i recall when i signed up (british infantry early 90s) the advert suggested that we'd spend most of our deployment windsurfing, playing rugby and walking on tropical beaches with pretty girls, with some exciting war games thrown in... they kind of didn't mention the hours spent sitting around in the rain eating unfit for human consumption food and burning leeches off your dick, or the ulster tours trying to keep the two sides from killing each other and getting bricked and bottled by both of them. course i wasn't naive enough to believe the recruitment puff, i knew what i was getting into , but a surprising number of guys, both officers and other ranks were https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1605704/Want-job-adventure-Frank-join-army.html
What is it with people in the building trade (plasterers, painter and decorators, general labourers) and fleece hoodies? They all dress the same but it’s like they’re trying to make some kind of statement; work boots, thick socks ruffled around the hem of the boot, knee-length cargo shorts (or cut down full length cargo pants), and a scruffy fleece hoodie always with the hood up. That’s the bit that gets me, always with the hood up!
The hood keeps shit out of your hair when you are working above your head. Same is true for baseball caps when it’s too hot for hoodie’s
Last week I ordered a book from Amazon. Amazon themselves wanted £12.95 - a bit pricy for a paperback there’s more than a good chance I’ll never read - so I turned to the market sellers and found it for £3.75. It never arrived so I contacted the seller and was immediately issued a full refund and apology. But I have a theory. The book never existed in the first place. Call me paranoid but think about it. As a seller you search for a few, overpriced books being sold through Amazon Prime. You list these books yourself (that you don’t actually possess) and undercut Amazon massively. You list the books as being in ‘Very good’ or ‘Like new’ condition and wait for the orders to come in. 24 hrs later you trigger the ‘Dispatched’ notification and because it’s not Prime mark the estimated delivery as being somewhere between 2 - 7 days. Some people, like me, will contact the seller when the book (which the seller never possessed) fails to arrive. The seller issues a full refund and apology, and his good reputation is maintained. But consider this. What percentage of the people who’ve ordered a sub £5 book from this seller will simply not bother following it up when it doesn’t arrive? I imagine it’s well over 50%.
Years ago I produced a piece of software for the Bank of England (the project sponsor obviously did better out of it than me, it was Andrew Bailey the current governor...). The system, pretty radical in its day, involved circulating electronic copies of invoices rather than paper, and the plan was that my extortionate fee would quickly be covered by savings - partly through reduced labour and handling, partly through reduction in late payment penalties, but principally by the eradication of phantom invoices. Rogue "businesses" would simply submit an invoice - in big organisations without decent process management, it can be cheaper and quicker just to pay it rather than locate the cost-centre/manager and get it authorised.
I have worked in skilled trades. Fashion has absolutely nothing to do with the way I, and most others, dressed. The hood up helps keep the gunk out of your hair. I wore long sleeves buttoned tightly at the wrists as a machinist when cutting stainless steel because the chips flying off were HOT.
Umbrellas when they introduced into Europe were adopted first and foremost by women, as they were originally used mainly for sunshading and well-born ladies employed various means to protect their complexion from the sun (tanning was very much unfashionable). They were taken more enthusiastically in France, where men took them up sooner than in other areas. So John Macdonald in England recounts that in 1770s when he used an umbrella as a man he was mocked, "Frenchman, Frenchman! why don't you call a coach?". Reminds me of this:
In 1971, a man named Gerald Mayo sued Satan and his staff in US court for depriving him (Mayo) of his constitutional rights by placing obstacles in his path. The suit was dismissed due to the impossibility of serving notice on His Infernal Majesty. <insert joke about Satan and lawyers here>
Reminds me of the fact that cigarettes were for women. Manly men smoked cigars or pipes until during WWI when cigarettes appeared in combat ration packs.
That's odd, because looking it up the suggestion seems to be that women were generally discouraged from smoking in the 19th century, in general, and so when cigarettes were introduced then they were aimed at men,. Although the cheap, neatness of them may have made them more attractive to women than pipe-smoking which seems to remained masculine-dominated in a way the cigarette didn't. Where did you get the idea of cigarettes being aimed at women? I'm curious. Perhaps you might be remembering their use as a feminist symbol? Because cigarettes were the kind of smoking adopted by women they were lated adopted as a feminist symbol post-WW1, so that might given them a certain association with women and they were definitely less gender-divided than the other smoking methods. But the feminism came specifically because smoking was traditionally male, there doesn't seem to be any suggestion cigarettes were actually for or primarily consumed by women. See: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/9/1/3.full.pdf https://theses.gla.ac.uk/1091/2/2001eliiotvol.2phd.pdf
There is no gay or straight. There is just the broad variety that is in humanity. A women I knew in college who was out about her sexuality told me that she believed everyone was gay. I harrumphed when I heard that, but now I kinda get it.
there was also a guy who tried to sue the pope for an act of god. His logic was that the pope is like an agent and thus responsible for his bosses acts it got thrown out of course
Appropriate for this comment. Warning: crude language. Everyone is a little gay, it's just the extent.
If you were going to generalise, "everyone is bi" would be more accurate but that would be a simplification. Also it's BECAUSE there is a spectrum that is possible to closer to the ends. We aren't all anything. As you say, variety. "Straight" and "gay" can seem like simplifications of that but you just need understand them in a more spectrumal way.
I was just reminded how amazing the human reflex system is. I was mowing a grass verge at one of our sites, and my right eye suddenly closed involuntary. Almost simultaneously something small and hard (a stone maybe) struck my cheek, millimetres from my eye. The part of my brain that controls reflexes must have seen this coming before it even registered on the conscious part, and acted accordingly! Who needs safety goggles with reflexes as sharp as that?
