost more than $90,000, came after Trump had visited the Soviet Union and met with Mikhail Gorbachev. (A few years earlier, Trump had offered himself as a replacement for Reaganā€™s nuclear arms control negotiators, whom he considered too soft.) Trump followed his letter to America with a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where voters were eyeing the candidates in the 1988 primary. There he spoke to the Rotary Club, which met at Yokenā€™s restaurant, where the sign out front featured a spouting whale and the slogan, ā€œThar she blows!ā€ In his talk, Trump sounded some of the same themes he offers today, except for the fact that the bad guys who were laughing at the United States were the Japanese and not the Mexicans or Chinese.

    Click across thereā€™s much more at the link above.

    And you can see the ad here:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/a…..first.html

    Donald Trump was up at a podium, saying that America had gone weak and was headed for disaster.
    ā€œWe donā€™t have tough people. We have nice people,ā€ Trump said. ā€œBut Iā€™m tired of nice people, already. I mean, too much.ā€
    But this was not 2016 and Trump was not talking about President Obama.
    This was 1987 and Trump was denouncing the course of the country as set by President Reagan, who was famously known for being the nicest of guys.
    ā€œIā€™m tired of nice people already in Washington,ā€ Trump told a Rotary Club gathering at Yokenā€™s restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. ā€œLet somebody be in there who doesnā€™t just smile nicely, whoā€™s not just shaking hands. I want someone in there who knows how to negotiate, because thatā€™s what itā€™s all about now. And, if the right person isnā€™t in office, youā€™re going to see a catastrophe.ā€
    America, he said, was being pushed around and fleeced as it fell ever deeper into debt.
    ā€œTheyā€™re ripping us off left and right,ā€ he said. ā€œThey knock the hell out of the United States. Do they say, ā€˜Thank you?ā€™ No. Do they like us? Not particularlyā€¦ā€
    He went on, ā€œWe are a country that is losing $200 billion a year. We are supporting, we are literally supporting Japan, which is the greatest money machine ever created, and we created it to a large extent. Letā€™s not kid ourselves.ā€
    He continued, ā€œWeā€™re supporting Saudi Arabia. Weā€™re supporting Kuwait. Weā€™re bringing in ships to Kuwait through the gulf. Weā€™re losing our men. Weā€™re spending billions of dollars. So whatā€™s happening? They donā€™t contribute one penny of this defense.ā€
    He offered a solution for the deficit, which was tripling under Reagan.
    ā€œWhy canā€™t we have a share of their money?ā€ he asked. ā€œWe should have Japan and we should have Saudi Arabia and we should have all of these countries who are literally ripping us off left and rightā€¦ They should pay for our $200 billion deficit.ā€
    That raised the unspoken question of how this might be accomplished.

  67. 67.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @opiejeanne: Yes, when I joined the army, I went to regular basic training on my way to OCS. I had lived in well-off suburbs and towns with good schools and I was always in the “smart” classes. I went to a selective LAC. I had to modify my vocabulary while I was in Basic. It was a real learning experience.

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Police detective stuff? If you don’t mind subtitles, Spiral. Fair warning: unabashedly graphic and gritty.

    Non-crime and more in a humorous vein? Club de Cuervos. Season 2 coming to Netflix later on this month.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The one thing I felt a little “meh” about was Matthew McConaghey’s voice performance. I felt like he got cast based on how much additional financing they could get, not on how good his performance was. Charlize Theron was great.

    Given the current philosophy of where I work, the lack of Asian-American voice talent in a movie filled with Japanese characters really stuck out like a sore thumb to me — I think there were only two, and they were in cameo roles. But, Laika doesn’t have the resources of the Giant Evil Corporation and needs to cast partly based on who financiers are willing to pay for. That’s just reality, unfortunately.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I always feel a little “meh” about Philadelphia Story. There are some weird and creepy themes in there, like when Tracy’s father basically says he wouldn’t have cheated on her mother if Tracy had loved him more. WTF?

  78. 78.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodinger’s cat: Okay then. Most people here have at least one degree and those who don’t seem to be people who became tool and dye makers and such – which requires a shitload of brains. We are not representative of the general population. We are a little elite and elitist island.

  81. 81.

    greennotGreen

    @SgrAstar: I second the recommendation for the Department Q movies – but don’t binge watch or you’ll end up with bad dreams like I did. It’s pretty dark stuff.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    I think we’ve moved on to a screwball comedies consensus. We just need one more to add to Holiday and His Girl Friday.

    Since we already have two Cary Grant movies, maybe The Awful Truth?

  87. 87.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Its sort of a combo. He knows and doesn’t know. He’s held these views for a long time. On foreign and defense policy on criminal justice/law and order on racial interaction and eugenics. He’s had longstanding positions being pro-choice and being socially liberal to libertine and being in favor of government funded healthcare. These last three he seems to have flipped on to get the nomination. But even the first couple that he’s held for a long time, its not clear how he came to them and/or why he holds them.

  94. 94.

    Peale

    @Adam L Silverman: I guess it’s safe to assume that in any given situation or crises, we will just imagine what the most belligerent outcome would be, and that’s what will happen. I do think we’ll be occupying Mexico as far as Durango, withdrawing when Mexico concedes beachfront real estate to the kids. We are looking at some kind of medieval real estate vassalage system where world stability will involve whether or not a country has personal business ties to our new monarch that will all fall apart when someone dies without an heir.

  98. 98.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    For all you know they were tie dying their mechanical presses. Donā€™t judge.

    Although that’s a new and interesting take on the idea, I think it’s especially difficult to tie hardened steel sufficiently to achieve the desired effect.

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: I don’t know, this was back when he was flush, before he lost bigly at the end of the 80s, and I reckon the NY Times doesn’t take free rounds of golf in lieu of cash.

  106. 106.

    Feathers

    A show worth tracking down is Jonathan Creek. It’s a British mystery show from the late 90s. Sort of an anti-X-Files. Where on the X-Files, everything turns out to be aliens, monsters, or a conspiracy, on Jonathan Creek, all the inexplicable doings turn out to be human in the end. It’s a male-female pairing, the woman is a reporter who investigates miscarriages of justice who pulls in an eccentric man who designs and builds the illusions for a famous stage magician (played by a pre-Buffy Anthony Head in the first season). It’s all about how the details of how the crime was committed – locked room mysteries.

    I first heard about it on a screenwriting board board back in the day – all the TV writers were raving about it, and Monk apparently was created in attempt to create the same flavor on American TV. I admit I prefer Creek to Monk, Creek’s oddity is less DSMified, as it were. Interestingly, Hugh Laurie was at one point attached to star, but dropped out because he couldn’t find his way into the character. House can be seen as his “getting the character” he missed the first time around.

    It showed on one of the minor cable channels where I watched it. It is one of those shows that started swapping out female leads and none of them worked as well as Caroline Quentin, who is in the first three seasons. It is on DVD. Apparently there is a Christmas special this year, so maybe it will pop up streaming some where. Worth keeping an eye out.

  108. 108.

    Mike E

    @SFAW: Ponyo was fun in the theater where Miss E and I made up half the audience…we chased Spirited Away all over town and saw it 3 times in 3 different theaters, something we haven’t duplicated since

  110. 110.

    Mnemosyne

    Random etiquette question for the gay men: my brother-in-law has been all over Facebook having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the same guy since at least a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, though I first started seeing this new fella being mentioned around August. At what point can I ask, Is this your new boyfriend and when do we get to meet him?

    I’m leaning towards waiting to see if they make it past New Year’s, which is always a trouble zone for any new couple, but if I should ask earlier, let me know.

  111. 111.

    Major Major Major Major

    I do find procedurals to be relaxing though. They’re rigidly structured, so you always know what you’re getting into (I watch one before bed), and network/basic cable gore has never bothered me.

    I’m sad that I ran out of House episodes. I’d been watching every day, all year. Just a winning take on the genre.

    ETA: @Mnemosyne: What’s got you thinking it would be any different than asking a woman?

  112. 112.

    Feathers

    @Mnemosyne: Have you read Stanley Cavell’s “Pursuits of Happiness”? It’s a Harvard philosopher writing about Hollywood’s comedy of remarriage – noting the debt the screwball comedy pays to Shakespeare; that they are about remarriage – thus the hero and heroine are both sexually experienced; and that the problem to be solved isn’t sex but – conversation. He sees them as being about can two minds really meet through conversation. It’s one of my all time favorite film books.

    Anyway, the movies with chapters in the book are The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, and The Awful Truth, if those appeal. I know we’ve already done Sturges.

    Oh, and my every Christmas movie is Bell, Book and Candle.

  113. 113.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m not particularly thrilled myself. Apparently the Taiwan call was month’s in the planning by a group of advisors that want to radically change the US’s position vis a vis Taiwan.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-taiwan-phone-call-was-weeks-in-the-planning-say-people-who-were-involved/2016/12/04/f8be4b0c-ba4e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.b5a32ec993be
    (h/t; Commenter Shalimar in my earlier post)

  114. 114.

    Mike J

    Yow. I learned a ton yesterday. Normally in sport, this means very bad things happened. Had the other boats in race not returned to the dock before the start it would have been a disaster. It was my first time crewing on a big boat. Forecast was 10 gusting 12, at the start there were solid whitecaps, which means base wind of 15+.

    I always told my students that a big boat, like our 24 and 27 footers, were just like a dinghy, just a bit more work, I was on a 44’er yesterday. Furling the jib took a 42×1 advantage winch, and took forever with that. Thousands of pounds of resistance instead of the hundreds I’m used to. Yes, everything was the same in that there were sheets and halyards and vangs, but everything had a couple of tons of stress on it. I can’t wait to do it again The boats I’m used to, you can manhandle and yank ’em around the course. Everything on a really big boat has to be thought about in advance, Which actually works better for a sailor who isn’t 18 any more.

    Normally post race we have a beer or two and tell lies for 15 minutes. Big boats mean twelve year old scotch and popcorn popped in the boat’s microwave and three hours worth of lies. Really, really hoping I get ride for Swiftsure.

  115. 115.

    Blue mouser

    After retiring 3 years ago Hayao Miyazaki is thinking of returning and making an animated film again!!. Kiki’s and Spirited Away are favorites.
    I think his successor in spirit will be Makoto Shinkai. His She and her Cat and 5 cm per second are becoming classics. His new film Your Name did pretty well in Thailand Hong Kong and even China. I want to see it but with a very limited release will need to wait until hopefully Netflix or Amazon licenses it.

  116. 116.

    SFAW

    @Mike E:

    I saw “Ponyo” in the theater. Once was more than enough, and it’s one of very few Miyazaki films I would not consider getting the DVD.

    “Spirited Away,” on the other hand .. I won’t say I could watch it endlessly, but multiple viewings are something I could do. That’s also true (for me) for plenty of other Miyazakis.

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Mostly that he only really started publicly dating since he began therapy about 3 years ago, so I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. (He was not closeted, but if he was dating, he wasn’t telling the family about it.) So this may be more something that’s personal to him than a specifically gay thing.

  119. 119.

    Feathers

    @Major Major Major Major: I have season 1 on DVD. Let me know if you can’t track it down. It really is wonderful.

    ETA – the only show I’m currently watching in real time is a great procedural “Elementary” It doesn’t get the love it deserves.

  124. 124.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Yes, but you’re not a noodge.

    I’ll probably wait for either post-New Year’s or for whenever G plans his winter trip to visit the family. Holidays can be rough on a new couple, and I don’t want either of them to feel pressured.

    But, seriously, they each tag one or the other of themselves on Facebook at least every other day, so am I not supposed to draw conclusions?

    ETA: I have been waiting for over 10 years to have a fellow in-law that I can gossip about the family with, so I am excited at the prospect. G’s gotten to have them this whole time with my family and it’s NOT FAIR.

  126. 126.

    eemom

    Sorry to interrupt late night politics-free zone, but this is good news. Hearing was held this afternoon and decision just issued.

  127. 127.

    jacy

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I love Robson Green. In anything. But Wire in the Blood is quite excellent.

    Love Ben Miller too. Death in Paradise is good — and much more escapist because it’s a comedy, and it’s on Netflix now. (I watch a lot UK TV)

  129. 129.

    Felixmoronia

    Check out MHz.org’s MHzchoice, all kinds of European procedurals/mysteries. Five seasons of “Spiral” with a 6th season early in ’17. Enough to keep one occupied for weeks/months.

  130. 130.

    burnspbesq

    Hoo-boy.

    I can’t vouch for this source, with which I am unfamiliar, but if this is accurate, there is serious fuckery afoot in the Wisconsin recount–and in exactly the place you would expect.

    Waukesha, of course

  131. 131.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The CI side of things has gotten more diverse, it had to, but overall the FBI is overwhelmingly white, male, and plurality Catholic.

    Growing up Catholic is a great training ground for arranging one’s entire life around the fiats (whims) of a strict hierarchy of (still, in America) mostly white men. Men of this mindset are less & less capable of coping with our corrupt modern world, which makes them deeply sympathetic to the ‘whitelash’ Angry Old Men of the GOP, with or without Trump as its figurehead.

    (I hear the FBI heads had great hope for the Mormons, now that so many ‘cradle Catholics’ are being raised by ‘cafeteria Catholics’, but the LDS foreign-mission training means the CIA steals the best of the returnees.)

    Comey’s thumb-fist-and-forearm-on-the-scales bullshit was alarming, but not IMO surprising. He may be the FBI’s version of Pope Benedict, but I doubt there’s a Francis waiting to replace him…

  132. 132.

    SFAW

    @burnspbesq:

    Jesus H. Christ. Time for the UN to send monitors to a certain banana republic which is home to a certain green-and-gold football team?

    “Party Before Country,” the not-so-new slogan of the Partei of Treasonous Motherfuckers, a/k/a the Rethuglicans.

    ETA: Would the bruited-about and hoped-for audit do anything to remedy that situation? My perception — which may be wrong, of course — is that an unaudited recount would be vulnerable to all sorts of fuckery by the GOP.

  133. 133.

    SFAW

    @Anne Laurie:

    Comeyā€™s thumb-fist-and-forearm-on-the-scales bullshit was alarming, but not IMO surprising. He may be the FBIā€™s version of Pope Benedict, but I doubt thereā€™s a Francis waiting to replace himā€¦

    Is that bastard EVER going to get fired?

  134. 134.

    Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)

    @Omnes Omnibus: It sucked when people treated me like I was stuck up or simply swallowed a dictionary when I were brought up to lovingly use ALL the words because it’s fun! Serious family point of pride was using words correctly, & then playing with& off of them. Was a shock to find how truly different that was.

    True story: Thanksgiving all us kids were sent to find all the dictionaries in our house (at least 2-3 college & 1 unabridged) because the adults were arguing over a word at dinner. (Really wish I remembered the word).

  135. 135.

    Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)

    @Mnemosyne: Not really a romance but Arsenic & Old Lace is a favorite Cary Grant film of mine, partly because the whole ensemble is so good.

  137. 137.

    Anne Laurie

    @Feathers:

    the only show Iā€™m currently watching in real time is a great procedural ā€œElementaryā€ It doesnā€™t get the love it deserves.

    It is very good, isn’t it? Spousal Unit & I just finished watching the first season — we cherish shows where our tastes overlap enough for that, so we’re carefully not-binging.

    We like that it’s not as consciously INTENSE! as the BBC Sherlock, wonderful as that show is. Sometimes you want a procedural where every episode wraps up its own story, apart from any overriding arcs. I think people forget that the original Sherlock Holmes tales were short stories or novellas — the ‘series tv episodes’ of their media day. Sir Arthur wasn’t writing three-volume novels, he meant his tales to be tidy little packets (with a few loose threads to encourage readers to look for the next one).

  138. 138.

    SFAW

    @Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):

    Frak! grammar nerd ā€œā€¦I was brought upā€¦ā€ /grammar nerd

    Beat me to it.
    I believe the proper phrase is either “I was brung up” or “I was brang up.” Or maybe even “I was bringed up.”

    And I should know, because I have my advanced degree from the Dunning-Kruger Graduate School of Pseudo-Pedantry.

  139. 139.

    Dog Dawg Damn

    Meanwhile the future NSA director’s son is in a Twitter war with Jake Tapper promoting a disgusting conspiracy theory about child sex trafficking.

    And Donald Trump is subtweeting China, very aggressively.

    This is spiraling out of control fast.

  144. 144.

    otmar

    Yesterday, Austria managed to re-affirm the election of the left-wing presidential candidate.

    We had a re-do of the election because absentee ballots weren’t handled consistently according to the law at the run-off election in May.

    This time it was not close. *phew*

  145. 145.

    R-Jud

    @Kelly: Seconding Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell here. A great big amazing doorstop of a book. Takes a couple of chapters to get going; persevere until a character called Childermass shows up.

    The BBC did an excellent seven-episode adaptation of it in 2015. You should be able to buy it on YouTube to watch immediately. Again, it seems a little overly whimsical at first, but then settles down into something dark and wild and wryly funny. Go go go!

  147. 147.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: Murder, He Says! Fred MacMurray! I remember that one from tv in the 50s/60s, when they showed old movies on the local channels.

    Honors flysis/Income beezis/Onches nobis/Inob keesis

  149. 149.

    J R in WV

    Since folks are talking about old films, I’ll re-post about a new film, Doctor Strange, which we saw recently in a theater. It was very good, cast OK, effects amazing.

    I would recommend seeing the 3-D version, actually although that wasn’t available at the cineplex we visited. Friend went a second time to see it in 3-D, I would if I can make time for it.

  151. 151.

    ET

    So this happened. During the election, a fake news story was circulated likely by guys similar to those profiled in the Washington Post, about a supposed pedophilia ring operating out of a local pizza joint in DC. They and some others associated with them have been getting threats for awhile and even one person went to the place to see for themselves. Well. It seems that some looser from red state America came to DC – with a shotgun – to see for himself. He even fired at least one shot.

    Trump voters – and I am going to assume he is one – and many conservatives, are just stupid, gullible, and/or insane.

  152. 152.

    MoxieM

    Fame-whoring: Nena’s daughter went to school with my daughter’s boyfriend (as children). That is all.

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