I hope you all read your Constitution carefully, like every freedom-loving real American, and therefore remembered to set your clocks back one hour (unless you live in the traitor states of Arizona and Hawaii). More importantly, I hope all your electronic devices did the same. In my house, Dish Network showed its lack of reverence for the founders by letting its engineers fuck up the transition back to standard time. I hope someone occupies their headquarters to punish them for the pain and agony of hours of missed DVR recordings. Since most of us gained an hour to burn, here’s a start, from Louis CK:
That video is both funny and a public service announcement. If you own a dog, have a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and one of these in your cupboard:
That’s an oral dosing syringe for babies, but it works for stupid dogs that like to eat chocolate. My technique, which has been effective multiple times, is to pry the jaws open just enough to work in the tip of the syringe and aim a good-sized squirt of peroxide at the back of the throat. The dog reflexively swallows and then pukes up a foamy storm in a few minutes.
Speaking of Louis CK, he’s going to be streaming his next show from his website for $5 a pop.
Use this open thread to discuss DST, funny videos, canine emetic agents, or anything else that you desire.
arguingwithsignposts
I actually have the solution to daylight savings time: split it down the middle and call it even, since we’re just making shit up anyway.
ETA: cat ice cream? discuss.
ETA 2: he thinks dogs are uncooperative? have a cat, LCK.
Phylllis
Beautiful day here. I will use my extra hour to help hubby set up the Kindle* I won at a conference last week.
*I already have one; I ain’t that magnanimous.
Brian R.
In honor of the occasion, Grandpa Jones singing “Daylight Savings Time.”
No, no. You’re welcome.
RossInDetroit
Sunday morning. Hardly started the day and BJ is already about dog barf. Nice.
If you live near skunks you should have peroxide and baking soda on hand already. It’s by far the best way to kill the smell on a dog.
MattF
Just to start the morning off right– here’s Steven Pearlstein on why the price of a loaf of bread is going up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/steven-pearlstein-you-bet-its-another-bubble/2011/10/31/gIQAKOtxnM_story.html
And, for the record, I’ll repeat the old Wall Street joke about commodity markets:
Q: How do you make a small fortune in commodities?
A: Start with a large fortune.
Phylllis
@Brian R.: Grandpa Jones rocks!. You know, in the cornpone rock tradition.
eastriver
hypo? no thanks. I’ll stick with the kicking and punching and splashing.
West of the Cascades
Why DOES dark chocolate poison dogs? And does it do the same to cats? Inquiring minds want to know.
JPL
@MattF: Shorter Steven Pearlstein…we are so f$$ked…
SiubhanDuinne
A kind of canine Santorum?
Triassic Sands
The clocks are changed, but my heart is still on Daylight Saving Time. This is my least favorite day every year.
smelter rat
Our dog seems to be immune to the poisonous effects of dark chocolate. He can smell it a mile away and will stop at nothing to get to it. If chocolate is ever outlawed, he’d be the perfect narcdog.
Anyhooo, he’s eaten his fair share, and never so much as burped a chocolate bubble.
Phylllis
@Triassic Sands: Really? The Spring change is the one that messes me up.
WereBear
It’s actually theobromine poisoning; this substance in chocolate is too zippy for dogs and cats, and their hearts can’t take it.
Actually dogs are far more likely to down enough to endanger them than cats; though cats can develop fondness for the most unlikely things (cream cheese frosting is a huge one) so keep yer chocolate to yerself!
The hydrogen peroxide to make them vomit is a good enough reason to keep it around.
Sadly, just because his liver is able to process it quickly enough that it doesn’t reach his heart, it’s not good for his liver. I’d still keep it away from him; one dog who ate a peanut butter cup every week died a few years later, to the shock of the person who thought she was simply feeding him a “treat.”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
There really are no better canine emetic agents than hydrogen peroxide via a dosing syringe. It is also useful should you see a canine swallow fabric, which can do dangerous things to the gut.
Happy Sunday to all.
West of the Cascades
@WereBear: Thanks!! I will keep my chocolate on a high shelf (and always have hydrogen peroxide around for treating scrapes and for gargling)
cathyx
@Triassic Sands: Same here. I never adjust and wake up too early and fall asleep too early. I can’t wait for March 11, 2012.
jeffreyw
Don’t y’all forget breakfast.
shwabout
Wow, I have cats… but I can so apprecitate that.
bemused
I hate, hate the time change in the fall. Here in the far north, it’s dark by 4pm in Dec and I’m yawning and ready to put on my jammies. This is the time of year when I up my vitamin D dosage. Minnesotans with day jobs go to work in the dark and drive home in the dark only seeing their homes in daylight on their days off. I’d be ecstatic with spring forward time all year round.
cathyx
@jeffreyw: Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.
smelter rat
@WereBear:
It’s not like we feed him the stuff. We’re careful about even having it in the house, but a second of carelessness is about all it takes. It’s like crack to him.
Neddie Jingo
The chocolate-as-deadly-poison thing is something of a myth. Chocolate contains a rather large amount of theobromine, similar to caffeine, which is not particularly good for a critter, but it ain’t gonna kill a pup unless it eats a whole lot of it.
Our Ella, a 75-pound wirehaired pointer/lab mix, ate an entire bag of Halloween Mars bars — wrappers and all — and lived to tell the tale. Her poops were certainly interesting for the next few days, but at no point did she appear to be near death’s door.
According to Animal Planet, it would take a pound and a quarter of milk chocolate to kill a 20-pound dog. Yes, much less baker’s chocolate (only two ounces) will do the job, but how much baker’s chocolate do you keep lying around where a dog can get at it?
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t keep chocolate away from dogs, but if a dog does get hold of some, death is far from certain. I would guess that in most cases of chocolate ingestion, it’s far worse for the dog to induce vomiting with hydrogen peroxide than to just let things slide.
If Louis’s story has any basis in reality, he might have noticed that by the time he got to the pharmacy and bought the hydrogen peroxide, the dog was still alive and strong enough to fight him. That might have given him a clue.
WereBear
@smelter rat: Oh, I didn’t think you were careless about it. Might want to talk to the vet about his “addiction” next checkup. A blood test can see if there’s more liver enzymes than there should be.
Neddie Jingo
What the hell about ch*colate, h*drogen p*roxide, and one link to Animal Planet is so sockial1st as to put my comment into moderation? FYWP?
Anya
Republican Senator Tim Grendell speaks on the Ohio State Senate on why he’s voting NO on Issue 2.
My college roommate teaches special needs children in Ohio. Like the great majority of teachers she cares deeply about her students and puts uncompensated time and resources to address their unmet needs. She told me about how she as a new teacher turned to her union when she discovered how her students didn’t have the books and resources they needed. The union helped her get the needed tools for her students. She’s been making GOTV calls all day yesterday with OFA to Democratic voters in Ohio. She told me that the majority of the people she called were well informed and are fired up to defeat Issue 2.
I know this is Kay’s beat but I just wanted to share my friend’s take, for those of you who are interested. I am sure this topic is more appealing than dog barf.
MelissaM
Or you could have a dog like we had, always eager to eat, even the rye bread soaked in hydrogen peroxide. This was because she had gobbled up a peach pit my son had dropped and I feared for her intestines. Sure enough, about 2 minutes after taking in the peroxide, she did about 4 rounds of puking with the pit coming up on round 2. By round 4 she was giving me that look of “ye dogs, what have you done to me?”
But she’ll eat another pit or peroxide in a heartbeat!
PurpleGirl
Re changing the clocks: I let Time-Warner Cable reset the TV, I leave all other clocks in the apartment for the morning, when I get up I check with the NIST/USNO clock on the web, set one battery-operated alarm clock and then take it to reset everything else. System seems to work for me.
Linda Featheringill
@Anya:
Issue 2 in Ohio:
Voted early by mail this year. I’ve never done that before and rather like it.
And of course I voted no on 2. :-)
arguingwithsignposts
@Anya:
As the former spouse of a teacher who marvels at the amount of shit they put up with for their (mostly) saintly service, here, here!
And just so we’re clear, NO is the correct vote?
Omnes Omnibus
@PurpleGirl: I reset everything (three watches, living room clock, microwave clock, and bedroom alarm clock) except the Saab before I went to bed. Cable, desktop, and laptop reset themselves.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: slacker
suzanne
I don’t know what time it is. When I first woke up, my iPhone said it was 6. A moment later, it said 7. I’m in Arizona, so we don’t do the Daylight Savings thing, and I’m enjoying my bed far too much to get up and look at a real clock. White people problems.
The more pressing question is WTF am I awake at 6 or 7 on a Sunday morning when I don’t have to work? Fuck this noise.
Mike in NC
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see shitbird Eric Cantor call a press conference to demand the repeal of Daylight Savings Time.
Steeplejack
@Anya:
Based on the history here, don’t be too sure of that.
I am dogsitting at my brother’s house this weekend. My charges are a two-year-old rescue greyhound and an ancient Italian greyhound who is becoming more like Dick Cheney every day. If you accidentally wake him when he’s sleeping, he jumps and makes those Dick-Cheney-as-the-Penguin noises: “Mreh! Wrrgh!” Then he remembers where he is, mumbles “Deficits don’t matter” and goes back to sleep.
No dog barf so far, although someone took a discreet dump on the dining room floor while I was out for a couple of hours yesterday.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: For not resetting the car clock? Legal reasons. Having had drinks, I wasn’t going to go out and start it for to change the clock. So there. Also too, I would have had to put on shoes.
Allen
You know, I’ve never understood DST. If some wants some more daylight in the evening , why not go to work an hour earlier? And another thing I’ve never understood is why normal business hours are supposed to be eight to five. Me, I go to work at six in the morning, home at three. Everybody at work thought I was crazy till we got a client in Israel who wanted a conference call every week. Didn’t mess up my schedule but totally mucked up everyone else.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: cudlip!
Anya
@Linda Featheringill: Ohio is becoming ground zero for union busting experiment by heartless trickle down GOP governors. A BIG defeat of issue 2 will give us a huge energy.
@arguingwithsignposts: NO is the correct vote. I hope the other side will get confused about that.
Linda Featheringill
@arguingwithsignposts:
Correct.
And issues #1 and #3 are also pretty crappy in my opinion. Well, #3 is crappy. #1 is so confusing I assumed it was hiding something terrible so I voted against it.
Steeplejack
@PurpleGirl:
I do pretty much the same. I am
obsessivea stickler about my clocks and watches being exact. My phone and laptop changed themselves, and without really thinking about it I reset the microwave’s clock in my brother’s kitchen. I’m not up to tackling his huge grandfather clock, though, so it is chiming an hour ahead.@Mistermix:
I used to have that problem with Cox, but a year or so ago they redid their software and fixed a lot of those problems. The DVR handles time changes well (at least it did in the spring–fingers crossed for last night, because I think it was supposed to record Cowboy Bebop and/or Ghost in the Shell), and they fixed a bunch of other irritating things, e.g., if you cancel a recording it no longer automatically cancels recording of the whole series. That used to drive me nuts.
cathyx
Well, I was a little worried that Rebekah Brooks would be joining us 99%ers when she lost her job but never fear, Rupert is taking care of her.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/05/murdoch-phone-hacking-rebekah-brooks
Anya
@Steeplejack: LOL! I am guessing he’s more gentle and caring than Dick Cheney.
Suffern ACE
@Omnes Omnibus: I never reset the car clock. It is 5:35 fast. Some kind passenger once reset it for me and I set it back after I dropped him off. My car, my time zone.
WereBear
@cathyx: “Cause she knows things.
Anya
@cathyx: He has to — all of his secrets are buried under her hair.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE: The car will more or less reset itself. I will just need to press a button to tell it to do so.
cathyx
@Anya: She does have some hair that I would die for.
jnfr
Daylight Savings Time is the stupidest idea in the whole, long human history of stupid ideas. Pick a fking time and stick to it! I don’t care which one it is, jumping back and forth is dumb.
Steeplejack
@Anya:
He’s a good guy–the dog, not Dick Cheney–but he’s very old (11 or 12, I think) and my brother thinks he has had a few micro-strokes. He sometimes seems confused about where he is; he’ll stand in middle of the floor and just look off into the distance, then suddenly snap out of it. And he has developed a habit of coming downstairs in the middle of the night and barking at something/nothing/whatever. When you come to get him, he looks around like: “What? Someone was barking?” But his appetite is good and he’s still active. Loves his Kong play! I think the disorientation seems to happen more at night. But it’s disconcerting to be sitting on the couch watching TV and reach out to absentmindedly give him a scritch and suddenly get the whole Dick Cheney routine.
Chat Noir
Our household is adjusting to doglessness. We had to euthanize my husband’s 12 year old Wheaten Terrier. The poor guy couldn’t even walk at the end and was in severe pain. To make matters worse, my husband was stuck in Florida on a long-planned vacation; he was on my iPhone speakerphone with our vet while we discussed what to do. Our vets were wonderful and couldn’t have been more sympathetic or compassionate.
We still have our three cats to help us through the loss. I’ve been giving them extra skritches and love though they are hardly neglected in the first place.
schrodinger's cat
Someone needs to make fun of MoU’s column in NYT. It has a nice mix orientalism, latest MBA catch phrases like hyper connectivity and cloud and regular MoU BS where he meets some random rich people and draws conclusions about the entire country based on his interactions with .0001%
ETA: MoU= Mustache of Understanding, also known as MoW=Mustache of Wisdom, NYT columnist Tom Friedman
schrodinger's cat
@jnfr: I have to agree, I have never understood this changing of clocks business.
WereBear
@Steeplejack: Since dogs live a lot longer under our care, they can “outlast their brain.” We’ve been helping our 15 year old cat by putting extra fat in his diet. Brain needs fat!
Since we started, the wailing at night has cut back to almost nothing. Coconut oil is our fat of choice.
Dear Pammy, Why do cats wail at night?
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
Thanks. I’ll pass that info along to my brother.
ETA: My last two cats lived to 18 and 20, respectively. Good luck with yours.
And you might like my friend’s blog about her feral cat colony.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear:
This relates to zombies in what way?
Villago Delenda Est
@Allen:
This is because most people have their schedules set by someone else.
“Going to work an hour earlier” (and then leaving work an hour earlier) is simply not an option most employers are willing to give you, for all the talk of “flex time”, having everyone at the work place at the same time for the same period every day is a necessity.
Bill H.
This is a biannual clusterfuck at my house. Between the automatic changes, my wife changing clocks without telling me, me changing clocks that she’s already changed, her changing clocks that have already automatically changed, me changing things back because I think she’s changed them when she actually hasn’t, her changing them the wrong direction after I’ve already changed them after they automatically changed in the first place…
Pretty soon one clock reads 6:00 and the television is set for 12:00 and I’m trying to figure out why the fucking football game isn’t on yet.
Bill Murray
@Linda Featheringill: John Scalzi explains his voting
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/11/04/how-i-voted-2011/
Jay in Oregon
I have a laptop and a desktop machine that automatically set DST on or off as needed; I use those as my guides for which clocks need to be reset. Also, too, my cell phone.
Steeplejack
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, flex time (at least the kind you’re talking about) doesn’t really work in retail. “Yeah, I know the store opens at 9:00. But I’ll be in at 10:00. You go ahead and start without me.”
But they will flex the hell out of your time as far as working different schedules, different days from week to week, etc.
Steeplejack
@Bill H.:
LOL.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack:
YOUR personal schedule (and off duty time) is of no importance to them (the powers that be).
Having been a “them” myself once I know that there are things driving that phenomenon beyond the power of the intermediate “thems”.
Cermet
@RossInDetroit: Good idea but experts say tomato juice works best
Cermet
@WereBear: Omega-3 is an excellent fat as is lecithin (both are great for animals but for people; however, be careful with lecithin – that is, people with blocked heart arteries since this substance has been proven to cause vastly accelerated blockage of arteries in (the oh so luckly) group of people with a specific bacteria living in their gut. If you have such issues, read the MD papers on the subject – see wiki on lecithin, one of the foot notes. Cleveland clinic is the best one.) If you don’t have such issues, you might not want that substance as a sup but it is in almost all baked goods and so many processed foods, don’t bother avoiding it because of this – like me, we find out the very hard way … .
Canuckistani Tom
DST is over for another year, and thank god. Being an astronomer, I hate having to wait until after 11 in the summer for the sky to get dark enough. December is my favourite time of year, because I can have dinner, go out and use my telescope for 2 hrs, and still come in and watch TV before bed.
Bostondreams
Hey, look, the Heritage Foundation has determined that public school teachers are paid fifty percent more than the market rate, with lifetime jobs, gold plated retirement plans, generous health benefits, and oh yeah, we are less cognitively capable than equivalent private sector workers.
They suggest that compensation for teachers can be cut with only minimal consequences.
I almost had a stroke reading this this morning.
Bostondreams
@Anya:
I’m sure you caught this in Ohio. The Speaker Pro Tempore of the Ohio House says that Republicans actually EARN their money, so there is no reason for the state legislature to take a pay cut.
arguingwithsignposts
Did nobody read my comment @ #1. I can solve DST – easy peasy.
genghisjon
Time change on the farm it was the cows that change we don’t.Every spring it was wtf it’s to early,every fall it was were the hell ya been we should have been milked an hour ago.We had a heifer(cow haveing her first calf)comeing fresh(getting ready to give birth)so we would bring her into the milking parler, so she could get use to it.To get out of the parler she had to go thru a swinging door.After much pushing,shoveing,swearing, she ended up backing thru the door.I told Tuffy it would have been easyer to put up a exit sign and teach her to read.
WereBear
@Cermet: Isn’t it amazing what those colonies in our guts do, and don’t, for us?
So glad you lived to tell the tale.
Allen
@Villago Delenda Est: I check with employers before starting a new job. For me its a must have. Intel here in Oregon has this STUPID eight to five rule. Count them out. Not to mention no bus service to speak of.
karen marie
I sure as hell wouldn’t make my dog drink hydrogen peroxide if she ate some chocolate. It’s not lethally toxic the way it’s been described here. My Cocker ate 1/2 ounce of baking chocolate when he was less than a year old. I called the vet because I had heard YOUR DOG WILL DIE FROM EATING CHOCOLATE. The vet asked me if the dog looked sick, I said no, and the vet said, well, nothing to worry about then. Apparently, different dogs apparently have different reactions to chocolate. It’s better if they don’t have any, but an M&M isn’t going to kill them.
Raisins and grapes, on the other hand, are very toxic to all dogs.
Too much garlic will make your dog anemic.
trollhattan
Didn’t know about the H2O2 thing, will stow that one into the memory banks. A tablespoon of salt does the same thing, I’ve had to use the technique twice when subject dog swallowed something he shouldn’t have.
Much, much cheaper than a trip to the emergency vet, not to mention you get it outta there faster.
Current dog gave us a scare one recent Sunday when I found her polishing off parts of a rat. Since she’s only a wannabe hunter and it was midday, I had to assume the rat was not healthy and may have been succumbing to rat poison.
At the vet they (of course) had her puke and went through the bits to see how much rat she’d downed. Since the rat poison was a vitamin K antagonist, they sent us home with a couple weeks of vitamin K pills and instructions to watch her.
Pets.
RossInDetroit
@Cermet:
Tried them both (Doglius does not learn), and the tomato juice left the little white critter pink and skunkmato smelling. Two later skunkings were treated with the peroxide/baking soda method and the smell was completely eliminated. Based on personal experience we’ll go with the latter.
WereBear
@RossInDetroit: Not to mention it turns the dog Platinum Blonde instead of pink!
Unless, of course, he/she is a punker.
Amir Khalid
I was just checking out some AP stories on Yahoo! News about the Haj (It’s on right now, and we just celebrated Eid al-Adha today) and damned if the comment section isn’t full of the usual virulent Islamophobes, just like any story on Yahoo! that mentions Islam and Muslims.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir Khalid: I though you weren’t a real muslin, per m_c?
ETA: “muslin” is intended.
RossInDetroit
@Amir Khalid:
Yahoo News, the most appropriately named entity in New Media.
Amir Khalid
@arguingwithsignposts:
m_c allows me to be a muslin so that she can justify calling me Balloon Juice House Muslin.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir Khalid: so this is your house Haj? noted, muftah. :}
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts:
The proper insult is maftoon. Lawd the things that stick in my brain.
And please let’s not discuss the child.
Arclite
We here in Hawaii are not only UnAmerican because we don’t set our clocks back, but also because we are majority Teh Asian. Real Americans are white.
Urza
I don’t know about other companies, but before I took over the transition stuff at AOL they messed up the DST transition every single time. For the couple years I did it, was no problems. Then I left and they had trouble again. I can’t understand since its just updating a couple numbers in the main databases that the clocks run off, for them anyway.
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano: dammit maftoon! My m_c bot is failing.
Yutsano
Also too: I have never liked LouisCK. There I said it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano: heretic, die! die!
schrodinger's cat
@Arclite: Also they live in the heartland and not the coasts. Plus they have to Christian, preferably of the Protestant variety.
ETA: You live in Hawaii, I has a jealous.
schrodinger's cat
@Yutsano: I agree, not that funny actually. I also think Jon Stewart is getting more Broderian by the day. Did you see his wishy washy interview with Condoleeza Rice?
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat: Not a real fan of Jon Stewart either. I guess I’m just fickle. :)
cathyx
@Yutsano: I don’t know Louis CK or his humor, but after reading your opinions of him, I figured I should at least watch the clip and see if I think he’s funny or not.
I thought he was hilarious.
cathyx
A new record for the New York City Marathon. 2:05:06.
Yutsano
@cathyx: As with all the things YMMV. Remember there are people who thought Richard Pryor wasn’t funny either.
Yutsano
For some God-awful reason I am paying attention to the Seahacks doing nothing. Someone shoot me.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Doesn’t sound so bad when your only alternative is 49ers-Redskins.
The 49ers are 6-1, and the Redskins may not be quite as bad as their three-game losing streak would indicate, but for some reason both teams kindle a raging indifference in me. Hope the four o’clock games are better.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: I’m hoping a Dawg shows up as a convenient distraction. He got injured playing with guns (he’s not too seriously wounded though) and is on reserve duty. I came thisclose to flying out there too.
Just Dale
If you don’t have a dosing syringe, you can soak a piece of bread in hydrogen peroxide and administer it that way. That trick only works once for most dogs, but it good for emergencies.
cathyx
@Yutsano: What does YMMV stand for? You make me vomit? I thought Richard Pryor was funny.
Yutsano
@cathyx: Your Mileage May Vary. I don’t think that’s an exclusive BJ saying. I don’t think.
Bill Murray
Victory! Get your hoes ready
http://www.goingpostalt-shirts.com/index.php?productID=2051
Canuckistani Tom
@Yutsano:
It ain’t. I saw that at least a decade ago on alt.callahans
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
Gosh, isn’t a gentlemanly tie on the road a glimmer of success? How long ago did they score their last touchdown?
Yutsano
@trollhattan:
Ask an archaeologist.
RobNYNY1957
I grew up partially on a farm, and I can tell you that farmers don’t give a damn about daylight savings time, because crops and livestock don’t. The cows get milked when they are ready to get milked. They don’t suddenly change their schedules when the time changes. It’s as silly as thinking that neighboring farms on opposite sides of a time zone border (saly, Illinois and Indiana) would milk their cows an hour apart.
sweaver
I saw Louis in Baltimore this past weekend. For anybody who doesn’t like him or his stand-up and has any further interest in the topic, find some youtube clips of him being interviewed as a regular person. He’s actually pretty centered and thoughtful. Like here, where he talks about the concept of honesty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgSIM5MQKHE