The Off Topic Topic

[Jacob]

Ok. Those Danish numbers are crazy. And j thought Danish was a sensible language

Why on earth would you think that?

[lustindarkness]

The conversations today wound up with us planning a gold panning holiday in the 4x4.

My wife is pretty cool sometimes, but damn. Camping in places and panning for gold is quite a lot her and not even a little bit me. It could be fun though.

Sounds cool, where at if I may ask?

[mongers]

Ok. Those Danish numbers are crazy. And j thought Danish was a sensible language

Why on earth would you think that?

[mongers]

The conversations today wound up with us planning a gold panning holiday in the 4x4.

My wife is pretty cool sometimes, but damn. Camping in places and panning for gold is quite a lot her and not even a little bit me. It could be fun though.

Sounds cool, where at if I may ask?

Yeah, definitely real 'Out and About' thread territory.


And MiM don't listen to the naysayers (Malthus) , though I did think, maybe Mrs MiM is thinking of a great place to start making babies. 

[Josquius]

A new years resolution for the year just came to me.
In light of Bowie's death.... I will learn to play an albums worth of songs on guitar.
I shan't actually be releasing an album of course.
But just in case every musician on the planet were to suddenly die it would be good to have backup.

Ok. Those Danish numbers are crazy. And j thought Danish was a sensible language

Why on earth would you think that?

Like swedish but spoken in a regular non-schizophrenic voice :shrug:

[Liep]

Ok. Those Danish numbers are crazy. And j thought Danish was a sensible language

Why on earth would you think that?

I worry for the Danish language. The youth is starting to mix up neuter and common genders saying "et hamster" instead of "en hamster" or giving the wrong gender to English words such as touchdown (clearly et and not en).

[Liep]

A new years resolution for the year just came to me.
In light of Bowie's death.... I will learn to play an albums worth of songs on guitar.
I shan't actually be releasing an album of course.
But just in case every musician on the planet were to suddenly die it would be good to have backup.

Ok. Those Danish numbers are crazy. And j thought Danish was a sensible language

Why on earth would you think that?

Like swedish but spoken in a regular non-schizophrenic voice :shrug:

That would be Norwegian (bokmål, not that godforsaken nynorsk nonsense).

[Syt]

[Josquius]

I've seen wackier attempts to get a job, I do like his honesty.

[The Larch]

And he clearly has skills. I like that the district attorney is one of his references. 

[lustindarkness]

You have to respect that. I'm sure he will get hired.

[Grey Fox]

A man of action & a closer. He's worth the look in almost every defense related business.

[Malthus]

A man of action & a closer. He's worth the look in almost every defense related business.

He got caught, though. 

[Grey Fox]

A man of action & a closer. He's worth the look in almost every defense related business.

He got caught, though. 

One must know failure to be a great leader.

[Zanza]

Douglas Adams:

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I'd gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It's very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here's the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn't look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know... But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do aclue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought Nothing for it, I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice..." I mean, it doesn't really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and st back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.