Real life fear/horror/madness

[Zettaijin]

I had no idea Darth Vader was asian.

In pretty much all the movies he's a big black dude.

I see.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Actually, Vader was actually a winy little wimp, pining for his mommy who he never visited.

All of his awesomeness comes from the helmet. Watch the films - he never does anything of significance without it.

Who knew, right?

The helmet was in fact the most powerful object in all fiction-dom: the great and mighty Mantle of James Earl Jones!

Legend has it that it was first crafted by Thulsa Doom.

[HuManBing]

On HDT's Inertia

My brother, HDT, is extremely lazy. We had these conversations.

On Mass

HMB: How much do you weigh?

HDT: I weighed myself with my Cat. Together we weigh over 200 lbs.

HMB: Crikey, that's heavy.

HDT: Yes. Clearly, Cat has to lose weight.

HMB:

On Movement

HMB: I'm reading this book about special relativity.

HDT: Oh? Anything enlightening?

HMB: Well it says that you can't go faster than the speed of light. And as you approach the speed of light in space, your "speed" through time slows down.

HDT: So that means with a maximum spatial speed, time stands still.

HMB: Yes, and with absolutely no spatial motion at all, you go through time at the maximum speed, aka the HDT speed.

HDT (thinking very hard about this): ...

HDT: ...

HDT: ..

HDT: .

HDT: HEY!

HMB:

[HuManBing]

Coming out: a confession

So, all through school I could tell I was not like the other boys. I didn't run around the playground shouting at snails, and I didn't pick fights with other kids so I could tie their shoes together and throw them over telephone lines. When all the boys my age were putting pillows over their heads and charging into each other headfirst, I wanted nothing better to stay indoors and bring out a book about the Universe or history.

At first they just thought I was weird and left me alone. Kids that age, everything's new to them, so whatever, right?

But then in middle school, things got real difficult. Your hormones are out of control by then, and kids are almost literally crazy from them. Under those sorts of conditions, you just can't lie about your true orientation. It was at that time I realized I might have opposite tendencies from most boys my age.

In short, I realized I might be a closet intellectual.

I kept this terrible secret hidden from my friends well enough, feigning interest in the latest Norwegian death slash metal, while pining for my classical music back home and Chopin and Beethoven. When forced to play soccer, I hid my distaste for the sweat, dirt, and adrenalin with a facade of general ineptitude - little did they suspect I'd really rather be épée fencing or playing chess.

Then one day, I found proof beyond all doubt. One of my friends found a stash of "specialist magazines" hidden under a bush, and brought them to school in a grubby backpack. All the boys gathered round him fighting over Playboy, Penthouse, and Automotive Weekly - all the normal basic male appetites. But somewhere in there was a single, shameful copy of American Scientist. I waited till they had thrown it to one side before retrieving it. While my friends gazed in drooling ecstasy over Jenny McCarthy, Cindy Crawford, and Ferrari 550 Maranellos, I found empyrean heights of wonder in reading about Space Elevators, Recombinant DNA, and the Pentium Processor.

Things only got harder in high school and college. Team sports got rougher and rowdier, and the after-game was most difficult of all. In the showers, surrounded by brutish over-muscled thugs, I'd fantasize about taking one of my teammates into a classroom and teaching him differential calculus or valency shell electron pair repulsion theory - of the moment of sublime pleasure when he actually grasped an abstract concept beyond thwacking a ball or sticking his thumb in an opposing player's eyesocket. These urges became harder to suppress and I was miserable, especially when the teammates would start a fight in the showers and then wrestle with each other in a grotesque display of grunting, soap-covered male flesh - which I found distasteful and homoerotic, but whatever floats their boat.

Thank goodness things got better in college. I met many different people who were far more liberal in their thinking - none of this testosterone-fuelled emphasis on loutishness and brute force. True, there were still cliques of people who would go play rugby in the mud and steam into a bar whereupon they would prank their teammates by sticking their genitals in each other's beers... but by and large I finally felt like I could be myself - be confident of what I wanted.

Be proud and say it in public: I am a man, and yes: I am an intellectual.


My local church wants nothing to do with me but that's the price I pay I guess.

[HuManBing]

How I Spent My Valentine's Day

Earlier on today, I was working at my computer which is downstairs in the basement. It is quite cold here and I often wear a jacket. Now that my landlord is out of town, I pretty much live in my chair, and after a few hours of cold toes and fingers, I wondered about living in the bathtub instead. With a carefully-regulated trickle of warm water, I could conceivably stay warm indefinitely. The only drawback was how to get out and eat something. (I figured the drinking could take care of itself if I was in the bathtub.)

These logistical considerations of food suddenly made me realize I was hungry, so I went upstairs to eat something. At that point I also suddenly realized it was nighttime. I put some dishes into the dishwasher to clean them, and started cooking some noodles. When they were done, the dishes came out and they were very nice and warm. I caught myself wondering whether I could live in the dishwasher instead. Fortunately I realized this was crazy talk - worthy of some sort of degenerate lunatic hermit - rather than the rational analysis of a modern educated man, so I stopped myself.

The noodles were nice though.

[HuManBing]

The Best Dream Ever

Last night I had a dream that I was a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet. It was awesome. I was flying around over fields and stuff and people were waving at me trying to get me to come down but what could they do? They were only people. I was a 747 Jumbo Jet. I don't have to do what they tell me. Plus if it came down to a fight I would probably win because I'm much heavier.

Easily the best dream I've had in recent months, and quite possibly one of the best dreams I've had in my life.

[HuManBing]

Valentine's Day Veganism

A few years ago, my girlfriend was big into museums. So one Valentine's Day we took the day off from work and law school, and we agreed that she would take care of the tickets to the museum, and I would handle the dinner reservations.

As it turned out, she took me to go to "Body Worlds 2" which is an exhibition of preserved human cadavers in interesting poses. Some of them are stripped down to the skeleton, others have varying degrees of reduction (musculature and nervous systems were a common theme). There was one human body that had every bodily component dissected and separated, with a few millimeters' space between each one so you could see how it all fit together, suspended in space - and a single human body thus sectioned was about four meters high.

It struck me as a weird place to go for Valentine's Day, but it was very informative and also pretty artistic if you're into that sort of thing.

At the end of the tour I signed the guestbook saying "Your exhibition has renewed my faith in the beauty of the human body, and also given me the motivation I needed to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle."

I also called up the restaurant and cancelled the dinner reservations, opting for a vegan place instead.

[Ail]

Coming out: a confession

So, all through school I could tell I was not like the other boys. I didn't run around the playground shouting at snails, and I didn't pick fights with other kids so I could tie their shoes together and throw them over telephone lines. When all the boys my age were putting pillows over their heads and charging into each other headfirst, I wanted nothing better to stay indoors and bring out a book about the Universe or history.

At first they just thought I was weird and left me alone. Kids that age, everything's new to them, so whatever, right?

But then in middle school, things got real difficult. Your hormones are out of control by then, and kids are almost literally crazy from them. Under those sorts of conditions, you just can't lie about your true orientation. It was at that time I realized I might have opposite tendencies from most boys my age.

In short, I realized I might be a closet intellectual.

I kept this terrible secret hidden from my friends well enough, feigning interest in the latest Norwegian death slash metal, while pining for my classical music back home and Chopin and Beethoven. When forced to play soccer, I hid my distaste for the sweat, dirt, and adrenalin with a facade of general ineptitude - little did they suspect I'd really rather be épée fencing or playing chess.

Then one day, I found proof beyond all doubt. One of my friends found a stash of "specialist magazines" hidden under a bush, and brought them to school in a grubby backpack. All the boys gathered round him fighting over Playboy, Penthouse, and Automotive Weekly - all the normal basic male appetites. But somewhere in there was a single, shameful copy of American Scientist. I waited till they had thrown it to one side before retrieving it. While my friends gazed in drooling ecstasy over Jenny McCarthy, Cindy Crawford, and Ferrari 550 Maranellos, I found empyrean heights of wonder in reading about Space Elevators, Recombinant DNA, and the Pentium Processor.

Things only got harder in high school and college. Team sports got rougher and rowdier, and the after-game was most difficult of all. In the showers, surrounded by brutish over-muscled thugs, I'd fantasize about taking one of my teammates into a classroom and teaching him differential calculus or valency shell electron pair repulsion theory - of the moment of sublime pleasure when he actually grasped an abstract concept beyond thwacking a ball or sticking his thumb in an opposing player's eyesocket. These urges became harder to suppress and I was miserable, especially when the teammates would start a fight in the showers and then wrestle with each other in a grotesque display of grunting, soap-covered male flesh - which I found distasteful and homoerotic, but whatever floats their boat.

Thank goodness things got better in college. I met many different people who were far more liberal in their thinking - none of this testosterone-fuelled emphasis on loutishness and brute force. True, there were still cliques of people who would go play rugby in the mud and steam into a bar whereupon they would prank their teammates by sticking their genitals in each other's beers... but by and large I finally felt like I could be myself - be confident of what I wanted.

Be proud and say it in public: I am a man, and yes: I am an intellectual.


My local church wants nothing to do with me but that's the price I pay I guess.

Simply great. I can relate to so much in this =)

[HuManBing]

Vlad Drakov attended a strip club.

It didn't end very well.

[Nukdai]

Flying home in a C-130 after a tour in Iraq. Looking up and seeing hydraulic fluid leaking from hoses across the ceiling. When you ask the crew chief about it he says plainly let me know if it stops....we will all die. No wonder why people go through Airborne taining.

[HuManBing]

Using a toilet in China can be pretty harrowing. They don't subscribe to the "sit on a bowl" idea. Instead they go more for a "squat over a trench" idea.

This is actually better for your muscles and relevant orifices (wider angles and less internal pressure and whatnot), but it also makes it hard to keep everything clean. Things are changing slowly but it's still grody enough that I give a silent prayer of thanks that I'm male and thus am spared much of the squatting.

There was one time I had a cold, and I tried one of those chewing remedies you can get. It's not quite betel nut, and it's not quite tobacco either. I think it is herbal-based, and given the extremely cheap price I can't imagine it has anything truly potent in it. It had a minty, aniseed sort of flavor and it made my tongue tingly and that was it.

It also made my saliva very thick. I went to one of the infamous Beijing squat toilets and tried to spit all this pulp out of my mouth.

The saliva was so thick it went down in a single unbroken line, like some sort of aqueous spider on a silk strand. It was so thick that it hit the surface of the foul disgusting organic gunk in the toilet and did not break.

...

Then, as I watched in a species of ever mounting horror, it reached the limit of its extension and then under the viscous force of its own surface tension, it began to retract towards me from the reeking cesspit.

WHAT DO YOU DO IN THIS SITUATION? IT IS WATER IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BEHAVE LIKE THAT DAMN YOU PHYSICS.

I was fumbling around madly in my pockets for a bit of tissue paper, when the line of (now ominously darkly-colored) spittle finally broke of its own accord and plashed into the toilet.

I try not to think too hard about the fact that I was connected through a brief liquid membrane to unspeakably vile human waste. Also, I try not to think too hard about the fact that every time I (or any other gentleman for that matter) goes for a pee-pee, exactly the same thing happens only with a different point of contact.

[Nerit]

My experience?


Reading that post by HMB.

[Manofevil]

Me too!

[Zettaijin]

I've missed this thread so bad.

Oh and quat toilets are also popular in Japan. In Japan, you either get the deluxe bum warming, water spraying type or you get the squat toilet. My school has the later.

[HuManBing]

Squat toilets (a.k.a. "The Lay-And-Display" toilets) are also popular in Europe, where you can find them more commonly the closer you get to the Mediterranean.

I've used both types and I can attest that the squat toilets are both far better for your posture, and far worse for hygiene. I wonder if there is a happy medium - I've heard that some Japanese places have something that's effectively an elevated squat toilet. Elevation is good because it takes the seat higher up, which means you reduce the risk of human waste mixing with the floor-level dirt and grime and vice versa.

I do miss the postural benefits of squat toilets though. On a bowl toilet it feels so damn ineffective - like you're trying to ventilate a house with all the windows half-open.