I’m working on a new post for Monday. My imagination has concocted the land of Quarroc. So, I will occasionally write short stories featuring this fictional land. I will be starting with the series of the three doors. I hope you all enjoy.
Those who know me best know my tongue to be clean. Yet in my retort posts, the wry humor is dependent upon the crass vernacular. You have been warned.
Smartass, you say?
To be a smartass, one must first be smart.
Elsewise one is just an ass.
Be I wise or smart,
Dumb or jack,
Hat, face, or even hole,
I am never half.
Ass thou has named me,
And so ass shall I forever be.
And if thou is any representation,
Indeed, ’tis sorry company.
You sir, are a hat.
A leather hat.
Yes, yes, fine donkey hide.
Exquisite jackass, if I’m not mistaken.
You sir are a quality ass hat.
I had a crazy day the other day. I won’t go into it all, just the car. I thought my battery died. I was sitting in the car, in line to pick up my oldest from her first day of school. I was a quarter-hour early, so I shut off the engine to save gas. Then the line moved and I turned the key.
Click, click, click! It wouldn’t start back up. Then it stopped trying to click.
I waved the other cars around. One of the other parents offered to help when the line was gone. I gratefully accepted. When the cars had passed me, I walked to the doors to pick my daughter up. The other parent let her sit in the back of her van and the kids watched cartoons. Meanwhile, the other parent, the teachers, a custodian, and I all pushed my dead car to a parking space.
We tried vainly to jump the car. We had to use jump points on my car due to design issues upon which I will later elaborate. Nothing. The other parent gave my daughter and I a ride home. My father-in-law got the car home.
To access the battery on a Chrysler Concorde, one must prepare for surgery. After opening the hood, you have to remove the entire air filter assembly. Now jack the front passenger side up. Remove the wheel cover and tire/rim. Now tackle the five screws holding an access panel i place. Remove access panel. Now, remove the bar holding the battery in place by way of two nuts. Remove terminal clamps. Now move the battery carefully out the access panel (it won’t come out of the top.) Fun right?
At this point, I suspect Rubik as the identity of the engineer responsible for this inane design. Come to find out, the terminal clamp needed replaced.
I’ve mentioned before how I do try to keep politics out of most of my posts. My personal leanings are moderate conservative, somewhere along the Libertarian/Tea Party Republican border. That said, I thrive on oppositional research. Conservative and liberal feeds stream almost constantly into my social media. I’ve noticed certain trends on all of the political spectrum which need to stop for one reason or another. No one reading this can feel superior by thinking, “Well, MY party doesn’t do that!” Whether big two or independent, these problems are plaguing EVERY party.
1. Fraudulent social media reporting. – I used to see conservative pages frozen or shut down all the time only to come back with the note that someone reported to whatever social media site that they were posting pornographic material, which of course they weren’t. Liberal social media pages seemed to be unaffected from where I sat. Then I read another WordPress blog called A Girl Named Jack. Her latest post was a general complaint of someone doing the same to her Facebook page and she wondered why it only ever happens to liberal pages. What we have here is a case of greener grass on the other side of the fence.
If you do oppositional research, as I do, then you still are likely to follow more sympathetic pages than opponent pages. This increases the chances of noticing this sort of thing happening to your side than the other. Not to mention the fact that you’ll notice the occurrences on your side more due to less investment on the other side. If you do no oppositional research, you have no real idea whether this happens to the other side or not.
In any case, don’t be that jerk. Ignore the post. Or, if reporting is warranted, report honestly. Facebook has admitted they don’t have sufficient staffing levels to sort it all. As a result, blocking is done without review unless appealed by the person to whom the blocked account belongs. Reporting an opponent’s page as pornographic (unless there is indeed pornography) is fraud. It is the dishonest, underhanded abuse of a tool and is not conducive to earnest debate.
2. Name calling.-What are we? 5 years old? Do we need to be put in a corner for time-out? Calling each other “Libertards” and “Republicunts” is out of line. Period. If you pull this move in a Twitter argument, you’ve already lost. It doesn’t matter whether you are on the right side of the issue or not nor does it matter how worthy your cause is. You’ve already shut down communication while simultaneously making your side look bad. Debate over.
3. Slogans.-Slogans are great tools for lectures, posters, and other one-sided outlets. But slogans have no place in debate. If the only argument you have is to parrot a slogan, you’re out of ammo.
4. ALL CAPS.-WE HAVE ALL RUN ACROSS THIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND IN COMMENT SECTIONS. SERIOUSLY, KNOCK IT OFF. IT IS THE TYPOGRAPHICAL EQUIVALENT TO YELLING, SERVES ONLY TO ANNOY, AND THERE IS NO GOOD REASON FOR IT. Every device with which you can type has upper and lower case letters. Make use of this feature, or type lower case.
5. Death threats.-So obviously inappropriate, I can’t believe the sheer frequency with which it occurs. I have had too few comments on my blog (Go ahead, I don’t bite. Much.), but if I receive a threat then I will take it seriously by reporting it to the proper authorities.
6. Hyperbole.-OMG! People who overuse hyperbole all time a murdering the language beyond death!!! If this continues, they’ll rape your eyes with all of this overly overdone extreme ranting!!!!!
7. Putting words into the other’s mouth.-The only reason no one can argue with a person who commits this error is due to this action abandoning logic and reason altogether. It also closes more ears than it opens. I began to listen to the Associated Geekery podcast after hearing about it on the Arkham Sessions. I shut the episode off part way through and have never listened to it again. Part way through the episode, a co-host went on a rant about how she thinks that companies should know what charities and politicians a person donates to (nevermind that the lack of such info protects employees all along the political spectrum). During this rant, she gave an example of if her boss donates to a pro-life charity. “So you’re okay with me working here, but you think I should be barefoot in the kitchen raising kids” (quote from memory). Those are two seperate things. The pro-life camp isn’t saying that. Sufferagette Susan B. Anthony was against abortion and saw it as a tool by which women would be oppressed. Pro-life does not equal anti-feminist. If you are going to bring an argument like this to the table, show the link.
8. Just repeating the same post over and over.-’nuff said.
8. Just repeating the same post over and over.-’nuff said.
8. Just repeating the same post over and over.-’nuff said.
Did I forget any?
Remember yesterday’s post?
Add to that. This morning, @ 2 am, the power went out. Fumbling and stumbling about the dark house, I locate my phone. I used the flashlight app in my Guardians of the Galaxy utility and widgit kit to find my way around the house to get ready. Good thing too. My daughter had gotten out of bed at some indeterminate point in the night to sleep on the floor. In the middle of the walkway.
Add to that, I began to feel sick while out on my paper route. My airway acted up, I was exhausted, my head ached, my throat hurt, I was in a cold sweat, I felt weak, and I was nauseous. I had to call off work. Goodbye big chunk o’ paycheck. Now saving up for the car issues is going to be harder.
My wife was feeling worse. Two sick adults looking after three healthy and hyper kids. Fun.
The bright spot to my day? My LootCrate arrived!
![IMG_20140821_142814595[1]](https://braindripping.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/img_20140821_1428145951-e1408648008890.jpg)
What’s inside?
I am Groot! An exclusive glow-in-the dark variant of the Groot Funko POP! bobblehead!
A LootCrate button.
A Sonic the Hedgehog air freshener.
TMNT sunglasses.
A KidRobot vinyl TMNT figure.
A shoe accessory.
Fridge Magnet.
Codes for digital loot. (codes are on reverse side.)
A booklet.
And a fun box!
There’s a flap that folds to complete the couch, as well as a QR code to bonus content. The LootCrate app kept giving me an error. It couldn’t open the link. The standard QR code reader app on my phone had no problem opening the silly little video. Not sure about the code on the freshener. My phone kept freezing.
Apparently, the KidRobot action figure for ages 8 and up is not a toy. Also, it is made with extra cheese.
And the words “still beat” are now the compound word, “stillbeat”.
Final thoughts, I loved it!
I have a reactive airway. It isn’t asthma, but it is related. Most days I’m fine. Couple of puffs on the ol’ inhaler and I’m good in short order. On four occasions, I’ve had a severe attack (one of which was prior to diagnosis). Two of those attacks occurred between yesterday and today. Yesterday’s left me dizzy. I had to leave work early. I should’ve today, but I wasn’t dizzy so I stubbornly powered through. I felt like I was breathing through a straw.
The flat-top grill at work has been broken, so I’ve had to sacrifice space on the DSG to grill the chicken. The end result is I have to do twice as many burger/chicken drops to produce the same amount of product. Add that increase in physical activity to an airway issue and it makes the whole thing worse. Today the flat-top was fixed, only to have the oven break. Now that space on the DSG was used for bacon. I normally drop four pans a round. Now I could only do one at a time.
The airway attacks left me physically exhausted. I’d get home, sit down on the couch to remove my boots, and pass out. My boots were still on and tied when I woke up 2-3 hours later.
On the paper route, it rained cats and dogs. And my umbrella went missing.
My son has been waking up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat and screaming like a banshee. This has added to my lack of sleep. The doctor said that there is no ear infection, and we are monitoring his temperature.
My car’s engine is on it’s last legs. I need it for the paper route. Now my wife and I have to ax a lot of things we were going to take care of just to save for either a new (to us) engine or car.
The pain, numbness, and tingling in my hands that has interfered with my drawing has been diagnosed as bilateral carpal tunnel. I’ll be seeing a specialist.
Tomorrow, I get up at 2 am to run my paper route. The route carries a 6:30 am deadline. I work 7 am to 3 pm. Then I attend an open house for my oldest daughter’s school from 4:15 pm to 7 pm. I go back to bed at 8 pm. Tomorrow is a wash.
I work two jobs totaling over 70 hours a week, and still we are in the in-laws house and on food stamps.
I look back on my childhood and wonder…
…Why was I in such a hurry to grow up?
Spoiler alerts, those nice little courtesy warnings before reviews. How have they garnered such a negative opinion?
Simple. People have become unreasonable in their demands for them. If you were to tweet with a friend about your favorite decade-old movie, chances are that someone would take you to task for not issuing a spoiler alert. The reasoning? They might want to see it someday. Big. Whoop. There are too many shows, books, movies, games, and other media to absorb them all. The rest of the world isn’t going to wait until you’ve seen something to talk about nor are they going to put up a spoiler alert before every media discussion.
On the other hand, revealing details of something recently released is a jerk move. So, when do you need an alert and when is one unreasonable to expect? I present the following guidelines:
1. If the dvd/blu-ray/download/other non-theatrical format has been out over 6 months, no spoiler alert required.
2. Exception to #1 is if you are talking directly to someone whom you have prior knowledge hasn’t seen the story in question. I.E. if you and your co-host review Upside Down on your podcast, no alert needed. But if I ask my sister if she’s seen Firefly over Facebook, and she says no, I shouldn’t spoil it for her.
3. If you discuss source material of an adaptation, no spoiler alert required.
4. If you discuss a poster, trailer, or you are merely hypothesizing over what you think might happen, no spoiler alert required.
5. If you discuss the merchandise, no spoiler alert required.
6. If you are discussing a book under one year old, spoiler alert.
7. If you are discussing a movie still in theaters, spoiler alert.
8. If you are discussing a tv series, wait until 2 weeks into the summer hiatus to remove the alert.
9. If discussing a periodical, like a comic issue, no spoiler alert is needed when the next issue hits the stands.
Any others? Weigh in in the comments!
Brain Drippings 