Random thoughts... - by Tocky
Tocky on 4/8/2024 at 04:57
No amount of money can pay for a minute of time in my estimation.
Anyway, want to hear some weird shit? Except for the office my work is in a tin building that reaches over a hundred degrees every day lately. I keep bandanas laying about to wipe my eyes while I do things. I was listening to a particularly long winded customer drone on about something that didn't matter because I had already told her we don't do that when I grabbed one and rubbed sweat out of my eye. It had a spider in it. I ground a spider into the corner of my left eye. Not a nice spider either. It began to sting immediately. My eye swelled up like I had been punched and still isn't right after a week. I can see though.
I told a guy I work with that I'm glad it wasn't a radioactive one. At my age I can't handle the responsibility of being Spiderman.
DuatDweller on 4/8/2024 at 12:18
Man, that sucks.
demagogue on 4/8/2024 at 14:19
Sorry to hear that. I got stung by a scorpion hiding out in a towel after a shower once (not exactly but pretty near there, yes, if you're gonna ask), so I've been trained to be paranoid about towels, rags, and shoes and usually double check them. But I think even I could grab a bandana just to wipe my face. Kind of scary to think about.
Tocky on 4/8/2024 at 15:49
You knew I was going to ask. Things can always be worse eh? Mine just gave me a Frankenstein eye for awhile with a little necrosis. I had a Brown Recluse get my hand once moving dusty boxes and it looked like a surgeons glove full of water and scarred me permanent but didn't sting nearly as bad as this.
What does a scorpion do? Any cool scar to point to?
Nicker on 4/8/2024 at 18:05
Love the venn diagram, dema. Was that a labour of love or a moment of inspiration?
Cases like Patricia Jeschke make the loudest argument against the death penalty.
Spiders. No comment.
demagogue on 4/8/2024 at 23:12
Quote Posted by Nicker
Love the venn diagram, dema. Was that a labour of love or a moment of inspiration?
I saw some joke out in the nethersphere like "What do Sisyphus & a radio DJ have in common? They're both bringing you that great classic rock all day and night." So it's not really original & I can't take credit. But I thought it'd be funny if the rock also referred to crack, and it's easy to make the link from a crackhouse to a DJ with "Let's get this party started" and split off the "Going all day & night" for the DJ-Sisyphus link.
But I wasn't sure what would link a crackhouse and Sisyphus at first, and that was the one thing holding me back from making it. So I went back and actually re-read Sisyphus's story, and I think like most people I didn't remember at all that the entire punishment was because Sisyphus killed a guest coming to his house, and I thought well there we go. That makes the last link by itself.
Edit: And the spellcheck for this very post is letting me know I actually mixed up the y & i and misspelled Sisyphus! =o
Quote Posted by Tocky
What does a scorpion do? Any cool scar to point to?
It was ages ago when I was a kid, so I don't remember it that well. No scar that I've ever noticed. It just hurt like hell for I guess a few hours. I think the scorpions in Texas aren't the really bad kind. (They say the bigger ones are okay; it's the tiny ones way out in the desert you really have to worry about.) But I remember we called poison control and they had us make some kind of paste out of baking soda and something or whatever to put on it, but it wasn't all that bad all things considered. (It's interesting to think about, in the days before internet, you'd have to phone 411 to get poison control's number and ask them what to do in cases like that. But I guess just about everyone here remembers those days.)
Actually when I was jumping on a trampoline once when I was an even smaller kid while a wasp was buzzing around, the wasp stung me between the eyes, and that swelled up and shut my eyes for like a day or so before the swelling came back down. No scar and not all that bad either, but worse than the scorpion.
Nicker on 5/8/2024 at 00:59
I got stung by a dead wasp once. Cleaning up a window ledge and jammed my hand into a recently deceased yellow-jacket. Vindictive little bitches. Got me from beyond the grave. Mind you, it was my window where it met its end so... well played?
Azaran on 5/8/2024 at 19:19
When I was young I thought it would be so cool to own a wolf; imagine finding a puppy and raising it like a dog.
Many years later I went down a rabbit hole online, and found out why it'd be a bad idea.
Even if raised from birth, wolves remain unpredictable, and retain dangerous wild instincts, especially the males (apparently neutering helps, but not fully). Most will take to their owners, but be wary of strangers.
They can't be house broken, and their brains are wired for self sufficiency, so training them is extremely hard, several times more than a dog. You'll also need a farm or very large plot of land to keep them happy.
Wolves also give warning bites when they're angry, even to their owners. Dogs usually growl first, but wolves are quick to bite.
I even read about a wolf that had been raised from a pup, that would stare threateningly at his owners, waiting to attack - an expert said that many captive wolves look for weaknesses in their owners, for a chance to become the alphas (opportunistic wolves do that in their packs too, looking for weaknesses in the pack leader).
The success stories I saw on Youtube involve female wolves and insane amounts of effort. There's (
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rO_r6-K6QHs) one who's extremely docile and doglike, gets along with dogs, cats, and most people. The owner explained that she got to that point as a result of 4 hours of socialization
every single day since she was a pup, taking her to dog parks, having her around different people and cats as well, etc.
Starker on 6/8/2024 at 07:42
The idea of alphas was a mistaken idea based on observing captive wolves who behave wildly differently from free wolves. In actual packs, there is no such power struggle or fight for dominance and it functions pretty much like a family unit. There is naturally some competition for resources, but wolves very rarely try to fight their parents who are the typical leaders of a wolf pack.
The reason for conflicts in a pack usually stem from artificial influences -- such as completely unrelated individual wolves with no kinship being forced to live together in a confined space or a large number of wolves living together in a limited space such as a nature park, so that there is no cohesive family unit, but multiple families forming a large pack.
Tocky on 27/10/2024 at 03:16
You know what holds a marriage together? It's little things like noticing when you shoo your cat from a shelf or make him stop harassing the other cat he moves his mouth four times and it looks like he is saying "motherfucker". You can both laugh at that. I mean, he does it every time.
