Fallout

We are so so so so so so fucked.

Glad I didn’t buy my new big-screen there last month. (Warranty issues, of course.)

@Prommie: I am so used to being able to walk up the street to get a printer cartridge … you just assume these things will always be there.

So now we can go to Best Buy where the service is worse.

@Signal to Noise:

We just bought a 52” flat screen there in December…the warranties are provided by a third party. Got an awesome deal too, $1,700 for a $2,500 T.V.

Buy everything at Costco. Best warranty and service on earth, even now that they have stopped the “lifetime satisfaction” warranty.

We are fucked because in a year, we will not be wondering where to get printer cartridges, we will be wondering why the water doesn’t come out of the faucet, and wether you can eat grass.

I just remembered – not only is there the CC at 79th and Broadway where I shopped, there’s one at about 63rd on Broadway that they JUST FINISHED PUTTING IN.

The Police, “Fallout”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7go5vylYhCw

@Prommie: Since it’s Bank Failure Friday, I wonder who today’s will be? Usually see one or two most Fridays.

@Prommie: I recently was at an event where they had a big platter of flan from Costco. Surprisingly, it was excellent. I’ve spent a lot of time at the gym working that off.

@blogenfreude: No J&R? Their ads were the first thing I went to in the Sunday Times as a kid, lost in a world of “if I could only have that“. Always wanted to visit the store, which makes me like one of those people who plan trips to NE with a stopover at the LL Bean store in VT.

@Dodgerblue: I consider flan the jello of Latin America. Good when there is absolutely nothing else to have, but pretty easy to say no, gracias to.

TJ: Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep, aged 91.

What is it now, 96 hours?

@nabisco: You must not have the jones for all things vanilla that I do. My wife and daughters have the chocolate gene and do not understand this.

Flan in a can is not flan. Homemade flan? – mmmm.

@Mistress Cynica: The Wyeth Hurd Gallery is just down the block from me. I’ll be passing it on my lunch walk for reloading supplies later.

@Mistress Cynica: I dated a woman whose family home was just down the country lane from the Wyeth residences in SE PA. Gorgeous countryside, just like the paintings.

@Dodgerblue: True, I was born two-fisting chocolate and coffee, but that isn’t it. I’ve been served flan everywhere from Hereford, Texas down to Sixaola, Costa Rica and never had it come up better than a “well okay, one more bite” on the taste register. I’m even kinda “meh” on tres leches.

@nabisco: J&R is 8 more blocks – when I got my 26″ Sony I had to carry it home b/c I’m too cheap to pay for a taxi, and I was not going to walk all that way. CC matched J&R’s price. When I got the 37″ (the precious) I just bought it from an online retailer and had it shipped.

@Prommie:

64 hours and change.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: got my 32″ + home theater system for $700 (all Sony) — it helped that Best Buy was willing to throw the home theater in as a deal for $50 less than the retail price of the TV.

@redmanlaw: ah yes….back before Sting got full of himself and Stewart Copeland was writing the songs.

@Signal to Noise: Andy Summers wrote a great book about his musical career both before and with The Police.

http://www.andysummers.com/onetrainlater.php

@Signal to Noise: I bet Stink hit a few of the high school girls back in his teaching days, hell, his song on the topic betrays experience.

@blogenfreude: Q: Since it’s Bank Failure Friday, I wonder who today’s will be?

A: Bank of America

Okay, not quite.

@Signal to Noise:

That is a sweet deal. That is our next buy, actually, a nice sound system…but Mr. ‘Catt is on a savings kick so it will be next year before we get there. It’s fun to go look, though…

Hey, here’s a website with logistical info and tips on attending the Inauguration, looked good to me. http://inaugurationplan.blogspot.com/

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: @Prommie: Here’s teh countdown. Sending the embedding code to our glorious Grand Stinquers.

@Signal to Noise: Tweeter in Rhode Island just closed their store before they settled the Christmas layaway purchases customers had made, leaving them without their deposits or their merchandise. What customer-service is all about.

@Prommie: Wow, bicycle valets! I am one crazee a$$ cracker for deciding to leave the area on Sunday….

@Prommie: Its looks like the transportation infrastructure will be so hosed that the Adkisson Brigades may be discouraged. Still, it doesn’t do anything about the helicopter gun ships that may be piloted by National Guard or regular armed services neonazis or the really deteremined suicide bomber skinheads.

@rptrcub: Gawd, that’s tacky.

Countdown clock conditions, if anyone’s going to the trouble: It has to be a simple HH:MM:SS display, it has to be something I can easily adapt visually, and it has to fit in the left (160 pixel) or right (300 pixel) column.

Warning: I’m very fussy.

@nojo: Here’s a title for the count-down clock. ‘Hours Before Caligutard Begins Life as a Fugitive from Justice’

@nojo: Tasteful. Subtle. Me likey.

@FlyingChainSaw: Love it, but I only have about ten characters to play with…

On the other hand, we’re due for a new poll Saturday.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to vent my lament. (ha. that rhymed.)

My darling little 9″ TV that I got as a high school graduation present is soon going to become obsolete because it doesn’t have any doohickey (technical term) to connect one of those digital converter things. I’ve turned that baby on every morning for the last 20 years to watch the morning news through sleepy eyes and the picture is still gorgeous.
The damn thing works better than the big TV in the living room. Late at night, it’s cute little antenna can pick up signals from Tucson. When I lived in Houston, it could pick up a Corpus Christi station after 11pm. Fuck it all. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

Now get off my lawn. It’s past my bedtime.

@Jamie Sommers: If you are on cable, you don’t need to do anything. If you are receiving over the air, you can get a coupon https://www.dtv2009.gov/ for a converter to keep your technology relevant.

I know what you mean. The Sony out the front is 1985 vintage and just realizing its value. No need to go tossing out perfectly enjoyable technology for some silly fad of the moment.

ObamaCron works. But so does TimeChange.

@nojo: You can deck a headline right over it, as well, which will observe the page convention and attract eyes to your new feature.

@FlyingChainSaw: No can do. I had to buy the living room TV back in 1995 because the lil one doesn’t have anything doohickey holes to insert cable cables or any other kind of cables into or out of. Nothing can be done. All I can do is watch her now, with the little analog A (scarlett letter) in the upper right hand corner to mock me, and wait for the painful morning next month when everything will go black.

@Jamie Sommers: It’s a thingamajig.

And Harry Shearer’s been following the Digital Boondoggle for years on his radio show: digital is a great mastering medium, not so hot for transmission. (Plus a whole lotta crap about stations cramping their main signal so they can squeeze in a dozen shopping channels.)

There’s already talk about extending the deadline yet again — I always thought it was a great joke to lay this on the new president a month after he’s sworn in. Folks on cable won’t notice, but it’s gonna be hell for everyone else.

@Jamie Sommers: The converter box should take care of you. Doesn’t it go between the rabbit ears and the television?

@chicago bureau: @FlyingChainSaw: It does need a headline, and “ObamaCron” is somewhat wan. I’ll have to see what the Camel Lights have to say about it.

@FlyingChainSaw: Aren’t they out of converter boxes? Or is it just the coupons?

And as a practical matter, the digital signal is weaker (or at least a lot fussier) than what it replaces. If you’re watching TV over the air, prepare for nasty surprises.

@FlyingChainSaw: I think the point being she doesn’t even have a cable inlet on the TV. I’m assuming the antenna attached a different way…or maybe Jamie was splicing wires directly into the thing (I wouldn’t put it past her!).

I can’t blame you for being confused though, because I’m sure Q does all the ‘splainin on how your gadgets work!

@Jamie Sommers:
Actually, if it takes rabbit ears, you can buy a splitter cable that plugs into where the antenna goes and gives you a place to plug in the cable from a cable box. But if you want to continue rocking it old school with the rabbit ears, you will need a converter box. Eventually. To watch the crappy pixelated pictures that will come over the digital air.

@nojo: I bought one with the coupon just because I could. Told the wife we can sell it some day, but I’d gladly give it to any stinquer for free, such as. Can you set up a ‘StinqueCycle” corner where we meet and swap things from our cellars? I also got a Styx album someone left in my apartment 20 years ago, and a bunch of Zippo lighters that used to serve me well.

@nojo: Whatevs. I’ll just counter that with what some others might think is tacky: Ikea’s Oval Office decorating thingy.

@rptrcub: They forgot Edward Norton and a gas stove.

rptrcub / nojo: LOLZ.

But, of course, this will give him good practices for his first crisis. Who knew that solving Gaza required only an allen wrench?

They are commissioning new democratically designed products just for Black Eagle, you know.

PLOUFFE: Overstuffed leather couch.
AXELROD: Tall, thin bookcase.
VALERI: Heavy-duty sideboard, suitable for holding briefcases and other large packages.

@flippin eck: Even if the rabbit ears used those cheezy screw down tabs there is an adapter somewhere at Radio Shack. Are there still HeathKit stores?

@Jamie Sommers: Sounds like that TV needs 2 in the hat. And just think – with Circuit City going out of business, you’ll be able to get a replacement pretty cheap.

@Jamie Sommers: Mrs.RML used to have this old TV when we first got together 15 years ago that was all out of color balance, so it was like watching through a night vision scope. Great for the X-Files, though.

Anyway, in the pre-cable/satellite days, a lot of TVs had a couple of screws in back that the external antenna wires were hooked up to. (Yours may not have one because it has a built in antenna.) If you have such inputs, you’re still in the game because you can go to Radio Shack to get a thingie that will connect to the antenna leads has a round input jack for connection to the converter box. See link below.

http://www.ezdigitaltv.com/Converter_Box_Adapter.html

One summer when I was working for the Bureau of Land Management way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere, I built the girls in the trailer next door a simple dipole antenna for their TV. Good enough to get the three or four over the air channels then available.

@nabisco: I’ll take the Zippos! (Still smoking like my pre-baby bod.)

@Mistress Cynica: @nabisco: Chadds Ford, PA — lovely land not far from where I live, and they even have a few wineries there. I used to imagine that I’d run into Andrew or Jamie at the cafe or some such, and I remember as a wee one visiting the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for a Jamie Wyeth exhibition — he painted mostly pigs it seemed. And Andrew was a mentor to the artist who painted my avatar, Bo Bartlett. He bought a farm near the Wyeths until Bartlett moved to some island without electricity or running water.

@JNOV: Yep, that’s where my GF’s family lived. I’d drive past the Wyeth homestead before getting to their refurbished colonial (not far off 202 from the KoP t’pike exit, as I recall.).

Funny thing is, they always made me sleep on the floor in their sunroom and not with their daughter, which meant we had to go through the whole creaking wooden floor routine when I’d go upstairs in the middle of the night. Ah, hormones!

@JNOV: I’ll keep one and give you several. I ditched my awesome collection of ashtrays from around the world, but kept my Zippos. Just. in. case.

@nabisco: That Christina’s World is so weird. Like. Give her a hand, dude.

@Benedick: Hee hee. When I first saw that as a youngster I thought “oh, a picnic, how nice!” Heartless bastid went on to pose her in a bunch of other paintings, as well.

@nabisco: You’re braver than me. My BF said he could give me a piggy back ride up the stairs so my dad would only hear one set of creaky footfalls on the way to my room. I never had the nerve to go through with it.

@nabisco: Wish I’d kept my Dad’s Zippos. All the WWII vets had them.

Newser says Circuit City liquidation sale starts tomorrow. Maybe I’ll pick up that surge protector I need … if I can get close to the place.

What flippin eck and @redmanlaw said. The antenna is built in. There is literally nothing – no doohickey, no thingamajig, no whatchamacallit, no wazzit, no widget, no thingie, no jacks, no jills, no ac or dc – to attach anything to.

@Benedick: It’s an arresting piece, one I was able to consider every day for some weeks, in another life. Deals with stuff that’s rarely considered in art, disability, in the subject’s case some kind of wasting palsy. The point of view is provocative, too, making you really want to see her face.

@FlyingChainSaw: I only found out that the subject couldn’t walk approx 16 months ago and my immediate reaction was EEWWW.

@FlyingChainSaw: scuzz-tacular.

@Prommie: you don’t write something that descriptive without a very vivid imagination or personal experience. Either he did it or was seriously considering it and backed out.

@blogenfreude: My gym is near one. Maybe I’ll bulk up tomorrow and fight my way in.

@Jamie Sommers: If there’s nothing apparently left to lose, then, open it up and see if you can make out anything that looks like it can be spliced out to the converter that RML found.

@Benedick: Oh, people like that shouldn’t be depicted in art? What if she was blind?

@FlyingChainSaw: It’s the exploitation factor.

Painter elevates his own moral standing by painting the ploit of a woman who has no option. As a painting it’s lovely and mysterious. But. Did he watch her crawl her way up the hill and offer no assistance? Or did he give her a drink of water. Or not? You see where I’m going? Where do we draw the moral line compared to say the aesthetic line?

@Benedick: Apparently the inspiration for Christina was a woman with disabilities (“cripple” in the parlance of the day), but that the actual model for the painting was his wife, Betsy.

@Benedick: I am sure the model, apparently his wife, as Nabisco points out, was made comfortable. Art has a place in examining these kinds of plights. Film, theater and radio can explicitly examine them this painting’s un-narrated aspects asks more of us in some ways and tells more about us. So, what makes you think the subject would ask for or accept assistance?

@nabisco: I know that area somewhat, my last best friend lives in a 17-something farmhouse in Downingtown, on 4 acres, with barns galore in which they store their neat toys (childless couples have expendable income) like the old 60s land rover, Sheryl, she was my best friend in law school and for years after, knew her long before I met my first wife, and she and her husband, I always believed, were my only friends who knew, how unhappy I was, how wrong that marriage was, yet when I left her, Sheryl stopped taking my calls, would not talk to me, finally her husband, with whom I had become very close also, told me not to call any more. For getting divorced? I was, am, bewildered.

@Dodgerblue: I’ll let you know how mine goes … probably will be packed with UWS parents trying to get that last educational DVD.

@Benedick: Would you compare it to the “retarded” phase in Hollywood, cheap pathos, and besides, is it really difficult to act afflicted? My theory is that Forrest Gump was actually a piece of sophisticated propaganda, elevating a simple-minded person to hero status, romanticizing the idea of simple wisdom, preparing America to embrace a simpleton President.

BTW, I never felt any “help her out” emotion looking at it. My take was that, whatever the disability, I thought she was blind, this person was exulting in being out in the sun and the wind, feeling the warmth, smelling the aroma of the field of grain or hay, her posture to me is one of sensual enjoyment of the world, coming in through all senses.

But that is so narrative, almost Saturday Evening Post-y.

Or else its the view of a predator of some kind, attracted to her weakness and vulnerability, and she is rising up, having heard his approach, and trying to locate where the sound she heard came from, creepy, I know.

@FlyingChainSaw: @Benedick: As someone who has posed for artists (back in the day) I can tell you they treat their models like crap. They could care less if you’re freezing, thirsty, hungry, cramping, dying, whatever.

@Jamie Sommers: I’m with Bisco on this. Maybe you can find an old school tv repairman to splice you the kind of plug you’ll need for the converter box, otherwise we’re gonna get all “Apollo 13” walking you through wiring it yourself.

/closes google search for “wiring diagram” portable TV antenna

@Mistress Cynica: Some artists feel they are entitled to special dispensation, they must feel life more intensely, follow all passions wherever they lead, as John Lennon once said “I was a fooking genius, and noone appreciated me,” so, that meant its okay for him to be angry and vengeful. Even the basic morality of caring about the pain of others is a bourgeoise straightjacket that must be thrown off, the wreckage I leave in my wake in the lives of those who come in contact with me is small price to pay for the ART it inspires in me. Also.

Re the TV: every TV on earth has a video input, whether the two little screws on really old TVs, or the coaxial input. There is a simple little gidget that converts the two-screws input into a coax input, and vice-versa, this is not a problem, trust me.

When I went full bull-moose midlife looney and quit law to install satellite TV for a living, I made the satellite systems work with any and every old TV on earth, this is definitely possible. Here is my advice; pack up the TV, take it to Radio Shack, and say “make this work with a digital converter box.” They will do it.

@Promnight: Shorter version: Artists are assholes. And I love them.

@Mistress Cynica: I think they come in all varieties, some assholes, some not. Why did my best friend abandon me? Was it because I left my first wife for my second wife? That possibility boggles me, because I am the only person who knows of her incident of infidelity, and I never judged her, never mentioned it, was the soul of discretion, this mention is the first time in my life I ever referred to it to a soul, even without names.

@Promnight: Only? So you performed the extramural pestorking?

The painting is gorgeous. Did the ‘real’ woman ever exist?

Beauty’s truth
Truth is beauty.
Gabriel blow your
Root toot tooty.

There is no explanation. There is the picture.

@Benedick: Ah, thats all we know, isn’t it? Beauty is Truth. Keats, I am not sure really what the fuck he meant by that. I have written essays about what he meant by that, but I really don’t have any idea. I have always believed that art is a form of teaching, whereby people with sensitive antennae, people capable of seeing the beauty that is everywhere all around, in the ugly and the beautiful, in the joyous and the tragic, the beauty of the extraordinary, and the mundane, and these sensitive people try to bring this beauty that is all around always to the attention of those who are less aware of it. Beauty is Truth? What is, is beautiful? That works for me, yes, but I am just not sure thats what he meant by it. He was getting all weepy over a greek urn with a cheesy satyr-nymph scene on it. Hey, greek urns make me weepy, too, simply because I am sensing an artist, the maker, whose work I am looking at 2,000 years later, and I am awestruck over the ability of art to communicate between souls seperated by 2,000 years.

I don’t know why they consider Keats one of the romantics, sometimes.

@FlyingChainSaw: FCS, no, but only by a hair. I have mentioned once or twice here, when the topic of behavioral differences between men and women comes up, my observation, that when it comes to embarrassing displays of mindless horniness where the libido overcomes all decorum, that men behave thie way often, its almost a default setting, whereas women occasionally have such an episode, but, when they do, the sheer libidinousness of it puts the average male’s horniness to shame, making it look like a piffling thing in comparison. With this good female friend of mine, I witnessed the most amazingn display of this phenomenon ever.

My friend was almost prudish, normally. To give a good example of what I mean, she would not, I think, enjoy this place, and the way we speak here. She was somewhat of a femtard, even, feminist PC even. Oh, I loved her, but I can describe clinically without betrayal, can’t I? She was with the man I also counted a friend the entire time I knew her. And, though I am a firm believer that there is really no such thing as a hetero-male-female friendship that is truly free from any sexual tension, this was less of an issue with her than with any female friend I have ever had.

But this one night, we were out in a huge group, my friend an I and 20 or 30 law school classmates, we frequently did this in law school, all of us, the whole class year, would go to one bar, one party. And she got drunk, and she got horny. And she started hitting on and hanging on every male who would stand still long enough. She started sucking face with whatever male was close enough. It was amazing.

And one of our group, not a dude I much liked, saw her condition, he saw his opportunity and swooped in, and very awarely and cynically saw this as an opportunity for an easy score, and achieved it by the simple expedient of grabbing her hand, saying “come with me” and dragging her to his room. Her state, as I have mentioned, was one of libidinousness such as I have never seen before, and she would have gone with anyone who had done the same, he was the one who saw this and acted.

I was the only spectator, at that stage of the party.

@Promnight: A hardcore feminist would probably judge you for leaving your wife, especially if the woman you left her for is younger or prettier. And if said feminist was somewhat repressed about sex, well, even judgier. That’s my brilliant analysis based on knowing next to nothing about the situation.
Sometimes women are just crazy. The last two women I became close friends with just turned on me like pit bulls., in two separate incidents. This is why I prefer gay men. I don’t necessarily agree with you about the impossibility of hetero male/female friendship without sexual tension (I’ve had such a friendship for years, we’ve even travelled together and shared a room, with no sparks, nada) but i feel safer with gay men. They have the straightforwardness I like in men, without my ever having to worry about any kind of sexual tension/temptation.

@Promnight: “My theory is that Forrest Gump was actually a piece of sophisticated propaganda, elevating a simple-minded person to hero status, romanticizing the idea of simple wisdom, preparing America to embrace a simpleton President.”

This is so wacky, it could be true.

@Mistress Cynica: But the woman I left her for is older, and there is no difference in degree of prettiness. And dammit, my ex was a lawyer too, and more succesful than I was, earned more, and so its not like I abandoned some poor helpless creature. I rather thought I was ending it sooner rather than later, and giving her the chance to find another love while still young. I didn’t want children, she did. Specifically, I did not want them with her. How can you stay with someone once you determine that although they are a good companion, you would never want to subject a child to them?

@Mistress Cynica: I like the company of gay men too, much more so than straight men. No territorial pissing. I have always, all my life, preferred the company of women to men. The sexual tension thing, maybe its just me, I must confess that there has never been a woman in my life I didn’t have some sexual attraction for (leaving aside close relatives, you pervs). But “some sexual attraction” is far different from “hidden aching desire.” I am not talking about some deep secret longing thing. I have boundaries. However, that said, I have known several men with longstanding, crippling loves for women who regarded them as “just friends,” and they clung to that as at least something, poor guys.

@Dodgerblue: More likely I am mixing up cause and effect, but it is interesting, isn’t it? American anti-intellectualism expressed in the embracing of Forrest Gump and W Bush, and for that matter, Palin. My favorite quote from Ronald Reagan, from memory, so almost certainly flawed “Some people say there are no simple answers to the problems we face. I say there are.” Something to that effect. The american response to a problem “If its complicated, its bullshit, lets bomb them.”

@Promnight: Well, there’s right, and there’s wrong. That’s it. Simple. Actually, this is one thing I enjoy about sports rivalries: my team is always right.

@blogenfreude: Here ya go, got yer Friday Bank Failures right here.

@Mistress Cynica: Beat me to it! Two of ’em … heckuva job Bushie!