Not you, Boris — you’re just not welcome under any circumstances:
This on a London street: Yes, it’s come to this. pic.twitter.com/s6iAu7KbYr
— Samuel R Delany (@SamuelRDelany1) July 12, 2020
Everybody needs a haircut, right now…
A toad that looks like it will sell you psychedelics rather than one that looks like you need to lick in order get psychedelics https://t.co/cGA7nNt5tQ
— The Cyberpunk Landsknecht (@cakotz) July 10, 2020
Possum loves his box like Repubs love doing crimes!
WATCH: A Virginia opossum scent-marks a cardboard box at Atlanta Zoo in Georgia pic.twitter.com/VNSnfvUoLf
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 11, 2020
piratedan
Well… trump got what he wanted… no one wants to come here now…and we’re essentially living with virtual walls too…
Sab
I know possums are not rocket scientists, but what is that critter up to? It seems stressed
ETA: wild possums fur never looks that good. Zoo is doing well by it.
cain
After seeing countless videos of Americans acting like assholes about something as simple as masks – I’m sure that nobody wants to have us coming over to visit at all especially when masks and other sordid things are still needed at times.
I reckon that they would be willing to not only boot them out of whatever establishment, but also out of the EU never to return for a period of 10 years regardless if they are doing business or not.
Keith P.
I’ve got a young possum that comes by right at dusk to eat my cat’s leftovers. That possum originally came into my house a few times one week when it found a way in through a wall when it was rat-sized. I trapped it and let it go outside several times, but one time it got into the main house and disappeared. It lived inside for a few days, eating out of the cats’ open dry food bag until one day I caught it. By then, it had grown too big to find a way in, but it still comes by regularly to eat, so I feed it.
Xantar
The hairy frog is a photoshop job, alas. Read the comments and you’ll see that they didn’t even crop out the watermark.
Sab
@cain: Governor ordered mandatory masks for our county. Finally. EVERYONE had a mask today. Big improvement. Most worn properly, but not all.
So if you have a mask on your face but not over your nose, aren’t you more a danger to yourself than to others who have masks? Not breathing out at any distance, but breathing everything in off your mask? Just wondering.
Patricia Kayden
Sab
@Keith P.: I had a friend years ago with a rescue baby possum grown up. Not bright at all. Extremely stupid actually. But sweetest mammal pet ever. Sweeter even than descented skunks ( but 1/4 the IQ.) I am amazed they function in the wild. Short wild v longer domestic lifespan suggests they don’t function all that well. Cars be bad.
ETA: Also too young single mother with a dozen kids to feed. That could be a problem even if they mostly eat bugs.
Nicole
@Sab:
Possibly? I would assume less respiratory drops escape from one’s nostrils.
All I know is, after seeing that cartoon comparing wearing your mask low enough that your nose hangs out to a man wearing his underwear low enough that his junk hangs out, now any time I see someone on the street with their nose visible above their mask, I think, “penis.” Doesn’t matter how the person appears to identify; all I can see is a penis
Also, my husband found a funny thing tonight, titled something like, “If the astrological signs had been made up in the South” and I can’t remember most of them I do recall Cancer was an opossum. :)
khead
I don’t want those assholes visiting me and I live in Maryland.
NotMax
@Sab
Akin to operating a motor vehicle with half the spark plugs disconnected.
Sab
@NotMax: You draw horrible conclusions and make me laugh out loud.
Stop! Behave!
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden: Oh hey, it’s Ron “Spent the 4th of July 2018 in Moscow” Johnson, such a shocker!
(I thought it was going to be Marsha Blackburn when I clicked on the link, honestly…but RJ is equally dumb)
‘Over-reacting’ IS what it looks like when you handle a pandemic correctly, Senatuh! Just ask the Kiwis how they feel about their government’s “overreaction”. Oh wait, they won’t be able to hear your question, because they’re back in bars and enjoying attending live sports and what not…
mrmoshpotato
@Patricia Kayden: Good Lord!
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
????
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
Phucking clown ?
mrmoshpotato
@Sab:
Good luck on your snipe hunt. ?
ETA – Might as well tell him to wear long pants.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: Johnson and Cornyn were neck-and-neck for Dumbest Senator title until Marsha Blackburn swooped in and ran away with the trophy.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Collins will forever be the most concerned and disappointed.
Ascap_scab
So the animal that sits on Trump’s head is a hairy frog that dispenses LSD. That makes total sense.
Kropacetic
Per the article, this is the Senator the Republican caucus chose to run the Homeland Security Committee. I feel safer already.
hoosierspud
My husband and I took in a couple of cats living in our neighborhood. The younger one liked to go outside in the morning and spend the day outside. One dark morning I let him out and then spotted a possum the size of a breadbox walking toward him. I thought Dizzy was going to get mauled, but they walked up to each other, swiped noses, and kept going their own ways. The only way I can explain it is that while Dizzy was living outside they had contact with each other and didn’t feel threatened.
Sab
Made an awesome veggie soup today. My husband wants to know why veggie soup is spelled that way. Makes no sense with American phonics.
My usual response to American phonics is of course it makes no sense. Get over it or go Brit. (Canadians conveniently waffle , and then blame their publishers. Wise move.)
Meanwhile my soup: Cutting veggies for husband’s snack tray. 1/3 celery sticks, 1/3 carrot sticks, 1/3 cucumber slices.
Lots of leftovers. All the carot peels. All the celery leaves and short stocks. Through in some onions. Some tomatoes. Some frozen corn. Some frozen grean beans. Some garlic. Some green onions.Two Knorr veggie soup packs (cheating, I know.
Excellent soup. I think the potatoe pes and carrot peels and celery leaves made it.
Jay
Jeffro
@Kropacetic: You too!
I mostly feel calm, sort of in that “oh hey, my space capsule is heading straight into the sun, should be pretty!” kind of calm.
(not really – Biden is going to clean trumpov’s clock and we’re going to win the Senate too. But still: Ron. Johnson. in charge of ANYTHING, even for a little while?)
Jay
@Sab:
gud soup . No cheating involved?
geg6
Isn’t he kind of like the Louis Gohmert of the Senate, but with bonus Russian complicity? Like really, really stupid? Figures the party of traitors would put him in charge of homeland security.
BTW, I still hate that phrase, homeland security. Too much whiff of National Socialism for me.
Barbara
@Patricia Kayden: Of course he does. When you assign an average value of zero to to the life and well-being of Americans, any action that puts lives over profits is by definition an overreaction. I mean, he probably rejoices at the deaths of the “negative value” Americans and can’t figure out why “culling the herd” hasn’t been picked up by the Trump campaign as its new slogan yet.
Kropacetic
It’s adequately descriptive of a worthwhile governmental function. Blaming the phrase is like blaming the little square mustache (not that I recommend wearing a little square mustache).
frosty
@Patricia Kayden: One more time … in any public health emergency, if you do the right thing, it will look like you overreacted. Oh well.
Jay
jl
The pic of the hairy frog is fake? BJ blog always breaks my heart.
Jay
oclib
@Jay:
this machine kills children
she reminds me of that Goldie Hawn character in Overboard….she’s got what, 12 yachts….won’t someone push her overboard….
Jay
Luciamia
@Xantar: why does that make me so sad.
Yutsano
@geg6:
The whole fucking Dubya post-9/11 “security” apparatus needs to be ripped out root and branch. I’m talking removing the Cabinet level office, repealing the terribly stupid Patriot Act, the AUMF which is used to justify way too much, moving the Secret Service back to Treasury, everything. None of these measures needed to ever be in place and few things erode our freedoms more. And that’s just a start.
Jay
In moderation at #35 which should be front paged.
Mike in NC
@Kropacetic: Hey, toothbrush mustaches just might make a comeback if Fat Bastard gets reelected, as will swastikas and the Confederate rag.
We actually have a creepy neighbor who styled herself after Sarah Palin in 2008, including the eyeglasses.
Kropacetic
How is Tina Fey as a neighbor?
In certain quarters they never went out of style
But yes, along with the excesses of our criminal justice system, the excesses of our national security state need to be addressed.
Ian R
@Jay: They should do something truly horrible, like exiling the murderers to America.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@cain: When overseas if there are Americans nearby we tend to not interact or admit we’re compatriots till we know if they’re going to be obnoxious or not. As we try not to use English, Americans never pick us out as fellow Americans. Nor do locals, though usually they can tell by the accent (and language struggles) that we’re English-speakers.
I’ve had this conversation, as I’m sure other jackals have, many times: “Are you Australian? No. Um, English? No. (Long pause). Canadian? Sorry no. (Long pause, person admits defeat). Then where are you from?”
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC:
You’re neighbors with Tina Fey?
ETA – Dammit, Kropacetic!
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
I know, I wanted to braid it.
Kropacetic
I’ve heard that before. In fact, it’s damn near trite at this point.
Kropacetic
We enjoy many things we know to be fake. Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story/concept.
I was skeptical of the frog when I first saw it but refused to look into it’s veracity. I’m not aware of any non-mammal with hair.
Yutsano
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: When I was in Germany I made it a point to speak German. This was for two reasons: I wanted to practice but my speaking and my comprehension but I also wanted to show respect to the Germans by not coming off as just another dumb American. This turned out to be useful when we had a waitress who didn’t speak English. There was a bit of pointing and grunting but it was mostly just me speaking to her.
Achrachno
@jl: That picture is fake but the frog is real and really has “hair” but not nearly so much. Google the scientific name.
Jay
Went out to get smokes, ( yeah , bad habit)
Saw a car with New York plates at the gas station.
Two passes, and then stood outside and waited .
Wanted to make sure they were okay.
Dead battery, electrical problems, Dealership.
They were ikay, of sort. Trapped here.
Covid sucks.
Kropacetic
In the picture I found, the hair more resembled something between moss and coral.
prostratedragon
New reporting from Martyn McLaughlin on the Turnberry scam
The Unexplained Wealth Order could be a handy tool to enforce some revelation, even if it doesn’t stop anything in the end (sounds hard to enforce to me, but I know nothing at all of Scot/British law).
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Yutsano: I’ve found that even Germans who speak near-perfect English are very patient with you if you want to practice German, and they won’t switch to English unless you ask them to. And as you mention, lots don’t speak English.
We were having one conversation with a nice young German waitress, asking about tipping customs and various line items on the restaurant bill. When she asked where we were from and we said the US, she said in English “Oh, so am I” and suddenly became a nice young American student. Turned out she was a University student. Not sure why she was permitted to hold a job, but there might have been family ties with Germany.
I’ve always been annoyed at the statement that “everybody speaks English”. I’ve found that to be very much not the case, unless you stick to guided tours and major tourist attractions. Or never leave your hotel.
rikyrah
Thread for a FrontPager about the Post Office???
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: Since every single Trump agency head seems to have destroying the agency as their primary mission, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
But I am.
Kropacetic
From my experience in Spain, it’s not so much that everyone speaks English that someone can always be found who speaks English. I spoke Spanish whenever possible, but I was in high school and occasionally found myself occasionally unable to articulate myself in the local common tongue.
Steeplejack
@Jay:
For future reference: If something goes into moderation, you don’t know what the eventual comment number will be. Make this comment a reply to the one in moderation, and readers can link back to that one when it comes out of moderation.
piratedan
been reading something where the Mayor of San Antonio reached out to HHS to see if they could get some help from the major Army hospital that is right next door (Brooke Army Medical Hospital) because they are running out of hospital beds, but hearing that the WH said no.
rikyrah
NotMax
@Kropacetic
Spiders, for a start.
CaseyL
@Xantar: I’m actually a bit relieved to hear that, because amphibians are not supposed to have hair! An amphibian-mammal crossover is just too strange to contemplate.
Kelly
@Kropacetic: A friend of mine spent a couple month in Spain in the late 1970’s. Reported he had a great time wandering to small villages, finding a bar and saying he’d like to order a round for the house. Always found an English speaker.
Mary G
This model has too many users right now, but if this is credible, wow:
Everyone trying to get into a bar should have to run it on their phone and sign an agreement that they aren’t going to get into a hospital unless and until innocent people are cared for.
Jay
@Steeplejack: thanx
HeleninEire
Today is the first day since March that NYC had no Coronovirus deaths. Please let this trend hold. I am both exhausted and angry.
The South refused to learn from NY’s successes and mistakes. And now all our sacrifices are going to be for naught. I will be stuck in my apt. until Christmas.
Anya
We deserve to be mocked but the Brits are the last people who should be shaming us. They gave Boris a super majority and they voted to marginalize their country because of an ad on a bus. STFU and sort your house.
Re: Dr. Fauci, I wonder if Dr. Birx is one of the anynomous “White House officials” who are discrediting Dr. Fauci?
Trump and his team are so vile. They’ve destroyed so many civil servants and career officials. I don’t know if they’ll leave anything intact by the time they leave.
Kropacetic
@NotMax: All spiders in fact, good to know.
Got any non-mammal vertebrates with hair for me?
Leto
@Yutsano: this is the same thing Avalune and I did when we lived in Italy. After a couple of months the ladies at the grocery store treated us better, we were better able to communicate with most people, and it was just showing basic respect/courtesy to our host country. Now when we traveled to Austria for the Christmas Markets, the Austrians insisted on speaking English to us because it was easier for everyone all around (plus they had near perfect English so why not?) I tried speaking to the lady in Italian first, she said, “American?”, I said, “Si”, she said, “Just English”, and that was that.
Leto
@Mary G: and I’m going to shoot this to my parents. They’ve been pretty good, but I just like to keep hammering home what a clusterfuck area they live in (the 100% area =/ ).
Kropacetic
Anyone with money to throw around like that and such a good social sense how to throw it around ought to have a good time.
The bulk of my time there was at museums and archaeological sites. Also had a grand old time.
sanjeevs
Toobin’s got a point here.
New York passed a law last year specifically to allow this. If not now, when.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/12/opinions/roger-stone-should-face-state-prosecution-lefcourt-gottlieb/index.html
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Yutsano:
That begs the question: what would happen if we dismantled the TSA and simply went back to the days of being able to freely enter airport terminals without going through security checks? Not even metal detectors, as has been the case since the 70s.
I know there were hijackings in the 70s and 80s, but even those didn’t result in the TSA. It took 9/11 for that to happen
Yutsano
@HeleninEire: Hey lady! I learned something important about my family history the other day. It turns out both my grandfather’s adoptive parents were born in Ireland. So if I can find their birth records (if they exist) boom I’m an EU citizen.
NotMax
@Kropacetic
Geckos rely on hairy feet, does that count?
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Don’t you have to learn Irish Gaelic or something?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mary G:
Damn, I want to be able to see that. Thanks for sharing it. I’ll have to bookmark the link
Kropacetic
@NotMax: Yes, I would say that counts. The things one learns here!
Thanks for your help. After the big spider reveal, I tried Googling to answer my question. I’m usually confident in my Google-fu, but it failed me tonight.
cain
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
A friend of mine suggested putting the Canadian flag on the backpack.
HumboldtBlue
I style myself after Sarah Palin.
I’m very stylish.
Brent Terhune is very stylish as well.
Yutsano
@Leto: Funny story: when I was there with my college choir (we toured a lot of the periphery of Germany but not the interior like Frankfurt and Augsburg) we were paired with host guests. I went off with a college student named Martika. The whole time from her picking me up until we were having dinner with her boyfriend we were all speaking German. I wasn’t understanding everything but I was holding my own (Mein Grammatik ist gut aber mein Volkabeln is schlect) then Martika held up her hand to my face and interjected “Stop!” I asked “What” in English. (Everything in this point was in English.) “You’re speaking German.” Me: “Yes I’m in Germany and I speak English.” “We speak English.” Me: “Yes but I’m in Germany.” “No we want you to speak English.” They wanted to do what I had been doing since I got there: work on their English skills. I said, “Oh I get you now!” and spoke English from then on. Turns out she was better than her boyfriend because he got lost at a couple points while we were talking. So sometimes it’s not just to be polite. It’s because they also want the opportunity to interact with a native English speaker and improve.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Nah. English is also an official language in Ireland. This could be fun because there are several things I’d be qualified to do there.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Yutsano:
Wow, that’s cool! Hey, it’s a potential escape strategy from this flaming wreckage, right?
: D
prostratedragon
@rikyrah:
Short applicable movie clip
NotMax
@Kropacetic
While not hairs per se, underwater can in some shots sure look like them.
;)
HumboldtBlue
I just received a series of photos from dockside where the Bonhomme Richard is burning.
The fact that our Navy is in a position where a docked ship can be lost to catastrophic conditions is boggling.
It’s going to burn until there is nothing left to burn.
No heavy ammunition on board, just small arms caliber, although aviation fuel is still mighty plentiful. I was told my information abut automatic fire suppression systems on ships utilizing the ozone-harming compound Halon was out of date and other methods are now used.
Jager
@Yutsano:
My granddaughter did a year at the University of Copenhagen, ran into the same thing you did. She went to Norway several times and most of the Norwegians she met spoke English, but with a British accent. Their English teachers were, ah English.
Another Scott
OpenThread?
True? Dunno. Does Donnie or his minions care about any piddly DOJ rule? Of course not.
Grrr….
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
Is the president’s authority to pardon/commute that absolute? Like classifying information? What’s the point of the DOJ rule, then?
Who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to let the executive have that much authority? Yeah, I know, the Found Fathers, but these guys had already fought an autocratic king. I suppose they assumed Congress would check the president for abusing such powers
frosty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Everybody does not speak English in South America. My pidgin Spanish got good enough that I told a joke to a cabdriver in Bolivia and he laughed!
frosty
House, for me. I had plans to have a social life after I retired. Ain’t gonna happen, and by the time I feel safe all my friends from work will have forgotten me. First World Problems — at least I (and my family) will still be alive and well.
Yutsano
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m not leaving the US. My government job is secure. I can ride things out for a few more years. However, if President Toadface gets re-elected, I can hop a plane with my friend who’s a Norwegian dual citizen and we can settle wherever in Europe.
You, however, can go pretty much wherever you want. Every country is in dire need of medical professionals and American medical education is considered some of the best in the world. So you also have a rather convenient out if things go to shit in November. I personally prefer to stay and fight but
frosty
When I Railpassed around Europe in the 70s the Canadians did that so they wouldn’t be mistaken for Yanks. I got pissed off and sewed a US flag to my backpack. Not sure I’d do it today … maybe a state flag. The bear flag that says “California Republic” would be good.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Yutsano:
Oh absolutely. I was half-joking. Still, it’s nice to have options
Steeplejack
@sanjeevs:
Good article. But it’s by Gerald B. Lefcourt and Robert C. Gottlieb. They’ve just got a Jeffrey Toobin video splashed at the top of the page.
Yutsano
I was going to bed, but I took one last look at Twitter. In the world of what the fuck, over Kelly Preston just died.
NotMax
@frosty
Another option. And you get to choose any color(s) you like – no one can argue with them!
:)
Aleta
@Amir Khalid: just step dancing
NotMax
Bad linky above. Fix.
@frosty
Another option. And you get to choose any color(s) you like – no one can argue with them!
:)
sanjeevs
@Steeplejack: Didnt notice that thanks
HumboldtBlue
I can sing and I can dance, I can do all sorts of necessary mundane tasks very well if properly motivated.
What I can’t do and wish I could was understand fractals.
r/Fractalporn is a favorite of mine on Reddit and here it is in discussion and while I grasp the immediate explanation once it’s done I’m left scratching my head as I try to explain what I watched to my brother.
James E Powell
@geg6:
Me too, but then I hate pretty much everything from the Bush/Cheney Junta.
PIGL
@Jay: I’d be all in favor. Over the last 15 years, I’ve slowly come to reevaluate my position as regards capital punishment. We really have to stop fucking around with these people.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Well, you’re one up on this codger then. If it’s possible, when it comes to dancing I possess a negative sense of rhythm.
;)
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
When I was in Europe, back a whole lot of decades ago, I always learned 3 words/phrases, hello, please, thank you, in the local language. It worked in every country I was in. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to learn enough to hold a conversation, so I made the point of showing respect for their country, language and them. Worked in every country. Except in Maiorca. Because I had taken Spanish and latin in HS, I kept mixing up words between the two. Still, danced most of the night with a Spanish girl who didn’t speak english and had a great time.
Now I did run into a number of Americans who were rude, obnoxious and condescending. All of whom were fellow sailors.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
I kind of lied, though, my dancing is really out of tune.
Then again, so is my singing.
But I can still pretend I’m a badass.
I wear a mask after all.
Sm*t Cl*de
That was originally from 3 years ago. Pubs in Edinburgh are now demanding that any Sassenach be accompanied by an adult.
Just One More Canuck
@HumboldtBlue: a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants
NotMax
@Just One More Canuck
Alas, poor Chuckles.
Funny, for whatever reason seltzer sprang unbidden to mind just the other day.
Back in kid times a bottle was always present on the dinner table. Delivered weekly by the case and empties carted off at the same time. Sometimes the bottles were clear, sometimes the bottles were blue. No discernible difference in the product that I can recall.
Robert Sneddon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Actually they fought an “autocratic” elected Parliament. The King was by that time in British constitutional affairs a powerless figurehead. He had some influence on the affairs of the country via patronage but no control over taxation, the military etc. Since the Founding Slaveowners were planning to set up their own elected legislature they didn’t want to bad-talk the British Parliament so they loaded all the ills they claimed caused them to commit treason onto George III, an early version of Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein and the meme has stuck.
Sadly the Founding Slaveowners decided an elected absolute autocrat as head of the Executive was the way to go, granting him powers which in many ways exceeded the decayed status of the British monarchy and 220 years later an elected absolute autocrat was what you voted for in November 2016.
Robert Sneddon
@Yutsano: You might want to double-check that Norwegian thing — Norway is not a member state of the EU. It does have associate status and the borders are somewhat open for visitors but residency is another matter.
Uncle Cosmo
@Kropacetic: Trite and true, boychik.
Uncle Cosmo
@frosty: Amble back on down below the Mason-Dixon line & get hold of a blue crab filled in with the MD state flag. Not only a great conversation starter, but with those bright colors you could pick your ‘pack out of a crowd at 100m. And you useta be a Marylander anyway, you’re just one of those tax-dodging refugees…:^p
Uncle Cosmo
I had plans for the 3 things I loved most in life: Social dancing (shut down now & perhaps for good), European travel (same), and writing…& I haven’t been able to craft a creative line since I retired 8 years ago (it’s terrible when you can no longer recall the word you need that you know you know). So fuck me, I guess.