Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Bark louder, little dog.

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

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

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

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Monday Evening Open Thread: Complaints Dept.

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike in NC

    We got home today from Boston, and the three cats are acting like they haven’t been fed in a week.

  7. 7.

    Tony Jay

    I quite liked the narration. How else is a cat going to verbalise its utter disgust with human conduct if not through a vocal programme similar to Steven Hawking’s?

    “What? Am. I. Not. Good. Enough. For. Your. Human. Technology? Seriously. F#€k. You. I. Am. Done. With. This. I. Am. Going. To. Lodge. My. Claws. In. Your. Nicest. Woolen. Tights. Good. Luck. Sleeping. With. Me. Purring. In. Your. Ear.”

  11. 11.

    Benw

    One of my cats has done the “cat personality rewiring” thing and instead of spending all his time in the basement and garage, now lives, like 24/7, on our kitchen counters. Except that he can’t jump all the way up, so he jumps up onto a chair then onto the kitchen island, then takes a flying leap over to the counters where he slides headfirst into the coffee machine. every. damn. time.

  12. 12.

    Anne Laurie

    @JoyceCB: What terrible narration! It sucked the life right out of the video. Siri would’ve been an upgrade.

    You can get 90% of the context by turning on the closed captions (CC button in the bar under the video) and turning off the sound.

  20. 20.

    Ohio Mom

    I’m with Tony Jay, makes perfect sense to me that a cat would avail itself of an AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) device.

    This technology is a godsend for people whose disability makes them unable to use verbal speech — which can include cerebral palsy, autism, ALS, and Parkinson’s, to name a few.

    If we are honest, a lot about disability can be foreign and off-putting to those of us not familiar with the specifics of various disabilities. So what, buck up.

  21. 21.

    indycat32

    I don’t have a complaint, but I have a kitten!! I mentioned in the weekend pet thread that I’m feeding some neighborhood cats and wanted to bring one of the kittens in but was worried about fleas.  I got the flea meds, brought her in this morning, dosed her (even though I looked very closely and saw no fleas) and she’s asleep in my bathroom.  She’s very calm  and purrs and sleeps in my arms whenever I pick her up.  Now to get my 3  adult cats to accept her.

  24. 24.

    Tony Jay

    @eclare:

    “Tremble. Before. Bast. Furless. Worshippers. Remember. The. Fate. That. Befell. All. Dogs. Do. Not. Test. Us. Bring. Forth. The. Tuna.”

    Still better than Conservatives, though.

  31. 31.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Well, tonight was the night of the school board meeting about masks where I live. And I chickened out. I just couldn’t get around the fact that I had to disclose my name and where I lived to speak publicly.

    There were a LOT of anti-mask parents there, talking all about their parental rights to make medical decisions for their kids, how the media is propaganda for COVID, how kids supposedly aren’t at risk, how masks are somehow “dangerous”, and that kids need to unmask for their psychological well-being or something. One even claimed students shouldn’t even quarantine when exposed because they’re not “sick”. Some even tried to point out the apparent hypocrisy of some board members allegedly being seen maskless at area restaurants

    I heckled the morons a bit, but out of the 5 or so speakers that spoke before I left the meeting in disgust, they were all anti-maskers. One even gave an endorsement to a nut job candidate for running for the school board.

    I can’t help but feel like a coward for not standing up the children of the district and supporting the board’s decision

    Like I said, I just couldn’t get around not remaining anonymous. I share the same name as my father who owns a local business. I had to think of my parents too

    I just feel bad all around

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Extremely good point:

    Trying to scare Trumpers with stories of people dying isn’t working. And the reason isn’t mysterious: They are all convinced they won’t be among the 1.6% who die of COVID-19. But 100% certainty of a pink slip? That’s a lot harder to handwave away.
    pic.twitter.com/IkTHulxSJG

    — Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) September 27, 2021

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I think the thing to focus on isn’t hypocrisy or something; it’s that the people are fundamentally wrong about the logic of masking.  Masks aren’t there primarily to protect the wearer from everyone else; they’re there to protect the rest of the world from the mask wearer.  IOW, it isn’t about you, it’s about everyone else.  You may have a right to decided whether you’re going to take a safety precaution that protects only you*, but you don’t have the right to opt out of a safety precaution that’s there to protect the person next to you.

    *Though maybe not: see seat belt laws.

  38. 38.

    PsiFighter37

    Protest just rolled down 6th Avenue past my place in Manhattan, saying “Hey hey, ho ho, Joe Biden has got to go”. The fucking left-wingers in this fucking city just do not get it. I don’t give a shit about what they are protesting; they are crazy if they think anyone outside of their loud circlejerk thinks the same thing.

    Good fucking God.

  39. 39.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @sab:

    That’s a REALLY good idea. I’ll do that. Thank you, sab :

    I just hope it’s not too late, given the meeting was tonight

  42. 42.

    Starboard Tack

    @sab: I’ve seen a few single people standing on street corners around Denver holding antivax signs. None of them seemed very engaged and I wonder if they were hired to do that.

  44. 44.

    karen marie

    @indycat32: Must be the Season of the Cat. Last week I was gifted a three to four week old kitten. She is so cute! I’ve never been a mama cat before but she and I are surviving our learning curves. Now that I’ve mastered the art of stimulating her to pee and poo, she’s decided she’s going to do it herself. Fortunately she is very tidy and has never missed using the tiny litter pan or the pee pad. Yay!

  49. 49.

    Benw

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Don’t feel bad! Just showing the board normal folks are showing up counts too. We went to our district meeting before school started here. It was mentally hard to endure their assholery and stupidity. I felt gross for days, even though we managed to have about 50% of the speakers be pro-mask. When our board was formally voting to accept the (expected) mask mandate from the Governor, the anti-maskers got really ugly, but I had to laugh at the moron who screamed in anguish, “you’re tearing apart the fabric of society!”

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @Steeplejack (phone): It is an excellent point.

    WaPo has up a good story about just how bad their guesstimations are (of their chances of dying vs. those of the vaccinated

    The median unvaccinated Republican believes that the percentage of unvaccinated people like themselves requiring hospitalization is 5 percent. How does that compare to how they believe the vaccinated fare? It’s exactly the same. They believe the hospitalization rate for vaccinated people is also 5 percent. So the median unvaccinated Republican essentially says the vaccines have net-zero efficacy — i.e. there is no benefit to getting vaccinated when it comes to landing in the hospital.

  54. 54.

    indycat32

    @karen marie: what an adorable kitten. Chloe, being an outdoor kitten, I was worried about the litter box but there was no problem. She took right to it. I didn’t even have to explain it to her.

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Benw:

    That does make me feel better. There were quite a few people wearing masks in the room. I’d say it was 50/50 or so. My speech would’ve called the anti-masker’s for their callousness and ultimately I didn’t feel safe to do so

    @Roger Moore:

    I agree. So many idiots insisting that masks were a “petri dish” of bacteria and that all of the deaths of the Spanish Flu were actually by bacterial infections, which misses that the 1918 flu virus was actually weakening people’s immune.

    It was all about how healthy their kids supposedly are and how as parents only they can make medical decisions for their kids.

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    Kinda OT from cats and the pandemic: GOP candidate for VA governor Glenn Youngkin makes a fatal mistake, shows true colors

    (shorter: he…well, really his campaign…after weeks of ducking the question…said that he would have voted to certify Biden’s election if he were in Congress.)

    Oh Glenn, all the CRT hysteria in the world won’t be enough to save you now

  58. 58.

    There go two miscreants

    After reading several complaints about the narration, I just had to unmute my speakers and listen to it. I was amused because I’m certain that voice has been used to leave spam messages on my voicemail. A dead giveaway that it’s spam — you hear that, or another computer-generated voice, and it’s “delete” right away!

  60. 60.

    Spanky

    Who would avail themselves of AI narration? Someone who doesn’t speak English, or does so so poorly that it’d get in the way of the video.

  61. 61.

    karen marie

    @indycat32: They really are amazing. In another three weeks I expect she’ll be ready to have the run of the house. It will be nice despite all the discoveries I will make of things I never thought she’d chew on!

  62. 62.

    Jim Appleton

    I just put down very good Ms Bisquits after fifteen years. So named because I was fostering feral kittens and called them all Biscuit when they came around and started kneading.  She was a good kitty.

    Her birth helpmate Ms Mako was always an adversary.  They got along, just barely, with a lot of hissing, poor grooming, and odd behavior.

    Since Bisquit’s passing, Mako has bloomed.  She’s ecstatic and social like never before, affectionate and attached in a way she definitely has not been prior.

  67. 67.

    trollhattan

    Got the flu jab today, because I’m all about the vaccines now. It’s said to be quadrivalent, covering four viruses and issuing a challenge to the other viruses to be that lucky #5.

    Shot was no big deal but the shoulder is now complaining.

    Get it anyway.

  69. 69.

    PsiFighter37

    @trollhattan: I never got the flu vaccine until 2019. I don’t think I ever had it, and to be honest, it was not something that was ever on my radar until I lived in NYC. I skipped last year – simply never got around to it, given what a shitshow 2020 was generally – but I will probably stop by the local CVS and get it this year.

  70. 70.

    dmsilev

    Somebody talked with Ben Garrison…

    Ben Garrison, a right-wing cartoonist known for his opposition to vaccines and his extremely flattering drawings of former President Donald Trump, told Gizmodo late Sunday that he contracted covid-19 and has been sick for about two weeks. But allegedly getting covid hasn’t changed Garrison’s mind about modern medical science.

    We’re taking Ivermectin and various vitamins including a lot of Zinc,” Garrison continued, explaining what he’s doing to treat the disease. The cartoonist also notes he’s taking beet root juice. None of this has been proven to treat or prevent covid-19, with monoclonal antibodies and vaccines being the only real ways to fight this pandemic, which is still raging in many parts of the world.

    “Both Tina and I feel slightly better after two weeks, but it has been rough. I lost my taste and smell as well as desire to eat any kind of food. I lost 15 pounds as a result. Young people tend to bounce back more quickly, but we’re in our mid-60s,” Garrison wrote.
    When Gizmodo asked Garrison whether he’d been vaccinated against covid-19, he repeated many of the same conspiracy theories that appear in his cartoons.
    “We will never take their foul spike protein-producing jabs, which are neither safe nor effective. They’re not real vaccines. They’re gene therapy,” Garrison wrote in an email to Gizmodo.

    If he kicks the bucket, it will be the mother of all Herman Cain Awards.

  71. 71.

    Peale

    @Jeffro: O.K. about 20% of those hospitalized with COVID actually die. 5% of the US population going to the hospital is 16.4 million people and 3.3 million deaths. How they square any of that as “no biggie. Just a case of the flu.” is beyond me. Although they’ve been beyond me for 18 months now. But 5% of the US in the hospital would be a catastrophe even if no one died of COVID.

  75. 75.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Jeffro: Youngkin’s strategy is to reassure the Republican base with coded language, attract independents with platitudes, and hope Democrats sleep on this election. So he really does not want to talk about trump at all. But trump is starting to stick his nose in the race. Last week he appeared on conservative John Frederick’s Virginia radio show, and explained that Republican candidates who are only lukewarm about the trump MAGA agenda lose. Youngkin, trump told Fredericks, needs to go “full MAGA” if he wants to win Virginia.

    I expect that Youngkin’s people tell trump’s people that “Glenn’s alright, he can really help you as Virginia Governor, but we really think it’s best if your boss doesn’t try too hard to help him.” But trump wants everything to be about trump, and he craves the spotlight. I’m hoping he decides to give Youngkin more help.

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    @Peale: 3M dead was my high-end estimate back when this thing first started and it looked like it was 10x-20x deadlier than the flu.

    It’s just unreal that the pro-vax forces, Dems, someone, anyone, aren’t screaming the numbers out on a daily basis.  There were (and still are) so many deniers out there who should be pointing out that we were told “it was all a hoax” and “it will go away by summertime” and “it’s no worse than the flu” and just. fucking. pound. it. home. that the whole country was lied, lied, lied to constantly by trumpov, Navarro, the whole sick lot of them.

  78. 78.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: Me too (on the trumpov ‘help’ – thanks Donnie!)

    I have no idea how closely Dems are paying attention or if they feel under threat here, but McAuliffe is not stupid and I feel quite certain that the next six weeks will be nothing but reminders that Youngkin as Gov = the end of all the hard-fought progress we’ve made in this state.

    (with a side helping of, “hey GQP base – didja notice Glenn’s on Biden’s side about the 2020 election ;)   )

  79. 79.

    Scout211

    @trollhattan:

    Got the flu jab today

    I got mine today, too. Tonight I am nursing a sore arm, shoulder and upper back. But since the discomfort is minor compared to Moderna #2 and both Shingrix shots, everything is awesome. ?

  81. 81.

    Jim Appleton

    @Yutsano:   Thanks all for your good wishes.  And you’re right, Mako is a singletons.  As a kitten she had traits of border collie and Mako shark — she would knead affectionately while also rabbit kicking aggressively.  Hence her name.  Also not the sharpest tool in the shed, but what a sweety.

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: McAuliffe gets a chance to lay out the stakes for Virginians when he debates Youngkin tomorrow night. I hope McAuliffe can make the slippery, slick-talking Republican own his positions on gun safety and women’s reproductive rights. In terms of majority opinion, Youngkin is on the wrong side of these issues, and tries hard to deflect attention away from them.

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