I liked Night School. I know the movie got a low rotten tomatoes score, but it was a fun comedy that didn’t veer too much into sentimentality at the end.
Same director as Girls Trip and Tiffany Haddish as an overworked teacher.
2.
germy
Waiting patiently for Stan & Ollie and I’m hoping it comes to my local movie palace. The trailer looks great.
I’m reading Madeline Miller’s CIRCE. I really like her SONG OF ACHILLES and this is good too. She takes these Greek legends and renders them as real people.
I stopped by the Democratic Party table at the farmer’s market — maybe looking for solace with like-minded people? I was trying to figure out if I need to do any research before voting, so I asked if our judges list their party affiliation on the ballot. The youngish woman said they do, but thinks they shouldn’t have to because judges are impartial so it’s not relevant.
Totally out of character for me, I blurted out “Wake Up!” in kind of a sharp tone of voice. She responded with “Well, in my ideal world…” and I interrupted and said: “It’s not an ideal world – were you awake yesterday?” “Where were you in 2000?”
I have never done anything like that before – this is a whole new level of angry for me. I don’t plan to be out in public again today.
edit: Anger and tears, that’s all I’ve got at the moment.
I’m going to paint the small space above my kitchen cupboards and then add the tiles I’ve been collecting from my travels.
7.
germy
I’m reading BABBIT.
I’d read about it for years, but this is my first time actually experiencing it.
I recognize the type. I’ve worked with and for Babbits my whole life.
One thing I noticed is 1922 America (and fictional town Zenith) is a place with local industry and pride in newly-built things. Marble floors, great train stations. Trolley cars that arrive every 15 minutes. Barber shops with manicurists.
Interesting that Babbit sells “badly-built houses” because I’ve always thought the early 20th century was a time of pride in workmanship. I thought it was only in the past 50 years or so they started building shitty houses.
Sailboat race today[1]. Last time out we saw a bald eagle grab a salmon and watched him being chased for miles by crows. Also, there’s a blue heron nest in the fen next to the yacht club we’ll be visiting for the race.
This is my waterfowl preview for today.
[1] Light winds, two n00bs on board. We’ll probably lose badly, but we’ll train the n00bs and be on the lake all day, so hard to complain.
Interesting that Babbit sells “badly-built houses” because I’ve always thought the early 20th century was a time of pride in workmanship. I thought it was only in the past 50 years or so they started building shitty houses.
The badly built houses from that time are gone. The well built houses still exist. Survival bias.
Finishing up two Bill Bryson books, one a re-read. Watched “Oceans 8” the other night (don’t bother), “A Walk in the Woods” last night (cute). I’ll re-read that next.
Still haven’t taken out my new fishing gear to try my luck. The place I want to go is open to the public Thursday through Sunday. I don’t want to go on a weekend and things keep happening to me on Thursdays and Fridays. I did a lot of trout fishing when we lived out west (where you don’t have to watch a floating leaf for 15 seconds to tell which way the river is flowing) but going after bass will be a new thing for me. The only real fishing I have done here in Florida is in salt water when I had friends with boats who liked to fish and all I had to do was show up and pay for gas for the boat. Alas, those days are long gone.
I’ve been working on a couple of tiny home projects and should finish up in a couple of hours. Tomorrow morning, I will catch the Japan GP (it comes on around 1:30 tomorrow morning but I will record it and watch as soon as I get up) and then a big Liverpool/Man City match. I want to cook something good this weekend but haven’t chosen a menu.
My plan to gradually wean myself from soul-crushing news about our country’s demise is going well. I don’t watch any TV news and my online news surfing has been cut considerably. Also, too, I have finally worked out an exercise routine to do in the pool while listening to groovy tunes. That will happen later today.
Enjoy the weekend.
Edit: nice to be able to do that again, thanks Alain.
13.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Makes you appreciate why Dems aren’t “tougher.”
I hope the rest of your day is more peaceful.
14.
Humdog
Betty, is the Florida red tide stinking up your neighborhood?
15.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: reading that long piece on trump’s taxes last night had me wondering what kind of shape old Fred’s properties are in, especially the row houses that went up in a week. I don’t know NYC real estate, or what neighborhoods they’re in, but I was thinking if they’re in those gentrified parts of Brooklyn (and Queens?). As Stephanie Ruehle said, trump would really be worth ten billion if he had just held on to the RE he inherited
16.
Eric U.
@WaterGirl: that’s tough, there are so many good-hearted Democrats that don’t realize the nature of the fight we are in. I got selected for voir dire and one of the republican judges was officiating. He was a real idiot (but I repeat myself), and was really snotty to me when I asked him a very legitimate question. I can only imagine he was a real jerk in court.
The badly built houses from that time are gone. The well built houses still exist. Survival bias.
Not quite all of them. I’m sitting in a 1923 foursquare that could have been built a little better. Studs 24″ OC, second floor is 2″ wider than the first, floors slope away from the center bearing joist, etc. But it has character!
18.
MazeDancer
What’s a great way to squawk? PostCards, of course.
We got some fresh Kendra Fershee names arriving later today.
And a new BJ Candidate joining, we hope by this afternoon, they reached out yesterday. – Jason Crow.
And we are loaded with Xochitl Torress Small addresses. (The campaign sent 600!)
If you haven’t done your 10 or 20, it’s a great weekend for starting:
what kind of shape old Fred’s properties are in, especially the row houses that went up in a week.
They can’t be in great shape. And they don’t seem like the sort of landlords to spend money on upkeep.
The donald didn’t even want sprinklers on that building that burned recently.
20.
germy
@frosty: Our house was built when Lincoln was president. But subsequent owners have done questionable updates.
I wish I could see vintage photos of it.
Friend of mine has a photo of his house from 1912. Three young ladies standing in the front yard for a family portrait.
Lots of the charming details were removed in later decades, by owners looking to “modernize”
21.
Mnemosyne
I’m going to a writers group this morning, then stopping at Daiso on my way home for some retail therapy. My shrink instructed me to write some postcards to voters this weekend, and she’ll be doing the same now that she knows it’s a thing. Then I’ll be sorting out another round of donations, concentrating on California House races and nationwide Senate races. Taking action makes you feel better.
I woke up with tears in my eyes. My first conscious thought — after the immediate recognition of why I had been crying in my sleep — was of what Robert Kennedy said when MLK was murdered.
Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
– Aeschylus
And I thought about how he, too, was struck down and what a horrible setback that was, too. But black people didn’t give up, and I know we have to keep fighting, for everyone who has gone before and for Christine Blasey Ford who modeled bravery for multiple generations of women.
But right now, anger and tears are all I have. Maybe tomorrow I can fight.
24.
Suzanne
I’m out in Southern California for a few days, and that is good, as I need a bit of a break.
I have been thinking about the way forward, and simply imploring Dems to turn out seems incredibly impotent. I don’t want to just vote these people out of power. I want to punish and humiliate them and slap their privilege off their faces. I want every Trump voter to suffer. Loss of job, esteem, healthcare, respect. I want their lives to be terrible.
Am in the midst of preparation for our trip to Africa. Banking for clean unsullied cash for sundries, appropriate safari trousers, luggage whiskey (for our in-room pick-me-ups). She’s getting a facial, we’ll get mani-pedis together.
It’s all good.
27.
PST
I just had my first experience with Medicare this morning. Maybe I should knock wood, but it was incredibly free of hassles. No checking to be sure if I was in network.. No trying to get me to pay a $50 co-pay in advance. I got a prescription and my pharmacy seemed to know everything it needed to know about my Part D pharmacy provider just from my medicare number. I paid a buck and a half and limped away fully satisfied. Medicare for all!
28.
Gelfling 545
@frosty: My house, a knock of craftsman type, was built in 1924 an working class housing. When we insulated the attic we found the studs getting farther and farther apart as we progressed to the back of the house. My father explained that when the houses were built the foreman would bring a load of materials and the workers were expected to construct it from what was supplied. Asking for additional materials could be detrimental to remaining employed.
29.
Kathleen
@germy: Babbit was set in Ohio, I believe. I read it over 50 years ago. Have your read “It Can’t Happen Here”? I think Lewis holds up pretty well.
@PST: That reflects my experience too. Medicare is much easier to deal with than the private insurers we have for supplement, dental, and drugs. People sneer at government inefficiency but these folks know what they’re doing.
The youngish woman said they do, but thinks they shouldn’t have to because judges are impartial so it’s not relevant.
This is what we’re told, and it seeps into our consciousness without our even realizing it, but it really comes down to how screwed up it is to vote directly for judges. How are we, the public, supposed to determine who would be a better judge? At least with a party identifier, we have some information about how the candidate probably approaches the world, if not court cases. But it’s a pretty shitty way to pick a judge.
What are judges supposed to run on, other than being a “good judge”? Since they’re supposed to be impartial, they really shouldn’t say much of anything concrete in public. We can’t have a full on discussion about how they reason because that’s too complicated for a general election – and these elections are almost always under the radar anyway because no one knows how to even evaluate these people unless one of them is flamboyantly bad (like that judge in Montana years ago who gave that serial child molester a slap on the wrist). Electing judges is crazy.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ooh going to check it out. Loved that stuff since I read Olivia Coolidge’s The Trojan War in elementary school (sometime around the K-T boundary.)
Have read Lattimore, Fagles, and Rees Iliad translations, and have Pope’s on the iPad. Pope’s is beautiful poetry, but I hate hate hate using Roman god’s names.
34.
CaseyL
The first trailer for Good Omens has been released, and it looks AMAZING. I don’t have Amazon Prime, have steadily resisted joining the Amazon monoculture, but Good Omens may push me over the edge, I want to see it that much.
I have reread the book until it’s falling apart. One of my favorite books of all time. For anyone unfamiliar, it was co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The plot is basically “The Omen” if it were made by Monty Python.
David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziriaphale. The rest of the cast is amazing, too.
@Gelfling 545: There’s a nearby town with lots of Craftsman style houses in one neighborhood. I love the style*, and was toying with the idea of taking some shots for Alain’s post.
In keeping with the ‘something else, anything else’ theme –
Who knew?
For 30 years, a man used a meteorite as a doorstop, not knowing that it was a rather valuable one worth $100,000. It was only when a meteor passed through Michigan that he wondered if his meteorite was worth anything. Source
I’m going to see the touring production of “On Your Feet”, the musical about Gloria and Emilio Estefan, today. Really looking forward to it.
@MazeDancer: Thanks for the reminder. I do postcards every Tuesday with my local Indivisible group, but I’m going to order some postcards for myself to share with some co-workers who want to get involved in lunch-hour postcard writing!
And if you find Lewis to your liking you might also turn an eye toward Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy in particular.
44.
zhena gogolia
Trolls are infesting the WaPo comments sections like I’ve never seen before. I wonder if the Russians just turned up the heat in preparation for the midterms. Oh, make that I’M SURE they have.
…..and there’s a group of white power skinheads staying at this same fucken hotel. GODDAMNIT I’m not really in the mood for this shitshow today.
47.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: it boggles one with disbelief that anyone would pay someone to troll the 100000th ranked political blog, but I have noticed a couple of old trolls resurfacing here with the mid-terms approaching
48.
Linda Binda
I’ve been playing DuoLingo on my iPhone 6. It’s been a lot of fun discovering that Spanish isn’t so scary after all, I remember a whole lot more college French than I thought I did, and that Japanese is pretty much what I expected. Sure wish I had something like this back when I was last in college back in 2010, or even when I started my post-high school life back in 2002. Heh. I may be a dreadful Millennial, but we didn’t have useful smartphone apps like this back in the early-to-mid-Aughts. The younger, dreadfuller ones coming after me are really a little lucky.
Also, I’ve discovered the deep black hole known as the ADOS. I found it via people’s objections to Roxane Gay’s article about learning to save money. Apparently, there’s this whole world of thought where only the ADOS suffer, and not other black people. Where Insecure, Black Panther, and 12 Years a Slave aren’t great movies because they have foreigners in them, and where McConnell didn’t oppose Obama after all! He actually said, “oh, wait! You’re one of the Good Ones! Never mind, then…”. Where Black Brits and Africans are stealing the ADOS’s jobs and scholarships away from them, and they get them by “tap-dancing” for white people. I’m glad some people in this country know how to think like xenophobic Trump voters and still know when to do the right thing most of the time, but wow. Sure wish I wasn’t still running into this shit. I dealt with this shit back in middle and high school. Kept being accused of hating black people and being uppity because of all this. Nice to know where all of the Black think tanks who refine how best to bully immigrant children are all at.
Also, trying to get back into anime, and knowing every other anime YouTube channel is run by an incurious idiot who apologizes for moe and creepy loli bullshit, and barely musters the effort to look at anything pre-Evangelion. Also, having to seriously consider retirement from the Post Office, since I’m being separated for disability. And my late-60s-aged mom is mad at me for even humoring the idea of taking retirement. I’m only 34. Will be 35 in Feb. Any general tips on how to retire would be appreciated.
Been reading this site since the pre-Schiavo days. For whatever reason, this site was a bit of a comfort during the dark days of late 2004/early 2005 — I was in my third year of school, then — I was reading a lot of blogs in my college downtime, this and Steve Gilliard’s blog. It’s pretty cool to see a blog like this evolve. This place, I always go to whenever political shit hits the fan and the world starts to burn. Thanks for the soothing and the entertainment.
With my Meals on Wheels delivery today came an official absentee ballot request form, which I’m allowed to return completed by email. (Hello, shiny new Pixma.) City of Alexandria, VA Senior Services, you go, girl.
And now, Rafa v Jose at their place, and we are desperate for points.
52.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: I just posted about this in the last thread. I’ve noticed an uptick too, including the return of some familiar ones here.
53.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Linda Binda: @Baud: I never heard of it, I may use it to polish up my two years of German for that someday driving trip
54.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@CaseyL: good thing for me that it’s not available yet, cause that would definitely suck me in today
55.
frosty
@Gelfling 545: That’s a hoot. I think ours was done on 24″ centers on purpose. But they appear to be real 2x4s, so that helps somewhat.
@germy: I think the agent told us we’re the third owners so it hasn’t been messed up. We added an addition, remodeled the kitchen Craftsman-style and took out the dining room wall, Mostly the good stuff stayed original.
This is our third house, and the oldest. Nothing built after WWII yet!
56.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Also, trying to get back into anime, and knowing every other anime YouTube channel is run by an incurious idiot who apologizes for moe and creepy loli bullshit, and barely musters the effort to look at anything pre-Evangelion.
Well, you gotta admit, it was a pretty seminal manga/series, being a deconstruction of the entire mecha genre, but yeah, most people don’t look back further than Dragonball or so. And I agree the loli stuff is just pedophilia. It’s really gross.
I have no advice on retirement, but if you’ve ever had any ambition to write, it sounds like a perfect opportunity. There are a lot of resources out there for disabled and chronically ill writers to help you get into a routine and work around your issues.
60.
Mary G
@WaterGirl: I love that you spoke angrily! We women are so socialized to be positive and not say anything if you have nothing good to say and it’s not getting us anywhere. I love Michelle Obama to bits, but “When they go low, we go high” doesn’t work with Republicans. I am in full go to the mattresses mode. I not only want to stop bringing a knife to a gun fight, I want to bring a bazooka, a cannon and a Star Trek phaser not set on stun.
Republicans are trained to be ruthless cheaters and rule breakers while lying like rugs. I want us to be rude, angry, and implacably set on transparency to expose all of their lies. We would not know nearly as much as we do if DiFi hadn’t broken the rules of the Senate by releasing a copy of the Fusion GPS guy’s testimony, and Cory Booker, Patrick Leahy and other Judiciary Committee members hadn’t released all the “Committee “Confidential” material showing Kavanaugh as he really is. AL’s post last night about the lace curtain Irish really brought it home to me that yes, he’s going to get to be a Supreme, but he’s always going to have the invisible asterisk by his name that says he’s a liar who went on Fox News and pretended to be a choirboy, then all his schoolmates came out to say no, he was a raging bully of a beer drunk frat pig. The ABA withdrew its recommendation! The Catholics said he was not fit! A Republican retired justice said he was not fit! The whole world saw him toss out a perfectly crafted dignified statement released before the Ford hearing in favor of a self-congratulatory raging whine fest where it’s now perfectly obvious to millions of people around the planet that he’s a raging partisan hack who thinks he worked his ass off to get where he is in life when in reality he was born on third base, got into Yale as a legacy, and owes his professional accomplishments to Leonard Leo, who didn’t even put him on the original list he gave to Twitler. Parties will be demanding he recuse himself on every conceivable case where Democrats are involved. If his drinking and rage and shame don’t put him in an early grave, I will be shocked.
Sorry for the cliché – filled rant, but I had to spew and feel much better. Off to write postcards.
61.
opiejeanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Have you read any of Esther Friesner’s books? She’s hilarious in person, the second funniest person at the first North American Discworld Convention in 2009 (Sir Terry was hands down the funniest). I have a couple of her books, YA books about Helen of Troy: Nobody’s Princess (when Helen is a young teen) and Nobody’s Prize.
She’s written a lot of other books but the one they talked about most at the cons was a collection of short stories called Chicks in Chainmail.
62.
hitchhiker
Glad you guys are here. I feel like I’ve just watched a giant chunk of iceberg calve off while people who don’t know any better cheer at the sight of it and mock my fear and sorrow. The USA is truly awful right now, in ways I find hard to take in. I’m doing what I can and feeling deep sympathy for people in history who were caught in this variety of nightmare. This cannot be happening. Maybe it will be okay. No, it will never be okay, because I can never not know that evil can easily win.
So, tomorrow go out to do my canvas shift for the D candidate in WA08, which is a neighboring district on the tossup list.
Today, go to the postcards site and get involved there.
Today, go down to Westlake Mall in my neighborhood of Seattle for a 3 pm rally.
Stay away from the news, especially pictures of evil people grinning in triumph.
What’s hard is that this ought to be such a happy season. Mr hitchhiker and I are plotting our post-work phase, which involves building ourselves a small house on a local island. It’s in a strong community of artists and activists that will see us through until we collapse under the weight of our years. Both of the dear & sane hitchhiker daughters have settled near, and both are talking openly about babies.
Two years from now, though, I have no idea what to imagine … it could all be on the slow path toward what’s right. Or it could have stalled in this nightmare of bad things happening so fast you can’t even keep track of them. Or it could have gotten very quickly worse.
I fucking hate this.
63.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: It was gratifying to read your rant about Kavanaugh.
@MazeDancer: @Steve in the ATL and Mary G: That was so out of character for me to talk to someone like that. I will have to ponder your “good for you” comments; I’m just not sure what to think.
64.
Heidi Mom
@p.a.: I don’t know how this fits exactly with the reading you’ve mentioned, but have you read Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, written around 1950? It portrays Hadrian near the end of his life, looking back on all that his life contained, especially his love for the beautiful youth Antinous. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
65.
opiejeanne
@germy: Our first house was a crappy 1924-built house, built on spec in SoCal. That was remarked upon as a rare thing, a spec-built house in that era. The builder had built the one next door to the south on commission, and ours on the corner on spec, and the one next door to the east on commission. The floor joists were not too close together in ours and the living room kind of bounced when you walked across the floor. It was a basic house, no craftsmanship on display, with a fake fireplace that had at one time held one of those heaters that tended to kill everyone in the house when they developed a gas leak. It was still there when we bought the place in 1970 and we pulled it out. The tile work in the kitchen was meh, there was none in the bathroom.
66.
opiejeanne
@germy: So, were they building tract houses in 1922 on the east coast?
67.
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: I just had to pull these parts out of your comment because this is exactly how I am feeling. Thanks for putting it into words.
Glad you guys are here. I feel like I’ve just watched a giant chunk of iceberg calve off while people who don’t know any better cheer at the sight of it and mock my fear and sorrow. The USA is truly awful right now, in ways I find hard to take in. I’m doing what I can and feeling deep sympathy for people in history who were caught in this variety of nightmare. This cannot be happening. Maybe it will be okay. No, it will never be okay, because I can never not know that evil can easily win.
Two years from now, though, I have no idea what to imagine … it could all be on the slow path toward what’s right. Or it could have stalled in this nightmare of bad things happening so fast you can’t even keep track of them. Or it could have gotten very quickly worse.
I fucking hate this.
68.
Gvg
@Mnemosyne: I appreciate the looks of many old style houses, but in Florida, I prefer actually built after 1978. After the energy crisis, when houses started being insulated. It makes a huge difference in bills and how well you can air condition. After 1990 is after hurricane Andrew building codes which turns out to be much cheaper on home insurance and if you know anything about roofs staying on houses, you will appreciate why. There is also built after ADA though, its kind of hit or miss how well they do inside private houses. Still I always notice how wide all the doorways are, especially the bathrooms. My grandmother was in a wheelchair for the last 20 years and now I am trained to notice. I am now mid 50’s and thinking my next house may be home into older less fit times as I want it paid off before.
My dream home would look older but be built to modern code.
Every era had its well built and it’s junk houses. The well built last so we get the idea old is better. It depends though. In Florida, there is just a better knowledge on how now.
69.
opiejeanne
@Gelfling 545: That’s what our first house was like, built the same year.
70.
Chris Johnson
@WaterGirl: I would’ve scoffed loudly too. Wake up, indeed.
71.
Joe Falco
Tired of all bull going on in the world this week, so I’m going up to the north Georgia mountains for a spell. Apple picking sounds a lot better use of my time than gnashing my teeth.
72.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: We are in a hotel in San Bernardino, because we are going to a music festival today. Just a Hampton Inn near the venue, nothing special. And there’s fucking NAZIS. I have told Spawn the Elder child that I do not want him walking around the hotel by himself. ARRRRRGH.
73.
Linda Binda
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I haven’t checked out the German side, yet, but the Spanish and French programs are pretty good. They let you take a diagnostic test if you feel you’re a little more than a beginner — I ended up opening up almost ten different skill sets in French, which is not bad for someone who hasn’t taken a French class in almost 10 years. Try and see if you can test your German there.
74.
trollhattan
@jeffreyw:
Nice! So feisty, those 5-gram warriors. Keep a feeder at our front porch and many summer evenings are spent watching them buzz in and out, always fighting amongst themselves.
Our 50-pound pointer expends a lot of energy ensuring they don’t…I don’t know what. Steal things? Invade the house? Pointers gotta point.
75.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
San Bernardo Nazis sounds like a Tom Waits song.
Stay safe, they’re Nazis.
76.
Suzanne
@Gvg: Building codes all over the country got much better in relatively recent years. Spray-applied asbestos was banned in 1978, continuous insulation, increased live load requirements, etc. Many older homes also don’t have windows that comply with fire codes (I see listings for “non-compliant” or “non-conforming” bedrooms, which means that if the house catches on fire, no one can escape that room). Not to mention hazardous materials and radon, etc etc etc. However, every modern building contains red list chemicals. So hazardous materials will continue to be an issue.
Disagree on watching a modern house built to look old, though. Architecture should speak of its time and cultural context.
Kavanaugh himself is a noteworthy bridge. A scion of the beltway political elite who received the country’s finest elite education, he made his name in the Bush White House. He is the epitome of the pre-Trump conservative establishment. Yet we can see here how seamless the transition was to full Trumpism, as it was for all the Republicans Senators who rushed to his side after his Thursday afternoon performance.
They are betting everything, everything on Donald Trump and Trumpism. They no longer talk about policy at all- it’s 100% drumming up resentment. I was listening to Right wing Christian radio on Kavanaugh and they were literally setting boys against girls- children- I have a girl and also boys so I was incredulous- “parents have to choose?” I’m thinking. It’s nuts.
This is a big bet and they double down on it every month. There are no more non-Trump Republicans. This is their brand.
No kidding. We’re just here for CalJam. Supposedly there will be a Nirvana reunion (insert joke here). Leaving tomorrow. I am decidedly displeased with the white supremacy.
80.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: omg, San Bernardino. My husband grew up there, graduated from SBHS in 1965. It’s changed so much since then and not for the better.
It’s too bad the mfNazis have the bucks and the sense to be in a Hampton Inn instead of the crappy motels on the edge of town.
@trollhattan: They’re in a hotel so most of them are probably from elsewhere. Like that nice beach town, Huntington Beach. We lived there for two years and were stunned by the history of the KKK/NeoNazis in that place.
Well, you gotta admit, it was a pretty seminal manga/series, being a deconstruction of the entire mecha genre, but yeah, most people don’t look back further than Dragonball or so. And I agree the loli stuff is just pedophilia. It’s really gross.
I tend to be like one of those mecha diehards who likes to insist that Anno and company didn’t deconstruct shit, that that show looked great, but it sure liked to indulge in melodrama, and then, there are its rumored, mythical budget problems near the end, and then, those two horrible final episodes. And then, there’s End of Evangelion, which, I dunno…. It’s always been a seminal/titanic juggernaut since its release back in the mid-90s. I’ve seen academic reviews of that show, and I’ve had English professors (I was an English major) gush about that show, but my older brother never rented it way back when, and I had never had a real job before the Post Office, so I never got to watch it back when the hype was new. I didn’t get to watch it ‘til around 2007 — I borrowed an ADV box set from a friend. I rented the End of Evangelion 1997 DVD release from Netflix back in 2010, when streaming was still new. If I had watched Evangelion before I started watching Ideon and other more obscure works by Tomino, the Gundam guy whose works inspired Evangelion in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have such a cranky, iffy view about it. I mean, being a child soldier was never glorified in the original Mobile Suit Gundam or many other Real Robot shows like it, so I’m not sure where the deconstruction really happens on this show. One interesting thing the show got across very well: I saw a lot of really unhappy people waiting for the world to end, while having no time for the teenagers who’ve never known a better world, and forcing the kids to fix it for them instead of them repairing it themselves, all before the End comes. I’m guessing that’s the deconstruction? A little of that is in U.C. Gundam, though. That seemed to ring true: it’s the kind of social commentary stuff which is a little too applicable to the world we live in right now. *cough*. I don’t care for the Evil Faceless Council of Doom stuff or the random Christian imagery, though — seemed to be too ambitious for its own good. As you can tell, *cough* I like Gundam and the original Macross, Robotech primarily (try being an 9-year-old trying to follow that show — it was a challenge), and I like Sailor Moon, so I’ve been having fun watching the new dubs of the Sailor Moon movies in my local theaters, this past summer. Only took 20+ years, but yay.
The Loli stuff is gross, and the people who like it pretty much pretend that because it’s from Japan, that that’s some sort of special cultural defense for it, and thus, it’s OK, when they find it gross over there. Sexualizing children is gross, and making teenagers look like preschoolers with big boobs is also gross: it’s a universal human thing that sexualizing young girls and women this way is gross. I’m just glad my older brother was never into this stuff, so he never rented it. I used to rely on him to bring home cool ‘80s and ‘90s anime movies from Blockbuster, back in the day, before Sci-Fi Channel had Saturday Morning Anime. Of course, he was the absolute first to jump on the Netflix train. He’s, like, the one anime fan I’ve known of who finds Wicked City gross. Everyone else makes excuses for movies like that. It’s just.. gross.
84.
Albatrossity
Birdwatching and getting out in the world has saved my sanity more than once! Nice gallinule!
85.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: Have you seen the film, Green Room? Very violent but terrifying movie about a band getting involved with some neo-nazis. Patrick Stewart as evil man … I thought it was hard to watch but a very good film.
Edit function A-OK.
86.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne: San Bernardino looks exactly like west Mesa, which is where I spent my formative years. They have nicer plants here, though. My high school had white supremacy problems, too, which is why I recognized them the moment I saw them.
Thanks for your advice. Yeah, you can tell I’ve been told many times before to write, right? (Not to be arrogant, of course.). Yeah. I’ll look into it. :).
I was being dramatic, but basically, it’s some dumb hashtag for American Descendants of Slaves. The people who use the hashtag are those who think that differentiating between black immigrants from Africa and black Americans here ultimately amounts to anything other than bullying children, because no one else differentiates us in any politically meaningful way beyond the U.S. Census, so why should they bother, except to spread needless negativity?
I could rant more, but basically, if any of their paranoia and xenophobia was justified, if Obama was really that much different from other black people in this country, would we have the Orange Idiot Horror and Mr. “I Like Beer!” to deal with right now? Heh.
89.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
Electing judges is crazy.
However, like Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
The problem is not voting for them, it’s knowing what they are like, what they do. Like every other part of a working democracy we need knowledge to make it work, and that ends up meaning we have to pay a hell of a lot more attention to everything around us. Or just trust most people to do their jobs. Right now that seems to not be working at all.
There is too much everything around us for most of us, because we need to work to eat and pay for shelter, etc. So, we could get rid of all the movies, music, videos, blogs and attend nightly political meetings to catch up on everything or we can guess on some stuff. Like judges we vote for.
In a book by one of my favorite romance authors, the hero was severely injured in the Napoleonic Wars and is trying to figure out what else to do with his life. He decides that he’s going to do travel writing, struggles with it for a few weeks, and then is like, This is boring, I need to find something else to do. ? Writers love to write about characters who are writers, so it was funny to see her playing with that trope.
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germy
I liked Night School. I know the movie got a low rotten tomatoes score, but it was a fun comedy that didn’t veer too much into sentimentality at the end.
Same director as Girls Trip and Tiffany Haddish as an overworked teacher.
germy
Waiting patiently for Stan & Ollie and I’m hoping it comes to my local movie palace. The trailer looks great.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m reading Madeline Miller’s CIRCE. I really like her SONG OF ACHILLES and this is good too. She takes these Greek legends and renders them as real people.
PaulWartenberg
Never get involved in a Twitter War over sports.
Politics, yes. But damn, arguing sports is hard…
WaterGirl
Is confession good for the soul?
I stopped by the Democratic Party table at the farmer’s market — maybe looking for solace with like-minded people? I was trying to figure out if I need to do any research before voting, so I asked if our judges list their party affiliation on the ballot. The youngish woman said they do, but thinks they shouldn’t have to because judges are impartial so it’s not relevant.
Totally out of character for me, I blurted out “Wake Up!” in kind of a sharp tone of voice. She responded with “Well, in my ideal world…” and I interrupted and said: “It’s not an ideal world – were you awake yesterday?” “Where were you in 2000?”
I have never done anything like that before – this is a whole new level of angry for me. I don’t plan to be out in public again today.
edit: Anger and tears, that’s all I’ve got at the moment.
TaMara (HFG)
I’m going to paint the small space above my kitchen cupboards and then add the tiles I’ve been collecting from my travels.
germy
I’m reading BABBIT.
I’d read about it for years, but this is my first time actually experiencing it.
I recognize the type. I’ve worked with and for Babbits my whole life.
One thing I noticed is 1922 America (and fictional town Zenith) is a place with local industry and pride in newly-built things. Marble floors, great train stations. Trolley cars that arrive every 15 minutes. Barber shops with manicurists.
Interesting that Babbit sells “badly-built houses” because I’ve always thought the early 20th century was a time of pride in workmanship. I thought it was only in the past 50 years or so they started building shitty houses.
Mike J
Sailboat race today[1]. Last time out we saw a bald eagle grab a salmon and watched him being chased for miles by crows. Also, there’s a blue heron nest in the fen next to the yacht club we’ll be visiting for the race.
This is my waterfowl preview for today.
[1] Light winds, two n00bs on board. We’ll probably lose badly, but we’ll train the n00bs and be on the lake all day, so hard to complain.
Mike J
@germy:
The badly built houses from that time are gone. The well built houses still exist. Survival bias.
jeffreyw
Squawking Hummingbird
“My flower! Don’t make me come over there!
germy
@Mike J: ha! Good point.
“Pre war” is always a selling point. I guess “it’s still standing” is what it means.
cope
Finishing up two Bill Bryson books, one a re-read. Watched “Oceans 8” the other night (don’t bother), “A Walk in the Woods” last night (cute). I’ll re-read that next.
Still haven’t taken out my new fishing gear to try my luck. The place I want to go is open to the public Thursday through Sunday. I don’t want to go on a weekend and things keep happening to me on Thursdays and Fridays. I did a lot of trout fishing when we lived out west (where you don’t have to watch a floating leaf for 15 seconds to tell which way the river is flowing) but going after bass will be a new thing for me. The only real fishing I have done here in Florida is in salt water when I had friends with boats who liked to fish and all I had to do was show up and pay for gas for the boat. Alas, those days are long gone.
I’ve been working on a couple of tiny home projects and should finish up in a couple of hours. Tomorrow morning, I will catch the Japan GP (it comes on around 1:30 tomorrow morning but I will record it and watch as soon as I get up) and then a big Liverpool/Man City match. I want to cook something good this weekend but haven’t chosen a menu.
My plan to gradually wean myself from soul-crushing news about our country’s demise is going well. I don’t watch any TV news and my online news surfing has been cut considerably. Also, too, I have finally worked out an exercise routine to do in the pool while listening to groovy tunes. That will happen later today.
Enjoy the weekend.
Edit: nice to be able to do that again, thanks Alain.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Makes you appreciate why Dems aren’t “tougher.”
I hope the rest of your day is more peaceful.
Humdog
Betty, is the Florida red tide stinking up your neighborhood?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: reading that long piece on trump’s taxes last night had me wondering what kind of shape old Fred’s properties are in, especially the row houses that went up in a week. I don’t know NYC real estate, or what neighborhoods they’re in, but I was thinking if they’re in those gentrified parts of Brooklyn (and Queens?). As Stephanie Ruehle said, trump would really be worth ten billion if he had just held on to the RE he inherited
Eric U.
@WaterGirl: that’s tough, there are so many good-hearted Democrats that don’t realize the nature of the fight we are in. I got selected for voir dire and one of the republican judges was officiating. He was a real idiot (but I repeat myself), and was really snotty to me when I asked him a very legitimate question. I can only imagine he was a real jerk in court.
frosty
@Mike J:
Not quite all of them. I’m sitting in a 1923 foursquare that could have been built a little better. Studs 24″ OC, second floor is 2″ wider than the first, floors slope away from the center bearing joist, etc. But it has character!
MazeDancer
What’s a great way to squawk? PostCards, of course.
We got some fresh Kendra Fershee names arriving later today.
And a new BJ Candidate joining, we hope by this afternoon, they reached out yesterday. – Jason Crow.
And we are loaded with Xochitl Torress Small addresses. (The campaign sent 600!)
If you haven’t done your 10 or 20, it’s a great weekend for starting:
PostCardPatriots.com
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They can’t be in great shape. And they don’t seem like the sort of landlords to spend money on upkeep.
The donald didn’t even want sprinklers on that building that burned recently.
germy
@frosty: Our house was built when Lincoln was president. But subsequent owners have done questionable updates.
I wish I could see vintage photos of it.
Friend of mine has a photo of his house from 1912. Three young ladies standing in the front yard for a family portrait.
Lots of the charming details were removed in later decades, by owners looking to “modernize”
Mnemosyne
I’m going to a writers group this morning, then stopping at Daiso on my way home for some retail therapy. My shrink instructed me to write some postcards to voters this weekend, and she’ll be doing the same now that she knows it’s a thing. Then I’ll be sorting out another round of donations, concentrating on California House races and nationwide Senate races. Taking action makes you feel better.
Betty Cracker
@Humdog: Not yet.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Thank you.
I woke up with tears in my eyes. My first conscious thought — after the immediate recognition of why I had been crying in my sleep — was of what Robert Kennedy said when MLK was murdered.
And I thought about how he, too, was struck down and what a horrible setback that was, too. But black people didn’t give up, and I know we have to keep fighting, for everyone who has gone before and for Christine Blasey Ford who modeled bravery for multiple generations of women.
But right now, anger and tears are all I have. Maybe tomorrow I can fight.
Suzanne
I’m out in Southern California for a few days, and that is good, as I need a bit of a break.
I have been thinking about the way forward, and simply imploring Dems to turn out seems incredibly impotent. I don’t want to just vote these people out of power. I want to punish and humiliate them and slap their privilege off their faces. I want every Trump voter to suffer. Loss of job, esteem, healthcare, respect. I want their lives to be terrible.
MazeDancer
@WaterGirl:
Right on, Sister!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Am in the midst of preparation for our trip to Africa. Banking for clean unsullied cash for sundries, appropriate safari trousers, luggage whiskey (for our in-room pick-me-ups). She’s getting a facial, we’ll get mani-pedis together.
It’s all good.
PST
I just had my first experience with Medicare this morning. Maybe I should knock wood, but it was incredibly free of hassles. No checking to be sure if I was in network.. No trying to get me to pay a $50 co-pay in advance. I got a prescription and my pharmacy seemed to know everything it needed to know about my Part D pharmacy provider just from my medicare number. I paid a buck and a half and limped away fully satisfied. Medicare for all!
Gelfling 545
@frosty: My house, a knock of craftsman type, was built in 1924 an working class housing. When we insulated the attic we found the studs getting farther and farther apart as we progressed to the back of the house. My father explained that when the houses were built the foreman would bring a load of materials and the workers were expected to construct it from what was supplied. Asking for additional materials could be detrimental to remaining employed.
Kathleen
@germy: Babbit was set in Ohio, I believe. I read it over 50 years ago. Have your read “It Can’t Happen Here”? I think Lewis holds up pretty well.
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: your reaction was perfect
Dorothy A. Winsor
@PST: That reflects my experience too. Medicare is much easier to deal with than the private insurers we have for supplement, dental, and drugs. People sneer at government inefficiency but these folks know what they’re doing.
sdhays
@WaterGirl:
This is what we’re told, and it seeps into our consciousness without our even realizing it, but it really comes down to how screwed up it is to vote directly for judges. How are we, the public, supposed to determine who would be a better judge? At least with a party identifier, we have some information about how the candidate probably approaches the world, if not court cases. But it’s a pretty shitty way to pick a judge.
What are judges supposed to run on, other than being a “good judge”? Since they’re supposed to be impartial, they really shouldn’t say much of anything concrete in public. We can’t have a full on discussion about how they reason because that’s too complicated for a general election – and these elections are almost always under the radar anyway because no one knows how to even evaluate these people unless one of them is flamboyantly bad (like that judge in Montana years ago who gave that serial child molester a slap on the wrist). Electing judges is crazy.
p.a.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ooh going to check it out. Loved that stuff since I read Olivia Coolidge’s The Trojan War in elementary school (sometime around the K-T boundary.)
Have read Lattimore, Fagles, and Rees Iliad translations, and have Pope’s on the iPad. Pope’s is beautiful poetry, but I hate hate hate using Roman god’s names.
CaseyL
The first trailer for Good Omens has been released, and it looks AMAZING. I don’t have Amazon Prime, have steadily resisted joining the Amazon monoculture, but Good Omens may push me over the edge, I want to see it that much.
I have reread the book until it’s falling apart. One of my favorite books of all time. For anyone unfamiliar, it was co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The plot is basically “The Omen” if it were made by Monty Python.
David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziriaphale. The rest of the cast is amazing, too.
MUST. SEE.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
I hear ya.
germy
@Kathleen: Yes, I read It Can’t Happen Here a few months ago. Again, I recognized his characters; lots of them are in government now.
I want to read Arrowsmith next. Any other Sinclair Lewis titles you can recommend?
p.a.
@Gelfling 545: There’s a nearby town with lots of Craftsman style houses in one neighborhood. I love the style*, and was toying with the idea of taking some shots for Alain’s post.
*They do look like bears to paint.
zhena gogolia
@cope:
The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid will have you in tears from laughter.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir/dp/0767919378
NotMax
In keeping with the ‘something else, anything else’ theme –
Who knew?
The terrible twos, indeed.
It’s always a bit climactic watching them leave home, isn’t it?
Eljai
I’m going to see the touring production of “On Your Feet”, the musical about Gloria and Emilio Estefan, today. Really looking forward to it.
@MazeDancer: Thanks for the reminder. I do postcards every Tuesday with my local Indivisible group, but I’m going to order some postcards for myself to share with some co-workers who want to get involved in lunch-hour postcard writing!
Mike J
@zhena gogolia: And fans of Bill Bryson should also read Tim Cahill.
I just finished Hank Green’s new book. A fun read, but I felt a bit cheated at the end.
cope
@zhena gogolia: That’s the new one I am just finishing. Being just a year older than Bryson, his book truly resonates with huge hunks of my childhood.
NotMax
@germy
Dodsworth.
And if you find Lewis to your liking you might also turn an eye toward Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy in particular.
zhena gogolia
Trolls are infesting the WaPo comments sections like I’ve never seen before. I wonder if the Russians just turned up the heat in preparation for the midterms. Oh, make that I’M SURE they have.
zhena gogolia
@cope:
The description of “Sky King” is priceless!
Suzanne
…..and there’s a group of white power skinheads staying at this same fucken hotel. GODDAMNIT I’m not really in the mood for this shitshow today.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: it boggles one with disbelief that anyone would pay someone to troll the 100000th ranked political blog, but I have noticed a couple of old trolls resurfacing here with the mid-terms approaching
Linda Binda
I’ve been playing DuoLingo on my iPhone 6. It’s been a lot of fun discovering that Spanish isn’t so scary after all, I remember a whole lot more college French than I thought I did, and that Japanese is pretty much what I expected. Sure wish I had something like this back when I was last in college back in 2010, or even when I started my post-high school life back in 2002. Heh. I may be a dreadful Millennial, but we didn’t have useful smartphone apps like this back in the early-to-mid-Aughts. The younger, dreadfuller ones coming after me are really a little lucky.
Also, I’ve discovered the deep black hole known as the ADOS. I found it via people’s objections to Roxane Gay’s article about learning to save money. Apparently, there’s this whole world of thought where only the ADOS suffer, and not other black people. Where Insecure, Black Panther, and 12 Years a Slave aren’t great movies because they have foreigners in them, and where McConnell didn’t oppose Obama after all! He actually said, “oh, wait! You’re one of the Good Ones! Never mind, then…”. Where Black Brits and Africans are stealing the ADOS’s jobs and scholarships away from them, and they get them by “tap-dancing” for white people. I’m glad some people in this country know how to think like xenophobic Trump voters and still know when to do the right thing most of the time, but wow. Sure wish I wasn’t still running into this shit. I dealt with this shit back in middle and high school. Kept being accused of hating black people and being uppity because of all this. Nice to know where all of the Black think tanks who refine how best to bully immigrant children are all at.
Also, trying to get back into anime, and knowing every other anime YouTube channel is run by an incurious idiot who apologizes for moe and creepy loli bullshit, and barely musters the effort to look at anything pre-Evangelion. Also, having to seriously consider retirement from the Post Office, since I’m being separated for disability. And my late-60s-aged mom is mad at me for even humoring the idea of taking retirement. I’m only 34. Will be 35 in Feb. Any general tips on how to retire would be appreciated.
Been reading this site since the pre-Schiavo days. For whatever reason, this site was a bit of a comfort during the dark days of late 2004/early 2005 — I was in my third year of school, then — I was reading a lot of blogs in my college downtime, this and Steve Gilliard’s blog. It’s pretty cool to see a blog like this evolve. This place, I always go to whenever political shit hits the fan and the world starts to burn. Thanks for the soothing and the entertainment.
James E Powell
@PaulWartenberg:
I do the opposite. I can gleefully savage people – or be savaged – safe in the knowledge that none of this really matters.
Baud
@Linda Binda: I’m learning Spanish on Duolingo.
TomatoQueen
With my Meals on Wheels delivery today came an official absentee ballot request form, which I’m allowed to return completed by email. (Hello, shiny new Pixma.) City of Alexandria, VA Senior Services, you go, girl.
And now, Rafa v Jose at their place, and we are desperate for points.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: I just posted about this in the last thread. I’ve noticed an uptick too, including the return of some familiar ones here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Linda Binda: @Baud: I never heard of it, I may use it to polish up my two years of German for that someday driving trip
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@CaseyL: good thing for me that it’s not available yet, cause that would definitely suck me in today
frosty
@Gelfling 545: That’s a hoot. I think ours was done on 24″ centers on purpose. But they appear to be real 2x4s, so that helps somewhat.
@germy: I think the agent told us we’re the third owners so it hasn’t been messed up. We added an addition, remodeled the kitchen Craftsman-style and took out the dining room wall, Mostly the good stuff stayed original.
This is our third house, and the oldest. Nothing built after WWII yet!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Well, you gotta admit, it was a pretty seminal manga/series, being a deconstruction of the entire mecha genre, but yeah, most people don’t look back further than Dragonball or so. And I agree the loli stuff is just pedophilia. It’s really gross.
Mnemosyne
@p.a.:
In our old neighborhood in Glendale (nowhere near Bill’s side of town), someone had coated a Craftsman house with stucco. I almost cried. ?
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
If you’re in So Cal, everyone is spitting in their food, so hopefully you’ll find that comforting.
Mnemosyne
@Linda Binda:
I have no advice on retirement, but if you’ve ever had any ambition to write, it sounds like a perfect opportunity. There are a lot of resources out there for disabled and chronically ill writers to help you get into a routine and work around your issues.
Mary G
@WaterGirl: I love that you spoke angrily! We women are so socialized to be positive and not say anything if you have nothing good to say and it’s not getting us anywhere. I love Michelle Obama to bits, but “When they go low, we go high” doesn’t work with Republicans. I am in full go to the mattresses mode. I not only want to stop bringing a knife to a gun fight, I want to bring a bazooka, a cannon and a Star Trek phaser not set on stun.
Republicans are trained to be ruthless cheaters and rule breakers while lying like rugs. I want us to be rude, angry, and implacably set on transparency to expose all of their lies. We would not know nearly as much as we do if DiFi hadn’t broken the rules of the Senate by releasing a copy of the Fusion GPS guy’s testimony, and Cory Booker, Patrick Leahy and other Judiciary Committee members hadn’t released all the “Committee “Confidential” material showing Kavanaugh as he really is. AL’s post last night about the lace curtain Irish really brought it home to me that yes, he’s going to get to be a Supreme, but he’s always going to have the invisible asterisk by his name that says he’s a liar who went on Fox News and pretended to be a choirboy, then all his schoolmates came out to say no, he was a raging bully of a beer drunk frat pig. The ABA withdrew its recommendation! The Catholics said he was not fit! A Republican retired justice said he was not fit! The whole world saw him toss out a perfectly crafted dignified statement released before the Ford hearing in favor of a self-congratulatory raging whine fest where it’s now perfectly obvious to millions of people around the planet that he’s a raging partisan hack who thinks he worked his ass off to get where he is in life when in reality he was born on third base, got into Yale as a legacy, and owes his professional accomplishments to Leonard Leo, who didn’t even put him on the original list he gave to Twitler. Parties will be demanding he recuse himself on every conceivable case where Democrats are involved. If his drinking and rage and shame don’t put him in an early grave, I will be shocked.
Sorry for the cliché – filled rant, but I had to spew and feel much better. Off to write postcards.
opiejeanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Have you read any of Esther Friesner’s books? She’s hilarious in person, the second funniest person at the first North American Discworld Convention in 2009 (Sir Terry was hands down the funniest). I have a couple of her books, YA books about Helen of Troy: Nobody’s Princess (when Helen is a young teen) and Nobody’s Prize.
She’s written a lot of other books but the one they talked about most at the cons was a collection of short stories called Chicks in Chainmail.
hitchhiker
Glad you guys are here. I feel like I’ve just watched a giant chunk of iceberg calve off while people who don’t know any better cheer at the sight of it and mock my fear and sorrow. The USA is truly awful right now, in ways I find hard to take in. I’m doing what I can and feeling deep sympathy for people in history who were caught in this variety of nightmare. This cannot be happening. Maybe it will be okay. No, it will never be okay, because I can never not know that evil can easily win.
So, tomorrow go out to do my canvas shift for the D candidate in WA08, which is a neighboring district on the tossup list.
Today, go to the postcards site and get involved there.
Today, go down to Westlake Mall in my neighborhood of Seattle for a 3 pm rally.
Stay away from the news, especially pictures of evil people grinning in triumph.
What’s hard is that this ought to be such a happy season. Mr hitchhiker and I are plotting our post-work phase, which involves building ourselves a small house on a local island. It’s in a strong community of artists and activists that will see us through until we collapse under the weight of our years. Both of the dear & sane hitchhiker daughters have settled near, and both are talking openly about babies.
Two years from now, though, I have no idea what to imagine … it could all be on the slow path toward what’s right. Or it could have stalled in this nightmare of bad things happening so fast you can’t even keep track of them. Or it could have gotten very quickly worse.
I fucking hate this.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: It was gratifying to read your rant about Kavanaugh.
@MazeDancer: @Steve in the ATL and Mary G: That was so out of character for me to talk to someone like that. I will have to ponder your “good for you” comments; I’m just not sure what to think.
Heidi Mom
@p.a.: I don’t know how this fits exactly with the reading you’ve mentioned, but have you read Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, written around 1950? It portrays Hadrian near the end of his life, looking back on all that his life contained, especially his love for the beautiful youth Antinous. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
opiejeanne
@germy: Our first house was a crappy 1924-built house, built on spec in SoCal. That was remarked upon as a rare thing, a spec-built house in that era. The builder had built the one next door to the south on commission, and ours on the corner on spec, and the one next door to the east on commission. The floor joists were not too close together in ours and the living room kind of bounced when you walked across the floor. It was a basic house, no craftsmanship on display, with a fake fireplace that had at one time held one of those heaters that tended to kill everyone in the house when they developed a gas leak. It was still there when we bought the place in 1970 and we pulled it out. The tile work in the kitchen was meh, there was none in the bathroom.
opiejeanne
@germy: So, were they building tract houses in 1922 on the east coast?
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: I just had to pull these parts out of your comment because this is exactly how I am feeling. Thanks for putting it into words.
Gvg
@Mnemosyne: I appreciate the looks of many old style houses, but in Florida, I prefer actually built after 1978. After the energy crisis, when houses started being insulated. It makes a huge difference in bills and how well you can air condition. After 1990 is after hurricane Andrew building codes which turns out to be much cheaper on home insurance and if you know anything about roofs staying on houses, you will appreciate why. There is also built after ADA though, its kind of hit or miss how well they do inside private houses. Still I always notice how wide all the doorways are, especially the bathrooms. My grandmother was in a wheelchair for the last 20 years and now I am trained to notice. I am now mid 50’s and thinking my next house may be home into older less fit times as I want it paid off before.
My dream home would look older but be built to modern code.
Every era had its well built and it’s junk houses. The well built last so we get the idea old is better. It depends though. In Florida, there is just a better knowledge on how now.
opiejeanne
@Gelfling 545: That’s what our first house was like, built the same year.
Chris Johnson
@WaterGirl: I would’ve scoffed loudly too. Wake up, indeed.
Joe Falco
Tired of all bull going on in the world this week, so I’m going up to the north Georgia mountains for a spell. Apple picking sounds a lot better use of my time than gnashing my teeth.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: We are in a hotel in San Bernardino, because we are going to a music festival today. Just a Hampton Inn near the venue, nothing special. And there’s fucking NAZIS. I have told Spawn the Elder child that I do not want him walking around the hotel by himself. ARRRRRGH.
Linda Binda
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I haven’t checked out the German side, yet, but the Spanish and French programs are pretty good. They let you take a diagnostic test if you feel you’re a little more than a beginner — I ended up opening up almost ten different skill sets in French, which is not bad for someone who hasn’t taken a French class in almost 10 years. Try and see if you can test your German there.
trollhattan
@jeffreyw:
Nice! So feisty, those 5-gram warriors. Keep a feeder at our front porch and many summer evenings are spent watching them buzz in and out, always fighting amongst themselves.
Our 50-pound pointer expends a lot of energy ensuring they don’t…I don’t know what. Steal things? Invade the house? Pointers gotta point.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
San Bernardo Nazis sounds like a Tom Waits song.
Stay safe, they’re Nazis.
Suzanne
@Gvg: Building codes all over the country got much better in relatively recent years. Spray-applied asbestos was banned in 1978, continuous insulation, increased live load requirements, etc. Many older homes also don’t have windows that comply with fire codes (I see listings for “non-compliant” or “non-conforming” bedrooms, which means that if the house catches on fire, no one can escape that room). Not to mention hazardous materials and radon, etc etc etc. However, every modern building contains red list chemicals. So hazardous materials will continue to be an issue.
Disagree on watching a modern house built to look old, though. Architecture should speak of its time and cultural context.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
I think this is a reason for optimism:
They are betting everything, everything on Donald Trump and Trumpism. They no longer talk about policy at all- it’s 100% drumming up resentment. I was listening to Right wing Christian radio on Kavanaugh and they were literally setting boys against girls- children- I have a girl and also boys so I was incredulous- “parents have to choose?” I’m thinking. It’s nuts.
This is a big bet and they double down on it every month. There are no more non-Trump Republicans. This is their brand.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Oh, San Bernardino. That makes sense now. Where there are meth labs, Nazis congregate.
Yes, steer clear of them as much as humanly possible.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
No kidding. We’re just here for CalJam. Supposedly there will be a Nirvana reunion (insert joke here). Leaving tomorrow. I am decidedly displeased with the white supremacy.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: omg, San Bernardino. My husband grew up there, graduated from SBHS in 1965. It’s changed so much since then and not for the better.
It’s too bad the mfNazis have the bucks and the sense to be in a Hampton Inn instead of the crappy motels on the edge of town.
opiejeanne
@Linda Binda: I’m sorry, but what is an ADOS?
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: They’re in a hotel so most of them are probably from elsewhere. Like that nice beach town, Huntington Beach. We lived there for two years and were stunned by the history of the KKK/NeoNazis in that place.
Linda Binda
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I tend to be like one of those mecha diehards who likes to insist that Anno and company didn’t deconstruct shit, that that show looked great, but it sure liked to indulge in melodrama, and then, there are its rumored, mythical budget problems near the end, and then, those two horrible final episodes. And then, there’s End of Evangelion, which, I dunno…. It’s always been a seminal/titanic juggernaut since its release back in the mid-90s. I’ve seen academic reviews of that show, and I’ve had English professors (I was an English major) gush about that show, but my older brother never rented it way back when, and I had never had a real job before the Post Office, so I never got to watch it back when the hype was new. I didn’t get to watch it ‘til around 2007 — I borrowed an ADV box set from a friend. I rented the End of Evangelion 1997 DVD release from Netflix back in 2010, when streaming was still new. If I had watched Evangelion before I started watching Ideon and other more obscure works by Tomino, the Gundam guy whose works inspired Evangelion in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have such a cranky, iffy view about it. I mean, being a child soldier was never glorified in the original Mobile Suit Gundam or many other Real Robot shows like it, so I’m not sure where the deconstruction really happens on this show. One interesting thing the show got across very well: I saw a lot of really unhappy people waiting for the world to end, while having no time for the teenagers who’ve never known a better world, and forcing the kids to fix it for them instead of them repairing it themselves, all before the End comes. I’m guessing that’s the deconstruction? A little of that is in U.C. Gundam, though. That seemed to ring true: it’s the kind of social commentary stuff which is a little too applicable to the world we live in right now. *cough*. I don’t care for the Evil Faceless Council of Doom stuff or the random Christian imagery, though — seemed to be too ambitious for its own good. As you can tell, *cough* I like Gundam and the original Macross, Robotech primarily (try being an 9-year-old trying to follow that show — it was a challenge), and I like Sailor Moon, so I’ve been having fun watching the new dubs of the Sailor Moon movies in my local theaters, this past summer. Only took 20+ years, but yay.
The Loli stuff is gross, and the people who like it pretty much pretend that because it’s from Japan, that that’s some sort of special cultural defense for it, and thus, it’s OK, when they find it gross over there. Sexualizing children is gross, and making teenagers look like preschoolers with big boobs is also gross: it’s a universal human thing that sexualizing young girls and women this way is gross. I’m just glad my older brother was never into this stuff, so he never rented it. I used to rely on him to bring home cool ‘80s and ‘90s anime movies from Blockbuster, back in the day, before Sci-Fi Channel had Saturday Morning Anime. Of course, he was the absolute first to jump on the Netflix train. He’s, like, the one anime fan I’ve known of who finds Wicked City gross. Everyone else makes excuses for movies like that. It’s just.. gross.
Albatrossity
Birdwatching and getting out in the world has saved my sanity more than once! Nice gallinule!
Immanentize
@Suzanne: Have you seen the film, Green Room? Very violent but terrifying movie about a band getting involved with some neo-nazis. Patrick Stewart as evil man … I thought it was hard to watch but a very good film.
Edit function A-OK.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne: San Bernardino looks exactly like west Mesa, which is where I spent my formative years. They have nicer plants here, though. My high school had white supremacy problems, too, which is why I recognized them the moment I saw them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: A Disk Operating System*.
*I’m really old.
Linda Binda
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks for your advice. Yeah, you can tell I’ve been told many times before to write, right? (Not to be arrogant, of course.). Yeah. I’ll look into it. :).
@opiejeanne:
I was being dramatic, but basically, it’s some dumb hashtag for American Descendants of Slaves. The people who use the hashtag are those who think that differentiating between black immigrants from Africa and black Americans here ultimately amounts to anything other than bullying children, because no one else differentiates us in any politically meaningful way beyond the U.S. Census, so why should they bother, except to spread needless negativity?
I could rant more, but basically, if any of their paranoia and xenophobia was justified, if Obama was really that much different from other black people in this country, would we have the Orange Idiot Horror and Mr. “I Like Beer!” to deal with right now? Heh.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
Electing judges is crazy.
However, like Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
The problem is not voting for them, it’s knowing what they are like, what they do. Like every other part of a working democracy we need knowledge to make it work, and that ends up meaning we have to pay a hell of a lot more attention to everything around us. Or just trust most people to do their jobs. Right now that seems to not be working at all.
There is too much everything around us for most of us, because we need to work to eat and pay for shelter, etc. So, we could get rid of all the movies, music, videos, blogs and attend nightly political meetings to catch up on everything or we can guess on some stuff. Like judges we vote for.
Mnemosyne
@Linda Binda:
In a book by one of my favorite romance authors, the hero was severely injured in the Napoleonic Wars and is trying to figure out what else to do with his life. He decides that he’s going to do travel writing, struggles with it for a few weeks, and then is like, This is boring, I need to find something else to do. ? Writers love to write about characters who are writers, so it was funny to see her playing with that trope.