# May the rant be with you (May 2012 rant thread) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 1, 2012, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483 "2012-05-01T05:07:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/241 "2012-05-09T01:28:23Z")
I tripped on a Metro escalator this morning and rammed my shin into the stair. It could have been worse (I didn’t get my fingers caught in the mechanism or anything, and I didn’t fall _down_ the escalator), but holy SHIT, this hurts! There is a huge hematoma on my leg that’s a good 3 inches around and it throbs madly every time I have to stand up for more than a minute or move faster than a slow dawdle. Ow ow ow. And of course it happened in front of a bunch of people. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/242 "2012-05-09T01:54:10Z")
Stop raining already. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/243 "2012-05-09T02:50:54Z")
> [@Mom-of-Andrew](#): > > Once it’s published in a public forum, it isn’t insider trading. So you just de-criminalized it for everyone. Somebody somewhere will owe you dinner at stock trading time… Sweet 🙂 I’ll have the lobster. As I mentioned, my AC went out over the weekend. It was too hot for my swamp to make much difference, so I took yesterday off to have the AC guy come out. He will come out on Saturday’s if its scheduled, otherwise emergancy charges happen. Today, a storm is moving in. I didn’t leave my swamp or AC on and it was only 78 inside when I got home. I burned up a whole bunch of PTO when I had my surgery, and used the rest of it on Bill’s surgery. I only have 45 hours on the books, and now it looks like I could have waited until Saturday to have the AC fixed. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/244 "2012-05-09T03:28:17Z")
> [@Avarie537](#): > > The problem is that his body will be full of a powerful anesthetic agent that WILL affect anything that eats him. Might not be a good idea … sorry. That’s one of the reasons it’s so expensive and difficult to dispose of euthanized horses. They have to be buried deeply, composted, or cremated, lest they be consumed by predators And I didn’t see this, I’m sorry. I’ve done this in the past, I’ve actually asked my vet about it. She was amazed that I cared that much about coyotes (who kill cats), so is careful with the doses. She says that its OK for the cats that she puts down for me. Only for me, because she has to do different things. I don’t know what she uses. I’ll ask when she comes for Fred. I do know that she puts my cats down gently and kindly. Most of my cats came to me as damaged goods. I’ve not had one of them live longer than 5 or 6 years, but they were the best years I could give them. I think that Lucky (declawed and half his face shot off) will live longer. His general health is good. My FIV pos feral and Bill’s FIV pos stray won’t last very long. Sorry, rambling. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/245 "2012-05-09T04:08:46Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > Well, dammit. Now I’m too interested to be pissed off. I’ve been rantjacked. > > How about Italian? In Italian, people tend to use a whole lot of diminutives when talking to babies as well, but the thing is that Italian diminutives actively make words harder to say. Like, ‘button’ is ‘bottone’, but the diminutive is ‘bottoncino’ - an adult speaking to a baby might say ‘Dov’é il bottoncino?’ for ‘Where’s the button?’ and there’s no way a baby can make a decent stab at ‘bottoncino’ (unlike ‘doggie’ or whatever). Does that fulfil the same function anyway? Good question! I took a stab at searching for information about “diminutivization in child-directed speech and its effects on language acquisition” :eek: as it applies to Italian, and have come back somewhat bloody and battered but a little better-informed! (Caveat: I can only read a very little Italian and don’t speak it at all.) As I (think I) understand it, the point of “diminutivization” isn’t necessarily to make words phonologically easier for the child to say. As you pointed out before, even simple English variants like “doggie” and “kitty” are not necessarily easier to pronounce than the standard forms “dog” or “cat”. They’re not simplifying **pronunciation** , they’re simplifying **grammar** by giving the kid a rough but easily grasped approximation to a grammatical marker. For instance, nobody using baby-talk diminutives applies them to **all** words equally. You never say to a child “Do-ie you-ie see-ie the-ie nice-ie doggie?” and you never would. The focused use of the diminutive marker on words like emphasized nouns and adjectives helps the child figure out the different functions of words in a sentence. The Italian “-cino”, as far as I can make out, serves exactly the same purpose in this context as the simpler-sounding English “-y” or “-ie”. Italian being a more inflected language than English, the diminutive also helps, according to [this article](http://faculty.piercecollege.edu/levined/word/Articles/Child-directed%20speech.pdf), by > [@](#): > > regulariz[ing] the system of morpho-phonological gender marking […] thereby aiding the learner in the acquisition of this grammatical category. Uh, yeah. What they said. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![living\_in\_hell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@living\_in\_hell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/living_in_hell)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/246 "2012-05-09T04:34:23Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Stop raining already. Plus a gazillion…I just looked at the month ahead forecast. I now understand why heroin is so popular in Seattle. This rain is so depressing. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/247 "2012-05-09T04:41:56Z")
Send the rain here. The weeds and underbrush is already hip tall. This is going to be a terrible fire season. ---
**Author:** ![living\_in\_hell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@living\_in\_hell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/living_in_hell)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/248 "2012-05-09T04:48:29Z")
> [@flatlined](#): > > Send the rain here. The weeds and underbrush is already hip tall. This is going to be a terrible fire season. 4 days in the next month that are scheduled to be rain-free…I’m going to talk to my insurance dude about flood insurance. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/249 "2012-05-09T06:44:22Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > Well, dammit. Now I’m too interested to be pissed off. I’ve been rantjacked. > > How about Italian? In Italian, people tend to use a whole lot of diminutives when talking to babies as well, but the thing is that Italian diminutives actively make words harder to say. Like, ‘button’ is ‘bottone’, but the diminutive is ‘bottoncino’ - an adult speaking to a baby might say ‘Dov’é il bottoncino?’ for ‘Where’s the button?’ and there’s no way a baby can make a decent stab at ‘bottoncino’ (unlike ‘doggie’ or whatever). Does that fulfil the same function anyway? It fulfills the function of making it clear to the baby when are you adressing them and when someone else. Whether you want it or not, the tone of voice comes out different with the diminutive. But still, I don’t think it’s rigth to “pull back” a kid’s development; when a kid’s already beyond that stage, that should be respected. We don’t make running kids crawl, do we? Also, I know several instances of people whose family never used the grown-up word in front of them, and who reached age 9 or 10 (old enough to want the Earth to open up and swallow them) without knowing how to say _carne_ (meat) or _pescado_ (fish), it was _chichi_ (which btw also happens to mean a woman’s parts…) and _pishi_ - until that fateful day in the school lunchroom. ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/250 "2012-05-09T13:15:36Z")
So the dealership wants $200 each for Jeep door handles. The parts store up the street wants around $110 each. I found some online for like $15 ($US - didn’t check the shipping charge to Canada, but still.) WTF??!! ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/251 "2012-05-09T13:32:21Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > **Jeneva** , there’s a product called Physan 20 which is aimed mainly at greenhouses I think. It kills algaes and molds and it is pretty harmless to plants with a few exceptions (begonias I think). ( Fish don’t like it though.) It does a wonderful job on soil that gets moldy. It can be hard to find sometimes but can be found on line: [here](http://www.amazon.com/Orchids-R-Us-Inc-Physan/dp/B000I2UTAQ). I use it for algae on the sidewalk, mildew on plants, many things. Works great in fountains too. Thanks, I’ll see if it’s available here. ---
**Author:** ![gregorio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@gregorio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gregorio)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/252 "2012-05-09T14:49:29Z")
Shipping to Canada: $150. Please allow four to six weeks for delivery. Fuck you US internet retailers. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/253 "2012-05-09T14:51:24Z")
I ordered my mushroom kits online. They haven’t turned up. Fuck them. I want to be a self fungied retiree. ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/254 "2012-05-09T15:28:47Z")
> [@gregorio](#): > > Shipping to Canada: $150. Please allow four to six weeks for delivery. > > Fuck you US internet retailers. Exactly. There’s a T-shirt I want but the shipping charge to Canada is the same price as the shirt itself! Seriously?!! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/255 "2012-05-09T16:24:00Z")
Apparently soy (but not **Soylent Juicy** ) is one of the foodstuffs that trigger my not-quite-allergies. Damnit but there’s a lot of things that have soy lecitine! ---
**Author:** ![living\_in\_hell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@living\_in\_hell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/living_in_hell)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/256 "2012-05-09T19:52:01Z")
Cat has vertigo again Debit card and personal info were posted on an online message board Car isn’t inspected and now it feels like an overdue library book Gnats are breeding in the walls due to the rain My neighbors (who I like) are moving I’m worried my farm share is going to be washed out ---
**Author:** ![anya\_marie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@anya\_marie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anya_marie)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/257 "2012-05-09T20:20:16Z")
I pit myself for forgetting to vote in the Indiana primary. Way to go, asshole. ---
**Author:** ![partlycloudy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/partlycloudy/32/3114_2.png) [@partlycloudy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/partlycloudy)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/258 "2012-05-09T21:13:38Z")
I ordered 3 items from Amazon the other day. Wasn’t in a big hurry to get them or anything, so I made sure the order said they’d be shipped in one package. Of course, they were each shipped separately. They were all shipped on the same day, and they all arrived on the same day. What gives, Amazon?? Trying to reduce my carbon footprint here. Sheesh. Edit: Of course I guess some of you might suggest that if I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint, then I shouldn’t order from Amazon at all. Well, I did. So there. ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/259 "2012-05-09T21:34:41Z")
> [@partlycloudy](#): > > I ordered 3 items from Amazon the other day. Wasn’t in a big hurry to get them or anything, so I made sure the order said they’d be shipped in one package. Of course, they were each shipped separately. They were all shipped on the same day, and they all arrived on the same day. What gives, Amazon?? Trying to reduce my carbon footprint here. Sheesh. > > Edit: Of course I guess some of you might suggest that if I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint, then I shouldn’t order from Amazon at all. Well, I did. So there. Just because you ordered them all from Amazon doesn’t mean they all came out of the same warehouse. Amazon has facilities all over the country, and a lot of the stuff they sell comes from third party vendors. If you order three things from Amazon and one of them is in California, one is in Arizona and the third is in New Jersey, there is no way they will put them all in the same box. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483/260 "2012-05-10T02:47:14Z")
> [@gregorio](#): > > Shipping to Canada: $150. Please allow four to six weeks for delivery. > > Fuck you US internet retailers. The four to six weeks delivery doesn’t bother me too much (I don’t order things from the US if I need them right away), but the US retailers who refuse to use the much more reasonably-priced USPS and instead insist on using extremely expensive courier companies are what scorches my popcorn. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-the-rant-be-with-you-may-2012-rant-thread/620483.md?page=14)