your asynchronous Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

Asynchronous because it's Sunday here. Whoops. 

Working at a university means, at least for me, that when there are no classes, I really have no schedule. Lots of things to do, mind you, but not having the comforting rigidity of classes means that I don't pay much attention to what day it is. Sorry about that.

So, tell us about your schedule? What anchors it and what wrecks it?

Comments

[crithical tinkerer]

My schedule was to go to work today (sunday), self employed. But i have to go wakeboarding, tubing, drinking with a friend and two girls instead. grrrrr :)

[wj]

What anchors my schedule is also what wrecks it. Specifically, having to be at work by 6 AM, because I'm in California and I have customers on the East Coast. (Not to mention some in Europe and Africa.)

I am a true morning person. Not one of those immitations who wake up naturally at dawn. A real morning person is one who is up between midnight and 2 AM, when the morning starts.

Left to myself, I would be up until 3 AM (probably reading), and sleep in until 10 or 11. Unfortunately, I have not been "left to myself" on that front since I got morning (rather than afternoon) kindergarten some six decades ago. Still I entertain hopes of becoming my natural self when/if I retire.

[dr ngo]

When the university is in session, I sing Sunday AM services in the chapel and rehearse Wednesday nights. Two fixed points. (I'm retired, with just a few time-insensitive responsibilities around.)

In the summer, there's no Wednesday rehearsal, and summer choir sometimes sings, sometimes doesn't on Sundays. So just one shaky point. Chaos. Anarchy. Freedom? Lapses into sloth and even solipsism.

Summertime . . . the livin' ain't always that easy . . .

[Countme-In]

Obsidian Wings doesn't anchor my schedule (the anchor, at the moment, is boredom, which motivates me to find excitement in walking the plank, keelhauling, and having my timbers shivered), but it certainly wrecks it. ;)

I'm thinking about becoming self-employed, but I don't like the cut of my jib and am afraid I would fire myself the first time I asked for a pay raise and then I would become self-unemployed.

[wj]

Totally changing the subject, it appears that the Libyan revolution is in its final stages. It was predictable that, once the rebels cut of the last land supply routes to Tripoli, it was just a matter of time. What was less predictable was just how little time.

My guess is that by the time we get up Monday morning, the revolution will be in the mop-up phase. But at the speed things are going, it could be before bedtime. (Enduring America's live blog is useful, if you hate waiting for formal news summaries.)

If I was Assad, I would be searching desperately for an argument why Syria is different. And likely only seeing a lack of a geographic base for the uprising there. Yet. As soon as Turkey decides to invoke a no-fly zone, even only over part of Syria, Assad is gone.

[liberal japonicus]

I was toying with the idea of posting something on Libya, but couldn't find a good hook that I felt comfortable with. I've been following the Guardian's live blog, which, given a quick glance at the Enduring America live blog seems to concentrate a bit more on Libya, though the EA live blog seems less filtered, or at least leavened with observations than the Guardian's site. Still, I love the ambiguity of the name 'Enduring America'.

Any other sites worth looking at out there?

[Laura Koerbeer]

I don't have an anchor for my week and I often am confused about what day it is. Sometimes I catch myself driving to the wrong client. My days off are Mon Wed and Thurs unless there's a schedual change or I'm subbing--where is the case more often than not

I'm ot workig tomorrow, though, so: walking dogs at home, walkig dogs at the kennel, goig to a walk at the wildlife refuge. That's my plan.

[wj]

LJ, Al Jazeera English http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/ sometimes does well on this kind of situation in the Middle East. But they seem a bit more focused on Syria today.

[joel hanes]

Tuesday morning 10:00 AM status meeting is the anchor. I usually work around six hours on Sunday and ten to fourteen hours Monday in order to be able to report closure on issues at that meeting.

Tuesday through Thursday I work ten to fourteen hour shifts, then go home for ten hours, coming in to work an hour or two later each day; Fridays I don't come until two or three in the afternoon. Friday's my short day; I leave promptly at six, no matter when I came in.
Most weeks I can take all day Saturday off.

I'm grateful to have a challenging and remunerative job in this economy, doing work I mostly like, but I've been working fifty to sixty-five hour weeks most of calendar year 2011, and it's kinda wearing me down.

[Slartibartfast]

For right now my schedule anchor is I have to get up at 5:45 am to get my kids to school on time. More generally, I work a (mostly) 9 hour a day job and take the kids to Tae Kwon Do Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with the occasional Tuesday and Saturday thrown in.

What wrecks it is a big push at work that has me working evenings and/or weekends, and the occasional company coming in town.

[Countme-In]

I was against the Libyan adventure because a tax was not imposed on Republicans only to pay for it.

Now, of course traitorous Republicans McCain and Graham, fresh from bowing and scraping to Gaddafi, can't bring themselves to praise the swarthy one in the White House for his success.

Nor will they offer to pay for the victory.

Why weren't the two of them stopped at the U.S. border on their return from Libya and arrested for treason?

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/praising-everyone-but-the-commander-in-chief-ctd.html

Obama can put a bullet through Bin Laden's eye and help to destroy Gaddafi, but he can't or won't deal with force with the greatest internal enemy of the United States since the Confederacy.

[Countme-In]

Russell Pearce, a corrupt, anti-American, wife-beating snake, is in trouble down there in Mexico's property, otherwise known as Arizona, and look, all of the other usual suspect Republican snakes show up to bail him him out.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/21/1009026/-Russell-Pearce-recall-in-Arizona:-Let-the-nastiness-begin

Whether he loses the recall or not, I'd suggest he throw his hat into the Republican Presidential Primary, because he would surely surge to the lead at least temporarily among the vermin, anti-American Confederate, murderous Republican electorate.

[hairshirthedonist]

Check this out (since it's an open thread):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EXCRESNS.png

This recession is special.

[ATCS USN Ret]

Since you're "The Voice of Moderation", maybe you'd be interested in my proposal of a moderate political party platform. I welcome all comments. Here's the link:
http://atcs.newsvine.com/_news/2011/07/13/7042740-could-you-support-this-politcal-party-platform-poll

[wj]

Countme-in, do you feel that, just possibly, you have wandered a bit far from the moderation that we aspire to here?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't feel strongly about these issues. (Nor, for that matter, that I disagree with you about some of the players. Since I don't.) But the name-calling seems just a bit over the top.

[hairshirthedonist]

Are you being ironic, wj? I mean, over the top is what Thullen does. I thought all the regulars here knew that this was the state of nature. It's, you know, like, a thing.

[Countme-In]

wj:

Thanks for the words of caution. I'm perfectly aware of the moderation aspired to at OBWI and appreciative, not to mention nonplussed on occasion, at the length to which my immoderation is indulged.

Thank you.

I am banned occasionally and have even banned myself for periods of time and probably will again permanently at some point.

That said, sometimes Obsidian Wings reminds me of the remnants of a monastic order (I've been reading Walker Percy again), well-provisioned, moderates of all stripes living below ground after a holocaust of the discourse and the polity has occurred, awaiting the half-life and dissipation of the noxious atmospheric radiation above ground.

That I wander around in the world and pay wordy visits here (taking it inside) without being properly decontaminated is well, peculiar, at best.

Maybe I should sprinkle a bunch of "if you wills" throughout my rhetoric to make it more palatable, like Rick Perry does, but Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and I don't know who, Josh Trevino do not.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/perrys-linguistic-disfluency-.html

States should, if you will, secede from the Union.

Ben Bernacke will be treated to some, if you will, Texas-ugly if he visits in an open air limousine.

Obamacare contains, if you will, death panels.

The, if you will, tree of, if you will, liberty, will be, if you will, watered, by the, if you will, blood of, if you will, patriots.

Taxes are, if you will, theft.

I'm going to go get my, if you will, wife's, if you will, shotgun.

Obamoreo, if you will.

Trevino, if you will, tweeting re Israel and the flotilla: Most Americans would be in favor of murdering the American protestors participating in the flotilla (he skipped the if you will)

I notice the spewers of all of the above statements are invited back on network, radio and cable communication venues to, if you will, spew further, so here I am, having not been invited to those more lucrative venues, to spew gratis and unimportantly.

I just re-watched the Scorcese film "Casino" and at the end, after the mob, who, after all, built the business, are dispensed and dispersed with, the Deniro and Joe Pesci characters voiceover (brilliant filmmaking) the difference between their brand of business and the new "legitimate" brand of business brought to us by the corporate, Steve Wynn, Citizens United types.

Two differences: there are fewer holes in the desert under the new brand of business, but the room service in Vegas now is vastly inferior compared to the old brand of business.

The similarity: Americans show up and lose their money to the house. The prearranged odds remain the same. But Russell's sh*t sandwich is served via inferior room service.

Another similarity: the Joe Pesci character and Steve Wynn would both agree, with varying degrees of vehemence, that Barack Obama is bad for "business". Even though he hasn't arrested all of Wynn's financier friends yet.

Like the actress in the French film, "Beauty and the Beast" who said, when asked in interviews later what she thought of the actor's looks who played the Beast after he shed the beast make-up, "Give me back my Beast", I look at the world-wide grift brought to us by the "business community" over the past 10, 20, and 30 years, and I say, "give me back my Joe Pesci."

At least you knew where you stood.

P.S. Great article in today's New York Times regarding the number of right-wing reptiles slithering about in Palm Beach, with Limbaugh at the center, spending the lucre they earned producing the above-mentioned holocaust.

I kind of like that they are in one place, for when the time comes.

[Tony P.]

Countme, I don't know who "indulges" your "immoderation", but I for one appreciate it.

I'm not sure, either, who is offended by your "over the top" style. I have not heard the conservatives who hang around this joint complain much about it.

Is there some Silent Majority of "moderate" lurkers out there who will stop reading Obsidian Wings if we don't tsk-tsk at you occasionally?

--TP

[Countme-In]

Alien versus Predator

Lock and load versus the wife's shotgun and the laser-guided pistol

Zombies versus Vampires

http://conservatives4palin.com/2011/08/the-tragedy-of-red-states-hypocrisy-toward-sarah-palin.html

I suggest these reptiles have a peace conference in Palm Beach, Florida, invite all of the noteworthy local real estate-owning murderers, fly in the rest of the velociraptors, and then President Obama, from the Presidential satellite should evacuate the innocents from surrounding areas and nuke from space.

Bin Laden, Gaddafi, and the internal Republican Confederate enemy destroyed.

Then offer to negotiate with the decent remnants (Howard Baker, Bruce Bartlett, maybe three others) on the, uh, remaining issues.

[hairshirthedonist]

This lingering open thread looks like a good place to share earthquake stories among East Coasters.

I work on the 7th floor of a building just across the river from Philadelphia. Our building shakes a bit in heavy winds, so my first reaction was to look out the window to see if the wind had suddenly picked up, once I had decided that the movement wasn't from people dropping furniture in a nearby office. Seeing no signs of heavy winds and noticing my monitor wobbling a bit, I said to myself out loud "I'm getting the fnck out of here" and headed to the nearest stairwell.

I must have been ahead of the curve, because the first people I encountered in the stairwell were just coming out of the 3rd floor when I got down that far. We had a decent crowd heading out by time the 2nd floor people started merging in. There was a bit of yelling "Go! Go!" and "Move! Move!" going on, which made it seem a little 9/11-ish panicky for a very short bit. I was definitely feeling some adrenalin at that point.

I got outside and my boss happened to be on the sidewalk talking to some people, and he had been outside the whole time, just by conincidence before the earthquake started. He knew it was an earthquake, since he felt it standing on the sidewalk outside the building. He said the street light was rocking back and forth. Finding out it was an earthquake actually felt like a relief after having no idea what was going on.

[McKinneyTexas]

I have not heard the conservatives who hang around this joint complain much about it.

My only complaint is that I don't know where to go to have a drink with Count John. That would be awesome.

If the Count self-banishes permanently, it would be a great loss.

[Tony P.]

McKinney,

Comments like that are one reason I like you. It takes a cuddly sort of conservative to appreciate John's contribution to this joint. What I wonder is, who else would you like to have a drink with?

Rush Limbaugh? Ann Coulter? I suspect not. Their brand of "humor" probably puts you off a bit. But I could be wrong: maybe you are broad-minded enough that you'll drink with anybody:)

--TP

[McKinneyTexas]

Tony--I don't like messianic know-it-all's of any stripe. I've never been any kind of Limbaugh fan. I read Coulter's column from time to time, but don't like her persona on TV. That said, I'm pretty slutty when it comes to having a pop or two with someone. I haven't yet discovered just how low that bar is.

BTW, I am cute as well as cuddly.