Saturday mornings I’ve been going to my boxing trainer’s “gym,” i.e. his garage. He gave up the old place at the beginning of the pandemic and we’ve been doing Zoom classes for two years now. Most people have hung bags in their basements or garages, but I’m on a strict NO MORE SHIT IN THIS HOUSE pledge, so I shadowbox, and one day a week I get down there to be in the Zoom studio audience, i.e. on Saturdays, in his garage. Two Saturdays running this month I’ve taken the class is single-digit temperatures (the garage has a heater, but still: 4 degrees + a garage = call on your Midwestern fortitude, hon. Still, it’s often the best hour of the week, just banging the shit out of a heavy bag.
What does that say about life these days? You tell me.
But things are looking up. Cases are way down. The temperature, notwithstanding Saturday morning, is edging up. Snow is starting to melt. Spring is more than a rumor, more like the Chinese Democracy of seasons. It’ll be here eventually, but it’s a long way off.
If I sound like a profoundly dull person of late, well I am. This has been a hard winter. I feel fat, boring and peevish.
But now we have the Winter Olymp– Excuse me, the Games of the Roman Numerals Olympiad, to make me feel like there’s nothing more fun than sitting on one’s couch and watching a moguls skier, whose course makes my knees hurt just looking at it. Those and the skaters. And of course the biathlon, one of my faves, along with speed skating, where a parallel-universe Nance is competing in a full speed suit, one hand behind her back, the other swinging in time =. The color commentators, how can we forget them: “She is skiing for gold. I know because I asked her.” Tell me when someone says, “Who, me? I’m here for the bronze, no better.”
And because we’re watching it on Plain Old Network TV, we get to see back-to-back-to-back ads for sports betting and online casinos, NOW WITH LIVE DEALERS, all of whom are beautiful and rocking seven inches of cleavage.
Ah, it’s winter.
And a fresh thread for whatever terrors and delights the day ahead has.
basset said on February 6, 2022 at 9:02 pm
Didn’t know cleavage was measured in inches. Once again, NNC expands my horizons.
“Fat, boring and peevish” pretty much says it all for me, too.
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Jeff Gill said on February 6, 2022 at 9:41 pm
I think about my hips as much as my knees watching those moguls. Yowtch.
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Deborah said on February 6, 2022 at 9:47 pm
I ate my way through January and I’m still doing it into February. Lately it’s too cold to get outside to do anything, I’ve been a slug.
After taking down the crappy bifold closet doors I’ve been dreaming about the day that I can get out and take a sledge hammer to them, busting them up into small pieces That can be taken to the dump. It’s so satisfying to do that. A few years back when LB and I renovated the bathroom we demolished a dilapidated vanity, it was so cathartic. I can see how pummeling a punching bag would feel great. In the meantime the bifold doors are stashed in the garage awaiting their demise.
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alex said on February 6, 2022 at 9:49 pm
The sports betting ads are even ickier than the yoga girls talking about their stinky crevices while animated miasma whooshes outta their butts. Maybe pay TV is worth it after all if you don’t have to see this shit.
My brother tells me his suite of HD antenna programming in Atlanta is pretty much the same as we’re getting here.
Brother’s back to relieve SIL from Mom-tending duties on day 21 of Mom’s hunger strike. The hospice nurse tells them she has never seen a patient last more than 10 days of not eating during her 17-year career. Mom’s freaking the nurse out by asking for advice on how best to off herself and the nurse keeps telling her she’s not ethically permitted to talk about such things. I have a feeling that this devilish game is one of the things that’s keeping Mom going.
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Suzanne said on February 6, 2022 at 10:02 pm
I am having a dry February thanks to my lovely bout of phlebitis. My varicose vein decided two weeks ago to rebel and after a week of it getting worse & worse, I finally went to the doctor. A week of antibiotics and there is improvement but not over it yet.
So now I at least can say I have something in common with Nixon. Yippee.
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Julie Robinson said on February 6, 2022 at 10:36 pm
We sprang for a month of Peacock so we could see all the skating and if you watch live you still get the commercials. Six ads, in rotation, shown every break. All of them dumb, annoying, or dumb and annoying.
My Google maps showed I went nowhere in January except to buy groceries and see a doctor. Fat, boring and peevish indeed.
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diane said on February 7, 2022 at 12:18 am
You nailed it-fat, boring and peevish is the state of things here.
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Dexter Friend said on February 7, 2022 at 2:55 am
I avoid the Olympiad and watch college basketball, some Cleveland Cavaliers games, and Premier League football when the players aren’t scattered all over the continent in games of national pride. Mo Salah, Liverpool’s star, is playing for Egypt lately, but when Premier League play returns, I can watch the Reds again. The Detroit Pistons, my old fave team, are just pathetic. Sometimes their top players are all in protocol and the team calls up G League replacements. Just not worth watching when the Cavs are so much improved and fun to watch, and are on my cable package.
Two streaming shows knocked my socks off, the new Bridget Everett show (just renewed) and the show about young autistic people living in a house. I can’t remember the names of either show, but Bridget’s show is on HBO Max. If somehow you don’t know who Bridget Everett is, you will love her after these 6 episodes. Murray Hill stars also…I had never heard of him; I don’t know what he calls himself but he likes the him and not the her designation. For me, a hard call; I just don’t know a heluva lot about this stuff. But most all the actors are queer.
I also like these action/cop/hero shows, and a new one called “Reacher” appeared and I just discovered it and watched Ep1. Not for everyone, but I like it, so what the hell.
Goddam weather ain’t melting shit here. Twice in the last 2 days women driving on my street see me walking Pogo out to the van and they have stopped offering help, as I truly walk so gingerly on frozen chunks of snow and ice I must appear to be just about to topple over. I appreciate the concern, but damn, it happens all the time and it’s a tad embarrassing.
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Dexter Friend said on February 7, 2022 at 3:08 am
https://people.com/tv/hbo-renews-series-somebody-somewhere-starring-bridget-everett-for-a-second-season/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/arts/television/review-as-we-see-it.html
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Alan Stamm said on February 7, 2022 at 7:22 am
Spring as the Chinese democracy of seasons is inspired and timely. You punch language as powerfully as the bag.
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Diane said on February 7, 2022 at 7:28 am
Clarification. I meant fat, peevish and boring is the state of things here in my life, not here in this blog!
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LAMary said on February 7, 2022 at 9:57 am
Watching the Olympics on the assorted versions of NBC here too and while the commercials are plentiful and annoying, the coverage is a bit better than other years. I got very annoyed at the last winter Olympic coverage being so focused on USA athletes it nearly ignored other medalists.
And did you see the 15 year old Russian skater who did a quad?
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Jeff Borden said on February 7, 2022 at 10:05 am
The doldrums have a tight grip on me, too. Even being back in the classroom isn’t giving the satisfaction it once afforded me, so I’m contemplating whether this is life telling me I’m too damned old to be teaching undergraduates. Or, maybe it’s just the grind of this particular winter, which has been gray, extra cold and quite snowy since the first week of January.
Dexter, have you watched “Justified” on Hulu? It originally was a series on FX starring Timothy Olyphant as a deputy U.S. Marshal who returns to his old stomping grounds in Harlan County, Kentucky, where he contends with a backwoods crime family, old girlfriends and an ex-wife. It’s pretty entertaining.
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Suzanne said on February 7, 2022 at 11:01 am
I watched a bit of the skiing last night during which about every third skier, including the US gold medal favorite, wiped out. Then I saw some of the team skating during which the Russian couple skated flawlessly until the wiped out right at the end of their routine, but won the gold anyway. The US ice dancers were fun to watch, but nothing will ever top Torville & Dean’s gold medal routine.
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Deborah said on February 7, 2022 at 12:19 pm
At the cabin where it was 9° Outside at 7am, three hours later it’s already 25°. Of course it’s sunny and we have all windows around us it will get up to 41° Outside later and maybe a little too warm inside. It’s very muddy though so outside activities won’t be pleasant. Later in the week it will get up to the low 50s so not bad, it’s just the nights that are bitter.
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nancy said on February 7, 2022 at 12:45 pm
Suzanne, I got the feeling the skiing wipeouts were the result of all the snow being fake. I’m not a skier, but I’ve seen enough Olympics to know that while it was “fast,” as they say, there wasn’t a naturally fallen flake on some of those slopes and it really looked like some of those people were skiing on solid ice.
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David C said on February 7, 2022 at 12:57 pm
I read an article during the Sochi Olympics and it’s like Nancy said. The snow is wetter and not the six sided flakes like real snow. It’s like ball bearings and packs into ice just about instantly.
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Scout said on February 7, 2022 at 1:12 pm
We also subscribed to Peacock so that we can watch the Olympics. Loved watching the Russians, who cannot actually compete under their own flag, skate their way to Gold. It’s obvious they spend so much more time at the ballet barre than other skaters; the quality of their arm movements and the way they hold their upper bodies gives it away. Kamila Valieva is breathtaking. I could watch her all day, and not just because of the jumping. Her every extension is exquisite.
I felt bad for Mikaela Shiffrin. It sucks for her that they will show her fall hundreds of times through the remainder of the competition. We saw it at least 20 times last night. At least she was able to right herself immediately instead of sliding headfirst halfway down the mountain like the French skier.
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Suzanne said on February 7, 2022 at 1:31 pm
The announcers mentioned last night how slick the fake snow was and that the slope was steeper than most. I also heard this morning on some news report that most slopes used for the Olympics have been in use for a while so in the year(s) heading up to the games, the skiers have several chances to try the slope out. This year they didn’t as I don’t think everything was in place until right before the athletes showed up.
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Sherri said on February 7, 2022 at 2:03 pm
I suppose I should never be surprised at how many white men pop up to defend the importance of there being a huge platform for someone like Joe Rogan to say the n-word, but I always am. And maybe tomorrow we can talk about his misogyny. Certainly, Spotify knew about both when they handed him $100 million, but what mattered more to them was the size of his audience. They needed him, because they needed something to differentiate themselves from the other content providers and give themselves leverage with hardware companies.
And they still do, which is why they’re not going to dump Joe Rogan quickly, if ever. They’ll lean heavily into the “just a platform” defense and “no editorial control” bullshit, and try to ride it out. Because what are they without exclusive access to content? It took me two minutes to move the Spotify playlist I had curated for workouts to Apple Music and cancel my Spotify monthly membership.
Joe Rogan is like Trump; he says the things that certain people wish they could say without consequences, and who get upset when they try to say those thing and consequences hit. It’s, of course, about power; they believe that they should be on top of the hierarchy and be able to say anything without consequence, and are angry to discover that life isn’t that simple.
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alex said on February 7, 2022 at 3:08 pm
Evidently Spotify is doubling down for now, claiming that “censoring speech is a slippery slope” and offering up lame platitudes about how what we really need is “more speech.”
No, what we really need are platforms that don’t provide a refuge for hate speech or pretend that it has any legitimate place in public discourse.
I suspect Spotify stands to lose many times over what it paid for Joe Rogan’s shitty podcast, if not the tanking of the entire brand. Great hill to choose to die on, assholes.
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Deborah said on February 7, 2022 at 3:29 pm
I don’t get the point of Spotify. I still listen to CDs for music and the podcasts I like are on multiple platforms.
I got today’s Wordle on the second try, first time for me.
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Jeff Borden said on February 7, 2022 at 3:36 pm
It’s looking more and more like my beleaguered birth state is going to nominate Josh Mandel as the QOP senatorial candidate. Meemaw’s boy, J.D. Vance, is polling at 9 percent despite his backing by loathsome tech billionaire Peter Thiel because his previous tRump bashing is working against him. Gee. He sacrificed his reputation and dignity for nothing.
Please, Ohio. Don’t elect someone who will make Ted Cruz look reasonable.
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jcburns said on February 7, 2022 at 3:55 pm
Please, Ohio. Don’t elect any Republican.
(It’s also my beleaguered birth state.)
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alex said on February 7, 2022 at 3:59 pm
Haven’t tried Wordle. I’ve been having too much fun playing Lewdle:
https://www.lewdlegame.com/
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brian stouder said on February 7, 2022 at 4:40 pm
My lovely wife Wordles and Wordles and Wordles – and she’s pulled me into it a time or two.
Way back in the day, my mom was a major crossword person; probably 50% of the reason that she subscribed to the newspaper!
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BellaGP said on February 7, 2022 at 6:23 pm
My daughter had a old teammate that took a year off from college to play for Team China (they practiced in Russia for the last 9 mos). First game she got hit (questionable hit) and is out for the rest of the games. She and her family were not historically very nice to other Michigan players so it seems like karma got her.
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Deborah said on February 7, 2022 at 6:33 pm
I’ve known a couple of Olympic hopefuls, one actually competed in the Atlanta games (high dive, she came in 4th). These people are incredibly focused and disciplined, including their whole family. It’s quite something. I haven’t watched it for years. I do like watching the skaters but I’m not on top of it and don’t pay attention to when they’re on TV.
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Sherri said on February 7, 2022 at 7:42 pm
My beleaguered birth state has already elected Marsha Blackburn to the Senate
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Jeff Gill said on February 7, 2022 at 8:06 pm
Ohio could vote for . . . https://timforoh.com/
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Deborah said on February 7, 2022 at 8:34 pm
I just read that 15 boxes of documents were taken to Mar-a-lago from the whitehouse and also some pieces of furniture. Is that even true? I’m pretty sure it’s true about the boxes of documents. But the furniture? Good Lord.
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LAMary said on February 7, 2022 at 8:41 pm
I don’t doubt the twice impeached election losing guy and his in house sex worker took all kinds of stuff from the White House. He stole things from US embassies when he traveled to other countries. Nothing is below him. He is a terrible human being.
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Sherri said on February 7, 2022 at 8:47 pm
I highly recommend “We NeedTo Talk About Cosby”, the four part documentary about Bill Cosby. It examines his work, his impact on Black culture (and culture in general), and his long history as a predator.
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Sherri said on February 7, 2022 at 9:15 pm
Amazon is raising its base salary cap from $160K to $350K for engineers and corporate jobs. For most high-level jobs at tech companies, base salary is not the biggest part of compensation, stock awards are, but $160K is quite low for the market here. Amazon is competitive for entry level of engineers, but my husband sees a lot of Amazon engineers looking to leave after a couple of years.
The other thing, which is also fueling some changes to Microsoft compensation, is that Facebook has come into the Seattle market in a big way and is spending heavy to hire away experienced engineers. The promotion budget in my husband’s org suddenly got much bigger, as word came down to promo people to retain them.
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LAMary said on February 8, 2022 at 10:38 am
Was just in Amazon looking for a used copy of a cookbook I loaned to someone and never got back and I noticed that Maus, To Kill a Mockingbird and The 1619 Project are all top sellers. Good.
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Heather said on February 8, 2022 at 11:04 am
I was just contacted yesterday by a company looking for tech writers for a long-term contract gig for Microsoft, but the rate was almost 40% less than my minimum. I don’t do those kinds of contract gigs anyway–if I wanted to work 40 hours a week for one client, I’d get a full-time job. But tech writing can pay very well, and this is just being cheap. It’s not like Microsoft doesn’t have the money.
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Julie Robinson said on February 8, 2022 at 12:04 pm
Heather, I wonder how much the company is charging Microsoft?
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Heather said on February 8, 2022 at 1:02 pm
Julie–indeed. I’m guessing it’s quite a lot. Agencies are notorious for lowballing creatives and keeping the $$ for themselves. (Obligatory disclaimers: not all agencies.)
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Indiana Jack said on February 8, 2022 at 1:45 pm
I haven’t watched any of the Beijing Olympics and will not watch any of what is left. The IOC is morally bankrupt. China’s treatment of dissent and its genocidal tactics in the western region demand accountability.
But then, the People’s Republic of Amnesia has managed to erase the events in Tiananmen in 1989. So a dazzling athletic event serves as just another shiny object to distract the eyes of the world.
I was in Beijing that final week of the demonstrations in the square. I was on the square at dawn when the Goddess of Democracy was erected. And I was with students in the square in the last hours before the massacre.
I figure it’s my duty not to forget.
James Fenton put it well: “Tiananmen/Is broad and clean,/And you can’t tell/Where the dead have been/And you can’t tell/What happened then/And you can’t speak of Tiananmen.”
The whole poem is worth a read. It’s available on the web.
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LAMary said on February 8, 2022 at 6:00 pm
Mitch McConnell said that peaceful demonstration on January 6 last year was a violent insurrection. He said the “GOP” should not have censured Kinzinger and Cheney. That and Miss Lindsay speaking up the other day makes me wonder what’s going on.
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Suzanne said on February 8, 2022 at 7:13 pm
I agree LAMary. It seems like they are realizing that the monster they created is going to destroy them and are trying to put the skids on but I do not trust any of them so I am not putting too much stock in what they are saying.
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David C said on February 8, 2022 at 7:19 pm
Yeah, they must know the hammer’s about to fall.
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