Probably not the best thing to see when I was talking with my husband about whether or not we could rent a boat one day and go fishing, in the hopes of catching fish that we could grill right on the waves…
Ahhh. She’ll be ‘right, folks. We’ll just punch the thing in the nose. Belated Happy Australia Day!
In the comments, that is.
So, this little vignette came directly out of the delightful madness that’s According To Hoyt’s comments section. It started from here and because WP was retarded, bounced down to here.
Enjoy the random bit of metafiction! The second half was done by Alma herself ^_^; the rest I fixed up a little, now that I’m not half-asleep.
~~
The conversation about guns sparked an impromptu opening of the gun closet at Chez TXRed. Alma muttered to herself as she sorted which firearms belonged to whom. “OK, mine” She moved a few from one side of the closet to the other. “Dad’s” Alma moved a few more. “Mom’s plus that other one …Dang. We probably shouldn’t have left these alone together in the dark for so long.” She chuckled to herself, remembering the long running joke about owning Mosin-Nagant rifles, and their tendency to multiply, almost like zucchini.
So, Larry wrote about this hilarious attempt at sniffing, upturned nose, fainting couch disapproval by a special snowflake SJW seal a couple of days ago.
The fisking was short, and well, pretty much was this:
See, to these escapees from the mental asylum, being male and heterosexual is apparently the worst! THING. EVAR. See helpful example below of how sane people view real oppression, and how these willingly mentally crippled nobility wannabes see it.
Anyway, go read Larry’s post. It’s worth every moment of your time, and I will warn you to set aside your beverage of choice, if you’re drinking; or stop eating if you’re having lunch/dinner/snacks.
Anyone with actual working neurons know by now that meaningless, thrown together words like ‘cis-gender-normative facist’ and ‘heteromediocre’ are attempts at virtue signalling – a social justice wanker’s barking to let other SJWankers know “I’m one of you guys, don’t eat me alive!” For those of us who get those meaningless, baseless accusations and insults thrown our way, it’s a signal that we’re disliked by the social scavengers of the human jungle; and that the person being insulted may in fact not be yet another one of the brainless stupid sheeple having delusions of Red Guardhood.
Because the wild SJWanker seal eschews logic, reason, and rationality for whatever s/he/it is currently feeling and ‘finds offensive’ just right then, those same things they’ve discarded as inconvenient (including reality) are wonderful weapons with which to beat their farcical attempts at argumentative guilt tripping with. Laughter, mockery and ridicule, as well as not taking them seriously, are others, and these are sometimes more effective than trying to reason with someone who thinks you should be erased off the planet, sent to concentration camps for being heterosexual/male/white/does not agree with the SJWanker. Why waste the time? Life is a finite resource for you.
On that note, I howled with laughter at the display of brainless arrogance at the demand that Larry do things her way to meet her approval with the mildly vague implication that if ‘she found his books’ more interesting, then there’d be the slightest chance she might, maybe, buy a book of his. This is stupid, as well as ridiculously self-centered thinking – “I don’t like this book, therefore, nobody should, and it should change to what I like” as opposed to reading authors’ works you enjoy.
Well, that’s what the rest of the world does, instead of wasting time and money on things they don’t like.
Anyway, Larry, having dealt with these weasel-word using morons before, went straight to mocking this one. I mean, come on, if a shelf full of action-packed fiction books sends this SJWanker to fits of narcolepsy, how do you think they’d react if dropped into say, the nearest ISIS base camp (well, assuming Russia hasn’t wiped them out yet) – they’ll fall asleep to the lullaby of AK-47s, while the jihadists rip off her clothes as a precursor to their SOP of raping women who are 1) alone 2) not wearing a niqab 3)not in the presence of a blood-related or approved guardian male?
Seriously, they couldn’t handle fiction; there’s just no way they’re gonna cope with reality, and reality doesn’t give a finger snap about their fragile melty feels.
Anyway, the sloshed together and hurked-up terminology mentioned in the post (related to some years ago) amused me enough to play around on Photoshop with; and I thought Larry’s snarky translation from English to SJWanker would be hilarious on a coffee mug. The resulting graphics below, inspired by the post’s spirit of laughter, are free to take and be used for both personal and commercial purposes.
Remember: smiles and laughter are better than frowns and shrill sloganistic shrieking! More fun and better for your overall health, both mentally and physically!
Seriously though; Larry? Mediocre? I’d love me some of that so called ‘mediocrity’ he’s got. He got himself (part of?) a mountain with the profits made from what he does; and there’s some gorgeous hectarage down under I’ve love to be able to earn up the AUD for through some lovely, lovely meritocracy.
Besides the comment above, which was written on Vox Popoli (the post being a topic-related jump off from Jerry Pournelle’s) the other reason why I bought the book was because, as I leafed through it, this passage caught my eye:
The other big disadvantage involved public perception. No matter what you did as a Kennedy or a Shriver, no one gave you credit for your accomplishment. Instead, people would say, “Well if I were a Kennedy, I could do that too.” For all these reasons, Maria had to fight harder than most people to carve out her own identity.
While nowhere near the level of Maria Shriver, I can relate to that. People frankly expected grand things from me, upon finding out I was Antonio Modena’s daughter. “Oh, so are you going into journalism, like your father in his youth, or going straight for the DFA?” (The Department of Foreign Affairs.) To this day I still feel a little twinge of guilt that I didn’t do any of that, even if my father never urged me toward those careers and was keen to have me forge my own path through the jungle of life. Arnold’s straightforward, little paragraph brought that back for me.
I was also keen to read what he had to tell about what life was like for him, being born on the heels of World War II. I don’t think I’m going to be in the least bit disappointed with this, or bored.
I’ll admit that I find biographies a bit hard to read. I’m not sure why, since I enjoy hearing what my family calls people stories, but biographies tend to feel rather flat to me, when read. But Arnold’s autobiography, when I leafed through it, is thoroughly readable, and I can even hear it in his voice. The narration even sounds like how he talks, and it’s …relate-able, as if you’re listening to the man himself talk.
If Keanu Reeves came out with an autobiography, I’d actually like to read that too. That man has had a completely relate-able experience of loss and tragedy, and he seems to come out of it scarred but intact. I’d like to know what he did, to hang on to his sanity, how he was able to make it through each day.
Life’s recent rather severe stresses seems to have taken a very huge chunk of my own ability to deal with the setbacks in day to day experiences. I don’t like this, because of how it cripples my ability to think. Rhys, because he’s been deployed, got the ‘things you watch out for’ and reckons I’m suffering from PTSD. It’s pretty severe, since a lot of the time I have nightmares and flashbacks to the horrible day that I woke up to discover Brandon had died in his crib while we both napped, or the day that we lost Damien to stillbirth.
I’m sure some fool with a brain riddled with more maggot than brain matter out there will read the above and translate it as ‘she’s saying she’s just like Keanu Reeves, because Keanu Reeves lost a baby to stillbirth’ or ‘she’s saying she’s had it worse than Keanu Reeves because she lost a baby to stillbirth AND SIDS.’ Fuck you. Losing children isn’t ‘fun,’ and it’s not what any real parent would want to have as a Victim Olympics competition. (Unless, obviously, the ‘parent’ in question is a self-centered, self absorbed virtue-signaling SJW. Those idiots seem to WANT tragedy, so they can milk it for attention and victimbux. Healthy human beings would not trade a the life of a child for attention and pity money.)
But I am not a leftist social justice wanker. I’m not a CHORF.
It’s a normal human reaction to want to know how someone else who has survived a similar experience did to survive. It’s normal to think “This person made it through, so I have a chance of making it through this.”
Well, normal, that is, for those who want to live, want to survive, to grab on and climb out of the pit of despair that circumstance has thrown them into, to refuse to be identified solely by the tragedies of their life. While losing my children has deeply scarred me in ways I have no words to express, and that pain on some days is all I can feel, I am not defined by that loss. It is the awareness of being wounded, and that I can choose to want to heal by doing what will bring that healing in time, or cripple myself, in body, mind and soul.
That choice makes the difference between someone like Stephen Hawking, or the invalid.
Jerry Pournelle’s post also included talking about backing up one’s data, and improved ransomware. I am very grateful, once again, to have made such a wonderful friend like Aff. Thanks to him, our network is safe and continues to remain so. I asked him about the improved ransomware and he said that our network is not vulnerable to such.
I sometimes get asked how I manage to ‘still have faith’, when really, the fact is, as hard as my life has been, I still have many, many blessings. I met Rhys, without whom I would have far less reasons to live. He and I have wonderful, caring children, who are surviving the hardships of the past few years with better I met Aff, who has become an important part of Rhys’ and my family, and cares for our children like they were his nephews and niece, and makes sure they’re safe online. I was blessed with friends who encourage me to write, to continue my art, learn things with and share joy with.
There are things to smile about, despite all the sad things that have happened to us, somehow.
Rhys brought me back a magazine from the grocery; and just leafing through it makes me kinda hungry. I think I’ll make sweet and sour fish tonight, because of it.
+++
Aff says that his mother rung up because she was told that he had passed away. There are, apparently, more than two or three people with his name in Australia. We joked a bit about that, that he is now a ghost in the machine, a zombie admin, and so on.
This post from Mad Genius Club by the ever-brilliant Sarah Hoyt kind of required a more lengthy, serious* response.
1- Nothing is ever easy, nor simple. Say you are walking across the street to get a gallon of milk. A rare make of car will almost run you down. The store that sells the milk will be out of milk. You’ll have to walk across the most dangerous area of town to get to the next store.
This means someone is making you terminally interesting.
It’s not quite that bad, but my household has learned to live by this maxim: “Nothing will ever be simple, because it’s us we’re talking about, and if everything is turning out great, wonder what new unexpected disaster will spring up and hit us, and when?”
Because life likes to go ‘fuck you, that’s why.’
2- You remember more near-death experiences than a character in iZombie.
This is probably just background infodumps. The author is trying to show how resilient you are.
Not really near death experiences, but apparently life hasn’t broken me yet and every time it fails to do so, it comes up with increasingly creative and more annoyingly timed ways to try.
3- All or your friends are terminally interesting and can be counted on for either an explosion or comic relief when needed.
This is good for keeping the plot moving when you’re tired/recovering/ill.
…This describes most of my friends. It’s never really boring around them. And David’s attempts to blow up FrankenPCs have consistently failed, so…
4- You have one or more catch phrases.
This is very useful for delineating a character when the author doesn’t have particularly good character skills.
Nine Hells, this does not bode well for me does it?
5- You consistently get interrupted when you try to tell people the most important part of any story.
This is an attempt to create suspense. Not a very clever one. BUT, you know, sooner or later your author might find a good writers’ group.
There’s kind of a reason why I prefer text-based communication.
6- You have almost lost a friendship to a huge misunderstanding which would have been cleared up if you’d just paid attention.
‘Almost’?
7- People are insanely attracted to you, despite age/body type/lack of interest.
A fortune teller told my mother once that there will be two types of people who linger in my life: People who cherish me; true companions or otherwise, or people who will despise me with every cell of their being. In fairness, I’m apparently not the only person in the house, or family, with this particular checkbox tick.
8- You have one or more unlikely abilities, which comes in handy in circumstances that should never strike. Say you are a camel whisperer. It will turn out the only way to escape a traffic jam is on camel back. If you’re this well foreshadowed, you might want to consider you only exist within pages of a novel.
I don’t think ‘cursed with rather extraordinary bad luck’ is a helpful ability, and since I can’t actively control or redirect it, I’d like to trade it for something more useful, like telekinesis.
9- You never cry. You’ve tried to, but you just can’t cry. You can REMEMBER crying, but that’s probably back history. Main characters don’t cry, because then the reader will have to.
This doesn’t apply to me; I cry because crying has the biological function of getting stress hormones out of your system. I forget where I read that, but it works, at least in my case. Now if only I didn’t end up being unable to breathe through a clogged nose, so I could have a good proper cry, that would be rather appreciated, but see point 1.
10 – You don’t remember some of the more exciting episodes in your life, or not in detail, particularly if they involve more than three people. This is because crowd scenes are very hard to write, but easier to summarize.
Also doesn’t apply. And, while I don’t know if this is true for other folks, bullet time is apparently a biological adaptation on perception.
BONUS: if you keep finding people who were murdered in bizarre ways, you’re not the main character of a novel. You’re an amnesiac mass murderer.
Apparently I found a dead body floating in Manila Bay when I was three years old, and reported this to my father in the way only a three-year old addicted to watching documentaries could: in a disturbingly calm fashion, and pointing out that the guy wasn’t breathing or moving to boot. I’ve been around a few too many human dead bodies; at least for a homebound suburban housewife in Australia who hasn’t been in an active war zone.
That’s a rather disturbing amount of tickboxes there. Yee.
*No, not really serious. At times though we do wonder who the fuck is writing the plot, and how the hell do we find that person so we can introduce said being to the joys of irukanji syndrome.
I play Star Trek Online, and by play, I mean I will log in, give my duty officers assignments to carry out over a few hours, be distracted by baby, forget the game is on and get logged out. On the rare occasion that I DO get to play, I’m busy running away from Borg Elite Tactical Drones, because my weapons are crap and they adapt too quickly. Somehow, I survived to become Admiral. I’m not sure how that happened.
Pick up a Tribble or three dozen…
I’m in a tiny fleet called Apathy Squadron, because we just don’t care. Surprisingly, this has netted us a number of high level / long time players who just wanna play and not be constantly told ‘Use teamspeak’ or that they HAVE to participate in Fleet actions. I’m also the kind of player who likes to read what’s going on, and that might annoy other players.
Kinda annoyed
At any rate, one of our members, a Chinese-American player called Sinaman (yes, and that name tells you immediately how many fucks he gives. Zero, for the totally clueless…) told Aff that we needed a recruitment post. No, he didn’t want to write it. Aff should totally get on that. Because we needed one.
Aff obliged him. The post, I am informed, meets with his approval. 100%.
For those who don’t want to click on that link, here’s the recruitment post.
Our motto is “if you care enough to join, you don’t qualify for membership” – but that’s not really true any more, so the fleet that doesn’t care is making a post looking for like minded people.
Known for nothing, we’re not famous at all – except for being horribly uncoordinated and generally unreliable as team mates. We have a firm belief that the average STO player cares way too much about everything.
Why worry about your damage per second, what sector you are in, or the hull integrity of your starship when you can simply not worry about those things.
As a fleet, Apathy Squadron offers absolutely nothing. We also require nothing, and will probably do nothing. Some of the benefits you will get out of joining us include:
– Trying to figure out how we manage to feed ourselves unassisted;
– Other fleets will be unable to spam invite you whenever you are unfortunate enough to beam down to a Federation Starbase;
– No matter how bad you are we probably contain someone worse – and we don’t care;
– We have a Mumble server – that none of us use, and it isn’t required;Our fleet has strict entry requirements, they are as follows:
– You must play STO*
*Our definition of playing includes being able to log in. Whether or not you explode in every single space mission, or are sold into slavery and forced to do unspeakable things to Gorn captains during away missions is none of our concern.
Some bonus things:
– On occasion, one of our members rises above the minimum standard (which is zero) and will probably help if you need it for a mission or something;
Pros:
– No secrets in the fleet. You’ll all know what everyone is doing.
Cons:
– No secrets in the fleet. You may need therapy.
Other:
If you still want to join this fleet, you are probably an idiot and/or a masochist. This is excellent, feel free to contact Seda@affirmative or Shadowdancer@kagemaiko today, or anyone else wearing the Apathy Squadron flag.
Remember, if you’re going to be terrible – be terrible in a group.
( This is what happens when people want a recruitment post, but they don’t want to do it – so they told me to get on that. Well, here it is. I hope you’re happy people. )
So, if you, for some inexplicable reason, want to join us on our lazy exploration of this fictional universe and the one right next door being invaded by Borg, Star Trek Online is free to play; there’s a cash store but Cryptic made it so that nearly everything in the game can be obtained if you farm enough dilithium so you can sell them for Zen, to buy things from the cash store. Hmm. I guess that means everything can be farmed for. The game is friendly for those people who Just Don’t Have Time to level, like myself. Yay for Duty Officer assignments. Work, slaves! brave explorers!
Ignoble, dishonorable death may be followed by being buried in tribbles.
Be advised that Aff’s Andorian tactical officer is overly fond of explosives, and blew up a moon during a mission. I’m still not sure how that happened.
*Screenshots are from a mission called The Tribble With Klingons, and yes it is as cracking hilarious as it sounds. Also, in true Trek format, if you are arsed to do so, players may create their own fanfic missions and submit them to the Foundry, which can be played by everyone in game. Some are incredible in-depth missions which delve deeply into the Trekverse. On the other hand, you may be contacted by Lt. Buffy Summers of the USS Josh Whedon, for help…
My mom decided to indulge in inflicting me with one of the favorite Filipino past-times of punnishing me with double-entendres and tongue-in-cheek puns. Now, since I’ve moved to Australia, I get these on a regular basis, especially as Rhys is someone who’s weaponized the use of punning (his unit occasionally forget to watch what they say around him, and the results are fun) and Aff and he sometimes toss them around to try one-up each other.
Some of these are easy to understand if you’ve been exposed to the accent of English-speaking Filipinos, while some will need translating, so bear with me when I have to explain the jokes.
We’re going with the intentionally funny use of language, not the ‘lost in translation and cultural myopia’ type. ‘Negros’ is the name of a region in the Philippines, and has nothing to do with American history, or racism.
Ang Kat Tea – Ang kati – ‘how itchy’. A good ginger, lemon and honey tea does a good job of soothing an itchy throat, I have found.
Bun of Brothers -a burger place. Do they break bread with strangers too, I wonder?
Brew HA – bruha – ‘witch.’ Great fun to be had with spelling (spilling, muahahahaha) the (magic) beans at that coffee shop, I see.
Eat My GF- their best seller item is garlic fries
Ken Afford – Located along Katipunan Avenue, where there are at least three large universities and a plethora of schools, their menu is something students can afford… especially if you’re able to afford the tuitions in the schools in this area.
Meats and Match -one has choices of meat dishes; and veggie side dishes.
Johnny’s Fried Chicken-The Fried of Marikina – They’re quite right to be pride-ful of their chicken. It was quite yummy when I tasted it.
Nacho Fast – a snack stall shop pulling fast ones! How cheesy, natcherally.
OBEERTIME – what you need, clearly, after too much overtime.
PorkBarrel Grill and Restaurant – do we have senators and governors visiting here frequently?
TRI MO SHAWARMA CO – “Try mo shawarma ko’ = mo is ‘you’ and ‘ko’ is ‘my’, so this translates to “You try my shawarma.”
Aha, found the same list, but with pictures (and the comments have some additional ones but are a bit harder to translate.)
Pizza ng Ina Mo – Ina mo, Ina Ko, Ina nating lahat – “(word) ng ina mo” … in use is similar to ‘(word) your momma’s face’, but a far ruder version exists – ‘puta ng ina mo’ – your mom is a whore. Translated literally though, the sign says “Your Mother’s Pizza – Your Mom, My Mom, Everyone’s Mom.” I guess this is a variation of a ‘yo momma is’ joke?
Jusko Thai – A play of words on a phrase often used in exasperation, ‘dios ko, dai/day!’ = Dios ko ‘ my God’ and ‘dai/day’ is a slang term of familiarity used by women and local gays, that’s kinda like the Aussie use of ‘mate’.
You Food – (burp)cast yourself – … From the Net and back again…
Tang Inasal – (pu)tang ina – ‘Sonuvabi–‘; plus inasal – which is a very flavorful preparation of grilled chicken. Politically correct, we are not. Easily amused? Very.
SleepNot Cafe – Either this is a net cafe, or a coffee shop, or both. The latter is entirely possible.
Adobo Putoshop – groooooooooooooooan Adobo, which is a Filipino stew, and puto – steamed rice cakes
Beer Hunter
Hijo de Pita – makes sense if you know a little Spanish.
Bagneto – bagnet is a pork dish. The logo has a pig’s face instead of the usual actor’s.
Aristoback. And as their name suggests, located at the back of The Aristocrat. Location: Malate, Manila.
SkewU Grill!
Harry Pata – Crispy pata is deep fried or crispy grilled pork knuckle / belly
Goto Heaven – Goto – savory rice congee.
Seditious Filipino Cuisine
KKK – A Pinoy Food Revolution – Patriotic Punny Pinoyisms with some history thrown in. KKK in the Philippines stands for Samahang Kataastaasan, Kagalanggalang Katipunan ng̃ mg̃a Anak ng̃ Bayan – English: Supreme and Most Honorable Society of the Children of the Nation, a secret society pushing for independence which was responsible for the Philippine Revolution.
Not restaurants:
Your Wash Is My Command
Talk Dirty To Me
Philippine Hairlines
Hairchitecture
Ah, I do love the entertaining use of language, don’t you? ^_^
More from a quick Google search:
Brew’d Awakening Coffeehaus
Grillenium Falcon – Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Bread Zeppelin
Pita Pan
Thai Tanic – Adventures of Thai Cuisine
Custard’s Last Stand
Lord of the Wings
Lord of the Fries
Wok This Way
Hu’s On First Asian Bistro
The Codfather
Frying Nemo
Pho Shizzle
Just Falafs Good Mood Food
Udder Delights Cheese Cellar
Lebaneser Scrooge
Blackboard sign outside a pub: Breakfast is Coming – Game of Scones *Javabean’s Allegiance Lies WIth House Ma(unreadable letter)rina on this one.
Restaurant sign: Ain’t Nobody Got Thai For That
A Salt and Battery Fish and Chips
Planet of the Grapes – Wine shop
What the Pho Vietnamese Noodle Shop