No mas. I can’t take any more. Taking a long hot shower, shaving, getting into some clean jammies (no footies, sadly), and playing games or watching a movie.
Need to save my energy for the Steelers/Ravens game tomorrow.
This post is in: Open Threads
No mas. I can’t take any more. Taking a long hot shower, shaving, getting into some clean jammies (no footies, sadly), and playing games or watching a movie.
Need to save my energy for the Steelers/Ravens game tomorrow.
Comments are closed.
MikeBoyScout
Go Stillers!
mr. whipple
Winners never quit and quitters never win. Don’t go half-terming us, John.
You don’t need to save anything for the Stillers, they’re gonna roll.
Calming Influence
NOOOOO! Stay out of the SHOWER! There’s a BROOM in there!
Liberal Sandlapper
GO FALCONS!!!
stuckinred
Da Berz
stuckinred
@Liberal Sandlapper: That too!
Cacti
I just heard on the news that his holiness the telegenic pedophile enabler, aka Pope John Paul II is on the fast track for “sainthood”.
*Puke*
Omnes Omnibus
@Liberal Sandlapper: Shut your yap, sir/madam.
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred:You may also participate in the yap shutting.
Cacti
Also just heard that Jan Brewer will be cutting healthcare and education in 2011…
But leaving country club tax breaks in place.
I’ve gotta get out of this place.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: You gotta dance wit who brung ya. And, being a lifelong Bear fan, scerrrrreeewwww the Packers!
Mnemosyne
Finished my Broad Street Mitts, so now all I have to make is a Cowl Catcher and I should be all set for our February trip to Chicago.
I really need to start hanging out at Ravelry again where they actually care about this stuff.
Nina
Or as the repub chairPerson (just to annoy him) would say:
“When I take a shower, I just wash, reince, preibeet–it’s close enough”.
Nina
Or as the repub chairPerson (just to annoy him) would say:
“When I take a shower, I just wash, reince, preibeet–it’s close enough”.
AliceBlue
Careful with your shower and shave, John. The Anniversary isn’t over yet.
stuckinred
@Mnemosyne:
“The almighty Hawk come blowin down Michigan Avenue like a razor blade”.
Lou Rawls
Dead End Street
suzanne
@Cacti: Take me with you. I’ll pay for gas.
suzanne
I am impressed by the obstinate stupidity of those who STILL apparently cannot spell “Tucson”.
jeffreyw
Mmm…pizza
cathyx
Wait. You can’t leave us alone. We’ll start to fight or something.
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: I will just say that you are wrong.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: Last time I checked the play the games.
quaint irene
Ready to call it a night as well. It’s not even half way thru the month and I’m ready to go ape-shit over this damn winter weather. Three big snow storms since Christmas. Temps that don’t get out of the 20’s. And now prediction of snow/rain on Monday. Great! A coating of ice on everything. Yes, yes. Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Not helped that the wall heater in my studio finally went kaput. For good. Bob the plumber and the PSE&G guy both concured. So I’m trying to make do with a small space heater till I can afford to get a replacement. Feeling like I’m in ‘La Boheme’ but without a pot-bellied stove to burn unsold artwork in.
cathyx
@quaint irene: You need to move to Oregon. It’s only dinner time and it’s been in the low 60’s this week.
JPL
John, Have a fun evening and break a leg.
Can someone explain to me why break a leg is suppose to be a good luck type of comment. Being the anniversary of the boss’ shoulder injury, I wanted to give him good wishes and all.
Francis
Is a flat tax libertarian, anti-libertarian, or not within the scope of libertarianism?
I got into a long disagreement w/ one of ED’s co-bloggers at his other blog, League of Ordinary Gentlemen. I took the position that as between a flat tax and a marginal rate tax system, a flat tax was profoundly anti-libertarian because it put a heavier tax burden on those less able to pay. (Marginal value of money and all that.)
The Ordinary Gentleman, one Jason Kuznicki, also of Cato Unbound, took the opposite view.
What say ye?
General Stuck
@Cacti:
Oh, you and Suzanne can come over next door to the land of enchantment. But once you check in, you can never leave, because everything is always done tomorrow.
PS – and we have the worlds only commercial space port. just in case.
beltane
This Open Thread is worse than the Holocaust and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. It is like the Apocalypse without the Rapture. Shame on you.
Mark S.
@Francis:
When have libertarians ever cared about poor people?
quaint irene
One of the superstitions of the theater. Wishing somebody ‘good luck’ is supposed to be the height of bad luck.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
What’s a “cowl”? and why would you want to catch one?
Mnemosyne
@stuckinred:
I was in high school the winter that it was (including wind chill) 80 degrees below zero in Chicagoland.
I formed a determination to move to Southern California and I never looked back.
@JPL:
It’s a theater thing — if you wish someone good luck, then inevitably the gods will rain bad luck down upon him/her, so you wish for a bad thing to happen instead so all will go well.
It’s only the “Spiderman” musical that seems to have taken it literally.
Calouste
@quaint irene:
And don’t mention M——, uh the Scottish play.
asiangrrlMN
@JPL: It’s a theatre thing because you aren’t supposed to wish each other luck, but I’ll be damned if I know why. I could Google it, but i don’t feel like it.
@Mnemosyne: May I say that I am very impressed with your work? I tried to knit a scarf once. It was horrible.
And, go Pack and Steelers! Go Jets, and…WTF’s the other game? Seattle v. Chicago? Oooh, that’s a toughie. I’m going to have to go for the Bears, though.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: Sounds like growing up Catholic.
robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles
Still waiting for Tunch’s 2011 debut.
Josh James
For comment from anyone interested, my Friday rant: http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=2003
numbskull
Wuss.
Ash Can
@Mnemosyne: That cowl catcher is beautiful, but I hope you have a woolen topcoat with lapels that you can fold over it. The wind will go right through those holes.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Day 2
On day two of my solemn quest to honor President Obama’s heartfelt and inspiring call to action – “to live up to the example that young Christina Green expected in how our democracy should function” – I have foresworn the practice of hiding illegally detained civilians from the Red Cross. My bad.
.
.
JCT
@suzanne:
@Cacti
Oh look you two — this is not helpful, can you believe I have a job interview at the U of A med center next week? Ack.
asiangrrlMN
@Josh James: Damn straight. We need honesty, not civility (so spaketh a BJ front-pager). Very good rant.
@Mnemosyne: He’s a double-asshole for not mentioning what kind of pie he likes! (I love MikeJ, too, for adapting cleek’s filter for Chrome).
Knitting: Yeah, I tried to teach myself. Epic fail.
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
It’s a fancy-schmancy word for “scarf that buttons.”
@asiangrrlMN:
I tried to do it from books on and off for years and finally had to take a lesson to actually understand it. But it was also when I became more sedentary after my knee injury, which is not necessarily a good thing since in some ways it has kept me from getting back into an exercise routine.
@JPL:
Did that, too. Catholicism + icy cold weather = not for me.
Mnemosyne
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
You know, only an asshole like you would come into a thread and insist that rhubarb is the best kind of pie when French apple is clearly superior.
ETA: cleek, have I mentioned lately that I love you?
sidhra
Sarah Bernhardt took a nasty fall during a performance, broke her leg but persevered to the end with thunderous applause. This was the tale told to young thespian sidhra. Probably crap.
BR
Just a random observation. I went over to Glenn Greenwald’s twitter feed and there was a curious time period where there were no tweets from him – Wednesday evening. And no mention was made of it either later on. I guess I find it remarkable that he mentioned the video from the half-term governor in the morning, but not what happened in the evening.
Edit: even McCain managed to be appreciative of Obama’s remarks from Wednesday. It’s hard to be crankier than McCain, but maybe Greenwald is…
Mr Stagger Lee
Jumping on the SeaJokes ooops I mean Seahawks bandwagon.
I will go with the Steelers because as a Browns fan I could never root for the ravens as long as Art ^%$^&$E& Modell (rot in hell) is still around. Oh and one more thing I hope the Patriots wipe the Jets out, so I can hear Mike Greenberg cry like a little girl on the Mike and Mike show.
Francis
Alternative topic:
I’m taking my first vacation in about 3 years and going to Thailand at the end of January for about 3 weeks.
Anyone here ever been to Thailand? Recommendations on where to go, hotels, food, things to do, etc. requested.
hilts
Chip Berlet has a nice background post on talk2action about what influenced Loughner
Jared Lee Loughner & Zeitigeists of Right-Wing Conspiracism
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/1/13/105529/815/Front_Page/Jared_Lee_Loughner_Zeitigeists_of_Right_Wing_Conspiracism
10 Best Documentary Films of 2010 List
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6736/get_angry_the_years_10_best_political_docs
Boudica
@JCT: Tucson is a little sea of blue in that red disaster area called Arizona. It was a comfort to my husband and me to discover this as we sent our oldest off to UA this past fall. Look at their bitchin’ sheriff!
asiangrrlMN
@Francis: I haven’t been in nearly twenty years, but if you can make it to Kho Phi Phi, it was amazing. Food: Yes. All of it. Street food is excellent, but be careful. Bargain at the night markets. Have loads of fun. That’s the best I can do.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: Is this a bad time to say “Go Ravens!!!!!”
Or should I have shut my yap?
mr. whipple
@quaint irene:
Yes, but why ‘break a leg’? Why not ‘get lung cancer’ or ‘clog up your arteries’?
lamh32
Ughhh!!
I have to get my car repaired. I’ve been pushing it off for awhile! I need to get at least 2 major things done, separately, they wouldn’t be so bad, but put them all together, and they add up to a good chunk of change. Add to that the area where I live does not have public transportation, it’s one of those “up and coming” areas in northern DFW, and if ya’ll didn’t know, it’s a good way of “keeping out the undesirables”cause ya know, poor people don’t have cars, so of course they travel via public transportation, No public transportation, no poor people.
So whenever I get my car to the shop, It’ll probably be there for more than 1 day, but I’ve still got to get to work. The conundrum is how the hell I’m gonna get to work.
BTW, Does anyone every have their timing belt changed? If so, what the running price, I have a Hyundai tuscon, which I supposed counts as a mid-sized SUV. I’m gonna call around tomorrow to see if I can find a shop that will give a reasonable quote, and I wanted to at least have a heads up idea of what’s a good price for the repairs!
JPL
@frosty: John said that he was going to sit in a La-z-boy surrounded by styrofoam peanuts
all day, so at this point he might notice.
frosty
@Mr Stagger Lee: I appreciate the sentiment. I hate the “Indy” Colts and their Mayflower vans in the middle of the night with the heat of a thousand suns.
Be glad Cleveland got to keep their trophies and memorabilia. And got a replacement team tout suite. Indy thinks Unitas belongs to their team.
MikeJ
@Calouste:
I propose that on blogs, mentioning M____ M_______ from the Atlantic is the same sort of bad luck. We refer to it as the idiot blog.
Or better yet, just don’t refer to it.
frosty
@lamh32: Timing belt? That should run a couple hundred dollars. And unless you like drifting to the side of the road, get it done.
If you have a car like mine with a no-clearance head, you’ll drift to the side of the road to the sound of the pistons hitting the valves, bending the valves, cracking the pistons, and maybe cracking the cylinder head. Good times.
Fortunately I replaced the timing belt before any of that happened.
asiangrrlMN
@asiangrrlMN: Make that Koh Phi Phi.
Mr Stagger Lee
@frosty: Thanks.
I live in the Seattle area, when the Sonics left, Ok City wanted Gary Payton to bless the Thunder and Kevin Callabero , the Sonics announcer to come and do the voice of the team. For the eternal love of the fans they both refused, and are trying to bring the NBA back to Seattle, though that may be a tall order.
mr. whipple
@Mr Stagger Lee:
What’s your take on the new Brown’s coach hire?
Personally, I think the whole thing is a joke.
JCT
@Boudica: The folks recruiting me keep emphasizing exactly your point. I guess I’m more worried about that psycho Brewer completely gutting support for the University.
And I hope your son is enjoying school, the high quality of the students there is a big plus for me.
Left Coast Tom
@General Stuck: I already checked in to the Hotel California…
Boudica
@JCT: Thanks. Only she’s a girl. But she’s enjoying it and learning a lot.
lamh32
@frosty:
thx, I remember the dealer telling me that the belt would be almost $500. At the time, that was just too much money.
I’m gonna just bite the bullet though. I’m looking at maybe $500 for the timing belt, and then an addt’l $350 probably for the brakes.
MikeJ
@Mr Stagger Lee: Seattle should have a NBA team. One that builds any arenas it wants with its own money.
We should also get ponys.
handy
@MikeJ:
Maybe if we invoke its name three times it will get eaten by sandworms.
MikeJ
Just watched flooding on the news. Very, very sad.
The difficult thing about rescuing Brazilians is they just have a tiny landing strip.
Ailuridae
@Francis:
Broadly, if libertarians “agreed” there was a marginal value of money they wouldn’t be libertarians. So it is tough to engage them on any point regarding marginal tax rates because they refuse to acknowledge the premise
Francis
@Ailuridae: But why? What is it about libertarianism that denies the most basic principle of economics? Is it really just fuck-the-poor?
Ailuridae
@Mr Stagger Lee:
My understanding is that Stern has has foot down that no team will relocate to Seattle unless 1) they build a new arena and 2) the city government basically admits to running the Sonics out of town.
Take a deep breath. Two is plainly false. But David Stern is an evil man and that’s his line in the sand.
My understanding of NBA relocation spots is that the NBA views it as
1) Kansas City (new arena, no competition from NHL)
2) St Louis
3) Austin (if they are willing to build a stadium)
Since the Hornets are the most likely to move (followed by the Grizz) I would guess Austin gets them and the Grizzlies relocate to KC.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: It’s not *that* cold here. Rumors that the nitrogen and oxygen in the air have liquified are grossly exaggerated.
(Seriously, for winter in Chicago, it’s not all that bad right now)
dms
Ailuridae
@Francis:
Probably? Honestly every libertarian I ever met started their “intellectual journey” with the incredible unfairness of affirmative action. It wasn’t that they didn’t work hard enough at Walter Johnson or New Trier or Niskyuana ir was that a black lesbian in a wheel chair took their spots at HarvardYaleStanford despite them having done better, more, etc.
Libertarianism at its heart is basically an advocacy for a competitive distribution of wealth. In a world where people start on an equal footing I might be sympathetic. But that world, if it has ever existed is not modern day America. In is not a coincidence that libertarianism is advocated almost solely by people who have been put in a competitive advantage against the rest of America.
Back to economics try to have the following conversation with a libertarian sometime. Advocate for a negative income tax that would bring every American out of poverty. Tell them that this would greatly shrink the size of government as it would just be direct cash payments to folks and stress that the program would be voluntary. Watch glibertard head explode.
Ailuridae
@dmsilev:
Yeah, this is nothing. If I may ask (and forgive me if I already have) are you in the city proper? If so, which neighborhood?
Dee Loralei
@MikeJ: That was sick, dude. And I LOLled.
@Ailuridae: My Griz are moving?? Sheesh…. I haven’t been to a game since Shane Battier and Pao Gasol left, but I did love those guys.
dmsilev
@Ailuridae: In the city, in Hyde Park.
dms
piratedan
@JCT: most likely because they’ve had to fire folks for violating HIPAA protocols by taking too personal an interest in the victims…or so I’ve heard.
hilts
Timely read in light of the upcoming MLK holiday
The Martin Luther King You Still Don’t See on TV
http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/01/14/the-martin-luther-king-you-still-dont-see-on-tv
Calming Influence
@lamh32: Google “interference engines” and see if yours is one. If so, and you have >90k miles on your timing belt, spend the $500 now to avoid spending $2,000 on bent valves/broken pistons later. If your engine is non-interference and your finances are currently bleak, you can safely risk drifting to the side of the road and just adding a towing charge in addition to your $500 timing belt if it fails on you.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ailuridae: Even if we could get that “everyone on equal footing” thing, that wouldn’t last after their competition started. In order to work it is self defeating. IOW, just like raw capitalism.
Zach
Groundbreaking news in Science Magazine this week that casts doubt as to the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s Presidency:
What does this have to do with Obama, you ask? Well, had this result been published before June 2004, Barack Obama would never have won the Illinois Senate race. You see, he was up against a formidable challenger in Jack Ryan. Formidable, that is, until the Tribune got his divorce records with Jeri Ryan (yes that one) unsealed:
This revelation quickly led to Ryan suspending his campaign. Alan Keyes gamely joined in and the rest is history. However, had this bit of science been known in 2004, Ryan would’ve simply responded that he was stating scientific fact.
Ailuridae
@dmsilev:
Oh my. Are you a U of C er? I am (96) and miss Hyde Park a ton. If it weren’t so isolated (I don’t drive) I would probably move back.
Ailuridae
@Dee Loralei:
They’re on the short list. They still don’t draw even when they win. The Hornets are a near certainty. I would put the Grizz at 60/40
JCT
@piratedan: LOL, yah — maybe I won’t bring that up during any of the interviews.
To be honest, those sorts of firings happen all the time after high-profile admissions. Momentary curiosity has killed many a job. Has happened at UCLA Med Center several times (most recently after Michael Jackson’s death) and awhile back at Columbia-Presbyterian (can’t remember which celeb it was).
In the NY hospitals I’ve worked at they often go to great lengths to make famous patient’s charts inaccessible. Used to be a problem for house officers when they were called to see someone urgently in the middle of the night and the charts had to be released from their undisclosed locations….
dmsilev
@Ailuridae: Sort of. I work there, but (thankfully) my student days are well in the past. I’m also a 1996 grad, but from a different Hell-on-Earth (MIT, to be exact).
I don’t drive either, and for the most part it isn’t a big deal in Hyde Park. Neighborhood is compact enough to walk from end to end in a half hour or so, and there’s a few bus lines to downtown, plus the Metra, plus you can take the bus to either the Green or Red El lines.
dms
Jager
@Francis:
Francis, I have been to Thailand, on a side trip during my government sponsored tour of Viet Nam. I remember arriving and have a hazy recollection of leaving, not so much inbetween. One of my buddies said we did go to the “world’s smallest bar, damned if I remember.
Ailuridae
@Barb (formerly Gex):
I wrote I might be sympathetic. I would never agree. As it stands libertarianism is a pretty self-serving industry proffered by the privilege like Kain and McArdle against those that haven’t been born into such privilege.
suzanne
@JCT:
It’s a great hospital. I helped paint a mural in the pediatric ward.
City sucks, though. Unless you’re rich. Then it’s awesome.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ailuridae: I was expanding on your point. Sorry if it looked like I mistook your intent.
piratedan
@JCT: I get ya, I used to have a job on the medical support software side of things and sometimes had to help our clients track down who transgressed on a couple of occaisions. I guess there’s good money to be had in knowing if someone has elevated potassium levels or some such but that was never my kind of fetish….
suzanne
@Boudica: How’s your daughter liking UA? I graduated from there in ’02 and have mostly fond memories of the place. I didn’t like the city, but the University itself was nice. They’ve built a whole lotta dorms there since I left.
Ailuridae
@dmsilev:
Is it still a fantastic place to work? I did IT stuff there for a bit after finishing and it was great. I live close to the green line here (Chicago and Ashlandish) so when I head down I tend to get off and just make then short walk from 51st 55th or 63rd (I hate waiting on buses.
It probably isn’t as bad as I remember but when I last lived there I was in HP Tower and commuting to Rosemont (honestly) so I might just be embittered.
Ailuridae
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Ah no worries and apologies from me. Libertarianism’s existence just makes me pissy.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ailuridae: I’m with you there. I’m beginning to think that the phrase “crazy is doing the same thing and expecting different results” was invented after several debates with a libertarian.
fucen tarmal
anyone watching bill maher? carville is wearing his purple green and gold power rugby shirt, maybe he is signalling he wants back in the game, haven’t seen that shirt, or one like it since “the war room”
dmsilev
@Ailuridae: Yeah, it’s a pretty good place to work. I’ve enjoyed the stuff I do, and I like the folks in the department.
Commuting all the way to Rosemont, especially on the El, must have been real amusing. That’s what, an hour and a half in each direction?
dms
Ija
Fellow BJers, I have a weird request, but please bear with me. Slate Audio Book Club is allowing readers to vote for the book they will discuss in the month of February. The book club is basically just three Slate writers talking about the book, and you can download the podcast. I really, really want to hear them talk about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, which is my favorite book of 2010 (and a book Obama read during his recent vacation). Currently the book is getting its ass kicked by Room by Emma Donoghue, a book I also read and found tedious.
So, if you guys want to make a fellow commenter really, really happy, I would appreciate it if you could go to this page and vote for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (scroll down about halfway down the page to vote). Of course, if you have your own favorite book among the choices, you should vote for that instead.
http://www.slate.com/id/2280713/
I know, I know, what am I doing still reading Slate. But the book club is usually pretty decent, maybe because the people involved are the culture writers, not the people from the contrarian political side. Here is a link to past podcasts of the book club in case anybody is interested. They talked about Freedom recently.
http://media.slate.com/media/slate/Podcasts/ABC/abc1.xml
Thanks for your help. If this is inappropriate, I apologize.
Ailuridae
@dmsilev:
It was a long long time and before the i-pod. I did some combination of the 2, Jeffrey or Metra to downtown and then the Blue Line out to Rosemont where I was mercifully a block from the blue line (in the big corporate developments out there.)
My work covered my commuting costs up to 100/month so I used the metra route pretty often. The worst part is that I took another job at U of C after I moved up here and then had to do 65% of the commute in reverse for a year or so.
Ija
A little background about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It’s basically a book about a Dutch trader in Japan at the end of the 18th century who fell in love with a Japanese woman. My first impression was, yeah yeah, another book about a white guy coming to the Orient and falling in love with a cherry blossom beauty, how tedious. But Mitchell managed to overcome the limitations of the genre through his plot and gorgeous writing. The Japanese characters are equally fleshed out as the white guys. In fact, the title is probably pretty misleading, since there are long stretches of the novel where Jacob disappears completely and it’s all about the Japanese characters. It’s a wonderful book, and I’m not usually into historical fiction. So that’s my pitch for the book. Here are links to some reviews. Michiko Kakutani likes it, so there’s that. (Although that might be a turnoff to some people).
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/books/29book.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/books/review/Eggers-t.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062904512.html
Mark S.
@Ailuridae:
God he’s been an asshole lately. He’s determined to fuck the players and the fans with a lockout that everybody thinks is inevitable.
Hasn’t he been commissioner for long enough? Do these guys ever fucking retire?
Ron
I think the Ravens – Steelers game will require some serious tums to deal with. I would not be at all surprised to see the score something like 16-13. Was really hoping the Chiefs could pull off the upset last week. Ah well.
JCT
@suzanne: I was quite impressed by the hospital the last time I visited.
Hah — exactly how I felt about NYC until I was finally earning a living wage.
Ailuridae
@Mark S.:
If you ever want to read something galling read up on his role in fucking Connie Hawkins. Evil, evil shit.
burnspbesq
@Francis:
Theoretically, libertarians should be in favor of progressive taxation. The state exists to protect private property rights, which libertarians say are the foundation of everything, and the more you have, the more you benefit, so you should be happy to contribute more to support the state.
In practice … not so much.
Ailuridae
@Josh James:
You’ve been added to “blogs I deign to read”. Awesome design, btw.
burnspbesq
@sidhra:
Joyce DiDonato broke her leg in the middle of a performance of “Le Nozze di Figaro” a couple of years ago, and finished the opera from a wheelchair. It’s available on DVD.
Ailuridae
@Ija:
It is a wondrous book. Really gorgeously written.
burnspbesq
@Mark S.:
There are those of us who lurrrrrrrrrrrrve the idea of an NBA lockout. Kyrie Irving and Austin Rivers together? Oh yes, this will be fun.
fordpowers
house pants make everything better………..
wish i could wear them all day
Ailuridae
@fordpowers:
What are house pants?
Ija
@Ailuridae:
Yup. In a better world, David Mitchell would be more widely read than Jonathan Franzen.
Ailuridae
@Ija:
In a better world, Franzen would edit Mitchell’s books. Man, I hate Jonathan Franzen.
Ija
@Ailuridae:
I’m torn whether I hate Franzen, or the hype about Franzen. But then I remember the tedious experience of reading The Corrections and Freedom, and I realize it’s Franzen himself I hate. The hype is just added noise.
burnspbesq
It’s been a long time since I went straight to the record store right after work on Tuesday because I couldn’t wait to get my hands on something that was being released that day.
I’m starting to think I may do that next Tuesday. What I’m hearing of the new Decemberists record, I am really liking.
Ailuridae
@Ija:
I hate him for many reason but specifically as he legitimizes hipsterdom (which is why critics in their 30s spank off to his shit). As much as hipsters need to be written about it should be surly, cynical and mocking.
frosty
@lamh32: Well, when I said a couple hundred, that was ballpark. $500 isn’t out of the question. And you gotta do the timing belt. Mine’s supposed to be done every 60,000, I pushed it to 90K and feel lucky that I made it without any damage.
Mnemosyne
@Ash Can:
I have down jackets that zip all the way up, so I think I’ll be okay. I may also knit it at a slightly tighter gauge to make it a little more windproof.
@Ailuridae:
@dmsilev:
I live in Los Angeles, I don’t ski, and I own three down coats. I really don’t like cold.
What I’m actually hoping for is nice sunny days with temps between 20 and 30 degrees, with maybe a day or two of snow right in the middle of the week. That I could live with. But I’ve already warned G that if it dips past 10 below, his family is going to have to come see us at the B&B, ’cause I ain’t going outside. There’s a reason I haven’t traveled to Chicago in the winter for over 20 years.
Ash Can
@Ailuridae:
House pants are the pants that you’ve had since you were a teenager and are the only pair from your youth that still fit you after all these years because they’re rump-sprung and stretched all to shit, and they’re faded to a ghastly color and have holes in all the wrong places and are by far the softest and comfiest pair that you own because they’ve been through the wash more often than Halliburton’s income statement. You wouldn’t be caught dead in public in them because they’re such an eyesore you can’t look at your own reflection in the mirror without turning to stone, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to get rid of them because they’re so comfy.
Ash Can
@Mnemosyne:
Yep, you’ll be fine. Wear something on your head too, though. Especially when you’re walking through the various concrete wind tunnels downtown, it’s not so much the temperature but the wind that will get you.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Do tell. Sounds like a “balloonbagger problem” to me.
BTW, President Obama may tut-tut you fiercely on your profanely shameful yet still impotent incivility toward your fellow 2/3 of a countryperson.
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Cliff
@quaint irene: get a IR heater .. like one of those parabolic ones, they heat where you point them instead of wasting energy heating the air .. there are many models out there.
Ailuridae
@Ash Can:
Ah, understood. I more have house jeans.
I thought house pants were an extension of house shoes which is essentially a black Chicago term for slippers.
Ailuridae
@Ash Can:
Ah, understood. I more have house jeans.
I thought house pants were an extension of house shoes which is essentially a black Chicago term for slippers.
Ija
I’m not certain which of these two articles are worse. On the one hand, forcing your seven-year-old to practice piano while forbidding her to go the bathroom until she masters the piece seems borderline abusive. On the other hand, encouraging your child to give up playing a musical instrument because you can’t stand to listen to kids playing at recitals seems borderline selfish and neglectful. My question is, where are these women’s husbands in all this? They are not single mothers, they have husbands. Are their husbands so neglectful of the children they barely feature?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_us_mostpop_read
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703333504576080422577800488.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Mnemosyne
@Ash Can:
I made my Beanpole Beanie before anything else, so I’m all set hatwise.
(Not a picture of me or anyone I know, just a handy one that popped up in Flickr.)
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
Wonderful work mnem!!
freelancer
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
It’s 3/5ths of a person, McTroll, work on your math skills.
Ash Can
@Mnemosyne: Great hat!
gwangung
@Ija: I think it’s very fair to say that the WS Journal hacked the hell out of the book to put out a sensationalist article. See
http://disgrasian.com/2011/01/battle-hymn-of-the-tiger-mother-you-hated-the-excerpt-now-read-the-book/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2011%2F01%2F13%2Fapop011311.DTL
Not that I’m surprised. It looks like the Murdoch mentality has finally leaked into the editorial side.
Ailuridae
@Ija:
Not sure about the “Chinese Mother” phenomenon. A girlfriend from college was Chinese and from one of these families. She was a good enough student that she got into Berkley from out of state. As an Asian. National merit scholar and all that.
She also chewed her cuticles raw from the stress of being her parents’ daughter and probably has tried to off herself with a combination of sleeping pills and booze a dozen times.
If I had to pick I would take option A versus the Jewish mother largely because the latter seems completely unaware that her kids can’t help but be successful.
As for the husbands from dating girls of both of these households I get the impression that the dad especially as it relates to female children is the spoiler. Stecey, the girl from college said that every positive memory she had of growing up in relation to family stuff was when her Dad would break the routine of three hours of piano and take she and her sister for ice cream or into DC to sight see.
asiangrrlMN
@Mnemosyne: I love that hat.
@gwangung: Yeah. However, I’ve read other things that say she has no regrets. And, I have to admit when I read Julianne’s post over at TNC’s place, I had a very bad reaction to reading the snippets from the book.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ailuridae: Chinese parents can be very demanding. In Jr. High we had seven classes. I was allowed to get two non-A’s, and those had to be higher than a B- or I was grounded for 9 weeks until the next report card. My cousins fared no better.
ETA: In our family if you are not a MD or JD, you’re a waste.
gwangung
@asiangrrlMN: Given that her kids are still young, I think she’s going to have to write a sequel on how she changed her mind.
Ailuridae
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Yeah, I understand that. My best friend is the black sheep of a Korean American family. He’s a computer wunderkind (full ride to Michigan from out of state) and leads an immensely comfortable life. His parents are openly quite embarrassed of him (his sisters are both MDs) and essentially say stuff like “I always knew you were rotten apple”.
I grew up in a demanding house and we were simply expected to be academically and athletically excellent. But nothing like what Chua writes about. To give you an indication of the level of compettive zeal in our house, my second grade teacher, tired of me blowing through school work with atrocious penmanship failed me in handwriting for a quarter in 2nd grade. My parents framed it. Now long divorced they still refer to it as their “greatest embarrassment” as parents.
But yeah, that was nothing once I got to the bog city and met Indian, Chinese, Korean and Jamaican kids.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ailuridae: Jamaican? I find it interesting that I didn’t know that.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
The SF Gate article makes it sound like the book is about her changing her mind when she realizes that she’s going to destroy her relationship with her younger daughter if she doesn’t lighten up. So it’s not “yay Chinese mother parenting!” so much as “well, some parts worked out okay and others didn’t.”
Ailuridae
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Yeah, Chua mentions it in the article (I think). I know some Jamaicans and more broadly West Indians who raise their kids by standards that would make anyone outside of Asian Americans blush. I taught chess to some Jamaicans years back here in Chicago (compared to the East Coast we have very few) and those kids were terrified of authority figures. I see some of them today and they are 23 or 24 and they still address me as “Sir” and thank me for the two hours a week they could enjoy themselves. Studying chess (I never trained a master but have 11 experts under my belt) was their relief from studying everything else.
Again, i can’t quibble with the results. Tough way to grow up though
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly Gex):
You must not have watched “In Living Color” in the 90s.
Mnemosyne
@Ailuridae:
Colin Powell’s parents immigrated to the US from Jamaica. ‘Nuff said.
Ailuridae
@Mnemosyne:
Ha! My friend was shipping cigs into IL form IN and reselling them (it was a huge enterprise) 8 months into medical school. His reasoning was that Rush wouldn’t allow outside work but his parents didn’t understand someone not working.
This all ended with the CPD “seizing” $1600 in cigarettes from us in the parking lot to Soldier Field at a Phish show. They were nice enough to not arrest either of us though.
Ija
@gwangung:
Given that her kids are still young, I think it’s too early for her to write a book extolling her parenting skills. Who knows how her kids would actually turn out as adults. There’s something very tempting fate about this.
Ija
The photographs in the two articles are actually quite revealing of the simplistic mind at work at WSJ. In Amy Chua’s article, her daughters are shown playing piano and violin, while in Ayelet Waldman’s article, her children are shown reading magazines and playing video game (at least that’s what I think that blue thing is). Hey look, permissive Western mom who lets her kids read magazines and play video games versus strict Chinese mom with kids who excel at playing musical instruments. Oh the stereotype. Both women look equally smug, though.
goatchowder
@lam32. Timing belts are cheap. Taking the whole @%@% engine apart to get to the timing belt in order to change it, not so much.
Ija
This article by Hanna Rosin is actually a better counterargument to Amy Chua. She doesn’t come across as self-indulgent as Ayelet Waldman.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959104576082434187716252.html
jinxtigr
Huh. New site design, with gravatars yet.
Oh noes, I am unmasked! (watch how the entire BJ readership has furry gravatars or at least cute animals)
What’s the moderated word in that? I didn’t even say socialism. If ‘furry’ is moderated there will be spankings from Tunch.