This week’s (belated, apologies) whimsy comes to you courtesy of a Kindle in a ziplock bag.
image source: matthewbull.net
And why is the ziplock bag necessary? Pfft – so one can read one’s e-books in the bath, of course. This piece of essential wisdom makes my electronic library experience now completely satisfactory.
Please share any bits and pieces you have come across recently that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.
Bonus question: what is the most inconvenient/expensive thing you have ever had ruined by a dunking?
NB: the whimsy threads are a stoush-free zone.
To answer the bonus question first: A DSLR camera, and it wasn’t dunked.
It was lightly drizzled upon.
A paperback copy of Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story, about which I had to write an essay some time in the next 24 hours. I ironed it dry page by page, used it again while writing my PhD thesis, and still have it. They don’t make books like that any more.
I am reminded of Mako Hill’s story of dropping his passport in a toilet: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20050317-00
We lost a PM back in ’66.
Wasn’t worth much, but.
@terangeree – DSLR’s are finicky, aren’t they? I have sachets of silicon beads in every pocket of my camera bag to absorb any inadvertent drizzle spots, and so far so good *knocks on wood*
@Pavlov’s Cat – craftsmanship, that is.
@Mary – supremely inconvenient, and also ewww.
I have been employing my google-fu, and there are some custom waterproof covers that would probably look a bit better for e-reading at the beach and keeping sand out of electronic nooks and crannies. I do, of course, already have a leather cover with a booklight in it (that works great for on the plane).
Some book or other, a long time ago. I still read in the bath, but I’m more careful now. Just don’t drink as much wine. In the bath, and when the chocolate on the chocolate biscuits melt, I put the book down somewhere safe and dryish, before I wash off the bits I can’t lick off. No point reading a book while in the bath with sticky fingers. Just leads to a different type of catastrophe.
The delightful Xanthe Littlemore has two more vids on YouTube, channelling Woody Guthrie and channelling herself.
I don’t have a link to it or indeed a hard copy of it, but one of my all-time favourite cartoons shows a woman in a bath, looking very exasperated, with a cat sitting on the rim of the bath, down the plug end, gazing at her in that inscrutable way they do. The woman is holding a book and saying to the cat ‘If you bring me my glasses I’ll give you $10,000.’
My best recent whimsy find is this.
I borrowed a hard-to-find book from a friend and was riding home with it when a Sydney thunderstorm hit. My waterproof pannier proved excellent at making sure that the water leaking in from the top could not escape out the bottom. Eventually I found a replacement copy in an online bookshop.
Worst experience with a liseuse was leaving it on a bus near Frnakston. I spent way too much time on the phone explaining what it was and suspect that if I’d visited a few more lost property offices I might have found it. That is one major disadvantage of the whole ebook game – the reading device tends to be more expensive than the average book.
My replacement PRS-505 is a couple of years okld, still works although the battery life is noticeably shorter now. Sometimes I only get a week out of a charge!
This had graphics on the e-mail, but I can’t reproduce them. Comes from an e-mail. But its still funny.
subject: FW: KIDS CAN BE REALLY FUNNY
1) This is a picture of an octopus. It has eight testicles. (Kelly, age 6)
2) Oysters’ balls are called pearls. (Jerry, age 6)
3) If you are surrounded by ocean you are an Island.
If you don’t have ocean all round you, you are incontinent. (Wayne, age 7)
4) Sharks are ugly and mean, and have big teeth, just like Emily Richardson. She’s
not my friend any more. (Kylie, age 6)
5) A dolphin breaths through an asshole on the top of its head. (Billy, age
6) My uncle goes out in his boat with 2 other men and a woman and pots and comes
back with crabs. (Millie, age 6)
7) When ships had sails, they used to use the trade winds to cross the ocean.
Sometimes when the wind didn’t blow the sailors would whistle to make the
wind come. My brother said they would have been better off eating beans.
(William, age 7)
shiny tails, but how on earth do mermaids get pregnant?
Like, really? (Helen, age 6)
9) I’m not going to write about the ocean. My baby brother is always crying, my Dad
keeps yelling at my Mom, and my big sister has just got pregnant, so I can’t think
what to write. (Amy, age 6)
10) Some fish are dangerous. Jellyfish can sting. Electric eels can give you a shock.
They have to live in caves under the sea where I think they have to plug themselves into chargers. (Christopher, age 7)
11) When you go swimming in the ocean, it is very cold, and it makes my
willy small. (Kevin, age 6)
12) Divers have to be safe when they go under the water. Divers can’t go down
alone, so they have to go down on each other. (Becky, age
13) On vacation my Mom went water skiing. She fell off when she was going very
fast. She says she won’t do it again because water fired right up her fanny.
(Julie, age 7)
14) The ocean is made up of water and fish. Why the fish don’t drown I don’t know.
(Bobby, age 6)
15) My dad was a sailor on the ocean. He knows all about the ocean.
What he doesn’t know is why he quit being a sailor and married my mom.
(James, age 7)
The saddest thing about e-books is they may spell the end of second hand books. I buy pretty much all of my books from http://www.abebooks.com these days, but for how long?
Unrelated whimsy: http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/
Well, most of it. One or two are quite sad really.
Havn’t seen much whimsical lately, only thing i can think of that has been lost due to water was my last non water proof watch, my only material inheritance from my grandfather. it had a dial that glowed in the dark and all.
Oh, I have lost my dignity several times.
I was myself dunked back when I was 8, at swimming classes, and the resulting experience cost me my confidence in the water, and my ability to swim. To this day I am incapable of doing anything but sinking like a stone and panicking. That dunking really pissed me off.
Nothing whimsical? Just got sent this animation
I don’t have any whimsy to share today, but I am well chuffed because an article I co-authored last year has got a press release in the British Medical Journal, and the article itself has an accompanying editorial (that I can’t access!) and has been reported in the Telegraph.
Basic finding: GPs less likely to refer poor and elderly patients to hospitals even where serious cause exists; and less likely to refer women for hip pain. The editorial attempts to explain why.
Not whimsical at all, but I’m quite proud of myself.
Kymbos: the end of the second hand bookshop, probably, since the publishers are adamant that ebooks cannot be bought or sold (only temporarily licensed from them).
Andy Singer has some whimsical cartoons. They change regularly but this month we have a comment on fonts to start with.
3 out of the 4 mobile phones I’ve previously owned have met a watery death – although one underwent a partial resurrection and still works reasonably well as emergency backup hardware
hungoverowls.tumblr.com is perhaps the best thing I’ve seen all year.
Ziplock bags are one of the great inventions of the 20th Century.
If you exclude the boat/yatch damage then mobile phone in pocket when falling off said yatch.
Razor: you mean the damage that comes from owning a hole in the water?
One of the funniest things I’ve seen is one of those little yellow key floats that boaties use bobbing happily along in the hydro intake while several people tried desperately to fish them out with a net on the end of a pole. Fortunately they were very careful not to end up in the water.
I once left a signed copy of Xavier Herberts “Poor Fellow My Country” in the backyard after an extended reading binge. It didn’t belong to me (borrowed). It rained overnight. The bloody thing swelled to about three times its normal size like a giant wettex. Friend not happy with me at all.
Not quite a dunking, but I had a party once with my data projector showing fillums in the yard, only a lovely clear dry summer night.
I’d clamped its mounting bracket onto a thick woody part of the old grape vine, with the projector upside down under the clamp.
About 4am, as things were winding down, I was sitting under it and felt drops on my head. Looking up, I see these drops are coming out from the little grill for the crappy built-in speaker. It’s still showing films, btw.
I stayed calm, put it through its shut-down procedure, then unplugged the power and loosened the clamp. As soon as it tilted, water poured out around the lens, and in all I shook out probably a litre of it from inside the machine.
All of this had come from the grape vine, as the 8mm bolt for the clamp has gone about a centimetre into the woody stem.
As with anything electrical that hasn’t already exploded though, it was fine after I took every bit apart and dried it all (addled in numerous ways, this was no mean feat). Somehow, there was room enough inside the chassis of the thing to let that much water slowly seep in without shorting anything at all.
So the moral is, don’t rig hanging brackets from live vegetation.
Also, water is generally okay with electrical equipment, provided you can turn it off quickly, and get the water out easily. Beer is worse, wine sorse still, and sugary mixer drinks – forgeddaboudit.
moz @21 – I subscribe to the view that boats are like pools – let others own them.
What I meant was I have been invovled in quite a few expensive on water incident – lost masts, collisions, groundings etc etc in 40 years of sailing/boating but they don’t really count in terms of things that shouldn’t get wet.
Dried out a CD Walkman once. Works fine.
Congrats, sg.
I dropped my stethoscope into a toilet once. I just took the bell off, let it drip dry, and voila, good as new.
Yes, I cleaned it after.
FDB: “with my data projector showing fillums in the yard… As soon as it tilted, water poured out around the lens… all of this had come from the grape vine, as the 8mm bolt for the clamp has gone about a centimetre into the woody stem.”
So, what you’re telling us, in a manner of speaking, is that, um —
You saw it through the grape vine, eh?
Well that’s certainly novel. Keats and Chapman, phone your office at once!
Thank you japerz. That was just the dose of whimsy my dry anecdote needed to qualify for the thread.
Bonus question. When I washed my husband’s mobile phone.I remember him being extremely ungrateful, the swine.
I’ve only just re-discovered WD40 in recent years, old dad being a fanatic in my childhood.
Prior to chucking anything water damaged or even just dead away, a liberal spray of this stuff is like technological CPR.
Can’t hurt, and can possibly resurrect the dead.
(no disclosures to mention)
I dropped my first mobile phone into the toilet. It died.
Earlier this year the day we walked over the pass on the Milford track it pissed raining. There were spectacular waterfall’s everywhere but I think everyone’s digital camera died. They all came to life again, some in the drying room, many after attention with hair dryers.
well reported sg
In an effort to ensure breadth to the child’s childhood, we have attempted ‘fishing’ on a number of occasions. As I have no interest and am unable to actually kill the fish after they have been caught, The Tormentor always has the rod, and I get to limply hold the handline.
Standing on the banks of the Shoalhaven, he cast with childish serious attention, and I attempted to copy, tongue out, arm back and cast to realise I had in fact thrown not just the line but also the bit you’re meant to hold onto as it arced out into the river and disappeared with a satisfying plop.
Suffice to say he was disgusted as I stood giggling helplessly for some time afterward.
Ah! WD40, works a treat on recalcitrant label glue on bottles and jars. Eucalyptus oil works too.
George Carlin
Yachties will know that the recommended treatment if something electronic goes into the sea is to put it straightaway into a bucket of fresh water – it’s the salt that does the damage, not the water. Same goes for sugary things like beer, wine, etc.
And yes, WD40 afterwards will help. But clean it off battery contacts and plugs – WD40 is an insulator.
I thoight WD 40 was a poision.
I thought WD40 was that British reggae group that covered “Red Red Wine”.
Not very whimsical Joe!
FDB — yeah, probably needs a language warning. Fairly crude metaphor — hope it didn’t upset anyone.
Time for a new telephone.
Since the discussion has been about getting wet…
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/12/03/funny-pictures-nothing-says-good-morning/
Though I used it on many an occassion in my life, it was only recently that I recognised WD-40 by that name.
The Australian vernacular has a very apt name for it with only half the syllables. This name was instantly recognised in the 3 states I worked in.
In various manuals it seems to be referred to generically as “penetrating fluid”.
Penetrene SATP?
Can you still get the original?
‘In an effort to ensure breadth to the child’s childhood, we have attempted ‘fishing’ on a number of occasions.’
.
One way to keep these excursions to a minimum is to ensure your child catches a fish.
Having caught a few the attraction hopefully wanes as the descaling and degutting can be unpleasant to some.
Best way to make sure a fish is caught requires a bit of subterfuge though- first thing is to buy some fish , snag them on the hook and throw the lot in while holding onto the handline or rod.
This then becomes the catch of the day and after a little more acting you will land it successfully.
Just don’t do what gave the game away for my dad- he bought a frozen fish.