Phoned in.

Not much tonight, I fear. Everything got pushed back today because of the snow — Kate’s bass lesson, dinner, the usual. So I don’t have much time tonight before bed will beckon.

Tonight’s low? 1 degree. Fuck me running, as Ashley Morris liked to say. But I’m still swimming tomorrow morning if it kills me. And it may well.

So, linkage:

The economics of the sex industry. Shame on you, Atlanta! You too, Dallas.

Here’s a picture of Kate in New Orleans that I just found on my phone. The ghost of the record store:

kateatrecordstore

And that’s it. Back tomorrow.

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

49 responses to “Phoned in.”

  1. alex said on March 13, 2014 at 8:01 am

    Received a CPAP machine yesterday and inaugurated it last night, hoping for the restful sleep it promises. Laid awake most of the night and have nothing to show for it today except dry eyes thanks to the constant stream of air blowing out of it. I know people who swear by them, but I don’t know if I can endure too many more nights like this.

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  2. nancy said on March 13, 2014 at 8:14 am

    Neil Steinberg has a blog today that you Lincoln fans won’t want to miss. Especially Brian.

    And Alex, there’s a learning curve on those things. You might also double-check the adjustment. It shouldn’t be blowing in your eyes.

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  3. alex said on March 13, 2014 at 8:18 am

    The fit of the mask is just fine. There’s an exhaust port on the hose, however. I’ve heard this is something you just have to get used to.

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  4. beb said on March 13, 2014 at 8:40 am

    Basset mentions beginning the WWII book, “The Last 100 Days” while in a deer stand last fall. I wonder how that works because, for me, either a book grabs me or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, I stop reading it, period. If it grabs me I keep reading and reading and reading. A deer could be nibbling n my shoe but I won’t know. So how does one combine the regular surveillance needed for deer hunting and reading an interesting book?

    If ‘March winds bring April showers,’ what do March snows bring? Aside from frostbite?

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  5. coozledad said on March 13, 2014 at 8:53 am

    A vibrator? Abe Lincoln would’na done it.

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  6. Deborah said on March 13, 2014 at 8:56 am

    I found the Steinberg post entertaining but it sure was full of typos.

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  7. Connie said on March 13, 2014 at 9:06 am

    Alex, my cpap machine truly improved my life. You should be able to aim that exhaust port away from your face. The real trick is finding the mask that works for you. I highly recommend the nasal pillow style, and my goal is to have as little strap stuff on my face as possible. I am currently wearing a Swift for her, and have also been happy with the Comfort Lite II.

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  8. coozledad said on March 13, 2014 at 9:13 am

    He might not have really told job seekers that they had as much chance of getting a federal appointment “as you have of sleeping with my wife,” but several contemporaries claimed he did.

    This is one joke O’Reilly will never be able to tell the Nassau county police, and it gets up his ass.

    So to speak.

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  9. alex said on March 13, 2014 at 10:03 am

    Connie, mine’s a Swift nasal pillow style and came highly recommended as the most unobtrusive mask. This one allows you to feed the tube through the strap on the back of your head so that the exhaust port aims down, but when I tried it that way the air flow seemed to be getting pinched off or something. I’ll experiment more with it tonight. You’re not the only person I know who swears by the CPAP and I’m looking forward to getting used to it. For a while now I’ve not experienced uninterrupted sleep and have noted a corresponding difference in mental clarity.

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  10. Basset said on March 13, 2014 at 10:19 am

    Beb, most of my deer hunting involved going to where I think they’re going to be and waiting for them to show up… read a few lines, look around, read a few more. I really should be in an undistracted flow state and as one with nature but I can’t concentrate that long – I know hunters who read, play games on their phones, etc. and it seems to work for them.

    The one deer I did get last season was a pretty good one and I wanted to keep the skull and antlers: standard way to do that is to remove the skin and as much flesh as you can, then boil it clean. My Coleman stove drowned in the flood and I haven’t gotten around to rebuilding it, couldn’t do that this time so I tried something I’d read about somewhere – soak the skinned head in water for a few weeks till all the soft stuff starts to rot away, then go to the car wash and blast it off with the pressure washer.

    So… one thing led to another and I left the deer head out in my shed in a five-gallon bucket, frozen most but not all of the time, from mid-December till last Saturday. Went to the car wash and… well, I’ll buy another camp stove before I try that again. Next step: zip-tie the skull to the upper reaches of a big bush in the back yard and let weather and insects clean it up.

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  11. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 11:09 am

    Basset – my hat is off to you (so to speak)…although I wouldn’t want to be the next guy in line after you, at the self-do carwash!

    Today our new refrigerator arrived – I was home from work (at Pam’s command…errr, request) for that; read Nancy’s linked Lincoln article, which got me laughing out loud – and now busily catching up at work.

    Short reaction: Lincoln’s friends and associates spent a generation trying to scrub his image – one line you see again and again in Herndon’s Informants (a genuine treasure chest of a book) is a variation on “I cannot repeat the story he told, as it is too smutty”.

    It is said that Carl Sandburg collected many such “smutty” stories, and then squirreled them away…maybe someday that will be found, eh?

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  12. Colleen said on March 13, 2014 at 11:10 am

    Like Connie, I swear by my CPAP machine. When I first got it, the difference in how I felt was immediate and amazing. If you keep using it, you will get used to it. In fact, now putting it on kind of signals my body that it’s time to sleep, and I fall asleep faster than I used to.

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  13. Deborah said on March 13, 2014 at 11:46 am

    It’s gone viral, so you’ve probably already heard about it: there’s a gut wrenching series of tweets about what women were wearing when they were sexually assaulted. It puts an end to the myth that women are asking for it by dressing too sexy. The saddest ones are describing what they wore when they were children. I don’t know how to link to it? And some of them are brutal to read.

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  14. Charlotte said on March 13, 2014 at 11:50 am

    Terrific series of photos of “Old Detroit” at Slate today — photographer Bill Rauhauser: http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/03/11/bill_rauhauser_photographs_detroit_in_black_and_white.html

    And Bassett — I know guys who have done such things but I don’t have any useful details for you, because ugh.

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  15. Julie Robinson said on March 13, 2014 at 11:57 am

    So, O’Reilly’s recent Lincoln book was phoned in? Shocking.

    Basset, I’m no longer hungry for lunch.

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  16. beb said on March 13, 2014 at 12:27 pm

    This isn’t a direct link to what Deborah was talking about:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-but-what-were-you-wearing-rape-myth

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  17. coozledad said on March 13, 2014 at 12:31 pm

    Bill O’Reilly’s life is phoned in. Like most wingnuts, he’s an incurious bastard who tries to mess up the lives of people in his orbit. When your old lady leaves you for a cop, it should be a clue that you are not merely an asshole, but an egregious asshole.

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  18. Dexter said on March 13, 2014 at 1:01 pm

    Not much from me today, except to say I am no clothes horse or fashionista of any kind, but I have been known to buy ten pairs of these at a time, at August sidewalk sales in front of shoe stores.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/converse-sneakers-outfits_n_4934802.html

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  19. Jeff Borden said on March 13, 2014 at 1:09 pm

    Bassett,

    I did a story for Crain’s Chicago Business many years ago about the use of flesh-eating beetles by the Field Museum of Natural History. I was hoping for those giant, hissing beetles I’ve seen on the tube, but they were actually pretty small. They’re extremely efficient at taking off every iota of flesh from a bone particularly skulls. They had a sign outside the double air-lock doors that in case of an escape, the escapees were to be squashed.

    Regarding the president’s appearance on the Funny or Die show, two quick points. Those most offended labor in the dinosaur media (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Kathleen Parker of the Post has a tsk-tsk column in the Tribune today) and are clearly put off by this president’s knowledge of and ability to harness newer media forms. O’Reilly sounded pretty much like the stereotype of the old “get off my lawn” guys. Second, the stunt worked like a charm and the Funny or Die site sent tens of thousands of presumably young viewers to the government health care site.

    I sure wish the ACA rollout had not been so badly bungled. Despite a very sick and divided party, the Republicans will hold the House and have a pretty good shot at the Senate and then, folks, we can all sit down and enjoy two years of Issa, Rohrbacher and the other infants launched specious investigations into the Obama administration. I fear the final two years of Obama’s term are going to be Clintonesque in the bullshit he and we as a nation will endure.

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  20. coozledad said on March 13, 2014 at 1:24 pm

    I’m a little irritated when people call this piece of head cheese intelligent. He’s a bulging sack of peasant cunning, a cecal worm, just like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

    Republicans get up every day and chant “hail Stupid”, because old dumbasses are lining up to throw their savings at them:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-abortion-rights-supporters-hail-satan

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  21. Dexter said on March 13, 2014 at 1:24 pm

    Bones, worms, flesh-eating beetles, grave diggers…and then there’s cremation. I respect everyone else’s beliefs about sacred remains, but I am more in tune with Sam McGhee.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZG9kP9kAiY

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  22. MarkH said on March 13, 2014 at 2:02 pm

    My wife has used a cpap for almost four years and it has made a world of difference in her health. She developed sleep apnea from a congenital condition with her palette that can’t be corrected by surgery. And, yes, Alex, there is a bit of a learning curve so stick with it, it’ll work out fine.

    In other news, the Formula One grand prix season is upon us, starting Saturday in Australia, the first of 19 races. Controversial new rules (smaller, 1600 cc turbo charged V6 engines; a push toward greater fuel efficiency) will either kill the sport or make it more exciting, depending on who you talk to.

    Brian Stouder, of course, is beyond ecstatic no matter what, as evidenced by this recent photo of his new front yard decor:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/69778414@N00/13078827914/

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  23. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 2:06 pm

    From Cooze’s linked story:

    Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said abortion rights supporters support a “culture of death.”

    as opposed to, say, those who want everyone, including students in classes and old coots in movie theaters to have loaded firearms – the better to blow the brains out of the first son of a bitch who needs killin’?

    Or – the same damned crowd that currently thinks we should be in at least three different shooting wars around the world, right now?

    I’ll give them this much credit: their own “culture of death” also includes physical and intellectual dismemberment for the living, so there’s that.

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  24. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 2:10 pm

    MarkH – now THAT’S cool!!

    Looks like it’s in British racing green….and by the way, I’d ‘hedge’ my bets regarding the supposed demise of the all-conquering Red Bull Renault/Vettle.

    My son believes all this chatter about how Sebastian is in so much trouble this year, with an unreliable, off-the-pace car.

    I say he’s sandbagging (as Fort Wayne may soon be, but that’s another story)…and we’ll soon see!

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  25. Charlotte said on March 13, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    Meanwhile, the Twitter conversation has shifted from first-hand reports, to the morality of quoting public tweets from survivors in the news media. Me, I think whatever you post on Twitter is public, but there are other (very strong) opinions being discussed. And amazing how interesting people can be 140 characters at a time …

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  26. Deborah said on March 13, 2014 at 2:41 pm

    I can’t imagine having to wear a cpap mask. When I was still married to my now ex I used to grind my teeth in my sleep (high anxiety). My dentist made a night guard for me to wear but I had a hell of a time trying to get used to it. It made me gag, the dentist made it over and over trying to adjust the fit. One night I woke up pulled it out and threw it across the room, that was the end of that. As soon as I left my marriage my teeth grinding stopped.

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  27. Scout said on March 13, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    If anyone on the rabid right who is currently pearl clutching over the Obama Funny or Die interview ever, even once, gave the President credit for something, anything, I might be inclined to think they hold an opinion that I simply happen to disagree with. But in the case of the O’ReillyHanittyLimbaughParker camp of nattering nabobs of negativity, if they’re saying it I’m not listening.

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  28. MarkH said on March 13, 2014 at 3:32 pm

    Deborah, my wife felt the same way, but any concern of getting used to the mask was quickly overcome by the prospect of heart issues or high blood pressure doing her in due to sleep deprivation. If your life is on the line you’ll do it.

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  29. Heather said on March 13, 2014 at 3:47 pm

    I have a nightguard too (no CPAP machine–yet!). My dentist told me teeth grinding/clenching is often genetic. “You could be a yogi and still grind your teeth,” he said.

    My sleep has greatly improved since my asthma was diagnosed. I’m on a lot of drugs, but I’m hoping the allergy shots will work and I can go off them, or most of them, someday.

    Since we’re talking health issues, I’m on my couch with my feet up after having two moles removed from them today. I’ve so far been successful at avoiding Googling “melanoma.” Fingers crossed!

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  30. Deborah said on March 13, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    You’re right Mark H, teeth grinding is not life threatening, at least not that I know of. I have never slept uninterrupted at night. It’s not due to apnea but I’ve always been a light sleeper. I wake up and then can’t get back to sleep, so I read. Now that I’m retired it doesn’t trouble me, but it used to drive me crazy. Now my 16 year old cat requires feeding in the middle of the night.

    We are making memorial pizzelles right now. Little Bird was lamenting the fact that she didn’t have anything of her friend who died recently, until this morning she remembered he had given her a pizzelle maker that she had never used. So we’re trying it out.

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  31. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 4:20 pm

    …and today I learned what a pizzelle is!

    http://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/pizzelle/

    They look like good stuff

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  32. LAMary said on March 13, 2014 at 4:30 pm

    I had one of those guard things I had to use after a car accident sort of threw my jaw out of alignment. I used to dream that I swallowed that thing all the time.

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  33. Judybusy said on March 13, 2014 at 4:34 pm

    The pizelles look great!

    Brian, how many hours do you spend per week on the upkeep on the topiary?

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  34. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 5:07 pm

    JudyB, if we limit it to April-through-October (28 weeks), and liberally interpret topiary as including any bush trimming at all(!) –

    I’m gonna say I spend approximately .0982 hours (or 5.89 minutes) per week.

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  35. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 5:08 pm

    *the phot MarkH linked was very cool – and entirely beyond anything I could ever do!

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  36. David C. said on March 13, 2014 at 5:27 pm

    I don’t know how anyone can stand sleeping with a CPAP. Anything out of the ordinary bothers my sleep. My dentists tried to get me to use a mouth guard because she said I was grinding my teeth. It felt like trying to sleep while holding a sandwich in my mouth. Three nights without sleep and it went in the garbage.

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  37. Suzanne said on March 13, 2014 at 5:42 pm

    I love pizelles and have them only rarely. Oh, the yumminess.

    I am fairly certain the pro-life side of the abortion argument would make much headway if they weren’t so often the same people as the pro-gun crowd. As someone stated above, being for abortion can’t really be called “death culture” if shooting people isn’t.

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  38. Hattie said on March 13, 2014 at 5:57 pm

    Get warmed up soon.

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  39. Dexter said on March 13, 2014 at 6:11 pm

    One less tooth to grind here. Yep, Old Doc yanked a molar that had cracked and split, no saving it. So much fun waiting for the pain to set in as the numbing agent is quickly wearing off.
    Spitting blood and chomping gauze. And of course I have to go back in a week to start a treatment plan to get new fillings.
    If you have dental insurance, fight to keep it. I retired quite a while ago and threw my dental insurance away in the process. Man, that’s such an important thing to have.

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  40. alex said on March 13, 2014 at 6:41 pm

    I remember one election cycle where the Republicans were talking up (or I should say dog-whistling) the phrase “culture of life” and it kept making me think about nasty stuff growing out of a petri dish.

    The conservative media bubble is more Orwellian than 1984. The very people who bloviate about freedom go ballistic about those who actually exercise it, for instance reproductive freedom or freedom to marry whomever you love.

    Ask them to name one freedom that’s being denied them and they can’t come up with anything, except perhaps that their religious rights are being trampled when polite society doesn’t tolerate their overt anti-gay animism or insurance companies are compelled to cover women’s contraceptives just as they’ve always covered hard-on pills for old farts. (As if anyone taking Viagra is doing it for those all-important procreative purposes.)

    Consider the discussion yesterday re: the NRA calling itself the oldest civil rights organization in America. Which is not much different than Strom Thurmond calling God the “original segregationist.”

    Like my daddy always said, you can’t argue with stupid.

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  41. Jolene said on March 13, 2014 at 6:54 pm

    Hard to take right-wing concerns about the dignity of the presidency. I’ve yet to see anything detract from the authority go the office like the invasion of Iraq, not to mention the quality of the candidates who were taken seriously in the last election.

    My only complaint about the Funny or Die piece is that it wasn’t very funny. It seemed strained, with both Obama and Galifianakis trying to be funny while holding back their natural humor–probably as a result of trying to be dignified in a situation that didn’t call for it.

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  42. JohnCT said on March 13, 2014 at 8:09 pm

    To jump off on a totally unrelated topic, this obit made my day. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theday/obituary.aspx?n=larry-d-kuhse&pid=170141997

    This is one reason to support the writing of obituaries by the family.

    Sorry, but it seems hat I can’t get the link to post well via a mobile device.

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  43. Deborah said on March 13, 2014 at 9:04 pm

    See, Jolene, I thought just the opposite, I found the Obama funny or die piece hilarious, I think because they were trying to be serious. There was a strange undercurrent that made it funnier for me.

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  44. alex said on March 13, 2014 at 10:18 pm

    What I like about Two Ferns, strained as it may have been, is that it’s the first time Obama ever actually responded to birtherism, etc., with the “you’re an idiot” response it deserves. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t sit well with the chattering class who have enjoyed pretending that his refusal to dignify such garbage is proof of his guilt. And I think the pundits are spot on where they say O’Reilly, Gergen, Jim Avila, Kathleen Parker, et al. are miffed because millennials would sooner turn to comics on youtube for political analysis than to stodgy and intellectually bankrupt old farts like them.

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  45. Jolene said on March 13, 2014 at 10:26 pm

    What kills me about the pundit game, Alex, is that there’s never any penalty for being wrong. Why, for instance, anyone would listen to anything Bill Kristol has to say is beyond me.

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  46. alex said on March 13, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    In the 1980s Bill Kristol was taken fairly seriously by people who weren’t stupid, but now he’s kind of an irrelevant hack who cannot find his footing in the shifting sands of the conservative movement, which no longer has any intellectual bearings. I may have mentioned here before that my dad — two-time Obama voter — was acquainted with his dad Irving and held him in high regard. My dad is at odds these days with a lot of his friends who vote with their wallets instead of their brains or consciences. I admire the wise old man he has become.

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  47. brian stouder said on March 13, 2014 at 11:06 pm

    Alex – are you any relation to the now retiring head of the Fort Wayne teachers’ union?

    http://www.fortwayne.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140213/NEWS/320146107?mytabsmenu=

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  48. Sherri said on March 13, 2014 at 11:23 pm

    How could “Quayle’s Brain” be taken seriously. Wasn’t that the ’80’s?

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  49. Julie Robinson said on March 13, 2014 at 11:35 pm

    Haha, the recliner! My hubby would be the same, except for his drink of choice, a cup of tea.

    And I just finished reading an obituary of a woman who leaves “one son, one daughter, one grandson, an uncle, aunt, sister and her two dogs, Precious and Ozzie”. The dogs are the only ones that get named? That’s cold.

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