Current Annoyances

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Please. I'm West Minnesota, born and raised. Under no sun is how I spend most of my days.

You saw my San Francisco and raised me a West Philadelphia.

[Dalty]

Holy crap - I have actually been to Minnesota!!

[Dalty]

First World Problem solved - business class maintained. To the lounge!!!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Allow me a second to mourn this loss of hundreds of dollars.

*sniff*

All right. I'm better.

[Dalty]

You are all heart.

[Adam54]

Holy crap - I have actually been to Minnesota!!

For all of the thousands of times I've mentioned Minnesota, for you actually watching a travel documentary ABOUT MINNESOTA, it takes me finally mentioning that we get no sunshine for it to click with you that you've been here before?!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I bet Dalty gets less sunshine than you do.

[Adam54]

I'd take that bet. If he saw the sun twice in December, for example, he'd lose.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It's not all about December.

I'm not going to do much looking, but this site claims Minneapolis average 2,607 hours of sunshine a year:

http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/mi ... s/usmn0503

This site claims London averages 1,481 hours of sunshine a year:

https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/ ... nshine.php

The Current Results site also has a page for Minneapolis, but it doesn't give the hours stat for Minneapolis. It gives the number of days per year, instead. I didn't find a number of days per year stat for London, but I also didn't look very hard.

I did see on the Wikipedia page for "Climate of the United Kingdom" that the average for total annual sunshine in the United Kingdom is 1,339.7 hours. This is apparently under thirty percent of the maximum possible. The maximum possible is around 4,476 hours.

I'm sure there are more dependable sites with cleaner breakdowns and a clearer definitions. I also realize Adam54 doesn't exactly live in Minneapolis, just as Dalty doesn't exactly live in London.

[Dalty]

I live in the tropical South East of London.

[Dalty]

Sorry Adam, I never put two and two together.

[Adam54]

No worries, just made me chuckle. What were you doing here? Or, I'm guessing more accurately, how long was your layover in the airport?

[Dalty]

London Gatwick to Dallas Fort Worth on Northwestern via Minneapolis St Paul!

About 3 hours.

[Adam54]

Did you visit the Republican Senator Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom Stall during your stay?? It's THE tourist attraction to beat all tourist attractions within the airport.

[Adam54]

I miss Northwest Airlines. A flight I had with them from New York back to here was the closest I've ever gotten to living like you. It was back in the days before they overpacked every. single. flight. AND when they still served food for shorter flights. There were a grand total of eight of us on the plane. I got to eat the first class food AND I got to drink free wine which was refilled by this piping hot blonde flight attendant basically every time I took a sip.

I felt amazing by the time I got home. No flight since has compared to that and likely never will.

[Dalty]

I had never heard of them before this flight. The movie was The Mummy and it was shown on a big screen at the front. I slept a lot!!

[Space Tycoon]

I very much dislike cockroaches.

That is all I will say on this matter. For now.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I've always thought they were pretty cool, but I've never met anyone who agrees with me.

[Dalty]

They crunch when you step on them.

I hate spiders with a passion.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I've always thought they were pretty cool, and I have met some people who agree with me.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Current Annoyance
A friend linked to an uploaded clip from My Dinner with Andre. The person who uploaded the clip claims it "predicts our current world." It made me annoyed all over again at My Dinner with Andre.

Here's the clip:



I'm not bored. Fuck boredom. I reject boredom. I'm a man of many privileges, but boredom is a privilege I refuse to let in.

I find the Andre Gregory character in My Dinner with Andre infuriating. He's smug and ponderously existential. It's my understanding that it was pretty much just Andre Gregory being Andre Gregory while Louis Malle pointed a camera at him and Wallace Shawn.

The character would be less infuriating if he were a little less sure of just how interesting he is. I applaud the Shawn character both for his restraint and for his willingness to humor the Gregory character. If I were a guest at that table, I'd probably have to leave the table at some point. It's exactly the kind of dinner conversation I tend to avoid. It's not a real exchange of ideas. It's a one-sided stroking of ego.

I liked My Dinner with Andre when I saw it as an early teen, but I came to like it less and less as I got older. It's set up something like a Socratic Dialogue, with the Gregory character imparting his "wisdom" and the Shawn character playing the head-nodder and occasional straw man.

Gregory's character's tales of going off to "find" himself feature pretty heavily in the movie. I like them least of all. Tales of white men of privilege going on journeys of self-discovery annoy me more than most other things.

If I want to enjoy it these days, I have to look at it as a comedy of restraint. I have to imagine that the Shawn character, despite smiling and acting interested, is consumed with loathing for every self-important and patronizing sentence that comes out of Gregory's character's mouth. Whenever the camera cuts to the Shawn character, I imagine him imagining himself killing the Gregory character in a series of ways that escalate in their creativity and brutality.

Regarding the actual clip, the Gregory character isn't saying much of anything. It's the same generic bullshit anyone from any generation might say when delivering their "What's Wrong with the Western World" critique. Twain had similar complaints, but he at least expressed them in a humorous way. Nietzsche said the same kind of stuff about newspapers. The Gregory character whines the same kinds of whines as Adorno. When you're complaining about the same stuff Adorno's complaining about, you know you're an asshole.

[Dalty]

"Tales of white men of privilege going on journeys of self-discovery annoy me more than most other things."

And there I was ready to tell you all about my epic trip to the mini mart just now.....

[Jubbers]

I am pretty sure someone at work is trying to go for the world record for toilet seat cover / toilet paper tower height. This is today's attempt.

IMG_20160523_162730480.jpg (137.36 KiB) Viewed 1942 times

I'm not sure where they actually bathroomed.

I am very tired of having to throw away all of this stuff. What is so terrifying about the toilet seat that one would feel a tissue cushion of such thickness would be necessary?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

A friend of mine once had me stand guard so he could go into a restroom intended for females and rub his ding-dong all over all the seats.

This friend killed himself a few years later. His suicide, as far as I know, was unrelated to that day's restroom actions.

[Dalty]

Erm............ nope. Nothing. That can't be followed.