blessings, ennumerated, personal, for the use of

[freckles_and_doubt]

Hey! When did it get to be May, all suddenly? Surely there are rules about that sort of thing?

I am, sudden unauthorised departure of April notwithstanding, pleased to report the following:

• Rain. Winter is apparently looming, in a way that makes me deeply happy. I had to dash to the library this morning in a light drizzle that wantonly became a downpour, as a result of which I look like a damp English sheepdog. (Although I hope I don't smell the same).
• Indecent triumph over the Powers of Darkness that reside on my computer. It is a relief to note that the random turning-itself-on trope wasn't, in fact, me sleepwalking or losing time to alien abduction of my hard-drive, but a mutant BIOS setting, which I have subsequently located and disabled all on my lonesome except for the power of Google. *flexes little, tiny geek muscle*. I'm also more or less caught up on all the missing programs and settings from the hard drive swop. Mutter.
• A couple of this batch of essays which have turned out to be astonishingly literate, which means I won't actually be forced to club to death both my classes in the interests of the human gene pool.
• Lost! It's cool! I like the way it's filmed, all fragmented, like. Although I'd be happier if the graphics card in this new hard drive didn't leave a regular grid of tiny, high-relief pimples all over the screen. That'll teach me to encourage evil bootlegs.
• Jo's game tonight, after many weeks of deprivation. I'm missing being monosyllabically obnoxious.

Comments

Stranded on a Remote Island

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Enjoy Lost! Channel 4 have FINALLY started showing Series 2 here, even though America, Ireland and even fricking Belgium are well into the series already. I almost feel like I'm in some backwards developing country or something! ;)

Re: Stranded on a Remote Island

[(Anonymous)]

...but see if you're still enjoying it by the end of the series. I kept wanting to throw things at the screen as I realised they really weren't going to answer ANY of the questions they'd been setting up. Messing with us, grrr.

Of course, I still watch. Sawyer keeps taking his shirt off.

scroob

Your google-fu is strong, but friends are even faster.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

http://extemporanea.livejournal.com/67876.html?thread=376868#t376868

[(Anonymous)]

Monosyllabic? You? Now that's roleplaying.

scroob

[(Anonymous)]

heehee! I think this is where extemp says something like, 'tchah!'
;P
everymoment.

[(Anonymous)]

Still only one syllable...

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

'Wossname' is two though, and she's almost certain to follow the 'tchah' with a backhanded 'wossnamewossnamewossname'.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

*confounds exemporanea-baiters by maintaining a dignified silence*

Actually, it's incredibly good fun playing a nonverbal character; not only is she the mad loner type who doesn't hold with all this communication nonsense, but she's none too good at the language she's currently speaking. I am, however, developing l33t skillz in explaining to the DM at great, verbose length, with gestures and gin-soaked vocabulary, exactly how I'm constructing any given variety of intimidatory dirty look. My dignified silence, above, thus neatly demonstrates the somewhat meta process of playing silence in a highly linguistic fashion.

*punishes baiters by Xtreme Unsolicited RPG Dissection*

[mcmayhem.livejournal.com]

It flummoxes me to no end, this whole Northern vs. Southern Hemisphere dichotomy where seasons are concerned. I made an utter fool of myself at work, I'm certain, with the expressions of unchecked disbelief expressed when an Australian coworker patiently explained that yes, they celebrate xmas in the middle of summer.
A point of reason, yes- but one I'd never stopped to consider. "So July is...WINTER?" I flabbergasted.

Self, meet ethnocentrism.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Geocentrism, perhaps?

The situation is doubly weirded when little South African towns in the Hogsback region offer 'Christmas in July' package tours so you can enjoy your ham and christmas pud without it being FRICKING FORTY DEGREES CELSIUS outside.

[mcmayhem.livejournal.com]

Geocentrism, yes. I like that. The term, I mean- not the tendency.

And there's another one- Fahrenheit vs. Celsius. I read "40 degrees" and think, "What? It's COLD there in July?" But no. Of course not. My head just doesn't translate quickly enough for that to make sense right away.

While we're at it, can the US please switch to metric? Measuring by twelfths just doesn't make sense. Not to mention the conversion needed. Why must we be so difficult? This is probably the real reason for jihad.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, seriously. When you're into something that has become old-fashioned even in that viliform appendix of modernity, the United Kingdom, you know that something has gone horribly wrong. :-)

I find it odd, though, that even metric countries fall back on the feet'n'inches standard for measuring human height. And then, of course, you get into D&D and all pretense of metric monogamy goes out the window.

[mcmayhem.livejournal.com]

Is that so? I've heard most measurements of height in Western European countries expressed in centimeters, but it could well be that those were isolated incidents. It isn't as though I spend much time at the Department of Public Height Measurement in Wales, after all.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Dunno... I've just never heard anyone described as 1.77m tall. Mind you, I guess I should have visited more than 4 ostensibly metric countries before making that statement, eh?

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

I do, all the time. In the last many years, whenever I've had to give my height, to a doctor, say, or for some medical insurance thing, they've wanted it in cm. I only know it in feet and inches, so they always look long suffering and say they'll convert it later. And that *awful* body mass index thing (spit, spit spit!) requires m and cm.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Do you think that it's significant that both of the circumstances you cite involve an instrumental relationship with height, in a context where the units are significant because they are going to be plugged into charts and/or equations?

I ask because I would say that the metric tendency has totally won out in such fields, while persisting in more sloppy everyday talk. For example: even in the imperial-measurement holdout that is the US, the armed forces have spoken in kilometers and millimeters since the 60s at least, because calculations need to be made. But in the wider society, where height-depiction needs only to be fairly visualizable to the common folk, the imperial standard seems to persist.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

You might be right there, it sounds likely. I'm not sure what the insurance companies do with the information, but they probably plug it into some machine that cranks out my chances of living and dying in the next little while.

I actually find the inch a useful measure. It has more meaning in everyday life, sometimes, than the tiny cm.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

cf. Craig and Craig, 'Aesthetic and Instrumentality: Suboptimal Unit Choice and the Processes of Mathematical Cognition,' Journal of LJ Conversations that Go Wrong, Spring 2007, pp 308-332

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

You're fantastic :D Stacey as well. Both of you can come up with such magnificent academic jargonese. I plod along using my everyday langauge and getting papers rejected by journals. I must learn to obfusticate!

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

PS: You should totally try out the DPHM. They have a great emplloyees' llounge.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

I've heard most measurements of height in Western European countries expressed in centimeters
Yes but only on the *gasp in horror* Continent

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Lost, eh? Well, I hate to ruin it for you, but Richard wins and the obnoxious one gets voted off the island.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's "Survivor", the other show about people stranded on an island.

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Pfff, what's the diff? Personally, I wish they would all get abandoned on their islands and leave TV to re-run Buffy.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

You don't say.

Lost

[(Anonymous)]

Mmmmmm Sawyer.....

It's weird to think that someone who was credited as "good looking guy" in episode one of Angel is now more famous than David Boreanaz.

Lara

Re: Lost

[(Anonymous)]

On a Buffy note - was weird seeing Xander in etv's new show, Kitchen Confidential. Oh, and Nicholas Brendon's imdb photo is so "Val Kilmer As Gay German In "The Saint". And he has a twin brother - who knew? That makes 3 of my pervs that have less-famous twins...

-KhoiBoi-

Lost lost

[(Anonymous)]

I forgot to watch this week's episode and now I am furious. What did I miss? Does M-Net do repeats?