Real life fear/horror/madness

[LadySoth]

You're preaching to the choir on that one. And how many of those textbooks, do you only end up reading one chapter out of and never look at again? Textbook market is such a racket. I used to work in a university bookstore, in some cases there was 300% markup.


An old Horror Check:

One of my old friends from my previous university loved the chilli they served at our on-campus restaurant. Now, this restaurant was (in)famous among the student body due to the amount of roaches and other pests that you could see everytime you went in the store. A long time previous, I had decided to never buy anything that wasn't prepackaged since you could never be sure of the quality of the "fresh" food.

Anyway, so my friend goes in to buy her chilli, and comes out ashen-faced, sans chilli.

"I just saw . . . it had to be the biggest freaking BUG I have ever seen!" she exclaims.

"Oh, yeah, the roaches" I say, "didn't you know about that?"

Of course she had no idea. "I'm never buying ANYTHING from this place again" she says.

our other friend turns and says to her, in all seriousness, "well, I guess that answered the question you had the other day, about that huge bean you found in the chili; haha, you were all 'SCORE! GIANT BEAN!' and ate it up, remember?"

First friend looks nauseous. Never saw her eating the chilli again.

[LadySoth]

Madness check:

Called Maintenance last week because fridge was broken, everything inside completely ruined, floor covered in water from ice box defrosting. Have unplugged the fridge because it was making horrible noises at night, due to this malfunction. Get a note from Maintenance this morning:

"issue resolved. Keep fridge plugged in to avoid items defrosting."



They just plugged in the broken fridge again without even fixing the problem.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Oh, god, nothing is worse than a broken fridge.

One time my power was shut off without notice while I was away for a week.

I had ice cream and crab legs in the freezer, but by worst was the loaf of bread.

I ended up using crumpled up newspaper inside the crisper to absorb the lingering stink.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Try losing a freezer full of breastmilk. You get the mess, the spoiled food, and the added bonus of a angry and despairing wife.

[HuManBing]

Speaking about breastmilk, I have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and sixteen great-great-grandparents. (Of these people, only two are currently alive, but I'm counting all the rest because they are genetically significant.) In this specific respect I am entirely normal.

One side of my family is Muslim, and marriage between first cousins is considered acceptable - although these days it's fairly uncommon. One of my uncles (codenamed 2) married a first cousin, my aunt (codenamed 2+). They had three daughters (codenamed 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3), all of whom are top scholars in Hong Kong and currently pursuing successful medical careers. None of the daughters has shown any sign of genetic problems arising from consanguinous parenthood. The middle daughter has unusually pale skin but this has been seen as a cosmetic benefit by the rest of the family.

This same cousin (codenamed 2.2) is of particular interest to me because she is extremely attractive and good company and seems to be quite happy when I'm around. She's also very liberal with hugs and cuddles and kisses and she doesn't have a boyfriend as far as I know. Hanging out with her I got the sense that it could end well for everybody involved.

HOWEVER IT COULD ALSO END POORLY FOR EVERYBODY INVOLVED

Before things got out of hand, I decided to sit down and draw a family tree to determine how many ancestors we have.

[th]Individual[/th][th]Parents[/th][th]G'parents[/th][th]G'G'parents[/th][th]G'G'G'parents[/th]

Bing (son of unrelated parents)	2 (par)	4 (par)	8 (par)	16 (par)
2.2 (daughter of first cousins)	2 (par)	4 (par)	6 (-2)	12 (-4)
Antichrist (spawn of Bing + 2.2)	2 (par)	4 (par)	6 (-2)	10 (-6)

My cousin (2.2) is the daughter of first cousins and she has: two parents, four grandparents, but only six great-grandparents - which is two fewer than normal. This is the inevitable byproduct of her parents (2 and 2+) being first cousins themselves.

If this cousin and I had a kid (codenamed "Antichrist" for brevity) the kid would have: Two parents (par), four grandparents (par), six great-grandparents (two under par), and ten great-great-grandparents (six under par). One generation further, and the kid would have twenty g'g'g'parents, or twelve fewer than a normal kid.

This gives rise to the "Kissing Cousin Paradox":
1. There are a few reasons why you totally should.
2. ...and there are a significant number of reasons why you absolutely should NOT.

To me this is an eloquent distillation of the tragedy of the human condition, fallen from grace.


I believe I shall have to be especially devious here.

[HuManBing]

A very short one.

I had a dream this morning that I brought my date back home for a home-cooked dinner and some movies on Netflix.

This would have gone well except for the fact that my house had turned into an M C Escher piece during my absence.

This posed a few problems with my date. It took us a long time to get in through the front door, and once inside we could not actually find the kitchen at all. I had to call my landlord for directions.

"Can I use your bathroom?"

"Sure, it's upside down on the second door from the floor where the basement meets the ceiling."

:/

[HuManBing]

My landlord and I have odd conversations by chat.

[Manofevil]

Why would you DISPOSE of dancing girls? You live in Asia, don't you? You could trade them to the crime syndicates for stereo equipment.

[LadySoth]

Originally posted this on main forum, but thought it went better here.

[HuManBing]

Oh, man. I can believe she's been through plenty of editorial tussles and can teach well about them too. Anybody signing up for her class would get their money's worth and then some.

"How to slip stuff past the editorial radar by playing around with names..."

[LadySoth]

Right. Just thought it was kind of funny, given her infamously venomous relationship with the editors while working on the Strahd books, this initally seems like a madness check. But she has worked as an editor for several short story collections however, so she's definitely qualified to give a panel on editing, it would really be interesting to hear if she would mention her negative experience working with the editors on the Ravenloft books, or if she'd primarily stick to her more positive interactions as the short story collections editor.

[HuManBing]

I can't really say much because a lot is still up in the air.

But I did a bit of unpaid research work for an eminent lawyer in my town. He was really good to work for and very appreciative of my help.

He asked me what sort of law I was interested in, and I told him my specialty. He called up the law firm where he used to be a partner, a few years back, and got the name and contact details of the firm's specialist in that field of law.

I decided to email her, but first I Googled her name. It was a good thing I did.

This was no ordinary "expert". She had been a former U.S. President's top legal expert on this field of law.

I decided to take a long while in writing my email to her and be very careful doing it. I sent the email off to her after spending about five hours composing it.

I got an autoresponse in about thirty seconds. She's out of the country and by the time she gets back, my email will probably be lost in the shuffle. :/

[HuManBing]

My favorite make of shotguns are Citoris.

It annoys me when people automatically assume I've made a spelling error.

[Zettaijin]

I have long hair and although I'd like to get some of it trimmed to remove damaged tips and the like, I'm afraid of local barbers.

There's this road I take sometimes and every time I pass by the barber shop, the balding owner rushes to the window to give me a very cold stare.

Scary...

[HuManBing]

I got to sleep at 10 p.m. last night so I could wake up at 6 a.m. this morning in order to read the email (sent at midnight) telling me that work is closed today!