Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Bark louder, little dog.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Come on, man.

This fight is for everything.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

The revolution will be supervised.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Florida Man No More

Reader Interactions

148Comments

  4. 4.

    Jerzy Russian

    Sounds like you packed a lot in during that vacation.  If you are like me you will need another two weeks to recover from the time off and to get back into the swing of things.

  5. 5.

    different-church-lady

    No, wait, seriously, a feel-good thread had to get blown up because people were assholes about figure skating?

  10. 10.

    Starfish

    @different-church-lady: We weren’t assholes about figure skating.

    We said that figure skaters should not be celebrated for their youth because a lot of women’s figure skating is dominated by young teens who are going to be permanently physical injured when they are sixteen or seventeen because their coaches are super unethical, but do go on taking the moral high ground celebrating the abuse of children.

    Or you can do like CaseyL did and say that people upset about the child abuse in figure skating are engaging in performative morality.

  14. 14.

    kindness

    So John…. from our perspective it seems you really liked your southern sojourn.  How wedded are you to West ‘By God’ Virginia?  Do you think there is a move south in your future?

  15. 15.

    Starfish

    @different-church-lady: TaMara got mad that we ruined what was supposed to be a cozy thread.

    There was something else going on with the person who originally posted a video of a young figure skater and celebrated her youth. I am still not aware of what it was, and she needed more grace and kindness. And I feel genuinely bad about that bit because I did not know what was going on.

    The other person who was bothered by child abuse in figure skating is a figure skating fan, and a lot of figure skating fans do not want the sport ruined for girls who hit puberty because some coaches are doing unethical things.

    I don’t have a strong stake in figure skating. I just followed romance writer Courtney Milan on Twitter. She is really into figure skating. I was horrified when she was explaining what had happened during the Olympics the other year.

  16. 16.

    Ken

    John’s title and message is reminding me of a joke, something about a person moving from state A to state B, and the average IQ of both states goes up.

  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    So tell me: is it really too big to be an insane asylum?! I mean, I feel like we could make it happen.

  21. 21.

    The Up and Up

    Stay safe on the way back home. You don’t sing the John Denver Country Roads song when you are heading back do you? Or is that a tune to despise?

  22. 22.

    different-church-lady

    @Starfish: I could tell that was going badly when I went off-line, but I didn’t think it was going to go so badly that they’d blow up the whole thread.

    Especially ironic on a feel-good thread. Some days it seems the internet is irretrievably broken.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @Starfish: Her father is dying, and she is unable to see him.  She can most certainly use some grace and kindness.

    But if you missed the recent thread where she talked about it, you wouldn’t know.

  25. 25.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Starfish: I figured skated until I was 60 when my orthopedist told me to stop (unexplained dissolving of my right femoral knob which necessitated  a hip replacement). Never jumped, but I could spin and do other simple tricks.  My coach before I quit was a lower level ice show skater who had had both hips replaced.  So yes, it is brutal.  Tara Lipinski had joint replacement in her 30s.  And like gymnastics, women undergo more abuse due to the focus on pre-pubescent girls and body issues,   but males do not as they get to mature more before moving up to the highest levels (or we just don’t hear about them.). Then there the Russian program of pushing young female teens and then spitting them out Olympics after Olympics.

  27. 27.

    satby

    Glad you’re with the parental units, tell ’em hi.

    This train is running only 2 1/2 hours late, so I may get home tomorrow as planned.

  29. 29.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne: I feel like it would like Arkham Asylum in the Batman universe; putting all of those crazy people in one place just means that when things inevitably go sideways, there’s a critical mass and a chain reaction of Crazy.

  33. 33.

    Sister Golden Bear

    DAMMNIT COLE FOR GETTING MY HOPES UP!

    But congratulations on a successful vacation and a return to the world on this side of the looking glass. BTW, Steve has a “present” awaiting you on your return.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    So, my ancestors on my maternal grandfather’s side were low-level notable. One of my something-or-other-cousins-some-amount-removed has put together some amazing genealogical research and made a very detailed set of documents going up to the present day. (That’s a big task….lots of marriages, divorces, kids born outside of “holy matrimony”, name changes….all the family dramatics, you know.) Anyway, one of the kind of funny things was learning that our family matriarch at one point suffered from “exhaustion” and was in an asylum for a while. I shared this with Spawn the Elder, who has had three of his own stays in a behavioral health hospital, and he was like, “MY QUEEN”. LMAO. I think it oddly made him feel good to know that he comes from a long line of crazy.

  36. 36.

    CaseyL

    Well, you’re out of Florida but in SC, so I’m not sure how much of an improvement that is. OTOH, at least your parents are there.

    Are they all the way moved to SC now, or do they still live in WV and “have a place” in SC?

  38. 38.

    Ohio Mom

    I was busy parts of today. Was around for the beginning of the feel-good post that got pulled but not the middle or disasterous end of it.

    I watched that figure skating video, which Alison Rose posted. I must admit, all figure skating looks alike to me but I like Alison Rose and wanted to see what she liked.

    So now commentators have chased Alison Rose off the Ukraine threads and now off a feel-good thread?!!!!

    She doesn’t deserve that, I hope a front pager reaches out to her. I would miss her if she left permanently.

    There isn’t a sport I can think of that doesn’t maim the practitioner’s bodies, except maybe yoga and that’s not a sport. A friend of mine was a professional modern dancer/choreographer and now she has kidney damage from all the Ibuprofen she took over the years.

  39. 39.

    Betsy

    @Ken: Oh yes.  That’s about people from Charlotte moving to its bedroom community of Fort Mill, South Carolina. Just over the state line.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ohio Mom: Hold the fuck on.  First of all, she is commenting in the current Ukraine thread as we speak.  Second, no one chased her off previously.  She got pissed off because she felt that people who were objecting to eliminationist language were defending war criminals and child rapists.  So she left.

  41. 41.

    CaseyL

    @Ohio Mom: This place is turning into a snake pit and it’s sad.  People need to dial back the self-righteousness like a LOT.

    Yes, there have always been vitriolic threads.  And somehow, they always seem to end with people leaving BJ.  Maybe we should do something about that?

  44. 44.

    Leto

    @CaseyL: I think the parental units have a place for the summer, and for the rest of the year they live across the street (or super close nearby).

  46. 46.

    Starfish

    @Ohio Mom: What went on in women’s gymnastics and is going on in women’s figure skating is worse than what goes on in a lot of other sports because the people in these sports are teens, and the career ending injuries are happening really young.

    While poking around for more information on what went on in women’s gymnastics during the Karyoli years, I learned about Elena Mukhina. She became quadrapledgic at age 19-20 doing a gymnastics move that has now been banned from gymnastics because people broke their backbones.

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ken: Will Rogers, about the Okies moving from Oklahoma to California. The statistical phenomenon of re-binning of data causing the average value of both bins to move in the same direction is sometimes called “the Will Rogers Effect” to this day.

  52. 52.

    eclare

    @WaterGirl:   Oh no!  People ragged on her?  Please send her my sympathies and encourage her to come back!  🙏

    I wondered why she wasn’t on the music thread, I am sure she would have had some great comments.

  55. 55.

    Lapassionara

    @Suzanne: I wish. Then maybe we would not have to count its reliably Republican electoral college votes.

    I lived in SC for a while, and it is as complex and interesting on a local level as any other place, but on the state government level, it is getting more and more MAGA.

  56. 56.

    eclare

    @Ohio Mom:   Exactly.  I’m watching the NFL now.  I can’t say shit about figure skating, not that opening my mouth would accomplish anything anyway.

  57. 57.

    Ohio Mom

    @catclub: Yes, table tennis and swimming seem pretty safe.I’m sure there are others.

    My kid’s Religious school principal once made an offhand comment how she is always in some pain as a result of injuries from the gymnastics she did in her youth.

    She was a cheerful, even-tempered person so hearing that her feet always hurt was unexpected.

  58. 58.

    eclare

    @Omnes Omnibus:   Good to know she is back.  I avoid all UKR posts for that reason, gets too ugly too often, don’t read at all.  The Guardian has a daily write up, I read that.

  61. 61.

    eclare

    @Ohio Mom:   One of my best friends has back damage from playing tennis.  She played at UT so she was a serious athlete.  All that starting and stopping and changing direction on hard courts has effects.

  65. 65.

    TaMara

    @Starfish: That is absolutely NOT what went on. And do NOT speak for me. But I think that you being OBSESSED with proving yourself right in three separate threads today might explain one of the SEVERAL reasons why I deleted that post.

    There will be no bullying in my posts. What the other FPers do, is up to them.

  68. 68.

    CaseyL

    @TaMara:  I’ve pied that person, as I do anyone who likes to take a crap in the threads.  Thank you for having more intestinal fortitude than I do!

  69. 69.

    gwangung

    I’ve gotten way less enamored of football as I’ve seen the increasing amount of damage that’s visited on bodies. Viscerally, it still attracts me, but I can’t always sit with the guilt.

    And that extends to other sports….

  71. 71.

    TaMara

    @CaseyL: I will never understand people who think that bludgeoning folks over the head with their view of “I’m right and you’re wrong” changes any minds.

    I will say this, Starfish was not bullying, and the person who was is the reason I dumped the thread.

  73. 73.

    Cameron

    Seeing “Florida” in the title of this post, I figure it wouldn’t be too far out to ask: anybody here ever been to Gulfport, FL?  I had never heard of it until a day or two ago, and it looks like a great place to take a break – am trying to persuade a friend of mine to go with me and spend some time there.

  74. 74.

    nadjasdoll

    @gwangung: I feel the same way. I was surprised to hear the announcers stress how Mahomes just had to play out the game. Lotta barely disguised peer pressure still.

  78. 78.

    satby

    @eclare: I think no one ragged on her, but the inability to tolerate different opinions on this blog has become much more pronounced.

    And none of us know what everyone else is going through.

  79. 79.

    Suzanne

    Spawn the Youngest has had a sore throat and a cough today. So I have spent much of the day cuddling her up. It’s so nice. It’s sad when they don’t feel well, but the cuddles are the best.

  81. 81.

    Mike in NC

    O/T: Wife loves a sappy retread show on PBS about veterinarians in c.1950s Scotland called “All Creatures Great and Small”. Tonight they introduced a character named “Mr. Hardmeat” and that has to be the greatest stage name for a porn star ever!

  85. 85.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    2 Black quarterbacks starting the Super Bowl

    Welcome to Biden’s America

  86. 86.

    Jeffro

    just popping in to say FUCK YEAH CHIEFS!!!

    (also, hey, way to go my second favorite team, the Eagles)

    Narrator: this is after Jeffro spent the morning caving/spelunking with Fro Jr’s Scout troop despite being a MASSIVE – did I mention MASSIVE? – lifelong claustrophobe?

    I’m spent.  I’m done.  Go Chiefs!  Go Kelces!  But more than that…Go Chiefs!

    And I’m never going caving again.  Box: CHECKED!

  87. 87.

    satby

    @eclare: my cousin’s son who was killed last year at 25 had been a high school football star who was recruited for a college team. He was an organ donor, and after his death his family had his brain sent to wherever the big studies on CTE are being done. He was already in stage 1 CTE, from grammar and high school football. He didn’t play much in college, the symptoms of CTE were already interfering with his activities of daily living.

    At some point we should assess as a society whether damaging young athletes permanently for mass entertainment is reasonable.

  88. 88.

    gwangung

    @nadjasdoll: Yeah, there’s the ambivalence for me, knowing how that punches cultural buttons in me, but at the same time thinking about the future cost (and on the gripping hand knowing that the players know the cost and consciously embrace that price).

  89. 89.

    eclare

    @satby:   Agree.  But I was talking about this with a former coworker who played pee-wee and high school football, and he said being on a team with others and the enforced discipline probably kept him from turning to a very different life.  He said he wouldn’t have it any other way.

    I know my aunt is thrilled that her grandson wrestles rather than plays football, but he has had some pretty serious injuries, too.  Luckily none head-related.

  92. 92.

    dww44

    @dmsilev: ​
      Actually, I think that S Carolina is a big improvement over De Santis’ Florida… certainly the Florida that he and his voters are turning the state into. I simply cannot imagine being a public school teacher in that state in the current environment. It’s both evil and tragic

  93. 93.

    CaseyL

    @Jeffro: That’s pretty amazing, signing up to do something that scares you a lot.  Good on you for doing it – at least now you know for sure spelunking isn’t for you!

    I must ask, though: what made you go?

    @TaMara: I didn’t know that: just got tired of what was going on, and eventually checked out.  You didn’t ask to be Hall Monitor, and I’m sorry you had to pull the thread.

  94. 94.

    joel hanes

    @catclub:

    swimming

    Butterfly is really hard on the shoulder joints.

    Both of the high school butterfliers I know  had to have their shoulder joints rebuilt before middle age.

  96. 96.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Mike in NC: if your wife hasn’t seen the original series, i think she would enjoy it. IMHO the original is better. It was a very popular series in the UK and I have to believe its on several streaming services. Some of the recurring characters are pretty funny. There’s a wealthy woman whose spoilt little dog named Trixie is always having gi issues.

  98. 98.

    mrmoshpotato

    @eclare:

    They won, but Mahomes is going to be hurting tomorrow. I am sure trainers have a bathtub of ice ready for him. 

    Do bath bombs even work in a tubful of ice?

  99. 99.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Mai Naem mobile:  I remember the old series, with Robert Hardy (Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter films) as Siegfried Farnan.  I have to say that in the new series it was a treat to see Diana Rigg as Mrs. Pumphrey.

  100. 100.

    dww44

    @Jean: ​
      And I too am a committed fan. What sometimes follows is a reality type veterinarian show from the same locale. Very good, both of them, and, imo, not smarmy at all.

  101. 101.

    jonas

    @Mike in NC: ​
      That would be based on the books by James Herriot, who was an actual veterinarian in Yorkshire (north England, but not Scotland). My grandmother adored those books (and the original show), which is how I know them. Incredibly sweet, if sometimes sappy, stories about farmers and their animals.

  106. 106.

    Mike in NC

    @dww44: Charleston is quite nice but horrible to drive in. The rest of SC is still trying to figure out if Reconstruction was a good or bad thing. Governor McMaster is a throwback to John C. Calhoun. Nikki Haley was a terrible governor who called labor unions and members of unions cockroaches because they resisted massive tax breaks for the rich, which is the only thing Republicans care about. The state capitol of Columbia is pretty grim, with more cops per capita than any other place we’ve ever seen. Must be close to North Korea in terms of repressiveness.

  107. 107.

    satby

    @gwangung: the players know the cost and consciously embrace that price

    Do they? If that’s been drilled into them since childhood?

    @eclare: the enforced discipline probably kept him from turning to a very different life.  He said he wouldn’t have it any other way.

    I wouldn’t expect anything different. But it shouldn’t be a choice made by minors. Oddly my foster son said the same thing about the Marines (probably true); and after 5 combat tours he has PTSD and is hearing impaired from his gun. Thing is, that was a more informed outcome because he was an adult when he enlisted.

  108. 108.

    eclare

    @James E Powell:   Former boss who was a linebacker at UGA said he never would have gotten through a season without ice.

    But point taken, I’m sure there will be a lot of that too.

  109. 109.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC:

    O/T: Wife loves a sappy retread show on PBS about veterinarians in c.1950s Scotland called “All Creatures Great and Small”. Tonight they introduced a character named “Mr. Hardmeat” and that has to be the greatest stage name for a porn star ever!

    The writers had fun with that episode!

  111. 111.

    satby

    @eclare: He was fully aware of the risks, and is doing quite well, union carpenter now.  He decided at about 19 that joining up was his goal, he loved being a Marine, and he was an adult who could understand the (potentially deadly) risks.

    Sports aren’t often deadly, but they can have lifelong repercussions that a child or a ambitious parent may not appreciate. I just think more safeguards are reasonable.

  116. 116.

    eclare

    @different-church-lady:   Hahaha…When the NBA first came back after lockdown in the “bubble”, lots of players took behind the scenes photos and posted them.  Many photos of them sitting in big, old-fashioned, metal washtubs filled with ice.

    Sippin’ champagne, of course.

  122. 122.

    NotMax

    @Westyny

    So old can remember when teenage girls imitated the Mary Travers look by ironing their hair.
    ;)

    (Yes, aware you were referring to a non-follicular type of curling.)

  126. 126.

    NotMax

    Been so chilly I’ve switched from vodka to rye with a dash of bitters. Drop one or two whole black peppercorns into the glass for a smidgen of extra kick.

  131. 131.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @TaMara: I’m not so sure about this.  Some of the biggest and most important changes I’ve had in issues like Feminism, Racism and Trans Rights (moving from being dismissive/hostile to them, to being a strong supporter of them) have happened as a result of witnessing other people strongly and unabashedly fight for what is right.  In fact, my turn towards finally listening to Black people about Racism and becoming a committed anti-Racist, began right here when former front-page poster, and friend of Cole’s, Imani Gandy (AngryBlackLady) called out a bunch of racism directed at her by commenters.  Racist trolling that eventually drove her away from the site.  Had she done it nicely and patiently, I don’t think it would have woken me up quite the way it did.  But she laid into them with the righteous fury that is an appropriate response to racism.  A few years later a skeptic space called FreeThoughtBlogs that I frequented suffered a giant rift over Transgender issues when Ophelia Benson pulled the now common TERF bullshit of claiming Trans Women Aren’t Women.  A bunch of LGBTQ people and allies called her out on it and repeatedly and forcefully shot down endless Transphobic trolling attempts by other commenters.  Again, the incredible confidence and righteousness was part of what made me finally realize that my traditional, gender-binary assumed positions were wrong and it was time to start listening to the people who really understand it all and live it, and change my own views to ally with them.  So for me, sometimes that sort of unapologetic advocacy is really one of the only things that can move me.  The person being argued at probably will not change their stance due to the fragility they feel in the moment (though once they cool down they might), but the people reading along are much more open to persuasion.  As awful and immature and tedious as flame wars can be, you can sometimes learn a lot from them.  I suspect that the predatory and physically damaging nature of figure skating is something many haven’t thought much about and is usually way more in the back of their minds when they think of the sport, but not that may change as a result of the contentious thread.  Sounds like the real problem is that it just happened in the wrong/inappropriate thread.

  132. 132.

    NotMax

    Posted in wrong thread. Repeating.

    Heh. Street scene establishing shot in Germany on the TV screen. One shop’s sign, in fancy script typeface, reads Jerkstrand’s.
    ;)

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @Jeffro: Nothing like waiting until the last 3 seconds to win it. Mahomes was struggling in the last half, he definitely needs the 2 weeks to recover. Who would have thought a game would be won because of a bad hit?

  134. 134.

    Gvg

    I did not stick around and realize a bad flame war developed, however to me it was obvious that the position that women’s figure skating had a child abuse problem and so did women’s gymnastics is more of an “oh, yeah, that is sort of obvious” information. It has been building up bit by bit for decades now. There is always a new teenaged girl gymnast who is great, that you hear about for about 4 years, then never or maybe in ads. Russia is always doping and never learns, etc. I miss my joy at college football, but my sister tried to tell me a decade before the public news got through to me. Once it did, I could not keep watching. I did not decide not to, I just…was busy and had to do something else until I noticed it had been a couple of years and I didn’t know the players names anymore.  If the sports governing bodies don’t act, they will watch the sport die, slowly.

    Hey John Cole, you know you have seasonal daylight issues and get depressed every winter. Maybe you should just plan a southern vacation every winter to save your sanity. Florida is a tourist destination and a snowbird home because you aren’t the only one. I think it’s built into people. If you bargain hunt all year you might even find something on the equator or over in the Southern Hemisphere with longer days. Although I was thinking, I am a native Floridian and I don’t know anyone who acts like the cliché of Florida man, never have. Most people act like normal people except we are used to alligators. That’s just landscape.

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gvg: I recall hearing that a lot of the “Florida Man” phenomenon just comes from the relatively open treatment of police-blotter information there–that the wild dumb-guy crimes that happen everywhere in the country are easier to report in Florida.

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    @UncleEbeneezer: I remember, when Larry Kramer and ACT UP were calling Anthony Fauci a Nazi over AIDS, seeing an interview with Kramer in which he said something to the effect of “‘you catch more flies with honey than vinegar’–that’s bullshit.” He was going to hammer on this as hard as he possibly could and be bullying and offensive if it was necessary to draw attention and save lives. Reading it, I thought it was counterproductive and obnoxious. They were attacking the only people who could help them!

    Here’s the thing: he was right and I was wrong. Kramer got action. Fauci recognized that in Kramer’s shoes, he’d do the same thing Kramer was doing. He prodded Fauci to come around and become a powerful ally, to change the focus of AIDS research in ways that increased the sense of urgency. And millions of lives were probably saved as a result.

  141. 141.

    J R in WV

    We lived in Fla for a couple of years in the early ’70s, then my ship was transferred to a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, which really sucked. Jim Crow was illegal, but beloved by all (the white bigots).

    Then in the late 70s and 80s my folks tried various places on the west coast of Fla, settled in Osprey, a   tiny spot just N of Venice, where the Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey Circus wintered back then. Long gone now, how times change. But we walked the beaches, and toured the state parks in the area.

    Regarding people who try to bully on the blog, I instantly put them in the pie safe, so all I see are cartoon pastries going forward.

    Cole, have a nice visit with your folks, be careful driving home across those mountain ranges in VA and Carolina. I guess they are still there?

  145. 145.

    brantl

    @gwangung: They all subconsciously think they duck it. Luck, genetically thick skulls, what ever they have to tell themselves to beat the odds, they do.

  146. 146.

    brantl

    @J R in WV: You were going to pie me for a comment I made on a thread about Nazis, where I said a comment was  too “inside baseball”, did you?

  147. 147.

    EthylEster

    @evodevo: re TrickiWoo, it was TrickyWoo. Or TrickiWoo. I’ve watched the original series a zillion times. Not sappy IMO.

    As for the new series I saw one episode and thought “That cow is fake.” Rules about what you can do to animals in a movie/TV series have changed a lot since the mid 1970s. I think the original series used real animals.

    Fun facts I ran across recently: the dogs at Skeldale house actually belonged to Robert Hardy. And James and Ellen had an offscreen affair parallel to the one in script.

  148. 148.

    kmax

    @Westyny: actually injuries are possible in curling.  In my teens sweeping with brooms (before brushes were a thing) I routinely injured my hand and wrist.  Still paying the price on that.

    Can’t count the number of people who blew out a knee while delivering a rock.

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