WNW: Spock vs Spock

Fascinating.

Traveller Tuesday: What Traveller Languages Sound Like

(Sample words are generated by http://travellermap.com/model2/wordgen.html.)

Anglic, the language of the Third Imperium, is a fusion of Vilani and Solomani.

Solomani is probably some version of English, but still unrecognizable to our ears in the same way that English from 1000 AD is foreign to us today.  (From Futurese.)

1000 AD:
Wé cildra biddaþ þé, éalá láréow, þæt þú tǽce ús sprecan rihte, forþám ungelǽrede wé sindon, and gewæmmodlíce we sprecaþ…

2000 AD:
We children beg you, teacher, that you should teach us to speak correctly, because we are ignorant and we speak corruptly…

3000 AD:
*Zᴀ kiad w’-exùn ya tijuh, da ya-gᴀr’-eduketan zᴀ da wa-tᴀgan lidla, kaz ’ban iagnaran an wa-tᴀg kurrap…

Viliani sounds much like Hawaiian or other Polynesian/Pacific Island languages, where glottal slops between multiple vowels are common.

Undimankha
Uumadii
Eshashkiila
Ishiriirni
Ardara

Zhodani sounds like an Eastern European language, probably Polish or one of the Slavic tongues, that has far too many consonants and not nearly enough vowels. 

Ievltliellaqpanz
Iarbadrdrepa
Tla
Drtlmeftliadzdinsjdidr
Itlzdonzhi'sheprtiancha

Aslan (speaking of not enough vowels) sounds much like Welsh, only pronounced with a cleft upper lip.

Aihteasahea
Koiyyuleaea
Iyhoi'ahfeor
Oseirlosyu'awau
Hke

Droyne  is a strange combination of dipthongs and consonant clusters, like a drunk fusion of Chinese and Australian.

Tradpoystdrirkfe
Ayyukyayoestpay
Ssyokayp
Yaxmyostmelm
Yyoidryuxormstoypkad

Hivers are mute and thus do not have a spoken language. Their language is therefore translated into that of the listener when speaking. (Note: While Gurvin is listed as the official spoken language of the Hive Federation, I cannot find any representation of the language anywhere within game materials.)

K'kree sounds like the click languages of African bushmen.

Kagn'
Een!!keg
!'gh!'x'rruung
Araar'ngimura
Kik

Vargr  is difficult to classify because, lacking a unified goverment or culture, they also lack a universal language. The most common one is Gvegh, which sounds like Norwegian spoken by a wolf.

Kouts
Ongouztsogoghzaek
Kaekfuel
Soghathal
Daer

Do you disagree?  (Do Traveller player have bellybuttons?)  Leave a comment!

Monday Morning Gunday Quickie

So there I am, trawling ze Facebookz and drinking my coffee, when I come across an article titled  "25 Messages From NRA Members To Gun Control Supporters."  I follow it, and I see some familiar faces...

I would recognize that bald head and biker 'stache anywhere!  That's JayG!



I scroll down a little further and think, "This guy looks exactly like how I imagined Weerd Beard would look."

Turns out I was right!


And this cute li'l guy is one of the murderhobos in my Traveller agame, a.k.a. the Snooze Button Ronin!

#15 looks like someone I should know... perhaps it's Michael Bane?  Unsure.

Congratulations guys!  You photograph well!


UPDATE:   I have been informed that this lady is Nancy R. of  Excels at Nothing. Looking good, lady!

Friday Facebook Funnies

1) 

Facebook Friend 1:  So, apparently, yesterday (April 30) was Dead Hitler Day and I'm only now finding out about this. I seriously feel fucking cheated now.

Facebook Friend 2:  With bin Laden's death on the same day I thought it was more of a general "Death to the enemies of America" day...



2)
This webcomic is basically "My Little Pony" crossed with "Calvin & Hobbes."  If you like either of those, you should give it a look. If you like both, you need to start reading it IMMEDIATELY.

3)
Me:  I have been dubbed "Princess Daintyhooves" by Mike SixEight. So it is written, so mote it be.



4)
One person asked to hear my voice, and so I made this brief recording on Vocaroo.  It's gotten 15 "Likes" and over a dozen comments about how lovely it is. I actually don't get that, because I think I sound hoarse and nasal and terrible, but whatever.




5)
Technically only on Facebook because I posted it, this comes via Borepatch:

A black day
On this day 211 years ago, Washington D.C. was incorporated. Other than a brief respite when the British burned the White House and Capitol, it's been all down hill since.

Don't Do Business With RGuns.Net

As promised...

LET IT BE KNOWN THAT THE PUBLIC BEATING HAS NOT GONE OUT OF STYLE.

This is the second one of these that I've had to write. It's a bit embarrassing to me, because this is twice now I've been taken fool by a vendor, and I'm letting everyone know just what a fool I've been.

But say what you will about my faults -- and there are many, to be sure -- I cannot be accused of not owning  up to my mistakes. When I screw up, I admit it. And I screwed up by not thoroughly researching this company.


I first encountered RGuns while searching for AR uppers back in December. This was just after Sandy Hook, when the crusade against dem ebil black gunz was in full swing, and my mother had said to me "I think we should finish building your rifle before they become impossible to get," and then offered to pay for it.

Now, I was of two minds about this. On the one hand, I didn't think that an AR ban would ever go through, and since there was a run on AR patterns anyway, finding an upper in a reasonable price range was becoming a unicorn hunt. I figured that eventually the hysteria would die down, and the units that had been built during the demand would flood the market and prices would stabilize.

On the other hand, I had someone offering to bankroll half a gun. This happens approximately never.

So yes, I got a bit greedy and decided "What the hell, let's see if I can find something within the price range I've been given."

It took me several weeks, but eventually I found an AR upper that had everything I was looking for*, and was only slightly more than I had been allocated. So I dipped into my own savings to make up the difference.

I would like to state, for the record, the following facts:

• The item I ordered was listed as being in stock. 
• Per the RGuns webpage, there was a delay in processing the orders, but they clearly state, and I quote: 3. RGUNS does not charge a credit card used for an order until it is ready to be shipped.  If your card has not been charged, we have not shipped your order.
• I did indeed look online to see if the company was reputable or not. Maybe I did not dig as deeply as I should have; I will not argue that. However, I feel (perhaps wrongly, perhaps not) that I performed my due diligence. The website was recommended to me by a gunnie friend (name withheld to prevent embarrassment), and a casual Googleing did not indicate "HOLY SHIT DO NOT BUY FROM THESE ASSHOLES."  Yes, there was the usual bitching on Arfcom that the owner was rude and the service was slow, but nothing indicated to me that they would violate their terms of service by charging me for something and not delivering. 

So, on January 6, I placed my order, received the confirmation email, and tried my best to be patient.

Time passed. Days turned into weeks, weeks to months, and winter became spring. The package never arrived, but then mom's card hadn't been charged either, so no harm, no foul.

In mid-March, mom showed me her Visa statement, and it indicated that as of 03/13/2013, she had been charged the requisite amount. Hooray! I was thrilled! Maybe I would get an AR upper as a late birthday present!

March ended; no AR upper. Okay, that was two weeks, maybe they were behind in getting the stuff off the loading dock or whatever. 

Mid-April; still no upper. After 4 weeks, I had begun to wonder. Mom sent them an email with a copy of the confirmation, asking if we could get an approximate ETA on the upper, and they didn't bother to reply. I called them on the telephone, and get a message that is so curt that it is just this side of being rude, basically saying "If you placed an order in December, chill the fuck out, it will get to you eventually. DO NOT MICROMANAGE YOUR ORDER." That last line is a quote, by the way. Their telephone number is 847-428-3569, call it and hear for yourself.

I left a message with our order number etc and asked them to call back. Did they? Of course not. 

At this point, it had been 6 weeks. Mom had gotten her second Visa statement, and didn't like the notion of paying for what is had effectively become Schroedinger's Upper. I was starting to get a bad feeling, so I did some more Google-ing, and lo and behold!  Since the end of January, lots of complaints have been levied against RGuns. They even have an F rating with the Better Business Bureau, with 28 complaints (out of 30) in the last 12 months!

Mom asks me what we should do. "Call Visa and tell them you want to begin chargeback proceedings," said I, because the 60 day limit for disputes was fast approaching. 

"Don't you want Visa to see if they can get your upper to you?" she asked. 

"NO," I thundered, fist upraised with lighting striking dramatically in the background. "They have taken our money and ignored our legitimate queries. For this they must be punished! Begin the chargeback forthwith, such that they not only lose our business but also must suffer the chargeback fee from their merchant bank! AND LET THIS BE A LESSON UNTIL ALL WHO WRONG ME THUS! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHH!

Because, you see, I understand that fecal matter occurreth. I understand that shipping is slow, and demand is high, and maybe they were swamped with orders. If they had just taken five minutes out of their busy schedule and replied with a simple "Hey, I'm sorry, we are running behind, but you are totally going to get your upper by X date," then it would have been fine. But they ignored us, and if you read those reviews I linked you will find multiple instances of people ordering things that don't show up for 6 months or more, and when they call to complain the owner cancels their order and charges them a $100 cancellation fee.  I have no idea how RGuns stays in business, and frankly, it doesn't deserve to.

We began the chargeback process on Monday. As of today, the charge has been cancelled, and mom has received credit for what she already paid. So we aren't out anything, thank God, except for whatever little trust I may have held in online vendors.

Now that I've been burned twice, I'm closing the book on "Erin Builds an AR." People would rather steal my money than legitimately sell me a product, so I'm done shopping. Maybe in several years, when/if the market bottoms out, I'll be able to buy an upper at a gun show or from someone I personally know -- but unless I can pick it up and take it home right then, to hell with it. I'm done with spending my money on promises that turn out to be lies.

DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM RGUNS.NET

*For the curious, what I ordered was: 16 Inch Upper with Fluted Barrel, M4 Handguards, QuadRail Gas Block and Vortex Flash Suppressor.

"One Second After": A Book Report

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen


Summary:
A not-particularly-well written novel about the effects of an EMP on a small town in North Carolina and the surrounding countryside. Characters are flat and boring, and are generally used as delivery pieces for information:  the police chief talks about martial law, the doctor talks about health and disease, and the protagonist -- a history professor -- is a thinly veiled author expy.

We are continually beaten about the head regarding how awful an EMP attack is, and how woefully unprepared the USA is for one, despite all the other post-9/11 terrorist drills, and yet there are no mentions of Farraday Cages at all.

One of the author's -- excuse me, I meant protagonist's -- children is a 12 year old daughter with Type 1 diabetes. It ends as badly as you think it might for her, despite the fact that the novel is set in a rural community, with repeated mentions of both veterinarians, cattle,and pig farms.  I find it implausible that the town of Black Mountain was able to string up old 1920s style telephones, but no one thought to research getting insulin from livestock like the way it was done, oh, up until the 1980s.

The author's other daughter is a 17 year old, who stupidly gets pregnant during the famine-and-dieoff portion of the novel, because that makes sense. Then her boyfriend dies in the defense of the town against Mad Max style raiders, and because the author was also a colonel in the military who assigned the boy to that station, he pledges to raise his bastard grandchild out of a sense of guilt. Because a risky pregnancy during a famine is fine, but taking an interest in who your child is fucking beforehand is out of the question.

I threw the novel across the room when the author's mother-in-law suggests that he kill his dead daughter's dog so that his stupid pregnant daughter can have protein so that the baby can be brought to term.

It's slightly cheerier than The Road, but not by much, and that book was also stupid and depressing.

Do not read, unless you like dark endings, idiot characters, or being lectured.

WNW: Sexy Pool Party

Have some eye candy to go with your funny.