@KannE arterial

and if that main defense was on the side it'd be:

a lateral arterial artillery

and if their height was greater than others, they'd be a:

taller lateral arterial artillery

and if the arrived after their expected time, they'd be a:

later taller lateral arterial artillery

and if these were the most recent ones sold, but not at wholesale, they'd be:

latter later taller lateral arterial artillery retail

and if you told this story again, by a bank employee:

latter later taller lateral arterial artillery retail retell teller

and if this teller was a rodeo star with a rodeo star name:

latter later taller lateral arterial artillery retail retell teller lariat, named Tyrell

and if the military had thrown their ADHD meds out the window it'd be:

latter later taller lateral arterial artillery Ritalin litter retail retell teller lariat, named Tyrell

oops. a rodeo star implement that everyone followed.

latter later taller lateral arterial artillery Ritalin litter retail retell teller lariat leader Tyrell

a way to climb to a light for a well-dressed birth message, that makes noise

A natty natal letter lantern rattle ladder, latter later taller lateral arterial artillery Ritalin litter retail retell teller lariat leader Tyrell

blorp

@Mitch You had me at "bank employee"...hahaha.

@Cerberus Oh I didn't mean direct contact.

You're right, but what I meant was the air trapped inside the ear canal pushes on the ear drum when I push in the wax ball.

I dunno if that can be damaging if repeated every day.

@Mitch Get a publisher.

@Mitch for all insensitive porpoises, asking questions on stack overflow is closed as duplicate

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected, potentially bad keyword in body, toxic body detected (110): What kind of grammatical structure is this called? by Shakesnicki minpearej on english.SE

hello everybody

@SmokeDetector vulgar words, but in the service of a SWR, not spam

Oh!

That works.

Change graph to chart in a Google ngrams U.R.L., and append .png to it and you can onebox ngrams results with a google hosted image. That is somewhat nifty.

:-o

@MattE.Эллен Once a question goes below -3, it doesn't appear on the queue. I answered the 'What is this rhyme scheme called?' but people keep down voting the question.

I'm shooting for a [badge:reversal] badge

What's the markdown for links to badges? reversal is for a tag, not a badge. But [reversal]? Nope

is there markdown for badges?

@Mitch it's difficult situation, as you only get the badge once the question is at -5 or below

@MattE.Эллен I figure stay visible at -2 while people recognize the brilliancy of my answer, then comment about how terrible (but on-topic!) the question is (for a couple extra down votes (and I'll reverse my own)).

I'm going to game the shit out of this.

My answer, with no false modesty at all, is a solid 10, but with extra eyes on it maybe can get up to 20.

Realistically, I expect difficulty.

But we can dream

@Mitch Maybe in Walmart your answer is a 10, but IRL it's no more than a 5.

@Mitch I deamt this morning of the phrase "couldn't find a dissenter in the grand legion", so it is true for me, at least.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, mostly punctuation marks in body, repeating characters in body, repeating characters in title (261): is shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh a word by sup on english.SE

@MattE.Эллен How hard did you try? I mean, you were literally sleeping on the job.

Also, do you have Walmart in the UK, or do you make do with a patchwork of M&S and other budget retailers?

@Mitch you're running terribly late for the hat season.

It has ended.

@Robusto who is Walmart? They only have Brexit. There are no shops left.

@Robusto Next time somebody asks Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? tell them they're in Chicago et environs.

Note carefully that that's in Fahrenheit.

They've had a couple feet of snow and I promise you it's going nowhere fast.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] No whitespace in answer (95): Is there a word that can describe something is good but not better than very few others? by Hehehe on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] No whitespace in answer (95): Is there a word that can describe something is good but not better than very few others? by Hehehe on english.SE

@Robusto My People

Or rather, CostCo

Their bakery is the best. For those weirdos (I'm looking straight at you @RegDwigнt) who don't know what CostCo is, it acts like a warehouse distribution depot (for all the Walmarts),huge quantities of the largest volumes of stuff. 5 gallon jars of pickles. 20 count shrink wrapped Frosted Flakes, bulk sales of 5 ft flat screen TVs, bag o' socks, 100. But they let non-commercial visitors ('normal people') walk around and pull stuff off with or without the aid of a forklift.

The point of all this is to tell you that their bakery, which also doesn't allow buying one of anything, is the best ever. If you need a minimum of 10 of the best apple pies ever, or having a breakfast party needing at least 100 croissants, high quality, best in US, almost like real croissants, CostCo is the place to go.

Everyone gets their own go-cart with attached shopping basket, that beeps when in reverse.

One downside.. make that two...

Make that a minimum of 30...

1) You have to pay to shop there. That's effing capitalism at it's worse. the only way it could get worse is if they charged you usage on your toilet for after you eat their stuff.

2) On your way out, after the cash register, they have people right at the exit who stop you to check your receipt against the things in your cart, you know, to stop shoplifters.

FU, CostCo.

1) I'm not going to pay you to get the privilege of paying you more

2)... FU

You have great prices but...

FU

@Færd Just FYI, regular doctors don't know anything about ears, IME--my parents were deaf; I worked on a pediatric ward; my eardrums have ruptured (the last time was recently, the day after my doc said it was fine), and it hurts worse than having babies (just TMI)--so see a specialist (ENT doc) if necessary.

@KannE Worse? Kidney stones may be worse. It's all about the length of time of discomfort.

18 years!

hahahahhaha

sigh

@Mitch I've heard that. I don't know why I don't know personally. I love calcium...and tomatoes. Are they handling each other? I have no idea.

@Robusto Dude. It's all about the BS. It's barely a 4, but with the work I'm not willing to do, I could make it a 4 1/2. Also the guy just transcribed some of his own stuff (it's nowhere else on the web). But I've been waiting for a question like that for a while. Someone did a rhythmic analysis of 'The Message'...

Language Log: The message

@KannE I just googled for pictures. I recommend not doing that.

@Mitch Okay, I won't do that anymore. My son is moving out as soon as he gets a good IT job. Meanwhile, my husband has just been offered a better job title (one that reflects what he actually does most of the time) for less pay. Pass. Don't mess with a man who can't even tell his wife what his current job title is (in order for her to enter it on their tax return), not on the spot anyway.

@tchrist Yikes!

My brother lives at the lake.

I think their garden borders on it.

But I didn't know it was that cold.

Did you know that it's now called Lac Léman again in French?

@tchrist 7 out of the 10 coldest days in Chicago were in the early '80s, and I was there for all those.

@Robusto In 78 they flooded the student parking lot and let it freeze so that they could do drivers ed on it.

Maybe 79.

@tchrist In 1965, on the very day that Winston Churchill died, we were able to skate on the streets all the way to the grocery store.

And yes, those are the brutal winters of my youth in the north that has forgotten these exist, or never knew them to start with. Tonight, they learn.

@Robusto I don't remember that; it wasn't much to me then. I do remember RFK and MLK and the Chicago riots and Armstrong.

In 1984 my wife and I were living in a high-rise on the lakefront when it got down to -26. The kind of apartments with great views, all glass floor to ceiling. And we had to sit in sleeping bags to watch TV.

I was a senior in college then. They didn't close the university, and we all had to walk, because most students lived on the Isthmus in Madison anyway. Plus there's always skating to cut across the lakes. :)

@tchrist You're probably equidistant between me and @RegDwigнt, age-wise, so why would you remember it? I only remember it because there was no power and my dad had a battery-powered radio which blared "Sir Winston Churchill is dead" every 15 minutes.

Like the news keeps telling folks, this is cold nobody from the current generation has ever experienced. They have no idea what –25 in old money really feels like, why it's so different from even 0.

It's amazingly different. In 1982 I bought a polar parka just so I could keep living in Chicago.

Now, that was a warm jacket. Too bad I didn't have the pants to go with it. Or the mukluks.

Last week somebody and his kid fell in Geneva or Delavan lake, I forget, and only the son escaped alive. It just isn't cold enough that far south any longer.

I remember standing on the Ravenswood platform in the morning in Italian loafers experiencing frostbite in my toes.

Just don't.

You can't go outside without real boots.

No. That was a lesson I only needed once.

Also: don't go outside with ANY EXPOSED FLESH WHATSOEVER, no matter how briefly. Not even to talk to the curb to your car.

Supposed to be -13 for the high in Chicago tomorrow.

I know.

That's up from -16 that they were saying for Lake Geneva.

You talk to curbs? ^_^

Chicago and Milwaukee are kept warm because of the Lake.

The Big Lake.

Well, the Little Big Lake.

Hmm ... I wouldn't actually call that warm.

The Big Lake they call Gitcheegoomie.

No, it's a big lake.

Just because Superior is bigger doesn't mean Michigan is a slouch.

It's like 2-5 degrees warmer in the cities compared to in Geneva.

It is one of the Great Lakes, most def.

@tchrist The flip side of that is that when inland is getting warm the lakefront is still in the fridge. I know, having lived on the lakefront for years.

Only a little.

Geneva is only 40 minutes west of Kenosha, so still gets lake-effect snow.

It warms up to 70° in May in the western suburbs, but the lakefront is still in the 30s.

Yes, I know San Francisco.

I never liked cold, or winter anything. I like to wear t-shirts and shorts and flip-flops, not parkas and mukluks and mufflers.

Here I can dress appropriately from about April 1 to November 1.

Which I could never do in Chicago or Boston.

Mostly.

It was only 9 last night, but it's bright and cloudless today.

And it was like 50 or better yesterday.

It's been 50s here, but nighttime barely gets below freezing.

And when the sun is out even 50 feels warm.

Isn't that something!

I can never get anybody to understand that.

I bitterly resent days without sunshine here. Officially we average over 300 days of Señor Sol, but even that doesn't feel like enough.

I know.

There was a cloudy snowy day a week or two ago. Felt a bit oppressive.

No sun.

Which reminds me, I should call my friend down there in Los Alamos. She's really from Madison and has family I know back there yet.

Los Alamos is pretty far up in the mountains. I think they're around 8,000 ft.

Here we're only around 5200.

@Robusto Oh that's right.

Hmm, Wikipedia says they're only ~7,300. But Santa Fe is around 7,200 and it seems like you have to climb forever to get to Los Alamos from there.

I thought SF was 7k and LA 7.5, what do I know.

Kids have school off tomorrow back home.

I would expect so.

I don't know that people know how to prep their vehicle for winter travel in these days of cell phones and warm winters.

You don't go somewhere cross-country without stuff in the vehicle to let you survive a night stranded in a snow bank at 25 or 30 below.

So anywhere in the country, out of town.

Yeah. A night or two if you're headed across the northern plains.

Down here if you do that, you need more because there just won't be cell coverage in the mountains.

I keep jackets and blankets and Clif bars and water in the car all winter. Force of habit.

Of course you do.

Be an idiot not to.

Again, there was no such thing as school getting called off just because it was too cold when I was a kid.

Yeah, and not to be an old man about it, but I always walked to school.

Duh.

Why walked and not cycled?

@Cerberus A yard of snow, like.

Snow a vertical yard deep, not a horizontal garden yard full of snow.

You don't bike in snow. At least, we didn't as kids.

People sometimes try now.

They have different tires.

Here's a good one for you: how cold is too cold for gloves?

It depends on the gloves, but usually about 10 degrees.

Certainly by 20 below, you MUST wear mittens not gloves. And rather before that I imagine.