I ain’t got nuthin’ to say.
John Cole started Balloon Juice early in 2002. Those who have followed along know that this has been quite the journey.
Friday Night Open Thread
Jersey Mike’s is what is for dinner because A.) I did not feel like cooking, B.) I have nothing but ingredients in the house that require cooking so see A and C.) I bought a several lb bone in lamb leg roast for 7 dollars from Fry’s the other day and it is currently on hour 24 of being marinated and will be cooked tomorrow, so I know we are having a very rich in flavor and composition meal then so a simple sub is what we did for tonight. That was a long paragraph.
Met a fellow Balloon Juicer in Mesa today- WE WERE DOING A DEAL- I picked up a couple of pieces of vintage Revere Ware from them, and mentioned while chatting we should do a meet-up. I generally don’t think of them because well, to be honest, I don’t really want to meet you or anyone else, especially not in public. But I do remember that I always have a pleasant time and that everyone seems to like them, so we should probably do one. I shall consult with the wife on a time that is good for her and get back to you all.
I was blathering on twitter today about how politics is so fucking easy right now- you can sort of tune out for days or weeks on end because unless the issues really interest you, they don’t really matter. Politics is right now, for me, the most clear cut it has ever been in my lifetime. You’re either with the flawed but generally good hearted party of fuckups, or you’re with the Nazis.
It’s just that cut and dried. I mean sure, keep up on the nuances of the topics if they interest you, but really, you don’t need to. You don’t really need to keep up on every LGBTQ issue. The Republicans are against them. All. Even the mention of them. You don’t need to know the ins and outs regarding abortion. The Republicans are against them and birth control and more. You don’t need to know the grim details of climate science. The Republicans are going to block anything to make it better.
I mean, it’s just that fucking simple. You either want a future that is the current fucked up status quo or better, or you are with the party that wishes it was still 1857 and they were still riding the ether high of Dred Scott.
It’s that fucking simple. How did we get here? It’s complicated. It was a lot of things, but we’re fucking here now. We’ve got the normal human beings on one side, and we’ve got the beared maniacs sitting in their pick up trucks screaming into the video camera that they are just furious they can’t use the n word and fuming they can’t say indian style and have to say criss cross applesauce. They’ve either never heard of the phrase “the lotus position” or if by chance they have it’s too pussy for them to say. I didn’t realize it then, but having a black president broke the ever loving brains of several generations of white fuckers.
So yeah. Biden’s old and imperfect and so are a lot of the Democrats and yes I wish they were younger and took more action and yes fuck Merrick Garland.
But they’re not fucking Nazis.
Thursday Night Open Thread
I see that the Justice Department has provided the media and Republicans with a both sides defense on documents to use in their fluffery of Trump, with a bonus dig at Biden’s mental health. So that’s fucking awesome. I remain very concerned about the Fall election. It’s clear that it does not matter how well things are going or anything concrete, a lot of people just want to burn shit to the ground and a lot of people just want to carry out their vengeance porn on the poor and minorities and those different than them.
In other news, I didn’t do anything today. I mean I worked, and I made dinner, and now I am baking brownies, but other than that I did nothing of note. Cleaned some litter boxes. Carried some palm tree debris around back. But other than that, just pissed and moaned about the rain and my back like a proper old person.
I did get to use my brand new to me antique nut cutter (or vintage) that I got for free at the estate sale. Like a mason jar contraption with a screw on lid with a plunger that crushes nuts up. I’d never made brownies for Joelle before, but she had mentioned in passing that she liked walnuts in them, so I crushed up some nuts and threw them in.
I like a good single use tool. I know with the need for economy of space in a lot of apartment kitchens multi-purpose tools are preferred, but I like to live in a world where a good tool has a place even if it can only do one thing. Plus, the more complicated things get, the more likely they are to break, and the less likely you are to be able to fix it. Especially with electronics.
I guess that’s all I have to say tonight.
Wednesday Night Open Thread
Another busy day today. Had a bunch of work work to do and then a bunch of things I wanted to do around the house. I wanted to go in and clean out the detached laundry room and organize that because that is where we have decided to store all the dog and cat crates and the like when animals are not in transit. Because Joelle always has lots going on in the dog side of things (owning her own, picking up strays, etc.), she has a bunch of crates and I brought a bunch and well you get the point- they need someplace to go. More accurately- I need for there to be a place for all of them to go. They are perfectly fine where they are. I’m the fucking lunatic who needs for their to be a place for them to go.
It occurred to me while cooking dinner that if the reason the Republicans in the House were going to impeach Mayorkas was for ostensibly not doing his job, does it not logically follow that the Republicans should impeach themselves for not being able to do their fucking jobs? Whatever.
Dinner was good- nothing sensational- thawed out that steak that I got a couple weeks ago at Fry’s and reverse seared that with some mushrooms and onions the way Joelle likes, and I was in the mood for fries so cut up a couple russets and double fried them. Not the most heart healthy meal, but whatever. My bag of vegetable scraps in the freezer is full so I needed the bone from the steak to make beef stock, and it was cheap since it was in the freezer.
One of the things that I noticed here that is weird is I kept seeing little colorful balls of stuff stuck here and there on the ground by the sidewalks. Especially if they had any vegetation/weeds and a rock garden- it really stands out there with the contrast. So I looked, and realized that it is dryer lint! And I realized this isn’t a problem near me because we’re not that close together and we have birds snagging that stuff up the moment it comes out to build nests. As it is I hang balls of cotton from my trees and have to replace it several times in the spring and summer.
The only birds I see with any regularity down here are the gi-FUCKING-normous pigeons that chill on the power line behind our house. When I sit in the back yard with the dogs, they are always out there. Also, I regret to inform you that Joelle is a bird racist and does not like pigeons. I asked her why and she said “Because they shit on everything” while scrunching up her nose and all I could think was you just agreed to take Thurston full time and I have never seen anything shit like he does.
Whatever. I like the pigeons and throw them bread scraps when we have them out in the front yard. We kinda fucked pigeons over, people did. We domesticated them and used them for food for thousands of years and then for communication and took them everywhere and now they’re feral but still almost completely reliant on human activity, and are who they are because we made them that way. So they kinda got a raw deal from us. And I understand the hygiene and sanitation implications. But still, they don’t deserve the hate.
Speaking of feral, here is a picture of Max:
He was looking down at all the dogs and debating violence. Vicious panther- a real bastard, that cat.
Global Trade Patterns
If you have been paying attention, this is not a surprise, but it is still jarring to see it in black and white:
I have now survived, in my lifetime, an “OMG THE JAPANESE ARE BUYING ALL OF AMERICA” and an “OMG THE CHINESE ARE BUYING ALL OF AMERICA” scares. Back to the point of the article, I generally think this is a great development, if for no other reason than lessening global shipping. And unless my fundamental understandings of economics are wrong, this will bring wealth to both nations, lifting both economies, and perhaps lessening the immigration crisis (although many of the people at the border are from other portions of central and south America who are fleeing regimes that we have encouraged/destabilized).
Any thoughts?
Tuesday Night Open Thread
I have a pizza in the oven so I thought I would start writing this to keep me from opening the oven like a savage and checking. At any rate, it’s nice to see that for once the Republicans seems to be getting credit/blamed for the fecal art that is their behavior on Capitol Hill, and it saddens me to see the RNC in such a mess. Certainly Glenn Greenwald will be publishing their emails soon.
In other news I have quickly adopted the Arizona habit of acting like anything below 60 degrees is freezing, and all my joints hurt because of the rain storm. Had some crazy winds for a bit, too.
That’s it for me tonight. Tired.