No matter how shitty my day is, I have found that spending fifteen minutes under the comforter with the pooches makes things better. Provided Rosie will stop moving long enough to let me relax.
It has been raining all day, which means it has been an ordeal to get Lily to go outside. Rosie is raring to go, but I have to pick Lily up and throw her in the wet grass, and even then she looks like she is being abused.
Was reading an article earlier, I forget what, and it had the word “hermeneutics.” Here is a brief list of words which, every time I read them, my eyes glaze over:
hermeneutics
dialectical
fiduciary
patriarchy
post-structuralism
I’m sure there are more, and you might have some, as well, but these were ones I thought of right now.
Alexandra
Burkean
transmaniacon
Quantum imaging
JPL
Bobo…
General Stuck
Those words look like ingredients for a Matako Word Salad.
Loneoak
Umm, I use four of those words pretty regularly.
JGabriel
Ontological.
JGabriel
@Loneoak:
Yeah, me too. Dialectical can make my eyes glaze over occasionally, but I have no problem with hermeneutics or the other three.
.
neill
The hermeneutics of post-structural patriarchy avoids Marx’s dialectic while resting in the sanctuary of old white men’s “fiduciary responsibility.”
The cure for this claptrap:
“Eat the rich.”
ExistentialFish
I love post-structuralism, but point well taken.
Derrida #ftw
uila
Sullivan
Maude
fiduciary a word investment bankers don’t even look at.
eyes glaze over at serious.
piratedan
for me it’s more along the lines of phrases that cause me to tune out….
fiscally responsible
liberal agenda
vouchers
free market regulation
fetal pain
piratedan
@neill: sure, but what sauce do you use? and good luck finding a quality garnish
Villago Delenda Est
John, this is easy. Fiduciary has to do with money. At one time, being a banker meant that you were a fiduciary…a guardian of that money.
Not any more, of course.
PeakVT
I hope “regulatory capture” doesn’t make your eyes glaze over because it’s dangerous when it happens.
p.a.
teleology
heuristic
and I’ve looked up the meaning of picaresque a dozen times and can’t remember the meaning.
Roger Moore
@neill:
Is that the meat, you wanted to eat?,
How would you ever know?
Yutsano
@piratedan: The Italians have a saying: “Parsley is like children. It gets into everything.” Ponder the possibilities and pass the gravy.
Silver
Theodicy.
I always read it as theoidiocy, which is apt.
scav
susurration and imbrication generally make me happy though. Unexpected words showing up as verbs usually make my hackles rise though. Defense against the MBA dark arts system kicks in.
Walker
Don’t you teach in a communications department? How does that word not come up all the time?
piratedan
on a serious note, it looks like Raleigh, NC took a direct hit from a nasty tornado:
http://news.lalate.com/2011/04/16/raleigh-tornado-spotted-outside-town/
Brachiator
ecosystem (applied to operating systems or hardware devices)
meme
social construct
War of Warcraft
RSA
Hegemony.
It’s quiet now, but the power went out for about an hour and just came back on.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
The way MBA culture has twisted the meaning of fiduciary duty is one of its worst crimes. They’ve managed to convert it from an extra ethical responsibility above and beyond normal legal and moral restrictions into a mandate for sociopathy. I guess that tells you everything you need to know about contemporary American business culture.
maya
deregulate, derivitive and
delovely
The Long March of Mao
The Long Form of Obama
lapel pin measurement tool
Josie
Post-anything. It makes me suspect I’m about to read something pompously erudite.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
pussy
panties
epiglottis
They don’t make my eyes glaze over. Just three words that creep out a friend of mine.
scav
@p.a.: heuristic is linked to pragmatic, let’s not go over-board with insisting on perfection, in my world. That is to say, another word I’d drag to my safe and happy place. Go figure.
piratedan
@Yutsano: here in the southwest, the same is apparently true for cilantro
New Yorker
@piratedan:
Not to be “that guy”, but do you ever notice that when Oklahoma or Alabama or Mississippi get smashed by a violent tornado (as happened the last few days), Pat Robertson and company never blames it on the sinfulness of the locals? It’s only when San Francisco has an earthquake (or New York has two skyscrapers destroyed by suicide terrorists), and then it’s the gays and the liberals and the secularists who had it coming.
arguingwithsignposts
distanciation.
scav
@scav: Note to self. Deep-six the worth “though”
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
What’s wrong with heuristic? I wouldn’t say I use it all the time, but I do use it with some frequency.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@General Stuck: matoko only used one of those….. patriarchy, as in White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Model.
Maude
@maya:
you win for delovely.
Yutsano
The one word that will send me into apoplectic fits is substantiation. If that word comes up at work I automatically know the case I’m working just got a helluva lot harder.
gelfling545
@neill: They’ll taste better because of their high quality feed.
scav
@arguingwithsignposts: Holy shit. Space-time or the apparently Frenchy version!
p.a.
@Brachiator:
Is this a web-inspired neologism? I don’t remember seeing it before I got online. Seems to be used as a pretty close synonym for ‘theme’.
Suffern ACE
Right now resumes of entry level post college grads are making me sleepy. Can’t tell them apart. Who wouldda thunk that college kids majoring in business and applying for corporate jobs would all end up with the same resume?
scav
@p.a.: something originally academic linking idea and gene if I remember correctly. GSD knows what it’s now come to mean on the tuubz.
transmaniacon
Post-modern classical liberals who whine constantly because Pajamas Media went tits up and continues to deny them the career path they most richly deserve.
WaterGirl
@piratedan: you forgot “Barry”!
@scav: For awhile people were using “modem” as a verb, and for me that was like nails scratching on a blackboard.
Yutsano
@piratedan: This doesn’t bother me, mostly because I have the cilantro gene and I lurve the stuff. But those who hate it HATE it. There is very little middle ground I’ve noticed.
Phoebe
empowerment
And what you all said. True fact: just reading this post and thread has made me suddenly sleepy.
Martin
@Suffern ACE: Do what I do in that case – look for something interesting. My last recruitment everyone had the same resume so the a-list was the girl that swam to Catalina, the guy that followed Springsteen on tour for a year, and the woman that worked in the mortuary during college for money. All three were great interviews and would have been fantastic hires.
Brachiator
As we approach the April 18 Filing deadline (Apr 15 was a holiday in DC, so the IRS extended the deadline nationwide), the Tea Party People and the GOP ask you to keep this in mind:
In fantasy land, Americans are being crushed by an increasing federal tax burden because Obama and the Democrats are, after all, tax and spend liberals. But in the real world there is this:
Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that this doesn’t get reported until the weekend, when most people will not be paying attention.
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
No, it’s a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins to refer to a self-replicating idea. The name is made by analogy to gene. A recurring theme like a snowclone is an example of a meme.
scav
@WaterGirl: Tangential, but I caught my mother in the bloody late 70s asking me to download the dishes in order to set the table. She’s not lived it down yet.
jeff
I think John was the right age to have been in college during the very height (depth) of pomo silliness.
licensed to kill time
I most often see the word heuristics when my anti-virus scan is almost finished and tells me it is now scanning for “heuristics and other stuff(paraphrasing)” so it doesn’t bother me much. I’m not really sure what it means, patterns in code/language or something? I guess I should go look it up.
/brb
eta:reading Wikipedia now, no need to edumacate me ;)
WaterGirl
@scav: That would be a tough one to forgive!
p.a.
2 responses to my discomfort with ‘heuristic’. I might not get that much feedback if I claimed Michelle Obama fertilized her garden with ground up puppies! I have uncovered an underground cabal of heuristicians. (edit- redundancy, but with alliteration! ugh)
Remember Calvin and Hobbes? “I love the word smock.”
“Smock Smock Smock!”
“SHUT UP!”
joe from Lowell
@Brachiator: I did my taxes. I’m getting a huge return.
Families like mine are not being taxed enough.
Yutsano
@Brachiator: In an ideal world I wouldn’t have a job, because what I do should really be unnecessary. But there does seem to be a lot of confusion about how to fill out a W-4 form correctly, and to be honest, the instructions themselves are hella confusing. That causes a plurality of my phone calls at work. And truth be told, if you don’t fix the problem the IRS will. And don’t even get me started on independent contractors or self-employed folks. Estimated taxes are much more complicated than they need to be.
Tim F.
Modulate.
jeffreyw
gyrontification
Suffern ACE
@Martin: I think this is more a problem of my HR department who seems to be screening for bland. I feel for them though. They apparently read the 75 or so resumes for applicants so that I could have these 15 declarative poems about senior case studies.
(To be fair to the youth of today, my first resume 25 years ago had my 4-H experience on it. I’m lucky I got by the person in my position now and got my first job. I probably got the job because I had a degree and was willing to work cheap.)
MattR
CNN has a beautiful article of a son recounting his father’s last days with cancer. It is a wonderful story about letting go gracefully and with as little pain rather than trying to hold on to that last shred of life. It also included this insightful bit (which I have top admit I never really thought about)
jeffreyw
mycophaginationism
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Roger Moore: actually the idea originated with E. O. Wilson. He wanted to call the concept “culturegenes”.
Sir Richard changed it up.
Memes is a lot more catchy i think.
i larnt that in coll-uge.
;)
RSA
@p.a.:
If you do any work in the area of artificial intelligence (I have and sometimes still do), “heuristic” is hard to avoid. My impression is that it’s more commonly used as a noun than a verb, in my area at least.
jeffreyw
securitisationalyst
Yutsano
@jeffreyw: Tunch hired Buddy as a bodyguard? :)
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
That’s about what I said when I saw how much I’m getting back this year. More specifically, I said that the mortgage tax deduction- which I get to use for the first time this year- is really unfair because it gives the most money to the people who need it the least.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
My eyes glaze over each time I receive a threatening letter from Donald Trump’s lawyers.
Fuck you wiggy – I will not be silenced!
Mouse Tolliver
Looks like Atlas Shrugged is on its way to becoming another conservative flop. Its per screen average so far ($2,276 per screen) is only slightly higher than An American Carol’s per screen average ($2,231).
Or maybe Kathy Nickolaus will find additional ticket sales on her personal computer by Monday morning, catapulting AS to the #1 spot.
MikeJ
m o i s t
jeffreyw
@Yutsano:
They are a happy couple.
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
Maybe I’m just sensitive because I’ve used “heuristic” professionally, and for about the reason that most people don’t like it. Using a $5 word is a great way of making what you’re doing sound fancier and more impressive than it really is.
transmaniacon
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Don’t take any guff from these amateurs.
You’ve survived the Psychic Wars on a million blogs.
Omnes Omnibus
Mayonnaise. Even the word makes me gag a little.
FlipYrWhig
@p.a.:
That’s in my wheelhouse. A “picaro,” from the Spanish, is a rogue, like a social outsider living by his wits. The original picaro, Lazarillo de Tormes, is a street kid who does things like stealing sausage from a blind man’s plate. “Picaresque” stories are about people like that. They tend to have rambling, episodic plots, because the point is to create more and more sticky situations from which the picaro can improvise an escape.
scav
@RSA: or as a description of a method for producing a solution that should be good but can’t be proven to be optimal. At least in my less rarefied treks through Location-Allocation and Operations Research. Although I’d so like to be part of an underground cabal.
MattR
@John Cole-
I didn’t think that was legal, even in West Virginia.
OTOH – I have to admit that Rosie was in one of my dreams a few nights ago.
JGabriel
@scav:
Get over it. Verbing is a feature of the English language, not a bug or aberration.
.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore:
That’s a rather platitudinous thing to say. ;P
gogol's wife
The latest cliche I’ve noticed is “drill down.” I’m not even sure whether it means “dig for a more profound interpretation” or “drill away the excess verbiage.” I’ve heard it used both ways. The problem is it’s always said with a sort of self-satisfaction that means the person saying it knows they’re being cool. I hate it.
FlipYrWhig
@scav:
Where are the hackles? Are they near the craw where things stick or the gorge where things rise?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@transmaniacon: well hipster musik still makes me want to cut myself. I got a bellyful of that crap at TAS the Glibertarian Hivemind.
You should lissen to 93.3 Adventure University for latenite.
I do still dig the classics tho.
Omnes Omnibus
@MattR: Was she mad at you?
Brachiator
@p.a.: RE: meme
This term seemed to pop up a few years ago when talking about how ideas could be transmitted and “evolve.” And some people used it when, as you note, “theme” would work just as well.
The Wikipedia has something on this, but I can’t stand to look at it, because my eyes will definitely glaze over.
JGabriel
@maya:
That really shouldn’t make your eyes glaze over. It’s just a synonym for Republican penii.
It might make you avert your eyes (and laugh), but not glaze over.
.
scav
@JGabriel: Consider it a heuristic for recognizing crap MBA-derived thinking.
Josie
@jeffreyw: Those pictures are so great. Homer is a very lucky kitty to have such a good and big friend.
Amir_Khalid
An oldie but goodie: disintermediation. Very popular in the early 1990s to describe the notion, the current, that the Intertoobz would cut out the middlemen between you and all the informations out there.
Sigh. We were all so innocent then.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
Heuristic is great because it lets you do something that might otherwise be seen as cheating. I’m not telling my program how to do everything based on my expert knowledge, I’m using heuristics.
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife:
I didn’t think it was either one of those, exactly. I thought it was just “go down to the next layer,” but with the connotation that down there things are simpler or truer. I first heard the phrase when I was doing web/database programming.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@gogol’s wife: drill-down is the new “unpack”
p.a.
@RSA: My work (for a telco whose name rhymes with ‘horizon’) involves proximity to intelligence neither artificial nor natural. I include myself in this statement. Hence my discomfort with ‘heuristic’.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: Hackles are the hair on the neck and shoulders of a dog or wolf that stand up as an anger display. But you probably knew that and were being funny.
MattR
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not at all. I remember her not leaving me alone. Which was kinda funny since I also remember that her intro into the dream was that she appeared out of nowhere when I was walking Ellie and all of a sudden I realized that I had forgotten about Rosie (who was my other dog).
stuckinred
How about the ubiquitous “in-studio”? Who gives a fuck if someone is “in-studio” or on the goddamn phone?
jeffreyw
@Josie: Yeah, but you can’t tell him that. Kids these days…
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
What’s wrong with embiggens? Embiggens is a perfectly cromulent word.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Brachiator: read vintage E. O. Wilson the father of sociobiology if you wanna know the origins.
Yutsano
@jeffreyw: Did you and Mrs J give in and go rescue that sweet little puppeh you were looking at?
stuckinred
And another thing, all the weenie politicians with their “look”. “Look, we all know this is bullshit. . . “
Tehanu
@gogol’s wife:
me too. And it doesn’t mean either one, as far as I can tell. It seems to mean something like, “actually get down to the details of how it works instead of just stating vague generalizations.”
scav
@gogol’s wife et al: might be originally derived from data-mining where you drill-down to reports of finer and finer detail — at least that’s where I first heard the term. Say start with a sales report of all Amazon books and then ask for greater detail about sales of fiction, then contemporary novels, then recent publications by Jasper Fforde.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: Really? Huh, no kidding. I actually thought the hackles had something to do with cockfighting, like it was a particularly sharp part of the bird’s foot.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
I think it’s intended to be analogous to “dig deeper” but with the implication that you’re targeting something specific rather than something more general.
Omnes Omnibus
Fun from Madison today.
FlipYrWhig
@stuckinred: I like “look” better than “Make no mistake,” but, yeah, clearly it’s something that politicians are taught by their handlers, just like pointing with the knuckle instead of an outstretched finger.
piratedan
@New Yorker: i hear ya, the lord god willin’ we’ll all survive, except for those sinful bastards who live over there who watch Oprah!
I’ve always been fascinated by tornadoes and like that line uttered by the female lead (Ms. Hunt) “You’ve never seen why it takes these houses and leaves this one alone, we need to understand”
stuckinred
@FlipYrWhig: roger that
Richard Fox
“Post”—- yes anything beginning with “post”.
“Postcoital” always got my goat.
And I ain’t kiddin’.
JGabriel
@FlipYrWhig:
On the back of your neck. Above and behind the vampire bite wounds.
.
Omnes Omnibus
@Richard Fox: Mickey Kaus?
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
Tell me about it. I had to help a temp employee with her state withholding. The payroll department at the temp agency was doing it wrong and insisted that they were correct. Had to actually take them to the state site and walk them through the damn calculation.
JGabriel
@scav: Oh. Yes, you have a point there. I tend to use verbing for humorous effect (a possibly bad habit learned from Whedon), but you’re right: it’s absolutely maddening in business speak — whether it’s because of all the other stupidity surrounding it, or because of the implied selectivity/cultism of people speaking in that style, I’m not sure. As usual, it’s probably both.
.
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel: I really thought “hackles” were something sharp that was used to hack, and thus “raising your hackles” meant preparing to strike. (Like an animal version of “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.”) This hackles = hair thing is going to take some getting used to.
gogol's wife
@scav:
Okay, I’m starting to realize it’s like a lot of other terms that originate in number-crunching and then get adopted by humanists who don’t know what they’re talking about so that it loses all meaning. See “parameters.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
WORLD of Warcraft.
Noob.
Brachiator
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I had forgot about Wilson. I’ve seen Dawkins and others use the term. It’s damn stupid.
Martin
@Suffern ACE: Our HR is quite good about pre-screening. I give them a list of specific skills/degrees/job experience and that’s all they send me. If you’re not a moron supervisor (let’s not go there) you send a very limited and reasonable list, not the ’10 years experience in iPhone development’ bullshit. They don’t look for anything else so if you don’t give a degree requirement, they don’t screen for that and you’ll get everything from HS degree to MDs. There’s no corporate culture in .gov that they’re trying to achieve, so it works very well, and we don’t have many HR staffers as a result.
Richard Fox
@Omnes Omnibus: Mickey Kaus..
Ugh. Just– ugh…
Maybe it’s time to re-watch footage of the tsunami on utube, that’ll brighten things up, right?
Josie
@FlipYrWhig: In my son’s little pug, you can actually see the hackles rise when she gets mad and barks at another dog. They are in a short line from the neck down to just below the shoulder blades along the center of her back. I had never seen them so clearly until I met her.
Arundel
Optics, pivoting, and walking back are three political terms that have been irking me over the past half-decade or so. Maybe it’s because I always think of Sully, or the Villagers wanting to sound “savvy”. Makes themselves sound like the herd creatures they are.
scav
@FlipYrWhig: Nah, that’s basically the right idea. It’s more the hair rising on the back of your neck before you attack than the thing rising that actually used to strike but it’s definitely along the threat-attack line of thought. The big hair in this context makes you look bigger and scarier, not closer to god.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
Come on, show of hands. Who here has seen Atlas Shrugged?
gene108
@Yutsano:
I personally think, when the IRS writes instructions to the tax code, they employ a group of cryptographers to hide the true meaning from people, who do not have access to the cipher.
The cipher is kept in a deep, dark, vault only accessible to a small cabal, under the Washington, D.C. subway lines.
Clarifications as to what the
cryptogramstax code means are specifically handed to IRS field agents, from the deputies of this small cabal, in order for them to collect on unpaid taxes.jeffreyw
@Yutsano:
A phone call the next morning early was as close as we got, alas. The little fella had already been adopted.
AAA Bonds
. . . Maybe you shouldn’t be scared of words, John.
Yutsano
@gene108: This has more truth than you probably want to realize. Except the secret underground vault is in West Virginia.
@jeffreyw: AAAWWWW!!! He looked like such a sweet lil puppeh too!
John - A Motley Moose
Just out of curiosity, why do you throw Lily out if she doesn’t want to go? A mature dog knows whether they can hold it or not. If she has to go bad enough then she’ll go out rain or not.
Omnes Omnibus
@John – A Motley Moose: His parents made him go out in the rain whether he needed to or not, so, by god, his kids are going to do the same. Dagnabit.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Anything that ends in “of Warcraft,” said or written by anyone over the age of 12.
transmaniacon
@Richard Fox:
My 78 year old mother was rejected today for specialist care because she was three years over the maximum.
This appears to be post-Ryan modernism.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Brachiator: the original term that Wilson proposed was culture-genes.
lamh34
Wow, I guess not all the Teabaggers are fans of Sarah Palin.
Either that, or the non-Palin fans outnumbered the fans.
Sarah Palin gets the welcome she deserves”
Check out the dude who seems to be giving Sarah the finger!
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh34: There were others who tend to drown out the sound of the tea people.
RSA
@p.a.: I feel your pain. Know what I hate (though I don’t know that this is your situation)? Business managers who adopt tech talk without understanding what the words mean. They’re worse than sportscasters.
jeffreyw
Captain Kangaroo was way ahead of his time. He used the term “green genes”. Or so I remember.
Cheryl from Maryland
I get the creeps when I hear the buzz word “Stake-holders,” used often collaborators and clients in the non-profit sector. It makes me think of Dr. Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood.
On the other hand, words are our friends. So much better at work to say “I’m not sanguine about this project” as opposed to “This is a shit sandwich.”
Linda Featheringill
@piratedan:
I was raised in Tornado Alley and I can tell you, there is no why. There is no reason. There is only what is.
Or, in other words, the universe is absurd.
andy
Just made some risotto with a pork chop. I’m finding it’s easier to cook a thicker piece of pork than a skinny one. I’m so glad I learned that technique where you compare the meat with the fleshy part of your hand (between the thumb and forefinger0 to determine doneness. Works like a charm every time!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40964542@N08/5625822126/in/photostream
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl from Maryland: I like stakeholders. It acknowledges that there are others besides shareholders who are should matter in corporate decision making.
lamh34
@Omnes Omnibus: @lamh34:
yep, just coming to correct that. looks like the union supporters surrounded the tea party supporters and gave Sarah “the grifter” the welcome she deserved.
Labor crowd surrounds Palin’s Tea Party rally
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: That’s Mr. Green Jeans, to you.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Woot — a blog!!
Edit: I keep forgetting if you can click on someone’s name, here, you’ll be taken to their blog. Gotta learn me up on usin’ those linky things.
Jason
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: “unpack” was the new “interrogate,” and “interrogate” was the new “problematize,” or maybe that was the other way around
Also, I am surprised the call for words effectively distracted the thread from the phrase “I have found that spending fifteen minutes under the comforter with the pooches makes things better.” Somewhere there’s a dog-lovin’ politician in need of a good PR guy
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh34: I am just sorry that I had prior commitments that did not allow me to be there.
piratedan
@lamh34: that Sarah, she sure is AFP, unfortunately it stands for “A Fucking Problem”.
Amir_Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
I heard “stakeholders” a lot back when there was a brief corporate fad for a bit of humbug called “corporate social responsibility”. In fact, one of the first people I heard saying “stakeholders” and “corporate social responsibility” (in 1990, as I recall) was the chairman of British Petroleum, as it was still called then. Make of that what you will, my American friends.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh34:
Just from looking at that video, it seems that the non teatards substantially outnumbered the target audience.
Delia
Golly, sounds like you need a session with The Post-Modern Generator. It’ll give you a lot more words to make your eyes glaze, and arranged in fake essays, too. It’s always good for a spin on a rainy day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir_Khalid: I think it is an idea that should take hold with the public. If the towns in which a corporation has offices or plants is seen as having a stake in what happens, if labor is seen as having a stake in what happens, if people living downstream or downwind are seen as having a stake in what happens, corporations will need to make different decisions. I also want a pony.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir_Khalid:
“corporate responsibility” is a classic oxymoron
eemom
@Josie:
same with my yellow lab mix. His fur literally stands up and forms a stripe down the middle of his back. It’s hilarious.
soonergrunt
@New Yorker: Well, there’s also that city that had a very high percentage of black people living in it that got hit by a hurricane. Pat told us all about God’s wrath on their sinfulness.
I live in OK, and I spent a couple of weeks mobilized for the May 3, 1999 tornado, and I’m here to tell you that God seemed pretty wrathful to me for the various misbehaviors and sins of the people here.
That first and most obvious one would be pride.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: Pride? Is it football season already?
Jay C
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine:
So far, the only “show of hands” for Atlas Shrugged has been with the middle fingers extended: it looks like it’s going to be another right-wing box-office disaster.
Unless, of course, the Koch Brothers or Rupert Murdoch or someone is going to pay people to fill seats and boost the numbers (like they do with RW books needing hyping)…
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay C: My guess is that most of the business will be repeat customers, and the theaters might need to mop up afterwards.
lamh34
did anyone else see Fringe last night? It was literally a trip!
I’m so glad this show has been renewed. The next season can give it a chance to finalized all the things that have happened this season.
love it.
soonergrunt
@MikeJ: I love that show. So of course, they cancelled it.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: {Shouted just like Leonidas in the movie 300} THIS! IS! OKLAHOMA! It’s always football season here.
Corner Stone
Hey Cole, how about a troll post on Libya again?
transmaniacon
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Are the elders aware that you’ve become such a brazen hussy?
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: … and you go to the games in a surrey with the fringe on top? July-November 1988 was a long time for me to spend in the Lawton area. Geronimo’s grave was cool though.
Josie
@eemom: Yeah, but I’ll bet it doesn’t look nearly as funny as it does on a 12 pound pug.
MattR
@Omnes Omnibus: ESPN broadcast the Arkansas University spring football game live this afternoon.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@efgoldman:
With pleasure.
I will not be silenced.
transmaniacon
@Corner Stone:
Hey Corner Stone, how about you shut the fuck up?
Amir_Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus: No disagreement on the idea that corporations ought to be socially responsible. It has been the work of unions, environmental and consumer organizations, civil rights groups, and everybody else who cares, over more than a century, to fight to make corporations act socially responsible. And to educate society to expect it of them.
But the sociopathy you find deep in the core of corporatist culture tends to treat CSR as one more thing to pay lip service to, while they go right on fucking us over. As they see it, being socially responsible costs them profits. Worse, it means yielding power to those whom they are accustomed to fucking over.
I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@transmaniacon:
How rude. I’m not a fucking BAPTIST. All Baptists are heretics as are, frankly, all alleged “Christians” who are not members of the one true church.
I am a good Catholic woman, which means that I can get away with anything as long as I say sorry five minutes before I die.
Rihilism
John, don’t blame the words when it’s the context’s fault…
jank_w
Orthogonal. Anybody tries using that word with me and they’re on the permanent shit list.
Josie
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: When I was a teenager (back in the dark ages) I was so jealous of the Catholic girls for this very reason.
eemom
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
don’t worry Sarah, we semi-lobotomized law school survivors here at BJ iz got yer back. I can whip up a 20-count malicious prosecution complaint for compensatory and punitive damages in nothing flat.
Also too, little old ladies make awesome plaintiffs.
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
Just for giggles I went to the US immigration web site a couple of days ago to see what the requirements are. I have looked at other countries sites and they are pretty straight forward. From country so and so these rules, over or under these ages look here. The US site? Faaget about it. I still have no idea after looking around for about a half hour if there is an age limit, a country limit, or even an actual process that someone, anyone can understand. There seems to be no recognizable language other than bureaucratease on the site. And I thought I knew how to read bureaucratease but I was wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Hell, she has a right, no, a responsibility, as a person with the 21st century equivalent of a printing press to make facts known to the voting public so that they may be better informed and thus make the best possible decision as they perform their most solemn duty as citizens.
Shorter me: SP&T can haz 1st Amendment counts too.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: 5 days is a long time to spend in Lawton. You spent five months there? Wow.
The fact that Artillery (and now ADA) is centered in Fort Sill explains a great many things about Artillerymen, but you seem to have healed.
Ruckus
@MattR:
The only thing I’d change is:
We do what we can when we must.
Not everyone in every family can handle things all that well. As long as people do what they are capable of handling, things work out eventually. But you are right the more of each others shoulders there are to cry on the better it can be.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@eemom:
Why thankyou dear. If I need any help I’ll let you all know.
Little old ladies who have slept with three serving Supreme Court judges and know exactly where the whips and chains are kept make even better plaintiffs.
lamh34
Lord, Space Jams in on CARTOON Network. I haven’t seen this movie since the damn 90’s!!!!
Punchy
MLB/NBA/NHL thread tonite?
Corner Stone
@transmaniacon: Wow Allan, I’m surprised at your orthogonal vehemence.
nicteis
abreaction
decompensate
recalibration
deconstruct
Pareto optimal
dynamic (as a noun)
financial instruments
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: It may have colored my view of your state. I owned a black VW GTI at the time; that car was a fucking oven.
George, Short and Sneaky
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Ha ha. That won’t save you, insatiable wench, when St Peter asks for the mileage on your chastity belt
Bwaaa Ha. Good Catholic woman! You’ll need to ask for an extension on the five minute warning for a cover to cover reading of Gideon’s Bible. Bwaa hhaa That might get you an interview.
Corner Stone
@Punchy: You should take it easy there Punchy. Allan doesn’t like it when people ask for open threads.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: At this point, only discretion stops me from asking which three.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: And then those were those of us who ended up redlegs by chance as opposed to MOS.
soonergrunt
@efgoldman: It’s kind of like being the only Airborne troops on a Leg post–the nail that sticks up gets hammered.
@Omnes Omnibus: ANY car (especially those with less-than-optimal air conditioning) are ovens here.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: J&J… You caught that too.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: It’s the red hats that get the attention.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Signing statement.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Or being in basic at Ft Campbell in 66 when the entire cadre was airborne. Dude had us spinning the guidon in front of the formation as they ran our sorry asses to death!
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: If one is drafted, I should think that Artillery would be preferred over Infantry. Bad enough to force you to serve, they don’t gotta be pricks and put you in the high-casualty jobs, too.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: RA here, none of that US shit for me.
mr. whipple
Hegemony.
suzanne
“Reification”.
And “bullshytt” and “proselytize” and “memetic”.
Martin
@Josie:
When this atheist was a teenager (in the very same dark ages) I prayed every night in thanks for Catholic girls. Oh, and for the church for telling them everything that would send them to hell. They were always very thorough.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Omnes Omnibus:
All I’m prepared to say is that you can cross Thomas, Scalia and Alito off your list of suspects.
stuckinred
@mr. whipple: REMF now FOBBIE
Martin
@Ruckus: US immigration policy seems to be distilled most simply down to ‘attorney welfare’. The requirements for becoming a US citizen: pay an immigration attorney a fuckton of money, and then you’re a citizen.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup. That sucked in Fort Ord, CA.
@stuckinred: I volunteered for that shit. That fact doesn’t commend my intelligence. One of my Drill Sergeants at Fort Benning (’88) left mid-cycle and became a Black Hat (Airborne Instructor) right before I graduated Infantry school. The miserable prick was waiting for me when I got to Jump School.
mr. whipple
@stuckinred: Had to google. LOL.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: I thought you had been drafted. Hmmm. {shrug} Enemy bullets don’t care about that, neither should anybody else.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Yea, many of us were a bit light. After my tour in Korea myself and two other dopes in an Honest John unit at Lewis PAID a guy to get us into a unit going to the Nam. Fucking Mensa.
jeffreyw
@soonergrunt: Do the black hats still double time in formation down to the exercise grounds after their own formation at the beginning of each day?
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: Wow. Going from nuclear artillery missile (and all the REMF-ness that implies) to combat Arty–you know, even today, firebases aren’t exactly known for their amenities.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Negative, judge said son, you will leave this community on your 17th birthday. It’s up to you whether it’s the joint or the big green machine. A good lookin 135 pounder like me had no place in jail. . .and not much business in the Army for that matter.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Sarah, Your recent tale of the moribund Studio 54 reminded me of a friend’s blog on the same topic:
http://myownrollerrink.blogspot.com/search?q=54
transmaniacon
@Corner Stone:
Sorry, I’m not ‘Allan’.
Does your Hillary worship get in the way of your critical thinking all of the time, or just some times?
stuckinred
@jeffreyw:
Beautiful streamer
open for me
Blue sky above me
No canopy. . .
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: Well, it could’ve been worse.
@stuckinred: :) That ain’t gonna end well.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: The other way around, 1/79th Arty (105mm) THEN Honest John. There is a guy at work that was an Arty officer in the mid-late 70’s and he tried to tell me a John had a 100 Mile range. He was duly humble when I sent him the correct range.
Corner Stone
@transmaniacon: Allan, I’m sorry your sponsor isn’t here at the moment. I’m sure someone else will front page you shortly.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Fuckin A I could have been with JeffreyW in the Herd.
mr. whipple
@Brachiator: I didn’t pay a dime in federal tax last year. This year it was just a very nice refund.
Thank you, Mr. President!
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: I’m talking about the other guys. your other post implied that they were HJ first then tube arty.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: What do you do with an Airsick ARVN. . . and other Vietnam ditties from the early days when the flew in t-shirts and blues jeans.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: When in ’88 did you go through jump school? I was in the last class prior to the holiday exodus that year.
soonergrunt
@mr. whipple: I had a nice federal refund, but had to pay $250 in state taxes, which is ironic and sad, because the state government of OK is fucking useless for most things.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Ah, sorry, I was FA in Korea and rotated to the HJ at Lewis.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I got that from the site. Most of the instructions had sections about what your attorney needed to do or pay and nothing about what a human needed to do.
Martin
@soonergrunt: Hey it’s not cheap to protect you from rampant lesbianism, you know.
Rihilism
@Martin: When I was closeted Catholic school boy, I lacked the self-awareness to be either jealous of or thankful for Catholic girls. I was much too busy fantasizing about which shoes would compliment the rest of my papal finery…
Anne Laurie
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, fighting cocks & hawks do have hackles, and IIRC it’s a term of art in falconry as well; apart from political blogs & horror movies most of us probably recall the word from T.H. White and fantasy novels.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: I was in OSUT at Benning from October, through the the Exodus, to early February, ’89 and went to jump in February, 89.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus:NINETEEN 88???? Wow!
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
this one may be odd but
modern.
to me the word means what people for the first part of last century thought the future should be, or something that was evidence at the time of progress.
which is fine.
its when modern is used to mean contemporary, or referring to something of the last 30 years or so, as modern.
plethora, its like the only “power word” some people know, and gets shoe-horned in, more often than not.
artisanal, which to me means overpriced.
soonergrunt
@Martin: But that’s one of my US Senators doing that so the state doesn’t even get in on that action, either.
stuckinred
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Here’s how it is defined for Navy Archives
transmaniacon
@Corner Stone:
Are you retarded?
Martin
@soonergrunt: You mean the rampant lesbianism is proceeding unabated?! My god…
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: We were roughly contemporary then.
Corner Stone
@transmaniacon: Allan, I’m sorry I outed you so quickly. Next time I’ll play along a bit further.
gordonsowner
You’re not alone, @John Cole — my favorite punking of post-modernists was the Sokal Affair, which used “hermeneutics” in the title… see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
You are a pioneer of sorts CS. Taking blog stalking to whole new levels of dumbfuckery.
transmaniacon
@Corner Stone:
No, seriously…do you have some kind of documented brain damage?
Rihilism
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: I just knew Roberts had to be one of them. He’s so humpy! Blue eyes, blond hair and noticeable bulge even in robes! Gotta be packin’ if you plan on skull-fucking the nation, am I right, ladies?
As for the others, may I ask you, have you ever played softball?…
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Was anybody talking to you, shut-in?
soonergrunt
@Martin: Yeah. I was hoping that we would return Coburn to OK so that he could save us all from that, but it was not to be. Washington, DC is safe though! No need to thank us.
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, we were, and if I thought jumping in February at Benning was cold, December must have been more so.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Don’t need a reason to spank you son. Nor point out your pathetic behavior when it reaches the levels it has on your sniffing out sockpuppets and people who may or may not be using other handles. As it is, each new person that arrives here has to weather your inane accusations of who they might be.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Listen dumbass. The Blue Oyster Cult douchebag showed up talking shit about lots of things long past. He’s not a newbie, just a new handle. And only a couple people would show up out of the blue and just randomly say the things he’s saying to me.
Pull your head out of your ass for just a second or two.
Or don’t. Wevs.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: I don’t remember it being particularly cold. I just remember being tired and wanting to land safely if not elegantly (which, as it turns out, is exactly what I did).
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Whatevs, Dick Tracy.
Joel
paradigm
Omnes Omnibus
@Joel: Thomas fucking Kuhn.
Comrade Mary
If you study the logistics and heuristics of the mystics, you will find that their minds rarely move in a line.
Dennis SGMM
@New Yorker:
Paraphrasing a comedian whose name I have, lamentably, forgotten: “Hell, half of those bubbas live in houses that have wheels. Why don’t they just pull them to a place that doesn’t have tornadoes?”
ETA: When the next big quake strikes California, the bubbas will be quick to state that we shouldn’t be living where earthquakes are a known hazard.
daverave
deductible
Just Some Fuckhead
Violent thunderstorms that have already spawned dozens of tornadoes are blowing through here right now, Pat Robertson’s home city.
Omnes Omnibus
@daverave: Someone is doing taxes right now.
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead: Stay low and stay safe good sir. And hopefully the worst consequences are scared dogs and downed tree limbs.
@Omnes Omnibus: Heh. I’m required to file as a condition of my employment. Done in February. Soooo looking forward to Monday now.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@suzanne:
awww…..not a Neal Stephenson fan? And you forgot missionariism.
And stupid.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Rihilism:
The man is an animal. But not as much fun as Sandra Day O’Connor. She was a right goer.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Joel: paradigm shift.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Did mine in February as well.
transmaniacon
@Corner Stone:
Sorry about that.
The Blue Oyster Cult was a simple MacGuffin, necessary for a Reptilian take-over bid to usher in the New World Order.
Yutsano
accidental duplication, nothing to see here.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Don’t get me wrong: the United States tax code is complicated as all get out, and trying to figure out which way is up there can drive the fire out of any man. Having said that, it’s also not college-level calculus, and it can be done. What really makes me sad are the people who don’t file then find out (through me) they were due refunds. You got three years to claim e, folks. And if no return by Monday, you lose out on any from 2007.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: I actually do some tax work. Nothing complicated. I have my last tax client to finish up on Monday. I am trying to get him out of paying the kiddie tax.
eemom
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Roberts?!? Dear lady, he’s young enough to be your —
heh. Never mind. Better I judge not, lesteth I be judged.
As for Breyer, the WaPo had a perfectly adorable quote from him today about how he has “a Twitter thing.”
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@transmaniacon: well …..if you don’t get latenite radio and Adventure University, then joo mus’ be An Old Person.
Mebbe Sarah, Plain and Tall will hook joo up.
;)
wrb
This thread: the eructations of unhealthy souls
suzanne
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
But I can spell “bullshit”. Gold stars for me.
Anne Laurie
@John – A Motley Moose:
Certain breeds, many of them lapdogs, will go full Tycho Brae rather than subject their candy arses to water from the skies. My favorite papillons will happily plow through snow higher than their shoulders, but three drops of rain and they’re clinging to the screen door like kittens, wailing ‘Let us in! We’re suede!‘ If you live with one of these dogs, it’s either harden your heart & let them know Out Means Out, or put down waterproof mats at the door…
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@suzanne:
lol! like i said, not a Stephenson fan.
From Anathem.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: You know, when an artist experiments with technique, it is one thing. When Picasso showed multiple angles at once, it was intentional and he was playing with concepts of perspective. When I do it, it is because I am shite as an artist.
WaterGirl
@Joel: @Omnes Omnibus:
I loved that book! I think it’s still relevant. I guess you guys didn’t like it?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Sorry.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Have you called my work before? Have we communicated without even realizing? Or do you not get involved when it comes to dealing with ACS?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I have a lot of respect or your opinion – i would love to hear your take on the book.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: No, I have never called you guys. Luckily, no one I have worked with is getting hunted down.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: awww…too crude? But they totally don’t get it when i’m subtle.
Whoosh it goes, right over their heads.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: I guess that would just leave Burnsy who would have to deal with lil ol’ ebil me. But his specialty kinda precludes that from happening.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I read it as freshman in college. We had a program called Freshman Studies that all freshmen took and all faculty members taught; it was supposed to provide a broad base of common references for everyone. Kuhn was one of the books, as was Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying.” Unfortunately, I really don’t remember much of it except that the next vaguely scientific book we read was “Sand County Almanac” which I loved.
MikeJ
Stochastic
parsimon
John Cole’s original list of words-to-make-your-eyes-glaze-over tells me that he and I will never make it. With the possible exception of “fiduciary”, the rest might make me roll my eyes, depending on context, though “patriarchy” usually makes my ears perk up.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: So you didn’t hate it. Now I don’t have to read it again to figure out if I would hate it now, too. :-)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@suzanne: here suzanne, a gift.
My favorite quote from Anathem.
bonne nuit et dormez vous bien
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Stands to reason, Trump has constructed some pretty bleak houses in his day.
Anne Laurie
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Y’know, the Spousal Unit (who is a Stephenson fan) read Anatheum, and he thought the ‘bullshyte’ spelling was pretty obviously intended as a satire on the sort of minds who took such reimagineering waaaay too seriously…
But then, he’s a linguist, not a mathematician.
licensed to kill time
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I tried to make my way through Camille Paglia’s book Sexual Personae.
Totally ruined the word chthonic for me forever, man.
Never finished the book, either.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I actually think that it is a book I should revisit sometime.
cleek
fascism
neo-confederacy
patriarchy
“will stop at nothing”
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Anne Laurie:
Wow, how wonderful to read Stephenson as a linguist.
I’m jealous.
I bet your husband loved Snow Crash.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Anne Laurie: i suppose this is really rude to bring this up, but the last two times suzanne swung on me she wound up punching herself in the neck.
slow learner?
Phoebe
@efgoldman: I almost put “synergy” too! We must be attending the same powerpoint presentations.
And yeah, “empowerment” means: I’m about to bore you into a black hole, or, if you insist upon paying attention to me, offend you with how pompous and presumptuous I am toward the population I claim to aim to empower.
And the thing is, both those words are kind of useful, but I have to find other ways to say what they mean because they are absolutely ruined by association.
Tehanu
@Dennis SGMM:
Wasn’t that Sam Kinison? I still remember him screaming about starvation in Africa, something along the lines of, “Why don’t those idiots GO WHERE THE FOOD IS?”
kerFuFFler
@MikeJ: Loved that show!
jafd
A seminary professor called up the computer support tech, said
“I’m having a problem. This morning, I printed out the syllabus for my course on the Synoptic Gospels, and it came out fine. This afternoon, I tried printing out the syllabus for my course on Postmodern Hermeneutics, and all I got was gibberish. Can you give me a hand here?”
The tech came up, looked around, said
“Well, what do you expect from a Canon printer?”