Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

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

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

No one could have predicted…

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Not all heroes wear capes.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Who Is Your Anger Translator?

Open Thread: Who Is Your Anger Translator?

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My anger translator has to be the Liberal Redneck.  I almost always feel better after I listen to him.

Of course, no one is as good as Luther.

HBO actually made a compilation episode of Key & Peele as Obama’s anger translator. Who knew?

I’ll be back in about 20 minutes after I watch these videos.

Who is your anger translator?

Totally open thread.

Updated to add.  Excellent link from Jim, Foolish Literalist.

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    I miss Christmas cookies, ice cream and all the chocolates I got for Christmas.  I am still mostly eating out of my freezer because I am trying not to go to the grocery store, but I am going to have to go to the store soon.

  2. 2.

    sab

    My husband is my anger translator. Twenty years of marriage and I have talked him off a bunch of ledges, and he has talked me off about two.

  6. 6.

    HumboldtBlue

    @WaterGirl:

    I forgot my frozen vegetables yesterday in my first trip to the market since before Xmas. Had to walk to corner store and get a can of peas and carrots for shepherd’s pie.

    My anger translator better have a master’s degree in cursing because I am good and varied.

  8. 8.

    Gin & Tonic

    @frosty: By the time you finish reading a Tony Jay post, an hour has passed and you’ve forgotten what you were supposed to be angry about.

  10. 10.

    Chetan Murthy

    Lotta anger today.  Sinema tagging-in on the voting rights beatdown, the Illegitimate Six deciding to murder Americans b/c reasons.  Sigh.

  11. 11.

    Yarrow

    I can get plenty good and angry and no one needs a translator. Comes through loud and clear.

    In fact I’m pretty sure the middle school kid who hit me in the head with his frisbee today knew exactly how I felt about it.

  15. 15.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: It would be nice to have someone who was verbally saltier than I feel inside, so that I could feel like they were my anger translator.  But the anger and frustration is so unbounded these days.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    being able to use curse words as punctuation, pronouns and verbs in a solid string along with assumptions about genealogy  helps.

    It’s a practiced skill.

    I am nice up to a line, make it clear where the line is,…..

    cross it at your own peril,

    More and more these days it’s Covidiots and grifters.

  20. 20.

    debbie

    @Benw:

    That’s my shopping style too. Also, always on early Saturday morning when the populace is sleeping off their Friday night

  24. 24.

    Ruckus

    @HumboldtBlue: 
    My anger translator is my ability to swear. First job other than delivering newspapers was working in a machine shop. In a machine shop you have to be able to swear over the noise to make yourself heard and understood. Fortunately you have others around to teach you the words and how to deliver them. By the time I enlisted in the navy I could be any 4 people’s anger translator at the same time. Always take pride in a fucking job fucking done well. That’s a tiny freebee.

  25. 25.

    Suzanne

    I want there to be a specific term for the meth-and-PBR-burly-white-man set. I need my anger translator to make a term.

  26. 26.

    Argiope

    My anger translator has got to be my sister.  I’m the older one who grew up more concerned about what other people think.  She is the younger one who DNGAF. The other day some older dude in a store asked her why she was wearing a mask.  She said under her breath, but loud enough so he could hear her, “because if I want to kill an old man I want the satisfaction of doing it with my bare hands.”  He said “OK” and left the scene. I’m still chuckling about that one.

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Suzanne: shame DougJ wasn’t able to patent that schtick, cause he’s getting ripped off fifty times a day. And probably a helluva lot more

  31. 31.

    SectionH

    Tony Jay of course! Did love P&K. Or K&P. Of course.
    Otherwise, my face doesn’t need translation.

  36. 36.

    Ohio Mom

    @Argiope: I would steal your sister’s brilliant line but folks around here are generally too polite to ask why someone is wearing a mask. They just passive-aggressively go bare-faced.

  38. 38.

    Felanius Kootea

    I have been told to calm down when upset before I even open my mouth. I am in awe of poker-faced people. No anger translator needed.

  39. 39.

    Hildebrand

    My daughter.  Her profanity laced righteous rants have been a balm these past years – especially when she launches about some nitwit, Trump-addicted classmate saying foolish things in class (she is 19).   The rant usually erupts as she describes how she verbally shivved said student in class –  and now ‘gets to say what I really wanted to say in class.’

    And yep, she’s a pastor’s kid, twice over (both my wife and I are Lutheran clergy)

    She is amazing.

  40. 40.

    prostratedragon

    Luther actually could work for me. Or Ving Rhames. Or one of the samurai characters like in HaraKiri or the general who loses it at the end of Ran,  or maybe the Lone Wolf.

  41. 41.

    Kalakal

    At work I do the not reacting thing, I get satisfaction out of not giving jerks satisfaction.

    At home I’m going through a lot of guitar strings.

    I used to think I hated Reagan and Thatcher, I now realise that was merely strong dislike

  45. 45.

    danielx

    Used to be Samuel L. Jackson, but I have grown past the need for a translator. I just start riffing off the expression “pigfucker” and it goes on from there.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    Sooooo, update on crazy dude. Apparently the DA’s office approved the warrant but he hasn’t been picked up yet. The officer said that it is his understanding that the dude is still hospitalized with “some psychiatric issues”, you don’t say. Insurance adjuster and door installer come tomorrow. We are supposed to get a big snowstorm on Sunday, so I don’t know if we’ll really be able to clean up the front porch.

  47. 47.

    patrick II

    Are secret service members out of bounds for questions about what they may have heard Trump say?  Or are they always ushered out of the room during criminal conspiracies?

  51. 51.

    patrick II

    @danielx:

    I am particularly thinking about people who were with Trump when McCarthy called and might have heard the other side of that conversation.  In ad-hoc moments you can’t always clear the room of witnesses ahead of time.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @danielx: On Saturday night, a dude (whose name I now know but I do not want to spread across the internet) was high as a goddamn kite and he ran into my backyard, naked, in the snow, screaming for help. He punched out my window and climbed into my house, cutting himself up on the window. Then he ran around in my house screaming that he was being chased. My husband got him outside on our front porch, where he was arrested and then taken by EMS to a hospital, but not before damaging a bunch of my stuff and leaving kind of a lot of blood.

  54. 54.

    Suzanne

    I should be more precise and note that he was handcuffed and subdued by the police, but he was not actually arrested on Saturday night.

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @Suzanne:

    don’t worry too much about cleaning up the porch.

    fresh blood is generally the worry, ( transmission), not dried/weathered/dead blood.

    30 Seconds Clear will clean that right up, later.

    Just the door, or was the door frame damaged as well?

  56. 56.

    Suzanne

    One of the many shitty elements of the entire incident was the fact that I had this dude and then five police officers in my house, when we have been trying so hard to keep Spawn the Youngest away from people, since she isn’t vaccinated.

  57. 57.

    Another Scott

    Lots of good choices above.

    https://twitter.com/Coldwar_Steve is excellent in presenting visual counterpoints that are kinda like anger translation.

    https://twitter.com/IamHappyToast occasionally animates Coldwar Steve’s stuff, and does some excellent original stuff as well.

    Both have a strong UK perspective.

    In other news, RollCall tells us that Cancun Ted’s Nord Stream 2 sanctions bill failed. It also says:

    The new German coalition government, which is generally less supportive of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline than its predecessor government, led by former Chancellor Angela Merkel, has suspended regulatory approval of the pipeline, which could drag on well into 2022.

    Interesting…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    Suzanne

    @Jay: The door leaf is split, and I can’t tell if the frame is still in alignment. He crashed around in our kitchen and there is broken floor tile, my Instapot is broken, the coffeemaker is broken, and a few other things in the interior. However, most of the damaged property is outside, because he was held on our front porch for about twenty minutes until the ambulance arrived, and there is a lot of blood on the outdoor furniture, rug, Spawn’s stroller, etc.

  59. 59.

    Yarrow

    @Suzanne:  Omicron seems to show up pretty quickly after exposure so another day or so and hopefully everyone is in the clear.

    Glad things are moving along for you guys. What a terrible ordeal.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    Good luck, Suzanne and family. You’ve been through a lot. :-(

    In other anger translation news, BallsandStrikes.org:

    In a concurring opinion, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito made clear that they would go even further to ensure that workplaces remain hotbeds of disease transmission. All three justices are superfans of the “major questions doctrine,” which holds that Congress has to be especially, super-duper clear about an agency’s authority to do anything the Court deems “major,” and the “nondelegation doctrine,” which is the idea that Congress can’t transfer its lawmaking power to other branches of government. Conservatives have been diligently pushing these theories in an effort to bring the basic tasks of modern government to a grinding halt. Neither appears anywhere in the sacred text of the Constitution, but that pesky detail has never stopped self-described originalists from solemnly invoking them whenever they find it convenient.

    The vaccine-or-test standard, Gorsuch and company argue, actually fails both tests. In other words, even if existing federal law did allow OSHA to write this rule, that law would be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority to the executive branch. Left unstated is the real reason for their enthusiasm: By creating a veto power over any agency rules the Court disagrees with, a robust “nondelegation doctrine” would allow this six-justice conservative supermajority to grab as much power as it wants, from whoever it likes, in perpetuity.

    Fight for 15!

    It won’t happen quickly, but we need to do it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  65. 65.

    danielx

    @Suzanne:

    Meth monster at a guess, but with the unknown crap people ingest these days, who the hell knows? I am sorry for the trauma undergone by you and your family.

  66. 66.

    Leslie

    Oh, I had forgotten the anger translator. Damn. I know the man had his flaws, but stuff like that sure makes me miss him.

  67. 67.

    Leslie

    Oh, geez, Suzanne. I left my comment without even scrolling through the thread. How awful for all of you.

  69. 69.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    Hmm, why would Ted Cruz want to support sanctions against Putin?

    I thought Russia was supposed to be our friend? /s

    Oh, and they’d rather be Russians than Democrats

  71. 71.

    Ms. Deranged in AZ

    Liberal Redneck is my anger translator too!!! We both grew up in Tennessee and his accent sounds like home. We both grew up poor. Our moms played really important roles in our childhoods, more so than our dad’s. And he expresses all of my thoughts so colorfully.  Almost makes me miss Memphis…almost.

  73. 73.

    Ohio Mom

    @Suzanne: My god, it’s taken forever for the insurance adjuster to show up. Living with all the reminders of that horrid night, all the broken things and the trail of blood — can’t be good for everyone’s mental health.

    Connecting to the theme of the post, I’d be tempted, once the insurance company’s check has cleared, to find a new agent and carrier and scream at the now dropped ones for being so unresponsive and irresponsible. And leave nasty reviews all over the internet for good measure.

  75. 75.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @patrick II: IIRC secret service were deposed and/or gave testimony in front of congress during the Lewinsky affair so I don’t see what’s different here.

  76. 76.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Mai Naem mobile: Surely you can’t expect the kind of SS agents who left an upper-decker at President Obama’s house (where they were graciously allowed to use the facilities) to rat out their Maximum Hair Furore ?

  78. 78.

    joel hanes

    Nothing seems to be helping with anger/despair today.

    I feel like Denethor looking into the Palantir

  79. 79.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Chetan Murthy: i doubt the SS has any loyalty towards TFG after spreading COVID to them and making them overwork, stretching them thin, making them protect his worthless children post 2020 etc etc

  81. 81.

    Chetan Murthy

    @joel hanes: I remember back in 2015 and 2016, both here and at LG&M, it was regarded as pretty declasse’ to talk about the death of our political opponents.  six-or-seven years later, and we talk&fantasize about it all the time, it’s one of our major sources of tension-release.

    I do it a lot, but even I can recognize how unhealthy it is.

  83. 83.

    joel hanes

    You do it a lot these days, and you’re not alone.

    It worries me, and I try never to make such comments myself.

    I’m gradually deciding that if reading the internet makes me feel this way, maybe I should quit reading the internet.

  84. 84.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V30tyaXv6EI

    Yes, and no. Fantasy and imagination are different from plans and plots.

    Life is not what it was.

    Those whom we innocently thought were political opponents, have revealed themselves as bitter enemies of the basic foundations  of our societies.

    8 years ago, we claimed they had “authoritarian tendencies”, now we realize they are full on genocidal Nazis.

  85. 85.

    Chetan Murthy

    @joel hanes: I don’t think it’s got much to do with the Internet.  If I read these things in the print papers, they’d be just as awful, maybe even moreso, for being unable to find out more.

    This is The Bad Place.

  86. 86.

    Tony Jay

    @Gin & Tonic: 

    You’re welcome.

    Seriously, though, I know there’s a valid argument that ranting about the evil that men, people, the fuckers of the Right do is a waste of energy and even counterproductive, but getting that disbelieving rage out of my gut and onto a crisp white page always makes me feel so much better.

    Car-Thar-Tick

  88. 88.

    Tony Jay

    @bjacques:

    Yes! When I’m reading back a screed it’s Matt Berry’s layered baritone I hear in my head.

    But the Meatsafe Murderer? He was such a quiet and inoffensive boy until… oh, yeah.

  91. 91.

    sab

    6:25 am and pitbull finally went back to sleep. She was afraid that the latest cat (a sweety) was getting a march on her. Nitwit dog.

  94. 94.

    Tony Jay

    @WereBear:

    Thank you very much.

    I’m afraid there may be more to come. More revelations today about Tory partying that implicate journalists and explain why Flobalob suddenly went into isolation yesterday.

    They just won’t stop twisting my nipples. The bastards.

  95. 95.

    J R in WV

    @Argiope: ​
     

    My anger translator has got to be my sister. … The other day some older dude in a store asked her why she was wearing a mask. She said under her breath, but loud enough so he could hear her, “because if I want to kill an old man I want the satisfaction of doing it with my bare hands.” He said “OK” and left the scene. I’m still chuckling about that one.

    OK, I love your sister like a brother, even tho I have never met her. That’s a wonderful reply to a shithead asking a really stupid and aggressive question. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, and pass my admiration on to your sister, please. You don’t have to mention that I’m a really old fart… I may have to use that if asked that question by some redneck dumb-ass.

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