Category: Daily Links

With all the stomach flu in the house this week, I think we definitely had the shittiest Christmas in family history. My children are about ready to riot. They’ve had one barely functioning parent (or the other) since Friday, and are really tired of being told we can’t go do ____ because their parents are sick and/or exhausted.

In other news, I have discovered that swapping out vodka for Basil Hayden’s dark rye in a white russian is fantastic. I learned that whiskey, coffee liquer, and cream is called a Sneaky Pete.

I hope unionization does for the SPLC what it has done for so many other institutions.

That’s not how I remember it at all.

China, Russia, and Iran to hold joint “naval” exercises (I’m not sure Russia and Iran qualify as having navies) in Gulf of Oman. Over/under on number of vessels inadvertently sunk?

What’s more problematic? That someone produced a play of “Mrs. Doubtfire” or that a play about a man “passing” as a woman would be problematic to transpersons?

Thanks, Limeys. You make this day a lot of fun with the marathon of soccer matches.  I’ll be tuned in all day and will be able to switch over to football immediately after its done.  Nothing happened yesterday sports-wise. That NBA thing on Christmas is stupid.

Which brings us to birthdays.  Famous pirate Calico Jack Rackham was born on this day. As were calculating machine inventor Charles Babbage, famous admiral George Dewey, outstanding author Henry Miller, sociopathic ChiCom murderer Mao Tse-Tung, the hilarious Steve Allen, substance abuser Kitty Dukakis, music mogul Phil Spector, “The Wizard Of Oz” Ozzie Smith, genius drummer Lars Ulrich, underrated actor Jared Leto, and another actor Kit Harrington.

That’s a pretty good list of heavyweights in their field. Nice! Let’s see if we can equal it with…the links!

Get a load of this bullshit. I guess all of human development, from the age of dinosaurs to the middle warming period never happened.

Rocket Man Reneges on Christmas Gift. Damn him. I was so looking forward to California being gone this morning.

Thanks a lot, Chicago. And thanks a lot, fuzzy new math used to come up with this statistic. Either way, the numbers are still astronomically low once you take bodily autonomy out of the equation.

This is a story as old as the concept of the “sugar daddy” himself. If this surprises you, you’ve been living under a rock.

How dare they leave the plantation! Get used to it, big taxers. Once marginalized people gain acceptance, expect them to abandon alliances that steal more and more of their money.

You know this will somehow be blamed on Uber. When anybody with a brain knows its the fault of the evil money-grab scheme by the municipalities.

I hope this doesn’t give anybody bright ideas about liquor. Seriously, these fucks need to look at ways to lower taxes, not raise them.

I love this song. And the overall greatness of the video can’t be disputed. Shit, I realized they cut off part of that. Here’s the “official” video with the whole song, but not as 80s as the other one.

Now go have a great (Boxing) day, friends!

 

So, another quiet Christmas at our place. I’m about to put together a lasagna that’s way too big for two people (and a Wonder Dog), but hey,  it’s silly to go to the trouble and then not have leftover lasagna for the freezer.

OMWC gave me an 8 qt multicooker for Christmas. We have a tradition of giving each other cooking-related gifts for all gift-giving occasions. Then we BOTH get the benefit of the present.

I have to say, I’ve resisted the multicooker mania, but it’s just exactly like the way I resisted a rice cooker.

ALL my Asian friends: SP you NEED a rice cooker!

SP: Eh, how hard is it to make a pot of rice on the stove?

SP gives OMWC a rice cooker when out of gift ideas one birthday.

Fast forward.

SP: OMG! How did we live without this thing??

Same deal with the multicooker. Tamales done in 45 minutes? Check! Flan in 15 minutes? Check! (#notvegan)

Along with all the more regular uses for it, I expect to use the hell out of the thing for small batch canning. Great gift, all around. Thanks, OMWC!

Anyway! Let’s see what’s happening in the world today.

 

Who hasn’t fantasized about doing this?

No, OMWC, we cannot do this.

How would this go over for the holiday decorations at your workplace?

I imagine they must have gotten the parents’ permission for this.

And, of course the legislator wants to legislate even more in response to this.

 

Time for me to open some cooking wine…you know, wine I will drink while cooking.

 

Merry Christmas, etc etc, Glibs!

 

Traditionally, Jews would slip a few bucks to a goy to do tasks on Sabbath forbidden to the Jew, like turning lights on and off or lighting a stove. If it pisses off Yahweh, so what? It’s not like it’s a Jew breaking the commandments. Today, the opposite, the Jew sits in for Sloopy, while he spends the morning trying to prevent his sugared-up kinder from smearing shit on the walls with glee and abandon (not to mention partially digested crayon fragments). And I’m a Jew in a good mood, given the fantastic female with whom I’m spending my day off, the amazing food and beverage in the house, the afterglow of the effective end of the regular season in the NFL, and the memory of SP’s four kinds of tamales with red, washed down with several ethanol-containing media, and accompanied by a delightful Humphrey Bogart flick set in Arizona.

Birthdays abound, though Wikipedia coyly omits the most famous one. But they DID include one of the three or four greatest minds in human history; someone whom I could have sworn was made up; a guy who combined a great mustache with shitty cars; someone who at least admitted that he was not to be believed; the absolute exemplification of cool; a guy I would love to have done some lines with; the source of the terrific quote about TV, “How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?“; one of the best baseball players I ever saw (but hung on too long); and an empty suit which could be a poutine receptacle.

Oh, and there’s likely some news or other out there.

 

IT’S HAPPENING!

 

If she’s successful, citizens will take turns shaving her legs.

 

“You can’t solve problems by just throwing money at them.”

 

Mexicans doing jobs Americans won’t.

 

He’s not incorrect.

 

After spending a few million dollars in grant money, scientists report startling fact known to anyone who has ever owned a dog.

 

Old Guy Music is clearly on theme today, a terrific song and a performance to match.

2019 decided to send one final “fuck you” to my family, the stomach bug laying into my wife and mother-in-law about 10:30 last night. There was so much vomiting. Soo much. I finally managed to nod off around 2am. I will say **knocks on wood** my kids have been great thus far. But its still shitty. I had to cancel all the family get-togethers for Christmas, because I’m not about to invite my parents and brother into our plague house tomorrow. I’m taking the boys this afternoon to Christmas Eve dinner with my aforementioned family. We’ll eat prime rib and cheesecake, and everyone can exchange gifts. But damnit, the only thing I make that my mother (who did all the cooking for us growing up) really likes is the Christmas brunch seafood chowder, and I’m not sure how to get that to her this year. I think I’ll make it and run it by their house in the afternoon if everyone is feeling better enough to take some kid duty from me. /rant

Pentagon tells service members they really don’t want to know who really fathered that kid.

Florida Man gets in the Christmas spirit, then arrested.

Who could possibly have seen the expensive wine thing boomeranging on Liz Warren?

You can’t spell Giuliani without “Jew”

Time for my favorite Christmas song

Well, we’ve almost made it.  Except the Jews. They started their thing already.  And the heathens celebrated a few days ago, I think.  But to those of us that believe…SANTA IS ALMOST HERE!!! And for Packers fans, he got an early start as they won handily, if ugly, to lock the division down.  Hell, they may get a bye in the playoffs. Which seems crazy if you’ve watched them play much this year. But take solace, Minnesoooooda fans. (segue coming) Your Wild won last night. As did Toronto, Boston, Tampa, Columbus, Philly, Ottawa, Nashville, Montreal, New Jersey, Vancouver, Colorado and St Louis.  Meanwhile, across the pond, they’re criminalizing stupidity at sporting events. But that is just part of being more enlightened than letting the venue operator remove someone and letting the public shame them. I notice no arrests were made of the Spuds fans making monkey chants though. Guess they didn’t have enough police buses to arrest all of them.

Frontiersman and Indian-fighter Kit Carson was born on this day. As were billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes, lovely actress Ava Gardner, wrestler Iron Mike DiBiase, novelist Mary Higgins Clark, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, the man Lemmy, fashion designer Kate Spade, Puerto Rican heartthrob Ricky Martin, “novelist” Stephanie Meyer, and TV’s Ryan Seacrest.

The list mostly sucked. But whatever, we’ve got to keep trudging along.  And that means…the links!

Christ, what an asshole. I mean…damn.

Good thing they’ve now gotten these ::checks notes:: dangerous, non-addictive pain-killers off the street. Let’s be honest here. The real issue was not paying the taxman.

Merry Christmas!!! You’re fired. I mean, shouldn’t this have happened months ago?

Awwwwww, this is a touching story. No, seriously.  And not in some perverted way, which I bet half of you were thinking.

Real estate is always a smart investment. This story gets weirder every day.

Yeah, cool idea. And I’m sure there’s no way this turns into a shitshow of lawsuits. Like within a month.

Welcome to Texas! See you in hell! Pardon me for shedding exactly zero tears.

I assume some of you expected this to be the song today. But I bet none of you were expecting this second tune.

That’s it for me until Thursday.  I want to seriously wish you all a very Merry Christmas.  Thanks for making this place so wonderful, day-in, day-out. It truly is a pleasure to do these links as often as I get to do them. I hope the holidays treat you all as well as they’re treating me, Banjos and our family. May God bless you all. Make it a great day, friends!

I was laid flat by something all weekend. I probably slept 40 of the 60 hours between 5pm Friday and 5am this morning, but I recovered enough that my dad and I had our 15th annual raw oyster and oyster po’boy Christmas lunch. He doubts we will get 15 more together. I’m hoping to be bringing him to the same place when he’s 100. On the other side of the holiday emotion spectrum, my wife is doing the first holiday season without her father, and its a very bittersweet affair. There are many emotional things going on that I’m frankly too much of a left-brain autistatarian to really get without coaching, but luckily, I’ve had some coaching.

If you say “Betelgueuse” three times while looking in the mirror, sometime in the next 100 kiloyears you’ll be rewarded with a supernova.

Cocaine Mitch is one bad turtle.

12M seems low to me.

I’m frankly confused by the alternate scales on this graph.  I’m pretty sure that this can be used to prove that either free-riderism is a viable strategy up to a point, or that union is a product that isn’t worth the price-tag to most new teachers in MI.

Two days left till Christmas! I hope many of you are taking the whole week off.  I know I won’t be.  There’s literal work to get done as well as continuing to unpack and move stuff from the old house to the new one. Not to mention, I have a shitload of shit to build for Santa tomorrow night.  But that’s the way it goes. I’m not complaining.  I’ll leave that to Cleveland Browns fans. And complain they will. The way the end of the second quarter was coached yesterday would leave any fan sick to their stomach. Texans fans are happy.  As are Pats, 49ers, Falcons, Ravens, Saints, Colts, Dolphins (and Bengals, in a way), Jets, Giants, Raiders, Eagles (at the expense of the Cowboys, who should have fired their coach at the airport), Cardinals and Chiefs.

Across the pond, the misery of ManUre fans continues apace. Everton made a splash with a massive managerial hire…then played a snoozefest of a draw. Spuds lost to Chelski in humiliating fashion and some of their loser fans topped it off with racist monkey chants. Man City topped Liecester. And Liverpool won the Club World Cup. And Ohio State beat Kentucky in Vegas in basketball in a rather exciting game.

Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith was born on this day.  As were cosmetics magnate and first female African-American millionaire Madam CJ Walker, hard-of-hearing VP candidate James Stockdale, bowling legend Dick Weber, Japanese emperor Akihito, “The Golden boy” Paul Hornung, voice actor Harry Shearer, douchy general Wesley Clark, ageless daytime actress Susan Lucci, King Crimson’s Adrian Belew, enormous douche Bill Kristol, Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray, underachiever Jim Harbaugh, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, and legendary actor Corey Haim.

That’s quite a list.  But we have to move on to…the links!

Bill Cosby’s publicist is all out of fucks to give. Dude needs to have a pudding pop and relax.

Gee, this is a real surprise. Despots gonna despot.

This is part of the reason why I’m glad I left Virginia (twice). I’m just surprised it happened east of Richmond. This usually goes down west of Charlottesville.

Chicagoans want 2019 to go out with a bang. And they’re succeeding, sadly.

Christ, what an asshole. I can’t see ever doing something like this.

As the impeachment circus continues, Trump continues to remake the Judiciary. Nice job on the rules change, Dirty Harry. You should have listened to Cocaine Mitch.

Remember that cop in Fort Worth who shot a woman inside her home recently? He was just charged with murder. Which continues Texas’s streak of doing the right thing in these situations.

I’ll do a couple birthday songs today. Here’s the first one. And here’s the second. Sorry, Eddie, but you lost this argument. It’s still a catchy song.

And with that, I bid you good day.  Make it a great one, friends!

This is it, the last Hebraic links before some fat dude slides down your chimney and raids your bar while you’re sleeping. My healing continues apace, SP is doing the preps for our Christmas dinner (four kinds of tamales), and I’m gleefully going through a massive gift from one of our IRL Glib friends- a collection of old 45s and 78s, the thick pre-LP shellac types. It’s a hilarious mix of material ranging from Verdi to Frank Sinatra to Lawrence Welk.

So many birthdays today, I’m going to be forced to leave out a lot of good ones, but will manage to cite a guy who was known for self-consistency; the one and true TV mom; a guy who really could be differentiated; the inspiration for yesterday’s birthday boy Frank Zappa; a frequent recipient of tossed batteries; and a guy who has pretty much disappeared until 2024.

So, news.

 

“You expect me to actually believe my own bullshit? HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”

 

I will not smoke it in the train, I will not smoke it on the plane.

 

She’s right. He’s not a third generation DC leech.

 

“We surrender, retroactively!”

 

I took a survey at our house and got a different result.

 

So wait, you want to collect welfare while you’re in college? Fuck you, get a job.

 

Judenrat.

 

For Old Guy Music today, I figured go ancient or go home. I was inspired by my Christmas gift. And sure, it’s ironic, but fuck, that’s some impressive playing.