ArtieShaw

Wasn’t Mitt the dude with the lady binders?

I didn’t really expect anyone to know that, which was sort of the joke. He was very famous in his time, but by now it’s a bit of a deep cut.

Artie Shaw was a clarinetist who ran a jazz band. In addition to that, he was also quite the weirdo. Womanizer, liked math a lot (like more than is natural), was an expert marksman who was nationally ranked in that sort of thing, and really into fly fishing. Also, currently, very dead. And that’s good because otherwise he’d be 114.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw

here’s a sample of his work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_v3GY3ZqdM

Shock: I’m not really Artie Shaw.

I suspect that if you just call them bison they won’t have any beef with you.

Many many years ago we watched an ancient movie in a theater. (It may have been Haxan). In any case, it ended on a dark, poignant and brutal note. There was silence until the word “slut” appeared and the entire theater erupted into laughter. Definitely an unintended mood lightener for the anglo audience.

Ex-astronomer nerd here. I would, unless light pollution is also a problem in the countryside. I saw the aurora twice when I was a teen. It was a long time ago, but definitely memorable.

Here in Ohio it’s hard to find any place with dark skies. Even farmers have high output lights attached to every barn and outbuilding. It comes off as a bit paranoid on their part, but maybe there are roving gangs of werewolves that I’m not aware of.

If you do find a dark place, give your eyes 20 minutes to dark-adapt. Don’t look at any terrestrial light directly and you’ll find that the available light will be enough to get around. If you do need a flashlight (sorry - torch) you can cover it with a red film to avoid ruining your night vision. It does make a difference when star gazing.

I have an at-home laser hair removal gun. It works best on dark hair and very pale skin because it uses the absorption of UV light to heat and kill the hair. It has a safety feature that makes you validate that “my skin is pale enough to use this” before it will turn on because it will burn anything dark. Hair, skin, whatever.

It won’t work on blond or white hair, and there’s no real workaround to that. Electrolysis is an option for light colored hair, but I think that’s more invasive. Not an option for me, so I haven’t looked into it.

I don’t agree.

It’s early afternoon and you’re on the front end of a 48 hour work trip. You just got off a plane in Cedar Rapids, found a rental car, and drove to the hotel. You’ve been traveling since 7:00am, the water bottle that you refilled at the connection in Chicago and again at the destination in Cedar Rapids is both disgustingly warm and mostly empty. The rental car was hot as fuck because it’s Cedar Rapids in July and the rental cars are sitting in an open lot rather than a garage.

Let’s Zork this out.

You need to cool down and rehydrate. Do you: a) buy a single use refrigerated bottle of water b) remember that there’s a fridge in the room and wait for 2 hours c) go east d) get yourself some bucket ice and tap water

Side quest pro-tip: do not pick up the metal bar

Twenty years ago my grandmother was dying of old age. She didn’t have any specific disease or diagnosis. She was just 92 and her body was shutting down. Whenever she was hospitalized for general organ failure they would give her a blood infusion and she would rebound.

Yes, everyone in the family made the same grim vampire jokes.

No one asked for her to receive this treatment, and she was definitely not well off financially. Her treatment was entirely driven by the medical staff. The only money being collected was through Medicare.

In retrospect, I’m more than half-way wondering if they were collecting data.

Indeed. Too real.