I'm around and Fresh Salt is fine.
I wish I could! Blandings and I will be traveling next week.
Well, drat. The NY commentariat has grown thin on the ground. Who else is possible... Barry Freed? Tia? I'm not remembering anyone else still local, but I'm terrible at that sort of thing.
The Pittsburghers should rent a stationwagon and do a road trip.
3.2: This post had me lamenting that I had not been able to make an NYC meetup in a while. And I still have relatives there, but that's the problem one of them is here this weekend, and then more coming here for a seder in a couple of weeks.
Josh can stay on normal vegetation side of the country for a couple extra days and the Bostonians can come down. It's what, an hour on the TGV we so sensibly built decades ago.
If Christie had built that tunnel I'd be there in a New York minute.
Lurkers welcome, of course, if there are any around NYC who haven't piped up yet.
3. Thinking about it but I've been out of town for much of the past month (though nearby on eastern LI). I have some business that I need to take care of in the city so I may try to arrange some things and see if I can make it in but I can't commit yet.
How late are people planning to stay? I went to a thing in Brooklyn back in October and learned that I pretty much can't get to anywhere beyond Grand Central before 7:30 or 8. I'm less concerned about getting back home late. If I make it at all, then by definition I will not have so much work to do that I can't make it.
Generally, people stay until at least ten or so. Myself, I'm very bad at leaving a bar. So getting there by 8:30 or so should be fine.
I had no idea you were local these days. I must get better about moving the little pins with flags on them around the world map.
It depends on the definition of local. But close enough to think about going to a meetup in NY.
That must be it -- I had you pegged on the East Coast somewhere (about to head back to CA), but hadn't realized you were in commuting distance.
14: I thought it was either a Bulldog or a Bear... or maybe someplace in between.
I don't know why, but it cracks me up that Wikipedia has a List of mammals in Connecticut.
And includes the wolf: extirpated in Connecticut in the nineteenth century; deliberately killed by early settlers, but the population also was hurt by the reduction of its food supply (largely deer).
Speaking of extirpated in Connecticut, I think I've mentioned here how cool the tracks at Dinosaur State Park are.
It's true that I can take a train to NYC, but I usually drive to a mid-line Metro North station.
That was supposed to be a reply to
17: A suitably indirect answer.
There's a possibility I'll be able to make it.
21: The other mammals got together and voted us out of the club for being assholes.
Barring some huge jump in productivity in the next 36 hours, I'm not going to make it. Spent a fair amount of today realizing that there are more things I should do* to wrap up this job.
*Not things I committed to and forgot. Just things that would help the people taking over some of the work I've been doing.
I have a lot to do myself and I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it. If I do it may be early like 5:30 or so.
Just joining the chorus of those who can't make it today, but know full well they are overdue to visit Fresh Salt.
Well, as long as you don't mind missing the expected knife fights.
In what must be considered a victory for the little-known but very real knife rights movement, the Tennessee legislature has repealed the state's ban on switchblades.
I'll be there and maybe I should mention that I've always thought switchblades and butterfly knives were pretty cool gadgets.
I, personally, have always considered knives with moving parts effete. Fixed blade or nothing.
I may not be able to make it now, sorry. Knife-fight proudly in my absence!
I am sorry I can't be there, but on the other hand JM and are are in Carcassonne and full of cassoulet.
While your disloyalty to Fresh Salt has been noted, I have to admit that that sounds like a pretty good excuse for not showing up.
I'm hearing 17 to Carly Simon's "The Wives are in Connecticut". "Trying to forget it, that they really do regret it, that their haaa-biii-taaat's Connecticut..."
And I am skulking out of the office now -- should be there in fifteen or twenty.
Moar liveblogging please. Otherwise I'm about to fall asleep at 7 PM again, continuing to prolong my jetlag.
Teraz and Barry Freed are here -- Ajay and Tia remain absent. As does Motumbo.
They are discussing obscure languages they speak and are planning to learn. I am feeling sadly
monolingual.
guys, it's unlikely for me after all. I'm sorry. Have a good time!
We are now talking about Polish Muslim Tatars.
Relevantly, I am waiting for tater tots to be delivered.
We have acquired non-bald Chris and Ajay, and are discussing homicidal whales.
Is not-bald Chris still not bald in the sense of not having hair but needing to maintain his hairlessness, or has he gone back to having hair?
Such second-generation internet languagesecond-generation internet language
One of our postdocs recently got very agitated when I pronounced "doge" as if it was a Venetian duke and told me the only acceptable pronunciations are "dog" or "doggie" and that this should be obvious because the meme, after all, refers to a dog and the misspelling in no way can change the way the vowel is pronounced. The link in the link in 60 seems less certain.
Tangential by way of alcohol: I go buy rum because life and then get to whole foods and there are no limes except bags of key limes. Feeling like the worst kind of idiot, I ask the produce guy if they, I don't know, work the same. So I have a Dark and Stormy with teeny little limes in it. Next I'm having a Gin-Gin Mule because I like the name.
I disliked the article about doge that went around that was like "many linguistic!" because it seemed like stating the obvious in terms of the academic. Of course I didn't finish it. I don't finish anything. Except for this drink!
One of our postdocs recently got very agitated when I pronounced "doge" as if it was a Venetian duke and told me the only acceptable pronunciations are "dog" or "doggie"
WRONG! It's obviously either like the doge of Venice or to rhyme with Vogue (like "dogue de Bordeaux"). Duh.
Does your postdoc also pronounce gif as Jif? What is the world coming to?
On the internet, no one knows if you say "dog" for "doge".
My doge has no nose.
How does it smell?
Much terrible!
<embarrassed whisper> I have always pronounced gif as Jif. </embarrassed whisper>
Well, we all live in a fallen world.
72: Because it's fucking OK! The creator's have no fucking say in it.
72: I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
I save all my photos as "joint photographic experts group" files.
72:
Drum explored this a few months ago: it's an age & industry thing. Old guys like him and me tend toward the hard "g" because "graphical" and because the other pronunciation is a sugared peanut butter. But we're losing ground, and the soft g is taking over.
I read that, but obviously mis-remembered it. I forgot what side Drum was on, I thought I remembered mine--hard G--but now I'm not so sure.
I encountered them first in the early 90s, Windows 3 days, while we converted to digital in the legal publishing industry. I have to admit we didn't pronounce the word very often, so my hard G may have been idiosyncratic
The gin worked.
75: Apparently Tennessee Williams would sometimes go and see Streetcar and at this line he would burst into hysterical laughter. Tony Kushner also had a good take on it.
I'm too lazy to get out my Russian dictionary -- what does "Palata" mean? Is it a cognate of "pallet" as in a bed?
51: We are now talking about Polish Muslim Tatars.
Halal pierogies?
We are now talking about Polish Muslim Tatars
I love that subject! Polish/Lithuanian Americans in whom you may see that heritage, on their faces, are Martha Stewart and the late Charles Bronson.
And the light Cavalry tradition which they excelled at was brought to this country by Casimir Pulaski, during the American Revolution.
You gotta fight
For your right
To haarrrdd g!
We are now talking about Polish Muslim Tatars
Discarded draft by James Agee.
And then everyone went to sleep and my awfully literary joke languished.
I was working on a non-literary Polish Muslin Tatters joke, but it turned to be too stupid even for me.
And a great time was had by all.
71 made me laugh but it would have been funnier in person.
87 was so much more refined than 83. But perhaps 83 will eventually cause this to become a food thread, which is worth, like, 250 Unfogged points. Such chagrin!
So do people pronounce .png as "Ping"?
88: The "HEY EVERYONE I MADE A JOKE" phase of drinking. I have to say, though, having a bunch of tiny-limed highballs on a Thursday was like the best idea ever.
Better than having a bunch of tiny-balled high Limeys?
It was great to see the NY contingent on Thursday and I'm sorry I was late turning up due to a much more boring prior commitment. OTOH, I have now finished a bit more of the John Buchan/Terminator nonsense and anyone who wants chapters 2 and 3 should let me know.
I very much enjoyed the first installment so please send away (replacing the "underscore" with the thing itself as before).
I'd like to read it too (haven't read the first chapter, so can I have that too, please?).