Weird Things I Bought

[m o l l y]

I did a quick search for "things that weigh 25 lbs":
19 inch Flat screen TV and a Two Liter Bottle of Soda
5 bags of sugar
2 bags of potatoes and a pair of men’s hiking boots
25 footballs
an average 2 year old
3 one gallon jugs of water
a bowling ball
25 one lb boxes of butter
a small dog
10 ft metal chain

Happy Birthday!!

[RCH]

Alex, try polymer clay.

[freddy]

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] Casey Johnston (“Ask A Swole Woman”) recently recommended the following options for DIY weights:

* suitcases, backpacks, or duffel bags filled with books, rocks, cans, or resiliently-packaged beverages
* cast iron cookware, perhaps loaded into the bags above
* boxes or bags of cat litter, sand, cement mix
* buckets, pails, planters filled with water, sand, cement mix
* children
* pets
* your very accommodating partner
* jugs of water
* a case of wine, handled gently
* a rack of beer, handled gently
* the end of a couch (for deadlifting)

[alexshred420]

Thank you all for the DIY weight ideas. Hard to do hammer curls with some of these but I'll see what I can do!

[astral hellion]

Also classic: use a cinder block!
When I was living abroad & didn’t have a weight set I just filled up a bucket with various heavy things & used it as a “kettlebell” and it worked ok.
I’ve read that you can fill gallon milk jugs with sand & water to make them even heavier.

[ritchey]

Lift up your own leg (with your arm)

[freddy]

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] Maybe you can fill a sturdy laundry jug with sand or cement? That should work for hammer curls. Or scour craigslist for the Wirecutter recommended adjustable dumbell set, which is what Josh did. Probably harder now tho.

[josh]

WORKS FOR ME!!

<<——-_____ BUFF NOW


^^^^^^^^

seriously you won’t even recognize me

[joni]

The clay came in the mail yesterday but now we’re sick of doing stop-frame animation.

[jamessumneriii]

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] you can call gyms and see if they're doing a buyback thing, that's how i got mine. my gym will buy back at like 80% once the plague days end

[jamessumneriii]

for weird things, i got the components etc for building these. figured it's this or ships in bottles:

[m o l l y]

Those are beautiful things!!

[RCH]

Are you making a Russian keyboard [mention]jamessumneriii[/mention]?

[yourfriendclaire]

Get this man inducted into Computer Club!!

[jamessumneriii]

[mention]m o l l y[/mention] thanks! getting real granular on the feel and sound this thing i use all day every day has been a nice sort of "keep brain busy" thing during quarantine

[mention]RCH[/mention] just russian keycaps, alas. no slavic langs under my belt sadly

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] i would EDIT→ welcome ←EDIT induction!

i tried to be classy and go speed or linear or tactile etc but so far deep down i just want clicky switches. like kraka-fuckin-toa relationship-ruining clicky. so i might as well take advantage of the WFH stretch

[alexshred420]

Whoa pro tip [mention]jamessumneriii[/mention]. Also HELLO!

[jamessumneriii]

HELLO also!

Also! Don't we share a birthday? And isn't it uh not Wednesday? Am I revealing arcane secrets here

[Regular_Yaris]

[mention]jamessumneriii[/mention] Can I ask about the fancy USB cable?

[jamessumneriii]

[mention]Regular_Yaris[/mention] by all means!

the rainbow cable is from kbdfans, it's 4ft or so and reasonably priced

there are cool and popular and not-reasonably priced cables with a bunch of coils (hand-coiled, ergo the price) and aviator connections (so you can swap out easier), but mech kbds and accessories thereto seem to have blown up a lot the last year or so, so the quickest turnaround i've seen is 5-6 weeks and with the quarantine a lot of places aren't even taking orders

not taking orders rn but i have one on order from luxecables, i will vainly and joyously post pics and a thorough review once it arrives

some other sources i have bookmarked:
noblecables
summitcables

[Phil]

I bought this little thing for reheating my afternoon cup of joel, which I just did.

[RCH]

Comfort purchases/necessities:
Cosmetic rose hip oil
Rosewater shampoo
Naphcon A eye drops (best for itching and redness)
Turquoise eyeliner, waterproof
Dish soap, geranium-scented

[meadows]

I used some of my govmt $ overflow to buy a big camera. It's one I used to have and sold around 2013 or so, to pay for some expensive show framing. Since then I've been borrowing and checking out cameras from various institutions, and hoping to replace it.

It's basically a steel loaf of bread! I got a very weird lens for it, SOFT FOCUS lens! Plus another basic one. I'm so, so happy right now. I've sold much more gear than I've purchased over the last several years and it feels incredible to recoup some of that stuff, bit by bit. Will I regret it this summer when I have no income and things are tricky? NOPE!

[joni]

Soft focus lens? COOOOOOOL!

[RCH]

I feel so happy for you, Sally. You are like a vinyl collector who buys and sells the same record 10 times, except with fine vintage photographic equipment.

I bought chocolate milk...

[meadows]

Soft focus!!!

I never want to sell anything, but it happens sometimes when I have a show coming up and need production $. Not a sustainable system!

[infopetal]

I bought chocolate milk...

I have been drinking a glass of chocolate soy milk every day for a few weeks,* which has attuned me to there being what seems to be a chocolate soy milk shortage that has lasted about 3 weeks so far and spanned many different grocery stores. feels like there could be a whole thread of Weird Things I Wanted to Buy But Are Out of Stock.

* I have no self control around any other kind of sweet in my house so this is my current compromise with myself.

[willowowow]

feels like there could be a whole thread of Weird Things I Wanted to Buy But Are Out of Stock.

YES! There is a smokey tempeh we typically buy every week that has been GONE from all stores since sheltering in place began! Maybe it's discontinued? Maybe there was a run on it? Other styles from the same manufacturer are readily available. So why?

[RCH]

Chocolate soy milk is a beautiful thing! I like the ones that come in single serving sizes, but my grocer doesn't seem to carry it. Thus the barbaric, treacly, baby cow formula.

I enjoy eating a bowl of cereal with some kind of alternative milk and then adding a splash of half and half I put in coffee.

[matthew]

Yo so like I got a cheapo bidet and it is life changing — fuck the puritanical patriarchal toilet paper

I LOVE BIDET

[ritchey]

I don't understand bidet; I mean, I literally don't understand a couple key aspects of how it works.
I have watched several "bidet explanations for absolute beginners" and I still don't understand it.
No one in any of the videos and no one I have asked will answer the very simple questions I have about it. It's like somehow I am using the most basic language I can conceive of and so is my interlocutor and yet still something is being profoundly lost such that they don't understand my questions and I don't understand what they are telling to me in response.
I find it so frustrating to be so thwarted in my quest for knowledge.
If anyone here wants to take a crack at it let me know but my questions are very graphic so it may be too NSFW

[m o l l y]

I was also confused. Don't you still need TP? Your butt is all wet!

I did have one in my Madrid apartment because EVERY Madrid apartment has one. I felt like it might be handy for "bloody stuff" but like, it doesn't have anywhere to sit? It is shaped like a seatless toilet on top. I lived with two Uruguayan men 10 years my senior so asking for help was more or less out of the question. I mostly used it to wash my dusty feet.

[m o l l y]

apparently this is a thing now...

[ritchey]

My questions:
- why is it CLEANER than TP, given no soap is involved? It's just water shooting gross stuff away, so why is that any better (in terms of more sanitary/getting you cleaner) than TB wiping gross stuff away? Are we to believe that a jet of water magically gets every particle of poop off a butthole, whereas TP leaves some behind? Why would that be the case?

- that attachment seems MORE legible to me than your classic bidet--with classic bidet I have this question: why does everyone act like it's so obvious that the water shoots exactly and solely onto precisely your butthole, and nowhere else? surely all buttholes are located at different angles etc. So you press a button and somehow magically water shoots exactly onto your personal 1 inch of butthole space and nowhere else, immediately? I don't believe it, yet everyone says this is how it works, but it is literally not possible. At this point the conversation with me ends because the other person starts making fun of me for being a philistine

- this is the most graphic. Lets say you have a vagina, which is a large open space directly in front of your butthole, a space that is moreover prone to getting bacterial infections. I would like someone with a vagina to explain to me HOW AND WHY this amazing jet of water coursing over your filthy butthole doesn't simply spray tainted water directly into the vagina which is directly next to it

- And yes, I have the same question as you Molly--so now your entire butt is presumably dripping wet with poop-and-pee-tainted water (this is all I can imagine possibly being the case), do you just pull up your pants over your wet ass?? But this CANNOT be true, I refuse to believe people enjoy this, so then what is the reality? Surely you have to then wipe off all that water with TP, the very thing you are trying to avoid by use of a bidet.

I AM VERY FRUSTRATED BY THIS. Am I like somehow picturing a bidet in a completely wrong way? Do you stand on your head in it or something--I feel like I'm missing something incredibly basic

If someone on this board can answer these questions in a way that satisfies me, please know that you will have succeeded where at least five other very smart people have failed, and you will be doing me a great service.

Sincerely,
American Butthole Misunderstander

[ritchey]

[m o l l y]

FWIW, until I was basically old, I was SURE bidets were for the ladies and that men who claimed they were for their butts were wrong and misinformed. My middle school Spanish teacher told a roomful of 12 year olds in a household-items vocabulary lesson that a bidet was, "what ladies use to clean out their twat. You know, their box." I think I was one of the only ones in the room that knew what a twat was (have a big sister). Lots of blank stares...

[ritchey]

THEIR BOX

[astral hellion]

Ok, I am not a Bidet Expert, and I don’t own a bidet, but I have dabbled with usage here & there. Here is what I have learned:
With the “is this an additional seatless toilet?” style of bidet, I think you face away from the stream/nozzles to clean your ass, and face towards it to clean your “box” (if you are a box owner).
One thing that people might not be mentioning is that traditionally you are gonna get your hand involved, as a way of directing the water and to facilitate the cleaning process. This will mitigate spraying germ laden water directly into your vagina, but there’s a learning curve! This is also why some people like the “bum gun” handheld sprayer style.
There might also be some soap involved that will be FOR BIDET USE ONLY, i.e. there is a DIFFERENT soap for hand washing afterwards.
Finally, there will be a BIDET ONLY towel that is your personal towel that you use to dry off with afterwards. Unclear on how this works if you are guest in someone’s home, maybe then you just blot w/TP & call it a day.

Ready to be corrected about any and all info here!

[Evan.V.N.S.J.]

i honestly have no idea about actually using a bidet so don't really have anything constructive to add, but the "Bidet vs. TP" debate is one of the clearest examples you can use to illustrate how people can develop passionate opinions about the supposed value of arbitrary cultural habits even when they have absolutely no understanding of "the opposition" so to speak.

Like do we really believe that everyone who doesn't clean their butt in the same way we do is really out there walking around with a dirty butt? Or is it possible that neither is truly "better" than the other?

Only tangentially related, one of my all time favorite memories is from the first time I went to Japan (Hi Claire and Jona thanks again for letting me tag along LOL) and was enjoying this really peaceful moment on the grounds of the imperial palace during the golden hour, just staring at the grass and the trees and the water and really taking it all in. This old man walked up to me and sparked up one of those very fun meandering conversations you get into when elders want to practice speaking English to foreigners. We eventually came to the topic of Taiwan (where I was living at the time) and he was like really excited to interrogate me about what the toilets were like there, because he really wanted to visit but didn't know if he could deal with going to a place where the toilets didn't have the little butt spray that Japanese toilets have.

[ritchey]

I have no political feelings about the relative merits of various butt-cleaning techniques/technologies. I grew up in a house that often went months without running water, I did a lot of intense Rocky Mountain backpacking/Outward Bound style stuff, I have wiped my ass with rocks and leaves and my bare hand then "cleaned off" by sticking it in dirt. I am fine with probably most cultural butt practices. My frustration is purely born of confusion with the material reality of actually using a bidet. Astral Hellion's explanation, if true, makes a lot of sense to me, but if it's true then I just am now even more confused by wondering why none of that is featured in any of the informational bidet videos and articles I have perused!!!! Don't you think that's bizarre? If indeed the actual practice involves, essentially, taking a sponge bath after you poop (which I am fine with and agree it is surely cleaner and nicer afterward) why is the bidet presented as this magical thing where you press a button and a jet of water cleans your butthole and that's it?

I am realizing this is all an outgrowth of one of my dilettantish historical obsessions (I'm a half-historian with wide ranging interests I don't have the archival skills to really pursue) which is basically bathroom etiquette in the upper class societies of 18th- and 19th-century Europe. Because no one bothered to write down how it worked. How did you ask your hostess where you should take a shit, at the fancy ball at her house? Was there a room with a chamber pot in it for guests? Did you have to call a maid? How and where did the 500 people swilling champagne for five hours at the Opéra in Paris go to the bathroom?

Claire found me a book about toilets recently that was pretty enlightening in some respects (in 18th-c London you could pay a roving guy with a bucket a nickel and he'd throw a cape over you and let you shit in his bucket, hidden by the cape. This was a job people held) but in other respects it raised more questions than it answered.

BUTTHOLES AND/IN HISTORY

[astral hellion]

I will further postulate that the lack of info in your bidet vids could be a cool combo of deeply American puritanical attitudes towards the body & its functions and a “this is SO OBVIOUS, why would we really have to spell it out?”
I feel like we Americans, as a culture, always want a magical solution, so it makes sense to me that bidet explanations would just be: water sprays & VOILA! YOUR ASSHOLE IS NOW PERFECT & CLEAN, AS GOD DESIGNED (let us never speak of how/why it became UNCLEAN)!
Side note: when I lived in Finland (and had a bidet), toilet paper was INSANELY expensive, something like 12 euro for a dinky 4 pack, so it was there that I gained most of my experience. But I always had what I think of as “that American feeling” of “am I doing this right?” Like the old classic, “HOW MANY cheek kisses are we giving in greeting? Is it one? Is it two?” I learned to perform this greeting, but there was ALWAYS a minute hesitation & a feeling of hyper vigilance lest someone throw the curveball of THREE CHEEK KISSES!

[m o l l y]

ohboy. Don't even get me started on the cheek kiss conundrum. Although, I guess that puzzle is over now? ...forever?

[Evan.V.N.S.J.]

I am realizing this is all an outgrowth of one of my dilettantish historical obsessions (I'm a half-historian with wide ranging interests I don't have the archival skills to really pursue) which is basically bathroom etiquette in the upper class societies of 18th- and 19th-century Europe. Because no one bothered to write down how it worked. How did you ask your hostess where you should take a shit, at the fancy ball at her house? Was there a room with a chamber pot in it for guests? Did you have to call a maid? How and where did the 500 people swilling champagne for five hours at the Opéra in Paris go to the bathroom?

Oh yeah this general category of extremely mundane stuff that we will nevertheless never understand because no one ever bothered to write it down is huge! It's also something very frustrating about trying to each history, because the most common questions about the most basic stuff never have clear answers and it makes me feel like a moron!

But also: Wouldn't it be funny/weird if every package of toilet paper came with diagrams about how you're supposed to use it? Like instructions for wiping your butt. A thousand years from now perhaps no one will know. We must preserve WikiHow at all costs (I assume there's a WikiHow article about this)

Oh one more thing - Sometimes weird answers to these questions can come from very unexpected places. Like there is a widely cited text that is how we know people used paper to wipe their butts in China as early as the 6th century, because there is a line in a book about how it is improper to use paper that already has writing on it (esp. not canonical texts) for toilet reasons.

[ritchey]

I love this so much

[kmikeym]

searching wikihow for "butt" is amazing

How to Get Smaller Butt and Thighs Without Exercising
How to Get a Bigger Butt Fast
How to Get a Huge Butt
How to Get a Nice Butt
How to Smoke a Pork Butt
How to Deal With a Boyfriend Who Is Obsessed With Your Butt

[matthew]

So like with the caveat I have not a vagina:

- yeah your but is wet and I use tp to dry and to make sure I did a good job
- sometimes I’m lazy and trust god I did a good job
- I’ve learned to sit at the perfect spot for the attachment, I have no idea how the separate accoutrement works
- I have been haunted where people went to the bathroom at the opera time was
- the only good thing JK Rowling did was talk about wizards and witches disappearing poo

[marijke]

I bought two weird things this weekend.

2 polaroid photos of Mike Hadreas on ebay

IV hydration

I'd never done IV hydration and likely never would have, but a hungover friend asked me to go along and I thought I'd try it. I truly disliked it and don't understand! I felt like there was an ocean inside my body, swishy and squishy and sloshing. Do people like this? What a world.

[yourfriendclaire]

I did an IV vitamin/hydration drip around this time last year—I had a head cold and I didn’t want to be sick for the holidays. I was also temporarily obsessed with a little medical spa that opened in my neighborhood and wanted to partake in some of their wackadoodle health offerings. Anyway, it helped!

[marijke]

I think maybe it was unpleasant because it went in so fast?

I am gonna try red light therapy this month. It’s $50 a month and what the heck else am I doing? Seems like a fun way to start the day.

[meadows]

I had an IV once when I had a very bad flu and it's so, so creepy how cold it makes your body. Cold and wet.
It did really work, though, to break a high fever and get the old bod off the edge.

[m o l l y]

red light therapy sounds intense!