This is the anti-semite who longs to bang, correct?
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If you have arms like that, Weiner, I'll admit you have a point.
oh man, i just re-read my comment. I meant to write, "likes to bang." But I think my subconscious is funnier.
"...with a shaved head, wearing a black suit, black overcoat, black gloves, black shades and carrying a four-foot sword..."
I know I'm giggling at the brass on the Titanic here, but his description of his outfit cracked me up. His awe at its badassness and his apparent nescience of its tacky predictability are golden.
I am reminded of silly SCA guys I met in college. Three separate guys, on separate occasions, told me that they had been going to an SCA event in 'garb', with a cloak over mail and a sword, when they were mugged by a guy with a knife who they scared off by drawing the sword. While I suppose this could have happened three times, I suspect that at least two of them were lying.
LB, why did you keep dating SCA guys?
Who dated them? It was MIT -- they showed up at parties. (Not that I would have had a categorical objection to dating SCA guys; I'm geeky enough myself.)
A medievalist friend of mine once claimed that another medievalist we know learned to make armor in SCA, but the story turned out not to be true.
Upon reflection, I don't think I made that anecdote as boring as it could have been. I'll try harder next time.
Some friends of the family had a SCA wedding, including the groom dressed up in a suit of armor. Jaw-droppingly geeky. (They're divorced now.)
a categorical objection to dating SCA guys
You mean aside from the fact that most of them look like they stepped out of a panel of The Far Side?
Most=Not necessarily all. Which is why no categorical objection.
What point? All I said was "BANG! BANG! BANG!"
I've been in an SCA-esque wedding (I was a groomsman). On the geek scale, it's up there, but it's nothing on the Klingon wedding, with armor and prosthetic forehead, in Klingon that some not-that-close friends had (out of state, or I would have gone, for the spectacle if nothing else).
Also, I meant to add: the hate-on that local conservatives have for the Strib is just stunning to me. Maybe I'm more radical than I think, but it seems to me that the Strib is only marginally to the left of center--there have been any number of days where I have found myself seething about how articles in the paper show a willingness to regurgitate Republican talking points as fact.
Well, they still all think that the NYT is a seething hotbed of liberalism, out to get Republicans, which is kind of funny in light of the whole Judy Miller debacle.
Don't be amazed, Chopper. They're the same ones who keep believing that the NYT is somehow carrying water for the Democratic Party, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. It's hard to keep up their internalized sense of victimization, so they have to invent victimizers.
LB's quicker on the draw, it appears. Bang bang.
Note also that Mr. Beale is kinda nutso.
But guys who crash SCA events in Star Trek uniforms—those are the keepers.
I'm treating the fact that I don't know what SCA means as a badge of honor. I beg all of you not to enlighten me. And I beg LB never again to refer to herself as geeky, lest I lose my cybercrush.
As for Vox Day, I think the Yiddish word for folks like him is Putz. And I think Labs likes him for his stone-hard, ripplin' abs. Think they met you know where?
They're the same ones who keep believing that the NYT is somehow carrying water for the Democratic Party, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
Admission - I don't think the NYT carries water for the Democrats, but I do think it put a journalistic hit out on Bush in Oct. '04. I'm not sure how much effort I'd put into defending that statement, though.
Would it be too much effort to explain what you're referring to?
Personally, as a journalist myself, I'd be more than happy to do a journalistic hit on a presidential candidate, especially a sitting president, a month before the election, if I had a great story. And with this administration, there have been lots of stories that could have been pursued relentlessly, but weren't. The fact is that Bush had a journalistic free pass for three years, which is probably unprecedented. At least in my lifetime.
I remember in Sept. or Oct. of '04 being shocked by the dramatic change in coverage of Bush in the NYT. It might be that it had finally decided that it was safe to simply treat him straight - that feels accurate - but I definitely remember a change in the tone of coverage just before the election.
I should say, I don't remember thinking that any of its stories were inaccurate or unimportant. But the change felt pretty dramatic, and fairly ham-handed.
There's no SCA chapters where I live, that I'm aware of. Probably too hot and muggy.
SCMT, I didn't notice much of a change, but I do know from previous experience that the tone of press coverage does change once there's a hint of blood in the water. And there definitely seemed to be more blood than water after that first debate. But that shift in tone -- if, indeed, it existed, and I can't say one way or the other -- was probably replicated at every major metro newspaper in the country. If it had happened a month earlier, the whole dynamic of the media coverage would have changed -- just as it has since Katrina -- and Kerry, despite his largely pathetic campaign, would have won handily.
BTW, is unfogged the only place left on earth where we could discuss this rationally, while also making jokes about whether ogged prefers length over girth?
I still don't get 6.
whether ogged prefers length over girth?
But you can have both (Probably not SFW.)
There's no SCA chapters where I live
An SCA guy I knew vaguely in college was famed for getting drunk at parties and telling people, half bragging and half threatening, that he made knives. He was also well-known for making absinthe, an equally exotic habit to us at the time, but in retrospect, a rather more interesting one. He totally freaked out the professor in an anthropology class we both were in when she was trying to demonstrate some simple point of evolution which escapes me now. Various class members were given small tabs of paper which had been soaked in a substance, with the predicted outcome that, due to differences (no doubt genetic, but I can't remember at all), some would taste nothing when they put it in their mouths while others would taste something utterly foul. Some people put the tabs in their mouths and shrugged, others did so and grimaced; he did so and said, quite firmly, "tastes like wormwood."
Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!
I will say that grabbing some sticks and armor and going at each other does have some potential for fun, however.
Both length and girth:
http://www.timwing.com/geoduck/geoduck3.jpg
The SCA has a nice recipe for kumiss (an alcoholic beverage made from milk).
I had my nose broken in an SCA practice bout when I was 17.
[Note to anyone interested: when bashing together a quick helmet out of an old freon can and using tin snips to create the eye slit, the snips should be positioned in such a way that the resulting ridge is on the outside, and not inside, where it might rest on the bridge of the nose.]
Ewww. What a wanker indeed.
I am glad, however, to learn that there is such a substance as flamepaste.
Someone should let Snees (see 27) and I know what SCA is. I consider myself pretty geeky and I guess I get the general idea (armor, etc.) but I've never heard of this.
Wehttam, Snees: try typing the relevant letters into Google. It's the first result.
I had my nose broken in an SCA practice bout when I was 17.
What were you practicing for?
OK, Unf is retired, Bob is retired, Ogged is on hiatus, FL is on occasional status, and no one anywhere can get Alameida to post very often.
Doesn't this mean that, like a super-heroine dispatching five adversaries in a single fight, BitchPhD has won?
And terrorism, too?
What were you practicing for?
Did you guys ever see that awesome Flickr series where some Montrealers dressed up as zombies and stormed an SCA, uh, tournie? Fantastic. The best part is that the SCA people responded as if they had, in fact, been training all along in anticipation of an undead attack. The man off the street who decided to join the horde, though he was not in any sense dressed as a zombie, is hilarity that even the Kids in the Hall couldn't script.
I was in the SCA for a couple of years, and to be honest I can't remember anything about it that surpasses eb's story in 12 in terms of sheer excitement value.
Guess that's why I stoped going.
My college classmates who were in the SCA seemed to be into medieval dancing rather than medieval fucking shit up. I was gravely disappointed.
Trying to goad Ogged into commenting, John?
Was/is there some enormous SCA Boston chapter that I'm unaware of? I never heard of these guys before I moved up north, and Jesus, all you Boston school kids seem to know heaps of them.
You should all be embarrassed that you even knew about SCA, or knew to call its members anything other than, "Renaissance Fair dorks." C'mon, people. (I now await the coming of The Farber.)
Like a lot of geeky things, while there are grownups who do it, a big chunk of the SCA population is college kids (or at least that's my impression). Boston is the home of college kids.
(And MIT is the home of exuberantly geeky silliness. A surprisingly fun school, if you have no dignity, which I don't.)
Pretty sure that should be spelled Faire, Tim.
Before getting expelled for bad behavior, I attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, a residential high school for, well, you can probably figure it out by the name. I'm sure any SCA chapter in these parts sports a not insignificant number of alumni.
Anyhow, as you might suspect, our athletics teams never really struck much fear into our opponents. You'd figure they'd at least give us a tough-sounding mascot to work with, right? Yes, indeed. We were the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Unicorns. I kid you not. Might as well have had tutus for uniforms.
What was fun, though, was spelling out the name at halftime. "Gimme an N! Gimme an O! gimme an R!" Also used regularly: "Tangent! Secant! Cosine! Sine! 3.14159! S and M!"
That is also the MIT cheer, but you left some out
e to the u du/ex, e to the x dx!
Secant Cosine Tangent Sine
3.14159!
Integral, Radical u dv
Slipstick, Slide Rule MIT!
When I was rowing, our coach made us chant this before the start of a head race. Later, Radcliffe passed us and hit one of our rowers in the head with an oar. Then we got stuck under a bridge.
(apo -- a rowing buddy of mine went there. I'm not sure how old you are, but she would have been high school class of 1989. Sasha Wood, originally from Australia?)
45. Were you there. Armsmasher? Your narrative displays more detail than I would get from looking at the photos. Which side were you on?
LizardBreath,
Is that the cheer? I learned the first verse as:
e to the x dy/dx. e to the x dx.
Tangent secant cosine sine . . . etc
Of course this was at the third rate U of Illinois where the football "response" cheer sounded to me like:
I am ill.
So am I.
I wasn't until I joinded a frat that I leared the proper cheer:
I L L
I N I
Oh Mi God.
Those typos are the limit! Criminy.
I am banned.
I'll turn 37 next month. Would have been Class of '86 had I stayed for the duration, but as it turned out didn't make it past the Fall '84 semester, so never met Ms. Wood.
No, Michael, I only wish. If you click up level to get to the set, there's an explanation. Canadians seem to have "zombie walks" frequently, and I'm totally jealous. (I'd be on the side of the undead.) I'm thinking that the National Mall needs one, but somewhat concerned that my girlfriend will be horrified.
you left some out
Well, we were just high school students.
I'm thinking that the National Mall needs one, but somewhat concerned that my girlfriend will be horrified.
This would be your girlfriend who now lives several thousand miles away, and so need never hear about this if you don't blog it?
Just sayin'.
But if you were to have a zombie walk, how could you not blog it?
Our cheer (for, at the time, the losingest team in college football history):
Repel them, repel them!
Make them relinquish the oblong spheroid!
43: For a real bout, where I would have been using full armor and swords made out of inch-thick rattan rather than PVC piping with foam padding.
46: Not from my experience, because 16-year-olds don't get to participate in all the fun, the real thrill of SCA is drinking mead and homebrew and then getting into giant all night fuckfests. But that could have just been my shire.
I'd have to blog it if I had any chance of recruiting a proper unholy army. Since she's not around, I can say that, when zombies on the National Mall come into the picture, my girlfriend's pride in our relationship comes in at second place.
64: With the SCA group I was part of, it would have taken something much more psychoactive than mead and homebrew to have made that scenario an attractive prospect.
Chooper, was that the Mineshaftshire?
the Mineshaftshire
What ho, thou foul-tempered, thick-shouldered ruffian? Dost the reacharound not meet with thine approval?
What ho, thou foul-tempered, thick-shouldered ruffian? Dost the reacharound not meet with thine approval?
Thou slender hairless knave, you shall acknowledge my droit du seigneur!
This certainly adds a new dimension to the expression "getting all medieval on your ass".
Oi! He's got my longsord by the hilt!
Now sheathe it!
Anyone interested in starting an over-under betting pool on whether this thread will hit 100 comments before one of the Unfogged Five starts a new thread?
starting an over-under
I'm still too tired from the reacharound, yo.
The version I know:
e to the x du/dx, e to the x dx!
Secant Cosine Tangent Sine
3.14159!
Go Engineers! Go Engineers!
Hit 'em with a log... naturally.
Math songs and, as an added bonus, a helpful guide to the periodic table.
Ooh, I was just collecting some links on exactly this topic, eb: The MASSIVE database and Singing Science Records.
I must say I find Vox Day's blog deeply depressing.
Previously, not repeatedly. And there's no apostrophe; this affects Googlability.
"The primary victims of NASDAP ideology were the Jews, a group that the NASDAP intellectuals sincerely believed were secretly dominating the world.... They killed approximately six million Jews, most of whom were adults perfectly capable of defending themselves."
To which I can only say, once again, BANG! BANG! BANG!
I messed up on the link. He says what I quoted in his most recent post. I thought he was joking.
I have to admit his blog grows on me.
May I suggest a topical antibiotic?
Do you think Vox Day and Rush Limbaugh 69 each other?
I didn't just make people throw up in their mouths, did I?
All y'all don't have a hair on your ass. Weenies!
There is no I in team. Or Btch PhD.
I keep hoping for the day some athlete tries to explain away his selfishness by saying: "There's no W in team."
There's no W in team.
There is if you say it in German.
I actually have no clue if that's true; that just used to be a running gag with some friends of mine anytime that expression came up.
For some reason it cracked us up.
Oh this is too good to be true.
I looked it up, apparently "Team" in German is "Mannschaft".
Adds a whole new layer of subtext.
In sports only. In a work context it's Gruppe. No W there either though. A female sports team would be Damenmannschaft btw.
Not to mention the ever popular Spielführer.
Matt F Spiele für die andere Mannschaft.
Matt F spielt für die andere Mannschaft.
Ich spiele für meine eigene Mannschaft.
And my last name is apparently a rather lewd German word, I"m not sure if my ancestors were bragging or just had a weird sense of humor.
Haw haw haw, I mock you, Matt person with funny last name.
I mock you, Matt person with funny last name.
Wow, that must suck.
Thoroughly unedifying, this thread, but enjoyable all the same. Light, fruity, refreshing. And on the very cusp of the century mark, too!
Light, fruity, refreshing.
That's my motto.
100. Talk about meandering.
Part of it's also ogged's motto, I think.
I've just sent him an email challenging him to a fight, to see what happens.
I think that's the best bet, though you could also try ogged@barbimail.com, or ogged@mylittlepony.com. I'm pretty sure he checks both of them religiously.
By the way, I can't believe I had enough restraint not to post #100 while you were all sleeping over there in Americay. Then again, 100 isn't what it used to be, now that ogged's run off with that pre-op tranny he meton his way to the Minesha... Shit, I was supposed to keep that secret.
Why does Ogged let Vox Day check ogged@mylittlepony.com?
Wait. Snees is revealing that Ogged is Vox Day. That explains so much.
Ogged is Vox Day
Also, he wants you to feel his pipes.
