From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #105 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Sunday, March 17 2002 Volume 02 : Number 105 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? ["West Moran" ] [loud-fans] Who drives the most? [Richard Gagnon ] Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? ["John Sharples" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? > I have a 12 mile car commute to work that takes about 20 minutes and it > happens to be my prime music listening time. I know my numbers do not > take into account the various errands and things I do, so just figuring > work commutes who has the longest, shortest commutes, and how do you > travel? My commute is 8 miles, and takes me 20 minutes, for which I am terribly grateful. Prior to buying my truck last July, I took the bus: one hour to get to work, and 1 3/4 hours to get home (my shift ends at 10PM, and not only do buses not run as often at that time, but they don't run near my office or my house at all, so there was a lot of waiting and walking involved.) But even that wasn't as bad as when my shift ended at 1AM: I was walking for 90 minutes to get to the only bus in the San Fernando Valley that was available in the middle of the night, which deposited me about a half mile from my house. Total time: 2 hours, 15 minutes. My last bus pass now hangs from my rear view mirror to remind me why I don't want to have to buy another one. I know there is great public transportation elsewhere in this country, but here in Los Angeles, if you don't have wheels, you are three notches below child molester, and it is perfectly acceptable to throw things at you and run you over. Pretend I'm exaggerating. I do all my music listening at work, and with a 70-hour work week, that's a lotta music. Yow! West (Of The Fields) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 08:36:39 -0800 From: Carolyn Dorsey Subject: [loud-fans] Like so many/Like so much Could someone with a degree in English please clarify something for me? Sometimes I will run across the phrase "like so many" or "like so much" usually in a New Yorker article. The phrase is followed by a metaphor. Examples: ....computer literate on a daily basis, I see this firsthand all of the time. Your average user has a dial-up connection and, as long as they can establish a connection, check their e-mail and the sports scores, they're happy. Like so many sheep... A booming economy has the potential to suck up vulnerable employees like so many ants in a vacuum, because if the majority of the workers are being .....as the ticket to solvency and independence, all the artists9 renderings dangled like gaudy baubles were so much smoke blown up the What do they mean, like "so" many. You see, the writer could have just said A booming economy has the potential to suck up vulnerable employees like many ants in a vacuum, because if the majority of the workers are being ... or, just ants in a vacuum, and the meaning is just as clear. Carolyn ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 06:35:18 -0800 From: Elizabeth Brion Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? My commute is 20 miles each way and takes me 30 minutes or so. This wouldn't be so bad (well, except for the indignity of having to use $3 or so in gasoline to earn $28 for a 4-hour shift) except that my commute to everything else - grocery store, health club, dry cleaner's, bookstore - is ALSO 20 miles each way. I'm just enough of an environmentalist that I absolutely can't rationalize driving 80 miles in a day just to cover my basic needs, so I usually sit around the house all paralyzed doing nothing until I have to go to work (fortunately, that's only a few days a week). I know someone out there is thinking, "Why not do it in one trip?" Some things I can, some things I can't. The explanation is far too dull to go into though. Anyway, we're trying really hard to find a place to live that will make this less of a problem, but the housing situation around here is unbelievable. It's harder to find a place than it was in NYC in the late '80s, with the added disadvantage that while at least once you succeeded in NYC, you got to live in NYC and have all sorts of fun, but here you'll just be bored out of your mind in a different set of rooms. This post does not read like it was written by someone in a good mood, but despite all that, I actually am. :-) - -- Elizabeth ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 10:41:22 EST From: LeftyZ@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? In a message dated 3/15/02 11:38:02 PM, zoom@speakeasy.org writes: << >Well, I'm afraid it's a tie. Two years ago, I built an office at my house --separate building right next to the house. I sleep in there. <> Well, several months ago, I anticipated this thread, and I really wanted to win SOMETHING. Two other reasons: My big TV and stereo and all my CDs and vinyl are out here -- and my sleeping habits are so bizarre I don't like to keep the rest of the family awake. Left ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 08:58:14 -0700 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? At Friday 3/15/2002 06:23 PM -0600, steve wrote: >On Friday, March 15, 2002, at 04:39 PM, Roger Winston wrote: > >>Is this where we talk about our cars? Where's Staples when you need >>him? I drive to the office in my new 2002 Acura RSX. > >160 or 200 hp? I wimped out and got the 160. My last two cars had manual transmissions, and one major reason for buying a new car was that my old and feeble self is too lazy to drive a stick anymore. The 200 HP model (the Type S) only comes in manual. The automatic RSX still has more pickup than my old manual Integra, so I'm happy. Gotta be able to zoom up those mountain highways to do that extreme snowboarding. Ha. Latre. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 11:08:11 -0500 From: Richard Gagnon Subject: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? >Twas written: > >Well, I'm afraid it's a tie. Two years ago, I built an office at my >house -->separate building right next to the house. I sleep in there. Then Andy said: >Can't win, can I? > >Although, this does bring up (not beg) the question, why do you sleep in >your office and not in your house... I'm also on the shortest commute list. Part of my office is in my bedroom. But I do have to go around the bed to get to the computer, because there's usually a cat on the other side, and rolling over her and out of bed is not an option. The drafting table is in the next room, though. Rick - -- ****** "Zodiac Killer needs that crack" ******* Scott Walker, "Man from Reno" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 11:45:27 -0500 From: "John Sharples" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? dana: >Greatest regret is that I no longer commute to Manhattan across the >Brooklyn Bridge, which made me so happy back when I worked at the Strand >Bookstore. Glad you enjoyed it. Definitely one of the best purchases Janet and I ever made. Walking (or running or biking) over the Brooklyn is just about my favorite NY-centric pastime. For the last couple of years, and for two months more, my office in Manhattan is at one foot of the bridge (the Municipal Building at One Centre Street), my school at the other, so when the weather is nice and I have the time I'll walk over the bridge from one to the other. The view is stunning, of course (although the downtown skyline suddenly looks like Hartford instead of NYC). Speaking of which, while I'm against displays of Sept. 11 narcissism, I went to see those twin towers of light the other night, and they're truly spectacular to behold in person. The last couple of nights there has been a very high cloud cover, and the way the beams soar straight up and hit the clouds it's like Commissioner Gordon is cranking up the Bat Signal. I submit that there is no better way to start the workday >than by bicycling across a large bridge, screaming "Get out of the bike >lane" at clueless Norwegian tourists. Wonder if they have one of those Monty Python phrasebooks, and think you're coming on to them! >BTW, we just bought coffee right after Steve Buscemi, unless Shari is >mistaken in her ID, and she's usually pretty good at that sort of thing. I'm sure it was him. For one, nobody else looks like him (a good thing). He lives in Park Slope, and I see him *all the time.* Can't swing a cat in the Slope and not hit Buscemi. JS ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 12:38:54 EST From: GlenSarvad@aol.com Subject: [loud-fans] Buscemi Oh yeah? Anyone else see the coach of the University of Wyoming as they were upsetting Gonzaga Thursday night? Just as I was thinking it, a friend called and said the same thing.... > Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 17:55:59 -0800 > From: John Cooper > Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? > > I would imagine it would be pretty hard to mistake someone else for > Steve Buscemi. But I don't know; maybe New York City is full of > people who look just like him--immigrants from some land-locked ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:57:34 -0500 From: jenny grover Subject: [loud-fans] Who sleeps the weirdest? LeftyZ@aol.com wrote: > Two other reasons: My big TV and stereo and all my CDs and vinyl are out > here -- and my sleeping habits are so bizarre I don't like to keep the rest > of the family awake. I strongly advocate bizarre sleeping habits. Jen (who didn't get to sleep till 7 am, and only then compliments of a sleeping pill) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 15:02:14 -0500 From: jenny grover Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Like so many/Like so much Carolyn Dorsey wrote: > > What do they mean, like "so" many. You see, the writer could have just said > > A booming economy has the potential to suck up vulnerable employees like > many ants in a vacuum, because if the majority of the workers are being ... > > or, just ants in a vacuum, > > and the meaning is just as clear. I don't have a degree in English (or anything else, for that matter) but I believe the phrase really is saying "like AS many," the implication being that the metaphor involves the same number as the original group described. It's a rather archaic usage, but still common. Jen ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 15:10:39 -0500 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Like so many/Like so much > Like so many sheep... As with all idioms, perhaps by definition, there are non-idiomatic ways of saying the same thing, and the use of the idiom instead is done presumably for style reasons (and not necessarily good ones). The sense of "like so many..." is "as if every one of them were...", emphasizing both overall and individual similarities, so "they milled about the enclosure like so many sheep" implies both that the group of people resembled a comparably sized group of sheep, and that the individual people resembled individual sheep. Contrast "They milled about the enclosure like sheep", which is much less explicit as to the extent of the resemblance. Similarly, "The lava crept into the abandoned village like so much molasses" asks you to imagine the same amount of molasses as the town has lava, whereas "The lava crept into the abandoned village like molasses" could just mean that the creeping is molasses-like, while the overall lava experience is not. In your "ants" example, "...suck up vulnerable employees like many ants in a vacuum" is awkward because it leaves the numbers unspecified, so we have to wonder whether you somehow meant that the sucking up of four (say) employees resembles the vacumming of sixteen (say) ants. On the other hand, "...suck up vulnerable employees like so many ants in a vacuum" asserts a one-to-one correspondence between vulnerable employees and ants, and thus is a little more nuanced than merely "suck up vulnerable employees like ants in a vacuum", although the difference is fairly small, and if the surrounding language is not especially poetic, "like so many" might easily come off as precious. Except I majored in photography, glenn ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:48:52 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Who drives the most? On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, John Sharples wrote: > >BTW, we just bought coffee right after Steve Buscemi, unless Shari is > >mistaken in her ID, and she's usually pretty good at that sort of thing. > > I'm sure it was him. For one, nobody else looks like him (a good thing). He > lives in Park Slope, and I see him *all the time.* Can't swing a cat in the > Slope and not hit Buscemi. Dana I'm sure would agree that cat-swinging is a barbarous and inhumane practice. For that matter, in this case, so would Steve Buscemi. Me, I commute (a) about 8 miles by car to the Park & Ride, another 2 by bus, to campus (where parking is rare): total time appx. 1/2 hour; (b) about 13 miles to my other job by car (where parking is plentiful): total time 12-20 minutes (to work, depending on fwy. traffic), 20-30 minutes (back home: fwy. impossible, take surface streets instead); (c) from bedroom to bathroom to bedroom to computer room to grade papers, total commute about forty feet counting the repetition: total time depends on how lazy I am about standing there in the shower letting hot water try to persuade me I'm awake and not in some peculiar water-involving dream. Does avoiding work by posting to Loudfans count? When I drive, I drive a red '96 Toyota Tercel, w/very little in the way of features except a cassette deck and a/c - but it's pretty peppy for a little car. It has automatic transmission, while I prefer manual - but it's what was available for a good price when my previous car (an '85 Toyota Corolla) suddenly decided that it would let all its parts rust out simultaneously. Our other car (which Rose usually drives to work) is a '98 Mazda Protege, sort of a maroon color (they call it sunset mica or something vaguely poetic-like), which has the CD player dammit. My commutes used to be way more interesting when we owned only one car, involving as they did a couple of bus transfers as well as a walk in sometimes very frigid conditions, in areas that peds were not terribly welcome in - but I've bored you enough. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::"Shut up, you truculent lout, and let the cute little pixie sing!":: np: Auto Interiors (really!) _No Frill Halo Flight_ ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #105 *******************************