Smiley Town, Episode II: Attack of the Grin [Now with over 1.5 million page views!]

[mr_pikachu]

Well, it's time for a new chat thread, everyone -- in other words, Smiley Town is a go!

This is a chat thread, so you can feel free to go off topic here, since, well, there is no set topic for discussion. I'll quote my fellow mod, Gavin, on this:

While SPAM itself will not be encouraged or permitted in this thread, treat this thread the way you would an IRC chat with your fellow TPMers -- you should feel free to talk about anything and everything, no matter how substantial or otherwise, and it doesn't have to follow a given topic. The only rules are that conversation stays respectful and otherwise adherent to the forum rules.

In other words, while other TPM rules still apply, you can feel free to chat about what you like here, even if it changes the subject. Don't worry about having to follow the current discussion chain if you have something unrelated to say.

So, without further ado... chat!

[mattbcl]

As of this writing, I've got the TV running over my left shoulder. There's an episode of Viva La Bam on it. I'm only half-watching, because I consider Bam Margera to be as lacking in inhibitions as Lindsay Lohan, and I wouldn't normally have it on this channel at all... but my girlfriend left it here while she went to go do laundry, and she did a load of mine when she didn't have to. So I'm not going to get upset.

But none of this is what I found to be worthy of posting. What truly got my attention was a commercial that advertised an institute of education called UTI. This stands for Universal Technical Institute, in this particular context... but it made my head pop up and twist around. It struck me as an unfortunate abbreviation - the only UTI I'd been familiar with until now was "urinary tract infection".

"What college are you recruiting at today?" "Aah, I got UTI." "...Dude, too much information."

[Sike Saner]

...Annnnd I just narrowly avoided shooting generic Mountain Dew out of my nose at that.

Research done prior to naming something in order to avoid tragic abbreviations = good idea.

[mr_pikachu]

Has anyone here ever been to Seattle? I'd like to know if you rode one of the South Lake Union Trolleys.

(Also, AcronymFinder.com is fun. )

[classy_cat18]

Nope, but it must be like Heaven On Earth.

[Gavin Luper]

Okay, just gonna refer to Brian's parting gift before he closed the old thread down:

Gavin, you know my quote is tame by comparison. For years you've been making it look like we're having sex.

I just want to add my two cents and say that this is completely true, I sigged that golden, ambiguous years ago with the pure malicious intent of raising eyebrows. BAHA!

And the new thread title is killer; glad to see my little quote was mentioned, too.

XD @ all the acronyms!

I think I may have a winner, though.

When it changed its name in 1988, a university in my city became ... Curtin University of New Technology.

They dropped the "new" three weeks later.

[mr_pikachu]

What truly got my attention was a commercial that advertised an institute of education called UTI. This stands for Universal Technical Institute, in this particular context... but it made my head pop up and twist around. It struck me as an unfortunate abbreviation - the only UTI I'd been familiar with until now was "urinary tract infection".

"What college are you recruiting at today?" "Aah, I got UTI." "...Dude, too much information."

I was running a search for more awful acronyms, and I found a top-11 (meh) list that featured your example at #4, Matt. (Here's the link; be advised that this may be NSFW.)

On a different subject, it was hailing here this morning. Now it's hot outside. Also, the rain and hail combination revealed that one of my apartment's windows isn't properly sealed... bleh.

[Sike Saner]

It's been disgustingly hot here lately. There's a sign in front of one of the local car dealerships that flashes time and temperature every so often. I saw 111° pop up on it recently and just kind of went >8( at it. Because ugh.

It was halfway decent this evening, though. Still warmer than I like, but there was a nice wind. And it stormed the other night. There was rain. Yay. But we could still definitely use more.

[classy_cat18]

Try having a busted AC. Nothing like being stuck in front of a box fan! But really, we're trying to cool down the whole house with a single window unit, a swivelling fan, a ceiling fan and two box fans. It kinda works for my room as long as it's in the open doorway so it pulls in cool air from the window unit.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Summer 2006 was extremely dry here. It didn't rain at all, except for one July day when we went to pick strawberries. We were on the field, when it stated raining. I said 'We're not made of sugar!' but a minute later, it started hailing. Big hailstones, we had to run inside!

[Gavin Luper]

Egad, hail is the worst!

We had a freak hailstorm last year (in Western Australia, yes) and it was chaotic and damaged so much property. You can still see people driving around with cars that are literally studded with golf ball-size hailstone dents.

Horribly, I'd borrowed my folks' car at the time and was driving it here while my car was safe and sound with them in my hometown. They were nice enough to not hate me for the hundreds of dimples all over their new car.

[mattbcl]

I despise extreme weather of any kind, really, but it seems that in the last five years things have really taken off. (Insert eye rolling here.) The reason I hate weather as much as I do is because of my job - as part of it, I'm trained and licensed in water damage restoration and applied structural drying. These processes are horribly expensive, time-consuming, back-breaking, and paperwork-intensive. So when rain comes around, there's always a little voice in the back of my head begging all the sump pumps in the region to, for the love of God, work properly. For those of you familiar with "The Flood of 2008", I live on the Mississippi River and I can't tell you how many water damage calls we got for that event. One of the tools I use for this is a thermohygrometer, which gives me a digital readout of temperature, and specific and relative humidities. I didn't want to see that thing again for quite some time.

[mr_pikachu]

Egh. Hail is the pits, I think we can all agree. Thankfully, I've only been caught driving in severe hail once, and it was back in my hometown, so I knew the roads. Despite being perfectly aware of where everything was, though, I was helpless to pull over until I was all the way home, however, because it was impossible to see the ground amidst the layer of solid white against the ground -- I could've just as easily plowed over multiple curbs as turned into a parking lot.

On a side note, hi Matt.

[mattbcl]

Hi Brian!

[Gavin Luper]

Went to get a haircut today and the bitch fucked it up. Instead of a blond fauxhawk I now have something completely indiscriminate, something in between a Puck-from-Glee-esque short black mohawk and a (very) short-back-and-sides.

To console myself I spent my tax refund on $500 worth of new clothes, which is something I never do.

So - new question - have you ever had a bad haircut? What was it and what did you do about it to soothe your damaged ego?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Today, Gavin.



Not really, but the picture in question looked so much better in my cell phone screen.

[Gavin Luper]

That's not really a bad haircut, though, Mikachu - it just looks curly and messy on top to me? I maintain mine is more traumatic, sadly.

I'm debating whether or not to shave my head before work tomorrow. I've had a shaved head plenty of times before so I know I can pull it off and look good with it, but, grrr, it's not what I had planned.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

My hair is naturally curly, and at times I wish it wasn't. They first put up a nice hairdo, but then I myself came up with the weird idea of coloring it and chose dark blue! I have never had my hair colored before, and what's more, they didn't redo the hairdo after the coloring, and again, what's more, the whole deal cost me €55.

[Gavin Luper]

It costs a lot, right? I know, I used to bleach my hair quite often and have had a pink mohawk and also a blue fauxhawk previously. So expensive.

Did you find that the blue colour started to fade really quickly?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Yeah, the same thing did dawn upon me, but I don't know if it's only because I'm getting used to seeing it everytime from the mirror so quickly.

I put the same picture on Facebook but not as my Profile Picture. Now we are discussing in Finnish why my head is leaning to the right. Stupid medication.

[Gavin Luper]

Is it unusual that your head is leaning in the picture? It looks normal enough?

Okay, gonna try to spike my hair up ... if it doesn't work ... time to bring out the clippers!

[Chris 2.1]

There's riots in London. It's so complicated why it's happening, but it's gone beyond protest and justice. People are just losing it. We got evacuated from work and Wimbledon (where I live) is being patrolled, shops are boarded up. Expecting a big scene tonight.

To commemorate, I'm drafting a huge riot into my fic. It's been oddly inspiring.

[Crystal Tears]

I'm worried for all of you near and/or being affected by the riots. o_o You're the third that's mentioned it being close. Samchu told me about it last night and today in Pingchat Becki was telling me how it was headin' for her work. ._. Hope you all keep safe!

<.< On the note of extreme weather, Canada is a lot of fun. Where I live (town near Toronto), we had a tornado touch down a year or two ago, another time giant hail (we have some saved in our freezer), a wind storm that nearly blew my friend's car off the road... Semi-recently we had a storm that didn't really do a lot in the terms of rain or wind, but there was tons of lightning and thunder, and it was frikkin aweesoommmeee.

As for temperatures, Canada can go from 40C in summer, to -40C in winter pending on the year. (admittedly there was one year where we had a green christmas -_-, unhappysauce.)

I love this country XD ♥

[classy_cat18]

I don't think I've ever had a bad haircut, but I don't really like getting them. I like my hair long even though Mom tells me it's "shapeless". It feels weird to not be able to put it in a ponytail.

[Gavin Luper]

Chris: It's scary watching this mindless destruction happen. It makes me so angry: we had half our country ravaged by natural disasters this past summer, and so many people are still a long way from rebuilding their homes and businesses and lives, and here are some dickwads in London voluntarily going around and destroying other people's homes/workplaces/neighbourhoods. It's fucking lame. Stay safe buddy.

CT: Wait - it seriously can get up to 40 degrees CELSIUS in Canada?! Where?! Here I was thinking it was the land of ice and snow.

Shonta: Since when is shapeless a bad thing when it comes to hair? Long hair looks sick I reckon. Keep it!

Re: yesterday's bad haircut: Okay ... I have decided that, with a small amount of correctional scissor work from my bf, and a healthy dose of gangsta attitude, I can make this haircut work after all!

[mr_pikachu]

Riots: I don't really have anything more profound to contribute here, but I wish for the best for everyone in that area right now.


Mikachu: I tilt my head like that all the time. You're in no worse shape than me.


Some of you know that I'm always looking for new ways to tell a story. Well, last night I started training myself in Macromedia Flash. It's a bit of a process, but I can see the advantages that it will have once I've mastered the basics. I'm hoping to eventually program games with nonlinear plot paths... that will probably be a bit cumbersome from a coding standpoint, but not entirely unreasonable.

[classy_cat18]

Oooh, I was in a Flash class. Got an F. That was more of a case of laziness though, and dislike of the teacher. x.x

Gonna use it for War of the Forums?

[Chris 2.1]

Gav: Looks good

Riots have calmed here, anyway. Manchester is bad. It's just... Gavin put it so well. Seeing the world get ravaged by nature, and unstoppable forces, it's awful, but when people turn on each other, how can they sleep at night?

The worst part is the pack mentality. Those arrested include teachers, support workers, healthcare assistants. A 39 year old man was in court today because he stole BISCUITS. He got caught up in it, he said.

A furniture store near me was set alight. Nobody tried stealing from it; they couldn't steal sofas or tables. They just felt like torching a 5-generation business to the ground. It was so bad, the railway tracks next to the warehouse melted, an the trains were cancelled.

It's just senseless, it's like society is broken.

[Blademaster]

Maybe that's because society IS broken.

[classy_cat18]

What do they say? "One rotten apple spoils the whole bunch"? That's what it seems like to me. A handful of bad apples spread their rotteness.

[Gavin Luper]

Maybe that's because society IS broken.

I dunno, that's getting too close to the whole victim mentality for me. A lot of idiots have been writing things like "well, they're poor and they've been oppressed, so they're fighting back against rich, white people, good on them".

I call bullshit. Being poor doesn't excuse or justify this kind of behaviour. I don't for a second blame the nebulous notion of "the system" - I blame the morons who think it's somehow acceptable to bash people, steal from them while pretending to help them, set people's homes and workplaces on fire and trash their own neighbourhoods. They aren't hurting anyone but other people: families, workers, blue-collar, poor people like themselves. It's idiotic, it's criminal, and I can't think of any other way to describe it except absolutely disgusting and contemptible.

[Blademaster]

And that description rings of a healthy, unbroken society to you?

[mr_pikachu]

I dunno, that's getting too close to the whole victim mentality for me. A lot of idiots have been writing things like "well, they're poor and they've been oppressed, so they're fighting back against rich, white people, good on them".

I call bullshit. Being poor doesn't excuse or justify this kind of behaviour. I don't for a second blame the nebulous notion of "the system" - I blame the morons who think it's somehow acceptable to bash people, steal from them while pretending to help them, set people's homes and workplaces on fire and trash their own neighbourhoods. They aren't hurting anyone but other people: families, workers, blue-collar, poor people like themselves. It's idiotic, it's criminal, and I can't think of any other way to describe it except absolutely disgusting and contemptible.

Egh. The whole mob mentality. It's... disgusting, yes. I can't think of a better word for it. It's also sad that this continues to serve as one of the most practical applications of social science to date. (Relatedly, thank you, Philip Zimbardo.) That fact does, in my opinion, say a great deal about society itself.



Flash: Well, I'm not planning to use it for WotF, no. In my view, one of the nice things about WotF is that it serves as an exploration of narrative through the webcomic format, in addition to being a fun story for me to write. Part of the reason I chose to produce it as a webcomic was that I felt that was the ideal format for the story, and I maintain that belief now, so I don't intend to use Flash in continuing the story. (Besides, publishing each issue in Flash would take a crazy long time.) Maybe I'll do future trailers with Flash, but not the pages themselves. There are other tales that I think are more suited to that medium, anyway.

[ChobiChibi]

Hearing a lot more sirens tonight than last night, and a police helicopter flying around over my bf's house. He didn't laugh when I did a little dance to my car and proclaimed that I was going rioting >_>

But y'know, it hasn't reached anywhere near my home/work yet, and I'm hoping that's the way it's gonna stay. The worst part is the rumours though. Turned out that one of the other stores in the area wasn't burnt down at all, and that they'd barely left the centre the night I was closing. We were just totally on edge and willing to believe anything I guess.

Tis really affecting work though. We're struggling in our warehouse cos we had to bring all the empty pallets in, and the company won't let us put them back outside just in case anything does happen. And we've not been taking as much. Hopefully it'll pick up by the weekend though

[classy_cat18]

Hearing a lot more sirens tonight than last night, and a police helicopter flying around over my bf's house. He didn't laugh when I did a little dance to my car and proclaimed that I was going rioting >_>

Awww, I would've laughed. And then told you to get me an iPod or something. XP

[Gavin Luper]

And that description rings of a healthy, unbroken society to you?

No, it doesn't sound healthy or unbroken at all - I'm just saying the problem shouldn't be projected onto "society".

I'm not usually a conservative person (as most of you know), but Maggie Thatcher's famous "there is no such thing as society" quote rings true for me here:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

There is a hell of a lot of common sense/pragmatism in that quote, I think.

I'm not saying there aren't real problems here, I'm saying that projecting them onto the illusion of "society" is unhelpful and not going to actually solve the problem. If you're poor, rioting and destroying things is not going to fix that. And, taking one step back from that stage, blaming society for your problems is not going to fix your problems. There is no "society" consciously creating problems for you: if you have a problem, to a large extent I think it is up to you to find a way to fix it.

I'm not an expert in British history, but I know that boatloads of migrants came to Australia over the last century, the overwhelming majority of them poor and with little to no English-speaking abilities, from places like post-WWII Italy and Greece, Vietnam (post-Vietnam War), and so on. These migrants didn't live in a world as tolerant as the one we live in today: they were confronted with outright racism, social ostracision and certainly a whole host of difficulty in succeeding financially.

I'm harping on about this because it's my reference point: those people were faced with a host of problems but they didn't blame it on society and then, in turn, expect society to fix it all for them. They recognised the nature of the beast - as sucky as it is - and went out and did something about it. They got jobs and started businesses. And if the economy went to hell, like it is now, they made the best of their impoverished situation instead of making a bad situation much, much worse by spreading violence, crime, fear, death and destruction.

I might be overreaching a bit by saying "go get a job" when the economy is weak and the job market not faring well, but the underlying point is: your life is your problem, find a way to take care of yourself and your family and fix your problems.

Egh. The whole mob mentality. It's... disgusting, yes. I can't think of a better word for it. It's also sad that this continues to serve as one of the most practical applications of social science to date. (Relatedly, thank you, Philip Zimbardo.) That fact does, in my opinion, say a great deal about society itself.

Mob mentality ftl.

Awww, I would've laughed. And then told you to get me an iPod or something. XP

Haha, nice form!

[Crystal Tears]

Yesss, it gets warm here. It must, during the warm months, Canadians forage and frolic, looking for food and mates. When the cold returns, we retreat into our dens and hibernate, working off the fat we’ve built up from summer months. :3

Some of us emerge next summer with cubs. You don’t want to get near a Canadian and her cubs. We’re vicious when defending our young.


This isn’t defending the morons who burn, pillage and plunder but…

Can’t the mob-mentality be used also for good? When say one or two assailants are threatening a group of people, the victims can form a group or mob and defend themselves adequately. Rally the forces, so to speak?

[mr_pikachu]

Can’t the mob-mentality be used also for good? When say one or two assailants are threatening a group of people, the victims can form a group or mob and defend themselves adequately. Rally the forces, so to speak?

In theory, yes. In practice, no. This has been thoroughly tested in both experimental and real-world settings... I'll explain.

Generally, when a number of people could help, each person is significantly less likely to do so. Each person thinks, "Well, someone will help," and no one does. "Someone will grab that mugger." "Someone will call 911." Etc., etc. The infamous Milgram studies ultimately progressed to the group stage, where a number of people all had the opportunity to save the "learner" who was supposedly being electrocuted. Groups were even less likely to help than individuals. This is why, when you need help in an emergency, it helps to give specific orders to specific people -- it's an implicit statement that the selected individual is the only one who can perform that task (and it's an order, which further plays into Milgram's authority experiments).

Weak humans... always looking for someone else to do the hard work. *shakes head*

[Crystal Tears]

I suppose, I guess I never thought about it because I'm one of those people who stand up and say "Help this person!" or "Don't do that!" Then others follow suit, my friends do this a lot to me. They won't make a sound until I say something.

Either way, was daydreaming on bus, got a new idea for a fic maybe? Probably, I got an RPG already. XD IT ALMOST MADE ME MISS MY STOP! D:

Has that happened to you people? Daydreaming/imagining ideas for something or another and suddenly you almost miss/miss something completely?

Strange question, when you quote something like "Don't do that!" and it's at the end of your sentence, do you put a period after it or just leave it with the exclamation mark? @_@

[classy_cat18]

I think you just leave it with the exclamation mark, but let's see what the Grammar Nazi thinks.