Yep. No laughs at all here.
(Episode CCCXXXVI: Time for us all to leave.)
P.S. I hate to end the last thread just after Tony bared his soul, but I’ll at least mention you ought to read that.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Bye, Caine. You do know you’ll be missed and I hope you won’t be gone too long.
Ogvorbis, speaking as an ex-E6 and ex-GS15, I order you not to have a heart attack.
Okay, I can’t give you an order, but please don’t have one as a personal favor to me.
Tony. I read your story and damn! You have my sympathy.
Caine:
D:
Hugs, Tony.
While the kitties are indeed cute, the random pictures on that site are VERY MUCH NOT SAFE FOR WORK!
Better to view the video at Coyne’s cats and blogs emporium.
Tony,
I have no words. I can only thank you for having found enough to tell us the story of M.
Tony, I am so, so sorry. Words fail me, but there are plenty of kind and sympathetic thoughts streaming in your general direction right now.
KG:
There’s a lot of that, I hear. How could that fit all onto one hat, or even onto an entire row of hats?
Tony, I am so terribly sorry.
Shit, I know some of those people too.
I’m really sorry for your loss. And angry about the fucked-up-ness.
*hugs* (I’m English and I don’t do hugs, but.)
Oh, Tony.
That’s heartbreaking– thank you for sharing M’s story with us.
Tony,
I’m so sorry. *hugs*
Tony, your story was at the same time beautiful and devastating and I am moved to tears. This stranger wishes you well.
Caine, I will miss you. Though I rarely have anything to say, you made me feel welcome here.
I’m so sad now.
I have no words, Tony. Thank you for sharing that.
Tony, I’m so sorry. Thank you for telling us about M.
Tony, that was beautiful (sad but beautiful). Thank you.
I’m utterly, utterly threadcrupt and have been for a while, but I’m glad I was able to read the moving words Tony shared with us.
I’m so sorry, and thank you.
I was PORTCULLIS’D!!
————
Tony: Damn. Just . . . oof. And thanks for sharing. It’s great that you gave someone hope and a shoulder to cry on, and ear for their words.
—————————————————
Well, the cryptography course started today. It’s quite a bit to take in for one week, and I wish I’d gotten my lazy arse downtown yesterday to check out RadioShack for possible netbooks or whatever. I’d much rather catch up on the course material than simply sit around while the kids are in special classes.
The upside is that they’ll be using Python for the homework and optional assignments, which is a language I have a passing familiarity with. So, maybe that won’t be too hard.
————————————————–
It turned out that the kid I had to watch today was picked up early by a friend of the family. Christ on a cracker with cheese, but was I glad!
And then I found out that I’ll be in charge of after-school tomorrow because of some dinner the Spanish teacher has to go to for ESL teachers. Forget Friday, I’d like to fast forward to Saturday, when I’ll head down to a tap room for lunch and have a beer or two
Tony… damn.
Thanks for sharing… it can’t have been easy.
I love a good sundae
Tony, that left a bit of a lump in my throat.
You sound like you were truly a good friend to him, and made his life better while you were part of it.
Tony: Ouch. Very much ouch.
My sympathies.
Tony, it may be trite or silly or whatever, but it’s true: [Frasier Crane’s voice] We’re listening.
If you feel like it, of course.
Tony, I am so sorry for your loss, and honored that you would share these memories of your friend with us.
* * * * *
Today I took a group on a hike and stopped by a native orchid that I’d seen almost in bloom on a group hike on Saturday. All that was there was a fucking hole in the ground. I hate people and will never share any unusual native plant finds with people I don’t know well. Seriously, I was on the verge of tears all day, feeling horribly guilty that I might have contributed to the theft by showing the plant to the Saturday hike group. Consoling myself with spinning this evening.
Tony, I’m so sorry. The loss – the losses, that’s too much.
My sympathies.
The Girl just had to tell her christian ‘best friend’ that she was LYING when she told her about her childhood sexual abuse. Yes. You read me right.
She opened her heart to this stupid sheltered fucking idiot, and what was the fucking idiot’s response? “OH, I know that person! As a christian I can’t just stand aside and do nothing!” She was going to meddle. She could have provided an ear, maybe a bit of emotional support, but no. Christians have no fucking sense of boundaries.
So, my semi-GF had to tell her she was ‘lying’ about it, to prevent this fucking stupid, sheltered, mindless little twit from ‘doing her christian duty’ and sticking her fucking pointy nose where it doesn’t belong, and stirring up a bunch of shit from years back.
I hate christianity so much right now. Come back to earth Jesus, so I can crucify you with a chainsaw.
Tony: I don’t have any meaningful words for you, but thank you for sharing your story.
*hugs for Ogvorbis*
*hugs & squeezes for Caine*
*hugs, chocolate and honeybush tea for Tony*
*heap of hugs on the floor for people to wallow in*
And when you’ve made it, don’t forget to eat ;-)
Seconded.
I must confess, I laughed.
Hmmmm. Maybe you’re (micro?)chimeric, and it actually was an ovary?
Bird embryogenesis is different… but… there once was a zebrafinch that had one sex on the left side of its body and the other on the right side. Different karyotypes, different gonads.
From the name, I’d suspect the critter was an equine mammal on one side and an avian on the other. But I’m probably wrong.
TLC, that’s bloody nasty. Do you know yet what’s going to happen next?
Weed Monkey: No, this is sexual abuse from YEARS back. When she was a little kid. And it’s complicated. Her ‘abuser’ wasn’t an adult, but another little girl who was in turn being sexually abused by her incredibly fucked up parents. The Girl has already forgiven her abuser, she understands that it was just a reaction to other abuse, and she’s working her ass off on dealing with it and putting the stuff behind her.
She told her friend, and her friend knew the girl in question, and was going to make a big fucking stink and try to ‘save’ her from her parents or some stupid shit, which means it would have all come back on The Girl, everything she’s worked so hard to deal with ripped up and shoved right back in her face.
It pisses me off to no end, the whole thing. Apparently, the cops had heard four reports of this shit going on, and ‘if they heard another, they were going to do something…’ yeah, because sexually abusing four kids… well… it happens… but five? Can’t have that.
Threadrupt, as usual.
Rev BDC – ouch! double ouch! First for your toe and then for the shoulder. Ugh I hope the shoulder will be better after a rest. (sympathies and grog from a fellow bum shoulder sufferer – ironically, also “discovered” while lying on a couch)
Caine – please no. :( You are one of the voices I tune in to read – have done since day one.
Ogvorbis – Oh no! I can only imagine what a scare that was! I am so happy it was not a heart attack.
keenacat, so glad you are doing better. It sounds like you are far more healthy emotionally than you realize – healthy people can experience excruciating pain, so that is not the tell – it is how they react. I’d say you are doing really well – but heaps o’ hugs going your way, because I know the pain ful waves will be hard for awhile. YOua re going to get through this, though, because you are much stronger than you think!
Tony – I saw PZ’s link and had to go back all the way to read. I saw the FA post and agree with most here – WTF? how about just listening to people who actually experience this garbage and believe them? – your story about your friend M is heartbreaking. Please accept this stranger’s deepest sympathy.
My news: broke a tooth last night and had to see a dentist (first time in this town, and I am phobic about dentists – not because I fear pain (I don’t feel a lot of pain) but because of the shaming and humiliation because of the state of my teeth. The clinic was very kind. I am relieved to say.
Also, got word today that the school the Nifty boys attend – the only non-sectarian school in the entire district (even the public schools – which have been gutted, financially and of teachers- creationsim the whole nine yards – are god-soaked) has fired the best head of school we’ve had in 8 years and hired an explicitly Christian new head. :( This town has an impoversihed public school “system” with a graduation rate far below 50%, it has wealthy, brand new, fortresses of megachurches and attached Christian schools – the town is drowning in religiosity and poverty as the churches and religious schools grow fatter and fatter — yet the one little struggling non-religious school in the region had to become a target for the religious nuttery. I am almost in despair.
I know it is a first world concern, and I apologise because it is a little thing compared to some things that people are dealing with even here – please forgive me. Why couldn’t they leave this one little school – with its real science and its liberal arts alone? I am dreading the fall.
I seriously wonder about doing secular homeschooling, but I fear that I would deprive my children because I am not capable of giving them what they need. :(
TLC, I had no idea, and I’m sorry to have it brought up. But I must say I’m glad she has a friend like you.
@ Tony
Thank you for letting us see this part of you. I wish there was something I could say that would help you. I agree with other commenters that it sounds as if you did provide good space for M to be in, and that he shared a lot of himself with you. I think that was a very good thing for you to have done. Speaking up in his memory is also something good to do, as in admirable.
@ Caine
I also join with the people who hope you will feel refreshed and rested at some point, and will come back. You were one of the first people who spoke to me here, and who always made me feel welcome. I hope the rats and the other positives in your life combine to restore you. I am filling my USB ports with good thoughts, smiles and small happinesses that will weave together to make each day as comfortable as a cashmere blanket. I will miss you, but in a good cause, that is, you restoring yourself.
Gah, that sucks TLC. I suppose I can give half a point to the friend for wanting to do what WOULD have been the right thing….years ago. OK, forget the half. I hope this doesn’t blow up into something major.
————————————————-
I never knew it was possible to depress yourself so easily. Listening to some songs from when I was younger had me nostalgic, and then remembering where I am today made my mood flatline. Sometimes I wonder where the hell that young woman I was in college has gone. The one who was writing like crazy, testing out all sorts of subjects, who could spend a late night eating soup and poring over threads like this one while having a window open to a story in progress at the same time, and another to a discussion on a parkour forum or Pagan forum. She was trying to cram as much of the world as possible into those hours, to analyze and enjoy, to rage against and sorrow with, and she loved every minute of it.
I suppose in a way, she was the free one. I guess it’s easy to feel free when you don’t have to worry about paying for anything, especially college. Still, I’d like to have some semblance of that part of my life back. Even when Dad died, I didn’t feel like I had no time left for writing, or restrictions about what I could write, much less a dearth of ideas to expand on.
Thanks, Weed Monkey. I try. She is truly a strong person and a wonderful mother, and IMO she doesn’t get the respect she deserves from others. Sometimes I think if she could only see herself the way I see her… I dunno where I’m going with that.
Rupture and in airports, but…
Tony, I am so sorry.
Ogvorbis…jeezis! Email me if you want for commiseration and practical advice.
Josh
Rupture?
Cipher, you are right and I am wrong, and I am sorry. I apologize. Your need for clarification was genuine, and valid.
—–
I posted that just before I went out*, and when out I had been querying my own motivations. I have an issue with what I perceive to be pretension, (and it’s my issue, it isn’t necessarily based on reality. I don’t think people actively discussing new rules are doing it out of pretension.) I remember being pretty scathing of the picture of the guy, with bookshelves and the suit and the tie, who was going to ‘fix’ sexism, or something.
Also I often have a sort of Dunkirk Spirit/grit your teeth and get on with it attitude, which stems I suspect more from being raised to never complain or query decisions because 1/ how dare you! and 2/ what would be the point? than any nobleness on my part.
Neither of those attitudes are constructive, nor are they relevant here.
—–
* ‘Out’ was my first visit to a lawyer, to discuss the possibility of a separation. If anyone has advice on therapies/medications to deal with paranoia, I REALLY want to hear them. Paranoia is poison to a relationship, and very, very difficult to live with.
Thanks PTI, but this is also the friend that decided to go all Godly on her ass when The Girl admitted that she’s attracted to women.
This is a stupid homeschooled sheltered little twit. Being homeschooled and sheltered doesn’t make her a twit, it’s the fact that she thinks the Bible gives her some kind of moral authority to pronounce judgements and interfere like that, which makes her an insufferable no-IQ twit.
Tony: Oh, my. I’m terribly sorry.
Og: I concur with ‘Tis in politely requesting you not to have a heart attack.
Gardening stuff: I’ve decided to go with Zephirine Drouhin for my arbor, and Louise Odier for the pink and red border.
Fishing related stuff: Caught a nice 37cm Salmo trutta on a Royal Wulff today, also nearly tripped over a Whitetail Deer fawn on my way to the stream.
Thanks, amblebury. I was feeling bad about snapping at you about it too, but with the whole … Caine leaving and I hadn’t eaten yet today and stuff, I felt like it would be a better idea for me to try to take a break before I came back and said anything further about it. *hugs*
—
Tony, thank you so much for sharing that with us. I’m very sorry for your pain. *hugs* And I’m sorry if that jerk’s behavior caused you to have to relive that.
Sorry, ‘rupt. Fucking autocorrect.
To all:
Thank you so much for the kind words. I hate getting into moods like this. Of course life just happens and sometimes things converge to make an average day turn crappy.
I think I’m finally at a point in my life where I need to seek some help for depression as well. My life since M died has just spiralled so far from where it was 5 years ago; and not in a good way.
I’m going to try and articulate something that may sound suicidal, but I don’t feel like I am. Aside from coming out of the closet 18 years ago, I’ve never had a suicidal thought. BTW, this is a bit long and possibly rambling. I apologize in advance.
There are good days and bad days, but most of the time, my days are filled with more emptiness than I’d prefer and a general feeling of
“what am I doing here/am I taking up space better used by someone else/I need to start *living* and stop existing, but don’t know how/how do I find worth in myself/I don’t want to die, but don’t feel like there’s much to live for either/”
In addition, over the last 2.5 years, I’ve retreated inward, spending *far* less time with friends, virtually stopped going to the gym (I was never a gym rat, but was quite active and tried to lead a fairly healthy lifestyle; when I was employed at TGI Friday’s there was a period for 3 months where every single day at least one guest mentioned that I looked like Vin Diesel), stopped eating (I’m about 165lbs where I used to be 200lbs), and overall just lost ambition/drive to do much (I have always been somewhat lacking in drive and ambition; looking back, I can see that he brought something out a certain drive in me that I’d never possessed and have since lost).
There have been some tremendous bright spots. I have two very dear friends that I live with whom I love so much. I’ve become far more vocal about the shit in the world that pisses me off. I’ve been able to discover a world view that I agree with (I just need to start living up to it). I’ve changed some of my beliefs and sharpened others. I’ve learned much about how to STFU and listen. I lurked around FtB for months before mustering the courage to post anything. That lurking opened my eyes to so much: feminism, sexism, transphobia, the value of science (even if I don’t comprehend many areas, I do recognize how incredibly important the pursuit of knowledge can be), the atheist movement, activism, societal constructs of gender and so much more. I’ve learned that it’s ok to say “I don’t know”. I *know* I’ve gotten better at reading what people say without injecting my biases into their words. I’ve become better at stepping back for a moment and give myself a chance to soak up ideas before spouting off at the mouth. I know there’s more that I’ve learned, but so much of it has come from reading comments or following links provided by people like YOU (if you’re reading this, I’m talking about you). I feel like a slightly better person for having found this worldwide community of individuals.
I’m also extremely proud of my parents. They helped cultivate in me a sense of critical thinking, fostered a home environment where my sister and I could question *anything* without being made to feel stupid, challenged me to think things through, and have always, always been supportive of me (even when we had a falling out after I came out of the closet, they never stopped loving and supporting me). I love them so very much.
–I hope this all comes together in something of a coherent fashion–
Another big factor affecting me:
I was fired last year from my bartending job of 7 years for one guest complaint (I live in FL, where–barring certain fields–you can be fired for pretty much anything at any time). That was a complete shock and came out of left field. While it was frustrating, I walked away with my head high. For one thing, my termination was the idea of only one person, my former general manager. Not only did no other manager back him up, but the owner wasn’t thrilled (I do comprehend why he didn’t have the decision reversed) Though the guest complaint was used as the excuse, I (and pretty much everyone else I’ve talked to) know there was something more to it. In a restaurant of upwards of 150 employees (many of whom I knew) I was (and still am) aware of only 1 individual other than our GM who had a dislike for me. There are extenuating circumstances that inform the decision of my moronic former GM:
Earlier in the year, I made some comments to fellow employees about how I felt the treatment of a good friend of mine (B) was below basic human decency; of course my former GM was the one responsible for said treatment and I think he simply didn’t like the fact that I was expressing dissatisfaction with his performance. B was in a DUI related accident one morning at 4 am. She didn’t get any sleep, didn’t appear to have anything other than scratches and dark puffy eyes, and had *not* been to a hospital. She crashed her car (thankfully she was the only person in the car and no one else was on the road) and totaled it. Guess who made her still come into work the next day at 10-fucking AM? Let’s just say when I came in at 3 pm and found out what happened, I was…livid is too mild. I’m sorry, basic human decency IMHO dictates that under those conditions, she should not have been made to work. She opted not to put up a fuss about it (though she later regretted not immediately going to the doctor, as her nose had been fractured), which is completely her call. My frustration was with GM. Discussing my anger over that situation with coworkers well away from any guests apparently rendered all my years of hard work and service to the company completely moot. You know what though, I didn’t care then and I don’t give a fuck now.
That is not how you treat another human being.
If he’s going to use a guest complaint (it may have been valid, but I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t exactly given all the details; and that’s unfortunate, as I do my level best to ensure guests have a pleasant time) to get rid of me b/c I don’t like how he treats others-he can fuck off. I wouldn’t change my reaction to the way he treats others. I think I have a good degree of empathy for others.
Even though I departed feeling good about myself, it didn’t change the fact that I had to go 5 weeks without a job and had to break down and ask my parents for help to pay basic bills. That lasted until about Christmas, when things started to finally come together financially.
I just realized how cathartic all of that was. I’m not so sad any longer. Thank you to each and every person here (not just Pharyngula, but all over FtB). Oddly enough, even the trolls that have come through here (or the ones imprisoned in TZT) have given me something to chew on.
Also, may I put this here as a balm for the wounded?
A few weeks back someone mentioned the pre-cambrian fossil find at Mistaken POint in NL – I used to pick berries near The Drook in NL and it was a known fossil spot back then by children – though we had no idea how scientifically important they were).
Anyway, a brief little bit of beauty featuring Mistaken POint, The Drook and the fossils.
http://youtu.be/LxFSkBK8Vf4
Oh shit!!! I am sorry about the borked link!!!!
Tony:
Hugs.
Caine:
Be safe. Be yourself.
I really do not plan to. This was a good shot across the bow for me, though.
Tony, *hugs again* You’re not alone. I relate to a lot of the things you’re saying about how you’re feeling. I hope you are able to find help and if you need anything we can help you with I hope you’ll ask.
Also, Og, since I realized I didn’t actually say this, I’ll be really pissed off if your heart chooses to attack you. We’ll have words, your heart and I. Words.
niftyatheist:
thanks for the balm.
Something about the beauty of nature in the video (especially the waves crashing against the rocks) filled me with awe and gave me goose bumps.
*And* made me smile.
It certainly looks like a wonderful place to visit.
Tony #48, I am glad it did what I hoped it would!
Wow niftyathiest, that really is beautiful I love places like that.
Worked for me. I’m embalmed.
No…wait…
Caine: Take as long as you like. Just know that there are people here who will wait for you.
———————————
TLC: *hands “friend” a paper with a big red F on it, with the note “See me after class.”*
———————————
Nifty: Preeeeety. And this is in Newfoundland? *starts figuring out how much it would cast and just what would be a reasonable time to spend there for R&R*
Eh, this was more a case of my heart saying, “Hey, moron, you need to start taking care of me!”
amblebury haha! No, now I don’t want you quite THAT “relaxed”!
Part-time Insomniac – It is a beautiful place – and you really can walk along bluffs and cliffs like that and just feel serenity and the cool sea breezes (sometimes quite stiff breezes, mind, but you can handle that!)
I must say, ever since that older conversation, I’ve had a nice little daydream about bumping into a bunch of Pharyngulites in St. John’s – maybe at a pub downtown (there are dozens, many with live music) – I can just imagine a lot of people here would feel very comfortable there and a visit would be happily memorable.
I have a scientific query I was discussing with The Girl, but it’s kind of gross. I’m going to post it here anyways, so GROSS WARNING:
Beer brewed with ‘Human Yeast’. Would it work?
First, which yeast? If memory sieves, there is more than one species (possibly more than one genus>)
TLC: No, it’s the wrong yeast (not even a yeast, really). Beer is made with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast infections are caused by Candida albicans, which is only distantly related to Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
I generally skim over Walton’s monarchy raves, but this time it sure sounded like he is saying that he’s only into the monarchy for the hats.
Perhaps he has has mistaken “monarchy” for “millinery”?
TLC:
What.
Gross.
No. For all possible definitions of “work”
Well OK then. Glad I asked!
Has anyone seen Louis recently? Last I saw he was getting sucked into an argument with SG on TZT*, but hasn’t seemed to have shown there recently either. Did he decide to flounce and manage to make it stick?
*Or SG was getting sucked into an argument with him. Having not read enough of that particular argument to make a coherent statement about it, I don’t wish to take sides.
niftyatheist:
No need for apologies. While I can’t imagine the frustration you’re going through right now, it’s not a ‘little thing’. You have every right to be frustrated. This is yet one more area that religion just has to bleed into. Why can’t they be content with preaching that crap in churches? Where is the space for the rest of us to live our lives without religious encroachment? Where do we even begin?
It’s not hopeless though. In fact, the hope is right here. I just looked at many examples of hope: in each of the heartfelt, genuine comments everyone here has made.
Being there to listen to others and offer support when requested is *actual* help, versus the crap TLC’s friend is having to deal with:
TLC, I’m sorry your (semi)GF is going through this. It doesn’t sound like she’s going to get the proper emotional support from this christian “best friend”. Please give her my sympathy and best wishes. And I share your antipathy towards Christianity. Right now I’m trying to imagine a Christian reaction to my story. I’m sure there would be some genuine well wishes, but there’s also likely to be far too many “god this, god that”. Remove religion from the equation and it becomes people addressing/helping/supporting people, not people ineffectually praying to an imaginary sky daddy as a meaning of “help”.
Bah. too much stuff, can’t reply.
But human yeast? Ewww… *slowly backs away*
Variance in recipes can be taken too far. I wouldn’t want winemakers to decide that in the absence of noble rot, any old rot will do.
niftyatheist:
I have a friend who is on vacation somewhere in Ireland and she *loves* taking pictures. Shortly after I watched that video you provided, I noticed she had some new ones up on Facebook. Wow. The beauty of nature. Amazing how it can bring you down to Earth and filled with awe, and also make you feel small, but not in an insignificant way.
Oh, and I can’t believe I missed this until just now, but thank you PZ.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
Golden.
Tony: Thanks. I dunno if their ‘friendship’ is gonna last much longer. This friend has shown herself to be worse than useless. I just can’t express how enraged it makes me that this godsoaked little brainwashing victim, with all her homeschooled christing naivete, thinks she’s qualified to make any kind of judgement.
I mean, fuck, I can’t imagine how it felt, for The Girl to have to tell this idiot that she was LYING about her experience, just to prevent her from making it infinitely worse.
#62, Tony, thanks. I can’t agree with you more – the bracing encouragement of reading the kind, thoughtful and often bracing remarks of the horde is one of the things that keeps hope alive for me. I figure if all of these smart, accomplished people are here throwing ideas around fearlessly, then I am not alone – you are not alone – and the thousands (hopefully, millions!) of other silent people who are worried about the damage religion is doing are not alone, either.
I hear Ireland is breathtaking in a similar way to NL – so true about the awe and wonder of just how magnificent this old earth really is!
Can’t touch the yeast question. I just…no…can’t…I…
*Gyeong Hwa peers in.*
*Ogvorbis waves to Gyeong Hwa*
If anyone has a moment (or any interest) in helping me out: someone flogging answer3 in gene3is posted on my blog (Noah’s Ark post – dragged it up from about 6 weeks ago) and threw up the stupid bits about fossils on mountain tops. I’ve read great explanations for the real reason for this (sea beds pushing up to form the mountains, etc), but I am not a scientist – so if anyone has a moment and/or wouldn’t mind, could you post a clear reply there? I’d also like to get rid of the links they left stinking up the place…ugh!
*yells “Gyeong Ha!”*
*Gyeong Hwa waves awkwardly at Ogvorbis*
How have you been?
*waves at Chigau too*
Not bad. The good news is that it wasn’t a heart attack.
Heading off to bed.
Even though I am not a Kings fan, it is always (for me) fun to watch them skate the Stanley Cup!
(If hockey had Scottish roots, would it have been the Stanly Cup?)
Hwa.
Sorry.
I’m, poking with a stick at a virtual keyboard.
Ogvorbis,
That doesn’t sound good. :(
I’ve been okay. Dental problems and such. Been busy calling out radical feminists and other assorted folks.
*SQRRAWK!s at Gyeong Hwa*
In other words, nice to meet you.
Just noticed an email from my local government unit about the water supply. The company they get their water from is changing from chlorine for disinfecting. They say starting tomorrow the water will be just as safe…unless you have certain medical conditions or are a fish living in a aquarium.
So.
Just as safe as the old water.
Nice to meet you too, d(thunk) over d(MQG) = SQRRAWK!
Human yeast beer
Please let us never speak of this again.
dianne I think Louis said he was going away for a few days – to Dorset, perhaps. The thing between him and SGBM was resolved, more or less, last time I looked.
He’d better come back. He promised me a snog.
—–
Gyeong Hwa Pounce!
Hi amblebury!
Gyeong Hwa:
thunk.
just thunk.
The rest is just a shout-out to the mathy.
My 105lbs lb is currently between mrs bdc and myself stretched out with his head on my pillow and hid ack to me pressing up against me trying to take up all of the bed.
And he ate a brand new pair of Carharts today.
Asshole.
His back
iPad typing while clinging to the edge of the bed is tough
but okay, it’s hard to tell which part of my nym is the actual nym.
Thunk it is. :)
There are a lot new
facesnyms here.Laughing Coyote, that situation with your girl friend is awful. The thought of her having to say she “lied” to prevent further harm is just awful. :(
LOL! I was picturing that already! Also I assume the 105lb lb is a dog of some sort? :D
There. Integrating my nym reduces confusion. :p
Damn. This thread moves too fast. Stupid work, interfering with me being able to keep up.
Ogvorbis:
Wow. I’m scared just from your description. Glad it wasn’t a heart attack.
Caine:
Sorry to see you go. Take the time that you need. We’ll be here when you get back. In the meantime, I expect regular rat shenanigans updates on your blog! :)
Tony:
Thanks so much for sharing your story. I know it must have been very hard to write, but I’m glad you did.
Calculus. . .
Gyeong Hwa:
You’re back! Yay!
Bah.
Threadrupt.
Have been at a wedding. Was nice. Lots of food (if I say “Cantonese wedding banquet,” will enough people get the reference to know what I mean by “lots?”)
Boss called me a “deluded idiot” today.
Pretty sure he’s looking for excuses to fire me. FUCK.
105 lbs chocolate lap
Snoring chocolate lab
Gyeong Hwa:
Hehehehehhe… *evil laugh*.
Esteleth: Oh, ouch.
Esteleth, OMGs! Your boss said that? WTF?!
Upon reflection, he might not. If I leave, he loses the grant that is tied to me. Since I am committed to doing the work I was hired to do (even if I don’t like it, or him all that much), his bluster about how there are 500 qualified applicants for every position in the field means exactly nothing.
Still, it is a bit galling.
RBDC Awwww…love labs. But ha, you and Mrs BDC clinging to the edges of the bed is a priceless image!
Rev. BDC: And that is the reason why I have an 8-pound dog. She’s as dumb as a bag of hammers, but she’s easily moveable when she’s in the way.
thunk, that IS easier to figure out!
No no. She has plenty of room.
I on the overhand am about to go into hand to dog combat with an immovable 105 lbs of snoring brown fur.
Other hand
myeck waters
re:water
Uh. Yay?
Good! (and I agree it is galling – it is completely inappropriate, too! what a jerk!)
Boss is a bit of a woo-meister too.
Has fallen hard for the fallacy that “Recognized Expert in My Field Makes Me an Expert In That One Too.”
Have bitten my tongue. Think that maybe he’s noticed?
Esteleth, that raving bloody galah is still at it?
Jerk. Anyone can make a mistake, even a few. But this guy’s developed a pattern of ass-hattery.
Esteleth:
That sucks. I take it that you’re in an academic setting? I found myself in a similar situation to yours some years ago. From my experience, it sucked to hear that from my boss, but knowing that xe couldn’t really do anything about did give me a perverse sort of calm.
Caine, I hope you will be back soon. I will miss you very much. *hugs*
Rev, sorry about your shoulder. I hope your recovery is a prompt one.
Ogvorbis, so glad it wasn’t a heart attack. And please take good care of yourself.
Tony, my condolences. Thank you for sharing. *hugs*
Gyeong Hwa, welcome back!
Esteleth, *hugs* Good luck.
Context of the “deluded idiot” comment:
He was bemoaning the current state of science funding in the US and elsewhere. Mentioned the “unlikely” event that Obama is re-elected, and the “infinitesimal” odds of an Obama victory coupled with the Dems taking the Congress. Declared that science is effectively dead. I – while admitting that things are pretty shitty – questioned the absolute certainty of the doom and gloom.
Cue “deluded idiot.”
It’s nice to be back all.
Cue “yep, he’s a tosser all right.”
niftyatheist:
QFT!
To any of the lurkers out there:
When the time is right, I hope you’ll join us in the lounge
Hmmm, I wonder if PZ has a bar in here…
(for some reason, *now* it feels like kumbaya time)
Welcome! Grab a chair. Have a drink.
Oh I could use a drink. I think I lost a tumblr follower because they think I hate white people. >.<
I’m in a horrible, hateful, vile mood. I wasn’t gonna post about it here, but absolutely nothing is making it go away.
I’m seriously so pissed off right now. Oozing sweat, body temperature up several degrees, the whole damn thing. There’s no rational reason for me to be this pissed off (or maybe there are a million), I just am. I can’t stand this shit. The whole physiological and mental thing.
NOTHING is making it go away.
@Sili, in re your question on the previous thread:
I’m mostly a lurker on FTB. I don’t really even have time to read comments on most of these blogs, much less get involved in the discussions myself, and y’all do such a good job taking apart nonsense anyway that I don’t feel like my input would be of much use. But once in a while I run across a neglected bit of mess, like the recent AAA episode, and then I try to do my part.
AAA is actually a pretty good podcast most of the time. I first listened to them when they had PZ on to debate Greg Epstein back in February, and they’ve gotten some unusual guests on there since then that I haven’t heard elsewhere on my podcast circuit (such as Alain de Botton, of whom they actually got to ask some fairly probing questions, the answers to which were rather illuminating to hear (although not illuminating in de Botton’s favor…)). They’re maybe a little more on the nicey-nice side than I usually prefer, but I’ve generally felt like they try to be reasonably thoughtful and balanced about it as opposed to just being just knee-jerk fearful of being forceful about their atheism like some others are.
So I really hate to see them misreading this sexism-in-skepticism issue so badly, and I’d like to think that they might be teachable. Despite the way certain unpleasant folks have been stinking up the comment thread over there, the AAA folks *do* at least seem to know better than to welcome *that* kind of support (if you read the cast members’ comments), which gives me some hope.
Hey Gyeong Hwa! Here, how about some white rum and grapefruit juice?
Perhaps it’s time to adapt my well-worn saying, “I don’t hate men, I hate assholes. Apparently you think they are synonymous.”
Esteleth, that sucks. I’ve been so fortunate in that I’ve had mostly great bosses throughout my working life. It makes such a huge difference.
I’ve only had one good set of employers. The rest, everyone from Rick Fucking Fast and his fucking woodmill to ‘Quadri Projects’ has treated me no better than a donkey to be sent to the metaphorical unemployment glue-factory when they’re done with my services.
They all lied, and told me if I worked hard I’d have a future there. I was always stupid enough to work hard and dilligently, while other employees played fiddly-fuck all day long. Won’t be making that mistake again, unless it’s something I love like knives.
I can’t do it again. Now that I recognize the lies, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop myself from blowing the fuck up in their faces once it’s past their lips. Smug, well-off privileged assholes holding my potential livelihood in their grubby hands… my hatred for them knows literally no boundaries.
One of the worst was this stupid fuck who ran a hedging cedar harvesting business. He looked like a human version of the ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ from that animated Disney version of Robin Hood, and had pretty much the exact same personality. The idiot he hired nearly cut me in half once, and I still kick myself for not dragging him out of the harvester and demanding he be fired on the spot. The boss loved that guy, because he was a pathetic ass-licking toady, and those are the only people that boss respected.
I’ve actually said that in so many words. I told them it was they who assume racism, and white supremacy is essential to all white people. But it’s annoying because they’re making the argument about them and their feelings instead of attacking the issue at hand. (and if they actually bothered to look through my archive they know it (that I hate white people) is blatantly untrue.)
Niftyatheist:
True, but I forgot the constant.
@ Tony
Sending you warm hugz across the vast reaches of cyberspace.
@ Caine
I’d also like to join those wishing you back soon.
@ Ogg
Look after yourself damnit!!!
@ Gwong Hwa
*waves*
Where dja been?
@Tony
I know I’m a bit late to the party, but… Ouch. Such a beautiful story about your friend that should’ve been one of healing and hope – and the way it was all past tense-ified was making me ache even before the end.
Hope you’re holding together,
-Other Dave B.
@ thunk
Explain now, or this rubber chicken gets it…
PET, tumblr, and FSTDT mostly.
@theophontes
It is a calculus joke. Although I don’t see why integrating SQRRAWK! over little piece MQG gets me a thunk.
I’ll have my dental hygienist evaluate any calculus jokes before I’ll make an ass out of myself again
… oh
V. good, Weed Monkey ;)
TLC: Amongst other things, I have been an employment counsellor since 1988. It’s always upsetting for me to hear of experiences like yours; I know all too well how many terrible, awful human beings out there who are bosses.
But!
For the good news!
You should try to choose your boss with the same care that you would choose your spouse. Remember, you will have to spend 40 or more hours a week beside them, and/or under their control. So, (concrete suggestion here) talk to all of your friends about their bosses, and other bosses they know, or have heard of. Then go out approach directly the good ones.
Good luck.
Tony: My father is 91. He was in WWII for 7 years of his life, from age 17 to age 24, including 11 months recovering from being shot through the head. Even now, he can’t stand to watch war movies. My condolences, and kudos for being the friend that M needed.
Bad News: The only friends I have left in this town are unemployed. The rest all moved on to greener pastures.
Good news is this Triumph program thingie I just heard about. http://triumphvocational.com/Locations/Fraser_Valley_Contact.html
I dunno if it’ll work for me or not, but I might try it.
I hate going to bed!
/toddler
Hey y’all!
I’m back home from a week in the American southwest desert country for a conference. Oh, lord it was hot.
I’m totes behind on everything, including you, my tentacled colleagues. Several of you are owed emails (and even some snail mail—how awesome, huh?). All in good time. After a long, long sleep. And much administrative catch-up tedium.
A few important housekeeping matters:
Ogvorbis—I think I said so before (was too drunk celebrating end-of-business to remember) you’re welcome to email spokesgay at gmail if you’d like any recipes/tips for making adjusting to heart disease less hellish.
Tony—As you know many of the Horde suffer from depression and related mental problems. You’re in good company. Should you wish to chat about ways to deal with it with someone who’s been through it (this is an offer, not an obligation on your part) you may also email me.
Gyeong— PIKACHU!!!!!!!!
There was some loveliness when I returned home tonight at 1 a.m.:
1. Thank fuck I was smart enough to have some liquor in the house.
2. My new old-school shaving kit was waiting for me! Disposable costly 26-blade drugstore bullshit razors can suck it from now on.
Thank you for sharing that with us, Tony. Tough to read but beautiful.
Okay, I want to run this by you all. Here’s my (pending flounce-sticking) final salvo at an anti-choicer:
Would it be just as accurate if I changed “pro-choice” to “liberalism” (or, better yet, “socialism” or “communism” or “anarchism” or “anti-capitalism”) for use against conservatives/”centrists” and libertarians?
—
TLC, seriously, we need to get together and have some joints and beers on me. And possibly rant at each other about how no one knows how fucking backwards the Valley is because it’s in Canada so it can’t be that bad. (Tell that to the guy who can walk ten minutes from his house and press his nose up against the window of Focus on the Family Canada’s bookstore, with Dobson’s work in plain view…)
Josh: Very classy.
I only shave with electric razors.
1, anything else scratches my skin too much,
and 2, I don’t like how I look without a bit of stubble.
Good morning
NIfty
That’s not a “first world problem”, that’s a real concern about the education of your boys. Since you probably don’t belong to the 1% either, that’s the only capital they can get.
Hope you can at least give them an extra hand educationwise at home.
Tony
*bacon chocolate hugs*
That’s a lot of shit you’ve been going through.
If you can get help (I understand that this is easier said than done in your country of no health-insurance), do so. You don’t have to fel suicidal to be “entitled” to help, you’re not weak for needing it. Your brain’s an organ like your stomach and if it’s giving you trouble something should be done.
BTW, not feeling suicidal but let me guess, you’d probably not mind if you just didn’t wake up again tomotrrow? And if I’m right, guess how I know. *moa hugs*
TLC
That’s shit. Why is it still the victims of abuse who are made to suffer again and again? And then people wonder why victims don’t speak up.
esteleth
For that your boss should be fired, not you
Sounds like a plan! Email? (my email address is really stupid.)
Giliell: It’s pure shit. I’m worried about her tonight, you know? She was beginning to have a panic attack a little while ago on the phone. We were talking about my stupid issues and she just started having an attack… and was like “I’m sorry, I was supposed to be helping you but now I’m just being selfish tonight…”
Of course it’s not selfish of her. I told her as much, told her that I’d do anything I could to be supportive, but she said she just needs to go to bed. But that’s my first time hearing her have a panic attack. It didn’t sound good.
In other bad news, apparently all of Tetrapod Zoology v2 has been deleted?
As a Darren Naish fanatic, I find this unacceptable.
@ niftyatheist #30, :(((.
Maybe the only practicable option is to stick with the current school but provide lots of conversation about critical thinking at home (which you clearly do anyway)? Providing homeschooling must be (literally (literally literally, this time)) a full-time job and one that not many of us have the right combination of time and skills and individual characteristics to provide (hell I know I could never cope. Years of copious discussing-and-helping-with-homework have shown me that). And if even the current school now gets godsoaked, is/are the youngest nifty/ies old enough to use it as an object lesson? (I think you may have mentioned their ages, but my memory is lousy) I feel for you on that front, though, it’s such an imposition and so bloody unnecessary … ::fumes::. We had little option but to use a CofE primary school for both Spawn, though fortunate in that there were/are non-denominational secondary schools for both. (last ever GCSE exam starts in just over an hour … almost done with xams for this year at least!).
My sympathies for the teeth also!
TLC, that must have been fucking appalling for her. The arrogance of the godbotter, thinking that their “help” outweighs what she actually wants and needs … argh. But I hope you manage to get your equanimity back; wouldn’t want the rage (however justified) to be bad for your health!
For Caine (publicly): An appropriatish song.
Here’s to a classy dismount.
Opposablethumbs: Not that I’m not enraged about that shit… but I was pissed off about lots of things tonight. God damn, I haven’t felt that pissed since I was a teenager.
But rage has mostly been replaced by tiredness and concern now.
TLC, Setar, I live in Vancouver. And I currently have a client in Surrey and another in Abbotsford. Email me, we can meet, have a jaw, and maybe I can point you in a good direction.
So how do I post my email addy discretely (not to attract trolls or anything)?
Giliell:
ok, first ‘bacon chocolate’? Never tried that. I do like bacon (a little closer to love) and I do like chocolate (the semi sweet kind). I’ve never mixed the two together. It sounds…interesting. Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds rather tasty mixing the saltiness of bacon with the sweetness of semi sweet chocolate. Perhaps peppered bacon.
Yum!
Second, thank you.
Third, there have been times its briefly crossed my mind [not minding NOT waking up in the morning]. When I say briefly though, it’s a shorter span of time than the few minutes I contemplated suicide years ago after coming out.
By the way, thank you for the reminder of seeking help =/= being weak. As I sit here, I think about all the times that people turned to me at my last job (usually for information, sometimes for heavy lifting, occasionally for gym related stuff). Or the times I didn’t drink b/c I wanted to be the responsible one to get everyone home. Or the times I would take a trip with a bunch of friends, and be the one coordinating a lot of the stuff. I’ve never wanted to be a leader, a boss, the guy in charge. Yet I’ve taken the role several times in the past. It’s usually when no one else stood up (or when everyone did and it got to be a mass of chaos). In a recent conversation about people asking for help when they need it, I told my current General Manager [one of the best managers I’ve ever worked for and someone I have come to respect more and more as time passes-and I’ve conveyed that to him, other employees and the owner] that I am the type of person to ask for help when I need it. Am I though?
I guess it depends on the situation. I wonder if some of the characteristics people see in me (usually ones I’m not comfortable accepting) *have* rubbed off on me to some extent. Is there a part of me that thinks I’m supposed to be the strong one?
Hmmm, you’ve got me thinking. I appreciate that. I hope you (and everyone else) has a great day/night. I’m off to bed.
Hello Josh! :D
Hairhead and Setar: What the fuck, I ain’t afraid of trolls.
My email is fart in my mouth at live dot ca (with all underscores)
Yeah, I made it when I was a young immature teenager, mostly because I didn’t want a stupid ‘randomword6969@’ email address.
Both of you feel free to email me.
KG, last thread:
Au contraire. Although it’s true that the Crown is legally a separate entity from the Queen personally, and that “the Crown” is in some senses the personification of the state (although it’s more complicated than that), the Crown Estate revenues do traditionally belong to the monarch personally. Every monarch since George III has voluntarily given up his or her Crown Estate revenues to the Treasury, in exchange for fixed annual sums from Parliament. In effect, it’s a bargain between monarch and Parliament; the Treasury gets the Crown Estate revenues, and, in return, Parliament apportions funds from the Treasury (which are much less than the Crown Estate revenues; until its abolition last year, the Civil List was fixed at £7.9 million) to fund the official expenditures of the monarchy. And it’s a bargain in which Parliament, not the monarch, gets by far the best of the deal.
Actually, she keeps a pretty demanding schedule for an 86-year-old woman. A life of constant public appearances is not easy, and nor is the constant media scrutiny that goes with it.
As a vegetarian, I can’t endorse this proposal…
Really? Millions of these animals get their bollocks removed every year, and in the case of some of them (dogs), it’s generally ‘good’ for them.
Nothing unethical about recycling!
Though, I have heard that elephants can’t really be neutered easily owing to their internal testicles.
*Unlurking*
@Caine Nooooooooo, please be safe and come back soon
@Og OMG look after yourself
@Tony I feel your pain ( a long story….maybe later)
Love and hugs to all
*relurking*
Bahaha. I live in Langley, if you don’t know where Focus on the Family Canada is headquartered :P
My email is areyoulistening at gmail. Email me, I’m bad at these greeting and conversation starting things (and am half the time too distracted by my nightly roll of articles to open up my gmail).
Setar: Email sent.
Tony
I think the bacon chocolate is something that solely exists on TET, maybe it’s been exported to TZT, too.
BTW, you sound like me. Better said, you sound like me before I noticed that fuckfuckfuck I need help.
To be the one who somehow finds herself in charge (OK, I actually don’t mind that much, but sometimes it would be nice to have a break), who’ll take care, respect other people’s needs and boundaries and end up with pretty little of that myself. Oh, and I would have told you that of course I’m asking for help. With heavy lifting and such. But much like Just a Lurker who dresses up breaks for herself as treats for the little one I would not ask anybody to give me a hand because I just need a break. It’s not that bad, I can manage…
In short, I’m the good friend you can call at 3am but who lets you sleep through the night because my stuff can never be as important as your sleep.
To be the one who does/cares/manages became so much part of myself that the idea of not being able to threatened me a lot.
Other people’s ideas about us do rub off, especially if they’re combined with praise.
Good night!
TLC
I can imagine that. I hope she can calm down, but I’m sure that you’ll be there for her.
Cipher
Big hugs for you. I understand that this time on TET/TZT must be very stressfull for you.
+++++
Mythcommunication, we haz it.
This morning #1 started to cry and said that I had earned it her. If you’re wondering what that means, it’s not that I’ve suddenly forgotten how English works. It’s what she said in German and it doesn’t make sense. After some questioning I found out that I had put her T-shirt onto the chair instead of the bed. And that was a horrible deed.
How I was supposed to know that the shirt must be put onto the bed and not the chair is a mystery to me, but it was my fault…
Speaking of communication from little kids, I think THe Babby is communicating all too well.
Since I’ve taught her what farts are, she now, at 2, announces to us every time she farts. “I farted” followed by a solemn nod. I personally find it hilarious and impressive, but I’m sure other adults would be mortified.
Less adorably, she’s developed a bit of a domineering attitude. I mean, yeah, ‘terrible twos’ and all that, but she’s got a bit of a rude streak. And she kind of mocks the idea of time-outs… if threatened with one she’ll often run to the time-out spot on her own and sit there laughing at us. She actually mocks lots of things- from calling her mom ‘Bum!’ once, to spitting on her auntie multiple times, to ordering me around (and me getting yelled at for listening to her…)
I expect a lot of people around here (both with and without Spawn) are wiser about this than I am, but it’s good for Teh Babby as well as for everyone else to insist that everyone in the household is important and gets respected and has wants and needs etc. – not just her. Easier said than done, I know … every person is different, and maybe we were a bit lucky because I don’t remember there being “terrible twos” – well SonSpawn had/has severe language-and-communication delay and disorder so it was more a case of “bloody terrible entire early childhood”, but that’s a bit different. Be that as it may, we generally just tried to treat the situation as one in which we-love-you-unconditionally-and-yet-at-the-same-time-it’s-not-always-all-about-you. Or something like that. Ah, hell, you know – loving, not spoiling. That kind of thing. Dunno, but they’ve always been really good at understanding they don’t always get everything they want. (though of course I may be suppressing some memories there …)
Yeah, I’ll be the second to admit that I spoil her a bit (second, only because her mother pointed it out first.)
We make her say sorry for that stuff, and we make it clear that throwing toys at people and stuff like that is not cool.
Part of it is that the rest of the family kinda spoils her too. It’s also just an instinctive reaction to get out of her way when she says “MOOOVE!”, for instance, but now I try to get her to say ‘excuse me’ before I do what she says.
Oh, and I make no apology for laughing when she says ‘I farted.’ It’s just so intensely adorable. And when I ask her if it was a good one, she always nods and says ‘yep’.
Farts are a natural (and hilarious) bodily function and I won’t shame her for being frank.
TLC: Sorry if this is reinforcing gender roles, but don’t you think that “Frank” is an inappropriate name for a girl?
(Yeah, I can be rather childish sometimes. :-)
Considering Spanish history, it would be worse to name her “Franco”!
birgerjohansson, Francisco Franco might have been what he was, but many people still think he did pretty well by Spain.
(Even if he was a true dyed-in-the-wool murderous Catholic asshole, he was a dedicated one.
A bit like Walton’s pride and joy, ol’ Lizzy, in that last respect)
—
Oh hai, Walton.
I remember your reaction immediately following the last UK election.
(How’s it working for you?)
TLC
I can top that! For some time both kids loudly announced to the world when we farted. Mummy did a fart is not something you want to hear shouted through the restaurant, only to be topped by “Do you wear a bra/undies?”
As for terrible twos, yeah, we haz them, too.
And with the Little One you really notice that she’s the second child and used to taking a stand for her stuff. So it happens that when I confiscate a pencil from her for drawing on things that are not blocks, I will lift a pencil with a kid still firmly attached.
And she’ll throw a tantrum when she is finally detached.
On the other hand she’s the sweetest and most snuggly kid ever and it’s both hard and incredibly important not to let her get away with it. I sometimes find myself giving in, not scolding her, being soft on her in situations where I would not do so with #1 because the little monster has her arms wrapped around my neck and says “I love you sooooooo much”.
As for politeness: You can overdo that, too.
The little one will politely decline your invitation to get the bloody fuck over here to let me put on those damn shoes (not the actual language used).
+++++
That’s kind of the same type of people who’ll tell you that measles aren’t dangerous because they survived them…
And anyone who blames Franco needs to read Homage to Catalonia, where George Orwell makes it blatantly obvious that the Loyalists had the Spanish Civil War won but for all the foreign powers backing the PSUC, who didn’t want to arm the POUM or CNT-FAI too much because — despite how those parties’ respective militias held wonderful strategic positions and could have easily pushed forward with enough supplies — both those parties were decidedly anti-capitalist, and had actually established collectivization in the areas they controlled -and- their militias. Worse yet, it was working, and we can’t have that now can we.
The blame for Franco rests solely on the shoulders of the Loyalists’ foreign backers, who were too greedy and/or ideologically blinded to go about actually winning the Spanish Civil War.
I’ve begun to read American Apartheid by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton. It’s pretty interesting so far, though I’m only on chapter 2. It’s about how racial segregation in America is the cause and continuation of the black underclass. One part that made me cringe in a “yea, that’s totally right way is this:”
Badly. This government is awful.
I’m probably voting Green Party in 2015. But really, I’d say British “democracy” is broken.
Kat,
That brings to mind a Chris Rock joke about how he lived in the same neighborhood as white dentists– he had to become internationally famous before he could move into a fancy, upscale community, whereas white people can do it by just having a regular job.
Anyway, goodmorning everyone! I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve right now ‘cos tomorrow morning I’ll find out if Darkfetus is girltype or boytype! Eeeee!
(Also, I’m wearing my “The Dude abides” shirt at work, which always makes for a good day.)
There are only three things I can think of that the current Government has done/is planning to do that are worthwhile.
1. Abolishing plans for ID cards.
2. Reforming the libel laws.
3. Introducing same-sex marriage as opposed to civil partnerships.
The latter two are subject to consultation at the moment. The CofE has decided to emulate the RCC in plumbing the depths of bigotry and has released a report condemning plans to introduce same-sex marriage on same grounds the RCC has, namely gays cannot have children.
@Audley:
Here’s a part from slightly later that also made me cringe:
It’s like we passed a few laws that were supposed to fix the problem, then completely ignored the fact they never solved the problem – and in fact in several cases made the problem much worse.
Matt,
Jesus Christ. Is the CofE against childfree couples, too? Are they out there banging the “all sex should be procreative sex” drum?
(Never mind that same sex couples do have children.)
Walton, bit of a shame that I can’t comfort you in that regard.
I hope you know I was alluding to those you might have thought too cynical, back in the day (KG for one).
You are still young (that was the first election cycle you could vote on) but no longer a pup, and I truly say may your idealism never die, but may your knowledge-base and experience ever grow.
I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your academic achievements so far, and counsel you not to despair as to future outcomes — providence is not to be discounted.
(BTW, Paladins have high charisma, you not least)
Kat,
So, in short “white flight” actually happens? Color me shocked.
Apparently a Dingo really did eat her baby.
Matt Penfold:
Oh, but there’s more to it than that. Allow me to summarise the CofE’s objection:
“If you [the state] allow gays to marry in secular ceremonies, some of them will want a CofE ceremony instead! And they might go to court for this right, under human rights legislation! What if they won? Waaaah! So we need you to continue denying their human rights!”
Yes, it really is that stupid. But then look at this quote from a CofE bishop:
Emphasis added. Yes, he really does seem to be suggesting that teh ghey will threaten straight marriages.
Pikachuuuu!!!!! Good to see you!
Tony, I can only add to the chorus of thanks for sharing and sadness for the story.
Crap, I’m exhausted and it’s not even 8:30 yet. I had to cook pancakes for breakfast because there wasn’t anything to eat (so they said), I had to cook my lunch because I thought I still had leftovers but didn’t and am determined to eat all the vegetables this week, it was one of those scrounge around in the clean laundry by the dryer for clothes days, and I’m almost a half hour late leaving from my usual time and still have to force myself to stop along the way to work for an exercise walk, which I started last month and am determined to keep doing. But all I want to do is sit. (whine) I can’t wait until the kids are out of school and I just have to get myself ready in the morning for a couple of months.
Audley:
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Actually, I think you’re misremembering Orwell slightly, in that the only significant foreign backer of the antifascists (that’s a lot more accurate than “Loyalists”!) was Stalin – who did indeed insist on all the arms going to the PSUC, and later on the suppression of the POUM and the breakup of the CNT/FAI militias. Orwell remarks that apart from Stalin, only Mexico gave a bit of aid, but Britain and France, which could indeed have made all the difference forbade the supply of arms to either side in a pseudo-neutrality that gave Franco victory. Franco had considerable support from Mussolini and Hitler, so if non-Spaniards are to be blamed, they surely come top of the list. As for the French and British motives, for the French, Léon Blum, the socialist premier at the outbreak of the war, was not willing to break with his centrist allies to support the Spanish Republic; while the British Tory government probably preferred a fascist victory to one of the left.
Tony, I haven’t been commenting here much while you have been, but I’ll add my sympathies. Likewise keenacat – I hope things continue to improve for you.
Moggie,
You are out of your fucking element!
[belated, but heartfelt]
Tony, I too felt moved by your testimonial to M.
(And I too, though I’m but someone on the internet, feel you’ve pretty much described symptomatic depression.
Please be kind to yourself!)
Thanks for bringing it to my attention – I haven’t read the book (though I’d like to), but it sounds like something I’d like to blog about.
(I need to get back into blogging. I haven’t written anything on my blog for weeks, and my only remaining reader is Piltdown, with whom I’ve been engaged in a long-running argument about immigration for the last year or so.)
Thank you.
So while you’re still unaware, another naming suggestion, apropos of being in the process of reading The Ruby in the Smoke. If it’s a girl, name her Veronica Beatrice, but call her Sally. Just too bad that Darkheart is not your real surname, or is it? Just think how awesome “Sally Darkheart” would sound.
Well think of it this way: you’re performing a valuable public service by keeping Piltdown from annoying other people!
SQB,
I like Sally, but sadly Veronica has already been taken in my family.
(Sadly, my surname is not nearly as cool as Darkheart.)
Love the book! And the other three.
Audley
Good luck for tomotrrow. some of the little buggers are just not cooperative :)
Warning : links to Friendly Atheist
In answer to Hemant Mehta’s challenge to progressive Christians to say that being in a gay relationship is not a sin (link), a Christian gives her answer:
A Christian Urges Atheists To Not Make it Harder for Her Side To Support the LGBT Community
Nice, it’s atheists’ fault that Christians don’t want to give up on their bigotry.
We should be more accepting and nice to progressive Christians. Poor things are having such a hard time stating their true feelings and atheists are just making it harder. It’s not easy not being a bigot. They need our support and compassion in these difficult times. Oh, wait, shouldn’t this be about supporting the LGBT community? Nah, we should take care of the fee fees of important people first (Christians, in case anyone wondered).
Beatrice,
Bah.
So very disingenous, that!
At least in the case of Catholics, I know damn well that supporting equality goes against the faith (note: no scare quotes) because the tenets of this faith are detailed in the bloody Catechism.
(It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact)
Giliell,
Darkfetus moves a lot, so hopefully that will correlate into showing off the junk! :D
Argh! Life! It keeps happening and taking me away abruptly! Sorry to anyone who replied to me last night and got no response. Mr Nifty is out of town and one boy was under the weather with the stomach issue we are shortly seeing the doctor for.
TLC #119 (hugs) if welcome – I hear you on the mind/body reaction thing and UGH it stinks. I see downthread that you were feeling calmer after, but I’m sending these virtual hugs now so you can cash them in later as needed.
Sallystrange, this is the perfect response. I will try to remember this one (and substitute the appropriate stereotype as necessary).
TLC 123 – employers :( I find it applies to any category of people who have power over other people – professionals, “leaders”, doctors, etc. The apparent human urge to lord it over others can really get you down.
thunk, I will have to refer your comment to my son, the math whiz, for deconstructing. LOL!
theophontes 128 LOL!! (one of the nifty dottirs has a rubber chicken and gave one to a friend for a grad present)
Josh 137 – HI! Welcome back! No more autocorrected posts from airports and similar! I can’t believe you are already thinking of the admin duties you’ve so willingly taken on – you are a good man, Josh Spokesgay! (btw,Mr Nifty switched to a similar shaving kit recently and ooohhhhh myyyyy! baby smooth skin!)
Setar, perfect conclusion of an argument that sounding like it had reached the end of the line. I always figure those discussions may never make a difference to the fuckwits but in a public setting, other people (silent readers, for instance) can benefit from you sticking it out and concluding with such elegant and truthful precision. bravo!
Uh Oh, have to finish catching up later – time to go to boys’ doctor (cringe). then dentist (cringe x 2)
Good day to all!
Audley: yes, Sally! My late mother’s name. If you name her Sally, I’ll shower her with gifts, bacon and chocolate (and booze later on)!
—
Hi all! Back at the cottage from two days in the big smoke – with a bottle of gin. This is not going to end well, but I don’t care, because summer.
TLC:
My child when through a phase like that at around two. And yes I, the proud Daddy, spoiled her. How could I not? But for me at least the problem was self correcting.
Now that my daughter is 4 bad behaviour that was tolerable at 2 has long since lost its charm. And the level of discipline I’m willing to provide has grown accordingly. The hardest part for me was to remain steadfast in any increase in boundaries in the face on uncomprehending tears. Fortunately she’s a pretty good kid and after initial resistance to any change it quickly becomes the new standard.
It helped me, her not so much, to always, always, always explain the reason for a change. By verbalising it I made sure I’d thought it through enough to make sense to me. I also see it as practice for the future when she’s developed enough to have a rational understanding of these things. I try and start as I mean to go on, and in the future I’m going to be expecting her to provide reasons for her actions and requests so I had better point the way by giving mine.
On another topic: my mother lives in Sechelt. I’ve got to say that part of the world is really strange politically. It seems to be a 60/40 mix of right wing idiots and newage idiots.
Audley:
If you’re planing on naming your child with a traditional name I’d suggest that you don’t do what we did. Our list was 10 names at the time of her birth, 5 girl, 5 boy. We’d decided that it would be a traditional name spelled traditionally. Despite that the girl list was 4 traditional names and one that my wife had made up in her teens, a combination of two names of people she loved.
As my wife was being stitched up (emergency c-section) I was out in the hall holding my new daughter in my arms for the first time. I had to name her that unique name. There was no other choice that fit the uniqueness of the situation and the uniqueness of that little proto-human. Fortunately my wife agreed and so we both share the blame for a lifetime of explanations that my poor daughter is going to have to give out. :)
Regarding names: Shelob?
or (whatever “Grendel’s mother” is in old Norse). I believe in names that will scare off bullies.
Or maybe “Hypatia”, the name of the last leader of the great library of Alexandria? That will scare the snake-handling patriarchs silly.
The Germans usually have a word for everything, so if there is a word for “goblet made of skull of slain enemy” it would make a nice name.
Just think how awesome “Sally Darkheart” would sound.
Sally Darkheart could be her Spitzname* for when she gets involved in the underground or becomes a spy or opens a detective agency. She can be Bea Reallastname in ordinary life and Sally Darkheart when a Darkheart is called for.
*Fuck it, where did the English for Spitzname go? I’m sure I had it right here in my broca’s area a minute ago…
Caine:
Uhm, what?
I hope you’re not gone long, Caine. You are and intrinsic part of the Pharyngula I know and love. I understand your decision, and I wish you peace and joy as a result.
But I’m gonna miss you.
Oh, and I’ll also suggest naming a girl Ruth but calling her Nancy. ‘Cause you know, pirates are ruthless. (Credit to Arthur Ransome and apologies to everyone else)
The Germans usually have a word for everything, so if there is a word for “goblet made of skull of slain enemy” it would make a nice name.
Gefallenfeindschaedeltasse? Probably no native speaker in his or her right mind would ever consider putting the phrase together like that, but I think I got all the concepts in.
FossilFishy @194: childhood-me thanks you for explaining things to your kid. That was a source of a great deal of frustration for me, when my father wouldn’t tell me why; I was just a curious kid and he wouldn’t answer! He very much subscribed to the school of thought that says “you’re just a dumb young thing and I MADE YOU, I don’t have to explain myself to you.” There were several times when I got punished and literally had no idea what for; he would say “you know what you did” but if I asked after that it just made the punishment worse. Anyway, I’m not a parent myself but I know that what you’re doing would have made my childhood much happier.
Gotta love when friends go hyper-nerd on you, to the point of acting like assholes. I was playing Mass Effect MP with a couple of friends last night, and after an hour or two I remembered that there was a hockey game and LA was probably going to win the Cup. I wanted to see that, so I told the friends I was going to turn off the Xbox. One of them acted the way you’d expect a person to act (i.e. she went right on playing the game because who cares) and the other took at as some kind of slight against him.
Apparently it’s a choice between video games and real-life sports; you have to pick one and stick with it and there’s certainly no room for overlap. I don’t even watch sports very much; basically just hockey, soccer, and rugby when they’re on (which isn’t very much in the South).
It’s often said that, years from now when the fight over gay marriage is just a memory, Christian churches will claim they supported gay rights all along. Well, it’s already happening, and at least one CofE cleric is not afraid to point that out:
Emphasis added. Yep, the church fought against civil partnerships, but now tries to whitewash that away.
My dog died last night
Mostly threadrupt, but I thought I saw Anna C. Hanna’s name up there. So y’all know, over in Ask an Atheist comments she’s single-handedly taking on the ERV slander crew – many of the old familiar names are there in full voice.
Stephanie was actually named in the podcast and called in. So was Ophelia.
https://proxy.freethought.online/almostdiamonds/2012/06/11/the-problem-of-dogmatic-feminism/
https://proxy.freethought.online/butterfliesandwheels/2012/06/both-sides/
Ing, I’m so sorry.
Oh no, Ing. I’m so sorry.
@Ing:
Sadface :(
*offers virtual Internet hugs*
Ing, *hugs*
Ing
I’m sorry to hear
*anklehugs*
FossilFishy
What helps a lot with #1 is that I tell her that I understand that she’s angry/frustrated/sad abd that it’s OK, but that I have this good reason for doing so.
Sometimes I need to give her some space. She’ll curl up in her bed for 10 min and cry and then come back to the rest of us.
It’s OK.
Ing
*hugs*
The pain hit about a 6 out of ten. The panic was up at 11. It was scary.
What the hell? That is not good. And it sounds like your boss is creating a hostile working environment.
I am trying to take care of myself. Wife says I am just plain trying.
Wife promises to help.
The thing is, I already use olive oil for everything (and not much of it at that). I deep fry about once every six months. A one-pound steak goes three servings. I eat more than six or seven helpings of veggies per day. I’m already doing things right, the only problem is the damn cholesterol ratios.
I appreciate the offer and may take you up on it. Depends what happens when I talk to my doctor.
Thanks.
How about vegetables that look like certain parts of human anatomy? WOuld that work?
Here in the US, it was broken intentionally. With malice and profit afforthought.
===============
Ing:
USB hugs are on the way. You have my sympathy.
Very sorry to hear that Ing. I don’t keep pets because of their short lifespan (parrots excepted and I can’t afford one of those) and my unwillingness to deal with the grief.
Predator Handshake: My adult self says “Your welcome.” to your child self and thanks him, er, you, er, anyway, thanks for the encouragement. And my sympathies about your upbringing. That sort of treatment is Kafka brought to life and has no place in a civilised society IMO.
Ogvorbis: my sympathies and hugs (carefully). Take care of that heart of yours, mkay?
Oh no, Ing, I’m so sorry! {{hugs}}
Very threaadrupt but…
Caine: be well and I (selfishly, I k ow) hope you return.
Tony: thank you for sharing you’re story. Many hugs
Minnie: summer in Fi land? I haz jealous!
M
Ing,
Oh noes! *luvs*
Overheard at work just now: “He doesn’t know a hole from his ass in the ground”. O.o
Ing:
That is sad news. I add my hug to the group.
Very sorry, Ing.
Ing, I’m so sorry. *careful hugs* and *ginger ale* and *crackers*
Sorry, I’m sick (bilateral GI failure), so that’s all I’ve got on hand.
Rowan Williams has a lot to answer for.
When he was Archbishop of Wales, prior to becoming Archbishop of Canterbury he supportive of gays in the Church. For example he willing ordained openly gay clergy.
But when he became ABC he abandoned his principles in favour of “unity”. He wanted to stop the bigots from splitting away from liberals and he was willing to throw gays under the bus to do it. When real moral leadership was needed he was found wanting.
Giliell:
Acknowledging their emotions and giving them space to deal with it on their own while still holding the line, I like it.
I think there’s a tendency to forget that the emotions children are expressing are real even if they are out of place or unwarranted by adult standards. It doesn’t help when they can be devastated beyond all hope of repair one minute and with a quick dip into the Big Parental Bag O’ Distractions ™, hey presto, they’re happy and bouncy before the tears have even dried on their cheeks. Acknowledging those emotions both to them and yourself seem like very good advice indeed. Thanks.
Ye Olde Blacksmith: yup, summer in Finland =)
This makes up for the other miserable 9 months of the year. I’m not yet on my holidays, but I take the laptop out in the mornings and sit in the shade of the lilacs and apple trees, working away. We do most of our cooking outside in the barbecue (using wood, none of those fancy gas or electric monstrosities for us, thank you) and heat up the sauna almost every night, too. Once the water is warm enough (around midsummer), we’ll go for a swim at the lake every morning and evening. Everything’s pretty much planted in the garden, so now all we have to do is water, weed and wait for potatoes, carrots, cabbages, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, beans, peas, radishes, cucumbers, zucchinis, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, black red and white currants, rhubarb, apples, and about 25 different herbs. Plus chillies. There’s a lot of chillies growing in the hothouse.
I’m also thinking of getting a couple of goats from a local farmer (only for the summer, the farmer will take them back in the autumn) and maybe some hens, if we find energy to build them a cat-free enclosure.
Apart from a few mosquitoes, this is heaven. Who wouldn’t haz jealous? =)
Well hello again.
Summer’s treating me well.
Predator Handshake: Ouch. That’s quite horrible, glad I never had to face that.
Audley: Nope, don’t have any name ideas.
Oh, Ing. Ouch. Also ouch.
ibyea: It just does!!! Only if you SQRRAWK! the right way, though. (few people can).
nifty: Ouch for the kids. +1 parasitic christ-mongering. I know that would make school even more horrible than it already is…
Ing, My condolences.
====
Ogvorbis, please take care of yourself.
====
Caine, please take care of yourself.
Goats are wonderful, and really quite intelligent. I used to keep a couple of goats and I had to periodically change however I secured the gate to their barn as they would watch me open and close the gate, and eventually work out how to open it for themselves. Goats can also sulk: If I did not give mine an apple every evening they would ignore me the next morning.
Ing,
Very sorry to hear about your dog.
Amusing story about penguin sexual depravity.
Matt: I’ll keep that in mind!
I’d love to have a pair of those fainting goats, but I don’t think anyone has them here in Finland. But any kind of goat is good enough for me, as long as I get goat’s milk for making my own cheese. Yum.
Minnie the FinnThe thing about goats is you need really, really good fences or very understanding neighbours. If the ones round here can’t walk through a fence (barbed wire, electric, 7 strand, it doesn’t seem to matter, they’re willing to give it a go) they’ll simply jump over it. This caused no end of aggravation until one wacko neighbour set his dogs on the herd and threatened the goat’s owner with a shotgun. Ah, rural Australia, a place of such charm and refined behaviour. :)
My two both came into milk, despite never having a kid. I used to make a fresh cheese with their milk, which when mixed with some black pepper and chives was delicious.
FossilFishy: I was kinda thinking I’d manage by having them on a long tether by day, then locking them in the barn for the night (the barn used to house cows, so it has all mod cons a goat might want).
No neighbors anywhere near, though. If the goats managed to stray off the property, they’d be most likely eaten by a bear.
That would work. At times I used tether my goats. Just make sure that 1) the anchor point is well secured in the ground 2) you use metal chain, not rope as they WILL chew through rope, and 3) the anchor has a swivel mechanism, otherwise the goats will walk around in one direction only and end up with the chain only being about metre long!
Matt:
exactly what I had in mind, fresh cheese with herbs =)
Also, back in the eighties when the cottage was last occupied all year round, the owners kept cows, so one end of the barn still has good accommodation for any kind of farm animals, and there’s also a dairy, which could be used for storing cheese for longer, so if I had enough goats, I could experiment more =)
We’re renting the place (second summer now), but we’ve also started seriously considering buying either this place, or some other place similar to this.
It could also act as a Pharyngula guerrilla training camp & bacon retreat.
Minnie (I had already typed out Finnie), sounds great to me.
On the other hand, you’re closer to my parents at the moment than I am, so everything has its perks :)
Matt: I thought the ever-shortening chain system was on purpose, so the goats will end up eating the grass evenly? =)
Minnie: Yup, that’d work, or at least it did work here, eventually. The goat owner pared his herd down to 3 favourites and used tethers but even that was fraught with difficulties. At first he used bits of rusting farm equipment as an anchor. The idea being that he could move them easily. The goats just dragged the anchors around behind them.
Then he started pounding in proper stakes to hold them, a pain of course, because they’ll eat anything growing, within reach, and a few things that don’t grow too. So you have to move them to fresh feed fairly regularly or be constantly pitching hay. Once they were firmly tethered they had a tendency to tangle themselves around anything vertical that was within their range, including each other if moored too close together. I also got the impression that they eventually figured out how to chew through the ropes, but that’s just hearsay. Though it might be true as these days they’re kept in an out of the way paddock that has really good fences.
Ah, I see Matt beat me to it. I must say of all things I thought I might end up discussing on Pharyngula, goat lore never occurred to me. :)
I speak from experience when I say that goats can indeed chew through rope, and once they have worked out they can do it they will carry on. Which is why I very quickly took to using metal chain.
FossilFishy: yeah, it’s kinda unusual to discuss goats that are not on fire here =)
Another thing about goats is that some human men produce a smell in their sweat that female goats can find irresistible.
Giliell: Finnie sounds good, no prob =)
Matt
That’s a very interesting information…
Ing: many hugs
Ah, I just got hand-fed some fresh-from-the-barbecue meat skewers, with BT’s secret spices and some sour cream dip and all. Plus a freezing cold beer. The service here is exceptionally good indeed.
Minnie @238: Hee, that got a real LOL.
Matt: And thus the excuses started: “All I did was stare at her, honest!”
And with that exhaustion of my goat knowledge I must get to bed. Night.
You have trained someone well then!
Night Fishy!
Matt: took me years, but now all those hours spent training are paying back =)
Matt @ 239: eeeewwwwww :-D
Minnie: how are the blueberries and kantarelli this year?
we are starting our holiday next week and our first stop supposedly has a Finnish sauna. I’m skeptical, but if true (and authentic) then squeeeeeeee! (sadly, its not a smoke sauna, but I will take what I can get)
Ye Olde Blacksmith:
too early for blueberries and chantarelles yet, but if this summer is anything like last, we’ll get truckloads of them! The mushrooming is great around here, especially boletes/ceps.
Good luck with the sauna, hope it’s the real thing! (Ours is the usual, wood-heated design, not a smoke sauna, but if we ever manage to own this place, or one similar to this, a smoke sauna will be at the top of the list for things to build!)
Well, I’ve been fumbling around in my lab with nothing good happening for way too long. I know this because I finally got my Fluo-4 line scans to work and that was enough to give me that feeling that’s usually reserved for finding something significant in the results. I have no idea if what I’m looking at today means anything, but it’s certainly much better than my last few attempts which ended up being a bunch of green bullshit. That description isn’t too far removed from a successful run; the difference is that when the Fluo-4 works it produces the correct quality of green bullshit.
Oh, look, PZ’s favorite politician (not), Michelle Bachmann is back in the news. She’s as crazy as ever.
Steven Benen writes:
Link. Benen provides additional links within the text.
Thunderstorms are moving in! &hearts
Matt Penfold:
Uh-huh. Have you had occasion to use this excuse?
I should have know it was a mistake to mention that :)
Moar goat trivia:
When I was living in Ireland (back in the Pleistocene), we’d sometimes drive up to Belfast. In some areas, political graffiti was rife, and I couldn’t help but notice the abundance of goats painted into various murals.
Apparently, a goat is the symbol for King William of Orange, the great patriot saint of the loyalists (William = Bill= billy goat).
Fancy that.
Argh. Isn’t it basic social skills that one not talk about how awful and disgusting and horrifying it is to have stepped on the scale this morning and had a scare about being near a certain weight (that turned out to be unfounded when the scale was reseated and found to be about 10 pounds too high) when speaking to a person who is quite obviously at least 30 pounds over said specific weight? Fuck.
Ing, so sorry about your dog. I hope its end wasn’t painful for it.
carlie: but it’s about weight! And looks! It’s about meeee! No social skills needed.
Next time, tell her that s/he looks ugly inside.
In response to a Friendly Atheist article about Seth McFarlane being announced in the New Yorker as the recipient of the Humanist of the Year Award, I posted my usual “we should not be happy to be linked to a man whose primary work is misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and racist.”
Naturally the first response is “it’s just a satire, you need a sense of humor to appreciate it.”
My response (it’s long):
Ing, I’m really sorry :( *hugs*
Aaaaand now I’m thinking about “Who is Sylvia?” Thank you.
—
I didn’t sleep last night, just finished my reasonably okay Greek final, and have eight hours until my not at all okay German final, which I absolutely must get a good grade on because I screwed up the oral exam badly. (Couldn’t think because of terror, lost ability to speak coherently let alone in correct German. Massive meltdown afterward.) I also have three days to finish my terrible horrible no good very bad term paper. I feel like Rage Wolf.*
*I decided that was what I was going to call the meme that is usually called “Insanity Wolf.” It’s a wolf going RAWR with its face that has violent or ragey memes with it. (My favorite one is “I have 99 problems, THEY ARE ALL YOU” with “You have 99 problems, THEY ARE ALL MISOGYNY” as a close second.)
Family Guy is one of those shows that does not hold up for me upon watching it again. For some reason now I see all the criticisms that were entirely dismissible when I was actively watching it.
It might be learning of McFarlane’s kinship with Rush.
About once a year ex-mormon “anagrammy” posts a list of Mormon Cosmology. As you would expect, the list provides multiple opportunities for facepalming and headdesking.
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,528281
A few excerpts:
There’s a tie-in here with PZ’s post of the Peter Rabbit story as told in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Joseph Smith translated some Egyptian hieroglyphs in order to come up with the Book of Abraham. A slight problem emerged later when it turned out the document Joe used as a source was a common Egyptian funerary scroll, and Kolob was conspicuous by its absence. Never mind. Joe was no doubt inspired by god to pull a “translation” out of his ass. Joe’s book is far more boring than Beatrix Potter’s story.
Carlie,
One would think, but often those people are so wrapped up in their own personal weight drama that they don’t realize that what they’re saying could be hurtful. It’s all very self-centered. And I’m betting that it wasn’t a criticism of you.
I had a friend in college like that who would constantly complain to me how fat she was (I outweighed her by 40 pounds easily). No matter what I said, I never could get through to her that she was being hurtful. I came to accept that she didn’t care about my size; she was too concerned with herself to pass that kind of judgement on her friends.
@AUDLEY
It could be a genuine body dimorphism thing where the perception is that of course complaining about THEIR weight can’t hurt you even if you’re heavier because YOU match THEIR perception of you. you look like you, you’re fine what are you complaining about….They on the other hand look too big for their perception.
@Ing:
I actually got an e-mail from the Harvard Humanists re: McFarlane which basically was summed up “I didn’t want him to win, but I couldn’t do anything about it.”
I’m curious to what his qualifications for the award was. Sure he satires religion kinda, but he also basically makes atheists look like assholes.
Katherine Lorraine,
I’ve never watched Family Guy, so can’t comment directly, but your point about satirical presentations of bigotry generally seems to hold even when there’s no doubt about the intentions of the writer. In my youth, there was a British TV comedy Till Death Us Do Part in which the central character was a working class bigot (primarily a racist) called Alf Garnett (prototype of Archie Bunker I believe). There’s no doubt that both the actor playing him, Warren Mitchell, and the writer, Johnny Speight, were sincere anti-racists – but also no doubt (as I think they later acknowledged) that a large part of the audience were laughing with Alf Garnett, not at him.
@my 265:
*from a member of the Harvard Humanists*
Lynna:
That means God’s home is a supermassive black hole – a celestial body so dense that not even stupid can escape.
Wow, Lynna … that’s some weapons grade batshit crazy there. It’s so hard to imagine functioning (for a given value of functioning) adults living in a fantasy world like this, I forget how strikingly insane they are.
Though of course (I think it was a post of Greta Christina’s?) they only seem crazier because we’re so accustomed to the “regular” talking-snake worldwide-flood empty-tomb crazies.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH so the name of the Collector Base was Kolob. Good to know the name of the place after you blow it up.
So this means that the Mormon God is a Reaper?
Ing,
Doesn’t mean it’s not rude as all hell, though.
I don’t like it when anyone just whines about their weight. I’m totally cool with discussing a weight loss plan or an excersize routine (and I’ve often stolen good tips for myself this way!), but to simply complain about how fat you are is just tacky.
@Audley
Oh of course. I’m just brainstorming on how someone could miss how it’s rude.
You’re right, Ing, and Audley. It’s just annoying as hell, especially when trying to eat lunch. I know, while we’re eating food, let’s talk about how much we hate food and how food is bad! *headdesk*
A recent Fresh Air podcast talks about the incentives for Lousiana’s private prisons to incarcerate people, and to keep them there. A bunch of conservative sheriffs are making money by keeping the beds full. Tax payers pay for this. The state pays private prisons on a per-prisoner basis.
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/05/154352977/how-louisiana-became-the-worlds-prison-capital
Oh, yes, it really works well to privatize all government services and institutions.
Oh! Yeah, then we’re totes on the same page, Ing. I was a little confused ‘cos the “AUDLEY” looked shouty. :D
Although body dismorphia means that you can’t control how you perceive yourself, I don’t think it means that you can’t control what you say about yourself, you know?
Yep. And mormons still insist that one good outcome of Mitt Romney’s candidacy is that we the infidels will learn more about mormonism, and we will like mormons better, and we will feel more comfortable with mormonism as a mainstream religion.
I’m back with a mouth that feels (and looks a little) like the mouth on the character Jaws in the James Bond movie. (sigh) it isn’t really visible, but it feels like it because my face is forzen.
Boys doc visit went well. Boy with the tummy rot will try prevacid for a month and see if that does the trick. Physicals fine. Vaccinations up to date (they’ve just had round 2 of HPV).
Giliell 141 and Opposable Thumbs 145 – thanks for the encouragement. I agree it’s best to stick with the current school (which has been excellent so far) and keep the channels of communication open. They are just 16, btw OT. One identifies strongly as atheist and the other mildy – both of them are aware and sensitive to the issue of religious oppression in our area – they cannot help but be. The grocery stores, gas stations, doctor offices (not ours, thankfully) dentist, insurance adjusters, bookstores, event he bloody hallmark cards shop – all play Christian music, push religious charities (I mean push – when the cashier at the grocery asks you to donate to X church and you say no thank you, they say, “JUst donate $2 and then you’ll get a coupon for xyz!” Forget about a tin quietly placed on the counter….but I digress.
Opposable Thumbs, I know just what you mean about needing the temperament etc. I actually got a degree in education way back in the stone age (before personal computer!) but I feel totally unqualified to meet the challenges. I did home summer school the boys because all three of them had attention issues and needed to stay in touch with things over the summer to be able to start off ready in the fall. But I had enormous difficulty with follow up and staying focused (my sons come by their attention issues justifiably- lol). I know that they would suffer if they had only me to guide them through. Plus, I am ignorant in the extreme on math and science. Mr NIfty rocks at math, but he travels too much to be able to give them the steady guidance necessary.
Anyway, we will see what the fall brings. I won’t lie, I was really upset yesterday about this, but my boys are smart, sensible and capable. If the faculty at school is not disrupted, then things ought to go along ok. There are many excellent teachers there.
Beatrice 189 OFFS! Another variation of the “don’t talk about what s wrong here or the people who are doing the wrong will get angry and NEVER do right!” ARGHH!!!
Yes, this is actually put forward as the only reasonable way to behave. (although tch tch beatrice, do I detect a sarcastic tone in your remarks? That is not allowed either!).
As Janine says: If only we would just be nicer to these people, then they will stop their hatred/bigotry/oppression. yeah
Audley, good morning! So exciting that you will find out more about Darkfetus tomorrow! I like Sally Darkheart, too, but since I already call someone dear to me Sally, I vote for one of the names I wish I had bestowed on my own offspring – Sheila! You never hear anyone called Sheila anymore. :)
Yeah but if you can’t perceive yourself properly it can mean you’re not aware that you’re saying improper things.
Ing, I’m so sorry to read about your dog. Do you want to talk about what happened?
I will report your conclusions to “anagrammy.” She will be so pleased to hear that you have come to such excellent conclusions.
It’s all so clear now.
My dog Stella who is living with my mom got out of the fence and was hit by a car last night. She’s been living half with us and half with her as she’s technically my Mom’s but we help out by dog sitting so it’s a second home. Was a second home :(. I got the call last night. I stayed home from work because things are already so awful and depressing there I don’t think I could cope. I feel like such a failure
Ogvorbis 210, apparently a significant portion of people with high cholesterol have it not because of diet but because of genetics. It sounds like you already eat healthfully. I am so sorry you’ve had this scare and now have to work out what to do to manage the situation. Mr Nifty has very high BP and cholesterol (some diet-related and most hereditary) : it was only able to be managed slightly with strict diet, but with a medication, it is now under control and his diet doesn’t seem to matter (though of course he tries to eat healthfully).
I hope you are feeling good this week. The good thing about a wake up call is that you have time to find a solution!
I was hesitant about actually talking about anything because of such dramallama in TZT now.
Oh Ing! I am so sorry!! ((hugs, if you want them))
Ing,
Uh, not exactly. You don’t perceive your physical body as it is, that doesn’t mean that you’re not aware of social norms or what could be hurtful to someone else. In the case of my friend, I wouln’t be surprised if she complained about her size to me simply because she was comfortable talking to me– her normal “filters” were off. I would be highly surprised OTOH if she brought it up with a coworker.
I daren’t go into TZT. The one time I ventured in there a while back, the awful oozing out of some of those troll-types left me feeling just about swamped with depression. I just have to stay away from too much direct exposure to that hatefulness. :(
@Audley
I agree, but also maybe it’s just my experience that people tend to be absurdly callous to each other especially if they have to spend a second thinking about someone else’s experience. But you probably know your friend better
Threadrupt.
–
*tearing up*
Oh, Tony…*hugs*…I’m so very sorry.
Damn.
–
Waitaminute. Caine is leaving???
Do. Not. Want.
Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, but….
–
I’d like to toss my vote on the pile for “Ogvorbis Not Having A Heart Attack”.
–
TLC, you and GF have my sympathy. I take it there was no way that the “friend” would take “just leave it alone!” or “it’s mine to deal with!” for an answer?
–
*waving at Gyeong Hwa*
Howdy, stranger! :)
–
Indeed.
:(
–
*hug* for Ing. I’m sorry to hear about your dog.
–
That was my original point, Ing– complaining that you’re fat is just rude. I don’t think that behavior needs any reason other than callousness.
Audley – I took Ing to mean that the person doesn’t even realize that the person they’re speaking to is bigger than they are, so that level of awareness that it might be hurtful isn’t even there.
I remember when Marianne Kirby did a “guess my weight” post with a couple of full body pictures (at therotund.com) she got dozens of guesses, close to a hundred pounds’ worth of spread, and most of them saying “I think I know because you look just like me and I weigh x”. Another person did start a visual height/weight chart to try and get at that discrepancy too, but I see it still has a lot of open spots. People do carry weight differently, so it’s hard to guess. But still, I’d like to see weight as one of those third rail discussions you just don’t do in polite company, rather than being seen as one of the topics women are supposed to always talk about.
Ing, please talk as much as you need to. Losing a pet is damned hard.
Ing,
My condolence to you. :(
Cicely,
pounce
niftyatheist – hopefully at 16 they’re already pretty well-prepared to cope, even if the school starts to slide into religious guff – and also hopefully, the school’s teaching staff themselves will keep it together. SonSpawn, my younger of two, has just turned 16 (that’s probably why I had that feeling I’d already asked – FSM but my memory is rubbish! sorry!) and he and DaughterSpawn both seem pretty clear about not believing in stuff for which there’s no evidence. Of course we’ve had all these years enjoying the advantage of not having it shoved down your throat (much) night and day by the surrounding community. I shall cross my tentacles for you re the school!
.
Ing that’s awful. Fuck, I’m so sorry! I had sort of assumed it might have been a semi-predictable old-age or maybe illness thing – not that that makes it easier, exactly, but this must have come as such an utter shock. No wonder you’re devastated. You are so not a failure for finding it harder to cope with crap at work when something like this happens! I hope the Matrimonial Collective holds on tight to each other and is made of hugs which you must both need so much right now. And your poor mum, too – I hope she’s all right. Being devastated by a horrible shock does NOT make you a failure, dammit.
Threadrupt, I’ll have time to really catch up on Thurs nite, but now I’m busy with a thousand things. In the meantime, tho’, I’m occasionally taking breaks just so I can correct errors like the following:
I think you mean,
“That means God’s home is a supermassive black hole – a celestial body so dense that
not evenonly stupid can escape.”I think that sums it up a little better.
I’m sure the MDs and physiologist types who actually know this stuff will chime in, but anecdotally: I tend not to pay a lot of attention to diet, in that area, anyway*, and have quite healthy levels…
But my older brother, my father, and his brother all have issues, and did fairly young (like 30 and up). Despite diets that don’t seem wildly different than mine, or which at least weren’t before their various physicians told them they really had to control certain things. And my brother, especially, has always been pretty active, and generally quite lean and healthy, if you don’t count those alarming test numbers. (And yes, given the suspicion re genetic components, and their relatedness, I tend to hold my breath every time I’m checked, but so far, for whatever reason, I seem to have dodged that particular issue. So a coupla different alleles does seem a pretty likely explanation, from here.)
(*/As in: I tend not to pay a huge amount of deliberate attention to fat content, nor to cholesterol–tho’ I do get kinda absolutist about calories in total, especially in the spring–as in: right now–as I tend to gain then if I don’t. My working explanation has been it’s probably because my output drops if I’m not very deliberately and with some effort propping it up, as the heat slows me down.)
Ing, I’m very sorry about your dog.
My dog was very grouchy and stand off ish to strangers (being a terrier). My partner was the first person outside the family she took an immediate like to :(
Carlie,
I’m with you on the rudeness thing– it should be a faux pas to mention how much you weigh or how fat your are simply because you want to complain.
Audley – and most of the time it isn’t just because they want to complain, it’s because they’re fishing for someone else to say “Oh no, you look great!” Blech.
Ing, that’s terrible, and you are not a failure for being shocked and hurt. You are a person with a heart.
niftyatheist,
Oh, see, that was tha OLD TZT.
The New, IMPROVED TZT
is mostly the regulars tearing into each other.
MUCH MOAR PLEASANT*.
*may only be true for certain specific values of “pleasant”.
R.I.P. Ing’s grouchy dog.
On another subject, Mitt Romney is doubling down in his support for the 1%. This time, the 1% he is protecting (by advocating giving them money, of course) is the oil and gas industry.
From journalist Steve Benen:
This is also more proof that Romney is irony deficient. He’s all for free enterprise and no government handouts, except for the 1%.
Link.
Carlie:
Yes! Exactly!
Ing, I’m so sorry. *hugs*
Ing, you have my condolences.
— — — — — — — —
Kirk Douglas: “We Are Spartacus” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirk-douglas/we-are-spartacus_b_1588173.html
The 95-year-old Kirk Douglas goes on to make some good comments about religion.
— — — — — —
As long as The Babby shows no inclination to turning into Stewie Griffin she will be OK. Al those death rays can be a pain in the ass.
My condolences, ING. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if my dogs went that way.
Most terriers I’ve met have been admirable little fellows. The other day I was walking around and a little scotty ignored his owners to come say ‘Hi’. I suppose I shouldn’t encourage dogs to disobey their owners, but I just had to pet him a little, or it would have been impolite.
That pretty much nails it right on the head. Roberts Creek is the area where all the newage hippy-dippies lived.
Any Canucks wants to feel me in with the Inuit food crisis?
If you have the “right” genetics, you’d be hard pressed to raise your cholesterol levels even if you tried.
If you have the “wrong” genetics, just looking at a cheeseburger the wrong way and send your levels skyward.
It’s one of those things where diet is the proximate trigger, while genetics dials in your baseline susceptibility.
For practical purposes the medical profession has for a long time emphasized diet, because diet can be (theoretically) changed, while genetics can’t. At least not yet.
Is there a way to stop facebook from emailing me every time someone so much as farts?
Now that I’m in PET (apparently, and thanks you all, I truly appreciate it), I’m getting absolutely SWAMPED, and it’s unnecessary because I keep facebook open as long as my computer is turned on anyways.
Katherine, #259 – well said! You hit the nail right on the head and your excellent writing made that point piercingly clear. Brava!
Ing, I am so, so sorry. Hugs if you want them.
Hi, Gyeong Hwa! Long time no see. Josh, welcome back! Hi, Loodup!
Esteleth, your boss is a poopmongler. And I hope you feel better soon.
Tony, I think that looking for some professional help would be a good idea. Try to find a therapist with whom you click, and who has values similar to yours.
Anne C. Hanna, thanks for fighting the good fight over there (your handle rang a bell for me, too), but I make a habit of not regularly visiting any site that fails hard on feminism, regardless of what their other merits may be.
Hairhead:
You should keep in mind that the majority of us do not have the economic privilege to do that.
Nifty, it is not a “first world concern.” It is a concern about the first world turning into the third world.
Beatrice, Alise Wright can go fuck herself. She is EVERYTHING wrong with liberal xtians.
Audley:
As Carlie says, she was likely fishing for compliments — and probably expecting you to join in the self-denigration. I hate that game so much, as well as “competitive non-eating.” You know, when a bunch of women are out for a meal and it’s an unspoken competition to see who can eat the least? (It’s a wonderful opportunity to get a burger and fries, plus a rich dessert.)
Kitty:
I think we may have a whole new use for this meme…
Also:
And this is why I almost never visit Fappy Atheist.
TLC, sorry to hear about that bullshit with your GF’s xtian “friend.”
On another note, I used to know someone who tried to use, er, Human Yeast to bake bread. It didn’t work out all that well. Also:
That makes two of us.
Giliell:
BWAHAHAHA!!!!!
Rev. BDC:
1 Cat, 1 Cup?
Finally, Caine says by email: “Feel free to tell everyone we’ve chatted and I said to drop a wholesale store full of hugs for everyone.”
TLC @308: Go to your account settings, and on the left of the screen will be a little menu where one of the tabs is “Notification Settings”. You can then change the settings for different areas of facebook. I know how frustrating that is, though, as when I first got my old Blackberry I found myself opting out of commenting on things just so I didn’t have to deal with all the pocket-buzzing all day.
I see fails on feminism everyday now. -_- You should (or shouldn’t) visit tumblr. Not only are there idiot MRA and general misogynists, we also have what we call radscums – radical feminists who are horribly transphobic and disregard the narratives of people of color.
My problem is that I have total cholesterol that is significantly lower than normal but my HDL is around 20 and my LDL is around 55 to 60. Which means trying to bring up the HDL without bringing up the LDL.
Bingo.
Oh jesus christ, I don’t have the energy to go into this but fuck you so hard.
Ms. Daisy, thank you! That is exactly my concern! Our cultural racism makes us believe that “we” could not wind up in an oppressive theocracy like “they” over there (ya know, browner people). It all goes with the privileged trope that “we” int he west (white “we” anyway) enjoy our higher standard of living because of merit blah blah blah – while “they” struggle with social/economic and other forms of strife because – well, because you know THEY! It makes me want to spit – although the irony of that particular privileged attitude possibly being our downfall is not lost on me. It scares and appalls me, but it is also fiercely ironic. :(
Hairhead, don’t you think that if most people had the luxury of “choosing their boss” that htey would, in fact, choose a great boss? You make it sound like most people have an array of job offers to choose from and they can shop around and pick the very very best one! The reality is that most people are job hunting for weeks or months or longer and then, when desperation is just about to swallow them up, a job offer comes. Do you think many people can afford then to say Hang on, let me see if you are the boss for me!
Maybe I just read your post incorrectly, but it seemed kind of out of touch with the reality of unemployed people – especially for an employment counsellor! But did I misread and that is not your line of work? Anyway, I hope I misunderstood and if so please toss out this entire post. It seems like you meant well.
Gyeong Hwa:
And then you have all the 16-year-old “otherkin,” “structurekin,” etc. who like to claim “oppression.” How dare the boss fire them for acting like their werewolf selves at work!
I can’t wait until the first “werebonobo” gets fired for masturbating on the job.
(No, sorry, Natalie, I do not “respect identities” when it comes to patent bullshit like that. Being unable to howl at the moon while pushing a broom != gay bashing.)
To Daisy and the niftyatheist:
Sigh. No, I’m not out of touch. I’m with unemployed people all of the time. And as a self-employed person, I have to be out “looking for my new boss” all the time. But that’s all that I do with my clients — “look for their new boss.” It’s a process of both action and attitude, and word “process” involves time.
Of course, I disguise it with new resumes, cover letters, references, networking, research, etc. — but it’s still the same thing — looking for your new boss.
And it’s not “economic privilege” to be choosing your boss — it’s a necessity for mental health, for career advancement, income, and all of those other good things.
The big problem is that all good bosses are hiding or kept hidden by their employees, who don’t want to leave. Finding/choosing a good boss is Holmesian exercise.
Ms. Daisy Cutter: Back when I used to be into the whole ‘were’ thing (which is embarassing to admit), stories like that were more common than you might think. And so was the hugbox bullshit that inevitably followed.
I do think there might be ‘something’ to it, that ‘something’ being issues with ‘feeling human’ (which I still struggle with), but that something is definitely not because they’re the spirit of a wolf trapped in a human body or such nonsense.
Ugh, what’s that word for by-proxy embarassment for someone?
Lovely interview with Harry Belafonte on Nightwaves on BBC3. Lots of reminisces about the Civil Rights Struggle. Even if he does tangentially talk about God.
Nice comparison of him and Sidney Poitier to astronauts.
He’s certainly not an accomodationist on the matter of African-Americans in the Bush Regime.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jrk34
I’ll also add, that I knew there was something wrong right from the start. They’d be claiming their ‘animal side’ was as immutably a part of them as their eye color and all that jazz… but at the same time, they’d change or take on new ‘animal sides’ at the drop of a hat, sometimes on the basis of a single dream where they were some kind of animal.
But, cognitive dissonance and all that. They’d also throw on any feature they felt like, especially horns and wings. I never did understand that. What’s the use of invisible wings if you CAN’T FUCKING FLY?
Addendum: He does say some strident things against religion, at least.
Something about Art being bigger than all the world’s religions.
Ooooh, on some nice stuff against banks.
Oh, don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but Happy Loving Day.
But that’s DOUBLY miraculous!
Not only do they have wings, which no human ever has, but those wings are invisible, which nothing ever is!
(Why, yes, I have indeed been reading up on Aquinas.)
Hairhead 318, maybe I am the one who is out of touch. Nothing you wrote makes a bit of sense to me. My fault perhaps. It all sounds fine on paper, but it doesn’t sound practical for a person out of work. How do they pay the bills and put food on the table while the “process” takes time? What do you even mean that good bosses hide or are hidden behind employees who do not want to leave? What does that mean? It sounds like you hope to remove old employees (who are hiding a “good boss”) to make room for your clients. But that only makes more unemployed people – IF you were to succeed, which I admit I find hard to imagine.
Perhaps it is just me, but this sounds like …well…nonsense, to me. But I admit, I am out of touch with the job market.
Nifty
Comiserations about the teeth. I spent so much time at the dentist’s last year it felt like I had moved in there.
Somehow I thought the Niftyboys to be younger.
carlie
Oh dear. I was the obligatory fat friend to the thin and popular girl. Actually helped me a lot in becoming really fat. Because what I looked like didn’t matter, I was fat anyway, it was an on/off somehow.
I see pictures of how I looked like at 11, 12 and I remember how I felt. Very, very different.
Ing
I’m sorry you lost your dog in such a cruel way.
Sili: needless to say, these were feathered ‘shoulder wings’, as in a third pair of limbs, such as NO TETRAPOD ever has. Triply miraculous?
Air time when leaping on prey. *nodnod*
Hmmmm…re the finding the carefully chosen boss: could it be that you are talking about highly skilled and educated professionals in a head hunting typs of situation, where you represent the “talent” and look for the right fit for them?
If that is the case, then I apologise because we are not talking about the same thing. I am talking about the millions of people who cannot afford to hire those kinds of services. People who do not have the luxury of being choosy about which offer to take after they tweak the resumes and cover letters and add names to the networking rolodex. People who don’t have resumes and cover letters and networks at all.
You are right: it would be infinitely better for mental health, career advancement salaries and all that good stuff if every person searching for a job had all of that – but I think you are overlooking the enormous privilege that people who can afford to wait to have all of that enjoy. Even unemployed, they already are several rungs farther up the ladder than the average working man or woman.
Who do I contact to be let into PET? I don’t Facebook much but I would if I could hang out with the cool kids.
Giliell, I probably speak of them as young because they are my “babies”. LOL Also they were preemies (32 weeks) so I got used to thinking of them as my “little guys” much too used to it.
Those two “little guys” are nearly 6′ 2″ tall according to the doc today.
They are pretty cool boys and I must watch it if I am sending the wrong signal. I am teaching them to drive right now! :D ON a stick, I might add (I taught all of the Nifty offspring to drive manual transmission cars – and I made sure they tested for their licenses in one.
kristinc,
Try looking for this group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/112420258808589/
I *think* our settings will let you request an invitation. Please include your ‘nym in the request so we know who is asking.
OMGS! Grammar, parenthesis fail! Apologies!
kristinc:
You can either search for me on fb (email: ourdeadselves [at] gmail) or shoot me a message and I’ll get you in PET. :)
Well, whaddyaknow.
I do want to live on this planet for a bit longer.
TLC #308: You can adjust the “notifications” settings somewhat to receive fewer email notices of FB stuff. Use the little arrow dropdown menu in the upper right. Choose Account Settings > Notifications> the classes of notifications, then you can edit those settings.
Oh yeah, the last thing you want is for your
pigeonsflock to go wandering off to California. Quick! Give ’em the Emperor’s New Gold spiel!The Koch brothers are blowing hot air about wind energy.
As Steve Benen writes:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12189492-the-wind-cries-koch-brothers
Seriously, FUCK. YOU.
Nifty:
I know! Thank you! ♥!
I’ll let you all know how it goes sometime tomorrow afternoon. :D
Daisy:
That’s why I’m hesitant to automatically say that her problem was body dysmorphia– body dysmorphia doesn’t make you into a callous asshole, being an asshole makes you into a callous asshole.
And, yeah, I’ve been there. The thing is, I don’t hate my body* and I’m really sick of the assumption that I should. It’s twisted that women who complain about being fat will automatically assume that you’re on the same bandwagon and they just can’t fathom that someone might not want to listen or participate in that crap.
I try to ignore that bullshit the best I can, ‘cos a lot of the time I feel like I’m being used as someone else’s self esteem boost. Go ahead and whine about how fat you are, I’m just gonna eat this pizza and tune you the fuck out.
*I may be fat, but goddammit, I’m strong.
Nifty, #331: I didn’t learn to drive a stick until my fiftieth year. I was so shaky I didn’t believe those who told me it would eventually become second nature. But eventually, it did.
sili 335, that was good to read!
Pteryxx: You mean, invisible prey?
Ava, hooray for you!!! I really feel it is a useful skill. If you can drive a stick, you have the basics to drive just about anything. Also, if you understand how gears actually work, you can drive better (even in an automatic transmission) because you understand about gearing down or putting the car in neutral in an emergency (eg. if accelerator sticks, throw the car in neutral so the drive sshaft will not be turning – presto, you coast to a stop! OR in snowy weather when touching brakes might throw you into an uncontrolled skid, gear down instead, to maintain more control). Boys are learning all of this. Our three older ones did too and it may just be luck, but none of them have had any road mishaps so far. I just think that the process of understanding the mechanical operation of a car engages a driver more – especially a new driver – and after much practice I hope it makes for a better driver.
Hmm, the American obsession with automatic is something that makes most Europeans shake their heads. I mean, ‘course you learn to drive with a stick, what else. I’ve never driven an automatic.
So, my mother made a weird observation that I want a [citation please] for it. Has anyone else heard this?
She said that due to welfare and other types of programs, a person making $20000 a year can get $50000 a year in benefits. I don’t know where it came from, I’ve never heard it before, and I didn’t ask her for a [citation please.]
Daisy,
There also “transethnic” teens/hipsters who appropriate and misuse trans* identity and struggles so they can basically do what amounts to as blackface. These are always white and they accuse people of color (or as they like to call it “cisethnic”) of “oppressing” their “identity”. It’s such blatant bullshit and insulting to any trans* person and/or person of color who had to struggle with their identity. That shit ain’t cute and shouldn’t be respected.
(Lots of scare-quotes)
Kat:
Um, what?
What bennies was she talking about specifically? Food stamps? WIC? Disability? Unemployment? Medicaid/care?
@Audley:
No idea. We were talking about welfare (which I know covers all of that.)
All of the above?
Fuck, if that’s the case, why the hell am I still working?
(It sounds like a conservative talking-point (lie) to me. Sorry.)
@Audley:
That’s what I’m thinking too.
Holy shit you really are out of touch.
Most people these days are just looking for a boss and don’t have the luxury of finding the the best boss for their mental health.
What you are claiming is not just out of touch, it’s fucking insulting.
Kat,
While trying to figure out where your mom got those numbers from, I did come across this news story: Local Elvis Impersonator Accused of $50000+ Welfare Fraud. O.o
@Rev
Like I said. FUCK YOU
Bonus: The “local Elvis impersonator” is from upstate NY.
Giliell, well I don’t think it is better or worse what sort of car a person prefers. I just think it is useful to learn how to drive a manual transmission car. I think “obsession” might be a bit of a strong word – it kind of sounds like you mean that the European preference is the standard, and therefore the North American preference is less valid? Kind of a Euro-centric viewpoint, not that there is anything wrong with that!
I just want to be clear that I do not look down on my North American compatriots because they have embraced the automatic transmission – there were good reasons to do so back in the late 60’s. It was technological progress, and – not nothing! – it enables more people to drive. I’ve known a lot of people with various disabilities which limit their ability to use two feet at once for clutch and accelerator/brake while simultaneously maneuvering a stick shift into the proper gear. This was even harder in older cars with the unwieldy crooked stick on the floor or even on the steering column – before the time of power steering and so forth.
Anyway, I think whatever car suits a person is grand. I simply think it is useful to learn how to drive the manual if one can.
Hairhead:
I tried to be mild in my previous response. Now I’m going to echo Ing. Go fuck yourself really, really hard.
Yes, in an era when unemployment is the highest it’s ever been since the Great Depression, and whatever workers’ rights are left in the U.S. are being systematically dismantled, with other countries following suit, it fucking well is an economic privilege to be able to choose your boss. If you can’t figure out why, then you have no clue what “economic privilege” means.
And thanks for validating my existing opinion of “job experts.” It’s why I stopped participating in “networking groups” and on job-board discussions long before I became employed again.
Audley:
I used to. I’d do the compliment-fishing and self-denigration thing. It took a long time to get over that shit. Now I try to subtly derail those conversations as best I can, depending on how well I know the other people.
Oh, and another thing I hate: “Being bad.” Another way society infantilizes women for indulging our appetites. Look, you’re (the general “you”) a grown-ass adult. Nobody’s going to send you to your room for eating that piece of cake. Eat it or don’t eat it, but stop acting like a naughty six-year-old.
Kitty, I think your mother got that “fact” from Anal Extraction Quarterly. You could email RedState dot org; they probably have all the volumes on file somewhere.
Gyeong Hwa: OMFG, do not get me started on “transethnic” assholes and their “cisethnic privilege” bullshit.
TLC,
Lightweights.
Daisy:
You’re a much nicer person than I am. I usually go with the, “oh, were you talking? Sorry, must have drifted off for a bit.”
Holy Crap. Well. I apologize for upsetting people; I do, really. (Note, none of that “if I offended you stuff”) But I worked at jobs so heinous I threw up before my shift from the intensity of my hatred and despair. I know what it’s like to be unemployed and desperate, which I was for years.
I’ll withdraw from the topic.
Note: Nowhere in that half assed apology is there an “I’m wrong”.
Well, Audley, it also depends on how much patience I have at the moment and on how blatant I can get away with being. But I like to seed the idea, where and when I can, that women don’t have to obsess like this.
“I apologize for upsetting people” is almost as bad as “that ‘if I offended you stuff'”. You’re apologizing for people getting angry, not for being incorrect – or, worse, for insisting that others who were trying to inform you that you were speaking from privilege were incorrect.
Just something to think about.
To Rev. et al. Thank you for the correction. I see where I screwed up. Big screw up. Upon rereading, I see that the text I wrote implied that it *wasn’t* economic privilege to choose your boss. And that IS wrong, as was I to let such poorly worded, ill-thought-out stuff fill up the text box.
Now is a really weird time to have a Pharyngula dream, but there you have it. A lot of you were there but I can’t remember because the dream is dissolving! QUICK JUMP OUT! People I know for a fact were there: Og and theophontes and Jules. Theophontes was giving a fantastic explanation of Roman sexualities to which I could only nod and smile excitedly. I have no idea how this fit in to a dream wherein we were chasing around a doctor type guy who had identified the symptoms of a plague happening once before but had been disbelieved and labeled a crank (so I was skeptical of his claims) and now the same plague was back and going to destroy the world! Also there were earthquakes which were related to the plague somehow and which for some reason everyone seemed to be very sincerely blaming on Joss Whedon, and I had a dream-within-a-dream where I was in the Star Trek verse living on a planet and there was a war.
Daisy,
I won’t. Tumblr is disheartening. I use to think all feminist understood trans* and race stuff but now I know better. At least we can all pile up on prolifers. :D
Nifty
Sorry, I think I came off wrong with that comment.
It was just to express my fascination with those little cultural differences. For me it wouldn’t be worth mentioning that the kids learn driving with a stick, but I would mention that they were learning with an automatic, on the other hand.
The European preference is the standard over here, the American one is the standard over there. Nothing more or less. I put farmer’s cheese on my jam sandwiches, you peanut butter ;)
Cipher, that sounds like an awesome dream! Mine usually are just me walking along the garden, watching plants grow and humming herp a derp. I am envious of you! :D
Giliell, no worries! I think we are all inclined to be looking at the world from our own vantage point and there’s nothing we can do about that. You are right, that IS why I felt it was worth mentioning – because it is no longer standard over here. I think I just felt the word “obsession” maybe said more than I was saying about it all, do you follow me? Anyway, nom nom for the farmer’s cheese and jam! We do apricot preserves and brie on nice little crackers – hey now I am hungry!
This is a strange question, but I must ask. Since I don’t think any of you know me in meatspace, what do you think I look like? Or, better, what do I look like in a dream?
Sounds like a fun dream.
Mine are either about 9/11, or tend to include donuts and alcohol. My dreams are boring.
My FIL has apparently been diagnosed as pre-diabetic. He sees his role in life as an eternally picky Peter Pan who isn’t going to eat vegetables, dammit, because healthy things are yucky. And my MIL sees her role in life as needing to caretake, “make” him “be good” and completely freak out and see the absolute worst possible outcome of everything (and then thank Jesus for saving people when the worst doesn’t happen, natch). Sooooo, this should be interesting.
She emailed me asking, since I cook so many great things, did I know any recipes to make brats and burgers healthy because that was what he wanted for Father’s Day, and she suggested chicken burgers but he said they taste terrible. And could I think of a side salad he would like that wasn’t potato salad. Well, 1) I agree about the chicken burgers and 2) I had to break it to her that the stuff I cook tastes great because I use bacon grease in, like, everything. (Not really. I love fruits and vegetables and things that taste delicious without a lot of fat, but that’s a lost cause with FIL.)
The only thing I could think of was to suggest 100% whole grain buns, and that maybe salmon burgers would be an acceptable substitute for him. My understanding of blood sugar issues is that cutting down on simple carbs and increasing fiber and protein
is helpful even if one does not cut down on fat?
OMGs so much this!! Ms Daisy, this is one of the weirdest things I hear people say (and it’s freakishly weird-sounding cousin – “I was <i.good tonight, I did not touch the dessert/potatoes/food!”. How on earth can people equate any sort of food intake with morality – with goodness or badness? It boggles my mind.
bah…italics fail. good
Also, I have heard men say that, too. One close to me uses this terminology which I think he picked up from his constantly dieting and fat-shamed mom. COuld it be that the fat-shaming our culture so mercilessly lays on people makes them feel (surprise) ashamed, therefore guilty, therefore the good/bad business? Ugh!
My comment disappeared :( Waa. Basically: I don’t really see faces most of the time in dreams, because I just know who people are without having to look. I think it’s because of how I don’t really remember faces in real life – I recognize them when I see them, and I could describe people’s faces in words if I have been around them enough, but I can’t fit together a picture of them in my head. You were tallish and dark-haired though. (And not in uniform. I would have remembered the hat.)
Ogvorbis,( if this is an open question), you are one of the people I have tried to picture. You have given a few clues in the past, so I fill in the blanks based upon my very positive impression of you via the intertubes. I think you are tall, with medium dark hair, you wear a cowboy hat (this you revealed, not my smart). I think you probably have a shy but wry smile (to go with your wonderful sense of humor but your sincere humility) and probably are quite tanned because I think you work outdoors a bit with the parks.
Yeah that’s my situation right now. I fought tooth and claw for a job under an abusive boss who went out of their way to make me miserable (including sabotaging academics for me) and now I lose that at the end of the month and am desperate that my family is going to be homeless soon. Thank goodness I have a union that might be able to help. how the fuck do you think you’re helping?
Btw for the Job Expert thing, I recommend “White Collered”
I just laughed really hard out loud at Mark’s review for Spiral (Buffy Season 5 Episode 20) today. Anyone else?
Aww.
Ing, my remarks were ill-expressed and hurtful, and I apologize unreservedly. I hope that you can find something and that your family doesn’t suffer.
@Cipher
Um link?
AAA I KEEP DOING THAT! Sorry. Here you go.
I’m amazed he avoided spoilers.
That is hilarious XD. He’s technically right though. Ben dies but it’s not Buffy and Dawn doesn’t die due to asspull (seriously by all logic Buffy as the key should not have worked at all…I guess we should be glad(?) that this was prefirefly else Whedon would have had her jump, die, and the portals not close)
Yeah – his spoiler policy is incredibly strict, and he apparently came into the show without almost any foreknowledge at all. Watching him figure out Will and Tara was pretty much the cutest thing.
This is just reminding me how I did not enjoy that season. I think it’s officially where Angel pulled out ahead of it’s parent show for me
Richard Austin,
I don’t think that apologizing for upsetting people is necessarily bad. It’s just vague.
It’s true it doesn’t really say about the cause of offence one way or the other, but it’s clearly taking responsability for it, which is world’s apart from “I’m sorry people got upset,” which is the type of thing which is really apologizing for people getting angry (as opposed to apologizing for getting people angry,) which isn’t an apology at all.
If someone’s actually apologizing, in the absence of something else in the context that undermines the apology, I kins of err on the side of assuming that they’re not trying to imply that there wasn’t a legitimate cause for upset or anger.
Which is also a rude move, it’s true.
Heh. I never liked Angel. I only get emotionally invested when Fred shows up, and then … mostly in Fred. (Fred and I get each other. *nods*) And I love seasons 6 and 7, primarily because everything is fucking terrible and everyone is wretched and I identify with everybody and also ANDREW! (I have a big irredeemable soft spot for Andrew, and also for Dark Willow.)
Andrew and Anya carried season 7 for me. 7 was a step back in the right direction, as was 6 but 5 was the low point.
Everything about Anya is perfection. *nod*
Has anyone watched Sherlock on BBC America I assume in the US and then whatever channel in England.
Heard good things, haven’t seen yet.
Namely I have no idea how the BBC channels work there.
YES.
Apparently there was an obnoxious episode in Season 2, but I really enjoy Season 1 of that show. Sherlock is great. Benedict Cumberbatch is great. Watson is great. ♥
@Cipher
I’m guessing you mean the Irene Addler interpretation?
the shorter format of Sherlock is the only real thing that disappoints me about it. Would have loved a longer season, but I see that it’s hard to write clever mysterys so probably better we got a few decent ones rather than tripe to fill 15 eps.
Need to track down how to watch it. Doesn’t seem to be on my xfinity.
Season 2 has more Mycroft thought which is awesome
baaahhhh shit
not available
Hairhead, thank you for genuinely apologizing.
Gyeong Hwa, every group of activists and such has its failures. Class is an axis of oppression that too many ignore. Some anti-racist activists are pretty shit on feminism. And then there are the big-name cis gay male bloggers and their commenters… enough said.
Nifty, yeah, some men do that as well, but it’s overwhelmingly women, IME. And, yes, it’s because of fat shaming.
“The Killer In Me” is making me cry all over the place though. This damn episode.
—
Yeah. I haven’t actually seen the episode with Irene Adler, or anything in season 2, so I’m taking Natalie’s word for it. It’s on Netflix which is how I watched it.
@Rev
A post I tried to give in response was eated. E-mail me if you want the link it had in it
@Cipher
I enjoyed Adler’s episode at the time, but also see the criticism of it. So yeah watch it and see what you think.
I love Angel, even have it on box set. I love Buffy at first too but damn she got annoying! I found her so whiny. I can’t even remember specifics anymore. I just got so tired of her. I hated when she popped up in Angel.
Reading the wiki to find specifics on what bugged the hell out of me about Buffy, I found out something I didn’t know. There are apparently Buffy Studies. I had no idea Buffy was this big a deal.
I don’t get it.
/shrug
@Just A Lurker
My friend put it hillariously “Anya and Cordiella are better feminist characters than Buffy!”
not sure I have your emaily thing
ingdamnit
My opinion is that Buffy should actually be about Willow. She’s a more dynamic and interestingly developed character. And also I love her, whereas Buffy… has always sorta not clicked with me as a person. I don’t get her. (Apparently my best friend does get her and identifies most with her of the characters.)
i’m bigdumbchimp at that gmail service stuff
oky doke
nifty:
It’s weird, isn’t it? It’s become so ingrained culturally that I doubt most people even notice that they’re attributing good and bad behavior to food*.
But on the other hand, look at how smokers are treated, for example. It’s not looked at as an addiction, it’s a moral failing. Being fat or unhealthy is a moral failing. Alcoholism is a moral failing. Etc etc etc.
Honestly, I think that the US would be much healthier in general id we could just stop with this Puritanical obsession with assigning a morality to every single action.
*Part of the reason why my in-law’s Eat Right For Your Type bullshit drives me up the freaking wall. It’s all a value judgement on food.
QFT.
The new episodes of Sherlock are available at PBS masterpiece.
The Irene Adler one wouldn’t have been that bad if it hadn’t been about Irene Adler. I don’t think it’s spoiling it to say that the worst thing was that Moffat turned it from being the only time Sherlock was bested by someone else to… him beating her. Yeah.
But besides that, I adore it. The relationship between Sherlock and Watson is fantastic.
HAHAHAHA XD I love it. I’m stealing it. :3
I love how Cordiella progressed in Angel. I was actually rooting for her and cried for her at the end. That was not something I was expecting. I actually want to know what happened to her and what this “fighting on another plane” meant.
I was so rooting for Angel to tell Buffy to go stuff it when she popped up in LA. I was not expecting that to happen when I first starting watching Buffy either.
Go figure.
@Rev hope that helps
Fuck yeah. The same person I was complaining about earlier is also one of those who is constantly talking about whether she is being bad or good based on what she eats. I love her, but it drives me nuts. Just eat the damned food or don’t!
So, I just found out some confusing bad news.
My dad was on EI last year. Apparently, they were supposed to be automatically taking the taxes off his checks?
But he tells me he’s just found out he owes 2300 dollars in back taxes. There is literally no way we can pay that off as a family. I don’t see how we aren’t going to lose everything.
I’m confused, and a bit scared, and I don’t see how this is anything but fucking predatory. I guess our wealthy overlords need new boats and hot tubs? *spits*
kick ass
Daisy, you know who I work with? Convicts, drug addicts, paraplegics, convicted drug addicts who became paraplegics, head trauma victims, amputees, survivors of strokes, etc. And somehow I express myself to them cogently, warmly, appropriately, getting their cooperation and commitment. I’m good at what I do.
And then I come here and shove my foot in mouth, up to the thigh.
Coyote, call me. EI fucks up like this all the time. I was a victim of it once.
It can be handled. You don’t have to lose everything. Give me call.
Angel?
Who could ever forget the Dance of Joy?
Oh no, TLC. I’m sorry. =( I hope it gets figured out.
Props to Hairhead for the actual apology and the offer of help.
Lots of hugs and vouchers for whatever the hell makes you happy for everyone. I’ve missed out on a lot with not keeping up.
HAHA I remember that John. I need to find the video of Angel dancing. XD
and here it is. Angel dancing.
Ing:
I am so sorry to hear about your dog. My condolences.
Dreamed about goats and diamantes, my brain confuses me.
TLC:
The other thing that immediately springs to mind about that part of the world is how the ad person who came up with The Sunshine Coast ought to get an award for the biggest lie told in service of tourism. The vegetation zone is fucking RAINforest after all.
Buffy for all it’s faults provided me with one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had watching TV. The episode where they dealt with her mother’s death was an astoundingly good representation of my experience with my father’s death.
The scene where they pan in from outside the house and slowly bring up from silence the sound of birds and the outside world, I experienced just that sort of attentional disconnect. I’d be doing something by rote, lost in my emotions, and slowly it would dawn on me that things were happening around me while I wasn’t paying attention.
The scene where Buffy and Tara were sitting on a couch at the hospital. Tara tries to say that she lost a parent and that she might be able to help and trails off saying that it must be different for everyone. I had that same experience from both sides of the couch. It was very cleverly shot too. IIRC there was a line separating the two of them from top of the screen to bottom drawn by the couch cushions and a doorway behind. [/pointless anecdote]
TLC, argh that has to be shocking and scary! I hope you can get it sorted out.
Hairhead, I’m glad it was a miscommunication. I hope you are able to point the Laughing Coyote toward a helpful resource.
TLCDamn that sucks. I love how a mistake on the part of the government results in punishment for the victim. Mind you, in other such case I’ve heard that repayment schemes are a possibility. I hope it all works out okay.
John Morales, :D I thought you were referring to this classic TV Dance of Joy….oh no, wait. I can’t do the link. :( How did you show that again? I wrote it down last time but I cannot find it. ARGH! THe tags above the comment box are NOT clear to a computer illiterate like myself (pout/sniffle)
Freeman is under-appreciated. ;)
(Mrs M is a big fan, and the symmetry needed to be restored.)
Dance of Joy
Damnation!
niftyatheist, this is how I did it:
Who could ever forget
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gWDM4X4xUQ" title="Joss Whedon is Numfar!">the Dance of Joy</a>?Dance of Joy
Oh hooray! It worked in preview! Thank you John!
Although I didn’t know what to do with the Joss Whedon part at first — so I left it off! :D
niftyatheist, grats!
When you succeeded, you put a hyperlink reference in the anchor tag so it actually pointed to something, and in a similar way you can ‘title’ the tag which shows the mouse hover-text* (aka the alt-tag).
—
* Incidentally, be aware blind people using reading software get to “see” the alt-tags in images and links.
[erratum]
mouse hover-text
→
mouse-hover text
(Much better!)
Thanks, John! I am going to try another for practice and fun:
This one is for you, Tony…therefore god
I’m spending my week at Girl Scout Day Camp. One of the girls today told me that frogs eat flys, snakes eat frogs, and eagles eat snakes. Then she asked me what use mosquitos are when there are so many other insects around to be eaten. Anyone have any good answers?
Crip Dyke:
Why couldn’t the stupid have gone somewhere else? It just *had* to land here.
Giliell:
I’m the opposite (pretty much). I’ve attempted to
ridedrive stick once, but after 20 minutes the only skill I acquired was ‘how to grind gears’.Sili @335:
That is awesome. I hope their offspring remember the lesson.
Rev:
Ain’t that the truth!
The vast majority of people I know were just looking for a job. Some were trying to find jobs in an their degree field (or a field they were talented in). Some were just trying to find a job to pay the bills. They (and I) were being interviewed to determinei if we were the right fit for a company. Not the other way around.
I will freely admit being completely baffled at exactly *how* ones searches for the best boss. Especially since best is so subjective. Does it relate to their level of skill? Their ability to work with others? Being able to think outside the box? Their integrity?
kristinc:
Would macaroni salad work in place of potato salad?
I love chicken burgers. As long as they have seasoning, or copious amounts of cheese, they’re great.
I’ve found that a ground turkey/beef/chicken mixture can be awesome (or turkey/pork/beef). It works for burgers and loaves. A t/b/c mixture with a smattering of bbq or teriyaki sauce over whole grain pasta tossed in garlic, olive oil, salt/pepper is nummy nummy for the tummy. Another favorite is mixing taboule, couscous, wild rice and quinoa. Using some chicken stock instead of water can impart just enough flavor that you don’t even need to add seasoning to any of that (though a squeeze of lemon can be awesome).
niftyatheist:
Ah, something I know a little bit about (subjectively speaking anyway). When I started working out consistently years ago, I also changed my diet to include leaner proteins, fruits, veggies and complex carbs. These were the good foods. I also restricted my consumption of what I deemed were bad foods (i.e. foods of lower nutritive value or those foods laden with all the wrong fat-fried chicken for instance). I didn’t eliminate them though. I reserved Sunday (later Tuesday) for the day I’d eat whatever I was craving (ice cream, brownies [no nuts; no jokes :) ], chicken wings, pizza, movie popcorn). It was my cheat day. I referred to the rest of the week as the days I was being good. It had nothing to do with the consumption of the food and everything to do with adherence to a dietary plan I’d set for myself.
Tell me it’s Balki tell me it’s Balki…*click*.. yes!
Carlie :D !!
…mosquitoes? Mostly they make more mosquitoes… but the larvae feed fish and tadpoles, and the adults feed birds and bats, and they’re also handy for spreading diseases that couldn’t spread all over the world otherwise. Like malaria, which indirectly gave us sickle cell. <_< and, IIRC, they're so ancient that they were biting dinosaurs with pretty much the same equipment they use today, neh? (not at my sharpest so take with vetting)
Tony:
And you gave up? But you were halfway there! ;)
Katherine Lorraine
Minnesota is a very generous state, and the only way I can imagine getting that much in benefits is if you are supporting a really big family (think quiverfull) or if you have significant medical conditions and are including the value of your Medicaid.
Thanks Pteryxx. I think I will avoid presenting malaria and sickle cell anemia as benefits to mosquitoes, but we were fishing off the dock and I missed the larvae feed fish bit, so I will add that to my list for tomorrow.
niftyatheist – I use that exact clip in one of my classes talking about kin recognition. :D
Isn’t David Boreanaz dreamy?
Oh you probably weren’t talking about *that*.
Angel has the *best* musical score for the opening.
I’m still annoyed that Angel was cancelled at the end of Season 5. IIRC, the execs learned shortly thereafter about the legion of fans that were pissed. I want to say they regretted their decision, but it was too late (it’s possible I’m remembering a few details wrong).
Of the main cast, Cordelia and Wesley were the most interesting to me (though I’m sorry, Cordy/Angel =no, every bit as much as Spike/Buffy), with the latter stealing the top spot. I liked Gunn, but even though he had a distinct voice and role on the show, I never thought he was the best fit (hard to explain). Lorne was an absolute hoot. Fred was ok at times, and annoying other times. Ilyria was interesting, but needed more development.
I preferred Buffy as she grew up and learned more about the complexities of life. That said, Buffy was often not the most interesting character on the show. For me though, it was an ensemble, even though she took top billing.
I’m the complete opposite.
I don’t *get* it, because there’s obviously many ways the show could be viewed, and everyone has their own tastes. I do however, see where they could do some classes on BtVS. Joss’ theme of “high school is hell” is a perfect point to talk to students about. I’ve never taken a class (would *love* to though), but I wouldn’t be surprised if it used BtVS–especially the high school years–as a launching pad to discuss relevant issues in society.
There are a 2 or 3 really cool Buffy compendiums that discuss much of the background for the various seasons, as well as give insight into the creation and evolution of the characters and the relevant metaphors for each season.
Oh, and everyone is wrong.
Faith is bestist :)
As for the popularity of the show, I’m a little biased :)
Oh, and I just have to mention that I bought a t-shirt with the words “And then Buffy killed Edward. The end.”
(I may possibly, perhaps, probably dislike ‘Twilight’ with a passion)
Damn, so close.
Ah yes, the otherkin.
Look dude, I like werewolf art as much as the next guy with a Cheetos-stained black t-shirt, but the whole “digitigrade” stance on two legs would not work in real life. Only if they had legs like birds.
FossilFishy:
Gosh no.
It was a great show.
Discussions on it get 4 thumbs up from me.
Oh, and “The Body” was excellent. I especially loved how they had no music through the episode. Oodles and oodles of kudos goes to Emma Caulfield’s (Anya) performance in that episode. Her inability to comprehend the situation (i.e. childlike eyes that haven’t experienced loss of this nature) as well as the frustration she felt b/c she *wanted* to was fantastic.
niftyatheist @434:
Thank you.
I loved the shot of all the colorful homes along the coast (I guess it was more up the cliff).
I’m wondering (for the first time) how music is chosen for commercials like this. I can see how they’re trying to use some sort of emotional appeal (I don’t know what my reaction would be seeing that for the first time without music), but how do they find something that’s the right _fit_ (though that’s probably apparent only in retrospect)?
Tony, I think the music for these ads was original – created for the ads. (I know this? Because it was in the comments under one of them – the composer posted to answer this very question).
ImaginesABeach:
The little fuckers are good for honing your reflexes. As in, swat them before they fly away.
I really don’t like mosquitos (I don’t know anyone who actually does, hmm).
[anecdote time]
two of the three dogs spend most of their days in our fenced in yard. One night after a period of rain, I let them inside, but failed to close the door quick enough.
I spent an hour and a half walking around my living room (why do they call it that?)killing upwards of 60 of those damn things (using 2 flyswatters). Every time I thought I was done, another one buzzed by. The little flying fuckers love to bite me. They don’t touch the other two people in the house.
Do you know how strange it is to have a huge mosquito bite on the top of a shaved head?
Audley:
my boyfriend ended the little driving session. He had the strangest look on his eyes.
I have a question:
I’ve encountered more than few people who treat Wikipedia with disdain. Usually they mention that it’s wrong a lot (to which I’ve mentioned that it’s also right a lot), so they dismiss it as useful.
Does anyone know why?
Tony:
*chuckles*
Reminds me of last summer. My uncle and cousin came out here and joined my dad and I on a canoe trip in northern Manitoba. I should mention that my uncle and cousin are from interior BC, where there are apparently almost no mosquitoes.
The first night out in the real backcountry, my uncle got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. He left the tent door open while he did so. When he got back to the tent, he had to spend an hour killing mosquitoes before he could go back to sleep.
I grew up visiting the Canadian Shield every summer, so I’ve perfected my technique for getting in and out of tents while leaving minimal space for mosquitoes to enter. It had never occurred to me that anyone would ever leave a tent flap open for a millisecond longer than required. I wonder what silly things I would do if someone took me camping in an unfamiliar ecosystem?
Slow news day? Spiders self-castrate in fight for females
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
My friend just got hired! I’m buying him a $3 pack of beer and some junk food to celebrate. This friend is my recent ex and father in all but name to the little one. We don’t get along well in a romantic relationship but we’re great friends. We were friends before lovers and are best that way. He’s currently sleeping on my floor since his mother got tired of him. Kicked him out after only a couple months unemployed. Because you know, couch surfing from place is place is going to improve that. Well, apparently it did. XD
It also really really helps that his friend just got promoted as this job and gave him an awesome recommendation. Those two went to college together and have worked together before at a different company.
Figures.
I’m next in line for job, I just know it. :3
I do, indeed. To make matters worse, Mosquito bites swell up really really badly on me. And they LOVE me. :(
On a weirdly related note:
Walked through about 30 feet of brush today with my daughter. Got home and found over 73 chigger bites on my pelvic region (yes, there too. :() I haz a sad! More weird…daughter had not one bite. I’m glad for that but WTF!!!
Tony:
In some ways, it’s “too easy” to just look something up on the Pfft and assume it’s accurate. That happens a lot.
Of course, there are also people who just like pissing in the pool, but I assume you know about those.
Teachers.
At least in my experience. So many teachers in high school and college will not let you use Wikipedia. They also don’t mention it’s a great jumping off point and that you should check the citation links to get to the “real” information. That plus students who plagiarize from it.
I want a refund. I purchased an earworm, and all I got was one song on an endless loop: Mambo #5…
(I don’t even *like* the song).
Bah, kinda threadrupt since I’ve been studying quizbowl all day.
After nationals, I promised myself I’d get better.
It seems to be working.
Nutmeg:
Yikes. Your poor uncle.
(and for some reason, after reading your last sentence there, I’m reminded of The Blair Witch Project…don’t ask, my brain is odd)
I wonder what silly things I would do if/when I ever go camping (nothing against it, but just like boat/yacht/cruise I’ve never done it)?
I’ve known people to edit political sections to support whatever they’re arguing, and then reference the page. I think it might stem from that, and the ease with which anyone could make edits to any article, but that situation doesn’t exist anymore.
But people that dismiss any and every citation and reference to material there out of hand are using a fallacious argument, and are free to dispute what is linked to with their own sources if they really have a point.
For the record, I donate to Wikipedia because I think it is a fabulous resource, and highly credible.
Tony, maybe relax with some Mambo Italiano?
Happened to glance at one of the google ads in the sidebar and saw this:
“A movie about leaving religion to follow Jesus”
Now my head, it go all kablooie!
Ye Olde Blacksmith:
That’s bad, but I’m sorry to tell you this, they love me more :(
Can you beat one bite on the head, one between the eyes, one on the forehead, and one in the crotch? Now imagine the looks of people around you trying to figure out what you’re doing when you start scratching (sometimes it takes me a minute to realize that the spot I’m scratching was a bite spot)
mikmik:
I didn’t know people were able to *make* edits. I can see where some people might have reservations, but only up to a point. It’s not as if there aren’t any citations one could follow.
Oh, silly me (speaking only of the US), I forgot that many people don’t even go as far as Wikipedia for info. Why would you when you can get all you need to know from FOX News and CNN?
Ah, mosquitoes.
I am the bane of my wife and child.
SCENE: Hot, stifling summer evening. Windows open to let in marginally cooler air. Wife and child sit on couch in shirts and shorts, slapping at skeeters. I sit there, cool and nude, skin unblembished.
WIFE & SON: We hate you! (scratch! scratch!)
Seriously, if it weren’t so annoying, it would be very funny.
John:
Well, I was going to check out your link but:
Granted, I’d feel much sadder if I had 73 chigger bites (my sympathies Blacksmith), but still…
Mosquitoes like me so much, my mere presence can *suck them away from other people*. Oh joy.
@452 John Morales,
I’m assuming they, the researchers, mean that they, the male spiders, palpondectomize themselves after they’ve anchored them in the appropriate hole in which they(palps) continue to plug.
I mean, what good is it to fight off competitors only to realize, “Oh, shit, now what?”
On the other hand, it’s a good financial move as the widow will continue to receive the dead husband’s benefits.
Hairhead:
it’s still a bit amusing.
The existence of mosquitoes disproves God. What kind of intelligent designer creates 1 of my two most hated creatures?
Hairhead, Blacksmith, Pteryxx:
I’m wondering if Hairhead would have any protection from them if we were all in the woods together. After all, three of the four of us would probably attract more mosquitos than Pi has numbers.
Tony:
I think she was looking for an alternative to mayo. Of which, I could definitely give her an idea or two, but FIL wouldn’t eat them. I love cooking with couscous but he won’t eat it. Nor wild rice. I don’t think he even knows what tabbouleh or quinoa are.
The best I could do for the burgers was suggest maybe salmon burgers, or (MIL is not a great cook and salmon burgers might intimidate her) those precooked teriyaki chicken breasts in the freezer at Costco.
They do not use seasoning. It’s bizarre. Their spice cabinet contains mostly vintage tins and bottles from like the early 1980s, the contents of which taste and smell just about like dried lawn clippings, but which are still. not. empty. MIL came of cooking age in an era where 1/4 tsp of onion salt seasoned a meal for 4.
Part of me is all “FFS let the man have his brats for Father’s Day” but I know that’s not really the issue. The issue is that my FIL is flat out unwilling to change his diet, and MIL’s job is to try and make him change it against his will. I sympathize with her, but it ain’t gonna work.
Tony: I get the feeling that’d only work if we snuck into the woods while wearing a sealed tent. Otherwise the mosquitoes would all leave the woods to come after us.
…Actually, if we snuck into the woods wearing a sealed tent, and then opened the flap, every single mosquito in the woods would fly in at once and OH GODS I CAN’T BREATHE *thud* *ominous self-satisfied buzzing*
Tony, huh.
Try again: Mambo Italiano
Mosquitoes, feh. Bedbugs make mosquitoes look benign.
Needless to say, I won’t be staying at that particular hotel again.
No no no no no you’re still confused. The question is what use insects have for us.
You know, mosquitoes love me too. Can I join your camping trip?
Hmmm… with the exception of parachuting into the social justice thread and getting sucked into the darling debacle, I haven’t been around much for nearly a month, owing to having become Overcome by Events™ IRL. Now I find that there are New Rulez© (I never actually understood the TZT concept to begin with, and now it’s… different) and people are fighting and leaving, and I’m too damned (multi)threadrupt to even begin to know how I should feel about it all.
I think I’m just gonna fade away. I’m not flouncing: I’m not mad at anyone (I don’t know enough about what’s going on to know who to be mad at, even if I wanted to be), nor is it too hot for me in the kitchen… but I’m going to be increasingly busy between now and the elections anyway, and this seems like an opportune moment to refocus the time I’ve been spending here over the years on Other Shit®. Mebbe I’ll drift back this way at some point; mebbe not. In any case, y’all take care of yourselves, OK?
(X-posted TZT/TET)
Rey Fox: Not completely true. I often find myself running ‘on toes’ (though obviously it’s not truly ‘digitigrade’), not because I think I’m a wolfman, but because I genuinely run better that way.
Bill Dauphin
Don’t go.
—
Cipher
For next time.
Fill your room with (well-sealed) bags of nut and berries.
kristinc:
WTF?
I think I need to sit down.
I know everybody has their tastes, but life without garlic, rosemary, chili powder, thyme, basil, dill, oregano, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, ginger, cinnamon and…(I’m going to stop now or I’d be here for-ever). I thought my mind was boggled reading comments from rajkumar or txpiper.
__
thunk:
You’re welcome to come. More [mosquitoes] for you. Less for us :)
__
ING:
I thought it was “what use do *cats* have for humans?”
Chiggers, mosquitoes, ticks, blackflies, have NOTHING on what I discovered myself to have last January.
Scabies.
My son brought it home from school. It started out as mild hot itching when I lay down to sleep. I took a blanket off the bed, still itching at night. Then I began to itch during the day. Then I began to itch during the day.
So I inspected our cats for fleas — didn’t find any, de-fleaed them anyways, vacuumed, washed, etc. Itching got worse.
So I stripped my bedding, stripped off all my clothes, and my son’s clothes and my wife’s clothes, spent 8 hours washing and drying everything, then sealing in plastic bags, in case it was bedbugs.
Itching worse. Wife and son have mild infestations of whatever-it-is, but I have it the worse. My crotch is now ON FIRE all day, big swollen lumps everywhere, including bites right on the (TMI warning) glans penis.
I go the doctor. One doctor thinks I have an STD (crabs or the clap) and sends me off. I know I don’t have either. Go to my regular doc. He thinks some kind of skin infection, yeast and bacteria combined. He’s writing out an expensive set of prescriptions while I go through some more of the symptoms and then he suddenly says, “Scabies! I had scabies once when I worked in an ER during my residency. The itching drove me insane!”
“What do I do, doc?”
“It’s simple, you don’t even need a prescription. Get some Nix from the pharmacist, one tube for each member of the family, and follow the instructions.”
Well, there must have been an epidemic of scabies around, because I had to go to FOUR pharmacies to but 3 tubes! And when I ask for the Nix, the female pharmacists could not help but screw up their faces and hold the tubes out to me on outstretched arms with only their fingertips.
So in some kind of exotic ritual, we, my family strip the beds and all our clothes, vacuum, and then anoint ourselves. With the fingertips, with this greasy, nasty stuff. Into every nook and cranny of our skin, except (thank FSM) the face and the scalp under the hair. My wife finds it stings a bit. My son, who was 12, yells and howls in pain during the whole operation. I had the least discomfort. And we had to leave this on for 24 hours, no bathing.
But it worked. Wife and son stopped itching overnight. Welts and bumps and rashes disappeared within two weeks.
Not me. The itching went down a bit in the first day. The bumps stayed bumpy, and hot, and sweaty, and rashed up (in the crotch). I had to reapply the Nix two more times. And even then, I itched intermittently and scratched for two months.
Why?
It’s scabies. These little fuckers drill through the surface of your skin and then eat and fuck and shit under your skin’s surface, causing the insane itching, bumps, opportunistic infections, etc. And it seems than my wife’s and son’s delicate, permeable skin passed the poison through right away and killed the fuckers. And my evidently thicker, tougher skin protected the little bastard for nearly another month.
What did my wife and son do? What any supportive family member would do: they laughed and pointed out that now I knew how they felt ALL SUMMER.
Scabies.
Ugh!
Tony:
There is, I think, a veeeeerrryy interesting story there… ;)
Hairhead:
re: scabies.
Ok, you win. No contest. Those are infinitely worse. I had them back in ’97 or so, and well, we both know how it feels. I remember being relatively ok during the day, but at night, I guess that’s when they’re most active. It’s really difficult to be working behind a bar needing to scratch your crotch every 10 seconds.
__
Blacksmith:
Sorry, no interesting story. Unless you count being bit *through* my pants and underwear interesting. I guess maybe it crawled up my pants leg and headed north, but the party was happening around the *other* head.
Hairhead
Lovely story.
Thanks?
For mosquito bites I’ve been using this bite zapper and it’s been working for me. Anecdote of course, but I did try it on one bite whilst leave another untreated several times and the treated bites subsided quicker in every trial.
I started using it because there’s a plausible mechanism for its action. Apparently the compounds in mosquito, er, saliva(?) that cause the itching are temperature sensitive and break down when sufficient heat is applied. The piezoelectric arc in the device is very, very hot and very, very brief so it doesn’t burn the skin. It can feel a little funny, either pinching or causing slight nerve tingles and the like. I also had to do repeated clicks turning the device a little each time to get good results unlike the one click promised by the product propaganda.
A quick google scholar search turns up this positive study on a similar product. It seems pretty preliminary to me but I’m no expert at assessing such studies.
Scabies, just, just…no. I can’t even think about that. I saw a bad horror movie in the 70’s where killer bees somehow got under a person’s skin. The itching drove him mad and he grabbed a fork and scratched so hard that his skin tore and the bees flew out. I’ve never recovered. Just typing this is making me do the itchy dance.
FossilFishy:
Thanks for the link.
Oh how I wish I’d known about that bite zapper when I worked at an outside bar right on the Gulf of Mexico. I did learn not to continue wearing cologne while working outside. That reduced the number of bites.
Your welcome Tony.
Apropos of nothing: Argument from authority, xe’s going to say that creationist “experts” have disproved evolution and are being systematically discriminated against by a dogmatic scientific hegemony.
Just watched a BBC Miss Marple movie from the 80s. The theme song sounds almost exactly like the Blackadder theme, so much so that it was distracting.
Miss Marple! Miss Marple! She wears a coat of tweed!
Miss Marple! Miss Marple! She’s very sharp indeed!
Miss Maaarple! Miss Maaarple! She knows you killed that man!
Miss Maaarple! Miss Maaarple! Forget your wicked plannnnnnnn!
BUM BA BUMP.
Just checked out the dungeon for the first time.
Saw the comments that got some people banned.
Disgust just isn’t a strong enough word.
Off to sleep.
Good night all (or morning I guess).
IMO, the best Miss Marple adaptations were the 1960s film versions with Margaret Rutherford. She was awesome.
(I’m not otherwise that fond of Agatha Christie.)
Well, in this one they tried to turn The Mirror Crack’d into far too much of a police procedural/worldly Hollywood expose/unhappy rich people soap. It was the 80s, so probably the Beeb was jealous of Dynasty.
Walton Would that be in part because of her fascist sympathies?
Because I really enjoy her as a writer. I like her understanding of character.
Ing I’m so sorry for the loss of your dog.
No, I didn’t even know she had fascist sympathies. I’m just not all that fond of detective stories in general. (But the 1960s films were enhanced enormously by Margaret Rutherford’s acting.)
@ ibyea #130
MQG = Medical Qigong?
I got the integral part. (The “virtual work” method I studied at varsity goes into quadrupal integration.) It is just the variables that got me confuzzed.
@ Josh #139
You might want to change the order you mentioned:
;D
@ KG 179
Hitler was actually more than happy to let the war drag on. He was asked for much more than the Condor Legion, but refused. Spain would be a distraction for the other western powers while he made his own preparations in Germany – and an opportunity to fine tune his new weaponry on a battlefield (eg the 88mm anti-aircraft guns and Messerschmidt 109s).
Mussolini’s troops were, well, crap.(They were too used to shooting at unarmed Abyssinians.) He went crazy throwing stuff at Spain after suffering a defeat in a battle with the Republicans.
The British attitude (as you mention) was simply appalling. They supplied the nationalists clandestinely. (As the ‘Merkins did with oil credits.)
@ Cipher #365
Don’t get me started! ;)
(Like Brogg, I am fascinated to know what I look like.)
@ Bill
Keep well and be back soon.
Crossed Atlantic last night. Brain feels distinctly fuzzy.
Good morning
Ouch. I somehow hurt my left shoulder while being asleep. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Can’t lift my left arm much.
Mosquito stories
I’m the person who seems like the little buggers’ favourite meal. When I lived in Cuba I was the only person in the whole dorm to get bitten. All the others said “oh I thought the mosquitoes would be worse”. Finally I caught a nasty strep infection in one of the bites. I oozed puss from every scratch I had, had a high fever and was a bit delirious. Would have been scary if my brain had worked well enough to be scared.
Bill
Take care and get back when you feel like it, preferrably sooner than later ;)
+++
Speaking of questions, this morning #1 asked me “Why do we exist at all. If we didn’t I wouldn’t be could now!”
I think I failed at giving her an answer that satisfied her…
Re mosquitoes: Mosquitoes are the only macroscopic life against which I harbor genocidal fantasies. None, alas, practical enough to be called plans.
Two words: Bed bugs.
I swear if I had an idea even remotely practical enough to be called a plan, it would be in action right now in my apartment. Nasty, parasitic vampiric little things that literally could not survive without the ability to ruin our damn lives. At least in their current state. I give them no mercy or time to change strictly out of fear they will evolve to be bigger literal pains in the ass (and in everywhere else I might add).
Kill. Them. All.