Read a book blurb. Aloud: “Highballs in the Hamptons? Not interested.”
My Wonder Woman: “You’re not interested in other people’s balls.”
Me: “You really lowballed that one.”
MWW: “If the cup fits. . . “
Filed Under “Stupid TV Shows,” #2,574
OK, I know why “Naked & Afraid” wasn’t called “Naked Pussies,” but still. . . (And, no, I don’t watch it. Why would I want to watch a show with even more stupid people than are found on most shows?)
Addicted Much?
Worked on just one dysfunctional computer today. “Cleaned up” some others. Then, chores around twc central. And. . . sat down briefly at one computer (FarceBooking, web browsing, checking email, etc.). Went to “work” (network housekeeping) on another (in another room). Read through a tutorial on yet another (yet another room). Accessed another remotely. From each of the other three computers. Read a bit on my (newest) tablet. Considered booting another one and decided. . . nah. Looked at one that needs to be put on the network and. . . “OK, why not?”
I think maybe I ought to go on a “computer diet”.
Useful Information?
Or not?
My inability to suffer fools gladly (or even not at all) limits commercial air travel for me, due to Thugs Standing Around idiocy, so this isn’t really germane to my needs, but I’ll gladly pass it along to more tolerant folks.
Baffling, Massive Illiteracy
I don’t get people who say “calvary” when referring to “cavalry.” I mean, hello! One refers to horseback-mounted soldiers, and it ain’t “calvary,” because that has nothing to do with horses. Cavalry, however, entered English via the Norman French cavalier, from cheval (HORSE!), etc.
Of course, it takes a minimal literacy to get this, beyond simply reading the word and learning how to pronounce it from that. Confusing “cavalry” with “Calvary,” the famous location of Christ’s crucifixion? That takes both a failure of basic, extremely minimal literacy and a MASSIVE historical/cultural illiteracy as well.
Oh, self-made morons who make this astounding error do NOT get a “bye” because they mislearned it by hearing another self-made moron saying “calvary” when meaning “cavalry.” Nope. Even there I sneer at their empty braincases, because they are so very poorly read (no excuses; that’s their bad choice) and too butt lazy and self-enstupiated to remedy that problem.
OK, someone with an innate IQ under 70 might well get a bye. All others (and they are legion), nah.
Yeh, It Seems I’ve Always Been This Way
There I was, seven years old, sitting in Dr. Job’s examination room, after a visit following up on some minor hand “surgery.” The lecture Dr. Job was delivering (at my mom’s behest, I had little doubt) was on not chewing my fingernails (which I only did to trim them, instead of using the implements my mom wanted me to use). Dr. Job, a family friend and our personal care physician, lectured me at length on harmful bacteria that could be lodged under my fingernails, making a point of the grime that was under them at the time and very authoritatively (I had GREAT appreciation for his authority) stressing what a fine habitat for bacteria that grime was.
I listened very attentively and heeded his words. Thereafter, before “trimming” my nails with my teeth, I scrubbed under them very, very well.
*heh* I don’t think that was the lesson my mom wanted me to learn. . .
Yet Another Head-Scratcher
I take one prescription med. I buy one year’s supply all at once. Keep it in the fridge. Pharmacist was aghast that I did so. Why? Because of the “moist environment” in that cold, dehumidifier. . . Oh, and the med comes packaged in foil-sealed blister pack dosages. *sigh* What do they teach in “pharmacy school” nowadays?
Oh, and in further conversation my tinnitus entered the picture don’t ask how–long evolution). He mispronounced it “tin-EYE-tis (AFTER I had already pronounced it correctly). I gave him the “kinder, gentler” correction: “I’m a bit nerdy about things that I’m interested in. The ‘itis’ suffix refers to inflammatory conditions like arthritis and is spelled differently, pronounced differently, and has entirely different etymology and meaning than the the ‘itus’ that is part of ‘tinnitus,’ since tinnitus is NOT an inflammatory condition.”
“Oh.”
Enough Already!
I found yet another writer to avoid. This one was too easy. Taught for taut, then for than, site for sight: enough! Now, such things are NOT “spelling errors.” No, they are word misuses caused by vocabularies that are too weak for any writer to have. I’ll not name and shame, here. That’s reserved for a future Amazon review (after my dizziness from all the head-shaking abates *heh*) titled, “Enough already! For the love of all that is decent, just stop writing!”
Why Did I Not Realize This Before Now?
Somewhere around 50 years late? *sigh*
OK, I was a fairly bright (never so-called “genius” level bright, but not intellectually dim, either) teenager. Oh, I was completely clueless, ignorant and could almost be classed as a zombie in all regards except for intellectual curiosity. A genuine nerd before such things were so labeled. An Odd, if ever there were one. I did have friends, but that’s ALL due to their friendliness (well, perhaps save for another Odd I connected with due to his parents’ long-standing friendship with my parents, and their awareness of our similar Odd-ness *heh*).
So, there I was at fourteen pitching the idea that my parents spend some of “my” money (long story involving an insurance settlement for injuries directly and completely caused by a neighbor’s stupidity and paid for by their car insurance) to buy a set of The Great Books of the Western World. Sold it. They bought the set. It thereafter “lived” by my bed until I got married, its authors works my constant companions.
Slide ahead a year from the purchase. I had just about completed a recovery and rehabilitation from the damage done me by “New Math”–said rehabilitation at the hands of a great math teacher (thank you, Mrs. Heinz, wherever you are!) via a year of high school geometry. Maths became enjoyable again. And then. . . Newton’s Principia Mathematica, though not in Latin (a language I still have no real facility with). Why not? It was really just an extension of geometry, since ALL Newton’s development of calculus in it were geometrically-inspired, driven, and derived. Oh, I won’t say I mastered Newton’s developments as an autodidact at the age of fifteen. No, I certainly did not, but. . .
Fast forward to my first year of calculus class. The teacher drew me apart after the first exam and required me to retest on the material, using different test problems, because I had scored 100% without writing in any of the intermediate steps between problem and answer, and I could offer nothing except, “Well, it seems obvious.”
So, retest. Same results. Puzzled him, and even I was puzzled as time went on and I saw other students I knew were brighter than I was have to work through the steps.
Just this evening, prompted by a mention of Newton’s approach to calculus in a novel, I recalled how much fin working through Principia had been a couple of years before that calculus class and the light dawned: I wasn’t just “seeing the answer” through some sort of intuitive insight. No, it was just the echo of having played around with Newton a couple of years before.
Now, I’m not as mentally sharp in intellectual pursuits as I was when I was a teenager, but I still enjoy working through concepts, and yes, even maths, to arrive at new and interesting ideas or learn new things about, well, just about anything. I’m still curious and enjoy poking the bear of my ignorance, prodding it into learning something new, so at least I still have that. No, I don’t learn languages as easily as I once did, and yes new concepts take a wee tad more effort to work out than I recall once being the case, but such things are still fun.
Still, why the heck did it take something like 50 years for me to make the connection between playing with Principia and the way calculus seemed so easy? Cluelessness. *heh* I still got it!
Well, Glad That’s Settled. (I hope. . . )
Watching a Holmes rerun–actually a pretty “not all that bad” show. (The “Mary Watson, Assassin” episode) Turned to my Wonder Woman and asked her if she had been an assassin all throughout our married life. Glad she said, “no,” (though with a sly smile; what does that mean? *heh*), cos that would’ve required Grand Master level dissimulation. . . 😉