ginmar ([info]ginmar) wrote,
@ 2008-07-23 10:04:00
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Entry tags:links, the girls

Oh, God.

C is trying to convince me the house is haunted. "I keep seeing someone go out the door. And when I pass by a mirror, I see someone."

Oh, Gawd.

"You know that brush for the cats? Is there one for dogs?"

I asked her to unplug the computer cord and bring it over to me so I could plug it in to a closer outlet. "What's that?"

"What?"

"What's that?" She was pointing at the cord, acting like she'd never seen one before.

"Well, what do you think it is?" I held up the plug in end.

"I dunno," she said sullenly.

"Think."

"I dunno."

Gawd.

She's going to church with a friend of hers. I saw this friend. She's ten years old, wears stacked platform shoes, and walks a huge pitbull around. But---heels? Really? The hell?

In other news, [info]ambitious_wench really sucks. Just so you know.


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cute camera!
[info]amberite2112
2008-07-23 03:59 pm UTC (link)
if it took actual film i'd want one.
as it is, i have 2(!) film cameras like it. i love the square negatives.

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Re: cute camera!
[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 04:04 pm UTC (link)
Oh, God, now I want both kinds.

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Re: cute camera!
[info]kanderson321
2008-07-23 06:33 pm UTC (link)
You can get Yashicas cheaper. We have a couple, left over from our days doing film photography. I think Will had one that he was going to sell. I'll see if he still has it, if you're interested.

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Re: cute camera!
[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 06:35 pm UTC (link)
Hm...how much?

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Re: cute camera!
[info]kanderson321
2008-07-23 07:49 pm UTC (link)
I'll ask, but certainly far less than the Rolleflex.

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Re: cute camera!
[info]kanderson321
2008-07-23 08:50 pm UTC (link)
You have mail.

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[info]idemandjustice
2008-07-23 04:19 pm UTC (link)
I used to like thinking places were haunted. It was kinda fun. Made the world a little bit less boring.

Somehow, despite that, I grew up to be... well, more of a skeptic than the average person, from what I've seen. There are still people who honestly think my night terrors (which are a pretty textbook case of a sleep disorder that I absolutely, positively inherited from my dad) might be demons.

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[info]xanath
2008-07-23 04:34 pm UTC (link)
I'm not going into my beliefs here, but I can remember how, at ten, my friends and I would scare ourselves silly during sleepovers. C may just be exhibiting symptoms of this. Does she read any ghost stories?

Also . . . that's an incredible watch. I'm not sure I like it personally, but it's still a great little watch.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 04:43 pm UTC (link)
Watch? Didn't I link to a camera?

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[info]xanath
2008-07-23 06:05 pm UTC (link)
::facepalms:: Yes, you did. And I took too quick a look because I had scrambled eggs to rescue.

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[info]ajollypyruvate
2008-07-23 05:23 pm UTC (link)
"Well, what do you think it is?" I held up the plug in end.

"I dunno," she said sullenly.

"Think."
I don't know if this will help but: My mom put an abrupt end to that behaviour in us by saying, "It's an intelligence test."

The feminist art teacher at my last assignment was cooing over the 10- and 11-year old girls staggering around in heels for their graduation ceremony. Sadly, my social filters are rusty and little used and I was unable to hide my dislike of the notion. Um. Possibly one reason why I'm no longer on that assignment. :D

And for fuck's sake, if you are going to let young girls wear heels, then at least have them practice wearing the damn things. Gah.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 05:26 pm UTC (link)
"It's an intelligence test."

Oh, my new favorite phrase, I like it! It'll get as much use as, "Thank you" (preens) when told, "You're meeeeean!".

Ten and eleven year old girls in heels are just....wrong. They're kids!

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[info]ajollypyruvate
2008-07-23 06:49 pm UTC (link)
I think that was one of my mom's most brilliant techniques, frankly. I told her as much some years back at a family dinner, to hearty agreement from my siblings. She said she just blurted it out in frustration at my sister's, "But I don't know hooowww", over some chore or other and was amazed at the result.

Wronger than wrong. I have similar issues with girl that age wearing any make-up beyond some lip gloss but I'm old and cranky.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 07:06 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, let me join you in a chorus of, "Kids these days! Get offa my lawn!" The girls here wear booty shorts and teensy miniskirts, and they're obviously ten and twelve and stuff like that.

Yeah, what gets the girls most often is the bland, dry approach. "I don't know!"

"Figure it out."

"But there was stuff in the way!" -of sweeping.

"Move it if you want to live."

"My chores are done."

"Then how come I can't see the floor?"

Gah. Unfortunately for them, I'm really really stubborn and I don't give up.

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[info]ajollypyruvate
2008-07-23 07:42 pm UTC (link)
"Now go fetch AuntJolly some more bourbon!"

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 08:26 pm UTC (link)
"But why is the rum gone?"

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Garbo Talks
[info]sister_sheena
2008-07-23 11:24 pm UTC (link)
Her first words in her speaking role: "Gimme a visky, with ginger ale on the side - and don't be stingy, baby".

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Re: Garbo Talks
[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 11:31 pm UTC (link)
Hee.

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[info]cissa
2008-07-24 08:30 pm UTC (link)
Ooo. I LOVE "intelligence test"!

I also found that offering ridiculous options helped.

What is it?

I dunno.

Maybe it's a car! Is it a car?

...No.

Maybe it's a cupcake! What do you think?

...No...

And eventually either they give a reasonable answer or start giggling, and in either case, they're over the sulks. Temporarily, anyway.

(Plus- it can be pretty fun for the adult involved. I figured I had to find amusement somewhere in the situation...)

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[info]xanath
2008-07-23 06:07 pm UTC (link)
Good God. 10 and 11? ::headdesk:: I really have no words.

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[info]ajollypyruvate
2008-07-23 06:53 pm UTC (link)
And thinking it was "cute" because they couldn't even walk properly in heels! No! Not cute! That just makes it worse!

Eesh. I am old.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 07:07 pm UTC (link)
Well, girls are getting fetishized younger and younger these days...Argh.

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[info]ajollypyruvate
2008-07-23 08:01 pm UTC (link)
I think this more often makes me sad than angry, in part because of the emphasis on what is, to me, a "trashy" look; one they are expected to be able to carry off as if they were super-hot 19-year olds. I mean, at least girls in India and some Middle-Eastern countries get comfortable clothing!

I've had men comment that the styles I chose to wear were because I was "ashamed of my body". Um, no. What makes you think you have the right to look at it? The more whining over my not wearing mini-skirts, heels, and low-cut blouses, and the more likely you'll never see me in anything but unrelieved black from chin to toe. (True story, that.)

Ok, see? I slid into angry and now I need fur therapy. WHERE ARE MY KITTENS

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 08:28 pm UTC (link)
Erm....Well, mine are stationed at the windows right now, staring at the sheriffs raiding my neighbors' house.

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[info]actiasluna
2008-07-23 05:51 pm UTC (link)
We had those crappy, plastic, sorta heels that came with constumes when I was a kid. They were tinkerbell or some such crap. They were strictly for at home, though, because they didn't hardly stay on the feet.

I just feel bad for the poor girls' feet these days, because they HURT.


And omg, I want that camera! *greedy grabby hands* Maybe I'll tell everybody that's what I want for my birthday so they'll give me $ instead of stuff. Might get close enough to being able to get it.

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[info]saiko42
2008-07-23 06:10 pm UTC (link)
I worked tech support in college, and we went around at the beginning of each year helping the little froshies (and their helicopter parents) get settled in electronically (hooked up to wired in their rooms, put the wireless key in laptops, help hook up the cable box system, give them our phone number, etc.)

One special little snowflake was wondering why her computer wouldn't turn on. It was plugged into a surge protector, but the LED on the power brick wasn't on (let alone anything on the computer itself). When she sees me look at this, she holds up the cord from the surge protector and asks, in what as far as I could tell was all complete seriousness, if this thing was supposed to go into the wall or something.

I'd already earned "genius technical wiz" status from her and her roomie by getting the TV to work by pressing the input button on the remote.... sigh.

This is a reasonably "top" small liberal arts/engineering college, too. We engineers tend to look down at the others, but, well, a lot of us are frickin' idjits as well. Sigh......

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[info]saiko42
2008-07-23 06:14 pm UTC (link)
Another conversation that seared itself into my brain. This was sophomore year, and I remember it clearly. I was leaving my mind-numbing chemistry class, walking out the double doors of the building, about to head to my awesome human geography class in the main humanities building, and two geniuses in front of me speak thusly:

"Like, so who were the Mongols again?"
"They, like, invaded Russia. But it was, like, a good invasion?"
"Why, because they brought them industrialization or something?"

Ow ow ow ow ow pain pain ow ow

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 06:21 pm UTC (link)
Oh. My. Fucking. God.

Please tell me you're lying. Genius! Nobody can be that fucking stupid. Please.

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(Anonymous)
2008-07-23 08:37 pm UTC (link)
Nope, I am deadly, deadly fucking serious.

Now, I'm a college girl, as evidenced by my sourcing of these stories, but I'm far, far beyond any illusion of the delusion that going to college or having gone to college is in ANY way correlated to not being a total. fucking. moran. (Get a brain!) After one of my absolute most brilliant buddies dropped out to be a mechanic, and a lot of these freckin' idjits get degrees.... yeah. Blargh.

(this is saiko/Falyne/yadda yadda on a public computer)

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(Anonymous)
2008-07-23 09:06 pm UTC (link)
Hahahaha oh this reminds me of people on my university course who have somehow got to the age of 20 and not realised that there were indigenous people living in Australia before it was colonised and that they were somewhat ruthlessly treated.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 09:21 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, we have those here: they're called Republicans.

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(Anonymous)
2008-07-23 11:15 pm UTC (link)
Well our conservatives aren't usually -that- blatantly ignorant...I can only hope their general social inadequacy stops them from forming scary future connections.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 11:21 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I'm worried about them reproducing. Scary scary people.

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[info]davidkevin
2008-07-25 03:03 pm UTC (link)

True story.

Twenty years ago, when I sold personal computers for a living, one evening just before closing we got a frantic request for a service call from a small exurban weekly newspaper located about 75 miles away. Their small LocalTalk network of a Mac SE, two Mac Pluses, and a LaserWriter had gone down. Nothing worked, everything was dead, help!!!

So our service guy leaves the next morning about 5 a.m. in order to drive from our southeastern exurb of St. Louis to their northwestern exurb of St. Louis, in order to be there when they opened their office at 7 a.m.

He tries to turn on the equipment. Yep, everything's dead. It's all plugged into one surge protector. The light on the surge protector is out. He follows the cord from the surge protector to its plug behind the file cabinet...

...which has pulled out of the socket. He pushes it back in and Voila! Everything comes up.

He gets back in the service van and drives the 75 miles back to the store and is there in time for him to start work when the store opens at 9 a.m. The small exurban weekly newspaper gets billed the $75 one-hour minimum for the service outcall plus mileage for the 150-mile round-trip.

So, yes, people can be that fucking stupid.

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[info]rikibeth
2008-07-23 09:25 pm UTC (link)
By the time my kid was nine, she was in adult shoe sizes, and you would not believe the difficulty I had finding her a pair of shoes to wear with a summer dressy dress that DIDN'T HAVE HEELS.

But that shouldn't apply to everyday shoes and clothes. My answer was to train her about how much cooler the clothes in the boys' department were. Look at all the pockets in the cargo shorts! And sneakers with HOT ROD FLAMES. Who wouldn't want that?

She's almost 13 now. She doesn't even WANT heels now. Except she'd like a pair of little-heeled granny boots like MY favorite pair, and probably would be all over a pair of giant platform Goth boots, which is more about the stomp than the heel.

But she's not running around in booty shorts or skirts that show her bum!

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-23 09:29 pm UTC (link)
And this is a girl from a supposedly really religious family. Huh?

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[info]rikibeth
2008-07-23 09:35 pm UTC (link)
Don't ask me, I don't get it.

And we're about as not-religious as they come. My objections had nothing to do with "God says it's a sin" and everything to do with "you are way too young to be attracting that kind of attention."

And I'm really sorry that she's already had to learn that "tank top" = "catcalls." Just walking around the corner to get a soda at the pizza place. Wouldn't it be nice if a kid could dress for the weather without having to deal with assholes?

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