Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“woke” is the new caravan.

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

I was promised a recession.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

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

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Consistently wrong since 2002

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Afternoon Open Thread

Afternoon Open Thread

by | 136 Comments

This post is in: 

Some friends of mine have a bunch of hens who are their pets, and they love them to bits and dote on them. They are all named after NPR announcers, too. You should see their henhouse- a family of four could live in there. At any rate, they bought scarves for their hens, and the recent snow gave them an opportunity to use them. Personally, I think every hen needs a scarf now:

Afternoon Open Thread
Audie Cornish
Afternoon Open Thread 1
Cokie Roberts
Afternoon Open Thread 2
Melissa Block
Afternoon Open Thread 3
Nina Totenberg
Afternoon Open Thread 4
Yuki Noguchi

I think we can all agree that Pearl needs a scarf, right?

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  5. 5.

    greenergood

    No! All chickens and ducks exposed to snow need proper body-warmers, like the ones you put on dachsunds before you take them out for a walk!!

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    Stopped at the post office to buy some stamps yesterday. Was going to go for the railroad stamps on the Available Here display at this branch until the clerk saw me checking the selection, asked with a knowing grin, “How about these?” and pulled out some cool dinosaur stamps which were not displayed. Instant sale.

  18. 18.

    ziggy

    As freaked out as my chickens are with new things, I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams that they are happy about wearing those scarves. Maybe tolerating it long enough for a photo shoot? That’s what photo shop is for!

  22. 22.

    TaMara (HFG)

    First of all – y’all realize ducks have claws sharper than cats, right?

    Second of all – we don’t play favorites here, Penny gets a scarf, they must all have scarves.

    Should I give you my mailing address so I can suddenly be inundated with scarves? LOL

  26. 26.

    pamelabrown53

    Okay…a little chicken fashion advice: Yuki Noguchi needs to trade scarves with Cokie Roberts and Melissa Block with Audie Cornish.

  32. 32.

    Eric U.

    I need to figure out how to block that picture of Trump with his bad makeup.  But the memes are pretty good so far

  35. 35.

    ThresherK

    My wife and I have long held that it’s a law that Labrador Retrievers are only issued red bandanas, and Goldens are issued blue.

    Now I wonder how this will be updated for pet chickens.

  38. 38.

    MomSense

    @WaterGirl:

     

    That makes me so happy!  I have some bright red – sort of a coral red and I’ve started, but I’m not sure how long to make it.  Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of duck scarf patterns online.

  39. 39.

    Seanly

    Ugh, my wife wants chickens. I know they’d cost us a lot more than we’d spend in eggs. However, I wouldn’t insult the chickens by naming them after NPR hosts, especially not biased hacks like Nina “I love Scalia” Toten-f’king-berg.

  41. 41.

    opiejeanne

    @Seanly: The eggs may cost a little more, but they’ll not only taste better, they’ll also be healthier than the battery-house eggs.

  50. 50.

    rikyrah

    Bernie’s polling with Black voters is still terrible. Several polls have him below Bloomberg. Bad sign for the general. I’ll continue to criticize him as long as he continues the class over race, wwc first, anti identity bs. Don’t care if he drops out or he is the nominee. https://t.co/PsqKOrgtRp— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) February 8, 2020

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    Inspecting the CA ballot there are still twenty Dem presidential candidates to choose from–nineteen plus Wilmer. A few have dropped out but several I never heard of. Are y’all feeling the Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente III-mentum? Rocky’s en fuego!

  54. 54.

    rikyrah

    Mayor Pete is a 38-year-old former mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana with no state or federal government experience, in a country that has never elected a mayor to be president without holding higher office. Trump is going to be far more vicious than Biden on this. https://t.co/H3XdmVHItt— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) February 8, 2020

  55. 55.

    Sab

    So my dad’s cocker spaniel went out and rolled in the burdock burrs and came in, in the dark, covered in them. My husband didn’t notice and put his sweater on. I did notice, hours later. I tossed the sweater because I didn’t want to pick al the burrs out when I had already picked a bunch off of him.

    I have been knitting him a new ine slowly. Now it’s cold and he has no sweater. ( An excuse, since he has a full coat of cocker dog fur-fuzz.) Just don’t want to go out in the snow slush.

    Are all cockers canine roombas?

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: I’d say you want to aim for something to hit somewhere between the length on Audie and Cokie, but not as long as Melissa.

    So you could find the average height of a hen vs. a duck, or ask for Penelope measurements from TaMara :-) and go from there.

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    @Sab: I had my first cocker for 7 years before she ever had a haircut of any kind.  Warm February day she goes out in the yard for a stroll and comes back covered with burrs.  I spent hours trying to get them out, then said fuck it and looked for groomers in the phone book.

    She came back with very short hair instead of her long golden feathering, and I did get her groomed regularly after that, but never with a cocker cut, always with a “puppy” cut like she got that day.

  62. 62.

    Sab

    @ThresherK: My goldens always got green, to set off their golden fur. My yellow lab was almost white. He didn’t like bandanas (skittish boy, that one.) My black lab mix got pink, because she was a girlish girl and wanted everyone to know that.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    @Sab:

    A friend’s springer would go out and roll in cow or horse shit anytime she got the chance, which was often in the San Joaquin Valley. Such a pretty, pretty smelly dog.

  65. 65.

    Eric U.

    we had a dalmation and we lived across the road from a field that was almost always filled with cows.  So we would occasionally have a green dalmation

  66. 66.

    pamelabrown53

    @rikyrah:

    How could Trump be more vicious when he never held any elective office prior to president?

    Just another way he’s blown up the bar.

  67. 67.

    Sab

    @WaterGirl: I inherited him from my late uncle, who got him show cocker cuts. We get him puppy cuts, and he seems to like those.

    Is yours a Roomba vacuum?

  68. 68.

    trollhattan

    @Eric U.:

    We had a couple Dallys and the first LOVED fetch. In spring when the park grass was fresh and tall, he’d come home with bright green boots. It was pretty adorable.

  69. 69.

    Bruuuuce

    @rikyrah: As it happens, this article just came across my Facebook feed. I can only hope it brings more folks around to Warren as the best candidate in our field. I’m not betting on it, though.

  71. 71.

    WaterGirl

    @trollhattan: The same cocker I talked about above came in as I was studying at the dining room table with a friend.  Something smelled just awful but I couldn’t find the source, couldn’t see manure or anything on her back or paws or anything.

    Eventually I discovered that she had a very ripe dead bird tangled up in her feathering on her underside.  (Not her butt, more like her tummy area.)  That was fun.

  73. 73.

    Eric U.

    @pamelabrown53: same way his kids complain about Biden’s nepotism.  Plus now Trump has been president for 4 whole years and he’s done a great job, just ask him. Have you heard he won the biggest landslide ever?

  79. 79.

    Eric U.

    @trollhattan: grass stained feet are a lot more adorable than a coating of cow manure.  I never thought about the fact that fresh cow manure must be green until the first time she coated herself with it.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @WaterGirl:

    Whoa, dead bird hidden in the fur? As a mother nature’s prank that ranks [heh] quite high.

    Unrelated program note: if it continue episode 1’s quality the HBO McMillion$ mini-series is well worth watching. They could just follow special agent Doug Matthews and make it work, but it’s a compelling story too.

  82. 82.

    ziggy

    @Seanly:

    Do it! If she hand-raises the chickens, they will be lovely pets and very entertaining! The cost per egg is going to be outrageous (probably $5 per egg the first year, factoring in the hen house), but it’s not about getting cheap eggs, it’s the experience. And if your hens free range, or get other things to eat besides layer feed, the eggs will taste fantastic. You will never look at a chicken the same way once you see their personalities.

  83. 83.

    trollhattan

    @Eric U.:

    I won’t lie, I like my experience better. :-)

    Both Dallys snatched up dead stuff at hyperspeed and it was a challenge to shake the dead whatever out of their maw before they swallowed it. Was not always fast enough. Ugh.

  84. 84.

    BGinCHI

    @pamelabrown53: Agree.

    Also, can we have a thread where we sort out James Carville’s bullshit?

    Why are people listening to that guy? I read his “rant” against the Dems and it was full of bullshit assertions and lousy arguments. Fine if he wants to bitch about Iowa, but that’s low-hanging fruit.

  88. 88.

    trollhattan

    @BGinCHI:

    I’ll guess two things: he loves being in front of the camera, especially after not having a real job for twenty years, and it gets him out of the house and away from you-know-who.

    Other then news network bookers, I can’t imagine anybody takes him seriously or knows who he is.

  92. 92.

    Jager

    My farm grandmother had a large flock of chickens, she took good care of them and enjoyed doing it. The farmhouse (a Sears two-story) and the large garden was fenced. One hen could wing it to the top of the fence, she’d hop down make her way to the Ivy covering the front porch, nest down an lay her eggs. I asked my grandmother why she let that chicken be in the yard, she said, “Alma is adventurous and likes time to herself.” I’m pretty sure we never had Alma for Sunday dinner either, she was the only chicken with a name.

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    @germy:

    When I replaced some foundation that had been attacked by powderpost beetles I used either pressure-treated lumber or wood I painted with copper-based penetrating solvent. Similar to this.

    Moisture management is helpful, if possible.

  95. 95.

    germy

    Robert Conrad, the actor best known for his role in the television show The Wild Wild West, has died. He was 84 and his death was announced by a family spokesman.

  97. 97.

    trollhattan

    @germy:

    Somebody finally knocked off that battery.

    One of the better go-to lead action-actors and had a pretty long career.

  100. 100.

    WaterGirl

    @Sab: That’s funny.  I laughed out loud

    edit: My little white dog LOVES fruit.  And tomatoes.  So in the summer he comes in from outside with an orange/green combo on his muzzle – from the tomatoes and the tomato leaves.  Or blue from stealing the blueberries.  A lovely rose color from the raspberries.

    The (previously white) muzzle never lies!

  101. 101.

    BGinCHI

    @trollhattan: Bunch of folks on twitter (I know, I know) were pushing his rant about how the Dem Party was fucking everything up, how they weren’t gonna beat Trump, turnout down, etc.

    I read their agreement in disbelief.

    He sounds like Trump without the insanity, but with just as much entitlement and lack of insight.

    I hope he fades back to wherever the fuck he came from. But I’m sure Bill Maher is calling his spokesperson as I write this.

    ugh

  102. 102.

    Bruuuuce

    @Another Scott: I didn’t do the ranking, and the source is not one I recognize as a troll or satire site. It’s possible that the Biden ranking included his role in Clarence Thomas becoming a disaster on SCOTUS.

  103. 103.

    chris

    @germy: Look at diatomaceous earth. Available at the garden center, harmless except to the bugs. And your lungs, wear a mask.

  107. 107.

    zhena gogolia

    Open thread, so I’m again recommending the adaptation of Howards End that is available on Amazon Prime, with Matthew MacFadyen and Hayley Atwell. It was on PBS and I loved it, and then I realized it’s on Prime so we are watching it again. One scene between MacFadyen and Atwell is so good we replayed it three times last night. All the acting is great, it’s very faithful to the book, and the music is by Nico Muhly. There’s an actor in it I’ve never seen before, Joseph Quinn, who gives the most amazing performance as Leonard Bast. If you have Prime, watch it

    ETA: the adaptation is by playwright Kenneth Lonergan and it’s brilliant

  111. 111.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    A little Chalamet goes a long way for me. I really don’t see anything much in him.

    Joseph Quinn blows him out of the water

    ETA: But I haven’t seen this movie, just Lady Bird and Little Women.

  113. 113.

    ziggy

    @pamelabrown53:

    Right now I’m only getting about 2 eggs per day, my feed costs are roughly $1 to $2 per day (including organic feed,  scratch, mealworms, hay) so about 50 cents to $1 per egg. When they all start laying that will go down to about 30 cents per egg. That is if you consider my labor is absolutely free, and don’t factor in the cost of ginormous run I built them last year. Free-ranging a large flock would be much less expensive. If they wore scarves or other clothing, cost would be outrageous.

  117. 117.

    wvng

    Not to be a spoilsport, but you shouldn’t leave a scarf on a chicken, or put them in a jacket. They need to groom their feathers, which keeps them fluffy and makes them good insulators, better than a jacket would provide. I’ve had chickens for decades and they never had a problem with cold, except for some frostbite in extremities when it gets truly cold; when you should keep them in if you can.

    However, for anyone questioning the joy of having a home flock of layers, my wife wrote “Ode to an Egg” after receiving a letter extolling the virtues of our eggs after we gave a dozen to a friend.  There really is no comparison.  Track 9 on her Poultry in Motion album.  https://www.amazon.com/Poultry-Motion-Jan-Gillies/dp/B00KO58RPG

  119. 119.

    prostratedragon

    @Bruuuuce:  My god I just tried it. Not only will you avoid images of pestilence, but the contrast with the accompanying headlines is hilarious.

  120. 120.

    LuciaMia

    Im a monster. Looking at one of those chicken pics, my first thought was  “Um, nice drumsticks.”

  122. 122.

    dexwood

    @wvng:  Late to the chicken party, but I second this. Chickens are damn warm blooded. Fluffing and preening are important to their daily self-care. Plus, I’d worry about the scarves being caught on things since chickens poke their heads into everything. As to the frostbite problem, a longtime chicken keeper we knew recommended coating their feet and combs with Vaseline to prevent it. It really did help when our temperatures dropped into the single digits. Before using this remedy you could see the affected areas turn a bit grey, Once we started using the Vaseline we never saw that again.

  123. 123.

    Steeplejack

    @wvng:

    Album looks great! “Ghost Chickens in the Sky”: “Workin’ for the Colonel for 30 years or more . . .”

  124. 124.

    wvng

    @Steeplejack: Thanks.  When we received the letter that inspired to song (we really did) we were just in awe.  Also, check out the “Mike the Headless Chicken” track.  True story.  :-)

     

    McMurray chickens carried this CD for a few years.

  125. 125.

    BGinCHI

    @NotMax: If you check back here, yes, The King is excellent.

    This past semester I taught the course most in my wheelhouse, on Shakespeare’s Henriad and Early Modern Historiography. That film came out halfway through the course and I was dreading having to watch it. Super low expectations.

    I was floored by how interesting it is as an interpretation of the historical record as well as Shakespeare’s tetralogy.

    I have a LOT to say about it.

  127. 127.

    NotMax

    @BGinCHI
    Thanks for the thumbs up.

    I have a LOT to say about it.

    Which I for one would be curious about and interested in hearing. Cliff’s Notes version or no.

  128. 128.

    BGinCHI

    @zhena gogolia: I was really, really surprised.

    Forget Chalamet and Pattinson and the celebrity bullshit. As a serious reckoning with power, war, and character-building, it’s a fascinating study of Henry. And also, amazingly, of Falstaff, who gets to do something besides waddle around as a cliché. The Catherine scene…such a knockout. The French king? Superb.

    So much to think about, which is the best compliment I can give.

  132. 132.

    MoxieM

    @Sab: I don’t have Cockers, but always refer to my dogs as “reverse vacuum cleaners”. They bring the dirt, leaves, twigs and what not inside, not the other way ’round. Dogs are usually Newfoundlands (rescued), but the dog that most needed a home when I most needed a dog was a Gt Pyrenees/Black lab mix. She looks like a Pyr who borrowed somebody’s black tux. But I do miss the dinner-plate sized feet–they are much easier to work on!

  133. 133.

    MomSense

    I finished Pearl’s scarf.  While I was making it my son told me it wouldn’t be fair to the other ducks not to make scarves for them.  So Mabel and Maddie are getting scarves.

    I’ve lost it.

  136. 136.

    Tehanu

    This is wonderful. Thanks for posting it.

    Off topic, today was William Tecumseh Sherman’s 200th birthday. My hero.

Comments are closed.