Random randomness

[hepcat]

Just because you order chicken tamales that are almost entirely composed of hot green sauce and are technically something that should only be handled by someone in a hazmat suit doesn't mean you should actually finish those tamales. I'm just saying...

[Kasey Chang]

There's clearly a story behind that in the way that "bad decisions makes great life stories" bumper sticker way. Unfortunately, it may be TMI.

Last night, a friendly auntie (not by blood, more of a friend) tried to set me up on a blind date. Girl never showed up. Apparently she "didn't feel well", LOL. Still have treat auntie to dinner, of course.

[hepcat]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of the night our Kasey Chang narrowly avoided becoming another victim of the San Fran Slasher. His life was saved by one bad taco.

[Exodor]

I smell a rat.

Well, OK I don't actually smell it but the wife saw one in the house last night eating out of the cat food bowl. We have three cats so that rat was either desperately hungry or really stupid (tbf the cats didn't react to its presence at all although they have been very interested in a nearby spot under a cabinet. That spot is where the rat fled after the wife spotted it.)

Orkin comes tomorrow to do whatever it is they do.

[Blackhawk]

Why must Cheetos put a graphic on the front of the bag proclaiming "Made with real cheese!"? ......Well I should hope so. I dont see anyone bragging about making theirs with fake cheese. Real cheese.....what else ya gonna make it with?

Because most brands probably don't? And just because it contains real cheese doesn't mean much - probably 90% of the powder has never been cheese. Most of what you're tasting is salt, sugar, MSG, various chemicals, and a dye that has been banned in multiple European countries because it can cause tumors.

That shit is so unhealthy that you'd be just as well off chewing on a stick of butter dipped in sugar and rolled in nitrites. It's what you eat when you want to make sure you have health problems.

Mmm... corpse chow.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I smell a rat.

Well, OK I don't actually smell it but the wife saw one in the house last night eating out of the cat food bowl. We have three cats so that rat was either desperately hungry or really stupid (tbf the cats didn't react to its presence at all although they have been very interested in a nearby spot under a cabinet. That spot is where the rat fled after the wife spotted it.)

Orkin comes tomorrow to do whatever it is they do.

Alas, domestic cats are terrific at killing mice. And while they can kill rats, most domestic cats will typically avoid doing so. Because rats tend to be bigger, sharper, and nastier than mice, so taking on mean and hefty rats is an entirely different prospect than predating upon helpless wee mice. Therefore, dogs tend to be far more effective than cats in terms of rat elimination, especially the terrier breeds that were bred with that purpose in mind, as shown here:

Spoiler:

[Isgrimnur]

The Vigilante Group Of New Yorkers Who Hunt Rats At Night

[Unagi]

The Vigilante Group Of New Yorkers Who Hunt Rats At Night

I would be terrified my dog would be exposed to rat poison, either from the rat's blood or from the environment they are hunting around in.

[Exodor]

Last summer when I went to RIOT fest in Chicago with my brother we were walking in downtown Chicago when we saw a large group of rats (maybe 20) emerge from a storm drain and race across a parking lot. Lots of folks around and no one seemed too surprised or upset.

I was just happy they were running away from us. I'm not sure what I'd do if a herd of rats came my way.



Orkin lady came out and put traps in the crawlspace and attic. I bought some space filling spray goo shit that filled the cracks they were using to access the house. No rats last night so...progress?

[Daehawk]

I remember the video of the new york rat chasing the cat.

[Daehawk]

I was looking at my Playmates STTNG USS Enterprise D and Klingon Vor'Cha ship toys. They light up and make sound effects. They are from the early 1990s.

I noticed one box had K-Mart layaway stickers on it where my sweet little wife got them for me for Christmas 1993. She put them in layaway Nov 1993 and got them out Jan 1994. Aww.

In my mind I thought about how long its been and said 20 years. Ooops. Was off by 10..its been 30 years. Geez.

[Unagi]

They are from the early 1990s.

Ahhh... man, remember the early 1990s? Those were the days, am I wrong?

[Daehawk]

Seems like yesterday sometimes.

[dbt1949]

I have short term memory loss. I can't remember yesterday.
I just seem to remember all my troubles seemed so far away.

[Blackhawk]

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they're here to stay.

[LordMortis]

I don't like the look of the word eighth.

[Jaymann]

I don't like the look of the word eighth.

And why is forty not fourty?

[LordMortis]

I don't like the look of the word eighth.

And why is forty not fourty?

Absodamnedlutely.

[Unagi]

When my daughter was a little younger she spoke the words "twenty-tooth" for the 22nd, and we still haven't stopped laughing about it.


edit: well, we take some breaks

[Unagi]

I don't like the look of the word eighth.

And why is forty not fourty?

Absodamnedlutely.

Honestly, I think "one" broke any chance we had to force the other numbers to make sense.

[LordMortis]

When my daughter was a little younger she spoke the words "twenty-tooth" for the 22nd, and we still haven't stopped laughing about it.

BGA (Board Game Arena) has a quarterly ranking system, if you choose to participate, for all of its games. They all are 1th, 2th, and 3th in their ordinals.

[Blackhawk]

I don't like the look of the word eighth.

And why is forty not fourty?

Because of threeteen is unlucky. Which is unrelated to why we don't have oneteen and twoteen, but it is related to why we don't have fiveteen.

Also: Teen = ten. 14 = four-ten, 16 = six-ten, etc.

[Max Peck]

How on earth is it possible to break a molar while eating an onion ring?

In related news, dental crowns are every bit as expensive as royal crowns.

[dbt1949]

I just found out that I've been volunteered to be a show and tell soldier at my d-i-l's granddaughters' schools. I think she has about seven.
What in the hell am I supposed to do or say?

[Jaymann]

I just found out that I've been volunteered to be a show and tell soldier at my d-i-l's granddaughters' schools. I think she has about seven.
What in the hell am I supposed to do or say?

You do know that you can just make shit up.

Like how you stormed the beaches at Normandy. And liberated the concentration camps. And dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. And beat back Napoleon at Waterloo...

[Unagi]

I just found out that I've been volunteered to be a show and tell soldier at my d-i-l's granddaughters' schools. I think she has about seven.
What in the hell am I supposed to do or say?

There are a lot of ways you could approach this.

[Blackhawk]

I just found out that I've been volunteered to be a show and tell soldier at my d-i-l's granddaughters' schools. I think she has about seven.
What in the hell am I supposed to do or say?

You do know that you can just make shit up.

Like how you stormed the beaches at Normandy. And liberated the concentration camps. And dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. And beat back Napoleon at Waterloo...

Or the part where you broke into that POW camp and liberated all of the prisoners before facing off against the commander, whose face looked like a reddish skull!

[Blackhawk]

How on earth is it possible to break a molar while eating an onion ring?

In related news, dental crowns are every bit as expensive as royal crowns.

You probably didn't. You probably broke it one something else and knocked it loose while eating an onion ring.

[Unagi]

Also: Teen = ten. 14 = four-ten, 16 = six-ten, etc.

What's more of a mystery (IMO) is what is eleven and twelve.

They are Old English left-overs of:
Eleven being: ten and "one left" over
Twelve being: "two left"

[Isgrimnur]

Elf, zwolf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn,...

[Blackhawk]

And into Old English from Proto-German. It's thought that the 'left over' is literally a reference to counting on our fingers. You want 11? You count ten fingers with enleofan (one left.) Pronounced something like En-layo-fan, which sounds close to 'eleven', especially when the 'f' was sometimes pronounced 'v.' It also sounds a little like like 'one left' if you use the old word for one (ain, which I believe rhymes with 'wine' sans the w.) Ain left. Ainlef. Enleofan. Eleven.

Keeping in mind that we also had a base-12 system in play at the time, which likely accounts for us having a different form for numbers up through twelve, and just variations of them from 13 on. That's why we have 12 inches in a foot, and specialized words for multiples of 12 (dozen, gross) and a habit of breaking things into 12. We have 12 hours in the day, 12 hours at night, 12 months per year (despite 'month' actually meaning that there should be 13 - it comes from the same root as 'moon', and originally referred to the time between full - or was it new? - moons), etc. Luckily, we got rid of the numbers eleventy and twelfty sometime in the middle ages (they were 110 and 120.)

No, Tolkien didn't create eleventy. But he was a world-renowned expert in the Anglo-Saxon language (his day job was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford), and his translation of Beowulf is still considered one of the most historically accurate (but not the easiest to read - he chose not to alter the translation in order to make it fit into poetic meter, choosing to make it more accurate instead.)

Also: I really like linguistics. It's one of those subjects that, were I rich and able to go to college just for the enrichment, I might have sought a degree in (maybe linguistic anthropology, which is what a lot of this post is.) When I did take linguistics in college (only a single one-year course), I was captivated by the section on how much you could learn about an unknown culture just from how their language was put together - what they believed in, what they felt was important, how they viewed the world, what they understood and did not, etc.

Also also: Tired + late at night + topic I'm enthusiastic about = rambling tangent. Me go bed now.

[Blackhawk]

I failed.

Mostly because I thought of a good example for what I was saying about linguistic anthropology.

We have unique words for 1-12. The numbers above 12 do not have unique words. If you didn't know anything about us save for the names of our numbers, you could deduce that we had a base-12 numbering system when that language was established. After all, we clearly thought that 1-12 were important, and that 13+ were not.

[dbt1949]

I think I found out a little more about the "event" I'm going to. I think I'm just supposed to stand there (with other vets) while the school honors veterans with a little song and dance. I'll go and do the best I can of course but it still feels a little awkward.

[em2nought]

I think I found out a little more about the "event" I'm going to. I think I'm just supposed to stand there (with other vets) while the school honors veterans with a little song and dance. I'll go and do the best I can of course but it still feels a little awkward.

Cool that they're going to honor you. I expect by the time I'd be the one standing on that stage they'd be wanting to shame us instead.

[Fardaza]

I think I found out a little more about the "event" I'm going to. I think I'm just supposed to stand there (with other vets) while the school honors veterans with a little song and dance. I'll go and do the best I can of course but it still feels a little awkward.

We used to do the same thing when I was teaching. Just stand when asked and smile. Your granddaughter might be next to you.

[coopasonic]

I get out of the Veteran's Day dinner at the schools here by telling them technically I am not a veteran. I was in the reserves and was never called. I'm Corporal Not-a-Veteran.

[Daehawk]

Jared Leto climbed to the top of The Empire State Building from the observation level today or yesterday.

https://www.today.com/popculture/jared- ... rcna124370

[Blackhawk]

It's all fun and games until the biplanes arrive.

[Daehawk]

Usually I take my little dog to the mailbox with me. Lucky I didn't today. Checked for mail then saw something in the ditch. Was just some trash but I decided to just step over the ditch instead of walking back around the mailbox. Bad idea. Lost my footing and fell back out into the road like an old elderly man. I jumped up and looked to see if anyone saw me lol. Probably think Im drunk which Im not. Made me mad enough to do it a second time and jump over the ditch and walk up the yard into the house.

Bah. I am not a teenager.

[hepcat]

Jared Leto climbed to the top of The Empire State Building from the observation level today or yesterday

Just think, we were less than 5 feet from a world without his shitty music.