154 is also a fine album by Wire.

The southern aspect of a season's tale
when clouds have parted and the days advance
with kinder sunlight into springs expanse
just at the point where hearts might seek to fail
is our new vantage. Right here we inhale
both air and sound, the enemies of chance
encourage hearts to feel the hope of dance
and with a new enlightenment to sail.
Good airs inspire the lungs and cause the feet
to find their rhythm with the season's change
in a new blend that came from over sea,
a deeper, wiser, measure of the street
bringing homeward what was once so strange
to make us in the end a bit more free.

Rather than sit at the window and watch the windstorm whip the treetops around (I hate enforced weight restrictions after surgery since there's so little you can do) I've been trying to find somewhere to get advice about cleaning some beeswax I have. I know it's not really a ML sort of thing, but I'm hoping that someone here might be able to suggest where I could go for some advice on this. Suggestions, please?

As far as online news goes, is there any sort of "Candygram" like service which involves sending Wil Wheaton out to sing a song featuring "Don't be a dick" in the chorus? Because, if there is, I think we need to take up a collection so "RadioFan" gets a visit.

If you're looking to get out solid matter, the easiest way is to put the beeswax in a pan of water and melt it: the wax will melt and float, but the impurities, which are generally either heavier than water, will not.

I have a hard enough time minding my own beeswax.

This is ten pounds of beeswax I got for $1.00 a pound because it had been stored outside and had gotten a black layer of crud in it: it's not really solid matter as such. (It doesn't smell like mold...pollen maybe?) I found an account online that said sending it through the filter stuff that's used for maple syrup would take care of it, but whatever they use for that in Maine sure isn't known here in Seattle.

Bruce #6: Oh, at first I'd thought your clauses in #3 were connected! Anyway, about that wax, I'd guess you've already tried melting it and skimming or pouring off?

One hit on "filtering beeswax" suggested the "maple syrup filter" is a device holding filters, rather than just filter -stuff itself. Another mentioned paper filters used by restaurants for cooking oil. Diatomaceous earth was also mentioned as an option.

Observation:

Dogs don't like it when their bosses spend all afternoon entering tax return information any more than when their bosses spend all afternoon playing Galactic Civilization II.

And here I thought it was a case of "Hey, you're having fun, and I'm here and not outside getting walked. Fix this!"

At least Kira doesn't jump up on the keyboard to get my attention.

Cleaning wax comes with keeping bees (my father had a hobby: five or six hives, for a while). It melts at a fairly low temperature, and you can cut it in chunks with a hot knife to do part of it at a time.

I suspect what you've got is just simply dirty wax, but there might be other stuff.

probably more information than you want:
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/waxmelting.html

So which one is the least of them? I haven't read all 154. I should probably rectify that, maybe do one a day for five months.

Bruce E. Durocher II @ 3 ...
've been trying to find somewhere to get advice about cleaning some beeswax I have. I know it's not really a ML sort of thing, but I'm hoping that someone here might be able to suggest where I could go for some advice on this. Suggestions, please?

My understanding is that you can do quite well by melting and then filtering the wax, plausibly using some combination of cheesecloth, or jam-filtering or coffee filters.

The wax is _quite_ flamable, so this is something that you really want to do outside (or somewhere that's exceedingly easy to control failures) -- and I'm told that it can also smell quite dire, depending on what's been mixed into the wax...

... and speaking of the IT thread again... Gmail accidentally resetting accounts, years of correspondence vanish into the cloud?.

David Harmon: Cooking oil filters--hmmm. There's a couple of restaurant supply stores downtown on 1st: I'll have to go into one when I can drive comfortably again. Thanks for the idea!

P J Evans: I suspect you're right. Thanks for the link: I'd never have thought of putting a block of the stuff into a burlap sack and boiling it, or the suggestion of panty hose stuff. I'll look into those as well. Thank you!

xeger, #12: I checked with my partner, who uses his Gmail account far more often than I do mine. His backup method is simple -- he downloads his mail frequently to an e-mail client on his home system, which in turn gets backed up regularly. This is probably the easiest method for many people, although if you haven't been doing it to date, that first download is going to take a LONG time.

My favorite chemist's blog has a new blog entry in the category Things I Won't Work With -- specifically, chlorine azide.

Aside from the piece's delightfully amusing writing, I thought it was particularly Fluorospherian because it only took four comments to turn to poetry -- and comedic Carroll pastiche, at that! Well worth it, and not even very long.

xeger: Thanks for stressing the safety concerns. I'd planned to melt the wax (assuming I don't use the bag it in burlap and put it into a big pot of water method and let it filter out) outside in a crock pot, with a fire extinguisher at hand. I'll be looking into alternate filters now, thanks to David Harmon and P J Evans.

Platypus, murnival, serpentine, vortex - hey presto!

Crane photos from the Boulder contingent.

Sorry to take all weekend about getting these up.

Jacque, if you'd like a copy of the originals, stop by sometime with laptop or flash drive and I'll fork 'em over.

OP: Indeed, many waters cannot quench Love, neither can floods drown it, for Love is strong as Death.

Xopher, that's one of my absolute favorites. My high school chorus sang an arrangement of that psalm that has earwormed me for life, and I don't mind, because it's that lovely.

On another site, someone posted that his girlfriend was mad at him for not getting her a Valentine's Day gift, even though she'd explicitly told him not to. He implied that in a previous year she'd also told him not to and gotten mad when he DID, because he hadn't respected her wishes.

The general consensus was "dump her and get a sane girlfriend." But some asshole piped up with "do they make non-crazy women?"

Well.

My response was "Yeah, there are plenty of non-crazy women. They avoid sexist, belittling men, though, so it’s not surprising that YOU’VE never met one!"

Xopher, were there not various very practical obstacles in the way to such a thing, I would propose marriage on the spot for your response.

The crockpot is probably safe enough.
My father had a solar wax melter for the first stage. It's basically a box painted black, with a transparent lid (and ventilation), with a large pan inside for holding the wax, that drained into a loaf pan where it cooled. (It's easier to store a brick than a bag of lumps. In fact, I have one of his bricks in my cupboard. It's about a pound of wax or a little more: maybe half an inch thick, and otherwise the size of a large loaf pan.)

When I heard my former ISP was going to be moving all mailboxes to GMail, I transferred about 18 years of email correspondence¹ ² off their mail server to my home server and deleted it off their systems. (If there's nothing in the mailbox, there's nothing for Google to lose, right? Also nothing for Google to index and/or expose.)

I realize that's not an option for everyone, any more than rebuilding their engine is a good recommendation for most people's car troubles. All the same, it is not a given that the company handling your mail will care about it as much as you do.

¹ I'm a packrat, OK? And probably even more so when it comes to digital data.
² Being the one who set up the mailserver hath its privileges.

Nicole: right there with you. I've sung at least three different settings of that Song of Solomon text in church choir.

Fade: That's sweet, thanks! Yeah, I was pretty proud of that comeback. Hence coming here to brag of it...though also I think it may be useful in other contexts, so I also came to share it.

Melted beeswax is what one uses to coat the areas to be protected in each dye dip when making pysanky. I still have a little box of tools from the days when I did this. My kistka didn't look like the ones in those illustrations; they were more like a fountain-pen nib fastened to a small dowel, and you heated the nib in a candle flame and then pushed it into the solid beeswax to draw liquefied wax into the nib.

Oh my . . . Anonymous declares war on the Koch Brothers.

http://www.anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=585

Crane-folding subthread: Clearly influenced by my long-standing tendency to take fairly simple things and complexificate them beyond all recognition (though, at least in this case, not beyond sanity -- for which much thanks!★), my cranes are being folded not only from pieces of paper I find useful for well-wishing will-work✓, but I am, in quilting terminology, fussy-cutting them.

If anyone's curious, I know how to make sure certain parts of your paper end up out on the flat part of the wings where they're visible. Oh, and my count stands at 23, despite my toddler daughter's repeated efforts at helping ...

---
★ Why, yes, I really am that parenthetical in real life (especially when I've been reading a lot of Conan Doyle, Gail Carriger, or the like). Sometimes, even in spoken English, which awes some people.
✓ A reproduced woodcut out of Scientific American to wish him useful technological advances; pages from a Penzey's Spices catalog's recipe section to wish him copious, tasty, and nutritious food, etc.

Elliott Mason, you cannot give me just that bit of origami knowledge and not follow through! I like having those bits of nifty in my brain.

#22
I strain hot beeswax through cheesecloth, then pour it into cocktail-ice cube trays.

#24
I used to do pysanky, which I learned from a Ukrainian woman. It was fun, but after 13 dozen eggs, enough. I still have my tools and dyes.

Oops. #25, not #24.

Diatryma @28: Well, as long as it's of general interest. :->

There's two ways to go about it. The first expects you to know exactly the size of square you want to do your fold with, and the second expects that you have a desired motif/picture on the paper, and you want to make sure you get as much of it as you can right where you want it to go, with a maximally-sized crane.

Both can be done by eyeball when you've got experience with the method, but there are proportions you can go by until you get 'the feel'. I suggest starting with #1 for practice before moving on to #2.

► Marked Template: Using a translucent substance (plastic sheeting, tracing paper, etc), cut out a perfect square the right size. The length of the side is hereby declared 'x'. Using a ruler or dividers, find its center, and then mark a square box around the central .25x of the template. Draw a border around the outside of the square about .625x (1/16th) in from each edge.

Lay your template over your paper and rotate and play with it until you get your motif near one corner, and with no part of it inside either the central penalty box, or the border. For extra credit and coolness points, line up the square so another motif or neat thing is in a similar placement on the OTHER corner.

► Flexible Size: Find the motif/pic you want to use on the page. Decide which end should point out towards the tip of the wing. Crease a right angle around that end, leaving a bit of a border between what will be the cut edge and the picture. Now crease it again, straight up the middle, bisecting your motif (and the right angle). Cut along the previously-creased line, leaving (on a folded piece) one 45-degree cut edge and a lot of extra on the other end, 'inside' the creased corner.

Fold it at right angles to the current fold-line, with the new crease pointing at wherever you have the least paper -- there should be NO missing paper (from a ripped edge or the end of the sheet) inside the little 45-45-90 triangle you just made, which has one cut edge and two folds that meet at the right angle. Now cut again along the first cut line, removing excess paper; when you open it, it'll be a square with two crossing corner-to-corner folds.

► Common to both: Folding Method: I'm going to skip steps and assume you already know how to fold cranes in general; there are tutorials out there. Make sure the side of the paper you want out is 'valley-folded' from corner to corner -- the fold-in-quarters-square folds should be 'mountain' on the good side. Once you have your little foldy square with the corners tucked in, look at all available 'square' sides. Before you do your make-a-kite folds on the open edges, make certain one of the motifs you want on a wing is FACING YOU. You will fold to the centerline OVER the motif, so that when you open up your kite into a canoe, it's facing away from you, not folded up tight at the bottom end.

Error-correcting my own @31 -- I do actually know that 1/16 is .0625, not .625! I also swear I did read my preview, I just didn't spot the howler until after I'd pressed 'post'. Oh, well.

Frank Buckles, the last US veteran of World War 1 died today. He was 110, as of the first of the month.

There are only two left, in all the world, out of how many millions?

Terry @ 33

... Two living non-US WWI veterans?

Because otherwise I am really confused by your second sentence.

KayTei: I think they're both British.

re beeswax: It's not massively flammable (parrafin is has petroleum distillates in it). Beeswax is just fine as a molten object.

Back in the day, when pasting up the newspaper meant taking columns, or pictures, and gluing them to the page, the standard machine for applying the "glue" was in fact a device to melt beeswax and then apply it to the paper. It made it easy to move things around.

So when we got in in the morning, we turned on the waxer, and turned it off, eight to ten hours later, when we were done for the day.

B. Durbin @ 35

Good to know. Thanks.

Elliot Mason: Russian has a word for beginning a parenthetical statement. It gets used in speech. to go back to your question about my, apparently, idiosynchratic usage of the semi-colon; I am also quite parenthetical, and the study of Russian has not helped. I may be trying to have the same sense of verbal aside, through punctuation.

Elliot Mason: Russian has a word for beginning a parenthetical statement. It gets used in speech. to go back to your question about my, apparently, idiosynchratic usage of the semi-colon; I am also quite parenthetical, and the study of Russian has not helped. I may be trying to have the same sense of verbal aside, through punctuation.

@18, 19, 24: Does anyone have links to those pieces? I'd love to hear them. (It's my favorite verse; we read it at my wedding.)

Lylassandra, 40: The one I've sung is by John Ireland, and is called either "Many Waters Cannot Quench Love" or "Greater Love Hath No Man." This seems to be a decent rendition.

Stefan Jones #26:

Looks like it's "on"... I guess. A boycott? Haven't seen one of those in a while.

From WFMU: Because Physical Wounds Heal. We're behind the looking glass down the rabbit hole now, folks!

Could someone with the websearch-fu that I lack give me a hand?

I'm trying to complete an embroidery project that a friend of mine picked up at a garage sale. Of course there's none of the original floss, and the results of my burn test were highly inconclusive. It's way too shiny to be wool, didn't smell like silk, and left the wrong kind of ash for rayon, but it's clearly not a petroleum derivative since it burned rather than melting.

The piece is printed "Grayona Needlecraft Corp No. 8186/11 Size 36"".

If all else fails I can match looks rather than fiber content (in theory; one of the colors is very weird), but I'd like to try and get on the right track.

Carrie S. @44: Could it be mohair?

Kate Shaw: Not a chance, way too shiny. I only did the burn test to distinguish between rayon and silk, really, but then my results were inconclusive. :)

Xopher@20: Nice! Well, elegant, anyway. Definitely worth bragging about. ("Nice is overrated" :-) )

Now, I'm not totally sold on the concept of "sane human", other than perhaps as a goal to aspire to (too bad there's little concept of what one would look like). And I suspect that societal imbalances will cause statistical differences in the flavors of insanity of men vs. women.

But yeah, choosing by bubble reasonably wisely has in my experience exposed me to a lot less insanity, and a lot less stereotypical insanity, than some people seem to think is normal. I suspect it would confuse the person you were responding to, since my bubble contains a lot of people with avowed psych diagnoses; they just don't spend much time at all being "fucking insane" in the social sense.

There's a new Simon's Cat.

Bruce E. Durocher II @3: advice about cleaning some beeswax I have. I know it's not really a ML sort of thing

*giggle* ::SNARK:: Sorry. Hee hee.

Carrie @44 -- Have you tried a differential test for cotton? Back in the day, a fairly high percentage of commercial embroidery kits used cotton thread of some type.

Terry @36 -- I will always cherish -- in a future-shocky sort of way -- the fact that my relatively brief time on the staff of MZBFM spanned the transition from waxed layout boards (along with sending out the artwork for half-tones or 4-colors as applicable) to entirely electronic layout (complete with requiring artwork to come in digital format).

HRJ: Have you tried a differential test for cotton? Back in the day, a fairly high percentage of commercial embroidery kits used cotton thread of some type.

It looks too shiny to be mercerized cotton, but I could be wrong; would that just be another burn test, with some cotton for comparison?

water, love and death always makes me think of Yeats,

Behold the flashing waters
A cloven dancing jet,
That from the milk-white marble
For ever foam and fret;
Far off in drowsy valleys
Where the meadow saffrons blow,
The feet of summer dabble
In their coiling calm and slow.
The banks are worn forever
By a people sadly gay:
A Titan with loud laughter,
Made them of fire clay.
Go ask the springing flowers,
And the flowing air above,
What are the twin-born waters,
And they'll answer Death and Love.

With wreaths of withered flowers
Two lonely spirits wait
With wreaths of withered flowers
'Fore paradise's gate.
They may not pass the portal
Poor earth-enkindled pair,
Though sad is many a spirit
To pass and leave them there
Still staring at their flowers,
That dull and faded are.
If one should rise beside thee,
The other is not far.
Go ask the youngest angel,
She will say with bated breath,
By the door of Mary's garden
Are the spirits Love and Death.

bathetically:
For Gmail, I just use the offline setting so that every time I log on, it copies everything to my hard drive, from whence backups. In detail here.

Steve, #48: Hee! That's the principle behind our use of "cat training tapes" on areas we don't want the cats exploring, such as the dining-room table. Take strips of ordinary clear packing tape and lay them sticky-side-up on the table at night. Cat jumps up on table, cat encounters tape, cat concludes that table is not a good place to be, whether the humans are watching or not!

Open-threadiness, small rant about my mother and technology . . . .

My mother (whom I love, though we are very, very different people and so of course there is friction between us) is technologically challenged. Most of the time she knows that and respects her own limitations.

But when she doesn't, I'm the one who has to go in and fix things.

Which is usually okay.

But not always.

Back in December, mom's oldish desktop became seriously virus-infected. This was annoying but not too troublesome since mother does no internet banking and virtually no online shopping. Mostly the computer is used by my teenager for school-related research, IM, and Fb. Fine and dandy.

So we went and bought a new desktop, and I set it up and installed all the software. The biggest problem was with the DSL, but a nice tech at Verizon and I worked out all the kinks there and all was well.

Until the printer died.

Now, you must understand that mom is comfortable making certain kinds of purchases on her own. She has bought TVs and VCRs without any problems, usually by sticking to brands she has owned before or by asking me or my brother for input. But when we converted to digital TV, I did all the hookups in her home and taught her how to use the converter boxes.

So mom thought she could by a printer, since it didn't seem that complicated.

So off she went and bought one. Without saying a word to me about it.

But then I had to hook it up.

And it never worked right--the paper feed was unreliable, I had to reinstall the software a couple of times and troubleshoot the thing . . . .

Which should have told me it was a lemon. _but_ I really didn't want to tell my mother she had bought a bad printer. So I did my best to get it working.

Except that every time my daughter tried to print something, it took forever and usually involved once again reinstalling the software because the computer and printer didn't seem to be able to talk to each other for more than a minute or two at a time.

And of course it was weeks before we finally threw in the towel, by which time mom had thrown out the packing carton and the store's return period had long come and gone. The printer manufacturer has been of limited-to-no help (mom on the phone to India is an oy vey moment) and I believe mom is now talking to American Express about solving the problem. (Which is, of course, my fault, since I knew when I installed the thing that it was buggy . . . . )

And somewhere in here my mother decided to buy a portable DVD player--which she bought primarily to hook up to a TV so that she can watch a movie over lunch and then take the player into another room to finish watching there. But it took me about 20 minutes to get her to understand that even though her TV remote said "DVD player," it wouldn't work with the portable unit since that unit _did not operate remotely_. And unless she wants to invest in a lot of cabling, she's going to get up every time she wants to pause or stop the DVD player, because the cable she has won't allow her to put the player near her chair and still reach across the room to connect to the TV . . . . (oh, and she had to return the first DVD player she bought because it couldn't connect to the TV at all, though she knows she told the salesperson that's what she wanted it for).

At any rate, there's still no working printer at my mother's place.

So now I need to get one for her. And I have to pick just the right printer, so that she'll never ever ever have a problem with it, or she'll complain about it to the end of her days.

Seriously.

I offered to buy one when we got the new computer back in December, but that was no good because "all she needed was the computer" even though the printer was older than the desktop . . . .

Bruce @3

There are few things that are better at making light than beeswax.

"For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light". - Jonathan Swift

Melissa Singer @ 54:

If she's only doing black-and-white prints, and she doesn't need the copy/scan functionality of the all-in-one devices, I would strongly recommend a small laser printer. They're reasonably fast, and don't need much in the way of maintenance. I have an older HP Laserjet (sadly not one of the really good ones) and I've not had to replace the toner in it for the ten years I've owned it. Of course, I don't really print a lot of stuff, but this does include my stint in university.

See the Budget Mono Laser Printers Group Test from The Register.

They also have reviews of inkjets and the all-in-ones there if that's the route you need to go.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @17: crane photos

Wow, those are actually reasonably good photos of me. Quelle suprise. Also of you (no surprise). The one of you with Null Krinkly-Pants Laser-Cat makes me laugh. Would it be appropriate to offer those for inclusion in the making light and faces gallery?

Melissa Singer @ #54, I have had terrible luck with an $80 Lexmark copy/scan/print all-in-one. There's a serious design flaw with a little plastic lever underneath the glass; it pops free and the printer concludes that the cover is open even when it's clearly closed. Because the lever is under the glass it's fairly inaccessible, which makes it worse.

You get what you pay for, of course, but I wouldn't have expected such an obvious flaw to get past the QC people. This happened when I tried to change an ink cartridge, something all users need to do regularly.

Melissa Singer @54: We bought a small laser printer last year (a Brother--not sure what model since I'm not at home right now) and it's been great. It's reasonably fast, the print quality is excellent, and the toner lasts a long time. It cost a few hundred dollars, but in the previous several years we'd spent at least that much buying overpriced ink and replacing crappy "all in one" printers. Of course, it only does black and white.

Melissa@54, KeithS@56, Kate@59: Indeed, monochrome lasers are cheaper to run and faster at anything like comparable prices. If mono will do, strongly second the suggestion to get a laser.

We've had a nice little Brother laser printer at home for the last few years (5 maybe?); a 5250DN, which is near-perfect. Direct wired ethernet connection, duplex printing, quite cheap, totally reliable, decently cheap cartridges. And better than other things in its price class in that the paper tray holds 350 sheets. This means that a sloppily grabbed "half a ream" always fits (when empty; nobody ever refills a printer except when it's empty, anywhere I've seen). Not taking a full ream is a downcheck, but nothing in this size and price range does. (We occasionally do brief heavy printing, like when Pamela finishes a book and has to print two copies of a thousand page manuscript; but mostly we're quite light.)

I've got a good but small inkjet for photo-quality stuff, but I mostly print on the laser--which is two flights of stairs up from my computer. Still, the exercise is good for me, and taking the dust cover off the inkjet is a pain.

KeithS @ 56: I agree that a small laser printer can be a valuable purchase if you are just printing black-and-white documents. My husband and I bought an HP Laserjet 5MP back oh, maybe 13 or 14 years ago now. It's been a real workhorse for home use, and is still going strong.

Oh, gee, thanks for all the recs, which wasn't the point but is much appreciated.

Alas, the teenager insists on color, and I can understand why if she's printing stuff for school, where color makes a bigger impact (and can be the difference between having something displayed in public or not, regardless of the quality of the writing . . . ).

Though my codgerlike brain, recalling my own days in high school, 3+ decades ago, grumbles things like "in my day, teachers got blurry photocopies of images and coped just fine."

"humans are the routers"
we also used to be the name servers.

General Open threadness:

Last week, I'm preparing my resume for a new round of job searching and as is always a good idea, I google my name. Everything is looking normal until I get down to the bottom of the first page of google hits and find that, along with my usual public pages is a Myspace page for a "Keith K. Kisser."

This is not me.

I shut down My Myspace account two years ago. Also, my middle initial is not K for reasons that I hope are obvious.

I contact Myspace and ask them to pull the page on the grounds that it's offensive, thinking it's a prank or joke in bad taste.*

Turns out, "Keith K. Kisser" is a legit account and the bald gentleman in the pictures who emblazoned Kay Kay Kay across his Myspace page is in a punk band. Myspace won't take down the page.

For the record: my name is Keith E. Kisser. I am in no way affiliated with Keith K. Kisser.

Also for the record: Myspace is well past it's sell by date and should be shunned like lepers.

_________
*Last month, I had a troll on my blog write a three part rant about how I was racist because I was opposed to the censoring of Huck Finn by replacing the N word with "slave". I assumed at first it was this troll, trying to punk me.

Keith E Kisser@64,

I know the feeling. Coincidentally, our names are nearly identical. I score the first few entries on google for my name, but the next one after me is on a sex offender registry. For the record: not me. Discovering that one lead me pretty quickly to always keep a good, clear photo in a prominent place on my website. It also offers some pretty good incentive to keep my googlerank high.

I get regular speculation about whether my middle name starts with a "K". Of course, it does not. It gets old. I have to assume you feel the same way.

Keith A. Kissel @ 65:

It does. Though jokes about my last name tend to edge it out, ever so slightly.

Umm, yum, ::lick:: *smack*

Just managed to salvage some week-old baked salmon that had been lost in the back of the fridge.

When I was little, my mom would make a salmon loaf that I really liked. Unfortunately, she made it with canned salmon, and I was hopelessly squicked by the bones-in (ew, ack, crunchity wrong wrong!), so she eventually quit making it altogether.

I haven't been able to find a recipe that seems right (or any recipe for salmon loaf, as far as that goes), so I just kind of faked it and made it like meatloaf, except with cous cous instead of breadcrumbs, and no tomato paste. Added some toasted sesame oil and roasted salted cashews.

OM NOM definitely food om nom nom....

Melissa Singer @54, if another product review helps the data sample, I am VERY happy with my Epson Stylus CX9400 all-in-one. I don't think I've fully explored all its features yet, but I can vouch that print, fax, and copy all work beautifully, and one of these days I'll try the scanner and the thing that reads photo memory cards.

I have no idea how pricey it is. I got it from Freecycle, new-in-box. I love Freecycle.

Jacque #67: when not using slab salmon, I use the stuff in the pouches. More expensive but no bones. My dog loves salmon bones (which she doesn't get) and salmon skin (which she does, along with the liquid) but I hate getting only half a can of salmon per can.

Hyperlocal News: Many catches up with Open Thread, finds Serge will be in Pleasanton this week. I don't go in to the office every day, but that's where my office is - ping me if you'd like to get together for lunch.

M Evans: I strain hot beeswax through cheesecloth, then pour it into cocktail-ice cube trays.

I'd been planning to use silicone cupcake trays, myself. I'll keep an eye out for a silicone cocktail-ice cube tray.

Jacque and Sarah S: Yes, beeswax is good at Making Light. I missed that one. Har de harr harr. I think that, under Schedule 3 Narcotics as I am until the surgery finishes healing, I should get at least a little credit for managing a semi-coherent paragraph, inadvertent idiocy and all.

@67, @69 - Here in the UK we can get tinned salmon without bones (and at a not-too exorbitant premium); is this not available for you guys?

Jacque @67, "definitely food" is a great two-word review. heh.

Boswell in the Baths

I lusted; wherefore here I lie, to cool
The heat of passion in the healthful springs,
That cool by heat. Such lethargy it brings:
To contemplate while steaming in this pool:
That I, who laid in stews, must stew once more;
Who once took sportive Venus hot to bed
Must now, with sighs, take Mercury instead,
And feel his coldness at the very core.

Shall I once more to Vauxhall for an Eve,
Or sally forth, (or fifth), for my delight?
I salivate without an appetite,
For now; but this is all I can believe:
That conscience gives a prick there is no doubt;
But not, alas, the other way about.

Dave:

Very nice. A night with Venus, a year with Mercury.

Jacque @67: When I was small, my grandmother would occasionally make salmon chowder, for which she'd pick most of the bones out of the canned salmon. I liked the bones' texture so she'd give them to me in a little bowl. But I always washed them really well before eating them because I hated the taste of salmon (and still do). Sometimes cheap canned tuna has little bones. I do still love them.

Jacque @ 67
When I was little, my mom would make a salmon loaf that I really liked...I haven't been able to find a recipe that seems right

This is my mother's/grandfathers recipe.

1 can salmon, bones picked out, flaked
Reserve the juice
1 tube Ritz crackers, crushed fine
1 egg
dollop mustard
black pepper to taste

Beat egg, mix everything together, add milk if needed to make a very stiff batter (about as stiff as whipped cream).

Bake or fry, eat with white sauce (yum) or stewed tomatoes (eww).

Sam @ 77 - Close to ours, but my grandmother added half-an-onion and a rib of celery, diced fine (the other half-onion to go with the overcooked veg of the evening)

I like the sound of Jacque @ 67's concoction, and will be passing it on to appropriate parties (those who actually eat salmon).

Bruce E. Durocher II @71: Schedule 3 Narcotics as I am until the surgery finishes healing

Yes, so sorry. If I was nearby, I'd offer soup or dinner or something nurturing.

I should get at least a little credit for managing a semi-coherent paragraph, inadvertent idiocy and all.

Sorry, not meant to impugn your intelligence or coherence. I'm just amused at the idea that any topic would be outside the perview of Fluorospherean expertise (with the possible exception of professional sports, and that's not even a bet I'd take). The apiary arts actually strike me as being a fairly hum-drum* topic, around here.

--

*Serge: you're up.

Bruce @#71

What Jacque said at #79, with the additional comment that I'm incapable of not quoting Swift, given a good opening.

Sometimes I even wax eloquent about the perfection of his prose style.

I have in my hot little hands paperback copies of John M. Ford's Star Trek novels, _How Much for Just the Planet?_ and _The Final Reflection_. Given to me by an utter philistine among Star Trek novel readers who does not look upon them as keepers even when all others, yea even those by Diane Duane and Barbara Hambly, get left behind. Contact me first at jbcroft, hanging out at that hot mail place, with your address and a bad joke or good recipe and I'll send them along.

SamChevre @77: salmon loaf recipe

Heh. See how I did that there? Mention a lack of recipe, and they magically appear.

("Well, you know, Jacque, you could have just asked if anybody knew a good recipe." "Um, yes, well...I suppose...")

Kate Shaw @76: I liked the bones' texture

::shudder:: Well, I suppose that doesn't make any less sense than eating fried shrimp heads (too much chitin for me, personally).

Hm. Dried, I suppose you could make a little crunchy snack out of them, like potato chips.

Heh. We would have made the perfect partners. I get the salmon, you get the bones! Hee.

sisuile @78: I like the sound of Jacque @ 67's concoction, and will be passing it on to appropriate parties (those who actually eat salmon).

::preen:: Coupla points: as I had already prepared the salmon as a stand-alone entrée, it came pre-seasoned. For a loaf, be sure to add (if it doesn't already have it) salting (soy-sauce, in my case) and lemon juice. (Actually, I should have added a bit more of each to my loaf.)

Also, smush the salmon up before adding the other ingredients. Ahem.

Close to ours, but my grandmother added half-an-onion and a rib of celery

I did put some diced onion in. I wasn't sure it would work with fish, but it's hard to go wrong with onion.

OTOH, celery is not food. ;-) My mother was a big celery fan. It's not toxic, like say rutabegas, but it's not food, either. IMHO, of course. :o) (Although I can definitely see the rationale: if you're of the celery-in-tuna-salad school, celery in salmon loaf certainly makes sense.)

Oh, wait: one exception. Thanksgiving turkey stuffing absolutely requires celery.

those who actually eat salmon

Actually, I'll bet this loaf recipe would work with any fish.* Hm....

--

*Do you dislike fish in general, or just salmon in particular?

That was quick --the John M. Ford books have been claimed!

I did some interesting experiments with salmon loafish things back a while ago when I was under-employed and exploring the really really cheap options at the local ... hmm, "grocery" doesn't do it justice, but call it that. In salmon season, they'd pack up bags of heads, spines, and other bits cut off when filleting and sell them for less than a dollar a pound. (This store also has a delightfully varied "culled produce" section that I took advantage of during that era.)

I think my recipe ran something like "put the fish bits into a crock pot with a quartered onion, a couple celery stalks, and anything else lying around that's getting wilted. Simmer until the bones dissolve. Strain to separate the broth (which gets used on its own for soup). Season the resulting paste with herbs and spices to taste and mix in eggs, flour, and rolled oats in the same proportions you would for meatloaf. Bake in a medium oven until a skewer comes out clean.

The main reason for leaving the bones in wasn't so much an active preference for them as the problem that picking them out (given that the represented more than 50% of the mass) would have been way too much work.

Also: make sure to label the containers of frozen salmon broth because when you're expecting chicken or lamb instead it's very startling to discover you have salmon.

Which is better, i.e., easier to learn from: Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone?

OT: A seasonal dish for Welsh fans of Turkish cooking.

Also: Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant Hapus Pawb

Janet Brennan Croft: Wow! You've reinveted "stone soup," only in loaf form!

That seasoned paste sounds like it would be a great adjunct to my Cream of Dinner recipe.

Jacque @ #79, I'll volunteer for pro sports general knowledge.

Jacque @82: Rutabegas aren't toxic; parsnips are toxic. Also jicama. Rutabegas are the secret ingredient in my sainted mother's beef vegetable soup, with the vegs ground up (to keep the rutabagas secret). They can also be substituted for or combined with white turnips for Armored Turnips. I'm quite fond of them with butter, salt and pepper, even though raw ones are surly and hard to cut up. Parsnips, on the other hand ... The good news is they won't kill your compost heap.

Then there's the Rutabaga Boogie, Tracie and Jacque....

Don't know how long it'll be available, but there's a full version of Shaun Tan's Oscar-winning animated short The Lost Thing up at indiemoviesonline. A very thoughtful 15 minute piece, totally right for those who like Among Others.

Parsnips? Toxic?

Jacque: most fish falls between 'eh' and 'ew' on my food preference scale, though I like tuna. I would much rather eat dead sea bugs. OTOH, my doctor, concerned about my heavy metal levels, pulled me off of all fish and shellfish for a while. (I maintain that it was more likely to be time as glaze-chemist + living with a recently disturbed lead water supply than my almost non-existent fish consumption. Still, not that much of a hardship. Her insistence on a lack of wheat? That's a hardship.)

Celery adds salt and fiber. Iirc (and it's been a while!), celery is one of the few plants that does well in salt marshes. It will absorb salts from the soil, making my grandfather happy because it was the only thing that would grow in the mini-marsh beside his house in northern IL where the winter road salt runoff killed everything else.

Carrie S. @44: Cotton? Most embroidery kits I know of use cotton. DMC embroidery silks* seem to me to be shinier than Anchor, and that's before you go for the really-shiny ones.

To my knowledge, I've never seen an embroidery kit that didn't use cotton threads (tapestry, that's different). But maybe thats a trans-Atlantic difference?

* cotton, even if called embroidery silks.

Linkmeister @89: I'll volunteer for pro sports general knowledge.

This then begs the question: Is there any K which I not CIML?

Tracie @90: parsnips are toxic.

Have to agree with you there. The one time I tried parsnips, I broke out all over my body with a hideous rash that took months to clear up. Odds are pretty good that the parsnips were correlative rather than causitive, but this is not an hypothesis I'm inclined to test.

Also jicama.

I'm okay with jicama. ('Sides, it's a silly word and fun to say.) No particular nutrition to speak of though. Sort of like vegetarian potato chips. Er. If you take my meaning....

Rutabegas ... can also be substituted for or combined with white turnips

EEK! Turnips are toxic, too. One of them is worse than the other; I can never remember which, though.

Armored Turnips Ahem...? :-)

sisuile @92: Celery adds salt and fiber.

It also has a bitter note that I really dislike.

It will absorb salts from the soil, making my grandfather happy because it was the only thing that would grow in the mini-marsh beside his house in northern IL where the winter road salt runoff killed everything else.

Cool! Probably doesn't grow in Colorado worth a damn, unless irrigated. Too bad, because I can think of a number of catchments that could benefit from its salt-absorbing properties.

Don't get me wrong. I don't oppose celery's existence. Celery is a perfectly lovely co-inhabitant of my biosphere. But, like a pine tree, I just don't especially want to eat it. Which, of course, leaves more for you! (Likewise turnips & rutabegas!)

'Sides, bunch-of-celery-leaves + budgies = hours of hilarity.

A Dog and Bed update:

Ardala's latest habit is refusing to settle down to bed until both of her servant monkeys have tucked her in. She alternates bedrooms each night, and she will woof, sigh, get up, pace, etc, until Other Monkey comes in to give her some last pettings. In addition to the tucking in, my roommate attempted to read her a story the other night (The Monster At The End of This Book) but Ardala was singularly unimpressed. Perhaps next time we will try Where The Wild Things Are. This behavior seems to coincide with the removal of her bed steps. I picked her up this morning (Ardala, not the roommate) and put her on my bed, where she promptly had a zoomie, dug in the comforter, and settled into the warm spot by the pillows. I am now considering getting a sort of hybrid step/ramp thingy which will still not reach the top of my bed, but will allow access to my nightstand, from which she can then get on the bed. This dog is completely spoiled.

In non-related news, I was thrilled to learn that Mysterious Galaxy, my favoritist bookstore EVAR, will be opening a branch near me this fall. I can't wait!!!

I'm not aware of health or food safety concerns regarding cooked parsnips; raw parsnips contain furanocoumarin, which can apparently cause phytophotodermatitis (for topical exposure to the sap) and (when eaten) may affect the metabolism of some drugs (as in the "grapefruit juice effect").

That said, I've eaten raw parsnip on several occasions and haven't experienced any trouble. (The parsnip-pine nut mash recipe that's partway down that page is excellent. If you like parsnips, of course.)

In defense of the noble parsnip, I offer the following:

Turnips and Pasternaks from Anthimus

Bedtime Stories for Dogs, ISBN-10: 0836221990

We've been experimenting with jicama as a substitute for potatoes, with reasonable success. You have to dice it fairly small in soup or stew, because the more exposed surface area, the more it absorbs the flavor of the broth. Put it thru the food processor with onions, and it makes pretty good hash browns as well. They'd be vegetarian if we didn't fry them in bacon fat. :-)

Xopher @ 24: I see what you did there! And how I confused the Song of Solomon with Psalms, I'll never know.

Lylassandra @ 40: This sounds like the arrangement my high school sang.

Jacque @ 57: By all means. I have no objection to those being horked into Making Lights and Faces. Glad you like; I tried to choose the least blurry of the ones we took!

ibid @ 82: My New Orleanian upbringing prompts me to protest, "Of course celery is food. Celery is one of the primordial building blocks of food. Along with onion and bell pepper." Except of course my mother's aversion to bell pepper meant I got a different version of that holy trinity at home, such that she added onion, celery, garlic, and green onions to the roux once it had roux'd sufficiently. She also puts celery in tuna salad and in the fantastic shrimp dip that she makes with mayonnaise, Zatarain's Creole Mustard, and just enough ketchup to make it pink. (Ketchup is a food coloring.)

and @ 94: it darn well grows in Colorado. Abbondanza sent me home from CSA pick up with oodles of it last year, some of which I helped harvest. And if one likes raw celery, harvesting celery is a lot of fun. You end up sitting in a whole heap of trimmings, munching away as you machete the next batch.

The conversation has moved on a bit, but here's my family's recipe for salmon patties:

Drain the oil from a can of salmon into a bowl. Add one egg and beat/mix well. Add wheat germ, milk powder, and (if desired) corn meal to thicken well. Season with salt and sage (or anything else your heart desires). Optional: add 1/2 finely chopped onion. Optional: Add 1-2 stalks finely chopped celery. Add salmon to bowl, mix well. Shape into patties and brown in a little oil.

Re: the Noble Parsnip
Best way I've ever had them was in a little pub between Cashel and Cahir - roasted with carrots, tossed with butter, honey, black pepper, and a little ginger.

Here, I tend to do Candied Root Veggies (carrots and parsnips in honey, orange juice, and ginger), or winter dinner (carrots, parsnips, onion, potatoes, and a little sage sausage. Possibly throw in barley instead of potatoes)

Celery is FULL of vitamic C.

Not ascorbic acid . . . Crunch.

I typically only buy celery when I make salmon "salad" for sandwiches. That and green onions.

While I agree that celery is not food, it IS a useful food additive. It contains a substance that, like MSG, enhances the flavors of other foods. I have empirically tested this by making otherwise identical batches of roasted veg with and without celery. The with-celery is noticeably tastier.

Armored Turnips, as made in the Barony of Bhakail back in Anno Societatis Way-Long-Time-Ago:

5 pounds turnips
1 pound provolone cheese, sliced
butter or margarine

Peel and slice the turnips.
Parboil them; drain.
Butter a baking dish, generously.
Layer the turnips with the provolone cheese, starting with a layer of turnips and finishing with a layer of cheese.
Bake at 350 until the cheese starts to bubble.

=======

This is the small-baronial-feast version; tripled or quadrupled, it's enough for Crown Tourney or a kingdom Twelfth Night.

For home consumption, a pound of turnips and a bit over a quarter pound of provolone will accompany a family dinner, assuming everybody there likes turnips.

JBC @81/83 - I'm long past the availability window for the titles but I remember them well - I loved The Final Reflection and still have a dog-eared paperback copy; I detested How Much For Just The Planet (I was a teenager and probably didn't quite get the humor - it was one of those books that looked like it was supposed to have been funny to someone, just not me) and haven't seen it in years.

However, Mr. Ford has the singular honor of having been, as far as I know, the only author to have sold me not one but two new copies of a book I could not stand. (The first, because I hadn't read it yet; the second, after I'd read it, because I'd loaned out the first copy to someone who then moved out of state and I wanted to have the COMPLETE collection....)

Wherever you may be now, Mr. Ford, I hope you're laughing... :-)

HLN: Visiting Arizona man takes the wheel of the HMS Surprise in San Diego harbor. Despite his lack of naval experience, no damage or injuries are reported.

Here are some nontraditional pysanky

A mermaid of sorts
I call this joy

Describing celery as 'full of' anything except water seems to be going a bit far.

It's got a substantially higher water content than milk, orange juice, or Coca-Cola, about the same as Gatorade.

87
Diolch yn fawr!
(Also, ooh nice, another food blog!)

My mother left the bones in when she used canned salmon. I won't say they taste good (to me they're like eating soft chalk), but they're certainly edible, for some value thereof. They'll mash up and disappear into the fish, too.

I've never noticed bones in canned salmon. Sardines, yes, but not salmon. Huh.

Catching up with culinary thread:

• I'm with Mary Aileen #112: I've never noticed bones in canned salmon, only sardines -- and lately, even those often come boneless.
• Celery is more a spice than a vegetable. In fact, it's three spices -- stalk, root, and seed.
• Lila #104: Interesting! Rutabagas are a kind of turnip, which in turn is just a mild radish. I like turnips, sometimes even raw.
• Lexica #96, it never occurred to me to eat parsnips raw!. Cooked mushy, with butter and salt, that's the way!.
• I also note that both a small turnip and a parsnip are near-mandatory parts of my family chicken soup recipe.

there are bones in the big cans of salmon. What is canned are big chunks of the actual fish, bones, skin and all(well, no heads and fins). It's just that the canning / cooking process makes them soft. As a point of interest, that kind of 'ugly' salmon has a lot more of the good things in it than the nice, small, tuna-sized cans of 'pretty' salmon.

Mashed as part of the process to make salmon cakes, no one notices anyway.

I guess I'm the odd one out here -- I can't imagine not wanting to have bones in canned salmon. That's one of the best parts of it!

Then again, I'm also fond of fish cheeks and eyeballs, so mileage may vary...

Jacque:Yes, so sorry. If I was nearby, I'd offer soup or dinner or something nurturing.

No problem: thanks for the thought. If this pain goes on much longer, I'm going to have to look into anger management: I ran into a page where the users of a device I want to buy were sending messages to the manufacturer about how they'd just found a bug and when will the bugfix be released and I found myself yelling "When hell freezes over, you impatient assholes!" I thought about posting a brief note suggesting the manufacturer has to verify the bug first and then debug the software before they could say when the fix would ship, but I was afraid I'd offer to kill them all with my bare hands instead...

I'm just amused at the idea that any topic would be outside the perview of Fluorospherean expertise

Clearly you missed the echoing cave Making Light became when I asked what the original phrase was that Pedro Carolino had, via a French-English dictionary and Portuguese-French phrasebook, bludgeoned into "For to craunch the marmoset." (Please don't suggest the theory that it's a garbled version of the Jamaican phrase "scrunch the marmot." I've read that one repeatedly on the internet, and there's never any sources given to flesh out the bones. I'm beginning to think that Mencken dreamed it up before deciding he could get a full column out of lying about when the first bathtub was fitted in the White House.) Crickets could have been heard. It doesn't happen often, but it *does* happen here--hence my hedging when I asked about beeswax cleaning.

Sarah S.: with the additional comment that I'm incapable of not quoting Swift, given a good opening.

I understand: I've been accused of looking for howlers just so I can quote the the rules from Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses."

Since I'm spending so much time in this Kennedy Rocker my tailbone is getting a little sore, so I've been looking online for a cushion set that cost less than $89.00. No success yet, but WOW...there are some seriously ugly cushions out there for rockers in general. I can't believe they're saying "That is gorgeous!" and I'm colorblind. And some of the ones for sale on eBay make you long for the subtle taste of Frederick's of Hollywood. The Kennedy Rocker versions may be expensive, but at least they seem to be solid colors like white or yellow--which is a substantial improvement over the eye-watering patterns and retina-clogging colors that I've been finding... Out of curiosity, are there any other items that sewers do which get hit with an ugly stick this big?

I had a long-term subjob in an elementary school with an agreement with HyVee: all the K-6 classes got free Healthy Snack each day. The plan, I heard, was to start easy-- grapes, baby carrots, apple slices-- and then gradually add weirder stuff as it came along.

We got a plastic container full of white rectangular sticks. Like carrot sticks, like very large fries. No one knew what they were. We passed the container around to the kids for careful sniffing and all of us thought, "Oniony? Um."

"Daikon radish? They wouldn't do that to us. They wouldn't do that to us."

Then the sticks were discovered to be jicama, which the kids adored. Anything that can carry ranch dressing is good.

I've got a copy of The Final Reflection around here somewhere that I would send on to a next stop. (that is, assuming that it's not already done that, since I can't quite find it right now) I'm still keeping my eye open for How Much for Just the Planet.

Jicama sticks also lovely for dipping in guacamole. Just saying....

Doesn't eating jicama give you the jicups?

I like parsnips, think celery is a kitchen essential, and turnips are ok.

Jicama is nasty.

I didn't chime in on the beeswax, because I had been beaten to it.

"Out of curiosity, are there any other items that sewers do which get hit with an ugly stick this big?"

Oh, I have been WAITING for some place I could talk about this. We were sent a Christmas box from my in-laws with many things for the kids and a bag for me. It may or may not have been that particular one, but the pattern is accurate—bright red, dark brown, sickly chartreuse. I looked at it and went, Oh God. A bag more repulsive to my sensibilities is hard to imagine.

My MiL called and asked how I liked it. (She was not the giver.) I hedged and told part of the truth—that I didn't have any use for it, because I don't use enormous bags. If I have something that needs that amount of space, I'm not going to be carrying it over my shoulder. I didn't say that the bag made me nauseated.

Probably just as well, because she said she hadn't been sure it was my style, but she rather liked it. So she ended up with it, and it's not moldering away in some back corner of my place. A win!

B. Durbin, #123: Ye ghods. My standard description for something like that is, "It looks like a sofa." And there are indeed a lot of truly appalling upholstery prints.* Why someone would think of wearing one of them I have no idea!

Your story, however, reminds me of something that happened back when my now-ex and I were first dating. It was my birthday, and I opened up the package he gave me, and... it was a purse. A purse the size of a battleship, made of straw or something similar, with only one compartment, and shaped sort of like one of those leather drinking flasks with a narrow end and a wide one. (The zipper went along the top, so you could at least get into it easily.) I thought it was a gag gift, and burst out laughing... only to discover that this was actually something he had thought I would like.** I'm not sure which of us was more mortified.

Fortunately, it was exactly the sort of thing my mother adored, so it went to her.

* Don't even get me started on wallpaper patterns! I can go thru a book containing several hundred wallpaper designs and come up with no more than half a dozen that I would even consider remotely acceptable for any wall I had to look at -- and I'm lucky if I find even one that I consider genuinely attractive.

** In his defense, he'd never seen me purse-hunting at that point, and he never got me anything else that I didn't like; I put it down to "he didn't really know my tastes yet".

Jicama can also serve nicely as "mock water chestnuts" if only the bland crunch is desired.

(And I'm trying really, really hard, but I can't be the only reader of this thread who cringes every time someone uses the words "salmon" and "can" in the same sentence.)

Bruce E. Durocher II: If they'd just stuck to the blue-with-darker-grapes (or blossoms or whatever) it would have been liveable-with, but the - contrasting, I suppose it could be called - paisley design on the endings, arms and centre of the stool cover is awful.

B. Durbin: that's awful as well.

Some years make, my flat got flooded. While various bits of good wooden furniture were going to be re-polished, I asked about getting a particular chair - re-uphostered. The samples I was sent (having asked for "tapestry" because it's a rather old chair, with wonderful carved wooden arms, and neutral/green) were awful - apalling patterns, colours nothing like what I'd asked for. I ended up asking if he didn't have a nice plain dark green, which he did, so I settled for that.

New word of the day: jicama. Seriously, it doesn't exist over here (the vegetable, that is).

xeger @ 115: "Then again, I'm also fond of fish cheeks and eyeballs, so mileage may vary..."

Me too! They look so silly without them, the poor dears, bumping into things and their food leaking out all over--I hear they're rather fond of them as well.

Parsnips: When roasted, they are scrummy. When merely boiled, they lose an important letter of your choice. I believe that this often leads to confusion, and it delayed my recognition of their true nobility by a couple of decades or so.

I didn't know they had poisonous qualities, nor have I ever buttered one.

Heather Rose Jones @ 97: Your second experiment sounds delicious, and I may attempt in a spirit of scientific rigour to replicate the results presently.

dcb @#93: The thing is, this is an old embroidery kit, like 1930s-Arts-and-Crafts old; Shauna got it either at a garage sale or online. It was fairly common for those to have floss that was either actual silk or rayon. And I'm quite familiar with mercerized cotton floss; this stuff is shinier.

For that matter, I don't even know if it came in a kit originally, or if the pattern-stamped pieces were sold alone and the person who started the embroidery picked the floss.

Regardless, I think I'm going to hit the needlepoint shop this weekend and see what I can do to match the stuff by looks. I'd still love to know what's up with the origins of the pattern, just for coolness value, but it's irrelevant to getting it finished. :)

Re #108: What may be the coolest pysanky I've seen this year: It's on a goose egg.

TexAnne (and Xopher!), I'm a little late getting started but I began folding cranes last night. My fingers DO remember how, yay! I think tonight I'll cut up some old maps for wishes for safe and happy travels as needed. You can tell me where to send them and how many you need at jbcroft at that place where the temperature of the mail is hot.

On the subject of toxins, I just took a wee tiny taste of the...cheesecake, I guess you'd call it,in the breakroom.*

ACK PTHEH GAGGGHHH PTHOOEE!

It's, um, peanut butter.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love me some peanut butter. Nekkid on a spoon, in peanut butter cookies, even the occassional chocolate-covered candy.

But this...um. Not.

Most assuredly not food.

--

* Our breakroom serves somewhat the function of the family dog of days of yore. If it's at least plausibly edible, and you don't want it, put it there and somebody** will eat it. There are a few things that have gone untouched long enough to wind up in the compost, but it's pretty rare.

** Too often, me.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @100: if one likes raw celery, harvesting celery is a lot of fun. You end up sitting in a whole heap of trimmings, munching away as you machete the next batch.

Pix! Pix! I visualize you with leaves sprinkled all over, including on top of your head. :-)

To be fair, I concede the possibility that celery could be processed in a manner which would render it food (cf. turkey dressing, above). I just haven't encountered such a thing. But the Universe is yet young.

Ketchup is a food coloring.

Breakfast, meet keyboard. Ahem.

Sort of like the brine shrimp in flamingos, eh?

Debra Doyle @105: Well, hell, of course. Enough cheese and butter will turn anything into food. Road kill...swamp grass...asphalt...

Bruce E. Durocher II @116: If this pain goes on much longer, I'm going to have to look into anger management

Oh, dear. You have my sympathies. It's amazing how having a chronic drain on one's system like that can cut into one's resilience. What does it to me is poor sleep. Three nights in a row of rowdy neighbors, and I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near polite society.

I take it your doctor is less than useful on this issue?

Clearly you missed the echoing cave Making Light became when I asked what the original phrase was that Pedro Carolino had, via a French-English dictionary and Portuguese-French phrasebook, bludgeoned into "For to craunch the marmoset."

Um...yeah, I guess so. ::blinks owlishly:: Wow. I wouldn't even know how to start looking that up.

Bruce E. Durocher II @117: at least they seem to be solid colors like white or yellow--which is a substantial improvement over the eye-watering patterns and retina-clogging colors that I've been finding... Out of curiosity, are there any other items that sewers do which get hit with an ugly stick this big?

In the 90s, I used to subscribe to Threads Magazine, because it had really good technique articles, and was useful for idea-mining. However, EVERY SINGLE example garment they printed photos of was overwrought, self-clashing, and generally fugly (in an "Oh my gosh, I can't believe the model was willing to be photographed wearing that. I KNOW they PAID her, but STILL!" way). I could imagine flattering, classic, elegant garments using nearly every technique they showed ... but I had to imagine them, because the stuff in the pictures looked like they were made by someone's colorblind crafts-happy overcheerful great-aunt from some town so small they have to drive an hour to get to a Wal-Mart. Not to insult all small-town dwellers, I hope; just addressing a stereotypical character. I have no idea if they got any better; I haven't picked up an issue in years. I fished around on the website looking for examples, but didn't find any.

In re your cushion covers particularly, there are a bunch of currently trendy color combinations that I find horrendously grating; that aqua-plus-light-brown one you linked to is one of them. Orange and silver-grey is another, or orange and hot pink. Lots of people think they are TRULY AWESOME AND CUTTING-EDGE, but I can't stand 'em. Give me saturated jewel-tones contrasting with black any day.

B. Durbin @123: in re gifts of that sort ... my sort-of-cousin★ gave our kidlet, for her recent 2nd birthday, a big floofy blue taffeta dress-up dress (with a small Disney Cinderella portrait badge on it; easily removed) and a box/sorter with four pairs of Disney Princess Shoes, all of which bear cameos/badges of their respective movie tie-in characters which are IMPOSSIBLE to remove without ruining the shoes. When we blinked several times and looked at her, in the pause between opening and thanking, she said, "I had to get her something I KNEW you would NEVER buy her!" And she's right, but not exactly in a good way ...

We think we can peel off the face-stickers or paint over them with nail polish or something to anonymize the play shoes before she's old enough to know the names of the characters depicted. I should note that I personally have no problem with dress-up fun clothes, I have a problem with pervasive branding in general, and the Disney Princess juggernaut in particular. The giver genuinely has no idea why we object. All her kids, and the kids in their circle, are swimming so deep in the sea of everything-is-branded that it feels utterly normal to her; in fact, she once remarked in our presence that it's "impossible" to get anything non-branded of late. I bite my tongue a lot when this subject comes up. Before next Giftmas or kid-birthday, I think I better figure out a way to raise it, lest we get deluged with more of the same.

dcb @126: Yeah, you don't have any decent Mexican restaurants either. I think the two facts are related.

--
★ Her mother is sort of my-and-John's alternate mom -- she's definitely our kid's spare 5th grandparent. So her kids are kind of our cousins, in a fictive-kin sense. We see a lot of them and are friendly.

Paula Helm Murray (114): Mashed as part of the process to make salmon cakes, no one notices [the bones in canned salmon] anyway.

That must be why I never noticed; we only ever used salmon to make salmon cakes.

Jacque @131: I was bemused recently to hear a radio advertisement for a new product being proudly carried by Trader Joe's: peanut butter cream cheese spread.

Um, yeah.

File under "things you never knew existed until watching late-night small-station TV," because I was only up at that hour AND listening to the radio because the kid was having an up-every-2-hours-to-nurse no-sleeping night, and I was trying to not go mad from boredom as WELL as mad from sleep deprivation.

Heather Rose Jones @125: I can't be the only reader of this thread who cringes every time someone uses the words "salmon" and "can" in the same sentence.

Are you old enough to remember the smell of a house after "fresh" fish had been cooked for dinner, in the days before modern shipping and refrigeration technologies became commonplace?

While admittedly a crime against nature, there are some things canned salmon is better than, believe it or not.

Jacque: I take it your doctor is less than useful on this issue?

No, they've been good--in fact, when I pulled a muscle this weekend they agreed I should double the dose for the next few days and greatly reduce my activity so things will heal. The problem is that the most recent surgery was abdominal which means that I have an 18" incision across my stomach with a 3" incision running up to my sternum. This means there's a lot to heal up, and the oral painkiller is to be taken not more than every 4 hours. Since it takes an hour to get to full effectiveness, I get enough pain between hours 4 and 6 to get grouchy.

Take two half breasts of chicken, skin on. Cut a half-thickness slit along the long axis of both. Stuff this slit with marinated herbed feta, capers and slivers of black olives (be generous). Season well. Tie the two halves together with kitchen string, with the stuffing on the inside. Brown this on all sides in heavy skillet with just enough hot oil to prevent sticking, remove. Add to the hot pan onion, garlic, sundried tomatoes, sliced peppers, mushrooms, in that order. Sweat them. Sprinkle with flour, cook through, add 1 cup chicken stock, and 1 cup red wine. Reduce this sauce a little and season. Return chicken breasts to the pan and turn the heat down to cook gently for twenty minutes or until done on fork test, turning once. Add two handfuls baby spinach leaves, cook through enough to wilt them.

Serve with couscous, flavoured as you prefer. Serves two.

Bruce: One of the tricks I discovered when I had my last root canal (the recovery from which was a lot rougher than I had expected) was to take half the dose, twice as often.

You are, I trust, otherwise spoiling yourself mercilously?

Heather Rose Jones @125 : I can eat salmon.

Especially lightly grilled with olive oil, salt and pepper, and a side of fresh fruit salsa.

B. Durbin: That's some pattern. Not the worst I've seen (the new couch that was abandoned at a little building I'm co-owner of featuring pictures of colonial tchotchke and psuedo-flowers in colors outside nature, all executed in polyester, still leads the pack), but not something I'd want to carry around.

dcb: If they'd just stuck to the blue-with-darker-grapes (or blossoms or whatever) it would have been liveable-with

As I said earlier I'm color blind so I'm going to have to defer to you on this one. Liveable, yes, but I hate to think of what definition of liveable the rest of the house would be.

Elliott Mason: In the 90s, I used to subscribe to Threads Magazine, because it had really good technique articles, and was useful for idea-mining. However, EVERY SINGLE example garment they printed photos of was overwrought, self-clashing, and generally fugly

Sounds like every American magazine on woodcarving I've ever seen, which is why when I get an urge to read about the subject I get a nice one from England the local B&N carries--90% less distressed, psuedo "folksy" gnomes and animals that way.

Oh, dear. The cheesecake has now sprouted a Helpful Note:

Leftover b-day cake

MMMMMM!!

Very rich!!

Food that requires subtitles? Hm.

Jacque: Bruce: One of the tricks I discovered when I had my last root canal (the recovery from which was a lot rougher than I had expected) was to take half the dose, twice as often.

Oh, we've done every dosage know to man in what seems to be every time interval under the clock over the past month. Thanks for the suggestion, but it's been tried. I'm just going to have to heal and outlive the pain.

You are, I trust, otherwise spoiling yourself mercilously?

As much as I can, being unemployed and under weight restrictions. Mainly my time is spent using my left shoulder as a cushion for the smaller cat, who now comes up and scolds me if I just sit on the couch and don't provide a shoulder to sleep on.

Sounds like every American magazine on woodcarving I've ever seen, which is why when I get an urge to read about the subject I get a nice one from England the local B&N carries--90% less distressed, psuedo "folksy" gnomes and animals that way.

My favorite needlework mag these days is an Australian one called "Inspirations". They tend to avoid the cutsey, the "country", and the overly-modern, and as a bonus they assume in their directions that I already know how to do things like French knots. I only wish I could afford to subscribe.

Jacque #133: ... celery?
Jacque #134: I wouldn't even know how to start looking that up. Language Log and/or Language Hat. Sorry no links, but my browser is acting up.

Dave #140: Into my Recipes folder... what do you call that?

Elliott Mason @135 there are a bunch of currently trendy color combinations that I find horrendously grating; that aqua-plus-light-brown one you linked to is one of them.

Heh. What goes around comes around. Somewhat more than 40 years ago now, as a pre-teen, I selected the first item of clothing I remember picking out for myself in the store and loving. (We didn't do much clothes shopping in stores in those days. My grandmother used to make all my school dresses; they were fine and often very nice, and I usually got to help pick out the material, but it wasn't the same.)

Anyway, I loved with a deep and abiding love my brown bellbottom jeans with the big turquoise flowers, worn with a white button-down shirt. I believe my mother viewed the color combination the same way you do, but she had the courtesy not to harp on it.

I have just been reminded of those pants. That is all.

Dave Luckett@140: I just might do that some day. Well, something like it. Without feta, capers, sun-dried tomatos, and probably black olives. And no doubt with other things. The spinach, added very late, is something I particularly wouldn't have thought of, which seems like a good idea now that it's been suggested.

All sun-dried tomatos I've experienced so far, which isn't that many because I'm a fast learner, have tasted and smelled musty to me. Not a pleasant thing. I might substitute a dollop of tomato paste or something to get what I imagine might be an effect somewhat similar to that intended.

OtterB @148: I am often reminded that I Am Not Like Other People. For one thing, I grew up in the 80s, so hot pink and searing turquoise are almost neutrals for me. :->

I remember scoffing at my mother, sometime in my late grade school years, for being absolutely over the moon that 'her colors' were back in style. She bought multiples of every wardrobe basic (pants, turtlenecks, button-down shirts, skirts, etc), and only opened one of each to wear: the rest (often three or four of each color in each garment) were left in the plastic, stacked in bins at the top of her closet, for use when the first one wore out.

Then I realized in college that all the current colors were fugly to me ... and that I literally had to either compromise and wear stuff I hated, or wait for the colors to come around again. Needless to say, compromised a little (I now own, ugh, multiple pairs of brown pants -- at least I can sometimes find chocolate/coffee, instead of the lighter, greener hues) when I started looking like a ragpicker in worn-out clothes I loved the colors of.

It's all of a piece with selling swimsuits in February, I think; the clothing industry has so overspecialized itself to only survive because of overconsumption that it has to change the colors radically on a more-than-ten-year horizon, and pre-sell each season's clothes, to survive at all on the prices they charge. It makes consumers buy clothes to the industry's timetable and tastes rather than their own. And some consumers don't even mind ...

About decorating and colors -

I'm with Elliott on the hatred of trendy pink/orange, brown/turquoise combos we've been given recently. I'm also quite tired of the giant tree and plant silhouettes they're slapping on everything. It feels instantly dated to the 70's to me. (also tired of: branches, animal horns used as dust-collecting objets. Guess we're done with the multiple useless spheres of crap.)

I've just redone my bedroom and discovered that if I don't want loud prints or bland, dirty looking neutrals, the search terms I have to use is "Shabby Chic", and damn is it hard to do a bedroom in pale colors without looking like it belongs to a 6 year-old going through a princess phase. Normally I'd gravitate toward jewel tones, but my bedroom is small and I don't want it to feel as cramped as it actually is. I think I'm going for a mostly white/super pale, glacier blue look just because I don't want giant two-dimensional plant life silhouettes or baby pink ruffles everywhere.

Elliott Mason @150: Not just colours but styles. I loathe low-waist trousers. Refuse to wear them. Which means that, some outdoor clothiers apart, it hasn't been possible for me to buy any for several years now: the shops just are not selling any where the wasit band actually reaches the waist. I even saw one pair offered as "high-waisted: resting just below the natural waist". Even my favorite outdoor shop has been highjacked by the "pink and purple is what all women want to wear" brigade and haven't done any of their women's clothes in a decent green for years. And the mens stuff (colours and cut both preferable to what they're doing for the women) is mostly too large for me (I can manage the short-sleeved shirts, if I don't mind the sleeves reaching my elbows).

Oh god, no decent green! I feel your pain, dcb! I'm a big fan of purple, but most greens look stunning on me. The last few years I've only found olive drab or neon chartreuse. So sad!

But I'm a big fan of low-waisted jeans, because my exceptionally short waist puts most pants buttons squarely in my navel (ouch!) or at the bottom of my ribcage. Why fashion has decided to follow the rules of Highlander, and refuse to manufacture more that "Only One" particular cut at any given time is completely beyond me.

Nerdycellist @153: It's to make you rebuy the rest of your wardrobe. Seriously. Low-waisted pants make it exceptionally hard to look good tucking your shirt in, so you need to buy shirts that look ok (or even good -- witness all the lace-hem camis lately, meant to be worn hanging out under a buttoned-down overshirt with short tails) when not tucked in.

So they sell short-tailed shirts, meaning that even if you happen to still HAVE tuckable pants, you now can't buy any shirts LONG enough to tuck into them! And so on. It's a whole suite of style choices that mean you can't mix-and-match your old wardrobe (cut incompatibility, clashing colors, etc) with your new one, so you 'need' to buy matching outfits of the 'new' looks.

It is possible to get by frugally in classic looks under such a regime, but MAN is it WORK.

And in re real-waisted girl pants, Land's End is a decent place to look, especially the back racks. Their pants cuts are, though not declared to be, very fit-diverse. My fit problem is that I need the front-to-back-through-crotch seam to be very long, because of extra Junk In My Trunk compared to most fitting dummies. I know what size I take in Land's End, so if I grab all the non-horrid colors of corduroys in the right size off the rack, two or three will fit me without cutting me in half. When the tag with the Magic Number (inside the pants, it's a lot of digits, and basically individually identifies that particular exact item) is checked, there's a consistent similarity, so their back-end knows there are different cuts, but it doesn't show up on the price tag.

B. Durbin @ 123: There are some highly disagreeable patterns on that page ("Hope Garden" and "Frankly Scarlet", for example), but I quite like the one you linked to directly. Go figure.

OtterB (148): When I was about 13, in the mid-1970s, I picked out fabric for my mother to make me pants: bright purple polyester. Yes, I wore those all through high school. :)

Around the same time, my mother had the couch and easy chair upholstered in a black-white-and-orange stripe. Not *quite* as bad as it sounds, but pretty bad. She insists the fabric wasn't nearly that ugly in the small samples she was working from. (Note: she is very fond of orange; I am not.)

Also around that time, I went away to camp and came home to find that my mother had painted the bathroom orange. That was quite a shock!

Random OT-ness: A couple of days ago, I had a fairly weird tactile illusion for a few moments. I was talking to my mother on the phone, and at one point I asked her what the temperature was outside where she was. She said she hadn't checked yet, and took the phone to a back door to check the outside thermometer there. Then I could hear her opening the door, and heard the background noise of the chilly air outside.

At that moment, the arm with which I was holding my phone started to feel slightly cool. Apparently, some part of my brain had decided that since there was the sound of chilly outside air coming from the phone, the part of my body closest to it should theoretically feel cold, and so it created a feeling of coldness there. The feeling stayed until my mother closed the door on her end of the line.

So I guess my brain kind of decided to believe its ideas of how things work rather than my lying temperature nerve endings.

Elliott, #135: Awesome and cutting-edge, my ass; every one of the combos you mention is recycled from the late 60s/early 70s "psychedelic mod" era. Well, the brown-and-turquoise might be more from the late 50s; there were a couple of buildings in Nashville with that kind of color scheme (yes, turquoise ceramic trim on the outside) which dated from then.

Jacque, #138: We didn't eat fish much when I was growing up. But my supervisor at one of my past jobs liked to bring his lunch, which tended to be the previous night's dinner leftovers, and about once every 2 weeks it would be salmon, and you could smell it ALL OVER THE BUILDING for the rest of the afternoon after he'd heated it up in the microwave. Gah.

dcb, #152: +1 on the hate for hip-huggers; the last time they came thru I had the figure to wear them, but now I don't. You'd think at least the companies selling larger sizes would have a clue. Your best bet at the moment is to shop in thrift stores -- look for one near the rich/trendy part of town, because that's where the "I can't be seen in this because it's OUT OF STYLE" castoffs will be.

B. Durbin @123: Ha! I knew that was a Vera Bradley bag just from your description. Ewwww. I love browsing the "Gifts for book lovers" area at Barnes & Noble, with all the journals with owls on them and pencil cases printed with cartoon robots, but then there's the omnipresent table of Vera Bradley merchandise, a cacophony of color patterns that are each in themselves cacophonous, and it's like a punch in the eye.

I like brown and turquoise together, though, and pants that don't quite come up to my waist. (dcb, if you're in geographical and adipose range of Lane Bryant, they might be worth a shot -- their "low-rise" jeans tend to hit even my generously bellied self at the ribcage.) Perhaps it's generational; I was born in 1981, so clothing that's reminiscent of the '70s strikes me as cool and faintly alien. If scrunchies and Zubaz came back, I would be utterly appalled.

Living on the Upper Left Coast of the US, fresh salmon is a perk of the location (though a bit expensive for our current budget, so it's not something we eat all the time). However, there is a place for canned salmon: a simple and tasty hors d'œuvre.

Open a can of salmon and carefully extract and discard the bones and skin. Mix remainder with one package of good quality cream cheese (Philadelphia or equivalent; watch out for cheap brands with extra gum in them) and one green onion cut into small lengths. Serve as a dip or garnish.

[Thought I'd posted this hours ago]

Carrie S. @129: Okay, that "old" might be - I've-no-idea-what!

I did -think- you would be familiar with the ordinary cotton flosses and have considered that possibility, but you never know when the obvious slips by, somehow.

You might be amused that I saw a cross stitch website recently where someone* was asking, with all apparent seriousness why the flosses were sometimes called "silks"...

I'm still on the lookout for patterns for animals, mainly to go on bookmarks**, so if you know of any, please let me know. Also a football and football boots (for one for my nephew), if you happen to see one

*the person writing the website and providing information about embroidery.

** projects of manageable size, which can then be given to people - so the pattern needs to be no more than say 30 stitches in one direction, can be longer in the other direction

I have one of those Vera Bradley patterns on an umbrella. It is mostly pink and orange paisley. I got it in the hopes that it was so loud and hideous it would be hard to lose in the back of my closet or forget about on the subway. So far it's worked!

Why toss salmon skin? Isn't that where a lot of flavor and vitamins reside?

Ooh, I just noticed the "Link back to Open thread 153" near the top of the page. Well done, well done! /em taps_cane_on_floor

Tim Walters, like it all you want. Take it, wear it, put it on your wall... but don't give it to somebody whose color profile tends toward jewel tones, who likes simple, clean lines, and who tends towards simplicity. It just... doesn't work.

Nerdycellist—I'm like you, except that my hips are so bizarrely proportioned (at least according to the clothing industry) that so-called low-rise pants don't work for me either—they're designed to fit around the hips, but my hips are lower. It's like this: most women's hips are like a pentagon on its point, and mine are like the Superman logo. Sucks in terms of finding pants; I have a style from Eddie Bauer that pretty much works, because it's loose fit and I can let the waistband slide low without it being obvious or uncomfortable. If I pull it up where it should be, it hits my rib cage because I need the tall legs.

I have found a perfect workaround for summer, though. I shop in the petites section for bermuda shorts or capris, and they hit me like regular shorts (the latter with perhaps a cuff.)

I like my body. I hate the clothing industry.

David Harmon @147: celery?

Yes, enough cheese and butter will turn even celery into food. Seems like a horrible thing to do to innocent cheese and butter, but sometimes extreme measures are called for. (Might even work for rutabegas, but I 'spect you'd be getting into the ppb range. </snark>)

@150-154: This is basically why my wardrobe of choice consists of solid-color mens t-shirts, yoga pants or mens solid-color sweatpants, and mens shirts used as a jacket.

I love hip-hugger jeans, but between my digestive issues and the, um, onset of age, I can't really carry them off anymore. (Made my own for years, though it's still hard to find pant-weight corduroy in non-horrible colors.)

I also love bright saturated colors in prints, but since my hair has gone gray, I can't really carry those off, either.

Most days, I feel like a monk or a nun.

Lee @158: you could smell it ALL OVER THE BUILDING for the rest of the afternoon

Ah, yes. Weaponized salmon. We've encountered that here a couple of times. Fortunately, the population is small enough and well-enough acquainted that collective displeasure is generally Made Known rather promptly, and so it doesn't happen very often.

Far as I know, my reheated salmon loaf slipped by entirely unremarked. (Whew!)

Salmon: I use the canned stuff for salads. I crush up the bones and mix in the skin. Add plain yogurt, celery, green onions.

I used to broil salmon steaks or fillets on a regular basis. Got out of the habit. I should really re-start.

xeger @ 115 — If my paternal grandmother were still around to make her pressure-cooked chicken soup, I'd offer you a bowl. People who dislike or are squeamish about bones, don't read this: Orpnhfr bs gur cerffher-pbbxvat, gur iregroenr jbhyq trg gung graqre-rabhtu-ohg-fgvyy-avpryl-pehapunoyr grkgher. So good.

Bruce E. Durocher @ 116: Much, much sympathy. The last time I was laid out by an episode of back pain, I found that the higher the pain level, the fewer brain cells seemed to be available for problem-solving and decision-making. I wrote about it at the time on my LJ:

And trying to figure out whether and how to reroute my travel plans when it became clear that the bus I'd planned to catch wasn't on schedule — oy. I had to silently talk myself through the whole process: "Okay, you need to check for alternatives... yes, you do... okay... open the cell phone... good. Now... start the mobile browser... load the trip planner... wait, hit enter BEFORE you try to clear the text in that field... *sigh* okay... load the trip planner again..." And then the pain eased up a bit and I could almost feel the brain cells shifting from processing the pain to processing the problem at hand. "Yeah, that'll work. And if I miss that bus connection, I can transfer to BART. And if the bus I need at the other end isn't on time at the BART station, I can catch a taxi. No problem."

Oh, yes. As usual, Pantone has announced the colors for the coming season, and, as usual, I have rated it "oh, look, another season of fashion to ignore as completely as possible." Some of us just don't look good in cool colors, and all those colors have a cool tinge to my eye. And thank you for your succinct summary at 154 of the pants-waistline and shirt-length problem.

Regarding Lands' End, what's your impression of their quality these days? After Sears acquired them, I thought their quality plummeted. Haven't wanted to try again since then.

One of my friends made Celtic knotwork pysanky until she moved on to other hobbies.

Bruce @116: I must have missed the question last time you asked it. James Millington's introduction to the 1884 edition of the book suggests the French phrase croquer le marmot, which (if I translate my French dictionary correctly) means to wait a long time for somebody you are supposed to be meeting to arrive. Unfortunately, we are all doomed to mere speculation, as the original book did not list the Portugese phrases that inspired the translations.

Lexica @ 170 ...
Orpnhfr bs gur cerffher-pbbxvat, gur iregroenr jbhyq trg gung graqre-rabhtu-ohg-fgvyy-avpryl-pehapunoyr grkgher.

Oh, absolutely! I do that when I make chicken soup, too :)

Lexica (170): I do look good in cool colors, and I can only wear four of those ten. That's one reason "make skirts and blouses for summer" is on my to-do list this spring.

The most important use for celery: blend 2 sticks with half an onion and garlic to taste. Fry lightly, then use as a base for making a tomato sauce. Definite improvement over almost any tomato sauce recipe that doesn't include celery.

Lexica #170:

After something over ten years, I nned a new briefcase; my last two have been the Lands End nylon version of their simplest thing. So I went and looked at the reviews for what they've got now, and was dismayed at the number of people who were complaining bitterly about the quality.

OTOH, this is the first year their women's clothing colors haven't been straight out of the Crayola primaries + Lilly Pulitzer box that I can remember in yonks, being instead something that actually goes with auburn hair and a pale faintly sallow complexion. And some good styles. I think I'll drop my money there this year.

Good lord, I can wear dark cool colors, but all of these wishy-washy pastels will look absolutely ass on me, with the possible exception of "russet" - which I'm sure is just "off" enough to clash with the rest of the browns in my wardrobe.

Bite me, pantone.

JM @159: Perhaps it's generational; I was born in 1981, so clothing that's reminiscent of the '70s strikes me as cool and faintly alien. If scrunchies and Zubaz came back, I would be utterly appalled.

I adore watching old teenybopper movies from the period when I was in grade school. I was too young to be interested in them the first time around, but I was very aware of all the clothing trends (that I was too poor or uninterested in copying to wear myself). Corey & Corey movies in particular are time-capsule cultural snapshots of All That Was Once Trendy, and kind of horrifyingly silly. In particular, the ripped-jeans-with-bandannas-tied-at-the-joints look strikes my funny bone nowadays. I can't remember which of the C&Cs was the one where Feldman was a ghost and opens the movie in a way that now seems sort of Desperate Housewives/Sunset Boulevardy, but in that one the trend is in full flower.

I wonder what we're doing now will look THAT silly in 20 years?

While I'm musing on the subject, I find it fascinating that the only Corey & Corey movie that's had any staying power to speak of was Goonies, which really is its own thing more than a classic C&C.

Lexica @170: At one point I had a cracked tooth that was mid-root-canal for a day or two, due to scheduling issues at the surgeon's end. When I left the dentist's office I felt fine, and did not anticipate needing to fill my pain prescription. Then it hit me, and I could almost not be coherent enough to the pharmacist to reassure them of my name, address, and birthdate. This struck me as odd (even while happening; yes, I AM that parenthetical in my own head!), because on my own personal pain-scale, it was only a 5 or 6 -- I'd had much worse. But for some reason, all my usual work-through-the-pain, ignore-it strategies were UTTERLY ineffective. Tooth pain isn't the hurtiest pain I've ever had, but it is definitely the most brain-stealing. So's labor, though that's very differently hurty, on several axes.

In re Land's End, I've not noticed any change, but I always buy at the inlets (usually from the catalog returns), never from inside Sears, and it strikes me as very possible that the inside-Sears clothes are manufactured differently. Or just that I haven't noticed. The winter coat I bought from them this year is nowhere near as warm as the last one I got several years ago, but they're not the same model and it's hard to tell what the equivalency is supposed to be, for comparison purposes.

nerdycellist #177:

I'm not objecting to russet; all the dark brown things I've gotten in the last couple of years go with nothing, but nothing, except black, khaki, cream, and white. Not even olive! Of course, I always knew chocolate was for eating, not for wearing.

Lexica @ 170, re: the Pantone colors--hold it, I just noticed something. How come men get more vivid versions of the same colors? Mind you, only one or two of them look tolerable in either the male or female varities, but I'd definitely prefer the more vivid shades.

What is this, "All women wear pastels"? Yeesh.

If you want to lose your afternoon looking at hideous "crafts" that people are actually trying to sell, take a peek over at Regretsy

Jules:

Well, that phrase makes more sense than the Jamaican claim. I'm not sure from the introduction you linked to if James Millington actually got hold of a copy of "O Novo guia da conversação em francês e português," which is identified by Wikipedia as the book that Carolino used for his lash-up. If so, I'd be fascinated to see what English phrases, if any, come up near croquer le marmot...

I generally ignore the trendy colours/styles, unless they suit me -- my shape isn't even vaguely similar to the average fit model.

On the topic of fun prints, this coat is something I made a while back, for a May Morning.

Joann @ #176 and Elliott Mason @ #178

For things like coats and luggage, I'm a devoted L.L. Bean shopper. I've found their quality to be very consistent, and on the rare occasion when I've been disappointed with a product, I've found their policy of "we accept all returns, no questions asked, no matter the item's age or condition" to be exactly as stated. So when I ripped a seam in a bookbag because I lugged both the Riverside Chaucer AND the Riverside Shakespeare around in it together every day for a semester, boom, new bag.

OtterB, #148: Oh yeah, I'm even noticing the "Flower Power" decals of the type we used to put on our notebooks back in junior high are back again.

JM, #159: Brown and turquoise can go together; it's very common in jewelry to see turquoise with picture jasper or other brown/tan stones, or with wood. The issue with the current fashion colors is that they don't invoke the forest or desert -- the shades being used are wrong for that.

nerdycellist, #162: Also, nobody else is likely to pick it up by mistake! (Or on purpose, with the thought that it looks like every other umbrella out there and so is a safe one to grab.)

Lexica, #170: I do look good in cool colors, but most of those read "warm" to me (yes, even the blues); I might be able to get away with a couple of them, but in general not. I'm still trying to replace my old teal leggings that died last year; when I can find leggings at all in my size, they've been nothing but dark neutrals.

Julie, #171: Wow, those are fabulous!

Sarah S. @184: I have a probably-irrational aversion to ordering stuff from a catalog that I can't try on, because then if it doesn't fit I have to return it. And I mostly find the returning-it to be such a PITA (did I mention, irrational?) that I never do it, so I waste money on stuff I can't wear.

Jacque @ 138

I haven't looked at the chronology of fish-shipping conditions over my lifetime, but having had the priviledge of spending 90% of my life within sight of the Pacific Ocean, generally the "fresh" fish I've eaten has, in fact, been fresh. (Had more to say but have to run to a meeting.)

Lee @ 158: I have the figure, I just hate them. Thanks everyone for the store suggestions, but I'm in the UK... Yes, I keep looking in charity shops (aka thrift stores) but even those are only getting hip-huggers nowadays.

Elliott Mason @ 154: It's to make you rebuy the rest of your wardrobe. Seriously. And I refuse to play. I look for classic styles, all the time. If I can't find them, I don't buy. That's why I can still wear stuff I bought 20 years ago.

I rather like some of those Pantone colours (peapod, Blue Curacao, Beeswax, Silver Cloud), but their "Russet" is nothing like what I call russet. And I'd prefer the men's Turf Green and Flint Grey. Yes, they always get stronger colours while we're supposed to prefer pastels.

Julie L. @171: Those are gorgeous.Particularly the Celtic knotwork and the dragons.

Elliott @135: Stick to your guns on the no logo, no licensed character front. It will make your life both harder and easier in times to come but it's so worth it. At almost 15, my teenager understands that having the word "Abercrombie" printed on your shirt does not make the shirt worth $$$ more than the same shirt from JC Penny and that branding is no guarantee of quality. That doesn't mean we didn't have struggles getting here, of course, both from the child and from friends and some family members.

I suspect it was easier, 10 years ago, to find non-branded "princess" stuff than it is now. Luckily my child wasn't solely driven by the princess thing, so dress up in our house also involved tiny graduation robes picked up at thrift stores (they make excellent wizard's robes), oversized plaid men's shirts and vests, and acres of scarves, feather boas, funny hats, and silly plastic jewelry (my thanks to the conventions that hand out Mardi Gras beads).

I suspect that I may have said things like "We don't wear licensed products" and "If someone wants me to advertise their company, I think they should pay me to wear their logo." around folks who were prone to those sorts of gifts, and told stories about picking logos off items we'd received as gifts, until the point seemed to penetrate. I tried not to say "don't buy this for us" but to make general philosophical statements or to point out sources of more acceptable gifts ("Did you see the wonderful Playmobil castle?--it comes with dragons!").

My own little piece of hypocrisy is that I love the Disney theme parks. And I do own a few Disney items--but they are not things I wear in public.

xeger (183): The colleague sitting next to me and I both think that coat is awesome!

Sarah S #184:

I buy stuff from Bean's, but I'm not enamored of their current color palette, and as for the briefcase, they (like just about everyone) have mostly switched to messenger bags, which don't have double handles on top. I can't wear a shoulder strap (stuff slides right off), and the crossbody version does not play well for anyone not wraith-thin up top. Their briefcases are either heavy materials, or have extra flaps that make them too thick.

I'm about to switch over to my William Morris-patterned tote bag, I swear, even though it's partly pink. If I can find it; I can't recall seeing it since the move two years ago.

dcb@152: I found jeans at Macy's that sit at my waist. Bought 2 pair, I was so excited! I have a high waist, but I simply do not feel comfortable in low-rise pants.

As for colors, I look best in jewel tones. Anything with too much yellow (be it orange, red, or green) is, as my daughter would say, a fail, and brown, unless chocolateish, is deadly. Shopping is _fun_.

David Harmon #147. Och, it hasnae a name, to quote George Macdonald Fraser, although he was referring to a certain form of scotch whiskey that had not, perhaps, paid the King what his government thought it should.

Earl Cooley III @163:

I personally will snack on the skin all day, but I've become accustomed to cries of "Ew! Gross!" when people even see it, so I routinely just tell people to toss it (or give it to me).

AKICIML: A couple of friends of mine are looking for novels they remember only vaguely. The first one says:

Once upon a time, perhaps 20 years ago, I read a mystery novel set during a production of Macbeth. The director of the play was the victim, the detective was laid up in the hospital recovering from something, and the key to solving the murder was figuring out who the director was planning to unveil as the third murderer (a witch), when this had been kept secret from the cast. I think the last line was the quote "Light thickens".

Unfortunately, I cannot at the moment recall the name of the author, the title of the book, or the name of the detective. The detective was a male. The author was not Ngaio Marsh, and the book is not her final mystery "Light Thickens"; I'm looking for the mystery where that is the last line, not the title.

As coincidence would have it, these past few days I too have been thinking about a novel I read decades ago. I believe it was written in the 40s or 50s. I have occasionally searched the Web for references to it, with no luck. It is a sort of reverse murder mystery. Early on in the book, the narrator's brother-in-law has some sort of drunk/violent episode that the narrator sees as a threat to his sister. Unpremeditatedly, the narrator kills his brother-in-law by hitting him over the head with a large, oddly shaped cigarette lighter. No one else is present, including the sister. The narrator immediately, and dispassionately, starts thinking about ways to cover up. The rest of the book is a study in psychology wherein we are continually wondering whether he will get away with it, and how.

The hero's friend, who becomes his girlfriend, is named Wiggy. I thought this would help in my searches, but it doesn't. I remember the book as a large-format paperback with an orange cover.

O.K., it's clear that I've been stuck in the house just so I can go insane. My apologies if I've gone into this before, but bear with me please. My sister has dyslexia, which was magnified by being taught the old "shape of words" method (which "See Spot Run!" was created to teach) rather than reading alphabetically/phonetically. They just got a fiber optic connection instead of analog cell phones that were the only way their valley had to communicate (the company apparently had to tunnel through a mountain to get near them) so she and her husband got their first computer. It took 3 months to convince her they needed an external drive ("But I don't want to store the internet!") despite her agreeing that because I used to do tech support I have some experience in this area. Additionally my pointing out that I don't have a Win 7 machine here to use so I could match what is going on with her machine if necessary didn't trump the fact that I'm her little brother and that Apple computers are expensive, so they bought a Toshiba laptop with Win 7 and expect me to do tech support via Skype calls from central Oregon.

I've been doing pretty well with their problems, mainly because I'm NOT my brother-in-law's little brother and he calls when things crash, but I'm starting to get worn down with calls asking "What is Prt Scrn?" at random times of the day or night. Are there any places they can rent a video (oh god, I hope so, because Sis is extremely frugal) or buy one for cheap that's akin to a Dummy's Guide? A written guide will do no good at all here, and if I keep taking calls on how to turn the volume up and down on the computer I'm going to go into a corner, lift a cement block over my head, and burst, thus ending my tech support cares once and for all...

Bruce @ 196

Youtube an option?

Is it evil of me to be quietly delighted that this racist asshole in the Netherlands that I know from another site just got fired from his job for cussing out his Polish boss and telling him he shouldn't be allowed to supervise real Nederlanders because he's just a rotten Pole?

(That's not how he describes it, of course, but allowing for his lying and self-justification I'm guessing that's what happened.)

If it is, then evil I am and evil shall be. You should hear what he says about Muslims!

Xopher: I don't see that as evil.

To me, your delight is the delight one feels at seeing all right with the world: children snug in their beds, pot of tea bubbling on the hob, people being treated in the ways their own actions make them deserve to be treated.

Mind, sometimes it's nice if the world has mercy in it, but people who push their luck sometimes find it isn't there to be pushed anymore, if you know what I mean.

Mind, I think Murphy's Law is a manifestation of godhood at work, so maybe I've got a twisted point of view. :->

KayTei: Youtube an option?

Since they've on fiber-optic they should have a faster and better connection than the horrible ADSL connection I have. Is there an introductory series there you can recommend? Considering the crap that's mixed in there I hate to have her try something at random...

#129
Lovely, lovely goose egg pysanky. Thank you for the link, Carrie S. I never thought to search for pysanky on Etsy. Doh!

#171
Julie, nice Celtic pysanky. Thanks for the link! Beautiful things.

I have diabetes and neuropathy. I probably will never do eggs again. But as I wrote, I still have the tools and dyes, so who knows?

m

How about telling him that 'godverdomme', which is what he claims he said, is Polish for something really nasty and obscene?

I admitted in the same post that I made that up. I wanted to give the guy a moment's panic, not a heart attack!

Wow. One of my pictures (What Dreams?) got posted on reddit.

Let's just say the traffic to that photo is atypical.

If celery is a spice, how come it goes bad after a week or two? (Says the man who wishes they sold celery by the stalk, so he could buy just two or three at a time.)

Elliot Mason @ 135: My family also have what you call 'fictive kin'. Fictive doesn't quite march with the way any of us think of such things, so I eventually called in kin's sib-word to help: kith-brother, kith-sister, kith-niece. (That's for clarification or specification only: in general, none of us use qualifiers except under such circumstances as one might refer to one's brother as one's half-brother if so he were, i.e. not very often at all).

Xopher @ 198: Not evil, unless appreciating the spring of all fairy-tales is evil.

Bruce @ #196, tell your b-in-law and sister to go to the local branch library and ask the librarian for computer training CDs. I just checked my library and there are plenty available there.

Celery seed doesn't go bad. (More so than any other dry seed.) And before you ask, I've seen dried flaked celery (stalk) sold as a spice too. But I didn't get the impression it was worthwhile.

This evening I boiled and mashed the parsnips, carrots, and celeriac, and then tossed the lot in with crumbled pork sausage. It wasn't very fatty sausage, was the only flaw in the plan -- so the result didn't fry noticeably -- but it was tasty anyhow.

I am looking for a really detailed online glossary of Victorian and/or Civil War costume terminology that explains the differences among a demi-toilette, home costume, morning dress, etc. I don't seem to be able to brain tonight--I can't ask my search engine the right questions to get the sites I need. Surely there is something out there?

Jenny Islander @208: would this Victorian sartorial glossary help? (First result on googling "Victorian costume glossary", and it looks as if it would have much of what you want....)

Linkmeister: ...tell your b-in-law and sister to go to the local branch library and ask the librarian for computer training CDs. I just checked my library and there are plenty available there.

Good idea! I'd suggested that they check with the library for classes several times, but had gotten resistance because it's 40+ minutes each way. CD's or DVD's might fly better.

Victorian costume glossary

That was what I was missing. Wow, I'm tired.

That page did clear up a lot of things. Thanks!

Xopher @195, plugging the phrase "light thickens" into Google Books turns up Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh: "Four murders. Three witches. A fiendish lady. A homicidal husband. A ghost. No wonder Macbeth is considered such bad luck by theatre people that they won't mention its name out loud. But the new London production of 'the Scottish play' promises to be a smash until gruesome pranks begin plaguing rehearsals. And when the last act ends in real-life tragedy, Chief Superintendent Alleyn takes center stage-uncovering a heartbreaking secret, murderous jealousy, and a dark, desperate reason for 'murder for foul'..." I'd bet that's it.

No luck on the second book, though.

Terry Karney @ 203: Great photo.

Cranes: 61 folded. I have some good folding time (local train journeys) this weekend, so I'll see how many more I can manage before thinking of stringing them and sending them.

Morning delight: I opened the curtains on the patio windows this morning and caught sight of something moving fast at ground level. Stopped, waited a moment, and discovered a beautiful field mouse, with rich brown fur, large ears and huge dark eyes. Tried to take a photo, but it didn't like the beam the camera puts out for focusing. Hope I didn't drive it away.

Avram @ 212: From Xopher's original request at @ 195, "The author was not Ngaio Marsh, and the book is not her final mystery "Light Thickens"; I'm looking for the mystery where that is the last line, not the title."

I wonder if it could be one of Simon Brett's Charles Paris novels, where the detective is a jobbing stage and television actor? I don't remember one featuring a production of Hamlet, but I haven't read them all by any means. The earliest was published in 1975.

Hyperlocal news: Englishman completely immersed in book, gets to bit set in Exposition Park, has to return to Primary World London until stops laughing like drain.

Hyperlocal news: Englishman completely immersed in book, gets to bit set in Exposition Park, has to return to Primary World London until stops laughing like drain.

M Evans @#201: I discovered while making my treasury that a great deal of the Etsy pysanky are made by three or four shops. It made things a little difficult, and I ended up with two shop duplicates pretty much by accident.

I have this urge to get an ostrich egg somewhere and do an insanely detailed egg. At the scale usually used for chicken eggs, all over the ostrich egg. It'd take forever, but it would be so cool.

Is it evil of me to be quietly delighted that this racist asshole in the Netherlands that I know from another site just got fired from his job for cussing out his Polish boss and telling him he shouldn't be allowed to supervise real Nederlanders because he's just a rotten Pole?

No.

It's part of every religious and ethical tradition I'm aware of that justice is important, and to be longed for and celebrated. And part of justice (not one of the fun parts) is that the evildoers suffer. (Which is why "I believe in the forgiveness of sins" is one of my prized lines in the Creed.)

Xopher:

Nothing wrong with feeling a little glee, as long as you don't let it spill over into doing or saying something that you might regret later.

My better half recently had a similar experience. Apparently the head of the company she was fired from last year left unexpectedly shortly after she did. And the new director did a clean sweep of the management. Everyone seems to have landed on their feet with the notable exception of her direct manager. The one with the 25 hour work week and the habit of saying "Y'know that big project that you were going to have finished by the end of the day Tuesday? I think you should finish it before you leave tonight" right before walking out the door at 4:00 on a Friday.

It was partly the proof that her firing had more to do with politics than anything in her performance that lightened her step for a week after that. ("See, board members, all the problems in my department were her fault! I was a good manager who dealt with the problem! You should keep me on even after my friend and protector the Executive Director has left!")

But there was more than a little schadenfreude in there too.

Gray Woodland @205 said to my @135: My family also have what you call 'fictive kin'

We don't call them fictive to their faces (though they wouldn't mind, they're an academic family), that's the technical term. I became aware of it my freshman year in college, when I took a basic sociology course.

We got to the chapter on kin-structures, and early in the lecture, the prof said, "How many of you have fictive kin? Raise your hands." Nobody. "Ok, how many of you have someone you call your aunt or uncle, even though you know they're not related to you by blood or marriage? One of your parents' friends?" Quite a few hands. "THAT is fictive kin, and you all have some. Now, in our society, the choice and addition of fictive kin tends to be casual, but in some societies it is more regulated ..." and on with the lecture, now that she'd related it to US instead of leaving it some Foreign Thing they do in Foreign Parts.

To their faces, we don't really call most of this family anything but their names. The matriarch is Gunga, since that's what her first grandchild named her, and she's definitely our kid's extra grandma. One of her daughters is jokingly the 'triplet' of me and my sister-in-law -- we are staggeringly siblinglike, the three of us, when gotten in one room.

Peter Watts continues his recovery from necrotizing fasciitis. He has posted pictures on his blog and a progress report here (not for the squeamish).

Xopher @ 195

The book where the mystery centers around the identity of the casting of the Third Witch in Macbeth is Bullets For Macbeth, by Marvin Kaye. I was just thinking about it the other day.

Jules @175: Definite improvement over almost any tomato sauce recipe that doesn't include celery.

Not. ;-)

(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Lee @185: "Flower Power" decals

You mean "ricky ticky stickies?"

Xopher, Chris: Reminds me of the Head Honcho at my last non-consulting day job. He had a habit of hiring a new salesman in January, and then firing him about 2 days before the distribution of Xmas bonuses. He did this at least 3 times that I was aware of.

Then our company got bought out by a large corporation... and the following year, he got let go about a week before Xmas. I won't say there were active celebrations in the break room, but there was a distinct sentiment of "serves him right, the bastard" among those of us who were left.

Bruce @ 200

I admit, it was just a first thought, and I hadn't chased it down to that level of detail. I talked to my husband, who does this stuff for a living, and he recommends either training videos/dvds or training programs with built-in emulators, so they have a safe space in which to follow directions and make any mistakes they might otherwise be worried about. His comment on Youtube was actually that it's a bit problematic because the screen is small, and you can't watch youtube and use the computer at the same time (live and learn!).

It occurs to me that mac, at least, had some pretty good built-in tutorials last time I was using one (something like fifteen years ago). I used them to try to teach my computer-phobic grandfather how to use the computer. And now I couldn't even begin to tell you where they were located or whether they've continued to provide that level of support.

Jacque, #224: I don't recall ever hearing that phrase, but like this. Except that's just a reproduction of the decals, and I've seen the decals themselves stuck on things much too new to be hold-overs.

M Evans @201: I have diabetes and neuropathy.

Not necessarily a show stopper.

Terry Karney @203: That's a wonderful photo! (Has it been cheezburgered yet?)

Alan Beatty #204:

Herewith I reproduce this Tuesday's grocerying conversation:

DH: What are you doing?
ME: Getting a stalk of celery.
DH: One stalk? But, but ...
ME: I only need one. By the time I cook something else that needs it, the rest of the big celery would be all to mush. (Takes stalk, weighs, prints out label) See? Why spend $2 when this stalk is only 16 cents?
DH: You seem to have a point.

Elliott Mason @220: 'fictive kin'

Ah! That's the term I needed for this annecdote. (Do a Find on "Susan's Family.")

I later figured out that, since they live in Lamar, Colorado, they are obviously "The Lamartians."

Lee @227: Yup. "That's the man, officer." I had assumed it was trademark, but when I googled, it seems to be a generic term. The current (meaning the last 10 or 15 years) manifestation in Boulder is Moe's Bagels. Absolute genius: only way to obtain proper ricky ticky stickies was to get their promotional stickers. Eye-catching, distinctive, and memorable. (Of course, they don't give out unbranded stickers.)

OMG

Latest thing to appear on the break-room table: Coffee glazed macadamia nuts.

Makes up for yesterday's peanut butter cheesecake, and then some.

Wow.

(Macadamia nuts, I'm concluding, are evilevilevil. But in a good way.)

Jacque@233: Boil nuts for a few minutes in salted water. Macadamia nuts are good in this, as are cashews, pecans, walnuts. Don't think I've tried Brazil, filberts, or almonds. Toss nuts just out of the water (wet) with granulated sugar until well coated. Let dry in a single layer until thoroughly dry. Now, deep-fry them until the sugar turns golden.

THAT is evil. (I think it's from Mrs. Chiang's Szechuan Cookbook, my first Szechuan book, but I haven't looked at the recipe on the page for two decades).

Elliot @220:
early in the lecture, the prof said, "How many of you have fictive kin? Raise your hands." Nobody.

I would have, because when you have a "pseudo-grandfather" (referred to as such in his presence), it's a short leap to understanding "fictive kin".

Had it just been my "grandmother on the mountain", I'd have probably left the hand down.

Steve Halter @221:

Very much not for the squeamish, since you don't get the advantage of the cut like you do if you go to his blog.

Having said that, Wow! Wow wow wow. Human bodies are neat, even when they're in trouble. That's cooler than the photo my husband took of my C-section.

Ahem. I may be slightly strange.

Interesting crossover between two previous ML topics:

Dervaes "urban homesteaders" engage in plagiarism.

(For those coming in late, the Dervaes family discussion was a sub-thread here, starting at comment #87.)

joann at 179: I've recently started wearing chocolate brown stuff, and I think (she said cautiously) that it goes well with blue stuff. I'm wearing brown tops and blue jeans, and no one seems to look at me funny. (I wouldn't much care if they did. The only person whose fashion sense I have to please is me.)

Question: what are "jewel tones"?

Lizzy L @238: emerald green, sapphire blue, ruby red, et alia.

abi@236:Yes, I quite agree, it is not something you want to have happen, but it is interesting in the abstract. And, he does provide balloons and cats with balloons.

Elliott Mason #239:

Whereas I go best with wine and sherry tones. With a dash of mustard.

KayTei: I talked to my husband...he recommends either training videos/dvds or training programs with built-in emulators..Youtube...a bit problematic because the screen is small, and you can't watch...and use the computer at the same time.

Ah, well, those are all good points which once again lead us to the question of where to get good training videos and how much. I'm going to recommend (again) she check with her town's reference librarian...

mac, at least, had some pretty good built-in tutorials last time I was using one (something like fifteen years ago).

That brings to mind unboxing my old Mac 128 and playing the audiotapes (with specially recorded Windham Hill songs) on how to set up and use it. Those were the days.

Lexica: Much, much sympathy. The last time I was laid out by an episode of back pain, I found that the higher the pain level, the fewer brain cells seemed to be available for problem-solving and decision-making.

Yes!

ddb @234: No, dear, I think you're beyond evil into explicitly Satanic.

@ Peter Watts: Dear ghu. The pebffungpuvat bs gur zhfpyr snfpvn are really cool, though. Reminds me of the time I qvfrpgrq n fanxr.

I seem to have been drawn into the crane vortex*, although I doubt I'll be able to make very many.

*platypus, murnival, serpentine

Jacque@244: <preen>!

abi @ 236: Perhaps you have the soul of a veterinarian. I won't ask you where you got it, nor even to put it back.

Those photos are lovely! Nice healthy tissue, nice granulation in the later photo -- that's what will pull the skin back into place during scar formation.

ddb @247: :-)

ddb@234

What did the original Szechuan recipe use for nuts? They can't have had macadamias, walnuts, or pecans, and I don't think of Sichuan as rainforesty enough for cashews.

thomas@250: I'll try to remember to look in the actual book (if my memory is wrong that may not work too well, though). I'm pretty sure the book said "use any nut you like" and talked about the commonly available ones (in the USA) that were good. It may have talked more about the original ingredients, but I don't remember.

This particular book was perfect for me in the 70s. It was written by an American couple who had a Szechuan woman, the "Mrs. Chiang" of the title, working for them as a cook (I think both in China and here; but maybe only in China). So, they addressed issues of getting ingredients in America at that time, and substitutions, and such, which were all very useful to me. And Mrs. Chiang may have already done some adaptation before teaching them the recipes. I remember a discussion of how most of the "shrimp" dishes were originally intended for crayfish (I believe a map of Sichuan province makes obvious why), for example.

Steve Halter @221 and the ensuing Watts discussion -- particularly fascinating to me is to be able to see which fascia appear to have been attacked. Since fascia are everywhere, there's some really interesting anatomy being demonstrated there (and I don't have the soul of a vet, just the interests of a massage therapist).

Re deep-fried nuts -- if you add a little cinnamon to the sugar, you'll get something remarkably like the (highly-addictive!) snacks one can buy at the Texas Renaissance Faire. They use cashews, pecans, and almonds, so any of those will certainly work for this. Peanuts probably would too, but they have more of a competing flavor of their own than the others do.

thomas@250: Wild guess says peanuts, via the Portuguese. Cashews show up in Chinese cooking, as do almonds and walnuts. I have no idea of the time frame or original sourcing of any of those, though, especially not as pertaining to Szechuan cooking.

#67 ::: Jacque
OM NOM definitely food om nom nom....

Just because this is an open thread:

My friend has a baby who recently turned one. I often visit, and often feed him when I visit.

I have taught him to say "Nom nom nom".

We now return you to your regularly scheduled open thread.

Cheryl @255: Okay, now it's time to start taking bets on how long it will be before lolcats expressions start turning up in Webster's. (And how they will handle the etymology.)

(No bets on the OED; ISTR hearing that they've already started a section on Fannish in recent years.)

Cally 222: Thanks! I bet that's it. I'll check with my friend, but it sure meets the criteria.

About the bigot in the Netherlands, he still hasn't explained exactly what happened or what the bosses SAID about why they were firing him, despite being asked repeatedly. His latest comment on it was "I blasphemed." I doubt he's referring to his utterance of 'godverdomme'! He's never going to admit that he deserved it.

About the cranes: I hope you all know how overwhelmed I am by this. I just don't know what to say. I tear up (like now) when I even mention it at all, even in writing. It means more to me than you can imagine.

Xopher: :-)

HLN- Upon attempting to section a bus schedule for crane paper, local woman discovers a distinct lack of talent for paper guillotines. A careful survey of fingers reveals none missing.

Cheryl @255: My six year old has coined the term "omnomcious". This tickles my funny bone.

Naomi Parkhurst @260: "omnomcious"

Mine as well!

Fictive kin: My grandmother turns out to have been my aunt, and her husband, whom I thought was my grandfather, was actually her unrelated husband.

My other grandfather, who (because my mother was born late in his own life) I only knew as a prophet-eyebrowed, lantern-jawed patriarch of gloomily censorious mien about everything, turns out to have been an enthusiastic cross-dresser - and this nearly a century ago, when getting about in public dressed in women's duds was, uh, not encouraged.

Does it count as fictive, when what you "knew" turns out to be so incomplete that it's misleading?

Computer training videos: have they considered checking at an office supply place?

frex: http://www.officemax.com/technology/software/learning-reference-software/product-prod3000243
(I know there are more; this is the first one I saw)

Walnuts and almonds are possible in China - they're native to the Middle East. (I understand that ginkgo seeds are edible. I don't know if they could be substituted.)

Regarding eggs: I have an acquaintance who does decorative eggs for money. She was impressed when I recognised both the egg (emu) and the work she had copied onto it (a globe of Drake's Golden Hind voyage).

P J Evans: #264: I understand that ginkgo seeds are edible. I don't know if they could be substituted.

Well, they're pretty bitter, so they could probably use the deep-fried sugar! My understanding is they're not so much "food" as a medicinal or "supplement".

Also: New from Hyperbole+½, The Scariest Story.

thomas@250, Lee@253, Vee@254: The recipe is indeed in the book I remembered. It's called sweet fried nuts (tianzha hetso), it doesn't contain salt, and it includes an anecdote that Mrs. Chiang liked to pick nuts from trees in the yard as a child, and deep-fry them in sugar like this. Doesn't mention what kind of tree nuts they had in the yard, though.

The Schrecker's first had this dish at an elegant Hunanese restaurant in Taipei, and later in Taiwan. In Taiwan black walnuts were used. They specify pecans in the recipe, saying they can't obtain black walnuts. So using a mix of other nuts was my idea (just like me).

Also, the back dust-jacket photo shows Ellen Schrecker in New York Chinatown with Chiang Jung-feng, so clearly they brought her back to the US with them for a while.

(P.337 in Mrs. Chiang's Szechuan Cookbook by Ellen Schrecker with John Schrecker.)

Going around:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a corporate CEO are sitting at a table.

In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it.

The CEO reaches across the table, takes 11 cookies, and looks at the Tea Partier.

"Look out for that union guy," he says, "he wants a piece of your cookie."

I just got back from seeing a production of Cats. Yes, Cats, the musical that has gotten a bit overexposed over the years, and oh god, it's Andrew Lloyd Webber, and it makes no sense, and on and on...

(I hang out with theater types. Andrew Lloyd Webber is Not Cool. (Stephen Sondheim is Cool.))

My God. They redeemed it. This crew took this tired old production and made it freaking awesome. How?

The Victoria Grove
Institute
for
the
Mentally
Infirm.

I love Ed Trafton. You never know when he's going to throw you one of these splendiferous curveballs...

B. Durbin: Why am I suddenly thinking of Marat/Sade?

Fashion note: Anyone remember the "seasons" theory of which colors you look good in? Incomplete, to my eye, but useful to know nonetheless.

I have a slightly olive skin tone that throws people—it's literally three points greener in an RGB system than your typical fair English. Every time I order photos from the studio where I work, I have to make that specification if I'm not the one doing the color-correction or they end up with half a dozen reject photos where everything's slightly magenta.

What this means is that people suggest corals and turquoises and oranges and yellows to me and I have to hold them up to my skin and say, look at what it does, I can't wear this. (Actually, since it's usually my MiL, it's much simpler to have Evil Rob say No, it makes her look dead. Well, faster.)

I need the cool tones, preferably in highly saturated versions. I can do red IF it's not going to fade towards orange, because orange is Right Out. So I say "jewel tones" because everybody understands emerald and sapphire and garnet. In reality, there are a lot of other colors I do well with, but that's my safe route.

—>Tangent: I have a theory that people with an eye for color tend to decorate in colors that suit their skin tones. This would explain Martha Stewart and why I cannot get on board her decorating palette.

Elliot Mason: Because you've read Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and can't get that one play title out of your head?

B. Durbin: ... I've read Tam Lin. It mentions Marat/Sade?

In re colors and skin tone, I am very low-melanin (except in spots -- literally. Freckles, on large swaths of my body), but all my NON-melanin skin pigments are very like that of fairly dark American black people. So I look good in all those weirdly saturated colors Sunday suits come in -- deep purples, etc. I used to find it fruitful to shop at plus-size stores in predominantly Af-Am neighborhoods, rather than in the paler ones; they had noticeably different palettes on sale, even in the same brand of store.

Except the green/yellow/orange side of the spectrum, which is tricky -- SOME of those, I'm good in, and some make me either magenta (feverish-looking) or yellow (jaundiced). Oh, and pinks. Almost all pinks are Problematic. And I look better in scarlet/ruby reds than tomatoey ones (purply reds, not orange ones). My skin has a faint greenish cast to it, especially where/if I've tanned, in summer. I've never had any problem with photo-correction, so probably not quite as extreme as B. Durbin's, but noticeable once I point it out.

Lately I end up wearing a lot of medium-to-dark blues, because of what's available in the thrift store and how that selection interacts with the dual axes, "I like it" and "I look good in it". I do have, and adore, one brick-red-and-orange-and-beige loud plaid shirt. It's a bit louder than that picture makes it look, but not eyesearing, just SATURATED. And contrasty. I love it to bits. :->

Since I've gone gray, I really need to rethink my personal palette. But <irritating whine>I don' wanna....

I basically don't pay attention to the colors of my clothes-- I have a few shirts I don't wear ever because they make me feel ungorgeous, but that's as organized as I get. Wait, no, I lie: one of my college roommates told me blondes look good in brown, so now I have some brown things. Most of the rest is purple-blue-turquoise, pink because I don't mind it, or a printed T-shirt.

Open Thread Query: Advice/experience/request for info:

I'm presently nursing a ? stress fracture in my second left metatarsal. BUT I think there's also something else going on in that foot. I was booked in for a session with a chiropractor, which I cancelled because I spent the day cycling to the GP & the x-ray department with the ? stress fracture instead...

Has anyone had experience with physio/osteo/chiro, particularly for sports-related problems? I booked with this particular chiropractor because he examined me briefly at the London Running Show (they had a stand there, suggesting they're interested in runners' problems) and said then that I had a problem with my left foot, which was probably what was causing my recurrent ileosacral joint strain problems. I've previously seen that the shape of my left foot walking across a force plate is very different from my right foot (and from other people's feet). However, I've never previously been to a chiropractor or osteopath (I did have physio after a dislocated shoulder 10 years ago).

Any recommendations re. whether a physio, osteopath or chiropractor is a sensible choice?

I'd vote for a physical therapist/physiotherapist, but then I'm a PTA. It's also possible that the correct option is (D) podiatrist.

Musculoskeletal problems are one of the primary areas of practice for PTs, and interpreting and correcting gait abnormalities is a major focus of their education. Chiropractors have a very different view of the organization and function of the body than either PTs or osteopaths do, and it's a view I do not believe is supported by good evidence (though clearly a good many people disagree).

For a more objective view of the differences among the three, here are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics descriptions of the education and scope of practice for PTs, chiropractors and osteopaths (this article includes information on both M.D.s and D.O.s, but distinguishes where necessary).

Elliott Mason@274: Perhaps the shirt is not the sole cause of your expression, but in the photo you certainly seem very pleased about something!

I've got pretty good color discrimination and memory (stereotypically unusual for a man, I know; but it's okay, I don't have names for all those colors), but I've never learned about color palettes for skin tones. When presented with an actual combination that people think looks awful, I'll generally agree that it's a bad idea, so I don't seem to have drastically different opinions about what goes together; but I haven't systematized the knowledge. I tend to wear plain colors, about everything but pink (well, I avoid most pastels, really; but pink most strenuously). Typical geekish not-caring-about-clothes.

I'd start with an osteopath, of those three. But better yet would be a sports medicine specialist, IMO.

Yes, your personal anatomy is probably different from that of others. Osteopaths pay attention to that, in general. Chiros mostly work with the spine. You also probably have some soft-tissue quirks, which a well-trained massage therapist might help with.

Some chiropractors would be good for you to work with; some osteopaths, bad. Going through a sports medicine person as a gatekeeper is more likely to find you results you'll like. A stress fracture in the foot is a fairly typical sports injury, so a sports specialist is likely to have referred more people out for working with it.

I speak as a massage therapist who works for/with a chiropractic office in Seattle.

Dave Luckett@262: Some years ago at a bbq/pool party, my mother, aunts, and a cousin were sitting around talking about members of previous generations of the family, all of whom had been dead for some time by then, and all of a sudden began discussing the various affairs conducted by the men. My jaw was on the floor!

The women all looked at me like I was nuts--apparently this was open news in their generation but simply had not percolated down to mine.

Most of the people they talked about were people I knew only at the ends of their lives, so it really re-grooved my images of them.

Open thready economics link: This link shows how much worse stagnating wages look, when you account for declining labor-force participation. The median[1] wage for men working full-time has been more-or-less stalled, once you adjust for inflation, since the 80s. But the median wage for all men has dropped quite a bit since the 80s. The difference is, the men at the bottom aren't working full-time. Many aren't working at all, or aren't working on the books.

It's common to see discussions in politics and economics about exploitation. That is, I'm paying you to do something, you'd do the work for any wage/benefit/working condition combination above X, I'd pay to have it done for any below Y. By improving my bargaining position relative to you, I can try to drive that wage down as close to X as possible. (I can't make you work for less than X, short of literal slavery. And even for slaves, there's a floor below which you can't survive to keep working.) Stuff like union-busting, moving production to places with a vast number of hungry unemployed people, keeping your employees as ignorant as possible of alternatives, or moving employees into a remote company town make it easier for me to bargain your wage right down to X. And that's nasty.

But there's something much worse than exploitation. Explotation means you're of some value to someone. It means you could conceivably have some bargaining power, because someone wants the coal you're mining or the crops you're raising or the toys you're manufacturing or the code you're writing. They at least have to pay you X, and it's not crazy to imagine getting them to pay you more, perhaps even somewhere close to Y.

What's worse is when you're not worth exploiting anymore. Y is less than X--you're not worth paying any amount you'd be willing to work for. Nobody is exploiting you, in that case, they're just not dealing with you at all. Call it uselessness.

My sense[2] is that in the 19th century, a great deal of poverty was caused by exploitation. And my sense now is that a great deal of poverty, especially in the rich countries, is caused by uselessness. It's not that the landlord is squeezing you for that last bit of surplus above bare subsistence from your farm, it's that there's no land for you to farm that's worth having you farm, and the landlord doesn't want anything to do with you. To be useless is to be utterly disposable, w.r.t. the economy. That's much worse. And it seems like that's happening, over time, to more and more Americans.

This happens both on the job side and on the retail sales side. What's a food desert, except a place where people who sell decent food have decided it isn't worthwhile to do business at all? They'd exploit you if it paid, but you don't have enough money to be worth exploiting, given the high crime and taxes, and lousy services and infrastructure, where you live.

[1] If you sorted the list of incomes, and chose the one in the middle, you'd get the median. People measure median wages instead of mean wages because the folks at the high end make so much more money that the normal average (mean) gets heavily skewed by the multimillion dollar CEO and investment banker salaries.

[2] I have an incredibly lame grasp of history, so I may just be wrong here.

Lila: Thanks for the input.

That information about osteopaths was interesting because it's totally different to over here, where osteopaths are NOT doctors (I don't think we have an equivalent of a D.O.), but more like chiropractors or physiotherapists - osteopathy is a discrete speciality concentrating on diagnosis and treatment of problems related to altered body mechanics, function and posture.

My step-mother would prefer me to go for an osteopath or physio rather than a chiropractor. The chiropractor I was thinking of does NOT seem to think everything is due to the spine (I said I had a sacroiliac joint strain and his response was that actually I had a foot problem).

Tom Whitmore: thanks also. Question is how to get to a sports medicine specialist. There are lots of physios, osteopaths and chiropractors around who focus on runners/sports problems, and I can just ring up and book an appointment. There are less sports medicine doctors around, and it's probably quite a lot more expensive to see one.

I -know- I've got something going on with my left foot/ankle - for example my ankle mobility (dorsiflexion) is lower on the left (I can stand about an inch further from the wall and touch my knee to the wall with my right leg, compared with the left) - and then there's that force plate test (my left foot really did show an unexpected shape, so much so that they had me repeat it, and it was the same again. And of course it's on the left that the stress fracture showed up - but then I'd been favouring a right calf strain until a couple of weeks previous, so I might have been putting extra pressure on the left.

I suppose the question is whether it's a joint thing per se, to be treated by manipulation, or whether it's a soft tissue problem (tight muscles/tendons) which need to be stretched, etc.

I'm somewhat biased against podiatrists because (from what I've read) they seem to want to put everyone into orthotics, while I'm heading for the minimalist shoe route (basically diametrically opposed).

As for my personal anatomy - well, my elbows don't bend as much as they "should", which was a problem for archery, but isn't (I don't think) directly relevant to my foot problem...

P J Evans: Computer training videos: have they considered checking at an office supply place?

I think one of those is further out than the library, but I'll suggest it.

Elliott 220: So, adoption is one of our culture's ways of formalizing fictive kin? I realize that many adopted people may object to the idea until they understand the technical nature of the term, but kin are either genetic ("blood") or fictive, correct?

Also, all in-laws are fictive kin, is that right? And my genetic uncle's wife (unless she's also related to me by other means) is my fictive aunt?

I just want to make sure I have this exactly right before I start using the term, which is going to be quite useful to me...I have a much bigger fictive family than genetic!

About colors: I tell people I look good in colors you'd see in a Persian carpet. 'High-saturation colors with a lot of blue in them' doesn't actually convey much to the average person, I find.

Xopher #285: I'm not Elliott, but I'm pretty sure that's not what it means. There may be a special term for non-blood relations, but this is more about "Aunties" and such who don't even meet those rules.

Also, the formal rules about cousins and uncles/aunts are probably a matter as much of English definitions as social custom.

Xopher@286: I think it's more about people to whom you have no connection by blood or paper. In-laws are "true" kin, related by blood through spouse, to whom you are related by paper.

otoh, my "nephew" is not related to me either by blood or by paper. however, I've known him and his mother since he was about 2 (he's almost 11 now), and we're pretty close. We eat meals together (he, his mom, me, and my daughter), go on vacations together, generally hang out together, done Thanksgiving and Passover together, etc. etc. etc.

Not every day, nor even once a week anymore (high school has put a crimp in our family socializing). Definitely a strong emotional bond. For some years now my daughter has referred to this boy as her brother (she's 4 years older), so I've been calling him my nephew. That's what the relationship _feels_ like, though I actually know this child better than I know my non-fictive niece.

I also have a fictive sister (a former roommate) and my mother for a while had a fictive daughter (a different former roommate).

Elliott Mason @ 274 — oh, I like that shirt! I would wear one like that quite happily and consider myself snappily dressed.

Regarding nuts, I'd posted this recipe earlier. If one wants sweet & spicy nuts but doesn't want to hassle with frying, it works very nicely.

#260 Naomi Parkhurst

My six year old has coined the term "omnomcious".

Oh, well done! I like it!

Xopher @286: 'fictive' versus 'real' varies from culture to culture. Modern US culture defines one's adoptive parents, one's blood-uncle's wife, etc, as 'real' kin. However, there is a culture in the Amazon that likewise defines as 'real' kin everyone who had sex with your mother during the time her pregnancy was evident -- they are all your fathers. Your mother's mate (or, if unmated, the one she had sex with MOST) is your main father, but the others all consider themselves 'real' fathers, and would teach you useful skills and trades, and contribute to your upbringing.

In our culture, my mom's very best friend in all the world, with whom she mostly shared childcare duties (toss all 4 kids together and one mom watches them while the other does something, or two-moms-plus-four-kids go to a pool together, etc), is not 'real' kin, but she's still my Aunt Holly to me. My godfather's ex-wife was very much part of the family (she wasn't his ex till after he was my godfather, if you get what I mean), but had no legal or widely-understood-in-the-culture relationship to us.

Sociologically, fictive kinships do not have a real-versus-fake feeling to them; that's an unfortunate side-effect of the word chosen for the jargon meaning. Generally it means the same thing as fannish 'found family'.

Melissa Singer's nephew is definitely fictive kin, sociologically, and ALSO is not 'real' kin by the standards of our modern American society.

Jacque @ #275, if turning gray (I'm told it's silver, but that's family for you) were the sole criteria for clothing color compatibility, I'd have had to turn my entire wardrobe over back when I was 32.

Now, if someone figured out colors which would attract attention away from male pattern baldness . . .

Regarding gray, it's surprising how many defective digital cameras are out there. The pictures they take of other people are fine, but the ones they take of me show gray hair and add 30 lbs to my frame. I gonna write Canon a letter....

Linkmeister #291: Now, if someone figured out colors which would attract attention away from male pattern baldness . . .

Well, a certain Emperor's courtiers found some that matched! ;-)

dcb @277: Has anyone had experience with physio/osteo/chir

Not sports-related, but, yes. I managed to inflame a nerve-root in my neck. I saw the physiotherapist my doc sent me to five times, and every single freakin' time¹, he managed to re-injure me—just with his diagnostics.

I then started asking around, and when I hit a recommendation for an osteopath who's name I'd heard positively in another context, I went to see him.

Between his work (I saw him five times, too.) and the Pilates variant⁴ that his business partner put me onto, my neck issues cleared up entirely within a few months. (It may have been less, I forget.) As a side effect, I also fixed the very painful problems I'd been having with my: ankles, knees, hips, lower back, and 20-year-old upper-back injury I'd gotten from a fall off a horse.

WRT this Pilates, I never did manage to figure out how to hurt myself with it. When I went in for my hysterectomy, my gyinie commented on my "strong abdominal muscles." When they were decanting me into my bed after my surgery, the nurse was setting up the little inspirator thingie I was to use during my recovery to keep my lungs clear. "How tall are you?" she asks, flipping through the booklet that came with it.

"Five-four," I say, picking up the thing and inspecting it.

"All right, let's see. By the time we discharge you on Sunday, I'd like you to be able to do—"

I stick the valve in my mouth, take a breath. Look at the indicator. The pointer sits at 3000.

"... 2400 milliliters." She smiles. "Okay, then!"

I also lost a shoe-size and gained an inch in height while I was doing this stuff. (I need to get back to it.)⁵

My 2¢.

--

¹ Me? Still angry?^2
2 After the fifth time, I had a BFO³ and thought to myself, "Maybe I should stop going to this guy...."
³ "Blinding Flash of the Obvious"
⁴ Yes, this is a shameless plug. Why do you ask?
⁵ Now, to be sure, I got very lucky in that the beginner level teacher was really really good. Unfortunately, the Ron Fletcher work isn't widespread. But they do have DVDs. I've got some on order⁶. I'll let you know if they're any good.
⁶ I am seriously unimpressed with the web design on their checkout. "Forgot password" returns a password in cleartext (alpha-num only), and doesn't seem to give the option of changing it once you've logged back in.

ddb @279: Elliott Mason@274: ... in the photo you certainly seem very pleased about something!

Actually, smug is the word I would have used. :-)

Jacque @295: I don't get to go out fully en homme very much, so it was exciting. Also, that was a steampunk-themed convention, and I was very pleased to at the last minute (a) borrow that tailcoat, and (b) realize that my Loud Orange Shirt worked well with a skinny black robe sash I had kicking around to fake up a Wild-West-style menswear look.

Lexia @ 170 - I can do probably 3 or 4 of those colors. Thankfully, I stocked up on the jewel/royal blue the last couple of years and should be able to get through this summer. Being a pale redhead with rosacea means I tend towards cool colors, so they won't clash with my hair or my face. Bright jewel tones are lovely, but I tend towards the dark reds, dusky blues, forest greens, charcoals, and chocolates. Even then, I do a lot of blue - from dark sapphire to ice, with some blue-teal occasionally thrown in. When I actually let my hair go grey (instead of remaining a redhead by boxed fiat), I won't have to change much of the wardrobe.

I have the low-rise pants problem as well, mostly because if they fit around my hips, the waist is too large (I'm stealing the comment about hips like the superman logo!). So I now have 5 pairs of slacks (3 black, 1 grey, 1 brown) from the thrift store and a whole lot of skirts and dresses. From April 1 to Nov 1, it is a very, very rare thing to see me in pants at all and winter is me living in wool skirts, wool dresses, and leggings/tights (often wool) and resorting to pants when it's just too nasty out.

Because of the job, I generally don't leave the house in less than a business-casual wardrobe, which makes the solution of mens' clothing Right Out without massive amounts of tailoring. Or, I could hit my local fabric store and www.burdastyle.com and make whatever I need.

In related HLN: Finished my first utilikilt last night, for a friend for con this weekend. Theme - heroes. http://twitpic.com/464tld (yes, that's quilting cotton, yes, I lined it. Pockets to be added at a later date. Recipient is happy even if i'm not.)

sisuile @297 said:Recipient is happy even if i'm not.

My VERY FAVORITE thing about making craftsy things for other people is that they almost never care about what seem like the big flashy neon I-suck-so-bad signs all over whatever it is I made. :->

Also, I don't have to find room to store it. But the other one's way out in front.

Chosen family is much on my mind these days. Especially the chosen sister I'm staying with right now, and her brother who is, as of sometime last week, my brother too; it's hardly our fault if our mothers never met, now is it?

(There are various levels of illness going on here, which is why I'm visiting right now; we would welcome any good thoughts, prayers, or positive energy you can spare.)

Much to my surprise, I've developed a taste for dressing up in middle age, and can often be found in a jacket and tie.

It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to find a jacket/shirt/tie combination flamboyant enough that people don't ask "did you come straight from work?" Without going full Hartwell, that is.

TexAnne, encouraging and helpful thoughts from here. I know they're glad to have you there.

"I'm stealing the comment about hips like the superman logo!"

Glad you like it! Other side effect—it confuses the heck out of my OBs, who have underestimated my kids' weights by more than two pounds, because I apparently hide an awful lot in that compressed space.

Timothy Walters@300: If I see friends in a jacket and tie, I ask them if they got the job :-). This is especially useful as a way to put pressure on people who tend to overdress for work.

Midterm grades are due. I'm grading my second set of essays this weekend. Out of the, ahem, oysters I am finding some "pearls". For example:

According to Goldman means of morality was that of religion; which denounce anything against the normality in the society. The denouncing of birth control by Goldman was a relation to women’s rights and was seen as negative.

Goldman shows comparison of how the prostitute is mistreated by law and society with that of a married woman whom are barred to child birth with absolutely no say in the matter.

Another circumstance is having a woman involved in a relationship where she is not in love with the man, but is forced to have sex yet resulting in children born to an unhappy couple or the woman that continuously having children due to not having the option birth control available. This creates an unstable environment for the child. These situations should not neglect the responsibility of female’s being responsible when having sex, but it does lead to Goldman’s point of having an option to sexual contraception and abortion if needed. Humans are naturally sexual beings. Taking away a natural process is neglecting behavior of human nature.

Fragano @304

Please tell me that writer's native fluency is in a language other than English. And that it was from a time-limited examination written with a broken writing instrument that splodged out the missing words.

AKICIML:

Hi, I'm a lurker here, but I want to talk about this and I don't know who else to talk to. I sincerely hope that this is taken as evidence of my great faith in this community, and not simply desperation.... I've always felt that I was part of the community here, even if I've only made one or two silly posts.

Anyway, I've been delving into earlier threads, and some of the posts dealing with autism and Asperger's seemed uncomfortably familiar. I eventually (after several months of thinking about it...) decided to see if I was "on the spectrum". I was never consciously aware of avoiding the question out of the fear of shame (even if I was the only one who knew), but I suspect that was part of it. Which is a slight problem for me, but much more for others.

I took the Baron-Cohen test and scored 31 -- where 32 means autism. This feels right to me -- I've always felt like I was just on the precipice of understanding the people around me, without ever having the chance to climb that precipice. Please note -- I understand that the human psyche is not this simple -- 31, "You're fine!"; 32, "You're autistic, pardon me while I adjust this coat....

I also know that this is not a diagnosis or really anything more meaningful than what I said in an online test -- but as I said, it felt true.

Anyway, I'd like to know several things, if y'all wouldn't mind:

1) Is the Baron-Cohen test worth a damn? I admit I haven't gone deep into the Google on this subject because I really don't want to run into people who think autism is some kind of socialist conspiracy....

2) Having scored a borderline score on the Baron-Cohen test, would therapy be a good thing for me? I've always thought I could muddle through my own problems, but if my perceptions differ a lot from those around me, perhaps an outside opinion would be helpful. Well, now that I say that -- an outside opinion is useful to anyone (but, of course, I was a Psych major....)

2a) (Okay, this is reaching) Assuming the answer to the above is yes, does anyone know a therapist in the DC area I could talk to?

Regardless of your reaction to what I've said, I want to thank those of you to post here for...well, posting here. I don't think you realize how important it is to us who only read your words.

Thank you.

Thena #305:

Those are taken from several essays. The writers are all native speakers of English. They had days (indeed weeks) to prepare for the essays since the topics were listed in the syllabus I issued at the beginning of the semester; the only issue of difficulty was the due date, which was delayed a week because of the horrible weather at the start of the semester. All the essays were produced on computers.

B. Durbin: I thought of Marat-Sade immediately too, though my reason is that I attempted to direct it once. Oddly, I was just mentioning it to my psych prof last week.

Justin @ #306: I can't speak to the worth-a-damness or otherwise of the Baron-Cohen test, but this page might be a starting point for finding a therapist, if you decide to go that route.

Good luck!

@Fragano

Can we reboot the educational structure of the English-writing world and start over with the alphabet? Do you think it would help?

Argh -- "those of you who post here", not to. I suppose I should just be happy that I didn't fall prey to the evil double post....

Justin, I don't know anything about the topic you're asking for help with, but as for the error...I read it as you intended it without noticing the mistake.

Appros of the Beowulf socks, a friend made my hubby PI socks. Start at the top of one of them, the (I think the yellow stripes) count out PI.

Blue and white, kind of plain for Doc Paisley though. Still lots of fun.

Xopher, thank you -- I know this is strange, but because of my longtime lurkeriness, I think of you as a friend.

I appreciate the goodwill mental copyediting on your part....

Fragano: You have my sympathy. I just finished writing a compare and contrast on Gorgias and The Analects.

I've done better, but for some reason couldn't find the frame of contrast until yesterday (the paper was due today) and I've been short sleep all week.

So I banged it out last night, and then did a fairly stiff rewrite this morning.

So it was only about 5 hours of writing (and I know not how much noodling) to get 1500 words.

Terry Karney: I know nothing of the play other than the title. Which is pretty impressive. The Cats performance I just saw was so phenomenal and done so well (and pretty hopeful, actually). The setting made it so the play touched me more than when I saw it in its original setting (an alley full of cats.)

Plus the fact that they had a television (twelve feet up, out of the inmates' reach) that was playing Thundercats before the show began was just so apropos...

Terry,

(Hmm...delurking seems to be addictive...)

Some time ago[0] you posted a link to an introductory talk you gave to a church group about why torture is bad. I thought it was wonderful to see, but I was wondering if there was any more -- not writing, which I know you've done, but you speaking from your experience. There are people who I love who need that message, but I'm not sure the short form will do it.

Okay, I seem to be the new demandy guy. What I'm trying to say is that I think you made a very eloquent argument against torture in just ten minutes -- for people who need 30 or 60 minutes, could you suggest anything?

I personally think that you should be given all the time you need to explain all of the implications of torture on all of our wondrous 24 hour channels, but I can't demand that (well, I can, but I can't expect any results)....

Sadly, many of my loved ones have bought into the fear that the news is intent on selling -- and one way to keep them safe is to make sure that those evil(!) terrorists(!) can never hurt them again...what it does to the rest of us? Well, that's for lily-livered liberals to whine about....

[0] That is to say, I don't remember exactly when -- my brain is currently timesharing Open Threads 124 and 154....

And, and...

B. Durbin -- Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't cool? Oh, well, good thing I never paid attention to coolitude....

That said, a production that can make Cats a coherent whole? That's a talented production/direction team. I love most of Webber's shows, but Cats...well, I saw it once.

Justin @306:

I don't know if the Baron-Cohen test is worth a damn, beyond serving as a rough guideline. What I do know is, I score a 29 on it, and my boyfriend scores a 35. His lovely wife scores an 11.

I don't have any practical advice on finding therapists. (I have a much more pressing issue for which I'm working with a psychiatrist right now, but when I've brought up the spectrum stuff they don't want to address it.)

In practical terms, it helps to know what issues you want to address. Social skills? Well,the way I like to put it is that I've had to derive rules of social interaction rather than intuiting them, and it made my younger life fairly hellish because I hadn't done all the deriving yet, but I do okay now. It helps that I'm a geek who socializes with other geeks, and I only simulate a non-geek when I absolutely have to. it also helps that I'm an extrovert rather than an introvert, and so the craving for social interaction has made it worth it to me to do the deriving. Boyfriend is an introvert. His strategy has been more along the "remain quiet so as not to screw up" lines, and also learning by negative example -- he's big on Don't Be That Guy.

But there's more to it than social skills. You may experience some degree of sensory processing or integration issues. Mine were noticeable enough when I was a kid that my parents got me evaluated by a physical therapist, who said there wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with my gross motor coordination and proprioception that increased practice wouldn't correct (in other words, send her outside to play instead of letting her stay inside reading books -- I was not thrilled about this idea, and compromised to the point of climbing trees to read my books) but that I had a high degree of sensory defensiveness (meaning, you could tickle me from about six inches away from my actual SKIN, and freaked out at loud noises, and so on).

I have, over the years, assembled a series of workarounds for the sensory issues. For the ticklish stuff, it helps that I've gotten to an age where other people have some MANNERS, and don't attempt to tickle me, muss my hair, or otherwise invade my bodily space unless we're already intimate. (I was a four-year-old with Shirley Temple ringlets who regularly scolded great-aunts for mussing my hair. Apparently even the scolding was cute because I got away with it.) Also that clothing companies have started printing their tags into clothing instead of sewing in itchy ones printed on Tyvek and attached with nylon monofilament, so I don't have to cut out as many tags as I used to. I also carry foam earplugs with me -- I started doing this for rock concerts, to avoide hearing damage, but noticed it helped with noisy bars, too. My boyfriend is more heavily affected by noise than I am, and his workaround for it was "get drunk for pain relief." I regularly hand him earplugs now. Eventually he'll get in the habit of carrying his own.

My best friend has a sensory issue around touching things that are gritty. I made her very happy recently by suggesting that she could eat the delicious-but-gritty honey roasted mixed nuts with CHOPSTICKS, and thus avoid having the icky feeling on her fingertips.

One book I've found very helpful for learning coping strategies with the sensory issues is Raising Your Spirited Child. I got it to cope with my own offspring, but noticed just how much of it applied to me. It's worth a read.

So. I guess the point of this is: you're not alone, therapy might be good if you wanted help deriving the rules of social interaction, and there are ways to work around the various sensory issues. Wouldn't hurt to pursue it to the extent of your medical coverage, but even without professional help, there are things you can do.

welcome to the club, we've got jackets.

Justin: I need to get in touch with the guy who filmed the hour, or so, that I did in Monterey. I don't know that it's on the web, but I'll bet you can get it from him.

I'll look into it.

TexAnne @ 299 ...
(There are various levels of illness going on here, which is why I'm visiting right now; we would welcome any good thoughts, prayers, or positive energy you can spare.)

Good thoughts, positive energy, and earnest entreaties to the universe headed your way...

Rikibeth,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.... I guess part of my problem is that I don't think I have a right to complain. I am privileged in so many ways, it seems churlish to complain about my relatively minor problems.

I thank you because you addressed my problems as real -- no matter what I think of them.

I don't know where I fit on the spectrum, but I think I'm on it...that being said, I know I'm in a much better position than many -- if I had to derive the basic rules of our society's behavior, I did it before I was old enough to understand them. What I'm understanding now is that my introversion is not simply a preference, but, perhaps, a predisposition. Not a bad thing, just a way of being. Not necessarily the best way of being (for me, at least), but it isn't something that I'm just choosing arbitrarily. That means something to me. I'm not sure why.

For example -- and this is just something I'm thinking about now, so please forgive me if my ideas still have some jagged edges -- I know that I would love to talk to any random person who went to a con, but I've never gone to one. I've never even wanted to go to one. Too many people, scary. I know that the people at AverageCon[0] will have two or three orders of magnitude more things in common with me than a random person from my mundane life, but.... I don't know I worry that I'll like the wrong books or authors. I worry about that here, even (which I know is silly).

Ah, hell, I'm out. I don't really know where I was going with that.

Thanks for listening, though, it means a lot to me.

[0] Yeah, what are you going to complain about? We said it was average....

Justin,

About the cons -- well, I guess that's where my extroversion comes in. I went to my first SF con the weekend of my fourteenth birthday, because I was blessed with a friend who was a second-generation fan, and whose mother brought her to cons, so I got to tag along. I cannot describe for you the feeling of delighted relief I felt when I experienced it. Sure, there were a ton of people there, and most of them were strangers. But they were strangers who liked what I liked! It was EASY to strike up conversations with them! They didn't mind if I babbled enthusiastically about stuff, or look at me funny -- they babbled BACK! And, you know, more than a few of them were boys roughly my age, and some of them were even CUTE boys my age, and others were girls my age who didn't look down their noses at me, and there was a Regency Ball where I got to dress up like a princess, and, generally, I was in HEAVEN.

Maybe there's a local campus with a science fiction society where you could go to meetings. Smaller group, less intimidating? And for a lot of them, you don't HAVE to be a student to attend.

The nice thing about cons is that they have panels, often on a lot of different subjects, and they publish the panel schedules before the con starts, on their websites, and so you can go in planning to attend panels on stuff you already like, and that way you've definitely got things in common to talk about.

It's also possible to be introverted without it being a spectrum thing. Introverts happen. It's real enough. I thought I was one for years, and, around mundanes, I can still look like one -- but, no, it's more that I was an extrovert who didn't know the damn rules and kept screwing up and found the screwups incredibly exhausting. But given the way I wither and pine without decent social contact, I don't think I am one.

Anyway. This stuff is real, it's manageable, and learning to work with your own defaults is always useful. Best of luck sorting it all out.

Justin, in terms of thinking about therapy -- you've got a lot of resources already, from having been a psych major, and I'd hope you have some idea of what kind of therapy feels right to you. Don't know anyone in DC, unfortunately. But I think the perspective of another person will help you, no matter what: and you seem to have realized that. You are worth it, and it doesn't matter whether someone else has it worse. You can only work on yourself, where you are.

In terms of cons, and feeling uncertain about them -- this is another case where I'd suggest you might want to read Among Others by Jo Walton, which Patrick pushed here a few topics back. I think it might help.

Justin,

First off, welcome to the ranks of the commentariat. Lurkers are of course a part of this community, but it's a pleasure to hear a new voice in the conversation.

My own experience of Asperger's is that it has been tremendously useful to have a name for some of the things that I've always done or been, but never felt were OK. Knowing why was a big way to give myself a break, and in many cases, that made it easier to mitigate or live with them.

I'd second Rikibeth's comments about sensory issues. I've learned over the years, for instance, that too much visual or auditory clutter tires me out. Having the TV on in the background, or having too many messy spaces around the house, can really fry my brain. And these sensory issues cross over, too; when I'm overstimulated in other ways, my arms start to itch in a particular fashion.

My other observation about Asperger's and autism is that it includes a lot of fear and anxiety. I saw an interview with Temple Grandin in which she said, "My primary emotion, most of the time, is fear." And I know exactly what she means. It's probably the product of a childhood spent with very little idea when I'd done something catastrophically bad and was going to have to deal with what seemed to me to be random emotional reactions. It's possible to overcome this, mostly by sheer momentum, until you can trust that things will go well most of the time. I was 40 before I started to rely on the fact that, because most of the people whom I have met end up liking me, therefore most of the people I encounter next will too.

It's important to look for the strengths in the syndromes as well, though. Autism and Asperger's are not diseases; they're descriptions of neurological profiles, and contain some profound gifts as well as challenges. In my case, my ability to find deep patterns in volumes of disparate data is tied to the sensory issues I mentioned above. In one case, the fact that I can't "pre-filter" the data and ignore it is a problem, but in the other it's a strength. I've made a good career in QA because anomalies jump out at me even before I realize I've read the dataset.

Also, the skills we learn are often better grounded than the skills we exercise by instinct. When I learned to compensate for my difficulties in social interaction, I acquired a skillset that allows me to do things like community moderation.

Thena #310: Oddly, some students learn to master the intricacies of the English version of the Roman alphabet, and the odd grammar and syntax of the English language. The ones who don't also seem to suffer major failures of logic.

Rikibeth @319

you could tickle me from about six inches away from my actual SKIN.

This just thunked a mental connection into place really hard. I knew I had tendencies toward Aspergers. I never made the connection of long distance tickling being a sensory issue, but of course it is.

Thank you.

dcb @283: I'd been favouring a right calf strain until a couple of weeks previous, so I might have been putting extra pressure on the left.

Heh. In the immortal words of my old karate teacher: "Be careful how you limp; you might screw something else up."

Interestingly, he's now an MD who specializes in sports medicine.

Linkmeister @291: Now, if someone figured out colors which would attract attention away from male pattern baldness . . .

Actually, I can tell you with considerable confidence that it's not the clothes that draw attention, it's the eyes (and the 'tude). Being fit helps the latter (not least because of the impact on posture). But you don't have to be Patrick Stewart to draw the attention of the [gender of your choice].

I commend to your attention this gentleman. He's a coworker of mine, and I've been known to get quite silly in his company. He is not unattractive in an objective sense, but mostly what makes him worth a second look is who he is. And he is very much himself.

I think our dear Mr. Xopher is another fine specimen. If I may say.

Openthreadiness...

I came across the following by Patrick in LOCUS's issue 600.

Summoning a terrific community into being was never our plan, but once it happened we both felt (and still feel) a non-trivial responsibility toward it. More recently we've been less active on Making Light, because of other commitments, and a lot of the slack has been taken up by our co-bloggers, Abi Sutherland in particular.

Woot!

ddb @303: If I see friends in a jacket and tie, I ask them if they got the job :-)

I mind the time that both Fred Haskel and I were in business dress* for the costume ball at a con. The reactions of the other fen were hilarious. I was startled to discover that the suspicious half-step-back you see mundanes take at the elevator are mutual.

When I see men in formal business attire in the grocery store, I will often tease them that Boulder has an ordinance outlawing ties.**

--

* Fred at least had a Smurf as a watch-fob.

** Boulder is renown for its casual dress code. I'm told that, at NCAR in days of yore, the way you could tell the staff from the tourists was that the tourists were wearing shoes.

Justin @306: Delurking is good. Hi there! More formally: welcome. (You know abi's gonna ask if you write poetry.)

Nothng substantial to contribute to your inquiry but: asking questions is good. Getting second opinions is good. Going with your gut is good.

Justin @317: Hmm...delurking seems to be addictive...

You seem sharp and interesting. By all means, leave the cloak down! :->

I've never seen Marat/Sade, just heard of it, but the full title does explain why that production of Cats brings it to mind.

Though, as a long-time furry-fan, I likely see Cats in a different light anyway.

Oh, you want the title?

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

But it has a plot, I understand—a story, that is, or maybe a thesis and antithesis—which I am not sure that Cats manages to have. That's a sequence of loosely-linked set pieces. If you want something with a story, maybe you should do a deal with Diane Duane—her feline wizards might work in that mode. It's no sillier than having actors on roller skates pretending to be railway trains.

Actually, the style of costuming in Cats seems well within reach for a Hugo masquerade, if you could find the right people.

Terry Karney @320: Justin: I need to get in touch with the guy who filmed the hour, or so, that I did in Monterey. I don't know that it's on the web, but I'll bet you can get it from him.

I, also, would be very interested to see that.

Justin: You're in DC...if you like, I can put you in touch with Jon Singer. He deals with ADD and so may have a line on the therapy pool in the area. He's worth getting to know in his own right, and he's a great person to intoduce you to local fandom.

I endorse Rikibeth's reports/recommendations wrt fandom and, in fact, Jon is my grand-fan (I met him at my first con). He knows everybody and he's had a lot of experience introducing folks to the community. A great way to get your feet wet, especially if you're prone to introversion, is to just tag along with him and let the converstation flow around you.

Serge @330:

Without going back into the conversation on the previous Open Thread, I'm touched that he said that. And thank you for bringing it to my attention.

(Also, open threadiness: I have not given up on the Babylon 5 rewatch series. I'm simply in a deathmarch project at work and haven't had the time to do the next writeups.)

Oh, Serge, in case it slipped by, Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @17 put up some pics that might be appropriate for Making Light and Faces.

Jacque @ 338... Indeed... Nicole... May I make use of one of those photos? If so, got a favorite?

Hyperlocal news... Man got a very nice bonus from employer. Man planning trip to brick-and-mortar bookstores and to web-based ones.

"Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't cool? Oh, well, good thing I never paid attention to coolitude...."

I should perhaps mention that my theater geek group tends towards the highly musical (as in music majors and opera singers.) In other words, there's music snobbery going on.

As for the production, it didn't so much make Cats a coherent whole as provide a plausible rationale for the incoherency. It was staged as sort of the happy celebration of a bunch of patients who have seized on T.S. Eliot as a means of explaining their lives. (Old Deuteronomy was this little girl with a stuffed tiger that they all respected, for example.)

Glad to see you join the conversation, Justin!

Hyperlocal news: area grad student gets to purchase heavily discounted gift coupons to Moe's. Is looking forward to using them.

Continuing the midterm slog. Ouch.

The prostitute becomes a victim because of freely and sexual desires and soon becomes marginalized and mistreated by law and society.

The fascist theory believes in a totalitarianism type of administrative system.

Confucius believed a leader to be benevolent and virtuous two things that were neither part of Mussolini’s character.

Well’s Barnett was an active women’s rights advocate and she was a fighter against universal suffrage.

Fragano (343): That third one isn't too bad; it just needs punctuation after 'virtuous'.

Fragano @ 343... Well’s Barnett was an active women’s rights advocate and she was a fighter against universal suffrage

Suffering succotash!

Justin -- Welcome!

Well, one way to get your feet wet in fandom gradually, in a controlled fashion, and with solid control over most of the sensory environment, is through text-based online forums. You've found Making Light. You might look at tor.com and see if the comment threads under the articles that interest you are of interest. (ML is not by plan a "fannish" venue, but Patrick and Teresa are very long-time fans, and a lot of their friends are from fandom, so there's a solid core of fannishness here anyway.)

SF fandom has been my primary social group since I found it (back in 1972, sort of; much more seriously from 1975). Definitely my people. I like it a lot, and have dragged a number of people into it (with some of them it's even stuck).

It's also a collection of people many of whom grew up socially challenged in various ways, and a set of people enough of whom have trauma around rejection that it's not very good at getting rid of people. We have our share, or perhaps somewhat more, of the assholes of the universe.

A lot of fannish events are big-group events, even though fandom contains a lot of introverts. I suppose it's inherent in being group events.

@ 346... It's also a collection of people many of whom grew up socially challenged

"I've never been so insulted!"
- me
"The night is still young."
- Abi

Mary Aileen # 344: I'm still trying to figure out 'neither part'.

Fragano @348

I think there's a confusion of "neither" with "not":

Confucius believed a leader to be benevolent and virtuous: two things that were not part of Mussolini’s character.

Or something like that. I suspect hypercorrection.

Fragano (348)/Naomi (349): Or "...neither was part of Mussolini's character." A bit awkward, but not impossibly so. Much better than the rest of the gems Fragano quoted (although that's an awfully low bar).

Justin #306: That sense of recognition is probably a better guide than any test. While autism isn't something that can be "cured" by therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy can be useful for building your executive abilities, dealing with anxiety, and other useful items.

As noted by abi above, just knowing what's going on is an enormous help! inter alia, I recommend the books of Dr. Temple Grandin for a highly educated autistic's perspective.

I haven't seen the Baron-Cohen test before; it's an intriguing object. A lot of the questions strike me as having a significant overlap with generalized introversion (not enjoying socializing with others, liking to work alone) and less with the things I particularly associate with autism-spectrum behavior (touch sensitivity, difficulty filtering input, inability to read social cues). I wonder how predictive the former really is: as Rikibeth notes, there are plenty of spectrum types who love socializing, but just don't know how. Being bad at something tends to make one dislike it as well, but that's a second-order symptom, isn't it?

I was also struck as I was answering the questions by how much my answers have changed since I was a child. I scored a 27 today, but I would have scored much, much higher when I was 15 on aspects like comfort with socializing. Words like "compensated" or "matured" strike me as entirely wrong, because I don't see the way I approached the world back then as bad, just limited--I feel like I've expanded the options available to me, not abandoned anything or learned the "correct" way to do it.

Fragano Ledgister @ 348: "I'm still trying to figure out 'neither part'."

I read "two things that were neither part of Mussolini’s character" as an acceptable variant of "neither of the two things were part of Mussolini's character." Maybe that's just my dialect?

One could say "two things that were both part of his character," correct?

Serge@347: I had a bunch of epistemological land-mines to navigate around in writing that. For example, I'm not an introvert, don't especially have rejection issues (more than normal), and by fannish standards didn't grow up particularly socially challenged (took a while to figure that out). But I wanted to use an inclusive "we" for fandom, especially to acknowledge the bad parts. And I think of ML as a "fannish venue" since that's where I know P&T and for that matter Jim and Avram from, but there's nothing explicitly fannish about it really, and some of the people here I believe want to avoid being associated with fandom.

So, well, we'll see if I stepped on any of them.

(I'm not reading your post as complaint or objection, more as using mine as a comment hook, with perhaps a bit of wry acknowledgment.)

Naomi Parkhurst @ 260

I now find myself thinking of the phrase 'the omnivorous in pursuit of the omnomnicious' as a good way of describing certain members of my family (including myself) on certain occasions.

Heather Rose Jones @ 97: Are you sure it's parsnips that Anthimus has in mind? One thing that makes me wonder - him being Byzantine - is that I've never come across a parsnip in Turkey; nor indeed found anyone in Turkey who had the slightest idea what I was talking about when I try to describe one.

We do on the other hand have plenty of carrots, including ones that are the right colour (as opposed to those
politically contentious mutants from the Low Countries,) which are a key ingredient in Beef Schadenfreude.

heresiarch @352 said: there are plenty of spectrum types who love socializing, but just don't know how. Being bad at something tends to make one dislike it as well, but that's a second-order symptom, isn't it?

I thought for decades I was an introvert, because I had massive social anxiety, and rubbed so many people the wrong way on first acquaintance that I found the entire prospect of encountering new people (especially in LARGE GROUPS ZOMG) exceedingly stressful.

Turns out I'm actually an extrovert with bad social skills. Despite my strong instinct to react to stressful periods/depression by hermitting up, I actually do BEST mentally if I have regular verbal social-grooming behavior in groups of fannish people.

I never knew I liked hanging out with people until I found large enough sample sizes of the people I like to hang out with -- so I always scored introverted on personality tests. :->

praisegod barebones @355

"I now find myself thinking of the phrase 'the omnivorous in pursuit of the omnomnicious' as a good way of describing certain members of my family (including myself) on certain occasions."

I love it! A nice bit of -- oh help, I know there must be a name for rhyming the beginnings of words instead of the ends, but it's not coming to mind.

Serge @339: Nicole... May I make use of one of those photos?

See Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @100. As to favorites, I'm going to presume to speak for both of us: I think you can safely use your aesthetic judgement.

heresiarch @352: I too thought that a number of the questions on the Baron-Cohen test were measuring general introversion, rather than specifically autism spectrum problems with social interaction. In particular I felt that some of them were strongly suggestive of the type of introversion described by the Myers-Brigg system, where introverts may well enjoy socialising, but feel drained rather than energised by doing it. I had that shock of recognition when I first encountered the Myers-Brigg description of being the life and soul of the party for an hour, and then wanting to go home and recharge in a quiet corner Right Now Please. I don't score as spectrum on the B-C screen, but I do score higher than average, and I think that's mostly down to questions that also pick up people who are highly M-B introverted.

Jacque @ #329, the male-pattern baldness line was mostly a wisecrack. I don't think about it much, and turning into my father (who also had it) wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to me.

ddb @ 354... Let's put it this way. Some people seem to have social skills built into them. Some people learn them easily. Some learn them with great difficulty, and I definitely was in that group. In other words, I was pulling your leg.

Jacque @ 358... You're up, right here, and Nicole is here. Let me know if you want the captions changed.

Elliot Mason @ 356: "Despite my strong instinct to react to stressful periods/depression by hermitting up, I actually do BEST mentally if I have regular verbal social-grooming behavior in groups of fannish people."

Agreed! Though I would still say I'm an introvert, because while I love socializing with the right people at the right time, it's still (a) something I want periodically rather than always and (b) something that leaves me needing some *hyperfocused on something else* time.

Julia Jones @ 359: "I had that shock of recognition when I first encountered the Myers-Brigg description of being the life and soul of the party for an hour, and then wanting to go home and recharge in a quiet corner Right Now Please."

I know what you mean--when I first read a MB description of my personality type I was like "HOW DID YOU GET IN MY BRAIN!?!", but in a good way. Ironically, I think since then I've become a much less extreme example of that type: reading that kind of description allowed me to start thinking about different ways of perceiving the world that didn't come down to "Yes, but this way is much more effective, don't you see?"

One of the best parts of understanding who you are is that it helps you figure out who you can be.

heresiarch @352: I was also struck as I was answering the questions by how much my answers have changed since I was a child. I scored a 27 today, but I would have scored much, much higher when I was 15 on aspects like comfort with socializing. Words like "compensated" or "matured" strike me as entirely wrong, because I don't see the way I approached the world back then as bad, just limited--I feel like I've expanded the options available to me, not abandoned anything or learned the "correct" way to do it.

YES, THIS. I was struck, when answering the questions, by how I had to differentiate between "how I have learned to behave now" and "how I dealt with the world before training myself to be otherwise." And which answer did they want? I decided that questions where I still felt like I was "faking it" to get the more socially adept/less introverted answer got the more introverted answer, and that questions where I went "oh, yeah, I used to be more like that, but it's not as strong now" got the less introverted answer. And I still got a 29.

I suspect that, as a twelve-year-old, I would have been OFF THE CHARTS.

Justin 317: (Hmm...delurking seems to be addictive...)

Oh, good! Stay delurked. Ever write any poetry?

And isn't Baron-Cohen that jerk who made that awful Brüno movie?

Jacque 329: Why, thank you! I'm fatter than that now, but working on it.

Xopher: The one who wrote the test is Simon Baron-Cohen. The jerk you're thinking of, Sacha Baron-Cohen, is his cousin.

Xopher: The one who wrote the test is Simon Baron-Cohen. The jerk you're thinking of, Sacha Baron-Cohen, is his cousin.

Baron-Cohen test I just took it, out of curiosity, and got a 23. However, there were six questions I really couldn't answer as posed, and put either 'mildly agree' or 'mildly disagree' as the probably least distorty answer available. The way they asked the question was simply not a single spectrum answer, to me! It's a sometimes-this-way, sometimes-that, it-depends thing, and can be anywhere from one end to the other of their scale depending on external circumstances.

I learned most of my social skills consciously, after entering college. And I only started really getting comfortable/good at faking it and interacting with non-fen positively a very few years ago.

Oops! Double post due to error message! Sorry!

AKICIML, Plumbing Division:

We have a damp spot☁ in the corner of our basement. Our current mitigation system, while working, is labor- and electricity-dependent: we lay clean towels carefully folded atop the area that seeps, point a fan at it, and run a dehumidifier nearby with its humidistat set to 45% so the overall basement doesn't get moldy enough to eat my books.

The best-case, real long-term fix♦ recommended to solve what we presume to be the underlying problem☘ is rather more money than we wish to spend, considering we're only living here until we can manage to close on another house, move out, and sell this place.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Currently the towels get damp and act as a wick for the fan to evaporate from, and the wet never spreads past the towels. However, we have to keep changing and bleaching them so they don't get moldy, and we've been effectively running a fairly heavy-duty air conditioner in the basement all winter, which is a nontrivial addition to our existing (fairly small) electricity expenditure.

--
☁ There's a slow seep in through tiny cracks near where our greywater out-flow pipe dives vertically into the concrete floor.

♦ That is, jackhammer out that entire corner's concrete slab, fish around with the pipes, replace the problematic part. Possibly would also involve going outside the foundation, if the pipe problem is there; the foundation wall is only about 2' from where the pipe goes vertical and comes out of the floor. THAT would REALLY be expensive, and involve removing our back porch and doing a lot of earthmoving as well.

☘ We're pretty sure there's a rotten/broken pipe somewhere in the dirt under our concrete slab, which is leaking and effectively charging an artesian aquifer under our foundation somewhere, which then infiltrates back into our basement through any available hairline cracks. We've had basement-waterproofing companies come in and refuse to take our money when we asked them to just slap something in the cracks to waterproof them; the pressure is high enough it'd only last a month or two, and they won't do it. We're pretty sure this is the right answer because we DID hire some goons to take up the floor and investigate. They found a section of rotten pipe, replaced it, and repoured some concrete ... which reduced the problem from a 15-gallons-per-day arterial spurting to the current level. A decided improvement, but in no way a true fix.

Rikibeth, I was joking. Sacha Baron-Cohen has never done anything remotely useful in the sciences, as far as I know.

Xopher, I endorse your strikethrough -- but they really ARE cousins!

One of those things that hangs around the edges of my mind like Helena Bonham-Carter's political connections, and so on.

heresiarch @363: I too found the Myers-Brigg descriptions of personality types useful for understanding other ways of looking at the world. Not least the "aha" moment where I really got that the people who liked nothing better than to party on and on and on like the Energizer Bunny were not faking it. I'd grasped it on an intellectual level, but not really understood it at the emotional level until I read the Myers-Brigg description of introversion/extroversion.

Naomi Parkhurst #349: That was probably what was intended.

Heresiarch #353: I'd have written "two things, neither of which was part of Mussolini's character.

Naomi @ 357

I'd use "front rhyme" in that context. I get that it also includes alliteration, but I'm not aware of any more narrowly-defined technical terms that require the entire first syllable to match.

KayTei @ 376

Works for me! Thanks.

Serge @362 Jacque ... You're up, right here, and Nicole is here. Let me know if you want the captions changed.

My caption is okay (I was kinda going for the Vanna White vibe), but Niki's almost made me choke on my salad. (In case anyone is wondering, the laser-cat is Null.)

370: We had to deal with a more severe version of the same thing, and what the plumber did was pick a likely location further along the line, punch through the concrete there, and reroute the line to run along the wall to the new location and then back into the slab. We had gone through the "just fix it where it enters the slab" solution too, and it failed more or less as you described; an additional feature was that the line ran directly under the ancient concrete wash tub, which are almost impossible to move without destroying. The second, thus far successful solution ran to about six (wall clock) hours of labor.

C. Wingate @379: Alas, it goes immediately out of the house and under at least 3' of dirt the rest of the way out to the sewer main. We've already had up all of it that's actually in the basement.

Jacque @ 378... Caption changed.

For the water in the basement problem, one second-best solution is a sump and a sump pump.

Basically, dig a 2-ft wide, 2-ft deep hole in the basement floor, put about 4 inches of gravel in the bottom, and put a sump pump in it. Fill it up with gravel.

Basically, you're providing a sub-floor drain.

Alright, praisegod barebones @355, I'll bite -- Beef Schadefreude?? I know and love Schadenfreude Pie, of course. Always glad to add more schadenfreude to my diet, though.

Bruce E. Durocher III @116: When I was busily acquiring free eBooks for my reader I picked up a volume of the complete Poe that consisted of criticisms. The first thing in the book is Edgar A. unleashing the full force of his discernment on (if memory serves) William Ellery Channing, Jnr., which is a laugh riot for anybody not named William Ellery Channing. It's followed by a look at Cooper which, alas, is not the hilarity fest that Twain's was, but is somewhat tempered by a review that's far more positive than I'd have expected.

Still, it's interesting to read Poe's criticisms. I bought the Library of America volume that's nothing but, and it shows him instigating feuds with other writers (and critics), some of whom may be sock puppets. This volume was titled (or referred to online) as if it were Poe's complete works, but turned out to be part of a series which, when completed, would have been the complete works. Might have been Google Books. They're more likely to go with an incomplete title like that than Gutenberg.

Jacque @138: An apocryphal story about canned salmon (and by the way, I have wonderful memories of Aunt Nell's canned salmon casserole, complete with those lovely bones) is that a famous press agent was approached by a canner of salmon with a problem: his salmon was white instead of pink, and nobody would touch it. He was in despair, and close to bankruptcy when the agent had him add a line of type that increased his sales hugely and caused the other canners to go after him in court. It said: "GUARANTEED NOT TO TURN PINK IN THE CAN."

Alas, it never happened, but that didn't stop Bennett Cerf from running with it as if it had, and leading me to believe for decades that it was true.

Melissa Singer @189: I always liked printed T-shirts with ads for local places, particularly if they were someplace far away. I still rue the day I could no longer wear my T-shirt bearing the name, "McCoy Tree Surgery" of Cherryvale, Kansas.

Also, I saw a T-shirt in the mall with just the face of Perry the Platypus in his "Agent P" identity taking up the whole front of the shirt. If I wore T-shirts at all, I'd wear that one. Every few years I get to design a shirt for someone. I recently did one for the Autumn Moon Festival here, and it turned out to be popular — by which I mean we sold ten or twelve more shirts and had to print up another batch — partly because I designed them on black shirts, so college kids who didn't care for white shirts bought them.

Serge: Very good. :-)

I posted this in a moribund thread a half dozen comments before the end. I now give it a second chance at being seen.

In Which We Take Leave of Our Hero

He sat at his table, dregs of Victory Hunny unlicked on his cheeks. He sat very still, not even brushing away a fat fly that came to inspect the glistening stickiness on his face. He tried to hum a hum, but all he could think of was “Three fours are fifteen.” And sometimes it came out “Three fours is fifteen,” and he didn’t know which was which. Owl came by with a Very Important Message about the Progress in the War Against Heffalumps and he listened attentively to it.

It didn’t matter. He knew that the Heffalumps would be defeated, just as he knew they would always be fighting them. It did not bother him a bit to hold both these thoughts fervently. He smiled slightly and hummed, “Three fours are fifteen.” He would do anything for Christopher Robin. He would give Eeyore over, just as Piglet had given him over, and for the same reason: love. The love of wonderful Christopher Robin, from whom all goodness flowed.

A tear twinkled from one eye and slowly tickled its way down his cheek. Winston Pooh was happy, happier than he’d ever thought possible. He was a Silly Old Bear.

Kip W @385, in the version I heard, the salmon company hired PT Barnum to come up with an ad campaign.

On, and nice work @388. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on there. "Victory Hunny" should've clued me in, but my eye had skipped over to "three fours are fifteen".

The problem with the Mussolini comment is (after the question of punctuation) a subject verb disagreement; neither takes were, or a partition, "neither was a part of...."

praisegod @355 -- Are you sure it's parsnips that Anthimus has in mind? One thing that makes me wonder - him being Byzantine - is that I've never come across a parsnip in Turkey

Anthimus's word is "pastinacea". Since the term is ambiguous, Mark Grant translates it with "parsnips and carrots". Although Anthimus is identified culturally as "Byzantine", his culinary treatise was written while he was the ambassador of the Ostrogothic king of Italy and is addressed to the king of the Franks, and there are a number of references and ingredients that reflect a more northerly cuisine (e.g., the use of butter). But in any event, although classical sources seem to use "pastinaca" promiscuously for both carrots and parsnips (Pliny discusses several different plants using this word as part of the name -- none sufficiently described for clear identification) both plants seem to have been in regular cultivation in Italy since well before Anthimus's time and that seems a better guide to what he might have intended than Anatolia would be. (And I refuse to get into the debate about the appropriate colors of carrots in historic cookery at the moment.)

Open Threadiness: I think this guy has been mentioned here before, and if he hasn't been, he should have been.

Book Sculptor.

B Durbin: I'm not quite sure how I feel about those. They are stunning, in more ways than one.

On the one hand, way cool, on the other... ... those are books.

This, on the likelihood of record floods in Minnesota is pretty scary.

Saw The Adjustment Bureau this afternoon.

I'm . . . I . . . I'm having a hard time remembering it. It was slick, handsome, well acted, moderately intriguing, especially early on. But, as was my experience with Inception, it didn't make a deep impression.

A few weeks ago I bought, from the Walgreen's $4.00 DVD bin, a copy of The Orphanage. But I'm not sure if I have to watch it again. You don't forget a movie like that.

Beef Schadenfreude

Ingredients:

A sufficient quantity of beef.
(1 kilo/2 pounds did 6 hungry adults and assorted small folk last time I cooked it; I won't make a stab at suggesting a cut since the ones you get here don't correspond to anything you could find elsewhere, but something you can stew. Shin might be good.)

Black (ie purple) carrots - about a pound

Black beer (not a stout; what you really want is a German dark beer; but last time I topped it up with a weissbier.) - about an English pint, maybe a bit more.

Pickling onions (or shallots, if you can get them)

Mushrooms - probably optional, but good for sweetness.

Salt,pepper, bayleaves

Plenty of time. (requires an overnight marinade and a long slow cook the next day)

Method

Put you beef in a large pottery bowl - (definitely not metal). Chop your carrots quite thin, peel but don't chop your onions. Add to the bowl of beef. Season - salt, pepper, bay leaves.
Add enough beer to cover. Cover, put in fridge over night.

On the morrow: Take a large, flat-bottomed pan. Fish the chunks of meat out the marinade - which you'll need in a moment - pausing to notice that thanks to the carrots it is now the colour of red wine. Add some oil to the saucepan - brown the meat.

Add the carrots, and pickling onions; also the mushrooms - button mushrooms, or what they call here fındık mantar - 'hazelnut mushrooms' - probably being best.

Now add your marinade to the pan, along with any left over black beer. Possibly a spoonful of sugar, if you're worried about bitter residues from your beer.

Simmer on a low heat for several hours until purplish black and omnomnicious. (It's important that it really is a simmer, or your beef will end up leather-like in its toughness.) Serve with mashed potatoes and yorkshire puddings

Serve to 6 hungry Goths. (If Goths are unavailable, you may substitute Ostrogoths, Vizigoths, Huns or Vandals according to taste.)

TexAnne @ 299: Heartfelt best wishes and sympathies. My own choice-kin have just come out of a mighty cruel year, and that's a hard thing to stand by and see, even if one can sometimes help around the edges. Take care of yourself, too: slips by the wayside, sometimes.

TexAnne @299: I hope the cranes sprinkle some collateral healing as they pass through your possession.

Kip W: Bruce E. Durocher III

II, not III, actually. My parents chose II because every Junior they knew was a ringtailed SOB. It's not correct according to Post, and my wife has a been running a long-term guerilla war to get me to quit using it, but I keep pointing out that it is what's on the birth certificate...

When I was busily acquiring free eBooks for my reader I picked up a volume of the complete Poe that consisted of criticisms. The first thing in the book is Edgar A. unleashing the full force of his discernment on (if memory serves) William Ellery Channing, Jnr., which is a laugh riot for anybody not named William Ellery Channing...I bought the Library of America volume that's nothing but, and it shows him instigating feuds with other writers (and critics), some of whom may be sock puppets.

If the Library of America edition includes the essay on Channing you mention I may just pick that up. A friend of mind was kind enough to drop by Value Village for me and pick up a pair of pants good enough for me to wear to go to a store and get my own pants (losing 75 pounds--fifty by choice--purely shoots the shit out of your wardrobe), so I should be able to go to bookstores again soon.

Confucius believed a leader to be benevolent and virtuous two things that were neither part of Mussolini’s character.

Confucius believed a leader should be benevolent and virtuous...

The second part of the sentence is confused, but the first part is plain wrong. Unless the student was talking about a particular leader who Confucius believed to be benevolent and virtuous.

Re parsnips:
I haven't made this parsnip spice cake yet, but I fully intend to. Parsnip cakes were apparently once as common as carrot cakes.

David Harmon @ #266:
My understanding is [gingkgo seeds]'re not so much "food" as a medicinal or "supplement".
Actually, ginkgo nuts are quite a prized ingredient in several east Asian cuisines (though I'm not sure about Sichuan specifically). Yan-Kit So's Classic Food of China says "Mild and tender, they are a favourite of vegetarians, providing a viscous texture to a dish." The fruit surrounding the nuts has an offensive smell, and the pulp can irritate your skin if you have a sensitivity to it, so gloves should be worn when harvesting. Also the nuts can be toxic if eaten in large enough quantities.

(I'm sure this has been mentioned on Making Light before, but the odd and hard to spell word "ginkgo" appears to have resulted from the Japanese name being misread in two different writing systems: first giving the second character of 銀杏 (ginnan) its alternative value of kyō and then mistranscribing something like "ginkyo" as "ginkgo".)

David Harmon @ #286:
There may be a special term for non-blood relations ...
Those acquired by marriage are called affinal kin.

Stefan Jones @ 395... Ah yes, "The Orphanage"... When I saw it, two young women came in with their quite young kids. It took only a few minutes before they realized this wasn't a Shhirley Temple kind of movie, at which point they promptly left.

I haven't seen "The Adjustment Bureau" yet. Speaking of Hollywood and Philip K Dick... It's my understanding that Ridley & Tony Scott are behind a miniseries based on "The Man in the High Castle". I'm not sure that's good news, as I remember their version of "The Andromeda Strain". Now, if someone would do "Ubik"...

praisegod barebones@396: Why ceramic and not metal? I don't see anything in that marinade that will bother any of my metal bowls, and I marinate been and chicken and shrimp in metal bowls regularly. (Stainless steel, however; perhaps it's a hangover from when people with "metal" containers had something more reactive?)

Bruce E. Durocher II @399: Hard to believe, but I even looked twice before I posted that. My dad's a III, so I'm apparently darn near hardwired to keep going once I've typed II. But fear not! Once I've embarrassed myself publicly this way, it'll be at least a week before I do the same damn thing again… and after that time, it'll be a whole month or more! (Just kidding. I'll never make that mistake again!)

Googling poe "ellery channing" under the books category gets me several links. Here's the first one. (Here's something that may be interesting: "Eureka," which at a cursory glance looks like Poe's Huge Theory of Everything. It's over 150 pages, and I'm afraid to even sample it.)

And I was wrong to say "William Ellery Channing, Jnr.," as the William Ellery Channing here considered — "He is a, and by no means the, William Ellery Channing" — turns out to be a nephew, not a son.

More openthreadygoodness: Classic 1978 pet cemetery documentary The Gates of Heaven can be streamed online for free! And the place it's at is apparently a video site that specializes in streaming documentaries, so for all you folks with way too much time on your hands, this could be the perfect solution!

Continuing to mark essays. Wondering what local number for the Samaritans might be.

Emma Goldman was positioned that women’s characteristics and beliefs mount them into who they are.

She not only focused on birth control, but on seal freedom for women in general.

Women of all ethnic and culture groups, although different, some had a similar interest in the idea of women rights.

Goldman means of morality was that it masked itself as the concept of religion, which prohibited anything against the norm; which in relation to women rights refuses the idea of Emma Goldman as well as birth control.

In order for women to liberate themselves they need freedom however unlike Goldman Beauvoir didn’t encourage freedom from morality, but inferiority.

Fragano (407): Ouch! I suspect that "seal freedom" is a typo for "real freedom".

And I was wrong to say "William Ellery Channing, Jnr.," as the William Ellery Channing here considered — "He is a, and by no means the, William Ellery Channing" — turns out to be a nephew, not a son.

'Junior' also used to be used to mean a younger man of the same name. So, while it's not the current usage, it's still correct.

Stefan @ 395 -

We saw The Adjustment Bureau yesterday and enjoyed it. It's essentially a love story, and I thought it was told well. They restrained the special effects and let the story carry the movie.

In contrast, we also watched Russell Crowe sleepwalk his way through a thoroughly dismal Robin Hood on HBO last night. Aside from Cate Blanchett's performance as Marian, everyone looked like they were thinking, "Why the hell am I stuck at the tail end of the 12th century? Isn't there a lighter century elsewhere?"

Stefan @ 395 -

We saw The Adjustment Bureau yesterday and enjoyed it. It's essentially a love story, and I thought it was told well. They restrained the special effects and let the story carry the movie.

In contrast, we also watched Russell Crowe sleepwalk his way through a thoroughly dismal Robin Hood on HBO last night. Aside from Cate Blanchett's performance as Marian, everyone looked like they were thinking, "Why the hell am I stuck at the tail end of the 12th century? Isn't there a lighter century elsewhere?"

With all the discussion of ginkgo nuts, bear in mind that as one of the links mentions, they definitely contain a neurotoxin. They must be boiled for a long time to be safe to eat at all. Once boiled, eating a few is harmless, but I would be concerned that eating a lot, even over a long period of time, might still be bad.

The distantly related (and equally ancient) cycads are responsible for ALS-PDC, a degenerative neurological syndrome found in Guam, with similar symptoms a few other places in the world where cycads were used in folk medicine. There are a bunch of papers on cycad neurotoxins in Neurology behind a pay-wall. There is still argument about exactly which compound is the neurotoxin, but no question that there is one.

Mary Aileen #408: I suspect the same thing.

Since this morning I have learnt:

Women of this time were expected to marry, bare children, and be happy.

I wondered why they weren't supposed to clothe their children.

Fragano @ #413, Baring children prepares them for the boiling pot. Happiness results from having the additional sustenance. Clothing may add fiber, but certainly not flavor.

Fragano @ 413: I would have suspected your pupils wish to cloth the children instead, based upon my recent reading.

I am morally certain that anyone reading this deep into an Open Thread will be as delighted by the jewellike, exuberant, besotted paean to language in this particular audio 'podgram' by Stephen Fry as I was.

There is apparently a text/transcription version, but I can't imagine it holds a candle to him speaking it.

Failing that, any non-language-maven Fluorospherians will definitely enjoy this photo of Mr. Fry dressed as a Klingon. And probably a lot of the language-lovers, too. :-> I have no idea as to the context of it, but it almost doesn't need any, does it?

I apparently used Words of Power in my preceding post, which is now held for review? Or maybe the two URLs were a problem ...

Elliott @417:

Your second link is borked.

May I take this moment to put my professional hat on* and extol the virtues of testing things? Preview is a great opportunity to check whether your links work.

-----
* It's 8 1/2" x 13 1/2"†. It has bells. Because nothing's foolproof until I say it is.
† You know, foolscap.

abi @ 418... I for one would welcome a photo of you wearing said chapeau.

abi @418: I coulda sworn I did. :-> In any case, it should have been this picture.

Via Argh Ink, a crocheted jetpack, powered by carrots.

Elliott Mason #420: Oh man, that's hilarious -- a Klingon geek!

Andrew W.K. tweets:

PRT TP: N vwls.

I'm not sure that's actually a party tip. Maybe a tip for how to keep party poopers under control.

I read the sentence I post below several times. I then checked the BBC for reports of any earthquakes in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery.

The goods and services are sold for far more than the price of wages which ideally allows the socialist class to remain on top of the working class.

Fragano at 424:

Those are all words in a language I know, but the sentence has no meaning.

Maybe it's a koan.

No. No, it's not.

My brain hurts.

You know, I'm a little uncomfortable mocking people I don't know and haven't worked with, simply because they are less fluent in my native tongue than I am. I find that I am a little surprised that more people in this community aren't sensitive to that. It seems a strange intolerance, coming from this community.

@426 - I suspect what you're seeing is a bunch of writers wincing at language abuse. I know that's my take on it.

If I believed that Fragano's students were non-native users of English, or that they were collectively assumed to have some other difficulty of language usage, I'd be far more willing to cut them some slack. I might even cut any individual among them some slack for if I were interacting with them on a personal basis.

But anonymously? on the internet? I am appalled. And snarky.

KayTei, we're sympathizing with Fragano's pain in having to grade such awfulness. We're making fun of the sentences.

I'm sympathetic to the desire to support. I just think there should be better ways to sympathize, than abusing others for not having the same talents the people here are blessed with.

I have the same reaction when I hear people being criticized for not being good enough singers. It's one thing to have those talents (as I do), and be able to tell between skilled and unskilled (as I can). I personally feel that it's another thing entirely to engage in the kind of overt contempt that takes the enjoyment out of learning new skills.

Not everyone learns every skill equally quickly. In my experience, this kind of public mockery just makes people who aren't fluent or innately talented feel marginalized and like there's no point trying to learn things that are hard for them. And like they have to hide or avoid the things they aren't good at. I find that really sad, and I can't bring myself to participate in creating that kind of social environment.

KayTei #s 426/429:

My students, when confronted with the barbarities they commit (generally because they write essays they night before they are due), have the grace to admit that they are bad. I'm not asking for much, but I'd like to see ideas presented clearly. I also hold office hours. I invite students to discuss difficulties with me. Few take advantage of the opportunity.

The sentences I've been sharing are from essays by juniors and seniors, not freshmen. All the students are native speakers of English. All of them have taken freshman comp. All of them have an abundant supply of excuses for the low quality of their expository writing.

@426-430

I'm going to step away from this particular discussion now, because it's touched one of my really, really sore spots w.r.t. internet communities.

I'll bow out as well. It's just a thing that makes me tense. There've been a few of those kinds of conversations here of late. Think I'll try to take a break for a while.

To all who offered their good wished to Gavin.

He's back now. He doesn't seen to have been badly affected. He's not talking much about it, but that's normal for him.

So, again, thanks to you all.

J Homes.

I'm watching an episode of The Simpsons which would rate as daring social science fiction with satirical touches a couple of decades ago.

So it's past the deadline for big prestigious writing workshops and little ones too, and now we try to raise money for scholarships.

Alpha's fundraiser this year isn't a wee zombie story but several wee stories written and illustrated by alumni. As with last year's fundraiser, this is run by Alphans.

So if you have a spare five bucks lying around, help support young writers. Alpha's one of my favorite things in the world, and I really want everyone who has a chance to go to be able to and not be held back by lack of funds.

Fragano @413 -- on the other hand, I expect "seal" was a spelling-autocorrect error when the person typed sexal (missing sexual in a way that led to seal as the replacement). And the one you quote in this comment becomes even sillier if you remove the first comma....

Not intending to add to the snarkiness with the first comment, though the second does a little.

The question of what kinds of errors are more likely to show up with an auto-correct feature strikes me as an interesting one. There was a case recently where someone in England was killed because an iPhone autocorrected the work "mutter" to "nutter", and the recipient took offense.

Fragano @ 424: It makes perfect sense to me. The socialist class socializes all the assets and profits and distributes them amongst Society. Working people are no more members of Society than they would have been in Jane Austen's world. It even looks dreamily familiar.

I am drawing a blank on the name of the aristocratic socialist who suggested that socialism, like champagne, was too good to justly remain the exclusive property of guys like him. My view of two-way socialism is by no means his, but he was dead right about the nature of the one-way kind.

Since it bears a remarkably close resemblance to a one-way market economy, it also offers enormous potentialities for either bipartisanship or spirited debates about the angels' disco, according to the needs of any given section of Society.

This last hypothetical arrangement, in which the rulers reap insane riches with their right hand* and simultaneously regulate everybody's lives for the greater good** on their left, is admittedly so absurd that it could never occur in real life. Nonetheless, it vividly illustrates the profound insight of your essayist, and I look forward to hearing very presently that he has made his mark on the world, quite possibly as Vice-President of a major Western nation.

* Via the forces of a market which they own, and whose rules they change as the greater good** moves them.

** $CHING!$

I don't know if this is sufficiently 'poetry' to qualify towards my Necessary Yearly Contribution, but it's what I've written lately.

It is a parody song lyric, to the somewhat obvious tune by Queen. If you want to add to the realism of the experience, you could start rhythmically doing a "stomp-stomp CLAP, stomp-stomp CLAP" backing track before you start reading the words. :-> I hope to debut it at FilKONtario at the end of the month, in their songwriting contest.

.

Kiddo, you're a girl, with your blonde curls
Playin' with your food, gonna be a big kid some day
You got milk on your face, you big disgrace,
Wavin' your spoon all over the place.

Singing, we will, we will feed you.
We will, we will feed you.

Kiddo you're a baby, maybe
If you live to grow up, gonna take on the world someday.
You got cheese on your face, you big disgrace,
Wavin' your noodles all over the place.

Singing, we will, we will feed you.
We will, we will feed you.

Kiddo, you're a minor, whiner,
Pleading with your eyes, gonna make you take naps someday.
You got pants on your head, and eyes of red,
Somebody better put you back into your bed.

Singing, we will, we will feed you.
Sing it! We will, we will feed you.
Everybody: We will, we will feed you.
We will, we will feed you.
Alright.

Julia, #373: For me, it was realizing why getting an actual assignment out of one of my co-workers felt like pulling teeth -- he was an extreme E, who literally didn't know what he wanted me to to until he'd talked his way thru it in front of me. Didn't make it any more fun to deal with, but at least after that it didn't feel like he was being deliberately obtuse.

Also, reading the MBTI book was like having one lightbulb after another go on about my conflicts with my parents. (I'm INTJ; as far as I can figure out, my mother was ESFJ and my father was ISFP. You perceive the potential for problems.)

Bruce D., #399: If Henry and Edward and Richard can be II, I don't see any reason why you can't. :-)

Backing way up to the discussion of colors: technically, I'm a Summer, but I'm on the dark end of that range, so I can also wear Winter jewel-tones in moderation. But then I screw with everything by dyeing my hair red; it's a blue-based red rather than a yellow-based one, but it still lets me get away with some Autumn shades that I otherwise wouldn't be able to wear at all. Good colors for me are pretty much anything in the blue/green/purple end of the spectrum, dark reds, and occasional forays into gold/rust/brown/tan.

The other thing that helped my fashion sense a lot was finding a book about body types and realizing that I was a Romantic; flowing, drapey clothing looks really good on me (but not the ruffly-fluffly stuff with frills and lace), whereas I'd been trying to wear things designed for a much more angular body type.

@431-432: I'm taking midterms today and tomorrow. Maybe I'm old, but I like to see people upholding basic standards. Someone mentioned to me when I went back to school that, in their words, "it's the student's responsibility to learn." One of my classes is basically 400-level chemistry, which I am taking without any 200- or 300-level chemistry and 20 years after the 100-level chemistry. What do I do? WORK HARDER. Now maybe I'm insensitive because I've got a high IQ, and a lot of time on my hands, and I'm a grownup. But apparently these students have taken and passed classes in how to accomplish the basic tasks.

["Advanced batteries and fuel cells", if you're wondering. With a whole lot of electrochemistry to start with. At least I know the electric parts.]

Hyperlocal news... Man gets up, turns on TV's "Singers & Swing" music channel, and finds it playing Duke Ellington's "Blue Serge". Is the Universe trying to tell man something?

Gray Woodland #437: You've brightened my morning.

That sounds like Saint-Simonianism, but I'm not altogether sure.

Tim May @#501, re "ginkgo": I don't know if you got that explanation from the same place I did, but I thought I'd link to my source* for elucidation purposes.

*Almost the very last thing on the page

I loved the radio astroturfer piece, and I'd love to see more coverage of it. Can anyone point out a news piece or blog article that goes into more depth about it?

This follows a broad pattern I've found interesting my whole life, from that critical evening years ago when Pat Robertson taught me a terribly important and valuable life lesson[1]: The many ways in which news and media more generally (reality shows, call-in shows, game shows, interviews, sports coverage, sitcoms, dramas) distort or hide reality is still quite interesting to me.

[1] His 700 Club News, which my grandmother watched (ahem) religiously in those days[2], ran an expose on the dire threat of Dungeons and Dragons. In format and content, it was indistinguishable from other exposes of hidden dangers on other news shows. It came from respectable sources (TV news anchors with all trappings of reliable authority, backed by a religious leader's authority). And it was so completely ridiculous and counter to my own experiences and knowledge that the illusion that this kind of news piece was the least bit trustworthy was shattered forever. Thank you, thank you, Pat Robertson. You gave me a wonderful gift that day.

[2] My grandmother gave up on him a little later, when he became openly political (fine by her) and Republican (definitely not fine by her). My grandmother was crippled her whole life by not having a Christian Socialist party to join.

Elliott Mason @438: You're onto something here. It could also work with "You must, you must FEED ME," but that's just me thinking the back rhythm befits a child banging a spoon or bowl on a high chair. Pfff, it's fine the way it is.

Particle (Amber): You don't often see two specimens so well mounted.

Serge #441: How are you feeling today, Serge?

Kip W @445: It's sung from the parents' perspective, because I'm doing it back-to-back with the other half (We Will Rock You / We Are The Champions); the chorus of the second part is "We are the parents, we are the parents. No time for sleeping, 'cause we are the parents ... of the girl!"

Also, that's just how the original was structured.

albatross #444: This sort of deceit is something every generation seems to discover anew, but we have complaints of much the same from Imperial Rome and older cultures.

It's a serious possibility that our evolution -- and especially our recent leap in intelligence -- owes a great deal to an arms race in that battleground of deceit! Certainly a great deal of it is customarily devoted to analyzing the behavior and trustworthiness of others!

Albatross @444

I'm with your grandmother. I want there to be a Christian Socialist party. It's right there in Acts!

32 Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. 33 And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. 34 Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, 35 and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.

On the other hand - I like my nice house and my full closet and car and stuff. I am willing to work for social justice and pour my time, energy, and money into helping those who haven't been given as much, I just dread the day God says I should really work on that sharing in community thing. (I'm territorial. It makes me a bad Christian. I'm working on it. Slowly.)

Poe's Channing take-down can also be found here, along with other works, on the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. One can imagine Channing bleeding just a bit every time anyone read the piece, whether he knew it was being read or not.

Fragano @ 446... Pretty well, actually. Today is a day-off and, aside from two short meetings, I expect the day to consist of relaxation, then a trip to a bookstore, followed by more relaxation.

Great news!

My wife, Susan Krinard, has sold a contemporary fantasy trilogy to Melissa Frain at Tor Books via Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency. The first volume, "Mist", will be published in October 2012. It's about Mist, a Valkyrie who believed she was one of the few who survived Ragnarok, but realizes the fight is far from over when frost giants and other long-forgotten enemies begin reappearing to menace the modern world.

Congratulations, Ms. Krinard!

Serge @ 452 - Congrats to Susan!

Woohoo! Congratulations, Susan!

I just came over here to convey Serge's news, and I see he's posted it already.

The cool thing is that I had no idea Melissa Frain was doing this deal -- I only heard about it when I read Serge's LJ just a few minutes ago. We're a big house these days, with several very energetic young editors rapidly building up their lists...

Serge #452: Congratulations to Susan!

sisuille:

Yeah, though I have to say, I'm just as happy not to have the enforcement mechanism for their sharing of all things in common in use these days. Even in the early church, with folks we now call saints guiding the whole thing, you can't completely overcome human self-interest, and the harder you try, the uglier your methods must become.

Jacque @ 294: I've managed to book a free 1-2-1 "intro to Pilates" 30 minutes for later this week. Mostly it will be talking about what I want Pilates to help with, but apparently I'll also be shown a few exercises. Then I can make a more informed decision whether to pay out for some classes in that (I do want to strengthen my core to help my running, anyway, and it might help with the sacro-iliac thing as well). The same centre does physiotherapy and sports massage, and has an osteopath, so I might get talked into an initial physio session and see where I go from there. The chiropractor I talked with back in November did seem to know what he was talking about (looking at my foot, not my spine, when I'd originally talked of a sacro-iliac problem) and I was intending to book a session with him last December but with the snow I was avoiding going into London. Now I sort-of feel bad if I decide I'll go to someone else without a good reason. (which I know is silly, but...).

Jacque @ 328: Yes - at least I'm aware it might be a factor.

Thanks, everybody.
I'll tell Sue.
Meanwhile I'm doing the Walter Huston happy dance.
(If you don't know what that is, you can see it HERE on YouTube.)

BREAKING: Hitherto-unpublished William McGonagall poems discovered, to be unleashed upon public. Run for your lives!

OT: Are copy editors supposed to check the spelling of foreign words in the books they copy-edit? If so, someone needs to have a word with whoever copy-edited Ian MacDonald's 'The Dervish House' for Victor Gollancz. It's set in Istanbul, and practically every Turkish word mentioned seems to be misspelt - often in ways that make it not even a possible Turkish word. /ykgoml

Serge: Convey my heartiest congratulations to Susan.

#642: Praisegod: It's set in Istanbul, and practically every Turkish word mentioned seems to be misspelt - often in ways that make it not even a possible Turkish word.

I suspect there was a problem with the Turkish font sometime between the copyediting/proofreading and printing. The Turkish font at the press didn't exactly match the Turkish font at the publisher.

Perhaps?

Serge @#452: Congratulations! That's great news. And the premise of the story sounds terrific.

Serge @452 - Congratulations to Susan! And it sounds interesting. I'm sure you'll give us a reminder head-up closer to publication date (hint, hint).

Serge, pass on my congratulations! I look forward to reading them.

Serge, congratulations to Susan! It sounds like a pretty interesting read.

Okay, so we have established that it is possible for me to do the splits. This is not to say that I am capable of doing the splits.

You know how Seattleites are reputed to freak out when it snows? This can be taken as a first approximation for how Boulderites "cope" with ice storms.

I can walk okay if I move like I have a cast on my right leg from rib-cage to toe. Getting up and down is...a challenge.*

Why haven't I gone to the doctor? A) I'm inclined to give it some time to see how things evolve. B) Today (and probably tomorrow, by the weather report) is not a day to be seen quickly in Urgent Care.

Question for the Aikidoka in the room: I've had enough martial arts that I can usually fall pretty cleanly. But when it comes to slipping on ice, it seems that I have no influence over the angle of my drop.** Any suggestions?

--

* I'm afraid the boys are not going to get out to play today. Leaving aside the challenge of picking them up when it's time for them to go in, the idea of stepping over the little fences that cross the room to keep them from killing each other makes me shudder.

** I mean, aside from getting back in shape. That one's a no-brainer.***

*** You know it's time when your boobs feel bruised from the g-forces.

Lee @439: The other thing that helped my fashion sense a lot was finding a book about body types and realizing that I was a Romantic.

Cite, s'il vous plaît?

Open thread:

What's that? You need a font that is only ampersands? Of course you do!

Here's a take on self publishing from someone who's pretty successful at it: things that need to be said.

Serge @452: I echo congratulations to Ms. Krinard! That actually sounds like an interesting story.

Thanks again, all of you!

It started when she wrote a story for a Tor anthology that'll come out this summer,and Sue decided she wanted to do more with the character.

dcb @ 459... intro to Pilates

"Stwike him, Centuwion! Vewy woughly!"

dcb @459: SCORE! See also: w00t!!

it might help with the sacro-iliac thing as well

I can predict that, if they are reasonably competent, this will almost certainly help with the sacro-iliac thing. Like I say, when I did mine, I wound up fixing things I hadn't even realized were broken.

Now I sort-of feel bad if I decide I'll go to someone else without a good reason.

Finding someone else who has a broader ranges of services available is a good reason, IMHO. Nevertheless, I hear ya. (I've had this problem with vets; I found a good vet fifteen minutes walk away, which led to me abandoning my beloved practice thirty minutes by bus across town. I still feel bad.)

Consider, also, that it is not a bad thing to have two good practices in your pocket, against a rainy day.

Jacque, #470: Unfortunately, if I still have the book at all, it's on the one bookshelf in the house which is completely inaccessible -- and I don't remember the title. What I do remember is that the body types for women were:

- Ingenue; she's the one who can wear all the fluffles and ruffles and lace and teeny flowery prints. She tends to mature into either a Romantic or a Classic.

- Romantic; aka curvy. Looks good in soft fabrics and flowing lines, but don't go overboard with the ruffles and fancy furbelows.

- Classic; think "business formal". Looks best in tailored, understated designs and mostly-neutral colors, although a bright-colored blouse or accessory can add some punch.

- Sporty/Natural; think "business casual" and "outdoorsy". Similar to Classic, but less dressy.

- Dramatic; fashion-model figure, all angles and lots of leg. This was where I was going wrong with my choices for dress-up -- I've always been drawn to the sort of things that it takes a Dramatic figure to pull off, like cheongsams, and they never looked right on me. Women who get pissed at the "REAL women have curves" meme are almost always able to wear Dramatic styles.

Most women can pull off elements of at least 2 of those styles. When I'm not being Romantic, my look leans toward Sporty/Natural.

There was a list of men's body types as well, but I don't remember it.

Serge@475

I'm washing my hands of this pun thread...

Andrew Willett at #461:

Marc Abrahams has often astonished the world by reporting information that is perfectly true.

However, he is also more than competent to pull off a successful hoax.

Is there independent confirmation that the "new" McGonagall poems are authentic?

Mr. Abrahams published his announcement in the Guardian. Can we rely upon this venerable and august newspaper?

(If you're reading this, hi, Marc!)