MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]

Subject: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 11:49 AM

So I know MOM is not happy being stuffed up on a shelf in Max's tech closet while he struggles with the Robot Gremlins who have developed an unhealthy interest in Our Dear Mother, but we must keep the spirit of the thread afloat. If this doesn't grow too long I may be able to transfer it over to MOM once the fix is made.

The usual suspects are invited to continue the long-running conversation. Anyone who drops in to bash MOM or cast shade on this noble enterprise may find themselves getting a bum's rush out the door. This is BS of the highest quality and the main thread contains superb fiction, songs, and poetry that snuck in inadvertently. The HTML tricks are astounding. Our late great Amos left many pearls of wisdom, and BWL wrote one of the funniest short stories I have ever had to pleasure to spit my drink on my screen while reading. We still miss Chongo et al.

MOAB's amanuensis
59139, in case anyone is counting.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 01:24 PM

I'm glad to see this make-do thread, Stilly. I was worried that Mom might run out of gin before the problem could be solved. With no way to get more booze to her, things could have gotten ugly pretty quickly. A 59,000+ post thread with a serious case of delerium tremens is not something to sneeze at.

By the way, did you know there once was a town in California called "Delerium Tremens"? Someone with no sense of humor renamed it "Omega".

Makes me wonder if there might be a town called "Acid Flashback" somewhere.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 02:27 PM

Google Earth says "We couldn't understand this question." The closest result that would render on the map was Flaschencontainer, Germany. (50^o08'46.52" N 6^o30'05.58")

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 03:06 PM

"Flaschencontainer" translates as "bottle container". It's not really a town. It's a collection of derelict cargo containers full of Mom's empty gin bottles. It's probably big enough to be a town, but nobody'd want to live there.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 05:42 PM

And you know, don't you all,
that there is a town named
"Truth or Consequences"?

The television show of the same name ran a contest of some kind,
before I was born I believe.
The states in the Continental US,
their towns were eligible to enter,
and...i forget the conditions.

The winner was a town called Hot Springs New Mexico;
ever since then it has been
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
Mostly they grow poblano chiles down there,
on the banks of the Rio Grande.


And those who aren't in the know are utterly bewildered
by references to a New Mexico Town called

Tee or Cee,
written out "T or C",
which some people mistake for "Torc."

as in,
where the heck is Torc New Mexico??

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 09:36 PM

Wow, Keb, I knew there was a town called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, but I didn't know the circumstances of its naming.

And there are some who think Mom is NOT a bountiful fount of useful information!

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Aug 19 - 07:05 PM

I wonder if duck dogs and Chongo and others will be able to find this thread? The other one engaged so many particles of energy (too bad Amos isn't here to talk about energy and mass) they landed on it perfectly. This one is like landing on an ice cube in the ocean instead of the MOAB ice sheet. Yeah, I know, mixed metaphors. The quality of BS is sometimes strained. :)

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Aug 19 - 11:34 AM

Acme doesn't have a Steep Cow's Face in the metadata? Shame. That would take care of the steep slippery road with ruts.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Aug 19 - 12:28 PM

Heat index is so high here that MOM pulled the car out of the garage and put sheets of cookies to bake on the dashboard.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Aug 19 - 07:52 PM

Jane's Rainbow is shy of 6,500 posts and it's back. Here's hoping MOM rises like a Phoenix soon. She's feeling very confined around a thread that just broke two digits.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 22 Aug 19 - 01:57 PM

Maybe we can make MOM feel a bit less confined by using BIG fonts to make this thread look roomier.


Or inserting lots of unnecessary line breaks.


Or... sticking... useless... ellipses... between... words....


Or
by
centering
each
word
individually
so
the
post
goes
way
down
the
page.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Aug 19 - 12:19 PM

No cuir a-steach mòran de bhriseadh loidhne neo-riatanach.


No ... a ’steigeadh ... gun fheum ... ellipses ... eadar ... faclan ....


Air neo

le

meadhanachadh

gach fear

facal

fa leth

mar sin

an

dreuchd

falbh

dòigh

sìos

an

duilleag.

Scots Gaelic

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 23 Aug 19 - 05:15 PM

Mom! Wake up! This is important!

I live someplace with a name!

Up here in the northern end of Santa Rosa County, Florida, we don't have a lot of incorporated towns. In fact, there's only one of them and it's very small. What we have a good number of are "communities". A community is the rural equivalent of an urban or suburban neighborhood.

While there are several named communities nearby, the clump of homesteads and small farms in which I live has never had an official name... until today! There is now a sign (on the same signpost which holds the speed limit sign) informing anyone who cares that this is the "Walling Community". That's also the name of our road, so no extra points for creativity to whoever decided on the name.

I'm waiting to see how long it will be before the first bullet hole appears in the sign.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Aug 19 - 08:52 PM

Did the US Post Office insist on this community having a name? What name do you use for mail, or does it all go to a post office box someplace distant?

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Raggytash
Date: 24 Aug 19 - 09:10 AM

To misquote William Shakespeare, the famous bard of England

"If music be the food of love ............... why can't rabbits sing"


Discuss.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 24 Aug 19 - 09:57 AM

Rabbits can sing, but they've learned to resist the urge. It attracts predators. If you've ever heard a rabbit being caught by a cat or snake, you've heard it singing. Some think the sound is a scream of pain or fear, but it's actually the rabbit saying, "Oh well, I'm a goner. Might as well sing."


Stilly, our community names have no legal status. Some, but not all, are census-designated places. And our mail comes from a good-sized town 20 miles away.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Aug 19 - 03:53 PM

I was working in an National Recreation Area campground many years ago when I heard a huge ruckus up the hill in the clover - the field was the area over the campground septic tanks so it was only grass and clover, and there was a baby bunny giving off a high-pitched squeal as a baby weasel was trying to grab it and they were rolling around as the mother bunny was thumping and grunting nearby, wanting to chase off the weasel. Being a tall human being looking down at this noisy tableau, I felt like a giant bending over and picking up the baby bunny as the weasel dropped off and ran into the clover. Mom still thumping a few more steps, and the baby making a gawdawful racket in my hand, and I'm thinking people are going to look up here and wonder what on earth I'm doing.

Then the baby stopped squalling, I guess figuring I was too big to defend itself against, and the mom stopped. I looked at the baby and found no serious injuries, just a little weasel slobber, so I put baby down next to mom and shooed them off away from the weasel's direction of travel.

Some days later some children came over to my ranger booth with a bloodied broken-necked baby rabbit, telling me they'd rescued it from a weasel and could I help it. I carried the baby and as we walked back to the campsite and I told them about the earlier event, and said that the difference was that this bunny couldn't survive it's injuries, and that the nature of the campground was such that there were lots of bunnies so they'd survive despite the weasels that ate them, and the weasels are as important as the rabbits. By the time we got back to the site the children (age 10 and under) understood that I had to give the baby bunny back to the weasel and it could feed it's babies. The parents were harder to convince than the children. If no one had been around I'd have dispatched the baby, but I wasn't going to be forever in those children's minds as the ranger who killed baby bunnies.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 19 - 11:49 PM

Not BS, but an old friend of mine called on Friday night asking for my research help on a particular type of scabies parasite that she first saw on her dog and then on herself, and as she described what she sees and where it has spread and the conspiracy of silence that she is meeting as she tries to report it and that she now sees on other people and in all of her food and under the varnish of the furniture and climbing the walls ("I hope it doesn't eat the art work!") and that her fridge is full of "evidence of contamination" and she hadn't eaten for three days, I realized 1) this was a call from a friend having a schizophrenic crisis and 2) that was the most scary-ass story I have ever heard and no wonder the human race is so fascinated by scary stories.

I woke up realizing I must have processed the information in my dreams because I literally sat up and thought this was a cry for help and this scary story is her reality right now, so I had to act.

I sent email early that morning to her daughter, subject "This is your mother's friend Maggie" and told her I had talked to her mother and I thought she needed help and included my contact information. She called a few minutes later, because someone else her mother had asked for help was the mother of one of her friends and knew her well enough to call late at night. She asked questions and I was able to tell her that the crisis seems to have been at its worst starting three days ago and, if the only way to get her to go into care is to be sure the dog is well taken care of (how many people forego things for themselves for the love of their pets?) that I would drive four states away and bring her dog back here. She was my go-to person to tell me what I needed to know about Labrador retrievers when Zeke came to live with me, she knows I will care for him well. She has an elderly ailing husband, but she has friends so I doubt it will come to that, but I will make the drive if that will assure her cooperation in getting treatment.

I'm posting it here because I was equally horrified and fascinated by the story she was telling me; she's a retired English professor with the full weight of a rigorous education behind this delusion and it came with citations. Literally - she cited a Thomas Pynchon novel that it felt like. (I've ordered The Crying of Lot 49 because I haven't read it but think it might give me a glimpse of what is going on in her poor troubled head right now.

MOM was listening on the extension and didn't say a word, just sat there wide-eyed with amazement.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Aug 19 - 12:02 AM

She's doing better, is aware of what happened, but will still need to take medications the rest of her life. And her daughter and I both hope she'll write this story and turn it into a hit SciFi novel. Creepy!

I added the old count, plus one, to the bottom of the first post on this thread.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Aug 19 - 10:10 PM

I have returned for a few days from Wallops Island, Virginia. Yes, Wallops Island, where NASA shoots rockets into space. I was offered the position of lighting the fuse on the next one (in October, a biggie) but I can't be there to do it. I asked and was told that I could have a fuse six inches long because I would be a guest AND a butane lighter with which to ignite it. It will be an orbital shot of a Minotaur rocket.

Amos is gone to wherever he went but if you like I can discuss mass and energy until the cows come home and ever after. Shall I start?

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 27 Aug 19 - 11:03 PM

NO, YOU SHALL NOT START!

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Aug 19 - 12:28 PM

Didn't you arrange to have some of your ashes shot into space? Are they trying to put you ahead of schedule?

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Aug 19 - 02:25 PM

Hi, MOM.
Another termite dared to show itself
on the wall-to-wall carpet of my living room.
It didn't last long.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Aug 19 - 08:13 PM

Hey, K! Them's good eatin'!

Mom, I'm trying to get a property tax appeal to the State Tax Commission done before I leave on Tuesday afternoon next for Ire***d (I don't want to say where for fear of making other envious) until the end of September. I shall endeavor to bring you back a bottle of Dingle Whiskey and if need be I'll drink it for you. I'd do that and that's what makes me your favorite: self-sacrifice and caring for others.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Aug 19 - 10:08 PM

So that's why Rapparee went off to an immersion course in spoken Gaelic ...

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Aug 19 - 09:10 PM

Maybeeee.... And maybe that's why he and his wife are seriously considering a couple of weeks immersed in Irish (the language AND the whiskey) in Ballyferriter next spring, or perhaps spend a couple of weeks with a teacher somewhere around Sligo or Limerick. Of course, the fact that her family teach Irish has nothing to do with it, nor do the 20,000 Mosin-Nagant rifles my family tried to deliver to Roger Casement back in 1916 and which are taking up a lot of room in the house (and are a real pain in the back end to move every time we've changed houses).

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Aug 19 - 10:06 AM

I should learn some Spanish and visit Mexico. I found this on Wikipedia:

Negra Modelo

Negra Modelo is a 5.4% abv Dunkel-style lager first brewed in Mexico by Austrian immigrants, and was introduced as a draft beer in 1926. Negra Modelo comes in an unusually shaped, wide brown bottle with a trademark gold label. The full name of the beer is Cerveza Negra Modelo. The word "modelo" means "model" or "example" in Spanish. "Negra" means "black" or "dark" and modifies "cerveza."

I see the US site for the beer has a recipe for BLT Tostadas. I'd drink beer with that.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 31 Aug 19 - 01:45 PM

Hi, Mom!

If you were to tell 100 Donald Trump supporters that the reason Hurricane Dorian is now expected to turn away from Florida is that Trump flew down to Palm Beach and bravely stood on the lawn at Mar-a-Lago while pounding the butt of his magic staff against the ground and screaming "You shall not pass!!!!" at the oncoming Category 4 Hurricane, how many would believe you?

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Aug 19 - 03:30 PM

If they read the newspaper or listen to the news they know he's at Camp David - he will pay to repair the resort with taxpayer dollars but he won't hang out in it during the hurricane.

Back to the better quality BS.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 31 Aug 19 - 04:18 PM

Aw, come on... Trump operating under the delusion that he's Gandalf is pretty good BS.

On second thought, maybe it isn't. Maybe Trump really thinks he is Gandalf. He already operates under so many other delusions that it can't be completely discounted.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Aug 19 - 10:14 PM

Maybe he IS Gandalf. Stranger things have occurred. Why, I told the good parish priest that I had auto-canonized and henceforth should be known as "St. Michael the Annoying, Patron Saint of Heretics."

He wasn't amused, but did own that if anyone filled that bill it would be me.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 09:34 AM

Since I wasn't raised in a Catholic household, my chances of being made a saint are pretty close to zero. That is regretful.

On the other hand, being a non-Catholic does allow one to skip over the sainthood step and go straight to Supreme Being.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 09:40 AM

At most Trump might aim at being Radagast, but frankly, he's like Sauruman without a plan.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 10:42 AM

It would be well to go back and
look at your Silmarillion.

After all, the wizards started out fighting,
not Sauron of the evil eye,
but the unmentionable Morgoth.

And Morgoth/Melkor is the one who manufactured the Balrog, not Sauron.
...ahh, never mind ...

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 06:56 PM

I wasn't going that far back. We're not talking about ultimate power, we're talking about a power grab by a nasty git.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 09:30 PM

Prit near all the original saints started out as non-Catholic. Heck, the Original 12, all the Marys, and the Big Guy Hisself were all Jews.

Good, I found my scissors AND my pliers right here on my desk! My mind is...somewhere around here.

But as I was saying earlier, if indeed E=mC² (and it does), then C=vE/m. This, however, ignores Time, which has been colloquially called the "Fourth Dimension." But as mass distorts the fabric of space and time, a new geometry is needed which, unlike Euclidian, Lobachevsky-Bolyai-Gauss, and Riemannian geometries, requires another axis for Time. Thus the Universe, already distorted by mass, becomes not only more quantumized, but more fractalized (if I may be so bold as to create a new word). You can then clearly see that any ?_? would YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE. YOUR FRIEND, THE GALACTIC OVERLORD.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Sep 19 - 09:41 AM

I posted a remark on Bonzo's greyhound thread and had to stop to think - was I posting to MOAB or someplace else?

BWL, It's a testament to your big heart in not holding your injuries and recuperation against the happy pooch. Same here with Zeke - accidents happen and we learn to watch out for the dog direction of travel that sometimes illustrate too well the Newton's law of motion, where the acceleration of a smaller solid body colliding with a larger human body results in the transfer of energy and your sudden acceleration to the ground.

If we ever get our hands on MOM MOAB, there are some great dog stories, and one of the funniest I've ever read was BWL describing the neighbor trying to find his dog.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Sep 19 - 08:43 PM

Och, Mither dear, it's off to Ireland I am tomorra afternoon if the hurrycane permits. We'll be after flyin' out of Charlotte, North Carolina and while that's a bit inland the winds and rain won't be knowin' that! And ye can see how well I've been after learnin' the Irish! Erin go braless!

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 03:40 PM

Stilly, the label on the beverage you were describing.

Spanish is a language I respect more than I comprehend.
All that Latin can make the language extremely intricate,
and that's leaving out the Moorish/Arabic influence.
Your post focused on the word "modelo."
The word that always makes me have to stop and think
is not "modelo"
but "etiqueta,"
as in "etiqueta negra."
Different, but very similar in the ways they are used
in language on labels.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Sep 19 - 10:17 AM

Hi, Mom!

I heard some wonk on NPR this morning talking about the war in Yemen. He said that efforts needed to be "redoubled... redoubled". Yes, he said "redoubled" twice.

Now, if to double something means to do it two times, then to redouble it must mean to do it two times, and then two times again. So, to redouble means to do it four times.

Therefore, "redouble... redouble" would mean to do it four times four times. That's sixteen times! Wow! That's a lot!

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Sep 19 - 10:40 AM

Exponential growth!

From Wikipedia: Its ubiquitous occurrence in pure and applied mathematics has led mathematician W. Rudin to opine that the exponential function is "the most important function in mathematics".

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Sep 19 - 01:35 PM

I used to be a proponent, then I became an opponent, now I'm an ex-ponent. I divorced myself from the whole situation.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 19 - 09:46 AM

I've checked on MOM every couple of days; she's still closed for repairs. :-(

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 05 Sep 19 - 10:10 AM

Mom wants to know this:

If your last name is Ford, can you buy a Chevrolet dealership and call it "Ford Chevrolet"?

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 19 - 04:54 PM

We're gonna have to throw a little party here - Pepper tested negative for heartworm today! I brought her home in June 2018 and we were using the "slow kill" method that the shelter uses on any of it's HW positive dogs. It worked and now she's free to race around to her heart's content. MOM needs to run by Cabela's and buy her a new bumper, the old ones are pretty torn up.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 04:25 PM

Greetings from Muireach on the Dingle Peninsula! Ah, the whiskey, the music and the craic!

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 06:28 PM

Sounds nice!

I'm going to be reinforcing the ceilings in a hall and at least one room, to be safe rather than sorry. The tape lines have pulled as the house shifts on this dodgy foundation. MOM says it's because of all of the holes the dogs have dug in the back yard, but it wasn't the case. They did make an unlevel mess of the PVC greenhouse out back, digging under one end of it.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 11:41 PM

A PVC greenhouse? You mean you can grow PVC in a greenhouse? Do you have any idea how much money I've given Lowe's and Home Depot for PVC pipe over the years? I could have been growing it in my very own greenhouse instead!

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 12:09 PM

Indeed! Though growing a glass greenhouse would be more environmentally prudent.

Subject: RE: Mini-MOAB - Mother of All BS annex
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 08:43 PM

Actually, we have a small greenhouse whose frame is made of PVC. It's an octagonal dome we call "The Igloo". (My wife dreams up weird projects and then makes me figure out how to build them.)

We also have a much larger greenhouse made from the tubular steel frame of an old 10' X 20' portable garage.

Both are currently covered with screen cloth for shade and insect control. The clear plastic will go on around Halloween.