rokulily wrote:
I Am The 1337 Master wrote:
Oh hey, hello? Wait what's all this?

—
'
To come back months later and still see the site in pieces. :(
-hands broom-
well, better get to work or something… how are you rival?

Still as bleh as ever, but nice to see you, Roku. :)
And I will…not…be…sweep…
(sweeps up the room)

^Also I have switched to this account here.

ayesinback is being lazy, so she's wishing l33t a very happy birthday… somewhat late.

i now feel like i've earned a cupcake… gonna go get one…

Man I was so nervous during my interview. It turned out to be 3:1 instead of 1:1 (the 1 being me.) It was hard to focus on who to talk to. I think I might have made a good impression. But there were at least 5 other people being interviewed today.

The best question was:

Interviewer 1: Why are you interested in this postion?
Me: I want to be able to see many aspects of business so I can decide on my future career easier.
Interviewer: Have you taken a class on Human Reasources yet?
Me: No. I am just in an introduction to management class right now. We only had to cover a chapter on Human Resources so far.
Interview: Despite that you still want to work here?
Me: Yes
Interviewer: Really?

So they might not believe me. They seemed to be trying to scare me away but I held my ground.

Niccea: Sounds like they have a good sense of humour :P I've studied Human Resource Management a bit… mostly just what was needed for the business degree. It's pretty simple stuff at its core so basic business knowledge and common sense (as well as a good heart) should help. I hope you get it! :)

Lemony leet master :)

Let's see what local tales of monsters and myth I can recall…

- Cats.
Mysterious big cats that stalk in the night and take down large farm animals…
That is universal though. I've read stories about sightings of those from too many countries to name going back probably to medieval times and beyond.
Maybe there's some truth to then though? In some cases it's been found that the culprit was just an overgrown domestic cat gone feral. Cats of all shapes and sizes follow human civilisation (as pets, escaped zoo and circus animals etc), and live alongside us even when feral but in secret in the shadows… so that if they're clever you never find them. So it is plausible.

-Sightings here claim they're huge, all black, rippling muscle, gaping red mouth, white fangs, glowing yellow eyes. They never make any sound but a low growl. Usually when seen they're in the middle of a road eating a kangaroo, emu, sheep or cow. The person stops their car and the cat slowly and calmly slinks off, watching them threateningly all the while.
That same take has been repeated by my witnesses over many years, but traces are almost never found and when they are it's inconclusive.

- The Bunyip
There are all sorts of explanations for this one, but I don't really care about them, they range between stupid to mundane to boring…
The creature is more interesting to me because it's mysterious.
No one is really sure what it looks like, but all agree that it's a monster that lives deep in the bush… sometimes in lonely waterholes. It's evil and big, dark and dangerous.
It could be dragony, or like a big walrus, or giant cat, or just an evil spirit that can take any form it needs to, no one knows for sure.
It has a haunting call…

- The Rainbow Serpent.
This guy is no longer around. he, or she was a creation animal from the dreamtime. It was gigantic in size, capable of carving out rivers and moulding mountains, a truly colossal and powerful creature. Its body was covered in rainbow coloured scales, it's head was as black as night. It wasn't good, or bad, it just was… sort of elemental. The whole continent of Australia was scared and moulded by it .

- The Qinkans.
These are very, very tall, thin people, with only four fingers on each hand. They have no nose or mouth, just eyes and long flappy ears, their skin is all dark. They're a spirit people from the dreamtime and live away from humans in the deep bush. You only see them at twilight. They can be friendly and helpful… but they have a rival, related race who are demonic and will kill you and then eat you. Or just eat you while alive.

- Moondyne Joe.
Once a convict in the 1800s… he eventually escaped and became a Bushranger. That's like a highwayman or outlaw. He hunted the bush for many years, living rough, steeling, robbing… Eventually he died of old age in an insane asylum. But people still say his spirit haunts the bush and forests in the Southwest and that those are his lands.

That's all I can recall for now ^__^

rokulily wrote:
ayesinback is being lazy, so she's wishing l33t a very happy birthday… somewhat late.

i now feel like i've earned a cupcake… gonna go get one…

meh - what we have here is a failure to have the same perspective.

I was NOT being lazy. I was working Very Hard. There were these green swine that Had To Die, and some rather pitiful birds that couldn't keep their feathers on. – I got a Kindle Fire for my birthday and have been busy filling it up with free stuff, including angry birds - which I had heard about, but hadn't played before. and so it is re-confirmed - there's quite the addictive component to my personality.

So Leet > Lincoln > Lemony . . . all righty, (I like Lemony, as long as the unfortunate events do not override), happy belated birthday!! Aquarian - WOOT! nice to see you around.

@Niccea - part of interviews is to see if there is a common ground to build a working rapport on. sounds like there is. good luck!

ah, too much to do today (perhaps the result of indulging in OCD activity for a couple of days). gotta get to

I just got stabbed by a gorilla.

He didn't mean to but the goldfish told him I was REALLY evil. At first we had a conversation and I had almost convinced her I was not quite as evil as the goldfish claimed but when a little girl came in the room I just HAD to punch her in the face. I hate little girls. Of course the gorilla didn't hate little girls and continued to the act of stabbing me. When the gorilla left the room to get herself a soda I had a conversation with the goldfish and we talked it out. I think we're friends now but I'm not really sure yet.

My goodness, how did I miss so much chat here? I need to check in more. It's been a distracting couple of weeks here for me. Sorry guys! I hope people feel better, people's pets feel better, people get jobs and people get their projects done!

And oh my, always interested in legendary creatures discussion. :] I have a big list of them for my comic.

So this is me catching up with you guys! It's been kind of odd so far this year, a little unsettling, but I've been able to do lots of thinkings about stuff it was too hard to think about before (and still need to do more). But I've been slightly more poductive project- and art-wise (yay) and I'm remotivated to do a number of things.

Currently I'm a bit mentally distressed though! It's been offered that I can soon buy a friend's old Cintiq (one of the original 21 inch ones) for a manageable (but still expensive) price, and I'm really torn. I've always wanted one since the minute I heard about them, but I've still never really used one. It would be quite easy for me to buy it thinking ‘this means I’ll do more art' (partially because traditional art tablets still feel unnatural and uncomfortable to me), but I can't guarantee that would actually happen. And the money would have to come from savings, I don't have another source of income right now. But it's probably the closest I'll ever get to being able to afford one and it's a chance I'd be hard pressed to let pass by. I don't expect I'll really decide about buying it until I can borrow it for an evening and make sure it works on my setup and is comfortable and all. I dunno when that will be though. Meanwhile I'm sitting around feeling bad about wanting it so much even though I'm not sure if I should get it!

ayesinback wrote:

So Leet > Lincoln > Lemon

Jacques, man_lick69, notachick, abrahamlincoln…And many many more…
Thanks, Ayes. :)

@Kroatz- just put on your batman outfit and… do batman stuff. ^_^

@Skool- welcome back! :D
Just get the cintiq!
It didn't make me more productive, but then I will use any excuse because I'm lazy and my brain is crap…
But the thing is, you WANT it, you WANTED it for ages and ages and drawing on an ordinary tablet doesn't feel as good for you anyway, so you should get it. You can always make up that money again later, so that's not a real issue really… get it!
Get it, get it, get it!

Well, Juliet seems back to her old self and then some today. I think she's starting to realize that the medicine makes her feel better. Usually it takes her a few days to trust me again after I've been forcing syringes in her face, but this morning she was following me all around and headbutting my ankles even after I gave her breakfast.

I think I've gotten pretty good at spotting and treating these blockages. The only problem is that she needs a bit of medicine to get her well again. I don't mind paying for the medicine, but the vet has to see her every time to prescribe it. I guess that makes sense, just to make sure it's the same thing, but it's outrageously expensive and a pain because it always IS the same thing.

That's an interesting theory about season changes, ayes. I doubt it's a hibernation instinct, but her condition can be brought on by stress, and rapid changes in temperature(and we have a lot of them here, dramatic ones) could probably be stress enough. Since my room is furthest from the furnace and the northmost in our house, temperature changes are felt most here. I'll have to keep an eye out for that in the future and see if her non-eating bouts coincide with temperature changes.

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Those are great stories, oz! I had to go look up pictures of all those creatures. The Bunyip looks almost like a cross between a walrus and a sea serpant and a giant cat in most pictures, but totally different in others. Now that I see the Quinkans, I think I may have had some picture books as a kid depicting them. I used to love those sorts of myths.

Thanks Oz, that really sorted it all out!

I'm addicted to THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY

Imagine the crow, mixed with forever alone guy, mixed with ultimate lovesong.

Product Placement wrote:
It didn't have extra pair of legs. It looked like an ordinary horse, which made them harder to tell apart from ordinary horse. The big telltale difference was that their hooves were supposedly turned the other way.

It didn't have… oh well, it's been so long since I heard the story. Doesn't really matter thoug- Hey look at that purty horsey, I wonder if it will let me ride it…

Nice to hear that your rabbit is better, Hippie. Don't know why, but the two animals I like more than cats and dogs are rabbits and turtles. Maybe it's that old childrens story in my head? Hmm…

Waitaminute, Skool… You're out of a job right now? Or else I'm doing the one idiotic thing I always do… make assumptions based on very little data. Sometimes I wish I knew where I picked up that habit…

On my end, I just got myself a brand new Nintendo DS. I saw the PS Vita on display and I already know I don't like it in its current form. It looks big and clunky in the hands to me and the $300 price tag only makes me move away from it more. Add to that the fact that I can't use or download my UMDs to it and… well… I'll wait on it.

And our “corrupt” government officials are at it again. Well, some of them. Even though the law states that we have to be paid our income tax refunds, some of them are contemplating delaying that. Like they started to do over two decades ago. Most people got paid theirs last year in November because our local governor was REALLY PUSHING for it. And now he's pushing again so it doesn't happen again. I'm pretty sure this time if some of our senators attempt to delay it again they'll end up in prison…

And after ages of working I could have a tax refund of $400 or so. But thanks to politics I may have to wait another 20 years if those crazy senators get their way…

Time to prepare for the pain of tomorrow… watching couples walk by and knowing I'm too old to join that club…

No, no, I have a job Lonnehart. :] I just meant that my budget is balanced for it, and normally I don't make big purchases unless I have a little bit of other ‘extra’ income.

I probably will get it though, so long as it works and all. Oz I'm surprised you're encouraging me, you're the one who has said they're not that great!

skoolmunkee wrote:
No, no, I have a job Lonnehart. :] I just meant that my budget is balanced for it, and normally I don't make big purchases unless I have a little bit of other ‘extra’ income.

I probably will get it though, so long as it works and all. Oz I'm surprised you're encouraging me, you're the one who has said they're not that great!

Ugh… balancing the books must be a real headache. But I'd go get that tablet. Especially if you think it's better than what you have now. Who knows… maybe that investment will pay for itself in the future. :)

skoolmunkee wrote:
Oz I'm surprised you're encouraging me, you're the one who has said they're not that great!

Hey, that's just me. I was perfectly acclimatised to my normal tablet before I got the Cintiq so it wasn't that great a thing for me because I had to retrain all over again.
But you don't have quite that issue and this is something you have been lusting after for YEARS, so I say fricken GO FORT IT! ^_^

ozoneocean wrote:
so I say fricken GO FORT IT! ^_^

I think he's right. imo - it's not so much whether it's a great bargain/investment, but that it's something you want.
sometimes (sometimes) that's exactly what savings are for. For the careful and practical, it's just as good for the soul to splurge every so often as it is for the carefree to try to be frugal.
I am neither careful or carefree, so I'm mentally torturing myself about a potential trup to Alaska - it would be a big dip into savings.

—
I love how the river worm brought all kinds of creature-talk to the fore. As bravo menitoned, we have the Jersey Devil, and stories differ to exactly what kind of creature that's suppose to be (the wildest I heard was that it was a cross between a short Big Foot and some kind of “soul-vampire”). I have thought about going down to the pinelands to see what's what – thought about it, as I sit in my cozy chair in suburbia . . .

but back to the river worm. Come on - fess up! It's an Icelandic fraternity boys prank, isn't it? :)

A loup-garou is French for werewolf. I had a dream about adopting a large Shepard/wolf mix that starting talking to me telepathically telling me it was a loup-garou.

The werewolf legend in France actually had a real life counterpart with at least one man being charged with being one and tried. The court documents are still around and today he'd probably just be called aserial killer. But remember in Medieval France after the the great famines wolvesstartedto enter towns and attack people. So people took the wolves to be changed people because they didn't remember normal wolves attacking like that. But then the countryside hadn't been denuded of food and people before either. The wonderful 14th Century.

When I was in grade school we actually had a class on New Jersey legends and lore. This was long before Weird NJ (Something else that went national that started in NJ) and the Jersey Devil was huge in it. But then I went to grade school in Central Monmouth county which is the northern edge of the Pine Barrens. The real Jersey Devil looks like a cloven hooved, horned man sometimes with wings sometimes not. His footprints in the 19th Century were found all over several NJ towns. He was supposedly shot at by a constable and witnessed leaping over buildings just like an American “Spring-heeled Jack” The origins of the Jersey Devil go back to when the Pine Barrens were heavily inhabited by lots of towns making pig iron which are today mostly abandoned. It started with a poor woman whowas overworked with12 kids and who said “If I have a 13th I hope it's born a devil!”
Naturally it was and it leapt out the window and into legend.
We had lots of school trips into the Pine Barrens including visiting the Olde Towne of Smithville. Back then it was a recreated Iron town from the mid 19th century. Now it's an collection of shops. The Pine Barrens is full of abandoned towns, ghosts and the Jersey Devil and even an abandoned nuclear missile site. NJ also has its own versions of Bigfoot and Mothman. The North Jersey woods supposedly have wolf men. That is a huge wolf that walks on its hind legs and has hands instead of forepaws.

Since NJ is a little short of large lakes it is sadly short of lake monsters.

My left ear is deaf today. Makes me feel all off-balance and wrong. I hate it. Teeth are sore, cheekbone sore… :(
F…ing Mondays! :(

People still believe in ware-animals in many parts of Africa. Rabits, leopards, lions, whatever. People have been beaten to death because they were suspected of being a ware-animal. In India too.
It's charming and msyerious when we look at it from a story point of view, but the real socialogical human realities for it are more scary than any myth.

Arrrgh! Christ! There should be a law against eating canned tuna at work!
It both sounds and smells like catfood. Disgusting!

And no, it won't make you stay younger or more intelligent or healthier, it's just bloody food you gullible stinky moron!

Sorry, with the earache thing I am not having a good Monday morning.

ozoneocean wrote:
Arrrgh! Christ! There should be a law against eating canned tuna at work!
It both sounds and smells like catfood. Disgusting!

And no, it won't make you stay younger or more intelligent or healthier, it's just bloody food you gullible stinky moron!

Sorry, with the earache thing I am not having a good Monday morning.

Had that experience with canned corned beef once. I felt like I was eating freshly ground (by truck tires)roadkill…

Psychosis can often involve the belief that one has changed or been changed into an animal. So the person may not have actually transformed into the creature but for all intents and purposesbehaveslikethat animal. So the belief in the actual transformationmay beillusory but that doesn't mean that the looney trying to kill you isn't a wolf as far as the looney is concerned.

It also doesn't mean that the looney couldn't be using a culture's fears of a certain animal to manipulate people. Maybe by the looney saying he can become that animal and if you see one , it's him. Just a touch of Paranoia?

That cat may not really be a familar and just be a pet, but messing with someone's head by intimating that the cat will be watching him so that every cat seen is believed to be an evil spy.

@Bravo-
In almost all cases in Africa and India that I read about it wasn't the victim who had the delusion, it was the mob, just because of general cultural superstitions: i.e. they believed ware animals were possible so anything that could be explained by that theory obviously fulfilled the right conditions.

It's be set off by any unexplained accident, death, mauling or loss of livestock.
Then next up you have a stranger to the community, or someone who was disliked because they were a loner or weird, or handicapped or albino, whatever.
Then rumours feed fear (that person transformed into the animal that caused the murder or took the livestock…). And it leads to an incident.

The other way it seemed to happen was when people were out hunting, for example, they wound an animal (dear, rabbit, lion etc), they completely lose it, then later on a person comes out of the bush or into a village with a similar mark or wound on them. (coincidentally of course)

Locally we have jungle spirits called the Taotaomona. They normally mind their own business. However, you pass through their jungle without permission and they'll pinch you all over leaving small red sores. And if you relieve yourself in their jungle without their permission you won't be able to anymore… well… not without gettng somesurgery for the “problem”anyway…

ozoneocean wrote:
Arrrgh! Christ! There should be a law against eating canned tuna at work!
It both sounds and smells like catfood. Disgusting!

And no, it won't make you stay younger or more intelligent or healthier, it's just bloody food you gullible stinky moron!

Sorry, with the earache thing I am not having a good Monday morning.

Even though eating fish is supposed tp be fairly healthy I doubt the shit in a tin is the best example.

@Lonne- those Taotaomona sound like Celtic faery people. It'd be cool if they really were a real world-wide tribe of related spirit peoples everywhere living in parallel to humans :)

@Genejoke- Yeah and it smells exactly the same as the tinned or packet tuna in pet food. My cat hasn't liked that stuff for years. Any time I get it for him he turns his nose up at it or only eats a small part, same with other cats. They're generally expert at knowing when there is anything wrong with the meat they're about to eat I've observed.

ozoneocean wrote:
@Bravo-
In almost all cases in Africa and India that I read about it wasn't the victim who had the delusion, it was the mob, just because of general cultural superstitions: i.e. they believed ware animals were possible so anything that could be explained by that theory obviously fulfilled the right conditions.

It's be set off by any unexplained accident, death, mauling or loss of livestock.
Then next up you have a stranger to the community, or someone who was disliked because they were a loner or weird, or handicapped or albino, whatever.
Then rumours feed fear (that person transformed into the animal that caused the murder or took the livestock…). And it leads to an incident.

The other way it seemed to happen was when people were out hunting, for example, they wound an animal (dear, rabbit, lion etc), they completely lose it, then later on a person comes out of the bush or into a village with a similar mark or wound on them. (coincidentally of course)

Classic “witch craze” behavior. It's textbook stuff. It's precisely the same behavior as during the European Witch phenomon, the Inquisition, the were-wolf craze in France. However that doesn't remove the fact that some of the victims were mentally ill and actually believed themselves to have transformed.(At least according to the studies of the various Skeptic organizations) It is even possible for the mob to convince the victim of his transformation because the victims own superstitious belief system. Again documented in these cases as well as in the classic witch craze as many of the trials are extremely well documented.
Also some of these victims have been people with stuff the mob leaders wanted and which were instantly grabbed by the mob leaders. Again taken from the reports of various investigations reported by those fighting popular superstition in those areas. And guess what? That's the main way reports of these things often come into the US through the efforts of secular and skeptic organizations fighting popular superstition in India and Africa.
This has all been reported in Skeptical Enquirer and The Skeptic fromgroups on the spot investigating these events on the spot working from eyewitness testimony. And it is the same mob behavior seen all over the world. Such behavior was even part of Anti-semitism in pre and post WWII Europe.

bravo1102 wrote:

It is even possible for the mob to convince the victim of his transformation because the victims own superstitious belief system.

There's a famous historical case from Northern Italy where a number of villagers believed they were doing God's work at night in dream trances, but when the Inquisition heard about it they denouced it as heresay and witchcraft and punshished/executed the lot of them. Indeed, a lot of the Inquisitions work was to enforce the orthodoxy. Lots of people had visions, etc. (lots and lots and lots of people … ) But as the Church became challenged on all sides (in response to its overwhelming corruption, etc) it essentailly sorted the accepted visions/stories from the ones it considred a challenge to its power. The good ones became part of the orthodoxy, the bad one's were witchcraft, etc. and punished accordingly. This all helped create a culture of reward/punishment on a knife's edge for religious oddities that often rested on nothing more than the popularity of the instigator. Get it right and you got attention and praise. Get and wrong and you got the pointy end of a sharp stick.