This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. Hmmm…a baby echidna is called a puggle? I did not know that.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PUGGLE! *faints!*
I’ve noticed that the ads are getting weirder than usual– I saw one for used busses earlier today.
Dhorvath – *hugs*
Tony – Congratulations and good luck!
rowantvt – I’m very happy to hear that your adult snakes are safe.
ednaz – Welcome!
@Improbable Joe from previous lounge thread:
I hear ya on that. Even many of the people who are suffering in the USA believe that bunch of baloney.
The DA and the judge should have been speaking to the groper and the murderer and telling them what not to do and supported the victims and loved ones of the victims.
Puggle, The name with so much win you need another universe to hold it all. My daughters want a Puggle now.
Puggles deserve to be happy because they were born cute.
PRAISE PROPERITY JEEEEEEEESUS
Puggles look very sleepy and would be great in tissue commercials.
@Improbable Joe:
I think 2 lounges ago you said you wanted music suggestions and were a metalhead. I’m a metalhead too. What bands/styles are you into?
Aratina Cage (last thread):
Damn, it sounds just like brOkenmech, over at Lousy Canuck:
I provided a few basic definitions of those words xe tossed around as well as asking how you could distinguish between ‘feeling’ and ‘being’ [threatened, harassed, or intimidated]. I’m curious if/when xe will leave a response. I’m not holding my breath.
@Tony
Oh, yikes, br0kenmech provides us with all we need to know about him in his next comment:
Imagine that! Who woulda known that his innocent, good-natured comment (what, did he call her the C-word?) would hurt her?
DPB,
Metal? Hell, I don’t even know anymore. On the one hand, I like some of the crazy downtuned chuggy grunty stuff… but if you own more than 10-12 CDs worth you really don’t ever need any more, sort of like if you buy and keep a year’s subscription of a “housekeeping” magazine you have enough tips and recipes to last you 5 years and they’re just going to recycle shit anyway. On the other hand, I’m cool with thrash and shred stuff, 80s and even early 90s Metallica, Pantera, Anthrax, Vai and Satriani.
Also, Tony, what I was documenting (there is a screen capture of it that the douchebro ignored) was more along the lines of a threat as you defined it at Lousy Canuck’s:
And this is terribly funny: https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/244271912245657601/photo/1/large
Clint Eastwood’s performance at the RNC rated as the Star Wars Holiday Special!
HAH!
So does that mean that Sarah Palin’s comments on the Dem convention would be rated as the Star Wars: Ewoks cartoon?
Aratina @9:
I know, right?
I don’t understand people like that.
“Oh I insulted you and made you cry? ::shrug:: I didn’t mean to do that. I guess you have your feelings and I have mine.”
At that point, if I was that friend, that would have likely been the last time I’d have talked to the jerk.
I dated a guy once, for about 6 weeks. After taking him to dinner one night-which I paid for-he made the comment “Thanks for dinner, one day I’ll have to return the favor.” Upon looking back on the short time we dated, I realized he never paid for *anything*. Nor was I getting any sex. He was getting money from his parents and grandmother to pay for college and for any expenses, yet couldn’t pay for drinks or dinner. Of course, he was more than willing to buy stuff on Ebay. Needless to say, the next time he called me, I told him I never wanted to speak to him again and that I owed him no explanation. I deleted his number from my phone and have never spoken to him since. I felt like an idiot for letting someone use me, but it hasn’t happened again, so I learned something.
I’m thinking The Game™ is over.
The Train just disgorged a horde (not the good kind) of loud obnoxious drunks.
Tony,
Hey, at least you got out after 6 weeks. I was with a woman for two years and she bought me ONE THING in the whole two years, but when she moved out she took EVERYTHING. She cooked one meal in two years, and took all of the dishes, all of the silverware, all of the cookware, and all of the glasses and coffee mugs. She worked two months out of two years, and felt entitled to everything except my clothing and comic books.
Thanks to the magic of cookies, I get a lot of ‘targeted’ ads for stuff I’ve either looked for or already actually bought online.
Right now, I’m getting come-ons for 1) terrestrial TV antennae (don’t need this, but did get and install one at my wife’s request a month or so back), 2) Argentina football jerseys (again don’t need–but did get one for son recently), 3) exercise benches (again–don’t need–went with gym membership but briefly considered just equipping here), 4) French horns (not really looking for one; passing nostalgic thing did have me looking, but sanity prevailed), and 5) hotels (thanks, no, vacation now done, and generally for business travel I’m kinda stuck with the corporate travel tool anyway). Notwithstanding it’s all kinda useless to me now, it’s still a bit like having a timeline of my life in my browser.
… I get to thinking it might be fun deliberately to search on eclectically strange stuff just to make the browser ads entertaining, see what bizarre combinations I can get together. Mebbe even try for a ‘Gary Aldridge special’, see if I can get advertisements for all the gear from the police report together on the same page.
They really don’t come any cuter than puggles.
Only times I ever see advertisements here is when I look from other than my home computer.
(Waste of bandwidth, they are)
@Aratina
Wow, I haven’t seen it, but if Clint Eastwood’s portion is Star War’s Holiday Special, it must have been really crappy. Also, I like how all the Republicans are the prequels.
@Joe:
Hmm…interesting. I agree a lot of it is interchangeable and I love me some old timey thrash (listening to Death Angel at the moment).
Check out Dresden. Their production levels are as low as one would expect. The vocals have a “disaffected young Lemmy Kilmister” kind of sound to them (to me at least). Here’s a fun Sounds of Silence cover that they thrash up a good bit in the middle.
Eeww just watched Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s benediction. What was I thinking. Ear bleach please.
Speaking of weird ads, I’m really tired of seeing the one featuring shirtless Hoggle.
@Tony
No doubt I would have been more like Improbable Joe in that situation. But I know that sometimes it is best to move on and cut off all ties with a person for your own health, something I have felt forced to do several times recently. I don’t want to count people like br0kenmech as people I associate with. At least with dating you get to have a choice in who you are getting to know even if it turns out to be a bad choice, but these a-holes are invading our spaces uninvited thinking they are all brave and shit for standing up to the gynocracy, which is supremely annoying.
DPB, I am rather surprised that I really enjoyed that cover (and I’ve always liked the original). It kind of fits the song, for me.
Go figure.
So what does it say about me that I delay opening the fridge to get a snack because the cat is in the way?
Hey all:
Any recommendations about good blogs at Patheos?
@ Aratina:
I’ve reported the documentation thread to the forum mods. I hope they’ll clean it up soon.
Thanks for contributing to it!
Joe:
Damn.
That’s beyond fucked up.
I’m sorry buddy.
Ads:
I’ve got GNC and Election signs for sale… ?
It is cool Tony, years and miles have dulled the pain… and knowing that she moved into the rotting trailer her older sister abandoned, and married the ex-boyfriend who screwed her best friend when he found out she was pregnant? Priceless.
Aratina Cage:
I’ve related this story before (back at Sciblogs), but this reminds me of what happened with a [former] friend. He and his wife had gone through some bad times and she decided she wanted a separation. I saw him one day and he was looking down,
Tony, I thought Libby’s blog was rather good when it was here and it’s now there (apparently, we atheists scared off the people she wanted to reach), but I don’t go to places that encourage theists and the religious so I haven’t seen it since.
Maybe I’m the last person to figure this out, but nohellbelowus is a sexist shithead. In response to Cristina Rad’s post about GWW, this fuckwit says:
Of all the things that could possibly be said, Captain McDouche decided her appearance was THE thing to mention!
Aratina Cage:
I’ve related this story before (back at Sciblogs), but this reminds me of what happened with a [former] friend. He and his wife had gone through some bad times and she decided she wanted a separation. I saw him one day and he was looking down, so I invited him out for a cup of coffee, just to talk.
So, we’re talking and in commiseration, I tell him that Mister and I are having a rough patch, it happens, yada, yada, yada. Things get quiet for a bit, then he looks at me. Looks me up and down, then says “well, if anything happens, you could make money, you know. A lot of money. Hell, I’d be your first customer!”
He was…taken aback when I made it clear that I did not appreciate that nor did I consider it a compliment. I paid for the coffee and left. Some people.
PS from Wikipedia on Patheos:
Sorry for the almost duplicate post, premature submit via rat.
Caine:
Uh, damn.
What a seriously fucked up thing for that guy to say. Sexist beyond belief.
All right, which one of you rats did it?
On Caine’s story
*facepalm* I may not be good at being social, but c’mon, even I realize that it is a total douchebag move! Where do these people learn social interaction from?!
Jon:
Thank you.
That information says quite a bit.
ibyea:
I know what you mean.
I realized a few years ago that I typically rehearse a lot of what I plan on saying, even in relatively mundane conversations. Obviously I can’t always do so, but if I’m meeting someone for drinks, or going on a date, or about to chat with my parents, or even just talk to either of my roommates, I create something of an overview in my mind of what I want to say and *how* I want to say it. I think I do it to try and avoid saying something insulting to the other person (not because I think I would deliberately say something insulting, but to avoid any accidents; of course that’s not foolproof).
For instance, I told my parents earlier in the day that I wanted to speak with them at the same time to let them know of my job offer. Prior to talking to them, I did a rough mental outline of what I wanted to say. Of course it didn’t work out exactly like I wanted to, but I covered what I wanted, in the manner that I did.
It’s almost like trying to mentally ‘preview’ what I’m going to say, in much the same way many people preview their comments here at FtB.
That’s weird. I just noticed something about the date/time of posts. My prior post here is at 12:18 am on 9/8/12, while the post at Cristina Rad’s blog is 5:09 am on 9/8/12.
That must mean…
…I’m a time traveler!
My mutant power finally kicked in!
Sweet!!
Thank you, One Thousand Needles! I wanted that one piece of documentation on there because that man (who made the threats) came to FTB yesterday patting himself on the back about how special of a cupcake he is because he took a Women’s Studies class, unlike the rest of us FTB gynofascists; therefore, he gets to tell us that we are wrong and what REAL activism looks like.
I cannot let that one slide by. You do not threaten women and then act like you are the paragon of feminism! N. O.
I googled stuff from Ogvorbis’s
lastrecent post and found this:http://inciweb.org/incident/3201/
is the interwebs not a wonderful thing?
Tony
You shouldabeen here when PZ was time-stamping as UTC.
Nobody knew what was going on.
@Caine
First time I remember hearing that one, Caine, and what a creeper!
I’m very pissed off because I want to read thunderf00t’s blog here and it got deleted. Did anybody archive it?
Chris Kluwe, an American football player, defends another player’s right to free speech and speaks out in support of gay marriage, when Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. wrote to the team owner, urging him to “inhibit such expressions from your employee.” Tone trolls would have a field day.
Choice excerpts (but please go read the whole thing):
see_the_galaxy #47
oh my goo’ness
That is a very serious problem‽‽‽
Oh noes!
Ok, now for something cool:
In part, this is for one simple reason: Atheists are Americans too.
I had to leave blogger Caryn Riswold a thank you.
SQL: ♥ ♥ ♥
Meanwhile, I’m making chicken soup from a leftover roast carcase, and a (sort of) bolognese spaghetti sauce. My spag bol recipe has evolved over time and it’s kind of an improvise every time, but this time I observed myself.
The ingredients are:
* 300g minced beef (grass fed local etc etc)
* 1kg tomatoes (mix of tinned & fresh, roasted)
* 500g sliced mushrooms
* 400g zucchini, chopped finely
* 300g chopped onion
* 400g cooked brown lentils
* 400g chopped red capsicum
plus wine, tomato paste, lots of garlic, oregano, bay leaves etc etc. That make 3kg veggies to 300g meat.
My meat-loving bloke loves it. I’m not sure exactly how many serves it will do, but I freeze 2/3 of it for later, and the other 1/3 will do at least 6 servings.
I have a case of hiccups and my feet hurt.
So I am taking a muscle-relaxant and a pain-killer.
See y’all later.
(*whoo colors!*)
SQL? WTF?!! SQB!!!
Tony, I still enjoy Unreasonable Faith at Patheos
Caine, oohh ratses. I miss my little critters, but not quite ready to have more. Soon, though.
NO, I’m not saying “good morning”
It ain’t so.
Can I please have a new one?
The little one drew a picture.
She drew a picture on my car.
She drew a picture on my car with a stone.
I haven’t seen the damage yet.
Let’s hope I can use the scratches-ex on them.
+++++
WTF is wrong with that woman (and I mean the judge)
So, ladies, never ever enter a bar again.
Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant. It was one of those nights when I just wanted someone else to cook for me and take care of the dishes.
Joe:
I can’t figure that one out, either. Mine will do that when she has plenty of food, water, and litter; when nothing’s wrong medically; and when she’s recently been petted but walked away of her own volition.
Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy
And when I see how sad you are, it sort of makes me…happy!
That proverb about the best revenge being living well? Totes bullshit. The best revenge is seeing assholes who fucked you over fuck up their own lives as well.
Also OMG LUCY!!!!!
Portia:
Meh. Who’s worshipped that goddess lately? Then again, I don’t have a problem with names stamped with current religions, either.
Morph is wicked cute, but I am partial to black cats.
Esteleth:
I can’t eat anything without wearing it, either. To quote an ex-SO, “It’s the shelf.” ;)
Josh:
YES, this. The whole point of the original Beetle was that it was cheap. The new one is purely yuppie nostalgia for their poor-student days, and it’s got the yuppie price tag to match.
Mmmmmmm, sea kittens.
Hello, Ednaz!
Aratina Cage, quoting a SF DA:
Same damn thing women have always gotten. Anyone else remember Looking for Mr. Goodbar? The protagonist being murdered at the end was a on
I just left a comment for Brokenmech. Unfortunately, Thibeault still has me in auto-moderation, months after I hurt his widdle fee-fees by calling him out on posting that triggering, misogynist LOLcat video. (Undoubtedly he still has Ginmar banned as well.) Even though he’s apologized to Happiestsadist for triggering them. Such an ~~ally~~. I told him as much in another comment… I wonder if he’ll delete it and ban me, or he’ll post it and reply with some kind of manipulative, scoldy bullshit? Asshole. With “allies” like him I don’t need enemies.
If I had a nickel for every sexist mansplaining douchebag on the internet who thought he was entitled to be a sexist mansplaining douchebag on the internet because he (allegedly) took a WS class or marched for women’s rights blah blah blah….
Tony:
Love Joy Feminism. That’s… about it. And you have to put up with xtians in the comments, because she’s trying to persuade them gently.
That comment to Cristina is of course uncalled for, but if you want to see real creepitude from NHBU, see this one.
1000 Needles: Other than the sheer fugliness of the website, bullshit like that is why I avoid AtheismPlus.com like the plague. I mean, hats off to people who have the patience to do 101, but inevitably you get swamped with JAQers-off. (If we can still use that term, that is.)
SQB: That dude gets points just for the phrase “lustful cockmonster.”
Giliell @56:
That would be a brilliant protest, actually; get women all over the US to not go to any bars for a specific weekend. If there’s no women in them, there’s no guys either, except for the hardcore rummies that would be there even during the Apocalypse/War Of The Worlds. When the pubs lose an entire weekend of revenue, the world takes notice.
DPB:
Puggle is a Scots word meaning “tire out”, usually used in the past tense: “I’m fair puggled”. Though my father (not Scottish, but he did serve in a Scottish regiment in WWII) used “puggled” to mean “mad, crazy”. I don’t know whether that’s army usage (army puts its own spin on a lot of language).
@25. chigau (違わない)
That you are considerate, put other creatures above yourself and maybe also a cat person perhaps?
@26. Tony •King of the Hellmouth•
Isn’t that where Fred Clark’s marvellous ‘Slacktivist’ blog with its take down of the Worlds Worst Books Lahay & Jenkins Left behind rapture novels was or got moved to? Or am I mistaken there?
Puggle? Wasn’t that the name of the leader of the flying creatures on Geonosis in ‘Star Wars II : Attack of the Clones?’
Thinks harder .. Oh wait that was Poggle actually :
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Poggle_the_Lesser
Never mind then ..
OFFSM, an echidna!!11
I loved Steven Jay Gould’s take on echidna brain.
I must express how happy I am about A+. I’ve been catching up on FTB posts and comments from the week, and I freaking love the eloquent takedowns here and there. Religion is hurtful to all society. Societies based on a hierarchy of domination and submission, which is at the core of religion and sky-fairy worship, actively fuck over their members and suppress progress. I thank A+ for giving voice to this idea. Explicitly.
Patheos blogs: Slacktivist by Fred Clark, most definitely. Love Joy Feminism by Libby Anne. I also like Hemant’s Friendly Atheist; I don’t agree with him on everything, but it is a source of news of atheist activism around the country. I just don’t read the comments on any Patheos blog except Fred’s, and then only on the Left Behind posts.
Puggle? Poggle? Peggle is an adorable computer game with unicorns and rainbows and fireworks. It’s the ultimate in positive feedback and praise. You cleared a level! Here’s a kaleidoscopic display of colors and happiness!
It is a drop-dead gorgeous morning outside. Sunny, 75 degrees, wind is blowing between 15 and 20 mpg making wonderful sounds rustling through the trees outside. It almost makes me feel bad that we’re not outside taking advantage of it, but I’ve looked at the radar and seen the front that’s coming in about an hour. You can’t trick me into getting stuck outside in the rain, nature!
My days are still all screwed up from traveling – I can’t quite internalize that today is Saturday.
Alethian Worldview thinks that Ed Kagin “has a point” with his self-aggrandizing diarrhea about A+.
#48 SQB Reading that letter was the best way to start my day.
And thumbs up for two football jocks who are public about supporting gay rights. Maybe their words will infiltrate some machismo bigot’s brain where the words of us less machismo types would never enter.
G’morning, y’all.
If you’re on twitter and have some time today, let’s reclaim the #atheismplus hashtag!
Maybe the nutters are winning at stealing the Twitter posts because their thinking is so simplistic it is easily contained in 144 characters. I would note it as a matter of pride that FtBers are more eloquent than that.
And I always get the bizarre mental image of stoners on a certain Turkish recreational pharmaceutical trying to play a game of grab-ass in the park whenever I see the word ‘hashtag’.
I am finding the trajectory of the ideas that are congealing around the whole A+ dealio quite interesting. In some ways, it feels like a replay of some things I’ve experienced in other social justice circles. It’s almost like some folks out there forgot the difference between a position being a focal point of an organisation versus taking the position of an ally. Atheist movements don’t have to focus solely on sex, gender, race, other social movements to recognize their existence and be allies. Ignoring those issues seems detrimental, especially if those social injustices are (in part) a direct result of religious brainwashing. Why is this not a no-brainer?
Oops, I should have mentioned I’m responding to linky in 65.
McC2lhu wrote:
Similarly, it seems a significant proportion of the people opposing A+ are doing so by making videos of themselves ranting about how awful it and everyone involved in it is, while those for it (and those neutral but willing to debate) are writing blog posts and interacting on the forums.
Hi all,
has anyone posted about this yet? (I’m probably slow on the uptake, as per usual, so plz ignore if this is old hat)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-emily-c-heath/how-to-determine-if-your-religious-liberty-is-being-threatened-in-10-questions_b_1845413.html
Emily Heath demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to be religious and yet manage to retain basic human decency and intellectual honesty (despite the illusion, presumably, that there are such things as supernatural entities). No excuse for the vast numbers of her co-religionists who fail Basic Decency and Honesty 101 so dismally.
Funny how religionists in power all over the world, whatever flavour of religion they favour, gravitate to the B-league…
I noticed that too – some haters who don’t usually hate via video are doing so. That might be because youtube’s a fertile field for hater support, as shown by TF among others; but I also have a suspicion some are making videos as a finger raised to A+Scribe. Greta’s comments about it got linked and amplified by pitters very quickly, such as JV. See also comments in Christina Rad’s OP about her takedown of GirlWritesWhat:
https://proxy.freethought.online/cristinarad/2012/09/07/a-response-to-girlwriteswhat-on-the-dmca-drama-more/#comment-3379
Good morning!
Ms. Daisy Cutter,
Well, it started out as 100% happy fury that the ex had left me for an unemployed cheater and a trailer sagging in the floor and roof in a soft ‘U’ shape. As time went on, I realized that she had issues that I couldn’t fix and the pressure of my trying was making both of us miserable. So mostly just happy to be far away from that situation, and since I’ve been married happily for the last 7 years I can’t say I’m sorry we broke up, whatever the circumstances.
And yes OMG LUCY!!!!!
Hey wowbagger:
STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO DIE IN A FIRE.
Caine:
Tee hee. My cat Chloe has nearly done this on numerous occasions.
Who’s Lucy?
chigau, Lucy is my cat. I posted a pic in the previous Lounge.
Just for you… OMG LUCY!!!!!
Improbable Joe
re: Lucy
*squeeee*
She looks a lot like my kitteh.
But less spherical.
Christ, it took all of 3 comments in Alethea’s molly thread for the clueless and the prolife to show up. *sigh*
Well, I got pissed and posted a screed in a thread that I think is mostly-dead.
But srsly, GunboatDiplomat (yep! he’s baaack!) seemed to think that the point of the Yes Means Yes Mythcommunication article was “well, if men are going to ignore ‘no’ signals from women, what’s the point in talking about consent?”
Bah.
Something cool shoots up from Texas*: Armadillo’s first space trip may speed commercial dream http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/09/armadillo-aerospace-prepares-f.html
*As opposed to crazy fundies and George Bush.
— — — — —
Sweden is tops in making most of Internet, USA second report finds http://phys.org/news/2012-09-sweden-tops-internet.html
— — — — — — — — — —
Caine,
that asshole must have served as a model for McFarlane’s Peter Griffin. Except Peter occasionally shows some consideration.
“They’ve posted the 10 Commandments in the Capitol”
There are two completely different sets of ten commandments in the OT. Retailate by posting the other set on a BIG sign nearby. The stuff about destroying rival places of worship might make people take notice…and think about why one set of commands is considered unimportant and the other essential.
Does anyone have some spare spoons? GBD is spewing some epic shit over on the “ready to be divisive” thread.
Esteleth:
Not worth bothering with, in my opinion. GBD lives for attention.
When I was a kid the newspaper had the car ads opposite the comics page and I clearly remember the VW ads; $2000 brand new (ca. 1967).
I bought my 64s in the mid to late 1980s for $400 and $600, both running great and one of them looked pretty good too.
*sigh*
Caine, that’s just insane. That’s the sort of thing that sort of makes it harder to reach out to help people, isn’t it? Gross.
—
I tweeted. There’s sort of a deluge of crap in the hashtag though. Saw a post yesterday from the twit who was retweeted by Richard Dawkins. Her post is much more of the same victim-blaming crap. Among the gems is “Maybe if someone called you a cunt or a twat, you should consider that you were acting like a cunt or a twat.” I’d go get the actual verbatim language (and I’m not far off) but I am not in the headspace to go back to it again right now. Some people’s logic just baffles my mind.
—
On a happy note, I went to a thrift store this week and found SO a necktie for a quarter. He wore it to court (he’s a lawyer) and got a compliment from the judge. My thrifty self felt so validated.
Portia:
What was interesting was that in the thread where I first related that story, several men were surprised by realizing they had said similar things to female friends in the past and at the time, they thought they were being complimentary and didn’t see why anyone would be bothered by it. They got better.
Caine:
I guess it wasn’t all loss then. Very gratifying when speaking up is demonstrably helpful. Good for you :)
I think I accidentally replied to myself on twitter a couple of times. Sigh. Oh well.
A person next to you sneezes. What does everyone say in response? Do you just unconsciously spit out “God bless you”? Is there another catchier phrase?
indicus
“Cover your mouth, asshole.”
Indicus, you don’t have to say anything – the whole ‘god bless’ business is based on superstition.
Gesundheit. Salud. Are you sure you shouldn’t take today off-you sound sick?
Reuters, AP, and all journalists:
It is not illegal to call a tornado a tornado even before the National Weather Service “confirms” it. It will not throw your credibility into question.
When you present Youtube video that clearly shows a tornado ripping through Queens, New York, it is not an “apparent” tornado. The video does not “appear to show a funnel cloud.” It actually fucking does. The tornado is right there for everyone to see. It didn’t happen at night. It wasn’t rain-wrapped. It’s not necessary to ask the NWS if it was “really” a tornado.
Obvious tornado is obvious.
/irked
Na zdravlje!
:)
[translation: to your health]
I’m guessing gesundheit wouldn’t be too unusual to hear in an English speaking country.
Caine, I know its based on a myth. Unfortunately after many, many years it kinda just rolls off the tongue and you don’t think much about it. I say gesundheit but too many people look at me like I just insulted their mother :)
Salud – or gesundheit.
Oh Jeezis Christ. They’ve all changed the headlines to tell us the National Weather Service has it was a tornado. Right next to their footage showing the goddamn tornado ripping buildings apart.
Journos: since you care so very much about accuracy and confirmation, try using “watch” and “warning” correctly. No, the entire New England corridor is not under a tornado “warning.” We are under a watch. A watch means “watch out because tornadoes are likely.” A warning means “OMFG there’s a tornado happening right fucking now and you need to take cover.”
This actually matters because people can get killed. The NWS confirmed that.
Indicus:
Heh. I was taught to say gesundheit and I’m old. :D You could always go the Seinfeld route with “You’re so good lookin’!” after someone sneezes.
Worth a shot!
This is fun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responses_to_sneezing
Maybe it’s because tornadoes happen in Kansas, not New York.
♫Sneeze on down, sneeze on down the road. . .
Somebody stay my hand before I kill the next person I see. The fucking media is running photographs of the “blasphemy girl” in Pakistan as she’s being rescued by helicopter. Along with her name.
What. . .are they fucking trying to get her killed? How. . I just can’t. .
Josh,
Well, her (probably violent and gruesome) death would make one hell of a story.
/cynical
(I’m not arguing that they are deliberately trying to get her killed, just that they are careless fuckers and besides, her death would probably bring them more profit than a happy ending anyway.)
Hey, Trinioler,
We’re not going to have to resort to that twee, uptight SJW euphemism “Step on a lego,” the SJ version of “Bless your heart,” are we?
One of my friends said the other day, “They can go die in a Lego.” I’m using that one. It’s too absurd for anyone to get their undies wedged over.
Esteleth:
The only spoons that should be used w/r/t GBD are large wooden ones, applied directly to his skull. ()
Indicus:
I typically say “Bless you,” minus the deity. It’s just a social convention, acknowledging that someone has sneezed. If the phrase bothers you, you can resort to the German Gesundheit (“health”).
I also still say “Oh, my god.” The pagans who change it to “gods” are so. fucking. irritating. Especially the ones who reply to your OMG with “Which one?”
Caine: I still use “knock wood” metaphorically, but that doesn’t mean I intend to ward off demons by rapping on my desk. :)
Josh, they have to be , you know.
Chigau:
That was sarcasm, right?
Ms. Daisy
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Tornado
Yesterday I went to the Democratic headquarters here in Fundyville and bought some buttons and a sticker for my car. “Gay marriage doesn’t frighten me. No health care does.” The lady running the place said it was the first one she’s sold. Doesn’t surprise me one damn bit. If I suddenly disappear you’ll all know I was stoned to death.
Good evening
So, my right arm is limp but I managed to polish out most of the scratches. If she ever goes near that door again with anything harder than a hanky I’ll kill her.
Oh, some idiots have decided that you shouldn’t say “Gesundheit”, because it draws attention to the fact that somebody just sneezed. Instead the sneezer should say “excuse me”.
To me, it shows a shift in society: From compassion and wishing somebody well to fucking having to apologize for being sick or allergic. I’ll say Gesundheit till my dying day.
Although, with frinds I usually go for “Gesundheit” for the first one and “will you wipe that up” for the second one ;)
Miss Daisy – I’m trying to break myself of all godist language, it’s almost impossible after more than 50 years of god bless,god damn and so on. When I was the worlds best christian, we had a “cussin’ kitty” where you had to give a coin for every swear word. Might have to resort to that for every god word. :D
Daisy:
Eh, I say Oh gods or similar often enough. It’s nothing to do with being pagan, it’s more of a Discworld affectation along with having the benefit of annoying people who think there’s only one god.
I also use Futurama’s Oh Your God now and then too.
At the Mercedes factory where I used to work as a student the response was usually a collegial “Shut up”.
I occasionally use “godsdammit” and the like, and I’m definitely thinking of Discworld rather than paganism :)
I hadn’t actually even thought of the pagan thing until just now. Hm.
Caine: Fair enough. Though sometimes fannish affectations get on my nerves as well. I could do without hearing “Shiny!” as an exclamation ever again, for instance, or the term “Gorram.”
Rorschach:
…okay. Gotta be honest, I’d be tempted to sneeze on a person who said such a thing.
Sporfle. R.E.M. orders Faux Noize to stop playing “Losing My Religion” during the DNC. Michael Stipe: ““We have little or no respect for their puff adder brand of reportage. Our music does not belong there.”
Caine:
SO and I used “Oh Your God” for a while but after saying it to each other a couple of times, we switched to “Oh Their God.” OTG is a reflex now, ha.
—
I had a friend who would say “Gasundheit” after your first sneeze. After your second, he’d say “You only get one.”
Gesundheit!
Heh. My cat Baby is fairly vocal, but at night after everyone is in bed he has a habit of wandering around the house yowling in a completely different, much more guttural and deep voice for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. Initially we worried a little, but we’ve come to accept that he’s just … singing to himself. :p
This seriously got on my nerves when I was watching the Battlestar Galactica reboot. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. And, can anybody confirm this, but I don’t think polytheistic cultures had a lot of oaths and exclamations that were equivalent? My impression is usually people swore/blasphemed by a particular god.
I don’t really care what particular phrase you want to use to express your ill-wishes. But as someone who has actually seen two people die in a fire, I really wish people would stop wishing it upon others.
Argue among yourselves if you want, I’m heading out of town.
kristinc – Have you seen Rome ? Titus Pullo swore to and at every god he could think of. I like to use the old gods for swearing when ever I can think fast enough. My current favorite is Koalemos, god of stupidity. He seems to be in charge of society where I live.
Nah, it was a kind of rough but good-humored thing to say. I liked working there actually, although most people would think twice about buying a Merc if they knew that a lot of the regular workers there pull the first beer out of the ubiquitous vending machines in the factory by 830am every day. The Eastern europeans would get the schnaps bottles out by the 10am morning break. Ah, good old times!
Jesus fuck onna stick, Ben Goren has gone all “abortion makes me squeamish! I don’t like it! Why are you being so meeeeaaan to me!”
Ugh.
Jesus fuck, is it “epic troll” day here or something?
Two new transcripts up on A+scribe!
https://a-plus-scribe.com/doku.php?id=transcriptions:matt_dillahunty_on_atheism_plus
https://a-plus-scribe.com/doku.php?id=transcriptions:matt_dillahunty_more_on_atheism_plus_2012_09_05
Special note: Matt Dillahunty was a sweetheart and gave blanket permissions to Atheist Experience and Godless Bitches. Excited for the Godless Bitches transcripts!
addendum to above: That also means ALL AxP and Godless Bitches transcripts are up for process. That’s a heck of a lot of content… there’s a thread up on A+ forums to recommend your favorite episodes and give us some idea where to start.
Who’s got favorite Godless Bitches eps?
http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=712
Esteleth:
No, haven’t seen one of those days for a while. In the meantime, Goren still won’t explain why, in light of Alethea’s winning comment, he brought up safe harbor stations in his first comment and now he’s down to this:
He’s an ally, ya see. *spits*
Caine #122:
I fucking hate these shame-meisters and squick-niks who pay lip service “I support the right to choose in all circumstances” and then hold that up as a sacred cow to ward off criticism of anything problematic they’ve actually said.
Like I told someone yesterday, this is a sacred-free zone. There are no spells or incantations, no shibboleths or markers, no relics or gifts that will save you from the unending fire should you make a problematic statement and not repent of it (for lack of a better term).
Goren wants headpats and to discuss this totally abstract theory that has no bearing whatsoever on reality, and who cares that people actually use that argument as a bludgeon?
Caine, I’ve run into that sentiment, too. I think that the only answer to a ‘compliment’ like “You could make a lot of money peddling your ass” or “Women are sitting on a gold mine” is “So could you” or “So are men.”
Esteleth:
Pretty much.
Markita, after the initial incident, I’ve asked men who say that sort of thing “If it’s such a good way to make money, why aren’t you out sucking cock?” Shuts them up.
“So, ladies, never enter a bar again.” I would love to see the women of Flagstaff so organized that no bar had a female customer for the next week, with a few dramas staged for each one where customers come in, get menus and glasses of water, and then leave when one reminds the rest that Being in a Bar is Licence to be Groped.
Okay, I’m going to blast some White Zombie to drown out the tantrum currently emanating from Alethea’s Molly thread.
‘Cause I’m a creature of the wheel =D
I walk away from the computer for a few hours…WTF??!
Alethea snags a Molly and someone has to taint it by being a giant douchecanoe? And in a couple of special and completely not predictable and never seen before ways? Shit on a biscuit, I’ve never heard anyone say “I agree with your rights but I’m never going to support those rights again because you hurt my feefees” before.
If the building I am standing in keels over and collapses, is it OK to say “earthquake” before getting confirmation from seismographs?
— — — —
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2714 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2725#comic
I still can’t comment everywhere. I can comment on every post where registration is not required and on Pharyngula, but nowhere else.
:(
This is interesting.
Baltimore Ravens linebacker comes out in favor of equal marriage.
Maryland legislator writes the Ravens owners scolding him
MN Viking Punter writes the Legislator.
some hilarity (and a few other things) ensue
Esteleth:
Hey, it’s a day ending in -y….
Caine:
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I was watering the garden after dragging out of the well what little water was left, then I was collecting plums for our slivovitz and grinding them.
I’m a weakling. I’m tired now. And then there’s Ben Goren making me stay at the computer long after my bedtime.
Grrr
Oh wow, Ben Goren actually pulled the false Voltaire quote on us. Never mind of course that I could have pulled it on him 70 comments ago, but found the wording too awkward.
I think I just got blocked by WoolyBumblebee on twitter! Victory? Right after they posted about how we’re all victims all the time.
Nope, they “protected” their account. Interesting.
From Zinnia Jones: “Oh, if you ever want to use any of my transcripts (all linked from my blog), feel free!”
Didn’t even have to ask!
We’re all victims all the time? Funny, because JohntheOther is afraid for his safety and won’t reveal his last name. Must be afraid that I’ll go to his house and flip him off or something, as if I have the time.
Well. I do. I’d just rather spend it in the woods away from people than flipping him off, a concept that seems to escape him (and for that matter seemingly most regressives).
Well, the comment was specifically directed at me after I(for the 70th fucking time) tell an A+ hater I’m hard of hearing, hence why I started A+scribe. Because they make the logical error of conflating one person of a group with the whole group, rather than seeing us as people(like we fucking WANT), they have to find some way to not be ableist. So they claim I’m playing the victim card.
What? Telling someone I’m HARD OF HEARING is playing the victim card? Seriously?
indicus:
I’ve stopped saying anything altogether. It took some time to stop saying “bless you” or “gesundheit”, but I finally stopped. I think someone (perhaps here or another blog) pointed out the silliness in saying *anything* following a sneeze.
I’m still working on other things like exclamations of surprise, shock, or horror (to which I’ve often said ‘Good God’). I’m getting better at not saying ‘Oh my God’. Sometimes I say ‘Oh my Thor/Zeus’. I hate the ubiquitous nature of God in American society. The little things like expressions, or phrases on money are part of that subtle “let’s keep God everywhere” shit that drives me up the wall.
****
Ms. Daisy:
You’d be irritated by me occasionally then. Despite not being pagan, I’ve said that at times.
****
Rev:
I loved reading that!
I also love being a lustful cockmosnter…
****
Geez, does Ben ever give up? How can someone be so dense?
Tony:
You aren’t respecting his squeamishness! Respect the Squeamish!
Judas, he’s a fuckwit.
What game is playing that card supposed to win, exactly, and what’s the prize? Makes no sense.
Cleaned. Shelved the pile of books that was almost as tall as I was (for the record: 6 books by Pratchett, Cunt, Wolf Hall, Return of the King, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Fit For Freedom Not For Friendship).
Decided to put away a box of knickknacks.
Realized that I have lost my Wedge Antilles action figure. *weeps bitterly*
Found a spritz bottle labelled “Brand Spankin’ Toy Cleaner: Clean toys for dirty fun!”
Am somewhat confuzzled.
Also, am deliberately ignoring the douchecanoes.
I generally ask if they’re feeling okay, to make sure it isn’t sickness or allergy.
I’m not sure why this is happening, but I seem to be getting targeted adds on facebook for very tight and skimpy mens underwear.
I don’t have a problem with it mind you, however I think they’re really missing their target audience.
Dang, I’m not getting my tartar removed by chewing on the concern troll. The Redhead expects me to take her for walksies (ARF). (since she makes fun of it, and I’m only repeating her words, so be gentle)
If it’s my wife sneezing, everyone in the room either has a heart attack or spills whatever drink they are holding while simultaneously pissing themselves.
Damn that woman is loud when she sneezes.
carlie,
I refer you to TV_Tropes.
(It’s an actual ad hominem)
Re: sneezing,
Sally Strange introduced me to the concept of saying, “happy reboot!” when someone sneezes.
In any case, as she, the SpokesGay, and Daisy can attest, when I sneeze I sneeze. And it is loud.
And really who doesn’t appreciate a lustful cockmonster?
Not this guy.
I smell of Rye whiskey, Angostura bitters and Mesquite smoke.
It’s very alluring.
I just can’t figure out why Mrs. BDC is hanging out upstairs.
see #152
Am I married to Rev BDC and forget about it?
*scratches head*
*sneezes loudly*
I heard that
Chimpy – The kim chi is jarred up, and in the fridge. Damn is it good!
Do you know if chow-chow needs to go in the crock for a couple of weeks? I can’t remember if my grandpa made it like kraut or not.
An examination of the label informs me that the “toy cleaner” is 0.3% triclosan, plus some ethylenediamenetetraacetic acid and laureth sulfate.
Basically, it is soap and some knock-em-dead antimicrobial.
…why do I own this?
Sally Strange:
I love ‘happy reboot’.
Fucking awesome!
Esteleth, I don’t remember you sneezing any louder than the average human… was I not paying attention?
Unrelated, but I thought you’d all enjoy this.
Other amusing responses to the original comment included “If your g spot is in your heart, please allow me to stick my dick into your ventricle”; “oh so you’re supposed to put it in her heart? ive been doing it wrong this whole time”; and “Just because you can’t find the real one…”
IMHO, if such an orifice actually existed, Jackhammer Jesus™ (NSFW) would be the best way to fill it up.
Ah, Daisy, those were not seagulls on the lake, those honking noises were coming from my nose.
Can’t believe that moron troll is still going. Left to see Hope Springs and he’s yammering on when we get home. Sheesh.
I am not sure what is more disturbing: the Shiva butt-plug or the Baby Jesus dildo.
Esteleth:
Sounds like standard vibrator/sex toy cleaner.
[rhetorical]Why do the Lake Gulls have to use a supermarket parking lot 2 miles inland for their sleep area.[/rhetorical]
Esteleth – it’s for those toys …wink, wink.
I suppose so, Caine.
I’d hope that if I ever have occasion to use it, I’d remember to rinse.
From my perspective, it’s a bit much to get worked up over social niceties like “bless you” or exclamations like “oh my god.” Not using them isn’t striking a blow for anything, really. Do as you wish, of course, but it’s perplexing people seem to be apologizing for “lapsing” into these things.
Josh – I dislike using religious phrases because it feels exactly like what you just said “lapsing” back into the crap assed mind set through habit.
Josh:
It’s more of a matter of breaking the habitual pattern of god think and god expression which most of us had instilled from a young age.
OK, Patricia and Caine. I can see that. It doesn’t have that relevance for me so that didn’t occur. Becuz it’s all about me, right?
Not sure. I’ve never made chow chow and my Kim Chi is POWERFUL sour now.
I’m not sure anyone but me will eat it.
Esteleth: Then I don’t want to know where the alleged loon noises were actually coming from….
I think the Shiva buttplug is more disturbing. Shiva is the Destroyer.
If by disturbing you mean awesome
Oh, the loon noises were real. Actually loons.
Josh:
Of course, dahlink! :D
I remember just how difficult it was for me to ‘take the Lord’s name in vain’ without having the horrible fear of hell popping up in my head (waaaaay back in my adolescent/early teen days.)
One of my great-grandmothers would scold me if she heard me say “geez”. Oh, how I was tsked.
Rev – Oh, mine went through that stage too. I took it out to the garage and left it two more weeks. Calmed it right down.
My grandpa was from the south and he made chow chow at the end of the garden season when we had tons of green tomatoes left. We never ate butter or navy beans without a spoonful stirred in. Yumm! Sadly, there’s no one left alive in my family that remembers how it’s made.
trinioler wrote:
I realise that it was the wrong thing to say. I won’t do it again.
Dunno how your grandpa made it, but where I come from Chowchow is a sorta sweet sorta spicy relish made with green tomatoes and peppers, and it’s not fermented. I think you have to cook the relish for a few minutes. Then it’s canned in a boiling-water bath just like bread-and-butter pickles or pickled green beans.
When I moved to the South after college I was astonished at how seriously people regarded “taking the lord’s name in vain.” It was frightening. If you said “oh my god” they’d get a look of real fear and dread; they clearly believed the word had power to rain actual hellfire down.
How many times I had to leave the room because I was laughing too hard at hearing “Cheese and crackers!”
Patricia – this sounds like what you remember:
Granny’s Chow Chow
Interestingly, recipe says you have to soak the huge pile of chopped vegetables with salt, in a crock, overnight before cooking and canning … that could be how your grandpa did it.
Josh, I had a BF in college who told me a story about an old friend of his who was in the Airborne Rangers and was generally a BAMF.
One night, they were coming home drunk from bars. It started raining, and the friend — we’ll call him Bob — growled, “Aw, goddamn it, God’s pissing on us!” He then flipped off the sky and bellowed, “FUCK YOU, GOD!”
His friends were unsettled. “Bob… don’t do that.” His friends were all raised in the North in families that were religious (mostly Catholic) but certainly not anything like the fundies are. None of them were too delicate for profanity in general.
It goes kinda deep.
hotshoe – that sounds like grandpas. He threw in everything that was left over in the garden (okra, bell peppers, cauliflower, etc) but for some reason I thought it went into a crock.
The most beautiful thing my grandpa ever made – dead of winter – no fruit for hooch, grandpa made shredded carrot and raisin hooch. Oh for some yarn that color!
Cheese and rice is what I always hear
I need to figure out why I don’t watch Doctor Who anymore. I just gave up, maybe because it actually sucks?
That too, Chimpie.
Hotshoe – that granny recipe sounds very close to what I remember it tasting like. I didn’t know the spices either. Grandpa just made it, who paid attention? I think I’ll try it. After the kraut and pickled beans… poor old crock!
Anyway Thanks! I printed it out. :D
I know about pickled greenbeans from my brother. He and his cohorts would do ’em up in Vermont and then during the maple sugaring season they’d eat their fall-canned ‘dilly beans’ to cut the sweet from tasting the sugar/syrup. A lot.
They had a dog–a cool dog–named ‘Dilly Bean’.
[Lounge]rupt!
I had my first “holy shit, I’m gonna have a baby!” class today– introduction to breast feeding. All in all pretty awesome, but the 15 minute La Leche League video (which was produced in the mid 80s, natch) was incredibly horrifying. It was basically a nurse bellowing at new moms, yanking newborns away from the nipple (eek!), and showing how to burp over the shoulder.
Apparently, there’s not a lot of decent nursing videos out there. :-/
“How many brain cells did ya lose on that one?”
Today was a great rummage sale day! We found a teak table with wings that pull out to replace our IKEA table — it’s been a challenge to find a small rectangle table for our dining corner. Now all we need are decent wooden chairs. And then an estate sale where I found sweet cotton gloves, almost a dozen beautiful hankies, a few tea towels, and YET MORE old buttons. I’m selling some of them to finance the hankies and gloves, but the rest are mine all mine.
Is it even worth responding to huntstoddard (of all places, in thread for Alethea’s Molly)? Is Ben enough idiocy for that thread?
Can anyone tell me what these things are? http://flic.kr/p/d8nuSs They were in with a lot of old buttons, some of which had been linked together to make cufflinks. I supposed these could work as cufflinks too but I’ve never heard of and can’t find example of any in this style.
They have a spring, and if you push on the nail-y looking part, it presses over to the other side. http://flic.kr/p/d8nvxU
Tony:
No, he’s a sexist, poisonous, dishonest toad. (No offense to any actual toads out there.)
Threadrupt (again), but congrats on the new job, Tony!
Damn, those ratlings are getting cute, Caine. :P
I’m just starting my holiday sewing (want to get it done as early as possible so I have less stress this year), and I’m trying plastic canvas for the first time. I’ve done counted cross-stitch before, so it’s not that hard. This is what I’m making for my friend’s Dr. Who-loving son. :)
(holy crap, I think I got the link right the first time!)
Caine:
Thanks.
I must have read something by him in the past, because my douchebag sense was tingling.
Kristin, they look like tie pins to me.
ChasCPeterson – We had those dilly beans too. Mostly in the winter. I have a killer recipe for pickled eggs, but no one eats them anymore, and I haven’t used it in years.
Tony,
Ack! I’m still catching up on that thread (I’m up to #167). I gotta say though, everyone fighting the bullshit has been incredibly awesome. I ♥ the Horde.
Tony:
He’s invaded every single thread which has anything at all to do with women/sexism/harassment/etc lately, showing himself to be a compleat douchecake. Apparently, he thinks he’s one of the Horde now.
Caine: I don’t think I can figure out how they would work as tie pins. They’re not as sharp as a tack pin — more like a nail — more like they were carefully designed *not* to puncture clothes. And they don’t push shut like a hinge, the spike just sort of slides back and forth.
There were three of them. Now that that tells us much, because they could be what’s left of a set of 4 or 6 or 8, but I doubt they were something meant to be bought singly or in pairs fwiw.
SHIRT STUDS! Aha.
I have been quite threadrupt, as I have had a metric fuckton of papers that need to be turned in.
I applaud everyone’s performance (and especially Alethea’s) on the thread.
Just can we please not do FPTP voting next time?
kristinc – Dammit! I had just gotten out my 1960 copy of Windsor Revisited by HRH the Duke of Windsor, and was madly flipping through the pages of black and white photos from Prince Albert forward to find your studs, and you’ve already figgered it out. *Le sigh*
What a treasure you scored!
Audley:
The absolute worst was Goren’s smarmy “what if the fetus can be successfully removed and brought to term outside the woman with no harm and minimal invasiveness” crap. Totally avoided the whole *abortion* part of the so-called abortion. Just the same as his ‘safe harbor’ crap – it was never about a woman being able to terminate, just some way or another to rescue that darling fetus!
Also, argumentum ad Star Trek makes me want to pound someone’s head through a wall.
Caine:
Oh dear. I seriously thought that way for a long while when I was younger. You and the rest shocked me out of most of the anti-abortion stuff. For some reason, I hung on to this one. Again, placing the fetus over the woman.
Caine:
Yup, just hit the “transporter” argument (and Tony’s response). I’m floored that someone could be so dense that they missed the entire point of Alethea’s Mollyed post. *headshake*
Also, I’m really fucking pissed that I rank lower than DarkFetus. I mean, I know there’s a crapload of people who believe that my only worth is in incubating her, but it’s like a sucker punch every time I’m reminded of it.
Thunk:
I think that’s a roadblock for a lot of people, Thunk. There’s a persistence of thought that if only you could remove the fetus safely, everything would be hunky dory. It says absolutely nothing when it comes to answering an unwanted pregnancy. That’s the bit a lot of people simply don’t want to face, so they take refuge in the thought that if a woman doesn’t have to give birth, she’d have no objection at all to having the fetus removed and brought to term.
Wait a minute, aren’t you a teenager? When you were younger you were a fetus. This is pure learning time for you, and being in such high company as the Horde you are getting the best. Give yourself a break, well done young mind.
Audley:
I can imagine. I know it’s late in the thread, but I think that’s a point well worth mentioning (or ranting about in a most vociferous manner), because you are pregnant and it’s a wanted pregnancy, yet look at how this rhetoric makes you feel.
I’ve never seen this answered: who cares for that premature baby once it’s born? Care in the neonatal unit is WHOA expensive– is it up to the biological mother to pay for that? And what about after? Are adoptive parents going to take on a child who will likely have severe medical problems? Our social services are already overwhelmed with something like 100k kids waiting to be adopted.
I’ve noticed people have started saying “excuse me” for not just sneezing but yawning, coughing, and even bumping into inanimate objects or stumbling. Which I find irritating, because none of those things have the actual unpleasant effects of, say, burping or farting.
How many months do you suppose it will be until it’s expected after every breath?
Caine,
Once I’m caught up, I totally plan to mention that.
Audley:
It’s a handwave. It will all be *magically* good, you see, because an abortion was avoided! *Magic!* Everyone loves the
fetusesbabies, right? Right?More seriously, it’s why it’s a hypothetical. A useless, pointless, stupid hypothetical.
Yeah… everyone who loves fetuses so much can incubate DF for a day or two.
Not.
Fucking.
Fun.
Shirt studs!
(I know I’m too late but I knew the answer.)
In Japanese culture the sneezer says “sumimasen”, more or less “excuse me”.
In Japan* it’s common to see people on the street wearing what look like surgical masks.
Sometimes it’s because the air quality is so bad but usually it’s because that person has a cold and is politely not sharing their germs.
*OK Tokyo. I’ve never been anywhere else in Japan.
Audley:
I’m not certain I should have humored Ben’s Star Trek scenario. It’s clear that his concern is for the fetus, rather than the desires of the mother (and was clear well before he posted that insipid ‘never gonna happen scenario’). Addressing the his hypothetical scenario gives it a legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve.
I think in the future I’ll avoid engaging stupid wankery of that sort.
The inconvenience of being a placental mammal. Makes me wonder, if humans were marsupials, would it suck less?
Abortions make me squeamish.
I will continue to not perform them.
Hmm. Slogan that randomly occurred to me: “I wish there were no abortions like I wish there were no root canals.” Good idea, bad idea…?
Patricia:
Yes, in fact. Just because I was 8 or so doesn’t mean I couldn’t have opinions…
That said, I’m still learning quite a lot from you, and I intend to keep doing so.
Ibyea,
Platypuses. I’d be very happy to hand off an egg right now.
Thunk @223:
Please teach that to Ben…
Caine & Audley – I can’t believe we’re having to fight for this AGAIN. Birth control rights, again?! This is like stepping into the Way Back machine.
A wanted pregnancy is, well just that, it will result in a child that will be provided for by its family,and cuddled, kissed and cooed over by the entire community. But a child of rape, force or oopsey is a whole different thing. I keep telling my great nieces, if you have a child while you are in school, your life as you know it will end.
Azkyroth:
That’s fine. I seriously doubt I’d ever find you making the shit filled “arguments” Goren was spewing all over the place.
The bottom line: there won’t ever be a time that not one single woman on the planet won’t want to terminate a pregnancy*. Abortions will happen, just like they have always been happening, in spite of legalities.
*If one must indulge in hypotheticals, how about how fuckin’ nice it would be if women were able to at will absorb a zygote? Now that would be handy.
OMFG! the other thing I found today was a cool old leather-covered suitcase in usable condition. I only just now noticed that the patent catch on it is stamped 1926. (November 1926, to be precise.)
I paid $5 for the thing. Squeal.
Patricia:
Yep. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it: being an unwanted pregnancy resulting in being an unwanted child is a bad thing. Very fucking bad. In my case, beyond nightmare proportion.
It simply cannot be emphasized enough that the reason any given woman has for obtaining an abortion is no one else’s business, full stop. Only that woman knows what is best, and I cannot imagine what in the fuckety fuck people are thinking when they wish to force a woman to carry and birth. They are not doing the resulting child any good at all.
Being unwanted tends to result in high resentment, neglect and various types of abuse.
Patricia:
It’s enough to drive me to drink and I hadn’t even been born the first time around.
I tell ya, if it were possible (and her ashes weren’t lost somewhere in West Virginia) my grandmama would be spinning in her grave right now. As it is, my mom has doubled her yearly contribution to Planned Parenthood and has written very strongly worded letters to just about everyone. I’m still amazed that I have to fight the same battles they did.
Caine, Audley:
Now it clicks. Thank you.
Thunk – Childfree Ladies of my age have a difficult time looking over our glasses and listening to the opinions of eight year olds, whom are certainly lovely to look at, but scamper about at astonishing speeds! One of my great nieces is six. She tells me the most amazing things. Did you know Giraffes lay babies in a nest at the top of Bow-bow trees?
Honestly, I applaud you Thunk for hanging out here, and I hope we don’t over load you with some really heavy adult stuff that over whelms you.
Random nonsense.
I have a significant proportion of blithertarians at my school.
Their favorite argument: “But after feminism, single motherhood increased 40%!!!”
And I can’t even remember why they hate abortion that much. I thought they thought that people shouldn’t have to provide support for others!
No; I’ll be fine here. If anything overwhelms me, I’ll flounce. And probably come back to read it out of morbid curiosity.
Reminds me of this joke:
Where do young children come from?
The ergosphere.
thunk, I don’t get it.
(Young children sleep a heck of a lot)
John:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergosphere
Patricia:
I’ll second that.
****
Thunk:
I find that some topics are way over my head.
In those cases, I don’t chime in. I just read.
So if anything ever overwhelms you, believe me, you’re not alone.
Seconded.
thunk, I know the term and its referent, I just fail to see the joke. ;)
Well, I just told my oldest friend to take her birthing advice and shove it up her ass. *sigh* Why the fuck can’t people let me make my own goddamn decisions?
Does the New Rule “No personal attacks allowed at all.” still apply when the person it not actually in the Thread?
Audley:
You’re just the incubator, remember?
@audley
Because people are nosy and likes to get in everybody’s business even if it doesn’t concern them.
Caine:
Right, right. And besides, she’s a doulla, so OF COURSE she knows better than my doctors or I do.
Audley my #242 wasn’t for you, just a random thought.
But I have some advice for you:
eat as well as you can
get as much rest as you can
get as many foot-rubs as you can
don’t let the turkeys get you down.
Chigau,
Thanks. The “pamper yourself” advice never gets old. :)
Ibyea:
It always starts innocently– how’s everything goin’?– then BAM! useless and unwanted advice.
chigau @242, in context the prohibition here clearly applies to all commenters on Pharyngula, therefore the answer is ‘yes’.
Audley – Being raised on a farm I saw many births. Being the child of the worlds greatest christians I never saw the conceptions. That was sin.
So I never understand how anyone gets to tell the mother how to properly give birth.
I’m stunned that people can forget how fucking hard it was back in the 1970’s to get the right to use birth control, wear pants to school, get a vasectomy, or even get a divorce. And still, NOW, women make 70 cents on the dollar. Where the hell have peoples minds gone?
Aaand there’s the apology text. Bah.
Patricia:
It blows my mind, too. We still have so far to go, why are we even tolerating this push back? How did fucking birth control even become up for debate again?
Stupid cow.
I’ve been witness to one human birth, I became so consumed with fear and pity for my friend that the nurses asked my stupid freaking out ass to leave. When the child was born I was there holding one hand while her husband held the other one, and it was the 2nd hardest thing I have ever done. SHE was radiant, thrilled, and so happy I about crapped! I went out and laid down in the back of my Subaru wagon and slept for 10 hours. Honestly, I have felt like a coward to my sex since that day. That little girl is 17 years old now.
Audley – Yep, there it is AGAIN. How the hell does this happen? I married my husband in 1975, in 1976 we had hashed out that we wanted to be child free. We had to have a lawyer petition a doctor to give my 23 year old husband a vasectomy! Am I the only one in this country that remembers when the menz didn’t have rights to birth control?
Holy fucking shit!
I knew Barbie was bad. I knew it was so unrealistic but really seeing it drawn out on a woman just sinks it in. Unbelievable.
Also, don’t read the comments there.
@Patricia
Holy cow! This country used to need a lawyer just for a vasectomy?! They treat people like they are baby factories.
ibyea – Yes, we had been married one year, my husband was 23 years old, he had been in the Army for three years! Serving our country, and STILL, we weren’t OLD enough, or wise enough to know that we wanted to be child free. It was a nightmare. I don’t know how it is for men NOW, but in the 1970’s it was tough.
Why is it that people who know they wish to be child free are so discriminated against? I’ve often wondered if a doctor would do a vasectomy for a single man?
*snort* I’m off to bed. Those fuckwits over on the Molly thread are too stoopid to believe.
Good night sweethearts!
This is fantastic: Gay marriage and the lustful cockmonster
For some reason I suddenly want to take this memo regarding max gross vehicle weight, cross out every instance of “weight” and write “mass” instead.
What on earth happened to that link? My apologies. Try again
Good morning
You were busy here last night, weren’t you?
Hmm, living in Germany where the chance of anybody actually meaning it is small I’m pretty relaxed about this. If there’s a chance that the other person will catch it I rely on the appropriate gods and goddesses of the most famous German RPG.
I remember that after the Japanese earthquake American journalists and pundits accused German media and experts of fear-mongering by using phrases like “apocalyptical”.
It’s just that people here don’t think that god will end the earth in some time soon.
Audley
That’s not going to make it easier, I think. Seriously, I wished people wouldn’t get that worked up about breastfeeding. And if anybody there tells you that “mums always have enough milk”, tell them I’d like to have their phone number to yell at them.
Oh, one of them
Yeah, it’s easy to give advice if you’re the one person in the whole scenario who has zero risk of real negative outcomes.
+++
Yes, that’s why all these people have already adopted 3 special needs kids.
Seriously, the last weeks here have been another clear case why abortion is a really good thing more people should have. There was a terrible fire in which 4 children, ages 3-7 (!) died. Their parents and 1 yo sibling were rescued. The fire was caused by a mix of candle stubs and smoldering cigarettes. Candle stubs because their electricity had been cut.
Before you go on about how poverty caused the tragedy, remember this is socialist commie Germany. It’s not fucking legal to cut the electricity of families with small children and there are ample ways to get a solution. But, well, you have to do something. You have to tell the energy provider that you have small children, you have to tell Social Service that you can’t pay yur bill anymore. I would say that contraception and abortion would have been much better solutions than children dying in a fire.
Ibyea
I think things took a wrong turn when we started to lay eggs on land.
Particia
FIFY
Although, it’s of course extra hard while in school. My second cousing knocked up his girlfriend when she was 16 (actually, it was her GPs fault, who, when asked if she had to take some care with antibiotics and the pill said “no no”). She decided to have the child, and although they are great parents (actually, they split up more civilly than many adults I know) and have a hellotof support, it’s tough for her and I’m wondering what will be the effects on the boy for basically having 4 homes and being constantly shuffled around because people have other things to do.
JAL
I’ll upload some pics of the Winxx club fairies you can find in the Girl kindereggs now. I’m going to send them to Escher-girls
++++
Warning, cut kids story
This morning we were despairing with a glass of jam (homemade strawberry daiquiri jam, unopened glass). While Mr. was sweating, the little one told him: Give that to me, I can do that better!
threadcrupt :(
… and likely to be so for a few days…
Virtual scritches to teh virtual rodent Theo. (via Caine)
{shoves large box of Mint Thins into USB port for all the hoomins too}
Oh, talking about good news, did you know that Vietanam has full gay marriage?
Fucking hell. I am sick and tired of hearing when knocking-off time and then waiting with half-bated breath to find out if that is really when we’re finished or if the giant corporate monster doing this job really needs us for another two hours but didn’t bother to fucking tell anyone on our end until we’ve got less than an hour until the original knocking-off time.
I know, it’s better than holding the gate open right up to knocking-off time in hopes that the trucks don’t come barreling down the road (or, worse yet, trundling at 10mph — this has happened and I wanted to rip that driver’s head off for being slow and blatantly wasting our time on the last load when I told all of them when we’d be closing) exactly at said time, forcing us to stay another twenty minutes in order to get them loaded and weighed.
What the fuck is this about public-private partnerships being more efficient and doing a better job than simple contracting? I can’t fucking see it through all the incompetence I have to deal with: not knowing what they want until they get here, not knowing how much they want (and thus how busy I will be), hardly ever knowing when they’ll be done, or for that matter not even fucking knowing if I’m working until I’m settled down in the chair at my start time. FFS, they should be fucking clear about how long they want us and how much they’ll be taking out when they place the goddamn order, not this bullshit where they seem to just cook up numbers and then do whatever the fuck they want come start time.
Within the last hour? English language news isn’t reporting it yet.
No.
Somehow I can’t find any news on the internet, I read it in a newspaper.
I’ll try to check up with other sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Vietnam
During the greate and epic purges by our Lord and Saviour (PZ) in the year of our LORD-AH two-ought-twelve, it became revealed wisdome that we shant partake in the utterances of porcupine shovingge.
In thysse threade…oh fuck it, I’ma can’t type like that all post…Wowbagger was told not to do the DIAF meme. I can understand the angst people would have over both and can live with the request to desist in their use. I just hate to lose a useful vitriolic response. I’m trying to think of replacements that carry the same weight of anger without being triggers or overtly offensive.
I also hate to get rid of the poor porcupine. He was becoming very mouldy and smelly, thus effective, although he had lost quite a number of quills in the months of use. Since the methodology of his use before was somewhat offensive and triggering, can we dig up the little guy and request that the offender ‘spoon’ (as in cuddling from behind) the porcupine? As in ‘Go spoon a rotting porcupine!’ If the offender is particularly thick and stupid, you can even add ‘…in a lemon vat.’ You know how it feels when you get lemon juice in a cut…yeah, you’re wincing right now, I can see it because my people have crystal balls!
The DIAF meme is quite nasty. I tried to think of something less horrific, but still rather nasty. I think I found it:
“Die in a Brazilian waxing!” would be my proposal. I looked it up on Giggle. It looks like the closest anyone actually came to dying from a Brazilian waxing was multiple severe infections that spread to the rest of the body because of weakened immune response caused by diabetes. So, so far no one has actually died of it, and it does have shock value. I’m hoping people can really get behind this one.
I hope you didn’t find this post offensive. If you did, I will submit myself to porcupine spooning in a lemon vat during a Brazilian wax immediately.
(I needed to take my mind off the real and pressing concerns about which this site keeps us up to date, and it is still a weekend evening here and didn’t want to have to get too deep(e) into anything…deep)
OH GOD. I remember those growing up and there are commercials for it or some continuation of it on The HUB or Nick Jr running now. Seriously, fucking terrible in like every way imaginable. Little One is not allowed to watch it. I struggle as it is.
Is it just me, or do the Winx girls look like the designer put some onion paper over the Sailor Moon cast, made the waists even more impossibly skinny and then slightly altered the faces to a more European comic style so the anime ripoff wasn’t so blatant?
Not just the waist but the knees, wrists, and ankles are barely there.
There’s also the fact Sailor Moon had some personality and jokes, instead of just talking about boys and clothes.
Winx is all the boys are here to help save the day again! Oh where would the Winx girls be without them? Oh my god the shopping. They were always shopping. Then there were the episodes on the beach. Bleh.
Or am I being defensive and remembering one of my favorite shows growing up better than it was?
I think this calls for re-watching of Sailor Moon.
JAL @270:
I’ll watch with you, but forwarn that I yell along with Sailor Uranus when she yells ‘WORLD-AH SHAKING!’ Just in case you have any heart conditions or want to actually maintain your hearing.
Works for me. I’d shout with you but I have terrible timing so I’m always late, so I only do the shouting when I’m watching alone. XD
I’ll just vicariously shout through you, if that’s okay.
*Holds tummy and beams*
“I’m shouting for two now…”
HAHAHAHA
/snort
That was perfect.
Audley – I was one of those women that didn’t thoroughly enjoy pregnancy. With kid #1 it was novel, and so I was cool with it up until the last month, when I giant and lumbering and miserable. With kid #2, I barely tolerated it. Both pregnancies were bad on my body. I breastfed and supplemented with formula. I put my son to sleep on his tummy (he was a reflux baby and he would scream on his back). All in all, I was a BAD MOM. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Guess what? My kids are awesome. I’m here to support you and your decisions.
Any horde recommendations for books on Ancient Greece aimed at school-age kids? Girl Kidlet (age 8) is studying Ancient Greece in school and is looking for some interesting reading.
I spent yesterday canning, and return to the lounge this morning to find a discussion of canning. I don’t care what the skeptics say, you are all psychic.
I have 3 dozen pints of dilly beans in my basement now.
Azkyroth, #215: Thunderdome, current page, #160. That is all.
Audley, good for you. (Oh, gawd, a “doula.” Do they even require training in New York State?) If the friendship is worthwhile, she’ll STFU and learn to respect your boundaries.
Chigau, #242: No.
Patricia:
In the U.S., most people’s minds are preoccupied with the important things. You know, like American Idol or MAH TAX DOLLAHZ or if Jeebus is really watching them masturbate.
Yes, I know, blah blah blah “regressive,” blah blah blah “blaming the victims of society,” blah blah blah “misanthropy,” blah blah blah “most people are just trying to get through the day.” The truth is, most people are not all that bright, not all that informed, and/or not all that empathetic. We can try to change society so that intellect, education, and empathy are more valued and religious privilege is challenged. However, IMHFO Kant was right about the timber being too crooked, except that he forgot to mention it was also rotted, termite-infested, and impregnated with poisons. We can only ever do damage control.
As for men’s reproductive rights, they still have far fewer challenges than women do. I have heard all sorts of stories from CF women whose doctors would not sterilize them unless they were x years old and/or had had x numbers of baybeez already. However, CF men have much less trouble getting a vasectomy.
Friend, asian lady, 14 years relationship with Tunesian boyfriend, finally he asks her to marry, financial security on offer and all, if she converts to Islam for him.
Her response:
She can have me, that’s for sure. How much strength and determination it must take for a woman like her to reject to marry a richish guy like that. It would put her out of any financial troubles. But she just didn’t like the slavery part, and told this partner of 14 years to fuck right off. I’m so impressed it’s not funny.
There is at least one female member of the Horde who has posted about her struggle to be sterilized in her late teens / early twenties. If I recall correctly, she had to go to at least 3 different doctors.
US federal law prohibits the use of Medicaid dollars to sterilize anyone under age 21, anyone with a guardian or conservator, anyone in labor, anyone seeking an abortion, and you have to wait 30 days after signing a consent form to have the surgery. I’m not aware of any other medical service that has these restrictions (and I’m pretty darn familiar with US Medicaid coverage regulations).
Psych-oh:
Thanks. :)
I’m starting to get the hang of telling friends and loved ones to STFU.
Daisy:
I have no idea what the hell consitutes a doula in NY– it’s worse ‘cos she’s in Maine and I feel like yeah, prolly totally unregulated there.
I’ve received and apoligy text and fb message so far, but I’m still not talking to her.
I can’t sleep. I’m so very very cranky. I need a real cig (I haven’t had one all night) and I feel terribly bad and guilty about a bad book review for an free ARC copy I received. I know what I’m going to say I’m just dragging my feet with actually writing it all out for the review. If I want to keep getting free books, I’m going to have to get over this though and man does it suck. I can’t even pinpoint why I feel so bad, I just do.
I’m just going to pull a Little One.
*pout, whine, stomp, now yell* I’ll do it later!
Audley, I don’t blame you… you’ve been dealing with so much flak over this pregnancy. I do hope you can patch things up with her eventually, but don’t worry about her; worry about you right now.
JAL, sympathy. Insomnia sucks big hairy pustulent warthog balls.
Also, I really fucking hate perimenopause. I barely ever drink, and here I am at 10 a.m. with a hard cider open. (Yep, Esteleth, the one I took home from Maine).
rorschach
Your friend makes the hero of the day
Smart woman, I say.
So, uploaded the pictures:
It really hurt when they broke my spine
Tits and ass. No, I’m not the giveaway from the pornsite. I’m aimed at girls 3-10 Also, her little leaflet tells us the most important thing about her “I have a pair of shoes for every occasion”
++++
Art by the little one
We have rats, too ;)
JAL:
Ouch.
Patricia:
I’m kinda interested in one, at least when I’m very sure I don’t want kids.
JAL:
Hugs. I’d be stomping and whining too– I’ve finally gotten a good night’s sleep after 2 weeks of insomnia. I know how you feel and it sucks.
Daisy,
I’m not too worried about the relationship long term. We go through this every once in a while: she gives some useless granola advice, I snap and call her an idiot, we don’t talk for a couple of months, then we laugh about how ridiculous we are for trying to hold a grudge.
Speaking of, things are a little better with my asshole sister. We’re still not talking really– although we’ve been able to briefly chat if we run into each other– but last week she bought an Eeyore plush for the DF because it made her think of me (I luv Eeyore). I also found out that she’s been calling my mom and my younger sister to check up on me. No one’s really quite sure why she can’t stand to be around me, but whatevs. I’m not stressing about it any more.
WHAT? During labor? As in, not in the middle of a c-section when everything’s open already, and it’s so easy and convenient to do then that I had to sign a form while in labor stating that I did NOT want it done? Shit, that’s cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Made Josh’s recommended Cook’s Illustrated biscuits a few minutes ago. Although buttermilk is readily available less than two miles down the road, I substituted sour cream and milk for it (and then was reminded later that we had half-and-half in the fridge, which made me sad that I didn’t use it instead of the milk). They are FANTASTIC. Even my kid, who usually doesn’t praise much, said “wow, these are good biscuits”.
Audley, glad to hear things are better with That Sister. I guess that she’s trying to be as good to you as she’s capable of being at the moment. Reasonable not to stress about it.
Audley – the reason everyone gives you pregnancy and birth advice is to get you prepped for after the baby comes, when everyone AND their grandma AND their second cousin will be telling you how to raise your baby.
“That baby looks cold, get her a blanket.”
“That baby shouldn’t be bundled up that much, she needs air.”
“You shouldn’t let your baby cry like that, pay attention to her!”
“You have to let her cry it out or she’ll get spoiled.”
“You’re not feeding her a bottle, are you? FOR SHAME.”
“Ew, you can’t breastfeed her in public! Put that away! FOR SHAME.”
Etc. forever.
Carlie:
That’s why I’m thankful that I’ve got a sympathetic Horde to whine to. ;)
(random) this is a really, really, good morning to have Sound of Music show up on cable. the way this week has gone I need all the Julie Andrews I can get ;>
carlie – I should have been more clear – Medicaid will pay for sterilizations of women seeking abortion / in labor / during a c-section IF the informed consent form was signed at least 30 days earlier. Interestingly, Medicaid will pay if it’s been less than 30 days if the woman is undergoing emergency abdominal surgery or premature delivery AND it’s been at least 72 hours since the consent was formed but NOT if the emergency abdominal surgery is an emergency c-section.
Anyone else remember Doktor Zoom? He’s doing a series of articles about Christian textbooks for Wonkette that’s pretty fasinating.
This is a semi-serious question… would it be too derailing to the good work in Alethea’s Molly thread to mention that I might be provisionally opposed to abortion in the case of a women collecting half-dollar sized fetuses, coating them in amber-colored plastic, and making cheap jewelry out of them? I mean, as long as we’re supposed to take ridiculous hypotheticals seriously and all… and as always, there’s good eating on a fetus!
*runs away*
ImaginesABeach – ah, so it’s just the old “we must make you wait a long time and THINK ABOUT HOW AWFUL YOUR LIFE WOULD BE WITH NO MORE BABIES for a LONG TIME before we’ll let you do it” rationale.
Improbable Joe – why do you hate capitalism and the free market?
carlie, thanks for the completely out-of-right-wing-field comment. Totally didn’t see THAT coming!
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
Joe – if there is no ability to make and sell fetus jewelry, THERE IS NO FREEDOM.
If I can’t buy a FetusRamics, the terrorists win!
I finally figured out what was bugging me about Ben’s herpaderp about abortion.
He made analogy about blood donation: there are people who are squicked out by it, and there are people who firmly oppose it on various religious/philosophical grounds, but as a society we’ve collectively decided that blood donation is a good thing so we have it available, but no one is forced to have a transfusion if they don’t want one and understand the risk of not having one.
But!
Jehovah’s Witnesses (etc) do not run around advocating the BANNING of blood transfusions.
Ben – and others – seem to think that their being squicked out by abortion (which is by no means an unusual position!) gives them the right to tell OTHERS what they can and cannot do.
I think roasting peppers triggers a headache for me. We don’t cook this very often (a lot in one batch and then freeze it), but I think I’ve noticed a pattern.
The smell bothers me and soon my head feels like it’s going to split, while my eyes feel like they are going to burst and trickle out.
Maybe I’m imagining things and it’s a coincidence.
So, today in christian privilege
My FIL’s uncle in law died and he and his siblings are the only remaining family members, so they have to organize the burial.
Well, the man was a life-long atheist, or at least not a church member.
Well, they had such troubles finding a priest to burry him!
When I said “but there are secular speakers” the reply was “yes, but she wanted 400€!”
Now, if the woman invests about the time my dad invests when he prepares them, 400 is more than justified and I needed to point out that church members have paid lot more than 400 in their church taxes.
But they found a Lutheran priest who’ll do it for a 200€ donation, so now an atheist will burried by a priest because it’s 200 bucks less out of the inheritance.
And they don’t even do it because of the money. They just don’t think that it might have been important for the man not to be burried by a priest.
Audley
Sounds like the thing with your sister is really not about you but about her.
Beatrice, sounds like you have an allergy to peppers. It does exist.
Theophontes:
Delivered!
WHAT. THE. FUCK. TW for child abuse in school setting.
trinioler ,
But I eat them raw all the time, put them in all kinds of dishes and they never have an adverse effect. Just when we roast them. Weird.
Ms. Daisy Cutter,
That’s monstrous. No words.
OH GOOD GOD. WHO WOULD DO THAT TO A CHILD?
@Daisy’s link.
Okay kind of a personal story.
I’m hard of hearing. What this means though, is that I was considered special needs as a child.
Often, with a disability like hearing, there come behavioural difficulties. Its harder to bond, to learn things about other people, to participate equally in conversations as a kid.
So this makes kids like me very susceptible to social and behavioural issues. We often don’t develop precisely like other kids.
There were many times I wished I had been put in the deaf school, or the special needs class, because they knew and treated you differently. I imagined they would be patient with needing to repeat things for me.
There were a few teachers that were very… impatient with dealing with my disability. Those were some of the worst years of my education, often accompanied by severe bullying. Its what made me turn inwards, to reading. Because I understood everything I could read. I didn’t need things repeated for me. I didn’t frustrate anyone. No one got mad at me. No one sent me out into the hall. No one laughed at me for asking a question that was already asked.
When its a teacher, an adult, someone you’re taught to obey and trust, laughing at you, or showing visible frustration, or telling you to stop asking them to repeat themselves “everyone else gets it”, it changes you. I became this super-studious kid, very quiet and inward. I would try to impress the teachers and just not ask questions, not ask for help.
Things got better when I got an FM system. Very helpful.
These memories are old and starting to come back as I get more involved in anti-ableism stuff, like A+scribe, as I focus on how I feel about and deal with my disability.
Imagine how toxic masculinity, with its demand of independence, can combine nastily with this kind of… not asking for help or repetition to understand things. As I’ve been addressing my masculinity, I’ve also had to begin addressing my issues with my disability.
And that op-ed about restraints and seclusion reminded me of all of that, brought it up. I never had it as bad as those kids did.
/personalstoryover
Those monsters.
Hello, is there anything like authorities licensing thee facilities? But I remember that the (conservative!) governemnt here tried to shut down the Pius Brothers school several times (child abuse, overstepping their license for boarding school pupils…)
Good newlyafternoon everyone.
That child abuse article is horrifying and furthers my general antipathy towards humanity as a whole. For a teacher to do that makes it even worse.
This is probably why I generally prefer the company of my animals.
I did keep back 2 hatchlings, just in case everyone else cleared. This is Ebon. He’s a little sniny.
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/9927/ebon2.jpg
Giliell,
I think you’re right– it’s not about me at all, but about my asshole sister. I know she’s having… difficulties. Not physically, but mentally.
Anyway, knowing that she doesn’t hate me is nice and if avoiding her makes us both comfortable, I’m fine with that.
rowan
Precious!
+++
Woooo-hoooo
*doing a little happy dance*
My Surly-Ramic is done (The flying scissors, the tree is for my sister)
Woooo-hooo
And now I need to stop buying stuff
Audley sez (in the thread for Alethea’s award):
I’m not familiar with whatever Frank is talking about and I don’t trust that fuckwit to provide an honest answer. Can someone tell me (or point in the direction of) what he’s referring to (I guess that’s assuming he’s talking about Clinton)?
I’m really curious to see how far he can twist something to make it seem like rape in his head.
Tony,
Here. https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/09/07/girlfakeswhat/comment-page-1/#comment-449945
Trinioler, to quote an older commenter in the LG&M thread ,”Frankly, this is simply a return to the ‘good old days.'” Or another one:
Rowan, that snake is beautiful. I love the pose; I have never seen that sort of “head shot” of a snake before.
Audley:
Thanks.
So he pops into a thread, and dropped some BS as if it were some sacred truth as a Gotcha!
I still don’t understand why people like that even bother coming here.
Well, suit yourself … but giving an apology is more than many people are capable of/willing to do, so that puts her in a category of “worth more chances” than other folks, I think.
Heh. I’m a fine one to talk. I’ve been cutting contact with people all over the place lately. Sorry, with the political situation being so dire (and my personal situation a little rocky as well) I just don’t feel like I have the time to make nice with anyone who’s an asshole to me. It’s not three strikes anymore. It’s one strike, out.
I’ve never listened to Eddie Izzard til now (listening to http://podcast.thehumanist.org/2012/05/the-humanist-hour-73-the-reason-rally-part-2/). Damn he’s funny!
hotshoe:
Depending on how much of an asshole someone acts towards me, I’m with you.
I’ve been told by people that I’m too quick to stop being friends or associating with people when they are assholes. There may be some truth to that. Of course my life is relatively drama free as well, so there’s that.
Random bit of verse from beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
Our father whose art’s in heaven
hollow be thy name
unless things change.
Thy wigdom come and gone
thy will will be undone
on earth as it isn’t heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
at least three times a day
and forgive us our trespasses
as we would forgive those lovelies
whom we wish would trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation
too often on weekdays
but deliver us from evil
whose presence remains unexplained
in thy wigdom of power and glory.
O, Man.
Oh no, I don’t like the looks of this. The Pullet Patrol Products engineers/scientists looking at a picture of the Redhead in a wheelchair, and then watching a film festival of Home Improvement. Think I had better order some real running shoes.
“Pick up your nose!”
Well, it works in my family….
–
Me, too. :)
–
WIN!
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Kyoot rats, Giliell. :)
–
@304
O-O
–
re: link @304
But it’s not quite like The Good Old Days™
Back then, you kept Those Kind of People™ at home, locked in a cupboard.
Now you can send them to a state-funded school to be locked in a cupboard.
Yay progress!
Ahem.
A series of facts:
1. I follow Wil Wheton (yes, Wesley Crusher. He’s cooler when Gene Roddenberry is not involved.) on Twitter. It is funny. He talks about his cat!
2. Wheton found a dented ping-pong ball in his garage and named it Silas.
3. Wheton decided to sell Silas on eBay.
4. Wheton proceeded to write the a href=”http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190724712013#ht_1010wt_1156″>funniest eBay page ever.
5. As of when I type this, Silas is going for over FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
For a broken ping-pong ball.
This is either hilarious, disturbing, or both.
In closing, I love the internet.
And I fail at html.
Seems appropriate.
Yep, sounds like the internet, where the answers are like biology: Yes to all mechanisms.
No.
No.
No.
Just saw some geese flying south.
No.
No.
No.
It’s tooooo sooon!!!
Chigau:
Aaaaw fuck.
This is good: http://io9.com/5938698/the-great-geek-sexism-debate
@chigau
Why is that bad?
Caine
I’m at 53°N.
You probably have a few more days until…
*ominous music*
*dashes in*
Ooh! Echidna hatchling! Look at its ear!!!
(…OK… probably not a hatchling.)
Caine, I’ve been threadrupt. How are the ratlets in general and Dexter in particular? :-)
*dashes out and to bed*
A friend retweeted this: Teh Kittar Ranch. 15-minute vid of rescued kittens, four weeks old as of today, and their mama.
@Daisy Cutter
I don’t understand how those fuckers aren’t in jail now.
No.
Everybody, cross your fingers and sacrifice a creationist on your godless altars that tonight is the last Taco Sunday my wife and I have for a long time.
ibyea
Winter is not far behind.
Chigau:
Yeah, not enough. 10 to 1 it effing snows in October. *sniffs*
David:
They are all fine. Esme’s girls are now back in the studio with the boys and settling in well. Rubin’s girls go in to be spayed tomorrow morning. Dexter is as squirrely as ever, he hides a great deal so I don’t see him all that much. He has, however, discovered Nutella and will go to considerable lengths to score some. :D
Why do you detest Taco sundays Improbable Joe?
Joe:
fingers crossed
RE: Winter
No.
Please no.
@chigau
I guess then it is good news for me. I hate summer. Especially in the deli store I work in because it gets so hot, and I feel like having a heart attack since it gets really busy.
Trinioler, imagine if you had to have Taco every Sunday?
Where is Peter Boyle when you need him?
Trinioler @308:
I had a very similar experience. I’m not sure what to say otherwise. :/
trinolier @329:
Great link. Thanks for that. I loved the idea of the soccer style cards KC made for DefCon. These should be made available for any of the conferences. They speak volumes without putting someone on the spot of being overly confrontational and putting themself in harm’s way.
Here is Peter Boyle!
SUUP-PER DUUP-PER!
Ah, I missed the context there Janine.
Thanks Azkyroth. Are you hard of hearing?
No; I have relatively mild Asperger’s syndrome, but other kids and adults around me related to it in more or less you describe them relating to your difficulties (I wasn’t actually diagnosed until I was 23, which was probably part of it).
I don’t want the world. I just want your half.
Esteleth – it’s almost a thousand dollars now. And it’s bidding for more than three hundred dollars more than a signed DVD of Stand By Me. I find that even more hilarious.
AND NOW THE BROKEN PING-PONG BALL COMES WITH A STALE BAGEL CHEWED ON BY WHEATON.
*nerdgasm*
Who is Wheaton?
Here is a *nerdgasm*.
Triangleman hates Particleman…
****
ibyea:
I believe Esteleth is referring to Wil Wheton on of ST:NG fame.
Who is Wheaton?
Seriously?
One clue. Look up “Crusher” and feel the hate. Even Wheaton hates Crusher.
You know what? I’m happy for fall and winter to get here. Last year in New England we didn’t even have a winter, and it was disturbing. This summer has been brutally hot and humid since June, with today being a merciful exception. It’s like 60 right now. . mmmmm.
I can’t wait to roll out 19th Century Casa SpokesGay and light the kerosene lamps while cooking beans in a cast-iron dutch oven.
That really honestly sucks Azkyroth. Hugblankets? Cuddles?
Ibyea:
Why don’t you learn to use a search engine?
Youth Culture Killed My Dog
Short attention span theater.
Mind your business.
trinioler,
My wife has been out of work for long enough that we’re close to eviction, and she’s applied for several temporary out-of-state jobs. No more Taco Sunday means that my wife gets one of those jobs, and I stay here and take care of our furry babies. It isn’t ideal, but until a more permanent solution presents itself… you know what I mean?
****
Dr. Marty Klein offers A sexual health platform for any political party?
Yo! I killed your thread!
Yeah sorry Joe. I missed the context.
Janine:
It’s been so long since I’ve watched ST:NG (even then, I wasn’t an avid follower of the show). Does the above capture most of the animosity toward the character or is there more?
Josh, I always have terrible S.A.D. at the ass-end of the year, but I have to agree that it’s time for summer to GTFO already. And, as little as I like shoveling or driving in snow, I hope we get significantly more than we did last year. We’re parched, and we’re still doing much better than most of the rest of the U.S.
Tony, Marty Klein is a creepy, lying douchebag.
Tony, I did not watch the show. (Meet the geek who detests both Star wars and Star Trek.) But one of my brothers, who was a huge fan, pretty much celebrated when Wil Wheaton left the show. He was hardly alone.
Call him the male Mary Sue.
Josh:
Wait…you too?
Seriously, it seemed like we skipped from fall ’11 to spring ’12. The winter of last year seemed the warmest out of the 9 years I’ve lived here.
It should be noted that the actor himself hates the character. Gleefully.
Sorry, I don’t watch Star Trek. But yeah, seeing the entries on that character in TNG, I see why people would hate Wesley Crusher.
Ms. Daisy:
Thank you for pointing that out.
Wheaton has matured into a hell of a guy, from what his online persona indicates. He got into internet/computer creation stuff from an early age and has built up a lot of history and cred in those areas (he started up and ran a company of some kind, I think?). He’s totally embraced his geeky nerd self, and has come to terms with the awfulness that was Wesley and the fact that he can’t really ever get away from it, and that he did learn a lot on that show. He’s done a couple of interviews with Chris Hardwick that were about as lewd as you’d expect, but I gained a lot of respect for him listening to them because of the way he’s managed to analyze himself and figure out his place in the world, and be so grateful and understand how lucky he is.
Isn’t that a Gary Stu?
I guess so, Carlie. I am not that deep in the culture.
Even an outsider with the outsiders.
Janine – it’s tvtropes what did it to me.
Joe, I will graft on extra tentacles, just so I can cross them on your behalf.
:)
–
@Janine
TV Tropes calls a character everyone hates but the creators have an annoying love of and keep trying to push them on the audience “The Wesley”
Thanks. Reciprocation. :3
Where I come from, this is a Wesley.
@Ing
Oh yeah! I completely forgot about that. Yeah, I have heard of the character before thanks to TV Tropes, now I remember. Although I didn’t know about the actor.
With cigs and sleep again, I feel much better. Now I just need to get off my ass to go get food and I’ll be set.
—
—
Am I the only one who hates the book Go Ask Alice? Or Catcher in the Rye?
Never read the first, but I recall finding the second to be painfully tendentious even as a 9th grader.
No, I found Holden Caulfield to be an unsympathetic and completely self centered little shitheel. I hated that book.
@JAL
No. Many people hate Catcher in the Rye…often specifically for it being overly hyped as ‘controversial’ when it really isn’t
Oh thank god it’s not just me. I haven’t meet anyone who admits to hating them. Maybe that’s living in conservative areas all my life, I dunno, but damn people have been assholes over those books. I’ve been called stupid and “what’s wrong with kids today” and blah blah blah over it.
Bill Nye the Satanist Guy
I couldn’t get into Catcher in the Rye, and from all accounts it sounds like I wasn’t missing anything.
I did like Go Ask Alice when I was a teenager. If I read it again today I’d probably catch all the scaremongering about drugs and sex.
I am very fond of Catcher in the Rye.
I kinda like Go Ask Alice.
I think all the characters, in both books, are a bunch of meatheads.
Still like the books.
How can you hate a book because you dislike one of the characters?
I mean, srsly?
Man, I wish I had googled my question first. I feel stupid for not thinking of that, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only one here either.
When the novel is focused on one character, it is very easy. And I hated Holden Caulfield.
chigua,
Well, sometimes that makes it hard to continue reading or get into the book. And some people care more for characters or character development. One book that I love that really is all about the characters, set up and progression is Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice. I get that people who hated or disliked the characters, especially the main character would have a problem liking it or finishing it.
What’s the point of finishing a novel you can’t stand because a character is too stupid, too unrealistic, too annoying (etc.)?
I thought Frodo was a wieny.
I still read the books 40 times.
Yeah, with how I grew up that was so just blatantly obvious to me and got on my nerves. I couldn’t get into it and thought the main character was fucking annoying and stupid. It was a struggle to read through it for me and though “well nice that her family is well off and white to get her out!”. Irritated all the way with everything about it. Blah.
I read Go Ask Alice when I was around 13 and eyerolled my way through the whole thing. Very *Drama!* and supposed to be ever so scary, in the scared away/straight way.
And The Lord Of The Rings had scores of characters and many plot points that did not involve Frodo. Can the same be said of Catcher In The Rye?
me fail tags
Ms. Daisy (from your Bill Nye link):
I can’t decide who’s comments are more entertaining. Is it Cerberus with hir wonderful biting commentary, or Terry the American Genius (::rolls eyes::).
I have to say Terry’s comments here are delicious:
Oh, and I wonder what the heck a polyverse is…
For reference I did not hate CITR. Partner did. I will say that CITR for me at least reads better if you go in with the idea that the protagonist has PTSD.
Holden was a weiny.
Scout was a wieny.
Jody was a weeny.
Still read the books.
OMG you guys. YOU GUYS. I bought an entire set of Cathrineholm Yellow Lotus enamelware pots and pans, with lids, for THREE DOLLARS today. Imagine my shock when I looked up what a single pan is going for on eBay!
chigau:
The answer has more to do with how/why people enjoy a book.
Some people can get completely immersed in a book and overlook and/or not notice certain aspects of that narrative.
Others read to get invested in characters and if someone acts in a way one finds reprehensible, that can ruin the book.
****
Somewhat related to that, I find that watching movies with one of my friends, ML can be occasionally frustrating. She and I have watched quite a few movies together and over time I started to realize that she and I approach movie watching from a completely different perspective.
For instance, the recent reboot, was IMO disastrous.
I thought the dialogue was laughable.
I wasn’t convinced by most of the actors (Colin Farrell was serviceable).
The plot was predictable (it’s a hallmark of bad movies when I can predict what’s going to happen before it happens).
The villain was so poorly developed I’m not sure he had *1* dimension, let alone 3.
And of course, the SFX seemed like they carried the whole movie.
Following the end of the movie, as we chatted, she just couldn’t understand my dislike of the film-despite the explanations I offered.
I don’t begrudge her liking the film, though I don’t understand why she likes it (she didn’t give me a coherent explanation; ‘I liked it’ doesn’t quite cover it).
She says I’m too nit picky.
I can’t *not* be.
I wish I could sometimes. Watching , I *wish* I could have turned nitpick mode off. It’s not a conscious decision to pick at things and it’s not like I’m trying to find things.
When the lead character survives a ground zero nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator, my suspension of disbelief is shattered to pieces. This isn’t a Superman movie. The world Indiana Jones operates in largely follows the laws of physics. Indy himself is *supposed* to be a normal human being. Last time I checked, normal humans (and normal refrigerators) don’t survive nuclear explosions. I’m aware that certain elements of the Indiana Jones movies defy reality. However, one shouldn’t have to suspend their disbelief in every aspect of the film (i.e. you can have aliens, and the logical repercussions of the aliens, but if your character is ostensibly a human being, he shouldn’t be able to survive a nuke).
I read Go Ask Alice about a week after a friend put herself through a plate glass window.
So I have a different take.
Christ, a friend and I have been watching Legend of the Seeker and it is horrible for exactly that reason. We encountered exactly ONE episode so far we actually liked. The only interesting stuff is the WTF offensive, like the religious order of magical slavers that reproduce via rape…who are good guys.
Aw, I loved Crystal Skull, largely because it was so bad and silly. But, that was with awareness of what made it silly.
My favorite books are the ones where rereading them is like visiting old friends. I guess characters really drive my enjoyment. That’s one big reason why I love the Vorkosigan books.
Aaaaaaand my second-highest ranking blog post today is, once again,…..the video of Rebecca talking about moving house from 2011. Who is still linking to this thing? (And we’re talking non-trivial numbers)
The mind really boggles.
Oh, and I agree with Carlie and Esteleth on Wil Wheaton, the guy is alright, I follow him on G+, he’s much into geek and nerd stuff, and unrecognizable from the Wesley Crusher persona(he’d wanna be).
A universe created by the Parrot God, of course.
On unlikeable characters – the most unlikeable character I’ve ever read is that of Tarquin Winot in John Lanchester’s Debt to Pleasure.
The book is terrific and I recommend it, but it can feel a slog, even though it’s not a long book, simply because the character is so insufferable. The whole book is about Winot, so there’s no escaping him throughout the book. Hands down, also the creepiest character ever.
I need a blog.
I heard somewhere that a central unlikeable character works fine, as long as the reader isn’t expected to *sympathize* with them or like them. Isn’t the trick to Catcher in the Rye that the main character’s basically lying all the time?
I can’t re-read books. No matter how long it’s been or how much I loved the book I get terribly bored and just start remembering every part of the book in detail. That really kills every attempt I make at it. I’ve completely forgotten books but when I start re-reading it all comes flooding back and I can’t slog through reading the words again. I can re-watch some shows and movies but even then I have a low tolerance for it. But it’s easier because I forget what I watch so much easier. I can’t remember dialogue usually, even when I try but I can remember it in books.
/shrug
I’d even let that slide a bit, if I could at least learn something from it. But I didn’t (as a teenager, haven’t read it since). That might have more to do with the story than just the character by himself. It was all so stupidly unrealistic and whiny and irrelevant to my life. Was I supposed to get something out of it?
Tropic of Capricorn
Not a sympathetic character in the book. I don’t regret having read it. Sometimes understanding is enough.
If you can’t re-read books, what the fuck is the point of books?
You are NOT the same person who read that book a decade ago.
jesus fuck
Chigau:
Reading them in the first place. I rarely re-read books. *shrug* I am always reading new* ones.
*Not necessarily new as in recently published.
Caine
If you are not re-reading them why are you keeping them?
they make good kindling
Same way about books for me usually. I just emailed a pdf copy of one the free ARC books I got in exchange for a review, full of all my highlights. Typos (this I suck at), repeating words and phrases close together, where paragraphs would be simplified or condensed, where the author did telling instead of showing (big problem there), and just some notes on what I thought as reading. I didn’t go into reading it expecting to do this, I just do it every time. Every book I have has sticky notes galore or notes/highlights. I’m not even an editor, writer or anything like that. I just can’t leave well enough alone.
—
To be fair, she just emailed me a copy of the book and specifically asked for us to email her back with our thoughts. Well, those are all my thoughts so…
kristinc:
If I know going in that a movie will be bad, I’m right there with you. Before M died, we would routinely do just that. Watching a movie in a theater with only 10 other people is perfect for ripping a bad movie apart.
In fact, after M passed away, we chose to have a Celebration of Life at the theater he worked at (we probably had 50+ people show up for it). The movie we chose to view was . It was exactly the kind of movie M and I would have ripped apart. It was awful.
Well, jeez chigua, I’m sorry I’m not your type of reader and that I still love reading books.
Well jeez JLA
um
wutevah
Let me repeat. Legend of the Seeker has a member of an order of magical slavers who reproduce via rape and practice gender based infanticide…as one of the core protagonists. And it expects me to accept this not just as some anti-hero but as a paragon like virtuous pure cleric woman.
Given that how can I LIKE the book given such a character?
Chigau:
Because I like having them. Because I’ve always had a library. Handy references. What the fuck difference can it possibly make to you?
It’s just great you re-read books, but there’s no need to be such a judgmental asshole about people who don’t.
Jesus Christ, Chigau—you’re angry at people who don’t re-read books? Maybe it’s time to call it a night. Really.
@Chigau
Would you care to borrow my Angrydome(tm)?
Caine
How does you keeping and me re-reading make me a “judgmental asshole”?
“angry”??
OK.
You are my friends.
I go to bed.
Chigau:
Oh, let’s see:
You:
You:
See if you can figure it out.
Chigau:
So…”jesus fuck” is an expression of affection?
This seems to suggest a kind of judgment:
This is just loaded with assumptions:
What if you read a book and return it to the library? Does keeping books in libraries have a fucking point? Do libraries make good kindling? Mmmm… Questions. Why are we asking these questions again?
I keep books because I MAY want to reread them. Or enjoy the collection. OR I enjoy lending them to friends if they show an interest.
Let’s let Chigau sleep.
JAL:
I know we’re discussing movies and books, but some of the examples I’ve chosen venture outside of those two.
I’ve found that typos stick out to me in ways that many authors don’t notice. Many of the restaurants I’ve worked at will post notices about upcoming meetings and I’ve often remarked that I should spell check for them (or they could use the darn function on their computer), because misspellings stand out to me.
I particularly love when people misuse ‘their, they’re, and there’.
After posting at FtB for a while, I began noticing that many posters avoid this problem (many of you in fact don’t seem to suffer from it). I noticed a tendency of mine to occasionally repeat words close together. That’s something I still have to be mindful of.
Gah!
I hate that.
Over exposition is horrendous.
I’ve read comic books for a long time. I never paid much attention to dialogue when I was younger. At some point in the late 90s, I became friends with an amateur comic book writer and he was trying to break into one of the Big 3 (Marvel, DC, IMAGE). He shared with me some of the lessons he learned from pros. One of them was “show, not tell”. From that point on, I became mindful of examples of writers making that mistake. It’s a problem many writers in comics have. The problem is compounded because comics are a visual medium, and if the artist you’re paired with is competent, they can convey the necessary information in their art. Yet many writers like to explain what’s clear to the eye! That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard for me to read Golden Age (1938-1956) or Silver Age (1956-1975) comics. For all that Stan Lee created many enduring characters, he indulged in ridiculous amounts of exposition.
I know the feeling :)
There’s a reason for that. The standard Marvel Method of Writing was horendously glitched (for lack of a better term)
Writer would write outline->Artist would draw art->writer would then use the artists work to write dialogue.
As you can imagine this led to many many odd things, miscommunications and necessity for exposition to fill in flaws due to poor communication between artist and writer.
One example in early FF when they go back in time the outline reads basically “the Thing sees some pirates and steals their cloths”.
What does the art show? Some pirates fighting over a pile of cloths and The Thing steals it from them. OOPS.
Ing
o.O
Well, shit. I never thought of it like that. I was all feeling bad about the stupid mages who caused it and didn’t know what they were really doing. I felt bad for Khalan and didn’t actually think about it. I was totally wrapped up in the series. I only got irritated and bored at the end with all the libertarian lectures so I skimmed some. Then the author went into our world for a continuation and the dripping libertarianism bugged me. I haven’t been able to read the latest from that series.
Huh.
Oh, and the show and the series deviate wildly from each other. For instance in the book Khalan is the last confessor.
—
—
–
–
–
Tony
I definitely have the same issue and take forever when writing just to get up to mediocre (hopefully). I’m absolutely dreadful when it comes to writing but I can easily point out wrong/bad writing in others. I can usually see where I’ve gone wrong but can’t fix it.
Correction for my comment:
but I can easily point out wrong/bad writing
in otherswhen reading.Oh we are aware. “Hatred of moral clarity” is a common riff to throw in.
But yeah…the bad guys have an order of magical slavers who destroy wills…and the good guys have one. I wasn’t left feeling there was a moral highground anywhere. I know that’s not intended but that’s because it’s of that sort of era of scifi/fantasy that has the odd both misogyny and misandrny package I call Peirs Anthonyism.
@JAL
Part of the thing was that if it wasn’t that Darken Rahl (also really..>REALLY?!) wasn’t the designated villain wiping out an order that DESTROYS THE WILL OF PEOPLE TO ENTHRALL THEM would seem like a heroic goal. Putting my self in the shoes of a peasant in the setting I would have to think that Rahl’s scourging of them as a good thing. One less horrific monster to worry about.
So, I took myself and my go-to-bed-flounce out to the back patio.
[heard and saw an owl]
the SO stumbled out of bed and locked the back door.
So I had to pound on the bedroom window to get back in.
(I’d link to Poor Poor Pitiful Me but I’m so happy to be indoors, I cannot summon a “)
True. And I love that term for it.
My line of thinking for that series was Khalan was trying to survive and was born into it while Darken Rahl was doing it to people still against their will. It wasn’t until the New Evil Dude from Foreign, forgot his name, had all black eyes and was in people’s minds, and the convent of witches and things went down. That’s when I started noticing things like the treatment of foriegn people, and women, and the libertarianism, that I started coming out of the story more to be like “WTF?”. I still had to finish it and wanted to know how it ended but I thought everyone would be better off with no magic at all. Then the Pillars of Creation and the ending happened! XD
Man, Richard kept repeating himself and going on lectures. It was unbearable. I started skimming and I think those parts should be read with Ben Stein’s voice. It was terrible and I think the author even admitted he had to flush it out to make the series so long for the publisher and to make more money.
Chigau:
I’m glad you made it back in okay. If Mister did something like that, I could kiss off waking him back up, he sleeps like the dead. We don’t lock our doors though.
I re-read books all the time, science books because I forget what’s in them, and fiction because I want to relive some great story, like watching a movie again.
And these days I find myself keeping books because I want my son to find them on my bookshelves some day in the future.
Is there a thing about men?
I mean, I wake up when the cat farts and SO don’t stir if there is a lightening strike 50 metres away.
Ing:
But she doesn’t want to reproduce via rape and angsts about such muchly, and doesn’t like using slavery magic (unless it’s convenient, of course, and continues to use it on every day that ends in “y”). And apparently the gender-based infanticide, while disgusting, seems fairly justified in universe (I may be misremembering the relevant episodes for the Male Confessors, but it seems like its basically, for each of them, “Would You Kill Baby Hitler?”). That said: She’s still morally gray, at best, and it is still pretty bizarre and galling that they portray her as Obviously Good. Which is actually pretty typical, actually. This is a series where The Heroes regularly lawnmower themselves through the armies of The Evil Guy, while later spending episodes pretending that they give a fuck about the lives of the poor folks who have been manipulated into fighting for The Evil Guy. And then they proceed to massacre a half dozen more of those soldiers per episode after their completely contrived spell of pretending that the show is going to start treating the nameless cannon fodder as if they were supposed to actually be people. I have to admit, they totally got me there. Must’ve been some kind of April Fool’s joke.
I kind of got more of a Gorean (John Normanism?) vibe, personally.
Ing:
Chris Claremont actually seemed to get *worse* as a writer over time. He was on Uncanny X-Men for 20 (?) years. After he left and came back years later, his writing was *painful*. It remained so until sometime in the mid 00’s (I think he finally got an editor who reined in his excesses).
Oddly enough, despite their rivalry, John Byrne is another writer who followed the same track. One of his favorite writing tics is to recap the prior issue for new readers (because every issue is someone’s first, natch). I don’t have an issue with that*, but his idea of recap is to use 6-10 pages of a 22 page comic for exposition covering the previous issue**. Ongoing readers can easily get turned off to that.
*in the last 15 years, Marvel has tried a variety of recap ideas. I recall they used a gatefold recap page on the inside cover, which also introduced the characters. I think that was a bit too much. A good writer should be able to introduce their characters over the course of the story. An ongoing, serialized adventure doesn’t need to convey the entire history of a character every issue, but there are some basics that should be known by the end of the issue.
The current tactic used in the Avengers comics is my preference. The first page is a recap page, which quickly sums up the events that have happened prior and lists the relevant heroes.
An advantage to the latter format allows them to remove the recap page in Trade Collections, without disrupting the flow of the story.
All that said, some fans dislike the trend in the opposite direction. Many writers in the last decade use no captions, and thought balloons are almost non existent. You rarely see omniscient narrators in mainstream comics. That’s resulted in some relatively quick reads. There are times I prefer this to the purple prose employed by Claremont.
Something of a ‘happy’ medium was found in Brian Michael Bendis. He doesn’t use captions or thought balloons (he tried the latter briefly, but it didn’t last long), but he employs ‘talking heads’. Many of his comics took some time to read, but too often nothing substantial will happen. I also find when he writes a large cast, he has difficulty giving each person a unique voice. For all that Claremont was overly expository, if you removed the art from a page, you often knew which character said what just by their dialogue.
**This became problematic in Trade Collections of John Byrne written stories. I can’t imagine trying to read a TPB of a 6 part story and every 16 pages, you got a 6 page recap of what you’d just read.
so I spent three weeks in a place with a diesel generator going 24/7
why was that quieter than living on a busy city street
Chigau:
I dunno. I’m a light sleeper, Mister is a heavy sleeper; it takes me forever to fall asleep, it takes Mister about 2 seconds.
??
Inquiring minds just HAVE to know…
Chigau:
Generator noise is always the same, easy to get used to and dismiss. City noises vary.
Tony:
Ever read Piers Anthony? I’ll describe thusly: Ugh. He’s not everyone’s cuppa tea.
I’m totally like you and Rommie is like Mister but I wouldn’t extrapolate much from that. After all Step Dad is just like us and Mom is just like Roomie and Mister.
chigau:
For me, definitely not.
I wake up *too* easily.
When I sleep I prefer to have 2 sounds going:
My Fan (actually, I have three of them circling my bed)
My radio (which is never used as a radio. Instead I use it for the sounds of nature. The setting is *always* thunderstorm.)
I’ve found if I don’t have those sounds going, it’s hard to sleep (unless I’m dog ass tired [wonder where that phrase comes from…]).
When I first took in my tabby, Kayta, she used to annoying the living hell (another weird phrase) out of me because she would scratch at my door in the morning to be fed. If I didn’t answer in time, she would start whining. Fuck that was annoying.
I eventually bought a dog/cat gate. To this day she’s probably pissed she can’t reach my bedroom door :)
Hotels are the worst places for me to sleep in. There are no soothing sounds and the quiet is just freaky. When M and I would go out of town, it was awful because his snoring was LOUD!
Now I’m really to bed.
I’m inside.
kitteh is inside.
SO is snoring.
All is right.
[and my books are safe]
Chigau, I am choosing to believe that you phrased your point badly. (Review what you said: it does have a “my way or you’re an idiot” vibe.)
I’m a big re-reader – it started for me as a child, when I read my favourites over and over again. Not just short little kid books or light stuff like Narnia: I must have read Jane Eyre a dozen times before I was twelve.
I reread for various reasons. Comfort is one – if I’m feeling low I’ll often choose to reread something familiar. Prime comfort-reading candidates are the Vorkosigan saga, the Peter Wimsey novels, Terry Pratchett, and 17th-18th century novels (Austen, Burney, Gaskell etc). And Tolkein. When my father died I not only reread LoTR and all the appendices and the Hobbit, but also the Silmarillion, and the Book of Lost Tales – and even some of the preliminary annotated versions of LoTR published later by Christopher Tolkein. (Pretty sure I’m *never* going to reread those last ones.)
I’m also a very fast reader, and when I really get into a book I can skim so fast that I miss parts. If I really liked a book, I’ll often reread it immediately. And them maybe go reread some others by the same author to prolong the experience. I just reread all the Charles Stross Laundry books because I got book 4, The Apocalypse Codex. (Recommended to all Pharyngulites and lovers of Modesty Blaise, BTW.) Oooh, that reminds me, now I must go reread some Modesty Blaise.
And then there’s self-education – it’s often worth rereading non-fiction, because you forget stuff that you’re not using regularly.
I don’t know about that specifically but I *do* know that apparently the author, Terry Goodkind, asserts that “I’m not writing about fantasy. … I’m dealing with larger issues and the things that are central to all people.” Eyeroll. Also, ” I’m not writing fantasy. I’m accidentally published by a fantasy publisher so I get thrown in with that genre”.
(Here’s the interview. He’s pretty much a pompous Randian gasbag. His publicity photo really says it all.)
I can’t read books with unlikeable characters when the characters are unlikable because a) they are obviously hand puppets for vile author views and/or b) they are unlikeable because they are un-anything-able because they are not characters, they’re hand puppets. The Sword Of Truth series, the Left Behind books and all the Piers Anthony books I’ve ever read all fall into those categories.
(where did my post go? I’ll try once more.)
I don’t know about that specifically but I *do* know that apparently the author, Terry Goodkind, asserts that “I’m not writing about fantasy. … I’m dealing with larger issues and the things that are central to all people.” Eyeroll. Also, ” I’m not writing fantasy. I’m accidentally published by a fantasy publisher so I get thrown in with that genre”.
(Here’s the interview. He’s pretty much a pompous Randian gasbag. His publicity photo really says it all.)
I can’t read books with unlikeable characters when the characters are unlikable because a) they are obviously hand puppets for vile author views and/or b) they are unlikeable because they are un-anything-able because they are not characters, they’re hand puppets. The Sword Of Truth series, the Left Behind books and all the Piers Anthony books I’ve ever read all fall into those categories.
arglebarg posts not showing up.
no doubt they will all show up in a big pile 3 hours from now.
arg.
ONE LAST try.
(where did my post go? I’ll try once more.)
I don’t know about that specifically but I *do* know that apparently the author, Terry Goodkind, asserts that “I’m not writing about fantasy. … I’m dealing with larger issues and the things that are central to all people.” Eyeroll. Also, ” I’m not writing fantasy. I’m accidentally published by a fantasy publisher so I get thrown in with that genre”.
(Here’s the interview. He’s pretty much a pompous Randian gasbag. His publicity photo really says it all.)
I can’t read books with unlikeable characters when the characters are unlikable because a) they are obviously hand puppets for vile author views and/or b) they are unlikeable because they are un-anything-able because they are not characters, they’re hand puppets. The Sword Of Truth series, the Left Behind books and all the Piers Anthony books I’ve ever read all fall into those categories.
All you need to know about Piers Anthony is that he once wrote a book called “The Color of Her Panties”. Well, OK, that and that it was part of a comic fantasy series with bad puns everywhere and an appalling condescension to women, aka “girls”.
Another reason to reread – sometimes when I look back at stuff that I liked in the 70s, I’m horrified. The sexual revolution and women’s liberation were going on at the same time, and some stuff got very mixed up in ways that I could only disentangle in hindsight. Yay sex! Yes, women can actually like sex and want sex! Make love, not war! Clitoral orgasms! Wheee! Are we not revolutionary! No anti-sex league here! What are you, some kind of prude? … As the social pressure on women shifted from always “no” to sex or you’re a dirty whore, to always “yes” to sex or you’re a frigid bitch.
(I am ignoring the Molly thread or I’ll cry. Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel tougher.)
Tony:
I cannot sleep at all without some sort of white noise. I use an app called Sleepy Time on my nook, set to play Rain 2 / Distant Thunder 2 / Rain 1. It has a zillion different choices, but those three combined work the best for me.
Alethea, it is exactly what you fear it is. I am sorry that I am confirming this. But I also know you are smart enough and experienced enough to not be surprised.
One book I did re-read is Bill Richardson’s Waiting for Gertrude. Despite being a slim book, the content is wonderfully dense with a lot of subtlety and sly wit.
When I first read it, I was hurried and I didn’t know much about several of the people characters were based on, so after the first read, I did some research and reading, then went back to it when I had more leisure time.
Caine:
Those settings sound cool.
One of the first nights K stayed with me, I told him about how I keep the setting on ‘thunderstorm’. He chuckled when I told him that ‘ocean’ and ‘rainfall’ were too peaceful for me to sleep to. They’re relaxing, to be sure, but they’re better suited to getting high on, rather than sleeping.
Years ago, when I lived in Alabama, I recall having difficulty sleeping because there was a fucking orchestra of frogs outside my window trying their best to rob me of sleep.
I also find it difficult to fall asleep listening to music or with the television on.
Alethea:
It is pretty bad in that thread, thanks to a few people.
Me too, but I think I skipped the “Frodo was very tired, sam was very worried and Gollum ate a fish” part most of the times.
I’m wodering if the character had worked better if he hadn’t become a traitor in the end. Tolkien tried to write a suffering hero, carrying a terrible burden yadda yadda and in the one moment he turns into a bloody asshole who used each and everyone of his friends for his own ends.
chigau
Glad you made it back to bed.
I once had the fortune to share a bed with one of my friends because his boyfriend accidentially locked him out (said friend shared a flat with another friend who had let me use her room for the night. His room had a knob on the outside, so if you didn’t have the key you couldn’t open it.) HIs boyfriend went to bed early, fell asleep and was not to be waken again. We simultaneously knocked on the window, the door, let the phone ring, let the mobile ring, rung the doorbell and shouted…
No. My brain is very well trained to switch off parts. Usually there’s the “sound the kids make” awake. Other sounds hardly bother me. I sleep through thunderstorms. But the sound of small naked feet wakes me up.
Ms. Daisy Cutter
Yes, that sounds familiar: old books are like good friends you can visit again and again and just talk about the good old times. Sometimes my brain just isn’t fit for new stuff (I’m really working my way through North and South at the moment. It’s not that I don’t like it, I like it imensely, but to find the time and muse to really read it is hard at the moment.)
ONE MORE try. I apologize for the inevitable trainwreck when all my posts appear at once in a string. Sigh.
(where did my post go? I’ll try once more.)
I don’t know about that specifically but I *do* know that apparently the author, Terry Goodkind, asserts that “I’m not writing about fantasy. … I’m dealing with larger issues and the things that are central to all people.” Eyeroll. Also, ” I’m not writing fantasy. I’m accidentally published by a fantasy publisher so I get thrown in with that genre”.
(Here’s the interview. He’s pretty much a pompous Randian gasbag. His publicity photo really says it all.)
I can’t read books with unlikeable characters when the characters are unlikable because a) they are obviously hand puppets for vile author views and/or b) they are unlikeable because they are un-anything-able because they are not characters, they’re hand puppets. The Sword Of Truth series, the Left Behind books and all the Piers Anthony books I’ve ever read all fall into those categories.
Alethea:
It deftly illustrates that in spite of your passion, clarity and eloquence, there are still people who will read what you wrote and immediately delve into happy hypotheticals and when called on that, dive ever deeper into the realms of magic land.
The thread sharply paints a picture as to why your point needs to be spoken about, loudly, and repeated as necessary. It also highlights just why such hypotheticals are actively harmful to women and to the pro-choice movement.
Interwoven in all the arguments, however, is a lot of appreciation for what you wrote.
Remember the story earlier this week about the comic book writer Mark Millar investigating the misogynist on Twitter? Ron Marz writes a follow up post and explains why he is against “don’t feed the trolls”.
I’m glad Ron Marz spoke up against that misogynist on Twitter. I’m glad he understands why ‘don’t feed the trolls’ works. I’m still a little bitter about some of his past work though.
Possible Trigger Warning:
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Fuck.
Looking at the list of characters and the way they were killed, raped or brutalized really angers me. I hate that the medium I love has this problem (I know, sexism and misogyny exist everywhere and comics are not immune; nor are they necessarily better or worse than any other medium, but still…).
Part of that anger is directed at myself. The me of today is mad at the me of yesterday for not seeing the sexism when I first read that comic (irrational, I know. I can’t change the past and I didn’t know a thing about feminism or misogyny when I was in high school). Nor did I come to understand it until I came to FtB.
RE: Women in refrigerators
There’s a Feminist Frequency video about this.
I found it noticable how in the Harry Potter movie the torture of Hermione suddenly fits the trope. In the book, although the boys downstairs were distressed and angry, the scene was more about Hermione. In the movies, the whole thing got a sexualized context and was suddenly all about how bad it made Ron feel.
+++
Ahhh, do you remember when I whined about #1 having lost two bracelets in kindergarten and the boy she said took them denying everything.
Well, I out up a note asking to please return them to her box which hasn’t happened. But I met his mother while shopping this morning. She looked away, didn’t say hello, in short, she had guilty conscience written all over her face. *sigh*
So much for setting a moral example for your child.
Well written good article here :
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4248444.html
About homophobic Christian lobby leader Jim Wallace’s recent comments via Aussie ABC’s The Drum website.
Good writers and comics/graphic novels:
Gritty, gross and hilarious stuff: Garth Ennis
Subtle stuff: Neil Gaiman
other authors just keep disappointing me.
— — — — — —
Concerns in ´Merica: Economy tanking, bombs exploding.
Concerns in Britain: See above
Concerns in Scandinavia:
http://www.thelocal.se/43110/20120909/
Hahahahaha!
On my hike today, I stumbled across a geocache!
I couldn’t resist the cheap sunglasses someone had left behind. But I left…something behind.
On keeping and rereading books:
Having just needed to move all the books that were in my office home, despite buying a large extra bookcase I’ve had to get rid of quite a few – mostly to Oxfam, who have a shop dedicated to books in Aberdeen. At some point, we’re likely to move to somewhere smaller, and I’ll have to get rid of more. I never find it easy – there’s always the thought that I might want to reread it / need to consult it. However, I am now trying to keep to a “one in, one out” rule – if I don’t, they’ll start piling up on the floor, as has happened before.
As for rereading, there are a small and gradually shifting collection of books I reread for comfort or if I’m awake at night and want to be able to get back to sleep: P.G. Wodehouse is the best represented author, but it’s not all fiction – I’ve got a set of Penguin historical atlases by Colin McEvedy, among other non-fiction.
My wife has recently bought a Kindle, which I’m free to use. It’s certainly better than any earlier screen-reader I’ve seen, but I can’t see it replacing codexes (paper books) any time soon for me – it still has serious limitations for non-fiction (diagrams and formulae are crap, it can’t even cope with the £ sign), and it’s still less easy to look back (or forward) from the page you’re on.
When I was I kid I never reread anything because that would mean less time to read every book ever written. I did want to make all the books mine and have a huge library of my own.
Now, I love having books of my own that I can reread when the mood strikes me. And I’m working towards that library I’ve been wanting.
Anyone know a good wireless keyboard/mouse combo for Desktop with the capslock key in a different spot?
Beatrice:
Sounds miiiiiiiiiiiighty greedy.
Did you have some plans for world domination as well?
Nick:
This reminds me (in a loose way) of Rupert Giles’ (of Buffy fame) dislike for computers. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of preferring the dusty old pages and being able to feel them between his fingers.
Alethea,
1) You are ace.
2) See 1).
3) It is time for Teh Mockereh Of Teh Misogynists on that thread. I have posted accordingly. They need mocking because it hurts their fee-fees so very much.
4) Ben Goren, in the words of the Prophet Mohammed, as intimated on PET, is exhibiting a piece of total fuckweasel behaviour. Some women who abort SHOULD feel shame etc? SHOULD? Ooooooh ho ho ho my chuckling funster, that is deserving of a big fuck you! Why, why, why, is this hard? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? {KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!}
5) There is no 5).
6) Hellooooo everyone.
7) Caine, if you would be so kind, pet the ratlets for me please. I’d ask you to pay particular attention to Vasco’s Unmentionables but I think he pays them enough attention as it is. If you are keeping him, will they be “whipped off” and preserved for posterity? My wife used to castrate euthanised male rats and harvest the fat pads behind the testes during her PhD. She could help! BTW this is a fact she brings up when I am getting out of line.
Louis
Oh and getting rid of books is an anathema. You are evil fucking scum sucking bastards for ever considering it ever.
Just, you know, a moderate and reasonable reaction from a committed (and indeed committable) bibliophile.
;-)
Louis
Tony,
Nah, too many people, too much paperwork and no time for reading.
Besides, I’d have more than just one world in my library. :)
Oh, and when I write “all the books”, I mean a copy of each book. I would let other people have their own. *grin*
A historical atlas is great for context of history.
for instance, the German-speaking world* was really compressed during the era of Charlemagne, everyone east of Elbe were west slav speakers until ca. the twelfth century.
German became a wide spread language through language transfer among subjugated peoples, just like the anglo-saxon language was adopted by celts in England. Anyone who can read a map can see why Nazi-style race theories were bogus.
— — — — — — —
Obama: ‘Help Us Destroy Jesus And Start A New Age Of Liberal Darkness’ http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-help-us-destroy-jesus-and-start-a-new-age-of,29478/
Yesss!!!
http://www.xkcd.com/1105/
Beatrice,
You are SO much nicer than I am. I would restrict access only to those who showed proper and due reverence.
For the books, of course.
Louis
kristinc, you get the most awesome finds! And I know how much work goes into that – it takes a lot of slogging through crappy yard sales to get great hits like that.
Books – I re-read my favs over and over and over. I don’t buy a book unless I plan to re-read it; I get it from the library instead. And even then I’ve been known to check out books more than once. Also, I hate Catcher In The Rye.
Tony – you might try reading the Percy Jackson books. Nothing like the movie, and they’re such fun. My son and I literally almost cried in the theater, we had waited for the movie for so long and it was so bad in comparison.
Esteleth – Here is video of Jonathan Coulton singing a personalized version of My Monkey to Wil Wheaton, along with Wil reaction shots. It’s as adorable as you might think. Around 1:30 he’s so giddy he just puts his hands up and shakes, and then at the end there’s a big hug and it’s all geeky fun times.
Louis:
I knew it.
There’s a body snatcher in our midst.
Who are you and what did you do with Louis?
I see through you! The Louis we know would never collect Bibles!
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yes I know
Those of you who enjoyed the letter about equal marriage that Chris Kluwe wrote to the Maryland delegate should enjoy his explanation of why he used such colorful language (lustful cockmonster). It looks to me as if he would fit in well here at Pharyngula. http://blogs.twincities.com/outofbounds/2012/09/08/out-of-bounds-blog-no-8-inquisitive-kitten-pawing-at-yarn/
Beatrice:
Wowee, you’re going to need some extra dimensional storage space then. My collection of 10,000+ comics takes up 1/5 of my garage and books are bigger and thicker than comics. You’re going to run out of room.
Perhaps you *should* take over the world, so you can have the peons build storage space…
Of course, if you could acquire a handy dandy science fiction shrink ray gun, your problems are solved!
ImaginesABeach:
Thanks.
I still think ‘lustful cockmonster’ in the original is awesome.
However, ‘lustful frolicking ostrich’ is quite hilarious.
Cigau – I’m female and don’t really wake up to noise at all including people coming into my room and knocking stuff over or thunderstorms. I have to have my alarm volume right up or I just sleep through it. But I also have trouble getting to sleep and have to have some sort of noise.
Caine – Please give Chester lots of extra scratches, belly kisses, tea and peas as I have been a very bad virtual rat parent lately.
I had to post a thank you response to Chris. Both for not being worried about tone, and for his support of equality.
Tony,
I have 3 bibles in my house (one red letter bible modern doodah, one Gideon’s I got when graduating from prep school, one KJV), one qu’ran, one hadith, a couple of guru granth sahibs, a torah, a talmud, a bhaghavad gita, sundry buddhist things, dianetics, and a couple of other thingies. All in English, sadly!
They’re quite interesting as it goes. And, in emergencies, they are very useful for roaches and/or toilet roll. Although the bibles are mostly printed on that really thin, crispy, cheap paper, and definitely chafe one’s bunghole.
Louis
Beatrice:
I promise I’ll help construct space for the books if you’ll ban PEA consumption when you become Ruler of All.
Louis:
Have you read them all?
If you have, that explains soooooooooooo much :)
Tony,
Of course I’ve read them all. I’m a book-o-holic of the first water. Any good combat atheist knows the enemy a bit! That’s just the path I took as it were.
And yes, they did warp my fragile little mind.
Louis
Tony,
Oh yeah, sure. *shifty eyes*
I’ll just store them somewhere safe.
*mutters to herself*
Need to buy freezers to save the peas.
busy night in the lounge…
—
re (Seeker books) magical mind-slavers who reproduce by rape…
I basically had to block consideration of it from my mind because OMFGS the incredible sexuality fail. The entire magical rape premise, and all the plot that depends on it, falls apart if sex doesn’t actually work as presented in cheap romance novels, where the woman’s swept away by passion just in the presence of The Man. The author could bother to be all fiddly with characters getting around the rules in plenty of other ways, but his notion of consensual sex comes right out of an air freshener commercial. NOBODY in all those hundreds of years figured out how women’s orgasms work? NOBODY figured out how *semen* works for petes sake? But it’s okay to have the glaring stupid as a major worldbuilding point because women amirite.
The gendered infanticide actually makes better sense because of the power differential. Then I get snippy about gender essentialism but I wouldn’t expect an author that thinks sex = swooning to get that much of a clue. *spit*
Dear people who name colours:
Buttercream?
WTF?
Also, buttercream is nowhere near that colour.
#absolutelyunimportant
Nick, re: the Kindle:
I’ve had my Kindle for a few months now and I still find myself buying paper books– probably half of what I buy is digital, the other half are physical. My big issue is that I can’t browse and pick out books on Amazon*, so if I don’t have something in mind but need a book, I’m better off going to bookstore.
Anyway, I started Infinite Jest last night**, so this means I’m going to get zero work done today. I prolly should’ve left the Kindle at home. ;)
*Don’t get me started on the Amazon recommendations. I bought one John Scalzi book a few weeks ago (Old Man’s War) and now all the app recommends is other books of his. Prior to that it was Charles Stross.
**The one piece of unasked for pregnancy advice that my mom has given me (she’s been really good and supportive so far, much to my surprise), was that I should consider reading out loud to DarkFetus. She apparently read Shakespeare’s sonnets to me (“I was hoping for a genius”), but she doesn’t think that books like Infinite Jest or Catch-22 are “appropriate”.
via Jen’s twitter, this long immersive essay about the feel of the Republican vs Democratic conventions. Like she said, read through to the end.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/down-and-out-in-tampa-and-charlotte/Content?oid=14690724