OK, I think normalcy is returning. Still weak and dizzy from time to time, but I’m chalking that up to Girl Scout cookies.
I’m speaking, of course, of normalcy only in my own body. Outside, abnormalcy — I just invented that word, pay me the royalty — continues to reign. Do we even need to go over the events of the weekend? In the year since we dumped cable, I’ve missed it only a couple times, and this weekend wasn’t one of them – you get on Twitter, and you can experience pretty much any big national event in more or less real time. And truth be told, I have better things to do on a Saturday evening than watch the president start his 2020 campaign three years early, because he’s so insecure he needs to. So some guy came onstage to say he prays to a cardboard Trump cutout every night? Am I getting that right? If so: Wonderful. In the interest of looking on the bright side, let me just say that if we all survive this era, several things will not, one of them being the lectures we can depend on from our religious friends. They no longer have any moral high ground; in fact, they now occupy the religious low ground, if they’re OK with a guy actually praying to a cardboard idol.
Actual quote from a Freep story today about a far-right Catholic group in Detroit: “The personal proclivities, the personal sins or life of a particular leader is a separate discussion from how that man’s view of the world might influence his policies. And if that policy is favorable to the church, well then, very good.”
Like I said, that’ll be outta here soon enough.
How was everyone’s weekend? We had spectacular, early-May temperatures, and everyone was out riding bikes, running, what-have-you. I stayed indoors and mostly cleaned, experiencing the glory in short bits. There will be more beautiful days. But the house was ready for a hazmat team, and I now feel better in my dust-free home than I would if I’d run around all weekend. And the forecast says the week ahead won’t be terrible at all.
Oh, bloggage? OK, here’s a really stupid NYT piece about how liberals are “helping” Trump:
Mrs. O’Connell feels hopeless. She has deleted all her news feeds on Facebook and she tries to watch less TV. But politics keeps seeping in.
“I love Meryl Streep, but you know, she robbed me of that wonderful feeling when I go to the movies to be entertained,” she said. “I told my husband, I said, ‘Ed, we have to be a little more flexible, or we’re going to run out of movies!’ ”
Mrs. O’Connell, who claims to be a Democrat but voted for Trump, now finds Democrats “scarier than Islamic terrorists,” to which I’d say: Congratulations, Mrs. O’Connell, you’re actually a Republican now. Enjoy!
If you want a brighter view, try Neil Steinberg’s Saturday piece. Of the Mrs. O’Connells of the world:
They were tired of the old ways, the business-as-usual politics. It wasn’t that they didn’t have a valid complaint, they did. It’s just that their solution will make the problem, make all of our problems, so much worse. America is like a man who burns his house down to get rid of the mice. Like a person who has a genuine ailment—say cancer—and then hires a shaman to spray fragrant oils on the soles of his feet. You’re sorry they’re sick. You understand the fear in that. But they’re embracing a quack and don’t know it. I’d add “yet,” but that would be wistful. If we know one thing about error is that it tends to compound. The majority of people would much rather dwell in wrongness than admit being mistaken.
Finally: Borden! RIP, Junie Morrison. Damn. The world is a little less funky today.
David C. said on February 19, 2017 at 6:56 pm
I’d be sceptical if this came from anyone but Josh Marshall. I don’t ever remember him getting too far out in front of a story. Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-big-shoe-just-dropped
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beb said on February 19, 2017 at 7:22 pm
David C. : I agree. John Marshall has always been a restrained, wonky commentator. When he looks up this old story and sees the same player… ow, more than ever we need to Special
Persecutorprosecutor to get to the bottom of this.Nancy. Glad to hear you’re feeling well.
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brian stouder said on February 19, 2017 at 8:01 pm
See, the temptation here is to launch a whole out-of-context/out-of-left-field/what-the-hell?- (faux)scathing attack on the personages of both beb and David C, by way of criticizing our man Cooz’s new posting style hereabouts.
But, we’ll skip that. The one thing I will say is that Cooze seems to have a genuinely ‘holier than thou’ attitude when it comes to expressing criticisms/concerns/fears of our incoherent new president (none of us can possibly match Cooze’s heart-felt, genuine, original, and passionate disgust for the Donald; we’re all just deluded pretenders, or something) –
and to that I’d say “don’t flatter yourself”.
And indeed, if I ever find myself on the opposite side of any issue from Jeff TMMO, I’d take that as a cue to re-visit why I think what I think (about whatever the issue is).
I could well be wrong, but I’d guess that Jeff has spent more shoe-leather/sweat/anxious moments/opportunity costs (to do something more pleasant) than Cooz ever has (or ever will), in his efforts to make the world in his Ohio area a little bit better.
Just sayin’
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del said on February 19, 2017 at 10:20 pm
Michael G, just catching up on your news. I too have treasured your comments. Love and peace to you.
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Basset said on February 19, 2017 at 10:51 pm
Cooz, one question. How old are you? (I’m 61, if it matters.)
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Danny said on February 19, 2017 at 10:53 pm
Oh sure, del, just saunter in the room after years away and make yourself at home. Lol!
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 12:05 am
Josh Marshall has more on Felix Sater, the guy in the article David C linked to @1, and the story gets even stranger: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/learning-eye-popping-details-about-mr-sater
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 12:18 am
This, from the NYTimes piece, is just plain offensive.
“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay.
Unless there’s something wrong with my reading skills, the author of the piece, not the deluded Mr. Youngquist, is the person comparing being a trump voter in Mountain View to being gay in the 50s. I lived in Mountain View for 12 years, and that’s just a ridiculous insult to the city and its residents.
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MichaelG said on February 20, 2017 at 1:46 am
Danny @6, thanks for the sensitive and welcoming reply to del’s comment. That was just an unprovoked piece of nastiness. What were you thinking?
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Suzanne said on February 20, 2017 at 7:04 am
Hopefully, the preponderance of the evidence (as Judge Wapner would say) on this Russian thing will force the hand of the GOP to act, but I don’t have high hopes. They seem incapable of doing much of anything except complaining about the bias in the media.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 20, 2017 at 7:27 am
For what it’s worth, my impression is that Cooze has a higher slope he’s shoveling sand up and over, and doing what he can in Person County, but a lot of the effort tends to slide right back down at you or blow back in your face.
A real challenge anywhere, and at least how I see it and feel it here, is when you’re doing the organizational and practical work to be present to and in service with people who are stuck in poverty and then choosing options like heroin or hash or meth, you can get bitter and angry real fast. Real fast. Including at the people you’re trying to help, and at those involved in the helping groups on either side. Yes, there’s turf protection (why is your organization trying to do housing? that’s our niche!). Yes, there’s laziness (county offices that hold nothing so holy as the closing time of their offices, or the righteousness of one more form versus expediting a voucher for a Y membership for a family). Yes, there’s a certain amount of entitlement (your staffer doesn’t have an LISW, they can’t ask that question). Even as you’re managing cop thinking (tell that hairball I’m gonna have their kids taken, okay?) and the mom you really thought was going to work the program skips three appointments in a row to get set up with suboxone . . . and when you see her next, has a bunch of fresh outlining for a sleeve tattoo, which you realize the housing arrangement you set up for her probably in essence paid for it.
Then she packs up her kids and bails, moving into a new boyfriend’s apartment across town with a scribbled note, and you go up to find the tub filled with used disposable diapers (?!?!?) and the pantry filled with canned goods and boxed dinners your team delivered months ago, and now left behind, probably a few hundred worth. And you think about those damn tattoos. And then push it out of your mind.
Until you go to an opioid response team meeting the next week and hear the two cops laughing about a mom that got Naloxoned twice in one night last weekend, and they had to sit with the little kids after the squad came for the CPS caseworker to get there . . . they aren’t laughing about the kids being taken, or the Naloxone repeat customer, but about the fact that when one had to go to the bathroom, he saw the tub in the apartment had a bunch of used disposable diapers sitting in it. “Guess she didn’t plan on bathing much!”
It’s really easy to develop a bitter attitude when you see enough of that — and I’m realist enough to know we’re pretty fortunate in the cops and sheriffs we have in this county. Although we just had one shoot his wife and then himself, which has the deputies pretty torn in two directions these last few weeks about what should be done, some ticked off that “there’s gonna be a bunch of sensitivity training crap now” and others more quietly saying “we’re overdue for some aggressive psych assessment and oversight in this department.” But in general, when cops show up for the third time in a night at an address they’ve been called to for domestic disturbances more times than they can count already in 2017, I don’t worry that they’ll make the situation worse. Mostly.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 7:35 am
Stouder: You don’t have any idea what I do, the actual heroic people I’ve encountered in my life, and the stupid, savage reaction it provokes among mediocrities. I simply don’t care to suck my own dick as much as Jeff. I don’t like those yogic extremities to begin with, and it’s all a song and dance for the credulous.
I know pastors that would recoil at such a fundamental character flaw. It’s part of the reasons he has to twist himself in knots when he’s confronted with the truth.
Try and fucking remember that discretion is the better part of valor, and you’ll be less of a doormat to Republicans.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 7:57 am
Shriley Jackson was the most perceptive writer about the will to mediocrity among Americans. The itch for a good old auto da fe is never far beneath the veneer of tranquility, if there’s a veneer at all. The Lottery wasn’t a literary invention so much as it was a documentary. A warning.
Our origins as a slaver state may make us more prone to group sadism, or maybe it’s just the village mentality that lets the old demons out. I saw it growing up, I saw it in my early adulthood working in a small college town, and as a bartender for several years.
Americans don’t need any prompt to turn on the weak. To cluster like a knot of bees around the Other.
I watched it right here on this very blog when poor sick old Prospero would set himself up for the boot, and the kicking wouldn’t stop until he’d hit the floor.
Then when he died, the boo hoo hoos cranked right up.
I can tell you the boots and the boo-hoos frequently came from the same ugly ass quarter, and it was conduct unbecoming a man o’ god.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 20, 2017 at 8:23 am
I think both our areas deal with the legacy of slavery in different ways, but it is still there. And I do respect your insistence on raising that legacy regularly, believe it or not. But I don’t recall taking pot shots at Prospero. More of us in general tried to encourage him on good days that rise to his goading when he was on a tear. I’m sure I’ll never know his full story, any more than I know yours, but I wish you well. If my storytelling is self-serving, I regret the necessity of it, but it’s the only story I can try to tell truly. I’m sure too much of me gets in the way; it’s a hazard I try to watch out for — on Sunday mornings especially — and you’re of course perfectly welcome to keep raising those red flags. Be well.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 8:30 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N9LnkKQfuc
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basset said on February 20, 2017 at 8:52 am
Cooz, I’m talking to you. Age?
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 8:57 am
Creep on off, old man.
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Danny said on February 20, 2017 at 9:13 am
MichaelG, You misunderstand. I was saying that to del with true affection. It really is good to see him around here. del goes way back, I think before you were even around. He hasn’t posted in ages though and I was thrilled to see that he was still around.
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Joe K said on February 20, 2017 at 9:16 am
Brian,
You being a Abe Lincoln fan, are there any recordings of his voice? And if not any idea who was the first president to be recorded?
Pilot Joe
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LinGin said on February 20, 2017 at 9:19 am
Felix Sater is acting as a go-between among the US, Russia and the Ukraine? Peace in our time.
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brian stouder said on February 20, 2017 at 9:25 am
no recordings of Abe’s voice. It is described as high – rather than the baritone that we sometimes hear in movies featuring him.
If you were a stump speaker, and drew good-sized crowds here and there across the Illinois prairie (let alone the Cooper Union hall, or on the steps of the Capitol) – such a voice is a definite asset – as the folks at the back of the crowd would still be able to hear you.
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Joe K said on February 20, 2017 at 9:56 am
Thanks Brian,
Benny Harrison was the first to be recorded.
Pilot Joe
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 10:10 am
CPAC and NAMBLA, out and proud.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/video-shows-milo-yiannopoulos-speaking-fondly-pedophilia-article-1.2977071
Remember, rape is about authoritarianism. From the bloated pussy-grabbing turnip, to the childfucker darlings of the Alt-right, it’s always about power. Don’t worry about Milo, though. He’ll never miss a meal as long as Paul Ryan has the gavel.
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Danny said on February 20, 2017 at 10:11 am
Portrait of a Young Man as a Douchebag (aka The Abridged Poetic Guide to Derrick):
1. Y’all don’t agree with me 100% so y’all is wrong.
2. Y’all don’t hate the people I hate with the same degree of hatred so I hate y’all too.
3. Y’all don’t know the troubles I’ve seen.
4. Y’all killed Prospero fer crissakes.
QED
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Peter said on February 20, 2017 at 10:17 am
Uh, somebody want to get me up to speed on what’s going on around here?
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 10:21 am
If anyone’s ever wondered why authoritarians don’t have their own comedy shows…
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Snarkworth said on February 20, 2017 at 10:23 am
Mommy? Daddy? Please don’t fight!
*quivers lip*
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alex said on February 20, 2017 at 10:24 am
Danny’s being passive-aggressive again and trying to pass it off as virtuous.
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Suzanne said on February 20, 2017 at 10:50 am
Settle down, kids. It’s Presidents Day and these guys always got along!
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Danny said on February 20, 2017 at 10:53 am
I don’t really understand how whereas Cooz is calling everyone on NNC, especially those who demonstrably agree with him on so many issues (including Nance), a bunch of racist posers for months and telling them that they should fuck right off that I am suddenly the issue. But I guess that is just part of the charm.
:::sigh:::
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BItter Scribe said on February 20, 2017 at 11:10 am
That NYT piece was beyond stupid. We lived through eight years of slander, insults and contempt hurled at a decent man and perfectly good president. Even more was heaped on a fine woman who had sterling qualifications for the presidency and would have been at least as good as her predecessor—quite possibly better. Then the people flinging the insults turned around and elected the most ridiculously unqualified clown imaginable—a genuine menace.
And we as liberals are supposed to regret hurting their feelings?
To quote a popular T-shirt among the Trumpanzees: Fuck your feelings.
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Icarus said on February 20, 2017 at 11:17 am
did this page get hacked by the Russians?
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MarkH said on February 20, 2017 at 11:48 am
That’s your idea of passive/aggressive, Alex? Clearly you missed Stouder’s dictionary definition exercise @#3.
I, for one, do not see Jeff spurning Matthew 6: 1-7 when he enlightens us with his day job – the heartbreak of Licking County, necessarily revealing how he engages the nightmares. His personal accounts drive home modern rural America’s decline.
And I, too, somehow missed the abuse of Prospero on this site. He was regularly treated with kid gloves, while lashing back at perceived slights. There were times even Nancy had had enough.
Coozledad, why bother with this site anymore?
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brian stouder said on February 20, 2017 at 12:07 pm
I apologize for keeping the unpleasant-ball rolling; it was not necessary, and – in this thread – it was my fault.
A non-sequitur: if you get a chance to catch “Brooklyn” – that was a pretty good movie.
Ditto another one about a war-era English house-keeper who assists a starlet as she navigates her life and career; can’t recall the title of it – but Pam and I liked both pictures, this past weekend
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 20, 2017 at 12:25 pm
Nothing wrong with a little Robert Mitchum on a Monday.
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 12:39 pm
If you lived in North Carolina, you might be as frustrated as Cooz. It’s the current front line for Republican voter suppression and bigotry.
The Rev. Dr. Barber received well-deserved national attention this past summer at the DNC, but he’s been doing the Moral Mondays protest almost 4 years. Cooz was telling us about what was happening with Art Pope’s hand picked tool Pat McCrory way back then, too. So yeah, maybe he’s unhappy with the complacency we had before the election. Being Cooz, he demonstrates in his inimitable way.
If you think Cooz is off the mark in attacking you, then shrug and move on, because you’re not going to win a pissing match with coozledad. If you’re mad, at least take a second to consider why.
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Suzanne said on February 20, 2017 at 12:41 pm
This is interesting. Coincidence, perhaps, or not:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/20/europe/russia-un-ambassador-vitaly-churkin-dead/index.html
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alex said on February 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm
I just begged off of an opportunity to go on the local CBS affiliate speaking my mind about how I think Trump’s doing in his first thirty days. When the reporter approached me on the street and asked me the question, I let loose with a string of invective that even surprised me. He then told me that he was having a hard time getting anyone to go on camera with an anti-Trump point of view. I demurred because I fear retribution. Probably the same is true for anyone else. It shouldn’t have to be this way.
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basset said on February 20, 2017 at 1:01 pm
Cooz@17, that was the reaction I expected so I’ll go with my first estimate… thirteen, fourteen, at the most fifteen. Mad-at-the-world eighth-grader who’s real proud that he knows some big words and thinks it’s smart to be negative, we’ve seen that before.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 1:17 pm
Coozledad, why bother with this site anymore?
Smae reason one might step outdoors to look at clouds forming or to inspect what sounds like a branch scraping the weatherboard. Looking at the squishy middle to see how it’s gonna sell its ass to the right this time. What is the nature of the adjustments they’ll make to their conscience so they can sleep?
Also, a kind of neighborhood watching. Not like some junior wannabe policemen, but as someone who takes a delight in internecine “neighborliness”:
Mother Perpetua would tell the children, with her famous, dangerously sweet smile:”We have no objection to Protestants worshipping God in their own way, but we Catholics prefer to worship him in his.”
The Protestaants were damned, of course, by reason of this culpable ignorance. They would roast in Hell. A span of seventy years, to ride bicycles in the steep streets, to get married, to eat bread and dripping, then bronchitis, pneumonia, a broken hip; then the minister calls, and the florist does a wreath; then devils will tear their flesh with pincers.
It is a most neighborly thought.
-Hilary Mantel, Fludd.
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Jakash said on February 20, 2017 at 1:27 pm
I, for one, am not mad, Sherri. Nor am I deluded enough to get in a pissing match. “…at least take a second to consider why.” Seems to me that some of us have been trying to consider why being frustrated with the situation in North Carolina warrants attacking a bunch of strangers on a website based in Michigan that largely agrees with one’s world-view and sense of frustration.
I don’t know if Jeff’s occasional reports from the Licking County trenches indicate “a fundamental character flaw,” or not. But I certainly find them illuminating and worthwhile, and think their omission from the commentary here would be a step in the wrong direction for us readers.
And, I’m sorry, but this was pretty rich: BRIAN is the one who needs to “try and fucking remember that discretion is the better part of valor?” Please.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 1:35 pm
Licking County trenches.
TMI, man. TMI.
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Jakash said on February 20, 2017 at 2:08 pm
Okay, that was mean, but funny and certainly succinct!
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devtob said on February 20, 2017 at 2:15 pm
This is just the kind of division among the anti-Trump majority that the Republicans are counting on to enable them to dismantle the New Deal/Great Society, pauperize what’s left of the middle class, outlaw unions, create a neo-police state, imprison dissenters, make women and minorities second-class citizens, and rule forever.
Even in this little corner of blogworld, let’s not give them any aid and comfort.
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Icarus said on February 20, 2017 at 2:17 pm
Alex, I probably would have seen you then, but not recognized of course. Wendy Widom is a friend.
Coozledad, aren’t you also BitterScribe on some other sites?
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BItter Scribe said on February 20, 2017 at 2:34 pm
Icarus: No, he isn’t. We both use four-letter words, but that’s it.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 2:36 pm
No. Bitterscribe is Bitterscribe. Out there on the Wonkette and the Alicublog. I’m rurritable some places- TPM and maybe Power Pop. It’s more to do with the blog platform than anything else.
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 2:57 pm
All I’m saying with consider why is, From what I can tell, Cooz has been working harder than me for longer than me to change things in a progressive direction in a much more difficult environment, and since the election, I’ve stopped being complacent about anything and started working harder. I’m not going to get pissy about someone who’s doing the work.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 3:09 pm
Sherri; My wife does the work. I mostly go along for the ride. My wife says I’m an ideal bullet sponge.
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Suzanne said on February 20, 2017 at 3:15 pm
Interesting. I just checked Fox News’ website. Nothing on the main page about CPAC telling pearl wearing Milo not to show up for their meeting (after his comments about it being ok to have sex with a minor). The Russian ambassador’s death way down on the page in with the small print items about a kid with cancer and stuff like that.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 20, 2017 at 3:39 pm
In that same spirit, devtob: we’ve all been having the conversation again, a little more intently than in the past, about picking our battles, focusing our energies. My own interests, I think out of a purely strategic sense (I surely knew jack about the subject twenty-five years ago, so it wasn’t my own interest that led me to it), have been around housing. Emergency shelter, transitional and supportive housing, Metro and Section 8 and Fair Housing issues, with most of my energy going into transitional housing through that time . . . but it’s all connected, anyhow.
More recently, the progressive folk of our community have been hammering hard on transportation; I’ve had friends and acquaintances push me pretty hard that the time and energy and alliances we have built up around housing would really be better spent on pushing for public transit, light rail into Columbus, access to vehicles and such. They have a socio-economic case that’s not nothing. The meetings where this comes up sometimes end with a near flare-up of hostility, as those who are doing one thing look askance at those doing another, asking why we don’t support them.
I’d like to think, in our county, on this blog, and elsewhere, we could agree that the cause of justice and hope is not served all one way. On the other hand, sometimes you need to concentrate your energies . . . what’s going on at the state level with education largely snuck around me and now I’m chagrined that I missed as much awfulness and evil at work right down the hedgerow from where I was hoeing my little plot it bothers me — and I really do welcome the challenges and questions from time to time, because just as I see some of our United Way partners stuck in their own 1954 ruts of how they do things, I know I’m just as liable to get dug into my own assumptions and comfort zones. And whether discussing with (or jabbing back at) Sherri or anyone else here, I’m still uneasy about where the best use of the tools we have now is put. It’s easy enough to say we wish more people cared, fewer felt entitled, and more hands worked to help get food on tables, kids safely to school and educated there, and share the work families have to put in to clear out a space for just living and being with each other and loving one another: which they can’t do in a state of constant insecurity and anxiety and double shifts and midnight runs to the ER.
I’m still working on making sure it’s as hard as possible for anyone, especially anyone with a child, to not have an option for a place to stay, with a roof over their head, that they can afford or for nothing if that’s what they have. I think it’s the best place to start, and by now it’s what I know. I could drop some of that work and do more to push for additional beds in the MH/addiction systems, but it’s a purely utilitarian calculus right now. And my mind could change.
Which is what keeps me reading here, even though y’all do cuss a whole bunch. You might have a new way for me to look at what we’re doing.
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brian stouder said on February 20, 2017 at 3:50 pm
Strangely, this is giving me a flashback of the D primaries last year, between the “go for it ALL!” Sanders folks, and the more hard-headed HRC folks.
This flare-up has been enlightening and viscerally educational; I respect all y’all, truth be told
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 4:05 pm
Housing and transportation really aren’t separable issues here. We have an enormous affordable housing problem, at all levels of affordability (I’ve been trying to help a friend find a room to rent in Redmond with an $800/month budget that will take her two dogs), and transportation to jobs is key. Puget Sound runs so close to the limit with traffic here that the slightest disturbance can send the whole system into paroxysm.
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 4:11 pm
BTW, the woman I met with and am supporting for my state senate seat in the special election has announced her candidacy, and I’ve already donated the max: http://www.electmanka.com
This seat could tip the balance of the state senate and finally allow us to fund education adequately without stealing money from other important areas.
Susan, I know you’re not in the 45th, but check Manka out!
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 5:06 pm
I’ve got a counter-proposal for this nutcase and his unConstitutional bill. Let’s sa it can’t go into effect until the Iowa legislature reflects the demographics of the state. The current legislature is 22% women and 6% minority.
http://iowastartingline.com/2017/02/20/senator-chelgren-aims-purge-democrats-iowa-universities/
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 5:19 pm
This about changes at Texas Monthly is very sad. Some really good journalism was done at Texas Monthly over the years.
http://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/texas-monthly-lifestyle-editor.php
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David C. said on February 20, 2017 at 6:36 pm
So the Rs are in favor of affirmative action after all. I’m sure they’ll be lining up around the block for all those sweet adjunct faculty positions.
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Sherri said on February 20, 2017 at 6:41 pm
Jeb Lund went to the trump rally.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a53275/trump-melbourne-florida-rally/
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basset said on February 20, 2017 at 8:34 pm
Back to yesterday’s topics for a minute – there was some mention of a NYTimes article about high-dollar sheep hunting ($100,000-plus for a tag) and how that kind of spending supports conservation.
Sorry I don’t remember exactly who posted it – but did you see that on the NYT cooking email? It was there a few days ago, very interesting article. And it’s correct in that the people who are most into hunting exotics don’t mind paying a lot of money, which in turn goes to conservation programs, or for profit depending on where you are; I’ve been on one of those hunts, on a game ranch in Texas which charged $6000 to shoot a sheep, forget what kind, but I was there when it happened. Not exactly a challenging experience – we just rode around in a Suburban with the windows broken out, and when the guide saw a sheep our hunter hopped out and shot it, so much for “spot and stalk.”
That said, down on the level where I hunt nearly all the hunters I encounter are respectful of the game laws and mindful of maintaining the herd and the habitat. A hundred grand for a tag is a little rich for our blood, though.
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basset said on February 20, 2017 at 8:57 pm
And while I’m at it, before La Cooz jumps in with some kind of overwritten comment about hunting and the outdoors in general, let me share a little Coozian negativity. These are descriptions of others here and out in the real world from just the last two days:
“mediocrities”
“the credulous”
“doormat”
“old man”
“bloated pussy-grabbing turnip”
“childfucker darlings”
“aren’t fit to lick lint off disused Christmas sweaters”
“anti-immigration fucks”
“white American shit”
“poor Kentuckian bastard”
“Fox whores”
“athletic sock choked with Hormel beef chili”
“Soviet bloc whores”
“Ryan fanboi”
“super old white git”
“old Bernie bastard”
“jackass”
“Reichswehr factotum”
“simpletons”
“whitebread”
“murderers”
And of the actions of others:
“fundamental character flaw”
“conduct unbecoming a man o’god”
“streak of rancid mayonnaise”
“tu quoque horseshit”
“puking up amens”
“non-sequiter” (spelled wrong, btw – missing it by just a little is worse than missing it by a lot)
My point being that it’s the same anger and the same negativity and the same lack of anything constructive at all every day, and I for one am tired of it. We are all stupid, everyone in Person County is stupid, the mules are stupid, the chickens are stupid, the neighbors are stupid, and the act is the same over and over and over, no contribution to the dialogue, just more complaining each and every time. Enough.
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alex said on February 20, 2017 at 9:03 pm
My partner went out and bought a $42K car today without even consulting me. Now he’s trying to rescind the deal but Indiana law is pretty clear that once you sign the contract you’re fucked. I don’t know what possessed him. I don’t know what he was thinking. We have three perfectly good vehicles and just got rid of a fourth because it was taking up space and not getting used enough. It’s on his credit and not mine, but it still means that cash flow is going to go down to a trickle so that he can have a fucking status symbol in our driveway while we figure out how to live on less. I’m livid. I just drank my dinner because I have no appetite. He knows it was a stupid impulse buy that we can’t afford. I’m seriously thinking of telling him to get out of my life and go live in the goddamned thing.
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David C. said on February 20, 2017 at 9:27 pm
In thirty-five years of car buying, I don’t think I’ve spent much more than $42,000 total. I buy cheap and keep them until they die. I can imagine how upsetting it is, Alex. I hope everything works out.
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Danny said on February 20, 2017 at 9:37 pm
Bassett, that was powerful. I was playing at clever with my James Joyce reference to Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist, but my Joyce sucks more than my iambic pentameter. Your direct approach is better.
Alex, that is awful. Sorry.
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coozledad said on February 20, 2017 at 10:01 pm
Go out and shoot some ruminants, Basset. It’ll make you feel better.
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Heather said on February 20, 2017 at 11:08 pm
Jeez Alex. I would be livid. An impulse buy for me is a $400 dress.
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Jakash said on February 21, 2017 at 1:36 am
All that nn.c research @ 60, Basset, and you couldn’t find out that I was the one who posted the hunting article you referenced @ 59? Huh. I recall a time years ago when you felt like YOUR comments were invisible. ; ) (Just joking around — no big deal, of course.)
Don’t know what it was doing in the cooking email, but it’s a Sports article and it was listed under Sports in the daily email I get, for whatever that’s worth.
You wrote “when the guide saw a sheep our hunter hopped out (of a Suburban) and shot it” That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing the article was mainly about. For instance, it says:
“What they are not buying is an easy trophy. Sheep live in steep and treeless terrain, above the timberline in the mountains or in the rugged hills of the desert. Sheep hunts can take hunters into places few humans have gone, and can include weeks of trekking and stalking.”
Not that I know anything about it beyond what I read, let me assure you!
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Jakash said on February 21, 2017 at 1:38 am
Yeah, Alex, that’s shocking and certainly sounds infuriating. An impulse buy for me is a Snickers…
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