Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

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

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

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

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

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Republicans do not trust women.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / It’s a Touch Damp Here

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    dr. bloor

    I think I am gonna need another willow.

    If only to muffle the sound of the guy next door building his ark.

  7. 7.

    Middlelee

    I just realized we haven’t seen anything about your garden this summer. Or have I just missed it? I come here every day.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    Don’t waste money buying another willow. If you cut off a small branch of the one you have and stick it in that wet ground, you’ll have a tree within a few months.

  11. 11.

    Scout211

    What is this thing you call “rain?”  Where does it come from?

    Can I order some for California? Which app should I use?

  13. 13.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ken:

    If you cut off a small branch of the one you have and stick it in that wet ground, you’ll have a tree within a few months.

    Not reliable. Best to do it with a half-dozen branches, planted around the yard, to improve the odds that at least one will root. The ones that root can be transplanted in the fullness of time, with sufficient motivation.
    (Full disclosure: I have 3 20-foot weeping willows (some pussy willows and a variegated cultivar too), but they’re far from the house.)

  14. 14.

    moops

    or maybe try planting sorghum next year.   if the torrent shows up, you will get a huge crop and you can try your hand at processing, or use it as mulch the following year. If the rains fail to come, then it just remains stunted and mowable.

  16. 16.

    moops

    yeah, wistfully looking at other regions getting rain.  So much water and not where we want it.  *sigh

  19. 19.

    J R in WV

    Fire and flood, plague and drought.

    Pretty close to the Four Horsemen, ain’t it? Good thing it’s a whole continent wide, otherwise we wouldn’t have room for all four.

    The willow is growing really fast… won’t go any farther on that topic.

    Did you all see the 80 pound cougar they confiscated from an apartment in NYC? Cruel to the big kitty! Needs moar room !! At least no one had to evacuate their home with that bad boy in their arms! Also rainy here. I went to the county seat to pay the taxes, register the cars, etc. Wore my mask also too~!!~

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    I’d kill for that here in California. Or for half an inch; I have a whole stack of buckets waiting to be put out to catch rain. If we ever get any.

    Very happy that the Chaparral Fire about 15 miles inland from me is still at only 1,427 acres and 50% controlled by Riverside Co. Fire, Cal Fire, and the federal firefighters assigned to the Cleveland National Forest. If no Santa Ana winds kick up it’ll be great.

  21. 21.

    CaseyL

    Put down a gravel bed, plant some water lillies,  and you could have a really nice frog pond there.  Turtles, too!

  22. 22.

    Kent

    Bone dry here in my corner of the Pacific Northwest (outskirts of Portland). Went out with my daughter yesterday looking for pill bugs for her AP Bio class. Spent about an hour with a pulaski digging up old rotting logs in the greenbelt behind our house and found nothing. Usually there are hundreds. But everything was just bone dry and the logs and dirt just crumbled to dust everywhere. So far we haven’t had any bad fires anywhere near here like last year. But the fire season is far from over. I just know some MAGAt asshole is going to start a fire in the woods with his ATV and then we will be fucked.

  24. 24.

    E.

    Cheers from Siskiyou County, which is currently on fire, hasn’t had rain in months, and has air quality in the 400s. It’s been like this for weeks. Or when I want my glass half full: house has not burned down yet.

  26. 26.

    lurker

    first thought – if you need another willow, looks like there might be some room between the current one and the house

    ETA: looks like @Gin & Tonic:  beat me to it…

  27. 27.

    Dan B

    @Scout211: Rain in Seattle!! We got the tiniest falling mist for a couple minutes. I had to clean my glasses to see the ripples on our, almost empty, pond / water storage tank.

    And, there is a steady breeze!!

    ¿¡Winter is coming!?*

    *Predicted to be high 70’s by Friday. Much lower fire risk is good since the garden is full of Chapparal type drought tolerant plants, and Eucalyptus, that burn reeeeel good. Wasn’t thinking high fire potential 12 years ago when they were planted.

  31. 31.

    MomSense

    Oh no.  I’ve refrained rom commenting until now, but I fear the willow tree IS actually too close to the house.

  35. 35.

    Dan B

    One good thing about our water storage tanks is we fill shallow saucers and bills with water and get lots of birbs’es.  We may be the only fresh water within a mile or more.

    The “tanks” collect water from 3/4 of the roof of the house, all of the large tool shed, and a good but of the back yard.  Three feet of rain on that surface area should be enough to water the entire garden for the summer but not this year and we were short last summer and fall.

     

    JC needs to invest in a pipeline to ship all that H2O west over the Rockies.

    Right?

  36. 36.

    rattlemullet

    John Cole beware -The willow will eat your plumbing and sanitary system. Beware of the weeping willow. Dogs are the best! Your web site exemplifies the care of animals.

  37. 37.

    Yarrow

    Have you put in a rain garden/ bio swale? Would help direct some of the water a bit and make it more useful.

  38. 38.

    Ohio Mom

    Standing water is no good for basements — ask me how I know (sob).

    Maybe a landscape company can create a drainage system that will send the water out front to the storm sewer. Where it belongs.

  40. 40.

    lowtechcyclist

    What’s left of Ida is headed towards Maryland tomorrow – where I am (a bit south of Annapolis), we’re supposed to get an inch or two of rain.  Guess that means it should stop raining on Cole sometime tomorrow.  Also, good thing I had the kiddo mow the lawn today.

  41. 41.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Dan B: The old farm house and property we had, had a shallow well, and a REALLY big rainwater cistern. All the buildings drained into it. We used it for everything but drinking.

  42. 42.

    JMG

    Ida coming for us on the Cape starting tomorrow night. In truth, while the rest of New England has had rainstorm after rainstorm this summer, we have not. Don’t need to make the deficit up in one night, however, but living on a sandbar means excess water doesn’t hang around too long.

  46. 46.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Your willow will be fine.

    eta <a href=”#comment-8274003″>@MomSense</a>: exactly, the house might be fucked but the willow will be fine.

    eta2: I see a NOLA journey in my future. They need a generator. Now. New baby and all that.

  48. 48.

    Wvng

    Been expecting serious rain all day here in the Eastern panhandle of WV and only drizzle so far. Plenty of time for lots of rain but hoping the 2-3″ they are now calling for here is it, as opposed to the 4-6 forecast.

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @Mary G: ​
     

    If no Santa Ana winds kick up it’ll be great.

    The next few days are looking pretty mild. Let’s hope that forecast holds. We actually got a few drops of rain at work in Duarte, which is unseasonable for August.

  52. 52.

    zhena gogolia

    You’ve drawn my attention to the fact that we’re supposed to get 3-5 inches of rain tomorrow night. This is much worse than Henri, it sounds like, at least for us.

  53. 53.

    John H. McDonald

    @Kent: I’m actually doing some research on pillbugs in the Northwest. A thick bed of English ivy, especially if it’s in the shade (such as the north side of a building or brick wall), can be a good place to find them. Really pull aside the ivy to get down to the dirt, and look up close to the base of the building wall. Because it’s been dry, they’ll probably be rolled into a ball instead of wandering around, so look closely.

    Another good place to look is in trashy overgrown vacant lots, underneath old boards and lumps of concrete.

  56. 56.

    SuzieC

    It has been pouring all day here in Columbus.  We live next to the Olentangy River.  I expect it will be flooded tomorrow morning.

  57. 57.

    JPL

    OT..  While another child dies of Covid in her district, MTG is on Tucker’s show threatening telcoms.   The boy was only thirteen, so maybe to her he didn’t really matter.

  59. 59.

    JPL

    @zhena gogolia:  The northeast could experience heavy flooding.  Ida moved further north in GA, so although I we had an inch or two of rain, it could have been much worse.   Stay safe.

  60. 60.

    ant

    the way to turn a willow branch into a tree is to dig a trench, and lay in (bury) the branch with a small amount of the thicker end sticking out. keep moist until it sprouts.  pee on it.

     

    willows do best right next to septic systems/water mains/irrigated gardens, or of course, as close to a house as you can get.

  62. 62.

    Another Scott

    Good luck, JC.

    In other news, Twitter on Chrome on Winders is apparently on to our “fix” of blocking all Twitter cookies.  Now it’s giving me “Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.” until I allow it to set cookies.

    Grr…

    Guess I’ll be clearing them manually until I have a better solution.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    Richard

    @Kent:

    No pillbugs! That’s pretty dire, seriously. I heard about your drought, we in Utah are in it too. We can’t ignore the fires because the smoke is here too. We heard about the heatwaves that killed hundreds.

    Hopefully they have gone underground.

  64. 64.

    Ohio Mom

    @Another Scott: What I’ve been doing for reading Twitter is setting my phone to “private.” It isn’t too much trouble but definitely makes me miss the old days.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @Another Scott

    Ccleaner (free version) is your friend.

    N.B.: Not always, but sometimes it will offer to install other items along with itself (none necessarily harmful, just extraneous stuff unrelated to Ccleaner proper). There’s always an option to refuse just those or to uncheck installation of those. So do look first before running all the way through the set-up.

    Have been using it since way, way back when it was a simpler tool and was bluntly called Crap Cleaner. I habitually zap both cookies and cache with it as a matter of course every time I close my browser.

  67. 67.

    raven

    (CNN)Two senior leaders in the US Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine review office are stepping down, even as the agency works toward high-profile decisions around Covid-19 vaccine approvals, authorizations for younger children and booster shots.

    The retirements of Dr. Marion Gruber, director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Philip Krause, deputy director of the office, were announced in an internal agency email sent on Tuesday and shared with CNN by the FDA.

  68. 68.

    zhena gogolia

    @Another Scott:

    I’ve been using the “incognito window” solution.

    And not reading Twitter anywhere near as much as I used to. I guess that’s what they want.

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Rudy goes full-on Norma Desmond.

    Asked about the widespread perception that he’s changed and even squandered his 9-11 legacy in recent years, Giuliani said, “I am aware of that. And what’s happened is, our country has gone off the rails…I’m exactly the same person. They changed!” Source

  74. 74.

    Ken

    @NotMax: I can believe he’s still the man who sited the city’s emergency command center in a building complex that had already been the target of a terrorist attack.  And wasn’t there something about putting his mistress in charge of distribution of the disaster relief funds?

  75. 75.

    Splitting Image

    NB for Twitter users:

    There is a good plugin you can add to Chrome and Firefox called “Behind the Overlay”. It will allow you to remove the sign-in window that pops up on Twitter and allow you to read the tweet threads it’s covering up. It will work on a lot of other sites that ask you to sign in, send them your e-mail address, and the like.

  77. 77.

    Mary G

    Ohio hospitals working hard:

    Palm Beach, FL, Police Officer Anthony Testa was flown to a hospital in Ohio while dying of covid because FL lacked sufficient hospital beds and resources to treat him.
    Desthsantis was fundraising in NJ.Not backing the blue. pic.twitter.com/q8qwBOsXkR
    — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 1, 2021

  79. 79.

    VeniceRiley

    @NotMax: B y Piriform! I love their Recuvah  program. Find old files and photos you’ve deleted long ago. Even got all the wedding photos off a flash drive AFTER I had reformatted.

  83. 83.

    HeleninEire

    Looks like maaaaaaybe??? I’ll get into Dublin in 10 days. The Irish gov’t issued new COVID guidance today. After the EU told the member States not to let Americans in.  We (me and my Irish friends) waited until 8pm Irish time for them to announce. The guidance was all about reducing COVID restrictions internally. Nothing about tourists. I’m hoping no news is good news!

    And you all thought I was absent. I told you I would not STFU when the time approached.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @Mary G: Isn’t he supposed to go to one of Florida’s 20 or so centers for a dose of Regeneron* antibodies?

    * “As seen in DeathSantis’ twitter feed. Ask for it by name.”

  87. 87.

    trollhattan

    So profoundly “not here” and yet I too have a willow. Willows, evidently, are not the rain-creating plants some assert them to be. (Pro tip: for a happy willow, plant it over the sewer main.)

    Get out the snorkel, Cole, and have some backyard hijinks.

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @HeleninEire:

    fter the EU told the member States not to let Americans in.

    I thought they walked that back to “unvaccinated Americans”?

  89. 89.

    trollhattan

    Band I really want to see is coming to a small club here next month, but delta gallops around the metroplex. Conflicted!

  91. 91.

    HeleninEire

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: unvaccinated Americans always had to isolate. 2 months ago Ireland let vaccinated Americans in. The EU is saying, well maybe not. The EU is letting the member states decide for themselves.

  92. 92.

    geg6

    @Suzanne:

    That was nothing compared to what my weather app says is coming over the next 15-18 hours.  And as I type this on my deck, the drops are starting.

  93. 93.

    citizen dave

    My wife is watching “Generation 9/11” on PBS right now and I unfortunately heard a Former Guy clip. I forgot how eloquent he was:

    Dec. 7, 2015
    T**** speaking during a press conference:

    “D***** J. T**** is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

  94. 94.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Debated on using that page as a link, but finding the free version on the rest of the site can be a bit confusing, and since even if it is downloaded it’s still a set-up program which will do nothing and remain inert until it is separately and deliberately installed afterwards I didn’t feel it was a noxious choice of linkage.

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