Friday Ephemera
Locker room scenes. (h/t, Julia) || Missile orientation. || Make your own sand kittens. || Salad jelly. || High-status leisure activity. || Pet repair. || Tiny frilled trumpets with mucous houses. || Dumpster fire toy, $50. || Differing approaches to package delivery. || I did not know this. (h/t, sk60) || New space-travel-related unit of measurement. A discussion ensues. || Bond villain death quiz. (h/t, Runcie) || Bluegrass abroad. || Our betters discussed. One, a former head of the BBC, now CEO of the New York Times. || “The bowl wasn’t actually connected to plumbing.” || What bird song looks like. || Tilted tornado. || Get a load of me. || Nostrils. || And finally, for devotees of the cinematic arts, “Hey, check this out.”
Bluegrass abroad.
A relative was travelling in Japan and heard a group playing Tejano music, which is basically Tex-Mex folk polka that’s still very popular with young and old rural hispanics. He said they were playing it so well that he thought it was a native Texas band until he saw them.
It’s amazing how well the Japanese can adopt other cultural items, especially given how strong their own culture is (was?).
Fred —
Is that “no refund” in case you don’t get an up-close-and-personal encounter with a supercell & tornado, or in case you DO?
It’s my understanding that one pays a fee to go hang with storm chasers for a set period during prime tornado season. Like a package holiday. They’re always watching radars, and heading out to wherever they think a supercell thunderstorm is likely to develop. But if no storms pop up to chase, or if they do but they fail to spawn tornadoes, no refunds.
That is my understanding, at least.
I see. Astro-gliding to other dimensions is a slippery slope that I think her mental health can ill afford to risk.
Maybe it allows her boyfriend to astroglide into other dimensions. :-0
Maybe it allows her boyfriend to astroglide into other dimensions. :-0
You know the drill.
I’m guessing that Conservatives public transportation advert is as real as the muslim rasslin’ woman.
It’s clearly taped over the regular advertising poster frame.
Heh. I think it’s safe to say it’s not quite achieving whatever non-creepy, non-car-crash aesthetic it was actually going for.
I thought the whole thing was a public service to help keep kids from turning to Furry culture. I have to assume that the coming protests will be even more disturbing than the film itself.
“So does the sign behind the Japanese country singers really say GLAND OLE OPRY?”
Plobabry. The Japanese take quite a self-deprecating attitude to their idiosyncratic grasp of English pronunciation, and happily use the L/R gag in ways that Our Betters would have fits over.
“*sharp intake of breath*”
Breathe out first… neither have I.
Logan. James Bond. Rambo: Last Blood. Top Gun: Maverick. Terminator: Dark Fate. Ghost Busters.
Sensing a trend here.
Engrish.com
@Pogonip
Baby is in absolutely no rush and is now 9 days late. I think she’s waiting for the book.
85% on the James Bond quiz. I’d be ashamed apart from the fact that the stuff I missed was all from the reboot series.
jabrwok
…Avatar 2, Coming To America 2 (yes, really), Big Lebowski 2, It 2, Godzilla 40, Toy Story 4…
When do we unironically see Sequel: The Movie!?
Sam duncan,
In my experience ( working with Japanese engineers) they were pretty sloppy with their japanese pronunciation too.
E.g.one guy I knew quite well passed me in the hall one afternoon and barked something like “ko-cha” as we passed.
Figured out later this was Konichiwa, but in the male idiom.
I got giggled at in Tokyo by receptionists, probably because my pronunciation was too feminine. Also, I was way too polite to young women.
Hi Prm,
Tell her to come ahead, I lost the notebook w/all the stuff in it so it’ll be a while!
Also, I was way too polite to young women.
? /explication of Japanese cultural difference desired
When do we unironically see Sequel: The Movie!?
That was part of it, but all the movies I listed showed old, white men enjoying a last hurrah before fading away, usually to be replaced by an uber-comptent ActionGrrrrl. That sub-text bothers me. But then I’m not woke.
No h/t for Bond Villian Quiz?
Locker Room Scene…
Short version Swalls and Swass
…this allows me to ‘astro-glide’ to other dimensions…
I own a book called “Practical Time Travel”. I bought it largely for the title. It was eye-opening to read that people actually believe the astrobullshit.
I despise Elon Musk — in the same way I despise all snake oil salesmen of his ilk — but he deserves her.
Pst314,
This was in the mid 1990’s, at the Tokyo branch of a big us tech firm, and at some of the Tokyo offices of Japanese companies we were doing joint developments with. Almost all of the local female employees were young-ish, say 20-30, working support roles like receptionist, “assistant”, or clerical. (And a female assistant was very different from an AA in the US, who often had a lot of power.)
Protocol was basically for the men to ignore them unless they needed some task done, or maybe just more coffee. You may know the term “Office Lady”. To an American ear, those tasks were requested with curt orders. Male lingo was gruff, truncated, almost staccato. Female lingo was artificially high pitched, correct grammar, and a bit flowery vocabulary.
Things have changed in the decades since then.
Hi Fred,
What changed? Did feminists come to Japan to explain to the OL’s that they were oppressed?
Shocking headline!!!
Biggest Business in Texas City Forces Law Impacting All Other Businesses and Citizens / Gets Itself Exempted
https://pjmedia.com/trending/youre-our-only-hope-liberal-austin-cries-out-for-republicans-to-save-it-from-democrat-homeless-policy/
Pogonip,
Don’t know. After that era I worked mostly with Finns, Poles, Indians, French, Brits, and Aussies. All of whom had their own … features. Sorry. But to make you feel better, here’s a key to the hottub. (No, not the grubby ground floor pool. The Restricted Spa upstairs. Password is “Swordfish”.)
No h/t for Bond Villian Quiz?
I couldn’t recall how I found it. Bugger. Did I screw up? Apologies. Fixed.
Heh.
Shocking headline!!!
Make rats welcome, get more rats.
Our betters discussed…
The other a former head of the Civil Service. It’s very notable that the Civil Service Code only cautions against party political bias. Senior Civil Servants appear to be allowed to lobby quite openly for their preferred political outcomes, particularly where their fellow partisans can be found in all three traditional parties. Sod the people they’re meant to be serving though.
Biggest Business in Texas City Forces Law Impacting All Other Businesses and Citizens / Gets Itself Exempted
Related…
We wants our $15/hour !
Meanwhile…at
Communist Party CentralSanders HQ…All the tovariches will have the equivalent of a new pair of shoes every five years. Hurrah for the GWONT !
*(Seeing as how this is Ephemera, fun fact that has little actual relevance to the above, the author of the second bit, Pfannenstiel, shares a name with the Pfannenstiel incision, the most common incision used for Caesarian sections, sometimes called the “bikini incision” because it would be covered by one – at least some of the older versions.)
In sports news, Iran picks up where East Germany left off, note the operative word “awaiting”.
If anyone’s interested, the UK’s Channel 4 is streaming Apollo 11 as if live. It’s not all Cathy Newman and Jon Snow; sometimes it can be the best channel we have.
Fred, thanks. Now that you write that, I have vague memories of reading something long ago about marked differences in speech by Japanese men and women.
What changed? Did feminists come to Japan to explain to the OL’s that they were oppressed?
Could have simply been the slow effects of “constant” exposure Western culture as communications and cultural interchange steadily increased after WWII? Just wondering, not implying any direct knowledge.
This man’s balloon animals are better than yours.™
This man’s balloon animals are better than yours.™
I see you’re getting the hang of it.
Heh.
Ugh. Jennifer Hudson has a great voice but no breath control. She’s slaughtering that song. Reminds me of Christina Aguilera, who is really good at runs but also only really good at runs.
Part of what made Webber’s musicals so popular is that he composed the music for the lead singers’ voices (and talents/limitations) specifically. It’s why the original London productions are the best.
It’s why the original London productions are the best.
I know almost nothing about musical theatre.
[ Cue sharp intake of breath. ]
Me either.
Moon landing Google doodle. Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins reflects on one of humanity’s greatest achievements:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzbquKCqEQY
Seems a good time to revisit this.
Maybe I’m feeling unusually well-disposed, or a little drunk, but this doesn’t look as awful as I was expecting.
This doesn’t look as awful as I was expecting.
Agreed. Although, of course, a trailer can be very deceptive. I’d been growing very tired of the Star Trek franchise but maybe the next film will be okay.
I’ve been growing very tired of how Hollywood recycles stories over and over, and want to see more stories that have never before been done on film.
This item about for-profit organ harvesting of prisoners in China reminded me of Larry Niven’s Organlegger stories (Gil the ARM). Why not make one of them into a movie thriller? A movie based on The Defenseless Dead would be timely and could be a very entertaining thriller. Will Smith did very well in I, Robot and could make a very good ARM detective.
Maybe I’m feeling unusually well-disposed, or a little drunk, but this doesn’t look as awful as I was expecting.
I know that guy…whatsisname….dammit….ah, that’s Alan Arkin isn’t it! I knew it!
As for the moon landing anniversary thing…watched the 4+ hour original coverage of the Apollo 11 launch from july 16, 1969 by CBS with Walter Cronkite. Broke it up into 3 sittings. Highly recommend it for more than just the moon thing. Was an interesting time capsule of what TV and the news were like 50 years ago. Relative to today, Cronkite seems rather unpolished yet more easy to identify with. The commercials are amusing and I had forgotten how bad location shots could be. And I had forgotten how often TV broadcasts would just go black for a few seconds when switching from commercials to regular programming and such. There’s also a 30 minute segment of the morning news, local to New York City with all that was going on there at the time. At one point Cronkite mentions that Teddy Kennedy was there for the launch. Wonder how the world would be different if he had stayed in Florida through the weekend. Also interesting to see Cocoa Beach area and Cape Canaveral/Port Canaveral back before it got so built up. I used to live in Cape Canaveral when I worked on the Shuttle program but when I pass through that area today, I hardly recognize anything.
Wonder how the world would be different if he had stayed in Florida through the weekend.
“Some people drove somewhere”
“Some people drove somewhere”
Well, exactly. So help me out here. When I was in high school I read newspapers regularly, especially the editorial and op-ed sections, and it influenced, in a way that I was not conscious of at the time, much of how I wrote. Granted I’ve never been much of a writer but I did have a partiality to getting the facts of the matter communicated and aside from what I’m about to relate, my teachers were OK with my writing. Yet through my reading I adopted into my writing a use of the passive voice. I’m fairly certain I was getting this from the weasel writing styles of opinion writers, most of them being leftists, though some right guys as well. My history teachers however, drove that habit out of me by constantly dinging me for use of “the passive voice”. I didn’t understand what that meant at first but once I grasped it and how weaselish it was, I became very annoyed when I encountered it from adults in the media and elsewhere. It seems very bizarre to me that such a thing persist among professional writers and especially academics. Does anyone else notice this absurdity or am I missing something here?
Pzt314
I’ve always thought Nivens short stories would make good movies.
Wtp
As a sprog i was taught that if you could not express your ideas in short active declarative sentences, you probably did not know what you were actually trying to say.
(Was that sentence too long? Oh, well… I’m older now.)
Does anyone else notice this absurdity or am I missing something here?
Nothing says plausible deniability like the passive voice.