Well, we have the first week of the NFL in the books. And the Vikings are tied for first in their division! That means it’ll be at least another 6 days before out Minnesodan contingent need to be talked down from a ledge. The Broncos also won in the nightcap of Monday’s doubleheader. Which, by the way, is an awesome thing the NFL should do a lot more frequently than opening weekend. As a person who once lived on the west coast, I can assure you that 6 pm start times for all the “prime time” games sucked. But that’s just like, my opinion, man.
In baseball, the Dodgers are officially shitting the bed after losing to the Giants to extend their winless streak to 11. Team Canada took the Orioles down a peg as the Baltimore team has now all but faded from the wild card race. The Yankees won. The Brewers lost. The Mariners lost, which helps the Twinks. The Rockies beat the D-backs. And, oh yeah, the Indians throttled the Tigers to capture their 19th in a row and move within two games of the all-time win streak (I will not accept the 26 game streak with a tie in there, sorry).
Nearly half of the state of Florida is without power in the aftermath of Irma. Thank God she seems to have scooted through without the destruction that might have been, but there’s still quite a bit of a mess left behind. Hang in there, Florida Glibs. And please, check in with us when you can (Carol, I’m looking at you! Put down the crunchy peanut butter and let the gang know you’re ok.). We know y’all are busy but we’re worried about you.
Looks like the assholes are at it again. You know, instead of building a new HQ, Amazon ought to invest in a Thunderdome thats large enough to accommodate all of these antifa and right-wing nutballs. Then we can lock them in and not open the doors until they’ve beaten each other to death.
Well here is some weird-ass shit. And no, it didn’t happen in the south. If it had, it would have been the leading non-weather story across the country. I’m curious if the “answers” the family are looking for are in the head of their child who decided to do something stupid. Because a few parts of the story just don’t add up.
California Congresswoman and possible undead, Nancy Pelosi.
Apparently Irma was a disappointment. Damaging, yes, but not exactly devastating. My mother’s main complaint now is that, without power, the ice in the freezer melted. “The kitchen floor is all wet now.”
Wartimus reclined on the roof of his father’s house and watched the stars glitter in the darkness of a moonless night. He had spent the summer making up his own erotic constellations and was languidly masturbating to them when the sky exploded with purple light. He dropped his erection as he tracked the burning band of fire of a meteor streaking earthward. It hit the ground with a boom and another flash of light that burned the silhouette of the trees into his retinas.
Wartimus stood, put his penis away, and ran to the edge of the roof. A column of smoke rose, lit up by the distant city beyond. The meteorite was obviously close, possibly in the forest that made up the bulk of his father’s vast estate. He climbed down from the roof and in through his bedroom window. The phone was ringing before he had even made it inside.
“What was that?” Simon demanded as soon as Wartimus picked up the phone. “Are we being bombed? I told you we were going to get bombed. We live too close to the dam!”
“It wasn’t a bomb, Simon,” he told the panicking boy. He cradled the receiver in his neck and pulled on a pair of thick canvas pants.
“There’s that big military base, where they test those missiles. Did they hit it?”
“It wasn’t a bomb, Simon. I was up on the roof. It was a meteor.” Wartimus set down the phone to tie his boots.
Simon’s voice squeaked from the receiver. “Don’t they have nerve gas at that base? Which way is the wind blowing? WHICH WAY IS THE WIND BLOWING?”
“Simon! Calm the fuck down!” Wartimus said, picking the phone back up. “It was a meteor. Get dressed for hiking and get over here.”
“It’s one in the morning,” Simon said, breathing heavily into the phone.
“It’s a meteor, Simon. You know how much those things are worth if there is anything left of it? Grab your backpack and get over here. I leave in ten.” Wartimus hung up the phone before the other boy could say anything else. Simon dealt best with ultimatums.
Wartimus turned in the mirror on the front of his closet door, shirtless. He flexed a few times and dropped to the floor for a dozen push-ups. His body was naturally muscular from his father’s experiments–the shots given to his mother when she was carrying him and the constant training growing up, but it wasn’t enough; Wartimus wanted to be bigger. All the other 12-year-olds at school looked like children. He had seen some the teachers watching him as he prowled the halls of his middle school like a panther. In a year, maybe two, he’d fuck a couple of them, he knew. Valuable experience before he hit high school and the girls his own age finally filled out.
Wartimus put on a tight tee that showed off his pecs and a loose, heavy black shirt over it. He slipped his father’s Walther PPK into the front pocket of the pants after checking the safety. His father knew he had taken the gun from the compound’s armory. Wartimus could have claimed something more powerful as his personal weapon but he was a good shot with Walther and knew the gun, field stripping it over and over again while blindfolded and timing himself. Flashlight, knife and his communicator clipped onto his nylon utility belt.
Checking the time again, he went back out his bedroom window, dropped to the ground and raided the garden shed for a five-gallon plastic bucket with a sealable lid and asbestos gloves. He was just closing the shed when he heard labored breathing enter the yard. Simon. The boy dropped his bag loudly at the gate into the backyard and leaned over, his hands on his knees.
Wartimus crept up on him and said, “Be quiet. My father is still up.”
Simon yelped in surprise, despite gulping down air.
“I ran over,” he managed, “Like, the whole way.”
“What did you bring?” Wartimus asked.
“Tongs,” he gasped. “Safety glasses,” he gasped. “Flashlight,” he gasped.
“OK, wait here. I’ve got to go back inside for something.”
“You told me to hurry,” Simon said. Wartimus patted him on the back hard enough for the pudgy boy to almost fall over.
“I’ll be right back,” he told the wheezing figure.
Wartimus used the code to open the back yard security door. There was soft music playing in the den, so he used the kitchen stairs to go down to his into his father’s laboratory. The giant vault door leading into the lab was already open.
The imposing figure of Professor Hieronymus Riesigmann loomed before Wartimus in one of his bespoke lab coats. The lab took up the entire basement of the mansion. Rows upon rows of merciless white lights bore down on stainless steel work surfaces and fittings. His father worked in the enormous space alone but the endless cabinets of equipment could have supported a staff of hundreds. It was all familiar to Wartimus from long hours playing here after his mother disappeared: the dials and switches of the interface for the buried reactor, the omnipresent hum of transformers, the hulking capacitors, the black slabs of isolation tanks, the crackling Tesla coils that he suspected were purely for ambiance. His father’s house had many rules but the most steadfast and unwavering was that this space was always referred to as his laboratory, and never his lair.
“You need to learn to sneak better, son,” Hieronymus said. “You’re almost 13-years-old. At your age, my parents had no idea what all I was up to in the middle of the night.”
“Did their house have motion sensors and security keypads everywhere?”
“Not the point, my boy. Not the point at all. Learning to sneak around in a 1950s house would do you no good. Technology never rests and we mustn’t either.”
Wartimus nodded.
“So,” his father asked, “What were you down here to pilfer? I better not catch you pawning my equipment.”
“I was merely going to borrow the Geiger counter.”
“Got a radiation leak in your bedroom? I thought you just masturbated up there these days,” he said with a toothy grin. Wartimus had tried to build a nuclear weapon when he was ten and his father never let an opportunity to bring it up go by.
“No, I was up on the roof and saw a meteor. It impacted somewhere on the estate, I think. I wanted to take a Geiger counter with me.”
“Nonsense. Meteorites have negligible radioactivity. You know that.” His father reached to ruffle his hair but Wartimus backed away from the condescending gesture.
“But what if it’s not a natural meteorite? It could be something man-made,” he said. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “What if it is Russian?” His father was an unreconstructed Cold Warrior, always ready to pit his individual American intellect against the hive mind of communism.
“Space rock or spy satellite, eh? And you are going to look for it? Excellent. A good use for a summer night. I’ll let you have the Geiger, it’s a sensible precaution if the power source is breached. But as rent for the counter and punishment for getting caught sneaking out, I claim all the iridium from the impactor or any photographic film from a satellite.”
“Father…” Wartimus began.
“It’s more than fair, boy. The iridium is of little use to you anyway, we all know who does the high-temperature recrystallization of semiconductors in this house.”
“Yes, sir,” Wartimus said.
“And the photos might be of the estate. Those Soviet bastards have been after me for years,” his father said.
Wartimus watched as father retrieved the Geiger counter. Despite all the late night nuclear safety drills, the painful martial arts training, the experimental weight-training regimen, and the cold knowledge that he might have to one day kill the old man in a struggle for primate dominance, Wartimus still loved and respected his father. And, more importantly to his otherwise jocular father, Wartimus still feared him.
“Here you go, son,” Hieronymus said as he handed over the olive drab counter. “Watch the needle; too many rems will fry your wedding tackle. I’ll accept no bald-headed telekinetic grandchildren in this house!”
Wartimus nodded and turn to go.
“Just kidding,” his father called after him. “Bring on the little freaks. We’ll sell ‘em to the carnival, my boy.”
Ah yes. The opening weekend of NFL football. May its splendor forever wipe the stain from the earth that is the Ohio State Buckeyes showing against Oklahoma on Saturday night. Hey coach, you do know you have a pair of 5-star QBs waiting in the wings, yeah? You do know our QB is allowed to lead receivers into open spots, yeah? You do know that someone can still be a team leader from the bench, yeah? Just curious. Elsewhere, Clemson beat Auburn. USC beat Stanford. Georgia beat Notre Dame. And everybody else that was expected to win, did. Good for them.
Before the NFL, let’s talk some tennis. Rafael Nadal won the US Open and inched back within shouting distance of Roger Federer for overall Grand Slam wins (16 to Fed’s 19). Those two truly are two of the best ever along with Sampras and Laver. On the ladies side, Sloane Stephens took Madison Keys behind the proverbial woodshed and destroyed her. So now we can all (mostly) forget about tennis until the Aussie open starts in 22 weeks.
In the pro pigskin league, Detroit rallied back against the Cards. The Iggles beat the Washington football team freaking Redskins. They beat the team called the Redskins. The Dirty Birds held off da Bears. The Jags crushed the Texans, but a little glimmer of hope arose at NRG with the QB change at halftime. The Bills topped the Jets. Raider Nation invaded Tennessee and came out victorious. Baltimore blanked the Bungles. The Rams mauled the Colts. The Panthers put it to the 49ers. The Packers took down the Seachickens. The Cowboys got the better of the Giants and the Steelers beat the Browns, and in doing so made Ben Roethlisberger the winningest QB in Cleveland’s stadium since 1999. (Not the winningest visiting QB…the winningest QB, period.) A couple more games tonight will round out the week.
On the diamond, the Astros got swept by the lowly Athletics. The BIG RED MACHINE won. The Nats clinched the NL East. The Twinks lost. The Brewers swept the Cubs and tightened up the NL Central. The Yankees drubbed the Rangers. The Dodgers continued their freefall with a tenth straight loss, falling to the Rockies. The D-backs returned to their winning ways. And the Indians reeled off their 18th straight win and moved to within 2 of the all-time record. They have three at home with the Tigers starting tonight.
That’s a lot of sports. And there’s plenty more, probably. But I won’t cover it. Instead, I’ll jump into…the links!
Hurricane Irma is creeping Northwest, according to the models. It sure looks to me like its making a beeline toward Jacksonville and the Atlantic. But I’m sure the models are correct even though they missed the landfall guesstimate from Thursday by 400 miles or so. Stay tuned to the news if you’re within 100 miles of its projected path and prepare accordingly. It’s breaking up, but it ain’t over. Also, if its passed, please let us know you’re ok.
ONLY READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO CRY!!! That’s a legit warning. Unless you’re ready to cry or want to read a story about the ultimate sacrifice and unselfishness, don’t click.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. BRUTAL ENFORCERS ARE STANDING BY TO AID THE CHOSEN ONES IN THE BRUTAL LAND OF PYTHONS AND METH. AND HURRICANES. OH…ALSO GATORS.
…
PERHAPS ZARDOZ NEEDS TO GET MORE ENFORCERS.
WHILE HE DOES SO, HE GIFTS YOU WITH THE LINK!
TO THOSE BRUTALS SAYING THIS STORM IS PUNISHMENT FOR VARIOUS THINGS POLITICAL…EXPLAIN CUBA THEN.
I’m an immigrant to the United States, originally from the tiny Scandinavian kingdom of Denmark. I moved here as an adult, not to better my financial situation, but to marry my American girlfriend and improve my emotional life. It was hard to leave a secure job with good pay; it was a risk of the unknown, but I thought well worth the love of a good woman. After settling in, I managed to find a job in the same field, with an almost identical income. Financially my life should be the same, except it quickly became apparent that I have more disposable income here. A lot more.
It can be difficult to understand the impact that such an increase in disposable income can have on a person’s life, without a tangible example. Americans shrug it off because they take it for granted. They can’t understand what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck or saving up for something trivial on an otherwise decent income. My Danish friends and family can’t understand the difference either. They think what I’m about to tell you shows how irresponsible or foolish I am with money, because spending money in this way is simply not possible without upsetting your financial life for months or years.
Literal disposable income
You get the idea: disposable income is nice, it allows you to be more carefree and buy nice things. But it’s also about more than being able to afford luxuries, and it can mean the difference between life and death for those you love. The main take away from the events you’ll read about here is this: had they played out in my native Denmark, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the medical care that saved my friend’s life. I probably wouldn’t even have been able to find anyone to provide the care because there is no market for something people cannot afford. He would have been killed humanely at my expense instead.
My friend’s name is “BJ.” Scratch that, BJ is more than a friend, he’s family. He also happens to be a cat. We didn’t really plan on getting another pet, but he was irresistibly cute – a real scrapper. He was a skinny little thing and had a lot of scars and scabs, but he was exceptionally outgoing and had very high spirits. His personality is likely why he evaded being killed at least twice while passing through high kill shelters in the first 6 months of his young life. He miraculously found himself in a no-kill shelter near us, and we found him in a pet store that features locally adoptable cats.
BJ had a clean bill of health from the shelter, and we decided to give him a chance. Having lost another cat recently, we decided to protect ourselves from heart-ache by offering to foster him, with the option of later adopting him. Yeah right. We decided to keep him within a couple of weeks. He quickly gained a bit of weight, his scabs healed, and his fur filled in. He got along with our 3 other rescue cats and was living a good life in his new home. He worked his way into our hearts, became part of the family, and we became inseparable.
Cats are prone to upper respiratory infections; they result from a herpes-like virus that is in virtually all cats. Like cold sores in humans, it lays dormant most of the time, but when it flares up the symptoms are a runny nose, sneezing, and maybe a fever. All our cats would suffer from this occasionally, but BJ caught it really bad after having lived in our home for a couple of years. His symptoms were much worse and he didn’t really seem to spring back from it as easily as our other cats. One day last year after a bout of this, he started to drool a lot and bleed out of his mouth. We panicked and took him to a vet immediately
It turned out he had several bad teeth, and one had to be removed. He was also presenting with enough other strange symptoms that the vet decided to do a few routine tests. BJ tested positive for FIV, the feline equivalent of HIV, and on top of that he was severely anemic. Because of the anemia it was uncertain if he also had the FeLV virus, which causes leukemia in cats. Shelters test for these viruses, but a cat can test negative for months after infection, so there are no guarantees.
So cute!
We were devastated. He was quickly getting worse, and we took him to an emergency animal hospital an hour away with an internist on staff. Honestly, it was uncertain if he was going to make it. BJ stayed in the hospital for several days, where he had two blood transfusions, a bone marrow biopsy, and a bunch of other tests and treatment. He was very sick, but through the whole thing he was friendly and alert, and you could tell the staff was rooting for him and giving him extra attention because of his personality. Being cute is a real survival skill for this little guy.
Thankfully he didn’t have FeLV, instead the anemia was caused by something called a “mycoplasma.” This bug had a field day because his immune system was compromised by the FIV virus. It can be easily cured, but was damaging his bone marrow and keeping him from producing and sustaining viable blood cells. He was getting a cocktail of antibiotics to kill the mycoplasma, and steroids/immune-suppressing drugs to give his bone marrow a chance to heal and produce new blood cells and to slow down the FIV. To complicate matters, the steroid made him diabetic, a risk we accepted, and he needs insulin injections twice daily. For months we were taking it one day at a time. BJ will always be sick, but thanks to our ability to provide this care for him, he can feel happy and healthy. He pays us back every day.
It wasn’t cheap–it cost us thousands of dollars, and he still needs medications and frequent trips to the vet. But it was our choice. If BJ lived with me in Denmark, that choice – and consequently his life – would have been extremely limited by how others think my income should be spent. BJ would have died to pay for an artist’s paint, a politician’s plane ticket, and the Queen’s morning cup of organic fair-trade coffee.
Not exactly, but it’s not great out there, either. At least my sainted mother, hunkered down in Del Boca Vista, seems to be riding the thing out, with her main complaint being that she can’t get her favored roast chicken because Publix is closed. “If the storm destroys Glick’s, that would be OK because I just don’t like those people.” No links to storm news, y’all know what’s going on. Well, one link, anyway.
My prog friends, who were flabbergasted that I didn’t see any substantive difference between the Team Red authoritarian and the Team Blue authoritarian, have been busy spinning this week, desperately, as the Team Red guy demonstrated that he can run up the debt in a manner identical to their heroes. And just as they thought it was safe to come out, this hits the news. Spin harder, folks, spin harder. I’m sure this is totally different because reasons.
And Today’s Tune from the insanely wonderful Eric Dolphy and Charlie Mingus, with my favorite pianist Jaki Byard doing his hard-bop/stride fusion like no-one else could.
DATE NIGHT AND STEVE SMITH NEED TO FIND HIKERS TO SCRATCH HIS ITCH. IN MEANTIME, HE FIND LINKS AND PLUGS BOOK BY BROTHER AND ANOTHER BY SOME LADY HE BARELY REMEMBER BUT LIKELY RAPED.
I typically don’t buy from this brewery. For some reason they think rather highly of themselves despite the fact they produce exactly one beer, an IPA. They just make it with a varying amount of hops, which means they get to sell them in packs of 4 for what might normally be the price of 12. Another reason I avoid them? They reside in a state whose most famous resident is a bit of a creeper and likely would be considered a racist in a sane world. That day was different and I picked it because Imperial Pilsners aren’t all that common and I remembered a book I read in high school with the same name.
My Antonia is a tale that begins when Jim, the novel’s main character, meets a woman by chance on a train that happened to have a mutual friend named Antonia. Jim and his contact agree to exchange a memoir of sorts of their experiences with Antonia. The novel is intended to be Jim’s submission to his contact on the train. This makes the novel an unusual read because it is not written to follow a discernable plot line, rather it is a collection of “books” from Jim’s point of view. Jim was orphaned at the age of ten and goes to live with his grandparents in Nebraska; the first book begins on a train to Black Hawk which also has the Shimerda’s, a Bohemian immigrant family with a daughter slightly older than Jim, as passengers. It is obvious from the start that Jim has a thing for the Bohemian girl next door.
Her family just so happens to live on the property adjacent to his grandparents. Later, Antonia meets Jim by a creek, where she inquires on several pronunciations to certain words in English. As a token of her appreciation, Antonia offers Jim a gift. The entire scene is broken up when her father awkwardly arrives and gives Jim an inquisitive look. This language barrier comes up repeatedly as a plot device as the Shimerdas are constantly screwed over by another Bohemian immigrant from whom they purchased their property. Jim and his family to their credit were always willing to give them a helping hand. Ironically, Jim’s grandparents had a bilingual farm hand, Otto, who could’ve solved most of these language issues but didn’t even bother because he happens to be Austrian.
I was 14 when I read this book, and even then, I questioned why the author wrote Otto in as a character or even made him a German speaking character at that?
Antonia herself seems almost bipolar, depending on the season. Eventually her father kills himself because nobody in Nebraska wants to hear him play his violin, Jim goes to Harvard and becomes a lawyer. Academics for some reason think of this as a tale of “the west.” It is your typical coming of age story written by an early 20th century feminist.
Predictably, the male protagonist, in a book full of terrible sexual metaphors–fails to score.
At least, I would have remembered if he did, but to be honest I didn’t finish the book. It is unclear whether Jim’s contact on the train sends her manuscript, further giving the reader the impression that Jim is an archetypal beta-male of some sort. I imagine him penning this manuscript for a random lady on a train, reminiscing about a girl he once knew while naked on a cold New England evening. Rewriting it numerous times because of the unreadable black streaks from the tears wiped away from his parchment.
Right…the beer. As you can tell from what is not my photo, is not quite amber in color. It has a nice foamy head with some citrus notes. Saaz hops which are Czech in origin are extremely prevalent, which makes no sense because the girl is not from that region. Wouldn’t Hallertau or any German variety be more appropriate? People notice details like this, Dogfish, and I only grade on a five-point scale. The Saaz hops leave a dry aftertaste on the back of the tongue. I like that they chose to go with the original Czech style, rather than the German styles that Americans are accustomed to, but for the most part these aren’t all that different. The Imperial Pilsner variety is of course similar to any Pilsner style lager, with the obvious contrast of an insane amount of hops tossed in the mix. The hop’s assault on your palate is reminiscent of this Czech SWAT team.
https://youtu.be/ygGEpl0EJRw
This video is fitting because why arm a tactical team only with pistols? Why name a libation like this after a book?
Bottom line, this book sucks and under no circumstances should you take anyone seriously that says otherwise. The beer however, is good. I give it a solid 4.2/5.
OK, no kidding around. NO OT LINKS or material. This is going to stay up and be the spot where our hurricane area Glibs can post their status, requests for help, offers of aid and the like. I will delete OT material and refer you to SP for the appropriate cyber ass kicking.
I typically don’t buy from this brewery. For some reason they think rather highly of themselves despite the fact they produce exactly one beer, an IPA. They just make it with a varying amount of hops, which means they get to sell them in packs of 4 for what might normally be the price of 12. Another reason I avoid them? They reside in a state whose most famous resident is a bit of a creeper and likely would be considered a racist in a sane world. That day was different and I picked it because Imperial Pilsners aren’t all that common and I remembered a book I read in high school with the same name. 
Antonia herself seems almost bipolar, depending on the season. Eventually her father kills himself because nobody in Nebraska wants to hear him play his violin, Jim goes to Harvard and becomes a lawyer. Academics for some reason think of this as a tale of “the west.” It is your typical coming of age story written by an early 20th century feminist.