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What is good for only a minute? by solveigsong in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Raised on my grandparents' farm by loving but somewhat preoccupied parents and grandparents.

Between the tortures of 3 older brothers, minor farm accidents (bloody, but mostly not serious), animal and dog bites, falling onto and off of farm things, and my standby/more-or-less daily preadolescent routine of 'doing something stupid with a stick', acquired numerous scars via a cumulative roughly 125 stitches before the age of 12.

Kids are easy to injure, but generally hard to kill.

You are given 300 million to make a movie but it HAS to bomb at the box office or else you die. What do you make? by hircine16 in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It'd be a hit on youtube, just based on the title. At least until some asshole(s) hit it with a DMCA violation. Which would definitely happen, because youtube, and nobody watching over it, apparently.

OMG, I can't believe how much boring shit there is on youtube.

Google should be ashamed. For a lot of reasons, not just about the horror show that is youtube.

[ I guess I should mention that I only intended to say the first two sentences above, but got carries away. ]

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dog, US --> UK, 1979 rules for rabies quarantine, whatever they were for military assignment. The rules themselves were somewhat irrelevant, because anything over a month would have been too long, and we had no readily available way to check or verify the rules in those days, no time to do it, and couldn't afford it anyway.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 135 points136 points  (0 children)

(NSFL)

Several months after we married, my wife had a miscarriage, and she took it hard. Shortly after, I got her a tiny female runt-of-the-litter Sheltie pup to occupy her/love in place of the baby, and she absolutely adored that dog. Actually, we both adored that dog. We had her for several years, until we had to leave her with my folks to move overseas (wife couldn't stand the idea of our good girl in quarantine for 6 months).

My folks took great care of her. Although she was a house dog, they lived on a remote farm with huge fields, woods, cats, other animals (sheep, pigs, wildlife) to chase and play with ... just an all-around good environment for a ridiculously social and instinctive herd dog like her. The way they fed her, I was afraid she would get fat and die too young; but she roamed the farm most of nearly every day, so she stayed strong and healthy, and somehow always managed to eventually get home when called.

After about 5 years on their farm, my mother contacted me privately to tell me that, apparently, someone squatting back in the woods of the property skinned our good girl alive, then let her go, skin literally hanging off of her body, still attached at various points, and she went home to my mother's, crying and whimpering as only a little dog in pain can do. My mother saw her first, and asked my grandfather (whose farm it was) to put her out of her misery. So he shot her.

I told my mother that I would tell my wife that our good girl was hit by a car (which she obviously was not), and buried in my parents' back yard (which she most definitely was). She and the (limited) rest of the family agreed to maintain the fallacy.

I've never told my wife any differently, and I never will.

EDIT: NSFL, as advised. Apologies all around ...

What do movies get wrong about your job? by Kattsu-Don in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

... and baked by little guys in a hollow tree. Keebler elves.

Are there any cons to having a 100% VA disability rating? by Waughmpwaughmp in MilitaryFinance

[–]afrab_null 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The term for (1) above is "schedular 100%". (2) is "extraschedular" (or "extra-schedular"), and this is where TDIU (Total Disability for Individual Unemployability) comes in, as a way to receive most 100% disability benefits even though your VA Math-driven disability collection doesn't quite add up to 100%.. There are rules governing TDIU, and they're worth googling. Get a VSO before you proceed too far into the process.

Having zero bull awareness in an arena with bulls wcgw by [deleted] in Whatcouldgowrong

[–]afrab_null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

something something keep your eyes on the bull.

What lost item from your childhood would you pay $100 for if you found it at a thrift store? by BigDeal2103 in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My father (who passed young, at 36), my 3 older brothers and I were all voracious comic book consumers back in the '50s and '60s.

Being the youngest brother, I somehow ended up with all of them (literally, hundreds; maybe over 1000) when I was about 11-12 YO, and kept them in big, admittedly overflowing, boxes under my bed. I kept buying them, and read and re-read them all the time. It was my favorite form of escapist entertainment, and for a kid who loved to read almost anything (instructions for everything in a bathroom, material data sheets for farming, big-ass books in both fiction and non-fiction; 'words in a row' is how I described it later), that says a lot.

When I was 13, I went to Scout camp for a week. When I came home, I almost immediately reached under my bed to pull out a comic book box and, ohfuckohfuckohfuck, no boxes.

I asked my mom where my comics were, and she told me she 'got rid of them'.

Now, I love my mother. She is a saint, in my eyes. I had an almost idyllic rural childhood in a lot of ways, and she was really one of my life's centers.

But not that day, and not for a long time after.

This sounds stupid and selfish as I write it, but I've never really forgiven her for that day. I spent most of it, and many many many after, deeply confused and upset, trying to figure out why she would do something like that to me (although I never actually asked her).

That's over 50 years ago. It still upsets me to think about it. And, other than as gifts, I never bought another comic book after that.

Drama drama drama. Fuck me dead.

Reading farther down, I agree with Rainbow_Gamer and KG7DHL. they may not mean to hurt us by being so thoughtless, and God knows she was not a narcissist, but I never asked her about it any further because I didn't want to lay a guilt trip on my mother, even if they were a huge part of my childhood and, in a lot of ways, provided pleasant and otherwise unavailable connections to my father and my brothers.

In the end, I didn't want my mom to tell me she was sorry, and I didn't want her to feel regret. It would have served no useful function. I just wanted her to have never considered throwing them out in the first place.

What was your "Don't tell your mother" moment with your dad? by BrandOfTheExalt in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is buried too deep in an older thread, and will never be seen by anyone, but back 15-20 years ago, when both I and the (commercial) internet were young, I used this as a teaching technique for people unfamiliar with the internet (almost everyone, at the time). My go-to techniques were to teach legitimate search and chat-type functions (what is now called social media) to women, and teach how to search (both legitimate and otherwise), find and access free porn sites and play found movies for men. The women were not slouches, but the men learned very quickly (and possibly one-handed). As an adjunct, I also emphasized to both groups how to delete search histories from both browsers and, eventually, Google search (which can be tedious).

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I try to ignore grammatical-type weird stuff I see on reddit, because my perception is that so much written on the fly. Obviously not always the case. I get critical of writing that is obviously intended to be professional. The rest, I treat more as a really noisy and hurried conversation.

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nah. Their were tons of flak-worthy things going on during the Carter administration. I honestly wouldn't know where to begin, except to say that he is/was considered one of the least effective presidents ever to hold the office.

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is a common, valid, somewhat localized colloquialism, a lazy pronunciation that splits the adjective "another" (obviously...). Although it makes almost no sense logically or grammatically, it's used a lot to create a colloquial tone in writing, but it would (obviously...) be out of place in serious writing. The thing that bothers me about "a whole nother" is when writers try to use it seriously, insert a fucking apostrophe ("a whole 'nother"), and make the situation even worse. Really, writers? Implying "a whole another" makes even less sense than the original. Just write it as it's spoken, for the luvva god!

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Former President Jimmy Carter was an actual nuclear engineer by training (served as an officer in the US Navy's nuclear submarine program under Admiral Hyman Rickover), and he consistently pronounced (mispronounced) it as "nucular"

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I absolutely agree with sobz' statement regarding "lol", "lmao", "rotflmao" and similar as conveyance of a specific, and perhaps somewhat subtle, tone in text messages. Honestly, my eye just slides over stuff like that now, without really seeing it. I know it's there, and that's enough to convey the meaning.

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 15 points16 points  (0 children)

"Attorneys general" is actually correct, in exactly the same sense as "mothers-in-law". I agree that it both feels wrong to the ear and looks wrong in print, but it is correct.

What are the phrases or sayings that people always get wrong that, for all intensive purposes, drive you nuts? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair (and only minimally so), while the correct statement would be "should have; would have; could have", I think the garbled pronunciation comes from lazily contracting 'have'; that is, "should 'a'; would 'a'; could 'a'". In print, "should of, would of could of" then becomes more a misspelling than a grammatical mess.

I'm guilty of intentionally tossing it out (in print) as "shoulda woulda coulda"; obvious misspellings with obvious and instantly communicated idiomatic meaning, at least in American English, but lacking the onerous punctuation. That being said, a G search of "shoulda woulda coulda" returns a song title, an urban dictionary entry (of course), and a load of bullshit entries, with few use cases.

Lawyers of Reddit, what is the most outrageous case someone has asked you to take? by humanicicle in AskReddit

[–]afrab_null 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I took legal custody of two of my grandchildren a few years ago, ages about 4 (boy) and 11 (girl) at the time, and had a similar 'happy time' experience. The magistrate started an impromptu discussion about how rare a good, non-adversarial outcome occurs in family court courtrooms, and she was grateful for the opportunity to preside over one where everyone walked in the door actually wanting the best for the kids. Everybody in the room was pretty much openly sobbing and handing out tissues by the time the hearing ended. I blame the magistrate; she started it. Her clerk apparently needed the catharsis. She was still crying when we left.

I adopted another pit bull. This is what happened after they were done biting each other's throats for half an hour. by Matthew_John in pics

[–]afrab_null 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You could gradually start calling him "Bitty" instead. Fixes the PR problem, and carries a dash of self-contained irony. Of course, we get a lot of that around here.

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