Month: January 2017

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

endreal:

the-fucking-turtlebear:

Peter Piper probably never picked a peck of pickled peppers for the peppers can’t have been pickled prior to picking. The pickling procedure takes place post picking, and the possibility of Peter piper picking a peck of pickled peppers is preposterous. The paradoxically penned poem positing Peter’s picking of the pickled peppers is past probability due to its postulating on peppers that were pickled pre-picking.

Perhaps Peter is a petty pilferer, picking a peck of peppers from the platform of a plant where peppers are processed for pickling in preparation for purchase by the populace?

Tags:

#say that one time fast

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

tennfan2:

thehypnobunny:

onlyseventhoughts:

justifiedsurrender:

The thing about trying new stuff is that you acquire a whole new range of things that can inappropriately remind you of kink.

I’m at the eye doctor earlier today. I’m not even sure what this particular test is for, but you look into a box and you can see a picture of a landscape. The nurse/technician person is explaining what this is supposed to look like. I’m sure she repeats this same speech all the time and that’s why it sounds weird, but she’s saying in this slightly rising and falling voice “and just let your eyes rest on that image.” Add to that something about mentioning the picture will “drift in and out of focus,” there is a definite hypnosis-vibe going on here it is not only me. (It might be only me.) 

I wouldn’t have cared much about that by itself, but later the doctor is doing that test to look at the motion of your eyes. She’s saying “Look at the tip of my pen” while she moves it back and forth, but also using the little plastic thing on a stick to cover one of my eyes at a time. She’s doing all this pretty quickly, I’m trying to stay looking at the pen and not at the stick… And I’m thinking: hey, do you want to hear about what was going on the last time(s) someone told me to focus on something that was moving around very close to my face? No you don’t, but that would go some ways towards explaining why I’m awkwardly smiling right now and trying not to giggle.

@spiralturquoise

Oh yes. Oh yes

This happened to me on the phone the other day at work. All she was doing was thanking me, but she did it in just. the. right way.

*Giggle*

The eye doctor is the most hypnotic fucking place that mankind ever devised. The new machines in particular are just insane, but also

“Follow the light with your eyes… this way and that way… up and down…”

I MEAN COME ON MAN

Oh god, I know this feel. I have known this feel ever since I read The Miserable Mill as a child.

(And they never do say what exactly happened to Klaus in that optometrist’s office, only what he was like when he left it. That might have made it worse.)

Lately, when sitting in that patient’s chair, I tend to end up going meta. I think about all the past selves that have come before, sitting in that same chair and thinking along those same lines. It isn’t precisely the same thought each time: it changes a little, the more I know and the better I understand myself. I think, if you could go back and trace exactly what I was thinking each time I had an eye exam, year upon year, you could get a trajectory of my sexual development in a nutshell.

Tags:

#hypno-fetishism: because eye exams just weren’t uncomfortable enough already #reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #eyes #A Series of Unfortunate Events #nsfw?

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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My new phone arrived yesterday!

(Amazon almost always takes less time to ship than they think they will, so I ignored them telling me to expect it on the 9th and kept an eye on the tracking page.)

I haven’t got it fully set up yet, but it’s coming along well. I might be finished by tonight, and likely by the end of tomorrow.

There are two main problems left.

First, it’s fucking cold out. -10C, windchill -20. It’s going to get less fucking cold in a couple days, but there won’t be a positive windchill temperature in the foreseeable future. Apparently active Pokemon Go players are dealing with this as best they can by things like walking laps around malls and camping indoor Pokestops. I might do stuff like that *next* winter, but I don’t want to *start* playing a game while it’s in winter dormancy.

Second, Internet access. I still don’t have a SIM card, which means I don’t have a data plan. I’m told Pokemon Go requires a continuous Internet connection.

I can think of a few ways of dealing with this:

1: Play only in Wi-Fi zones. I can’t tell yet how feasible this is: I don’t know what the public Wi-Fi coverage is like in my area. Because it is, again, fucking cold, I can’t go out mapping yet. (There are a *few* hotspots already listed on that map as being within walking distance, but it’s clear nobody’s gone through and systematically mapped my area. Not yet.)

2: Pay my brother to come with me, with his phone set to mobile hotspot. I might need *a* mobile data connection, but nobody said it had to be *mine*. I’m pretty sure I’d need to pay him even if he didn’t mind the act of coming with me, because I don’t think he currently has a data plan, nor do I think he has enough spare credits that he could buy one without making more top-ups to his pre-paid account than he otherwise would.

3: Convince my mother to detach her pre-paid account from her current flip phone and attach it to a phone capable of generating a mobile hotspot (the smartphone I’m giving her, perhaps). Then, take her phone with me. (She probably wouldn’t mind me using her phone without her supervision, as long as I asked first.) She has enough spare credits built up that I probably wouldn’t need to pay her, but she likes her current phone and getting her to switch would be tricky.

4: Finally just buy my own phone plan. (This option can probably be discarded. I am very reluctant to spend money on gaming: I normally stick to video games that are ad-supported, volunteer-maintained, or have optional purchases I never buy. I might be willing to bend a *little*, but not to the tune of $100/year. This option would be feasible if I had a significant amount of non-Pokemon use for a phone plan, but I currently don’t.)

5: *Partially* just buy my own plan: instead of getting the same setup as the rest of my family, with a $100 minimum top-up paid annually, pay on a sub-annual scale and let it lapse in winter. Alternatively, pay on a monthly scale only on months I don’t have school (and therefore have a lot more free afternoons in which to play), letting it lapse during winter *and* during school semesters (using one or more of the other methods to play during semesters). Even pre-paid plans don’t like people lapsing, so there would be penalties for having my plan be on-and-off. Because of the discount for paying annually, it might not even be cheaper depending on what periods of time the plan is “on”.

(All of these options, other than 1, also require arranging the data plan itself for maximally efficient use of phone credits. Depending on the setup, minimum payments might not provide enough credits, and if the minimum isn’t enough even Mom’s built-up credits would eventually run out.)

Last I heard, @nenya-kanadka has an on-and-off phone plan. Her Internet connection usually isn’t good enough for Tumblr these days, so she probably won’t see my ping, but I think I’ll message her on Dreamwidth and ask for details about how her setup works. (What with her being in Canada, any country-specific advice she gives will still apply.) That’d get me a bit closer to having enough information to make a decision, though I won’t be able to make any plans until I’ve mapped the local Wi-Fi.

Tags:

#originally I wasn’t even going to *consider* replacing my phone until spring #because I knew I’d get antsy if I had the theoretical capacity to play Pokemon Go but not the weather #(I’m now trying to balance ‘doing enough research to plan stuff like Internet access’ with ‘researching will make me antsier’) #but the sooner Mom gets an Android that actually functions okay (unlike her shitty tablet) the better #and anyway the roomier hard drive will be nice regardless #oh look an original post #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(three at the moment) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #I’m not especially *expecting* advice but if anyone has any I’d be interested in hearing it

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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sinesalvatorem:

ocbr:

yesterday this girl in my academic writing class sits down next to me and puts 3 bananas on the desk (which was jarring by itself) and i had two bananas in my backpack so i wanted to see if she would notice if i added those to her banana pile when she wasn’t looking and when she finally looked back at the bananas she sighed and said really quietly to herself “oh my god…i have so many…” and put all five of them in her backpack

I feel like this is a perfect vignette of Caribbean life

Tags:

#food #arguably a postscript to the previous pair of posts