ArtieShaw

I would say that the hair is the set of raccoons that hang out on the roof of the house and do weird shit at unexpected times.

I’m somehow more creeped out by the Greatest American Hero hairstyling.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_greatest_american_hero/s01

hotel and meal vouchers

In the US? Not in the past decade. I usually get a link to an app that’s like shitty Expedia for local hotels. You can race to compete for rooms with other stranded passengers while your partner tries to re-book the flight for the next day. “I’m sorry - all flights are full until next Tuesday. We can put you on standby, but there’s a list of people ahead of you.”

This probably goes hand in hand with the trend of providing sleepable bench seating in airports. For awhile they were doing the anti-homeless park bench design. You’ll have to fight your fellow passengers for space, but it’s better than the floor at DIA or ORD.

masks in the cabin aren’t designed to keep you awake. They’re just designed to keep you alive.

In that situation I’m perfectly fine with that. More than perfectly fine, in fact. Sounds like a feature I’d pay extra for (don’t tell United).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammy_Faye_Messner

Some people just like to fuck their shit up.

Super cute.

Super-Cuter-ie? (sorry - I’ll show myself out)

Having moved to Canada as a 23 y-o with a valuable (NAFTA approved) skill set that got me a quick but temporary work visa. Hahahahaha. No.

At the time, the process for landed immigrant status took 2 years and $1,500 in 1996 money (neither of which I had to spare).

My best advice is to look at the official immigration website. If you feel like there’s some special loophole, consult an immigration lawyer from Canada. It will be worth the money, even if they can simply spell out the reasons why you shouldn’t waste your time.

Also - good luck finding housing in Canada. It was bad in 1996 and hasn’t gotten better.

Couple of things that I’ve observed. It’s a combo of shit design and poor human behavior.

-the ones in an office setting take an absolute fuck ton of abuse from people who can’t reload paper or replace an ink cartridge; I have seen punching and slamming on the regular -as a corollary to the above, no one fucking trains workers on copiers. The workers have to figure it out on their own. Violence is a natural response. -as a secondary corollary to the above, you can absolutely fuck with hated colleagues by removing their names from the user list simply by using the manual keypad (or changing the name from TooBeeSan to TooBeeNasty) -the ones in a home setting are persnicketty about color toner and are shit at Bluetooth connections (and thus also take a fuck ton of abuse)

I had a professor whose ice breaker question was some version of, “what book do you want to write/planning to write?” Everyone seems to have one.

Might not be as relevant today after blogs perhaps cleared that out of peoples’ systems.

As for me, I cycle through mostly craft-based hobbies. Embroidery, leather work, candle making, 3D printing. I can make candles much faster than I can burn them, so that’s self-limiting. 3D printing is great to have the materials and skills for, and I’m slowly learning to design in Blender. But at the moment I only use it when I suddenly need to have a thing-a-ma-widget and remember: “hey! I’ve got a 3D printer. Of course I can make a valve stem cover!”

I’ll probably be back to leather crafts as we head into the fall and winter.

My friends in Italy have told me that it’s not normal to change your surname after marriage. They could be messing with me, though. They’re mildly evil.

I went from a “normal” western last name that was ethnically coded (like McCoy) to another ethnically coded name (like Nguyen, or - um - Fink).

My options were to keep a common and dull name that I share with people I don’t like, get a new one (that I’d need to spell to every customer service representative ever), hyphenate (HELL NO), or make up something new (which would involve a shitstorm among relatives on both sides.)

The only real options were A and B. I was undecided until we were leaving the county courthouse after we were married. He asked me “are you going to change your name?” He didn’t care. He thought it was a weird custom and was curious. And I realized - this is an opportunity. It’s a relatively easy and socially acceptable way to shed your old name.

I took it.

The new name honestly messes with quite a few people who are meeting me for the first time, and it’s interesting to see how they react. I’ve had people ask straightforward questions (I prefer that - there’s an easy and straightforward answer), get half-way through a straight-up racist comment before they stutter to a stop (helps me get to know them), get all the way through a racist comment (again - helpful to know where you stand), or just not comment at all (just fine by me).

I’ve found that it’s not the worst way to get a read on someone.

tldr: part spite, part novelty, part legitimately helpful when your profession means you need to meet strangers and get a quick read on their personality/potential biases/willingness to be straightforward when there’s no reason to be weird about it

This is a really nice idea. Which is refreshing, because my go-to is always something mildly disturbing but not too scary or criminal.

If I were going the wholesome route, I’d add a paper note to the USB or other digital storage, though. If I were to find a LaserDisc from 1990, that would be more or less unreadable without expending some significant effort.

But maybe future folk will have magical devices that can read cassettes, 8-tracks, or whatever.

I’m a big fan of concealing doll heads behind drywall. The local hobby shop used to sell half-heads (just the face and neck, including eyes), so that was my go-to.

It was also a hard to fix drywall job, so it looks a little janky. It’s almost guaranteed that the next owner rips out that section and finds her.

More of a hardcore Jewel/Osco shopper?

No - I think Mariano’s and PicknSave would be competitors in that region. I travel a bit through the US, and I’m flummoxed. My Kroger discount card works more times than not, no matter where my work takes me and no matter which the local branding is.

Each state has different rules. Some allow “early voting” on selected days prior to the main election day. This allows people who can’t get time off from work on the main day to work it into their schedule.

Absentee or mail-in votes are also done early. Where allowed.

Votes aren’t counted until the main day.

For chemistry? No.

The most common job track for someone with a BS in chemistry is something on the analytical side. Think: contract lab that processes environmental or pharmaceutical samples. All you really need to know how to do is press some buttons and follow detailed instructions. So - the work is both exacting and boring. And to find this unfun job - you will be in direct competition with every biology major in your region. And there are hoards of them. And the hiring manager will be one of them. If you can score a job, be prepared for the low pay that goes along with a plentiful labor pool, along with the frustrations of working with people that don’t have the ideal frame of reference for talking through problems.

Other options?

In my area, microbiologists are in higher demand, so I think someone might get by with a BS. Standard bio majors seem to have had an idea of becoming naturalists or park rangers after graduation, so many didn’t specialize. They can count birds or frogs and are still acting weird about having to memorize the Krebs Cycle, but aren’t really up to speed on aseptic technique or all that other micro stuff.

Physics? I can’t even imagine.

Engineering is interesting. 30 years ago some people came to my highschool to talk to the “indoor kids.” They were pitching the idea that “the engineers of today are 30-40 something baby boomers who have high paying jobs that they absolutely love! In the next 5-10 years we will be facing a crisis as they all retire early, and GenX could easily be called the Baby Crunch.* There’s no one to replace these engineers who are living the dream! You’re looking at a great opportunity if you study engineering.” A good portion of my class took that advice. Bwah-hah-hah-haa! No one retired early. Great pay + great job = early retirement? No.

No engineering grads that I knew got a decent job because there were no openings and a high number of qualified applicants. Companies did find some cheap engineers, though. The ones I know now (GenX and Millennial) found other careers and swallowed the bitterness.

I’ve heard that something similar happened in the 2010s with law degrees. In the 2000s it seemed like every 30-yo with a crappy job was studying nursing. Point being - if someone is saying that there is a desperate need for workers with Skill X and that they make a great living, it means that companies don’t want to pay current market rate for Skill X. They want you to take out loans to train yourselves for the skill they want at the price they want.

*Demographics. In the US the birthrate fell dramatically in the '60s and '70s. Before Doug Coopland came up with a marketable name for it, GenX was being called a Baby Crunch. Reasons? Birth control. Oil crisis. Vietnam War. Boomers waiting a bit longer to start their families. Reasons.

I’ve become attached to this eldritch abomination.

Easy. It’s a dried and shellacked squid that has been posed in an artful, somehow bipedal and menacing position. I call it the creeping horror and keep it in an old wooden box.

Not really my taste, but it was a gift.

Well that’s terrifying.

My old vacuum bags were meant to be tossed, but I just emptied it and put it back because $.

I was just thinking about “quirky” because my sister-in-law recently used it to describe her daughter. Her contrasting word (for her son) was “straightforward.”

Personally, I fit the former even though I’ve learned to “pass for normal.” NOT my words. That was a direct quote and it was meant as a compliment. Weird is definitely meant as an insult in the US Midwest.