ArtieShaw

I’d be salty about that too!

I’m under a series of non-disclosure agreements that serve to protect Big Talc. I can disclose that step one is to dig it out of the ground. The rest is processing.

Yep, I am sick unto the death over talc and talc derivatives. It’s all sunshine and lollipops for the first few years, but it gets old.

Anyway, these medical devices were sort of like spinal implants, or things that could mitigate damage from a bad alligator bite if one got ahold of a person’s ankle. Bone replacements, mostly. The photos on the posters were pretty unpleasantly graphic, but they all basically looked like good solutions to very unfortunate problems.

Well said.

Honestly, I like to avoid them. They sound fun at first, but then you realize that you’re going to be in a room with strangers for 8 hours and at the last minute you realize, “would anyone really notice if I just skipped out?” And, “why do I always get invited to the talc and sulphates convention and not the candy convention?”

I do travel a lot for work, and frequently see conventioneers at hotels. The Excruciating Implantable Medical Device Convention (with posters) looked amazing. I honestly thought about crashing that one.

Compared to Billy Budd, I was all in on Bartleby. I felt a certain kinship, if you will.

All of our proposed work field trips sucked so hard, everyone revolted.

Idea one: There was a bizarre “corporate leadership conference” which was a bunch of weird conservative motivational speakers that were on tour across middle America. No one aside from the two asshats who proposed it wanted to go after learning the details.

Idea two: Our two department managers decided that a canoe trip would be a great way to bond as a group. It sounded fun until anyone put an ounce of thought into it. Since the managers didn’t want to do any planning, we were all given vague tasks. Like, “lunch.” And “portage at the roller dam.” I was one of the two in charge of lunch. WTF? Do we figure out a place to stop mid-way and eat at a restaurant? Am I bringing a cooler of hotdogs? Does Steve bring a grill? Can there be beer? (NO)

I had a woman slap my hand away from a hot surface while on one of these tours. No songs, though. And I’m not much of a higher up, so probably not worth it.

“She touched the reactor’s body, she did! Now her flesh is melted like…?”

I enjoy how Germans were like, “fuck you (W)oden, we’re calling it mid-week. We’ll keep the rest.”

Yep. Conventioneering! Except you get to learn about talc processing and talk to sales reps who are really big into talc processing.

When I was a kid, a neighbor was shot in his garage. There were definitely two stories that went around the neighborhood. One said suicide and the other said “cleaning his gun.” One of those was repeated when kids were around. The other when they thought no one was listening.

Years back, I read was a very odd story about the Korean belief that falling asleep in a closed room with a running fan would result in death. This also seems to be a cover story for suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

manipulation and guilt around money when I was younger

I feel that. I don’t count pennies around friends, but I probably have a net positive of $5 from taking quarters from unreturned carts at Aldi. No regrets.

I will give you my cart for free if you ask nicely, but a loose cart is fair game in my book.

Also -The original post is a parody account.

That takes me back to a club I was in during the '80s. The instructor had a space heater that looked a lot like this. Basically a horizontal tube with an open flame that she used to heat her garage. She did an safety demonstration by dropping a paper towel into the flame, so we 6-year-olds would know what happens when you go near the heater. You burn, children. You burn. Effective.

I would think that the water content of the mushroom would make it weird. But if you’re not expecting a nice crisp crust, I’m sure it could be good enough. Interesting idea, for sure.

Interesting. I’ve always heard that they weren’t worth foraging. Maybe next season! We usually see tons around here in September/October.

I do like a nice chicken of the woods, and morels (which I can never find in the wild).

All three are pretty easy to ID, and I’d rather be an old mushroom hunter than a bold mushroom hunter.

That’s so charming! It’s my absolute favorite thing today.

Where I grew up there was an urban legend about radioactive deer. It was pre-internet, the deer were legitimately weird, and they lived in the woods adjacent to one of the US’s earliest nuclear research facilities. Everyone had seen them. The facility was active and well guarded. It seemed… plausible. Very plausible.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/4077627323 https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/july-2016/argonne-national-laboratory/

Yeah - I remember reading about how these signs were laughably easy to “hack” a few years ago.

I thought about it for minute when the city installed one down the street. Then I imagined the weird shame I’d feel when my neighbors inevitably caught me, so never tried it out. Actually, in retrospect, they’d probably have helped.

To be fair, I read an article earlier today that said it’s nearly impossible to find a copy of the original. It was a low budget co-production and the distribution rights are murky. It claimed that if you’re lucky you can get a second hand DVD copy. Otherwise? Pirates?

Hopefully, this next sequel will prompt the re-release.

The kid is 18. Were y’all assuming he was older for some reason?

Out of idle curiosity about your username, I’d like to ask.

Dune, cryptography, or both?