Bastet

I'm so sorry to hear about the sudden death of O.C. Even with her age and health, to be fine one minute and dead the next must have been a shocking experience for you. She was a lovely kitty, and my heart goes out to you during this awful time, @GaT.

I can't believe I can still be surprised by the insanity of the Sirius rankings, but this most recent set of ten did it. Good gods! Almost none of those songs are among the top 40 of all time (the only ones I'd put there are "Forever and Ever, Amen" and "The Gambler"). And is one of the guys at Sirius who made this list Jason Aldean's brother or something?

It's the same bizarro world in which intern Mallory is given a job CEO Brianna turned down.

Because they can be sound asleep for an hour, well and truly into a nap that would normally last several hours, oblivious to anything else going on in the house, but you mop a floor and suddenly they're awake, present, and absolutely must walk on that floor.

This is what I've heard pretty much everyone I know with a front-loading washer say needs to happen. Which means I'll probably never have one unless the top-loading units go extinct; I can't close the door from my kitchen to my laundry room, as my cat's feeding station is in there and her litter box is in the half bath off of it, so whenever I was in the kitchen I'd see the partially open door - which would be substantially open, because my cat would come along, see it open a bit, and promptly open it more so she could get in - and it would bug me (I'm not particularly anal, but that's one of those silly little things that I wouldn't be able to ignore). I guess I could put a kitty door in that door, keep it closed, and make her crawl through that, but then the heated/cooled air from the kitchen wouldn't carry in there, so at some times of year it would be too hot or too cold in there for her. File that under bridge I'll cross if I ever get to it.

My oven is from the late '50s and has an integrated thermometer - stick the probe into the meat, select what temperature you want to cook it to, and wait for the signal to buzz when that temp is reached. My mom's oven that's just a few years old has an updated version. I'm assuming many ovens made in the years in between have similar features. Hell, there's probably a wireless thermometer that will text your smartphone. So it should be pretty damn hard to accidentally turn food into cremated remains, yet TV characters manage it regularly.

Especially since it takes more effort to send a letter than an email; companies/organizations/government offices generally tally not just positive and negative feedback on a given item, but method of correspondence - the more effort involved in the means of communication, the greater the weight it's given (on the assumption whether someone chose to add their name to an email generated by a lobbying organization, post to social media, send an original email, call, or write a letter indicates how important it is to them, and thus how important it should be to address their feedback).

That was quoted in the Deadline obituary linked above; it comes from Keith Richards's memoir.

That has started showing up in the rotation again for me, too, and it's one of my least favorite of the series -- it's funny if I don't grab so much as a toothpick to dig below the surface, because, if I do, a) the shirt she's contemplating when she believes it to be a regular business dinner is an awful shapeless blob, which is an offensive representation of her fashion sense given her size, and b) it makes no sense for her to respond as she does to erroneously hearing it's a costume party - it plays like the other woman is a friend, not a co-worker, but, either way, if you believe the event to which you've been invited is a business dinner, and then someone - whether or not they may be privy to more knowledge than you have, but especially if they're not also involved - tells you it's a costume party, you don't ask, "It is? No one told me that/it doesn't say that on the email/etc."? Or, even if you fall for it and have a closet full of costumes, say, "Oh, cool - I'll go as a Viking," thus prompting a Wait, what? reaction in the other party? She does play it off nicely once she gets there and realizes, though. We see very little of the other diners' reactions, so I like to think she explained her misunderstanding, took her seat a little embarrassed, then held her head high, made the turkey leg joke, and got a laugh from the table's occupants.

Agree to disagree is fine when it's a debate of opinion, both parties have thoroughly explained what they believe and why, and further discussion would be fruitless, so it's time to just move on to something else because "I see what you're saying, but I disagree" is as productive as the conversation is ever going to get. When it's thrown out by someone who is arguing something that is factually incorrect, doubling down when the error is pointed out, and then trying to flounce off with "We'll just have to agree to disagree," though, no. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts. If someone thinks five is a better number than four, so the world would be a better place if two plus two equaled five, I can entertain that discussion. But if someone claims two plus two does equal five, I'm not going to just shrug that off as an opinion I don't share.

There is no other appropriate reaction to Mick Jagger's moves in that video.

That was The Today Show (Michelle Kosinski later worked for CNN, but she was a new reporter for NBC back then). A producer thought up the canoe idea, bought one, and sent her out to practice paddling. They were going to shoot in an intersection where the water actually was waist high with a good current going, but they couldn't light it, so they had her paddle to another location, the shallow water. When the guys ambled through the shot, the hosts teased her on the air, and of course other outlets - and The Daily Show - picked it up. About five years later, TDS also nailed a local news crew for a similar stunt: https://www.cc.com/video/gyzgup/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-moment-of-zen-shallow-flood

It was called Ubu, Gary David Goldberg's production company that he named after his dog (who died during Family Ties, but lived on in those production tags for the remainder of the company's life). Goldberg's memoir was titled Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I Went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair. Here is a short article about Ubu.

It's totally ridiculous. There are numerous examples of patients - especially women - being dismissed as head cases when whatever is wrong with them doesn't show up in the standard battery of tests, and in those cases it can be good to seek out anecdotal evidence in order to investigate one's own mystery diagnosis situation and, armed with that additional data, connect with a doctor who'll do a deeper dive in such cases. The same is true of pet owners whose animals prove to be unusual cases and whose individual vet may not do a proper investigation. Sometimes one has to be an advocate beyond being a patient/client. But to reach for "what do y'all think" feedback on a general social media platform - in which the odds of someone with relevant experience, let alone expertise, are totally drowned out by uninformed/misinformed dolts - rather than consulting a medical professional is nuts.

In law school, a classmate with whom I was friendly through our membership in a club had some sort of medical emergency I can no longer recall the nature of, and when I brought some stuff by her apartment she told me the whole tale. (I don't mind listening to stuff like that, although I certainly understand the peeve about people who only talk about their ailments.) When she finished, she remarked something along the lines of, "Jesus, I sound 80 years old. Next I'll be telling you about my gout."

Unless you've trained your cats to only stand or lie down, never sit, you must be exhausted from following them around sanitizing everything their butts touch.

But that wasn't the case with the fish (like @Browncoat, I happened to watch Natalie's first episode this morning, so I know far more detail than I normally would), a detail later proving untrue as a means of revealing the culprit after having diverted the characters' and viewers' attention. This was the much more common example of misstating or exaggerating a "fact" as a foundation for the plot. Here, the plot required the museum's tour guide to hide the moon rock in something that would be carried out by an unchecked visitor, since employees were being searched.* So he stashed it in an aquarium kit (which included a similar-looking rock), marked the box, and arranged for his accomplice to buy that one, but Julie foiled the plan. So, Julie needs to have a fish so that she'd buy this kit on a field trip. And to establish Natalie as a great widowed mom, we need to learn she's been secretly replacing the dead fish (how fortuitous that she always happens to spot the dead fish and replace it before Julie notices - or maybe she just flushes the living fish annually after procuring one to replace it, ew) so Julie can hold onto the last thing her dead dad ever gave her. And Monk needs to hear this story, and opt to save the fish, so "all men are liars" Natalie will decide Monk did what only Mitch would have also done, and be so charmed she'll accept the job as his assistant and launch us into phase two of the series. That goldfish can actually live well beyond the average wasn't ultimately a plot point; in fact, it was never even acknowledged as true. The lifespan declaration wasn't a means of distracting the audience away from who did it, but simply as shoring up the denouement where everyone converges on the science fair. *They never wrote themselves out of a corner on this one, where they made a point of - in the "here's what happened" recap - him being there so long he knew security procedures and vulnerabilities like the back of his hand -- yet somehow had to improvise with the whole gift shop/accomplice thing when it turned out employees were being searched upon exit. Flaws aside, it was interesting to revisit after all this time, and see how Monk and Natalie each eventually wanted to work together under the circumstances; the transition from one character to another was rather well done, positioning Natalie as neither the anti-Sharona or Sharona v.2.

Patrice, played by Valerie Mahaffey. I had to look up the actor's name, as I just know her face - from Women of the House, a recurring character from an important story arc on ER, an absolutely horrid mother in an episode of SVU, and small supporting roles in a couple of big movies.

I had a goldfish of some sort that lived many years (and only died when it did because our neighbor forgot to feed it while we were gone). I don't remember how long it lived, but maybe six years? We all marveled at it. (And, no, my parents were not replacing it every year like Natalie.)

Oh, that doesn't bother me, because I don't take it as her referencing being "frigid". Sidney wants to want to have sex with him, but something happens, she freezes up (see, the imagery can be there despite a deliberate rejection of the word), and doesn't want to. To me, Tatum is saying there's nothing wrong with Sidney that she reacts that way; it's something that's happening right now while she's still processing severe emotional trauma, but some day it won't, and Billy and his dick can just deal until that happens or get lost -- Sidney will be ready when she's ready.

Tatum is great in the grocery store scene, though. Sidney says Billy is right, whenever he touches her she just can't relax, and Tatum says, "So you have a few intimacy issues as a result of your mother's untimely death. That's no big deal, Sid; you'll thaw out." When Sidney goes on to say he's been so patient with her - "How many guys would put up with a girlfriend who's sexually anorexic?" - Tatum assures her, "Billy and his penis don't deserve you, alright."

Ha: "Its status as a wedding staple is recognition enough for this sap." This is another entry that convinces me the Sirius dudebros assigned an intern to type "old country songs" into a search engine, so they could plop some lesser known oldies into the list and look like they actually have some awareness of country music in the 20th century, but because they don't actually know the songs, they plop them in weird places on the list. This is not top 50 in this or any other universe. Ya know, it's Sunday morning, I had to get up early, I haven't had a Bloody Mary yet, it's overcast which puts my mood right in the shitter ... I'm not even going to get into why they might keep randomly shoving Darius Rucker songs where they don't belong. But, hey, half of these ten are about right. It's the top 50, so we should be debating whether the songs are in the right order, not dealing with songs that are 200 slots too high, though.

When she first pondered the name, I thought - based on the sotries and pictures I was getting - she was calling "trouble" what is just being a kitten. But, having taken care of him for five days, I see what she means. (It's still not a name I'd have ever picked, but he's not my cat, and she means it with absolute affection and adoration.) Holy cow. I've only had two kittens, and both were decades ago, but I do not remember either of them being tiny bulldozers like he is. Guaranteed, their Christmas tree is coming down at least once this year. He's every bit as sweet as he is mischievous, and he's hilarious, so he's the best kind of trouble. I was very cognizant of giving the other cats plenty of one-on-one time with Auntie Bastet, because Trouble is pretty much irresistible, and more sociable than they are (they don't like anyone outside the household other than me, and they don't even spend time with her husband like they do with me), so it's easy to get caught up in him, and I didn't want them feeling like the new guy gets all the attention.

Before I installed triple pane windows and air conditioning, there were summer nights it "cooled down" to 98 degrees in the house. I would wet the cats - and myself - down and then hang out under a ceiling fan, with a standing fan blowing at us, too. Obviously, without power, the fans wouldn't be part of the equation, but just the wetting down should help. We did that with one of our cats in the motorhome when a fire near the campground knocked out power. (Wiping with a wet cloth was all we did for her, but my cats in the sweltering house I'd stick under the faucet because they were fine with it under the circumstances.) My parents are out of town for a week, so I'm doing the 24 hours at my house with Riley/24 at their house with Bandit routine. It's really sad to be there without Chester; I'd been over for dinner a couple of times since he died, but we had a special relationship when my parents were gone and I was taking care of the boys - for him to not be there under these circumstances hits a lot harder. I find myself expecting to hear/see him for half a second, and it stings when I remember. Bandit has seemed to, having been there when Chester was euthanized, understand the death, as he's never looked for him like he did when Bailey went to hospital and never came home. But he's still upset like we all are, and, as a result, rather clingy (he was already a much-indulged attention hog with no inside voice, so he's lucky he's cute). Last week, I took care of my group of nieces and nephews that includes the little bundle of mischief that is new kitten Trouble, and, oh my stars, he is entertaining. He's into absolutely everything and he's also incredibly snuggly; he loves being carried around and sleeping on chests, which makes up for the fact he thinks toes are chew toys and wants to walk right in between legs rather than beside or in front of someone. He's not only one of those cats who finds closed doors offensive, he's one who must climb inside anything revealed by the opening of a cabinet, even if it's a refrigerator:

When I saw a Jeanne Robertson video pop up in my YouTube recommendations, the freeze frame looked to me like a church lady talkin' Jesus, and since I'm an atheist I wondered what whack-ass algorithm selected it for me. Curious, I clicked on it, and it was the grocery store story. Hilarious! I watched several more; she was very funny (and didn't preach, but her clothes and the backdrop always made me think that was coming - I'm glad I didn't let that stop me from watching).