Apparently, I can just buy a sword-cane and that even if I get a doctor's note, I can't take one on an airplane. So I guess the stretching will be ok.
Also, it turns out I was wrong about not being dizzy. If I'm on the floor for a stretch and I get up, I get a real head spin. Enough that if I didn't stop, I could easily pitch over.
I guess I should mention that to my doctor?
Maybe it's a mistake to try to get a sword cane on the basis of what the cane can do to help you get around, and better, especially in the US, to focus on how the sword will help you defend your way of life.
I guess if I'm having dizziness, I should just use a gun for safety.
Working from the office three days a week seems to have ruined my ability to get work done on the days I'm at home.
Well, that and it being summer while the home desk is in an un-air-conditioned attic.
6: Probably, but it doesn't bother me when I get up unless I've been exercising.
Took more steps toward running for that office! Applied for a committee number since that takes a while; went to a party picnic for schmoozing and got a few enthusiastic responses, heard of no alternate compelling candidates. Decision in a few days, plus need work sign-off, but if I do it it will start happening very fast.
Go all. I'm still not taking responsibility for anything. Though I'm back to knocking on doors.
I am doing nothing actively political, but at work I have been assigned to lead a project acting as Lorax for the next few months: I will be speaking for the trees of NYC.
It doesn't work unless you can sound like Danny DeVito.
I phrased that poorly. I know she can. I hoping she's willing.
On the internet, nobody knows you're not Danny DeVito.
21: And nobody can be sure if you are.
21: And nobody can be sure if you are.
21, 22: Well, I'm pretty sure the real Danny DeVito wouldn't double post.
24: But the real peep would definitely get the comment numbers wrong.
The exciting news from Ohio is that the Ohio State Fair is back and open to the public, so Covid is officially over.
Thanks to Monkey Pox you can't fuck the butter cow this year.
I do a really upsetting Lorax voice. Worse than Devito. And I'm a little baffled by the tree project. I will be speaking for the trees but I'm not clear at all on what effect we're expecting this to have.
You march to Isengard, to hew the stone and break the door.
28: Maybe before you speak for the trees, you need to listen to the trees.
27: Yes, but this year there is also a butter calf, a butter pig, and a butter goat!
I assume the butter John Glenn was removed in 2016, because butter fucking counts as masturbation.
I don't actually know what we're talking about, and I already regret 33.
We're talking about Ohio, so 33 is totally apposite.
33, 34: No cause for regret! I think you're right about butter fucking.
https://www.dairyherd.com/news/education/record-breaking-butter-display-unveiled-ohio-state-fair#:~:text=The%202022%20Ohio%20State%20Fair,butter%20displayed%20in%20two%20years.
Their was a John Glenn one year -- maybe two.
36.3: "Their"? really??? Now that's a cause for regret.
I saw in the other thread where peep says he stands on one foot as a form of exercise, and, are peep and I the same person? because I do the same thing. I feel like it's especially effective when I brush my teeth or do the dishes, because by keeping my balance while my upper body is in motion, I'm further testing my awesome powers of strength and balance.
Anyway, based on those tests I know that I'm in peak physical fitness, but despite that, a few weeks ago I started to worry that I'm in danger of becoming an inanimate object, or of literally being absorbed into my couch cushions. I started playing tennis more often, and now my wrists hurt and my elbows hurt. It's unclear whether this is an improvement.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show once displayed a butter Ben Franklin, complete with printing press. I had to restrain myself.
Yeah, it's pretty disrespectful to fuck Ben Franklin since he's on the money.
I think of all the Founding Fathers Franklin is the one who would have the least problem with people fucking a butter version of him.
The title of Horniest Founder probably goes to Gouverneur Morris by a slight edge over Franklin, but he's not on the money or in the butter.
It'd be delightful if LB got to receive the trees' correspondence.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/when-you-give-a-tree-an-email-address/398210/
(To the tune of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie") When You Give a Tree an Email Address
I don't know why everyone thinks of mice as demanding. The deer staring at me as I cook dinner is worse.
Would the deer be more afraid if I were cooking beef, not chicken?
Trump endorsing "Eric" in the Missouri Senate primary is the funniest thing in a long time. (Both frontrunners are named Eric and both immediately trumpeted the endorsement.)
49: the funniest thing since he endorsed J. D Mandell
I'm forever loyal to Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
51: That is probably still the all-time champion.
I have mentioned that my cousin (well, the husband of my mother's cousin who died 25 years ago) is in those pictures? White-haired guy who's Giuliani's lawyer. I've been cracking myself up for years watching his name pop up in the news.
None of my cousins have done worse crimes than armed robbery and being a hospital administrator. Same cousin, different ages.
I was at an Indigenous lit festival last week, and Louise Erdrich was asked about how to write the best sex scenes. Her answers, I shit you not, were (a) don't write (much) about sex and (b) butter.
jms, I feel I should share this with you.
(I was similarly turning into a human couch, then decided to embrace figure skating as a quality parent-child activity... in which Elke has eclipsed my skills in record time. I was probably a stronger skater than she was at the beginning of this year, and now I am [proudly] eating icy dust. Unfortunately this is a sport that makes hockey look cheap.)
57: Man, I wish I knew how to feel about Erdrich and her late ex-husband and all the dark stuff in their past. I rarely obsess about artists' moral purity, but this is a case where I find myself wanting the whole story.
Like Wallander after he started dating that widow.
56: my cousin went from doing some time for cocaine dealing (I think) to hospital administrator. I don't know how lucrative the first one was, but the second one made him very rich.
60.1 He writes the score and then someone else plays the match?
60: That's wonderful. One of the commenters to that post imagines Victor Borge's reaction - VB playing a Schoenberg tennis scoring sheet is something I would pay to see.
Re: Erdrich and Dorris, I agree. It's hard to know what to make of the parallels between Dorris and his character Dayton, from A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Like Dorris, Dayton is a mixed-race Native American and a teacher, whose racial authenticity is repeatedly questioned by people around him. Dayton turns out to have been convicted of child sex abuse. Weirdly, this fact is not a big deal in the book - Christine just kind of assumes he was wrongly convicted, and is happy to have him live with her and her young daughter; and Dayton never behaves in a problematic way within the framework of the novel. The book was published long before the allegations from Dorris' children came out.
I don't like the practice of drawing inferences about an author's biography from their fiction; and I certainly don't think that characters and events in a fictional work necessarily have parallels in the author's life. But it's very weird! Weirder still, when you consider that Erdrich and Dorris said that they basically wrote all their work collaboratively.
63: People go to prison and learn how to be better criminals.
The deer has moved back just far enough that I can't see her without standing on my toes.
56, 63, and 66: My hospital requires a CORI check (MA term for criminal background check). I think they've started to let people clear certain things from their record in the past few years, but I'd really love to know how they managed to get hired after their prison stints.
I'm talking about someone who is now a very old man, close to 90. The armed robbery was in 1950 something. I'm sure he was hired before they starting requiring a criminal record to be a hospital administrator.
I just straight up forgot to post this morning, before we left the hotel in Amarillo, and didn't remember until we were in the parts of west Texas with no reception. Whoops. It feels nice to be home, though.
My cousin is 70, would have started working in hospitals maybe 1980 or so. Probably not as much background checking then?
They had ethics but not in a way we can understand.
It would have been a great story if they had been able to spin a story about personal growth and redemption and how it aligned with the mission of a non-profit hospital.
I do, actually, have an interest in how people who go to prison can get jobs and live productive lives, not necessarily getting filthy rich.
I grew up with the State Attorney that just got fired by DeSantis. We weren't exactly friends, but we kind of got in trouble together in class together as quasi-sibling-accomplices. I feel very proud of him.
Also we were very similar people in a lot of ways, and I thought it was massively unfair that I thought he was very cute, and he thought thin blond girls with extremely bland personalities were cute. That was a major pain point for me growing up, that extremely dull girls commanded so much attention from boys who were funny and interesting.
However, I did not become a reverse-lady-incel over it or anything.
Someone find the fruit basket to welcome Avril Levine.
If "Levine" is an intentional joke, I appreciate it.
Then let's say that it wasn't just me not knowing how she spells her name.
73.2: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/nyregion/john-gargano-nyu-graduate.html is a good story for you too. Also a positive Obama clemency story. The guy was just featured in Humans of New York.
80 is me. Also I'm not sure why there's a "too". It's supposed to be "then".