Comments

  1. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    It looks to me like David’s responsive comment would be applicable in the context in which Beatrice indicated her father was on the spectrum, yes? A preliminary inquiry to that effect might have saved him exacerbating her frustration.

    Okay, now I follow. In that regard, I agree.

  2. Portia, snowbound says

    I put my hair in a ponytail, bent my neck weird, looked in the mirror, and held up a tape measure. I think I have enough hair to donate. :D

    Missed my hair appointment today though. *sniffle*

  3. vaiyt says

    Wolverine and Hercules kiss in a comic (X-Treme X-Men) where they were gay since the beginning. American comics news sources don’t care, but the local fans here are going batshit. Meanwhile, I point and laugh.

  4. Portia, snowbound says

    Why do my mom’s perfectly normal, non-intrusive questions about my life make me want to hide under the table? I can’t figure out why I feel this way.

  5. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    Hey guys, bit of freedom from religion activism to pass on to you to act on if you feel so inclined. So yesterday, this happened. Relevant excerpt:

    “Let me have everybody’s attention, please,” said Magistrate John Caywood just before the meeting. “…at this time, I’d like to ask Magistrate Sammons to please lead us in prayer. Anybody who’s uncomfortable with this, we’ll give you a moment to step outside.”

    Smith was the only audience member who stepped out of the courtroom.

    “…our most gracious Heavenly Father, we come to you today with sad hearts,” Sammons said. “We’re so sad that we as a nation have let such a small minority group tell us what to do. Lord, I ask forgiveness for myself, but I’m of the old school where we don’t run, we fight. So, forgive me for that.”

    “Lord, we ask You to be with us always today…we just ask Your special blessing for this court, this good Christian bunch of people that are always trying to do the right thing for the county. We ask all this in Your Son’s precious name. Amen.”

    So the ACLU was there and they may or may not pick up this case, hopefully they do see the merit in it as it very clearly violates the First Amendment. What we can do in the meantime though is to contact the Boyle Co. Fiscal Court, the ACLU, Americans United, FFRF, and American Atheists about it.

    This is the contact information for Boyle County Fiscal Court j.e. Harold McKinney

    Judge/Executive

    Harold McKinney
    321 West Main Street, Room 111
    Danville, Kentucky 40422
    phone:(859) 238-1100
    fax: (859) 238-1108
    hmckinney@boyleky.com

    Office Hours:
    8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., weekdays
    Regular Fiscal Court Meetings:
    Second Tuesday of each month, 10 AM and
    Fourth Tuesday, 10 AM

    This is for ACLU, urge them that you’d like them to take up this case:

    General Feedback Form
    Write:
    125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York NY 10004.
    Or call: 212-549-2500

    AU:

    Email: americansunited@au.org
    Phone: (202) 466-3234
    Fax: (202) 466-2587
    Address: 1301 K Street NW, Suite 850E, Washington, DC 20005

    FFRF:

    EMAIL: contact form

    Freedom From Religion Foundation
    PO Box 750
    Madison WI 53701
    608/256-8900
    FAX 608/204-0422

    American Atheists:

    Contact form

  6. says

    Portia,

    Parents have the (black!) magical ability to say words that, if simply printed out and read by a random person to another random person, would seem innocent and possibly even positive. When said by a parent to their child, even an adult child, it takes on all sorts of hidden dimensions based on past experiences and can leave you feelings 11 kinds of discombobulated. You can train your parents out of a large part of it, but never all of it.

  7. Portia, snowbound says

    Joe:

    You’re exactly right. Plus, I end up feeling guilty for feeling annoyed (or something like annoyed) because she only means well, I really know that. I can (and have) told her that I’m not up for questions or discussion on a certain topic, and she’s 100% ok with that and respects it. So it’s just me, being irrationally irritated (is the story my brain tells me). But thanks to you, now I realize that there’s some underlying reason or trigger button buried down there that I don’t know or really even need to know in order to just take a breath and let go of the irritation.

  8. cicely (Hell, YES, I'm ready for a Real Change) says

    Is that an exclusive or an inclusive one? Chocolate, bacon covered *hugs* for those who want them?

    I save those for special occasions!
    :D

    Hi, feministdalek; welcome in! And yes, it is Caine who owns an entirely-improbable number of rats.
    :)

    I just like the Horde/Pharyngula more than most other online communities, so I’d rather post here than anywhere else.

    Hey, me too!
    :) :)

    t’s late February 2013. You might not believe it, but 102 #rhinos have been poached so far >>THIS YEAR<<. One rhino per 11 hrs. HELP!!!

    :( :( :(

    WMDKitty: Hurrah for increased stability!

    “Spermburgling”. Now there’s a word you don’t see every day! It conjures up images of roving black-clad, ski-masked women stealthing through the night with crowbars and buckets (and, where applicable, ladders—for the second-story work).

  9. Portia, snowbound says

    cicely:

    It conjures up images of roving black-clad, ski-masked women stealthing through the night with crowbars and buckets (and, where applicable, ladders—for the second-story work).

    And they call themselves….

    Lillith’s Angels

  10. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    Currently have a post in mod which had more than 3 links. Here’s an alternative in case it never gets through: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=7404376#post7404376

    Also, I made cookies! For each letter you send I’ll imagine I gave one to you… ;) Some of you already deserve some noms… Form a line! (cicely, portia, joe, azkyroth, vaiyt and everyone whose name is on the first page…)

  11. David Marjanović says

    Ever lurk a thread and watch someone run headfirst right into the brick wall that is the Dunning-Kruger effect? I think that’s unfolding right now in the Krauss and philosophy thread. I want to reply, but I don’t even know where to start with the idea that the theory of gravity aren’t falsifiable, that natural selection is not falsifiable, or may even be indistinguishable from intelligent design.

    Done.

    David!! Just the help I need: How are you on Arabic?

    Bad. Never tried to learn it.

    Need something transliterated:
    النذل

    I’m pretty sure that I know the meaning, but not at all sure of pronunciation.

    From looking it up, and from experimenting with the Windows Character Map (♥!), the first is a ‘alif, and the second is a lām, giving the definite article al-. That makes further sense because the rest is 3 letters, by far the most common number for an Arabic word to have in its basic form. Then comes a nūn, then a dhāl, and then another lām – “n”, then “th” as in “this” (not as in “thick”, that’s another letter), then “l”. To know what vowels to fill in, I’d need to know the language, the spelling alone doesn’t tell.

    Great explanation. Now here’s a potentially illuminating question. Should it have been Beatrice’s responsibility to explain all that to David?

    No, why? It’s my responsibility to read the thread so I know the context. I remember that Beatrice has complained about her dad before, about quite different things he also does and that I can’t explain this way. That’s exactly why I started with “in isolation”, put that in boldface, and then went on with “would” instead of just stating it as a fact.

    But now I won’t catch up (even though I gather Beatrice has weighed in), I’ll just go to bed. It’s… crap, it’s a quarter to four in the morning. FML!

  12. dongiovanni says

    cicely – I like horses and peas insofar as they refer to the commonly accepted meaning of the term… if this is not what you meant than I apologise for the confusion that shall inevitably ensue.

    Lynna – What is wrong with Limbaugh and related right wing commentators? Do they really think that a deficit is more important than 40 million odd people not having adequate healthcare? Sorry about this, I just can’t understand the mindset that would prompt that kind of behaviour.

    throwaway – Cake is better than cookies. Always. Et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. Not saying that cookies are bad in any way, but cake is just better.

  13. David Marjanović says

    …uh, except that the vowels have to be short, because long ones would be spelled out (as ‘alif, yā’ or wāw) AFAIK.

  14. Portia, snowbound says

    Welcome, dongiovanni!

    …confusion is the least of your worries at this point. Here, take this suit of armor. Or just run.

  15. Portia, snowbound says

    We, in the Give Peas a Chance faction of the Lounge, have forged a small but scrappy resistance movement to the Tyranny of the Pea-haters. There is also a smaller subfaction of Horse Defenders, but we mostly seem to sympathize with abject terror as a reasonable reaction in the face of the Awesomeness that is Equinity.

  16. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    dongiovanni: Much as I hate to consign newcomers to Outer Darkness on such short acquaintance, I’ve just gotta say
     
    Blasphemer! Heretic! Hater-of-Kittens!
     
    and watch sternly as you are flung into the Equine-infested Pea-gardens of Hell.
     
    No, I’m sorry. You brought this on yourself.

  17. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    As the old saying goes, “A day without Horses is like a day without showers of flaming bile”.
     
    And also, “A pea in the hand is an Abomination Unto Nuggan. Put that thing down—you don’t know where it’s been!”

  18. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Oh-oh, deep rifts forming. *Lays out a spread of bungied grog and swill to keep things together*

  19. dongiovanni says

    What do the kittens have to do with it? My kitten – loving credentials are impeccable. I even post on whyevolutionistrue occasionally.

    Also, I’m half convinced that horses are a manifestation of the Tatterdemalion King of Carcosa. Just the way they look at you.

  20. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    They lurk beneath the pie-crusts of the unsuspecting, you know.
     
    The peas, that is. Not the Horses.
     
    You’ll find Them lurking in darkened out-buildings, poised to spring out upon the innocent and the unwary.

  21. Portia, snowbound says

    Well….Horses have been lurking in unsuspecting folks’ foodstuffs as of late…

  22. dongiovanni says

    Flaming bile? Is that even possible? Am I going to have to buy bile and try to set fire to it? Or are you referring to the Pope’s valedictory address?

  23. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Well….Horses have been lurking in unsuspecting folks’ foodstuffs as of late…

    …springing out upon (and into) the innocent and the unwary.
     
    Who complained. And rightly so!

    I’m entirely willing to believe in a Carcosa Connection for the Hellbeasts.

  24. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Flaming bile? Is that even possible?

    It’s Supernaturally Malefic!

  25. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    That said, horse salami isn’t actually that bad.

    I wouldn’t know. I do not partake of the Unholy Communion.

  26. Crudely Wrott says

    Just to let Esteleth and the rest of you wonderful people know that a big chunk of care arrived today in my bank account. The event was most welcome! Many, many thanks.

    The first thing I did was go to the grocery store. Second, made rent up to date though another weeks worth comes due tomorrow. Also tomorrow Sprint gets enough dollars to make my phone work again and the folks who rent me storage get paid for February’s rent.

    I’ve been absent from the Lounge for the last couple of days since my InnerTubes keep going flat. Several outages per day, some lasting all night. Just when I most wanted to be in touch, doncha know.

    Right now I’m going to have another quick bite to eat and then hit the hay or, as my father used to say, “hit the goose hair”. (no such luck to have feather pillows and down comforters just now)

    I’m very tired and have slept but little for three days. Just short naps. Lots of worries and anticipation concerning the days ahead.

    Just know that your generosity is making a huge difference and I have some breathing room. Next on the list is visiting health care providers and relief agencies. Neither one of which I’m fond of doing.

    Dear Horde, may the blessings of Cthulhu be upon you and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s appendage touch you gently. May you always make up such a sweet and laudable assemblage of humanity and never forget that you really do make a difference that extends far beyond yourselves.

    Now, to belly and then to bed.

  27. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    What is wrong with Limbaugh and related right wing commentators? Do they really think that a deficit is more important than 40 million odd people not having adequate healthcare? Sorry about this, I just can’t understand the mindset that would prompt that kind of behaviour.

    I’m quite certain they regard the 40 million people not having adequate healthcare as a feature, not a bug.

  28. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    …so, I knew a guy who made some speculative investments. Like, when he and his friends invested in this Italian restaurant. I was pretty skeptical, but it wound up being a success. His profit margin wasn’t great, but it was there, and it’s growing.

    He wasn’t a fool, though. He tried to draw the line when his friends’ next idea was to open an animal shelter. But, you know what they say: “In for the penne, in for a pound.”

    ^.^

  29. rowanvt says

    I just had my first lock up of the year with my snakes, and it was the matriarch and demi-patriarch of my Sweet Corn temperament line! If none other mate, I will still be happy to have super docile baby snakes to play with again.

    Not like this nasty little piece of work. Also pairing her parents together again. Evilest corn snake hatchling there ever was.

    http://imageshack.us/a/img100/1016/evilbaby.jpg

  30. Beatrice says

    Azkyroth,

    I have to admit that I know that David is on the spectrum. His response was hurtful because it took a ridiculously charitable view on something that is only a very small part of my father being an unpleasant person, some of which I occasionally write here. David doesn’t read regularly, and even if he were, I wouldn’t expect him to know everything I have ever written, but I think his response was going out of his way to give the most charitable reading to something for which the easiest explanation is… less nice anyway. Even with not knowing any of the context. I was also in a really bad way last night, so reading that comment didn’t exactly help.

    Does telling him to fuck off even though I know he’s autistic make me an asshole? Even if it does, in this particular instance, I don’t regret my response. A nicer thing to do would have been to write what you have written (and thank you for that explanation), but I was in no state to stay somewhat polite in more than one paragraph.

    I do understand that people on the spectrum would benefit from explanations of some situations, so that they would know how to respond without looking inconsiderate or hurtful, or getting hurt themselves. But there are situations, like this one, where the other party is already hurt and angry. In that moment it is easy to start doubting whether someone said something because they didn’t know any better or because they just didn’t care to stop and think for a moment before hitting Submit.

  31. Beatrice says

    Ah, I read this page now. Well. Apparently, I completely misunderstood David’s nuanced comment, which was clearly about some different theoretical situation I should have taken no notice of.

    That was sarcasm, btw.

    Whatever. I’m not going to argue and show off as a greater asshole than I already appear to be/am. I already clarified.

    *grumpy hugs* to those who need them, ignore the grumpiness

  32. dongiovanni says

    Hmm… could I please have your thoughts on Chocolate Mousse recipes?

    And that is just the most adorable glabrous little corn snake baby from the pits of the outer dark. So cute.

  33. rq the kutalikleptomanic says

    Good morning. I see there are cookies to be had.

    *hugs*, Beatrice. And for Portia, too. I know that parentally-induced feeling you speak of. My dad says “Hello, how are you doing?” and I panic at the thought of giving a wrong answer. And here I am, all grown up and with me own house now. *sigh*

    +++

    In other news, I have no other news, except that I realized my faux pas with the Furnace yesterday was because, for a few days there, I forgot to mention how Awesome the Good Horse really is, and I was punished for my omissions. I shall henceforth strive to better remember the Greatness that is the Equine Nature and Spirit. With many sacrifices of peas.

  34. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    Wife and I went to see Cloud Atlas yesterday. Highly recommended, despite rather excessive amounts of bang-bang action and an unnecessary “Happy Ending” not in the book. Gripping stories, amazing sets and special effects, and very clever use of a small number of excellent actors to play parts in all six interwoven stories – at the end, they showed who each of these few had played, and in many cases, particularly those involving cross-dressing, I hadn’t had a clue at the time.

  35. says

    Good morning
    Talking about films, I think I need to get Beasts of the Southern Wild when it’s released on DVD here. Thank you haters, you made me realize that a film I might really like is out there.
    Oh, and it was not my idea to make Mac and Cheese tomorrow. OK, I didn’t argue against it, either…

    Crip Dyke
    I think you must mix me up with somebody. There are several knitters here, but my only use for knitting needles is making pinchos.

    beatrice
    (((hugs)))

    David
    Women are quite used to having their existence only acknowledged in terms of work not done. Because servants are not greeted. Servants also don’t have plans of their own. The behaviour beatrice has described of her dad reminds me often of my own “I’m not a sexist therefore I don’t have to change my behaviour, it is automatically not sexist” dad, only worse.
    And it grinds you down.

  36. says

    dongiovanni
    My thoughts on chocolate mousse recipes?
    I like them!
    ;)
    But maybe you’d rather like an actual recipe…

    OK, classical French Mousse au Chocolat
    Easy as pie
    Beat 6 eggyolks with 100g confectioner’s sugar, add some drops cognac
    Melt 200g of chocolate. Attention: white chocolate doesn’t work!
    Carefully add the chocolate to the eggyolks
    Beat the whites with a pinch of salt.
    Add 1/4 of the whites to the chocolate mixture without taking much care.
    Add the rest in several portions and carefully incorporate them with a wooden (or silicone) spoon.
    When all is mixed, put into bowl or glasses, put some cling film on top and put into the fridge for 24 hours.
    Yes, that’s right, a full day.
    This means it’s not much of a spontaneous treat but very well to prepare in advance for a dinner party.

  37. rq the kutalikleptomanic says

    Giliell
    Waiting a full day for chocolate mousse is torture. It’s one of the reasons I don’t make it, because the waiting period is soooo loooonnnng… (But thanks for the recipe. ;) )

  38. rq says

    carlie
    That’s interesting, I’ll have to try it, because every other recipe that requires melted chocolate I’ve ever made makes a big deal about not splashing any water into the melting chocolate, because it separates it. Maybe it’s the difference between a little and a lot, though.

  39. Matt Penfold says

    I’m not sure how stable that mousse make with just chocolate and water would be. I suspect if you kept it for any length of time it would be begin to seperate, as fat and water do not like to mix unless you use an emulsifier, which in standard mousse is where the eggs yolks come in.

  40. rq says

    I am, as of this moment, revoking all of FuckingCat’s balcony privileges. When he returns (again), he will never go out there again, and will simply have to learn to go in and out via the front door, like any normal pet, instead of jumping off the balcony railing. Bloody hell.
    I hope he’s not hurt, there’s a lot less soft snow on the ground this time around…

  41. rq says

    *ahem*
    Looks like I owe FuckingCat an apology, seeing as how this time his absence on the balcony meant that he’d gone up the roof, not down. He is now back inside, but I will force him to use the front door for going outside from now on. /catstress

  42. Ogvorbis says

    Good morning. Happy Friday!

    DREAM WARNING

    Had multiple remembered dreams last night.

    One of them involved a small herd of dwarfs, a box of donuts, and a giant bottle of creme de menthe. I was trying to get the donuts and alcohol from western Minnesota (for some reason (hell, it’s a dream, it ain’t supposed to make sense) the donuts and creme de menthe were in storage at the Spam plant (which I think is in southern Minnesota, not western . . . )) to Florida. But the donuts and the green liquor were considered holy by the dwarfs and they were chasing me. Picture the chase scene from The Blues Brothers but insert dwarfs driving Mini Coopers for the police and police cars. Yes, it was strange.

    TRIGGER WARNING

    I also dreamt of scouts. Normally, when I dream, I am always me. I am almost always in my own body in dreams, never outside looking at me, except for the cub scout dreams. Those dreams I have always been outside of myself but still feeling the pain (and, yes, pleasure (shudder)) of the abuse. This time I was in me, I was in my body, and a man, a man with a beard, a tall and heavy man, showed up while I was being abused. And in a detached part of my mind, I wondered, oh, shit, is this yet another rapist I didn’t remember?

    He took me by the hand, and took T and S and S by the hand, and led us out of the trailer, out of the tent, out of the campsite, out of the community center, out of all the different places I was raped, and walked us away from our abuser. I woke in a cold sweat with my mind running away on twelve different what-if paths. I didn’t remember ever seeing this man before. Ever.

    Eventually, I went back to sleep. I woke up, headed for the bathroom, and dropped my toothbrush into the sink. There, in the mirror, was the stranger who helped us walk away. (It really did shock me even though this sounds like a plot twist in a b-movie.)

    So my today self showed up in a dream about my past self as a non-me character to lead me away from my past. What the fuck? This is like the dreams where I, as a child, took the hands of others and walked them away.

    I wish I knew what my mind was trying to tell me. Or that my mind would stop sending me messages that are so damn allegorical.

    Anyway, feeling better today.

  43. Portia, snowbound says

    Og:
    Glad you’re feeling better. *hugs*

    Giliell:
    Mmmmm Mousse. I may have to try your recipe.
    And mac n cheese.
    You’ve planted a lot of food cravings, ha.

    ————–

    The Onion made me snicker this morning: Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian

    “The other week, I was this close to picketing in front of an abortion clinic,” the mortified teenager said, his eyes welling up with tears. “I know it’s wrong, but I wanted so badly to do it anyway. I even made one of those signs with photos of dead fetuses and hid it in my closet. I felt so ashamed, yet, at the same time, it was all strangely titillating.”

  44. Portia, snowbound says

    rq
    Yeah, it’s so weird the way parents can affect you. I feel better knowing I’m not alone (and thus not an Ungrateful Wretch of a Daughter).

    …I think one of my issues is that whenever I’m annoyed with her I immediately think “You’ll be sorry when she’s gone.” It’s been that way ever since her mother died four years ago. I’m a little neurotic, yes.

  45. chigau (違う) says

    Oggie
    *hugs*
    It sounds like the “adult you” and the “child you” are agreeing.
    Probably a good thing.

  46. broboxley OT says

    okay, will comment on dads with adult children
    responses may sound the same but the meanings vary
    “hmm okay” may mean any one of the following
    what the fuck does he/she want now?
    how much is this gonna cost?
    lalalalala I dont want to hear you
    I love you but I don’t want to know(common)
    I’m glad you are alive and apparently well (also common)

    parental discussions are rarely straight forward because of years of history as an authority figure who has to learn to let that go.

    I don’t have much practice or history as my father died when I was very young and my mother has been quite insane her entire adult life but functional enough to not be institutionalized so I wing it.

  47. Portia, snowbound says

    rq
    I would guess they think that this:

    “The Bible is the foundation of this nation, of our laws, of our society,” Burnett said.

    constitutes setting the record straight. : P Because us godless heathens have been actually setting the record straight wrt the foundation of U.S. democracy spreading our secular hellbound lies about the Founders.

    Because Pilgrims!

  48. rq says

    Portia
    Considering my dad has cancer and his time is running (extremely) short, I also get a huge guilt-trip out of not being happy? grateful? enough when he asks about my life. But when I was little, there was just too much nit-picking and putting down for not being good enough (that is, using my reasons, not his reasons to come to a (polarly opposite) decisio), that I just panic at even simple questions… Eh. *shrug* What’s a girl to do? We can start an Ungrateful Daughter-Wretch Corner, if you like. :)

  49. Portia, snowbound says

    Well, with such good company, I’ll be quite happy in that corner, rq.
    Many many hugs for your dad-situation.

  50. rq says

    Portia
    Ah, right, the pilgrims. The ones who brought turkey to the Americas to share with the heathen Injuns, and thus convince them of the Truth of the Bible and the Love of Jeezus Ker-rist. Or something. Well, if the special effects don’t suck, it’ll be worth watching a piece of Bible-ugliness-omitting crap.
    Now, what drinks shall we serve in this awesome corner of ours?

  51. Portia, snowbound says

    Haha Definitely “worth watching.”

    …hmm…I’m having some hazelnut coffee to start my day but you are probably ready for a cocktail by this point in yours! Especially with the FuckingCat giving you grief!

  52. Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Well, accept my apologies, Gilliel.

    I haven’t had much use for knitting needles lately either. I haven’t even painted anything since law school started – not one darn thing. To the extent I’ve had any down time, I’m just treading water stress-wise.

  53. thumper1990 says

    @rq #562

    I read the list (Yep, I’m that bored!) and of all of them I’m actually quite excited about this guy:

    Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi – 12/1

    Age: 71

    Nationality: Italy

    Pros: Thinks Darwin can be reconciled with the Bible, quotes Amy Winehouse on Twitter and says Church is boring.

    Cons: Sounds like he’s in the wrong job.

  54. Portia, snowbound says

    Crip Dyke,

    Now I’m going to have go back and look for what knitting thing you posted.
    I didn’t paint for long periods of time during law school, either. Sorry you’re bogged down right now.

  55. Portia, snowbound says

    Nevermind, thought it was a pattern or something. Don’t mind me…gonna go confuse myself elsewhere for a minute :)

  56. rq says

    Portia
    Hazelnut coffee sounds delicious. With Bailey’s instead of milk, in my case. ;)
    Actually, I have to drive to choir tonight, so I guess that will have to wait, too.

  57. rq says

    For those brave enough to try yet another weight-loss program, I present the Moose Cleanse. As the tagline indicates, any weight-loss is incidental.
    (I’m going to post this on my friends’ Facebooks every time they put up another post about how cupcakes make girls big or how exercise is the single thing missing for a healthy life-style.)

  58. Portia, snowbound says

    I am CRANKY.
    Real estate agent schedules closing at exactly the time I told him I was scheduled to be in court.
    Dry cleaner isn’t going to have my stuff ready til next Tuesday. Stupid storm.
    Had I been told earlier (that is, on Tuesday when the problem occurred) I could have made other arrangements.
    Rarg.
    I’m gonna come up for air from organizing my desk and have something to eat and try to banish the crankies.

  59. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Tree Lobsters!

    Hmm… could I please have your thoughts on Chocolate Mousse recipes?

    I approve of them.

    “In for the penne, in for a pound.”

    *groooooan!*

    chigau!
    *hug*

    In other news, I have no other news, except that I realized my faux pas with the Furnace yesterday was because, for a few days there, I forgot to mention how Awesome the Good Horse really is, and I was punished for my omissions. I shall henceforth strive to better remember the Greatness that is the Equine Nature and Spirit. With many sacrifices of peas.

    If this were so, then the Horses would be revealed as a collection of blackmailers/extortionists. Just like the Xian god.
     
    Happily, we can know that the Horses had nothing to do with the Furnace, by the fact that the house did not explode, then burn to the ground (because they are bottomless well-springs of Maleficence, that’s why!); and also by the fact that no catastrophic weather phenomena bedevilled Usaia (because other places Do Not Matter (and possibly Do Not Exist) for purposes of Super-and/or-Un-natural Signs & Portents) in connection with the misFurnacement.

    Ogvorbis: Nicely surreal dwarf dream; I approve.
    The other dream sounds…promising.

    rq: You know, if the Horses have been filling the top spots in the RCC (using the same image-distortion technology that made it possible for space fish to masquerade as perfectly ordinary Venician vampires) since at least the Renaissance, it would explain a lot!

  60. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    Dearest Horde, I have discovered a glorious lunchtime thing.

    (this contains both meat and cheese, so those who abstain from either/or are thusly cautioned)

    To wit:

    Honey wheat bread.

    Generously slathered with:
    (1) cranberry sauce
    (2) honey mustard
    (3) chopped walnuts

    Topped with:
    (1) roasted turkey
    (2) brie.

    Pardon me, my mouth just had an orgasm. :D

  61. glodson says

    Frascotti hinted that Hasbro may have more of these gender-crossover products in the works.“There are lots of opportunities to broaden play opportunities that historically have been more gender-specific.”

    This made me a bit dizzy. I get what they are going for (more money by expanding their marketing to both genders), but…. yea.

  62. opposablethumbs says

    Wow Ogvorbis. Sounds like a shock to have experienced such a dream – but this has to be another positive step, surely? Your adult self taking control of the memories, perhaps (which is kind of what seems to have very gradually been happening since this all started coming through)????

    Do you always remember your dreams in such lucid detail, or do these ones behave differently for you do you think?

    Argh, RL is being a bit too frantic for my liking. And I’m not concentrating, and this work is due next week … Concentrate! Dammit.

  63. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    Oggie, if I could speculate, I’d say that the dream featuring now-you coming to tend to then-you is a good thing. Best of luck. *hugs*

  64. David Marjanović says

    *hugs for Crudely Wrott*

    Women are quite used to having their existence only acknowledged in terms of work not done.

    *facepalm* Now I remember that Beatrice posted just the other day that her dad pointed out the kitchen floor was wet and expected her to wipe it all up because she was the woman in the house. Yeah, he’s an asshole.

    Keeping track of so many people’s backstories is difficult, especially when I only know them as names and avatar pictures. The Reset Rule comes naturally to me, and it goes both ways. :-(

  65. David Marjanović says

    TRIGGER WARNING

    […]

    I wish I knew what my mind was trying to tell me. Or that my mind would stop sending me messages that are so damn allegorical.

    There isn’t always a message. Dreams are often confused, incoherent, chaotic even.

    And if there’s one, you’ll find out. Don’t try to do all the work at once. *long hug*

  66. says

    Hmmmm… I thought I had posted a comment.

    No biggie. MORE hugs for Oggie… I think the current dream is you hopefully internalizing positive messages about yourself. Because the adult you is an awesome person who would protect anyone who needed it.

    See, when I have dreams, it is about being a drone on an assembly line where the parts come to fast to finish, and there’s a never-ending stream of them.

  67. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    Congress has passed the inclusive VAWA! :D :D

    The GOP nonsense failed to get enough votes. So the Senate version – which includes expanded protection for Native American women, queer women, and noncitizen women – is on its way to Obama.

  68. says

    Y’know, there was this person here that I used to think was awesome. When she revealed that she is Pro-Pea, I struggled with how to cope with the devaststing news. It took time but I came to accept that she has to have one failing. But now I see that she disagrees about Cake>Cookies??!! Thats just too far. Now she never gets to come to Pensacola and enjoy sunny, non-snowbound weather. If only I could remember her name. Starts with a ‘P’, ends in an ‘-ortia’… :)

  69. Portia, snowbound says

    Do we need to head back to the Thunderdome and continue the Epic Fight That Wasn’t?
    Cooooookies for Life!

  70. glodson says

    The GOP nonsense failed to get enough votes. So the Senate version – which includes expanded protection for Native American women, queer women, and noncitizen women – is on its way to Obama.

    Good. I am glad it got passed, and still rather disgusted that it took this long.

  71. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    Observation:

    The vote on VAWA was mostly along party lines. However, some Republicans voted “aye.”

    Most of said Republicans are women.

    Funny that.

  72. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Esteleth, that sandwich does, indeed, sound glorious.

    Congress has passed the inclusive VAWA! :D :D
    The GOP nonsense failed to get enough votes. So the Senate version – which includes expanded protection for Native American women, queer women, and noncitizen women – is on its way to Obama.

    Yesssssss!!!
    *punches air*

  73. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    And hurrah for glue that can actually…you know…make things stick to other things.

  74. Portia, snowbound says

    Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit. Prepare yourself for defeat! Or save yourself the humiliation and surrender now.

  75. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Tony: You know…Portia was propagandising for the Horses, just last night. I fear the worst. I fear that Portia is…
     
    …nag-ridden.

  76. glodson says

    cicely

    I just imagined that you put on a pair of sunglasses as you said the last bit. I really hope you did as you typed out your post at 599.

  77. Ogvorbis says

    Nicely surreal dwarf dream; I approve.
    The other dream sounds…promising.

    Yeah. The dwarf dream was both surreal and strange.

    The other dream, I have no idea what to make of it. It wasn’t frightening. But at the same time it was scary.

    Your adult self taking control of the memories, perhaps (which is kind of what seems to have very gradually been happening since this all started coming through)????

    Do you always remember your dreams in such lucid detail, or do these ones behave differently for you do you think?

    Yeah, I do seem to be taking control, or at least taking others by the hand (which includes me?). And no, most of my dreams are not this lucid, nor do I remember them. The nightmares (9/11 or scouts) I tend to remember. Nonsense ones are usually forgotten upon waking (other than a memory that I had a dream).

    There isn’t always a message. Dreams are often confused, incoherent, chaotic even.

    And if there’s one, you’ll find out. Don’t try to do all the work at once. *long hug*

    The dreams about being a scout, about my abuse, tend to lead somewhere, tend to open up something that I had forgotten about (usually for self-protection). So I have kinda trained myself to look for meaning, or to poke around in the memory gaps, when it I have these.

    I think the current dream is you hopefully internalizing positive messages about yourself. Because the adult you is an awesome person who would protect anyone who needed it.

    Well, the adult I am appears to be who I thought I was pretending to be, so it sounds right.

    See, when I have dreams, it is about being a drone on an assembly line where the parts come to fast to finish, and there’s a never-ending stream of them.

    Oh. That’s life. Normality.

  78. says

    cicely:
    NEIGH! say it isnt so! Quickly, my entourage, bring me the fainting couch! And some Red Velvet cake.
    ****
    I do believe you have spoken too soon Portia. My skills are known throughout the world. I am unparalled.
    Plus I’m really good at board games.
    Pictionary it is.
    ***Alert! Alert!
    Please stand at attention!
    Incoming!
    PENIS FACTS
    ” 1. Spiny Norman no more.

    Evolution has discarded many parts of the human penis, including … its spines?

    Penile spines are little tiny ridges made of a hard tissue called keratin, and line the outside of the penis. They look (I think) a bit like those punk-inspired accessories that are so popular these days. Lots of animals, including the chimpanzees, still have penis spikes. Christine Dell-Amore of National Geographic News writes that the human genome project gave us the information that the ancestor we share with the chimps also had the spines.

    But that was so six million years ago. The code for the “penile spine enhancer” was deleted from the human androgen receptor gene, says Nature (androgens are male sex hormones) and Dell-Amore reports that it happened “before our common ancestor split into modern humans and Neanderthals about 700,000 years ago.” Quite a few deletions were discovered — 510, if you please — and gave us other spiffy changes like having bigger brains and not having whiskers.

    It’s not yet certain just what the spines are for, though there are theories, Jen Quaraishi reports in Mother Jones like a correlation between spines and greater promiscuity, also that they make for faster copulation time. If you want to see what they look like, here’s a picture of a cat penis on a blog called Sand Walk.

    http://www.alternet.org/9-fascinating-things-you-may-not-know-about-penis?page=0%2C0

    Number nine is definitely odd…

  79. Portia, Consequential Pursuit Warrior says

    You are free to be wrong about cookies. Just know that you are wrongwrongwrong.

    Cheesecake is better than cookies. Tis the only concession I shall make.

    You’ve done it now.
    You’ve really done it.
    I gave you two choices, you fell right into my trap.
    Rule number one: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
    Rule number two: Don’t go up against a Sicilian in a battle of wits when death is on the line.
    Rule number three: Don’t challenge Portia to Pictionary.

    Muahahhahaha

  80. thumper1990 says

    Well, I give up. #610 went to the right site but the comic didn’t display. I took the “http:\\” out, and now #611 is trying to take you elsewhere on Pharyngula.

    There is a reason I’m not in IT.

    Thanks anyway, Portia! I’ll try some other time, on a different thread…

  81. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    I just imagined that you put on a pair of sunglasses as you said the last bit. I really hope you did as you typed out your post at 599.

    Sadly, no, for I do not own a pair of sunglasses.
     
    I do, however, own a pair of eyebrows, which I wiggled ferociously as I typed it.
    :D

    thumper: Especially the “secret message”:
    “Some days, it seems like there are more statistical outliers than there are valid data points. How am I supposed to justify my conclusions with that sort of data?”

    Tony: I will not say you “neigh”. (Even though you clearly did. I am trusting that this aberration will not be repeated, else it’s to the Horsepond with you.)

  82. says

    Well look who went out and got herself a shiny new nym.

    Neverthesless, it shall do you no good.

    None who have entered the octagon have bested me. I shall continue my generosity and allow you to pick some allies to have on your team. There plenty of Pea lovers in here that might come to your aid.

    I shall need no help, as I have been besting ‘Consequential Pursuit Warriors’ since my infancy…

  83. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Hmf, you picked the wrong game, then I forgot to change it.

    Nonetheless, you shall still hang your head in defeat.

    ~~~CALLING ALL PEA-LOVERS*~~~

    *Those with pea-ambivalence are also welcome to the cause. These tyrants are trying to establish a cake-igarchy and banish your freedom to eat peas. Do you want that? I don’t think you do.

  84. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    Gah!

    One of the current news stories in the UK is a series of complaints of sexual harassment of women against a former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. Today on The World at One, the BBC’s lunchtime radio news programme, they interviewed an EP-ist “scientific” apologist for harassment, who explained that men often touch women without consent because they “misinterpret signals”, women are more likely to complain about this if the man is married andor unattractive, and “by their own admission” “women” (all of them apparently) use flirtation to get things other than sex (or, by implication, the pleasures of flirting itself). Below is my comment to the BBC.

    The BBC apparently feels apologists for groping should have their say. On World at One today, we were treated to a five-minute farrago of sexist victim-blaming with a pseudo-scientific veneer, courtesy of a Professor Glen Something-or-other.

  85. dianne says

    Threadrupt nonsequitor:

    I just finished submitting an abstract for the EHA. The first piece of demographic information they wanted about me before I could submit it? Gender.

    Problem #1: They provided a binary drop down menu forcing one to choose male or female.

    Problem #2: Why is it any of their damn business what gender I am?

  86. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Excellent! Cuteness is one of my primary criteria for an effective Pea-ally.

  87. glodson says

    She’ll make a better ally than me. She’s both cuter and smarter than her daddy. But she did tell me that I was lovable. Then she had us all do our cheer in the car.

  88. dianne says

    Read some of the thread. I now have a craving for really good peas. Plus a horror of bad peas. Simultaneously.

  89. glodson says

    @626

    You monster! That image was more suitable for the Thunderdome!

    Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

    Oh god, I’m stupid.

  90. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Tony:
    I laughed really loudly at that link Your feeble attempts at intimidation fall as flatly as your boasting will when I crush you like a two-year-old with a birthday cake.

  91. rq says

    COOKIES!!!
    And I love the Horse.
    Cheesecake is the only cake better than…
    Ooooh, wait, Portia, I think I have to go with cake on this one. I just pictured that devilish chocolate cake I sometimes make with cream-cheese/whipped cream icing with a dash of maple syrup… And while I make amazing cookies, too, Tony wins me with cake. So so so sorry.
    Can we still have our corner?

  92. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Nooooooo, rq! Not you too!

    …I guess we can still have our corner. But only if you bring cookies.

    I might also pout for a bit. Don’t mind me.

  93. says

    I love it when you’Re silly, all of you
    Have a brownie

    +++
    Shameless bragging
    I needed some razzle-dazzle
    (and yes, I am that pale…)

    ++++
    And since we’re bashing evo-psych: I was watching a program last night about beliefs in magic all over the world. Well, I watched it for like 5 minutes until the evo-psch guy showed up to tell us: “basically we’Re still mammoth-hunters”. Yep. Because all humans hunted mammoths. Especially in Africa. And nothing ever changed since…

  94. says

    I see that was as effective as your attempts to psychologically demoralize me by changing your post nym…
    (I suddenly have this image of a bunch of us meeting one weekend for Teh Great Pictionary Wars of 2013–at IJoe’s home, where he will dazzle us with his culinary skills, while rq is the referee/scorekeeper, and everyone else chanting:
    “Shoopy, Shoopy, he’s our man. If he can’t do it, no one can!”)

  95. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Mmmmm brownie.

    …is it cookie.
    …or is it cake.

    WHAT HAVE I DONE.

    Pretty sparkle, Giliell :)

  96. says

    Snicker, snicker…all out ROTFLOL!
    ****
    Giliell:
    Oooh, pretty.
    Rhinestone Cowgirl? (And why does cowMAN or cowWOMAN not sound right?)

    And despite the fact that I do not enjoy besting _another_ friend in battle, I am having a blast being silly.

  97. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    I’m dying over here because I can’t stop picturing you muttering chanty encouragement to yourself as you scribble and everyone looks on in puzzlement.

  98. glodson says

    And why does cowMAN or cowWOMAN not sound right?

    Because you imagine a half cow human that flies?

  99. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Giliell: I see the blingies, but can’t make out what they’re attached to. Can has stand-alone pic, plz?

    Portia: I will be chanting for Tony, though it breaks my heart that I must choose; for you are a lover of peas, and a lately-revealed Horse sympathiser.

    DEEP RIFTS!

    As long as they come with chocolate frosting….

  100. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Oh, sure, no problem, have a “time out.” I’ll totally “observe” a “truce.”

    How’d those quotation marks get in there?

    *scarfs another brownie*

    You have asserted your undefeatableness without evidence, I therefore dismiss the assertion without evidence.

    Boom. Hitchen’d.

  101. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    That’s okay, cicely, friendships are casualties of WAR.

    Plus, I have GlodsonDaughter on my side. How can I lose? Weapons-grade cute…key word…weapons.

  102. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    I was on the fence, as I am approximately pea-neutral and like both cake and cookies, but…

    Ooooh, time out Portia…brownies…NOM NOM NOM. May I have one with no nuts?

    A brownie with no nuts? Portia, please pass me a cookie. (Unless you have an allergy, Tony, in which case, is it okay if I for now remain somewhere in the middle where I don’t have to make any big decisions, pretty please with a cherry on top? (which reminds me… ice cream is better than cake and cookies!))

  103. rq says

    Brownies are awesome, too. I make the best. *here are some* but I ate most of them, sorry… But not really.
    Why do I have to referee?
    And Tony can be his own cheerleading squad. I’ll eat both cake and cookies AND all the brownies. I hoard them, just so you know. Grab ’em while you can.

  104. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Because you imagine a half cow human that flies?

    Got that for you right here. (This is obviously the male of the species.)

  105. rq says

    Brownies with no nuts? I am aghast… Although I did make some once, Triple-chocolate, they were called… But they needed the nuts, it was just too much chocolate, otherwise. <– I hate admitting that.

  106. David Marjanović says

    It’s link dump time.

    Petition to the “green” President Rafael Correa Delgado of Ecuador, who wants to hand over lots of rainforest for oil drilling – against the wishes of the inhabitants.
    Candidate for Germany’s Next Topmodel has no problem coming out as lesbian (“article” in German). Progress, I guess. :-)
    Injustice Antonin Scalia has no problem coming out as flat-out racist. Petition to Chief Justice John Roberts not to vote for overturning the Voting Rights Act with Scalia.
    Vertebrate eyes, or at least lab frog eyes, still work when they’re not in the head.
    High humidity leads to loss of infectious influenza virus from simulated coughs – open-access paper!

  107. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Parrowing
    Welcome aboard! Have a cookie : ) Thin Mints are today’s special.

    rq
    I wouldn’t make you referee. Just mean ol’ Tony. He’s mean like that.

  108. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    I has a sad.

    I went down to the coffee cart in the lobby and ordered this drink I’ve enjoyed for some time there.

    The barista gave me a sadface and said that this was a special and they don’t carry it anymore.

    *weeps*

  109. says

    Oh, she had said HITCHEN’D.
    Well if that were an original retort rather than one borrowed from our resident grog provider, Nerd, ‘twould have been thread-winningly funny. As it was, I merely gave a half smile.
    ****
    Parrowing:
    Nope no allergies.
    I see you side with Portia.
    The Rifts are growing indeed (another brownie please). Oh and vanilla ice cream with a warm brownie or chocolate cake is heaven.

  110. opposablethumbs says

    I am (ha!) attempting to work this evening. But whenever I can I shall keep an eye on the Terrifying! Horse-and-Pea-Defying! PICTIONARY PURSUIT CAGE MATCCCCCHHHHHH!!!!elebenty! from my ringside seat.
    .
    May I say I’m enjoying the pre-fight warm-up immensely. Though I’m just a little concerned for the structural integrity of the Lounge …

  111. dianne says

    Chocolate ice cream cake with chocolate chocolate chip ice cream and a chocolate buttercream frosting. This is what I will likely be attempting to make for my daughter’s next birthday.

  112. rq says

    I feel my loyalties are torn, torn, I say!
    I’m just going to have myself a pile of cheesecake, brownies, icing, cookies and roasted garlic (this is magic) over here.
    And yes, I want a real brownie now. *pout* I’ll take Esteleth’s orgasmic sandwich, too, but a warm cheesecake brownie would be better. With ice cream. Vanilla.

  113. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    rq: I’d suggest that you reach under and check for yourself…but I thought we all were against non-consensual groping? The appearance of a penis-tip barely revealed peeking from behind that rear-right leg is enough to convince me, however.

    *comforting hugs* for Esteleth. I grieve for your loss. “Object desired no longer available.” Story of my life.

    Tony: I think we’re going to have to suspend judgement pending a proper DNA assay—however, given the speed with which DNA is processed for current-events rape cases, I also think we’ve got a bit of a wait ahead of us.

  114. rq says

    cicely
    It might be a penis-tip. It might be something stuck in the fur of the underbelly, like a giant pea. How’s am I to know without copping a feel? With permission, of course.
    Alternatively, those sculptors could have gone for a more spread-eagled pose. Appropriate, no?

  115. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    I love cake and cookies and ice cream and brownies and garlic sooooo much that I won’t even mix mine. No ice cream cake, no brownie à la mode, and not even garlic cookies for me.

  116. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    I was really confused why you were saying you couldn’t get hitched. Now I follow.

    …no wait, I lead. I lead my valiant forces into noble battle!

    I made chocolate dipped pretzels earlier in anticipation of a craving.
    I’ll share, Beatrice….
    (almost left out the comma, which would have been awkward)

    Tony
    As a penalty for your impudence, you can’t make snowmen with me. And the snow is perfect. So there.

    You only add Wannabe because you have not yet experienced the mighty power and amazing prowess I wield in this game called Pictionary. The game-playing relatives, they clamor for my favor, that I will grace their team with my participation. Verily.

  117. rq says

    Tony? An angel? I’m sorry, do you have wings to prove it? As far as I know, Esteleth is the only semi-proven angel around here.
    opposablethumbs, I’m pretty sure PZ knows his audience and the Lounge will take it. But you never know, A woman’s anger and all that jazz… (Portia, I’ll being lots of cookies!)

  118. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Hmmm the Lounge may not be able to handle all the stress amazing artwork Portia is going to be creating. I of course have merely been sitting innocently inculpatorily (angelicdiabolic, even) on my bean bag watching Buffy, and taking notes on how to be evil from the various villains.

    }:)

    rq, don’t listen to Tony. Those who are not allergic but don’t eat (tree) nuts are not to be trusted.

  119. rq says

    Giliell
    That should be the Bling-Crown of Victory for this Pictionary-Death-Match. To be worn by the referee during competition, of course, and kept in a glass case afterward and awarded to the winner to be dusted and kept in pristine condition for life.

    Parrowing
    I’ve had a garlic parfait. Delicious.

  120. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Portia doesn’t go in for herbal additives to brownies :)
    Just nuts. Or peanut butter.
    Or candy.
    Now i may to make brownies.

  121. rq says

    Tony
    I’m allergic to pot. Also pots (not really, bad pun opportunity), but that’s a whole other story.

  122. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    DISCLAIMER:
    I have in no way implicitly conceded the point that Tony will win. What do you bake when you lose, Shoop? May want to collect ingredients for that.

  123. UnknownEric is just a spudboy, looking for a quantum tomato. says

    Rhinestone Cowgirl?

    I can never remember the words to Rhinestone Cowboy, but I insist on singing along.

    “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy (bum-bummmmm)
    umm… like a two-fisted dog in a Calgary rodeo (???)”

  124. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Trust me when I say my Pictionary skills are better than my html skills.

  125. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Alternatively, those sculptors could have gone for a more spread-eagled pose. Appropriate, no?

    *snortle*

    Giliell: Pretty-shiny! Like!

  126. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    rq:

    Garlic parfait?! I want one!

    *

    My husband calculated that he saved 120:- (approx. $18.50) in tax this month because he officially withdrew from the Swedish Church last year. Not a huge amount, but it adds up. Unfortunately, there is another church tax that no one can get out of, not even people who are not members, never have been, and never will be.

  127. ednaz says

    rq

    I feel my loyalties are torn, torn, I say!
    I’m just going to have myself a pile of cheesecake, brownies, icing, cookies and roasted garlic (this is magic) over here.
    And yes, I want a real brownie now. *pout* I’ll take Esteleth’s orgasmic sandwich, too, but a warm cheesecake brownie would be better. With ice cream. Vanilla.

    May I have one of each, please?

    *holds up plate, looking sweet*

  128. glodson says

    I’m trying to get caught up in this thread, but I keep thinking of a human-cow hybrid that is weapons grade cute and made of brownies. With nuts.

    I am utterly confused.

  129. says

    Parrowing
    Mr. left the Lutheran church after, in a month with several big boni he paid 100 German Marks in church tax. But nobody is allowed to tell his grandma. He gets to use me as an excuse why we were never married in a church and why the kids aren’t baptized.

    +++
    Uhm, sorry, the chocolate is all in the brownies…

  130. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Further:

    Pistachio nuts are the single-seeded stone fruit of the pistachio tree (sumach family, Anacardiaceae), which is native to the Mediterranean area.

    Emphasis mine. Source.

    Portia – 1
    Tony – 0

  131. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Luckily for me, “Pictonarian” is not in my post-nym :)

    (I’m worried we’re gonna devolve into pedantry…but then I’m great at pedantry).

  132. rq says

    Oooh, I was going to be pedantic, but Portia beat me to it!

    ednaz, would you like your roasted garlic on the cheesecake, or beside it?

    Anyway, good luck with the fight. I’ll be checking in tomorrow to make sure you two (all?) have behaved. That’s how I referee, and if you don’t like it, bite me (warning: I am not crunchy except in the bony bits). I’m taking my pile-of-goodies and whistle with me, and no, nobody can stand in for me, because nobody referees like I do. Not even shiny rhinestone half-cow-girls (or men).

    I’m confused, too. Ek. Time for bed!

  133. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Had your correction been correct, I might have corrected myself! Neener.
    It’s only hubris if you’re wrong, as a friend of mine used to say…

  134. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Night, rq.
    I’ll try to make Tony behave in your absence, but he’s just so unruly.

    Sweet dreams : )

  135. rq says

    *whisper*
    Psssst Tony, look over here! Nuts are fruit, but peanuts aren’t nuts (they’re legumes). So Portia is only half-right. ;)
    */whisper*

  136. David Marjanović says

    Catching up.

    *very careful hugs for Cerberus*

    *chocolate for Beatrice*

    Nutella is, as the name says, a hazelnut product. It’s not chocolate.

    Cheesecake contains cheese. That’s bad.

    David is autistic. That means you’re oppressing him by telling him to fuck off.

    Well, I’m autistic enough that I can’t tell if you’re actually mocking me here… but I don’t think you are. So, I’ll just take this at face value:

    No. I don’t feel oppressed at all, and I don’t think any such effects are happening on me or will happen later. All that’s going on is that the interpretation of greeting set me off, so I undertook some projection. Beatrice has nothing to apologize for.

    Again, it’s my responsibility to read enough of the thread so I understand the context.

    And while I’m clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum, I’m clearly not outright autistic. I’m not even diagnosed with anything; the one psychologist that I told about Asperger’s (because she… may not even have known about it) didn’t want to diagnose me with it, for fear I might hide behind the diagnosis…

    Cake is better than cookies.

    Depends on the cake and the cookies, obviously.

    Congress has passed the inclusive VAWA! :D :D

    *Jadehawk’s® Totally Biodegradable Confetti®*

    Lots of animals, including the chimpanzees, still have penis spikes. Christine Dell-Amore of National Geographic News writes that the human genome project gave us the information that the ancestor we share with the chimps also had the spines.

    o_O I had no idea!

    Well, I give up. #610 went to the right site but the comic didn’t display. I took the “http:\\” out, and now #611 is trying to take you elsewhere on Pharyngula.

    In comment 610, the URL ends in a formatted quotation mark that clearly doesn’t belong there. Did you use a word processor to write the comment?

    I just finished submitting an abstract for the EHA.

    What’s that? (Google doesn’t help.)

    *comforting hugs* for Esteleth. I grieve for your loss.

    All seconded.

    Those first two aren’t nuts.

    FRAUD

    Still, bizarrely, the smell of peanuts triggers my nut allergy, as do both walnuts and hazelnuts. It’s not the classic peanut allergy where people get anaphylactic shock when someone opens a bag on the other side of the room.

    Luckily for me, “Pictonarian” is not in my post-nym :)

    From memory, the Bierce-Hartman-McKean-Skitt Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation states that any statement about correct spelling, punctuation(,) or grammar is bound to contain at least one eror.

  137. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    I’d call you a traitor, rq, but I clearly distinguished the first two in his group as not nuts, and the third as a fruit!

    …wait. I might be lost.

    Anyhow, I should get to work too. Have a good night, Tony! :)

  138. rq says

    Portia, it’s ok, I lost the original list too (read: I’m too lazy to scroll up) so I’ll go hide in bed, this time for real! (Cashews are nuts – they also happen to be fruits.)
    Have fun at work, Tony! :)
    Good night, all.

  139. ednaz says

    rq, Roasted garlic on the side, please. : )

    Go Tony!

    Go Portia!

    Wait, I want both teams to win! : p

  140. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    S canceled on taking a weekend trip to judge a moot court competition with me. Whiiiiiine. Now I don’t wanna go either. : /

  141. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    Sorry that he canceled, Portia. But, if I may do the annoying “But maybe there’s a bright side!!!!” thing- maybe if you still go but alone, you’ll have a greater chance of meeting other lawyerly people that you get along with? I’m sorry if that’s a silly thing to say or it doesn’t make you feel better/makes you feel worse. *hugs*

  142. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Thanks, Parrowing. That’s actually helpful. Not only will I see old classmates, but I can also make new acquaintances. I mean, I could do that with him. But I’m going to tell myself that if I’m not concerned with hanging out with him I willl be forced to get outta my shell. *hugs* back, thank you.

  143. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    I need to be supportive of his efforts to bolster his own mental health, even when they inconvenience or upset me. I need to be supportive.

  144. says

    OK, my bed is calling and I’m afraid it might wake the kids.
    Thanks youse all for the compliments about the Bling.
    Assorted hugs

    Tony

    Does this weaponless Shoop look like a hammer wielding camel?

    My 11pm brain made that a “shirtless weapon”…

  145. dongiovanni says

    Giliell – Thank you so much for the recipe. I shall try it immediately.

    As for fruitcake, it is most definitely aberrant.

    Hugs to those who need them :)

    Now I must go to produce cake and mousse.

  146. says

    you can’t make snowmen with me

    My spouse called me on her way to work because she’d passed a snow-Dalek complete with plunger and eggbeater. WANT!

  147. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    Let me be the first to offer you a malted beverage, Joe : )

    dontpanic: Snow-dalek…now I have ideas :D

  148. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    At seminar today, the speaker started with a cartoon.

    Two snowpeople, outside. It is snowing.

    One snowperson is pointing up with its stick branch, and saying, “Look! Stem cells!”

    (I laughed)

  149. opposablethumbs says

    Two snowpeople, outside. It is snowing.

    One snowperson is pointing up with its stick branch, and saying, “Look! Stem cells!”

    I love it. The whole family loves it. Passed on the description to SonSpawn, who laughed out loud and agrees that it’s adorable and has instructed me to tell his sister first thing tomorrow (only ’cause it’s kind of late tonight).
    Good night Horde.

  150. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    I laughed, too, Esteleth. :)
    My dad will love that joke.

    Joe, welcome to the winning team.

  151. says

    Beer, and chrome amplifier corners, and an amplifier carrying handle, and guitar straps, and shoulder pads for guitar straps, oh my!

    I blogged about it, and I’ll mention it here… my amp sounds AWESOME! It is going to look so good when I’m done putting it back together, and it is worth the effort because it sounds so good.

  152. Portia, Pictionarian Extraordinaire says

    *clink* my wine glass against your beer, Joe, that’s really cool : )

  153. Portia, has had better days says

    Jessica Williams is a gem. I am so glad she started getting better stuff.

  154. says

    Portia:

    Wanna guess what my next project is? I’m going to buy a DIY guitar effects pedal kit, where they send you a housing and the components and you solder all the bits together. And then maybe an Arduino, but no promises. And the ultimate goal is to build an amplifier entirely from parts. Because I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, probably an amplifier based on David Gilmour’s Hiwatt amps.

    Not that I have any idea what I’m doing, but I can learn… *grins*

  155. Portia, has had better days says

    That’s the spirit, Joe! Sounds like a neat way to learn. Great feeling of accomplishment awaitng you on the other side of those projects :)

  156. says

    Thanks Portia… accomplishment AND serious cash-savings! The Hiwatt company is currently shut down (I’m sure someone else will buy the name… Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend used these amps too!) and the closest clone models run between $1900-2200. I can build a hand-wired clone with similar specs for around $650, and upgrade to closer to original specs for only a couple of hundred more.

  157. Portia, has had better days says

    I just took a survey for a sociology major or something,and this question is an “agree or disagree” one
    and I’m not sure what it means.
    “When I am with a sexual partner, I feel that I can always be responsible for what happens sexually with him”

    I don’t get what that means. There were others about whether the respondent could “say no and mean it” in the midst of a progressing sexual encounter, and I know they ask questions slightly rephrased, but I’m still confused.

  158. Portia, has had better days says

    Dalillama,
    That makes a little more sense to me. Maybe they ran out of different ways to ask the “Are you regularly raped?” question. : p I answer “neutral” because I didn’t understand it and my first and second readings almost sounded…victim blamey.

  159. says

    That’s actually a chronic problem I have with those surveys. There’s almost always at least one or two questions that I can’t parse in a way that makes sense, or make sense but don’t appear to have any meaningful answers.

  160. bluentx says

    You relurk for a while and what happens:
    DEEP RIFTS!
    I must take better notes and start a Lounge Lizards* Preference Chart. Items to track: peas, horses, cilantro, cake vs. cookies, brownies nutted or nyet, game prowess.. This could turn into a never ending/ constantly being upgraded project! Such anarchy… such animosity… such silliness : )

    *Lounge Lizard is NOT a pejorative. Why they’re one of my favorite bands! http://youtu.be/xbvrRct-TXc

  161. cicely (If the glue's fit, I'll wear it.) says

    Just remember, bluentx, that Horses is always capitalised, in keeping with the associated unnatural threat level—after all, who spells ‘Cthulhu’ other than with a capital ‘Cth’?

  162. Portia, has had better days says

    Joe:
    Yeah it’s two glasses of sparkling wine for me.
    I wish S hadn’t waited til I was half tipsy and 9pm before implying he wants me to come over.
    Sigh.

  163. bluentx says

    And:
    @ # 588:
    Yea! Passage (finally) of the VAWA!
    @ #604:
    Why did my brain insist on reading that article in a Dr. Ruth voice?
    [Can’t find the comment number now]:
    That clip of Keith Ellison doing the Hannity Stomp was a thing of beauty, but of course the Fox-watchers will dismiss him with: “Oh, what do you expect. He’s a Mooslum! He hates Amurika!”

  164. bluentx says

    Horses is always capitalised, in keeping with the associated unnatural threat level

    You mean it’s part of the Homeland Securtity Advisory System?
    Red
    Orange
    Yellow
    Blue
    Green
    Horses
    —-
    Who knew!? The Lounge is so educational!

  165. says

    Did the overflowing sink full of dishes; quaffed a glass of Port; continue to avoid the work task that I’ve been avoiding all week…

    peas — fresh snap, sugar or shelled: good. cooked in any way: bad
    Horses — eptimone of evil
    cilantro — glorious, especially in my albondigas soup with a half cup of garlic
    cake vs. cookies — good cake better than bad cookies, and vice versa (i.e. depends)
    brownies nutted or nyet — either w/ a slight preference for nyet
    game prowess — I can sometimes beat my wife (mostly luck on my part) and two learning disabled 11 year olds at Scrabble (last time I played that particular one); monopoly usually ends in a draw w/ my 15yr old (wife hates to play); son can whoop me at any video game and has been able to since he was 10 (Star Wars: Battlefront, in the space fighter scenarios I would almost never make it out the hanger before he shot me up — he’d alway be cackling evilly)

  166. says

    Whoa. Threadrupt. (Apologies!)

    On Peas, Horses, and the Matter of Cakes or Cookies

    Peas. I will eat them if I have to, but I really don’t like the way they feel when chewing. They kinda squish, it’s ick.

    Horses. I’m neutral on the matter. While I’m not particularly fond of the beasts, I must admit they have their uses. (I’m thinking animal therapy, yeah?)

    Cakes vs. Cookies. I like both. Some days I want cake. Some days I want cookies. Sometimes I want pie. Sometimes I go out to the Food Co-op and get something weird and dessert-y because, what the hell, I can. As long as I’m getting sugary goodness, I’m happy.

    Dreams

    Been having strange ones. Okay, even stranger than usual. I think these ones are trying to tell me something. I’m searching through a castle or dungeon, sometimes a modern estate-type area. I’m searching for gems or treasures or parts of a whole, I’m not sure exactly what, but I know it’s important and I need to find all the parts. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the things are, or what they make, or what they are part of, or what the point is. I just know I need to find them, and a lot of them are hidden in wall panels and shit like that. It’s… like a wacky nightmare version of No Stone Unturned, but without a clearly defined number of objects (or even a clue what the objects are), or a clear objective in place, just an urgent sense of “find these things”.

    I feel like this is important, somehow, but what does it mean?

  167. says

    WMDKitty, I have those same sorts of dreams, but they are more in the context of video games. I don’t know if you play video games, or if you do what sorts of games you play, but most games I play involve someone saying “we need the pieces of the A in order to open the B gate, so that we can access the plains of C where you’ll need to collect the seals of D so that we can breach the E wall, beyond which the F fragments lie… and on and on and on. And I have nightmares of chasing down piece after piece after piece and never finishing.

    I don’t know what it means either, besides a restless night and a crabby morning.

  168. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Dreams do not have complex meanings. They all mean one of the following:

    you have been feeling stressed lately; or
    you have been feeling powerful lately; or
    you have been thinking about the subject of the dream lately; or
    nothing.

    Usually nothing.

  169. bluentx says

    My board game prowess was stunted as a child. My Southern Baptist mother wouldn’t let her kids play certain games. She read my cousin the riot act when he taught me how to play Monopoly because … !!eleventy-eleven!! IT HAS DICE! DICE ARE FOR GAMBLING!!!! My cousin was stunned. “Board games? She won’t let you play board games!?”
    Mom was quite upset with me when I reasoned: “Mom, if someone wanted to gamble, they could devise a way to use Old Maid cards to do it.” Mom hated it when I used logic. Looking back I don’t know why it took me so long to use the same logic on religion. Zombie Jesus, men surviving in the belly of a whale, miracle this, miracle that…sheesh!

  170. says

    bluentx, I’m lucky in that I’ve always been an atheist, since I was old enough to understand the difference between fairy tales and reality. So I don’t and can’t know how you feel on that level. On the other hand, my parents taught me to be an atheist completely accidentally, and none of us realized the Deep Rift until I was a teenager, so I DO understand the “mom being mad” part.

  171. bluentx says

    I don’t particularly think that dreams “mean” anything but they can be interesting and maybe help you work out a problem. Kinda like: prayer doesn’t ‘work’ but it might calm you down enough to work out what your next step should be.
    Many of my dreams are “you have been thinking about the subject of the dream lately” and through the dream(s) I have worked out a way to handle the situation IRL. Sort of a role playing therapy thing.
    Now, what I was supposed to get out of the strangest (but not scary) dream I ever had I do not know to this day:
    I’m attending an outdoor concert (Auditorium Shores for those of you who know Austin). The topography was slightly off but it was recognizable. I listened to the music, people watched and eventually realized that I was dreaming, then woke up. Next night I have the same dream (same bands, same music) but this time I immediately say to myself “This is the same dream I had last night.” I look around and say, “In last nights dream I was standing under that tree over there. I wonder if…” I walk to the tree and there ‘I’ am! I said “Hello” to myself, myself said “Hello” back, second-dream-self thinks “This is weird.”
    And I woke up and said, “That was weird.”

  172. The Mellow Monkey says

    My dreams are usually like bizarre art films with convoluted plots and tortured metaphors. At times, there’s some recognizable symbolism of whatever I’ve been thinking about during my waking hours. Usually it’s just the fact that I’ve trained my brain to think like that through reading and writing, so it goes into free form storytelling mode. There is no meaning. Just a hilarious story, free from the burden of having to make sense.

    As a result, I’ve had a lot of dreams that I cherish the memories of them like “so bad it’s good” movies. The one involving the T-rex trying to ride the swing at the elementary school while Steven Spielberg was shouting out instructions from the jungle gym shall remain with me for the rest of my life.

  173. bluentx says

    iJoe:
    Religion-wise “Mom got mad” at me because I fought like hell (as a teenager) about having to get up early on Sunday to go to church : ) Then, it was just that church was so boring!

    After leaving home I was just ambivalent about religion. For years I’d get on an occasional “where do I fit in” kick and study different denominations, religions, New Agey crap, etc.

    For the longest I thought “What’s wrong with me?Why can’t I just accept/believe what my friends believe?” Growing up in Texas I was sometimes worried (literally) that someone would find out I’ve never been baptized. (Egads!) It would have been social suicide (not to mention an onslaught of unwanted witnessing/proselytizing coming my way) to admit it.[ Now I think it’s a plus– I don’t have to get un-baptized ! Heh!]

    Eventually I read more philosophy (yeah, I know how some people around here feel about that) and I read Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History, some Dawkins, some Hitchens, etc.
    Now I consider religion just “an interesting psychological phenomenon”– (a favorite line from the movie
    The Gods Must Be Crazy)- that seems aprapos.

  174. says

    The Mellow Monkey,

    I’ve had those sorts of dreams too, and they are great and awesome. In the theme of my earlier video game-based dream post, I had a dream the other night based on the Dead Space game series. You’re in a powered armor suit, and one of your powers is “kinesis” which means limited telekinetic powers. So I had a dream the other night that included sentient gorillas throwing iron balls on chains at me, and me being able to catch them with “kinesis” and throw them right back at those damned dirty apes!

  175. rq says

    Good morning!
    The reason I’m glad I no longer have religion?
    I won’t be worrying about my dad ‘seeing’ me from Heaven after he dies. That means less guilty thoughts about doing his my way or his way.
    This thought came to me once when we were visiting Husband’s mother’s grave, and I was randomly thinking about how he’s a bit shy about sex noises and generally doesn’t like to do it if he knows his siblings are in the next room (although asleep), and then the thought came to me that, Wait, he (his family) believes that his mom is in heaven and looking down on everything they do… And I just… Don’t really want his mom watching us. :/
    Either way, I had a weird epiphany that day also about god, because, if she herself isn’t always looking down from heaven, supposedly god is, and he could always tell her about everything we do, since, you know, he’s god and everything. I decided I was glad I could look at all of that from the side.

    In other news, I see last night’s conflict has not been satisfactorily resolved. Did everyone involved just flounce, or was Improbable Joe just being a distraction with his amps and beer?
    (Portia, I hope you had the sense to tell S not to come over and not to go yourself!! And yes, I think you should go to the event yourself and network for yourself, if only to get used to going places without S. It’ll be fun!!)

  176. says

    bluentx: yeah, ‘philosophy’ seems stupid to a lot of us because it fails to drum out its own stupid, and gets defended by people we respect and expect to know better. And when you add in the folks who claim to be philosophers who are former FtB bloggers and who turned out to be complete assholes? From a lay perspective, the entire discipline is suspect.

    My mother didn’t get on me for religion until she found out I was an atheist. Before that she was generally not awesome. I want to be fair, she had to deal with me and my genius IQ and my older brother who is on the autism spectrum at the same time. I mean, come on! The first time I took the SAT I got almost 1000 out of 1600!!!

    She still could have been nicer. I wasn’t great, but she would never have dared treat an adult that way, so she shouldn’t have gone after me that way either.

  177. ednaz says

    IJoe, Congratulatory beer coming your way for your awesome amp adventures. Way to go!

    Portia, Seconding Joe’s – Stay Home.
    Perhaps let S miss you a little?

    Esteleth, Loved the snowman joke. : ) Will tell it to The Hoodlum.

    chigau (違う), How goes the govt. work?
    May I offer you some rum?

  178. chigau (違う) says


    re: dreams
    yup
    —-
    I have just eaten some eda-mame (perilously close to peas).
    They were frozen and a bit beyond their “best before”.
    But slow simmer and lots of salt has made them yummy.

    Kitteh does not approve of skim milk.

    *rum hugs for all*

  179. ednaz says

    bluentx,

    Now I consider religion just “an interesting psychological phenomenon”– (a favorite line from the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy)- that seems aprapos.

    I like this. : )

  180. says

    Hey ednaz I have a fireplace and wood, so heat is covered. :) There’s a really nice Sealy mattress in the spare bedroom. We’ve got DirecTV and decent Internet. We have a Keurig and plenty of K-cups. You can touch ONE of my guitars. So my house is better than a hotel, and we also have cats if you like that sort of thing. :)

  181. says

    sgbm
    Of course not, no, it’s not at all possible that dreams are the brain’s way of sorting out conscious and subconscious issues while you sleep…

    iJoe
    Yeah, I’m a gamer. I’ve been back and forth between Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim lately. It makes sense that my brain might use that kind of framework to work out… whatever it is. It’s a pattern I’ve seen before with my dreams, where it’s the same thing (with minor changes) every time, until there’s a breakthrough of some kind. Once it’s worked out, the dreams change, or move on to (repeated) dreaming about the next “objective” in my brain’s nocturnal agenda.

    Right now they’re leaving me with a feeling like there’s… something just out of reach, something important, something vital, like maybe it’s the key to finally taking the next step forward in coping with the shit I’m coping with. Heh. Like screwing up the courage to seek out a therapist.

  182. rq says

    Improbable Joe
    I have had direct experience with amps. Just not green ones with fancy corners with all their insides plucked out. ;) Always a new perspective on the horizon. Thanks, Joe!

  183. strange gods before me ॐ says

    The something-important-just-out-reach feeling in a dream is just as meaningful as when the same feeling occurs during an LSD trip. It’s your waking narrative self that is saying “seek out a therapist”. Doesn’t mean it’s not good advice.

  184. chigau (違う) says

    ednaz #759

    How goes the govt. work?

    Redundancy on top of repetition inside of reiteration overlapping with ‘covering all the bases’.
    cubed
    rum is always welcome

  185. bluentx says

    iJoe:
    If I didn’t make it clear (and apparently I didn’t) the philosophy study was a stepping stone for me and mostly just of historical interest– what’s already been argued, been debunked, reworked, etc. I didn’t go to college so I was a late bloomer in reading many things– just catchin’ up : )

    Good morning, rq:
    No, the Rift is not settled and yes, it just seems to have faded (for now). Always happens: about the time I get caught up on the thread the virtual crickets start ‘singing’, The Lounge clears out and the night crew gets stuck with the push broom and cleaning ashtrays : )

    And yes, I think the “God and Grandma are always watching” thing is kinda creepy, too.Religious Voyeurism- yech! I thought “good Christians, et. al.” were supposed to be against peepshows. Holy Hypocrites, Batman!

  186. says

    WMDKitty I would love, and be honored, and even would be willing to spend my own money, to play games with you online. Some variation of “Improbable Joe” is my ID across all gaming platforms.

    rq Few people have direct experience with an amp as awesome as mine. *grins* The guy at the store was amazed, and we’d already spent half the morning playing the same guitar through most of the good amps in the shop. When you add in the vinyl covering and the adhesive… it certainly makes for a unique experience.

  187. John Morales says

    ॐ,

    Dreams do not have complex meanings.

    Not intrinsically, anyway. :)

    Tony,

    I’m a gay man in Florida. I cannot get hitched.

    Well, you can get a beard…

    (Bad joke?)

  188. says

    bluentx

    I 200% endorse the study of philosophy as a branch of history. I think that philosophy has covered immense areas of human experience, especially before we had competent science to do the work in the world beyond the conceptual.

    I’m a person who exists in both worlds. I’m intellectual enough, I think… I’ve got a fair grounding in literature, mathematics, and physics. I’ve also spent plenty of years in the world of DOING. I’m a former Marine, I’ve worked on assembly lines, I’ve dug ditches and shoveled chicken shit. I don’t value one world over another, but I’m more aware than most when one world crosses the line into places they can’t understand.

  189. rq says

    bluentx
    It just made me wonder why people think it’s so awesome when their dead relatives ‘look down on them from heaven’ – honestly, would you want a whole collection of blood relations from several generations (right back to the last pagan one) checking out everything you do?? /rhetorical
    I certainly don’t. I know it’s supposed to work as a way of keeping people good (because people are only good when other people watch and make sure they’re good).
    I’ll help you clean up.

  190. says

    rq

    I’ll help you clean up.

    Me too. I was about to launch into an ugly thing about how I’d love Internet bullies to come at me in real life because I’m a former Marine with lots of extra instructor training and I could hurt lots of people, and my sparing partner was a guy who was 8-inches taller than me and outweighed me by 60 pounds… but you know what? The OTHER thing I was good at was cleaning. I can scrub good and I’m great with a floor buffer. :)

  191. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Ethics is philosophy.

    If you’ve ever been unsure what’s the right thing to do, you needed philosophy.

    If you thought about it and then made a deliberate decision, you used philosophy.

  192. ednaz says

    IJoe, I will trade being allowed to touch one guitar for being allowed to hear you PLAY one guitar!! : D *thumbsup*

    Beverage of choice for the clean-up crew. : )

    Good night All. Pleasant weird dreams.

  193. John Morales says

    The future is becoming: Drones set for large-scale commercial take-off

    Hundreds of small commercially operated drones could soon take to Australian skies under a radical new set of rules proposed by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Melbourne this week.

    Under a new weight class system, prospective drone entrepreneurs with craft weighing 2 kilograms or less could take off after completing nothing more than an online application form.

  194. bluentx says

    Once the game(s) is/are back on, rq, I put my name in the hat in case you need a break as ref. Not being much of a gamer (board or video- tho I do enjoy some word games) I volunteer as your second.*

    *Not intended to imply that you are not up to the task.

    So God’s a peeping tom!

    Apparently, yep. A Celestial Peeping Diety.

  195. rq says

    Improbable Joe
    You can polish some brass taps. They’re around here somewhere. I’m better at cleaning windows… Wait, does the Lounge have windows? Or is it one of those dark, sub-terranean dens that make you lose track of all time?
    What brought your rage this time? Or is it a general thing?

    ednaz
    Of course god’s a peeping tom – otherwise, how’s he to know who gets the coal and who gets the… oh, wait. Well, he’s still a peeping tom! ;)

    bluentx
    I suspect our time-zones are similar enough that we’d be on the field at the same time (or at least, when no one else is on it :P). :) But first, we must invent the Referee Dessert. Just so nobody thinks we’re taking sides (cakecakecakecakecake…). ;)

  196. says

    rq

    What brought your rage this time? Or is it a general thing?

    I don’t know about you, but any time I step beyond the safety of the Lounge, I see things worthy of some righteous rage. Lots of bullies, lots of harassment, some number of people dead by suicide or murder because of ideas that should have been rejected decades or centuries ago.

    And there’s a part of me that says “I can make a change” by hitting people really really hard… and I know it is unreasonable and illegal and impossible. But by putting the solution on that scale, it puts the problem on that scale, and makes it something I feel can someday be corrected.

    It is wrong. It is a ridiculous fantasy. I can’t help but wish I could do something.

  197. says

    … and I’m sure someone from the Slymepit will take what I posted and try to claim that I’m making a threat, because that’s how the Slymepit rolls. And fuck them too, because if anyone sees what I said as a threat against them, it only means that they are a bully who is afraid of people calling them out. Let’s not coddle the sexist bullying cretins, OK?

  198. bluentx says

    Time zones and match schedules:
    I guess it all depends on how many rivalries or teams end up surfacing. We may have to have some “away games” and travel may become a large factor.

  199. says

    Good morning
    Can you hear that?
    It’s the sound of silence!
    Both kids in kindergarten (and it is about time the little one settles back into “world with rules mode”).
    I have big plans for today, like taking a shower in peace without worrying about the rest of the flat.

    dreams: Last night one’s involved tree houses. And somebody who wanted to play one-upmanship and tried to build one where you boarded a spaceship to get there. Actually a funny one.

    games: I’m from a family of gamers and I married into a family of gamers. I’m also from a family of cheaters. My grandpa would even cheat at chess. Not because he wanted to badly win against a little kid, but because he wanted us to catch him.
    What was funny was when my grandma was Worried™ during the time I played trading card games. Because she was afraid of gambling and she was totally shocked when she heard that there was Money involved. It took some time to explain to her that yes, we played for money, but you couldn’t win any. If you lost a game, you had to pay 10 ct, if you won you still had to pay 5ct and when there was enough money we’d go for dinner together.

    atheism: 4th generation (at least on my maternal side) here. Although I guess my mum is the perfect example how being raised a liberal atheist without critical thinking turns you into somebody who isn’t actually liberal, but who simply has the right position on a couple of issues. Fooled me for a long time. So she has, for example, some feminist ideas, somewhere between 2nd and 3rd wave but no background in those ideas so she is totally not able to examine new ideas or change hers. She would be totally pro-choice and of course pro women in the workforce and stuff, but also absolutely victim-blaming and teaching me how to prevent rape and shocked, I tell you, shocked when I made a pin-up of myself for Mr. (I’m still quite proud of that picture. It was funny because out of like 50 pictures the one is the best where the setting crashed around me…)

  200. says

    bluentx

    I read that about Bob Woodward. I understand that he’s a whole lot pathetic, but he’s also a legendary journalist who has always targeted hugely important figures including several presidents.

    Imagine people who are engaged in similar behavior, except instead of targeting a president or two, they’ve picked some random guy on the Internet like me to follow around in order to harass. Bob Woodward isn’t even 1/100th as important as the presidents he’s targeted. Can you begin to imagine how sad and pathetic someone would have to be to target me? Because I can’t even start to formulate that… they would be below me, but also below my pets, and also below the poop and pee I scoop out of the litter boxes… but they are following me more than I follow the poop and pee I scoop up, so how low does that put them?

    It is entirely too sad to even consider, so for their sake I hope they stop following/bothering me, because they’d be better served in their own lives by doing ANYTHING else… scratching their butts, picking their noses, clipping their toenails. Some dude made a video about me? Really? I don’t have a whole lot going on, and I still found something better to do than watch the video.

  201. says

    Also? I want to say two things:

    1) “I know who you are. I know where you live. I’m going to give you exactly what you have coming to you with my bare hands. It is going to hurt me more than it hurts you… no, that’s a lie. It is going to hurt you a bunch, and I might have a few bruises for my pleasure.”

    2) “Carly Simon. 1972.”

  202. rq says

    Improbable Joe
    I wouldn’t have gotten the reference, anyway. :)
    And with regard to the stuff outside of the Lounge, yeah, it makes me ridiculously angry sometimes… But also at those propagating those ideas. Like, can they really be that stupid to believe it and to teach it? I find it extremely difficult to wrap my mind around the kind of world view that can see telling your gay child he is an abomination as a Good Thing. I just… I can’t understand it. And while I do get angry, I get a horrible sense of sadness for the victims of such world-views, to the point where it just makes me cry. To be that trapped, and to grow up (or have grown up) believing [x], which is harmful… Bleh. I just hope I can do better for my own kids, you know?
    (Punching things just isn’t my style, really. But I can understand the feelings behind it – mostly frustration at the immensity of it all, I suppose. And the pure, unadulterated asshole-ishness. Beer?)

  203. rq says

    Tony
    Good night! Here, have some cake! (I’ll admit it’s not red velvet, I have yet to attempt that recipe, but when I do, I will save a piece for you.) In the mean-time, you’ll have to make do with these:
    Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes
    Yield: 24 cupcakes
    Prep Time: 40 minutes | Bake Time: 17 minutes

    For the Cupcakes:
    1 cup Guinness stout
    1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
    ¾ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
    2 cups all-purpose flour
    2 cups granulated sugar
    1½ teaspoons baking soda
    ¾ teaspoons salt
    2 eggs
    2/3 cup sour cream

    For the Whiskey Ganache Filling:
    8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
    2/3 cup heavy cream
    2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
    2 teaspoons Irish whiskey

    For the Baileys Frosting:
    2 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
    5 cups powdered sugar
    6 tablespoons Baileys Irish Cream
    1. To Make the Cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring the Guinness and butter to a simmer in a heavy, medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the cocoa powder and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.
    2. Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl to combine. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sour cream on medium speed until combined. Add the Guinness-chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and beat just to combine. Reduce the speed to low, add the flour mixture and beat briefly. Using a rubber spatula, fold the batter until completely combined. Divide the batter among the cupcake liners. Bake until a thin knife inserted into the center comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Cool the cupcakes on a rack.
    3. To Make the Whiskey Ganache Filling: Finely chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then, using a rubber spatula, stir it from the center outward until smooth. Add the butter and whiskey and stir until combined. Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped.
    4. To Fill the Cupcakes: Using a 1-inch round cookie cutter (or the bottom of a large decorating tip), cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes, going about two-thirds of the way down. Transfer the ganache to a piping back with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.
    5. To Make the Baileys Frosting: Using the whisk attachment of a stand mixer, whip the butter on medium-high speed for 5 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally. Reduce the speed to medium-low and gradually add the powdered sugar until all of it is incorporated. Add the Baileys, increase the speed to medium-high and whip for another 2 to 3 minutes, until it is light and fluffy.
    6. Using your favorite decorating tip, or an offset spatula, frost the cupcakes and decorate with sprinkles, if desired. Store the cupcakes in an airtight container.
    (Recipe from the Brown-Eyed Baker.)

    Yes, it has a lot of ingredients, but honestly, do you want all your cooking and baking to be easy??

  204. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    Good night, Tony.

    In the light of day and in the absence of wine haze, this rift seems to be filled with chocolate sauce. I think we’re allowed to swim or raft to the other side of this one when we want to.

    For some reason, I always enjoyed being scorekeeper much more than actually playing games. No one ever believed me when I said I’d rather sit out of playing because I’d have more fun that way. They would always pressure me and accuse me of not wanting to enjoy myself… that was really annoying.

  205. rq says

    Parrowing
    I think filling the rift with chocolate sauce is the best idea ever… Until someone who hates chocolate sauce comes along, and puts up a High Peninsula between the chocolate sauce and the vanilla creme.
    Looks like we have a team of referees and score-keepers developing. Heh. By the time the match is done, all the goodies will be eaten and gone!

  206. bluentx says

    do you want all your cooking and baking to be easy??

    ” Neigh!” Oh..uh.. I mean, “Nay! ”
    *looks around to see if Cecily heard that*
    I hate, hate, hate seeing a luscious picture of a cake, cupcakes, brownies, etc. and then reading the ingredients that start with “1 box of cakemix”or “brownie mix”! Rarely is a mix “appropriate” in my opinion.

  207. rq says

    bluentx
    Iadmit, in a pinch, sometimes I cheat (like making a Jello cake for Middle Child’s 3rd last week because sick and no ingredients (because sick)). But. When I have the time and energy, there’s a special magic to making something complicated from scratch.
    That being said, Tony, I will not be relegated to the kitchen just because I can do it. It’s a bit of a sore spot for me, and while I honestly enjoy doing stuff for fun in the kitchen, once I’m put there just because I can (and don’t place myself there by choice), it’s no longer amusing. I’ll referee; if Joe needs help, I’ll lend a hand, but please don’t stick me in the kitchen for posting a recipe with lots of ingredients. I do it for fun, not because I’m assigned. ;)

  208. bluentx says

    Until someone who hates chocolate sauce comes along, and puts up a High Peninsula between the chocolate sauce and the vanilla creme

    I would fight to the death for chocolate and caramel! Ummm…caramel….nomnomnom…

  209. bluentx says

    in a pinch, sometimes I cheat

    Understood. I did say ‘rarely’ ; )

    Growing up Mom (the housewife) sometimes supplemented Dad’s income by catering parties, baking wedding cakes and always baking the birthday cake of our choice.
    My mom died in 1997 and long time friends still comment on her German Chocolate Cake or Carrot Cake or (this one’s for you Tony) Red Velvet Cake or her Christmas cookies or…

    I got her to write down many of her recipes before the Altzheimer’s kicked in too badly but I have to be careful when passing recipes on. Some of the ones she hand-copied more recently are missing an ingredient or two, a crucial step or instruction.

    It’s amazing just how many memories are triggered by the taste or smell of just the right recipe or ingredient.

  210. rq says

    bluentx
    That sounds like a delicious childhood, and too bad about the missing ingredients/instructions. If you know some of the ingredients/instructions, maybe you should consider putting together a cookbook of her best? In case you have too much time on your hands and all that, apologies if the suggestion is inappropriate. ;)
    My mum also did the cake-of-choice for birthdays, within limits, though (by that I mean she wasn’t a cake artist, but it doesn’t lessen the gesture or the deliciousness of the cakes). I can’t remember a single cake that I didn’t like, either mine or my siblings’. But I know which recipe books she used, which makes the best ones easy to reproduce. ;)

  211. Ogvorbis: We Are LEGUMES! says

    Damn.

    PZed must have forgotten to lube up the portcullis again.

    And it is Saturday. Mmmm.

  212. bluentx says

    I’m working on the reproduction of recipes and have been ‘thinking about’ the Family Cookbook for years. One of these days… I’ve already got one box of recipes labeled “Mom’s Best”… you must be psychic!

  213. says

    buentx

    I’m working on the reproduction of recipes and have been ‘thinking about’ the Family Cookbook for years.

    One of the best things I ever got was a ring-binder cooking-book where you can just write in the recipes yourself.
    So, whenever I try a recipe that works really well and that isn’t in a cooking book but in a magazine or on the internet, I write it down. Also grandma’s recipes for my two favourite christmas cookies. Funny enough, there’s only sweet stuff in there. For dinner recipes I usually just remember the general guidelines and then do them from scratch.

  214. bluentx says

    Giliell:
    I’ve got a binder something like that. Somehow it seems to keep overflowing and never gets scanned, copied or properly organized. Go figure!

  215. bluentx says

    I’ll say goodnight/good morning now.
    It’s only Friday?! My Friday doesn’t happen until Monday morning, so I’ve got three more days of “workin’ for tha man” torture?!*

    * There ya go Ogvorbis. Competition on warping calendars. Ha-ha!

  216. marko says

    Hi folks,

    I don’t often post in the lounge, but I was wondering if I could get a bit of advice from anyone who has their noses a bit more finely tuned for sniffing out quackery than me.

    I was one of a reasonably large distribution group for an email forwarded on by the head at my daughter’s school (I’m on the parent council, so find myself on these distribution lists fairly regularly). I was immediately quite concerned about the contents and thought it didn’t all quite ring true. The email was from a group called the “Emergent Disease Foundation” and was warning about the potential risks to public health from exotic animals. They linked to their website and a couple of journal publications, I was suspicious that the papers all seemed to be written by the trustees of Emergent Diseases Foundation, and seemed to be quite fond of citing from their own publications. A Google search for them showed enough evidence that my gut feeling was right and I sent off a quick reply all urging caution before we sent this out to a wider audience than it had already found.

    Has anyone came across this group, or know anything about them? I would appreciate any opinions as to whether my initial diagnosis of quackery was in the ballpark?

    You can find them here:
    http://www.emergentdisease.org/

    And a link to the paper they cite in the email:
    http://emergentdisease.org/assets/documents/A_review_of_captive_exotic_animal-linked_zoonoses.pdf

    Cheers,
    Marko.

  217. Pteryxx says

    bluentx re boardgames:

    Mom was quite upset with me when I reasoned: “Mom, if someone wanted to gamble, they could devise a way to use Old Maid cards to do it.” Mom hated it when I used logic.

    Ooh, I got that line too! Nothing involving dice or ‘bad’ playing cards (the standard ones with hearts, spades etc). I was told that’s why permissible games were ones like Life (which used a spinner instead of evil dice) and Uno (which used its own cards instead of the evil ones).

    I used to roll wooden pencils. They have six sides, right? <_<

  218. chigau (違う) says

    Several members of the Forum for Young Canadians http://www.forum.ca/forum2/index.php have become ill with a ‘stomach bug’ while on a trip to Ottawa.
    On the News, a spokesperson was quoted as saying that one of their trips was cancelled because they didn’t want to spread the infection on Parliament Hill.
    Am I a bad person because I thought, “Well, I would.”?

  219. rq says

    chigau
    The first place I would go would be the PMO, to shake hands with Mr. Harper.

  220. chigau (違う) says

    rq
    Yup. Then with every politician in the place and on to the Senate!

  221. says

    @ chigau

    pea-flavoured pop-sicle?

    Rather nyummy actually. (Red bean popsicles are also very popular.)

    edamame

    or mao dou in Chinese. Literally “hairy beans”. Sadly none on the market right now. I buy them fresh and then boil them in water with some added sechuan peppers, soy sauce, vinegar. Beats even popcorn as a tasty snack.

  222. cicely (No further comment.) says

    Why We Have Sinuses: a series of untested hypotheses (in varying degrees of facetiousness)
     
    1) To lighten up the skull, since empty space (quiet down, you hecklers in the back!) weighs less than bone—or squishy water-filled tissue.
    2) As a sloppy, inefficient barometer, advising you that:
    a) a front is coming through; bring in the patio furniture and tie down the cats;
    b) you have abruptly changed altitude; you have driven up a mountain, or your plane is going down in flames.
    3) Mucus Overflow Containment. Need I say more?
    4) The ragweed is ripe. What you do with this information is entirely up to you.
    5) A large feline has you in its sights. Teleport Without Error!
    6) Air-borne Particulates Advisory; grab a fire extinguisher, there may be a burning plane somewhere in your vicinity.

    Cilantro: What good is soap that won’t get the dishes clean???
    Cake or Cookies: How much chocolate are we talking, here?
    Nuts in Brownies: Yes please, with extra nuts; pecans for preference, but walnuts are also acceptible.
     
    And I think that I’ve made my view clear on Certain Other Matters.

    While I’m not particularly fond of the beasts, I must admit they have their uses. (I’m thinking animal therapy, yeah?)

    But nowadays, it is possible to get perfectly good glue from other sources. Less infernal ones.
     
    WMDKitty, I have dreams like those all the time! What they generally mean, in my experience, is:
    1) I haven’t been playing enough D&D.
    2) I’ve been playing too much D&D (difficult, but possible).
    3) I’m the DM, and teh brainz is set on Autoplot.
    4) I need to DM. Plan coup.
     
    Your mileage will almost certainly vary.
    :D
     
    I also sometimes do D&D/movie-and/or-TV fusions…or D&D/book fusions…or D&D/Civ III fusions (those are odd!)…or D&D/Real Life fusions…or D&D/Superheroes fusions…or D&D/SCA fusions….
    I’m sure that this crowd will have easily picked out the common denomiator.
    :)

    I didn’t know Rainbow Mars was about Svetz.

    Neither did I, I was just wikiing for a linkable explanation for the malfunctioning “time machine”. It looks like it collects all the short stories, but I don’t know how firmly that additional material is tied to them. Is the Secretary General an inheritable office? And does the current holder of that office have the cognitive development of a 6 year old? Inquiring minds have no clue.

  223. carlie says

    pea-flavoured pop-sicle?

    Rather nyummy actually. (Red bean popsicles are also very popular.)

    I have had a durian popsicle!* I even had an entire photo essay of feeding them to my children on facebook, back when I had such a thing.

    *which I first spelled as “duran”, then giggled at the thought of 80s pop band branded treats

  224. cicely (No further comment.) says

    Peeping Toms are “created in God’s image”.

    “Conscience is that calm, still voice telling you that someone is watching.”

    Both kids in kindergarten

    Hurray!

    ” Neigh!” Oh..uh.. I mean, “Nay! ”
    *looks around to see if Cecily heard that*

    Oh, cicely heard it, all right!
    *racking up a demerit in bluentx’s column*
     
    And cake from a mix is about my speed.
     
    My mother always asked what kind of cake we wanted for our birthdays—then made the kind of cake she wanted for our birthdays. Why did she even bother with asking?

    {distracted by the EP comments, The Horde fail to notice a tiny electrically powered octocopter, piloted by an eight legged invertebrate, deposit a linky marked: “For Emergency Use Only” on Portia‘s lap.}

    *eyes wide with horror*
    Is that…a pea-flavored popsicle???
    *gulps hastily, while reaching for the barf bucket*

  225. says

    More evidence that something has gone seriously wrong in Bob Woodward’s mind. This journalistic giant, famous for the role he played in exposing the Watergate scandal and in bringing Nixon down, has slid off the rails. His reality train is so drastically derailed that he is now appearing with Ann Coulter on Faux News to blather away, in ways that only confirm that he has lost his grip on journalistic integrity.

    This latest edition of wayward Woodward began when he misunderstood/forgot/lied about the origins of the sequester. He got so much of that story wrong that his friends tried to put him back on track, and they did it kindly, with respect. Which drove Woodward wild. He came down especially hard on Gene Sperling.
    Video and longer article here.

    … Look, this really isn’t complicated. As we’ve discussed, last week, after their phone conversation got a little heated, Sperling emailed Woodward directly and said, “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today…. But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

    Sperling added in his email, “I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously. My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.”

    Even now, after having a week to think about this and reflect on the exchange, Woodward is still convinced Sterling was speaking in “code,” trying send a subtle “you better watch out” message.

    And this is why it seems something has gone very wrong with Bob Woodward.

    There is no code. There is no secret message. There was no between-the-lines threat. Woodward was advancing an argument with factual inaccuracies and Sperling told him “as a friend” that he will “regret” the embarrassment that comes with getting a big story wrong.

    That Woodward feels the need to run to Fox News, of all places, to argue once again that a White House staffer sent him a “coded” threat is just sad, and unbecoming of a journalistic giant.

  226. says

    Mansplaining coupled with evasion and an irony deficit:

    Politicians who try to be funny often struggle. Politicians who try to be funny about state-mandated, medically-unnecessary, trans-vaginal ultrasounds invariably fail.

    Just ask Sean Duffy, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, who made some curious comments on the subject last week.

    Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) declined to take a position last week during a town hall meeting on whether transvaginal ultrasounds should be mandatory for women seeking abortions, saying he has never heard of the practice and couldn’t weigh in on it because “I haven’t had one.” […]

    Yeah, that’s funny. You are a man and you’ve never had a transvaginal ultrasound. [cough, spit]
    This fine lawmaker went on to explain that he didn’t know what a transvaginal ultrasound was. Oh glorious ignorance.

    Linky.

  227. says

    Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is supremely wrong, WRONG. In arguing against the Voting Rights Act, he presented “facts” that have since been easily proven to be, well, not factual.

    Up-thread @517 dongiovanni asked why people like Rush Limbaugh, that is conservatives, think like they do. Well here’s prove that even the Supreme Court Chief Justice can fail at thinking on the same level as Lush Dimbulb.

    “Do you know which state has the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African-American voter turnout?” Roberts asked Solicitor General Don Verrilli. When Verrilli said he did not know, Roberts answered the question for him: “Massachusetts.” Moments later, the chief justice did it again, asking, “Which state has the greatest disparity in registration between white and
    African American?” Again the solicitor general did not know, and again Roberts said, “Massachusetts.”

    James Carter took a closer look at the latest information on voting and registration from the U.S. Census Bureau and found that Roberts appeared to be completely wrong. What’s more, the Boston Globe talked to Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, who’s eager to explain just how mistaken the conservative justice is. “I’m calling him out,” Galvin said…..

    More details about the wrongness of the Wronghere.

  228. howard says

    @827: of course, you’d think that the logical thing to do if the VRA doesn’t cover states with deeper divisions (assuming his asspulled data was correct) is expand the act. But you know he just wants to do away with it entirely.

  229. rq says

    I would like to smash something, please. Could somebody pass me the sledgehammer? I seem to have misplaced it in one of the corners of the Lounge.
    The phrases I give up and I hate myself and Fuck this shit and I want out have been running through my brain since early afternoon. Does anyone have any suggestions to tempt them down to at least a walking pace, and soon?x
    Many thanks.
    The oven is calling (dinner, nothing more).

  230. opposablethumbs says

    Noooo rq, I’m sorry and angry for you at whatever/whoever has been messing up your RL. I have to run right now, but can I send you lemon and ginger tea before I go? And a hug, I have one here all ready to go?

  231. Parrowing, Time For A Saucy Change says

    *passes sledgehammer to rq*

    I’m sorry you’re having such a bad time. I don’t think I have any suggestions, just a reminder that we’re always here to listen to you. Here is a garlic parfait for you but if that’s not to your liking currently, it will magically turn into something else.

  232. cicely (No further comment.) says

    *hugs* for rq. And sledgehammers are all well and good for Life’s Little Viscitudes, but may I recommend the napalm!, instead?

  233. rq says

    cicely, not that bad (yet). Perhaps later in the evening.
    And a garlic parfait would be parfait, Parrowing (why is it called a parfait?). Although a garlic cheesecake (I dare you!) would go down well, too.
    All I want is a little, tiny, little break. I’m tired of hearing myself yelling for no reason at all. It speaks of a lack of self-control that I simply do not possess at the moment, and yet there is no other out. Or at least, not one I can think of. Help?

  234. says

    I do not know what is wrong with some people. I mean seriously, WHO…WHO would create a pea-popsicle or garlic parfait?

    On a whim, I decided to do some Wiki-Fu (cicely, thou should avert thine eyes) on the dreaded PEA. I found some trivia (which will give me a leg up so I may win against Portia in Trivial Pursuit after I easily best her at Pictionary):

    ” There are many varieties (cultivars) of garden peas. Some of the most common varieties are listed here. PMR indicates some degree of powdery mildew resistance; afila types have clusters of tendrils instead of leaves.

    Alaska, 55 days (smooth seeded)
    Thomas Laxton/Laxton’s Progress/Progress #9, 60-65 days
    Mr. Big, 60 days, 2000 AAS winner
    Little Marvel, 63 days, 1934 AAS winner
    Early Perfection, 65 days (This variety is the foundation of many improved varieties and crosses, including Dark-Seeded Early Perfection and Bolero, the latter being one of the most successful commercial varieties.) [8]

    Kelvedon Wonder, 65 days, 1997 RHS AGM winner
    Sabre, 65 days, PMR
    Homesteader/Lincoln, 67 days (heirloom, known as Greenfeast in AU, NZ)
    Serge, 68 days, PMR, afila
    Wando, 68 days
    Green Arrow, 70 days
    Tall Telephone/Alderman, 75 days (heirloom, tall climber)
    Other variations of P. sativum include:

    Pisum sativum var. macrocarpon is commonly known as the snow pea. Pisum sativum var. macrocarpon ser. cv. is known as the sugar or snap pea. Both of these are eaten whole before the pod reaches maturity and are hence also known as mange-tout, French for “eat all”. The snow pea pod is eaten flat, while in sugar/snap peas, the pod becomes cylindrical, but is eaten while still crisp, before the seeds inside develop.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea#section_9

    I hasten to add, I do not mind snow peas in a salad. Uncooked of course. I also love edamame. It’s the solo, squishy, starchy de-podded peas that are an abomination.

  235. says

    Although a garlic cheesecake (I dare you!) would go down well, too.

    I’m trying to remember if that was one of the offerings at the Gilroy Garlic Festival when we attended a decade ago. There were so many different things available it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  236. Parrowing, Time For A Saucy Change says

    rq:

    garlic cheesecake (I dare you!)

    Dare accepted. I’ll even taste it. Some of us live on the edge.

  237. Portia, Plentiful Pleasant Pea Purveyor says

    rq
    So so so many hugs. And sledgehammers. And martinis.
    Sorry you’re having a rough time.

    theophontes
    Operation Octocopter Advantage has been a success. I shall have ALL THE VICTORIES.

    Tony
    You just admitted an affection for peas.
    CICELY!!!!! You have a defector!

    I’ve had red bean ice cream at a sushi place, it’s rather good.

    =======

    I think I have enough hair chopped off to donate.
    I can’t get used to how light my head feels.

  238. rq says

    °Tony
    Let’s do it. *laces up steel-toed hiking boots* I’ve got my sledgehammer, what’ll you bring?

  239. rq says

    Giliell
    *jealous* of your holiday.

    Parrowing
    When I come to Stockholm in August, you can make me two cheesecakes – one with garlic, and one without. I’ll even eat them both. ;)

    Portia
    Red bean desserts are generally good. I think because the beans themselves are sweet. My favourite after-sushi dessert so far, though, is green tea ice cream. Seems pretty tame, compared to some of the stuff floating around here.

  240. Portia, Plentiful Pleasant Pea Purveyor says

    Ooooh yes, green tea ice cream is a lovely light flavor.

    mmm Now I want ice cream.

  241. Beatrice says

    I want raspberry icecream. Like the one I ate in that gelateria in Florence.

    I also want to eat it in that gelateria in Florence.

  242. Parrowing, Time For A Saucy Change says

    I lurrve green tea ice cream! But most places make it too sweet to be perfect, in my opinion. I like it like I like my pea-colored horses, green and bitter.

    *

    Congrats on getting the haircut, Portia, and yay for being able to donate! My next haircut (less than two weeks from now!) will be straightening out last year’s asymmetrical bob. It will be waaaaay too short to donate.

    *

    Oh, it’s happening, rq. By the way, I’m trying (sort of) to look into logistics for Stockholm. Without having a price for the conference I can’t make too many decisions, but if you want to get in touch with me about it at all, let me know and I’ll leave my email address here.

  243. Beatrice says

    Technically, that raspberry icecream was actually sorbetto. That just means I can eat it more than the regular kind so that’s even better.

  244. Portia, Plentiful Pleasant Pea Purveyor says

    Raspberries are the best berried. I love them.

    Parrowing:
    Thanks! I’m pretty excited to have a whole new look. My motivation was mainly to look a little older and maybe get taken a little more seriously. We’ll see.
    Good luck with your haircut :)

  245. birgerjohansson says

    More confirmation of “background” climate science. (The denialists are out in force in the comments section) “In prehistory, CO2 and warming went in lock-step” http://phys.org/news/2013-02-prehistory-co2-lock-step.html
    — — — — — — — — — —
    If I get a weapons-grade stomach bug, you can put me in a trebuchet and launch me into the Capitol building. Going out in a blaze of glory…or at least in a display of “guts” (splat). I think South Park made an episode of it.
    — — — — — —
    I got a set of glasses for my 85-year old mom that had different parts of the lenses adapted for different-distance vision. Sadly, my mom found it too complicated to learn to use them so today I ordered two different pairs, one for reading and one for watching TV. Fortunately the optical examination for the previous glasses is also good for the new ones, so the cost for the pair ended up less than half what the failed ones cost. Also, without a new examination they can get her the glasses in just a week.
    — — — — — — —
    Paid bills, worked first day since I got sick. Feels good.

  246. rq says

    Portia
    Hair or no hair, they damn well should take you more seriously. Grr. Here, have some raspberries!

    Parrowing
    I’ll probably ask for your email as the dates get closer, and yes, prices become available. I’m still waiting for a reply from Minnie the Finn, I haven’t got one yet, and looking for accomodations on my own will be a bit more challenging. Oh, and have you seen my pea-green horse? :)

    Beatrice
    Whatever it was, it had raspberries in it. That’s good enough for me (also, Florence, where I’ve never been, which makes it sound that little bit more awesome).

    +++

    I’m going to be here a while tonight. Translating. Education crap. Ech.

  247. birgerjohansson says

    Stockholm in August? Potential for “ryssvärme” (Russian heat). Many days of 30+ (which you probably consider chilly).
    .
    Returning to disease and Canada -have you tried to give Harper a Central African bat as a pet? The critters have amazing innate immunity. Ebola gives them no problems.

  248. Ogvorbis: We Are LEGUMES! says

    Threadrupt

    Making home-made pizza. Home-made crust with oregano, crushed chili, and herb-infused olive oil. It wil be topped with sweated onions, yellow sweet pepper, sliced fresh Roma tomatoes, pepperoni, hard Italians salami, and some cheap mozzarella cheese. And there was enough dough left over that I have a foccacia rising right now.

  249. rq says

    birgerjohansson
    Someone linked to a link about exotic pets and all… I think Harper has been warned. :o
    (Glad to hear you’re feeling better!)
    Why is it called Russian heat?

  250. says

    Mormon Moments of Madness, and, surprisingly, mormon mommy moments of reason: mormons have been doing so much fighting over breastfeeding infants lately, (the when, the where, the how, the “porn”), that the issue made the Salt Lake Tribune … twice.
    First link.

    … Any change would come too late for Marie Le, who stopped attending LDS services after being scolded in 2006 for breast-feeding her baby.

    Though Le says “nothing was showing,” the Idaho mother got a visit from her Relief Society president, who said that some women had complained about her nursing, that she was harming their husbands who had “porn problems” and that they didn’t want their teenage sons “exposed to anything.”

    Le went to her Mormon bishop, who she says sided with the critics. The experience was “emotionally devastating,” Le recalls. “I felt that church was like a big family and now my safe religious haven had betrayed me.”

    She started having panic attacks at the thought of a whispering campaign about her. Le no longer considers herself a Mormon….

    That first article also makes the point that many mormon women have so many children that they can’t leave the meeting room to nurse a baby elsewhere without also leaving their toddlers and other children unsupervised.

    Second link.

    If you find the sight of nursing mothers distractingly scandalous in church, then perhaps it’s time to get over it. There’s every reason to believe God doesn’t care. And if he doesn’t, maybe we shouldn’t either.

    More important, if you find the sight of a nursing mother sexually problematic, there’s probably a lot more wrong with you than church could ever fix.

    And there’s this: http://latterdaylactivism.com

  251. says

    Oh, dear, I left out the porn quote from my post @860. We can’t have that.

    As a new mother in Provo about three years ago, Heather Moore-Farley got a call from her Relief Society president, asking her to use a blanket or go to the mothers’ lounge in the women’s bathroom to breast-feed to protect others’ sensitivities. Then her bishop suggested Moore-Farley and her husband pray about it. They did and got the same answer: She was doing nothing wrong.

    Sometime later, another ward member confronted the couple as they were walking home from church and accused her of “contributing to the pornography problem” and “not keeping [her] covenants.”

  252. Portia, Plentiful Pleasant Pea Purveyor says

    Thanks, rq! They damn well should! Sad realities we live under. : /

    Om nom nom raspberries!!

  253. Ogvorbis: We Are LEGUMES! says

    Hugs to rq and all who are in need of supportive hugs.

    Dreams have not been too bad. Nothing really scary — just normal 9/11 scary. Which is a relief.

  254. Nepenthe says

    @Lynna

    This fine lawmaker went on to explain that he didn’t know what a transvaginal ultrasound was. Oh glorious ignorance.

    To be fair, there are lots of things that Sean Duffy doesn’t know about. He was elected because–excuse me while I get out a handkerchief–he was a reality television star. Yes. The good people of the Northwoods decided to elect a guy from The Real World. *commences weeping*

  255. Parrowing, Time For A Saucy Change says

    Ooh, nice horse, rq! (For those who are concerned, I didn’t just write that.)

    Off to bed. Good night, everyone.

  256. birgerjohansson says

    rq,
    Russian heat: Often, in summer, a stable high-pressure area moves from the Russian-Ukrainian region into Scandinavia and stays there for weeks.
    But I should not complain, it is much worse for the Russians; most cannot afford AC, indeed many in rural areas still lack basic amenities. At work we had two consecutive co-workers originally from the Volgograd area, they told us how it is for their relatives in summer. A couple of years ago, the heat lasted well into fall and set off forest fires that made the sky above Moscov full of ashes.
    .
    I am told the Russian thunderstorms need no lessons from the ones in Amercan tornado territory. A Russian filmmaker who filmed King Lear made good cinematic use of the thunderstorms.
    — — — — — — — — — —
    The practices by the LDS and other churches have been flying under the radar until the internet era makes the stupidity visible to the world. It will get harder for them to get young converts, and their young people will increasingly compare the world beyond with the stunted existence the religious community offers, and find the latter wanting.
    It’s not rock music that is diabolic, it is the internet.

  257. Ogvorbis: We Are LEGUME! says

    And I forgot to put salt in the dough for the pizza and foccacia. Damn. I could fuck up a one-horse parade.

  258. says

    Progress has been made!

    I stopped in at DVSAS today.

    I talked to someone about The Jackass.

    And I stopped in an alleyway (on the way there) to vomit, because I was just. that. anxious.

    My Wednesday evenings will be spent attending a support group for survivors.

    I feel really, really good about finally taking this step.

  259. carlie says

    This was on slactivist recently. Stop apologizing for what you like to read.

    I really like it.

    You should not apologize for what you like to read. The person you are apologizing to can only fit into one of three categories:

    1. He or she shares your joy.
    2. He or she doesn’t give a good goddamn.
    3. He or she thinks less of you for what you read in which case don’t apologize to that person because he or she is clearly a douchebag who doesn’t deserve your obeisance.