Don't have too many babies, Hebbie, or Ellen Goodman will be mad at you.
Like the soldier in Catch-22
You see everything twice? I guess I could see how that might work.
No, I want to be as miserable as possible so that life feels as long as it can feel.
I want to fly my airplane so close to the beach that I chop off the top of my fellow soldier.
I want to buy my eggs at one place at 6 cents apiece, and sell them somewhere else at 4 cents apiece, for a profit.
Those aren't horse chestnuts, they're rubber balls, and they're not in my cheeks, they're in my hands.
I keep two lists: one of all the feathers in my cap, and one of all my black eyes.
I want to die in the back of an airplane while my guts slither out and I whimper, "I'm cold".
I want to row to Sweden in a rubber raft.
I want to censor all the words in a soldier's letter home except the articlesarticles
I yearn for you tragically.
I want to overuse the phrase, "I have a happy faculty for X".
I want to put on a false moustache to play basketball with my subordinates. Untill I realize they're taking advantage of my incognito to foul me.
Who promoted Major Major Major Major?
15: I have named the baby Caleb in accordance with your wishes.
I want to know where Captain Flume sleeps.
I heard there's a new gun that will glue a bunch of planes together, mid-formation. I want to see it, although it scares me.
20: Don't worry, I hear Bologna is a milk run.
I haven't read the book, and I must say this thread isn't sparking my interest in the least.
By "only pregnancy website" you mean ...? The only one that's otherwise dedicated to the so-called miracle of life?
So even feminists advocate for sending women to the pregnancy hut.
Where, oh where, are the me of yesteryear?
22: I'd hate to have my low comedy contribute to dissuading you from reading it. Forget the military aspect, it really is a great book for the present situation in the US and World. Organizational dysfunction, small-mindedness and free enterprise done well.
I also remember aspects of the plot of Catch-22, but I'm keeping them to myself. Perhaps you can all try to guess which specific aspects I'm thinking of?
22: Thing is, none of the lines we're repeating are funny to you, because they don't make any sense out of context. But how many books can you think of where a bunch of people who read it years ago will remember that many distinct lines from it, and bother repeating them?
I'm not saying it's a great work of literature, but it definitely has something.
Well, I dunno, heebie. Granted, I don't much like any of the pregnancy websites ('Are you expecting an infant? Let us infantilize you with our patronising and paternalistic didacticism ... '), but on the importance of a "positive outlook," this one seems even preachier than most:
The pregnant woman must take good care of herself during pregnancy by way of balanced diet, regular exercise coupled with a cheerful and happy disposition. This will help in having a safe and secure pregnancy along with a healthy baby.
30: Wow, that sounds literally Victorian.
I find myself thinking a lot about Heller's "Good as Gold" these days. Like a lot of art from its era, it attempted to be a contemporary satire, but fails to withstand the test of time because it failed to anticipate that worse things were on the horizon. ("Network" is another obvious example of this.)
1: I do love me some Ellen Goodman, though I haven't read her consistently in years. She said the smartest thing I've ever heard about babies: If people thought about it rationally, nobody would ever have a baby. Having babies is a desire, like sex itself.
32: I don't remember that much about it, but just this week when Obama admitted that he made a mistake, it did remind me of the sensation that the main character made in Washington when he simply answered some questions from the press with, "I don't know".
34: Yep - and when you saw Obama admitting his error, did you not think it was brilliant? I did.
36: Yes, agree. Semi-relevant William Greider quote: "Only in Washington, after all, is it considered bizarre when someone important comes forward and tells the truth."
36 - it certainly boggled my mind.
Our old copy of Catch 22 had this cover. As a kid I loved the idea of never being quite the same again because of one book.
And as for 30 - I was deeply deeply miserable for the whole of my first pregnancy (not because of the pregnancy) and after Violet was born, my nasty old bat of a grandmother seemed to never miss an opportunity to tell me how surprising it was that she'd turned out to be such a happy baby.
38.1: Win.
38.2: Had never seen that one,"polymesmeric"?
I guess when you're just hanging out in a sensory deprivation chamber, you end up drinking your own urine. How embarrassing.
Isn't it just nature's way of preparing them for swimming in kiddie pools?
I've never seen the word "polymesmeric" before.
You might have seen the new types of coax cable that are appearing on the market. They use a newly developed micro-crystalline polymesmeric compound for the dielectric, which is wound into a helix. The outer conductor has a sheath of nitrogen-free mono-obdurate copper, as well as the conventional braid. The inner conductor, surprisingly, is ordinary copper, but is extruded to a tolerance of less than a thousandth of a millimeter and has a polished surface. There is, of course, a price premium on a cable with such exacting manufacturing requirements, but the excellent performance of this cable makes its use worthwhile in demanding applications.
More than 80% of the 2000+ googles of the word refer to this jacket cover, however.
but on the importance of a "positive outlook," this one seems even preachier than most
Right, I don't really love the website. I was just surprised that they mentioned terminating your pregnancy.
Profgrrrl just had a baby. Is this news? (Functioning link on the left.)
30,31,45: But you girls look so much prettier when you smile.
44: That's the same stuff Monster uses in their cables. Makes them much better that the crap Radio Shack sells.
48: Heller's blurb writer should get some kid of credit.
46. Brad DeLong dropped by to mention it a few days ago, but somebody accused him of being the ToS, so he went away again. I don't pretend to understand the dynamics of such things.
Congrats to Profgrrrl once again, though.
44, 48: Beware of hype. There are $20/ft speaker cables out there, for example. They are no better than the el cheepo ones, but the materials are expensive and the production methods finely controlled, which helps justify the expense, but the actual physics of the electrical characteristics are not improved to a level detectable by the human ear. It's not marginal, either - it's several orders of magnitude off. I can't speak to the particulars of the coax mentioned, but for reference - I use coax cabling to transmit signals up to a GigaHertz and am taking measurements of milliVolt signals with accuracies in the 0.01% range. I've never heard of these cables. We use bog-standard RG-48U from Digi-Key.
Home Theater and Audiophile marketing is full of the worst kind of absurd hype and outright lies from manufacturers. The experience is so subjective that people can readily convince themselves that the $20/ft speaker hookup wire is actually making a difference, but the only difference it makes in reality is to their bank balance.
In the words of the Sage: Don't Believe The Hype.
"Poly mesmeric" googles up nineteenth century mesmerism. It's possible that "polymesmeric cable" has the same scientific status as the unique form of water that naturopaths sell.
Ooh, now that this thread has included audiophilia, I can relate this fresh anecdote:
Back in the fall, my 3rd pair of Apple earbuds crapped out. Unlike the first 2, in which physical abuse played a role, these just stopped working on the left side. With sadness, I set them aside and listened to one of the previous pairs (now shorn to 1 bud), awaiting the day when I could swing new, in-ear buds. Yesterday was the day, and AB suggested that I bring the previous pair, in hopes of some sort of discount or something.
The Apple guy said, "Well, let's check on these and see if they're really not working." Of course, I had sound in both channels, leading me to think, "crap, my iPhone is only putting out one channel." As I left the store, I figured I'd check and, lo and behold, glorious stereo sound for the first time in 4 months! Who the hell knows what happened, and I regret listening to semi-stereo for the last 4 months, but mostly I felt like, "Hey, I just saved $80!"
Firmly OT:
Not only has it been confirmed that Bonds used illegal and banned drugs (duh), but now there's a rumor that the presumptively clean A-Rod used as well. Not truly surprising, but will be interesting to see what happens.
"Mono-obdurate" sounds like a term from a complex psychological theory.
There's a steps group for earbud-abusers, JRoth. Just sayin'.
52: The paragraph about cable in 44 is part of a longer spoof. Funny if one has ever been into electronics beyond plugging stuff in. As for Monster cable, I wonder what their profit margin is. I'm thinking "fantastic" even if the stuff is constructed somewhat better than RS cable.
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/ymbj/directionalcoaxial.html
It's actually a serious biz site with lots of jokes on it. So we may conclude that "polymesmeric" comes from the Catch-22 jacket that Asilon saw.
