Welcome to middle-age. I can't even remember the name of... that guy. He was in... that movie.
Hope the migraine stuff works. I get a few of them a year, and have been advised to try to knock them out with paracetamol and ibuprofen early on. This usually doesn't work.
Yeah, I started noticing it about the time I turned 40. Al has lived faster than me, so it comes sooner to her.
DON'T PANIC. It isn't early onset dementia; it happens to everybody, especially when they're tired or sick.
1. no, no; the combo is paracetamol, aspirin and caffeine, ibuprofen optional. in the states they sell them over the counter pre-mixed as powders in glassine envelopes, BC powders, or Goody's. The single most illegal-looking headache medicine in the world, which is why I'm afraid to have my family send me a bunch for fear I'll be haled into the narnian police station again like with the knuckledusters. you pour all the powder down your throat, drink a 6 1/2 oz glass bottle of coke, and often all is solved. they have tablets too but the powder works way faster.
chris y: it's not that I haven't heard of "senior moments" it just seemed so...odd. when I wanted to mentally draw the roundabout I could picture it fine, and name all the other adjacent roads, and then it was like there was a bare place on the map where the label should be. maybe that's just what it's like.
That's exactly what it's like. Welcome home.
3: They sell it as Excedrin too (paracetamol aka acetominophen, caffeine and aspirin). I use it for cramping pain too when the ibuprofen isn't quite enough.
My mom used to use something called cafergot. It made her horribly nauseous and gave her stomach cramps. She swore by it. Her constant migraines dropped very significantly in frequency and intensity with menopause, so you can look forward to memory loss without insane physical suffering in your future.
Migraines are associated with aphasia too, right? I have a friend who gets bad ones who will occasionally lose a whole bunch of ordinary words while in the throes. They come back when the headache's over, but when it's happening she doesn't know the word for ice cream, or piano.
6:Yeah, my suffering partner used to use a cocktail containing ergotamine (I think) and I think a little phenobarbital.
And something else, I'm sure, not scope, having a senior moment, something radical...gone. Can't remember.
I also think I remember that if she was conscientious about talking the meds early onset as the mige was coming they started to decrease in frequency
I remembered! I knew it began with a 'b'
belladonna
Very romantic, bob:
The species name "belladonna" comes from the original use of deadly nightshade as a way of dilating women's pupils to make them beautiful.
Atropine drops sting badly.
belladonna also contains scope, scopalamine.
Used to want to try a scope/opiod cocktail. Datura.
Anyway, glad your brain ain't all rotted al.
Atropine, more likely. (Atropa belladonna).
I could picture it fine, and name all the other adjacent roads, and then it was like there was a bare place on the map where the label should be.
This is what it's like in Boston for everyone, all the time. "Do you know how to get to Water Street?" "Ummm. What street is this?" "Never mind."
yeah, aphasia! I should have mentioned it to the doctor. I suddenly don't know ordinary words when I'm having a migraine.
Caffeine and aspirin have been mixed with about 20 different things. Caffeine may be the wonder drug. It seems to reduce or prevent liver damage in alcoholics too.
later, if they can't figure out what is going on or how to fix it they want to give me topamax. what is this; topamax is from the gumball machine now? don't be handing out topamax right and left, people, that stuff will straight fuck your shit up.
I had mild migraines every day for a month once, and once the cycle was broken I was ok. Bodies are weird.
16: that's because he takes the hit when you shoot up, flippanter. that bastard is getting all the sweet dope you score.
Nothing is sweeter than Christ's love!
Maybe caramel.
We are doing a weaning off topamax now. It works mostly well, but we need to reduce meds.
Glad the doc seems on top of it.
They sell it as Excedrin
And this is like the grown-up version of Willy Wonka's golden ticket.
They put my wife on Topamax for a bit to try to contain some nerve pain that wasn't responding well to painkillers. After a couple of months, she decided she'd rather live with the pain than with the weird Topamax side effects.
Not to be alarmist or anything, but have you had a brain scan done recently?
After a couple of months, she decided she'd rather live with the pain...
You courtship story is more honest than most.
22: Desperate marketing scheme. Except sales to go up temporarily, though.
Expect. I have some kind of finger dyslexia.
An old friend of mine was diagnosed with glioblastoma after he started forgetting words, so now of course every time I can't finish the Friday puzzle, my hypochondria kicks into high gear when (presumably/keinahora) the real answer is that I'm just turning into my dad, as one does. (I mean actually he finishes the Friday puzzle but he also frequently points at things on the dinner table he wants someone to hand him rather than think of the word.)
22: fucking A, I wonder how much no-doz they sold in the following week.
25: yes, just now; I'm fine.
30: That's extra-good then. Persistent headaches and memory issues were the first symptoms of my father's brain tumor.
I get mild transient aphasia sometimes. Probably because of all the whatsitcalled I did back whenever it was.
Also my second cousin who somewhat recently got diagnosed with glioblastoma did not, as far as I know, have any aphasia before diagnosis. So don't worry about... thing... people.
mild transient aphasia
That must be why people try to avoid talking to the homeless.
13 This is what it's like in Boston for everyone, all the time.
Oh good, it's not just me. I had the most confusing attempt to give someone directions the other day. "You walk that way a few blocks and then you'll hit Davis Square and then you go... um..."
More and more I stop mid-sentence and say "what's the word I'm looking for?" and sift through any suggestions people offer me. They never find the right one.
35: The local policy is to put up only signs that are pointless or misleading. This, combined with the tendency for roads to change names, means there were streets that I took daily for years before learning their names.
I've never been to Boston, but I imagine it's the closest thing the US has to a European city? As in its quite old, and the streets probably aren't all griddy?
||
My boss just started a Twitter account to follow some work-relevant news. Her handle includes two Z's, both surrounded by lower-case, and ends in "pants". She is at least 45.
|>
Eventually I realized that if they just kept walking in a straight line the street they were on would change names to the one they were looking for, but by that time they had already given up on me and wandered off.
39: they are not at all griddy, no. Also, a decision was made early in the history of Boston to change the names of streets every couple of blocks (which, if any of this is actually true, and not misinformation I'm passing on, allegedly aided mail delivery in an era before people had fully cottoned to numbered houses). Cambridge is a bit better than Boston is, but the best you can hope for even there is several off-angle grids half-assedly transposed on top of each other. Pretty much the only ways to get around are to have a complete topological picture of the street grid in your head or to refer to landmarks, which is probably why people here say things like "then you take a left where the Star Market used to be".
the streets probably aren't all griddy?
There's one small griddy section, Back Bay, that was built on fill in the 19th century.
Streets change name as they go along in China. So do rivers sometimes.
The lack of a grid is, I think, the cause of my latest peeve: the aggressively stupid three-point u-turn on an arterial street at rush hour.
So do rivers sometimes.
The Allegheny and the Mon merge to form the Ohio. This is three rivers instead of one river flowing into another because people suck at consistency.
There are other small griddy sections, too! Some of them have been partly obliterated. The triangle formed by Causeway, Merrimac and Washington was originally laid out as a grid when it was filled in. The problem is that all the small, local grid-like patterns have no connection to a larger grid.
Urpleville has some streets that make 90 degree turns, so that if you keep going in a straight line, you're no longer on the right street.
And, of course, 3rd St Rd, if you follow it through a couple of name changes, eventually merges with 2nd St.
49: Pittsburgh has many of those. They aren't small streets either.
Oh, Boston has some of those, too. Except they don't quite make 90 degree turns, because that seldom happens here.
I think they were originally winding country roads that developed into city streets. At least, I hope that is the reason.
mail delivery in an era before people had fully cottoned to numbered houses/i>
There are a couple of streets in Hong Kong on which houses are numbered in order of construction. 1 is halfway down, 2 is a bit further, 3 is on the other side of 1 from 2 and so on.
I have no idea how the postmen manage.
53: Someone (a classics prof) once told me that the non-straight roads in Westchester (all very old roads) were basically paved Indian trails. I've no idea if this is true.
55: I thought I'd mentioned this before, but I can't find it on google. In Durham, I met a woman who told me that she was at a party talking to a man. She said that the streets of downtown Durham were made by letting a herd of pigs loose and paving the resulting trails. The man she was talking to replied that he was the traffic engineer who designed those street and would everybody please stop picking on him.
51: Doesn't Pittsburgh have the excuse that the roads have to go around mountains?
Are they trying different triptans? Sumatriptan means the difference between days of misery and functionality to me.
The myth about Boston streets is that they were the cow paths from when people pastured cattle downtown. It is definitely a myth, and detracts from how interesting what really happened is: the city used to be a small peninsula with three big hills. They didn't grid the streets because otherwise they would have been too steep. Then, they started filling in the marsh around the peninsula. For each additional chunk they filled in, they were faced with what had previously been a coastal road (so obviously not a natural entry point for a grid) so they just laid out the streets how they made sense for that section. Eventually, the original hills got (somewhat) flattened. Later, big chunks of the city were demolished and made into superblocks. So it's a palimpsest, and you can learn things about how the city evolved historically by looking at the places where the street grid fails to make sense. Which is really fun to think about when you're wandering around utterly lost!
Urpleville has some streets that make 90 degree turns
I live just off of a street that does this: Old Chapel Hill Road. If you don't make the 90-degree turn, you end up on University Drive. To make it worse yet, Durham also has the following *completely different* streets: Chapel Hill Road, Chapel Hill Street, Chapel Hill Boulevard, Chapel Hill Boulevard Service Road, and Chapel Drive.
Also, the rolling English drunkard didn't make the rolling English road.
But the "paved Indian trails" story has a certain inherent plausibility. The trails were there, and presented the easiest way from A to B, provided that was where you wanted to go.
57: I've always assumed that the version we have here is related to having so many hills. ("Go C/nc/nnat/ straight," a friend insists directions should say if you're following the road but also sort of turning.)
I'm really annoyed by the name of the luxury yarn brand/store A Verb for Keeping Warm because wtf yarn is a noun and knitting isn't necessarily for keeping warm and I just get unreasonably huffy about this. Am I becoming my mother?
Taiwan has one very nice convention: the road between Taibei and Yilan is called the Beiyi road, after the two ends.
57: Pittsburgh doesn't have mountains. It's an eroded plateau. The roads do have to go around various topographical features.
When two approximately perpendicular roads meet and the name changes if you go straight and doesn't change if you turn, it seems churlish to blame the landscape. It probably is the fault of the landscape (i.e. the road going straight is newer and required a great deal of extensive fill or a bridge), but you have to think historically before that becomes obvious.
What's it called when you can't remember a word, so you just say "bla" instead?
I was thinking that was called "santorum," but I Googled that and it turns out to mean something else.
a decision was made early in the history of Boston to change the names of streets every couple of blocks (which, if any of this is actually true, and not misinformation I'm passing on, allegedly aided mail delivery in an era before people had fully cottoned to numbered houses)
Reminiscent of Japan, where addressing is done by taking names of or assigning names to mini-neighborhoods, giving each block therein a number, and two more levels of numbering for buildings in the block and apartments/offices within the building - so Azabujuban 2-3-10 is the 10th space of the 3rd building of the 2nd block of the Azabujuban area. Most minor streets (IMX, this may vary by city) aren't named.
My daily commute used to have me walking up and down a street that was where you ended up if you got off the highway, so I ended up giving directions to a lot of confused people. The most impressive was someone who had a nice printed set of map directions that she had followed exactly, and was very confused about why she wasn't at her hotel. It quickly became clear that she had asked Mapquest [this was back in the day] for directions to NNN Auburn St. instead of NNN Mt. Auburn St.
Minor mistakes like that can ruin your entire navigational experience.
My Taiwan address was Beiyi Rd., Sec. 3, Lane xx, house yy, #zz.
60: If that is what I'm thinking of, that isn't so bad. The road is going back to its original direction.
Also, holy shit have they built a ton a new houses near where I used to live. I can't even find the route I used to jog. And I think somebody put in a new lake.
on which houses are numbered in order of construction.
Czech villages are still like this. Prague's districts used to be numbered the same way, older buildings still carry these addresses in addition to the different consecutive street numebring. The system before that was decorative signs-- three storks, a millwheel,
29: I did more of that when I was younger, and do more now when I've been hit with lots of things to think about and have used up most of my processing power.
In the the Cartesian grid system of central Mannheim, the streets are not named at all. The blocks are identified by their coordinates, and the house numbers go clockwise around the block.
There were certainly roads in my home town in Scotland that were paved medieval cow trails/droving routes. It is a bit older than Boston, though.
re: 72
That makes sense, actually. My wife's village doesn't have streets, as far as I can tell. All the houses just have 'Village XX' where XX is a number, and they don't seem particularly ordered.
72: aha, that explains it! I always wondered about the two house numbers in Prague.
There were certainly roads in my home town in Scotland that were paved medieval cow trails/droving routes.
Paved? Wait, when did that happen?
re: 76
Falkirk has a wheel, I'll have you know.
[Although I'm more from the northern fringes of Falkirk, tbh]
77.1 - very good. Chuckled out loud at that.
The house I was born in, a villa built in 1919 by my great-grandfather, then kept as a combination shrine to the past and boardinghouse for Japanese visitors by my malevolent grandmother, has just recently been torn down. The heavy furniture was made from the same wood as the door frames and some of the paneling.
It had nothing but bad memories for my dad who inherited it in the course of an unpleasant divorce from his second wife. I don't fault him for selling, at all. Still, the wife attacked the wall of one room with a sword, then the new owner flooded it to get around historical preservation regulations, and now there will be a six flat there, after the trees in the garden are cut down. The past has to make way for the present, but looking at the particulars....
So it's a palimpsest, and you can learn things about how the city evolved historically by looking at the places where the street grid fails to make sense.
Sortakinda relevant: a friend of mine in Boston with obsessive tendencies has started collecting bricks and has a brick blog. Apparently you can also learn a lot about the history of the city from bricks. And brick blogging.
79: alameida, look to your laurels; another supplier of bizarre gothic family history has emerged.
I LOVE MY BRICK
a brick blog
The straw blog and stick blog didn't work out.
53: Tremont Street heading to the South End!
has started collecting bricks and has a brick blog
LINK PLEASE.
I ended up giving directions to a lot of confused people
Twice recently I've been asked by people in cars over near Somerville Hospital if they were anywhere near Harvard Square yet. In both cases I gave them directions through a couple of intersections in the right direction and told them to ask again after that.
I am slightly reluctant to link it on here but will send you a link. The wife of the brick blogger (my 1st-order friend; blogger is friend-in-law) cheerily told me in the presence of blogger "you should read it! Most of it is really dull but not all of it!" Blogger smiled and agreed.
For whatever reason, most of us are not to be trusted with information about bricks.
Venice has arbitrary five-figure numbers rather than addresses. Fortunately, they're unlikely to ever need to renumber out of the address-space due to geography.
Ha, no, I just...people seem to track hits back here a lot and I was having a little paroxysm of anonymity-fear?
Some of Tweety's born-and-raised-in-California friends who came to our wedding were disturbed all the brick architecture out here.
Substitute "blah" for "bricks" in the blog name and people can find it themselves.
Actually it turns out to be pretty easy to find even without any hints. What a twee name! What impressively dry-seeming text at a first pass!
I mean, profiles of historical brick manufacturers? That's some deep cuts.
Oh ok. It's blahfrog.wordpress
Some of Tweety's born-and-raised-in-California friends who came to our wedding were disturbed all the brick architecture out here.
Yeah, wandering around the North End when I was out there a few years ago, all the brick buildings definitely weirded me out. You guys are so screwed if the New Madrid fault ever cuts loose again!
New Madrid reaches all the way up here?! Shit.
You thought you could escape me?
Hey, if it got bells ringing in Boston the last time...
It looks like the earthquake situation in the Northeast is more complicated than that:
The past has to make way for the present
WRONG. As long as there's air in our lungs, we can fight.
The house story in 79 sounds fascinating. In the Czech Republic, right, so it was never expropriated?
The geologist's reaction to a lot of old brick buildings might instead be "hey, scant quaking here for centuries!"
The guy in 100 seems a little bit too skeptical or something. IANAG but I thought the idea that intraplate earthquakes occur along preexisting fault lines was pretty much normal science these days.
I was upset by the amount of concrete in DC. It became a metaphor for the oppressive power of The Man. I walked past one floodlit city-block-sized monstrosity and all it was was a minor subsection of the Department of the Interior, the Subsection of Inland Waterways or something.
Consensus at AGU, on whether the massive earthquakes around the rest of the Pacific indicate increased risk AK-CA; no, we couldn't increase the expected risk, the big ones could hit any minute. As ever.
Main AGU is in SF, as ever, adding piquancy to all this.
Yes, same rules, different players. Inspectors were bribed in the fifties to sign off on the building being a shambles with a small habitable core when in fact it was fine, just temporarily defaced.
My grandfather pulled this off before his vicious divorce with my grandmother, in which the kids had to choose sides and testify, after which everyone continued cohabiting; that last part was pretty much SOP in Prague, since not enough housing and complicated paperwork. My aunt responded to her childhood environment from which the clearest escape was shit work in the countryside (daughter of a political prisoner) with suicide/overdose at 22. My dad found her, in the chilly attic rooms with a nice view; these were the part of the house he could lock against his deranged not-so-soon-to-be ex who wanted to drive him off and keep the place.
So a nice place to look at or sit in, but the less you knew about it the better. I mock my mother's ongoing claims that there were ghosts, my aunt was not the first untimely death there.
Some of Tweety's born-and-raised-in-California friends who came to our wedding were disturbed all the brick architecture out here.
And all the piles of raked leaves! A wildfire could strike any minute!
Migraines are associated with aphasia too, right?
Yeah. I (rarely) get the aphasia but not the headache. The aphasia part is scary; I can't talk even though the thought is as clear as it ever is. I just can't say the word for the thing, and cycle through other words that start with same letter until I hit on the word I meant.
I should do more experiments and see if I could type the word. But I'm usually lying down in a dark room to avert the headache, and not feeling all empirical.
I did not know about you condition. Sorry.
I've got a HS friend with similar symptoms, caused by a car accident. I wish there was something I could do to help.
Very occasionally (like, once per decade) I get this thing that I'm told is a migraine blind-spot without the migraine pain. The blind-spot covers a part of my visual field in the shape of spatter-pattern. I can't see what's within the spatter, not because it's black, like when you close your eyes, but because it seems 'not there', like the part of the world behind your head. Last time it happened, it started with my thinking "Is that man winking or does he have only one eye, with the skin grown over the socket?".
I had something similar once, where I had no pain but slight nausea and my vision was filled with speckles. I assumed it was either a migraine or a stroke, so I excused myself from the soccer game I was in.
OT: Why does the internet/Google ads now think that I am an Indian woman? All of a sudden I'm getting nothing but ads for Indian woman's clothing on various blogs. What is a Churidar Kameez?
If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
I always thought "Robert Halford" was a weird pseud for a Brahmin Gujarati chick.
143 Maybe you got whatever it is some asshole laced the bit of 'shit' I bought at the English Garden one long ago summer night. Take a few tokes, go back down to the bar with some acquaintances (friends weren't out that night), thinking damn this hash sucks, I can barely feel it. Ten minutes later a short splitting headache, and when it fades I've got kaleidoscope eyes. Nothing but pretty rotating swirls of colors, sometimes flowery, sometimes geometric. I inched toward the wall and collapsed. After a half hour or fortyfive minutes of panic (how does one get home when blind, how am I going to explain this to my parents), another splitting headache and I'm totally fine, if a bit shaken up.
For 35 years, I've wondered what some stuff was, but now, thanks to magic of the internet, I see that it was N-ethyl-3-piperidylbenzilate. Do not recommend.
Nothing but rotating swirls, like the phosphenes you get when you rub your closed eyes? Freaky. (I was completely panicked when the blind-spot thing first happened.)
my mom took a mysterious drug once that had her, my dad, and his childhood best friend-turned-smuggler al "seabird," tripping for three days. and she had to take care of me the whole time (I was...under 1, I think). she said when she woke up on the third day and all the could see was "wheels of fire within wheels" she was hella pissed off at al. I sometimes wondered about these things. where are these lost drugs from the past?
116: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING A KSHATRIYA THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
I've never experienced aphasia with my migraines - I once continued work on a document for work with lights and monitor turned off - but the ones I get are pretty mild all around.
It wasn't quite like what you get from rubbing your eyes. I really am talking about a full on kaleidoscope. It was really, really bizarre. If I'd known in advance what the effects would be and was in a safe place, it might have even been enjoyable in a try it once kind of way. This just freaked the hell out of me. I didn't do anymore hash for a whole month.
There is a group of people in this airport whose excitement over the existence of a Sbarro's is really excessive.
how does one get home when blind
Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late has useful advice on this.
124: It's OK as long as it's their first date.
(Presumably at least one first date has involved air travel. Huh.)
210: PIKHAL and TIKHAL. Coulda been synthetic mescaline or MDA or various other things.
Wait it's PIHKAL and TIHKAL, sorry.
Those "little" one-letter mistakes kill people, you know. One hydroxyl more or less and BOOM! Dead.
117 could have been a lot of things, but, hm, 2CB, maybe?
PIHKAL and TIHKAL. Up until relatively recently, any designer psychedelic you were likely to find would have been synthesized based on its appearance in those books. (Legalish or previously legal drugs like GHB and Ketamine excluded, but those aren't really psychedelics.) They also include things like MDA and synthetic mescaline, which are somewhat older (sort of the first generation of psychedelics; MDA led to the much improved MDMA, which you might have heard of). The landscape has changed in the last few years with things like bath salts (nobody really knows what's in them (and it varies a lot) but it's probably nothing from Shulgin) and new synthetic cannabinoids from underground Chinese labs.
I like that I wrote "120" as "210". I'M SO HIGH.
MDA led to the much improved MDMA, which you might have heard of
Trivia: MDMA was first synthesized 100 years ago. (I love telling people that; it's way earlier than they'd usually guess.)
I think it was alleged to be some kind of synthetic mescaline? but maybe that was a different time, and this was some string of letters. al brought it from CA in his plane (otherwise full of more saleable coke iirc) so who knows; californians and them crazy drugs they synthesize.
Probably was. Synthetic mescaline was relatively
common even in the '70s.
Come to think of it, it's possible that MDA is, or is very closely related to, synthetic mescaline. I think that might be right.
134: people in the 'teens should have been having way more fun. fuck this great war bullshit, it's dance party time!!
I think it was alleged to be some kind of synthetic mescaline? but maybe that was a different time, and this was some string of letters. al brought it from CA in his plane (otherwise full of more saleable coke iirc) so who knows
You ... brought it from oudemia's significant other ... in his plane?
138: A worthy of the church I grew up in was in college in the late 1920s. He and a buddy threw a few dance parties, bought a Ford roadster, brought it to Europe and spent several months just driving around and seeing stuff and partying.
I think there were almost certainly more, and almost certainly way more fun, dance parties in the 1910-1920 period than there were in the MMDA fueled late 80s-mid 90s. People* just danced more.
*We are talking about an inter-temporal young white person comparison here, right?
139: admittedly a little confusing. I'll just call him al seabird from now on. the state of california can remain CA in a pinch. sadly, al seabird died in a plane crash. I know you are all astonished.
142: It certainly sounds like the "salt-and-pepper" clubs, where and when they existed, produced that little extra frisson that marks a really good party.
There was a bit on the local public TV station's ongoing documentary series about vanished local structures that told the story of these three African-American guys who had opened a salt-and-pepper club somewhere just outside the city limits, and they had to reinforce the floor because the dancing got so intense.
I would say that the 1920s-early 1950s were probably peak "fun dance party" for white American youths, and it's been pretty much a decline ever since.
In other words, either TV or racial equality ruined it.
Should probably put "increasing" or something in front of "racial equality."
I think you guys didn't go dancing enough in the 90s.
I was afraid I'd have to line dance, so I just made a blanket "no dancing" policy.
now going to my psychiatrist gave me a fucking panic attack even though we didn't talk about anything disturbing. except that last night my husband handed me a graphic novel to check out during the first three pages of which a nine-year-old gets raped. I ask you. I specifically asked him if the author was mean to his female characters (having mildly disliked his previous work for this reason) and my husband said no. is he actually a robot?
she has another office, I guess I could go there and never mention my childhood ever again, that would work for me. unilateral decision to heavily sedate myself. plus from sitting down to eat dinner with my in-laws in an attempt to be social I have gained weight. look, if I'm going to get paratyphoid fucking fever the least I can do is come out thin. I hate everything.
I'm willing to grant that the 20s were probably more awesome. at least no one was wearing jumpsuits.
or sucking on candy pacifiers, or wearing dr. seuss cat-in-the-hat hats.
Also no one was getting burned on E deals and only getting sudafed for their $20. I suppose there was the possibility of getting served wood alcohol, but probably that didn't happen too often.
154: I, myself, own several, but they don't work on everyone. I have no doubt you totally rock a jumpsuit, tweety.
If I was not such a stick-in-the-mud, I could be at a DJ night right now where the DJ is very likely wearing a jumpsuit. But she's DJ'ing again tomorrow at a more optimal bar, so I'll go to that. I have to drink quite a lot of ethyl alcohol products before I can forget that don't nobody want to see me do no dancing.
Speedsuit, Dean. I don't want to hear you say "jumpsuit," not ever again!
One of my friends told a story last week, between splitting-couple bickerings, about stealing laboratory ether for recreational use in college. I did not repeat the story about selling my blood for pocket money.
I did not repeat the story about selling my blood for pocket money.
Is it not common in other parts of the country? Me and my buddies did the plasma donation thing a bunch of times.
Speaking of splitting, if a building collapses on your parked car, who pays for the damage. Assume the owner of the building has no insurance or wealth but that the local government never formally seized it for nonpayment of taxes.
120 etc an overdose of DOM (STP) can last a week.
Look it up at Erowid or whatever if you want
158: my brother and all his friends donated blood/plasma for extra cash in college. as we all know, I used the stolen lab ether to make meth. ok, and just get high on, sometimes, but it was better value for money to make the meth, sell it, and then buy heroin with the proceeds. I must that we gave good value for money. "on the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene/but yours was kitchen clean." we didn't even cut it with anything.
that I don't feel so bad about, but I think I'm pretty fucked karmically for giving so many people heroin for the first time. what proportion of them ended up significantly hooked later? 10% at least. I was like a fucking evangelist moron.
155 I have no doubt you totally rock a jumpsuit, tweety.
After all, have you ever seen a jetpack without a matching jumpsuit?
OT bleg: can someone tell me if there are any shows that don't suck available through either Netflix streaming of Hulu Plus (I think that's what it's called). We canceled cable a couple months back. It was fine at first, but now we're tired and need to be entertained.
British IT Crowd, Kansas City Confidential, or Dead Man
165: On Netflix, we watch a lot of The Universe series, along with National Geographic's stuff. Party Down is available streaming and hilarious.
Sherlock, which was discussed here recently. And yes, Party Down.
165: Breaking Bad is a pretty good for a show without any sympathetic characters. There's also Twin Peaks, Arrested Development, Rocky & Bullwinkle, TNG, and David Mitchell's shows. All are on Netflix.
I've been wondering whether I should watch any of Downton Abbey, Portlandia, or Breaking Bad.
Weeds, up to a point. A point beyond which I watched many episodes.
Oh generally rather than right now. Don't know, since an agreement between Netflix and their main vendor of good recent stuff, Starz, is about to lapse. Party Down which is very funny will be gone.
Downton Abbey is soapy as all hell, but the first season (and the recent Christmas episode) are great. People are right that the second season is not nearly as good.
165: Community? We're watching Homeland, which I'm pretty sure isn't available on any streaming sources yet.
At least last time I checked, every Joss Whedon show ever was on Netflix streaming. So is Mad Men.
Community doesn't stream on Netflix. I guess it's on Hulu+, though?
Almost everything that comes up when I google "jetpack jumpsuit" is Boba Fett-related.
I'm liking Friday Night Lights, and there seem to be a gazillion episodes. Parks & Rec got good after the first season, apparently. And Twin Peaks is on Netflix streaming. And the new Doctor Who, but not the most recent season or two. Um, Damages?
Parks & Rec got good after the first season, apparently.
Heck of.
I'm liking Friday Night Lights
You're in good company with me and catherine. Well, catherine's good company, anyway.
Parks & Rec got good after the first season, apparently.
I thought I was safe giving up on that one after the first couple episodes.
Mad for Friday Night Lights.
Weeds was basically good for two seasons, right essear? I gave up somewhere after that.
Veronica Mars?
I can't heartily recommend The Hills (according to AWB I watched too much it) but there's a ton of it on there. If you like watching stupid people with two facial expressions go to restaurants and not eat, you're in for a treat.
Oh and this came up recently: three seasons of Damages are on there and they are trashy fun.
Damages, Party Down, and Downtown Abbey. Noted. The others we've seen. Thanks, all.
Also, in the spirit of reciprocity, you know what show is on Netflix streaming and isn't good? Bones.
That said, Veronica Mars? Friday Night Lights? Mad Men? You think we haven't seen those shows? What do you take us for? Savages?
Next you'll be telling me we should try Buffy or Battlestar Gallactica (that Portlandia skit was funny, by the way).
186, 187: There's this great show about cops in Baltimore you should watch...
Next you'll be telling me there's a series about mobsters. Mobsters! As if! Done to death, right?
There's not a lot of Portlandia to watch, so if you're only about 5 or six episodes interested, you'll see all they've done so far.
Weirdly, I cannot connect to unfogged right now from my home internet from this computer. But I can get to it on other networks or on my home network with a different computer.
Huh, season 2 of Portlandia has just started, apparently.
Terriers, Von Wafer. One beautiful season of updated Southern California noir. Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James make it look so easy and so fun even while it's heartbreaking and murderous.
Misfits is interesting. And Mrs. K-sky and I are enjoying the hell out of Revenge, though it can be a wee bit goofy.
Sons of Anarchy. Some good stuff there, although I've been sidelined. I think Justified may have just started streaming, too.
(And definitely Party Down, definitely the first two seasons of Veronica Mars, and absoposidefdefinitely Friday Night Lights. Only the first season is a full 22-episode network order -- the second one was shortened by the strike, and the three following were all 15-eps per the Direct TV agreement.)
(Upon rereading -- it turns out you're not savages. Carry on, then.)
How funny; I just finished catching up with Downton Abbey and wrote a post about it for TGW with a response to its soapiness. But yeah it's both very good and hella soapy.
Am starting to take Topamax now for my Cluster headaches. Been avoiding it for years since I've been attempting to do grad school too and my impression has been that Topamax and grad school don't mix well.
But I'm sick enough at this point that I can't go to school anymore so why not try the stupid-making pills, right? I'm up to 3/4 dose so far and feeling pretty messed up from the side effects and not seeing any benefits yet. Blech. How bad does this stuff get??
people in the 'teens should have been having way more fun. fuck this great war bullshit, it's dance party time!!
Both sides of the war they were doing enough coke to sink a battleship. During the war they were just using other stuff to sink battleships. Same difference.
Portlandia. Pretty sure I will hate it.
193: I wouldn't mind reading a comparison-and-contrast of the genres of "soap" and "pulp," and the respective histories of eternal return thereof.
Weeds was basically good for two seasons, right essear? I gave up somewhere after that.
The series has rather sharply diverted from its "weed is harmless" theme if one considers the number of murders to which the protagonist has been a party to at this point. I like Andy, though.
Apparently no one here checked out Wilfred upon my reccomendation? It's SO GOOD. So good.
So is Louie, Party Down, Community, Parks & Rec, 30 Rock, and everything else.
17: Oh do I wish I'd read that 6 months ago. Got sent to the neuro following a horrible headache that I really don't even think was a migraine and, yes, it fucked up my shit fast.
It is out of the realm of possibilities that someone may have tried Wilfred and disliked it, and is keeping quiet to spare my feelings.
Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late has useful advice on this.
Not on many other things either, being a book whose plot is entirely reliant on the protagonist, someone who as a resident of this here United Kingdom has access to unlimited, free healthcare without even having to fill in a fucking form, waking up blind and never even considering getting any medical assistance, although he does have a set-to with the job centre about getting extra sick pay.
as an effort to break out of reactionary stereotypes of the working class it's not a triumph, although it is a great example of why you shouldn't read books that win mainstream literary prizes.
I didn't try Wilfred so that I didn't have to keep quiet to spare your feelings if I didn't like it.
come to think of it, if you have to have a huge PLOTFAIL like that in order to make 1980s Glasgow seem bleak, y'r doin it rong. I mean, Glasgow. In a recession.
200: sorry di. doctors tend to hand out mad strong anti-psychotics all the time, just to see what will happen.
Weeds might very well be the darkest most nihilistic series in the history of television. I like all the main characters. It really has a radical comic picaresque tone that I love, and coincidences and deus-ex-machinas and blind fucking undeserved luck are part of the point.
I missed season 4 but caught the last.
I caught 3-4 episodes of the original Aussie "Wilfred" whatever it was called. Weirded me out.
bob, I hope you're not going to let Uncle Andy's self-abuse instructions go without a Marxist interpretation.
waking up blind and never even considering getting any medical assistance
No, he goes to the Central Medical. According to wiki anyway. I haven't read it, being another believer in avoiding stuff that wins prizes. (Exception: Wolf Hall, which was really not bad.)
It's a very long time since I read it, but that was the salient impression I got - "didn't anyone dial 999?"
Apparently not. Which is weird.
Just class it with all those bad horror films that make you wonder "but why doesn't she turn the light on/take her mobile phone/tell someone where she's going?"
Skimming through Alyssa Rosenberg's posts (I read everything she writes), I must qualify 206 by saying that apparently there is a lot of comic picaresque amoral television going around these days. Two Broke Girls skip a bar tab type thing.
This could be studied, it feels very different from the previous era when we made John Dillinger a folk hero. I expect some type of Hayes code to come soon.
999 = 911, I presume.
Going, going, gone
Now I dialed 911 a long time ago
Don't you see how late they're reactin'
They only come and they come when they wanna
So get the morgue embalm the goner
They don't care 'cause they stay paid anyway
They teach ya like an ace they can't be betrayed
I know you stumble with no use people
If your life is on the line they you're dead today
Late comings with the late comin' stretcher
That's a body bag in disguise y'all betcha
I call 'em body snatchers quick they come to fetch ya?
With an autopsy ambulance just to dissect ya
They are the kings 'cause they swing amputation
Lose your arms, your legs to them it's compilation
I can prove it to you watch the rotation
It all adds up to a funky situation
So get up get, get get down
911 is a joke in yo town
Get up, get, get, get down
Late 911 wears the late crown
911 is a joke
Wolf Hall totally sucked it IMO, and I was well disposed towards the premise.
All the shows everyone mentions above are very good. Special shout out to Terriers, and I also like Sons of Anarchy but think I'm the only one who watches it. Justified is so fucking great and got better over its run (as did SOA). One show not mentioned above that I think VW would like is The League, though i cant tell if it's too bro-ish for mainstream Unfogged sensibility, it's very well done. Amazing how good FX has been recently as a network.
I haven't seen Downton Abbey yet; do I absolutely need to do Season 1 before diving into this season?
Did anyone else watch Shameless? I enjoyed it, but was essentially high every time I saw it so my judgement may be in question.
I also like Sons of Anarchy but think I'm the only one who watches it.
I watched series 1. It was OK but pretty soapy; not sure I'll watch series 2.
215 -- it gets a lot better, stays a bit soapy, definitely never gets to the level of great but stays enjoyable.
202, 204, 208, 209: Interesting. I didn't think of it as a piece of realism - more kind of Beckettian in intent (as someone somewhere on the internet has said).
(In any case, the 'useful advice' thing was a joke.)
Ditto on Sons of Anarchy, soapy but OK and entertaining. Although my wife fancies Charlie Hunnam somewhat (but only in scuzzy beard mode) so it's one of the few US tv imports she'll watch.
re: 213.last
Yes. The first is much better than the second. The second is Acorn Antiques level hilarious/bad, though. Some of the plots are like some kind of fevered soap/Rattigan/farce hybrid, but all done with a straight face. The second is entertaining as fuck, it's just not any good. The first is quite decent soapy drama, but well written and performed.
Troll Hunter was a nice SF find on streaming Netflix. I enjoyed seeing the local scenery. I'm catching up on 30 Rock and I also found there were some Twilight Zone episodes I had never seen before, or saw and forgot.
If anyone has recommendations for good SF (not the ghosty stuff though) on streaming Netflicks please let me know. I'd appreciate it. I have a fascination for SF.
I'm going to sleep, but somebody should be able to get this to 404.
The second is entertaining as fuck, it's just not any good. The first is quite decent soapy drama, but well written and performed.
Agreed! Though I would say "highly addictive" as well as "quite decent". The recent Christmas special (so, after all of series 2) is a happy return to form, in my option.