Well, it’s getting awfully foggy and shooty and muggy out there, so I’m just not gonna move more than a few blocks tonight I suppose. Time to re-watch Don’t Trust the B* in Apartment 23 for a little while.
WTH is going on up there in SF? I posted a story earlier about some TV reporters getting robbed at gunpoint on camera while they were doing a live remote, and it sounded like it wasn’t the first time it’s happened recently.
Since this is an open thread I just have to say what is with Hannibal being canned. Look I will be the first to admit I am a fan and to some level the show has become a little full of itself. But if it is not one of the better shows on TV I am not sure what is. Gillian Anderson is amazing as is Mads Mikkelsen. I can’t put my finger on it but there is almost something hypnotic about his acting. Yet another show I enjoy cancelled.
Had a great day today only to come out late to my obnoxious neighbors partying on the back porch. I wouldn’t care but I live in a townhouse and their back porch is pratically under my bedroom windown and it’s 1 am. I just keep chanting it’s a holiday weekend, it’s a holiday weekend and am hoping this isn’t a return to their behavior from last summer. Last summer they were out there until 1 am at the earliest almost every night.
I’ve talked to them multiple times about the noise and HOA has written a letter to them as well. They were on their best behavior for about 2 months and now it is back to the same old shit. So tired of it.
@NotMax: It didn’t do well. Middle of the road at best. But my gut is it got too expensive to keep the talent. Plus they never got the rights to the Hanibal books.
18.
Tommy
Another TV question. Anybody here watching Killjoys?
19.
Bart
@Tommy: The show is dirt cheap compared to others, and they got the rights to all books except one. Hint: the second half of this season is going to be Red Dragon.
I mean: are we really to believe that NBC has got something lined up for broadcast next Summer that’s cheaper to produce and gets better ratings? Why not stick with the critically acclaimed show and get some praise for it? What else they got to be proud of?
20.
Mary G
Yay Thurston! He does have a naughty look in his eyes. We can haz other pets’ pictures, please?
21.
Tommy
@Bart: I was making an assumption about the costs. I don’t know that for a fact. And about right to the books, well I guess reading TVLine isn’t the best source for info because they often cite they don’t have rights to the books.
NBC kept 30 Rock around without great ratings. But the critics loved it and it won awards. Seems to me Hannibal is a similar show. That a network would want them around.
Since this is an open thread I just have to say what is with Hannibal being canned.
Maybe it’s because the times, they are a-changin’. Endless heaping helpings of the same-old-same-old torture and brutality and sadism is starting to wear on the American public. Despite that Americans have been told since day one by our sick twisted hyperpuritanical society that torture and death and suffering are good (“No pain, no gain!”) and joy and pleasure and sexuality are evil and must be abhorred, after umpty-ump years of non-stop video games featuring nothing but KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! and umpty-ump years of American foreign policy of nothing but KILL! TORTURE! DEATH, DEATH! KILL THEM ALL, MAKE THEM SUFFER! just possibly the American public is getting tired of TV shows and movies and videogames that feature nothing but DEATH! DEATH! SUFFERING! TORTURE! MURDER! SADISM! PSYCHOPATHIC AGONIZED KILLING AND HORROR AND MADNESS AND DEATH!
The blunt truth about the guards at Auschwitz is that they just got numb to it all. They got tired of it. Killing helpless people, watching helpless victims suffer, seeing the endless meaningless parade of horror and brutality, just wears on your soul to the point where you can't take it anymore.
Sick sadistic brutal shows like Hannibal and Game of Thrones are a symptom of America's diseased psyche. But if Bernie Sanders' poll numbers are any indication, the sickness may be waning. Bad news for all you torture-lovers out there — instead of watching vaudevilles of horror and torment like Hannibal and carnivals of child-rape and baby-murder like Game of Thrones, you'll have to set puppies on fire to get your amusement.
Spent the last 4 hours painting my kitchen cabinets, they look much nicer now. Thurston is plotting against you Cole, sleep with one eye open.
ETA: I think my Nikki is getting used to the fireworks, she seems to be barking less that she has the last few nights.
26.
Tommy
@mclaren: WTF. I like Games of Thrones and Hannibal but also about the most non-violent person you will find. It is a TV show. I am also an avid reader and there is violence in many books I read but they don’t make me want to harm somebody else.
I am watching Salem as we speak and watching it does not make me want to attempt witchcraft. Like when I watched True Blood didn’t make me want to drink your blood or harm you.
They are freaking TV shows. Or books. Or movies.
27.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Can you outline your process. Thinking of doing this myself.
That’s a BIG cat, Tommy! I think they are so great, nothing ever takes them aback, they have so much confidence.
We had a giant white/red cat who would just look at a great dane and they would freeze, looking him in the eye, and then backing away.
Give Mather a scritch for me!
So you’re using wordpress to build commercial web sites? Are these sites where multiple items are for sale, with inventory display and ordering, or sites more like “Here are the great things we can do for you!” web pages with some kind of marketing of services?
I managed development of web pages using what was then ColdFusion [ pages ending with .cfm.] and javascript. but that was before blog servers. I’ve wondered if PHP and PERL were still big for web development or what.
29.
Tommy
@J R in WV: Yes WordPress. Mostly I do corporate sites. Professional services. Lawyers. CPAs. Not multi-level stuff (seemed you might be hinting here/there). What I’d call “brochure” web sites.
I am trying to move to e-Commerce sites and doing two as we speak because that is where the money is. I’ve done a few in the past, one that does $10,000 a day. But they offer a single service. Delivery for a national retail chain.
You can do a ton of stuff with WordPress.
30.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Mask off the area that you’re not painting, and then I used a brush(I used a pad on larger surfaces, though not today).
ETA: Preparatory work included getting the landlord’s permission and deciding on colors(that took quite a while and many visits to the orange home improvement store, it’s really close).
31.
Tommy
@J R in WV: Oh PHP is the backend of WordPress. The core of the program. What makes it run.
32.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Did you use primer first? I am not so good with home improvement stuff. But I repainted a vanity in my bathroom. Off white and repainted grey. It turned out so well I am thinking of doing my kitchen cabinets. I think I will take one door off and try to paint the inside so if I mess it up, which I might, it won’t be anything people can see.
33.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: You shouldn’t need primer if it’s already painted. If the change in color(especially dark to light) is too great, you may need two coats. Don’t over apply the paint, do a second coat.
@BillinGlendaleCA: Oh, use the blue painter’s tape. It’s the best.
37.
TheMightyTrowel
@BillinGlendaleCA: i never found decent painters tape in the uk. moving into a new house in Aug – my first house! Our uk place is a flat – and planning on painting, so hopefully will have better luck in oz.
38.
J R in WV
I mostly know Oracle, but MySql seems pretty professional. PHP is a black hole of mystery to me tho.
@J R in WV: O’Reilly has good books for almost anything. MySql is IMO better than Oracle… Much more flexible, but Oracle is very… inflexible. Which is great for enterprise work but not so, well, flexible.
Everybody out here uses PostgreSQL nowadays.
PHP is IMO infuriating, I prefer Python for the logic and then passing that into the template instead of combining them into one file, but YMMV.
Trying to decide what to do today. I have so many deferred projects and stuff to tidy up I should do as much of that as I can. Doesn’t quite scream “fun holiday” though.
47.
ultraviolet thunder
@mclaren:
I find myself in complete agreement with this.
I would add that America’s taste for grotesque violence, brutal payback and large scale destruction as entertainment increased after 9/11.
Maybe it’s time we stopped working out our butthurt symptoms in our fiction.
48.
JPL
Happy 4th. We had some light rain overnight so the pups want to stay inside. They don’t like to get their paws wet. Whatever plans you have, enjoy!
49.
Poptartacus
The TV show -Naked and afraid
It’s the end times fer sure
I understand why their naked( in the Japanese porn way)
But why are they afraid?
Can you outline your process. Thinking of doing this myself.
A family member is a professional painter and I’ve helped them when they got in a scheduling jam often enough to be considered a semi-pro.
If you are going to paint the interior of a cabinet of some sort a “cigar roller” is the tool to do it with, small paint roller about the size and shape of a large cigar. Paint the hardest to get to parts first and then gradually progress to the easiest parts. Slop the paint on with the cigar roller and then come back after the roller with a brush to smooth it out. Stroke with the brush in parallel lines in one direction away from the interior corners. Putting the paint on with a roller of any sort is much faster on virtually any surface than with a brush, for the most part a brush is a smoothing tool, the only places you should be actually applying paint with the brush is cutting in the edges against non painted surfaces. Don’t put too much paint in your bucket a couple of inches is plenty, only dip your brush in the paint maybe an inch and then gently slap it against either side of the bucket to remove excess paint.
Don’t work out of the paint can, buy a paint bucket and a small plastic roller grid that fits inside to load the cigar roller up. For cabinet interiors an angled sash brush is better than a straight brush, about a 2″ sash brush is a good choice and Purdy is a good brand. A good quality paint brush will save you considerable time and leave a better looking job. Remove hardware such as drawer pulls rather than trying to paint around it, a pro can make it look decent without taking the hardware off first but even a pro can do a better looking job on an uninterrupted surface.
As someone already pointed out masking off surfaces you don’t want painted can make things go easier but pull the tape off before the paint is completely dry for best results, particularly if the surface is a smooth and slick one like some cabinets are.
53.
Steeplejack
Tour de France about to start (NBC Sports) in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Unseasonably hot—just over 90°, about 10 degrees over the usual high—but it’s a short stage today—time trials, I think.
Hannibal and 30 Rock are in no way comparable. But I will say 30 Rock was a far superior comedy to Hannibal, which is an overblown, underplotted wannabe thriller.
I didn’t make it past the 2nd or 3rd episode of Hannibal. It was boring and annoying at the same time. But then I think most of the dramas on now are boring. The only one I still watch is Grimm, and even that’s not as good as it was when it began. Maybe it’s a matter of network executives trying too hard to attract their target demo.
55.
MomSense
Someone decided to set fireworks off after midnight.
The dog was not amused. I enjoy a nice fireworks display but this DIY fireworks stuff is the worst.
56.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@Valdivia: So sorry to hear about the loss of Sisu.
The dog was not amused. I enjoy a nice fireworks display but this DIY fireworks stuff is the worst.
I agree. I think it’s obnoxious.
in other news, I just saw this:
Sarah Palin just solved California’s drought crisis
People smart enough to pay $99.99 a year to subscribe to the Sarah Palin Channel learned that their winking maverick hero has solved the California drought crisis:
“You might ask, though, why don’t they just fix the infrastructure problem, why don’t they just build more reservoirs and plants? After all, California is a coastal state. It’s got a whole ocean right there, water all around ya.” “If we built reservoirs to capture the water coming down out of the mountains instead of wastefully putting it into rivers (to preserve wetlands and fish runs) there would be plenty of water.”
60.
gogol's wife
I was dreading fireworks too, but they didn’t happen. What did happen is that the cable is screwed, yet again. Every time I try to watch a show, I end up talking to Comcast instead. They’re going to send out their technician (for the fourth time in about a month), but not until Tuesday. Monday is the first TCM Shirley Temple spectacular, and I was really looking forward to it. But with the screen going black every minute or so, I don’t think it will be very enjoyable.
So instead of Midsomer Murders, we watched a DVD of Far from the Madding Crowd with Nathaniel Parker and Paloma Baeza and Nigel Terry and Jonathan Firth and Natasha Little. It’s superb.
@debbie: I love Grimm! Just started season two. If it falls down, it falls down. It’s practically inevitable.
Any series can fall prey to the open-ended ending. Fantasies are long and often come in trilogies, but ideally have a beginning, middle, and end. That’s why mini-series are often “just right” because they are done as a piece. They can be structured.
The structure starts cracking when the suits start demanding things it’s not designed for. Babylon 5 is a famous example. He wrote the whole series with its complicated aliens and mythologies, and the network was going to pull the plug early, so he managed to bring things to premature conclusions… only to be given the season back, but by that time it had been damaged.
Networks will stop at nothing to keep a popular show on the air, wringing every last bit of ratings out of it, and don’t care if the quality falls. The fans will hang in there, hoping, until it’s just killed with bad moves and indifference.
This wasn’t a problem before story arcs. The show would run out of ideas and it would be done. But now, while the complex and expanded story telling is what pulls fans in, the lack of a defined middle and the unknown ending starts to distort what was so great in the first place.
Beginnings rock. And then the series gets all wonky. It’s because they do have to make it up as they go along, to a certain extent. And it’s not like they can go back and do-over, like with a novel.
So I’m resigned. I get what I can. And really appreciate a good British series where they get to do the whole thing at once.
@gogol’s wife: It’s past time for you to demand a “specialist.” That how I got our weirdness solved. Turned out they hadn’t checked one stretch of wire in five service calls, and it was from 1967.
The structure starts cracking when the suits start demanding things it’s not designed for.
And “consultants,” who convince those suits they know the viewers’ psyches.
Like having character stare off at mid-distance, intently but unfocused, with swelling background music. Wasted time that would be better used in an actual plot.
64.
BubbaDave
@Valdivia: Sorry to hear about Sisu. 20 years is a long time, but there’s no such thing as long enough. My condolences.
65.
JPL
The Peachtree Road Race is a mess this year. Because of lightening strikes, they had to delay the start for some groups. The award ceremonies have been canceled.
Yeah, this is where I am worried that Person of Interest is getting to: the tension between the underlying story arc and the unending week-to-week is starting to make the whole structure teeter.
ETA: Can’t decide if Grimm is about to get revitalized or is about to jump the shark.
@MomSense:
Sarah Palin, who didn’t even complete one term as a governor of Alaska, giving advice to Jerry Brown, who during her teens served two terms as governor of California and is now serving his fourth term.
71.
dmsilev
@Germy Shoemangler: Putting everything else aside, is Sarah Palin advocating big government spending money to build infrastructure?
How many follow up questions would it take before Palin would be faced with the flaws in her idea? I’ve found the best way to poke holes in Republicsn ideas is to just ask basic follow up questions.
Light, steady rain here in NoVA. Temp is 70°, dew point 69°, humidity 98 percent, so it’s wet, but in July anything under 90° is a blessing. I opened a couple of windows to let in the smell of the rain, and already the sound is telling me, Nap time later. Nothing on the agenda today, so . . . yeah, probably.
We just got a robocall claiming they’d fixed the problem and were cancelling our appointment. I don’t have time to watch TV right now, but I just had it on for five minutes and it didn’t go black, so I’m hoping they actually have fixed it. But you’re right — maybe it’s time to get a specialist again, since the last time we had a specialist about a year ago.
@gogol’s wife: It’s bizarre the way they are perfectly happy to keep sending out techs who never really fix the problem. They never move up to the next level on their own.
ATL is apparently aiming to get itself redefined as a rainforest.
79.
Elizabelle
Happy Independence day, all!
@Steeplejack: Yup. But it can’t rain all day. Gonna be bands of rain.
Saw some local fireworks last night. Very light rain at the time, but it was cool out and they were still beautiful.
Anybody going downtown for fireworks today? I shall be at the Foos. Hoping they might do some fireworks at RFK, but I don’t know that. Maybe we can see the ones on the Mall from the stadium.
I have no clue there …
80.
Elizabelle
@gogol’s wife: Do you by any chance have a Samsung TV?
Had the same prob with cable, for ages, until about the 7th tech finally fixed it. I will check out the message that appears on turning TV on, because maybe it would help your tech …
What cable company? We have Cox.
81.
Baud
NYT
WASHINGTON — Sometime in the next few weeks, aides expect President Obama to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses. With the stroke of his pen, he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century.
Yes, I now have a Samsung, since I recently bought a new one, but the old one (when the problems started) was a Toshiba. We have Comcast.
84.
SFAW
Sorry if this has appeared in previous threads, I’m too lazy to check all 3000 of the comments. And, also, apologies to Thurston for putting this anywhere near him, but:
Bloody Bill Kristol tweet from yesterday, Hall of Fame caliber:
“152 years ago today, at 2:00 pm–Pickett’s Charge, one of the most memorable–and, on both sides, most admirable–moments in U.S. history.”
He may, in fact, be the stupidest motherfucker on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, given the state of Your Republican Partei these days, it’s not a slam-dunk certainty on that.
No, I won’t link, because Teh Stoopid might be contagious.
85.
Poopyman
@Elizabelle: I haven’t been downtown for fireworks since the mid-nineties, when we were out on the river in a friend’s houseboat. I’m just not up for the crowds and hassle, and never will be.
Maybe some year we should do a BJ meetup on the 4th if somebody can rent a houseboat. Kitchen and bathroom (and a/c!!) mere steps away. Can’t be beat.
86.
Bruce Webb
@Tommy: “They are freaking TV shows. Or books. Or movies. ”
That is what the Romans said about gladiators and animal battles at the Colosseum = hey just a circus. That is what our not very remote ancestors said about bull baiting (bulldogs fighting bulls), dog fighting (pitbulls fighting pitbulls) and cock fighting. Just good clean fun for the whole family. Much like public hangings. Hell we have dogfighting and cock fighting going on today. And few if any B Juicers are okay with that, we almost all agree that such ‘games’ are not only cruel but de-humanizing.
Now in movies today you can be pretty sure that nobody is actually being disemboweled or having their brains eaten and these days (though not just a couple decades ago) you get disclaimers that ‘no animals were actually harmed during filming’ and so you can argue that it just being ‘fiction’ gives you moral distance, that your ‘American Psycho’ is not the equivalent of that exploitative rape video, that there is a big difference between GoT and a snuff film. Just as the Romans were okay with games in the arena because after all the ‘performers’ were either professional killers, criminals, slaves, barbarian captives or pesky Christians who would not sacrifice to the Emperor. You know ‘others’.
Of course there is a distance, a line between endorsing violence against ‘others’ and watching or reading a fictional depiction of violence against sympathetic and unsympathetic fictional characters alike . But I am not so sure that line is a blinding bright as many of us would like to think. After all the Turner Diaries were just fictional until Timothy McVeigh used certain pages as an operations manual when blowing up the Murrah Federal Building. That novel became all too real for Bailey Fields.
As for me I respect fiction too much to simply dismiss it as “just a book” “just a movie”. Because each genre has had many real world consequences both for good and evil. Which doesn’t make every fan of Dexter a psychopath or ever FPS fan one either. But neither is indulging in either just an exercise in meaningless. Or shouldn’t be. Feel free to disagree but I don’t think McLaren’s argument simply merited dismissal.
@gogol’s wife: Oddly enough, we have Comcast too, and are replacing our CRT TV with one designed and built in this decade (let alone century). It seems that sporting events are being framed and cameraed in such a way that everything looks small and fuzzy on out set. Nice to know that my eyes are fine, it’s just that bigger and LCD sets are the norm now.
Spousal unit says to make it a very modern one, and it’ll last the rest of her life. (And the best part is no more lugging a 65 lb CRT device aany longer. I’ve moved that for the last time.)
89.
Botsplainer
Rocky is on Spike right now. I always forget how fine that movie is, how it captures how shitty life was for lower class folks, how cheap even the nicer places looked (the wood panel in the office).
@Tommy:
Tommy, I know that Hannibal was excellent television, but I could not take it. It got too dark for me, even though, top to bottom, production and acting, it was superb.
@BillinGlendaleCA: How about if the cabinets are stained–will they need to be primed then?
96.
Zinsky
Everyone needs to completely ignore Sarah Palin and her cretinous, inbred family. Now that her birdwit, spunk receptacle of a daughter has gotten knocked up twice out of wedlock, maybe Sarah will shut her idiotic pie hole about the Obamas being bad parents. If we are lucky, the old man will go through the ice, thinned by climate change, on his snowmobile and drown. And the rest of the family will be snuffed from carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to grill mooseburgers indoors. That would truly be poetic justice.
97.
Elizabelle
@gogol’s wife: I will look up the message on the TV and post it for you.
Tomorrow OK?
98.
SFAW
@Kristine:
Probably. I think that part of the function of a primer is to (help) prevent the top coat from soaking into the wood (which could result in uneven appearance). I don’t think that the stain would do the same thing, since it (theoretically) soaks into the wood.
Standard disclaimer: not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.
Don’t hold back. Quit suppressing your feelings; let us know how you really feel.
Now that her birdwit, spunk receptacle of a daughter has gotten knocked up twice out of wedlock, maybe Sarah will shut her idiotic pie hole about the Obamas being bad parents.
Sadly naive. Conservatives wield their alleged values as a bludgeon which they use to flog their political and social opponents for things they do themselves.
@Botsplainer: palin got preggers to hillsong, so it’s a holy bastard. Unlike the spawn of black kids, who listen to hippy hop ‘music’ like Beyoncé. Do we have to go over this again?
103.
SFAW
@Peale:
Hillsong? You sure they weren’t piping in one of the pieces they used in “Humping with the Stars”?
And, I’m an old fart, so I might be wrong — well, in my case, it ain’t the age that’s the driver, of course — but isn’t it “hippity hop”?
We are dog-sitting my husband’s business partner’s two year-old goldendoodle this weekend, and bless his heart, he is making me appreciate how easy and well-behaved my own dog is. It’s not just that the goldendoodle is an irrepressible bundle of energy (though he is), it’s that he has effectively zero training. He does not respond to his name. He has no recall. He might sit, maybe, sometimes, on cue. But probably not.
We knew this going in, and I thought perhaps liberal application of clicker training would help. So far that is not the case. I can’t tell if he simply doesn’t have working drive (which my dog has in spades) or if the fact that he’s grown up in a house where there’s no consistency about rules or training has given him the idea that humans aren’t consistent, so why should he be? Anyway, I’m giving it a go. We’ll see how things look at the end of the three days.
In the meantime, I’m planning to spend most of my day the way the founding fathers intended: tending a grill for several hours while dogs romp around me. I’ve got the dry rub on a slab of ribs and homemade barbecue sauce ready to go. I expect the ribs will take around six hours: plenty of time to enjoy the Allagash Tripel Ale I have stashed in the fridge. And with this dog, I might need it.
112.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Had a problem with Verizon once, talked to the tech when he came out. He was the only tech for a rather large area, several thousand customers. He said they never sent anyone else out, just him. On his days off or when he was not on shift, no one was sent. Fortunately he was very good. I took it from his discussion that Verizon didn’t give much of a damn about actual service, just income. They get stuff fixed, when they got around to it, it just was never close to your schedule. I’d bet good money that none of the companies are any different.
@Ruckus: Sounds like what happened with my web host, which is based in Dallas. Verizon service in the Dallas area went out at weeks end, hundreds of small businesses impacted, and Verizon essentially did nothing over the weekend. Not until the regular tech crew came in on Monday were repairs initiated, and they took a while. Verizon joined ATT at the bottom of my list for just about anything after that.
Webhost is trying to set up an alternative.
FWIW, Comcast in NE IL has been pretty good.
116.
Ruckus
@Bruce Webb:
The all the time repetition of violence can set the tone, the background for real life. You see violence all the time, even if you know it’s fiction like Tommy is saying can set that background noise level. Now not everyone takes it or sees it that way. And our actual violent crime level is down over the last 30-40 yrs so Tommy has a point as well. We are a physical and violent species, in the past centuries one had to be to survive. That, for the most part is no longer true but changing that direction will and is taking time. Look at the conservative politician side of the isle, strong military, attack, attack, all the while they sit in nice offices in a suit and tie and send someone else for the letting of the blood.
My theory is that some people have learned that force/violence is rarely called for and can enjoy a fictional story that is very violent without any repercussions. But as we know, not everyone is a rational human being, for the rest, even fictional violence sets a background idea that force/violence is OK.
117.
Ruckus
@Kristine:
Where I live now we have Charter Communications. Don’t use it for anything but internet but in 6 months I’ve had 100% up time and better than 66mps download speed. In the US that’s pretty good.
118.
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: It’s not America, it’s you. McLaren had a problem distinguishing fantasy from reality. No fair projecting that on everyone else. Except wingnuts.
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22over7
He’s obviously a sweet angel baby.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
“It’s cool I peed in your bed, right? U mad bro?”
Major Major Major Major
Well, it’s getting awfully foggy and shooty and muggy out there, so I’m just not gonna move more than a few blocks tonight I suppose. Time to re-watch Don’t Trust the B* in Apartment 23 for a little while.
Thurston’s getting big!
Steeplejack (phone)
That dog got the devil eyes!
Aleta
delights the eye
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Major Major Major Major:
WTH is going on up there in SF? I posted a story earlier about some TV reporters getting robbed at gunpoint on camera while they were doing a live remote, and it sounded like it wasn’t the first time it’s happened recently.
ETA link: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_28421525/san-francisco-tv-reporters-camera-operators-robbed-pier
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (tablet): No friggin’ clue. Fortunately my cat will ward off all intruders by hiding under the couch, though.
Tommy
My pootie is always up to no good. I am looking at her sleep and pretty sure she is dreaming up ways to bind me to her will.
opiejeanne
Aw, what a sweet puppy! He could never be naughty.
Snerk.
sharl
Yay, Thurston!
Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but pics of the other 4-legged family members would be most welcome.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: you crack me up.
wasabi gasp
Yippee yi yo, bro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWMDuRZBnnw
Tommy
Since this is an open thread I just have to say what is with Hannibal being canned. Look I will be the first to admit I am a fan and to some level the show has become a little full of itself. But if it is not one of the better shows on TV I am not sure what is. Gillian Anderson is amazing as is Mads Mikkelsen. I can’t put my finger on it but there is almost something hypnotic about his acting. Yet another show I enjoy cancelled.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: I hope in a good way.
askew
Such a cute doggie.
Had a great day today only to come out late to my obnoxious neighbors partying on the back porch. I wouldn’t care but I live in a townhouse and their back porch is pratically under my bedroom windown and it’s 1 am. I just keep chanting it’s a holiday weekend, it’s a holiday weekend and am hoping this isn’t a return to their behavior from last summer. Last summer they were out there until 1 am at the earliest almost every night.
I’ve talked to them multiple times about the noise and HOA has written a letter to them as well. They were on their best behavior for about 2 months and now it is back to the same old shit. So tired of it.
NotMax
@Tommy
Got eaten alive in the ratings maybe?
Tommy
@NotMax: It didn’t do well. Middle of the road at best. But my gut is it got too expensive to keep the talent. Plus they never got the rights to the Hanibal books.
Tommy
Another TV question. Anybody here watching Killjoys?
Bart
@Tommy: The show is dirt cheap compared to others, and they got the rights to all books except one. Hint: the second half of this season is going to be Red Dragon.
I mean: are we really to believe that NBC has got something lined up for broadcast next Summer that’s cheaper to produce and gets better ratings? Why not stick with the critically acclaimed show and get some praise for it? What else they got to be proud of?
Mary G
Yay Thurston! He does have a naughty look in his eyes. We can haz other pets’ pictures, please?
Tommy
@Bart: I was making an assumption about the costs. I don’t know that for a fact. And about right to the books, well I guess reading TVLine isn’t the best source for info because they often cite they don’t have rights to the books.
NBC kept 30 Rock around without great ratings. But the critics loved it and it won awards. Seems to me Hannibal is a similar show. That a network would want them around.
Tommy
@Mary G: Here is my little girl:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/8183863290/in/dateposted-public/
And a bonus pic of my brothers hyper, but loving dog and brother.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/9594733046/in/dateposted-public/
mclaren
@Tommy:
Maybe it’s because the times, they are a-changin’. Endless heaping helpings of the same-old-same-old torture and brutality and sadism is starting to wear on the American public. Despite that Americans have been told since day one by our sick twisted hyperpuritanical society that torture and death and suffering are good (“No pain, no gain!”) and joy and pleasure and sexuality are evil and must be abhorred, after umpty-ump years of non-stop video games featuring nothing but KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! and umpty-ump years of American foreign policy of nothing but KILL! TORTURE! DEATH, DEATH! KILL THEM ALL, MAKE THEM SUFFER! just possibly the American public is getting tired of TV shows and movies and videogames that feature nothing but DEATH! DEATH! SUFFERING! TORTURE! MURDER! SADISM! PSYCHOPATHIC AGONIZED KILLING AND HORROR AND MADNESS AND DEATH!
The blunt truth about the guards at Auschwitz is that they just got numb to it all. They got tired of it. Killing helpless people, watching helpless victims suffer, seeing the endless meaningless parade of horror and brutality, just wears on your soul to the point where you can't take it anymore.
Sick sadistic brutal shows like Hannibal and Game of Thrones are a symptom of America's diseased psyche. But if Bernie Sanders' poll numbers are any indication, the sickness may be waning. Bad news for all you torture-lovers out there — instead of watching vaudevilles of horror and torment like Hannibal and carnivals of child-rape and baby-murder like Game of Thrones, you'll have to set puppies on fire to get your amusement.
The rest of us will breathe a sigh of relief.
Mary G
@Tommy: Both adorable!
BillinGlendaleCA
Spent the last 4 hours painting my kitchen cabinets, they look much nicer now. Thurston is plotting against you Cole, sleep with one eye open.
ETA: I think my Nikki is getting used to the fireworks, she seems to be barking less that she has the last few nights.
Tommy
@mclaren: WTF. I like Games of Thrones and Hannibal but also about the most non-violent person you will find. It is a TV show. I am also an avid reader and there is violence in many books I read but they don’t make me want to harm somebody else.
I am watching Salem as we speak and watching it does not make me want to attempt witchcraft. Like when I watched True Blood didn’t make me want to drink your blood or harm you.
They are freaking TV shows. Or books. Or movies.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Can you outline your process. Thinking of doing this myself.
J R in WV
@Tommy:
That’s a BIG cat, Tommy! I think they are so great, nothing ever takes them aback, they have so much confidence.
We had a giant white/red cat who would just look at a great dane and they would freeze, looking him in the eye, and then backing away.
Give Mather a scritch for me!
So you’re using wordpress to build commercial web sites? Are these sites where multiple items are for sale, with inventory display and ordering, or sites more like “Here are the great things we can do for you!” web pages with some kind of marketing of services?
I managed development of web pages using what was then ColdFusion [ pages ending with .cfm.] and javascript. but that was before blog servers. I’ve wondered if PHP and PERL were still big for web development or what.
Tommy
@J R in WV: Yes WordPress. Mostly I do corporate sites. Professional services. Lawyers. CPAs. Not multi-level stuff (seemed you might be hinting here/there). What I’d call “brochure” web sites.
I am trying to move to e-Commerce sites and doing two as we speak because that is where the money is. I’ve done a few in the past, one that does $10,000 a day. But they offer a single service. Delivery for a national retail chain.
You can do a ton of stuff with WordPress.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Mask off the area that you’re not painting, and then I used a brush(I used a pad on larger surfaces, though not today).
ETA: Preparatory work included getting the landlord’s permission and deciding on colors(that took quite a while and many visits to the orange home improvement store, it’s really close).
Tommy
@J R in WV: Oh PHP is the backend of WordPress. The core of the program. What makes it run.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Did you use primer first? I am not so good with home improvement stuff. But I repainted a vanity in my bathroom. Off white and repainted grey. It turned out so well I am thinking of doing my kitchen cabinets. I think I will take one door off and try to paint the inside so if I mess it up, which I might, it won’t be anything people can see.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: You shouldn’t need primer if it’s already painted. If the change in color(especially dark to light) is too great, you may need two coats. Don’t over apply the paint, do a second coat.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: PHP and mySQL.
ETA: Can you tell I’ve set up a WordPress server?
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. Those are the two things you need.
BillinGlendaleCA
@BillinGlendaleCA: Oh, use the blue painter’s tape. It’s the best.
TheMightyTrowel
@BillinGlendaleCA: i never found decent painters tape in the uk. moving into a new house in Aug – my first house! Our uk place is a flat – and planning on painting, so hopefully will have better luck in oz.
J R in WV
I mostly know Oracle, but MySql seems pretty professional. PHP is a black hole of mystery to me tho.
Are there books? Or just youtubes….
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: O’Reilly has good books for almost anything. MySql is IMO better than Oracle… Much more flexible, but Oracle is very… inflexible. Which is great for enterprise work but not so, well, flexible.
Everybody out here uses PostgreSQL nowadays.
PHP is IMO infuriating, I prefer Python for the logic and then passing that into the template instead of combining them into one file, but YMMV.
BillinGlendaleCA
@TheMightyTrowel: This is what I’m using.
Valdivia
Thurston is a cutey and getting so big!
raven
Nice dogtag.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Valdivia: I still don’t trust him, sorry to hear about the passing of you kitty cat.
Valdivia
@BillinGlendaleCA: He does have a little look of mischief :)
Thank you for your kind words about Sisu.
Schlemazel
@Tommy:
Thank gawd! When I first read your reply I was afraid it was to mclaren.
satby
Trying to decide what to do today. I have so many deferred projects and stuff to tidy up I should do as much of that as I can. Doesn’t quite scream “fun holiday” though.
ultraviolet thunder
@mclaren:
I find myself in complete agreement with this.
I would add that America’s taste for grotesque violence, brutal payback and large scale destruction as entertainment increased after 9/11.
Maybe it’s time we stopped working out our butthurt symptoms in our fiction.
JPL
Happy 4th. We had some light rain overnight so the pups want to stay inside. They don’t like to get their paws wet. Whatever plans you have, enjoy!
Poptartacus
The TV show -Naked and afraid
It’s the end times fer sure
I understand why their naked( in the Japanese porn way)
But why are they afraid?
satby
@Valdivia: Valdivia, mentioned it in the last thread, but in case you missed it, I just wanted to send condolences on Sisu.
JPL
@Valdivia: I just read your comment about your cat. It’s never easy and I am so sorry for your loss.
bin Lurkin'
@Tommy:
A family member is a professional painter and I’ve helped them when they got in a scheduling jam often enough to be considered a semi-pro.
If you are going to paint the interior of a cabinet of some sort a “cigar roller” is the tool to do it with, small paint roller about the size and shape of a large cigar. Paint the hardest to get to parts first and then gradually progress to the easiest parts. Slop the paint on with the cigar roller and then come back after the roller with a brush to smooth it out. Stroke with the brush in parallel lines in one direction away from the interior corners. Putting the paint on with a roller of any sort is much faster on virtually any surface than with a brush, for the most part a brush is a smoothing tool, the only places you should be actually applying paint with the brush is cutting in the edges against non painted surfaces. Don’t put too much paint in your bucket a couple of inches is plenty, only dip your brush in the paint maybe an inch and then gently slap it against either side of the bucket to remove excess paint.
Don’t work out of the paint can, buy a paint bucket and a small plastic roller grid that fits inside to load the cigar roller up. For cabinet interiors an angled sash brush is better than a straight brush, about a 2″ sash brush is a good choice and Purdy is a good brand. A good quality paint brush will save you considerable time and leave a better looking job. Remove hardware such as drawer pulls rather than trying to paint around it, a pro can make it look decent without taking the hardware off first but even a pro can do a better looking job on an uninterrupted surface.
As someone already pointed out masking off surfaces you don’t want painted can make things go easier but pull the tape off before the paint is completely dry for best results, particularly if the surface is a smooth and slick one like some cabinets are.
Steeplejack
Tour de France about to start (NBC Sports) in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Unseasonably hot—just over 90°, about 10 degrees over the usual high—but it’s a short stage today—time trials, I think.
debbie
@Tommy:
Hannibal and 30 Rock are in no way comparable. But I will say 30 Rock was a far superior comedy to Hannibal, which is an overblown, underplotted wannabe thriller.
I didn’t make it past the 2nd or 3rd episode of Hannibal. It was boring and annoying at the same time. But then I think most of the dramas on now are boring. The only one I still watch is Grimm, and even that’s not as good as it was when it began. Maybe it’s a matter of network executives trying too hard to attract their target demo.
MomSense
Someone decided to set fireworks off after midnight.
The dog was not amused. I enjoy a nice fireworks display but this DIY fireworks stuff is the worst.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@Valdivia: So sorry to hear about the loss of Sisu.
gogol's wife
@askew:
I am so sorry. There is nothing worse.
gogol's wife
@Valdivia:
I’m sorry too — I saw it late last night.
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense:
I agree. I think it’s obnoxious.
in other news, I just saw this:
gogol's wife
I was dreading fireworks too, but they didn’t happen. What did happen is that the cable is screwed, yet again. Every time I try to watch a show, I end up talking to Comcast instead. They’re going to send out their technician (for the fourth time in about a month), but not until Tuesday. Monday is the first TCM Shirley Temple spectacular, and I was really looking forward to it. But with the screen going black every minute or so, I don’t think it will be very enjoyable.
So instead of Midsomer Murders, we watched a DVD of Far from the Madding Crowd with Nathaniel Parker and Paloma Baeza and Nigel Terry and Jonathan Firth and Natasha Little. It’s superb.
WereBear
@debbie: I love Grimm! Just started season two. If it falls down, it falls down. It’s practically inevitable.
Any series can fall prey to the open-ended ending. Fantasies are long and often come in trilogies, but ideally have a beginning, middle, and end. That’s why mini-series are often “just right” because they are done as a piece. They can be structured.
The structure starts cracking when the suits start demanding things it’s not designed for. Babylon 5 is a famous example. He wrote the whole series with its complicated aliens and mythologies, and the network was going to pull the plug early, so he managed to bring things to premature conclusions… only to be given the season back, but by that time it had been damaged.
Networks will stop at nothing to keep a popular show on the air, wringing every last bit of ratings out of it, and don’t care if the quality falls. The fans will hang in there, hoping, until it’s just killed with bad moves and indifference.
This wasn’t a problem before story arcs. The show would run out of ideas and it would be done. But now, while the complex and expanded story telling is what pulls fans in, the lack of a defined middle and the unknown ending starts to distort what was so great in the first place.
Beginnings rock. And then the series gets all wonky. It’s because they do have to make it up as they go along, to a certain extent. And it’s not like they can go back and do-over, like with a novel.
So I’m resigned. I get what I can. And really appreciate a good British series where they get to do the whole thing at once.
WereBear
@gogol’s wife: It’s past time for you to demand a “specialist.” That how I got our weirdness solved. Turned out they hadn’t checked one stretch of wire in five service calls, and it was from 1967.
debbie
@WereBear:
And “consultants,” who convince those suits they know the viewers’ psyches.
Like having character stare off at mid-distance, intently but unfocused, with swelling background music. Wasted time that would be better used in an actual plot.
BubbaDave
@Valdivia: Sorry to hear about Sisu. 20 years is a long time, but there’s no such thing as long enough. My condolences.
JPL
The Peachtree Road Race is a mess this year. Because of lightening strikes, they had to delay the start for some groups. The award ceremonies have been canceled.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
Nonononono. She said that? Out loud?
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: Someone commented that building more reservoirs to deal with a drought is like building more pantries to deal with a famine.
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
Yeah, this is where I am worried that Person of Interest is getting to: the tension between the underlying story arc and the unending week-to-week is starting to make the whole structure teeter.
ETA: Can’t decide if Grimm is about to get revitalized or is about to jump the shark.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler:
Or preaching abstinence to deal with pregnancy.
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
Sarah Palin, who didn’t even complete one term as a governor of Alaska, giving advice to Jerry Brown, who during her teens served two terms as governor of California and is now serving his fourth term.
dmsilev
@Germy Shoemangler: Putting everything else aside, is Sarah Palin advocating big government spending money to build infrastructure?
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
How many follow up questions would it take before Palin would be faced with the flaws in her idea? I’ve found the best way to poke holes in Republicsn ideas is to just ask basic follow up questions.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
She thinks she is wicked smart.
Scott S.
@MomSense: Palin = mclaren = troll.
Steeplejack
Light, steady rain here in NoVA. Temp is 70°, dew point 69°, humidity 98 percent, so it’s wet, but in July anything under 90° is a blessing. I opened a couple of windows to let in the smell of the rain, and already the sound is telling me, Nap time later. Nothing on the agenda today, so . . . yeah, probably.
gogol's wife
@WereBear:
We just got a robocall claiming they’d fixed the problem and were cancelling our appointment. I don’t have time to watch TV right now, but I just had it on for five minutes and it didn’t go black, so I’m hoping they actually have fixed it. But you’re right — maybe it’s time to get a specialist again, since the last time we had a specialist about a year ago.
WereBear
@gogol’s wife: It’s bizarre the way they are perfectly happy to keep sending out techs who never really fix the problem. They never move up to the next level on their own.
chopper
@Steeplejack:
ATL is apparently aiming to get itself redefined as a rainforest.
Elizabelle
Happy Independence day, all!
@Steeplejack: Yup. But it can’t rain all day. Gonna be bands of rain.
Saw some local fireworks last night. Very light rain at the time, but it was cool out and they were still beautiful.
Anybody going downtown for fireworks today? I shall be at the Foos. Hoping they might do some fireworks at RFK, but I don’t know that. Maybe we can see the ones on the Mall from the stadium.
I have no clue there …
Elizabelle
@gogol’s wife: Do you by any chance have a Samsung TV?
Had the same prob with cable, for ages, until about the 7th tech finally fixed it. I will check out the message that appears on turning TV on, because maybe it would help your tech …
What cable company? We have Cox.
Baud
NYT
cc
@Valdivia:
I am so sorry to hear about your loss
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
Yes, I now have a Samsung, since I recently bought a new one, but the old one (when the problems started) was a Toshiba. We have Comcast.
SFAW
Sorry if this has appeared in previous threads, I’m too lazy to check all 3000 of the comments. And, also, apologies to Thurston for putting this anywhere near him, but:
Bloody Bill Kristol tweet from yesterday, Hall of Fame caliber:
“152 years ago today, at 2:00 pm–Pickett’s Charge, one of the most memorable–and, on both sides, most admirable–moments in U.S. history.”
He may, in fact, be the stupidest motherfucker on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, given the state of Your Republican Partei these days, it’s not a slam-dunk certainty on that.
No, I won’t link, because Teh Stoopid might be contagious.
Poopyman
@Elizabelle: I haven’t been downtown for fireworks since the mid-nineties, when we were out on the river in a friend’s houseboat. I’m just not up for the crowds and hassle, and never will be.
Maybe some year we should do a BJ meetup on the 4th if somebody can rent a houseboat. Kitchen and bathroom (and a/c!!) mere steps away. Can’t be beat.
Bruce Webb
@Tommy: “They are freaking TV shows. Or books. Or movies. ”
That is what the Romans said about gladiators and animal battles at the Colosseum = hey just a circus. That is what our not very remote ancestors said about bull baiting (bulldogs fighting bulls), dog fighting (pitbulls fighting pitbulls) and cock fighting. Just good clean fun for the whole family. Much like public hangings. Hell we have dogfighting and cock fighting going on today. And few if any B Juicers are okay with that, we almost all agree that such ‘games’ are not only cruel but de-humanizing.
Now in movies today you can be pretty sure that nobody is actually being disemboweled or having their brains eaten and these days (though not just a couple decades ago) you get disclaimers that ‘no animals were actually harmed during filming’ and so you can argue that it just being ‘fiction’ gives you moral distance, that your ‘American Psycho’ is not the equivalent of that exploitative rape video, that there is a big difference between GoT and a snuff film. Just as the Romans were okay with games in the arena because after all the ‘performers’ were either professional killers, criminals, slaves, barbarian captives or pesky Christians who would not sacrifice to the Emperor. You know ‘others’.
Of course there is a distance, a line between endorsing violence against ‘others’ and watching or reading a fictional depiction of violence against sympathetic and unsympathetic fictional characters alike . But I am not so sure that line is a blinding bright as many of us would like to think. After all the Turner Diaries were just fictional until Timothy McVeigh used certain pages as an operations manual when blowing up the Murrah Federal Building. That novel became all too real for Bailey Fields.
As for me I respect fiction too much to simply dismiss it as “just a book” “just a movie”. Because each genre has had many real world consequences both for good and evil. Which doesn’t make every fan of Dexter a psychopath or ever FPS fan one either. But neither is indulging in either just an exercise in meaningless. Or shouldn’t be. Feel free to disagree but I don’t think McLaren’s argument simply merited dismissal.
rikyrah
He looks so cute and so sweet.
ThresherK (GPad)
@gogol’s wife: Oddly enough, we have Comcast too, and are replacing our CRT TV with one designed and built in this decade (let alone century). It seems that sporting events are being framed and cameraed in such a way that everything looks small and fuzzy on out set. Nice to know that my eyes are fine, it’s just that bigger and LCD sets are the norm now.
Spousal unit says to make it a very modern one, and it’ll last the rest of her life. (And the best part is no more lugging a 65 lb CRT device aany longer. I’ve moved that for the last time.)
Botsplainer
Rocky is on Spike right now. I always forget how fine that movie is, how it captures how shitty life was for lower class folks, how cheap even the nicer places looked (the wood panel in the office).
American exceptionalism!
rikyrah
@Tommy:
Tommy, I know that Hannibal was excellent television, but I could not take it. It got too dark for me, even though, top to bottom, production and acting, it was superb.
WereBear
@ThresherK (GPad): Yep. I tell the younguns I remember when you had to move your desk out from the wall to get your CRT monitor on it.
rikyrah
@debbie:
I love Grimm….loved this season’s finale.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone. Enjoy the day with family and friends.
Kristine
@Tommy: I’m amazed that it lasted on NBC as long as it did. Maybe because the violence and gore were so operatic that they didn’t seem real.
Kristine
@BillinGlendaleCA: How about if the cabinets are stained–will they need to be primed then?
Zinsky
Everyone needs to completely ignore Sarah Palin and her cretinous, inbred family. Now that her birdwit, spunk receptacle of a daughter has gotten knocked up twice out of wedlock, maybe Sarah will shut her idiotic pie hole about the Obamas being bad parents. If we are lucky, the old man will go through the ice, thinned by climate change, on his snowmobile and drown. And the rest of the family will be snuffed from carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to grill mooseburgers indoors. That would truly be poetic justice.
Elizabelle
@gogol’s wife: I will look up the message on the TV and post it for you.
Tomorrow OK?
SFAW
@Kristine:
Probably. I think that part of the function of a primer is to (help) prevent the top coat from soaking into the wood (which could result in uneven appearance). I don’t think that the stain would do the same thing, since it (theoretically) soaks into the wood.
Standard disclaimer: not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.
Botsplainer
@Zinsky:
Don’t hold back. Quit suppressing your feelings; let us know how you really feel.
Sadly naive. Conservatives wield their alleged values as a bludgeon which they use to flog their political and social opponents for things they do themselves.
SFAW
@Zinsky:
Right. And maybe the rest of the Rethugs will stop being evil, sanctimonious, lying, treasonous assholes.
And maybe I’ll become smart and good looking.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
As has been said innumerable times before: they’re all about projection.
Peale
@Botsplainer: palin got preggers to hillsong, so it’s a holy bastard. Unlike the spawn of black kids, who listen to hippy hop ‘music’ like Beyoncé. Do we have to go over this again?
SFAW
@Peale:
Hillsong? You sure they weren’t piping in one of the pieces they used in “Humping with the Stars”?
And, I’m an old fart, so I might be wrong — well, in my case, it ain’t the age that’s the driver, of course — but isn’t it “hippity hop”?
Valdivia
@satby: @JPL: @BubbaDave: @La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes): @gogol’s wife: Thank you guys, you all are keeping me sane here.
Happy 4th!
Elizabelle
@Poopyman: A houseboat meetup. Sounds like a great plan.
Or one of those murder mystery weekends…
Happy 4th!
PS: elmo suggested National Harbor for a meetup. That could be cool.
Botsplainer
@SFAW:
To be fair, (and I’m not googling it) but I’m unaware of anybody ever getting preggers by doing it to “The Bunny Hop”.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Wimp.
Well, not these days. But when I was a kid …
Nah, not then, either.
shell
Sweet Thurston. He’s really long and lithe in the body, isn’t he?
Is that his license or a nice chew strip he’s got there?
opiejeanne
@rikyrah: we bailed on The Following pretty early. Much as I love Kevin Bacon, it was too dark and scary.
opiejeanne
@Kristine: yes, and sanded a little.
Anne
Happy Fourth, everyone!
We are dog-sitting my husband’s business partner’s two year-old goldendoodle this weekend, and bless his heart, he is making me appreciate how easy and well-behaved my own dog is. It’s not just that the goldendoodle is an irrepressible bundle of energy (though he is), it’s that he has effectively zero training. He does not respond to his name. He has no recall. He might sit, maybe, sometimes, on cue. But probably not.
We knew this going in, and I thought perhaps liberal application of clicker training would help. So far that is not the case. I can’t tell if he simply doesn’t have working drive (which my dog has in spades) or if the fact that he’s grown up in a house where there’s no consistency about rules or training has given him the idea that humans aren’t consistent, so why should he be? Anyway, I’m giving it a go. We’ll see how things look at the end of the three days.
In the meantime, I’m planning to spend most of my day the way the founding fathers intended: tending a grill for several hours while dogs romp around me. I’ve got the dry rub on a slab of ribs and homemade barbecue sauce ready to go. I expect the ribs will take around six hours: plenty of time to enjoy the Allagash Tripel Ale I have stashed in the fridge. And with this dog, I might need it.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Had a problem with Verizon once, talked to the tech when he came out. He was the only tech for a rather large area, several thousand customers. He said they never sent anyone else out, just him. On his days off or when he was not on shift, no one was sent. Fortunately he was very good. I took it from his discussion that Verizon didn’t give much of a damn about actual service, just income. They get stuff fixed, when they got around to it, it just was never close to your schedule. I’d bet good money that none of the companies are any different.
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
Oh, thanks — I’ll remember to ask them to look at it when they come. Don’t worry about it.
Dolly Llama
@opiejeanne: Same here. It also seemed like it was trying to push the limits of how much gore you could get away with on TV.
Kristine
@Ruckus: Sounds like what happened with my web host, which is based in Dallas. Verizon service in the Dallas area went out at weeks end, hundreds of small businesses impacted, and Verizon essentially did nothing over the weekend. Not until the regular tech crew came in on Monday were repairs initiated, and they took a while. Verizon joined ATT at the bottom of my list for just about anything after that.
Webhost is trying to set up an alternative.
FWIW, Comcast in NE IL has been pretty good.
Ruckus
@Bruce Webb:
The all the time repetition of violence can set the tone, the background for real life. You see violence all the time, even if you know it’s fiction like Tommy is saying can set that background noise level. Now not everyone takes it or sees it that way. And our actual violent crime level is down over the last 30-40 yrs so Tommy has a point as well. We are a physical and violent species, in the past centuries one had to be to survive. That, for the most part is no longer true but changing that direction will and is taking time. Look at the conservative politician side of the isle, strong military, attack, attack, all the while they sit in nice offices in a suit and tie and send someone else for the letting of the blood.
My theory is that some people have learned that force/violence is rarely called for and can enjoy a fictional story that is very violent without any repercussions. But as we know, not everyone is a rational human being, for the rest, even fictional violence sets a background idea that force/violence is OK.
Ruckus
@Kristine:
Where I live now we have Charter Communications. Don’t use it for anything but internet but in 6 months I’ve had 100% up time and better than 66mps download speed. In the US that’s pretty good.
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: It’s not America, it’s you. McLaren had a problem distinguishing fantasy from reality. No fair projecting that on everyone else. Except wingnuts.