While visiting my hometown yesterday with my boys, we went to a local park. The park is relatively new, and the playground structures are well chosen and well assembled. It’s a nice park.

At first, the only other visitors at the playground was a dad and his daughter. The dad had no wedding ring, it was a Sunday afternoon, and the way he and his daughter were playing suggested it was probably their visitation time (custody arrangement).

After they left, another dad arrived with two daughters and their friend. This dad, you probably had to see to “appreciate,” but let me try to describe him: He had bright, white, new sneakers; very tight blue jeans with his keys attached to a beltloop (no belt), so they jingled everytime he ran; a tight white tanktop showing his moderate beer gut and his multiple tattoos; dark black hair and mustache over a cigerette hanging from his mouth. His daugthers squealed in delight when he pushed them high on the swings. He’d rush forward, pushing them up over his head, and continuing his run under them and away. The girls reached a height of about eight feet and then dropped back down in a big jolt and swing. They loved it, and they were old enough to hold on tight through the ride. (Their friend, however, did not like it, so the dad let her swing by her own power.)

Then a big red pickup truck arrived with half a dozen kids in the back bed, clinging to the sides like a redneck school bus. One of the kids in the back of the truck was in a wheelchair, and when everyone dismounted, they all helped get him down together. All the kids were barefoot or in flip-flops. That group went in the park museum for a while. When they came back out after about half and hour, they all climbed back on the truck. Four of them sat down on the tailgate. The truck backed out of the dirt parking lot, turned, and headed out to the main road with the kids hanging on and laughing amid a cloud of dust.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I made level 70! Wahoo! Now I just need a few hundred more gold to pay for a flying mount and training.

One of my last quests was turning in the totems for capturing some of each elemental type (earth, fire, water, air). A funny thing happened when I turned in the last of that quest chain.

The quest giver is at a place in Shadowmoon Valley (Outland) called the Altar of Damnation. When I rode up to the Altar area, there was a giant, green rock/fire elemental guy standing nearby. Apparently, an Alliance group had just summoned him from the Altar. I watched just long enough to see the Alliance group engage the elite elemental lord in a fight. I then turned to my quest giver and turned in my quest.

There was a cool scene played out for turning in the quest. The quest giver summoned one of each of the elementals to stand before us, and he questioned them about how to turn the land and elements away from the evil taint that had cursed the land. The quest giver was talking, the elementals were responding, and I was watching. It was an interesting story, conversation, and scene.

The conversation explained that the elementals were under the taint of an elemental lord. The next series of quests would be to find a way to summon the elemental lord to destroy him. Ironically, that elemental lord was currently behind me, fighting an Alliance group.

I panned around to see him, knowing the Alliance group was finishing the quest line I was about to start. The Alliance team was breaking up—some were dead, the others were scattering. The elemental lord chased one Alliance character back to the Altar of Damnation. The elemental lord (sorry, I can’t remember his name) killed the Alliance character, and then aggroed on me and my pet.

I tried just backing off after getting hit pretty hard one time, and my pet counter attacked. The elemental lord hit my pet and killed it. I immediately used Feign Death to escape the fight.

Funnily, the quest giver and the four elementals continued their scene without so much as acknowlegding the elemental lord was upon them, and attacking me. Eventually, the elemental lord turned and went away.

Hilarious. My quest was telling me that I needed to find a way to summon this guy to kill him, and here he was already, stomping on me.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

You can’t trust anything you see reported in the news. You especially can’t trust a headline.

Boyfriends Do More Housework Than Husbands

My wife found that headline at her online news source. She showed it to me for a chuckle, and she mentioned that she needed a boyfriend to come clean her house. I know she was just kidding me, so no one think I took it seriously. But I read the article.

The article was reporting on a survey conducted by a team of at least two people (George Mason University and North Carolina State University were mentioned). The survey gave data on who does the most housework among husbands/wives and live-in boyfriends/girlfriends. Turns out, the data was obtained by having the boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, and wives report on themselves. Alright, that right there is enough of a flaw—that’s like doing an IQ survey by having individuals report their own IQ. (Yeah, I’m 220 IQ, myself.)

But even better, the survey was of just a few thousand couples (8,119 males and 9,517 females—note the different numbers) in 28 nations. Twenty-eight nations. Would that number include nations where it is the culture that only women do housework? That would kind of skew the data, would it not.

* * *

Back in my college days, when I was working as a salesman in an electronics department, a reporter came in and wanted to look at the [then very] new personal electronic phone books. I had only a very little knowledge of how they generally worked, but between the two of us looking through some of the user manuals, we figured out a couple of them.

After spending about an hour looking over the features and plugging in some fake numbers, the reporter had enough info to write his article for the local newspaper. He wanted to know my name for the article. I declined to give my name because I didn’t want to be mentioned in the paper. He tried to talk me into it, but I really just wasn’t interested in having my name in this article—I’m strange like that; sue me.

Well, the next day, when I came to work after school, I found out that all day long, people had been coming to the electronics department asking to talk to the “expert” about the new personal electronic phone books mentioned in the newspaper. Seven people had come in after reading that article. One of the salesmen had gone and picked up the day’s paper and sure enough, the reporter mentioned the store (the only one by that name in that town) and the “expert.”

Journalists — don’t trust ’em.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Imprecise language use drives me nuts. To give an example:

In a particular computer game, a certain thing happens 5% of the time. This 5% is a hardcoded game mechanic. That’s the way the program is written, and it can be tested by watching 100 situations and you see it happen 5 times — 5%.

But in a conversation I was reading, a person said, “It happens all the time to me.” I’m not even going to point out that “all the time” means “all the time” — 100%. I’m not so pedantic to expect absolute precision in conversation. But come on, 5% is hardly “all the time.” For someone who doesn’t know the 5% fact, the “all the time” comment is very misleading, and can lead to future misunderstanding.

“Accidents at that intersection are very common.” — There’ve been three in the past five years.

“That’s a problem all over the city.” — There’ve been six reports in a population of 100,000.

“We’ve been waiting a very long time.” — It’s been 5 minutes.

“It’s a total wreck!” — It’ll cost $2,000 to fix the $35,000 car.

And expanding on that last item, car mechanics are exceptionally frustrating to me:

“Your breaks are busted.” — The breaks are showing wear and will need replacing within the next six months for safety.

“Your tires are bald.” — The front two tires have noticeable wear on the outside (only) edge.

Errr. I understand the concept of hyperbole for effect, and I don’t have a problem when both the speaker/writer and the listener/reader know hyperbole is in use. It’s the lazy and sloppy use of imprecise language the irks me. Language is for communication, but when used sloppily (accidentally or intentionally) it just miscommunicates.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com