I Had A Random Thought...

[Dewar]

I usually have mine shaved to 3/4 an inch with tapered back and sides. A really skilled barber can do the entire thing with an electric clipper, including around the ears in around 10-15 minutes. If the barber uses scissors, it can take up to 30.

[Apple Cider]

I really envy you folks with short, clippable hair. My hair care in the shower alone takes like 20 minutes.

[Dewar]

My wife has had various forms of longer hair for quite a while, but recently she started getting it done short with a shaved undercut. She loves not having to fight with it every day.

[Badfinger]

I really envy you folks with short, clippable hair. My hair care in the shower alone takes like 20 minutes.

 

I would happily trade you, haired-person!

[miffy495]

Hair is fun! My girlfriend just shaves off different patterns depending on her mood (she is currently transitioning from a mohawk to a half shave, meaning that she is continuing to shave the left side of her head, has about 4 inches of mohawk down the middle, and the right side of her head has about 3/4 of an inch of stubbly growth as she grows it back in) while I have a more defined cycle thanks to my career that's dependent on whether or not the school year is happening. When I'm a teacher, I need to look pretty normal so it's my boring brown hair in boring guy cuts, then about this point of the year I stop getting hair cuts so that by the summer I have a good length to bleach, dye, and shave into a big mohawk of my own that I then have to shave off again in September. Last year was a really deep green. This year, I'm thinking lavender but haven't decided yet. The great part about a punk haircut is that people already expect less of you if you have one, so I have the option of just waking up and letting it fall where it wants to or spending the 30 minutes actually getting it to stand up. Either way I look badass, and it's just down to my mood.

 

So yeah, the moral is that everyone should not give a fuck about fighting with their hair and have fun with it. It's great.

[Twig]

My hair does one thing and one thing only. Boring combover. The shorter the better, 'cause when it gets long it gets curly and not good.

[tegan]

I have natural long, wavy hair, but I might change it up at some point.

 

Undercuts are hot.

[Badfinger]

This is a truly random thought. With all the talk about infinifactory and besiege on various 'casts, I was trying to find the music that Looney Tunes used under building infernal contraptions or conveyor belts and that sort of thing. Unfortunately you can't type in "bwa bwa bwaaaa, ba da dada da dah" into youtube. Thankfully a cool twitter person helped me find it. And then I found guys playing it on harmonicas. The size and variety of harmonicas raises more questions than it answers for me, frankly.

 

 

[Ben X]

When I'm a teacher, I need to look pretty normal so it's my boring brown hair in boring guy cuts, then about this point of the year I stop getting hair cuts so that by the summer I have a good length to bleach, dye, and shave into a big mohawk of my own that I then have to shave off again in September. Last year was a really deep green.

 

Do your pupils ever bump into you over summer and get all, "Woah, Mr Miffy, you're, like... totally badass!"

[Apple Cider]

I would love an undercut but it would have to be something I can cover up at work. 

[miffy495]

Do your pupils ever bump into you over summer and get all, "Woah, Mr Miffy, you're, like... totally badass!"

 

Some of them try to look me up on facebook. All they can view without my permission is my profile picture, which is me on the bike path downtown in mid-August with my green mohawk up-but-slightly-crushed-by-my-bike-helmet. It's enough to impress them.

[Bjorn]

Pop Quiz: Do you feel Pandora's Box has a positive or negative association as a phrase?

[Ninety-Three]

Pop Quiz: Do you feel Pandora's Box has a positive or negative association as a phrase?

I can't even imagine someone using it as a positive. Do people do that?

[Merus]

Only when referring to the late 90s Alexey Pajitnov puzzle game Pandora's Box.

[Bjorn]

I can't even imagine someone using it as a positive. Do people do that?

 

It happened today, which is why I was curious.  Someone used it mean "an action that has an unintended, but positive outcome."  This was someone quite a bit younger than me, and they had only a passing familiarity with the phrase, but a generally positive view of the word Pandora because of the music service, and so flipped the meaning of the phrase.  So I was curious if this was something other people had encountered.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Going by the original legend of Pandora that read is potentially true since opening the box released a bunch of bad stuff into the world but then also one good thing (hope). But that requires that the action had a bunch of unintended negative consequences.

[Ben X]

This was someone quite a bit younger than me, and they had only a passing familiarity with the phrase, but a generally positive view of the word Pandora because of the music service, and so flipped the meaning of the phrase. 

 

I have not encountered this but it is depressing.

[SecretAsianMan]

I honestly never understood the original story.  If Pandora released all the evils into the world by opening the box, why was keeping hope inside a good thing?  Shouldn't it also have been released into the world?  Or was the intention to deny the world hope?  Or is the hope being saved for something?  Why was it in there in the first place?

[SuperBiasedMan]

I think the idea was that we only needed hope in response to the evils of the world. But that always made me think that it was a shitty silver lining given the cost is required.

[tberton]

Yeah, I think it's that hope is not necessary if despair doesn't exist. Think about it: to hope is to wish for tomorrow to be better than today. If today's already perfect, there's not much to wish for.

[tegan]

If I remember correctly, she shut the box after the evils escaped because she didn't want to release any more, but didn't realize that hope was inside. Later she opened it again and released hope.

[Mangela Lansbury]

It happened today, which is why I was curious. Someone used it mean "an action that has an unintended, but positive outcome." This was someone quite a bit younger than me, and they had only a passing familiarity with the phrase, but a generally positive view of the word Pandora because of the music service, and so flipped the meaning of the phrase. So I was curious if this was something other people had encountered.

I've seen some weird uses of it in admissions essays, and I've kind of been able to piece together the way I think they're using it. I think generally that the whole evils being in the world thing is seen as just a thing that is case and would be the case regardless of what any single actor did, but Pandora's box is the thing that holds hope and keeps it alive. So it loses the negative connotation because of the inevitability of evil and the hope bit flips it on its head so it becomes a positive thing.

Disclaimer: This is mostly based on usage by kids who wrote in letters about how they were holding out hope that their application would be reconsidered after being waitlisted or deferred.

[SecretAsianMan]

I've seen some weird uses of it in admissions essays, and I've kind of been able to piece together the way I think they're using it. I think generally that the whole evils being in the world thing is seen as just a thing that is case and would be the case regardless of what any single actor did, but Pandora's box is the thing that holds hope and keeps it alive. So it loses the negative connotation because of the inevitability of evil and the hope bit flips it on its head so it becomes a positive thing.

Disclaimer: This is mostly based on usage by kids who wrote in letters about how they were holding out hope that their application would be reconsidered after being waitlisted or deferred.

 

Man, being waitlisted for a college sucks.  I was on two waitlists when I was applying and it was nerve-wracking.  At least a straight up rejection letter doesn't prolong things.  Being on a waitlist makes things decisions a lot harder since you're not sure if you should accept what you have or hold out hope that you might get in.  I suppose the Pandora's Box analogy fits.

 

Incidentally, I ended up going to one of the schools I got waitlisted on.  It was my second choice, so all things considered it wasn't bad.  I was also waitlisted on my first choice and when I called them up to ask about my status, they told me that I was second on the list but they got a higher than anticipated number of acceptances that year so the waitlist was never used.  If 2 people had said no, I would have gotten in.

[Bjorn]

The comment spawned an interesting conversation between the lady and I last night, about it being a potentially good thing if the negative connotation got lost. Like Eve, the story is about demonizing women (Pandora is the first woman) and curiosity, while encouraging blind devotion and faith. If you can flip that, even unintentionally, that's kind of an awesome thing to do.

[Apple Cider]

Greek mythology has a lot of misogyny. But I also don't really use "Pandora's box" as a phrase. I just can't imagine it using it as a positive, even as a mythology devotee.