Bauhaus Furniture

by | Jun 26, 2021 | Beer, Food & Drink, History, Racism | 235 comments

They made more than just coffee table books and brutalist architecture, they also made furniture, and no place better exemplifies this than Ikea.  Its the Scandinavian house of form follows function CRAP.  And yet
I am typing this currently on an Ikea desk.

This is my review of Tired Hands Brewing Migrating Eyes Saison:

Ikea apparently offended people with their Juneteenth menu at the Atlanta location.  I’ve been to that location, as it is where I picked up the Ikea kitchen island/stand/thing to compliment my Ikea desk.  It also compliments my Ikea wrap around bookshelves, and Ikea nightstand
at any rate their lunch menu included fried chicken and watermelon.

“You cannot say serving watermelon on Juneteenth is a soul food menu when you don’t even know the history. They used to feed slaves watermelon,” an anonymous employee told Atlanta’s CBS 46. “It caused a lot of people to be upset. People actually wanted to quit. People weren’t coming back to work.”

But where would they get the idea this is in any way proper?  Lets consult THE INTERNET.

From eHow:

Pies such as sweet potato, peach and blackberry and watermelon, easily available to former slaves in Texas, also continue to remain popular.

From Serious Eats:

You’ll find watermelon as a part of almost any spread, whether cubed, sliced, or even pickled. A watermelon, feta, and mint salad is a sweet and salty way to incorporate the ingredient into your menu

From care.com (one of those “how to explain to kids” sites):

Abari’s household incorporates the aesthetic and flavors of freedom through treats like symbolic red foods and drinks like hibiscus tea, watermelon and strawberry crisp and adds the sentiment through reading activities.

Watermelon

Watermelon

Watermelon

Watermelon

Strawberry Soda Water
wait that’s just Agua Fresca!  I’m playing the race card!

Not really.  The issue at hand here is it does have a historical role, but not exactly in the way the person quoted in the NY Post seems to believe.  Like anything with history, its complicated.

Indigenous to North Africa and the Middle East, melons were considered a delicacy in antiquity.  Why?  Consider the region.  Its a fruit that doubles as a natural receptacle for water.  This was a actually a crop brought to the Americas on slave ships.  It grows nearly everywhere with relative ease and quite frankly they’re delicious.  Seeds were even given out to freed slaves during Reconstruction by the Freedmen’s Bureau.  The reason being its easy to cultivate but more importantly it was a delicacy during that time.  This allowed Black farmers a cash crop from which they could find economic independence, that could avoid the rent seeking from other economic interests in the South at the time (i.e. cotton or tobacco).

Success unfortunately led to envy, and the stereotype began to take its familiar form.  When it fell out of favor with “higher classes,” watermelon became associated with Black farmers growing and subsequently eating it.  Note the story at this link about the “Poor Arab’s Feast” and how it aligns with the stereotypes of Blacks.

The watermelon, noted a British officer stationed in Egypt in 1801, was “a poor Arab’s feast,” a meagre substitute for a proper meal. In the port city of Rosetta, he saw the locals eating watermelons “ravenously 
 as if afraid the passer-by was going to snatch them away,” and watermelon rinds littered the streets. There, the fruit symbolized many of the same qualities as it would in post-emancipation America: uncleanliness because eating watermelon is so messy. Laziness, because growing watermelons is so easy, and it’s hard to eat watermelon and keep working—it’s a fruit you have to sit down and eat. Childishness, because watermelons are sweet, colourful, and devoid of much nutritional value. And unwanted public presence, because it’s hard to eat a watermelon by yourself.  These tropes made their way to America, but the watermelon did not yet have a racial meaning.

Um
I’m pretty sure Arabs are a race.  But hey, its not me who decides if Ikea is racist.  I can’t wait until eating tacos on Cinco de Mayo is frowned upon.

 

I personally do not care for watermelon.  I don’t care for the grainy texture, and I grew up with braces so picking seeds out of my teeth was less than pleasant.  I always liked peaches so this Saison from Alaska piqued my interest in that it incorporated peaches and apricots.  The base is more sour than usual but is counteracted by the scent of fresh peaches.  Nice attempt to be different. Tired Hands Brewing Migrating Eyes Saison:  3.5/5

About The Author

mexican sharpshooter

mexican sharpshooter

WARNING: Glibertarians.com contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. https://youtu.be/qiAyX9q4GIQ?t=2m22s

235 Comments

  1. Brochettaward

    Being First is what I do.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      I should apologize for pissing in your cheerios.

      But you weren’t first for the links, so
.

  2. Creosote Achilles

    I’m going to lose points as a Southerner for admitting this, but I don’t care for watermelon. That said, it is a staple summer food in The South, black or white or any other color. Esp. among those from working poor stock.

    • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

      Works great in a fruit salad chunked up with some feta cheese sprinkled on top. Surprisingly yum.

      Otherwise, I’m with you, CA. Never liked watermelon by itself.

      • rhywun

        Me neither. And it was a staple summer food of poor white people in the north, too.

      • Not Adahn

        Approximately 0.0% of summertime gatherings of any sort (family, church, neighborhood, scouts) were watermelon-free growing up. My parents referred “Black Diamond.”

    • rhywun

      So is fried chicken. Or so I’ve learned from the numerous black (and white) folks I’ve seen cooking “their grandma’s recipe” on cooking shows.

      All of this just strikes me as another instance of “damned if you do”, so… don’t. Completely ignoring Biden’s new holiday is the only safe way to navigate through June now.

      • Mojeaux

        another instance of “damned if you do”, so
 don’t.

        This goes for romance. “People” (of indeterminate race) cry that there are not enough romances with POC, and not enough POC authors. Well, okay, then. Random white author goes for a POC romance. She is decried as appropriating culture and/or not portraying it with authenticity and summarily canceled. POC write romances with white characters because “that’s what sells.” (#protip romances with white men and black women sell like hotcakes.) But the romances with POC characters are hard to find and/or don’t come up on searches. Anyway, there’s this round robin of people who can and can’t write POC romances, but not enough white people reading them to make them profitable as a genre, but not enough publishers publishing them for white people to read so they can’t get any market traction, and so on and so forth. I’m not going to deny that there’s a problem. There is. But white authors choose not to write POC romances because they don’t want to get in trouble for writing them “wrong”, and then get screamed at for not doing so.

        I wrote an interracial romance (Indian [dot] dude and white chick) and my POC readers were not amused. Except…the Indian dude was based on a real person and his real experiences so any claim of “not authentic” (and what would black women know about it anyway?), I just ignored. I didn’t even bother to ask, “Are you questioning someone’s lived experience?”

      • Mojeaux

        I wrote an interracial romance

        Actually, I’ve written two (the other was a white dude and a Korean chick). I forget both of them are interracial romances (even when I’m asked to define a genre) because to me, they are people.

        So my Taiwanese friend beta read the white dude with the Korean chick, and she said that while she cringed at my stereotypical rendering of the Korean mother, it WAS true, and it made her reflect on her Asian culture and parenting, and didn’t like what she saw.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, all these minefields… Congratulations, Marxists. You’ve turned the country to shit.

      • Festus

        Those masks are there for a reason, my Friend.

      • one true athena

        The exact same debate was running around in fandom wars back in the 90s, except now those teens are in charge of HarperCollins so it got immeasurably worse for all writers everywhere.

        That’s why I laugh when people say this is new. No, it’s not, it’s just nobody was paying attention, or at least nobody thought it would metastasize.

      • Mojeaux

        nobody thought it would metastasize

        I think the effort to cancel romance and various authors is futile, actually. I’m on FB in several reader groups and the older white women are still buying the same stuff we bought in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and the POC stuff is still not selling very well. I have my theories about that:

        1. POC just don’t read much romance.

        2. The 20somethings and younger, regardless of race, aren’t reading much at all. (As my son says, “We’re stupider now.” “Well, okay then.”) Their attention spans are shot. There comes along the occasional Twilight or Hunger Games or some other Young Adult love-triangle that will blow up, but those aren’t predictable.

        3. There are tastes for the now-taboo (questionable consent, for example) that are not going to go away. It gets self-published, bought, and read, but it’s like Nickelback–the authors make oodles of money, but “nobody’s reading it”.

        The traditional romance genre will die out when the women my age and ~10-15 years younger start dying, not because SJWs lobby against it.

  3. CPRM

    Growing up in Wisconsin, I never heard most of these racist tropes until I moved to Vegas. Watermelon, Cool-Aid and Fried Chicken were all apparently reserved for blacks. Curious that I grew up consuming all of those things all the time. Almost like the ‘Black’ tropes are more about class than race…

    • Urthona

      I grew up mostly in Texas and we all ate those things pretty much all the time.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      *nods vociferously*

      Had all of that stuff on the regular. Fried chicken was the only one that wasn’t necessarily a summer staple when we were kids.

  4. The Late P Brooks

    Tired Hands Brewing Migrating Eyes Saison:

    These beer names are verging into performance art territory.

    Like some sort of crypto-dadaism in which the artist scrounges up a random piece of crap and puts a pretentious name on it, like “The Elephantine Nature of Time”.

    • kinnath

      As time goes on, it becomes harder to find a name that hasn’t been used by someone else already.

      • zwak

        As long as they don’t start making stupid commercials with an idiot kangaroo, I’ll just ignore it.

        When the kangaroo comes out, I am done and will be going back to a party ball.

  5. Fourscore

    I love watermelon, particularly those that I grow and ripen on the vine. Red ones, orange ones, yellow ones. I grew some white ones but they lacked the color necessary to make them look tasty.

    Last year I had about 60, average 10 lbs each. Easy to give them away but we ate at least 20. Those store bought early ones would turn anyone off. Bland, the seedless melons are not a flavorful as those with seeds.

    Few of my neighbors grow melons, they tend to ripen all at once. I like honey dew and cantaloupe but the growing season is a little too short
    Unfortunately this year was lost, garden wise. Wait’ll next year…

    • Fourscore

      Thanks MS, for the article and the history.

  6. Yusef drives a Kia

    Watermelon is fine, just don’t put it in beer ffs! And what is this made up word Juneteenth? is this Newspeak? sure sounds like gibberish to me.

    • DrOtto

      First time I heard it was when I moved to Houston in ’95. It’s been a TX holiday as long as I’ve been here. The rest of the country is appropriating TX culture!11!ELEVENTY

      • rhywun

        It was big in “urban” areas of upstate NY when I was little, too.

    • Agent Cooper

      I’ve “noted” Juneteenth for at least 20-25 years. I thought it was actually an important thing to signify in the nation’s history.

    • l0b0t

      I attended an HBCU in Florida, in the mid-90s. The holiday was obscure enough outside of Texas that it was used as a sort of shibboleth to judge the depth of a young person’s knowledge of black history.

  7. DEG

    Apropos

    Migrating Eyes is a collaboration between Anchorage Brewing and Tired Hands Brewing. Anchorage Brewing is in Alaska, Tired Hands is in Ardmore, PA. I’ve been to Tired Hands’ taproom in Ardmore. They have some good stuff, though the taproom is a hipster/trust-fund kid hangout.

    • Plinker762

      Hey! My eyes are up here!

    • creech

      “Tired Hands” continues the fiction that their brew pub is in an old trolley barn, even though historians have told them otherwise. If they can’t tell their history correctly, what else are they lying about?

    • slumbrew

      Oooh, Lange & Söhn, shiny!

      I don’t need another watch, I don’t need another watch, I don’t need another watch…

      (I recently got a Laco as a birthday present to myself)

      • slumbrew

        (checks prices of Lange & Söhn)

        I definitely don’t need another watch.

      • Sensei

        Old boss had one in platinum along with deployant clasp. Bought it based on my recommendation.

        Amazingly heavy. Well outside my means. Happy with my Omega and Zenith and collection of about 30 vintage American watches.

    • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

      And people keep asking me why I don’t have any cloud-based apps or devices.

      Exception: the security system put in by our local telco. It’s okay, but it is a set of devices that could be used to “re-construct” most of our daily movements…

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Those are choice, but I’d rather not liquidate part of my 401K or sell a kidney to get one.

      • egould310

        You may as well liquidate part of your 401k. At least you’ll have a watch at the end of the transaction. A watch won’t just go *poof* and disappear because the stock market had a bad day. That cash in that 401k? *Poof!*

    • zwak

      How big are the faces on those bad boys? Same as my dinner plates?

      Thanks, but I will stick to my military Hamilton and vintage Illinois. Mechanicals FTW.

      • Shpip

        Their Danish sensibilities remind me a lot of the Michelsen watches from Iceland.

        I’ve been considering one of the latter’s Arctic Explorer models with the blue face (despite living nowhere near the Arctic) for a while, as an outdoor / tool watch.

  8. DrOtto

    So much of what has become “soul food”, I grew up eating as “comfort food”. With fried chicken being at the top of the list. Race didn’t play into it.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Yeah, that’s what I saw in all of these articles on what to serve to celebrate Juneteenth: southern barbecue. Who doesn’t eat it?

      • rhywun

        “Black culture” is basically “southern culture” brought north to cities where it was alien. And mostly still is.

      • zwak

        It’s all poor people food. Black, white, it don’t matter.

  9. egould310

    Who gets offended by fried chicken and watermelon? Fried chicken and watermelon is good. I want fried chicken and watermelon. I whipped up some pimento cheese last night. Okay I want a pimento cheese omelette for breakfast. And one of the donuts I just bought. And some bourbon, maple syrup, and heavy cream in my coffee. And bacon. Maybe those sausages in the freezer. I’m hungry. And sober. I’ve got to roust my wife from bed and get her in the kitchen.

    • egould310

      Speaking of fried chicken, if you’re in the Puget Sound and want some good fried chicken, booze, and genial company go to Bob’s Tavern. https://yelp.to/Nw7V5xfmphb

      It’s in the background of my avatar photo.

    • l0b0t

      The kids and I made ersatz donuts (tubed biscuit dough, formed and tossed in the deep fryer) this morning. They were delicious.

  10. slumbrew

    I want a pimento cheese omelette for breakfast.

    This is the way.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    I want a pimento cheese omelette for breakfast.

    You can have mine.

    *pantomime retching*

  12. Festus

    I for one think that is a handsome watch, Mexy. Does it keep time though? I’ve a Seiko self-winder that seems to have a mind of its own. Good enough for an evening out but starts lagging or sprinting after a day or two. *Cues masturbation joke thread*

    • mexican sharpshooter

      No idea, I don’t own one. I cross shopped it before buying the watch displayed near my middle finger.

    • Sean

      Mine needs a couple minute adjustment occasionally. Not measurable in days, more like months.

      • Ted S.

        That’s what Daylight Saving Time is for.

  13. egould310

    Got my coffee Irished up. Well, technically Kentucky’ed up. With maple syrup and heavy cream.

    • Festus

      Good man!

    • DEG

      I just made some boozy coffee.

      I do have to mow the lawn later.

  14. The Late P Brooks

    I like pocket watches. I can’t stand a watch on my wrist, or rings.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    “Obstreperous Gazebo Light”

  16. Gustave Lytton

    “It looks like the clock you see outside a fucking courtroom.”

    What’s wrong with that? What I miss is the smooth sweep seconds hand of AC clocks. Can’t stand quartz clicking. Sadly Telechron is long gone and the numbers are aging and dwindling.

    • rhywun

      I have a wall clock in my living room that looks like a school clock with the plain white face and big chunky digits. I love the design.

      • Gustave Lytton

        I like those. Reminds me not just of school but any clock in a public place when I was younger and before digit display became common.

        I found a battery powered sweep hand for my storeroom at work. It makes me happy when I look at it for the time.

    • Homple

      Is a Telechron one of the clocks that stop when the electricity goes off, after which you have to spin up the motor to start because it’s a synchronous motor without a starter coil?

    • egould310

      Portland predicted to be 113°F Sunday and Monday. Stay hydrated.

      • Not Adahn

        What’s the temperature in neighborhoods without arson?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Pretty sure I’ll be under that. NWS forecast discussion was saying that due to the heat island effect, inner Portland may not drop below 80 overnight for up to 3 days. Ouch.

      • rhywun

        may not drop below 80 overnight

        Welcome to my summers. Well, not yet, but it’s inevitable.

  17. Not Adahn

    Introduced the pup to Saratoga Lake. She was deeply suspicious about the waves, but after a few minutes romping in the water commenced. She doesn’t seem thrilled with swimming as much as jumping around where she can touch the bottom.

  18. Not Adahn

    Ikea: Their Billy/Oxberg bookcase is something that I really like that nobody else makes a knockoff of. And there are none near me to get any from.

      • Timeloose

        Nice style used with the numbers and graduations.

      • slumbrew

        I really love how legible it is – all of the flieger watches are, by design I suppose.

        I actually use the 2nd timezone feature, too – all of our servers are set to GMT (UTC, really), so it’s handy to have mine set to GMT.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Oh nice. I was expecting a 50mm Luftwaffe monstrosity.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Nice, Sensei.

  20. Mojeaux

    I personally do not care for watermelon. I don’t care for the grainy texture,

    THANK YOU!!!! I am sitting firmly on the “hate watermelon” bench.

    • Timeloose

      Like everyone else in the entire us I had watermelon all the time in the summer. Grandpa would wield a big knife a cut each grand kid a big wedge. Spitting seeds was then a sport. Hit the Dixie cup with the most seeds wins.

      • Suthenboy

        Huh. Our sport was breaking the rind into golf ball size pieces and throwing them to knock the shit out of each other. But then we were little savages.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Introduced the pup to Saratoga Lake. She was deeply suspicious about the waves, but after a few minutes romping in the water commenced. She doesn’t seem thrilled with swimming as much as jumping around where she can touch the bottom.

    Does she fetch sticks. Ex-girlfriend’s lab would fetch sticks out of the river all day, if your arm would hold up.

    • Not Adahn

      Her instinct to chase is solid. Her instinct to retrieve is intermittent.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    I am sitting firmly on the “hate watermelon” bench.

    Too messy. Even as a kid I hated getting watermelon juice all over me.

    • Mojeaux

      I don’t like the flavor, either. Don’t like watermelon-flavored anything. Also, bananas and banana-flavored.

      • DEG

        I don’t like watermelon either, but not liking bananas?

      • Mojeaux

        ?

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        The common banana flavoring is horrible. Actual bananas? I have them almost every day.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Likewise, the common watermelon flavoring is garbage, but I’ll eat the heck out of (good, ripe) watermelons.

        IMO, seeded watermelons taste better than seedless.

      • dbleagle

        I can’t stand watermelon candy, freeze pops, etc. But I do love me some real watermelon. Those seedless watermelons are not even a pale imitation of a real watermelon. I should get 8 from the two vines I planted.

  23. Suthenboy

    A close relative(worse kind of useful idiot) had an experience lately. A black man that was her neighbor had been helping her with her yard and repairs around the house so she wanted to cook him dinner as a thank you. She cooked turnip greens with fat back and ….uh…I dont remember what else but it was some stereotypical racist trope. You know…he is a nigger so she cooked him nigger food. When he showed up to eat he took one look at what she had cooked, did not say a word then walked out and never spoke to her again.
    She called me and told me what had happened. She was apoplectic. She had no idea what she did wrong. So was I. My jaw hit the floor and I didnt know what to say for a minute. “You did what?”
    JFC.
    “He is a man. What is wrong with steak, mashed potatoes with brown gravy and maybe some asparagus wrapped in bacon? What the hell is wrong with you? If you cant figure out why he was insulted my explaining it to you would be a waste of breath.”

    A month or so later I told her that white flight was occurring in Alexandria, LA. Her response…”I am just trying to figure out how racist you are.”
    A typical progressive. She still thinks Jimmy Carter is a good man.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Only in his heart has he sinned.

    • rhywun

      She should have given him a gift certificate and sidestepped that minefield entirely.

      • Suthenboy

        That would work…or just cooked something good for him. Good God, that is some epic lack of self awareness.

      • Akira

        From the sound of it, she’d probably get him a Church’s Chicken gift card and think she’s being totes culturally sensitive.

        She’d better just go with an Amazon or a Visa cash gift card.

      • Not Adahn

        To be fair, Church’s biscuits >> KFC’s

        To be even more fair, stale vending machine pretzels >> KFC’s biscuits.

      • R C Dean

        Popeye’s is objectively superior across the board.

      • Mojeaux

        Mostly.

        Hardee’s biscuits are better than everybody else’s.

      • zwak

        Coleslaw says no.

      • Mojeaux

        Red Lobster cole slaw #FTW

      • Suthenboy

        I forgot to add that before I said “Tell everyone I said hello” I asked her ” Why didnt you just paint yourself in blackface, flap your elbows and do a little jig across the kitchen?”

        I grew up in the old south so I know how stupid the old timey racism is. Those people are so tiresome but I have to add that I have never seen it as bad as it is today.

  24. Gustave Lytton

    Is serving tacos on Cinco de Drinko, corned beef on St Paddy’s, turkey on thanksgiving, and hamburgers and hotdogs in Memorial Day/4th of July/Labor Day still ok?

    • slumbrew

      Your Cinco de Mayo tacos are cultural appropriation and that’s Not OK!

      The Irish are (now) white, so are always wrong, so you can do whatever you like.

      The other two are celebrations of Amerikka’s racist/imperialist/genocidal past, so are canceled.

      Am I doing this right?

    • Suthenboy

      I remember when they were a hundred bucks and you could get ammo for next to nothing.

      • DEG

        I paid $90 for my 91/30, and I only paid that much because it was a former sniper rifle and in very good shape. Regular 91/30 rifles were about $70 at that shop at the time.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    ”I am just trying to figure out how racist you are.”

    Racism meter pegged: eleven.

    • Suthenboy

      It is projection all the time with those people. I dont even know how to respond to that so I just said “Tell everyone I said hello” and hung up the phone. No doubt she had no idea what I was saying.

      • Festus

        So your close relative is/was my late Mother? Small world.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Looks like a party drug

      • Mojeaux

        Heh. It’s purty. I love oddball gemstones like that.

  26. trshmnstr the terrible

    I spent the morning with a bunch of guys hacking a path to where a retaining wall blew out into a small ravine. We were only told that there had been some “structural concerns” with the wall. Nope, a 100 foot run of the wall was gone, as was a substantial portion of the hillside. I should’ve snapped a picture, it reminded me of what you see when earthen levies fail.

    The failure cause was obvious as we hacked through the woods. It gets increasingly steep the closer you get to the failure. Not enough backfill and not enough of the wall was structural concrete.

    • Suthenboy

      “not enough of the wall was structural concrete.”

      What was the rest of it?

      • Festus

        Twigs and berries.

  27. Not Adahn

    Two rabbits in the back yard. I guess in a few weeks I’ll have lots of rabbits in the back yard.

    • slumbrew

      We have so, so many rabbits here.

      I know they’re destructive, but the little pocket-sized bunnies are adorbs.

      • Festus

        We have coyotes and foxes and just enough snowshoe hares.

      • Not Adahn

        My neighbor to the east has a small garden she’s surrounded with chicken wire. She says she several bunnies gather around it trying to find a way in each morning.

    • Not Adahn

      Though maybe not depending on how soon the fence is finished. Is it odd that I just bought more T posts to demarcate the border between my woods and my neighbors’? It was the free shipping with a $45 order that did it. Plus T posts shipped direct are in much nicer shape than the ones you get from the store.

      • Festus

        Good on you! High fences make for polite neighbors.

      • Suthenboy

        Mr. McGregor?

      • Not Adahn

        Nah, once the fence is complete, the pup will have free rein and be sleeping outside. I imagine she’ll keep the place free of anything catchable and edible.

      • Festus

        Direct shipping means much less handling ergo damaged goods.

      • Not Adahn

        Yup. The ones shipped direct are pristine. The ones from the store have obviously been stored in a big pile leaving them bent, chipped ad rusty.

      • Festus

        They get moved around the warehouse because everything is a commodity and space is essential. Don’t ask me how I know (laxed warehouse foreman)

    • Suthenboy

      Two? The woods here were thinned some years ago so the underbrush has grown up very thickly. That means more than two rabbits. It also means those rabbits go around at night tossing ticks around like confetti.
      DEET is my good friend.

    • Animal

      I have two words for you:

      Rabbit.
      Stew.

      • Not Adahn

        I do love me some rabbit… And I’m so glad I live in the era of Youtube videos that show you how to take the backstraps off without leaving any meat attached to the spine.

        Someday I’ll spend way too many hours taking apart rabbits and have “rabbit tenders” and gravy.

      • Animal

        Up here we have snowshoe hares, and I’ve seen enough of them on my daily walkabouts to know that they’ll be showing up on the table pretty regular. They’re enough bigger than cottontails that I think the backstraps and back legs from one hare should make a decent meal for two – plus Mrs. Animal is expecting some white winter pelts for some yet-to-be-determined purpose.

      • Not Adahn

        I usually cook storebought rabbit. My go-to dish is cassoulet style with beans and sausage.

        I imagine the pelts would make excellent slippers.

      • Animal

        Wild rabbit, like most wild game, is generally much drier than domestic versions. Wild bunnies are best in a stew or casserole, where they can be very tasty.

        And slippers, yes, I bet they’d be warm. I’m informed I’m also expected to bring her four or five prime winter wolf pelts, so she can make herself a knee-length winter coat. Fortunately I did bring my long-unused string of traps up here with me.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      You don’t have a .22 lying around?

    • zwak

      Two words; Airgun and hosenphefer.

    • creech

      I’ll not send you my worthless fox. He keeps crapping in a corner of my patio. Scat today was about 100% berries, no fur or mouse tails. Lots of squirrels and rabbits around but he can’t seem to catch them before they destroy my plants.

  28. slumbrew

    For the (other) watch nerds here, yet another thing to spend money on:

    https://www.combat-straps.com/gallery

    Bespoke straps.

    I just had one made as a 50th birthday gift for my oldest friend (he wanted to spruce up his Grand Seiko). It came out beautifully.

    Similar to this:

    https://www.combat-straps.com/beaver-dollar210 but with green stitching to compliment the green face of his watch.

    • Sensei

      I have a very narrow wrist. Finding straps is always a real PITA. But I have too many watches to consider custom straps so I make do with the few short bands I can find.

      So for this guy I was really happy to find something in pigskin and roughly period correct for not a lot of money.

      Grand Seiko isn’t a watch you see here very often. Given the pricing and the lack of cachet I’m not surprised. That said they are wonderfully well made.

    • R C Dean

      After the Big Dumb One killed a Gila Monster, I thought about having a few watch straps made. No dice. Protected species, nobody would touch it to cure the skin or make a strap.

      It would have made some awesome straps. Went into the ditch instead.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Wait, really? Its not like you brought in a box of them.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Let me tell you about possessing an eagle feather found lying the ground….

      • Gustave Lytton

        Unless you’re Killer Cuomo.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        When I worked at the jail an eagle feather on an object meant the Native American possessing it was sacred and therefore I was not to touch it.

        Guess where they hid their contraband?

      • Not Adahn

        We learned brain tanning in the Boy Scouts. I wonder if the rule “God gave every animal enough brains to tan its own hide” applies to reptiles? We only did mammals.

    • Festus

      There’s some sort of backlash coming for this idiocy, right?

      • Sean

        I’m not overly optimistic today.

      • EvilSheldon

        I don’t know what scares me worse – that there won’t be any backlash, or that the backlash will come with a lot of shaved heads and red armbands.

      • Festus

        I’m a little ahead in the line.

    • Festus

      Jesus Christ! Gateway doesn’t employ an editor? What the fuck is a “baffoon”?

      • Sean

        A baffled buffoon. Duh.

      • Not Adahn

        I think that’s a New Orleans term for someone who is 3/16 white.

      • Festus

        ^seen it

    • Ownbestenemy

      Yeah and I mentioned that when I am forced to hire based on race or anything other than merit and ability is when I leave.

      Been plotting my exit from FedGov for a bit so this will accelerate my plans

  29. Sean

    Less shoppers wearing masks at the grocery store today. Cashiers still masked up 100%. I’ll assume next weekend they’ll be free of them.

    Harbor Freight had almost no masks in sight, including the cashiers.

    • Festus

      Still 100% up here. I doff mine when I’m not within 50 feet of the staff but minimal compliance is my middle name. This is fucked up. I don’t want to be 13 years old again, testing boundaries.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        60 % unmasked 40% masked as a rough estimate. Pretty good as two weeks ago it was about 100%

    • Ted S.

      The liquor store that use to have a sign saying “no mask, no service” now had one saying to follow all CDC guidelines.

      There were two registers open. One of the cashiers was masked, the other (older) one wasn’t.

    • Festus

      I think it’s awesome that your acting President wears a shower curtain!

  30. Festus

    Oh dear. Temps are getting unruly. We’re well into the 80’s and not the cool, rad 80’s. Will be in the 90’s by nightfall and worse to come. Supposed to hit over 100 on Monday. Not good. My people are cold climate creatures. “I come from the land of the ice and snow…”

    • zwak

      We are getting that heatwave also. 96* at 2:15, supposed to be around 110* tomorrow. As Gustov says, up in Portland it wont get below 80* on the overnight.

  31. prolefeed

    Did the Shiner Beer Brewery tour today. Nobody on the tour was masked. A lovely reminder of what non-progville is like.

    Mrs Prole doesn’t drink, so on the second “free” token for beer, a peach flavored beer.

    • Ownbestenemy

      All of Las Vegas is wide open with a few stores that require it, which is fine by me.

      The two breweries we hit up had no more of that spacing requirements and people were laughing and being joyous.

  32. Ownbestenemy

    Little doggie went in to get a tooth pulled. She cracked it sometime ago. She made it through and will be home in an hour or so.

    On a more shitty note my boys mother has reemerged not in person but virtually on FB supposedly. I thought she was dead, along with the youngest. Oldest is not taking it well.

    It is going to be a rough few weeks and gave both them access to talk to someone about it.

    • Gender Traitor

      â˜č So sorry! Best wishes navigating that mine field.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Thanks. They dont talk about their time living with her and I know they hold it against me that I didnt remove them earlier but she was good hiding her drug habit and other things she probably was doing.

    • Akira

      Crap, sorry to hear that. Sounds like a real upheaval.

      It’s good that they have someone to talk to though.

    • DEG

      Sorry.

    • Sean

      Sorry, dude.

    • Festus

      Gah! Walk with care and know that you have friends here. Might be a scam?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Will do and only reason I would ever say that is cause ya’ll a good bunch.

        Not sure about scam…but who knows.

      • Festus

        I know you. You are a good Man, OBE. Best wishes, whatever transpires.

      • Tonio

        Despite all the grief I give you, Festus is right. You got friends here, bro.

    • Mojeaux

      Oh, geez. Best of luck to you and the spawns.

    • zwak

      Best of luck man. They will need it.

  33. Gender Traitor

    Sitting in a German Baptist market north of Dayton picking up some pies and cheese and waiting for some fresh out of the oven pretzel bread.

    This place is very dangerous.

    • Akira

      Nice! People from big cities may say we live in “hick country”, but I like the all the small vendors of produce around here. I always pull over when I see an Amish wagon set up in a parking lot because they have the most amazing sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, and bell peppers.

      • Festus

        It’s the prayers for your eternally damned soul that add the J’en sais quois.

      • Gender Traitor

        You do have a fair number of Amish folks up your way, don’t you? I used to have to watch out for buggies heading from Covington down to Butler Township.

        If you want all sorts of wonderful goodies and don’t see any Amish stands about, try the Covered Wagon Farm Market on 48 between West Milton and Union.

    • DEG

      This sounds delicious.

    • Gender Traitor

      The pretzel bread steamed up the inside of its bag! 😀

      • Gender Traitor

        …got away with just three pies (two strawberry rhubarb – one of them sugar-free – and a “Burst O’Berry”,) four cheeses (mozzarella, cojack, smoked gouda, and smoked gruyere,) white & wheat buns in addition to the pretzel bread, and some “Amish-style” butter. If I’d more than just a handheld basket, I might have gotten a lot more.

      • DEG

        Yummy

  34. DEG

    Fuck it. I’m not mowing the lawn today. I’m getting other work done.

    • Sean

      I pruned my pepper plants. That was the only other thing on my list today other than shopping.

      #Lazy

      • Festus

        Drinking beer, hiding from Sol.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Like a true Norseman

      • Akira

        I painted a dresser and did a faux distress job that came out pretty damn good. The nice thing about the faux distressed look is that it legitimizes all the little mistakes from the sanding and painting stages. When that’s good and dry, it just needs a coat or two of polyurethane and it’s ready to go.

      • Mojeaux

        Shabby chic irritates me. Why go out of your way to look like you can’t afford better furniture?

      • Festus

        Yeah, I’m a take it down to the grain sorta feller.

      • Akira

        Eh… I just thought it would look bland in that room if it were pure white.

        PS: You know who else was irritated by things that weren’t pure white? 😉

      • Festus

        Shaq?

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        The makers of Clorox?

    • DEG

      The only way you could make this better is to make it a 80% lower so that it doesn’t have to go to a FFL.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Twitter is a cancer. This would have been ignored in an earlier time. Now this woman and other mentally ill people can get their message out.

      • Agent Cooper

        Conversely, Twitter is fun if you’re a troll.

    • Gender Traitor

      Our cats have both been neutered, but they are most definitely boys. They tussle at the drop of a hat, even though they get along well, and they both want to hang out with the little female who comes flirting at the front door…even if they don’t understand why.

      • rhywun

        My two girls fought all the time and they did not like each other.

      • Gender Traitor

        We got lucky. The big Norwegian Forest Cat (or possibly Maine Coon – he was a stray) is MUCH bigger than the little black cat, but the little black cat is sneakier and gives as good as he gets.

      • hayeksplosives

        Yeah, in my anecdotal experience, 2 fixed male kitties get along much better than 2 fixed females.

        The females develop a state of truce and avoidance at best. The males go on stupid adventures and sleep in a cuddly heap when they are tuckered out.

      • Sean

        Lol @ avatar

    • hayeksplosives

      “Who’s a good gender neutral non-human animal companion? You are! You are!”

  35. Tonio

    Since our friend Neph is on vacay, and having way too much fun, I’ll kick off a Glibs Zoom Happy Hour / Nerdfest / Snarkathon at 20:00 hours Eastern.

    Cool kidz only!

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Darn, I’m not cool.

    • DEG

      I have dinner commitments tonight, and will probably turn in early afterwards as I must do tomorrow what I did not do tonight.

      Have fun and thanks for running the Zoom for Nephilium!

  36. Grumbletarian

    Dragging this over from the morning links:

    More horseshit: Floyd killed himself with a drug overdose. Dead man walking before the cops arrived.

    I agree. It is horseshit. If Floyd had been hit by a car instead, does anyone think the appropriate response from law enforcement would be to tell the driver “Well, turns out he had craploads of fentanyl in his system when you ran him over in the street, so you’re free to go get the blood and guts cleaned off of your car.”?

    • Sean

      I’m betting on a successful appeal. He could be the biggest shithead on the force, but he got fucked over.

      • Grumbletarian

        He’ll win his appeal thanks to Maxine Waters, not because he didn’t have anything to do with Floyds death..

  37. LCDR_Fish

    Excellent piece by Institute for Justice at NRO: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/how-to-hold-federal-law-enforcement-officers-accountable/

    Good points in terms of the conservative cop love.

    But there has long been a glaring exception to conservative wariness of federal power: Law-enforcement officers. Over decades, conservative judges and policy-makers have effectively placed federal law-enforcement officers above the law, freeing them from the consequences of their human frailties. As a result, good cops have found it harder to do their jobs, and law-abiding citizens across the nation have been assaulted, robbed, falsely imprisoned, and even killed by those who carry a federal badge and a gun, adding insult to their physical injuries.

    Increasingly, America’s predictable rule of law is being replaced with the arbitrary and irrational rule of man, with a federal badge providing a shield of absolute immunity from accountability in cases where citizens’ constitutional rights are violated. This is true not only for federal law-enforcement officials, but also for the large number of state and local police officers deputized each year as members of joint state–federal task forces.

    …..

    Unfortunately, when it comes to holding law-enforcement officers and other government officials accountable, current Supreme Court precedent has created a “heads, the government wins; tails, the ordinary American loses,” dynamic even in cases when an officer has clearly violated an individual’s constitutional rights.

    This was not always so. There is a long history, stretching all the way back to the Founding, of American courts’ holding federal officials accountable when they violate individual rights. In 1803, the Supreme Court held U.S. Navy captain George Little liable for exceeding his authority. More than a century and a half later, in the case of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), the Court again held federal agents to account, concluding that the Fourth Amendment provided a remedy to Webster Bivens, after Bivens was wrongfully handcuffed in front of his family by federal narcotics agents who proceeded to search his apartment — and then strip-search him at a federal courthouse.

    Unfortunately, in the decades since, the Court’s conservative justices have systematically stripped Bivens of its power, ruling that unless federal agents violate a person’s rights in precisely the way they violated Webster Bivens’s, Bivens no longer applies, and as a result, the officials cannot be held accountable. This has created a world in which officers and officials are often let off scot-free simply because what they did was different what was done to Bivens.

    One particularly egregious example of this jurisprudential trend is the case of JosĂ© Oliva, a career law-enforcement officer and Vietnam veteran. Conservative judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — two appointed by President Trump and one appointed by President Reagan — ruled that Oliva could not hold the Veterans Affairs officers who assaulted him in an unprovoked attack caught on camera accountable in a court of law, because the facts of his case did not perfectly mirror the facts of Bivens. (What the federal officers did to the 70-year-old Oliva was worse than what was done to Bivens; they choked him, slammed him to the ground, and permanently injured his shoulder and throat — all despite the fact that he hadn’t resisted them.) The conservative judges in the case ruled that because the officers involved were federal officers, they could not be sued. Oliva had overcome the qualified-immunity doctrine that protects law-enforcement officers from legal liability for their actions, only to be denied relief; because the cops who’d beaten him worked for the federal government. (In May 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review JosĂ© Oliva’s appeal, but he has since asked the justices to reconsider his appeal.)

    Perhaps law-and-order conservatives support an overwhelming legal lenience for government law-enforcement officers because of the increasing politicization of criminal-justice-reform issues in recent years — perhaps they feel they must pick a side. But if that’s the case, they’re falling into a trap. Ignoring the culture-war battles of the moment, there are timeless conservative principles at stake: The Constitution, the rule of law, and the limits they have always sought to place on the power of government officials.

    Conservatives who reflexively support law-enforcement officers worry that our nation will lose officers in droves and others won’t step up to replace them if stricter accountability for violating citizens’ rights becomes the norm. But the statistics are clear: In the rare cases against police that make it to judgment, individual officers almost never pay a penny. In the best-known study of its kind analyzing this issue, only about 5 percent of federal officers themselves had to pay restitution out of their own pockets; the other 95 percent of such claims were paid by the government.

    This lack of accountability allows bad cops to stay on the job and tarnishes the reputation of good cops, as one damning headline after another turns public opinion against law-enforcement officers as a group.

    • rhywun

      Narrow interpretations of previous cases is a huge problem in way more than just law enforcement issues.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      The difficulty is this; the old saw that “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” is not quite correct. Power does not corrupt; no matter how great the power a man may hold, he will not become corrupt… if he is not also immune. It is immunity that corrupts; absolute immunity corrupts absolutely. I need very little power to be a force for unlimited destruction – if I am absolutely immune.

      John w Campbell:

      The whole essay is worth a read.

      https://www.free-culture.ir/Analog_1961_May_Constitution_for_utopia.html

  38. The Late P Brooks

    This lack of accountability allows bad cops to stay on the job and tarnishes the reputation of good cops, as one damning headline after another turns public opinion against law-enforcement officers as a group.

    You don’t say.

    • Homple

      Did you shoot the steer with that pistol?

      • Sean

        You’ll need to speak with my attorney.

        Am I being detained?

  39. Sean

    Been watching Greatest American Hero today. Boy, they were down on the FBI on an organizational level.

    • l0b0t

      Indeed. The television cultural zeitgest did a complete 180° in just a couple years; think The X-Files versus 24.

  40. The Gunslinger

    Been raining near constant this weekend. This afternoon a large branch fell from our elm tree into the neighbors backyard. Probably 10-12 inches diameter where it broke from the tree. Fell a good 30 feet to the ground and appears to have taken out the power wire to the house. Up until this weekend we have been very dry this spring.

    • Sean

      Your power or the neighbors?

      • The Gunslinger

        Neighbors

      • Gender Traitor

        Ruh roh.

      • The Gunslinger

        The owner is a young kid in his 20’s. He just moved out last month and started renting it out to some younger guys. But he seems like a sharp kid. I texted him to let him know and he said thanks for the heads up and asked how we have been.

  41. Shpip

    Having eaten watermelon my whole life, I can attest that the melons bought from a couple of ol’ boys selling from the back of a pickup truck are superior to whatever you can get in a grocery store.

    I’ll pick up one in the next few days, cube some of the meat to muddle into cocktails, and save the rind to try my hand at this.

    Watch-wise, I’ve found one of these for a very reasonable (for some values of reason) price. I’ve been resisting its siren song so far. That might not last much longer.

  42. The Late P Brooks

    Am I being detained?

    You can go.

    But I am going to have to confiscate those steaks, as evidence.

  43. l0b0t

    I pounded out a few chicken breasts and have them soaking in a buttermilk and cumin mix. Tomorrow, they get floured and fried.

    • The Gunslinger

      Pounded out some cumin mix eh? Enjoy!

  44. blackjack

    I love watermelon and I love fried chicken. Especially spicy fried chicken, like I normally get from Gus’s fried chicken which I’ll likely get tonight, assuming they have drivers to deliver it because of the fucking exorbitant unemployment benefits. Bastards!

    I just got a federal jury duty summons. Whoo-Hoo! Maybe this time I get to serve instead of just being on call. I get paid full pop and certainly prefer hanging out at court and possibly helping to achieve real justice for at least one case. When I was self employed, I hated the very thought and worked diligently to avoid it.