Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

The revolution will be supervised.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

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

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

“woke” is the new caravan.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

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Reader Interactions

70Comments

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    Love natural hot springs. Spent a relaxing afternoon at one in Ridgway when I was there two years ago.

  3. 3.

    Balconesfault

    Wow, a point for Darrell Issa of all people. He started his questions to the FBI director asking about asset forfeiture.

    He relapsed quickly though.

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    I like that the towns were in alphabetical order. I wonder if some enterprising person from the tourism office for MA will use this in a video or at least post it on their website.

  10. 10.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    The guy in the video reminds me of this:

    “What was he wearing? Well, uh, let’s see, he was wearing a red argyle sweater, and tan trousers, and red shoes… Hmm? No, he’s not retarded.”

  11. 11.

    JanieM

    My snarky side wants to say that some people have too much time on their hands, but I’m laughing as I say ig, because that’s just the flip side of how much I love stuff like that video. I’m trying to imagine the time it took to map the notes of the song to the list of towns, and just to drive around to all those towns (including islands!), and to make sure the uke was tuned just right at every stop, and (as someone said in the comments) to do the editing, and to make the map thingy……

    Very cool.

  12. 12.

    Miss Bianca

    Shivering in my office, dealing with spotty Internet and *wishing* I were at the hot springs! Enjoy, TaMara!

    @Gin & Tonic: That wouldn’t have been Orvis, would it? My favorite hot spring! Worth moving back to the Western Slope for, IMHO.

  15. 15.

    Tom Levenson

    What a hoot. Made my morning. In its honor I will sing the first three notes of Beethoven’s 5th as in about 250 yards, I bicycle from Brookline to Boston to Cambridge about 45 minutes from now.

  18. 18.

    Tom Levenson

    @Major Major Major Major: William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Or The Peripheral. Also, I’m rereading, all 20 volumes, Patrick O’Brien’s ginormous novel, from Master and Commander to Blue at the Mizzen.

  25. 25.

    randy khan

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Older: A.S. Byatt, Possession; and Michael Chabon, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

    Newer: Neal Stephenson, Seveneves; Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem (although the translation of the second book in the series seems better to me)

    Okay, the older ones might qualify as Literature, in theory, but they still were awfully good, and K&C should be right up your alley, as it’s about comic books (sort of).

  30. 30.

    different-church-lady

    @WaterGirl: …and a thread for the FBI director’s testimony? And a thread for the government shutdown? And a thread for the…

  38. 38.

    brendancalling

    I have too much going on, as usual. Working right now. Getting my phone fixed during lunch. Practice tonight. Moving stuff into my new digs. Trolling republicans on Twitter using my ALL CAPS TRUMP-TAUNT VOICE (example: HAHAHA @SENATORCOLLINS SOLD OUT MAINE AND GOT NOTHING, VOTERS WILL FIRE HER SHE WILL NEVER BE GOVERNOR WE ARE COMIGN TO FIRE YOU). (yes, the misspellings are on purpose).

    Juvenile, but it helps get the aggression out.

  43. 43.

    Miss Bianca

    @Tom Levenson: The Aubreyad! A glass of wine with you, sir!

    I was on my fourth voyage thru’ via audiobook when the CD player in my car broke down somewhere around “Treason’s Harbor”. Haven’t got it repaired yet. : (

  45. 45.

    Ramalama

    @captnkurt: I have a really good friend from Websta. She mentioned the lake’s name many times, but I never could get it right.

    This video reminded me of the conflicting pronunciations for Wareham (Ware-ham) and Dedham (Deddem/Deddum).

  47. 47.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Major Major Major Major: Bujold, Vorkosigan Saga (SF) or the Five Gods books (fantasy). She wins all the awards, and for good reason. If you’re comfortable with not having everything explained, try her novellas. “Mountains of Mourning” and “Borders of Infinity” for the SF, “Penric’s Demon” for the fantasy.

    I also keep pulling 1632 off my shelf lately. Time travel alternate history with the UMWA as the heroes….

  49. 49.

    tarragon

    @Major Major Major Major:
    The Culture novels are mostly disconnected. There is an occasional reference or bit of history between them, but I can’t imagine it would matter too much if you just went in any order.

    Bank’s novels Against a Dark Background and The Algebraist are science fiction not set in the Culture series. Both are excellent and standalone.

  51. 51.

    Schlemazel

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Have you read Scalizi’s “Lock In”? Not really SciFi but SciFi-ish detective story.
    Bradley’s “I Am Half-Sick of Shadows” is a CHristmas-based mystery that is pretty good.
    An old favorite of mine are Westlake’s Dortmunder series. You could start with “The Busy Body” which was the first although it is not really part of the series it introduces the characters and their MO. Marginally competent NYC thieves never quite manage to pull off the big caper.

  53. 53.

    aimai

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: So funny! I love all those books–well, I’m not as big a fan of “five gods” as I am of Vorkosigan’s saga. I adore Vorkosigan’s saga and for years read and re-read them. Have you tried Wen Spencer’s Tinker series (a bit fluffier?) or her marvelous “A Brother’s Price” which is a steampunk re-imagining of what would happen in a fantasy world in which women form sister based alliances to purchase a husband, selling off their sons and brothers to do so. I also love 1632, although I never could get into the others.

    You might like SM sterling’s two related series: Islands in the Sea of Time (about what happens when nantucket is thrown back into 1250 BC and the Emberverse/Dies the Fire about what happens uptime when electricity and gunpowder cease to work and our present time is thrown back technologically, but not intellectually, into the middle ages. I love both of these series for their exploration of what it would be like for a modern/intellectual/educated person to have to deal with the physical and technological limitations of previous epochs, and what happens to pre-modern communities when social institutions and ideas like democracy or science get introduced.

  56. 56.

    Schlemazel

    @Major Major Major Major:
    I assume you wanted something light & fun & these mostly qualify. The black dog insists I not read at the moment but when I can bring it to heel the DOrtmunder stuff is often my gateway back.

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    @Tom Levenson:

    Also, I’m rereading, all 20 volumes, Patrick O’Brien’s ginormous novel, from Master and Commander to Blue at the Mizzen.

    One day, off work because of illness, I caught an Oprah interview with Russell Crowe. He was pitching the movie “Master and Commander,” based on the O’Brien novels. Loved the movie, and then got swept up in the novels.

    Great reads.

    ETA: I got so deep into the novels that I started reading about British naval history. Nicholas A. M. Rodger’s The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, the second book in a series on naval history, is a master work that deals not only with sea battles, but with politics, social history, the technical innovations that made the British navy so formidable, finance, training and command.

  59. 59.

    wormtown

    The farm I grew up on (and family still owns) is on for a nano second around 17 second mark. Cool! Thanks Tamara

  60. 60.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @aimai: If that’s the aspect of the 163x universe you like, then please revisit it via the Dr. Gribbleflotz stories, now collected in an ebook, The Galileo Affair, where among other story threads Sharon demonstrates surgery in Venice and Grantville’s uptimer priest is summoned for an audience with the Pope, and The Kremlin Games set largely in a Russian skunkworks. Uptime middle school science meets Aristotelianism.

  62. 62.

    Kathleen

    If you enjoy mysteries I recommend anything by David Baldacci. He’s my go to for plane trips to Tampa and when I need to enter a totally different world and quiet my monkey mind.

  63. 63.

    Heidi Mom

    @Major Major Major Major: You’ve made my day! Nothing makes me happier than being asked for book recommendations. I’ve just finished and highly recommend Lightning Men by Thomas Mullen. It’s a crime novel set in Atlanta in 1950, when the city has just begun hiring a very few black cops to police black neighborhoods. At the same time, a few brave people are breaking the racial boundaries in housing, white flight rears its ugly head, and the Klan (which includes some police officers) and even uglier groups (as in “Didn’t we just win a war against these guys?”) respond. The author doesn’t pull any punches but includes plenty of humor to offset the bleakness.

    Prussian Blue is the latest in Philip Kerr’s series about Bernie Gunther, a cop and (later) private detective who tries to retain as much honor as he can while staying alive before, during, and after WWII. This is one of his best, IMHO, involving a feud between Heydrich and Bormann, construction at Berchtesgaden in preparation for the Fuhrer’s visit, salt mines, and so much more — serious but very readable, complex but not hard to follow,

    The North Water by Ian McGuire is a pretty dark but gripping novel about a 19th-century whaling expedition where, of course, things go badly wrong. The protagonist, the ship’s surgeon, has to grapple with evil crew members, the weather, polar bears, and his own history. Hope I haven’t made it sound like a run-of-the- mill adventure novel because it most definitely isn’t.

    Doc by Mary Doria Russell is a fictional biography of Doc Holliday, pre-Tombstone. Val Kilmer’s portrayal of everyone’s favorite character in Tombstone, good as it was, only hints at how fascinating and complex Doc’s character and story are. There’s a sequel, Epitaph, that covers Tombstone and its aftermath; I didn’t like it as well because I’m not much interested in Josie Earp.

    Heat and Light by (fellow Dickinson College alumna) Jennifer Haigh is a novel about the impact of fracking and the Marcellus Shale boom on a variety of characters in PA. It hit close to home for me, but you wouldn’t have to be a resident of PA to find this both entertaining and worthwhile.

    “Entertaining and worthwhile” — that’s the sweet spot I’ve been trying to hit here. Let me know if you need more! I also read literature, non-fiction on a variety of subjects, and — my favorite — crime/mysteries/cop novels, everyone, so — requests welcome.

  64. 64.

    Heidi Mom

    @Schlemazel: You too, huh? Sorry to hear that. When the black dog visits (seems unfair to use that term for depression, as Heidi is a mostly black dog and she brings nothing but light and joy), I reread my favorites — mysteries by John Sandford, Craig Johnson, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, and the late, great Tony Hillerman; and everything by J. K. Rowling.

  65. 65.

    Heidi Mom

    @Brachiator: One does get swept up in the novels! Although I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive the (late) author for a certain death that occurs late in the series, and for not telling us in detail how rhinoceroses are best stowed. And the movie is one I’ve seen several times — endlessly fascinating, and with a gorgeous Baroque soundtrack.

  66. 66.

    Brachiator

    @Heidi Mom:

    One does get swept up in the novels! Although I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive the (late) author for a certain death that occurs late in the series, and for not telling us in detail how rhinoceroses are best stowed. And the movie is one I’ve seen several times — endlessly fascinating, and with a gorgeous Baroque soundtrack.

    I think I know the death you speak of and agree.

    And yep, I loved the movie’s music.

    ETA: I am also looking at your earlier comment here on book recommendations, and adding them to my list.

  67. 67.

    Tenar Arha

    @Major Major Major Major: I’d strongly recommend N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy if no one has mentioned it yet….

    ETA to give you an idea how much I liked this series, I’ve actually risked the spines of my trade paperbacks loaning them out. ;-)

  68. 68.

    gratuitous

    If you’re a Car Talk fan, you will find Tom and Ray’s Cambridge (their fair city) at 47 seconds.

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