Shades of Gray

27 Jan 12.

argentumextraho — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:49:11 +0000

This morning before I went to bed I popped out to the backyard to check on the hive. I cleared out a bunch of dead bees from the entrance (that was expected; rearing drops to almost nothing, but they keep dying on schedule) and then lifted the hive to get a feel for how much honey was left. That hive was damned light – so much so I was starting to think they’d already starved out – but no, when I gave the hive a sharp rap on the side I got an irritated buzz in return, so they aren’t dead yet. And it still smelled good in there (if it was empty it probably wouldn’t) so I ran back in the house and made some bee candy out of sugar and corn syrup to start emergency feeding with. Hopefully they’ll make it as long as I keep feeding. I know I can start over if I need to with another package, but I’d rather keep running the ones I’ve got; I like them and I’d like to keep them.

Christian Bullshit Nailed by Bill Maher – Antitheist Atheist.

argentumextraho — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:41:37 +0000

The Mensa Invitational…

argentumextraho — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:38:12 +0000

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.) amen!!!

11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

The weekend.

argentumextraho — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:15:24 +0000

The weekend was good, really: I went offline for all of friday night, drank an entire coffee-pot of tea and read a bunch – and played with my toy, the Nook eReader I bought thursday night. Wednesday when I was sitting I did a lot of reading and research on the various eReaders (the Kindle Fire, Kobo’s Vox and various Nook models) and the Nook beat them all. I even made a point to get up early enough to hit the bookstore after getting my nails done to go look at them and I ended up getting the Color. It is just an awesome little tablet. I took a good part of friday night getting the hang of the controls, but once you it’s pretty easy to use. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t realize that it take microSD chips, not the regular size, so I need to get one – actually I should just ask Matt; he probably has some he’s not using right now. But it is still an awesome toy.

And it plays Pandora.

Saturday night was also great; I went with a friend of mine to Game and I actually got the ST’s award – which is especially excellent right now because there is going to be a soft reset, and my reward for good playing, instead of being 1XP, is actually 1BP (build point) which equals 5XP that I can put toward the character rewrite. I am going to be totally all on that as soon as the rules for the builds are posted.

The week from Hell.

argentumextraho — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:45:55 +0000

Well, not literal Hell since I’m an anti-christian, (anti-all organized religions, really) but a hell none the less. Monday night we had three separate sitter rooms, so while there were four of us scheduled there was only one of the floor. Me. Well that went well. Even better, right after shift I had a mental health appointment, so I got to spend 45min pouring out my drama and spleen before finally going home. That shit is soooo tiring.

Tuesday night we were down to using only two sitters (one person watched the two in single rooms) which at least left us two on the floor – which was better, but it was still damned busy. Oh and there was the snow scare. I was going to be damned if I was getting stuck up on the Hill, but if we have no relief then we are legally required to stay. Because someone has to watch the inmates, so sayeth the law. Thankfully it melted down to nasty slush and I still got out just fine.

Tonight though… was looking pretty good: we were down to one sitter room, and five - five! – of us were scheduled so we all had only about six patients apiece which is the fewest we’ve had in like two months. Until I found out at about 2100 that someone was going to have to float and it was my turn again. *sigh* So after the CBG’s down to 6D I went, where I kinda demanded the sitter room so at least I could get off my knee and not be running around someone else’s floor like an idiot. Besides, if they were good I was hopefully going to get some homework done. And my sitters? I think one has started circling the drain and the other is just a crazy (like, schizophrenic crazy) guy. Although he whines really annoyingly.

Speaking German in Texas.

argentumextraho — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:51:36 +0000

In Texas there is a town called New Braunfels, where there is a large German-speaking population.

One day, a local rancher driving down a country road noticed a man using his hand to drink water from the rancher’s stock pond. The rancher rolled down the window and shouted: “Sehr angenehm! Trink das Wasser nicht. Die kuehe haben darein geschissen.”

Which means: “Glad to meet you! Don’t drink the water. The cows have shit in it.”

The man shouted back: “I’m from New York and just down here campaigning for Obama’s health care plan. I can’t understand you. Please speak in English.”

The Rancher replied: “Use both hands.”

So… confused.

argentumextraho — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:33:45 +0000

I’ve got a horrible case of the jitters; I though I needed to eat but that didn’t help. Didn’t hurt, but didn’t fix it. My personal life, such as it is, has me wound like a spring. I don’t like commitments; I don’t like giving any person ‘all’ of me because I don’t like anyone having that kind of hold over me. My husband doesn’t even get that kind of power over me. Now my best friend has given me something of an ultimatum: either I devote myself to ‘just us’ or he’s leaving. I feel like I’m trapped in an either/or situation where neither choice is what I want; either I give all of myself over, or he’ll leave completely. I don’t want either of those and yet I don’t see any compromises. Part of me would relieved at the end to the conflict and no further drama if he left. Part of me just cringes at the loneliness that would leave me with. I don’t know why it should bother me though; I’ve been alone most of my life so that’s hardly anything new. I suppose I could drop all relationships everywhere; not that there’s many people I spend time with outside of game, and that would give me more time alone to concentrate on homework, but it would also give me more time alone to drink and brood… two activities I’m very good at. Speaking of drinking I would terribly love to just drown the confusion but my stomach is so tight I think it wouldn’t agree with me. And it would be a damned shame to go throw up my good scotch.

Speaking of homework I have a paper due this week… not happening right now though; I can’t concentrate well enough to just put my thoughts on paper, let alone a homework assignment.

10 Jan 12.

argentumextraho — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:07:25 +0000

The weather is still too cold to do anything with the hive outside, but I’ve been working on oiling the new hive in the living room for staining later. I’m going to do something completely different this year and use a tinted stain… mild violet I think. Reading continues on the book my mentor suggested and will for a little while, because this book is big. But it’s a good book too, so I don’t mind packing the behemoth around.

One of the the boards I frequent someone posted this link: http://www.honey-bees.de/videos/75-heathland-traditional-beekeeping-skep-apiary-videos.html – it’s a link to several historical videos on bee keeping with skeps (something you don’t see here in the states any more) in Germany. Its been translated of course.

From the Washington Post.

argentumextraho — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:40:26 +0000

The Washington Post
August 18, 2011
Obama: The Affirmative Action President by Matt Patterson (columnist for the Washington Post, New York Post, San Francisco Examiner)

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world’s largest economy, direct the world’s most powerful military, execute the world’s most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama’s pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a “community organizer”; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote “present”) ; and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator.

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama’s “spiritual mentor”; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama’s colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass — held to a lower standard — because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) “non-threatening,” all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon –affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don’t care if these minority students fail; liberals aren’t around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist.

Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin — that’s affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn’t racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama’s oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people — conservatives included — ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichÃ©s, and that’s when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth — it’s all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

Religion… yeah, it’s like this.

argentumextraho — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:19:13 +0000