The ‘Wolf continues to rock.

I forgot to tell you about Steppenwolf. OK, here goes:

This was yet another outing organized by my friend Dustin, who has yet to reach 30 but, as he often says, is devoted mainly to musicians who qualify for Medicare. And the ‘Wolf — as John Kay referred to the band from the stage — certainly qualifies. Kay does, anyway, and for all intents and purposes, he *is* Steppenwolf. He’s now 74, and announced from the stage that this would be the final! Steppenwolf! Tour! EVER.

Sorry you couldn’t be there to hear them plow through a completely standard oldies-act set, with all the usual hits, from “Sookie Sookie” through “Rock Me,” “Snowblind Friend,” blah blah blah, “Monster” and then the band introduction, followed by “Magic Carpet Ride,” “Born to be Wild” and one more I can’t remember…oh right, “The Pusher.” (Thanks, Setlist.fm!)

I was hoping for a MAGA-led riot during “Monster,” as anti-America a song as was produced in the ’60s, but no deal. The Trump voters in the audience — and I’m confident a straw poll would have shown a crowd as red as blood — either saw it as a nostalgia piece or just didn’t know what it was about.

But of course I wasn’t there for the music, which I burned out on before junior year of high school. I was there to see the amazing audience of elderly bikers, who looked sort of like the Confederate Army in full retreat, if the Rebels had still had decent boots, four-footed canes and health insurance. There was so much evidence of hard living — beer bellies, prosthetic legs, baroque surgery scars running up and down legs from where they’d had to lay the bike down on that bitch of a turn that one time.

Being a biker is a look that doesn’t age well, but hey, no one cared! And so there were women who looked 70 if they were a day, still wearing skintight jeans, Harley-Davidson tank tops, engineer boots and American-flag bandannas on their hair, a face full of wrinkles like W.H. Auden, in total IDGAF mode. Once an old lady, always an old lady. And their dudes were similarly dressed, and guess what? They made for some cute couples.

Lots of this sort of thing:

When was the last time we used combat paratroopers? That guy’s hair looks too young to be a Vietnam vet.

Here was John Kay, signing a last autograph before heading off to his bus or hotel room or something:

The ‘Wolf has had a good run, Kay said from the stage — 50 years and then some — but it’s time to move on. He’s planning to save the elephants in his remaining years. God bless him.

So.

Some of you were talking in the comments about companies moving their corporate offices hither and yon in search of the young and educated. That’s certainly happening here. But I wonder how well this trend will scale, as the wonks say. The older I get, the less willing I am to sit in traffic, under any circumstances. Commuting at rush hour is one of my least-favorite things to do, ever, and I’ll do almost anything to avoid it — take surface streets, be an hour late, whatever — because it’s the closest I get to murder these days.

If I had to get into a dense downtown via car every day, I’d go insane. Fortunately I mainly do so off-peak, or else take the bus.

Just one piece of bloggage as we slide into the weekend — the peerless Robin Givhan on Paul Manafort’s revolting, expensive wardrobe:

His is the story of a man’s inexorable slide into a nauseating spectacle of insatiable consumption — a parable, or perhaps, a farce that included salivating merchants flying across the country to cater to his appetites. There are so many enticing, beguiling entry points in this story of unbridled decadence: the use of wire transfers from foreign bank accounts to pay his clothing bills, the capacity to spend more than $929,000 on suits in a five-year period, a perplexing fixation on plaid sport jackets. But ultimately, the one thing that most folks will remember from the first week of Manafort’s trial on bank and tax fraud charges is his $15,000 ostrich-leather bomber jacket.

The jacket is an atrocity — both literal and symbolic. It’s a garment thick with hubris and intent. For the prosecution, it was not an opening statement; it was an opening salvo.

As a matter of aesthetics, it’s worth stipulating that most clothes would not look particularly enticing dangling from a wooden hanger hooked over the back of an open door. And the government’s photographer is not exactly Richard Avedon. But hanger appeal is not the problem. The jacket, with its white topstitching and white satin lining, lacks finesse, artistry and sophistication. It’s simply a celebration of ostrich leather, which is to say that it is a celebration of money and excess. Ostrich, after all, is an expensive, exotic skin. Manafort also owned python, which he had stitched into an equally unimpressive but expensive jacket.

Now that. Is fashion writing.

Happy weekend, all. Rock on.

Posted at 8:55 pm in Current events, Popculch |
 

46 responses to “The ‘Wolf continues to rock.”

  1. Brian stouder said on August 2, 2018 at 9:34 pm

    Manafort seems to be straight out of Good Fellas… a laughably flawed bad-guy, indeed. (Before this week, I’d never heard of an ostrich-skin jacket!) Aside from that, the local news here has thrown me for a loop. A fellow who I grew up with, 4 decades ago, went on to be a policeman…..and now he’s in a heap o’ trouble…

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  2. Sherri said on August 2, 2018 at 9:49 pm

    What are the odds that Ohio State fires Urban Meyer? On the one hand, it’s ludicrous to believe he didn’t know his assistant beat his wife, despite Meyer’s claim of ignorance. On the other hand, he wins a lot of football games. If this were Nick Saban and Alabama, I know which way I’d bet, but harder to say here. With the wrestling scandal already ongoing, and the Michigan State mess still simmering, I’m not sure what the tolerance for looking the other way in Big 10 land is.

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  3. alex said on August 2, 2018 at 10:12 pm

    I’m not sure what the tolerance for looking the other way in Big 10 land is.

    Considering the fan base, about the same as Trump shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

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  4. Bitter Scribe said on August 2, 2018 at 10:49 pm

    But does Manafort have a vest made of real gorilla chest?

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  5. Dexter Friend said on August 3, 2018 at 2:32 am

    Dan Patrick had guests on Thursday breaking down the Urban Meyer saga, my son-in-law lives in Columbus and he filled me in, telling me which way the wind is blowing…it’s a dilemma for Meyer, as if he admits he indeed knew the gruesome Zack Smith story, he’s immediately fired. If he sticks with “I know nothing…NOTHH-ING” , his senior nurse wife who is a fixture in the OSU medical system loses everything, is fired, and banned from OSU’s employment forever. Maybe even, they both will be dismissed, but the scuttlebutt is they would let Mrs. Meyer slide and skate away from legal charges, even though she did sign a full disclosure contract spelling out she had to report any sexual assaults, any physical abuse by anyone. She did not, apparently letting Urban handle it, and perhaps Urban stonewalled and pigeonholed the whole information bloc. If this is the end of the Meyer era, Mrs. Meyer would just quit anyway and move into another senior slot at some other university as part of the new family contracts package.

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  6. David C. said on August 3, 2018 at 6:23 am

    Back to fast food. I see in my Google news headlines that 395 people who ate McDonald’s salads were sickened. I think that means everybody who bought a salad at McDonald’s for the past year got sick.

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  7. alex said on August 3, 2018 at 6:53 am

    David C for the win.

    Off topic, but I just had a Mohs procedure on my face to remove basal cell carcinoma. It’s an invasive surgery and it took three passes for them to get it all. I’m wearing a ginormous bandage over my face for the foreseeable future. And taking only antibiotics and Tylenol because they evidently don’t prescribe pain pills anymore. Yesterday ran into a friend who had a dental abscess last week and then a root canal procedure and no narcotics for her either.

    I don’t get it. The pain management clinics are basically just managing a bunch of long-term addicts, but those of us with acute severe pain can’t get a few Vicodin to see us through the worst of it? Talk about an opioid crisis. Those with a legitimate need are getting trampled in the mass hysteria.

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  8. Julie Robinson said on August 3, 2018 at 8:44 am

    A high percentage of the addicts started with a legitimate need too. A car accident, a back injury at work, a surgery; I’ve two friends who buried children as a result of the addictions that started with legitimate pain relief needs.

    If only we could know who can handle a few Vicodin after surgery and be unaffected long-term. I wasn’t offered anything after my breast biopsy either, so I get what Alex says. That pain was a real b*tch for about 48 hours afterwards, and significant for another week.

    I was given Xanax ahead of time, and now I’ve learned that’s addictive too, and some docs no longer write scrips for it either. I got 20, took two, and I think I should toss the rest.

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  9. Connie said on August 3, 2018 at 9:03 am

    I had Mohs procedure on my face last November and only had one go round for two basal cell spots. I took the giant bandage off for Thanksgiving which meant they all got to look at my stitches.

    Compared to the giant hole my local Derm dug in my back for one basal cell, and the giant scar my husband keeps admiring, I am thankful I was referred to a Mohs. My face looks pretty good, small vertical scar on lip.

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  10. Connie said on August 3, 2018 at 9:08 am

    I just received an email from Booklist, a major source of book reviews for libraries. The subject line is:

    SF! Fantasy! Horror! Mitch Albom!

    Made me laugh hope it cheers you all as well.

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  11. Suzanne said on August 3, 2018 at 9:42 am

    My daughter’s boyfriend had one wisdom tooth extracted and got a prescription for 20 Vicodin. 20! That seemed extreme to me.
    A friend’s husband had hernia surgery a few years back and my friend told me about arguing with the nurse to get a smaller prescription for pain pills. The prescription was for 30 pills or something larger and she said she had to get very testy with the medical staff to get the script down to a smaller amount. Her hubby had to return to the doc in a week for a check and they had teens at the time so she did not want extra meds around. But it was a tough sell.
    Like so many things in modern life, the moderate middle ground seems to have disappeared.

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  12. Connie said on August 3, 2018 at 9:59 am

    I have had a ridiculous number of Vicodin prescriptions in recent years, including each of the three times I’ve had a tooth pulled. I didn’t even use any they gave me after having my foot amputated. So I do have a cabinet full of slightly expired various strengths.

    The first time I had a tooth pulled by this then new dentist I was given a prescription at checkout. I asked the receptionist what it was. She told me was medical tylenol. In fact it was Vicodin and I did speak to the dentist about the receptionist’s potentially dangerous mistake.

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  13. Joe Kobiela said on August 3, 2018 at 10:01 am

    Last combat jump was March 26, 2003 173rd airborne into northern Iraq.
    Pilot Joe

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  14. Deborah said on August 3, 2018 at 10:04 am

    Our upstairs neighbor in Santa Fe has a degenerative genetic condition that I can never remember the name, his dad had it too and died when our neighbor was 10. Apparently the condition can be extremely painful and requires strong narcotics to live with any semblance of normalcy. The mother of our neighbor made a documentary about the dilemma of people who have chronic pain in these times when they can be suspected of either being addicts or dealers. The mother was a Kennedy cousin so she had the money to make the documentary. She herself died in a plane crash a few years ago. The documentary is available online. I’ll see if I can find a link.

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  15. JodiP said on August 3, 2018 at 10:15 am

    My mom fell and broke her other hip this week. She is getting opiates while in the hospital, but she’ll be tapered off very quickly. She’s had chronic back and hip pain for years, but no one’s considered opiates, and she doesn’t want them. She’s also in early stages of dementia, so opiates would make that worse.

    I’m slightly crabby right now. I biked into work after checking the Accuweather weather app on my phone. It said: cloudy, some sun today, high of 85. What’s really happening: waves of severe thunderstorms! The ride home could be interesting. If it’s horrible, I’ll Lyft it.

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  16. FDChief said on August 3, 2018 at 11:13 am

    Re: “combat paratroopers”…

    I think you can look at this two ways.

    First, as a sort of unit solidarity. A lot of – probably most – guys in the jump outfits think of themselves as “paratroops” first and foremost. So when they go to the chow line, it’s as “paratroops”, like just having that quality makes their chow-line-standing different (and, of course, BETTER) than any straight-leg chow-line dude. So a guy with a jump unit right shoulder patch? He (or she – I should remind myself of the gals at the brigade and divisional levels…) is a “combat paratrooper”.

    Second, as a person who has been in an actual “combat jump” – that is to say, exiting the aircraft over a hostile DZ. On those grounds I’d actually cut that off with the guys in the Ranger battalions that went out over the runway in Grenada in 1983. The 173rd jump that was part of the 2003 “Operation Northern Delay” was a combat jump in name only, given that US and pershmerga troopers were already on the DZ. It did give the jumpers a chance to get the sexy little bronze star on their jump wings, which is VERY important for the badge hunters.

    My guess is that our combat paratrooper comes in through Door #1.

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    • nancy said on August 3, 2018 at 12:50 pm

      I was hoping you’d weigh in on this, and I thank you for that. My late father-in-law was a real-deal combat paratrooper, as in WWII, jumping into many hot zones, sometimes in the middle of the night. They were supplied with maps printed on silk and often had to figure out what to do only after they were on the ground.

      Fun fact I just learned: The Grenada invasion was called Operation Urgent Fury. Oh, for the days when the military used actual code names (e.g. Overlord) and not marketing slogans.

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  17. basset said on August 3, 2018 at 11:20 am

    Since we’re talking about medical issues I’ll mention that Mrs. B just spent 8 days in the ICU with sepsis and some other problems… then a few more on a regular ward and a week so far in a nursing home for IV meds and rehab. She’s doing better, though, made it across her room and back on a walker last night.

    Confederates and old bikers, here ya go… “mechanized cavalry,” they call themselves:
    http://www.csascvmc.org

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  18. JodiP said on August 3, 2018 at 11:43 am

    Bassett, please wish Mrs. B. continued health and healing–that stuff was serious!

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  19. Sherri said on August 3, 2018 at 2:10 pm

    Hope Mrs. B’s health continues to improve, basset!

    On pain meds, if there’s a crackdown on prescribing, not everyone got the memo. I had a tooth extraction with bone and gum graft three months ago, and was prescribed 20 Vicodin, of which I took maybe two. In two weeks, I go in to have the post for the implant put in, and I have a prescription in hand for another 20 Vicodin, even though the dentist says I probably won’t even need any. This despite the fact that I always indicate on my medical history that I’m an alcoholic.

    I do take the prescriptions, though, and I keep the meds. I get migraines regularly and when for some reason I can’t get my Imitrex soon enough to stop the migraine, then I have a store of Vicodin to cope with the resulting pain.

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  20. alex said on August 3, 2018 at 2:24 pm

    I used to save my leftover Vicodin for emergencies like intractable headaches. Then my hubby busted our former cleaning lady smoking the last of it from a pipe made out of tinfoil and the empty prescription bottle was sitting right in front of her. When he walked in on her, she told him “Look what Alex has been doing! I found all this stuff hidden up in your ceiling light fixture.”

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  21. Sherri said on August 3, 2018 at 3:48 pm

    This is over a month old, but I just read it, about a kid in an Oregon high school who had raised a red flag for someone as a potential school shooter, and what happened as a result: https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/06/75f0f464cb3367/targeted_a_family_and_the_ques.html

    That, and a recent incident at Smith College where the police were called to investigate a young black woman eating lunch in a building on campus (she was actually a student), has me thinking about who is allowed to feel safe. Vague, anonymous complaints lead to action out of proportion with the actual threat, which is nonexistent. The excuse is, “we have to check it out, we have to be sure, what if there really was a threat?” It’s Cheney’s 1% doctrine applied to everyday interactions.

    (I can’t believe how patient the parents in the story about the kid were with the school district. Had they tried that kind of nonsense on my kid, I’d have hired a lawyer in a hurry. I don’t know that the kid had an IEP, but if he did, the district was almost certainly in violation of federal law concerning special education in addition to violating the kid’s civil rights.)

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  22. David C. said on August 3, 2018 at 3:52 pm

    My mom gets a regular Oxycodone prescription for back pain. She’s has intermittent memory problems too. I’ve known people with early stage Alzheimer’s and her memory problems seem nothing like what I’ve seen before. I have a feeling that the Oxy has something to do with that. It could also have something with the dozen or so other prescriptions she’s on. It’s a hard subject to bring up to someone believes you should do whatever the doctor tells you to do. I tried once and was told “Well, you’re an engineer, not a doctor”.

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  23. Sherri said on August 3, 2018 at 4:49 pm

    David C, I just ran into a similar problem with my father. He’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but given his age and the status of the cancer, it’s not a cancer that’s going to kill him whether it’s treated or not. But you can’t convince him of that, so he begins radiation treatment today. Hopefully he won’t suffer side effects from that, in pursuit of getting rid of a cancer that is so slow-growing that worrying about it spreading in an 80 year old overweight man is kind of irrelevant. But my parents can only hear “might spread.”

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  24. David C. said on August 3, 2018 at 5:27 pm

    Sherri, I sure hope they didn’t find your father’s cancer through a screening test. Doing any kind of cancer screening on an 80-year-old is just completely unnecessary. One thing I was able to persuade my mom of was that she doesn’t need any more mammograms at her age. She’ll be 80 in November. Mary’s 60 and she’s already decided not to do them anymore. Having her breasts squeezed to transparency and nuked lost its charm. I refuse PSA tests too. The only cancer screening we do is the FIT test for colon cancer. As near as I can tell, colon cancer screening is the only screening that’s been proven to extend live spans.

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  25. Colleen said on August 3, 2018 at 5:46 pm

    My job is dealing with cancer data. I am in no way a medical professional, but prostate cancer in older men is often treated with “watchful waiting”. If he was in his 50s, the cancer would most likely be much more aggressive and require aggressive treatment such as a prostatectomy. I see very few charts of 80 year old men recieving treatment for prostate cancer. It is most likely older men will die with it, not of it.
    That said, I wish your father good luck with the radiation. It’s not a walk in the park.

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  26. Deborah said on August 3, 2018 at 6:19 pm

    I still get mammograms but I no longer need pelvic exams or paps. My Dr said after 65 they’re not necessary unless you suspect a problem.

    Basset, sounds like Mrs. B is making progress, but wow that’s something to have had to go through. Sorry to hear that.

    We’re back in Santa Fe and Sunday we go back to Abiquiu. It is good to be back in NM, all in all we had a great trip. My husband goes back to Chicago in 2 weeks and I have 1 whole month more in NM, I want to let the hot sticky weather play out in Chicago before I return.

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  27. ROGirl said on August 3, 2018 at 6:39 pm

    Goatpocalypse in Boise.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQJrFV2LI2g

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  28. MarkH said on August 3, 2018 at 7:37 pm

    You’ve all no doubt seen by now the recent viral video of the asshole taunting the Yellowstone bison (it’s included in the link attached here).

    Well the maroon has been arrested in Glacier Park after creating a disturbance in the Many Glacier Hotel dining room. Turns out he’s a serial national park trouble maker, now being held, rightfully, without bail. Part of me wished the bison had knocked him into the trees. What an effing jerk.

    https://buckrail.com/bison-taunting-man-apprehended-in-glacier-np/

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  29. Sherri said on August 3, 2018 at 9:54 pm

    David, his cancer was found on a PSA screening, and it was just barely high enough to be classified cancer. All the other subsequent tests confirmed that it was the absolute minimum cancer. I agree that it makes little sense to be doing PSA screenings on an 80 year old man, but I can’t convince my dad of that. I tried to suggest that radiation treatment might not be as easy as he seemed to think it would be, and that there was a substantial risk of incontinence as a side effect, and that for men in his situation, treatment provided no improvement in outcomes, but all I accomplished was to piss him off, I think. Some consolation at least: the doctor told him he wasn’t a candidate for surgery.

    The only cancer screening I agree to do is the FIT test as well. I agree with you that colon cancer screening is the only one that seems to actually improve mortality, and even so, I wont do a colonoscopy because the rate of complications is too high given the benefit achieved. I’ve had a hysterectomy so I don’t need a Pap smear, and I don’t do mammograms because I don’t think they’re worth it. My doctor isn’t entirely happy with my decision not to do mammograms, but that’s okay.

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  30. Deborah said on August 3, 2018 at 10:32 pm

    Mark H, I saw that video and since I was recently in Yellowstone and saw a bison from a distance, I could totally relate to what an idiot that guy was. I was a little disappointed we didn’t see more wildlife, only also saw an antelope but I would never get close to them for my sake and theirs. On the whole trip we saw very few animals, a mama road runner with some baby chicks in NM, what I mentioned in Yellowstone, and a group of about a dozen elk in North Dakota. On the way back we saw a few antelope in Colorado. On other trips we have seen many more animals. We did see some road kill deer and coyotes here and there and a porcupine or two smashed on the road.

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  31. basset said on August 3, 2018 at 11:48 pm

    MarkH, we could only hope the bison would stomp him flat. I had to stop some obnoxious dumbass from throwing pebbles at a resting bull moose in a park in Anchorage some years ago – “but he ain’t doin’ nothin’!”
    Thanks for the support on Mrs. B’s situation. She is progressing on the rehab, a little stronger every day.
    You definitely do not, though, want to Google “sepsis” and “mortality” when you’re at the hospital.

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  32. Dexter Friend said on August 4, 2018 at 1:41 am

    That fucking moron at Yellowstone was arrested at least…should get a whopping fine for that dumbass stunt.
    I have a little problem with the new season of “Orange is the New Black”. The sound editor dropped the ball. When Vos speaks, it’s almost always in a toned-down hushed situation, but I can’t understand, and several other characters are hard to hear. I just cannot max out the volume as my wife watches TV in another room and this house ain’t all that big. The main storyline is easy to hear and to follow, so it’s not all botched because of that irksome low-V from some characters. With my hookup, I have no cc options with Netflix.

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  33. David C. said on August 4, 2018 at 6:42 am

    My cousin raises bison. Even having them a two-tiered fence away scared the bejesus out of me. Only alcohol and probably MAGA fueled belligerence can make people that stupid.

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    • nancy said on August 4, 2018 at 8:17 am

      I was just going to say, if that guy isn’t a Trump voter I’ll eat a MAGA hat. Speaking of which, I saw another variation on those today: Make Orwell Fiction Again.

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  34. basset said on August 4, 2018 at 9:35 am

    Went to a buffalo roundup in Kansas some years ago, the ones on state land get herded in annually for vaccinations and to move some around and vary the gene pool. The cowboys would drive them into a pen of about an acre, then a smaller pen, then a “crush,” a little box of movable fencing that would hold them still to get their shots.

    The smaller pen was made of 2x10s bolted to sections of telephone pole, about six feet high. One of the bull buffalo decided he wasn’t gonna stay, broke the top 2×10 out with his hooves, jumped the fence and took off for the horizon. Everyone just watched him go, no use trying to catch that one.

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  35. beb said on August 4, 2018 at 12:17 pm

    basset @34…. And just as I was thinking of making a bison my security pet!

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  36. Sherri said on August 4, 2018 at 1:43 pm

    Michael Lewis has a new piece out, and it’s really good, and also only available on Audible, at least for now. It’s about government data, specifically weather data, and what is done with it and what happens when the grifters take charge. Apparently it’s also going to be part of a new book he has coming out in October, but if you have an Audible membership, The Coming Storm is currently free.

    Among other things, I learned a lot about what the Department of Commerce does!

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  37. David C. said on August 4, 2018 at 2:46 pm

    If I remember right from Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise”, Accuweather has the second worse wet bias, second only to the local team weather spokesmodels. The Weather Channel and NWS are pretty close to accurate with The Weather Channel being slightly higher. I use NWS most of the time because without ads it doesn’t take forever to load. You have to figure the tRumps would try to privatize weather. The big prize of privatization will be the US Postal Service. With the Rs making them pre fund their worker’s pensions for the next 75 years, it’ll be a nice grab for a want to be oligarch. Snatch the USPS, declare the pension fund overfunded and pocket the fund. Won’t the MAGAts be happy when it costs $8 to mail a letter from Uncledad, Arkansas instead of $0.50.

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  38. Julie Robinson said on August 4, 2018 at 3:06 pm

    When it comes to bison, I’m with David C. The first time I saw them I was taken back to the bull at my grandparents’ farm. He also scared the bejesus out of me, and my parents never, ever had to tell me to stay away from his pen. So my question is if anyone took a blood alcohol count on that guy.

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  39. Dexter Friend said on August 4, 2018 at 5:15 pm

    listening opportunity for a slow Saturday: Leslie West. http://ronbenningtoninterviews.com/2013/11/25/leslie-west/

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  40. Deborah said on August 4, 2018 at 6:22 pm

    I’m enjoying a lazy Saturday, got up late which I haven’t done for weeks. Right now I’m sitting outside on the new patio we put in at the Santa Fe condo building. I’m sitting out on a lounge chair in the shade with a gentle breeze, I took a rare nap out here, woke myself up with a snore. I don’t do this often and it feels great when I do.

    David C, you bring up something my husband and I have been saying for years, the right wing can’t wait to get their hands on the USPS funds and even more tantalizing for them is privatizing Social security. Must make them cream in their pants thinking about that.

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  41. Jeff Borden said on August 5, 2018 at 1:03 pm

    When my wife was treated for a broken right wrist in Porto, Portugal in May, she was obviously in a great deal of pain. When she asked the doctor who had set her broken bones what she should take for the pain, he replied with a smile, “Advil. We don’t hand out opiods like Americans do.” Our national reputation precedes us.

    Meanwhile, how wonderful to see our great Orange King slurring the intelligence of LeBron James and his interviewer, Don Lemon, as stupid people because James dared to point out the obvious: the Orange King uses sports, as he uses everything else, to divide us. The bag of pus in the Oval Office never hesitates to slur and slander people of color. He routinely refers to Rep. Maxine Waters, the vociferous African-American from California, as “extremely low IQ.” Christ on a popsicle stick, I loathe tRump.

    It’s instructive that the alleged charitable foundation established by tRump is being investigated by the state attorney general in New York. James, on the other, has donated more than $40 million of his own money to various charities. His school in Akron is no vanity project, either, but was built with input and assistance from Akron Public Schools.

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  42. Sherri said on August 5, 2018 at 2:48 pm

    The WNBA has turned more explicitly political than ever this year, supporting Planned Parenthood, for example.

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/04/wnba-trump-protest-politics-sports-219155

    Of course, as the article points out, the NFL makes political statements all the time, with the military flyovers and stuff, it’s just that that’s not seen as “political”.

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  43. David C. said on August 5, 2018 at 2:52 pm

    In a strange way, I feel better today after seeing photos from yesterday’s White Incel Halloween Costume Parade in Portland. They couldn’t organize a two car funeral.

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  44. Suzanne said on August 5, 2018 at 7:34 pm

    I saw part of the Lebron James interview and remember thinking “Wow! He is really smart!”

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