So, my laptop is an Asus M50v. Lately it's seemed like it's been running rather hot, which is of moderate concern to me. Performance has seemed vaguely slow here and there but I'm not sure.
Where there seems to be a problem: Left 4 Dead (just installed tonight) runs like a cow. That's been shot.
It shouldn't. It's an Intel Core Duo processor (~2.5GHz I think) with Nvidia 9600M GS graphics card. Computer has 4GB of RAM.
Anyone have any idea what's going wrong, here?
8 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
 |
|
So, I gave a guitar to an eight-year-old today, and she loved it, which is pleasing. She likes the classical guitar better than she liked my electric guitar when she saw me playing it, even though she thought the amp effects were kind of awesome.
Which is good, because a classical guitar is what she has, and also, I'm fond of her, but I am not going to let an excitable eight-year-old who picked up a guitar for the first time today play my genuine Gibson Les Paul Studio, because seriously.
Still feeling rather unwell. I slept terribly last night, because lying down made my lungs sad and my throat hurt and felt all swollen and it was all pretty miserable. I feel better now than I did last night but I intend to let my body keep recovering rather than pushing it, so I'm going to try and sleep and rest as much as I can.
I'm skipping episode 12 of Lie To Me because episode synopsis says it will be Very Bad for my mental health. I realised this immediately but found it strangely difficult to follow through with a plan of just skipping it. Required reinforcement from Chas (and I think, a little, from Dean, though I'd mostly decided when I mentioned it to her) to be able to make myself just go straight to episode 13.
Which is looking pretty awesome.
Right now I'm lying in bed watching it, but I think - if only because my lower back is getting grumpy about too much time in bed - I might later go downstairs, set up at the table, and start writing detailed recaps/meta of all the non-triggery-to-me episodes, because this show is seriously awesome and I don't feel well enough to write fiction right now.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
So, my otherwise-totally-awesome Gibson Les Paul Studio has one irritating problem: the third (G) string keeps going out of tune. Wildly so. I suspect this may mean the bridge needs adjusting... which I don't really know how to do.
Solution: Call the shop where I bought it. Ask them about it. Get diagnosis confirmed... and a free offer of: "Bring it in, we can fix that for you." Because, after all: "You bought it here, and we want you to be happy with it..."
Online retailers have their virtues, but those virtues really don't include being able to get them to fix minor problems quickly and easily, without having to ship the thing places. Had I bought my guitar online I'd likely be better served trying to fix this myself.
Which I don't want to do - I don't really know what I'm doing, my guitar is new and expensive and already beloved, I fear damaging it. Besides, I feel like I'm coming down with a cold.
So I shall pack up my Gibson and wander into town. (Might pack my camera, too, maybe grab some photos in town if it seems convenient. Or if the US Navy sailors are about again - they were all over town on Thursday. I assume a ship's in at Freo.)
5 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Culling friends list to readability. Mostly dropping feeds and people who are crossposting to Dreamwidth, but am also removing a few people I haven't interacted with in a long time, etc.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
 |
|
So, I went to Officeworks today, to buy printers and an external hard drive. I ended up buying a more expensive inkjet printer than I intended to get, but I don't actually mind, particularly; this one is awesome, with all the features I want, and my father has one from the same line that has had very heavy use for about six years, so I expect it to last me pretty well.
While I was there I also bought photo print sticker papers, because I have several items I wish to decorate with stickers, and have been unable to do so due to inability to find appropriate stickers. Now I can make my own, and shall do so, and my things will be decorated forthwith.
(I also bought some more rechargable AA batteries, because I've been intending to do so.)
I think I've finally cleared off my backlog of Things To Buy from the last two years of non-money-having. (Except for clothes, but I hate clothes shopping and will continue to put that off as long as I possibly can.) Though the new external hard drive was something that was just upcoming, because my last one is only now at the point of being almost full. (In terms of combined values for convenience, cost effectiveness, and practicality of storage, external hard drives are my best data storage option.)
On the way back from returning the trolley, I stopped by the Save the Children charity shop, where I bought a couple of shirts to cut up for various purposes, a Bible printed in 1958 (I like old things, I wanted a Bible, it was $2), and an absolutely beautiful soft brown leather belt. (Also $2.) I plan to attempt to turn the belt into a more comfortable camera strap. Failing that, I'll find some other use for it - there was no way I wasn't buying a beautiful leather belt I loved on sight when it was two Australian dollars.
Op shops are in one way dangerous, because I'm way more likely to buy things just because I like them if they're invariably VERY VERY CHEAP, and in another way totally not, because even when I buy a bunch of stuff just because it's cool, it never costs me more than five bucks total, and the money is for charity anyway.
Oh, and I also bought a Ricoh YF-20 N 35mm (film) camera for $2, mostly because I wanted the bag it was in to use for my digital compact. (Which has no bag, and I have a preference for keeping my cameras wrapped in something.) The camera itself will probably be put in my storage box of Miscellaneous Techish Bits until I turn it into a taser or something.
The recycling part: old, unwanted, ugly shirts into useful items, and things like camera bags for now-worthless cameras into usable things.
Now, though, I need to dig the batteries out of this camera before I toss it into storage.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
| 2009-07-01 13:34 |
| PS |
| Public |
|
Am picking up reading LJ again, but since I haven't read it in about two months, am not even going to TRY to catch up. If there's something important I've missed, tell me, or it'll work out in some other fashion, I imagine.
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
 |
|
Things I approve of: Adobe's updater. First, it doesn't get all grabby about focus when it wants my input. A bubble pops up from the system tray that says, all politely, "Adobe Updater needs your attention." Awww.
Second, when it's in the middle of updating, and I decide to run Photoshop, it doesn't make a fuss, just tells me that the Photoshop update couldn't install, would I like it to try again?
Yes, yes I would.
Photoshop still gives me a hive in a range of ways, but I'll give it points for that.
So, because it's new and shiny, during a patch of okayish weather, I popped outside with my DSLR. Took some random photos, took somewhat purposeful photos of our broken TV antenna, and then took Today's Photo in the back garden.
It's not much of a garden, but it did come with this:
Digital cameras are awesome. I have already taken more shots with my DSLR than with my film SLRs that I've had for most of a decade, because OH HEY I don't have to pay for film and processing thereof. I can has CAMERA FUN.
2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
So, they're closed today, it being a Sunday, but tomorrow I need to call my guitar dudes, because I'm wondering if there's something wrong with the electronics on my guitar.
If the pickup selector switch is in the middle, so both pickups are on, and you turn down the volume control for the neck pickup, it turns off *both* pickups. But both pickups work fine if checked separately with the selector switch.
Meanwhile, I read the owner's manual this morning. Gibson appear to produce a general manual for all guitars - so half of the booklet on mine is about the Robotic Guitar, which is apparently self-tuning.
It looks really complicated, with many, many pages of instructions and so on, and special instructions for restringing the damn thing... all for a self-tuning guitar.
Tuning a guitar is not that hard, especially these days, with electronic tuners. I tune my Gibson by clipping a little widget to the headstock, plucking the strings, and having it tell me what note I'm playing and how far it is from the correct frequency on a cute little display. Certainly it seems an awful lot easier than dealing with this robotic stuff, plus it means you get to pick the rest of your guitar's features at whim. I can maybe see a use for it if you want to get heavy with a tremolo arm (that wah-wah bar that some electric guitars have), which can push the strings out of tune... except the Gibson Robotic Guitars don't appear to have tremolo arms. (Also, Brian May managed to overcome that problem with some ingenuity about bridge design decades ago.)
Hmm, lunchtime. (I slept late.)
2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
Comment replies will be delayed a bit again, as we're shaped, and it's just annoying to try and do stuff online. Also, I'm still mildly ill.
For people reading this on LiveJournal: I haven't read LJ for about a month, maybe more. At some point I'll be picking up reading again, but not until tomorrow at the earliest, when we're not shaped any more; if there's anything I've missed that you think I should know, let me know.
I've been occupying myself reading Deadpool comics. Because Deadpool is awesome. (And loves Bea Arthur.)
I've realised that I have this odd parameter set for reading comics. I like comics that take themselves Very Seriously Indeed (e.g. Sandman, Lucifer was deeply flawed but still readable, etc.) or just take their subject matter seriously (e.g. early Authority, but not Preacher, because Preacher was trying way too hard to be blasphemous and ended up just being kind of crap after the first couple of trade paperbacks). In order to read them I need the art to be reasonable, too - the first couple of Authority TPBs were awesome, and then suddenly the art changed and became hideous and I couldn't stand it.
(No, I dont read anything with Liefeld "art" if I can help it. My cat could scratch a better Cable if you let him play with the paper.)
At the other extreme, I like comics that don't take themselves seriously at all, that play with meta just because they can, like Deadpool or Top Ten.
Stuff in the middle - stuff that just rolls on through the story, but isn't trying to be Deep - doesn't grab me. I like reading ABOUT those sorts of comics - reading summaries, descriptions, and meta on Iron Man or Captain America or Superman or Batman or X-Men - I just don't like the comics themselves that much. (Unless it's specific issues I've been recced, and where the art is really, really pretty.)
Today's image is toilet vampires.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
 |
|
written this morning
With one eyebrow raised to the sky, I followed a link to the infamous whale.to for an apparent argument that the tsunami several years ago was actually caused by a "nuke".
Second paragraph makes reference to "fake hurricane flooding" in New Orleans.
I. What. Seriously.
What's supposed to be fake? The hurricane? I'm pretty sure that happened, and would be prety hard to fake, given how far weather effects for hurricanes and cyclones reach. (Speaking as someone who lives about a thousand miles from cyclone latitudes: trust me on this. We haven't had one even close to the severity of Katrina hit northern Western Australia in my lifetime, but cyclones still affect the weather in Perth significantly when they're hitting Broome.)
The flooding? Because there's an awful lot of evidence that the flooding happened.
Is it some kind of weather control thing? I don't know. I don't think I want to.
returns some hours later
So!
The pre-trial conference for the insurance thing finally happened, and... I pretty much won.
Well, my lawyers won for me, anyway. They negotiated a settlement about fifteen times the initial offer - out of which I have to pay legal fees that amount to about 7.7% of the total. They had given me an initial range of what they thought they could get, which the barrister said he thought might be slightly high... and yet, the final amount was a tick over the upper end of their estimate. And it's definitely an amount I find acceptable.
I should get the money in about ten days - the insurance company pays my lawyers, who deduct their fee and transfer the rest to my bank account. On some level I really like just the fact that at no point do I have to pay my lawyers myself, it's just part and parcel of the Stuff They Handle. Of which there's been quite a lot, and it's been an unbelievable relief to me along the way that all of this process has, since I engaged them, been Not My Problem. I don't have to know how to deal with it or fix it, my lawyers do that. I didn't have to deal with the discussions with the opposing lawyers today - I sat elsewhere, and periodically one of my lawyers would come and talk to me if they needed information from me, or just to update me on progress.
I am fortunate in that I was recommended one of the handful of non-scabby personal injury lawyers who don't charge you anything until the whole thing is finished; they paid for all sorts of medical tests and things, and it all gets sorted out now. (The insurance commission pay for most of that. And about two thirds of my legal fees.)
I talked about it with the barrister, and mentioned my bemusement at the risibly terrible initial offer the insurance people made. He observed that about 50% of people take that offer.
Which of course is why they do it. Ironically, in cases like mine, if they'd offered me, say, five times as much as they did, I might have taken it, and in the end it cost them a lot more than that (not just the settlement, but also all my medical and legal fees), but sadly they probably do come out ahead this way - financially, if not morally.
Oliver and I talked about motor vehicle injury in Australia a bit. It's interesting the way Australian legal precedent goes on this one - even if, say, someone steps out from behind an obstacle directly in front of you, and you couldn't possibly have seen them, and you were travelling at the speed limit, and you brake immediately, but hit them anyway because it was not physically possible to avoid it - legally, you're At Fault. And when it comes up in court judges have noted that, specifically, no blame should be placed on the driver's ability or character, as this was unavoidable, but preference states that...
Because Australian legal precedent is based on the fact that third party insurance, which does, in fact, cover injury to other people, is compulsory.
The driver who hit me has never been identified, and never will be. However, the Insurance Commission is still liable, because I was injured in a motor vehicle accident and was, in fact, legally Not At Fault, and that's what they cover, for everyone.
Seriously, some things about Australia are pretty thoroughly awesome. (Like the AEC. Which we also talked about but I'm all tired and going to chill out for a while now.)
11 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
... sometimes, you get a story that just lets you feel like there's progress in the world. Like speaking up does, in fact, make a difference.
It's the KRXQ saga. Shock jocks spend half an hour advocating violence against children who show potential transgender characteristics.
Horrible, right?
And yet, awesome.
Because the radio station had sponsors.
Past tense.
Companies to withdraw sponsorship of the station, and in some cases make a point of telling GLAAD about it (not avoiding gay cooties so much as making a point of ensuring GLAAD knows they're doing things GLAAD will approve of:
- Chipotle
- Snapple
- Sonic
- Bank of America
- Verizon
- Carl’s Jr (CKE Restaurants)
- Wells Fargo
- Nissan North America
- AT&T
- McDonald’s
Seriously! It is now considered not only commercially valid, but necessary, to distance your company from that kind of thing as fast as you possibly can. I'm not sure which is actually more awesome, to be honest, though. Yanking your advertising and making a point of telling GLAAD, so they can tell everyone else, or just doing it and then, when GLAAD asks, just being all "yeah, we pulled our ads from them because they suck, thanks for asking". Nissan's is kind of hilariously low-stress though, I suspect. The broadcast happened on the 28th of May. Their contract was due for renewal on the first of June. So they're just not renewing. No pulling to deal with, just: "eh, cancel the renewal". Even if this is just a single radio station, so the bad-PR-vs-loss-of-advertising decision is easier than it might be? I still call this a victory for the forces of right. Rock on.
4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Dear world,
How the hell does C sharp 7 work?
(Am approaching a week behind on LJ. Cannot catch up at this time. Am not dead.)
7 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
 |
|
So, today I went out for a tick under three hours. I went to my parents' house, crammed my backpack with stuff of my own, and found my mother's classical guitar and the replacement strings it needs, and she'd bought, but not yet strung, and wended my way home.
For some reason, by the time I got home I was positively shaking from low blood sugar, despite having snacked only two hours before (usually I can go to not-quite-three before hypoglycaemia kicks in, after a reasonable snack, which I'd had). Thinking about this, it has occurred to me that while my afternoon snack was a normal snack, my "lunch" consisted of an apple, which might have something to do with it. And yet, at lunchtime, I reeeaaally didn't feel like eating. Requires some thought.
After getting home, I sat my shaking self at the table while my brother-out-law made me a sammich, because he is awesome, and looked up how to restring a classical guitar, because the bridges are much, much less restringing-friendly than steel-string guitars. I... I think I can handle it.
Tomorrow, we have a rent inspection, so tonight, there will be much cleaning taking place here. I, being all chronic-pain-y, have exactly one entry on the chore list, but it makes me feel much better than if I had none. (I also may cook dinner, if the BFF lets me.)
Other than my assigned cleaning task, tonight's plan is: rest, restring Mum's guitar, play her guitar and my own, rest, get early night, more-or-less. Am several days behind on LiveJournal, but am too tired to tackle it atm. (Also, before I take on LJ friends list, will perhaps be unfriending several people who always crosspost with DWth.)
Oh, forgot on to-do list for this evening: "retune classical guitar constantly, because new nylon strings have an in-tune lifetime measured in seconds". I'm going to see if the digital tuner built into my steel-string picks up the notes from my mother's okay, for ease, but even if it doesn't, I at least have my guitar to get a tuning note from - for some reason, I remain absolutely unable to tune from a pitch pipe, but I think, somehow, tuning from an acoustic guitar low E to an acoustic guitar low E will be within my capabilities.
I feel... okay. Better than I've felt in many weeks. I think it's just possible everything will be all right, and maybe my suicide is not an inevitable thing that all this stuff we do to improve my mental health is merely delaying.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
Mr Barnett described the poll question as “unnecessarily complex” and said he believed West Australians would not have to go back to the polls on the question for at least another decade.
1) I'm sorry, what?
This was the question: Are you in favour of daylight saving being introduced in Western Australia by standard time in the State being advanced one hour from the last Sunday in October 2009 until the last Sunday in March 2010 and in similar fashion for each following year?
That question is not too complex, that question lays out the terms of the referendum. And hardly anyone is going to read the damn question anyway, because EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE DAMN STATE knows full bloody well that the question is: Do you want Daylight Saving Time in WA? Yes or No? Don't imply that people will be voting No because they're too stupid to understand the question.
2) Oh, for fuck's sake, back to the polls on this in another decade? This was the FOURTH FUCKING TIME ALREADY, and the margin is looking like being WIDER THIS TIME THAN LAST TIME, and for the love of God GET OVER IT AND STOP TRYING. The majority of Western Australian people DO NOT WANT DST, now SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT IT.
One of the arguments this time was that a whole generation had never had a chance to vote on it. Well, guess what - we did, and the margin against got wider, because DST is an antiquated concept that may have some validity in countries like England but doesn't have any here, and if we have to have this fucking argument again I demand at least another generation's worth of time first because we've HAD OUR CHANCE TO VOTE ON IT and we FUCKING SAID NO, okay?
There is no AMBIGUITY on this. It's a clearly-defined question. Everyone's talked about it, everyone's been subjected to this shit for the last three years, and the ballot only gave us options of YES or NO (or spoiling the ballot, realistically). Everyone was legally required to vote, so no citizen was left out - there's a reason we don't have Get Out The Vote initiatives in this country. FUCKING DROP IT ALREADY.
5 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
... So, according to the Internet, the Fremantle Dockers lost by 22 points to Hawthorn.
Why are so many people walking past my near-the-stadium house singing drunkenly at the tops of their voices?
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
| 2009-05-15 12:48 |
| Oh, my. |
| Public |
| Sheila Chandra - Sacred Stones |
| guitar |
|
I...
you have no idea but
Words can not express how much I want this. If they still have it when I finally get this insurance crap sorted out and actually have some money, I am getting it. There is a very short list of things I'm going to buy when I get the settlement, an electric guitar is on that list, and as far as I've been able to tell Parkers are not easy to get in Australia. (No, really: I do want an electric guitar, and when I get an electric guitar, I want a Parker.) That site also has other cool guitars I just like looking at, but don't feel the need to own, so much.
I kind of want a classical guitar, too, but the problem with that, you understand, is that the classical guitar I really want is the classical guitar that belongs to my mother. I can't bring myself to plan spending substantial amounts of money on a classical guitar, because the one I want is so very, very much not for sale.
Although (back on the electric side of things), the Hofner Shorty is kind of adorable, too.
2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Huh. Based on this sample alone, I would have voted for this guy: Humphrey-Muskie, 1968. Humphrey came into the race late, having won no primaries, and won the candidacy at a disordered Democratic convention following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Transcript (by me): Voice of young man in audience: Mr Vice-President, how do you expect to gain the respect of the American people in the event you're elected?
Then-Vice-President Hubert Humphrey: "Well, I think, by my record of public service... When a man says that he thinks that the most important thing is to double the rate of convictions, that he doesn't believe in and he condemns the Vice-President, myself, for wanting to double the war on poverty - I think that man has lost his sense of values. You're not going to make this a better America just because you build more jails. What this country needs are more decent neighbourhoods. More educated people. Better homes. Uh, if we need more jails we can build them but that ought not to be the highest objective of the, a Presidency of the United States. I do not believe that repression, alone, builds a better society. Now if Mr Nixon can close his eyes to that, then he doesn't have enough vision to be President of this country. And that's why I've said what I've said.
Applause.
Voiceover: Humphrey, Muskie. There is no alternative. If only at some point in the last forty years, or the last four hundred, the idea that repression alone doesn't build a better society, had really caught on. I mention the centuries with a reason, because the history I'm studying right now includes the era when the modern police force was invented, and almost immediately turned into an instrument of social control, to keep the lower classes in their place. And, too, the era in which the notion of criminal justice went from deliberate savagery (the idea being that, though many crimes were left unpunished, those who were punished should be punished harshly and very much in public, to serve as an example to others), to the form we follow now - the surety, not the severity, of prosecution. Neither seems to work all that well. Though the Bloody Code was cheaper, because imprisonment just wasn't how it was done. You were flogged, you were pilloried, you were executed, you were publically humiliated - but you weren't locked up. And they were making no pretense of trying to prosecute every crime. And charging someone with a crime could be expensive to the plaintiff, and in any case, people wouldn't prosecute if they didn't think the criminal who had wronged them would be deserving of the punishment they would receive. Of course, sometimes this became "community justice" anyway. One man who wrote against the King was pilloried, and pelted with flowers instead of rotten produce or stones by an approving populace. Just about anyone who was convicted of deviant sexual crimes (either interfering with children, or, sadly, homosexuality) had a near-certainty of being stoned to death in their time in the pillory. An interesting digression on this, actually, is the death sentence: Many crimes were capital crimes, at the time, but only a minority of those convicted of a capital crime were generally executed. Why this was is a matter of some historical debate (isn't everything?), but (my view, fairly well supported by evidence and historiography) was that the following things were major factors in this: 1) Past a certain point, too many executions would shift public opinion from "that bastard deserves to hang for what he done!" to "just about every day someone else swings at Tyburn - do they all deserve it? What if it's me or someone I love next?" Balancing public opinion on this stuff was quite important. 2) By granting clemency and reducing death sentences to transportation, the judges (who were of and represented the upper classes) could seem merciful and kind - despite the fact that the sentence they were giving was to send people, chained in ships which could be more-or-less just like the slave ships (including the women, children, and high death rates), to servitude in distant, harsh conditions, frequently for very minor crimes. In doing so, they reinforced a paternalistic class-power structure to their own benefit. 3) While, at the same time, more-or-less retaining the legal right to kill off anyone who was too much trouble. Which they did. At certain points in this period, habeas corpus was suspended. ( This is never, ever a good thing.) There was, in place, a fairly thorough system of oppression. I think one of the most interesting things about English history is the frequency with which there weren't revolutions. Negotiating the path from absolute monarchy to parliamentary democracy by a process of gradual adaptation, overall, is kind of impressive. Especially when you factor in religious upheaval and the other countries of the British Isles. (Of course, reading the history of Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries kind of makes you hate the English a lot, but I'm a sensitive woman of the 21st century and have only occasionally mocked my English classmate for her nationality - which, since she gives as good as she gets, including to the Glaswegian lecturer, is All Good Fun.) It's that interesting thing about context, and power relations. It's easy to make light of casual racism when it's taking place in another country altogether, where participants are in fact on equal terms now - and when each target is represented equally as well. My lecturer can make snarky jokes about the Scots because he is Scottish; I can make snarky jokes about the English-in-history because the English were the dominant power group, I'm part-English, and so on. Whereas no-one has made a single Irish joke, because in the period we're dealing with, the Irish were the victims of some serious, comprehensive wrongness that just doesn't allow for humour. It reminds me of a section from Mock the Week's first episode. Relevant: Dara, the host is Irish. John is English. The show is English. Dara O'Briain, on an EU referendum: There is photographic evidence, of course, that vote-rigging took place in the referendum in France. [A picture comes up on screen of two women with their arms raised, revealing hairless armpits.] With armpits like these, there's no way these two are French.
Audience laughter.
John Oliver: Is that not - I'll go out on a limb here - a little bit racist?
Dara: It's a tiny bit racist, but not as much as the next one is racist.
John, laughing: Oh, okay, I'll look forward to that.
Dara: The next one is actually painfully, hideously racist on many many levels. It hits them repeatedly with a shovel and a pike at the same time, the next line. Do you want to hear it?
John: I love casual national hate. Come on.
Dara: It's fantastic. And it's not even my national hate. I quite like the French! The Irish get on very well with the French! It's your national hate. Anyway, I'm here, I'll play your game. All right! I'm willing to try and mix. Okay! A recent survey revealed that all of Europe sees the French as rude, smelly, and obsessed with sex and food. One Frenchman replied: "Piss off! I'm busy eating garlic off my girlfriend's nipples."
Audience laughter and applause.
John: No!
Audience response dies down.
John, pointing at the audience: Shame on you! On the bright side, it's been years since any of these countries went to war with each other, when it used to be a near-constant; frankly I'll take making catty jokes about other European Union countries while still actually maintaining the EU as greatly preferable. (Besides, even if the racist jokes aren't funny, the snark about the racism itself often is. For instance, in this section, the jokes Dara is reading off the autocue aren't funny, but John Oliver's reactions are.) But that's the thing - the history behind this hate is of war between approximate equals, not one of oppression of one group over another. It's interesting to look at the way this more-or-less represents progress: First violent, bloody warfare, for centuries on end, culminating in two World Wars that touched every continent except Antarctica; then, peace, uneasy at first, then more calmly, but tinged with vicious national stereotyping and hatefulness that gradually becomes jokes almost nobody really takes that seriously - then jokes that also get called out as racist. I wonder if this evolution will continue till the jokes become entirely harmless, the kind that acknowledge difference without implying either side is superior. That would be good. But even if that takes centuries - and it might, because the grievances and hatreds have had centuries to build - I can live with that, because European countries only tend to invade each other by accident these days. Heh, I'd forgotten that the next section of this episode of Mock the Week includes the serious discussion of who would win in a fight between an owl and a tiger. The argument: the owl would win. Every time. John Oliver explains to Linda Smith how the owl would adopt Ali's rope-a-dope strategy, letting the tiger swing itself out then flying down to peck it, while Dara simulates the fight with his hands. It is hilarious.... No, I don't quite understand how I get from one point to another either.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
So, today I:
- Discovered that I do not, in fact, have A Certain Medical Condition, the treatment of which required procedures sufficiently triggering to me that the first two times I did it I fainted and the third time I only didn't faint because I spent half an hour lying down and being kept talking by Vel'ithya. I don't have to do that any more so I WIN.
- Made several new icons for Dreamwidth. I have a seed account! I can always have many icons! I want many icons. There is this one, which is for my brain ferrets and also for when I want to throw a distraction, and also the following two, which may or may not have something to do with having spent some time in the last couple of days talking to people I thought were being very stupid:
 
IT TOTALLY SAYS PEA
Okay, I'm clearly, like, twelve, max, and I'll probably decide that's Really Not Me and either never use it or actually delete it, but still.
- Did I mention I don't have to do the Triggering Action of Doom any more? Seriously, so much win.
- Watched two peacocks having an argument. It goes like this:
*honk* warrrholololll!
*honk*!
eeeya*HONK*
*honk* warrrrhololololollll
Repeat variations while they glare at each other.
Meanwhile, there is clearly drama in the World of Peafowl at uni - the two brown peahens who were totally lesbians together appear to have broken up. One of them is now hanging out with the white peahen, and being all snuggly with her, while the other brown peahen is wandering around with a peatoddler.
So, either the peamama shagged one of the peacocks (but WHICH ONE? There are now two young peacocks, and the old one is nowhere to be seen!) and the other pealesbian ditched her faithless ass and shacked up with the white peahen, or the pealesbian ditched peamama for the white peahen (who was previously single) and peamama found solace in the arms wings of one of the peacocks.
Who she has subsequently ditched, given she doesn't let either of the peadicks (they're both jerks, honestly) come near her or the peatoddler. (She let me get closer to her baby than she lets either of the males get.)
Both the current pealesbians appear to be keeping their distance from peamama. So I think there's clearly dykudrama happening.
... I like watching the peafowl, okay?
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
relieved
irritated