Bill and I went out for breakfast this morning and got ambushed by a sermon. This unpleasant start to the day occurred at our favorite breakfast café, an unpretentious place in courthouse square.
There’s a room in the back of the diner that seats about 20 or so. It has large double doors that are never closed because the restrooms are off that room, which keeps it from functioning as a private banquet area.
Unbeknownst to us, it was serving as a men’s Christian study group breakfast this morning. The server seated us at a table about five feet outside the door, me facing the group and Bill with his back to them.
At first, the group members were just eating and talking like everyone else, so nothing seemed off. Just after we’d put in our order, a man rose from one of the group’s tables.
Dressed casually in a tight-fitting polo shirt, jeans and white New Balance sneakers, he ostentatiously carried a large Bible and a clipboard containing papers that were copiously tagged with post-its to a table in the back and began holding forth in a loud, booming voice.
We tried to ignore it and carry on our own conversation, but it was hard.
The preacher identified himself as a Fox News-watching asshole early in his discourse, when he described foreigners arriving at the U.S. border and just brazenly expecting to waltz into the country as one of America’s most daunting challenges.
It got worse. Jesus would have puked!
At our table, trying to distract myself and make amusing observations that would keep Bill from rising to tell the man to shut the fuck up, I described the increasingly desperate fidgeting of a pair of unfortunate boys in the group. They created a table hockey game using butter knives, sugar packets, jelly tubs and creamers until their father (I assume) admonished them.
It reminded me of the obnoxious antics my sister and I engaged in when forced to endure our maternal grandfather’s interminable sermons as children. Granddaddy was fun and indulgent at home, but he was a hellfire and brimstone Southern Baptist preacher who held forth at great length, and that’s a lot when you’re six and seven years old.
Anyhoo, I also thought of this passage from Wuthering Heights, a dream sequence in which an exasperated parishioner rebels during a marathon sermon called Seventy Times Seven:
Oh, how weary I grew. How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and revived! How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he (the reverend) would EVER have done. I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reached the “FIRST OF THE SEVENTY-FIRST.”
At that crisis, a sudden inspiration descended on me; I was moved to rise and denounce (the Reverend) Jabez Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon.
“Sir,” I exclaimed, “Sitting here within these four walls, at one stretch, I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse. Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and been about to depart – Seventy times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat. The four hundred and ninety-first is too much.
Fellow-martyrs, have at him! Drag him down, and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!”
My guess is Emily Brontë endured many lengthy sermons too.
The meeting concluded while Bill was at the counter paying the check and I was finishing my coffee. I heard the preacher tell someone the meeting was held on the first Saturday of every month. I won’t forget.
Open thread.
RepubAnon
Funny how so many of these critters calling themselves “Christians” don’t believe in any of Christ’s teachings. It’s almost as though they really worship the AntiChrist.
Dorothy A. Winsor
For anyone looking for something to read, I finished The Diamond Eye, a novel based on a true story about a woman sniper in the Russian army at the start of WWII. I hadn’t realized I could be that fascinated by the technical detail involved in being a sniper. In 1942, the woman’s kill record (over 300 confirmed) led to her being part of a delegation to DC to try to influence FDR to support the Russians.
Now I’m reading Yellowface (the Asian equivalent of blackface) about a writer who convinces herself she has the right to do a bunch of very bad things, bad both as a writer and as a human being. My whole experience with publishing makes me read this through my fingers over my eyes because this will not turn out well. FAFO. But the unreliable narrator is very well done.
Karen S.
And yet they claim to be so persecuted. Was he dragged out of the place in chains? Was he thrown to any lions? No? They really are tiresome creatures, sanctimonious Christians I mean, not lions.
Juju
Sorry your breakfast was ruined. At least you weren’t on a plane.
J
Evelyn Waugh on the coronation mass of Haile Selassie (paraphrase from memory): ‘I sat next to an American expert on the Coptic rite. After the celebrants had gone on for a very long time, he leaned over and said “this is the credo”, after another long stretch, he said ‘this is the Homily”, then after more time had passed “this is is the Eucharist”, and then the mass began.
Fans of P.G. Wodehouse will remember Joy in the Morning, in which Bertie Wooster organizes a betting syndicate. Bets are placed on the times of the sermons delivered by local vicars. He wins by praising a local clergyman’s particularly lengthy sermon, which he remembers–he claims fondly–from his youth.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
On Christmas Eve, 2001, my church was subjected to some old fossil substitute priest who droned on about all he evil in the world. Apparently, he’d never learned the “gospel” is Greek for good news, and that night might have been a good time for a message of hope.
Changed churches not long after that.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Two suggestions: The book “Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper” and the film “Battle for Sevastopol”, both about Lyudmila Pavlichenko. The first is autobiographical, the second lightly fictionalized.
Omnes Omnibus
Trump ordered to respond by 5:00pm Monday. That is an extremely short turn around time in the legal world. Judge Chutkan is not fucking around.
narya
There’s a passage in Samuel Butler’s “The Way of all Flesh” that describes a preacher droning on to his kids on Sunday; Butler likens it to a bee that goes from flower to flower on wallpaper–i.e., repeating the forms without any of the substance or meaning. I haven’t read the book in decades, but that scene has stuck with me, and I think of it whenever I read/hear about preachers going on and on and on.
narya
@Omnes Omnibus: I read the government’s request and was impressed that they basically said, we wanna be able to hand over ALL discovery, not just what is required at this time, but we want controls over it so TIFG isn’t blathering about it publicly.
hueyplong
@Omnes Omnibus: Here’s hoping Trump spends the rest of the day contemplating how this quick order correlates to a trial date.
Anoniminous
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Lyudmila Pavlichenko aka “Lady Death” is famous. She was one of the deadliest snipers* in history. A very good film of her war experience is The Battle for Sevastopol.
* usually glossed as “deadliest female snipers” by those who do that sort of thing as if having boobs means jack shit about her combat competence
ETA: Comrade Scrutinizer got there first but I included a link to the film’s trailer so I win. There. neener-neener
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Thanks for the recs. The book’s afterword talks about “Stalin’s Sniper,” which I believe was the primary source Kate Quinn used. It’s a fascinating story.
Omnes Omnibus
I’ve never seen the point of a long sermon/homily/whateverthefuck. If you want to impart a lesson to your congregants, I would think you would want to be succinct and clear. Otherwise you risk the TL;DR syndrome. Then again, I don’t write fourteen paragraph blog comments, and I have seldom written legal briefs that hit the max page limit.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Anoniminous: Comrade Scrutinizer made the same recs! I didn’t realize this woman was so well known.
dmsilev
@Karen S.: It is tiresome, isn’t it? Like, there are times and places where Christians have genuinely been a persecuted minority, but the US in 2023 sure isn’t one of them.
Scout211
Betty, I always identify and empathize with your stories of living in a red rural area. We’ve been out here in the boonies for 15 years and are still surprised sometimes. In California!
Just a few examples:
I volunteered at the main library here in the county library system after I retired, for about five years. I really love libraries and I loved being able to help out wherever they needed me. And they needed me everywhere. LOL. Most of the patrons were fine. But most the staff there were just hard to be around.
One of the staff screamed at the top of her lungs in the back room (which echoed throughout the library), “I hate Hillary! I hate Hillary!” That was right before the election of 2016. And that was not her first Hillary hating diatribe.
Another staff person was the wife of a local pastor. She was extremely upset when cataloging new books that had LGTBQ+ characters and themes and didn’t mind sharing her “concerns” with anyone who would listen to her. Loudly. Sigh.
The new library director that came on board was a Democrat. But when she came up to me to share a great quote from David F*CKING Brooks, I just gave up.
I am glad I had the experience, as much as I love public libraries, but I have never regretted quitting.
The End
MattF
Trump is inviting a reprimand from the court.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MattF: I hope so.
Chief Oshkosh
My brother and I got caught in a similar situation many years ago. Super weird human beings, and really sobering hear just how fucked up they are.
And scared of everything.
kalakal
High Anglicans aka “Bells and Smells” are the UKs sect of choice for Protestants who really want to be Catholics. They bow to no one in their determination to drag out sermons and ceremonies to inordinate length. I once had the misfortune to go to a HA wedding, the sermon was aural Mogadon.
Betty, my profound sympathies for what you and Bill had to endure
E.
@narya: There is a great passage in Emerson’s Divinity School Address about a preacher delivering a sermon of “thoughtless clamor” during a snowstorm: “The snowstorm was real; the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow.”
AM in NC
You are a calmer person than I am, Betty.
I have pretty much decided that Imma be one of those people – you know, the obnoxious ones who won’t let that bullshit go unchallenged in public anymore. If I see something, I say something now. I don’t want the Christofascists thinking that they are a majority of Americans OR a majority of Christians, and I want “unaffiliated” bystanders to see Americans standing up to Christofascists wherever they rear their very ugly heads.
I’m counting on the fact that I’m a gray-haired suburban white lady to protect me from getting shot.
trollhattan
My God [heh] Betty, you’ve stumbled across the Gemstones’ Jason’s Steakhouse!
I know where they keep the money, in case that helps.
Anoniminous
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh yes, very much so. She even has her own action figure.
cain
@RepubAnon:
This post is practically an invitation to a regular here who is very anti-Christian :D
I think I’m more disappointed in the liberal / progressive christian denominations who do not stand up against these folks. Like fascists they are – they are taking over every symbolic thing in America – the flag, the church, the military, and patriotism.
Just so you know the harm being caused – these folks not being able to go against LGBTQ+ community here – have exported that shit to Africa. It’s why I can’t organize an open source conference in Africa because it won’t be safe for our LBGTQ+ friends.
trollhattan
@Scout211: Your cast has a real ’70s sitcom vibe. Feel free to send the script back to the writers for a 21st century treatment.
oatler
@Omnes Omnibus
The congregants probably stare at their lap phones throughout.
kalakal
I found this interesting today. I’ll have to try some Vietnamese coffee
BBC News – Starbucks Vietnam: Why the US chain cannot crack a coffee-loving nation
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66167222
cain
@narya: That sounds like Trump is only one of the targets – they want him scared so he’ll give up others. I think they have many targets in mind. This is going to be a hunt. This is going to go on for awhile. We need to make sure that we keep the presidency in Dem hands.
trollhattan
Nature drama set in our backyard. Our bird dog informed me this a.m. that mourning doves have nested in the persimmon, an offense with which he will not up put. I am now tasked with keeping him from making them flee so they can instead hatch and raise those two eggs. Not liking my odds.
cain
@MattF: I hope the court accepts his invitation. It would be rude not to.
UncleEbeneezer
Leviticus 19:33-34
33 “ ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.
Nelle
@Omnes Omnibus: A favorite family story from the early 1950’s: mu oldest sister was about four when the preacher began one of his lengthy prayers. On and on it went, until my sister could bear it no more. “Amen, already!” she yelled. “Amen, Amen, already.”
If caught in that situation, one needs a small truth-teller.
NotMax
@kalakal
And then there’s Finnish coffee.
;)
cain
@kalakal: I always find it ridiculous that starbucks is remotely successful in places like India. The american brands are worshipped and going there is some funny form of showing off – but it’s not good as the stuff you get at the roadside shops. I’ll take a Bru instant over a starbucks any day.
Also, my wife was on the warpath yesterday (speaking of american brands) she subscribes to all the British shows and noticed that how Brits speak and the word choice as changed. For instance, they use the word ‘trucks’ instead of ‘lorry’ – so basically they are adjusting these shows for the American market while diminishing their own cultural branding.
The same thing with The Witcher series – the producer was complaining that Americans don’t understand nuance or anything that isn’t American centric and so a lot of things don’t make sense to them. He was kinda pissed.
We are a bunch of idiots collectively. But we are a lucrative market.
UncleEbeneezer
@kalakal: You can get an amazing Cafe Sua Da (Vietnamese coffee with sweetened/condensed milk) EVERYWHERE in Vietnam for practically pennies. And up in Hanoi they have Egg Coffees. Good coffee is so easy to find in Vietnam that I just can’t fathom why anyone would even bother going to Starbucks.
Butch
When we first moved into our old farmhouse we got lots of visits from local church groups. I finally got some copies of “How to come out to your parents” and would hand them out to these folks; the visits stopped pretty quickly.
Elizabelle
@ Betty Cracker: you and Bill are better people than I am. I would have had to ask to be moved, or to take the meal to go. My condolences. Good you can avoid them in the future.
@Scout211: Ugh. And the Bobo Brooks anecdote is the icing on an unpalatable cake.
I am not sure why these wingnuts feel the need to proselytize like this. A friend has given up volunteering with a local plant sale fundraiser because she encountered one, and it was so unpleasant.
jimmiraybob
@MattF:
Martyrs gotta get martyred.
Nukular Biskits
Reminds me of that meme about being a terrible person … in the eyes of religious extremists:
A Chaotic Combination of Mixed-Up Memes
Can’t find the single meme I want … look @ #51.
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: My ex had a weird prejudice against French coffee and insisted on going to Starbucks in Paris for coffee (I was embarrassed to be an American in a Starbucks in Paris). She did not do it Italy.
Elizabelle
@UncleEbeneezer: I love Vietnamese coffee! Have never been to Viet Nam. Yet.
Also bubble tea. Yum.
Nukular Biskits
@Butch:
Many years ago, in another life, got a visit from a couple of women from a nearby SBC church just up the road.
Being polite, invited them in. They asked if we attended church and we told them we were in between churches. When they asked where had we previously attended, I responded “ZYZ Church of God”. Both women were dumbstruck … the only COG congregations they had ever heard of were those in Appalachia which featured snake-handling, which, of course, they then asked if we handled snakes.
They had never heard of the denomination that was based in Anderson, Indiana. Of course, I just couldn’t let that go by without having some fun.
We never saw them again. So sad … Anyway …
HumboldtBlue
Hallelujah, sweet Lord Jesus, let’s share some gravy and biscuits and throw down some thunderbolts from Corinthians!
Thou shall not allow thine syrup to touch the sausages nor the toast, lest ye burn in the fires of the Devil’s kitchen!
No man shall place tomatoes and mushrooms on a breakfast plate, we are children of the Lord, not flea-ridden, blue-painted Britons who EAT BEANS FOR BREAKFAST! NOT EVEN THE PHILISTINES DO THAT!
Keep holy the day of the egg, for thine eggs shall be scrambled, or easy, or poached, but hear me well, none of that undercooked egg slop they serve in Japan where they just spin the egg around a chopstick and then lay that mess on your plate as if undercooked egg were manna!
A letter from Mark to the Hungry Diners. And so sayeth the Lord, the first Saturday of each month shall be devoted to [preaching to the heathen as he ignores the glory of the lord for a mimosa and a dish of fresh fruit!
Let us pray, Lord, we beseech thee that when we must endure to presence of the unholy we are loudly and proudly intrusive as to ensure those heathens hear the glorious word that will save their souls from the perdition of hell, or whatever its called when you’re stuck listening to a goddamn right-wing preacher when all you wanted to do was eat breakfast with Bill.
I am still a bit shaken your husband’s name is Bill. Thought he was much more an Antonio, or Pascal maybe even Guillermo, but no., it’s Bill, from accounting.
And here I thought he was a pirate.
OzarkHillbilly
Heh: On slavery: Gov. DeSantis and his crack education team are all about facts
Closing with:
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue:
A Full English breakfast is a thing of beauty. You need to take a few deep breaths and go for a walk.
Nukular Biskits
@Elizabelle:
The only “foreign” coffee that I’ve ever had was in Japan, Mexico and Panama.
All excellent, nothing like what you can get here.
Geminid
From Brian Tyler Cohen, @NoLieWithBTC:
I think about 21 Republican Senators voted for the Infrastructure bill, but only 13 House Republicans did. Of the latter, Katko, Reed, Gonzalez, Kinsinger and Upton retired, and Young died last year. That leaves only 7 House members who can honestly claim credit for a project in their district.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Ah, so you’re a kippers man.
;)
Juju
@UncleEbeneezer: I can’t fathom why anyone anywhere would go to a Starbucks, they make horrible burnt bean tasting coffee.
HumboldtBlue
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Women warriors were prevalent throughout the Soviet military. Units such as the Night Witches:
FastEdD
I was enjoying looking at an old Model A this morning at the car show Donut Derelicts in HB. An old crusty guy looked at me and said, “You look like a foreigner. Are you an American?” I told him I used to work right down the street for 34 years. “You look like a communist,” he replied. Asshole.
NotMax
Another shoe drops.
October 2nd trial date is “set in stone” per the judge.
Brachiator
@Karen S.:
Maybe somebody can bring some lions to the next scheduled meeting.
zhena gogolia
@cain: What are the liberal/progressive churches, whose congregations are melting away to nothingness, supposed to do?
lollipopguild
@Nukular Biskits: I have a nephew who is a hospital chaplain down in Georgia, several years ago he worked at the University of Kentucky hospital in Lexington Ky. He got to meet a lot of snake handling preachers who were bitten by snakes.
BeautifulPlumage
@Brachiator: it’s Florida, shouldn’t that be alligators?
OzarkHillbilly
@FastEdD: My response: “You look like an asshole. You must be a Republican.”
Juju
@Omnes Omnibus: Since you seem to be familiar with the English breakfast, what is that thing that looks like a hockey puck?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@HumboldtBlue: The book mentions the Night Witches. I was interested in the degree to which the USSR included women in the military right from the start of the war. Not on equal terms, of course. But it appeared to be part of the Communist ideal (to the degree it was ever met).
moops
I would have told the preacher that his hate speech was not welcome in our shared dining environment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Juju: Black pudding. Don’t ask.
Nukular Biskits
@lollipopguild:
In my travels, I’ve never met anyone who admitted/bragged about attending one of those churches. I know they exist, though.
I just can’t fathom that level of stupidity.
Growing up in a rural area, I developed a healthy respect for all snakes, venomous and not. I don’t fear them and, generally, I leave them be as they serve a vital purpose in the grand scheme of things. On occasion, though, I’ve had to kill a few (moccasins) because I had young children at the time and pets.
Most snakes prefer to avoid people but, in my experience, the larger/older moccasins tend to be a little territorial and aren’t open to negotiations.
What were we talking about ???? LOL! Oh, yeah, religion and snakes.
MattF
@Omnes Omnibus: Ha. So they say…
kalakal
@cain:
For decades there has been this terrible phenomenon whereby UK culture would try to produce stuff that would appeal to both the UK and the US by diluting the UK part of it. They nearly always ended crashing in mid-Atlantic and appealing to nobody. It was espescially noticable with comedians and comedies who managed the feat of being unfunny in multiple cultures. The smart ones either kept the concept but did a full adaption eg The Office, Steptoe & Son = Sanford & Son, Till Death Us Do Part = All in the family. Didn’t always work, for your own sakes do not, repeat not, watch the US version of Fawlty Towers and they made a real hash with the Dr Who relaunch film in 1996.
Or they just did themselves and either knocked it out of the park or bombed
Eddie Izzard explains
HumboldtBlue
@Juju:
It’s nasty, is what it is, just like the entire full English.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It very much was a Soviet ideal, as you point out — to the degree it was ever met.
Juju
@Omnes Omnibus: That bad?
Old Man Shadow
You should have opened up Matthew 25 and loudly read it in their direction.
Juju
@HumboldtBlue: Oh my!
Glidwrith
@Butch: Husband has the habit of engaging the religious persons going door-to-door and accepting their literature. Notably, the first pair had been young men.
The second pair were women.
Unfortunately for them, I was the one that opened the door.
Once I told them I could give eternal life through the miracle of cloning, they never came back.
I wonder why?
kalakal
@Nukular Biskits: Greek coffees great.
Drink only in very small amounts, if you let go of the spoon while stirring it will remain upright. I love the coffee around the Eastern Med
Omnes Omnibus
@Juju: It is quite tasty.
Baud
@Old Man Shadow: At first, I didn’t realize the oil jars was for the lamps.
MomSense
Sitting on the balcony at my son and DIL’s place. They are in California and I’m watching the grand dog today. It’s warm with a nice breeze off the river.
Sorry about the preacher this morning. The Republican Fox ideology is not compatible with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s horrible how they have done such evil in his name. He was a poor rabbi who taught love, care for the stranger, and economic Justice.
NotMax
@kalakal
Case could be made that being subjected to the pilot for the American version of Red Dwarf is cruel and unusual punishment.
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a mystery to me why the full Highland Scottish Breakfast has never caught on internationally ( or even in Scotland). There’s so many great things you can do with Oats, the best being eat something else.
Betty Cracker
@Nukular Biskits: Bill loves snakes and makes fun of me for being afraid of them, but he did have to reluctantly dispatch a large moccasin that slithered through the fence into the yard a few years ago. It was aggressively resistant to his attempts to drive it back toward the river, and we have smallish dogs. When we replace that section of fence at some point in the future, we’re considering a chicken wire border or something at the bottom to discourage moccasins.
kalakal
@NotMax: I didn’t even know they’d made one. I’ll happily avoid, thanks for the tip
Uncle Cosmo
Really. Tell me, what part of Matthew 28: 19-20 are you having trouble with?
Jesus commands them to proselytize, and keep at it until “all nations” have been taught “to obey everything that [he has] commanded [them].”
IMO these are the most pernicious verses in the Bible – for a proselytizing religion is by definition an intolerant religion, or more precisely a religion that is only as tolerant of other faiths (or lacks thereof) as is needed to keep itself and its faithful from being wiped off the faith (;^D) of the earth – and tolerant only until said religion is temporally powerful enough to be unassailable.
(FTR, it is my considered opinion that any belief system that shunts aside its spirituality to pursue temporal power has already corrupted itself irretrievably. That happened to Christianity in Constantine’s reign – and to Islam when it was founded – among doGonlynose how many others…)
brantl
Don’t. Please. They’re dumber and meaner than rocks.
kalakal
@Juju: No, it’s pretty good.
Nukular Biskits
@kalakal:
Back when I used to work for a company whose name rhymes with Mockheed Lartin, I attended a 2-week training class in Norfolk, VA, which is where my home office and manager was.
My manager was a 2nd generation Italian-American (his folks came over from the Old Country), stereotypical in appearance and mannerisms (talked with both hands, quick to spin up but also spin down, etc). He invited me and another employee over to his house for a REAL Italian meal the night before I returned home. The only thing I can remember with any certainty was real homemade shrimp scampi but there was a lot of other -inis, -olis, etc, that this rural hick from BFE, MS, had never heard of. Great food, way too much for just four people (me, fellow employee, mgr & his wife).
Anyway, after dinner, he brought out his grandmother’s espresso set and made us coffee in the little cups, with some kind of liqueur. Damn that was good! So good, I had another … then another.
I couldn’t sleep that night and was so wired I could feel my hair growing.
Marcopolo
Apologies in advance since I realize college football isn’t the most discussed thing on the blog but apparently the PAC 12 imploded this past week & is now the PAC 4. Of course, it was all about schools wanting to get the most money from league broadcast deals but I wonder about a couple things:
Are the schools going to fly teams that don’t bring in the views/bucks around the country for league competition or just drop the sports? And what about the athletes families who could once make the effort to see their kids play when it was day’s drive but now that’s mostly out of the question. Also, so much for all those historic team/school rivalries.
Anyways, curious to hear others thoughts & happy to share some non politics news.
kalakal
@Nukular Biskits: Same with me first time I had it. one cup “wow that’s good” , second cup “oh yeah”, third cup nervous system flashes up “TILT”
Nukular Biskits
@Betty Cracker:
Growing up here in MS, I think I’ve seen only one coral snake (on the Coast). The rest of the venomous snakes were copperheads, rattlers and moccasins.
Most of the time in my experience, rattlers, copperheads and young moccasins will retreat if they can. Older, larger rattlesnakes would occasionally hold their ground but at least they’ll give you fair warning.
Large moccasins, however, can be quite aggressive and their dark coloration topside has caused me to get far closer to them than I’d otherwise have liked because they were difficult to spot while laying/floating motionless.
I don’t dislike them. But I sure as hell don’t like being surprised by them.
Uncle Cosmo
@kalakal: @Omnes Omnibus: Says who? I find it utterly undrinkable, heavily sugared and half mud left in the bottom of the cup.
(Seriously, what part of de gustibus non est disputandum was omitted from your educations?)
Benno
@cain:
Until a couple of years ago there was a coffee shop in Karachi called Sattarbuksh. They even had a nice business center with free wifi upstairs, at the time a real boon to have available.
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: Turkiye has its own renowned coffee culture. So when a graphic appeared in 2020 that mapped out Starbucks locations in Europe, some people were surprised to see that Turkiye’s 500 Starbucks locations were second only to Great Britain’s.
The Daily Sabah asked the experts how this could be. Some said it was a matter of conspicuous consumption, but others discounted this. Starbucks had a new and different coffee culture, they said. Instead of taking time with friends or family to enjoy some Turkish coffee and a sweet, someone could order a coffee at Starbucks and then interact with their laptop computer.
And Starbucks customers could get go-cups; most Turkish cafés didn’t have go-cups, an unsociable artifact of Western impatience.
Dan B
@Omnes Omnibus: Love Black Pudding. Must be the transylvanian ancestors. I also love trying new foods which has led to some “memories”. Korean jellyfish salad, approx 1/4 raw garlic by volume. Still much less satisfying than Black Pudding.
Jackie
@hueyplong: He has an event today in S. Carolina. I wonder if he tones down or doubles down on his rhetoric.
Nukular Biskits
@Geminid:
I understand Turkish coffee can be quite … bracing.
Juju
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll take your word for it until I get a chance to try it myself.
BellaPea
We were in a restaurant in Jackson, TN several years ago with my parents. There was a middle-aged man and three teenagers in the booth next to us. He was just preaching away, almost nonstop, the whole time we were there. It was nuts. I try to avoid these people whenever possible, but there are tons of fundies in the state, unfortunately.
Uncle Cosmo
@Nukular Biskits: May I suggest that in non-bureaucratic language, the name of that corporation is most appropriately rendered as Blockhead-Moron. Along with General Demonics and Boing-Boing.
glc
@kalakal:
Wait, what?
Not going to Google that, ever. I’m just going to go with the theory that you made that up, and leave the matter there. Lord have mercy on your soul.
The Pale Scot
Speaking as a Celtic Catholic that grew up in a Polish parish*, Mt Carmel, Bayonne NJ, It’s about Apostolic Succession. If you can’t prove your church hierarchy descends from St Peter’s Jerusalem parish, your just a godless pagan cult, “Upon this rock I will build my church”. Any yammering idiot who can memorize a couple paragraphs can be a American protestant reverend.
* Nobody is more hardcore than a Polish priest. I was in kindergarten when the mothers who ran the cafeteria threatened to strike because one young priest kept giving away the clothes they bought for him, his shoes and clothes he wore were 1/2 holes. That’s a Christian.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uncle Cosmo: Actually, you pretentious twit, I was talking about blood pudding. And if it’s sweet and you are trying to drink it, something has gone badly wrong. But do lecture me about taste.
kalakal
@Uncle Cosmo: I leave out the sugar, I have a totally non sweet tooth. It’s the incredibly strong coffee flavour I love.
I’m very simple when it comes to coffee, I think the only ingredients should be coffee and water. It’s why I avoid starbucks, they go out of their way to sell you anything except that
I agree with you about the mud at the bottom.
Omnes was talking about the fine and noble dish that is black pudding not Greek coffee
ETA he got there first
Jackie
@MattF: “And…… Trump team has just asked for a delay,” CBS News Congressional Correspondent Scott MacFarlane reported on Saturday. “They want 3 extra days (til Thursday) to respond to court about proposed ‘protective order’ in the Jan 6 case.”
This is getting good! Who all thinks “request denied” will be issued in short order?
Brachiator
@Nukular Biskits:
Had some wonderful coffee some years ago at a restaurant in Manzanillo.
Dan B
@Glidwrith: Traveling to Texas with my partner and his mother we stopped in Salt Lake City and his mom wanted to check on genealogy. A young woman engaged her and it became an obvious proselytizing pitch. I said in an operatic voice that, “This is my lover. We are gay and do not like the church. And we have to get to Moab so are leaving now!” The visitor’s center got quiet.
kalakal
@glc: It’s a thing and it is far, far worse than you can possibly imagine
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: The coffee is one of the reasons I would like to visit Istanbul some day. Another is the cats.
gwangung
@Marcopolo: Professionally, I help raise money for University of Washington athletics. My opinion is that this is going to hurt students as their travel time will increase greatly, but help in that they get more places to travel. Alumni will cautiously accept but be pissed that the Apple Cup no longer is something that counts for the league standings.
Personally, as a Stanford alum, I’m putting up with a wailing from the alums about losing the southern Cal teams and the chance to compete at the elite level (and the teams HAVE been at that level recently). They might try to go the Notre Dame route, but I dunno how that will work out.
Haven’t a clue how that will work out on the women’s side, but I always got the feeling the programs and boosters were a lot more sane about things.
RevRick
Just got back from a tour (self-guided) of the site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School at the Carlisle Army Barracks. The army was no help, other than granting us a pass to the base. But knowing that 4,000-5,000 Native American children passed through it in the forty years it operated from 1879-1918, and seeing the graves of the 230 children who died there was, in its own way, moving. It was all part of the misguided, white supremacy crusade to “kill the Indian and make the man.” The boys and girls quarters have been demolished, but the Academic building and many others still remain (including “Pop” Warner’s quarters, who coached Jim Thorpe).
Jackie
@NotMax: No jury. It will be tried by the bench! Donny’s NOT gonna like that!
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: 1/2″ Hardware cloth. 24″ width, would do the trick. But it won’t be cheap.
Betty Cracker
@Marcopolo: I’ve only heard fleeting references to what’s happening with the conference reshuffle, but your question about how it will affect teams that aren’t football is an excellent one. What the actual hell?
NotMax
@kalakal
Actually, two pilots were produced. Well, a full pilot and a subsequent presentation reel.
Tony Jay
@Juju:
Black pudding is delicious if cooked crispy on the outside and soft in the middle; like a savoury, spicy disk of taste enhancer. Overdone it can turn into bitter shrapnel and be fit only for dogs or the Welsh*
The Full English is a joy and an experience that is wasted on breakfast. It’s just too filling and there’s so much of it all you want to do afterwards is cradle your belly and have a bit of a snooze. We tend to have it for tea once in a while as a treat. Sort of soul food for the English middle-aged set.
* I keed, of course. The Welsh aren’t omnivores.
Sister Golden Bear
ChatGPT is at useful for one thing, a fellow trans woman asked it to create a fake Biblical passage about Jesus accepting trans people. I’m gonna tell the Bible humpers it’s from Luke 15;4-9, since they never read the whole Bible anyway.
p.a.
Longest church service I ever had to endure, and I was too young to drive so I couldn’t escape, was at my local Catholic church (large parish) when the priest went over the yearly budget as part of the reading. Every line, every item, of the annual budget. I’m sure this is nothing to anyone raised with Calvinist stemwinders, but for us it was looooonnnng. I suppose anyone concerned about ensuring legit spending would appreciate it.
The Pale Scot
Bear spray, works great on deer and any other critter. They remember that shit and never come back
Nukular Biskits
@Brachiator:
Pulled in there for a few days when supporting a US Navy ship.
Nice little town. Great food!
Nukular Biskits
@The Pale Scot:
How many bears do they use to make that?
<rimshot>
Dan B
@Juju: There’s no blood taste but it has a savory / umami character. It’s not as pronounced as a steak or burger by any means.
Papa Boyle
You all may pretend he didn’t do it, but Jesus famously spooled out barbed wire in the border rivers to drown the illegals of his day.
I’m having trouble finding an example in the gospels of Jesus actually laying barbed wire to back up what I am saying, but assume I’m right until I say otherwise.
Kelly
@Marcopolo: Duck alumnus here. A conference that spans 4 time zones seems a bit awkward. I just checked flights from Eugene to New Brunswick, NJ (Rutgers). The shortest flight time is 7.5 hours. So a full day of travel on either side of a competition. Uncle Phil Knight (Nike) has donated vast sums to his alma mater, U of Oregon. Perhaps a billion dollars. Without his money Ducks would be in the PAC-5. I suspect his fingerprints are all over this.
I somewhat miss my hapless, occasionally surprising Ducks of the 1970’s when I attended there.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear: That’s good!
middlelee
What does TIFG stand for?
Omnes Omnibus
@middlelee: The Indicted Former Guy
kalakal
@middlelee: The Indicted Former Guy
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: And your speedy fingers strike again!
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: @kalakal: See what going through all the trouble to bold got you?
Ken
I have a small collection of “family trees” of the Christian denominations. They are amusing because in every case, there is one single straight trunk leading upward from the first-century church to the very top, where sits… well, whatever denomination had the thing printed. All the other denominations are little stubby side branches somewhere below.
Sebastian
@RepubAnon:
They should be taxed as the political organizations that they are.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
One might say they choose to eat caerphilly.
;)
UncleEbeneezer
Barbie and Fight Club (Spoilers):
Dan B
@Kelly: Besides Oregon all the teams the UW would play are at least three hours flight away and many would be seven if you count security and check in.
Sister Golden Bear
@HumboldtBlue: Worth mentioning that the reason the Night Witches glided in silently was the pilots intentionally cut the engine. Restating the engine wasn’t guaranteed. Ovaries of steel.
OzarkHillbilly
Coup Coup Ca-choo. I swear, Doug is mainlining the NYT.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan B:
Yeah, you’re going to need a new abbreviation for University of Washington. Wisconsin already has UW in the Big 10.
RevRick
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s always easier said than done. I quickly learned that I couldn’t get away with preaching sermons as long as those of Harry Emerson Fosdick or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But it can’t be too short either, because then it ends up being a bunch of cliches in search of coherence.
My habit is to say what I’m going to say, throw in some dad jokes, and then talk about what the Scripture has to say about it (making sure folks understand the context), and then talk about its (personal, church, or societal) implications. I let the folks take it home from there.
HumboldtBlue
@Marcopolo:
The dissolution of the PAC-12 is a crime against sport and just one more step until we see the full professionalization of college athletics.
The PAC-12 was a cornerstone of college football and the latest mergers and re-alignments have pulled that cornerstone away, the edifice as we now know it will soon fall.
Butch
I’m sorry I don’t know how to respond to multiple commenters. Many of these folks are Seventh Day Adventists; cool that the church really does promote a pretty healthy lifestyle but some of the other beliefs – had me staring and wondering if they were listening to themselves. For example, heaven is on the other side of Orion (and don’t try to point out that the constellation isn’t a planar surface so there’s no “other side” because you don’t get anywhere) and they know that because there’s a black hole there and Jesus will use the black hole to come back to earth. They also won’t let their kids observe Halloween because it will turn them into demons.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: eta: My bad, the Wall Street Journal
zhena gogolia
@RevRick: Like William J. Barber, I think of Harry Emerson Fosdick a lot these days. “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.”
Litlebritdifrnt
@Jackie: Apparently they called the Judges order a “Friday ultimatum”. Did they go to some law school that didn’t teach Rule 1 “do not piss off the Judge” (technically that is rule 2, rule 1 is “pay your lawyer”) I mean seriously every Judge’s order is an ultimatum, it is not optional, or a suggestion. Where the hell does he find these numpties? If I were the Judge I would tell them that perhaps if they spent less time being interviewed on Fox News and the other right wing networks they might have some time to respond.
Omnes Omnibus
You just have to limit the amount of candy they get to eat on Halloween night and that solves that problem.
zhena gogolia
@Litlebritdifrnt: Absolutely right.
trollhattan
Imagined conversation among Indian muckety-mucks:
“We should invest heavily in the renewable energy sector, for a better future.”
“Sounds interesting, but not very exciting. What if we took that money and went to the moon instead?”
“The moon?”
“Yes, we should go to the moon, only some part of the moon nobody has been yet.”
“The moon it is! [dialing sounds] Hi, Australia, I want to order some coal.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66402526
Sister Golden Bear
@Litlebritdifrnt: The law and following judge’s order is for the little people.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
GET OUT!
dnfree
@Juju:
Once I had occasion in the 1990s to work on a project with a well-known consulting firm. The young man showing me around said “And we have free Starbucks coffee!” I said to him, “I don’t like Starbucks coffee.” He looked at me in astonishment, and then whispered “I don’t like it either.”
trollhattan
@Butch:
More than a few cultish newer religions have a space travel component, going back to the 19th century when nobody was even pondering such a thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Kelly
@Dan B: Maybe they’ll do East/West divisions to cut down on the percentage of ridiculous commutes. Even at that the Mississippi River is a looong way from the left coast.
Jay
@middlelee:
@Omnes Omnibus:
@kalakal:
Wait, whut?
I thought he was only Indicated,
Jay
@middlelee:
@Omnes Omnibus:
@kalakal:
Wait, whut?
I thought he was only Indicated,
Scout211
Yep.
Very good opinion piece at CBS Sports
Sadly, college sports is now a business. Mergers and acquisitions abound.
. . .
trollhattan
@dnfree: A matter of perspective back in the day. If they offered SBux in lieu of tearing open a package of Folgers to dump into the Bunn-O-Matic, then in spite of themselves SBux would be an upgrade.
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus:
Espescially after midnight, you must never feed them after midnight.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Cheesed off, are ye?
:)
zhena gogolia
Emily Brontë’s father was a minister. I don’t know if he would have been this type of sermonizer, though. I think he was more high church.
kalakal
@Jay: Good point TIIFG it is then then
oklahomo
Had this happen at a funeral for a neighbor who’d died from cancer (and had a deathbed ambush conversion while stoned on painkillers–until then, he’d been a complete heathen). Was supposed to be a simple memorial for an urn of ashes. Preacher man who ran the simple cheap funeral hall got up, said, “He wanted a simple funeral, his family wants a simple 15 minute service — but I’m gonna have to say a few words about our Savior.”
An hour later, he finally noticed the intense outrage that had been building, and abruptly shut up.
I mean, if you tell the family you can give them a simple non-religious memorial, is it that hard to do so?
Tom Q
@Jackie:
Ideally saying “You didn’t need 3 days to compose the tweet, you don’t need 3 days to figure out why you sent it”
trollhattan
@Dan B:
Seahawks routinely log more miles than any other NFL club, on account of the geography.
I ponder the future of the non-revenue sports, which TBF are the vast majority of sports the Pac 12 schools have. They have a very hard path for amping up their travel budgets to compete in the new conference. The Title IX audits will be quite revealing.
The Lodger
@Brachiator: where I grew up, the Lions had their own scheduled meetings.
RSA
I wonder how he’d have reacted if you’d asked him to keep his voice down for the sake of other patrons, then moved to the double doorway to record him with your cell phone?
It might be enough to throw someone like that off his game, wondering what you have planned for the video.
NotMax
@Jackie
First time the phrase “Bwa-ha-ha” appears in a court document.
//
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: He famously opened his sermon at Riverside the Sunday after Pearl Harbor: “God dammit!”
Also, you now have me singing that hymn as I walk.
Dan B
@Omnes Omnibus: UWa
Ken
I’m not so sure. The latter requires a combination of self-examination and memory that is… well, lacking in this defendant.
Scout211
@Dan B: I thought it was UDub. Too many characters? 😉
Kent
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I haven’t read all the comments but there is a Russian film on Amazon Prime about this story called “Battle for Sebastopol” which is a reasonably entertaining watch but very Russian jingoistic.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Oh! Oh, you can consider that stolen forthwith. Excellent.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
New seminar coming fall 2023 to Yale Law: “Emoticons and their uses in legal documents.”
Kent
@Kelly: I’m a UW alumn but this development is dismaying to me. My daughter was in the Husky Marching Band two years ago and we bought season tix and went to lots of games. They are already a miserable experience these days with the late night games in cold rainy November with endless TV timeouts.
The football teams will most certainly take chartered jets rather than travel by regular airlines and so can fly direct to more regional corporate airports and such and avoid the hassles but teams like women’s volleyball will not. The’ll be stuck trying to fly between Seattle or Eugene and places like State College mid-week in winter which will not be remotely direct.
I don’t know where this all ends. Meanwhile WSU and OSU will likely end up in the Mountain West which might actually be better for the local game day experience. I’m on a college visit road trip with my youngest daughter at this moment and we just visited Colorado State which is a gorgeous place and would be a good sports partner for both WSU and OSU, all very similar size land grant colleges with similar vibes. She is looking at WSU, WWU, CSU, UO, OSU and maybe a few privates like Seattle U. I think WSU is her top choice at the moment with CSU a close second.
Kelly
Oregon vs Oregon State games have been a major part of Oregon’s social fabric for generations. Eugene and Corvallis are 40 miles apart. OSU focus is Ag and Engineering. U of O focus is Liberal Arts. U of O says the games will go on. How will they be the same if the conference standings aren’t on the line?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ken: And Jack Smith asks that Trump’s motion be denied
Dan B
@Scout211: We need an expert.
middlelee
@Omnes Omnibus: @kalakal:
Thank you.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
Hahahahahaha
Kelly
https://nitter.net/Scharf_gen5/status/1687161025274265600
Have the whole PAC-12 merge with the Big-10.
One division called the PAC-12, one called the Big-10.
Winner of the PAC-12 plays the winner of the Big-10.
Have the game in Pasadena.
Have it at the Rose Bowl.
Call it the Rose Bowl.
A novel concept I just thought of.
Anonymous At Work
DeSantis’s biggest donor wants him to attract more backers and adopt a more moderate approach. My immediate response was a loud, “Who the EFF are you when you’re at home?”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-desantis-biggest-donor-says-210055095.html
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Dorothy A. Winsor: LOL. Smith includes the point that Trump had time to request a delay, but not time to read a 5 page order
ETA: Smith’s filing
zhena gogolia
@RevRick: It’s a great hymn.
trollhattan
@Kelly: Apple Cup, the Big Game, the Civil War (not making that up), the Crosstown Cup–all a century old and all now dead. Okay, guess not the Crosstown Cup.
IDGAF about the Arizonas.
Sadface.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Scamp!
cain
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it’s because the french seem to like to burn their beans (eg french roast) – the odd thing is that; starbucks seems to do the same thing – so you’re not really getting anything better. Of course, it’s starbucks so there is a consistency.
Dan B
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Jack Smith has dealt with international criminals. Trump is a doofus with lawyers.
Tony Jay
@Butch:
Chose the first person you want to reply to, click on the reply button to the bottom-right of their comment.
You’ll skip down to a little comment box at the bottom of the page with the name of the person whose comment you’re replying to in the top left in a blue font.
Write your comment next to or under that blue tinted name, depending on your preferences. Don’t hit Post Comment yet.
Scroll up a little and you’ll see a little X in the top right next to Leave a Comment. Click on that.
You’ll be back up the page at the comment you were replying to. Simply scroll down to the next person you want to reply to, repeat this process.
When you’ve written everything you want to write, hit Post Comment.
This is how it works when I’m using BJ on my phone, I think it’s the same on other interfaces. 👍
WereBear
@UncleEbeneezer: From what I can tell, people don’t go to Starbucks for the coffee, they go for those giant mugs of sugar and flavorings and whipped cream
And there’s some coffee in it, I’m pretty sure.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dorothy A. Winsor: And with some humor: “Rather than spend time complying with the court’s order, the defendant drafted a filing as to why he did not have time to review the 5pg protective order”
cain
Plenty – issue a press release. Build coalitions with other denominations that denounce evangelical. Contribute publicly to social projects that help minorities. Be seen. Run for office. Maybe these are happening – I don’t know. Maybe it’s just like Dems – they do things and the media doesn’t cover it. Regardless, like the Dems they need to up their game.
It’s their religion they can either defend it or just lay low – but in the end those evangelicals will be gunning for them in the end once they gain ascendancy.
Sebastian
@RevRick:
Reverend, I am asking this as a Croatian Catholic (we are due to our frontier status a special kind of Catholicism):
I noticed that in America, scripture (as far as I understand that’s the St. James Bible) is being used as the sine qua non, often comically taken out of context, single quotes twisted in interpretation, and generally as some sort of argumentative hammer.
Where I come from nobody reads the bible, priests will during mass read certain passages pertaining to the sermon’s topic (usually hope, love, acceptance, devotion to God’s plan and Divine Justice), but generally there is an overarching rule governing all matters of faith (besides the more elaborate Croatian Codex of Conduct):
– The Seven Deadly Sins – don’t do them.
– The Ten Commandments – obey them.
– The Rules Jesus gave us (we are our brother’s keeper, turn the other cheek, care for the poor and weak, forgive thy enemies, bring the children, and love thy neighbor) and the daily spiritual exercises to be more like Jesus. (Related to that is our belief that the Second Coming of Jesus, aka the Coming of the Kingdom of God, is when we humans succeed in fully incorporating Jesus’ spirit, thus becoming him. Not the arrival of a physical Jesus 2.0 or the weird belief in Rapture where God somehow doesn’t love a majority of his children and only accepts a small clique to Heaven)
If any given thought, action, or discourse is deviating from those above, it requires reflection and adjustment, especially when it is hard. Prayer is supposed to be meditation and contemplation on what one did wrong (i.e. sinned) and how to do better in thought and action.
It is deeply bewildering to me to see someone citing the Holy Book as justification for hate, not that this is something new, but I am wondering (and I mean this respectfully), where are the real Christians?
WereBear
@cain: Statistics show the young people are leaving and not coming back. That’s what they’re dealing with, along with a higher proportion than it should be of people in progressive churches who aren’t that progressive.
Cacti
The older I get, the more hardened I become in my by disbelief, and the more convinced I am that religion is actively harmful to the human race, even in its more benign forms.
This is the only life we’ll ever have. The only place we go when die is into hole in the ground or an incinerator, to be slowly forgotten as more time passes and all who knew us die too.
In the end, everyone’s existence will be summed up by two dates separated by a dash.
So, make the most of the dash.
zhena gogolia
@cain: They’re happening. No one pays any attention.
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: It’s one of my favorites. But the one that always gets me is We Would Be Building, with its haunting tune from Finlandia. It makes me weep. And I also love “Peace I Leave with You My Friends ” and “In the Bulb There Is a Flower.”
Sebastian
@The Pale Scot:
That’s exactly it. Some churches have literally more than 1500 years of uninterrupted lineage and to me it seems that in America it’s build-your-own-“Christian”-franchise everywhere.
zhena gogolia
@cain:
This is my church. You’ve probably never heard of it. It doesn’t get a lot of press.
trollhattan
Local op-ed on the Newsom-DeSantis thingie.
zhena gogolia
@RevRick: Those are great.
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
123 years of sporting history thrown away like a fucking empty can. It’s infuriating.
trollhattan
@Sebastian:
Can I get personal cutouts for sloth and gluttony*? Five Deadly Sins are easier to remember.
*Substitution of one for lust would be considered.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
Fuck them very much.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
“for whatever reason” fuck them very much
trollhattan
Local blues guy with Saturday radio show is playing a live version of “Try a Little Tenderness” I’ve either not heard, or forgot. Otis kills it.
cain
It is this type of cultural change my wife objects to. Changing the pace of old world countries that are built in human interactions and then changing them into something fast pace with no interactions at all.
Dan B
@Sebastian: 60% or more of churches in the Seattle Metro area are welcoming of LGBTQ+ people. Only folks like me know that. They’re mostly run by academically trained pastors who have no training in media, traditional or social. I tried along with help from the head of the Department of Communication at UW, to get some of them to use the media. I had one success but there was reluctance to continue. Academics like to use many words and consider all sides. Media needs to know the story quickly. I got burned out.
Warren Senders
I have had coffee and snacks at the Mumbai Starbucks. It is extraordinarily beautiful, and nothing at all like Starbucks stores elsewhere; if I could move into that room, I would.
Sure Lurkalot
@Sister Golden Bear: Won’t change my mind about ChatGPT or religion but that is beautiful.
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
This is an absolute waste of time. Newsom is gonna get sandbagged, DeSantis is going to be the moron he is and nobody, not one fucking person is going to be moved, enlightened or better informed at the end.
cain
@Scout211: Meh. Nobody can afford any of it anyways. The kids have all moved on to watching online gaming.
Once hte rich boomers and Gen Xers disappear – it’ll only be the 2-3% who can afford to watch them anymore.
Jay
@Dan B:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/newcomers-toronto-shelter-north-york-church-1.6909624
an “issue” that the Feds, the Province and the City were “unable” to fix for months, was solved in 24 hours by local Churches.
cain
@RSA: lol – I would have probably said – imagine what Israel would have been like if they had the kind of border control he wanted when Moses and his people tried to leave Egypt.
Butch
@Tony Jay: Thank you! I made a copy of your post.
p.a
I grew up with the Big 10, Big 8, SEC, SWC, Pac 10 and I miss them. ACC was a minor football conference. Penn St and ND were indies. Pac 10-to-12 was reasonable, since then, well I just don’t follow it any more. The groupings are ridiculous.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue: Sandbagged? Perhaps, but only if Fox has decided to keep the DeSantis boat afloat, which I think is debatable.
The same as with Albany insiders and Boston insiders and Lansing insiders, etc., what Sacramento insiders are discussing has national implications but are not on the national radar. Trust me on that last bit.
RevRick
@Sebastian: Yes, while the KING James version holds pride of place in many Protestant denominations, mostly because it was not only the church book but also an instrument of literacy through the 19th century, your observation about its misusage is dead on. In seminary I was taught a text without a context is a pretext.
In my experience, Catholics are all over the place, ranging from paleo-Catholics like Justice Alito to those who take the Catholic social teachings very much to heart.
My United Church of Christ has a reputation of being a liberal denomination, having been first to ordain a black man, a woman, and an openly gay man (in 1785, 1853, and 1980 respectively).
jackmac
I’m pleased to report a far more pleasant run in with Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Illinois).
While driving along the Fox River near my home I spotted an Underwood meet-and-greet at a small park and decided to turn around and say “hello.” The event was winding down and she was getting ready to leave but I was able to chat for a couple of minutes, wished her well and encouraged her to keep up the good fight in D.C. We said so long and as I walked away I turned around and asked if I could get a photo. She graciously agreed and an aide took four images on an iPhone of a disheveled-looking constituent (hey, it’s Saturday and I didn’t comb my hair very well) while she flashed her trademark radiant smile. I’m so pleased to have her as my representative. If you want to know more about Underwood, search for a Washington Post profile of her written earlier this year. You’ll agree. She’s awesome.
Baud
@jackmac:
👍
dnfree
@jackmac: I am in the district of Raja Krishnamoorthi, after being in the district of Sean Casten. I have a monthly donation to Lauren Underwood as well as my representatives. They’re all good people who replaced mediocre Republicans.
dnfree
@trollhattan: Heck, I worked one place where the free coffee was sort of tan-colored liquid from a vending machine. I still didn’t like Starbucks.
Jackie
@Dan B: UDub.
Jackie
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’d sure like to be a well hidden fly within hearing distance of TIFG when he is told of Smith’s retort 😂
trollhattan
@dnfree:
Jeez, when’s the last time I had vending machine coffee? The kind where the cardboard cup drops, pause, brown liquid squirts into it. Sometimes the order was reversed.
Unless it’s in Japan I’m not going on the nostalgia tour if I see another.
Baud
Kayla Rudbek
I’m trying to decide whether to sell some of my clothes from Svaha on the Facebook fan group, or whether I should just send them all to ThredUp and have ThredUp sell them for me. Advantages of Facebook sale: 1) sell straight to the fan base 2) potentially more money in my account right now. Advantages of ThredUp: 1) no shipping fees 2) just pop it into one box and ThredUp takes care of everything else. Any suggestions?
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: I drank so much of that in “Machine City” in the Yale library in the 1970s. Not good for the gut.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: YAY!
cain
@Dan B: and thus progressive churches dies off – and the evangelical continue to gain ascendancy because they’ve merged with the GOP.
But you can bet that they’ll go after ‘woke’ churches next. It’s how fascism works. None of you are safe once evangelicals control govt.
bbleh
@Baud: lol whoops. Seems like Judge Chutkan is already living up to her reputation for running a tight ship, not putting up with BS, etc. Good on her! Justice delayed is justice denied.
Jay
@dnfree:
Grew up in a Nescafe house, (instant).
When I moved out, moved to “Little Italy” in the early 80’s. # Coffee shops per block, most were fronts, but good coffee.
Most other places served “Prairie Coffee”. Bunn drip, weak, often left on the burner for hours.
Outside of Little Italy, Starbucks was pretty much the only decent coffee available, until the coffee shop thing took off and better local options became available.
When I worked at the Orange Menace, the Starbuck’s kitty corner was closest, the next closest was a Mickey D’s (yeesh) and a Timmies, (yuck). They opened at 5am, closed at 11pm, so a bacon egg breakfast muffin and a Grande Pike Place on the way to work, every day. The staff were nice, and we were all on first name basis.
MattF
@Baud: And I assume ‘You will hang by your thumbs at the gateway to my court’ is the unspoken alternative.
Jackie
@Baud:
🤭🤭😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Jay
@dnfree:
@trollhattan:
Here in Coffee City, the vending machines give you a choice of two different roasts, four different “styles”. The machine grinds your choice, the cup drops, then hot water is dripped through, so basically, the vending machine coffee is not bad.
Sebastian
@RevRick:
Thank for the correction.
I agree on the (various national) Catholic organizations and Orders being all over the place, which must be confusing to outsiders. The US Catholic bishops are an excellent example of reactionary assholes as is (was?) the Irish Catholic Church and the various nutcase orders like the Opus Dei.
One could generalize that Catholics more or less like and respect their local priest and ignore whatever the national organization or even the Holy See orders. In a sense we have internalized that the Catholic Church has to stick to dogma in order to survive as organization for almost two millennia but we just ignore it until it becomes to meddling in our lives.
On the other hand you have orders like the Jesuits, Franciscans, or Dominicans (and other mendicant orders) who truly live according to Jesus’ preachings and walk the walk.
It is not surprising that it was these priests and missionaries who created Liberation Theology and preach and fight for social justice and tolerance.
It’s fairly easy to recognize which Catholics are legit and which ones are full of shit:
The simpler the robe, the more likely this priest or friar will lean towards more Labora and less Ora (or rather prayer in seclusion).
The more frilly the robe and bigger the hat, the bigger the asshat.
Dan B
@Jay: It occurs to me that churches and synagogues could solve the issues that face trans people and their families in red states, and it would be newsworthy. If a coalition of a dozen or half a dozen Seattle churches pooled resources they could help trans people and their families from Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas flee
Finding affordable housing might be the biggest challenge but the outer suburbs are manageable.
kalakal
@Baud: Yes! The walls of Mar-a-Lardo will be running red with ketchup tonight. I long for the day when we can write TCFG
FelonyGovt
We were talking about long weddings in the last thread, and obnoxious sermons here. I remember being at a friend’s Jewish wedding- and being Jewish myself I had been to several- and the rabbi droning ON and ON and ON. Finally I thought he was wrapping up, but then he said, “and now a passage from the ancient Aramaic” ARRGGHH
Jackie
@kalakal: You’re mostly right: it’ll be the walls of Bedminster.
I, too, am looking for him becoming TCFG!😁🤞🏻
Or when TIFG means “IMPRISONED”rather than Impeached 😁
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@trollhattan: Whaddya mean? Those machines always worked perfectly.
I got a short comedy piece out of the coffee machine in the library that I wrote for our briefly-lived college humor magazine.
Last time I saw those? I can’t remember. I’ve used some more modern versions, even once in France where they’re pretty picky about their coffee.
Jay
@Dan B:
it’s getting ugly out there,……..
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/solidarity-march-local-pride-organizations-northeastern-ontario-rural-1.6924531
cmorenc
@Juju:
“at least you weren’t on a plane”
On a full flight from Denver to Raleigh a few months ago, our plane had video screens where you could watch a selection of TV channels, including various cable news networks. An older guy in the seat next to me watched OAN (much farther RW-nut than Fox) the whole 3hr flight. Although you needed earbuds to hear the audio, he had the volume on his set turned high enough that i could just faintly intermittently hear snippets of the commentary. UGH!
l
Dan B
@cain: The evangelicals, being mostly from GOP business or adjacent, went for branding, marketing, and media. They got funding to establish TV ministries and mail. Progressives being intellectuals debated and sliced and diced over fine points of theology.
Captain C
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I read an interesting book on the Night Witches (older YA level) sometime in the last few years, called A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II by Elizabeth Wein.
From the link:
NotMax
@trollhattan
Movie theater* where I was an usher offered free freshly brewed coffee (theater was owned by a coffee company). In porcelain cups, with saucers.
No popcorn, no hot dogs. Small selection of candies on shelves of a wheeled cart that was rolled into the lobby between shows and promptly tucked back into its closet when the feature began.
*long gone now
Dan B
@Jackie: It’ll be tye walls of Trump airplane after a screaming fit in South Carolina.
Sebastian
@NotMax:
Not surprising they went out of business. The radically decreased time between launch in cinemas and release to DVD/streaming forced movie operators to make their profits via the concession stand, hence the stupidly expensive popcorn.
Pretty much how most gas stations make their money with food and drinks.
Yutsano
Proud alumnus of Washington State University. While I figured something like this was coming…it still feels so cheap. Apple Cup will be nothing more than a meh game now. Recruiting will be literally all about the alumni bucks. College football is not going to be improved by this. And it’s only about money. Not the players. Not the schools. Not the common programs. Nope. It’s all about who can soak their alumni for donations while getting that sweet sweet broadcast rights lucre. It’s not going to end well and could affect elite players who get worn down with long travel distances and who can only get by with loosening academic standards for athletes. But hey, it’s gonna make someone rich right?
WaterGirl
@Nelle: I love that story! I hope your sister hasn’t lost her truth-telling nature. :-)
NotMax
@Dan B
“We’re gonna need more ketchup.”
//
dlwchico
@Scout211: Sounds like Shasta County shenanigans.
jackmac
@dnfree:
k All three are awesome. Bill Foster is too.
Ken
@Baud: @kalakal: I wonder if Trump’s lawyers will be able to stop him from going on his twitter knockoff and threatening a federal judge, or doing the same at his rally tonight. I find myself hoping not.
kalakal
@Dan B: I just love it. All his life the bastard has been able to avoid the consequences of his criming, stupidity, and incompetence by bluster, bullying, and money. Now he can see the light at the end of the tunnel and even in what passes for his brain there has got to be the realisation that it’s an oncoming train.
kalakal
@Ken: I doubt it. His caliber as a businessman is perfectly revealed by the circumstance that he’s spent $40m on lawyers and has ended up with a bunch of clowns. He can’t shut up even when his freedom depends on it. Sad
NotMax
@Sebastian
Worked there in the 1960s. I believe the theater disappeared sometime during the 1980s.
Place also wouldn’t deign to display anything so tacky as the one-sheets a studio provided outside, where the ticket booth was and anyone walking by might see them.
instead they employed an in-house artist who created unique posters.
WaterGirl
@Dan B:
I can’t stop laughing at that.
NaijaGal
@Baud: Damn! 😂😂😂
Bill Arnold
@OzarkHillbilly:
DougJ once wrote on this site: I believe that trolling is the highest form of human expression.
Craig
Thanks. I love the way you write. One of the main reasons I keep coming back here.
NotMax
@kalakal
Last figure I happened across reported Smith’s office had cost in the neighborhood of $25 million. Certainly more by now but I’ll wager still well under the $40 million (and counting) Crimey McCrimeface’s entities have shoveled out.
jackmac
Here’s one more Lauren Underwood update.
My daughter is down at Lollapalozza in Grant Park and just spotted Underwood there (along with photographic evidence!).
LAO
@Ken: first, they have to stop him from threatening Mike Pence.
Origuy
There are only 14 Starbucks in Italy at the moment. They’ve had trouble breaking into the market, because you can get good coffee everywhere. I think they also have trouble selling anything containing milk, because Italians believe that it’s unhealthy to drink milk after 11am. If you order a cappuccino after noon, they look at you funny, although they’ll probably serve you. At that point, it’s preferable to order a caffè completo, which has alcohol in it. Italian bars, which are the coffee houses, generally have a fairly good selection of liqueurs and spirits on hand. According to the starbucks.it website, they don’t carry alcohol.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: O, ffs. What an insultingly fatuous take on it. Although, frankly, as far as I’m concerned it’s a big fat nothingburger of an event.
Sebastian
@Origuy:
Actually, Italian coffee is not better. Italians drink Robusta, which tastes a lot worse than Arabica but is a lot cheaper. Same thing in the Balkans btw.
This allows them to sell Espressos for around a buck or two at most, and they are VERY price sensitive when it comes to coffee. When Italians walk into a fancy coffee shop or Starbucks and see the prices they walk right out.
There is another cultural tidbit: coffee ordered and consumed at the bar is cheaper than sitting down at a table (or God forbid on the terrace, where you are charged extra for the view) because the waiter doesn’t have to bring you the coffee.
Elizabelle
@kalakal: Nice.
It can eventually mean The Incarcerated Former Guy.
Ohio Mom
@WereBear: When I stop by my local Starbucks for a latte in the afternoon during the school year, and it is full of high school kids ordering I-don’t-know-what that is capped with three inches of whipped cream, I realize Starbucks is this century’s malt shop.
Juju
@cmorenc: Did that make you miss the evangelist who could have been sitting next to you instead? For me, it would have been a toss up.
Kristine
@Sister Golden Bear: I saw that on Threads. I thought it was lovely even though blast it ChatGPT
evodevo
@Butch:
good idea – you can get a set of pamphlets from ffrf that are very handy in those situations lol
evodevo
@lollipopguild:
yep – a friend of the family is a herp guy. The KY states would call him in to deal with the rattlers associated with snake handler deaths. He named one of the confiscated snakes “Thumper Bumper”. He would keep them for awhile, feeding them and allowing them to recover from the usually abusive captivity they suffered in the care of fundies, and then returning them to the national forest in Eastern Ky.
evodevo
@evodevo:
That was supposed to be “KY state troopers” ….
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus: A Full English breakfast is indeed a wonder. But not the beans. That part is to be pushed aside. Let the B&B host just look slightly askance
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought that was a Full Irish. And I did taste it. Once. Very tiny bite. Beans are delish by comparison.
Cliosfanboy
@Captain C:
I loved talking about them in my World Wars class.
Cliosfanboy
Jesus was pretty explicit in his (low) opinion of those who made a big public show of how devout they were in public. I wish the funniest would take THAT literally.
BellyCat
@Sister Golden Bear: Amazing! All hail ChatGPT.
mbobier
@J: Wodehouse’s short story “The Great Sermon Handicap” goes into this in immense, and wonderful, detail.