mc5 - The Banter Page

I think it might be time to turn the North Wales connection on for all games by default...

Y cysylltiad gogleddol

Ti 'di'n meddwl Mrs T?

Howdy

How are things with y'all? Over here the school holidays got changed to two-week half terms and I am wondering if becoming a teacher is still on at my age. Currently jobseeking, so you never know.

Demused

I flogged my writing muse yesterday to great effect and today she's gone AWOL just when I need her to help me write a webpage and a bunch of campaign emails. And the windy miller is having a day-long snooze after overdoing it (not Covid - we've tested). On the plus side I've booked a trip to England in late Nov instead of at Xmas. At least I'll get a decent break in December instead of dashing all over the place.
I have no idea how people do teaching. My pa was a teacher for 35 years.

Wot my old man did

(pen) Mine too. He taught English, a language he couldn't speak until he was about 8.

[Rosie] That's impressive. Mine was an art teacher.

(pen) Have you inherited his talent? I can only draw steam engines.

scribbler

[Rosie] I did Art O-level in one year and got an A (I did the still life and calligraphy papers) but that's as far as I took it. I thought I could 'always do art at home' so I studied science instead. I think I might have a bit of talent but it's completely untrained and I get frustrated that my lack of training doesn't let me produce the things I want to produce. But I've got all the kit should I ever feel the urge to practice...

Art

[penelope]I have no talent for art whatsoever. I’ve tried, but lack the whatever-it-is to convert what I imagine to what I can draw. The Stevieling is *extremely* talented, but refuses to work at it. She draws manga-style for fun, but is capable of much more - we persuaded her to take a class in college and she claimed she enjoyed it but she dropped it next year. Very frustrating for me. She has fantastic ideas and a great imagination. I’ve tried to get her to draw comics or illustrated stories but to no great success. Aaaaargh.

[Stevie] Bad luck. I bet she's not going to fall for reverse psychology any more either

I can't art either, but I can script and I can program. Not well, but I can. So I use PoVRay and/or Blender, and that lets me program a computer to do what I want. Yes, this is easily as difficult as just drawing the stuff, and in many respects it's much more work, but it's something I can do, whereas I cannot draw

End Times

The barometer has fallen to 982 and it's gone dark outside.

Was it the End?

[Rosie] You still 'ere mate? I've been across the North Sea and back since you posted that and I can confirm both sides are still here. (the crossing last night was very smooth, by the way)

(pen) Yma o hyd, to use a well-known phrase or saying.

Hidden text

Still 'ere

. Extensive research has revealed that the darkness was due to the well-attested rotation of the earth and it was twenty past four. It's going to get cold - you'll be able to skate here soon. I'll be there with my camera.

Baltic

[Rosie] Indeed. I watched a few of the models this morning. Mentally making a list of my thickest socks and their likely locations.

Kin-taters

(pen) Went down to -3.5°C last night ym Mhlas Huws. First frost of the winter (v. late) but I think it's now going to seriously rectify this happy anomaly.

Degrees

Frost here also, and the thermometer didn't make it above 0°C all day. Another thermometer is showing 38°C, as I've managed to get Covid again.

Raak

I went out for a bicycle ride this afternoon, but I had to turn back in half a mile. It was too dangerous, with patches of frozen ice everywhere, unmelted frost from last night that was still frozen, even where the sun was shining and some traffic had passed.

[Bismarck] Bummer. Hope you start to feel better soon.
Just above freezing outside in N Brabant but clear blue skies and sun (warming up the living room to 21C but my home office is on the north side of the house so still cold in 'ere - and no heating on in the house today...)

Boolbar

A tad of snow here in Bedfordshire. Just enough for the seasonal crop of cars in ditches.

Raak

Brr

–7°C in my NE-facing front porch this morning. The lowest I've seen it since putting a thermometer there some years back, so I can assess the cryotesticular potential without stepping out of doors.

I would imagine the repair of the copper/zinc primate, now meteorologically appropriate, is a matter of some delicacy.

BMW

[Raak] Got very cold over the weekend here too. So cold, in fact, that the brass shut-off I have on the sillcock at the back of the house split because I shut the valve in the brass part but stupidly did not remember to turn off the sillcock itself, so a column of water about the size of the end joint of my thumb was residing in the brass manifold, which was enough to fracture it.

To maximize the fun I did not realize this had happened until the thaw, when I went down to the basement and discovered a nice new paddling pool.

The water had sprayed up the side of the house for about a day and a half and frozen in many interesting patterns, but had also soaked into the ground and waterlogged it, causing many leakes through the basement wall and seepage through the floor itself. I took over 40 gallons of water out using the wet-vac, a submersible pump and a stream of class four Words of Power.

Class IV Words of Power

[Stevie] Are those adult words?

Chalky

Power Words?

Like Kinell or Effeffess?

Word of Power

Words of Power are the way one forces out the anti-handyman demons infesting whatever it is one is attempting, in this case, keeping my machine tools dry and unrusted. I went directly to class fours as I had only just solved a similar crisis brought on by my having new gutters installed on the house and the gutter guy not understanding that if he dumped the rainfall on umptytump square feet of roof next to the basement wall, the water would soon be inside the house. I have to come up with a proper solution to that one. right now I just have an 8 foot pipe running to the edge of the property where a nice new pool forms every time we get a storm.

CdM

Does "edge of the property" = "neighbour's basement wall"?

[CdM] 8oD

Anyone had enough of 2023 yet? Gripe warning!

Among other hindrances and irritations (including starting the year with Covid) the windy miller has a case of the burnout from his real-life job and is taking at least two weeks off to sleep, and I have eczema on my effing eyelids (that's a new and unusual place, even for me).
Still to look forward to: three months of my route to work in Rotterdam being absolutely shut during June, July and August because of repairs to the massive Haringvliet bridge and a tunnel under the river a bit further north. I don't fancy joining everyone else on the road coming from Antwerp and Zeeland heading to Rotterdam taking two and a half hours to drive 40km. Hmmph.

Feel your pain with the eczema. I get it inside my ear tubing sometimes. As far as bridges and tunnels over a river, time to buy an army surplus DUKW. You could run a bus service to recoup fuel costs. It seats about twenty

Hidden text

so c'mon and bring your juke-box money

.

[Pen] trying saying you have COVID (Congenital Objection to Vehicular Ingress by Dams) and say you have to isolate at home.

And thirdly...

The dishwasher is broken. All it can manage is a 10 minute rinse. Aaargh.
Eyelid eczema is clearing up - I already had some evil cream but I didn't know if I'd be allowed to use it on my eyelids. Apparently I can use it for a couple of days. Last day today then. Let's see how it goes from here. (If anyone needs a recommendation, I've found that Aveeno oat-based cream is the best for keeping eczema at bay once you've swatted it with steroid creams.)

Superman

That oat-based cream puts you at risk of being kissed by a horse, I'm sure.

Oatmeal

Yep. Oat-based products were always thought to be a palliative when I were a lad, and I use Aveeno hand cream myself on my hands and in my ears. That said, I also use Mometasome cream and lotion, and on a recent re-occurrence of the odd leg-scurvy, some ointment made of what looks like petroleum jelly mixed with coal tar. I feel like the bloke from Going Postal who had the explosive socks sometimes.

Eeep, not been here in a long time!

Eeep, I've not been here in a long time! It's crazy. My hurricane lawyer now HAS my funds for repairing my house and how I'll have to take $9000 out to be able to keep staying at this hotel and pay my bills while my house is being repaired, but they are taking FOREVER in getting it to me! I'm definitely not happy with this lawyer. I'm struggling and have pulled some funds together for one more week right now . . . some of which I probably shouldn't have used, but I need to be able to extend and hopefully will have funds back . . . I will NEVER recommend this lawyer to anybody.

Getting blood out of a stone

(KS) Welcome back

[KagomeShuko] Very welcome back. Was worried!

[KS] You've been having a rough time over the last 2 years also. Will your settlement or other relief funds also pay for all your accommodation costs since the hurricane?

No auroras on Belgium, but a cracking conjunction this evening of Venus and Jupiter.

Ugh, it's awful!

[Simons Mith] [Bismarck] It's so awful! The settlement will get my house fixed, but I've already been depending on donations to stay the hotel! I told my contractor that I'll need to take out funds to stay. It won't get my house to the way she was going to make it all accessible for me, which isn't great, but I'll have my house back. Hopefully I'll get the last bit of money from a car accident settlement (different lawyer) and maybe that'll pay for my house to be more the way that I want.

Project Tiddles (South)

Following in the footsteps of Rab, I'm starting my own Project Tiddles.

Phase 1: gotta get a cat flap, or no one will even consider me for entiddlification. That's due for this Thursday.

I had never really considered getting a cat at this address before, because I'm right on a main road and I'm not really willing to accept even a low probability of a poor mog getting squished.

But then I belatedly realised (belated by $%&^$% years) that if I got a cat that was elderly, defective or otherwise unable to go out, then the road wouldn't matter nearly so much. So that's the plan. Find an old slow animal that can't be bothered to move much and spoil it rotten for its retirement

I've laid on Bird TV for it already, so we'll both have something to look at out of the window

Radox The Green

Pets, slow

[Simons Mith] have you considered taxidermy?

[Radox] That's... not a bad idea except that a taxidermied cat would need at least occasional dusting. I consider that a step backwards from the live versions, which are self-cleaning.

Playing the Rosie Card.

When did "taxidermied" (which MS Edge doesn't even think is a word) replace "stuffed" in the discourse concerning dead, straw-filled roadkill?

I asked this in another forum recently and was assured it was to spare the sensibilities of those who would confuse a once-live but now stuffed animal cadaver with a build-a-bear.

Rebuild-A-Bear

[Stevie] You've just given me the most marvellous business idea.

Mister Flopsy, TriColour Dutch: a rabbit dead as a doornail
Gentlemen we can rebuild him
We have the technology
We have the capability to make the world's first bionic rabbit
Mister Flopsy will be that rabbit
Better than he was before
Better, Smarter, Fluffier

Taxidermiing

[Stevie] If you can't verb taxidermy, you can't have taxidermiing as a gerund. That alone should be reason enough.

(SM) Good thinking. You can't verb anything because verb is not a verb except when it is. I have now fulfilmentized my role as a member of the grammar and style police (fel aelod yr heddlu gramadeg ac arddull in Welsh BTW FWIW).

CdM

I'm half-Welsh, but I'm struggling with how to pronounce Btwfwiw.

(CdM) Try half of it then. The bigger half.

Radox The Green

Since nouns are too often verbed, can we balance the trend by nominalizing verbs (other than the speaking entirely in gerunds)?

What's the verb form of 'nutrition'? Nutritioned? Nutritised?

nutrit, nutritted, nutriting

It's not a popular word. In use, it sounds a bit too much like something else.

(SM, pen) Nutrify. Sgoddaby.

Radox

Nourish, surely.

You can't fool us

The adjectival -ish suffix means like, or somewhat, so 'nourish' clearly means something that's a bit noury.

(SM) I have a cousin-in-law who I wouldn't be so ungallant as to describe her as a large dog but she is nevertheless Danish.

Pablo

Does that imply "dish" means "like the letter D" then?

Yes, and the same for 'fish' and 'wish' too. One of the great benefits of having a highly consistent language like English is that these rules are 100% reliable.

Radox The Green

Langur ages

Ah, but you speak of Engl, not the debased English!

Oh yeah. That is a good point.

CdM

So, if some town planner decides to make a location vaguely resemble a Birmingham suburb, would that be astonishing?

Why should I watch The Villa? They never cum to see me when I was bad.

Superman

'Astonishing' was actually a deliberate policy of post-war governments, and formed part of the overall strategy known as 'maudling'. The Thatcher government, of course, declared that 'astonishing' was old hat and Britain was now in the 'Steven age'. Thus the Villa knell was sounded.

[Super] And all this time I thought 'Stevenage' was named thus becuase it was on the River Steve.

Stevenage sounds like a statutory payment. "Stevenage Shall Be Levied At Three Shillings And Fourpence In The Pound."

Boolbar

[Stevenage] Surely named after the patron saint of alternating birthdays?

Something strange is going on . . .

I have two people claiming that I've posted things on Facebook that I've not posted at all. One guy claims that I keep posting about him. The only post I have is a prayer asking for prayers for somebody with his first name. The other guy claims that I have a post revealing the last name of somebody. I have a total of ZERO Facebook posts with that last name. Things have been weird for years, but they started getting much weirder lately. I have a TikTok musician who thinks I'm stalking him over me just trying to help him by doing a simple Google search of his name because he said he wanted to create a boundary between his real name and social media, so I was trying to help him and when I let him know how easily his name could be found and that he could be found on social media, he freaked out and said he he told me that he wasn't comfortable with how deeply I searched him when he said he wasn't comfortable with that (which he never said). It's so very confusing for me.

(KS) Stick to the Morniverse. We're a bit mad but we're not weird.

I had a beer delivery today. Came in three boxes. I've already got dozens of boxes. Fortunately, boxes make good cat fortresses. And these days I've got enough boxes for the most epic cat fortress ever. In fact, as I joked to the delivery driver, I could do the whole Maginot Line.

Although I suppose strictly speaking it would be a Moginot Line.

Boolbar

Farcebroke

[KagomeShuko] There are people/bots who replicate your fb account (photo, bio etc.) then "friend" all you know claiming your original account was hacked, then spam/phish them.

Moginot Line

[Simons Mith] Watch out for German Shepherds sneaking round the side.

Standing in Cologne railway station lookat a train with "National Express" on the side, and wondering if I have travelled in time as well as space.

(Bis) Was it a steam train?

[Rosie] Nope, just an emu. Though there was a preserved steam train in Hanover.

Tractive effort

Emus can't even fly, let alone pull trains.

Emus???

When I was in middle school, I had a student teacher who had gone to Australia. She said that emus weren't smart at all and would run straight into fences, not even TRYING to miss them.

EMUs

Electric Multiple Units, like their Diesel Multiple Units counterparts, are trains with no locomotive and localised (one or more motorised carriages pull one or more non-motorised carriages) or distributed (all carriages have motors), all controlled from a driving position at either end of the train.

Down with electrics

I did my initial trainspotting on the Oxted line. Bloody Fairburn 2-6-4T's but their exhaust could blow your ears off.

Ear-MUs

[Rosie] I think we all need some proof of this aural sectioning that you experienced...

nights

*waves from war-torn Paris*

(Bis) The interior of Riddlesdown Tunnel is littered with severed, now largely decomposed, auditory appendages. They are, or were, mine.

[nights] on holiday in the City of ~~Light~~ burning cars?

Yesterday was apparently the warmest day globally since records began. Here in B it was colder than normal, but amazingly windy.

(Bis) Ackshully it was the month of June that was the warmest month in a rather precisely defined area known as Central England. It was also the warmest, unsurprisingly, that I have personally recorded here at Plas Huws (= Hughes Hall) over the 40 years I have been an amateur weather nut and before that a professional one. Gotta be precise.

So tired of this . . .

I wish I could be back in my home, but it's not ready yet. It's not even ready for living in one room. My contractor is trying to get it so I have a room and a bathroom and there's air conditioning and the outside is all okay. My vinyl siding was shipped, but delayed the last I heard.