Well you don’t see this every day!
Iguana fight: Only in South Florida would you see two massive iguanas facing off in a Starbucks parking lot!
STORY: https://t.co/itMzQTgCV4
(Video: Shannon Moskoff) pic.twitter.com/W4xyimUMuo
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) June 25, 2018
From WSVN 7 News in Miami:
A South Florida woman says she was shocked when she spotted two iguanas duking it out in the parking lot of a Starbucks in Boca Raton over the weekend.
Shannon Moskoff captured video that shows the large reptiles fighting for over a minute, as she and a friend try to figure out what is happening.
Moskoff says that she didn’t know how the fight ended since other cars were behind her.
Open thread!
Amir Khalid
Oh noes. Even the iguanas have stopped being civil.
NotMax
What happens after eight double espressos.
;)
Davebo
@Amir Khalid: Much like the rest of us, they never were.
Mike J
Rat mouth is not a place you want to be.
NotMax
@Mike J
Better neighborhood than Culo Raton.
;)
Platonailedit
That parking lot looks like shit.
Platonailedit
@Amir Khalid: lulz.
Yarrow
My favorite iguana story. It’s about frozen iguanas.
I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to be in that car.
Brickley Paiste
Them has to be immigrant iguanas. Showing up on our shores from the south. No way a creature like that could be a true Floridian.
Platonailedit
Now jimmy fallon whines to twitler’s 3rd. She has said openly she don’t care. Well, you should have thought of that when you literally petted that monster on live teevee.
NotMax
Repeating from this morning for the nighttime crowd.
Been in the Amazon Prime queue for quite a while as was ambivalent about watching it (mistakenly under the impression it would be soap opera-y); finished viewing The Royal Tailor, from South Korea. Hard pressed to remember the last time I saw a movie made with such meticulous passion. It’s long, clocking in at just over two hours but don’t think there’s more than maybe three minutes which could be cut without detriment to the whole.
Wow. Just wow. Trailer.
Adam L Silverman
@Platonailedit: It’s south Florida, what were you expecting?
NotMax
Lizard Blogging
Is that now gonna be a regular feature?
:)
Adam L Silverman
If anyone is interested, Daniel Dale has the details. I’ve seen a few video clips and the President looked more unhinged than usual.
FlyingToaster
@Adam L Silverman: Magic City?
[Ducking for cover]
Viva BrisVegas
@Platonailedit:
Fallon is whining because he is falling behind Colbert in the ratings, he desperately needs something to boost his profile. What better than to get Trump to dis you across a wide range of media.
It’s a win for Fallon since the Deplorables will say “Jimmy who?” and his audience will say “poor Jimmy”.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: It was on the categories pick list. I’m guessing it is there as a result of some sort of subterfuge by Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs…//
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: From that thread.
Such class. Also, this means she had a face lift, right?
Mike J
Mike J
@Mike J: They should keep it and Pink Floyd’s pig flying over Battersea.
Adam L Silverman
@FlyingToaster: Never saw it.
barbequebob
years ago at a campground in Costa Rica’s Manuel Antonio National Park, we had iguanas habituated to human food begging. They were eating salami and whatever the campers fed them. The big alpha male whupped anyone else who came close to the picnic tables.
PS, was not me doing the feeding.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Who knows. My understanding is it takes a lot longer for the bruising and swelling on a face lift to go away than the amount of time she was out of the public eye and convalescing. I doubt we’ll ever actually find out what she was really treated for.
NotMax
It’s the 21st century. Shouldn’t we have robotic e-guanas by now?
:)
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Or if she was actually in a hospital.
FlyingToaster
@Adam L Silverman: I liked it more than Burn Notice, which is saying something. If it turns up on a streaming service, I recommend it highly.
HerrDoktor was born-n-raised in Miami. He always checks out the “Miami” series to make fun of their driving scenes (e.g., Miami Vice). And we both make fun of Boston series and films, since they seem to think you can ride the Orange Line to MIT and take the Zake to Dot.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: I believe she was in the hospital. I’ve just got no reason to believe this was the reason why because this White House press office and communications team, as well as this President and Vice President, have a 522 day in office track record of never telling the truth, even when telling the truth is the easiest thing they could do.
Adam L Silverman
Apparently the President likes to keep the temperature in the Oval Office very, very cold… Also, she’s got terrible posture for a formal model and/or those after market bolt ons are made of ultra heavy silicone.
danielx
@NotMax:
I thought I was dying last week after scarfing a triple espresso after not eating for five hours. Couldn’t have sweated more in a sauna and had to get an ekg. Conclusion: don’t drink a triple espresso on an empty stomach, and especially not when your blood sugar is crashing.
Blinding flash of the obvious.
Adam L Silverman
@FlyingToaster: I lived in Miami for two years during grad school. I try to avoid all references to the place if I can.
Adam L Silverman
@danielx: Could you hear the electrical current moving through the wires in the walls?
EBT
Anyone who says “this is not who we are” is lying to themselves. This is precisely what america is. A grinding behemoth that chews up minorities and poor people and demolishes their lives. This happened under Obama, under every President, in just this way or (often) worse. The American ruling class has always remained the same, dedicated to a political project that necessitates imprisonment, wage slavery, etc. If you’re sicked by ICE wait until you find out what the rest of the government does.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh meeeeeow….seriously, I cannot get upset about Ivanka’s attributes being lit up on top of every other sin and crime being committed every day. On the 1-10 scale of Trump tackiness, that rates about a 4 at worst.
Ruckus
It looks like the big ugly Iguana won.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
No, but I couldn’t have gotten more soaked from standing under a lawn sprinkler for a half hour which was about how long this sweating ordeal lasted. I don’t even want to think about blood pressure.
Adam L Silverman
@EBT: While I’m not necessarily in disagreement with what you wrote, and this is an open thread, it is an open thread about iguanas in Florida fighting in a parking lot. Are you sure your comment is in the right post?
FlyingToaster
@Adam L Silverman: I kinda understand. I grew up in Kansas City and felt that “The Day After” was not the worst possible outcome…
EBT
@Adam L Silverman: I thought that open thread was where you put whatever ole thought you had banging around in your head?
Adam L Silverman
@danielx: When I was an undergrad, there was a little Lebanese cafe a couple of storefronts down from the bar and grill/tavern where I worked. We’d go down there and get double espressos or cappuccinos or Arabic or Turkish coffees sometimes. One night there espresso machine was broken, so they Turkish ground the coffee for us and we made it in a pot on one of the stoves in the kitchen. I didn’t sleep for three or four days and I could, without a doubt, hear the electrical current moving through the walls of my apartment. Even two hours on an elliptical at the gym wasn’t enough to wear me out.
EBT
@EBT: Upon further reflection, I think my post fits well; directly after the OP. Two giant iguanas fighting over the scraps describes American politics well.
Adam L Silverman
@FlyingToaster: Ya’ll are such a friendly bunch…
Adam L Silverman
@EBT: It can be. And I’m not criticizing and you don’t need to move it. It just seemed so specific that I was wondering if you meant to put it in another post. Or, perhaps, you were anticipating a post I’m planning on doing tomorrow about this civility stupidity.
FlyingToaster
@EBT: It also describes academia: the most vicious possible infighting over the lowest possible stakes.
The Pale Scot
Well.., Not sure if this is cooler than the iguanas. This afternoon I pulled into the WAWA’s across from the Bay Pines VA facility to get gas when I thought I heard roosters cock-a-dodooling. The big truck across from me pulled away and yes, there were 3 or 4 big, beautiful big red roosters staking out the middle of the gas pad.
I guess you might see this in any agri-rural area, but hey, Bay Pines ain’t the St Pete neighborhood that has horse paddocks. Pasta only knows, they were gone when I walked out of the store, But I did get to complement the folks behind the deli that their chicken must be the freshest. Of course it took them a minute get the joke, ’cause you know, Floriduh.
Adam L Silverman
@The Pale Scot: I know of someone who had a bobcat in their backyard in downtown Dunedin about two years ago or so.
The Dangerman
@Adam L Silverman:
I have a similar story with what might have been my first cup of strong coffee; Boelter Hall at UCLA (Engineering Building) used to have a little cafe/lounge. It was my first year, I remember clearly, and I poured me a cup at the cafe/lounge; I should have known something was up when it poured out something like motor oil. Oh, man, I studied, I did laundry, I power sanded the floors, I did everything but sleep for a while.
Last time I was there, I don’t recall the cafe/lounge in Boelter existing any more. Or it moved (or was shut down after the coronaries it produced). Fun times.
FlyingToaster
@Adam L Silverman: It’s fake, alas; if Cascone’s were in Westport instead of opposite City Market, it’d be a lot more believable. And Kansas City can put on the biggest “fake polite” face in the known universe. I’ll take surly Bostonians any day. I’d rather be honestly cursed at (and I regularly am), than accept the “bless your heart” [you elitist liberal cunt] politesse from my former neighbors.
I think 25 million includes cows. Ref: The American Royal.
It’s pumpkin time for me; I’m starting to nod off, and I do have to get up and chauffeur WarriorGirl to camp in the am.
G’Night, all!?
Platonailedit
Now the traitorous thug is attacking Harley Davidson despite the fact that the thug is the root cause. Wonder how his biker magats feel now.
Adam L Silverman
@FlyingToaster: Because of temporary duty at Leavenworth, I’ve spent a lot of time in KC. So I’m aware.
Adam L Silverman
@Platonailedit: Do not speak of the Tsar’s Finest Cossaks MC in that manner!//
Jager
Speaking of Florida, we were eating one evening on the patio of a nice little place in West Palm. The couple we were with stopping eating/talking and had horrified looks on their faces, right behind Mrs J’s head a huge snake was coiled around the pillar. The four of us un-assed our chairs immediately. The busboy came over and took the snake away. I have no idea what kind of a snake it was. The kid just gently removed it from the pillar and walked off between the other tables. When we left, I asked the cashier what the hell was th deal with the snake, She said, “They come up from the canal all the time, don’t worry their not poisonous.” And no, we didn’t finish our dinner.
West of the Rockies
@Adam L Silverman:
Were they especially long-lived bobcats?
(Yes, nerd humor… Groan.)
West of the Rockies
@Adam L Silverman:
Were they especially long-lived bobcats?
(Yes, nerd humor… Groan.)
M4
I feel like I’ll never get tired of stereotype-confirming Florida shenanigans. Maybe they stop being funny when you live there.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Dangerman: Ah, Boelter Hall; I spent a great deal of time there.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@EBT:
Doesn’t this describe practically every society/polity in history? We’re not exceptional in that regard.
Mnemosyne
@EBT:
Here’s the tricky thing, though — for a large segment of the human race, if you tell them that something sucks and will always suck because historically it has always sucked, they’ll ask, “So why should I bother to do anything since nothing I do will make any difference anyway?”
Yes, America as a polity has done some extraordinarily shitty things in our history. But we also made a great effort to CHANGE in the past 60+ years and improve ourselves. We did a good job of it for a while, and now revanchists are trying to reverse that progress.
Just in the last 30 years, we’ve gone from people being unable to be openly gay without being in fear of being fired from their jobs and shunned by their families to gay marriage. Do you have any idea what an ENORMOUS cultural change that is from when I was in high school? And it was not a fake change, or a cosmetic change. It really happened.
We need to turn the tide, but we also need to realize that we are NOT starting from square one. There are no longer ads in the paper that casually declare that only white people need apply for a job. Women can get credit cards in their own names, and there are commenters on this very website who can tell you that they were NOT allowed to have that as young women. My (step)mother grew up in a world of “white” and “colored” water fountains. She was already in her early 20s when the Civil Rights Act passed. My older brother was born 1 year before it passed.
We’re not even close to perfect, but we’re better than we used to be. That gives us something to build on, and I would rather do that than give up.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Also, we don’t have to stay this way. And you neglect to mention the good we have done as well. There is good and bad in everyone and everything.
Don’t make the mistake of falling into misanthropy
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: It’s not perfect so WASF’ed.
The Dangerman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I rarely made it to North Campus other than to go to the URL (Library); now, of course, URL means something completely different. Funny, given the Internet was born at UCLA.
Boelter was great; close proximity to the Bomb Shelter (food place, a converted bomb shelter as I recall) and the Coop (pizza place); I know the Coop is gone, I’m not sure about the Bomb Shelter, I think it’s gone, too. Last time I was there, right after the last July 4th, Boelter itself looked eerily similar while walking some of the halls.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
You said it better than I did.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: With my major, I was either in Boelter or Bunch; or running between the two.
smike
@EBT: @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I seems as if there are two species of humans on the planet. The species that wants to see everything burn down, basically because they can’t have everything 100% their way, seems especially dangerous to society. The fact that they don’t understand that they will die in that same fire is troubling.
M4
@Mnemosyne: call me crazy but I imagine EBT is aware of recent changes in LGBT acceptance.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Dangerman: I worked up at the North Campus restaurant, so I was there quite a bit. URL is now YRL(Young Research Library), they redid the Bomb Selter. Are you talking about the old Coop before they renovated it or the Cooperage(post renovation). The old Coop was a fun place to eat(right next to the bowling ally and the video game room).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@M4: I was once told that I was lying when I said that I didn’t know anyone that gay and out until I was in college.
HumboldtBlue
They are just preparing in case they have to go to animal jail.
Like Pawshank.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@M4:
They claim to be trans I believe. Anyway, Mnem’s point still stands. EBT is feeling despair at what’s currently going on and that’s honestly understandable, but we have to keep things in perspective. We can’t fall into misanthropy.
The Dangerman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Booooooo ;-)
Actually, kinda cool, as my Mother went to HS will Charles Young (they were different graduating classes). San Bernardino boy makes good (well, him and the McDonald brothers … fun little factoid, I had a Family Member that was offered to join up with the McDonald Brothers early on and passed on the opportunity, thinking it was destined for nothing … oops … oh, the wealth that could been … oh, well).
I knew the Cooperage as the Coop and it was post renovation; as I recall; I think it was finished my first year there. Ackerman hasn’t changed much on the outside, but, damn, the insides are completely redone. Bowling alley gone, video game room gone. Luckily, next door, Kerchoff (sp?) has changed little, interior or exterior.
Damn, that was an amazing campus, and other than meeting Coach (Wooden) and another gentleman that became almost a second Father (Les Agnew, one hell of a good man) and playing some pickup ball with some pros and college players … I wouldn’t do it again. But that’s getting deeper than intended on a Monday night.
Chetan Murthy
@EBT: I’ve been reading about the lives of Germans under the Nazis. About their complicity. And one thing: the Germans weren’t all “rah-rah kill the Jews” at the beginning. Yes, antisemitism was rampant, and possibly the population was largely so. But when the Nazis tried a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, it backfired. They had to slow it down, do things much more incrementally. And that worked — worked a treat actually. So by near the end of the war, the Nazis were writing articles and giving speeches about how the German people had liquidated the Jews, liquidated Russian peoples, and so whatever came was in retribution for that. So the German people had to fight together, b/c there would be no mercy — after all, they’d done such terrible things.
I think there’s strain in the human character that can (if tickled) accept and perhaps relish the evidence of their complicity in evil. And that makes it even harder to pull back from that evil. I think that part of why people like Obama appeal to “we’re not like that” is that they know — they KNOW — that if we tell ourselves that we ARE like that, we’ll BECOME like that. And if well ourselves the contrary, maybe we’ll slowly walk toward decency.
I’m not saying you’re wrong.
An aside: I read once that if you want to convince an employee to work more productively, to work better, you shouldn’t give them negative reviews — that negative reviews always hamper productivity. So even for employees who need to improve, managers are taught to give positive reviews. The point where negative reviews are given, that’s when management has written-off an employee, and is preparing to fire them –hence the negative reviews as documentation.
Obama was giving us all positive reviews, trying to encourage us to be better. Trump? He’s giving us negative reviews, b/c at some level ,he doesn’t -want- us to be better: he wants us to be worse.
Ruckus
@Platonailedit:
They are too fucking deaf to hear him.
I’m not commenting on their ability to read.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Dangerman: You were a couple of years behind me, so our time on campus overlapped a bit.
Mnemosyne
@M4:
Yes, that was part of my point. But IIRC both of you are at least 10 years younger than I am, and the earthquake happened between 1985 and 1995.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Just saw this story on the news, lady and her sons(Latino) are doing landscape work; another woman(white) shows up and tells them they need to go back to Mexico. Starts arguing with one of the sons(turns out he was born here), calls him a thief and a rapist. Another case of economic anxiety.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
He thinks that will make him look better in comparison. Just in case anyone is wondering, it won’t. He’s been shit his entire life only now he’s showing everyone how big a shit he really is. Those good ole boys that like him? They like him for the same reason drumpf wants us to be worse, to make him look better. They feel that their lives of hate have been justified, because the president is as big a racist and just as big of assholes as they are.
Chetan Murthy
@M4: @?BillinGlendaleCA: I sure didn’t, and I entered college in ’82.
M4
@Chetan Murthy: I didn’t know any LGBT people well before college and I’m gay and started school in 2002.
jl
Are there initiations for joining Mar-a-Lago? That could explain it.
Chetan Murthy
@M4: Oh jeez. I can’t imagine how that must have felt. At least I could see people like me (that I didn’t want to be like, b/c I wanted to be white, but at least I knew successful people like me) in my town and the surrounding area. It’s one great thing about the increasing diversity of TV and movies: that little children can see people that look like them on TV, and not feel alone.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
There were I think 2 people in my 1987 high school graduating class who were strongly rumored to be LGBT and did not deny it.
One was a mostly-out lesbian who got enough votes to be on the homecoming court, but the administration refused to allow her to be seated because she was a lesbian. That caused a huge kerfuffle among the students but the admin didn’t give a shit what we thought.
I didn’t really know her but it turned out that one of my BFFs was in those clandestine social circles, though she didn’t come out to me until she was safely away from her parents’ house and in her dorm at Champaign-Urbana.
john fremont
@Chetan Murthy: Trump wants us to be callous. Trump took out a full page ad almost 30 years ago to tell everyone how much he wanted to hate the Central Park Five. A person that reaches adulthood, wants to hate people and spends money to advertise this. How do you get to a point like this?
Brachiator
@EBT:
OK. So what are you going to do about it?
Mnemosyne
@M4:
It’s hard to explain now what a huge deal it was when it was revealed that Rock Hudson had AIDS. That he was one of them, and had been all along. I can’t even think of something that would be comparable in shock value now. Michael Jackson being revealed as a long-term drug addict probably comes closest.
The Dangerman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I transferred in Fall 81, finished 84. I think I was in Hedrick (first year) a year after Heather Locklear was in Sproul. Her Daddy and another friend of mine were friends; missed her by THAT much. Just missed a rooming situation that would have placed me in the presence of a future Miss Somethingorother (Julie Hayek). Oh well.
Brachiator
@john fremont:
Years of practice?
Trump is quite a piece of work. He also attracts and surrounds himself with advisors like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, CoS Kelly and others who also are filled with hate and eager to hurt people.
J R in WV
So the nearer lizard is Donald John Trump, and the more distant lizard is Kim Jung Un, and they are deciding the fate of the world in Florida parking lot by Stumpo I, which is like the famous Sumo wresting of Japan, but more stupid, like a stump. If Kim wins he goes back to Asia in Triump and rules a united Korea, with budgetary support from Don Trump Enterprises to make Korea Great Again.
If trumpelstiltskin wins, he gets 1% of the North Koreas rice crop in 2021, if he actually provides 200 million tons of fertilizer and 2400 John Deere Tractors by 2020. So no real chance to make a buck, win of lose.
EBT
@Adam L Silverman: I mean, I do have good precognitive timing; but this was mostly just my bipolar going off randomly again.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: I am not saying don’t make the world better, I am saying we aren’t some nations of uprightness and morality and this isn’t some temporary fumble.
There is a lot of hard, ugly, nasty work to be done and what comes out the otherside may simply not BE America. And that might even be for the best.
EBT
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Honey, I do a lot more than claim it.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@EBT:
Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you were lying. I only say that because really, on the intertubes, you don’t truly know anybody and I said so without putting much thought into it. I take you at your word.
EBT
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Gotcha <3
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Dangerman: We did overlap for one year, I graduated in June of 82. I started in 1978 and spent my first 2 years in Dykstra and then lived off campus. Heather was in the news tonight, another trip to the hospital. BTW, I went to Jr. High School with her; I don’t remember her, but I did have classes with her sister.
ETA: So I guess we were wandering the corridors of Boelter at the same time.
EBT
@Brachiator: The same thing I have been, but more. Giving emotionally and monetarily to my community, voting my conscious in the primary and taking a more pragmatic view for generals, and riling people up (in all the various senses) online.
Mel
Perhaps Florida Dog was on his way to grab a latte before getting ringside seats for the iguana fight?
https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/blogs/off-the-beat/2018/06/06/its-dog-eat-dog-world-man-blames-pooch-driving/644838002/?from=new-cookie
(Apologies tor the cut and paste link. The link option hasn’t been showing up on the site on my iPhone today.)
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
I was born long ago enough to have seen Jim Crow signs in the deep south. As we drove to Florida for the first time, the interstates were partly done, and we drove on detours through rural deep south countryside and saw the very aged slave shacks that tenant farmers were still living in, one board thick walls on rocks.The whole family sitting on the front porch as it was December and there was no farm work to do.
And the filling stations had two water fountains with the horrible “Colored” and “Whites only” signs on them. I was probably 11 or 12, and wanted to ask my Mom about it, but she hushed me and said we could talk about it later on, in the car, moving fast.
When I was in the deep south while in the Navy, we were in Pascagoula MS for a ship yard overhaul, in 1972-73 and they were pretending Jim Crow was over, the signs were gone, but in the liquor store was a big sign I will quote “All proceeds from sales to Ni**ers will be donated to the United Klans of Mississippi – you are welcome!”
And it was worse than that sign sounds… really!
And today, 50 years later, we still have racist bigots to deal with in positions of power – that’s just wrong!!!
opiejeanne
@EBT: Do you mean “conscience”? Stupid autocorrect changes words on me all the time.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Yup. This codger saw the same things live and in person as well (also on a trip to and from Florida on two-lane roads that alternated between steaming and dusty, pre-interstate).
The water fountain scene at the end of the TV movie of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman probably doesn’t carry the punch for today’s audiences that it did at the time but boy howdy, it was a powerful moment then. Then was 1974, a time when it still took real moxie for Bill Paley to stand firm behind CBS’ broadcasting it.
MagdaInBlack
Dead thread maybe, but I just read that Daniel Dale thread…..
I feel like I’ve been listening to that drunk guy thats a fixture at every (dive bar) I frequented in my youth.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Jager – the snake at the restaurant was probably a boa or python, they are apparently all over the Everglades, south Florida and some of the Keys. I believe the last count and estimate by the parks Service and researchers puts the number in Florida at about 100,000. They are invasive (probably released by pet owners when they got too big) and as an apex predator are eating any birds, small and medium size mammals and rodents they can find.
EBT
@opiejeanne: Yeah the 25 different rules for how “c”and “s” works don’t really entertain me so I don’t bother with them and let autocorrect get it.