Most people is pretty quiet right about now. Me, I see a stiff -- one I didn't have to kill myself -- I just get, the urge to, you know, do stuff. Like work out, run around, maybe get some trim if there's a willin' woman about... not that I get flush from corpses or anything. I ain't crazy.

Jayne ,'The Message'


Natter 54: Right here, dammit.  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Susan W. - Sep 25, 2007 9:43:52 am PDT #2889 of 10001
Good Trouble and Righteous Fights

How far back have various people gotten with their ancestral tracking? I've got a couple of lines reliably back to the 1600s--hooray for early immigrants and obsessive-compulsive New England genealogists--and one line traditionally back to the 1200s.

A genealogy-obsessed second cousin got one line of my family all the way back to the late 16th century, but when I had to do my family tree for 11th grade American history most of the lines petered out somewhere between 1820 and 1850. I'm sure if I was really into genealogy I could push it back a bit further, though.


brenda m - Sep 25, 2007 9:46:37 am PDT #2890 of 10001
If you're going through hell/keep on going/don't slow down/keep your fear from showing/you might be gone/'fore the devil even knows you're there

WASP -- The one person I know who's embraced the designation was pretty solidly middle-middle class (as in, lived on the "poor side" of one of the richest suburbs in America).

I don't think of WASP as necessarily wealthy. To me it has a more whitebread, "republican-cloth-coat" feel to it.


§ ita § - Sep 25, 2007 9:47:16 am PDT #2891 of 10001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Okay, black crusty cockles sounds icky, no matter how punkass.

Can you have moist crusty cockles?


juliana - Sep 25, 2007 9:47:30 am PDT #2892 of 10001
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I miss them all tonight…

How far back have various people gotten with their ancestral tracking?

Great-grandparents, and that's it. Grandpa doesn't even know which village he was born in in the old country, so anything earlier is pretty much gone. Hooray for peasants!


Emily - Sep 25, 2007 9:47:54 am PDT #2893 of 10001
"In the equation E = mc⬧, c⬧ is a pretty big honking number." - Scola

Maybe middle-class, but I too wouldn't assume servants-and-prep-schools from WASP.


Nutty - Sep 25, 2007 9:49:04 am PDT #2894 of 10001
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

I think moist things, by definition, are not crusty. You only get crustiness when you dry things out. Hence the difference between pie dough and pie.

"republican-cloth-coat"

What does this phrase mean? I think I have a general "staid conservative" vibe from it, but the cloth-coat part is a mystery to me.


tommyrot - Sep 25, 2007 9:49:16 am PDT #2895 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

aurelia, are you/they sure it's not just the engine computer notifying you of scheduled maintenance for the timing chain?


Kat - Sep 25, 2007 9:49:59 am PDT #2896 of 10001
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

moist crusty cockles?

that sounds so icky.


tommyrot - Sep 25, 2007 9:50:33 am PDT #2897 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

I think I have a general "staid conservative" vibe from it, but the cloth-coat part is a mystery to me.

Comes from Nixon's famous "Checkers" speech in the late '50s or whenever. Nixon was talking about his wife, trying to convince people he was not a crook.


Scrappy - Sep 25, 2007 9:50:54 am PDT #2898 of 10001
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

It comes form the Nixon "Checkers" speech, IIRC. He was reacting to allegations of kickbacks by saying his wife, Pat, didn't wear a mink, but a good Republican cloth coat.