Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Let there be snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

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

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You cannot shame the shameless.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Let’s finish the job.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Something Good Open Thread / Palate Cleanser: Something Good!

Palate Cleanser: Something Good!

by | 80 Comments

This post is in: 

There’s been a lot of darkness today, and this week, so how about a palate cleanser before bed?  Or for the wee hours of the night for the folks who are having trouble sleeping.

Something funny, something happy, something good.

I’ll start with my two favorite tweets from the past few weeks, almost certainly from Anne Laurie.

Something good: Lamh got her job!

Okay, your turn!

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  1. 1.

    bertintx

    This sends me back to Monty Python’s Flying Circus show, and the three sided Matching Tie and Handkerchief Album, which I think I still have in my LP collection. Accents plus social commentary…

  2. 2.

    laura

    Friday is my last day of work. They said dont come in Monday. Learning how to not work will be “A Thing” but they’ll be time to put to use getting Biden/Harris elected and catch up on the laundry.

  3. 3.

    Leto

    After a poop Tuesday, I completed my VA benefits and Social Security Disability applications and got them submitted. I needed to get the SS Disability one completed and submitted to the state so I could start collecting my state disability. I’m almost done with all this stuff, which is a good thing.

  6. 6.

    Emma from FL

    Thank you! That first tweet made me giggle. Haven’t had a lot of that lately. “We are the definition of fucked.” And it’s not even us!

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @laura: I saw a passing comment from you earlier this week and I wondered if I had missed something.  Indeed I had!

    Does this mean you are retiring, or taking a break before looking for something else?

  9. 9.

    Ruckus

    @laura:

    I have a concept of how you are feeling.

    I worked 2 days in the two weeks before last, worked my full 3 day run last week, was scheduled for 2 more full weeks this week and next. Boss called on Monday, he’s got no work for me for this week and next. I have no idea when my job will be back. I still have a job, just nothing to do. I’m practicing retirement.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: That reminds me: I’m going back to work. I’m not going back to my office mind you…but I will be working again. Honestly not certain how I feel about this.

  15. 15.

    laura

    @WaterGirl: Retiring. I’ve worked since 1976 – a glamorous grocery store career and worked through college starting in 1990 and left in 96 for law school and worked through school and lobbied and worked the census and then went to work for three unions, the absolute privilege of my professional life.

  17. 17.

    gene108

    I had a pet hamster from ages 8 to about 10/11. He died around that birthday.

    They are very cute, but after awhile all he did was climb on top of his water bottle and try to gnaw his way through the mesh screen on his cage. He succeeded a couple of times. When we were moving from Ann Arbor to Houston, we were staying with my aunt after our stuff got packed, and before our flight.

     

    He got out one night, and got stuck in the sump pump. I was very distraught, but my mom fished him out.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    @Leto: I know every state does disability different, but after I filed for SSDI I got a form back with 10 pages of “additional” essay questions back, all of which were covered in my first filing, and a ridiculous deadline of three whole days to complete and return it all. I copy/pasted the exact same words in different paragraph order and sent it in. I was approved in three months without having to get a lawyer or appeal, which almost never happens. That was in the GWB administration, though, which seems kind and competent compared to the current dumpster fire. Good luck! Keep fighting!

  19. 19.

    Original Lee

    Our garage freezer stopped working, but we were able to get a repair person out pretty quickly, and it turns out that the inside light circuit shorted and kept telling the thermostat that the door was ajar. So we just needed that simple fix and we don’t need a new freezer! Yay! Plus, our next door neighbor made some room in her freezer for our expensive meat, so nice neighbor stuff happened, too. I made her some roasted butternut squash bread while I was waiting for the repair person to tell me what was going on.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    Thankful we don’t cover fires in CA by having reporters stand out in the middle of the fire like we do with hurricanes.

    “That’s right Jim. We have an air temperature of 335 degrees. It’s really hot out there, and getting hotter. You can see the fire tornado just behind me.”

  27. 27.

    Jay

    An absolutely shocking piece of propaganda blaming the David Patrick Underwood death on the "riots." Underwood was murdered in a targeted drive by shooting by the Boogaloos, a domestic extremist group more aligned with the far right. https://t.co/2Zqcu8L3pN— Tim Miller (@Timodc) August 27, 2020

  30. 30.

    frosty

    Great, thanks for the title WG. Now I’ll have Herman’s Hermits running through my brain all night!

  32. 32.

    frosty

    @laura: Learning how to not work was a snap for me. Learning how to generate enough ambition to get to all the things I didn’t have time for when I was working … well, that’s a little different.

  35. 35.

    otmar

    Positives?

    All fine here in a club on a Greek island.

    Flight back is on Monday, then 4 more days of vacation back in Vienna.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    The good? New computer mouse arrived this week.

    The kicker? Of course on the very day it showed up the comfy old reliable and much used mouse decided to quit acting weird and return to its normal self.

  38. 38.

    Mary G

    Very much not positive, so don’t read if you don’t want to be upset. LAPD has protesters trapped in a tunnel at both ends and is firing “non-lethal” projectiles into them at point-blank range. The cops are going to escalate this shit to try to terrorize people into not participating.

    The LAPD has trapped tonight’s #BlackLivesMatter protest in a tunnel and is not letting them out. This is illegal and insane. https://t.co/zVbAFxpee2— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) August 27, 2020

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    Yup. Sittin’ in the box.

    Made sure to get one with the option to turn the redonkulous LED light displays they all now have off. The lighting on the old one is subtle enough to neither bother nor distract me, new ones nowadays can look like a carnival midway. Upgrade is that the new unit has an extra two customizable buttons on the side.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: Or – dueling mouses!

    My wireless Logitech has a simple green/red LED under the scroll wheel. No dance party here.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    Ribs? Will be there with bells on.

    And shorts.

    :)

    Haven’t made ribs in the Instant Pot yet but the pix and videos I’ve seen look mighty toothsome.

  46. 46.

    Sister Golden Bear

    NorCal fires have slowed down, thanks to a change in the weather, that firefighters are starting to contain them.

    Temperatures are back to normal, and more importantly air quality levels are finally good again. The splitting headache I’ve had for more than week is finally easing.

  48. 48.

    Sister Golden Bear

    OK, not so positive, but insomniac jackals may be interested in following a hurricane chaser who’s live tweeting, with videos, from Louisiana tonight. The eye is getting close to him at the moment.

    The power of nature is truly awe inspiring.

    1:53 am. Spoke to soon. Big, bone-rattling gusts– worst of the night. Lobby windows starting to fail. Maybe an inner-eyewall eddy, because radar says we're practically in the eye. #Hurricane #LAURA in Sulphur #Louisiana— Josh Morgerman (@iCyclone) August 27, 2020

  50. 50.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: Interesting.  I’ll have to keep that in mind.  I’m thinking oven roasted potatoes with salt, pepper and rosemary tossed in olive oil.

  52. 52.

    hitchhiker

    2 yrs ago we bought some land on Whidbey Island, inside the town of Langley. Langley is a village of maybe 1200 people, including many, many artists and writers and old hippies.  From its website:

    In the 1960s and 1970s, Langley attracted its share of “hippies,” some of whom had an uneasy relationship with the more established citizens. Eventually many of these counter-cultural folks became assimilated into the community, leavening Langley with their artistic skills and progressive ideas, helping to create today’s cultural balance that makes Langley such an attractive place to live, work, and visit.

    On Friday, at long last, we’re going to do the final walk through with the main contractor who built our little house. It’s a trip to realize that this is probably going to be my last move to my last address — or at least that’s the plan. The house is designed to be accessible and very low maintenance; it has no stairs at all, and the master bath has a giant roll in shower. All the doors are extra wide. There’s a front porch, and the back yard opens to a path through a protected wetland/woods.

    I’m so, so happy. Here are some photos from Whidbey/Langley.

    http://nitaogphotography.blogspot.com/2011/08/langley-whidbey-island-washington.html

  53. 53.

    SectionH

    Positives? Just got off a long phone call from a dear friend “somewhere outside of Merida.” That’s positive. He’s currently isolating big time but I think he’s nearly through it. Oh, and the isolation was because he was leading an archaeology tour somewhere in Guatemala, and he’s being incredibly careful. So fuck off about judging.

    Just hearing his voice was so great. I

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    Luscious. Even better roasted with a smidgen of minced fresh garlic.

    The cooks at the summer camp where I worked learned to save the whole onions they placed in the pans with the gigantic roast beefs they’d prepare for the hordes and set them aside for me rather than throw them out. Lip smacking goodness.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    Compliment I treasure came from one of the cooks, said to me the first summer I became Head Counselor, after she motioned me to come with her into the pantry:

    “Been working her since 1938 and I ain’t never seen this place run so good.”

  64. 64.

    SectionH

    @Martin: Yes, worrying TF about ppl. Not as far north as .Shreveport, which is basically eastern TX, I mean compared to Lake Charles, yeah they’re fine.  But damn, it’s not the wind, it’s the water.

  71. 71.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The Chuck Henry story from the Old Fire was absolutely terrifying. He was right where they told him to be, but  the fire came up behind him and the firefighters. When he and his cameraman tried to leave, the truck wouldn’t start. The firefighters grabbed them and they watched as the aluminum bits on their truck melted and ran down the road toward them.

  74. 74.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: I never thought of doing that with corn but that’s a clever way to fix it if you’re in an RV. Many years ago we had a little 6-pack cab-over camper and I figured out how to make a cobbler in a skillet, but damned if I can remember the trick now.

    Last week I priced renting a small RV, one that we could throw the cats into and just go somewhere.

    Anywhere.

    Kind of pricey to rent though, and to fill with gas, and the garden would go to hell so it won’t happen before we’re finished with it. .

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @laura: Sounds like you had a good run at work!  But you deserved more than 4 days notice, that part is really disappointing!

    Hoping that this will turn out to be one of those unwelcome changes where you look back and can see that it was a good thing, even if not of your choosing.  Crossing my fingers!

  80. 80.

    UncleEbeneezer

    A couple good things here:

    1.) Pasadena voted to form a Citizen’s Oversight Committee for the police on Monday. I have been working on this for 3 years, the recent fight has been on-going for about 7 years and this fight really began in the 1970’s. It’s just a first step, still needs a lot of work and could go sideways, but still it’s definitely a cause for celebration. Especially since various groups worked together and stood firm on our demands in a way that we really haven’t seen before.

    2.) In an hour or so, we are off to El Capitan State Beach to begin celebrating our 8th Wedding Anniversary, and first real vacation/breather since Covid.

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