Now we know what Becks meant about him "flipping out".
The snow we got from that storm was totally powder. I'm impressed that anyone was able to make a decent snowball out of it.
Maybe it was time to defrost the freezer.
Over at DCist, some guy named Kriston wrote about his experience at the affray.
5: And over at Unfogged, some guy named Stanley linked to that account.
It ups the level of difficulty. Sometimes I fall on my face. But when it works, the East German judges give me great marks.
Great comment from the DCist thread:
Snowball fight? You close the Whole Foods and immediately white people turn on each other. We knew this and we let it happen anyway.
I have got to go to bed. Tomorrow is liberal leave for the Feds, but not for me. Hmm, why isn't there ever leave for conservatives? Is this like the War on Christmas? Should Beck investigate?
There's a main page?
Nah, I'm not picky like that.
Dammit, I should have known better than to start reading that DCist comment thread.
IIRC the department initially was saying the plainclothes didn't have his weapon out. Sounds like there's a good chance he pulled it out and then got a bit creative with the story afterward. Not good. The uniformed guy having a gun out is a normal response for a "man with a gun" call.
I admit that I am unironically shocked that a cop can draw down on a bunch of unarmed (cough and white cough) citizens and not get in trouble for it instanter.
Where trouble == fired and/or jailed, yeah.
But then again, cops do get away with worse all the time.
The uniformed guy having a gun out is a normal response for a "man with a gun" call.
Yeah but it didn't feel that way. Here's the rough order of events (from what I gather from that story):
1 Snowball thrown at Hummer!
2 Guy in turtleneck gets out with gun, snomg
3 Citizen calls 9-1-1 not knowing guy was detective
4 Guy reveals himself to be detective
5 Cop with gun joins scene
Now see, for a lot of the people who had just showed up, it appeared that -- as the plainsclothed or off-duty cop had threatened -- armed police were joining him to start arresting snow-perps. Plus, you couldn't make any sort of snowball with that snow.
Wow - kind of like in 1775 when the citizens of Boston called the British troops "lobsterbacks" and threw snowballs at them. OK not really.
Is that like Mann Page?
Is that like the Mannfred Mann Page?
Some of us still call Brits "lobsterbacks".
Whoa. Is that a painful condition or just presenting?
Bostonians calling British soldiers "lobsterbacks" strikes me as improbable, as it is my understanding that people didn't eat lobsters back in the 1770s, what with the plethora of other, non-pinchy, seafood that was available.
28: I believe it is not necessary to eat lobsters to understand that they exist.
29: But it is necessary to cook lobsters to be aware that they turn bright red.
The internet not-very-verifiably claims they were served to inmates and orphans in colonial times.
Is that really photoshopped? I think I'm clinically unable to recognize photoshopping. You know Photoshop Disasters? Half of them I can't figure out.
31: The internet also somewhat tentatively claims that British soldiers weren't actually called lobsterbacks.... at least not until the War of 1812.
served to inmates and orphans
How times change.
Salmon was also food for the poor, I believe. But that was when you could cross the San Joaquin River walking across the backs of salmon.
Yeah, it kills me that people willingly preferred eating cod to lobster.
36: I learned only last month that Cape Cod was named for the then-very-popular fish. I just hadn't ever thought about the name before.
Ugh, Kobe beef again. Can't you go leave that crap at the poorhouse? Would it kill you to spring for hot dogs every now and again?
Another side effect of overfishing is the gastronomical interest in species previously disdained. Restaurant habitués will note the appearance of mahi-mahi on menus over the past decade; previously, the species was deemed a "rat of the sea"--too low-brow to be served in polite company.
39: Yeah, I love how slimeheads got rechristened orange roughy, and the Patagonian toothfish became Chilean sea bass.
This fruit had a long history before it was commercialised as kiwifruit and therefore had many other older names. In Chinese:
- Macaque peach
- Macaque pear
- Vine pear
- Sunny peach
- Wood berry
- Hairy bush fruit
- Unusual fruit or wonder fruit
"Aquacalypse Now" was another recent article on the topic of overfishing.
39: Mahi-mahi tastes boring enough. I don't look forward to eating carp.
I don't look forward to eating carp.
Man, the Emerson-baiting is starting to get a bit desperate around these parts.
No more Emerson-baiting.
46: I didn't even know he was in ill health.
44: kiwi jellybellies are endangered. You are going to have to settle for carp jellybellies.
In Bleak House, the miserably-paid Guppy takes someone out for a lunch of lobster and lettuce.
Lobster is again becoming cheap and abundant, in part because of the decline of various other fisheries (or so I read recently; I can't find the source at the moment). So there's a bright side to global ecological collapse.
50: I believe the increase in lobsters also has to do with the fishing regulations. According to my Uncle, a cranky old man from Downeast Maine, they increased the minimum size of a lobster that you can harvest. This means lobsters get to live for another year before being eaten, which means they also get to breed for another year.
I want them to do the same thing with Maryland crabs, but the watermen will never stand for anything that gets in the way of harvesting as many crabs as possible in the short term, long term prospects be damned.
51: my Uncle, a cranky old man from Downeast Maine
I have uncles that resemble that remark! One of the crankier ones occasionally gets us lobsters that fell off the back of the boat, as it were, which aren't always quite as big as they ought to be. They're still tasty though.
Of course, you can get legal ones pretty cheap if you drive down to the dock and buy them direct too.
My feeling on the lobsters-for-convicts deal is that the prisoners were (justifiably) angry that they didn't get little bowls of melted butter for dipping. That would take a lot of the fun out of eating lobster all the time.
[missive from the pro-Emerson-massive]
Carp is, fwiw, actually nice. Bit boney but the flesh is really good.
Doesn't that depend on what it has been eating?
53: Returning to this thread having forgotten the topic, I read that as referring to one of our resident lawyers.
53: Is carp the magic immortal fish in that Aldous Huxley novel? he asked, barely half remembering.
I have a lot of trouble with the claim contained in 39, given that "mahi-mahi" (b/k/a "dolphin[fish]") was quite popular on menus in Florida 30 years ago. I suspect its increasing popularity has more to do with the economics of fish freezing and transport than with declining culinary standards necessitated by overfishing.
If you watch the linked video very carefully, you can see a certain flophouse resident with his dog about 30 seconds in.
Bit boney but the flesh is really good.
That's what she said!
My feeling on the lobsters-for-convicts deal is that the prisoners were (justifiably) angry that they didn't get little bowls of melted butter for dipping. That would take a lot of the fun out of eating lobster all the time.
Cf. Joe Frank, Escape from Paradise.
Huh. I just saw that the snowball thing ended up on the WaPo print version of the op-ed page. Online here.
The WaPo hasn't been doing so well with the story, it seems.
