Disqus - Latest Comments for MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel

Re: Charlie Rose: 27 More Women Report Harassment

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 04 May 2018 15:42:18 -0000

I was a guest on the Charlie Rose show for an entire segment during the 1990s. Everyone who remembers, I’d wager, has cautiously asked me if Rose behaved inappropriately with me.

No, he didn’t, although to my annoyance, my fellow guest talked over me condescendingly and answered questions loudly that Rose had directed at me. And I take up space in solidarity with the women who have been complaining about Rose’s behavior—as well as those who are yet to come forward.

It now is difficult to watch past segments of “The Charlie Rose Show” on YouTube, even if the subject matter is of interest to me, and if the folks on camera appear to be heaving themselves. Probably I’ll just stop.

Re: Question of the Day

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:56:48 -0000

[CN: alcoholism]

“And to the republic for which it stands,” from the Pledge of Allegiance, I misheard as “for witch at Stan’s,” the latter word being the name of the liquor store whose trucks made frequent deliveries to my parents’ home. I though, well, of course there might be a witch there!

Re: The Press Has Learned Nothing

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:53:27 -0000

Hypocrisy 101: CPAC is a gun-free zone.

Re: Discussion Thread: How Are You?

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:45:07 -0000

Our longest-staying guests just left; I’m exhausted. However, I truly enjoyed them: Lawyer A’s three kids grew up with mine, like siblings or cousins, and we hadn’t met her boyfriend before. They fell madly in love with Key West and plan to come back (G-d willing) when Mr. B and I re-rent Casa Biscuitbarrel South in 2019.

We three were caught in a downpour yesterday and took shelter under the overhang of The Basilica of St. Mary Star of the Sea. A priest in vestments came outside to greet us. I thanked him for offering a trio of soaking-wet Jews shelter from the storm. Mr. B rescued us and took the guests to a kosher restaurant—yes, Key West has ‘em—for a meat fix. I collapsed after a change of clothes.

Fortunately all of our guests’ politics are compatible with ours, so we could grumble together.

Re: Mueller Files 32 New Charges Against Manafort & Gates

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 17:46:54 -0000

Good.

Re: Daily Dose of Cute

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 16:25:38 -0000

Tiny wee ATTITUDINAL cat loaf!

How she would have enjoyed chasing the chickens begging snacks at breakfast this morning! As my guests and I sat on the patio of Le Grignote (note: French for “nibble”), a couple of roosters and a fast-moving hen snatched morsels of croissant and Belgian waffle from our fingertips as soon as they were offered. I’m sorry to see these friends go; I’ll be just as sorry when we leave Key West at the end of the month.

But there’s still next year, Maude willing.

Re: Trump Doesn't Feel Your Pain

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 13:06:56 -0000

Surprised his crib sheet doesn’t remind him to breathe.

Re: Beach Boys Singer Mike Love Says Music Could Have Saved Charles Manson's Victims

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 09:13:24 -0000

Sure, if you consider contracting a hot case of the clap “a hoot.”

Before he moved out of his own house and stopped paying the rent (the grifters were evicted), Dennis Wilson spent hundreds of dollars getting the whole Family treated for gonorrhea.

Re: Question of the Day

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 14:41:41 -0000

To @speedbudget, who “loved the Ramona books,” let’s give a group W00T! to their author Beverly Cleary, who is 101 years old (102 in April, G-d willing). Those who love Cleary’s books may enjoy her memoirs, for adult readers, The Girl From Yamhill and On My Own Two Feet. Wonderful reading, and these books really show how she drew upon her own experiences as well as her imagination to write for the children who asked, “Where are the books for kids like us?” when she was a children’s librarian, before becoming a writer.

The first thing I remember reading was the local newspaper, The South Bay Daily Breeze (Torrance, California). Why? It was there. I wasn’t yet old enough to walk to the public library, and there were almost no kids’ books at home. I was fascinated by the obituaries, especially of people who were born, say, in far-off years like 1887.

Re: We Resist: Day 393

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 14:25:47 -0000

Not that I’d forgotten about Mitt Romney’s incurable case of wealthy white privilege, but thanks for posting the link to the notorious “47%” remarks of 2012 in which he declared that those “lazy” [working poor] are NOT entitled to food!

Chances are depressingly high that he may be elected to the Senate from Utah, but we knew you when, Mittens, and we know you now. Grrrr!

Re: On the Parkland School Shooting

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 11:02:43 -0000

@catvoncat, may I take your hand and march in solidarity?

I, too, have spent much of the first six weeks of 2018 trying, phone call after phone call, to access Schedule II medications to treat a well-documented chronic pain disorder. The so-called health care insurer’s first response in every contact is to deny, deny, deny, which doesn’t help the pain, obviously, and heaps stress onto the situation to boot.

Re: The Virtual Pub Is Open

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:10:24 -0000

Happy to see a man get a first-ever-for-the-U.S. men’s medal in singles luge, @Kathy_A, but an American woman earned the first American singles luge medal ever at Sochi. Let’s hear it for Erin Hamlin, won bronze in 2014 and has returned to the Games to compete again!

Update: those above are the first American medals in luge singles. American teams have won silver and bronze in luge doubles a total of four times in the past. I read with interest for the first time today that “luge doubles” means just that—two people. It can be of any gender mix. So let’s see if this year’s competitors comprise something other than men together!

Re: The Virtual Pub Is Open

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Sat, 10 Feb 2018 09:02:26 -0000

Now I know how to get privacy at the pharmacy counter, @SueKerr, just shout “Menopause! Hysterectomy! Ladyparts!”

@DesertRose, great stories! I cracked up envisioning the wee Silkie eggs!

Yes, I’d love to be able to Accio! my meds—one my sons has been FedExing some of mine to me during the two months Mr. B and I are away. That is, once I’ve tangled attitudinally with both the provider and the so-called insurer. But that’s another story, and I’m trying to keep my sunny side up today.

It’s starting out a warm sunny day, which helps make up for the Internet access flickering off and on like fireflies. This isn’t southern Florida, it’s the northern Caribbean.

Re: The Virtual Pub Is Open

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 19:12:14 -0000

[CN: Mention of prescription drug, anxiety]

@lupinella12, when I told Mr. B that I had to pick up my refill of alprazolam tomorrow, he said, “That sounds like a Harry Potter word.”

Since I’m out of meds and feeling it, I wishfully called out my best Summoning Charm: “Accio alprazolam!”

Damn. Didn’t work.

Re: The Virtual Pub Is Open

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 19:06:53 -0000

[CN: Health warning]

The CDC has just advised people who keep backyard chickens not to kiss them, because salmonella.

The chickens roaming free here in Key West are so attitudinal that I wouldn’t dream of touching them. I’d be pecked to death before the salmonella could get me!

Re: UPenn Student Allegedly Murdered Because He Was Jewish and Gay by High School Friend Who Trained With Nazis

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 18:37:03 -0000

Me too. I also have a checkbook, and I will donate in the hope that Blaze’s memory endures as a blessing...

Re: Discussion Thread: Good Things

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:13:12 -0000

Discovered a guitar shop just a couple of blocks from the Key West cottage! It’s in a tiny outdoor “mall” ruled by a flock of impudently strutting hens and roosters. The latter let out robust cock-a-doodle-dos at any hour.

So I took over my acoustic guitar, propped on my shoulder as I did as a little girl with no case, and got it restrung. It sounds wonderful.

I hadn’t played in decades when I decided to sling my guitar and some songbooks into the car for the trip down. Since we got here at New Year’s I’ve been playing several times a day for as long as I can, to recover the calluses and hand strength needed to play on steel strings. My oldest son was amazed when he and his wife visited. He took a photo of me on the front steps of the cottage. I captioned it, “Back in the high life again,” since that’s the song I just learned.

As I strolled down Duval Street with the guitar on my shoulder, I was surprised how many passers-by smiled at me. All of them, it seemed. I smiled back.

Re: Question of the Day

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 15:54:28 -0000

@Laurie Brown, yes indeed, I remember the old “E-ticket ride” from Disneyland! Used to describe all sorts of things (food, sex, parties, dates) with sardonic approval! That’s something that bewildered my own boys when I took them to Disney properties and discovered that the A-through-E ticketing had been discontinued. And everyone kept the 10-attraction or 15-attraction ticket books on a desk or dresser-top, even when they contained only an A-ticket, good to ride the carousel...

Re: Question of the Day

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 10:42:39 -0000

I’m racking my brain and coming up empty! I grew up in Surf City, speaking “newscaster’s English,” utterly unaccented Southern California English.

When Frank and Moon Unit Zappa came up with their slang-heavy song [San Fernando] “Valley Girl” in the early ‘80s, we tittered helplessly at the inland folk and their jargon: “Gag me with a spoon!”

Re: Quentin Tarantino Is an Abusive, Disgusting Person

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 18:10:40 -0000

@SusanMc, small creepy world, isn’t it? I’d heard the porn story too, but must have repressed it.

Re: Quentin Tarantino Is an Abusive, Disgusting Person

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 11:14:45 -0000

Before and while Quentin Tarantino was getting a toehold in the movies, he clerked at a video rental in my hometown. One of my oldest friends recalled frequently “that Quentin” making rude remarks not only about her (“Obviously YOU don’t have a date for Saturday night”), but also about almost everything she checked out, especially if it was a movie that might have passed what was later known as “the Bechdel test,” or children’s films to please her goddaughters when they came over. In short, what QT
considered chick flicks.

Were my friend and I ever aghast/surprised when Tarantino got so famous so fast. So no, none of the recent revelations about him surprise me at all.

And I’ve never seen one of his films. Nor will I.

Re: I'm Going to Crunch Man Doritos in All the Man Caves

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 10:18:58 -0000

When Bic introduced ladypens, the Amazon reviews were scathing and priceless! They’re still there, I think.

The marketing term for such gendered products is “shrink ‘em and pink ‘em.”

Back in the ‘80s, commercial laundries tried to charge more to wash and press my women’s Brooks Brothers button-down shirts than men paid for near-identical garments. It took a then-landmark and much-publicized court case in the District of Columbia to change the law.

Re: Question of the Day

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 09:48:44 -0000

[deleted]

Re: Bill Cosby’s Honorary Degree From the University of Pennsylvania Has Been Revoked

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 10:09:59 -0000

Good.

Re: State of the Union Open Thread

MrsTarquinBiscuitbarrel — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 22:15:21 -0000

Catching up here on the SOTU, since as soon as it began, Mr. B insisted that we walk around the corner for ice creams... regards and sticky fingers from Key West!