Well, bad news: work starts up again. The grand conjunction moves apart, but only because the Earth is moving out of alignment. On July 1-ish Mars will get its best view of it, and that’s a horrible sign violence-wise. But that’s not until July, so no need to worry about that now.
If letting you know about what the skies are going to look like on Mars is making you think there’s not much going on, well… It’s not that there’s nothing there, but it’s all so obvious and facile that I feel myself beginning to cringe to even mention it. I mean, come on — “times of transition, of beginning and endings, change” are the stars trying to make me look like a hack? Just FYI, if you ever engage the services of an alternative epistemological forecaster and they say something like “I see you are on a journey for greater understanding,” then leave immediately, without paying. They’re a fraud, and they’re not even making an effort to make their bullshit entertaining. Don’t worry about the curses, they’re a fraud, remember? Besides, if you’re really worried about it, I can perform a ritual to cleanse your money from their maledictions. I’ll need you to take the cash and put it in an envelope…
Congratulations Capricorns, 2021 is your year! Enjoy it.
Between now and Jan 10, being honest will your partner will actually yield good results for your love life. Bizarre, I know.
The first half of the week has an increase chance of betrayal and backstabbery. Then the moon moves into Cancer and things will be safer.
A lot of Major Acanae drawn this week, and most are reversed. Not so good.
Capricorn: Justice – Equity (pre-SJ definition), rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law
Aquarius: Wheel of Fortune reversed – Increase, abundance, superfluity
Pisces: 4 of Wands reversed – Prosperity, increase, felicity, beauty, embellishment
Aries: 8 of Wands – Activity in undertakings, swiftness, great haste, great hope, love
Taurus: Queen of Cups – Good, fair woman; honest, devoted woman, a perfect spouse and a good mother, loving intelligence, gift of vision, success, happiness, pleasure, wisdom, virtue.
Gemini: 5 of Swords – Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonor, loss — but these things are inflicted by you.
Cancer: Knight of Wands – Departure, absence, flight, emigration, change of residence
Leo: The Emperor – Stability, power, protection, realization, a great person, aid, reason, conviction, authority, will
Virgo: 3 of Cups – Conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing
Libra: Strength reversed – Despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, disgrace.
Scorpio: 9 of Wands reversed – Strength in opposition, delay, suspension, adjournment
Sagittarius: The World reversed – Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence
IFL Aries this week
“I just want to be wuvved, is that so wong?”
Any Leos wanna hook up?
How you doin?
Yes, it is so wrong.
?
As a Capricorn, I’m gonna invite someone else to take 2021, since it looks like a shitstorm in waiting.
My husband is a Capricorn too. Hoping he will have enough of a good year to reflect a little goodness in to direction of my sorry Aries ass.
LOLOLOLOLOL Even the cards think I need reassurance.
“Conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing”
I pray…..
Sagittarius: The World reversed – Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence
Now we’re talking.
So… 2020?
Increase, abundance, superfluity
I’m going to waste my bonus on hookers and blow?
No, wasting it would be spending it on rent and groceries, so you’re good
‘Waste?’
fridge magnet seen in TX
An old, sad cowboy with a mug of beer in his hand is seated at the bar of a saloon. The caption says: I spent all my money on beer and women. The rest I just wasted.
and now for something completely different
There’s a movie from 1961 called The Valley of the Dragons, which is loosely based on a Jules Verne story. Its main claim to fame is its use of lizards as dinosaurs, plus a guest and uncredited appearance by Rodan. Anyway, the everymen who get stranded in the land time forgot make gunpowder to fight off the giant lizards, I mean dinosaurs. It seems Star Trek ripped off the whole homemade gunpowder to fight a giant lizard in the 1967 episode with Kirk vs the Gorn.
I did like the full size mastodon costumes they made for the actual elephants used in the film.
I’m going to ignore your comment about STTOS and enjoy the rest of what you wrote.
Listening to football commentary, it occurs to me that LSU turns out a disproportionate number of excellent football players.
FWIW, Louisiana is a single-school state: LSU gets first pick of all its best talent.
GEAUX TIGERS!!!!!
True story:
In my husband’s distant yout (his early 20s) he was traveling with his Illinois band, which was pretty good.
They had a van they’d painted in purple and yellow, the LSU colors. They happened to be in Baton Rouge during a game and decided to drive to it and check it out.
Stadium personnel was directing pregame traffic and waived their van on. They followed into the tunnel where the guards indicated.
Turned out to be the way to the field! Their van colors made it look like they were some kind of school spirit mobile.
They drove into the stadium, immediately took to the track around the field and exited out the opposite tunnel, never slowing down.
To this day he cheers for LSU just for that.
This is such a great story, a real life scene that seems like it’s right out of a (good and funny) movie or sitcom. Sorta Larry David-ish. In the movie they would have decided that it was a good opportunity to plug their band and opened up the back of the van to play the LSU fight song ?
I need to get him to tell his stories on audio recordings so I can arrange them into a book.
He’s led an interesting life, to say the least.
He’s astonished that he has lived this long.
Pic of the band.
https://imgur.com/a/gAlopbj
Mr Splosives on the left, with the shirt on.
(I think I got the best looking one)
Is that Ron Swanson on the right?
Terry Bradshaw sez “screw you, Don!”
Currently contemplating switching over to something stronger then beer to finish the Browns/Jets game.
Who knew losing two linebackers and your entire group of wide receivers would have such a huge impact?
At least the Colts are putting the Browns future in the Browns’ hands.
Looks like the Browns’ future is in Covid’s hands. I guess they didn’t listen to Fauci. Do better, Browns.
Gemini: 5 of Swords – Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonor, loss — but these things are inflicted by you.
Dear Ted: I’m so sorry these things write themselves, that I’m such a self-absorbed moron of an asshole, that week after a week I fuel my enemies’ fires with my incompetence, that even the stars know week after week after week how hopeless and impotent I am – DJT45
I’m sorry you’re such a self-absorbed moron of an asshole, too, Don. 😉
* falls to floor devastated; staggers to feet and runs from room sobbing *
Going to finish off Mr. Robot today. A little bit worried about being disappointed. The last season overall was fantastic, and proved that the writers didn’t need a gimmick to turn out a tight, suspenseful show. I then I watched the second-to-last episode and was very very unhappy. One of the protagonists’ main character traits is that he’s observant. But the time never changed throughout the entire episode and he didn’t seem to notice. This anomaly also was dropped much more heavy handedly than is usual — the time they picked for every clock to be displaying, 11:16, how are we NOT supposed to notice an alarm clock waking someone up to start their corporate day job then?
Well, maybe that was all misdirection and the ending is going to rock. I hope so. Even if the show crashes on its last two episodes, it’s much better than all the shows that went to shit on their later seasons (looking at you BSG).
DOOM.
“You mentioned the numbers yourself quite correctly when you’re dealing with a baseline of 200,000 new cases a day and about 2,000 deaths per day, with the hospitalizations over 120,000. We are really at a very critical point. If you put more pressure on the system by what might be a post-seasonal surge because of the traveling and the likely congregating of people for the good warm purposes of being together for the holidays, it’s very tough for people to not do that. And, yet, even though we advise not t, it’s going to happen. So I share the concern of
President-electBiden that as we get into the next few weeks, it might actually get worse.”It’s always darkest just after someone cuts the power off.
“Might get worse”
“might be a ‘post-seasonal surge'”
It might.
Science!™
“Science it out just how much worse it would have been if
weyou hadn’t done this or that other thing we bullied you about.”Grandfather say – “It never rain every day.”
One of my favorite movies.
#metoo
It’s one of those films that benefits from repeated viewings as the art department did such an astounding job dressing the sets. I notice new things every time I watch it.
Except, of course, for Sunday
“We are really at a very critical point.”
Crying wolf again? Good Grief.
If everything is a priority, nothing is.
acht
The Germans taught me that you can never have more than eight number one priorities at a time.
If the problem really is lack of capacity of hospital beds and ICU spots, then all Certificate of Need requirements should be waived for the building or expansion of hospitals and clinics.
I have heard exactly Zero whining about the CoN issue during this period in which we supposedly have a shortage.
“then all Certificate of Need requirements should be waived”
Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Don’t you know the dangers of just letting just anyone get a MRI machine?
Just like gubmint intervention causes school tuition to increase. This is the same thing, with the same result.
Certificates of Need make everyone stupid?
And now a word from America’s foremost senile buttlicker
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Sunday that an already-rising tide of coronavirus infections may get another boost as Americans flock together for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations despite warnings from public health officials.
“We very well might see a post-seasonal — in the sense of Christmas, New Year’s — surge, and as I’ve described it, as a surge upon a surge,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Fauci, a White House advisor and one of the country’s leading infectious disease specialists, expressed optimism about the pace of vaccine distribution, which began this month after federal regulators approved two drugs made by Pfizer and Moderna.
But he said he agreed with the assessment made by President-elect Joe Biden, who warned on Tuesday that “our darkest days in this battle against Covid are ahead of us, not behind us.”
“I share the concern of President-elect Biden that as we get into the next few weeks it might actually get worse,” Fauci said.
Thank goodness he will soon have a bona fide political swamp-dwelling President’s ass to kiss.
Fourteen days to flatten the curve.
Started season 9 of Letterkenny. One minute into the first episode and it is so terrible I don’t know if I can finish the show, let alone the season.
My husband watches that show.
I don’t get the charm. 5 minutes was enough for me.
In my opinion, the original DerpTube videos and first few seasons of the show were amazing, but were starting to wear thin by season 5. That LSU van story is absolutely hilarious, BTW.
I am even Canadian and have had so many people tell me it’s my kind of show. And on the surface it seems like it “should” be. But I can’t get into it at all.
I’m sorry you’re Canadian. 😉
Me too Ted, me too 😉
I could get into Michelle Mylett.
Pander harder.
Our Kwanzaa celebrations are one of my favorite childhood memories. The whole family would gather around across multiple generations and we’d tell stories and light the candles.
Whether you’re celebrating this year with those you live with or over Zoom, happy Kwanzaa!
That needs to be nominated for the Didn’t Happen Awards
Bwahahahaha! What fucking joke she is
And yet the media are carrying water for her.
For some reason, it seems the most of the Twatterverse thinks she is lying.
I love that the simplest and least accusatory comment is probably the best one. “Sounds like it was fun, you should post some pictures!” ?
Her family was too poor to afford a camera, you racist!
Mother from India, father from Jamaica, so of course they immediately picked up on Kwanzaa when it was invented.
To be fair, I think it was invented in Berkeley while they lived there.
#NotMyHoroscope
#TheResistanceShallContinue
#CapriconsRpeople2
Slutty Sunday features scantily clad babes old enough to be most of your daughters you pervs.
https://archive.li/xQoc6
Holy fuck, that’s a good gallery!
#36 now. #36 forevah!
Gemini: 5 of Swords – Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonor, loss — but these things are inflicted by you.
FINALLY! KNEEL BEFORE ME, YOU PEONS!
? I’m gonna fuck some shit up this last week of the year!
Instagram‘s New Terms of Service – Not Sketchy at All!
So what is the deal?
Fukkit. I’m going to 711 in my cozy slippers.
Chocos. Get some Chocos. Socks and sandals FTW.
Will Tevas work?
God no.
I’ll have to look at nordstrom’s rack and see if I can find some.
I doubt nordstroms will have them. Last pair I bought I found at Cabela’s. Like I said last night the quality has gone down since they sold out to china.
First pair I bought was at a Birkenstocks store, with Vibram soles. I thought those were the best sandals I’ve ever bought.
I hope we don’t see any headlines today of you getting busted wheezing the juice.
You kids and your incomprehensible slang
-1 Encino man
Gemini: 5 of Swords – Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonor, loss — but these things are inflicted by you.
? It’s about time I got off my ass and did something.
Bummer, man.
Our Kwanzaa celebrations are one of my favorite childhood memories.
Was that before or after you won a Nobel prize for curing cancer?
That was Dr. Jill, rhymes with Phil,,,
Sucking democrat dick cures cancer?
Jackie O never got cancer.
SCIANCE™!
She hasn’t ended systemic racism yet by throwing a bunch of innocent black men in prison?
Be patient.
Shall we once again revisit why no one in the Democratic primary wanted to vote for her? She is so transparently ambitious and disingenuous. She’s not only a liar, she’s terrible at it.
“Shall we once again revisit why no one in the Democratic primary wanted to vote for her?”
They couldn’t help it. They wanted to like her, but their systemic racism wouldn’t allow them. They’re confessing their privilege now so that they can do better.
Yet, she’s failed upwards her entire career.
For party leadership, “transparently ambitious” is very much a desired trait.
Failed up by lying down?
today’s award for pretentious writing goes to NPR
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/26/948993865/promising-young-woman-is-a-dark-comedy-that-will-keep-you-on-your-toes
***
Her voice can drop from a pleasant, white-wine melody to the whiskey alto of a broad — the kind who should not be crossed.
***
The movie is about a woman who gets drunk in bars so men will take her home. Then she tortures and kills them, I guess. Wonder Woman she is not.
Years ago, I was a regular in an atheist chatroom. As one of the few non-lefties there, I got lit up constantly. There was a particularly obnoxious food critic from New! York! City! that I tangled with. I think the most pompous thing he wrote was “I just want a wine that’s poignant but not overbearing.”
OK, your majesty. Us peasants will just have to get by with cold Bud and Yuengling. Maybe a Shiner on xmas.
There’s a Dilbert comic where Bob the Dinosaur rips the pants off people we hate for no good reason. One category is guys who know wine. “Fruity, yet tannic” pronounces the turtle-necked dweeb. “Flowery, yet polyester” pronounces Bob the Dinosaur as he rips off his pants to expose his underwear.
The movie is about a woman who gets drunk in bars so men will take her home. Then she tortures and kills them, I guess. Wonder Woman she is not.
Meh, watch François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black instead. TCM is showing it overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, check local listings for the exact tmie.
I don’t even *own* a TV!
[haughty scoff]
Every deadly woman story is a rip-off of the sirens and/or Circe. The Arabian Nights has a few stories in that vein as well. As does Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.
***
Liaozhai Zhiyi (Liaozhai; Chinese: 聊齋誌異), called in English Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio or Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, is a collection of Classical Chinese stories by Pu Songling, comprising close to five hundred “marvel tales”[1] in the zhiguai and chuanqi styles, which serve to implicitly criticise societal problems then. Dating back to the Qing dynasty, its earliest publication date is given as 1740. Since then, many of the critically lauded stories have been adapted for other media such as film and television.
***
“I don’t even own a television; notice I said television.“
[Darth Vader voice]
Most impressive.
So Aileen Wournos? Didn’t they already make that movie with Charlize Theron?
QUIET, YOU!
I know, right? What a monster 😉
All I know is the nauseatingly praising commercials. Assume it’s got some woke message.
“As one of the few non-lefties there”
Sure. NPR writers are always the only non-lefty in the room.
“When you are dealing with a baseline of 200,000 cases per day and 2,000 deaths per day with the hospitalizations over 120,000, we are really at a very critical point,” Fauci said.
Numbers are fun. You can make them up. You can “predict” what they will be, into the future. You can make them DANCE.
Statistics are like bikinis – what they reveal is suggestive and what they conceal is vital.
Torture the data enough, and it will confess.
Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
***
Modern Latin statisticum (collegium) “(lecture course on) state affairs,” from Italian statista “one skilled in statecraft,” from Latin status “a station, position, place; order, arrangement, condition,” figuratively “public order, community organization”
***
seen in a meme
“Bye, Forrest! I’ll be back when your a shrimp millionaire and I’m a single mom with AIDS.”
Question for Kinnath: the book I’m reading says that before the development of saccharometers, mead makers would drop an unshelled egg into the liquid. If it floated, it was sweet enough. Is that true? How do your test the sweetness?
Thanks
Hello.
Modernly, brewers uses a hydrometer (saccharometer) or a refractometer to measure the specific gravity of the liquid we want to ferment (called wort for beer; called must for wine/mead). In simpler terms, we want to know how much sugar is dissolved in the wort or must.
In medieval times, brewers used fresh eggs to determine the sugar concentration. The more sure that is dissolved in the liquid, the higher the egg will float in the liquid. Brewers gauged the height of the egg in terms of local coinage. So when the exposed top of the egg was equal to the thickness of a penny (or some other coin), they had as much sugar in the wort/must as they wanted.
This technique is only used for knowing when to start fermentation. Whatever sugar is left after fermentation is what you get. There were no measurements made of the final product.
Thanks. This book is truly fascinating – Bee Wilson “Consider the Fork”. Talks about using paper to determine the oven temp – if it charred, too hot to put the pastries in the oven. Also cover development of the use of cups in the US as opposed to weighing stuff elsewhere.
Saved for later at Amazon. Sounds like an interesting book.
And you are welcome.
None of the stores around me have a mailbox in stock that is a drop-in replacement for my many-times-hit-by-the-snowplow one.
I find it amusing that the replacement mailbox is going to me mailed to me.
How closely related does an animal have to be before it’s cannibalism? The blue jays loved the turkey scraps I put in the feeder.
Yeah, that’s starting to cross over into Creepy Valley.
(Mind you, the magpies around here crossed over that valley a long time ago…)
I used to gross out my kids by feeding our chickens any leftover chicken nuggets.
There’s probably not any chicken in chicken nuggets.
They were feeding chicken bits to the falcons at the resort.
Corvids are scavengers. They’ll eat anything.
Fun fact: the Swahili word for leftovers comes from the verb that means to scavenge.
Check out Cliff Clavin over here.
*ducks*
Leftovers are awesome.
My best dishes usually require the leftovers from something previously made.
I am thawing out leftover Cowboy stew as we speak. I am not going to say if it is made with actual cowboys or not.
*Picks at filed pointy teeth*
Long pig #FTW
Two for the Road >> The Story of Us
I’m fixing to play the Sims, which is usually an hours-long endeavor. Thanks for all the social time & fun the last 4 evenings!
talk about problematic….
***
From the beginning Verne had problems with this novel.[10] Originally he intended that Gallia would crash into the earth, killing all on board. This may have been the motivation for naming the hero “Servadac” with the mirror of the French word cadavres (“corpses”), predicting all would die on the “return”. His publisher Hetzel would not accept this however, given the large juvenile readership in his monthly magazine, and Verne was forced to graft a rather unsatisfying ending onto the story, allowing the inhabitants of Gallia to escape the crash in a balloon.
***
***
He was a man of fifty years, who looked sixty. Small, weakly, with eyes bright and false, a busked nose, a yellowish beard and unkempt hair, large feet, hands long and hooked, he offered the well-known type of the German Jew, recognizable among all. This was the usurer with supple back-bone, flat-hearted, a clipper of coins and a skin-flint. Silver should attract such a being as the magnet attracts iron, and if this Shylock was allowed to pay himself from his debtor, he would certainly sell the flesh at retail. Besides, although a Jew originally, he made himself a Mahometan in Mahometan provinces, when his profit demanded it, and he would have been a pagan to gain more.
***
Anti-semitism – not just for Germans and Russians!
Mr Splosives in his band, ca. 1980, plus or minus a couple of years.
He’s on the left, wearing a dark shirt and sporting a porn star mustache.
https://imgur.com/a/gAlopbj
He’s got that 70s hawt.
Yup.
I’ve only known him in his bald days (shaves his dome after male pattern baldness crept in). Still works for me.
Cats That Don’t Like Being Picked Up
Oh look, it’s either one of my cats.
All mine too. Don’t know why I’ve never had a cuddlebug.
Cat curling up on the foot of your recliner doesn’t count.
My cat sits on my lap if she is cold or wants to be brushed.
I guess I’m lucky.
Our cat wanted to sleep with me but only in the winter. I’m sure the heated waterbed had nothing to do with it.
I think it has to do with how much you handle them as kittens. All of mine have been varying levels of cuddly except the last one, who was a glorified barn cat with limited indoor privileges.
I don’t know about that. In my (limited) experience, there’s a pretty radical personality shift at kitty puberty.
It’s also hard to talk about cats in the abstract. Breeds have different personality types. I tend toward short hair tabbies, which are usually pretty chill. I can’t imagine doing half of what my daughter did to our tabbies to a persian and still being in one piece.
Yeah, mine were passed around to various temporary rescue homes before I got them at around one year old. No idea what they went through but they were skittish for years.
Mine are iffy about being picked up but both often curl up in bed with me* (which is cute but annoying because I don’t sleep well and toss/turn) and occasionally get in my lap on the couch. Strangely the male seems to generally like the gf more but he will groom me to wake me up to feed him. The female seems to like me more but she will annoy both of us in the morning to be fed.
*They also get under the covers sometimes. Usually the female and usually during the day. But once I awoke to them both under the covers and between me and the gf.
I had a long hair who would crawl under the covers with me in the wintertime, stretch out on her side, her back dressed into mine.
As for feeding, I have never fed a cat on a schedule. Their bowls are kept full all the time and they eat at their leisure. Never had a fat cat. They’ve all be very self-regulating.
I woke up three times today. 0630, 0830, and 1030. I was still drunk every time I woke up and went back to bed every time except the last time. I am thinking that might be an efficient use of time.
What It’s Like Living in California Now
As loving and accepting as a spineless doormat.
Chortle.
Just looked at the weather. Just a pain in the ass amount of snow forecast. Dammit.
The amount that doesn’t warrant getting out the snowblower, but that still requires shovelling?
Looks out window at lifted 4×4 and grins.
The hell happened to the Stillers? Not that I mind; this makes the playoff picture more fun to watch.
The Chiefs are not impressive today. They should be walking all over the Falcons.
Commentator: It’s almost like they’re bored, like they know they can put it away at any time.
Yeah, obvs. Stop doing that, my team.
Browns are screwing the pooch too.
To the Jets, FFS.
Beware the hungry team with nothing to lose and everything to prove.
The Browns are losing to the Contact Tracers, not the Jets.
1st and goal in the 1 – > 0 points
Any recommendations for refitting a grill thermometer probe for use getting the ambient temp in the oven? The issue I’m having is that the probe clip is designed to fit into narrow grill grates and doesn’t fit the oven grate. This means that I have to lay the probe on the oven grate, which makes me unsure if it’s an accurate measure.
Make sure you check the thermost- *falls flat on face revealing tranq dart in left buttock*
A Trump double from The Bee!
Christian of the year 2020 and now that’s some stimulus!
This bitch’s premise is false.