Y’all may want to check out today’s Google Doodle, Celebrating Lake Xochimilco… and also the perennially and proverbially immature axolotl.
The species is seriously endangered in the wild, but it’s widely used in scientific research, and so popular as a pet — particularly in Japan, where they’re known as uparupas — that Amazon has a wide selection of ‘cute’ axolotl toys and trinkets.
But for those of us of a certain age and (perennially immature!) mindset, axolotls will always recall a ‘classic’ from our childhood…
I Wandered Lonely as a Clod
Anonymous, with apologies to William Wordsworth
(from Mad Magazine, issue #43 in 1958)I wandered lonely as a clod,
Just picking up old rags and bottles,
When onward on my way I plod,
I saw a host of axolotls;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
A sight to make a man’s blood freeze.Some had handles, some were plain;
They came in blue, red pink, and green.
A few were orange in the main;
The damnedest sight I’ve ever seen.
The females gave a sprightly glance;
The male ones all wore knee-length pants…
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Ol_Froth
Twas Brillo, and the GE stoves, did Procter-Gamble in the Glade.
OzarkHillbilly
I like Hellbenders. So ugly they’re cute.
oatler
If I recall history correctly, Frank Jacobs made his bones as a MAD writer with those parodies.
There’s bright golden cyst on his elbow
And I think that his kneecap is startin’ to leak
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
Nominated.
PaulB
Good morning. Happy Eliza Doolittle Day to all those who celebrate.
There go two miscreants
@Ol_Froth: Extra points if you remember to pronounce “Glade” as two syllables!
rikyrah
It’s not even the gift. It’s the words from his father😭😭
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTREMJ8JF/
Dorothy A. Winsor
@oatler: Tigers, Tigers, burning bright
In the ballparks of the night,
Your pitching’s swell, your fielding adroit,
So why no pennants for Detroit?
rikyrah
Who will save the poor men?😒😒🙄🙄
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTREMDMSU/
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good Morning! Thought you would get a kick out of this listing in Fenton, MO.
You may know the house. Pretty sure you know the owner. Be sure to thumb thru the interior pics.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/801-Bowles-Ave-Fenton-MO-63026/55188555_zpid/
rikyrah
AP NFL (@AP_NFL) tweeted at 2:23 PM on Fri, May 19, 2023:
BREAKING: Jim Brown, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who retired at the peak of his brilliant career to become an actor as well as a prominent civil rights advocate, has died. He was 87.
https://t.co/3wUBiZQXnL https://t.co/1CGwg9CSKE
(https://twitter.com/AP_NFL/status/1659640818099974144?s=02)
rikyrah
John V. Moore (@johnvmoore) tweeted at 10:17 PM on Fri, May 19, 2023:
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
White folks on the left: Dems, progressives, liberals et al.
BLACK FOLKS, especially #BlackTwitter is going to be getting tons of jokes off at Tim Scott’s expense. DO NOT JOIN IN! I REPEAT DO NOT JOIN! We can go places you can’t, we’ll handle it/him.
(https://twitter.com/johnvmoore/status/1659760346049966081?s=02)
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: I don’t even have to look, I know it’s Ferd’s house. I did a little bit of work on it for him.
rikyrah
AI—- the new crypto?
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTREMHVB2/
HinTN
@Quinerly: That’s a very busy bathroom.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: Did you do that exotic trim work?
Scuffletuffle
@HinTN: yes, that bathroom…no, just no. The rest of the house is awesome.
BellyCat
Noteworthy article discussing how parking requirements shape the built environment.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
I thought you probably did. I was only in it once…many years ago. Lots of stuff I never saw or stuff that wasn’t there. Sounds like they are building a new house.
OzarkHillbilly
@HinTN: Nah, nothing fancy. IIRC, just a little structural work.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: Someplace a little quieter I suspect.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Well put.
Quinerly
@HinTN:
Ferd’s house has a lot of neat mosaic. My house in St. Louis (city, near AB Brewery) had some mosaic work that was done by the same artist. I had a pretty wild 1/2 bath but nothing truly crazy. We did an eclectic third floor full bathroom with mosaic on walls/ floor and a cool steam punk inspired walk out basement apartment with a penny floor in the bathroom/mosaic slate double shower. My old kitchen had a marble mosaic countertop and backsplash and one hall had a beautiful mosaic floor which were done in 1994. Nothing in my place was really over the top like this. My house sold pretty quickly. But it took a “special” buyer. The moral of the story is never think you are going to stay forever in a house like I thought I would. The negative comments I got about mine was it was “too personalized.”
Mine was NOTHING like this. Very, very tame.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
They are staying in Fenton.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: It feels like Dr. Seuss did the decorating. On the other hand, its way better than the monochrome grey I’m seeing so much of.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: Fenton can be nice, my eldest granddaughter and her mother live in a nice quiet cul de sac across from a golf course, but Bowles sucks. Especially during rush hour.
Quinerly
Totally OT. I’m pricing these “smokeless” firepits. Kinda liking the Tiki branded ones. Not interested in the Solo. Love the Breeo but mighty pricey even with the sales going on for Memorial Day.
Any thoughts/experiences?
NicaKnit
Don’t forget this short story on the topic by Julio Cortázar: https://ambystoma.uky.edu/teachers_materials/axolitbook/AxolotlByJulioCortazar.html
prostratedragon
@rikyrah: Two-person ridicule interpreter act? The White person is either tied up in a chair screaming through their gag, or else reading the blandest News Hour description possible of a Scott rally, while the Black person translates. Nah, probably still too rough.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
I paraded once with the MG Club for the Mum Fest in Fenton (or was it Festus??? Pretty sure it was Fenton). Two, if not 3 lifetimes ago. We dressed like Mardi Gras (I have no memory as to why, except we were mostly from Soulard). Fenton kinda didn’t “get it”….we threw beds and candy. It was the Fall. I wore my gold lame body suit. One spectator came up to me later and thought we were doing some performance art from “Gold Finger.” Fenton didn’t know what to do with Soulardians. I think that was when I was in Ferd’s house, too. The Fabulous ’90’s.
lowtechcyclist
@Scuffletuffle:
One would have to really, really like all that flooring. And of course, what makes that one bathroom crazy is that the flooring from the rest of the house takes over the walls as well.
But there’s no way I’d buy that house because if I had to live there, all the flooring would have to be pulled up and replaced before it drove me even more nuts than I already am.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
I’m not a fan of the monochrome gray. The really modern houses I was in and out of quickly when looking to buy in New Mexico were all that way. Just not me. They all looked to be staged with the same furniture too.
With that said, I am thinking about painting my kitchen light gray next year. It will go better with the the dark slate floors and gray granite counters than this strange green that it is painted. The rest of the house (except the den that I painted) is that popular “Navajo White” with a cool finish on it. Drawing a blank on the name for the finish on the plaster.
Quinerly
@lowtechcyclist:
If you are ever in St. Louis, check out a bar called The Venice Cafe. The guy that owns this house plays in a band that plays there quite a bit. Sister neighborhood to my old neighborhood of 40 years. In the shadow of Anheuser-Busch Brewery. This mosaic style basically came from that bar. Then later came “The City Museum” with its mosaic. Many of the same mosaic artists.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: “McMansion Hell” recently did little essay on the almost universal use of gray and the staging of furniture: how its easier to sell, because its not so “personalized.”
I like gray, just not so much that it makes me think I may have lost my ability to see color.
Isua
Axel-Maxine says hello! (The kids named her Axie, which got lengthened to Axie Maxie five minutes later, which then got lengthened again for a formal handle.) My cousin the amphibian ecologist somehow ended up with a pair of rescue axolotls, and this rapidly escalated to “I need to find homes for 90 baby axolotls now” so of course we needed one.
She is the absolute best. She’s so much more restful than the dog. She swims over to me when I’m near the tank, waiting for her worm. One tupperware of worms from the bait shop feeds her for months (as opposed to the guinea pigs, who get mad at me if the lettuce is three days old). My husband says I have to stop calling her feedings The Blood Ritual before the kids freak out their teachers.
Anyway, axolotls are awesome creepy overgrown tadpole beasts and I wuvs them.
Spanky
Speaking of Nature and Respite (I didn’t even know we had that tag), here’s a gift WaPo article for you all:
Why birds and their songs are good for our mental health
ETA one of our crazy Carolina Wrens is yelling “Tweedle tweedle tweet!” as I’m posting.
Over and over and over.
AWOL
@rikyrah: He led the league in violence against women, too.
rikyrah
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) tweeted at 9:40 AM on Fri, May 19, 2023:
Oh my God. Almost every single Oregon Republican state senator is now BANNED from running for re-election because they walked out of the chamber so many times to block votes— and voters just approved a rule disqualifying politicians for unexcused absences. https://t.co/jxyOp6YOi5
(https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1659569733362937860?s=02)
Baud
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
I get that school of thought about a buyer wanting to visualize their stuff in a space but I’m with you about some color. My Santa Fe house was furnished when I looked at it. But nothing personal…no pictures, very little on the walls. Not my style of furnishing but I had no problem picturing my 3 PODs full in the house. My St. Louis house was basically sold empty except for the dining room suit that went with it. Buyer loved the dining room suit. So it all worked out.
As for the mosaic in mine, people either liked it or didn’t. I didn’t read the online comments on the listing until after it sold. I couldn’t change the house at that point. Mine hit the market just as the market was changing. I was already out of it. Sold in 45 days. I was about 2 months late getting it on the market…took a lot to get out of a place I had lived in and babied for almost 30 years.
Betsy
100%. Even though I’m not a boomer, stacks of old Mads from the 60s were left behind at a relatives house and my cousins and I read them til our eyeballs rolled out of our heads. We used to use “axolotl” and “potrzebie” as interjections.
Mad gets most of the credit for my skepticism and offbeat / cynical sense of humor.
kalakal
@rikyrah: Sounds good to me! About time the posturing jackasses suffered the consequences for their contempt of the voters and democracy. If you or I don’t do our jobs we lose them, glad to see it applied to our rulers
Ken
@rikyrah: Why are you posting these TikTok links? You know that our Montana jackals don’t dare open them, less the omnipresent security forces break through their doors to make sure all watchers are over 21.
Seriously, how would they think they could enforce that?
zhena gogolia
@Betsy: And I didn’t know until much later that “potrzebie” is an actual word in Polish. Means something like “It demands.”
Google tells me “it needs.”
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Homes are to be lived in. I’m not going to decorate with a mind for the next buyer. You lived there 30 years, you decorated for you and ya know, so what if someone didn’t like the mosaics etc. You did ❤️😊
Another Scott
@HinTN: The crooked toilet paper roll is [chef’s kiss].
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
Mad Magazine reference. This IS a full service blog.
NotMax
Weekend long watch.
Gielgud and Richardson and Washbourne strutting their stuff, making the intensely difficult appear almost effortless.
Delk
@zhena gogolia: potrzebować – to need spotrzebować – to require
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
💚🩵💛❤️💙💜
Keith P.
I hear “axolotl” and I immediately think The Veils in Twin Peaks, although I don’t really know what the song has to do with the reptile. Just a cool song and scene.
CaseyL
When I was younger, I got “axolotol” and that old sling weapon “atlatl” mixed up. I wondered how they could possibly be related. Then I realized they were two different things, from entirely different parts of the world!
@rikyrah: I’ve been following that story, and have thus far filed it in the “too good to be true” category.
I don’t doubt the existence of the facts. I don’t doubt those politicians violated the new law. I just assume the disqualified GOPers will go to court and have it overturned.
But it would be oh so delicious if the court found in the citizens’/voters’ favor!
Ken
@Baud: It looks like Lindell is trying for an insanity defense. At least, he’s still claiming that the data shows the Chinese hacked the election, while Zeidman and the outside experts the arbitrators brought in both agree it’s gibberish.
twbrandt
While we are on the subject of real estate, if you want to live like an archbishop, the former 33,000 sq ft (that’s not a typo) residence of the archbishop of Detroit is for sale.
MagdaInBlack
@twbrandt: And in the last pictures, there’s that damned gray 😉
Quinerly
@twbrandt:
Wow! I’m reading all the still under construction stuff. That’s costing a pretty penny. Was it crumbling before all of this new work?
MomSense
I give up. My garden is just going to have to suffer. The outside is like a Hitchcock movie called Ticks.
twbrandt
@MagdaInBlack: The house is currently owned by an investment firm, which is renovating it for sale. So naturally they are making it as bland as possible.
laura
Anybody else lurking on ABL’s twitter feed? She’s in Paris to see Beyonce and it’s the closest thing to a vacation I’m going to get this summer because we have veterinarian bills.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
My old farmhouse sold again last summer and I found the photos online. The only thing that’s changed was the furnishings. It was weird seeing the kitchen floor I painted in big squares. I scraped up old linoleum to reveal the pumpkin pine. The pine couldn’t be sanded but it looked really nice painted.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@twbrandt: Whoa. That’s in Palmer Woods (west of Woodward, between 7mile and 8mile). Our first house was in a neighborhood just south of there, between 6mile and 7mile, north of the University of Detroit. The houses in that area are beautiful.
BC in Illinois
twbrandt
@Quinerly: I’m not sure. The archdiocese sold it former Detroit Piston Bad Boy John Salley in 1989. Salley dumped a ton of money into it, then he sold it to something called Great Faith Ministries International sometime in the 1990s. That outfit sold it in 2017 to the real estate investment firm that now owns and is renovating it. It probably deteriorated quite an bit after Salley sold it.
twbrandt
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yes, they are! I grew up and still live in the Detroit ‘burbs, and we used to drive through that area and gawk at all the big houses.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@BC in Illinois:
The Daffodils
RaflW
@MagdaInBlack: The current designer (or at least HGTV wannabe) obsession with grey. Ugh.
Saw a listing in our building where the seller left the medium brown oak cabinets and ‘butcher block’ laminate countertops but painted everything grey. So. Weird. So ugly.
Listing went pending in 4 days. 🤷
K488
@NotMax: OMG! I saw this in London when I was a kid, and this seems to have been a recording of that production. This really brought back memories – Thanks!
NotMax
@twbrandt
Big enough to be decorated in 50 shades of gray.
;)
MagdaInBlack
@RaflW: I have personal issues with gray anyway. I lived with a man who painted every wall battleship gray. It was depressing. When he moved out, bright colors moved in
That is why I find the trend depressing.
HinTN
@Another Scott: True, dat.
Quinerly
@MomSense:
Since 2020, I have sold the house my father built and I grew up in and my family beach place in NC…all since my mom’s death. And last year the house in St. Louis that I put my heart and soul in for 30 years. I had bought it when the inner city neighborhood was up and coming but still rough. It feels like I all I have done since Covid Times hit has been putting memories on the market and closing chapters of my life…not to mention all the painting, cleaning, packing and touching “stuff.”
With all that said, I thought I would be more nostalgic. Mostly weary and trying to be settled again. I have no desire to even look at anything these buyers have done to these places. I guess I was the most sad the day the sign went up on the NC house that my dad had built in 1963…it was always “home.” But by the time I got it cleared and all the personal stuff out, it was just a “house.” My timing was so off that I started my 1000 mile drive back to St. Louis at 4pm as the sign was literally being pounded in the ground. A lot can be said for moving often and not getting attached. My parents didn’t and I didn’t….you end up accumulating and not purging every few years.
S Cerevisiae
Another person twisted by Mad magazine here, I can still remember many bits. From the Star Trek musical:
Observe that crewman rub his leg
last week he caught the Neptune plague
today his joints are blue and yellow
in seven days he’ll turn to jello
and that last remaining blob I’ll analyze
when he dies
these are my kinds of sickness…
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
This gray seems to come around every few years. My boyfriend at the time and I bought a historic house to rehab in St. Louis in 1987. It had been painted battleship gray. Every room. 4 stories. Just awful. 1880’s woodwork had been painted white. My weekend life for most of that relationship was stripping and painting. I worked for months on a walnut Victorian staircase. The joke in my lawfirm on Mondays was I had a side job “stripping on the weekends.”
HinTN
@RaflW: I’ll say something good about that gray. Several years ago we repainted the interior of our house, which I designed to have exterior light from two directions in each room. Mrs H picked out a different gray for each room. She said it would “bounce the light” throughout the day, and she was right. The color and texture in every room changes in subtle ways throughout the day.
StringOnAStick
@rikyrah: Even more lame is the media falling for their “principled reason” for why they did the 10 unexcused absences and have now lost their chance to run for reelection: that the rules require every bill to be written at the 8th grade reading comprehension level. Oh no, it’s not that the D’s wanted to pass an even more supportive pro-choice measure (abortion access is the law here, period), or some climate change rules; no, not at all, why they’re just so damned principled, you know?
My prediction: they will all run again anyway because they are all far right R nutters so rules don’t apply to them, even ones the voters overwhelmingly approved like the “10 unexcused absences and you can’t run for office again”, which was passed by voters in response to this same tactic of leaving the chamber without a quorum so no legislation can pass. I hope the chaos that causes makes sure to finally reduce their numbers to low enough that this walk out tactic no longer works.
HinTN
@Quinerly: I hear you. I’ve been living on this patch of earth, with short excursions away, for over 50 years. I like it that way but it’s time to downsize and that’s damn difficult!
Ken
@MomSense: You could keep guinea hens, they are good at tick control. The neighbors might object.
Google tells me that opossums are not as good at tick control as once thought. All for the best, I suppose — the neighbors would really object.
Kelly
@rikyrah: Legislative quorums of 2/3 are defined in Oregon’s constitution. The truant legislator reelection ban is the result of constitutional amendment passed in 2022. I voted for it. It’s better than nothing. I cannot figure out why Democrats didn’t just submit an amendment to modify the quorums to 50%+1. Would have passed just as easily. Republicans will elect one term jackasses and continue this using the quorum rules for obstruction.
Anoniminous
@rikyrah:
The OpenAI people have already said Large Language Models, the basis of ChatGPT & etc., are a dead end. The basic reason is exactly the same reason Technical Analysis doesn’t lead to massive riches in the Stock and Commodity Markets: the future is not 100% determined from the past.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
I’m not ready to move but I definitely need to do a purge. Unfortunately I can’t get rid of much because my mom is with me and she is very attached to stuff. She’s already angry with me because she wanted me to promise I would keep the settee and chairs that belonged to her grandparents. My mom is 85. Her dad was 65 when she was born. It’s old. The settee has been broken my entire life. We took photos on it when I was 5 or 6 and even then they told us not to move or it might fall apart. In perfect condition it’s a tiny, uncomfortable thing with lots of dark, carved wood. In what world am I going to use it?
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: Excellent point. I guess the one good thing is the blocked from running again R’s will have lost the benefit of incumbency, which might matter on the margins. That’s probably not as big a deal as it is for federal level office though. This does mean Bend has “lost” having Knopp represent us again, and I sure hope a D takes his place. There’s enough CA liberals moving in here that it should matter!
Anoniminous
@Ken:
The same way they enforce the Communist Control Act of 1954: they don’t. It’s all posturing for the ignorant hick bigots.
StringOnAStick
@MomSense: My remaining parent is 91 and none of us live forever. I am dreading cleaning out the 4 metal sheds packed full of crap (and likely full of Hanta virus infected mouse droppings), the basement full of the cheap plastic crap my mother loved to buy, and the 5 freezers full of Omaha Steaks crap that is at least 7 years old now since my dad just buys new stuff at the grocery store, and packs that in there on top of it all. I made an inventory for him years ago so he could see what he has and thaw it for use, but he just buys new. I am going to suggest that my siblings and I rent a large roll off dumpster and use the highest level filtration masks we can get to deal with the sheds. The freezer that has been broken for 12 years but is stranded in the basement because of the shelves my dad put in for his office is likely a full on biohazard zone.
And yes, as an adult I have made it a point to have a little “stuff” as I possibly can after living with the opposite with our parents and seeing how their continuous collection of more and more crap simply buried their home in junk.
trollhattan
So happened to click a link to a Lucinda Williams article and am pondering the publisher: “Garden & Gun.” The actual hell is this?
“Nice flarrs.”
“Thanks.”
{BLAM} “Where dit go?”
“Fuck you!” {BLAM} “Where’d YOU go?”
And, scene.
Origuy
@CaseyL:
Actually, they are from the same part of the world, or at least the names are. Both names are Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. the axolotl is from the area around Mexico City. The atlatl or spearthrower is found all over the world; I don’t know why the Nahuatl name has been adopted.
Interesting story about the atlatl; archaeologists found depictions of people playing a game using atlatls. They didn’t understand them until someone contacted the World Atlatl Federation and they worked out the rules to the game. It is now a competition in atlatl events.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: I think we can pick up Bend and maybe Tillamook. Republicans would still have 11 Senators, 1 more than they need to blockade a quorum. All of the others will just be next wingnut.
Ken
@Origuy: Got a link for the atlatl game? Google just shows me people hunting game with atlatls, leaving me imagining an even more dangerous version of lacrosse.
StringOnAStick
@trollhattan: That magazine has come up here before. It’s from the pre-crazy NRA times but still has that name. You know, from when guns meant actual hunters who hunted for food and tradition, not as an excuse to go get drunk in the woods and shoot up anything and everything: meaning the past.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: Well, crap.
I feel like the world is burning and democracy is on a knife’s edge, while we have to struggle with their rearguard actions just to keep a tiny bit of forward motion, not the leaps and bounds we need to be making and could be making if they weren’t hamstringing everything.
trollhattan
@StringOnAStick: We used to have an annual “Gun and Doll Show” held at the state fairgrounds and I always pondered just what it was like. Not enough to go, mind, but definitely curious.
Quinerly
@HinTN:
I didn’t downsize as much as I should have on this move. I got rid of a lot of stuff in St. Louis and sold the beach place furnished and with memories going back to 1973. I probably should have gotten rid of even more stuff but I love my family furniture that has been passed down thru generations and didn’t want to completely start over at age 60. It really doesn’t go with “Santa Fe Style.” But fuck it. I guess never say never, but if my plan holds I’m here until the end. Clearing it all out will be someone else’s problem. I have no family. Only child born of two only children. Never seemed weird until I started getting older.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Thank you for the Lucinda Williams article.
Had the pleasure of catching her in concert in Charlottesville earlier this month. She is in great voice.
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
Thanks for posting this. I love her. She puts on a great show. Seen her a couple of times in NOLA and tended a bar in a tent for her show at one of The Big Muddy Bluesfest in St. Louis many years ago. She was very cool and approachable. Friendly and talkative with her fans and us volunteers working the fest. This was late 1990’s.
(This magazine is actually pretty good)
Quinerly
@Elizabelle: 💙
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
and @Anoniminous:
In both cases, note that the big arguments are what people think those techs would be able to do in the future, not anything they were able to do right now. While that very, very rarely that works out, it’s a giant red flag of ‘Someone is trying to sell you garbage.’
Which does not stop the Job Creators from falling for the latest dumbass buzzword AGAIN and causing havoc while patting themselves on the back for being genius innovators. So what if it doesn’t work?
Quinerly
@StringOnAStick:
What a mess. One of my best friends went thru this with her MIL who was a frozen food hoarder (some stuff went back 20 plus years) and was addicted to a home shopping channel. She bought stuff and never even opened it. Piled up in the hall. My friend’s husband did nothing to help about his own mother’s stuff. All sort of excuses. Mostly, “it’s too painful for me to deal with this.” So my friend spent het vacation days cleaning out her MIL’S 60 years of junk and rotten food. They had to get the house on the market. I would have left the husband had I been in her shoes.
Elizabelle
@Quinerly: I hope she gets out west so you can see her again too.
Last saw Lucinda at Great Orange Park in Tustin, CA. Many years ago. One of the best concerts ever.
She signed my book for me! Did not get to meet her; a very kind roadie took it back to her. Next stop was Asheville, NC.
Maxim
@rikyrah: Outstanding. I hope it holds up in court.
Elizabelle
@Quinerly: I knew a mother and daughter who had adjacent colonial style homes, with large backyards. There was a doggy door in the fence so their Italian greyhounds could visit back and forth. (I pet sit for them once, and it was a challenge to figure out where the doggos were, sometimes.)
Anyway: the mom was a compulsive shopper. Compulsive. House was organized, but too many of everything. Stuff from HSN was arriving, daily.
The daughter’s home: empty countertops. Lots of white walls. Just about sterile.
I understood.
Quinerly
@Elizabelle:
I’m missing my live music scene…my local St. Louis musicians, festivals, and touring bands. I don’t see much on the horizon here but Bonnie Raitt in the Fall which I am skipping since I’ve seen her at least 6 times. I am going to Taos next month for the Plant/Krauss show. Ringo Starr is coming to Albuquerque but it’s a lot of planning/organization for me to go to an Albuquerque show. The drive to and from, plus a JoJo sitter. Just don’t think I need to see Ringo Starr when weighing the effort and expense.
Quinerly
@Elizabelle:
I don’t get this HSN addiction. Knew a woman in St Louis who had the bug too.
Anoniminous
@Frankensteinbeck:
I was being nice. My personal and professional opinion is nicely expressed in Unsavory medicine for technological civilization: Introducing ‘Artificial Intelligence & its Discontents’. My personal and professional opinion not so nicely expressed is … not so nice.
Geminid
@Quinerly: Last year my friend Joan spent a week helping her hoarder friend Elaine clear up her house. Joan said she had to walk sideways through the boxes once she got past the front door.
There was a ton of work to do. Elaine was a shopaholic, and in particular collected a lot of excess food and clothing. She was also obsessive about her mail; Joan helped Elaine blot out addresses with a marker so she would could throw years worth of mail into a dumpster.
It was a tough but successful project that was made easier by the first stop they made between Boston’s Logan airport and Elaine’s condo: a cannabis dispensary. They also broke up the grind with a “Sunday, Fun Day” trip, and took the ferry to Provincetown to hang out for the day.
trollhattan
@Quinerly: The “Call to action” is very powerful, technique arising from the intersection of marketing and psychology.
Anyway
Thanks, AL, for that Mad Magazine riff on Daffodils. It’s so great…first time for me.
Quinerly
@Geminid: your friend sounds like a gem. It’s great her friendship with Elaine survived it all. I guess Elaine realized she had a problem and knew she needed help. So many get defensive in these situations.
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
It’s hard for me to comprehend “impulse” buys. I tend to over research. A friend joked that I researched buying a new TV (when the flat screens had already been out a few years) so long that by the time I pulled the trigger on the purchase, the TV was outdated/discontinued. Actually, it ended up being true.
Yesterday it rained all day here in the High Desert. I spent hours researching and looking for deals on the best “smokeless” fire pits. It’s always a struggle for me because then I am overwhelmed with research and reviews. I think I have settled on the Tiki Brand Patio Fire Pit, but am putting out the call for anyone to signal me back if they have one.
Redshift
@Elizabelle: A friend’s mother got banned from QVC more than once. She was a compulsive shopper, but not a hoarder. She enjoyed buying things, not having them, so she’d just return them. Unsurprisingly, that makes you a money-loser for them, so they banned her. (They probably even have some rule of conduct covering it.)
Then a while later, I’m assuming, the marketing department would see how active a customer she was (and probably not cross-check with whatever other department) and she’d get reinstated, and the whole thing would start over again.
Uncle Cosmo
@zhena gogolia: I conjecture that one of the MAD guys was in Poland and saw the word on signs outside small shops – essentially it advertises “(household) necessities”. (And it’s pronouced pot-rsheh-byeh, with the rsh the sound of the “r” in Dvorák – not potter-zeebee like most of us kids would’ve.) You see the same in the Czech lands (potřebu).
Geminid
@Quinerly: Elaine and Joan became friends when they attended college at Boston State in the early 1970s. Elaine went on to a career with the EPA and retired 4 years ago. Now she comes down to Charlottesville for a couple weeks every year and that’s how I met her. I send Elaine “On the Road posts” and she really likes them.
oatler
@Origuy:
There’s a Terry Southern story “The Road to Axotl” about which I remember nothing but a house in Mexico gleaming with ants…
Ken
@Uncle Cosmo: Spotted on the instructions for a bottle of aspirin, if wikipedia is to be believed.
I feel curiously happy that I live in a world with a free online encyclopedia that includes articles on the history of running gags in a seventy-year-old humor magazine.
Fleeting Expletive
Thanks to this thread, I have spent a happy hour shopping on Amazon for a plush axolotl as a second birthday gift, and there are many cute versions. My 15 year old granddaughter, somewhere on the autism spectrum, likes the most unusual things. The other gift is a cool backpack with a usb connection to charge phones and whatnot. I just have to figure out what power bank is and get one to keep it charged. Didn’t know they existed until yesterday.
Full service blog, indeed.
RaflW
@HinTN: I found a couple of taupe/off white colors with hints of warm gray that I love.
I painted the living room the lightest of the 3 on the chip, and it is one of those colors that looks remarkably different with morning sun, afternoon bounce light, yet again different if overcast, and a whole other shade with lamps at night.
The 2nd and 3rd values of the hue went on different walls in the primary bedroom (which had extra right angles because of the posts for the tower behind the drywall). Only a most astute observer could tell there were different shades, but it gave the room extra dimension.
It’s now my go-to color for two subsequent moves. But it doesn’t have that blue-gray, chilly feel that I seem to see in current vogue.
Quinerly
@RaflW:
Could you post the names of the colors? I’m looking for a new color for my kitchen and bedroom. Thanks!
HinTN
@RaflW: You might like Cloudy Gray by Benjamin Moore. That was the lightest of the colors Mrs H selected, but even the darker ones achieved the desired effect. Ben Moore is good paint.
HinTN
@Quinerly: I can go dig up the list if your would like.
trollhattan
@Quinerly: Similar, I typcally research to a fault, to the point of decision paralysis, i.e., going too far the other direction.
Call to action + FOMO are keys to triggering impulse buying.
Jackie
@rikyrah: As a border neighbor – separated by the mighty Columbia in southeastern (RED) WA, you gave me my first genuine laugh of the day! Lots of OR MAGAts cross the bridge daily – either for work or Costco.
Thank you!😊 Now off to read the entire article slowly – savoring every word!
cain
@rikyrah: Yep – so far 7 republicans are no longer eligible to run for re-election. The measure passed voters by 68% – everyone is sick of their bullshit.
None of us gets to skip work because we are feeling pouty. They don’t get to either. Act like adults.
zhena gogolia
@Uncle Cosmo: When I started learning Polish in college, I cracked up when I saw the word.
zhena gogolia
@Fleeting Expletive: Neat!
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: That is hilarious. As a good man said, “Fuck ’em!”
Origuy
@Ken: It was in Archaeology Magazine a while back. The modern version is called Moche Badminton.
dnfree
@Quinerly: Here’s a nice color between gray and taupe that looks good at different times of the day: Anew Gray by Sherwin-Williams. Looks very nice with Persimmon as accent color in a little niche.
https://www.sherwin-williams.com/en-us/color/color-family/neutral-paint-colors/SW7030-anew-gray
evodevo
@Baud: Yep…a friend in 8th grade wrote a parody of Lochinvar (we’d just had it in our English text) in honor of the MAD poems…his wasn’t too bad, either…
“Oh, young Lock-and-Bar is come out of the west…throughout all the wide drag strips his car was the best, etc. etc.”
evodevo
@Quinerly:
Can definitely sympathise with your friend…my MIL was a hoarder (well, she grew up poor in the Thirties, so I guess she had an excuse) and so is Mr. Evodevo. I despair of getting rid of all the accumulated crap, so I am just concentrating on my own stuff. I have vowed that THIS year is divest year lol…we’ll see…
Quinerly
@evodevo:
Hang in there.
Quinerly
@dnfree:
Thanks! I like this!
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
I’m in decision paralysis re the fire pit. That with the combination of losing interest.
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
I’m in decision paralysis re the fire pit. That with the combination of losing interest.
@HinTN:
Don’t sweat it. I thought if you knew the name off the top of your head. Thanks!