Saturday: Hili dialogue

39 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

1. How do we know the “autobiographer” – and their support staff – didn’t just look around for names that – for whatever reasons – sounded good, and it just so happened that The Real JAC got picked?

2. Don’t tempt me…

   Well, okay, I was about to pour water onto the instant coffee and sugar in my saucer when I realised I had omitted the cup.

   And numerous times I have raced about the house searching for my glasses which were either sitting up on my forehead or already in place over my eyes (but I think that’s quite a common mistake).

   cr

   1. Oh, and further confirmation that I am not safe to be let out on my own – on Thursday I was making my way south down Mokoroa Stream (last visited a decade ago) in its steep narrow valley in thick bush and I came to the spot where Goldies Track crossed it east-west. As I dimly remember, the track crossed the stream and climbed steeply up the east bank. But there was a new sign that showed both destinations, east and west, going up the freshly-maintained track up the right (west) bank, which made no sense at all. I inspected the east bank and found traces of what might have been the abandoned remains of the old track – which I was reluctant to follow far, I had no wish to get lost, and tracks can disappear remarkably quickly in the bush. And I badly needed to find the east track to get back to civilisation.

      So, I thought, I’ll try the west track just far enough to confirm the sign is wrong – it could only be correct if someone’s built a huge long suspension bridge somewhere up ahead to cross back to the east bank, which would be ridiculous. So the track climbed steeply, then doubled back on itself and led – to an impressively long new suspension bridge across the valley directly above where I had been searching for the old track. I had just never thought to look up and my Aussie hat had effectively blinkered me. What a doofus.

      cr

   2. Woke up one morning, feeling hung over. Went to kitchen, put dark Dutch powder and water into coffee machine, set it going, went to micturate.
      – Followed sound of snores to find a Bob on sofa. turn sofa over informing Bob of the “morning” status of our region of space time.
      – Return to kitchen, adorn 3 mugs with sweeteners, sugars and instant coffee to individual tastes.
      – Go through to Runt’s bedroom and wake him up by practicing on his trumpet. Apparently the pressy buttony things are meant to be on the uphill side, whatever.
      – Return to kitchen as gurgling coffee machine stops gurgling. Pour coffee onto instant coffee in mugs, add spoons and cow juice and take through to other sufferers of morning. The coffee is drunk, with expressions of distrust for “Old Peculiar” (so named, as it makes you feel old and peculiar).
      This recipe is now, in a small and rather eccentric circle, known as “breakfast cofffee”. It is not recommended, but a second round is rarely made. By accident.

3. That teddy bear turkey – that is the stuff of nightmares. I should think it would give the poor little sods the horrors. “Your kids will love them” indeed – I hope no parent is sufficiently brainless as to inflict that on their offspring.

   cr

   1. Putting in googly eyes would not help. I would do that, actually.

      1. Lol!

   2. Leatherfaces’s teddy.

      1. I wondered what it reminded me of ,i was going to suggest it was out of the Dr Lector’s cookbook .

4. A cool new word for me: Chuntering –

   British informal

   1 Talk or grumble monotonously.
   ‘she chuntered on about her problems’

   So, the cat came to greet him, chuntering all the way.

   1. Confusingly close to ‘chundering’

5. I had mislaid my cell phone at home and unable to get to the land line for clutter to call myself I had to use the cell phone in my pocket.

   1. I lost my address book back in April or so. I guessed it migrated out of the side pocket of the rucksack onto the floor of the bus, before it departed for points 3 hours away and I walked to the flat.
      Much wailing, gnashing of teeth, phoning of bus depots at either end of the route, then buying of a new address book, starting to populate it from online address books.
      That was April. Found the missing address book under my coveralls this morning. Doh!

6. It’s also World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, whatever that is.

   There should be a slide-show explaining.

   1. “Look up, pun overhead!”

7. “This guy is unwell.”

   Isn’t it the whole nation though? It happens that a person is a conspirationist or does not accept claim from his authorities. It even happens that a cruel and twisted person attacks the victims – there were several media stations being victims for terrorist – mass scare – bombs. But it is still rare that the leader of the nation does all of that, to the inspiration of all these unwell persons.

   I am reminded of a saying I first met in English: “Shit runs downhill.”

   1. That explains why the orange abomination drained the swamp and replaced it with a sewer.

   2. Not knowing who Dinesh d’Souza is, I just thought it was flat out sarcasm.

8. Quibble: the ninth avenue IRT wasn’t the first subway in NYC. It was the first elevated commuter train in NYC and built 36 years before the first underground train. The first underground subway in NYC was constructed in 1904. The ninth ave IRT was replaced by the eight avenue line, the A, C, and E trains.

   1. The 8th Avenue line’s A train became world famous for being the main route uptown to Harlem, of course, thanks to The Duke and Billy Strayhorn.

9. Yes, I distinctly heard Armstrong say “That’s one small step for Iman, one giant leap for mankind” when he stepped on the moon.

   1. Armstrong was a fan of Mrs. Bowie?

      1. Imam. Joke gone bad.

10. A few weeks ago I was about to pee in the garbage can of a public bathroom.

11. Why is it that the mandible of that Iranian skeleton seems so long, and the chin bone so sharp and pronounced? I’m not an anatomist but that jaw looks very strange. Can anyone tell me what’s up with it?

    Here’s an article giving more information on the find https://kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/the-women-of-persia/reconstruction-of-the-face-of-a-5000-year-old-woman-in-iran/, but it doesn’t answer my question.

    1. Good observation. I’m no anatomist, but perhaps she had acromegaly.

       1. Google Images yields a few x-ray images of mandibular changes in acromegaly, not as many as I’d like, but from what I can discern, the chin bone elongates and forms a concave ridge that looks quite a bit like the chin on this woman, so I bet you’re right.

12. Just recalling, Dinesh D’Souza is a right-wing conspiracy theorist and felon who was convicted for campaign finance fraud to benefit NY Republican senate candidate Wendy Long and later pardoned by arch-hypocrite Donald Trump.
    https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newyork/news/press-releases/dinesh-dsouza-sentenced-in-manhattan-federal-court-to-five-years-of-probation-for-campaign-finance-fraud

13. I spent two weeks hiking the Ozark Highland Trail in Arkansas by myself, never had an issue. When I finished, I got in the car and immedy drove for 20 minutes in the wrong direction.

    1. That’s a good one!

       cr

       1. Oh, I once drove from Cortina d’Ampezzo past Venice and through Turin and Susa to Briancon in one afternoon, on the Autostrada. I just followed the ‘Torino’ and ‘Bardonecchia’ signs but it didn’t quite match what I was expecting and I couldn’t tell when I passed Milan, and when I stopped at a gas station the staff couldn’t point out where I was on the maps I had (but I spoke no Italian).

          Many months later, comparing my hurried snaps of autoroute signs with Streetview, I found I had been on a completely different autostrada 40 miles to the south.

          cr

          1. One morning, doing fieldwork out in the middle of the mountains, I saw the first person for 3 days – a couple of miles away on the other side of the valley. “Strange place to be- no footpaths over there,” thought I, and pottered on, preparing my stuff for the day.
             14 hours later, I was sitting outside the barn (well, it kept the rain off, if not the midges out), tucking into my tea when a footsore person appeared from the direction of my field work. Very strange direction to be coming from at that time of day.
             He was lost. Impressively lost. So while I put him outside a plate of scoff and a brew, we worked out where he’d been. In one 15 hour long walking session, he’d managed to get almost 40 km off his (perfectly sensibly planned) route. Which, since he had only started 15km from the edge of his map was a reasonable defence for having not been able to work out where he was.
             And all because he walked down the NW side of the col of his first decision point instead of the SW side. And he didn’t entirely trust his compass over his interpretation of the landscape.
             I put him on the road with instructions “keep the loch on your right, don’t get your feet wet. when you get to the boathouse, follow the only dirt track to the road, then turn right to get back to your car.” The local plod had noticed the car overnight where he’d parked it and was keeping a wary eye on it.

14. I once spent the better part of a morning looking for my reading glasses. They were on my head.

    1. I can’t find my reading glasses right now. Might they be on your head, too?

15. In addition to Neil Armstrong, everyone wants to claim Shakespeare.

    Various people have claimed him as a Catholic (John Noonan), and atheist (Walter Kaufmann), a conservative (Andrew Schlafly), and even Rosicrucian (W. F. C. Wigston). None of them are particularly convincing.

    One exception to this is that heavily Anglican author Roland Mushat Frye argues that Shakespeare is probably not a conventional Christian in his book “Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine”. The only “would-be-nice-if-he-was-in-my-camp-but-probably-not” book in Will I know of.

    1. Noted Elizabethan Lit scholar Andrew Schlafly not convincing? There’s a shocker. 🙂

    2. “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” – Chancellor Gorkon

16. One night my daughter & I had just located my car in the middle of a dark parking lot. I pulled out my keys and pressed a fob button to open the door remotely. Nothing happened.

    Me: “What the…???!”

    Daughter: (referring to key fob) “The battery’s probably dead.”

    Me: “Oh, great! Now how am I supposed to get into my car??!!”

    Daughter: “Well…I guess you could use your key.”

17. I remember in Vancouver taking a bus a shortish ways to meet some friends and colleagues for lunch. I remember looking up the streets before the stop on the routeplanner before hand and looked it over several times on route. Suddenly I am way out of the relevant area and in danger of going outside of my paid fare zone. To this day I wonder what happened to my brain that day.

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