Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Choop]

I have only ever done one historical comic and it is about the McDLT

who gave you this gift of the funny? you got it so true. i got funny regifted once after it went through like seven pregiftings and that shit just ain't as pure, i need to locate the source and tap it. like ponss duh lee-yon and the fountain of youth, there's an analogy there with me and syntax of colons &c.

[side_show]

What is with the internet being on such high alert, waiting for Zsa-Zsa Gabor to die?  It's been a couple years of non-news stories about how ill she is... come on internet.  Relax.  Just wait it out and tell us when she's died.  Half the people who use the internet know her as little more than a sick old lady who was famous before their time for some unknown reason.  Take a step back, internet.  We really don't need regular updates about her condition.

[Carlos del Vaca]

On one of my softball teams, we had a guy named Stuart who was from the far southwest corner of Virginia. It might as well have been Tennessee. He had a bit of an accent.

We had another guy on the team name of Ron Shields. At one game, every time Ron came up to bat, Stuart would shout, "C'mon, Painey! Let's go, Painey! Get a hit, Painey!"  After the third time of this, I had to ask, "Stuart, why the hell are you calling Ron 'Painey?'"  And he said "You know, Ron 'Painey' Shields!"

It took a moment to register that he was attempting to say "panty shields." Hilarity ensued.

[lprkn]

I had a guy from Louisiana tell me about "bald shrimp." It took some explaining for me to realize he was saying "boiled shrimp."

[pmcd9]

Yeah, we ball shrimp here in Houston too.

[greenkoolayd]

Yeah, we ball shrimp here in Houston too.

"you got some perty mouth parts.... squeal like a shrimp!"

[jay-ell]

My mom doesn't have a Facebook she uses or a smartphone she understands, but the other night when I was over watching some shows she DVR'd for me, I had to ask her to start it up for me because I don't know how to use the newfangled cable boxes.

I am in a weird generational place when it comes to technology, and probably a lot of people my age are, where there are new technologies that are tied to old technologies  on which we have completely pulled ourselves out of the loop. Like cable TV and landline phones (hey mom, how do you delete messages from this answering machine?) and sewing machines -- even fancy modern ones that do embroidery and accept USB drives full of elaborate designs that you can download with specialized software. She does not know about internet radio, but she has a machine that converts LP records to MP3s.

If the technology gap is getting bigger, it's because my generation understands one kind of new technology, and my parents' generation understands a completely different set of equally complicated technology.

[wombat]

That post is like my whole morning.

The Tech Staff has set up the TV in the basement with fancy speakers and with the ability to play stuff either from the cable box or streaming from a laptop or the blu-ray player. There are so many things plugged in together and you have to adjust a setting on each one (to say nothing of so many remote controls) and the result is that sometimes I can't figure out how to watch plain old TV.

And this morning, I got everything set to the right settings and suddently the sound stopped working. I called him at work and he said I had to get out the manual and follow the procedure for rebooting the stereo receiver. Seriously WTF.

That incident followed an earlier phone call where I had been very proud of myself for remembering I was in the 21st century. He called at 8.30 AM to ask "Hey, you know that group Midnight Oil? What was the name of that song?" and just as I was about to get up to rummage through the pile of CDs on my bookshelf to check the exact name of the song, I stopped and said "I'll Google that for you."

By the way, that was totally a "who was that man and what has he done with my husband?" experience. He constantly complains about people chatting at work, has no interest in that kind of music, and never calls me at home from work. I have no idea how he could have gotten into a conversation about this and cared enough to call. He doesn't have Internet in his office for national security reasons, so the fact that they didn't Google it themselves is the only thing that makes sense about this incident.

[CortJstr]

My mom doesn't have a Facebook she uses or a smartphone she understands, but the other night when I was over watching some shows she DVR'd for me, I had to ask her to start it up for me because I don't know how to use the newfangled cable boxes.

I am in a weird generational place when it comes to technology, and probably a lot of people my age are, where there are new technologies that are tied to old technologies  on which we have completely pulled ourselves out of the loop. Like cable TV and landline phones (hey mom, how do you delete messages from this answering machine?) and sewing machines -- even fancy modern ones that do embroidery and accept USB drives full of elaborate designs that you can download with specialized software. She does not know about internet radio, but she has a machine that converts LP records to MP3s.

If the technology gap is getting bigger, it's because my generation understands one kind of new technology, and my parents' generation understands a completely different set of equally complicated technology.

I know we've discussed this before, but it reminds me of the growing problem we're likely to have with Archaic Euphemism Syndrome. Even kids seem to say "rewind" despite never having seen media that winds. And phones have a red "no" button but people still calling it hanging up despite never using a phone that hangs. It would be like if your car's ignition had a picture of a hand-crank on it. And then there's the 3.5" disk icon that means save...

[side_show]

The thing is, now a days, plenty of times you can just use your phone to do the googling, rendering calling someone to ask them totally unnecessary.

[jay-ell]

The thing is, now a days, plenty of times you can just use your phone to do the googling, rendering calling someone to ask them totally unnecessary.

See, this is the thing. My mom has a smartphone (which she doesn't know how to use) and a GPS unit in her car, and yet she will still sometimes call me while driving to ask me to check Google Maps for her.

Straddling that technical divide, indeed.

[wombat]

The thing is, now a days, plenty of times you can just use your phone to do the googling, rendering calling someone to ask them totally unnecessary.

The Tech Staff can't use a cellphone at work either. I think they can go out in a separate room or something and use the internet. Otherwise it's just the landline and maybe carrier pigeon and semaphore. Anyway in this case he knew I'd know the answer to the question so it was a reasonable approach. I was just double checking for absolute precision.

I don't think archaic euphemisms will be a problem for long, they're like any other words people use that we don't know the history of. It's only disturbing to those of us who remember the origins, but eventually we'll all be dead.

[pmcd9]

And to tie this up neatly the song was, of course, Beds are Burning.

[Nabubrush]

We say "ball that chicken" - and then we talk about how horribly wrong it is to ball a chicken.

[Nabubrush]

If you are not happy with your lot in life, and you aren't trying to change it, don't tell me about it (unless you just want to joke around about it).