Miscellany

[Ensign Steve]

There were a bunch of silk shirts on sale at Kohl's this weekend, and they were great high-quality shirts, but they were all seriously Parrot-Headed. I picked up the most subtle one (blue on blue) for bey, but I would love to have dressed him up in all of them. Too bad he has taste.

[LadyShea]

LOL what's distasteful about tropical print silk shirts??

Srsly some guys can rock that shit, no matter how obnoxious and bright, and others can't. Hubby can't...he looks like a banker trying to do resortwear or something.

[lisarea]

I just realized this is Misc. so I can say tangential and potentially redundant stuff without getting banned.

There used to be this car I would see driving around the area where I was working that had a personalized license plate of: Apartheid. I would see it all the time and try to figure out why that guy had that. Then, one day, I was driving to lunch with a friend and I saw it, and I was like, "Man, there goes that apartheid guy," and my friend is like, "What apartheid guy?" and I showed him the license plate, and he said, "It says APRTHD. I think that's supposed to read as 'A parrothead,' as in one of those people who likes Jimmy Buffett too much." And I was like, "Oh."

But still, I kind of think that people who like Jimmy Buffett too much are probably racial separatists also.

[livius drusus]

Hey wait a minute. I know all the words to Cheeseburger in Paradise. LISAREA IS BANNED.

[lisarea]

I only regret that I have but one primary account, and about three or so sock puppets, to give for the cause of justice.

[livius drusus]

What about Maturin? Do you think he's safe from my APRTHD clutches? He is both Matlock and ODB, remember. I could, nay, would have to by law, tear him in two.

[BrotherMan]

[LadyShea]

My awesome new shorts fabric

[lisarea]

I am not intimately familiar with the lingo of your subculture, but I'm fairly certain that "RAHOWA" is the appropriate compliment for your fabric choice.

[LadyShea]

My subculture is those of us that buy cheap and used, when possible, rather than pay retail. So the appropriate compliment is "nice score cheap ass!"


ETA: OMG I just got off the horn with Google. Racial Holy War?! You are so not nice.

[LadyShea]

I splurged on a new, name brand, swimsuit top since I saved so much on the shorts

[Doctor X]

So from whom do the Parrotheads wish to remain separate?

Cool people?

--J.D.

[lisarea]

OH I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS.

Necessary background for this story is that my mom and my sister live in New Mexico, about five minutes apart, and they see each other almost every day. My sister does a lot of my mom's day to day financial stuff for her. I live in Colorado and talk to my mom on the phone almost every day. My babby bro lives in Pennsylvania and talks to our mom every week or so. Another important factor is that we do not have any feuds in our family. Everyone is on very friendly terms with everyone else and nobody is not speaking to anyone else, or anything like that.

So. This morning, my babby bro calls me, because he had just talked to our mom, and she told him that some recent winds damaged her fence. So I was all like "Oh." And he was all like that I am supposed to fix her fence, and I'm like, "I am in a different state! Also I am eating a burrito and this telephone is occupying my Tapatio hand! GOD!" and he tells me that I should call my sister and tell my sister that our mom needs her fence fixed.

Go back now and look at that background stuff you totally skipped! My brother in Pennsylvania thinks that the best way to relay messages between our mother and our sister, who live five minutes apart from each other and see each other every day, is for him to get the information from mom, which he then passes along to me, and then for me to pass that information along to my sister, who I guess would tell me her response, and then I could call my brother and he in turn could call our mom and tell her what sister said, ideally while our sister is standing right there next to her.

See the problem with this? That's right. We have another brother who lives in DC, and we're leaving him out of this Important Family Project. I am not even kidding now: I am actually going to email the other brother with this vague fence directive, and tell him to call our sister to convey it to her.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

LOL what's distasteful about tropical print silk shirts??

Nothing at all! It occurred to me after the fact that I should have gotten one for myself. It's just not his style. I'd characterize his look as "conservative, preppy, academic" and mine as "holy shit, did she do that on purpose?" You'll never know!

[LadyShea]

Well, pea, at least your whole family is now involved in the problem solving.

[lisarea]

This is actually an extant family issue, where when my mom and my youngest brother get together, they get all tangled up with these completely bizarre complications and can't do anything. So like if we're all in the same town and, like, there are two different items on the agenda for stuff, they will sit there and talk about it forever and devise the most ridiculously complex plans for accomplishing those things in the least efficient way possible.

So one time, years ago, we were all at my house, and there was some stupid task that needed done. I think it was some scrap metal or something to a place called Can-Land that's in some ugly stupid place that's like this horrible junkyard/recycling center in basically Detroit or Gary, Indiana or some shit and it smells even on its own and has these stupid like candy canes at the entrance, like it's supposed to be some magical Santa Land all year round. It is the stupidest and horriblest place in the world, I am not even playing. Ma and bro nattered and nattered and nattered and I was like, "OMG whatever you decide" and I left and I guess sister and other bro left too, and eventually I come back, and they have the most ridiculously convoluted plan, where we have like three different cars with various family factions in each, and we caravan to Can-Land to drop off the refuse, then do this thing where everyone changes to a different vehicle, then heads to do some other mundane chore, like, "Go pick up some sandwiches" for one car, and then another car is tasked with like stopping at a grocery store, and god knows what else but I promise something stupid, and then we all coordinate and convene back at my house or something like that. They'd managed to take some fairly simple little errand and turn it into one of those grade school logic problems where you have a fox and a chicken and a bag of corn and you're trying to get them across a river for no good reason at all.

So anyways, that day, I came back and I said "OMG you guys are stupid" and I vetoed their idea and ordered that the Can-Land expedition be totally discrete and wasteful and not even coordinated with any other errands.

OH and another time it happened at my sister's house, which was awful because she lives right near this really good panaderia, so different people kept going there and getting giant bags of baked goods and drinking literally gallon after gallon of coffee, and G-Dawg and Chouster (yes, I just called them out by name, on purpose!) are holding court making horrible stupid plans, and then I look over and there's my sister's babydaddy, with this stunned look that I know all too well. So I go over, and I'm like, "Babydaddy, I'm gonna get them out of here for you, OK?" and he's like, "I love you," and I'm like, "Yeah, you had only better." So I somehow herd my ridiculous nattering scheming family to some other location so that poor babydaddy can recuperate, and I dunno man.

So like, you normally would think, "Hey, Lisa, you are such a stupid asshole, how did it ever come to be that you were basically the boss of everyone in your family?" and I'm like, "I know, right? But man, you do not even know." But now you do. You know.

[LadyShea]

OMG wow, I miss these lisarea stories. Kiddo and hubby are like "why are you giggling to tears?"

More please. Write them in a book too.

[Janet]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Need craft or repurposing ideas for wooden building blocks. Hate to throw wood away, but what do I do with it all?

My sister-in-law does these magnificent mosaic art pieces on blocks of wood for cheap things to sell when she does an art fair. She used typesetting blocks, but it would probably work with what you have. Here's her site, if you want some ideas.

[LadyShea]

Wow, neat, thanks Janet

[livius drusus]

I love the mandala wallpieces.

[lisarea]

So hey, did you guys see I'm p. famous now?

Tiny $35 Raspberry Pi computer causes big stir on launch day - CNN.com

That was me! I'm the guy who refreshed those websites so many times.

[Ensign Steve]

Maybe if they weren't running their web server on the Pi...

[lisarea]

Stop telling that joke.

Anyways, it wasn't the foundation's website that went down. They were pre-hardened. Apparently, though, both of the distributor sites failed to heed their warnings about the demand; and then one of them, in violation of their agreement that the first round was one per customer, was reportedly selling multiples.

I got in at one of the sites a couple of times, but it still didn't let me order, and I'm not going to do all that Cabbage Patch shit, so I'm just waiting until the distribution's sorted and I'll get one later. It's not the foundation's fault, though.

[Crumb]

Published in The New York Post Sunday:

[livius drusus]