Hi, Me Again
Among the things that catch the attention here in rural Oregon is the fact that metal and plastic items that are left in any way idle, like unrunning cars and trucks, camper tops, mailboxes, kiddie pools, or lawn gnomes or flamingos, and also for that matter barns and houses, will grow a beardy green extravagance of moss, or possibly of some kind of lichen or air kelp, on them. Like, literally from some number of hours or days to the next.
I’ve identified one of the green dripping-from-objects things here as Lobaria oregana (cf), but that’s no guarantee as to the safety of the others; and indeed a reasonable impulse here, and the one I’ve most fallen to, is to caffeinate, speed up, and keep moving in some direction or another so that the creeping verdure won’t catch you.
Anyway, this is where I’ve been these past couple weeks, and the pre-contemporary Internet here on the literal Oregon Trail is the reason I haven’t been checking mail or reading anything online, or even successfully loading any pages with extravagancies such as JPEGs on them, since literally last year as it were.
Um, hi! Apparently, the Weblog Awards are on again. And in case anyone asks, we won a few of those already, and probably ought not to win any more of them, since there are tremendous writers, analysts, and artists in the liberal blog firmament who deserve such awards and more, but haven’t yet been given any.
The past couple times, we campaigned for second-place winners, and officially handed our first-place award to someone else. This time, we’d like to sneakily cook the voting to help someone else win first place, honestly and according to the rules.
But how? I’m in the woods, literally (outside the window are woods), and am picking up the Internet for another couple of days as though through a vibrating filling in a molar. But how can we, as a group, best exert our considerable dork-fu in order to make good people comforted and fulfilled, and bad people go ‘Aaah!’ and dive self-hatefully through a wood chipper?
Vote for driftglass, damnit!
Yeah, but Rumproast is also great, and it’s from Kevin of Catch.com (= working it daily for about as long as Driftglass)…
You mean, there is no inter webs where you are :O
First Retardo goes and lives on a farm down south, then you disappear to the Pac NW. You guys giving up entirely on the civilized world?
This is off topic, but has anyone checked out the new ‘big ‘Hollywood’ website? It looks like rich comic fodder for Sadlynauts (?) and the comments are open!
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/
Oops… my bad. the big Hollywood dorks scrub their comments, in typical cut-and-run conservative fashion.
Gavin,
Where are you in Oregon? I was back (in SE Portland – Woodstock area) for x-mas and I had never seen so much snow. I hear it’s flooding in Oregon & Washington now…
Getting the bad folks to dive into wood chippers is always tricky since they almost invariably go for the Dress-as-Santa-and-waste-the-relatives solution.
And as the least 8 years show, anything less than a headhigh tackle from a cruise missile is only going to cause slight bruising at best.
Continuing to exploit their “articles” for laffs strikes me as the best hope. One day they will have an gigantic Hissy Fit, disappear up their own fundamental orifices and the world will be reborn anew.
Fuckin’ rural Oregon. We had to stay in Medford a few times to visit my retired maternal grandparents, and it’s awful – you just walk around all day surrounded by white people who look like they stumbled out of the 1992 RNC and have been passing the time with crank ever since.
Beautiful country between it and PDX, though.
Gavin, how are the cattle faring down there on Cooper Hollow Road? I’m still sticking it out in the Portland urban hellhole but might eventually return to more rural environs once the poop really starts sticking to the windmill. Those five acres on Strong Road are looking better by the moment– should’ve kept ’em. Need any extra hands on the spread?
Tough call. (Is it just me or is Wizbang the wrong gang to run the Weblog Awards?)
Hmmmm, well, I’d say there’s some action to be found in the Best Conservative area. I know, I know, it’s very low hanging fruit but it might be worth shinning the Sadly No flashlight of shame on, oh, Plumbblogblog, a particularly arrogant and vile example run by an underemployed substitute teacher. His shtick is “I’m logical!” Which, since he parrots _every_ Bush dead-ender talking point and is way borned again, is insane. He’s breathtakingly rude to his guests, even guests who are trying to help out but talk over his head. Think Special Ed crossed with, oh, Protein Wisdom and add a giant helping of the Anchoress. It’s a special blog with an audience of, oh, ten. And, yup, it’s one of your better conservative blogs.
So, maybe, he deserves some help. Take a look at his archive. Most of his work is just regurgitated swill from the usual suspects–Obama is a Marxist, real scientists know that sun spots cause global warming, Bush would have been great if only the KGB media hadn’t taken him down, God wants Israel to bomb Gaza, Newt is the greatest, and so on. But once in a while Phil hoes down with the best. He’s written several recent posts to “prove the existence of God” (the comments are priceless) and Obama has given him a Jonah-size wedgie.
Here’s a typical post about Obama winning the election: http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=1751
Check out the ending:
“I’m interested in hearing from any individual who wants to work toward any one of the following:
–prosecution or class action lawsuit against Progressives involved in a nationwide criminal conspiracy;
–mass exodus to some state or group of states with the purpose of seceding from the union;
–arming and organizing ourselves for deliberate overthrow of the government, if that becomes necessary for our security.”
Those are desperate measures, but these are desperate times. At the very least, we must begin organizing for our defense.”
I’m sure there are other worthy candidates but whoever put the Wizbang list of nominees together either didn’t read plumbbobblog or, well, hmmmm, I’m not sure what the other option is. What ever it is, it’s ugly.
Ya move, or you just visiting the hockey mom half of the family for the holidays?
There’s a great passage near the beginning of Sometimes a Great Notion about Oregon, wetness, and how it sends immigrants from Kansas fleeing, screaming insanely, back where they come from. Can’t be bothered to find it.
Only tangentially on-topic, but: Roy has an amusing piece up quoting Michael Totten, who really doesn’t care if he wins the Wizbang award for Best Mideast Blog, really he doesn’t, but asks all his readers to go vote vor him only because he doesn’t want Juan Cole to win the category:
(Fuck a bunch of WordPress; here’s the link:
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2009_01_04_archive.html#4607540786122250423 )
That peckerwood law professor in Dogpatch (you know, the one who espouses bracingly tough libertarian views from his position as an unfireable employee of the state) has sent his legion of mouthbreathers and gun fetishists to vote for Totten, who now has a comfortable lead.
Now, the Wizbang blog awards are bullshit, and I’m sure Cole could not care less whether he wins. But Totten is a dick, and dicks deserve disappointment. Here’s the link; you know what to do.
(If PZ is reading this: this might be too political and OT from your own website’s perspective to justify launching a pharyngular pollcrash. OTOH, Totten is a dick, and dicks deserve disappointment.)
Oh, and shouldn’t we be helping the Shrieking Genocidalist Harpy win the Best Conservative Blog award? (Sadly, Kathy Shaidle is not among the options.)
Vote your values!
So, apparently Oregon is where Jordy Verill lived?
Odd.
Awww, not all Kansans are pathetic…..
OK, I voted and this moss seems to be the NW equivalent of kudzu down South where I was spawned.
Oh, and shouldn’t we be helping the Shrieking Genocidalist Harpy win the Best Conservative Blog award?
Mrs, I know you probably mean Pamela on that one, but really with the options it could sadly be almost any of them! La Malkin is on that ballot, after all.
Longtime lurker, occasional commenter, and Best New Blog finalist here.
The Best New Blog category has been a hilarious soap opera this year. In the beginning uber-PUMA blogger UppityWoman08 was whipping the hell out of everyone; apparently the PUMAsphere has a bunch of blogs in the running, all of which they’re cross-promoting. I guess they’re hoping internet awards = credibility!
But then the Wonketteers got involved. Deciding (rightly) that a PUMA shouldn’t win the award, they picked ~synthesis~ because they have “a fun-lookin’ name.”
I’m glad a PUMA won’t be walking away with the award, but it kind of sucks that a category full of smaller blogs with less traffic became a proxy war, shutting out the smaller guys like me (not that I was going to win it anyway–I think I’m somewhere near 12th place right now).
Alright, end rant, I gotta head to work.
Since xkcd and garfield minus garfield appear to have positions 1 and 2 comfortably (and deservedly), please go vote for Medium Large (which is also, most excellent) as best comic so Day by freaking Day is out of the money.
L.f.a.f.,
oh, there will be no teh funny or teh snark here during the whole of 2009, none at all. You might as well leave now and never come back.
I vote a straight up pro-Lebron-Coming-to-the-Knicks ticket. That’s change I can believe in.
Woods? Stuff made out of wood? I don’t follow….
In the spirit of circular firing squadity, bring back the Cobb Awards!
This morning’s comedy moment for me: Fox & Friends was covering the “Stolen Election” of Al Franken, and their expert guest was Michelle Malkin. Although Malkin did acknowledge that the election wasn’t so much stolen as ‘gamed’ for Franken by Democrat-friendly officials, my favorite part was when blond lady asked Malkin “What is your research and work indicating about where this will go next?”
Yes, Michelle Malkin, what has your “research” produced about this important matter?
HAHA….does La Malkin the Diva ever have research to back up her nonsense? Has she ever? And if she’s an “expert guest” then they might as well put Tickle Me Elmo on the air along side her.
Tickle Me Elmo would be a worthless guest as he knows nothing about countertops.
See, personally I’ll agree with you that you’re a major contributor to Teh Funny. I find gotcha posting pretty lame, and yet it continues to warm my evil little heart whenever someone reposts you raving about the polls (which predicted the election as reliably as they generally do) being rigged by the Chicago black panther Jew mafia and how we’ll all be crying when it turns out real Virginia won’t vote for a Marxist radical with ties to ACORN, which will be openly guilty of fraud on election day.
Seriously, you make schadenfreude work just by being so goddamn crass. You treat not having an original opinion to your name like a sort of sainthood, and you expect nobody to call on it because you’re a pretty princess who is always right.
We won this election hard, as we won 2006 hard, and you want to know why? Because the people you’re ineptly trying to parrot aren’t just disgusting bigots but impatient disgusting bigots. Barack and Michelle Obama are affirmative action candidates (‘cuz the Harvard Law Review is AA sinecure, doncha know), and also Hillary Clinton, because affirmative action also favors feminazis over men. Blah blah blah. Nobody who doesn’t already believe the stupid shit you do will even pretend to take what you’re saying seriously. You and your toady pals are the only people in the room who think stopping Bill Cosby on the sidewalk to call him a nigger and accuse him of stealing your wallet is acceptable behavior.
And you didn’t just lose the states in which that was a foregone conclusion, which have no vested interest in racial controversy or exclusion of outsiders. You didn’t just lose Pennsylvania. (Ah, Pennsylvania: victory was always around the corner for you there, wasn’t it? Because real Pennsylvanians would never vote for an affirmative action princess, I believe it was. Funny how real Pennsylvanians evidently comprise around a third of the state, but hey.) You lost Virginia and North Carolina, you came within spitting distance of losing SC and GA. You lost the Front Range evangelical stronghold; after twenty years they’ve run out of patience with your worthless servility to evil men and worse ideas. You’ve lost people who believe the earth is 6000 years old; you’ve lost people who think all blacks are out to get them; you’ve lost Zionists and neocons and pretty much every remaining right-wing intellectual you can think of.
But you’ve still got your eye on Bill Cosby, and in the end, isn’t that what really matters?
Gavin,
Mind the landslides and flooding. We’re still doing okay where I am on the North coast of Oregon, but it’s getting dicey elsewhere.
Also, in the orgy of hilarity in the last thread, I had forgotten that Sam the Skinhead
(1) is a member of the Natural Law Party
(2) thinks calling a black man Sammy Davis Junior is some kind of ice-burn
(3) Is obsessed with elitists stealing his earnings
(4) Might just be the worst-vetted spokes-shill in partisan history
Long story short, Pajamas Media is sending a guy who pretty much has every clear sign of being a raving insane anti-Semite as a correspondant to Israel during the Gaza war.
A guy who the Republican Party spent weeks pushing as their idea of a real American. A guy who is going to have ready access to and be watched by every major news outlet.
I give him about a week before he starts quoting Coughlin on air. I expect the right will somehow survive it – as much an indictment on us as them – but it’s not gonna be pretty for the institutions driving right-wing politics in this country, not for a long time.
If he times it right, he just might wind up leaving the ceremonial bowing and scraping before the GOP politically infeasible, and that’d take us to a truly strange place for a while.
Tripp Palin said:
Tough call. (Is it just me or is Wizbang the wrong gang to run the Weblog Awards?)
It’s not just you. I wouldn’t trust those assholes to run a popsicle stand.
alec @ 16:34,
Jesus, that was pretty deftly done. I think you got his skin off in a single piece before you stuffed him into that barrel of salt.
Oh, and:
You’ve lost people who believe the earth is 6000 years old
is priceless. I’ll be stealing it, of course, and I won’t be the only one.
“Air kelp” is otherwise known as algae. And yes, algae grow out of water, if it’s moist and slimy enough on a surface. Which, here, it is. Or you might have liverworts, which are pretty cool, or club mosses. My deck has a combination of all of the above, the club mosses, mosses, and liverworts in the planter boxes because I encourage them, the algae and lichens on the woodwork because they’re happy there. The ones you really need to watch out for are the molds, some of which can produce spores and stuff that can kill you.
Welcome to the PNW, and please watch for crossing fish on the flooding roads.
“Among the things that catch the attention here in rural Oregon is the fact that metal and plastic items that are left in any way idle, like unrunning cars and trucks, camper tops, mailboxes, kiddie pools, or lawn gnomes or flamingos, and also for that matter barns and houses, will grow a beardy green extravagance of moss, or possibly of some kind of lichen or air kelp, on them. Like, literally from some number of hours or days to the next. ”
here in metro D.C., all metal and plastic items left idle for more than 10 minutes are ticketed, booted, towed or otherwise confiscated by the gubmint. so count your blessings, oregon! you get to turns your lawn gnomes into de facto trees so’s you can hug em. buncha libs.
Twoofie reminds me of Steve Buscemi’s character in Fargo – right before his accomplice put him in the wood chipper.
Please keep making those fabulous predictions, troofie. I’m “bookmarking” all of them.
McCain won a majority of white voters of both genders and every other age group. And of course McCain ended up winning 47.3% of the vote nationally.
And yet he still lost.
Too bad so sad.
Yes, it really is impressive to win the majority of votes from the most rapidly declining segment of the electorate. You got it, Twoofie. We’ll ceded you 55% of the white male vote every time, and mop you up by taking 2/3 of everyone else. Loser.
Has Twoofie ever been right about anything?
You know, I’m kinda weird, I guess. If I find a humor site to be not my cup of tea I don’t come back to it every single day of the week, pretending to be looking for humor.
I guess that’s just me.
Hmm, here is the exit poll data from politico: 55% of whites voted for McCain (that’s a majority, liberals).
Meanwhile, Obama pulled in two percent more white voters than John Kerry did, loserboy.
More from Politico:
A stunning 54 percent of young white voters supported Obama, compared with 44 percent who went for McCain, the senator from Arizona. In the past three decades, no Democratic presidential nominee has won more than 45 percent of young whites.
[…]Obama compensated for the drop-off in white female support with the strong 41 percent support from white men. No Democrat since Carter had until Tuesday’s election earned more than 38 percent of the white male vote.
Errrrrrrrrrr, that’s not making the future of your so-called white majority look so good, Troofie…
So, you were saying…?
If anyone else feels like puncturing Troofie’s balloon a bit more, here’s the link:
Politico’s exit polling article
There’s plenty more for the little troll to have shoveled in his face.
Women – the largest bloc of U.S. voters.
Lations – the fastest growing bloc of U.S. voters.
Blacks – folks who previously didn’t put much stock in voting
Young folks – voters who previously didn’t come out to vote
Obama ran away with Catholics, Jews, and Asian voters as well.
Income – a non factor.
Obama walked with people of all education levels.
Obama walked with every age group except those 65 and over.
Obama walked in every region except the south, where he earned a mere 45%. The GOP doesn’t exist in the Northeast any longer. It is rapidly disappearing in the midwest and west. The GOP even lost a vote in Nebraska.
You have no ideas, and your party (such as it is) is a backwater cracker-fest made up of old white men who don’t know how to use the internets.
Translation: 55% of white males doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Wait, is this Teh Funny?
No, Tihs is Teh Funny:
55% of whites voted for McCain (that’s a majority, liberals). The youth vote (read: no responsibilites or experience) skewed heavily towards Obama among white people; McCain won a majority of white voters of both genders and every other age group.
Democrats are DOOMED, DOOMED I tells ya, because the old white people, who will all be dead soon, vote Republican.
And besides, I think that’s faulty data. Obama won the majority of whites under 45 and got about half the white vote in the 45 – 60 age category. It was really old white people – you know, the ones that won’t be here 20 or 30 years from now – who strongly favored McCain, and even there, McCain didn’t get 60% IIRC.
Yeah, y’know that for someone who keeps acting like white Christian males are being steadily bred out of the country, it sure puts a lot of stock in 55% of white males.
I mean, not that I mind it puts its little hopes and dreams into a slowly collapsing racial faction, clinging to the Golden Age it longs for when 55% of white males meant anything.
Your masters are dying! Soon they’ll kick off and it’ll be a nation led by black men, Latin women and Asian androgynes!
Booga booga.
Democrats are planning on winning from now on by telling the great unwashed whatever they want to hear
right, unlike the Republicans like Sarah Palin who take such abstract, intellectual and principled stands on wonky issues of law and governance.
Welcome to the PNW, and please watch for crossing fish on the flooding roads.
And the wolf spiders. Seriously.
Remember! Awardies can be used as legal tender in Second Life and at 3 of the 2,485 Sunglass Hut locations in the continental United States!
What Obama won was the lockstep minority vote and peeled off a bunch of undecideds (aided by the horrible economy).
“Aided by the horrible economy”? Where could that have come from?
Rumproast & Jon Swift
And another thing, Twoofie and its kind (who are very serious and learned keepers of such serious matters) were telling us that the troubled economy was all in our heads in, oh I don’t know, July, August, September and October. I’m confused as to why Twoofie now tells us that the economy was “horrible” during this time. I wonder if he’ll explain the inconsistency.
Gavin, thanks for consideration. I’m pretty far ahead thanks to Jim Newell, Thers, Jesus’ General, Jon Swift and all of the PUMA-hatin’ cheaters who are supporting me, not because they like Rumproast, but because THEY HATE VAGINAS!!!, so definitely pass the honor onto someone who needs it. Swift could use a lot of help (and he’s recently gone out of his way to help others), General’s in a tight three-way, and if you think you have the horsepower to push Democrashield past Uppity Woman … well, that would be sweeeeet.
Can I get a blogroll slot as a consolation prize, though? I know yours is stacked pretty hard, but maybe Seb or HTML could help a brother out?
I’m confused as to why Twoofie now tells us that the economy was “horrible” during this time. I wonder if he’ll explain the inconsistency.
It won’t. If it did, I imagine the explanation would be something like that liberals insisted on believing the economy was bad, so people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died.
That’s serious shit. Here in the Emerald City, we had an entire library branch (albeit, one of the smaller ones) shut down for nearly a month (I think) because an inspector found some toxic mold in a crawl space.
General’s in a tight three-way (yummy!)
Fixed. Sorry about that.
hrm: And the wolf spiders. Seriously.
Aw, shit.
hrm, I am seriously considering a move to Seattle later this year (should the stars align in my favor). I am also a massive freaking arachnophobe. What is this about wolf spiders?!?
Are they…waiting for me?
Man, that Spartan wrestling is sounding better by the minute.
@Eric (an halibut):
We have assloads of spiders here. Metric assloads. Fortunately most of them are harmless, but we get so many in our (Seattle) yard in late autumn that we’ve taken to calling it Spider Season.
Whizbang is a putz, I say we ignore the 2008 version of ‘The stacked-deck’ awards
Yes, Cascadia has its charms … the wag who coined the name “Sunshine Coast” for the lower mainland of BC will go down in history as a lulz-harvester to rival the Viking who came up with “Greenland” … on the Liquid Sunshine Coast, whenever the great burning ball appears in the sky, the radio & TeeVee stations helpfully remind people that this is actually a normal phenomenon & not to panic.
I recall seeing a road-sign with a fish on it & thinking it just had to be a joke. It’s no joke – the suckers are an actual road-hazard when it floods.
Interesting that Herr Trout now never posts under his original nym. A mere “cunning” piefilter-dodge from a typically needy attention-whore … or an admission of the now-permanent putrid reek of shame that nym now represents after his joyful exhibition of marathon TurboFail in the weeks & months before November?
I’m going with ALL OF THE ABOVE.
The Truth? He can’t handle the truth.
I remember when I lived in Kent WA that it was in our actual lease agreement that we would keep a sharp eye out for mold and frequently leave our bathroom window open a crack so as to keep a good air flow going. Mold creeps me out, so I spent a lot of time bleaching stuff.
I didn’t notice spiders particularly in Wash but then we have shitloads of spiders, wolf and others, in the midwest so I was used to them. Besides, I’m a gardener when I can be and spiders are good for keeping bugs down and I don’t use pesticides. I encourage snakes as well. I guess I do like spiders and snakes, as long as they don’t attempt to get cozy with me, which is pretty much how I feel about people as well, come to think of it. Personal space is a good thing.
Please excuse weird comma usage. Writing with migraine hangover.
You, in particular? No.
But they’re waiting.
I say vote PANDRAGON!!!
Where else are we going to find some really hot leftwing lesbian action?
No really it is a great site I hope they win.
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-very-large-blog/
When I took the train to PDX for Drinking Sadly Too – Teh Portlanding, I noticed these things too. You could see into everybody’s back yard, endless rows of suburban and rural back yards.
These back yards were full of rusting, leaning, disintegrating stuff, from swing sets to kiddy pools to old appliances and random junk, all of it with green fuzz, even in june.
Oh. And trampolines. What’s the deal with that? Nearly all the back yards had trampolines in them. Is this an Oregon thing, where you need a trampoline in order to be taken seriously? Seriously?
And what must life be like for the poor families here and there without a trampoline? Are they mocked relentlessly? Do their kids shuffle, shoeless through the schoolday, head down, wishing only to have a trampoline like the OTHER kids?
mikey
.
Now, now Jeb. That’s no way to talk about your brother.
@mikey:
Trampolines are surprisingly popular here, too. There’s a house near-ish to us with one that takes up their entire front yard… I found them with Google Maps, but their yard is obscured by trees.
I won’t say there aren’t spiders, but I’ve only been bitten once and it was harmless, just itched a bit for a few hours. I walk around barefoot and tromp through woods and vacant lots all the time, plus I let spiders live in my actual home as long as they stay near the ceiling. So, yeah, I probably see one or two spiders a week in my home and porch and garage areas, and you’re gonna see them all over in the gardens. But I’ve never seen any of the venomous ones.
I’m not afraid of them, though, so the fact that most of them are harmless may not provide much comfort. My advice is to get a cat. You’ll never know you had spiders till it’s barfing up legs.
Our rat terrier fills this role with admirable zeal. We just wish he wouldn’t trot around the house to show them off, clutching them daintily by a leg or two between his teeth, his lips curled back in a dumb-ass grin so as to best display his catch, before settling down to snarf on them.
Our best spider story to date involves a small floating dock beached on Vashon Island, and an incoming tide. This thing scuttled out from underneath to get out of the water’s way. It must have been two inches across…
Let’s just say that I’m glad no one had a video camera rolling. And that my son didn’t repeat any of the things that were said during the ensuing rout when he returned to preschool.
I’m guessing that some here are just thankful they don’t live down here where Teh Tarantulas are.
May I take this opportunity to assure Eric that wolf spiders rarely attack and devour flatfish.
Seriously, as every schoolchild knows, Spiders Are Our Friends. They consume massive amounts of insects, many of them harmful to our interests. And if you’re still a diehard arachnophobe, well, you’ll be pleased to hear that they also consume massive amounts of fellow spiders.
Spiders are also an overwhelming evolutionary success story. With less onboard computing capacity than your iPhone, they have established themselves firmly in every terrestrial environment (and even a couple of aquatic ones) and are no doubt looking forward to their next 100 million years of existence. How does your species stack up against that record, puny primate?
Wolf spiders in particular are an attactive group. Their colours tend to the dull, but their lines are clean. Their behaviour is fascinating. On sunny summer days, look in your garden for females carrying their egg sac behind them. If you’re really lucky, a little later you’ll see the mother carrying her newborns round on her back before they strike off on their own. And you can easily impress your friends with your m4d natural1st $killz by correctly identifying spiders, as long as the spider is a wolf spider. (The giveaway: the middle two eyes in the back row — like most spiders, they have eight altogether, in two rows — are greatly enlarged, giving the impression that the spider is watching you with wide-open “human-like” eyes. Bonus spider ID: if it’s the middle pair in the front row that is huge, you’re looking at a jumping spider.)
The only spider you’ll need to worry about in the American PNW is Tegenaria agrestis, the “hobo spider”, whose bite can cause a somewhat milder version of the necrotising wound sometimes caused by brown recluse bites (there’s a bit of controversy about that, actually, but that’s the current consensus view). And even they are very unlikely to bother you. Your best defence against them, BTW, is having lots of other spiders in your house (no, really; T. agrestis has only comparatively recently learned the trick of moving into human dwellings; longer-established spiders resent the competition and kill them.)
D. Sidhe, I’ve corresponded with a Belgian arachnologist who does comparison studies to determine which common spiders’ bites are most painful for humans (he is his own guinea pig). He told me that while one or two packed a wallop (like hitting your thumb with a hammer), most produced, if any result at all, only mild, temporary irritation, like a bad mosquito bite that went away after an hour or two.
Apologies to everybody for coming over all serious. We all have our hobbyhorses, and this is mine.
Mrs. T: Sorry, total arachnophobe here. I’m sure Wolf Spiders are lovely but my only experience with one consisted of much screaming and backpedaling away from a kitchen sink in a house in the Magnolia area of Seattle. I had just gone to get glass of water to take a pill (just staying overnight at a friend’s house before going home to Oregon) as a quite large one was scuttling around in the sink. Needless to say, my freakometer went off the scale.
So yes, Eric (an hallibut), they are waiting for you.
Mrs. Tilton, my grandmother used to bring a garden spider inside and put it amongst her potted house plants as natural pest control. They would settle down happily and dwell amongst the philodendron and spider plants. Some of my friends found it unsettling to be sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast under the watchful eye(s) of a resident arachnid.
I was terrified of granddaddy longlegs as a child and am still unreasonably disgusted by them, even though I know that the poor little things pose no threat at all. This is due to my rotten older cousins teasing me by chasing me about the yard with them when I was but a wee lass. Evil bastages.
Holy jeebus, did all of you live in Seattle at one time or another?
I’m beginning to suspect that the reason the absolutely brilliant Big Hollywood blog is being unfairly ignored by our hosts is: Big Hollywood is a subsidiary of Sadly No!.
All this crap about being in the woods in Oregon and being too tired of nutters to blog and so on is just crap. In fact, our hosts have found the crawl space behind the filing cabinet in the Sadly office tower that leads directly to the Breitbart brain cavity and they’ve been crawling down that duct on their hands and knees every day to drop off stories. What else could possibly explain some guy calling himself Jonah Goldberg going off about Reagan and the Watchmen. Freaking brilliant. It’s the kind of thing that Goldberg might write himself but it’s crispy around the edges and burn through and through with Sadly thought. For example, “…after decades of typical Hollywood rigmarole and creative argy-bargy, the film adaptation of Watchmen is finally going to hit screens and Watchmen-mania is running its course like a particular bad case of fanboy (and fangirl) St. Vitus’ Dance. I’m very excited to see it myself…” Brilliant!
Seriously, as every schoolchild knows, Spiders Are Our Friends.
Oh yeah? Tell that to the caffeine spider.
Toof, was I talking to you?
No, I was not talking to you.
Shut the fuck up and sit down.
Aand another one for the killfile.
And why no drinking sadlyly, the Portlanding-ing-II? Huh? Plenty of wifi here!
Or maybe I just wasn’t invited back…
-The other Toby.
tbati: I was just about to say the same thing. Sadly, PDX 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I’m not sure whether or not to be terrified. I’m thinking “not terrified”…
“Looking for anything funny” = THE TRUTH. You, asshole, would be flattered by my attention. No? Let’s see you here, you puddle of vomit. Watch me wait for you. One….
celticgirl, would you like to go out for a drink?
I’ll make every effort to keep that cancer-patient stalker killer ‘comedian’ from winning a “funniest” award this year. Damned if I can remember his name, but surely someone remembers this battle from last year?
speaking of weblog award banner (corrected):
last year i was a finalist in best liberal blog category, but i was neck and nec w/dave neiwert of orcinus for last place in the voting. luckily at the very end dave voted for me, and i voted for me, too, so i beat orcinus by a hair.
anyway, a reader of mine sent me a graphic of the 2007 weblog banner that said “second-to-last place – skippy the bush kangaroo.”
i proudly display that banner at the top of my sidebar now.
well, not actually this week. this week i’m a finalist again, only for best large blog authority between 301-500, so i’ve put this year’s banner at the top w/a link to the voting page.
so go vote for me already.
Jennifer: omg that was hilarious!
Eric (an halibut): Och laddie, I moved from Oregon to bonny Scotland a few years back with my (then) new husband, so you’ve missed me by one relationship, several years and about 6000 miles. But thanks ever so for the offer…
Bonus spider ID: if it’s the middle pair in the front row that is huge, you’re looking at a jumping spider.
Dammit, retry:
Bonus spider ID: if it’s the middle pair in the front row that is huge, you’re looking at a jumping spider.
All right, Mrs. Spider Expert, then tell me this: if you can see how the teeny spider eyes are arranged, are you definitely doomed, or is there still time to run the fuck away?
celticgirl: …so you’ve missed me by one relationship, several years and about 6000 miles. But thanks ever so for the offer…
Damn it all! Beaten to the punch yet again!
At least I got within ten years and 10,000 miles this time.
hrm,
if you can see how the teeny spider eyes are arranged, are you definitely doomed, or is there still time to run the fuck away?
Oh, you’re doomed all right. But if you hold perfectly still and try very, very hard not to look like a yummy fly, your doom might possibly come otherwise than through the spider’s razor-sharp, venom-gushing, insatiable fangs.
One way or another, mind, your doom will come; and not later than with the heat-death of the universe.
You liberals are the one who got rooked by a con man, an empty suit full of ambition.
Wow! We make up 56% of the country!
AWRIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
So, does that mean we start extraditing the stupid minorities, like Troofie here?
So, does that mean we start extraditing the stupid minorities, like Troofie here?
It does seem to be the liberal fascist thing to do.
“…start extraditing the stupid minorities, like Troofie here?”
Who would take ’em?
Who would take ‘em?
Maybe when the Scientologists’ alien spacecraft comes, he can be ejected into outer space once they leave orbit.
Maybe when the Scientologists’ alien spacecraft comes…
IT’S A COOKBOOK!
Ah yes, the typical liberal fantasy of violently “re-educating” those who oppose their nasty, anti-Western schemes.
So who said “re-educate”?
We’re through with you, pal. Go. Get out and take your greasebacks with you.
Hey! The Truth! Imagine that, The Truth hanging out in one of our threads…
Yo, douchebag? Why don’t you go fuck yourself? And before you say THE LIBERALS CAN’T ARGUE WITH ME THEY CAN ONLY INSULT ME, consider the fact that you would get your ass kicked in any barroom that I’m familiar with–be it here on the Front Range, in Massachusetts, or even in Kansas–if you strutted in and began spouting your racist venom.
Fuck you, you lump of dogshit. Most people are better than you.