Serge,
I just tried to google the name to find proof. And, well, that was a mistake...
But no, I'm not kidding. And I must say, if it had been me I would have retired right then and had my own letterhead printed up.
I had an oral surgeon once named Dr. Looney.
My Dad had a classmate at the Air Force Academy whose last name was Marvel. Why, yes, he did reach the rank of Captain.
Yes, I try to keep things stocked around the house anyway--it's common sense, really! But harder to do, I've noticed, when you live alone, like me. No one is depending on me and I'm used to being able to just run out to the store two blocks away whenever.
I need to be better about this sort of thing--especially living alone, since no one is on hand to look after me. I tend to be a little blase, which I think comes from living in a region with too many survivalist types who take the whole emergency kit thing to an extreme. You know, keeping a small army's worth of ammo with their bottled water...
Somewhat brainless practical question. I was raised by a family firmly entrenched in that sort of Midwest Great Depression Survivor mentality of waste nothing, throw nothing away, use everything. The thing that has always struck me about these survival kit plans (car kits, earthquake kits, flu kits, etc.), is they involve buying lots of things with expiration dates (medication, food, even bottled water), then sticking them in your trunk or closet until they expire, then tossing them out and buying new ones.
Anybody have strategies for avoiding that sort of thing? Is it possible to actually use the stuff in your kit before it expires, then simply remember to keep it stocked?
Am I crazy to be worrying about this sort of thing?
A complete tangent, but like Lydy I was confused. This forum is run by science fiction editors and writers, frequented by science fiction writers, fans, etc., so in that context, when I saw "SF" I automatically thought "science fiction."
I'm thinking, "science fiction strip club?"
Never mind...I'm slow sometimes...
Oh my goodness, Teresa, those things are adorable. They've got this stoic hamster look going.
So, I sent these links to my friend and he wrote back this:
"You're a bad bad person for sending me these. Now I have to build them."
Heehee. Not a pyro myself, but I suppose I'm a bit of an enabler.
My former housemate makes shoulder-mounted PVC rocket launchers. They use a battery operated trigger to ignite and launch model rocket engines. It's like G.I. Joe for grownups.
I think I'll show him this thread.
Then there was the time one of the other housemates let it off in the house...
Re: calling 911. When I worked in a bookstore, a man came up to me at the info desk and said, "There's been a bad car accident outside." I immediately went, "Oh gosh, here's the phone, call 911." He said, "I don't want to be the one to call." And just stood there. So I called, and what happened was absolutely predictable. The operator asked me for specific info, and I had to ask the man who'd actually seen the accident, then get back to the operator. An extra, time-wasting step that wouldn't have happened if he'd just made the call himself.
Have you emergency medical types ever had this happen, where you tell someone to call 911 and that person says, "No." ???
A friend of mine uses a phrase: "outrage fatigue." I've been suffering from it for quite a while now.
/going back to read the post from a couple days ago about stress.
I'm vaguely jealous of these extensive, detailed family histories that go back four hundred years--for the stories, not for the status.
My own is scattered at best, and fairly textbook lower-class American. My mother's side has those Irish peasant refugees of the potato famine, Pennsylvanian Germans who decamped to Colorado, Dutch, more Germans, and my great-grandfather who came from Sweden on the Lusitania.
The history of my father's side comes to a screeching halt at about 1850 with a couple of extra-marital offspring who no one wanted to claim. I suspect colonial roots on that side--but they'll turn out to be the convicts, indentured servants, etc.
No DAR credentials, but my paternal grandfather was a member of the Sons of the Confederacy. He had his certificate hanging on the wall next to his picture of Bill Clinton.
Keith,
Can we add a category under horror? Something along the lines of splatterpunk, or "the gross-out" to use Stephen King's terminology.
The spoilers will be impossible to avoid after this. Grrrr.
Bouncebouncebouncebounce.
I'm a sucker for big spaceship movies. I even saw "Wing Commander" in the theater. This will be better. (Couldn't possibly be worse.)
From my bookselling days:
Customer came to the desk with an armload of "How to learn Spanish tapes." I prepared for her question, which in this situation was usually "which of these do you recommend?"
She started, "My family and I are going to Spain." I nodded encouragingly. She continued, "They speak Spanish there, don't they?"
I'm really not sure how long it took me to stop gaping at her like a fish before I said yes.
Then there was the woman with the screaming four-year old hanging off her arm who wanted to know if we had a copy of "Your Unruly Child."
One from a colleague, that actually turns the tables:
Our store was well known for its extensive computer books section. All the techies and programmers came to us. The clerk answered the phone. The caller's question was, "Do you have any books on unix?"
She, being rather new and not so computer savvy, dutifully typed "eunuchs" into the search engine. It's a case of the bookseller being possibly TOO literate.
The scary thing is, occassionally a customer would come in, wanting a copy of that book that someone talked about on the radio a couple months ago, the one with the blue cover, and I'd know what they were talking about and take them right to it. It's very impressive when you can swing it.
Drive-bys don't stop when the kids grow up. In college, my brother studied theater and I studied English. My mother got lots of grief about our majors from her friends and colleagues. "How can you let them study such impractical subjects? Aren't you worried about them moving back in when they can't find jobs?" My mother would reply, "They're adults. I can't tell them what to do."
She had no end of fun around 2001, when all their computer science major kids moved back home after getting laid off. Meanwhile, her kids are actually making money at theater and writing and have always paid their own bills.
Success is always the best revenge.
My getting pissed off may also be an expression of my own inability to do anything about it. And the voyeuristic guilt at watching disasters happen while sitting dry and safe at work.
This is going to sound weird, but the videos seemed strangely nonviolent. No towering wall of water ala "Deep Impact." Rather, it seemed like the entire ocean just said, "Right, I want to be over there now," and then went there, in the middle of everything, before I really knew what was happening.
I also get vaguely pissed off at amateur disaster videos where there are people getting swept away and possibly hurt, and the guy with the camera just keeps filming.
Sargent's "Gassed" has always been one of my favorite paintings. It's so deceptively simple (as opposed to Napoleonic era paintings of cavalry charges on masses of frothing horses), and so emotionally devastating.
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| 2004 | 4 |
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