July 17, 2006

Curious George can't get simple concepts. We've all be stranded on this giant ball spinning through space for a while now, and during that time we've learned a few things -- to stop for reds, who's buried in Grant's Tomb, or how mittens work. However, we all have some very simple ideas, that no matter how many times they've been explained, that our respective brains simply cannot comprehend.

Personally, I've never grasped the difference between weight and mass -- no matter that it's been explained to me a million different ways. Or, just WHY the Lady is a Tramp. Mother Renault simply cannot tell the difference between Left and Right, despite the hundreds of mnemonic devices given to her over the years. What very simple things simply refused to be grasped by your brain? It's my centenary post. Indulge me.

posted by Capt. Renault 17 years ago
  • Happy 100, mon Capitaine! I cannot find my car in a parking lot. No matter what clues I deliberately give myself when I park, I always end up looking in at least two rows before I find it.
  • The drawer with the dishtowels. I've lived in my current house for over 6 years, the dishtowels have *always* been in that drawer (there), and every time I go after a towel, I open that one (over there) and wonder, hmm where the f*ck are the dishtowels? Then the little man that lives in my head checks in and says "They're in the other drawer, dude, like the last bazillion times you opened the wrong one, you moron."
  • I can't tell my left from my right to save myself. Gah. Drives me crazy. I have to look at my hands, and think carefully about which one I write with to get it right. To say the least, when I'm driving this causes great consternation to the navigator. Oddly, I have an absolute sense of where north is, no matter where I am so never get lost.
  • I'm bad about left/right, but when I hear left, even a Monkey can be trained to hold up the hand with the wedding band. I have to think about it EVERY time since I broke the knuckle and had to have the band cut off (can't wear it now.) Don't wear one at all because all the knuckles are arthritic, plus I don't want to mess up a good thing. Werks for me, except when I can't take my hands off the steering wheel. "AHHHHHHHHH! The OTHER left!" (Mr B. Horse originally said he was going to get left engraved in it) Finally memorized righty tighty/lefty loosy, but have to think about THAT, too. CAN NOT remember that Werd isn't actually installed on this other computer at work. I don't have admin priv. to dump the icon, and I can't get them up here to install it. So forever it jams up when I forget and clicky. It's a diesel truck, stupid, don't forget to let the glowplugs do their thing* *And nobody better tell Mr. Horse, either! **glowers**
  • When I hear left, even a Monkey can be trained to hold up the hand with the wedding band. Damn, ONE MORE reason married people have all the advantages!!!
  • I always have to think "righty tighty, lefty loosy" to correctly turn the spigot on or off on the first try!
  • I think even the most intelligent among us have blind spots or mental blockages. Fes' dishtowel dilemma sounds all too familiar; mine involves utensil drawers and patterns so deeply entrenched that at this point I'm just habitually checking the contents of the "wrong" drawer even though I know I'll still have to open the one next to it to get what I need. I've also had a big problem understanding why seemingly intelligent people could have voted for George W. Bush, but that's another matter entirely.
  • When I see attractive women, I can never remember if I'm married or not.
  • Kinnakeet: spit take on the coffee! Maybe Republicans can't ever remember which is the RIGHT/LEFT chad to poke? Medusa: you think you have it tough, when we re-did the tub, Mr. Horse installed the faucets on opposite to the sink. I can't tell you how many times I get into a cold shower and brush my teeth with hot water.
  • Hey, as of this Saturday, I will have a wedding band on the left hand . . . maybe that will finally solve the left/right problem.
  • I've also had a big problem understanding why seemingly intelligent people could have voted for George W. Bush, but that's another matter entirely. Lack of reasonable alternatives, primarily :) bwahaha! Congrats, finbulvetr!
  • i quickly become disorientated when indoors or underground. if i can't see the sky (or preferably the sun), i loose all sense of direction.
  • Well I just don't understand why an ugly, stupid fucktard like me doesn't have a beautiful girlfriend with big bazongas who plays the banjo.
  • Wait - it's cause I smell. OK - thanks.
  • My partner can't understand how probability works. You know, if you toss a coin 100 times, you'll probably get about 50/50 heads/tails. But not necessarily. She's all like, "How does it know? Why does the coin obey the rules of probability?".
  • Hey, as of this Saturday, I will have a wedding band on the left hand . . . maybe that will finally solve the left/right problem. You know it won't. Because you'll still have to think about it, that your wedding band is on the left. Or is it the right? Another thing I can never remember. But there's a reason for that -- Dutch Catholics would wear wedding bands on one hand, and Protestants the other. And the wedding band would be worn as an engagement ring on the other hand first, and switched over at the time of marriage. So you still wouldn't know if they were Catholic and engaged or Protestant and married or the other way around. End result is that I know it's worn on the one hand, but my family isn't like everybody else. As in most things, I suppose. But back to the point, fimbulvetr -- hopefully the proximity of the wedding band's metal won't throw off the magnetic bits in your brain telling you where North is. I don't think Frau Fimbulvetr would be too accommodating on you ditching the band so as to not lose your sense of direction.
  • Mazel Tov, fimbulvetr! I'd pay close attention during the rehearsal, though. May you have many blissful ambidextrous years! *offers tray of champagne flutes to all monkeys*
  • Left hand for the wedding band, as far as I know. And that's what Im sticking too, 'cause it's too late to buy one that fits the right hand (stupid asymetric hands).
  • Mercy buckets and thank-you for the congrats! (Gah! Oly 5 more days!)
  • aside from not knowing left or right (and i thot i was the only one), i have no sense at all of the cardinal directions.
  • She's all like, "How does it know?" There are multiple definitions of probability, and actually the Bayesian interpretation is that what probability measures is the subjective state of knowledge, not the "average" result of a repeated experiment. You can tell her not to worry. Despite graduate studies in the subject, I don't really understand how probability works, either. I have problems differentiating between 'v' and 'h' (only in lower case). I also lose my otherwise quite good sense of direction when indoors.
  • muteboy, have your partner watch (the beginning of) Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. its a great explication of the laws of random probability (IMHO) fimbulvetr, congrats!! have a beautiful wedding day & a long happy marriage :)
  • Achj, I can't tpype. Not very wrell.
  • I have no mental blocks. I am perfect. And my modesty is my most impressive personality trait.
  • That's what you think.
  • it seems bees has a mental block about the simple idea that skrik is perfect. har!
  • While you are at it, you might want to have your partner watch the rest of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It is a fine movie.
  • Congrats fimbulvetr on yer nuptials, (and also on having the hardest name to spell on the Philter :-).
  • If you toss a coin 100 times, .... "How does it know? Why does the coin obey the rules of probability?" y'know this is a really profound question.
  • I always heard that the 'heads' side of a US quarter is a bit heavier, so will land downwards, so you'll get tails slightly more often than 50/50. (with an old quarter, not these new state ones)
  • I can't tell when I've had enough
  • Also, the lady is a tramp because she refuses to adhere to the social norms expected of a society woman in early-20th-century Manhattan, and scorns upper-class people in favour of proletarian pleasures like the Coney Island fairground and sitting in the bleachers (the cheap seats) at baseball games. A fashionable woman, for example, would be seen in the expensive seats at the theater or the opera, but would not have great interest in either: she'd arrive fashionably late to the theatre so as to "make an entrance" and would probably sleep through most of the opera. The singer of the song, on the other hand, is passionate about the arts: "I like the theater, but never come late[...] I go to opera and stay wide awake." So even though our impoverished heroine leads a life of sexual celibacy ("I'm all alone when I lower my lamp"), she is looked down upon by society types both for being lower-class and for being unfashionably intellectual-- and for refusing to aspire to the glittering, trivial, bitchy, soulless world of Manhattan high society. That's why the lady is a tramp.
  • y'know [the probability question] is a really profound question. It is? I mean, of course it's always possible that you'll get 100 heads or 100 tails. But that's wildly unlikely because there's only one way to get either result, whereas you can get, say, 75/25 in a whole bunch of ways. Extend the argument to 50/50 and you have your answer. Am I missing something?
  • After 14 years of driving a car, I still pop the trunk instead of the gas cap about 70% of the time. That is if I even remember to press anything. The guys at the full-service station start giggling even before I come to a full stop.
  • What I don't get: Perl. I've tried to learn it several times but it just doesn't stick.
  • That's why the lady is a tramp. But that's just it -- why does all that make her a tramp? That's what I can't understand.
  • Wow, Pallas. Perhaps when you have a moment you can get to these: 1. Why must I be a teenager in love? 2. Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? 3. Who wrote the book of love? 4. What's love got to do with it? 5. War. What is it good for? 6. (and most importantly) How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?
  • Fax machines. Interoffice phone systems.
  • I found my mental block. Turns out there was a piece of popcorn stuck in there.
  • Algebra. Javascript. Walking around things instead of attempting to walk through them :(
  • Capt. R... the refrain should be probably read as "That's why [they say] the lady is a tramp." As in, it's the polite-society people saying it. (that's "tramp in the sense of "socially unacceptable loose woman" rather than "vagrant" I think, despite the bit about hitchhiking in the first verse.) I think the song is about her accepting the label and turning it on its head: the behavior that puts her outside the pale is behavior she likes, and if that means being called a tramp, so be it. Does that make any sense?
  • No. But it's not you. Many have tried to explain it to me, and all have failed. Same with "You're So Vain / you probably think this song is about you..." It IS about him. YOU'RE so vain. YOU. If it's not about him, what is it about? Her? Her attitude towards the vain guy? Then why the focus on the you? Yo no comprende.
  • so she's subverting the supposed insult by making it her own? cf. otis redding and salt n' pepa.
  • I see the source of your confusion - it's "That's why the lady is at ramp." She's stuck on the offramp, otherwise she'd be on time to the theater, finished with dinner by 7:59, and at the Harlem branch of Ermine 'n' Pearls R Us before closing.
  • I constantly have to be re-taught card games like Hearts, 500 and euchre. The rules don't stick. Once they're explained to me I can play along, but by the next day I'll have to have it all explained again.
  • The fact that there are 3 billion women in the world who are willing to file restraining orders if I talk to them. *SOB*
  • Me too with the card games, especially cribbage. And making change - I'd be a terrible cashier.
  • Ralph... I'll do my best: 1. It will pass. Meanwhile, here's some Ritalin. 2. Scholarly opinion differs. Some think that the bomp bah bomp bah bomp evolved with the bomp already in it, while others point to my baby falling in love with me as evidence of the hand of God at work. Fossils from a pre-bomp era have yet to be unearthed, however. 3. Shakespeare. Who may have been the earl of Oxford. Or Francis Bacon. Or someone who looked exactly like him and lived in his apartment. 4. Lots. 5. Killing lots of people. 6. In attempting to answer this question, I induced existential angst in a group of laboratory mice by making them listen to "Highway 61 Revisited" while watching "Brideshead Revisited" on TV. The Dylan-exposed mice currently wear black, drink lots of caffeine and have funny-smelling smoke coming from their cages. Attempts at interpretive dance have been documented. The control mice, by contrast, maintain a healthy interest in family values, churchgoing and American Idol. Results of the experiment are, thus far, inconclusive. It would help my research if you could provide insights into the following: 1. Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight? 2. I heard there was a secret chord that David played and pleased the Lord. Any idea what? 3. Should I stay or should I go? 4. Why did Constantinople get the works? 5. Will you still love me tomorrow? 6. Scaramouche Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?
  • And stay tuned as I ask the musical question "Who Are You and What Have You Done with My Trousers?"
  • Be strong. Your trousers are in a better place now. It was God's will.
  • There's only one thing that stupefies me: well...how did I get here?!?
  • Maths.
  • I have incongruous mental blocks: I'm great a chemistry, but suck at physics. Geometry and trigonometry are like a second language, but calculus is in greek. But more than this, I can never remember how to spell receive, or recieve, or whatthefuckever it's supposed to be.
  • Interoffice phone systems. Sweet sufferin' Jebus on hold! I hate those things. Bastards they are, Drivingmenuts. Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to say goodbye?
  • Interesting factlet regarding right versus left: my concept of physical alignment is dependent on which way I'm looking. I drive a manual transmission, which (for those of you who drive automatics) requires you to lift the left foot, and push down the right foot, in order to make the car go. This works fine most of the time, since I'm looking forwards. However, if I put it into reverse and have to actually twist around so that I'm looking through the back window, there's a 75% chance that I'll switch the foot actions, and stall out my car.
  • 1. Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight? - I have no idea. I've always hated chewing gum after a traumatic chewing experience in childhood, and I'm unwilling to test this. I will however, have a crack at the others... 2. I heard there was a secret chord that David played and pleased the Lord. Any idea what? - Records indicate that it was the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift. 3. Should I stay or should I go? - Unless you're in immediate danger, you should stay put and let the authorities find you and guide you out. Otherwise, stay low and take care to avoid fire, live electrical wires, noxious or super-heated gasses and, of course, broken glass. 4. Why did Constantinople get the works? - Actually, it's to do with Ataturk's conception of Turkish navevist nationalism, but I really don't think it's any of our business unless any of us are, you know, Turkish. 5. Will you still love me tomorrow? - Given that love is like a magic penny, I think it would be a wise investment to do so. So yes. But for purely selfish reasons. 6. Scaramouche Scaramouche, will you do the fandango? - Of course. But stop calling me Scaramouche.
  • Sorry, nativist nationalism.
  • They wrote "L" and "R" on our hands in Kindergarten, the idea being that we'd have it memorized by the time the ink wore off. They had to write mine on several times.
  • Did they write "TGIF" on your shoes?
  • The stock market. They deliberately made it extra complicated just to confuse me.
  • Dreadnaught, I call bullshit. Pallas, the "secret chord" was a C major 7th. The Lord was a sucker for Stan Kenton.
  • I can never remember the correct order of the months, no matter how I try. I also cannot remember the times table. I've forgotten it and relearned it and forgotten it nine times now. I cannot do math for my life. Period. I use fingers for everything.
  • Whew! Fortunately, no Monkey responding so far has mentioned a problem with poo flinging!
  • Funnily enough, for someone who wants to be a librarian/information technologisty thingamibob, I have to mutter the alphabet under my breath when it comes to filing away the hundreds of index cards I use every day. I always remember left from right by splaying my hands out: see, your left hand, the index finger and thumb form an L when you streatch your wee fingies out. Neato! Of course, there are dumbarses who would do this palm up and get mighty confused.
  • Some things I don't get: Adverbs Who that guy was that I was just introduced to How to produce CSS that validates Correct care of woks US foreign policy 1950 - present Why birds suddenly appear every time you are near The dogs - they were let out by whom?
  • Woks - never wash 'em. True.
  • Ditto cast iron skillets.
  • Correctamundo.
  • I have trouble with card games too, but I think it's more a case of me just not caring.
  • ame with "You're So Vain / you probably think this song is about you..." It IS about him. YOU'RE so vain. YOU. If it's not about him, what is it about? Her? Her attitude towards the vain guy? Then why the focus on the you? Yo no comprende. The song isn't about him. It's about her. It's about her hurt and sorrow. He's the cause of it, but the song is still about what she's feeling, not who caused it. It's kinda like the statement "foo pisses me off." foo is the subject of the sentence, since foo is performing of the action, but the sentence is about how I feel about foo. The sentence about my feelings, not about foo. If I composed a whole paragraph, or song even, about why foo pisses me off, that paragraph/song would still be about me and my feelings. Every mention of foo would be there as supportive data explaining why I felt how I felt.
  • >>Why birds suddenly appear every time you are near<< I keep suet in my hat.
  • I blame GranMa for giving me that fucking CultureClub song running round my fucking Asperger's brain all afternoon. Thanks a bunch, I have eidetic memory for music. /turns on Led Zeppelin full bore to drown out earworm
  • >>Why birds suddenly appear every time you are near<< This is literally true for me. Ask bees. I believe it is because they can tell I'm stupid enough to feed them & not try to eat them. Millions of years of human evolution down the drain = Chymie.
  • Birds and bees. I knew this thread would degrade to sex.
  • fuckin' . . math.
  • Chyren, petebest, Vertex - I loved the scene in "Dead Man's Chest" where the voodoo lady asks "What is it that vexes all mankind?" and the one pirate yells out "Sums!"
  • Then the next one yells "The dichotomy of good and evil!" Tee hee.
  • Oh, the Perl answer finally gave me one: Hebrew letters. I can transliterate Coptic and Arabic and Old Church Slavonic, nevermind Fraktur and Greek and Phoenician and regular Cyrillic languages, but for some damned reason, I cannot remember the correlates for any Hebrew letters. I think it's because they're mostly blocky. Also, why Mr Cobalt insists on putting out all the silverware for each meal. If there's no need for a spoon, and it's the two of us, at home, there is no need to put a damn spoon out.
  • I can transliterate Coptic and Arabic and Old Church Slavonic, nevermind Fraktur and Greek and Phoenician and regular Cyrillic languages, but for some damned reason, I cannot remember the correlates for any Hebrew letters. AND Her old man sets the table, and she's complaining? sheesh! Oh, yeah, sure, whatEVER. We're trying to figure out our times tables, which hand we scratch our butts with, and woks. And like, here's Colbaltnine, she's all, can't remember teh Hebrew. If I could remember which one to use, I'd probably give her The Finger.
  • I can never remember why so many of you bitches wish you was me. Until I look in the mirror. BURN
  • Don't dream it. Be it.
  • But what shall I do if I dream about you, And who shall you be if you dream about me? If a dream becomes real then was it a dream, Or just something real with a fictional theme?
  • I often get "c" and "v" mixed up when typing (having learned touch-typing at an advanced age). It seems logical that one shouldn't have to "back up" to use the more common letter.
  • Also, why Mr Cobalt insists on putting out all the silverware for each meal. Ach, creatures o' habit we nuns be! Ahrr.
  • The one that gets me when typing is the no double period. I don't no if anybody remembers this but typewriters used to have a key with two periods on it so that if you were typing with your little finger on the caps key you could still type a period. I haven't used a typewriter in at least ten years but i still always look for that second period on my keyboards.
  • YEAH< ME TOO>
  • 2591 85821 1841515
  • UH? WTF? Numerical end times prophecy? Your mate's measurements in metrical? Winning blotto numbers? Secret Da Vinci Sumerian code?
  • Someone needs a shower.
  • Nazi cipher spy code? Intercepted alein transmission? The telephone number of a Ukranian sex line?
  • "Also, why Mr Cobalt insists on putting out all the silverware for each meal." If he starts getting the fingerbowls and butter-pat plates, then I'd worry.
  • WHAT ARE THOSE NUMBERS!?
  • I've always loved Cryptograms, but I can't seem to make heads or tails of that one.
  • Num Lock. (a.k.a. "Nummie")
  • HUH?
  • Nummie?
  • Yummmmy!