Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

We still have time to mess this up!

An almost top 10,000 blog!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Bark louder, little dog.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

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78Comments

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    I think I finally got the logline for my novel figured out. Now I can order my business cards for the RWA (Romance Writers of America) conference next month (I have my author information on the front and the logline on the back.)

    Now to figure out my oufits … ? Do I want to look business/professional, or do I want to be memorable? It’s a dilemma.

    Business/professional: dresses with a blazer
    Memorable: book-related t-shirts with a blazer and nice jeans or leggings

  5. 5.

    Major Major Major Major

    1. I am buying two chickens in Stardew Valley. What should I name them?

    2. I emailed the people from Monday’s interview today, coyly mentioning that I’m available to meet again next week since I’ll be in town for other interviews, if that’s an issue. Heard back right away to schedule a call tomorrow to ‘update’ me. Methinks they may be stalling for time for some reason. (They said they’d tell me Tuesday)

  6. 6.

    Tim C.

    I have spent the last four days with my step-dad, a kind and wonderful man in his 70s as we build a playhouse for my two kids in the back yard. I’m about as handy as your average Kardashian and it’s been a fun experience to work with 2x4s and oriented strand board to build something fun. Also makes me reflective about how lucky I have been with my parents, step parents and kids to have the time and resources to make this kind of stuff.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    I’m spending the day getting acquainted with my new Lady. She’s the white Squier Stratocaster that arrived yesterday by courier, and now occupies a stand alongside The Girl and Sister. (I bow to the guitar player’s tradition of naming one’s instruments.)

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    Positively indefectible loaf of half and half bread (roughly ½ whole wheat flour, ½ white flour) just removed from the super duper bread machine. With poppy seeds throughout plus a touch of basil for added enjoyment.

  17. 17.

    HinTN

    Also too, it’s nice to be tipsy in the hotel room packing to leave in the early AM from a week long conference!

  18. 18.

    HinTN

    @Major Major Major Major: LOL

    ETA: When I moved to the country as an impressionable young man I had a good ole country man (not boy) tell me an extended story about fucking a duck when he was “coming of age”. It’s a wild world.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    OMG that looks about 95% like our Australian cattle dog/border collie mix, Cheryl! She just got her summer shave-down, so she looks like a dingo who maybe acquired a little bit of a taste for pizza crusts, lol!

  21. 21.

    Old Dan and Little Anne

    Would the powers that be please delete my comment at #17? I fucked up commenting on my phone.

  22. 22.

    jeffreyw

    JJ MacNab
    ‏
    Verified account

    @jjmacnab
    Follow Follow @jjmacnab
    More
    Dear spellcheck gods:

    I am angry at you. The phrase I am trying to type is not, “Go fund yourself.”

  30. 30.

    Brooklyn Dodger

    @Mnemosyne: Please do not take offense at this overly familiar comment from an infrequent commenter, but I picture you as memorable.

  33. 33.

    SectionH

    @jeffreyw: Heh, you must be politer (is that a word? well, it is now) than I am. My spellcheckers don’t fuck around when I type “fu…”

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brooklyn Dodger:

    That’s what I’m leaning towards, because in appearance I am an unremarkable middle-aged white woman, so I feel like I need to stand out from the crowd of dresses-and-sweaters a bit. I don’t want to look sloppy, but I also don’t want to be too bland. ?

  40. 40.

    SectionH

    @Amir Khalid: !!!! You’re right. I’m gobsmacked. Apparently most Kentuckians lost track of the “d” long ago. (Not a Kentuckian, but I lived there a long time. In a Blue Island, but it was Harlan there too).

  42. 42.

    RandomMonster

    I love heelers. Our red heeler George passed on a few years ago. He was a loving dog and, well, a cattle dog with everything that entails about being clever and a big handful. But we loved him.

    In other news, I successfully convinced my employer to keep me on as a remote worker so we can move to the east coast out of Silicon Valley.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    I hope there won’t be any kids at the convention. That would be way more inappropriate than a t-shirt. ?

  47. 47.

    Brooklyn Dodger

    @Mnemosyne: Jeans and blazer always looks sharp, and the book theme t or any nonpolitical theme you’re passionate about will inspire interest. Bull terriers (real and on tshirts) work for me. I hope you let us know how it goes.

  50. 50.

    Jager

    We cleaned our pond, cleaned the filter, planted new water plants, lilies and lotus blossoms. We got a dozen mosquito fish and 30 goldfish. That was a month ago. What have I learned? Fish are incredible pigs. I may as well stand on the side of the pond and yell soo-wee, soo-wee (spelling?) The little shits school up and go crazy at feeding time, feeding our fish is like slopping hogs. And they are growing like crazy, Mrs J is giving them names, the biggest is George, gold with white lips, he is already eating out of her hand, he’s gone from under an inch to 2 inches in a month.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yarrow:
    If he wants to name them he must be planning to have them around for the long term, so probably not for eating. I think people who name the animals they plan to eat are … scary.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ohio Mom:

    So, yoga pants and a t-shirt with holes in it? ?

    The main thing I’m worried about with the jeans is that I still have to wear my stupid knee brace, and the Jag Jeans that my middle-aged midriff prefers tend to make the brace shift around. Ugh.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    @Jager

    Memorable moment from a delightful Japanese show about things and places in Japan, <em.Soko Ga Shiritai, took place during a visit with a koi farmer. Paraphrasing from memory:

    KOI FARMER: That one there is a 500 thousand yen fish. The one over there is a 10 thousand yen fish.

    REPORTER: What’s the difference? They look identical to me.

    KOI FARMER (as if patiently explaining to a very slow, very young child): The difference is – that one is a 500 thousand yen fish and the other one is a 10 thousand yen fish.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    @Jager:
    I get much pleasure from our two ponds–the large one for koi, the small one for decoration. Koi will basically grow to the space and water quality they’re afforded–up to salmon-sized–goldfish too to a limit, and both are VERY adept at making more fishies. At this point koi I’ve bought are outnumbered 5:1 by ones spawned in the pond. They are worth approximately 1 Yen each and I’m fine with that. Koi can live a century, for what that’s worth.

    A small delight courtesy of the county mosquito abatement district was ordering mosquito fish on line for our decorative pond. They were delivered next day, gratis. Gummint I can believe in.

  66. 66.

    Snarlymon

    Blue Heelers are such great dogs. I still miss my Moxie who passed several years ago.

  67. 67.

    RandomMonster

    @Steeplejack: Aw, thank you so much! It’s a big company and they’re kinda set in their ways, but they looked at it and figured there’s not really a reason someone couldn’t do the job remotely with all the modern communications. As it is now, I actually join most meetings via video anyway even if they’re on campus!

  69. 69.

    SectionH

    @NotMax: I had the serious privilege to meet a 100+ yr old Koi, well, at least observe the Koi in his pond in a family garden in Japan. I don’t remember the gender, but I think maybe it was “he” – I remember our host telling us how that fish had been carefully transported somewhere in safe during WW2, and was then returned to his pond in their house south of Yokohama. He was very large, but not record-gigantic. And my talking-google source (Mr S) tells me that the oldest Koi on record died at 250+ yrs old. Not that I ever doubted our hosts that evening anyway.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Along with leaky gas pipes and arsenic exposure from the green dye favored by Victorians for carpets, wallpaper and women’s and children’s clothing, what’s one more hazard?

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    A bit of history on the green dyes (both Emerald Green and Scheele’s Green were particularly popular and also particularly toxic). Scheele’s Green was also used to color foods such as sweets as well as in paints for such things as children’s toys, and much later as an insecticide.

    This was obviously unpleasant for women who wore green apparel. In 1871, one “lady who purchased a box of green-colored gloves at a well-known and respectable house” was horrified to find that her hands broke out in blisters after putting them on. Unless the dye was sealed, sweaty palms could cause the dye to run onto the wearer’s skin. Other accounts from this era tell of babies dying in their nurseries after playing on green carpets or rubbing up against green wallpaper. One foreign dignitary even told Queen Victoria that the green wallpaper in Buckingham Palace had made him ill. This sounds like a ridiculous dig at her taste in decor until you realize that he was absolutely correct. Queen Victoria, clearly less sensitive than I would have been, had the wallpaper removed, though perhaps because when the dye was applied to wallpaper, a “mouse-like odor” was produced. Ironically, when people in these nurseries or rooms became sick, they were often put to bed in those very spaces, where the arsenic would ultimately kill them.

    And if you think the effects were terrifying for the people who merely brushed against these fabrics, wait until you hear what happened to the women who manufactured them, working with the dye every day. Matilda Scheurer, a 19-year-old woman who applied the arsenic green dye to fake flowers, died in a way that horrified the populace in 1861. She threw up green vomit, the whites of her eyes turned green, and when she died, she claimed that “everything she looked at was green.” When people began investigating such workshops, they found other women in similar distress, like one “who had been kept on [working with] green… till her face was one mass of sores.” Source

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