Or as in “Jonah OUGHT to have retired from writing at the start of that decade.”

Jonah wears his farts on his sleeve.

As a season-ticket holder of DC United who STANDS on LOUD SIDE, I can assure you there are conservatives in the stadium. They sit on quiet side for the sake of their kids, hating both DC and United and Major League Soccer, hating how the beer vendors fill OUR pints to the very tippy-top but not theirs, grumbling it’s because the vendors are black and we are liberals, not realizing it’s because we tip and they don’t.

Since Kennedy, hasn’t it been considered bad luck for a president to be elected in a ‘0 year? Sure, consider Regan in ’80. Pure disaster. Bush in ’90. Who was 1970… Nixon? Well, there you go! The dastardly Oughts! Rhymes with, ummm, snots, tots, Rots, Boughts, Dots, Foughts, gots… hey, just about every letter in the alphabet rhymes with OUGHT. I smell a conspiracy! Or maybe its left-over pie from Christmas dinner.

“It’s Negro President-Elect”? Oh Clif.

(Is it? Is it really?)

But calling your wife fat isn’t love.

TRUE love keeps feeding her lard and sugar cakes to see whether the diabetes or the heart disease kills her first.

Fozzetti, you young ‘un, it was Nixon in ’68 and ’72, and Bush I in ’88. But then it was Bush II in ’00, so there you go.

Calling your wife spouse fat isn’t very loving, true, but steering said spouse toward more healthful food and talking walks together, tactfully and out of concern, certainly is.

and taking walks is good too.

True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for.

I thought this was a sign that I’m a suicidal narcissist. What a relief to learn it’s something I should be proud of. Thanks, Joel Stein!

Methinks Stein et al have confused love with infatuation.

Isn’t this just one step away from stalking?

Jonah writes a cooking column now? “Your brick of cheddar, I eated it.”

Does anyone know what we’re supposed to call this decade? …

I think “a tragedy” would fit pretty well.

Wouldn’t want to leave out the largest city in the country, Gay Jewistan aka New York.

Oh, conservatives just love love love New York. They just can’t stand all the people in it.

No, no, I think Joel must be right.

Conservatives DO love america more.

The Liberals had Bill Ayers.

The Conservatives had Tim McVeigh.

Now I asks ya. Who delivered more LOVE of country?

mikey

Jesus Christ, I thought at least that Goldberg would know the difference between “ought” and “aught”. Guess I was wrong.

MzNicky said,
December 27, 2008 at 20:52

Calling your wife spouse fat isn’t very loving, true, but steering said spouse toward more healthful food and talking walks together, tactfully and out of concern, certainly is.

You no longer have standing, I’m afraid, to complain about any of my misplaced apostrophes. 🙂

Pathetic.

I was unaware of the existence of Joel Stein before today. I wish I still was. As anyone who’s not an idiot knows, the ‘love’ conservatives feel for their country is composed mostly of hate. I assume that Stein knows this perfectly well and that he wrote his servile op-ed piece as a way of stirring shit and attracting attention.

Conservatives love their country in the same way that manhood-threatened wankstains love their families after they’ve butchered them in their sleep — it’s what you scream to the TV crews while the cops are leading you away and toting your wife and kids out in body bags.

Why do so many morons get high-paying media jobs when I have to get by on unemployment and family charity?

Conservatives do not love America, they hate America. This is easily empirically verifiable. The hate the constitution (separation of church and state, free speech, separation of powers, due process, retrictions on search and seizure, equal rights for women and minorities, etc.). They hate “all men are created equal.” They hate e”every vote counts.” They hate anybody who is not exactly like them. They love a nasty, hateful vision of America which has absolutely nothing to do with the founders’ vision or modern reality.

Uh, Clif darlin’, you might want to change the batteries in your sarcasm detection device.

I don’t love America. That’s what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there’s no winning.

I like using the ‘aught’ phrase. Especially when discussing a disaster.

The Great Hurricane of Aught-Five!

The Election Debacle of Aught-Four!

Usually, using ‘Great’ helps.

The Great Election Jubilee of Aught-Eight!

And I agree with Doctor Dick. History proves that conservatives HATE everything that makes America great and actively work to destroy everything that does make America great. Of course the Democratic Leadership is in league with the GOP, and have been ever since the Reagan Disaster…

Uh, Clif darlin’, you might want to change the batteries in your sarcasm detection device.

Oh, now there’s a useful invention.

I was just waiting for y’all to pick up on Pantload’s “whole brick of cheese” quote. When I read it, I sprayed my beverage all over, snorted, and maybe even wet myself slightly. I was so glad I wasn’t in the room, remembering an incident wherein a 350 lb. Safeway clerk said, ringing me up, “I hate beer. It makes me so bloated.”
I must admit it was the first time Lucianne’s baby (Papa’s maybe…) ever wrote something I believed.
Velveeta, I’m guessing.

Well, if by “America” you mean the Union-hating Confederacy, well, then, yeah, conservatives loooooooove “America”.

Let’s play a game: Which quotes are from notorious serial killers and which ones are from Bush?

Answers will be posted tomorrow.

Jonah writes a cooking column now? “Your brick of cheddar, I eated it.”
Battered and deep-fried is good.

Clif: I subsequently corrected my error, pal. 🙂

(“its/it’s” confusion is a pet peeve that annoys me all out of proportion. Please excuse.)

See, you have to distinguish between the ordinary, workaday, reality based America which only hateful liberals can see.
There is another America, made up of myths, legends and movies. This America is the one conservatives love. Lioberals hate America so much, they don’t even recognise this real imaginary America. That’s hate for you!
Yeah, and “The Dirty Dozen” wasn’t a true story, either, and all those “Die Hard” movies are complete fabrications! I can’t even conceive of a person who hates America enough to say that.
The real America? Who cares? But do you love cinema-America, or Meta-America, or America-the-Myth? That’s what really matters, and that’s where Liberals fail completely.
If you really love, you can love a lie more than the truth!

The fact is, liberals love muslims and faggots and the blacks more than America, which is why they are trying to destroy USA to make their “friends” happy, which they won’t be.

If you are white and you are a liberal, you must hate yourself and your children, for you are working for your death and theirs, a great race, that invented society, sacrificed to mud people on the altar of PC before the suicide of the race..

You know, I can’t believe the fact that Stein is attempting, very dryly, to lampoon hard-right jingoism is going over the collective head of what I thought was a very smart web community.

I’m not going to defend Stein’s writing style; it’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s best described as decaffeinated snark. But as long as I’ve been reading his material in Time (I’m less familiar with his LA Times work), I’ve always read his material as being written, facetiously, from the point of view of an overgrown liberal frat boy who’s two steps behind the rest of the world (and I will say that “ersatz liberal” applies to the character he writes as, though perhaps not to him per se). He’s not overly talented, no, but he is occasionally funny and is not to be taken so terribly seriously as all that.

So, basically, the idea here is that Gateway Pundit is dumb enough to take Joel Stein at face-value when he makes a snarky comment about how stupid conservatives are when they say they “love” America, and then, so as to clarify this point *Clif* takes Joel Stein at face-value saying that?

Man, crazy.

Then again, I’m more used to Joel Stein advertising softcore porn on Cinemax than anything he’s written, so excuse me if I’m not going to take him seriously.

Its/it’s is legitimate confusion IMO, since we’re talking about a possessive. It’s far less horrific than adding an apostrophe to verbs and plural nouns, which has become depressingly common and acceptable among people who really should know better.

Also, if you really love America, you break into her house when she’s not home after receiving a message from her in the television, kill her cat, erase the phone messages from her answering machine, and then shoot her, her boyfriend, and yourself when she gets back.

THAT’S REAL AMERICA. STALK IT OR LEAVE, LIBTARDS.

a great race, that invented society

Mmmmm. No! Speaking as an anthropologist (you know, an expert on this topic), this statement is totally false. “Society”, to the extent that we can talk about it being invented, was the creation of black Africans about 2 million years ago. Civilization (what wingnuts usually mean by this) was first invented by the ancestors of those Arabs, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Pakistanis, and the Indians of Mexico and Peru (mud people, doncha know?) between 3,000 and 5,500 years ago. Europeans, being rather backward barbarians for most of their careers, were quite late to the party, only joining in about 1,000 years ago. For that matter, they were a very benighted 3rd world backwater in 1500 AD when they started their “voyages of discovery” and ultimate global conquest. At that point the centers of power, commerce, and civilization were in the Muslim Empire, China, Central Mexico, and the Andes. Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztecs, was several times larger and far wealthier than any European city at the time of the Spanish conquest.

talking walks together
I support the idea of talking walks, but after a few kilometres the Frau Doktorin tells me to shut up.

I support the idea of talking walks, but after a few kilometres the Frau Doktorin tells me to shut up.

One of the reasons I advocate solitary walks in the mountains and forests. Cross country skiing is also good.

You know, I can’t believe the fact that Stein is attempting, very dryly, to lampoon hard-right jingoism is going over the collective head of what I thought was a very smart web community.

Well, shucks. He shore fooled me. I thought the guy was a more flippant version of Alan Colmes.

Its/it’s is legitimate confusion IMO, since we’re talking about a possessive.

I’m with MzNicky on this one. It’s just such an easy rule that I don’t understand why people make the mistake: it’s can never mean anything other than it is.

Then again, I’m sure I’m guilty of more than one recurring error which probably also has a simple rule. We each have our own struggles in dealing with the written language.

Europeans, being rather backward barbarians for most of their careers, were quite late to the party, only joining in about 1,000 years ago.

Say what?

Jennifer said,
December 27, 2008 at 22:58

Its/it’s is legitimate confusion IMO, since we’re talking about a possessive.

I’m with MzNicky on this one. It’s just such an easy rule that I don’t understand why people make the mistake: it’s can never mean anything other than it is.

It was a fucking typo. I know the difference between “its” and “it’s” ferchrissakes. Just as Jennifer probably knows that she should have put quotation marks around “it’s” and the “it is” in the last clause of her comment.

Say what?

My bad. That should be 2,500-3,000 years ago (early dates are for the Minoans on Crete). Sometimes multitasking is not such a good thing.

I think Stein was supposed to be satirizing right-wing thought in this column; unfortunately, Stein is such a craptacular writer that it’s impossible to tell for sure.

Hadn’t heard about Colmes. When did he grow a spine?

Yeah, you’re gonna need to back this thread up and take the drive from the top cuz you missed the crucial turns. Eesh. Maybe Clif hadn’t had coffee yet.

…should have put quotation marks around “it’s” and the “it is” in the last clause of her comment.

I italicized instead. 😉

MizNicki: Deep sigh. Well ’80 was correct, and ’00. One of these days I’m gonna figure out that Google-thingy.

He has a certain point. I have no interest in that conservative, rah rah, God Bless America bullshit.

Does anyone know what we’re supposed to call this decade?

The Naughties…

The Naughties…

We can only hope! 😎

Say you have a 7-year-old kid who bullies all the other kids, and steals their lunches, and hits the girls, and cheats on his homework, and kicks the teacher, and sprays graffiti all over the classroom. The teacher calls the parent in for a conference. Who is the better parent – the one who says, “My little Aloysius is just a perfect little angel and if you say different, I’ll report you to the principal and have you fired for abusing my precious darling child” or the one who takes stock of the kid’s problems and disciplines the kid accordingly, imposing limits and consequences for bad behavior? Which parent gives the kid a chance at growing up to be a happy, productive member of society, with friends and relationships, and which parent will doom their child to a lifetime of friendless misery at best and a beating death in a back alley at worst?

Wow, politics, western civ, grammar, snark and even snarky grammar; is there anything you can’t get in this comment thread?

Special thanks to DrDick for the history of civillisation shorter. Very nice.

Wow, politics, western civ, grammar, snark and even snarky grammar; is there anything you can’t get in this comment thread?

Alice’s Restaurant.

I think we need photoshops of the Doughy Pantload cradling a huge hunk of velveeta…

Fozzetti: Just remember, Leap Yr., Summer Olympics & U. S. Pres. Elections, every four yrs., all in the same yr.

I read Stein’s article a couple of days ago, and I too was a bit surprised at seeing it show up here in a negative light. Granted, it’s not the best-written column ever.

What’s the quick rule on when to use an apostrophe on Marie Jon’?

What’s the quick rule on when to use an apostrophe on Marie Jon’?

Apostrophe? Is that what you kids are calling it these days?

Special thanks to DrDick for the history of civillisation shorter. Very nice.

De nada. I do it in expanded form several times a year and have done so for about 20 years.

Constructive Crit for Clif:

“First orgasm” link not working.

As a regular consumer of the dead-tree edition of the Incredible Shrinking Newspaper™© I have the misfortune of reading (or at least scanning) this pud’s output every Friday. He gets off an amusing column about once every eight tries. (A batting average of .125)

Much of his output is dedicated to his inability to get a sitcom writing gig. Based on his columns, I can’t imagine why he can’t.

Suck this, Joel!!!

The fact is, DrDick, this is false liberal BS about the history of great civilzation, white people invented technology and the blacks only steal it from us, all that feelgood BS about black inventors most of it is made up for self-esteem for getto kids, the real quality stuff was made by white people and still is, whithout white people no electricity, writing, airplanes, cars, roads, horses, real realigion, without white people, all honor killing, mud, gang warfare, mumbling and laziness. Refute that libs.

I think Stein was supposed to be satirizing right-wing thought in this column; unfortunately, Stein is such a craptacular writer that it’s impossible to tell for sure.

It hardly helps when the satirical crazy doesn’t seem all that much of an exaggeration of the real crazy (examples are conservatively religious more than political– I’m sure SadlyNauts can find examples).

Shorter Ruppert: Hey, I can’t help it if my prolapse isn’t as assertive and prehensile as Twoofies! It’s not like I’m not straining as hard as I can!

Hey that’s some first-rate genuine ersatz liberalitude there, Joel, not the cheap imitation faux ersatz stuff.

Its/it’s is legitimate confusion IMO, since we’re talking about a possessive.

No, No, NO!! It is NOT a legitimate confusion. “Its” is a possessive pronoun. “It’s” is the contraction of “it is.” As I used to tell my illiterate journalism students, the apostrophe is there for a fucking reason, you idiot children! It indicates that a LETTER IS MISSING! In this case, the “i”! From what would otherwise be “IT IS”!!!!! You stupid moronic overprivileged doughbrained kids who should never have graduated high school!!

As I said, pet peeve. I no longer teach.

What Brian X said. I read Stein in the LA Times. He’s not so bad. I do seem to remember, though, reading something months ago and thinking, “Oh, Christ, he’s a Republican?” But I can’t swear to it.

I wonder whats bothering MzNicky. Maybe its the weather.

MzNicky–

Yeah, but: you can’t blame people for seeing the apostrophe in the misspelled “it’s” as being possessive. “The dog’s collar” could equal “it’s collar.” It just doesn’t, for some reason. It’s its nature to be counter-intuitive.

Um, going along with this theory, as a gay man who likes the idea of teh buttsex, I would like to humbly submit my request that the prolapsed anus talk be no more.

Kthxbye.

Yes, MzNicky, & the never-ending confusion of “lay”‘ & “lie” among the dough-brained. Etc. Will the torture never end?

Shorter Stein: I’d be the P. J. O’Rourke of the center-left if I could, but the center-left doesn’t actually play that position.

Shorter Stein: I’d be the P. J. O’Rourke of the center-left if I could, but the center-left doesn’t actually play that position.

Aaaand M.B. wins the thread.

Um, as a gay manhetero dude who likes the idea of teh buttsex (Just the idea!) I would like to humbly submit my request that the prolapsed anus talk be no more.

Kthxbye.

And another county heard from.

Dr. Dick, I have an off-topic question for you, given your anthropological expertise. Do you know of any good books on pre-Europeann-contact Afric civilizations a that are accessible to dumb-ass country boys like me? Apart from stuff on Egypt, of course, which is about all the History Channel has on it apart from shit on World War II. Thanks in advance.

And P.J. O’Rourke doesn’t even play his shtick as well as he thinks he does, so anyone trying to do the same has nothing to offer the world but beau-coups of suck, it seems. Same thing with people trying to do H.L. Menken and Hunter S. Thompson, which, let’s face it, the combination is all of O’Rourke’s shtick. I’m embarrased at how much I read the guy when I was 13. I mean, yeah, everyone thinks they’re smarter than they are at 13, but still. Embarrassing.

MzNicky said,
December 28, 2008 at 0:39

You stupid moronic overprivileged doughbrained kids who should never have graduated high school!!

If you’re going to be a grammar prig, you should know that schools “graduate” students and students “graduate from” schools. Sheez.

Matt T.

Unfortunately, not really. It is not my area (I specialize in Native Americans, chiefly political systems and the evolution of inequality, gender, and ethnicity/race). There is some good work that has been done on Nubian civilizations and some on Zimbabwe (the archaeological site, not the country). There is also quite a bit of work on later precolonial African societies such as the Ghana, Mali and Songhai empires of West Africa. Van Sina has done some excellent work on the Kuba and other groups in the Congo. There are also some good research on the Yoruba, Nupe, Katsina, Hausa, and Kanem-Bornu in Nigeria and central Africa.

Damn! Clif shoots, he scores!
But remember team, it’s only a game. Easy w/ the elbows.

Matt, I believe my friend Joe Conrad can pretty much tell you everything you need to know…

mikey

Ha! I bet they don’t have such stimulating arguments about grammar in countries where the language has more rules than exceptions and at least some semblance of structure and …

Well, fuck.

I distinctly remember someone *cough cough* getting on my case for mentioning that if two things differ from each other, then they are different from each other, not “different than” each other. And yet, there is a grammar free-for-all in these comments sparked by an error of typing, and not knowledge.

How about we all take a nice big Perspective Pill or something and go back to mocking wingnuts?

Look kids, the TalEvan is fixin’ to start a real set to:

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake bashed Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren this week, saying “God will punish” Warren for agreeing to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration next month.

“I pray He is kind to you in this punishment that is coming,” Drake wrote in a widely-released e-mail. In it, the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park pastor criticizes Warren’s “recent plan to invoke the presence of almighty God on this evil illegal alien,” a reference to Obama.

That is what a grown man does for a living.

As opposed to wanking as you do?

No, I just don’t understand how you study the evolution of inequality, gender, and race/ethnicity. As a sentence it doesn’t appear to make much sense.

This brings back memories.

BTW, what the hell is a bioethicist? Is that actually a real job, or, is it one of those made up positions that Liberals constantly come up with so they do not really have to work for a living, but, can spread their lunacy and political viewpoints?

Hey, you are the expert, you explain what it is you do. Your first attempt didn’t exactly work.

Odd. It was perfectly clear and understandable to me, and I didn’t even struggle trying to understand why someone would choose it for their life’s work. But then humanity, honesty and compassion along with a desire to see societal growth are not entirely alien concepts to me. So there is that whole “Sociopathic – acting internet troll” thing, which by the way, I have a very hard time understanding why a grownup would choose to be a dick for fun, but hey, to each his own.

mikey

Hey Things,

It seems pretty clear that if inequality, gender, and race/ethnicity are mutable then studying their changes over time does make sense. Maybe your conception of these matters is juvenile.

Hey Clif and Jennifer,

Jennifer was so right, and yet no concession? Words mentioned as words are correctly emphasized with italics, not quotes! [Clif says: Wrong. The NYT manual says both are correct. So Jennifer deserves an apology. You don’t.]This goes for letters, too: November is spelled with an en.

Dr. Dick,
That’s cool. To be totally honest, I’m looking for something easily digestible, a la Jared Diamond’s pop-anthropology. Same thing with Native American cultures, since you mention it. My brother’s fascinated with Southern tribes like the Choctaw, Chickasaw and whatnot, but tends to go for the type of books written by guys in the Chickasaw tribe detailing how the Chickasaw tribe will eventually run Western Civilization. Same stroke as his Robert Anton Wilson obsession.

mikey,
Heh.

That is what a grown man does for a living.

Jackass, you ever built houses in Mississippi in the summertime? You ever dug septic tanks in the same summer? You ever cover high school softball? You ever tend bar across the street from a halfway house? I guarantee you a career in academia kicks all that shit squire in the nuts. Plus, bennies. My one goal in life is score either a job with paid health care or a woman in academia who wants someone to cook, clean and keep the joint together.

Matter of fact, the only job I’ve ever had that I’d take over a career studying something and teaching is driving a bulldozer. Everyone should drive a bulldozer before they die, I’m convinced. My old man says a tank is comparable and I’m inclined to agree with him. Fuck on mushrooms, learn an instrument well enough to play with someone else, and drive a bulldozer before you die, that’s my only advice to the kids.

I have a very hard time understanding why a grownup would choose to be a dick for fun

Don’t knock it til you try it!

That is what a grown man does for a living.
Please do not turn this thread into a competition to see who has or has had the most improbable vocational duties. Otherwise Mikey will start reminiscing about his time as a vibrator repair-man, and I will make up some bullshit about my ill-thought-out plan to open a shop that sold watches and sex toys*, and things will go rapidly downhill from there.

* The 13 Clocks and the Wonderful O.

As for Native American History, I just devour everything I can find on Henry Berrie Lowrie. That motherfucker was tougher, smarter and better, at just about everything, than anybody he ever came up against.

He might well have been the first superhero.

Dude ROCKS!

mikey

I think it’s pretty clear Stein was ripping on Hannity and Beck, although a lot more gently than they probably deserve.

Cut the guy some slack. Not everyone can be as vicious as the people who run this site or post to it.

Everyone,

‘And how the devil does gender “evolve”?’

See? I’m vindicated!

Fuck on mushrooms, learn an instrument well enough to play with someone else, and drive a bulldozer before you die, that’s my only advice to the kids.

Those are damn good, but I’m compelled to add one.

Run for your life.

You can never fully appreciate life until you’ve had to turn tail and HAUL ASS in a desperate, near hopeless dash to try to live one more minute.

After that, pretty much nothing that happens the rest of your life will truly harsh your buzz…

mikey

Aim high!

Hey, I’m a good cook and I don’t mind cleaning toilets if there’s free dental involved. You work yourself to death in the manliest way possible. I’ll at least have someone to talk to.

And how the devil does gender “evolve”? It sounds like some made up bullshit that you can spend several decades bullshitting about until you retire. Good on you, I guess.

You can’t be this stupid. You mean to tell me you’ll sit there and say that everything about gender is totally set in stone and hasn’t changed one iota sense the days of Alley Oop? For real? The whole women’s movement thing, from Susan B. Anthony to Amanda Marcotte, didn’t happen? Have you ever left your house?

mikey,
I was thinking more like stuff you do on purpose. I totally grok what you’re saying, but you really can’t plan for a panicked retreat from total destruction. You definately should expect it sooner or later and I know one can sometimes see it coming (be it war or returning husband), though.

It sounds like some made up bullshit that you can spend several decades bullshitting about until you retire.

Don’t knock it til you try it!

Say, you seem like a perfect fit for our organization. Granted, the job won’t last very long, but you can name your price with any WingNut Welfare supported “Think” Tank, not to mention speaker’s fees. And the pension, it’s to die for!

Hey Matt and mikey,

One down, two of the four to go. Like Matt’s saying, I can’t endeavor to run for my life — but I guess it could happen by accident. If I’m lucky there will be zombies involved! (Or at the very least cars with hurricane fence welded over the windows!)

Oh. Ok.

Then I wanna change mine to “Spend a week alone on a sailboat out of sight of land”…

mikey

On the whole tired “its”/”it’s” bit:

MzNicky:”it’s can never mean anything other than it is.”

Actually, it can also be a contraction for “it has”, as in, “It’s been fun beating this topic to death, but it’s time to move on.”

fascinated with Southern tribes like the Choctaw, Chickasaw and whatnot

Now there I really can help, since I am what they call an expert (though less on the Choctaw and Chickasaw).

Clif: Let us call the whole thing off. [Clif adds: k]

Also: Gender “evolves” in theoretical terms. I believe what some irresponsibly ungrammatical sorts on this thread are referring to is “sex.” Imagine that!

Oh, I forgot. The whole thing off.

Also: Jennifer, or whoever: I (yes, I!) am retarded when it comes to “lie” and “lay” and also “prescription” and “subscription.” Truckloads of embarrassment have always been my constant companions.

Truckloads of embarrassment
Bandname.

The misuse of whose and who’s is kind of annoying as well. Also, there’s that whole too, to, and two thing. Discuss.

Or not.

Not.

Before I die . . hmmm, well, I’ve done the shroom thing, and the running like hell for my life thing, but although I seriously tried to learn to play guitar, it was sadly not to be. I’ve not driven a bulldozer, either, but I did drive a 17 foot U-haul laden with all my earthly possessions from Seattle to Des Moines, through the mountains and across the badlands, so there’s that.

You can’t be this stupid. You mean to tell me you’ll sit there and say that everything about gender is totally set in stone and hasn’t changed one iota sense the days of Alley Oop? For real? The whole women’s movement thing, from Susan B. Anthony to Amanda Marcotte, didn’t happen? Have you ever left your house?

Once again I am compelled to ask Matt T. to bear my children. (Seriously! I can’t do it anymore.)

MzNicky: ”it’s can never mean anything other than it is.”

Nuh-uh. I never said that.

In fairness to Things (not that he deserves it, but that is just the way I am), my sentence was a tad ambiguous (multitasking has its hazards). It should have read:

“gender, ethnicity/race, chiefly political systems, and the evolution of inequality”.

That said, both gender systems and ethnic/racial systems do evolve and change over time. The former are also highly variable (7 genders anyone? Works for the Chukchee.).

7 genders anyone? Works for the Chukchee.

Yep. Pretty sure I’d been through five of them before I was 25…

mikey

MzNicky,
Ask me in a couple months. I spent the week back home with the kinfolk and I’ve had my fill of young’uns for the duration. Actually, to be honest, the kids weren’t that bad this time around. It was the adults who were out of their friggin’ minds. I swear to God, it’s like “Dukes Of Hazzard” meets “The Stepford Wives” meets every third Faulkner novel with my people.

And nobody bothers with “whom” nowadays…

The sex-on-shrooms advice *is* spot on. I’ve only done it once, and I think I’ve had better experiences with stoned sex, but my then-girlfriend absolutely loved it.

Pretty sure I’d been through five of them before I was 25…

Well, that would all that you could “go through”, since the other two are celibate male and female shamans.

Joel Stein: not quite Onion quality, but apparently close enough.

Speaking of the Country Firsters (who love their country so damn much, dammit, well they just HAD to destroy in order to save it) — d’ja hear a former top adviser to Pastor Huckabee and Herr Doktor Frist is in some kind of hot water over “Barack the Magic Negro”?

Query: Is there any way We the People can vote against these maroons AGAIN, like We did last month? And next month, again and again, until they get the frikkin’ message?

My apologies, MzN, it was Jennifer, I guess, quoted by Clif. I lost track of imbedded indents.

The really sad thing is that I’m here debating grammar on a perfectly good Saturday Night.

Oh, and my vote is for the double-noughts, from the episodes when Jethro Clampett wanted to be a double-nought spy. Kinda sums up Bush & Cheney rather well, I think.

About the shorthand name for the current decade, I’m OK with “the Aughts”, I guess, though it does seem a bit archaic.

I’m more curious when we are going to stop saying “Two Thousand-” (or “Two Thousand and-“) for the years. When will we start using “twenty-” in common speech?

2009 (Two Thousand Nine)?
2011 (Twenty-eleven)?
2020?

Before I achieve the “driving a bulldozer on mushrooms” goal, I’m focussing on the “Learn to fuck well enough to play with someone else” part of the advice. And “run from instruments”.

Stewardess, another pronunciation for the 00’s would be “Oh-Oh”, as in what you say when you hear the front door slam from the bedroom upstairs when she swore her husband wouldn’t be home until after the late shift at the precinct.

Matt T.: I didn’t mean new ones. It’s the ones I’ve already spawned I can’t bear. 🙂 Kidding! I kid. My kids are awesome.

it’s like “Dukes Of Hazzard” meets “The Stepford Wives” meets every third Faulkner novel with my people.

Haha! A son of the South. We inhabit the same world, my friend.

The really sad thing is that I’m here debating grammar on a perfectly good Saturday Night.

Steerpike: That is pretty sad. Then again, I’m getting ready to go watch the “It’s Me or the Dog!” marathon on Animal Planet with my mother. There’s no good place in that sentence to not dangle the participle.

it’s like “Dukes Of Hazzard” meets “The Stepford Wives” meets every third Faulkner novel with my people.

You should meet my little sister who is still in Oklahoma. Add a touch of the Clampetts and Dog Patch and you’re there. Fortunately, don’t really have any other family besides my son and his family and I raised him better than that.

Before I die, in a single day:

Climb a woman, fight a mountain, fuck a bear

Or something

Climb a woman, fight a mountain, fuck a bear

Sounds like a normal summer here in western Montana.

I have to give credit to my dad for that line, who could do all of those things before breakfast in his prime, and could probably still manage all three before sundown today, at 77

“Climb, Fight, Fuck! Climb, Fight Fuck!” Doesn’t anybody TALK anymore?

Anyone dangles a participle around here, it was obviously intended as a cat toy, so I can’t understand what all the fuss was about.

Doesn’t anybody TALK anymore?
Only while walking.

Hey Steerpike,

I think it’s pretty clear that we’ll start using twenty in 2010 because calling next year twenty-nine sounds stupid, but the year after that, twenty-ten, sounds awesome. I’m talking space-stations, velcro, food in tubes.

I can’t wait.

Stewardess, another pronunciation for the 00’s would be “Oh-Oh”, as in what you say when you hear the front door slam from the bedroom upstairs when she swore her husband wouldn’t be home until after the late shift at the precinct.

Which brings us back to the running for your life thing mikey brought up.

THE CIRCLE OF LIIIIIIFE!!

Not “twenty-nine”, it should be “twenty-OH-nine”

I think it will catch on for 2011. Six (or seven) syllables is just way too much for Americans to bother with for a year. We’ll probably shorten it to “Twenty-‘leven”. (Twenny-Lebbin in Alabama)

The best thing about fucking a girl on mushrooms is that all the vomiting doesn’t threaten my ego as much as it usually does. Those things taste nasty.

Those things taste nasty.

Dude, think it all the way through.

Two words for you.

Chocolate Milk.

No charge…

mikey

Ugh, I just had to click on the link to Gateway Pundit, and he links to this (I swear I can’t tell if this is a parody or the real deal):

http://www.viet-justice.net/2008/12/27/mumbai-terrorists-actually-frusterated-gay-men/

EEP!

Why didn’t Joel say that conservatives are sentimentally attached to the fantasy about “it” being better “back then?” Depending upon the maturity of the conservative “back then” can be one-hundred-fifty years ago to as recent as yesterday. Everyone knows that it was better when women kept their mouths shut and abuse was considered a private family matter. It was better when the young knew their place. It was better when one could join an all white club, vigilantism was better, the South was better, land free of Native-Americans was better, when Christians were the only “real” Americans, and white people could act on their prejudices and superstitious beliefs without having to pretend that they were tolerant of others.

When did politically correct change from the goal of modernizing language to reflect the cultural and scientific knowledge gained over the last two-hundred years to being ridiculed for imposing an Ozzie and Harriet view of reality on bigots?

Please do not turn this thread into a competition to see who has or has had the most improbable vocational duties

Yeah. I WILL win. Unless someone can beat stealing newspapers (one copy every night) for a rival company for pay.

all the vomiting doesn’t threaten my ego as much as it usually does. Those things taste nasty.

I am not the right person to be handing out sex advice, but I am reasonably confident that you’re doing it wrong; unless you are the victim of a post-hypnotic suggestion gone horribly, horribly awry.

Hey Steerpike,

Of course I know the oh was implied, I was just teasing. I still hold that twenty-ten is in the bag. A sort of laziness (or conservation if you prefer) of syllables is sort of the hallmark of today’s English. It makes me irate in prolonged doses (like, um, when I catch SportsCenter). Anyhow, this leads to pronunciations like uhmerkin and two-kay-six, as if that *one extra syllable would fuckin’ kill you to enunciate*. Sheesh. Hilariously at odds with this phenomenon though is some’s tendency to say, “dubya-dubya-dubya,” when they could have more painlessly said world wide web.

I should mention that twenty-seventy sounds kinda stupid, so we might revert to two-thousand for that year.

The fact is, faggot faggot, bite my butt.

Please do not turn this thread into a competition to see who has or has had the most improbable vocational duties
——————————–
Yeah. I WILL win. Unless someone can beat stealing newspapers (one copy every night) for a rival company for pay.

I was an all-night, totally nude accordion repairman for the KGB.

Hey Snorghagen,

We may have passed in the night! I was a third-shift, totally nude lederhosen removal technician for the German embassy in Moscow.

I was a third-shift, totally nude lederhosen removal technician for the German embassy in Moscow.

I always wanted to get into the lederhosen removal field, but I got sidetracked when I landed a gig performing cane toad vasectomies in Djibouti.

Those things taste nasty.

mikey

We used to dice ’em up and stir the bits into those little chocolate pudding cups. Worked quite well.

Honest to FSM, I used to deliver balloons in costume: Ninja Turtle, Playboy bunny, belly dancer, Big Bird. We could deliver as flappers but we didn’t have a Flipper.

Once I was late to a kid’s party, dressed as a teenage mutant ninja turtle, and the little brats punched me on my shell the whole goddamned time I was there, saying shit like “Cowabunga, little dudes!” It’s a wonder that I ever decided to have a kid.

Hmm. I think Stein’s trying to be funny … in his case, I’d say, yes, give up your day-job. Those septic-tanks won’t install themselves, you know!

I’ll never experience the joy of Hannity-level patriotism.

I predict that by February, neither will Hannity.

That’s the funny thing about neocons’ patriotic fever – it magically subsides the moment they get booted from power, replaced by a love of subversion that any Shining Path guerilla would envy. America: Love It Or Leave It (just as long as I get to Run It)!

Climb a woman, fight a mountain, fuck a bear

Met up with a black bear on my way home from work about 2 years back. Guess I’ll never be a real man, if ursine eroticism is the cover-charge to get in … didn’t look like a hot night on the town to me.

If I ever get THAT hard-up for nookie, I’m going to just cut it off completely – because the alternative is jusy too grizzly to contemplate.

because the alternative is jusy too grizzly to contemplate.

Oh God, here cum the puns.

I can’t bear it!

I’m…not sure…conservatives should be taken seriously anymore. They shot their entire wad on Jesus coming back in the oughts, and they just don’t have any more jam. Pay attention to them as you would the porn movie you just jacked off to.

Hilariously at odds with this phenomenon though is some’s tendency to say, “dubya-dubya-dubya,” when they could have more painlessly said world wide web.

This is one of those instances where I like German: “vay vay vay punkt” instead of “double-u double-u double-u dot”. (How I pronounce and think about things in my head has become a weird, inconsistent mishmash of English and German.)

Of course, 99% of the time, the www. part is irrelevant. It’s mostly an anachronism from the days before the World Wide Web was the dominant part of the Internet. These days, DNS is almost always set up so that the root domain resolves to the primary webserver.

this bear sex issue is bound to be polarizing. Ted Kennedy once said that we shouldn’t panda to it.

Some sexual-invitation gestures are so basic, so primordial that even bears will understand them.
[Joke about Ur-sign belongs here].

“Gender “evolves” in theoretical terms. I believe what some irresponsibly ungrammatical sorts on this thread are referring to is “sex.” Imagine that!”

Sex evolves? Impossible!!

Hey Sheesh

I really don’t have a problem with people being too lazy to vocalize extra syllables. Really the French language is just Gallic laziness to pronounce Latin. By the way, what were you doing on New Year’s Eve, One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine?

And Jim,

Once you go Black Bear, you’ll never go Back There

As far as sex “evolving”, if you haven’t experienced Klingon Circus Sex, you are truly unenvolved

Hey Steerpike,

I really don’t have a problem with people being too lazy to vocalize extra syllables.

You say that now — but what happens in 90 years when English is uniformly monosyllabic. What will you say then? I reel doan hav a prob with peeps bean too laze to voke ext sylls, or something. And then how will you feel about all those queer people still talking oldspeak like the pointed headed academic elites? What, are they too good for for the nu glish?

hating how the beer vendors fill OUR pints to the very tippy-top but not theirs, grumbling it’s because the vendors are black and we are liberals, not realizing it’s because we tip and they don’t.

Awww, geez, I go out to visit fambly (thank FSM, not the wacky southern branch… yeah, I got some too) and come back to see this looooooong thread–

and I bounce it back to what might be the defining definition of conservative vs. liberal…

and it’s got no grammer parsing to it at all.

Such is life.

At that point I will be 135 years old, so whatever I say will be difficult to understand, at best. My gradchildren, and their kids, will have to learn to live in a world of textspeak; I won’t care

If I ever get THAT hard-up for nookie, I’m going to just cut it off completely – because the alternative is jusy too grizzly to contemplate.

You’d really make a spectacle of yourself. Talk about a Kodiak moment.

Yeah. I WILL win. Unless someone can beat stealing newspapers (one copy every night) for a rival company for pay.

Hah! Paradise. Back when my firstborn was an infant I worked part-time at a cloth shop cutting fabric and selling notions at nights and on Saturdays. In teh Bible Belt. To rude overweight mentally-challenged imbeciles. I’ve got more where that came from, amateur!

Don’t get me started on shitty jobs. Takes a lot of those to get through grad school.

May I just say, rejoining the thread already in progress, that I am so happy that attempts at trollishness have been ignored and snarky smarty-pantsedness and continuation of actual thought and responsiveness thereto has been maintained.

okay, catching up:

Smut Clyde at 3:48: I CORRECTED my fucking ERROR in the very next COMMENT, goddamit!

Arky, ask and ye shall receive.

Oh, and owlbear, I like calling this decade “the Naughties.” It just seems fitting. Let’s see…Back in naughtie-naught, I got busted going more than double the speed limit on an interstate.Naughtie-one through naughtie-four are kind of a blur, but they included a ketamine overdose somewhere in there.Back in naughtie-five I ended up in the ER for a bong-related injury.Back in naughtie-six, there was that time I killed a case of Steel Reserve and ran around campus naked in 30 degree weather. (Naughtie-six was also the Year of the Bong Stand.)Back in naughtie-seven, I passed out drunk (and naked) on the quad after streaking the library on a bike and woke up getting a BJ (not from Joel Stein, thankfully).*And in naughtie-eight… well, I’ll avoid talking about naughtie-eight until I can say “back in naughtie-eight.”
Yeah, gotta be “the Naughties.”

* I really, really hope nobody I know IRL is here.

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Hmm. I think Stein’s trying to be funny …

If you’re not sure whether it’s satire/sarcasm/humor, it’s FAIL.

Okay, if it’s a shitty job competition, I can at least get a ribbon.

I worked in a windowless basement, filing things numerically.

I had about twenty paper cuts per day.

At the end of the month (it was a temp job) they came to me and said they were impressed, and wanted to offer me the job full time.

I was only twenty, from a small town, and not yet savvy enough to decline with thanks. I actually broke down and told them how horrible the job was and how horrified I was at the thought of continuing it one second longer.

Hey, kids! Don’t do that.

Boy that’s some editorial page they got going at the LA Times.
Stay tuned for tomorrow when Jonah discusses why lettuce on hamburgers is so Anti-American and Max Boot writes about how overly compassionate – and PC – the Israeli’s are for only gunnin’ down 300 Arabs on the Gaza strip this week.

Boy that’s some editorial page they got going at the LA Times.

Can’t even use it to line the bird cage. Bird refuses to use it, just holds it in until you change it.

Superfluous apostrophe there, bay– *AWK*

Can’t believe the magical-thinking Obama-haters are STILL glomming desperately onto the Chief Editor Korir/API “birthcertificategate” scam: http://tinyurl.com/9ptshk

The GOP base is unraveling bit by bit … the batshit crazies are going too far, and even the Protein Wisdom screechers are making fun of them… pull up a chair and watch as the fight over Rick Warren moves over to the right side of the political spectrum…

Victory Davis Hanson auditioning for some LA Times Op-Ed real estate while at the same time illustratin’ his love for America (via Israel):

Hamas blankets Israel for days with rockets and the Europeans are silent until Israel responds with force—only to be blamed for inordinate aggression—the subtext being both that the militarily capable party is to be condemned for being,well, too militarily capable, and that those who can field and deploy terrorists, or aid those who will, against Western targets are deserving of some sort of exemption.

I prefer to call the decade the Naughts, as in “under Dubya this whole decade has gone for naught.” And fittingly, Bush was installed by the Supreme Court in the Year Triple-Naught.

“things that conservatives hate about America: Its Negro President-Elect”

Actual CNN news crawl: “RNC Chairman defends ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ song”

Ya know, to be fair, Joel Stein’s right. We liberals love our country, but they conservatives love their country more. Except that we liberals think that loving our country is something the country has to earn, and it’s got to earn that through not being imperialist, not stifling science, etc. They conservatives just get annoyed whenever someone claims that our country has done something imperfectly, calling it “anti-American” (in the case of American conservatives). Liberals: look, there’s all this stuff wrong with America that we need to fix. Conservatives: WHAT? HOW DARE YOU CLAIM THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH AMERICA? And so on.

Conservatives love their country a lot more. It’s called nationalism. Liberals love our country a lot less. It’s called patriotism.

Mauro,
Well said. But you forgot to add for conservatives (allowing maybe a one breath pause): AMERICA IS A DECADENT, SINFUL CESSPIT OF HEDONISTIC SOCIALISM AND AN AFFRONT TO SUPPLY-SIDE JESUS! To which I would reply: “if only…” Well, except for the cesspit part. Not really my thing. NTTAWWT.

parsec,
You make a strong argument for your preferred nomenclature. But riddle me this: is it really “for naught” if it’s actually negative (and very large)?

Didn’t Al Franken do the whole “Conservatives love america” snark like, 5 years ago? In a book?

The LA Times does have Rosa Brooks, who is a real law professor and really quite wonderful:
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-columnist-rbrooks,0,5243347.columnist?coll=la-news-columns

The noughties.

You call it “The Zeroes”, which is the same thing you call the staff at the National Review. So you’d think he’d fucking know.

I’m guessing Joel Stein’s satire was lost. He’s not that clever a writer to pull this level of wittiness off. He really should stick to true snark and not try to achieve what for him is impossible.

We ought to enlist Jon Swift to give his column more punch.

Hah! Paradise. Back when my firstborn was an infant I worked part-time at a cloth shop cutting fabric and selling notions at nights and on Saturdays. In teh Bible Belt. To rude overweight mentally-challenged imbeciles. I’ve got more where that came from, amateur!

Well, that sounds like a regular, everyday job at a fabric/craft store, and your clientele was bizarre. Considering where you were located, whaddya want, extra points for having to deal with rude, bible-bashing customers? Retail is always like that, and I thought this was about bizarre jobs, not regular jobs with bizarre clientele.

When I tell you what my job was, I was being literal. My (and everyone on my shift – I became one of the shift supervisors half the time) job was to watch the trucks of a rival paper bring out their early edition, tail them to their drop (almost always a vending machine), use a slug to get the paper out of the machine, telephone the rival’s contest numbers to our composing room, and bring a paper in for confirmation for our final edition run. All this had to be done within 3 hours. Our bosses wanted us to actually buy the paper, but wouldn’t reimburse us the quarter, so I always had a load of slugs. Tailing was the best part – it was just like in the movies and required some actual talent, something which half the shift wasn’t suited for. The drivers for the other paper may have assumed they were being tailed after one of our bozos gave the game away, but we didn’t follow everyone. Some of the trucks would go to far off locations and were worthless to us. One of our crew wouldn’t go over the then-55 mph speed limit (she was absolutely useless to us), another tailed a driver so close that he blew our cover (before that, the rival paper didn’t know where we were getting their numbers) and we had a ton of trouble for weeks as they switched which routes got loaded first and which locations within routes got serviced first. But within a few months, we had a such a load of locations scouted, we didn’t have to tail them anymore except for fun. After that, it was such a soft dollar that everyone wanted to get in on it. The most amusing memories I have were after the job got routine. We would literally throw an impromptu party nearly every night at whatever location we congregated at within view of the rival’s newspaper dock, break up the party, get the numbers in, and reconvene later at a club, park, or wherever. As bizarre jobs go, I think that’s near the top.

I had a regular job at the same newspaper, delivering newspapers to customers when the stupid carrier missed someone. I covered an area of about 70 square miles and dealt with a lot of unpleasant and unstable customers (do you know how mad someone can get if his paper wasn’t on his doorstep on time, especially if that someone was on drugs?). I was assaulted a few times, and shot at once. At least I had a getaway vehicle.

Gary Ruppert said,

December 27, 2008 at 22:37

The fact is, liberals love muslims and faggots and the blacks more than America, which is why they are trying to destroy USA to make their “friends” happy, which they won’t be.

If you are white and you are a liberal, you must hate yourself and your children, for you are working for your death and theirs, a great race, that invented society, sacrificed to mud people on the altar of PC before the suicide of the race..

fucking brilliant

Please take me, you need me.

I am not the right person to be handing out sex advice, but I am reasonably confident that you’re doing it wrong; unless you are the victim of a post-hypnotic suggestion gone horribly, horribly awry.

It was very kind of you to let my imprecise writing lead you to believe that I’m the victim rather than the cause of the nausea in these intimate instances.

Because it’s always a good idea to make a second attempt when a joke falls flat:

The best thing about fucking a girl on mushrooms is that all the her vomiting doesn’t threaten my ego as much as it usually does. Those things taste nasty so I understand.

i don’t like to say this, as a long time listener first time caller to sadly no radio,

but clif, you fucked up. your post needed to address stein’s underlying claim to a sarcastic pretense, a la your cohen posts (richard, in re unfunnyness [sp?]). to not have done so is to be risible and dopey, and clif, you ain’t that.

either pull this post or correct it to make the deeper point, which is that stein’s sarcasm is lame milquetoast middlebrow horseshit for the rubes, sarcasm that makes wrong assumptions about that which it lampoons (as you have accurately pointed out in your post abov).

if you don’t do so, you are no better than gateway pundit, dude.

Okay we start with the joke going completely over the OP’s head, then almost immediately devolve into tedious grammar-nazii-ism.

Only the “before you die” bits saved this thread from utter suckitude.

Only the “before you die” bits saved this thread from utter suckitude.

You found the puns unbearable?

Joel Stein is a mildly funny humorist. He used to be funnier when he was writing about Hollywood for Entertainment Weekly (narcissistic humor goes over better when snarking on The Industry than when discussing serious matter), and he’s generally OK on the “I Love the [Insert Decade Here]” stuff on VH1. Whether he deserves the scorn piled on him in comments here or not, I think Clif missed the boat in the original post.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when Jonah discusses why lettuce on hamburgers is so Anti-American

Spoiler alert–It’s because liberals love lettuce, and use it to oppress white men, who are the only group left that has to suffer from oppression.

Bet nobody saw that coming.

Strangely, leftists *hate* lettuce.

Well, I do.

And I think that from an anecdotal standpoint, me hating lettuce means all leftists hate lettuce. Unless someone disagrees, in which case my central point will only be strengthened.

The fact is, you are elitist.

I am shocked and disillusioned to see that someone is commenting under the nym and URL of IMDB, without actually being a movie database. Is there no end to the perfidy of the intertubes?

Comrade Trotsky,

I believe your logic is impeccable by theological standards:

A. You are a leftist.
B. You hate lettuce.
C. Leftists hate lettuce.

# Para español, oprima el dos.

Genius. The negro president part too, but that one was just beautiful.
RyrRy, do you have to bring poor old lettuce into this?

Hey, don’t blame me. That was all bayville. I think.

Actually, I really don’t know how this thread went from Joel Stein’s expertise at blowjobs wanking to the political philosophy of lettuce. I blame America, because I am a liberal and I hate freedom. (And I miss Norbizness.)

I support the idea of talking walks, but after a few kilometres the Frau Doktorin tells me to shut up.

The Ambulators!

One of the surest signs of love is it makes you talk stupid.

And just like love, it can be faked.

Bite me, Sam Zell.

And just like love, it can be faked.
Talking stupid CANNOT BE FAKED.

Its the Major League Soccer hate that gets me……

Go Houston Dynamo!!!

Yo si le voy, ley voy al naranja!!!!

why, I aughta…….

Didn’t Al Franken do the whole “Conservatives love america” snark like, 5 years ago? In a book?

Ayup.

The Ambulators!

LOL!