The Hat and The Hair: Episode 143

by | Jan 22, 2020 | Hat and Hair, SugarFree | 293 comments

 

“I hate Switzerland,” the hat said, staring out the hotel window at people in ski outfits.

“You hate everywhere,” the hair told him.

“I love America.”

“And hate most Americans. Why did you even want to be the President’s hat?” the hair asked.

“I didn’t. I wanted to be President, but America just isn’t ready to elect a sentient hat to the highest office in the land,” the hat said mournfully.

“Poor you,” the hair said, pouring over the room service menu.

“There’ll be a black President before a hat gets elected,” the hat said. He pressed his bill to the glass of the window and sighed.

“There already was a… oh fuck it, never mind,” the hair said. “What are you going to do while we are at the conference?”

“Beat off onto the drapes, watch the impeachment hearings, whatever,” the hat said listlessly.

“Donald!” the hair called into the bathroom, “Hurry up in there! It’s almost time to go.”

“Still in the shower?” the hat asked.

“He loves hotel bathrooms,” the hair said, shrugging his tiny sideburns.

“DONALD!” the hair yelled into the bathroom. “You are running out of time!”

“I told you to not let him bring any bath toys,” the hat said.

“I didn’t let him do anything,” the hair said. “He’s a grown man that travels with bath toys and there’s nothing you or I can do about that.”

When they heard the shower turned off, the hair said, “FINALLY!” and the hat snorted out a laugh.

“Fantastic!” Donald yelled, walking in the room nude, wet, and dripping. “Just fantastic! I love that shower! I should buy this hotel!” He ran to the window where the hat was looking out.

“And the view!” he said, dripping water on the hat from the bulbous end of his penis.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” the hat screamed.

“Donald, put on some clothes!” the hair shouted.

“There’s dick water on me!” the hat wailed.

“Donald! People can see you in the window!” the hair yelled.

“I don’t care!” Donald said. He smashed his belly into the window and rubbed it side to side.

“Dick water!” the hat said again as it inched away.

“No impeachment! No mean reporters!” Donald said. “I love Swisserland!”

“Donald,” the hair said calmly. “If you don’t get dressed, we won’t have time to go to McDonald’s before the conference starts.”

“I want McDonalds!” Donald said, turning to press his ass cheeks against the window.

“Then get dressed,” the hair told him.

Donald shuffled across the room, shedding more water, and began to struggle into his underwear.

“I want two McRattlers!” Donald said.

“McRaclettes,” the hair corrected absently.

The hat pulled himself under the bed and moaned, “Dick water,” one last time.

About The Author

SugarFree

SugarFree

Your Resident Narcissistic Misogynist Rape-Culture Apologist

293 Comments

  1. JD is Unemployed

    “There’s dick water on me!” the hat wailed.

    Ugh. I hate when that happens.

    • AlexinCT

      My girlfriend love them pearl necklaces…

  2. Swiss Servator

    I…I want to go to McDonald’s and get 1000 of them! RIGHT NOW!

    • Drake

      Are McRaclettes real? I want one!

      • Bobarian LMD

        I didn’t see no Le Royale mitt Käse.

        I’m disappointed.

      • Swiss Servator

        Hey man, you want a Royale with cheese, go to Paris!

    • Rhywun

      #metoo

      The McBretzel looks good too.

      Also, I can’t believe these are real.

      • Swiss Servator

        The only false claim…”Crafted with succulent Swiss beef”.

        Swiss beef is…generally not very good.

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, they should feed those cows more.

      • invisible finger

        I thought White Castle was swiss beef.

      • AlexinCT

        White Castle is ass.

      • UnCivilServant

        Wait, you mean HM is really just talking about going to White Castle?

      • Nephilium

        It checks out.

      • AlmightyJB

        Why can’t we have those? What is this Russia?

      • invisible finger

        If it was Russia we’d at least get “Any size Vodka for $1”

      • Fatty Bolger

        Can I get a McBrexit in the UK?

    • WTF

      Those are real?! Why can’t we have that?

  3. JD is Unemployed

    TGA:

    https://reason.com/2020/01/21/covington-catholic-media-nick-sandmann-lincoln-memorial/

    “A Year Ago, the Media Mangled the Covington Catholic Story. What Happened Next Was Even Worse.”

    Robby has decided that he doesn’t have a future at any corporate press outlet anyways, so he’s gone YOLO

    Yeah I read that t’other day. It’s pretty goram fierce for Rico. I’m proud of the little scamp. I thought I’d reply in here since it deserves another linking.

    *pats Robbé Soavé on his dainty little coiffured head*

    • invisible finger

      If I were running a news operation, I’d be enforcing a policy that the words “Twitter”, “Facebook” and “Instagram” are providing advertisement of a competitor and therefore will not be used in any articles or stories without said companies paying the going advertising rate. We should be well past the “we need to be on social media” phase and understand that these platforms take more customers away from us that they provide to us and detract from our reputation rather than enhance it. Think about what would happen ad-dollars-wise if Fox or CBS bought Twitter.

    • Caput Lupinum

      He got a shout out from Tim Pool for being correct about Covington.

      I’m mainly sharing that not because Rico deserves another attaboy, but because I lost my shit the first time I heard Tim try to pronounce his name. I’m on my phone so I’m not going though the hassle of verifying the timecode in the link, so if it doesn’t go to the specific part of the video in question skip to 4:35 or so to hear Tim trip over Rico’s name.

      • Mojeaux

        I thought it was SO-avv.

      • UnCivilServant

        I have no idea how it’s pronounced. I’m not even sure how it’s spelled.

      • Rhywun

        Yeah, I’ve never heard him say it himself. I just go with “SWAH-vay”.

      • WTF

        I prefer “Froot Sooshi”.

      • SugarFree

        He has to hate me for that.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        He’s shaking with fury in his fair trade alpaca sweater and fauxshoe hare lined suede boots.

      • Hyperion

        NOT AS MUCH AS STEVE SMITH HATE YOU!

      • SugarFree

        I have a first-hand report from an LA Reason meet-up that Steve Smith was asking everyone without their handle on their name tag if they were SugarFree.

    • Gadfly

      Robby has decided that he doesn’t have a future at any corporate press outlet anyways, so he’s gone YOLO

      I don’t know about that, I saw him being interviewed on Fox News when I was at my parents over the Christmas holiday, so I’d say he hasn’t burnt all his bridges to a corporate gig. He does have the hair to be a corporate newsman, after all.

  4. tarran

    I almost feel sorry for the hat.

    • JD is Unemployed

      Even after it’s Oval Office underdesk activities in episode 142? That ain’t gum that’s forming crusty stalactites under there.

      • tarran

        Well, there went my appetite… :mrgreen:

  5. Swiss Servator

    “No impeachment! No mean reporters!” Donald said. “I love Swisserland!”

    And McRaclettes!!!!

  6. Jarflax

    I can only imagine what McDonalds’ raclette tastes like.

    • Swiss Servator

      PARADISE…with rösti and bacon!

      • Swiss Servator

        Humph! As if Whammyburger could make it in the Confoederatio Helvetica!

      • wdalasio

        with rösti

        Hash brown fries? Yeah, sign me up for those.

    • Not Adahn

      I was immensely disappointed with McPoutine.

      Especially considering the lines out the doors of Montreal’s Dairy Queens after the bars close.

      • invisible finger

        Poo is in the name.

  7. leon

    So how much of a donation did the Swiss Tourism Board send our way for this one?

    • UnCivilServant

      I think they failed to pay up.

    • Swiss Servator

      Not sure seeing the Donald waving his wang at skiers promotes much tourism…well, at least not the kind the Swiss want

      • leon

        So you are saying this is because the Swiss Tourism Board refused to send us a donation….

      • Bobarian LMD

        They failed to bend to extortion and thus this was published.

  8. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Honestly, the McRaclette doesn’t looks too bad.

    • UnCivilServant

      Food glamor shots don’t contain the actual product, and often contain things that should not be eaten.

      Don’t trust them. Find someone in Switzerland who’ll take a picture of a real one in the wild.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I asked Donald Trump, but all I got in return was a picture of a mushroom and a wet hat

    • Nephilium

      Pictures of food almost always look good (mainly because of doctoring, primping, and creative substitutes for items), and it’s usually not edible.

      • Mojeaux

        Marginally related, I said this on FB 5 years ago:

        I have concerns about a dietitian who is an APRN who has never run into the term “mouth hunger” before. Makes me wonder what else she doesn’t understand about eating.

      • UnCivilServant

        I’ve never run into that term – what’s it mean?

      • Sean

        Sounds like a porn search phrase.

      • Mojeaux

        It means you’re not hungry. Your stomach isn’t grumbling. Your emotions don’t need to be assuaged. You just want to have your mouth full of yummy things.

      • Mojeaux

        (Yes, I said that on purpose. No, we don’t do phrasing anymore.)

      • UnCivilServant

        It’s still a form of phrasing. Just one that allows for… creative interpretation.

      • Naptown Bill

        I’d never heard of that before, that’s interesting. Or I guess more to the point I’m familiar with the concept but I didn’t know there was an actual term for it or that it was something that’s specifically accounted for.

      • Mojeaux

        It’s not something I would expect non-fatties to know.

        A dietitian should absolutely know.

        These are also the dietitians that put diabetics on high-carb, low-fat diets.

      • UnCivilServant

        dietitians that put diabetics on high-carb, low-fat diets.

        What? Do they work for the NHS and want to kill the patients?

      • Bobarian LMD

        AKA the munchies.

      • Mojeaux

        AKA the munchies.

        Well…yeah. Now that you put it that way.

      • Tundra

        Dietitian?

        Usually a fat person who has been specially trained to parrot governmental nutrition advice.

      • Mojeaux

        No, a thin person who has never been fat trained to parrot governmental nutrition advice.

      • Nephilium

        Heh… reminds me of our 8th grade health teacher. Without a doubt, the most overweight teacher I ever had. And she was the one supposed to teach us kids about being healthy.

      • Ted S.

        My health teacher moonlighted as a mall cop. 😐

      • l0b0t

        I’ve worked commercials for McDonalds, Olive Garden,Popeyes, Dunkin, and several others. Under US law, the food being advertised has to be the actual product. A week of Olive Garden (and the metric shit ton of food they sent everyone home with) has made me unable to eat Olive Garden ever again. Every item in OG, everything, is shipped bulk frozen; gallon tubs of sauces, cases of breadsticks, etc.. McDonalds ice cream spots required the employment of 20 soft serve machines with the foodies and PAs making hundreds upon hundreds of sundaes that melt in seconds under the giant lights. Sizzling burgers on the griddle involve room temp patties coated in glycerin, with dry ice being sprinkled to simulate the sizzle and and art dept. fellow under the prop grill with the clothes steamer from the wardrobe department.

  9. Tundra

    “And hate most Americans…”

    I can empathize with the Hat.

    • Swiss Servator

      THEN WHYCOME U DON’T GO TO CANADIA?

      • Jarflax

        America feeding the world with gunfire! As it ought to be!

      • Lackadaisical

        It’s just missing a girl in a bikini and a jet doing a flyover.

      • Hyperion

        And the the phrase ‘Fuck Yeah!’.

      • AlmightyJB

        The only people worse than Americans is everyone else.

      • Gadfly

        This almost beats out dancing banana Eli Manning as my favorite GIF. Almost.

      • Gadfly

        Yep, still the best.

        Thanks for making this thread even better.

  10. The Late P Brooks

    “He’s a grown man that travels with bath toys and there’s nothing you or I can do about that.”

    One small step on the road to enlightenment.

    • Jarflax

      When you change the can to should you have arrived.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    You just want to have your mouth full of yummy things.

    More than a mouthful is wasted, Q’s obsessions notwithstanding.

    • Rhywun

      He seems nice.

    • tarran

      That’s eerily appropriate to something I am coping with right now.

      I am so furious with my daughter that I’m having trouble focusing on work. There’s a part of me that wants to give into the siren call of wrath.

      • Tundra

        Teenager, huh?

      • RAHeinlein

        Speaking of children – how’s your son’s college career progressing? I am happy to report that I no longer burst into tears and feel as though someone punched me in the stomach when our son returns to school after vacation – hope the same for your spouse.

      • Tundra

        He’s doing well, thanks for asking. My wife and I sure look forward to having him home, though. Right now, he’s in a study abroad program and absolutely loving it.

        I’m glad it’s getting easier for you. It’s weird, isn’t it? Every time you see them they are a slightly different person.

        How is your boy doing? What’s he studying?

      • RAHeinlein

        Actuarial Science – just passed his first professional exam and studying for a second. He’s a junior now, and we keep thinking “wow, this could be his last Summer at home.”

        Where’s your son studying? Hopefully, an excuse for a nice vacation!

      • Sensei

        Congratulations. My son is a second semester freshman.

        Is he on the P&C, L&H or pension side?

      • Tundra

        Smart boy. He’ll be making bank in no time. Woohoo!

        Mine’s in Scotland. We’re going to meet him in Prague over spring break.

      • wdalasio

        Actuarial Science

        Smart kid. That’s one of those lines of work that doesn’t have a lot of glamour but pays pretty darned well and consistently has work available. He made a wise choice and you obviously did a good job of raising him to have a clue.

        Best of luck to him.

      • RAHeinlein

        Sensei – internship in L&H, but his interest is on the pension side.

        Tundra – I have Prague-envy!

        Wdalasio – thanks!

      • Sensei

        That’s where the current demand is!

      • tarran

        Fifteen years old.

        She basically accused me of using her as a pawn in a war with her mother. She flat out lied about things she said I was doing.

        What sets me off is that my ex is a garbage human being who
        a) has physically and emotionally abused both children
        b) falsely accused people of crimes committed against her
        c) steals from the kids
        d) switches from neglect to over-controlling
        e) invariably tries to sabotage any extra-curricular activity our kids engage in, generally successfully.

        All I’m trying to do is to raise a daughter to have the skills and attitude to make her own way in the world. I don’t do any of those things. I’ve at great cost done the right thing by those kids.

        And to have my daughter basically act like her mother fills me with rage. I spent so many years trying to extricate myself from living with my ex and her gaslighting, abuse, theft and lies. And now it feels like I got another little poisonous bearer-of-false witness in my home.

        It’s so tempting to consign her to the depths of hell; one phone call, and she’d be living with her mother full time instead of seeing her every other weekend. And her life would be thoroughly ruined – the last thing my ex would want is for her meal-ticket to ever move out. It would be like that Pink Floyd song.

      • Tundra

        Geez, sorry tarran. Raising kids under the best of circumstances is a motherfucker. Adding in the special treat of a hostile ex makes it exponentially worse.

        You sound like a good dad who doesn’t deserve the shit raining down on you. I know you won’t let the little shit ruin her life.

        Hang in there, brother.

      • tarran

        What makes me feel hopeless is that my daughter has a tendency to take the easy way out. And her mother really fertilizes that tendency in a bid to curry support. So mom will promise to let her do things that she wants to do, where I will be saying “no”.

        My daughter has recently revealed that she is bisexual and now has a girlfriend. Said girlfriend is also bi and doesn’t want to come out to her parents because dad will kill her if he knew.

        According to my daughter, my ex offered my daughter the following proposition. Why don’t we take your girlfriend to florida for a week this February? Now those vacations are always a shit-show. My ex in laws have some kind of timeshare at a resort, and the whole clan descends at the timeshare together. So, while she’s visiting family, my ex totally ignores our daughter. Not necessarily a bad thing. The rest of the family are extremely socially conservative Micronesian Catholics with a family tradition of physical, emotional and occasionally sexual abuse. My daughter invariably returns from those trips as a hellion.

        So a budding relationship with effectively unchaperoned teenagers is about the unwisest thing I can think of to plant there. It’s like throwing a squirrel in a room with ten starving dobermans and no furniture.

        So I said “no”. Girlfriend can spend time with daughter in chaperoned environment with no sleep-overs.

        And my daughter spent the next 24 hours trying to provoke a fight with me.

        The pathetic part of all this? My ex loves to make these offers. And she rarely delivers. In all likelihood it was entirely purposed to improve my daughter’s mood just for the weekend.

        And I expect that my daughter’s whole reason for acting this way is to express the pain she feels at having households that act so differently. Rather than expressing her pain through words, my daughter generally expresses it by wounding people. Lately my wife and I had through patience and encouragement gotten her to talk rather than lash out. And it feels like we’re back where we were months ago.

      • Not Adahn

        Is your daughter’s gf also bi? And into older men?

      • Sensei

        Ugh… Absolutely sorry to read that.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Crappy situation overall, but this particular incident sounds pretty common. Tell a teen girl no, and she’ll start pushing your buttons. In your case, probably the ones she learned from her Mom.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That sucks. I wish you the best of luck and pray that your daughter gets thru her chemical imbalances soon.

      • Mojeaux

        Oh, I am so sorry.

        I have no advice.

      • wdalasio

        Crap! That sucks. My sympathies.

      • Gadfly

        That sucks.

        It’s so tempting to consign her to the depths of hell; one phone call, and she’d be living with her mother full time instead of seeing her every other weekend.

        Can you split the difference and send her for a week or two?

      • Mojeaux

        Can you split the difference and send her for a week or two?

        This has a 50/50 risk of backfiring very badly.

        OTOH, what is happening is not working.

        Therapy?

      • Mojeaux

        I am right there with you, except I am also enraged with my son.

        Two enraging children, two totally different reasons. They consumer EVERY BIT of emotional energy I’ve got and then they take some more.

    • Caput Lupinum

      Revenge allows you to turn the principle of my action into a rule for your conduct toward me: you make my bad your good. This is the opposite of trying to undo or reverse my action. You hold me accountable by holding onto my theft, refusing to forget it, turning its one-off opposition between our interests into a rule to which I am now subject. You do not let me “live it down,” instead you force my own thinking down my throat. Seeing me as accountable for what I have done means treating my action as a principle governing our interactions.

      That sounds familiar; using anger as a chance for reflection and teaching…

      “When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?” — Marcus Aurelius

      Oh yeah, that’s the stance if the Stoics. Maybe he should actually read them and engage with their actual stances rather than setting them up as one side of their strawman debate.

    • Rebel Scum

      Most importantly, it is a path to the Dark Side.

    • kinnath

      My father says he suffers from Irish Alzheimer’s — you forget everything except your grudges.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Anger is fine. Vengeance leads to a cycle of violence that can be difficult to stop.

    • AlmightyJB

      Nothing shooting out a couple kneecaps won’t fix.

      • AlmightyJB

        Lol. Nice:)

  12. UnCivilServant

    “That was a bad idea” – Kord FizHelen upon severing a dragon’s spinal cord mid-flight.

    • UnCivilServant

      For more context my train of thought continued from the Harpy story. I kept thinking that the narrator would bring along his grapnel-firing crossbow from a story I haven’t written to a fight with flying opponants. In the unwritten story, he uses the same piece of kit to get on the back of a dragon in-flight and makes the mistake above (ie, disabling its ability to fly while they’re still well above the ground).

      I’m trying to figure out where he got the damn thing in the first place though.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    That sammich pic is making me hongrey.

    • Tundra

      Same. So I made an omelette with tenderloin and scotch bonnet peppers.

      Quite good.

      • Bobarian LMD

        scotch bonnet peppers

        You’ll know when you’re done with it.

  14. Rebel Scum

    “He’s a grown man that travels with bath toys and there’s nothing you or I can do about that.”

    Damn straight.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    WaPo headline:

    Republican state lawmakers push bills to restrict medical treatments for transgender youth

    Put limits on drastic irreversible surgery? Restrict away.

    Democracy dies in disingenuousness.

    • Hyperion

      As long as the individual is paying, they can whack off their peepee all they want. And when they regret it, they can also pay to reattach it.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        And when the individual is 12 and their parents are dragging them down this road?

      • Hyperion

        We prosecute the parents for child abuse. Then we whack off their peepee and they can pay to reattach it.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Deal, but only if we can requisition SP’s rusty can lid collection for the task.

      • wdalasio

        Then we rule “temporary insanity” when they use their parents’ carcass as a skinsuit when they turn 17.

    • Mojeaux

      I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately.

      I think most of us agree that gender dysphoria is either itself a mental illness or masking a deeper mental illness. Now, this might seem self-evident to you all, but it just occurred to me and it was a revelation.

      People are not happy with who they are and so they want to transform into someone else thinking that it will solve all their problems. I did it when I was a teenager (I thought being magically transformed into a thin person would solve all my problems) and this is common amongst teenagers, no?

      Getting to a place where you can accept your Self for what it is instead of always wishing to be someone else is a life-long process for many people. How do you teach a teenager that “wherever you go, there you are”? That you can’t run away from who you are? If you are ugly, you are going to be an ugly opposite gender.

      This is what needs to be treated, but these people transitioning kids don’t get that far. Instead of saying, “Why don’t you like yourself? Hey, let’s try to fix that” they say, “I AM [opposite gender] and making my body match that will make me like myself.”

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        In my mind, it’s grouped with eating disorders as “illnesses of overabundance”. It’s the shit your mind does to create adversity when you have none in the real world.

      • Mojeaux

        I’ve compared it to eating disorders and wanting to amputate a leg.

        I can see that affluenza may be a factor. Too much time on their hands.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There’s a multitude of factors at play, not the least of which is the elevation of victimhood to high moral standing.

        Because teens are almost always in a social jockeying state, they’re utilizing the new rules of the game, whether they realize it or not, usually not.

      • Rhywun

        I think there’s more than a little “refusal to accept being gay” in there, and a mad rush to conform to what they see/are being convinced is society’s expectation of what a proper opposite-sex person is supposed to look and act like. Have you ever seen a man transition into a fat tomboy?

      • Mojeaux

        I think there’s more than a little “refusal to accept being gay” in there

        That.

        Have you ever seen a man transition into a fat tomboy?

        It appears that the majority of people who are DEtransitioning are females who thought they were males and transitioned. I don’t know what happened to the good ol’ fashioned tomboy. It’s been an accepted thing since God was a baby.

      • Mojeaux

        To add, this is partially where I’m coming from lately:

        My son’s BFF is a FtM (8th grade, mind you) who has now attempted suicide twice in the last month. My son’s shaken up really really hard. Her/his parents were not accepting her/his preferred pronouns and new name, hence, suicide attempts. So the parents have apparently gone along with it, as the kid’s name is now male and the kid is in boys’ PE (when the kid comes back from being homeschooled for a month or whatever).

        I don’t get this. Just be a tomboy.

        Do I like that my daughter dresses dowdily? It’s a misdemeanor against fashion, but she would rather be comfortable and she’s trying to deflect male attention. I get that.

        Now, for boys who want to be girls, I just don’t know.

      • Rhywun

        Oh that sucks. This is that kind of trauma that encouraging kids to do this leads to.

      • RAHeinlein

        No, but Chastity Bono did the opposite.

      • Festus

        “Have you ever watched a man transition into a fat tomboy?” No, but I have seen a fat tomboy transition into a “man” (the result was less than convincing). Jodi always had the hottest friends, something that our adolescent pea-brains could not gronk.

      • Shirley Knott

        This, more than most cases of “mental illness,” seems to call for some leavening with the insights of R.D. Laing. It’s been many years since I read his stuff, but he makes a good case for considering many ‘behavioral disorders’ and “mental illnesses” as contextual or situational. They arise out of interpersonal dynamics, generally within the family.
        I’ve known a couple of trans people and have immense respect for another I know only through her work. They’re no crazier than any of my colleagues, friends, or acquaintances over the years.
        One of the factors that brings Laing’s work to my mind is the deep involvement, too often proactive and close to if not deep into Munchausen’s By Proxy, of the immediate family. He provides a way of seeing that the issue is not properly addressed by saying “this one has a mental illness and everybody around him does not.”
        It also fits with my generally Szasz-Ian approach. It’s not an illness, it’s a disorder. Illness maps one-to-one with persons, disorders rather less so. The disorder is the ongoing process(es) amongst a group of persons.

      • Jarflax

        I think there are strong connections, causal connections, between the rise of these conditions and parental, particularly but not exclusively maternal, over control and regimentation of kid’s lives. Children were always under adult’s control, but there used to be extensive periods of time where the kid were off with other kids and away from all adults, and there used to be extensive areas of kid’s lives that parents largely left alone, at least until some significant issue arose. I think this parental over-engagement is really destroying children and it really needs to stop.

      • invisible finger

        Some of it absolutely is people unhappy with themselves, especially adolescents, but the motivations aren’t the same Some are doing it for the attention, some for the antagonism, and a whole lot for the I-wanna-be-in-a-protected-class-so-that-I-can’t-be-criticized. I would say there are some I suspected were going to extremes to repress child abuse to the point where dad-diddles-me-so-i-want-to-be-a-boy-to-make-him-stop.

        But some of it is like this: Every kid has gone through that awkward the-opposite-sex-is-creepy stage (7 or 8 years old typically). Over time one overcomes most of the awkwardness and discovers what they are. But present day society can’t accept awkwardness anymore – 8-year old boy says “girls are creepy” and narcissist helicopter mom says “My gay son”. 8 year olds, dude. Good grief, he doesn’t know what he is yet, he’s still learning what he is and how to relate to people. The parents and school administrators start feeding these asinine thoughts into the kid and who knows if the kid goes along to get along or lashes out or what. But the adults who want to overreact will find nine ways to Sunday to justify their action.

        In any event, normalizing such desperation (either on the adolescent’s or the parent’s) does more harm than good. But society prefers to pretend it’s not a problem than admit they’re failing these kids – especially when a few bad actors make bank and grab power by perpetuating the failure.

  16. Rebel Scum

    Shifty Schiff is SOOPER concerned about fairness, the rule of law, and the constitution.

    • Rebel Scum

      “rather than a tool to overturn an election…”

      Sure…

      • Hyperion

        It’s turning out more like another Florida man plots bank robbery and fails in spectacular fashion episode.

    • Rebel Scum

      “obstructing a separate but equal branch of government”

      So the legislature is obstructing the executive by not funding border security that has been the law since the 90s?

      • Hyperion

        It’s OK when we do it, you racist!

    • Rebel Scum

      Senator Rand Paul✔
      @RandPaul

      The more we hear from Adam Schiff, the more the GOP is getting unified against this partisan charade!

    • gbob

      This impeachment is just tedious. Schiffy is insufferable.

      It’s interesting watching this in a cafe. I’m in the heart of blue country, and theres not a single eye on the television. Even the homeless guy, who spends his day writing down lines of dialog he hears on television, has stopped watching the television.

      Anecdotal, I’m sure, but it sure feels different than the impeachment hearings of the nineties.

  17. The Late P Brooks

    Huh- Talking point ho, off the port bow, Captain!

    State lawmakers can’t stop fighting about the rights of their transgender citizens: Their access to bathrooms. The sports they can play in school. Whether businesses can turn them away because of their gender identity.
    But they’ve never weighed restrictions to transgender healthcare that are this extreme.
    Since the start of the 2020 legislative session, at least six states have proposed to restrict transgender minors’ access to gender reassignment treatments, including surgery and hormone therapy. Some bills would make it illegal for physicians to administer the treatments. Others would classify the act as child abuse.
    The number of states contemplating whether to restrict transgender youths’ access to healthcare is “unusual,” said Ryan Thoreson, a Yale Law School lecturer and an LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

    No states have enacted a blanket ban on gender reassignment treatment for transgender minors. But the sheer volume of proposals this legislative session is concerning, he said.

    OMG I’m so stressed now. Those poor children and their shattered dreams.

    • AlmightyJB

      What I really look forward to is some of these kids sueing the doctors who fucked them up for life.

      • wdalasio

        Yeah, but what do we do about the kids who decide to use the parents who encouraged this nonsense as skinsuits?

      • AlmightyJB

        Give them filet knives

      • Unreconstructed

        Give them filet flaying knives

        FTFY

    • Plisade

      “treatments”?! “healthcare”?! OFFS.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Just rephrase the legislation so as to restrict their medical access to surgical mutilation.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Access to healthcare might be the latest, and perhaps most extreme, attempt to curb transgender rights among state legislatures.

    In 2015 and 2016, lawmakers fixated on trans students’ access to bathrooms. More recently, they panicked about trans student athletes competing in sports as their identified gender.

    “These attacks on transgender youths tend to seize on whatever can be sensationalized to the general public,” Thoreson said. “This year, I think, the issue they’ve chosen to seize upon is basic healthcare for trans kids.”

    I’m pretty sure nobody has suggested that doctors should be punished for treating strep throat, or setting broken legs for “transgender” patients.

    And for as much bleating as they do about Trump’s inveterate cheatery, they don’t seem to give much of a damn about the rules governing sports.

      • AlexinCT

        I really don’t give a flying fuck what you do to your genitals as long as I don’t get forced by government to pay for it. That’s my beef with this shit.

    • AlmightyJB

      They create the rules. Everyone else has to obey or they’re Nazis.

      • Hyperion

        And racists, Nazis and racists. You left out half the playbook.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Of all the previously out but now in groups, the tranny lobby has done the most to make me a bitter cynic that makes me just want to respond with NO AND FUCK YOU

    • Hyperion

      Not to be redundant, but they can have all the transgender rights they want, as long as they’re paying.

      • AlexinCT

        Dang, you beat me to it. My beef is with the belief others should foot the bill for this shit. Be it the tax payers – people that join the military and then demand the military pay for their shit come to mind here – or the people that buy insurance – through government mandated insurance coverage for this elective shit – we are being forced to pay for elective shit, and being told that we are evil for not wanting to piss away this money.

      • invisible finger

        Yep. They’re not looking for rights, they’re looking for entitlements.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Mutilating your genitals is basic Healthcare, it is known.

    Oh great. Circumcision flamewar, incoming!

    • Hyperion

      “Mutilating your genitals is basic Healthcare, it is known.”

      Except for when it isn’t.

    • Cy

      STOP OPPRESSING ME!

    • Pope Jimbo

      No need to get snippy.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Twoskin, foreskin, sixskin, eight,
        I use my foreskin when I masturbate

        Foreskin, sixskin, eightskin, ten,
        when I clip my foreskin it grows back again

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Not to be redundant, but they can have all the transgender rights they want, as long as they’re paying.

    Minors?

    • Hyperion

      Trashy and I were discussing a possible solution for that upthread…

  21. The Late P Brooks

    If your son wants to wear a dress to school and take home ec, I have no problem with it. If he wants to go to the prom as another boy’s date, okay. If your daughter wants to wear nothing but Levis and learn to shoe horses or beat metal into tools, good for her. I just think it’s a good idea to not do something prematurely which you may later come to bitterly regret because it cannot be undone.

    • AlmightyJB

      But no one ever changes their mind about what they want to be when they grow up.

      https://youtu.be/tPBLyb8H_iE

      • Hyperion

        At 20 you can’t decide to drink beer or use tobacco, but you can decide to get blown up in a war at 18 and to cut your own dick off at 8.

        We’re living in some really fucked up times.

      • AlmightyJB

        Word.

  22. Hyperion

    Ya’ll best get one last look at Tulsi’s tits before she’s found face down in an alley way for an apparent suicide.

    Tulsi suing Hillary

    • Cy

      This may be the smartest strategy she’s had for her candidacy. We all hate Hillary, even her own damn team.

    • kinnath

      This could be enough to get me to register dem and attend a caucus.

      Nevermind

    • Hyperion

      Idindunuthin…

  23. Sensei

    About time!

    U.S. airlines including Southwest Airlines Co, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines have moved to limit emotional support animals in cabins to large dogs and cats after a growing number of passengers were bringing a wide variety of exotic pets that could pose a safety risk. Airlines in recent years reported a big jump in travelers bringing animals aboard.

    Delta noted in 2018 that some passengers “attempted to fly with comfort turkeys, gliding possums known as sugar gliders, snakes” and spiders, while American Airlines in 2018 said it would not allow a wide variety of creatures on flights as support animals including goats, ferrets, hedgehogs, amphibians and reptiles.

    The Trump administration’s proposal would define a service animal “as a dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability.

    US will redefine ‘service animals’ flying with their owners on flights

    • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

      Waste of time. So stupid. Let the airlines decide. Why in God’s name does the government need to intervene.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW

      • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

        “Conservatism conserved”

      • Hyperion

        “Why in God’s name does the government need to intervene.”

        It’s what they do. Because why else, at this point, would they exist?

      • Sensei

        Because right now they can’t decline them – for the same reason!

      • Gadfly

        Why in God’s name does the government need to intervene.

        Because this whole thing is due to the government mandating the accommodation of service animals, and we know that the government can’t fully retreat on any issue it’s stuck it’s nose into.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      “emotional support animals”… Giving true support animals a bad name since 2005.

      Or whenever Paris Hilton first started toting her little dog around in her purse.

    • leon

      Southwest Airlines Co, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines

      The Government Created and supported cartel is colluding!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The airlines will welcome the regulation because it provides them with an out.

      “We would love to allow your emotional support weasel colony on board but the government doesn’t allow us to.”

      • Bobarian LMD

        “You’ll have to dump them in this trash can.”

      • grrizzly

        That’s exactly what it is. Fake emotional support animals are an actual problem. The airlines prefer to point to the government as the source of any inconvenience they have to impose on passengers.

      • invisible finger

        Eh, the government (activist judge) was the one ruling against the airlines when the passengers sued for damages. If the government is going to pretend there is language in the contract that isn’t there, the airlines would be idiots to not get the government to be more specific.

      • invisible finger

        Then the airline is lying,. The government is setting the minimum standard. The airline is allowed to let the emotional support weasel on board if they want.

  24. "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQYvqVYGjU

    WATCH: Katherine Magu-Ward is ripping off Tulsi Gabbard with the grey hair streaks in her hair. How are you suppose to know she’s a libertarian without purple hair? WTF

    • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

      KMW: I’m the editor of a libertarian periodical

      Dude: Bullshit, there are no libertarian women

      KMW: Ummm…have you noticed my purple hair?

      Dude: *rubs eyes* Holy shit- it’s true. What’s the name of the periodical?

      KMW: Reason

      Dude: Oh, so I was right, despite the hair

    • Hyperion

      “How are you suppose to know she’s a libertarian without purple hair? WTF”

      When you see purple hair, you can only ask ‘Libertarian or Starbuck’s employee?’.

      • SugarFree

        You forgot the third option: Librarian. It’s like a unicorn took shit a rainbow on most of these girl’s heads.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Are you saying that my google search for “hot librarian” is lying to me?

      • kinnath

        If they look like Rebecca Romijn, they can die their hair any color they like.

        Nevermind, she was a guardian.

    • wdalasio

      Except Gabbard does just the streak. Mangu-Ward looks like she’s sporting a blond on purple mullet. It makes her look old.

    • Mojeaux

      I tried a new hair color.

      I hated it. It wasn’t me.

      But it was July, my hair is extremely thick and long, I was doing a lot of DIY outdoors, and my hair was damaged beyond repair.

      So I shaved my head.

      • UnCivilServant

        I sometimes think about trying different hair colors… but my hair is less than a quarter inch long right now, and it gets annoying when it’s longer. I’d end up dying my scalp…

      • Bobarian LMD

        Shave and a tattoo?

        “Don’t Touch my Gloves!”

  25. Rebel Scum

    Nuke it from orbit.

    The Chinese government has quarantined the city of Wuhan and plans to shut down the airport and public transportation within hours amid an outbreak of the coronavirus, according to reports on the country’s social networks. The virus has been linked to at least 17 deaths and has sickened over 400 others.

    Other countries including the U.K. have advised against “all but essential travel” to Wuhan, which is where the virus was first detected.

    • Urthona

      coronavirus is bad, but the one you need to really watch out for is tecatevirus.

      • Tundra

        ^^No bueno^^

      • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

        The only thing in China deadly than coronavirus are the death camps.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Do you get that from Mexican beer?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Boy, I’m slow on the uptake sometimes

      • Rebel Scum

        Dosequivirus is the worst.

      • leon

        It strikes at the most interesting men in the world…

      • Fatty Bolger

        Coronavirus is best with lyme disease.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Best but still horrible.

      • Urthona

        Winner

      • Jarflax

        It’s the women you need to fear not the viruses. The real danger is XX, Dos Equis spells trouble!

    • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

      “Wu-han. Cry more, lib”

  26. Gadfly

    Was this entire episode inspired by the McRaclette? This is the first SF story I’ve read that not only did not reduce my appetite, but increased it. I don’t know how I feel about this.

    • Not Adahn

      Someone forward this comment section (comments only, please) to McDonalds USA corporate. Maybe they haven’t realized the goldmine they’ve got here.

      • UnCivilServant

        When your menu exceeds a certain size, you start to run into trouble. Especially with high staff turnover, like you see in fast food.

      • Not Adahn

        Honestly, if they’d offer those hashbrown cakes as an addition to their regular burgers, I’d order it.

      • Nephilium

        One of the local breweries has a burger with a hash brown on it. I didn’t think it added that much to the burger.

    • mikey

      As we saw with the last episode, SF has the cadence a of hellfire and brimstone preacher. Start off quiet, slowly build, then the crescendo. Lather, Rinse and Repeat.
      This is just a rest after last week. What’s coming will likely be worse than what we’ve seen before – or better, YMMV.

    • SugarFree

      I knew I was going to do something about Davos so I cruised the Swiss McDonald’s site. The McRacelette was just a happy discovery.

  27. JD is Unemployed

    There’s a fresh roadkill deer just laying by the zode of the road a couple of houses down. What sort of learning curve is involved in butchering a deer? I’m a cosmotarian fruit sushi man so I never learned.

    • Caput Lupinum

      It takes some skill to do well, but give it go. What’s the worst that can happen, the deer is already dead.

      Just don’t eat any of it.

      • Gadfly

        What’s the worst that can happen

        Ummm…..

        Just don’t eat any of it.

        Oh, OK, I see you’ve already got it covered.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Waitaminute! He never said anything about eating it.

      • leon

        Woah. And let all that meat go to waste?

      • Caput Lupinum

        There are plenty of creative uses for a mutilated carcass besides food.

    • Cy

      youtube. How long has it been there? What’s your ambient temperature been since it’s been there?

    • Bobarian LMD

      Gotta do the field stripping right away. Get the organs out cleanly. Basically cut out the butthole and carefully trim out the connective tissues that hold the organs in.

      After that you can hang it for a couple days and it gets better.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      Wait, you have a knife?

      *reports JD to local constable*

      • Pope Jimbo

        Not that uncommon. My dad the probation officer knew of two similar cases to that in the 8 county area he covered. He didn’t have them on his caseload, but he and the other PO’s laughed.

        I knew the PO who had one of the cases(went to high school with him) and he told me on a hunting trip that that case made him realize what a bizarro world he was living in. Why? Because when the counselor at the halfway house told him about the guy’s confessing to molesting road kill, his first thought was “well, at least it’s a victimless crime”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Don’t, just don’t.

      Probably has ruptured organs. Unless you get on the job immediately, the meat, at best, won’t be any good. At worst, well….

      Also, you really don’t want to puncture the tarsal scent glands

  28. The Late P Brooks

    Waste of time. So stupid. Let the airlines decide. Why in God’s name does the government need to intervene.

    Get back to us when the ADA is repealed.

    • Hyperion

      There isn’t a single law or regulation that can be repealed without millions dying in the streets the next day. It is known.

    • Trolleric the Goth

      whycome I cain’t bring my emotional support turkey on the plane nomores?

      • UnCivilServant

        Because Turkeys Can’t Fly!

      • Sensei

        As God as my witness…

  29. Rebel Scum

    She will because she intends to be the nominee.

    Hillary Clinton backtracked on comments she made about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in a documentary on her life set to premiere this week at the Sundance Film Festival, insisting that despite trashing the Vermont Senator and 2020 presidential contender, she’ll “support” him if he becomes the Democrats’ eventual nominee.

    “I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!” Clinton tweeted Tuesday night, after enduring a torrent of social media abuse from Bernie Sanders supporters.

    “But to be serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump, and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee,” she added, though she did not commit to supporting Sanders explicitly.

    • Hyperion

      Bernie won’t make her SOS again and let her burn down what’s left of the ME, like Biden will. Bernie’s top priority will be burning down stuff here at home, like the economy. Just imagine Gulag Barbie as Bernie’s top economic adviser.

    • Not Adahn

      “retiring”

      • Hyperion

        Funny way to say ‘ensuring the re-election of’.

    • Nephilium

      It was probably the Illuminuti, under the evil eye of America’s Greatest Monster (Jimmy Carter).

  30. Rebel Scum

    Schiff tells Senators they have the full and complete power to request documents. He says a fair trial requires nothing less than hearing from witnesses.

    Indeed, you do. And if the admin doesn’t provide them, you need to go to court.

    • Not Adahn

      Why do they seem to assume that the dems are the only ones who would be calling witnesses?

      • UnCivilServant

        Because he’s been on a power trip and it hasn’t quite sunk in that his voice is just a voice in the senate, not a command.

      • Hyperion

        At this point, the Democrats are under the full assumption that the media is going to control the narrative and swing the public’s opinion to allow democrats to do whatever they please, any time, all of the time. That may not be the way it’s playing out, but that’s their game plan, win or fail.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Maybe one of the legal eagles around here can answer this. If this were a normal trial, could the prosecutors call witnesses not called at a grand jury? And can the prosecutors ask for documents during the trial that were not put into evidence ahead of the trial itself?

      • leon

        Maybe one of the legal eagles around here can answer this. If this were a normal trial, could the prosecutors call witnesses not called at a grand jury?

        Since that is to just get the indictment, i think so. But i don’t know.

        And can the prosecutors ask for documents during the trial that were not put into evidence ahead of the trial itself?

        I don’t know, aren’t there rules about discovery and giving the defense knowledge of what the prosecution has.

      • Ted S.

        Yes, as Marisa Tomei informs Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny.

      • Spudalicious

        The Senate is the jury. This is like the prosecutors asking the jury to call witnesses they didn’t interview during the investigation.

      • Mojeaux

        win or fail

        The possibility of failure is zero.

        If they fail, it’s not failure. It’s that those stupid rubes doan know no bettah.

        But it is NOT failure in their minds. They will learn nothing because nothing is ever on them.

    • Gadfly

      Schiff tells Senators they have the full and complete power to request documents.

      The same power the House has, which they probably should have used when they were building the case.

    • Ted S.

      Call Hunter Biden as a witness for starters.

  31. Spudalicious

    “ “There’s dick water on me!” the hat wailed.”

    I need to read this stuff when I’m at home.

  32. Michael

    “I don’t care!” Donald said. He smashed his belly into the window and rubbed it side to side.

    Goddammit. I wish I had more time to spend here lately, because shit like this is majestic.

  33. leon

    Concert of the day

    why is it that all violinists really get into their music like that? is it a pure performance piece or does it help get some of those notes?

    • ChipsnSalsa

      you mean like guitarists do?

    • Festus

      Violinist has an incredibly sexy back. Yeah, I said it!

  34. "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

    These are my thoughts exactly on Senator Turtle

    https://freebeacon.com/politics/midnight-mitch-mcconnell-badass/?utm_source=actengage&utm_campaign=FreedomMail&utm_medium=email

    “Journalists Can’t Stop Giving Mitch McConnell Badass Nicknames”

    FTA:

    “Democrats and journalists—to the extent that there is a meaningful difference—can’t stop coming up with nicknames for Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) that make the Senate majority leader sound like a total badass, which he is.

    The latest, via lib journalist Carl Bernstein, is “Midnight Mitch”—a reference to the Senate impeachment trial rules McConnell recently proposed. Some have criticized the rules because, among other reasons, the late-night schedule could make it harder for grandstanding Democratic senators to get video clips of their grandstanding played on evening news programs.

    In any event, some users of the popular social networking website Twitter pointed out that “Midnight Mitch” is a pretty badass nickname.”

    STOP MAKING MITCH MCCONNELL SOUND SO GOD DAMN COOL

    • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

      We need to redistribute the memes of production, because the Left sucks ass at this

    • Gadfly

      STOP MAKING MITCH MCCONNELL SOUND SO GOD DAMN COOL

      I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. To me it’s quite funny that all these cool nicknames keep accumulating to a rather boring and dorky looking run-of-the-mill Senator.

      • leon

        It is ironic (i think right… That meets the definition of irony? TedS?

      • Ted S.

        Sen. McConnell is not like ten thousand spoons, for what it’s worth.

      • "Tulsi Gabbard Apologist"

        The Great Meme War Part II is going to be an epic slaughter. The one sided casualty rate will surely result in the Left demanding laws banning high capacity dank memes

    • Rebel Scum

      Midnight Mitch

      Sounds like a pr0n/stripper name.

    • Hyperion

      Fuck, I mean if the dems can unintentionally make Turtle Head cool, what can they not do? Soon they’ll be making Mike Huckabee cool again.

      • Rebel Scum

        They certainly made Sarah Huckabee cool.

      • Hyperion
      • Mojeaux

        The best thing about her was her dead stare. The “Are you kidding me with this? Do you know how stupid you sound?” look. It’s the ultimate Queen Bee weapon.

      • Mojeaux

        That’s my girl!

  35. SP

    UPDATE: The first run of the BarkBath was a success. I just did her back for the first foray, but she didn’t resist at all, just laid down and snored. She also doesn’t smell like wet dog. We’ll see how it does on a more complete bathing experience.

    • Shirley Knott

      Cool. Congrats on having a successful first pass!

  36. Hyperion

    I’ve been playing some Youtube vids and it seems all the ads are Bloomberg presidential campaign ads. Good gawd, that is some of the most insufferable shit I’ve ever seen. What a fucking asshole.

    • Mojeaux

      He’s on heavy rotation in the KCMO metro.

      • Hyperion

        Saving KC from big sugary drinks no doubt.

    • Urthona

      Anywhere I go on the internet I am followed by that douche. He must’ve spent hundreds of millions in ads.

      • Hyperion

        I love the one where the poor black lady is lamenting how her son got shot, in one of the ghettos created by democrats no doubt, but no worries, Mikey is going to fix this gun violence stuff. Then there’s the poor little girl suffering from Asthma, which medical technology will never be able to fix, but no worries, Super Mikey is here! I’m sure the next one is going to be drowning baby seals and super Mikey saving the planet.

      • UnCivilServant

        It took me too long to find this gun video again. I can’t remember how I stumbled onto it the first time.

        Does it have Bloomers ads too?

    • Rebel Scum

      I get those a lot as well. And my youtube history, let’s just say it doesn’t suggest that I would like Bloomer.

    • Nephilium

      So far the Pandora ads have been kind to me. No political ads yet. Now, when the general election starts getting closer… that’s when I may spring for ad-free just to avoid the political ads for a while.

    • leon

      Bloomers ads are just bad. He had one pro abortion ad, and i was like “Really in Utah your gonna run that?”

  37. l0b0t

    Did afternoon links just post then vanish?

    • UnCivilServant

      Maybe, I didn’t see it.