Cup of Coffee

August 27, 2014: Half a Generation Apart

86 Comments

I'm glad I'll see my sister in less than a week, so we can make up for the awkward talk we had yesterday, which seemed like it was between strangers. We're not great at keeping up.

86 thoughts on “August 27, 2014: Half a Generation Apart”

  1. While I dont expect a pitching like of 7-0-3-6-1 every time out, something close to that would be nice from Ricky Nolasco more often.

  2. Hi! It has been a while since I have been to this site. A certain Pirate told me to come back here to promote this amazing event I am part of, since I know you guys (and gals) love food and BEER. There will be a Food Truck battle at Harriet Brewing (so good beer) on Sept. 13 from 12-3p. You will get a chance to try food from 8 different food trucks and vote on which food truck has the best food. Plus, you get beer while you are tasting the food! Can you think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon? And to add another bonus, this is a fundraiser for YouthLink, a nonprofit which helps homeless 16-23 year olds get a new start on life, whether it is through education or job training or health needs. To buy tickets, please click Thanks!!

              1. i've rounded my evening out with a torpedo. yeah, free doesn't approve (which should be in the help wanted post....), but I was a bit homesick. so sue me.

                2. I used to drop €2.50 on a bottle of Honkers once in awhile when I felt homesick. I totally get where you're coming from.

  4. I just had a coworker announce in team that she believes getting the flu is healthier than getting the flu vaccine ("I don't like unnatural stuff in my body") and is completely confused as to how the flu can possibly cause death. She's arguing with our nurse. This girl has a master's degree and has children.

        1. Heh, I've got in arguments with co-workers defending that position for those reasons, and I'm not sure how serious people think I'm being.

    2. She may not die, but that old lady at the market may not fare so well. Just nature's way, I suppose.
      I wonder if she'd take a cancer vaccine. Cancer is pretty natural, too. Our bodies make it on their own!

      And I'm pretty sure that getting sick is decidedly not a healthy choice. But science, and shuch whatnot, are probably all out the window anyhow at this point.

      1. Right. Culling the herd is not "healthier" at the individual level. It's just natural selection. "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger" is bullshit, even if I enjoy saying it.

        1. That goes back to the Simpsons, too. "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right?"

          "No, actually, it's made you weak as a kitten."

          A slight paraphrase, I think, but I loved it on both a humorous and intellectual level.

    3. tell her to lick her hands clean after going to the bathroom, because dysentery and hepatitis are a wellness program.

        1. Yeah, adult vaccinations are something that I forget about. Thanks for the link/reminder!

    2. I like that sheenie is popping up again. Now if someone just mentions pie, we'll have two females!

          1. I've decided that dinner tonight will involve wrapping all-beef hot dogs in applewood-smoked bacon, then frying until crisp.

            1. For you certain somebodies complaining that I did not deep-fry: I ate them and you did not. NYAH NYAH NYAH!

    2. Glen Taylor making a strong case that the team should be taken away from him as soon as possible. I think any goodwill for keeping the team in MN has to be gone by this point, yeah?

      1. Glen is an idiot.

        Maybe a banner with this as the tagline can replace the Kevin Love banners.

    4. Timberwolves fans showing no love for K-Love
      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3svPkthjWcM

  9. apropos of the seat-reclining thread from yesterday (err, from my bookface, I meant):

    The average short-haul passenger aboard a U.S. airliner gets 32 inches of “seat pitch,” an industry term for the space between rows, an analysis of data from travel compendium SeatGuru show. But 11 of the 13 biggest U.S. airliners run short-haul flights with even less legroom, and some allow much less. Spirit Airlines offers the smallest space between rows, at 28 inches, about the size of a computer monitor.

    JetBlue Airways and Virgin America now provide the roomiest arrangements, with an economy-row average of about 35 inches. But even those jetliners aren’t opposed to shrinking fliers’ space. When JetBlue announced it would double the number of “Even More Space” seats on its Embraer E-190 fleet, it stole away the roominess from other coach seats.

    1. christ. for the larger of us citizens, both in height and girth, this is a terrible trend. Time to hit the gym and spinal compresion unit.

      1. I'm quite girthy, and my wife is 6'2". We flew Frontier to LA because their seats are the roomiest without paying for First Class, despite the awful service I got from them last year. I wish flying weren't such a trying experience because I'd love to travel more.

    3. And then the person in front thinks its their right to recline. I would be happy if the "feature" got removed.

      2. oh, I've deployed the knee defender on short haul flights. I've never had to deal with anyone asking wtf.... not sure what I'll do in that situation.

  10. Question for the readers of Pale Fire... How are you choosing to read it: notes simultaneously or subsequently?

        1. Hehe. Aye jussst finished. Holy Man.

          cat Gravity's_Rainbow | sed s/A4-rocket/ashplant/g > /dev/boyo

        1. I like that last sentence in Ulysses. 42 pages long. The period must have broken on Joyce' typewriter.

          Just started Pale Fire. Looks like I'm in for another doozy.

          One of our our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy.

        1. I decided on that method because there was no reference to the commentary within the poem itself. That made me think that it was intended to be its own stand-alone work, expanded (for better or worse) by what came after it.

    3. Ack, I guess I have to publicly confess I haven't made it past the introduction. I blame Spooky for keeping me preoccupied with ever ballooning word counts and short deadlines.

      I think you should read it opposite of how DG did and then you can each tell me which way you recommend when I finally get to it!

        1. Oh, please, like the guy whose entry is late every single week has any room to complain about that. If I gave you two months to write a fifteen-word story, you'd still submit three minutes after the deadline. SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSNAP

          1. Sure, but it's getting harder and harder to turn things in 3 minutes* late.

            *Blame Beau for that. In my first Survivor game, that was the buffer.

            1. My unforgiving deadlines can probably be blamed on two things:

              1) My own quick writing. Once I have an idea, I can get a draft down in no time flat. I forget other folks have a different process.

              2) This is the big one: my overall antsiness to get to the next elimination or game. I'll keep this in mind for the last couple of challenges. There are only two after the current one, so I'll be sure the people left feel comfortable.

              I'm probably not going to put a word limit on the last two stories. What I've found in the past is that with no word limit, people tell the story they want to tell without feeling compelled to bloat a 700-word idea into 2000 words. It's a weird practice that I don't understand, but the lack of a word limit has a freeing feeling for the players and does the opposite of what one might expect, kind of like the lack of speed limits in certain areas of Germany.

              1. I've never made it that far into a writing game and I don't know if I ever would but I would feel incredibly overwhelmed at a 2000 word count for whatever reason, and I'm sure my story would suffer. I wouldn't want to be the only one turning in 800 words instead of 2000.

                1. I wouldn't want to be the only one turning in 800 words instead of 2000.

                  I know exactly what you mean here. I can remember a couple of stories that I felt good about, fired up the word counter and... came in 300 words short. Well, I mean, you can tell more story with 300 more words, right?

                2. For the record, Zack, I often end up picking the shortest story in the lot. Some occasional judges (like the other weenus who commented here; aw snap!) can't see past small word counts, but if your story isn't a 2000-word story, I urge you not to coax that many words out of it.

      1. you didn't get red-shirted?

        is it funny to just me, or is it more generally funny that the term for college's stashing a player for a year is the same as the one for the dead guy on the away mission?

  12. Finished up "Ham on Rye" already. One of those books I kept telling myself "I'll go to bed after this chapter" about 10 times in a row.

          1. By which I mean that was the gif url in your lte. There was also some malformed iframes crap vaguely referring to something on mlb.com (?) that I could not figure out, so I assumed the gif was what you wanted.

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