We also called it a white elephant exchange.
Maybe everyone could roll the dice to establish the order.
We have something like this at my office but I forget the exact mechanics of it. I've never participated, but I did watch one year. It was pretty entertaining.
I went to an office* holiday party last night, and they forewent any sort of gift exchange and instead raffled off one very valuable gift, paid for by the office. In comparison to white elephant exchanges, the raffle was great because it was over very, very quickly. (What? Yes, I hate fun.)
*not my office; I don't even own an office
2 - That's the best I can come up with, but it seems more cumbersome than drawing numbers. Dice for the sake of dice.
Had never heard of the white elephant thing until last year, and I cordially dislike the whole Secret Santa thing. But I have to admit, it was fun.
Do the normal swap. Then everyone gets to roll the dice. The first person who rolls doubles gets to keep the dice. Done.
My favorite rulest was the one from my last job, which involved no gift exchange or even a reference to one.
This year there were no gifts at all but yoga pants.
A work gift exchange sounds much worse than one among friends. I don't trust my colleagues to know the difference between a good gift and a shitty gift.
The holiday party I was at last night also had a DJ, like at a wedding. People were encouraged to dance, but few did, presumably because it's kind of weird dancing with your cow-orkers.
At the one I attended about half of the gifts were bottles of liquor.
For the dice: when someone wants to steal, have the two people (the one who currently has the gift and the one who wants it) roll the dice. High roll gets the gift.
That would work. Or seems plausible to me.
My current workplace says the gift exchange is supposed to be entertaining, and cheap joke gifts are apparently a tradition.
Huh, phone forgot me in 14.
The boyfriend's stepfamily does these exchanges for Christmas (with gifts that are supposed to be desirable, $30 limit), and we have to try to avoid getting stuck with stuff we'll never use (gift certificate to local restaurant in MI? No thanks.) and appear good humored. Glad we haven't had to do that in years.
Assign the gifts numbers instead of the people. (or in addition) When it's your turn you can either take the gift with the number you rolled, or steal somebody else's. The first person goes twice (also last).
Just do the rolling-doubles dice thing, but require that all the gifts be bottles of wine or small (375) bottles of liquor. Then make the progression (1) take a package and unwrap it (putting back a bottle if you already have one) or (2) take someone else's bottle and drink it (trading your bottle with them if you have one). That way anyone trying to exploit rolling doubles more than everyone else in order to get more gifts ends up the worse for it (or at least ends up providing enough amusement to everyone else to compensate for some other people not getting to drink something from the pile).
oh mine doesn't work if more than one person rolls the same number.
okay if the your-numbered gift is already gone, you get to pick the one you want?
We do this at my step-grandparents house every year on Christmas Eve, except in all the years we've played there has never once been a single gift that wasn't brought by us that was anything other than absolute shit, the sort of thing I'd actually pay money not to have to take home with me because I don't want it cluttering up my house and it's completely useless. That really makes the game not very fun. Last year we won a bright orange plastic reflective triangle you can set up in the road behind your car if your car breaks down on the side of the road, to help oncoming traffic see your car. That is 100% useless--I don't keep it in my car and wouldn't bother to set it up even if I did keep it in my car and happened to break down on the side of the road at night--and yet it's still probably the best gift we have ever walked away with.) Such utter shit. Not fun.
That sounds like a great opportunity for revenge-gifting. I bet you could convince people to institute a rule about bringing nice gifts and/or get yourself permanently uninvited* within a year or two with the right selection of gifts.**
*Either one solves the problem!
**Kid size vuvuzela! Fifty pounds of sardines in a bucket! Seven hundred very, very tiny screws!
Fifty pounds of tinned sardines would be. But just a bucket of sardines would pose certain logistical problems.
Maybe it's my sobriety talking but I'm opposed to all gifts being alcohol.
You could just dry all the sardines on a beach, and then you have a useful bucket. (Note: requires beach.)
That is, some alcohol gifts is fine. But not everyone drinks.
More people drink than eat 50 of sardines at a time.
I'm opposed to all gifts being sardines.
I'm opposed to all gifts being sardines.
In the context of a White Elephant game, it really unnecessarily encourages people to engage in the old bait-and-switch.
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I've been sick since Sunday and in bed since Thursday evening. I'm very tired of it.
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A prior workplace had a white elephant gift swap with the utter horribleness of the gifts being a source of competition and good natured fun. Much regifting from year to year, with a set of hideous cast iron trivets and one of those homemade candles made using a milk carton and ice cubes making hallowed appearances year after year. There was all kinds of strategic stealing. I once got a battery operated singing dog of spectacular awfulness that a colleague bagged, she reported her family spent the entire evening totally engrossed. It provided a great outlet for getting rid of the random odd things acquired from, eg, great aunts, and most people kept things small so it was easy to tuck away the gift in your desk until the next year. Was always surprising when some objects would be removed from circulation as it turned out folks actually desired them.
I like the idea of using the same gifts year after year after year. "Conference room, everyone! ! It is time for the annual Junk Trading!"
E M, the antibiotics I've been on since wednesday for complicated dental distress have only just begun to lessen the pain, you have much much sympathy from me. I'm watching David Lean's Madeline, it's good, you can stream it from the evil river.
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So AB & Iris embarked on a graham cracker "gingerbread" house. It's their project, so I've been hands off, but it is a structural disaster for largely predictable reasons*, and I'm struggling to keep my mouth shut.
Now they're asking for my help, and I'm kind of pissed to be involved in trying to salvage a failed project. THIS SHOULDN'T BE MY PROBLEM.
*store-bought frosting (which is not remotely as structural as royal icing) used sparingly, a poor structural concept
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one of those homemade candles made using a milk carton and ice cubes
??
Nice wrapping paper, alcohol consumption and the addition of chocolates or something nice and consumable as part of each gift were also part of the tradition. But the best was the worst of the repeat gifts and the stories that came with them.
37: Hope you feel better soon. That does sound like a thing you would quickly tire.
As I understand it, you take some nice elderly Methodist ladies in Fresno*, melted paraffin in several pastel shades, wicks, lengths of dowel and milk cartons. The ladies suspend the lengths of wick in the cartons, pour in the wax layering the colors, occasionally suspending ice cubes. As the wax hardens voids of varying shapes are left from the melting cubes.
*aka my granny, the only person I know who made these, at some point she gave these to everyone for gifts. It is entirely possible that her Methodist ladies' choir produced the entire population of these candles still in circulation today.
42: Some cities have municipal water that is 76% paraffin.
I like 14, but if you win the roll, should you keep the gift permanently, or should it be possible for anyone else to challenge you for it again (when it's their turn)?
I was thinking maybe when you get a gift, if you're sure you want it, you roll to get a 1/3 chance to become immune from theft. But that involves less competition, which people might like.
Somehow the gifts in our exchange over time have tended to be fairly decent, some duds but plenty people fought over.
Could you wait for a stupid joke before giving the right answer please.
The sick are so bored, we cannot wait mobes.
dairy queen (and whoever else) here is a fun game: click the "see translation" thing on all your friends' posts and comments that are in English.
Wait. Now there's no see translation thing on the English ones.
I swear
oh whoops.
I swear am pretty sure I'm not delusional. I've seen it before, too.
I only occasionally see that button, usually on comments short and colloquial enough to confuse an identifier program, like "Ugh."
39: sounds like sexual terminology to me
This is reminding me that I still have to figure out a gift for my mom this year. I wonder if she would like a watch.
We gave my dad and my in-laws nicely framed photos of Zardoz last year. I don't think we can do that again. Maybe photo calendars? All of these people are hard to buy for in very different ways.
Was it the flying head one? Because you could do that every year. It was the best.
NEED HELP WITH CLOTHING -- BUYING JEANS
I have not had to buy jeans for a couple of years. I used to wear GAP but the quality went to shit, and then I switched to Ann Taylor Loft. I went in to the store and found that (1.) they have completely redone their sizing (2.) they no longer make boot cut jeans--though regular Ann Taylor does and (3.) all the "denim" is thin and stretchy.
Who makes normal jeans? I found somethign halfway decent at levi in a light color but the dark ones were this stretchy shit.
Maybe that is what the kids are normcore? I'm not sure because nobody has been able to explain it to me.
41 is hilarious. Have you informed them of your rate?
Hopefully this will at least given them a better understanding of the importance of your profession.
You could at least lend them the book with the structural strengths of the various types of frosting.
60-63 make me very happy.
AB ended up retrofitting a cardboard substructure WHICH IS CHEATING.
My kid is making gingerbread at school. They are building on a substructure of milk cartons. Milk cartons and lies.
I helped my mom's kindergarten class make gingerbread houses once. They too started with milk cartons.
And used graham crackers, so they really weren't gingerbread houses in any meaningful sense.
I assume your mom started it all. Teacher Zero.
Nah, her teaching style was very derivative. She also did Elf on a Shelf with the kids, which surprised me when I learned it.
Seeking to bring down Christmas from within.
That could have been it. She could certainly have functioned as a mole deep within Christian territory.
Are you insulting your own mother's nose?
There's nothing wrong with having a star-shaped nose.
We all have noses made of star stuff.
Yankee Swaps are the worst. They're always filled with the laughter of people trying to conceal resentment over being shafted with a crappy gift, because there's always one good gift and a dozen crappy gifts. Apparently I feel strongly about Yankee Swaps!
75.last reminds me that Smearcase is from Kentucky .
75.last reminds me that Smearcase is from Kentucky .
Kentucky Swaps are similar except that every gift is a bottle of bourbon.
Teacher Zero
Better than Teacher Zero Dark Thirty.
This seems like an awful lot more hassle than an ordinary Secret Santa for not much if any benefit.
Who makes normal jeans?
Marks and Spencer, but that's not a lot of use to you.
The swap games described here seem insanely complicated. If there's a problem with people ending up without presents, make a rule that such people can steal the person who stole their last gift, and name their ransom. If nobody is willing to pay the ransom, they get to keep the person, who has to do their job for them until the next Christmas. This will encourage good behaviour.
These things seem like the white crypto-fascist workplace at its most pure and strange. Take a stupid fucking power game and bring it into what is already one of the most awkward and demeaning social situations imaginable (work social events) and associate it with a religious holiday. Why not just have the boss toss a pile of [appropriately-denominated for job grades/salaries currency ] onto the floor and have everyone fight for it.
Yes, that'd be one work holiday party down, two to go next week.
About the Pimms, I had the amusing experience of eavesdropping on a conversation that two guys were having, one explaining all about Pimms to the other, and since I'd bought some that afternoon, I'd read the Wikipedia entry and knew exactly how much nonsense the guy was spouting. I've always considered him a bit of a blowhard.
simple solution: dice roll picks what gift you open (when you choose to open). requires you line the gifts up, i suppose.
It's Pimm's, Heebie, with an apostrophe. That much I know for sure.
47.1: I'd say that a gift holder could be challenged up to three times, in keeping with the rule that nothing can be stolen more than three times. The stealing thing seems to be fun for people. The loser of the dice roll should pick a new gift from the pile so everyone gets something.
58: Would love to hear the answer to this myself.
I'm picturing the alcohol white elephant as a total shitshow. Like, someone brings orangecello (tastes like Triaminic!), someone brings butterscotch schnapps. Franzia.
Yeah, gift exchanges are only fun if the participants take pride in bringing a great gift.
Oh god, is there orangecello? I thought limoncello was bad enough. For desperate alcoholic twelve year olds.
89/90: The owner of the house I rented in grad school had bought and left behind a bottle. We had an "empty the bar" party when we left and tried it. Luckily, there was an attendee who had loved orange-flavored cough medicine as a child. She took the bottle home. Sadly, it wasn't the worst alcohol we tried that evening.
Later, when we asked our landlord how he'd ended up with it, he explained that it had been a drunk impulse purchase on a mid-party restocking trip years before.
Because of local liquor laws, the stores where you make such an impulse buy close before you get that drunk.
Boy I have a short attention span for Legos.
My liquor cabinet (really, it's more of a shelf than a cabinet) currently houses an eclectic collection, mostly leftover from a party where people brought ingredients for specific drinks. It includes: Pernod, black raspberry liqueur, Drambuie, two kinds of bitters, and an airport bottle of Ouzo. (That last one was a gift from a friend who visited Greece.)
Like, someone brings orangecello (tastes like Triaminic!)
Exactly like it. I wish someone had informed me of this before I made some. (I mean, I even have fond memories of Triaminic, but really, I don't need a litre of it.) I find it occasionally useful in place of other orange-flavoured liqueurs, but wouldn't use it in something nice.
89: desperate alcoholic 12-year-olds have feelings too! don't judge me them. naw, for real I didn't start drinking seriously till I was 13. I drank a reasonable amount of cough syrup on purpose in my life, though, surely I'm not alone here? teenagers who can't buy booze making do with entire bottles of nyquil? no? it's 70 proof.
95: never, ever drink out your liquor cabinet all in a night and finish with the whole bottle of ouzo. this is, like, the most serious , good life advice I have ever given. that caused one of the few two-day-long hangovers I've ever had. when you wake up the SECOND day still hung over it is unutterably demoralizing.
I spent two nights in the neurological ICU with my mom. she's been moved out just now. last night there were no creepy episodes of her being so disoriented and not recogning me or knowing her own name. I am so wiped though.
96.3: Been there. It's so unsettling; very sorry. Hope you can trade off nights if you have more ahead.
And used graham crackers, so they really weren't gingerbread houses in any meaningful sense.
A gingerbread house made of used graham crackers would be the saddest gingerbread house of all.
96.last: Sorry to hear it, al, and good luck.
Owing to the possession-purge of some people naming whom would violate the sanctity of something or other, I am now in possession of a Cran Blaster BuzzBall (200ml).
96.last: Best wishes.
(Also best wishes to everyone in the previous thread-of-woe.)
100: That sounds like something from the torture report, put up butt section.
Minivet, condolences on the UTI.
Alameida, very happy to hear your mother had a better night, hope you will be spelled soon and can get some rest.
96: Thinking of your mother and you, Al! I hope the recovery from the surgery continues to go well.
Is there an equivalent for icing someone with a Cran Blaster Buzzball?
I suppose saying that bros are Buzzballing other bros would give a misleading impression of what's going on. Maybe.
Someone on my FB feed posted a photo of Leinenkugel's Cranberry Ginger Shandy, which sounds fucking disgusting.
my brother drove up to charm city to get me, and drop off my sister who is now spending the night. it's sort of funny that the classic wisdom of patriarchal culture is that sons are forever and daughters end up belonging to their in-laws and not being useful. because in our society I think your daughter is about a million times more likely to help change your bedpan and clean up, know all the relevant facts to tell each group of doctors who trek--bedouin-like--through the wards, advocate that you be given the second half of your pain meds now AND the full dose in 1 hour when it's due, etc. etc. my brother says he's "not good at medical stuff" and "hates hospitals." EVERYONE hates hospitals! though my sister and I really are shinobi-level medical-interacting people, she being (much) more sick than I, and I being a mom who has had little girls in the hospital not so long ago.
my brother is a loving, kind son and a pretty solid guy, but I just can't picture him dealing with the happy results of those powerful laxative drugs they had to give my mom after she hadn't been able to poop for 13 days. yay results! boo them only coming about because one (ONE) nurse re-read all her drugs and realized they were giving my mom a medicine prescribed by her GI specialist for her Chron's disease which is a constipating agent. three times a day. my mom asked repeatedly if they were giving it, but because the brand name was different between the liquid she usually takes and the pills they gave, they kept saying no.WTFFFFF?!??!?
I've changed bedpans for my mother-in-law too; I think sons just get to beg off on this stuff to some degree.
I'm going right to sleep now wooo hook'em a cat is sleeping with me!
10: Oh, is Leinenkugel something people drink elsewhere? We have half a small keg of something left from the girls' party but I have nothing to do with that.
Al, that sounds dreadful. I hope you sort it out.
I thought saying was "A son's a son til he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for life."
110 is the version I know.
More sympathy, Al.
Yes, my sympathies alameida.
Also, I think maybe in the cultures where they think a son is forever, they also think the daughter-in-law is going to do all the actual work.
It's obvious you're making a huge difference al, which justifies your trip. When you can do these things, there is no feeling like it.
Twenty years ago, my dad had a heart attack, surgery and a stroke, and my mother had surgery too. They were helpless, in a matter of weeks from none of this being on the horizon. We drove out to help, traveling across Indiana on Christmas Day in a car barely running with my wife and 2 kids under 5. I stopped for roadside repairs twice, nothing open, in the dark and sub-zero temperatures, finally got it up to speed on 2 cylinders and just kept going.
For the weeks we were there my wife cooked and looked after the kids and I attended to the most basic needs of both my parents, one after the other. Took all my strength to move my dad, spent hours on my mother's dressings and needs.
And it was amazing that I was able to do it, but it was just one thing after another, establishing a routine. They actually never needed live-in care; by the time we left they could manage.
It's beginning to seem like one of the most significant episodes in our lives; my mother talks about it still.
All the best, al, as you deal with all this.
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Is the full text of Oscar Wilde's prison letter to Dirtbag Alfred Douglas not in the public domain somehow? All that's around for free seems to be the 1905 expurgated version. I got a free Kindle sample of the Dover Thrift edition, searched on some longer phrases only appearing there, and didn't find anything but excerpts. I know the full version wasn't published until significantly later, but does that confer copyright somehow?
At least the Kindle version is just two dollars.
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because in our society I think your daughter is about a million times more likely to help change your bedpan and clean up...
I was at an event where someone told me that there are data showing that having a daughter keeps you healthier in old age, because they are more likely to be engaged in their parents' medical care. In other words men generally don't do shit.
al--many, many hugs
109.1: I've seen it in liquor stores lots of places. I've never bought it myself.
114.2: I've seen it in liquor stores lots of places. I've never bought it myself.
Copyright is originally conferred by God, but yeah, any version published after 1923 would start the clock ticking at the date of publication, and be protected in the US for I think the next 95 years. It's probably out of copyright in the UK by now, but Gutenberg and such tend to look at US terms when deciding whether to transcribe things.
Hm. How does it enter in that the British Library has the handwritten manuscript online? Could anyone transcribe and publish that?
If only we had some librarians or copyright lawyers around here.
Here's a handy chart:
https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
Don't know if it's been linked here before.
I don't know much about UK copyright, but in the US and Canada there are different rules for published vs. unpublished work and I assume the UK makes a similar distinction. I also don't know whether a partially published letter would count the same as publishing a full letter. But the following combinations of rights statuses aren't that unusual:
1. Early publication of something is now public domain.
2. Later publication of edition of the same something is still in copyright, since the publication added enough value to count as a new work, like all those "classics" series with copyrighted editions of novels where the novel itself is public domain but the intro, notes, etc. aren't.
3. Depending on jurisdiction, whether the author is known, and whether the author's death dates are known:
3a. Unpublished manuscript of same something is public domain.
3b. Unpublished manuscript is still copyrighted.
So, we've started watching the Netflix original series Marco Polo. How on earth does it make sense to produce an original series for Netflix? Ok, they have to keep up the subscriber base, but is it really worth the investment in filming on the steppes of Kazakstan? Couldn't they just get more John Wayne?
Dude, not only that, but Douglas almost secured American copyright. Dirtbag!
Al, I'm spending this week grading and planning next semesters' classes. I could easily drive down to DC for a day to sit with your mother (as long as the grading and course planning can happen at the same time). Would even spend the night. Just let me know if you need someone to spell you.
123: Doesn't Netflix account for some crazy high percentage of overall worldwide internet traffic? Like a third or something? That's both a lot of revenue and a lot to lose. (Also, I think it's inherently impossible to get more John Wayne at this point.)
Netflix may fail at some of their original programming, but creating things where they get to control the rights is pretty much always going to be necessary if they want to avoid getting squeezed out by rightsholders who will just keep raising license fees, pulling content, and/or trying to support their own competing streaming services.
Competing streaming services built on existing rights holdings, that is. It's worrying that this business logic will probably end with all the subscription streaming services looking pretty much like cable networks.
someone told me that there are data showing that having a daughter keeps you healthier in old age, because they are more likely to be engaged in their parents' medical care.
No, no, it's because sons are more likely to bump off their parents in order to get their hands on the title.
So, we've started watching the Netflix original series Marco Polo. How on earth does it make sense to produce an original series for Netflix? Ok, they have to keep up the subscriber base, but is it really worth the investment in filming on the steppes of Kazakstan? Couldn't they just get more John Wayne?
Netflix doesn't want to be the Spotify of movies/TV (alas for us). It wants to be HBO, but on the internet. And in the big scheme of things, the budget for their handful of original programmes are a tiny fraction of their revenues, and much less than they pay for rights. Now, personally I'd rather have a Netflix which had every film more than 2 years old and every TV show one season back than the current set-up, but they see headline getters like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black as driving subscriber growth and retention
Isn't the issue that the studios won't let Netflix be the Spotify? They could rent out DVDs because they could simply buy the physical DVDs. In a streaming world, they have to negotiate terms, and the studios have been unwilling to make deals.
As long as I can still get The Rockford Files. I'm thinking of trying to dress like Jim but I don't want to live in a trailer.
Isn't the issue that the studios won't let Netflix be the Spotify? They could rent out DVDs because they could simply buy the physical DVDs. In a streaming world, they have to negotiate terms, and the studios have been unwilling to make deals.
Well, they've been willing to make deals for the most part, but at increasingly expensive prices. Spotify's under the same theoretical constraints, but a) the music industry is a little further along the track, and b) TV/movies still have a highly profitable pay TV window to protect. Netflix has decided that rather than jack up prices to cover ever higher licensing fees as a universal distributor, it's better off becoming a content producer. Which is annoying to me, because I'd be willing to pay more for a universal distributor and while I like some of Netflix's content, I can get the equivalent elsewhere.
I don't want to live in a trailer
My brother recently moved into a trailer (with his new lady friend). I like to think I'm relatively non-judgmental, but that's totally bullshit: I kind of wince at the idea of my brother living in a trailer. Because I'm classist, I guess.
In any event, my dad reports it's "really nice, as trailers go."
Is the trailer inexplicably plopped down on the parking lot for a public beach?
I've never lived in a MH but my sister has on three different occasions, and it seems a viable and flexible option for many situations. Touring athletes and entertainers live in RVs and Motor Homes, actually a bit more cramped, for much of their careers, after all.
In grad school I would fantasize about living in a van, possibly a VW since I drove a bug and knew their mechanicals well, and moving it around Hyde Park from day to day. I'm sure they'd have caught up with me sooner or later, and it would have been cold. I actually sub-sub-sublet a room for awhile where I nearly had to live the same way. I would shower daily in the old Gym at 57th & University which has now been demolished, and many was the meal I would "see my food."
I lived in a van for six weeks and it was just fine. I kind of miss that nomadic sort of existence where if I wanted to get the hell out and go somewhere else I could be ready to go in under a minute.
Not far from the river. I am a motivational researcher. Which should go in the other thread, I suppose.
Maybe I will try and type up the original manuscript, then.
125: thanks, J, robot; that's incredibly thoughtful of you, I really appreciate it, and also everyone's well-wishes. I got another offer of help too but I can't remember from whom right now, but it also was awesome. we can pay people to be with my mom and it's not as if no one will empty your bedpan at johns hopkins, but in the NCCU (they decided its the neurological care...hmm. for real it's an ICU, wev.) they are more dealing with people stuck right the hell in bed, and they can never come quite as fast as one wants, and then we'd prefer she had someone there with her. I dunno.
129: my mom is cleverly leaving everything to my sister, bar special stuff like paintings. my brother and I have a different dad so my sister needs it more.
132: DOOOO IT!!!! dress like jim!!!
This jacket style should be revived: https://www.etsy.com/listing/195595925/1970s-houndstooth-sports-coat-38s
That's basically what I had in mind and just a bit too small.
Best wishes, Al. Pace yourselves, it's all too easy to burn out in ICU hell even for non-patients.
141.1: the rest of us are a bit far away from that, though I like the idea of al's mother being nursed back to health by a rota of Unfogged regulars. To hell with Obamacare. We have Mutumbocare.
Uber, but for seriously ill family members.
Getting back to the OP, it turns out my office's gift exchange is tomorrow. I will not be participating.
147: Because you're stranded in Nome? Or you don't approve of the swap rules? Or you're not Christian? Or you disapprove of fun? Details, man!
148: Primarily the former, although 149 is accurate.