Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I really should read my own blog.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The willow is too close to the house.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

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

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Counting Down to New Year’s Open Thread

Counting Down to New Year’s Open Thread

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Yes, this is a deplorably Eastern-Standard-Time-centric blog…

Celebrate with all due caution!

Ain’t nobody gonna be sorry to see 2019 end. Including the whole continent of Australia…

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  2. 2.

    PST

    Oh man! Central time. Another hour. I feel I should stay up. My wife and I got engaged five years ago tonight. She reminded me; I had forgotten.

  5. 5.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Starting to hear a few pops of fireworks in the distance. Last year Threadkill Lane was pretty quiet—surprisingly so.

  6. 6.

    WaterGirl

    Anne Laurie, that tree frog made me laugh out loud.  Hope he was able to back it out, and that no tree frogs were injured.

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    I guess it’s almost that time back East.

    Happy New Year.

    And may all you all be as sharp as 2020 in the days to come.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    After midnight
    We gonna let it all hang down
    After midnight
    We gonna chugalug and shout
    Gonna stimulate some action
    We gonna get some satisfaction
    We gonna find out what it is all about
    After midnight
    We gonna let it all hang down
     

  15. 15.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Happy New Year!

    No fireworks here. Quiet again this year. Okay, now a few more pops in the distance.

  19. 19.

    Kattails

    Cheers, loves. Patty the cat is getting very insistent that it is time for her evening treats; of course she’s been saying that since I got home at like 9 PM from work.

    A shopper told me that the hot cocktail of the evening was a “Trump”– a White Russian with a twist of orange.  ;-)  Sorry I could not impart this in time for your own festivities, and hopefully it will be out of fashion next year.

  24. 24.

    joel hanes

    Good riddance to a kidney stone of a year.

    May 2020 be a better year for all of us except Trump and his evil hench.

  28. 28.

    Matt McIrvin

    Spending the opening moments of 2020 reading Twitter leftists shitting on Barack Obama, somehow. Guess the resolution didn’t take.

  29. 29.

    Emma from FL

    Happy New Year everyone! My neighborhood is very fond of fireworks. And parties. Everyone is very understanding because, hey, no gunfire.

     

    (and yes, I’ve added geographical ident to my name as I have seen another Emma recently)

  32. 32.

    Kattails

    @Matt McIrvin: sigh. Please quick do something for an antidote.

    I had a mind to go enjoy Dire Straights doing Telegraph Road, the aLCHEMY tour on youtube, sorry too tired to link. But it was a well-spent few minutes and the song has aged very well.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    Needed some smiles so watching (on Prime, so can see it on the big screen) one of my favorite episodes of Dobie Gillis (YouTube link), one precisely at the point in the final season when the producers decided to sprint headlong into full-on surreal ‘n’ wacky.

    Nothing will ever convince me that Mrs. Osborne did nothing to pull her punch when she hauls off to box some ears.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    Chicago spent 5 minutes trying to blow up 5 downtown bridges.

    Gonna be smoky around there for a bit.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    Neighborhood boom booms going off since 7 p.m. Come midnight in 3 and 3/4 hours, watch out. Unlike last year which was uncharacteristically subdued.

    Next time I mow (this coming week) shall need to be extra vigilant about looking out for detritus lurking in the green.

  45. 45.

    Redshift

    Happy New Year, Jackals, from Northern Virginia (an hour later, just got home from the party.)

    Wishing you all a year of kicking righteous ass and restoring or creating all that is good and right!

    I’m renewing the only good New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made, “don’t get into arguments with idiots.”

  47. 47.

    frosty

    @NotMax: I had occasion to try to describe Dobie Gillis to the kids at work last week. None of them (of course) knew anything about it. Context: Maynard G. Krebs freaking out when someone mentions work: “Work!! Work!!!!”

    SAD!  We need to edumacate the youngs.

  55. 55.

    frosty

    @NotMax: It was funny. I was trying to describe Maynard: “He was the original hipster, no, that’s not it, I know he wasn’t a hippie, that was later … beatnik! He was the original beatnik!”

    Blank stares.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    I did not see the “never” you included and responded based on what I read.

    @frosty

    Beatnik, qualified yes. Beatnik wanna be, absolutely.

    Sans beret and turtleneck, of course.

    ;)

  59. 59.

    hells littlest angel

    I believe in realistic expectations, so i’d like to wish all Balloon Juicers a not horrible new year!

  60. 60.

    prostratedragon

    @frosty:
    There was a beatnik character (along with various other bohemians) who preceded MGK by about a year, on Peter Gunn. Fellow by the name of Wilbur. First appears in the episode “The Blind Pianist.”

  62. 62.

    Amir Khalid

    Happy New Year from the new new new laptop. If I may explain:

    I had begun to weary of my elderly wheezing Win7 laptop, which I had purchased late in Obama’s first term. A week or so ago I happened upon a used-laptop dealer and noted the specs of an Intel i3 machine with Win10 and a 15.6″ screen and a 240GB solid-state drive. But when I came back for it, they told me it wasn’t working and offered me a similarly spec’d Intel i4 laptop, which I took home. That, alas, was the one with the failing battery.

    Back to the shop. They said the battery would be replaced by the next day. But when I showed up again, there had been no battery replacement; the battery was still on order from abroad, I was apologetically told, and could I come back around New Years Day?

    I showed up today, and this time they said the battery had still not arrived. (Which I was half-expecting, at this point.) So they gave me a third new laptop: an i5 machine. I just cranked it up a few minutes ago. No issues so far. Fingers crossed this one doesn’t die on me.

  63. 63.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kattails: That’s a good song.

    Anyone else, though, ever feel a little guilty about turning to “respite” media when you’re feeling horrible about politics? Like, feeling that refusing to stare the full horror of the world in the face until it literally destroys us is how we came to this pass?

  64. 64.

    Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ

    15 minutes before midnight here in Arizona the jail called and told me my ex just made bail.  His rich uncle probably ponied up the money. I’m going to bed depressed and angry.  Happy Frickin New Year.

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    Some of my neighbors are setting off a ton of fireworks at the elementary school behind my house. My poor pupper is very stressed out. We went to a party tonight, which was fun, but we came home before midnight to hug our Loonie.

     

    Here’s to a great 2020, and hopefully a great decade of positive change, for us as individuals, but also for the country and the world.

  66. 66.

    Amir Khalid

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There’s taking the occasional break from being face-to-face with the full horror of the world. And there is refusing to face the horror at all. The first is entirely appropriate, the second is just willful blindness. If there’s one thing we don’t do here as jackals, it’s willful blindness.

  67. 67.

    Amir Khalid

    I sympathise with the poor children and pets being frightened by the noise from celebratory fireworks (and firearms!) this New Years evening. Hug them for me, and promise them everything’s going to be all right.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Matt McIrvin: It’s necessary to practice self-care and unplug from time to time.  If you stare at this shit without pause, the desire to go “Fuck it.” and completely unplug is too great.

    Many others are fighting.  Think of it as a relay race.

  74. 74.

    opiejeanne

    We have 13 minutes to go and the noise has started up again. Around 9pm there were a few big booms that sounded like a small cannon but were probably big cherry bombs. Now there are sounds with a lot more bass, very deep booms, that don’t sound at all like cherry bombs.

  75. 75.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The Dobie Gillis tv show was based on a couple of books, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and I was a Teenage Dwarf.  I think it was a stage play before it was on tv.

  77. 77.

    opiejeanne

    Today was the 100th anniversary of my mother’s birth. She said her mother was at a family party and was annoyed that she went into labor with the party in full swing.  These were southern Baptists deep in the Ozarks so there was no liquor but I guess they figured out how to have fun. The party must have been at Grandpa’s  parents’ house because she said she was born there, so they probably just took her to a birthing room at the back of the house.

  78. 78.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I seem to remember that the play was considered a wee bit scandalous for some reason, so when it came to tv there was concern that there might be some faint hint of S-E-X.

  82. 82.

    Anne Laurie

    @opiejeanne: I still have a handful of brittle 1960s Max Shulman paperbacks — including, IIRC, I Was A Teenage Dwarf.

    Shulman’s stuff was as of-his-moment as The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (MadAve ad-men were among his favorite subject-targets).  Another few years (assuming we survive the current moment), and his books will probably be re-released by one of the nostalgia presses.   I’m thinking that Maynard G Krebs was the spiritual baby-daddy of today’s Cosplay Socialists… young men who assume a world-weary attitude and a talent for snark is a substitue for actual talent…

  83. 83.

    opiejeanne

    HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM JUST EAST OF SEATTLE!

    WWIII has started here. I assume there are fireworks but it’s been raining all day, so maybe not.

  85. 85.

    Anne Laurie

    @opiejeanne: I thought Maynard G. Krebs was a pretend beatnik, and kind of a bum.

    Yup!  Dobie Gillis was a success because Shulman made it clear he considered Maynard as big a fake & a poseur as his ‘opposite’, all those Men in Grey Flannel Suits.  Horseshoe theory, but for sociology instead of politics.

  86. 86.

    CaseyL

    OK, it’s been 2020 for almost 45 minutes and nothing’s changed yet.  Someone do something!

    From 2016 onward, each year has been worse than the last, so the best I can come with is: Happy New Year, may it be not nearly as bad as we think.

    Goodnight, jackals!

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: It’s a very old template… going back to Greek theatre, at least, and very much under the aegis of the Trickster God!

  89. 89.

    Kathleen

    @Anne Laurie: I’ve caught a few episodes of Dobie Gillis on You Tube and am amazed at how well the show has held up. My dad was a huge Max Shulman fan so Dobie was one of the few programs I was allowed to watch.

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