The eagle beagle.

Sorry for the no-show yesterday. I was planning to write an information-dense, four- to five-paragraph press release for Kate’s band’s press kit instead of blogging, then I decided to blog instead, and then I ended up doing neither.

Yeah, I ended up watching the dog show. But I went to bed after the Russells. Didn’t see the beagle win. I don’t worry about missing things on TV anymore, because everything’s on YouTube the following day.

So, a day off.

A little housekeeping before you get bored: The poverty-in-paradise project concludes today, and my part is on how Aspen and Jackson Hole have instituted affordable-housing programs amid spiking real-estate prices. The Jackson Hole portion came with the help of our own MarkH, yay NN.c commentariat. That link won’t work until after 6:05 a.m. EST, mind you. The other two main pieces, on two schools up north and the exodus of young workers, are pretty good, too. There are also some short pieces; you can start here and cycle through.

That out of the way, let’s start a discussion about towels. Dirty towels. Or not-dirty ones.

Lately I feel like all I do is wash towels. Every week, I do four loads of clothing and three of goddamn towels. A while back I stopped using a fresh one every day, because what does a towel do? You step out of the shower, clean, and use it to absorb clean water from your body. Does that require a new towel every time? I think not. But I live with two people who get a fresh one every time, and that adds up to MORE GODDAMN TOWELS in the wash than you can imagine.

I started college during a summer term, one of the steamiest I’ve ever endured, and in un-air conditioned dorms. It was two- or three-shower a day weather, and I quickly ran out of towels. I’d rotate them through, hoping I could find a dry one by the time the next shower rolled around. So I’m not some hotel-dwelling, fresh-towel-every-handwash petunia. Have I underlined this enough? You don’t need a fresh towel every day.

That is all. Now to wash another load of practically clean towels.

Did you all see Neely Tucker’s WashPost piece on how Harper Lee was manipulated into publishing her first draft of what became “To Kill a Mockingbird?” You should. There’s no way I would buy this book, and unlikely I’d even read it.

The president explains why he won’t call ISIS “Islamic extremists,” as the ravening chorus is demanding he do:

“They are not religious leaders; they are terrorists,” Obama said during remarks at a White House event on countering violent extremism. “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

Obama said the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is “desperate” to portray itself as a group of holy warriors defending Islam. It counts on that legitimacy, he said, to propagate the idea that Western countries are at war with Islam, which is how it recruits and radicalizes young people.

“We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie,” he said.

Of course this won’t work, but it’s nice to hear.

The midweek hump is behind us. Let’s coast to the weekend.

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

55 responses to “The eagle beagle.”

  1. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 19, 2015 at 12:37 am

    A fresh towel every shower? Are you kidding me?

    (I’ve pre-ordered “Go Set a Watchman”. I don’t feel good about it, but I’ll still read it. Whatever it is. Sorry, Nelle.)

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  2. Dexter said on February 19, 2015 at 12:53 am

    I have a rack I use to dry my towel between showers. A person can use the same towel several times after showering unless the person gets extremely dirty via occupation or hobby. When I worked as a punch press operator I’d get cutting oil and this nasty stuff called “compound” on my clothes. “Compound” was thick oil mixed with water to form this glop that resembled thin pancake batter. After work, straight home and clothes right into the washer, then after removing the clothes I had to run a small extra wash and rinse to cleanse the residue from the washer. Soon I began renting work clothes. Of course in those days I had to use a clean towel every day, but not now. My wife uses two clean towels every shower, one for her hair. I quit trying to reform her because she thinks I am crazy to re-use a towel.
    I’ll say this: Richard Engel’s reports for NBC News are scary as hell as he depicts the movements and strengths of ISIL/ISIS. Last night he said no drones can beat these people, sounding very much like he believes the USA will have to order boots on the ground…US boots and guns.

    I missed all of Westminster, first rounds because I didn’t know it was on, then last night because I forgot it was on.
    Then I missed Fat Tuesday’s paczki treats, because I missed the fact that Lent was so near; I also missed seeing any coverage of the krewes parades in New Orleans or seeing anything at all about Mardi Gras parades. I do know it was almost record cold temperatures in New Orleans, only 36F the other day.

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  3. susan said on February 19, 2015 at 1:05 am

    I have never heard of using a fresh towel only once! Never. My goodness. Never known anyone to do that. That is crazy and extremely wasteful. A person is (supposedly) clean after bathing, so all she/he is doing is drying off a clean body. Towel racks. You know, those things you hang damp towels on for drying, so as to use them for the next bath…?

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  4. Sherri said on February 19, 2015 at 3:20 am

    People who want to use fresh towns for every shower should be placed in charge of laudering said towels on their schedules. Otherwise, towels will be laundered on my schedule, when I deem it is appropriate to wash towels. Should the rest of the household disagree with my schedule, they may either (1) adapt to the superior way (mine) by re-using towels (2) wash their own damn towels at the pace they deem appropriate, or (3) buy more towels, and participate in the grand washing of the towels as it is down on my pace. I prefer option (1), but any option is acceptable, as all of them meet my goal of washing fewer towels.

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  5. Deborah said on February 19, 2015 at 4:34 am

    I launder towels (1 per person) once a week in Santa Fe. We shower every other day here unless we are working on a project that is extremely dirty. Water saving is the reason we do this and it’s so dry here, sweating is semi-rare. In Chicago I maybe use 2 towels a week, but only in the humid summertime. Using a fresh towel every day is excessive and wasteful in my mind.

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  6. jerry said on February 19, 2015 at 4:58 am

    A couple of comments relating to yesterday’s comments.

    First, those of you who know England is an island know something that just ain’t so. The Scots and Welsh would be understandably upset at the statement. And as an Englishman I know just how easy it is to make that mistake.

    SecondI’m loving Wolf Hall but my wife isn’t quite so keen. The acting tends to be underplayed. Mark Rylance, as Cromwell, makes great use of his eyes and of silence. And the production seems to have been shot using natural light as far as possible. There is a scene in the first episode which takes place by candlelight and I was straining to see what was going on. My wife did call for the lights to be put up at one point – not that it made any difference of course. I’ve no doubt it was a fair representation of what it must have been like but I would have preferred a little more illumination. If you watch it I hope you enjoy it – we have the penultimate episode to watch on iplayer some time today.

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  7. adrianne said on February 19, 2015 at 6:18 am

    Nance, the only answer is offloading the washing and drying of the towels. Our oldest is now in charge of towels, in addition to his own laundry (the youngest does his own laundry, too) and guess what? He uses fewer towels. I’ve delighted in offloading my least favorite chores onto my spawn, which they do with nary a complaint. Hence, I never vacuum anymore, rarely unload the dishwasher and never shovel snow (of which we’ve had plenty this winter). The solution is S.O.N.S., or D.A.U.G.H.T.E.R.S.

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  8. Dorothy said on February 19, 2015 at 6:18 am

    We have two towel bars in our master bathroom, and we each hang our towel out full width. This way they dry every day and we reuse them four times each. I keep track of it in my head by counting what day we started using them. On the fourth morning I usually say “Last day for towels” within earshot of Mike. And he always reliably responds “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!” We started this years and years ago. I guess when I came up with this goofy system of every-four-days replace the towels, when I made my announcement, it reminded him of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So it’s an in-house joke which I never tire of. In fact if he DOESN”T say it, I remind him to. And the Today show asked some cleaning expert one time how often you should replace your towels and she said every three days. Lately I’ve been thinking that I should use one set for four days, and the next set for three days. That way the days of the week I change them would be consistent. That WOULD be more logical, but much less fun.

    I think I spend far too much time thinking about towel rotation. But a clean one every day? They need to be the ones doing the laundry. IMMEDIATELY.

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  9. Dave said on February 19, 2015 at 7:19 am

    Jerry, I suspect that the problem is that there are plenty of folks who think that the United Kingdom is somehow attached to the European continent and have no idea, with little geography education, that it is not. Which makes me wonder where a lot of people think Ireland is.

    As for New Mexico, see above about geography education.

    I use a towel about five times before getting a clean one, keeping track of the days.

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  10. David C. said on February 19, 2015 at 7:39 am

    When we bunk-in at my parents house when we visit Michigan, my mom seems quite aghast that we recycle our towels. When my three sibs and I were living at home, we sure as hell didn’t get a new towel every time we showered. I have no clue what changed in the past thirty-some years to give her the notion that a towel that once touched our butts and other nether parts can’t touch our faces again without being a public health hazard.

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  11. David Kirk said on February 19, 2015 at 7:58 am

    I stopped using a fresh towel every time out of the shower a long time ago. And, I must be getting old as I’ve recently begun to wear clothing two days in a row. Shirts, for example, that I wore for only a few hours that couldn’t possibly be soiled. Things I used to throw in the hamper automatically creating lots of unnecessary laundry. Those days are gone.

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  12. Connie said on February 19, 2015 at 8:26 am

    So you are singlehandedly responsible for your entire family’s laundry? What will your daughter do when she goes off to Michigan?

    When my dad went to grad school at Michigan he mailed his laundry home and received it back the same way complete with nicely ironed shirts.

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  13. alex said on February 19, 2015 at 8:27 am

    “No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism.”

    No fair. He stole the NRA’s favorite slogan!

    I hear ya Dave, as regards clothes. Other than socks and undies, it’s not worth the trouble. Besides, I have my few favorite pairs of jeans that still fit worth a damn and they wouldn’t if I washed them all the time.

    I’m embarrassed to admit how long I can make a towel last.

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  14. devtob said on February 19, 2015 at 8:33 am

    It would make more sense to wash sheets every day — bodies are dirtier than right after a shower, and spend eight hours or so transferring that dirt to the sheets and pillowcases.

    And who does that, aside from rich germophobes with maids?

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  15. coozledad said on February 19, 2015 at 8:37 am

    When I lived in a band house, there was one of us who could only use a towel once before it became offensive. Whatever that odor was, it never seemed to hurt him with the wimmenz.

    According to my wife, I had hardly any body odor then, probably because I didn’t eat much of anything.

    During the winter our bathroom inhibits the growth of bacteria. We bathe outdoors in a repurposed cattle waterer during the worst of the summer, and let the towels dry in the sun. This prolongs the period between launderings.

    One thing I can tell you is don’t dry a beagle with a towel intended for later human use. And whatever you use, burn it.

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  16. Heather said on February 19, 2015 at 9:00 am

    Once a week for both towels and sheets. If you really want to start a controversy, ask women how often they should wash their bras!

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  17. Judybusy said on February 19, 2015 at 9:40 am

    Ditto what all of you are saying about towels. The high towel utilizers def need to start doing towel duty if they want fresh ones every day. I also wear clothing multiple times before throwing them in the wash, unless I spill something on them, of course. And sometimes stuff just picks up cooking smells, so they get washed, too. Something about day-old fried onions is so unappealing….Even my gardening clothes get several wearings before they get in the wash. It’s all about saving water.

    On a slightly related note (because it’s about clothing): I am so sick of having to wear so many layers! There. Now I feel better.

    Happy belated anniversary to Wim!

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  18. Suzanne said on February 19, 2015 at 9:41 am

    Towels washed once a week, occasionally more when I forget or run out of time–or just don’t want to bother. We’ve all survived so far.

    Interesting article about ISIS from the Atlantic making the rounds: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/#disqus_thread

    It’s long but enlightening.

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  19. Jeff Borden said on February 19, 2015 at 9:52 am

    You have to hand it to the scaremongers at Faux News. They’re doing better work for ISIS than any PR agency. . .pumping out all the hot, gooey, pro-war propaganda. . .demonizing 1.5 billion Muslims. . .painting the more patient among us as weak-wristed sissies. . .O’Reilly has already gone full-on religious war, battle of civilizations, argle barge.

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  20. Kirk said on February 19, 2015 at 10:25 am

    I use my towel until my wife flings it down the laundry chute. Nance, the rest of your family stands convicted by a jury of us as guilty of clean-towel fetishism.

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  21. Suzanne said on February 19, 2015 at 10:31 am

    Oops. Should have been “Towels washed once a week, occasionally LESS when I forget or run out of time”. But you all are smart people & probably figured that out.

    Of course, if I was somebody, certain news outlets would report it as “Suzanne intentionally tries to mislead people on her towel washing habits by being intentionally obtuse! Flip-flopper!”

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  22. Bitter Scribe said on February 19, 2015 at 10:38 am

    Can’t the idiots understand that denouncing Islam by name is exactly what these murderous bastards want us to do? They’re trying to bait us into a conflict with Islam as a whole, and those fools are demanding that the president play right into their hands. It really scares me that these morons may soon be in a position to set U.S. foreign policy.

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  23. Julie Robinson said on February 19, 2015 at 10:53 am

    Yep, kids are for work. Ours both learned to do laundry when they started dumping clean clothes on the floor, mixing them up with the dirties and then depositing the whole lot back to be washed. They also cleaned/took out trash from a young age, and by high school were cooking one meal a week. The goal was that they’d know how to look after themselves when they left our house, and for the most part, they did.

    But only one day for towels? I don’t even mind doing laundry and find the idea ridiculous.

    All y’all wearing clothes multiple days, you probably don’t sweat like you did in your younger days. The corollary is the need for cardigans.

    I’m afraid I didn’t make it to the end of the article about Harper Lee. I wonder if anyone here has read the Marja Mills biography, also tainted by controversy. It’s on my holds list right now.

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  24. coozledad said on February 19, 2015 at 10:54 am

    And Jeb Bush is getting the old act back together- the same utter failures. It’s a crime family, and they want to get at back in power so they can fuck everything up again. If there’s a holy war to be fought, it should be to make sure these people are incarcerated:
    The list includes two former secretaries of homeland security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, who worked for George W. Bush; two former secretaries of state, James Baker and George Shultz, who served under George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan; two former CIA directors, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, who also served during the second Bush presidency; and former attorney general Michael Mukasey.

    Others on the list include two former World Bank presidents, Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz. There’s also John Negroponte, a former United Nations ambassador and the first director of national intelligence; Stephen Hadley, who was George W. Bush’s national security adviser; and Meghan O’Sullivan, who worked with Hadley and Bush on the second Iraq war.

    Criminals, every god damned one.

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  25. Courtney said on February 19, 2015 at 11:07 am

    A fresh towel a day? No no no no no no no – bad for the environment, bad for the laundress, awful use of water. I followed some advice I read on a minimalism blog and bought one set of towels for each family member in an assigned color and wash them once on Saturdays. Now, it turns out we need a *few* more towels than that but really, only like two more towels, and they ALL get washed first thing Saturday morning. It’s really been a great system and nobody has complained so far. (I should note, the baby is different. he is disgusting and banana covered with sticky syrupy hands and etc so he has a pile of baby towels. Because yuck.)

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  26. Colleen said on February 19, 2015 at 11:30 am

    We have a heated towel rack (lah de dah) that really extends the time you can go between washings, because the towels dry faster and don’t get that funky smell. I’m with Nance….you’re clean, you’re wiping clean water off yourself, how dirty can it be?

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  27. Judybusy said on February 19, 2015 at 11:50 am

    Courtney, what is the name of the blog you mentioned?

    Cooz, thanks for the summary–I’d seen an article elsewhere but found it too disheartening to click. I really hope these yahoos don’t win.

    In the summer, I like to put my towels out on the patio furniture so they smell fresh. Grwoing up in the country, we had a clothesline. There is nothing so wonderful as sleeping on line-dried sheets.

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  28. Deborah said on February 19, 2015 at 12:20 pm

    That link up-thread to the Atlantic about ISIS is fantastic. I’m too lazy to scroll up and see who it was to thank personally. So whoever it was, thanks. It’s a very long read but worth it. I learned so much, now I feel like an expert, in other words: dangerous.

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  29. BethB said on February 19, 2015 at 12:24 pm

    SInce I retired in 2008, I find that I shower less, wear the same things or types of things every day, and generally do less laundry than ever before. I got rid of most of my “teaching clothes” when I retired, and the last time I ironed anything was the outfit I wore to my mother’s funeral in 2009.

    I wash towels when I feel they need it, and it most certainly is less often I am comfortable saying. I have separate towels for my hair and body, and I only wash my face with a wash cloth and towel I keep in the sink area. I do rotate the clean towels to the bottom of the clean linen each time so that all are getting used.

    My husband has his favorite towels that he uses in his bathroom, and I try to go in there as little as possible because I am shocked at the clutter. However, he says he know where everything is, so I leave it alone and just ask him to bring out his dirty towels when it is time to launder them.

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  30. Charlotte said on February 19, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    Count me among those aghast at the idea of a fresh towel every day. On the other hand, I’ve lived in the arid west since 1988, so I don’t have to deal with humidity and towel-funk. Mine go on a hook, where they dry between washings. Also, I’m a clothesline fanatic, so they’re probably crunchier than most Americans would put up with (fabric softener is the Devil’s chemical brew — white vinegar in the softener slot will take care of clothesline crunchiness without poisoning you).

    Haven’t had a chance to look at the Jackson/Aspen piece yet, but Telluride was building employee housing even as I was leaving in the early 1990s. They’ve done a pretty good job of it — I have friends who are not trust funders who managed to stay, work, raise kids in nice housing.

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  31. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    Deborah, here is a short piece written in response to the piece from The Atlantic that you mentioned. May reduce the likelihood of dangerousness.

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  32. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 12:50 pm

    Oliver Sacks has been told that he has terminal cancer. Sad, but he is an old guy, so not tragic, and he has written a lovely essay about it.

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  33. Deborah said on February 19, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    Jolene, sorry, I realize I was unclear, I meant I’m the one who is dangerous because I now think I’m an expert. I was referring to the old saying about only knowing enough to be dangerous.

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  34. Scout said on February 19, 2015 at 1:57 pm

    Funny the things that can spark conversation here! Our towels get washed once a week too. We once had a multiple night house guest who tried to hand me their towel after one use. I handed it back and told him to hang it up and reuse it the next day. He looked shocked but complied.

    Good on Pres O. I am going to miss his even keel and intelligent approach. The politicians agitating for confrontation scare the shite out of me.

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  35. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 2:11 pm

    I understood, Deborah. I thought you might be interested in the piece I posted as it contradicts, to some extent, Graeme Wood’s perspective in The Atlantic.

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  36. Sherri said on February 19, 2015 at 2:18 pm

    When my daughter went off to college, I felt like the amount of laundry went down by half, not a third, as well as the amount of garbage generated. Not that my daughter was a slob or a clothes horse, but I think that laundry and garbage grow faster than the number of people.

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  37. adrianne said on February 19, 2015 at 2:20 pm

    Another one for the clown file, Nance, this one about a stolen mannequin of Louie the Clown that was found in a sex offender’s home. You can’t make this shit up.

    http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article10675619.html

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  38. susan said on February 19, 2015 at 2:34 pm

    Sherri @36 As is the case with cats. Two cats put out more than double the pee and sheeit than one cat. I’ve never understood that, except that maybe there is some sort of effluent competition.

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  39. LAMary said on February 19, 2015 at 3:03 pm

    I have one of those microfiber towels I use for my hair and only for my hair, so that thing only gets washed when I’m looking around for other white things to make up a load. The towel I use on my body is probably good for four or five days. It’s pretty dry here most of the time so it never gets funky.

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  40. Dexter said on February 19, 2015 at 3:11 pm

    I was trying to remember, and I am sure that in the army we were issued one thin towel a week if we had a dirty one to exchange.
    Oddly, for a short while when I was living in a hootch in Vietnam, we had mama-sans who did our laundry by hand every day and we got a fresh towel every day. They washed and folded our fatigues and underwear neatly every day. That scene didn’t last too long. We only paid them a pittance in military MPC , and were warned not to get too generous with tips because we would disturb the “way things were”. Screw that, I always tipped over the top. Also, if you gave some of the mama-sans a pack of Salems once in a while, you’d have a friend for life…they absolutely loved Salem cigarettes. Boiled rice and Salems…life was good. 🙂

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  41. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 3:11 pm

    Cooz, I share your disgust at seeing the names of all those GOP advisors once again attached to a presidential candidate. Ridge and Chertoff probably never did anything too terrible, but the idea that anyone would put any faith in anything that Paul Wolfowitz says defies credulity. He should be in jail. In addition to the criminally wrong perspective, Jeb seems to want to include the world-as-it-was perspective. George Schultz is 94, and James Baker is 84.

    Have been spending more time than I should lately stewing about the intellectual failings of people who disagree with me. Between the anti-vaxxers, the people who can’t give up on trying to kill Obamacare, and the people who are mad at Obama because Obama is mad enough at Muslims, I am having a hard time maintaining my equanimity. I want all those people to go away–or, at least, to stop talking and stop voting.

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  42. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 3:42 pm

    Meant to say “because Obama isn’t mad enough at Muslims.”

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  43. brian stouder said on February 19, 2015 at 4:03 pm

    I’d say the first major candidate (say, BushIII or Raphael Cruz or one of the google-eyed governors) to lionize/venerate/fondly recall Dick Cheney, will be the first big clown to tumble out of the Republigoon car.

    And if that doesn’t get one ejected from the clown car, than HRC wins all 50 states, and the D’s take congress back over

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  44. coozledad said on February 19, 2015 at 4:10 pm

    I just wish they’d go ahead and admit they hate the people of this country, and want to live in some gated financier’s soviet. I would like to help them get on the boat to that hellhole, 1.Because their bitchy dreams are not going to come true here, and 2.Their attempts keep bringing unnecessary suffering to decent people.

    There aren’t two sides to every issue. There are people happy to get by, and there people who are insufferable graspy, stupid bastards, who want things just as miserable and ugly for the rest. They lack both the hopeful spirit and the egalitarian impulse that so long kept this nation out of the totalitarian shitter. Tory whelps. Born ass-kissers.

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  45. Ann said on February 19, 2015 at 5:11 pm

    As others have said. I was aghast when my son, at about age 12, said we should be washing our towels after every use. Went straight to K-Mart, bought him half a dozen navy blue bath sheets (none of the other towels in the house were navy), and gave him a quick lesson on how the washer works. Never did any of his wash ever again.

    We could move on to sheets. I was taught to change them once a week, moving the top sheet to the bottom (using hospital corners, natch) and putting the bottom sheet in the wash. That ended once we all started using fitted sheets, and my sheets now get changed by the cleaning ladies, once every other week. (Don’t ask how often they get changed at the cabin, where we have no cleaning ladies). My 90 year old mother still changes hers every week, though now both sheets since she too has converted to fitted sheets. But in my mother’s house no one’s allowed to use the dryer, so she has to carry the wet sheets–and towels and everything else– upstairs to the upstairs bathroom (except, of course, for the six weeks each year that the snow in her U.P. backyard is low enough for her to hang them outside) and hang them on racks up there. After she had her stroke on Christmas day I suggested maybe at least she should start using her dryer so she didn’t have to lug wet laundry up the stairs on her wonky leg. She laughed, literally laughed, at me.

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  46. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 5:17 pm

    It’s taken Ta-Nehisi Coates a few days to produce his tribute to David Carr, but it was worth the wait. I must have read at least a dozen of these. They’ve all been very touching and have made me wish I knew Carr other than as a reader. But this onelike all Coates’s writing, reaches deep, capturing both the joy and terror of knowing Carr and the terrible loss of his early death.

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  47. alex said on February 19, 2015 at 6:28 pm

    Thanks, Jolene. And I think it states perfectly the mission of the alternative press (that is, before it got gobbled up and coopted by the dying dailies that didn’t have a clue what they thought they were getting besides a competitor’s ad revenue). Some of the best journalism I saw and took as an example ran in the Chicago Reader in my formative years. And I did some of my best work there, although it was dwarfed by the best work that ever appeared in it.

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  48. Deborah said on February 19, 2015 at 6:43 pm

    Yes, thanks Jolene. And Alex, Charles Pierce also comes from the alternative press.

    I have had to mentor young designers in my former career as a Design Director and I can say that it is hard work. Trying to balance praise and criticism in a way that builds instead of damages is not easy in the least. David Carr sounds like he was a master and for that alone we should revere him in memory, not to mention his talent as a writer.

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  49. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 19, 2015 at 7:18 pm

    Brian — for you, from 1976. The look in his eyes says it all.

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/cinegrappler/dick-cheney-in-a-bumper-car-dallas-1976-w5t

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  50. Jim said on February 19, 2015 at 8:43 pm

    Towels. They require a system. I take a daily shower, but six mornings per week, it’s at the Y. For this purpose, I have a total of four towels. Two are a radioactive puke-green color, and two are space-alien burnt pink. I do this on purpose; I’ve found that if you use white towels at the Y, sooner or later someone takes yours by mistake while you’re showering and leaves you his, and that ain’t good. I bought horribly-colored towels to prevent such accidental trades. For two weeks I use the green ones, alternating daily and hanging the out-of-service one to dry; thus each towel dries me off after six showers, after which it seems like time they got laundered. Then I enter the pink-towel two weeks, and at some point during those two weeks, the green ones get washed. I have about seven years’ service on this set of four towels, and they’re still doing well.

    Sundays, I shower at home. I have a white towel for this. I launder it once a month, whether it needs it or not. And, really, it doesn’t.

    And then, I have a towel-a-day wife. I do not argue with her about this. Such arguments are lost by winning.

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  51. Jolene said on February 19, 2015 at 9:03 pm

    Here’s a good piece of work on what’s become of the protest movements launched in the wake of the shootings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. Fairly detailed reporting by three WaPo reporters. Lots of challenges and complexity in trying to channel outrage into real change.

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  52. Dorothy said on February 19, 2015 at 9:27 pm

    Sheets have to be changed once a week. At our house we shower in the morning, so that means we get into bed with stinky feet and other areas that naturally get stinky as the day wears on. My favorite night of the week to get into bed is Saturday, especially if I shaved my legs that morning. Clean sheets + shaved legs = a marvelous tactile experience! (And why do I get the feeling that we have discussed towel and sheet washing practices here at least twice before?!)

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  53. Deborah said on February 19, 2015 at 11:36 pm

    We have discussed bedding before, I don’t remember discussing towels, however. I said before that I use only a fitted sheet and a down comforter cover, no flat sheet. I wash these and pillow cases once a week, same time that I wash the towels only not the same load as my towels are green (in Santa Fe, but in Chicago they’re white) the sheets are ivory (in SF). Little Bird launders her own sheets and clothes, she’s done that since she was in high school.

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  54. Dexter said on February 20, 2015 at 12:21 am

    A few years ago there was a bedbug saturation; it seems that Detroit and Cincinnati were hit the worst. I wonder how many people just didn’t do anything and are still living with infested sheets, furniture, … everything.

    I am so glad the vet did the surgery on little Noelle Belle the Jack Russell terrier. She is back on her routine, eating and drinking water and doing splendidly. That tumor was as big as a tennis ball and a half.

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  55. Dexter said on February 20, 2015 at 12:24 am

    Ever wonder why that Indiana ditch weed or that Chronic compels you to make a run to Taco Bell?
    http://www.wired.com/2015/02/weed-gives-munchies-manipulating-cells-make-feel-full/

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