Topic Drift Game

[Griffin NoName]

But is reducing life expectancy a choice one can make?  Even places with violent crime probably have other factors that may be life-prolonging, and maybe more so than staying where you are. Travel information is not particularly helpful with this aspect.

Personally I worry quite a bit about where the rain has come from before it reaches me but short of wearing a good deal of equipment I have to assume it probably will not shorten or lengthen my life. Same when I breathe in. Never know where that air has been before. I hear kissing can be bad for you as well. My Grandmother would never kiss anyone, not even us grandchildren. True Fact.

[pieces o nine]

What the rain has filtered through and the hazards posed thereby is a major health threat facing us today. When it all started, with an immoral music industry, would anybody listen? No. They never do.

It started off innocuously enough, in retrospect, but those folk singers led to 'hard rock' and I don't have to tell you about the problems 'hard water' can cause after being filtered through that! 'Soft rock' was more dangerous because it was tossed out as a sop to those raising red flags, and as a result, no one takes seriously the dangers of 'soft water'.

But by far the greatest hazard is 'acid rock' and the particulates it imparts to 'acid rain'. And as you know, 'acid rain' is eating away at our very infrastructure! Where will it all end, I ask you?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

With Rain, the korean singer/dancer? Ask Stephen Colbert.

[Swatopluk]

I wonder whether Koreans have a genetic disposition towards kitsch and pathos (while sharing the defective "sophisticated humor" gene with Chinese and Japanese). Good that the custard pie had not been introduced there before those habits formed or all movies would be about pie fights with prolonged tragic enedings. And lets hope they don't get infected with Bollywoodish sing and dance routines.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I find that I often really like many of those Bollywood movies.  They seem to have a fresh approach to movie-making that is often lost on Hollywood-- utilizing real people instead of virtual ones, for example.  Who can identify with a completely virtual character anyway?  They never seem to get the mouth and eyes right-- let alone any hair.

On the other hand, if they basically leave off the hair completely, that sortof works.

So long as hair was not the object, I suppose.

Speaking of hair, I still have to unclog my bathroom's sewer drains (again).  I'm pretty sure it's not really a hair-thing, as it's the bathroom sink, and not the shower.  But, a cursory exam seems to show that I'll have to cut out some of the plastic plumbing pipes under the house to properly fix it up.

Why bother unless done properly?  I really don't understand why anyone would even attempt a job, to only do it half-assed.

I mean, it takes just as long to do it half-assed as it does to do it right, most times.  Why not do it right in the first place?  And, if done wrong, it WILL needs be done over, later, and then you'll have to tear out the bad job FIRST:  double the work.

Truly I do not understand the mentality of a person who only does things "sorta".

It's like putting all the ingredients for a cake directly into the cake pan, giving them a swirl with a fork, and slamming it into a cold oven-- and being surprised when it does not turn out as "cake" but something inedible instead.

These sorts THEN blame the ingredients or the oven or even the fork for the "cake" not being "cake" in the end.

Why is that?  Why do people fail to see the REAL problem from the outset? 

Must be a genetic thing, mayhap.

[anthrobabe]

I always believed that drains were some sort of portal when I was small. And we had great fun talking to each other through the floor heating duct work, our voices would carry all over the house. We also had a sort of floored but otherwise unfinished half basement- I still have a fork that I found down there one day while playing. The plumbing -- black cast iron wrapped with 'rags' left the house and went into the ground in this basement-- such interesting sounds.
Portals are a facinating idea-- the entire wormhole idea. Very facinating.

[goat starer]

indeed worholed, string theory and the calabi Yao manifold are topics that are worthy of much discussion. Why only the other day i was explaing my theory of socks to friends and all of these played a significant part. Funnily enough just after my inspired presentation i realised that i had run out of socks! my washing machine broke down a few weeks ago and I hate getting repair men in because i have no idea whether what they are telling me is true or whether they are simply trying to fleece me. It is terrible that trust has been removed from so much of western society.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Like the inherent trust I feel every time I go the car dealer to a scheduled check. It only has 12.000 miles and he 'suggested' an injector clean up, for an obviously overpriced fee. Why is everything overpriced nowadays?

[Griffin NoName]

I don't think everything is really overpriced. I believe it is our perspective that is wrong. In the privilege of living in the western world we should pay over the odds. Only by doing so can we honour our brothers and sisters in the Third World. As I argue with my son, does he really expect refugees in camps to pay for their water? Isn't fresh water a humanitarian inalienable right?

[Sibling Chatty]

To the 'sufficiently' self-sufficient, there ARE no humanitarian, inalienable rights, as that MIGHT mean they'd have to pay for something that didn't benefit them directly. (Since when did every individual have ONLY himself to consider?)

The loss of community, of caring about the 'other' in the world one lives in as certainly one of the first signs of a sick mind. From that sort of "Mine, Me, What I Want" thinking comes most of the ills of modern society, from racism and sexism to child abuse, sexual abuse and murder.

Let he who assumes he's self sufficient try to survive in an alien place without benefit of that which CAN be taken away by circumstance or force. For instance, drop GWB, with $100, no more, and a 20 year old beater auto, into Bogota, and let him try to get a job and survive without using his wealth, his contacts or anything else a refugee lacks. He'd not make it... Now, take an Upper Classish British Management type, and drop HIM in that refugee camp, same limitations. Wanna take bets as to how soon water will be a RIGHT??

Perhaps every human should be made to force deprivation and desperation on a regular basis, just to remind them that they ARE human, not Superhuman.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Mmm, US$100 happens to be 1/3 of the legal minimum monthly wage in Colombia. Not that you can live on that... you can get about 20 meals in Mickey D's with that money.

But the image of dubya driving in Bogotá?

It takes two (2) days for me (and I learned to drive there) before I'm able to drive in the city. He wouldn't last 20 seconds (and that is without being recognized).

Some people deserves to go to hell. I don't know if driver's hell is enough but certainly Bogotá is (in that respect) as close as you can get.

Oh, and Swato, crime in Bogotá is indeed high but there are plenty of safe and nice places to go, just don't flag a cab in the street*, ok?

* Seriously speaking, there is a hybrid theft/short term kidnap called 'paseo millonario' or 'millionaire's trip' if you will, in which the victim is taken to various ATMs to retire all the money in his/her account at gun point. You can always call a cab, which is safer and not much more expensive.

[Swatopluk]

Well, in those old movies it is the police that hijacks taxies and does not pay the drivers for the expenses (or the bullet holes and other damage that the car chases inevitably result in). In some areas of the world/history the police was/is not better or even worse than the criminals. On the other hand the sheriff of Nottingham would have been laughed out of town, if he had tried to read the criminals their Miranda rights. Car chases are strangely absent from Robin Hood movies and even horse chases are rare.

[Griffin NoName]

I believe the producers of Robin Hood movies realised they could never compete with The Italian Job and that is why car chases are absent. Oddly, the TV schedulers here put on Robin Hood far more often than The Italian Job. I often wonder what makes TV schedulers tick.

[Swatopluk]

Each channel has produced its own Robin Hood serial in the past, so no rights have to be bought. The Italian Job (the original or the remake?) would not come free I think. That would be a pretty good reason. Reruns are the daily bread of TV (and even the Peanuts have a Rerun). Ephraim Kishon wrote a satire about the early Israelean TV consisting of a phone call between the TV station and the film distributor. The TV guys can't spend much money so they go back further and further in time* (older and shorter movies being cheaper) until they reach something affordable. Those turn out to be 3-minute rolls from the 19th century.**

*and the very long list of remakes of a certain movie
**in reality those carry hefty rental fees and would not be the cheapest choice

[Griffin NoName]

I guess they are lucky that there is a fairly recent point in time back which beyond they cannot go, film being film. And that it can be pinpointed reasonably tightly. I wonder when the first word was spoken? I mean a real word, not a grunt. Given animals make consistent noises to indicate certain things, how was the first real word differentiated from a meaningful grunt?