Everything posted by RDCanecutter
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
Very well. Where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving electrician from Montgomery with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for truck-stop waitresses. (skips 20 years) ...so of course after the divorce and shacking up with the cray-cray girl, I got a Spanish-teaching gig on a handshake at an undesired high school. Life was a ticking time bomb back then, and I was trying to claw my way back into employability as the one-man Romance Language Department of a small college.. I figured with the high school Spanish I had that covered, so next was French. Took a GRE and laid waste to it like Legolas shooting orcs, got invited to come be a slacker at UT and study French + all the Linguistics and Spanish that I could pack in. Was in the room when they were talking about making a website, drew an armadillo on a napkin and got the job. A couple of gigs later, achieved Dream Job teaching French and Spanish at small college. New Dean was a tyrannical bully and I told him so, then my services were not required. I'd been going to Mexico, buying craft items, then selling them for multiples on eBay, so I figured I'd just take a few thousand dollars, cash, y'know, to Tlaxcala where they make most of the Drug Rugs, Baja Hoodies, Chamarras de Jerga sabes weyyy, sell them for 3xwholesale, repeat, with wads of cash as one does at no peril because it's nice tame Mexico. My wife told me I was fucking insane and to just sit down and draw cartoons, which I did, and do. But yeah I like languages.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
Put down that knife. The gun doesn't even fire. click click BLAM oh shit
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
C'est possible. Zob de mulet, if you want to pop off with Franco-Arabic slang.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
quoi ça.
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I caught the cancer
Oh they were right. Definitelu=y brain damaged. But there is so much brains in that big celtic skullbone that I just need for some of it to work. Bang! See? Cranked right up.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
This video reminds me of when I fetched up in LeHavre with three months cash pay in my pocket and went in an internet cafe that turned out to be a ho house. Behen chot.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
queue de mulet, je crois.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
It was a miracle we got to do it in French. There were some way-too-serious people who had to be convinced. Way back when, we tried to get a similar project going with Spanish, but got the cold shoulder. [A few years later, we did a website for German: https://coerll.utexas.edu/gg/ ] There's probably been a complete turnover in both departments since then, but I am a mere hired gun. Or am I.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
Mercy!
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
Like a full-grown man.
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Texas GQP is spontaneously combusting
Republican infighting allowed Alabama Democrats to jiu-jitsu in a blue senate seat, however briefly. I expect Texans could do the same.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
Oh no, it'sa verrry nice-uh.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
They already got one.
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UT Language Website Fundraiser
In the late-90s, several UT French professors and a scad of grad students (including moi) put together an interactive French language course with cartoon armadillos, meant for local use: https://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/ It won awards and got added to the curriculum of many schools. It's still used today, though as you can see it's long in the tooth now. We are redoing it and updating it. I am the artist again. They are running a fund-raiser. I figured the Surly 1% would want to know: https://give.utexas.edu/a-new-francais-interactif
- I caught the cancer
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I caught the cancer
I am psychologically set that if I live to 100, I will still be dragging a little parasitic blob of cancer around with me. Maybe I can train it to laugh at my jokes. But like @Gatorubet said, my elbow bursa blob is halfway back to normal with zero college-boy-doctor treatment. Good ol' @Gatorubet
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Have you ever seen a ghost?
I grew up in half of an old mansion in Selma, Alabama, when it was ground zero for Spanish moss, honeysuckle jungles, and spiked iron fences leaning askew. My bedroom looked across a narrow street at the famously-haunted Sturdivant Hall. I knew there were ghosts over there, but they never bothered me. In fact, given the surroundings, I saw way less than my quota of ghosts. I had a normal childhood, talking to my toys. And they'd talk back. A regular chattering until bedtime. One time I told my Mom that my toys told me something. She said they couldn't, toys can't talk. I walked back to my room and looked inside. All my toys were looking back. They weren't saying anything. But it wasn't because they couldn't.
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Gold bug / silver bug / numismatic / metals thread
For fractionals I usually do a tad better locally but you're limited to what they have. Austin dealers are probably pretty well stocked though. Fractional mark-ups can be high, but I have beaten the system by buying from friends, split the difference between what they'd get and what you'd pay. In Texas, if you are going with Mexican gold, I'd get the first few from a dealer. I say this because down on the border they make 2 peso copies (usually 90%, or 21.6 karat) in 18 karat, 14 karat etc for weddings and whatever. I seent em on trays at La Moneda de Oro in Laredo. Side by side it's obvious which is original, and the store wasn't trying to trick anybody, but you can see how some might get mixed up out in the wild.
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I caught the cancer
I was waking up at 5 to eat 3-egg steak breakfasts during the steroid months. Had a pony keg of water weight in legs and balzac. Since stabilized down at 190, weigh-in after weigh-in. Until they run some more science fair experiments on me.
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I caught the cancer
Note to self: when having a pleasant conversation with people you just met, and you tell then you lost 40 pounds of beer gut, and they say: "How did you do that?", just say: "I stopped drinking so much beer." Do not say: "Cancer!" That is like ripping onion and sausage farts inside a minibus. They didn't have time to roll down their psychic windows.
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Gold bug / silver bug / numismatic / metals thread
Where you at? Online can be fine. Just avoid any "scam yer grandad" places that say to call them for prices. I had good experiences with Provident Mint, Apmex (before it went crazy on prices), Gainesville coins, a couple others. By your last sentence, do you mean you want to buy multiple ounces, or fractional ounces?
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Gold bug / silver bug / numismatic / metals thread
That's $42 per oz, ie $1.40 face value. Maybe not what you wanted to hear. Those prices mirror what I heard happening back when the Hunt Brothers cornered the market. Before my experience, just going off what old coin dealers said, people lined around the block selling everything for a fraction of melt. IIRC the price of silver went up about ten-fold, so maybe few tears were shed if they "only" made 7 or 8 times what they paid.
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Gold bug / silver bug / numismatic / metals thread
Whatcha gonna git?
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Life expectancy map in America
One day the youth of Alabama will learn how to aim automatic weapons, and we will need a color redder than red.
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I caught the cancer
Doc said mine was normal for a man my age, although larger than most she had seen. badoom shing. I have been sent to physical therapy where my job for three weeks is to play with a giant rubber band 5 times a week until my shoulders are tired, then we will take account of everything. After one session my wife remarked that I was already swole, and her eyes followed me around the room. Her next eye doctor visit is soon.