Hard to describe just how miserable it is outside at the moment. I imagine those of you who live in Louisiana, south Florida or some other tropical-summer shithole know what I’m talking about, but: Man. All the windows are steamed, and it’s 9:30 p.m. I guess it’s been this humid and hot before, but every time it happens, it seems like the first time.
Wendy and I went walking, and I’m sorry we did, as 20 minutes of slow ambling left me draining sweat for maybe the fourth time today. It should break by the weekend. Let’s hope so.
I’ve been thinking today about passive aggression, and how much I hate it.
It goes back to the police dispatcher in the Zimmerman case, who, when Zimmerman said he was planning to get a little closer to this kid in the hoodie, said, “OK, we don’t need you to do that.” Some have interpreted this as the dispatcher saying not to get out of the car, which I think is what s/he was indeed trying to say. But it’s hard for people to give direct orders.
Part of the cringing humor of “Office Space” came from the boss, Bill Lumbergh, played by Gary Cole, and his oozy, greasy passive aggression: Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too… He never says, “Come in on Sunday.” He says, “I’m gonna need you go come in Sunday.” No wonder Zimmerman ignored him. I hate that shit.
Oh, why are we even talking about this. Jenny McCarthy has been added to the cast of “The View,” a passive-aggressive move if I ever heard one. The New Yorker blog has more, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who has been paying attention. Good to know network television has no problem hiring a health crackpot.
“We store a lot of anger in our thighs,” and other ludicrous things said by yoga teachers. Not necessarily true, but oh well.
Mitch Daniels, now a president of a major American university.
Finally, remember Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic?” Remember how wrong it was? Well, someone fixed it.
Have a good Wednesday. I’ll be traveling, with sketchy posting.
Dexter said on July 17, 2013 at 1:29 am
We came back from Florida Sunday to see grass that has never grown that high in ten days before. It’s too sickeningly hot to mow it, but I will be up at 8:00 AM to tackle it. I scalped the lawn the day before we left but with this rain, well….
I was worried how the Florida heat would affect my wife and I, but it was no problem whatsoever. It’s this Ohio heat that is making me sick; I felt weak walking around the grocery store. This is no damn good.
Time trials today in the Tour de France, so I can catch up on some recorded material. The rented vacation home had six TVs…and no NBCSN, so I saw none of the Tour de France. Why would someone install lovely huge Vizio TVs in every room and not provide a decent cable package? Pissed me off.
Oh, I did go visit the old Ellyson Field complex where Dad trained radio operators in airplanes in WWII. The brick buildings were standing, we saw the boarded-up control tower, real ghost chasing; we let our imaginations run wild to imagine how there were tens of thousands of sailors everywhere readying themselves for the war back in the 1940s. It’s all a crappy industrial complex now, but wide open, so we got to poke around the place.
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MarkH said on July 17, 2013 at 2:03 am
Weren’t we talking the other day about the love/hate of making beds? From NPR, someone has decided too much time is wasted making beds, so, a nifty solution:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/16/202647700/a-bedding-innovation-for-people-who-hate-making-their-beds
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Kaye said on July 17, 2013 at 2:33 am
Happy to see the note indicating “duvet goes inside” as I was perplexed by the multiple “duvet inserts” available in the Crate and Barrel catalog. For a moment (and that is all it was) I questioned how we could have a duvet cover and a duvet insert yet no “duvet”.
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Sherri said on July 17, 2013 at 2:54 am
On a different topic we’ve discussed here, over on grist.org, Nathanael Johnson is doing a series on the GMO debate. He’s got the first three posts up, and he’s done his homework and written a clear description of what’s going on. Well worth reading, starting here: http://grist.org/food/the-genetically-modified-food-debate-where-do-we-begin/
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Deborah said on July 17, 2013 at 6:11 am
Regarding the bedding solution, Mark H, I don’t get why you need a top sheet if you use a duvet and duvet cover? You can totally leave out that step altogether. I wash the duvet cover every week, so why use a top sheet? It makes bed making super easy.
The rain we’re getting here is making the plants grow like crazy, you can almost watch it happen.
As I said yesterday, so not looking forward to going to hot, sticky, St. Louis today.
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David C. said on July 17, 2013 at 7:13 am
It took me years to break my wife of her habit of saying “if you want”, as in “you can take out the garbage, if you want” rather than “would you take out the garbage?”. She came by it honestly, because her mother does the same. I still don’t think she understand how it sounded to me. If I had ever actually said no thanks, I don’t want to I would have paid dearly.
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Suzanne said on July 17, 2013 at 7:43 am
Mitch Daniels doing something creepy and unethical. Why would we expect anything less? And Hoosiers will love him for it!
Passive/aggressiveness. Chronic in my family. We all find ourselves saying to the waitstaff at a restaurant, “Could I have…?” Right. Like the waiter would say, “No, no you can’t have that 3 egg omelette. You are too fat.” We come by it honestly, though, from our German Lutheran ancestors, who mastered it generations ago.
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Mark P said on July 17, 2013 at 8:36 am
Hot and humid? If you don’t learn to live with it down here in Georgia, you die from it. To quote my uncle, a life-long resident here, I don’t know why I ever liked summer.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 17, 2013 at 8:37 am
But hey, thanks for calling Purdue a major university! We survived Steven Beering, so I imagine we’ll survive Mitch.
HuffPo writer Michael Calderone, in reviewing “This Town” about DC culture, notes that someone “set his sites on…” — arrrggghhh.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/mark-leibovich-this-town-new-york-times-politico_n_3605745.html
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beb said on July 17, 2013 at 8:49 am
My favorite line from Office Space was when some management consultants were interviewing the hero. They begin by noting that he’s been missing work a lot. The hero replies “I can’t say I’ve been missing it.” So true. Oddly, outside of a few lines like that and Nancy’s quote the movie is kind of boring.
I don’t know if asking a waitor “Could I have…” is passive-aggressive or just a form of politeness as the alternative would be something like “Hey, bitch, bring me some salt!”
Mitch Daniels… makes we glad I live in Michigan. Of course Rick Snyder makes we regret living in Michigan….
The temps in Detroit have only been around 93, which is a lot but we’ve had higher. It’s definitely the humidity that makes the outdoors stifling. When I was down in Florida – I didn’t hate it like my wife thinks – but was feeling ill almost all the time – the temps were high 90s but the humidity, despite being on the coast wasn’t that bad.
The techie website, Slashdot.org has a thread today asking for titles of books that anticipated the surveillance state we have today. 1984 was a given. My choice would be a book, title and author uncertain but maybe The Space merchants by Kornblurth and Pohl, where the hero could go anywhere without ads popping up on any flat surface, calling to him by name, tailoring their offerings specifically to him. That is exactly the state we’re in today in regards to the Internet. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft all track our browsing in order to sell our tastes and preferences to advertisers. The NSA would have been able to collect all the data on us that they do if the data weren’t already being collected by marketers.
Sadly, there were really few book recommendations in the thread. Most of it seemed to be filled with arguments about how the surveillance state in undermining our second amendment rights…
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John (not McCain) said on July 17, 2013 at 8:54 am
“We all find ourselves saying to the waitstaff at a restaurant, “Could I have…?” ”
That just sounds like politeness to me. Of course a server isn’t going to refuse someone, unless they are out of something, but barking out “BRING ME MY HOSSENFEFFER” just sounds tacky compared to phrasing it as a request. I guess you could go with “I’ll have hossenfeffer, please”, but the request thing still sounds better to me. Being a server is the worst job in the world, so making it as easy to deal with me as possible is important.
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Deborah said on July 17, 2013 at 8:58 am
I’m the queen of passive/aggressive, I say things like, “someone needs to take out the trash” instead of “please take out the trash” all the time. I honestly don’t even know when I’m doing it, it comes naturally for some reason.
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beb said on July 17, 2013 at 9:04 am
sites, cites, sights. Another victim of proofreading by spell-check. What we need is an add-on to the standard spell-check program (more properly it ought to be in a grammar check program but who uses that?) where words with numerous homophones are underlined for special consideration.
Calderone seems to have missed the point that a book about the incestuous relations between pundits in DC is going to be about people in DC and not people from elsewhere, ie, the New York Times.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 9:04 am
I cannot even ignore the silent ice cream in the refrigerator. It has placed a mirror ball in my third eye center.
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Scout said on July 17, 2013 at 9:09 am
@Suzanne: Now that you mention it, it makes sense that MY passive aggressive tendencies are a product of being raised by German Lutherans! They’re all pretty much like that.
I agree with the comments regarding kindness to waitstaff. If I’m with someone who is rude or demanding, I then go practically overboard with kindness (and a large tip) to compensate.
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alex said on July 17, 2013 at 9:10 am
I’m not so sure putting Jenny McCarthy on the View isn’t a stroke of brilliance. She’s the perfect intellectual lightweight to replace Miss Hasselbeck but without the batshit Republican politics, Amen, Hallelujah. And if you think Whoopi & Company aren’t going to skewer Jenny and her ridiculous anti-immunization crusade, just you wait. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jenny quit after one week on that hot seat, and she’ll have ignited a national dialogue about vaccination that should put any doubt rest.
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Peter said on July 17, 2013 at 9:20 am
Regarding Mitch – well, Ike was in charge of Columbia for awhile, and that place is doing OK today, so this can’t all that bad.
I did read a book on Ike a while back and a section of the book explained how to parse his statements, which was an art form all its own. Ike mentioned his objectives for Columbia, academic excellence, talent retention, attracting top notch students, etc., and he then described how he would delegate every one of those tasks to specialists; the only area he didn’t delegate, as he said it would be insulting, was golfing with potential donors.
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Little Bird said on July 17, 2013 at 9:38 am
I can vouch for Deborahs passive aggression, but it’s become something of a running joke in our house.
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Jenine said on July 17, 2013 at 10:35 am
Thanks Sherri for the grist.org GMO discussion link.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 11:21 am
New York Republicans need to forward a bunch more photoshops of Obama with a bone through his nose. Come on, goobers! Step up that game!
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/report-new-york-to-announce-50-percent-drop?ref=fpb
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Deborah said on July 17, 2013 at 11:22 am
Ditto on being raised by German Lutherans (except my father wasn’t German, he was a convert to Lutheranism when he married my mother). My ex is German Lutheran too, through and through.
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adrianne said on July 17, 2013 at 11:22 am
Here’s the polite, non-aggressive alternative to ordering food in a restaurant: “I’d like …” or “je voudrais” if you’re feeling, you know, French!
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A.Riley said on July 17, 2013 at 11:55 am
Jeff (tmmo) might have an insight into this — I work with a lot of clergy, and it seems to me that they’re trained to be non-directive. They won’t tell you “please do that” or “please do it this way.” This is fine in a therapeutic setting, I guess, but it can make things more difficult than they need to be in the office. Sometimes I want to stand up and holler, “You’re my boss! You’re SUPPOSED to tell me what to do and how to do it!!”
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LAMary said on July 17, 2013 at 11:58 am
I’d like or I’ll have are ok. Of course there’s the classic, “gimme a pig foot and a bottle of beer.” That wouldn’t work as “could I have a pig foot and a bottle of beer?”
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MarkH said on July 17, 2013 at 12:21 pm
Delegating. Very hard for some people to do (like me), so it can be easy to fall into the P/A mode, as a manager, for example.
A passive/aggressive trait I am trying to purge and bugs me to death when I hear it from others: the use of “sort of”, “kind of”. The continual qualifying or softening of a statement or attitude. When I hear myself use it, I think to myself, “take a stand, g*****n it!” Are we that concerned with offending others with our banal convictions?
My wife once had a despised co-worker among whose negative traits was a P/A nature featuring snarky questions in a sing-song voice: “Is this where we leave our _____?” “Is this how we handle _____?” Her husband eventually got tired of being treated like a second-grader and split.
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Jeff Borden said on July 17, 2013 at 12:29 pm
There’s a story up on Think Progress about how the North Carolina assembly made the most drastic changes to the tax codes in some 80 years and spent –wait for it– just 25 minutes debating the issue. Taxes for those making as little as $12,000 are going up, up, up, but luckily, the Masters of the Universe, those wealthy folks who are the “job creators,” will see some very substantial reductions in their taxes. The effort will cost billions over the next five years, but no doubt the GOP controlled state government will find various and sundry programs serving the poor that can be dismantled or starved out.
Such a beautiful state. . .such stupid politicians.
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A.Riley said on July 17, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Here’s one that drives me nuts every time I overhear it: A mother says to her child, “Mommy needs you to do this for her.” Less egregious but still annoying: “I need you to do this.”
The answer to either one of those is “Yeah, so?” Really, just say “Please do this.” Simple is good.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Borden: When McCrory was governor of Charlotte, the Democrats were in charge, and he got money to make improvements in his city, with such things as light rail and infrastructure repair. These were Democratic initiatives that made him appear moderate.
The only dicks he has available to suck now belong to the tea party and Art Pope. As the rest of money gets vacuumed up to go to the whores, he has no opportunity or even a reason to appear moderate, so he’s going with what his guts tell him, and his guts sound just like Bob McDonnell’s guts and Sarah Palin’s guts and “Duke” Cunningham’s guts.
Those guts say I’ma get my kicks before the shithouse goes up in flames, because the Lord helps those who help themselves.
Anyone who has any illusions about Republican morality needs to look down here and in Wisconsin. It’s a shit-fingered textbook of fail.
And now they’re even rolling out Potemkin demonstrations called “Thankful Tuesday” to thank the fine General Assembly for their fine racism and misogyny. I ask you, how fucking North Korean do you have to be before the business sector of this state pulls the trigger on your sad, stupid cracker ass.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 12:59 pm
oh, I neglected to mention that “The Moccasin Creek Minutemen” were co-sponsors of Thankful Tuesday. Shoooo-weee! They was some dookie filled drawers at that crackerfest!
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Jeff Borden said on July 17, 2013 at 1:00 pm
The North Korean comparison is classic, Cooz.
I just entered a dear friend from Charlotte, with whom I worked while I was at the Charlotte Observer. He copped to having voted for McCrory, as did other of his progressive friends, based entirely on what you lay out above. Now, they’re all appalled, but as I reminded him, if you expect Republicans to do good things, you’re thinking of a party that has passed on. This is now the party of angry nihilism and abject cruelty to the poor, women, minorities, young people and, of course, gays.
I honestly wonder if I will ever again cast a vote for a Republican.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 1:11 pm
A Democratic crook will at least leave the institution of government intact so he can steal from it on a rainy day.
Republicans suffer from cavum septum pellucidum and can’t stop themselves from burning everything to the ground. I suggest when the Democrats come back into power, we attach a rider to the noxious voter ID laws for mandatory cortical MRI’s. If your brain ain’t fused, your ass don’t get to vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_septum_pellucidum
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Judybusy said on July 17, 2013 at 1:38 pm
beb @ 10: I read a couple sci-fi books by David Marusek that had a lot about various surveillance used. They are a two-parter, and the first is Counting Heads and the second is Mind Over Ship. There is a lot of other really creative stuff–it’s not the tightest writing, but great fun. The world he describess is just awful, but there is also much humor and good character development.
Have you heard of/seen the TV show “Continuum?” It’s on the sci-fi channel, just wrapping up the second season. The story mostly takes place today, but with people who have time-travelled from 2077. At that time, there aren’t governments, just corporations running things. The cops have neural implants which allow them to do facial recognition and analyze a person’s truthfulness/emotions/stress. (It also allows them to communicate instantly with HQ.) They can also look up the person instantaneously once they are identified to see if they have a record or warrant. In one scene from 2077, the cop is going to work on the train and checks out two young men. Sure enough, one has a warrant, so she shoots him full of a drug that will cause great discomfort if he doesn’t report to the authorities within a specified time.
As for the soupy weather, love it, except I can’t be too active in it. I had a very bad case of heat exhaustion about 10 years ago and it gets triggered pretty quickly. The last two days I’ve been in heaven after work: out pulling weeds and staking stuff while drinking either beer or an iced coffee. I also finally figured out how to check out digital audio books from the library, so Brother Cadfael’s keeping me company as I garden. He is the sleuth in a mystery series which takes place in the early 1100s. He gardens at the abbey and makes remedies while solving murders. The writing is sublime, and the author seems to have done a great deal of research, so you learn a lot about life during those times. I have finally combined two of my greatest joys: reading and gardening!
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annie said on July 17, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Check out the sink/urinal on the website MikeH @2 linked to.
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Mark P said on July 17, 2013 at 2:05 pm
It’s too bad about North Carolina. My wife and I have considered moving somewhere near Asheville after I retire. Of course we’re living in Georgia right now, so the change in the political and social atmosphere would probably not be noticeable.
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Julie Robinson said on July 17, 2013 at 2:05 pm
If the special sheets stay put, how do you pull them out with your feet when you crawl into bed at night? I can’t sleep with the sheets tucked in.
For all the Laura Ingalls Wilder fans, a post of every meal Almanzo eats in Farmer Boy: http://thehairpin.com/2013/07/farmers-bo/. Also on that page, a link to a twitter pic that proves Almanzo and Channing Tatum are the same person: https://twitter.com/jiatolentino/status/331934389334331392. Hilarious. But he was a dish.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 2:13 pm
Mark P: Asheville, by all means, but not near it. It’s surrounded by the dumbest motherfuckers who ever drew mother’s milk from their sisters.
Buncombe county. That says it all.
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velvet goldmine said on July 17, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Mark H, the main character in “The Accidental Tourist” came up with something much like that bedding after his wife leaves him. Ann Tyler posits this as a measure of him sliding into the abyss, but I always thought it made perfect sense.
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LAMary said on July 17, 2013 at 2:33 pm
I thought of The Accidental Tourist too. I always think of that book when I see corgis too. I think they’re biters based on the behavior of that dog in that book.
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Judybusy said on July 17, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Julie, you cracked me up with those links!
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beb said on July 17, 2013 at 3:21 pm
Judybusy: Brother Cadfael is a favorite of mine, too. I was surprised to read recently that it had been intended as a stand-alone story. Thankfully the author saw so much more in the setting.
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Jolene said on July 17, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Julie, the Smart Bedding sheet is never tucked in. Instead, it’s attached to the duvet cover with snaps, so that, when you straighten out the duvet, you’re also straightening out the sheet. To launder the sheet, you just unsnap it from the duvet and snap it back on after it’s washed and dried. Seems like a pretty good idea, actually.
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Prospero said on July 17, 2013 at 4:48 pm
The Cadfael books were made into a TeeVee series that played on Masterpiece Mystery. The role of the Sherlockian monk was played brilliantly by Sir Derek Jacobi, one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century, whose Richard II is definitive, and who made the TeeVee version of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius one of the best television productions of anything, any time, ever. I’m sure many episodes of Cadfael are sstreaming free on the net. Ingenius creation.
Really felicitous publishing news: A new book from Ivan Doig. Fine writer and a male novelist, and Wild Wetserner at that, that writes memorable female characters. Fans of McMurtry,
Someday, there will be an inexpensive device that projects a holographic made bed over a rumpled one.
Anybody that likes science fiction material would probably enjoy Continuum. We love it. It’s vg on time travel protocols, has Stainless Steel Rat style action and tech, and is as morally ambiguous as sf fiction can get. Like the Katee Sackhoff BG.
As for iced coffee, that is a summer staple. Our guest couple from Independence Day weekend, well-bred Southren ladies, sent a thank you gift. It’s an iced tea maker and boyo, what a treat. It’s basically a pour-over coffee brewer, but the carafe is a pitcher big enough to hold ice immediately and the coffee gets cold pronto.They sent along some very strong Starbucks coffee, a Kiwi variety called Kati Kati I had never heard of but would now swear makes the best iced coffee I’ve ever had, PDQ and seriously strong and smooth with no noticeable acidity.
Got a new album in the mail today, Buffy Ste. Marie’s Greatest Hits. I love songs when she goes nuts with an electric guitar. Her vibratoized voice is obviously an acquired taste, that I recall acquiring the first time I heard her. She wrote a song that is a perfect theme for the brutal racial divide My Country Tis of thy People You’re Dying. A country built upon genocide and slavery producesrabid supporters of George Zimmerman’s campaign to rid the streets of assholes, thugs and “fucking coons”. And this sort of insane spew:
http://www.carbonated.tv/news/conspiracy-theory-claims-dept-of-justice-organized-trayvon-martin-protests
Should anybody nuts enough to believe that shit have a gun licens of any kind? Hell, no
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LAMary said on July 17, 2013 at 5:40 pm
The weird breaks in words…is this bothering anyone else?
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jcburns said on July 17, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Have you tried making your browser window wider?
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ROGirl said on July 17, 2013 at 6:13 pm
An objective observer (the girlfriend of a cousin), after spending some time around my family, pronounced my father the most passive-aggressive person she had ever seen. She also happened to be a licensed social worker. He rarely came out and said he wanted something from you or he wanted you to do something, but he was extremely persistent and I usually ended up feeling like I disappointed him if I didn’t just go along.
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Prospero said on July 17, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Very interesting climate change comment from that wild-eyed radical, Juan Cole. It used to be that knee-jerk was an epithet attached to liberal as firmly as rodoktopolous adheres to the Homeric dawn. Not any more. The right has fetishized knee-jerk opinions and responses to the point that they recognize each other by shibboleth. On no issue is this truer than that of climate change, although “liberals are the racists” and “Obama isn’t American” are right up there. Half the politically aware population of the USA has traded thinking in on sloganeering and goupthink. Sad but true. How did this sad thing happened to the self-proclaimed deep thinkers of movement conservatism and the children of Norman Podhoretz? First, I blame that rotund floatin white fish Frank Luntz. I mean, these days, you can’t swing an “activist judge” dead cat without smacking a phony originalst knee-jerk conservative right in his venom-spewing pinhole.
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LAMary said on July 17, 2013 at 6:22 pm
That doesn’t seem to do it. Still got strange things like the word “snaps” in Jolene’s post. It’s broken into sna and ps.
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Prospero said on July 17, 2013 at 6:28 pm
Jeff Borden@30: Sounds like the moral of an Uncle Remus tale. Or this
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Jeff Borden said on July 17, 2013 at 6:32 pm
Pros,
I love the frigging song! Right up there with “Mongoose” by Elephant’s Memory, which by the way, were the backup guys for a lot of John Lennon’s records.
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Julie Robinson said on July 17, 2013 at 7:12 pm
Things look fine to me. I’m on a PC running Chrome.
And I will get not be getting those smart sheets–snapped to the top is just as bad, because after I yank the sheets out from being tucked into the bed, I tuck them under my feet. Doomed to a lifetime of spending two minutes daily to make the bed!
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Deborah said on July 17, 2013 at 7:14 pm
I’m not having any problem with weird word breaks, at the Kansas City airport awaiting my flight to St. Louis, on my iPhone.
By the way it’s 90 degrees here, 93 in St. Louis and a lovely 68 in Santa Fe where I wish I was.
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LAMary said on July 17, 2013 at 7:28 pm
Someone else mentioned the word break problem yesterday.
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Kirk said on July 17, 2013 at 7:34 pm
No word-break problems on Internet Explorer here at work.
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LAMary said on July 17, 2013 at 7:44 pm
We have very little control over how our computers are set up here so maybe someone in tech was messing with my settings.
Either that or the NSA has been checking my online activity.
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Kirk said on July 17, 2013 at 8:33 pm
The NSA probably is watching all of us on this blog as accessories to some of the obvious national security risks who post here. You know who you are.
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Prospero said on July 17, 2013 at 8:43 pm
Despite GOPer hydrophobic obstructionism, ACA Obamacare is providing economic benefits all over the place. The NYer whose health care premium on an individual plan is going to have enough money to take a vacation and enough left over to buy all new, energy efficient appliances Thats a lot of jobs produced in several different industries.
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MichaelG said on July 17, 2013 at 8:54 pm
I’m having the word break problem but only on some comments. It just started but I looked back a few days and it’s now there retroactively.
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Dorothy said on July 17, 2013 at 9:36 pm
Kirk that made me snort with laughter! Not really sure why but it did. It’s been in the low 90’s here all week and we’re supposed to cool off when some storms come through on Saturday.. I’ve been grateful that I’m on medical leave and can stay inside with the A/C set at 76 or 78 as our energy co-op is asking customers to do. I’m really touched at how our animals are behaving around me. They quietly watch me navigate the house with my cane and realize I’m moving much slower than I usually do. When I go outside with them, I’m not leasing them and they stay close to me, only going off to pee and then come right back. Even Lucy is snuggling next to me on the outside edge of the bed. It’s sweet but is also making sleep complicated for me. I’m laying at weird angles anyway, and now I’m fretting that ill either roll over on her or turn and dump her onto the bedroom floor.
Loopy stitches at top and bottom of the scar were left in place today when I saw the doc. I am allowed to drive again and next week he’ll snip the (what looks like) fishing line then. They actually used GLUE on top of the incision, and stitches are mostly inside the scar. Twelve days post-op and it really looks amazing. Then again, I’m easily impressed.
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Dorothy said on July 17, 2013 at 9:36 pm
*leashing* not leasing
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Sherri said on July 17, 2013 at 9:37 pm
I’m having the word break problem on Firefox. Resizing the window just changes which words are broken wrongly.
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coozledad said on July 17, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Suck on this, NSA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqopDh-KlmU
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Kirk said on July 17, 2013 at 10:37 pm
Thanks, Dorothy, you’ve been a great audience. Keep taking those pain meds.
As for your animals, when my wife broke her ankle 25 or so years ago, our dog, too, walked slowly and with apparent concern as she hobbled around on crutches. The problem was that he sometime walked so slowly in front of her that she damn near tripped over him.
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Dexter said on July 17, 2013 at 11:14 pm
Last year on July 17 the local F temperature was 100. However, it was not this miserable. I had to mow the yard no matter, because it was hideous, but I only got 2/3 done and I had to quit for the day. We had to drop off my wife’s car for repairs just now and in just six-tenths of a mile I had sweat running off my head. My van AC is broken.
My brother and I were discussing how people survived with no car AC. We had 4 windows with vents that would go all the way down. We had huge vents under the dash that would blast in the cool night air. The past thirty years or so, if you have a car that has an AC, you had better keep it in good repair, or prepare to boil to death.
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Bill said on July 18, 2013 at 12:01 am
No word break problems with Safari. Temp in Chicago at 11 p.m is 84 F.
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Dorothy said on July 18, 2013 at 6:41 am
Actually Kirk as of 10:10 last night, the last pain pill I had taken was last Thursday. But I gave in last night and took one and slept very well. So your humor was appreciated by a narcotic-free, but admittedly slightly daffy, Dorothy.
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lynn said on July 18, 2013 at 8:07 am
passive aggressiveness, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Ok just one.
I could choose from almost any comment, question, command or thought my mother has uttered in the past 40 years, but all of my personal favorites inevitably start with ” do you really think you should ( have gotten THAT degree, named your daughter that, have chosen that wedding dress) and end with ” i didn’t mean that as an insult” and sometimes added is ” and i’m not the only one who thinks that”.
Its so hot anything I could say is a cliche but I’ll take this over about all other shitty varieties of weather Detroit has to offer. Although its true crime rates ( gun shots) go up significantly on weekends when its over 90 degrees).
Jenny Macarthy has always been to me, an intolerable, shrill, cartoonish fool, but people watch and love Nancy Grace so I’m sure the Viewers will thinks she’s just the shiz. I get a special tickle out of the spectacles as her ‘smart’ accessory and the fact that her tits are no longer the first thing you see.
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Heather said on July 18, 2013 at 8:19 am
Now I’m seeing a few Word problems (just a few). I’m running Firefox 22.0 on a Mac.
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Heather said on July 18, 2013 at 8:20 am
Sorry, that’s word break problems, not Word as in Microsoft Word. More coffee please.
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Mark P said on July 18, 2013 at 9:08 am
It has been significantly cooler so far this month than it was last year, but it was 97 yesterday with high humidity.
How did people live without AC? Good question, and I should know the answer but I don’t. I can remember when our house had one window AC unit in the living room. One hot summer my brother and I slept in the LR because of the heat. My mother would drape wet sheets over the windows to try to cool the house. That might have worked in New Mexico, but not in Georgia. We had a huge, incredibly loud attic fan we used at night. That brought a warm breeze through the windows. The only reason we survived was that we were kids and didn’t know any better. I have no idea how my parents survived.
I can also remember driving the little yellow Fiat 124 Coupe (with a black vinyl interior!) I got when I graduated from college. I would turn the vent towards myself and dream about how nice it would be if the air were just a tiny little bit cooler than it was. I finally had a dealer install air conditioning. When was the last time you heard about having the dealer add air conditioning?
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Connie said on July 18, 2013 at 10:00 am
Mark, I remember those dealer installed air conditioning units that sort of hung under the dashboard.
Yesterday in all this heat my husband and daughter spent the day at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, where they were thankful for the misting stations.
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Kirk said on July 18, 2013 at 10:16 am
Just walked a guest dog around the block, and it feels nastier than it has the past two days. My car’s in the shop, so I’ll be inside the rest of the day.
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Judybusy said on July 18, 2013 at 10:28 am
Working from home today, so was able to do a quick run to the dog park. Dog just loved jumping into the Mississippi as soon as she could. I ran the AC in the car on the way home, though, as I had to park in the sun. We don’t have central at home, but it’s OK with a fan blowing on me.
Since it’s hot, we’ll be making this bacon-arugula saladA< tonight. Our neighbor's coming for dinner, and we're all so excited to eat this! I'll be picking up a melon to round out the meal….
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Dexter said on July 18, 2013 at 10:30 am
Kirk, I’m 165 miles NW of C-Bus and it’s def hotter than yesterday. I walked my dogs , but they only walked about 75 yards and U-turned. Now I still have a half hour’s lawn mowing time staring me in the face, to hell with the trimming this round. Here I go. If I die…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK8emiWabU
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Sherri said on July 18, 2013 at 12:34 pm
What say the collective here about the Rolling Stone cover with Tsaernav on the cover? Some stores are refusing to carry the magazine because it shows the accused bomber too much like a rock star. I don’t have a problem with the cover, but I don’t have a problem with the notion that evil sometimes (often?) looks quite attractive. If only evil were always clad in a black hat!
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coozledad said on July 18, 2013 at 12:46 pm
I think Rolling Stone has done more actual reporting than most papers,and the photograph is on the money.
I still like commenter ph7’s take on the cover at wonkette:
“Gonna buy five copies for my mullah!”
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Bob (not Greene) said on July 18, 2013 at 1:16 pm
I get so tired of people. It’s the part of my job I struggle with most, dealing with people who have so little grasp of what government is or can do and who have very little idea of what a newspaper actually is. Lots of people believe a newspaper should simply reinforce how they view their community (i.e. everything is rainbows and lollipops, the schools are all great and everyone is the perfect neighbor in Hometown USA). Complicated stories make them uncomfortable. Pictures that don’t neatly put people into boxes are bothersome, because it might make them think a little harder. The kid that killed people can’t possibly look like the kid who lives down the block. His face must betray some inner evil. I don’t think the cover photo glamorizes anything. It’s a picture of the kid. That’s actually how he looks and how he looked to his neighbors and friends. To me, it’s actually more instructive. I haven’t read the story yet, so I don’t know what’s in there. But for private businesses to censor the article because of the cover? Classic corporate fear that someone might be offended. I’m so sick of that shit.
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adrianne said on July 18, 2013 at 2:12 pm
I think Lance Mannion diagnosed the Rolling Stone blowback accurately when he said that people were attracted by the photo (he does look sultry) and then repulsed to find out that it’s the Boston Marathon terrorist.
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Jolene said on July 18, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Very interesting overview of what’s going on with the implementation of Obamacare here, with links to a longer article on the topic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/18/wonkbook-10-things-i-learned-reporting-on-obamacare/
Also, links to what’s going on with regard to policy development in several other areas, including the economy and education.
This is all in Wonkbook, Ezra Klein’s blog on the WaPo website. If you are a policy nerd ( or, to a lesser extent, a political junkie), you’ll find Klein’s work a one-stop shop for analysis of what’s really going on in government. What he’s achieved is truly impressive. He’s a young guy (about 30, I think), and, after several years of work at the Post, he now oversees his own small staff (several other Posties regularly write for Wonkbook) and has broad access to the politicians, policy makers, and academics that he needs to write clearly about very complicated topics. And, in my view, it appears that he’s achieved all this by being smart, fair, and hard-working. Nice to know that there is some justice in the world.
One more takeaway from this piece: The demand for people who have the technical and managerial skill to oversee large software projects is probably endless. Obamacare is, in practice, a complex set of computer programs. From the exchanges that consumers will see, to the IRS-linked programs that will determine eligibility for subsidies, to the programs that link federal and state agencies–it’s all about seeing that the right info appears on the right screens when it is needed.
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Prospero said on July 18, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Comparing Jenny McCarthy to Nancy Grace is grossly unfair. Jenny seems like a minimally brain-damaged nice person that cares about others. Miz Evil Tri-Delt is as authentic a Gorgon misanthrope as has ever been spawned. Jenny would like to teach the world to sing. Medusa Grace would like to wipe out mankind, like Theo Bikel on Twilight Zone getting rid of the little people. Jenny clings to pseudo-science because she is distraught and clueless about a child’s autism. Nancy would eat somebody’s kid raw on TeeVee and then blame the mom, for ratings, and butter would not melt in her mouth. Jenny McCarthy didn’t invent a history to back up her contract. And no matter what anybody here says, drug companies put vaccines in multi-packs with mercury based preservatives to enhance profits, and not for any other reason. Knowingly exposing kids to mercury is a criminal act, particularly, doing so for profit. Just sayin’, and while I’m in no way a vaxxer, having parents that were an MD polymath and an NP maniac UGA Bulldawg sports fan, Up the innoculations, and fuck the drug companies. My personal take is that nobody should make a profit on health care, nor on food production. Kinda WWJD filtered through Jesuit education and scars from the late 60s anti-war and civil rights movements.
Anyway, there is more common human decency in Jenny McCarthy’s little fingernail than could be found in Nancy Grace, the ultimate misanthropist if she was pulverized into Soylent Green. I can’t say why I believe this, but it seems pretty obvious. And isn’t a monster like Nancy as part of the food chain the true nightmare of that story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmHvSz6y9M4
Does anybody have an actual specific reason for finding the RS cover objectionable. I’ve been reading RS since it began. Got copies at the Grande. I found the first Richard Dreyfuss cover more objectionable than the Dzokhar cover. How ’bout them darkened OJ covers on national “news” magazines?
Adrienne@77: Yep. Guy looks like Cat Stevens about to sing Moonshadow. The reaction you describe is what makes the photo some fine photojournalism. Cooze@75: That Dr. Hook reference made my day. Funniest play on words I’ve heard in a long time. Actually, Wierd Al-worthy.
Greene@76: the reaction is a throwback to the Medieval Shrubco years.
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Deborah said on July 18, 2013 at 3:11 pm
I agree that the point of the Rolling Stone cover is that the guy looks normal, kinda cute, but what a monster he turned out to be, shocking us all.
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paddyo' said on July 18, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Zero problems with the Rolling Stone cover, but then, I’m one of those former evil ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate.
I am surprised at the level of negative reaction among some other journos and ex-journos I know over on Facebook. But hell, good magazine covers — particularly those that illustrate good reporting and writing inside, like this one — are almost by definition controversial. Remember Mullah Obama and fellow freedom fighter Michelle’s White House fist-bump on The New Yorker cover more than FOUR years ago?
And ignoring the “fell into radical Islam and became a monster” wording right in the subheadline is either disingenous or stupid, or perhaps both.
Anybody remember any such outrage back in 1975 when the RS investigative coverage (and cover art) of fugitive terrorist Patty “Tania” Hearst was illustrated with her in a “Tania’s World” re-casting of Andrew Wyeth’s famed “Christina’s World” painting? Yeah, neither do I . . .
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Prospero said on July 18, 2013 at 3:35 pm
I’m considering all of these responses. Nobody seems to have remembered the purist reponse: ” As yo wish”. Dread Pirate Roberts, Willie DeVille? Don’t like that, no friend of mind.
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alex said on July 18, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Hey, I’m noticing the effed-up word breaks right now in Internet Explorer. It wasn’t doing this earlier today. It wasn’t doing it in Safari either last time I checked.
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nancy said on July 18, 2013 at 3:37 pm
The RS cover is one of those things that pisses me off. Not at the magazine, but at the dim bulbs who think that just putting him on the cover, looking somewhat attractive, is somehow wrong. I spend a lot of time in grocery-store checkout lines, and can testify that there are approximately seven thousand magazines that are all-Kardashian, all the time. Surely there’s room for some news out there somewhere.
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Prospero said on July 18, 2013 at 4:07 pm
Nonsense Nancy. It is a far better if we can avoid.
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Suzanne said on July 18, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Let’s face it. If Tsaernaev was a creepy looking fat guy with out of style glasses and greasy hair, I doubt few people would be having this conversation. He’s a handsome kid and yes, rock star looks. That is what makes the story so compelling. It’s the whole banality of evil. Those horrible “others” look just like your kid’s friends, or better.
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MichaelG said on July 18, 2013 at 5:08 pm
He doesn’t do anything for me.
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coozledad said on July 18, 2013 at 5:21 pm
I’m sure the response to this from the usual quarters won’t be racist at all. Not one bit. Because we’re past all that and it’s high time the blahs just shut up and auction the city off to the Koch bros.
The righties are already reaching way up their asses past the old Cheetos and peanuts to tie this to the GM bailout. Let me be the first to say go fuck yourselves with your daddy’s dick.
http://gawker.com/detroit-is-filing-for-bankruptcy-829486877
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MarkH said on July 18, 2013 at 5:21 pm
Well, I guess we all knew this was going to happen:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/detroit-emergency-manager-files-largest-municipal-bankruptcy-in-us-history/2013/07/18/fa98c9c4-efe6-11e2-8c36-0e868255a989_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b
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MarkH said on July 18, 2013 at 6:56 pm
I have hesitated to bring this up, knowing the likely response from certain quarters here. Maybe most of you knew it already. But, please, please pray for us good citizens of Wyoming:
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/17/19525491-cheney-calls-gop-senator-shes-challenging-confused?lite
Let’s just say this is not welcome news around the state. The republican party will be fractured by this effort, the question being by how much. Hard-core tea-partiers here are dwindling, and that’s where her backing comes from, aided by daddy. Our senior senator properly enjoys wide support as an accessible, reach-across-the-aisle, below-the-radar politician. Due to this and his background in finance and accounting, he was Ted Kennedy’s favorite republican, one willing to work with anyone for results. The Cheneys are not as welcomed as you might think around here. Although it’s a year until the primary, Liz Cheney may soon realize her miscalculation:
http://trib.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/cheney-balks-at-carpetbagger-talk/article_a540e02c-6e82-5808-9187-4c08aa162a3f.html
Dems are foaming over this one and will likely put up our most recent former governor, Dave Freudenthal as a candidate. Good choise, too. Centrist to a fault, called a DINO by some, he was na effective governor. Three of our last five governors have been democrats.
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MarkH said on July 18, 2013 at 6:57 pm
“choice” “an”. Sheesh.
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Judybusy said on July 18, 2013 at 7:59 pm
Hey all, don’t try that bacon recipe. I damn near burned down my house, or so it seemed. We have a gas grill, and the dripping fat caught fire (duh!) to the point I couldn’t rescue the bacon. I had to shut off the gas and close the lid. After about 7 heart-stopping minutes, it all died down. The missus went of to get a rostisserie chicken and melon. I’m toasting pecans and so wel’ll have a sald with those things, plus dried cranberries and shaved parm. Yikes.
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beb said on July 18, 2013 at 8:13 pm
A friend in California wrote to express his sorrow that Detroit had filed for bankruptcy. First I knew about it. Well, all hell will break out now instead of next month. Sucks to be me.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 18, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Just heard the BBC story on Detroit going Chapter 9, and I keep being more than mildly irritated at stories that include pundits and pols saying “everyone’s left” and that there are “only” 775,000 residents in Detroit today. Yes, I know it used to be bigger — but three-quarters of a million isn’t nobody home. Makes me mistrust most of the rest of what they say . . . including the fact that Chapter 9 has intricacies that no one seems to even be discussing. Just “The Motor City is closed for business” which is lazy non-news reporting.
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Rana said on July 18, 2013 at 10:19 pm
LAMary – yeah, I’m seeing the weird breaks, too, in Firefox. It’s like the browser isn’t recognizing words as single units, and instead is treating each letter as an independent stand-alone.
This week I am feeling incredibly grateful for our window AC unit, refrigeration, and having a job where I work from home, as the temperatures (and heat index on top of them) are just punishing this week. It’s so bad that our cupboards are nearly bare of our usual staples, as I haven’t been able to do my usual run to the grocery due to the heat. (We live close enough that usually I walk to the grocery store(s) – which also means that if I try to drive, the car’s AC doesn’t kick in until the moment I pull into the parking lot.) If it gets over 85F and is humid, it’s not good for me to be out in it. This week it’s been in the 90s with a heat index of about 106. And it hasn’t been cooling off at night, either. The rains that are supposed to break this heatwave can’t get here soon enough for me!
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Brandon said on July 18, 2013 at 11:47 pm
The weather in East Hawaii has ranged between the high sixties in the early morning and the low eighties later in the day. Right now (5:45 p.m. Hawaii time) it’s overcast. It seems as if temperatures are more extreme on the mainland.
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brian stouder said on July 19, 2013 at 12:10 am
I’ve tried a time or two to post, and failed; similar to Deboraha – we’re sitting in the San Diego airport – beautiful cool and breezey weather.
I’ll post more later (assuming this post goes up). Danny – saw your message, and would’a loved to buy you an icy-cold Diet Pepsi.
Leaving aside all the bigtime politics, the mayor here in SD has his tit in a ringer (so to speak)
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Dexter said on July 19, 2013 at 12:38 am
1988 was a killer summer. I was working the all-night shift, 11p-07a, and it so hot life was miserable. I went outside at the 3:AM break and turned on my radio, to hear it was 88 degrees. At 3:00 AM. I never forgot that, and even though it is merely 79 degrees right now at 12:30, it just feels the worst. I drank 4 quarts of water, a quart of Gatorade and a quart of Powerade since this afternoon, plus three cans of soda.
If it does indeed rain in 24 hours or so, I will get out the old coaster brake bike and take a ride in the rain.
Jimmy Carter Nails it Again—
http://www.craigcrawford.com
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LAMary said on July 19, 2013 at 12:40 am
Brian, I hope California was good to you. We’re not really a bunch of airheads here and in spite of some people’s best efforts to mess it up, it is still a very beautiful place.
Stephen Colbert pointed out that Rolling Stone has also done covers of OJ Simpson, Charlie Manson and Roman Polanski. I think Nancy got it right when she pointed out that the Boston bomber looks so sweet and approachable we find the fact he’s a monster really hard to deal with. He does have that cute guy in the boy band look about him. That photo is a self portrait. I think the Armani shirt is a nice touch.
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