Amusing

The Blight

Chill Amusing, Annoying

One of the strangest parts of getting older is all the things that people fervently insisit “could never happen” or “did not happen” that used to occur frequently and were just a normal part of life.

I think Gen Z is worse about this even than past generations because we’ve screwed them up so badly, enervated their very souls with social media and smartphone poisoning. They cannot help it because their brains have been blighted. But it’s still annoying.

Roaman

Chill Amusing, Annoying

Were kids in 80s actually allowed to roam around unsupervised, or is that just in movies?

It’s terribly sad that Gen Z folks post this same question on Reddit every few days. The world that was seems to them some impossible phantasmagoric dream.

But yes, almost all kids roamed wherever they liked in the 1980s after the age of 9-10. Not just those with “bad” parents. In fact, the “bad” parents back then were ones who didn’t let their kids outside much. Then that would’ve been considered at least near-abuse.

Deny it as many people do, but the fact is the world has changed immensely since that time. It feels very foreign now even to me and I lived it.

Have the Itch

Chill Amusing, Annoying

Ichetucknee.

It’s pronounced (not gonna use IPA here) itch-(tiny glottal stop)-tuk-nee.

I’ve heard tourists say:

Itchy-took-nee
Icky-took-a-nee
Icky-tuck-a-nee
Itchy-a-tuck-a-nee
Icky-toke-annie
Ict-toke-nay
Itchy-toch-nay
Icky-tock-nay

And many more I’m sure. When I lived near the confluence of the Santa Fe and Ichetucknee Rivers, every weekend we’d get 1-3 tourists asking where the river was. They never pronounced it right. Not a single time.

Also, nearly none of the YouTube videos or pronunciation guides on the internet render an accurate Ichetucknee pronunciation (as North Florida natives do). All of them totally butcher it. Whoa, I found one woman who gets it about 95% right! She says it as close to a native as anyone I’ve ever heard.

The rest are so bad. But if you ever get a chance, do see the Ichetucknee. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Inference Engine

Chill Amusing, Cute

She’s pretty, looks both fun and intelligent, is not obese and doesn’t appear to be full of unwarranted judgement and entitlement like nearly all American women. She looks like she could be someone who is an actual friend and not a competitor vying for power with you in any sort of relationship, romantic or otherwise. At a glance, it seems like you might be able to talk to her without having your reputation dragged and your life ruined on social media for internet clout.

Yes, that’s a lot to infer from a photo, but there’s a reason we claim they are worth a thousand words.

(That’s not the new Japanese prime minister btw, that’s Saori Araki, a former Japanese pop star.)

Go Play

Chill Amusing, Annoying, Clowns

Wrong. So wrong.

I was vastly ahead of my peers in kindergarten. I could already read at an eithth-grade level. I could tell time on an analog clock1. For this and other reasons, I was vastly bored in school from the start.

I’d also do all the worksheets for all the kids around me because I could complete them 100x as fast as they could. This was so we could go play more quickly.

Kindergartners are definitely not all at the same level. Important differences show up early.

  1. And had my kindergarten teacher get mad because I checked the time off her analog wristwatch. For some reason we weren’t supposed to know what time it was in kindergarten?