Friends, this is going to be pretty paltry. We’re getting a new roof today, and already I’m a prisoner in my own home. The living room is darkened by the blue tarps and particleboard shielding the windows from the tear-off, which is clamorous. I don’t dare go upstairs, because as loud as it is down here, it’s worse up there, where the roof is. Our contractor comes highly recommended and promises they’ll be done in a day, but what that means is, there are approximately 15 guys swarming around, all stoked on Monster and cigarettes, each one armed with a tool that makes a lot of noise.
And yes, of course I have work to do. Quite a lot of it. What a fun day this will be.
So let’s punt:
Life, too strange for fiction:
A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.
The president’s problem is, he’s too smart and he uses them big words:
(Obama said): “That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”
“A little less professorial, less academic and more ordinary,” Payack recommended. “That’s the type of phraseology that makes you (appear) aloof and out of touch.”
Yes, by all means, Mr. President, throw in “real America,” “three-legged stool” and “freedom and democracy” the next time.
(The roofers just added a gas blower. I think I’m off to the library.)
Mittens Romney said, a few weeks back, that liberal social policies led to the downfall of his one-time family home in Detroit. From what I hear, this was more likely the reason:
Federal prosecutors in Detroit say a local crime ring ran a mortgage fraud scheme that cost lenders more than $100 million and was used to fund a lifestyle that included hot rod cars, international travel, palatial homes — even a helicopter.
Which can be blamed on?
Novy said the fraud, rooted in the relaxation of lending standards, can be blamed on the mortgage industry and Wall Street, which packaged the loans for investors.
Really? You don’t say.
Two blowers now. I’m outta here, guys.
coozledad said on June 17, 2010 at 9:26 am
Payack must be sporting an Ed.D. Using words like “professorial” and “phraseology” makes you come off like some douche who insists on being referred to as “Dr. Payack” at the Movie Mates.
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MRMARK said on June 17, 2010 at 10:07 am
We had a new roof put on last year and then all of our neighbors followed suit! I guess we got used to the pounding, but the dog never did.
Here’s a photo of Mondays early sunrise at a local country club.
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alex said on June 17, 2010 at 10:09 am
I’ve heard this “liberal social policies” crapola before with regard to the banking collapse. “Civil rights leaders” and the liberal politicians they’re supposedly in bed with wrote new laws “forcing” banks to lend money to the non-creditworthy people of you know what color. It’s all in a Ben Stein essay and has been getting wide circulation among the boobocracy.
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moe99 said on June 17, 2010 at 10:09 am
Gorgeous, Mr. Mark. We in Seattle are facing a high of 64 degrees today. And grey at least in the am.
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Jolene said on June 17, 2010 at 10:14 am
Is there a luckier guy in the world than Barack Obama? The amount of free advice he gets is just amazing. He must be so grateful.
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Julie Robinson said on June 17, 2010 at 10:16 am
We’ve lived through a couple of roof jobs and you have my sympathies. It is hard for we professorial types to turn a good phraseology with all that noise going on.
Edit: That golf course photo is stunning, MM. I’d think they would want a copy in their clubhouse. It glows with the promise of perfect rounds.
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Snarkworth said on June 17, 2010 at 10:16 am
Good on you, Nance, for spending resources on a good roof to keep you warm and unleaked upon. Some people would have spent it on hot rods and helicopters.
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nancy said on June 17, 2010 at 10:19 am
I can’t believe how fast this crew is. They started around 8, and they’ll be done by lunchtime. If nothing else, all the pounding will be over soon.
We’ve moved on to the nail guns, which aren’t as loud as the scrapers, but have the added fun of the compressor. I mean the generator. I think. Whatever.
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ROgirl said on June 17, 2010 at 10:20 am
If I were Irish, I would tell Payack to “kiss my royal Irish arse.”
That’s a leftover from yesterday.
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David in Chicago said on June 17, 2010 at 10:20 am
We replaced the roof on our condo building a few years ago. This included removing the old chimney that vented the original boiler that heated the building when it was built in the 1920’s (we all have individual HVACs in our units now.) And we had it done in January. The crew had it all done in less than a week – I presumed because keeping themselves moving made good sense when you’re on top of a three story building in the middle of a Chicago winter, but Nancy’s experience suggest that roofers just like to work fast whatever the weather.
I’m on the top floor, and on sunny days for almost a year afterward, my unit was scented with tar fumes.
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Jolene said on June 17, 2010 at 10:21 am
Good lord! Joe Barton (R-TX) just apologized to Tony Hayward for the “shakedown” that led to the $20B escrow fund established yesterday.
Really, there is nothing that Obama can do that the Repubs would not attack him for. Un-fucking-believable!
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nancy said on June 17, 2010 at 10:25 am
My favorite line from “Syriana” is when the board gets the news that someone has to fall for paying some public official’s kid’s private-school tuition, considered a bribe. Delivered with bewilderment: “This is the awl bidness we’re talking about?”
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Deborah said on June 17, 2010 at 10:33 am
I’ve lived in a lot of high-rise buildings in my adult life, so I’ve never experienced a new roof. When I was growing up in Miami we used to get our roof whitewashed every summer. It was one of those tile roofs that got damaged badly every time there was hurricane. We loved it when they did the painting because it was the only time our house was relatively cool in June. Can you imagine living in Miami in the summer now without air conditioning?
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adrianne said on June 17, 2010 at 10:34 am
I watched Barack’s speech, and told my sons that he was speaking at a seventh-grade level – pretty much perfect for politicians in this country (and a few grades above the daily newspaper reading level, I might add).
Repubs won’t be satisfied unless Obama dons a wet suit and plugs the oil well his own self. Sheesh.
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coozledad said on June 17, 2010 at 10:34 am
I think the Department of the Interior ought to post openings for people willing to act as “seconds”. Experience helpful, but upper body strength and attention to detail a must.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku
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nancy said on June 17, 2010 at 10:45 am
Roy Edroso wasn’t getting his roof pounded on this morning and got more sleep, so he brings a more serious and cogent comment to the prezdint uses big werds story.
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Jolene said on June 17, 2010 at 10:46 am
Really, some of our congressmen are so embarrassing. Their gassy opening statements are so inelegant and such a waste of time. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Hayward.
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judybusy said on June 17, 2010 at 10:47 am
When the banking crisis was just blowing up, Michele Bachmann really did say it was because of over-regulation. I have looked for the exact phrasing, but am out of time. I did, however, find this, on the financial reform bill: “Let’s remember really what this is. This has a lot in common with Italy in the 1930s and they way Italy dealt with economics,” she said. “It still continues private ownership of business but government is in control.”
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coozledad said on June 17, 2010 at 10:59 am
It’s not like this oil is going to stay bottled up in one place, either. This is already a looming global environmental catastrophe.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-464768/Thousands-rubber-ducks-land-British-shores-15-year-journey.html
A lot of industry people are saying the well is more like a garden hose with a rip in it than a puncture wound oozing goo. It can’t be plugged.
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Julie Robinson said on June 17, 2010 at 11:14 am
Does anyone know where all the oil-soaked detritus is headed? I haven’t the mental health to go investigating but it isn’t something I’ve seen in any stories. I know that some of the diverted oil at the site is being burned off because BP lacked storage for it, but what about all the booms, beach sand, etc.
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Rana said on June 17, 2010 at 11:24 am
Obama’s ability to talk to me like a thinking adult is one of the things that I continue to appreciate about him. Bush irritated me (on the few times I could bring myself to listen) because he always lectured me as if I was five years old, in ways that made it clear that I, in fact, knew more about the subject than he did. Being patronized is always annoying; being patronized by someone with less in the wheelhouse is enraging.
“He uses big words” is really a grade-school taunt and way of bullying smart kids – I heard it regularly from about the time I was in 5th grade on, from both teachers and students, and it was almost always meant to cow me and shut me up. (It obviously didn’t work.) I’ve learned to modulate that tendency since then, but every now and then someone feels like they must deploy it when they feel like I’m being too “uppity.”
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LAMary said on June 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm
The speech Obama made in Philadelphia, that speech about racism, was what completely sold me. He spoke to the American people as adults. As thinking people. He addressed a very difficult subject and opened it for discussion.
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nancy said on June 17, 2010 at 12:03 pm
And yet, that very same speech, Mary, sent some people off the rails. One blogger I was already growing disenchanted with repeated the right-wing line that the speech “threw his grandmother under the bus” because he mentioned that she feared black men. That criticism seemed so blockheaded and just …aggressively stupid that I had to turn away. Yuck.
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nancy said on June 17, 2010 at 12:05 pm
By the way, my roof was done by 11 a.m. This included a tearoff to the deck (no new plywood, though). Done in THREE HOURS. Plus the garage. And it looks great. I’m in awe, and $6,000 poorer.
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brian stouder said on June 17, 2010 at 12:07 pm
And last night, while I watched Olbermann (who is on probabation, after his silly response to the president’s address from the Oval Office), I popped over to crazy-ville during the commericials, to see who Shit-for-Brains Sean Hannity had on, and ol’ SFB-Sean topped even his pinstriped own-self; he had the author of a book called “Negrophilia” on, who was trying to make the case that racism either does not exist in the US anymore, or if it does, it is a paternalistic racism coming from the left (hence the title of the book, presumeably).
Suddenly, KO’s hissy-fit didn’t seem so bad, anymore
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Sue said on June 17, 2010 at 12:27 pm
LAMary, from all your explanations re Britain/UK/England, my husband wants to know:
Which ones are the British Isles, and
So a ‘Brit’ (in-house or otherwise) is someone from England, Scotland or Wales?
He’s just wondering, after I attempted to explain the discussion.
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Jeff Borden said on June 17, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I loathe the national Republican Party with a vengeance, but even by the subterranean levels they set for themselves they manage to dig ever deeper downward.
Watching a punkass like Joe Barton curtsy before the plutocrats of BP is only slightly less off-putting than the always dependable, crazy-eyed idiot of Minnesota, Michelle Bachman, who is declaring the creation of the $20 billion escrow account to aid the thousands whose livelihoods have been destroyed as “distribution of wealth.”
I wonder. If someone takes a large semi-tractor trailer rig and crashes into Barton’s house causing massive damage, would he object to being reimbursed? Would he bow and scrape to State Farm or Allstate or Geico and tell them to keep their money? If the same truck runs over Bachman’s car and totals it, does she walk away because the insurance payment would be a redistribution of wealth?
Where do they find these people? And, sadly, who are the cretins who vote for them?
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LAMary said on June 17, 2010 at 12:41 pm
The in-house Brit in this case is from England, but he could be from Scotland or Wales.
The British Isles are Ireland and the island Scotland, Wales and England are on. And the assorted smaller islands off the coast too.
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Sue said on June 17, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Dem candidates all over the country should be using quotes from this hearing at every possible opportunity, starting now.
But they won’t, because that would be so impolite.
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Sue said on June 17, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Thank you LAMary.
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beb said on June 17, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Joe Barton could be the gift that keeps on giving. All one has to do is take the soundtrack of him apologizing and run video under it of oil covered birds, scum filled marshes, etc. Even an idiot would realize that nothing that we have done to BP equals what they have done to us.
I thought Jolene @5 made it into the finals for snark of the day, though facing stiff competition from C’dad as usual.
The idea that this escrow account-against-liabilites is a “shakedown” represent an abuse of language of Rovian magnitude.
Brian Stouder: a lot of people felt Obama bunted when he should have been swing for the wall on that speech.
Attacking the president for using big words…. Back in the day when our daughter was of an age when we read bed time stories to her, I picked up some volumes of Dr, Doolittle, which I remember reading as a lad and liking. Re-reading the stories confirmed why I liked the stories but also surprised me back that author felt free to use big words any time he liked. I imagine that it would be listed as high school reading level even though its target audience was 1st to 3rd grader. The problem isn’t’ that Obama writes as a 12th grade level but that we, for whatever reason, don’t expect him to.
When I was putting myself through college I put a roof or two and it is surprising how fast the work goes. Well the shingles do cover a large amount of space each and only takes a couple of nails to hold in place. (This was before nail guns.)
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brian stouder said on June 17, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Dem candidates all over the country should be using quotes from this hearing at every possible opportunity, starting now.
Sue – you could not be more right! I just watched the news and my jaw dropped when I saw the “shakedown” clip.
Everyone running for congress should be asked whether they agree with that sentiment. One wonders how long before Joe Barton tries to somehow walk back his ridiculous ass-kissing and genuflecting.
And let me just say, this Tony Hayward boob who “runs” BP had been reminding me of something, and THEN it hit me. If you could wave a magic wand and make the Geico gekko into a human being, that person would be Tony Hayward.
Edit – Beb – I’ll agree with you there. KO seems only have two settings, and that would be complete and utter outrage, or else wink-wink sarcasm. I don’t think the president deserved the outrage-response.
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Dexter said on June 17, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Joe Barton is a ginger creepy-eyed asshole. He continually embarrasses himself and his state of Texas. I saw that clip…Barton is A JOKE !
Send that crew down to LaDonna Batiste-Williams bar, down on the Treme!
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LAMary said on June 17, 2010 at 2:11 pm
On my way out the door this morning I saw about thirty seconds of the CBS morning show. A republican political strategist from the Bush administration and a Dem counterpart were discussing the prez meeting with the BP guys. The republican was saying the president should take on more responsibility overseeing fixing the leak, cleaning up, reparations etc. The Dem said he was shocked that a Republican would support big government taking care of this rather than the private sector.
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moe99 said on June 17, 2010 at 2:33 pm
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2010/06/artist-thomas-kinkade-arrested-for-drunken-driving/1
Well, well, well.
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Deborah said on June 17, 2010 at 2:35 pm
The Repubs just want to embarrass Obama and his administration, no matter what he does they will be against it even if it totally contradicts whatever they said yesterday. I hope the Dems are keeping track of all this ammunition they’ve got at their fingertips when it comes time to put commercials and ads together for election campaigns.
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Dexter said on June 17, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Unreal? Nope, real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4elLeTY8Mwo
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prospero said on June 17, 2010 at 5:35 pm
That Payack nitwit reminds of Roman Hruska making a fool of himself on behalf of G. Harold Carswell:
Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.
Like internet twats that rely on the “thesaurus” card when somebody with whom they disagree displays a working vocabulary larger what you’d expect from monosyllabic 6th grader.
Critics of the President, particularly died-in-the-wool free marketeers, insist simultaneously that he’s not handling the spill forcefully enough and that he’s shoving big government down the throat of poor, downtrodden BP–a bizarre combination of hypocrisy and schizophrenia.
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MichaelG said on June 17, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Shit,Prospero. You busted me on that thesaurus thing.
I’m glad you’re back. I love outrage. We need more of it.
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Dorothy said on June 18, 2010 at 11:37 am
We only had one roof replacement in the five different houses we’ve lived in. Laura was in kindergarden and Josh was in pre-school, and I was babysitting for 2 or 3 little kids at the time. We could not stay inside all day since I had to get the kids to their appointed schools (we lived on a HUGE hill and the school bus was forbidden to come up and down it, hence the drive to and from school). At least twice I remember I had to holler out the window “We’re coming out!!!” as though we were hostages being released by the bank robbers inside.
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