Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

“woke” is the new caravan.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Fight them, without becoming them!

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

The lights are all blinking red.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Books are my comfort food!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Y’all Can Be Jealous, But No Hating

Y’all Can Be Jealous, But No Hating

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I have a watermelon guy in WV who gets the best watermelons and is an expert at picking ripe ones, and Ann Burr loves watermelon, so I schlepped four of them up here for her. I just cut this one open and you gotta admit that is one amazing looking watermelon.

Oh, I meditated for an hour yesterday. It was very nice. I didn’t even fall asleep. On Thursday I go to my first yoga class. It’s going to be me and a bunch of olds because I am a beginner and I didn’t want to be around a bunch hyperfit people doing yoga. Although on second thought, maybe I do want to be around a bunch of hyperfit ladies in yoga pants.

I may need to rethink this.

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  1. 1.

    Karen

    No you don’t want to be around a bunch of hyperfit women, you will go home depressed and probably sore from trying to keep up with them

  2. 2.

    wmd

    ABC have any thoughts on hyperfit ladies in yoga pants?

    You’re doing great. Soon you’ll have all the best tote bags.

  3. 3.

    jl

    Cole thinks he’ll look good in yoga pants to hyper fit hot young yoga chicks? I think different, from recent Cole pics I have seen on this here blog. I wish you luck with that, Cole.

    Next time I breeze by W By God Va, I’m willing to meet with Cole at an undisclosed location and teach him how to pick a good watermelon, so he can conduct watermelon operations by himself. For a small fee. Maybe some fresh ramps.

  4. 4.

    frosty

    I’m signing up for a second session of yoga at work. A mix of attendees but it does include some hyper-fit young ladies in yoga pants. Good reason to rethink it.

    OTOH, if it’s the first time you’ll be doing some Unpleasant Bending (h/t Bonzo Dog Band) after years of not so much moving around, maybe your first choice is best.

    ETA: Nice watermelon!

  6. 6.

    jl

    And, BTW, WTF are those supposedly real Americans, in W By God VA, doing eating that G-damned seedless watermelon?
    I want my country back, dammit!

  7. 7.

    Diana

    My yoga studio in Brooklyn is on the third floor of an old building in Hasidic Williamsburg, and on the second floor a bunch of Hasidic guys had an office. Were they upset at seeing all these young women wandering ny their doors in bras and yoga pants?

    We found out when they put a sign on their door, where only their customers and the people going to yoga could see it.

    The sign said, “receptionist wanted.”

  8. 8.

    jl

    @Baud:

    ” Little does Cole know that the olds are into naked yoga. ”

    Hell yes! Baud 2020 will make history by introducing a new Presidential sport. Better than golf.

    Edit: old geezers with hot young yoga instructors, bare buck nekkid. You’ll get all of the Fox News audience eating out of your hand.

  9. 9.

    trollhattan

    Anybody go to a Whole Paycheck this weekend? Amazon’s takeover is official and they were supposedly dropping prices on all the “staples” whatever that means in Whole Foodspeak, and I was curious whether it was even noticeable.

  13. 13.

    Karen

    Good job on meditation; it takes time to find a way to shut your mind off and hear the heart beat of universe and not fall asleep. It can also be used as a way to focus healing energy. (oncologist suggested doing that since found that people who meditate have high survival rates)

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    @trollhattan:

    I went last night and didn’t notice anything in particular that was startlingly lower. However, all of the shelf tags were digital, so I assume there’s some kind of global change they’re going to be able to make.

    They’re about halfway done building a Whole Foods a couple of blocks away from us. I think it’s supposed to be done this winter. It’s one of those highly fashionable retail+apartment complexes.

  16. 16.

    trollhattan

    @Mnemosyne:
    Have to drive a decent distance to the nearest and while they have a handful of unique items I really like I never get out of there for less than $50/bag, so I don’t go often.

  19. 19.

    BethanyAnne

    Nothing to do here in a tornado warning. Maybe meditate? Went into the kitchen and cooked some food instead. Now I have a pot of black beans in the pressure cooker.

  20. 20.

    Bruuuuce

    @trollhattan: Mine is across the street from work, so I won’t be seeing it until at least Monday night, by which time they will have had a chance to make changes if they’re making them quickly. Given that it’s in midtown Manhattan (by Bryant Park), high prices were already destined to be the order of the day, so conversion to Only Half Paycheck would be an improvement.

  22. 22.

    Hal

    @trollhattan: Monday…

    http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/25/546130559/whole-foods-will-drop-prices-on-monday-amazon-says-detailing-new-grocery-strateg

    Amazon is cutting the prices of bananas, butter, organic eggs, and other best-selling staples at Whole Foods’ 470 stores, promising customers lower costs and targeting the grocer’s “Whole Paycheck” nickname. The online giant also says its Amazon Prime members will get special prices and perks.

    New prices will take effect on Monday — the same day Amazon says it will finalize its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods. The online marketplace, famous for disrupting the book industry and other retail segments, also laid out its plans for combining its business with an established brick-and-mortar chain

  23. 23.

    Davebo

    For me, the bar and yoga pants are the only things that makes Whole Foods worth the money!

    Well that and really excellent meats.

  25. 25.

    Bex

    You might like Dan Harris’s book, “10% Happier” about his practice of meditation He also has a weekly podcast with people who share their meditation practices.

  27. 27.

    jl

    @Amaranthine RBG: Just to show you how this country has gone to hell and lost its way, I have to go to the damned over priced fancy pants foodie SF farmers markets to get a good old fashioned water melon, with seeds, like God intended.

    Look up how you have to grow seedless watermelons, to understand how pathetic those things are. Real pain in the ass to get a crop of those things. Artificial parasites of the melon and gourd plant realm. Down with seedless watermelons.

    Edit: helped my uncle with growing seedless for a few years a while back. Taught me to hate them. Unless they are only thing in the super market, then i guess OK to eat, if you are lucky and can find one that doesn’t taste like an under ripe squash with some weak ass sugar water sprinkled on it.

  28. 28.

    FlyingToaster

    I’ll be going to one of the local Whole Paychecks (usually Newtonville, but this week may mean Cambridge) to get more conditioner and crackers for WarriorGirl. Everything else I can buy at normal groceries, but there’s a serious problem with obtaining Annie’s Bunny Crackers — every store has two varieties, and the White Cheddar only seems to turn up at Whole Foods. And since a staple school snack is a mix of crackers, somebody (namely, the Procurement Officer at Chez Toaster) has to go obtain the ingredients.

    The bastids stopped carrying *my* haircare products, so I get them online. GRRRRRR.

  31. 31.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @jl:

    Yes, what the hell? SHouldn’t even have to call them seeded versus seedless.

    There’s real watermelon and then there are those soulless, seedless monstrosities.

  33. 33.

    satby

    I don’t like melons of any kind. The neighborhood critters are getting regular melon treats, mostly cantaloupe, from me because the sweet old farmer in the next booth keeps giving me them. Insane bumper crop of the things this year around here, they’re selling for $1 each. Way too sweet for me.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    I just found out that Will & Grace is coming back this fall. In the previews, it looked like nobody had aged at all. That’s not right! Or maybe I just needed to put my glasses on?

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    @Karen:
    All of my docs tell me about mindful meditation, unaware that I’ve taken the VA course on it and it didn’t cover any ground I haven’t already been doing. For decades. I liked that they kept telling us that picturing a babbling brook would relax us, I end up sooner or later needing to pee.

  37. 37.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: I couldn’t pick a good cantaloupe to save my life. We do get “Indiana Melons” for a week or two in the summer, and those are hard to get wrong, but otherwise, either all the cantaloupes suck, or I do.

  39. 39.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Baud:

    I confess I was on the fence about Baud 2016.

    But I am all in for Baud 2020 given the addition of this plank!

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    He doesn’t?
    I think he sorta looks like most every Buddha statue I’ve ever seen. At least he’s the right shape.

  52. 52.

    raven

    I have a pretty extensive Buddhism library, this is the first book I’ve bought in a decade.

    “Robert Wright, the best-selling author of The Moral Animal and The Evolution of God, has written a new book titled Why Buddhism is True. Don’t be put off by the audacious title, though.

    Wright isn’t proselytizing or implying that other religions are false. This is, instead, a light, accessible guide for anyone interested in the practical benefits of meditation. There are no analyses of Buddhist beliefs about reincarnation or supernatural deities; the focus is on what Wright calls Western Buddhism or secular Buddhism, which is less about belief and more about meditation as a therapeutic practice.

    By “true” Wright means that Buddhism’s “diagnosis of the human predicament is fundamentally correct, and that its prescription is deeply valid and urgently important.” That diagnosis goes something like this: the human condition is defined by constant and ultimately inexplicable suffering. Meditation isn’t a way out of this suffering. But it helps us transcend it by teaching us to see it clearly for what it is, and by making us more attuned to our emotive impulses and the behaviors they produce.

  53. 53.

    raven

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The Laughing Buddha the email asked about is known in China as Ho Tai (or as Mi Lo Fa) and is not direclty related to the historical Buddha. Ho Tai was, according to one legend, a monk who would always carry a bag full of candies, which he gave out whenever he met up with children. He was always joyful (hence he is referred to as the Laughing Buddha). And because he was a monk, and because some Asian languages use the same word for monk as they do for Buddha, there has been confusion that he is a form of the historical Buddha.

  55. 55.

    jl

    Let me tell you about these damned seedless watermelons. Seeded watermelons grow like weeds. I remember, on the farm, we had all the watermelons we wanted for years after we put in a crop. We’d just get what we wanted out of the field at picking time, and after we finished it we’d throw the remnants on a ditch bank where it would be convenient to have some volunteer watermelons next year.

    First seedless watermelons are hell to germinate. I remember one year, we got some seeds and then we got a notification from the seed company that they had reports of poor germination. So they were recommending that we ‘notch’ the seeds before planting. So I was sitting around with my uncles family notching these stupid seeds in a certain way for several evenings. Seedless watermelons seeds are hell to germinate. Some farmers always just start them in a hothouse, and there are all sorts of tricks.

    You may ask, if seedless watermelons are seedless, where do the seeds come from? It’s totally effed up. They are hybrids from diploid and tretraploid seeded watermelons that have seeds. Weird manimal shit going on getting those seedless watermelon seeds. You need to do immoral watermelon miscegenation to get those degenerate seedless watermelon seeds.

    Then, they don’t produce enough pollen to self fertilize, so you have to inter-plant them with seeded (aka REAL) watermelons, so the seeded pollen can help out. And that is an uncertain process. One year something went wrong, plant pattern wasn’t working, so we tried to hand pollinate. The seedless plants need more thinning than real watermelons. The quality goes to shit real fast if a vine has too many, because the plant is a kind of hybrid thing that was not designed to exist or reproduce itself in nature, is why. IMHO, a lot of the squashy unripe ‘green veggie’ taste you get in market seedless is they didn’t’ thin enough.

    Seedless watermelons: pain in the ass. In the biz, they call the little hybrid white semi-seeds ‘eggs’ which is weird and unappetizing.

  59. 59.

    BethanyAnne

    Pressure cookers still feel like magic. 1 hour from closing the lid to opening it, and beans that weren’t soaked are done. Magic.

  65. 65.

    Ocotillo

    Going to be in Cincinnati for a very quick turnaround next weekend. Meeting up with stepson, wife and 2 year old granddaughter. Looks like we are going to the aquarium (granddaughter controls this) lol. Anything to be sure and not miss?

  70. 70.

    jl

    @Baud:

    Baud 2020! Real Watermelon! Real corn on the cob! Real beef patties!, Hot chicks in yoga pants!

    is that too long?

  72. 72.

    efgoldman

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    Anybody else hope Mayweather & McGregor do a double KO and/or literally murder each other tonight?

    I’m SO sick of hearing about it. If there were a way for them both to lose….
    And i grew up watching the Friday/Saturday night fights on TV. One of the few things my dad and I did together.

  74. 74.

    lamh36

    @WaterGirl: well, McCormack def has aged a bit ’round the eyes, but Messing, Hayes & Mullally…do look darn near ageless….

    But then again are we really surprised that Jack and Karen, I mean Anastasia Beeverhausen, would not allow themselves to age…lol

  77. 77.

    zhena gogolia

    Just watched “Royal Wives at War.” Gina McKee and Emma Davies were wonderful as Wallis Simpson and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. But the commentary was bad!

  78. 78.

    lamh36

    Spent the early part of my day, running errands and cleaning house, the family who are going to DC with me in a month are all coming to my crib to finalize some of our trip plans.

    The rest of my day, was spend watching Roadhouse of all things…I was in a Patrick Swayze kinda of mood. And as I do oftentimes, I was live-tweeting as I watched it…lol

    Finished watching bout 30 mins ago and just caught the final 30 mins of Face/Off. I gotta say, the final boat scene in #FaceOff is STILL really fun to watch! Great stunt work & camera work

    Face/Off – Boat Chase https://youtu.be/7NdWKdlue-Q

    Also too, Face/Off may just be my fav Travolta movie after Grease. It’s def one of my fav Nic Cage movies

  79. 79.

    Ivan X

    That is a beautiful watermelon.

    But fuck you (meaning, congratulations) for meditating for an *hour*. I lose my mind from boredom in a minute and a half, and then feel like a failed person for having done so.

  83. 83.

    WaterGirl

    Cole, you inspired me to cut into the watermelon I picked up at the farmer’s market this morning. (seeded) Best watermelon I have had in years. Yay!

  85. 85.

    Gravenstone

    Visiting my stepdad and poking around the old farm house. I found a copy of “Trump (the game)” sitting in a closet. My temptation to grab it for a ceremonial bonfire is rather strong. Maybe even worth recording the event for posterity.

  89. 89.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: Yep! This summer I haven’t seen your long-white-haired buddy who plays an instrument for the kids – is he still okay?

  90. 90.

    Karen

    @Ruckus: I learned to meditate back in the 70’s, used candle flame for focus to start with; the hardest part I found was shutting off my mind. For a time the harder I tried to not allow mind to hold internal dialog the worse it got until was like a hamster going at full speed on wheel. I had all kinds of different suggestions; what clicked for me was something simple, watching a baby sleep. Once I learned that “switch” I learned how to turn it off and then come back again. I have people who tell me all these things you are suppose to do, none of them ever worked. The babbling brook idea would probably send me to bathroom.

  98. 98.

    CZanne

    @Ivan X: There is meditation in labor, too. Haul water, chop wood is a valued meditational practice, too, or labore est orare (work is prayer). If you can’t get into the headspace by “don’t just do something, sit there,” try “don’t just sit there, do something repetitive.” Meditation is one of the hardest tricks for the ADD brain to figure out, so the training wheels version is weeding a garden or trimming shrubbery or needlework or painting walls.

  100. 100.

    Chet Murthy

    @Ivan X: I also suck at meditation. But a similar effect (it seems) is achievable with endurance sports. I’ve been swimming a lot, and as long as you can swim slowly enough that you don’t get out of breath or tire out the joints, the necessity to actually focus on the mechanics seems to “make me present” enough that I can push out all thoughts of …. well, you know, the clutter that meditation is meant to push out. I’m sure the same thing would work with running or biking, though it could be a lot more dangerous there. The problem for us old feebs, is that “slow enough” is real slow.

  104. 104.

    eclare

    @raven: Haven’t watched much by Tarantino, but Pulp Fiction is one of my faves. Still remember being shocked when a friend told me how long it was, almost three hours. Was stunned because it flew by. Trivia: if the scenes were played out chronologically, the last line would be “Zed’s dead baby, Zed’s dead”.

  113. 113.

    scav

    @Chet Murthy: From what I understand, walking, breathing, yoga poses, all sorts of things can serve as the focus. The hard bit is quieting the mind. Breathing seems to work best (admittedly not great) for me — luckily it tucks into all those other things (so I can keep trying. Pious thought. At least making an attempt can sometimes break the brain going in a undesirable direction.)

  114. 114.

    Ruckus

    @Karen:
    Everybody is different. OK not all that different but what works for me isn’t necessarily what works for you. If my mind is going 90 mph in ten different directions then nothing really works. I have to sit down and slow down first. OK that’s not all true motorcycle racing used to work to focus the mind for me as well. Didn’t relax my mind but did teach me how to focus to the exclusion of everything else and to relax the body. I don’t recommend it as a meditation process. Though it can be a lot of fun and a good way to learn problem solving on the fly. I can still remember races from 40+ yrs ago, lap by lap.
    Back to your original point, the switch. I think once you find it it’s like a key or a switch, you just turn it/click it and it works. There is a brain process, alpha wave generation, which are the signals that you send to muscles when you want to relax them. You can learn to do that more generally than say relaxing a finger and one of the ways I’ve used to describe it is to just drop your shoulders. That’s creating a large alpha wave signal to your body to relax. It’s easier to do standing but can be done at any time your torso is vertical. Find that key and you are at least half way to getting to relaxing your mind.

  117. 117.

    CZanne

    @raven: @Chet Murthy: When we get salt water at 6000 feet, I’ll add that to the list. But enough other people (plus me!) get the 12 hour itchies from 50 minutes in the chlorine pool, which rather defeats the purpose of the peace found in the water. But running, hiking, walking, stationary bikes, exercise…

    With ADD brains (and a lot of PTSD brains, which is what I deal with, and why I latched onto training wheels meditation), there’s often enough already extant guilt and shame surrounding exercise, focus, maintaining a schedule or routine, and/or failure that just saying “Cardio type exercise” is a setup for more failure, guilt, and shame. Since ADD and PTSD brains often behave erratically while doing something that the bad brain tapes can interpret as selfish, training wheels is to do something repetitive that is much harder to interpret as selfish.

  119. 119.

    Karen

    @Ruckus: I agree, the hard part is finding that switch; once you find it and can reliable use it then meditation is no longer a chore. I don’t remember if I read it first or was told it; but you can heal your body through use of meditation; I remember an article in Reader’s Digest, early 70’s about fighting cancer using meditation. The author said that he pictured his cancer cells as sheep and then pictured wolves as attacking and killing those cells; according to article he did that and change his diet so that was no longer eating any processed foods.
    I have had people ask me how to find switch, and I can’t really tell them since it was in just “there”

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @Karen:
    I’ve shown a bunch of people the shoulder relaxation thing and it starts them on the path pretty easily. Relax the body, relax the mind. Most do have to practice a bit at first but it comes quicker than anything else I’ve seen.

  122. 122.

    J R in WV

    @Amaranthine RBG:

    Can you share your recipe for watermelon pie with us? More pie information tha I ever knew was out there. Keep up the Pie Education plan, A. RBG…

    Um, is that mincemeat pie I smell?!?!?

  123. 123.

    catclub

    @Baud: I was interested to read that Mayweather scheduled this fight to do maximum damage to HBO’s upcoming fight promotion. He holds a grudge from long ago – and can act on it.

  124. 124.

    Chitown Kev

    Few things taste as divine as a very cold and juicy watermelon on a very hot and humid day…in fact, very hot and humid days are the only time that I eat watermelon…so I’m a little jealous, John Cole that the watermelon does look good but it isn’t hot enough here in Chicago for me to be hatin’

  125. 125.

    central texas

    The watermelon looks wonderful and reminds me of my great-grandfather. Much of the family lived/lives in WV but he had a farm across the Ohio R in bottomlands that grew wonderful melons. His delight was to feed small children large slices from huge green-almost-black skinned watermelons and laugh as we tried to eat out of hand what we could barely lift. Best watermelon I’ve ever had, though it is nice that here in central Texas we get ripe ones earlier and longer; just not better.

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