Category: The Voices in My Head

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Lies, Damned Lies, and “News”

NEVER (as in DO NOT EVER) take “reporting” on ANYTHING about ANY scientific research as anywhere near what the actual research may (or may not) have shown. EVERY Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “report” on science in the last couple of decades, at least, that I have read has either been grossly inaccurate (because of stupidity–willful or otherwise–in the reporting and editorial staff? Quite often) or a deliberate attempt to deceive for scaremongering purposes. If the topic is at al interesting to you, LOOK UP THE ACTUAL RESEARCH and read the actual paper cited, if available. It is the only way to discover whether the Hivemind “report” is lying to you or not. Well, you could ask your friendly neighborhood scientist to review it for you, I suppose. ? If you know one who is honest and can actually do decent research.

Gather up all your hens’ teeth to pay for the consultation, though.

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Sharing Through the Generations

Something that interested me when I was a young lad, sitting and, yeh, staring at my maternal great grandmother (she was OLD, I tell ya! *heh*), particularly as she sharpened her pen knife and used it to trim her fingernails VERY short: onychorrhexis. Nah, I didn’t know what to call it as a six-or seven-year-old lad, but that’s one of the things that interested me: the ridges on her fingernails. *huh* Same as on my maternal grandfather’s hands, and. . . mine, now. (I have one sib I have noted who has the same issue: ridged nails that split easily.) So: trimming my fingernails (yeh, and toenails, now) very short has become a thing for me. Recently, however, I’ve had a really handy tool added to the task: a nail trimming device (a small, rechargeable rotary grinding tool) soundly rejected by the dog. Works for me, though.

Oh, med resources list a lot of different causes for the issue, but only three of them seem to apply to me: heredity, aging, and arthritis. *shrugs* If I can live with joint pain, I can live with this, especially since I have naproxen sodium for the one and this neat lil grinding tool for the other.

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Things Tend to Work Out. . .

. . .or not.

For example, as I walk, my left-right strides are about equal, despite the fact that my left leg is longer than my right leg. It kinda works out, cos my left foot is shorter–missing part of the heel, as a result of the same incident that caused my left leg to be a bit longer than my right leg.

It just kinda worked out that way. Cool.

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Annoyingly Stupid Expression #4,736 Used by Writers with NO Imagination Whatsoever

“[he, she, they] turned on [his, her, their] heel[s]” Sometimes “spun” (or even more stupidly, “span“) is subbed in for “turned,” as if that makes the expression any less abysmally stupid.

THIMK!

#gagamaggot NO THEY DID NOT. NONE OF THE CHARACTERS THESE WRITERS HAVE “TURNING” ON THEIR “HEELS” ARE GINGER ROGERS, FRED ASTAIRE, OR GENE KELLY! Heck even searching for those masters of popular terpsichorean displays trying to turn up even ONE instance of any of them doing it was too tedious a task to complete, although there are youboob videos demonstrating in excruciating detail how difficult the maneuver is for even accomplished dancers. For example:

And even then, it’s no singleton action. *smh* I file this with all the other annoyingly stupid laziness writers abuse to break suspension of disbelief. So, wee lil tip to lazy writers: unless your target audience has been playing with autolobotomy kits, don’t have your characters “turn on their heels” unless they are accomplished ballroom dancers, mmmK?

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Side Effect or Par for the Course?

The second, I am quite sure. *smh* Oh, what am I talking about? Old injuries–30, 40, 50, and even 60 years old: long healed. But. Nowadays, the slightest lil thing can seem to evoke reminders of broken bones, interesting wounds, torn ligaments, etc., making minor missteps into weeks long re-recoveries, at times.

*sigh* It’s not a side effect of age but simply my body “remembering” old insults far, far better than I would prefer. *heh* As long as the 59-year-old old skull fracture doesn’t start issuing updates, methinks I can weather the littler things like the lesson on watching my feet around horses. . . ?

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It’s the Little Things #5,392

Of no real significance, I offer a wee quirk, FWIW:

Some things I do in sixes (or fractions/multiples of six), some in eights (or fractions/multiples), some in nines (etc.). Some things “require” I do them in sevens, and a very few in thirteens (no multiples, just thirteen, period). There are also certain “calming” patterns I trace–with a pen/pencil on paper, on my right or left thumbnails, or simply between my ears. These always involve nines and are drawn in one continuous line, with no trace-overs. (Patterns derived from these can be found, at times, in my private “Non Compos Mentis Coloring Book”–a collection of doodles made during boring lectures in grad school.)

These, along with visualizing numbers as having places in 3D space and colors associated with different number “families,” are just things I have done since childhood, for the most part.

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Things That Baffle Me

Here’s one: For years–decades–I have found the sound effect “footsteps” of people in movies and TV shows distracting. Effects people seem to make one person sound like a thundering herd competing with a massive storm and a traffic jam for a “Noisiest” award. IOW, I have a hard time processing stomping, clacking noisemaking with normal footsteps, and it drops suspension of disbelief into a deep, dark hole it just can’t easily climb out of.

*shrugs*

My Wonder Woman has accused me for years of sneaking up on her, but I just walk normally–for me–and it seems to her like I just suddenly appear. Yeh, I don’t get it. Had a guy living upstairs from my off-campus apartment when I was in college who stomped around. He moved out very shortly after I “schooled” him one evening on walking less like a baby elephant in lead shoes. I dunno why. ?

Oh, well.

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Just One Browser? Nah.

I have to use five different browsers (and occasionally a couple more) to do the web surfing I do. Oh, I don’t _have_ to, but different sites just work differently in different browsers, even if they use the same rendering engine. And some browsers just have features that work well for certain things. Example: If I want to do some searches on topics that are just none of anyone’s business to track (say, procedures and methods for NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS *heh*), I use a TOR-enabled browser in addition to a good VPN, etc. But if I’m just comparing some items at a shopping site I use regularly, I don’t use that one because my fav TOR-enabled browser has lousy tab stacking, so I use one that can auto-stack tabs from the same host. Just different capabilities. If there are a lot of videos on my download list for the day, I use an entirely different browser that is the one I have found to be able to do that task most easily.

And sometimes I use one that offers really nice video backgrounds on its speed dial page, just ‘cos they’re “purtier” than what’s offered on any of the other browsers I use. So?

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As a General Rule. . .

. . .the thing I dislike about February the most is people who say “Feb-YOU-ary.”

#gagamaggot

I am of two minds about the January weather we’re having in the middle of FebRuary, though. On the one hand, bitter cold with freezing rain, followed by snow does tend to keep me housebound, for the most part. On the other hand, bitter cold with freezing rain, followed by snow does tend to keep me housebound, for the most part. *heh*