Random thoughts and questions

So I finally got in. It turned out my appointment (a "meds group" thing that is supposed to be sort of drop-in) had been canceled and the nurse forgot to call me. Of course it took 45 minutes to figure this out, despite the fact that I asked several times if I was in the right place, etc. When the receptionists finally tracked down the problem, the nurse apologetically squeezed me in at about 4pm, it turned into a full appointment, and ultimately I was back at work 1.5 hours later than I had told my boss.

oh well. luckily my boss is understanding.

(sympathy like for bureaucratic healthcare bullshit)

Mangoes are one of those fruits that go through a mysterious alchemy when cooked, and end up tasting better than they are raw.

Which is absurd because they taste so fucking good before you even do anything to them!

Do not make conversation with the attractive Target cashier about how their coupon printers are tracking you. It WILL print you out a coupon for cold sore cream.

Have you ever had a mango curry? Totally amazing.

I have a 32 GB iPhone 4 that I am no longer using. Where's a good place to sell it and what can I expect to get for it? I took a brief look at craigslist and pricing seems to be all over the place.

Part of me wants to keep it because I am an unrepentant Bejeweled whore but I probably need to wean myself off that, anyway.

eBay. I sold a broken (side buttons didn't work) iPhone 4 16GB and it went for $250 instantly (which means I underpriced it) to someone in the Ukraine. Just make sure that you setup so that you're willing to ship international, because that's where a lot of iPhones go.

Check also what they're going for used on Amazon. I had an old digital camera that was going for $100 on eBay but checked Amazon and everyone was trying to sell at $300. I listed it for $250 and it sold quick because it looked like such a bargain. I'm still confused how I even pulled that off.

Same sex marriage is official at midnight tonight in Washington State. Congrats to all the happy couples lining up right now to make it official!

We're waiting for the Supreme Court to decline to hear the California case, which we should know probably Monday. If they do, gay marriage will resume here...

I happened to take a tour of the County Recorder's Office yesterday (librarian field trip!) and the manager was pretty excited about it. They are all ready to go with gender-neutral marriage licenses (they were caught short last time the law changed, but now the licenses are just "spouse 1" and "spouse 2") and ready for the protesters and the lines.

Dear whoever in this building is apparently holding a rock concert in their apartment: fun is awesome.

Fun this loud on a Wednesday is perhaps ill planned, but good for you.

Causing the infant that (presumably) lives elsewhere in this building to scream its fool head off? Less awesome.

Kindly cease your microphone-assisted caterwauling before I perform vasectomies with a santoku knife. Thank you.

I have! It is tasty. :) I was actually using it in a stir fry with plum sauce, it was pretty delicious.

I cured my previous neighbors of this pretty definitively by moving my large speaker against the wall and setting a WAV file of Ric Flair yelling "WOOOOOOOOOO!" to repeat over and over again.

And then I went out to a movie.

While this is tempting, I believe such a setup in our case would require rigging the speaker against the ceiling. Sound premise, though.

Not hard to do. Duck tape if it's a small yet powerful speaker, or you can screw eyebolts into the rafters and use a bungee cord to hold a speaker up there. It's all in how industrious you're willing to be to get your point across.

You could also go upstairs, go to their door, tape Saran Wrap over the doorframe and fill it with garbage so it'll spill in when they open their door, and enclose a note saying "If the noise continues, so will this."

Nute, remind me never to get on your bad side.

Also, after a few days of basically dormant ribcage pain, it's throbbing again this morning. Either (a) I slept wrong on it, (b) the alien parasite is receiving new instructions, or (c) my hangover found new and interesting ways to manifest.

And if it's (c), I quit the human race.

I am convinced at this point that the cause of your pain is (b), and you should probably call Ellen Ripley before some awful creature bursts out of your chest.

Keep in mind that Ellen Ripley cannot actually help you, she can only contain the alien beast. If you feel the need for dire vengeance against humanity for all your suffering I'd instead recommend that you find a nice, dark, secluded place to hole up in.

Take off and nuke your internal organs from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080820174408AAZkbcG

I don't understand French, what's written on the box he's plugged into?

Question time.

Why do people use the way they were raised as an excuse for rude/negative behavior?
To be exact, when people say things like "oh, well he was raised in a household where he was beaten, that's why he beats his kids". I mean, I can understand where the person is coming from, but at the same time, that doesn't excuse it, you know? What is it that makes some people do the things that they were raised with and others not do those things?

This question comes up because I was reading the In Your Arms LP and one of the characters is cheating on his wife because, presumably, his father did the same thing. What makes it so someone looks at that kind of behavior and, instead of saying "man, this isn't cool, I'm never going to do this", says "man, I'm going to do this exact thing when I grow up".

I don't want this to come off as one of those insulting kinds of questions, I'm genuinely curious.

That's not an excuse, that's an explanation.

This is different for everyone and the subject of much argument (nature vs. nurture, parenting methods, therapy, etc.)

Presumably because if you have a strong role model (your father) that you look up to in other ways -- or maybe just defines all your expectations of being a husband/father -- then that will be how you model your behaviour. There is no absolute morality that is injected into all of us, we all define our morals based on our observations, experiences, and life lessons. If one of your moral guides cheated on his wife, then you would naturally incorporate that into your own compass.

Thank you for your prompt response.

I understand what you're saying. It just seems so strange to me. If you see how hurtful some behaviours can be, why would you do them?
A mother beats her child and the child obviously knows that this is hurtful. So why does the child do it to their children?
A man cheats on his wife for another woman and the child sees that the wife is hurt by this. So why does the child do it to their own wife?

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interg...rgenerational_communication_of_violent_trauma

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

Her: "Gurl look at dat body. Gurl look at dat body. Gurl look at dat body."

And then the exerfarts began.

Got my tree put up tonight.

I'm looking at that and thinking "A couple of hundred packs of rollie papers and we're having a damn good christmas."

Good for you! That's more then I've bothered to do for the last few years. In my old apartment I'd pull out the three foot artifical tree with everything already attached and plug it in every year, but that's been in storage since I moved into my current location and I can't be bothered. Of course, with no family in the area Christmas to me is just that day off between all the craziness at work more then an actual holiday.

In more random news, I don't think I should have drank all this V8 juice. Ugh.

I love real trees, I've never had an artificial one. It just brings back my childhood, getting all bundled up, choosing a tree, watching dad cut it down and try to carry it by himself. Can't really do that now that I'm in Texas instead of Michigan though. On the other hand, it was nice coming home from work and having a tree waiting for me outside my door.

Wish there was a Christmas thread to post in, besides the BAH HUMBUG one.

Many, many glasses of Glühwein for lunch on a workday are both big and cleve/. Lucklily my boss was getting lucnh with me and the 7th and 7tyhe glasses were his eidea so I'm pretty sure I'm ok to work this afternoooon,/

fuck enter doesn't work to post.# sa;salso what is this 1 seconds bollocks/.

Hopefully you are not a surgeon, a pilot or a bus driver. Everything else: good to go!

Nice! This is the extent of our holiday decorating:



It is FESTIVE AS SHIT up in here.

My daughter to one of my wife's colleagues: "McDonald's isn't food!"

Well it's almost food (fast is German for almost)

I am imagining Iain waking up the day after too much Glühwein, surrounded by garishly-painted miniatures all looking at him accusingly. "Hot pink and midnight black armor with a sparkling chainsword? EXPLAIN YOURSELF!"

Time to do that new Chaos army he's been thinking about.

SLAANESH IS PLEASED.