He seems to be smarter about evolution than the creationists, that’s for sure.
(Episode CCLXXXI: Contrived outrage!.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
He seems to be smarter about evolution than the creationists, that’s for sure.
(Episode CCLXXXI: Contrived outrage!.)
Reposting:
I’ve always liked Semiramis
A mesopotamian queen of great accomplishment, she may be the first queen (ruling queen) recorded in history. Although we haven’t pegged her timeline down as well as the Egyptian pharaonic timeline, so we can’t be absolutely sure a woman pharaoh didn’t come first.
Plus…cats need royal names.
I was portcullised!
Caine
Do rats get rabies and distemper shots at the vet?
(I know only cats.)
Portcullised!
Caine, I forgot about Perdita! That may be perfect.
Hypatia is being saved for a potential daughter, but Boudica has been added to the list. Talk about badass!
Crip Dyke:
Isis then. Why stop with royalty? Go gods…I’d choose Tiamat.
Chigau:
Nope, no shots required. We take them in for the standard wellness check, then they don’t go again unless there’s a problem* or illness.
*Like Arlo, who had misaligned front fangs and had to go in for a tooth trimming every 3 months. In the event of illness, we’ve always treated at home, after receiving a diagnosis, meds and all that.
i’m not sure I want to encourage her that much.
Thread bankrupt.
I ♥ Louis CK.
me too. Maybe my current favorite comic even after his divorce which seems to have mellowed him a bit (strange I know).
Having a cold sucks, but that’s not going to stop me from watching a shitty movie (Cowboys and Aliens) and cracking open this bottole of Glenmorangie.
Ooh, I do like Isis.
Cat name, how about Lise after Lise Meitner.
How about Hatshepsut?
MikeG:
A black cat by the name of Isis also figured into the Star Trek episode Assignment: Earth.
Esteleth,
What, and train the cat to come whenever people sneeze?
bottle
Hatshepshut was a Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. She was pretty badass.
Mike, what about Hedy, as in Hedy Lamarr? She was beautiful AND brilliant. She invented cool radio stuff as well as being a famous movie star.
Cats and gods’ names? One of the forms of Bast would be appropriate in that situation. Bast is a cute cute kitty. A domestic cat god before 1000 BCE (used to be a lion).
Chas definitely goes for males, he keeps trying to hump Rubin.
How about Seshat as a cat name? (I named my Nook Seshat. No cats here; mustelids, lagomorphs, and canids.) She was the Egyptian goddess of knowledge and writing.
Louis CK is definitely incorrect on one biological assertion near the end of this clip. It is most certainly not true that 100% of (nonhuman) animal sex is rape.
Some, arguably, but not all.
note that I had to add the ‘nonhuman’.
100% of duck sex is rape. I’m still freaked out about ducks.
Also, Louis seems to be saying that there’s no love in nonhuman animals, which is also incorrect — social animals demonstrate high levels of empathy. Humans aren’t the only social animals.
Clip was hilarious, though. I just watched it. Worth it for watching him mime giraffe sex.
Esteleth, I know who she was.
(Try saying it)
Rev,
Ha! Cowboys and Aliens! Daniel Craig’s accent bugged the shit out of me.
Never been a big fan of Louis CK but that was hilarious
Hedy is nice, too. Often forgotten, until my call doesn’t go through.
Ooh, yeah, Hedy. And then you could do the whole Hedy-Hedley thing like in Blazing Saddles.
Haven’t been able to post much of late. I attended the Washington, DC meeting of the International Electronic Device Manufacturers this week. A lot of very cool stuff being done, especially with regard to new memory technologies. Intel’s 22 nm process is going to be FINFETs (sort of like a MOSFET, but with the gate surrounding the channel on 3 sides) with Hafnium Oxide dielectrics. And of course, it just drives home how pathetic the US has become. If you want to work on microcircuits, you’d better learn to speak Chinese or Korean.
A bit of an oddity–Most of you have probably heard of Moore’s Law. In 1965 Gordon Moore postulated based on only 6 years of integrated circuit development that the density of transistors would double every 18 months. It’s been astoundingly accurate. In 1974, Bob Dennard showed that you could follow fairly simple cookbook rules and get smaller and smaller MOSFETs that worked, and that became the physics behind Moore’s Law.
The thing is that in 2005, Dennard’s scaling approach broke down because oxides were too thin for reliable performance and voltages too low for stable operation. And since that time, Moore’s Law still holds. Not only that, you are seeing a huge variety of new electronics technologies introduced. It sort of makes me wonder whether our reliance on scaling might have been holding the development of electronics back the last decade or so.
In other physics news, they’ve demonstrated quantum entanglement between two diamond crystals–very cool–and the Voyager probes now seem to be well and truly out of the Solar System.
SallyStrange @ #21:
It looks like Bugs Bunny was right. Ducks are screwy.
[ducks]
Heh, yea me too. So far, it’s entertainig. Basic western until BOOM aliens.
I do like the kid from Little Miss Sunshine and There will be Blood. He plays a good whiny ass.
I’ve observed duck necrophilia. Is that rape, or not sex?
I actually observed the whole situation: Long ago, when I was attending the UW (Seattle), every winter the fountain in front of the chemistry building would freeze over. Eventually, with a thaw, a small open area would appear in the otherwise frozen over pond. Ducks would fly in and make nice ski-plane landings on the ice then waddle out into the open liquid area, whence they would dive down to dabble.
One morning I observed a duck dive down, surfacing, or rather “subsurfacing” under the ice rather than at the liquid, with predictable results.
Later, when the ice had all melted, this same duck was still floating around in the pond; an otherwise lovelorn drake found solace with it. It was neutrally buoyant, such that the attentions gave it a vaguely downward vector, which required the living drake’s periodic diving to bring the carcass back to the surface for more attentions.
For some reason, the ten or so people to whom I pointed out this phenomenon were appalled rather than fascinated. This may be part of why I hate so much of humanity.
Yep. At Skepticon.
–
Sad, but true. I’ve had some luck if I make a point of ordering mine “extra crispy”.
–
According to Hedy’s autobiography, her name is pronounced hay-dee.
The giraffe sex is a thing of beauty.
I think he’s leaving bonobos out of his analysis, though. They really enjoy their sexytimes, though they’re arguably the exception that proves the rule.
I’ve also seen dolphins engaged in sexytimes and having a very good time. Boy, didn’t THAT make for a fun afternoon in a day-camp field trip to the aquarium. “THEY’RE HAVING A THREESOME!” (How the hell does a 9-year-old know what a threesome is, I ask you?! It wouldn’t have bothered me quite so much if she hadn’t kept screaming about the dolphin threesome for the following hour while the lady working the desk in the lobby glared and ssssh-ed at me like I was supposed to keep my campers under control.)
Ballistic penises and corkscrew vaginas – the sexual battles of ducks
I wasn’t clear: it was gay necrophilia.
And since it was mallards, Anas platyrhynchos, I just have to repeat: gay duck sex: Anas.
Oh, and yes, the homebrew, Sierra Nevada, and Yard Extra Special Ale were quite tasty this evening, why do you ask?
“Yards”
Tpyos.
OK, goodnight. I’m going to start on some of the other genus of namesake now, so had best get down to the basement, as far from the computer as possible.
Your welcome.
“You’re”
Fuck.
G’Night. And yes, I’ve been using preview. Obviously incompetently. G’Night.
Haha. I would’ve been right there with you. “COOL! GROSS! COOL!”
This is false. I have observed it among mallards, but it is far from 100% and occurs when most hens are already sitting on their nests. It also seems to be more prevalent in urban populations that lack normal shoreline vegetation.
Young males in their first breeding season are sometimes clueless.
One year I had a wild tom turkey who would courtship display to my chickens and my female cat. He never displayed to my male cat. I’ve always wondered how he could differentiate.
OK, Thanks all. She just put a dog in her place. She didn’t use her claws, because she’s smart enough to not need them. Esme it is. At least for now.
Brief interruption of the topic: inaccessible paper (not even an abstract is shown!) says the Dead Sea completely dried up 120,000 years ago (last interglacial). Drill cores show a gravel bed 235 m under today’s water level, underlain by no less than 35 m of salt. For context, 15,000 years ago (near the end of last ice age), the water level was almost 300 m higher than today. Take-home message: that part of the world gets much drier when the temperature rises just a little (just wait for it), and much wetter when the temperature drops. German news feature.
Today’s Nature says anomalocaridids had huge compound eyes and saw almost as well as dragonflies.
xkcd has been linked to. I suppose I was Thread-bankrupt when the War on Christmas was posted?
ROTFL!!!
I think we have a winner.
That’s why I mentioned that part. But obviously, I don’t actually know.
I’ll look for it.
Like… the other person’s face isn’t so far away from yours?
Nearly every member of the animal kingdom has external fertilization or, if male, deposits a spermatophore that the female then inserts into herself. Among mammals, I wonder if it’s all learned from watching others (or, in humans, by other means). That would explain why there are couples (among Christian fundamentalists, and apparently in China) who have never figured out how to fuck. I find it quite easy to imagine that I could have ended up like that if I didn’t know better.
This is quite different from having sexual instincts in general. I distinctly remember noticing, at the age of 6 or 8 or so, that most women’s swimwear cuts diagonally across their asses and wondering why anyone would ever wear something so obviously uncomfortable. How does such absurdity come into the world? A few years later, I simply knew, even though nobody had ever explained it to me and I had never asked. That’s instinct.
(…I’d still find it physically uncomfortable to wear such a thing, though.)
Silent majority? :-)
Perhaps not. Not everyone would. I wouldn’t, or at least I wouldn’t get the idea on my own – I just can’t make a connection between fun and any level of pain, however bearable, notwithstanding the good flavors of several hot spices (where I try to focus on the taste and ignore the hotness as far as possible), whether inflicted on myself or others.
And that’s even though I’m fortunately not used to corporal punishment.
I’m sorry. I’ll never learn not to comment on teh intarwebz at 4 at night. :-)
:-D
I can’t make anything of it. How did you get the idea of putting a doll(‘s head) anywhere near your vulva? By accident?
You’re in good company.
Congratulations, I suppose.
:-D
:-D On one level, that’s awesome.
You know, it’s still there. You only need to scroll up…
I couldn’t think of one, so I didn’t put any in either…
Usual options: 1) To parents. Doesn’t make sense, because they can’t understand my thesis. Also, painfully unimaginative. 2) To girlfriend. Ain’t got none. Also, somewhat kitschy; unimaginative if she doesn’t work in the same field. 3) To long-dead colleague. Not that unimaginative (rarely chosen, and I’d have to pick one first), but useless, cuz he’s dead and can’t read the dedication.
!!!
Yeah, well, sugar doesn’t counter sourness in the first place. Acid is only countered by lye.
Thou hast.
You confused ye and you.
Also, “to it” once was “to him”, but IIRC that change happened earlier than the others.
I don’t drink coffee. But on the rare occasions when I eat confit de canard, my piss smells of it for the next 24 hours. :-)
:-)
How else? It’s not English. :-)
What is it short for? Hedwig?
Well, how? One kid heard it somewhere and passed the information on because it was giggle-worthy and offered a fresh new way of teasing people. :-|
Yep, well documented.
No indeed, you are correct. In fact, after following the link Caine put it, I learned that only 3% of duck reproduction is due to forced mating. So I was totally wrong about that. Apparently the females can relax their vaginas when mating with a duck they like, which facilitates insemination, and mated ducks often form long-term partnerships.
Duck penises and vaginas are still extremely freaky for being borne of a rapey evolutionary genital arms race.
MikeG:
I’m not at all surprised. :D Although, that got me thinking…in Wintersmith, Tiffany presents Esme Weatherwax with a kitten. A white kitten, named You.
Tethys:
Well, yeah, isn’t that obvious?
Oh, wait: You’re talking about nonhuman males, aren’t you….
;^)
Sex is so messy, confusing, and wasteful… the evolutionary benefits of sexual reproduction are, we conclude, spectacular.
@cicely, unheeded prophetess of the Equine Apocalypse
When I was a short order cook, one morning a gentleman ordered hash browns this way:
I would like hash browns, not hash tans and most certainly not hash whites.
That order sticks with me to this day (30+ years).
I don’t know if anyone’s heard about this lately, but I just heard about this quote from John Huntsman on the Herman Cain sexual assault allegations. “We’ve got real issues to talk about not the latest bimbo eruption,”
I know he’s the liberal favorite out of the GOP, but this is absolutely disgusting.
Thoughts anyone?
I own(ed) somewhere a copy of Ecstasty and Me.
Unless the crazy parent-sibling stole it back.
I don’t think Hedy was for Hedwig but it’s been 40 years since I read it …
sonny …
get off my lawn!
Aaaaaannnnnnnnd another candidate for candidate for president down the drain. Buh-bye.
Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. She was married 6 times.
How does one determine that?
Rorschach:
The 100% thing is not true, however, duck rape is well documented. Seem the link @33.
Or, you could see the link @ 33.
I remember reading that humans are the ONLY species which copulates with the intent to reproduce. Sometimes.
Of course, how would one determine that?
In an era when Pres. Obama, the alleged liberal, bows to social conservative pressure and gets HHS to overrule the FDA, and require that girls 17 and under get a prescription for Plan B, it’s hardly surprising that liberal GOPers are blatantly sexist. Chris Matthews has said some horriblly objectifying things about Hillary Clinton. Sexism is rampant, and it’s everywhere.
I’ve made the best study schedule ever. Now, time to actually start studying. If you see me on here for more than an hour a day (I’ve allotted time for breaks) over the next week, please tell me off. Finals studying begins tonight!
Good luck, Starstuff. I’ll be sure to tell you to fuck off if I see you. Cuz I care.
This is hypothetical at the moment, but could I (or my wife, if there is a gender restriction) buy a plan b set to keep about the house, in case my under 17 daughter needs it? I have at many years before I need to really worry about it, as my daughter is entirely imaginary at the moment, but without announcing it to the pharmacist, would that be relatively kosher or will I have DEA agents at the door?
I was thinking, buy a course and let her keep it in case it was needed. It doesn’t fix the FDA bs, but is that a viable option?
No seriously, how do you tell whether a female duck is consenting to copulation?
Rorschach:
FFS, did you click the link and go read? If that’s not clear, I don’t know what to tell you.
Good oLrd Mike G.
What are you smoking?
Mostly the lack of struggling. But yeah, click the link. There’s videos! Duck porn!
MikeG:
I’d be quite surprised if the drug itself remained viable for such a period of time. They do have expiration dates, ya know.
I wouldn’t be concerned. If you have a daughter, when she’s approaching an age you think it would be a good idea to have Plan B in the house, you or your wife should be able to obtain it.
I’ve always kind of imagined that when you get into the large carnivorans, bears, big cats, etc, sex pretty much HAS to be consentual.
I feel confident in saying I’m 100 percent positive that among hyenas, at the very least, consent is most definitely required. Nothing is getting in there that the female doesn’t want in there.
OTOH…. can’t say for the males.
Better option: give her the information she needs to contact her doctor and obtain it. Even if you have a great relationship with your child, there are still going to be times when she doesn’t want to share the details of her sex life with her parents. Also let the doctor know that if she calls requesting the scrip, that s/he should write it, no questions asked.
Ducks form pair bonds for the breeding season. During this time the female and male spend all of their time together. Head bobbing, bill clacking, and intertwining necks are common pair bonding behaviors. Ducks mate in the water. The female indicates her consent by ducking her head down, spreading her wings slightly, and allowing the male to mount. Copulation is very brief at 10 to 20 seconds.
Eventually the female assembles a clutch of eggs and begins sitting. The male usually hangs around nearby for a few weeks and accompanies the female when she leaves the nest morning and evening to eat.
In late breeding season any unmated females, or females whose nests have failed will be chased by packs of bachelor males until she is too tired to escape. When she lands the males all attempt to copulate.
on another subject
It often happens that we inherit left-overs from events at the Community Hall.
It often happens that the left-over bread/buns go straight into the freezer.
It seldom happens that there is a freezer-purge.
Tonight, after the purge and the use of the food processor, I am now the proud™ owner of 1.1kg (2 litres) of bread crumbs.
They are in the freezer.
What is my next move?
@ Chigau
Sounds like time for bread pudding! Sweet or savory?
Chigau: Got a bigass deep fryer?
I could go bread-pudding. either way.
No deep fryer.
but some of it is
definitalyfurshur set aside for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonkatsu.and I use it for felafel.
It’s in the freezer! I can use it at MY will.
I got a backrub this evening, and was informed that I am skinnier than ever. Apparently. Sometimes I wonder if I should worry about it. Apparently she could feel all my bones.
But I kinda like being all crazy-skinny. I’m economical. I have exactly as much muscle mass as I need, and not a single stitch more.
When is a person too skinny, provided there’s no actual eating disorder present? Should I be taking a good long look in the mirror one of these days?
Chigau:
Wow! Japanese Wiener Schnitzel! DO WANT.
My shy, very quirky little gray cat just curled up like a dormouse with her paw over her face and her shoulder pressing against the outside of my leg. This is pretty much the closest she gets to snuggling.
Teaching biology without evolution is like teaching geology without plate tectonics.
Just sayin’.
SallyStrange, that’s a great idea.
Others, I wasn’t thinking of keeping it for a dozen or more years, more like making sure she knows about condoms and known where/how to get ’em and that kind if thing. But the FDA does’t limit the sale of condoms, and I don’t want her to have to ask for plan b if she needs it. I just thought that maybe I could keep it around like an epi pen. You know, just in case (for a year until it expires). The law will probably be very different by the time our family may need it, but it may be useful to others reading, brothers in my circle of acquaintances to whom I may pass the information to.
[previous thread]
@ Brownian
“And Stockwell Day says there are more beggars on the streets of Vancouver than Mumbai.”
Title= “Stockwell Day: India poised to win as Occupiers lose”
Stockwell Day has a rather strange idea of development. India is “winning” because it is set to consume more? Hello! We are about to run out of planet on the current trajectory. An unquestioning faith in following the western model of development is going to be on a hiding to nothing. And we already know the outcome of doing the same stupid things twice. “Occupy Delhi” is already written in the stars.
He waves the censer “new technologies that are friendly to the environment” across his spiel but leaves it there. Does he not understand the whole dilemma is a social one and not a shortage of “green technology” or crass consumption? At least in Vancouver you get to see the social failings of that society. In India (Day’s “India” at least) the social problems are being stop-gapped at the cost of the environment.
(I am all for getting out of poverty, I just have a very different outlook on what “prosperity” should look like as we all move forward.)
@ Crudely
Wow!
I’m just happy that lots of people know about bonobos :D
Ok, sucking at hypotheticals. Done now. Night.
Coyote, underweight is medically more dangerous than obesity of any but the highest defined level. But that’s a group statistic, and may not apply to any individual. Under BMI of 18.5 is probably a worry, but not if you are naturally a skinny type who is eating regularly and not weakened, with very low stamina, or in constant minor ill-health.
MikeG: I can definitely empathize with the concern. With The Kid being both native AND a girl, I worry about what the world will be like when she’s a teenager.
I am so glad that I came to pharyngula right around the time little Baby L came into my life, and that it all happened right around the time of elevatorgate. Not that elevatorgate was ‘good’ or anything, just that it all gave me exactly the education I needed, right about when I needed it. Thanks for everything, Hoarde.
She’s been talking more and more.. heehee… I love this part. This is why I don’t believe in baby talk…. it’s pretty obvious what she wants right now is information and words for objects and concepts, not a string of nonsense babble.
And here I am, falling into that same silly trap I always swore I never would. Every little thing she does is great news to be shared with anyone who will listen! Humans have been raising babies since before they were even humans, but everything this one does is earth shattering and amazing!
TLC, if your body fat percentage goes below about 6%, you’re gonna start having health problems (unless you’re very careful with your diet), and you’ll have difficulty maintaining muscle mass without deliberate, regular resistance work.
Other than that, no biggie — you’ll feel the cold a bit more than most and have less cushioning when you bump into things. ;)
TLC: It *is* amazing. A little person coalescing there before your very eyes! I sometimes think the reason so many humans are insensible to how amazing it is, is because the species would never get anything else done if we were constantly caught up in it.
Have you thought about teaching her to sign? My son only new a couple signs (related to food IIRC) but we taught quite a lot more to my daughter and the fantastic thing about it was the glimpses it gave us inside her head: she got to communicate to us about what *she* thought was interesting. She could share deductive reasoning and make jokes way before she was verbal enough to do it with spoken words. It was great.
John Morales and Alethea: Stupid question, but how do I calculate my own BMI or body fat percentage?
I FEEL relatively strong and healthy. I know I still have enough upper body strength to pull myself up off the ground with my arms (this one is important to me, as a kid it took me forever to get that strong). OTOH, my heart sometimes does weird stuff. OTOOH, I’ve always been skinny. When I was a kid, you could watch the skin twitch and pulse where my heart was. As an adult I usually hover around 130 lbs, the biggest I ever got was 140 and that was due to the most insane strength training ‘workout’ imaginable. It would have been a severe human rights abuse, had I not entered into the whole thing willingly and with full foreknowledge.
I used to be obsessed with ‘getting big’, but bigger isn’t always better and I’ve discovered the advantages to being built as I am.
One more thing: John Morales: Bingo on the cold. Christ. I kinda wish I could live in the tropics or something.
TLC
FYI
kristinc, ~delicate snowflake~
is NOT a source of accurate information.
Uh, what, chigau? Cause I feel like I missed something here.
Kristinc: If someone were to teach ME to sign, I’d gladly teach The Kid.
It’s funny you should say that, about the girl having that level of reasoning before she’s able to use her words. That actually ties in with what I’ve observed of the kid. She clearly understands way more than she says, and we seem to communicate pretty fluently in our own way. She makes a vaguely questioning noise and it seems that based on context and tone I can pretty accurately guess what she’s asking. And when I answer, I give her real answers, and she seems to listen with the most thoughtful look on her face. We also have our own sort of range of goofy gestures and expressions too (grunts, jaw clacking, head shaking- yeah, really embracing the inner primate here) but they don’t really mean anything except to us.
Kids are endlessly curious and have MUCH learning to do- I hate the idea of patronising them or giving them stupid explanations for things under the assumption that they can’t understand the real one.
BMI is a very rough guideline. If you want to use it anyway:
weight divided by height squared?
TLC: We just made up signs. I thought for a while that it would have been better if we had used an actual sign language dialect, but considering that she forgot all the signs once she started talking verbally I guess it didn’t matter.
I have the sweetest memory of keeping her busy — 15 months old — on a layover in Chicago O’Hare by teaching her signs for “phone” and “glasses” and helping her look for them in the crowd.
kristinc
Seriously? You really believe that?
I dunno about full on deductive reasoning or ‘jokes’ (though I crack up whenever she makes that fart noise), but I would say she definitely understands far more than she says.
Yes Chigau, I do, although I should have said “inductive reasoning”. I once saw her have a conversation with her brother about a rack of pot lids that had been knocked over. She examined it, made our sign for “cat” and pointed at it. The cats knock things over, this thing had been knocked over, the cats must have done it. As it happens she was wrong, I knocked it over earlier when she wasn’t around, but her reasoning was good.
I don’t remember any specific joke incidents right now, I have notes of some of them in her baby journal though.
TLC, BMI is quick-and-dirty*, caliper tests can be done at any gym with half-way competent staff (takes practice, you can do it at home but small errors build up big), but the best method is hydrostatic weighing which needs specialised equipment.
I doubt you need to worry, unless you’re looking starved or like a bodybuilder peaked for competition!
—
* And not that accurate for lean people; it’s based on sedentary people, so I used to register as overweight at around 10-12% body fat back in my 30s, at (converts) 5’8″ and 177 lbs (BMI of around 28).
(I don’t recommend it for you)
The Kid likes it when I jump, she likes to copy me and see if she can jump as high, and one time I jumped under the light fixture and whacked my head pretty good.
I dunno if this counts as a ‘joke’ or not, but she’s always pointing to the light fixture and jumping and laughing when I play with her now. It’s pretty obvious there that she found it pretty amusing. But is it a ‘joke’? Or a mere childish slapstick ‘gag’?
TLC: Yeah, they would have been puns or gags on absurdity more than droll G.K. Chesterton witticisms. Knowing signs for things she did not have the verbal words for, though, allowed her to make humor with the idea of those things in a way she wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.
Star Trek tech coming closer?
Australian leads immunisation revolution
(Video)
John Morales: Thanks for the BMI info.
TLC, I am also a thin man as was my father. Poor ol’ Pap was certainly not a man to be trifled with. His stamina and short term strength used to amaze me. He was one of the last of the true American cowboys and his dietary history was no where near what is available now.
He was five foot seven and a hundred thirty five pounds. I am five foot ten and one hundred forty five pounds. Same as I measured when I finished high school in 1969. At age forty five I did a dead lift, spine straight, load on hands cupped under chin, using legs, of 1100 pounds. Twice. At the time it seemed easy but then the placement of the load and my posture were optimal. Today I could do two thirds of that though I haven’t made a habit of trying.
These days I eat one large meal in the evening with a small breakfast and maybe a snack or two during the day. Little junk food (though I does love me some crunch fatty salty stuff), lots of protein and vegetables. Whole milk when it is handy. I also put away about three quarts of beer per day and have done so for the last mumble years. I piss freely and shit regularly.
What I try to continue doing, as I gather you also do, is to stay active doing things that are pleasing to me and that are strenuous. I also stretch a lot and try to incorporate stretching into routine activities.
I have bones sticking out all over! But when I flex my arm for my grandsons and they squeeze my biceps they go, “Wow, grandpa!”
I used to worry that I was puny or looked weak or somehow not as desirable as your run of the mill hunk on a magazine cover but I got over that simply because my body works. It does what I want it to most of the time. I think that is simply the result of doing physical work all my life and when not working taxing my body for the fun of it. It makes for such a delicious kind of tired.
Truth be told, all that strain has taken a toll and these days I labor against near constant back pain. Too much stooping and straining and those loads I raised off balance. On good days it is just background noise. Other days I find something to do that involves more reclining, more gentle to do.
There is also a little bastard with a ball peen hammer that smacks some random part just out of the blue for no damned good reason at all. Makes me cuss. Curiously, the pain fades quickly and without lingering damage.
My advice to you, in light of the above unassailable anecdotal, subjective evidence, is to not worry much about your morphic type as long as you find yourself able to do the things you want to do, the things you are used to doing. Eat sensibly, consuming foods that are as close to natural as possible. Stay active, stretch a lot and most of all, enjoy what you can do with your body. Test it while not overloading it.
And love that little girl. Laugh with her. Tell her your fondest dreams even before she can understand. And, as ever, eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and scratch where it itches. It’s worked for me for six decades and I enter my seventh with a grin on my face, a song in my heart and a mountain yet to climb.
Oh. This too; the company you find here are empowering and most expeditious. Not totally without fault and not always right but compared to some alternatives a hands down winning team.
One more thing: go to the last TET and my comment 606. Follow the link and getcha some sourdough. Podner, those sourdough saddle pads for breakfast will stick to your ribs. Take it from me, another skinny guy. =)
Marc Stephens swings and gets hit with own bat.
From Popehat (for your amuse monk):
http://www.popehat.com/2011/12/07/tell-me-about-the-rabbit-marc-stephens/
My main computer with email is tucked in for the night. Would someone be sure Rhys Morgan gets the popehat link. He’s probably seen it already, but just in case …
One last, last thing, TLC. I have heard the coyotes laughing. On good nights, when the air and the wind was right, I laughed back at them and they laughed back at me in turn. We laughed together. Ever since I have regarded them as my friends and allies.
I have the impression that you have not named yourself The Laughing Coyote in vain.
I look forward to your comments here. They have the same kind of honesty as those ghostly calls I heard in days gone by.
Thank you most kindly Crudely Wrott. I’ve been following the sourdough trials with some interest, actually. Following your link as I type.
I’m unfortunately not as active as I’d like to be. I don’t drive, and quite frankly have no huge particular urge to. I keep thinking I should, but I really do like walking. You get to see more stuff.
OTOH, driving would take me to the mountains, where I can actually walk around fairly freely. And a vehicle is a ready made waterproof shelter if I ever feel like staying the night out there for no particular reason.
Ah yes. Coyotes. I’ve always loved coyotes in their own way. Most people see them as the pitiful little brother to the wolf, but uh, coyote numbers are increasing and wolves are still kinda in trouble.
Here they come and laugh and whoop right around town. I know a place I used to hang out next to a frog pond and there was one particular coyote I’d see around multiple times.
First time was at night, in spring, listening to the frogs. Around the corners of some hills slinks this little black shadow. And then this little triangular big-eared head peeks over the top of a dirt mound, all sly like, if I hadn’t seen it poke up I would have missed it.
That particular pond is gone now, and though there are new ponds just a little ways away, I don’t see tadpoles in them. :(
I always loved the springtime pacific treefrog orchestra, and the performance only improved when I discovered weed.
Whiskey You’re The Devil-The Pogues
Fiesta-The Pogues
Bottle Of Smoke-The Pogues
Cotton Fields-The Pogues
evilDoug @97, heh.
(Most amusing)
Meh, the BMI index is so rough as to be gravel. Most if not all of the NZ All Blacks are way over their BMI, and they’re some of the fittest athletes around. Muscle density is what does it. Also, you can be as skinny as a rake, with no muscle tone, a poster-person for artherosclerosis, and get the big tick in the BMI ratings.
Anyone getting the impression I think it’s bollocks?
The Pogues. Love the music, worst concert I ever paid for. Shane McGowan staggered on at about – oh- very late. Squawked a couple of lines then passed out.
Cheap lousy bugger.
Light Rail Coyote-Sleater-Kinney
A Quarter To Three-Sleater-Kinney
Milkshake n’Honey-Sleater-Kinney
The Fox-Sleater-Kinney
Absolutely amazing that Shane is still alive.
“I’m unfortunately not as active as I’d like to be. I don’t drive, and quite frankly have no huge particular urge to.”
You’ve got legs? A journey of a thousand miles begins with yadda yadda yadda. ‘Course, you know that. Using them makes them able.
Short story from younger days:
My father and I were horseback, gathering cows from spring pasture. Would have been early June. The badlands of the upper Wind River valley are red and grey and ridge after ridge rise up against the sky. We had just crested one when a clear morning sky turned dark. Down in the wash between them we paused to put on our rain gear and then zig-zagged up the next one.
As we reached the top there was a sudden and violent wind that drove the rain against our faces and against our horses like needles. The clouds were low and fleeting, blown quickly off to the north. Of a sudden the sun found a fault in the clouds and illuminated the next ridge over and, in a moment when the rain abated and the wind ebbed, a wolf topped that next ridge.
It stood there in profile against the grey in a spotlight of unexpectedly bright light. It turned and looked our way. I turned to look at my father only to find his face transfixed, his eyes wide. I looked back to the wolf and for a moment, just a fraction of time, as if between two thoughts, it seemed I met its eyes. They were steady and sharp. My heart leaped into my throat. I nearly called out but then the wind returned and with it the rain. The light dimmed and the wolf melted away down the far side of the ridge.
Pap and I rode down into the next wash in silence and climbed up to the very spot were that wolf had stood. We looked down and saw the prints it had left. “I thought it was a coyote,” said he. I stammered, “He was to big for a coyote, wasn’t he?” He answered, “I reckon you’re right”.
To this day that memory is as sharp as can be. It was as near to a mystical moment as I’ve ever known.
Janine: Not bad. I like it.
If you ever have the chance to be in New Hampshire, in the penneplain, just as winter becomes spring, when the nights just barely freeze and the morning thaws, listen for the spring peepers. Little frogs no bigger than your thumbnail with voices as big as a summer day. How they manage to be so bold and so frost proof is another wonder.
I used to stalk them, a near impossible hunt, for as soon as your foot crunches the icy ground their song stops. You can feel their eyes on you but you can’t see them. They are so small and so still.
If you mimic them, if you can hold perfectly still and silent for a few long minutes, you will hear one begin to peep. Then two, then a chorus. Wicked stereo sound.
Crudely: Nice.
I love walking, but the real nice wild places are beyond daily walking distance for me.
I may have told this wildlife story before:
On a family camping trip in keremeos years back, there was a cougar in the area. We were warned on our way in.
That cougar found us very interesting. It was definitely around. Fresh tracks in odd places. Tense dogs. Occasionally, they’d start barking madly at the ridge across the creek from our camp, and we’d turn just in time to see some pebbles tumbling down.
We slept outdoors all that night, and I had strange surreal spooky dreams. Could that big kitty have been checking us out up close at night? Perhaps it smelled the cold steel we kept beside us, because it chose to try for easier prey on the last night.
We got woken up next morning by the very redneck campers a K or two up the dirt road from us. “Cougar problem”, the hung over woman said.
Turned out she had let her two year old daughter out of the RV for a morning pee, and that big kitty was crouched in the trees right above her. But like all smart canadian rednecks, they had a pack of very capable mongrel dogs with them, and the cougar was still up there.
I suspect I will never in my life get that good or close a look at a wild cougar ever again. And it was most definitely looking back at us. Every bit a cat, defiant as the day is long.
@ TLC
Yeah, definitely go for it. Very simple once you gave got the starter going. Just a bit of flour and water and the starter will go for over a centuary. I got my starter posted out to me by Josh. I still have some of his dry yeast in the deep freeze. If you want it, mail an address I can post it to. (theophontesathotmaildotcom)
………………………………………….
It is important for one’s health and wellbeing to take good care of what we eat. The slow food movement is doing a really good job at this. But one of the best investments you could make, is to get a good quality juicer and juice whatever fruit or vegetables are in season at the local market. It will pay for itself in no time – and that excludes the health benefits.
Here is a good movie to look out for in this regard: “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead” by Joe Cross. Linky to trailer.
Janine @105
This is possibly due to the fact that alcohol can be a preservative. If that’s so, he may be immortal.
(Seriously, it beats me, too.)
I like the slow food movement.
To me it’s like, do we want a constantly ‘profitable’ society, or do we want a satisfied society with relatively self reliant communities?
I’ll second the props for the juicer, theophontes. I still have the one Ma gave me about six years ago. Until I tried it out I never knew how good a carrot could taste!
TLC, the big cats are still around. I had the good luck to follow one for a couple of miles through Oscar Scheer State Park in Florida one time. I was riding a rented bicycle when I heard it yowl just ahead of me and saw the bushes shaking where it had been. I abandoned the bike and followed prints and, later, scat, along an old two track road through the pucker brush.
While I never clapped eyes on it the signs said that it was near, just ahead. I remember turning around to walk back to the road and all the time thinking that it was then following me. Such grand excitement. The best part is feeling so close to a wild animal in its own environment. A great equalizer.
I’ve got a double pocketful of critter stories to tell but it’s getting late (early?) and so I say good night. Pleasant dreams to all.
Complete bancruptcy, but I need, need, need a place to vent and this is the one where people won’t talk stupid.
I received an email from my university. No, nothing about my degree, but a mail to all students and employees, especially women. A female student narrowly escaped rape after she’s been attacked in the university car park and abducted by car. She could escape at the last moment.
They believe that this is the same perp who has groped an attacked women on and off campus and in a nearby smalltown with a high student population, since the descriptions and actions match. Seems like his deeds are getting more and more serious, with the attempted rape being the current top.
Their advice:
Women should not go to the carpark alone, especially after dark. We should always go in small groups, because astonishingly (I’m not making that up, they’re actually claiming that it’s a conspicious feature of his crimes that he always attacks single women and never groups. How stupid are those people?) he has never tried to rape a whole bunch of women at once.
Well, how about police and university setting up security? They might even have a chance to catch him that way! But no, the safety of several thousand female students is apparently not worth the police time.
Fuck themselves sideways with a rusty porcupine.
Fuck rape-culture.
That’s horrible, Giliell. Vigilante action looks very attractive right now, but my rational side knows better than that.
Giliell, ack. Sorry to hear that.
Sure sounds like the university doesn’t think it’s their problem. :|
—
Do you think you’d be prejudiced against if you complained about their (relative) inaction? Because perhaps enough complaints might induce some more positive action.
(No, I don’t think issuing a warning counts as action)
@ TLC
I don’t really have a problem with globalisation (hell, I live in China) nor with technology (hell, I’m on teh interwebz right now). But, yes, we need to be sustainable and not reliant, as we are now, to steal our children’s futures to survive today.
It is very much a question of values. A social(isation) issue. You are happy to walk, where most might drive. That is a positive value. You are getting things done and enjoying your day in a way that is very much sustainable. Slow living anyone?
@ Gilliel
Even in those who really mean well. Their solution to the problem: “Be afraid, be very afraid. (And act accordingly.)” It only feeds the cycle.
Giliell, Dogamn, that’s beyond frustrating.
I, too, know that vigilante action is not the answer, but I mentally modify the advice to read, ‘One female should go alone, with a large pack shadowing her.’
But that doesn’t stop the ‘one foolish woman, alone, got what was expected’ attitude from dying the swift and hideous death it ought to.
Maybe campus administration expects women to make like penguins and shove one of their number out ahead of the pack to check for predators.
It makes me think about back when I glanced through a large book on serial killers, and how many of them had failed abduction attempts earlier on in their ‘careers’ that were dismissed similarly by authorities.
Chrys Stevenson has written about Ivanoff/Hoggle. So have I. Time to give the guy the Mabus treatment.
Thank you all
No, place’s too big for that. And I sure will.
Maybe it would help if they realized that their well-meaning advice is exactly the same as the furious demands muslims (and other religious) extremists shout out regularly.
I note from skimming the ERV blog, that btw still gives Ivanoff the established stalker a forum, that Ivanoff, MK Gray and others are getting tables at the GAC dinner. I might not attend this convention after all, to not have to vomit over those disgusting fuckheads.
Giliell, that’s absolutely infuriating. You’d think there would be progress by this time.
Oh for fuxake. Rorschach, come and join the paupers’ alt-dinner.
Do Australian Atheists want this convention to be an occasion for decent people to meet and celebrate reason, or do they want the decent folks to require bodyguards because the likes of Ivanoff and MK Gray are threatening violence and stalking? I’m waiting to hear what the verdict is.
rorschach, I didn’t see any threat of violence, only of harassment.
@ Rorschach
Looking at Chrys Stevenson’s blog, it sounds that these problems are fairly recent (within last 12 months). Could it be sudden onset psychosis? Excessive smoking, stress, feelings of rejection, very likely a poor diet … He needs medical help, but the cure could be as simple as a B12 supplement.
(Hoggle, if you are reading here … don’t take this lightly: Get help!)
/cross-post (from furious purpose)
John M, I did not pay 440.-AUD to be looking over my shoulder for 3 days to make sure I’m not being stalked. This should not be an issue. You threaten violence or unsolicited contact, yuo are on notice. You do it in public with a track record like Ivanoff, you go in the book and on police record. And fuck you too for being such a great help.
Rorschach:
That’s completely unnecessary. If you don’t want to attend, don’t. Yelling at people here isn’t going to help.
You’re threadcopping me Caine ? Seriously? Geez, go have dinner with Stef Zwan LOL.But don’t be pathetic please. I’ll say here what I want to say.
Rorschach:
No, I’m not. You can stop being such a fuckwit now. Who’s stopping you from saying whatever you want? I simply pointed out it’s unnecessary. It’s also stupid. That’s me saying what I want. See how that works?
Nite. Not going there.
Rorschach, get some sleep. GAC has been notified, but it may take time for a decision to filter through. Hoggle hoggling at erv’s is no proof of the GAC attitude.
Coyote, yeah, BMI is a very very poor measure to trust in. But it can be a helpful start to think about. Feeling cold a lot is a common symptom of undereating, too. Adding some healthy fats like nuts and avocados might be advisable. But beware of internet advice!
Avoid nuts. You are what you eat.
@ Tis
… and they don’t contain enough vitamin B12 to cure compulsive ERV-itic hoggling.
Damn. The only way I know I even have bones is when they ache. Or make popping or cracking sounds.
Me pa has a degree in geology. Earned it back in 1961. And plate tectonics was mentioned. And ridiculed as patently impossible. Of course, just a few years later, thanks to magnets (how the fuck do they work?), it was accepted fact. Amazing what just a few years can change, neh?
And you believe that? Were you there?
======
Last winter, Wife and I went for a drive up in the mountains. It was cold, about a half foot of snow on the ground, and the creeks were frozen over save for the smaller falls and rapids. We stopped to enjoy our cheese (sorry, our chez (meta)) and crackers and watched four Mallards (one male, three juvenile or female) ride through about 30 yards of waves, hop up on the ice, walk back up to above the rapids, and ride through. They did this continuously for about a half an hour and looked (anthropomorphically) like they were having an absolute blast. There was no feeding behaviour involved, just whitewater ducking.
========
Last night I was in no mood to cook anything fancy. I pulled out a container of Pillsbury pizza dough (not really pizza dough but it is still usefull) and pre-baked it into a rectangular high-sided tray (I use the pan for my convection oven but turned upside down for the pre-bake). I filled it with some diced pork from the crock pot (from Wednesday, I think), some sweet onion, some diced chile peppers, some frozen corn and black beans, some green pepper, some smoked salt and cilantro. Tossed on some grated cheddar, jack, and asadero cheese and baked it until done. I topped it with some salsa and some sliced fresh avacado. And it was good.
And now I’m hungry again.
They should have listened to the paleobotanists. :p
+1
@ carlie
Indeed, the Wallace Line stretches way back in time.
@ Brogg
Ha! Gotcha! Your weren’t there where you‽
Tethys #38
Once, walking through a crappy little free zoo in a city park, I saw one enclosure that included both peafowl and turkeys. A male turkey and a peacock both were doing their mating displays. At one point the faced off against each other. Remarkably similar, yet hilariously different.
Hail Tpyos!
wheren’tweren’t/where-wolf
wheren’tweren’twherewere(Why can I never get this right?) ….sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep…..
There wolf. There castle.
A five minute YouTube clip seems to be the perfect way for me to watch Louis C.K., his Everything’s Amazing & Nobody’s Happy rant on Conan O’Brien is one of my favorite things. But I tried to watch an hour-long standup show of his and I was exhausted halfway through.
Their, they’re. You’ll both be fine.
Except that the palaeontologist and palaeobotanists had spent the previous 60 or so years tying themselves in knots with disappearing/reappearing land bridges and other such strange (and completely unsupported/unsupportable) theories about why the rocks, plants and animals all supported various direct connections at different times. The animals of the Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone are found in South America (Prana’), the Karoo of southern Africa, and the Bowen formation of Australia (along with part of Antarctica (but were unknown at the time). Or the rocks of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (late Triassic basalts, sills and mafic dikes) which occur in the southeast and eastern seaboards of North America, Iberia, western Africa and northeastern South Amrica. In retrospect (once a mechanism was found), plate tectonics is obvious but, save for some mavericks, within the paleaofillintheblank community, along with the geologists, there was a great deal of resistance to Wegener’s ideas. If memory serves, it wasn’t even geologists who found the mechanism — it was oceanographers with magnetometers.
carlie: No one listens to the paleobotanists…until it’s too late.
From yesterday…
Learning something disappointing about Jon Huntsman is NBD to me, because no matter how much better he might seem than the other Rs, I cannot imagine an electoral scenario that includes Huntsman winning that isn’t also an unmitigated disaster for too many reasons to name. That said…
…my thought is that I’d need to see the quote in context: If he really was being that dismissive of sexual assault allegations, then yes, disgusting, without question. But the most recent sexual allegations — and the one that finally put Cain out of the race — had to do with a long-term consensual extramarital affair with a woman who described it as “fun” (which I take, in the absence of more specific evidence, to suggest ongoing consent).
If that’s what Huntsman was referring to, and if he meant to be saying something along the lines of “Cain’s private (consensual) sexual behavior isn’t relevant to his fitness to be president,” well… I seem to recall saying similar things about Bill Clinton when Newt Gingrich was trying to overturn the will of the electorate on the basis of private sexual behavior.
More generally, the principle that we shouldn’t make judgments about people’s fitness to be and do various things based on their unrelated consensual sexual behavior is AFAIK, a liberal value.
What the Huntsman quote reveals that is disgusting, even in this most benign interpretation, is…
1. …Cain’s campaign actually survived the sexual assault allegations, but allegations of consensual, albeit taboo-breaking, sex brought him down. That indicates some pretty fucked up values on the part of the whole community of people upon whom Republican candidates political fate rests.
2. An apparently well-educated, cultured, self-assured businesswoman gets written off as a “bimbo” because she seems to enjoy sex.
Really, though… I would never downplay the importance of sexism and sex-negativity, but the Republicans are poised to fuck up the country — and by extension, the world — in so many ways. Fighting sexism is just one of a myriad of reasons they must not get power.
Urrk!
Fucking Saturday morning, how does that work?
OK, now I’m’a just give up…
Quoted for obvious and overwhelming truth.
It is Thursday, you calendarist!
“122 year old sourdough…
Wow!
And you believe that? Were you there?”
.
No Oggie, and by the way, g’mornin’ world, I wasn’t there. Where I once was was in my father’s kitchen eating (relishing, without relish (which would be silly on sourdough pancakes (or would it? (perhaps I should try it)))) his sourdough pancakes. He called them saddle pads. He also claimed that he got his starter from a homesteader who settled in Wyoming in the teens (that would be the period from nineteen one teen to nineteen nine teen) and I don’t see why he would lie about such a thing.
The old man went over the hill in nineteen eighty two. I moved into his house in nineteen eighty three and the crock pot that held the starter was empty and clean. But not entirely; when I sniffed the air inside there was the unmistakeable tang of yeasty sourness, ancient and timeless. So, yeah, I believe that, lacking any evidence to the contrary.
(I think this is the very first time I have used the word “was” twice in a row. This is promising to be a unique, if not contrary, day.)
Among the most liberating experiences of adulthood is the realization that you can eat anything for breakfast that you want to. I am having vegetable soup that my wife’s mother made a few nights ago. It is freaking awesome.
I have offered this same liberty to my four year old daughter, and she has rejected it, opting for oatmeal instead.
Apparently, she prefers to submit to the arbitrary expectations that our society places on the first meal. Or she preferes oatmeal.
Sorry. That was a failed attempt at humour playing off of the Hammster’s idiocy. I do not doubt the starter is that old. My best friend in high school’s mother had a sourdough starter that dated from the 1920s. And it did taste different than other sourdoughs I have had.
Anyway, sorry about that. Sarcastic humour doesn’t work to well on line. Please forgive me.
“Sarcastic humour doesn’t work to well on line. Please forgive me.”
Sure it does, Brother Og. Especially when the mighty Tpyos is in attendance. Or perhaps your British?
Do you mean, ‘you’re British?’ All hail Tpyos, yadayadayada.
No. I picked up the Britiscistic spelling to annoy a right-wing English teacher back in high school (she thought that Joe McCarthy was one of the greatest Americans ever) and it has stuck. Just humour me and we’ll be alright.
Oops. Meant to assure you that you are eternally forgiven. If not by all of creation and the universe at large, at least by me.
Remind me to tell you my fire stories someday. Unfortunately I have only one train story and that is from my early childhood and involves a girl in a white dress. While I was there, then, my memory is more informed by my father’s recollection and recitation than by my own. Which is as valid as my own.
Memory. How the fuck does that work?
You remake a memory every time you recall a memory. Thus making them very slippery beasties.
Myeck Waters
They are remarkably similar! I can picture this complete with sound effects. Gobble-gobble-gobble…..me-YAH, me-YAH
I have taken to using CK’s line when watching people get frustrated with their phones not working fast enough.
“Give it a second…it’s going to space and back.”
—-
Boudins bakery in San Francisco has a sourdough mother that is 151 years old. She has been rescued from a few city leveling earthquakes. I wish San Fran wasn’t such an expensive city, I would love to move there.
Breakfast today is bananas in almond milk, ginger thins, and coffee. Yum.
“I picked up the Britiscistic spelling to annoy a right-wing English teacher back in high school (she thought that Joe McCarthy was one of the greatest Americans ever) and it has stuck.”
I’ll give you a nine for content and a perfect ten for style. ;^>
I had a philosophy teacher, a lady, who always dressed in black right down to her stockings, shoes and hair ties. The most depressing class I ever attended. So very dark.
Some years ago, on a brutally hot and humid Sunday afternoon, a family showed up to take one of our longer train rides which was being pulled by a coal-fired freight locomotive. The family had six (count ’em, six!) children. All girls. They were dressed in Sunday-go-to-meeting dresses: pastel knee-length dresses with puffy sleeves, white stockings and white shiny shoes, even a white lacey apron thingy. Their ages ranged from about three to about ten. Cute kids. Perfect hair, the works.
Our trains do have summer air conditioning. Windows: summer closed, summer open. And the condition of the air inside the coach is identicle to the air outside the coach. Which, as I said earlier, was hot and humid. And hot.
Steam locomotives, especially those burning soft coal, are notorious for soot and cinders. The steam exhaust, along with forcing a draft for the fire, also pulls cinders through the flues and out the stack. With enough force to toss them 20 or so feet above the train. And, at 30mph, they start to fall back on the train at about the third car. Which is where I was. With dress family.
The girls go so dirty. The youngest decided to keep her dress clean by taking it off and handing it to Dad (who handed it back and told her it was okay if it gets dirty (which earned him a rather caustic look from Mom)). For much of the trip the younger girls kept handing articles of clothing to Dad (stockings, shoes, apron-thingie) which made sense to me (but I’m a dad so what do I know, right?) By the end of the trip, the girls looked like they had rolled in a coal pile. I tried to reassure Mom that there was very little oil in the cinders so they should come clean. She glared at me and said, “Men have no clue about pastels!”
As they walked to their car after the excursion, the girls were happy as clams in mud. Mom was fuming. Dad looked like a scolded dog.
And I am so glad that my uniform shirt is gray. And I don’t have to where the summer flat hat on the train.
The flounce always gets me, though. I have never been able to stick the flounce. And since that is one-third of the score, well . . . .
(So you gave me a 6.67 out of ten? Not bad.)
You are right, Janine. There is a hazy subset of memories that I remember remembering. Unlike the moment just passed, which I may not remember at all, the memories I remember remembering remind me that I might not know what I remember even though it seems like just a moment ago.
Nevertheless, these thin slices of history that call to me over the years do inform the present and therefore my sense of self. Spooky action at a distance. I seem to recall that someone else remarked about that in some related context that I remember being disturbing when first I was informed of uncertainty.
One of the weird things about memory is that I have the amazing ability to combine memories that are completely unrelated in both time and space. Which then, of course, become part of my memory in addition to the original memories.
This must be that ‘intelligent design’ I keep reading about.
This episode of Radiolab blew my freakin’ mind. It basically builds the case that the only way to keep a memory intact is to never recall it. As soon as you do, you ditch the old version and replace it with a new one. Aaaarrrghh.
Ramen to that. I had leftover stir fry for breakfast today. I love having strong flavors and various kinds of nutrients to start the day.
I have only one fire story, which is from my early childhood and involves a girl in a white t-shirt. :) Me +birthday + candles on cake + long hair = flames go pfoof.
Did you know it takes weeks to get the smell of burnt hair off of your head no matter how many times you wash it? Thank the fsm it was a year or so before I discovered Aqua Net.
Sounds like she’s the one with no clue about pastels, if she dressed her kids in them to go on a train ride.
Speaking of moms, Michelle Duggar? Nobody but nobody should ever have to go through the heartbreak of a lost wanted pregnancy. I wonder what she blames for it, though, given that their whole trek to many-children-hood started with a miscarriage she blames on birth control. And I wonder (meaning I think there’s no chance in hell) if this will cause her to have an inkling of critical thought re: the first one and the second being either both “God’s will” or both caused by her own actions or neither, but how stupid it is to ascribe one to one cause and the other to something different.
As I recall recalling, Brother Og, the girl on the train didn’t take off her dress, being alone and without a father to hand it to. Too, this was 1955 and if she had taken off her dress the moment would have been lost on me. Perhaps my father would have remembered remembering if she had but, alas, he is beyond the asking.
What I do recall, and this quite clearly, is that the girl got on the train at Grand Central in New York in a brilliantly white dress. She looked so eager to ride and arrive somewhere. When the train pulled into Philadelphia her dress was grey and so was her countenance. I seem to recall that the windows were open and that smoke was blowing past. Some of it must have gotten in.
“And I wonder (meaning I think there’s no chance in hell) if this will cause her to have an inkling of critical thought . . .”
Only the illusion of a memory. She said that God had a lesson to teach her. Something about her responsibility to have even greater faith in the very same god that had told her to have another child in order for that god to increase her faith and make it, that god, proud of her.
Sheesh!
NB: the selective use of capitalization of the word “god” is intentional and grammatically correct. At least, I seem to remember that it is.
I am trying to revive a sadly neglected Christmas Cactus (Schlumbergera buckleyi) by rooting offsets and by leaf cuttings. I’m not very experienced in this craft so I’m asking for the wisdom of the Horde. Anyone here well versed in propagation?
Crudely Wrott:
I think your memory may be faulty.
First, no steam locomotives were allowed into Manhattan. Second, the NYC had no steam locomotives east of Cleveland after August 7, 1953.
Third, no trains ran out of Grand Central Station heading for Philadelphia (the NYC ran north, the NYNH&H and the LIRR ran east).
It is possible you rode behind a steam locomotive from Manhattan to Philadelphia, but it would have been the B&O (Pennsy’s line was electrified) using an electric locomotive to New Jersey and then switching to steam (unless you took a really weird route (say LV, CNJ, RDG down to Philly).
So it would have to have been a different station for the route you took, coupled with it being steam.
As penance for thread hogging I offer the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7wG0cbmou8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4bVRpjNA-A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfbIrAxdo20&feature=related
Go back in time to see today again. The human condition does not seem to change that much. What does change is the way we holler an moan about it.
“I think your memory may be faulty.”
Memory is not as accurate as I (we) assume. You are probably right with regards to train history. Perhaps the train I rode on that day was pulled (actually pushed (one of my favorite paradoxes) by a dirty diesel engine.
Still, the girl’s trip was less glamorous than she may have anticipated it to be. Sort of a thirty minute, Twilight Zone interpretation. And so it goes.
*raises tentacle*
Define sadly neglected. I have had good luck with root pruning and repotting old schlumbergias. This encourages lots of new growth from the base of the plant. Any leaf segments that get broken off in the process are allowed to callous and then placed in a sandy sterile potting media designed for succulents. The soil is kept just barely damp. Wet soil will rot the cuttings before any roots form. I have a 4 foot florescent shop light on a timer in the cool basement that is my wintertime propagation area.
Crudely Wrott:
Some corrections:
First, B&O did not have a station in Manhattan; one traveled to Jersey City by B&O bus service. And LIRR never went to Grand Central. Sorry.
Crudely Wrott:
You could very well have traveled behind steam from NYC to Philly, just not out of Grand Central. The B&O continued their Royal Blue service (using both steam and diesel-electric locomotives) until about 1957 on that route.
TLC
Do you mean a full chin up style lift, or just holding your feet off the ground while suspended from your hands? The former is an excellent indicator that you have above average strength, particularly if you can do it for reps.
___
Janine,
Awesome.
___
Speaking of steam, I asked you a question a ways back Ogvorbis and I think I wrapped my head around it finally. Anyways, thanks for your reply, I just realized that you did and I never acknowledged it.
Appending a missing close parenthesis to my last. Humiliating Oops to Tpyos, it’s favorite snack. Short of souls, that is. Right, Oggie?
And just because I can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cin0QzuEss&feature=related
I did? What and when? Damn. Won’t happen again. I promise.
Ogvorbis,
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Me fingers were crossed. As were my eyes. And my armpit hair.
The Unrepentant-Steve Earle
You’re Still Standing There-Steve Earle & Lucinda Williams
CCKMP-Steve Earle
Goodbye-Steve Earle & Emmylou Harris
Brother Oggie, while you claim dementia you are not so gifted in that respect as to claim and advantage over me. At least where memory is concerned. By virtue of you railroad virtuosity I accept your corrections to my memory. (Assuming, of course, that you are actually remembering as opposed to remembering remembering. (Hush my mouth! The man knows what he’s talking about!))
Now that I think about it, the trip did originate in New York but instead of ending in Philly it ended in Pittsburgh. At least, that was our destination. See, my father had a friend there at whose home we tarried a while.
So long ago. I do recall the bunkbeds that were built into the wall and climbing up the ladder to the topmost. I was friends with that man’s children and remain so to this day. Now those old fellows are gone and what they have left are their accomplishments and memories of being there. What they did and how they treated me are parts of my life that I am satisfied to call grace. They graced my life and I shall not forget them. Unless I forget to recall the memories. Should I forget, that will be the day that I am undone.
And because most of the people I meet only know It’s A Beautiful Day by way of White Bird, http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=VxaoJdfVw9w
Then it could have been the Pennsylvania (from Penn Station) via electric locomotives to Pilly and Harrisburg then diesel-electric or steam (depending on the train and whether they were running extra) to Pittsburg. Or it still could have been the B&O via Baltimore and then west through Harper’s Ferry and up and over the Sandpatch to Pittsburg.
GreenvilleLucinda Williams & Emmylou Harris
@ Tethys
*raises tentacle in return*
Sadly Neglected = not tended nor watered for some time; looking a bit wilted with a bit of wrinkling and drooping.
I got the plant handed to me sans soil; stuck in a jar of water. Upon inspection I noticed some root growth at the base of a couple of stems. These I have sprinkled with rooting hormone and planted in potting soil mixed with sand.
I have also cut some leaves, setting them aside to dry and become calloused (oh, nearer my heart to thee) as well as doing the following experiment.
A vigorous appearing stem of the plant, with buds that have, alas, fallen off, that was in the jar showed some root growth. After trimming some leaf cuttings and removing some poor looking branches I returned it to the jar. What I did was to add rooting hormone to the water. I confess that I don’t know what good that will do but I reason that root growth will be encouraged. How am I doing?
Since I’m on a roll, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1hdGEWHD6E&feature=related
I have a very stupid question. Why do so many people post shitty sounding cell phone recordings of concerts on YouTube?
Brother Ogvorbis informs me thusly:
“Then it could have been the Pennsylvania (from Penn Station) via electric locomotives to Pilly and Harrisburg then diesel-electric or steam (depending on the train and whether they were running extra) to Pittsburg. Or it still could have been the B&O via Baltimore and then west through Harper’s Ferry and up and over the Sandpatch to Pittsburg.”
Your attention to detail as well as your retention of railroad arcana is impressive and valuable. I appreciate it deeply. But, attend; you are trying to inform me of the minutiae of a single day in my remote childhood. Would that I could recall some details, like the legend on the side of the collier to inform you better.
No worry. The memory that I remember is sufficient.
And now, because I don’t remember remembering this, I actually remember this and this is probably unexpected to many who are used to three chord noise and raw-throated screaming vacuous vocals promoting adolescent angst (pardon me, my age has put me on a par with my parents when I first put Jimi Hendrix on the family Hi-Fi), more IABD to blow your young hearts away — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoNoVgp9rKA&feature=related
Take time. It’s the raw material from which you build your life.
One time when I was in the Navy ever so many years ago we were having a change of command. New ship’s captain replacing old ship’s captain. The crew was standing on the pier in ranks and in dress whites. A bunch of senior officers are on a platform at the end of the pier, also in dress whites. A tugboat came by, billowing oily black smoke from the funnel. Over a hundred sets of dress whites were ruined. There were some very unhappy sailors that day.
You are devious.
Have you had your Theo Jansen fix recently?
http://www.strandbeest.com/film_videos.php
Perhaps some will like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0k5UrZkeA&feature=related
No apologies for taking delight in music I haven’t hear for years. I suspect more is to come. YouTube is better than I first suspected.
Blackhawk-Emmylou Harris
Ain’t Living Long Like This-Emmylou Harris
Red Dirt Girl-Emmylou Harris
Deeper Well-Emmylou Harris
I would suggest that here is one of those places where people don’t realize that they are remembering while they are experiencing the recording. Their memory serves to deepen the quality of the recording and gloss over distortion and clipping issues and they think that therefor anyone, even people who were not at the live performance, can do the same.
In general I do very poorly with live recordings, and bootleg ones tend to drive me batty.
I had the pleasure of hearing It’s A Beautiful Day in concert in 1971 at Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa, Florida. They appeared after the opening act, Argent. They were followed by Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen who were followed by The Jeff Beck Group.
Man, I still can’t get over it. Linda LaFlamme was soooo beautiful and wispy in a way that made that girl (wassname?) in Fleetwood Mac look like a kindergartener.
“Why do so many people post shitty sounding cell phone recordings of concerts on YouTube?”
.
Because that’s all that they’ve got and they are under the spell that says if you can post it you are really somebody. Poor things.
*gee–I hope that my links lead to high fidelity*
Just riffing to keep my mind sharp. I do not expect you (or myself, for that matter) to remember one childhood day. Just tossing out the different realities that could exist.
Civil servant and father.
Ah. Well then.
The Boxer-Emmylou Harris
C’est La Vie(You Never Can tell)-Emmylou Harris
Crescent City-Emmylou Harris
Lodi-Emmylou Harris
Some kinds of nihilistic death rock existed long before some of you were born. (Not pickin’ on anyone, just sayin’. Not beating up or beating down. Stuff is. Shit exists and things like that there.)
As evidence, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0e-JFio2s&feature=related
*starts searching for something ameliorative . . .*
This otta do it — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92HjH1GG3ro
Alternatively, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_kZE7MSlLw&feature=related
Crudely Wrott,
This is where I get to pull the get off my lawn out: Seems kinda, light, you know? Still, thanks, I have never heard that track.
Brother Ogvorbis, Demented as much as I,
Anx.
202 will always remind me of Illeana Douglas skating over the ice that contains the body of Nicole Kidman in the closing credits of To Die For.
Shucks, Dhorvath, and everybody, just call me Crudely. Otherwise it seems so needlessly formal. From what I gather we are not that here.
I think I will be devious enough today to seek out some lost musical treasures that I might afflict the Horde with. That is, if I can recall the memories of them. ;^>
Crudely,
I was just aiming at capitalizing on some musical differences, while letting you know I did enjoy that DOA track. I find myself curious what my child will end up thinking is so new and fresh when he gets of an age to do so.
Here’s Emmylou Harris, along with Mary Black and Delores Keene, singing Cyril Tawny’s “Grey Funnel Line”:
I discovered rock and roll in 1978. That put me just, what, six years? removed from The Beatles. My daughter listens to The Beatles. And the Dead Kennedy’s, Devo, and other early-80s punk. Boy listens to Guns and Roses, Def Lepard, and other heavy metal from the time. And it hit me the other day — they are further removed from Devo and the Lepard than I was from The Beatles. There is less separation between me and Sgt Peppers than there is between my kids and The Wall. And then I felt old.
And you! Yes, you! Get offa my lawn!
*hands Brother Ogvorbis a metamucil grog*
Since there are so many posts with songs, maybe some folks would like to get in on this:
Songs for Nonbelievers
The sample of “Severed Swedish Heads” is hilarious.
Apparently, the former home of George Jones and Tammy Wynette is on the market again. (This is the home from which he famously rode a lawnmower to a bar.)
Beis mich! (or however DDMFM spells it)
For those interested: Over at Debunking Christianity,Loftus and another person he cites favorably tries to argue that William Lane Craig isn’t dishonest/incompetent, defends him also on the basis that he isn’t a scientist so he can’t be considered too incompetent when it is science, not philosophy, that proves him wrong.
Also hilarious: At the link Loftus provides, someone who argues that Craig is in fact dishonest/incompetent is dismissed by a different commenter, because the person making that argument also argued that Plantinga was dishonest/incompetent. I mean, come on, that couldn’t possibly be the case!
Crudely Wrot
I would take it out of the jar of water and pot it. The roots that form in water are different from roots that form in soil.
In their native habitat, they grow on trees (epiphytes) or rocks (lithophytes) and they need good drainage.
They need high humidity to thrive, so you could put a clear plastic bag over it until it gets some roots established.
Disturbing the plant by repotting or even moving it usually makes the flower buds fall off. Your plant is obviously mature enough to flower though, so getting it well established in a pot may mean that it will bloom for you by Easter. Short days are what triggers flowering. I know of one woman who has some very old plants that bloom nearly all winter.
So, the best defense WLC can hope for is “Hey, MAYBE he’s not a lying moron, he just has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about!”
Hmmm. Maybe I’ll go for burial rather than cremation just so I can have that on my tombstone.
===========
And I found the perfect present for my niece: My Little Pony Glue Factory.
Very little is new in music. I love this comedic take on the subject.
Pachelbel Rant
Thanks, Thethys. In a previous life I had some well established Christmas Cacti that were quite punctual. I just never propagated them. I’ll pot that jarred specimen right away.
Dhorvath, ;^>.
Nerd, I can haz metamucil grog two? (feels accumulating time and wimpers softly)
*eat shoots and leaves to comb the YouTube archives*
phantomreader42: Yep, apparently. The fact that really isn’t a clear distinction between “moron” (i.e. “incompetent at philosophy)” and “has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about” (i.e. “he is delusionally dead wrong”) is just par for the course. I really can’t imagine how you could across someone who could be considered good at philosophy (a field almost exclusively about correct application of logic) when they are also deluded, dead wrong, and insistent upon talking about only subjects where the delusion and wrongness apply. But I guess imagining that someone can be both at once is the power of Friendship!
Tethys,
I am crying. So funny.
Here, try some of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BJt5tJ_rQE&feature=related
for Brother Oggie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnzqNhQCxjw&feature=related
Even better, trains can be lonesome or promising. One doesn’t know until one gets off at the station:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6uK_fpb9Rg
Look where you’ve been:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-esmbXe91A&feature=related
Well, the longest train
That I ever did see
She was fourteen coaches long.
And the only girl
That I ever did love
She was on that train, and she was gone.
Dhorvath:
Both, I suppose. I can also brachiate (clumsily). PRIMATE POWER!
It all came from when I was delivering hay with that Madman. Like I said, it would have been a human rights abuse had I not TOLD him to work me like that. The money was crap, but there was so much more to gain than a bunch of zeroes on the end of my bank account.
Maybe someday, when I feel like it and the mood is right, I’ll tell that story in detail.
Crudely:
Your snippet of lyrics reminded me of a beloved folk song (maybe the same song, but I don’t recall that version of the lyric), so I went a’Googlin’. The first version I found serve to remind my why I had such a crush on Linda Ronstadt when I was a teen.
But the version that stands out in my memory is by the Smothers Brothers, who are better musicians that people realize.
And of course, we can’t talk about train songs without this one. You can hear that whistle blowin’ a hundred miles.
Semmelknödel!
Or of course breading.
On rare occasions, I have found* that I can see my heartbeat right under the lower end of the breastbone. (I’m rather disturbed by the fact that apparently some big artery is so close to the skin with no bone in between.) I’m thin, but not scarily skeletal.
* Translation: I have no idea how often that happens – I don’t often stand in front of a mirror naked.
So… full… of… win. :-)
And the paleozoologists. :-)
Some did that. Others accepted Wegener’s continental drift (but of course had no mechanism). AFAIK, it was about 50/50. The geologists and the physicists were against it.
Paraná.
Exactly.
In Paris I often got up, drank milk, ate cress soup or chocolate, and went to have “lunch” (dinner as in “biggest meal of the day”) in the cafeteria. :-)
Trust me, my English teacher’s bright red and bright green tights weren’t a more uplifting sight.
Leck mich is the phrase that’s actually used.
Jebus.
There’s a graduate student get-together in my department tonight. I called the organizer and offered the case-and-a-half of assorted beers that I have left over from my party last weekend. This offer was cheerfully accepted.
So, the organizer just came by and made off with a bunch of Saranac and Smutty Nose. All well and good. But! This woman absurdly turned up her nose at the Hennepin.
What. I do inot comprehend.
Damn!
David Marjanovic: On me it was right above where my heart would generally be. At 14 ish though, I went through this obsession with ‘getting big’. I never did ‘get big’, but I did grow a pair of decent pecs to cover it up.
Also, as long as we’re doin’ Asleep at the Wheel, we gotta’ have them on the great Bob Wills tune “Miles and Miles of Texas.”
And now, back to train songs. Good mornin’, America, how are ya’. Don’t ya’ know me? I’m your native son.
Oh, I love that rant. I was crying with laughter the first time I heard it, and the tenth, and etc., and I’m about to watch it and do so again. Gold.
In other news, kitty kitty kitty kitty!!!! We have also just become servants of a cat. :) We went cat shopping today (which was so weird, because we just kind of fell into our other cat, and spouse has always had cats just kind of show up). There was a cat at a shelter an hour away we had seen online that seemed just perfect, so we drove out there first. I hadn’t called ahead, because it was still listed this morning, and this cat had been there since JULY, so what are the odds? Yeah. Showed up, found out the cat was absolutely even cuter in person, and had just been adopted out an hour before we got there. *big sigh*
Went to the next shelter on the way back, and it was flooded with people. Open house day and garage sale fundraiser. Oof. They had one cute kitten that was terribly sick, so that was a no-go. None of the others really seemed to click with us.
So, we finally stopped by the shelter at home, the one I drive past every day on the way to work, the one that had almost no kittens listed online, just to check. Found a ROOMFUL OF KITTENS OMG DIE OF CUTE. I swear, there were about a dozen. Almost missed the one we wanted there too; there was a couple playing with one cat, we asked for the grey girl, and a minute later the other couple asked for the grey boy (her brother) and less than five minutes after that decided to take him. I think if we hadn’t gotten the girl first they just would have asked for either and it would have been 50/50 which one they ended up with. NO MY KITTY MINE. Spent awhile cuddling her, then watched her play with the others for awhile, then filled out all the paperwork. They have to verify our housing information on Monday and then we’re all hers. :) Just have to make sure they don’t mix up who gets which one when we pick her up.
And we have to pick a name. I’m partial to Stormageddon. Or Mildred.
Arlo Guthrie is one of the few famous performers I’ve managed to see live (Weird Al and Jonathan Coulton are two of the others). Definitely worth the effort, even though he didn’t perform either of the songs I wanted to see him do (Alice’s Restaurant and The Motorcycle Song).
Railroad songs: “In the Pines” for me.
I will always associate that classic with our first successful deer hunt, and the stark fire-blasted hills of Brooksmere (which had many pines in them).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRsmAl9UPI4
This is the version I was looking for.
I got yer Pachelbel right here!
***
Carlie, it’s just got to be Stormageddon.
***
Bomberman:
I haven’t seen Arlo, but I did see The Smothers Brothers a couple years ago (sharing the bill with the Kingston Trio, no less). Despite being eleventy-hundred years old, they still killed.
Don’t know if it’s been mentioned here, but CNN is reporting that one of the kids accusing Sandusky of abuse has been bullied to the point that his parents have taken him out of his school.
Bill D,
Also priceless.
Happy birthday Muse!
Haz you the e-ducats? Then metamucil grog, or anything else on our shelves…remember we have “bottomless purse” technology, but can support the weight…
What I’ve learned from Latin class: Catullus was an obsessive creep. That’s all I have to say. Now I have to get back to reading his poems about Lesbia.
Carlie, you are such a Whovian.
From my experience with kittehs, the name is for your reference, not their’s. They’ll still take a message and get back to you in their time, which if it involves food or catnip, might be sooner than later.
Strange, what a person can find when one goes googling.
Wake Up in the Morning Feelin’ Like Stormageddon
The Amazing Rhythm Aces, for those of you who remember and for those of you who don’t:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly-o1BG07rw&feature=related
and Joe Walsh does more than just Funk 49:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-XlTezJwLk&feature=related
.
The naming of cats.
I’ve worked with Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez several times. They are just as good as people as they are performers.
Arlo is a nerd, he loves him some tech. He had the first Kurzweil sampled digital keyboard I’d ever worked with. (Piano action with Steinway or Bosendorfer digitally sampled, very bleeding edge at the time. It took more maintenance than an actual grand piano.)
Benjamin, Arlo has said several times he would never play Alice’s Restaurant again. (He did, at least once, and I have a recording;-) He doesn’t want that to be his signature song, he’s sick of it.
Re. Pachelbel:
TUOoGB is invaded by Handel …
I really enjoyed the outdoor stories earlier today. Feel free to keep them coming!
My own outdoor story for the day:
I was out doing fieldwork on a large river system, looking for the spawning grounds of a particular fish species. We stopped to eat lunch in a back bay where a little feeder stream became a small (~8 foot) waterfall.
We were sitting on a ledge at the top of the waterfall when we noticed something moving in the stream. A large snapping turtle was slowly working his way downstream, with his shell just sticking out of the water, looking exactly like a rock.
As we watched, the turtle climbed out on the opposite side of the stream from us and made his way to the ledge. It was obvious that he intended to get to the water below the falls. He tried to move down the steep slope in a controlled fashion, but his claws lost hold on the rock. He fell out into open air, flipped upside down, and landed on his shell in the water with a huge splash. He swam off and seemed just fine when we spotted him downstream.
This was the same day that we saw a wolf, a red fox, eagles, various ducks, an osprey, painted turtles, various cool minnows, warblers, and woodpeckers…but not a single individual of the species we were looking for.
Don’t.
Make me.
Jealous.
Ah, a welcome day of rest after getting the house ready for the Redhead’s neighborhood tea yesterday. Tea was a success, with more women than normal, but there is still a lot of gingerbread in various forms left-over. At least our front porch is now cool enough to be an extension of the refrigerator. In fact, the “coolers” need RT blue ice to keep from freezing overnight.
Stormageddon? Is that a thing? I’d go with Sturm myself, particularly if you could get another one and name it Drang.
In my defense, I only thought of it because one of the cats we saw online was named Tegan. :)
In admissions that are no defense at all, I’ve had that song on my mp3 player for a couple of months.
It is a very, very good thing I didn’t think of that, because there was a calico kitten there we were choosing between, and there was a bit of a family push to get two. I just didn’t think our allergies could handle it.
That must have been something to see, Nutmeg.
Once, on the way up to Gramie and Grampa’s camp Dad had to slow the car for a turtle crossing the narrow blacktop road. As soon as he came to a stop my brother and I piled out of the car and ran to grab up the hapless reptile.
Imagine our surprise when it turned and opened its raptor like mouth and hissed at us! Both of exclaimed simultaneously, “Snapper!”
Undeterred we gathered it up and clambered back into the car. Mom and Dad and little sister protested loudly but gave in to our assurance that as soon as we got to camp we’d put the turtle into the lake.
We did so and it swam to the bottom and headed out to the dark green depths and that’s the last we saw of it. The next summer we were talking to the fellow who owned a camp just up the shore. He said he’d never seen snappers in the lake before in his fifteen years of summers. He said there were at least half a dozen little ones in the cove that adjoined his property.
Brother and I looked at each other and grinned. Gravid female!!!
Ohh, ooh, I also ran sound for The Kingsmen one night. One of my favorite rock & roll souvenirs is the busted parts of the supposedly unbreakable graphite drum stick the drummer broke during ‘Louie, Louie’.
(Psst – he told me he was hungover the day that they recorded Louie Louie and even he didn’t know the lyrics.)
CW,
So you weren’t the only kids who pulled that then?
Crudely:
Yikes, you’re braver than me! I wouldn’t get within 5 feet of a snapper if you paid me!
Well, Nutmeg. It was four hands versus one mouth. No contest.
What? So he liked kissing? So what?
Radio3 did a play about his life some months ago. Not uninteresting.
Ave atque vale …
I love Louis CK. I’m downloading the special now.
David Marjanović says:
Oh. I didn’t realise you still had The Spawn around.
Because I am such a romantic softie and because each day seems larger than the one before not to mention that the Moody Blues played a very large role in my own history and because home is a place long ago and far, far away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAHgpzCgPcA&feature=related
.
You are right, there is no defense of that. But I am not to one to criticize you for that. Every so ofter, I have to link to that live version of the Osmonds doing Crazy Horse. That is probably the most inexcusable thing I have done at this blog.
The portal of the WayBack opens wide
Stick your questing ear here, inside
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOjdHTMZZX4&feature=related
Damn. Dated. Kids, let this be a lesson to you.
Speaking of time ->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LERAgcuv8jg&feature=related
Not that I’m in any kind of hurry.
On The Air-Peter Gabriel
DIY-Peter Gabriel
Here Comes The Flood-Peter Gabriel & Robert Fripp
No Self Control-Peter Gabriel
Does anyone know any good intro to philosophy books? Both thinking philosophically and history of philosophy would be awesome.
julian, you should perhaps ask Daniel at Camels With Hammers, him being the resident philosopher at FtB and all.
Done and thank you for the advice. Totally forgot he was a philosopher. Not sure how… I guess the gerbil in charge of powering my brain isn’t the most reliable employee.
Sturm und Drang, 200-and-something years old:
Mozart – A minor piano sonata – 3rd movement
Mitsuko Uchida’s even better, but not available on youtube. Buy her CDs. ;)
Huh ?
Mamillary bodies. Among other things. Not pretty when they get damaged, e.g. by excessive alcohol use. Leads to something called Korsakow syndrome. Very well described by Oliver Sacks in his book “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”, worth a read.
Changeable moniker, there is always the GrooveShark.
Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is pretty good.
Do you think this is an example of the Socratic method?
Thank you, janine, but the GrooveShark is a bit late when I already bought:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Piano-Sonatas-Mitsuko-Uchida/dp/B00005QDYG/
And ripped them all in q=9 Ogg Vorbis for my “MP3” (ha!) player. ;)
But you can link to a specific song. Well, more like a title and artist and there will be a list you can choose from.
@Sili, after Catullus and Lesbia broke up, he got into a ferocious snit about it and wrote poems calling her a big old back-alley whore. Not pretty.
@ Pharyngulitic Train-spotters
Bro Ogg Heaven. Link- Mylene Farmer “XXL”
………….
I see you and raise you. Link -Gram Parsons “She” (sound only)
………….
@ David M.
The correct expression would be: “Leck mich am Arsch, du Wichser!” At least on my side of the tracks…(No, I didn’t listen to Mozart.)
please. Snapping turtles are in every farmpond and drainage ditch and creek and lake in the East-ish USA and always have been.
snapping turtles: The most badass of turtles.
@ Alethea
Teh Menz have a really long history. “She doesn’t love me”, therefore:
I will bet $10,000 that Newt Gingrich’s remark about the Palestinians is the most racist statement by a 2012 presidential candidate.
Hi folk. Just been lurking in the Ivanoff and condom Christmas tree threads and thought I’d pop over to say hello, since I haven’t poked my head in TET for a while. It was a pretty good week for me.* Got a story finished, baked some cinnamon buns from scratch yesterday, & two of my aunts came to visit my mother and me on Thursday.**
Didn’t get a chance to read the thread, but Giliell’s university letter caught my eye. I totally agree that rape culture sucks and the emphasis should be placed on providing security and catching the guy rather than on telling women how to behave. But it did strike me that this is actually one step above what campus authorities used to do: i.e. nothing–informing no one and hoping the “problem” would sort itself out and not damage the school’s reputation. Ugh.
*Well, except that one of my websites is infected with malware, and I’m no expert so I’m just going to wing it tomorrow to try to restore it. By the way, if anyone has some expertise in this area, I could probably use some guidance (ibis3 AT readerofthestack d o t com)…
**Until my one aunt travels south after Christmas, this will be a regular occurrence. The other aunt is suffering from early onset dementia and is going downhill pretty quickly. Yesterday, she called 911 to get her son out of bed so he would give her the keys to drive to the store (my uncle sold her car two weeks before). The visit itself was good though.
Not caught up, tho the skimming was sure interesting . . .
Just poking my head in to lament that Occupy Boston was evicted from Dewey Square, a public place, at 5 a.m. Dec. 10. Dozens were arrested, and police shone lights into camera lenses to prevent documentation. However, I can say that we’re down but not out. And Boston mayor Tom Menino will know my disgust. On the other hand, several commentators have been saying that the powers that be wouldn’t be breaking up occupations and roughing up occupiers unless they were afraid. So tired I won’t be making sense for much longer, so I’ll check back in tomorrow . . . Good night.
Oh, and before I go, one more railroad song:
Sorry for the embedding. ARG. I thought that wouldn’t happen if you post the whole URL. How annoying.
Man, they sure all are dumb as donuts, those GOP candidates.
So definitely don’t eat horse meat.
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Crudely, you give Brother Oggy back his parentheses right now. :)
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Goth, back before goth was…if not (exactly) “cool”, then whatever it is now?
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carlie, congratulations on your introduction to your new owner. May your service be long and happy. :)
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Newt Gingrich:
contrast this with reality:
From Science Daily:
Link.
They are the same people (even if infected by different strains of the same crackpot, death-cult meme).
(It goes even further IIRC. The Palestinians of the Israel are essentially jews who converted to islam way back when and did not get forced out of Israel. If anything, genetically they are the purer “jewish” (with scare quotes) brothers in the same family. Religion – separating happy loving families for millennia.)
Damn you, theophontes, I was just working on a post on that ! :-)
Here is the study cited in the Science Daily article.
Newt?
Via PET: Fundamentally: Newt Gingrich’s Favorite Word
That popping sound you just heard was me returning from a long voyage that started from Ibis3’s link to Gordon Lightfoot.
From there I time traveled. Just got back.
pop
~~~~~ZODIAC~~~~~
Hey, Brother Oggie. You get one of these.
proffers parenthesis
Would that be open or close, sir? Very good, sir.
winks at Cicely ;^>
Hey, Ibis3, what was the story?
Carlie – Yay for Stormageddon, because it’s a Who reference, and can be shortened to Storm, which is a Tim Minchin reference. Win-win!
#236 Otrame:
Sometimes it worries me that I don’t find these things surprising. On creating an out-group:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/on-the-vilification-of-rail-enthusiasts-and-what-this-tells-us-about-contemporary-society/
I was going to label this OT, but it’s the endless thread…
anyhoo, came across this guy:
http://www.jimchines.com/blog/
Not sure if he was mentioned during elevatorgate or any of the subsequent posts, but he seems to be a guy who not only gets it, he has a lot of suggestions for making conferences a safe place for female attendees. Worth a read.
On the Rick Perry idiot anti-gay Xian ad: the background music was composed by a gay man. Wait, not just that, a gay Jew. Better yet, a flaming gay commie jew. AWESOME!!! http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980886727
Cath, that’s hilarious !
I love my facebook friends.
Have I posted this vid of Udo Juergens performing “Ich war noch niemals in New York” here before ? Not sure to be honest. Anyway, that one’s for Algernon, whose help I asked for the other day in figuring out how to play it on piano, especially that mean Bb….:-)
God yeah ! And they are the best natural news feed aggregator out there, too ! And Catherine Deveny’s tweets, too LOL….
Alethea:
:D
Shit like that makes me wonder who is fucking with the Republican slime. Remember back when the Tea Baggers were, you know, important*? There were a whole bunch of news stories/blogs about how they were (unintentionally) using old communist symbols (my favorite being the red fist in the air) and one group had been using Anonymous’s motto
apparently without realizing where it came from. I refuse to believe that they are that stupid on the whole, just lazy and gullible enough to be sabotaged.
*As a protest group. Their “values” are still fucking up political discourse, but when was the last time they tried to rally?
Don’t call me sir. ‘Tis an expression of respect. Besides, I work for a living.
Stop laughing. I do!
)))))))))))))))))))))))
An here in the US, railfanning has come under government vilification. There have been many instances of railfans being detained, having their memory cards wiped, arrested, and harrassed by municipal and (in far fewer instances) railroad police when taking photos from public property — sidewalks and roads. The railroads themselves have little problem with railfans (as long as they stay off of railroad property) especially because railfans are very good at spotting unusual activity such as theft or sabotage. Local police, however, see a railfan taking a photograph of an Amtrak Acela set and immediately go into anti-terrorism mode (they may be casing the railroad for an attack).
The publisher and editor of one railfan publication was held for three hours by municipal police in New Jersey. His camera’ memory card was wiped (destroying hundreds of images (and these images are how he makes a living!)). The lawsuit was settled out of court — he was standing on a public sidewalk taking the photos and, to top it off, three months before, Amtrak had sent a letter to the police department in question explaining that photography from public property is legal, even if the photographer is shooting trains or planes.
Many railfans make sure that they have multiple copies of railfanning and trade magazines (especially if one of their photos is in the publication) which they can show to cops to convince them that yes, this is a legitimate hobby and no, I am not a terrorist. Some railroads issue cards (to railfans who volunteer for them — they are not mandatory) which identify, for police, the activity taking place and also have the emergency phone number for the railroad.
I know that isn’t quite what the article means about the vilification of railfanning, but this is the rather unusual way it has manifested itself in the land of the free.
“On the vilification of rail enthusiasts” is twaddle with a dash of mild paranoia and a topping of “kids these days” paternalism. (IMO, of course.)
tl;dr summary:
Old people do stuff that kids don’t think is cool. Kids do stuff that old people don’t think is worthwhile.
Oh, and it self-Godwins. ;)
Oh! That wasn’t in response to Ogvorbis; it was simultaneo-posted.
I guess Parry’s taken a leaf outta Cain’s book: Campaigning as performance art.
Is he gonna quote Disney’s princesses instead of Pokèmon? Or Naruto? It he gonna base his foreign policy on Axis Powers Hetalia?
Only the hindquarters.
You can trust me on that one. I heard it from someone favouring the other end.
Very entertaining, certainly. I’m sure that if I knew the philosophers better, I’d have understood even more of his snide remarks.
–o–
I sit corrected.
Why does Teh Menz never consider how these judgements reflect on themselves? If she had such bad taste in men, then why did she pick Catullus in the first place?
theo @#289: I don’t see any contradiction at all between the two quotes you’ve ‘contrasted’. But I’m also baffled about what it is about Gingrich’s quote that constitutes ‘racism’.
@ GOP
Just give it up. You have NO-ONE to field. You are an embarrassment. Come back in four years time, if you have sobered up by then. But please stop dragging your great country through the mud – it is painful to watch.
@ Cath
Thanks for linky (I followed it all the way back to Rachel Maddow.)
@ Sili
You must also bear in mind that the people of his time where not quite as prissy as we are today. This guy must have come across as pretty creepy and obsessive. (Or was this, at the same time, the well spring of his poetic genius?)
I would be interested to know if the “incident” did not occur at this time of the year, during the Saturnalia, when all the social brakes where let loose. (Linky: Bacchanalia … Ok, even the Romans thought some of this went too far.)
Last night’s Republican debate has the mormon and ex-mormon forums on fire. One subject being hotly debated is Romney’s arrangement to have the hard drives associated with his tenure as Governor removed from the public domain. He managed to find a way to legally erase a lot the records of his administration.
I’ll bet Romney paid his aides under the table to buy those hard drives.
Reuters link.
Trying to make public records unavailable to the public is a typical Republican move.
@ Chas
True. But my comments are not a hermetically sealed entity. What I have stated is part of a much bigger picture of what Newt is about. Here is an article which puts his perspective into more detail. Linky: Newt Gingrich comments on Palestinians draw heavy criticism. Further calling the Palestinians “an invented people” he goes on to say:
The context… He was pandering to a Jewish audience (That, I can only deduce, he does regard as a “genuine” and/or “legitimate” people.) The idea is that we de-legitimise our enemies. They have no claims to land because they do not represent a “people”. Here another linky to explain how it works: Gingrich: There are no Palestinians!
Who gave ‘Merkins the right to regard themselves as a national state? They are “an invented people”.
……………………….
Could you be more specific? I don’t know if one could speak of “racism” between Jews and Palestinians. They are the same people. Race is not determined by religion.
@tielserrath
It’s a YA M/M romance (though the romance is a tad overshadowed in this one), written as a freebie for a group on Goodreads. I meant it to be a shorter vignette but the narrating character had different ideas.
Thunder Busters – (AC/DC vs Ghostbusters Mashup)
Mormons are up in arms over a raid of mormon food storage facilities by federal agents. As the story goes, the feds are demanding a list of people who store food. This is supposedly part of the federal government’s plans to exert its tyranny over everyone, and to give the poor persecuted Oath Keepers some trouble.
Excerpts from a story on the Natural News website:
One problem: the story is a complete and total fabrication. Even people that “hold Oath Keepers in very high regard” have debunked the story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKLnsaQgqc8
Undeterred by a good debunking, Oath Keepers and mormons (and mormon Oath Keepers) continue to pass around this bogus story.
It’s not surprising to hear commenters who want to believe that the federal government is conspiring against citizens of the USA writing that you can believe what the Oath Keepers say.
Of course, the biggest debunking comes from the mormon canneries that were supposedly raided. Nope, they say, no feds showed up and demanded the names of food storage
fanaticscustomers.some links:
– a brave Pakistani woman pwning an Islamic cleric in a heated television debate Watch the video, it’s worth it!
– Chilean president, producing one gaffe after the other while abroad. This time, it was a sexist joke. Last time, it was writing “Deutschland über alles” in the official guest book of the German government…
about Newt Gingrich: of course he was pandering to Jewish voters, also look at what he’s said he’d do on his first day in office: http://twitter.com/#!/newtgingrich/status/144894682906902528
About the race debate: ethnic groups are also constructed identities, if I understand my anthropologist friends right (and of course races too if I understand the biologists right ;) ). I’m not sure if a genetic argument will help here. At the present stage, it seems to me that Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs identify themselves as distinct ethnic groups, and it doesn’t just hinge on the religion.
President Obama can stop worrying about unemployment … in the state of Utah anyway, that’s all been taken care of.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705395552/Utah-unemployed-pray-for-jobs.html
Yep, the unemployed got together with clergy to pray for jobs.
From the comments section:
Then there’s a bunch of stuff about kicking illegal aliens out of Utah and how that will create more jobs.
@ Pelamun
…Veena Malik. Wow. Wow.
@ SallyStrange,
I know. I was watching the video, and I was just sitting there in awe.
The sad thing is that her father now wants to disown her over the nude photos (doctored or no) and her frequent trips to India. Argh…
Off topic.
I saw a t-shirt today. A black shirt with a white ‘hook-em-horns’ (thumb and third and fourth fingers folded, pinkie and pointer extended) with an umlaut over it. Underneath, the text read, “Because Metal can Never be To Heavy!”
I though it quite clever.
Lynna:
Oh yeah, ‘cos that has worked out so well for the states that have effectively kicked out undocumented immigrants. *eye roll*
One of the Utah multi-level marketing schemes is getting some harsh press.
Link to story in Salt Lake Tribune.
The founder of MonaVie is Dallin Larsen, a BYU graduate who has a string of other MLM schemes in his resumé. He’s an ethically-deficient mormon who moves from one scam to another. His companies rake in billions, and he credits god.
All of the MLMs blatantly claim health benefits that are not supported by research. Senator Orrin Hatch backs them up with legislation favorable to MLMs.
Why, you may ask, is Amway sueing MonaVie? Because MonaVie executive recruited some of their top distributors from Amway. In-fighting among the gullible. But the lawsuit does highlight, once again, some of the problems with these idiotic MLMs.
Oh, look, it’s another example of the 1% ripping off the 99%:
pelamnun: “what [Newt] said he’d do on his first day in office”
*space lasers space lasers space lasers*
*clicks*
That’s actually quite dull. ;)
Have some space lasers, and some fundamental transformation.
I just found out that I got an A in ecology lab. Aww yeah :D
Hopefully I’ll have done as well in my other classes.
StarStuff:
Excellent.
StarStuff:
I just made a cake*. Let’s celebrate!
*stuffs cake into USB port*
*With homemade frosting, fuck yeah!
Also, I found a bottle of Breckenridge vanilla porter in the fridge yesterday. Should be excellent with the coconut cake.
*pours into USB port!*
Good evening
If the Palestinians are an invention, what are the ‘Mericans?
I prefer the classical: Er aber, sag’s ihm, er kann mich im Arsche lecken!
I’m very, very tired. And I’ve forgotten what I wanted to write.
Giliell:
Jesus’s favorite people. Duh.
:P
If the Palestinians are an invention, what are the ‘Mericans?
gods’ chosen people. Did you miss that memomeme?
Ibis3, may we read it? (even if one is not a YA … :) )
After #301/2 and #328/9, the phenomenon I identified here needs a name!
“Quantum post-tanglement”?
Just got back reviewers’ comments on a paper. Thanks to Reviewer 3, I will be spending the next 30 days re-analyzing data and re-writing the paper. After that, it’s almost guaranteed that the paper will be rejected anyway.
Couldn’t they have waited until after the holidays for this? Argh.
I just found a documentary to watch. “The Elephant: Life after death.”
Shocking new evidence suggests that elephants believe in the afterlife!
Nah, kidding, it’s about what happens to a 5 ton elephant carcass after it dies, and how all that decay contributes to the ecosystem. Much more interesting than the title suggested.
Thought he was an invention, too
Giliell:
:D
changeable moniker:
We already have a term for this– the Pharyngula Hivemind™.
But what about the Quantum Tomatoes?
If rotten, they’re used to throw at Chopra…
The hivemind would be *everyone* posted the same thing, though, right?
Bzzzzzzz! (Obligatory Onion link.)
I think they sell that on TV — the Slap Chopra?
A fun spoof of the Perry video, courtesy of George Takai’s facebook.
Photo link
What’s with all the “undefined”s at The Atlantic? Is it like fnords or summat?
Not sure, Sili. Works for me (FF8, WinVista).
*grin* at Crudely.
You should at least give him a breeding pair.
–
So many have clearly dined well and often on the horse’s ass….
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Because Real Americans are just impatient to take the low-paying, low-status, physically-demanding jobs that are traditionally relegated to immigrants (documented and otherwise).
–
*high five* for StarStuff.
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Nutmeg, re re-write: bummer.
–
I went to the “None” thread. There are trolls (well, bots). Sweet!
—
I also found my copy of One Hundred Great Books in Haiku. (Yeah, I know, now you’re scared!)
Oh, Isaac; would that you had such poetic grace.
(And if you could quit poking yourself in the eye with a knitting needle, that might help, too. Also avoid investing in tulip bulbs.)
tulip bulbs -> south sea company stock
*blush*
sorry
Here is a link to a site for a movie that will be released in March 2012. Please read the description and ask yourself, how realistic is the scenario.
Warning, whine follows:
I waaaaaaant my caaaaaaat. Now.
Spent the whole day cleaning; I happened to look around and realize it was a minefield for a small inquisitive creature prone to gnaw on anything it can find. So it was a full-scale pull out everything and vacuum/sweep out underneath all furniture and etc., which in child’s room was quite a task (under that bed, ugh!). One room left, but I have to write two finals for tomorrow and can’t put it off any longer. Child 2, who has taken over the basement to live in, while cleaning it found a mousetrap with just a leg in it. Um…
…
Never did find the rest of it. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Not sure if we get the kitty tomorrow or Tuesday. Technically the shelter is closed tomorrow, but they said that they’d do the verification checks on Monday and call us then, so maybe they have pickups on Mondays also. I’m irrationally worried that there will be some kind of mix-up and when we go back they will have given ours away to someone else. Because I’m a paranoid worrier. And I want the kitty!!! Still making a list of potential names, most of which involve variants on a color description (yeah, that’s original). Maybe she’ll have such a personality that her name will jump right out at us.
Hope everyone else is having a good weekend! (or midweek, depending on your own personal calendar)
From Janine’s link
“… survivor of a failed abortion … ”
Presumably the movie won’t go into much detail about this point.
Jasmine Guy must be starving.
Janine and Chigau:
Ah, fuck. I am so NOT looking forward to hearing people rave about how ‘touching’ this movie is gonna be.
Blech.
That movie is made by American Family Studios and Provident Films. And, as you can guess by the name of the studio, it is owned by the American Patriarchy Association.
Survivor of a failed abortion. Because so many of the abortions that are preformed are on fetuses that are viable for survival outside the womb. Yeah, it is a work of fiction but it is also propaganda. Propaganda with a lie embedded in the very center of it;s construct.
Jasmine Guy, say hello to Kurt Cameron.
Propaganda. There’s the word I was looking for.
I bet the character who ‘saves’ the fetus will be a lapsed catholic doctor suffering a crisis of faith, who impulsively rescues the helpless embryo after being told to ‘dispose of it by some ‘cold clinical scientist’ stereotype and in the process rediscovers hir belief, leading to warm gushy feelings all around.
I’m also hazarding a prediction that the ‘mother’ character will be a stereotypical caricature of a drug addict.
It does not even needs to be that. A woman who is lead astray by feminists will be enough.
It’s magical, it’s wonderful, oh boy, here it comes, another mouth.
This one is dedicated to The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cyneocephalus): Sepultura – Propaganda
@opposablethumbs
I’ve put it up on my (mostly defunct) blog: http://florilegia.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/a-short-story/
You need neither be YA or LGBT. :) I was told it should come with a hankie warning, so consider yourselves warned.
Janine, chigau, Lone Coyote:
“OCTOBER BABY is a coming of age story of Hannah, a beautiful 19 year old college freshman [NOTE: not “intelligent”, not “gifted”, not even “kind” or “generous”]. In spite of her energetic (if somewhat naïve [code for non-believer or left-leaning? definitely pro-choice]) personality, Hannah has always felt like an outsider. Something is missing. She has always carried a deep-seated sense that she has no right to exist [but if this is the case, surely some of that Christian indoctrination must have sunk in, after all that’s the primary supposition of Christian doctrine, right?].”
If you lived in the US and knew a noncustodial adult was providing a 12-year-old with regular access to weed, would you narc on them?
@Kristinc
Is it drug use or abuse?
Ing @358: kind of hard to tell the difference when it’s a 12-year-old.
@kristinc
And by narc do you mean report to the cops or report to the parents?
This baffles me. The poles show people are lb for lb more prochoice than not. WTF does Hollywood continue to cater to this unpopular belief when it won’t for any other? Why the fuck is Hollywood so eager to alienate the urban costs, which I imagine would have more income to spend on their product than middle america?
To clarify, for the purposes of this conversation, it’s for recreational use not medical.
My gut says yes, but I think it would depend on the parents. If they were ‘let’s work this out and find a way to come out of this better for all’, then yes. If they were ‘blame and punish the child’, then no. And there would be lots of other variables involved.
I would also be wondering about why the adult is supplying (even mild) drugs to a 12-year-old.
Ing @360: sorry, crossposted with you there, I mean report to the cops. Again for the purpose of this discussion, let us assume that reporting it to the 12-year-old’s parents is impossible or useless.
Infidels of the World Unite – FischerSpooner
Words I Never Said – Lupe Fiasco
Nerd of Redhead, why can’t you stop doing that BOY thing you do? You’ve been told it insults people, fuck, I’ve never even been in the US and I know it’s obvious it insults people. And NOT in the way you like. That’s just shitty.
@359 I disagree that it’s hard to tell the difference. I would evaluate along the lines of alcohol use. If the kid smokes up once in a while (equivalent to having a beer or glass of wine on special occasions), and the child is doing okay in other spheres of life i.e. school & socially, I’d keep an eye on it. I might report it to the parents.
If it’s more regular than that, or is a problem (again, compare to getting the kid drunk on a regular basis), I’d probably tell the adult to back off and leave the kid alone or you’ll report them. I’d more than likely tell the parents what’s going on.
If this is someone who is selling regularly to kids (or ever gives the kid something harder), *then* I’d probably go to the police.
That is different, but I would lean towards reporting it just because of the possibility of expoitation.
Nerd of Redhead, when you say BOY you are massah fondling a whip. Please, consider that.
@364 I cross-posted too. In the case where parents are useless, I’d be more vigilant. I’d only go to cops though if there is very clear exploitation going on, and if I felt helpless to manage the situation in another fashion. I don’t agree with the draconian drug laws the US has (& which we’re poised to import), so I’d be loathe to put someone in worse trouble than if they provided a 12 year old with the alcohol “equivalent”. Sounds like this child is already vulnerable though.
I get the impression that the “non-custodial adult” is not a non-custodial parent of the child, yes?
I’d report it, because I’d be concerned that this adult is “grooming” the pre-teen for later sexual exploitation, whether personal or otherwise.
–
Weed Monkey:
What the hell are you talking about?
####
*headdesk*
The last few months I have only done it in response to the troll calling us immature, as happened today. If he doesn’t want to be called out for what he is (somebodies butt boy, not mine), then they need to keep up their maturity level up by responding like an adult, not an immature fool attempting to belittle us.
Benjamin:
I just thought this might be a less intensive arena to talk about it.
I have no idea what a ‘butt boy’ means. But does it really matter? It was certainly nothing you meant when you were calling people BOYs.
I’m calling him immature and ill-schooled. Which he is. If you want to carry on a monologue all night, be my guest.
@Nerd
There’s a certain…er….racial connotation you may be missing.
Alternatively you sound like Foghorn Leghorn
Way to have the last word. (while it’s actually morning where I live)
Since when did searching for “mineral oil” turn out about ten categories? I thought it was usually listed under health and personal care, not under “tools” or “furniture”!
————————————–
34 minutes, 40 seconds. My fastest time for the 5k so far. Now to see about running 5 kilometers in half an hour.
Isn’t mineral oil primarily used to treat wood used in food preparation? I know my cutting board recommends using it.
Hai thred!
In the continuing health saga, it turns out while my undercarriage is full of all sorts of bumps and lumps and wibbly bits, there is also nothing to worry about in the plumbing department. Which means that I don’t get to go visit the cute urologist again. Awww.
Alethea
Yay for your undercarriage.
Balvenie 12 year old Double Wood.
Not bad.
I use a mixture of beeswax melted into mineral oil to finish some wood projects (including cutting boards and wooden spoons).
Are you sure your cutting board is sure about that? Mineral oil can mean pretty much anything resembling oil that comes from the ground.
Thanks, Chigau. But he was so cute! Awww.
It really is amazing what kinds of cruft the human body can accumulate. Design, my arse. All those Reader’s Digest “I am Joe’s Kidney” articles that I read as a child had such nice tidy pictures of smoothly shaped organs, assembled like a neat little plastic 3-D jigsaw puzzle. But it’s not actually like that.
I’m sure all the medical people here are going ‘well, duh’, but seeing pics of your insides rather brings it home. Also, seeing pics of your insides is super cool tech.
Mineral oil makes a good laxative.
The mineral oil that they sell as a laxative is what I use on my woodwork. It’s super cheap at cvs (or whatever internatonal drug store/pharmacist/whatever non English word you furrners use) and it’s food safe. It’ll even seal the interior of bamboo to make drinking vessels that won’t crack.
FFS are you serious? Mineral oil belongs in a garage, not in a kithcen!
I’m all for freedom and stuff, but I don’t think any 12 year old really needs to be smoking pot.
Back when I first started smoking a lot of weed and hanging out with roaming packs of stoners, there was a certain subcategory of adult potheads that would hang out with us. We’d hang out with them, of course, because they usually had access to higher quality pot than most of us, but always in the back of my mind I’d wonder what a 40 year old dude was doing hanging with a bunch of teenagers.
Most of them seemed alright, but I can think of at least one or two who turned out to be really flakey, flakey in ways that ‘make me wonder’. And it’s not like we were young teenagers, the youngest those crowds went was 15 and most of us tended to be closer to the 17-20 range. I’m pretty sure even most of us, back then, wouldn’t have given pot to a 12 year old.
So yeah, I’d be just a little suspicious.
Meh… If it’s ok to drink the stuff to make you poop, it’s probably ok on a cutting board.
It’s not quite Hollywood, really. It’s the Christian film ghetto.
quoth janine:
Too much calculus. I can’t wait to forget it all after my final tomorrow.
Mineral oil is fine on a cutting board, or at least most kinds sold with that label are (I can’t guarantee outside the US, though I’d expect similar labels in UK, Ireland, Canada, NZ & Aussie), but why bother? Olive oil works fine and penetrates many wood products quite well. Unless you really use mineral oil enough that you know you’ll go through a bottle relatively quickly (so it doesn’t get lost in a move, wasted, whatever), you’re really better off using spare food oil.
changeable:
hope I’m not too late…
Oh, wait: I still need to get to the store tonight. Hrmph. I guess I miss out on this one. Have to call Ms. Crush when I get back from the store…
I heard the problem with using vegetable oils like canola or olive is that they don’t really ‘dry’ properly, and tend to get gummy and attract dirt and crud.
I also heard boiled linseed oil is ‘food safe’, but I haven’t used linseed oil in ages. And have never made anything that had to be ‘food safe’. So I dunno, YMMV
Weed Monkey
Look!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil
—
“Why the fuck is Hollywood?”
That’s a really good question.
Heading for bed.
However, oils.
Vegetable oils can go rancid (as can animal fat oils). Randid oils can impart an odour to such things as cutting boards which, unless you are aiming for he ‘barbarian with randid butter in his locks’ look and smell, is a bad thing. I have never had mineral oils go rancid.
(Just my experience. Your results may vary. Created by a nut in a manufactured facility.)
Yep, I use mineral oil in my wood finishing gunk and petroleum jelly in my leather-conditioning gunk because neither of those will rot or go rancid. The last thing I need is a rancid oil stink on a piece of wood, or rot in a piece of leather.
I’m told good old-fashioned unadulterated beeswax is best for leather. That from a guy who spent most of his life running around mountains – it was the only thing he’d use to waterproof boots.
My daughter has just made some nutty sponge-fingery truffley things covered in chocolate.
Huzzah for university holidays.
Hanna.
(Why watch touching, when you can watch kick-ass?)
Good morning
kristinc
Welllllll, your writing indicates that the parents don’t give shit, which is bad. IMO, there’s no drug use in a 12 yo, there’s only abuse. But I know that you’re not living here where calling the authorities might do some good, so, tough call.
What do you think would happen if you informed anybody?
survivor of abortion
Oh, there’s a case in Germany where it happened. The mother requested a late term abortion on a fetus with Down syndrome. The prognosis and plan was that a fetus that age would die after delivery within minutes anyway, but the boy fought and fought so that after 2 hours they placed him in an incubator. The mother killed herself some years later, and the sensible meassure taken was that since that, in late term abortions the fetal heart is stopped within the womb.
What did fucking pro-lifers do?
They first sued the doctoers and the hospital for not giving the boy immediate ICU treatment (which, of course, made his bad situation worse), and when that failed, the same people sued them for not killing the fetus. Assholes.
Oh, and my best friend is the survivor of an unsucessful illegal home-abortion. Still, I wouldn’t miss her if it had worked.
Giliell, yeah. I’ve known some parents, my good friend’s mother is one, who have a philosophy with pot and alcohol… basically “If they’re gonna try it anyways I want them to try it under my supervision, so I know where it’s coming from” and all that. Sensible.
This situation doesn’t sound like that. If a non parental unit is supplying a 12 year old with pot, I have to wonder why.
Ibis3, thank you very much! Really enjoyed reading.
Loved the story.
TLC
Completely agree.
That’s also my approach, let them try while I’m with them, but we’re not talking about even a teen yet. So, I’m sorry kids, but mum’s not going to go pot-shopping for you for the next 10 years or so, and she’ll hunt down anybody who does. After that I’ll be happy to brew them some lovely coacoa or “herbal tea”. Only I won’t join in since it makes me puke.
Yeah Giliell, as a guy who would usually rather smoke than eat, I say 12 is too young.
The story actually has me a bit… worried? I dunno. I’m just trying to find a non creepy reason for an adult to supply a 12 year old with pot, and I’m having trouble.
Pot makes you puke? I find it interesting how pot effects people in such vastly different ways.
For instance: I can use it as a mild painkiller, but many people have told me that it actually makes them focus MORE on their pain.
Same for anxiety. When I have pot, I am freakin IMMUNE to anxiety, but I’ve heard of it triggering panic attacks in other people. My dealer is one such. He sells the stuff, but says actually smoking it makes him anxious.
Some people get really silly, some people get really slow, some people get really meditative, and some people seem completely unaffected to the outward observer.
And some people get the spins and ‘green out’. No one, to my knowledge, has ever died of a pot overdose, in the history of stoners, but it isn’t pleasant.
Pot’s great, I honestly believe I would have ended up in a bad place if I hadn’t started smoking (I was on a bad, bad, ANGRY!!! path, and only reefer could tame the savage beast), but I’ve said it before and will say again till I’m blue in the face: It’s NOT for everyone.
I hardly ever watch TV, but I saw this advertisement recently and was rather amused: Young Drivers – Taxi.
(By the South Australian Motor Accident Commission — a government body!)
I agree that it’s bad for an adult to be supplying pot to a 12-year old. But if the authorities are likely to make things worse, what can you do? Anonymous tip on the supplier? Are there any youth services you could talk to?
Seriously, who cares ? David Warner made 123 not out, and yet we lost the Test match against New Zealand by 7 runs ! Good riddance Ponting and Hussey. And someone get that curator of the Hobart wicket and get him charged with treason.
This is serious business ! High treason, in fact. I think.
I don’t know pot, but I know 12 year olds fairly well. I have a 12 year old and a 13 year old, and I’ve been running summer science camps for the 12-14 group for several years. Yes, there can be exceptions, but for the most part that’s an age that can give off the aura a lot more maturity than they actually have. They look like teenagers, they mostly act like teenagers, but scratch the surface of an average 12 year old and there’s still a little kid inside. They’ll still sit on mom’s lap for a hug when they feel bad, they hide the stuffed animals under the bed to bring them out at night and sleep with, they’ll do shit that makes you realize they don’t quite understand consequences yet like turn on a stove burner and then wander off for awhile to let it “warm up”.
I’d say that unless it’s a pretty exceptional 12 year old, they really don’t understand what’s involved in smoking pot (such as the consequences if caught), and most probably have at least a bit of trying to please the adult in question by acquiescing to it. I would be very concerned, and I’d be riding that adult’s ass pretty dammed hard to fucking stop it right now or get reported.
Very true.
Carlie and Alethea: My big concern, and this has already been mentioned by hoarde members far more competent than me, is that this smells just a little like ‘Grooming’.
American Pie-Hutband
I want you-Hutband
TLC
Yep, I first thought it was smoking that made me sick, so I tried out other things and the result was always a mess. I was a bit sad about this since I liked the sensation, apart from sickness, of course.
I’m all for responsible, recreational use, but that means the consumer has to be able to make such decisions and 12 year olds definetly don’t have that capacity. That’s why we call them kids and don’t judge them as adults (well, sensible people and governments do).
That’s not to underestimate their abilities, but a realistic view of them (supported by developmental psychology and such) shows that they’re not just smallish adults.
Pot’s not for everybody and it’s not candy. Safety rules apply. Don’t take pot and drive, even though you might feel like a much better driver when stoned, don’t take it when you’re off to work or college, don’t take it as a remedy against a shitty day/week/life.
Bob Dylan-John Wesley Harding
Dylan and the Dead, 1987- Rainy Day Women
Err, 1994, and Woman….
Anyway, here are the Dead playing “Its all over now Baby Blue” in Berlin 1990.
Grateful Dead – Me & Bobby Mcgee – Fillmore West – 07/02/71
@ Alethea
I shall take that as a good thin and drink a beer on your behalf.
@ Gilliel
“Tweens” or “Tweenagers”. A dread time indeed. Probably the worst “stage” we went through in raising of Spawnphontes. Advice: just keep showing lots of love and support.
Dope is probably not a good addition to the hormonal mix, but there is bound to be something. Good that you can keep an eye on it. In terms of intervention, maybe a good councilor can talk her through it. I would be really careful to call in cops etc. But I do not know enough about the situation to give any more advice in this case.
thinthing@theophontes: whereabouts do you live that “dope” is a word for weed? I’ve only ever heard the word used for heroin, except in my elementary school DARE program where Dope was whatever drug they were currently talking about.
I did have a semester in college where I smoked entirely too much weed, though. I was in a weird place in my life; not really sure if I wanted to keep going in the major I had chosen, but not wanting to abandon all the credits I had earned (I was a junior in chemical engineering). I decided to take a very light load: an engineering statistics course for 3 hours and a riflery course for 1 hour. The rest of my time was originally for some deep thinking about my future, but it quickly turned into partying every day (I didn’t quite manage to rock and roll ALL night).
The problem I ran into was that I can be very introverted if left to my own devices, and weed helps me feel better about doing that. I was living in a fraternity house at the time, and there were a couple of weeks where people weren’t sure if I still lived there or not because I came out of my room so infrequently and at such odd times.
What I learned is that, for me, weed takes whatever feelings of isolation or loneliness I might be having and exaggerates them, so if I’m going to partake I make sure I haven’t been doing the hermit thing lately. I’m much more stable emotionally now than I was back then, so I’m pretty regular in usage these days.
Sigh. Yet more evidence of my sheltered, geeky
youthlife. ‘Dope’ refers to the varnish used to tighten the canvas covering on old aircraft.And, FWIW, ‘Drugs’ refer to additives (ranging from pigments through waxes and oils to vulcanising agents) used in rubber manufacture.
Predator Handshake
Back in the day, in my part of Canada “dope” meant weed.
Everything else was specified: acid, peyote, heroin.
SteveV
People sniff your kind of dope :(
@tielserrath & opposablethumbs
Glad you liked it.
Just a lonesome LA cowboy
Hangin out and hangin on…
I been
Smokin dope
Snortin coke
Tryin to write a song.
Forgettin everything I know til the next time comes along.
NRPS
Lupe Fiasco – The End of the World (Occupy Wall Street Anthem Song)
SteveV, I ued to shoot dope … but then I was an aircraft mechanic working on restoring wood & fabric classics.
+++++++++++++++++++
I’m completely against getting the cops involved for a 12 yr old smoking pot. If there isn’t some other crime going on I consider it no big deal.
On December 6th, 2011, Los Angeles became the first major U.S. city to call for an amendment reserving Constitutional rights solely for living human beings.
This is all from my real name facebook feed, by the way. I live in a bubble. Or, my facebook feed is relatively unpolluted by Christo-conservative stupidity. However you want to look at it.
You shot who in the what now?
If you have that bubble, then why do you need a pseudonymous FB?
It’s for potential employers. I try to keep my FB feed pretty private, and it’s mostly my friends who post the political stuff anyway. I’ve already lost one job because the parents of my potential babysitting charged thought my leftist marching band was too alarmingly political for them to allow me near their children. Plus, I’ve just graduated and am seeking entry level employment. The FB thing was mostly so that I could have a FB contact with Pharyngulistas, but the creation of the SallyStrange pseudonym was to protect my job prospects.
Digital snow and frozen pianos to all this holiday season
@ Predator Handshake
As far as I am aware, this is a common term for weed everywhere in the English speaking world … and beyond. It is sometimes also used as a generic term or specifically for thinners (“dope”, also used in model building) or glue. These terms I first became aware of in South Africa, but have heard them pretty much everywhere.
Ok, you asked for it: Dope Show.
Well, don’t you dare to portray some muslims as all-American middle class citizens. Because if you do, advertisers will pull their big bucks from your show.
Religious and right-wing nutters put a lot of pressure on the Lowes’ (a home-repair store similar to Home Depot) because Lowe’s advertised on “All-American Muslim,” a reality show aired on TLC.
http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/12/09/ads-all-american-muslim/?hpt=hp_t2
Back in April of this year, the Florida Family Association went after the show featuring Muslim families. But it took this long to get Lowe’s to bow out.
Earlier this year, the Florida Family Association also insisted that companies stop advertising on another TLC show, “TeenNick,” which featured a transgender character.
From WorldNetDaily:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/groups/florida-family-association
And people wonder why we bother to confront religious organizations, and why we sometimes seem angry at them.
Science!:
Science Weekly podcast: An accelerated guide to the Higgs boson
Abstract: Scientists use a Large Hardon Collider to explore Bigg Bosoms. (Hail Tpyos!;-)
++++++++
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/12/12/researchers-build-a-one-particle-steam-engine/
“Right groups now are demanding a boycott of advertisers on MTV”
Yeah, that’ll work, heh, heh.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
““MTV airs a free promo for PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) on DeGrassi which directs kids to an organization that will encourage our youth to embrace a different sexual identity that may stay with them for life,””
Umm, isn’t that called ‘monogamy’?
How is religion still good enough of a cover to keep bigots from being publicly tarred and feathered?
Greta Christina famously addresses all of the wishy-washy mealy-mouthed types, mostly liberal religionists, who wonder why we’re so angry. My response to them is “Why aren’t YOU angry?!”
Predator Handshake, you’re in the US I take it? In my (limited) experience in the UK “dope” is never heroin – it’s hash, or possibly weed.
I ought to remember where theophontes is, but my memory has more holes in it than Swiss cheese (and that’s entirely without benefit of dope, too!)
I’ve never heard “dope” used to refer to anything other than cannabis.
####
Disney does a good job ‘monitoring the behavior of Gay Days patrons’. (They enforce the same rules as they do on every other guest.)
I always thought “dope” was just a (old-fashioned) catch-all for illicit drugs.
I thought dope was a reference to Rick Perry?
Via Boingboing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16136521
Yes, I’m in the US, specifically the south.
By the way, it’s my birthday! StrangeBoyfriend already called to wish me a happy. I slept in and made myself fried squash, baked beans, and egg scramble with kale for breakfast. I’m going to have dinner with Josh OSG and a couple of other friends tonight. Low-key. Otherwise, just trying to get by and take care of myself, like every other day.
Muchas smooches to the Horde!
Good evening
theopontes
I think you mixed me up with kristinc and carlie all in one ;)
My spawn is still in the terrible twos and the complicated fours, so there’s still time for them to choose their battlegrounds
Alethea
Yay for intact undercarriage
Okay, so I realize this is a long shot. But does anyone here have any idea:
a) What ACP analysis is, with relation to population structure data?
or
b) How the hell I do a PCA on population structure data?
Google is spectacularly unhelpful with regards to ACP and I’m terrible at stats so I don’t actually know what a PCA is, much less how to do one for my type of data.
Nutmeg: maybe this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v40/n5/abs/ng.139.html
Unfortunately I don’t remember much of the math from my population genetics course, much less recognize PCA or ACP. Does this have anything to do with your data?
Birthy happday, Sally.
Pteryxx
Thanks, that second link looks like it will be useful! I’ve decided that the reviewer must have meant ACP to mean PCA, so I’ll have to learn all about it and get some analysis done.
Don’t know ACP; I suspect a typo for PCA. Principal Components Analysis is a way to reduce multiple measured variables to a smaller number of calculated variables (principal components), each of which is a linear combination of the original measurements. Basically it combines variables that are highly correlated with each other and therefore not independent. Samples are then plotted on the principal component axes to look for clusters and groupings.
It’s pretty hardcore multivariate statistics and not for the faint of heart. I’ve played with it (in SYSTAT) but never had occasion use it as a serious tool.
I don’t know what ‘population structure data’ means in your case.
Nutmeg again: Looks like ACP is simply an alternate abbreviation for PCA (Principal Component Analysis) as often happens when translated between languages. I keep seeing phrases like:
“Principal component analysis (ACP) on the morphological parameters performed on populations:”
and
“Component Principal Analysis (ACP) on idiosomal setae showed that O. punicae population from. Tarabana (TARVID) is similar to those from El Tocuyo …”
Looks like it’s normally used by plugging your data into some program or other and hitting a key, frankly. Unless there’s some fancy ruler-work involved.
Found a full-text article that goes into a little more depth:
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0030160
Good luck.
Feel-good story of the day via Shakesville: Led by the girl who simply knew.
Identical twins, one is transgender, parents and brother and friends all supportive and she’s in treatment to go through puberty the right way for her. :) There is a little bit of trouble; they’re suing her previous school for bathroom issues, but all in all a truly heartwarming story.
Don’t know if it helps, but ACP seems to be Analyse en Composantes Principales, or Principle Composant Analysis.
Happy birthday, SallyStrange!
And then right after that the news goes one better: other lost episodes of Doctor Who are being retrieved from space where the old signals are bouncing back to us. fucking awesome story
Damn, they updated the story to indicate sorry, happened in 2009. But STILL COOL.
Aaaaand an April fool’s day story, at that.
[Emily Litella]Never mind.[/Emily Litella]
Happy Birthday, SallyStrange.
—
calie
Thanks for clearing that up ;-)
cool, awesome, fake.
So hard to believe anything anymore.
Coyne was badly suckered just the other day.
r
This is why publication info shouldn’t be in tiny pale grey font.
(grumbles)
Did I mention I had to stay up late writing three finals? Yeah, I’ll use that as an excuse. Like I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing when fully functional.
Happy birthday, SallyStrange! *cake* and *champagne* and *confetti*
–
Happy birthday Sally Strange! Mmmmm, kale.
—–
Has anyone else seem this video of Newt Gingrich? It seems to be proof of the alien reptile theory. It’s right there in his name republicans!
Newt is the Grinch
Crip Dyke (from a few days ago),
While I’m far from regular, I would be interested in a PNW gathering, should groupies be allowed.
Re Pachelbel, them descending sequences get around (loved the rant).
newts are amphibians.
Are they out to get us, too?
Happy birthday SallyStrange!
Happy birthday, Sally Strange!
(META: How do y’all know who’s birthday is when?)
Happy birthday, SallyStrange.
Happy birthday, Sally Strange!
Occasionally they make an announcement. Other times we read it on the entrails of our enemies.
I announced mine.
It was funny, on FB, I put in a fake birthday to go along with my pseudonym. And of course FB has the birthday alerts, so back in August, lots of Horde people started sending me birthday greetings. I felt kinda bad, like, “Err well, thanks, but… it’s not actually happening.” Wot the hell though. Maybe I will change my birthday to August. December birthdays are a drag. At least I’m not like my grandmother, her birthday is Dec. 23rd, and she always gets birthday/Christmas presents together. She’ll be 83 this year. I want to get her something nice, but old well-off people don’t need anything! Maybe I’ll bake cookies.
Hipy Papy Bthuthduth, SallyStrange!
This is the best the supposed mainstream un-religious people can muster, is a wishy-washy Faitheist screed about how the author is so afraid she’s doing the wrong thing by not soaking her child’s brain in religion, when I would have (in retrospect) thanked my parents profusely for not doing so in my case ?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/devon-corneal/keeping-the-faith_b_1137893.html?icid=maing-grid10|htmlws-main-bb|dl20|sec1_lnk2|119421
That’s the GF™’s birthday. But the bigger problem is the one I always have with SOs: what do you get someone who already has the best thing anyone could possibly want—a relationship with me?
While I try to figure that out, Happy Birthday Sally!
newts are amphibians
Herp a derp, you’re absolutely right. I suppose to be precise I should have written that he is actually one of the alien lizards who are trying to take over the world. I think real amphibians would make excellent replacements for the current crop of republican candidates.
In other news, I hate migraines…
SallyStrange
I usually get my aged parent bubble-bath and teas and occasionally silk long-underwear.
All of which would also work for Brownian’s SO (with slightly different applications).
Ramen! Niece and I celebrate our 1/2 birthdays in June just for this reason.
Happy Birthday, Sally! Did you get my card?
Joyful circumsolar day to SallyStrange.
Og, if it’s not self reported, I pick up a few on FB *spits*, (yeah, I know.)
+++++++++++++++++
We use PCS occasionally in my lab, but then we have people trained in stats. All I do is plug in numb3rs to stat apps. I can fit a curve to anything!
IRT to whatshername’s study linking mental problems with abortions: ‘There are liars, outliers, and out and out liars.’
Happy Birthday, Sally
You picked a good day, today is my gran’s 90th birthday.
SallyStrange,
I obviously know nothing about the individual dynamics involved, but the best present I ever heard anywhere for a grandparent was when a friend of mine bought a tape recorder (this is decades ago) and a box of tapes and gave it to his grandmother. It was to record all her stories and tales about her family as a kid.
There was a specific caveat to it, however: my friend had to be there to run it.
I haven’t talked to him in ages, but I know that he still had those tapes after she’d died (I think they recorded like 14 or 15 hours of stuff, most of it just her talking with him asking questions sometimes).
Anyway, one of the best presents ever: attention. Caring. Recognition. A chunk of time with her grandson. I would have loved to have had that chance with my grandparents (my mother has stuff from her mother and father, mostly writings).
Richard Austin,
That reminds me of something we did for my dad’s 70th. I stole his phone book and had everyone in it help with this. Turned out really cool.
Quick hits:
Ing:
Re boy…
Given FL’s “Kentucky colonel” southern accent, I’m not sure it’s really all that much of an alternative to racist undertones. In the U.S., at least, I think it’s really difficult to use boy as an insult without ringing the race bell, howevermuch one might mean to be referencing youth and immaturity instead of race.
***
Althea:
I know it’s wrong, but all this talk about your undercarriage couldn’t help but remind me of this.
***
SallyStrange:
Happy Birthday! I’m jealous that you get to hang out with Josh OSG (and jealous of him that he gets to hang out with you).
***
Re pot for a 12 year old: As a drug, I don’t take pot any more seriously than I take beer… but I wouldn’t give beer to a preteen, and wouldn’t let another adult do so without some attempt to intervene. Assuming the child is smoking the pot, this is roughly similar to a noncustodial adult giving a child beer and cigarettes… and the child’s parents not caring.
I don’t know if the cops would be my first call, but I think I’d try to do something: It does, after all, “take a village,” and it seems like this kid is short on responsible adult supervision.
Context is everything, of course, and I’d be wary of unintended consequences… but I don’t think I could just say “meh, that’s cool.”
My go-to for people who have everything (or at least a lot more than I do) is truly good, luxurious soap. Either handmade goodness from etsy or Roger & Gallet (guys get less weird about Roger & Gallet than etsy for some reason).
I dunno exactly why this gift is nearly bulletproof. I think it’s because it’s a personal luxury of the kind that people rarely seem to realize they can indulge in for themselves, but really appreciate once they have them. I have hooked many people on good soap this way.
Also, although the best soaps are quite pricy for soap they’re still quite reasonable as presents go.
Good incense ditto, but there I have to be more careful because although most people use soap, many people don’t want to burn even lovely incense.
@ DLC
That article was ridiculous. Especially when she was like, “Am I going to hell for this?” And I’m like, SHUT UP! You don’t actually believe that you’re going to hell, otherwise you wouldn’t wait a second to have your son baptized! Stop pretending!
SallyStrange:
I generally give my old-but-[modestly)-well-off mum booze.
Actually, this has been something I’ve been thinking about for a while. My grandparents live a long way away from me, though. So she’d have to run it without me there. Still, it’s a good idea. I’ll be thinking about that one. (I’ve also been considering whether it’d be worth it to relocate further south. Visiting them is well nigh impossible as it is.)
Caine, I got your card! It is SO CUTE! I love it.
Thank you cards to the Horde members who have so generously helped me survive these past few weeks will be forthcoming, I promise.
Heh, kid#1 asked a question about saints. Subsequent discussion covered:
* Christian mythology
* Saint Nicholas
* Saint Peter
* Heaven
* Saint George and the Dragon
“Are there other people who believe different things?”
* Islam’s position re. Jesus
* Historical evidence (i.e., lack of) for Jesus
* Eastern religions
* Noatic flood mythology
* Pre-Christian Greek flood mythology
* Paleo-flood evidence thereof
* Why people make shit up to explain stuff they don’t understand
* Alien abductions and the surprising extent of belief in them
* Ghosts and the lack of video evidence for them
* Sleep paralysis
* Conspiracy theories and the psychological dynamics thereof
* Raelians
* David Icke and the lizard NWO
“Like the Slitheen!”
Sometimes I feel like a bad parent. Sometimes, though, I rock. As does he.
I missed crop circles, though. ;)
Sally:
*Phew* I was gettin’ worried. :)
For y’all’s perusal: Following up on the Skepchick guest post “Sacrificing Privilege”, about losing male privilege after transitioning, a commentor linked his short essay on GoodMenProject about acquiring male privilege after transitioning.
http://skepchick.org/2011/12/sacrificing-privilege/
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/sir-can-you-help-me-with-this/
changeable moniker @492
I don’t recall how old your #1 is.
How long did that conversation take?
Notes From the Mall
I took my last personal vacation day today and spent it shopping for gifts (not only Christmas, but also my wife’s birthday). In no particular order, interesting things that happened/occurred to me during the day:
1. Pursuant to our recent talk about bdsm… I passed a retail block that used to include a store called D/s Toychest, and it seems (sadly) that that business is now defunct. In its place in that storefront? A Christian church! My first thought was, “wow, what a step backward!” And then it dawned on me: What could have more to do with dominance and submission than church?
2. Reading the blurb about the author of an alternate history/SF novel, I noted that his occupation (apparently author is secondary) was listed as Forensic Ballistic Archaeologist. What an awesomely cool field (unless, of course, he just made it the hell up); who knew?
3. Walking through Barnes & Noble, I noticed a history of the Girl Scouts — a coffee-table sized book with a prominent green cover and a title that could be read from yards away — shelved under a placard reading Gay & Lesbian. On closer inspection, it seems only the top shelf under that placard had gay- and lesbian-themed books; the lower shelves seemed to be more generally devoted to women’s (and girls’) issues. Even so, I had a little chuckle imagining the righteous dudgeon of Scouting moms searching for this book for their girls. (To be fair, my family only had glancing acquaintance with Girl Scouting; perhaps it’s not as reactionary and conservative as Boy Scouting?)
4. On the way home, I was briefly behind a car with a bumpersticker reading God Bless Our Troops… Especially Our Snipers! OK, I really do respect the sacrifice and risk that individual soldiers take on in defense of their society (I presume that’s the individuals’ motivation in most cases, even if they’re not always deployed in ways that honor that intention)… but are we really still asking for blessings on combat? Shouldn’t that be offensive even to believers? And why “especially snipers”? No doubt they fulfill a valid military role, and if the situation justifies killing by any soldier, it justifies what snipers do. But in terms of the precise mechanics of the situation, isn’t sniping — killing a specific person (i.e., not just a faceless “enemy”) with a single shot at long range — isn’t that just about as close to cold-blooded murder as “legitimate” combat gets? I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around the mind of a guy whose only bumpersticker asks divine blessing on solo killers.
@chigau: 9, nearly 10. And about a half hour; bedtime delayed but worth it. (Giggles were had.)
Hi Bill, I’ll have to look at that later, no video at work. BTW, I think you’ve called me Althea more than once. No biggie if it’s just a typo, but the pronunciation is A-LEETH-ea so that missing e matters. (Alethea = reality, truth.)
And I’m “only” 50, but my preferred presents to receive now are definitely consumables. I have way too much stuff already. Booze, choccies, fancy soaps and fancy foods are all good. But don’t forget tickets and vouchers, too. Not gift card types, but a voucher for a specific item like a massage or a hot air balloon ride, or tickets to a particular theatre show, etc.
Alethea:
D’Oh! Not so much a typo, I’m afraid, as careless reading. Mea maxima culpa! Forgive me?
*dips into Thread*
Happy birthday, Sally Strange. (If I’m not too late?)
*rolleyes* Somehow, I don’t remember the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said “Blessed are they that shoot foreigners: for they shall be called the children of God.” And I suppose that whole thing about Christ being the Prince of Peace has to be interpreted as a metaphor. (Unlike passages that appear to justify hatred of gays, which, of course, have to be interpreted hyper-literally, irrespective of the context.)