Saturday Morning is Sponsored By . . . [DOT 8/7/23]

you and me! (Yes, there will be stars for participation.)

8/7/23 Elliecoo 42
Image via Shutterstock

Hello, Team DS Saturday! Apparently, we do give time off for good behavior (or for time served), so @MegMegMcGee is having fun in the wilds of Ohio and is not offering her morning DOT. So come on over and hang out with me, from DOT through BrainDrain!

You good people know the drill – I’ll throw in some cute animal stuff and rely on you to do the heavy lifting of current events. (As always, a gazillion thanks for that.)

Awwwww:

Oh, good one:

It seemed like a good idea at the time:

Fun times:

Please have at it – do share all the news that fit to print, and even some that isn’t!

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar
About Elliecoo 559 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

42 Comments

    • …part of me can’t help but admire how the belgians could go a calendar year without a government…while playing host to the EU government in a capital that not only managed to function in a eurostar-still-serves-brussels sense but avoided looking like…say…edinburgh that time the bin men went on strike in the run up to the festival

      …but for the most part I’d say having a government is generally better than the alternative…generally…not loving how there seem to be ever more of them acting like they’re generals & not generalists, though?

      • I would love something like that, quite frankly. A year’s relief from the misbegotten initiatives and petty pickpocketing that comes with every bill that comes out of Albany and Washington. Kath O’Lantern Hokum has proved to be a disaster, which disappoints me because I had high hopes, but I will award her top marks for one thing: She leaves NYC alone. Her predecessor, Handsy Andy, took full advantage of his “emergency” powers granted to him by the Legislature during the pandemic to screw us every way to Sunday. And he’s from here! His mother has a condo over by the UN. But oh no, everything in NYC must remain shuttered until every last restaurant and hotel and entertainment venue closes for good (except for the live audiences for “Saturday Night Live,” for reasons that were never explained) while other venues in more Covid-ridden counties were opening partially or fully.

        I’m still so angry. Slowly but surely the dishonesty and the caudillismo and the waste, fraud, and abuse of New York State’s response to Covid is coming to light. It makes for interesting reading.

    • That story was absolute insanity. That’s been in the news here for a while. But we New Yorkers consume an awful lot of tabloid-ready content (I think it’s because we live in a kind of tabloid-esque environment, not Mayberry, RFD) so this was right up our alley.

  3. Oh no. That first video. The puppy and the duckling. I am so behind on a couple of projects that are due Monday and now this is the only thing I’ll be able to think about and will be revisiting over and over again.

    Speaking of puppies, we have two new ones in the building, two different apartments, and apparently Faithful Hound has already put his snout up their butts and allowed them to examine his and now they’re great friends.

      • Luckily he’s neutered and will be 10 next month. When we first got him as a puppy he used to try to hump all the female dogs and even made a careful examination of the female humans, and I used to have to apologize profusely. But luckily my female neighbors found it kind of funny and would push his face away from their crotches in a playful way.

        My Faithful Hound. I should have named him Hugh Hefner. Or Harvey Weinstein.

      • Maybe. But as Better Half pointed out, it’s much better to make dog-walking a business transaction, just in case something went wrong. That way, if we were dissatisfied, we could just never contact them again, and not live in the same building with them.

        My French dog walker, whom I adore, told me that her grandmother wants to know when she will find a boyfriend and settle down. I asked, “Do you want a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?”

        “A boyfriend. But not here. Not New York. I like my little private room but I will not stay forever.”

        “Well, while you’re here I have friends who have sons who are about your age and they do pretty well for themselves. They could at least take you out to dinner.”

        She politely declined. It frustrated my inner yenta.

      • You know who loves it more are the British and the Germans. As someone who can speak English, German, and Spanish, Mediterranean Spain is like my paradise. Poor Better Half. But he likes it too. I really should start online Catalan lessons.

  5. The hoarder collector had a successful first pass at the yard sale. Twenty-five cent records, because 2,100+ isn’t enough.

    Edit: the Red Hot Chili Peppers sells for $45 as per discogs…

    Good stuff though: Joan Armatrading, Bryan Ferry, Grover Washington Jr., Graham Parker, Ry Cooder, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and some small release Philly/NYC compelations.

    He did come back with huge soft pretzels, score!

    And I discovered that I can stalk the street with the Ring doorbell on live. Muhahaha.

    • Lol to you 👀… but also scary in the Big Brother sense. We’ve passively accepted mass surveillance into our lives and there’s seemingly no going back. It’s not new news but I wasn’t aware of it until my recent trip, they are using our biometrics as boarding passes now. Passengers can still opt out but most people don’t because they are sheep or like me they are afraid of repercussions for stepping out of line especially during flight travel. I’m on some bullshit list whenever I fly back from London, I get flagged at the gate and have to be swiped down and my carry-on inspected again as if I have motivation and access to an evil genius network who can sneak dangerous shit into Heathrow. The last time I flew home from there five years ago, one of the crew apologized and unofficially told me that the States required them to select me. Of course everyone that was flagged “randomly” was a POC.

      • Random double check list, yikes! My boss and her husband travel constantly. (They are in their 70’s.) For many years, they spent six months annually in either Mexico or Chilie, as her composer husband gathered inspiration from the beautiful and isolated areas. They are older, caucasian, and harmless looking, but they are pulled out of line, swiped, and questioned at most airports in the US. That will teach them.

      • A million years ago, I saw Roxy Music live at the outdoor Mann Music Center small venue. After the covered seating it is sort of a grass amphitheater. They were very good.

    • You have violated the spirit and essence of the law. It is written “Québec.”

      I’ve seen this in action in France when I’ve been around French Canadians who have been given the hairy eyeball by restaurant waiters, but has anyone ever stood up and said, “You are not French. You are Canadians. You do not speak French. You understand it but you speak Québécois. Get over yourselves and let’s move on.”

      That said, as President de Gaulle put it so memorably in Montréal in the 1960s, “Vive le Québec libre!”

      • French Canadians are proud to speak quebecois French. They don’t presume an affiliation with France or idolize the French from Paris. Just like we don’t feel like we are British even though we are part of the British commonwealth. Yes Parisians are snobby about accents but so are most large city dwellers when they encounter people from the countryside.

        • I read a really interesting thing about the Québécois Separatist movement. This might have actually been written by my dearly departed friend Mordecai Richler.

          He said that one of the things that really defines Canada is that it’s not America. It is, but in its own Canadian way, let’s face it. So, he posited, if Québec broke away they would not be Canada, which is not the USA, so what would it be?

          I have the book somewhere, it’s a collection of essays, and this one was very funny and affectionate. Some of his stuff…you think I go on rants. But he was very funny and a much better writer than I am, despite his well-deserved contempt for a lot of the people and topics he wrote about.

          • Personally, I think that Quebec kept us from merging with the US in the distant past as well as helped English Canada deal with immigrants better (than the US which sadly isn’t a very high bar) and look at everyone (except the natives) with less racist eyes (better than the US, again not a high bar.).

            However, Brexit has pretty much put a damper on Separation/Sovereignty Association (their bullshit -we’re our own indpendent country but we share a currency and treaties) as we (in ROC aka Rest of Canada) would be as prickish, petty and vengeful as the EU has been to the UK (quite justified too.)

            • …fair enough…in my head they’re like the french version of reuters crossed with the BBC…so I default to looking in their direction for french-language stuff & wondered if that might give them an edge on canadian coverage…pretty sure they have desks out that way as they’re a global effort?

          • I read a lot of AFP stuff. They have wonderful translators so their stuff is often more intelligible in English than places like Buzzfeed or, I don’t know, pick an online site. My comments, for example. I’ve been reading about the riots. They’re taking a steady, measured response to all of this. They are also reporting that it is sending the far-right’s voter approval ratings through the roof and Marine Le Pen quite possibly could be the next President. She’ll join a long list of European governments that have tilted right these last few years.

  7. The GOP blew a gasket simply because low level IRS employees had flagged Tea Party organization applications for scrutiny after a flood of applications, and falsely accused Obama of orchestrating it.

    Now we find out that John Kelly has testified again that Trump himself wanted Peter Strzok investigated while he was White House Chief of Staff.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/us/politics/trump-kelly-irs-fbi-strozk-page.html

    Strzok has just won the right to depose Trump himself in his lawsuit over his firing.

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/politics/trump-strzok-page-deposition/index.html

    Kelly said he never acted on Trump’s request, but it’s worth noting that by the time Strzok was fired, Kelly had been cut out of the loop by Trump on many issues.

     

Leave a Reply