"They also have never been told they come from monkeys, which really does something for their self-esteem."
I have been saying this non-stop since she quoted it.
I mean, keep tweaking! Quoting MS is always the right thing to do.
Does "tweaker" now primarily connote methamphetamine use?
Today's 18 year olds have always known what "tweaker" means.
My ex used to always say, "Are you reading that penguin blog again?" if I started laughing while reading on my computer.
||
We have a new provost. In this first week of classes, she has:
1. Changed a boring bi-weekly meeting that I have to a attend, to a monthly meeting.
2. Gotten everybody $$ for teaching overload credits. I've never gotten paid extra for teaching an overload before.
I LOVE HER.
|>
Did "tweaker" mean something else before it meant methamphetamine user?
Cut a tennis ball (who plays tennis? Real Simple readers, I guess) in half because, in addition to being unable to wait, you've never heard of towels, dishclothes, or gloves?
10: Person who likes to fix things by making repeated minor adjustments.
12: But the tennis ball fits over the bulb perfectly. Perfectly! It's clearly a product of design.
Also, should a reader of Real Simple still be allowed to have incandescent lamps? Or am I mixing up the demographics?
12: In the time it would take you to locate a tennis ball and saw it in half, the light bulb would likely have cooled off.
The average reader of Real Simple has several dozen old tennis balls employed around the house in various roles as improvised somethings or other. Tennis balls and toilet paper tubes are the go-to items for the household improviser if my occasional reading informs me correctly. With those two plus some sharp scissors, tape, and colored paper you can make pretty much anything you need, up to and including a stand mixer.
But the tennis ball fits over the bulb perfectly. Perfectly! It's clearly a product of design.
Intelligent design. Providential, even.
Real Simple's working version of the word simple is often staggeringly complicated. It makes me feel like I'm watching some other species at the zoo sometimes.
Still more accurate than Entertainment Weekly's working version of "entertainment."
Isn't simple in this case meant to mean stupid?
Doesn't that explain everything?
19 is truth.
I loved this bit especially: "What an amazing explosion of creationist food-smug. If smug were jism, that would be bukkake right there. Marie, I hope your children grow up to be Twinkie-eating Wiccans."
I now want to start calling myself a Twinkie-eating Wiccan, even though I'm really neither, just so everyone knows I'm the opposite of Marie.
I also like how she works both jism and Twinkie eating into one paragraph. One must applaud the (white, gooey) imagery.
OT: Is getting garter tattooed on your thigh a thing now?
23: Only if you are a twinkie eating Wiccan.
Somebody on the bus just got knocked clean to the floor by a sudden stop. I don't think I've seen that before.
This should be combined with that weird practical joke column. "Make a fake cut-out tennis ball out of material that doesn't insulate at all, and give it to your spouse next time a light bulb needs changing. The look on his face as he burns the fuck out of his fingers will be priceless."
I use the vise grips on stubborn light bulbs.
I had to use the pliers to remove the remains of a light bulb that I had inadvertently and unknowingly smashed my head into at some point, which was sorta dangling by a piece of glass. Damndest thing, I must've hit it just exactly right so that it didn't shatter completely, or crunch into my head and cut me, or do anything but just hang there. It was freaky.
Someday I will have to hike that chandelier up a couple of links on its chain. It's a hazard to navigation right now. I'm not even so tall, and I'm constantly whacking it.
That was an especially good MiMiSmaPa though.
I'm not even so tall, and I'm constantly whacking it.
Outside of what is related to biological maturity, I don't think height has much to do with it.
Children of the Mineshaft aside, Nora seems like one of the coolest kids in the world.
I'd never heard the term "tweaker" before. I did eventually figure out that Real Simple was not a catalog, so it's not like I've lived a sheltered life.
One or two houses ago, the Flip-Pater and I would regularly knock our heads against the light fixture on the second-floor landing with a rousing "God damn it!" Why didn't we replace said fixture with something less obstacular? None of your business Because we are lazy not handy, that's why.
I have a nice little scar right between my eyes from an overly tightened light fixture that, instead of unscrewing when I applied torque, exploded in two big pieces.
34: that's a very strange way of describing a bar brawl.
Because we are lacked tennis balls.lazy not handy
Because we are lazy not handy lacked tennis balls have a high tolerance for pain.
34: I have no scar but a mental one from the time I pulled the top (and mos of the neck) off of a wine bottle whilst using a manual corkscrew... Laydeez.
38: In much the same way I cut the inside of my lip pretty badly opening a bottle of root beer with my teeth in the [large university in New England] Science Center, demonstrating my unfitness for a career in science, ladies....
Baby O knocked the stem of my wine glass clean off yesterday by forcing a copy of Goodnight Moon at me.
Which is why we always drink wine from jelly jars. There are occasional spills, but those thing hardly ever break.
Sippy cup lids are an even more obvious solution.
I forget the threads where this was already mentioned, but it looks like the shooting this morning was just a regular murder combined with some bad aim. It doesn't look like a shooting spree. Hooray, I think.
44: It doesn't increase my confidence in the NYPD.
As someone (I'm not sure what the protocol is for someone with a different name here than Twitter) said elsewhere, the fact that the NYPD did nearly all the shooting doesn't say a lot for the "armed Libertarian hero" hypothesis.
That argument really could go the other way so easily. If the police shoot that badly, how could a libertarian make things worse?
Yeah, I mean, that construction worker's interference put a whole bunch of people in the hospital. Not very smooth.
Anyway, some guy wanted to shoot one particular person and things got out of hand. That's the sort of thing that can happen almost anywhere.
Ah, an "execution-style" massacre.
If the last report is correct, the murderer only shot at one person.
I'm now way too excited about saying "Calm down, tweaker." I already know that I won't have the patience to wait for a really great moment. YES I CAN SEE THAT THIS IS ALANIS-IRONIC.
Right, is it really so hard to get an oven mitt or something? Is a tennis ball often closer at hand? And a..a...tennis ball saw?
At the risk of coming off as someone who is secretly always watching Friends "I had it on the other day while I was eating" and there was a bit about Joey playing the hapless person in the first minutes of an infomercial who can't pour milk without a special device.
"A regular murder... Hooray, I think."
Very True.
I'm glad I'm old and will die soon.
the hapless person in the first minutes of an infomercial who can't pour milk without a special device.
I like devices for making tea. Apparently this is/was an actual product. Or there's this.
Kid D really does watch 'Friends' all the time, and she came in the other night whilst 'Episodes' was to hear -
Lawyer: did you have sexual relations with her?
Matt Le Blanc: does anal count?
Lawyer: yes.
MLB: well yes then.
At which she laughed and said, "sounds like Joey!"
I am choosing to assume she didn't understand.
I just clicked through. Someone should tell Mimi and Nora that Weird Al is still going strong.
60: Someone did, via Twitter, I believe.
|| Latest on the Empire State shooting: one person shot by perpetrator, perpetrator shot by police, NINE BYSTANDERS also shot by police by accident.
Might be better if the NYPD had just stayed at home... |>
That's what I was saying above. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Not a spree killing.
NINE BYSTANDERS also shot by police by accident.
Three shot. Six had some minor wounds from bullet fragments. Video here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYWgrHwrlf8
Some less than stellar tactics on that approach and shooting, but it's a tough spot to be in. Busy street and it happened fast.
What percentage of the bullets went into the suspect? I can't find that and it seems like an important metric.
I haven't heard a number on that yet. Some of these quotes from a supposed former NYPD guy give me pause.
If bullets fired by police or fragments struck civilians, then the officers were also lucky to be alive, since bullets could have boomeranged in their direction, said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. O'Donnell, a former police officer and police trainer... He said officers are trained to fire only as a last resort and must fire multiple shots because only one in five generally hit the intended target.
Boomerang bullets? Man, worst design ever. And one in five is a scary number. Tighten that shit up.
So I and my work colleagues form a small cadre who try to figure out how to fix some of the most fucked up situations faced by a large federal body. Im wondering if moonlighting is less a good idea and more morally required.
66: NYC has more fit people. Maybe the targets are bigger in other places.
Wait, you can get injured by a (fired) bullet without getting shot? I am fascinated by this.
So I and my work colleagues form a small cadre who try to figure out how to fix some of the most fucked up situations faced by a large federal body.
This sounds like the elevator pitch for a new show on CBS.
But in the movies, when a guy is shot he always flies backwards. This guy just sort of falls over.
Anyway, my guess is that if you got hit with a bullet fragment fired by somebody committing a crime, the NYPD would say you got shot.
Moonlighting for the NYPD, that is.
72: yes, it's like that with less satisfyin resolutions and more speeches by figureheads.
Video. Shooting one-handed in a crowd is probably not the best idea.
77: I cannot make out the "one-handed" (even after watching the video several times! I'm sure I'd make a horrible eyewitness). What I can make out is that Johnson pulled his gun on the cops: did he think he could shoot them and then get away? or was this 'suicide by cop'? or perhaps neither of the above (an adrenalin-fuelled, hair-trigger response?)?
Cop on the left standing still between the planters is using two hands, but cop on the right in the middle of the sidewalk is only using his right hand while also backing away. I'm guessing cop #1, who was closer, using two hands, and not moving was not responsible for most of the misses.
Wait, you can get injured by a (fired) bullet without getting shot? I am fascinated by this.
Besides ricochets there's bullet "splatter" if it hits a hard object and breaks up. If you go to a range where they shoot steel silhouettes the ground around them is littered with pieces of bullets. The copper jacket can spit off some nasty jagged little projectiles. And if the bullets are hitting concrete there can be pieces of that flying around too.
I cannot make out the "one-handed"
Like SP said if you look at the one on the right he pretty clearly has his other arm down while he's firing and backing out of the frame. There's some seriously bad tactics going on there.
Ah, okay, I see it now (but only with these cues, and not that I doubted Eggplant, btw, it's just that I don't know what to look for).
Needless to say, the NRA absolutists who want every man, woman and child in America to conceal and carry are plainly nuts and/or have watched too many late-night John Wayne film reruns. If trained police officers can employ bad tactics in the heat of the moment, imagine a street full of rank amateurs, fully armed, with bullets and bullet fragments ricocheting here, there, and everywhere...
The question that interests me: when Johnson left his apartment the other morning, all armed and dangerous and with murderous intent, did he expect to return to his place later that same day, after having dispatched with his workplace enemy, and feed his cats and read the newspaper? or did he understand that he was in it for real and for good, and that he would soon afterwards (after committing the deadly deed, I mean) follow his nemesis into eternity, or into nothingness, or into however he understood that next state? Did he think he would get away it, in other words? or did he calculate that his own life forfeited was well worth the price of depriving his enemy of his life?
Yes to 74. "Now, it is true that I fired a gun at you, and that as a result a fast moving piece of metal from this gun then entered your body, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I actually shot you."
This gives me renewed confidence in the cops I see all the time in Penn Station carrying MP5s.
Needless to say, the NRA absolutists who want every man, woman and child in America to conceal and carry are plainly nuts and/or have watched too many late-night John Wayne film reruns. If trained police officers can employ bad tactics in the heat of the moment, imagine a street full of rank amateurs, fully armed, with bullets and bullet fragments ricocheting here, there, and everywhere...
Not if the Invisible Hand is guiding their aim! I mean, if bad marksmen get boomerang bullets, eventually there will only be good ones, right?
Here you go:
http://www.examiner.com/article/should-nypd-be-disarmed
I'm sure there are many more along those lines.
82
... Did he think he would get away it, in other words? or did he calculate that his own life forfeited was well worth the price of depriving his enemy of his life?
Rumor has it he was being evicted so I would guess he wasn't expecting to get away with it.
My coffee pot died after only 13 years.
Pouring hot water directly into the pot makes funny tasting coffee.
I am tweaking a bit. My improvised French press made some really strong coffee and I had to drink it quickly because there was no way to keep it warm.
I just want to say one word to you. Just one word: aeropress.
Look, it's only by filtering the coffee through a new mattress that you can extract the aromatic oils while avoiding the least hint of bitterness in the brew. But if you want to settle for second-best, fine.
I looked it up. Aeropress is just way too complicated.
Man, it was General Giap's 101st birthday yesterday and I missed celebrating it!
Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is gonna win!
And you know what? They did.
OT: Should I buy a free-standing closet (from a local dorm that was renovated, I think) and modify it so that it contains a folding workbench like this? All past evidence suggests that I won't be able to finish it but who knows.
The NLF is gonna win!
The USFL just couldn't get the fans.
97: Wouldn't the tools on the pegboard that folds down constantly fall off when you were folding or unfolding it?
Seriously, I just got one a month ago and it's the quickest, easiest coffee-making method I've ever used. As convenient as a french press, but without the clean-up, because - get this - it virtually cleans itself in the process of making the coffee. And the result is better than with a lot of espresso machines. This thing has revolutionised my life.
/Halfordesque
99: I'm not sure, but the pegboard seems optional.
100: I'm sure it's great, but we tend to drink coffee by the pot.
103: What is this year's never-before-heard-of deep-fried food-or-beverage?
104: deep fried ennui (also my "I've-never-been-but-this-has-to-be-accurate" summary of Vegas)
103: I miss the fair. Wave to the bucket of cookies stand for me, will you?
I should find out if my sister in law is entering a pie this year.
Seriously, I just got one a month ago and it's the quickest, easiest coffee-making method I've ever used. As convenient as a french press, but without the clean-up, because - get this - it virtually cleans itself in the process of making the coffee
It is pretty damn convenient.
And the result is better than with a lot of espresso machines
Not even close. Espresso machines (the real ones, not the fake things without pressure chambers) are surprisingly consistent at making really good coffee in my experience. They're equally consistent in dying in their second year. OTH not everyone thinks espresso style coffee is the best, some people have screwed up taste buds.
108.last: That's what I use, making 2 or 3 triple espressos for myself a day, I guess. (And it's looking right now that I am going to have to replace a gasket sooner rather than later.)
I still like the drip coffee makers. They were invented by Joe DiMaggio.
I continue to love the real life superhero stories.
On their irregular forays, the Black Monday Society forms up in groups of four or more to patrol troubled downtown neighborhoods like Drug Alley and Area 51. They stride with the assurance of rock stars. For the most part, they have only themselves for company. They have yet to encounter a crime in progress, although they have broken up fights and helped drunks passed out on the sidewalk...
Most passersby were curious, but some nights bring tension. After coming upon a bar fight, members walked bar patrons to their cars in an effort to instill calm.
But the veterans are also finding that, like a comic book read over and over, the superhero story line can get old. Montgomery has handed over the reins of Black Monday to a younger crusader and now prefers to spend more time with Frankie and less on patrol. "Do you know how hard it is to actually find a crime?" he said. "On the street, there are no real super villains. Life is just not that amazing."
Haha. "It's time to GET OUT THERE AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE...fuck, another drunk bum? Where's all the crime around here?"
111: Admit it, gs, you are jealous of their uniforms.
Was Commissioner Gordon ever that snarky about Batman?
I think I might like aeropress even better than espresso. More flexibility with the brewing parameters, and it's made by the same people as aerobies.
114: [SPOILER ALERT] Officer Blake sure was.
Is this a good place to link to a huge batman spoiler?
104: Here's the list of 40 new foods:
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2012/08/23/minnesota-state-fair-40-new-foods-and-one-you-wont-believe
I saw there is now a poutine booth. I was thinking you could make a pretty good poutine-on-a-stick by taking a ball of cheese with gravy inside and covering it with a couple of latke-type things. And frying it. Double-fried Poutine On A Stick! That would be awesome.
This year I tried the corn fritters, fried green tomatoes, and Kiwanis-produced strawberry malt, all for the first time. Plus of course some cheese curds.
I did not get to see my friend's prize-winning bread, but another friend won a ribbon in the Fine Art competition, and I did see that.
Also we saw the chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and rabbits. I had not realized that many of the duck breeds are just slightly smaller than the geese. Some of the rabbits are fucking huge too.
115 is quite right, but 102 is indeed disqualifying.
Aeropress is fantastic. And has the advantage of being portable, and looking as if it couldn't possibly work at all, for a nice surprise factor. Not if you need a pot of coffee though, no.
Nothing beats a Moccamaster. Moccamaster, Moccamaster. Technivorm!
120: Care to comment on the truth of falsity of the following (from here):
"You can make a full carafe of coffee
using your AeroPress in less time
than it takes to brew a pot of drip
coffee. Two 3-scoop or 4-scoop
pressings, topped off with hot water
will fill most vacuum carafes"
technivorm.com is disqualifyingly Flash-based.
I don't know what a Moccamaster is, but as nobody told me not to, I purchased a seriously used wardrobe, four hinges, and some other pieces of wood. I am currently plotting my folding workbench closet of doom.
I am "pulling a Moby" and commenting from an airport bar. Also, I recently slept on a top bunk for a couple nights and it's awesome being so high up! What if I bought myself a bunk bed to sleep in - one of those with a double on the bottom (say if i had a guest) - and then I added a platform to the ladder so my dog could get up to the top as needed - that'd be awesome, right?
127: I purchased a seriously used wardrobe, four hinges, and some other pieces of wood.
From the Junction I presume? Part of their admirably sturdy but totally abused basic furniture selection (as you'd expect per your 97).
Construction Junction, what's your function?
If you want oddly shaped hinges, they have buckets of them. Only 25 cents.
essear is thinking, "I'm the airport guy! That's my thing!"
Not very often. I rarely fly without a small child.
Tomorrow I have to go to, well, a bunch of things, but in particular a talk called "Being a Profes/sor in the Ye/ar 376." Isn't that a little too... precious? Myopic? I don't know.
I've only flown maybe four times in the past year.
133: Heh. Also, thinking "meetup in an airport bar!"
in the Ye/ar 376
I... don't get it.
Dates are apparently counted from the founding of the university. Because it's special pompous that way.
That is the slickest way I ever saw someone drop the H-bomb, Essear. Way better than saying 'I went to school in Cambridge'.
||
[wingnut documentary about Obama made by Dinesh fucking D'Souza] has earned "the top gross of the year for a documentary (excluding nature films)".
Soooo what you're telling me is that it has now been seen by a number of people between the number that saw Bully and the number that saw, I don't know, More Fucking Penguins Walk Around Looking All Cuddly and Stuff. Why would I want to know this? Why do I click on things?
|>
Bowling Green isn't as old as I thought.
I thought that he was being careful and not humblebragging.
Also, essear is the airport bar blogger.
Anyway, *my* foster-mother (and her sibs) went to grade school at H@rv@rd. So there!
If essear and ursine have an airport bar meetup are lurkers welcome?
Dates are apparently counted from the founding of the university. Because it's special pompous that way.
Oh, of course.
I thought I got all the humblebragging out of the way a few months ago. This is just, I mean, what a ridiculous talk title.
This is just, I mean, what a ridiculous talk title.
Yup. Sure is.
Do they use AUC, I wonder? Don't even need to change the U!
146: I think in that context they would be called "voyeurs."
On closer inspection, the speaker is from the department of someone else who has commented in this very thread.
Aren't the urbe and the universitate contemporaneous in this case?
Isn't that a little too... precious? Myopic?
It's like a golden rai--ain you can't even see.
160: I think I'm missing a reference, and when I tried to Google it I got lots of results about golden showers.
163: If you search for related topics often, google will learn your patterns and adjust.
160 is making me so happy.
As did the original MS post.
120:
"You can make a full carafe of coffee
using your AeroPress in less time
than it takes to brew a pot of drip
coffee. Two 3-scoop or 4-scoop
pressings, topped off with hot water
will fill most vacuum carafes"
This is exactly right. (I steam a pot of milk and dump a 3-scoop pressing into that.)
169: Not that I don't appreciate the advice, but if I learned one thing from the late 90s, it's to never put too much thought into coffee. Madness lies that way.
132 et al: my bad! I mean, Moby posts from bars, give me that. I had some travel related association in my mind but I don't know what (also, airport bar beer). Indeed the canonical airport barblogger is essear but I guess I was on a Moby kick because I also wanted to build furniture?
Airport meetup sounds great but I'm home now, happily. I was flying away from hurricanes and it was a little iffy.
I have been flying to Omaha a fair bit.
||
This is why, I think, it's vaguely absurd to talk about "heightening the contradictions", or indeed, to talk about action or inaction on the part of the most politically alienated segments of society having a meaningful effect on the course of our civilization. This social death spiral is well past the point of no return. There's really nothing any of us can do about it. Even the recent crises in Europe, while apparently opening up a lot of space for effective collective action from below, pale in comparison to what capital and the state conspire to do every day of the year.
It's been passe in the anarchist scene for some time, but I feel like I'm returning again and again to the central points of Hakim Bey's T.A.Z. -- Temporary Autonomous Zones. The most it's reasonable to think about doing right now is carving out little packets of liberation here and there and hoping that may serve as some kind of guide or inspiration to the people of the far future.
||>
The talk with the title I was making fun of was actually quite engaging and interesting.
175. Only because we made fun of it.
That's some sophisticated google proofing. Unproofing the title still shows no results in google.
