Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

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

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

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

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

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

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Made it Safely to Rhode Island!

Made it Safely to Rhode Island!

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Had a nice drive today despite the crappy weather and the bumper to bumper traffic from NJ onward. Don’t know how anyone puts up with that shit year round- it would make me mental. But it was nice catching up on phone calls and driving in silence and just thinking. I did listen to Little Feat- Waiting for Columbus and Pink Floyd- Animals, continuing my streak of playing those albums on every 8 hour plus car ride I have made since I dunno 1992 or so.

My hotel has a bunch of LARPers in it- apparently a literary society roleplaying books, which as far as I am concerned, removes one of the best aspects of books, which is that they work great without other fucking people. Really solid solo activity, I think. To each his own. Tomorrow, I get to meet this guy:

Made it Safely to Rhode Island! 1

Handsome fella!

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    piratedan

    good thing you got the music out of the way first, in case he turns out to be talkative, you may be in for a long conversation on the way back.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    Fingers crossed that whoever may be dressed as Tarzan is at least semi-fit.

    Tarzan: The Retirement Years don’t cut the mustard.
    :)

  3. 3.

    Mike in NC

    The best years of my life were living in Newport, RI from 1986-1989. Met the woman of my dreams in Providence, but shortly thereafter my entire office got laid off and I got relocated to corporate HQ in Rockville, Maryland. Shit happens.

  6. 6.

    CaseyL

    Ooh, the new house panther!

    That slitted-eye expression – looks like he’s been taking lessons from Tom Levenson’s Tikka.

  7. 7.

    Eljai

    I think that cat is an old soul.  It’s like he can peer into my very essence.  It’s as if he sees through all my pretenses and says “you cannot hide.  do not try.”  You’re in for some trouble, Cole.

  15. 15.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    So that cat loves you five pecks, which is 40 dry quarts. Who says that you can’t measure love? Congratulations on the new darkness that stares back at you!

    Beautiful eyes…

  17. 17.

    Origuy

    I have Sirius XM in my car. I got tired of listening to the Classic Rock Hits station, Classic Vinyl. It plays the same things over and over. The next channel over is a station called Deep Tracks, which plays the other songs on the albums, along with a lot of artists who never got high in the charts.

  20. 20.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Chris T.:

    I spent a lot of time in class staring at a Pee-Chee until my eyes glazed over so I have that crap memorized. That and modifying the artwork in disturbing ways were my bored in-class means of amusement.

  21. 21.

    twbrandt

    That’s one handsome cat!

    I am currently crashing on my friends’ couch because a winter storm has yet again knocked out power in SE Michigan, second time in a week. DTE (the local utility) needs to get its shit together.

  24. 24.

    Mike in Oly

    Looks like a Bombay. A most excellent type. Very personable and people oriented.

  27. 27.

    JWR

    @HumboldtBlue: Wow. Bet they didn’t have to pay anyone to see Ronnie Raygun lie his lying a** off speechify.

    BYW, if anyone’s up for some genuine ear-bleed, here’s Aaron Rupar’s account of the day’s events, including Nikki Haley, Matt Gaetz, and MTG, all whining the whine of the true anti-wokesters. (And f*ck Haley for her “Woke” has killed more people than any ol’ pandemic schtick. )

    Aaron Rupar
    @atrupar
    my CPAC day 2 thread begins here
    7:07 AM · Mar 3, 2023

  29. 29.

    opiejeanne

    @Redshift: What book/author are you LARPing? One of the most fun things I ever did was a Discworld convention. Both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman were in attendance at the one in Madison, WI.

  30. 30.

    opiejeanne

    @Chris T.: If you bake you find out that there is a difference between dry and wet measures. Most of the time it won’t matter, but sometimes it really does. Your measuring cups are for dry measure, like flour. Measuring pitchers, like the Pyrex ones your mom used, are for wet.

  31. 31.

    Chris T.

    @opiejeanne: Some years ago, I worried that this might be the case, so I tested measuring 1 cup of water with a dry measure and with a pyrex cup, and they both declared the same volume of water to be “one cup”. So the distinction is lost in modern-ish (1990s and later) cookware at least.

  32. 32.

    piratedan

    @Origuy: you might give Little Steven’s Underground Garage a try, a mix of older artists and their deeper cuts and newer artists that don’t suffer from the usual woes of overproduction.

  33. 33.

    Sean Nuttall

    If you love Animals, please watch Us and Them on Prime. Great versions of Dogs & Pigs 3 different ones. I went to this show & consider Dogs the best single tune I have ever seen live.

  36. 36.

    Chris T.

    I should also add that the fact that “wet” and “dry” measuring cups measured the same volume is, I think, what convinced me that there wasn’t any difference here. But apparently there was once, just as there’s now a difference between an Imperial gallon (4.546L) and US gallon (3.785L) (both values rounded to 4 significant digits after conversion to sane units).

    The fact that powdery stuff like flour packs is why recipes should use grams (weight) measures, not volumes. But that’s an entirely different hill of, er, stuff.

  43. 43.

    eclare

    @sab:   And that is why although I love to cook, the only thing I bake is cornbread, which is a sloppy batter.  The measurements have to be so precise for baking.

  44. 44.

    raven

    @eclare: My unit for the last half of my tour was the 107th Signal Company, Providence RI National Guard. They called up the guard in the wake of the King assassination and federalized 8 of them and sent them to Vietnam.

  51. 51.

    sab

    @eclare: British recipes do everything in grams. Do they weigh ingredients rather than measure them?

    I made a cake in college 40+ years ago that fell with a big bang. It was supposed to be angel food but instead had the texture of cheese. So I quit with pastries, and only baked bread and rolls after that.

    Made my first cake in many many years last month. Chocolate sauerkraut. It was fantastic, but big. I will do it again, but only as cupcakes.

  54. 54.

    eclare

    @sab:   The people on Great British Baking Show measure everything.  They are amateurs, but very experienced, so I don’t know how representative they are.

    Does the chocolate sauerkraut cake include sauerkraut?  I can’t picture that.

  55. 55.

    prostratedragon

    @eclare:  Ah, Water Valley, my paternal grandmother’s home. Most or all her family decamped to Iowa with the rail yards.

  56. 56.

    kalakal

    @sab:

    British recipes do everything in grams. Do they weigh ingredients rather than measure them?

    Yep, unless it calls for extra precision when we use pinches, sprinkles, touches, and the ever reliable “a bit”*

    American measurements confuse the hell out of me.

    * If you’re middle class a soupcon is another standby

  61. 61.

    Wanderer

    @JWR:  Friday fun fact:  Howler Monkeys are much more enjoyable to watch when they are in a tree canopy. Once they are in a confined space  there is just boring stares and even their howls are joyless. I learned this from watching them in the wild vs in a zoo.  Fun fact, the call of the Howler Monkey is one of the loudest natural soundS so even a very few of the make a deafening racket. It’s interesting to listen to the vocalizations briefly but the decibels make it impossible to listen for any length of time.

  62. 62.

    Wanderer

    @JWR:  Friday fun fact:  Howler Monkeys are much more enjoyable to watch when they are in a tree canopy. Once they are in a confined space  there is just boring stares and even their howls are joyless. I learned this from watching them in the wild vs in a zoo.  Fun fact, the call of the Howler Monkey is one of the loudest natural soundS so even a very few of the make a deafening racket. It’s interesting to listen to the vocalizations briefly but the decibels make it impossible to listen for any length of time.

  64. 64.

    kalakal

    @NotMax:

    @SteveinPHX:

    Heh, the place names caused me problems back in England

    Tehachapi to Tonepah

    became Tehachapeka torn apart

    and I always heard it as weak white sand wine

  66. 66.

    sab

    @kalakal: Huh? Tehachapi is California, high in the mountains. Tonopah is Nevada, near Las Vegas, wants to secede from the state and the country.

  67. 67.

    sab

    @kalakal: Jamie Oliver’s butter measurements utterly confuse me. My mom absolutely loved butter, but even she found British butter usage excessive.

    ETA How much is a “knob” of butter? I would guess a tablespoon, but not being a Brit I might be way underestimating.

  69. 69.

    OverTwistWillie

    @piratedan:

    One of their few channels that doesn’t suffer from meh curation. Music Choice is far better in quality and quantity, and even has blurbs for esoteric subjects like champagne orchestra leaders. Unfortunately their curated streams are only available with a cable or sat TV subscription.

  70. 70.

    Mark

    @sab: You need to read the recipe carefully; there’s a critical difference in weight between a “cup of sifted flour” and “sift a cup of flour”.

  72. 72.

    SteveinPHX

    @NotMax: Whites were were also called white crosses because they had lines across the tablet to facilitate splitting into quarters, if necessary.

    Kept truck drivers and adventurous college students who knew where to cop, awake. At least, I think that’s how I remember it!

  73. 73.

    dnfree

    King Arthur flour recipes weigh dry ingredients.

    ETA that my scale has a button to select pounds or kilograms.

  74. 74.

    sab

    I do hope Cole keeps that cat inside for the first few weeks. Also too: Steve will be pissed. Maine coons don’t like other cats. They like people.

  75. 75.

    sab

    @eclare: It does include sauerkraut, very drained. I couldn’t picture it either, but it was excellent. Very moist and not sour at all. Also, used regular flour not cake flour. Hint to me that not that difficult.

  79. 79.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    Yeah, based on watching Jamie Oliver grab a knob of butter, it’s way more than a tablespoon. 😹

  80. 80.

    Sandia Blanca

    @kalakal: my husband and I love Thursday Next. We are planning to attend the JodiWorld convention in Coventry this June, where two of our favorite authors,  Jodi Taylor and Jasper Fforde will be in attendance. Sort of a meta LARP event!

  81. 81.

    Steeplejack

    @OverTwistWillie:

    Kudos for the mention of the Music Choice channels on cable. The ones I have listened to are surprisingly good.

    SiriusXM is up and down. Some channels are kind of bland, others are very good. My metric is a good mix of the channel genre’s “hits” with deep cuts and overlooked relics. For channels that aspire to be all deep cuts—e.g., Deep Tracks and Underground Garage—the bar is higher, of course.

    Not a popular genre here, but Willie’s Roadhouse is good for country.

  82. 82.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: Jackals at night like country when we are not slicing and dicing the newbies

    ETA Our blogmaster is in WVA after all. Being from Ohio, we laugh at West Virginians because they are so much like us.

  84. 84.

    ninja3000

    John, that’s one beautiful cat, looks like he could take Steve two falls out of three. BTW, go back to Rhode Island in the middle of summer when it’s the greatest place in the world.

  85. 85.

    karen marie

    I hope John Cole takes advantage of being in Rhode Island and fills up on delightful foodstuffs. Grey’s Ice Cream in Tiverton is a dream. Don’t get me started on the mom and pop bakeries. And the clams – I miss them dearly.

  86. 86.

    RevRick

    Hey John, I don’t know which route you took to get to Rhode Island, but DO NOT take I-95 through NYC. Instead, get off 95 at Milford CT (about 10 miles past New Haven) and get on the Merritt Parkway. It’s less likely to be bumper-to-bumper, no commercial trucks are allowed, and it’s a helluva lot more scenic. From there get on I-287 west, circumnavigating NYC, going over the Mario Cuomo Bridge (formerly the Tappan Zee). About 10 miles past the bridge 287 separates from 87 again and heads south into Jersey and 40 miles from there you can pick up I-78 west to I-81 to the PA Tpk in Carlisle.

    Of course, you may already know this, but I know GPS directions often insist on taking you through NYC, which is insane. My when my SIL and BIL come to visit us in Allentown from Maine, I always have to correct his directions which want to take him thru NYC.

  87. 87.

    ninja3000

    @karen marie: As a former resident of Little Compton, Gray’s has been a regular treat for me for… decades! For clams (and clamcakes!), it’s always Evelyn’s.

  90. 90.

    AnnaN

    Awwww, man.  Almost two years ago I moved across country from RI to CA.  Would have loved to meet up with you on this cat-fetch and treated you to some awesome Italian food on Atwells Avenue in Providence.

  91. 91.

    AnnaN

    @RevRick: I cannot okay this enough.  I drove plenty of times from RI to Frederick, MD and skipping 95 was imperative, as was the Cuomo bridge route and avoiding NYC altogether.

  92. 92.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @RevRick: co-signed on taking the Tappan Zee/Mario Cuomo bridge and avoiding NYC. On our last trip back from up north, we got turned around after coming across a bridge in NYC and wound up heading back north on the NJ parkway, and stopped at Palisades State Park for lunch and to turn around.

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