My son's school subjects its students to a program called Accelerated Reading (AR). Each kid is given a points goal for each quarter. They read books from the library (or anywhere else, as long as the book is registered in the AR system), then take a quiz on them on the app: if they pass it, they then get the number of points the book is worth. These vary according to the grade they're in when they read the book: for example, a fourth grader who passes the quiz on War and Peace would get hundreds of points, but if he reads something intended for a second grader, maybe a fraction of a point.
My son is not the bookish type: in fact, it's a struggle to persuade him to read anything that is unrelated to basketball or football. He's behind on his AR target for this quarter. In a desperate attempt to fix this, my wife scoured the house for any books we had that he could get AR points for, and found a series of children's detective stories in the garage that she had at his age, and enjoyed. We handed him this one:
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My son's immediate reaction, without skipping a beat: "Brown Gets His Man? That sounds a bit gay to me!"
At this point I could not restrain myself from bursting out in giggles, which was not the reaction he was expecting. It turns out that in school yard slang these days, "gay" means stupid or undesirable, in a way that attracts attention and/or causes embarrassment. I'm 99% sure that the didn't know the actual meaning of the word, hence not understanding why I found his remark funny.
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I have to do a short notice call in San Francisco next week, which was only confirmed yesterday and which the customer needs done on a specific day, and is prepared to accept the extra travel expenses caused by this not being able to wait until I'm back in that neck of the woods in a few weeks' time. As the call time is 7a, it's not possible as a day trip, so I'm having to fly up the previous night. Trying to find a hotel room, this caught my eye on the search results page:
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Well that destination fee really is a deal breaker, isn't it?
Needless to say, I was able to find somewhere a lot more reasonable, but it boggles the mind that anyone would be willing to pay that much for a hotel night under any circumstances. My only guess as to how that number can be anything other than a bug in the website's back end is that the hotel is fully booked for that night, but for that money would be willing to bump someone (presumably some poor sucker who does not belong to their loyalty program, booked through a third party site and at a discount rate, etc.).Leave a comment:
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Seen while stopped in gridlocked traffic on the way home at the intersection of Olympic and Western in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon, thanks to political protest activity downtown causing a section of the 101 freeway to be closed, and consequent traffic armageddon within a 2-3 mile radius.
Maybe the Quality Learing Center could be their first tenant?Leave a comment:
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More a random screenshot than a photo or comic, admittedly, but...
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Apparently some spam emailer thinks that I'd like to become a witch. Well, I do have a black cat (two of them, in fact, although one has a white patch on his chest, and so may not qualify) and a broomstick. Just a pointy hat needed, and I'm in business. Do you think they'd teach me a spell to magically recharge ICP batteries?Leave a comment:
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Sure, maybe they felt the need distinguish from:
"Salty Dogs"
"Hot Dogs"
"Sun Dogs"
"You Old Dogs"
"Dog Days"
But honestly I thought you were sharing it because of iconography. Are we supposed to know that a phallic crystal represents a crack rock or crystal meth? The needle/heroine is pretty obvious... but what are all the others? Snow (Cocaine?).....Leave a comment:
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