Don’t panic. Comments will be fixed, hopefully by tomorrow. I’m attempting to upgrade and fix things all by myself, which, in retrospect, might not be the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done (I rank it up there with “refusing to get out of the way of Johnny’s croquet mallet on principle,” which was a li’l number I executed at the age of 5. Yes, plastic surgery followed).
Anyway… I guarantee that someday this will all seem worth it.
Update: Ahhhh - there we go. Comments have returned. Take THAT, Johnny!
Fanny Roborat
49 comments
Murray
May 23, 2006 at 4:22 pm
1Testing 1, 2, 1
Uh-oh,
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 5:34 pm
201000111000101111comments from “Group Activity: Headlines From the 2nd Term”010011000000
BUSH DRAFTS EVERYONE, DECLARES WAR ON REST OF WORLD
In a long-anticipated move, Supreme Leader George W. Bush announced “full mobilization of all U.S. forces” and declared war on “everybody else.” Chief Jester Dick Cheney expressed surprise as he was drafted into service with the 247,122nd Airborne division, which consisted of three residents of a nursing home, a street mime, and two First-Graders who were participating in the revised “Leave No Child Behind” program. The 247,122nd was assigned to invade western Senegal.
Bush, sitting alone on his throne in his newly-depopulated nation, could not be reached for comment.
0100001110000end comments01111001110
Oh, crap. Your modifications have ripped open the fabric of the space-time continuum thingie. See what happens when you screw around?
cooper
May 23, 2006 at 6:16 pm
3Well, Adam, it sounds to me that Johnnie’s croquet mallet needed to be taught a lesson and your head was just the one to set it straight, or crooked, as the case may be. The Firesign Theatre, my muse of choice, stresses that one should learn to stand up for a principle, or to sit down on its own stool. I have always opted for principle; most times it’s less messy, shall we say.
Adam Felber
May 23, 2006 at 8:34 pm
4Let’s get some chatter going, folks!
[I’m testing a new spam filter…]
Jay
May 23, 2006 at 8:49 pm
5Ford Prefect would love Adam’s opening in this post. And if you don’t understand the reference, you need to take up hitch hiking.
Jay
SeattleDan
May 23, 2006 at 9:03 pm
6While traveling through the galaxy, I like to eat spam. And spam filters.
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:06 pm
7Ummm,I’m getting a “Live Bookmark feed failed to load” message from FireFox for my Live Bookmark for your site. Is your RSS feed kerfunkt?
Oh, so you want us to test your spam filter, do you?
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:07 pm
8House of Saud
That was an old classic that used to get blocked.
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:09 pm
9OK, looks like H-o-u-s-e-o-f-S-A-U-D is still getting blocked.
dee
May 23, 2006 at 9:14 pm
10Well okay, if you insist.
Two weeks from today I’m off to Provence. I’d give you the full itenerary but I can’t remember all of it. I do know we have three formal performances and “informal” performances will occur when the spirit/acoustics move us. When we go to Marseille I’m staying with a “host family” for four nights. I’m practicing saying “Je n’ai pas voté pour lui.” I just hope they don’t mind when I interrupt their viewing of the World Cup to see if I can catch the Tigers (best record in baseball!) I know we go to Avignon, where I will be sure to stand sur le pont and peut-etre danse.
Of course, all of this pales in comparison to my planned trip to Grouseland in September. And in honor of Julia from the last thread, I’m designating my tent as Useless Bastard Central.
There, Adam — that oughta give that spam filter a good workout.
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:18 pm
11Hello, I am the former Minister of Culture from Nigeria and I would like to offer you a chance to REFINANCE YOUR MORTGAGE NOW!!! Rates have never been cheaper, and you can increase your penis AND breast size AND lose inches off your waist while you sleep with our all-new all-natural HERBAL VIAGRA / EPHEDRA / HOODIA / ANDROSTENDIONE all-in one pill! Pass this prayer on to ten of your closest friends or little Timmy won’t get his gift certificate to The Gap from Bill Gates!
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:19 pm
12House of S-a-u-d gets blocked, and that didn’t? Phreeeow, as Ford Prefect might say.
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:45 pm
13Saud
Harold
May 23, 2006 at 9:46 pm
14OK, that word alone works! Weird!
dee
May 23, 2006 at 10:10 pm
15Oh I have another rather bizarre thing to report. I was playing with google trends and just for the hell of it I searched “barbecue.” The most searches were from Austin, which is understandable. The second most were from Marseille.
I hope to hell my host family doesn’t think a night on the town should include a stop at Monsieur Barbecue instead of bouillabasse.
Dale
May 24, 2006 at 12:11 am
16Dee–
Go Tigers! I’m naming my firstborn Leland! (Will call it “Lee” if it’s a girl)
Dale
David
May 24, 2006 at 12:27 am
17Harold,
Please continue to channel the rips in the space-time continuum thingie.
dee,
Can you feel the rolling waves of envy? Can you, can you, huh? Bouillabaisse for all at Useless Bastard Central, I assume.
Chris B
May 24, 2006 at 9:34 am
18‘Ey batter batter batter batter…’ey batter batter… easy out! Sa-WING, batter…
[you said chatter, right?]
Mary
May 24, 2006 at 10:11 am
19Go Tigers! Go Tigers! Go Tigers!
And Chelios has signed his contract for next year. Now to pray to the gods of Stanley ;-D
Julia
May 24, 2006 at 10:19 am
20Dee, for what it’s worth, have a lovely time in Provence.
(bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter)
I am off work all next week, and will be spending said week here in the lovely wilderness we call…Omaha….
(bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter)
I wonder how the new filter does with the phrase “bite me?” Totally unconnected to Provence, of course, and anyway, I hope to follow in your footsteps sooner rather than later.
Harold
May 24, 2006 at 10:56 am
21Somethings’s goofy with the comment count, though I’ve noticed that on previous posts. It says there are 17 comments, but it lists 19.
waterfowler
May 24, 2006 at 1:37 pm
22Coop, keep your papsmear, er…Pabst beer? I’ll see if I can muster a sample or two for y’all.
Siobhan, what’s your take on the bird flu in Sumatra? Also, I read that none has been found yet in Anchorage, but that’s where NA should expect it first.
David, what part of the 1st Amendment does the ACLU not understand?
It’s classic liberal thinking. I remember my older sister once wanting to leave a larger than standard tip @ a restaurant, but insisting that “little brother” pay for it. “What the…?”! So often w/ lefties it’s “Do as I say”…or “I know how to spend your money better than you because you’re just an ignorant redneck”. Now it’s “Everyone has the right to free speech unless you criticize the ACLU”.
David
May 24, 2006 at 4:37 pm
23Waterfowler,
Huh? I must have missed something.
I do agree that liberals tend to love the classics and thinking.
Harold
May 24, 2006 at 10:11 pm
24Perhaps the rips in the space-time continuum are more serious than I thought, and we are receiving responses from the future from waterfowler to things Cooper and David have not yet said?
Harold
May 24, 2006 at 10:12 pm
25And by the way…House of Saud!
cooper
May 24, 2006 at 10:17 pm
26Rips in the continuum indeed… “W snorted cocaine at Camp David more than once during GHW Bush’s doomed presidency” said Sharon Bush.
Whoa, where did that come from?
siobhan
May 24, 2006 at 10:28 pm
27Fowler, got no idea about the Sumatra stuff. Trying to find more info.
Got a friend who’s working in Alaska this summer on the monitoring project. Swabbing the butts of thousands of birdies. We’ll be doing some testing locally during the fall migration, but I don’t think I’m going to sign up for the training…
david
May 25, 2006 at 12:34 am
28If there be space enough and time, we should all go down to the continuum and get ripped.
cooper
May 25, 2006 at 7:28 am
29siobhan, I hope your friend is issued Level 4 biogarb.
David, good idea!
Harold, House of Bush!
siobhan
May 25, 2006 at 9:51 am
30Coop, the precautions are mostly as simple as: don’t lick the Q-tips.
David
May 25, 2006 at 11:45 am
31Don’t Lick the Q-tips. There’s the title for the great bird-flu novel. Channel Douglas’ spirit and get cracking, siobhan. You could go with Don’t Panic, and for Lobster’s Sake Don’t Lick the Q-tips.
If you’re not inclined to write this novel, lean on cooper to accept the commission. Adam will clearly be up to his ass in the new tv show, so he’s likely out, at least for the moment.
waterfowler
May 25, 2006 at 5:00 pm
32David, see the NY times, 5/24/06.
siobhan
May 25, 2006 at 6:48 pm
33Cooper - write that novel for me, okay?
Landis
May 25, 2006 at 7:56 pm
34WF - I assume you’re referring to this article? ACLU is against the first amendment? I didn’t follow. Please help.
cooper
May 25, 2006 at 8:20 pm
35siobhan, I thought David was the English Professor. Surely he has at least one novel in him.
siobhan
May 25, 2006 at 8:52 pm
36I’ll let the two of you sort it out. I’m not good for anything longer than a letter to the editor, as one can easily discern from any post of mine over four sentences long.
Ann
May 25, 2006 at 10:11 pm
37I think WF is referring to a proposed ACLU policy that would prohibit directors from publicly “highlighting” disagreements on matters of civil liberties policy (I’m paraphrasing from Common Dreams).
Of course WF’s reference is wildly inaccurate–it’s just a proposal by a committee, and it hasn’t even been discussed by the board yet. And, also of course, the First Amendment deals with our rights as citizens in relation to our government, not the rights of board members in relation to an organization.
David
May 25, 2006 at 11:37 pm
38Thanks, Ann. I suspected it must be something of that sort. Pretty bizarre attempt at linking two utterly disparate issues. Sorry, Waterfowler, no score on this one. Sounds like pretty normal behavior for an organization. We didn’t air our differences in public when I was on the faculty senate at my community college. However, had the president of the college been guilty of a major transgression, which transgression he attempted to keep secret, the faculty senate would ultimately have gone public, had all else failed.
David
May 25, 2006 at 11:58 pm
39Catchall English instructor at a small community college, along with “We need someone to do something with theater.” It was a hell of a ride, however. Probably wouldn’t have it any other way, being somewhat deranged and wound just a bit tight.
siobhan, I assume you mean you have released claim to the title. I’m thinking it might be a better idea to just go with For God’s Sake Don’t Lick the Q-tips - They Aren’t Cotton Candy as the title and let people discover it’s a pandemic thriller (pandemics do make the heart beat faster). Opening scene could be a kid near the aviary at the Seattle Zoo licking a Q-tip because his mother won’t buy him any cotton candy. But I gotta tell you, I defer to cooper’s talent. You would of course have to provide technical support, siobhan. I don’t know about cooper’s level of knowledge of avian flu, but mine is pretty limited. Waterfowler, your knowldege of wildfowl could prove invaluable. Cheney’s out, of course, because he knows only staged hunts, and even then he has trouble remembering what to shoot.
matt
May 26, 2006 at 8:28 am
40I think “Don’t lick the Q-tips” works better as a name for a rock band.
siobhan
May 26, 2006 at 10:03 am
41I guess it could also work as a variant of “drinking the Koolaid” - e.g. “Looks like McCain finally licked the Q-tip”.
David
May 26, 2006 at 11:18 am
42siobhan,
If possible, get that comment (with context) to Si Hersh (sp?).
Matt,
When does their national tour start, and when will they be in Orlando?
David
May 26, 2006 at 11:24 pm
43siobhan,
My comment from this morning urging you to get 37, with context, to Si Hersh (sp?) apparently got eaten by a cyberdog.
Also ate my question to Matt about the tour dates for the new band. Could be a public service band sent out to raise awareness of what to do if the bird flu goes pandemic (kind of like the viral version of going postal).
Pete IVDL
May 27, 2006 at 5:08 pm
44Can we suck the Q-tips?
Harold, congratulations. House of Saud. Ahhhh. Now, what was your comment regarding the House of Saud about? (Yeah, I know - I tried a comment using that phrase and it got swallowed and I forgot the point by ten minutes later, so how the hell could I remember what the comment was about a year later and when is this sentence ever going to finish? Ah.)
JR
May 27, 2006 at 6:32 pm
45‘Fowler,
FWIW, the haemaglutinen spikes on the influenza virus’ coating (the “H” in H5N1) look for specific receptor sites to attach to. One hypothesis I have seen, with some evidence to back it up, is that humans have the appropriate receptor sites generally only in our deep lung tissue. The receptor sites in the upper respiratory tract do not allow H5 attachment.
This hypothesis holds that the reason the H5 version does not generally infect humans is because the virus can not get past the non-attachable upper respiratory cells to get to the attachable ones further in.
Now if someone did have those same deep lung receptors in his upper tract, he would be highly susceptible to the H5 virus. Since such a condition is genetically determined it stands to reason that if one member of a family had this condition, others might too.
I believe this may be the situation with the family in Sumatra where one person may have caught the bug from fowl and then passed it on to his/her genetically extremely similar relatives.
The H5N1 virus has not, at this time, yet become contagious for the vast majority of humans. Being influenza, it is mutating constantly. It could mutate toward or away from human infectiousness–the process is entirely random. At some point in the future some version of influenza will cause a pandemic of variable lethality. It’s a matter of time. But not just yet.
Back to the shadows for me!
David
May 27, 2006 at 7:36 pm
46JR,
Thanks for the info. Glad you popped out of the shadows on this one.
Pete IVDL,
Yes, you can suck the Q-tips. But that is different than whether or not you should suck the Q-tips.
waterfowler
May 28, 2006 at 10:21 pm
47Is this thing on?
waterfowler
May 28, 2006 at 10:24 pm
48Just checking. I thought Sea Skunk had me spam filtered. If it was the bug I had, I think I finally stepped on it. Keep us informed JR.
Harold
May 30, 2006 at 5:42 pm
49Pete, your analysis is pretty close to the mark. Sometime in the past year-and-a-half someone discoverd that comments using the phrase “House of Saud” were getting blocked. (I din’t rmember why it ever came up in a comment.) Nobody knew why, but it was pretty bizarre. The first test comment I fired off which included this phrase got blocked! Very, very weird.