Displaying comments 1 to 50 of 121
MeFi post:
Lightning Strike on Camera
Years ago, my mother was the farthest of 5 young girls standing under a tree that got hit by lightning. She was the only one who did not have permanent damage. The oldest girl, closest to the tree, lost the sight in one eye. My mother had lost touch with her of course, and got an address from the book left over from a ghost town reunion in the area, wrote to her, and a month later the lady hopped out of a car in front of Mom's house for a visit.
Apparently, in her late 80's, she... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 9:57 AM on July 13, 2008
MeFi post:
10th July 2003
Knew a guy who ripped off 40 year old wallpaper and found a note on the wall with the date and "Never again!" under it.
I lived in a house for 10 years and always wondered why there were very narrow but very long straight creases randomly in the drywall. When we moved out and got the appliances away from the wall, it said Fuck in drywall mud in letters 6 feet high.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 7:11 AM on June 3, 2008
MeFi post:
Crap, I'm hungry.
CKmtl:
I believe that's caused by an obstructed bile duct, and is called "greasy feces". Without bile, the grease doesn't get digested and it causes the thing to float.
IANAD, just wish I had managed to forget some of that biology over the years.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 6:11 AM on June 3, 2008
MeFi post:
You're a spared man, Charlie Brown
A similar story, not related, just similar.
I learned to read at maybe 4, (about 1951 or 52). and we used to visit Grandma out of state. Grandma had a lifetime supply of Reader's Digests, stacked in large piles behnd the coal oil stove,which kept one room warm. (It was not a bedroom.) When we visited, I taught myself to read them, because they were much higher levels and more interesting than what we had in school.
There was one wonderful story, of a flyer who was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 9:11 PM on April 10, 2008
Many years after they invented the internet, I did Google some sites about landing without a parachute, and I found several of them. (Within the last 5 years.)
I never found my story, but I did find that every such site had notes about there being many other similar stories, and not of all of them had any details available. Apparently, there are many other such stories that are not well documented, and I never found my exact story on the 'net. Having seen the scars and heard this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 7:09 PM on April 16, 2008
MeFi post:
You can't spell "terrarium" without "terrar"
You do not want crickets, and there is no such thing as a singular cricket. They lay eggs in the dirt or the cardboard or whathaveyou, which hatch into very tiny, perfectly formed crckets, small enough to escape anything you can think up. Then they will get loose, where they will not only chirp annoyingingly, they will eat your sofa, your carpet, and your sweaters in the back of the closet.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 9:21 AM on January 26, 2008
Five gallon glass water bottles (or plastic, if you can live with the optics) make wonderful terrariums. You wash the dirt off the roots gently, and use long sticks to poke the roots into the dirt. If you've never done this before, I'd start with weeping fig. It's a tiny-leafed vine that creeps around and spreads slowly, and it's available anywhere you buy houseplants.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 9:28 AM on January 26, 2008
MeFi post:
Mythbusters Saves Another Life
His friend explained in the comments that he had an undiagnosed electrical problem with his heart and went home with a pacemaker. It happens. I knew a guy who crapped out behind the wheel and then several more times at the hospital while they were trying to sort out the mess. He drove himself home from the hospital.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 10:51 AM on December 31, 2007
MeFi post:
wonderful ecards
I have used them for about five years for business contacts. It's quick to open, and if they don't pick them up a couple of years in a row, I just take them off the list. I have several people who like them well enough they forward them home for the family to watch. They let you keep 100 addresses on file, if I remember that right. It keeps track of whether the card was picked up and if the address bounced, which is how I know someone doesn't work there any more.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 10:50 AM on December 21, 2007
MeFi post:
Do Not Resuscitate
An RN of my acquantance once had a lady post surgery on a narcotic drip with a push button, and her family, not wishing to see her suffer, apparently was pushing the button while she was asleep. Uh, too asleep to push her own button. They snowed her and went home for the night. The RN is now looking at a patient with severly depressed respiratory function, and a DNR on file, who had no reason she couldn't live a normal life for another few decades.
She spent most of the shift... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 5:49 AM on December 12, 2007
MeFi post:
Have a Bowl of Cereal, Make a Bowl of Gut Chutney.
Quiznos had a spectacularly disgusting one that involved a well-dressed young woman pulling a half eaten sandwich out of a trashcan, on the street. I only saw it about twice before they pulled it. I could not believe they did not immediately fire the ad agency, along with anyone who thought that was a good idea.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 12:19 PM on November 12, 2007
MeFi post:
Trash into treasure
You can repot house plants in it. Or perhaps, drive it into the country and arrange for it to go to a good home. The worms don't go very deep and cold weather would kill them off in the fall, to prevent any invasive species problems. The temperature range for them is 50° to 85°, apparently. (Mine's outdoors, so I'm guessing about that part.) Maybe the city would like it for those big civic flower pots if you asked?
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 8:56 AM on October 28, 2007
I was being Politically Correct in suggesting you offer it to the city. Actually, if I lived in the city and did not have a car, I'd smuggle a few pounds at a time into one of those "tree in a pot" things. The dirt settles in those so there would be plenty of room, and it's not like it's toxic. It would make the tree happy (or petunias). If you don't have a pot handy, you could sneak a few pounds into any vacant lot.
The ratio is pretty favorable,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 3:28 PM on October 28, 2007
MeFi post:
Babies are sponges
OK, I'm embrassed. Figure he's a boy (blue), they learn to walk a bit later (month, maybe), he's just getting the hang of it good. That kid is maybe 14 months old and he can swim (OK, float) better than I can. (Yeah, it bothered me to watch the kid out there too. Go get him, already; I don't care how much they paid you.)
My daughter the nurse taught the RugRat sign language starting at 6 months. He was good at it. Beter than actual speech, as it turned out (bad... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 5:30 PM on October 3, 2007
Beter/Better
More coffee (I did check; I goofed.)
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 5:38 PM on October 3, 2007
MeFi post:
Shift Option Rinse
I just threw mine on the top rack, keys and all, no soap and the dryer turned off. Nobody told me to cover the plug. Toast upside down over the furnace vent for a couple of weeks. I had replaced it anyway for not working, and after washing, everything worked except for one of the 6 keys, and I had two of them, so the experiment was considered a success.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 5:44 AM on September 19, 2007
MeFi post:
Lanier Phillips, survivor
In about 1951, my mother sold Avon in a black neighborhood, and she left me in the car with the windows rolled down in the shade. (You could do that back then.) I was missing when she got back, and she found me in the kitchen next door. The neighborhood kids had taken me in the house and were looking at my hands, because they were the same color on the top as the bottom, and had taken my shoes off to see if my feet looked like that too. They were feeding me soul food, which was so close to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 5:11 AM on August 29, 2007
MeFi post:
Let Slip The Badgers of War
"There is a bloody brave little animal in Africa called the honey badger. It may be the meanest animal in the world. It kills for malice and for sport and it does not go for the jugular--it goes straight for the groin. It has a lot in common with the modern American woman."
Robert Ruark
* Working from memory, I'm pretty sure this is paraphrased, but the book is out of print and this is the only quote I can find.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 10:05 AM on July 12, 2007
MeFi post:
Armpits!
Of course he's not kidding; you just cut them off. It hurts for maybe 2 seconds and bleeds for about 30 seconds and by tomorrow, you can't even see the spot.
But, yeah, you defintely want to chug some whiskey out of the bottle, because it's what real men do when performing surgery on themselves. It's tradition. (You could also pour some over the wound, but that would hurt like hell, so you might want to skip that part.)
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 7:55 PM on June 18, 2007
MeFi post:
Frida Kahlo's 100th
"In reality Kahlo wore three or four socks on the thin calf and her right shoe was built up to compensate for the smaller limb."
My friend who had polio wonders how long it took her to figure that out. He wears 3 socks on one foot, to make his tiny foot fit the same size shoe as the good foot. (It's a matter of pride with polio victims to wear two shoes that match; that are the same size. It makes it less obvious.)
That's just for background.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 6:38 PM on June 18, 2007
MeFi post:
Vigilante Justice is Blind
Family member once shared a hospital room with a guy who was legally blind, and his buddies took him hunting every year and stuck him in a blind. Apparently, the rule was to make a lot of noise when they came back to get him.
< /I could not make this up.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 5:22 AM on May 17, 2007
MeFi post:
Undark and the Radium Girls
As a child, I was encouraged to "go wiggle your toes under the machine" to keep me entertained while Mommy picked out shoes. Doctors never did figure out why every time they cut my toenails, pus ran out from under them. There's a pool in the family about which kind of cancer gets me. I think thyroid is still open.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 4:24 AM on January 3, 2007
MeFi post:
A reason to call in sick tomorrow.
The last one I saw, I was dragging neighbors out of the house to show it to their kids, as it's pretty rare in our latitude, and I had to explain what it was to all of them.
Kids, lawn. What do they teach in the schools these days? Anything?
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 8:03 PM on December 13, 2006
MeFi post:
It's imperative you keep your ass on the phone line.
The no-call list doesn't cover charities, IIRC, and the one that steams my clams is the local PD Support Group. They have called the last three Saturdays at 8 AM, (in spite of telling them no, but thanks for checking), they only use men on the phone, and they pretend to be working cops. I can visualize a lot of old folks responding to their implied threat that if you don't give them money, somehow you will receive substandard police protection, and yes, they do manage to imply it.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 6:53 AM on October 13, 2006
Ynoxas: Thanks, and I'll do that.
posted to MetaFilter by unrepentanthippie
at 8:10 AM on October 13, 2006
