Glyph recently reminded me how much I love the Kids In The Hall, the Canadian, produced-by-Lorne-Michaels-but-non-SNL sketch comedy show. So I thought I’d start up an open thread with a sketch which is really just a big, zany, over-the-top lead up to a subtle but hilarious comedy-of-manners punchline:
Yeah, it’s probably an acquired taste.
Consider this an open thread. Have at it.
Tod Kelly
Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.
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on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024You've already admitted to being a Reagan voter, Chip.
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024I admit there is a tendency of liberals to harbor the Secret Disney Liberal view of the Palestinian… on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024is something new It's not new. It has been normalized over the past couple of decades. it is incompr…
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024The Israel-Hamas War is having a much bigger domestic impact than any previously flare up in my life… on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Considering the current political moment, I don't think we are going to come to an agreement on what…
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024As John Ganz noted when discussing Jodi Dean, very few people are truly free speech absolutists. on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Cite? A google search revealed a bunch of calls for her to be kicked off campus but nothing saying s… on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Dicky Betts of the Almann Brothers Band has died
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Protective Custody. (versus the Trump demonstrators, who were allowed to go where they liked...and g… on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Expanding on my comment above, the Gaza protests and Trumpists are each testing the limits of our me…
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For whatever reason, Foley’s confession that he drank human blood in college made me think of this.Report
Next you’re going to launch a “Touch Tod Kelly” contest.Report
So DRS, as one of her suggestions, says: Work harder at finding new topics to discuss. I don’t care if it is the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, we’re hashed out abortion enough over the past few months. You want to discuss an issue when the state can intervene in a private moral decision? How about an end of life situation for elderly relatives: either in non-reversible comas, vegetative conditions (like Terri Schiavo) or simply the issues of living wills. End of life counselling is also a good topic – how much should older people and their families be expected to deal with at a vulnerable time or is that just the price to be paid for ensuring that your wishes be fulfilled as much as possible? This area is going to become a big issue in our lives and is much more likely to happen than abortion.
As such, I will offer some free associations that have to do with my cats.
During the Summer of the Sixteen Cats, we had a whole mess of feral cats spayed/neutered. Whenever we went to the clinic ($35 to spay/neuter a feral, $65 to spay/neuter a tame stray), they made us sign a form. I hereby authorize the clinic to spay/neuter this cat, if the cat is female and found to be pregnant, I hereby authorize the clinic to terminate the pregnancy.
Now, that’s one of those things that put what I was doing into stark relief.
We are catching feral animals and, if they are pregnant, we are killing the kittens in their wombs before releasing them back into the wild. (A conversation with one of my imagined ancestors about this practice takes place here.)
Well, a few years after the eldest showed up, his kidneys failed and he told us it was time and we had him “put to sleep”, as the saying goes. Now, the service to have pets “put to sleep”, as the saying goes, is very different from what they did in the 70’s.
A nice lady comes to your house. She puts a beautiful white blanket over your table or on the floor you’ve prepared. You place your pet on the blanket. She gives your pet a shot in YOUR house, in YOUR living room, and you watch your pet relax for the first time in a long time and then she will listen to your stories for 5-10 minutes and then she will give a second shot to the pet and she will listen to your stories for a few more minutes before she will take out a stethoscope and tell you “he’s gone”. She brings kleenex and everything.
Well, one of the things we talked about was how great it was that this is how it’s done now, compared to how it used to be done. She nodded. This, of course, evolved into a discussion of whether the new and improved methods of “putting pets to sleep”, as the saying goes, will change public attitudes toward end of life care.
For the record, I suspect it will. I suspect that our attitudes towards our pets will eventually turn into our attitudes toward each other, insofar as we internalize how we are in charge of caring for each other.Report
It’s probably also worth mentioning that the vet in question said she felt somewhat as though this was what she COULD do, because when her father was already gone, at the very end of kidney failure, and all he had left was suffering… there was nothing they could do. For weeks.Report
Consider this an open thread.
So…ignore it and save my essay on why Salmon P. Chase was history’s greatest villain for the next abortion thread?Report
The Oregon Ducks are ranked 10th and have a 2 game lead in the Pac 12. Why isn’t this a topic on everybody’s lips?Report
Does the coach leaving for the NFL impact this at all?Report
Whatever NFL team hired Dana Altman is going to be in for a big surprise come training camp.Report
Shockingly, on our local sports talk show this week they interviewed the radio play by play for the Ducks. He said they’re still not selling out. (Though as they creep up the rankings I guess the crowds are getting bigger.)Report
When Halo 3 came out, it was crap. I had to force myself to finish the fight. After finishing it, I had to be talked out of throwing away Halo 1 (for the PC). Some of it may have been my TV but, even without it, it was just a godawful singleplayer experience.
Time goes by and I play a demo for Halo Wars. RTS games on consoles are always garbage. I avoided Warcraft and C+C for years because of their PS1 variants. Imagine my surprise when I found that Halo Wars really nailed it. This made me receptive to Halo: Reach which, in turn, made me give Halo: ODST a chance. These games made me realize that the worst part of the Halo Universe was it’s main protagonist, Master Chief.
Enter Halo 4. 343 Industries has created a game where I actually feel like there’s substance to the Master Chief character. Instead of an emotionless killing machine, we’re looking at a human being. A soldier who finished his war and is already now seen as someone who was a legend but is now a anachronism.
To tie into End-of life conversations, his arguably better half, Cortana, is dying. AIs, in the Halo universe, have a shelf life of 7 years. After that, they start to go rampant as all the information that they have absorbed and computations that they have done start producing irreparable glitches. The effect is much like slipping into dementia except with a guaranteed end result of death.
Cortana is 8 years old.
Master Chief is in the position of watching his only emotional connection to the rest of the world die in front of him and, like many of us would, is grasping at straws to save her.
This alone would have influenced me to buy but it also comes with Spartan Ops. Spartan Ops takes place about 6-8 months after the events of Halo 4. While the overarching plot is both to puzzle out Requiem, there are lots of subplots going on. One of these subplots involves Katherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartans. The short description of Katherine Halsey and her career would be “What if Josef Mengle’s experiments saved the human race from extinction?” I find her inclusion fascinating and, to Spartan Ops credit, it is not trying to whitewash her nor is it trying to elevate her. I’ve only watched and played Episode 1 but I can already tell that Spartan Ops will have more story punch to it than COD:Black Ops 2 would have (if I could have played through the whole thing).Report
Big shakeup at CNN. Carville and Matalin say they’re leaving, what with them living in New Orleans. Erick Erickson says he’s going to Fox: says he doesn’t even want to thank anyone specific at CNN in case they might get hate mail. The odious Bill Bennett’s schtick has likewise been tossed: his sauce had turned into a science project years ago anyway.
Housecleaning at Cable News Network! Hurray! Brooms and mops and backhoes too. Used to be a great little network once upon a time. They’d load those tapes onto the deck, straight out of the satfeeds and didn’t nobody know what they were about to see. Maybe they could go back to that format, warts and all, parachute crews into trouble spots like they did in Iraq all those years ago.
Well, I can dream, can’t I?Report
Reporting costs money, and CNN’s revenues are way down. Babbling heads are cheap.Report
If they wanted to go cheap, they could just buy stringer content. Lots of intrepid boys and girls seem ready enough to put on the blue TV armoured vest and the li’l helmet.
The gasbags are what’s driving off viewers. And all those stupid News Lite segments. Will someone put Jeannie Moos out to pasture? Please? It’s like watching some revenant, shambolic Andy Rooney in a skirt. They’ve got a brilliant neurosurgeon, Sanjay Gupta, serving up pablum when he should and could be (and probably wants to be) reporting on advances in medical science and suchlike. It’s not like they CNN don’t have talented people — but it’s all so dumbed down and witless. Al Jazeera would be eating both CNN and Fox’s news lunch if this county would let them in the cable door.Report
When Lynne Russell left CNN, that was the sign that CNN’s quest to be “infotainment” had gone too far.Report
Oh, that a Monty Python boot would descend from the top of the frame and squish that tedious git Piers Morgan for the bug he is.Report
Ugh. This is a good argument against both widespread gun ownership and stand your ground.Report
That’s a depressing story.Report
How is it an argument against Stand Your Ground when he’s being charged with murder? You can’t just say you were afraid—the circumstances have to be such that the fear is deemed reasonable. That doesn’t appear to have been the case here, and that’s why he’s being charged with murder.Report
That was disappointing. It’s just the “upstart” joke from Duck Soup.Report