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RDCanecutter

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by RDCanecutter

  1. I read an article a long time ago whose thesis was that one thing that helped push Europe into more innovation was that the Europe's "Classical" civilization got smashed up with the fall of the Roman Empire. Other places, like India, China, or I guess even the Byzantines, they had their barbarian troubles, but never completely fell apart like (Western) Roman Empire did.

    [government-mandated pause so that Surl can tear that statement to bits like ravens feeding on the field after Odoacer passed through]

    Anyway, dude pointed out that in some ways, the Dark Ages in Europe saw more tech innovations than the same places under the Romans.

    Can't remember the source, but either that writer or another pointed out that the very geography of Europe made it more likely to have competing cultures instead of one main one, thus encouraging the guys on this island to try to outcompete the dudes on that peninsula, with some chance of holding out and surviving.

    tldr: If the Franks hadn't been so good at throwing axes, you White People would be expected to study math or science by your demanding Roman parents.

    • Like 1
  2. On 4/20/2018 at 5:24 PM, Don Keibals said:

    were there no trucks with good beer around?

    We were up in Cloudcroft workin on the cabin. Water tank started pissing out algae. Luckily, somebody had left a case of Coors.

    Y'all can laugh and call it water. Y'all can laugh and say it's got no taste. I can tell you, when the water tank is pissing algae, that Coors will always have my thanks.

    We made coffee with it. We made soup with it. We brushed our teeth with it. Pure, clean, sweet water.

    • Haha 1
  3. 14 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

    Maybe my Maltese sailor dialect is a little rusty, but them sounds like fightin' words.

    It's just Spanish with dropped vowels/final consonants, and any new final consonants devoiced. Also, velarized final L, because I like that, and K --> CH before A and front vowels.

    Basically, Old French if you started with modern Spanish instead of Vulgar Fucking Latin.

  4. Chat be che yo me vo, llef au lat de mi pieu

    tu fotografi, par verla chat be

    che tu ausenci me devor eu corazo

    y no me chet remedi ma

    che amart.

  5. I had some fun yesterday.

    One of my jobs is selling art online. I needed more storage space for about 100 small paintings, you can't just stack them. Once at Walmart I found some kind of dish drainer that works well as a Painting Storage Rack. It's the only one that ever worked right. So I go to Wally World to get some more Right Now.

    Walmart was all Poor People Shuffling Slowly. I didn't see the rack I wanted, so, out of a sense of morbid fascination, I approached two workers who were interrupting their conversation about a chicken place to place items on a shelf, to see if they had seen any other racks.

    The one with asymmetrically-placed false eyelashes came over to me. "Huuuuuuh... you wanna rack...." She had her phone out, Johnny-on-the-spot no doubt checking Walmart inventory. Then I saw that on her phone was the face of her coworker two aisles away, sharing a bon mot. "huuuuh... I'on know...."

    The child wandered off with her phone. She's the one who beat the other candidates at the job interview.

    I swung by Target to see if they had the same rack that I could get Right Now. Target was all Middle-Class People Being Important, clipping along with their butts tucked in planning the assault on Pointe du Hoc on their phones. "Yes We Are On Aisle 30 D Now We Will Finish In 5 Minutes And Then We Can Collaborate On The HOA Letter Re Dandylions."

    No damn rack there either.

    So I figure I'll do the modern thing, go home, get the brand and serial number off the racks I already have, slide a dildo up my ass, then order it from Amazon. So I unload a shitload of paintings off one rack, and-- nothing. Not a single mark of any sort. I must be looking at some Jack Ma Ali Baba Bootleg thing made from recycled Chinese death row prisoners.

    A search through hundreds of images on Google is fruitless. The racks I want must all now be floating in that plastic-choked dead zone in the Pacific. Nobody online has anything like it.

    Then it occurs to me-- I could just make it. I could make the same thing out of cardboard. I have a ton of strong clean cardboard, because eBay gives me shipping materials for free.

    Full circle.

    • Like 8
  6. OH! OH! OH! I also have a pin number for a card I seldom use, written on a scrap of paper in my wallet with several phone numbers of people scrawled on it. The PIN is part of the alleged phone # for a friend who is dead.

    I feel so clever I could just shit myself.

    And in my phone I changed "Mom" to her actual name so that when I get kidnapped in Mexico maybe they don't call her while they are hacking me to bits in the background. Maybe I will change somebody's name I don't much like to "Mom".

  7. 16 hours ago, PhillyD said:

    Other than this forum, I have been using the same username for almost everything for years including throwaway email addresses, bank accounts, retirement accounts, etc.  Today, I got an email that someone had logged into my Discover account and tried to change the password and email address.  No harm done in this case, but now I'm thinking everything is vulnerable, especially if they manage to get a password.  I have a hard enough time just managing passwords and I can't imagine trying to remember a bunch of different usernames.

    How do the rest of you mange this?  Do you use different logins for everything?  How do you remember all this shit?

    I basically keep a list of passwords on a piece of paper taped near the computer, with all the English words translated into Spanish, and the whole thing written in cursive Greek letters, except I do the numbers as Roman numbers, and if the numbers are for something like a combo lock I'll enter them as Base 9 or some shit. Also, I sometimes use part of a guy's name who reminds me of my dad's dad except the name is not my dad's dad's name. I will indicate the non-dad's-dad's name with a dash mark.

    After you read what I just wrote, you probably think I made it up and I am fucking with you. I did not make it up, and I am not fucking with you.

  8. 19 hours ago, Baboontyme said:

    I've thought about that before and it scares me. I mean I don't see any way around it. Either he's right, or he's going to end up in jail. And I don't think he's right (based on my completely uneducated opinion and a little thing called common sense). He's not exactly the sort that you can talk to about this stuff. He knows better than you. 

    Ask him about Serpent People.

    • Haha 1
  9. There are stores and there are stores. If a store has somebody on site with esoteric knowledge gained over a lifetime, I go there. If they are staffed by teens and might-as-well-be-teens playing with tongue-piercings nose-in-phone because Tiffanyyyy just said something about Jessicaaaa, I still go there, then I bitch about it here.

    • Like 2
  10. Recon time. Gonna go sacrifice 30 minutes of my time hanging out with Birmingham Sicilians who keep a huge screen blasting Fox at their place. Will be in "Fly on Wall" mode.

    Will pop two red flares followed by one green when I am ready to reenter the wire.

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