Stream of Consciousness

(Ass) Blast From The Past

by ruemara| December 25, 20191:56 pm| 22 Comments

This post is in: Because of wow., Cat Blogging, Not Politics, Open Threads, Pet Blogging, Something Good Open Thread, Stream of Consciousness

Look at that face. Adorable, elegant, lovingly demanding. Let us step back to Hime’s first Christmas with the family.

There she is. A delicate little flower.

Brother Odoriki had the kitty snuffles when he was adopted, hence the booger snout. Hime was just naturally perfect. Or so I thought. So, on Christmas Day, Hime demonstrated she had a tender stomach. And a bad case of the runs. Worse, she was intimidated by the litterbox. And shadows, slight motions, a slight breeze. She was a complete coward about everything and still is Queen Jitters. After the 3rd cleanup of a poop spill outside the low box, I was determined that this time, I’d wait patiently and just help her keep her tiny butt in the giant litterbox.

This, of course, did not go well. It’s Christmas morning, I’ve been cleaning all week and the result of my frustrated attempt at kitten corralling was… a tiny white projectile spraying liquid shit across the linoleum, the carpeted downstairs, up the stairs and under the sofa.

I really wanted to cry. My lovely quiet Christmas was a fetid, poop garlanded mess. My housemate came down to see what the hubbub was about and managed to pin Herself. We looked at each other and just burst out laughing. Finally, after capturing the little biological weapon, I called my friend’s dad, who’s a large animal vet as well as the head of an NGO that teaches about zoonosis & husbandry in African countries, and drove her over for a Christmas freebie checkup. We cleaned EVERYTHING, including her butt and put her on very simple food for a day or so. The rest of Christmas was lovely, since she forgave her humans for daring to pen her and get her muddbutt checked out.

Yes, I was still finding little poop spots days later. But I feel very loved. Merry Not Stinky Christmas!

Merry Christmas To All & To All A Good Night

(Ass) Blast From The PastPost + Comments (22)

Whatever Blows Your Trumpet

by John Cole| November 12, 20183:50 pm| 160 Comments

This post is in: Stream of Consciousness

One of the things I hate about the anti-vaxxers is they make me feel like an authoritarian scumbag because I am infringing on their right to be idiots or whatever. I am totally fine with people being idiots, so long as their idiocy does not impact other people’s behavior. So if skipping vaccines hurt only you, that would be fine. You can drop dead if you want. But that’s not how it works, and when you refuse to be vaccinated because your healing crystals have you covered and blah blah blah Jenny McCarthy, you put other people at risk.

And it’s like that with so many things. Guns and drunk driving and meth come to mind. At heart, I’m really about letting people do what they want, just so long as it isn’t hurting anyone. It’s one of the reasons I have never understood why straight people give two hoots in hell what LGBTQ people do or who they sleep with or whether they get married, etc.

I’m also not SCIENCE UBER ALLES. I mean, I think from a policy perspective and 99% of the time in my personal choices, following the scientific evidence is the way to go. But hey, science also discusses the placebo effect, and science also doesn’t have answers for everything- yet. Which is why if people want to go to chiropractors, even though I think they are quacks, whatever. Same with cupping, and acupuncture, and other shit. Maybe it’s just the attention or touch from others that helps people. Maybe it makes them calmer in the head. I don’t know, but if it makes people happy and ISN’T HURTING ANYONE, again, whatever floats your boat.

Hell, I use CBD oil daily. There is, to my knowledge, no real scientific evidence that it works. But since I started a couple months ago, my knees and fingers feel better, and I have not woken up ONCE with a frozen shoulder, something that used to be an every night occurrence. I also think I am a little less anxious. It’s almost imperceptible, but when I lie down at night to fall asleep I just feel a little less, I dunno, worked up. Maybe something in the oil has made a change. Maybe I just think there is a difference because I am doing something about it. Maybe I started sleeping differently. Maybe I’m just nuts? Who knows? If it stops working or if I think it stops working, I’ll stop doing it. But I’m not hurting anyone or hurting myself, so, who cares.

That’s what we should be getting back to in this country, along with a renewed concern for our fellow man. We should start helping people more, and we should stop worrying about what kind of harmless other shit people are doing just because it irritates us. That’s another thing- these white women freaking out about a couple black kids in a pool somewhere. Maybe they aren’t supposed to be there. Maybe they are. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE? It’s just some kids trying to not be fucking hot in the middle of summer. Leave them the fuck alone.

ehh whatever.

Whatever Blows Your TrumpetPost + Comments (160)

I Hear There’s A Sporting Contest Today

by Tom Levenson| February 4, 20182:35 pm| 217 Comments

This post is in: Sports, Stream of Consciousness, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

Confession 1: I am a football fan. My father took me to Cal games at Memorial Stadium — one of the most beautiful places to watch more or less anything, tucked there against the slope by Strawberry Canyon, gold-and-green hills behind, the Bay, the Bridge and Mt. Tam to the west. We’d go to one or two games a season, rarely victories (my Golden Bears were valiant, but not that good), and as I lost dad when I was ten, those are memories overlaid with power.

I was aware of the ‘Niners then too, but as an East Bay kid with a full sporran* of high school anomie and safe rebellion, the Raiders were the real deal, all felons and left handed QBs and chain-smoking stick-um slathered Fred Biletnekoff. And yeah, Tatum’s embrace of that hit made me sick, but football, you know?

Then I moved to Boston, four years for college and then, after a few seasons away, for good. I still claimed to be a Raiders fan, (Plunkett!), and as a Bay Area kid, I took more pleasure than previous allegiance entitled me to in the Montana across the bay. But I paid attention to the Patriots. I always thought Grogan was cool, and Hannah was such an archetypal football guy and so on. They usually sucked, but they weren’t (mostly) dull. I’ll pass over the Berry years in silence.

Then, of course, we got that other guy named Bill, soon to be followed by the 199th pick in that draft, a hopelessly unathletic kid, Tommy something. You know the rest: it was easy to root for a hopelessly underdoggy team of Patriots in that 9/11 fall, a season capped by a most improbable playoff run. Been high living ever since.

So I’ve been watching a long time and for many of those years Sunday was a pretty well defined ritual, at least one game, sometimes two, and hanging out with folks I enjoyed. I watch a lot less now. Because the Patriots have stayed good and I’m something of a front-runner, I check in for most of their fourth quarters, but it’s rare indeed that I watch a whole game through any more.

Partly I’ve lost patience with the action to hanging around ratio. Partly I’m more jealous of my time than I was when I thought it came in infinite supply. But yeah: partly, increasingly, I’m seeing myself as an accessory to genuinely awful stuff.

Confession 2: I know that football destroys minds and lives. It’s impossible not to know that now, and if you needed any reminder, there’s a story in today’s New York Times** by the wife of a former NFL player to put a face to life after too much grievous bodily harm.

When we married in 2009, I already knew he was an amazing father. He could play dollhouse with my stepdaughter for hours without a hint of boredom. This continued when we had two children of our own. When our son was born and I was focused on taking care of a baby, he would bathe the girls, brush and blow-dry their (tangled!) hair, then put them to bed. Afterward he would wash the dishes. He brought me coffee in bed each morning. I was spoiled rotten.
But since I had known him, he had trouble sleeping, and he has been prone to mood swings and depression. In 2010, things got worrisome, so I arranged for him to be evaluated by neurologists so that he could apply for disability benefits. …
I was right to be concerned.
Over time, I had started to notice changes. But this was different and, around 2013, things had become much more frightening.
He lost weight. It seemed like one day, out of the blue, he stopped being hungry. And often he would forget to eat. I’d find full bowls of cereal left around the house, on bookshelves or the fireplace mantel. The more friends and family commented on his gaunt frame, the more panicked I became. By 2016, he had shrunk to 157 pounds. That’s right, my 6-foot-2 football-player husband weighed 157 pounds (down from around 200 when he was in the N.F.L.). People were visibly shocked when we told them he had played the game professionally.

This is a gut and heart rending tale, made worse by the increasing pile of evidence that Rob Kelly’s is not an isolated case.

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It seems to me that such an outcome is intrinsic to the game, not obviously correctable by changing rules or equipment. Yesterday I procrastinated in the face of some early eighteenth century financial asset analysis that was just a little tricky to tease apart, and pulled up some old Super Bowl videos on Youtube. I landed on a couple of Montana highlights and I was genuinely surprised to see how brutal the game seemed. Those games were before the rule changes came in intended to protect the quarterbacks, and Joe Cool was getting whacked on almost every play, as rushers would take one, two, even three steps after he’d released the ball and slam into him at full speed. There’s a reason top quarterbacks are playing longer than they did then, and one of the big ones is that they don’t get turned into hamburger helper by the third quarter of every game. I’m amazed, frankly, that anyone from that age of football can remember their names, and I confess (another one!) I’d forgotten just how thoroughly physical the game was back then.

I’d still say the risks are higher now though, at least plausibly. Another change from then and now is that players at every position are bigger, stronger, more powerful and faster than they were back then. Some hits may have been legislated out of the game, but those that occur are hugely violent, and in the routine, subconcussive zone, all that slugging that goes on in line play gets done by men who are simply huger than their predecessors, and in ridiculous shape. When I was a kid, a 300 pound lineman on either side of the ball was a giant, almost a freak. Now? Well everyone knew that Vince Wilfork, to speak of one Patriots great, was a very big man. But even at 325 pounds he wasn’t seen as off the charts.

All of which to say is that every time I watch a football game I not only know that I’m seeing fit, impeccably trained, incredibly gifted young men hurt themselves for my entertainment, I find myself watching each tackle and wondering, surprisingly often, if that’s the one that turns that gorgeously talented twenty something guy into the forty year old-to-be who can’t remember where his bowl of cereal went.

That is: I can’t suspend my awareness of how the game works anymore. I used to could, but can’t anymore.

Confession 3: I’ll watch the game this evening. I’ve even got a few friends coming over, and we’ll have the Mexican bean dip and some Peruvian chicken thighs (fabulous: I’ll post the recipe soon) and some Dogfish Head IPA and all that. We will root for the Patriots, because d’uh — and y’all hate us ’cause you ain’t us. The rooting thing is real: it’s fun to pick a set of laundry you decide is your flag and cheer for that. The game, played at the highest level, still is amazing to watch — in fact, that’s the dirty secret. Football can be thrilling, a catharsis, and it’s easy to get hooked on the seemingly harmless rush of life-and-death, victory and defeat to be found on the mock-battlefield of a football field. And the social side is real too, hanging with folks on a day when all diets are off and so on. We’ll watch, and we’ll probably have a good time.

But I’m finding it harder and harder to do so. This is how I feel: the right thing to do is obvious, but the long, long habit of not doing it remains hard to break. Eventually, the time comes when that tension turns into a contradiction, and that’s it.

With five decades of reflex to undo, I don’t know if tonight will be the last time I turn on the NFL.

But I hope it is.

*I actually wore a great kilt (with all the trimmings) to my high school in my senior year. Even played badminton in it (not recommended). This guy I’d seen around, kind of intimidating, came up to me at recess or lunch, and asked me what it was. I told him. He just looked at me for a moment, then cracked up and said “you’re brave.” I confess (again): I exhaled.

**Posted 2/2, in print today.

Image: Edmund Blair Leighton, The Gladiator’s Wife, 1884.

I Hear There’s A Sporting Contest TodayPost + Comments (217)

The Selfishness of It All

by John Cole| October 9, 20177:45 pm| 193 Comments

This post is in: Gun nuts, Stream of Consciousness

I’m warning you in advance this is going to be another rambling post.

Yesterday I was looking at the pictures of the victims of the Las Vegas shooting, and I made it a point to read every bio that was provided. I figured it was the least I could do, because I know we aren’t going to do a fucking thing as a country to honor their memory with any meaningful action on the gun front. I was just struck, with few exceptions, how young they all were:

Quinton Robbins was 20. When I was 20, I was living in Germany, serving in the Army, and just having the time of my life. Seeing new things, doing something important for the first time in my life, on my own, paying my own bills, and making friends that I still to this day keep in touch with pretty regularly.

Sonny Melton was 29. When I was 29 I was at the tail end of grad school, and I still went to a lot of concerts and went out all the time and was still pretty wild. That could have been me.

Rachael Parker was 33. When I was 33 I didn’t have my life in any sort of order, but I was finally making decent money and could afford to do things, and I had Tunch and lot of close friends.

And on and on and on. And now, they are just all gone. They are no more.

I know we have all sorts of differing opinions on the afterlife, but mine is pretty simple. When you’re dead you’re dead. That’s the ballgame, as they say. Roll the credits. It’s just over.

I know that’s really hard for people to comprehend, so that’s why I think we have so many myths made up to comfort people about the afterlife, because it’s really hard to contemplate not existing or the world continuing to exist without you- all of us are to some degree egocentric in that way. We’re the only thing that has been with us our entire lives- you always have to live with yourself, because you never go away until you go away.

And the euphemisms we employ to soothe us- passed away, moved on, is in a better place, the long sleep. I find it hard to put a finger on mortality, too. The best way I’ve come to imagine what the world would like be without me is to try to think back to my earliest memory as a child, and then to go farther into nothingness. Just a void- you can’t remember any more before that. Well, that’s what it will be like when we are gone, I think.

And when you are dead, that’s the end of experience. On the drive home today I picked up a small Coke slush and had a sip and just smiled because it was so good. I listened to Kendrick Lamar DAMN. for the fifth or sixth time, and this time, for the first time, I kind of got it (you have to listen to it in reverse order). His others all made “sense” musically the first listening, especially Good Kid, which is another one of those perfect albums. And it happened while I was cruising along on the highway, with my polarized sunglasses on so everything looked so precise because my eyes didn’t have to filter out the glare, the fall foliage was amazing, the sun was filtering through the thick rain clouds that are a consequence of Hurricane Nate, the windows were down and the pollen was low and I just had that rushing “Oh, I think I get it and appreciate it now” feeling and the hair on my arms stood up a little bit. Later on I was driving down the back roads, and the smell of leaves and manure and the sweet country air filled the car, and I saw a beautiful Holstein just sitting down by the fence, chomping away, twitching her tail and I pulled over and watcher her for a bit.

None of those fifty dead will ever get to experience anything like that ever again. Not the feel of clean sheets, the cold floor when you wake up, the burst of hot water in the shower, the minty taste of toothpaste on a new tooth brush, the aroma of the morning coffee, or the feel of your kid’s hands as you walk them to the school bus or kiss your lover again. They will never get any of that ever again. Those things are just gone for them.

And this is where some will inevitably say but their memories will linger on. No they won’t. More than likely, history will not remember them as people- they might be known for a while as victims, but who they are as people will die off in a couple generations, as their loved ones move on. There have been billions of people- history remembers very few. Maybe if they had lived full lives, one of them might have done something extraordinary in the historical sense, but I doubt it. And I’m not saying that to be an asshole- people do extraordinary little things every day, from things as simple as slamming on the brakes to not hit a squirrel or saying something kind to someone who is having a bad day. Time washes all the stuff but the greatest achievements away- the Grand Canyon wasn’t always so grand.

It’s a fragile and short and wonderful thing being alive, and your life is really, truly, the only thing you have in this world. And that’s what is so damned maddening about these shootings. All of those people had the only thing that mattered stolen from them, literally robbed at gunpoint, just so a few people retain their unfettered right to own a little hand-held killing machine that makes their dick hard or gives them a grin for ten seconds at a firing range.

It’s sick. It’s a sickness. Like I said earlier, you have to live with yourselves your whole life, and I just don’t know how these people who oppose all gun control do it. There is just something wrong with them. They are broken. And worse still are the politicians who oppose it for a few coins and some political power.

Some of them, I suspect, know it, which is why they rely on nonsense arguments like “more people are killed by cars” or all the other bullshit that gets churned up. They’ll tell you if we ban guns only criminals will have guns. OK. Then we lock them up until we get all the guns. We can change- there used to be a time when there weren’t seatbelts in cars. Or “We can’t confiscate all guns.” Sure we can. It will just take time.

But even assuming they are right, why the fuck does it hurt to try?

Again, it’s a sickness. And everyone who continues to fight for the right to unfettered access to guns is complicit. They didn’t pull the trigger, but they might as well have.

It’s just a level of selfishness that I will never ever ever understand.

The Selfishness of It AllPost + Comments (193)

Another Rambling Thread About Music and Other Things

by John Cole| July 12, 20178:00 pm| 91 Comments

This post is in: Stream of Consciousness

First things first- on my way home from the grocery store today, a fracking truck kicked up a rock (more than likely part of the road they have torn up because the trucks are constantly driving over the lip and ripping the concrete and asphalt up) and cracked my windshield. There went a quick $300 bucks. It’s all part of the miracle of the free market. On top of a Subaru that got totaled when they drove my friend off the road and into the field AND DIDN’T STOP, I get destroyed road, traffic hazards such as trucks driving roads to narrow at speeds too high, debris all over the roads when their offroad vehicles come onto the roads during their pipeline constructions, numerous delays by flagmen, and excruciatingly slow drives as oversized loads transfer equipment, I now have to buy a new windshield. And this isn’t even going into the longterm damage to the water table which we all FUCKING KNOW is inevitable and will be met with a massive hoocoodanode, although we might not find out about it since the state GOP and the Trump are dismantling all the regulators. Or the eyesore of large fracking pads all over the god damned place.

And what does WV get in return? A couple permanent jobs, lots of people from Texas and Oklahoma driving around in monster trucks to and from work, and not much else. We aren’t taxing them much of anything, the profits are all exported with the resources, any time you mention taxing them more some idiot states the same bullshit we heard for years when we talked about coal taxes: “We can’t tax them too much, they’ll just go somewhere else.”

NO, THEY FUCKING WON’T. DO YOU KNOW HOW I KNOW THIS? BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE THE FUCKING NATURAL GAS IS.

So I guess I will just bend over and pay safelite a couple hundred bucks when they come tomorrow, lie back, and think of tax-cut jeebus. Sick of this shit and the way the right has fucked this country.

***

Moving along before I stroke out for real.

I spent some time today importing more music into the digital archive, and I imported a bunch of old Paste magazine cd samplers from the early 2000’s through 2009. As we have discussed at length, I have many, many issues and require correct metadata and artwork for everything I import, and I first thought that this was going to be a disaster. It turned out it wasn’t.

As many of you know, if for no other reason that I rant about it all the time, itunes uses the gracenote public automatic content recognition to fill out artwork and metadata for imported music, so that means it is not a complete archive of all music. It’s what people have and have imported, warts and all. I was sure there would be no artwork in the database for these cd samplers, and I was right! They were, however, correctly recognized, so I just had to find the artwork. This turned out to be easier than i though, as Paste magazine has all of them archived on their website in .pdf format. I just had to download them, convert them to .jpg, and crop them. Easy enough.

It turned out to be a pretty fascinating and weird modern archaelogical project. It was interesting seeing who was “unknown” at the time, who would make it, who would not, etc., but even more interesting was the artwork. Viewing thee sampler artwork through the years turned out to be like watching the extinction event for a magazine.

The artwork for the earlier years was just beautiful. High quality photographs, beautiful layouts- people put a lot of time, thought, pride, and energy into them. Again, I know I am an oddball because I really do appreciate album and video game artwork, but see for yourself. Here is the very first piece from Q3 of 2002:

Here is one from 2005:

Another from 2005:

Here is February of 2007:

I’m not a photographer (as you all frequently remind me), but these are good covers for a sampler cd. And they were all like that from 2002-2007. And then came the real estate unpleasantness of 2007. Here’s some background from wikipedia:

In October 2007, the magazine tried the “Radiohead” experiment, offering new and current subscribers the ability to pay what they wanted for a one-year subscription to Paste. The subscriber base increased by 28,000, but Paste president Tim Regan-Porter noted the model was not sustainable; he hoped the new subscribers would renew the following year at the current rates, and the increase in web traffic would attract additional subscribers and advertisers.
Amidst an economic downturn, Paste began to suffer from lagging ad revenue, as did other magazine publishers in 2008 and 2009. On May 14, 2009, Paste editors announced a plan to save the magazine, by pleading to its readers, musicians and celebrities for contributions. Cost-cutting by the magazine did not stem the losses. The main crux cited for the financial troubles is the lack of advertiser spending.

I don’t know if the two are directly related- Paste was having problems anyway. But anecdotally I suppose you can actually visualize the impact of the crash and the decline of Paste Magazine through the artwork. Here is February 2008 (note, this is prior to the actual market crash):

Notice the corporate logo’s? Here is August 2008:

And here is January 2009:

It never recovered from there, and the print version of Paste magazine ceased to be in 2010. It’s depressing to think about, like watching an extinction event in slow motion.

It’s also interesting to think about how things are being archived in the digital era. With Moore’s Law and the Law of Mass Digital Storage, we are used to ever faster processing and ever increasing storage space, but where is it all going and who is keeping track of it? What is happening to it? We all seem to think that with all this new storage space, once something is out on the internet it will be there forever. That may very well be true regarding celebrity nudes and your dumbest tweet, but for a lot of other things it just isn’t the case. Read this from 2013:

A new study has found that as much as 80 percent of the raw scientific data collected by researchers in the early 1990s is gone forever, mostly because no one knows where to find it.
According to a study by Timothy H. Vines, et al. titled “The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age,” published last week in Current Biology, most raw data from scientific papers published twenty years ago is unobtainable – either because authors have since changed their contact information and can’t be reached or because the data was stored using outdated technology, like floppy disks.

I sure as hell don’t know where my data from the late 90’s is. I know I have a box with old mainframe SAS printouts in the basement from grad school, but I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with it now. And as a gamer, this is crazy:

The people who make enhanced editions of old role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment want to do the same thing for Icewind Dale II. There’s just one problem: nobody knows where to find the code.
Beamdog, a Canadian publisher best known for releasing snazzy new versions of old Infinity Engine RPGs like the ones mentioned above, is looking to re-release Icewind Dale II with enhanced graphics and other improvements. But Beamdog’s CEO, Trent Oster, says his team can’t find the source code for Icewind Dale II. Without that code, he says, they can’t make any sort of enhanced edition of the game.
“We’ve searched all the archives we have access to, including all the data handed over to Wizards of the Coast from Atari and there is no source code for Icewind Dale II,” Oster told me in an e-mail. “We’ve reached out to our friends at Obsidian, as many of them were the development staff behind Icewind Dale II, and they do not have any source code. We’re stalled on the project without source and the project won’t move forward until we can find it. We’ve naturally moved on to other things until there is a change in the situation.”

Wow. This kind of stuff should be important. We should be archiving things. Our collective digital knowledge isn’t going to always “just be there.” It’s going to need people who care to take care of it, and a willingness to finance those endeavors like we would with museums or libraries. Well, like we used to, I guess.

Although, I guess, maybe it is irrelevant, because we are living through another slow motion mass extinction event:

A massive iceberg the size of Delaware has broken free from Antarctica and is floating in the sea.
“Put any adjective you like on it: a corker, a whopper — it’s a really large iceberg,” says Anna Hogg, a researcher with the United Kingdom’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.
“There have been some this big before,” says Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University in the U.K. who leads a project to track changes in the ice shelf. But he adds, the roughly trillion-metric-ton iceberg is unusual. “This is certainly in the Top 10, maybe possibly in the Top 5.”

And then there is this:

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.
Gerardo Ceballos, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, acknowledged that the study is written in unusually alarming tones for an academic research paper. “It wouldn’t be ethical right now not to speak in this strong language to call attention to the severity of the problem,” he said.

I grew up in rural areas. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get rid of barn swallows. This should scare the hell out of you. I guess maybe worrying about digital archives is a waste of concern right now. Nothing really matters any more, does it.

I warned you this would be rambling.

Another Rambling Thread About Music and Other ThingsPost + Comments (91)

The Republican Party is tearing itself apart. It’s about damn time.

by Soonergrunt| October 10, 20168:00 pm| 218 Comments

This post is in: America, I'm With Her, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Assholes, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, Both Sides Do It!, Schadenfreude

The following is from a Tweetstorm I composed yesterday in the hours before that shitshow of a “debate.” There are probably some spelling and grammar errors, because for the most part, I just copied and pasted from my Twitter account, @soonergrunt.

Someone asked me recently why I’m a dick to Conservatives who engage me on Twitter. I’m not to everyone. @RadioFreeTom is a notable example. There are others. But I’ll tell you the answer now. I came to political conscience in the age of Ronald Reagan. I liked him as a person, but I didn’t agree with him on much. But I respected him. He was my President, for one thing, but also my parents taught me that the other side were decent people who wanted what they saw as best for the country. They just happened to usually be wrong. And sometimes they were right. That kind of consideration is something I’ve rarely received in return. Rare enough that I remember a lot of those respectful interactions. They stick out due to their rarity.

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What I’ve heard most of my adult life is that as a Democrat and a Liberal in particular, that I didn’t love my country. Liberals in the Army get used to this kind of thing very, very quickly. We learn to keep our mouths shut. The same NCOs and officers who are telling you that ppl like you should be killed for treason are the same people writing your NCOER. They are the same people who are supposed to risk their lives for you. Even after serving as a combat infantryman, some of the guys I served with, and a LOT of civilians still would say things like that. This kind of thing was pushed a little bit by Reagan, but a LOT by Newt Gingrich. And it’s burned into the modern Republican Party’s DNA. FOX News monetized this. Tune in, anytime day or night, and you’ll see what I’m talking about within a few minutes. Millions watch daily. The typical Conservative is so incredibly vicious because s/he has been raised on a steady diet of vitriol and hate for 2 decades now.

It’s to the point where Conservatives who aren’t calling for a Liberal to be killed, who aren’t calling for a Liberal’s daughter to be raped who aren’t calling for a Liberal to lose his employment are the atypical ones. You spend 30 years hearing this kind of thing, and maybe you aren’t quite so open minded and accepting anymore. It’s hard to take people at face value, because you’re just waiting for the other shoe.

There’s probably more than just the 4 or 5 Cons that I follow that are worth following. There’s a lot of people on Twitter after all. But they’re very hard to find in this bitterest of election years.

@SopanDeb had a couple of tweets yesterday about talking to Establishment Republicans who were, in his words, shocked at all of the hatred directed at Hillary Clinton from the right. That they considered her just another cynical politician. I RT’ed that with a hearty ‘fuck you’ or some such attached to it. Today’s ‘establishment Rs’ came up on that attitude and behavior. They are the principle actors and benefactors. Well, right now we’re watching the Republican Party self-destruct. Where it is because the party and intellectual leaders on the right have, for decades, sold them on the idea that they are the only true patriots and that anyone who opposes them is aligned with the enemies. And now, as was inevitable, they’ve turned on the Conservatives who aren’t complete assholes. Well, I’m not really sorry for them. They are reaping what they have sewn.

When I was a kid, there were Conservative Democrats & Liberal Republicans, and most people held views that occasionally crossed ideological lines. I tend to believe in a much stronger military and more robust foreign policy than many of my liberal brethren. It is essential to the health of the Liberal movement and the Democratic Party, and most especially to the political health of the Nation for there to be a functioning, engaged Conservative movement and a center right party. I don’t know if the Republican Party will survive or if something else will rise in its place, but it’s going to take a while. It took decades to get here, and it won’t be changed one way or the other overnight. I take some small consolation that many Conservatives are now experiencing what people like me have for decades. But schadenfreude isn’t something I should be proud of.

It’s going to be interesting to watch, but I really am worried for the near-term future of the country. I do believe that in the end, things will be OK. I believe that most people are essentially good and decent in their hearts and that my kids will see a better country and a better world. If you’ve made it this far, you sure are a glutton for punishment, but I thank you for reading.

The Republican Party is tearing itself apart. It’s about damn time.Post + Comments (218)

Argentina v Panama Open Thread

by Randinho| June 10, 20169:27 pm| 2 Comments

This post is in: Sports, Stream of Consciousness

Should not be much of a challenge for Argentina. Will Leo Messi play?

Argentina v Panama Open ThreadPost + Comments (2)

You can help solve a mass murder!

by Tim F| November 23, 201510:20 am| 127 Comments

This post is in: Bleg, Hiking, Science & Technology, Stream of Consciousness

Located in a town famous for its hills, University of Pittsburgh’s main campus climbs an especially steep one like a vine. You can see intelligent design (small ‘i’, small ‘d’) in the way classes, dorms and the medical school all sit within a short walk of Fifth Avenue at the bottom while a more strenuous hike is rewarded with the athletic facilities and an excellent view. Behind campus Center Ave. runs up the spine of the hill and over its peak, into a neighborhood understandably known as the Hill District.

Around dusk Center is busy with Pitt employees looking to avoid Oakland traffic, and crows. For reasons that probably involve old, tall trees that line the street, and the excellent view, crows seem to like that part of Center. Once in a while one can see what seems like half the crows in Pittsburgh wheeling around over the hill and holding corvid debates in a babbling din. You can drive on for miles and see murder after murder headed for Center in the fading light.

The group name for crows is 'murder', as in a murder of crows. This would be an attempted murder. Photo via Mudfooted. — The group name for crows is ‘murder’, as in *a murder of crows*. The above would be an attempted murder. Photo via Mudfooted.

Of course you need look up, so like most commuters I usually missed it. In fact I only noticed it one early spring night when I opened my car window and looked around to see what the racket was about. I have not even taken that commute for a long time now so I have entirely lost touch with how often or what time of year it happens. This weekend I brought Dr. Mrs. Dr. F., Jr. for a walk on the hill at dusk but we only saw clear sky and a great view of Pittsburgh’s east end. The girl loves pointing out birds so I thought a living sea of crows could short out her toddler brain in a delightful and hopefully non-permanent way.

Maybe you all can help. Does anyone know motivates crows to gather in mega-murders like that? Mating season? I would love to hear actual expertise, educated guessing, suitably persuasive BS, whatever you got. Maybe some of you drive that commute and can pass on when you see it happen.

Use this space to share any unexpected wildlife encounters you have had.

You can help solve a mass murder!Post + Comments (127)

Apropos Of Not Much

by Tom Levenson| September 19, 20157:23 pm| 55 Comments

This post is in: Books, Open Threads, Stream of Consciousness

Picked up a Terry Pratchett off my paperback shelf today pretty much at random — The Nightwatch, one of the Vimes strand. It’s one of my less-read ones, meaning maybe twice, possibly even three times, but not more. I just idly flipped it open and looked over the first couple of pages,,,and came to this little digression:

The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights, and ended up with a dress niform that at least looked as thought its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it.

Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.

That’s my Terry! — and why I miss him so. His brain bubbles were the best, and he had absolutely no shame — none at all — when it came to transcribing whatever floated to the surface. I tell my son more often than he cares to hear that words are toys. Pratchett had more fun with the English language than anyone else I can think of. I take him as a role model (as my students — and family — know, to their sorrow).

As I warned — apropos of not much at all. What’ on y’all’s minds as Saturday night beckons Sunday morning second thoughts?

Image: Titian, Philip II of Spain, 1551.

Apropos Of Not MuchPost + Comments (55)

Another Tank o’ Freedom (Early AM Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| January 30, 20153:33 am| 97 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, General Stupidity

Yesterday afternoon, I was complaining about the rising repair bill on my 16-year-old’s car, which had been in the shop for a few days. They kept finding new things that were wrong with it. I picked it up yesterday evening. The final bill topped out at $1,400 and change.

The kiddo had been driving my car to school and to after-school activities this week since her vehicle was in the shop. Yesterday was a late day for her since she had sports practice and then had to haul several schoolmates around to complete some class project, allegedly.

Somehow during that excursion, she managed to lock the keys to MY car in the trunk while all the way across town. When she called us for help, I decided I’d drive the extra set of keys to my car over in her car and then reclaim my vehicle.

Her stupid car was on empty because of course it was. When I stopped to gas up, I noticed this sign:

Naturally, when I fetched my car, it was on empty too, so on the way home, I had to stop for even MORE freedom. Goddamnit.

I can’t sleep, so I was half-watching Rachel Maddow on rebroadcast, half-reading something awhile back, and unless I’m very much mistaken, I think Rachel was urging Senator Claire McCaskill to run for president if HRC stays out of the race. Whaaaa?

I can’t believe it’s Friday already, but yay, I guess.

ETA: I found out the hard way many years ago that it’s inadvisable to drive through an automatic car wash with dogs in the car (they go berserk). But being from a state where, if you dig a hole, it immediately fills up with water, I was unaware of the effect tunnels have on babies until I saw this delightful compilation, courtesy of Gawker:

Poor little terror-stricken babies!

Another Tank o’ Freedom (Early AM Open Thread)Post + Comments (97)

Open Thread: Social Media Kidz, These Days

by Anne Laurie| January 29, 20159:08 pm| 130 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Stream of Consciousness, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, Clown Shoes

For the past day or two, I’ve been seeing some very inexplicable-even-by-twitter-standards stuff on the tweetstreams. David Roth at Vice Sports finally explained this new “thing” for me, and you:

It’s greatly to Twitter’s credit that no one has yet figured out a productive use for it… It is a place to flush our puns and dispose of our surplus thoughts and spoonerisms, and that is valuable, but there is the question of what all those words are actually worth. Are they just millions of plastic bags clotting the virtual ocean? Or are they poems, each of them, waiting to be read as such?
Ha, just kidding, it’s the “millions of plastic bags” thing for sure. But the site Poetweet is doing its best to advance the idea that there’s some poetry hidden in our Twitter feeds, and uses an algorithm (presumably) to mine old tweets, chop them into iambic pentameter, and turn them into poems. If you can handle soaking in your own fragmented mundanities, you should absolutely try it yourself…

Since I am only a twit-lurker (I can get into enough trouble just with FYWP, thanks) I tried feeding Poetweet “inspiration” from our Blogmaster…

Behind that
by John Cole

Meat for his drooling readers?
Out of bounds to get to the one.
Is too small for my fat fingers.
By next week he will act alone.

Decisions. What is a “deportable?”
In next generation power sources.
This is on SNL, but it is horrible
That Judy Miller’s WMD pieces.

That everyone is a sociopath.
Detroit got J O B JOBBED.
Condemn the turkey to death…
.

(Yes: If this, my fellow Juicers, cannot attract a bigfooting puppy-update post from Himself…. well, I’ve done my best.)

Open Thread: Social Media Kidz, These DaysPost + Comments (130)

Before we go patting Mark Udall and Diane Feinstein on the back…

by Soonergrunt| December 11, 201412:56 am| 108 Comments

This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Stream of Consciousness, Torture, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, Both Sides Do It!, Decline and Fall, Midnight Confessions, Our Failed Political Establishment, Outrage

Remember that they knew all of the stuff in the torture report for years, and they did and said NOTHING. Feinstein was in the “gang of eight,” as the Chair of the Ranking Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2009. She’s known all or most of this stuff since then. A couple other notable members of that group are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

As for Udall, he has been on the Senate floor today as a couple of earlier posts by John and Anne Laurie pointed out. But he’s been on the SSCI for at least the last two years, and was very involved in the research on the torture report.

It’s good that an executive summary of the report has seen the light of day. It’s important for us to know what’s being done in our names, and I seriously doubt we’d have gotten actual information from the Republicans after they take over late next month. It would be very nice for the Politicians who oversaw torture programs and the lawyers who twisted the law to claim it was legal to be punished, but I’m not holding my breath. The prime difference between Charles Graner and Dick Cheney is rank, after all.

Having said that, why, if this report shocks the consciences of those who’ve read it, are we only seeing the exec summary, and why only now? Udall waits until now when there’s no risk to him doing this. Well, better late than never for your ideals, I suppose, even if it’s to demand a couple of people resign and not, as he said he would, to enter the text of the report into the Record. Feinstein is as safe as a Democratic Senator can get. She could have read the actual contents of the entire report into the Congressional Record at will at any time and nobody could have stopped her and there would’ve been no cost to her at the ballot box in 2018.

Everything I’ve just said above applies to the other Democrats who’ve served on the SSCI in particular and to a lesser extent on the House Committee on Intelligence since 2001. We still don’t have effective oversight of the CIA or the NSA or the rest of the Intelligence community because our representatives in Congress are complicit in keeping these secret. If Congressional oversight is the mechanism by which we exercise control over our government, we are being sadly failed by the people that we’ve sent up there to provide that oversight. And the Republicans are every bit as complicit, but being Republicans, it was absolutely predictable that they’d actively work against the interests of the general public on issues like this, and the few who aren’t are notable for that.

And lastly, look in the mirror. After 9/11, the vast majority of the American public was demanding that the government do whatever had to be done to keep another mass-casualty attack from taking place. A lot of people who otherwise counted themselves as liberals supported the Bush administration in their taking a free hand to do whatever the hell they wanted in those early years. And while Liberals began to peel off of that support within a couple of years, it wasn’t even as Iraq dragged on, and Abu Ghraib first exposed some of the ugliness did the majority of our country begin to express doubts and question what we were doing there. And in fact, it wasn’t until after Hurricane Katrina landed on our own shores and we witnessed the full extent of their incompetence and mendacity where they couldn’t hide it that the majority of the American public finally began to admit that Bush and Cheney and their minions had lied us into an unwinnable war on the other side of the world. And our Congress, including the heroes of many people here, supported them for much of their agenda. The USA PATRIOT Act passed a Democratic-held Senate, and a Democratic-held Senate gave retroactive immunity to the NSA and private corporations that assisted them later on. These were our elected representatives that did these things or allowed them to happen. They are our will made whole, and their acts and things, dark and light, are ours. Before we spend too much time wallowing in the outrage bath, we would do well by our children and our ancestors to remember that.

Before we go patting Mark Udall and Diane Feinstein on the back…Post + Comments (108)

Fables Of The Reconstruction: Cue The World’s Tiniest Violin Edition — Plus: Bonus For A Good Time On The Cape!

by Tom Levenson| October 25, 20142:17 pm| 132 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Events, Food, Stream of Consciousness, Someone Somewhere Is Having More Fun Than I Am

Attention conservation notice (term stolen from Cosma): What follows is mostly purely Levenson-domicile maundering. The good stuff is at the end; great art by someone I love. Now you know.

I’ve gone silent on our kitchen renovation farrago, for the obvious and very good reason: it’s the eternal return of the same, and thus boring. Everyone who’s lived through (or, FSM-forbid, DIY’d) a major house project knows the one universal truth: it sucks. It’s like parachuting without the thrill: August 1 at 7 a.m. we ~~were riding a perfectly functional airplane~~ had a perfectly functional kitchen. By 8:30 we’d jumped.

And the usual followed: the house is filled with dust; we’ve broken so many glasses in our makeshift sink that we’ve finally given up and gone to plastic; and as the weeks go by the house looks more like a communal grad-student flop than I ever thought I’d inhabit again.

But there’s hope. Yesterday — all in one day! — saw the transition from this:

To this:

Of course, the resulting upsurge in that sweet feeling that suggests, yes, this may someday end, is “hope” only in the sense that Robin Williams describe here. (Round about 1:48 for the reference.) Yeah, the room finally looks more or less like a room again — but now we’re going head on into the fiddly stage, where two or more skilled craftspeople will nudge something or other into some precise configuration that takes hours to work out, for an indefinite and seemingly unending future. Again…tiny violin time.

Never mind. We still cook — this week I managed a lamb stew, even, browning the meat on the gas grill — in the midst of a thunder squall — before finishing everything else on 12o0 watt burner on the hot plate:

Tasted fine.

There’s HOOOOOOOOPE (18 f**king times!)

Meanwhile, of course, life continues to do its thing — and given that, can I draw your attention to something that makes me very happy, and that I think (as I should) shows real power as a work of art.

That would be the new installation show my wife, Katha Seidman, is about to open with two other artists at the Cotuit Center for the Arts — calling all Cape Cod-proximate Balloon Juicers!.

Inspired by and in conversation with Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 a.m. (to be seen at MOMA in New York), the installation opens tonight. Details on the card:

Lots more on the installation (with photos of both the stages of creation and some of the more sculptural elements) can be found at its Facebook page.

I’ve seen it go through all the stages of gestation, from sketches and models to huge bits and pieces, some of which we trialled on our lawn. It’s (in my no-doubt utterly unbiased opinion) a deeply conceived and executed work of art, powerful as spectacle and more so as I’ve lingered with what its elements say in themselves and with and through each other. So, if you happen to be passing anywhere near that way in the next month, check it out.

Last, just for grins, here’s a picture of me, ~~singing~~ cooking in the rain:

And now…open thread.

Fables Of The Reconstruction: Cue The World’s Tiniest Violin Edition — Plus: Bonus For A Good Time On The Cape!Post + Comments (132)

The Insanity Continues

by John Cole| October 6, 201411:52 am| 99 Comments

This post is in: Shitty Cops, Stream of Consciousness, Our Failed Political Establishment

I really wish we had a functioning political establishment that would deal with stuff like this:

Speaking of insanity, I don’t know if it is the weather changes or what, but I have been having insane and extremely vivid dreams the past few days. Last night my dream was about dropping my toothbrush into the toilet and then having to go through sheer hell to buy a new one. I had to go to 40 stores in my dream and every time I thought I was close to getting one someone would buy it before me. I even remember the clerks saying there was a run on toothbrushes (and you all can insert your own damned WV jokes here). Finally, I got to a store and it was stocked wall to wall with toothbrushes, and then I couldn’t make a decision on which one to buy. That’s when I woke up. Oh, and the colors have just been so vivid. In the final store, I remember the toothbrushes were so brightly colored it looked like a big bag of jelly beans- not that cheap Walmart shit, Jelly Belly or stay home.

Must be a glitch in the matrix.

The Insanity ContinuesPost + Comments (99)

State of Play

by John Cole| July 18, 20143:02 am| 149 Comments

This post is in: Stream of Consciousness

Do you have any idea how hard it is to deal with addiction and get treatment in America? I have gold plated insurance, am comfortably middle class, and I have been going through sheer hell trying to get into a facility. It’s almost like you have to show up with a syringe full of heroin dangling from your arm and a crack pipe in your mouth to get anyone to take you seriously.

A while back, I went to my general practitioner and tried to get into a rehab facility. He was caught off guard and sent me to some place which was basically a level 4 detox facility (this meant nothing to me when I was first told it). Regardless, I had made the plans, packed my bags, gone to go be admitted, and the doctor there told me there was no way in hell he was admitting me because this was a place for court ordered detox of people who were in a far different place than me, criminal, and basically the people drinking MD under a bridge for 30 years or smoking crack rock and holding people up at gas stations. Basically, he told me that under no circumstances was this the place for me. I’d set aside the time for work. Showed up, got rejected.

Spent another couple months trying to get a place that was right, covered by insurance, and amenable to my time schedule. Found a place in Ft. Myers, Florida, and was getting ready to go, but then they flaked out on me and would never send me proof that my insurance would cover it. I’m not jumping into that kind of scam, especially in Rick Scott’s Florida. Not to mention, I sweat in a meat locker, and Ft. Myers in July sounds like my own personal hell.

So then I just said fuck it. I’m just going with the VA, even though I have private insurance. It’s close, veterans (who bitch more than anyone on the planet) consistently rate their care at the VA higher than civilians rate their hospital experiences, plus there would be a comfort level there because I was around folks I understand. Spent a couple days making arrangements with people at the VA in Pitt, they told me what to bring, packed everything up, and went, thinking I was making a big step.

Guess what. In 2003, under our favorite President, for whom I voted twice, they changed the rules of eligibility. Because I am comfortably middle class and have a retirement account, even though I am a veteran with a combat patch, I am not eligible because I have too much money. At this point, I’m just like, you have to be fucking shitting me.

Get home, called the local hospitals. None of them have facilities for rehab, or if they do, they are all outpatient and they basically give you aspirin for headaches from withdrawal. Called a number of places, and it was all the same.

Finally, I called a hospital which accepts my insurance, and I can’t even set up a rehab appointment, I have to go through their emergency room, and then they will refer me to the clinic. So that is the plan this weekend.

Why is this so fucking hard? Am I just incompetent or is it this fucking bad everywhere? You’d think they would make it much easier for people to voluntarily check in to rehab. I mean, after all, I’m a drunk. A high functioning one, but a drunk nonetheless. Sometimes I cut myself while slicing tomatoes or doing basic everyday things because… I’m fucking drunk. Why is it that getting into rehab requires a fucking PhD in bullshit and the equivalent of a tax attorney’s knowledge of procedure? Isn’t getting clean tough enough? Jeebus.

I’m winding down now. Was really psyched to start today and get shit done, and got home dejected and have just been keyed up and pissed off all night. Not to mention the bullshit of the day we discussed earlier.

Weird fucking world we live in.

State of PlayPost + Comments (149)

No one could have predicted…

This is how realignments happen…

This Blog Goes to 11…

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We have all the best words.

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

I can see Russia from this blog!

How has Obama failed you today?

It’s a tarp!

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Lighten up, Francis.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

Han shot first.

We still have time to mess this up!

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

What fresh hell is this?

(Ass) Blast From The Past

Whatever Blows Your Trumpet

I Hear There’s A Sporting Contest Today

The Selfishness of It All

Another Rambling Thread About Music and Other Things

The Republican Party is tearing itself apart. It’s about damn time.

Argentina v Panama Open Thread

You can help solve a mass murder!

Apropos Of Not Much

Another Tank o’ Freedom (Early AM Open Thread)

Open Thread: Social Media Kidz, These Days

Before we go patting Mark Udall and Diane Feinstein on the back…

Fables Of The Reconstruction: Cue The World’s Tiniest Violin Edition — Plus: Bonus For A Good Time On The Cape!

The Insanity Continues

State of Play