Play nice.

It was a busy weekend, and I hit the wall about five minutes ago. Open thread? Sure, open thread.

Posted at 12:30 am in Same ol' same ol' |
 

34 responses to “Play nice.”

  1. Sherri said on December 9, 2013 at 2:07 am

    That was a fun football game to watch in Philly today, as long as you were watching it on television like I was: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/sports/eagles/Snowy-comeback-is-an-instant-classic.html.

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  2. Dexter said on December 9, 2013 at 3:27 am

    Sherri, please. To cap off the weekend of the week in which Detroit got a green light to proceed with bankruptcy, the Lions break ahead 8-0, assume total command of the snow, and then even magic man #12 Jeremy Ross (Cal) with his amazing run-back TDs cannot close the deal and Philadelphia wins in a cakewalk.
    It was kinda neat to see Matt Prater kick that football through the very light air of Denver 64 yards to finally beat the old long-standing 63 yard record.

    We finally got a light dusting of snow that made the streets very slippery and dangerous . This draws out the morons who love to intentionally spin donuts in parking lots and fish-tail down the streets and all that crap. A local young man peeled out from the church lot across the street from our house and screamed and careened east on the street in his green Ford pickup truck. No traffic, so he put ‘er through the test, slaloming back and forth, and something happened and he skidded into a high curb with the rear back wheel and then the front wheel quickly slammed into the same curb. I reckon he turned left…whatever, ka-bam-blam-boom, but he just peeled out of there and continued driving east, loudly. I guess that’s fun…many years ago I tried “doing donuts” and went into work, the temperature dropped to minus 22F, at 11:pm I had to change a tire…I had knocked the tire off the bead and of course, flattened it. Dumb stuff to do. It seems really dumb when I see it now. And the weirdest spelling to my Michindoh eyes?… the English/ Ozzie spelling of the word “tires”. It’s tyres. It looks funny. 🙂

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  3. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 9, 2013 at 6:59 am

    Interesting speech made by friend of NN.C David Simon; I think he doesn’t realize how many faith community leaders and members are with him on “capitalism and its discontents”, because he’s saying many things here about how capitalism is a blunt instrument of an economic driver that is worse than useless as a precision tool for making humane adjustments and crafting a culture & society worth earning a living in.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire

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  4. Deborah said on December 9, 2013 at 8:42 am

    Excellent link Jeff tmmo.

    The Bears are playing in Chicago tonight when the temp will be 16, with 12-24 mph winds. I can’t even fathom what it will be like to sit in Soldier Field by the lake for that game.

    It will get down to 4 tonight in Santa Fe.

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  5. brian stouder said on December 9, 2013 at 9:21 am

    Deborah, I honestly wouldn’t have guessed that anywhere in NM would get anything like that cold!

    Non sequitur salad:

    Snowy and slick here in Fort Wayne this morning, but – and I take some pride in this – our local school district went forward without delays. Of course, an angry chorus went up on their Facebook page, and considering that we’re talking about maybe 8 or 10 pajama-clad moms and dads, in a system that has 31,000 students, that’s OK, too.

    And again I say – when Pam and the young folks and I watched The Sound of Music show that we had DVR’d, we were quite unexpectedly captivated. We thought we’d give it 20 minutes and then go on, but instead watched for more than 2 hours, and then stopped so as to not exceed Chloe’s bedtime.

    It will be interesting to see all the American presidents (except Bush senior), including the incumbent, at Mandella’s memorial service; a genuinely epochal event.

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  6. LAMary said on December 9, 2013 at 9:35 am

    Brian, a lot of New Mexico is at high altitude. I’ve been in the snow in Santa Fe a half dozen times. It’s a very lovely place to be when it snows.

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  7. Deborah said on December 9, 2013 at 9:36 am

    Brian, it’s the altitude, Santa Fe is at 7,200 ft. It’s colder in Taos, the forecast there for tonight is -3.

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  8. brian stouder said on December 9, 2013 at 9:41 am

    Taos always reminds me of McCloud, a somewhat cheesy but nonetheless entertaining “Mystery Movie of the Week” series, from decades ago.

    Dennis Weaver’s title character always had pithy sayings, and one that stuck with me is when he described a person as being “nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs”

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  9. Jolene said on December 9, 2013 at 10:03 am

    Brian, the struggle you’ve mentioned between your governor and the state superintendent of public instruction is in the national news. This article was in the list of headlines that the NYT sends to its online subscribers (and maybe to other people as well).

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/us/politics/tensions-rise-as-indiana-schools-chief-and-governor-clash-over-new-agency.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131209

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  10. brian stouder said on December 9, 2013 at 10:14 am

    Mike Pence, who was elected governor of Indiana because he looks like Bobby Knight – and because he’s a Republican* – is acting exactly like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.

    Ms Ritz is like Dorothy, who finds herself in Pence’s dungeon, and her ruby red slippers consist of her unlikely popular election**, with more votes than Pence got on the same ballot!

    Pence wants her slippers, and taking them means he cannot leave her politically alive… but it must be done dellll-icately…

    *friend of NN.c Mark Giaquinta once said that Allen County Republicans would elect a giraffe, if it made it onto their ballot.

    **Tony Bennett was enough of a complete jerk to at least partially disprove GQ’s theory!

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  11. Connie said on December 9, 2013 at 10:28 am

    Facebook looks at the most popular topics of 2013, and includes a link to your very own year review. (That is, if you are on facebook.) http://www.facebookstories.com/2013/en-en

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  12. Alan Stamm said on December 9, 2013 at 10:35 am

    Threading us back to Michigan, home to at least two of us here, the weekend comments exchange below at The State News [MSU student paper) reminds me of the vast gap that can separate college and maturity. It’s about a fiery “tradition” of furniture bonfires, car flipping and other deeds that East Lansing cops yesterday labeled “a large civil disturbances.”

    * “My fellow honors college colleagues and I participated in this glorious riot. True Spartans celebrate with their team. We are all Spartans; We are all one.” — ‘A Real Spartan’

    * “I know ten years from now you will laugh at your comment. Think about it. Why are you ‘rioting.’ Is it an injustice? Is there something wrong? No we are celebrating, yet we continue to vandalize our own. I was a student though the times that we rioted in the late 90’s. There were things that needed correcting, such as how students were treated by the police. But in the end we all looked like snot-nose brats, kids without discipline.
    “So Mr. Honors College, what are you rioting for tonight and what do you wish to accomplish? My guess is that you just want another bud light and wish you were actually at the game.” — ‘True Spartans Have Pride’ http://statenews.com/article/2013/12/rioters-descend-on-cedar-village-fires-chaos-ensue

    Mind you, I don’t claiming personal unfamiliarity with dumb statements and actions at Syracuse University not long after the Age of Aquarius — though the only flames involved were for a pipe bowl or something in rolling papers.

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  13. Prospero said on December 9, 2013 at 10:40 am

    Jeff@3: In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes famously said that life for mankind was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. It seems that conservatives in the modern world believe that Hobbes was identifying an inevitable fate for a large number of members of the human race, who somehow deserve painful and dreary lives because they lack certain virtues of industry and ambition. This view completely distorts the context in which the prescient Hobbes delivered his descritption, and beggars belief when it comes from the Randites and RMoneyists and Granny-starvers of the American right wing, who also expect everyone to renounce Darwin in favor of “Intelligent Design” by a benevolent God who answers all prayers. The salient point that Hobbes made was that mankind was possessed by its Creator with enough communal intelligence to invent government as an engine for acting in the interest of commonweal to rise above and mitigate the miserable afflictive conditions he noted, for everyone. This would be a Christian view of the uses of government. In today’s political Bizarro World, the Pharisees that proclaim their “Christian values through bullhorns subscribe to the opposite view. They are blessed with wealth and comfort because of some innate grace that the least of their brethren do not possess. Religious “leaders” on the right need to have a talk with Oral Roberts’ 900-ft. Jesus and get the message straight.

    Meanwhile, HuffPost, the bastion of “progressivism”, is publishing news that the Obama administration is handing over government to multinationals:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/tpp-trade-agreement_n_4409211.html

    Pretty clever slander, since it is aimed at the progressive than thou. Anybody that doesn’t think hard core right wingers in Canada or Australia, or Japanese Capitalists that actually do run their government produced this is naive. Anybody that believes this tripe is welcome to come down to HHI, SC and check out our bridge to the mainland. It’s for sale. And I was sure all along that viewers of Family Guy had not seen the last of Brian Griffin.

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  14. Connie said on December 9, 2013 at 10:45 am

    Alan, there are at least six of us in Michigan that I can think of, all in the metro Area: Me, Nancy, Beb, Crazycatlady, ROGirl and you. And we’re just the ones who comment sort of frequently, I am sure there are a lot more. Read about the MSU riots over the weekend and was horrified. I did go there back in the day. (And grad school at U of M.)

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  15. Prospero said on December 9, 2013 at 10:49 am

    Johnny Bench’s birthday was Saturday. He once guested on HeeHaw. Pretty good singer.

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  16. brian stouder said on December 9, 2013 at 10:57 am

    I shook Johnny Bench’s hand one time, when he cam to Fort Wayne to help his brother open a Jeep dealership.

    Shaking his hand was like grasping a gnarly branch of an oak tree (and now we’re back to Wizard of Oz similes!)

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  17. Julie Robinson said on December 9, 2013 at 11:13 am

    Brian, your Wizard of Oz comparison is apt. If the ruby slippers were on the other feet, imagine the outrage at a governor working against a fellow elected official.

    And since nothing today can be considered off-topic, our dear daughter was installed as Pastor yesterday, and we’ve been spending time with local family members, who are universally lobbying for us to move here. On a day like this, with 54 degrees separating Orlando from Fort Wayne, it looks pretty good. But, there is summer.

    The internet is wonky here and soon we leave for my sister’s, where there is none. I’ll check in when I can, and for those of you in the nasty weather, be careful out there.

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  18. Charlotte said on December 9, 2013 at 11:18 am

    Johnny Bench is an asshole. My late brother used do the tents for the Lake Tahoe Celebrity Pro-Am golf tournament, and Bench was famously awful to everyone. One year, a cement pumping truck lost it’s brakes at the top of the Kingsbury grade, and came screaming down, through the stoplight, through the 8 foot chain link fence onto the course. The driver managed to steer the runaway cement pumping truck along the edge of the fairway, avoiding all the greens, and dumped it in the creek without hurting himself, any of the spectators or the course. Bench was about to tee off when the truck crashed in front of him. Never even asked if the guy was okay. Just bitched about it ruining his shot.
    The greenskeeper gave the driver some free passes for the course — it’s a really expensive course, and that the driver didn’t tear it up was a feat of really amazing driving. When we left the casino after dinner that night at 10:30, they were still trying to tow that truck out of the creek.

    Temps up to 11 above this morning, but wind is blowing snow sideways. Much more miserable than the past few days of subzero but calm.

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  19. MarkH said on December 9, 2013 at 11:27 am

    In his wierdest TV appearance, Bench once did a cameo on the original Mission Impossible TV series, playing the captain of the guard of a place the IMF crew was breaking into. 1971, just breaking into baseball stardom:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0649289/

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  20. brian stouder said on December 9, 2013 at 11:49 am

    You could see a picture of Shelby (our highschool freshman) from the front page of the Spanish language newspaper –

    http://www.elmexicanonews.com/

    but their website is kerfluffled*.

    But if you’re a Fort Wayne person and eat at (for example) Don Chava’s (I love that place), it’s free in their lobby.

    The teams in her class at Wayne New Tech are working on community-based projects, and her team got a very nice write-up.

    *Pam found the paper’s Facebook page, which also shows it, but I’m a Facebook alien

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  21. coozledad said on December 9, 2013 at 1:52 pm

    Ultimately, the spiritual leadering is about the fuckering. Always with the fuckering:
    http://wonkette.com/536112/moonie-family-values-rev-moon-made-washington-times-publisher-raise-his-secret-adultery-baby#idc-container

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  22. Prospero said on December 9, 2013 at 3:00 pm

    One month until the next manufactured out of thin air federal budget crisis.

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  23. coozledad said on December 9, 2013 at 3:24 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4tXMYeUIls

    She was pubescent, and I was senescent
    I had my valet
    Undress her with several other girls
    In the hot tub baptistry

    For I am holy, and in need of friction
    And I might be lying, but I work that diction
    Hey, where y’all from?
    And where’d you get them dimples?

    I am the Reverend Sun Myung Moon
    I mouth the words, you bring the poon.

    Simple.

    Sun they said to me
    Moon they bred to me
    Spring they sprang in me
    tang they dangled me
    Now I’m dead
    A challah bread.
    A mummy.

    I am the Rev. Sun Myung Moon
    I mouthed the words, You brought the poon
    Dummie.

    Guitar!

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  24. Connie said on December 9, 2013 at 3:56 pm

    Carrie Underwood is praying for those of us who were “mean” about The Sound of Music.

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  25. paddyo' said on December 9, 2013 at 4:29 pm

    Mean people suck. (sniff!)

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  26. brian stouder said on December 9, 2013 at 4:33 pm

    Connie – Cooz got me laughing, and your post kept it going!

    I was seriously swept off my feet by her performance. The idea of live TV with no re-do’s struck me as nothing if not mightily courageous; plus, I thought she did great.

    I did note early on when she ran out of breath, after all the dance moves and so on (and did you see when the one fellow stepped on the brunette woman’s skirt, before the ball?)

    Anyway, it was pretty cool

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  27. Deborah said on December 9, 2013 at 6:36 pm

    Brian, we stayed overnight in Dennis Weaver’s house in Taos. A friend of ours was house sitting for Weaver at the time when we had dinner with her and drank too much to drive back so we crashed there, this was 15 years ago maybe. Our friend worked for the architecture firm that designed and built the house. It was what is called an Earthship (or Earth Yacht depending how expensive it is), designed to be extremely sustainable, but sorry to say, ugly. Here’s a link to the architect that designed and built the house http://www.mongrelmedia.com/press_info/?id=1449, we’ve met him many times, he’s a real character. Our friend no longer works there, frankly the guy is kind of an asshole. She has her own company in Taos now, along with her husband.

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  28. ROGirl said on December 9, 2013 at 6:42 pm

    Somehow there’s always a riot in East Lansing featuring destroyed vehicles and sofas set on fire in the street after a big MSU win.

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  29. Deborah said on December 9, 2013 at 6:45 pm

    Coozledad, hilarious as usual. Will these guys ever stop their hypocrisy?

    Getting colder by the minute here in Santa Fe, winds whipping up making it really uncomfortable. Glad to be inside now with a fire going.

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  30. coozledad said on December 9, 2013 at 7:03 pm

    Deborah: Dennis Weaver’s house looks like a cross between a biotech startup and a gluten free Mexican restaurant. “Ensalada Olmeca?”

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  31. Deborah said on December 9, 2013 at 7:22 pm

    Coozledad, the interior is even more like a Mexican restaurant.

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  32. Sherri said on December 9, 2013 at 7:33 pm

    Trying to photograph the football game in Philly: http://mmqb.si.com/2013/12/09/philadelphia-eagles-detroit-lions-week-14-snowstorm-photo-gallery/

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  33. MarkH said on December 9, 2013 at 8:53 pm

    I remember seeing and reading about Dennsi Weaver’s environmental home about 20 years ago. Back when he was shilling for AutoFom. Selected garbage (tires, cans, othe stuff I can’t remember) comprised the structure, underneath the stucco.

    There is a similar structure down in the little town on Centennial, Wyo. owned by this guy:

    http://www.muddymountainpottery.com/west-magoon.html

    I met him when I went to see an Alfa he had for sale. Quite the character, I spent about four hours with him, touring the house mostly. Didn’t buy the spider, although I shuold have. Yes, that’s his real name.

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  34. Deborah said on December 9, 2013 at 10:59 pm

    Mark H, there are Earthships all over the southwest and west designed and built by the guy In my link. It is horribly strenuous work building them. They pound dirt into old tires and build walls from recycled cans and bottles covered with stucco. It’s admirable but hard, hard work that, young devotees take on. We’ve met a lot of those people, some who have become jaded and burned out by the effort.

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