Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Piratelvr1121]

Not to mention there's US cities named after foreign capitals.  Paris, Dublin, and those are the two off the top of my head.

You must be from TX where the old fashioned Dr. Pepper is made in Dublin and Paris, TX has this starring attraction:
http://www.planetware.com/picture/paris-us-tx164.htm

Nah, was born in Va. and raised in Maryland!

[Slartibartfast]

I may misquote this a bit, since it's been a while, but a few years ago I was chatting with some guildmates (online) in World of Warcraft.  These are people I know by voice and *maybe* by the general part of the world they live in, but nobody knew each other outside of the game.  I don't remember how we got on the topic, but someone mentioned he was from Canada, and that set one particular guy ranting about ice fishing.

Weird Guy: "So I had this great idea for ice fishing!  You get some hot water, right?  And you pour it on the ice.  You can melt a hole through the ice and you won't even have to use a drill!"

Canadian Guy: "Err, that's an interesting idea, but since water freezes at zero degrees either way I don't think it would work."

Weird Guy: [LONG pause] "Dude!  Canada must be a lot colder than the US!  Water freezes at 32 degrees here!"

Everyone else on the guild chat: ". . ."

(Sad to say, he was serious.  Some guildies later convinced him that Australia was a suburb of Atlanta.)

[DottyG]

Some (most? all?) of these stories make me fear for the future and the people who will one day be running things that affect me.

[StarDrifter]

Random Friend-of-a-friend on Facebook started this exchange on my Wall the other day. This Random Friend-of-a-friend (RFOF) lives in the US, I think (from her profile and the friend she is friends with) that she lives somewhere in the north-east, in one of the tiny states up there)

RFOF: You live in Australia, right?
Me: (where is this going?) Right.
RFOF: It doesn't snow there, does it?
Me: Not everywhere, but up in the mountains it does, during winter.
RFOF: But it's hot during Christmas in Australia, right?
Me: Yes, because Christmas is in summer.
RFOF: Then how can it snow?
Me: What do you mean? It snows in winter, in the middle of the year, up in the mountains down in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. Here. *I inserted a Google Map link to south-eastern Australia with blue marks on where it snows*
RFOF: But if it's hot at Christmas how can you get snow?
Me: ? Again, what do you mean?
RFOF: Well, it only snows at Christmastime, and your Christmas is hot, so how can you get snow?

At this point I gave up, because (thankfully) the link-friend stepped in and explained to her about the reversed seasons. Apparently RFOF is still confused about how we get snow at a time of year that isn't Christmas.

[zyrs]

This conversation was reported to me by a friend many years ago, so I don't know if I have it right.  This is between friend and friend's co-worker.

FCW:  Hey, I just watched "Blair Witch Project" last night.
F:  I've heard that is a pretty good movie.
FCW:  I watched the DVD a few times and I'm pretty sure I know who the killer is.
F:  Okay.
FCW:  Yeah, I'm going to call the FBI's local office after work.

Moment of silence as friend stares at co-worker, processing what they have just heard.

Friend: You understand that that was just a movie, right?  With actors and all that?  They didn't release evidence in a murder into theaters.

FCW:  Yes they did!  And I bet there is a reward.

Friend:  No, it was a made up movie - there have been interviews with the director and the actors, including the supposedly dead ones.

FCW:  I don't believe you.

[Hijinks]

<snip>
OK is the halfmoon part of you fingernail the size of a pea? I held while she got a pea. 
<snip>

Still reading through this thread, but the bolded above made me laugh so hard.  Bwahahahaha!

[Virg]

Slartibartfast, I have to admit that I was laughing about your story, because I've run into people who couldn't get a handle on different temperature scales myself.  That said, I'm wondering why Canadian Guy would bother about Weird Guy's idea.  It would be very inefficient, but if you had enough hot water and took the time to do it, you could melt a hole to fish in.  I'd have told weird guy to give it a shot and let him see how slow it would be.

And zyrs, keep in mind that the creators of The Blair Witch Project actually set out to create a work in the line of War of the Worlds with real life news reports and everything leading up to its release.  It doesn't surprise me to find at least some people who didn't realize that it was wholly fiction.  In fact, for a very short time after I heard of it (but before I saw it), I didn't realise it wasn't a regular news report about a crime many years ago that had been repeated in the present day.

Virg

[rose red]

Who did he think the Blair Witch killer is?  The guy who "disappeared" in the middle of the movie to trick the other two so he can kill them?   

[Hillia]

BIL prides himself on his vocabulary and overall geniusness, because he is a JOURNALIST who graduated from COLLEGE (I totally messed up his superiority when I married DH, because now BIL is not the only family member to have graduated from college).

Anyway, when we visited DH's grandma over Thanksgiving, BIL picked up her Bible and was leafing through it - the conversation wasn't about him, so couldn't be important - and came upon a description of some people behaving 'wilily'.  He read it out loud as 'willily' - 'that means willy-nilly, you know'.

Yeah.  Cause the King James Bible always talks about people behaving 'willy-nilly'.

[Slartibartfast]

Random Friend-of-a-friend on Facebook started this exchange on my Wall the other day. This Random Friend-of-a-friend (RFOF) lives in the US, I think (from her profile and the friend she is friends with) that she lives somewhere in the north-east, in one of the tiny states up there)

RFOF: You live in Australia, right?
Me: (where is this going?) Right.
RFOF: It doesn't snow there, does it?
Me: Not everywhere, but up in the mountains it does, during winter.
RFOF: But it's hot during Christmas in Australia, right?
Me: Yes, because Christmas is in summer.
RFOF: Then how can it snow?
Me: What do you mean? It snows in winter, in the middle of the year, up in the mountains down in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. Here. *I inserted a Google Map link to south-eastern Australia with blue marks on where it snows*
RFOF: But if it's hot at Christmas how can you get snow?
Me: ? Again, what do you mean?
RFOF: Well, it only snows at Christmastime, and your Christmas is hot, so how can you get snow?

At this point I gave up, because (thankfully) the link-friend stepped in and explained to her about the reversed seasons. Apparently RFOF is still confused about how we get snow at a time of year that isn't Christmas.

I can't really blame Babybartfast for making my brain hurt, since that's part of being a toddler but it very rarely snows down here.  Last year we got one big snow - on Christmas day.  (Many of the locals said that's the only "white Christmas" they can remember.)  So Babybartfast - then age 2 1/2 - figured that every time it snows, it must be Christmas!  We then went to visit my parents in Wisconsin in March, where they still had a foot and a half of snow.  Every morning Babybartfast woke up, saw the snow, and got all excited because it was CHRISTMAS!  Sadly, it took her most of the week to stop being disappointed every day 

[hermanne]

Slartibartfast, that is so cute!

DD is 4.5, and she still says "It's Christmas!" during snowfalls. (We're in NJ, so we get several snowfalls every winter.)

The most amusing was during the freak snowstorm we got on Halloween weekend. Our scarecrow and pumpkins were getting covered with the white stuff, and DD announces "It's Christmas!"

Not yet, hon.

[Elfmama]

Both the kids and the "how-can-it-snow-in-summer" guy would be puzzled by snowfall in what is nominally summer in the US...

I used to live in a tiny little mountain town in California, at 7000 feet elevation.  I saw snow as early as the last week of August, and as late as mid-June.

[MommyPenguin]

My kids were more crushed by the opposite.  "Mommy, it's Christmas!  How can it be Christmas without snow?"  And then, now that Christmas is over... "Is it spring now?"  "No, sweetie, winter just started."  "But we had Christmas, and there was no snow, so now it's time for spring!"  <sigh>  I'm reading them a Berenstain Bears book that talks about winter as "January, February, and March," so maybe that will get things straight.  We're in a region that ought to get at least a few good snows this winter.

Hillia, I will have to profess my ignorance as to the meaning of wililly.  I wouldn't assume willy-nilly, though. 

[Giraffe, Esq]

Hillia, I will have to profess my ignorance as to the meaning of wililly.  I wouldn't assume willy-nilly, though. 

Something to do with "wily," perhaps?  At least, that was my guess.  So wily like a fox, not willy-nilly like a headless chicken. 

[Hillia]

Hillia, I will have to profess my ignorance as to the meaning of wililly.  I wouldn't assume willy-nilly, though. 

Something to do with "wily," perhaps?  At least, that was my guess.  So wily like a fox, not willy-nilly like a headless chicken. 

That's it.  The people in question had disguised themselves and were talking to someone else in a wily (ie sly, clever) way.

He had never heard the word, and was astonished at the connection to Wile E. Coyote.