An open thread to lighten the mood a bit, and give me a chance to use the above picture. Brain-bleach, oddball YouTube videos, movie recommendations — all welcome. Anything positive and distracting, really.
Categories
Open Thread: GROUP HUG!
Dalillama, you have my sympathy. Getting doored is so hard to avoid
I was doored in 85 in a way that separated my shoulder and herniated a disk besides scraping the bike and removing a pannier. What I learned is that this is entirely the drivers fault for opening the door into traffic. My friends from the paceline made sure I got the insurance information by telling her if she continued to refuse and left the site they would report her as a hit and run to the police.
The drivers insurance company listened to my story, called the driver, who told them about the cyclist getting in the way of opening her door with pretty much all the same details I had given them, so they made a cash offer for all medical, mechanical and time lost from work compensation with no quibble.
I do hope you recover soon and do not have to many flash backs in riding near opening doors. I also hope you can make a claim to cover your costs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w“>
Don’t know how many here like British comedies. I personally think Fawlty Towers is the funniest series ever. While poking around on youtube I found Harry Enfield, an English entertainer I admit I had never heard of before. He did a series of satirical shorts for the BBC that had me in hysterics.
My favorite is Women: Know Your Limits. The above should be the link but for some reason I seem to have a bit of a problem with things like that. Of course you can just go to youtube and type in the title. I think it’s worth it. The last line about dear little kittens is priceless. Afraid my writing is a bit boring but Enfield’s is wonderful.
My second favorite is Paul Enfield Takes a Wife. This is another superbly crafted satire on the supremely chauvinistic veddy upper class Englishman.
Unfortunately due to some stupid copyright crap the BBC pulled Women Keep Your Virtue (hilarious) and another one about why women shouldn’t be allowed to drive. Glad I saw them before they got yanked.
I was in terrible pain from my back yesterday, so ended up staying in bed doped up on painkillers with the cat cuddled up next to me and I marathoned all seven Saw films. It was cathartic! I’m a bit of a horror buff, I like western horror and Japanese/South Korean horror equally but I go through phases and I am squarely in a western horror mood right now. I also spent last week watching all the DTV Hellraiser films which weren’t as bad as I had been led to believe. Hellraiser: Revelations still blows though.
dslucia and kupo, that rings so true! Sometimes what you want so damn much is just to know that you’re heard/somebody hears you. If someone’s actually prepared to listen to you for five minutes – and even feels sympathy – that can be incredibly restorative and helpful in itself, especially if a non-antagonstic listening ear is something that’s in short supply.
Asking if there’s anything you can do to help/what the other person would like you to do to help is good, before suggesting solutions (or at least express suggestions not as “you should …” or similar, but instead as “do you think maybe you should …?” or “do you think it would work if you … ?” – it makes a big difference to me anyway, if I feel that someone’s recognising me as a person somewhere in the mix by offering a suggestion rather than short-cutting me out of any relevance by just steamrollering and giving me instructions. This may be more important to people who are generally overall used to not being listened to/having their opinions dismissed.)
@opposablethumbs
Great suggestion. I would add that the worst possible opener for a suggestion anyone is about to give me is, “why don’t you just…” Not only does it come off as similar to “you should” but the “just” implies that the thing being suggested is easy. It’s usually given in response to a complex problem the listener has only heard a small amount of before jumping in with the suggestion, too.
Example:
Person A: “I’ve been feeling really thirsty lately.”
Person B: “Why don’t you just carry a water bottle around so you can drink whenever you’re feeling thirsty?”
A: “No, like I think there might be something more to it. I have to pee a lot, too.”
B: “Doesn’t your employer let you have bathroom breaks? I heard you can sue if they don’t because it could give you a kidney infection.”
A: “No, that’s not the issue! I’m worried because I have a family history of diabetes and these are often early symptoms.”
B: “Why don’t you just make a doctor appointment, then?”
…etc. Person A is just worried and wants to express that worry and get a little emotional support but Person B is just making them feel unheard and assuming the problem is easily solved (and that person A hasn’t already thought of those solutions).
@kupo, yes, exactly!
@Dalillama:
Ugh, that sucks. Housing issues are the most stressful ever. They touch on basically every other stressful thing and make you feel totally unsafe even in your safe places. Many hugs and best wishes.
@Dr NicolaLuna:
Go you! Congrats on that. WHTM is slowly growing its own little community of kickass female scientists, which is great and I admire very much.
@PocketNerd:
Stellaris is pretty cool, and the people who made it seem to be on the side of the angels. If you look at Martin Anward’s twitter feed, a good chunk of it is him SJWing it up and mocking #GGers.
Are you active on the forums? If so, you probably know me there.
@GardenGallivant
Fortunately I partially dodged it, and I’m not that badly hurt. The only expenses to date was a couple days bus fare while I healed a bit. I think that my wheel might be further out of true than it was, but it was already pretty warped and I couldn’t prove a difference. It feels like I’ve bruised a bone in my shoulder, and it didn’t do my bad knee or ankle any good, but I need to go in for more physical therapy anyway, so it’s kind of a wash ( my health insurance will pay for that, fortunately)
@wwth
I’m loving BrainDead, too! I’d take your “House of Cards meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers” analysis and toss in a little X-Files for the major Mulder/Scully vibes I’m getting from Laurel and Gareth, who will almost certainly end up together despite being from different sides of the aisle.
@Dalillama
That’s the exact kind of incident that led to me giving up bikes forever (presumably). I had a factory job back then, and got caught by a car door on my way home from work. I went over the handlebars and messed up my shoulder, and the bike was wrecked. I never got another bike after that, and had to take a week off work to rest my shoulder. :/
Thus Spake ZaraEJ (The ZaraOther One):
Alas, I’m not. Maybe I should be!
@ IP
This incident isn’t even in the top 10 times my person and/or bike was fucked up by someone in a car. I’ve lost 4-5 bikes and probably a couple square meters of skin that way, although luckily I only actually broke any bones the one time.
@PocketNerd:
I wouldn’t recommend it, truthfully. These days the forums are overrun with whiny entitled brats DEMANDING changes and additional features in order to fit their own personal paradigm of what they think it should be. There’s still some good people around but ugh.
It’s a good game, despite what they say. I don’t have internet in the new flat but if you fancy some multiplayer, I might be up for it.
Yeah, sounds about right. Yay gamer culture. ::sad noisemaker sound::
On the other hand, some forums like that can be amusing just for the hilarity factor of the occasional pompous, overwrought post in the vein of “I Shall Carefully Enumerate Everything This Game MUST Do Differently, And You Should All Listen To Me Because I Am Very Important: A Brief 20,000-Word Treatise.”
Heh. Sure! I’m still pretty bad at it, but there’s only one way to get better at anything. 🙂 I use the same handle on Steam (and I’m in the nigh-defunct WHTM group here https://steamcommunity.com/groups/WHTM/ ) so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding me. Feel free to friend me up!