Random thought re reality blindness: what was it like in the Middle Ages? I mean, if a medieval peasant saw a dragon, a giant, a unicorn or an angel he’d be variously terrified or awed, but he wouldn’t find his perceptions or understanding of the world challenged. Would he see, say, Cthulhu as a fat giant with a big green beard?
Actually, I doubt that Cthulhu would challenge the perception or understanding of the peasant either. They seemed to understand “Big, nasty and trying to eat me!” quite well.
This leads me to wonder if the reality blindness has a basis in human minds being literally forced to cut in with an overactive “We KNOW about everything and *that’s* not in what we know, so it can’t be real and is therefore not perceivable.” I mean, most human minds when confronted with a giant pink elephant in Times Square will SEE it but then try to explain it away as a hallucination, publicity stunt or magician’s street theater– they still acknowledge seeing it, though, so the reality blindness effect has to be an unnaturally strong artificial emphasization of a really stupid response.
Way back in Medieval times, though, they didn’t believe they knew everything– for gods’ sakes, they weren’t even sure what *clouds* were– so maybe they’d be more likely to perceive exactly what they saw. Ignorance wasn’t bliss… it was sheer terror and one hell of a lot of garbled accounts for the historians.
Yes. That was the tradition of many fantasy stories in the 1930s and 1940s at least. And I think that this particular tradition was formed in the 19th Century. And be it noted that Materialism rather than science and logic was the assigned culprit although it should also be noted that reality blind people in those stories insisted that Materialism *was* the only basis of science and logic that there could be. @_@
Choose to collapse? If someone leaves an aircraft weighing I-don’t-know-how-much pressed against your back, something is going to give sooner or later.
Perhaps, once Rhodey is relieved of the pain of having Nick sit on it, we’ll find that it normally talks like Chris Eubank.
The fact that they needed rescuing implies that Nick is incapacitated, though he looks to be whole. Laying the journalistic groundwork is a fine practice. Even finer is paying compliments to the person keeping you from the briny deep.
Although it is possible that Nick was, in fact, shot out of the sky, and Rhodey saved them from sinking, it is also possible that Nick deployed his countermeasures to prevent being shot, and Rhodey’s “rescuing” them may have been as simple as giving Nick a quick place to land in the middle of the ocean, so that it merely appeared that he was shot down.
I have the Brandon Dennis World of Warcraft Christmas album, which among may other things, features We Three Dwarves of Ironforge, which is my new standard.
Whereas my sister had commented that the radio station they listen to in her office never once played “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (not sure if they played “We Three Kings” or not). So she was actually happy when it came up in my personal playlist at our house on Christmas Eve. My brother, on the other hand, said that they played it far too often where he works.
Myself, I don’t recall hearing any radio stations playing Christmas music at all. I don’t listen to actual radio at home – just MP3s – and I did almost all of my Christmas shopping online. I’m sure they must have been playing Christmas music at Lowe’s and Wal Mart over the past few weeks, but nothing stands out in my memory. And with my love of music, that is surprising.
I just listen to the radio in my car (unless I’m trying to catch part of some political commentary show). There were a lot of versions of “White Christmas” (though I only heard Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters once.) Everything from “Silver Bells” to “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” but no “We Three Kings.”
(And since when did “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” get to be a Christmas carol?)
I also only listen to MP3s in my truck, and yes, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” is in my collection. Actually, now that I think about it, so is “We Three Kings”, but most of the versions I play are instrumental only.
Frankly, I detest radio programmes. Partly because I have to put up with songs I don’t like, but mainly because I hate commercials. Yeah, I know, playing commercials is how stations make money, but almost all of the commercials are for merchants I have no interest in, so I finally got tired of dealing with it. With MP3s, I can buy music I like, support just the artists I like, and listen to what I want, when I want.
As for “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, I wouldn’t call it a Christmas “carol”, but it is definitely a Christmas classic – but only if it’s the original Thurl Ravenscroft version.
KKUP.org is a fully listener sponsored radio station that has _NO_ commercials, and a wide range of genre, from doo-wop to blues to poetry to swing to reggae to psychedelic to … While their 91.5 FM range is limited to the Santa Cruz CA area, streaming is available from their web site.
I have no affiliation with KKUP other than as a satisfied listener, spending 90% of my radio time with them.
Once in a great while, however, I will turn on Pandora or Amazon Music for a day or so just to see if there’s anything new I might want to add to my collection. They have the advantages of 1) being able to see what song is playing if I like it, and 2) being able to skip a song if I don’t like it. There have even been a couple times when I heard a song playing in a grocery store – of all places – that I decided to track down because I liked it.
My car has a plug in, but (a) every time I’ve tried to load up an MP3 gizmo, it dies on me, and (b) I’m not willing to trust my one and only iPod Classic to long-term car use.
I’m impressed you still have an iPod Classic. I actually replaced my car stereo just so I would be able to plug in a USB flash drive with all my music on it.
It works, it’s got five thousand plus tracks on it…but they don’t make ’em like that anymore. I could buy an iPhone, but I don’t want the other features. A flash drive, you say?
Yup. There’s a USB port right on the front of the stereo, and it plays the MP3 files just like any other device would — such as your iPod (and in fact, I could plug an iPod into it and control the iPod directly using the stereo’s remote… but my iPod died years ago. And I don’t want an iPhone either. I could plug my iPad into it, but I don’t actually have much music stored on my iPad.). My Mom’s Chrysler 300 has the Beats sound system in it, and actually has the USB port hidden in the center console. So I loaded up a USB drive with a bunch of her favourites and stuck it in there. It took her a bit to learn how to navigate media files, but now she really likes not having to swap CDs all the time.
Belated thanks. It worked. It revealed some problems with my iTunes (files appeared to have gone missing), and I’ve only been able to drag them one at a time from one file to another, and so far only A through G (which is some thirteen hundred tracks). But it works. It plays.
1st!
I love how even though Nick is a helicopter and shouldn’t have facial expressions, somehow he still manages. 🙂
HRRUNGH?
…
HRRUNGH!
Hrrrunghhrrrungh! **waves fins enthusiasically** Hrrr~ungh?
“He told it wrong. And since when do Irishmen drop their aitches?”
Have your people call his people, Jonah Yu.
Random thought re reality blindness: what was it like in the Middle Ages? I mean, if a medieval peasant saw a dragon, a giant, a unicorn or an angel he’d be variously terrified or awed, but he wouldn’t find his perceptions or understanding of the world challenged. Would he see, say, Cthulhu as a fat giant with a big green beard?
Actually, I doubt that Cthulhu would challenge the perception or understanding of the peasant either. They seemed to understand “Big, nasty and trying to eat me!” quite well.
BTW, is anyone else having problems with “Invalid security token.” when they try to post?
This leads me to wonder if the reality blindness has a basis in human minds being literally forced to cut in with an overactive “We KNOW about everything and *that’s* not in what we know, so it can’t be real and is therefore not perceivable.” I mean, most human minds when confronted with a giant pink elephant in Times Square will SEE it but then try to explain it away as a hallucination, publicity stunt or magician’s street theater– they still acknowledge seeing it, though, so the reality blindness effect has to be an unnaturally strong artificial emphasization of a really stupid response.
Way back in Medieval times, though, they didn’t believe they knew everything– for gods’ sakes, they weren’t even sure what *clouds* were– so maybe they’d be more likely to perceive exactly what they saw. Ignorance wasn’t bliss… it was sheer terror and one hell of a lot of garbled accounts for the historians.
In other words science and logic are the _cause_ of reality blindness?
Yes. That was the tradition of many fantasy stories in the 1930s and 1940s at least. And I think that this particular tradition was formed in the 19th Century. And be it noted that Materialism rather than science and logic was the assigned culprit although it should also be noted that reality blind people in those stories insisted that Materialism *was* the only basis of science and logic that there could be. @_@
I’m not entirely happy with that notion myself. For one thing, a giant killer robot is awfully material. 🙂
I hope there’s no Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster…
What is a Hrung anyway, and why would it choose to collapse on Rhodey?
Choose to collapse? If someone leaves an aircraft weighing I-don’t-know-how-much pressed against your back, something is going to give sooner or later.
Perhaps, once Rhodey is relieved of the pain of having Nick sit on it, we’ll find that it normally talks like Chris Eubank.
This might help: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Collapsing_Hrung_Disaster .
C’mon, Nick. It’s not what Rhodey says, it’s how he says it.
Just like body language, inflection and tone speak volumes.
Captain Olympia (“Bubbles”) Waters has a vocabulary of only six words and she seems to be able to get *her* point(s) across okay…
Seven words, actually, but still true.
Six INCLUDING “Not”. “Service is my only joy”. Unless I’ve forgotten something
Yes. You’re forgetting “destroy”.
Imagine a conversation between Rhodey and The Librarian.
The fact that they needed rescuing implies that Nick is incapacitated, though he looks to be whole. Laying the journalistic groundwork is a fine practice. Even finer is paying compliments to the person keeping you from the briny deep.
Very, very valid point, sir.
They needed rescuing because that psycho psychic lady tried to shoot them
Although it is possible that Nick was, in fact, shot out of the sky, and Rhodey saved them from sinking, it is also possible that Nick deployed his countermeasures to prevent being shot, and Rhodey’s “rescuing” them may have been as simple as giving Nick a quick place to land in the middle of the ocean, so that it merely appeared that he was shot down.
We three things disorient are,
Out to save creations bizarre.
Shelled, explodey,
Saved by Rhodey,
Sea-monster exemplar.
Oh…Rhodey saved us, Rhodey’s nice,
Rhodey’s diction will suffice.
Good for squawkin’
And small talkin’,
Rhodey’s meaning is precise.
—from “We Three Kings,” which I did not hear *once* while the radio stations played Christmas music.
I have the Brandon Dennis World of Warcraft Christmas album, which among may other things, features We Three Dwarves of Ironforge, which is my new standard.
Whereas my sister had commented that the radio station they listen to in her office never once played “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (not sure if they played “We Three Kings” or not). So she was actually happy when it came up in my personal playlist at our house on Christmas Eve. My brother, on the other hand, said that they played it far too often where he works.
Myself, I don’t recall hearing any radio stations playing Christmas music at all. I don’t listen to actual radio at home – just MP3s – and I did almost all of my Christmas shopping online. I’m sure they must have been playing Christmas music at Lowe’s and Wal Mart over the past few weeks, but nothing stands out in my memory. And with my love of music, that is surprising.
I just listen to the radio in my car (unless I’m trying to catch part of some political commentary show). There were a lot of versions of “White Christmas” (though I only heard Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters once.) Everything from “Silver Bells” to “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” but no “We Three Kings.”
(And since when did “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” get to be a Christmas carol?)
I also only listen to MP3s in my truck, and yes, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” is in my collection. Actually, now that I think about it, so is “We Three Kings”, but most of the versions I play are instrumental only.
Frankly, I detest radio programmes. Partly because I have to put up with songs I don’t like, but mainly because I hate commercials. Yeah, I know, playing commercials is how stations make money, but almost all of the commercials are for merchants I have no interest in, so I finally got tired of dealing with it. With MP3s, I can buy music I like, support just the artists I like, and listen to what I want, when I want.
As for “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, I wouldn’t call it a Christmas “carol”, but it is definitely a Christmas classic – but only if it’s the original Thurl Ravenscroft version.
non-commercial plug:
KKUP.org is a fully listener sponsored radio station that has _NO_ commercials, and a wide range of genre, from doo-wop to blues to poetry to swing to reggae to psychedelic to … While their 91.5 FM range is limited to the Santa Cruz CA area, streaming is available from their web site.
I have no affiliation with KKUP other than as a satisfied listener, spending 90% of my radio time with them.
Touché. There are a few listener-supported radio stations in my area as well, but there is still the problem of there being a lot of songs that I simply don’t care for. I just like the fact that I can listen to what I want, when I want. If I want to skip a song, I can. If I want to listen to the same song 10 times in a row, I can do that too.
Once in a great while, however, I will turn on Pandora or Amazon Music for a day or so just to see if there’s anything new I might want to add to my collection. They have the advantages of 1) being able to see what song is playing if I like it, and 2) being able to skip a song if I don’t like it. There have even been a couple times when I heard a song playing in a grocery store – of all places – that I decided to track down because I liked it.
My car has a plug in, but (a) every time I’ve tried to load up an MP3 gizmo, it dies on me, and (b) I’m not willing to trust my one and only iPod Classic to long-term car use.
I’m impressed you still have an iPod Classic. I actually replaced my car stereo just so I would be able to plug in a USB flash drive with all my music on it.
It works, it’s got five thousand plus tracks on it…but they don’t make ’em like that anymore. I could buy an iPhone, but I don’t want the other features. A flash drive, you say?
Yup. There’s a USB port right on the front of the stereo, and it plays the MP3 files just like any other device would — such as your iPod (and in fact, I could plug an iPod into it and control the iPod directly using the stereo’s remote… but my iPod died years ago. And I don’t want an iPhone either. I could plug my iPad into it, but I don’t actually have much music stored on my iPad.). My Mom’s Chrysler 300 has the Beats sound system in it, and actually has the USB port hidden in the center console. So I loaded up a USB drive with a bunch of her favourites and stuck it in there. It took her a bit to learn how to navigate media files, but now she really likes not having to swap CDs all the time.
Belated thanks. It worked. It revealed some problems with my iTunes (files appeared to have gone missing), and I’ve only been able to drag them one at a time from one file to another, and so far only A through G (which is some thirteen hundred tracks). But it works. It plays.
Don’t you understand its simple yet ingenious native language?
I would, if only it were a gerbil.
Rhodey has stripes? Where?
Those black lines look kinda like stripes.
“I am Groot”
“HRRUNGG!”
“I am Groot”
“HH-RRUNGG?”
Yeah, and Bubbles only says “Service is my only joy” and “not” but I would gladly read an interview with her.
This is just like Zeta and Foot.