If you have to have a four-hour meeting, you should have it in our Ann Arbor office, where three windows look out onto green loveliness and you can gather strength from the verdant fields stretching away into more greenness, and…excuse me, did you say something? My back hurts during a meeting that long. But there was a lunch afterward, and more meetings, and now we’re all done for another quarter.
That was Monday. Plus the drive there in the rain, and the drive back in the mugginess, and then some spaghetti carbonara, because I can’t always get it together to marinate something and otherwise plan a decent dinner. Sometimes bacon and eggs and spaghetti is the best you can do. Fortunately, it’s delicious.
Tomorrow is orientation in Ann Arbor. I still have cleaning to do before graduation. And yet here I sit. Sue me.
It’s an all-pop culture bloggage menu today, because I’m out of gas to think very deeply:
What will be the song of the summer? A few contenders.
How horrible can people be? In a Walmart shampoo aisle, pretty horrible.
“Caps lock is the Palin family’s rhetorical open-carry.”
Off to bed.
Brandon said on June 9, 2015 at 3:44 am
“How horrible can people be? In a Walmart shampoo aisle, pretty horrible.”
And from that, extrapolate the condition of the world?
———-
The Palin photo: Ugh!
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David C. said on June 9, 2015 at 6:13 am
$P’s videos are even worse than her written screeds. She looks like she fortifies herself with a box or two of wine to get into the mood.
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ROGirl said on June 9, 2015 at 6:26 am
I have some memories of orientation in Ann Arbor that probably couldn’t happen in today’s environment. One I can share is of a woman who told a group of people who had gathered in the lobby of Alice Lloyd (where we were put up) that her mother, who worked in her high school office in a Detroit suburb, had changed her grades on her transcript. I never saw her again after orientation.
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Peter said on June 9, 2015 at 9:03 am
That Walmart video was really disturbing. Let’s go videotape the catfight and not do anything to stop it. Classy. They must be very proud of themselves.
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Kirk said on June 9, 2015 at 9:08 am
Peter@5: My thoughts exactly. It takes more white trash to let other white trash battle away in a store that long without doing anything. Were all the part-time, $5-an-hour Walmart employees on a butt break?
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Connie said on June 9, 2015 at 9:21 am
My orientation in Ann Arbor was for graduate school, and we were all moved in and ready to start classes. This will date me. After orientation afternoon a huge crowd of us went to the movies to see “Star Wars.”
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Deborah said on June 9, 2015 at 10:43 am
I can’t bring myself to watch the WalMart video just yet. Maybe this afternoon. I don’t want to taint the rest of the day. Bad enough to read the Palin screeds.
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MichaelG said on June 9, 2015 at 10:54 am
Two couldn’ts.
I couldn’t get through more than half of the first Walmart video. Jesus. Why didn’t anybody try to stop things? So much anger around.
And when I went from Ana Marie Cox’s comments to the Palin page I couldn’t bring myself to spend the time to read Palin’s drivel.
I know the Phoenix folks (Scout?) will yawn but it was 105 here yesterday. That’s warm enough for me.
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Jeff Borden said on June 9, 2015 at 11:41 am
Good thing the Walmart brawlers were white. I shudder to think what store security or the local cops would’ve done if they were black. And how is it someone in a scooter designed for the disabled suddenly rises to fight? God, I feel the need to take a shower now.
Isn’t it inspiring to see how much $arah Palin has evolved since we first met her in 2008. Oh, wait. . .
Right-wingers have been whining about the very same media that lines their pockets for as long as I can remember. At the height of his power –and he was huge at one time– Rush Limbaugh never hesitated to castigate the very industry that was making him so very, very rich. The crackers on Fox are always whining about the media industry, but last time I looked, it was the No. 1 network on cable, even if its audience is overwhelming elderly white males. No matter. In Conservoworld, you’re always the victim.
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brian stouder said on June 9, 2015 at 11:57 am
I believe the newer word “media” is their mental fig-leaf, but such dunder-headed, self-contradictory thinking.
The word “press” sounds old fashion, and therefore has a respectable patina…in fact, that word is in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, so it has some holiness.
All of which makes me wonder what hate-word will replace the word “media”, as it ages out? (Afterall, “social media” frequently feeds/outstrips ‘media’-media….
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brian stouder said on June 9, 2015 at 12:07 pm
Chloe, who was our ‘almost-11 year old’, in fact became 11 years old yesterday, so she picked the restaurant, and we headed for Casa’s (smart kid!), and as we were eating near large windows, the increasingly ominous skies opened up, and a genuine deluge ensued.
But, it was over when we left, and the car got washed off – so it was all good. (and indeed, she was happy with her new Wii – whatever that is)
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Deborah said on June 9, 2015 at 12:35 pm
Brian, when you mention Chloe’s age I’m always astounded. I remember when you commented about your 4 year old and Nancy about her 8 year old. Makes me realize just how long I’ve been reading this great blog and comments section.
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alex said on June 9, 2015 at 12:57 pm
Eleven is old enough to play with your Wii.
So the white-trash Walmart throwdown was in Indianapolis, bringing even more shame to our beleaguered state. I haven’t watched it yet either.
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Jeff Borden said on June 9, 2015 at 1:20 pm
Oh, Alex, it’s a real treat. Especially when one of the brawling women instructs her little boy to “punch her fucking face!” while she holds her opponent steady. I expect GoFundMe will soon have a page for the little boy, who likely will need deep psychiatric analysis after this upbringing.
If only the McKinney, Texas police department had intervened, huh?
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Sherri said on June 9, 2015 at 1:29 pm
I had the same thought as Jeff: what if those two women weren’t white? Neither of those women were even arrested. It’s still possible that one or both may be charged with something, or that Child Services may get involved, but if those two women had been black, would they have avoided a trip to jail, at the very least? Seems pretty unlikely.
Quite a contrast in the visuals between the scene at the biker shootout in Waco, where hundreds of bikers are sitting around looking at the phones with no handcuffs on, and the pool fight in McKinney, where a black girl in a bikini standing there not posing a threat to anybody gets slammed to the ground and a gun pulled on her, for what infraction it’s not clear, all the while a white boy can wander through the scene recording the whole event on his phone as if he’s invisible. Black kids are cursed out and told to get on the ground, he’s ignored. But sure, it’s all about just about compliance, not race.
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Jeff Borden said on June 9, 2015 at 1:41 pm
But Sherri. . .Chief Justice John Roberts assured us we no longer have a race problem when he and his court gutted the Voting Rights Act. And I understand from Fox News that the skinny black 15-year-old girl brutalized by that well-armed white cop is “no angel either.”
I’ve always loathed Rupert Murdoch’s sewer for being a GOP propaganda operation, but the cover they give to racist crackers is even worse. Who was commenting on the pool party arrests? None other than disgraced racist LAPD cop Mark Fucking Furhman. Today, perhaps we’ll see a lily white pseudo-psychiatrist explain the pathologies of black girls in bathing suits and why they are a threat to all that is decent and good in ‘Murica.
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brian stouder said on June 9, 2015 at 2:52 pm
White House briefing room evacuated…??
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/09/white-house-briefing-room-evacuated-by-secret-service-during-televised-briefing/?wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%252Bnation
Aside from that, let me say that, yes – time has been moving entirely too quickly, Deborah!
And, it only ever picks up speed.
(we’re getting a stream of beautiful photos back from Shelby – the almost-17 year old in Guatemala, and that’s been pretty wonderful)
And a corollary: Pam went to an app she saw touted on the Today show, wherein you snap a photo of your visage, and it adds 40 years to your looks. Warning: Not for the faint-of-heart!
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Connie said on June 9, 2015 at 3:00 pm
Jeff, using one of those carts doesn’t mean you can’t get off and walk. It usually means you can’t walk far by yourself. I currently use those carts, as I am wearing a large heavy orthotic boot in which walking is slow and uncomfortable.
And guys, just don’t watch those Walmart videos.
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Julie Robinson said on June 9, 2015 at 3:06 pm
I’m refusing to harsh my vacation mellow by watching either of those videos. I’m getting plenty enough wretched details here and I;m not going there, no sir.
Brian, I have been to Guatemala! My sister lived there for 18 months in an exhange program so we visited over Christmas. My impressions at a 40 year distance are of beauty, poverty, and ever-present soldiers. Shelby is no doubt also experiencing the tropical heat and humidity.
Oh yes, I also remember the worst Montezuma’s revenge ever.
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brian stouder said on June 9, 2015 at 3:14 pm
Julie – we’re hopping to avoid the vengeance of Monty, as the young folks have a compound where they eat and sleep, and they have their own bottled water.
Here was Shelby’s update yesterday:
Hola familia! Lol it’s only day two in Guatemala and I’ve already got a million stories and new knowledge about the culture, language, and country of Guatemala. Driving through this country is crazy! There are absolutely NO stoplights, &there are pedestrians darting through the streets, motorcycles squeezing through packed cars, and did I mention no seatbelts?!? At one point we saw a family of six piled on to one motorcycle! There are also stray dogs everywhere, and the drivers don’t stop for them, or the pedestrians!! I was so sure we were going to hit someone! I talked to our driver Pedro in spanish a little bit, but it was hard to keep up! Once we got to our destinstion, we pretty much unpacked, ate, and went to sleep.Today(6-7-15) we loaded up and went to the city of Chichicastenanga, or Chichi for short. We visited the market, and it was awesome to be submerged in the culture like that. I learned how to use several phrases with the villagers, mainly, “No, gracias,” to the relentless vendors shoving various merchandise in my face! I learned how to barter, sorta, but I’m pretty horrible at it! I just have Anastasia work their prices down for me! We have a pretty cool tour guide type guy named Diego who helped us navigate the market, and also took us to scenic over- looks and pretty churches. I was able to talk to a little girl at one of the churches a little, and she was probably around two or three, which is good because we were pretty much at the same level of ability to speak spanish!! We met some nice peeps from the other church and played phase ten with a couple of them. As of now I’m just sitting on my bed, constantly killing these annoying bugs. Atleast they’re not scorpions! Miss you all! -Shelby
And so it goes!
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Julie Robinson said on June 9, 2015 at 3:26 pm
Crazy drivers and wandering dogs, oh yes. We thought we had done everything to be careful, but Monty caught us anyway. My sister said most of the natives just live with a low-grade infection most of the time, and it contributes, along with the heat, to the manana attitude.
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MichaelG said on June 9, 2015 at 3:59 pm
What a fine writer and correspondent your daughter is, Brian. You have every reason to be an extremely proud Papa!
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brian stouder said on June 9, 2015 at 4:07 pm
Michael – and it is an understatement to say – she got ALL her brains from her mom!
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Suzanne said on June 9, 2015 at 5:49 pm
The Walmart video. My husband watched it. To quote the guy in the video, “White trash at its finest!”
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devtob said on June 9, 2015 at 6:53 pm
I don’t follow Michigan politics enough evidently, since its popular governor’s austerity program has some shocking stuff in it, according to Laura Gottesdiener’s TomDispatch story at Alternet — http://www.alternet.org/magical-mystery-tour-american-austerity-how-one-state-destroying-democracy-and-poisoning-its-people.
Like the fact that Snyder’s antidemocratic emergency managers are locally ruling over, and cutting services for, about half of the state’s black residents, but just 2 percent of its white residents.
Like the fact that the Muskegon Heights emergency manager closed the city’s public schools, fired EVERY school employee, and gave the schools to a pro-profit charter outfit. Which quit mid-contract after two years because it wasn’t making enough money.
Like the fact that voters repealed the emergency manager law in November, and Snyder promptly got another one, this one somehow “referendum-proof”, passed. Just to re-emphasize how antidemocratic the emergency manager project is, I guess.
What’s shocking is that the obvious racism of Snyder’s emergency manager project has attracted so little national attention and protest.
White governor and legislature takes over mostly black cities, indirectly fires thousands of black public employees, decimates local services to mostly poor and working class black residents, and politically gets away with it.
I knew that sort of thing would be commonplace in deep-red Confederate states. But I thought Michigan was better than that.
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nancy said on June 9, 2015 at 8:46 pm
That story is ridiculous, devtob. Ten percent truth, ridiculously exaggerated. Sorry.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 9, 2015 at 9:11 pm
Brian, hat tip to your wife for her obvious genetic superiority . . . but I’d hate to think genes are the whole story on good writing and effective storytelling, so blessings to both of you and traveling mercies to your daughter on her way.
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MichaelG said on June 9, 2015 at 9:29 pm
I know the feeling, Brian. Same story with my daughter.
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Deborah said on June 9, 2015 at 10:04 pm
Brian, your wife must be a genius because you seem very smart to me. You’re articulate and sensitive in your responses here, so based on that it’s no wonder that your daughter has those same traits. Please let us read more of her correspondences, I’m enjoying them immensely.
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