Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

He really is that stupid.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

In after Baud. Damn.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

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

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Respite, Con Brio

Respite, Con Brio

by | 99 Comments

This post is in: ,

This made me grin…a lot:

 

These are wretched times to be sure. But I am amazed and so grateful to all the incredibly inventive folks who have gone to enormous lengths to share a bit of joy amidst the gloom.

What else? How about some swans (and, in an in-joke for the 02138 set, a cygnet society)*:

Respite, Con Brio 3

And finally, bonus Tikka, here preparing to give a vastly more useful update on epidemic concerns than the shitgibbon ever could:

Respite, Con Brio

 

And now, oh jackalteriat: the thread is open.

 

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    Baby fuzzy swans! Is Haavaard Yaard swan-infested or something?

    We don’t get swans in our local park ponds, just ducks and geese. IIUC swans can be veddy nasty, if nice to gaze at.

  2. 2.

    Just One More Canuck

    The furball that Tikka seems to be considering hacking up would be more intelligent than anything the orange menace could possibly say

  3. 3.

    Jerzy Russian

    Great music!   I wish I could sing like that.

    Tikka has that “what have you done with my  balls?” look about him.  I hope you have a good response to that question.

  4. 4.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Woo!  The audiobooks for You Can Be A Cyborg When You’re Older are ready for Audible!  They’ll go up for sale officially as soon as my friends download their free copies.  I love this book, and I love the job Arielle DeLisle did as my reader.  It’s the only one of my books I think I’ll actually listen to the audiobook.  Reading or listening to my own writing feels weird.

  5. 5.

    Miss Bianca

    A propos of nothing in particular, I have long contemplated using “Con Brio” as a stage name. Or would that be too obvious?

  7. 7.

    CaseyL

    Wonderful video! The singer sounded very much like Andrea Bocelli, but Andrea Bocelli would never sing those words. So I looked up Daniel Emmet and, lo!, he *is* an opera singer and a damn fine one.  He must know a few other fun-loving opera singers to have put the chorus together.

    Tom, you are so right about the creative people doing their best to make our time confined a bit better.  Appreciative applause to them all.

    And Tikka… I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a photo of him where he didn’t have that Evil Genius slitted-eye look going for him.  He is one of the handsomest tuxedos ever.

    Open thread?  I got nothin’.  Just another day WFH, watching the traffic outside slowly increase as the Governor clears more businesses to re-open.  I continue to be bemused and mildly alarmed at how little I’ve minded being stuck at home for 2 months and counting:  apparently “hermit” is an occupation I’d be well suited for!

  9. 9.

    Haydnseek

    Tikka is the master of the look that says “I have found you useful from time to time in the past. Your death shall be quick and painless.”

  10. 10.

    Miss Bianca

    @Frankensteinbeck: Oh, yeah! I have to find a different way to listen to audiobooks – I used to listen on CD in my old car, then the CD player crapped out. My ‘new’ (1996 vintage) rig only has a cassette player. I guess I can download it onto my computer and listen to it that way?

  13. 13.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Aww, Tikka is so cute! My cat loves to rub his chin on everything too

  14. 14.

    Wapiti

    @CaseyL: I thought the chorus was the same guy wearing different hats/glasses, but sitting in front of the same window shade.

  17. 17.

    Roger Moore

    @Miss Bianca: 
    As long as your computer has a CD or DVD drive, ripping your audiobooks to mp3 (or equivalent) seems like a good approach. If you really want to go old-school, you could get a cassette tape adapter for your car stereo so you could still listen to them there. Or, if you’re willing to spend a little bit of money, you could upgrade your car stereo.

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    Polls are meaningless, but this is a happy one:

    Didn’t check the cross-tabs, but my guess is white college educated women are the primary reason “college educated whites” are on Team Don’t Fucking Drink Bleach in this poll.

  19. 19.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I just watched some of Ken Burns’s documentary on The Roosevelts – especially those about Franklin D (as opposed to Teddy) and boy howdy were the times precarious back then. FDR’s first political position was as the State Senator for Duchess County, NY. During his re-election campaign he could not campaign in person, at all – he used surrogates for the entirety of the campaign – because both he and Elanor were convalescing from Typhoid, which was often fatal back then.

    Shortly after the election (which he won) he’s appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration, a position he held when the US entered WWI. So he goes over to inspect the troops and on the way home gets double pneumonia from the Spanish Influenza. He survived that only to be crippled by polio  (another of the crippling and not infrequently deadly epidemics of the time) a couple years later. Kinda put things in perspective a little.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:

    Yeah, a ’90s era car probably has a discrete stereo in a standard single-DIN slot that can be replaced w/o too much bother or expense. More recent cars, not so much.

    Car stereos, like CD players and VHS decks, are a waning market and I doubt there are all that many to choose from.

  23. 23.

    trollhattan

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    Yup, doubt I’d have had FDR’s fortitude to clear all those hurdles.

    Am coincidentally on Vol 2 of Chernow’s TR bio, at the point where the Panama treaty has been ratified and we are introduced to the new Secretary of War, William Howard Taft. Kids and badgers have overrun the White House.

  25. 25.

    Ninedragonspot

    @Miss Bianca: The second movement of Ives’ Violin Sonata “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting” is titled Allegro (con slugarocko).

  26. 26.

    pamelabrown53

    r@Amir Khalid:

    Re: the feline reincarnation of Lee Van Cleef = genius!

    BTW, I loved reading the last post/thread. I’m spending more time than usual at my computer as I had minor “surgery” (that’s what they call it) for an ingrown toenail. The toenail is cut all the way down the sides and chemically treated so the nail can’t grow in anymore. Not fun and am supposed to stay off my feet today.

    Chaps my hide that one of the few times I’ve left the house since early March and for such an odious necessity. Good Covid safeguards though.

  33. 33.

    Tom Levenson

    @trollhattan: It’s la Rive Chuck, just past the Waltham gateway to the so-called Lakes District (not that one!). (About half a mile from the western end of the Waltham Watch Factory, to be precise, at the little boat landing.)

  35. 35.

    ziggy

    I looked into getting a pair of swans (we live near a lake) and the cost is outrageous! Like $500 for a cygnet (baby) and $3,000 for a mated pair. You have to have a mated pair or they are miserable, and they live around 25 years. It’s a huge commitment, like getting a parrot!

  37. 37.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Miss Bianca:

    You’ll have to get this one specifically from Audible, then figure out which of the ways they let you listen to it works for you.  They do have a lot of options, but it took a little poking for me to get it onto my iPhone.  That vexes me because I am a great believer in making it as easy as possible for people to give me their money.

  38. 38.

    pamelabrown53

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:

    I love “Obamagate”. Like Seinfeld’s show about nothing, tRump with seethe, slander and hyperbolically lie, while Obama largely ignores him until at the time of his choosing he stilletoes him!

    Clean, effective and deadly.

  39. 39.

    donnah

    The stay home orders gave me a lot of time to finish the Helen Keller rug. I’m very pleased with it. It contains a quote of hers, written out as well as translated into Braille, which I included across the bottom and embellished with round beads so they have a texture you can feel.

    imgur.com/gallery/CN7kb69

    Next project, a portrait of my youngest son.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    @ziggy: Wow, I had no idea! I suppose you couldn’t just get an unrelated male and female cygnet for $1,000 and assume they’d become a mated pair — what if they weren’t suited for each other? Then you’d have TWO miserable swans who would probably take it out on your shins!

  45. 45.

    pamelabrown53

    @donnah:

    Absolutely amazing, donnah, that you can create such detail in your medium.

    You have serious skillz/artistic ability.

  48. 48.

    ziggy

    @Betty Cracker: I think if they were the only male and female around, they would iron things out, but if the right swan came along….Plus you have to keep the wings clipped to keep them around. Maybe I’ll try for some good plastic ones.

  50. 50.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @trollhattan: Do you mean Edmund Morris? I did read Chernow’s Grant biography and that was excellent…it boggles my mind that he was considered one of the very worst Presidents for many decades – even up until my youth in the 1970s. He was a good and decent man and a pretty effective President and post-President.

    He really tried to enforce reconstruction (and was the last POTUS to do so) and enable African Americans civil rights in the South. Then we let the lost causers redefine him as a failure for decades. Thankfully the historical record has been mostly corrected. Yeah, he failed at some stuff. They all do. But by and large he tried to do the right thing and often succeeded.

  52. 52.

    donnah

    @NotMax:  That’s me!

    Thanks for the kind comments, everyone. I love this medium and don’t usually get this much time to hook because I travel the country to teach it. A double-edged sword, though, as without the workshops, I’m not making money. On the other hand, lots of time to hook! I love it.

  59. 59.

    Central Planning

    I started thinking about this the other day: Why doesn’t there seem to be any good viruses?

    I know there are some responsible for the evolution of humans (viruses could be responsible for up to 30% of all protein adaptations). So that’s long term, but generally the ones that get you sick last a short amount of time (I’m thinking colds and flu). They always do bad things to people.

    Where are the good viruses that will let me burn off my body fat and get me to a BMI of 12, or give me infrared vision or extra strength, fix my tinnitus, or get the hair on my head to be more luxurious? To be clear, I’m not talking about genetically modified viruses for gene therapy.

    Why do viruses hate humans?

  60. 60.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    My very first social encounter with anyone besides my husband: “Why is Biden just sitting in his basement doing nothing?”

    Same person who was very concerned about Hillary’s e-mails four years ago. Sigh.

  62. 62.

    Central Planning

    @pamelabrown53: My son had that surgery done about 8 months ago. He wore open-toed sandals for a few weeks while they healed. He was happy he got it done.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    The one area where Grant really deserves his bad reputation is in regards to corruption.  He had a gigantic moral blind spot around public figures accepting gifts.  He doesn’t appear to have given any favors in exchange for stuff, but his own willingness to accept gifts left the door open for less moral people to engage in all kinds of corruption.  You can draw a direct line from Grant Administration corruption to the gilded age excess that we didn’t really get a handle on until the New Deal.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    I got another homemade mask at the court today. Rachel, who is an extremely competent clerk, made a bunch. Gingham! So cheery. These carefully crafted and ironed masks people are handing out are restoring my faith in humanity. Well, “people” are handing out. I mean “women” :)

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    Took me nearly six months but think I’ve finally doped out the optimal amount of ground coffee to put in the tippy top of the line Rolls Royce of coffee makers I treated myself to for the holidays last year (succumbed to Black Friday sale temptation).

    Was reluctant for too long to use more for the 10 cups it makes than did for the old, replaced 12 cupper, which was mistaken mulishness on my part.

    Not that have ever gotten a bad cup of coffee from it, rather that now each one is consistently superior.

  76. 76.

    Central Planning

    @CaseyL: LOL, biology/chemistry weren’t my favorites in high school and I haven’t done anything with that. My 11th grader might want to be a chemist, so maybe I can pique his interest.

  77. 77.

    Central Planning

    @NotMax: What is the Rolls Royce of coffee makers? Or does Rolls Royce make a coffee maker and you have their highest-end one?

  78. 78.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Central Planning:

    Bacteriophages could be considered good viruses in that they hunt and kill bacteria that can make us sick. In fact, I believe bacteriophages live inside our intestines alongside gut bacteria and keep them in check

    Scientists are revisiting phage therapies with the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

  81. 81.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Kelly:

    Yeah, that’s an awesome one and to be fair, Rex is a great follow on Twitter. Very funny very insightful.

  82. 82.

    donnah

    @Sure Lurkalot: She was a hero to me, too. I remember seeing The Miracle Worker and being enthralled by the story. I have always been in awe of her and her teacher Anne Sullivan, and am concerned that their story is being forgotten. I hope my rug will remind people and maybe spark new interest in Helen Keller’s amazing life and her many contributions to society.

  87. 87.

    JPL

    @raven: Interesting.    For me it’s the beans that count, since I like a dark roast

    It’ a tad chilly here.     Just now warmed up to 60.

  88. 88.

    raven

    @JPL: I just turned the heat on for a bit. I don’t know what’s going on with me and coffee. I was almost thinking it was the virus lack of taste since doubling up in the grinder didn’t do much.

  91. 91.

    J R in WV

    @donnah:

    Your art is really wonderful. Beautifully conceived, planned and just as well executed in every way. One of my uncles became fascinated by hooking, and was really good after a while. He copied great art, and some of them took a couple of years to complete. Not as original as your work by any means!

    Years ago Wife got a woven tapestry in France, it was a little expensive, but was from a guild member, and was the last one for sale at the museum we were visiting. It has animals from the famous cave paintings, which was the main purpose of the tour we were on.

    Your work is very much like that but for the variation in the medium, hooked rather than woven. Ours is about 6 feet long and 18 inches high, and hangs over the head of our bed.

    SWANS…

    Regarding swans, my dad was a big convertible man, and he and mom took many road trips in one of the other of the roadsters he had over the years. On one trip in Delaware, they were visiting a duPont estate now become a museum, and the long winding road up to the actual building passed by a big pond, with beautiful swans in abundance.

    One of them, the biggest male, decided the little white car was threatening his bevy (one of many words for a group) of swans, and ran towards them. Just as Mom said “Look out, he looks mean!” Dad pushed the roll up button for his window, just as the swan rammed into the window, leaving a big smear of swan spittle dripping down the window. I hope no swan was injured in the episode, but very glad Dad closed that window when he did!

  93. 93.

    Miss Bianca

    @jeffreyw: I haven’t listened to any in a long time. I always got them on CD to listen to in the car, because in the Before Times I used to drive around the area *a lot*. We are talking 25,000 miles or more per year.

    Now, not so much. So while I suppose I could still get CDs out and listen to them while I am doing other things, it hasn’t really occurred to me to do so.

  95. 95.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Roger Moore: Kind of feel like the corruption was rampant in just about equal measure in every administration of that era…but they applied a different standard to him. Or maybe that’s when public opinion started to finally frown on the political spoils system and he was just the first guy who came in for that kind of criticism. Though Chernow does make that same “blind spot” point in his book. I’m not condoning the corruption but if it was just the way it was in that era it seems less egregious.

    Then, we for a while seemed to stamp out corruption during the New Deal era and the couple decades that followed it, and now it’s back in a major way and seems worse because we know it doesn’t have to be this way.

  99. 99.

    The Lodger

    @ziggy: We had plastic swans in our climate control pool at Bell  Labs in Holmdel to discourage migratory geese. At the holidays some folks would feed them styrofoam peanuts. Ah, tradition…

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