Watching the Pens/Caps. Got a lot done today, and am really enjoying the cool breeze. I have all my windows open and I get a great crosswind, and it was just a nice, comfortable 70 all day. The college kids had a baseball game down down over the hill at the park so it felt like I was at a ball game while I was sitting on the front porch working. Also, I forgot how much I just like the smell of outdoor grilling.
Lily had a very peppy day and was acting very much like the pre-illness Lily, and she was even begging for dinner scraps (I made a pot of chicken hot sausage sandwiches yesterday), which she hadn’t done since before she got sick. Right now she is tuckered out and in her bed next to me.
I checked on the bird eggs in the fern, and kept an eye out for mom and pop and did not see them. Eggs are still there, though.
Steve, who has been fed twice today, is currently staging a silent protest at his feeding area:
I refused to give him some more, so now he is just acting the martyr and making a big display of napping in front of his food bowl, apparently so famished he can not move:
I thought I was going to be able to get him his summer shave this week, but the groomers were packed and we are going on Thursday.
schrodingers_cat
Abominable Snow cat is floofy.
Yarrow
Lily! Such a good girl. She must be tired from all that eating. Good to see she’s doing so well. Love that picture of Steve. He looks like a puffball.
Major Major Major Major
Just gave Samwise fresh litter. That’s it, that’s my cat news.
Went to a bbq in El Cerrito this afternoon, which was fine. The ribs took forever because the host kept opening the grill. But in the end they were tasty.
For this evening I think I’ll take it easy, might draw some. No writing though. Had a tough week revising my story and don’t wanna burn out. I’ll get the next draft out by Friday…
Mary G
Thank you, John! So happy to hear Lily is good and hungry. Steve is a drama queen, but at least he’s being quiet about it. He looks YUGE.
p.a.
Starving him then having him shaved? Stock up on gauze and iodine.
(Is iodine still a thing?)
schrodingers_cat
@Mary G: He looks like one of those big Siberian cats.
Mike J
@Major Major Major Major: Ribs are supposed to take forever, opening the grill or not. I’ve rushed them before and gotten decent results in as little as 3 1/2 hours.
dlwchico
In November of last year we adopted two brother kittens. They were supposedly around 6 months old at the time. Been feeding them Orijen Cat & Kitten dry food, following the kitten instructions on the bag.
They officially had their first birthday recently and we quit feeding them per the ‘kitten guidelines’ and switched to the ‘adult guidelines’ but I’m afraid we should have switched earlier. The black one is super beefy and cutting back to the adult meal amounts has them acting like they are starving.
https://i.imgur.com/b6ZzRql.jpg
Steve in the ATL
@p.a.: Mercurochrome
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: I’ve never seen a recipe that called for opening the grill every ten minutes and leavin it open for stretches of twenty when you got distracted.
Steve in the ATL
@Major Major Major Major: mmm…ADHD ribs….
Major Major Major Major
@Steve in the ATL: I’m one of those monsters who cooks them in an oven.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: Dude obviously had no clue.
Another Scott
It’s kind of amazing that an animal that big can jump so high.
;-)
In other news, WaPo: Where did Donnie’s money come from to suddenly start buying lots of real estate with cash?
It’s all so mysterious, isn’t it?!
Donnie spending lots of cash without a care in the world, not caring that the places lost money before he bought them, not caring that it costs a bucketload more to renovate them, not caring that they won’t make any money for years. Why it’s almost like he’s being given money by mysterious people who have money that they can’t spend on the up-and-up and are hoping to curry favor with him.
“Follow the money!!!”
Donnie and his kids were in Moscow in 2006, working on “business deals”, of course.
185 days to go…
Cheers,
Scott.
Gelfling545
@Major Major Major Major: o My uncle, who lived much of his adult life in TX, used to bbq ribs when he came to visit. They took 2 days.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: I don’t eat it anymore but we cooked this 300 pounder for 24 hrs with nothing but smoke. You could push your hand right through the ham to the bone.
eta don’t click on this if you don’t want to see a big hog right after it was cleaned.
raven
@Gelfling545: Fuckin A!
Major Major Major Major
@raven: nice. I’ve often thought I’d like to get into smoking some day. (Insert cigarette/weed joke yes yes)
Mike J
@raven: ?️?️?️Some pig.?️?️?️
raven
@Mike J: It almost made me wish I ate pork when it was done!
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Late in life onset of keeping kosher?//
raven
@Major Major Major Major: Here’s a 5 minute movie of it, damn almost 10 years!
raven
@Adam L Silverman: I haven’t had beef or pork since I quit drinking. . . over 25 years. I can still cook this shit out of it!
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Okay.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Nuthin but I thang, I thought I’d miss it but I don’t.
chris
@Major Major Major Major: There was a webcomic… which stopped just before the juicy bits. What was it called again?//
ETA snark tag
Major Major Major Major
@chris: I’ve got three very nice panels of the next update ready I’ll have you know!
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Whoops. I misread the Medium link in my comment above. Donnie’s kids went to Moscow in 2006, but it doesn’t specifically say that he did.
Donnie was, however, trying to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow in 2005…
Cheers,
Scott.
Planetpundit
Sweet Lily and a great pic of the magnificent Steve!…….another fine day at Casa A La Cole. (Would Cole in Spanish rhyme with “Ole!”?)
chris
@Major Major Major Major: Cool! Ready to refresh my memory anytime.
Mary G
Weigel at WaPo has an article up from Thursday about the official start of ratfucking season. A mysterious PAC affiliated with NoLabels is spending big money in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 7th District, attacking a man endorsed by Wilmer and a woman endorsed by Emily’s List in favor of a so-called Democrat who happens to hate immigration and approved of Trump.
More than half the PAC’s money came from Jerry Reinsdorf and Bud Selig, and they are no Democrats.
Now Tom Steyer’s PAC is going in to oppose him, and I feel so much pity for the poor people of that district, who are in for a long six months.
trollhattan
“Groomers were packed” or “panicked”?
“You groom Steve.”
“Nope, you groom Steve.”
“I did last time [shows stump] it’s your turn.”
“Can’t we just be ‘busy’?”
And, scene
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Good for Steyer. This is more useful than running ads about impeachment.
Steve in the ATL
Weird thing happened. Wife is in the hospital; there is a break room for visitors and family members. People leave magazines to share. The usual Time, People, etc., plus a few New Yorkers I was pleased to see. When I first went in the room, there was a large stack of Weekly Standards and National Reviews, but a short time later all of those had been discarded. Sadly, we will never know how that came to be, but at least some causes of sickness are no longer in this place of healing.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Ever Alton Brown ribs?
Basically, you use a sweet, salty, smoky, acidic marinade overnight, ( I use brown sugar, lime juice, liquid smoke, Montreal Steak spice and a little hot chili and garlic sauce),
Tightly foil wrap them to keep all the juice in, then cook low and slow at 275F, about 2 1/2 hours. Keep wrapped and refridgerate overnight. ( Turns the gristle, any tendons or silverskin into collagen).
Pull out the next day and warm up, enough to melt out the fat. Use the “juice” as the base for your BBQ sauce, sauce the ribs, reheat on the BBQ until they are hot through and the sauce has set.
Gives you fall off the bone, juicy tender ribs every time.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
LOL
schrodingers_cat
Investigators for Mueller have called Steve for questioning, they suspect that he is really a Siberian cat posing as a Maine coon. Penetration at all levels, even Balloon Juice is not safe.
jl
Poor Steve. And Cole wonders why the cat is gradually becoming Tunchified, and is planning to feast on defunct owner for days, sooner or later.
I’ll just pray that Cole continues to pull of of these fixes of his own making.
Edit: I do admit, Cole has a point, that is quite a demonstration that Steve is pulling. Almost doglike in its naked and open desperation and mope.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: you keep hanging around with foreigners like that and the trump administration will put you on a list.
They seemed nice but if either had answered my question with “Tottenham Hotspurs” I would have given him a Glasgow kiss!
Mainmata
We are at the Shenandoah farm this weekend first time I have been here in three months ( spouse has been here before) owing to my overseas sojourn. Quite cool and rainy but that’s fine for this Irishman. All the apple trees are blooming. We may yet again be hosting rescue horses and the various berries we are growing look happy. The whacko dog was also happy to be back where she could just go crazy.
Also attended a Kentucky Derby party with neighbors who are very nice and who work with horses and Hispanics very cool but who also seem to think Hillary is a Russian agent. I really think the rightwing Internet and Fox News has ruined a lot of otherwise well-meaning people.
mai naem mobile
@Steve in the ATL: I went to a Nordstrom Rack a couple of months ago and there was an Ivanka Trump shoe box but a non Ivanka Trump brand inside. I wanted to drop the box on the floor and accidentally smash it but alas it was weird – there was a sharp thick tack stuck to the box with the sharp part sticking out inside the box so I left it alone. Maybe one of the employees had stuck the tack on it.
Major Major Major Major
@Mainmata:
Wow that is some next-level shit!
Shell
Lily looks both sleek and nicely plump. Good girl!
Anne Laurie
@dlwchico: Your black no-longer-kitten, at least, looks like he has the ‘Oriental’ (Siamese-style) cat genes — pointy triangular face w/bat ears, relatively slim limbs. If he inherited the rest of that gene set, he’s also what farmers call an ‘easy keeper’; i.e., he uses calories efficiently… and will pack his excess weight around his hips, rather than ballooning all over like a ‘British’ shorthair. (We have a red tabby rescue who I suspect might be a purebred Oriental Shorthair, down to his whippy tail with a kink at the end; because we’re not determined enough to keep him on short rations, he’s shaped like a kangaroo.)
Following Cheryl’s example, we got one of these to make our guy work a little harder for his second breakfast — most pet stores seem to stock variants on the idea, now. He hasn’t lost much weight, but at least it keeps the little monster busy unlocking Kibble Achievement rather than stealing our clothes to eat!
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: :-)
Every little bit helps.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
I love seeing Lily and Steve.
I made the mistake yesterday of buying the Hartford Courant, which used to be a decent newspaper. The “editorial cartoon” showed the statue of Justice saying to Mueller, “You decided Trump is guilty and now you’re just looking for a crime?” YECCCH!! If this is what we’re getting in civilized CT, what brainwashing is the rest of the country getting?
mai naem mobile
I listened to This American Life today about Univ Nebraska at Lincoln and their free speech/Turning Point controversy. It was a depressing show. Then I listened to Weekend All Things Considered. Apparently Maryland businesses involved in crabbing can’t find crabbers because they’ve been coming on temporary work visas and the Dolt45 admin has turned it into a lottery system. Anyhow, the host asks the crabbing company guy how the community feels about Dolt45 since she saw lots of his signs during the election. The guy said he was a Dolt45 voter and that they had always gotten their temporary workers before no matter which party was in power and that he was sure Dolt45 had gotten his temporary workers for his resorts. Hahahahahahaha. The schadenfreud . Hope it ripples through their whole little rural communities with their non diversified economies. I know I sound like a beeyotch saying this but fuck ’em.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I blame the Union Thugs.
frosty fred
@Major Major Major Major: I regularly visit family in Winchester; they’re cool but some of the neighbors–whoa.
ETA: and the local paper is unreal.
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: ooh I wonder if Samwise would like a food maze. He doesn’t have any particular ailments though.
frosty
@Steve in the ATL:
Channeling Adam: “Eez a puzzlement.”
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
How is your wife doing? I’m so sorry you are going through this.
NotMax
Somewhat interesting Taiwanese movie viewed recently on Amazon Prime, Code. Far-fetched as all get out, however the film makers run as much with the premise as they can and manage to remain internally consistent.
How to describe it? Part SF, part thriller, part cyber mystery, part slow-building tension in a quasi-Hitchcockian vein. Doesn’t hurt either that the female lead is cuter than a boxful of buttons. B+ overall.
Repeating a couple of items for the evening crowd.
1) Attention, Twitter people – CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. Now. This is not a drill.
2) Looking for a time sink by any chance? Like food? Like history? Like nostalgia?
Here ya go.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: good all-purpose villains!
@frosty: indeed!
@MomSense: no change yet, but exploratory surgery in the morning. I told sawbones that he better find something to fix!
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat: The giant-furry-cat gene set is well established wherever the winters are long & cold enough. For cat-show purposes, North American — ‘Maine Coon’ — furcats are basically square (blocky head, square build). Scandinavian ‘Norwegian Forest Cats’ are triangular. Russian ‘Siberian Longhairs’ are round (you can see that in the photo you linked; much rounder heads than Steve’s).
But if you’ve been to any cat shelters around here, you know there’s always ‘Maine coon crosses’ that have the lineage ID (tufted ears, full ruff & squirrel tail, squeaky little voice) but who aren’t nearly as big as the purebred show cats. All these cats presumably came from the same deep-taiga ancestors, probably with the assistance of Viking mauraders. Just as all the ‘Siamese’ breeds — including those that have been refined pretty far from the original line, like the modern flat-faced Burmese and long-haired Balinese breeds — probably have the same roots in the jungles centered around Thailand/Laos/Cambodia/Myanmar.
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
To explain Steve’s remarks: “Tottenham Hotspurs” is a common American mistake. The football club’s name is Tottenham Hotspur after the 14th century English soldier, diplomat, and rebel Sir Henry Percy, nicknamed “Harry Hotspur” by the Scots he made war on; he appears as a character in Shakespeare’s play Henry Ivy Part 1. A Glasgow kiss is bestowed by cutting through the skin on either side of the victim’s mouth, thus widening it. It leaves very obvious scars after healing. The Joker played by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight had such scars, which were accentuated with makeup.
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to pedant.
Another Scott
@mai naem mobile: I heard the ATC thing too.
It was disgusting to hear him trying to justify his low pay (not a direct quote, but the gist: “I pay over minimum wage!, and after they’re trained they get paid by the piece and can earn a lot of money!!”) while saying he has to have guest workers because Americans won’t take the jobs.
“89% of the people around here voted for Trump.”
Why doesn’t he ask himself these questions:
Why do guest workers come here? Because they can earn more money here.
Why do Americans not want to work for him? Because they can earn more money elsewhere.
It really is that simple. He needs to pay more and have better working conditions and benefits.
People respond to economic incentives.
His company (and the other agricultural firms he cited for support) would have Americans beating down their doors if they made their firms appealing to workers. That includes having competitive pay and benefits.
Would it be easy? No, of course not. But no business is guaranteed a nice profit by the Constitution…
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
@Amir Khalid: You’re welcome good sir. Wikipedia thought a Glasgow Kiss was a headbutt. If you choose to pedant further, you have an opportunity to waste a good bit of your life there correcting people who may or may not be wrong on the internet.
Anne Laurie
@mai naem mobile: Don’t know the specific Nebraska ‘Turning Points controversy‘, but I’ll take the opportunity to share this:
The scary thing is — the Mercers give him, IIRC, a six-figure salary to come up with GEENYUS ideas like this and the adult-diaper stunt!
Jeffro
BREAKING: looks like McCain has left instructions that Trumpov is NOT to be at his funeral, while George W and Obama are asked to be eulogists.
Said he regrets picking Palin (hey, John, now we finally have something in common)
News report on local DC news was not clear about whether or not McCain is on death’s door, but they sure made it sound like he’ll be gone quite soon…
Amir Khalid
@frosty:
And that is the whole point of pedanting: to express one’s inner Cliff Clavin.
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: We root for the Spurs here (on the rare occasion we remember to catch a game) for no better reason that my brother is into
soccerexcuse me, football, and I needed someone to root for/against, to help with feigning interest.Ok, it IS interesting…but still…it’s sportsball…
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: I do not regret getting Tottenham’s name wrong
@Amir Khalid: @frosty: I was using “Glasgow kiss” as cited by frosty and described to me by a Glaswegian: a head butt but without the traditional grabbing of the victim’s lapels to pull him into the butt. Perhaps he wasn’t a true Scotsman?
I asked the alleged Glaswegian if this variant developed after savvy thugs began sewing razor blades into the edges of their lapels to thwart such an assault. He was impressed with my knowledge of British street thug fighting techniques. I try to be knowledgeable in many areas.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro: you mean you root for the Spur. You Americans always get that wrong!
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: oh lord.
Quaker in a Basement
Previously unpublished work from Zora Neal Hurston drops this week!
https://www.amazon.com/Barracoon-Story-Slave-Zora-Hurston/dp/0062748203
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
I was referring to a definition I came across in an article about a Glaswegian actor who had those scars. I think it’s entirely possible that the term applies to either thing, depending on which street thug is doing it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Sheesh, it’s not like I roam random hospital waiting rooms jonesing for old Weekly Standards and National Reviews. At least give me credit for a modicum of, whatdoyoucallit, taste.
sdhays
@Jeffro: He should resign now so that the people of Arizona can choose his successor in November rather than shithead governor Ducey.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: is that done by sticking a credit card in the victim’s mouth to begin the assault?
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
Maybe what confuses American sportsball fans is the San Antonio Spurs.
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: Right. What I said. The Spur.
(who fucking cares?)
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
I want to marry your autocorrect and have all its babies.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: There’s also a Japanese ghost story based on a murdered prostitute who’s been disfigured like that.
And — Google is not helping me here, but I’m not working very hard — it was also said to have been done to professional beggars in pre-Revolutionary France; those who survived the ‘surgery’ had a built-in advantage in winkling money out of strangers’ pockets. There was a Victorian romance novel, maybe a series?, about a noble lord’s child kidnapped & (literally) defaced this way, who grew up to be a secret champion of the poor & oppressed. Possibly a precursor to our Batman, through one or more silent films made from the novel…
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: i think one of their chants/rallying cries is “COME ON YOU SPURS!”
Spurs. Like, plural.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro: not I—I root for the Arsenals!
Jeffro
@sdhays: He should give one last epic fucking speech on the floor of the Senate about everything that’s wrong with Trumpov, campaign finance/CU, his mistake in picking Palin, and how Obama is the best president in the post-war era. Then he should pull out a grenade, pull the pin, and drop it on the floor of the Senate chamber.
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
Silly Steve. Thugs don’t use credit cards for anything. That leaves a paper trail of their activities, don’t you know?
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: gag me. Arsenal and Chelsea = waste of human tissue. The lowest of the low. Why do they even occupy the same space and time as other more worthy beings?
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro: another misspelling: it’s Chelski
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: well played
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
The good FSM knoweth I’ve had my differences with Senator McCain, but damn it all, that takes some major brass balls to ask the two men who defeated you in your 2000 and 2008 presidential runs to eulogize you at your funeral. Damn. Balls to the walls. I’ve never liked him better.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
Spurs is their nickname, yes. There’s a longstanding cliche that a Jewish Londoner will always support them rather than Arsenal or Crystal Palace or West Ham United, which is why their supporters are sometimes collectively referred to as the “Yid Army”.
sdhays
@Jeffro: He’ll never admit that Obama was a better President than he would have ever been. And I’ve seen it reported that he regrets not picking Lieberman, which isn’t quite the same thing as regretting picking Palin. He voted for the McConnell tax scam, so I expect very little from him. But if he’s seriously talking about how he wants his funeral to be, he should get the fuck out of the Senate and let democracy take its course. My expectation is that if he has a choice, he’ll put ego and party ahead of country and try to hang on past the end of May so that the seat remains in Republican hands until 2020 without asking the voters their opinion.
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
Hoping they find the best possible thing they can treat easily and effectively. I just really want your wife to feel better.
mai naem mobile
@Anne Laurie: the legal stuff in their crap is crafted by the Goldwater Institute. Jeff Flake used to its head several years ago. They’ve been taking the hammer to public education in Arizona for years. Lots of Koch money of course. The ATL piece is worth listening to. The main character is a white Michelle Malkin wanna be snowflake. Or maybe I should say a Dana Loesch wanna be snowflake.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: I only mutilate people with bitcoin myself.
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: ‘man in the arena’ and all that…and sending a message while on the way out…
Frankly, he has driven me nuts at times with his bs, but the guy can take and certainly return a punch.
mai naem mobile
@sdhays: rumor was that Cindy wanted to take his place if he passes away. There was a tweet from Meghan McCain on Friday or today thanking people for their good wishes and that she was going home and not coming back till Tuesday on the View. It made me wonder if he has taken a turn for the worse.I think he may be really feeling his mortality and is maybe trying to make things right as best as he can.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
The message to Trump is pretty pointed. It’s one thing that he wasn’t welcome at Barbara Bush’s funeral — there was the traditional protocol that sitting presidents don’t normally attend the memorials for former FLOTI, so he had good cover — but to have it be known that both she and McCain explicitly said they did NOT want Trump’s participation, and further that McCain requested Obama as a eulogist — that is some excellent burn, that is.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: We’ll keep good thoughts!!!
Steve in the ATL
Question for anyone watching ESPN 2: WTF is spikeball?!
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: danke!
Adam L Silverman
@frosty: Eet eez!
mai naem mobile
@Another Scott: I wonder how much the prices for food would go up if Americans were doing the work that temporary foreign workers coming here do? They’ve been coming for decades and the industry is probably addicted to cheap labor.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Hey, Adam, completely O/T, but I’d be interested in your views, if any, on Bruce Feiler. I’m reading/rereading his Abrahamic/Walking the Bible books and curious about your take on him.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: We were at the vets on Wednesday for my older dog’s annual check up. The vet’s office cat is a huge tabby colored Maine coon. Has the very clearly delineated M marking on the forehead. Basically looks like Steve if Steve was the color of orange sherbet with a vanilla ripple. Absolutely beautiful cat. Rosa was upset because she went up to say hello and the cat was not having any of it.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro:
Yes, but the regret is that he didn’t go with his gut and ask Joe Lieberman to be his running mate.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: @frosty: @Steve in the ATL: One of the most dangerous innovations I encountered when I lived in Scotland was that some genius had worked out that if you carried a carpet knife with two razor blades separated by a one pence piece, then if you cut someone they couldn’t actually stitch the wound because of how the cuts were placed. So it produced really bad scarring.
Adam L Silverman
@Quaker in a Basement: I saw an article about that the other day. Looks very interesting.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: They filmed a documentary to do this. There is an accompanying book. Unless something miraculous happens, his next trip to DC will be for his funeral at the National Cathedral and his inter
nment at Arlington with his father and grandfather.Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Never heard of him.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Okay, no worries.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Based on what I read on Wikipedia, he sounds like a crank. There are at least four different possibly routes for the Israelites during the Exodus that I can remember off the top of my head, so how he walked that, I have no idea. In other cases the bible tells us that a village, town, city, etc is in a certain place. Archeology tells us that is not the case.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
Interment. That’s the trouble with spellcheckers: they can catch a wrong spelling, but they can’t catch a wrong word.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman:
You shut your whore mouth, infidel!
hervevillechaizelounge
Not to be a scold, but I think it’s really important we hold the decent(ish) republicans responsible for devolution of the their party and the current Trump regime.
Yes, John McCain was a war hero—but his party installed a Russian traitor in the White House via racism and dishonest right-wing media.
Our plight is the logical outcome of wingnut welfare saturation; he could’ve spoken out against Trump or Faux news propaganda but he was happy to take the votes his cowardly silence provided.
Slightly off-topic but related: I need to stop reading Huffpo because I lose my everlovin’ mind when I see a Kurt Badella’s byline; WTF? He worked at Breitbard for years riling up the rubes and shitting on brown folk; couldn’t Huffpo find a writer who HASN’T WORKED FOR NAZI PUBLICATION?
Robert Sneddon
@Steve in the ATL: A Glesca kiss is a headbutt (BTGT had the bruising and headache.) Done right it can cause a skull fracture as well as concussion.
The traditional face-scarring fighting technique in Glasgow was to use a couple of craft knife blades or razor blades taped on either side of a thin stick on someone’s face, leaving two cuts side by side. They can’t be stitched properly so the resulting scars are accentuated. For more serious fighting hatchets were popular. N Division Strathclyde police had a short way with regulars who were picked up with blades on them, they tended to fall down a lot of stairs in custody. They weren’t racist though, they’d do it to Rangers supporters as well as Celtic supporters (Partick Thistle supporters got a bye on sympathetic grounds).
Litlebritdifrnt
Several thoughts this Sunday morning catching up with all of you. I thought I saw on twitter the other day that McCain said he was resigning specifically so that he could speak freely. I am assuming that this was just his plan and he has not formally resigned yet then? Re: Glasgow Kiss. It is definitely a headbutt. The wounding that was described is known as a Chelsea Smile. Apparently it originated in Glasgow but was used extensively by London Mobsters in the 60s. Just my twopennorth on this bright and sunny morning.
Amir Khalid
@Robert Sneddon:
@Litlebritdifrnt:
What did they call it in Glasgow before the London boys took it up?
Major Major Major Major
@Steve in the ATL: Totally OT but every so often I think about how cool it is that we know where Troy was.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Amir Khalid: Glasgow Smile.
pinacacci
hahaha Steve is a badass
Robert Sneddon
@Amir Khalid: I’ve never heard it described as a “Glasgow Smile” or anything else really. It’s a lot of work, you’d have to hold the victim down to deliberately cut the sides of their mouth. A simple face slash with a straight razor could be delivered in a regular fight, ditto for any sort of a chib or blade once straight razors became fashionista things for hipsters to use rather than regular everyday shaving items.
Glasgow gangs were followers of fashion, taking cues from bad movies and TV series — there was a thing in the Glasgow area back in the 1960s for youth gangs to call themselves “Tongs” from the Chinese gangs in Hong Kong movies. The use of hatchets was similarly derived from such movies. Later the media depiction of the Japanese Yakuza influenced them, they got into “samurai” swords and, sad to say, the idea of cropping fingers off their opponents (not themselves for obvious reasons). For a time Bill’s Tool Store down the Barras in Glasgow was doing a roaring trade in ex-military folding wire cutters (meant to be used to cut barbed wire) until N Division let the word go around that anyone found carrying such would fall down a LOT of stairs when they got home to the police HQ in Springburn.
Amir Khalid
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Ah, so I got the “kiss” part wrong.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: But, do we know the way to San Jose?
KithKanan
@?BillinGlendaleCA: From where I live, it’s pretty easy: take
101the freeway northMajor Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I was there Thursday!
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Jeffro:
Nah.
He should call a meeting with the Republican caucuses of both Chambers, give his speech, and then detonate the Mother of all IED’s in one final act of service to his country.
Frankensteinbeck
@Steve in the ATL:
I see what you did there.
Adam L Silverman
@Robert Sneddon: When I was living in Scotland in the early 90s – St. Andrews – we’d see this done with proper carpet knives.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41oOfX27bjL._SL500_AC_SS350_.jpg
Specifically, you’d loosen the screw enough to advance two razor blades out of the base and then wedge a penny between the blades. Then tighten the screw back down to hold everything securely in place. The slash or cut this type of weapon would produce would leave the distinct close together parallel cuts and therefore scarring because it made it impossible to stitch the wounds.