of a concern, but we do have to be a bit careful. And I'd far rather be overprotective than not. Cause Joe's waaaayyy back east and I can't easily call on him for help.

It's also Remembrance Day (in Canada).

Maybe somebody can tell me why people recently treat Veterans Day exactly like Memorial Day? I thought Memorial Day was in honor of anyone who died while serving in the military, and Veterans Day honors living veterans (or veterans who have passed away, but not in battle). Is that right?

You really expect Americans to keep track of what or who or why they're celebrating? Most people can't even tell you what president's birthdays are honored on President's Day. We also celebrate Cinco De Mayo--and I ask you, why? Not even all of Mexico recognizes this holiday. Eh. Give an American an excuse to party, and...that's exactly what they'll do.

(the above is meant in a satirical fashion and not to be taken to offense. I hate disclaimers, but not as much as I hate the toneless quality that many things have online. Anyway.)

And, seriously, how many people out there know that Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico's defeat of the French?



See? Exactly.

And, seriously, how many people out there know that Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico's defeat of the French?



See? Exactly.

It wasn't all of Mexico, either.
But I couldn't remember what part, so I had to look it up. This was the "I'm feeling lucky" from Google. It's not long, so go ahead and read it.
I'm sure glad that this little history lesson COMPLETELY ignores the Mexican/Amercian war. But that's pretty much what America does, too, so I'm not really surprised.
*g*

We don't need no stinking badges"
__ " ...And Mr. Stiggs is trying to kill fish with his mind..."

This is Google...the most powerful search engine in the world...capable of taking your head clean off.

So...you gotta ask yourself one question:

Do you feel lucky?

Well?

Do ya, punk?

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

cool pt to Joe for a clever quote 'adaptation'.

For some reason, I've always thought Joe transcends cool points.
It's probably something efreeti-related.
*g*

that only Eve and Benjy transcend cool pts. Joe just gets quite a few and Apple gets so many that she's got to be excluded from Trivia questions.

I've given Eve a cool point once or twice. Like I said, she used to be a much more active participant in the comments.

*sigh* I miss those days, she being only one of the reasons.

There's always e-mail, but she probably won't answer you, it's that whole 'stalker' thing. Sorry 'bout that.

Nobody's allowed to stalk Eve.

I mean, really...it gets you on the wrong side of a large group of clever people who like to discuss how to dispose of bodies.

"You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm."

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Because, IRL, I do worry about some of you folks, especially the ones in the Bay Area.

...especially as we do have access to the airlines, and can come to the rescue as needed.

"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me!"

Good times... good times.

nice, you said it twice! Hee!

I knew! I knew! I grew up in what we lovingly called "Little Mexico." Always a big celebration on Cinco de Mayo. Always.

And, just because I'm harboring a tad bit of spite toward you, Matt, :^P

Really, I'm rather tame with my malice, huh? *grin*

Always? Like some freakish nightmare of neverending celebration and debauchery?

Creepy. How ever did you escape?

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Yes, it was verr hard to leave, loving a neverending party the way I do. :^P

*grin*

it's several people's birthday, too. Well, several people being the five that I know. I'm sure there are more than just those five, though.

*grin*

Well it's close to Friday so, given marinerd's comment...
What a drag it is getting old
'Kids are different today,'
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day

Yeah, that song goes through my mind on a regular basis when I talk to some of my friends who are, shall we say, chemically dependent...

One Fogey Point to ParU for that almost 40 year old song. But as it's withstood the test of time, I'd have to call it a classic...

Does tim also get a point, since he quoted it waaaayyyy back towards the beginning of the thread?

Saint you're so cute.
You can have the point for your selfless attitude
hehehehe
: )
__ " ...And Mr. Stiggs is trying to kill fish with his mind..."

You know what they say:
Credit where credit is due...
you ol' Fogey, you.

;)

Does tim also get a point, since he quoted it waaaayyyy back towards the beginning of the thread?

Saint, I stand in awe of your memory. Seriously. With me, it's out of sight, out of mind. (Maybe that's why I'm so chronically cheerful?)

It's not memory, marinerd; I ran across it while I was looking for the rest of the new posts (I browse in Threaded List Expanded, which is better for comprehension but makes it really hard to find new posts when they reply to old ones that have gone off the first page). Yowza, what a long sentence.

See, the thing about long sentences is that I sometimes use them to amuse myself, as that is really the only reason I go on rants to begin with yet sometimes I'm bored even by the terribly mesmerizing sound of my own pondering so I have to do odd little things to amuse myself such as agonizing antics and aggravated alliteration or perhaps trying to find convienient places to use Lovecraftian words like "stygian", "cyclopean", or even "syzygy", "psychopomp", and "armigerous" in everyday conversation though this really doesn't count as they're not in context, thus defeating the whole point of the entire exercise even though it is, in fact (and, paradoxically (though I, myself, believe that a paradox is merely an unsolved enigma caused by either a lack or a misunderstanding of a phenomena, rather than an actual impossiblility)), a pointless exercise, it is the process and not the goal that is important, rather like life itself if one could actually be so bold as to attempt to drag anything remotely meaningful into this senseless farrago of mobius mental meanderings and not utterly succumb to the shame of such a charade, wondering (as I have) on the origins of charades, as the word seems to have a rather francophonic ring to it and the French do have a thing for mimes, after all, notwithstanding the theory I have, which is mine, that perhaps France is infested with mimes not because the French, themselves, enjoy the presence of such painted bipedal vermin but instead because the French are less prone to mime-enduced violence (due to their floppy hats) and because the French, despite the absurd chapeau fixation of the Napoleonic hordes, realize that everyone else hates mimes and thus if they allow their country to be overrun with those infuriatingly reticent nuisances perhaps they'll have to put up with fewer of us flowery-smelling foreign-types who think that cheese is extruded from a machine as a byproduct of the plastics industry rather than, say, the curdled remnant of what nature intended to be fed to ickle baby cows, causing one to wonder, further, about who was the first idiot to decide it was okay to eat moldy cheese (as if it wasn't bad enough that it's curdled, they had to go and let it spiral down to a whole new level of ickiness and allow fungus to grow on it) or how many prehistoric gents had to drop over dead before they figured out which mushrooms were okay to eat when anyone with any sense would have just taken everything terribly poisionous off the menu rather than thinking that maybe the next one would taste like pumpkin pie, despite the fact that I'm currently unaware of the existance of pumpkin pie in prehistoric France, though they did have many colorful cave paintings of ickle baby cows, thus leading some archeologists to believe perhaps, that there were early cults of nomadic cave-dwelling blue cheese cultivators in the highlands of what would later become Gaul, though what that has to do with the Celts is entirely beyond me as they went in for more of the violent kiltish look than the benign floppy hat thing, and had several very nice henges whereas there were none in the caves, probably due to the low ceilings and all, and their cluttering up the place and making it difficult to get the cows in to make the cheese so it could grow mold, unless, of course, they developed dairy aquaducts (or rather calciducts) as the Romans later did when they took time off from their looting and pillaging to build large stone structures, though not as large as those made in Egypt, since the Egyptians lived in the middle of a bloody desert and really didn't have much else to do with their time, though some of the scholarly castes, the ones most skilled in heiroglyphics (or, maybe, least skilled at sleeping), were known to be sedulous in the practice of carving exteremely long and tedious sentences such as this one.

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

I think you win a quadruple word score for use of "senseless farrago of mobius mental meanderings". Wunderbar!

there's a Secret Society convening an emergency council of Elders (decked out in the really cool hooded robes (which add an air of gravitas to the otherwise inane proceedings)) all in a tizzy that SOMEONE'S come this close to putting it all together and blabbing out the heretofore esoteric Sacred Mysteries of Roquefort and Divination. The funky mushrooms, henges, Neolithic cow paintings, moldy cheese, heiroglyphics, the mimes- these things are not for the uninitiated to contemplate. The veil has been rent.

Reprisals will be forthcoming. I'd proceed in an armigerous fashion.

(That whole rant just sounded like some kind of Foucault's Pendulum/ Holy Blood Holy Grail/Knights Templar/ Masonic/ Rosicrucian/ etc. connect-the-dots kind of thing. You never know.)

I read a Foucault book once. Made about as much sense as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

I was getting more of an Eyes Wide Shut feel.

What is the password for the house?

I bet Foucault would've enjoyed that bit, though.

now THAT'S a long sentence!" would actually have been the proper response, now that I think about it.

Slapsticky.

Thank you, Joe. I'm just starting off my work week and you totally made my morning.

i'm always reminded of the 90 year old guy who wrote in to the nun study about never having written a simple declarative sentence in his entire life. i just adore that old man... i think of him often. you guys are lucky i can edit when i'm in public. generally. hey, remember when i used to refuse to use the white space? *grin*

hrm... i COULD use my own copy of this... where's that "donate" link?

Joe, I think you need to get some more sleep. Or coffee.

Gotta admit, though, you've touched on one of those things that has long puzzled me: how such strange things as cheese came to be regarded as edible. Did someone let some milk rot, and decided that it smelled good to eat? What about blue cheese? Why did they decide that something that smelled like their grandma's breath would taste good? Artichokes are another one- what sort of extreme desperation would have forced someone to try boiling and eating what is essentially a very big thistle?

As for the French tolerance for mimes- well, the French are just plain weird. Just look at how they idolize Jerry Lewis.

Who was it who figured out that if you picked those nice red berries, burnt them, crushed them, boiled them in water, strained them out again, threw them away, and drank the water, you got a caffeine buzz? Who had that kind of recklessness, persistence, and passion for experiment?

Whoever it was has my undying thanks.

Very good daen... 1 Coke pt.

And Joe, I am in awe, you are the master. But be careful dissin' the French cause our site goddesses is tres fluent in French and loves the French culture. So sometime you just might wake up and have the head of a Mime on your screen saver.

Joe sleeps??

Apple... Good one. I hereby award you a night's stay at a Marriott in Chicago... (inside joke).

shhhhhhhh! it's only a rumor.

Try earthlights

Shows all the lights taken from a NASA satellite--guess where most of them are?

I've seen that photo before and it's an excellent and non-biased measure of economic activity. A very telling pt. Look at North Korea (to the left of Japan). South Korea and China have lights, but North Korea is a black hole.