ArtieShaw

Presumably it’s the same reason that I couldn’t find a way to close my bank account (in person, at the fucking bank) in 1998. And presumably it’s the same reason that my elderly parents can’t get their Medicare supplemental insurance agent to close out their account prior to their move to another state, where that insurance won’t be accepted.

You’re a customer. They love you. Reasons.

I’ve become attached to this eldritch abomination.

Easy. It’s a dried and shellacked squid that has been posed in an artful, somehow bipedal and menacing position. I call it the creeping horror and keep it in an old wooden box.

Not really my taste, but it was a gift.

Well that’s terrifying.

My old vacuum bags were meant to be tossed, but I just emptied it and put it back because $.

Oh no. I feel that. Back when ipods were a thing, I liked to call it my husband’s “tiny radio.” Particularly on planes, with lots of captive listeners.

But I was mainly torturing him.

It’s OK - he does similar shit to me. 30 years and counting…

I didn’t really expect anyone to know that, which was sort of the joke. He was very famous in his time, but by now it’s a bit of a deep cut.

Artie Shaw was a clarinetist who ran a jazz band. In addition to that, he was also quite the weirdo. Womanizer, liked math a lot (like more than is natural), was an expert marksman who was nationally ranked in that sort of thing, and really into fly fishing. Also, currently, very dead. And that’s good because otherwise he’d be 114.

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

here’s a sample of his work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_v3GY3ZqdM

Shock: I’m not really Artie Shaw.

I collect ancient coins and this explanation doesn’t fly for me. There’s a certain amount of “artisanal-ness” in the production of ancient coins - which were all handmade. Like, I’m looking at a tray of coins right now and there’s no way a simple go/no-go tool would be helpful. Also, for this purpose a simple handheld counterweight balance would be more accurate and portable. The existence of these simple balances, along with reference weights for various denominations, is well documented.

Moreover - if you’re an ancient merchant, what is more important? The weight of the silver or the ability for it to pass for a denarius issued by Rome? Particularly for international trade, it seems to have been the former. Bankers’ cuts and countermarks are commonly seen on coins, and seem to have been an early form of foreign exchange. (eg - I’m travelling from Athens to Ephesus with a stock of my local currency. If I pass it to a local banker in Ephesus, they can evaluate it, determine the local exchange in terms of silver, and give it a locally recognized countermark to assure their own merchants that they’re getting the equivalent local value).

That being now off my chest, I’ve got no great answers for the dodecahedrons. I strongly suspect that it was a nifty thing that metal workers made as a master’s thesis.

This was 1981, so no. I think he’s just the “ice cream man.” Weird play on words.

Casefile. It’s not that content is boring or uninteresting. It just knocks me out.

Thundercats! Not great, for sure, but I remember that the same weaknesses were still there in the 80s

Snarf was always insufferable. My idiot brother and I hated Snarf. Why was he not humanoid like the other Thundercats? Why was he a ripoff of Lost-In-Space’s Doctor Smith? Why did he have weird crocodilian qualities? “snarf snarf”

Liono was just one dimensionally dumb. Kit and Kat were clearly there for the littler kids to relate to.

Tigra and Panthro were solid dudes. Cheetara and Pumyra were the closest thing to making me question my sexuality at a tender age. Mumm-ra was great - he had a nice pyramid and flying wrappers. Mumm-ra’s henchmen have probably aged the worst.

My brother ate a Snausage for the low low price of one US dollar. There was a whole negotiation process beforehand (Snausage, milk bone, kennel ration biscuit and dog chow were all on the table). He had regrets. I’ll admit that I drove a hard bargain, but he was old enough to know better.

For myself? No. Some of my cats’ shredded chicken in “gravy” looks and smells OK. Still no.

The veterinary sales rep I used to work with said, “their taste buds are very different from ours.” I’ll trust him

I like the mnemonics of c (copy), v (get in there), x (snip-snip), and z (bad idea) as much as I like the similar ones for bold and italics.

text you’ve already typed and change the format. Control (shift) + F3 used to do that in MS word. Highlight your text and Toggle Through The POSSIBILITIES.

That looks amazing.

I was just thinking about “quirky” because my sister-in-law recently used it to describe her daughter. Her contrasting word (for her son) was “straightforward.”

Personally, I fit the former even though I’ve learned to “pass for normal.” NOT my words. That was a direct quote and it was meant as a compliment. Weird is definitely meant as an insult in the US Midwest.

Internment was a bit complicated, but my understanding is that the US army wouldn’t turn away young Japanese-American men who were willing to fight in Europe.

There was also a secret program where second generation men served as translators for US naval intelligence in the Pacific. They translated intercepted messages and assisted with prisoner interrogations. They were also in very real danger of being mistaken by the enemy by US or allied troops. The existence of this program was only revealed in the 1980s. If anyone is interested, google “Nisei linguists” or check out these references

https://www.nps.gov/goga/blogs/nisei-linguists-in-world-war-ii.htm

https://history.army.mil/html/books/nisei_linguists/CMH_70-99-1.pdf

I missed out on those! We were there for less than a week and never saw them on a menu.

They were on my list, though.

I’d say that both White Castle and McDonalds are a separate food entity. In form, they’re both burgers. That much is true, but the overall thing that you eat is consistently something else.

This is may be more obvious for WC because in spite of being the oldest fast food hamburger, they also depart more radically from the norms of cooking and presentation. Whatever McD’s is doing is a little more arcane. It presents itself as a burger, but doesn’t really taste like a burger.

And if you’re adding regional chains, Culver’s deserves a mention.

I noticed that they had a presence in London. We didn’t stop to compare them to the US version, though. I had weirder things to try.

That’s kinda brutal, but I’m going to back you up on the thing with hamburgers in Canada. Maybe it’s just limited to Ontario, but when we moved there we were consistently shocked by the weirdness of the burgers. For the first year or so we shopped around trying to find a good burger and eventually just gave up. Our local pub served some that were OK.

And before anyone chimes in with the thing about all Ontario burgers being prepared well-done by law, it’s not that. I’m pretty sure our time there pre-dated that law. I think they may have been “spicing” them with onion powder, but who knows.

The burgers at Burgermeister in Berlin were quite decent. Those were the only ones we tried, though.