Movie night tonight. Avoiding turkey like the plague and eating chicago dogs, chips, and baked beans while tussling with Steve, who is needier than usual.
Open Thread: Could Be Worse
Cranky curmudgeon Mark ‘Copyranter‘ Duffy (nobody’s favorite coworker) tells Gawker the “TOP 10 BEST EVER WTF OMG REASONS BUZZFEED FIRED ME, LOL!”:
I achieved the near-impossible Monday morning, October 7, at approximately 9:30 am. I got fired from BuzzFeed…
BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith called me into his office via GChat and said something like, “This is just not working out, your stuff. Let’s just say, it’s ‘creative differences.'” (I paraphrase, but he most certainly used the c and d words.)…
I was “officially” fired at my apartment on Halloween, via a letter delivered by UPS. Inside the envelope were two copies of the legal document, one to sign and return and another for my records. Both copies had CUTE stickers affixed to the first page.
I did not LOL.
I know for a fact that there are more appropriate varieties of sticky notes in the BuzzFeed office supply cabinet that do not have “CUTE” printed on them, including white ones with a ghosted red BuzzFeed logo.
A 53-year-old man, BuzzFeed’s oldest ever employee, jobless and without health insurance? CUTE as a fucking bug’s ear. Not as CUTE: Making your advertising critic disappear posts that criticize the advertisements of big advertisers, which Ben Smith did to me on at least one occasion. BuzzFeed has a “no haters” hiring policy and an overweening desire to draw big-name advertisers into its “community” of users, in exchange for money. Which makes ranting about ads professionally for the site a complicated endeavor. At which I FAILed…
So… Whatever the tribulations of your life, at least you do not work for Ben Smith, former Politico cheerleader and, according to Yasha Levine, dedicated Kochsucker. Who probably congratulates himself on having measurably increased mindshare for the brand with Duffy’s latest rant, because if one could literally show one’s arse in the Media Village, Smith would get a trampstamp reading BROUGHT TO YOU BY ____________ . Previous generations might complain ‘I owe my soul to the company store’; our new Social Betters have solved that problem by not having souls to sell.
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Apart from tryptophan comas and yelling at clouds, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
The Archbishop’s Gonna Sanctify Me
I’m looking at some online sales on laptops, and it’s interesting to see the different approaches. Dell just discounts a few specific models (most of them are last year’s). Apple will give you a $150 gift card (not bad, but there’s probably not $150 worth of swag that I want if I were to buy a Macbook). Lenovo, the ThinkPad people, seem to be the only retailer that is actually offering a discount.
That said, after all the trampling that’s gone on in the past few years, is it really wise for them to use “Doorbuster” as their coupon code?
Open thread.
Yinz Guys Goin Dahntahn ta Watch the Stillers?
Yeah, we lost, but still feeling the love for the Burgh tonight:
Ah yinz goin’ dahn nair to see Dawwny Iress?
Yinz Guys Goin Dahntahn ta Watch the Stillers?Post + Comments (45)
Post-Turkey Open Thread
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We are back home after the thirty-seventh iteration of our particular Boggie Bloat, and the dogs & cats have been served their dinners (THREE hours late, we are indignantly reminded). I am doing my best to feel flattered that two of the people who’ve known me longest congratulated me on how much better & healthier than I looked when they last saw me two years ago, which I assured them was mostly due to having slept in my own bed last night. And I remembered that two years ago, I’d spent the preceding 24 hours under great stress and contention with the Spousal Unit and the three godsdamned damaged rescue dogs, culminating in an unscheduled three-hour pre-dawn delay in a strip mall parking lot outside Parsipanny, after (a) a tire blew out (b) somebody realized he’d forgotten to re-inflate the spare, and (c) it was established, after much cellphone triangulation, that somebody had also forgotten to update his AAA membership before we started the trek from Boston to Hoboken…
So now, I have one more reason to be grateful tonight.
How’s things in your neighborhood?
Steelers/Ravens Open Thread
Also, Happy Thanksgiving.
Pie and Coffee (Open Thread)
We have pecan and pumpkin. I’m not having any pie, but I am having a cup of coffee to fortify myself against the chill. We’ve been taking the little cousins out to explore the woods and trails. Here’s a lovely freshwater spring right off the Suwannee:
For those if you celebrating Thanksgiving and/or Hanukkah, how did your feast turn out? I was in charge of the turkey and gravy, and it was perfection if I do say so myself.