I got an adreneline rush just reading that story.
I know the seizure angle too well. Sucks to be that guy.
Okay, hero? But those girls are gonna need therapy for, like, ever.
I hear he incidentally crushed a rat when he jumped onto the tracks.
Y'know, it's nice to see that there are real heroes still out there, who risk their lives only because it's the Right Thing to Do. [Or at least one real hero.] What with people talking about the "heroes" of 9/11 - by which they mean not the NYFD and other rescue workers [real heroes], but simply those who died, victims of circumstance, having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the word's been devalued in the last few years.
A superhero would have stopped the train. Still, not a bad effort.
3: Given their ages, I doubt they were aware of the possible ramifications of Daddy's act. They were probably frightened at first, then got Daddy back, and the world was rosy again. Unless he falls into the post-accolade depression that frequently affects rescue workers, life will probably go on normally. Except that they'll have money for college.
5: D'you know, the boyfriend told me that he saw a mouse yesterday at the restaurant he works with, and "as a restarauteur, he should've stomped it," but he didn't. B/c he knows.
'Course, they'll end up putting poison out instead, but still. Aww.
See, I look at a story like this and think "how did he know the train wouldn't kill him?" I figure that if I was afraid that doing this would lead to my death or serious injury, I would have no chance of doing it, because it would mean I didn't know enough about the situation to be sure I was saving the other guy anyway. And if I knew that it would not lead to my death or serious injury, I would do it.
Did this guy actually risk his life (by which I mean that he didn't know he would be uninjured by the event)? If so, how did he know that doing so would help the other guy?
I guess even if you know how the trains work enough to know you can fit under them, it's brave to jump down into that hole and risk breaking an ankle.
it's nice to see that there are real heroes still out there
Of course, everybody here already knew that.
Ned, I think a lot of people would piss themselves if a train passed an inch over their heads, no matter how sure they were that there was enough room to not get killed.
I figure that if I was afraid that doing this would lead to my death or serious injury, I would have no chance of doing it, because it would mean I didn't know enough about the situation to be sure I was saving the other guy anyway. And if I knew that it would not lead to my death or serious injury, I would do it.
It easily could have killed or seriously injured him while he saved the other guy, in fact -- if the clearance was a little less, he would have been torn up by the subway car, but unless the clearance had been quite a lot less, the guy under him would still probably have been saved. I don't think anyone, even someone who knew quite a lot about the underside of subway cars, could have known for certain that the shared thickness of the two people would be little enough to fit underneath.
There's no chance in hell I would have done it.
Why is it "piss themselves," not "piss on themselves"? This has always bothered me.
That's true.
I guess my scientific mind views the concept of "bravery" the way economists/libertarians view "altruism". (If you're doing something brave, doesn't that just mean you see less risk it in for yourself, and other people see it as more risky? If you are actually risking your life, doesn't that mean you have simply misjudged the risk value of the situation? Isn't being a coward simply being unable to ignore the risks of things?)
You also shit yourself rather than simply shitting on yourself. Perhaps you could think of it as short for "bepiss (or beshit) yourself".
14: You're overthinking this, Tim. Just be happy that you live in a country where you're allowed to piss yourself.
16: That also bothers me. As do the words "piss" and "shit."
I would totally go for "bepiss myself," though.
15: I rather suspect that overthinking is precisely what people like that don't do. You either jump, or you don't. There's not a lot of time to weigh the consequences.
If you're doing something brave, doesn't that just mean you see less risk it in for yourself, and other people see it as more risky?
To put it in your terms, I think "brave" is what we call people who are willing to accept more risk than most of us would, in a similar situation.
If you're doing something brave, doesn't that just mean you see less risk it in for yourself, and other people see it as more risky?
Like the experienced soldiers who throw themselves on grenades (or do other things they damn well know have a high probability of being fatal) to save their buddies?
I think doing something you know will be fatal is in a different category.
Brave isn't being fearless; it's being shit scared and doing it anyway. "The man who knows no fear" is just an idiot.
You made the Arabs saucy.
In French backwards slang ["verlan"], "Arab" becomes "beur."
ah, thanks!
So I've got an Arab in my pants. Why is that racist?
Someone really committed to the equal treatment of all persons would let him out eventually, don't you think?
He tells me he likes the florae and fauna. He calls it his Shangri-La.
if the clearance was a little less, he would have been torn up by the subway car
Even if he knew to the millimeter what the clearance was, he had no way of knowing the guy under him wouldn't toss him upwards. After all, that guy had just had a seizure of some sort. We can also discount his knowing no maintenance tech had left something hanging under a car. IMX it's perfectly possible to think while reacting to a scary event happening at high speed. You get the shakes later.
Wesley Autrey is the real thing.
What a quiet, quiet evening here on Unfogged. No one to talk to. Can one of the posters put up an entry about the psychology of dating, or something I'd be really opinionated about?
HELLO OUT THERE! (Hello...hello...hello...)
PAAAAAAAAAAAAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEE!
I wanna talk. But I warn you, I'm grumpy and Becks-style.
Excellent! I've been drinking!
'kay. I propose as a starting point my irritation at having received a sweet note in my luggage from the TSA, saying, we went through all your stuff, if we took some stuff, it's because it was prohibited! Happy new year.
Or words to that effect, which make me grumpy.
You don't take comfort that they're making the world a safer place to be?
I imagine that bluebirds are sitting on the DHS shoulder's and helping them refold my articles after they rifle through and confiscate my toothpaste. Live action mixed with cartoons with choruslines. You don't?
You have a better imagination than mine, which is populated by the extras from Brazil.
Since you mention it, why the hell is that movie called that?
Also, holy crap, you posted the lyrics to Chantilly Lace, which I was humming to myself on the airplane today. Coincidence? You be the judge.
I've posted those lyrics every day for three years, just waiting breathlessly for the day I might hear you utter those very words.
Time to start posting the lyrics to "Love Is A Battlefield" and start courting a small man in South Africa.
the lyrics to "Love Is A Battlefield"
Aigh! Get out of my head, heebie!
I hold great power. My left hand is a claw resting on a skull.
No, you're supposed to say, "And into my car."
Fuck. You're so right.
Fortunately the skull functions as a mouse, and I can navigate around on the Cosmic computer and fix that error.
Seriously, who knows the Big Bopper's catalogue? What are you, sixty-three?
Sixty Three Years Young! I'm as hale as a turnip green if a day!
Actually I listen to a lot of country music and the rockabilly gets a good bit of play in that arena. I must be sobering up. What an entirely straight answer.
Okay, again, seriously: The Big Bopper counts as rockabilly?
I think so. He gets played on my country stations, at least during the Solid Country Gold Noon Hour.
I stand amazed. Only repeated hearings in childhood, at the merciless hands of my parents, has drummed the likes of Mr. Richardson into my skull. Also, Little Anthony and the Imperials, and many other useless lyrics.
If you are actually risking your life, doesn't that mean you have simply misjudged the risk value of the situation?
While I'm sure the cowards of the world would prefer to seem themselves as merely having superior judgement, it is in fact possible to know the risk, and to act anyways.
Now I'm all checking wikipedia and maybe they play the Jerry Lee Lewis cover of that song. I mean, if the cognitive dissonance is that great with the first guy?
D'you know, the boyfriend told me that he saw a mouse yesterday at the restaurant he works with, and "as a restarauteur, he should've stomped it," but he didn't. B/c he knows.
Probably a total lie. But considering the audience, a pretty good one.
You think it wasn't a mouse? Or it happened, just not to him?
I suspect, SnackyCakes, that gswift sees this statement as serving the same purpose as the investment banker's claim to want to open an animal shelter.
I found a dead mouse in the middle of my kitchen floor just this morning. The poison is clearly working. (Did I mention that a mouse, perhaps this very mouse, ran across my toes in my bedroom?)
You think the investment banker wants to shelter something else than animals? Like trees? Or tax-deductible incomes!
Oh, he wants to shelter something, all right.
70 - you were actually pretty calm about it, I believe, and paused within point to mention the mouse, actually.
Ohhhhhh. A homeless shelter! For girlfriends.
I suspect, SnackyCakes, that gswift sees this statement as serving the same purpose as the investment banker's claim to want to open an animal shelter.
You're reading my mind dude. I was just thinking this was a better lie than the animal shelter line.
See the comments to that post for gswift's suspicions about that "dog rescue."
I was just thinking this was a better lie than the animal shelter line.
He does know her better than animal-shelter dude knew Tia.
73.--When in fact I shrieked out my open window, spent the next ten minutes dancing nervously around my apartment waiting for my neighbors to call the cops, and chased the mouse out from under my bed--my bed!--with a magazine. I'm glad I seemed calm in writing, though.
I just like the idea of him lying about the details of which rodent it was, or who actually failed to stomp it. Like in a seduction scene, "Yeah baby, it was a mouse. No, sugar, I let it be," when it was really a squirrel, and he batted it out with a broom. Or it was really silverfish in the rice, and he just threw it out. "I didn't stomp on nuthin'."
I just like the idea of him lying about the details of which rodent it was, or who actually failed to stomp it.
That would be awesome if the story morphed from "I screamed like a girl and ran" to " I just couldn't do it because you've made me into a better, more sensitive man."
63: I suppose that's slightly better than Buddy Holly and the Everley Brothers, which are what I was subjected to. But not much.
My uncle, an otherwise staid young accountant, was discovered weeping bitterly at his desk after that plane crash. His boss, figuring it was something personal, asked "Harry, what's wrong?" And my uncle turned up a teary face and whimpered "The Big Bopper's dead."
Jesus, I'd have killed for some Buddy Holly. My parents were big into Orleans and Fleetwood Mac.
Oh, I'm fond of Buddy Holly now. But it was pretty much all Dad listened to.
(James Taylor covers of Buddy Holly songs worry me. I find myself thinking, "It's supposed to be about twice as fast as this. What are you, on heroin?" And then I think, "Oh, right.")
Oh, I'm fond of Buddy Holly now.
Whew. That saves me having to pedantically explain to you how much ass Buddy Holly kicked.
My parents listened to classical music. Digging through their LPs, they had the Beatles and Johnny Cash and others when they were in their 20s, but it's like they hit the 1970s and decided that syncopation was the devil's work. Then, in the early 90s, my mom discovered "world" music.
My parents were big into Orleans and Fleetwood Mac.
I grew up with my mother's mellow favorites: The Carpenters, John Denver, Barry Manilow, The Lettermen (who are still around!), and Simon&Garfunkel. My dad mostly listened to classical music.
That saves me having to pedantically explain to you how much ass Buddy Holly kicked.
I liked Buddy Holly when I was growing up, but I'm hard pressed to see that he (or the Big Bopper) kicked ass.
Yeah well, weiner66 agrees with me in the very first comment, SCMT.
OK, after a little light Intertube reading, I will concede that I may not appreciate the awesomeness of Holly because of my oft-admitted lack of musicality. Rolling Stone lists him at #13, though that seems high to me. Also, isn't Capps more or less aesthetically obligated to start a tribute band?
But it was pretty much all Dad listened to.
The part I never got was the capacity some people have to listen to the same small sample of music in an apparently endless loop. But there've always been people who did this, who bought records and played them over and over. I could never do that; I always wanted more variety.
But there've always been people who did this, who bought records and played them over and over.
I'm one of these, though I also like variety between times.
Now I'm imagining my notional future children. "Jesus, I'd have killed for some Orleans or Fleetwood Mac. My parents just listened to Shellac and the Rezillos all fucking day."
Can I be bitter about my children? We've had two albums on repeat for six months now -- Sheryl Crowe's Soak Up The Sun, if that's the album name, and Liz Phair's Whitechocolatespaceegg. They're not terrible, as albums go, but I can now sing both end to end from memory, and I'm not happy about that.
They're not terrible, as albums go
Pretty terrible, though. My condolences.
92 - I hear ya. "Jesus Christ, it was nothing but Mission of Burma and Drive Like Jehu with that guy. Would it have killed him to play a little Justin Timberlake?"
93 - LB, have you thought about trying out Mathew Sweet's Girlfriend album on them? It seems like it might be a hit with your two.
I have never had a coherent thought about current popular music, particularly not one including proper nouns. If you say that someone named Matthew Sweet exists, and that his Girlfriend album might be appealing to the little wombats, I'll give it a whirl, but I've never heard of the singer or the album.
Chantilly Lace was one of my Dad's favorite songs. Every time I hear it, I feel a little like I'm 6 or so, watching my parents dance. (I'm assuming "dance" does not function as some kind of Freudian screen memory here.)
And "Oh, baby, you know what I like!" was always my Dad's standard response to any question my Mother asked him which he didn't want to think about.
I have never had a coherent thought about current popular music
You are in luck! Girlfriend is not current popular music, but rather 15-year-old popular music. I bet Chopper's right, regardless.
It would be a stretch to describe Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend as either current or especially popular, LB, though the latter is probably more accurate than the former. But it is a good recommendation by Chopper.
It went gold, so it was popular enough at the time, at least.
(I only know this because I went off to double-check the release date, and ran into the fact; I'm not a gold-album-remembering savant.)
All I meant was that I'm completely brain damaged on the subject of music. I have heard of a very few randomly selected musicians, and have well-considered opinions of basically none of them. So for any question of the form: "Have you done or thought of X music-related thing?" the answer is no, I haven't.
Gold is popular enough to be called popular. I didn't know that album was that popular. Were his others?
I think Whitechocolatespaceegg is the most family-friendly of her albums, but isn't Phair a little, um, mature for kids? I'm a bad person for chuckling at the thought of LB's kids playing Exile in Guyville or Liz Phair over and over.
95 - Chopper, what did you think of The Obliterati? Clearly LB's little marsupials should be strapped down and forced to listen to "Academy Fight Song".
I thought 100% Fun was Sweet's biggest hit album. Wasn't "Sick of Myself" his biggest hit?
105: She picked up the album from a friend with reasonably attentive parents -- I did give it a close listen for lyrics, and figured that anything overly mature was pretty incomprehensible.
Whitesiuhgghskjlegg is generally considered her "maternity" album and is definitely the one you could most comfortably listen to with Nana and Pop-pop as well as the children.
Fuck. That didn't work at all with 108 slipped in there.
Then LB's kids should just starting listening to The Fall, now, while they're young and impressionable.
111: You theists are just so cruelly bigoted against my people. (Holds hand to forehead; swoons.)
The Fall's most kid-friendly album is probably The Frenz Experiment. I'm absolutely serious about this; I would have loved that album as a kid. Buy the CD version that has like 8 bonus tracks.
That suggestion somehow brought to mind the vision of Mark E. Smith doing some of the songs from "Mary Poppins". I may need to go lie down.
Buck informs me that Girlfriend is in the wall o' CD's. So I'll try it out on the kids.
106--It never really grabbed me the way On Off On did. I've been meaning to dig it out and give it another listen. One of the best concerts I've ever been to was the reunion tour they did right before that album. Gotta love a band where the lead guitarist wears noise-cancelling headphones and the drummer performs behind plexiglass to protect themselves from the sound.
Be sure to check the "wall o' CD's [sic]" for some Easy-E or 2 Live Crew. Those are other good ones for the kids.
I find it amusing that my brother has discovered many of the exact same bands that I used to listen to when in high school and is playing them on repeat. The odd thing is that my mother hated them when I was in high school but likes them now. I can't figure out what conclusion to draw:
1. I just laid the groundwork?
2. She's started to get better taste in music?
3. I'm awesomer for managing parent/child rebellion while my brother's a big puss?
4. She just likes him better?
Hmmm....
5. The top-40 musical milieu nowadays is such that in context, the same bands are now comparatively much less objectionable from a parenting standpoint.
Here's a bare-bones objectionability relationship.
Paula Abdul
Apparently typing a "less-than" sign makes everything after it in the post disappear. Oh well, enver mind.
It came out extra-funny, though.
"<" == "& l t ;", but without the spaces.
Also, 78 makes me think that it's time for Jackmormon to buy a cat, no?
119: Go with 3. But don't forget 5: parents get sick of struggling after the first kid or two. My younger sister got away with so much more shit than I did.
Girlfriend is really a fantastic album, LB.
I've long wondered: is there some good reason for 121/123, or is it just that way because the programmers who developed html are bad people?
121/3/6: also isn't there some code that says "listen website, this is html code but don't parse it that way; I want to show other people what this particular code looks like"?
There's no way to have tags without having a character that means "start a tag now" -- these comment forms could treat everything we type in here as text only, which would let the less-than sign show up normally, but wouldn't let us type HTML tags and have them function as such.
107: Yeah, but do you ever hear "Sick of Myself" on the radio these days? "Girlfriend" still gets some play, particularly on the '90s-nostalgia shows.
so who is going to make the first mix tape for LB's kids?
126 - It's because HTML is a modified version of SGML, which was developed by IBM for (I believe) the Navy, and for IBM and the Navy, causing you minor irritation is like getting a new puppy on Christmas.
127 - There is in XHTML, but not in HTML. You can google "CDATA section" if you're curious. I'm not sure what just dropping it into a comment here would do.
[CDATA example redacted by Becks. 5 point penalty for breaking the blog]
128- huh, that actually makes perfect sense. But is it just greater-than and less-than signs that cause problems? I thought there were a lot of characters that did bad things. (If there's not, all those html programmers I've been beating up in parking lots might not have deserved it after all.)
shorter 131: because it is a simple markup language that doesn't allow for easily quoting it's own markup characters.
133 - The reserved characters in XML are <, >, and &. In HTML, " is also reserved, although many people ignore this and produce malformed code, which leads to rioting in the streets and people gay-marrying their pets.
I thought there were a lot of characters that did bad things.
Like curly quotes? This is a separate issue to do with different charsets. I bet Snarkout could explain that one in a lot of detail these days -- Snark, wasn't this related to what you had to build a hideous workaround for in a recent project?
Ogged is going to start giving me Indian rope burns if I try to explain Unicode and Microsoft's evil character sets.
Usually you can type a greater-than sign and have it appear normally, I suppose because the browser is clever enough to notice that it isn't appearing after an unmated <.
But can you type something like:
Brady > Manning
I suppose I could have used preview there and saved us all these three useless comments.
I cannot tell you how sad I am to discover I've stumbled upon the Matthew Sweet and Liz Phair thread too late before it devolved into a coding argument. It's like the opposite of Divine Intervention.
Since both Shellac and Liz Phair have been mentioned, I give you "Liz Phair is Rickie Lee Jones (more talked about than heard, a persona completely unrooted in substance, and a fucking chore to listen to)".
So thanks everyone, I should really know the & l t ; thing, since I memorized the phrases "a href" and "img src" about ten years ago.
Will now post what I was going to say in 121 before going off to meet with my boss, which was
In terms of objectionability,
Paula Abdul << The Jesus Lizard << Snoop Dogg ft/ R. Kelly
144 -- you mean, like, a Mundane Intervention?
I think there should be some kind of law for the progression of Unfogged threads -- given a closed system of commenters, the conversation will inevitably devolve into some kind of programming languages discussion, or a tutorial on the niceties of escape characters.
Shellac! This isn't some kind of metaphor.
You should hold Sausagely down and make him listen to Terraform instead of wussified Canadian and pseudo-Canadian indie pop, 'smasher. Then give him Mexican rope burns. Nobody who likes the Decemberists could possibly fight back effectively.
Maybe a shell for some loop like read-eval-comment. The meta-circular commenter.
Saiselgy claimed that Armsmasher starting a band with Spencer would be a bad idea b/c the former has such terrible taste in music that he'd pay not to listen to the bands he likes. An intervention is definitely in order.
145: I remember that from when it first got published. Now I feel old.
Saiselgy claimed that Armsmasher starting a band with Spencer would be a bad idea b/c the former has such terrible taste in music that he'd pay not to listen to the bands he likes.
Good grief.
Snarkout -- you broke the RSS feed with your CDATA example in 131. I redacted it but I'm keeping an eye on you. (glare)
145:"Urge Overkill are Oingo Boingo (Weiners in suits playing frat party rock, trying to tap a goofy trend that doesn't even exist)."
That makes them sound appealing, actually. Urge Overkill would've ruled with a couple of Weiners.
So what's wrong with Dead Man's Party?
Sausegly makes bold claims about his fighting prowess.
I'm going to make him go see Asobi Seksu next week. If he doesn't like them, the purple nurple!
I'm going to make him go see Asobi Seksu next week. If he doesn't like them, the purple nurple!
I just heard them for the first time this week: they're great!
156 - Sorry, Becks! In my defense, the Navy made me do it. I will abstain from any such flotilla-based tomfoolery in the future.
the Navy made me do it
Snarkout is catherine's brother!
To be fair, I do from time to time play the Demetrio Stratos/The Locust/The Shaggs trifecta to drive Saiselgy out of the room.
Couldn't you get the job done just with David Bowie?
146: I don't understand your fancy math, but are you somehow saying that Jesus Lizard is more objectionable than either of the two options? If so, fie on you, sir. Fie!
Saiselgy would have to be pretty lame to be driven out of the room by Bowie.
At the previous DC meet-up, Saiselgy was quite vehement about his distaste for Bowie. Bowie turns 60 on Monday, so maybe we could arrange the confrontation to see whether Saiselgy could take him down or would be driven from the room by him.
While you people were impugning by boyfriend's honesty and character, I was getting royally fucked on the living room floor.
In other words, dance away, puppets.
Her annual holiday letter has arrived.
I like the way B feels the need to tell everyone when she has sex with her boyfriend, as if it doesn't count otherwise.
169: My boyfriend's bacon is delicious. I haven't tried yours, yet, because he overslept and I woke up at 5 am feeling feverish. Tomorrow, though.
171: Just trying to account for unprecedented absences, lest anyone worry about me.
171: See, I never tell when I have sex with B's boyfriend, because he made me promise I wouldn't.
My boyfriend's bacon is delicious.
I was getting royally fucked on the living room floor
This is not something one usually boasts about.