If my photoshop skills were a bit better developed I would copy Cole’s latest selfie, go back through the blog and find every single photo of his mangled, sprained, broken and clawed appendages and then paste them all together in a giant, glorious ginger Frankenstein’s Monster collage of domestic disaster.
Thursday Evening Open Thread: He’s Certainly Earned It…
Beyonce and Jay Z will attend Obama's birthday bash: report https://t.co/wZrFezoMMc pic.twitter.com/PakBk4MpUJ
— The Hill (@thehill) August 5, 2016
… and it may actually distract the Twitchykin from attacking Hillary, at least for a few hours on Saturday. Per The Hill:
… Obama is celebrating his 55th birthday Friday night with a star-studded celebration at the White House, with Beyoncé and Jay Z attending. Kendrick Lamar, the president’s favorite rapper, will also show up, according to the New York Post.
R&B star Usher will perform for the first couple and their guests.
It’s Obama’s last birthday as president, and he is planning to go out in style.
Several stars from the worlds of entertainment, sports and music have scored an invite. The guests include comedian Ellen DeGeneres, singer Stevie Wonder, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, singer and actress Jennifer Hudson and basketball legends Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning…
The party is taking place one day before the Obama family leaves for its annual vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
Obama’s birthday falls on Thursday, and he is keeping things strictly business, according to his public schedule…
Happy birthday, Mr. President, and may nothing more immanently serious than Donald Trump’s campaign interrupt your vacation.
***********
What else is on the agenda as we prepare to wrap up another busy week?
Thursday Evening Open Thread: He’s Certainly Earned It…Post + Comments (242)
And it Begins…
So I went over to the new house, and who do I find on the front porch but my father and his dogs, giving it the good German inspection it needs. My dad lives for this stuff, and has remodeled every child’s home in the family and actually has a vision for this kind of thing. Where Devon and I see potential in stray animals and Seth and mom see potential in Pittsburgh Pirate reclamation projects, dad sees potential in homes.
“Good porch. House just needs to be powerwashed. Steps are solid. Need to rip up that carpet. This is going to be a beautiful home. Good place for a porch swing.”
He walked off after a bit and I went around back to go in and feed and water and walk the dog and… promptly fell through a rotten plank in the deck. I just heard a crunch and I was suddenly four feet tall, in pain, and wearing a bucket of water and kibble. My right leg was balls deep through the porch, and I just sat there for a minute before I did anything. I didn’t want to move because I didn’t know if I had cut an artery on a nail or broken any bones and moving would make things worse, so I just pulled my shit together for a bit and had a giggle to myself about bringing this on by mentioning I hadn’t had many injuries while sober.
I tried to call to Dad but he’s deaf and didn’t hear me, and he was already walking down the block talking to neighbors and telling them I would be moving in. Again, this is a small town and everyone knows everybody so dad was just doing his normal thing and walking around with the dogs spreading his particular brand of cheer.
I slowly pulled myself out, and I have scrapes and the like all over my legs, but no deep cuts. Got a massive bruise on my thigh and my upper leg hurts like hell and will for a couple days, but I will be ok.
My right flip flop is still under the porch. It can stay there for the night and think about what it has done. But hold on. This story GETS BETTER.
I got up and fed the dog a little and gave him some water, and was driving around the block and saw my dad. Pulled up next to him and the dogs and started to say “Hey- guess what just happened” and before I could get it out he told me “Some of your neighbors told me there are some bad boards on the deck.” He then said “Good thing it was you and not me,” which is true because I am resilient and he is not, but also YOU ASSHOLE THAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU SAY?
I swear to god I almost killed him. So I guess I just added “GET TETANUS SHOT” to the to-do list tomorrow after “TAKE DOG TO VET” and “MEET REAL ESTATE ATTORNEY.”
I swear- am I the only one whose life is like this? It’s just one damned thing after another. I guess it’s my density to just soldier on until one day I drop dead. And don’t worry about paypaling me money for the dog, if he needs help I will let you all know.
*** Update ***
The dog is fine but I have no idea what his name is. He’s very sweet and I am going to go see him tomorrow morning.
Second, I really am on top of the current injury, so thanks for all the advice, but I am good. I did what I normally do, which is just let it bleed out while trying to keep the dogs from licking me too much, and then I took a shower and scrubbed it, dried it off, let it air dry, and sprayed a little bacitracin on it. This is not my first rod(erp)eo. The scrapes hurt a little like your average strawberry, but there is some deep muscle pain on the outer thigh. I’m not going to take anything for it tonight or tomorrow because I want to be able to have a good gauge of how much damage I’ve done. I’ll let the doctor look at it tomorrow when I go for a shot.
Remember- I’m pretty decent at handling physical pain. I’m sort of used to it. As I told someone else, I can break multiple bones and be ok, but if I cough a couple times I think I have lung cancer and act like Fred Sanford.
Weirdness Open Thread: Peter ‘Bathory’ Thiel Vants to Transfuse Your Plasma
Welcome to Trump's America, jobs for young people selling their blood to billionaires.https://t.co/rF4iyVtzGO
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) August 1, 2016
And here we all assumed Ayn Rand fanatic Thiel was just encouraging strapping young men to drop out of college and visit his palatial seasteading for the usual reasons. According to Inc:
More than anything, Peter Thiel, the billionaire technology investor and Donald Trump supporter, wants to find a way to escape death. He’s channeled millions of dollars into startups working on anti-aging medicine, spends considerable time and money researching therapies for his personal use, and believes society ought to open its mind to life-extension methods that sound weird or unsavory.
Speaking of weird and unsavory, if there’s one thing that really excites Thiel, it’s the prospect of having younger people’s blood transfused into his own veins.
That practice is known as parabiosis, and, according to Thiel, it’s a potential biological Fountain of Youth–the closest thing science has discovered to an anti-aging panacea. Research into parabiosis began in the 1950s with crude experiments that involved cutting rats open and stitching their circulatory systems together. After decades languishing on the fringes, it’s recently started getting attention from mainstream researchers, with multiple clinical trials underway in humans in the U.S. and even more advanced studies in China and Korea…
In Monterey, California, about 120 miles from San Francisco, a company called Ambrosia recently commenced one of the trials. Titled “Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers,” it has a simple protocol: Healthy participants aged 35 and older get a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for molecular indicators of health and aging. The study is patient-funded; participants, who range in age from late 30s through 80s, must pay $8,000 to take part, and live in or travel to Monterey for treatments and follow-up assessments…
Because the RNC convention was such a multi-ring circus, I never found time to link to the NYTimes essay on Thiel’s speech endorsing Trump there. “Peter Thiel’s Heroic Political Fantasies,” frankly, presented Thiel as someone who thinks of himself along the lines of the genetic vampires in Peter Watts’ novel Blindsight — a member of a predator species only distantly related to Homo Sap.
But that’s an unduly heroic fantasy. Thiel’s just another Dives trying to avoid the final judgement — during the first Gilded Age, he’d have been visiting Switzerland to have monkey glands (or the testicles of executed criminals) sewn into his scrotum.
blood for the blood god. Disruption for the disruption throne.
— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) August 1, 2016
@AthertonKD Can I just write, "Not for Peter Thiel!" on the outside of the blood bags when I donate at the Red Cross?
— Old New Dad (@old_new_dad) August 1, 2016
Weirdness Open Thread: Peter ‘Bathory’ Thiel Vants to Transfuse Your PlasmaPost + Comments (86)
Iz Our Media Village Lerning?
Thought we needed some new threaditude, so how about this?
Here’s a screengrab from coverage of the Polyester Cockwomble‘s rally in Portland, ME*:
Death by parenthesis. Couldn’t happen to a nicer leather faced shit-tobboganist.
We’ve had too much celebration today. Time for the snarling jackals to find some kittens to skull fu….
Oh wait.
This is a family blog.
As you were.
ETA: Josh Marshall pointed this out, and I forgot to steal it here. As he put it, most campaigns spend at least some effort getting a crowd behind the candidate that looks kind of inclusive. As you see in the shot above, and as I confirmed watching a few minutes of the rally, not this time. Trump’s got a phalanx of middle-aged, could-lose-a-few-pounds, white guys (there was one woman visible in the wide shots to Trump’s right, but that was it as far as I could see). And that’s all.
To call this amateur hour is to insult everyone who’s ever done anything for the love of it.
*Sic! Going after that crucial single electoral vote Maine might give a Republican — in very much the wrong district. Sad!
Biennial Selfie and House Update
Still fat, more gray. I tried to smile.
So I went to the house and was in for a little surprise. The former owner left his dog in there for months (which we knew), but he had supposedly removed it after the neighbors and my mom called the game warden. He said he did, but apparently took it out and put it back in and told no one. So when I went over to change the locks, I was greeted with a very sad and emaciated dog.
He’s a very sweet old dog, doesn’t bark and is starved for attention. I gave him a tiny tiny bit of food because you have to be super careful with how much food you give a dog who has gone through this, and will give him some more tonight, as well as plenty of water. Unfortunately, he has shit all over the entire house and there is dog hair everywhere.
Tomorrow I am taking him to my friend the vet to see if he can be saved or if it is more humane to put him down, and if he can be saved I guess I will just pay the vet to do everything that needs to be done and my sister’s animal rescue in Pittsburgh is going to take him and get him the home he deserves. Everyone in town is just livid and furious, and the older lady next door who had been feeding him when she knew he was there almost broke down in tears. If I see this asshole I am going to have to really exercise a great deal of self control so that it does not become a felony encounter.
I’m new to this adulting stuff, so I hired a real estate attorney to deal with all the paperwork, and in the short term all I am going to do is get the yard taken care of and powerwash the fence and the house because the neighbors have suffered enough. Phase two will involve a dumpster and ripping out all the carpet and basically just deep cleaning the entire property until it is sanitary enough to work in.
After that, electrician and plumber, my friend is a contractor and will have him look at a few things, and when that is done, I will start painting. Since I am starting new, I have the luxury of actually choosing the colors for the interior, so that is nice. Then the flooring. It’s a 1910 house so I am hoping underneath there is some hardwood thick enough condition that hasn’t been refinished 100 times and is good enough for another sanding and finishing. If not, I’ll explore options.
I’m mentally exhausted. This is more excitement in one day than I usually have in six months barring personal injuries, which, I’ve noticed, come less frequently now that I am sober.
Thanks, Everyone!
Many, many thanks to Scav, Betty, and everyone here for the good wishes on The Hunt for Vulcan making the Royal Society’s book prize finals.
I feel like I have to thank the book itself as well. I love all my book-children equally (if not always for the same things), but HoV was definitely the kindest one I’ve ever worked on. I’d wake up, grab my coffee, and go to my desk, and it would tell me what it wanted to be that day, so I’d write that. Then damned if it wouldnt’ do it again the next day … and the next, until we agreed that it was done. That’s kindness.
I’d be remiss in my authorly duty if I didn’t also note that it’s just out in paperback in the US and will be so next week in the UK. (You can always get the hardcover, the e-book, or the audiobook if you’d like — at all the usual suspects. (see below).
ETA, per commenter Mike J.: here’s the Amazon link for the hardcover, the paperback, the kindle edition, and the audiobook. As Mike J. notes, buying via the affiliate link helps the site. I’d only add that communities and all those books that don’t get the Oprah/Fresh Air/zeitgeist boost utterly depend on the support of independent bookstores — and the relatively few remaining Barnes and Nobles and the like too. So if you’ve got a brick-and-mortar store near you, and you can stand the higher price you’ll pay compared to Amazon, I’d urge you to help them out, and me (and any other writer you like), by telling the actual humans there that they might like to talk the book up.
OK — back to your regularly scheduled programming:
To answer a couple of questions from Betty’s thread:
Alas, no owls. I found out a few days ago from my UK publisher, Head of Zeus (no, really). The Royal Society lets the various publishers know under embargo to help with the promotion of the prize and the short listed books.
What am I going to do with the money? A) never price the unborn calf. B) most of the shortlist winnings are already allocated to Q3 estimated taxes ;-( (and whew for the windfall). C) I might splurge on a new and faster bicycle. (Noting, as ever that the bike may change but, alas, the rider does not.)
Who did I tell first? My wife and son, obviously. My agent and editor over here. And one more member of my household. He was strangely unmoved by the news:
Questioned more closely, he restated his position:
Again: my thanks to everyone, and especially to those who have or will read about the planet that was and wasn’t there.
Image: Jacques-Émile Blanche, The Readers, 1890.