So I’m watching this video with the lovely damp lady with all the silk scarves, finding it all rather stimulating, and then it gets to the end and…oh, man. Castration anxieties. I’m going to go curl up in my bed and whimper.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Sorry for so many cross-postings, but since PZ may see this here:
PZ —Would it be helpful to have someone count and collate the requests for style/functionality changes in The Complaints Department thread? If so, I volunteer to write up the requests along with the number of people who asked for them so you can prioritize. If you see this, lemme know and tell me when you’d like it so I can set myself a deadline.
Yes, that’s a fabulous idea. Not going to be able to touch it for a while, though…
@ Josh OSG
Your avatar is creepy.
I like it.
I got what I had to grudgingly concede was a fanny pack at REI a few years back, which I use (not often enough) as an accoutrement for birdwatching. Of course, the fanny pack isn’t often worn on the (American) fanny. A few years back, we had rather large fanny packs at Fish & Game for a plant survey in the Salmon River canyon. I tried one on, couldn’t stand having all that weight perched on my upper pelvis (I hypothesized that the ladies could wield those better since they had, a heh, a more natural shelf back there), and went with my backpack instead.
Cool, PZ. I’ll get to work on that at a leisurely pace.:)
You might want to take some Airborne before your flight, too. It was invented by a Teacher™!
This fanny pack is, of course, a rugged, fashionable gray, and not one of those neon-yellow nylon vintage 1990 ones that probably everyone thinks about when they hear “fanny pack”.
@Kamaka
I’m glad you approve. That’s Miss Joan Dunaway. Or Miss Crone Jawford. I can’t decide which I like better.
What part of the Salmon River Canyon? I’ve been at fires in the area downstream from Salmon and upstream from Riggins. Beautiful area.
Here’s one: put a link to the complaints thread so we can find it more easily. Like the endless thread link. Otherwise we’re just going to post complaints all over.
And since it got lost at the end…
Clearly you lot have absolutely NO idea how funny this fannypack concept is to a non-USAnian. No, not the object, the name.
LOL. Literally. Fannypack! HAHAHAHA!
Damn. Portcullised. But at least this time I saved the comment by copying it.
Skipped a lot of TET because I am so far behind. Can’t see FtB at work and been busy and nuts at home.
So….
Caine: hope you are all healthy and feeling better now.
Hi, Ariel. Welcome (back) to TET!
Hi, Cicely. I’ve missed you (but ate some peas in your honor – no horses near by though).
Hi, Josh! It’s getting closer to my trip to VT and seeing you in Meatspace. I am getting quite excited to meet you and Francine.
I’m sure I’ve missed great stories, great recipes and lots of fun, but what can I say?
Started looking at apartments and think I have found one. Price is higher than I wanted to go, but it has a GARAGE! (very important for NJ winters and my precious motorcycle). Started filling out papers to file for the divorce, so life goes on. Stress continues but no future panic attacks (good thing, too, or I’d be on Josh’s doorstep howling for Val*ium)
Hugs to all the Horde! It’s bedtime for me.
Before or after the fires?
Indeed – as a young scottish boy reading american novels I was often somewhat excited by the frequent use of ‘fanny’ in prose… and there seemed to be a lot of ‘patting’ of same.
It did confuse me (and early girlfriends) quite considerably!
[Conversation continued from last thread]
And thank you too, @cicely and @Tethys.
I just found this, according to which we’ve already seen the only two episodes with Reaver appearances, so it looks like we’re good for the rest of the TV show.
As for the movie, I’ll definitely follow everyone’s advice and stick to watching it on my own. I have no problem with scary/tense scenes or movies myself – like you, Tethys, I note that they’re fiction, and I generally find myself simply wondering what the zombie/Reaver/ghost is actually thinking and how he/she/it could be reasoned with.
My only other question is whether you all remember anything else in the TV show that might similarly scare her. But @cicely’s comment makes me hopeful that we’re in the clear. Thanks again for the help.
I must admit I have seen some fannybacks that are worn in the back, made for joggers I think that actually don’t look hideous.
As for men and their refusal to use bags I think there must be a North American epidemic of men with lop sided backs from sitting on their overstuffed wallets all day.
And thanks for being so welcoming :) I know you are all nice people, snark included, but I must admit I get I intimidated sometimes. I’m happy I got a slight push to join back in.
The original complaints thread is already on the long side (~ 450 comments), and a lot of the complaints are now addressed. Maybe a new one to collate new suggestions?
Josh, feel free to add me to the group who would like the superfluous says: to go from the comment headers, and unjustified paragraph text. Now that PZ’ CSS fixes are in I’ve done away with the majority of the Owlmirror/Orange Utan fixes, but I’m continuing to run a short, custom CSS with a few niceties like this.
We have bold, italic, and strike through; why not underline for the set. (And why WordPress is unable to cope with <s> as well as <strike> is a mystery.)
Actually, I should also ask, “What state?” as I’ve been spiked out at Forks of Salmon in northern California (nine days in one set of clothing (I’ll have to tell y’all about that one someday)).
I’ve taken the bread pudding out of the crock pot (lefover sourdough, leftover french toast, some whole wheat bread and some French bread (and Costa Rican vanilla)) and put it in the refrigerator, so I’m heading off to bed.
Hopefully I will still be able to log in tomorrow.
repost after the portcullis:
I finally just started carrying a purse this year. I say it’s because of getting diligent about carrying the epi-pen around, but it is convenient. The sad thing is that after I bought it, I realized it’s almost exactly the same as the one my mom uses.
I have one purse by this person (although I bought it on etsy, not this site). I LOVE it, but it turned out to have a shorter strap than I’m used to so it isn’t really comfortable to carry around as a shoulder bag (and the strap is too long to be a handbag), so I only carry it when I’m really wanting to show off. :)
Other than Family Guy, Futurama, and maybe South Park, what’s good on TV these days?
Yes. And during, too.
@ Audley, I don’t want to restart your bug bite anxiety, but if you absolutely can’t stand it Tiger Balm will make the whole area go numb so you can sleep. When I was in Belize there were these awful bitey flies called Doctor Flies, and I swear Tiger Balm was the only thing that kept me sane.
@ Cath the Canberra Cook
Oh, I get the humor, but I’ve been to Oz. C’mon, Cath, don’t give it away!
@ButIsItTrue
I think she may also want to avoid “War Stories”. There is a fairly graphic torturing in that one.
Its fictional…..This is what I tell myself if I should start thinking about the werewolves in “The Howling” while walking around in the country at night. Scariest werewolves ever!!
I suppose this would be a bad time to point out that, when skiing back in the 80s, I not only had hot chocolate in my fanny pack, but I also, on occasion, had fudge in there?
And now I will attempt, again, to stick the bed flounce.
I do actually own a couple of “fannypacks”, or as we say here, bumbags. They’re quite practical for some uses. One is quite large – the perfect size for SLR camera, an extra long lens, my wallet and my reading glasses and sunglasses. Perfect tourist accessory! Sod fashion, practicality wins. And when I get my SLR fixed, I’ll probably use it again.
Cath: LOL. USAian folks, remember that “fanny”, while it means “butt” in the US, means “pussy” in UK/Aussie. And yes, it’s pussy, not vagina, that it mirrors.
Triskele – can’t wait to meet ya! FYI, txting is not my main form of communication, so don’t think I’m ignoring you if I don’t get back to you soon. You have my phone number and address, right? You know how to email me for it:)
Philip – Please leave your suggestions on the Complaints thread. I don’t have the brainpower or motivation to catalogue them across multiple threads.
Cath
I was wondering what you call them. Bumbags sounds like something hobos would carry to my USA ears.
@Josh: no worries. I just text random stuff and don’t worry if you don’t text back. I *do* have your phone number but not your address; as time gets closer I will email you for it. Still don’t have the full itinerary stuff (hotel info, times, etc). Once I have that, you will get a long email with lots of “squees” in it.
Good night, TET!
Suggestion: A jump to the end of the comments would be useful.
–
*sigh* If you will do these things, I trust that you at least have Poison Control on speed-dial? And perhaps something in the way of a Suicide Prevention Hotline?
–
@Tethys
Thank you! That’s exactly what I wanted to know. I’ll warn her when we get to that episode.
The scariest movie I ever saw was Young Sherlock Holmes. I was nine years old, and the idea of evil monks in dark robes with their faces in the shadows shooting hallucinogenic drugs at me that would make shower heads etc. come alive and attack me was truly frightening. Never show that movie to a child with a good imagination.
Looking back now, I was right about (many of the) religious guys in dark robes being scary, just wrong about the reason.
Wikipedia sez:
(Bum-bag is indeed what I’ve heard used)
Excellence is on PBS tonight.
Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King.
If you can, do tune in and get’cha some real blues.
Teeheehee, OggVorbis is a self-confessed fudgepacker!
—
(*) No, this is not a very nice word. It’s an unpleasant slur.
* Sorry for the misspelling, Ogvorbis.
I think fudgepacker means the same thing in the USA and Australia.
Josh, okay; I just wasn’t sure whether that thread was really so helpful for noting all of the things that we’d like FTB to be able to do, as opposed to what we found was missing when we first arrived over here on August 1. (I also thought of a few more things to add to my list, so you can ignore the suggestions in this thread.)
I therefore withdraw my suggestion that PZ should start a new thread; here is the link to the original complaints thread.
I still cringe whenever I hear fanny-pack. I’m Canadian, and I found out the hard way, travelling with an international group. Owen was a very young 21 year old Welsh guy, whose mum had pressed his laundry and packed his bags for him.
Me, fumbling for my camera: Owen, can you just hold my fanny pack for me?
Owen: *turns beet red and actually runs away*
Me: WTF?
Everyone else: *Dies laughing*
Hi Brother Ogvorbis!
++++++++++++++++++++
IRT fanny packs, I wore one for years but in the belly pack position. Nowadays I either have my laptop bag or just go nekkid with my money clip and credit card in my front pockets.
Unless I’m sailing, in which case I have a 6-pack cooler over-the-shoulder-holder containing my camera, binocs, sunscreen … &c. and no beer*. I figure if water can’t get out, water can’t get in.
*I have a much larger cooler for my beer;-)
Ah, I had wondered if it was local or common. Not enough to google it though, that could be nasty.
Downhill from Craig Mountain, not far from the mouth at the Snake River. Searching for the exceedingly rare (and surprisingly, somewhat beautiful) McFarland’s Four O’Clock. Something like 12 miles of horizontal distance, around 2,000 feet of up-and-down. It was…unpleasant.
Rey
Did you find them?
Ariel:
Hm. Tiger Balm is numbing? I had no idea.
I’m pretty okay now– I think I just had to break the cycle of obsessive freak outs.
1) Scratch an itch
2) Worry that it is a new bite
3) OMG THEY ARE IN MY HOUSE
and/or
1) Scratch an itch
2) Worry that it is a new bite
3) OMG THERE ARE BUGS CRAWLING ON ME
Repeat until crazy.
Can I wear a bumbag* even though I’ve no nifty gear to put in it? I’m getting the impression that one needs an excuse to wear one (running, cycling, photography, outdoorsy crap, whatever) and all I have is a lot of junk.
*You can stop snickering now.
Last time I was near the salmon was in salmon idaho in july circa 1977. 85+ degrees Fahrenheit and woke up shivering in a tent with the vapours from my breath freezing into ice crystals in the pup tent. It was 30F. Loved it.
No.
So I’ve herded a few cats, (most of them escaped), into the new and improved TET, ground some peas and horses together, (I threw out the ponies, I always throw the small ones back;-), and have all the parts for a trebuchet.
I just have one question: Where is blf!?
Audley, maybe you can put a decoy in your fannypack? I wish I had a good excuse to wear one of those neat fishing vests with all the cool pockets and snaps. They have the coolest rafts too, with cupholders and little foldout trays and cubbies. Would it be weird to take up a hobby for the accessories?
Mmm. I know just how you feel. Coincidentally I developed an eccentric skin rash the same week my upstairs neighbor came down to tell me he had bed bugs (which was very kind of him, actually). I spent some bit of time in a crazed state over that. No, I didn’t have bed bugs. But it took getting an exterminator in my house to inspect before I finally calmed down.
It’s almost surely just understandable nerves, Audley. I’m nigh on positive you don’t have any bugs crawling on you.
Take a sleeping pill or a tranquilizer for a couple of nights and it’ll fade away on its own.
Actually, some sleeping pills, antinausea agents, and older antidepressants can cause OMG BUGS CRAWLING ON ME.
So, um, careful with that.
I’m off to bed, good night thread. Don’t let the bedbugs…. I mean *cough cough* what bedbugs?
Skepgineer:
My absolute favorite scripted show — Men of a Certain Age — was just canceled after its 2nd season finale, but it’d be worth catching up on. It stars the wonderful Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life On The Streets), Ray Romano, and Scott Bakula as three men of around 50 (±~2) yr old men, best friends, each dealing with his own set of problems. It happens that I am a “man of a certain age,” but I don’t think you’d have to be to love this show: The writing is incredibly honest, and the acting is uniformly brilliant (which I expected from Braugher, but pleasantly surprised me from the other two). There’s a Facebook campaign to save the show, but those rarely work out.
I’m also waiting for the new season of HBO’s Hung, which stars Thomas Jane as a divorced schoolteacher/baseball coach in Detroit who turns to prostitution after his house burns (halfway) down, and Jane Adams as a hapless poet/law firm proofreader who becomes his pimp. It’s HBO, so expect R-rated scenes, but it’s not porn, nor is it sexually exploitative. It is cringingly hilarious, and like MoaCA, it’s brilliantly written and acted.
I also always like In Plain Sight (about Federal Marshalls who work as WITSEC inspectors) and Royal Pains (about a concierge doctor in the Hamptons) on USA.
And if your cable system gets BBC America and you have ever enjoyed any of the Law & Order shows, check out Law & Order UK, a really successful translation of the original concept to London.
All that said, I mostly watch reality shows these days. Speaking of which…
SYTYCD fans, what did y’all think about the performance finale tonight? My Lovely Bride™ and I thought some of the choreography (and some of the music, come to that) was disappointing, but there were also some high points. The best dance, IMHO, was the Melanie/Sasha desperate (50s) housewives number, and the fact that the two remaining girls dancing together was the highlight pretty much summed up the season for me (and for Nigel, based on his comment after the last number). Nothing about tonight changed my longstanding prediction regarding who will win, though I think one dance who might’ve been a longshot for an upset fell entirely out of that position. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Cath, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I first passed an Australian pub with a dress code posted outside and read “No thongs”. I wondered how they expected to find out!
I wore a bumbag throughout the nineties when I was a taxi driver. For the first few years I had enough to carry with the huge bag for my ‘mobile’ phone (‘mobile’ in about the same sense as a ‘mobile home’) and even when the phones shrank it was safer than carrying a bag – where would I put a bag so it was safe?
I still own an assortment of belt pouches that I prefer to a handbag, although I recently bought a small hard case (originally designed for carrying a NDS plus games/accessories) that has become my favourite. I still have an assortment of handbags for special occasions (mostly impulse buys from charity shops).
I converted hubby to a bumbag at the same time I started using them and he uses one daily. I bought him an expensive hikers’ one (complete with built-in water pouch) for last Monkey. When he needs to carry bigger things he uses either a laptop briefcase or a lightweight fellrunners’ rucksack unless he’s cycling, in which case he uses these:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3659/3662216057_03b7e9a7e7.jpg
Damages with Glenn Close is absolutely riveting.
Did somebody say Scott Bakula? Be still my heart. Row. Rrr.
I won’t get to watch the finale for a few days yet.
It better go Melanie wins, Sasha second, Marco third.
I will have to content myself with re-watching the amazing dances from last weeks episode.
Melanie’s solo and broadway routine, Sasha’s wall dance, and Caitlynn’s last dance with Marco were all breath-taking.
I won’t mind if they never do whacking again.
Ugh, bugs! Why does it always have to be bugs??
I cringe every time mosquito season comes around because I’m apparently they’re favorite walking buffet. It never fails that in a crowd with my friends, I’m always the first to get bitten, repeatedly, after which I end up looking like I’ve got a case of the mumps from all the itchy swelling. Now in the habit of carrying anti-itch bug bite ointment with me, and repellant can get tricky when I’ve got an outdoor fire spinning thing because I do not want to be covered in anything remotely flammable – any suggestions for alternatives?? I’ve heard eucalyptus scent can act as bug repellant.
the pint
Avon skin so soft works as a decent insect repellent. Works for mosquitoes, chiggers, and biting gnats.
Pint-
You need a bug spray with DEET (Google it). Yeah, it’s a “nasty chemical.” It’s also one of the only effective bug spray ingredients. The hippy-dippy home remedy stuff doesn’t work. Full stop. I won’t go out to a summer picnic, especially in the evening, without a spray down that has DEET in it. You can labor all summer trying eucalyptus and citronella and whatever other Earth Mother shit people will recommend, but it won’t work.
And Pint – spraying yourself with bug repellent isn’t going to set your arms on fire, even with a live fire there. Really. It’s not the chemical, but the fumes, that is flammable. If it were the chemical alone, your car would burst into flames from having gasoline in a car parked next to a fire.
Spray yourself, let it dry, and that’s it. Just don’t spray yourself next to an open flame (common sense).
Ah yes, Tigger, good one.
Note to tourists: rubber thongs are a lot less exciting than they sound.
@Skepgineer #18
Family Guy
No.
Also, the answer to your question is probably nothing, though admittedly I don’t actually watch TV anymore. That’s why Jesus invented torrents, amirite? I just wait a few weeks, then watch the entire season/series all at once in HD with no commercials.
@The bags discussion
Fannypacks/Bumbags are horrible and you should all feel bad for wearing them.
Not that I don’t carry around a horrible piece of shit manpurse for college supplies and my various nerdshit. What could I possibly do if somebody challenged me to a game of Magic: The Gathering and I didn’t have all eight of my decks to choose from? Get trapped in the Shadow Realm, that’s what.
Ah, DEET. It’s the only thing that makes camping bearable.
But it doesn’t taste very nice.
Josh OSG, I think I love you.
I’ll be back when my wireless is functional, which will probably a week and half or so. I aten’t dead.
Hee-hee. It’s only because I’m right. There aren’t any effective “alternatives.” All of those are just snake oil natural-food-store bullshit tinctures.
Ach! Caine- we must launch a revolt against your Internet provider. My tentacles stand fully engorged and at the ready, My Queen.
Josh
Skin so soft is soap. It works quite well. I prefer soap to things that might be carcinogens, and definitely disrupt central nervous systems as deet does. (do not breathe that shit!)
Sorry, but I think that makes this link mandatory.
Speaking of TV, BTW, does anyone here watch The Big C with Laura Linney? A friend of mine, whom I know from local politics, is the art director on that show… but because I don’t get Showtime, I’ve never seen it. Is it good?
Tethys:
I’m aware of Skin So Soft’s reputation of being a bug repellent. What do you think “might” be a carcinogen?
DEET for truth!
Nothing else works.
It does melt some plastics.
The Pint | 10 August 2011 at 10:58 pm :
Eucalyptus is actually quite flammable. At 100F and up, it is ridiculously flammable. This fact plays a crucial role in Austrailian bush fires.
DEET is also flammable, but not nearly so much as eucalyptus, and unlike eucalyptus, DEET actually keeps the bugs away.
Deet “may” be a carcinogen. It is classified as type D.
Which means “We don’t think it causes cancer in humans, but it might”.
citation and explication needed. Are you prepared to parse, and then illustrate the direct effects (that not even the authors proposed) on humans from this paper?
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/7/47
Don’t skim scientific papers and then make bullshit declamations about things “definitely disrupting central nervous systems.”
Jesus. That’s your concern? Really? Did you read what you just wrote?
Water might cause cancer. We don’t think it does, but it might. Honestly.
Here’s a report on comparative repellents which includes IR3535, the “repellent” added to some types of Skin So Soft.
And this is from pubmed regarding a study done against midges. The SSS only worked because the midges got trapped in the oil.
I’m licensed to apply pesticides commercially. I don’t think the USDA is lying about classifying it as class D.
Deet works by disrupting central nervous systems. It has low dermal toxicity, is highly irritating to mucous membranes, and clearly states to avoid breathing the fumes on the label which is a legal document required by law.
What is up with the Japanese and their tentacle obsession? However I have to admit that the best squid I ever ate was at a local Japanese restaurant. Second best squid I ever ate was at the original Tampico Restaurant on Airline Drive. They’ve got a menu in English, Spanish, and some Native American language I do not recognize, probably Nahuatl or Tarascan.
I live in what is usually a mosquito infested city that gets over 50 inches of rain a year. But not this year. It’s amazing to walk outside and be largely mosquito free. We did get some rain a couple of weeks ago and there have been a couple of confirmed cases of West Nile Virus. I’m pretty sure I had West Nile back in 2007. Headaches, chills, weakness, blurred vision. Didn’t go to the doc as I had no insurance and was better in three days anyway.
I used to discount West Nile as hype until I met a guy who went into a coma from it and took three years to learn to walk again.
And here’s the Environmental Protection Agency’s explanation of their own letter grades for “possible” carcinogens. I’m afraid you need to do some remedial reading, Tethys:
Futher reading shows it also reduces flame resistance when applied to Nomex clothing.
http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/php/library_card.php?p_num=0551%202327P
Sigh. So you’re not going to respond to the fact that you were unduly alarmist about it “might” cause cancer. OK. Just so we’re clear.
I’m wondering if race car drivers really need mosquito repellent. Those must be some fast frickin’ bugs! ;^)
I went to the USDA website and did a quick scan for DEET. Here’s what I found:
Why bother, Katrina? Looks like we’ve got a True Believer That Chemicals is BAAAAD™
Tethys:
You don’t think they just need to “whack it harder,” as the delightful Christina Applegate declared?
Sadly, I think last week’s performance show was better than the finale… but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy tonight’s show, when you finally get to see it.
I know very well what all the various classes are and what they mean.
In the case of deet, its possible bad effects are out-weighed by its benefits in areas where west nile or encephalitis are common.
This does not make it harmless.
Josh
Now your just being pissy because I disagree.
Citation needed for both:
1. What are its “possible” bad effects? Are those the same ones as its “possible” carcinogenic properties, which no one has established?
2. You didn’t start out merely objecting that DEET wasn’t “harmless.” You raised an alarmist cry that you’d rather use an Avon skin soap than something that “might be carcinogens, and definitely disrupt central nervous systems as deet does. (do not breathe that shit!.”
Any objective person can see that’s extremely melodramatic compared to the actual data.
So cut the shit. What’s your goal here?
Don’t. Lie.
Nope. I’m being pissy because you won’t support your rhetoric with data, and you won’t answer reasonable direct questions.
If I could make these tags work I would cite it for you.
If there was no concern about possible carcinogen effects it wouldn’t be classified as type D.
(For those of you just stumbling on this, understand that the EPA’s rating of “Type D” is “Inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential”)
It’s the next category before “Not likely to be carcinogenic to humans”
Seriously, Tethys, what’s your problem?
Josh, WTF?
You make an awful lot of assumptions and have attributed to me lots of words I did not say (or type) or opinions I do not hold.
Can we go back to the part where Skin-So-Soft has been proven not to work? Even after Avon added a non-DEET repellent, it worked for only 20 minutes.
In spite of its Class D status, DEET is – at the moment – the only repellent proven to work. Period.
Because you say and cite absolutely nothing credible in support of your position, and you refuse to answer questions that interrogate your position. It’s obvious you want to create an atmosphere of alarm about DEET (come on, don’t demur, we can see it), but you won’t back it up. Why? I’ve put the data out there, but you won’t answer it.
Skin-so-soft does work for me. It is not as effective as deet.
Citronella nope. Eucalyptus nope
Because NONE of these tags work for me.
Why would I wish to create an atmosphere of alarm about deet?
Don’t breathe it.
And if you are a fire-fighter, don’t spray it on your fire-proof clothing.
Yep…Im such an alarmist.
Katrina, I acknowledge what you’re saying. It’s clear SSS doesn’t work nearly as well as it is reputed to work. What I’m more concerned about, though, is Tethys’ attempts to distract from that and make DEET seem like an Evil Chemical™ by citing its Class D™ status while avoiding the fact that there’s absolutely no evidence at all that DEET is a carcinogen. In fact, that’s the very definition of “Class D.”
Troll.
DEET works.
The smoking will kill me before DEET does.
——
on the topic of feeling bugs crawling…
A long time ago on Canadian TV was David Steinburg…
get off
the whole “Get Off!” *stomp* *stomp* *stomp* thing was iconic in my crowd for decades.
Josh, fair enough. It’s past my bedtime anyway.
‘Nite, all.
LOL @ Josh calling me a troll because I said you should avoid breathing deet.
Well, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. That sushi ain’t gonna make itself.
Deet has not been shown to cause cancer in humans, but it does seem to be a mutagen. Thus the class D rather than class E.
Dosage is the key.
The original question was asking for a non-flammable insect repellent. Skin so soft does work, but it is not as effective as deet. It is however, completely non-flammable.
@ Josh
New .css layout:
I have made a mock up of a simple layout for this blog. The current on is still too noisy. Also have changed out the justification for regular text. (Sorry for font.)
Link to alternative format.
(cross-posted to complaints thread.)
Come on Josh, Tethys is a regular, not a troll. I’ve had the same advice from the specialist travel doctors who I consult when planning an overseas trip. Don’t inhale it, don’t get it on broken skin or mucus membranes. It may well be that they’re over-estimating the risk, but it’s still pretty common advice.
The latest news is that Palin’s oldest kid got married 3 months ago. His wife just had a baby. She is BTW, a Lutheran minister’s daughter.
It’s not looking like abstinence only sex ed is working so well. Palin is 0 for 2 with her kids.
So who cares if Track impregnated a minister’s daughter out of wedlock? It’s 2011, nothing unusual any more. Very few, probably including oogedy boogedy christofascist Sarah Palin.
These morons are such hypocrites though. No sex before marriage, don’t teach their kids about sex and birth control, and all that happens is that fundie kids get pregnant and have abortions at higher rates than the general population.
Greek: noble language of too many words.
I am, again, having login and refresh difficulties.
Is anyone else awake?
also my “u” key seems to be crapping ot.
“The Greeks had a word for it.”
=^_^=
I’m awake! Intermittently, as I’m still not 100% (or even 80%) over the virus, but it is 4pm here in soggy rainy Canberra.
So, I googled the product I use to keep the nasty little biters away (Autan) and it has DEET in it. It works. They are also touting Icaridin as a very effective new ingredient.
I’m always awake, chigau.
Always.
Shplanington sama
I am not touching your popsicles!
ever
honest
I’ve been having refresh problems; at the old site, the browser remembered which post I had last read and refreshed to that point.
To do the same here, I have to click on the date/time of the last post I’ve read in order to refresh to that point. :-(
Yay comment numbers!
Chigau, you are also a student of the Path of the Weaboo?
What are your favorite animes?
Also, comment numbers is a pretty cool guy etc etc etc
Teehee memes.
My wireless is working for a moment (yeah, yay), and I have this to say, to Tethys:
Do. Not. Ever. Blame. Tags. for your inability to cite, to back up what you are claiming. Post links to studies which will back you up. Do not lie, do not make claims you are unable to back up. That shit will get you chewed up and spat out, and rightly so.
You want to be hysterical about DEET? Fine. Back it the fuck up. No, you shouldn’t stuff it up your nose and breathe. I haven’t seen anyone advocate that. What you are claiming, however, requires back up. Either post studies to back your claims up or admit you’re wrong.
Chigau:
Wish I could help out. Here are some extra u’s: uuuuuuuuuuuu
Feel like fixing up my wireless connection?
@Caine
Have you tried doing violence to it?
Lord Shplanington, Not A Frenchman
I have not the slightest idea of what you
speaktype.Everything by Hayao Miyazaki.
Just be glad you haven’t spent as much time in terrible parts of the internet as me.
Studio Ghibli fuck year. Literally the only one I haven’t liked was Porco Rosso, and I think that’s mostly because the dub was awful. I need to try and find it with subtitles instead.
Lord Shplanington
dub bad
subtitles good
—–
Caine
thanks for the extra u’s
—–
bed now
Hikaru no Go FTMFW.
“Totoro, totoro…”
I have a plush catbus and a plush catbus hat…
I want a real catbus, though. Wouldn’t it be the best transport ever (except for motorcycles, of course)?
=^_^=
Yessssss. We hates them, preciousssss.
As seriously as the subject deserves, I seem to remember some brief trend/period thing some time back when some fashion current or ‘nother was trying to say, oh, they’re in now… Look how stylish we can make ’em. They’re like soft leather, canvas, look, we wrap them around sufficiently hot models, and they’re sexy!!!!
… and I looked and found myself thinking: umm… no. That’s kinda entertainingly surreal, but it still doesn’t really work. That there, that’s still a fanny pack. I don’t care if you hang it on the most gorgeously curvaceous/ripped young bod you can pay enough/coke up enough to wear it, it’s still a fanny pack. It’s like…
It’s like a prosthetic spare tire or some damned thing. Seriously, you put that thing on, you’re instantly George Costanza in the episode in which he wore one. Just don’t do it….
Oh, and don’t let your friends do it, either. That’s right: friends don’t let friends be George Costanza, dammit!
… sorta more seriously, okay, I guess I get they could be practical…
But there’s also soft briefcases (also available in nice, soft leather), teardrop backpacks… As pointed out above, if you’re on a bike, there’s panniers. If you’re carrying a camera, there’s actual camera bags…
(/I’m just saying there’s alternatives, man. You don’t have to do this to yourself. Just put that thing down, and back away from the ledge, and we can talk this thing out, dig?)
@Chigau
Eh. Unless the dub is really, really horrendously awful, I prefer the things I watch to be in a language I understand, and to not need to split my focus between reading and watching the action. I’ll go Sub if the dub is god-awful or if it significantly changes the original plot in a bad way, but other than that, dub all the way. Especially if Steve Blum does any of the voices.
@Tigger
Good cat, best public transportation.
Sorry, AJ; I still think that bumbags are very practical items.
But don’t take fashion tips from a granny who dresses as a pirate every Friday.
You aren’t going to believe this.
The cervical PUNCHES I got with my Oregon Health Plan primary doctor – didn’t happen.
The pain and bleeding that I have had, well, that’s just silly. That happened, but (!) when I called in for the last three days to get my results of the fucking biopsy, the biopsy didn’t happen.
It’s my fault that my cervix isn’t open because I’ve never been pregnant, and because of that – the punches didn’t work, so I have to have them AGAIN.
Does any of that make any fucking sense? No.
She didn’t send in the punches. Instead, she is referring me to another doctor. This makes NO sense to me, and it is an exercise in cruelty, and torture. So if any of you are in the medical field maybe you can explain the logic here. I sure as hell can’t.
Lord Shplanington, I much prefer the original soundtrack to dubbing, whatever the original language.
I don’t find subtitles distracting in the least.
Sometimes it is even fun to compare the English subtitles to what the actors are actually saying.
Caine @ 115 –
Thank you.
@Bill #49
ewww. I hate “reality” TV. It’s not appropriately named. It should be called “we saved money by firing all our writers & actors and getting morons to do contrived scenarios for free.”
Patricia, that is horrible!
How dare they put you through that torture! Is there someone you can report her to?
I am fed up with doctors using crap excuses; I’ve heard them all:
It’s always because:
You’re too young
You’re too old
You haven’t had children
You’ve had too many children
Your pregnancies were too close together
Your pregnancies were too far apart
And never because they are stupid/incompetent/haven’t a clue and/or don’t want to refer you to someone else who will know they are stupid.
Aaaaaarrrrgh! Bloody doctors!
I know a lot of people who prefer the original voices no matter what. I just don’t really get the point of listening to what is, to my ears, meaningless gibberish. The acting might be absolutely amazing, but it won’t matter because all I hear is random noises interspersed with the occasional rare word that I picked up from 4Chan.
Subs aren’t usually distracting, but occasionally I’ll miss some subtlety in the visuals because I’m splitting my attention, so it’s kind of annoying. Again, it doesn’t happen often, but it happens enough to bother me.
Comments or objections to my article on how science undermines stock arguments for the existence of god?
Tigger – Thank you for acknowledging that. No there is no one I can complain to. The Oregon Health Plan does not allow me to complain.
I went to my local drug store and asked if I could get 90 days worth of my stomach acid pills, so I could leave the state to visit a dieing ancient relative. Nope. Oregon Health Plan pays for 30 days, and that’s it.
I am in such deep dread of being punched in the cervix again that I don’t know how I will ever face it.
Skeepineer – I think you have just run up against the stoopid basis of the christian right. No, they don’t have any evidence, but that proves gawd.
See how that works?
“I don’t understand why men won’t just carry a bag.”
Now that we are getting flexible electronics and flexible batteries, I see the potential for a Dilbert-grade bag/case with so many functions that men will overcome the fear of it looking like a woman’s purse.
I suggest the outer shape would be like a bag/case/purse with a shoulder strap, but when worn by the handle, the shoulder strap should automatically reel in instead of dangling by the side.
The antenna for the unit should be integrated with the shoulder strap, giving a good signal even when you are in the periphery of the cellphone coverage.
The side should have a flexible screen with text scrolling down (if you have set it to monitor the newsfeeds) or it should work as a screen for your cellphone, so you and the person you are talking with get proper video of each other while talking. No clunky wristwatch tv phone like the fifties science fiction.
Instead of carrying *everything* inside, it should include a 3-d printer for “rapid prototyping”.
If you are in the wilderness, the side of the bag should shape itself into a parabolic antenna, enabling its use as a satellite telephone. If immersed in water, the bag should inflate so you can hang on to it until help arrives.
Oh, Patricia. I wish there were something -anything- I could do. :-(
I’m not at all surprised at and fully understand your dread. I know I need further surgery to my guts but would honestly rather die than go through what I went through the last time.
Why the hell would they do that to you without anæsthetic? It’s brutal. And then to deny you your rights?
Evil.
“E. coli metabolism reversed for speedy production of fuels, chemicals”
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-coli-metabolism-reversed-speedy-production.html
Actual camera bags are much less convenient in many situations. I own a couple, and it’s quite hard to keep your hands free when the bag is swinging about while you’re scrambling about, and you’re worried about smashing your stuff into a wall or a rock. Anyway, AJ, hon, do remind me why I should be dressing to suit you, instead of my own convenience? I seem to have forgotten when we decided that.
I’m still waiting for a television channel I’ll have access to here to broadcast the third season of Mad Men. And then there’s Fringe’s next season, which might be broadcast next week or never, as far as I know.
But at least I’m back on TET, as the layout seems like it might not trigger my headaches anymore.
Cath:
Another option is a backpack-style camera bag (which is what I use), but there you’ve got a different set of difficulties. Specifically, I have to take the backpack off in order to put things in or take things out, and that involves finding a clean, dry place to set it.
Generally, if I’m on a daytime photowalk (or, say, at Disney), I’ll have two go-to lenses: 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS (yes, the kit lens) and 55-250 f/4-5.6 IS. One is on the camera and the other is in the waist pack. I switch between the two constantly. I don’t want to keep taking my backpack off just to switch.
In any case, gearing up for a photo shoot is one case when function trumps fashion (as long as you’re the one behind the camera). If you’re holding an SLR, rest assured that you will look like a dork.
So apparently Palin is on the road again. Die already, Sarah Palin’s career! Anyway:
Fried butter onna stick? What the hell, America? What the hell?
Hi Patricia,
I’m far away and haven’t been following closely, but is what they are trying to do a cone biopsy ? I’m not aware that that requires an open cervical os to be done, the so-called tranformational zone of cells lies well before that. This kind of biopsy is usually done after a brush cytology/PAP smear has come up with severely abnormal cells. It’s usually done with some kind of anaesthetic cover here, either spinal/epidural, or general. I’m not aware of any reasons that it should not be successful in the first place, but I’m not a gyno. Bleeding can be expected for a week or so after the procedure, as far as I’m aware. Hope that helps.
E.E. Smith has a little fun, having one of the characters in his space opera Children of the Lens himself write space opera:
“Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crasheddown, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in thetranship’s platingdeepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely.
Fools! Did they think tha the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN?
And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…”
Fried in butter or bacon grease, I hope.
You sound like one of them elitist socialists, telling me what to eat, blaming America first. Hitler did that too, you know.
Next, you’re going try to take away my Medicare…. From my cold, dead hands, you bastards! Cold and dead!
I hate things in my pockets, back worse than front. Pants don’t stay up well on me to begin with and the extra weight drags them down, not to mention the extra heat I retain, and the hatred I hold for jingling pockets. I have a courier bag, Timbuk II, and I can use it unironically being as how I cycle a lot. It’s pushing twelve and still water proof, although it has lost much of it’s original verve.
What I hate even worse is belt packs, a good courier bag is comfortable to wear, can actually carry stuff, and can come off virtually anywhere so it’s no longer against my skin. Belt packs are, in my experience, uncomfortable, difficult to navigate, and small enough that they will passively disappear if removed for comfort.
Gimme my purse damnit.
___
DEET and I don’t get along and citronella is largely useless so I don’t wear bugspray. It made life interesting in Onterrible, but now that I live on the Island things are a whole lot better.
___
Patricia,
What? That’s just shitty. And you can’t complain? What the hell? I really hate your country sometimes, bloody health for profit.
___
Fried butter on a stick. I feel ill.
Proxy settings on my computer being weird… dunno if I can fix them and the last time this sort of thing happened it took them three months to fix the issue (*sigh*)
The more I read TET the more I realise just how ignorant I am of most computer lingo. I have no idea what proxy settings are, but I hope they get dealt with quickly!
Chas might like this one :
Grateful Dead- Whiskey in the jar
Ariel:
You know, I have a utility vest kicking around here somewhere*, but I feel it would be even more ridiculous to wear than a fanny pack. But, boy, does it have a lot of pockets!
*sigh* It looks like I’m stuck carrying a big ol’ purse for now. The fanny pack rage is just too much.
Patricia:
What. The. Fuck?? Your doctor didn’t even tell you that you had to go through the biopsy again?
That is some serious bullshit. *hugs* are coming your way.
*Last Halloween, I dressed up as Walter Sobchak.
Jesus Fucking Christ, I drink too much.
Actually had to take a nap on a bench at the station before finding a cab.
And of course they were doing loud repairs on the other platform …
But Copenhagen has plenty of nice skeptics. Almost too many.
Wildland firefighters also wear nomex. Trousers and shirts. And there can be all kinds of really fun biting and stinging insects in forests. And they can get agitated when the place is on fire. So, yes, it is important to know if a repellent affects the effectiveness of your PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).
Rey Fox:
Far downstream from where I have been. The fire near Riggins (the Taco Fire back in 2000) — I worked night shift. Daytime temps were 105 to 110. And the Log Chief refused to authorize a hotel for the three of us on night shift until we went to the safety officer. Fun times.
Used to wear a belt pouch(?) long ago (see my avatar thingy).
I was often asked what I carried in said pouch.
My normal response of “Oh, you know, all the normal things – lipstick, mascara, spare panties, condoms. How to you carry yours?” often caused the questioner to adopt an expression resembling a zombie goldfish.
Don’t do that with water, either. *nods sagely*
We used to have enormous trucks drive through the neighborhood spraying out DEET all over everything every few days during the summer. We (the kids) would sometimes go inside when it went by to avoid being gassed, but usually didn’t pay it any attention. Hm – I just went looking to find out when they stopped, and it looks like it’s still going on in some areas (and maybe even more than it used to because of West Nile): foggers.
Patricia, no!!! But maybe you can at least parlay that into “of course it was closed because I was HURT AND TENSE and use that for a reason for anesthetic? (yes, I know it’s not like cervixes clench under pressure, I’m just suggesting it might get some sympathy…)
Worst. Coffee. Ever.
NuMad, if the ‘Merican TV channels ever broadcast “The Thick of it” or “Absolute Power” I strongly recommend them. Very good satire.
“Qadgop the Mercotan” ….that’s so bad Schwarzenegger should make a film about him!
Cell therapy fights leukaemia ……………………………………………….. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110810/full/news.2011.472.html
Is it just me, or is the Wisconsin recalls not in fact rather depressing? The Democratic wins barely snuck up to 51%.
Oh so it’s going to be like that huh mr. blockquote gremlin? This early in the morning too.
Alright then. This is war.
Thanks for the explanation, Rev. BDC, but I’m afraid you lost me around about ‘server’. o.O
@Rev BDC:
You go get ’em.
I love that it is early in the morning where you are, it’s 22:40 on Thursday evening here, yet we are having a conversation. I think of it as a sort-of time travel.
Yeah pretty cool.
But technically it really isn’t “that” early, I misspoke.
I was up at 5:00 AM so I’ve been up for 3:41 so far.
But that gremlin a-hole better watch his back.
I ♥ the ads here.
Anyone else getting “Sexy Russian Girls Are Highly Attracted To Western Men”? I’m not sure if it’s pr0n or a mail-order bride service.
Next, you’re going try to take away my Medicare…. From my cold, dead hands, you bastards! Cold and dead!
No, cold and dead describes what happens after the medicare is gone. (Wanders off to look at the Canadian want ads again.)
DEET?!! I doubt it. It’s used as a repellent, not an insecticide, and it’s a pretty nasty solvent in quantity. People’s vinyl roofs would be melting off their LeBarons and shit. Likely it was malathion back in the day and pyrethrins nowadays.
You can bet your behind it’s a scam.
BTW, since “Yikes!” is nowhere to be found in my English–Dutch dictionary, can somebody check the Urban Dictionary entries for it? I’m not sure Yikes! expresses surprise or dislike.
In the UK ‘yikes!’ is usually just surprise. It’s very Bash Street Kids now, though.
Patricia @126: I’m not an OB and can’t really tell what’s going on with your cervix, but my guess is that they didn’t get endocervical material (the inside of the cervix) and therefore want another sample. I’m not sure how an OB could tell this without sending the sample to the pathologist though. Also, I got pap smears starting at 16 and didn’t have a kid until 35 and never had anyone tell me that they didn’t get a good sample because I hadn’t had a kid. (I’m sure that at least one report specifically stated that there was an endocervical component present.) So I think the “no pregnancies” thing is at least partial BS.
As far as how you’re going to get through it, one word: anesthesia. Demand that they give you anesthesia this time. And maybe some sort of anti-anxiety medication before hand so that you don’t go in terrified. Also real pain meds for afterwards, that is, low grade narcotics. Some women have relatively few pain nerves in their cervixes and can get through a procedure without much in the way of pain meds. You’re not one of them. They need to deal with that.
Set 2:05…..Grrr. I was blazing along and got 5 sets right away, probably in just over a minute, then got really stuck on the 6th, as always. Then, as always, when I finally saw it, it seemed so obvious. Grrr.
Thanks, ‘schach @ #148.
Great version. I’ve been thinking about ol’ Gar a lot this week.
(it’s mislabeled–this is not the Dead*, but just Garcia jamming with David Grisman on mandolin. By remarkable coincidence, I caught Grisman just 11 days ago, at FloydFest**. Amazing.
*there is a recording of the whole band running this number… ah, here it is. As I recall, these 2 versions were recorded days apart.
**also Railroad Earth (ignore visuals), Yonder Mtn String Band, Hot Tuna (ac/el), Robt. Randolph, Grace Potter, Donna the Buffalo, Taj Mahal, Sam Bush, Peter Rowan, Seun Kuti (Fela’s son, an outrageous wildman), &c.)
Night night, thread. Just sending out granny-hugs to all who need them and hopes that your Thursday will be as peaceful as mine was. =^_^=
@René:
Yikes! is an exclamation of surprise. Usually when something scary or unexpected happens. Like if I almost drop a cup of coffee, I’ll be like “Yikes! My coffee!”
—
Set: 2 min, 21
Still think DEET is the best repellent I’ve ever used. It would actually make a small dent in the swarms of mosquitoes trying to fly off with me on the way early spring climbs in the Tetons.
Chas:
LOL!
I don’t know about anyone else, but hearing about foggers spraying insecticides around neighborhoods makes me sad. I mean, there are so few cases of “West Nile virus” (or whateverthefuck) in the US every year, is it really worth that sort of drastic measure?
Think of the bats, people.
(And I fully admit that I have not looked into this at all, so hey, maybe my gut reaction is wrong.)
(OT) Just in: New drug could cure nearly any viral infection http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-drug-viral-infection.html
I lack the medical knowledge to make any credibility assessment, so I am forwarding it to you.
— — — — — — —
Regarding recalls: Progressives are organising themselves to by-pass the moribund Democrat “leadership”, and if they get going they might inspire disappointed voters to go vote next time.
As for missing one vote in the state senate… if the Republicans lose one due to health problems or (more likely) scandal, they are in real trouble :)
-Can the governor appoint a senator on his own instead of le tting the voters vote for a replacement? I think the rules are different for each state.
Seun Kuti (Fela’s son, an outrageous wildman), &c.)
Oh damn. I’ve heard of Femi but not Seun.
How was this?
jeez, ignore the obnoxious vidgame sound effects too.
fucks up a great tune.
that’ll teach me to listen, then post.
or more likely, I’ll just desist. I’m having trouble dealing with the Thread sans killfile.
Yeah, and I see I missed the whole DEET discussion above. Look, do not doubt that that shit is in fact, as chemicals go, nasty, scare-quotes inappropriate. Anybody can look up the citations via ‘kipedia. thus
Among other things, like malathion, it inhibits acetylcholinesterase. Same as WWI ‘nerve gas’.
Very unlikely to kill you, and spreading it on dry skin is probably the least unsafe way to expose yourself to it, but, yeah, nasty for sure. As aromatic solvents tend to be.
What?! How dare you! Respect my fashion authoritah!*
You don’t understand. It is all about me….
You! Yeah, you there in the sandals and socks… You’re just doing that to piss me off, aren’t you? There’s a UN convention on that sorta thing, you know!**
Wait… Brown sandals? With black socks!?
This is an evil time. The people have forgotten their way.
(*/Totally earned, I assure you. As I only dress like a pirate fortnightly.***)
(**/Half true. We’re working on it… Figured the guys who were trying on the blasphemy laws could do somethin’ more generally useful for a change.)
(***/TMI?)
DEET has a similar make up as paint thinner. I prefer to use gasoline as a repellent, deet kills my sinuses
Regarding wildfires, if a firestorm gets going, the strong upward winds will spread embers for hundreds of yards.
I think one way to prevent fires from spreading would be planting succulents/cacti in broad hexagonal bands (several hundred meters wide) breaking up the ordinary forest in regions where the Santa Ana favours big wildfires like California. The edges of the corridors should have ordinary firebreaks, bands without vegetation.
The damp inside of the succulents will stop firestorms propagating though the zones, and the edge firebreaks would stop fire propagating along the ground.
@ René:
Ik zal wel een gok wachen:
(Well, that’s as good as I can think of at the moment.)
A thought:
Carlie, were you thinking of DDT and not DEET?
Yikes! … that should be wachen wagen…
(Tpyos goes Dutch.)
wagen (Now my strike has failed.)
p.s. Josh, you were an idiot on the subject.
“Inadequate information to assess” is not one step up from ‘safe’. If in fact there is “no evidence at all” it’s not because people have looked into it thoroughly and come up with nothing, as you seem to imply. It means inadequate information is available to make a call one way or the other. Fuck, this is skepticism 101.
need killfile
Rev, Fela’s kid was fronting his father’s old Egypt 80 band. Incredible rhythm section, amazing complicated percussion grooves, great guitars, but balanced by incredibly lame and out-of-tune horn section. The damn trumpet player (as with many of Fela’s recordings I’ve heard) just ruined it for me. And Seun is an even worse saxophone player than Fela was (not a fan). And he’s just out of control, gesturing expansively toward his balls all the time and shit. Not my favorite performance of the weekend.
Skepgineer:
Well, in my own defense, most of the “reality” shows I watch should really be called long-form gameshows (e.g., Survivor and The Amazing Race) or long-form talent competitions (e.g., SYTYCD, Project Runway, Top Chef, etc.). These days, it seems anything on TV that’s not scripted fiction, news, or “chat” gets swept up in the “reality” category… but I’ve never been interested in the kind shows that originally the category, such as The Real World. I enjoy watching competition, and I enjoy watching talented people do what they do; I have very little interest in watching “Real” People Behaving Badly™, which strikes me as just prurient and base.
Audley Z. Darkheart wrote:
That is one of the most awesome things I’ve ever heard.
It might not have been specifically DEET (although the smell is sure the same), but definitely not DDT. I’m not quite old enough to have lived through the DDT smokers. :)
Audley:
Aww, you beat me to it! That really did make me literally LOL.
Are people talking about fogger trucks nowadays? I thought we were reminiscing (hence “LeBarons and shit”). I haven’t seen a fogger truck in decades, now, but when I was a kid, in the late 60s/early 70s (i.e.,. the heart of the Better Living Through Chemistry® era), they used to come down our street at least weekly from about April ’til October. Of course, this was the Texas Gulf Coast, so mosquitoes were a non-trivial problem.
Contra Carlie, my memory is that kids would often run out to play in the fog. Of course, we also used our fathers’ cigarettes to light Black Cat firecrackers and throw them by hand. And we roamed the neighborhood armed with peashooters, slingshots, and (occasionally, at least) BB guns. And we rode bikes — all over town, for miles — without helmets or any other safety gear. And we ate our Halloween candy without having it fluoroscoped first. It’s a miracle any of us made it to adulthood, eh?
When I was a kid we’d drag my dad’s old set of clubs to a nine hole “par 3” golf course about a half mile away. The course was lighted so people could start a round at sundown and still be able to finish. Of course, by then the bugs were getting unbearable so they’d drive a golf cart along the upwind edge of the property and slowly drive back and forth spewing insecticide fog.
Those being more innocent times, and us being stupid kids, we’d welcome the waves of dense, vaguely cherry-scented fog. It meant four or five minutes of no skeeters.
Carlie:
My apologies!
Bill,
Carlie said that they were still used in some areas and I just posted my gut reaction. *shrugs*
Wowbagger:
Hee hee. Thanks. I’ll post pictures if I can figure out where they went.
This story is obviously tragic, and there’s apparently very little public information about the whys and wherefores… but is it wrong of me to be separately bummed over a quote like this:
Yeah, right… only those sad-sack secular people ever have troubles that lead to conflict or violence, eh? <sigh>
Good day threadizens,
Set 1 min 36 sec
I think I could have been a contender if only the last (obvious) set hadn’t taken over 30 seconds to find.
One day, one day.
My “Russian Brides” ad has been replaced with a bunch of links that would seem to be culled from words/phrases from the posts:
so by quoting them, I am hoping for some sort of recursive explosion.
__________________________________________________
When did the notify tick box happen?
Hey y’all
I apologize if this has been talked about before. I haven’t been reading TET lately because I didn’t know there were any new posts because apparently I have to clear my cache EVERYTIME I come here or I don’t get to see anything new. Does anyone know another solution for this? I’m using chrome also, do other browsers have this issue too?
Again, apologies if this has already been discussed. I’d be happy to dig through old posts if someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks!
Audley:
Yeah, I re-read her post more carefully after I posted; sorry. Still, you have to love me “back in the day…” stroll down memory lane, no? ;^)
Audley Darkheart, I’m sorry you’re having the bug bite freakouts, but I’m intrigued as well. I have a son on the autism spectrum, and his practical communication is… odd. :) As in, he tells us what’s on his mind, but he does so in weird and often metaphorical ways, so it’s often like decoding an alien language, like that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok.”
Anyway, he occasionally will freak out, and scream for us asking, “Any mosquitos or bees????” like he’s worried they’re in the house and plotting to GET him. We’ve often wondered if that’s his response to feeling itchy, and seeing your thought process written out like that reminded me of him, and I wonder if that’s similar to what’s going through his head.
ZOMG. After 16 years. 16 years! my SO found the name of a book that in elementary school had been read to us and never finished! Not knowing the ending had driven me nuts on and off all this time and since I didn’t know the title I presumed I was doomed to go to my grave never knowing!
FYI: it’s “The House of Stairs”
This must be how people who witnessed the Berlin Wall go down felt!
Re: DEET and alternatives
Still not available yet but, in case anybody’s missed the media reports, it sounds like there’s a compelling alternative to DEET being developed, with some science behind it. Would make me happy if true, ’cause I live where the black-legged ticks hold their summer jamboree.
Thanks, Emrysmyrddin, Katherine and Theophontes! (I’ll translate it as Tjeempie!, indicating my generation. ;-)
Hey everyone. I haven’t been around for a few days because of the heat wave. My computer’s in a part of the house that gets really hot, so I have to leave it off and flee to the living room during the day. I also happen to live in Oklahoma, so I have to listen to the likes of Jim Inhofe talk about how it being 105 degrees all summer was just some fluke and definitely not global warming!
They fog for mosquitos in Grand Forks. Pyrethrins, I do believe.
Audley, your gut reaction is spot on. The day after spraying, I have dead and dying dragonflies and damselflies about the yard. And the stuff kills more insects than that… Have you ever inspected goldenrod when it’s in bloom? It attracts all kinds of interesting critters. Not here. The goldenrod in the park across the street from my home is essentially devoid of bugs.
I’d make some noise, but it’s a fight I can’t win.
Melissa G:
I’m glad my bug bite anxiety has helped someone! :D
I don’t know enough about the Autism spectrum to know if obsessive thoughts are common, but it seems reasonable to think that he could be blaming any itch on mosquitoes, whether they’re there or not.
I don’t usually have obsessive thoughts like what I described, so the whole experience was weird for me. I could say to myself, “Audley, you know there’s no bugs– you have no new bites, Mr Darkheart has no bites, the cats don’t have fleas– so calm down” but I couldn’t stop myself from freaking out every time something brushed against me or when the antihistimine started to wear off.
I’m much more calm today, by the way. I don’t itch nearly as much and I got a good night’s sleep, so everything’s looking pretty rosy. :)
Speaking of SYTYCD, this strikes me as unfair. Two guys are charged with sex crimes that [a] appear to be entirely unrelated to each other and [b] appear to be entirely unrelated to the show, but because they both have SYTYCD on their resume, the show gets prominently featured in the headline, along with the term sex crimes. Det. Olivia Benson isn’t gonna be slapping the cuffs on Nigel Lythgoe anytime soon, but you’d never know that from the way this story is presented. Grrrrrr…..
khops #195
I hafta clear my cache every time, too.
I thought it was just me.
What are school vouchers being used for?
Some quotes from text books being used in private Christian schools:
and more – dinosaurs walking the earth with humans, ozone destruction denialism, denialism of the Great Depression, Bill Clinton as a socialist, attacks on Unitarianism – much, much more.
I apologize for calling you a troll, Tethys. That was pissy and unnecessary.
But I still find it extremely frustrating that you exaggerated the risks of the chemical in question and wouldn’t back up your position. I don’t understand why.
Oh, and Chas? Hope you get your killfile soon. *eyeroll*
Patricia – your situation is way beyond unacceptable. You need to scream, holler, demand and not put up with it. If you have to make a scene right there in the middle of the clinic until a doctor takes you seriously and agrees not to physically torture you with non-anesthesia cervix punching, then do so. Go up the chain if it’s a hospital to the ethics committee. Anything. But do not put up with this.
@ Josh
Thank you for the gracious apology.
I am actually very frustrated with being unable to use the tags to cite.
I do not think I was exaggerating the risks, and apologize if it came off as OMG ebil chemicals.
Now off to see if I can manage to blockquote the MRSA data for you.
There’s this artist I know who used to make these leather pouches that you could hang off your belt. They were, of course, handmade and thus quite expensive, but very cool looking. So if you don’t want to wear a purse or a belly* pack, you could try fashioning a utility belt.
Here’s the link to what she’s currently selling, since I think it’d be right up the alley of quite a few folks here:
https://missmonster.myshopify.com/
* This is one of those words that I just hate, actually.
I um…have a slightly hard time believing that you read that book and forgot the title.
Multiple studies I can find (including the EPA report) show:
That isn’t to say it doesn’t have some toxic effects when used in high concentrations or certain situations. Here’s a detailed study. Most of those seem to be in extremely high concentrations (3-4x what most products carry) or repeated, long-term exposure.
!!!
!!!
Seriously, why even bother to educate your kids at that point? And how are those kids passing state mandated tests with that kind of, um er, “education”?
Gah! That’s seriously fucked up.
Also regarding photography gear: What kind of backpack do you have for it, Ben G? Mine is a teardrop backpack with the single strap, which means I can swing it around to the front to gain access to it without taking it off. Except that even with the strap tightened as much as I can make it, the thing still tends to rest on my pelvis rather than on my back, and I’m not sure if that’s a feature or a bug.
I don’t see why not; lack of outdoorsiness has never stopped me.
–
Patricia @126: Ouch and Damn!
This might be a good time to take up voodoo as a hobby. Absolutely accurate materials are necessary to obtain a satisfactory result.
“Punch this, ‘doctor’!”
–
This.
–
There’s Christian Mathematics?
π=3?
chigau () @215,
That’s B. S. Johnson territory, see Going Postal.
XD
Reading through all the data on DEET, it strikes me as odd that it is class D even though it has been in use for over 40 years.
This is the salient point that I was trying to make:
Exposure: Effects of DEET on human health and the environment depend on how much DEET is present, and the length and frequency of exposure. Effects also depend on the health of a person and/or certain environmental factors.
page 4
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/DEETtech.pdf
The label says to use it SPARINGLY for good reason.
Patricia #126
uhhhh WTF? I’ve had two punch biopsies. Never been pregnant either. Sounds to me like your doctor is a total fucking shitidiot and is trying to cover up their ineptitude by unloading you on someone else. I’m so sorry :(
Hello Horde! Long time no see! This article from Shakesville is so cool & will brighten up your day:
What a great idea! It’s broadened the way I think about political protest and direct action. I’ll be mulling this over for a while…
In the meantime, a defense of reality TV:
Some reality TV shows trade on reducing people to their worst and most nastiest. Those would be the Jersy Shore, Survivor, Bachelor spectrum of TV shows. They are indeed terrible blights on humanity.
But the ones that rely on getting people to rise to an extraordinary challenge by drawing on their creativity and resourcefulness, a la SYTYCD, Project Runway, and some of the cooking competitions–I’m glad those are around. Enjoying those types of shows doesn’t make me less likely to watch and enjoy other high-quality shows with actual writers and actors and a plot. One of my guilty pleasures in this department is Burn Notice, which is just as formulaic as a reality show. Anybody else watch Burn Notice? It has Bruce fucking Campbell in it, I mean, what else do you need?!?
On the cervix punches … they were not supposed to hurt, but they hurt a lot, and then, they turned out to be bad? Isn’t the simplest conclusion that the doctor punched the wrong thing?
Bruce Campbell is by definition not reality tv.
I’m under the impression that a significant part of the draw of those shows is the hypercompetitive behavior and the abusiveness of the judges.
Uh oh.
Hullo Thread. I aten’t dead – but I have wished I were at times during the past week.
The work keeps piling up, which is good, except that the bills keep piling up as well, which is not good. I seem to be working double shifts all the time just to keep up with my luxurious lifestyle of grilled sausages & red wine in cartons. Also, too much work plays havoc on my mental state, and I end up not enjoying what I’m doing – which is not good at all for a self-employed person.
Good news is, I have friends coming over to the cottage this weekend, so I’m forced to take some time off work and chill out.
—
We had a house guest dropping in last night, too. A bat flew in and it took the six of us (cats, pygmies, BT & myself) almost an hour to chase him back out. We named him Mr. Wayne. I almost wanted to keep him as a pet, but the cats didn’t agree – they just wanted to play with him, and probably eat him, too. Luckily he was quite a skilled aviator, so no bat supper for kittehs.
—
The autumn is clearly on its way already. The garden’s ripe with all sorts of crops, and the nights are getting chilly and dark. It’s the perfect excuse to build a roaring fire each night in the bedroom fire place =) I just wish the summer would last for another month or six, I most definitely do not want to return to the city… and I think the sentiment is shared by all of us.
—
How are you all keeping up? I haven’t really had time to follow Pharyngula (or even the FB community) lately, so apart from the M*bus issue, I’m blissfully unaware of any recent news. Any good gossip you can fill me in on? =)
Reading Patricia’s posts make me want to punch her Dr. right in the cervix.
Tethys,
I have an image now. But yes, anger here as well.
Minnie,
Work is good, too much is a problem. Is it enough to bring in a hire to help? I know that would be a back to the city decision, but that can make a big difference in your workload.
Sadly it seems I am running down the other path, work has almost completely dried up for me over the past three weeks and it never really got busy in peak season. I am starting to wonder.
I like SYTYCD for the amazing skill and sheer athletic ability of the dancers. The judges are not abusive, and the contestants seem to become best friends during the competition.
I like project runway for the awesome sewing skills, and the amazing creativity. It’s quite cool to see them have to create high fashion out of only things you can find in a pet store.
Was dein T-Shirt kann, kannst du auch
For some reason I read this as “Was dein T-shirt kennt, kennst du auch” (What your T-shirt can do, you can do too.) Which is arguably even more bizarre than what it actually says. Also I didn’t know my dyslexia/word substitution thing worked in other languages.
*surfaces from report writing long enough to catch up with TET, then resubmerges*
Once again, a reminder that we need the folks who post here and also belong to the Pharyngula Endless Thread on Facebook to check the “Secret of Nym” doc over there. We still have seven members who have not indicated who they are.
The admins over there have decided to set a Monday deadline for this endeavor. Any PET members who have not posted their TET nyms (or, if not TET regulars, something about their lurker status) by that time will be deleted.
This is to help ensure some privacy for posters, since FB – by its nature – allows more personal information.
Oops, didn’t read the whole story about the T-shirts above until after posting. The actual statement on the T-shirt makes a lot of sense now, although I’m still not sure what a T-shirt kennt.
“God used the “Trail of Tears” to bring many Indians to Christ.”
Excuse me, I’m off to worship a tree now. Yes, it’s true I’m an atheist, but I feel a sudden need to piss the Christian right off more than mere atheism ever could. Assholes.
Dhorvath, OM:
I swear I haven’t stolen any of your work, honest! =)
A new company is in the works, but you’re right, it’s ‘back to the city’ to deal with all the paper work and practical issues before it happens.
My future business partner is brilliant. He’s still relatively young (abt 28-ish), but has just the right attitude for an entrepreneur, plus some very valuable experience & training in the field (language technology + computational linguistics). I’m sure that between the two of us, we can share the workload easily, as well as make it much more profitable by finding just the right kind of clients (and getting rid of the ones demanding too much for too little). So, 6 months tops, I’ll be out of this mire, one way or another. Then I will have the resources to languish in front of my comp screen all day, spending my time on Pharyngula, sipping Prosecco and munching on bacon and/or chocolate =)
chigau #215 Juggalo math is better
pi=r squared close enough to build a yurt
Say, does anyone know what it means if your computer slows down a lot, and you here four clicking noises from the hard drive? I have a bad feeling about this.
I am reasonably confident that bike repairs don’t morph into translation jobs. I am weather dependent and we had a cool damp spring, (moreso than usual.)
It’s obvious in hind sight but imagine being a kid who had it read to you in chapters and didn’t get the title to begin with. I didn’t even KNOW if it was a well known book, I thought it was a novella in an anthology collection. I had no idea where to start looking
Dianne @232:
I’ll join you and build a few dream catchers or other assorted pagan idols to hang on the tree. I’d also offer to sacrifice a goat, but I haven’t got one handy at the moment, and it would seem like a waste of a perfectly good animal anyway.
By the way, the clicking noise happens regularly.
ibyea:
Probably unrelated things.
“Slows down a lot” usually means bloatware/crap running on startup, unless the “slows down” is directly related to reading data from the hard disk.
Clicking could mean the drive going bad – how old is it? There are also some internal components that “click” but just require an update to repair; we had that problem with some hard drives for dell laptops at my old company.
However, you should probably make sure you’ve got backups of all important data and reinstall disks (or installation files backed up) for all your drivers and desired software, just in case.
Ran across this:
Dhorvath, OM:
at the risk of being boring (like, I never!), I feel the need to point out that I don’t do translations, I do multilingual publishing processes =) Well, okay, I do some translating every now and then for old clients, but the main business is at the technical end of localization. Last week, I did a job with 36 languages, including my all time favorites Amharic, Korean and Tagalog. I luvs them.
And yes, you’re right, there was not a single bicycle involved, in or out of need of repairing.
@Richard
I got backup, so no worries there.
The slow down is related to the clicking noise. The clicking noise just stopped and now the computer is running normally. When the clicking noise starts, the computer is so slow that it is barely usable. In fact, getting that one comment was a terrible experience.
Good grief, I hope no one checks the Notify box on TET.
As of a few minutes ago, the “quick link to the endless thread” on the left side of the site took me to the previous iteration, not here.
Therefore, wandering back a topic: another option for men who are worried that a shoulder bag will be seen as unmanly is the backpack. It doesn’t even need to be a laptop bag, they come smaller (and not just in Hello Kitty designs). Or I suppose you can do what my brother-in-law does, and wear or carry a coat year-round in order to have the large pockets. (This requires a greater heat tolerance than I have, for sure, though when I was visiting last month and it was 30 and sunny, the coat was over his arm.)
crowepps: Awww, really? I like Jeremy Irons. Now I have a sad.
ibyea says | 11 August 2011 at 12:25 pm :
Back up your data now, and replace your hard drive as soon as possible.
@lewelly
I backed up the data yesterday because of this. So, do you know what is going on?
I’d also offer to sacrifice a goat, but I haven’t got one handy at the moment, and it would seem like a waste of a perfectly good animal anyway.
I agree. The one thing I admire about Christianity is its insistence that if you’re going to sacrifice something, it should be your god that you sacrifice. (Though the concept may have been stolen from the Norse or possibly the Celts.)
Regarding the discussion up-thread about DEET, and bugs, the dangers of the great outdoors.
As most of you know already, I spend a lot time in the backcountry of the western states. Here’s where to go if you want to experience mosquitoes at their worst:
Desolation Canyon in Utah, specifically, the launch site at Sand Wash for float trips down the Green River. Best time to suffer: June and July. When we were there moment: At the launch site we step out of the truck and then pop back in like we’ve been electrocuted, checking all the windows to make sure they’re closed. Immediate retreat to a windy knoll above the river puts us out of reach of the worst of the mosquitoes.
Lower elevations of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. Best time to suffer: mid-July.
Island Park area of Idaho, on the western border of Yellowstone National Park. Best time to suffer: late June and July. This ancient caldera is full of ponds, streams, rivers and mosquito food.
Anaconda Pintler, Scapegoat and Bob Marshall Wilderness areas in Montana. Best time to suffer: July through early August (depending on elevation).
DEET works. Other “natural” or “safe” products either do not work, or barely work, or quickly lose their effectiveness. You can reduce your reliance on DEET by wearing anti-bug clothing, like Buzz Off. (Or, at the very least, wear long sleeved shirts and long pants.) You don’t have to put DEET on your face if you put some on your hat, and on a bandana — wear the bandana around your neck.
Lynna: Thanks. I’m going hiking this weekend and I’ve been trying to figure out how NOT to come back looking like a mosquito pincushion.
Minnie,
Sorry, my understanding of the difference is poor. You do publishing work in multiple languages, but you don’t translate?
Clicking noise sounds like your hard drive is about to shit the bed.
Back up everything as soon as you can.
Be prepared to have to buy a new hard drive.
NOOO! The clicking started again!!!!!!
Since I’m back in school, I have a ready excuse for wearing a backpack. I figure that if I had a job that I needed to tote around the volume of stuff I keep in the backpack, I’d still use the backpack though, monster eye button* and all.
* Looks like the eye at the top of the page. Unfortunately, I believe I snagged the last one she ever made.
I hear ya. I’m going to marry my television set.
ibyea:
Yeah, okay, drive’s dying. Sounds like either the actuator arm itself is having issues, or you’re just having so much trouble reading part of your disk that it’s working extra hard. Either way, not good.
*faints*
Just gave my Icebreaker speech at Toastmasters. Nailed it, but now I will pass out and lay here unconscious because I hate giving speeches.
crowepps
Jeremy Irons
We did that already ;)
yesterday
Katherine:
Yay!/aww.
As someone who hates giving speeches but is told he does it amazingly well and therefore gets forced to a lot, I both salute you and commiserate.
Katherine,
I actually like giving speeches. Is it to soon to express my envy?
Finally, it stopped. Stupid computer, breaking the day after I started playing Civilization V after a long break from playing.
Heh, it wasn’t actually that difficult a speech. I talked about myself, and I’m the best person I know to talk about myself. I was a bit nervous, used my hands too much, and had a few hair flips (I can’t help it, it’s long and in my face!!!)
Some interesting discussion about Gnu Atheists.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/are-atheists-also-evangelicals-ctd.html
Quote:Demonstrating that atheists are a wide variety of people, not just the church-burning black-metal-listening malcontents people seem to think of us as is a much better thing than yelling at them about their beliefs.
SallyStrange:
What a great story about the stealth T-shirts!
I agree, though I confess I enjoy Survivor and The Amazing Race. In both cases, I like the competition/game-theory aspects (and, not incidentally, the often stunningly beautiful location photography: They may not be paying for scripts, but they’re not scrimping on cinematography!), and grit my teeth through the People Behaving Badly® stuff. IMHO, those shows are in a separate subcategory, becasue they are games, from the Jersey Shore/The Real World/Bridezillas ilk, which strike me as the equivalent of Wild Kingdom… with homo obnoxious as the species being observed in its “natural” habitat. I can see where they might be of interest to sociologists (hi, SC!), but it’s beyond me why anyone thinks of it as entertainment.
Again, I agree. Aside from the enjoyable competition aspects, I really enjoy watching talented and creative people do what they do. Learning about the craft of professions like cooking, fashion design, etc., is very appealing, and I’ve actually gained some respect for a few professions (the most obvious being modeling, thanks to America’s Next Top Model) that I might otherwise have sneered at. I recognize that an entertainment product may not be the best way to learn about somebody else’s work, but it’s an available way, and one that comes with “a spoonful of sugar.”
As for the labor issue… there have always been TV shows (and before that, radio) that relied on “real” people instead of actors and writers, dating back to long before “reality” TV became a category: Game shows, talent shows, daytime and late-night talk shows, newstalk shows, documentaries, etc. Did we demonize Jeopardy! or Star Search or Oprah or Today or Tonight or Wild Kingdom because they weren’t hiring actors or buying scripts? (OK, maybe there are other reasons to demonize them, but….) IIRC, there was an issue with some reality shows effectively using “producers” as writers (i.e., creating storylines that were scripts in everything but name), but not paying them for their writing… but I believe that was part of the settlement that ended (or averted; I can’t recall which) the last writers’ strike.
I see Burn Notice promos all the time, because I watch a couple other shows on USA, and it looks like I’d enjoy it (not least because of Sharon Gless, whom I remember fondly from her Cagney and Lacey days)… but I already watch too much TV as it is, and the last thing I need is to get hooked on more shows! USA seems to have a pretty good lineup: In addition to Burn Notice and the two shows I mentioned before (In Plain Sight and Royal Pains), the promos I see for White Collar, Necessary Roughness, and the new lawyer show all look good. Plus which, I enjoyed the first several seasons of Psych, before I drifted away from it (for reasons I can’t quite recall now). Not great art, any of them, but solid, character-driven entertainment.
OK, I’ll never catch up.
Patricia, I am dizzy with rage about your treatment and all I can think of to suggest at this point is that you practice projectile vomiting. Work on aim.
Don’t get me started on the stupidity of general bug-spraying. Also on brodifacoum, and I’m not even going back to check the spelling. On Fb, I reposted a linkpost from Allen Fish to something my Joe wrote for the Berkeley Daily Planet, and if this be intellectual incest, make the most of it. The rest of you, here in the Wild Neighbors column.
Sailor (and anybody else with a working vocabulary of things nautical), I invite caption review/corrections and just plain Get A Load Of This! in these two Flickr sets:
Uto Ni Yalo
and
Greeting the Vaka.
OK, it’s 11 AM and I really should get into the shower. No bugs, tho’.
After spending the morning on the phone to Our Sisters of the Child Molesters I find out that no one knows what my appointment with the specialist on the 15th is for, they don’t know what she is going to do, and yes it is $458 to walk through the door, but not to worry they “think” OHP is good for it. I don’t ‘think’ there’s a word for these people even in old Entish.
(/rant)
ibyea,
You could try using a free tool from Seagate to test the drive. It is supposed to be for Seagate drives, but actually works with any drive regardles of who made it.
You can download the tools here, there is a version that run under Windows and ones that run from a boot floppy or CD. Personally I prefer the bootable CD option.
It should also tell you who actually made your drive, and it might be worthwhile downloading the manufactures specific diagnostic tool. Drives sometimes have warranties that are a longer than the PC manufacturer offers on the PC as a whole, so you could check if the driver is still under warranty. To do that you normally need to run the manufacturer;s diag tool and make a note of any code it gives you if there is an error. You can then go to the website and see if you are covered.
Dhorvath, OM:
Don’t worry, there are very few people who grok the process, even among my biggest clients =)
But imagine you were a company producing a line of complicated technological Gizmoes(TM), with loads of different features, additional appliances (like chargers and headsets et al.) plus several versions of supporting software, and you wanted to sell them to several dozen countries in the world simultaneously (probably different versions in different areas, too, with local variations to availability of services, different consumer laws etc.). Now, you’d need to publish manuals for each country in their own lingo. Most certainly on the web, and in some areas probably printed versions, as well. Would you want your poor, unsuspecting, freshly-out-of-the-business-school marketing assistant to produce all of these versions manually, in all of the languages, in all their variations, with possible updates annually or more often (and varying according to the region)? Probably using Word for layout? =) Or would you rather pay someone to automate the process so that the updates and external data (say, pricing from a database, or user interface terminology, for example) would always be up-to-date, and readily publishable in any media?
Well, that’s what I do. A genuine byte-bugger, me. Also, it’s good for my business to keep the whole thing as esoteric as possible. It’s not rocket science, it’s just extremely specialized knowledge of a very particular area of publishing technology.
Hope all that didn’t put you to sleep. I know it has that effect sometimes. Luckily, I happen to love the subject – otherwise, I’d be looking for a new career at my advanced age.
My deepest sympathies. There’s some real quality stoopid produced and consumed in OK; though arguably, if you park your state right next to Texas there’s bound to be some infection/slop-over.
(I should probably mention that most of my kinfolk live in OK, and that I lived there myself for something like 13 years. Long…miserable…years.)
–
*slowly shaking head* Oh, Bill. You know that “fair” doesn’t sell. “Sensational” is what sells.
Well, possibly if something was both “fair” and on fire.
–
Wait, what? MRSA in a DEET context?????? Surely not!
–
And the body count? Necessary collateral damage. </sarcasm>
–
When is the new dungeon opening?
and where’s Molly?
Dianne:
I know jack shit about Celtic mythology. However, if we’re talking about Scandinavian mythology, it’s prolly the other way ’round. The myths that we’re familiar with (Odin being hung on a tree for nine days with a spear wound in his side, for example) were first written down after Christianity spread to northern Europe and the stories were probably influenced by Christian beliefs.
Or so I’ve been told. *shrugs*
Oh, and forgot to add to the above tirade: it would be madness to even try to find a translator to do all of the needed languages – therefore, the translators are subcontracted (that way we can find the best specialists for any particular product). I just shepherd the translations, so to speak.
Minnie,
I see that I severely misunderstood the scope of your work. My apologies, I am actually just as simple as I say.
However, it’s pretty awesome that you can automate some part of that process for your clients. Does that take code work on your part or does commercial software exist that you can adapt to your customer’s needs/
MRSA in this case refers to materials safety data sheet. All chemicals regulated by the EPA have one.
I realize it can also refer to Methicillan Resistant Staph, Minnesota Street Rod Association, or Metropolitan Squash Racquets Association.
Rey:
Tethys has already chimed in, I see, but SYTYCD, in particular, is almost entirely devoid of either competitiveness or abusive judging. My wife and I were just commenting last night, as we watched the SYTYCD performance finale, about how mutually supportive the contestants seem to be, even when it’s down to the final 4 and the big prize is imminently on the line. The last number of the evening last night paired the 2 female dancers who are pretty much everyone’s favorites to place 1-2, and yet there was not the slightest suggestion that they were anything other than fully cooperative, mutually supportive partners: No sabotage, no upstaging, no backbiting in the rehearsal vignette we saw. And it turned out to be (IMHO) the best number of the night. On some of the other shows I watch, there’s more open competitiveness than on SYTYCD, but it usually isn’t awful, and when it is, I see it as the flaw I have to suffer through for the stuff I like; it never is the stuff I like.
As for the judging, it can sometimes be brutally honest, but it’s always in a spirit of constructive criticism, meant to be useful to both the comptetitors and the TV audience (who vote on their favorites, and presumably rely to at least some degree on the judges for instructive reactions). I could say largely the same thing about the judging on Top Chef (and, in fact, most of the cooking competition shows I watch, including, surprisingly, Gordon Ramsey’s MasterChef[1]). One of the reasons I do watch SYTYCD and don’t watch American Idol is Simon Cowell’s reputation as a bully (yes, I know he’s not on the show now, but I don’t have any open spots on my TV dance card).
[1] On the most recent episode, one of his fellow judges refered to Ramsey as “the man who put the F in food,” but despite the salty language, his judging on MasterChef is generally supportive and encouraging, sometimes to a fault. I don’t watch any of Ramsey’s other shows, because of his reputation for screaming at everyone in sight… but on this show he’s a pussycat (albeit a fairly foulmouthed one).
Dhorvath, OM:
I subcontract coders (well, just one, but a feckin’ brilliant one at that) when there’s a need, but mostly I use Adobe’s Creative Suite software spiced up with some pretty awesome third party plug-ins (some of which we’ve co-developed), plus whatever my incredibly brilliant business partner-to-be comes up with. Me, I’m old skool publishing – advertising and print media mostly. It’s sometimes bloody hard for me to keep up with all the digital innovation in the field nowadays, but that’s why I’m doing my best to groom in the younger generation. I’m already looking forward to my retirement (only 10 -15 years to go)!
cicely:
True dat… but I really don’t think Sex Crimes!! headlines are the brand of “sensational” that the producers want (nevermind the parents who send their 18-20something yo offspring off to spend weeks on the show). In this case, it’s the journalists who are using sensationalism… and they’re supposed to have scuples about that. </naive>
Right next to Waldo?
Probably more info than most people care to read on Norse mythology and its distinctly non-christian roots.
http://www.zianet.com/docdavey/norsemyth.htm
*shakes fist at Charlemagne the library burner.
Wow, that was interesting. Thanks Katherine, Josh, Tethys and others re: DEET and bugs spray. I tend to be a bit paranoid about getting stuff on my skin and fire. Cut WAY down on my use of hair products when I started fire spinning. I do have non-aerosol DEET bug spray from when I went camping earlier this summer, so it’ll have to do. If I didn’t sweat at the drop of a hat (which ends up requiring more bug spray application, sigh), I’d wear thicker jeans and boots during practice (as the little buggers seem to go straight for my feet and lower legs first), but I’ll just be sure to apply the spray with enough time to dry before lighting up. It would be so much more convenient if the flames just roasted the little fuckers…
I do know that several people who work with REALLY big flame toys use nomex gloves – a friend has a set of fans shaped like giant wings and they’re near impossible to handle without the gloves. I’ll use kevlar fingerless sleeves (same kind that mechanics use) to protect my arms when I do wrist wraps and the work quite well. And of course, we don’t let anyone light up if they’re wearing synthetics like polyester, fleece, rayon, etc. – I think the lowest blend percentages we’re ok with is 80% natural fiber/20% synthetic.
Shplane @ 117:
Mmmpf. Don’t tempt me. It has decided to function today, for how long, I don’t know. I don’t even want to say what a pain in the ass it has turned out to be to try and get another battery for it…
*Le sigh*
Say, does anyone know what it mean if I type the correct serial number from my hard drive into the manufacturer’s web site to see if it has warranty, and then it tells you that the serial is invalid?
@ibyea:
It means the FBI will be at your house in ten minutes.
(nah, maybe you mistyped)
Because squid are always on topic,
this.
Sounds strange at first, but after you think about it for a while it starts to sound like your everyday, standard issue evolutionary kludge.
___________________________
I’m so glad that Caine is vertical and suitable accoutered.
Heartfelt sympathy to Patricia. Wish I could spank her cares away but I just don’t know who to spank. (One grows used to expecting professional care from health care professionals. Can’t spank them all!)
@Katherine
I checked and checked to see if it was correct. It was, so I wonder what does this mean.
Re bugs & bug sprays:
no shortage of biting life forms here at the cottage. Mosquitoes are a given in Finland – I think I’ve become pretty much immune to them by now, I only get an occasional itching bite on areas of thin skin, like ankles or fingers, otherwise they can feed on me all they want.
All varieties and brands of repellents have been tested here by various members of the family this summer. So far, the best seems to be a roll-on version of a fairly general variety – the stink isn’t quite as bad as in the aerosol version, and it seems to do the job just as well. But then, Finnish mosquitoes may be entirely different from the ones you get in the States or in the Antipodes. Not to mention tics, gnats, clags… I remove tics from the kittehs practically daily. So far, I’ve been lucky enough to have had only one on me – other human members of the family have had none so far.
Still, makes me itchy to even think of them – if I really, really _thought_ about all the various bloodsucking life forms around here, I’d probably have to leave =)
@Bill
Christina Applegate was an excellent judge. I loved her comment about the “knee thing” in Caitlynn’s samba.
Christina- “What are they called Mary? The dadadadadadada step?
Mary-“Botafogos?”
btw…samba is a really hard dance. I think Kayla and Max’s samba is the best one ever on the show.
I have had that with a Seagate drive. It turned out that drives they supply to large computer manufactures have a different format serial number and Seagate do not cover those under warranty.
It is why I will never buy another Iomega product and will avoid Seagate. The drive was only 12 months old, 1Tb in capacity but Seagate did not want to know, and Iomega expected me to pay to send it back. Since it would have cost more to send back than to replace I told them to stuff it, and themselves.
@Minnie
What is a clag? I’m with you on the ticks. Nasty skin-crawl inducing creatures.
@Matt Penfold
I have a Hitachi hard drive. Do they do the same thing as Seagate?
Patricia:
Oh fuck, Patricia. Every drop of my sympathies, as my appointment this Monday was very much like that. This is how mine went:
Get to the fucking hospital about 9:45 am, check in, get up to gastroenterology, check in. Wait. Called in. The doctor who initially consulted with me during my hospital stay and scheduled the cat scan is no longer with medcenter. (What the fuck do I care about this?) So, we’re waiting in the stupid exam room, which is bloody freezing. The new doc shows up. She asks *me*, “why are you here?” I just stare at her. Finally, I say “I am supposed to be here to find out about my anemia and have a cat scan of my pancreas.” Her: “why are you supposed to have a cat scan?” Me: ” Are you fucking serious?” (yes, I said exactly that). Her: “Well, I don’t have your chart…” Me: stares. Me: unimpressed. Me: getting seriously pissed off. Rick: looks at me, about ready to explode.
Me: I tried like hell to get out of this damn appointment, since no one seemed to know what the fuck they were doing. However, it was insisted that I drive a hundred fucking miles to make this appointment, so why don’t you tell me why I’m here? Rick: Do you have a nurse named Rita? Doctor: Yes. Rick: Talk to her.
New doctor: Well, let me call down to get your chart and Dr. Fayaad’s notes, that will tell me why he wanted a cat scan. Me: Okay. Her: Well, we’ll need to draw blood, too, to determine the anemia. Me: Okay. Doctor: I’ll go talk to Rita. Me: Okay.
Waits.
New Doctor: Okay, I have your chart, and Dr. Fayaad wanted the cat scan to check for cancer. Me: Okay, what do you think, is this necessary or not? Her: Well, I think we should go ahead with that. Me: Great. This was *supposed* to have been scheduled for today, it was supposed to have been set up three fucking weeks ago. Her: I’ll go see if it can be scheduled. Me: If it can’t be done today, I am not coming back. Her: leaves room.
Waits.
Rita comes in: “it can be done today!” Me: “great, thanks.”
Waits.
Rita comes back in: “Okay, you have an appointment for 2:15, you can’t eat or drink anything. Now I’ll give you this paperwork, you need to go to the lab.
Me: Okay.
We leave, go to the lab, check in. Wait. Get called, get poked, have blood drawn multiple times.
Leave the hospital, get to the car. It’s now just a bit after 11:00 am.
We go to the bookstore, go to a bunch of thrift stores, killing time. Found mass amounts of books, this was the best thing of the day.
Get back to the hospital about 1:45, there is no parking place to be found. Leave the hospital parking lot, head down the street, circle around and park across the street. Get to radiology about 2:05. The waiting room is stuffed with people. Walk up to the registration desk and are informed it will be a long wait. It is. About 2:30, a nurse (or tech, I don’t know) brings me two cups of nasty shit to drink. I drink the stuff. Rick and I are trying to read, but the television has the sound at max volume and is starting to give me a fucking headache. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I’m called. I’m handed hospital pants and the usual gown for a top, pointed toward a dressing room. I change, hang out in there waiting to be called. Eventually, I’m called. I go into yet another prep area, where I’m to answer yet more questions, sign more paperwork, and have my IV started. Nurse gets a successful poke for the IV, but doesn’t pull the needle fast enough. Blood all over the fucking place. That’s stopped, there’s mop up, the IV is in place finally. Wait. I get called and head in for the cat scan. (The tech there was brilliant and wonderful and helped to make the day much better.) I’ve been warned about the iodine (contrast dye). I’ve been told, among other things, that it will make me feel like I’m pissing myself. I have news, it does make you feel exactly like you’re pissing myself.
I completely geeked out over the actual scanner, it’s an amazing piece of equipment. The scan went very quickly, about 7 minutes or so. Get back to the dressing room, change, and we’re finally out of there, around 4:00 pm. Not the best day I’ve ever had. I will receive a letter at some point, about more fucking appointments, I’m sure, but eventually I imagine someone will manage to tell me whether or not I have anemia and whether or not I have cancer.
Tethys – A friend of mine in Washington lives in a tick infested area covered in scrub Oak trees, she swears that her property has been almost totally cleared of ticks by a small flock of Guinea hens. She has two golden retrievers and I’ve never seen a tick on either one of them, so it could be true.
Oooooh, samba.
Light years and galaxies back, I used to date a guy who competed in Latin dancing (or is it called ballroom dancing? dunno). Needless to say, he was hawt.
He tried to teach me samba (obviously to no avail). But the way he described it stuck to my head. He compared samba to paso doble, saying that while paso doble is a male dance, samba is the woman’s dance. In paso doble, the man courts the (mythical) bull, as in a bull fight, while in a samba, the woman courts the man (who obviously considers himself the bull). Which may be a load of bull, but that’s what he told me, anyway =)
.. and that’s why I’d still love to learn samba, if only I didn’t have two left legs…
@Caine:
Eeesh… that’s just crazy.
Kat Lorraine:
Yah. On top of it all, the new Doc was from Arizona and had been here two weeks. I know that culture shock – it doesn’t wear off for about two years. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t completely on the planet.
Caine, aren’t you the customer? I don’t understand how things work at all.
Tethys:
A clag, as far as I can tell, is the same as a horse fly. Looks like a normal house fly, bites like hell.
Come to think of it, the name clag might be Irish vernacular for them. Don’t care what the buggers are called, I hate them =)
Katherine Lorraine (still love that name!), I’m sure you wowed ’em. *hug*
–
Tethys, as far as I am concerned, there is only One True MRSA; i.e., the author of what I now choose to think of as The New Year’s MRSAcre. Street rods and squash rackets are not in it.
–
*hugs* for Caine. It just seems stupid (at least, to me) that New Doctor didn’t have your chart already at hand.
–
@cicely:
Thank you! *hug!*
Dhorvath:
Supposedly, yes.
Cicely:
Oh, you won’t get an argument out of me. It was stupid. Extraordinarily so.
Caine
Deepest sympathies on your medical trials. I have horror stories about the quality of care some family members have received in Bismarck which I refrain from sharing.
Heres hoping all tests come back clear.
p.s. Josh and I have mutually apologized, but I do want to note that inability to use the tags to cite is not lying, but lack of tech abilities. I do not lie. To do so here would be incredibly foolish/masochistic.
Caine
It could have been worse.
I’m not sure how…
*hugs*
(the doctor came into the exam room without your chart???)
Caine,
So sorry. I hate people wasting my time. Add in hours of travel and it is just ridiculous. Were i to pull something like that my customers would expect and receive compensation.
Caine – Oh shit. That’s horrible! And we are supposed to have “the greatest health care in the world!” I’ll bet the same thing happens to me on the 15th. Why are you here? WTF!
I’m suprised you were able to keep your temper so well.
Why are you here is going to stick with me all day.
Tethys:
Oh, don’t refrain on my account. At least no one was praying over my ass, like they would at St. A’s. As you can see from Patricia’s post upthread, looks like she’s in for a similar day. It’s enough to drive a person nuts.
Chigau:
Yeah. It was one of those special moments. When all you can do is stare. I seriously hope I don’t have to go back. There was talk of a colonoscopy…bleargh. Thanks for the hugses.
I’ve never actually seen a horse fly, but I’ve heard their bite is supposed to be pretty nasty. I’ve always had this image in my head of an ordinary fly with a horse’s teeth.
Patricia:
That’s what I’m afraid of! As soon as I read your post I thought “oh christ, sounds like what happened to me.” I swear, if you hear “why are you here?”, scream. Loudly.
I didn’t keep it that well. There was considerable cussing.
Sisters of the Child Molesters actually has stained glass windows in the lobby, crucifixes in every room (even the ladies), and the catholic mission statement on a bronze plaque over the check in window. The only thing I haven’t seen there yet is ol’ Benny himself. *snort*
Caine, Patricia:
I do hope that the quality of your health care goes up. Pretty much the only direction it can go, eh?
I used to grumble about the fact that at our local free clinic, my appointed doctor is not a native Finn, so we might have an occasional misunderstanding over words. Albeit, if I ever feel I need an exam of any description, all I have to do is tell him, and he’ll write me a referral (to a FREE consultation, because that’s how the system works here).
Because of my family history, I can have mammographs every six months if I feel paranoid about breast cancer, and any additional cancer-related blood work. Or other tests, if I think I might need them. Yeah, this kind of puts the pressure on me, he’s supposed to be the professional, but I do understand that he’s overworked, so it’s a load off his back if I’m proactive.
I now realize that I should just shut up and enjoy my tax money at work. I’ve grown up in a society where health care is a human right, and it shakes me to see that it isn’t necessarily so in what I’d still consider a free Western country.
USB hugs and chocolates all round, if that doesn’t sound too naive. Or a glass of a lovely soft 2008 Spanish tempranillo, which I’m consuming as we speak.
Thanks Minnie! Our government leaders have great health care, the rest of us, not so much.
Gotta go do my volunteer thang.
Eh well… I will confess that about half of the draw of “Dancing With the Stars” for me is watching the judges make fun of both the dancers and each other.
Example, from Bruno Tomioli, the flaming Italian former choreographer for Elton John: “It was like… Marcel Marceau Desperately Seeking Lolita in a Clockwork Orange.”
“You looked like a crazy bear lost in a swamp!”
Patricia:
Ugh. I’m so very glad I do not have to deal with St. A’s. That would have tipped my temper over into unstoppable rage. I’ve only had one experience there and those people freak me out.
Minnie @ 309
What’s the job market like for superannuated monolingual hell desk geeks in Finland?
Sounds like paradise.
MartinM:
The analogue is not too far from reality.
From what I’ve determined from the numerous horse fly bites on my oh so delicate skin, their choppers are like razor blades, only more geometrical. When one bites you, it leaves a bleeding triangular hole on your skin. And it hurts like hell for a while. Not to mention the allergic reactions some people get (my sister, for one). I’m luckily blessed in that way, I don’t swell up, I just hurt. The fuckers.
I believe they’re called horse flies because they mostly pester horses (and cows). Humans are just an occasional delicacy for them.
Haahaha!
Nooo, she’s the docile, obedient submissive, OR she’s a *problem patient*.
I detected some back-talk in that story, Caine. So *problem patient* it is.
I got a hospital MRSA after surgery…6 months of that kind of treatment ensued. I feel your pain.
Signed
*Problem Patient, Too Demanding*
MFheadcase @313:
(I first typed it out as MFheaddesk, I wonder why?)
If your mono language is English, then no prob. There’s a plethora of jobs in businesses that use English as their ‘official’ language.
If you want to actually function in the society, beyond the small circle of your job/company, I’d suggest learning Finnish as a hobby. It does open up the reality a bit (reality in the sense that we Finns describe it, which can be very different from others).
Um. What I meant to say that yeah, you feel like coming here, you’re welcome, but it might not be the paradise you imagine =) Although yes, I’m first to admit, this place is a paradise compared to an awful lot of other places I know of.
Folk-biology, my dear Minnie; mere folk-biology. The real reason is that the flies are being compared to horses, i.e., Evil, and their bites hurt like Hell.
If you’ll look closely into any pasture or stable where there are horses, you’ll see flies buzzing around ’em. They are conferring. Watch for the ear-flipping; it’s a dead give-away.
Lawyers and sharks, ya know.
–
cicely:
how right you are.
I’ll be sure to keep away from any horses *shiver* from now on. I knew there was a reason I never liked them even as a teenager, when all the other girls were going horse-crazy. Now I know. I was already onto them, uncannily psychic that I am.
From now on, it’s salami for me.
(Even though I still insist on my freedom of choice in peas. I like them, and you cannot convince me otherwise!)
Unbelievable. We have actual Glenn Beck readers (Christians with bad spelling carping about Pascal’s Wager although they don’t know the term) showing up on the Glenn Beck has a very silly poll thread. I mean, they’re real simple. We’re talking “you’re angry at God and don’t know how to blah blah blah”. Also they are “intrigued” to know if atheism causes profanity.
Rey Fox:
This one.
—-
Katherine Lorraine:
Congratulations on giving your Icebreaker. It all gets easier from there.
—-
Did you know Tabasco can be used as an alternative to DEET?
Benjamin “van Driessen” Geiger | 11 August 2011 at 3:05 pm :
It doesn’t work as well, and you don’t want tabasco on your mucous membranes either. Nor should you inhale it.
Kamaka:
Aauugh! Talk about hell.
Caine:
I’m so sorry you’re having frustrating and scary health care experiences. I know it wasn’t your main point, but I can so identify with this…
…because I had the same geek-out experience over some of the diagnostic gear they used on my daughter during her cancer treatment and follow-up care, especially the bone scan machine: They would give her an injectible radioactive dye, wait a couple hours for the dye to be taken up in the bones, and then do the scan. The machine looked like something out of a science fiction movie: a high-tech table with a big detector section mounted so that it could rotate around the table and move up and down the table’s length. The used a “lens” on the detector that was a deep open egg-crate grid made of lead, such that the only those emissions from the dye in her bones that were traveling close to perpendicular to the detector plane would make in through the grid (think of the grids used on fluorescent light fixtures to reduce side-scatter).
So the doctor and I would sit in this darkened room with enough techy gear to look like the bridge of the Enterprise, and dot by dot, an image of my daughter’s skeleton would build up on the monitor. Even though her tumor was in her meninges, the cell type was closely related to Ewing’s sarcoma, which is (often) a bone cancer… so this particular test was the scariest: It was in her bones that we feared we might see metastasis. The very first time I sat in on it was utterly terrifying, because the image of her knees lit up like the 4th of July (bright, or “hot” spots indicate fast growing cells), and I was convinced her legs were riddled with cancer… but I was quickly reassured that it was just because she still had active growth plates at the ends of those bones. Once I got over my terror, the test itself was awesomely cool.
Oh fucking fuck. I went and had a look at the Glenn Beck poll thread. I think I’ve gone blind and it’s all your fault.
Please tell me that stupid isn’t contagious, because there’s an awful lot of it there and now I’m feeling itchy.
On the other hand, if I ever find myself short of entertainment, I could try to do a POE on Barbara the Loving Christian. Although I think she’s doing a great job herself, pretty much nothing to add to it.
Bill, that does sound like an amazing piece of equipment. The tech who did my scan happily geeked out with me and we had a wonderful chat about it. It looked like something straight out of Star Trek or some other show of that ilk. Very cool stuff. It’s truly amazing what can be done these days.
My MRSA is apparently the competing brand, known to be at large in this area for a few years, now. I coulda got it anywhere. And it’s still out there, lurking, poised to spring, and no doubt plotting with the horses…something about insect vectoring…..
–
Not so much crazy as possessed. And horses need to be exorcised regularly.
My sister was among the afflicted; it was manymanymany years before she was able to kick the horse habit. At least monkeys are fairly small.
–
It also doesn’t repel squirrels worth a damn, and don’t let anyone tell you different; they probably own a tabasco farm.
–
Geeked out by machinery here too.
I was pregnant with the first spawn, maybe 7 months gone (pretty big belly), and having my routine bi-monthly ultrasounds at the maternity hospital. The nurse doing the scan is supposed to freeze the scan picture every now and then, then take measures. All of a sudden she just goes ‘Uh oh’.
She then sends me up two floors to a Really Big Ultrasound (and whatever other measure you can think of) Machine. The guy who operated the machine was very amicable, and we had a great chat as he measured my umbilical blood flow and whatnot on a screen that I could see all the time. The result: everything was as it was supposed to be, baby being normal size and all. The nurse downstairs just got a measurement wrong, hence the scare. But I still remember the ice cold feeling of that ‘uh oh’, and the wonderful relief of the guy actually explaining to me what he was doing with the Very Big Machine, and me being able to appreciate the actual bigness and awesomeness of the Very Big Machine. Not that the VBM would have made any difference if there had been anything wrong – just the fact that you’re being told what’s going on is quite good.
So. Very Big Machines (and their operators) are cool =)
I could never use Tabasco in place of DEET, it would make me too delicious.
The Tea-party wants to expand into outer space! Yes they say they want to expand the “American Civilizzation” through the solar system with the help of a non-socialist free market. (And apparently this is not a poe.)
I’d like to make an official complaint.
Every time I refresh the page, at the top of it, there’s this: Free UFO books Download the Message from Extra- Terrestrials to humanity http://www.rael.org
Um, really?
Minnie @330
Look at the bright side, can you think of any site that would be more of a waste of the Raelians money?
I wish more health care professionals were actually professional when it comes to expressions like that. My son once had epididymitis, although we didn’t know that’s what it was when we went in. It was a different pediatrician who was in the office that day than our normal doctor, and he examined him and then very calmly said he would like to have an ultrasound and have us come right back and he’d wait for the ultrasound results (it was the end of the day and the office was already mostly closed). We went down the hall (via wheelchair, poor thing) to the other part of the complex and got it done by a nice tech who explained what he was seeing on the screen, then we went back to wait with the doctor for the chart to be delivered back. After he got it, he visibly relaxed and THEN said “It’s ok, it’s just epididymitis. It could have been this or another kind of blockage that would have required immediate emergency surgery to save his testicles, but I didn’t want to tell you that and worry you about it before I knew one way or the other.” I was SO GLAD he hadn’t told us that before, or I would have spent that hour or so in a complete panic.
Jebus, Caine & Patricia. I really hope your medical care experiences improve quickly!
Tonight’s Futurama: Fry am the Egg Man, Fry nurtures an alien egg that hatches into a horrific monster.
#18 Skepgineer
The shows I’ve been watching are longer series, and I never watch them at air-time (torrents and usenet). SyFy (erk) has a couple ok shows (Warehouse 13, Sanctuary), but they’d be hard to start in the middle.
—
#74 Francisco Bacopa
Maybe a method of getting around some censorship?
—
#124 Lord Shplanington
Never ever ever. Even the best dubs require the voice actors to line up sentences with non-English (in my case) cadences, running through natural pauses and ignoring sentence breaks. Some of that might be due more to editors than actors; either way, it’s required to line up mouth movement and words. And honorifics always having to be Mr. or Ms. every time they’re used, just not the same.
#131
After a while you pick up basic phrases, and notice more nuance (same phrase can have slightly different meanings). I think I’ve seen at least 20 different translations of itadakimasu.
I watch a lot of fansubbed shows (yay torrents), anime tends to have much more interesting storylines compared to shows made in this country (US). I also like cute (^.^).
—
ibyea,
Clicking means Death has stopped by for a visit, and will be returning shortly.
Sorry, I have never had any dealings with Hitachi with regards faulty hard drives. Try contacting their tech support and reporting the problem.
So, I (re)watched the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Highlights:
– Reed (Reid?) looks a lot like Sili and speaks with almost exactly the same accent. It’s incredible. :-)
– Hoshi to Captain while ship is being shaken: “You might want to recommend seatbelts!!!”
Now to catch up with the last two subthreads. Let’s see how far I get, I really don’t want to stay up that long again.
#330 Minnie,
My machine gets stuck on Quantum Jumping, which apparently defies reality.
Our government leaders have great health care, the rest of us, not so much.
How can you say that when they suffer terribly under socialized medicine?
I got a hospital MRSA after surgery…6 months of that kind of treatment ensued.
MRSA is part of my normal skin flora. I wash my hands a lot. This doesn’t actually make normal flora go away, but hopefully keeps it from jumping onto vulnerable patients. Some day surgeons will adopt this newfangled “germ theory” too and the post-op infection rate will decrease. (Kind of an unfair comment, but while surgeons are obsessive about sterile fields in the OR they sometimes forget that they need to wash their hands before checking post-op wounds or even just doing a regular exam.)
I was pleased to note that when I was in hospital having my wrist sorted out everyone who examined me either washed their hands, or used a cleansing gel both before and after.
I also had swabs taken to test for MRSA on admission.
I can’t say I’m surprised. I had myself checked not too long ago, and I am not carrying MRSA around. That did surprise me.
4 months of intravenous antibiotics must have wiped out every germ in and on me. It was no fun.
Please tell me you are not using triclosan to wash your hands at work.
They’re called clegs in Scotland, and they’re right nasty little bastards.
I’ve been reading about the clusterfuck that is the sadistic excuse for “healthcare” being offered to Patricia, and I just wish I had the power to make the fuckers provide the decent care they should. It would be so tempting to have all those involved in deciding these standards of “care” undergo the procedures themselves (I’m sure we could come up with an analogous procedure for the male decision-makers who are presumably the majority). Patricia I so hope you can force them to find a loophole in the regs to give you an anaesthetic. Fucking beggars belief.
Please tell me you are not using triclosan to wash your hands at work.
To tell the awful truth, I’ve never read the ingredients on the gel or the soap. I’ll check. The goop is supposed to be alcohol based and that’s what it smells like. If that helps. (Probably not.)
Caine:
♥!
Futurama has a clip from The Belly of the Beast as their bump for tonight’s episode on their fb feed. So, either someone at Comedy Central is a little confused or I’ve time traveled.
I’m gonna go with the time travel explanation. ;)
Oh, by the way, Caine:
I’ve read a bunch of The Matarese Circle and it’s really good so far. Thank you for recommending it!
The stuff (triclosan) is in far too many consumer products and scares the hell out of me (being as MRSA nearly killed me three times).
*Meta* Preview here is sweet!
Audley:
Hmmm, there’s no such ep title, according to the Infosphere. On their Season 8 list though, we’re supposed to be seeing an ep called The Tip of the Zoidberg, with Fry am the Egg Man next week. Who knows what they’re doing?
Oh, the horrible alien being Fry hatches is named Mr. Peppy. :D
O rly?
*grabs bag of popcorn and scampers over to thread.*
Audley:
Oh, I’m glad you’re enjoying it! (And relieved my memory is still functional).
I laughed out loud. Hard. :)
Caught up but can’t stay – Greek final tomorrow. I’m ready to fall asleep, which is pretty much the diametric opposite of the right reaction right now. Plus my brain is happily, excitedly doing anything but Greek – earlier I thought of this wonderful (but sadly nonexistent) thank you gift for one of my TAs, and a pretty good one (I think) for the other, and I was writing their thank you notes in my head, switching back and forth between that and the letter to my friend who is moving to SLC in a few days, trying to figure out what kind of care package would be good for him since he’s lived with his family up til now and he’s scared… So yeah, anything but Greek.
What I said about preview, I take it back. The link worked there.
http://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/consumer/fact_sheets/ABClean.pdf
Caine:
Oops, I was wrong (or the Futurama feed mislead me) according to everywhere else, it’s called Mobius Dick.
So, yeah, anyway it was last week’s episode. :)
:( What counts as “intermediate level” in language learning? I have just received an email that is seriously shaking me right now – apparently in addition to the requirements that I was aware of for grad school admission, I actually have to have one of three languages that I don’t currently have, at an “intermediate level.”
kamaka
Three times! Yikes, I think I would have to consider living in a hamster ball due to sheer paranoia after the second time you had to go through that.
I saw your post about goldenrod above. I have a patch of milkweed that I encourage as Monarch habitat and because blooming milkweed smells like jasmine. It has attracted a few other fascinating insects that rely on milkweed.
Sadly, I have noticed a sharp decline in pollinating insects this year. Few bumblebees, no honeybees at all. I think my neighbor killed them when he sprayed the dandelions with herbicide.
Classical cipher
I know requirements vary, but in my state 4 years of high school, or two years of college foreign language qualify as intermediate.
If you have to ask the question…
@Khops – I had that for a few days. Cleared cache once, then just shift-reload handled it.
Re: Yikes! In commonwealth English that means a frightening surprise, not just any surprise. A startling experience. It would be appropriate for several of the healthcare stories above.
Quite often something pops up on FB with a plea for money for medical expenses. Could we do that? Didn’t we do a “Save Cicely’s” Ass fund? How about a “Knock Patricia Out” fund to pay for an anaesthetic?
Yes, I feel very thankful not to live in the US. I’ve had 3 weeks off work with no threat to my job; I have drugs at a relatively low cost, and if I have to spend more than $1200 a year on prescriptions there’s a safety net to cut costs further. Sure, there are problems – not least of which is a staff shortage in all medical fields (Wanna immigrate? Be a doctor, nurse or med tech!) but I will never have to worry about bankruptcy.
You know you’re in trouble when you walk into the emergency room and the admitting nurse says “Oh my god”.
When milkweed is in bloom, pull up a chair and watch the goings on for a while. Seriously, the diversity of insects that show up is just amazing!
went on another assignment from the temp service today. Little office, mostly data entry and filing, but another difficult client. I’m beginning to wonder if this temp service specializes in clientele who are unserviceable by other agencies.
while i’m here, LEFT JUSTIFY please. just putting in my vote.
Yum, rum and coke :3
Oh Kat! I would join you, but I have no Coke. Or OJ for a tequila sunrise. And I’m out of beers.
*sigh* I think I need to go to the supermarket.
Who-oh, Sunny D and Rum, Yum Yum!
Even if I weren’t already halfway there, Spike’s idea of a perfect day would make me all choked up. (Go ahead and disregard if you haven’t watched Angel, since this will make no sense to you.)
BTW, PZ, thanks for the new CSS :-)
…Oh, and what I particularly like about the 2nd episode of Enterprise, which I’ve now also watched, is the claim (by T’Pol) that one of every 43,000 planets supports intelligent life. That sounds realistic to me. I’ll take it and run with it :-)
I’ve now caught up with Episode CCXLI. I just love the trackback at the end.
Mattir, please e-mail me!
Would, frankly, work better than a lot of alternatives.
BTW, I like how the recent burial of a certain Dr. Habsburg was in some subtle ways the burial of the monarchy. Want me to elaborate?
You can actually hear them; unlike most commas, they make the voice go down, and unlike periods, they make the voice stay pretty far down.
Compare:
You can actually hear them. Unlike most commas…
“Pierce Butler the About Fourteenth”…
There’s actually a noble family in Germany that is now at Heinrich (Henry) LXXV.
vanitas, qui utilise des accents aigus au lieu d’apostrophes… *g*
Bookmarked.
Yes, Jadehawk, go there and liveblog it or something :-)*sniff*(August 30th is in the school year in the USA? Seriously?)
Oh, speaking of Brazil… this morning they promised to invest heavily into science from now on. They want to drain all the unemployed brains from the First World; at NASA alone, 4000 scientists are said to have become unemployed. I think I should look for more information and perhaps job opportunities tomorrow; they have really great fossils there…
Maybe it works like with the spiders.
Heh.
Restaurants can be as fancy as they like. What I don’t like are fancy prices. :-)
(…My liking for seafood is pretty much limited to some of the vertebrates, though.)
Subthread won.
I don’t know whether to laugh or to headdesk.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
“Pz Myers: Man, that was easy.” :-D
@David M:
Holy crap, you can hear semicolons!
I’m so behind with Bill on SYTYCD!
Re the constant mentioning of how pretty Caitlynn is: It would be one thing if they told her she was a beautiful dancer, but they were more like, “Well, you were really mediocre, but aren’t you pretty.” If I were her, their comments about what an awesome dancer she was when she was awesome would have been meaningful, and the rest disposable. And c’mon, they’re all great looking.
I missed it live last night as I was out to dinner (fish & chips – delicious!), so didn’t see it till today, but I still think Sasha should win (and wish I had seen it to vote for her). I think there’s a good chance she won’t, and her career could possibly be even better if she doesn’t, but she’s my choice. Melanie’s fantastic, though.
I could go on and on about the choreography…
I’m actually enjoying Masterchef. I think Ramsey’s screaming is an affectation – he did little of it on the British version of Kitchen Nightmares.
Have you seen Extra Virgin?
Random scrolling while finishing the row of chocolate.
*careful hugs for Caine*
Test: — (two hyphens) – (en dash)
Where’s the difference between reading and watching the action and listening and watching the action?
Can’t be stolen from those – Christianity isn’t from northern Europe.
@Kamaka
I have swamp milkweed in bloom so I went and did a quick survey.
At least ten different species, including one that I have never seen before and am trying to identify. I think its a leaf-footed bug. Awesome site for bug identification:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/
Can’t be stolen from those – Christianity isn’t from northern Europe
It’s definitely in northern Europe, though, and its character did change as Christians started attempting to convert northern Europeans. One story I heard-don’t know if it’s true, but it’s amusing-about the conflict between a northern people and a southern religion: A priest came to Scandinavia to convert the heathen. He seemed to be getting nowhere until he started preaching about the flames of hell. Suddenly, everyone got very excited. The priest thought he was really getting through to them about sin and changing their ways until he heard them murmuring, “We shall be WARM!” After which the imagery changed to the icy flames of hell…
That story is probably apocryphal, but it’s clear that Christianity evolved as time went on. The cult of the virgin, the saints, etc are all clear examples of things appended onto the “basic” Christianity as time went on. I’ve heard it claimed that the whole sacrificed god thing was from Norse mythology (Baldur and all that) and that before attempting to convert northern Europe Christianity downplayed the sacrifice on the cross thing in favor of emphasis on the charismatic cult of Jesus. Again, don’t know for sure that this is true. I’m not a religious scholar and I’m repeating things told to me by people who also weren’t religious scholars.
Oh, speaking of Brazil… this morning they promised to invest heavily into science from now on. They want to drain all the unemployed brains from the First World; at NASA alone, 4000 scientists are said to have become unemployed.
Already in progress. I know several astronomers from various countries (including the US) now employed-happily-in Brazil. Wouldn’t be my first choice, but that’s because Portuguese is a difficult language and I like cold weather better than hot weather. Other than that…
I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.
Havamal stanza 34
David Marjanović, Yes, a week from now, I’ll be waiting in the Charlotte airport for a flight to Rio. I’m starting to get psyched even though there is no possible way I can finish everything I have to before I leave.
Would I leave if I got a job offer. Well, Brazil has its own problems. It is very Catholic, and the Bible thumping Pentecostals are starting to infest. However it is at least going somewhere! The US is going down the toilet. And Portuguese isn’t all that bad. After a week or so in Brazil I can hold semi-coherent conversations. I’ve facilitated so many art sales to tourists on the Avenida Atlantica Sunday Night art sale that I could have lived off of commissions (if I’d gotten any of course). I sort of think of Portuguese as Spanish with French grammar.
And I love Rio–so beautiful even humans couldn’t screw it up. Sigh, all I have to do is get through one more week without going postal.
Patricia, maybe the new doctor will be competent. Hugs and chocolates abound.
Caine, I hate not knowing. I live in too small a town to curse at my doctors. OTOH, I know their supervisors. I will get even. I’m a ‘problem patient’. (It helps that I’m male, over 50, and white.) I’m not helping, am I?
+++++++++++++++++++
et al Please notice the ‘nym w/o qualifications.
The Sailor:
I’m sorry about that. I simply don’t give a shit. If they want mass amounts of money, they can play at being competent.
@Classical Cipher:
James Marsters is actually going to be at Comic Con in Chicago and is apparently playing a special show with his band on Saturday night. My friends and I are going as the cap on our convention day and now I’m kinda hoping he’s got a song called “The Wanton Folly of Me Mum.”
This.
I thought I was logged in. Then I wasn’t. Then I couldn’t comment. Then I could. Then I couldn’t. If this goes through, I can again. If it doesn’t, what I am writing is even more pointless than normal. Nevertheless, me gigo is up to mere tiring, so t’beddibye mego.
I don’t bother buying antibiotic hand soaps. If I’m worried about bacteria, I use an alcohol-based sanitizer.
—-
Went to Sam’s Club to pick up something for my class: candy!
The professor in charge of the course redesign suggested this when he was briefing/interviewing me for the job. Basically, reward attention; if a student attempts to answer a question (successfully or otherwise), or asks a question, or otherwise shows an attempt to actually learn something, toss a few Tootsie Rolls or the like to ’em.
I have the day off work today – ‘theatrical leave’, as I call it – and, having finished watching the episode of Bones, have found American major league baseball on tv.
There’s advertising on the walls for something called a ‘Hardee’s charbroiled thickburger’. There’s something inherently delightful about that combination of words – has anyone ever eaten one?
Many USians are one.
Haaahaha! They’re trying to play you for a sucker!
Hardee’s “food” is shit on a shingle. I’m gagging just thinking about it.
Charbroiled Shitburger is closer to the truth.
Free range zucchini! Heh.
Crap. Premature submission. That’s never happened to me before, baby, I swear…
—-
Anyway. Bought candy at Sam’s. $20 got me a five-pound bag of the Midgee-size Tootsie Rolls and a similar-size bag of mixed candies (SweetTarts, Laffy Taffy, etc.). I also picked up a 12-pack of small Frappucino bottles for $13; they go for about $2 and a quarter individually. Also got a big box of popcorn.
This book intrigued me. Since they were selling it for less than Amazon does, I picked it up.
—-
There are only a few anime series I can stand watching in dubbed form. None of them spring to mind. There are some live-action movies I can watch dubbed, but they’re also rare. Granted, it’s probably easier to dub something in French or Spanish into English and have the cadence line up.
The absolute worst dub I’ve ever heard is the first few episodes of Excel Saga. If you value your sanity or your ears, DO NOT WATCH THIS DUB. It’s… ow.
The voice actress, Jessica Calvello, lost her voice after a few episodes (gee, I wonder why). I didn’t bother watching any dubbed episodes past that, so I don’t know if her replacement was any better. I do have to give her credit for trying to keep up with Kotono Mitsuishi, though.
Excel Saga, episode 4, part 1, dubbed. I have an easier time understanding subtitles. Damn.
Zoidberg: Hurry up with those scrambled infants!
Hee.
Perhaps I’m biased, as I have been watching movies with subtitles since I was a teenager. Dubbing is a no-go with me.
There’s more to language than understanding the words. Curse Of The Golden Flower comes to mind. The nuances of tone and expression would be lost, I am sure, with dubbing.
Wait. This crap is allowed to become “normal skin flora”? *crawls under bed*
How do you prevent it trying to storm the castle? Enquiring minds are desperate to know.
–
It was bruited about, but fortunately turned out not to be needed. Only three-ish years of Easy Monthly Installments, and I will once again be able to call my ass my own! :)
Re Drugs for Patricia, it was enthusiastically suggested, but I believe that she said that if she had the money to pay out of pocket for the anaesthetic, the Oregon Plan would consider that she had too much money to get treatment under that Plan.
–
Kamaka:
Same here. I have met a *lot* of people* who recoil at the idea of watching a subtitled movie, though. “I’m not going to read while I’m watching a movie!” type reactions.
*Almost all of them Dakotans.
Whew, back from the office. Some days it really gets to me how much unneeded suffering and anguish the damned VA makes the vets and their families go through.
Thanks everyone for the kind comments about my situation with these blasted doctors.
yep; classes start on the 22nd
Yup. The MRSA bacteria is living and growing on the walls of a hospital near you.
Yea, verily, even the hospital in which I had my MRSA abscess cut out, I’ve no doubt. It’s the part about it becoming “normal” skin flora that heeby-jeebizes me. I want it gone; I want it to come back no more.
–
Wait. This crap is allowed to become “normal skin flora”? *crawls under bed*
Yep. Staph aureus is a pretty common component of skin flora and hospitals are good places for bacteria orgies so resistant organisms are easy to come by. I probably poop VREF too (enterococcus being, as the name implies, intestinal flora). Fortunately, I have the sort of immune system that likes a challenge once in a while…if I don’t keep feeding it bacteria it goes and tries to eat a plant and then I sneeze a lot. Sigh. Immunology: almost as complicated as neurology with almost as ridiculous consequences.
Oh, ouch!
Get tested. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I am not a carrier.
Two interesting observations: 1)My company’s net nanny blocks this site; and 2)I just saw an advertisement for my company on this site.
Probably? C’mon, it’s a near certainty.
I’m sure jezus won’t allow any of that nasty MRSA at Our Sisters of the Child Molesters. (That’s so much better in comic sans. le sniff)
Kamaka, I know for damn’ sure that I’m carrying it; I’m doing antibiotics (a longer course of ’em than before, two oral types, plus ointment, plus Hibiclens for my daily showering pleasure) to try and kill it with fire right this minute. This is my second flare-up (and minor abscess cut-and-drain; whee!. So…much…fucking…fun.) Mine is the variety available at-large in the community; no telling where it came from.
–
Good thing you’re a believer. Otherwise, you might be at risk.
Oh, shit! That is very, very bad. Betadine is your friend.
I didn’t know anything much about MRSA until Cicely and Kamaka started talking about it. Yikes. If you don’t mind, I’m curious to know what symptoms it’s caused you. If you’ve written this up somewhere in a comment, I’d be grateful if you pointed me to it.
I find the Hardee’s Thickburger to be pretty good as fast food burgers go.
As if they spend the rest of the day reading. I like subtitles, they’re a way to make sure that I don’t miss any dialogue, which might otherwise happen in an English-spoken movie*. I don’t have the best ears in the world.
* Some more than others. I’m looking at you, Lost In Translation, AKA Mumblers On Parade.
Josh, http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mrsa/DS00735/DSECTION=symptoms
A lot of people think they have a spider bite and don’t do anything about it right away. There’s a lot of info on it on the net.
Caine, I know Google is my friend. :) I’m just morbidly curious for anecdotes, too.
I hate the fact that those bacteria exist at all. I made the mistake of going looking for photos of the damage. ACk! Kill it with fire now seems the right approach to take. (and a good reason to avoid hospitals and health care professionals)
Rey Fox:
You aren’t kidding. Mister and I were talking about that last night (we decided to move one of the bookcases and about 500 or so books). It’s really shocking just how many people don’t read. It’s unimaginable to me, to live without reading.
I like them too, but I always have CC running on my TV. I’ve had people comment on that, too “what is that on the bottom of the screen? Can you get rid of it? That’s really weird, how are you supposed to read while watching TV?” :sigh:
Sorry, completely off the rails, but I’m having problems with the blog. It doesn’t update itself when I load the main page, I have to clear my cache and refresh (just refresh doesn’t work) every time. Is this my problem or server side?
Drakk:
Everything is working okay for me, using Firefox.
I recently watched a gorgeous subtitled film called XXY. I believe it was Argentinian? It was excellent and I highly recommend it.
Dredging the memory banks for the title of another of my favorites, which eventually did get dubbed into English from the original German.
On subtitles: love them. Hate hate hate dubbing. I won’t watch a “foreign” movie that’s dubbed. Aside from the issues other people have raised, such movies lose what sound recorders strive so hard for. No room tone, artificially clear “canned studio” sounding dialogue. . ugh.
If you’re accustomed to foreign-language movies you get familiar with the intonations and shadings of different languages. I’ve watched so many Japanese and Korean films that, while I’m not a speaker, I recognize the idiosyncratic intonations that inflect the meaning of the dialogue, and that’s essential to the enjoyment. Also, for anyone with any familiarity with Romance languages, watching such films and matching the sound to the dialogue onscreen is great fun. I know just enough spoken Spanish and French to recognize a bad subtitling job, too, and boy, Netflix is the worst. Really important shit just doesn’t get translated.
Drakk
If goggle chrome is your browser, you need to go into the settings on your browser cache and set them to dump the cache when you close your browser.
Otherwise it seems like it gets stuck pointing to a previous page view.
Tethys, I found XXY to be very good too. Geez, my netflix list is stuffed full of what are to me, foreign films which aren’t in English.
I know too many people who simply refuse to watch any movie which is subtitled. It’s sad.
The music selection of the evening: แรงงานข้าวเหนียว
Josh
jealous. I have many Hmong neighbors, and I try really hard to intonate (?) correctly. It amuses them to no end but I just can’t seem to hear the differences.
Drakk:
From my limited experimentation, I need a hard refresh if I’m on IE, but not on Firefox.
Tethys:
Oh, don’t be! My recognition of the intonations is surface at best, and I’m quite certain I couldn’t produce the correct pitch modulations even if I knew the languages.
Caine
I think XXY should be required watching. +sea turtles!
Reading is one of my favorite things. I cannot fathom how anyone is proud that they haven’t read a book since they finished school.
MRSA=Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
Staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as Staph, is a ubiquitous bacteria that is everywhere on our bodies and our homes. Hospitals have evolved an antibiotic-resistant version that kicks your ass if you get what is normally a minor infection. I am writing to you from this side of death; three, four months of intrevenous antibiotics saved my life. I should be dead.
My god, Kamaka. It was that bad for you. . I’m so sorry. Were you an invalid the entire time? And aren’t you relatively young?
Tethys,
Tones are very subtle depending on how much tones a language has. Try my language. It’s the non-tonal but since it’s tends towards being monosyllabic, it relies on many grammatical particles to make sense of a sentence.
Josh,
Lol, you wouldn’t survive a Khmer dubbed movie. They usually translate directly off Chinese (except for movies originating from Southeast Asia) so you get Korean/Japanese/English names read in their Han reading!
Josh
But can you hear the subtle pitch and intonation differences?
I just can’t hear them at all. I know one word in Hmoob. Helicopter.
This does not stop me from trying to talk with them. We do pretty well with pantomine, even though we are speaking in our respective languages. And the questions they ask are all fairly predictable.
Oh gods my grammar was terrible. Let me fix that: It is non-tonal but since it tends towards being monosyllabic, it relies on many grammatical particles to make sense of a sentence.
Not to self: Avoid contraction of words.
Could use some shoulders to cry on. An old and dear friend is probably going to die tonight after an 18 month battle with cacer. I am heartbroken and every time I hear someone we know mention prayer it goes so far up my spine that I can’t really talk to any of them. They mean well and it would be an ugly thing for me to jump all over them for trying to be comforting.
I hate this. He is a good man and has been so strong.
Tethys:
To paraphrase Lichtenberg, if a stupid person watches a movie, an intelligent person is hardly likely to look out.* The person who summarized XXY on IMDB chose to use the word hermaphrodite. :sigh:
I’m with you there! I’ve pretty much had my nose in one book or another my whole life. While we were killing time on Monday, the bookstore was the first stop. We bought about a dozen books and a new employee looked shocked and asked if we were going on vacation. I said “no, we just read a lot”. She actually shook her head, like it was wrong and murmured “I guess so.”
* “A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
Gyeong Hwa
I am listening to your music link. Is it in Vietnamese/Lao?
I can at least hear the separations between words.
What language do you speak?
Hugs to Otrame!
Tethys:
But can you hear the subtle pitch and intonation differences?
I just can’t hear them at all. I know one word in Hmoob. Helicopter.
I don’t know how subtle my detection is; probably not that much. And I’m mainly talking about Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. I suspect I mainly pick up on relative contours in questions, exhortations, etc. That is to say, sentences more than words.
I have a naturally good ear for “tones,” broadly speaking. Picking out a melody I’ve heard on the piano comes pretty easily, and if an instrument in a musical group is out of tune (by Western diatonic standards) just a little it drives me batshit.
Otrame:
I am so sorry, Otrame. Share your grief if you wish or share your memories of you friend, whatever you need. {{hugs}}
Otrame, I’m so sorry. I know you’re not supposed to say “I know how you feel,” but to some degree I think I do. Cancer deaths of close friends are awful. Take care of yourself.
Perhaps. For sure, I thought I was a goner, but the atheist part kicks in…oh well, oblivion arrives. But it didn’t.
Here I am, still alive, thinking your avatar is so gay.
I do not know many native speakers of Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin.
I do know lots of natives of Cambodia, and Laos. The Hmong are a ethnic group from Laos. I would at least like to be able to say a few words to my neighbors.
I wish I had your equanimity. My close call was stark staring terror, and I still deal with panicked thoughts of imminent death nearly every day (not all day, of course).
Um, yeah, it so is. It’s the mostest gayest evah.
Otrame
Death from cancer sucks. Feel free to cry on my shoulder about it.
Lol. It is Thai.
(Well culturally I would actually say Lao, but I already pissed off a lot of nationalists this week so I’ll say Thai.)Linguistically, Lao and Thai are related. They are so related that most Lao speakers can understand Thai without problems. (The other way around is difficult because of lack of cultural exposure). Viet on the other hand is more related to my language, Khmer (except that Viet has been vastly altered due to thousands of years of being under Han Chinese rule. Many of their lexicon are actually Han words.)
(If you ever want to piss off an ultra-nationalists in SEA you can mix up nationalities.)Gyeong
I see that Tai Oratai is from Thailand.
Josh,
But I wanted to be the most gayest of gays! (What is your avatar?)
#379 Benjamin “van Driessen” Geiger
You’re teaching kindergarten? ;) ;) ;)
Oh Gyeong, darling, I see I must fully step into my role as your Gay Uncle who instructs in Teh Ways of Teh Ghey. My avatar is a pic of actress Faye Dunaway portraying Joan Crawford in the movie Mommie Dearest. The best, campiest drag fest ever committed to celluloid. You simply must watch it with an “experienced” older gay.
I have the entire dialogue from start to finish memorized, which is not surprising since I’ve seen it at least 300 times.
Yeah.
I used to work at a company with many people from all over SEA, and many of those who fled the refugee camps are now my neighbors.
They had no problem speaking to each other. I realize mixing them up pisses them off. But my ears cannot tell the difference between Lao and Thai except for a slightly more drawn out quality in Thai.
Josh:
Everyone reacts differently, Josh. I think reactions are often tempered by just how ill you are and for what length of time.
Mister and I had the what if it is pancreatic cancer talk the other day. He’s having a worse time of it than I am and I absolutely don’t want to die. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Caine, tell me that’s not much of a possibility, though. They’re just checking to make sure all the i’s are dotted, right?
I know many native speakers of Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Teochew and Cantonese through college.
My original tongue was Khmer but it was erased in elementary school. So now I barely speak two lanaguages correctly!
Thanks guys. I knew I could count on you for some sympathy that did not come with a dose of god. Not in the mood for that crap. My friend is an atheist who never felt any need for false comforts (not that it seems to me that religion rally provides much comfort for most). He was our cartographer and graphics guy for our publications at the lab and he and I spent a lot of time together over the years. I will miss him so much. He leaves a wife and 4 little boys less that 12 years old.
Is the term Vietnamese hated in SEA?
I would think it was, but it is used commonly here.
Oh, Otrame, how desperately sad for all you. I’d hug you and make you a nice, warm bowl of soup (washed down with alcohol of your choice) if I could. Now, just sit here and put this comfy quilt on your lap.
Aarg!
Blockquote fail!
Otrame
*hugs*
My friend Sopheak has been here since he was three, but I correctly identified his accent as Cambodian when we first met.
He doesn’t think he has an accent..
Heheh, Kamaka. I am very curious so I’ll be blunt – how old are you?
Josh:
There’s a fair chance, but I fully expect to come out clean. I’m just not very worried about it. If it is cancer, it will have been caught as early as it possibly could be, which is a positive.
If you must die, I recommend bleeding to death.
Its impossible to be afraid without the proper amount of blood going to your brain.
*suggles into the quilt.
I have been lucky. I have only lost one or two close friends and only one relative I was really close to. But I am getting kinda old and I know this will keep happening until it’s me that goes.
Oh, and Josh, you definitely get my vote for Quiessent Ghey. The avatar cinches it.
As far as I’m concerned, Caine, there is not to be any possibility of you having pancreatic cancer. None. And yes, I’m indulging in magical thinking. I will not be dissuaded.
Josh:
I can tell you that he’s gorgeous, tall, a fab conversationalist, a talented artist and very nice to hug. :D
No no. SEA (Southeast Asia) as a whole wouldn’t care, but many Southeast Asians will. For historical and nationalistic reasons, many SEA nations don’t like their eachother. Example: Border conflicts between Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia. There is also nationalistic issues (Malays claiming to be the original civilization, Burma’s attack on Siam, the Khmer Empire dominion over most of mainland SEA, Vietnam’s policy during the Cold War era, Malay and Filipino cultural conflicts over the southern island, things like that.) Calling (mostly older) Khmer people Viet will get you chewed out.
Josh, Official SpokesGay #442
Yes. I would like to hear that, too.
Josh:
I won’t dissuade you, Darling. You’re absolutely right.
cross-commenting is such fun!
@ Josh
I’m ancient (56). Why do you ask?
@ Caine
Would you please not be telling on me?
After that recommendation from Caine, Kamaka, now you really have to answer my question.:) I wasn’t Internet-flirting with you before (really), but I’m considering it now. LOL.
Gyeong
I am old enough to know why it would be insulting. However, I have never heard the term Khmer used positively. But perhaps this is because many of my neighbors were prisoners of the Khmer?
I do not wish to offend them or you in any way. Thank you for the explanation.
Honestly? Because I’m perversely curious about those of us who’ve faced death early, that’s all. Given that I nearly died at 36, I’m unfortunately attuned to Unfair-Too-Young-Deadly-Maladies.
But now that I know you’re tall and gorgeous, I feel it’s only fair to inform you, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I likes my menz older (than me). Last boyfriend was 61.
/naughtiness
Kamaka:
You told everyone I was nice. :sniff:
I will add my own “there is not any possibility that anything is wrong with Caine.”
I finally found one place in the world where Reason and Logic are the law, and it needs Caine in it.
Hmmm, I’m having a little trouble with your denial of being a flirt.
Kamaka
Hey I have gay creds! I go to a gay bar once a week.
We all were. I think if you are saying Khmer with the “r” at the end, you are refering to the genocide. We say Khmer as “Kmai” “Kmae” or for the northern people “Kamen”. That is how most of the Khmer people I know say it. I mean we call it “Srok Khmai”.
Oh Caine
We didn’t need Kamaka to out you as “nice”.
*sorry*
Tethys:
Aaaw. :Blushes:
But Caine you are nice! (I still have your fan btw).
Chigau:
You better be!
;)
Particularly after reading this:
Why, I didn’t mean nothing by it. . . .(twirls hair around finger)
Oh, and thank fuck I get Francine back tomorrow. She was at the shop for almost a week getting her carb rebuilt and her manifold re-planed (she likes it hard core), and now she’s getting her pressure plate and friction disk replaced. They
me she’ll be ready for this weekend.
Otrame – Hugs and sympathy to you. If it will bring you any ease at all, my husband died in the veterans hospital, very much an atheist. Because the doctors knew he was dieing they had him on “comfort care”, I sat with him and held his hand while he passed away, and after. He didn’t suffer any fear or pain. Of course I didn’t allow any wailing praying morons to be present.
I’m sorry for your loss.
What the hell? I didn’t blockquote myself!
On another note:
fuck “going-away-party”
I don’t want them to leave.
Why would I have a party?
Come on quit smothering Caine with *nice*, she needs to keep sniny teeth!
Kissy kissy.
Oh, Kamaka, I hope I didn’t offend you with my playing.
@Patricia – She can keep her coat and fangs as sniny as she wants. She’s simply not allowed to have cancer. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
chigau:
Undergrads; close enough. Seriously, I’ll be teaching 101-level programming to non-CS majors. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of ’em haven’t even used a command line before.
—-
Where the hell is my giant d20? I was going to use it as a makeshift gavel, but I can’t find it.
—-
*sigh*.
Patricia:
Yes I do! :D
That part was spoken by Eric Idle in the viking suit.
I know we’ve fought, but we simply must hang out someday.
Another song for the evening: 정선아리랑
Never fails. The moment I kvetch about losing something, I find it.
It was in a bag of junk from my office that I had forgotten about. I literally tripped over it.
The same bag also had my slide rule; I’ll probably end up using that on the first day.
I don’t quite know what to say.
This touches me. Thank you for sharing this story.
SC:
Yes, we must. The fighting I chalk up to two dominant personalities with short tempers (and also that we’re very alike, if you don’t find that insulting). But your fabulousness is way more important than any petty differences.
Umm, excuse me, girlfriend, I would be offended how?
The horde in general does not suffer fools. What could be nicer when we live in such foolish times?
Gyeong
Thank you for you answers to my possibly rudely phrased questions. I love living in a multi-cultural neighborhood and have great empathy for my neighbors. I am deeply ashamed of the atrocities my country enabled in SEA.
And I love pho.
Pssshhhh! (screwing up his mouth and waving his hand). Whatevah, OK? Shooz.
:)))
I wish I knew more older gay men. All the young men I know aren’t into the old stuff.
Rey
Eric Idle.
Good one!! Still laughing….
:)
Our fabulousness.
Benjamin “van Driessen” Geiger
The last time I took a course in programming it was BASIC.
What I wanted was: “Help me make this WORK!!!!”
If the instructor threw candy at me, I would have tossed it back.
*sigh*
Times change.
All the young men I know aren’t into the old stuff.
Grrr.
Well, I know what you mean, really. I’m only 36, but that’s 78 in Ghey Years. I do know all boutz the old school campy shit, and it’s good stuff. I once picked up Quentin Crisp from the Bronxville train station and ferried him to Sarah Lawrence College. Whereat he proceeded to discourse on the time he watched Joan Crawford step out of her limousine in the 1950s at an Oscars ceremony. Two minutes (yes) later, Christina and Christopher emerged from the car, at which point, according to Mr. Crisp (he described this in vivid detail as he ate chicken), Joan turned her eyes toward her children and “stared at them as if she’d neeeeeeeeeeeever seen them before. She was radioactive with confidence in herself. That is a star.”
I’ve read Mommy Dearest but I’ve never watched the movie.
No wire hangers!
And yeah, I have the pictures to prove it. I was shooting Kodak 400-speed color film (Ektar, maybe?) pushed one stop to 800.
Oh, Tethys, you’ve got to watch the movie. Find a gay man—any old neighborhood fag will do in a pinch—and settle down to it with some popcorn.