Saw this poster at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota last week:
I can’t sleep for some reason, so I’m re-watching Harry Potter movies and reading crap on the interwebs. Damn, I wish I had a pet phoenix.
What are you up to?
This post is in: Open Threads
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Belafon
I just had the thought that what’s happening with Democrats right now is that we’ve gone from splitting hairs to splitting atoms, with all the mayhem that causes.
srv
Old friend says Sanders is just another sellout.
And how can you go to bed without reading the NYT opinion on Stewart? Patron Saint of Liberal Smugness
On that, many liberals and conservatives can agree.
John Revolta
After seeing that poster, I may not sleep either.
Nathan Tyree
@srv: Yeah, supporting Mondale over Reagan was a real Quisling thing to do…
Brachiator
@srv:
Yawn. Stewart is a comedian, a satirist, and a damned effective one. Is he smug? BFD.
Well, these people are idiots. And the fixation comes from the conservatives who continue to celebrate these fools, who are well past their sell-by date.
This is the crap that they’re putting in the NYT these days? What, they didn’t have a Bobo column ready?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
I like that we live near a 24-hour pharmacy so when I forget to pick up my prescription during the day, I can run out at 10:30 at night instead of having to wait until morning.
Also, perimenopause sucks. At least, that seems to be the most likely explanation why my period decided to show up again two weeks after it ended (normally I’m 28 days like clockwork on or off the pill). It really is like being 15 again. Feh.
David Koch
Chuck Toad was on the evening news and said they have been polling post debate, and while the poll is not complete, the numbers so far indicate Trump wasn’t hurt by Fox’s attacks.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Coming to the end of twelve work shifts in ten days. It’s closing with a crescendo: I worked 10pm Friday to 6am Saturday; 7am to 3pm Saturday at a different location; I’m currently working 10pm to 6am at the first location; and I’ll be back here from 2pm to 6am tomorrow. Or today. The usual nomenclature of “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” gets confused working overnights.
I’m also worried that the end of the line is coming for my 21-year old cat. She spent most of the time I was home today vomiting and under the bed. She’s done that before, but I have a bad feeling this time. I wish I had the time to take her to the vet when I get off work, but I don’t. I’m not sure when I will, given how tired I’ll be when I get home Monday. Hopefully, she’ll solve this problem by perking up and running around again.
piratedan
@Brachiator: maybe if the GOP didn’t offer these folks up to run for public office and if they had perhaps refrained from giving their honest heartfelt positions that outed them as the racist, misogynistic asshats that they appear to be, then perhaps that feeling of butthurt would have some basis in reality.
As it is, they are strikingly seen as reinforcement of those perceptions… perhaps if there was national entity that could express their disapproval of said same, say the RNC perhaps, then perhaps they could be treated as outliers instead of mainstream.
Nathan Tyree
@David Koch:
Nope. I bet he is climbs in the polls.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
Got back a little while ago from a library event featuring Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire series. Nice guy and funny. The library had an open bar, mostly soda, wine, and beer, but no Rainier ( it’s a joke). They fed us barbecue, and it was a great evening.
PurpleGirl
I’m having trouble sleeping too. I slept so much of Saturday that I’m awake now. Been watching a marathon of Air Disasters on the Smithsonian Channel. It’s a guilty pleasure. Also reading on the web and playing jigsaw puzzles. Also watching kitten cams — Shelly in Canada has two momcats with babies on two cams. The moms are ferals who will be spayed and then released back to their colony. The kittens will be socialized and adopted out. The kittens are way cute.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I hope your cat perks up enough to snuggle with you. I hope that if she does pass away, it doesn’t happen until you can be home with her. At the kitten cams I watch, a couple of little ones have died shortly after birth and while the cam watchers are sad, at least these little ones were warm, feed and held by the human rescuer or near to their momcat.
ETA: I’m surprised that the poster is hung with tacks and not a nice frame. If it’s an original poster the tacks have damaged it. And those are some loooong necks.
David Koch
@Nathan Tyree: yup. electrical currents didn’t hurt Godzilla, it only made him stronger.
divF
@PurpleGirl:
I’m having trouble sleeping as well. I have a cold, and everything is draining.
Purple Girl: what is the origin of your nym ?
ETA: I’ve been doing free associations on wikipedia and youtube. Watching Kennedy Center honors for Al Green and Carlos Santana, biographies of actors Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, the Tango scene from Scent of a Woman…
PurpleGirl
@divF: Well, I’m female and don’t feel any particular age and I like the color purple… Some of the other names I tried to use were taken and I didn’t want a number after the name, i.e. PurpleRose450 or something like that.
Brachiator
@David Koch:
I was looking at some YouTube snippets of and reactions to the debate. Although this stuff is obviously not statistically significant, I was surprised at how many of the pro-Trump comments combined an increasing disdain for Kelly, Fox News and the Republican Establishment.
I still expect Trump to flame out fairly soon, but the anger that the GOP has flamed throughout Obama’s presidency may be about to burn the Kochs, the Tea Party and the remaining presidential contenders.
divF
@PurpleGirl:
Thanks for sharing that.
Mine is a reference to my professional work.
Villago Delenda Est
I’ve been reading The Martian and boy is it a terrific read. The trailer for the movie looks promising…some of Mark Watney’s best lines made the transition from the original medium to the new one.
Mike G
Billmon — “It’s hilarious. Ailes trained the morons to believe nothing except what “the leaders” tell them. And now Trump is their leader.”
divF
@Mike G:
What’s scary about this is how well Trump has timed his moves and seems to understand exactly what he can get away with.
Is he an idiot, or an evil genius who knows how to cater to idiots ?
LT
I find putting that circus poster up without any note of the numerous problems attached to it is *problematic*, and not a great service to this website.
Now Betty’s gonna yell at me about cocktail parties. Just a warning. Someone call McArdle.
Calouste
@divF: Trump’s been in a reality TV show for a decade. If he hasn’t learned how to cater to idiots by now, he never will.
Brachiator
@divF:
He’s an idiot whose biggest fans are also idiots.
The sky’s the limit.
@Villago Delenda Est
I keep hearing good things about the novel. I have the audio book from audible, but couldn’t quite find the time to give it a serious listen.
I didn’t realize that the film is scheduled for release this October. I might try to finish the book before the movie opens.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): “Rainnniiiiiiieeeeer Beeeer”. That was their commercial when I was up there in the early mid 80’s.
Marc
Just finished my latest run playing Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown. I was a big fan of the tabletop version of the game from the late 80’s, and while this is more of a shooter-style of computer game, it still has the story and look of the cyberpunk game. Gonna call it a night (morning), and see if I can get up at a reasonable hour.
Anne Laurie
@PurpleGirl:
Looks like standard conservation framing to me: The original (poster) is mounted on a white backboard, and those “tacks” are two-part fasteners that ‘float’ the glass away from the surface of the poster. But the fasteners only go through the backboard, not the original.
The arguments against “a nice frame” are mostly that any kind of frame, in a research setting, detracts from close examination of the work. And, less important but not insignificant, any frame is liable to degrade over time, possibly leaching rust, glues, pigments, or other damaging materials onto the artwork.
Anne Laurie
@divF:
Neither idiot nor genius, just a professional at what he does. Trump’s been working reality-show-style “publicity” for more than forty years now. If he didn’t have some talent for it, he’d never have gotten his “empire” off the ground; and if he hadn’t learned anything about timing since the 1970s, he’d never have hung onto it.
J R in WV
Circus posters are what they are. The circus was a big deal in Sarasota and in Venice, a little bit south of Sarasota, and historically, there were sideshows as well as the traditional big top acts. So people from mysterious eastern places, like Burma, were a big deal.
We stayed with my folks in their condo near Venice one winter. We joined a gym and it turned out that many members of the circus were members of the gym. It was more interesting than the actual circus was.
People with amazing physical talents, from all over the world!
And no one here cares that you have an abnormal reaction to a piece of cultural history like that. If you had ever spent time in that area or ever learned a little history about the circus lifestyles, maybe you wouldn’t be so quick to judge something from ignorance.
NotMax
A pet phoenix would be oh so handy for whenever one had a sudden craving for s’mores.
gene108
What I find helps me sleep is streaming the BBC’s The Blue Planet on my iPad via Netflix. I keep the device out of sight and just listen to the narration.
Something about David Attenborough’s voice is very soothing to me.
LT
@J R in WV: Of course, but the display of peoples from different parts of the world – in circuses, like animals – was deeply racist and ugly in every way imagineable. Just putting the poster up, with such trite and unrelated commentary – gah.
Holy fuck. 1) You speak for everyone here? 2) Cultural history? How about a blase post showing posters of people in blackface? That’s “cultural history” too.
I have spent time with Burmese people (in India), and I know quite a lot about circus history.
Betty Cracker
@J R in WV: Did you make it to the Ringling Museum while you were there? The circus museum portion of it is fascinating. And since most visitors are presumed to have a level of intelligence and self-awareness at least equal to that of the average mushroom, the exhibits aren’t marred by annotations that announce what particularly dull and tedious Internet scolds might find “problematic” about a collection of vintage freak show posters.
But circus museum aside, the main museum’s art collection is incredible. Ringling left it to the state of Florida in his will, so naturally it was criminally mismanaged for decades. It has been physically endangered more than once by lack of funding, and for years state budget squabbles threatened to shut it down. Haven’t heard any talk of that lately, though, so hopefully it’s on more solid ground. The collection really is a treasure — definitely worth a visit.
Cervantes
@srv:
Diamondstone is, in his way, a good guy.
And so is Sanders.
The article you cited makes that clear enough (for my purposes).
LT
@Betty Cracker:
…aren’t marred by annotations…”
“Marred.” Oh joy.
Wouldn’t want to mar a drippingly racist poster with an annotation like that, huh?
http://theday.co.uk/arts/shocking-exhibition-reveals-racist-past
Just One More Canuck
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): @BillinGlendaleCA: The commercials with Mickey Rooney (hunting the wild Rainier) were great too. Up in Victoria, we referred to Rainier as “Vitamin R”
Cervantes
@Anne Laurie:
Look at the curves and shadows at the bottom of the picture.
LT
The exploitation of these particular women, just to note, continues today:
http://www.myanmarburma.com/blog/377/giraffe-women-kooky-custom-or-human-zoo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101701.html
Cervantes
@LT:
I know exactly what you mean but, being as familiar with Betty Cracker as we are, I think we can assume she does as well.
That is, I think one can give her the benefit of the doubt without dismissing your anthropological point.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Worth a visit, I agree.
Re funding: I believe the museum budget runs through FSU now, so whenever the latter’s budget is threatened …
Betty Cracker
@LT: The point isn’t that it’s not offensive or that freak shows weren’t appalling. The point is of course it’s offensive, and freak shows were appalling. If I showed a pre-schooler that poster, I’d point that out. I’m trusting the readership of Balloon Juice to grok that for themselves. But go ahead and preen and fume some more. It’s what you do.
LT
@Cervantes: It’s not about giving her the benefit of the doubt. Does she know the poster is related to a bad history? I’m sure she does. Did she put it up, with no remarks except unrelated blase comments? Yes. That it the issue by itself. It’s jarring, and it jarred me. I doubt you’d be so blase about this yourself if it were William Henry Johnson or the “missing link.”
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: You’re right — it is managed by FSU now. They seem to have their act together lately with managing the museum. That’s probably the most positive thing I have ever said or ever will say about FSU.
LT
@Betty Cracker:
“I posted X horrible thing without any comment about it cuz I knew people here would know it was horrible” is as empty as can be.
P.S. Your “the readership of Balloon Juice” comment is just silly. I’ve been among “the readership of Balloon Juice” for many years. And I found the post jarring. I stay away from your posts – you are as pricklishly defensive as possible to anyone who gives the smallest criticism – but it was jarring enough that I was compelled to comment.
And by the way, you’re posts don’t just go to “the readership of Balloon Juice” (which you actually mean people who agree with me on everything) – they are seen by anyone who happens along here.
Cervantes
@LT:
OK, you found it jarring. That’s understandable. I have just time enough to say I hope you recover quickly.
Even with more time I would not be able to help you with this at all.
Have a great day — I must dash.
Major Major Major Major
Yay, more insomnia.
Had a really great chat/cuddle session with a friend though. So there’s that. At least. He’s kewt too
low-tech cyclist
Right now I’m sitting on the deck of our rented beach house on the east side of Anna Maria Island, listening to the waves crash against the seawall, looking out at the Skyway bridge and waiting for the sun to come up. After driving down here from Plant City yesterday in a, um, driving rain, today looks to be beautiful. It’s been very kind of Florida to ease off on their monsoon while we’ve been here.
And there’s the sun now, climbing over the horizon through the haze.
LT
@Cervantes: You don’t have to help me with anything. And ‘I doubt you’d be so blase about this yourself if it were William Henry Johnson or the “missing link”‘ is a pretty simple statement. If it’s wrong, you can just say so. If not, also too.
You have a great day.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: Freak show? I’m done.
Gimlet
An inspection ordered by Gov. Rick Scott into Planned Parenthood clinics didn’t find fetal organs being sold, but state officials Wednesday said they are citing four locations for other violations.
After inspecting 16 Planned Parenthood locations in the state last week, the Agency for Health Care Administration found that clinics in St. Petersburg, Fort Myers and Naples have been performing abortions in the second trimester of pregnancies without a license to do so.
“These facilities have been notified to immediately cease performing second-trimester abortions,” AHCA spokesperson Shelisha Coleman said Wednesday in a written statement.
Laura Goodhue said that the inspections hold clinics to a different standard from what AHCA has previously used to distinguish first trimester and second trimester abortions.
“I can state unequivocally that all of our health centers are operating in full compliance with Florida law as well as best practices in reproductive health care,” Goodhue said. “The claim that any of our health centers are performing procedures we are not licensed to perform is false and seemingly stems from AHCA flip-flopping on their own rules and definitions of gestational periods.”
Betty Cracker
@LT:
Actually, you don’t. But you have my wholehearted support if you’re considering that as a future strategy.
Iowa Old Lady
@Villago Delenda Est: I was surprised by how much I liked The Martian because he doesn’t shrink from giving technical details. My engineer husband liked it too. I think the character’s voice is strong. It’ll be interesting to see how all that translates into a movie.
I believe he published that chapter by chapter on his blog first and then self-published on Amazon for 99 cents because his readers wanted to see it all together. Then a publisher picked it up. At least, that’s the story I heard.
Gimlet
As with previous reports, however, the anemic figures released on Friday actually demonstrate that American workers face continuing economic stagnation.
The economy added only 215,000 new jobs in July, slightly below analysts’ already low expectations. Through the first half of the year, the job market is on pace to grow at a much lower rate than last year, which averaged 246,000 jobs a month.
The jobs situation facing young people is especially bleak. The labor force participation for teenagers was only 41.3 percent in July, the lowest level in the post-war period. The official unemployment rate for teenagers was a staggering 16.2 percent.
A defining feature of the American economy seven years after the 2008 collapse is the prevalence of low-wage jobs. Wages grew by only 0.2 percent last month, according to the report. This follows on the heels of a previous report by the Labor Department that found that employment costs in the second quarter of the year rose by only 0.2 percent, the lowest quarterly rise since 1982. Over the past year, wages have only risen by 2.1 percent, barely enough to keep up with inflation.
The increase in employment in July skewed toward the retail industry, which added 36,000 jobs. The median hourly wage for retail salespeople in July was a poverty-level $10.29.
Betty Cracker
@low-tech cyclist: Looks like you’re going to catch a break with the weather. Have fun, and stay hydrated!
LT
@Betty Cracker: Trust me – I do. I’ve commented in maybe three of your diaries in the last year. And I will continue.
Also – I think this post was obtuse and offensive. Just thought you might like to know.
Gimlet
I thought a better ending to the Harry Potter series would have been to have Voldemort end up as a Slytherin ghost after the climatic battle.
Major Major Major Major
To answer the last couple things about The Martian, one of the reasons I decided to serialize the first draft of my fish thing novel is the way that book was published. It was indeed just posted online for free and for $1 on Amazon before a big-boy publisher picked it up.
satby
Oh wow. Historical artifacts reveal racist, misogynist attitudes. Shocking! Film at 11.
redshirt
@LT: Lighten up, Francis.
Keith G
Who knew Balloon-Juice posts needed trigger warnings?
Zinsky
Betty Cracker: I’m sure you are familiar with carnival people, given your proximity to Gibsonton. I could tell you some stories about the carnies that dwell near that God-forsaken place….
low-tech cyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks!
And we really have caught a break with the weather already. We flew down here a week ago today, and were in Plant City, going through all the junk in my wife’s grandmother’s house. Monday was rainy, but Tuesday and Wednesday were clear and sunny, and Thursday and Friday both had decent stretches of sun before the monsoon briefly returned yesterday. Made it a lot easier to clean out the shed, which mostly meant digging boxes of papers and objects of possibly sentimental value out from under a metric ton of lumber scraps and rusty tools that look as if they were old when LBJ was President.
Anyhow, that was our ‘work’ week, and this is time for to play, per Buffett.
Cervantes
@LT:
Thank goodness!
“Can’t” was my point, not “Have to,” but you’re right.
Actually, it’s not “pretty simple,” but I still can’t take it seriously.
Thanks!
David Koch
bystander
I seriously tried listening to Rubio the other night. He’s a dishonest idiot, but I did find I was fascinated by his enormous ears and stopped listening to him. All I could think was that some gifted cartoonist could mine a Dumbo vein at Marco’s expense.
These people bring out the worst in all of us. Well, maybe not all of us. But they really get to me in the worst way.
Josie
@David Koch: Wow! I hope that some ad person from Hillary’s campaign got a copy of that conversation for later use.
Bex
@PurpleGirl: You’re probably asleep by now, but Tinykittens update: Tip is not a feral; she is a stray and will be up for adoption with her kittens. She and her litter are sponsored by people from DreamWorks and have names from some of the movies. Sisko is a feral and will be spayed and returned to her colony when the kittens are weaned. They are sponsored by the vet hospital Shelly works with. Her kittens will be up for adoption and have Bambi/Disney names.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@David Koch: Just listened to the NPR top-of-the-hour, the two or three minutes on politics were all Trump, Trump, Trumpety Trump. What he said about Megyn, what Marco and Jeb and Carly said about the things he’s saying.
Bonnie
@NotMax: That made me burst into laughter. Thank you.