Nope, I’m not dead. But I have been dealing with some old-ladyish health problems, even though I’m not really old. (And some churlish individuals might dispute my claim to being lady-like.)
Anyhoo, chicken update: I moved the critters to the coop. My kid had the genius idea of activating the record feature on her iPhone and propping it against the side of the coop to capture the half-grown chicks in action at their eye level:
They’re all pretty tame, and one flies up and sits on my arm like a parrot. What are you up to this weekend?
Linda Featheringill
Awwwww. The girls are sweet!
Linda Featheringill
On the political front, I noticed at TPM that Romney & Co. are concerned that Obama is dealing with Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union incorrectly.
Oh, my.
Captain Howdy
You may have seen the NYT piece this week on fowl sanctuary in Portland.
Up to this weekend: Couch potato for Knicks’ & Rangers’ games on Saturday. Then taking in the late set at the Jazz Standard (the great Regina Carter). Sunday: getting baked (via special brownies) and watching Three Stooges (movie).
It’s a full life fraught with peril and adventure.
the fugitive uterus
cheep, cheep! mornin’ chickies.
Meanwhile, Sean Hannity says mutant shrimp and fish with lesions make an excellent source of protein for poor people!
not sure if I will ever eat seafood again.
Phylllis
Celebrating our first anniversary with yard work and a trip to the grocery store. Oh and dinner out tomorrow night at our favorite semi-upscale joint. Plus tinkering with a grant narrative I’m working on, and Braves baseball on the teevee.
ornery_curmudgeon
So you are an animal lover, or at least have familiarity with animals.
I would like you to know that I well remember the post you made deriding dressage … and Kay’s (ow! Not Kay!)I also remember how you and the other fp’s kept that line of attack in spite of people here explaining and asking you (them) not to.
I’m not intending to be negative, just want you to know that it made a HUGE impression that the attacks happened, and that I’m very glad you didn’t continue. No lasting bad feelings … but there were a great deal of emotions involved there. For whatever reason, it is to your credit and others that you stopped. Thank you.
dmsilev
Last night, I went to see Ian McDiarmid at Chicago Shakespeare (in the titular role in Timon of Athens). Very highly recommended; I’d urge anyone who is going to be in the Chicago area over the next month or so to go see it. Sadly, he didn’t shoot lightning bolts from his fingers even once.
Betty Cracker
@ornery_curmudgeon: I would like YOU to know that the horrible psychic trauma from the Dressage Derision Incident kept me up for days and might very well be the cause of the health problems referred to in the present post.
I can’t speak for the other FPers, of course, but I can tell you that I bitterly regret calling for the torture and dismemberment of dressage horses and their conversion into Alpo. (Well, even if I never said that in so many words, we all know that was what was really meant when I implied that Mrs. Romney was a fancy-schmancy, out-of-touch, rich, horse-dancing lady, amirite?)
Yes, the attacks happened, a great deal of emotions were involved, HUGE impressions were made, and it is all well remembered, etc. I just hope we can all move on with our lives somehow…
ornery_curmudgeon
Yeah. You are not going to be a favorite of mine, Betty, you’re not that clued in.
It is not that you were calling for the dismemberment of horses that have been schooled in dressage. It is that you were signaling a tie between dressage and frivolous elitist wealth.
I believe things are going to get much worse for the economy, I hope not but that’s what I see. And it is possible rich people will become targets of some kind. Horses already have the unfortunate status marker with abusive aristocracy.
As a result of class resentment, Britain banned Fox Hunting under Tony Blair a couple years ago, (though still allowing the killing of foxes with guns, poison or traps) . Let’s not throw horses into the political conflict ok?
SiubhanDuinne
On the road in Alabama. Meetings yesterday in Birmingham, today in Tuscaloosa, back to Atlanta tonight.
Haven’t given the weekend much thought yet, but I know i’ll be watching the W.H. correspondents dinner Saturday night.
Valdivia
Hope your lady problems get resolved soon.
No big plans for the weekend except marching again the War on Women tomorrow.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: I am most concerned with their inability to get a handle on Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires. I mean, they are empires, for god’s sake.
otmar
Has this been posted here yet:
http://i.imgur.com/XOAOa.png
/ol
Josie
Thanks for the chicken update, even though each one turns me pea green with envy. I love the way young birds look like aliens and then turn into pretty birds, sort of like the story of the ugly duckling. Some day I will have my chickens. Oh, yes, some day I will. Hope you get your health issues resolved soon.
aimai
Is ornery curmudgeon some kind of bizarre joke bot?
At any rate, Betty, I’m concerned for your health. Take care of yourself. Yours is a unique and really loved voice on the internet and you, JC, and Kay are the people I’d most like ot have a drink with at Balloon Juice. Well, and DougJ and Mistermix, of course. And the chickens.
aimai
Joseph Nobles
@ornery_curmudgeon: At some point, you are going to produce the Heritage study that shows that 29% of people under the poverty line have dressage ponies of their own, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@otmar: Daenerys is working to learn and become qualified to rule. No comparison to la Palin.
And if you want to make Obama a Stark, Jon Snow might be the better comparison. Birth subject to rumors, etc.
Hodor, hah!
@aimai: You don’t want to drink with chickens. The ones that don’t get mean, get morose.
ornery_curmudgeon
@Betty Cracker: Let me be clear: the HUGE impression made was not emotional trauma, but that fp writers like yourself would choose to make a blind attack on something they did not understand, and be so condescending to others ‘on their side’ throughout … and be unwilling to learn about something they were attacking.
Plus trying to incite the Democratic political infrastructure to create these attacks.
Because of the attack on dressage of all things, I realized I don’t necessarily respect the fp’ers political instincts here, and that as a liberal I’m not sure I want your particular brand of “leftist” political thought to have great influence. That was the impression made.
schrodinger's cat
My plan this week, clear up the house, go grocery shopping, decide whether to go visit India and participate on the 10th and 13th day ceremonies for FIL, where I am sure there will major awkwardness at the very least or a family melodrama at its very worst.
Work on a research proposal on derivative markets and the financial meltdown, using network analysis.
Or do nothing and watch movies and hang out with teh kittehs.
cathyx
I always love a good dressage fight in the morning. Is it too early for popcorn? Maybe kettle corn, I love kettle corn.
Omnes Omnibus
@ornery_curmudgeon: Jesus, Christ, a large number of activities that I enjoy, despite being not particularly wealthy, get called out as upper class markers. Hell, I’ve done some riding in my distant past. Wine, classical music, art collecting, skiing …. You made your point; ordinary, everyday people do participate too. They don’t have six figure horses, air conditioned stables, and multiple employees like the Romneys, but let’s pretend that owning a sunfish sailboat is the same as owning an America’s Cup contender. Can you drop it now, or are you going to become like m_c on your pet issue?
Schlemizel
@Joseph Nobles:
No but I bet nearly 100% of the people that care for, feed and train dessaaaaaaaaaaaage horsies live below the poverty line so its not at all an elitist thing.
BTW – I know its early in the year but I want to nominate O_C for BJ troll comment of they year – this ones a winner!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Cool! Quite a clever idea by your kiddo. Feel better.
ornery_curmudgeon
@Joseph Nobles: At some point, you are going to produce the Heritage study that shows that 29% of people under the poverty line have dressage ponies of their own, right?
Rural poor can and do in fact ride dressage (it’s not a breed, just a system of empathetic training) and Joseph, I truly believe if more horsemanship were available for the poor it would be a great thing.
Dressage is basic cavalry science, and only since WWII’s disbandment of cavalry has it widely spread to the civilian population. It is the basis of ‘enlightened’ (ie, humane) riding, first discovered by the ancient Greeks. It’s in a new phase now, expanding, and I hope you might even get a chance to experience it in some way.
Dressage is not exclusive, you can practice it on your backyard horse, and millions do. It has basic levels (the ‘dancing’ is just how it looks at highest level), you can have meaningful enjoyment without spending thousands. And really, horses eat grass, poor people can and do have horses: it is only expensive at the very top (as in most sports). I’d like to expand the opportunity for people to ride, I don’t think the ‘nobility’ should keep this wonderfully positive thing for themselves.
To help raise up our fellow man is a basic tenet of liberalism, and I think rediscovering our common equestrian heritage–for all people–would be a wonderfully advancing achievement.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus:
who gives a fuck?
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes I see the m_c thing, looking for excuses to drag some old “wound” into every thread. If o_c shows up on the Thursday recipe exchange to whine about this alleged insult we will know we have a winner.
Any chance o_c is actually m_c but with a new burr under the saddle?
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: That was actually the point I was trying to make.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Linda Featheringill: That’s just gotcha questions of no substance. We don’t expect foreign policy advisers to actually have to know anything about foreign stuff now, do we? Besides, we all know the really important issue that voters will base their decision on this election will be Can Mitt Romney make Boring Sexy
Shoot me now.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: roger that
JPL
Betty, Thanks to you and your youngin for the great video.
It seems a little early for Doug to be trolling but I’ll add that if dressage helps Mrs. Romney deal with her MS, good. She should be a spokes person for alternative therapies.
Less Popular Tim
Wow, those chickens are really in that awkward adolescent phase. I bet getting them to clean their rooms or turn down that awful hippity-hop “music” is a major war. I hope you can get them through this period without them doing alot of experimentation with drugs and rainbow parties and what-not
PurpleGirl
@Schlemizel: Any chance o_c is actually m_c but with a new burr under the saddle?
I was just thinking that too.
LGRooney
Blasts in Ukraine
The usual autocratic nonsense. They have intelligence some nutbag(s) want(s) to carry out something like this allowing them to: a) make sure that their own are well and clear of the target; b)ensure that a news cycle is removed from coverage of their opposition gaining international sympathy or of the opposition starting to close ranks; c) engender international sympathy so the world will back off pressure based on the situation in b) above (“We’re all Ukrainians, now!”); and, d) allow them to apprehend the perpetrators quickly making them look efficient and tough.
Unfortunately, Ukraine is one of the places where both sides actually do it.
schrodinger's cat
@PurpleGirl: Nah, no WAI, the grammar and punctuation is much better as is the spelling.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: My gut feel is it’s Doug.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Javamanphil: Boring != sexy. Mitt Romney is too square to be sexy. MSM bots give it a rest.
ornery_curmudgeon
@Schlemizel: people that care for, feed and train dessaaaaaaaaaaaage horsies
This is what I mean: the front pager led attacks have ‘trained’ or given permission to you to attack, sneer, demean.
The larger point is, I think this is why we are floundering: liberalism is NOT the mirror image of the Right. Liberalism is about attracting, expanding a franchise to include. Never blind attacking, demeaning the interests of others, etc. The liberal word Progressive was coined to illustrate this difference from Right/Left fighting.
It is the Right that is limited to making attacks others and enforcing tribal purity to enforce unity (and the frustrated Left, too often) … but the Right will usually win that fight one way or another because they represent money interests. Liberalism gains unity by its principles of inclusion and acceptance.
The attacks on dressage are illustrating the loss of understanding of even what liberal thought is about. We will lose in a war against the Right, even if we win, if we use totalitarian techniques of attacking differences.
In fact, even if it ‘worked’ we don’t need to attack his wife or her interests. Romney participated in the destruction of American businesses and outsourcing labor and raiding of pensions. That is the truth by which liberals (or as the corporate media calls us ‘the Left’) can win. That is the message to unite people.
Schlemizel
@ornery_curmudgeon: Boy, if you think I need permission to attack, demean and sneer you don’t read my posts much. I actually got your point although you did your darnedest to make me not care about it & have actually completed the job in this thread. To the point I went the other way. On purpose.
Reminds me of a line from Monty Pythons Upper Middle-Class Twit Of the Year:
“This boy doesn’t know when he is losing!”
“In fact he doesn’t know when he is winning, he has no external sensory perception what so ever!”
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: teh kittehs. Every time. I am shocked you would even consider other options.
So hubby arrived ?
Schlemizel
@Schlemizel:
BTW – see my comment yesterday about who gives a shit about what we losers on BJ say in comments. This is not the official liberal party line here & hardly represents anything but the mindless clucking of us chickens.
Now go away or I shall taunt you again
I guess I’m in a Montey Python frame of mind today.
handsmile
Turned on the intertubes machine this morning to learn that Pep Guardiola is stepping down as the coach of Barcelona FC. This caps an absolutely gutting week for fans of that magnificent club. (And with this morning’s report that Spain’s unemployment rate has climbed to 24.4%, for fans of that magnificent country as well.) It’s a shame that football (the real football!) posts have largely disappeared from this site.
amk
@handsmile: Hey from another barc fan. Blues just got lucky.
handsmile
@Schlemizel: (#40)
Just don’t wave your privates at his aunties.
gogol's wife
@ornery_curmudgeon:
For Pete’s sake, she was deriding Ann Romney, not dressage. This is so tiresome.
schrodinger's cat
@amk: He will arrive this afternoon (9.00pm IST). The funeral is on Saturday.
ornery_curmudgeon
@Schlemizel: Taunt me all you want, Schlem. Of course you are right that you can make attacks all on your own. But you were given the idea to attack dressage, it wasn’t yours.
As for the searching questions of whether I’m DougJ or whoever … does it matter? I could be Ann Romney for all anyone knows. Only the ideas behind what I’m saying matter in this online context.
If I’ve explained myself poorly please give me constructive criticism, I’d like to be better. Liberals don’t need personality politics, the Right/Left conflict mindset does. We just need to stand for our principles, of which inclusion and tolerance are key.
I’ll stop now. You’re welcome :)
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: Hope you are holding up well.
jibeaux
Do you dressage the chickens? That might be a very good way of signaling your deep regret over this issue, Betty.
Unfortunately dressaging the chickens sounds like a reasonably tasty Frenchified way to prepare them, possibly involving some lemons, butter, and capers, but I’m sure you’ll find a way around that.
Damn, I should not have tried to substitute fruit for breakfast.
schrodinger's cat
@amk: Thanks I am much better this morning, a good night’s sleep helped.
the fugitive uterus
@ornery_curmudgeon: i’m on the tail end of this but i must concur that horses, like the poor and middle class, are exploited by the rich. beyond that, evil humans are fair game.
the fugitive uterus
really, if you haven’t read the Al Jazeera article about the mutant and lesion-ridden horrors that fishermen are pulling out of the Gulf, i highly recommend it. before or after breakfast, not sure.
if there has already been a post about this, i apologize. have not been around in the past few days, i miss a lot.
handsmile
@amk: (#42)
If I understand your comment to be that Guardiola will accept the soon-to-be-vacant Chelsea job, I would have to disagree. At his press conference this morning, Guardiola emphasized the relentless demands, the “pressures and passions,” of the head coaching position that led him to this decision. I simply can’t see him wanting to work for the mercurial (to be charitable) Roman Abramovich.
(One occasionally awkward aspect of Open Threads is that someone will write about a matter of truly important personal consequence, as schrodinger’s cat does above, and I feel rather foolish bleating on about something as ultimately trivial as football.)
amk
@handsmile: Nah, I was talking about blues getting to CL finals while barcs had an upper hand in both their semis most of the time.
handsmile
@amk: (#53)
Oh yeah well that….
When one side has 79%, then 82%, ball possession and 14/3, then 23/6, goal attempts and still loses, I must look to metaphysics for an answer.
Bayern Munich’s name might as well be already engraved on the trophy as the 2012 winner, imo.
Rosalita
@jibeaux:
Excellent! We had a nice morning chicken zen thing going on until it got a little too testy (before coffee).
Comrade Mary
@otmar: This Canuck modified it a bit. Fonts matter, y’all.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@ornery_curmudgeon: It’s too fucking early to have to listen to this level of crybaby butthurt bullshit. Your passive-aggressive whiny pity party is possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read here.
Oh wait, no, this is:
This one sentence drips with so much condescension and unaware privilege it is mind-boggling. When you find a horse that can live in my 400 square foot backyard and that eats for free, you let me know.
Mnemosyne
@ornery_curmudgeon:
Oh, I’m pretty sure we could have figured out on our own how to mock horses that have their own personal masseurs on staff.
But I’m sure that every single mother living in a trailer whose kid belongs to 4H keeps a horse masseur on staff, amirite?
Mnemosyne
Back on topic (of the open thread), it’s when chickens are adolescents that you can really see that dinosaur heritage, IMO. They have that raptor look, like they’re trying to figure out how your eyeballs would taste.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: Totally true. I often repeat the last words of the unfortunate gamekeeper character in “Jurassic Park” when observing my adolescent hens: “Clever Girl!”
Yutsano
@Schlemizel:
I saw what you did there.
@Mnemosyne: @Betty Cracker: I have often wondered if dinosaurs did indeed taste like chicken. I think they were closer to emu, which has a more blood red tone and deeper beef-like flavour. Oh and is wonderful.
I highly recommend forages into the yard for bugs Betty. Chickens are omnivores and will eat grass as well as keep the pests down. Not as well as a guinea fowl (which is an insectivore) but still you’ll notice. Oh and watching a chicken chase a fly is extremely entertaining. Also. Too.
Schlemizel
@ornery_curmudgeon:
I could believe you are Ann Rmoney – we know your backyard is large enough to support equine residence.
I confess – if not for Betty and a couple other FPs here it would never occur to me to make fun of people who put on funny clothes and make horses do odd tricks. Mea maxima culpa.
However, even if you were correct in your assessment of the unfair attacks on stupid pet tricks and actually had a legitimate complaint at one time why bring it here much later? Why bring it in such a whiny way?
Get over your butthurt, people say offensive things here every day but the grown ups are able to play it off as someone having a bad day or being insensitive about some topic that means more to me than to them. They mention it at the time and move on.
And trying to play pointing and laughing at dresaaaaaaaaaaage as a horrible thing for a liberal to do? Thats a maybe but I doubt it and, in my case, it was not the activity I was making fun of it was the arrogant air of privilege exhibited but its most vocal practitioners – and there you served as an excellent example.
Mnemosyne
@ornery_curmudgeon:
Okay, now I know you’re just trolling us for fun:
Anyone who tries to defend fox hunting as having an unfairly upper-class reputation is just messing with our heads. Or is secretly m_c, as I seem to recall her defending it before because apparently farmers absolutely love having dozens of horses galloping through their fields in the middle of planting season.
sharl
Well, o_c could be a troll, just having some fun. But assuming sincerity…
On those occasions where I come across someone/something I care about getting a bad rap due to what I perceive as ignorance, I gather up some links and try to do some edumacating. Folks can take it or leave it, of course; eh, whatev (as the kids say), you can only do what you can do.
I was actually curious about the point o_c seemed to be trying to make, though s/he seemed to be in too much of a snit to bother making it well, until well into the comments. And that’s a shame, since for someone who has a genuine passionate loyalty toward the practice of dressage, this presented what is known as a ‘teachable moment’ (original post would have been better for that, but that’s closing the barn door after the water’s gone under the bridge past the spilled milk).
And though it should go without saying, I’ll also say – oh wait, Omnes Omnibus already said it:
ShadeTail
Hey, Betty, your youtube commenters are worried that you’re going to eat them. You might want to go write up a video description confirming their fears.
Paul in KY
@Schlemizel: Don’t think so.
Paul in KY
@jibeaux: Add some dressaged horse to that!
Pangloss
Apparently, Pennsylvania has some God-awful supermarkets.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2012/04/13/12-Worst-Supermarkets-in-America.aspx
Paul in KY
@handsmile: Don’t count Chelsea out yet.
Betty Cracker
@ShadeTail: Jesus God, I’d forgotten how insane YouTube comments were! According to one of them, that clip was on the front page of YouTube at least briefly. Damn my hide for not opting to monetize my YouTubage!
2Crude
Test. Test. Test.