If you’ve been hanging out on blogs for a while, you may recognize a type of commenter who engages in fierce debate, trading gibe for barb, until all sensible folks have retired from the field, only to come back later (usually after a thread has cooled to room temp) to lay down The Last Word. It’s very important, The Last Word, and I suspect the commenter who gets it does a little dance that looks something like this:
I swear I’m not talking about anyone in particular; it’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed on every blog I’ve ever seen. I’ve done it myself a time or two (though I’m not proud of it).
Anyway, open thread!
Ben Cisco
Alabama 5-0 stops a black jogger for jogging while black, gets a free education for his trouble: https://t.co/hPa6kHXg6y
Felonius Monk
Dancing Chickens? Sounds like an apt description of the Republican Presidential Debate Team.
ETA: Or are they the Squawking Chickens?
donnah
Been here, seen that!
It’s human/animal nature and on blogs it’s how people establish a pecking order. But in the end, they get plucked!
Punchy
Just booked a work trip out of a Midwest airport, layover in Detroit, onto Newark. And back, same stops. In mid-December.
What are my odds that at least one of those flights are canceled/delayed/FUBAR’d due to weather or Obama? 65%? 78%? Shall I plan to hold a WebEx standing in a security line in my socks and hoodie?
goblue72
The Last Word
3/4 oz gin
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz green Chartreuse
3/4 oz maraschino liqueur
Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass.
Recipe courtesy Detroit Athletic Club (1920s) as unearthed by Murray Stenson, Zig Zag Club – Seattle (2004)
the Conster
When BJ had a “recent comments” feature in the good old days, it was easier to do that. I remember one of those Greenwald threads that went on for days (I know, shocking, right?), and Kay was the last one left waging an epic battle with him and his flying fanboy monkeys. Good times.
Josie
I love your analogy, Betty. It is so spot on. Now, whenever someone follows this pattern, I will think of the prairie chicken and give up the fight even more quickly than I ordinarily do.
srv
Actually, that video reminds me of someone else:
Just what America needs – another preening leader who can’t make up his minds.
trollhattan
@goblue72:
Sounds vile. Was it first named “Last Drink Before Quitting for Good”?
trollhattan
@srv:
Wow, that’s really going to leave a mark. Or not.
low-tech cyclist
Where’s the Chicken Dance music?!
To be honest, I’ve done that more than once. Sometimes you think of that perfect rejoinder hours or days after everyone else has gone home. And even though you know that nobody’s going to read your latest comment, you feel compelled to write it and hit ‘submit’ anyway.
But (speaking for myself, anyway), no dance. Because my ‘last word’ is going to make the same sound as the proverbial tree that falls in the forest when nobody’s around, and I know it.
Gin & Tonic
@goblue72: I have a vague recollection of a bad evening in the company of green Chartreuse.
patrick II
Sometimes, because life interferes with Balloon Juice commenting, I come back late a thread that has interested me. It has nothing to do with getting “the last word”, and besides my dance looks more like a Tango then whatever that bird is doing.
I’m going to lunch now, I’ll be back later.
amk
@srv:
as opposed to the blowhards from your side who make shite up? didja see the ‘south korean’ kid taking your idjit to the woodshed?
Another Holocene Human
RELEVANT
University of Florida asks its frats nicely not to embarrass them on The Social Networks for another year running:
http://www.alligator.org/news/campus/article_8574497c-7232-11e5-8662-1b9e800fcded.html
Renie
Unlike today cuz I’m home from work, I read threads hours after they have ended. I usually want to comment on something someone else said or add my own thoughts but I don’t bother cuz I know no one is going to read it. Coming in so late makes me miss the opportunity to become a more visible member of the community.
Another Holocene Human
@patrick II: Dead thread necromancy is an art.
Face
@Ben Cisco: He was damn smart to stand in front of the dashcam the whole time. Otherwise I’m guessin he’d have in excess of 50 bruises and a skull fracture for “resisting arrest” for daring to question the po-po.
Paul in KY
I’ve certainly been guilty of that. Main reason is because I only have work computer, so when I leave I am incommunicado with you fine folks until next time I get to work.
jurassicpork
Fox News at its Finest #20.
goblue72
@trollhattan: The drink is rather sublime and the ingredients perfectly balanced. Audrey Saunders, owner of New York’s Pegu Club (one of the most influential of the modern day speakeasies in the country – and an absolutely fantastic place to grab a drink if you are ever in lower Manhattan), calls it it one of the best drinks she has in her bar.
http://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/the-last-word-a-cocktail-reborn-in-seattle-is-on-everyones-lips/
I believe Rachel Maddow may have made one on her show a few years ago.
Tom Levenson
Prairie chicken dances! My day — it is made!
Keith G
Interesting article alert .
Should we completely change the vocabulary we use when we are talking about the American Civil War? Kottke features the work of historian who believes so.
Another Holocene Human
@Punchy: What, they won’t authorize to send you first class on the Lake Shore Limited Chicago to Newark?
They’ve had some on time performance problems, true, but at least you can be late in comfort. Also you can bring as much of libations as you can haul into your first class cabin and drink the whole way.
ETA: stupid me, the train ends at NYC and you would have to change to another train to get to Newark, maybe even NJT with the plebes.
Germy Shoemangler
Robert Benchley wrote an essay about dances with chickens in the 1930s:
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G: How is labor camps better? Almost sounds fun. Strength through joy. They are forced labor camps. But you know what? That’s letting them off too easy. It doesn’t really convey the sadism, perversion, and rape that “plantation” implies.
In the 20th century, “camps” was a euphemism for prisons, internal displacement, murder, and slave labor.
Paul in KY
@Keith G: Sounds good. Think it should be ‘Slave Labor Camps’.
Ben Cisco
@Face: Nope, “B&E suspect shot while attempting to avoid arrest.”
scav
Bottom crawlers (my term for them) are habitual, not that esprit d’escalier that hits everyone once in a while. I think it’s in their handbook (along with the sudden adoption of the fluttering eyelash ingengue vapors) because after a few epic thrashings of garden variety trolls, they’d retreat to a pattern of bottom crawling in threads one or two back and slowly work their way back to the real-time nonsense. There’s some real psycho-drama inward-directed clues there about the critters.
Face
Can I suggest using “Patriots vs. Traitors” terminology instead?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
in today’s edition of “Morbidly Obese Racist Mocks Michelle Obama’s Physique…”, a high ranking Cook County State’s Atty was just exercising his First Amendment rights when posting racist, misogynistic shit on Facebook, during work hours.
Betty Cracker
@Germy Shoemangler: Good old Benchley!
Keith G
@Another Holocene Human: I don’t disagree with your point there. For me it’s a bit of a wash.
You might want to click the link and read the entire article. I do like the notion of doing away with the term Union and just call it the United States Army instead of the Union Army. He makes the point that the United States remained the United States and the term Union should not be used at all because it implies a lesser creation.
Edited to correct a dictation issue.
Shantanu Saha
Speaking for myself, it’s much easier to do the comment chicken dance when the blog you’re commenting on has Disqus or another commenting service that sends you notifications of other people’s responses to your comments. Earlier this year, I got into a comment war on Kevin Drum’s blog with one wingnut who kept coming back with more inane justifications of his viewpoint every time I refuted him.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
So, I’m facing my inability to figure out how to talk to people again. I have a couple of friends that I used to see frequently, but for the last couple of years, it’s mostly been just through Facebook that I’ve interacted with them. They were married four years ago, but recently his Facebook feed has had a number of pictures of him doing things with another woman. She is using her maiden name on Facebook, and I think she changed it when they were married and changed it back, but I’m not positive about that.
Is there a polite way to ask if they’ve gotten divorced?
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker: He said he was the worst reporter who had ever worked on a newspaper. He said that when he was in Venice, he send a telegram to his editor: “Streets flooded – please advise.”
Ben Cisco
@Face: I have a delivery of one, let’s see here, “internets” for you?
Mike J
@Keith G: Lincoln always referred to the rebellion instead of the confederacy.
Punchy
@Another Holocene Human: Gotta travel with a female work companion. Too many libations and suddenly I’m either in divorce court or HR, or both. I’d rather risk the near-certain Detroit Delay (Detroit airport motto: If we can fuck this up, we’ll fuck it up better than anyone!) than a possible hangover, mysterious lipstick stains on my pants zipper, and paternity testing.
Another Holocene Human
@Ben Cisco: Damn.
Keith G
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Start out with the question, “Have you ever seen things on Facebook that leave you perplexed? “
Another Holocene Human
@Punchy: My wife thinks North by Northwest was an instruction manual. Hey, if it gets her as excited about my hobby as I am–!
Keith G
Trashing a duplicate post
Ben Cisco
@Keith G:
This concept has merit.
Another Holocene Human
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Did you check out the “in a relationship” status on FB?
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G: Yeah, I did click over (no comments allowed) and I don’t have an issue with that particular point.
Ben Cisco
@Another Holocene Human: I know, right? He has a set on him, that’s for sure…
srv
Prediction: Biden will now book after her so he can do his chicken dance.
Another Holocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Separated at birth?
https://farenthold.house.gov/
SiubhanDuinne
@goblue72:
What color does that become? Because equal parts green Chartreuse and (red) maraschino liqueur sounds visually awful.
Just One More Canuck
@Keith G: The War of Southern Treason
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah. Nothing for her marriage, but she still lists a couple of his brothers as in-laws. And it lists her maiden name, the one she’s currently using, as an “Other Name.” And she still friends with him.
Another Holocene Human
@Face: Did you get to the part where he said he doesn’t trust police because he was beaten bloody by four cops — in handcuffs?
Another Holocene Human
@Just One More Canuck: The Slavers’ Rebellion
SiubhanDuinne
@patrick II:
We’ll save the last dance for you.
Belafon
@Another Holocene Human: Concentration camps? That’s definitely not meant to imply a fun filled evening.
SiubhanDuinne
@Renie:
I do much the same, Renie, and I suspect there are others. Maybe we should just say “Devil take the hindmost” and post regardless of how long it’s been since the previous comment. At least we’d see each other’s brilliant thoughts.
Bruuuuce
Somehow, Betty Cracker, I see their dance looking more like this one :-) (Though perhaps a little less with the all-out sexy chickenness)
SoupCatcher
@Keith G: I remember that’s one of the things that stood out for me in the posts LTC Robert Bateman wrote about the Civil War at Esquire (sample here). He always referred to the right side as the United States, the United States Army, etc. It was one of those subtle language shifts that I found not so subtle in impact.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Do you know their anniversary? If so, you could ask whether congratulations are merited when it rolls around (but you might have to wait a while for that to happen).
Does it matter whether they’re divorced or not? If not, just let it come out naturally when/if it does.
Or you could call. :-) That way only you and the NSA would know.
HTH a bit.
Cheers,
Scott.
burnspbesq
The math is way beyond my comprehension, but this is a pretty interesting development.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/haldermanheninger/how-is-nsa-breaking-so-much-crypto/
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Well, uhm, if she’s single, I might want to call her and ask if she wants to watch football together again. Which I ought to do even if she’s still married, but takes on a different context.
the Conster
Public Policy Polling shows 27% of polled people think gay marriage negatively impacts them. If your straight marriage is negatively affected by gay marriage, one of you is gay.
ruemara
It may be a certain lack of knowledge on other cultures but I’ve always found the prairie chicken dance to look like church ladies doing their spirit dance. Dead thread victory winners are just lame. Prairie chickens are just cool.
schrodinger's cat
I usually check the next morning if someone has posted a response to the comments I made the night before. Does that make the last word having chicken?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I confess, I have frequently been guilty of this. I’ve mostly broken the habit now, unless the subject is movies. If that’s the case, I just. can’t. stop.
gogol's wife
@Keith G:
That’s excellent.
TG Chicago
This happened to me yesterday in the drone thread.
I was discussing the issue, but then my social life called, so I was away from the computer. I returned to find that some folks after I left had continued to reference federal court cases, but were not providing links as I had requested. (I had looked for these cases without success)
I pointed out that I think they were mistaken as to what the federal courts had actually decided. But that they were welcome to provide links if there are cases that I had missed.
Does that make me a prairie chicken? Did I break netiquette by leaving my computer for a few hours?
I’m sure in some cases, people are indeed “getting the last word” for its own sake. But not in all.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I think this is not a faux pas if it’s movies and if it involves you, me, Elizabelle, or Steeplejack.
TG Chicago
@Paul in KY: Check the caption under the picture at the top of the original article. :-)
Germy Shoemangler
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123137/democrats-request-doj-investigation-exxonmobil
p.a.
More drama at DNC. Can someone (Betty:Floridian) explain to me Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Is she a good fundraiser? Wall St./DLC type? Why her?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@TG Chicago:
It only makes you a prairie chicken if you post something like, Ha! You were unable to post refutations of my points so I win! I win! and do a chicken dance while the rest of us are eating dinner, watching TV, and moving on to other threads.
Sibelius
@Gin & Tonic: Oh, but a C&C, as in cognac and Chartreuse is amazing. Only found it at Nepenthe in Big Sur. Warmed by the fire on the patio overlooking the Big Blue Pacific.
Schlemazel
If you read enough blogs you are more than familiar with “FIRST” posts.
I’m going for LAST
Schlemazel
HA! I WIN!!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Chartreuse is one of those distlled-herb liqueurs that persons looking for a prairie chicken internet fight might suggest tastes like Vicks Forumula 44? Or am I thinking of Benedictine?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I think that’s your answer. Don’t ask if she’s divorced; say you’re wondering if “you’d” like to hang out sometime. Leave it open whether “you” is singular or plural. Or say you’re thinking of having several people over and ask if she’d like to come.
Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Schlemazel: and a Frist Jane! and a Fitzmas to you!
Gravie
I have several Facebook friends who have friends that come in and dominate every discussion said FB friends try to launch. When I see their names pop up in the comments, I immediately make myself scarce. There is nothing to gain, except a lot of aggravation, in trying to have an actual discussion with these folks.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@gogol’s wife:
I got very frustrated in the suffragette thread the other day because there were people who seemed to think that it’s easy to re-write a film to be about Character X instead of Character Y, so why didn’t they make a movie about Princess Sophia Duleep Singh’s work as a suffragette instead of making one about Emmaline Pankhurst? It’s just a matter of changing who you cast as the lead, right?
/headdesk
I’m a little embarrassed I pulled my MFA out of my back pocket for my reply, but I was really frustrated. I know people don’t take writing seriously and think it’s easy, but really?
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: The math does make a lot of sense. This is actually a vector I’ve thought about for a while.
PurpleGirl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Call her and ask her over to your place to watch a football game; then during the conversation you ask if she’s using her “maiden” name for professional purposes or if it’s change in her marriage status. It is a delicate question and probably best done in person.
Reading the husband’s relationship status on FB could mean he’s married or that he’s divorced and in a NEW relationship with the lady whose pictures he now shows on the FB page.
Aleta
This summer I heard a story about the heath hen, similar to the prairie chicken, but lived along the east coast, and then went extinct. Eaten to exrtinction.
They had all disappeared from the mainland, but one last group hung on for awhile on Martha’s Vineyard. Eventually only one was left, a male, who went around the heath doing his dance in solitary. He became famous in the community and beyond before he died. My friend who told the story wrote a song about him, with some good warbling.
scav
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Benedictine. Chartreuse is one of the herby wonders that is also a little peppery (I tended to indulge in the green one, not the yellowish). Or, maybe you just have wildly different Vicks, in which case, I want your Vicks.
Germy Shoemangler
LAST!
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Real Maraschino liqueur is clear, not red.
Patricia Kayden
@Ben Cisco: Seems like Youtube is full of those kind of videos. Thank goodness for phone cameras. They’re racist cops’ worst friend.
Another Holocene Human
@Belafon: In the context of the first half of the twentieth century, concentration camp (KonZentrationslager, or KZ) was absolutely a euphemism for what they actually were. Just as the US had its so-called “internment camps”.
After 1945, the truth about “concentration camp” became known to the world. They got a new name: death camps.
So, to us, today, perhaps it’s confusing to think of a time when it was a euphemism (to cover great crimes) rather than a term evoking terror.
The Nazis used a lot of euphemism in discussing and executing their genocidal aims.
Another Holocene Human
Japanese internment camp is another lie. Internment doesn’t sound as in-your-face as imprisonment, camp seems nicer than a stockade, and Japanese repeats the lie that they’re enemy aliens rather than Americans who have been rounded up extralegally. And the whole term as a stand-in for what happened to them glosses over the theft of their property, businesses, and even their citizenship beyond the theft of their freedom and dignity.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Maybe–I know I am–they are wondering why the project was greenlit in the first place?
Wonder if it fares better than the Amazing Technicolor Transphobic Stonewall.
Intersections. Are a thing.
Another Holocene Human
Speaking of intersections, the 2014 movie Pride about gay activists who go into the countryside to help the miner’s strike in the early 80s has one of the most tearjerky scenes of contemporary cinema, when a beerhall full of dejected protesters starts singing “Bread and Roses”.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: They need to look into that diesel fumes thing. So much ugly there, so little time.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Another Holocene Human:
At the time, the camps for Japanese-Americans were called “concentration camps.” It was only after it was revealed what the Germans were up to that the name was switched as an Okay, look, we may have imprisoned people unjustly, but we never planned to mass exterminate them.
And, really, no movies about white women in history are allowed to be made unless movies about the less well-known women of color in the same time period are made first? Really?
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: I totally do the same thing.
gelfling545
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Check his-her status? If no info there try “So, what’s new with you?”
Another Holocene Human
@the Conster: But if they THINK it negatively affects them, does it amount to the same thing?
“I wish I was special. You’re so very special. But I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo.”
27% of people want to be very special people, better than other folk. The elect. The saved.
Us urban elites just ruined marriage for them.
goblue72
@NotMax: Yup. Maraschino liqueur is a clear liqueur. It is made from sour cherries from Croatia and the pits of the cherries. It has a subtle bitter almond taste and is somewhat dry.
Bears no relation to the American sickly sweet fire engine red “maraschino cherries”.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think there’s too much resentment between the black young feminists that dominate social media and the established white feminists. Black feminists are finally saying shit, but often they seem to forget that just as they feel ignored & excluded from the history of equal rights, so to have white feminists from history itself. The fact that we can tell a herstory now, it’s a goldanged miracle. Bellowing about intersectionality accomplishes what, exactly? I get why we need to talk about it, but why can’t we approach that in a calmer,less perpetually outraged fashion? This movie is still important, we can discuss if there’s something more that could have been said but the flame war over it was damned silly.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
It was especially weird because it’s a British movie, made by a British director from a British writer’s screenplay, about British history, made with an almost entirely British cast (Meryl Streep is probably the “name” that got them funding), and yet it seemed to be Americans who were up in arms. It’s being distributed by Focus Films, so it’s not a Hollywood film by any stretch of the imagination.
The casting issue in general is a genuine problem. Even I, Whitey McWhiterson, can’t help but notice that there are a whole heck of a lot more white people walking around the streets of fictional New York or Los Angeles or Chicago than there are in reality. That’s a problem that more directors need to be cognizant of. I understand why people are pissed off at the all-white extras in the Stonewall movie, because if you look at the actual photos, there are black and brown people rioting, too.
Some directors are doing better — the “John Adams” miniseries was a primarily white cast, but they had black people going about their business in the streets of Boston just like they would have been doing in colonial times.
But as you well know now that you’re sitting in the director’s chair yourself, casting is decided long after the writing’s done, and it’s a pain to have to suddenly switch out a character because you can’t find the right actor.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
Also, too, if you haven’t been watching “Project Greenlight,” producer Effie Brown is becoming the hero and breakout star, just as I predicted. On that show, the director is always a pain in the ass and the producer is always the hero.
Betty Cracker
???????????????
J R in WV
@Punchy:
So you write about airline flights you booked, and then you worry about flights you yourself booked being snafued “due to weather or Obama?”
What the fuck are you trying to say about President Obama? That you expect him to try to fuck with your life by looking up your flights and what? Ordering the Air National Guard to shoot your fucking ass down? Closing down airports you need to use? What, exactly?
You sound like you need hospitalization for your raging insane paranoia!
Go away, now, please.
And your other comments show paranoia about your co-workers. I’ve had co-workers that you need to watch, but I can’t imagine having the suspicions you voice about any of them.
Betty Cracker
???????, damnit!
patricak ii
Cha cha cha
Runt
Does this mean I win?
Hey, at least I have the excuse of being on European time.