Since I’m in New York hanging out with the Amazing Randi, I thought I’d feature a video of that spry fellow.
(Episode CCCXVIII: Death throes of the terrorsquid!)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
birger:
There’s a third one??
I adored Johanes Cabal the Necromancer!
The Vulture’s are not responsible for the C.A.T’s ignorance of it’s own festering wounds. Obliviousness does not drown out the stench of rotting meat
Hormones, I think.
Oh, and knowing about the baby blues reduces your chances of slipping into real post natal depression.
Hormones will drive you even more crazy some days after delivery and then women who don’t know end up in a vicious circle of feeling really unhappy, being ashamed of it (I should be the happiest person on earth, everybody tells me so) and feeling more unhappy.
But you don’t seem like somebody to me who gives a lot about societal pressure.
Good night
Sorry C.A.T your apology actually got me pissed off at you. I’m not saying to leave, but I’m telling you that despite you feeling ‘alive” you’re very much DOA due to having the classic derp sandwich of staggering ignorance and strong opinions.
birgerjohansson, cool, I have put those on my book list. Thanks!
C.A.T., here’s a little Protip: Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
I’m caught up to #442, and threadrupt from then:
I don’t drink anymore … I just don’t drink any less.
I found C.A.T. insufferable in the smugness, but held my tongue because people are allowed to say and do stupid things when they’re 20 and know everything.
I do the traditional American tm thing when I get my heartbroken and get drunk or drugged to excess. And when I wake up the next day I have 2 pains bothering me. And feel rightfully stupid. And then I swear off women for a while. But that’s just me, and it only happens once every decade on average.
I extremely dislike people who encourage others to drink when the other person has already said no. And I make sure to support the person who doesn’t want a(nother) drink. It’s a form of shaming, and I’m not OK with that. People get to do what they want to do as long as it doesn’t harm others.
Maybe a ‘drink responsibly’ commercial should be made along those lines.
I worked in clubs for 20+ years, I rarely had a drink when I was working, but I stopped many a fight around my sound booth by saying to one on the other of the potential combatants, “hey, let me buy you a drink.” I wish bouncers would learn that.
(It was self preservation on my part, I worked in some rough clubs, and the spilled mixers*, not to mention the alcohol and physical damage would hurt my gear and my livelihood.)
Also, too: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” – George Bernard Shaw
+++++++++++++++
Nutmeg –
I got what you were asking about, and I didn’t take it as judgmental, we have lots of folks here who wonder why people do [insert question]. I took it as an honest question.
IRT dancing, music just makes me move, that’s how I know it’s good. Dancing confuses me, moving to music however is unavoidable for me. I admire folks who can dance, who do dance, but yeah, good music makes me move. Even if it’s in my chair.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Mattir –
My ex-GF, who didn’t drink because she hated the flavor, was surprised when we were on vacation that I drank so much. I said “I’m on vacation!”
We sailed, we walked the beaches, we went to NASA 2 days in row, (you can’t see everything in one day, she agreed), we waded in the surf, took long walks on the beach, did a lot of hot-tubbing and swimming), and she said “but you never seem to show it.”
My personality just doesn’t change that much when I drink.
Caine:
I just looked up the third Johanes Cabal book (The Fear Institute) and it’s not available ion the US yet*. But the first two are and I really enjoyed the hell out of them.
*Amazon will ship it in 1 to 3 weeks.
Ta-da!
Folding footstool
One-quarter-inch plywood should do.
@Sailor
Yes but one of the joys of older age is the social acceptance of being able to tell those people that they’re idiots when they do such stupid things. It’s a trade off for the constant vigilance our lawns now require.
Carlie, Ta-da!
Folding footstool
One-quarter-inch plywood should do.
(FTB is telling me I have a duplicate comment but I don’t see it.)
This amuses me far more than it has any right to do:
http://thereifixedit.failblog.org/2012/04/22/white-trash-repairs-the-dominos-pizza-safe-scooter/
@C.A.T., I wasn’t around while people were discussing drug usage and treatment earlier, but seriously, I suggest you take a small step back from statements like these below, and look at what people who’ve dealt with addiction actually have to say:
Whether you intended to condemn people who have used drugs of any type or not, that is what you have done. Upthread @Pteryxx suggested you look at what someone currently in methadone treatment had to say about addiction, and I second this. Your statements very much sound like ignorant soap-boxing and I suspect this is why you’ve received so much anger and frustration. Taking a moment to listen to someone who actually has personal experience is key in learning, understanding and not being an asshole.
Natalie Reed talks about the Vancouver move to use weaning doses of heroin rather than the standard methadone here. She discusses the harms caused in drug stigma here. Here Natalie talks about addiction and secular recovery. @Pteryxx already linked to Natalie’s piece on evidence-based drug policy.
And just as a community standards aside, we may be a rough and tumble crowd, but using bitch as a pejorative is absolutely not okay here. Not just in our little lounge, but in any thread with regulars, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic and racist language is not well received.
Opposablethumbs way back at the beginning of the thread, luckily with home studios/splicing/videos, etc., your spawn may be able to compose from home and deal with contracts by fax if, say, writing music for a movie.
The Sailor:
Oh fuck that noise. Yes, we tend to stupid things when young, however, that does *not* excuse an abysmal lack of knowledge nor willful ignorance. Doing stupid things is *not* the same as being an insufferable, judgmental cookie-cutter Pollyanna.
Considering the amount of time The Horde™ has invested in making this a safe space, I’m in no mood to indulge such sheer asshattery.
The Sailor
I restrained myself.
You know that joke was painted on a cave wall somewhere …
Markita Lynda – Oh my fucking god. Massive thinking-outside-the-box fail on my part. I’ve been so obsessed with thinking about how the angled sides could fold but still not stick out at the bottom (including the triangle possibility mentioned earlier, but that would make it too short), that it never even occurred to me to switch it to the other two sides altogether. I love you and would offer to do your taxes for you, if I wasn’t so bad at doing taxes.
Congrats, AJ! Doesn’t it feel awesome? Managing people and it works, yay!
Josh also – forgot to say yay for the great talk! I know what you mean about the whole weight thing (I’ve lost weight lots of times! (the same weight over and over again, but who’s counting?)) Just enjoy the attention – you’re treating your body well so it lives long and prospers. And it could easily be that you’re getting flirted with because of your awesome personality. :)
David M – can you do all of your Rhinebecking after? Come the 21st and then stay awhile?
Audley:
Awesomeness. By the time I get around to getting them, it will be available. I have a huge stack of reading to get through at the moment. I don’t know how I missed A. Lee Martinez, but tonight I’ll bed down with Gil’s All Fright Diner, Where zombie attacks are a regular occurrence and you never now what might be lurking in the freezer…
Time to out-Marjanović Marjanović. I hope there aren’t any other must-read threads on here right now.
Happiestsadist:
At least two of those reasons are why I’ve never been able to think of myself as a geek. Sometimes I say I’m a geek of all trades and a master of none, but that’s not even really true, there are plenty of geek things that I know nothing about. But those attitudes always put me off, no matter how much I like whatever activity they’re centered around.
(Can I admit that I even can’t stand a lot of the injokes around here?)
The Laughing Coyote:
(Ah, can’t hang around the furry scene as much as I have without getting the fine distinctions betweeh different canines.) The size of the ears and the scruffiness of the back read “coyote” to me. The bushiness of the tail is approaching fox territory, but the lankiness of the body offsets it.
I have an actual electric wood brander that I used to decorate my leather wallet, but I haven’t used it since.
That Idiot From the Dillahunty Debate:
That was a reaction to the booing? That would have been a trigger for booing for me. Or maybe a nice “OH FUCK OFF!”. Despite what the tone trolls would say, there are situations where this is the only appropriate response.
Classical Cipher (or Cassandra Caligula or whatever her nym is these days that I can’t be arsed to check in the middle of this):
Ding ding ding. I thought that was what he was referring to at first.
I tend to prefer no apology at all to fake apologies.
Hate that shit. Even when it’s a pretty girl doing it, I just get instantly resentful and dig in my heels. NO ONE may tell El Rey De Los Zorros when he must dance.
Want to hear more about the dog ‘n’ pony show!
chigau:
I’ve only had one drink puke, and it wasn’t my fault. It was the Jager and Red Bull.*
* To explain myself: My friend came to the table with four of them. I didn’t want one, but I felt like he probably dropped more than a few bucks on it, and felt guilty about letting it sit. Plus, I was the most sober at the table and felt it would be best for me to have it rather than have someone have two.
Louis:
This is my stop.
Gilliel:
That may have been what I was thinking.
Ing:
On second thought, this is more likely.
DDMFM:
And :-)
slignot:
Probably because it started earlier. Also, can’t really instill a taboo against fellatio without talking about fellatio.
Audley:
Oh, now you’re gonna reap the whirlwind. ;)
C.A.T.
Might want to cut out the gendered insults around here. Consider that a little un-digging tip.
All this talk about alcohol is making me wonder where Louis is. I wonder if O can lure him to his computer by sending a large amount of single malt through his USB.
Hail Tpyos. I, not O.
This. There are other young people here that have not been spared because of their age. I don’t want that here. It’s really frustrating to see other people get a pass for bullshit when I’m the same age and don’t pull that shit. I like the ferocity here, it’s what helped me finally become an atheist, become angry and fight back.
Clearly, with the use of “I was being a bitch”, CAT doesn’t know the community here well enough. I suggest lurk moar. It helps so you don’t stumble into someone’s lounge and shit on the rug.
Alethea, I’m sorry for your loss. Losing a kitteh is so hard.
Audley, I’m glad all is well.
Yes!
Hekuni Cat:
No!
Oh gods, we have done disagreed with one another. I still love you.
This is insulting to human intelligence. Oooh, we gotta make them ‘more fearful’ now? Ridiculous. Like telling kids that a troll lives under the bridge to keep them away from it. Insulting.
What we need is less stigma and fear, more education and knowledge. The paranoia and fears make people react less rationally, and that’s when you get the kind of knee-jerk ‘protect people from themselves’ mentality that you seem to display.
There’s a good body of evidence that punishment and ‘fear’ aren’t even really effective on toddlers, much less on grown adults. At least WRT to training animals I know from experience that positive reinforcement is more powerful than negative reinforcement almost every time.
Well as long as it’s illegal and in the hands of shady underground organizations, we’ll never know for sure will we? All the stigma, propaganda, and absurd draconian legal measures muddy the whole thing up. Like I said, most cocaine isn’t really pure cocaine in north america. It’s ‘cut’ with other substances of varying composition and levels of danger. Not to mention the shady criminal organizations have a vested interest in keeping people addicted.
And quality control? Forget about it.
Read about prohibition in the 20s. People didn’t suddenly stop drinking alcohol, instead gangs and criminal organizations took over production and distribution, and from what I’ve heard some of that inexpertly homebrewed whiskey or moonshine could be pretty dangerous.
But alcohol is legal now, and its quality is strictly regulated by government organizations. We have laws about how and where one can use it, and we have a legal age limit.
Banning the substance outright only made the problems associated with it worse.
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart:
For kristinc to talk about this with you, surely! For the rest of us who read your lashings, they might give us some ideas, but they’re not very constructive. If you feel attacked and need to scold her and others in her situation, please just step out of your imagined ‘fish bowl’ so that you won’t feel ‘judged’ and let the rest of us fish answer calmly and as well as we can. There are excellent examples around. (You, on the other hand, are an example of what Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD describes on 432.)
I didn’t expect such a nasty judgment in this place and in this context, and just because you had nothing better to do. (It’s strange to read Nutmeg excusing herself once and again [with so much sweetness] for such a mild expression of exasperation, without her apology being at least acknowledged — yet this comment is OK, it seems, and doesn’t deserve even an answer, let alone an apology, from you to kristinc when she justly criticizes it.)
Oh well.
kristinc, in case you are in the mood to continue the conversation, let me try a comment. Your last post (although lost, it seems, on Dr. Darkheart) was an excellent explanation of why you’d want to understand what goes on around you — I’m sorry that you’d have to defend that position here, but you did a very good job.
Many years ago, I also felt suffocated by what I perceived as a monolithic atmosphere where I didn’t fit. My reaction was also to work hard at understanding others, to try to share what they found interesting, etc.
My hint (forgive me if you’ve already tried) wouldn’t be necessarily to exercise the habits that everybody does, and then make an effort to understand them. In your case, even in a monolithic sports culture (something pretty alien to me), I’d try to uncover quirks instead of commonalities, heresies instead of conformity. This asks for some courage, but not that much — everybody has some deviances, everybody wants to be thought special in certain moments. This approach would have two advantages: it separates you from the anxiety of having to blend immediately (since you don’t know the eccentricity that might appear, and nobody would expect it from you), and it brings people however slightly away from their comfort zone, but in a flattering way, even.
Succintly: don’t anxiously study common traits, but ask about differences. Go for them. They’ll free you from the need to agree outwardly and you might start much more interesting relationships.
It’s late here, I have a cold, and I’m tired — sorry if this sounds confused or presuming. I’ll try to check again tomorrow.
Oh, and Richard Austin, since you liked her comment, may I tell you that I found myself nodding in total agreement with Mr. Mattir (459) when I read her (I couldn’t have expressed it so well, but that was my impression exactly).
Forelle, before you settle in and set to “schooling” people, you might want to answer as to you just who in the fuck you happen to be. Most people new to TET have the manners to introduce themselves.
Forelle:
Oh, and Cupcake? You can shut the fuck up about “nasty judgments” when you’re going to make statements like that. We were having a discussion – it’s not up to you to declare that someone had “nothing better to do”.
I still love you too.
CAT – “Maybe Pharyngula is not for me.”
Well, I agree with that since you doubled down on you judgmental assholery.
CAT – “It feels more like vultures attacking a very much still alive C.A.T.”
Nope. The sharks with lasers will get you as soon as you jump in the tank.
++++++++++++++++++++
Caine – I wrote my original comment before I saw CAT double down.
And we argue so much about things here that I’m not sure I would call this a safe place.
+++++++++++++++++++
Take into account that at home I have dial-up, and it takes a lot of reloading between the time I make a comment and the comment appears, and then I see all the comments have been made between when I started to write it and when it appeared.
TLC:
Yep. I love coke. Seriously love it. Grand stuff. It never ate my life, never destroyed any aspect of my life, never cost me a thing except money. That’s why I stopped indulging, ’cause I wanted my money to go for other stuff. Back when I was doing it, it was easier to get purer coke, too.
Rey Fox:
Ah thanks, that’s what I was going for. The forelimbs ended up a bit thicker than I was hoping, but when you do woodburning like I do, you kinda just have to ‘let it ride’ if something isn’t 100 percent perfect.
I’ve tried using the electric wood branders, but I just can’t get a good burned line like I can with a heated up butterknife. Plus I can use the serrated bit to play with texture and the curved tip for curved lines. It does burn the hand a little, but that’s what the paper towel soaked in water is for.
I had more I wanted to say to C.A.T, but discussing art techniques is just so much less infuriating.
CAINE! CAINE!
OK… we’ve finally decided to deal with the rats in the backyard. I’m OK with that, mostly… we killed a male the other day and I didn’t enjoy having to do that.
But just now I caught a little baby female. I can’t do it. Not to this one. But I can’t let her go.
Should I attempt what I’m thinking? Will it work?
Caine:
Good choice!
I’ve liked almost all of A Lee Martinez’s work, but I gotta be honest, I found Chasing the Moon to be a bit of a slog.
Just to make sure, you’ve read Christopher Moore, yes? Fool is one of my favorite books.
Forelle:
Feel free to criticize me all you like, I don’t really care. I said I’m letting this drop, so I am.
Beyond this, don’t expect a response.
Admittedly Audley may or may not have had better things to do and I’m honestly not really sure where that part of the comment came from, but saying that other people have a hard time making friends because they prefer not to came off as exceedingly nasty. I mean, honestly – kristinc? Nutmeg? Me? We’re not trying hard enough? When kristinc just posted explicitly about the effort she puts into understanding other people and socializing, Nutmeg has posted repeatedly preparing herself to go to this social event and deal with the hard parts, and I have spent months posting about efforts and even some successes? These things are hard to do, and to be told that what’s happening is that you’re not willing to try and “find something else to do” is really very insulting.
It’s not always automatic. Sometimes post-partum depression can manifest as feeling detached from the baby, and then of course that makes the mom feel even worse, and it spirals down from there. But yeah, in general humans have had a very long evolutionary history of selecting for genes that reinforce bonding and taking care of that squirmy loud thing that just forced its way out of one’s body.
Caine:
Well, I’m nobody and I felt an introduction was out of place at that moment. I’m a veeeery longtime reader from a very small city in Spain… but I’ll ask to be excused until tomorrow. I’m really tired.
Oh, and
this is not mine; Dr. Darkheart herself said it in 398. I believe I substituted a word, but I don’t think it basically changes the meaning.
I won’t ask “who the fuck are you!?” because it is an open forum, and I received it the first time I entered.
But “I didn’t expect such a nasty judgment in this place” is just naive.
Have you seen how we talk to our friends here? If somebody says bullshit, we respond “bullshit!”
Do you have a problem with that?
Speaking of stigmas and so on making people more vulnerable:
I’ve been thinking something along these lines especially, reading, recently, the saga of the shutdown of the Trois-Rivières centre for $cientology’s astonishingly quackish ‘Narconon’ ‘drug-rehab’ program.
… seriously, it seems to me that without that stigma, they’d have at least a somewhat harder time pulling shit like they do on addicts. Sure, the addicts themselves are probably intrinsically vulnerable in part because of the addiction. But their family members who are checking them in are probably feeling as panicky as they do in part because of the social anxiety that goes with the stigma. It’s just not the sort of thing you feel comfortable asking around about, so hey, someone says ‘Send us ten grand; we can help’, they’re that much more likely to be relatively isolated, less likely to spot all the red flags they should otherwise be seeing in the whole arrangement, less likely to have someone at their elbows saying ‘Wait… Just who are these alleged ‘experts’, anyway…’
(Well, okay, that and fuck, you’d like to hope it’d be below the consideration even of the very lowest slimebucket on the planet to take advantage of the vulnerable quite like that… But, then, apparently, you’d be wrong.)
Also, the whole program, this bizarre, sadistic ‘sweat it out’ thing Hubbard ‘prescribes’, too, strikes me as being rife with just the sort of punitive flagellatory silliness you tend to get from those convinced not so much that this is a medical problem as this is some kind of yawning, horrific moral failure…
… notwithstanding that cults, generally, do tend to have this fondness for sadisms that tend to break the will. But I wonder, also, if the addicts would be a little less likely to put up with that shit if they hadn’t been inculcated steadily with the notion of what a dreadful moral failure all this is.
Bloody breathtakingly toxic, anyway, the whole of it. I dearly hope they stay shut down. And are stuck paying damages until they’re bled dry. Hell, I hope the whole damned front goes down, worldwide, in a sea of red ink, and turns out to be the last decent economic input Miscavige and Co. had left, and so takes their sorry, slimy asses with it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch, really.
Audley:
Yes! :D
CC:
Yes, I get that. What Pteryxx said came off as exceedingly nasty as well, however, “Forelle” isn’t showing up here to scold them, right? Seriously, what I read from everyone, including Audley, was a lot of frustration combined with short tempers.
This is hardly the first time we’ve had an ongoing fuss filled with misunderstanding on TET, to say the least. We all know each other well enough that I think we can sort it all out. I don’t know who the fuck “Forelle” is or what their particular dog is in this discussion, however, I don’t think we need someone we don’t know stopping in to stir shit up. That’s just me, I guess.
I’m very sorry if you were hurt by all this, I’ve read and learned from what everyone has said.
@Louis:
Did somebody mention cat macros?
********
That is a bad environment. I understand your frustration. Its people management 101 not to do that.
************
And not everyone does. Whilst I did, a close family member struggled to bond with fm’s no2. Worked out in the end & 18 years later they are close.
**************
I’ve been struggling to keep up with all the comments & sub-threads, but I’ve been following the conversation about “fitting in” I think started by Nutmeg. I have enjoyed reading other’s accounts on this topic, so thanks to all who contributed their thoughts. I strangely feel less alone than I normally do. Thanks for raising it Nutmeg.
Forelle:
Fine, introduce yourself tomorrow. Just because you’ve been reading doesn’t mean we know you from shit, so don’t presume, okay?
@CAT
Stigmatizing people for drugs would cause the problem to worsen, not make it better. Plus, it would be unnecessarily cruel. In problems like this, always think about the human side of the story. Always think, is it too cruel or inhumane?
AJ:
I share your hope.
Caine:
Which nails it exactly– from me and from everyone else. Here’s what I’ve gotten out of the whole damned thing: we don’t understand each other and the conversation was going nowhere.
Which is exactly why I’m trying to bow out. The longer this goes on the more frustrated we’re all going to get and more feelings (on all sides) are going to get hurt.
But, hey, can’t stand in the way of a stranger criticizing me, can I?
Can I set off a plushie and glitter bomb now? It’s raining plushies and glitter! Ooo, duck before you get hit in the head with a spleen!
I may be missing something, but it appears that the people involved in the initial argument have all made peace with it, and that now it’s new people trying to pick the fight back up again and make the original people defend themselves, thereby setting off another whole round of upset. Perhaps that could be avoided?
Markita Lynda – I’ll have to post a picture once I’ve made my footrest. It will have to wait until after finals, no matter how much I want to make it right away. I’m thinking of making the “legs” inset so that the top will rest directly on them and maybe be a little more sturdy. If I’m feeling like purchasing equipment for the sake of a project, I might even try putting in a bottom “lip” on it that folds flat into a groove on the top surface (I’d need a new drill bit).
<blockquote.“I didn’t expect such a nasty judgment in this place” is just naive.
Have you seen how we talk to our friends here?
I may or may not have been here longer than Forelle, hard to say since sie’s a lurker, but it did surprise me. I was in the habit of thinking of Pharyngula, while not a snuggly-wuggly place, as probably the best place I know of to genuinely inquire about things.
I understand how some of the comments re: drinking could have come off as judgmental but the level of negative response is still surprising to me. I suspect that an emotional/social trigger I don’t fully understand was tripped, because in my experience that’s often the cause of a reaction that seems disproportionate to me. Usually my course of action is to investigate it to maybe prevent missteps in my future but obviously I’m not very comfortable doing that right now.
@Rey Fox
You will never out Marjanovic Marjanovic. :)
Audley:
Maybe you can’t, but I can. :D My temper has had a non-existent fuse the last few days. I might need to get the fuck outta the house for a bit.
Oh, on a different note, the week’s netflix has arrived, and the new movie version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is in the house, yeah!
Kristinc:
You didn’t make any missteps. It was a lot of frustrations and short tempers, that’s all. This isn’t the first blow out on TET and it won’t be the last. I think it’s probably best to drop it all now, at least for a few days.
Are ther enough of those plushie-organ things to build a whole person?
Apologies for the teal deer ahead:
David Marjanović and Antiochus, re: dialect map – Ask and you shall receive!
Ms. Daisy – the map blew my mind! I knew there were differences, but seeing the finer distinctions was another thing entirely.
—————————————–
cicley: LOL, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s gone for so long in between moments of dancing in public. It’s one reason I think I never entered into ballroom competition – bad enough people will see you in the clubs and such, being judged puts a different kind of pressure on, and I think it’s even worse than the usual.
——————————————
Carlie, forget which post now, but about the soccer ball being returned to the little boy: Totally. awesome.
——————————————–
RevBDC: Vodka and Red Bull was a favorite with some of the volunteers I was with in CR. I’m not sure of any of them qualified as meatheads. Me, I like vodka, but not Red Bull. Energy drinks tend to taste horrible to me, and I don’t see why I should waste vodka by mixing the two, especially GOOD vodka.
——————————————–
I drink when I’m down, though this happens rarely – the drinking, I mean. I’ll confess to draining half a bottle of champagne one night while IMing with a friend, I was feeling that blue. But I ended up being silly by the end of it. And yes, I put away the rest of the champagne. I love it, but there are limits and even though it was at home, I didn’t want to risk toppling the down the stairs.
Also, pressuring people to drink when they adamantly refuse: Not cool. Nutmeg, your friends can screw off if they can’t stop doing that shit to you.
——————————————–
Althea: Sad face. Big hugs. At least you got to see your cat one last time, and he died knowing he had people who loved him to bits.
——————————————–
Ing: The hell? Your boss thought you were why the emergency vehicle was parked out front? Well . . . damn. Yay for the vote of confidence there, Ing’s boss.
———————————————-
Third grade teacher has begun to work on the letter of reference for me. She showed it to me, although I wasn’t quite at ease with that, as I always thought that such letter were supposed to remain a mystery until the final copy was in hand. Still debating on who to ask for another letter, in terms of the teachers to approach.
Oh. Yeah.
(/Also, I had such a productive afternoon after doing that. Meetings that drag out for no good reason, they’re just bad all ’round–kill momentum like nobody’s business. It’s so very, very nice to be in the position to deflect that bullet decisively, for a change.)
kristinc:
Okay here it is:
Caine nailed it. On my part at least, my temper has been short lately and I know I’ve got a habit of reading far too much into what people say/ask– especially in text format. While I took the initial question to be offensive, I should have stopped the second that it was clear that it wasn’t.
So, I apologize for dragging it out for as long as I did and for not stopping and thinking outside of my own experiences. I wish the convo could have been done face-to-face ‘cos I doubt that I would have reacted as I did.
Anyway, to you, Nutmeg, CC and whoever else: my bad, yo. I wasn’t lying when I said this was pointless, but now I’m thinking that it’s pointless from my point of view: I’m doing a damned fine job of alienating people who I find interesting and engaging.
Caine:
You are just all full of goodness tonight!
It’s a good one, I hope you enjoy it.
Forelle: Thanks for the defense upthread. However, I don’t think that I have anything new to contribute to this discussion, and I’m now finding it more stressful than interesting/informative. I think I will go with the general consensus and drop the topic. Anyway, I enjoyed reading your thoughts, so I hope you will stick around and introduce yourself more fully in the future. From what I’ve seen and heard, it’s not unusual for people to get off to a rocky start here and later become valued members of the community.
Well, to be clear, I didn’t necessarily think I had personally made any missteps this go-round (because I got involved *after* things flared up), but if someone had, I wanted to learn from it. That’s reassuring to know though. Thank you.
And no hard feelings, Audley.
Audley: No hard feelings. I enjoy your comments and will continue to do so. Let’s talk about happy things! I was glad to hear that Darkfetus is doing well.
Well, I got the rat to sniff my hand a bit and relax enough to eat food in my presence… Maybe it’ll work. She panics if I move fast though.
Appears to be a recently weaned female with smoke gray fur and fairly bright eyes. From a distance she looks like a mouse, but her big head and feet betray her true identity.
I hate to say this but I can’t lie, her life kinda depends on me being able to tame her.
Nutmeg:
Me too. Being whoa sick for a couple of days had me a little worried, but everything’s looking fine.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite so weird as seeing Darkfetus move around on the screen. And the skull? Nightmare fuel.
Nutmeg:
Books, please! I detailed my latest acquisitions upthread, but I love hearing about what others are currently reading.
In non-TET-related news, I’m making out like a bandit on roadside stuff here in St. Charles. I rescued a very nice plush panda from the side of I-70 yesterday. Good condition aside from one small rip in a seam, and missing an eye and the nose and the remaining eye sustaining road rash. I’m going to have to see about replacing them. Then when I was out on the bike today, I found a water bottle with an insulating jacket on it. Even matches the color of my bike. Especially welcome since I’m thinking of doing the Bike MS spring ride on Saturday and left my insulated bottle at home.
Still damn pissed that I missed that movie when it was in the local arthouse theater. Then they screened it on campus on the night I had to leave for field work. ARGH.
Well, I thought my last comment might be longer than his comments on this thread. But it was only about a five-screener, so I don’t know.
TLC:
Give her time. It took Esme ages and she wasn’t feral. Actually, the younger they are, the longer it takes.
Ooh, books! I’ve been having trouble finding fiction that I like lately, so I’ll be checking out the A. Lee Martinez whose books were on your list. My tastes vary, but something light and fun sounds good right now.
I’ve been working on Bill Bryson’s At Home. I enjoy his writing style, but I find this one to be kind of unfocused.
Rey:
My favourite plush panda will always be the one from the Animal Fence. Huge, iconic panda.
Caine: So I’m in for some work just to avoid having to off a cute and innocent creature? I don’t mind.
Even if she never tames, well, I’ll probably end up seeking out another young female to keep her company anyways. Can’t keep one alone, after all.
For now, her cage stays outside in the chicken coop though. Only way I could convince my brother to let her live.
I won’t even consider names until it’s decided whether I’ll keep her around or not.
It bugs me to even have to type that last bit out, but after all she is a wild rat.
She appears to be making small progress with tolerating my hands being near her though, so there’s that. Baby steps.
TLC:
That’s unfortunate, it’s going to make things more difficult for you both. Best of luck.
Rey Fox
re road-rash plush panda
Here’s a story
http://thebloggess.com/2011/07/would-you-like-to-buy-a-monkey/
Caine: Well, I’m gonna work on changing that. The family’s big worry is her escaping into the house, but I’m reasonably certain she can’t get out of that cage. I’ve kept young rats her size in it before.
I don’t even have to mention that she’s an incredibly cute and charming little creature, do I?
Currently reading: Mockingjay, on my tablet. No spoilers, please.
Currently pushed aside in favor of Katniss putting an arrow in some mothefucka: Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser. About the role of cities in the past, present, and future of humankind and its health, and the health of the environment. Of interest to me in my field of urban ecology, and of hope even though I’m skeptical of some of its premises. I’ve only got as far as the introduction.*
* I have a backlog of books to read at home, but typically when I get a new book, I read the introduction before putting it on the shelf for months.
TLC:
No. :D
Rey:
That sounds like an interesting read. Added to my list.
Coyote, no idea whether it’s the same species of wild rat, but IIRC there are temples in India where the wild rats are honored and end up very tame with the priests and pilgrims. They’re smart critters (but you knew that).
Oh ha! Has anyone else seen this: State GOP served with eviction papers for its St. Paul office space?
One would think that a bunch of people who have NO IDEA HOW TO MAKE A BUDGET! were running the MN GOP. Go figure, huh?
Anyway, books: I’m currently on the lookout for some good fiction, myself. I’ll be starting Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) tonight.
Money quote from Neil Gaiman: “The Bloggess writes stuff that actually is laugh-out-loud, but you know that really you shouldn’t be laughing and probably you’ll go to hell for laughing, so maybe you shouldn’t read it. That would be safer and wiser.”
Apparently my city’s ice hockey team won the national championship a couple of hours ago, and there’s much celebration.
Not that I were against it, but the football season has just started, and that’s way more important. :)
Yeah, there’s nothing like stigma to keep people from developing drug or alcohol problems. I mean, who would drink alcohol to excess if they knew they could (at least in the bad old days, and I’m not sanguine about today) lose their health insurance, security clearance, or what have you for having had a drinking problem more than a decade ago. Seriously, are you delusional? Do you write the educational materials for DARE or the Boy Scouts of America? Are you a recent graduate of such presentations?
A solid discussion of drug effects, side/after effects, brain development, legal consequences, and other – ahem – reality-based educational strategies to avoid abuse are worth a whole lot more than your bullshit peer pressure stigma crap.
I stopped drinking 25 years ago, but “drunk” is still the insult of choice for some close family members when we fight. Fuck you and your cavalier endorsement of stigma.
I made a mistake.
I went to ThinkGeek.
look
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/jewelry/ec54/?srp=10
It’s got a Jon Stewart endorsement on the back cover. :)
Mattir:
How fuckin’ nice. *spits*
Look!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/e990/
chigau:
WANT.
Since I’ve decided that this summer is the summer of beer t-shirts, I’m on the fence whether or not I should indulge in non-beer related clothing.
I have that Tentacle hoodie. It arrived just a few days ago. Raygun Robyn is the artist.
chigau, I have that dragon earring. The pic does it justice, IMO It can be sort of hard to fit precisely to your ear, though. Pliers, and some careful adjusting, help a lot with that (I never realized how soft pewter really is before).
Well, if you don’t want to pay Thinkgeek that kind of scratch, you can do it yourself at home with some cardboard, a utility knife, some bleach, and a spray bottle.
I got that idea way back when I got a little mildew cleaner on one of my navy blue T-shirts. Why don’t I ever get around to doing it?
speaking of books, I’m 860 pages into Neal Stephenson’s Reamde.
As it’s 1042 pages long, and it was due back to the library today on a 7 day loan, Imma gonna ignore the rules and pay the fine. It’s quite good. I’m not a gamer, but it has multi role online playing games as a base, and then adds Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and British spies. Weaved with love stories and al Queda terrorists. Not necessarily in that order.
I almost went into the library and asked to extend it, because how many people can read 1000+ pages in a week? But the rules are, an Express Loan book is 7 days only, no renewal.
So rather than put my librarian friends on the spot, and possibly be refused, I chose to go full outlaw.
Rey Fox
There are about a bazillion thing I could do myself at home.
But I, too, have a terminal case of “not getting around to”.
Weird stuff happens in Utah a lot. These booby traps were in Provo canyon, near Provo – BYU and just about 100% Mormon.
A few decades ago, some cult leader threw his kids out of a skyscraper and then jumped. The polygamists used to fight wars with each other and the number dead is hard to tally. One guy alone killed 30-50, some of them from his own family.
There are a huge number of graves in Southern Utah around the polygamist areas. No one knows who is in them or how they got there. One hiker once reported an unmarked grave up in a canyon. The police didn’t even want to see it because they said, “it’s not illegal to bury people in canyons.”
Rey:
It’s an interesting thought, but I’m not exactly the, ah, crafty type. I’d prolly end up bleaching a cat in the process. :D
Also cardboard, a utility knife, some bleach, and a spray bottle carries a large *wink*wink*nudge*nudge* component.
I tried to do the bleach stencil thing myself a few years ago, with a large fern leaf (frond? thing) as my stencil. The design transferred fine but the result looked distinctly … homemade.
The coolest one I’ve ever seen used the torso of an about 1/4 life size plastic skeleton to stencil on ribs, spine, collarbone etc.
Alberta Election chat
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/alberta-politics/chat.html
anyone bored?
Brownian?
Albertans?
I’m hoping for the PCs!!‽?
Anything but WildRose.
craponastick
lookit southern Alberta!
Well, I guess there was no point in linking to the Tentacle Wear artist.
fuck
fuck
fuck
Caine
I clicked your link and got to her page.
Am I missing something?
Thank non-existent Christ. Alberta had provincial elections today and their right-wing Wildrose Party was widely touted to win. The Progressive Conservatives have been in power for 41 years and people are pretty sick of them. After hearing about the rights of healthcare providers to refuse service to women and marriage commissioners to refuse to marry same-sex partners, the people of Alberta have re-elected the incumbent PCs. A party needs 44 seats for an absolute majority. The PCs seem to be heading for about 60 seats.
That wasn’t very clear. The Wildrose party was talking about “conscience rights” for bigots and people rejected that.
Was it his exact inner structure?
This is what it’s like when people have healthcare: they like it.
Danielle Smith [party leader] denies that Wildrose Party has plans to de-list abortion.
Alberta Election
I am going to get drunk enough to kill all memory of this night.
fuck
I understood the words about Alberta but apparently lack any context to follow it.
Fill me in; sad face or happy face, which should I be wearing?
C.A.T., the “me” I was, back when, would have wanted to have nothing to do with the “me” I am now (including, Once Upon A Time, horror at my atheism, now: Hell-bound! Amoral Devil-worshipper!); and I am in retrospect mortally embarrassed by an answer I once wrote on a biology test, advocating Creationism as The Truth, and denouncing evolution as a lie. Changes in viewpoint can be quite dramatic; maybe you’ll find it so, maybe not. It does bear keeping in mind, though.
Luckily, my son is now grown (incredible thought!), but it was a constant running battle, from the time he was 7, with people who “knew better” than I did about ADD/ADHD and how it “should” be treated. Their knee-jerk condemnation hurt. I’m hoping that by the time Son has a kid old enough to go to school, this will have got culturally sorted out, ’cause in my family, it’s real hereditary; no male descendent of my paternal grandfather is known to have avoided being ADD or ADHD; and I have reason to suspect undiagnosed ADD in myself, with the advantage of retrospect. OTOH, there are some advantages….
–
Dr. Audley: just teasin’. A’ course I’m still talking to you!
(And, obviously, one day Darkfetus will become Darkspawn.)
–
Yes. The Poisoner’s Handbook, by Deborah Blum, goes into detail about it. Also, some seriously poisonous shit was added to professionally-manufactured alcohols in an effort to deter people from drinking it. Didn’t work, and a lot of people died.
–
Books? I dream of being able to back up a U-Haul to the front door of a large bookstore, and filling ‘er up. This is a come-down from my previous dream of kidnapping the Library of Congress and installing it as as reeeeeeally big, multi-level basement.
I know; eyes bigger than my stomach.
–
That last comment was supposed to have a “/nigeltufnel” tag on it.
Ing
hair-tearing head-pounding that the same old shit got elected
coupled with vast relief that the liberterian homo-phobic climate-deniers did not get elected.
my face just hurts.
Me, I’m going with my ‘well, I was expecting to be more appalled’ face.
Wild Rose did not win. And they really were (are) pretty scary…
But honestly, the guys who did win: they’re the very, very long-entrenched provincial counterpart of the federal party currently in power, who just did this. Among other things.
Granted, it’s Alberta. So, again: I was expecting to be more appalled.
(/Don’t know what the smiley for that is, tho’. Anyone?)
Those tentacle t-shirts are too dull for me. Although I like the tentacle dress–it has a little more contrast.
Caine, I get the Zombie duckie link for your name.
Holy shit, people were not kidding when they said the Torchwood series finale was the most depressing shit ever. Tonight we’ll need to watch something lighter and more cheerful, like, I don’t know, Schindler’s List.
Ok going with this face /:|
Ing, bus dodged, could be worse: the party that thought it would win is a right-wing, homophobic, anti-abortion, climate-change-denying party. The party that remained in power is an entrenched, privileged, party. The Liberals and NDP are trailing by far. The right wing will be the new official opposition.
I’ve got like six books on the go right now. In two languages. Only one of which I read particularly well. And one of those in the language I do read well is a popular treatment of quantum physics*.
… so yeah, I know that syndrome. And it’s probably for the best I don’t have one of those trucks at my disposal, either.
(*/It’s actually pretty good, tho’–only really slightly painful so far for my not-exactly-a-theoretical-physicist’s-brain. Cox and Forshaw, The Quantum Universe.)
I don’t think I’ve posted many comments on Pharyngula completely sober. A few drinks (or many whatevers) seem to lower some barriers so it’s easier to participate in a conversation. And that’s why I post so sporadically: the rest of the time I’m sober. But I read almost every day. Because this is an important place for me.
And most of the time when I think of something I might comment, I see someone else has already written it far more eloquently.
C.A.T.: Read. That’s how you can learn. Pharyngula is full of so smart people it can be scary. You don’t need to confront or try to one-up them. Just read, that’s what I do most of the time.
John Llewellyn is the author of Murder of a Prophet (true crime story). This man has an insider’s view, having actually converted to Mormonism, then to Fundamentalist Mormonism and was for a while polygamous. However, he became aware of abuse of women and girls and large-scale monetary fraud. He discovered that the social and religious structure is conducive to corruption.
Incidentally, both the leader of the Wildrose (opposition) party and the leader of the PC party (government) are women.
cicely on stealing the LOC: I’d settle for the pre-1500 collection. The one time I was there in the stacks (with temporary special access pass and a librarian two feet behind me; the public hasn’t been allowed in since the 80’s) I had an sense of overwhelming knowledge. Just seeing 100,000 books (less than a thousandth of the total collection) is a very sobering experience. You just can’t get that with digital data.
Note about the Library of Congress: anyone, *anyone* can join but you need to go back across the street to get a library card. If you go out on the street you have to line up to get back in, so instead ask to be shown the tunnel under the street, thus staying “inside” the library. It has a conveyor belt near the ceiling for sending books over to Congress.
Carlie @517, glad you like it. I was just mentally banging the ends of unevenly cut props together in my mind when it occurred to me that I could move them. I feel happy because I’m not usually very inventive with these things.
I’m currently reading Corrupted Science: Fraud, ideology and politics in science by John Grant. Next up is Malintzen’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico by Camilla Townsend. After that, the list gets long and the stacks higher as I try to balance reading the books I want while at the same time staying relatively currently on magazines, and all those pesky necessities of life. But it is never a crime or a hardship to have too many books.
Mr. Hekuni Cat and I will be visiting two library books sales on Friday, so I’m sure to find new treasures to add to my list and stacks. ^_^
Where’s our armorer? Fantasy armor and lady-bits.
Hey… Nutmeg? Cassandra? Anyone who doesn’t “get” dancing?
This might be of interest to you… http://ttbook.org/book/frank-browning-dancing-brain
It’s a PRI bit on neuroscientists’ takes on why we dance and what happens in our brain when we do. I didn’t find it especially mind-blowing, but I figured any little bit might help.
SallyStrange:
Thanks! I’m off to bed soon, but I’ll listen to that sometime tomorrow. I read through the text on the page, and this bit from the “alternative viewpoint” stood out:
That, at least, is a subjective experience that I can relate to. I played clarinet in high school. I was a good player but nothing special, so my skill level only allowed me to have experiences like that a few times. Those experiences stick in my memory, though.
That makes dance a little more comprehensible to me, so thanks.
@ Nutmeg
It makes me very happy to help, even if a little bit. Also nice to discover a fellow clarinet player! I too have had those experiences in playing music. It is indeed similar to the attraction of dancing. So, cool. :)
The Sailor,
I enjoyed it as well, although as a player of online games, I was a little disappointed that the game in the book wouldn’t be feasible in our world.
— —
kristinc,
Yeah, I didn’t like the whole last season. Nothing like packing in as much depression as possible into ten hours of airtime.
— —
On thread mechanics, this url gets used twice during threads with over 500 comments:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/04/21/episode-cccxix-pigasi/#comments
It starts as the link to the first (actual first) comment, but once 501 is reached, it becomes the link to the 501st comment, and the link to the first becomes
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/04/21/episode-cccxix-pigasi/comment-page-1/#comments
Not a huge deal, it created some cache confusion in my browser that fixed with a refresh (browser thought it already had the material, when in fact it had become something else).
Armorkinis. They’ve been bugging me for a while, it’s nice to come across professional critiques.
Caine, Fleur du mal@60, Books? you want books? Oh, OK. Nothing too deep here, I just finished Jenny Lawson’s (thebloggess.com)”Let’s pretend this never happened” Very funny read, several incidences of laughing so hard I was gasping and crying. Currently reading book 12 of the Wheel of Time series “The Gathering Storm” By Robert Jordan. Awesome so far. Hope to finish book 13 before the final book in the series comes out later this year.
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart@72, re: “Let’s pretend this never happened”, Darkfetus will probably think it’s on a tilt-a-whirl from all the laughing if my experience is any guide, so be warned!
Question: Where did “threadrupt” originate and how is it defined? Thanks in advance.
My pillow calls, I must away to its waiting arms. G’night to all and sundry.
Did anyone else catch last night’s Colbert Report? The guest was none other than Don “Thomas Jefferson is a doubleplusungood unperson” McLeroy!
@123:I did. Wanted to bash his head in with that rock.
Hi Markita Lynda – Younger Spawn is all about the playing, at this point, but what you said is going on the List of Ideas for possible future trying-out – thank you!
Chigau, ILOVE that ear-dragon, it’s perfect! Never seen one like it (me, I just have a couple of ordinary little snakes). Ooh, nice t-shirt dress, too (you can never have too many tentacles around :-) )
Refreshing news about the defeat for bigotry in Alberta. I get the disappointment that same-old-shit got in, but sounds like a great escape from seriously-fucked-up shit.
I love the sound of the clarinet so much – the reed and the wood seem to give it a quality I can’t resist. Of course sometimes the best instrument in the world is whichever one you’re listening to right now, when the player makes it so!
Ok not really, but seriously, who gave him the power to decide what students are taught when he clearly shows he has no interest in them learning facts?
“speaking of books, I’m 860 pages into Neal Stephenson’s Reamde”
(Spoiler ahead)
It’s pretty cool when the gangstas kick in a door and run head-on into even badder gangstas.
But in the last part of the book you get the impression all blokes of a certain persuation are channeling John Wayne Gacy. Stereotype alert!
‘morning
Well, Mr.’s home sick and it seems like last night was the “peak”, so I’m seriously underslept.
TLC
Best luck with the doggish creature
bags of poop
I think the most important is not to be taken in by the hype about what it is and how you have to do things.
I know how it goes, you want to be a good parent and want to give your child the best start and you inform yourself and it’s so easy to get taken in.
There’s all that wonderfull research abou how breastfeeding is really good and then things don’t work out the way you planned and suddenly you find yourself under pressure with unhelpfull people who add more of that.
Fuck that noise.
There’s a wide range of ways to be a good parent and any person who ties that “badge” to a single, quite small choice is an asshole.
The original one, or the new one? Because I’ve watched the ending of the original one probably a dozen times, and it still makes me cry. Space pig. *sniff*
I didn’t even want to watch the new one; after what they did in Children of Earth, I was done
“New York Mom Fired After Donating Kidney To Boss” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/kidney-transplant-donor-debbie-stevens-fired_n_1446441.html?ref=impact
Fuck. This has to be some kind of record in douchebagginess.
Hm, nice Asia trip lined up for my holiday, 2 weeks in China then a few days in Singapore on the way back, the visa stuff was a nightmare, but that should all be good now. Freethoughtblogs from China, I don’t fancy my chances there, so I might go quiet for a while next month. You may of course enjoy that…
I have just finished an important experiment. I have determined that when using cocoa powder, it doesn’t matter if one puts the powder in the cup first and then adds the hot water or if one puts the water in the cup first and then adds the powder, one still gets sludge in the bottom of the cup.
I’ve always wondered about that.
Does it make a difference if you use milk? I like using milk but haven’t done the experiment for sludge on the bottom. I’m don’t have any currently but I’m looking forward to trying it out now.
You put the powder in the cup, then add a small amount of liquid, and mix well into you get a paste. Then slowly add the rest of the liquid, stirring briskly as you do so.
Elder Spawn (first year biochem undergrad, but still just a baby (to me, anyway (for given values of “baby”)) at 18) was just telling me about her first in-person conversation about evolution with someone (at her weekend job) who doesn’t believe in it. Common where a lot of you live, I know, but actually quite rare here! (I’ve never met one in person myself). This individual is apparently nice despite being xtian and thinking we all come from Adam and Eve, so I dare say ES may go on talking about it with them from time to time.
It’s so lovely when they get all growed up ::wipes tear from eye::
You put the powder in the cup, then add a small amount of liquid, and mix well into you get a paste. Then slowly add the rest of the liquid, stirring briskly as you do so.
Huh, I just found an empty box and the instructions are just like that, only they don’t add the helpful part about the paste.
Figures, should’ve read the instructions.
I’ve always found cocoa too bitter. Prefer drinking chocolate.
I wonder if it’s just different markets?
Still get the sludge. One day I’m gonna put a sample in a spectrometer & see what’s so damned insoluble.
I remember that some years back, when the first Narnia movie came out and I was looking for resources on how to construct Susan’s dress, I found a site and a forum with a very good costumes section and infested with YEC.
I was so stunned to learn that there are people who actually don’t accept evolution I couldn’t believe it.
I see my cocoa experiments must continue. Fortunately I hadn’t submitted my paper to the Journal of Hot Chocolate and Related Beverages yet.
I second (or third or something) the recommendation for Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. I laughed so hard I actually had to change my pants (damn 45 year old bladder). My GirlChild rolled her eyes when I kept insisting she needs to read this book until I started reading it to her.
I used to define being successful as being able to buy any book I wanted whenever I wanted. Now I define successful as having time to read the books I have. I may never be successful.
Well, when you do and if you find the method I suggested works best be sure to credit my grandmother who was the one who taught it to me.
Himself,
What Matt Penfold wrote.
You slowly add liquid and stir until you get a slurry (the high viscosity aids homogenisation despite surface tension), then you dilute the slurry.
(Useful general principle when cooking)
You’ll only end up with sludge if you super-saturate (in the short-term), or let it sit long enough for the solids to settle (in the medium-term)).
It puts the lotion in the basketIt puts the powder in the cup and makes it into a smooth paste with the minimum amount of hot water.Hmmm it doesn’t have the same ring. Back to the drawing board.
Louis
‘Tis,
That’s why hot chocolate is best made in a Keurig brewer. Damn, I hate the sludge.
Ray and ImaginesaBeach,
I can’t wait to start Let’s Pretend This Never Happened! (I ended up dozing on the couch while Mr Darkheart played Mass Effect last night instead of reading. And now I’m at work. Poo.) I’m not a huge memoir fan, but it looked too funny to pass up. :)
“My thanks are given to Mrs. Berthatrude Penfold, the grandmother of some guy I know on the internet, for telling the guy about this method.”
Semi-threadrupt.
I hurt my right foot last night. I slipped off a metal stepladder and fell, and I instinctively put my foot out to spare my lower back.
The right side and middle of the instep just behind the toes are swollen, with some bruising. The heel and left side seem OK, and I can kinda-sorta walk on them, and I can drive. I’ve been taking ibuprofen, elevating the foot, and icing it.
I went over earlier to what I thought was a walk-in clinic. It’s not. It’s a community health center and they don’t take walk-ins. They told me to go to the ER.
My job is temporary, I’m not insured, and I get no paid sick time. I can’t think of anything I would rather do less right now than go to the ER, sit for six hours in an uncomfortable chair in a room with a TV probably blaring Faux Nooz, be in more pain as my foot is palpated and then moved around on an x-ray plate, and then pay $2,000 U.S. or more for the privilege. I could afford it, if worse came to worst, but… right now, the whole idea is much more stressful than the pain is. I can cope with much more pain than I can fear and anxiety.
I’m going to go back to bed, put my foot up, ice it, and tape it up later. Somewhere in the house, I think I have crutches from a years-ago sprain, and I have a hard-soled sandal that will work for an open shoe.
Fuck my life and fuck this country.
Giliell
I know what you mean. It completely throws me to really try to get my head round this, that there are people around – in the world of streets and groceries and bodies , not just on my computer – who seem to all intents and purposes to be quite ordinary, but who are actually so deeply and profoundly out to lunch that they sincerely believe any number of completely impossible things (before breakfast, even).
Ms. Daisy Cutter, ow. :(
Here in Oz, you’d see your GP and be covered by medicare.
Hot Choc
The best way to avoid sludge is to first make sure you’re wearing comfortable shoes and clear a path that will allow you to reach top running speed. Then get a very wide container, like a kiddie pool.
Fill it with warm milk. Have a friend grab one side and you grab the other. Lift the pool.
Meanwhile have another friend empty the correct volume of cocoa powder onto a large board positioned at the same height as the level of your hands and where the kiddie pool will be.
Get an industrial fan pointed into the pathway you will be running positioned behind the board covered in cocoa powder.
Now here is where it gets tricky. Timing is everything.
You and your fried lift the pool and start running but you need to time your top speed to occur just before you cross the path of the fan / cocoa delivery device.
At just the right time, make sure the second friend turns on the fan so that the cocoa will be delivered into the pool of warm milk you are running with.
If you time everything correctly, you should have perfectly mixed hot chocolate.
If you want to add a little adventure to this exercise have a another friend at the end of the run with a sling shot and a bag of marshmallows. I think you can figure out the rest.
Fuck, Ms Daisy Cutter, that is the pits. Every time I hear about things like this, I – shit, it’s just so stupid and unfair and counterproductive, why can’t people see that and vote for politicians who would support moves towards better access to healthcare?
I hope the ice and support work and the swelling goes down, and I hope the pain dies down. Nice Cup of Tea any good to you?
Well, this may be a more than usually awkward introduction, but here it goes.
But this must be a part of it, for even a stranger should be able to deny an accusation, direct or implied: I didn’t intervene before in order to pick up a fight or stir shit; that was not my intention. I’m afraid you’ll have to take me at my word, since supporting this statement would imply revising and quoting from the thread, and that I won’t. Now for a second leap of faith: I do appreciate and admire, even feel some long distance/lurker’s warm affection for, all the parties involved.
Though of course I understand that my word, as I said some hours ago, is that of a nobody, a lurker — worse, a sockpuppet, since I’ve been reading here for so long that the two or three times I may have posted I probably (and involuntarily) used different names.
I don’t excel at anything, but I’m vaguely curious about many things. I love music, but don’t play any instrument. I’ve recently realized that I should have studied Latin when young. Maybe someday I’ll be able to do so in an amateurish way.
I came to Pharyngula attracted both by the atheism and the biology — I have terrible gaps in my education and almost no scientific knowledge. I like the atmosphere here and the incredible amount of data I’ve been able to gather in this informal way. And, of course, I like very much our host and his style of writing.
Currently, I’m reading Goodbye to All That and have The Sense of an Ending waiting on my bedside table.
Thanks, John.
Anywhere in the civilized world, I’d be covered.
Obviously, I’m not a doctor, but I suspect I’ll be OK so long as I stay off the foot as long as possible. If it were that bad, I don’t think ibuprofen would be taking care of the pain when I’m off it, and walking would be a lot more difficult.
Opposable Thumbs, thanks as well for the tea and sympathy. Of course it’s stupid and counterproductive, but we have a critical mass of people in this country who run on resentment and who think too linearly to understand that they’ll pay for other people’s health issues one way or another. I.e., wingnuts. Fuck them all sideways with a telephone pole embedded with broken glass smeared with dogshit.
Giliell: Growing up in a town with way too many fundies taught me very quickly just how common YECs are. It’s still a shock when someone you expected to be halfway sane turns out to be one though.
Ms. Daisy
I’m sorry about your foot.
Hope it gets better soon.
Your system is fucked up in so many ways I can’t even start.
Forelle – Please understand that the response you got wasn’t because we think you’re a “nobody”, it’s because you hadn’t introduced yourself first (which is considered rude). People start off arguing all the time, just after they’ve walked in the door and said hi, so to speak.
Sorry about the foot, Ms. Daisy Cutter. In most cases I think the general treatment is pretty much exactly what you’re doing anyway.
Good afternoon everyone (or whatever time of day it is where you are).
Ms. Daisy Cutter,
Ouch. Sorry about your foot. I hope there’s no serious damage and that it gets better soon.
I must be supersaturating my hot chocolate solution during the paste phase. I tend to just treat it like Turksh coffee* & not drink the last bit.
*although not in the sense that I don’t drink Turksh coffee, which I don’t. More in the sense that drinking the last bit of Turkish coffee wouldn’t be something that I’d do if I drank it.
That was a worthwhile simile. >_>
Hello forelle. Thanks for the introduction. & you’re not the only one lacking in things to excel at. I have a whole truckload of stuff I don’t excel in also! (like making hot chocolate)
As for sock puppetry, my best friend is a sock puppet, I just don’t let him out on pharyngula. (the sock makes typing difficult).
Clearly way past my bed time.
Ms Daisy Cutter, hope the foot mends quickly & with minimum pain, both to your person and bank account. Truly winced as I read your post.
Rev BDC
Is that a hot chocolate relativity generator?
Woo hoo everybody!! Just saw this at Shakesville: no more being able to discriminate in employment due to gender identity in the US!
link to original report
Depends on the quality of the chocolate.
@carlie:
Oh awesome. It’s basically ENDA without being ENDA… now we just need to get Obama off his tuchus and get him to make ENDA a reality!
Special comment just for C.A.T., in case you’re still lurking.
Notwithstanding your apology preceded by reams of whining and self-justification and followed by a gendered slur, I’m going to tell you to put the shovel down already.
The Justice Department is not a reliable source for anything regarding … well, justice in general, but especially as it pertains to drug use. Not all drug users need treatment. Some can handle recreational use just fine. And, just as “reducing the abortion rate” shouldn’t be a priority over making sure women have the reproductive care they choose and they need, neither should “reducing drug usage” be a priority over making sure abusers get the care they want and need, and users in general reap the benefits of harm reduction.
If other people are using drugs and hurting nobody, it is none of the state’s business, nor is it any of yours.
You don’t deserve respectful responses to ignorant, unscientific spew that contributes to the stigmatization, imprisonment, prison rape, and impoverishment of thousands upon thousands of Americans, especially those of color, you sheltered, arrogant little twit.
And you’re getting precisely the response to them you deserve.
Here, go read before you subject us to any more of your Depe Thotz on how to best treat addicts.
Jesus on a pogo stick, J_A_L wasn’t half right to peg you as a smug, condescending shitsmear, was she?
I really hope you’re fucking joking, but I’ve seen too many people make claims this stupid. You seem entirely representative of the generations whose parents wanted/want to foam-pad the world for them. (Aw, did I hurt your feewers again? Good.)
Also, what Ing, Caine, and Mattir have said about stigma. And, trust me, you’re being dealt with mildly. Nobody has yet told you to shove a rotting porcupine up your ass.
Caine and J_A_L: I agree w/r/t “fuck that noise.”
Caine, Dr Audley Z. Darkheart,
It is sad that there are rather few *good* urban fantasy authors, and even fewer *funny* urban fantasy authors.
If you like graphic novels, the trilogy by Templesmith about Wormwood (a demon inhabiting an ambulating corpse, thus doing his thing for re-cycling) is a must-read. Provided your sense of humour is robust enough to deal with stuff that would gross out even “South Park”.
Other graphic novels: “Top Ten” had me laughing my head off.
More serious but very well-written graphic novel “Welcome to Lovecraft” (the place, not the person).
YEC -I guess it means “young Earth creationists”. Do they accept the spheroid shape of the Earth, or is this also a commie lie?
— — — — —
“my best friend is a sock puppet”
-But would you let your daughter marry one?
And what about the influx of Mexican sock puppets?
I hear they have wonderful hot chocolate.
Slignot:
Seems to me that Mormonism generates the most extreme cases of such baggage, but there are examples from all religions and especially the most ruthlessly patriarchal.
Pteryxx, re the persistence and power of dietary taboos: It depends, especially when the “forbidden fruit” factor comes into play. For example, many people raised in kosher households eat pork, as adults and also as kids out of the house without their parents.
Ing: Christ, I’m sorry you’re dealing with that kind of work environment.
Rey Fox:
Why not. Any group is going to have in-jokes that vary in quality, and jokes do lose their lustre with repetition.
I’m somewhat familiar with Edward Glaeser, in that he occasionally writes an op-ed for the Boston Globe. He leans too far to the right economically for my taste. Just curious, what are some of his premises you disagree with?
Also, I’m the one who made the remark about Latin countries; Giliell corrected this misimpression.
Sailor, regarding Pharyngula as a “safe space” — it’s safe in that it guards against aggravating the effects of societal oppressions. It’s not necessarily safe for people who get upset at the rough-and-tumble environment.
Not to revive the discussion, but, Kristin:
Probably not, for most people, a trigger in the common psychological sense of the word, but certainly a defensive response. American culture isn’t uniform in its approach to drinking. For example, a person who grew up in, say, a hard-shell Baptist household but is irreligious in adulthood and enjoys a beer with dinner may bristle at negative discussions of social drinking. I can’t speak to anybody else’s particular sore spot here, though.
PTI: There’s an old expression, “Language changes every 20 miles,” which has been made obsolete in most of the world and for the moment by widespread literacy and telecommunications. Pelamun (come back, Pelamun!) or someone else with a linguistics background could speak to this, but my hunch is that the accents are ghostly remains of what would have been dialects, at least, in an earlier age.
Audley, the MN state GOP getting evicted delights my inner Nelson Muntz.
Raven:
Big surprise that an intensely patriarchal culture considers certain people disposable.
Giliell, Carlie, Pentatomid, Catnip, anyone I may have missed: Thanks. Carlie, I especially appreciate the reassurance that the home treatment is more or less what a doctor would do, minus the x-rays. (Also, yay, protections for gender identity!)
BTW, Pentatomid, I owe you an apology for biting your head off over at Natalie’s a while ago. Sorry about that. I was in a KILL EVERYBODY headspace that particular day.
So one of my current reads is a PDF of Bare-Faced Messiah. I found it somewhere in the course of looking at Narconon stuff again, stuck it on my phone, have been reading it in bits that would otherwise be downtime.
I find it… actually thoroughly disturbing. There’s something just so very off about the guy, through the whole thing, even before he gets up to anything so really, truly nasty as, y’know, starting a brutally manipulative cult. He’s this incredibly flighty character, mostly, the way it reads… Unfailingly grasping and self-aggrandizing, too…
It’s presumably partly the author’s distinctly (if sometimes bemusedly so) critical tone, presumably partly my knowing what’s coming, but seriously, it’s making me grit my teeth and cringe, a little, just reading this. I find myself looking at the overall mess of a man that’s developing in there, and viewing with distinct anxiety every little detail in myself even remotely similar, telling myself things like: ‘Okay… Don’t be anything like that anymore, ever… No tall tales. At all. No exaggeration, however mild, of anything you’ve ever done. Stick with absolutely paranoid assiduousness to the facts, the best you possibly can. The way that guy went, that way lies madness… Madness and really, truly terminally embarrassing critical biographies…
(/’Also: don’t ever write anything near speculative fiction nor fantasy again… You just never know…’)
NEW THREAD!