The Cocktail Party Thread (a.k.a. The "Jack This Thread" Thread)

[ThatReallyHurt]

Have you ever looked around you, seen something bad, and wondered if it was your fault because you weren't paying attention?

[sabreur]

TRH must be Catholic, don't you think?

[fencergal33]

I went to Catholic school (guys, insert your plaid skirt fantasies here), and they were all about the guilt thing. Always made us feel like Original Sin was our fault and stuff cuz we were girls. I say, when in doubt, blame it on the men!!!!

[swordwench]

Yeah, that old original sin crap. That's about where I finally cut ties with organized religion. Why's it all my fault? How could I possibly be to blame just for inheriting the sins of my forefathers? I may be guilty of a lot of sins, but not THAT one. Give me free will anyday. I think I still have one of my old philosophy books from college lying around here. "Free Will and Determinism." Problem is, every time I think of the title, all I can visualize is that cheesy movie "Free Willy" and I picture the orca sailing over the jetty. But Michael Madsen was pretty hot in it. More than in "Kill Bill" anyway.

[fencergal33]

... and a little baby sized Elijah Wood. He was adorable, but got much closer to "hot" in LOTR. However, nothing could possibly compare to Legolas. He was dreamy.......*sigh*

[Nusy]

Dreamy eyed child staring into the night... ooh, sorry for singing. It's my favourite band... Do you like Nightwish?

[Fencergrl]

I've always wanted to poll those who grew up Catholic to see if any lied in the confessional... as a kid I could never think of any sins I committed... so I thought of ones that I hoped the priest would consider "cute" and go easy on me with the penance. Then next time, I had a sin to confess... lying. It was a good system.

We had one priest who gave out a reasonable amount of penance, and another who went over the deep end. As I rotated through the same sins, I noticed the difference. So I tended to just do a reasonable amount of penance/praying regardless of who I got (I figured God was fair minded).

My other siblings must have been doing the same thing with the exception of my little sister.... I only found this out years later when we discussed it as adults. My little sister exclaimed "That's why mom would pull me aside and asked "What on earth have you been up to???" I was the only one saying all my prayers for penance. She must have thought I was a really evil child to be getting that kind of penance!"

[Inquartata]

"The Pirates of Penance" is my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Unless it's "The Mikado". Depends on my mood, really. Anyway, I was never quite able to figure out what the "Penance" was. Still, it's got good songs.

[Goofy]

"The Pirates of Penance"? Isn't that the one about duty? Or are they ALL about duty?

[fencergal33]

I think he means the Pirates of Pensance. But who cares?

What should I be for Halloween this year?

[Maeve_Mari]

Well, it's really Pirates of Penzance

http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/html/index.html

In The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic was as a child apprenticed to a band of tenderhearted, orphaned pirates by his nurse who, being hard of hearing, had mistaken her master's instructions to apprentice the boy to a pilot. Frederic, upon completing his 21st year, rejoices that he has fulfilled his indentures and is now free to return to respectable society. But it turns out that he was born on February 29 in leap year, and he remains apprenticed to the pirates until his 21st birthday. By the end of the opera, the pirates, a Major General who knows nothing of military strategy, his large family of beautiful but unwed daugters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria's name.

Do you understand the Penance you face now that I have pointed it out to you?

[Robert Smith]

Do you understand the Penance you face now that I have pointed it out to you?

Penance, aren't those the little triangular flag johnnies that they fly from the backs of ships? Never could do with "going down to the sea in ships" and all that rot; far rather stay at home, huntin' and shootin' and fishin'. I say, I believe there's a word for that, don't you know, droppin' the final g and all. Zézayer, si I'm told. Darn Frenchies gettin' everywhere.Well, least they don't smell like a tarts boudoir like those darned goofy american sabre wallahs. Speakin' of ... I say, what were we speaking of?...

[sabreur]

Goofy sabre wallah? What's the word for a three-part oxymoron?

[parrythis]

Would that be a "troxymoron" or is that a new word? My old school English teachers drove me nuts when they told us things like "ain't" isn't a word. Don't they realize that language is a dynamic entity that grows and changes over time as cultures intermingle and branch out?

[Epee_Pox]

Unless it's French, of course. Ironic how they established an entire bureaucracy to "manage" the evolution of the language, which resulted in the sudden freezing of the language and utter resistance to evolution.

That's why the spellings are so weird. And the markings, too. Like, the circumflex was just supposed to be a temporary thing to indicate that a vowel used to be followed by an "s" but now it's chiseled in stone, never to be removed.

[Robert Smith]

Speaking of carved in stone, you have to wonder why all Henry Moore's stuff had holes in it. Maybe he was working towards a charm bracelet for a giant. Lessee, assume a normal charm to be about 8 mm, and an average Henry Moore to be around a metre, that's .... about 120 times the normal scale, so around 200 metres tall. Wow. Could keep King Kong as a pet. Would be a tough bugger to beat with an epee.

[Goofy]

Did you mention charm bracelets? You know- that makes me think about gifts which make me think about Christmas, and would you believe I received a 2005 Christmas catalogue in the mail today? It's September, right? Sounds like 'This Weeks Sign of the Apocalypse' or something...

[swordwench]

I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like... victory.

[Epee_Pox]

I remember we had this kid who made napalm in my high school chemistry class. The teacher was really angry with me. I'm sorry, did I say me? I meant "him."

[parrythis]

Did it work? When I worked in the science lab in college, I used to clean up after the students and take all the beakers, flasks, and test tubes that had left over chemicals in them and mix them all together randomly just to see what would happen. When all the other work was done, I would hook myself up to the oscilliscopes to see what kind of electronic signal I could produce from my body. Once, I mixed some common household chemicals and made a nifty little smoke bomb. I tested that one outdoors.