This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. The tardigrade would like its tummy tickled.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
What is wrong with me?
When I saw that name Whïsker Dü, this is the first song that should have come to mind.
How To Skin A Cat
Perhaps are of the rat lovers should avoid this song.
This means you, Caine!
Sorry, my hands are too big.
The Typo Monster gets fed again.
“Perhaps all of…”
From the last iteration of the Lounge:
broboxley:
Why are they burning the morels? Why does the cat have a monocle? Why does the unicorn have a swastika ‘arm’band? Why am I trying to make sense out of this?
Tardigrades are SO FREAKING CUTE!!!!!!!11!!elebenty!!!!
Alan Osmond talks about meeting, courting, and marrying his wife.
There’s almost too much mormon schlock in this story for you to survive reading it. Expect to lose a few brain cells. The story does accomplish one goal, it really let’s you know what mormon culture is like when it comes to dating. No doubt Alan Osmond did not intentionally reveal how disastrous mormonism can be when it comes to shaping the attitudes of young men.
http://thefamily.com/tag/suzanne-pinegar-osmond/
Lynna:
Is it normal for there to be that much bragging about physical possessions? The apartment complex my family owned, my Mercedes Benz 450, etc. Is that part of the Mormon mating dance?
Godless Teen recently added a correspondent from Egypt and is looking forwar to doing battle with a christian who has just turned up on his site. http://www.godlessteens.com
Yay tardigrads ! ^.^
tardigrade!
squee!!!
—-
So no thinks Oggie has lost it:
broboxley’s link
So you are proposing that I have not lost it? And I thought atheists had no faith.
And the tardigrade? Looks like an amputated caterpillar. One of the ones that secretes acid. No thanks.
Insofar as it resonated a lot with my own experiences, I read it as a *dawning* realization of his privilege and as re-examining and perspectivizing his own feelings in light of it.
Lynna, not too sound rude but I am too terrified to learn about Mormon Mating Rituals.
I would rather watch bowerbirds.
Og,
Why are they burning the morels?
To kill the inhabitants of the morels
Why does the cat have a monocle?
Because the cat would look silly smoking a big cigar without a monocle
Why does the unicorn have a swastika ‘arm’band?
To show solidarity with their european counterparts (they dont get news updates very often)
Why am I trying to make sense out of this?
that I can’t help you with
I wonder about that ‘loss’ of faith stuff.
I didn’t ‘lose’ my faith, I kicked it to the curb.
More bowerbirds.
Chigau, I did not just kick my faith to the curb; I curb stomped my faith.
Wouldn’t that be immoral? Or immorel?
Nonsense. I smoke a cigar. I have bifocals. I do not look silly. Therefore the cat would not look silly.
Okay. So unicorns are slow. No problem.
A preposition is something you shouldn’t end a sentence with.
Yes, Azkyroth, after some ghoutht over dinner, I realize I owe you an apology for totally missing the point of what you posted last thread. I’m sorry. I should have thought about it a little bit more, instead of looking at it purely from my own perspective.
+++
At least I’ll be taking the weekend off.
rq:
YAY!
Ogvorbis
Not to worry, the Portia/Porsche thing makes me snicker every time. My avatar has been boring for lack of any ideas, and I like yours! Now once I figure out how to change the avatar, I’ll plug it in there :D
Giliell
I like it!
rq
What the what? I agree with her that no one has any business telling a person what, when and how much they should eat (unless you are a parent or doctor or something), but wow. Does she have it all wrong.
I want to rub its belly but I would likely either mash it to paste, or pick up a silent resident. So conflicted!
Portia,
If I remember correctly, you were talking about candied orange peel once. I made some today, so I have a couple of questions.
How do you store it? Does it need to be in sugar, or can I just put it in an airtight container? How long can I store it?
Portia,
For avatar change: https://en.gravatar.com/
Make sure to use the same email with which you log-in here.
Beatrice,
I stored them in airtight containers at room temperature, and they were delicious for at least 3 weeks. I believe they’d last quite a bit longer than that if stored properly. I did layer them between wax paper to prevent too much clumping together. (Not that that is fatal, you can just peel them apart if it happens, and if enough sugar stuck to them initially there won’t be much sticking together). Good luck :)
Roll them in sugar and keep them in an airtight container and they should keep for a while.
Oh good, they need to last just until the 23th/24th. Thanks
I rolled them in sugar already, and they are currently on some wax paper, drying. I read a suggestion that they stay out for 24 to 48 hours before storing (to prevent clumping, I guess)
Thanks Beatrice!
(testing testing)
Mine is actually a photo of me. Hanging from a rope in Mosaic Canyon at Death Valley National Monument (now Park) when I was 5 or 6 years old. It was a school field trip.
That’s sweet, Og.
So, today the little one managed to cut herself with her scissors.
That alone isn’t much of an achievement, I guess most 3yo do at some point, but mine, well mine cut herself in the tongue.
I told Mr. there are 2 possibilities:
She’ll either want her tongue pierced by age 12 or never…
Hmmm, and I cooked mulled wine jam for some cookies I want to make. I boiled it for about 10 min so the kids could eat the cookies, too, while I stood in front of the stove *hicks*
Giliell,
Ouch, poor little one
Portia:
Thanks. I have fond memories of that time. It was before I broke.
Giliell:
Now, if she had managed to cut her tongue with scissors while running . . . .
Hmm. Not one of your cuter tardigrades, that.
Portia
Very posh!
OMG
It’s happening…
Thanks chigau. It was Ogvorbis’ brilliant idea :)
Wait, what’s happening?
Wait, what? The end of the world wasn’t supposed to start before the 21st. I haven’t prepared myself yet! What is happening?!
The little FTB logo on my bookmark tabs has changed to the new one…
the reformatting might be underway.
What is happening?
What was my idea? And how did ‘brilliant’ come anywhere close to Ogvorbis?
The Porsche avatar, Og.
Oh, and yeah, I noticed the new logo today on the tab too.
Ah. The stupid joke I made. I understand. Sort of.
And I see no new logos. Of course, I’m in Chrome right now so that may be part of it?
I’m in Firefox and I don’t see it either.
I can’t find the comment now, but you actually suggested the logo as an avatar, and I liked it. You make me smile; don’t be so hard on yourself!
And I’m in Chrome, seeing the FTB logo change. *shrug*
Can you tickle something with an exoskeleton?
I take the view that the supernatural doesn’t exist. If something interacts with the universe in a measurable way, then it is part of nature, by definition. If it doesn’t interact with the universe in a measurable way, then it effectively does not exist as far as the universe is concerned.
However I’ve been puzzling over the Trinity question. Say I was god, and the universe is a simulation in my computer. My creations in the computer are bound by the laws I defined in my simulation, but I would not be. I could create an avatar, a simulation of myself in that world, that in essence would be an extension of myself that could interact in that world. I could have that avatar bound by the laws of the simulation, or be Matrix-like and able to bend the laws of the simulation to suit their purposes, like the god-level cheat codes of video games.
So in the context of this analogy, a god would be outside the laws of physics, unable to be detected or measured by the inhabitants of the universe, while able to have a part of itself appear in person in the universe and interact with it.
I still think the whole concept of the Trinity is ridiculous, and don’t believe in god(s), but this analogy might be challenging if presented by a Christian creationist. This analogy has no weight as far as proving god(s) exist, or that a given religion is true, but rather argues against the notion that I began with that a god could be outside the laws of physics/science yet still interact with the universe.
Of course debating within the rules of a delusion might be a pointless exercise.
I see the logo in FireFox and IE.
(still talking about the Goblins webcomic maker’s post)
which is how I read it, also; because that’s Thunt’s posting style. Mostly he concentrates on his comic, and his blog and twitter tend to be random thinking out loud. (Also because this isn’t the first privileged misstep he’s made, thought about, and apologized for.)
Certainly. I once had a very small crayfish take up residence in my swim shorts and it did tickle me. Freaked me out, too, but it did tickle me.
Its a habit of mine that dates back to middle school. If I insult myself (self-deprecating humour), it beats others to the punch and, quite often, derails them. It is a self-protection mechanism that has outlived its usefulness but is still a part of me. Sorry.
Tardigrades can survive ten days in space, AND they have a tickle response! They never fail to impress.
But can they be used as a desert topping? Or a floorwax?
Ok then, I guess I could have read it too uncharitably, after all these misogyny threads.
Yes, but if you try it, the rest of them group together and hunt you down.
How does one cut one’s tongue with scissors?
…I’ve cut my tongue with scissors by trying to lick the blades clean (and forgetting they have edges going the other direction from knives…)
Pteryxx
What was on the scissors that was lickable?
Improbable Joe
Put scissors in mouth.
Act like restless child.
You’ll see. :)
Portia
Loverly avatar. I would have expected the blue car, though. ;) Maybe next time. But yes, I’m with Ogvorbis – very posh.
Ogvorbis
You too, nice avatar.
I’ll have to look into something for myself.
Pteryxx
I admit I’m not familiar with his style; if that is it, then yes, I admit, I was too uncharitable.
+++
Good night and I’m out for the weekend. This evening brought to you by, second migraine in a week. Good time to take time off.
This hurts.
Good weekends to all!
Good weekend rq, take care of that migraine!
rq,
Good night! Have a nice weekend and I hope your migraine will go away soon.
I don’t know what Pteryxx was doing, but I sometime use scissors for cutting dried fruit, like dates for scones or big chunks of candied orange peel into small chunks.
And I read the goblincomic piece as a progression, in which the author moves from stupid to mostly enlightened. He may not have got every nuance down, but he certainly got the big picture.
Take care rq.
Oh, I’ve licked scissors after all sorts of things – cutting apples, peeling oranges (works, but not as well as fingers), clipping grass or clover, and getting pencil dust off when I didn’t want black powder on my hands. White glue will lick off, but not tape residue or pine sap. I’ve even licked blood off scissors (use scissors, nick finger, lick finger, lick scissors). I got fairly good at it or I’d have cut my tongue a lot more often. <_<
…Do you use scissors only on paper or something? *headscratch*
Oh, and I use kitchen shears too for things like that, but I don’t lick ’em – I’m picky about getting my spit on kitchen tools, and I’m usually cutting things like green onions where I don’t WANT to lick the juice. Ew.
I don’t really lick things, so I was at a loss.
rq
Now I feel inspired to periodically have a new Porsche-themed avatar :) Migraines are sucky, I hope yours doesn’t plague you long. Get good sleep, and have a good weekend.
====
If I believed in karma, it would explain my morning a lot better. I went to the bank and found out I have $300+ in rewards on my credit card waiting to be redeemed. I got really excited about spending some of it on Christmas gifts.
I left the bank, and got pulled over and ticketed for speeding and having expired plates. The amount of the tickets? $300+.
It was a demoralizing start to the day. And the rest of the day was exhausting and long and now I want to curl up and go to sleep. But I promised to go to a gallery hop and my art is on display so I really feel like I should go. So I will. But I will sleep hard tonight.
===
Ogvorbis
I understand the self-depracation impulse all too well. Part of my discomfort with going to the art thing tonight is that people will inevitably feel obligated to compliment my artwork, and I will be convinced they are just being polite. And that they in fact recognize my work for the amateurish dabbling that it is. Such thoughts will make me uncomfortable and awkward all evening. C’est la vie.
I have kitchen scissors for cutting food-things.
I wash them afterwards.
I know, weird.
;)
It was just a fluke a couple of days ago, but I think this time we’ll end up with lotses of snow tomorrow.
Good thing I only have to pop out to buy oranges and bread.
Portia,
Gain $300, lose $300… it isn’t a terrible day if you break even, is it?
And I yell at people who try to use my sewing scissors to cut paper.
I don’t lick scissors, but I lick knives.
…
This sentence sounds weird.
and as long as I’m rambling, one rarely *needs* to lick kitchen tools because they get dirty in a kitchen, where a sink is. Classrooms, yards, buses, desks, whatever kind of workspace where a scissors gets sticky, hey, tongue is a portable and environment-friendly washcloth.
It also helps keep other students from ‘borrowing’ your things. (Note to self: not a tactic for use in dissection labs.)
No, not terrible in the sense that I’m not much worse off. It’s just that now I will have a mark on my driving record, and it’s my own stupid fault. Which means my guilt-complex and self-loathing kick in to make it all seem far worse than it is. For pete’s sake, my plates expired in July. What kind of a fuckup can’t remember to renew license plate tags when the sticker is right there on the car all the time, reminding you? And who doesn’t recognize a Dodge Charger sitting in the median for what it is? And who absent-mindedly goes that far over the limit? On and on til I wear myself out with guilt. Wasting money is one of my big guilt-triggers, I think because of growing up poor. It’s not really worth too much sympathy, I know I’m still better off than lots of folks, it’s just a hard pill to swallow today.
But thank you Joe, I do appreciate the cheering up effort :) Hopefully when I go to court with my renewed license registration (which I’m going to do in the morning), they will drop the second ticket.
Good luck Portia – in my experience, when you go in with an otherwise decent record and ask that a ticket be dropped, often they will (because you bother to show up).
That Osmond shit is horrifying. They were engaged and she didn’t know he played instruments? WTF?
And those song lyrics. Nowhere a single hint about what kind of person she is. She, uh, well, she smiles and makes him happy. Dude needs a fucking Real Doll is what he needs.
Portia,
guilt-complex, self-loathing? Oh, I’m right there with you.
I know nothing can really make you feel better right now, but this really was one of those things that just happen. Not because you are a fuckup, but because we all sometimes fuck up.
Many *hugs*
Thanks for the encouragement Pteryxx. I have nothing else on my record because the speeding and crashing I did when I was a teenager was removed via court supervision. If this had happened in my home county, I would know the prosecutor by name and feel much better about my odds of getting it dropped. (“It’s who you know,” a cliche for a reason). As it is, I will keep my chin up. I think venting here and you and Joe’s responses have already helped me feel much better. Thank you. I like it here.
Thanks, Beatrice. Hugs back. I really appreciate your kind words. Stuff happens, right? Everybody lets things slip.
I’m gonna tell a spider story, but I promise not to get hysterical. They are getting more creative in their diabolical plots. No, seriously. I baked cookies at SO’s last weekend. For hours. After a while, the carbon monoxide detector upstairs went off. I convinced SO to call the landlord, who said to call the gas company. He did it the next morning, and the gas company guy did a reading of the oven, and the CO^2 levels maxed out his meter. Well beyond what is dangerous. How are spiders involved, you ask? Yesterday, the fixit guy said it was spider nests that blocked the vents and caused the oven to burn dirty and put out such ridiculously high levels.
Spiders are evil and homicidal. QED.
(Incidentally, I noticed no ill effects. Spiders were foiled by my superpowers).
Portia,
I think it definitely counts as A Series of Unfortunate Events.
You let things slip, everyone does. You had the added misfortune to get caught.
—
Definitely lotses of snow. I might take a nice walk in the snow tomorrow after all, while it’s still fresh. If I can force myself, since it’s one of those things I would rather enjoy with someone than by myself.
Portia, what kind of fuckup? Well… I moved to Virginia Sept. 30, 2011. I didn’t get Virginia plates(or a VA licence) on either car until Sept. 2012, and now I live in New Mexico.
And yeah, they will probably reduce all or part of it.
I’d pay cold, hard cash for chadgething to shut the fuck up. I don’t know how much more I can take.
thanks for the validation, Beatrice. I do appreciate it.
Joe, I’m in good company then :)
Caine
I’m finding it difficult to believe that chadgething is really that stupid.
pounces on chigau
pounces back on Gyeong Hwa
Chigau:
I don’t care if he’s truly stupid or not. He’s an obvious, admitted sexist and doesn’t want to be budged out of his corner. His statement that calling his daughters cunt now is unacceptable, but it might be okay in 15 years or so, has me infuriated. Doucheclam.
Sorry Caine. I get the impression cadgething’s just here to sap everyone’s energy.
Aw geez.
This talk about tags reminds me I have until my birthday to renew them.
Now where am I going to come up with $36 for that? Sigh.
Cell phone is turned off. Sitting in the parking lot of Barnes & Nobles to use their Wi Fi.
::sigh::
Tony:
I have to come up with $116 for the registration, which is the other unpleasantness. I feel you. I’m sorry your cell got shut off : ( Glad you’ve still found a way to drop in here, though. *hugs*
Well Portia you’re in… company of some sort. Any port in a storm, I suppose? You’re welcome to borrow my dunce cap if you forgot your own. :)
Joe: is the dunce cap the opposite of the snark hat? : )
Jesus Fucking Jumped Up Christ. Now he claims:
Oh, and apparently there’s a penalty if you renew after the tags have expires. /whine. A Series, indeed.
Pteryxx:
I’m good at rage. I’ll deal. Thank you.
me declares a pouncing war
sigh The problem with being quasi-popular on tumblr is that inevitably some MRA or White Supremacist fuckwit will derail my post with their fucking useless accusation and I don’t have time to deal with them all.
*offers Caine rat-shaped anklehugs*
Mostly I don’t have it in me to engage in depth with the lie spinners these days. I’ve just been skimming cadge’s BS and reminiscing about the argument me and rugby-player had over whether rugby, soccer, or ice hockey gave its practitioners better asses.
*cHadge. However apropos the misreading, I wasn’t doing that on purpose.
Pteryxx:
Aaaaw, thank you.
Who won?
Insufficient sample size.
<_<
oooh, now I have an idea for a Kickstarter!
Pteryxx:
Hahahahahahahaha. Time for a study.
Portia, if by “opposite” you mean “dunces attract snark” then you’re dead-on.
My wife’s licence was suspended in Florida for not returning the plates in a year, so we had to pay them $250 in order for her to get a Virginia licence so she could drive to Texas and move to New Mexico without getting arrested.
Pardon me if this has already been posted, but it’s tragic.
TW for extreme violence.
Former Mayor of Mexican town found beaten to death. She was known for defying the cartels. Stop scrolling down as soon as you see a second, column-wide photo, if you don’t want to see a non-graphic photo of her body.
Joe, ouch. That sucks.
Nah, you know what sucks? My wife got here and found out she owed the power company $275 from 10 years ago when she lived here last time.
I think the Lilac Berets™ of the Pullet Patrol™ are interested. You might be able to talk them into making it a training exercise in how to deal with folks who don’t pay their PS&SP tabs on time. Depends on how much pain you want inflicted…hint, more equals cheaper…
On a more serious note, can the health care professionals tell me how much effect dietary cholesterol intake really has on a lipid blood test? The Redhead has a blood test at the end of the month, and is talking about eschewing eggnog, red meat, one egg for breakfast, and a bunch of other dietary changes. I say eat normally and get a baseline that may require some dietary changes to avoid more meds.
Is NatGeo ever going to reinstate all those lost comments from the SciBlog Pharyngula?
Nerd,
Remind me later if I forget to check with my wife on the cholesterol thing. She’s been an RN for 20+ years, has focused on older patients for the past 10, and has been running nursing homes for the past 6-7. If she doesn’t have a good answer, she can buzz the dietitian at her job.
110# Nerd
anecdotal here.
A long time ago when the world was young I had a lipid test that was horribly high. So made an agreement with the doc. I would eat vegetarian for 40 days, no dairy or nuts. No booze beer or cofee then retest.
It almost killed me but I did it. Took the retest, all markers went the wrong way, triglycerides thru the roof bad lipids thru the roof, the good number fell horribly.
Now I know that I have a weird system but my advice (not as a medical anything) is to eat sensibly of your normal diet and discuss it with your healthcare provider.
Nerd, I think the modern consensus is that “cholesterol intake in food has little, if any, effect on total body cholesterol content or concentrations of cholesterol in the blood.”
chigau @111, I doubt it.
(I disbelieve the claim that it’s a technical issue)
John Morales #115
I expect you are correct.
It makes me a little sad.
Chigau:
At this point, I don’t think so. Makes me pissy, as there were many sterling threads (I have so many bookmarked) and it was a great reference.
I opened a package of cream cheese to make cream cheese spritz cookies (thanks to Portia, I believe), and printed on the inside of the package is “Come join our community of real women today! Share your best recipes, learn about cooking with Philadelphia cream cheese, and compete in different contests…”
ImaginesABeach,
I’m flashing back to the last Lounge iteration with the guy who felt slighted as a man, but understood that his pain was small potatoes. Also, sexism hurts men too. I’m killed all the time that everything cooking-related defaults to women.
I buy cream cheese! I cook with cream cheese! Why can’t I be part of a community of people who cook with cream cheese?!?!?! I don’t even have to join in your competitions! I mean, I would win your competitions because I am an awesome cook, but my penis has nothing to do with it!
Joe, you don’t use your penis while cooking?
I hate cooking. I’m lousy at cooking. I can bake pretty well, but I have to follow the recipe exactly. I’m not sure they really want me as part of their community of “real women”.
ImaginesABeach
How many varieties is that for you now? :)
Funny how cooking is “women’s work” until there’s a dime to be made off it, then it’s a heavily male-dominated field. I don’t mean Food Network chefs, I mean all the head chefs, sous chefs, or line cooks I ever, ever worked under. Funny, that.
(Oh, hey, the Snark Hat fits over the Dunce Cap).
I’m up to 18 kinds of cookie dough in my freezer, I think. I have a recipe for spritz cookies that uses apple butter, and I’m going to try rq’s obscenely big black pepper snap recipe. Next weekend, we start baking the cookies.
Would you mind sharing the apple butter recipe? That sounds tasty.
Pro-tip when you have your oven going so long: Keep you CO^2 detector handy. The spiders are on the offensive.
ImaginesABeach,
To be fair, I took “real women” to mean “not hired writers pretending to be actual customers”… and no, I don’t use my penis. It is only useful within a very limited temperature range, after all.
I love cooking, I’m great at it. I know a lot of other men who are great at it, and women who are terrible at it. Stereotypes are garbage, and throwing them out helps everyone.
Spreading the post: Gary needs a new pair of shoes
Best comeback I’ve ever heard to “Well stereotypes exist for a reason.”
“Yeah, and the reason is bigots. Like you.”
Speaking of cooking…
My stovetop apparently has two settings: Don’t Cook Nothing and Burns Everything. Dinner is looking iffy at this point, I put a mess of red beans on to warm on 2 and it seems to have burned at 10.5. Now is not the time, believe me. My wife just worked a 13 hour shift and is not amused.
Improbable Joe, what Portia wrote @121.
There’s quotidian cooking, and there’s celebrity cooking.
(Yes, I know that was your point too)
—
Was there ever a woman featured in the Iron Chef?
John:
In the real one? As challengers, yes. More than once. They tended to win, too.
#127 Joe, the new stove electric?
Portia – I haven’t tried the apple butter spritz yet. You may want to wait for the recipe…
I spent my evening making massive amounts of frybread and now I am stuffed full of starchy, fatty goodness. Thankfully, I had a great deal of help in eating it all.
No cream cheese or penis was involved, however.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Icons_of_Saint_Christopher
Wasn’t Cat Corra a ‘real’ Iron Chef? or does the American version not count?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Cora
*CORA yeesh, watching too much Avatar.
Thanks, Caine. I only ever saw it episodically, and never a woman then.
Portia,
I don’t want to get too deep in the Lounge, but stereotypes exist for a reason… and part of the reason is because they are often accurate. They just don’t really ever get into the “why” of the accuracy, which is how it serves the bigots. Sort of the way evo psych serves bigots, come to think of it.
I have gotten a few negative comments over the past 14 months for using terms that could be seen as racially loaded when describing the horrible neighborhood I lived in. Ignoring the fact that I grew up in the same sorts of neighborhoods and that I’m not a white person, the fact is that the people in the neighborhood describe it in the same terms I used.
My last day in Virginia, a nice lady from across the street and I had a conversation about the neighborhood, and one of the first things she said was “I guess now you know how black people are!” referring to the noise and fighting and police showing up every other night. Was she being a self-hating black woman? Nah, it is just reality fueling the stereotype.
Of course, it isn’t “blackness” that makes people like that, or else she wouldn’t have rejected and mocked and shunned it herself. The job stereotypes do is to make it easier to not look any further than the surface, to not assume any deeper than “because that’s how black people are” and thereby reinforce the bigotry.
ॐ #133
That is exceedingly strange.
How did you get there?
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie cmon now (puts on best wheedling tone) give us your recipe for frybread
Spouse makes the best frybread in the world but doesnt like to make it any more and my attempts taste like frozen biscuits rolled flat and fried
John:
Iron Chef Chen lost to two women in a row – first an older woman, then a young woman. Later on, the older woman’s son was a challenger, who lost.
Marc Lepine -> virago -> Termagant -> Category:Medieval legends -> cynocephaly -> Saint Christopher
SG:
Huh, cynocephaly. So, Christopher started out as Anubis and went from god of the dead to patron saint of travelers?
Nope.
Caine, it might be funnier than that.
He was supposed to have been from Canaan.
(Wait for it …)
Wikipedia: ‘This Byzantine depiction of St. Christopher as dog-headed resulted from their misinterpretation of the Latin term Cananeus to read canineus, that is, “canine.”‘
Refresh!
SG:
That was wonderful reading. Oh, those pesky language fuck-ups.
Hang On Saint Christopher
Ah. Typical internet search.
I’m imagining him riding along with his head out the window.
Seriously. Mixing up one vowel results in an elaborate myth?
Is it just that storytelling comes so easily to people that they’d do all that, rather than simply going back to check for a spelling error? Or what?
Or did no ever really believe that? I mean, I guess it could be they were just being racists and thought it was clever to say a group of people looked like dogs.
CR:
It’s a testament to just how credulous people can be.
Everything Reminds Me Of My Dog
broboxley:
Everybody has their own recipe, so there’s no guarantee you’ll like mine, just to warn you! Ours is a yeast dough. There’s no reason why you can’t reduce the recipe down to a more reasonable amount, too:
5 pounds flour
4 cups water
2 cups milk
1 package of yeast
2 tablespoons salt
1/3 cup sugar
Cooking oil
Fill your bowl with the flour, salt and sugar and push it to the sides so that it forms a hollow in the center. Warm the water and milk, then pour it into the hollow. Add the yeast into the liquid and let it sit for about two minutes. Start mixing it slowly by bringing in small amounts of the flour from the sides. You’ll want to get it nice and smooth with no lumps. Eventually you’ll have to mix it by hand, but you don’t want to really knead it. Just mix.
Let it rise for two hours or until it’s doubled in size.
Once it’s ready, get your oil heated up. You can test if it’ll work by dropping in a little bit of dough. Oil your hands, then grab a chunk of dough to pat and stretch out flat. Again, you don’t want to knead it too much. For the right texture, it really has to be just ooey, gooey dough inside.
Poke a hole in the middle, then fry away!
Makes enough for friends, family and people you didn’t even know you were related to until they smelled what you were cooking.
how about the great comanche “Buffalo Hump”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Hump name, properly transliterated, was Po-cha-na-quar-hip which meant “erection that won’t go down”.
somehow you dont see that in the general literature
#153 The Mellow Monkey: Caerie thanks! will be doing that one tomorrow night
The notion that people in faraway lands were radically different anatomically was so common that it might have already sounded plausible. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a text to say the people in this part of the map are dog-people.
Paul the Deacon recognized one particular story as bullshit,
but who knows, maybe he thought cynocephali were entirely plausible and those warriors were just lying about their own troops.
chigau @ 68
Oh, good. I’m not alone. : )
Oh, yeah, I’m sure of that. There are lots of myths involving half-human animals or monsters, and I’m sure many really did believe that sort of thing. I was just speculating about that particular case (not even convincingly, I admit).
It’s just bizarre that a myth like that would originate because of such a trivial mistake. How hard is it to check translations or sources for accuracy? I know there was no standardized spelling or any dictionaries (or many good geography reference books), but they had to know to check for that kind of error.
Of course, “dog” is very common word, so you’d be more likely to know that word than the name of some exotic location. So, it gets written down that way, and because the story is plausible like you said, the whole thing is already out of control by that point.
(random) Thinking of y’all…
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5tq78lBeU1rpy84ao1_500.jpg
(cute baby tiger image from antioppressivebabyanimals.com)
Ah, I didn’t think about that part.
Say, is Rev. BigDumbChimp around? This comic made me think of him.
Joe @119:
I feel you about the subliminal sexism in our culture.
It’s gotten to the point where I can’t watch much television anymore. The commercials alone reek of sexism.
Women in the kitchen.
Women caring for babies.
Women waiting at home for their darling husband who is suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Women doing the cleaning.
Argh!
Tony:
Goes the other way, too. Advertisers seem to think that men need to be portrayed as helpless idiots.
Christopher the Dog-headed Saint looks like folk etymology at work to me.
–
Cicely:
In most of those depictions, the heads looked more horse/pony/asslike to me, rather than doglike.
Tony & Caine @ #161 ¢:
It is bizarre how a man can be nine kinds of terrible and also a savior, and a woman can be a terrible nag and the only thing holding society together, all in one commercial break.
We seem to be portrayed as people who constantly want more power at any cost (that is, at someone else’s cost). The “helpless idiot” thing I think is just another way of saying we get whatever we want. Other people help us, other people think for us, etc., not the other way around, because we are the penis-havers, and that is what we want.
But it sounds more innocuous when you leave out the fact that we already have lots and lots of “help.”
CR:
Yes, I can see that. I make it a habit to ignore advertising as much as possible. I’ve got a hair trigger when it comes to hitting the mute button when I am watching television, so a lot of what I do catch is visual only.
That seems to be the argument put forward by the Wikipedia article, citing Leslie D. Ross’s Medieval Art: A Topical Dictionary.
David Woods thinks it’s the other way around, that kunokephalos was sometimes translated as canineus, then canineus was interpreted as Cananeus, and this is the source of the idea that he was from Canaan.
I agree, although this one is very doggy. Every text I’m finding agrees it’s supposed to be a dog, though. He was “healf hundisces mancynnes”.
Caine,
Cynic.
SG:
That sounds (and looks) positively obscene.
John:
Can’t help it, I am an artist.
1 package of yeast ????
What’s that? 15 mg or 15 oz. Or some other quantity.
Like,
Rick “healf hundisces mancynnes” Santorum?
SG:
Yes. Yes, just like that.
mildlymagnificent, I just put on a beer brew*, and the packet of yeast that came with the concentrate was 7 grams.
—
* Coopers.
This is what I love about history. That people have always been bizarre and weird.
I think people are the greatest fun.
@Janine
I agree, some of my best lovers have been people
Love
@ OP
Indeed it would.
Here Comes A Headache-Hypnolovewheel
Guy Who Got A Headache And Accidentally Saves The World-The Flaming Lips
I Think I Lost My Headache-Queens Of The Stone Age
theophontes, I knew you’d be tickled by this instantiation.
(Meanwhile, PZ strives to avoid tardy grades)
Am I the only one who can’t go directly to articles now that the new layout is in place? I have to click on a blog banner, even though it shows the two most recent post like usual, I can’t click on them.
Love Yer Brain-The Flaming Lips
Itch In My Brain-Utopia
My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down-The Ramones
Dalillama, I see no new layout.
Hm.
<tries Ctrl-F5>
Nope, I don’t see any such.
Dalillama
I just tried a couple at random and they both worked.
—
John
He’s referring to the FTB front page.
There’s A Spy(In The House Of Love)-Animal Logic
Spy In The House Of Love-Was(Not Was)
A Spy In The House Of Love-The dBs
Good morning
22cm of snow, it was about 1-2 cm when I went to bed last night. Still falling.
Chigau, ednaz,I have kitchen scissors for cutting packages open, and for other purposes. I also wash them between uses.
you are not alone !
Oh noez, B&W has the new design. Change is upon us.
re: format change
Yeah.
I’m kinda scared of what I will find tomorrow morning.
Blue Line-Let’s Active
Blue-The Jayhawks
Am I Too Blue-Lucinda Williams
Sunday Morning Coming Down-Kris Kristofferson
Sunday Morning-Velvet Underground
Way Too Early On A Sunday Morning-Eleventh Dream Day
Whoa!
This is going to take some getting used to – everything is so freaking large.
whoah. I reloaded the page and boom! there it was. scary.
In Firefox, hitting Ctrl and the hyphen key once (a single zoom out) makes the page width just about right for me.
+++++
So, does hushfile still work?
Jebus Christ, what happened to the layout? The logo is ok I guess, but what’s with the huge fonts? Did Ed hire a vision-impaired techie? Funnily enough it still looks the same(i.e.very small and hard to decipher) on my mobile.
SG, I zoomed out too. Godsdammit, my killfile is gone! Not acceptable. At all.
Whoa. Zooming out does help.
Hm. It’s probably going to be easy to fix, but I’ll wait a bit to see if the layout changes again real soon (e.g. if this is a crummy beta).
The comments look weird too. Because they all have the same grey background now I think, makes it look too uniform. Also, the links to previous/next post are almost invisible.
already I miss the Next /Previous links below each article.
SG:
I’m sure PZ will want to tinker with it. (At least I hope so.) The text everywhere is huge, but it’s ultra-tiny in the comment box. Not-so-intelligent design.
oh. whoops. I found them just below the banner. but they’re small font, not underlined and grey text. Didn’t notice them at first. I’ll shut up now.
And as long as I’m whining like a petulant sprog, why in the fuckety fuck did someone switch the preview/submit buttons? Stupid.
The Drug Suite-Stew
Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll-Ian Dury & The Blockheads
Drug Train-The Cramps
On the good side, comment numbers are now searchable.
Testing q:
ॐ, huh.
The gumby tagging is also gone from the OPs, so I’m guessing PZ will fix that.
I note posts also lack timestamps, unlike comments.
(Whoopsies!)
The links under “FTB Recent” are totally fucked. They’re just blog-number dot thread-number.
Ok, gonna brave the outside now. Waiting for the snow to stop apparently isn’t going to work.
Yeah, my original complaint’s been fixed, but I dunno about the new layout, still.
birgerjohansson
I like Stanislaw Lem. Apropos of a conversation here that I missed, several days ago!
.
Re kitchen scissors, we have a pair which comes apart into two separate blades for better washing (you know how you can never get the
forensic evidenceperfectly innocuous general grime out completely from the bit where the blades are riveted together on ordinary scissors). Somehow I am blown away by the elegant simplicity of this design solution – and I still haven’t seen it on other scissors..
Oooohhhhh no killfile … and tiny text in comment box …. and I predict lots of premature submissions until
weI get used to the submit and preview buttons being switched …. ::haz fit of the vapours and looks around for fainting couch::.
PS I like the idea of St. Kit riding along with his head out of the window too. :)
Last one for tonight: I notice that the Supreme Court are going to hear cases on California’s Prop 8 and on the Defense of Marriage Act. I am cautiously optimistic that the court decided to hear these cases in order to knock them down.
(random) I just linked another post on the Never forget thread, but this author’s next most popular blog post is about ukeleles. Somebody on here likes those, IIRC?
http://fayehicks.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/my-top-10-tips-for-the-ukulele-beginner/
(*whine* Why is SUBMIIIIT COOOMMEEEEENT bright and huge, and *whisper* preview is tiny and gray? It ought to be the other way around… /whine )
Oh dear
I guess #1 would have been glad if somebody had moved the goalposts.
So she hit one of them.
With her forehead
Wow, the new FtB logo is completely terrible.
Audley,
Oh god yes, it’s ugly! I thought I was the only one thinking so. I liked the blue one.
(submit/preview – my fingers are confuzzled)
Urgh, yes. This is nasty, and I liked the nice simple blue FTB logo before. Blue is better than grey! Also sans-serif fonts = yuck. And those titles in the side bar with white drop shadows make me feel like my glasses are broken or something.
Damnit. I usually roll with changes, but this one is not good.
I never roll with changes. This is doubleplusungood. I know I will get used to it in a few weeks or so, but for now, I’m gonna whine.
NOooooooooo!!!! The logo is still so big!!!!
Hi, all.
Bad night with mares. And, in the past, when my dreams have been ‘reintroducing’ forgotten memories, I tend to kinda lead up to it? Like waiting for that second boot to drop? Those damn dreams are starting to show up. With a different adult male. And I am scared shitless because I do not know if I can handle it. I’m bumping along okay with knowing what I did as a kid but I’m not sure I can bring more in without something happening.
Anyway, should be a nice day. Supposed to warm up and be nice. :)
For me, I am convinced that they are setting me up. I still have to fight that when I am complemented.
Yuck for the new look.
—
and *hugs* for Oggie
Damn!
Has anyone else checked in on the Dungeon?
from article on rising number of muslims in prison in the UK:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20639699
Nooooo of course not. Because no true
Scotsmanmuslim ever commits a crime … never even heard of littering let alone non-violent crime alone parents and brothers and uncles murdering women for supposedly besmirching the family “honour” …*offers hugs to Oggie* Same here. Both the leading-up nightmares (just with less horrendous abuse) and ‘they’re setting me up’ instinct. This morning’s ep of MLP was about facing and acknowledging fears, even. <_< but we're here to vent to, as you may need.
*snuggles* from DarkBaby to Oggie.
For the spanish speaking Atheist.
Today, is second day of the “Primer congreso mexicano de ateismo”
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/congreso-mexicano-de-ateismo
To see the program, check at
http://www.ateomx.org.mx
Unfortunatelly our web is very slow… so the image is very bad… so consider it a err radio cast…
Hugs to Oggie
+++
The pitfalls of being a decent person
When I was a kid, the main immigrant groups in Germany were from Turkey and Italy.
The hallmark of the good old racist was/is to adress them always with the familiar form “du” instead of the polite “Sie”, which is something you only do to kids, normally never to adults you don’t know well. It indicates superiority, of course, so I usually take great care not do so and to be an extra bit polite towards immigrants.
Now, during the 90’s there came lots of Russian-Germans, and the area I live has a very high percentage of them, and many of the old German-Germans who live here are the good old racist type.
So, I’m very careful to use the “Sie”
But: They don’t. It’s a feature that is not common among them, and if you have any kind of relationship with them, say neighbours or children in kindergarten together, you’re on “du”.
I think I come off as an arrogant asshole who rejects their “relationship offer” by being polite.
AAAAGH New format!!!! Add my whines to the pile.
Hugs to Ogvorbis. I know people have said this before, but I really hope/want/wish for you to have someone available to you in meatspace to talk about this, for if/when/if there’s a time when that’s what you want.
.
If you think the tectonic plates of your memory might be likely to readjust at some point, you might have someone sort of mentally lined up for you to talk to … maybe? Just in case?
Fox News is as classy as it is a real news operation.
Bourbon or hot chocolate to Ogvorbis, as your mood requires.
Alright! All of you eyeball loving freaks! Here is the ULTIMATE BOX SET!
Be sure to gather all of your small change, you are going to need it.
It is my birthday and I’m celebrating with a gin and tonic at lunch.
I’m also working on my historical novel at the moment. It’s just pulp-for-profit, but I can sneak in a little education for the reader at the same time. For example, I get to poke fun at the romanticism of the colonial era. No, I’m sorry. You’re not going to be able to enjoy that rum without knowing it was made with the blood of slaves. Let’s discuss the trade triangle and how every drop of rum bought helped support the purchase of more slaves! What’s that, Abigail? You got a marriage proposal? Let’s explore the common law concept of coverture and how you’ll literally be property! Say goodbye to your entire inheritance and any hope of autonomy. Oh, what’s this? A chance to bring up the genocide being perpetuated while all of this is going on? Don’t mind if I do!
I will likely avoid this sort of setting in the future.
Land Of A Thousand Dances/Wipeout
Don’t mind me. Just testing to see if I can get a post to show up on this thread.
Caerie,
Happy birthday!
Your historical novel sounds interesting. Much better than a bodice ripper that uses a historical setting just so that the woman lead could wear elaborate dresses and be kidnapped by a Highlander, without the author giving any thought to accuracy of the setting and time period.
Swasikas On Parade
Hitler Was A Vegetarian
Happy Birthday, Caerie
Happy BD Caerie!
Sounds live your novel could use some vampires.
*ducks and runs*
Chigau, how out of date are you? Zombie are now all of the hipness.
(Yes, I worded it that way on purpose.)
Thanks everyone!
With zombies and vampires everywhere, I’d been thinking a kraken would be a nice change of pace.
Too late. China Miéville beat you to it.
Not Available
Janine
I aten’t hip.
Zombies do not sparkle, they drip.
Who really want that?
Gater Hater!
I forgot to tell y’all how my health center visit went:
I ended up with a prescription for vitamin D and for Sertraline. When asked what I was hoping for in terms of treatment (just therapy, just drugs, combination), I said I wanted a combination, because just counseling hadn’t worked in the past, but I also don’t want to become completely dependent for my health on a mindaltering drug. To which I got a)assurance that SSRIs are not “mindaltering substances” b) a lecture on what depression supposedly is (basically the “serotonin deficiency” story, which is likely not true) and how SSRIs supposedly fix the problem.
So frustrating. If I weren’t so goddamned desperate, I’d have given up. Because seriously, psychotropic drugs against a mental illness aren’t mindalterning? Really?!
*sigh*
what the fuck is with the new decor? it’s ugly as sin.
Jadehawk:
If drugs that treat mental illness don’t alter the mind, what the hell do they do? I had good luck with an SSRI after my (unsuccessful) suicide attempt.
====
I just had to explain to a group of boy scouts that yes, this is a national park and yes, some national parks have campgrounds but no, we do not therefore they cannot spend the night here. Four times. To the same two people. Four times. Four.
I have developed a dislike for that phrase (not you, kristinc, or your comment). What are some of the things the religious right consider a sin? Sex (of all kinds (except either baby-makin’ sex (in marriage) or whatever kind of sex the religious man is engaged in)), women (thinking for themselves, being in charge, being actual full-fledged humans), independence (of the congregation, of the patriarch, of the family), progressivism and liberalism (taking care of the poor, using government for good, making sure a future exists). What do they like? Racism, sexism, xenophobia, genocide, rape, etc.
I’m going to start using ‘Ugly as Christianity’ rather than ‘ugly as sin’.
Maybe.
I probably won’t remember.
I really think there is a distinction between “drugs that treat mental illness by altering brain chemistry” and the scaremongering sound of “mindaltering drugs”.
But then I choose to take medication to manage my medical condition. It’s a personality flaw, I know.
OK, maybe my 252 was overly snarky. I also use a combination of medication and therapy. But I am no more concerned with being “dependent” on my medication for my health than my diabetic friend is with being “dependent” on her insulin or my friend with a transplanted kidney is with being “dependent” on her antirejection drugs. Why is it that only mental illness garners that sort of discomfort with being “dependent” on medication?
it’s not scaremongering. it’s what they do, as you yourself admit when you say they alter brain chemistry. they alter your mind. they are mindaltering. wtf?
good for you. i on the other hand prefer not to be dependent on expensive medication, given that the only reason I have access to it right now is because i’m in college; and 6 months from now i won’t be. and god knows where i’ll be years from now. consequently, access to these drugs is limited and precarious, and i’d rather not become dependent on something i might lose access to.
plus, if i have the choice between lifelong dependence on drugs with very strong side effects on the one hand, and short-term use of said drugs plus therapy, i’d prefer the latter. for the sake of my health.
Because there is still a huge stigma associated with mental illness. How many other ailments are used as jokes? Or as a way to explain behaviour one does not understand? Or used as a way to silence someone? Well, other than anything having to do with a woman’s reproductive organs that is. That also seems to still be fair game in many circles. So no, that was not overly snarky. I think the snark level was, if anything, a little on the low side. But that’s just me.
i would be. because my access to these drugs is not guaranteed. and if there’s an alternative that often/sometimes works, why wouldn’t i prefer t try that that over lifelong dependence on drugs, regardless of the health issue?
TRIGGER ALERT!!
heard a very sickfuck add on the radio, SECRET KEEPERS its aimed at preteen girls. I guess its how to keep your mouth shut when wicked uncle earnie or you pastor molests you.
http://blog.secretkeepergirl.com/?p=565
Kristinc:
I think because people consider their brain to be them, whereas the body is a transport system, which you have to keep maintained to house ‘yourself’. We’re all frightened of things which can alter our self or take it away, like Alzheimer’s, right?
Jadehawk, I grant you the point about the financial cost of dependence on prescription medications, and my privilege was definitely showing when I didn’t think of that aspect myself.
(By the way: Americans should definitely not look at a site called 4 Corners Pharmacy, where many antidepressants are available from New Zealand without a prescription, although at premium prices. That would be wrong.)
Holy shit, broboxley! That comment scares the shit out of me. Notice how mom informed her daughter that it was her fault? Bleh.
seriously, if i were given the choice to take statins, or make lifestyle changes to lower my cholesterol levels, i’d pick the latter and see if i could make that work, first. not wanting to be dependent on drugs where non-drug methods exist is not wrong; it’s not because of “shame”; it’s simply how i’d prefer to manage my health.
And wow, is it weird for me to experience being privileged in a discussion about medical care and medications.
I guess part of it is that I’m coming at this question from the experience of trying “lifestyle choices” for over 15 years and still living half a life punctuated by periods of desperately wanting to die. It is true that my experience is not the case for everyone.
oh, one more reason to not want to be on antidepressants forever: should I ever become pregnant, my choices would be a)abortion, b)getting off the antidepressants during a very emotionally trying time (pregnancy & postpartum) c)accepting the elevated risk of birth defects
those are shitty choices. therapy would give me better ones.
Yikes, broboxley. That is some hardcore maternal victim blaming there.
“Oh, my dear daughter, if only you kept yourself properly covered, you wouldn’t incite lust in men. Since having your skin shielded with jeans and a t-shirt wasn’t enough, let’s try draping you in from head to toe in fabric!”
Mellow Monkey:
Happy birthday to a fellow Sagittarius (for all that Zodiac signs mean *anything*)
That’s it from me today. Gotta go back to work (a nice, long 17/18 hour day and this one idiotic manager gets mad that a few of us actually needed breaks in between; she really pissed me off with her condescending, patronizing attitude)
Thanks, Tony. Yeesh, I hope the rest of your workday passes quickly and smoothly.
Where are you from, kristinc? I’m also lucky to be able to afford prescription meds, being Australian. I use a very low dose antidepressant, because every time I’ve tried to stop, things have gone bad. It’s just not fun waking up every day at 5am fantasising about how to kill yourself. The really old tricyclic worked well for me, and was cheaper – even with the Aussie pharmaceutical benefits scheme it cost about half of a standard prescription. I’ve recently changed to a newer one, though, and I’m happy that the drug-induced weight gain seems to be very slowly drifting off.
Jadehawk, the really big thing that helps me (apart from drugs) is outside exercise. Or just sunshine or just exercise, but the combo is best. Just a walk around the block is enough to help a bit. Also, yoga breathing exercises and making sure you have good posture. Worth a try – it’s no cost and can’t hurt. I note that this was not enough for me at my worst, without the addition of drugs & counselling. But now I’m pretty well in control, it’s enough to pick me up from a low patch.
I’m from the US, Alethea. I have no medical coverage of any kind, so If I were the kind of person to buy meds online without a prescription (which of course I am not) I would thank my lucky stars every day that I could consistently afford them.
Without meds my condition is so debilitating that I can’t stick with therapy, get regular exercise, get out of the house or eat well. Meds (fluoxetine) allow me to manage my health issues in all of those ways.
SMBC on the sociology of religion.
Borked link. Trying again:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2817#comic
Not sure I like the new lay-out. I’ll give it some time. Maybe it’ll grow on me.
Like moss…or peas.
–
Eeeeeeevil!!!
*manymanymanyhugs* for Ogvorbis. Remember, we’re here.
And I am convinced of both of these things, though not generally at the same time, or of the same person.
–
Happy Birthday to The Mellow Monkey!
–
Aiyeee!!! My eyes!!!
We need to add some sort of Bleeding Eyeballs Alert or something to our Customary Usages.
–
I had a zillion tabs open, as usual. I followed AJ Milne’s link, and somehow did something that closed them all. All.
Time to go to bed.
As the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) community implodes in slow motion, more and more young women are leaving the abusive and restrictive polygamist colonies headed by Warren Jeffs. (Jeffs is still the “Prophet” even though he was jailed some time ago for having sex with girls as young as 11 years old.)
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55401520-78/helen-allie-jeffs-flds.html.csp
Lots of photos of the young women are available at the link. There’s also a sort video.
sort video
Can we make this a new meme? Please?
(Sorry, Lynna.)
Beatrice,
If Firefox:
History > Restore Previous Session
Janine! How did you get Comic Sans to work in the Never Forget thread?
Hundreds of FLDS children were recently taken out of school and ordered to pick pecans on a private ranch.
YouTube link to coverage by CNN. Looks like they might be working as “volunteer” labor in order to earn money for Warren Jeffs.
Anti-depressant medication doesn’t have to a be a never/forever binary. I used them to push, (messily, inconsistently, and with plenty of other help) the nadir of my emotional swings up to the point that I could still function. In essence they didn’t “fix” me, they simply allowed me to survive until I ‘d developed coping skills sufficient to get me through the rough patches.
I was on a MAO inhibitor the first time around. I hated it. Fucking hated it. A half hour after the dose I could feel the drug climbing my brainstem and dragging me down to unconsciousness. But I kept taking it. You see, the feel of the knife against my wrist was worse, and worse still were the visions of those I love on their hands and knees cleaning up my blood. I kept taking it until I was in a time and a place that I felt safe from myself and could slowly, cautiously wean off of it.
The second time around I took the ubiquitous fluoxetine. I hated it. Not as much as the MAOI, but it killed my sex drive and gave me a pretty flat affect. But I kept taking it. By this point I knew that it was possible to be better, that I just had to get through. I was in therapy, progress was being made. By scraping off the bottom of the curve I managed to stick out the therapy. I kept taking it until I realised that the only way to be sure that my new-found coping skills worked was to use them unaided. So again, I slowly, cautiously, weaned myself off it.
There are no right answers here. There’s only trial and error, perseverance and pragmatism, a willingness to fight, fail, and get up to fight again. Should someone try and harm those that I love I would never stop in my efforts to protect them. Never. I realised that my depression was such a threat and acted accordingly, and one day I hope that the notion that I am someone I love and am worth fighting for intrinsically will finally take hold in a way that’s more than purely intellectual. At that point I may no longer label myself as someone with a mental illness.
Best of luck to all those struggling to get through. It’s not impossible. It’s not unbeatable. And you are not alone.
Is this an other one of those mormon concepts?
(Caine, I am simply using the Gumby tag. While there is no Gumby, comic sans is used.)
um. i know? which is why i agreed to take it, in combination with therapy, and then a year from now, i’ll try to get off it again, assuming therapy becomes more productive/helpful than it currently is…
Janine:
Oh. I don’t know the markup for that. Damn.
(blockquote cite=”creationist”)Comic Sans(/blockquote)
I’m sorry Jadehawk. Reading skillz, I has ’em not.
One odd detail I just noticed. When I refresh, the quote that I used the Gumby tag on, the quotation marks that you find at the beginning of the blockquote, will briefly reappear.
Beatrice/#273:
Umm… My apologies?
Lynna/re FLDS
Re FLDS’ disintegration, I read Stolen Innocence just recently.
It’s one of those ‘recommended… depending on your triggers’ works, I’d say.
Hell. I found it kinda stressful. But it was more the sense of authoritarian/indoctrination-driven claustrophobia it conveyed. Like anywhere this woman went, she was still a prisoner, or at best just beyond the reach of the pursuing dogs*, their baying at best a hill away and coming closer.
Oh. And re ‘keep sweet’. Kind of doublethink, the FLDS version. Or more mandatory self-censorship. Do not say what you are thinking. If you have grievances, this will only break up our happy little family. Smile. You’ll feel better eventually. Really. Also, smile, damn you, or you’re a dirty little tool of Satan and doing his evil for him. There. That’s better, don’t you see? Now lie back and let us do it to you again.
So like I said. Depending on your triggers.
(*/Figurative. No, I don’t recall them using actual dogs. And some of the scarier beasts pursuing her were calling from inside her head… But now I’ve really mangled that metaphor, haven’t I? Anyway.)
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie
frybread dough waiting to rise, guessed at quantities because I first saw 5 cups not pounds of flour. A standard yeast envelope is approx 2.25 teaspoons of jar yeast. fingies xed
On a more positive note, the folks building our house (lovely Jehovah Witnesses, oi.) are saying we could be to lockup by the end of January. I’m trying really hard avoid magical thinking about it but it’s hard. I find myself avoiding getting excited about it in order to not ‘jinx’ it. Blargh.
I am told, with great authority, that once the floor slab is cured I’m required to hold a barbeque on it. Any Aussies care to confirm this? I’m up for my citizenship this year and I wouldn’t want to jeopardise that.
I’ve been a silent reader for some time now, and your science blogs are of interest to me. I was fortunate enough a couple years back to see you speak. I found you informative, and somewhat humorous in your presentation. I am posting this here since the page I’m commenting about is not allowing comments. I don’t follow or understand some of the pettiness that seems to follow your blogs. Your “dungeon” page is odd, and something I would expect to see on a different type site. Maybe a yahoo group for teen boys. I have to wonder if you ever stop and think of what some of your fellow colleagues like Eugenie C. Scott for example would think? It is immature, and some of what you say about these people is not backed up with proof. If you are going to call someone racist then show proof of why you believe this. It is the responsible thing to do. Someone could say that they don’t advise anyone to let their young daughters alone with you, because you are a pervert. Do you see what my problem is with this accusation? It can damage a person, and once it is out there, people latch on to it. It can damage the reputation of a person for years. Based on a suggestion. Mr. Myers, you are a intelligent man. I feel it is time for you to behave as one. Shame on you for losing your sight, acting irresponsible, and behaving like a juvenile boy.
Not only not likely to be true. Not true. Demonstrably false.
In related news, also not true.
Mary Murphy, don’t you have a season of SYTYCD to tape?
marymurphy, I direct you to the Commenting Rules (you can find it on the right side-bar), which clearly explains that which puzzles you.
After perusing it, you should be sufficiently informed to have a meaningful opinion, the which you can freely express and discuss over in the the Thunderdome — the other permanent open thread which is set up just for such comments as the one you’ve just made.
(This place is the Lounge, dedicated to social chit-chat, where niceness rules)
Eureka! Thanks, Janine.
MaryMurphy:
It’s not the least immature, it’s informative. No proof? The fuckwits in the dungeon have left evidence of their fuckwittery littered all over the damn place. We know, we get to deal with them every day. Like we’re dealing with you.
marymurphy, The Lounge is not the place for your complaint. This is a social space. Please take it the The Thunderdome. And understand that while from time to time PZ will comment here it’s rare. If you wish to talk to him send him an email.
John:
Ooops, pardon my rudeness. *Covers mouth genteely*
What a crap way to start off my Saturday evening. I was browsing the recent CBC archives and came across this:
Laurence Kotlikoff: Is the United States Broke?
He’s the Boston economist who ran for Prez. I have some education in economics, and what he says sounds very plausible to me. I’m thinking about digging into his actual work (partly to see if I can understand it) but I’m also curious if any Horde members are actual qualified economists who might’ve heard of Kotlikoff’s argument.
Because if he’s a wingnut, that’s good, and if he’s not, that’s really fricking scary and bad.
Marymurphy, did you noticed that most of the entries have links? It will take you to the thread where PZ dropped the banhammer on them.
If it does not goes straight to the point where that person was banned, hit ctrl “f” and enter the moniker of the banned. You will find that person’s quotes.
Those who were banned added nothing useful to this blog.
I just want to ask this question, do you stay with people even when they get very antisocial? A banning, if used correctly, is just getting away from a person who is rather unpleasant.
FossilFishy:
‘Cause he’ll just love that.
Heh. Oh yes indeedy, Caine. But I have every confidence that His Poopyness’ spam filters are up to the task.
Thinking about it, maybe that could be an income stream for PZ? His inbox would be the perfect place for developers to test out new spam filters.
fossilfishy
You’ll never qualify for citizenship until you realise that anything and everything is an excuse for a barbie. Anywhere. Anytime.
(Except fire ban days.)
You know mildlymagnificent, one would think I’d understand that after all the evidence I’ve been presented right from the start of my relationship with Mrs. Fishy. For instance: Australia Day in the northern hemisphere is not exactly a good time for a barbie and yet there we were, minus20c and snowing, sparking up the grill.
there’s a horse and buggy parked in front of the coffee shop
it’s neighing at me. through the window.
hope it won’t eat my bike
Jadehawk:
Normally, I’d say that sounds nice, but not today. It’s effing freezing here.
Speaking as the owner of bike store in a rural area, you might want to move your bike Jadehawk. I’ve replaced many a saddle gnawed by all manner of livestock. Other than that the image made me laugh.
Got some bag balm. I got a rash, because my body is stupid. But I’ll try it again tomorrow and see if it was a fluke. I do know someone who keeps cows, so if I can’t use it I can pass it on to them.
True that. On fire ban days, you need to buy a bucket of cooked prawns instead. And a slab of beer, of course, which should go without saying. And lots of ice.
(Err, that was to mildlymagnicificent & the fishy. Not related to bag balm or horses.)
magnicificent? WTF? Ptaise Tpyos.
Okay, good, good, I feel like that Citz test is in the bag. Now, is it going to be a problem that on total fire ban days I can most often be found laying in a pool of my own sweat weakly calling out for the mercy of a cold drink?
Jadehawk, there’s a paddock with two goats behind my back-yard fence*, and they love carrots, so I give them one now and then.
(I am their friend! Silly, but true)
—
* Behind the chicken-run, in turn.
Oh,
As you recognize, also bullshit. FFS, it’s right there in “SSRI.”
3 for 3. Goddamned system.
Not silly at all. :)
frybread done, adequate but I did not follow the recipe correctly. After I read 5 cups instead of five pounds I knew I was in trouble after I added the milk. 4 more cups of water would have made a very watery flour soup. Since I was out of flour had to guess on quantities. 1st two pieces are already gone so I will have to hide one in my bedroom to ensure I have one for breakfast
Thanks Caerie
was in that business for many years. Most large ISP’s will let you test a new filter/product in their labs at no cost to them. You provide the gear and they can get an inside look at a new goody. I have an antispam algorithm that I’m pretty sure will eliminate spam at a higher rate with fewer false positives than most but I need to get off my behind and patent it first.
And that’s why I’ll never be an IT billionaire broboxley, ignorance is such an economic killjoy.
broboxley, I’m really sorry to hear about the recipe mix-up. I wish I had made it more obvious that it was by weight and not cup measurement. I’m glad it still turned out edible, at least!
318 # FossilFishy (Νεοπτόλεμος’s spellchecker)
nononono if you have a neat new idea, do a quick patent search to make sure you arn’t stepping on someones toes then proceed. Excel wasn’t the best spreadsheet in the day, Microsoft’s Multiplan was by light years. One was marketed and one wasn’t. Get a neat new idea then turn loose the marketing vultures.
silomowbray,
America can’t be “broke”… and Kotlikoff is a batshit wingnut of the worst sort. He claims to be “centrist” but all his ideas are discredited Republican ideas, like a national sales tax and healthcare vouchers. He wanted to run for president under the right-wing Americans Elect party. He’s a pretend “centrist” whose positions fall between the center-right and the far-right. Feel free to feel secure that everything he says is nonsense.
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie no worries, you made it quite plain it was pounds. My brain sizzled, neurospazzed and saw cups because that is what it was used to seeing in recipes.
Will be making the correct recipe maybe wednesday
#321 Improbable Joe
America is not broke at the moment. The day that China starts requiring us to pay debt in Euro’s Rubles Yen or a basket of currencies it means we can no longer just print money to pay external debt. This would mean the fed would have to purchase foreign tender and if even more money was printed the costs would quickly spiral out of control.
That could cause hyper inflation like Argentina is facing.
There are draconian methods to solve that like seizing private pension monies (401k) IRA etc because the government could claim that only a public pension (social security) is needed and all this private money needs to go in the pot for the public good.
We are not going to see that happen though. We have a lot of energy in the form of natural gas. If we expend effort to delivery of that energy we can be an energy exporter. If we had lng pumps in the gas stations and tax credits for converting vehicles to lng as a nation we would be reducing our carbon footprint and our exchange debt.
Exporting energy would easily be accepted as debt payments. So we are in reasonable shape at the moment. We just need to tuck in our belts. Make payroll tax applicable to all income and raise rates or reduce deductions to make the world think we are a serious debtor. Once that happens we hope the economy expands enough to absorb the debt load and money supply we have been pumping non stop since 2007
For anyone upset with the new decor, I’ll leave you with a pic of one of my cats trying on my sandals for size:
http://www.aulro.com/afvb/attachment.php?attachmentid=54216&stc=1&d=1355023148
Also Joe
eh? blockquote broken?
broboxley… no, really. Just keep on spinning your weird semi-religious economic fantasies, I don’t mind. I’m only going to mock them GENTLY. :)
The day that China decides to bankrupt America for absolutely no good reason for them or us, is the day I’ll eat my hat and Beijing will eat a nuke.
broboxley… to be fair, not everything you said is loopy. But America’s possible future debt problems are not solved by any of the right-wing nonsense being spouted by people like Kotlikoff.
Also, a VAT isn’t the same as the flat-tax garbage that Kotlikoff and Co. are pushing. When you corner them, they admit that it requires destroying America’s infrastructure to make it work. The reality is that when you’re dealing with Americans talking about debt and deficits and taxes from a right-wing perspective, what they are really saying is “we want to cut social spending and create a permanent underclass that will work for slave wages and die when they become inconvenient.” Everything else is a smokescreen to hide/justify their true intentions.
Lofty, your link require a login.
Fishy asks:
That seems OK as long as it’s a beer. Sitting in the kiddies’ paddlepool is also recommended. We won’t force you to put on heavy clothing and go fight fires. But if you dis the RFS, you are dead meat.
Um.
Checking Wikipedia, I find that an energy density of 46.1 MJ/kg for LPG vs 43.5 MJ/kg for gasoline, but liquid density is 0.58 vs 0.77 for gasoline, yielding a ratio of 1:1.25 of energy per unit volume, and also emits 81% of the CO2 per unit of energy, yielding a ratio of nearly 1:1 carbon emissions per unit of energy.
So, how do you figure that becoming a net energy exporter and converting to gas will reduce the USA’s net carbon footprint?
Also, converting a gasoline engine to run on LPG costs a fair amount, and diesel engines can’t be converted at all.
Rats. Must get a picture hosting thingy.
Try again after I logged out of that forum:
http://www.aulro.com/afvb/attachments/general-chat/54216d1355023148-interesting-odd-funny-pics-thread-cat-sandals.jpg
Better?
sales tax != VAT
Improbable Joe
China gas already complained that it is being repaid with printed money and in the past several years have discussed with russia and others for a new bretton woods system that would involve all debt settlements be made in a basket of currencies. I suppose we could nuke someone who had the temerity to ask that the money they lent you should be repaid but that would be rude at the very least.
“Also, a VAT isn’t the same as the flat-tax garbage that Kotlikoff and Co. are pushing.”
A national sales tax is a VAT but not a flat tax, unless you are talking about a national sales tax that is flat in nature
” When you corner them, they admit that it requires destroying America’s infrastructure to make it work.”
Ah, you have been dealing with them then. Do you have a link to where you cornered them? Or if not you personally a link to where they admit that they want to destroy America’s infrastructure would be nice.
Please note that I am not promoting their ideas, as I noted above the solution is solvable in another fashion
John Morales, diesel engines can run up to 25% LPG replacement of diesel without risk. (That’s my job, LPG conversions) CNG can run a much greater percentage, dunno exactly how much but a friend of mine ran a truck for years with a rack of CNG bottles under it.
Oops, this “and also emits 81% of the CO2 per unit of energy, yielding a ratio of nearly 1:1 carbon emissions per unit of energy” is confused (and stupid) on its own merits — leaving aside it’s for fuel oil burnt in electrical power stations and not gasoline burnt in combustion engines, which I missed in my haste. So I retract that claim.
But I’d still like to see some figures for how switching fuels and exporting fuel reduces carbon footprint and can be profitable after the required infrastructure investment all along the supply chain.
In all seriousness Alethea, the Beechworth segment Black Saturday bushfires here in Vic came within 3 km of my home and family. I spent the night watching the sky light up and as we had no motor vehicle at the time I had no way of getting them to safety. The only thing that saved us was a 2am wind change. I was hoping to go to my grave never having owned an internal combustion engine and that hope died that night.
The only reason I haven’t joined the CFA is that I don’t want a conflict of commitments. My family comes first and our bushfire plan is to run like hell. Mind you, our soon to be built new house will be much more defensible. Once my daughter is old enough to realistically help defend our that home my wife and I will review our plans and most likely one, or both, of us will sign up.
Lofty, really?
Sheesh, I’m more ignorant than I thought; I should have checked first.
(Thanks)
John, $2300 for a conversion and there is a small tax credit that could be expanded. LNG has about 60% of the power of an equivalent amount of gasoline so your mileage will go down but your costs at about 75cents per equivalent gallon compared to $345 per gallon of gas will help the drivers pocket book.
Dunno about wikipedia LNG burns a lot cleaner than gas. If you use natural gas for cooking in the home its usually okay. If you use a gasoline stove, you better have a lot more ventilation.
5
Yeah… I was talking about batshit right-wing ideas,not European liberal socialist ideas. I thought that was clear by the repeated use of “right-wing” and “batshit”? :)
And you don’t actually need a link, do you? Not where I’ve personally cornered them, but where they’ve frequently admitted that their tax schemes require enormous cuts to everything except the military budget. Hell, you barely have to corner them… they often flat out admit that they want to end most of the government’s non-defense spending. This week alone, look at the wrangling over federal relief money for Hurricane Sandy.
#333 Jadehawk a value added tax is a federal tax that is added to the price of something when it is sold. How is it not a sales tax?
BTW with Washington State now being legal to smoke weed, BC being a neighboring country with a VAT awesome weed and a long land border, I expect a brisk trade involving Marlboro’s and BC bud ensuing
Information linky for John Morales:
http://www.dieselgasaustralia.com.au/default.aspx?ID=Gallery
#340 Joe, Ah, you were talking popular political discourse. I was talking how money moves around. Past each other this time
Uh … is this bullshit?
http://gapsdiet.com/INTRODUCTION_DIET.html
broboxley, you might find this site of interest: http://www.eia.gov/countries/
broboxley,
OK… no harm done, right?
#342 Lofty thanks! absolutely new to me as well now since your average diesel pusher (peterbuilt tractor here in america) gets about 7 miles per gallon what change would I expect to see after conversion
John, #345 old data
Joe #346 no worries
Unlurking for just a moment and then I’m gone again, but . . .
My local PBS station is airing Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King jamming the blues like you dream about. From 1983. If it trips your trigger, do tune in.
That’s all. Bye.
kristinc, now with added ventilation
soap in the gut sets off my bs meter so lets start with the suggestion
start from carrot juice first thing in the morning and take your cod liver oil at the same time.
well lots of A and D vities there, wont hurt you.
Testing for food allergies in notoriously unreliable: if one had enough resources to test twice a day for two weeks, they would find that they are “allergic” to everything they eat.
No, you go to an allergist and they will give you tests that test buttloads of stuff at one time
f you have decided to go straight into the Full GAPS Diet, keep in mind that about 85% of everything your patient eats daily should be made out of meats, fish, eggs, fermented dairy and vegetables (some well-cooked, some fermented and some raw). Baking and fruit should be kept out of the diet for a few weeks, and then be limited to snacks between meals and should not replace the main meals. Homemade meat stock, soups, stews and natural fats are not optional – they should be your patient’s staples.
not really bad advice at all
my 2 cents
@Improbable Joe #321
Thanks Joe. I did a bit more digging whilst away and uncovered a few gems that aligned pretty much with what you wrote. I should write the CBC and ask them to move that segment to their “Comedy” section.
I appreciate the heads up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax#Comparison_with_sales_tax
@broboxleyOT,
NG conversions are not exactly my field but the cost advantage would depend on your fuel costs locally. With the advent of fracking I believe US costs of NG have plummeted. Diesel fuel in Australia is mostly imported so quite expensive compared to NG. (I do LPG on light/medium vehicles because that’s what my ticket is for).
Well, shit. The program just ended and the music is gone. Sorry.
Check your local listings. Perhaps it will air again near you.
Now I go.
broboxley:
Both are toxic in excess, though this (usually) requires supplements to achieve.
—
Actually, pretty current, but if you can do better, I’d be interested to know where.
it’s snowing :-)
OK, so “soap in the gut” is definitely bullshit? Because that’s what pinged my meter too.
drive-by
kristinc #344 quoting someone else
From personal experience (which I will not explain), soap in the gut does not cause constipation.
It causes something as far as possible on the other end of the scale.
Sounds like bullshit. 99% of all dietary advice is bullshit, anyway. Eat plenty of fruit & veg, be moderate on the sugars and fats and grains and meats and booze, and get some exercise. All else is either: bullshit; a diet for a specific medical condition; or an unsustainable eating plan intended for some specific short term use (eg, if you are an actor or model or bodybuilder wanting to tweak water mass for a photoshoot.)
This bears out what I was going to say is definitely not my personal experience, but a very strong instinctive guess.
Chigau:
Chigau is absolutely right about this. One of the things you do to facilitate a successful enema is to use soapy water, injected into the gut via the back passage. (The things you learn from rats…)
Jadehawk from your link
The VAT mechanism means that the end-user tax is the same as it would be with a sales tax.
John
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/05/usa-eia-idUSL1E8N58Y120121205
The surge in production will allow the United States to
become a larger exporter of natural gas than projected a year
ago and a net exporter as early as 2016, the agency said.
Well and now here I am thinking about the actual mechanics of soap forming in the gut.
Fats combine with LYE to make soap, and lye is a very strong base isn’t it?
Isn’t the interior of the gut probably acid? I should know that. But I don’t.
I mean, is it even possible for a living human to have a gut so base that fat would saponify?
Another thought:
if we could, by diet, form soap in our guts (or in the guts of rats (for example)), would there be a market?
Like that civet-shit coffee?
@ chigau (無) #365
No offense intended to your no doubt floral rectal emissions, but I am willing to wager, even without a market study beforehand, that very few people would be interested in washing their face with soap that is, shall we say, “pinched off.”
無-soap. It’s 99% something something.
I just made some pork noodle soup.
I found a leftover cooked pork chop in the freezer, and dropped it and its juices into a pot of water. I sliced in some carrots, thinly, as the water heated, then poured in soy sauce, sambal, spices and whatever looked good. Once the water boiled, I added the egg noodles that I had found, and simmered until they were cooked.
Then I added a wish for some good bread to go with it.
It was fast and easy and good.
The reason I post this is because I seldom see noodles cooked in broth or stock. Fresh dumplings, yes, either the noodle kind or the fluffy spoon dumplings, but dried pasta usually gets cooked in plain water around here, then added to flavory stuff (which ticks me off when I’m doing the dishes and have to clean a strainer and an extra pot). Besides, white-flour pasta had so little flavor that boiling it in stock can only help.
Dumplings: My mom made both kinds, but we called the noodley kind “noodles”. Depending on where you are from, dumplings can be different things. Some may include egg, are rolled out like pasta dough, cut into squares and dropped into boiling stock, where they sink—basically fresh noodles or pasta. Or there’s the spoon dumplings that get mixed up like batter, mostly just flour and baking powder, that float atop the stock and get steamed into puffy goodness, that you mustn’t overcook. (There’s also the Chinese dumplings, of course, those little pockets of yum.)
Like I said, my mom made “noodles” and called the floaty ones “dumplings”. I now see people making what I would call square noodles and they are calling those dumplings. So I am just giving a heads-up to anybody else who is confused.
Mom, the gods love her, once got irate with a book she had enjoyed, when one of the characters put her dumplings into the pot and went off for more than the seven minutes that Mom cooked her floating dumplings for.
silomowbray #366
first: har!
next: I recently gave a gift of note-paper made of elephant shit.
Your comment just made me think I may have sent the wrong message.
(I was all about environment and fund-raising for a zoo.)
(not about ‘your notes=shit’)
(oops)
Silomowbray, you seriously underestimate the stupidity of people everywhere.
As an aside, eating soap also seriously aids in…evacuation. No, I don’t eat soap, but the rats do, at every given opportunity. I had to start keeping the bathroom sink soap in the medicine cabinet, as they kept stealing every bar I put out.
Caine, years and years ago I read the memoirs of Louis Camuti, a vet during the 1930s and 40s. He told a story of having a cake of Cashmere Bouquet soap go missing from his practice bathroom every single day. He thought his assistant must be stealing it, and his assistant just thought Camuti must be crazy. Until they staked out the room one night and saw a huge, glossy rat steal the fresh bar they had just set out on the sink. When they caught it, it was the biggest, fattest rat with the sleekest fur they had ever seen.
My pet rats used to eat candles mainly, but I do remember a couple gnawed bars of twee ornamental soap. (I was a teen. People gave me that stuff.)
Kristinc:
Hah! Thanks for that story. The rats do have incredibly sleek fur. I guess a little soap now and then doesn’t hurt. :D Mine are also very fond of any sort of lip balm and they go stark crazy over Bag Balm.
Hia all. They changed it. Now it’s horrible.
Also, procrastination is setting in. (Oh come one thunk, one more week. And then finals.)
I’ll get there.
Hi thunk!
Get to work!
No.
Go to bed!
urrr, what’s your time-zone?
My vague recollection from either a high school health or chemistry class is that the intestinal environment is basic, though not strongly so.
…ah, here we go. Was partially right. O.o
They™ are predicting -26°C overnight.
We’re ready.
The car is already plugged in.
Good evening all. Totally ‘rupt and fighting off a nasty sore throat., dropping in to say hi.
*Hugs* where needed, yay for cute animals and all that. Now I’m off to hope that I can get the chicken I’m making down me. It’s marinated in a chili-ginger-I’m not sure what sause that L made.
Speaking of the gut and bad fads: There’s one where the key is to eat a couple of odd things together, things that curdle. Worse than milk and rennet, it’s something like olive oil and cleaning vinegar (but odder). So the stuff curdles in the stomach and forms lumps, and the lumps get pooped out the back end, rather noticeably. The trick is that they don’t tell you the stuff makes lumps, they tell you it is cleansing your colon of the caked-in fecal matter we all supposedly have eleventy pounds of. The lumps are proof the colon was clogged, and proof the “cure” worked, but it’s really just chemistry that would have worked just as well in a mixing bowl.
I am watching a documentary about “Space Archaeology”.
seriously.
good morning!
strange gods:
I tried Restore Previous Session first thing, but it didn’t show signs of cooperation.
When I do something wrong, I do it really thoroughly. :)
LINK REQUEST – VICTIM BLAMING
.
Can anyone link a good site for the dialogue between a bloke who’s been robbed and the investigating officer who questions him like a rape victim? The victim-blaming thing? I was sure I had it bookmarked, and now I can’t find it and I need it for a discussion on this chat place I frequent …. if someone has that at their fingertips I’d be very grateful!
Oh, I found it, the Rape of Mr. Smith dialogue. I did have it bookmarked, just couldn’t see it –
thanks anyway, because I know if I hadn’t found it somebody here could have linked me :)
Can you give me a sincere “OMG I am so shocked”?
Godmenproject has an article about rape, it sucks:
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/nice-guys-commit-rape-too/
Excerpts:
They fell asleep together. She woke up with his penis inside of her. There is really nothing ambiguous about it, no mixed messages there.
warning: WHINING AHEAD
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This is the worst toothache I can ever remember having.
If the dentist had actually sent the fucking referral letter when they said they would, the extraction would have been done about six weeks ago – long before it started hurting. Because they forgot or didn’t send it or I don’t know what went wrong – and I had to phone the dental hospital, find out they’d never received it, and then ask my dentist to send it again – the extraction will now happen on Tuesday, the day after tomorrow.
And it’s been getting more and more painful. Now it doesn’t just hurt a bit and intermittently, now it hurts a lot and all the time.
Just waiting for the ibuprofen I took 15 minutes ago to kick in. Sitting here rocking …
(I have ibuprofen and paracetamol available. I also have some out-of-date co-codamol, but I tried them and 2 make me unpleasantly woozy while 1 doesn’t numb the pain. It’s OK to overlap alternating ibuprofen and paracetamol, right? To get a shorter interval. I haven’t actually done that yet, but I’ll want to tonight if this gets any worse).
FUCK.
/whine
(via Feministe)
Re soap production in the digestive tract. Enzyme called lipase. Breaks down ingested triglycerides to fatty acids and glycerin.
opposablethumbs
It is fine to do that. Best way is to take them as staggered doses, so take one lot and then two hours later take the second lot. Also, don’t skip a dose just because the pain has become bearable, especially the ibuprofen. The anti-inflammatory effect of that drug can take 24 hours to become fully effective,
Portia – I won’t bother posting the recipe for the apple butter spritz cookies. The family has judged them not worthy.
I think at this point, antibiotics are your friend.
Yes, it is unreliable, according to my allergist. The problem is that allergy testing for foods is done on blood, and the antibodies you have might not be present in enough quantities in the blood to test positive. It’s entirely possible to break out into hives upon contact with a food but not have a blood test come back positive for it. I know several people who have tested negative for foods they are most definitely positive for.
AJ Milne:
…er, no, no the metaphor’s absolutely perfect, speaking from personal experience of the last couple of years. Also after reading your description I’m going to run like heck and bury myself in repetitive clicky things for a little while. <_<
(Thanks for mentioning it. It'll go on my 'future-with-controlled-PTSD' reading list.)
Beatrice:
Yeah, I had the exact same response to that when I saw it. There’s nothing ambiguous there. Nothing about the woman’s sexuality needs to be discussed. She did not say, “Hey, it might be cool if somebody had sex with me while I was asleep. I am giving blanket consent for someone to have sex with me while I’m asleep! Seriously. I’m going to be pissed off if I don’t wake up with your penis inside of me.”
There is no fucking such thing as “mixed signals”. The flirtation and implication of sexual interest is not blanket consent any time, any where, any condition.
She might very well have planned on having sex with that man at a later date. Like, say, when she was conscious. Even if she had explicitly stated those plans, that doesn’t mean he has access to her vagina any damn time he wants.
It’s rape. There is nothing ambiguous there whatsoever.
This isn’t the first time the Good Men Project has posted a pro-rape/rape apologia article. I’m sure it won’t be the last, either.
There is a lot of dodgy practice in the allergy testing business. Here in the UK it is quite common for health food shops to offer allergy testing, which they do by using skin tests. The results are generally pretty meaningless, those carrying out the test have little training and very often there are no procedures for dealing with the risks of anaphylactic shock in place.
that’s the problem with the “no means no” paradigm. in too many d00dz minds, it means precisely that: open access, unless otherwise stated.
we really need to move on and start taking the “yes means yes” paradigm; otherwise, the “mixed signals” bullshit isn’t going to stop
Warning: vegetarians better skip this comment.
.
.
.
Oi, cooks! A question.
Tripe.
Ew, I know.
I hate it, but I promised to cook it tomorrow. I have no idea about the best way to prepare it. I was thinking about following a pretty simple Italian recipe: onion/garlic/carrot base, tomato sauce, tripe and some parmigiano stirred in at the end.
Any better suggestions?
Good morning, all.
Bad night. Bad! Bad night!
Had homemade pizza last night with carmelized Mayan onions (I need to use them quick — they will all die in about a week or so) and sweated sweet peppers. Good pizza. Good!
Beatrice:
A barley and tripe soup/stew?
Jadehawk,
Oh, “yes means yes” isn’t a barrier to this particular rape apologists. Don’t you know that women can say yes with their body language and walking like fuck and talking like fuck (also, talk about treating women as sex objects), so that can still confuse poor scatterbrained men?
Rape apologist says:
Ogvorbis,
I love barley. That could work.
Holy shit, how is that even legal? It took 3 epi shots and about a dozen various antihistamine and steroid pills to get me through my allergy tests, and that WAS the skin tests. When I complained about the iffy nature of the blood tests, my allergist said that’s why they don’t do skin pricks for food poisoning: too much risk of anaphylaxis.
Holy fucking shit. I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen anything quite that dehumanizing from a fucking MRA.
IT.
She is an IT.
She is just a FUCK.
She doesn’t even get the “dignity” of being a life-support system for a vagina. She’s just an opportunity.
Yep, it.
Also, something.
@Beatrice 397
Holy fucking fuck. I assumed that your rape apologist quote was a paraphrase. I was wrong. I need to retrieve my skin; it appears to have crawled away.
This is the Good Men Project? Jesus christ I’d hate to see what the Bad Men Project comes out with.
Also @Beatrice
If I recall the flavor and texture correctly, one could make vegetarian tripe by cutting a mop and cooking as normal. Might actually be tastier.
In other words, good luck.
at all points, until explicitly stated otherwise.
it’s people like that who make e very much understand the perspective of sex-negative feminists. these guys are the reasons we can’t have nice things
I think that the only reason it is not more of an issue is because the strength of the solutions used to test are so low. Still, I know that doctors in the NHS who do allergy testing would like to see stricter regulation in place.
Nepenthe,
Hah. I think I might actually like wet mop better than tripe.
I currently can’t remember the flavor (of tripe, not mop), but texture is horrible enough to make me have to fight gagging.
it’s snowing, -13C/8F with strong winds (“feels like” -27C/-17F)
I allowed the cats to go outside. the scrawny short-hair lasted the longest, 15 minutes. the other two gave up on Outside within minutes.
Also, the sound of snow crunching under shoes scares the living fuck out of them
i’m trying to convince them that they don’t want to go outside, so they don’t whine so much when people leave :-p
How many times have we had Men’s Rights Apologists claiming that men do not objectify women, that sexual objectification is a myth?
==========
Beatrice:
Dice the tripe very very small for the stew. Think Campbell’s Soup — Pepper Pot or Scotch Broth both have itty bitty pieces of tripe. Good flavour and they are small enough that the texture is not noticed.
This isn’t the first time the GMP has been awful. In October they also had a piece of fiction that was quite graphic about a man raping a drunk teenager, and there have been quite a few other bits of nastiness.
This is a thing they actually published:
That they still have any legitimacy as anything other than a mouthpiece for the most vile anti-woman positions shocks me.
However much difference that makes, the article in question was written by a woman.
—–
Ogvorbis,
Thanks! Whatever makes tripe
halfquartera bit edible is good.I motion we start calling them The “Nice Guy”
Project.
let me amend my comment. people like that are why we can’t have nice things.
Good girls don’t get raped, remember?
The desperate belief that if you do everything right you’re safe.
That’s why women are often worse in victim-blaming than men:
They have to find something she did wrong, something she could have done differently and that would have kept her safe.
Because if they can, then they can avoid it and they are safe.
I know that nothing was as scary as the realization that the fact that my un-raped status doesn’t have much to do with myself, but with sheer luck and chance.
Hey, I was fat, i was safe.
I did X, I was safe.
I only trusted the right people*, I was safe.
I had a good guy as a boyfriend*, I was safe.
If saftey depends on what the woman is doing, then you can keep yourself safe (not talking about the sacrifices you’re asked to make for that “safety”).
If you realize that it doesn’t, and that you can only tweak the odds a little, it’s scary as hell.
*Fortunately yes. As I said, I was lucky. I was lucky that when I was black-out drunk the people I was with just brought me to bed and didn’t help themselves. I was lucky that I was a bit faster that the probably rapist. I was lucky that Mr. is indeed a good guy (and not a Good Guy ™) and didn’t make good use of my pschological mess up.
now I’m grumpy
got up and wanted a mocha. Went to the cupboard, no cocoa. No problem, I have a box of mexican granny cocoa and no one in the house likes anything mexican. Shit, its gone too. Suspect from the arrangement of stuff someone has been cleaning again and looking at expiration dates. I have tried to explain that expiration dates on dried powder is a suggestion, not a command.
#395 beatrice, make menudo a favorite of mine.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/menudo-rojo-red-menudo/
*looks at #412*
o.O
test: ™
Jadehawk,
how did you make it work?
I tried $latex, but it turned out wrong
Jadehawk:
You’re trademarking ‘test’? Some sort of get-rich-quick-off-the-backs-of-overpaid-professors scheme? ; )
Beatrice, ™ = & trade ; without the spaces
Of course it’s that simple.
headdesk™
anyway: what’s really frustrating about the failures of the GoodMenProject and similar ideas is that we won’t be able to deconstruct patriarchy without addressing the PHMT problem and creating alternative, non-toxic masculinities. So in theory we’d need people to figure out how to be male and/or masculine without toxic gender expression, but it apparently always devolves into shit like that when someone tries.
Matt and Rorschach, thank you – much appreciated.
I’m glad of the info about not skipping ibuprofen when the pain is milder – up until now I had been trying to take as little as possible (without going to extremes, or anything. I mean, as little as was reasonably comfortable) so I will go for regular doses until the tooth has bitten the dust on Tuesday :)
And I will probably pop in to my dentist tomorrow without an appt, and just ask for a prescription for antibiotics. I suspect you’re absolutely right about that.
This looks like being a long and highly unpleasant night :(((((
opposablethumbs
My sympathies.
Toothache is about the worst kind of pain there is.
Good luck with the extraction tomorrow.
Jadehawk:
I think at least part of this is because of our cultural programming regarding gender itself. Within patriarchy, masculinity is based upon a bedrock of male = power. To give up unearned power by moving toward equality isn’t just an attempt to recreate new masculinities; it’s seen as an instant betrayal of masculinity itself. The stereotype of the feminist man as a weak, effeminate person illustrates this view, as if “manhood” can’t exist alongside equality.
Obviously, there are plenty of feminists on the masculine spectrum who manage just fine, but in groups aimed specifically toward masculine identities that cultural idea of male = power can make it easy for the toxic personalities found among MRAs to gain influence.
Something cheerful:
Mulled wine jam
250ml (1 cup) decent but not too sweet red wine.
160g (appr) jam-sugar. This is a special sugar with added pektine which is usually labelled 2:1 sugar.
2 small apples, cut into very small dice
mulled wine spices. I make my own mixture of cinamon, cloves, coriander, anisseed, orange peel and cardamom.
Put spices into a filter (I use a paper tea filter)
Put wine into a pot, add spices and apples and put onto heat. Now, depending on how much alcohol you want to remain in the finished jam, either turn heat to low and let it heat for about 15 min with a closed lid without ever letting it close to boiling.
Or turn heat to high and let cook for 10 min.
Add sugar, follow instructions on the package.
Enjoy.
Giliell, that sounds delicious. I was planning on making crumpets for Christmas breakfast. Maybe some mulled wine jam is just what’s called for here.
bible according to brad
http://skywiseunlimited.com/2012/04/22/my-way-or-the-highway/
“You must do as I order. I am God. Do not go to one of your relatives and try to take their clothes off and see them naked. Do not try to see your dad naked, or your mom naked, or your dad’s other wife naked, or your sister, or grandchildren, cousins, aunts, uncles, or in-laws. And don’t be trying to get your wife’s sister naked while your wife is still alive. That’s an important one. Don’t ever get a woman naked if she is menstruating, which goes without saying because that’s just gross. Just as a reminder, avoid having sex with your neighbor’s wife. I am God.”
Yesus Christerson, that was a depressing way to start the day for a Y-chromosome carrier like myself. Guy penetrated a sleeping woman, but the situation’s so MURKY. Murky my ass. Even Austin Powers knows better.
Read down the comments section, and you find this gem:
And then the author and another commenter call it a “good question!” The mind reels.
Looks like the FCC chairman is trying to bend rules to allow Rupert Murdoch the opportunity to try to monopolize media in places it is currently illegal to do so. I found a link to the petition to stop this on Progressive Veterans of America on Facebook. Please take a moment to sign it. One of the papers he’s after is the LA Times, which is the only SoCal opposition to the Faux News print edition known as the OC Register.
Petition link at freepress.net
…sponge or yarn mop?
Rey Fox, ugh, that’s awful. It does go back to what Jadehawk was saying about how “no means no” has been absorbed into rape culture, too.
In that mindset, sex is opt-out instead of opt-in. If you’re not on the National Do Not Rape Registry, you have only yourself to blame for not properly registering your lack of consent.
@Azkyroth
The best substitute though is one of those mops made with flannel-ish strips, but a yarn mop is acceptable. Use an old one for extra flavor.
Generally:
Thank you Pharyngulites for being yourselves. It’s comforting in a delusional world to find a place where I won’t suddenly be chatting with a person who believes that they are a 40-year Black man, a 12-year-old girl who is the reincarnation of Queen Victoria, a 300-year-old wood elf, and a tiger occupying the body of a 23-year-old White female.
Sir Patrick Moore, 89, Dies At Home
The astronomer and broadcaster passes away peacefully at home in Sussex after failing to fight an infection.
The Guardian has an obituary.
Now I’ll download and watch the last Sky at Night.
WIRED magazine posted an article Pseudoscience Saps the Power of TEDx Brand that looks at the inroads newagey crap made into TED presentations, and the ways in which scientists are fighting back against the scourge of the likes of Amma or of Randy Powell and his “vortex-based” math.
“Presenting bad science on the TEDx stage is grounds for revoking your license.”
TED posted a letter to the TEDx community on its blog warning of the pitfalls of bad science.
New Oglaf is up. Definitely a NSFW one. But, oh, it’s good.
*Is threadrupt*
**Happy Dance** I got an interview, I got an interview **
Same company that I’m with now, but it will be in Ga. Which is good. And a promotion if I get it.
:-D
Good luck, Rawnaeris!
Nepenthe:
That is a comfort. It also makes me curious about where else you’ve been chatting.
Wow, Nepenthe, where does one hang out to meet these people? And the people they think they are?
Er…
*pulls top hat over his big pointy ears*
I’m reminded of my friend, the transethnic Japanese leopard, who formed a pack with a dragon and a wolf. They never were able to explain how they managed to take down prey with such divergent hunting strategies.
That is ridiulous
I’m 3000 years old and I’m a high elf!
Also, I spent most of that time in the woods being angry at my boyfriend, so don’t expect me to have learned anything useful in that time.
Funfact: Giliell actually was said role-play character.
She was also the one who used to get hit whenever a group-member would roll a disastrous failure
@Ogvorbis re: name change
NOoooooooo! Not you! I thought it was safe! I thought you of all people…. *weeps*
The person given is an amalgamation of some of the bizarre characters that I’ve discovered on mainstream non-atheosphere feminist sites frequently linked from here, the names of which shall go unstated because to do so would pretty definitively identify the people I’m referring to, which is probably an asshole move.* But suffice it to say that it’s not the backwaters of bizarro-tumblr where one might expect to find such creatures.**
I… I just don’t know how to analyze the feminist issues involved in an astral relationship between a corporeal woman and a disembodied man or how consent works when 5 “people” use one body. Are wood elves subject to the patriarchy? I just don’t know. *gnashes teeth and rends clothing*
*Just mentioning it is probably an asshole move, but then I suppose I am an asshole anyway.
**Is it dehumanizing language to call a person a “creature” when they claim to be an animal!? *gnaws off own limb*
Must be some good shit your smoking there, junior.
Actually, my best role playing characters ever were ‘Blug’ — a fighter with an intelligence of 4 (when someone asked ‘me’ to do something and used a multisylabic word, I had to roll a d20 and get a 4 or better. if not, I got to ‘creatively misunderstand’) — and Out Ul Uck — a very successful monk. Never played an elf. Or with an elf.
And I understand. Sort of.
Nepenthe, I’d really like to respond to all of that, but…I just can’t find the words. Wow.
I’m going to sit over by the window and watch the snow fall instead. So many special snowflakes. So, so many…
Thanks for the sympathies, Giliell! Can’t get it actually extracted until my appt. on Tuesday, but now I’m taking the advice from Matt and Rorsach (and overlapping my painkillers) it’s made it so at least I’m not climbing the walls :-D. Just a day and a half to go, worse things happen at sea and I appreciate that I’m lucky at least I don’t have to pay for it.
Congratulations on and good luck with the interview, Rawnaeris FREEZE PEACHES!
Wow, Nepenthe, that’s … a bit bizarre? I’m glad I’m here, where even the tardigrades are real.
opposablethumbs:
You have my extreme sympathy. I went for almost a month before getting a tooth removed (turned out it was abscessed as well as broken). Painkillers good.
[what the hell? try again.]
opposablethumbs:
You have my extreme sympathy. I went for almost a month before getting a tooth removed (turned out it was abscessed as well as broken). Painkillers good.
Either I am having more than my usual difficulties, or something is wonky round these parts.
Velociraptor with a toothache here. Be careful.
opposablethumbs
Oh, I must have misremembered, I thought it was tomorrow.
rpg characters
One of the most fun ones I have is a mixture between that annoying gnome at the Southern Oracle in Neverending Story and Bilbo Beutlin: A relatively wealthy 50+ guy who so far spent his life studying “the people and cultures of Aventuria” from his desk in the capital of the main empire. At 50 he suddenly decides to write “The BIG history of Aventuria” and sets out to know everything.
NOw, the system allows for an subconscious 1/4th mage who can practise about 5 spells without consciously doing so. He can make people like him (very useful when you’re annoying as fuck and will not understand subtle and not so subtle hints that folks would like to be left alone), he can make people ignore him (very useful when in a battle situation and convinced that the quill is mightier than the sword) and he increases his defenses.
And frankly, he is fun to play and every game-master loves him: He glues any group together like treacle and will always come to the rescue.
Gillell
What system is that?
*raises one talon preparatory to speaking*
…
<_<
*slinks back under the couch to gnaw on something swiped from a mousetrap*
Caerie,
re: today’s Oglaf (and the previous, since it’s two-part)
lol
Lucius Bonecrusher needs some loving too.
Everything was white
rq,
Ah, you were in the country for the weekend. How was it?
Besides white.
Nothing that Mary Matalin says should surprise me, but I’m scratching my head over this recent quote of hers I read today anyway:
“There are important constitutional, biological, theological, ontological questions relative to homosexual marriage…”
What the blueberry fuck kind of “ontological questions” does homosexual marriage pose, other than the ones about the fundamental anti-reality of the beliefs of the Religious Right and the platform of the Republican Party?
Dalillama
“The Dark Eye”
Most popular German Pen and Paper RPG system.
Don’t talk about white. I hope that tomorrow weatheris either so bad I can’t get to college at all or good enough so I make it back again
Beatrice
It was beautiful. Not a family-country trip, but a choir-weekend trip (doing some concerts with the professional brass band orchestra for the cities-not-the-capital).
And, mostly, white. Seriously. I’ll have to find a way to show you photos. But WHITE. And beautiful.
::gibbers in terror and hides under the desk::
Bloody hell. That sounds beyond horrible. Mind-bendingly nightmarishly horrible.
‘scuse me while I gibber quietly here under the desk …
rq,
Sounds brilliant. I’im glad you had a nice weekend.
OK, I’ll be off to bed now. I really shouldn’t be feeling so tired after doing nothing the whole day.
Ah jeez, pretend that in 443 I said “non-human animal” and haven’t had my rhetorical ass hanging out this whole time.
My intelligence is FOUR?? OUTRAGEOUS!!
Good night, Beatrice!
victims of federally legalized pot
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/07/08/opinion/sunday/the-strip.html#1
Another perspective on the Good Men Project stuff earlier…
…even if we grant his claim that he didn’t understand her signals, it’s inexcusable. But I’m extremely skeptical of that claim.
Speaking as someone who actually has an impaired understanding of nonverbal communication, the response to having difficulty understanding someone’s signals is anxiety, frustration, and sometimes existential panic, ESPECIALLY when they are verbally and nonverbally communicating incompatible or actually opposite things, not “okay, I’ll just go ahead then.”
i just realized that there are 3 pharyngulites/A+ers in Fargo-Moorhead.
That’s almost a crowd, considering.
broboxley:
On a related note, I got a kick out of going through the spice cabinet at my parents’ house earlier this year. I noticed she had McCormick seasonings that were in noticeably NON modern containers, which looked familiar. Then I realized they were the same ones she had when I was a child. Checking the expiration date, I saw that most of them had a date in the mid 80s. I guess my mother and father don’t cook with much flavor.
They also had multiple types of the same seasoning (same brands too). I consolidated around 6 different seasonings, which freed up their spice cabinet.
****
New font–>no likey.
New logo–> me hate!
Sometimes expired spices and such have sentimental value. There are a couple of jars in my family that go back four generations…
Hmmph, I thought Her Scaliness had come out from being wedged behind the foam backboard in her tank to join the rest of the family. Turns out she’s just shedding and will wedge herself back again. Reptiles. *eyeroll*
PS: Does anyone know what it means if a snake starts to shed much more frequently than normal, on the order of twice as often?
Here are MRA’s who are moving beyond making rape threat and rape jokes online.
Ordinarily at this point, I’d say, “Run as if the very Horses of Hell were neighing at your heels!” (because they would be), and remind you that your bike’s health and well-being are the least of your worries; but since this all went down yesternight, it’s obviously far too late for that. All that remains is to avenge you.
With napalm!
(And possibly chainsaws.)
–
My own anecdata corroborates this finding.
–
*hug* and sympathies for opposablethumbs.
–
All at the same time? That’s…quite a combo. Impressively diverse.
One feels, however, that there is also room for some vegetable element. Ent would be an obvious addition. Failing that, broccoli.
–
*high five* for Rawnaeris.
–
If this is the part where we all tell everybody about our RPG characters, y’all are in for several hours of mind-numbing boredom when it gets to be my turn.
:P
–
Would some fanfic writer get on this, please?
and provide a link.
ImaginesABeach
Bummer. Thanks for the update; nice of you to remember.
cicely
I was really hoping you’d show up for that one : )
===
Hope everyone had a nice weekend. I reached a new level of injury-prone with mine (I’m always outdoing myself in that regard). I managed to take a paintball to the eye in spite of the full face mask I was wearing. Ouchie.
I also spent some time contemplating gender roles today as I started my day baking cinnamon rolls to take to a crafting session with aunts and (female) cousins, then went to be the one woman at the paintball games. And then home again to sew an apron for my mom for Christmas.
*bowing*
I am nothing if not predictable.
:)
–
How the hell??? And are you all right?
–
I’m ok, or will be once the soreness and redness fade. I think it happened in a moment when I may have shifted the mask to try to reduce the fog on the goggles. I was on my stomach sniping from behind a fallen tree. All that was exposed was my head. The paintball hit right on the nose-area, and shrapnel ricocheted through the grate over the mouth/nose area and up into my eyes. I flailed and wailed dramatically, in no small part that the paint pouring out of my eye looked like blood to my panicked/pained eyes. Luckily, it was a fire department event, so there were emergency medical personnel* available to help get the pieces and paint out of my eye. I sent SO a picture of my eye a few hours after the fact, and he asked incredulously if I had gone to the hospital. I said no, I had gotten it all out and kept playing.** I’m not sure I’ll play again though. I hope I don’t look weird and bloodshot during work tomorrow.
*Is “personnel” the plural of “personnel”?
**Because I didn’t want to look further “wussy” after feeling embarrassed about my hysterical reaction to the hit. And no one even gave me an ounce of grief for it. It’s all internalized at this point. *sigh* Another of the events today that had me contemplating gender roles. Don’t want to be a girly girl and quit and go home after a painful injury! : /
Pteryxx/#391:
I’m now burningly curious to hear your reaction, if/when you do get to it.
… and I have to confess to similar burning curiosity about your story, now, too. But I’m not asking. There are things I figure you don’t. And I think I’m developing a possibly unhealthy fascination with the general subject, anyway…
Okay. I lie. About the ‘developing’ part, anyway. It’s pretty much endemic, now.
…
In completely unrelated (yes, I’m absolutely as deft and subtle at changing the subject in meatspace, too), I’ve now got a Virus From Hell. And I guess at this point, given the depth of the cough, I’m just hoping that’s still all it is, but seriously…
Seriously: no one, anywhere, should give me any sympathy. And I ask none. As this is, in large part, self-inflicted.
Self inflicted, seeing as–and I will admit to this, as I feel absolutely no shame–I woke up already pretty horribly sick… Next to a fire I should, by all that was sane, have simply stayed right next to, sipping soup and other warm liquids, before simply crawling carefully home…
But there was also this mountain, right there. With freshly fallen natural snow on it. And cold, clear air, and a blazing sunrise I knew would be etching the runs in hard, gorgeous light…
And almost no one else there. And my board was already in the rooftop carrier. And they had just opened this run… How do I describe this run? It has these long, rolling sections, which you can very nearly fly through, skimming the surface in long semiballistic arcs, just touching down long enough and hard enough to turn…
And I got to thinking, hell, some decongestants, some ibuprofen, take it before the first descent, add that on top of the adrenaline, I bet I’ll still be functional, anyway… Sure, at, in all probability, the cost of considerably greater misery, later…
I regret nothing.
Damn.
See, given my current headspace, I was waiting for the ‘because I was totally pumped and into it’ right there…
(No, not because I expect I would at all be. Honestly, I’ve never even been to a paintball thing. I hear people shoot stuff at you at those… What the hell is that about?)
Seriously, that’s just a crappy deal. Pain just because suck it up/shitty double standards. Hope it gets better fast, anyway.
Tripe. My mother once tricked us into eating tripe. She cooked the thing for eleventy bazillion hours in some sort of stock. Then, presuming that it was as cooked as it was ever going to be, she cut it into small pieces, dropped them into a batter she’d made, then shallow fried them. It probably helped that this was much the same as she sometimes did with the last scraps of a weekend roast. It wasn’t until we’d all had seconds that she told us what it was. She never did it again – it was just to make a point.
She’s bragged about it for 50+ years.
AJ Milne, the snowboard bit was beautiful. I’m in the middle of Flatland, on a foggy night, so your picture was jealous-making. It does sound worth it. Get well soon.
—
I’m clicking through YouTube listening to ukuleles being played clawhammer style, like a banjo. I think I’ll try learning that on my uke when I have the house to myself.
I tried a proper link but it looked like shit in Preview.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTWckZef770
So it turns out I have two finals tomorrow. Fortunately, they’re the one I don’t really even NEED to study for, and the one where studying is basically superfluous because it’s A) open-book and B) general-principles and tons of special-case equations rather than the intermediate state where memorizing distinctions is very effective. >.>
Unfortunately the later one partially takes place in the time I was going to use to study for the two back-to-back finals I have the next day. >.>
@ Memyambal #480
The preview did that to me too earlier, but it came out right after all.
Good morning.
Shit I’m tired. My kids really have a sensor that tells them when I have a busy day ahead. It’s when they won’t let me sleep at night…
So, let’s see whether my mum manages to get herself fired today*, which I’m suspecting is kind of her goal, because, you know, no more job, no more need for sick leave, no more need to see a doctor who might say something uncomfortable, no more insurance demands of doing something to get better again.
I’m only wondering whether she’s aware that once her unemployment benefits expire all there is is dad’s measly pension which won’t be enough for schnaps. And I might have to kill her if she manages to lose my grandparents’ house as long as gran is still alive.
*She tore up the last sick leave slip and wants to go to work today. Now, the possibilities are either that she shows up drunk or that she won’t show up at all, both legitimate reasons to fire her, especially if the employer can’t stand your ass anyway.
Relevant to yesterday’s soap-guts conversation.
I think that people who refer to their pets as their children are creepy.
I think that when they pretend to be their pet and refer to themselves as ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ on the interwebs, they should …. dunno, volunteer or something.
I have on occasion called the dog by the kids’ names, and vice versa. Sometimes they are frighteningly similar.
Amusing note from a conversation with a friend Re: final essays.
Two additional reasons Social Darwinism is wrong: those Social Darwinists identify as “the fittest” not only tend to reproduce LESS than the “less fit,” but are almost invariably extreme specialists whose ability to survive and thrive is largely dependent on very specific and tenuous environmental conditions.
Come to think of it, the dog usually listens a lot better than the kids do. Even when I call her by their names.
Stephanie Zwan has now Freeze Peach T-shirts
Catholic church over here coordinating an attack on the new health education curriculum in our schools. Bishops stirring shit, accusing the government of breaching the agreement with Vatican, organizing meetings with parents where they tell them not to send kids to health classes.
I mean you wouldn’t want someone to tell your kid that masturbating doesn’t make them a sinful freak, right? Or that wanting to kiss another boy isn’t a horrible sin and abomination. And God forbid your kid knows how condoms work before they start fucking (because if they don’t know, they won’t fuck, clearly).
*Looks around*
Hmmm, everybody snowed in?
So, I made it to college, but first I had to stop by my doctors’ to get blood drawn. And apparently everybody and their dog went there this morning so I sat there for an hour and by the time it was my turn I had been up for more than 3 hours without the added benefit of breakfast.
Shit that was bad.
Managed not to faint, but the first thing I did afterwards was to get some Dextrose.
+++
And since I had nothing betterto do than reading the newspaper I couldn’t help to stumble upon the story of the English nurse who fell for the joke of some Australian radio station put put a call “from the Queen” through to Kate’s hospital ward. She has apparently killed herself over this and now everybody is screaming for the blood of the radio hosts. And nobody asks what’s wrong with a society in which in the 21st century a young woman kills herself because she has apparently failed the royals.
I have to admit I didn’t look at it that way. I saw it as a woman killing herself as a result of public humiliation.
Jesus Christ, way to miss the point here! Those 2 Aussie dimwits called the hospital posing as the Queen and Prince Charles, and Jacintha Saldanha a mother of 2 relayed the call to the duty nurse, who allegedly then gave up medical information about Kate. Saldanha was facing a fierce and unforgiving media assault in the UK over this, and she took her own life. Shame on you for suggesting this has anything to do with “failing the Royals”. Saldanha was 46 years old and had a family. I blame her death on those 2 fuckwit “DJs” from 2Day FM.
So, they led the unforgiving media attack?
They made a bad joke, yeah, but really, not the end of the world bad joke.
If people weren’t all up over this freakish royal cult it would and could have remained like that. Stupid joke, don’t do it again.
You thinkthey could have reasonably forseen that their call would result in a suicide?
So, she wasn’t attacked endlessly because it was about the royals?
You’re suggesting that anything like that would have happened if it were even some other celebrity, let’s say somebody posing as Brad Pitt if Angelina Jolie were in hospital?
NO, it has everything to do with a world that still treats those people like unicorn poop because their ancestors killed other people’s ancestors
Not that I want to defend the “fuckwit DJs from 2Day FM”, but why blame them rather than the “fierce and unforgiving media assault in the UK”?
Woman hit by arrow at Stockholm http://www.thelocal.se/44950/20121209/
This was part of a circus act, not a Conan the Barbarian re-enactment.
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Can you re-enact something that never happened, BTW? Apart from biblical never-happenedings, like the Betlehem stuff?
Media can turn into a lynch mob, even in Sweden. Brit media is even worse.
How about people who refer to their pets as their children because some people find that creepy?