PA way to deal with muggers: “Maybe you can help me find my wallet. It’s in ‘urban cammo’ pattern, and I can’t find it anywhere.”
*pa-dump-bump*
"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
PA way to deal with muggers: “Maybe you can help me find my wallet. It’s in ‘urban cammo’ pattern, and I can’t find it anywhere.”
*pa-dump-bump*
I forgot what I was going to write.
YW.
*heh*
Uffda and feeda are two words commonly used by folks of Norwegian extraction, and while they have some similarities in meaning, the differences were graphically illustrated for me in the summer of 1978, when I visited my Wonder Woman’s family in Minnesota for the first time. One afternoon, while there, my Wonder Woman’s sibs took us to see “Grease” at a local movie theater. The movie was OK, but the highlight of the day came as we exited the theater and made our way toward the car. A couple of guys were walking in front of us, and one of them pointed at some gum on the ground and said, “Uffda!” The other guy didn’t see it in time, stepped in it, lifted his foot and looked at the gum on his shoe and disgustedly said, “Feeda!”
So there you have it. If one merely _sees_ something unpleasant, the proper expression is “Uffda!” But if one _steps_ in it. . .
YW. 🙂
Lovely Daughter gave us a lovely plaque to hang on our front door that reads, “Velkommen,” a nice Norwegian “Welcome.”
I want to hang this below it:
My Wonder Woman says, “No.”
*sigh*
Just look for “gimmes” from wannabe writers on Amazon.1
Yeh, I’m just a wee tad irked with the “self-pub” wannabe writers who
a. Don’t bother to learn English (though it’s their native tongue)
b. Think characterization is accomplished by listing all the name-brand products a character uses, and describing the character by just saying what dim-witted celebrity the character resembles
c. Doesn’t bother to read their own text, and so commits multiple errors of continuity at the speed of light
d. And then packs all this wonderfulness into 100 pages (or, sometimes even worse, 200) of a “novelette lite” and calls it a “novel.” *sigh* “Novelette Lite” even with padding the word count with useless crap like, “. . .in which case he would probably be stuck out here for the rest of his life, however brief a period that turned out to be.” No. DELE “a period.” Wasted electrons. (*sigh* Rather like this whole post, eh? *heh*)
Fortunately, I only actually read through about one of these a week, because I reject the absolute worst of them within the first page of text. The “survivors” often get eviscerated in reviews, though I only note ten or so (and when I’m feeling generous, sometimes fewer) of the worst examples of text that would gag a maggot.
Yes, it got worse in the book I picked to pick on here. Because of certain external factors (namely a recommendation from someone whose recommendations are often on target), I stuck it out with the book the above example came from–through even more garbage–until,
“. . .the slug had been fired from a large-caliber handgun, probably a .45. . . He knew that such projectiles traveled at a high velocity, faster than the speed of sound. . . ”
Urm, no. A good rule of thumb for speed of sound, at sea level, under ideal conditions, is ~1,125fps. Not even a .45ACP+P with a light bullet weight of only 185gr travels that fast (max out at ~1,000fps muzzle velocity), and given the circumstances in the scene, I _seriously_ doubt the writer was referring to (or is even aware of) the .45 Colt (often called “Long Colt”) cartridge or the firearms it is used in, and even then, if he were, he’d have to have been talking about a +P load.
Sorry. When a writer just keeps spreading The Stupid, the book should be relegated to the scrub pile.
1Do note that I keep on “buying” freebie Indie pub books because I have thereby found a few really excellent writers whose other work I end up buying and reading, and not just writers of fiction. I’ve not yet found any good poets that way, but hope springs eternal.
. . .on Quora. (Of course. The site is almost as bad as FarceBook.)
“If removing the 300 million guns circulating in America is the only way to turn it into an Australian sanctuary, how would we do it?”
The first person to address the question did a pretty good job dealing with it, but I’d add a sidebar:
About that Utopian “Australian sanctuary. . . “ Since the Australian “gun ban” (although it’s not really a ban) in 1996, Australia has had well more than 10x the number of deaths per capita from single-actor massacres than the US—only a few of which were committed using firearms.
Yeh, Australia is not a violence-free paradise, and reducing the numbers of firearms in the hands of law-abiding folks has not reduced the per capita ratio of deaths from mass murders.
For anyone questioning my statement, just compare single-actor mass murder totals in US and in Australia since 1996 and run the numbers against the population of each country. If you have trouble with the math, go back to school and pay attention in class this time.
Anyone who has trouble doing a search for the basic data should go live in an “assisted computing facility.” (“Here, dearie, let me make that mouse click for you.”)
To anyone I may have offended: if “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry,” then, sorry.
(I hope someone explains this to “slow readers.” *heh*)
Can I get a cheer for “redneck engineering”?
I ran into a problem with my installation of some “snap and click” laminate flooring. Uneven floor combined with some heavy furnishings (in the latest case, a refrigerator1) caused some problems with planks not quite matching up, leaving a very small gap and a ridge.
Not good. I had already placed and glued together the pieces under the fridge (the flooring is water resistant, but still, using a waterproof glue in the joints that might be exposed to water was definitely the thing to do) So, what to do? Move fridge out again, only detach the line for the ice maker and unplug it in order to get it far enough away to allow installation of more planks, without the mismatch caused by the weight of the fridge?
Nah. Six-inch plastic ruler, carefully wedged under the lowest point, to bring the plank back level. New plank fit in slick as goose grease.
Three cheers for “redneck engineering”!
1Moved the fridge out, installed “waterproofed” laminate flooring, moved fridge back. Weight of fridge over piece of flooring at front caused a very , very slight depression I could not get another piece to match.
Asking me what I’m thinking about runs the risk of me actually answering with. . . what I am thinking about.
“Zombie elves from the North Pole” was one recent answer.