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Interspecies Group Dynamics and the Effects of Transporting Precious Artifacts Over Vast Distances: a Study, by J. Tolkien
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:47 PM on May 23, 2020

Company Town Comes to the Jungle: the Effects of Magical Realism and Isolation on Expansionist Capitalism
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:20 AM on May 24, 2020

I've been better. A lot better. I'm having massive feelings of imposter syndrome, trying desperately to seem competent at online teaching, yet terrified that if I ask my colleagues for help, they'll point their fingers and Donald Sutherland scream at me, realizing that I'm not doing enough, or that I'm not the teacher they thought I was, and it's taking so, so much more work and time than it ever would if I was just. at. school.

Yesterday, after a long and ultimately… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 11:14 PM on May 18, 2020

I'm sort of flailing at teaching over zoom at the moment. I'm in my second year at the school, and was essentially brought on full-time from April to overhaul classes for the sort of mid-level kids that are too advanced for regular EFL classes, yet not advanced enough for the full on returnee level classes. Last year was essentially getting my bearings, and I had planned for a pretty full on revamp of the classes and students I'm in charge of, but those plans were pretty much based on being in… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 10:53 PM on May 16, 2020

Going back about six years now, Mrs. Ghidorah and I have an ongoing game about spotting stray cats. One cat, one point, first to spot it gets the point. One cat who used to live around here was worth two points based on the, uh, prominent reminders of just how manly of a cat he was (Mrs. Ghidorah named him, but I’d never seen balls that large on a cat before). Non-strays (either in a window or outside with a collar) are pleasant, but don’t count. Mistaking a dog for a cat is -2 points. All of… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:51 AM on May 10, 2020

Oh, please keep going you guys. I spent the morning crying and this is the cure.

“I’ll take ‘Things That You Might Hear On A Goth Podcast Shortly Before They Play Disintegration’ for $600, Alex.”
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 12:57 PM on May 2, 2020

went a tiny bit...overboard with the self-inflicted quarantine haircut

I mentioned in the venting thread that I'd said I wasn't going to shave (or even trim) my beard until my school started up again and I got to go back to teaching, and that, on finding out we likely won't go "back" until probably September, I decided to shave.

So I did. I shaved off the beard that I've had for the last ten years, with exceptions… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:14 AM on April 26, 2020

Well, in my defense, the boredom was letting the beard grow out longer than I have in years, maybe two months without a trim, when I usually trim it down to 3mm every couple weeks or so. The terrible decision of shaving was more due to the realization settling in that I won't be back at school in May, June, or July, and that my joking refusal to groom was the stupid thing.

A cavalcade of stupid choices, really. But I'm happy to be a hashtag that confuses the hell out of… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:36 AM on April 26, 2020

I just found out yesterday that my school has decided this term (usually April to early July, now May to late July) will be entirely online. I get it. I’m in favor of it. I think it’s the absolute correct decision, and I was honestly expecting it. Hearing it yesterday in a zoom meeting, I had to work hard to keep myself from crying when I heard it. Among other things, it’s direct confirmation that I’m not likely to really leave the house, see people, live anything like the normal life we’re all… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:34 PM on April 23, 2020

Sorry, misozaki, and I'll memail you about this, but literally everything I've heard about the lack of a stay at home order is that they can't do it constitutionally. They are slimy as hell, and clearly trying to pass the buck onto anyone else they can, and yeah, I can see this as a beginning of the push towards re-writing the constitution like they've been trying to do. Anyway, memail. And trust me, I feel the same way.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:14 PM on April 23, 2020

lollusc, what I've been mailing to friends on their birthdays is basically what my dad* used to say, that birthdays are moveable feasts, and some day, when all of this is, I don't know, whatever, and we can all get back together, it's just going to be everyone's birthday, all at once, for as long as it's necessary to properly celebrate. So, premature happy fortieth, and again on Monday, and again whenever it's time, which let's hope is sooner, but still safe, than later.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 8:58 PM on April 23, 2020

soelo, I literally feel your pain. Partly due to stress, partly due to trying to cheerlead the tiny Japanese craft beer industry (which I’ve gotten to know over the past couple of years, and have good friends working at/running breweries), I’ve been drinking a lot more than before. Before, I’d have a beer or two once a week, maybe *drink* once a month. With a full beer fridge and wanting to be able to order more beer to help out these businesses, it became two or three beers a night with Mrs.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:19 PM on April 24, 2020

Never leave us again! It’s cold, and there are wolves after us!
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:33 AM on April 20, 2020

Not so much my food, but as a couple local Mefites can attest, I've been running an underground meat club* for the last couple of years after my restaurant closed. Enough former customers kept asking if they could still buy my homemade sausages and bacon. Unfortunately, the licensing requirements to do anything like producing cooked meat products to sell to home consumers make it nigh impossible to do above board. Because of that, for the last couple of years, I've been… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 1:13 AM on April 15, 2020

The other, non-meat thing Mrs. Ghidorah and I are doing is, along with a lot of other beer geeks in Japan, ordering beers from craft beer breweries. With most craft beer bars closing down voluntarily, most orders for kegged beer have dried up. Not many breweries here focus on bottling or canning, and a lot are struggling at the moment. Over the past couple of years working in the industry, then writing about it, I've met a lot of brewers, and become friends with several of them, and it pains me… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 1:32 AM on April 15, 2020

Jessamyn, if you’re enjoying the crunchiness of Fritos as a side to your tuna sandwich, might I suggest putting them in the sandwich? Potato chips or corn chips in a sandwich gives a sandwich a wonderful crunch texture that, while not necessary, adds a little umph to each bite.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:50 PM on April 15, 2020

It looks like the original article on Wikipedia was removed/subsumed/edited down, but luckily, Wookiepedia has most of it, with bonus history, training, and move names. I give you several thousands of words on the 7 Styles of Lightsaber Combat, guaranteed to waste enrich several hours of your life.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:04 PM on April 11, 2020

Here in Japan, schools are set to open again in April, but there really doesn’t seem to have been much in the way of any social distancing during March at all. Restaurants are still up and running. People were out in parks all weekend for the cherry blossom viewing, maybe fewer than usual, but still plenty of people setting down mats and drinking and eating with their friends (like, five to eight people on a 10’x10’ mat).

Yesterday, I went to my school for the first… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 5:10 PM on March 23, 2020

Fuck. The governor of Tokyo, who’d been rumored to be ordering a lockdown, is holding a press conferencing really, really suggesting, very strongly, pretty please, that people stay home this week.

Today, after the largest single day number of positive tests in the city. No order to restaurants and bars to close down, and with no support structure for those that choose to close down during one of the traditionally busiest times of the year (business year end/beginning… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 4:37 AM on March 25, 2020

The surgeon says I can't keep it and turn it into a piece of gruesome jewelry after it's out though, bah.

mygothlaundry, I’m sorry to hear that (and that your surgery has been delayed, ouch!). When I had my gall bladder out, the surgeon presented me with my roughly chocolate-covered-almond-sized stone in a little plastic vial. I kept him(the stone, not the surgeon), and he’s on my book case. I call him Alexander.

I hope… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 2:48 PM on March 26, 2020

The restaurant where Mrs. Ghidorah works shut down last Saturday, announcing the closure of their whole group over Facebook before notifying staff, someone whom were on their way to work at the time. She’s part time, and hasn’t heard anything since then from the company directly, only bits from full time workers that she’s in touch with. That’s about $800/month of income our household just lost, with no word of whether it’ll come back, in the middle of the Japanese government announcing the… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:41 PM on April 8, 2020

I put together a small facebook page for friends and acquaintances to post photos of what they're making for dinner (and hopefully recipes, but that's been a struggle), both as a place to show off, but also as a way to inspire each other, or help one another think of different things to try so we don't fall into a rut. If this was only going to be a one or two week thing, sure, no worries, but at some point, you end up going all the way through your playbook, and then what's next? I'm interested… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 9:07 AM on April 6, 2020

If we're doing a March Madness we should also have ESPN-style talking heads making for and against cases for each book.

I'll be Stephen A. Smith and do bizarrely left-field hot takes.

Come back, sports! We miss you, and we promise we’ll be better, just don’t leave us again! Come back, and it’ll be just like it used to!
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:23 AM on March 19, 2020

I remember finding the Celestine Prophecy laughable, but I had the misfortune of working in a bookstore during its boom* and we could barely keep it in stock until one day, the boom just ended, and we had a full display of dozens and dozens of copies just sitting there, utterly ignored by all.

In terms of loathing, I made it about twelve or fifteen pages into Sword of Shanara before it became the only book I’ve ever thrown across a room. Never got any further. I did… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:42 AM on March 19, 2020

Mister Moofoo, I think I've ended up in a similar place regarding Gaiman. I absolutely loved Sandman, and really enjoyed moments where I came across things that he had based parts of his stories on (Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, which he cited as a book he drew from was pretty amazing), and I don't doubt part of that was young nerd Ghidorah being excited to find something that felt like it justified all of the useless knowledge I'd come across.

As I've gotten… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 8:20 AM on March 24, 2020

Honestly, the thing I've been playing the most recently has been Pokemon Go, and March was supposed to be chock full of events and chances to get rare mon, but Japan, Korea, and Italy all had those events cancelled (and, yeah, for good reason). Instead of having fun events and reasons to keep going, it just sort of reverted to the basic game with no real incentive to keep playing. Since things got serious in America, though, Niantic seems to be finally trying to figure out how to keep people… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 9:27 PM on March 14, 2020

I’ve mentioned this in other threads, but I feel like I’m incredibly lucky to have gotten out of food service and back into teaching in Japan, as if I managed to make the tight choice at the right time for a change. My school closed on the sixth, but my responsibilities only changed in that I didn’t have to go in on the 11th, and am not scheduled (or at this point, allowed) to go in until the 23rd, and even that might change (it’s literally just a prep day for the next school year, changing… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:24 PM on March 12, 2020

Feral kale is a misnomer. The real mistake, though, is believing any kale can actually be domesticated. One wrong step, and even the gentlest seeming kale can revert back to its latent Paleolithic rage responses. Please keep that in mind when petting your kale.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:26 PM on March 12, 2020

Ah, Madagascar, you scamp/reason why I always lose pandemic!
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:49 PM on March 12, 2020

Jessamyn, I’ve been dealing with something similar. I had a weird internal pop while lifting something over the summer, and people I was working with told me I had a weird protrusion on my side (I was wearing a tight dry-fit shirt), so I went to a hospital, told them everything, and they did a ct scan and told me there was nothing wrong, even though I had a weird bulge and I was in pain. A couple weeks later, the pain wasn’t getting any better, so I went to another hospital, same thing, same… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:30 AM on March 13, 2020

This is starting to remind me of time dilation in a bad car accident. Right before the end of my fourth year in college, I was driving two friends to a senior dinner for our department. We got hit by a lebaron doing about 70, and the fact that I was driving an old two door blazer is probably why none of us died, though the impact of the other car put my right front wheel under the blazer’s engine block. We got hit, we spun, we tipped on one side, spun more, flipped back upright, and finally came… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 10:13 AM on March 13, 2020

Cortez, anymod, sort of a joke, sort of a request, seeing as I imagine we’ve got a lot more people reading a lot more often than usual, maybe put up note on the top, where you’ve done announcements before, something along the lines of

“Remember to wash your hands, stop touching your face, and just take a deep breath, we’ll get through this”
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 10:05 PM on March 13, 2020

Sauces are where I’m a Viking. For fries/tater tots, whatever, usually mayo, cider vinegar, black pepper, and a pleasant, but not overwhelming hot sauce. A friend gave me a bottle of hatch chili based sauce, and that was perfect. A little oregano is nice, too.

From a place I used to work, a solid spicy ranch dip (we used it for hush puppies), but given the difference between sour cream in Japan and the states (not sure of elsewhere, but sour cream in Japan is very thick)… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 4:51 PM on February 29, 2020

Not sure how many people are still following this thread, but PM Abe announced last night that all schools nationwide are expected to close next Monday, March 2nd, until at least the 23rd or 24th, which is the start of the spring vacation (when there aren’t any classes anyway). This was evidently a unilateral announcement, done without consulting prefectural governors, the board of education, or even the scientific experts on the council that’s supposed to be dealing with the virus. This morning… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 9:02 PM on February 27, 2020

Folks, it's simple math. Two legs are fine. Four legs are usually pretty good, with the potential to inspire awws and related adorableness. Past four, we're entering a world of levels of eww, while accepting that there do exist some insects that are kind of okay. But once you cross the hated eight leg barrier, there is nothing good on the other side. Only gross terrible things that hate and are evil. Past the land of terror (eight legs) you're just talking about straight up… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 8:04 PM on February 24, 2020

dancestoblue, I asked this question about spiders a while back, and I was told that, essentially, there is no poison that works on spiders. I don’t know if it was one of those “the thing you want does not exist” or if it was “the thing you want exists, but is utterly toxic to all things and you would also die.”

Either way, no. Can’t be poisoned. Sure. That’s a sign of something that’s totally not from the darkest regions of the outer night. Definitely adorbs.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 9:19 PM on February 24, 2020

How long did it take you to do that?

About twenty minutes. Same as back before this was a town.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 9:20 PM on February 26, 2020

I want to thank you, too, for posting this. I mean, it's cheesy to talk about the good old days, but there's still a part of me that remembers looking to MetaFilter because the signal to noise ratio was often better than other sources, and that during significant events, rumors and factual errors tended to get caught and debunked faster than most national news sites. Specifically, for me, the Fukushima earthquake/tsunami was one of those events, where it ended up that I could get more accurate… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 8:09 PM on February 24, 2020

Phone-wise, I'm still playing Pokémon Go, and occasionally play Alto's Odyssey, and have recently started playing Mini Metro and SpellTower again. There was a big holiday sale on PS4s here in Japan, but I dithered, and the stock ran out before the stated end of the sale. I've got a lot more time to kill these days, and I was thinking I'd get one during the sale and start playing games again. When that fell through, I went back to my old PS3, but my controllers had died, so I had to get a third… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 4:31 PM on February 22, 2020

There should be a commemorative bathrobe for the 20 Year Club.

With a wedding anniversary coming up, I did the standard google search for “what’s the supposed standard gift for this anniversary,” and having seen the bathrobe comment, I’m all in for a list of commemorative items by year of membership, year one to year whatever. Something like

Year Ten: Commemorative Sock Puppet. If you haven’t made a sock puppet account yet,… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 2:59 PM on February 21, 2020

I've been rereading Pattern Recognition, and Cayce's calming mantra "he took a duck to the face" or just "a duck to the face" could be a pretty solid username.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 5:00 PM on February 16, 2020

I evidently look “just like” a random person known to almost every person I ever meet. A lot more often than not, a person I’ve never met before, on being introduced, will let me know what random acquaintance of theirs I remind them of. It’s uncanny.

I’m also lousy with names and faces, and it takes repeated meetings for me to internalize someone’s name and face, but somehow I’ve become memorable to people, so a lot more often than I’m comfortable with, I have to do… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:01 PM on February 8, 2020

Well, jamjam, not to worry! Exchanging money for a knife with your doppleganger is considered the standard way to sever yourself from them and to keep them from following you and assuming your life.

You, uh, did complete the ritual when you got home, right?
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:41 PM on February 9, 2020

KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat, I feel your pain. Literally. 20 years after my second surgery on a lumbar disc, I've finally gotten a doctor to actually listen to me about the weird connection between yawning and cramps that reach from my shoulder down to my hip, that have made me afraid to yawn, and yeah, I've got a disc letting go in my neck.

The doctor told me that the advil I've been taking for this is less than useless against nerve pain, and has put me on Lyrica, which… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:16 PM on January 29, 2020

Cortex, as someone who follows you on twitter (does that sound stalkery? that's definitely not the intent) and appreciates the art you make and the explanations of the craft you put into it, and seeing what you're writing here, I want to tell you that you shouldn't feel any sort of guilt about giving yourself time to create. It seems, very clearly, to be a positive in your life. And you're very clearly working your ass off here. If, at some point between running this place and all it entails,… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 12:42 AM on February 6, 2020

I played Settlers of Cataan for the first time on Monday, after watching the super bowl with friends, while tipsy, and won, bizarrely. Honestly, the fashion in which I won seemed as if I had a keen understanding of the rules and exploited them to my advantage, but mostly, it was me just asking "hey, uh, can I do this?" and my friends looking at each other like, "oh, there's just no way that's possible" then checking the rules and finding out that, yeah, I… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 7:00 PM on February 4, 2020

Gribenes is the stuff that goes in potato kugel and makes it transcendent instead of just a potato onion muffin. It’s also the stuff that, if you’ve been helping in the kitchen and in general been a mensch, your mom will let you nibble on from time to time.

So good.


Oh god, this is so wrong (and definitely tref), but hear me out: grilled cheese with gribenes in the middle.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 2:24 AM on February 5, 2020

Just as a data point, but several years ago, while there was a thread (that I posted in a bit)going on that got a lot of attention, I received an email from someone who wasn't a member of this site, asking me about what I had written. I've never had my email visible (as far as I can recall) to anyone but the mods, but that email address is from the early days of the internet, and is simply My_Name@site.com. It's not like it took a great deal of sleuthing to be found, but literally all they had… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 6:53 PM on January 29, 2020

I used to wear necklaces, mostly ones with Judaic imagery, when I was a teen and still a mostly observant Jew. One necklace had a habit of getting torn off or having the chain break at bad times, like in a mosh pit or playing no-pads tackle football in foot deep grass. Every single time it came off, though, I always got it back, either someone bringing it up to me and asking if it was mine, or managing to find it on my own. I can’t remember what it said on it, but it was something I liked.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 2:02 AM on January 5, 2020

I move that Etrigan’s fantastic post about the tragic death of a storied form of narrative expression founded upon feats of athleticism, spandex, and excessive baby oil application be made eligible for the contest. It’s only crime was being too perfect to hold off until January had begun.
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 4:23 AM on January 1, 2020