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That happens so often. One of my Burmese cats tended towards being fat, so the first time my wife saw him, she called him Fatso. I instantly turned it into Catso and the poor thing was stuck with that for the rest of his life. Her current cat is even less fortunate. Her full name is by now Precious Princess Pretty Kitty Meow-Meow.

First good result from beta testing of Derivations - what was track 9 is now track 1. The placement works so much better, and the transition from the old track 8 to track 10 is wonderful. Burned a new CD for in-car testing on the way down to Galveston on Sunday. Fingers crossed!

I just opened this fortune cookie "Engage in group activities that further transformation". Did I get a cookie intended for Moperville?

'Fixed' that for you. Yeah, that's why I'm doing short posts of late. :-)

And she is back to "helping" me post here and on Facebook.

I just got a whistling tea kettle. The noise it makes when the water comes to a boil freaks my Cat, Explorer, right the [redacted] out.

For reasons, I'm awake at 1:00 in the morning. So is Explorer the Cat. She's been helping me do posts here, by helpfully rubbing her head on my hand and stepping on the keyboard, and is why I've done a bunch of smaller posts not a longer post with all the comments in one. Edit: Now that I'm done posting she has started eating and leaving me alone to post and type. Of course, like a cat.

If you really want people to obey the signs, then you need to make sure that they will know how to read them. Education in heiroglyphics seems to have fallen by the wayside.

The rizatriptan, in combination with its forced sleep, has done its work. My migraine is suppressed.

I just freaked Explorer, my cat, out by pulling out 2 tissues out of the box. After about 15 seconds she reached over and batted the tissue sticking out of the box several times.

I am now playing through a playlist of ALL TEN SONGS off my Derivations album. You read that right - I've finished writing them! I put the last tweaks in on the last unfinished track yesterday. Now, I'm checking for relative volume levels, mastering differences, appropriate track placements, and other details. I've also put out a call for help in getting the album cover designed. If it weren't for my knee and my infected toe, I would be a happy camper indeed.

Let's see, at least 13 hours of sleep (uninterrupted I assume since you didn't mention any) feeling better because of it... only complaint being boredom? I wish I could get 7 hours uninterrupted sleep most days. lol

There is also risk of overdose.

I'll put $Q 25 on April... of 2021.

Fixed that for you.

I love how "my cat" seems to be a part of her name! Every reference is to "Explorer, my cat," or "My cat, Explorer," pretty much without fail. Kind of like how my Patrick was never Pat. After the fifth or sixth time one of our receptionists tried to call him "Saint Patrick" and ended up saying "Sir Patrick" instead, that became part of his name, too, his full title being "Sir Patrick the Fuzzy-Mouse Slayer" for his fondness for the little fake-fur cat-toy mice we carried then.

Not your usual spin on, "I had my Explorer fixed."

I have an ottoman as part of my over stuffed chair. Explorer, my cat, just blasted out the bedroom, charged across the living room and jumped over the ottoman, ending up in the kitchen, with enough hang time as to be noticeable. She has done this like 3 times in the last 5 minutes.

If you figure out you want to delete before you hit submit, you can just leave the page. Afterward, all you can do is edit the second one into a quote and add a comment, "What an excellent post".

16 February 1923 – At the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Howard Carter demonstrates that you can not trust tourists to respect simple "Do Not Disturb" hieroglyphics

The neighbors across the street have no regard for the cops when it comes to playing loud music. I've called the cops on them for blasting their music from their big-ass pickup trucks' subwoofers in the past. Immediately after the cops left, the idiots threw a tantrum by turning up all four of their trucks' radios and honking their horns for a minute solid. Since then, they've continued to violate city code on subwoofers and automobiles (I've read it), but never long enough to get caught in the act again. Until today. They fired up their subwoofers and stood around with beers in hand, having a grand old time with no concern for anyone else in the neighborhood. I called the cops again and explained that this was the second time I'd had to call them for this. I also explained that they were "retaliators." They said they'd send someone out. Less than 5 minutes later, a police unit was on scene. There's been blessed silence ever since. I hope the police wrote them a ticket.

Explorer, my cat, has decided that it is time to dash about the house. Of course she is still in the last stages of her second heat of this "season" so she dashes, then lets out a cry for a boy cat, then dashes off again. Never had a cat do that combo before.

Fairly sure. Other than the kibble only thing she fits most, if not all, the tropes about cats.

Explorer, my cat, seems interested in anything I eat, in that she sticks her face in the bowl or cup that has the stuff in it, however she doesn't eat any of it. I'm used to cats that will go nuts for select types of human food, but she seems to be all about the kibble and that's it.

Why yes, Boost Mobile, I would like ads for Boost phones and the Boost network interrupting the videos that I'm watching on my Boost phone through my Boost network. /s

She might have enough money to fund EVERYONE in whole country. Like, in real economy that's impossible, but in simplified game economy ... So yes, why not? If Arthur didn't wanted Rhoda to go to pub, he should tell why, not mock her about not having money. ... of course, it's possible it wouldn't help. Also this. ... and the way Dan speaks about splitting into parts, we likely aren't in half yet.

I got my buckling spring keyboard and it seems to be working just fine. And it's noisy like a key board should be.

*nod* That concerns me too and, as far as I can tell, I'm very much like Dan in many ways relevant to what I like to read and write about. I suspect the difference is that Dan feels the pressure to keep a schedule while I'm much more willing to delay producing something in order to meet a certain standard. After all, everyone productive agrees that "perfection is no good if it means you never get it done" but where to draw the line is a fuzzy thing. (For my story ideas, I'm taking the "plan out the whole novel/fanfic first, then fill it in like a progressive JPEG, then only share it with strangers after it's more or less done," approach... something that keeps getting me dopamine hits from a trickle of insights I never could have had from writing in linear order, which cause me to make significant but proportionately worthwhile changes to the character bio charts, backstory, etc.) Heck, once I clear out some more urgent projects, I have a Scrivener competitor in a very early stage of development where the ability to pull up note cards which share a certain tag (eg. character bios) in a cross-comparison display is on the TODO list specifically because I'm finding it's starting to get laborious to double-check that my characters aren't evolving toward too much similarity as I continue to develop my conceptions of them.

We more or less had that in mind. Also, that name didn't just appear in one go. It grew gradually. First the poor cat got called Meow-Meow, then Kitty Meow-Meow... you get the idea. And then we came up with the idea that it was the official title of some Imperial Princess in some sort of shoujo anime, and then things went entirely out of hand and we imagined the Empire christening its biggest battleship after the beloved Princess. News reporter: "And here the Fleet sets out to save our homes, led by the battleships Yamato and Precious Princess Pretty Kitty Meow-Meow." Things went rapidly downhill after that.

On January 31 in The Future: 2021 - Former president Donald J. Trump is finally removed from the White House by Secret Service and police, where he had been holed up for eleven days, refusing to leave. Of course we all know he really just accidentally locked himself in the bathroom. 2033 - An assassination attempt on Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fails when her would-be killer suffers a stroke just before he is able to initiate his attack. A self-described "anti-socialist", he had refused access to free public healthcare (famously championed by the senator), which could have saved him. You can't make this stuff up. 2057 - The last patch of Maldives soil sinks beneath the waves for good. Now I'm never getting my security deposit back. 2081 - Coca-cola retires their once-iconic polar bear advertising mascots, deeming them insensitive. That, and most people under 25 don't even know what they are. 2107 - The last ice from the last glacier on Earth melts. This is going to be a really bad hit to the bottled water industry. 2116 - The first shots are fired in the Third American Civil War. Folks in the nations of California and Cascadia feel a certain vindication. 2199 - Alison Simms, the first human born on Mars, is...well, born. The first person in the history of the world not to be part of the history of the world. 2245 - Pope Francis III is elected. Let's hope he's a bit more like his first namesake than his second, eh? Eh? You know what I'm talking about. 2311 - Rwanda officially takes the place of Peru as the world's largest economy. China quietly reminds us all of their storied history of playing the long game. 2465 - The crew of the Astraeus become the first human beings to leave the Solar System. "Smart move, getting out while you can." ~California and Cascadia

She just did a thunder run through the house that I happened to see. She is jumping when she goes though a door.

My cat, Explorer, has the zips this morning. What is different about her zips than other cats I have had zips is she jumps a lot more than they did. She runs through the house, making at least one jump per segment of her dash.

Thank you! I thought I saw your name roll through on a Bandcamp receipt the other night. Much obliged!

Well, I like to make each post standalone, so I don't assume that the reader has read any of my other posts. Plus saying "my cat" dates back to my previous 2 cats, Ashley and Susan, which I did not want to be confused with Ashley and Susan, the EGS characters.

Have a Google Translate weather report. It isn't much better, but it may make you laugh.

That'll be more than Microsoft ever managed to do with their Explorer.

Well, I'm legally a Kansas resident now. Got my ID card in the mail today. And there was much rejoicing among the people...

I've decided to punt. Me and the cat are back in bed and I'm reading EGS from "New and Old Flames" on to current.

My cat, Explorer, has spent most of this morning either on my WW2 American/UK tank book on my book shelf or in the window sill. More on the window sill than on the book, but enough on the book that I'm not putting it back in the normal book shelf slot for it, because she seems to like it on top of the smaller shelf. Any rate, she is bird watching and making the odd chittering sound every once and a while.

Cats are soft and warm and fluffy Anything that is also soft and warm and fluffy but isn't a cat is obviously incomplete so she is obligated to cover it with her scent and hair to make it as cat like as possible

Here is explorer hanging out on my overstuffed chair .

I am. My cat, on the other hand...

And here I thought you were a Linux man.

Obviously we must bring back municipal trolley/streetcar systems!

OK, now that makes sense. However, there is another nuance, atheist seem to care about their atheist. I had a friend in high school who claimed to be agnostic, and he was fairly apathetic about the whole thing. Is that a thing? Also, it's not a can of worms, it's the FSM, bless his noodly appendages.

I thought it wasn't until he saw poop. Dog poop. The atheistic stance that rings closest to true for me is actually from Babylon Five. Marcus Cole. "Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

More than 1/4 of the Union Army died at Gettysburg, more than 1/3 of the Confederate Army. Edward Everett was the name of the featured speaker. Quoting history.com : " Everett, the former president of Harvard College, former U.S. senator and former secretary of state, was at the time one of the country’s leading orators." It is worth noting that a two hour speech was customary and expected at the time. " Lincoln's speech was short because that was his role, akin to being the one to use the scissors to cut the ribbon at a building dedication. Of course in hindsight, it is easy to see that a two minutes speech of less than three hundred words can be memorable, less so a two hour oratory. That the Gettysburg Address was crafted on the train ride is a myth. Witnesses place the writing the days prior to the event. Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward accompanied him, so there may have been further discussion and possibly some revision along the way. It was a well crafted piece designed to hammer home a few key points, the most radical of which, (and honestly, this had escaped me, the referenced article laid it out), was that the Declaration of Independence was a foundational document of our government. I've understood the notion, even scratched my head at "why?"; it never occurred to me that this speech is the one that drove it home, linking the intention of the Founding Fathers laid out in the Declaration to how we govern. "Oh, that makes sense now; this is way more foundational that it might appear at first glance. It's more than just a really good speech." He was cutting the legs out from under the argument that "The Constitution does not forbid slavery."

Gentle forumgoers, a little while ago I had a discussion with our esteemed fellow poster @Darth Fluffy. In it I offered to share some of my and my family's experiences with him. I have decided to post a brief essay I have written on the topic publicly here in the hope that others might benefit from reading it, too. Darth, if you feel it may be helpful, I suggest you show this to your daughter. It might conceivably open some pathway of discussion between you that I hope you may both benefit from. Please note that I am issuing a general content warning for what may be somewhat personal emotions and experiences. It might trouble some readers and be of no interest to others. Also please note and respect that I am not open to unsolicited advice nor to opinions about my state of mental well-being. I leave that in the hands of the health professionals I trust and have no interest in armchair psychology peddled by people who have no direct personal knowledge of me. With that said, let me begin. My name is Monika, and I am a trans woman. I am writing this document at the urgings of my father, who believes that explaining my identity in my own words may be a good way to make myself understood to my friends and family. I also dedicate it to my online friends and acquaintances, many of whom have trans relatives or are themselves genderqueer. It is my hope that my own experiences may be helpful to those who wish to better understand. Please note that I am writing on my own behalf and that I do not speak for anyone else, though it is my hope that other trans and genderqueer people upon reading this will nod and recognise at least some of what I have experienced. Now, right out of the gate I wish to deal with a potential source of confusion. It is common trans terminology to say “I identify as <gender identity>.” Many assume that ‘identify’ here functions as an active verb and that it is a choice I have made. Nothing could be further from the truth, which I will attempt to explain in this document. Whether my identity was already biologically determined at birth or it formed in the following years is not relevant for these purposes; what matters is that it formed and that I at no point ever possessed determination in coming into it. As far back as I can remember, I was a girl even in childhood. I was simply assigned male gender at birth based on my physical attributes and was obviously never even consulted on the matter. Why didn’t I ever object to it back then? Perhaps I did and was gently or not so gently corrected by respectively my family and society at large. Children were not allowed agency in expressing their gender back then and it is still rare today. We are heavily socially conditioned to express our assigned gender as soon as we are old enough to be subject to conditioning. Whether it fits us at all does not matter. We are simply told to conform, and if we do not, we suffer the consequences. And in fact I lived in such fear of these consequences that as time passed, I could not bear the thought of not presenting myself as a boy. I would be considered abnormal, strange, weird. I would be ostracized by my agemates and seen as an aberration by people older than me. And finally that fear grew so strong that I entirely repressed my female identity and pretended to be a boy. Which I was not very good at, so I got ostracized by my agemates and seen as an aberration by people older than me. Ah well. Having arrived at the point where I am at last able to acknowledge being a woman to myself has transformed my perception of my life. So many things that made no sense to me in my childhood and teen years have suddenly become comprehensible to me. And in the process, repressed memories of mine resurface -- at times with startling lucidity -- and I marvel at how they suddenly make sense to me from my new perspective. Throughout my childhood I was the odd one out, among the last ever picked for any team, the misfit no-one quite knew what to do with. My agemates called me the ‘girly boy’, I did not properly engage in the ‘boy games’, I pretended but never convinced anyone. Not even myself. I was just too afraid to even consider the alternative. It led to some moments I consider very telling in retrospect. An example: I loved singing in the school choir. Then one year the woman in charge of the choir decided to perform the March of Saint Lucia, an old and well-loved midwinter celebration welcoming the return of daylight. But because the performers wear long white robes that are basically dresses, the boys in the choir shied away from the idea in horror. A mere week or two after the decision they had all left. I stayed behind, not even understanding why there would be a problem. And as a result got more flak for being the ‘girly boy’ than ever. I could provide more examples, but I’d rather go on in a more general way so this will not grow overlong and repetitive. Suffice it to say that I again and again encountered situations where my actions were judged on the basis of me performing as a boy, and again and again I fell short of expectations. Failure became so common to me that I started to take it for granted. As I entered puberty I fit less and less well in among the boys around me. I felt uncomfortable in situations where we got divided into ‘boys and girls’. And when the other boys discussed girls, I frequently found myself biting down on wanting to interrupt them and say that they were not being fair, or mean, or just didn’t understand. Eventually I just couldn’t relate to my agemates at all and ended up entirely sidelined. I even accepted it. This was, after all, the only normal I knew. Unfortunately acceptance did not enable me to endure it and eventually I failed out of high school with a resounding crash. (I have since learned that this is not an unknown phenomenon for trans teens of either gender.) At this point I would like to address the elephant in the room: a general and common perception of trans people as ‘mentally ill.’ While this is no longer the accepted view of the DSM, it was only addressed back in 2013 and many still believe that trans people are delusional. For now I shall sidestep Foccault and his ideas that ‘insanity’ is a view of society rather than necessarily a medical condition, though I do wish to nod to him in passing. But as a matter of fact: Yes, I suffer from mental illness. To be precise, clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder. But I posit that naming them the reason for my identity not matching my assigned gender is placing the cart squarely in front of the horse. Rather, I suggest this possibility: that being forced to spend my entire childhood and adult life pretending to be a gender not my own resulted in me experiencing constant anxiety and eventually severe depression. I daresay that there are professional psychiatrists and psychologists that are at least amenable to discussing the idea. (By the way, two common arguments employed against the concept of transgender identity are respectively 1] that trans individuals are delusional and insane, and 2] that it is not possible to just ‘choose’ to be the other gender. Precisely how and why one might ‘choose’ to become delusional and insane is for some reason never satisfactorily explained.) All this, by the way, is why I am violently opposed to the notion that I have ‘become’ a woman, or even more ludicrously that I have ‘chosen’ to be a woman. I have always been a woman. I was merely forced to repress my actual identity out of powerlessness to resist the one imposed on me and fear of the consequences if I should object to it. I was a girl from childhood on. I was just never allowed to express it. Along these lines, trans people in general tend to object to the conception that they either 'become' or 'choose to be' a gender other than what they were assigned at birth. I hope this helps to make it more explicable why. I may have more on this topic later, but I think I am done for now. If you have gotten this far, I thank you for reading. Monika

Danish Bananas? Can't the Danes let Iceland have anything as their own? https://satwcomic.com/never-say-never