Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

It’s a doggy dog world.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

The lights are all blinking red.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

The revolution will be supervised.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "Stories from the Road" / And Another Thing

And Another Thing

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This post is in: ,

One of my favorite things about this blog is how I get to pop in and bracket posts written by health insurance or national security experts with my completely vapid bullshit and inane observations that anyone who had ever spent more than ten minutes outside a WV holler would already know. Fucking brilliant.

At any rate, another thing I have noticed is that sunset means something completely different here. In WV, where the sky is just shades of bruise for seven months a year and it’s just not bright that often in the winter, sunset means nothing. But here, a couple hours after sunset and I am ready for bed.

Also, Joelle is mad she has not been getting any good lines, and would like to let you all know that she told me a while ago that Tempe Cold and WV cold were two different things. I would also like to note that I have seen Joelle give me the finger on several occasions, a few of which I am not sure she intended for me to see it. Regardless, I have informed her that her little hobbit fingers are so tiny that she also needs to vocalize or I might miss it. This led me to tell a Cole family story that I don’t think has been mentioned before.

At any rate, many decades ago before becoming a parent, my mother was a genteel Quaker girl who didn’t drink, smoke, or swear. She still doesn’t drink or smoke. And for years she did not swear. She would say thinks like “shoot” or “sugar” or if more mad than usual she would break out a “fudge” and when at her absolute limit would throw out a rare “fudgesicle.” That is all I remember her ever saying until the mid eighties. When I was a teen and broke her.

I remember it plain as day. We were in the kitchen, and I had her just frothing mad in a way that only I can get someone (it’s a fucking talent, really), and she looked at me, held out her arm and extended here middle finger and aimed it right at my face and said:

“THERE!!! THAT IS WHAT I THINK OF YOU!!”

And. I. Got. HYSTERICAL. I laughed so hard I could not breathe it was so absurd and mom started in laughing, too. From that point on, mom eased into swearing and took to it like a natural.

Many years later, my brother had infuriated my mother and instead of flipping the bird, just looked at him and said “OJ!”

My brother looked at her and asked “What the hell does OJ mean?”

And mom, the English teacher and grammar nazi, stated confidently: “Obscene Gesture.”

Seth looked at her and said “Gesture is spelled with a G, though,” and the giggles followed.

And from that point on, whenever someone in the family irritates someone else in public, we just say “OJ” to each other and know what is going on.

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  2. 2.

    The Up and Up

    I can see the confusion. Gesture vs. Jester. Hence OJ? Anyways good to see you around enjoying the Southwest.

  5. 5.

    Josie

    John, I just know that, if I could meet your mother, I would love her. What you describe reminds me of conversations with my sons.

  7. 7.

    Eric S.

    Growing up, swearing in my family was strongly discouraged. Then the summer after I graduated HS I worked at the factory my dad worked in. The first lunch I sat with him and his friends it was all “c**ks****r this and that”. The taboo was gone.

  9. 9.

    BethanyAnne

    I was at Burning Man in 2004, and the night of the burn, someone groped my friend. 5’0″ Quaker from the Bronx. She spun around and had to jump up to clock him, but clock him she did. Told her that when you get knocked on your ass by a Quaker, you know you done fucked up.

  11. 11.

    HeleninEire

    OK. Imma gonna say something here. It will for sure freak you out, John. And it may freak a lot of the BJ people, but…..

    OK..I can do this…

    John Cole…you sound HAPPY!!

    OH MY GOD!

    YAY, YOU!

  12. 12.

    cain

    Ha! My wife cusses like a sailor. Even as a child she would talk back to her dad and flip him off .. I think she was only 7 or so. That’s how progressive her family and her dad was given that he was just laugh. That’s like the 80s in India ! Shit I would never talk the way she did to her did.

    Of course today I say a lot of stuff .. shit I’m 54 I can do whatever the fuck I want !

  13. 13.

    Alison Rose

    Many years later, my brother had infuriated my mother and instead of flipping the bird, just looked at him and said “OJ!”

    I thought she was telling him she was gonna kill him.

  18. 18.

    Yarrow

    Also, Joelle is mad she has not been getting any good lines, and would like to let you all know that she told me a while ago that Tempe Cold and WV cold were two different things.

    Of course she did! Because she’s a kind and thoughtful woman who wanted you to be prepared and comfortable when you moved to her place. Team Joelle all the way.

  19. 19.

    wjca

    Puts me in mind of a story my mother used to tell.  My brother and I were perhaps 5 and 3.  (Early 1950s).  Something happened, and my brother burst out “Damn it!”  And I very seriously corrected him: “No, David.  It’s  ‘God damn it.'”

    Mother had no idea that she’d been swearing enough to get copied.  Oops.

  20. 20.

    piratedan

    I know many places boast of awesome sunsets, Arizona is one of those places.

    looking to the east, I can watch the sun set “up” the mountains (Catalina) and the angles change the colors from shades of common brown and transition to rose and magenta.

    In the southern part of the state where the saguaros are more prevalent, seeing them on the ridgeline in the dusk makes you feel like you’re in a movie.

    hope you can enjoy your time here JC, hard to see how you can’t. when you’re surrounded by Joelle and the critters.

  25. 25.

    middlelee

    If Arizona high desert is anything like Nevada high desert you will probably get amazing clouds. I have too many photos of clouds from 38 years in Nevada.  It’s not the same in the California foothills–the beauty here is trees and grass.

  27. 27.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @John Cole:

    I gotta agree with Helen, you sound very pleasant to be around. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you seem very happy. That’s a good thing and it’s making people here smile because you deserve it.

    Joelle gets the credit because she’s a big part of the reason you are happy. Lines? She’s in the lead role!

  28. 28.

    TriassicSands

    I would also like to note that I have seen Joelle give me the finger on several occasions, a few of which I am not sure she intended for me to see it. — J. Cole

    My guess is that in time, Joelle’s middle finger will get quite muscular from use.

  29. 29.

    moops

    I thought I’d enjoy these slice-of-life posts more….but I now admit I’ve stopped looking forward to JC posts.   *sigh*

     

    I’m not in the inner siblings of this blog family.  Partly of my own choosing.   I now check out when a JC post drops.   Maybe this is expected.   The blog should be here to support its founder, but it will need to be other more committed juicers to step in and be nurturing.  I will leave to read other blogs until WaterGirl or Betty Cracker step up with content.  John used to bring the fire, but now it is too introspective and personal and I’m not family.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    Any jackals planning on viewing the meteor shower (info from 0:14 to 0:56 here) during the wee hours of Thursday?

    Live stream o’ the night sky above the big Island.

  31. 31.

    TriassicSands

    @Alison Rose: I thought she was telling him she was gonna kill him.

    But, Alison Rose, OJ is innocent. I have it on good authority that he is still searching tirelessly for the real killer.

    [This comment has been brought to you by Fantasy Land™, the amusement park where nothing is real, Donald Trump makes sense when he talks, and always acts presidential.]

  32. 32.

    Redshift

    @NotMax: Solid clouds here, sadly. She even it it was clear, I’d have to drive 45 minutes and stand out in the bitter (for Virginia) cold to get dark skies.

    Stupid light pollution. I wish we could get any momentum going here to at least stop wasting energy lighting up the sky.

  34. 34.

    teezyskeezy

    I actually do love pie, so you are, like, doubling up on what I actually like. So congrats, pie filterers, you only get one expression of pie love when you could have gotten two….I love pie (that’s the second) –Me as Kristen Wiig as Penelope.

  35. 35.

    teezyskeezy

    @Redshift: So I’m north of Cole in Utah-land and…us too. The bitter part of this one is it has been clear for about two weeks (a few cloudy spells in there but mostly tepid snowless sun with wasatch valley haze)…but of course, the day of…the clouds roll in.  However, that’s great for the ski resorts. Great for the ski enthusiasts, whether they ski in resorts or backcountry. But if it waited *this* long…why not one more day????

  36. 36.

    teezyskeezy

    @Redshift: So I’m north of Cole in Utah-land and…us too. The bitter part of this one is it has been clear for about two weeks (a few cloudy spells in there but mostly tepid snowless sun with wasatch valley haze)…but of course, the day of…the clouds roll in.  However, that’s great for the ski resorts. Great for the ski enthusiasts, whether they ski in resorts or backcountry. But if it waited *this* long…why not one more day????

  37. 37.

    teezyskeezy

    @Redshift: So I’m north of Cole in Utah-land and…us too. The bitter part of this one is it has been clear for about two weeks (a few cloudy spells in there but mostly tepid snowless sun with wasatch valley haze)…but of course, the day of…the clouds roll in.  However, that’s great for the ski resorts. Great for the ski enthusiasts, whether they ski in resorts or backcountry. But if it waited *this* long…why not one more day????

  38. 38.

    teezyskeezy

    @Redshift: So I’m north of Cole in Utah-land and…us too. The bitter part of this one is it has been clear for about two weeks (a few cloudy spells in there but mostly tepid snowless sun with wasatch valley haze)…but of course, the day of…the clouds roll in.  However, that’s great for the ski resorts. Great for the ski enthusiasts, whether they ski in resorts or backcountry. But if it waited *this* long…why not one more day????

  39. 39.

    teezyskeezy

    @Redshift: So I’m north of Cole in Utah-land and…us too. The bitter part of this one is it has been clear for about two weeks (a few cloudy spells in there but mostly tepid snowless sun with wasatch valley haze)…but of course, the day of…the clouds roll in.  However, that’s great for the ski resorts. Great for the ski enthusiasts, whether they ski in resorts or backcountry. But if it waited *this* long…why not one more day????

  40. 40.

    teezyskeezy

    @Redshift: So I’m north of Cole in Utah-land and…us too. The bitter part of this one is it has been clear for about two weeks (a few cloudy spells in there but mostly tepid snowless sun with wasatch valley haze)…but of course, the day of…the clouds roll in.  However, that’s great for the ski resorts. Great for the ski enthusiasts, whether they ski in resorts or backcountry. But if it waited *this* long…why not one more day????

  41. 41.

    teezyskeezy

    Shoot those cloned responses were not intentional. Sorry you all…BUT…that’s somewhat the fault of the site’s code, not just me. However, that’s fine, just please understand that was not intentional.  I know you all think I’m the negative misery spreader but I don’t try to do stuff like that on purpose. I would like to get blamed for the stuff I’m really at fault for not code quirks on a blog

    EDIT: And I don’t fault anyone for code quirks…they happen. I just clicked clicked clicked too many times. Sorry.

  42. 42.

    Rose Weiss

    @moops: You can include yourself anytime and everyone will welcome you. It’s very different for me even though I mostly read rather than comment. I’ve been reading this blog for maybe 20 years, so the blogfather is kinda family for me. I love hearing what’s happening for him.

  45. 45.

    trollhattan

    Heh, I needed this. Hey, now that Cole gets to stay up two hours later, maybe we West Coasters will get more Balloon Juice after dark content. Huzzah.

    Kiddo had a “peak mom driving” story tonight, in which they were on a metered freeway onramp today, one with no instruction sign re. # cars/green, got frustrated, blew through the red, flipping it off while driving past. I can only imagine the kid’s reaction at the time.

    Spouse has become very A-type out there.

  46. 46.

    divF

    @trollhattan:

    Hey, now that Cole gets to stay up two hours later

    That’s during the winter. March-November, Cole is on PDT = MST, since AZ doesn’t use DST. So he will be sync’ed up with us West Coast folks.

  47. 47.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @divF:

    I’m officially on Cole Standard Time! That there’s absolutely nothing of significance in that statement is irrelevant, it is what it is. Now what is it and is “it” the proper word for ummm… it?

    Back to the chips and salsa to consider the ramifications.

  48. 48.

    Redshift

    @teezyskeezy: Don’t sweat it. The blog isn’t supposed to let you post the same thing multiple times (I’ve at times gotten “you already said that!”), so everyone should know duplicate posts are unintentional. I understand it’s still unnerving, though.

  50. 50.

    divF

    @NotMax: Re: goofy time zones. I resent that they left out Newfoundland and (now just a small bit of) Labrador, which is 30 min. ahead of the rest of the Maritimes.  CBC television and radio used to announce the programming schedule by saying things like, “the news is coming up at 6 PM Atlantic Time, 6:30 in Newfoundland and Labrador”.

    (Yes, Mom was from Newfoundland).

  52. 52.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @teezyskeezy:

    My “trick” for when WP chokes on a post (hangs and goes nowhere) is to CTRL-A/CRTL-C (highlight/copy) my post in the window, close the comment window and reload the page. My post usually shows up then and if not I check again in a few minutes. If it still hasn’t posted then I CTRL-V (paste) the comment into the comment window and try again.

    Just don’t click to post the same comment more than once and you’ll outsmart this sad excuse for blogging software.

  53. 53.

    ColoradoGuy

    I love the hyper-intense Arizona sunsets, where all the colors get more saturated just before and after sunset. Deep ultraviolet straight up, transitioning like a Hiroshige woodblock print through purple, blue, shimmery yellow, pinks, oranges, and deep reds, while the colors on all the objects on the ground get deeper and deeper. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve seen it for yourself. Not easy to photograph, either, since the camera’s white balance system gets confused by the deep reds.

    The Mountain States have this wonderful Big Sky look you don’t see elsewhere. The entire color gamut is different. The color palette of the West Coast is not the same. I tell people that the Maxfield Parrish colors are real if you come out to New Mexico or Arizona.

    On the flip side, mid-day photographs in Arizona look terrible no matter how much time you waste in Photoshop. At the minimum, you will need lots of fill light and/or a polarizer filter. Take your pictures during the Golden Hour instead.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @ColoradoGuy:

    I love the hyper-intense Arizona sunsets, where all the colors get more saturated just before and after sunset.

    Suddenly reminded that when I was quite a little girl — maybe 5 or 6? — I discovered Arizona Highways magazine. Just incredible landscape photography! I can’t even remember where I would have seen it (pretty sure nobody in my family subscribed), but I vividly recall gazing for hours at the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and a surprising number of lightning-illuminated desert skies.

    Haven’t thought about Arizona Highways in decades, but I was sure obsessed with it as a child.

  56. 56.

    Don

    Cole, you’re an idiot. You are the reason we’ve been coming here for twenty years. We’re happy you’re writing again, so we’ll stick around for another twenty.

  57. 57.

    zattarra

    I grew up in Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s.  There was no such thing as “swearing.”  They were just words we used.  All the time.  For anything.  Essentially if you were a product of my neighborhood and that time the words didn’t matter, just the intent.  No bad intent, no problem.

    Fast forward to my life now in the midwest raising kids in the 2010s.  Swear words are still just words to me.  So our kids are allowed to swear all they want.  Eventually the novelty wears off and they just do it like I do.  But they have friends over and they are all just shocked the first time they swear in front of their parents.  It was always enough to make me laugh.  Eventually we became the household where all the friends would come and swear like they did at school and everywhere that wasn’t there home.  Showing me that these parents who thought they were teaching their kids not to swear were just so clueless.

    Now my daughter is 21 and in college.  Christmas she brings over her new boyfriend to meet us for the first time last week.  She swears at the dinner table.  This guy just looks at her like “oh my God, you just dropped an f bomb in front of your parents.”  It’s still funny.  She capped off the evening by giving us the traditional OJ photo while opening her first Christmas gift.
    .

  58. 58.

    Wvng

    Mostly been a lurker for 20 years. Love the diversity of posts here at BJ, including the blog master’s range of political and personal. Let me echo what others have said, that it’s great to see John so happy.

    Regarding cursing, probably the first time anyone ever heard me curse, and possibly the first time I did, I was helping a friend build a fence line on the forest side of a huge pasture near Huntsville, Alabama. I was working alone, way up on a hill. Everyone else was down in the valley at the stable. I stirred up a paper wasp nest and several found refuge underneath my tee shirt. My new found words echoed thru the valley.

    Finally, I love John’s parents.

  60. 60.

    Krista (RedKitten That Was)

    Your mom is an absolute treasure, John.

    My folks don’t swear a ton, but my grandfather – whew! The man grew up in Acadian Canada and when vexed, could mix French and English curses into an absolute symphony of religious blasphemy combined with farm animal body parts.

    I must take after him, because swear words stick to my head like burrs, and I’ve got English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Mandarin epithets in my repertoire – lol!

  61. 61.

    lee

    I agree it sounds like Cole is beginning to actually enjoy himself.

    I grew up in the desert (west Texas). It is certainly a different type of living. Every so often you get one of those sunsets that just takes your breath away (and not because of the local wildfires). Then there is when a giant dust storm (haboob) comes blowing in.

  63. 63.

    Krista (RedKitten That Was)

    My folks don’t curse much, but my grandfather was adept at mixing French and English swear words into a spicy stew. I must take after him — can swear in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Mandarin. (I’m sure I butcher the accent on many of them, though.)

  65. 65.

    JustRuss

    Dreamt last night that I road-tripped to visit Cole in his new digs. (We have never met, although I do have a cat who closely resembles Steve, so there’s that) .  The front of his place was a dilapidated trailer, but it opened up to a beautiful, modern, spacious house.  So that was weird.

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