Catching up in Minearverse, from the F.L.O.:

We need better minions. Zombies leave their tags open half the time. You think with all the brains they're going on about, they could remember to insert a t BR , but nooo...

In "Natter"
Kathy Astrom
Will someone please tell me to go home and do my laundry? I'm being all procrastinate-y tonight.
Gus
Kathy, laundry is for wimps. Posting makes you strong. Nobody here can smell you, anyway.
ChiKat
I like this philosophy and feel I will need to live by it.

Allyson:

So, I had a conversation with The Big Guvmint Safety Bureaucracy about our coffee pot at work.

We'd been written up several times for leaving the coffee pot on.

Solution? The engineers and physicists of the Timing & Frequency Lab, which is my lab, rigged a timer to it. Shuts off in twenty minutes.

BGSB flips out. "That could short circuit and start a fire!"

"What do you suggest?" I ask.

"Assign someone to shut it off," they remark, self assuredly.

"But see, a human being is more likely to forget, or call in sick, than it is likely that the nation's sharpest engineers, whose job it is to time the Deep Space Network, who design the most accurate clocks ever known, to screw up the circuitry on a timer on a coffee pot."

"It's against the rules," the geniuses at BGSB say.

"How about if we make a new rule, that if you design a balls-on atomic timing device that safely guides a spaceship to Mars, you're allowed to design a timing device for a coffee pot?" I ask.

"It's just against the rules," BGSB says.

In Natter:

moonlit: Ebay halts auction of girls

Steph: Well, damn. My high bidder was up to $12.83.

And also in Natter, an introduction from Blue:

Allyson, I can relate to the BGSB thing. I'm a physicist myself (well, physics grad student actually, but that sounds less impressive, not that anyone is impressed by physicists, what was I saying? Oh yeah), and I've had the occasional warning from our local safety office.

Now, I actually expect this and would be a bit disappointed in them if they didn't complain, because my lab is, in fact, a death trap. This is somewhat intentional, because people from neighboring labs kept coming in and "borrowing" everything not bolted down, and some things that were. So the place now has plenty of exposed high voltage, powerful infrared lasers aimed at the head, cables at tripwire and garrote level, pit filled with spikes covered in leaves etc.

But what does the safety office send threatening notes about? A cardboard box left in the hallway. Someone could trip on it.

Allyson, Amych and Wolfram, Minearverse, discussing less-than-graceful initial posts:

Allyson:I know this is probably awfully uncomfortable, like stumbling through the front door and landing in the guacamole at a party where you don't know anyone, and you just want to scream, "I really am a cool person, damnit!"

Wolfram: If it's any consolation, I'm still trying to get avacodo remnants off my slacks.

Amych: Have another drink, Wolf. I wouldn't have dreamed of mentioning those strange green stains to your face.

Wolfram: Well I did trip over the front lawn gnome before I even reached the door, so some of it might be grass. And it feels like I just sat on something mushie. Hmmm, tastes like cake.

LJ, you missed Allyson's setup.

Thanks, Wolf. I was kind of going for who-needs-context, but it does read better with.

("Tastes like cake" is what elevated the conversation to COMM-worthy, though.)

Only because I thought Allyson's post was super gracious. :)

t /natter

Miracleman reminisces about the great gerund wars:

Must have been, oh...ought two or ought three. Me and the squad were in the thick of it, right outside this little hamlet in the middle of enemy territory.

It was colder'n a witch's tit. Tommy Robeson...he was from Tupelo, we'd come up through boot together...we were huddled in a foxhole waiting for the word to come down the line. We were under-equipped and we knew it. We only had a couple of Strunks. Jonesy had a 10C he'd picked up off a Grammarian lieutenant, but that was it.

Sarge came down and told us we were goin' in at 0400. Me, Tommy, Jonesy and the Wichita boys were to sweep in from the north. Me and Tommy shared a smoke while we waited.

0400 and we went over. We didn't get twenty feet afore the enemy hit us. They knew we were comin', they hadda. They lit the area with glaring logic and unloaded irrefutable reference at us. Jonesy got off a couple good ones with the 10C but went down quick. He didn't even have a chance to scream.

Me and Tommy made it to the middle of town and scrambled for cover in the library. Tommy found him a Shertzer "Elements", but we never had time to use it. The bastards parsed the whole building.

I woke up in an enemy POW camp. They kept me awake for four days, making me write essay after essay, critiquing and making me re-write. Hell, I tell you. Finally the camp was raided and I was sent home.

I still wake up screamin' some nights...

Fie on thee, wee ammitch! Beat me to it!