The "worst campaign ad" sidelight keeps taking me to a YouTube registration page. Is there a problem with the link, or is it just me?

The ad appears to have been made private sometime between yesterday (when I watched it via the link) and now.

Fortunately, there's another copy up on Youtube.

"Tapping the Admiral" is a slang term for drinking on the sly, and the title of a woozy little tune I finished last night. Appropriately enough, it features a chorus of sixteen alcoholic-beverage bottles blown in hocket, as well as melodica, bass, and both kinds of dulcimer (country and western).

The origin of the term, coincidentally, also involves battlefield medicine, in a way...

I do like how that commercial says that the current round of Republicans and fiscal conservatives are sheep.

this injury was not the cause of his death

"Look, you stupid bastard. You've got no arms left."
"Yes I have."
"Look!"
"It's just a flesh wound."

Þórarinn was struck by a blow that cut through his shoulder such that his lungs fell out. He was bound up, ... over the summer, he recovered.

As written, that doesn't seem to make sense, on a couple of counts! I smell a translation error, or at least an odd turn of phrase. Anyone know what they might actually have meant when they say "his lungs fell out"?

Lost his breath? Probably not....

Okay, so I _never_ do this, but a dear friend is having serious health issues, so good wishes and/or prayer would be gratefully received.

Kirstin's latest post: http://barefootandlaughing.blogspot.com/2010/08/going-quiet-for-about-ten-days.html

I've known Kirstin for at least 10 years now. I've watched her figure out who she is (long unhappy story), literally figure out what her name should be, and discover a vocation. The latter particularly surprised her and she fought it hard for some time before opening herself to the possibilities.

Watching her grow and discover herself has been amazing for me and for everyone who knows her. Seeing her discover her ability to minister--her _calling_, seeing her find community, and reading her thoughts on faith, belief, and religion have . . . well, I feel like I've been bearing witness to something special.

She's had one go-round with melanoma already. It was far from easy.

This one is worse.

Please, if you can, keep Kirstin in your thoughts.

My thanks to all.

Melissa Singer @ 9... My best wishes to your friend.

David Harmon #7 a more literal translation would be 'that cut his shoulder off so that the lungs fell out into the wound'. Exaggerated? Oh yes.
Some of the sagas weren't exact historical science, even if many of the writers were well versed in battlefield injuries, being occupied with beating up each other in the internecine batt... scuffles of the 12th and 13th centuries.
The latter weren't exactly heroic. Biggest battle saw less than 100 fall, and one of the greatest chieftains was bludgeoned to death in a sheep corral. After descriptions of how he had to repeatedly straighten his sword by stepping on it.
Dignified fighting? Not much...

No job for me! Which is just as well in this case. Instead, I'll be taking some courses and maybe finally catching up on my reading.

so can sheep be good at shepherding resources?

David Harmon @7:

Hmmm, from that description (brief as it is) I find myself wondering where exactly the blow landed?

Maybe a cut that separates the pectoral muscle from the chest wall with the blade possibly being turned by the ribs?

You'd be able to see the lungs in that case, but I don't think they'd "fall out."

Remember most of these folk butchered their meat animals, so they'd have a rough idea of anatomy.

Bjorn (11): bludgeoned to death in a sheep corral

First time through, I read this as "bludgeoned to death by* a sheep corral", which would take some doing.

*as in 'with' not 'next to'

Fascinating stuff. But I must have my thick hat on today; I don't see the customary connection to the number.

Melissa @9 prayers for your friend.

Texanne, too bad about the job. The roller coaster is hard. Hope the right one comes along soon.

TexAnne @ 12... catching up on my reading

Now is the time to read "Les Enchantements d'Ambremer"?

Mark (16): Sometimes it's just interesting text to start us off with.

I'm finding myself waiting for an addendum from Jim Macdonald with links to the appropriate First Aid posts.

Backtrace to Open Thread 144

Kip W @144/803: pour a very small bowl, or cup, of cereal. Add about an inch of milk. Consume quickly. Repeat as needed.

Actually, there's an even easier way: fill a bowl with milk. Pour in a few bites of cereal. Eat the cereal until it's gone. Repeat until full or milk is gone.

Brown sugar sandwiches: heavily buttered bread with a layer of brown sugar in between. Or, for more favorable sugar/bread ratio, eschew the top slice of bread.

PB&Honey sandwiches are good, too, but I always thoroughly mix the PB & honey, else the honey ends up on my shirt.

Anybody else here of the "Tiki torch" school of roasted marshmallows?

Never really been into marshmallows that much, but recall a campfire incident in childhood where part of a melted marshmallow got incorporated into my hair.
Have little to contribute to any discussion of battlefield injuries save being glad I wasn't there. When I worked in a machine shop, I sometimes had to stop and perform a sliverectomy, and one of my co-workers once saw me doing this and said, "Just push it all the way in and it'll float away in your bloodstream," and I replied that I already had enough iron in my blood.
As much as I wish I could fly back in time and have a long talk with the operators of the original trebuchets, I would not want to face the defenders' arrows, nor the unsanitary conditions of the time. And yes, I too was half expecting Teresa's post to lead to practical instructions.
Best wishes to Kirstin and all others here who need them.

A month or so ago I took advantage of a promotion for "S'mores" ingredients. I had coupons for all the stuff involved so it seemed like a good deal.

I got rather tired of S'mores rather quickly. While I found other uses (burp) for the graham crackers and chocolate bars, I really didn't know what to do with most of a bag of marshmallows. Then I discovered that my dog is rather keen on the things.

I'm sorry to hear more news of more good people facing significant health problems. This includes excellent poet-friend to Making Light.

Texanne -- Sorry to hear this turned out not to be the right job for you! There will be another one soon.

In other not so good situations, is of course, the dire straits of the flooded out people of Pakistan.

In contrast, the half year struggle of our circle of friends and our communities, to get our Haitian friend's 6-year-old daughter into the U.S., successfully concluded earlier this month. Yay!

Food, the best, best time of the year for food is upon us. I'm looking forward to the local Farmer's Market in Chestertown. We make the (temporary) re-location a week from Saturday. We've begun frantically to grapple with drafting the first words of the book project. Argh.

Love, C.

I see that http://www.editfast.com/ is now up -- so, I'm repeating my question: does anybody have experience with them, from either end of the business?

me #26: Whoops, never mind, I just found them on Writers Weekly and Absolute Write. Doesn't look good at all.

Curiously enough, I badly needed some medieval healin' advice right about today...

From 144:

Bruce E. Durocher II, #863, I hope things go well! I'm so late -- thanks for letting us know it went well, Margaret!

dcb, #919, my smoke detector has a remote that will let you turn off the first beep and keep it off for 15 minutes. If it goes off again, I flip the breaker and I open the battery compartment with a reacher while I lean on the wall. I got it with the batteries because people use candles when the power goes out (not that ours does often) and we don't have firewalls in the buildings.

Here:

Constance, #25, you don't have a link under the poet.

I was recently reminded of the book Blood Red Roses: The Archaeology of a mass grave from the Battle of Towton AD 1461, which has (among other things) a forensic take on a similar topic to the initial post, a bit farther south and a couple centuries later.

The book is a collection of essays from various subject experts on a mass grave discovered a little town in England when they went to build an addition on the church; the archaeologists had a very short time to dig everything up and record it, and someone implemented the brilliant idea of laying down sheets of clear plastic and tracing & tagging everything as it came out, so they were able to preserve relative positioning both of which bones belonged to whom and where they all were in relation to each other. At any rate, there are bits about history and culture and armor, and several bone forensics chapters that cover both the sorts of things they all lived through, and what killed them. Absolutely fascinating if you like that kind of thing.

ebear #28: I can suggest some more resources for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

A video called "F_ck me, Ray Bradbury."

(Gosh, maybe if I become a science fiction writer I'll finally get a girlfriend.)

Erik Nelson #32: I wonder if anybody's told them the guy turns 90 this Sunday?

Erik Nelson #32: I wonder if anybody's told them the guy turns 90 this Sunday?

ebear #28: And you didn't call me on the phone?

Let me tell you a story:

I was, in some ways, a very orthodox child. I followed the unwritten rules. More to the point, I followed the rules that did not exist anywhere but in my head. I spent a lot of time trying to anticipate expectations.

This wasn't in all things. I still read all the time rather than playing games of social status— but I accepted the position near the bottom of the hierarchy. It came through primarily in schoolwork and sometimes in writing submissions— the spark was just not there.

I distinctly remember when it changed. I'd been trying to write better stories in seventh grade that just weren't coming out right. (I keep a few of them around to remind me that yeah, you need a LOT of practice to get good.) In eighth grade we were given an assignment: "The Mad Scientist and His Machine." The class started to brainstorm— what was the scientist like? "Old." "White hair." "Lab coat."

And something snapped in my brain and I thought, "Young. Cute. Popular."

The story that resulted isn't great by adult standards but it took my class by storm. And I learned something very important that day: if you can't be incredible, you can at least be good in an unexpected way.

Flash forward to 2008, when the WorldCon filk contest was around the theme "One Mile Closer To the Stars." We threw the song together a week after I had Gareth (and stretched my diaphragm out of shape— lordy I did a bad job on that vocal track). We placed second... and when the organizer was introducing our song she said something along the lines of "We were expecting all these bright and cheerful songs and then we got this..." at which I was doing a mental happy dance, since this was exactly the reaction we were hoping for.

They gave us chocolate and beer. Good times.

Anyway, this story is germane. Can't say why yet. But different often wins.

(*happy dance*)

My friend the Cranky Old Codger was fuming.

“Kids today!” he snarled. “They don’t know anything!” This is how he usually starts, and by the way ‘kids today’ is his phrase for “anyone more than ten years younger than the Cranky Old Codger.” That’s practically everybody, so don’t feel singled out if you’re actually a kid.

“What now?” Not that I was eager to hear what had set him off this time; more that I knew he would tell me eventually, like it or not, and figured I might as well get it over with. The Cranky Old Codger can go on for quite a while if not managed properly.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. I’d been certain he would. “Today I saw an award someone at my gym got. It said it was for the ‘North Jesrey’ region.”

“That’s pretty bad,” I said.

“No, no, that’s not it. We laughed about that. Then I told him it should have said ‘Northern New Jersey,’ since we’re a state, not a Channel Island.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yep. He said ‘There’s a place called Jersey?’”

“Oh no!” I was shocked.

“He scoffed when I told him there were places called Hampshire and York, too. But I’ll give him credit, I’ll give him credit,” said the Cranky Old Codger, feigning patience, “he did seem to know there was a Mexico!”

I have to admit. It boggled my mind that someone could know of New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York, and not think that those names implied the existence of places called Jersey, Hampshire, and York, and I said so.

“Never occurred to him. And this wasn’t a stupid musclehead, either, though God knows there are plenty of those at my gym. This was a bright guy who’d just never learned to think! Never learned logic! Never learned the meaning of the word ‘new’, for Christ’s sake!”

There was a lot more, but I didn’t stay to hear it.

Xopher, thanks for the story - it was just what I needed on the day I started graduate school.

"Tapping the Admiral" is charming, Tim.

Since reading the intro post link, I've kept returning to cutting and washing hair, That seems odd, because it's usually easier, not to say more pleasant, to cut clean hair.

Could it be so gunked up that you'd whack it off to get to something possible to wash?

It sounded like they bathed regularly (natural hot pools, surely they put their heads under?).

Or are we back to battle so frequent that even if your own blood wasn't present in your hair, someone else's innards might be?

And I, too, checked several times to be sure Teresa and not Jim had posted this.

David@33 I'm guessing, from the photo on the obligatory posterboard visual-aid, that they've figured out something of the sort.

That, or their perceptions of reality have been permanently warped by the demon sheep ad. Classic. Inspiring. And definitely memorable.....

Carol, #40: You can definitely get your hair so matted up that it's impossible to wash without first cutting the mats out. Anything that dries hard or sticky (chewing gum, various building materials, blood) will do it. I would think that melted marshmallow would as well (harking back to Angiportus @23). Plain old mud will dissolve in water, but when mixed with other things, it may just be easier to cut first and wash second.

One of the things we get on British TV is programmes about archaeology. Time Team, of course, and others such as Meet the Ancestors. And sometimes there are skeletons, thousands of years old, with the grave-goods of a warrior, and signs of serious injuries. And the bone has healed.

Sometimes, in peat bogs, there are corpses which look very like a human sacrifice.

And, on occasion, an archaeologist will trace stone-age patterns across modern fields, and pick out a few pieces of bone from a midden, and say to camera that these people were farming sheep and, the way they did it, they must have had sheepdogs--herding dogs, not the guarding sheepdogs of the rest of the ancient world--and then he'll walk off with his sheepdog to see to his sheep.

And maybe, one day, some archaeologist will find that six feet of English ground that Harold Hardrada was given to hold.

Lee, candle wax can also do a good job of messing up hair.

Or fur. Woke up one morning a few weeks ago to discover one of our long-haired cats, Rikkus, had spatters of blue candle wax across one side of his fur, and a big (about 1x2 inches) blob of same matting up his belly fur. Could comb off the side spatters, but the big blob had to be carefully cut off with scissors.

What happened, best as I can figure out, is that Rikkus got up from his usual night-time spot on the bed and went for a don't-touch-the-floor walk around the bedroom. We keep several votive candles burning on Hilde's altar box each night (green for fiscal health, blue for physical health), and Rikkus must have knocked the blue one off the altar box, giving himself a good splash of melted wax at the same time.

The astonishing thing is that the blue votive was still upright, and still burning in its holder. It had just moved from the surface of the altar box to the top of the dresser about eight inches down.

We'd thought Rikkus had figured out he shouldn't go near the candles, since he hadn't done so since getting his belly fur frizzled a few times last year, but apparently not. (He's a pretty old cat -- he's the guy I was having to handfeed with a syringe a few months ago, but thyroid pills twice a day have him almost back to normal -- so senility isn't out of the question.) So he's spending nights in the main house now, with the Grumpy Cats, instead of in the bedroom.

I think it was here on ML that I first saw the limerick by the young man who wrote all of his verse as haiku—but I cannot find it again, and Google has not helped me.

Can anyone post the haiku limerick for my delight?

pensnest

Dave Bell@43 I'm a sad addict of all those Time Team and other archaeology programmes. The sense of a depth of history under our feet never fails to interest me. The Land by Kipling captures that overlying sense for me.

If anyone hasn't heard a good sung version of the Kipling poem Jon Boden sings Kipling's "The Land" extremely well, and he's an excellent folk singer currently doing a project where he sings a folk song a day - most of which are well worth listening too.

Coincidentally, I saw a particularly aposite New Scientist article today.

Link is to p.3, which is the bit that mentions historical intensive care.

Oh, yes, Benedict. When I was active on uk.business.agriculture there was some discussion of the problems of finding a good Hobden in the modern world.

That poem struck a chord.

There's a lot of Kipling which is still applicable. They call it Iraq now. And some things don't change much.

Carol Kimball #40: Also, not everybody had those hot springs, and those who did might not want them full of loose, dirty hair!

B. Dubin @36: I'll share a similar story. In fourth grade (though this seems a bit simplistic for that age, still, that's the classroom I'm picturing), we were given a sheet of paper with a human outline and told to draw what the emperor thought his new clothes looked like. The fact that the drawings would be judged anonymously was somehow oddly liberating -- I didn't have to be my usual conformist self. My emperor wore heavily embellished bellbottom jeans, a tie-died tank top, and a flashy motorcycle helmet. It won the popular vote. It was just something about nobody being able to know it was me that set me free.

Patrick mentioned a while ago that he was going to AussieCon 4. Are any other Making Light folk planning to be there?

I have half baked plans to attend, and knowing there was a Making Light contingent would bake them slightly more.

I shall be there. I live, well, only 2700 miles away. Just next door, really.

47: Kipling was probably thinking specifically of the disastrous Siege of Kut, one of the worst defeats suffered by the British during the Great War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_kut

Benedict Leigh @ 46: Thanks very much for that link! I'm a big Bellowhead and Spiers/Boden fan, but didn't know about that project.

Xopher @ 37 — The meaning of "new" can be surprising. A street named "New Street" is usually the second oldest in town. I've noticed that "new" generally means "second oldest" in some other contexts. File names come to mind.

Dan Hoey @54 I remember being amused by that when I visited Edinburgh for the first time earlier this year. The "New Town" section was begun in the mid 1700s.

What's the difference between a European and an American?

The American thinks 400 years is old, and the European thinks 400 miles is far.

B. Durbin @36: When my dd was in kindy or 1st grade, there was a class assignment to draw a scientist. I don't remember the context now, alas. Almost everyone drew a man and most of them had white hair. (and most of them were white, which was interesting considering about half the students were not)

dd drew herself, as an adult. In her lab.

Now she's 14 and still wants to be a scientist.

When she doesn't want to be Meryl Streep.

She's shortly going to start at a high school with both a drama track and a science track, so life will undoubtedly be very interesting beginning in September . . . .

What did Einstein do that was so important, huh?

http://i.imgur.com/pqHYy.jpg

Pensnest #45: Is the following the one you mean? (it's about an old man, not a young man, but that's a trivial tweak):

There was an old man
From Peru, whose lim'ricks all
Look'd like haiku. He

Said with a laugh "I
Cut them in half, the pay is
Much better for two."

I got the text from the Limerick Database (which is where I recall having encountered it originally--can't help you with a ML reference, sorry):

LimerickDB

Tim Walters (#3): Never having heard the phrase before, I'd have assumed that "Tapping the Admiral" would be something one would do after an hour or two of drinking (depending on how long one rents beer for).

And I like the tune!

Adam Lipkin @ 59: That's "spending a penny."

Bruce Arthurs @ 44 : It is good to hear that your cat did not wind up with injuries to anything other than his dignity. Mine decided to have a hairball at 0200 this morning, which woke me up and knocked my circadian rhythm on the head. Unamused by this.

On a different topic, I assume someone here at ML knows the origin of "tapping the Admiral" - but what came to mind immediately is the tale that Lord Nelson's body was preserved in a barrel of rum after his death - and that the barrel was found empty on the ship's return to England.

Dan@54, OtterB@55 - I once visited a town in England (probably Bradford-upon-Avon), where the tourist info booth folks said "You should see the old church across the street, and also see the new church over there - it's Norman"

The Quaker meeting I attended in New Jersey had been going since the 1660s. The meetinghouse itself is newer, rebuilt a couple times after fires, but there's still the opening under the seating area where we hid people during the Underground Railroad.

Adam @ 59:

I'd not heard the phrase "tapping the Admiral" before, either -- but figured it might be a matter of "An Admiral is a Very Important Person, so if he gets killed in some remote place his body will be preserved in a cask of rum or brandy, to be brought home for ceremonial burial, and some sailors would be capable of tapping this unauthorized source of alcohol".

New College, Oxford, of course.

Dan Hoey@54: Nice observation about file names. I hadn't previously associated that with these others, but yes, that's very much something that happens.

Melissa Singer @56 -- so, she wants to be able to say, "I am a scientist AND I play one on TV"?

(My kids are also going through the stage of trying to figure out what they want to study/do/be -- difficult for all concerned.)

Facebook has a new "feature". Here's how to turn it off.

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2010/08/how_to_turn_off_facebook_places_1.html

Turning off Facebook Places

ajay @52

Of course he was.

Kipling's poem was published on the 11th July 1917, 4 months after the capture of Baghdad, which took place less than a year after the surrender at Kut.

There was some pretty major incompetence.

Steve, #67: Thanks! Done, and linked on my Facebook page as well. Does it strike you that this misfeature is just begging for a contributory-negligence lawsuit when somebody gets kidnapped or killed by a stalker or a crazy ex?

All knowledge is contained in Making Light, and I have a question about... aspirin.

I've now come across two pre-war references to aspirin which make me think that a pre-war aspirin was something different from a modern one. Modern day aspirin's just a mild painkiller. But Ngaio Marsh, in one of her novels, refers to someone having slept particularly deeply because she'd taken aspirin; and George Orwell says in The Road to Wigan Pier "A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread."

What's going on? Did aspirin have something else in it pre-1939? And was it an upper (pace Orwell) or a downer (pace Marsh)?

I stumbled across an article in Midwifery Today that really gave me pause. Being related to a midwife, I grew up soaked in the midwifery model of care, which can be summed up as "Birth is a thing a woman does, not an emergency an OB has to save her from, so GTFO with your interventions KTHX unless there is actually a problem--which, again, birth is not--because applying a solution to a nonexistent problem causes problems, so again, get that scalpel away from my client's hind end." But even my crunchy midwife SIL assumed as a matter of course that the cervix must be dilated to 10 centimeters before it's safe for the laboring woman to follow an urge to push.

The author of the article argued that this 10-centimeter rule is no older than the days when every woman was drugged so heavily that her baby had to be pulled out of her. In that state, the cervix would have to be safely out of the way or the attending OB might injure it while reaching in to get the baby. Don't ask a woman who has the pushing urge to pant like a puppy if her cervix isn't open, the article suggests. Just tell her to try a push and stop if it hurts. If the cervix is soft enough, it will open as the baby descends; if not, the pain will tell the woman to stop before she injures herself.

So even midwives, who generally pride themselves on basing their skills on direct observation, may have fallen victim to a nonsensical idea.

Lee @69: I always have an uphill struggle with half my family explaining why anyone would ever WANT to turn this kind of thing off. People under about 22 honestly do not at all seem to grok that having private things be known can be dangerous.

#70: The other bizarre thing about Marsh's aspirin description is that it was (purportedly) dissolved in water and swallowed. Not only does modern aspirin not dissolve (it only goes into suspension, but Marsh uses the adjective "murky") but why on earth would anyone take it that way--after tasting once, anyway?

So, yes, I've always been curious about that too. I'd missed the Orwell.

Debbie@66: Very likely.

The scientist thing has been a persistent passion since she was old enough to understand what a scientist is/does. The acting, well, it's almost more about _performance_ than anything else--she's already built a few characters of her own, including a very convincing boy.

Elliott@72: I think the pendulum swings again because dd and her friends, who are all 14ish, have privacy-blocked all kinds of stuff and monitor each other's fb pages for things which should be taken down lest they prove embarrassing in adulthood.

At least in her group, many (I won't say all) have apparently fully absorbed the "don't tell anyone where you are, don't reveal personal information" mantra. They are kind of horrified at the things people only a little older than they are are doing "in public" on the web. Perhaps they will feel differently when they themselves are older teens/younger adults; that I cannot say.

CMK and ajay - You can still get headache powders.

http://www.bcpowder.com/Products/OriginalFormula.aspx

In fact, I still remember BC's commercials from the 60's, where a sonorous voice intoned, "But...have you tried BC?"

Lee @ #69 - You're welcome.

One would think that FB would be wary of sticking in all this stuff you have to Opt Out of, but I can see why they do it. They figure most will just ignore it, and therefore their revenue projections from gathering more eyeballs will satisfy the money droids.

I still use it because it's a handy way of keeping in touch with friends and family, but I try to be careful.

I remember reading about what Norse warriors would do to opponents in the heat of battle. One involved violently opening the back of the enemy and pulling the lungs out. It was called an 'eagle' or something similar.

Melissa Singer @ 74... she was old enough to understand what a scientist is/does. The acting, well, it's almost more about performance

"They laughed at me at the University's Stage & Chemistry Depts! But I'll show them! Hahahahahah!!!"

AKICIML - Does LinkedIn have the same privacy problems as FaceBook, FourSquare et. al.?

If so, any remedies?

ajay @70: From a little digging around I find that prescribed dosages of aspirin were higher in the early part of the 20th century than those available OTC today.

Also, prior to the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, many things could have been mixed with the aspirin (opiates, cocaine, what-have-you).

moe99@77: Perhaps Blood eagle? A method of torture and execution more than a battlefield thing, though.

At least according to Wikipedia, there's some debate as to its historicity.

Sounds unpleasant, all in all.

Xopher@37: in my very early childhood in Yorkshire, I thought that New York was in Yorkshire. York was in Yorkshire, so New York would be somewhere nearby, obviously. (Also I think I thought that 'Yorks', the usual newspaper-headline abbreviation for Yorkshire, was the same as York, or perhaps New York. I was a confused child and from this distance I can't remember whether I was scanning the horizon for the skyscrapers I'd seen in Kojak and Rhoda.)

Yay!

ajay @70: Did aspirin have something else in it pre-1939?

I plugged aspirin (acetylsalicylic|acetylsalicylate|salicylic|salicylate) into two different date-restricted Google Books searches (pre-1900 and 1900-1940) and didn't find any evidence of the original "Aspirin" formulation extending beyond acetylsalicylic acid.

However, after WWI, the trademark was forcibly genericized in the UK, US, and various other countries, and so Marsh and Orwell may've been using the term in a more general sense. There are a lot of 1900-1940 references to dosing with caffeine salicylate as a water-soluble powder, which would explain the stimulant effect.

ajay@70: I wondered the same thing when I read Marsh. I'm reasonably sure the aspirin we have today is the same thing (many sources assert it).

The theory I made up, which I have no evidence whatsoever for, is that enough people had little chronic pains that even a mild analgesic might make them sleep especially heavily (accumulated sleep deficit plus placebo effect).

The possibility that Marsh simply got off on the wrong foot somehow sounds more likely to me.

I'd be fascinated to hear more evidence about whether other people of that vintage talked about aspirin the same way, or not.

@ Jenny Islander: I didn't feel the urge to push with either of my kids until the way was clear. Of course, with the second, I apparently went open like a telescoping iris, so that wasn't an issue.

Both were hospital births, but the local Kaiser hospital is very non-interventionist unless necessary.

Serge@78: She already has a great Evil Laugh.

B. Durbin@83: Congratulations!

C @25: to get our Haitian friend's 6-year-old daughter into the U.S., successfully concluded earlier this month. Yay!

HUZZAH!

B.Durbin@36
"More to the point, I followed the rules that did not exist anywhere but in my head. I spent a lot of time trying to anticipate expectations."

yes indeed. I just read JM Coetzee's Boyhood and was remembering what it was like to be a careful timid child, trying to work out the rules and how to follow them..

to the aspirin questions - I recall as a child taking aspirin that dissolved in a glass of water. The English must have a different pharmacopoeia.
It certainly helps me sleep. I can see it working both ways: remove the mild pain, and sleep will be better; similarly the quality of attention improves without the stultifying drag of dealing with the pain.

Carol Kimball @79 -- as LinkedIn is much more about professional connections, and people can be banned for asking for too many connections to people they don't really know, I'd say it has a lot fewer privacy concerns than FB. It's also a lot smaller.

Merrilee

It's bolded text, not link text, that's why.

Just wanted TA to know I was thinking of her, and the poet, who may not want his name actually posted, know the same.

Love, c.

Doug K@89: yes, soluble aspirin—quoting from memory here but isn't that the sodium salt of the acid?

When I were a lad, children were not only allowed to take aspirin but even had their own special variety of aspirin, Junior Aspirin. Junior Aspirins were an attractive orange in colour, had a delicious orange taste, and came in little plastic jars that contained well over a fatal dose. It's a wonder any of us survived to adulthood.

Junior Aspirins were an attractive orange in colour, had a delicious orange taste, and came in little plastic jars that contained well over a fatal dose. It's a wonder any of us survived to adulthood.

Yes indeed. I had my stomach pumped out as a result of this one. To this day - more than 45 years later - I cannot abide the taste of anything that particular flavor of orange.

Aspirin has always had a soporific effect on me. I never connected it to aspirin until I read those Marsh stories (and I think other 1930s books, too), so for me, at least, it's probably not the placebo effect. Aspirin's almost as effective a sleep aid as Benadryl.

#88 Lin D

We cannot describe the sheer relief that we're still feeling every minute.

And the daughter? She's just a whizzbanger, who takes to everything like she was born to it.

What a job her mom did protecting her all these months, and much of that time was literally on the streets, due to the sheer lack of places to go. And so dangerous in so many ways.

Love, C.

B. Durbin @ 83 - congratulations from me, too.

NSAIDs, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, are known to cause sleepiness in some people. Higher doses are more likely to cause this unwanted effect. I suspect the "stimulant" effect is more likely to be the placebo effect of an NSAID, or the particular preparation that was used in this case contained caffeine. An old version of ASA (the shorthand for Aspirin (tm)) contained caffeine -- they were APC tablets (ASA, phenacetin, and caffeine). Eventually the phenacetin was dropped (kidney toxicity), but caffeine may still be included for "headache" versions, as caffeine does help reduce some headache pain.

These days, soluble asprin is probably Disprin, or some variation of it.

I'm another recovering Lawful child. I sometimes get into arguments with my mother about the rules I followed, but they always end the same way, with me reassuring her that I do not blame her for this, seriously, can't I talk about my weird childhood beliefs without attacking her as a mother? Once all three of us are out of the house, she'll get better, I hope.

I try to be aware, at least, of when I avoid something because it Isn't Done.

On the Vikings thread - War was Hel then, still is...

Steve, #76: My current description of Facebook:

"Facebook is like an un-housebroken puppy. You have to keep a sharp eye on it all the time, you have to limit its range of activities, and sometimes you have to smack it with a rolled-up newspaper to keep it from getting out of hand."

Incidentally, there's one more thing you want to turn off that's connected with the Places misfeature. Account --> Privacy --> Applications and Websites/Edit Settings --> Info Accessible Thru Your Friends/Edit Settings --> uncheck "Places I've Visited". This keeps you from being tracked via your friends who may not be as careful or savvy as you are.

Carol, #79: During the Great Facebook-wants-to-own-all-your-information Flap, I remember seeing that LinkedIn had similar issues WRT intellectual property. But that was over a year ago, which is aeons in online time. You might want to take a look at their User Agreement -- it must be online somewhere.

OtterB, #93: I guess I was lucky. By the time I was tall enough to reach the shelf with the baby aspirin bottle, I was also old enough to read and understand the warnings... and perhaps had already had them explained to me verbally, I don't recall. But I was never tempted to eat them as candy, and I knew why I shouldn't.

Ginger, #97: That's interesting. I knew that caffeine withdrawal causes headaches, but I wasn't aware that it could go the other way (except that I would have assumed it to if the headache in question was a caffeine-withdrawal headache).

Steve C. @ 75: Did you head about the person who claimed not to like Alka Seltzer because it was too loud?

B. Durbin @83: Congratulations from me as well. I look forward to reading your story (and the others).

Question for the flurosphere:

In 2008, for various reasons, my license plates were suspended. I straightened things out, and new plates were issued in 2009. Just this afternoon, my car was towed, for the plates being suspended in 2008. I called the town, and they said the plates were suspended 2008, but the plates were the new ones from 2009. The town was aware that these were new 2009 plates, issued after the suspension - which would obviously mean that the suspension was addressed.

They said it was a DMV problem, I'm very confused as to why the DMV would have issued new plates last year if things were still suspended.

If I drink coffee more often than very occasionally, it gives me headaches*. Tea doesn't have the same effect, so it may be nothing to do with the caffeine.

*I started a two-part study once, stopping coffee for a month. I was going to count the number of headaches, start drinking the stuff again and count again. The results of the first half of the trial were so obvious I never formally bothered with the second half. Recently, several years later, I was tired from overwork, drank a couple of coffees each morning for three days to improve wakefulness. Daily headache starting on day two. Stopped drinking the coffee. Day four, no headache.

Mark @144/946: (Ooh, and the breadcrumb post is 945. Nice bit of parallel structure. Hat-tip to the lovely and charming Jacque.)

<curtsy> Sorry, didn't mean to slight your 144/945. I didn't see it in my haste. <*sparkle*>

Thanks ddb!

[I just found this sitting in a Notepad document - thought I'd posted it this morning]
Constance @ 25: Re your Haitan friend and her daughter - really pleased to hear this has finally worked out.

Marilee @29: They're hard wired - part of the fire safety requirement for the loft conversion (since it's now a three-storey house). Actually, the battery-operated one we used to have several feet further down the hall was even more sensitive and my husband - who could reach it, being six foot five, used to have to go pull the battery quite frequently - sufficiently often that we finally took it down (we've kept the battery operated one in my home office, which is an extension on the back of the house).

B. 83: Congratulations!

perilla #59 Yes, that is it—many thanks! I've been writing limericks of late, and was just so charmed with that one I wanted to have it as a good example.

Goodness, you folks have been busy! Conga rats to B. and C., a hearty endorsement of BC powders (which, if memory serves, do have caffeine as well as aspirin), and Jacque, I didn't feel at all slighted by your thoroughness.

I'm still a little pouty about missing the piñata, however.

Melissa Singer @9: Requesting goodness for your friend.

TexAnne @12: No job for me!

Go have a look at Liz Ryan's stuff. She has a very interesting model of how to go about applyig for jobs. And she's got mountains of stuff out on the internet for free. (I've been sufficiently impressed that I actually shelled out Real Money to take some of her courses.)

YouTube helpfully suggests http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2wgHwYC-ZE as an improvement on the Carly Fiorina political ad mentioned in PNH's recent sidelight. I wholeheartedly approve.

BC powders do, in fact, contain caffeine. I find that they do their job best when washed down with cola -- the additional caffeine and sugar are both important.

I admit this sounds something like "drop an aspirin into a Coca-Cola to get high." It never did that, but it helped me get past heat-stress headaches in a kitchen classroom when the outside temp was in the 90s and the A/C wasn't working very well.

Facebook: Information once released cannot be recalled. (usenet people know this one really well.)

Caffeine: I'm addicted to it, and get ghastly headaches by noon if I don't have my daily dose. The headache is bad enough that I carry caffeine pills with me everywhere, just in case I get stuck somewhere overnight. I choose this because the alternative is not being fully awake (read: unbelievably groggy) until noon, or possibly all day. I also drink water for the rest of the day, with an occasional fruity drink inserted for variety.

caffeine for headaches: my understanding is that it only works for migraines, rather than regular headaches. migraines often involve vasodilation whereas standard headaches are often from vasoconstriction. adding caffeine (a vasoconstrictor) to a normal headache will make you feel worse, but it will help relieve a migraine.

B. Durbin, #83, congratulations!

Millions of US eggs have salmonella -- that FDA link has the brand names of the companies that sell them.

Shadowsong #115: Except, of course, for those caffeine-withdrawal headaches. I find I've slipped up to twice-a-day, but I do stick to one caffeine drink each time.

I tend to switch off among coffee (spiced, with milk&sugar), tea (sweet, no milk), or Mountain Dew. Lately my tea is gunpowder green -- much better since I learned to brew green tea in sub-boiling water!

shadowsong @ 115: About 12% of caffeine is converted to theobromine, which is the main vasodilator (theophylline makes up about 4% of the metabolic derivatives, and it is also a smooth muscle relaxant). This is the main reason caffeine and ergot are still packaged together as a medication for migraine. Caffeine itself is a CNS stimulant, which may also lend itself to treating migraines; however, the primary reason for adding caffeine to ASA is that caffeine enhances the uptake of substances -- it makes the absorption faster, which means the ASA gets into the bloodstream sooner, therefore starts acting on your pain sooner. It also synergizes the effects of some drugs, allowing you to take less of a drug to get the same effect.

Caffeine can also cause headaches, particularly withdrawal or rebound headaches. A little of it goes a long way. If I consume too much of it, as I did in veterinary school, it triggers random flashes of light in my vision and erratic heartbeats. I prefer tea, and don't drink much in the way of sodas, so my daily caffeine intake is much more moderate now. I can still get a withdrawal headache if I forget my morning tea.

On the other hand, for migraines I prefer to add an antihistamine to my NSAID.

Oh, hey!

http://anadapta0801.livejournal.com/6650.html

A Doctor Who slash poem in Middle English simply must be brought to the attention of this blog. Apologies if it already has been.

It even manages to translate "and then they done sex" with a straight face. Fantastic!

Oh, I should warn for some coercion in the above, though relatively mild as Doctor/Master goes.

I've gone down to one diet Pepsi a day (warm weather) and one big home-made brewed tea (cold weather) for my caffeine just because I thought it was a good idea.

I remain eternally grateful that the one bout I had with migraines turned out to be in tune with the vaccine manufacturing plant I worked at and one particular process that was done about every six-eight weeks. Once I quit that job, I have never had so much as a hint of that horrible, nasty kind of headache again. (It caused visual side-effects and if I didn't get myself home the minute I noticed it coming on, it was very difficult because we only had one car at the time.)

May I pick the fluorospherical brains here? My sister is looking for the name and author of a man sells his soul to the devil story, in which the devil tells him the day, hour and place of his death, and the bloke arranges to be far, far away on that day, but he meets death anyway, who tells him that it was odd finding him here, he had an appointment with him far away.

Anybody know it?

Dave Luckett@122: Take a look at http://www.au.lspace.org/books/apf/the-colour-of-magic.html , scroll down to "Appointment in Samarra", and then -- if you like -- prowl further for references.

Although I don't remember seeing a version where the victim *bargains* with Death.

The classic that's similar, Dave Luckett, is "The Appointment in Samarra." Somerset Maugham's retelling of it is found here.

Dave Luckett @122

90% of that sounds like Somerset Maugham's Appointment in Samarra. The differences are that it is Death, not the Devil, who has the appointment, there is no sale of soul; it is just that appointment, and the remaining difference is a spoiler.

Google will find it.

J Homes.

Dave, I just read that one! It's Arabian, right? He rides from Damascus to...I don't remember.

I think, from my sister's vague description, that it must be "Appointment in Samarra". The funny thing is, I know the story - though I don't expect anyone to believe that - and simply couldn't call it to mind.

Having a senior moment, over here. I'll be all right about ten years ago.

Right, Samara.

"Funny you should say that," said Death. "I was surprised to see you in Damascus, because we've always had an appointment here."

Or something like that.

And thank you all.

Dave, we all have moments like that. I believe you.

I just read unquestionably the darkest YA series I've ever come across: Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet.

There are heroics, yes, but also much death and dolor in these books. If I were going to recommend them to a youngish reader, I'd want him or her to be 14 or more and have any youthful optimism tempered by realism. Phew!

The prequel, Fever Crumb, is every bit as depressing. I thought they were quite well done -- possibly they'd serve as a way to find out if someone's ready to read J. G. Ballard.... I recommend them.

Tom @ #132, I have Fever Crumb sitting on the shelf with the rest of the library books. I'm trying to rebuild my strength by reading Books 2, 3, and 4 of Doyle & Macdonald's Mageworlds, which just arrived in the mail via Jackson Street Books, owned and operated by some internet friends of mine in Hoquiam, WA.

Ginger @ 118: And for sinus headaches, it's amazing how helpful it can be to simply breath steam for a few minutes.

I don't get classic migranes (not one-sided, for example, and no light effects) but I do get occasional (now about once a year) migrane-level incapacitating headaches with rock-solid neck and shoulders. Only cure I've found is to take NSAID, lie down and get to sleep. If I can sleep, everything relaxes and I wake an hour or two later feeling fine.

dcb@134: Ah, for the sinus component I use a nasal rinse (aka neti pot, only with a 6 ml syringe instead). The first time I used the rinse, I was quite surprised to have a migraine without pain. I've now had these pain-reduced migraines a few more times. One of them presented as 4 days of intensely enhanced sense of smell, to the point where I was almost unable to eat. Very peculiar.

I've learned to do the nasal flush for every migraine, as sometimes it just stops the process. Other times it makes little difference; for those I get the antihistamine and NSAID, and try to sleep. Occasionally I also have to use a cold pack on my head or neck.

Tom Whitmore #132: they'd serve as a way to find out if someone's ready to read J. G. Ballard

Now that's an interesting idea: pairing YA and adult authors, specifically choosing the YA author as a gateway to more sophisticated works along that line.

Thanks to all for the aspirin advice! Caffeine salicylate, and aspirin occasionally having soporific effects...

On "Appointment in Samarra" - interesting that the narrator is Death, and is female.

Dave Luckett -- Terry Pratchett has played with the premise once or twice as well, with Rincewind encountering Death unexpectedly.

I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND, FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT.

'Oh no, not —'

OF COURSE, WHAT'S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEPHOPOLOLIS.

'But that's five hundred miles away!'

YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME. THE WHOLE SYSTEM'S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN, I CAN SEE THAT. LOOK, THERE'S NO CHANCE OF YOU—?

Ginger @ 135... for the sinus component I use a nasal rinse

And, for the cosinus component, a math-al rinse?

Serge - you're going off on a tangent, but that's ok. I have pi.

Ginger--that last comment really struck a chord with me.

No need to go all hyperbolic everyone.

Geeze - everyone is working an angle. It's just a question of degree.

Open-threadiness -- I'm sure a lot of people have heard about Dr. Laura deciding to stop having her radio program because people are upset over her using "the N word" multiple times on her show. I'm glad that she's stopping, whatever the reason, but I'm wondering when it is that people stopped believing in the use-mention distinction. Her mentions of the word were all about other people using it; while she was defending the possibility of white people using the word, she never actually used it. Another example, perhaps, of the symbol (the word, mentioned) taking on power that is really only appropriate to the actual (the word, used).

Tom @ 144 -

Words invoke emotion, and emotion drives meaning. The level of that emotion can change, and is dependent on context, on who says it, and how it's said. Since words are symbols, any power they have is always relative.

Tom @ 144 — While she didn't apply the word to a person, I interpreted her repetitive chanting as actual use, with intention to be offensive.

She deserves 8 million hardbound copies of the first amendment.

Dan Hoey @146 -- Dr. Laura generally strives to be offensive (in my experience -- she badgers and hectors her callers mercilessly). But the offense she was attempting to create was not the offense of using that word in the sense of using its meaning. To my mind, there's a real difference.

Steve C. @145 -- words are indeed symbols, and there's a difference in my head, at least, between using the word to represent a thing ("use") and using the word to discuss the word. And from what I heard, she was clearly doing the latter. I think there are parallels here with the ongoing "mosque at ground zero" discussion, where many people are pointing out that the words "mosque" and "ground zero" are being used inaccurately (and "ground zero" is a seriously overused nuclear metaphor).

Tom, #144: The position she was arguing -- that it's just fine for a white person to use the N-word because black people use it -- is just as offensive to me as if she had actually used it to address a black person. It displays a complete lack of awareness of balance-of-power and privilege issues, and a stunning deafness to nuance. A person with those traits absolutely does not need to be setting up as having authority to give other people advice; she's seriously in need of therapy herself. And while it might be argued that I shouldn't say anything about the ways in which PoC use language to address each other, I most definitely AM qualified to have an opinion about the things other white people say.

Eminem can use the word (although it still gets bleeped out in his recordings), but Vanilla Ice, probably not.

I do disagree with her (and think she's no good at what she purports to do) in the same way you do, Lee, and I'd castigate her for using the word; and I defend her right to have that opinion. But it's really hard to have the discussion if the word can't be mentioned. And her mentioning the word (not her stance about it) is what seems to be getting a lot of people up in arms.

Lox, red onions, cream cheese, capers on a bagel.

OMFG.

Tom @ 147,150 — You are distinguishing between the use of an offensive word "in the sense of using its meaning" and the mention of an offensive word for the purpose of discussion. I believe this case is a third way of using an offensive word, without regard to its traditional meaning, but with the intention of giving offense by the use of the word.

I'm having a hard time expressing how I believe the third usage is offensive in a way that the second is not. Perhaps it's the general feeling that it's right to take offense when someone tries to be offensive, because otherwise they will try harder.

Stefen, if the mere thought of a chewey bagel didn't make my cracked tooth ache, I'd be right over there with you nomming. Preliminaries for the root canal Monday, if I can last that long.

Stefan Jones@151: I personally would skip the capers (though they're quite traditional), but yeah, so fine! (If the bagel is any good.)

Mostly red onions are my least favorite, but they seem right to me for this; dunno if I've just accepted the tradition, or if the flavors really do work better.

Janet Brennan Croft@153: Ouch! Yeah, decent bagel VERY STRONGLY contra-indicated in that case. Hope it all holds together for you until you get it fixed!

The word can be alluded to to discuss it, just as other words have circumlocutions, like c-bomb or f-bomb.

Context matters. The same word can be spelled out explicitly in a magazine or journal article, but be too inflammatory in a talk-show. Or it can be routinely used by someone line Chris Rock in a comedy routine.

I haven't listened, or even red the transcript. It does seem to me, in general, that repeated "reference" to a word can be done in such a way that it amounts to actual use. Some of the descriptions make what Dr. Laura did sound like it's in that category.

ISTR that there is already a body of law regarding words that can't be used on the public airwaves, and that it has been determined that in those cases the First Amendment does not apply -- cf. Howard Stern. If the n-word is one of those, then she really doesn't have a leg to stand on, not that she did in the first place for reasons outlined above.

As my partner puts it, she is not "being censored", she is being censured by the general public.

Dan, #152: I get what you're saying. It's a bully's trick, a way of gaming the system -- on a par with saying something deliberately offensive, and then playing the "nobody can hurt you unless you LET them" card. Since Dr. Laura displays all the traits of being a bully, we shouldn't be surprised that she knows this one.

The bagels were inferior West Coast Noah's Bagels product. Much better than most, but not awesome glossy things from Back East.

And the lox was smoked salmon from Costco.

But still. Damn. The synergy of those ingredients.

I just swung by the break room and swept up the last few gobbets of salmon and some onion bits. Mmmm.

The Mad (Republican) Tea Party

Open Threadly throwing it out there:

Trying to get the lay of the land. Is anyone here particularly knowledgeable about China, or has anyone China experience(s) they'd like to share? I'm an aspiring sinologue, in awe of how much there is still to learn and discover*. Stories, (trivial) facts, opinions (positive and negative alike), anything on China or the China experience really, all will find a willing ear and interested soul in me.

In the coming year, I'll be writing my master's dissertation. Right now, I'm still making up my list of possible subjects. To me, this list seems not quite diverse enough yet, so I'm looking for (wild) suggestions. The only criterion being that it's likely the Chinese were interested enough to write about it scientifically, as I need to use a substantial amount of Chinese sources. Interesting little facts that you think need elaboration, (tormenting) questions that need investigation, (hidden) mechanisms that require inquiry, anything goes.

Some examples out of what's currently on my list:
- what could be the main reasons behind the technological retardation during the Qing dynasty (this one has a pretty large body of (sometimes controversial) literature already, but then it is a very interesting question.)
- Earlier this year the Belgian Conference pear was the first imported fruit in China (perhaps the first European or non-Asian fruit import, not sure) Why? How? &c
- Evolutions in modern Chinese pottery (what with their long history of, well, china)

The last one is still vague, but I was suddenly curious, so I wrote it down. If it sticks in my head for long enough, I'll look further into it and see if there's a proper research question hidden in there**. The possibility of such a question alone is enough to merit a mention: if it seems interesting to you, it might seem interesting to me. The job of looking further into it is my own at any rate.

--
* in general, of course, but specifically about China. If I ever want to feel worthy of my chosen field, much to learn, there is.
** of if I can find one, at least. Not quite the same thing.

Tom Whitmore @#150: As I understand it, her stance is what's got people up in arms, as much as her word choices. You can read the full transcript of what was said over here--to me it hardly seems that she's trying to have a reasonable conversation about the acceptability of the N-word. She's berating a black caller for complaining about racist comments made by friends and family, and accuses her repeatedly of being hypersensitive.

The power of talk radio (apparently all deployed for evil) is reminding me a lot of Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron.

Re: "Dr." Laura, Media Matters has both the full audio (to which I have not listened, and will not--her voice annoys me) and a transcript (which I have read) here.

Since it started because a (black) female caller was asking for advice on how to handle the racist remarks she gets from her (white) husband's friends/family--and how to handle the fact that her husband wasn't standing up for her--it seems to me that "Dr." Laura's usage of the word was nowhere near the "use it to have a rational discussion about it" sense. From the beginning of the call, "Dr." Laura was unresponsive to her caller's question and concerns, seeming to go out of her way to drag in Obama and "why is it okay for black rappers to toss around the n-word but nobody else can?" rhetoric and then ascribe attitudes to the caller that were not in evidence based on the caller's words.

That "Dr." Laura is surprised by the reaction only reinforces the fact that she has NEVER had the credentials to give anyone life advice. I wouldn't trust her to advise my cats on how to catch mice.

Re: me @165...and Mary Dell posts a good and less wordy response @163 while I'm typing. :)

On the fantasy cover art particle, I note that the only two trends on the rise from the previous year are the presence of "hobbits, ogres, dwarves" and "guns".

I once long ago did a watercolour of a standoff between a dragon and a hobbit with an Uzi.

Tom Whitmore @150: And her mentioning the word (not her stance about it) is what seems to be getting a lot of people up in arms.

Are you sure the mention of the word is the cause of the complaints? It seems very plausible to me (without investigating anything and only knowing what I've read about the case here) that it is her stance that caused the offence, but the complaints were about mentioning the word because simply taking that stance isn't in violation of anybody's rules about things you can broadcast, but the word itself could at least be interpreted as so being.

Linkmeister, #133, the bookgroup is discussing book 1 of Mageworlds -- The Price of The Stars -- tomorrow. Half the forecasters say it will be 89 and half say 90, so I'm going to go, as long as there's no Code. The library has the rest of the series and I plan to read that after I finish the Richard Jury series.

Syd @ 165 — I am not convinced she is surprised by the reaction. She may have courted the reaction, including the termination of her contract with CNN, in order to gain victim credentials for her next scheme. Race-baiting credentials, too.

Open-thready comment aimed at the local Catholics: has anyone here seen the new translation of the Missal that's supposed to become standard sometime next year? I've heard "the language is more elevated in tone," and that one major reason for the change is to help make worship more mindful (and less robotic parroting of the next response that you've known since you were in diapers), but I'd love to get a Fluorospherian's take.

Elliot Mason @ 171... What's that you're asking about robotic parroting?

Elliott Mason #171:

The whole thing is here

There's not a lot of change. Some of it I think is an improvement (and these are mostly changes that move closer to the Anglican versions). Some I'm not convinced about.

It's unfortunate that they didn't take the opportunity to fix the translation of 'homo' as 'man', especially in the Credo. Tt made sense in the 1970s, but forty years later it really stands out in modern English.

Dan Hoey @170 -- I'd believe that.

Jules @168 -- I might believe that, except that NPR (at least) was re-broadcasting parts of what she said to demonstrate how she used the word. AFAIK, the word isn't on any do-not-broadcast list as a word (as were the famous Seven Words George Carlin listed). I think she's smart enough to know that she was being offensive (which I agree she was, though not simply by use of the word).

Serge @ 172 -- Or here. I wonder if Douglas Adams was influenced by that episode of LiS.

Dan, #170: Dr. Laura wasn't fired. She quit, took her ball and went home, and is now whining about it.

"Hyperlocal News" is the new buzzword. The latest Boston Phoenix has an article wondering whether hyperlocal news can support its journalists. Here's my take on what news would be like if it were really hyperlocal.

http://captaincormorant.com/miscart/hyperlocal-page1.jpeg

Very clever, Erik. But it must be published in some remote area in Italy -- why else would its language be Latin?

Hyper-Local News

Spoon Is In Frozen Yogurt

Water Bottle Contains Water, Ice

Editorial: Split Keyboard Is Slightly Sticky

Xopher @#179:

Plums in Refrigerator Eaten

Joel Polowin @ 175... It wouldn't surprise me. Irwin Allen has been quite a pioneer - and probably other things we won't mention in polite company. For example, did you know that "Lost in Space" probably featured one of the earliest examples of non-Verne steampunk? What? Don't you remember the episode where Doctor Smith, Penny and Will are abducted to the steam/pedal-powered asteroid of an Arabian-Nights character?

I actually have plums in my refrigerator. I think I'll eat them, even if my nonexistent roommate was saving them for breakfast.

Dan @152:

I believe this case is a third way of using an offensive word, without regard to its traditional meaning, but with the intention of giving offense by the use of the word.

I'm having a hard time expressing how I believe the third usage is offensive in a way that the second is not. Perhaps it's the general feeling that it's right to take offense when someone tries to be offensive, because otherwise they will try harder.

You appear to be describing what I think of as "Does this bother you? I'm not touching you! Why does it bother you if I'm not touching you?"

(The visual for that is Bart Simpson in the back seat of the car poking at the air within an inch of Lisa's arm without actually touching her.)

Only the last time I had occasion to think of it, it was to do with people who went out of their way to use semantically inoffensive but phonologically similar words "niggardly" and "snigger" as a way to say the two offensive syllables without the people around them being able to call them on it.

Syd @165: I wouldn't trust her to advise my cats on how to catch mice.

Yes, well, there are very few humans I'd expect could give cats decent advice on how to catch mice. I've been tempted to try it, because my cats truly suck at the sport, but about the best I can do is "Not like that, you idiot." Doesn't really help the cat improve its hunting technique.

Elliot Mason at 171: I am reserving judgment. I know the new words will feel awkward at first, and I don't envy the music directors, who are going to have to fit the new words and phrases to old music, or new music, and then get choirs and reluctant congregations to sing them -- OMG!

Some things I will like. Some I'll hate. Let's see how it all feels in about three years.

I have noticed that in the last couple of decades the "N-word" has shifted in common usage, if not in FCC regulations, from a slur to an obscenity. (I'm being somewhat imprecise in my use of "obscenity", but I mean to describe the transition from a word that isn't *used* in polite discourse to one that isn't even *mentioned* in polite discourse.)

The "n-word" is of course not alone in that latter category. The "f-word" lives there too, for instance. And the "polite discourse" qualifier is an important one as well: the HBO comedians and musicians that Dr. Laura cites, *both* black and white, use the "f-word" frequently, not just the "n-word". They're *not* operating under the rules of "polite discourse"; indeed, comedians and many other cable-TV performers make a point to *transgress* those rules.

So Dr. Laura can't claim that "blacks on HBO" justify using the n-word any more than she can use to it justify dropping the f-bomb. (She's not stupid; she knows enough not to do *that* on the air.) Reading the transcript with that in mind, I find her "hypersensitivity" claims sounding a lot like whining over the erosion of white privilege, and baiting and bullying callers that try to challenge that privilege. That I find more offensive than any particular words she used on the program.

If I were still in college, I would have promoted a Dr Laura drinking game: take a swallow every time she interrupts the caller.

A couple of news articles:
Young Colombian immigrant working for real estate developer picked the site for the community center

Apparently the local strip joints don't mind having the mosque move near them. (All the news articles are quoting each other and adding comments; looks like the original was probably in the WSJ.)

HyperLocal News:

Cat Food Dish Interior Visible! Starvation Imminent [*], Howling Felines Declare!

Folding Awaits After Completed Laundry Cycle

Householder Threatens Lawn Mower Neighbor After Late Night, Early Morning

[*] Why is this word not in the spelling demonologies? I know I want the one that starts with an 'i' but I can't seem to remember what the unstressed vowel is supposed to be and they all look wrong.

Elliott Mason @171: Have so far only seen bits and pieces. Not impressed so far. As a choir member, I am peeved that it's going to mess up our Mass settings, but I guess we'll adjust.

Thena, confusion might stem from the fact that there are two that begin with 'i': 'imminent' (which you spelled correctly) means "about to happen." 'Immanent' means "materially manifest."

Hyperlocal News:

p1. The four-year-old is asleep in bed, dreaming of owning his very own Aston Martin DB9. (Must do something about relatives book gifting habits.)

p2. The assertions in the production code are still not trapping the elusive error causing the day-for-day schedule slip.

p3. The machine code emitter in the personal initiative project remains unwritten.

p4. The sauna is hot, and the vanilla nut brown ale is fully conditioned, and ready to drink.

p5. Area man announces the arrival of a local Nudity epoch.

"Tapping the admiral"--the Peabody Essex Museum had an exhibition entitle The Great Age of Sail back in the 1990s, with items from Britain which included Sir Francis Drake's pocket calculator, a scale model of HMS Victory, and the quite a bit larger than life (or death...) size painting The Death of Nelson. The notes mentioned that the sailors voluntarily gave up rum rations to put preserve Nelson's body for return for burial in England, but then were tappig the keg to bring them luck.

========

Laura the Lout lacked the panache of the ill-behaved flight attendant, she exhibited no creativity....

Hyperlocal News:

Delicious Strawberry Shortcake Causes Lassitude, Experts Warn

App Which Makes iPhone Sound Like Star Trek Communicator Wows Five People

Cat Flirts Shamelessly With Anyone Who Sits on Sofa

Hyperlocal News: Kitten reports human face as good as catnip.

Seriously. I have never seen a cat want soooo much luuuurve that it would rub it's head and face and body all over my face. When I'm trying to read.

If I were still in college, I would have promoted a Dr Laura drinking game: take a swallow every time she interrupts the caller.

Good God, man! you'd choke!

Any suggestions on interesting directions in which to kill time while effectively prevented from engaging in any meaningful physical activity for the next 8 - 12 weeks would be much appreciated.

Nothing dire, I've just misaligned things a bit in one knee and am supposed to not aggravate it further while we wait for the physical therapy to kick in...

Nicole@195

On the other hand, being drunk probably makes listening to Dr. Laura more bearable...

Via Elizabeth Bear, I see that Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little has sold a story to Ellen Datlow. Congratulations!

KayTei, if you've ever wanted to learn to knit/crochet/embroider/do origami, now sounds like a good time. (I learned to juggle during a particularly boring pregnancy.)

Also, as a physical therapist assistant I feel obliged to say that you should find a way to continue to work out your upper body and, if possible, get an aerobic workout. For example, you might be able to walk in a swimming pool (chest-deep) without irritating your knee. Failing that, you can do an upper-body workout with hand weights or resistance bands. Ask your doctor or your PT.

Congratulations, Nicole!

#196 ::: KayTei ::: (view all by) ::: August 21, 2010, 03:19 AM:

Any suggestions on interesting directions in which to kill time while effectively prevented from engaging in any meaningful physical activity for the next 8 - 12 weeks would be much appreciated.

Seconding knitting/crocheting/beading (stringing seed beads on a needle from a tray is nearly as close to zero-motion as you can get and still be moving -- no impact whatsoever).

However, my "I only have half a hand and am stuck in this chair" brain-saver during the early stages of breastfeeding were facebook clicky-games, and Civilization. Civ occasionally needs a single-key keyboard shortcut (or shift; I only have a 3-button mouse) from the other hand, but there are plenty of games out there that can be done with one elbow propped near the mousing surface and only small hand motions.

Plants Vs. Zombies from Popcap is pretty amusing, for one. :->

Xopher #182:

s/even if/because/

Hyperlocal news:

Cat is stuck (again) in the stretched-out upside-down position; mouse drugs suspected

Solar panels across street glare mid-morning: blindness possible

Surprising science discovery: fragments of dropped glass can fly thirty feet

Nonlocal news:

Looks like Australia will be following the minority government trend.

KayTei @ 196 -- I've been doing a lot of rereading of old-favourite books in the last few months, selected to match what limited brain power I've got on a given day. And I've been going swimming about every second day, which gets me out of the damn house and gives me at least some exercise -- treading water, upper-body workout against the water, lower-body workout against the water.

If your medical problems leave you the brain cells to rub together... as Merlin says in The Once and Future King: learn something.

Joel Polowin@205:

> If your medical problems leave you the brain cells to rub together... as Merlin says in The Once and Future King: learn something.

I read somewhere or other that lots of writers' biographies and autobiographies contain accounts of longish childhood illnesses that left the young-person-who-would-grow-up-to-be-an-author bedridden but alert enough to read intensively for several months, working his or her way through every single book brought to the bedside, whether age-appropriate or not. I like to think that I'd use a few months of enforced idleness in this way, but I probably wouldn't.

Perhaps that's how all the sagas got written: it's something for a Norseman to do when he's lying on a straw pallet for six months trying to ignore the pain of a shattered femur.

Hyperlocal News Briefs:

Crown and post fall out, dentist appointment unavailable before November

Area man announces completion of delayed laundry project

Obese cat stampedes through apartment, psychosis suspected

Plums in refrigerator await breakfast

Well crap, we've lost another good one.

Lee: That fix (places I've visited) is nice to know, but I think I found the other way around that risk. No one but me gets to add places. Since I will add no places it doesn't matter if anyone can see them.

I will probably go and fix it, but since I have no faith that FB won't need to have all these reset the next time they roll out a forcible "feature", I am tolerably happy with the present arrangement.

Ursula L: As I don't understand how one's plates get suspended, I can't help you. In Calif. it's a tax. Pay the tax, get current tags (reminds me I need to get the tags I want for the BMW; it's harder because the motorcyle plates are smaller, and I lose a letter to the Army Logo [and can't get the veteran bar, I think... grmnph. But I need to get the Army plates, or my blue bike, with yellow gear will lead people to think I was in the Navy).

One can have a vehicle impounded for an excess of unpaid parking violations, but that's also easy to fix... show proof of payment. The hassle is when one is mistakenly towed, the towing/impound fees are not reimbursed. Since the city gets no cut of that, however, there isn't an incentive to play with that sort of thing.

Maia used to be useless without her morning tea. She switched to decaf, and had much more energy. She slept better, and was tired less early in the evening. The transition was a bit stressful, but all in all she's not inclined to go back to caffiene in much of anything.

re Dr. Laura: The part that got me was, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" aspect of her comments. When she said the woman ought not have been in an interacial marriage if the word offended her. Throughout the exchange it was, "you are black, so you have to be willing to put up with it.

You know what? If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race. If you're going to marry out of your race, people are going to say, "OK, what do blacks think? What do whites think? What do Jews think? What do Catholics think?" Of course there isn't a one-think per se. But in general there's "think."

And what I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think -- and it's really distressting [sic] and disturbing. And to put it in its context, she said the N-word, and I said, on HBO, listening to black comics, you hear "nigger, nigger, nigger." I didn't call anybody a nigger. Nice try, Jade. Actually, sucky try.

Need a sense of humor, sense of humor -- and answer the question.

If you look at it we have some classic Limbaugh (abuse the caller, and put words in their mouths after the hang-up, when they can't rebut, or defend themselves) as well as a whole lot of race-baiting (all the "blacks voted for Obama, not because he was a better candidate, but because he was, "half-black", admit it.). Immediate charges of hypersensitivity (and a post-call admonition to, "get a sense of humor"). It was classic bully/troll behavior (not the bit where she accused Jade of saying Schlessinger uses the word to refer to people. Didn't happen. Jade asked if it was ever appropriate. Schlessinger said yes; sauce for the goose and all).

So yeah, I think she ought to have been fired, sadly she was able to quit.

Kay Tei: If you are going to be that limited for that long, get an Occupational Therapist too.

Local news: I've had a fault in the ABS on the BMW since OKC(ish). Not a major problem, the bike had very good standard brakes.

Yesterday I figured it out. Bum tailight (the taillight is in the same circuit as the brakelight), which ought to be an easy fix.

Nope. Got the new bulb. The old one, was cooked. The socket is discolored, and there is no current passing through. I'll see if I can get a new socket before I leave for home (Thurs/Fri), but I wonder what the real problem is.

Which is to say I am afraid whatever it is which fried the socket could recur. The fault came on after about five hours of riding in the rain, and about twelve hours of the bike being rained on.

The only real worry is that I dare not ride past dusk, because I have no light at the back of the bike, which strikes me as less than ideal.

Australia looks like going to a hung parliament. One hundred and fifty seats in all. Looks like seventy-two seats to the conservative coalition, seventy to the Australian Labor Party, one to the Greens, four to various flavours of independents, three too close to call on election night, but they won't all fall the same way. No party will have an absolute majority in the lower house.

I read the analysis of the Dutch style of politics with interest, but that isn't going to happen here. There will be no Green-Labor coalition, and certainly no conservative-Green one. If anyone governs, it will be as a minority government. Which means, basically, that if two or more of the independents decide to pull the pin, the pin is considered well and truly pulled.

Interesting times lie ahead. Those attending Aussiecon may very well find themselves duly interested. well, I know I am.

211
Terry, I'd think about water getting in somewhere and shorting the circuit. JMO....

P J: That's half my thought. The questions (not easily resolved) are, what caused the socket to die?

Is it local (i.e. related to just that socket)?

Is is recurrent (i.e. will it happen again if I get lots of rain).

Is it some malfunction further up the wiring, which will be a lot harder to trace out and repair?

Since I am not the best of electricians, this is something which gives me minor pause.

On the upside, it's not a $1,200 ABS pump.

Terry, #209: Since I will add no places it doesn't matter if anyone can see them.

ISTR hearing that Facebook will add Places for you automatically if you log in on your cellphone, I don't know if that's true (as I don't have a smartphone, I wasn't really paying attention), but if it is, then you also want to customize "Who can see my Places" to "only me".

I would like to think that the people who run Facebook are only clueless and naive, and can't imagine why anyone would want to be in control of their own online interactions. But given the number of times that they've had "opt-in" forcibly 'splained to them, I have to conclude that they're doing it on purpose -- which makes me ever less inclined to trust them with anything I can block off.

Lee, I don't see how FB is going to know where you are just because you used FB on your cellphone. I suppose if you have GPS activated on your phone and you have tied it somehow to FB (which I don't think is even possible at present, is it?) then perhaps it could work, but I think you'd have to deliberately set that up.

Summer Storms @ 216: You don't have to set anything up, on the iPhone at least--Facebook asks to use the GPS and you say yes or no.

Summer Storms @216

When you go online with a regular computer, your location (or at least probably the location of your ISP or seomthing, I'm afraid I don't really know) becomes known. See, for example, region or country specific ads. Even though I've got my facebook set on 'international English', they show Belgian (dutch) ads. When I was in Denmark last month, facebook made me run an extra security check as 'someone' (luckily, me) tried to access my facebook profile from an unfamiliar location. Facebook already knows where you are. Now they just want to make it generally accessible. (I've been very wary of facebook since I signed up, apart from who I've befriended, the locations I sign in on is the only information they've got on me - that I'm aware of. Letting Google own me is quite enough already.)

With cell phones, my guess is that they don't necessarily need a gps either. Triangulation of the signal will probably give them a location close enough for their purposes. I've actually no idea how accurate their 'places' feature is, as I've disabled it immediately. (I hate how they made the 'only me' option two extra steps, preying on the lazy and stupid)

Summer Storms@216: our pastel-coloured probably non-evil overlords have developed a clever mobile phone maps application that will tell you where you are even if your phone doesn't have GPS. It triangulates between the signal strengths of nearby cells. Usually accurate to within a dozen metres in large cities; much less accurate out in the sticks. Of course if you're just connecting to Facebook via your phone's web browser it won't know where you are; but it's possible to run software on a mobile that can determine location surprisingly well in the absence of GPS.

Has anyone heard further from our missing poet, scholar and all around good guy? I am concerned.

Abi... I was wondering too. I just posted something on Fragano's FB Wall.

Terry @ #209, ". . .will lead people to think I was in the Navy"

That is not automatically a bad thing, you know.

I'm reminded of my sister training our collie. When she wanted the dog to like some foodstuff she'd say "Navy chow." When the dog was supposed to turn up its nose she'd say "Army chow."

Dave Luckett @212:

The Dutch-style politics aren't working out too well here, either. There's still no coalition, and it's becoming clear that there won't be. Every combination but the right-wing VVD + CDA + PVV (hack, spit) has proven unworkable, and now Wilders is playing silly buggers again.

A lot of observers think that we'll end up with a minority VVD + CDA government, with the PVV sitting on the sidelines aiding and abetting but not participating in government. There's some concern that this allows them scope to look effective without doing any actual work that might lose them respect.

Personally, I think the amount of arsing about the PVV have introduced to cabinet formation won't serve them well in the long run; they're looking un-governmental and unreliable. Whatever government comes out will be gossamer-fragile, though, so the question is whether they'll have enough egg on their faces when election time comes round again.

Serge @221:

I pinged him through Twitter and got a response. He's recovering from surgery.

abi @ 223: Is Wilders' planned appearance at the 9/11 hatefest in New York getting much reaction locally? I can't imagine his pissing around in US politics is playing well at home.

Mark @225:

My rather sketchy following of the Dutch news hasn't touched on it. I suspect everyone's focusing on the coalition negotiations, which have one more week to go before the next deadline passes.

Wilders must be relieved to find a chance to appear in the US that he can attend without annoying his base. The last time he considered going to the US, he changed his mind and missed the opening of a laudatory film about himself because the organization sponsoring it was anti-gay.

And he didn't want to be associated with that.

Regarding Facebook giving out your location via GPS:

You *still* have to associate it somehow, though, or at least it seems so to me. Since I use FB on my phone as well (one step down from a smartphone) and FB has never even tried to do anything with regard to my location.

abi @ 226: That...is fascinating. The Christian Action Network flacks' heads must have gone all splodey on that one.

re FB and phones: I don't trust them at all. I have never allowed them any access to mine. It means I have to do a lot of catchpa crap, but that's a small price to pay to deny them any more chance to compromise my privacy.

Linkmeister: it's not always a bad thing, but it is a false thing. As to chow... standard rats on the Belleau Wood were fine (and the moreso as I was in the brig at the time), but the midrats in galley were so-so. The worst chow I ever had was in the galley at NSTI, I mean awful. Everything they made was off, with the exception of the fried eggs. The hash browns were bad, and some of the other things they did with potatoes were unspeakable. The coffee, on the good days, was bad, on the bad days we swore they'd pulled the water out of SF Bay.

The only place I had worse food was contracted to Ft. Devens, but I can't really blame that on any of the services.

You were in the brig? That sounds like a story!

Many thanks for the advice and suggestions.

There is no question that I can't stand to be physically idle for that long -- Part of the reason I'm starting to run out of the obvious ideas for self-distraction is that I messed up my knee two weeks after finally getting over a badly sprained ankle.

Also, swimming is definitely on. Already got a green light from both my doctor and my physical therapist. Besides, it's California in summer. Some prohibitions go way beyond prudence and into the realm of cruel and unusual.

Anything involving repetitive or extremely controlled movements is unfortunately kind of a problem, as I've got repetitive stress injuries in both hands. So I'm looking for as wide a range of different kinds of upper body movement as possible, so I can keep changing things up. (I know! How lucky can one girl get?!)

Elliott, plants vs. zombies is definitely cute. My aunt is visiting us from Ohio, and has spent the last three days sitting in front of the computer with my mom, "power-leveling."

Terry, I'm totally confused, which is probably just my ignorance on the subject. Why an occupational therapist?

#220

ML's Missing Poet most kindly responded to an e-mail inquiring as to his state earlier this week.

He's doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances, and under those I SHOUT YES!

But I've not contacted him since because it felt he didn't need me as far away as I am, and surrounded by loving folks as he is.

But dayem, nevermind. We all miss him, obviously.

Love, c

Doing what I need to do to be recognized on the New Thing (i.e. new computer and operating system).

KayTei, if you like Plants vs. Zombies you really should check out the other Popcap games. I've completely gone through Peggle (I still like going back to it anyway), and can't play the sequel Peggle Nights because my computer isn't new enough (sniff!). Snood is also a fascinating challenge.

Fragano said that he very much misses his own bed.

... Snood? I hadn't realized they had a new one out... *goes to check*

Hey, it's the knitting works!

... Color me chagrined. I just had my brother AND younger cousin tell me, within 5 minutes of each other, how that game was one of their major college memories...

I suppose I shall have to check it out anyway.

Terry @ #229, with my sister it was tribal. Her father (and mine) was a 34-year Navy officer. I spent two-plus years in the Navy myself, but shore-station food in Japan was undoubtedly better than shipboard food.

So, is it fair to ask yet whether there's a measurably high correlation between anglophone plutonomy and democratic process dysfunction? I ask this first, because I'm wondering when it's going to be okay to ask the dependent question without sounding like a dangerous cult member...

Paula Helm Murray @121: I've only had migraines three or four times in my life. And I got only the visual auras (praise be to Allah in all of Her many names). (Never traced it back to a concrete cause, but it seemed to be some combination of Buspar and dehydration.)

First time, I was watching Christiane Northrup on PBS of a Saturday afternoon. After blinking at the TV for a while and puzzling over why I could't quite see straight, I realized the frame of the TV screen had a peculiar break in it. My next thought was "Odd, I don't recall Christy Northrup as having four eyes...."

Having read (or attempted to read) Oliver Sacks's book, and having several friends who suffer from migraines, I clued into what was going on fairly quickly.

The fortification aura was the most fun (sort of like looking through Waterford crystal), although trying to go down and swap out my laundry while I only had peripheral vision (that looked like it was graviationally lensed) was an interesting exercise.

Whole process from start to finish lasted about forty five minutes, though I felt a little spacy for the rest of the day.

I am VERY grateful I didn't have to experience the headache.

Janet Brennan Croft @153: Preliminaries for the root canal Monday, if I can last that long.

More duct tape? :) My sympathies. I went through that a couple of months ago. Fortunately, I have access to very competent dentistry, and my endodontist and his assistant were some of those rare creatures who can actually carry on a satisfying conversation with somebody who's effectively gagged. (That, actually, was the most difficult part of the whole experience: being with people but unable to talk for FORTY FIVE MINUTES. My primary coping strategy when I get nervous is to chatter. Hard to do with a mouth full of dental dam.)

Be sure you make them give you good drugs for the following week. :)

Hyperlocal news:

Ripping fabric = crackling plastic bags, guinea pigs declare. I.e., "DINNER!"

eric @194: I have never seen a cat want soooo much luuuurve that it would rub it's head and face and body all over my face. When I'm trying to read.

Gee, in our house it's regarded as much more efficient just to lie on the book.

KayTei @196: kill time

If you haven't already: take up drawing?

TexAnne @198, Serge @200, thank you! I only got the go-ahead to blab about it Thursday, and I sent out a barrage of emails and babbled all over my blog, but I didn't think to blab here ("And why not?" Erm...)

I shall try to be less remiss when the anthology hits actual stores in actual book form next year(ish). The blabbing shall be mighty then!

On a semi-related synchronous subject, I'm tickled to see Plants v. Zombies in discussion here. I have a short-short story that seems to take place at the intersection of PvZ and Pride & Prejudice & Zombies that, when I get off my butt and apply some revision love to it, is heading over to Weird Tales's slush.

I was addicted hard to PvZ, but then I reached the point where there was nothing left to buy, and the zen garden was more of a chore, and I wasn't doing anything but Vasebreaker Endless... so I returned to my first PopCap loves, Insaniquarium and Alchemy.

I have much sympathy and hope for good drugs for anyone having a root canal. I apparently have a record at our local dental school for saying something Real Loud with a dental dam and all that crap in my mouth when something untoward went wrong and pain was HUGE.

"I didn't know you could say 'F-sK" with all that in your mouth" was a direct quote. It made all the supervisors and other such come attend to the problem.

They ended up giving me enough novacaine that I had to call a friend who lived nearby to come get me and let me sleep it off.

That was long ago and far away, in terms of drugs, etc. I have had several since and they never caused such pain. Modern medication is a wonderful thing.

All of my root canals have been fairly painless -- in fact, they've sometimes been very good at relieving pain (or at least long-time dull ache). I've had either three or four, so that's not a single datum unless you aggregate to the "person" level.

On the question of dental pain, I also note that it really isn't supposed to hurt while they're doing it (and if it does, they're doing it wrong). I only mention this, because I spent way too many years myself, before I discovered that it was possible for dental work to not be excruciatingly painful.

(My current dentist is awesome, and has learned to schedule in extra time, just to administer the painkiller and let it thoroughly set in. I am not... quite... his most pain-sensitive patient, but I definitely rank up there.)

My root canals have all followed days of increasing pain. It was such a joy to have the Novocaine* knock out the damn tooth that I barely minded having a mouthful of hands and tools. I've had some discomfort the next day, but nothing major.

*I believe they actually use something stronger than old-school Novocaine, but don't know what it is.

#206 Summer

And another one...
Henry Kolm, inventor of maglev and inventor/developer of rail guns and other electromagnetic launch systems, inventor of magnetic plasma containment systems, inventor of magnetic metal forming techniques, of techniques for cleaning highly polluted water....

http://www.wbur.org/2010/08/19/kolm-last-story

and
http://www.wbur.org/2010/08/19/project-paperclip

Looking Out: Nazis On The Harbor
Just after World War II ended, U.S. soldiers smuggled the Third Reich’s top scientists and engineers to a Harbor Island fort — just a few miles from downtown Boston — to find out what they knew and what they could do for America in the Cold War. In this ninth installment of “Looking Out: A New View Of Boston Harbor,” WBUR looks at one of the last veterans who ran the secret camp.

The Kid And The Star

Henry Kolm had an interesting job as a 21-year-old....
...German scientists [von Braun and his team] were transported to Boston hidden aboard the troop ships returning American soldiers home from Europe. Kolm’s team had the job of getting to the ships before the pilot boats did.
....
As an intelligence officer working as an Army talent scout, Kolm and his associates evaluated every German, then directed each one to the right U.S. military program, laboratory or defense contractor.

Kolm had reason to hate the Nazis...[his immediate family] was on the last ship to leave Europe [with Jewish passengers] in 1939."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492.html

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII
Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits'

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007

For six decades, they held their silence.

http://www.henrykolm.com/Paperclip.htm

....Peenemünde had been systematically dismantled as the allied armies approached. The staff had scattered and all the crucial documents, drawings and rocket fuel formulas had been removed into hiding by the Waffen-SS. They found Riedel at home, digging his car out of his barn, where he had hidden it in the hay to keep the German army from commandeering it. Riedel was happy to help the Americans, and told them where to find his colleagues. He also took them to an old miner who lived in a shack in the mountains, and who had helped the SS bury documents in an abandoned salt mine. The miner led them to the buried shaft where documents had been welded into one meter cubes of armor plate and lowered down the shaft. They managed to get hold of an engineer battalion and dragged the cubes out of the mine shaft, just in time to depart as the first Russian truck arrived. It is by so narrow a margin that German rocket technology fell into American rather than Russian hands

KayTei @196:
Eight weeks in which you must kill time? Duty calls!

Did you know that the Internet is full of people who are WRONG? You could dedicate that time to hunting them down and carefully explaining to them the error of their ways until they reach enlightenment!

Think of the minds that you could change and friends that you could make! Of course you'd end up with a repetitive stress injury of the brain to go with the rest, but it would surely be worth it.

There must be something wrong with me because I never had any pain after my only-ever root canal. Same thing when the dentist drilled a hole into the jawbone to install an implant's screw.

GAHH!!

"No Filipinos Need Apply"

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??

Steve @51: I'm going to be at AussieCon 4. At least, I'd better be -- I'm already in Sydney, and I didn't come all the way from Scotland just to miss out on the worldcon!

Charlie Stross @ 250... I didn't come all the way from Scotland just to miss out on the worldcon!

We thought you were really there as an International Man of Mystery. Or on a job for the Laundry.

My migraines, working from three data points more than ten years ago, give me three or four of the five signs of a stroke. The first is kind of interesting, actually-- I lose my left arm and presumably the rest of that side of my body. I can use it, I can feel it, I know it's connected to me, but it's no longer mine in the normal sense. The headache ends a few hours later, assuming I've been able to sleep it off.

My sister gets them regularly enough to be medicated for them. Once again, I won the genetic lottery.

KayTei: An occupational therapist helps one to cope with the things one can't do, because of a limitation (most are physical, though a lot of those also include a mental aspect).

It has nothing to do with one's employment, but rather how one occupies one's time/effort.

Let's say one has a broken leg, and can no longer reach to the kitchen cupboards. An OT will help one devise ways to get at the things (and help determine which ones can't be managed without moving, etc.).

A friend of mine had some repetitive motion injuries. His healthplan prescribed an OT. His entire office *loved* him, because the OT took one look at his office space, asked if that was the chair/desk everyone had and promptly caused the entire staff to get better equipment.

Which actually increased the amount of work they were able to do.

Lila, #249: What I found notable was the claim that the discriminatory hiring was instituted in response to the nurses protesting planned cuts in services to their "largely poor" patients. Makes me wonder if this isn't a case of "All those damned [insert ethnic slur of choice] stick up for each other".

I just made a comment to a paper in Iowa. The subject of the column was a plaintive cry that "sometime" we stopped getting to see the First Family in church (and the people replying were going back to the Kennedys, ignoring the Clintons).

This was because the columnist says he's not sure of Obama's affiliation; because he, you see, prays in private (or in conference calls).

So all sorts of people started explaining all sorts of nonsense. "Old White Guy" (honest that's his handle) said Obama was a plant, by al Quaeda.

To which I said:

"An al Qaeda plant? Whoa....

A group 15 years old, (more or less), managed to plant someone more than 20 years ago (at least). That's pretty good. Because it's obvious Obama has been here that long. So they managed to attach him to a lot of things which happened almost 50 years ago (his birth in HA, the announcements of same in local papers) and either suborn him, or replace the actual person referred to.

That, or they managed to to all that, before they were created; or when they were on the same side as we were (when Carter and Reagan were helping them).

That's amazing.

More to the point, if they are that good, if they can choose a child, and know they will need him to be president, almost fifty years, and a couple of not-yet happened wars later, there's nothing we can do to stop them.

Or... you're wrong, He's just what he (and the paperwork) says he his. Born in Hawaii, went to school, worked in Chicago, went to law school, taught, got into local politics, etc.

I know which way the smart money ought to bet."

Because really, when you think about the people saying that, it's what they are saying; that their were Muslims, in the fifties, who saw they would need to take over the US, and managed to pull it off.

Wow.

Not that logic has any chance of persuading them. They are stewing in a ferment of fear and impotence, and reason will not sway them.

#255: They are stewing in a ferment of fear and impotence, and reason will not sway them.

The most aggravating part about the fear, hate, and bigotry flying about is the way it is making me feel less (and that's putting it mildly) about my fellow Americans.

The best thing that can be said is that most of these cranks are old, and will die soon.

Lila @249 -- the one Filipino nurse I ran into at a local hospital was one of the prettiest people I've seen in a long time, as well as being incredibly kind and competent. Being half-Irish, with a Maori tattoo on one arm and Gustav Klimt's "Tree of Life" tattooed on the other arm, didn't hurt him being real eye-candy.

Lee @ #254, this article suggests it was their habit of sticking up for each other (and the union) that was the problem. "The Filipinos are always related, or always know each other, and that's not good."

jnh@247

You're right! Why am I sitting here worrying about what I can't do, when people with far greater difficulties than my own are busy spreading misinformation on the Internet?

For the greater good! *poses*

Nicole @242:

Why not boast here, indeed! Why boast anywhere else? We have the finest boasting space available, twenty-four seven, hot and cold running boastification enablement!

Congratulations. Do boast again when it comes out, and keep doing boastable things!

Steve with a book @ #206: Perhaps that's how all the sagas got written: it's something for a Norseman to do when he's lying on a straw pallet for six months trying to ignore the pain of a shattered femur.

The ones that weren't written with political purposes in mind, possibly.

Nicole @ 242... I shall try to be less remiss when the anthology hits actual stores in actual book

Robust boast is a must.

Decades ago, in grade school, I was made to memorize the last few lines of a poem by Emma Lazarus ("Give me your tired, your poor... Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.")which is inscribed on a plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Love those words. I still know them. But I had forgotten that the lines I know by heart are the final lines of a longer poem.

Over at DailyKos, someone's got a diary up with the whole poem. The poem is not long, but in addition to that memorable final exhortation, it contains this amazing image:

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.

Mother of Exiles. Oh yes.

Lizzy L @ 263... Mother of Exiles. Oh yes.

Isn't the most famous fictional American an exile from a dying world?

Terry@255: From time to time I think of the possibilities for a technothriller in which Cheney and other neocons were secret converts to Wahabbism in the early '60s. Inspiration from the real-life case of Philby et al and John Le Carre's treatment in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, of course.

Serge -- Mickey Mouse was an exile? His world may be dying, but last I heard he was still based here.

(Krypton isn't a dying world -- it's an exploded one. There's a difference.)

Tom Whitmore @ 266... But Krypton was not dead yet when Kal-El left.

Serge @267: It would be ... unfortunate, let us say, if your planet were to expire unexpectantly.

While wandering around the Internet today, with no particular place to go, I encountered the following.

Those who use religion as a means toward thought control and rigid conformity are twisted and deranged. Anyone who would use religion as their reason to cause unhappiness to another is guilty of a great sin.

Roger Ebert

KayTei: You might want to research the possibility that you're developing a resistance to commonly-used dental painkillers. Evil Rob's whole family has a history of developing resistance-- to the point where there was one memorable episode where he was dosed up to the legal limit on no fewer than three painkillers and was burning them off at a frightening rate.

He now attends a "sedation dentist." That has its own side effects because of the medications that he's on (it takes out the whole day and then some, even though it isn't supposed to.) Even so, it's preferable to having, in essence, no painkillers.

Me? I react to painkillers normally. And I have a literal big mouth, with plenty of room.

Lizzy L, that's from Ebert's blog post regarding Christopher Hitchens' illness and Hitchens' bemusement at the number of prayer groups praying for him, the atheist. It's well worth a read in its entirety.

Steve C.@156
Or it can be routinely used by someone line Chris Rock in a comedy routine.

Not any more, it would seem.

Lizzy L. @ 263
I don't know if I've ever seen that entire poem before. I'm having trouble resisting the urge to compare it to certain political "discussions" ongoing right now...

B. Durbin @ 270
I know my current dentist had to escalate through at least a couple different painkillers... but I dunno. I've got so much weird stuff going on medically, I get to the point where I just chalk it all up to the freaky mutant body, and as long as my medical team and I can keep things more or less painless, I figure we're doing fine. (I also notice that when I go in for other things than dentistry, I don't have as much trouble, so I suspect my outright terror of dentists is making it worse -- adrenaline countering the medication effects or reverse-placebo or something.)

B. Durbin, #270, one of the bad things about the new health reform law is that the Medicare Advantage plans will lose their dental plans. I have to get everything fixed before the end of the year. The plan doesn't cover dental work in a hospital, and I'm supposed to have sedation in hospitals because of what it caused before, so I'm going to have to just brave it in the office. I'll make sure they know that. The other thing I have to tell them is that sedation or numbness shots almost always last too long for me, and they shouldn't worry too much.

Serge @ 264: We're all exiles. Nearly every one of our ancestors came here because they got thrown the hell out of every other country on earth. (In my more cynical moments I'd say every decent country, but either way, what bliss.)

Be fair, Mark. Some left before they could be thrown out.

Draft dodger, on my paternal side. He decided not to be Prussian cannon fodder, and picked up a Portuguese bride on his rather indirect trip to Iowa.

abi @260 I will henceforth consider myself given unconditional permission. Thank you! I promise not to abuse this power, use it only for good...

Serge @262 Robust boast is a must.

...and to resist the urge to turn it into tongue twisters. 0_o

KayTei @245: On the question of dental pain, I also note that it really isn't supposed to hurt while they're doing it (and if it does, they're doing it wrong). I only mention this, because I spent way too many years myself, before I discovered that it was possible for dental work to not be excruciatingly painful.

O ye Gods. Tell me about it.

I have heard so many anecdotes from my peers that I can't help but come to the conclusion that sadistic or at least terribly uncaring pediatric dentists are the norm. When I was growing up, my dentist would give you the novacaine and then proceed to drill. If you felt it, and, being a kid in pain, cried, he would say, "Sssh, you'll wake the baby next door." When I got too old for that line, it became a sort of panicky "Sssh, ssh, it doesn't hurt! It can't hurt!"

This is the "norm" of dentistry I grew up with.

My current dentist moved me nearly to tears when in the midst of some cavity work he asked me, "You doing OK?" It blew my mind that he actually cared whether the anaesthetic were wearing off, or in fact covered the intended area. He cared! He not only didn't want me to hurt, he would take steps to make sure I didn't hurt! And he wanted me not to hurt for my own sake, and not just so that I wouldn't make noises that put him off. Wow.

And it's not just him but everyone in the office. During a normal teeth-scraping ordeal, it's "OK there? Did I hurt you?"--when I was growing up, they never ever even acknowledged that routine cleaning operations could be painful. Or at least that if they caught my gums and it hurt, I should just suck it up, because that's how it goes if you're bad enough at hygiene that you let your teeth get full of stuff that need scraping off.

So, yeah--total paradigm shift, going to a dental office where the patient is never supposed to be in pain if they can help it; and if they can help it and they will. Wow.

Mark@275: but either way, what bliss.

Not necessarily for the original occupants, if the accounts are to be believed.

My pediatric dentist was very good at not causing pain. The problem came when I was thirteen and needed braces - and had to have four teeth extracted first so that there would be space for the braces to shift my remaining teeth into.

Four teeth, one in each quadrant. All in one go. My dentist didn't perform these extractions; the orthodontist did. Now, to be fair, my orthodontist was reasonably good, but there just wasn't enough Novocaine in the world to render this a painless encounter. I spent over two hours in the chair, feeling... not so much pure pain, as a frightening pressure, accompanied by pulling, twisting, and yes, pain as well, as he worked to remove four very stubbornly rooted teeth that quite simply did not want to budge. At one point I recall hearing/feeling a sharp crack! after which he paused and apologized, explaining, "You've got two here that just don't want to come out; one has a ball on the end of the root that's complicating things, and the other has a spike that just tried to break off in your jaw." Oh, yes, just what I wanted to hear. I asked if there were any chance they could simply put me under general anaesthesia before continuing, and was told that it was rather too late for that. They did give me another shot of Novocaine, which helped a tiny bit, and we soldiered on together.

My mother, when I was finally finished and re-emerged into the waiting room, was nearly frantic, wondering what on earth could possibly have taken so long. And I've been more or less terrified of tooth extractions ever since. When I had a wisdom tooth out sometime in 90's, the very considerate and skilled dentist I visited for this tried to use nitrous oxide in addition to Novocaine, only to discover that I apparently am one of that small percentage of people for whom nitrous oxide produces the opposite effect to that desired. After a half hour of trying to sedate me enough to at least calm me down so he could proceed, he finally had to go ahead with just the maximum dose of Novocaine. He did manage to do the extraction with only minimal discomfort to me, and I credit his exceptional skill. He kept reassuring me all the way through, and asking if I was doing okay. He also took the time to call me at home that evening and check on me!

(He also told me that if he ever had to pull another tooth from me, he would prescribe me three Valium: one to take the night before, one to take in the morning before I came for the appointment, and a third to bring along to the appointment just in case I needed it.)

Nicole, #279: My childhood dentist didn't believe in painkillers for children. He also didn't use anything but a mechanical drill. I am frankly amazed that I didn't come out of that with a terror of dentists! The one my parents switched to when I was about 14 was entirely different, and since then I've been lucky enough to have nothing but very good dentists. The ones I have here* are good, but I still miss my dentist from Nashville, who understood that the more he told me about what he was doing and why, the more comfortable I was.

* It's a 2-person office, and I've been seen by both of them at different times, and don't have a preference.

My favorite dentist fantasy is to escape and call 911 on them if they hurt me, and have the staff arrested for battery (or worse) and unlawful restraint. And, since we're at war, their acts of torture on me would be war crimes.

I have similar dental experiences to Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @279. I trust most of those reading this are familiar with the events at the end of the novel Black Beauty? The dentist that was my dental equivalent to Beauty's final owner was Priya Setty, whose office is in the basement of the Sears Tower in Chicago. I cannot recommend her more highly.

I went to see her after a known-to-be-far-too-long gap in dental care (due to a combination of my fear of the pain and a general lack of funds; I went looking for a dentist the week I got a Real Corporate Job with Real Corporate Bennies). She did a cleaning and inspection, and scheduled me to come in for cavity-filling. In the first such session, she shot me up, waited the recommended time, and started working. I -- as I trained myself to, because of my pediatric dentist's habits -- started breathing deeply and carefully through my nose and gripping the armrests, to deal with the pain that I still (but could not, since I'd had The Shot! It must be a hallucination) had.

She stopped instantly, having seen the tension, and said, "Are you ok?" I said something like, "Yeah, I'm just a huge pussy about going to the dentist. Don't worry, I can hold still, go on." She instantly reached over for the syringe and said, "Well, let's give you a little more novocaine just to see if it helps."

Hosannas. Singing angels. When she went back to drilling (DRILLING!), it felt like she was patting my teeth with tiny foam-rubber pillows. NO PAIN. AT ALL. While drilling!!! Apparently I need a higher dose, and it wears off faster on me than the clinical standard expects. I never knew this until I was 26 years old, because when it wore off halfway through drilling with any of my PREVIOUS dentists, all I got was, "Hold still, I'm almost done," and another 20min of drilling.

It was while I was under Dr. Setty's care that I also found out that my mouth opening is smaller than average, giving dentists very little room to work in the back of my mouth. I needed a root canal on a cavity on the back face of my last upper molar on one side. It was a procedure too complex for Dr. Setty, so I had it done by the head of her practice. He was, um, significantly more callous about my sensations, discomfort, and uneasiness. He was frustrated and trying to get finished with an objectively intricate and difficult procedure, but he still gave me rips at the corners of my mouth that took a week to heal (because I didn't get the chance to ask him to aggressively reapply petroleum jelly to them as he was working, and his gloves wore it off).

In my experience, younger dentists (meaning those with more recent degrees) are more sensitive to things like this -- perhaps the curriculum has changed since the mid-80s?

Summer Storms @281 said: I've been more or less terrified of tooth extractions ever since.

I've had two extractions at UIC's dental school: one an absolute bugbear awfulness and the other textbook simple.

Number one was for a tooth that had a visible cave in it down by the gumline that was easily two-thirds the visible area of the side of the tooth, and half the depth of the tooth. When they got the grips on it, it broke off at the gumline and they had to go after it in small pieces. It wasn't terribly painful (because this was post-Dr.-Setty, so I'd warned them, and they actually got me numb numb instead of sorta-numb), but it was incredibly squicky-gross from the bone conduction noise and my overactive visualizations. On the plus side, the grad student doing most of the work got to show the undergrad assisting her Every Single Trick she knew about extracting stubborn roots.

Number two, I was steeled and ready for another such odyssey. However, in the actual case, they loosened it lightly with the spade-shaped things, then reached up and got it in the grips, and VOOM out. No stitches needed, even. Just slid right out cooperatively. Which was good, as it was a top molar, and I happen to have really, really thin bone up there between the tooth-roots and, um, my braincase. So it could have been very bad if they'd had to put the pressure on it that Number One took to get out ... my mandible is, thankfully, much more robust (and Number One was a lower molar).

Elliott,

I'm way overdue for a dental visit now. And I have an upper wisdom tooth (twin to the one previously removed) that is very nearly No Longer There and needs to be removed. I'm fervently hoping I can find a dentist who can remove it easily and with a minimum of problems/discomfort.

A brief aside...

I believe it in was a discussion on Making Light that I saw a recommendation for Iain M. Banks' "culture" novels. Someone said it would be good to start with The Player of Games. I did, and enjoyed it immensely. Thanks!

In my case, I at least partially did it to myself. It just always took so long! And the dentist would add the painkiller, and it wouldn't work, and he'd look surprised and add more, and it still wouldn't work... and after about four or five shots, and some topical somethingorother, and whateverall else, and being told how unusual this was, and the increasingly concerned looks at how much medication I'd already been given, I'd decide to just suck it up and deal because it obviously didn't work on me and they didn't seem to have any other tricks.

It didn't help that once, when I mentioned this, my mom let drop (honestly, in good faith) that she always toughed it out too, because the painkillers never worked for her either -- which set the bar, and made the pain a predictable, possibly genetic thing.

That said, I had eight teeth pulled at once for braces, and all four wisdoms removed on a second occasion. I was knocked out both times, and I wouldn't do it any other way.

I'm overdue (way overdue) for a trip to the dentist which will be expensive and extensive. Teeth are one of the aspects of human physiology that thoroughly disprove Intelligent Design.

Nicole: re permissions. I know that feeling. Teresa has, somewhat pointedly, disabused me of it. Now I worry I may be overusing it, but have decided if I do, I'll hear about it. So my worry is that of being a bore.

Self-doubt, it's insidious.

It was a pediatric dental experience that made me avoid the dentist for years - I had a moderate amount of orthodontic work as a kid, and that was fine (chatty orthodontists and being a very nerdy kid worked pretty well) - but I remember one dental technician who soured me on an entire practice. My brothers and I (I have two, both younger) had all gone in for a standard cleaning; if memory serves, I had a technologist who was skilled at inflicting pain with a plaque scraper. I think she managed to hit my gums on each and every tooth. Now, that would have been irritating enough, but not *quite* enough on its own to make me tell them to pound sand. However, that combined with her telling one of my brothers and myself to wait outside as she less-than-tenderly cleaned the teeth of my five year old brother did it quite nicely.

I got lucky with my most recent dental experience - I needed to find a dentist on short notice back in Nashville when I lost a fight with a bagel, and he was happy to answer all of my questions, careful about not causing pain and quite pleasant to go to. Now I need to find one here in Berkeley who I like and trust in the same way. Maybe not this week, with classes starting and such...

@245, 279: Anasthesia and analgesia technology has really taken off in the last thirty years or so, so it's not quite fair to compare what you experienced as a child to what you can get now. And also, recently there's been a real change in how seriously almost everyone takes children's pain in general. People used to say all kinds of clearly untrue things -- that children didn't even feel the same kind of pain as adults. I wonder if none of them had any childhood memories?

That being said, my dentist is a genius. And he reads all the current research. Consequently, my visits are really quite pleasant. Oh, and he's a science fiction fan, too!

Benjamin at 290, I am happy to recommend my dentist in El Cerrito, just up the road from Berkeley: Dr. Rosita Law, office # 524-9808. You can probably find someone closer, but Dr. Law's terrific and reasonably priced.

Norse wounds and sagas in general: There was a lot of exaggeration in the accounts of the fights. Makes a good story. There were also some spectacular injuries that people managed to recover from. (I may have mentioned here that I once spent work day or two researching the History of the Hit Point and horrible wounds in general. It was actually part of my job. )

Dr. Laura: I occasionally had the urge to call in and ask her about knee pain. I'm pretty sure they've dealt with that particular variety of clever before, though.

Reading the transcript, I thought she might have gotten stuck on the inappropriate phrase, which I've done before. You say something that seems edgy at the time, you are getting misinterpreted, you want to correct them and not apologize, and you end up repeating the phrase over and over in a death spiral of awkwardness. And she's a communications professional, she should know better, but 200 live shows a year for a few years you're going to screw up horribly at some point.

Then I listened. And I don't think it was a death spiral of awkwardness. I think it was intentional, but oddly that wasn't the thing that made me angriest. It was Dr. Laura telling her caller that she, the caller, wasn't experiencing something that she obviously was.

Slightly related n-bomb thought: That Chris Rock routine was funny... but then I realized I'd heard a similar distinction coming out of my grandmother's mouth once and it kinda killed my laugh.(She was white, born in the 1920's, lived in the South her whole life.) So yeah, I'm kinda glad he retired it.

Lucy, 291: I'd have been happy if they'd used anesthesia beyond Novocaine when I had those four teeth pulled.

And no, I know that there have been advances. But fear isn't a rational, intellectual thing. Intellectually I know that I can have dental work without pain. Hell, I've *had* plenty that didn't hurt, including drilling/filling, some even done without Novocaine due to needing (again) all four quadrants worked on at once, the day before I was due to lose my insurance and approximately two hours before a hot date with my at-that-time boyfriend who was getting home from his two-week National Guard stint. I got a really good dentist that day; between his skill and the fact that I actually do have a fairly high pain threshold, I was able to go on that date neither unduly traumatized nor a slobbering, nonverbal mess.

But tooth extractions still terrify me, down to my primal core.

Nicole #279, Lee #282 My childhood dentist didn't believe in painkillers for children. He also didn't use anything but a mechanical drill.

Arrgh! I bet that turned Little Shop of Horrors into wish-fulfillment fantasy! The thing is, even primitive technology doesn't excuse lying to children about what's going on. And that "children don't feel pain" crap was crap from the beginning -- just institutionalized callousness.

Another hazard to painkilling: some people don't respond to codeine, apparently a genetic thing. When I had 3 wisdom teeth out, the pills they prescribed for afterwards didn't work. I wound up having one of my roommates drive me to the liquor store to get a half-fifth of whiskey. (Yes, I know, dangerous to mix alcohol and painkillers. At that point, I didn't care.)

I respond fine to codeine as a painkiller, but some of the, erm, side effects are less than desirable. After I had that wisdom tooth out in the 90's, I just took 600mg of ibuprofen, and it did the trick quite well. I think I may have washed them down with a glass of wine, but I'd been doing that since my early teens, when I discovered that was the only way to treat my particular brand of monthly pain.

Sandy B @ 293... Norse wounds and sagas in general: There was a lot of exaggeration in the accounts of the fights. Makes a good story

Such as John Fjord's "Norse by Nothwest"?

8888888888

Sandy B. #293: Dr. Laura: I occasionally had the urge to call in and ask her about knee pain. I'm pretty sure they've dealt with that particular variety of clever before, though.

I tried to find out from financial pundit Suze Orman's web site about what percentage of my income I should invest in lottery tickets (research for a rant on the economics of despair) but never got an answer back.

I always hesitate to post such things because I fear I am the last person to have seen them and everyone else is rolling their eyes, wondering what I've wasted my life doing.

But it hasn't turned up in this discussion of Norse saga, which seems a shame because it is my new favouritist example:

Tattúínárdœla saga
What If Star Wars Were an Icelandic Saga? In Old Norse with English translations.

Apologies if it is old news!

If anyone should happen to get an email (supposedly) from me, with no subject line, delete it. It's NOT from me, and it contains a virus.

An old acquaintance called me up about an hour ago to tell me that a message under my name had been posted to a mutual Yahoo! Group, and her computer had gotten the virus when she opened the message. (She was pretty unclear about what exactly the virus did.)

So far, that's the only place it appears to have hit. The last time my email address got misappropriated, I figured it out when I received an email from myself, offering to sell myself V**gr*.

As of yesterday's scan by Trend Micro, my own computer is coming up clean. I'll run a full scan shortly to see if something new made a hit in the last 24 hours.

Bummer.

In other news of the day, my Acer netbook came back from the repair center this morning. Yay! Plugged in the AC cord to charge the battery...

...hey, wait a minute. Is there supposed to be smoke?

Unplugged the AC cord ASAP. Double-checked... and discovered I'd plugged in the wrong power cord, one that had a 24V transformer instead of the needed 19V.

Argh.

Crossed my fingers and plugged in the proper power cord. From the indicator lights, the battery does appear to be charging. So I'm hoping I only overheated the connector, and didn't do any permanent damage to the machine. Will try it out in a bit.

Sylvia @ #300 posted a link.

Thanks! I'd never seen that before. A truly inspired work.

The dentist I went to when I was a young child had a simple technique with young children -- a combination of honesty and bribery. He explained that it might hurt a little bit, but that you would feel better afterwards, and that he would stop and give you a minute to recover if it got too sore or scary. And afterwards you were allowed to choose something from a bag of cheap-n-cheerful toys he kept for the purpose, the sort of things you get from lucky dip vending machines. It was amazing how much easier it was to cope with the pain when the adult *acknowledged* that it hurt and was scary.

Julia Jones @ 303 -- For the fictional version, see Miles explaining things to Nikki in Komarr.

When I was in my 20s I'd generally get fillings done without novocaine because the numbness would be about as annoying as the pain and novocaine didn't always work well for me; I'm not sure where that pain tolerance went over they years. I normally use nitrous for dental work, in addition to any other pain killers - there may still be pain happening, but it's Somebody Else's Problem.

On the other hand, when I had my wisdom teeth out as a teenager, it was under general anesthesia; my wife got hers out with local anesthetics during grad school, and I got to see the dentist get out a very large chisel and hammer, which was a process I'm glad to have not known about before mine got done :-).

With root canals, I've found the pain afterward is usually pretty minor, because the operation has gotten rid of the nerves that hurt. I did realize driving home after one root canal that I hoped I didn't get stopped by a cop for anything, because my speech was all slurred from my cheeks being numb so I might sound drunk even though I was clear-headed, novocaine's pretty much cocaine, the codeine I'd had earlier is an opiate, sudafed I'd taken to keep breathing clearly during the operation is an amphetamine, ibuprofen causes false positives for marijuana on the cheap drug tests, so I'd be hitting the jackpot if they wanted to test me. (And it also turns out that the usual novocaine formulation these days has a stimulant of some kind in it as well, which apparently helps it get absorbed quickly or something.)

#255 Terry Karney

Because really, when you think about the people saying that, it's what they are saying; that their were Muslims, in the fifties, who saw they would need to take over the US, and managed to pull it off.

And what's more, those Muslims, back in the fifties, thought that the guy they needed to fight his way through the system and become President of the USA should be black...

Actually, if they were that far-sighted, maybe they should be running the world.

Blogging for money in Philly? Pay up.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Debating-Philadelphias-300-Blog-Tax-4793

Sylvia@300, the Tattúínárdœla saga has been mentioned here before, but nobody's brought it up with the current Norse discussion thread, and it's topical and hopelessly silly, and seems to have had more chapters added since it was last here. So thanks!

Julia, #303: Not just for kids, either. I knew I'd found the right gynecologist when he acknowledged that a speculum is damned uncomfortable!

Julia Jones @ 303: My son's dentist did that too. He explained to us that he'd endured a more difficult time in his childhood trips to the dentist, and wanted to make sure his patients did not have the same experiences. He is very good, and we needed that at the time -- our son (at the time my ex's grandnephew) had major dental issues, requiring multiple root canals and so on. We had to give chloral hydrate before we left the house, and the dentist used N2O supplementally in the chair, but it was still a great trial for all of us.

By the way, a small update in my ongoing soap opera/tragicomedy: we had a short counseling session with a different therapist, with much the same coming from my Ex that I've heard before -- only this time she emphasized that she'd been feeling adrift or disconnected from me for years. Much longer than I'd realized, and implying that most of the past 5 years have been full of lies. She never talked about her feelings, couldn't bring herself to speak up about her feelings -- so she led us all on, thinking we were a couple.

Of course, this makes me ready to move onwards. I need to stop mourning the loss of something I never really had, now that I know it.

I'm done with hoping for reconciliation. I have no desire to reconcile with someone who could not tell the truth when it was important to all of us.

So. Anyone know any nice reasonable sensible sane and single lesbians who like dogs, cats, and children? A good sense of humor is a must. No U-hauls necessary...

The cake was indeed a lie. And it was four lights.

Hyperlocal news: Cat Toy Extinction Feared; All Known Toys Lost Under Bookcase

Ginger @ 311 -- I'm sorry to hear it. But assuming that she's telling the truth now about having been lying for years... you don't seem to have much of a foundation to base anything on, so yeah, it seems to be a lost cause. Bleah.

I can't think of anyone off-hand matching your parameters, but... geographical preference? Alas, I don't meet your gender spec.

Ginger: sympathies re the ex who couldn't talk about feelings and about being disconnected. Been there, got the scars, etc.

Joel @ 313: No geographical preference at the moment. I'm inclined to want any excuse out of here, although that's just the reaction setting in.

Ginger... My sympathies and remember that you're most welcome to spend time with us and our kids Freya, Nahla, Cagney, Jefferson and Agatha.

I think this is in the running with the demon sheep ad.

Jane Harmon as Frau Blucher; as presented by her opponent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUKHWnpsOL8&

Ginger, I'm so sorry. How is your son doing?

Serge: Thanks! When I do take my road trip across the US, I am definitely taking that left turn at Albuquerque.

TxAnne: He is dealing well enough with the part he knows about. I don't think I should emphasize the lies at this point. He loves both of us, and there's no need to break his heart. I did get his permission to show the therapist the photo that he modified, of my ex with her mom. I'd stumbled across it on my iPod, and told him that it said a lot about his feelings.

I just need to get her off the mortgage and then slowly disengage her from my life. She will always be a part of his life, but she doesn't have to be in mine.

Ginger @ 319... I am definitely taking that left turn at Albuquerque

We used to have widdle gwey wabbits show up in our backyard, but Agatha, who is no Sylvester, has made it clear that it wasn't healthy for them to hop around.

Ginger, I'm sorry that it's so, but if it must be, I'm glad you know it. I'm sorry for your loss (because finding out you never had something is a real loss in terms of feeling), and hope that you find healing quickly.

Ginger, a friend of mine went through kind of the same thing over the last year-- a shorter marriage, no kids, not as much a part of who they were, if that makes sense. They went from trying to have a baby one month to her wife asking for a divorce the next. It's been a rough year in general; she's the roommate who was going to move to Portland, and tore her Achilles tendon two days before we had to be out of the apartment and a week before she planned to move.

My sympathies.

Ginger, if i can help I will but I'm not sure how.

We're members of a local polyamory community where one relationship (with kids and which we though was stable) has turned suddenly to shit with the addition of a new member and the turn-out of the husband and the attempt to keep his relations with the kids. (I suspect she, because she's the one with a business and stable job and etc. is the owner of their house...)

It is all frightening for all of us because the new female has lots of demands that sound abusive from our end. We just hope the kids don't get the brunt. She does not like males at all and one of the kids is. And she's already trying to draw him into her hypochondria, as in 'you need pills, you're allergic," when none of us have heard a sniffle from him at all.. or any other symptom.

It is very hard because we all love the kids and are worried.

I hope you are okay and if you need help, email.

Ginger, that includes, if you need a bottiomless, speechless pit to download your frustration, I'm a good place. No one but me will ever know and if you need any advice i will try and help. With discretion.

I'm not in your same town, I'm not anywhere near AND I never talk about other people's problems to others unless they allow me to. And even then, I'm fairly scatterbrained, so if it meets the 'tell' case, it may not ever get told unless I'm asked.

Ginger @313 - So very sorry. Learning that you've been lied to over something important is Just Really Awful.

My cousin might fit your bill, but she's across the country from you. On the other hand, if there's something to know about the San Jose area school systems from a teacher's-eye view, she knows it.

I wish to make an enquiry of the persons here assembled, to wit: is it common among such as ourselves to find, upon re-reading Jane Austen — I myself am in the midst of a long-overdue re-reading of Pride and Prejudice — that we begin to imitate the style of the period in our own prose, and even (dreadful thought!) in speech, or is that my lot alone?

Xopher: I am not a good example. My speech is too archaic (and mutable to audience, etc.) to be a measure, but when reading such things (and O'Brian, and Shakespeare and Byron, Dickens, etc.) I find my word-choice being affected, yes.

Xopher, I do that with Sayers and Heyer, among many others. When I read the Bible before bed, the stories I told myself were all long, long sentences beginning with 'and'.

I do that with friends, too-- my particular accent is text, and my word choice tends to echo the internet more than anything. At Alpha this year, one of the students had very contagious speech patterns; by the end of the workshop, ninety percent of the people had picked it up.

Well, this thread is totally appropriate for me today. I had a front tooth (#7) extracted today, and am trying to deal with that.

When I was in the fourth grade (mid-80's) I fell straight down on my face on an asphalt playground while trying (unsuccessfully) to do a cartwheel. Broke large chunks off of my two top front teeth. They veneered them whole again, but there was also trauma to the tooth next door, even though it didn't look damaged.

The damage lead to an abscess, which lead to a root canal or two and two apicoectomies, after a looong span of being left untreated.

They finally decided that there must be a vertical crack in the root of the tooth, and nothing was going to stop it from being reinfected. So it had to come out (especially since it was eating away at the bone.)

Tonight I have a gruesomely missing tooth, a bone graft, and some stitches. Tomorrow I get a cosmetic temporary crown. In six months, if everything worked, I get an implant. Three months after that, I get a new permanent tooth. Of course, there is a 60-70% chance that the cadaver bone compound that they used won't work, and they will have to do a second bone graft, from my own chin or jaw...then another six months.

I know that I will be much happier when all this is over. At the moment, though, I am miserable and scared. And angry that this costs so much and that my insurance will cover so little of this. (Don't even get me started on the insane separation of "dental" insurance from "health" insurance.) Grar!!

However, my oral surgeon was the good sort. (And easy on the eyes.) And everyone else's stories are helping me feel less alone.

Time to take some hydrocodone and fall asleep.

I see that mentioning my post-surgery meds must have evoked "Word of Power" moderation. :)

On PS to my post... one nice thing to come out of today's dental surgery. I'm involved in the fPOE Miss Match Diptych Project and this week my assigned word/theme is "Half-empty". Needless to say, I got a good (though maybe a bit morbid) photo this evening. I'll let you know when the finished diptych is ready.

Okay, I'm racking my brain here. I recall an SF short story, I'm thinking it's Jonathan Lethem, taking place in a near permanent traffic jam in New York City.

Can anybody remember which story I'm thinking of?

I ask because apparently it's now happening in China, where a 60 mile traffic jam has been going on for over a week.

Xopher, #326: I can always tell when I've been reading too much Georgette Heyer. Some of her idioms have simply been adopted into my normal speech patterns, but if I'm really submerged in her books I start using the structures as well as the vocabulary.

Glenn, #331: Maybe not the one you're thinking of, but "Bluesberry Jam" by Gene Wolfe takes place in an eternal traffic jam, somewhere in a dystopian future. It's in the anthology Space Opera.

Ginger: Hugs, if OK.

Sometimes this is what the benefit of marriage counseling turns out to be, just to learn that it really is broken and can't go on. Mine turned out broken in a different way than yours, but in the long run I do believe it's better just to know.

Right now though, I imagine you're just feeling bleak and all I can do is acknowledge that.

Trapped by the photonic gravity well of Making Light; sigh.

So I just read the entire thread from August 20, 2006, because the Seattle Interactive Fiction Group is getting ready to throw a party at PAX, and a recent email across the list said "So, here's a list of items I excised from the Making Light website which people can sign up to be responsible for."

'What?' I wondered. 'How did a reference to Making Light end up here?' The next thing I know, I am wheezing and gasping, lungs and legs burning, because I'm frantically running to catch a bus I need to intercept and am late starting, having spent way too much time reading about "How to throw a large room party at a science fiction convention."

Grr. And whee!

This post, however, is a comment on the (to me) absolutely baffling Pizza Rule that suggests avoiding ham&pineapple pizza. I certainly agree that doing 50% pepperoni pizzas seems about right. But personally , I *detest* pepperoni. Yucko. Which means I need to be sure to hit the pizza line early, because the Hawaiian pizza will run out early, and then I either have to pick green peppers off a 'supreme' or settle for boring cheese pizza.

Now, I'm mostly eating pizza in the Pacific Northwest, but I'm also specifically seeking the ham/pineapple pizza, because it's the only 'standard' pizza I enjoy eating without having to dissect it first. (Olives, happily, are usually fairly easy to separate from the cheese. Onions, impossible.) A good standard ratio around these parts would be 3 parts pepperoni, 2 parts Hawaiian, 1 parts other.

Just sayin'.

P.S. I am smugly delighted at having secured for the "Seattle IF" organization the domain "if.seattle.wa.us", and, I might add, for an indefinite period of time at no charge.

My two favorite pizza ingredient clusters are Italian Sausage, mushrooms and onions, and Grilled Chicken, bacon and pineapple. The double cluster works well for me as an alternative to a standard Supreme.

Glenn @331.

Also the Doctor Who episode, Gridlock

On the pizza rule for group events - Business lunches are a bit different than parties, because if there's pizza there's usually nothing else except maybe salad, and especially here in California you need nearly half the pizzas to be some kind of veggie if there's going to be any non-meat pizza left for the people at the end of the line. I've observed that even carnivores will eat a plain cheese pizza, though you can sometimes scare them away with pesto.

I'll second Teresa's opinions about not doing anchovies or ham&pineapple, and I'd add jalapenos or Italian red cherry peppers (yum) to the "don't" list. I miss white pizzas - I don't think I've seen one on a menu anywhere west of the Susquehanna, and the only place out here that didn't give me a blank look puts feta cheese on theirs.

I'm glad to see the link was new to someone and considered on target for the Open Thread.

I'm somewhat dismayed, though, that Bill @338 has created the perfect pizza for me with his "don't" list (Anchovies, ham, pineapple, jalapeños, peppers with a healthy amount of mozzarella sounds damn near perfect to me!)

@Ginger

I just wanted to say I know how difficult it can be to balance a child's needs against disentangling a relationship in a sensible manner. It is probably not much consolation but I'm relieved to report that having handled it pretty badly myself twelve years ago, my 16-year-old son is a friendly, outgoing, somewhat nerdy kid just like all his friends. I'm still somewhat nervous about what he'll be like when it comes to relationships but at least it is clear already I didn't *completely* screw him up, for which I am grateful.

326: this question is of particular interest to me as I prepare to embark on my Sponsored Non-Stop Lionel Fanthorpe Readathon. Qualified neurologists are standing by to assist.

339: I don't think it's possible to have a link that would be off target for an Open Thread - except possibly one that someone else had already posted.

I had actually seen the Tattúínárdœla saga before, but only the summary and discussion. I didn't know that the maniac was actually writing it, chapter by chapter, in Old Norse. (And I mean "maniac" in an entirely positive way.)

Xopher @326--Oh, yes. Indeed, yes, and not just with one author but with several.

Ginger, I'm sorry you find there is no choice but to draw a line across things and write "finished" under it, bit I'm glad that you are able to at least have that knowledge, rather than wondering, if you are just patient enough, thoughtful enough, change enough--and so keep hanging by a thread.

Xopher: writing, thinking, and speaking like Jane Austen is a condition devoutly to be desired.

Ginger: Have a virtual hug, to be redeemed if you choose for a real hug when you get to Atlanta, if we can make our schedules coincide! When in October is your conference?

Xopher@326: Oh, yes. In particular, when I see a Shakespeare play my brain runs in iambic pentameter for a while afterwards.

Lee@333: I thought of the same story. There's also a companion story to that called "Ain't You 'Most Done?" which appeared in _The Sandman Book of Dreams_.

Xopher@326: O'Brian is currently affecting me that way, if I'm not careful. More in email than in comments, it seems, so it may not be visible here (and I'm being somewhat careful; it feels somewhat affected coming from me, so I try not to do it).

Pizza: There's probably more geographic variation than I would have originally guessed (based on e.g. Bill@338 on the level of vegetarian content needed in CA).

Today is pizza lunch at work (in Minneapolis). Based on previous months (we have one most months) there'll be 15 or so large pizzas. Probably two barbecue chicken, one cheese, one veggie, and the rest ordinary pizza ingredients (in which category ham and pineapple do NOT qualify!). And that's the right mix for this audience; the special cases last through to the people who want or need them (quite possibly things not ordered would be popular; dunno, don't hear complaining).

I've been at too many parties where there's nothing left but the Canadian bacon and pineapple. My impression is that most partisans of that and other unusual flat-bread-food overestimate the demand.

re language: Oh yes, speech patterns, word order, clause structure, etc. I have read far too much (and I think had to fit into far too many places) and so have a very plastic ear.

I am often asked, if I am in a mixed nationality group what country I come from. I get spoken to in French in Ottawa, and all sorts of other confusions when I travel.

So far I managed to avoid people thinking I am mocking them when my accent/word choice is a little off.

Ginger@311: Best wishes. Perhaps the best that can happen is getting you less coupled to the problematic ex.

I'm trying to put together 2 playlists of about 20 songs each, for two rather odd occasions.

First, for the upcoming "My Super Psycho Sweet 16 Part 2" on MTV, I'm hosting a party for my daughter, who is a stunt performer in the film. (No spoilers, but if you watch it and you see a woman catch on fire--my daughter is the stunt double.) I'm looking for songs about show business and taking risks. Everything from "On Broadway" to "Rainbow Connection" to "Mi Vida Loca" so far.

Second and more strangely: her baby sister just started college, with the aim of going to Mars as a mission specialist. This is a little more challenging subject ("Rocket Man", "Benson, Arizona", "Chiron Beta Prime", "Fly Me to the Moon"...)

Anyone got a favorite song that might fit in either of these?

In re pizza frequency, I'm always amazed at how LITTLE plain sausage pizza (my preference at parties, or sausage and mushroom if they go that far) is ever ordered. Like, usually none.

There are scads of pepperoni (which I can't eat; gives me horrid heartburn), and usually several Supreme (sausage, bell peppers, and other things -- which I can't eat; bell peppers give me horrible heartburn), a veggie option, and maybe plain cheese. Sometimes there are also a few that I consider 'exotic'.

When I was a kid, it was sausage or cheese and thems was yer choices -- when did pepperoni replace sausage as the default one-meat party pizza of choice??

Paula Helm Murray @ 323 -- Some friends of mine are going through a similar blowup -- a long-term monogamous couple decided to expand their relationship, and the toxic tendencies of the new person became apparent a few years later. I've been considering writing an essay about the dynamics of EDTA chelation: it encloses the metal ion, isolating it from its previous anions and any other ligands, and then when the pH decreases or some other metal ion happens along, the EDTA unwraps and moves on... Part of the problem in this case is that the person who *wasn't* ejected is in denial about the mess, and also avoiding contact with anyone who might provide better insight or at least an external viewpoint.

Elliott Mason @ 351, I don't know, but pepperoni has been the default at least since I've been old enough to notice (mid-80s). As a kid I preferred sausage, though. I never really liked pepperoni. Then I went vegetarian for a while and stopped being able to handle fatty meats on pizza. These days I like veggie pizza, and BBQ chicken with pineapple. (I also like pineapple alone.)

Re: dentists: I realize now how lucky I was to have a dentist who was gentle and prioritized pain management. I never had a bad dentist experience as a kid, and have therefore never been nervous or afraid of the dentist. I had accepted that many people were, but never quite understood why. This thread has caused me to understand why that fear can be quite rational. (Drilling without anesthesia?!)

I haven't been to a dentist since I stopped being on my parents' dental insurance. Now I've got dental insurance again through my husband. I suppose I'd better go.

Ginger @ 311: Sympathies and a strong zen hug.

Elliott Mason@351: I went through college eating sausage on pizza (Bill's Special with mushrooms; still go there, still order that), but I've always had the impression that pepperoni is the more basic default (going back to the early 1970s). Maybe somewhat regional, or just closely enough balanced that a random statistical cluster can make it look either way locally for a while.

Our lunch pizzas will probably include a sausage plus a few vegetables option, and I will probably have some of that one. Especially if there are onions.

I find random pepperoni less likely to be bad than random pizza sausage. Mediocre, perhaps, but not actually bad. I'm very fond of GOOD sausage on pizza.

If bell peppers give you heartburn, not surprised that pepperoni does too. Unfortunate, both in that those things taste good, and that they're ubiquitous on pizza. Must be very inconvenient. (And the pepper part extends into lots of Chinese and Indian and Vietnamese and....)

Ginger: My sympathies. As others have said, it's better to know, but that doesn't make it easy. If you accept virtual hugs, consider yourself hugged.

Re dentists: I didn't have much dental work as a youngster. A few fillings, but the novocaine worked well. The cleanings were uncomfortable but not awful. When I found a new dentist as an adult, suddenly the cleanings were completely painless! I believe that the difference is that now there are hygienists to do that part. Query: when did dental hygienists become a regular thing? My aging dentist didn't have one in the 1970's through early 1980's; my young dentist had one when I first saw him around 1990.

Lila @ 350 -- For your second list, "Pioneers of Mars" by Lloyd Landa and Karen Linsley. Exerpt here. Lyrics here (page 15). The entire song can be heard here.

Xopher, 326: It doesn't happen so much with Austen, partly because I use lots of archaic constructions anyway. But I channel Paarfi like nobody's business. (That's not a complaint, of course.)

Lila, 350: They Might Be Giants has an album called Apollo 18 which might be of some use to you; I'm not familiar enough with it to be sure, but it's an evocative title!

Mary Aileen@356: I knew somebody who worked as a dental hygienist in 1976 roughly.

But I remember hygienists being there when I went to the dentist as a child, in the 1960s, too (Northfield MN). I'm sure I'd have noticed if I was used to getting all my attention from the doctor, and they suddenly introduced a lower-level employee to do most of the work!

And Ginger, I'm sorry.

I know that "there were four lights" feeling at the end of a crazymaking relationship. It's a thread of relief to hold onto, even through the pain.

Just from your posts here, I can tell you are a great person -- a fantastic mother, a good friend. I am so sorry this had to happen. But I can already see that you will make it through, self intact.

(And I actually do know one such lesbian, with kid, cats, and dog. Should you find yourself in NC, perhaps we could all meet for coffee or something. It would be fun to meet for coffee regardless.)

Elliot Mason @351: Interesting. In my pizza experience, pepperoni came first; sausage appeared sometime in the '70s.

(On the other hand, the antipathy I developed toward anchovies has lasted 50 years. And the modern anchovy is supposed to be less like eating a tablespoon of salt.)

Joel and TexAnne, thanks!

Xopher @ 326: Rather, yes. I'm influenced by what I read or what I hear. We've been watching Aaron Sorkin reruns of late, and after a few episodes of West Wing I talk like a combination of Leo McGarry and Josh Lyman.

I pick up accents, too. We're going to Dallas for a few days in September. After we get back to Phoenix, my wife will be telling me to drop the Texas accent for a few days.

On pizza: I used to work at a place that had a company meeting/pizza feed every Friday. The militant anchovy-lovers insisted on anchovy pizza. So guess what was always in the leftovers after that?

ddb @355: If bell peppers give you heartburn, not surprised that pepperoni does too. Unfortunate, both in that those things taste good, and that they're ubiquitous on pizza. Must be very inconvenient. (And the pepper part extends into lots of Chinese and Indian and Vietnamese and....)

There's Pepper Suprise (as in, "Surprise! Have peppers in something you thought was safe!!") in a whole range of things that someone who likes peppers might not have thought of.

Frozen entrees, for example, very VERY often have bits of red in them, with no indication in the photo on the front that they'll be in there.

For the record, it's just bell (or 'sweet') peppers that do this; I'm fine with hot peppers like poblanos and the like, at least in any concentration their heat lets me consume. I have no idea what it is that's triggering me, but it's consistent.

Potentially-unrelated fact: I can also taste that paper they give you in high school bio to track who's got the tasting mutation, and I think cilantro tastes like dishwashing liquid (ptui!) Speaking of 'Surprise!' when visiting a restaurant ... cilantro's gotten really, REALLY trendy lately, and even tiny specks of it can render an entire dish unedible by me. Note: cilantro leaves only. I have no problem with powdered coriander from the seeds, as a spice.

I'm a recovering Picky Eater (or, as I sometimes describe myself, a pickytarian). I have friends or relatives with religious or genuinely biological (intolerances, allergies, etc) food limitations far harsher than mine, so I try to keep quiet and just not make it anybody else's problem.

The friend who can't eat anything in the entire rose supergroup (from strawberries out past apples and stone fruits), and the other friend who can't have any nightshades have it far, far worse than I do. Even if I miss a piece of pepper (or pick them off and eat it anyway as the only food on offer, thereby consuming residues), the worst I get is heartburn, which is no fun but over in a few hours. Some of my friends swell up, turn pink, stop being able to BREATHE ... trust me, I do know how easy I have it.

Elliott Mason@364: having a bad reaction only to bell peppers, not hot peppers, strikes me as very strange. And you're clearly not describing just a preference; it's not apparently in the life-threatening allergy category (lucky you!), but you get a consistent physical response.

My most troublesome dislike is mayonnaise (and anything vaguely related to it); this blocks out nearly every mass-market "creamy" savory thing. But I don't get physical symptoms, I just don't like it.

Glenn Hauman @ 331: I think you're looking for "Access Fantasy" from _Men and Cartoons_.

Glenn Hauman @ 331: I think you're looking for "Access Fantasy" from _Men and Cartoons_.

Xopher @ 321: Thanks -- I do prefer honesty, because now I can deal with everything appropriately instead of wasting time hoping for an impossible reconciliation.

Diatryma @ 322: Sounds like this happens more often than we realize. My sympathies to your friend!

Paula Helm Murray @ 323, 324: Thank you very much for your offer. I will keep that in mind especially during those dark hours late at night.

Laura @ 325: Thanks. I would not mind moving to the Bay Area, and if I do, I'll let you know. Stranger things have happened!

Xopher @326: I don't read Jane Austen, but I have noticed a tendency to talk/write like Deverrians after re-reading Katharine Kerr. Some people have dominating styles or suchlike.

Clifton @ 334: Thanks -- hugs accepted in all languages. You're right, it is better to know that things are irretrievably broken. Now I can focus on moving on in positive ways.

Sylvia @ 340: That's very reassuring, thanks. My son is starting from a background of neglect by his birth mother (Ex's niece) but we seem to have overcome most of that. He appears to be handling things well enough now, despite being an adolescent male with attendant inarticulate awkwardness.

fidelio @ 344: Precisely. Now I know there wasn't anything I could have done to make this better, since it started years before.

Lila @ 345: October 6th through 13th. Two different locations, so the first four days are likely to be very busy with the first meeting. On Sunday I will be less busy, and shifting to a different hotel. I expect to also have friends in my profession visiting from Canada, but I'm looking forward to a mini-Gathering of Light.

ddb @ 349: Thanks!

dcb @ 354: Thanks!

Mary Aileen @ 356: Thanks!

Caroline @ 360: Thank you -- and the odd thing is, we met in North Carolina. We were both doing post-docs at Bowman Gray. I'm sure I'll find myself in NC sometime, even if just for a quick meeting. Coffee will be had, one way or another!

In the UK, there is an operational courthouse and jail that is so old no-one knows when it was built or by whom - not just in the Brechtian sense of "Who built Thebes of the four gates?", we don't even know who wanted it built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_Castle

Admittedly, this is partly because digging under the walls of a prison is frowned on.

Re. pizzas: as a vegetarian, I can tell you that usually what's left if you arrive late is - pizza with meat on it. All the meat eaters will say there don't need to be many vegetarian pizzas, then they'll grab a slice or two of whatever vegetarian pizza is provided, to eat alongside their meat-laden pizza of choice. The first vegetarians to arrive of couse take several vege sliices each. The last vegetarians...

If you're not providing lots of vege pizzas, at least put the vege ones where they're NOT the closest, easiest ones to grab. Ditto with buffets - often the vege options are at the start of the line, so each meat eater takes a bit of each vege dish while waiting to get to the "real" food - with the result that when a vegetarian arrives late in the queue, lo and behold, there's nothing left for them to eat.

And if anyone loves olives and is catering a gathering, remember please that (a) not everyone likes olives, strange though this may seem to you; (b) the taste permeates, so even if the olive-hater removes all the visible bits of olives, the rest of the food is still nasty-flavoured.

Elliott Mason: in my case it's almonds, cashews and possibly (I'm not sure yet) sesame seeds. As a delayed reaction (at the evening and morning histamine peaks), of a REALLY itchy palate. It's often okay if I eat the offending foods once, but gradually gets worse if I keep eating them several days in a row. Like you, I'm pleased it's not worse, but when the eustacian tubes start itching as well... And I love marzipan. And honey-roasted cashews.

"I sing the body electric" from Fame, and perhaps, "Fame". Also, Flashdance.

re pizza: I used to work in a pizza place.

Pepperoni is (in LA) the big winner. Then sausage. Bell peppers are on the list of ubiquity too (more the pity, I dislike them), so are mushrooms (though more with sausage then pepperoni... I like mushrooms, but not dessicated and mutated to the taste of old shoes).

After that... pineapple shows up with ham/"canadian" bacon. I think both are nasty. Ignoring that I don't quite get the pineapple/cured meat thing (yes, I get that it's "sweet/salty", I just don't think that pair is all that good an example. Not hideous, but not all that good), I find the high heat of the pizza oven changes the pineapple, and that I don't care for it. Plain cheese and pineapple, or a veggie with pineapple, or any number of, "gourmet" pizzas with pineapple).

Anchovies... they are special. Expensive (most places lose money on them.

A can of anchovies cost (at the time) about $2. A large pizza topping cost $.75.

The mean on anchovies was one can = one pizza; i.e. by the time we got a second anchovy order, the previous can wasn't usable. We averaged (as I recall) about 200 pizzas a day.

Then there were the people who'd order a half-anchovy pizza. I recall the worst delivery I ever made. I had a half-sausage/half bell pepper for "room 13" (this guy would order a half sausage/half "x" about every 3 weeks, to room 13 of a nearby motel. He never answered the door. A different woman, in lingerie, would pay for the pie), and a small anchovy.

It was a cold, rainy, night in November. I'd had the heat on, and the windows had to say up. Oi.

Anchovies also are trouble. People who want to fake an order, would add them to the pie, I don't know why. It actually saved us from making a of prank deliveries. We'd do a callback. These days it would probably be a callback and address lookup.

The best part of the callback: people who prank deliveries like to watch them, so it was two birds with one stone... we didn't deliver, and they got frustrated.

While I was there (6 months, or so) I we only got stuck for one anchovy pie. They had a cell phone (this was in 1988). For the rest, it was a loss for the store, but a boost for morale, as undeliverables (and mistakes) were, "crew pie". Since no one in the shop (which was pretty diverse) like anchovies, that one was a real loss, as it couldn't be written off.

Alex@369 — I think you mean seven gates.

Lila #350: "Headed For the Future" (Neil Diamond, at least). "Keep Your Head to the Sky" (EWF), "Light the Sky On Fire" (Jefferson Starship).

It occurs to me there's some classical riffs on "The Planets", you can swipe the Mars entries...

dcb (370): All the meat eaters will say there don't need to be many vegetarian pizzas, then they'll grab a slice or two of whatever vegetarian pizza is provided,

Not quite *all*--this meat eater will only eat vegetarian pizza if there's nothing else left, including plain cheese. (And I'll only eat plain cheese if there are no meat options left, even if that means I have to pick olives or mushrooms off.)

#311 Ginger

We have quite a few long-time fabulous lesbian friends. Most are coupled now, but they themselves know many others in their communities who are not.

The catch is this is NYC.

And we're leaving NYC Saturday for nearly a year.

You're going to do just fine, particularly considering your state-of-mind, your attitude, your profession and most of all, your characters.

You have all my sympathies though, for the discomforts of transition.

Love, C.

#326 Xopher

Even more so with Patrick O'Brian. At least for me, at this stage of life.

Wish you joy upon your Austen re-read!

Love, C.

Ginger, fidelio @344 speaks for me as well. The ultimatum I finally had to give my now-ex, after 6 months of back-and-forth and I-don't-know, was, "One way or the other, but I can't hold MY life in limbo any more. If you're staying, I need a commitment to that effect. If you're really gone, I need to know so that I can start rebuilding." Knowing it's over is better than being at sea.

Lila, #350: For the first one, have you looked at Billy Joel's "The Entertainer"? It's music rather than show business, but it might still work.

For the second list... have you considered filk? There are tons of songs in that genre that would fit -- and, being in Atlanta, you have access to people who are likely to have them even if you don't. E-mail me (fgneqernzre NG zvaqfcevat QBG pbz) if you'd like to be put in contact with some of them.

Lila@350, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars?

Back when I was carnivorous, I generally preferred sausage pizza to pepperoni, but it seemed to be the minority position, and as somebody else said, bad sausage pizza is bad, while pepperoni is at worst mediocre. My wife dislikes green peppers, so I'm familiar with the concept that they do pretty much permeate anything they're cooked with - I'm surprised to hear the olive-dislikers say the same thing about olives, and I've always assumed that at least black olives usually added more visual contrast than actual flavor to pizzas.

Bill Stewart: Olives, in general, suffer a bit from the, "overheated and dried out" problem (but not so much as mushrooms). Black/California olives tend to do a bit better (the canning process keeps them really moist), so the cooking tends to give them a more robust flavor.

They do add textural variety too.

I've never found them to be pervasive, not in the way peppers are. I know people who tried to do an end run with a single anchovy, in the hope that would get them the rest of the pizza (they hated anchovies) this worked in college, but when they got to fannish circles they found enough people (like myself) who would happily eat the rest and leave the single piece with anchovy for them, that the habit was lost.

At least, in my circles, there are enough people who like anchovies.

I am getting better at eating them, it's not that I dislike them, but they are intense; and suffer from the mushroom problem on most pizzas.

There is a way to avoid that problem (dessication/overcooking) of things on a pizza; put the cheese on top.

350:
Show business and taking risks:
Like a Rhinestone Cowboy

Space:
Hey, Mr. Spaceman
Space Oddity

Elliott, #364: I have another friend who can handle hot peppers but not sweet ones (you might actually know her -- her name is Alisa, and she likes filk). Coincidentally, you're both from the same general part of the country.

ddb, #365: I can't stand mayonnaise as a condiment on sandwiches or burgers, but for some reason I have no objection to it as a binder in chicken salad. (For potato salad, I want the kind that has mustard as well.) And don't even get me started about "tangy sandwich spread", which appears to be a synonym for "mayonnaise with added vinegar" -- two bad tastes that taste even worse together!

Ginger, #368: I'm a night owl, and frequently up until 2 or 3 AM. Send me a message on Facebook, and I'll give you my cellphone number. The cellphone lives at the other end of the house from the bedroom, so if I've already crashed you don't need to worry about waking anyone up.

I am figuring out Windows Vista and I found an empty textfile in my documents folder that I don't remember saving. Could it be malware? How can I check. The name of the file is "Thermal". Does this coincide with the behavior of any virus anyone knows about?

On Broadway

dcb@370: If there isn't enough vegetarian pizza, then there isn't, and should have been more, yes.

I suspect this is an area where expectations play a part in in what one sees. Those of us who don't need vegetarian pizza mostly don't notice if it runs out too soon (most people don't make a fuss).

There were in fact exactly 15 extra-large pizzas for lunch here today. There were 3 BBQ chicken, not two. There were a couple of combinations involving sausage, some also had pepperoni. There was one straight cheese and one vegetarian. And there was one ham&pineapple this time. I even saw one person take a slice from it :-).

Open threadiness: Has anybody found a good way to follow the comments to a post at tor.com? Keeping the tab open and refreshing periodically is the best I've found so far (and that's highly dangerous; it can become a tight loop), and it works less well when I move between computers than I would like.

Ginger @311:

I am so sorry. Like many of the people here, I was hoping that it would work out. Clarity is useful, though; now at least you can find the new shape of your life instead of being frozen in place.

And thank you for keeping us posted. We care, very much indeed.

Xopher @326:

Also have it I do when certain movies I watch.

Elliott Mason @ 364: My sister is allergic to both nightshades and roses--particularly hard at this time of year (in the northeast) when vine-ripe tomatoes and new potatoes are temptingly everywhere and we're shading into apple season.

On dentists: Even local anaesthesia apparently can be tricky. I have a wonderful dentist, who has taken care of my teeth since I've had teeth (the kind of guy who opened up his office at 8pm on a Saturday because I bit an apple and shattered a molar), but every filling I've had save two has been incredibly painful. About five years ago, he happened to mention that some small percentage of people aren't adequately numbed by the usual placement of Novocaine shots--then took a second look at me and gave me another jab.

It was like a miracle: it didn't hurt at all! I had always assumed that fillings were supposed to hurt--why else would everyone complain about them? Thank the universe for his insight, because it's unlikely I'd have ever mentioned my pain (stoicism fail). I've had to have one more filling since then, and it was pretty weird to notice how much pain I was prepared to endure, once I didn't have it anymore. Oh, my poor nerves...

Pizza: I like cooked pineapple better than raw (which bothers my mouth and throat in any quantity larger than one bite), so I adore pineapple on my pizza. I don't need the ham, but it's tasty too. I will eat anything except anchovy, having never really developed a taste for fish on my pizza. I once accidentally took a bite of meat pizza that had anchovies and decided I preferred live anchovies - but not to eat.

Constance @ 375: I was born in NYC, raised in a small town about 70 miles North, and used to shop at all the lesbian and gay bookstores in the City..If I should move back to NY, I have an old friend in the area who would probably be my entry point into the community again. Still, if any of your friends decide to move about 200 miles south, feel free to point them at me.

Lee @ 377, 381: Thank you. Yes, it is better knowing that it's over.

abi @ 386: Thank you. I had hoped myself, but it seems the damage runs too deep and had been for too long.

I do have things to keep me occupied, besides watching mind-deadening television late at night. I have to keep my son on task for school, which starts next week. I would like to find a new job within the government, preferably with a higher pay scale. I am still doing car seat checks as often as I can, along with CERT training and Boy Scout merit badge counseling. I am also visiting my parents more often, something I couldn't do while her mother was declining in health over the past 7 years. There's lesbian parents in the neighborhood, and at least one of them knows a singles group. I can't play softball or baseball anymore (old injuries make it painful now), but I can probably find something else to do. As the weather gets cooler again, I'll be able to walk the dogs in the park with the other separated lesbian mom and her dog again. There's the never-ending list of chores around the house. Before I know it, four years will pass, and I'll be sending him off to college. By then, I'll have reached 17 years in the government, and will be actively looking for someplace to retire to, and who knows? Maybe by then we'll all have air cars or matter transportation, and travel will no longer be the hassle it is today.

All this discussion about pizza is odd (ISTR it was odd last time I read it, too). Maybe it's my Canadian inclination, but the Hawaiian (ham and pineapple) *always* goes. Usually before I get there (grumble). Add another gripe for "veggies = peppers and olives" - both of which I can't stand the texture of, and with olives at least, also the taste. And the black olive rings look ugly, too, so that can't be it. And around here, at least, people seem to agree with me, because we always get a "veggie" or "supreme" pizza, and it's always the last to go - except, of course, for the small vegan pizza (no cheese) that nobody but the resident vegan will touch, even if there's nothing else.

So I end up with the "safe" choices just like everybody else. I get tired of pepperoni and cheese pizzas.

I do have an advantage with sausage on pizza, though - we're the home of Spolumbo's. If you don't use Spolumbo's, or a sausage at least as good (or you're a chain), you go out of business (like when I lived in BerlinKitchener, where if you made a bad sauerkraut, you went out of business (they'd just go to the Mennonites, who dug it up today).

Love anchovy on pizza. If you chop it up, it doesn't get dry; and the flavour permeates better. Which, of course, is why they don't do it.

Ok, having listened to Apollo 18, there's an appropriate song: The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)
with the lyrics:

In the spaceship, the silver spaceship,
The lion takes control.

There's also a whole lot of short strange songs. But that's TMBG.

abi@387: If Yoda so strong with the Force is, use correct English word order why can he not?

#392 David Goldfarb: talk like me you would too, if hand-up-ass puppet you were!

I have a recording of a radio sketch (which seems improvised) entitled "Things Yoda Would Say in Bed." It's - disturbing.

Elliott Mason @#364: I also get heartburn (eosinophilic esophagitis, probably) from foods I'm allergic to, even ones that are completely not-spicy and not-acidic. Milk and wheat being the worst offenders. It's very counter-intuitive...for the longest time I would eat a cracker or some bread to take the edge off of the heartburn while waiting for medicine to kick in, without realizing I was allergic. Ouchie.

Yoda's favorite programming language is FORTH, because he talks in RPN.

Ginger:

What I forgot to say last night is that IMHO there is a good chance this will turn out to be the best thing for your son - not the best of all possibilities, but the best reality - and if you happen to get into a good relationship down the road, better still. Don't stress about that side of things more than you must.

I agonized for years about the possible impact of a divorce on my daughter, but I think it turned out to be a huge improvement for her to stop having her parents fighting and going around in pain all the time. When I got into a relationship again, although she was very dubious about it at first, that indisputably turned out even better for her - she started getting a model of what a good relationship could be like. She is doing very well now.

Might say Yoda,

If English your 42nd language be, and goblin-ears you have, so pretty you talk?

David @ 392 - BTW, stealing that I am. :)

typing one-handed at the moment. short version: wet floor, WHAM!, ER, arm in sling until shoulder recovers. not a good day.

Erik Nelson@382

Doesn't ring any bells, and a quick look around anti-virus sites doesn't get a match. I'd say run something like malwarebytes, which should pick it up if it is.

Bruce Arthurs #399: Ouch... FML? Hope you heal quickly!

Diatryma @ #328: my particular accent is text, and my word choice tends to echo the internet more than anything.

I tend to think of my own particular brand of English as Internet English. (Though maybe that lumps me in with the Nigerian bankers.) It's, in my case, sort of a generic British English with creeping Americanisms and occasional bits of Scots thrown in.

Which I don't take my writing style completely from my reading material, but I'm sure writers like O'Brian have an influence on my phrasings.

It's more difficult to speak English than to write it, with all those weird diphtongs and stuff. I've been accused of having only a little bit of an accent though, which I find ironic; when I'm speaking Norwegian my local accent is as thick as porridge very easy to pinpoint if you're familiar with it or know the particular markers and/or vocabulary.

Ginger, I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Breaking up is always really tough, it changes the shape of your world. I'm sure you and your son will do fine, eventually. The here and now can be medium dreadful, though.

If mystical to appear you would, talk funny you must.

Erik @395: *Chortle*
But make it work I could not.

Bruce Arthurs @ 399: Sympathies. Hope the damage (whatever it is) heals quickly.

Comment on comments offered here without comment.

http://commentisfreewatch.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/satire-1.jpg

Fragano will not need further surgery, but he's stuck with a tube in his nose.

Open-threaded grumpiness: Requiring someone to re-register with a software company simply because an e-mail address has changed is one of the pinnacles of dumb. VMware loses points for their silly-ass system.

Steve C. @ 408: Well the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons says they're going to strike people off the register* (which you need to be on to practice as a veterinarian in the UK), if we don't contact them each year to tell them that your (physical) address has not changed.

* The ultimate sanction, usually reserved for severe professional misconduct.

Random House wins battle over e-rights with Andrew Wylie

Ginger @311: I scowl darkly on your behalf. Finally being told it's over after years of it having been over is a very special kind of suck.

It's very closely related to the congenital inability to say "No."

I've encountered variations on this problem in all of the relationships I've had (from both sides, embarrassingly).

But what really blew the top of my head off was when I realized it started with my very first relationships, e.g., blood family.

It's like one wants to want it, but just somehow doesn't have the nerve to face the obvious implication: that one doesn't want it.

Well, here's to the truth finally coming out. (Unless the Ex is just telling herself this story retroactively to make it all make sense—which is a different kind of suck, but the difference is probably not relevant, for your purposes.)

Here's to people who know what they want and know how to ask for it. I only hope that I can become one someday, and become worthy of partnering with one.

One of the ones that Got Away informed me, after two dates, that he didn't see it going any further. Was THE most spectacularly UN-traumatic turn-down/break-up I've ever experienced. Blew my mind. I just didn't have a place in my brain for "honest clarity" up until that point. I still think very fondly of him, once in a while.

& @319: And if you happen to wander down the Colorado Front Range, give us a shout. There's a wee outpost of the Fluorosphere in Boulder. (Though a week or two notice is advised to allow for archeological excavations of crash space.)

Xopher @326: we begin to imitate the style of the period

I've heard Bujold refer to this as "style leakage."

Diatryma @328: contagious speech patterns

I've noticed that the younger cosmologists coming up tend to have a strangely "voice-synth" accent when talking about their field. I suspect a certain Hawking influence.

Earl Cooley III @336: Chicken Just Does Not Belong On Pizza. Bleh. Really. And Jalapeños Are Not Food. Just sayin' (Nope, no food prejudices here!)

ddb @347: [Mpls pizza] Is the Green Mill II down by Dinkytown still open? (30 years later? Yeah, right!) <wistful sigh>

Bruce Arthurs, #399, ack! Fell at work or home? I hope you get better soon.

Pizza, I like Margherite best and can get one at a not-too-expensive place near. I end up bringing three-quarters of it home, of course.

Lila @ #350, digging into my iTunes library:

"Stage Fright," by The Band
"That's Entertainment," by Fred Astaire, Michael Feinstein, and squads of others
"There's No Business Like Show Business," by Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra, and others
"Wanna Sing a Show Tune," by Michael Feinstein
"Gus (the Theater Cat)," from Cats

Jacque #411: Chicken Just Does Not Belong On Pizza

I used to think the same thing about BBQ sauce, but I'm willing to admit that I turned out to be wrong. Chicken on pizza is, to me, essentially inoffensive, as it naturally acquires the virtues of the other ingredients of the pizza.

I wish I could get delivery pizza that has shrimp.

Pizza: On a recent visit with my parents I had my first "New York Style" pizza in years. Thin hard crust, nice and hot and a bit oily. I didn't realize how much I like the stuff.

West Coast pizza tends to have a soft bready crust, with outrageous toppings. I do like some of the oddball combinations. Chicken and pesto, "Hawaiian," chicken and BBQ sauce. But I'm not sure if it's really pizza.

Damn. I meant to have a Carvel cone when I was back east. Next time . . .

I can corroborate dcb's experience with vegetarian pizza and lack of same. This applies to Chinese food as well. I don't eat "family style" at Chinese restaurants unless the group is all vegetarian or agrees to order more veggie than non-veggie dishes. If you think one vegetarian at the table means one vegetarian dish, don't expect me to share it!

Steve C.@398: I stole it myself, I don't remember now from whom.

I've had spinach Alfredo pizza, and liked it alot.

Have you seen this item from McSweeney's:
This is Just to Say
That I'm Tired
of Sharing an
Apartment With
William Carlos Williams.

Reading it reminded me of some good threads here...

Lila @ #350: I like "You Will Go To The Moon" by Moxy Früvous.
"Girl From Mars" by Ash could fit, as could "My Star" by Ian Brown.
Then there's "Space Travel Is Boring" by Modest Mouse, or "Supersonic Rocket Ship" by The Kinks.
And another They Might Be Giants track, "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)" - which is most excellent.

Xopher (416): I hope I didn't offend you--or anyone else--by quibbling about dcb's use of "all" in that context. I certainly did not mean to imply that hir experience was invalid. And your point about Chinese restaurants is very well taken.

At the risk of jamming up the Held For Moderation queue:
You Will Go To The Moon
Girl From Mars
My Star
Space Travel Is Boring
Supersonic Rocket Ship
The Ballad Of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)

Clifton @ 396: Thanks -- I've been telling him that he's learning valuable life lessons, and that someday he'll appreciate it. We've both been modeling good behavior around him; only once did she try to send a message through him (I told him not to let either of us do that, as he didn't deserve to be in the middle of anything).

Bruce Arthurs @399: Ouch! Hope you feel better soon.

Lydy Nickerson @403: Thanks!

Jacque @411: Yes, that is it. She has been unable to say "No" for probably most of her life. She's the 4th out of 5 children, the diplomatic one and probably the one who was designated to "take care of mom and dad" (and also the only "unmarried one"). She was painfully shy as a child, had social anxieties and still has panic attacks. I am not sure I totally buy what she's saying now, because it doesn't align with her behavior over the past 5 years. There's still something not right about her explanations or justifications, but that's now her problem and not mine.

It's a shame, really. Oh, well.

This meat eater is part of the problem. I'll happily take a couple of slices of vegetarian pizza because it would be Wrong to load up solely on pepperoni and sausage when children are starving in other parts of the world.

I'll eat any and all varieties of pizza mentioned above, The only kind I have turned my nose up at was a combination sauerkraut and pineapple.

Lis Riba @419, that reminds me of something I linked to a while back: Mollie Wells's "William Carlos Williams is a Really Bad Roommate".

Lee @381 said to my #364: I have another friend who can handle hot peppers but not sweet ones (you might actually know her -- her name is Alisa, and she likes filk). Coincidentally, you're both from the same general part of the country.

Alisa the lawyer? Yes, we know each other. If we lived slightly closer we might well be a band by now, as we have highly compatible tastes in songs and harmonic choices. Whenever we end up in a circle together, it's a beautiful thing.

Mary Dell @394 said to my #364: I also get heartburn (eosinophilic esophagitis, probably) from foods I'm allergic to, even ones that are completely not-spicy and not-acidic. Milk and wheat being the worst offenders. It's very counter-intuitive...for the longest time I would eat a cracker or some bread to take the edge off of the heartburn while waiting for medicine to kick in, without realizing I was allergic. Ouchie.

IANAD; I don't even pretend to have a med degree from Google University. I also don't have a formal diagnosis about what I call 'my heartburn,' because I'm the kind of person that only goes to doctors about stuff when it's verging on debilitating. Having talked to people in my adulthood about the sensations, I now know I've been HAVING it, on and off, since before puberty. It's a stabby sensation behind my sternum, that I call heartburn now because for a while there it was getting a lot worse/more prevalent, and largely arrived right after I ate fatty stuff. Eating carbs would calm it (and could sometimes completely stave it off; hence eating a few slices of crusty bread after my ice cream).

However, none of the 'take these pills for a month to make your heartburn better' over the counter pills do jack for me. One of them actually made it significantly worse. And being pregnant cut it out comPLETEly, which really doesn't make any sense to most people (as gestation is known to CAUSE reflux, usually). Right now it's well-controlled, as I know how to avoid getting it; I have a bout of it maybe once a month.

RoseG @388 said to my #364: My sister is allergic to both nightshades and roses--particularly hard at this time of year (in the northeast) when vine-ripe tomatoes and new potatoes are temptingly everywhere and we're shading into apple season.

Ouuuuuch. The real killer on rose allergies is how very many things use apple juice for sweetening so they can say 'all natural' or 'no sugar added' or whatnot. Not all rose-allergic people are allergic to the stuff that remains in the juice, but if you are? Massive 'Apple Surprise'. Everywhere.

Roy G. Ovrebo @402 said: My particular accent is text, and my word choice tends to echo the internet more than anything. I tend to think of my own particular brand of English as Internet English. (Though maybe that lumps me in with the Nigerian bankers.) It's, in my case, sort of a generic British English with creeping Americanisms and occasional bits of Scots thrown in.

I first got on the internet in September of 1993, and within a year had a circle of friends I frequently conversed with (on Usenet, MU*s, email, and other ways), many of whom were varying sorts of British. I've been conversing with them so long that I regularly come out with words my husband the precise-speech-fetishist calls 'outlandish,' in that they are in regional dialects not of any region I've ever lived in. I don't even notice that they're not my native idiom anymore, because I moved to the Internet over ten years ago and have now naturalized. :->

A shibboleth I use to see if someone is 'of my tribe' when it comes to internet use: if someone knows how to spell 'anonymous' immediately when asked without even having to stop to think about it, they're probably a well-socialized internetter of longstanding residence.

Elliott Mason, re being able to spell "anonymous": or they're like me, and tend to visualize the spelling of words automatically.

Continued thanks to all for the great song suggestions--I really appreciate it. It's amazing how even songs you know well (e.g. "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas") don't immediately come to mind when you try to call up a particular genre or theme ("what songs do I know that reference outer space?"). At least this is easier than trying to find songs for a hippotherapy slide show (must be kid-appropriate, not sad, and not reference drinking or gambling--which eliminates a TON of folk songs about horses).

Lila @ 427 -- "Glorious Mud", "Hippo In The Bathtub", ... oh.

Cat Faber's "The Seventh Horse". Leslie Fish's "Horsetamer's Daughter" is probably not what you're looking for.

Mary Aileen 421: Not at all! I can't speak for dcb, of course, but I didn't take it that way.

If anything, my sense is that the problem is people pretending to be you and acting like Allan. If they would be consistent about either, the problem would not exist, but all too often I find meat eaters insisting on ordering only enough veggie food for the vegetarians, and then eating it when it arrives.

I'm guessing someone here knows what the equivalent term for "speculative fiction" is in Spanish. I'm trying ficción especulativo but am aware this might be an overly literal translation. Yes, it's for school, and yes, I'll tell my teacher I got that help.

(Yes, I'm over fifty, and yes, I can use the Google to occulate the interwebs, but, man, I'm over fifty!)

Lila@350
"Come Take a Trip in My Airship"
Holst's the Planets

Don't Rain on My Parade
Make 'em Laugh

I haven't seen anyone mention the (Hugo-nominated) second side of Blows against the Empire, repackaged as by Jefferson Starship. "People with a clever plan/can assume the role of the mighty/and hijack the starship..." And one of the best uses of the future perfect in popular music -- "They'll be building it up in the air/Ever since 1980."

And the Moody Blues had a couple of songs in the early years -- haven't listened to those albums in too many years, but To Our Children's Children's Children or A Question of Balance. Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" are pretty amazing if one likes psychedelia. Neil Young's song "After the Gold Rush" has a verse about silver spaceships.

Not to mention there's lots of space-related anime with theme songs in Japanese that are pretty good.

Lila @ 350:

"Found A Job"*, by the Talking Heads
"The Flying Wallendas", by the Drive-By Truckers
"Monument Valley Alone"*, by the Drive-By Truckers
"Slapped Actress"*, by the Hold Steady
"Cracked Actor", by David Bowie
"Montgomery Clift", by the Clash

"Spaceman", by Harry Nillson
"Have You Seen The Stars Tonight"*, by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship (or the whole Hugo-winning Blows Against The Empire album)
"For Jeffrey, Michael Collins, and Me", by Jethro Tull
"Neil Armstrong,"* by the Dexateens (I love the Dexateens!)

I put asterisks by the happier tunes. Maybe no Sun Ra or Interstellar Space, but Parliament/Funkadelic? Oh, yes.

Don't fall for "Puttin' People on the Moon" or "Space City" by the Drive-By Truckers, or "Whitey on the Moon" by Gil Scott-Heron. Great songs, all of 'em, but not really on point. "The Flying Wallendas" is and is not a sad song, even if it is a sad story.

Oh, and if you use "Stage Fright", I think you have to pair it with Bob Dylan's song on the same subject, "The Drifter's Escape"*. I like the Jimi Hendrix version, but I think it's still pretty hard to find.

The closest I can come with a Warren Zevon song is "My Ride's Here" but I'm almost certain there's a better one.

Oh yes, and how could I forget Ed Sanders of the Fugs and "Beer Cans on the Moon" -- another album that's not too well known, but the title song is at least a little relevant.

Oh, of course: "For My Next Trick, I'll Need A Volunteer". Performance as metaphor. Is today the anniversary of his death?

Damn! "They Moved The Moon", from Transverse City.

John, you reminded me to suggest Julia Ecklar's "One Man Magical Show", available on the album Divine Intervention.

Oh and good ghod, how could we all have forgotten "Magic To Do" from Pippin?

Well, and on the performance front there's stuff from The Producers and Kiss Me, Kate that would fit in quite nicely. "We Open in Venice", for one from the latter.

Since someone else has already asked for help with their Spanish homework, something's been bugging me about mine. Don't worry, I won't get your answer in time to change what I hand in tomorrow morning; this is just for my information.

Is there a less literal translation of mac & cheese (KD for my Canadian friends) than 'macarrones con queso'? Assuming it's eaten in the non-US Spanish-speaking world at all, that is.

Our first writing assignment for class is to ask a seatmate a series of 'getting to know you' questions, then use their answers to write a paragraph that introduces them to the class. Because this is the sort of group that might find it amusing, I append it here:

Steven es un estudiante trabajador. Él toma cuatro clases este semestre: matemáticas, español, psicología, y religión. Vive en Chicago de todo vida. Tiene veinte años, y no tiene nada hijos. No tiene un película favorita, pero gusto "Poetic Justice" mucho. Gusto comer macarrones con queso también. En las fines de semana, duerme mucho.

This is for Spanish 102, so we're expected to know the basic grammar of how to speak in the present tense, and to have a certain suite of vocabulary at our disposal. I just hope it sounds reasonably like a native speaker (of five years old, or so) could have composed the paragraph, rather than being obviously the broken product of a language-learner.

Random cat question: I have three, and the kittens want the old cat food, and the old cat wants the kitten food. Big kitty is on prescription c/d for urinary blockage. Kittens are on kitten food. So, I'm not thinking that it's good for them to be sharing. (vet doesn't either)

I've been dealing by watching and pulling the kitten food when they finish, as well as pulling the kittens out of the big cat food. This is not robust, as I'm going to need someone to feed them for a week when I'm gone. The kittens will do fine self regulating, the old cat will turn into a kitty blimp.

Any ideas? All of them can climb, and I don't think that it's likely that I can keep old age and treachery from getting into any semi accessible food. Is there a food that's likely to work for all of them?

re Magic to Do... D'oh... I was in a production of Pippin. Oi.

Comedy Tonight, from Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

A Little Night Music, "Heigh-ho the Glamorous Life"

John A A @433 Sun Ra? Definitely, Space is the Place. (I've occasionally wondered whether that could be doable at a filk convention...)
And so many different things by Jefferson {Airplane/Starship/Whatever}, Have You Seen The Saucers?, various parts of Across The Sea of Suns
Standing on the Moon by the Grateful Dead.

The Byrds: Hey Mr Spaceman

Lila @350: David Bowie is a rich seam for your second category. There've already been several suggestions, but it appears Life on Mars? has been missed so far.

From Kiss Me Kate, there's also "Another Op'nin', Another Show":

Another chance that you hope, at last
Will make the future forget the past
Another pain where the ulcers grow
Another op'nin' of another show

(The song's been on my mind quite a bit of late, especially the bridge section counting down to opening night. Our opening night is tomorrow. Our first successful attempt to get through the whole show from beginning to end without stopping was yesterday. Whee.)

ddb @ #385: Has anybody found a good way to follow the comments to a post at tor.com? Keeping the tab open and refreshing periodically is the best I've found so far (and that's highly dangerous; it can become a tight loop), and it works less well when I move between computers than I would like.

The way I do it is to bookmark the most recently read comment in each thread (using the permalink attached to the post date). That at least allows me to close the tab and re-open it another day, but it still has the moving-between-computers problem unless you have a portable bookmark set-up of some kind.

Xopher @ #326:

It is certainly the case that in like circumstances I find myself thinking in the style of whatever I have been reading, but for the most part it colours my writing but little, and my speech not at all. (The latter would, I think, require the flow of my thoughts into speech to be much freer and more fluid than in general it is.)

Lila @350
These might be the wrong tone but if it's just a case of space references then David Bowie's Space Oddity and Chris De Burgh's A Spaceman Came Travelling would be obvious matches.
Also: Space Truckin' by Deep Purple and Space Pirates by Alice Cooper and Rocket by Smashing Pumpkins. I'd be tempted to include the Star Trek theme tune, too. ;)

Paul @449,

On occasion, when presenting my thoughts, my turn of phrase will astonish me, and pass unnoticed amongst my audience. One of the pleasant features of this venue is that there are, amongst those present, those who will notice, and express their appreciation. Yet it is also apparent how inadequate some of my formal schooling was. I do not see the need, but I faintly regret that I was not taught to diagram a sentence.

In re getting the sentiment, "YAY! I want to be a SCIENTIST and go to SPACE!", the best song I know that celebrates it is Cat Faber's Outward Bound. It has the advantage of being to a bouncy traditional American gospel hymn tune, so in a filkcircle half those present probably already have a harmony. :->

A recording was on Echo's Children's 'Under the Gripping Beast,' which is now out of print, but widely owned by filkers.

A relevant sample, for those who don't know the song:

I've bought a tube of vacuum-seal; I figure it can't hurt.
I'm counting every calorie and weighing every shirt.
But I'm going to be a spacer lass, no more to walk the dirt.
And it won't be much longer now.

I've visited the doctor to be sure I wasn't ill I've visited the dentist till she sent me home to chill And just in case things don't work out, I've written out my will-- And it won't be much longer now.

We mean to see a corner of this universe of ours, To watch the shifting heavens and write home about the stars In letters postmarked "Outward Bound" and counter-cancelled "Mars" And it won't be much longer now.

Just posting that I'm tearing up. I hope to God my daughter gets to dream dreams like that; it's too late for me. :-/

eric @ 411: Any way to rig up somewhere to put the kitten food with a small hole so the kittens can get through to it and the old cat cannot? Maybe a room with the door jammed (using wedges etc.) so it's narrower than adult cat head width?

Mary Aileen @ 421: Nah - your comment reminded me to be careful about the use of "all" or "every". Although I'll nitpic right back by noting that "plain cheese" is a variety of "vegetarian." *grin*

Xopher @ 416: I agree.

ddb @ 384: where expectations play a part in in what one sees My mother-in-law, years ago, looked at the foods on offer in her hospital canteen and beckoned one of the staff over. "Help! I'm Jewish*," she said, "what do I eat?" Every dish was pork or ham. "Oh," said the canteen worker, looking afresh at the dishes, "we hadn't thought of that." She says that after that, they did make sure there was a non-pig dish on the menu each day.**

Xopher @ 429: Agree again. And they dig into the veggie food with utensils dripping in meat and don't understand why the vegetarians are not happy. (Note to canteen workers: using the spoon from the dish of pork chops to serve the vegetarian lasagna to a Jewish vegetarian renders the food instantly inedible).

* She isn't, but was aware that several members of staff were.

** This was long before anyone thought about providing vegetarian meals.

Wow, more great songs. And these are jostling my memory: I'd forgotten all about Klaatu, another rich seam of space-themed songs.

Elliot Mason @440: Have the rules on the verb gustar changed? Because gustar and faltar did not take direct objects at last report. (Mrs. Bell spent a week trying to cram that into our heads and then we got workarounds. Mrs. Bell, I think, taught us more Yiddish than Spanish.)

D Potter @ 455... I have a photo of you from when we met on July 16. Do you mind if I add it to the "Making Light and Faces" gallery?

Lila@350: (this seems to be where the "space" songs thread started) I can't find mention of a few favorites. On Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery, the "third impression" in Karn Evil 9 is SF themed with suggestions of space travel. Yes has a song commonly known as "Starship Trooper". And let us not forget the one-shot album Intergalactic Touring Band.

From the filk world, for what you're looking for, you absolutely must have Leslie Fish's "Hope Eyrie".

Here's what I told my teacher after her critique of my first draft:

I changed to "ficción especulativa" as a literal translation of "speculative fiction". I've got a query out to fellow readers of such to find if that is the term in use in Spanish. It's a broader term than "science fiction", as it includes fantasy, alternate history, and the more literary works which fall into its purview. I could say "ciencia ficción" but I don't think it's accurate. Here, I think I should explain or drop the term. True?

#458 John A Arkansawyer

"la narrativa especulativa" is more up-to-date.

Here's a web citation to support the assertion.

Love, C.

Elliot Mason #426, Lila #427:

Or you're like me, been around even a little bit longer, and the random association test for "anonymous" always pops out "guest".

Lila @350:

Ah, that brings back fond memories of Clouds Across the Moon

"Good evening. This is the intergalactic operator. Can I help you?"
"Yes. I'm trying to reach flight commander P.R. Johnson, on Mars, flight 2-4-7"

Jacque #411: And Jalapeños Are Not Food. Just sayin' (Nope, no food prejudices here!)

There are five food groups, and the name of the fifth is ... Hot.

D. Potter @445 said in reply to my Spanish homework @440: Have the rules on the verb gustar changed? Because gustar and faltar did not take direct objects at last report. (Mrs. Bell spent a week trying to cram that into our heads and then we got workarounds. Mrs. Bell, I think, taught us more Yiddish than Spanish.)

I was trying (rustily, after a gap of a month since taking 101) to use the 'me gusto' reflexive construction. I was using it ritualistically instead of realizing DUH IT IS A VERB YOU CONJUGATE, and I needed to put it into third person and use the right pronoun to indicate that HE is the one that likes it, not me. The 'form-of-gustar +infinitive' construction I used to talk about his favorite food is definitely something we did in exercises last semester, so that's fair, but I'm not sure about the other use.

Oh well. I'm still more comfortable than most of my classmates in trying to fling myself off the cliff and communicate in Spanish with the teacher, so that'll count for something until I get my grammatical ducks back in neat tidy rows. :->

In re teachers and their personalities (and trying to keep this of general interest to Fluorospherians), my Spanish 101 teacher is American of Mexican descent, bilingual and bicultural. She told us that she never uses the second-person-informal stuff (vosotros forms, for those who know what I'm talking about), but that it's in the textbook, and if any of us intended to travel to Spain (the only people that use it), we'd need to know it or people would look at them funny.

This semester, my teacher is from Spain. In the initial 'do I belong in this class' review session, she gridded out the six verb persons, and when she got to vosotros, pointed at it and said, "Nobody uses this. *I* use this, when I am home [in Spain on vacation] with my family, but I get off the plane here and poof, it goes out of my head. Only about forty million people out of everyone who speaks Spanish ever use this. It is in the textbook, but I will not teach it."

I was amazed both that she was willing to cut out something that's in her native dialect, and that she thought forty million people was a SMALL number. I mean, it is, compared to all people who speak Spanish worldwide, but still. :-> My 101 teacher was careful to mark for us things that are dialectical variants she grew up with that are perhaps nonstandard (both so we can use them and blend in, and so we can NOT use them in more formal contexts). I hope this one will too; I find the regionalisms as fascinating in Spanish as I do in English.

Elliott @463 "...if any of us intended to travel to Spain (the only people that use it), we'd need to know it or people would look at them funny."

This is very true - none of my high-school Spanish teachers bothered to teach us vosotros forms, and then I spent six weeks in Spain during college - I got a crash course in it, particularly since it's the form most teachers use when talking to a group of students (I like to think of it as "y'all" for Spaniards). My main issue was actually the drilled verb tenses where you go through the conjugation very fast and almost automatically (soy/eres/es/somos/son) and having to add it back in (soy/eres/es/somos/sois/son). So don't ignore it entirely if you're going to Spain someday - it is very useful there.

Anne Sarkovoy, "Harbors".

dcb (453): You're right, of course, about the plain cheese; I was parsing "vegetarian" as "vegetables". So we were both a bit imprecise. :)

I had been focused on the linguistic point ("all"). Then when I saw Xopher's #416, I was suddenly afraid I'd put my foot in it; I couldn't tell if he was upset with me or just providing another data point. I'm very glad to hear that it was the latter.

Dave Luckett @ 465 -- "Harbors" is by Anne Passovoy.

Since there are some particular rules about what makes something meat/dairy/tref, the Jews I know who keep kosher tend to eat vegetarian; and often uncooked, vegetarian, in places which serve meat.

joann: I like "hot", but I'm with Jacque. The taste of jalpeños is what I don't like. As a note in "nacho" cheese, it's ok, but as a general rule, unpleasant.

And reaching WAY back for space themed songs, I submit:

"Calling Occupants of Interplanatary Craft" performed by the Carpenters

I know plenty of Jews who eat pork. I know a few Jews who keep kosher. I believe it's fairly common for Jews who do not keep kosher to still avoid eating pork, though I don't remember any in my acquaintance.

I know one Jew who does not eat pork, except for things he was used to eating before he discovered they were pork (such as pepperoni). (He makes no religious claims about his behavior in this regard.)

I wonder if Sarah Brightman's "Starship Trooper" is still on YouTube. Not for the faint of heart.

Holy Modal Rounders: Hey Mr. Spaceman (not the same song the Byrds do)
Van der Graaf Generator: The Pioneers Over C

Franklin Bruno: The Death Of Vaudeville

I provide, for amusement (and envy) Buddha's (no longer just) Veggie Restaurant conveniently located to the me. Chinese, family style, and the meat-eaters probably won't realize until the vegetarian starts eating *their* food.

Yes, in general, "order enough for the vegetarians and then eat it yourself" is a good way to make enemies (and I would guess it tends to lead to pieces of Carnivore's Delight going "missing" and reappearing, upside-down, on said cow-orkers' chairs a day or two later). Never mind the great variety of vegetarian pizza on offer...

I've never understood the "get one vegetarian dish because there's one vegetarian". I can see half, but I would have thought (from the omni's perspective) of minimum 4/10, going up in percentage as the table gets smaller, no less than 2 ("the great variety..." again). But then again, I think that's a reasonable mix anyway. If it's the kind of place where there aren't multiple vegetarian dishes worth eating even if you're not vegetarian, maybe you should have picked a different place to take the vegetarian to?

I've never tried sauerkraut and pineapple. It would either be incredible or horrible.

It's odd, now that I think about it, that I like "Hawaiian" pizza. I am very strongly of the opinion that ham (or any cured meat) should be *salty*, not sweet, and all the sauces people put on roast ham I have to scrape off and hope not too much gets into the meat. I think that the difference with that pizza is that the amount of pineapple is so small that it doesn't affect the "ham" taste - it's distinct, not combined, if that makes any sense.

Ginger: I don't normally go in with the "good luck"s or "sorry"s or such that come through, because although I do feel that way, I tend to get annoyed by generic repeated stuff from people I hardly know when it comes to me. But what you're going through speaks to me, and I do wish you the best of luck with it. In my case it was "fatal 'forms of communication' mismatch", not *exactly* lying, but that doesn't change the "if I can't trust what you were saying about *this*, what can I trust of what you were saying?" In this time of trial, you have my best wishes and what support (random, straight, male, non-U.S-resident) I can give you.

dcb@453: I find myself a little dubious. On the one side we put the people who don't keep kosher strictly enough to be worried whether the ladle which is giving them lasagna just touched a pork chop; on the other side we put the people who dismiss the entire cafeteria as tref and bring their own food. You're worried about the people who fall in between, and I can't help thinking that's a pretty narrow target.

Mycroft W @ 473 -- If it's the kind of place where there aren't multiple vegetarian dishes worth eating even if you're not vegetarian, maybe you should have picked a different place to take the vegetarian to?

Sometimes there are other priorities -- the mediocre restaurant is handicapped-accessible while the good restaurant isn't, for example. But since the group always ends up going to that mediocre restaurant for that reason, this vegetarian hasn't gone to dinner with the rest of the group for several years. (There are other factors that have also deterred me lately, but the unappetizing food options were the first and biggest.)

#350 Lila
Fire in the Sky by Jordin Kare
Planet-Bound Lovers
Much stuff by the late Cynthia McQuillen
Then there's always Banned from Argo for the irreverent. It got to the level corresponding to House of the Rising for overexposure years ago, which meant it went out o the repetory for years....
Harbors by Anne Passavoy
..
There's the Pegasus Awards website, which might be off http:www.ovff.org

Great-walling (family-style) is certainly more complex when there are a small number of people with restrictive food rules (religious, medical, preference) in the group.

We frequently get fewer total dishes than people in the group; I have the sense that some of the discussion is based on what we'd call "n dishes" (one per person; as opposed to n-1 or n-2 or whatever). If it were me in that situation I'd certainly just go solo. If carnivores or whatever were interested in more dishes edible by the special case, then there might be a worthwhile swap possible.

If there's only one thing the person can eat in the set, they're not getting any benefit from being in the "great wall" group at all, it seems like. (And may lose enough of their dish to others to matter.)

Terry Karney @ 468: Yes, that's a useful work-around, and can be easier to explain (there was the time, back when I was a child and still ate meat, that we were offered rabbit, "since we know you can't eat pork.")

I find the Kosher "Parve" mark really useful to confirm something is vegetarian, when the ingredients list isn't quite clear (okay, I have to check it doesn't contain fish).

ddb: Yes, many Jews continue with a deep-seated aversion to pork even if not otherwise keeping kosher. And many Jews who wouldn't dream of touching pork or bacon will nevertheless eat shellfish.

Mycroft W @ 473: If it's the kind of place where there aren't multiple vegetarian dishes worth eating even if you're not vegetarian, maybe you should have picked a different place to take the vegetarian to? Can I hug you? So many meat eaters I know think I should consider myself lucky that the restaurant offers a single vegetarian dish - even when it's based on spinach, which I loath, or manages to be deficient in both protein and vegetables (which a surprisingly large number of chefs manage).

Are there any varieties of cuisine which are normally better places to take vegetarians? I know that Indian is generally fairly good, and I would think (based on my experiences here) that Middle Eastern buffets would pass muster, but I'm not sure about other styles.

Xopher @326, I do that with E.R. Eddison. It can be disconcerting when I go all Goldry Bluzco on someone.

Ginger @311, if you do make that cross-country trip, think about a stop-over in Oklahoma City, and we can commiserate and tell each other stories.

In hyper-local news, Woman Finds Percoset Very Nice for Dental Pain, but Can Only Take Two Doses in a Row Unless Desiring Major Wooziness. Also, Waiting Impatiently for Pain of Having Jaw Jerked Around to Subside. In Culinary News, High Probability of Soup for Dinner.

I find I have a somewhat idiosyncratic reaction to painkillers. Perhaps TMI, but during my period they just don't do much good. It takes about a triple dose of Novocaine to have any effect. I also had a slightly sadistic orthodontist growing up, and a rather rough-handed dentist. But -- I firmly believe that the twice-annual dental cleaning and check-up is the best thing you can do for your general health, not just your dental health, and I keep that up even if I skip the GP or the optometrist.

Also, depending on contexts it seems these usages are literately acceptable: literatura especulativa, narrativa conjetural, literatura fantástica.

I do not know if various Spanish speaking regions favor, 'privilege'? one term over another though.

It isn't a subject that comes up in conversations about music, history, politics, romance, love and sex, food, etc. which, by me, are conducted mostly with Cubans, Puerto Ricans and people from the Dominican Republic. Not so much with people who are from Spain.

Love, C.

Seethe not the kid in its mother's milk.

Oh...OK, so we're not supposed to eat goat and milk together.

No, Moses. Listen. Seethe not the kid in its mother's milk.

So no meat of any kind with any milk product. Righto.

That's not what I said, Moses. Seethe not the kid in its mother's milk.

Ohhhh, I get it, so the meat and the milk shouldn't touch the same plates and utensils. Probably shouldn't have them less than a few hours apart either, huh? I'm gonna need more plates....

Fine, Moses, fine. You do what you want.

Lee @#479: If the vegetarians in question eat dairy, Italian food generally offers a lot of meat-free options. (There are one or two meat-and-cheese-free options in most Italian places, but not more than one or two, in my experience).

re 374: It is not uncommon for travelling Orthodox Jews to compromise on utensils but not ingredients, which led to the following incident:

Back in 1997 I was travelling regularly to Lincoln, NE, where one of the places we would eat was the Green Gateau (it's still there and still good). In this case I was with my Italian Catholic boss and an Orthodox co-worker, whose rule when travelling was that she would eat fish and vegetables but no meats. The GG is sort of place that types up a menu every day, and here we are, and the fish dish features "walleye", which some will recognize as a kind of pike. Well. Not all sorts of fishes are kosher, so we discuss this, and I assure her that walleye is OK, but just to check, she speaks to the waitress (probably a Cornhusker coed) and says, "I want to ask a question about the walleye", and before she can get another word out, my boss says, "she wants to know if it has fins and scales." And with an expression halfway between "eeww" and embarassment, she says, "I don't think so...." Whereupon we reassured her that it didn't have to have them on now. The next night we ate at the hotel second-string restaurant, where the fish was wahoo. At that point my co-worker gave up and had a salad.

Mary Aileen 466: Actually I hadn't even noticed your comment when I corroborated dcb's. I was purely providing another data point. And as far as I can recall, I've never been upset with you on any topic.

Lori 469: "Calling Occupants of Interplanatary Craft" performed by the Carpenters

I much prefer the original Klaatu version, personally, though Karen C. did have a nice voice.

David Goldfarb: Well, I'm in what you consider that "pretty narrow target" set, so maybe (as indicated by ddb @ 384 we're back to "where expectations play a part in what one sees"). I'm not happy to eat my vegetarian food if it's been served with meat-contaminated utensils, and I was brought up keeping Kosher, so it remains, for me, a double-whammy if the meat in question is pork. On a flight I was offered French toast with sausage on it; when I said I was vegetarian I was told "well, just take the sausage off". Nope, doesn't work like that.

In my experience there are a lot of Jews - most of the (UK) Reform Jews I know and whose eating habits I am aware of - who do not eat pork etc., but don't worry about whether the beef or lamb is Kosher in terms of having been stamped by the Beth Din. Maybe the percentage in that group is smaller where you are?

Lee @ 479: Yes, Indian is usually pretty good (I like the places which offer a vegetarian Thali, so I can have a variety of dishes easily, if ordering on a one-by-one basis. Italian generally offers several vegetarian sauce/pasta combinations as well as pizzas. Asian noodle bars and similar are variable, but often include several vegetaran options (or, more practically, one or two vegetarian options, to be served with plain rice, fried rice, fried noodles, thin noodles or broad ribbon noodles).

Mycroft @ 473: It helps knowing that I'm not the only one who's ever been deceived or misled, or found themselves in this kind of situation. And some of my best friends have been straight male non-USian.

Lee @ 479: Italians tend to have nice vegetable dishes, such as pasta primavera. Some of the Argentinian churrascarias also have extensive salad buffets, but they're not really good places for vegetarians unless this is a department function. Japanese restaurants, particularly the ones where sushi is made on premises usually have a lot of vegetarian items along with the sushi.

I'm getting hungry.

Janet Brennan Croft @ 480: I spent a semester at Oklahoma State U, and used to drive over to OK City for the bookstores. Tulsa had better stuff, but I remember the drive. I'll make a note to include you in my cross country trip, and hope I can do this soon!

In Minneapolis we have good luck with some but not all Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants for vegetarians and vegans. Several of them have several "mock duck" dishes in addition to other options. Plus fish and seafood (which are useful options for some people with dietary restrictions).

And then there's Evergreen Chinese, on Nicollet Ave. just a bit south of 26th St., which has full meat plus about everything on the menu made with mock duck, mock pork, mock beef, and so forth, all really good.

Nicole way back@183 re: cats and mice . . . My adult adoption cat (from a shelter that was not no-kill, which is why I went there looking for a grown-up kitty) began killing mice about a year after coming to live with us. I don't know whether he had done so before but his early technique was a little ragged. In the last couple of years he has become very, very good at it--silent, fast, no-muss-no-fuss. He left the corpses--intact and stiff--for me to clean up (good kitty).

Last night I discovered that he's fully capable of eating what he kills. He left only the tail.

I'm a little squicked out.

Part of me is proud that he's fulfilling his feline obligations (he still gets plenty of food, of course, as mice do not make daily appearances in my apartment; they turn up every few months). Part of me is worried that we'll start finding _parts_ (which will terrify/freak out my teenage daughter). And part of me just doesn't ever want to hear the bones crunching ever ever again. So maybe what it is is that I'm having trouble with the idea of him really being a predator instead of just a killer?

He's such a good boy, though, and it's kind of amazing to see his instincts coming to the fore. He's really proud of himself when he gets a mouse--if someone's home, once it's dead, he comes right over to be petted and praised. (He's become much more social since he started hunting.)

Paula@243 and others: I had my first two root canals when I was 16 (fell down, hit face on floor). . . and, in the last few years, having at least one and as many as three in a year (bad genes and bad childhood dentistry). I am lucky to have use a dental practice where, when you say, "I need at least twice as much pain relief as you would ordinarily give" they take you seriously. For one procedure, last year, the dentist had to drill a hole in my jaw in order to properly numb a nerve that would not go to sleep.

Previously I went to a dentist who didn't quite believe me about pain meds . . . he thought I was completely numb (and I was, admittedly, pretty numb) until the drill went into an area that was live and I grabbed his wrist and forcibly removed his hand from my mouth. I'm not sure which of us was more startled by the speed of my reaction, but at the time, I had been fencing for several years and my reflexes were pretty sharp.

My dentist often asks if I get toothaches. I don't. I might feel a twinge or two, and then days/weeks/months later, a tooth will shatter in my mouth. I broke one on egg salad this spring. So I'm sensitive to dental pain but otherwise I don't have pain even when my teeth are dying.

After a root canal I always have a headache but I rarely have pain. The dentist gives me generic vicodin and I might take one the first day. Otherwise, Tylenol is just fine.

Elliott@364: I am, alas, all too familiar with Pepper Surprise. Since bell peppers and chilis seem to have a mildly neurotoxic effect on me (tingling in fingers, toes, and tongue), I try very very hard to avoid them. And they're in a lot more stuff now than they were 10-15 years ago. Drat it.

This also causes no end of trouble when there's pizza around at work, as if I'm not in the mood for pepperoni or sausage, I pretty much have to have plain, because the only veggie type ordered always has peppers on it.

And my favorite pizza place near home--the one that did a spinach and broccoli pie that was YUM--has gone under.

Dave Bell @451:
Yet it is also apparent how inadequate some of my formal schooling was.

Please remember that one of the people whose name is on the URL never finished high school. And then quit worrying about formal schooling. You write good stuff.

joann @460:
Or you're like me, been around even a little bit longer, and the random association test for "anonymous" always pops out "guest".

We run in different circles; I get "coward".

Mark @482:
I rarely find it congenial to poke at people's dietary or religious choices. You've managed to do both at once, in a conversation where it is particularly disruptive and rude.

abi, perhaps rather than assuming, you might ask those among us who were raised in the orthodox Jewish faith whether they were offended. Such as...myself.