I remember when some pundit or other coined the term "porcupine power" to describe the late, and not at all lamented, NC Senator Jesse Helms. He could never get his miserable bills passed,
but if you rubbed him the wrong way he could stop your good bill in its tracks.
According to a Tarheel I know, every night on the news he'd refer to Chapel Hill as Pinko Hill. And the happy Tarheels thought it was hilarious because he was hilarious. I wish I had that attitude. Although actually---- what about Joe Manchin putting out feelers to Biden the other day?? That WAS funny.
My local nat history museum (which has a small zoo-like area for unreleasable friends) is always posting pics of their porcupine Lancelot. He's pretty cute in a No Touch New Friend way.
I assume so. I’ve never been there myself, but all their marketing suggests it’s just hats. I think that includes Monmouth caps and wimples- they have a broad definition- but they promise they’re all nasty.
I had it once in upstate New York pulled right off the plant and cooked right there in the cornfield. To this day I think it ranks among the top five things I have ever tasted.
Sorry, it's one of my favorite bits from Dirty Work with Norm McDonald. His response is to pull out his tape recorder and say, "Note to self. I don't want to live."
Good morning, Martini! Thanks for always brightening up my day. You are simply golden, my sweet friend. Speaking of fresh summer corn, I had my first corn chowder yesterday, and it was amazing! I had no idea how delicious it would be. Plus it had bacon in it, sweet! Now I just need to find a good recipe and make it myself. Have a great weekend, honey!
I'm actually a big fan of clam chowdah, although I'd never stoop to using canned clams! I'm just shocked that I'd never had the corn version before. Talk about missing out!
During one of the more recent Gulf hurricanes, I read about a restaurant on a Florida island that supposedly had the nation's best clam chowder. I tracked down the recipe, which called for CANNED CLAMS.
You say that, but that woman is a steamroller. She recruited me to help with the Atlanta Meetup tomorrow that she concocted ( see wonkmeet.com). She has high standards for menial lackies.
As are you, honey! This looks pretty close to the soup I had yesterday, except I believe the corn and potatoes were pureéd (?). I'll definitely let you know how it goes!
Sharing a couple of hacks that I used (I am both lazy and impatient) after frying bacon I added frozen diced potatoes (sold as hash browns) and cooked them until browned but not fully soft, then removed and set aside to add toward end, this cuts down on peeling/dicing drudgery and overall cook time. Enjoy!
Cute little buggers but boy can they be destructive. They love to climb our aspens and will break the branches doing so. They also strip the blackberry canes of their leaves. They are adorable, though. You can get right up on them and they don't seem to care. They can make quite a racket when they are mating. I heard this one night but didn't know what it was.
When Mrs. Mild was in college she had a summer job as a hut attendant at a Long Trail hut in Vermont. She'd come done to her car and find that porcupines had chewed on her brake lines, making for a very exciting ride back down the mountain to town.
She also found a shovel very effective for porkycide.
Native Americans called them slow meat: easy to catch, if you were desperately hungry enough. I mean, their defense mechanism is basically to face a tree with their barbs sticking out. Great against bobcats, not so much arrows, pointy sticks, or shovels.
fishers weee reintroduced to new england to control porkies. but! fishers are apex, can outrun a red sqirrel, and grab cats off windowsills in broad daylight. thanks, paper industry!
I very much dispute the claim that fishers were reintroduced to contro the porkies. Introducing any non-native species can lead to all sorts of awful conseguences.
I did not know that, thanks! I watched one climb a tree, maybe 30-35 feet up. It was dusk and just a silhouette but I could tell by the sloped back and tail what it was. I wasn't scared but it filled me with awe, knowing its capabilities.
When I heard them, they were about 100-150 ft away in the woods, loud enough that my phone was able to record the sound. I thought, damn, that boy has some moves.
I remember, many years ago, when Teddy Bear the porcupine was the rage of social media with all his chattering sounds while eating corn and other foods, that was before Tik Tok!
I know you're joking, and only wanted to add that BCE & CE have both been used for decades. It's just that non-scholars are becoming more aware of it. I remember learning about it over 30 years ago freshman year of high school. This prof goes into detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Lv3KpphVg
I don't doubt. I just didn't want to make a declarative statement when I wasn't 100% sure. My particular (public) k-8 used AD when they used a signifier at all, (which wasn't all that often.) I graduated the k-8 in 1991
I am a childless cat lady and one of the few things I am miserable about is that people like trump and Vance can hold positions of power. I chose not to have children or a husband; I have way too many cats. I like it that way.
If I/we did run the country, it would be run very differently. For example, cats would be allowed to vote and radical righters would not.
You’re probably familiar with their special prayer: I think it goes “you must tell me babe, how yr head feels under something like that- yr nasty old leopard skin pillbox hat” which you yell like you’re drunk. Otherwise they don’t let you in.
I guess I'm just old. I don't understand the Beyonce video at all. Why is she standing on a stage like she's paralyzed from the chin down in her nightgown? Everyone looks miserable. I just don't get it.
So I watched a thing that was critiquing that live stream and at one point before he went off about his trans daughter Petersen asked him what he liked about what he liked about parenthood. There was a reaaallllyyy long pause before he answered and all he had was some rambling about how we're programed to love our children. He really just wants to jizz all over the place.
Right. He wants to be a parent because he can’t imagine depriving future generations of his wonderful genes. That’s why he hates his trans daughter. She’s less likely to pass those genes on.
Vance has convinced himself that his mother became a drug addict solely because she got divorced and didn’t become a stay at home mother. In contrast, his Mamaw stayed in an abusive marriage and probably had few opportunities to leave the house. So that’s why he believes she didn’t get addicted to drugs. But she had a lot of guns. So she fits the rightwing American ideal.
I want to go to the Portland meet up and bring the cash for the drinks and wear my fashionably-distressed Kamala 2020 shirt. I am also expected at a family bbq where I expect my rainbow child will wear all the rainbows to chap the asses of my bigot relatives and I bet the Kamala shirt will generate some raised eyebrows - mostly nice relatives with a couple of recent arrivals who bring some evangelical nonsense to the mix. But there's also a really great fundraiser house concert I'd like to go to and say kind words to someone who felt down the other day over some possible homophobia but I don't know her well enough to be texting heart emojis to a married lady so I think in-person kindness is bettersmarter. Plus it's my birthday weekend and I want to do what *I* want to do which is get my nails done and paddle on the river all day long or until I need some wine. But also, throat hurts a wee bit and is it covid? Allergies? Strep?
Happy Friday!
Thank you for reading. As I recently discussed with another WFH colleague, we get so excited to see humans at professional networking events that we don't talk business, we talk cats and babies and aging parents and camping and everything but our actual shared professional stuff. Humans! Let's make words at each other!
"Why does JD Vance look at his grandmother, pregnant from 13 on, never finishing middle school, with a violent husband and piles of miscarriages, and want that for the rest of us?"
Aside from sheer volume of insult and disregard for the rights of Americans contained in Vance's vile attacks on childless women and couples, what's truly galling is that he frames it as though childless people have no stake in the future.
Yet he's tethered his opportunistic self to a dictator wannabe and a party that seeks authoritarianism, encourages violence and the exponentially expanding proliferation of guns, and doesn't even mention climate change's catastrophic implications in its platform or speeches.
OTish, here's something I ran across looking up how badly Drumpf did in the primaries. Sure, just because he didn't get within 10% of his polling numbers specifically because informed and motivated voters were turning out to oppose him doesn't mean the polls are wrong about him outperforming a Democrat by margins under 2% are wrong. And this definitely isn't because he keeps telling followers their votes don't count because of "fraud" and that they should be able to overturn elections they don't like anyway.
Summer corn: even porcupines love the stuff (it’s your hed gif source info link)-https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/porcupine-porkin-out?r=angu9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Just bought a bunch of corn today. Grown locally so yeah!
I love corn. As a kid the family had a large garden so we have so much fresh corn. Loved every bite of it.
Porkypine has many corms!
Porcupine corn, and I don't care
Porcupine corn, and I don't care
Porcupine corn, and I don't caaaaaaaaaaare!
The master's gone away.
Porcupine.
One of a kind.
Covered in spines.
It's a rodent.
https://youtu.be/w8NfQqj7VAQ?feature=shared&t=1192
Corn, on the other hand, is botanically a fruit.
Botanically there is no such thing as a vegetable. Biologically there is no such thing as a fish. And don't get me started on gender.
I love that their babbies are called porcupettes.
Baby puffins = pufflings
Awww
Porcupette paupiettes are a French delicacy. A lot of people don't know that.
Dang it, I googled that, you sneaky Pete.
just don't call them late for dinner
but don't try to pet the pettes
I remember when some pundit or other coined the term "porcupine power" to describe the late, and not at all lamented, NC Senator Jesse Helms. He could never get his miserable bills passed,
but if you rubbed him the wrong way he could stop your good bill in its tracks.
Don't demean porcupines like that!
Ugh. I still get a frisson of ick whenever someone brings up that cursèd name.
That miserable old SOB was a proto-Trump.
My parents were born and raised in NC. My dad used to say that his big regret about moving away was not being able to vote against Jesse Helms.
Even my Republican father in North Carolina couldn't stand the guy.
According to a Tarheel I know, every night on the news he'd refer to Chapel Hill as Pinko Hill. And the happy Tarheels thought it was hilarious because he was hilarious. I wish I had that attitude. Although actually---- what about Joe Manchin putting out feelers to Biden the other day?? That WAS funny.
Too bad he didn't have enough voting company on that.
You were obviously brought up right.
My local nat history museum (which has a small zoo-like area for unreleasable friends) is always posting pics of their porcupine Lancelot. He's pretty cute in a No Touch New Friend way.
"Lancelot" is the greatest name for a porcupine EVAH.
One of the highlights of my life was holding a koala in an Australian sanctuary.
As soft as they look, and that iconic profile...
Unforgettable!
I read that as "my local nasty hat museum" and wanted to visit.
I'd go! It's just hats, right?
I assume so. I’ve never been there myself, but all their marketing suggests it’s just hats. I think that includes Monmouth caps and wimples- they have a broad definition- but they promise they’re all nasty.
Lesdyxia!
Adorbs. That is all.
Here is Teddy the porcupine munching on some corn.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DZaRTAoGelQ
I have to get to the farmer's market early to get ears of corn lately...
Maybe our porcupines have become hoarders...
Mighty Blue, large cat at large, spurns raw fish, but will break cover for corn on the cob...
Friends of ours had a cat who got his own ear of corn and did a pretty good job of stripping it for someone who couldn't hold it.
I have yet to have corn on the cob this summer......
I had it once in upstate New York pulled right off the plant and cooked right there in the cornfield. To this day I think it ranks among the top five things I have ever tasted.
I,m not a good cook but I know you can just lay the husks down and put the corn on top and they'll cook that way without water, and be really good.
As soon as corn is picked, the sugar starts breaking down to starch.
You had optimal conditions. Lucky you.
I guess I'll settle for 'Mellow Corn'.
Well, honey? You haven't lived! 😄
Sorry, it's one of my favorite bits from Dirty Work with Norm McDonald. His response is to pull out his tape recorder and say, "Note to self. I don't want to live."
Good morning, Martini! Thanks for always brightening up my day. You are simply golden, my sweet friend. Speaking of fresh summer corn, I had my first corn chowder yesterday, and it was amazing! I had no idea how delicious it would be. Plus it had bacon in it, sweet! Now I just need to find a good recipe and make it myself. Have a great weekend, honey!
Did you include canned clams in that chowdah? (Ducks head to avoid cans of clams thrown her way!)
My weird trumper uncle is still trying to grow canned clams on his little patch of earth. Of course I had nothing to do suggesting it to him!
How dare you! 😁
I'm actually a big fan of clam chowdah, although I'd never stoop to using canned clams! I'm just shocked that I'd never had the corn version before. Talk about missing out!
During one of the more recent Gulf hurricanes, I read about a restaurant on a Florida island that supposedly had the nation's best clam chowder. I tracked down the recipe, which called for CANNED CLAMS.
Ooh, that chowder sounds delicious! I want to try that. Let me know if Ty or find a good recipe.
Thanks for checking in, sweet Thalia. You are lovely 🥰
You say that, but that woman is a steamroller. She recruited me to help with the Atlanta Meetup tomorrow that she concocted ( see wonkmeet.com). She has high standards for menial lackies.
😆
As are you, honey! This looks pretty close to the soup I had yesterday, except I believe the corn and potatoes were pureéd (?). I'll definitely let you know how it goes!
https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/best-creamy-corn-chowder/
This one is pretty great too. I like the idea you suggested to puree, it would help thicken it up a bit and aid in "drinkability", get in my belly!!
https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/cheddar-corn-chowder
Oooh! This looks absolutely wonderful, thank you so much!
Sharing a couple of hacks that I used (I am both lazy and impatient) after frying bacon I added frozen diced potatoes (sold as hash browns) and cooked them until browned but not fully soft, then removed and set aside to add toward end, this cuts down on peeling/dicing drudgery and overall cook time. Enjoy!
Summer Corn makes me feel fine
Blowin through the Jasmine in my mind
Cute little buggers but boy can they be destructive. They love to climb our aspens and will break the branches doing so. They also strip the blackberry canes of their leaves. They are adorable, though. You can get right up on them and they don't seem to care. They can make quite a racket when they are mating. I heard this one night but didn't know what it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qYBB67tMTc
When Mrs. Mild was in college she had a summer job as a hut attendant at a Long Trail hut in Vermont. She'd come done to her car and find that porcupines had chewed on her brake lines, making for a very exciting ride back down the mountain to town.
She also found a shovel very effective for porkycide.
Native Americans called them slow meat: easy to catch, if you were desperately hungry enough. I mean, their defense mechanism is basically to face a tree with their barbs sticking out. Great against bobcats, not so much arrows, pointy sticks, or shovels.
They come with their own toothpicks.
Fishers are one of the animals that can attack them because they can attack the head while on the tree because of their amazing climbing ability.
fishers weee reintroduced to new england to control porkies. but! fishers are apex, can outrun a red sqirrel, and grab cats off windowsills in broad daylight. thanks, paper industry!
I very much dispute the claim that fishers were reintroduced to contro the porkies. Introducing any non-native species can lead to all sorts of awful conseguences.
I did not know that, thanks! I watched one climb a tree, maybe 30-35 feet up. It was dusk and just a silhouette but I could tell by the sloped back and tail what it was. I wasn't scared but it filled me with awe, knowing its capabilities.
At least it doesn't sound as violent as racoon coitus.
When I heard them, they were about 100-150 ft away in the woods, loud enough that my phone was able to record the sound. I thought, damn, that boy has some moves.
There's a dad joke there somewhere.
He is SO adorable he looks like a Muppet and I love him!
I remember, many years ago, when Teddy Bear the porcupine was the rage of social media with all his chattering sounds while eating corn and other foods, that was before Tik Tok!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4wOBw82ExE
He's a talkative guy! 😍
I remember years measured as either 'BC' or 'AD'.
Nowadays they come in 'BCE' and 'CE'. (Thanks to Woke PC "religious neutrality" Thanks Obama!)
https://www.antidote.info/en/blog/reports/bc-and-ad-bce-and-ce-whats-difference
But have we finally entered the era of years designated 'TT' and 'BTT'?
Since Tik Tok was unleashed in 2016 we would be living in the year 8TT right now.
As for the years before Tik Tok was unleashed my old man mind cannot remember such far fetched things as those kinds of years.
I know you're joking, and only wanted to add that BCE & CE have both been used for decades. It's just that non-scholars are becoming more aware of it. I remember learning about it over 30 years ago freshman year of high school. This prof goes into detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Lv3KpphVg
In non-Christian schools BCE and CE were used even before I was a child, after all, AD is a frankly religious statement (anno domini)
I don't doubt. I just didn't want to make a declarative statement when I wasn't 100% sure. My particular (public) k-8 used AD when they used a signifier at all, (which wasn't all that often.) I graduated the k-8 in 1991
1991 being year 2534 in the Buddhist Era as used in Thailand :)
So.."Thanks Bill Clinton!" instead?
Oh, Bush Sr, at least! By the time these things trickle into public high schools, they've been around a bit!
Quite a talker!
I am a childless cat lady and one of the few things I am miserable about is that people like trump and Vance can hold positions of power. I chose not to have children or a husband; I have way too many cats. I like it that way.
If I/we did run the country, it would be run very differently. For example, cats would be allowed to vote and radical righters would not.
You’re probably familiar with their special prayer: I think it goes “you must tell me babe, how yr head feels under something like that- yr nasty old leopard skin pillbox hat” which you yell like you’re drunk. Otherwise they don’t let you in.
Boebert is a stupid fucking person. Why would anyone listen to her bullshit other than they more stupid than she is?
I guess I'm just old. I don't understand the Beyonce video at all. Why is she standing on a stage like she's paralyzed from the chin down in her nightgown? Everyone looks miserable. I just don't get it.
Hey Atlanta (or really Wonkers across the South who think Atlanta is as close as we’re gonna get) who’s going to Manuel’s tomorrow?
We can raise a toast to Jimmy Carter 🖤
I'll be there!
For a man who is obsessed with passing his genes onto future generations, Muskrat is a really shitty father.
I wonder if that obsession is related to his hatred of queerness in general?
So I watched a thing that was critiquing that live stream and at one point before he went off about his trans daughter Petersen asked him what he liked about what he liked about parenthood. There was a reaaallllyyy long pause before he answered and all he had was some rambling about how we're programed to love our children. He really just wants to jizz all over the place.
Right. He wants to be a parent because he can’t imagine depriving future generations of his wonderful genes. That’s why he hates his trans daughter. She’s less likely to pass those genes on.
Vance has convinced himself that his mother became a drug addict solely because she got divorced and didn’t become a stay at home mother. In contrast, his Mamaw stayed in an abusive marriage and probably had few opportunities to leave the house. So that’s why he believes she didn’t get addicted to drugs. But she had a lot of guns. So she fits the rightwing American ideal.
I want to go to the Portland meet up and bring the cash for the drinks and wear my fashionably-distressed Kamala 2020 shirt. I am also expected at a family bbq where I expect my rainbow child will wear all the rainbows to chap the asses of my bigot relatives and I bet the Kamala shirt will generate some raised eyebrows - mostly nice relatives with a couple of recent arrivals who bring some evangelical nonsense to the mix. But there's also a really great fundraiser house concert I'd like to go to and say kind words to someone who felt down the other day over some possible homophobia but I don't know her well enough to be texting heart emojis to a married lady so I think in-person kindness is bettersmarter. Plus it's my birthday weekend and I want to do what *I* want to do which is get my nails done and paddle on the river all day long or until I need some wine. But also, throat hurts a wee bit and is it covid? Allergies? Strep?
Happy Friday!
Thank you for reading. As I recently discussed with another WFH colleague, we get so excited to see humans at professional networking events that we don't talk business, we talk cats and babies and aging parents and camping and everything but our actual shared professional stuff. Humans! Let's make words at each other!
Lots of strep going around in the PDX area lately.
It’s lame to crow about this, but my hair is gorgeous today! It looks how I always want it to.
It’s all ringlets piled up and tumbling down.
If I get quadruple-vaxxed, do I get 20G connectivity?
I wish that were true, my internet has sucked lately.
"Why does JD Vance look at his grandmother, pregnant from 13 on, never finishing middle school, with a violent husband and piles of miscarriages, and want that for the rest of us?"
Aside from sheer volume of insult and disregard for the rights of Americans contained in Vance's vile attacks on childless women and couples, what's truly galling is that he frames it as though childless people have no stake in the future.
Yet he's tethered his opportunistic self to a dictator wannabe and a party that seeks authoritarianism, encourages violence and the exponentially expanding proliferation of guns, and doesn't even mention climate change's catastrophic implications in its platform or speeches.
What stake in the future does THAT represent?
Conservatives seriously don't believe you can care about people not directly related to you.
( Or even the ones that are. See Trump's remarks about his nephew, for example. )
Another Portland announcement-
I will host a meetup for Indian DInner on Tuesday when I'm back in PDX from Cali.
Please DM me on the 'Stack' and I will send details!
See you, Ducks!
This sounds amazing and I hate that I am way over here!
Well, I hate that I am way over here also.....!
Beyonce has yet to serve KH with a cease and desist, something that happens to GOPers within days of using any decent pop song.
The Odds are KH asked for permission before using it. Something that separate Dems from Thugs.
Kamala probably also asked, which is the polite and decent thing to do. Which of course the repugs have no concept of.
OTish, here's something I ran across looking up how badly Drumpf did in the primaries. Sure, just because he didn't get within 10% of his polling numbers specifically because informed and motivated voters were turning out to oppose him doesn't mean the polls are wrong about him outperforming a Democrat by margins under 2% are wrong. And this definitely isn't because he keeps telling followers their votes don't count because of "fraud" and that they should be able to overturn elections they don't like anyway.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/16/polls-trump-primary-november-00147438
WHY won't these people GO AWAY? Dept.
𝐕𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐤 𝐑𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐊𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐎𝐛𝐚𝐦𝐚.
tw: Elno link https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1816602115688603719
Why do they have to always come up with THE STUPIDEST conspiracy possible?
these pitiful attempts at remaining even marginally relevant really need to be stomped into the ground