miskatonic jack 2's definitions
They had a 4 acre spread on the outskirts of "town" and a large gun collection. They were afraid of the government.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 November 23, 2010
Get the spreadmug. A small child, roughly between the ages of 2 and 8 years, who hangs out in a back yard, usually white, usually male and usually suburban.
This was the definition used extinsively in magazine advertisements and television shows, especially comedy, during the 1980's and 90's
This was the definition used extinsively in magazine advertisements and television shows, especially comedy, during the 1980's and 90's
"Heavens to burgitroid, what is that detestable little yard ape doing in my movie? He's ruining it!
- Sir Boris von Orloff,
Eerie Indiana
from the episode "America's Scariest Home Video (a.k.a. Scariest Home Videos)"
Air Date
Sunday October 20, 1991
- Sir Boris von Orloff,
Eerie Indiana
from the episode "America's Scariest Home Video (a.k.a. Scariest Home Videos)"
Air Date
Sunday October 20, 1991
by Miskatonic Jack 2 June 27, 2010
Get the yard apemug. ♦ Where people live who drive an hour to a well paying job.
♦ Where your neighbor's house is 100 ft from your own and both are 50 meters (164.041 feet) from the road.
♦ Where gated communities are built with 2 acre lots and the homeowners association is constantly in fear of non-conformity and people using that land to grow their own food as well as any landscape which is reverting to it's natural state.
♦ Where your neighborhood centers around a golf course and the closest retail is 4 miles (6.43737 km) away
♦ Where your zip code's tallest building rises 2 storeys and the population density never goes beyond 1,000 people per square mile.
♦ Where rich white people go in order to avoid ethnic minorities, same thing with their country clubs.
♦ Where the water table is irreversibly contaminated by all the lawn chemicals the residents use.
♦ Where the treeless lawn surrounding one's ranch house is used for parking, sports, and an area where one's many dogs and children can run wild and wreck havoc.
♦ Areas idealized by people like Frank Lloyd Wright and Joel Garreau (writer of Edge Cities).
♦ Areas reviled by people such as Paolo Soleri and James Howard Kunstler.
♦ Where your neighbor's house is 100 ft from your own and both are 50 meters (164.041 feet) from the road.
♦ Where gated communities are built with 2 acre lots and the homeowners association is constantly in fear of non-conformity and people using that land to grow their own food as well as any landscape which is reverting to it's natural state.
♦ Where your neighborhood centers around a golf course and the closest retail is 4 miles (6.43737 km) away
♦ Where your zip code's tallest building rises 2 storeys and the population density never goes beyond 1,000 people per square mile.
♦ Where rich white people go in order to avoid ethnic minorities, same thing with their country clubs.
♦ Where the water table is irreversibly contaminated by all the lawn chemicals the residents use.
♦ Where the treeless lawn surrounding one's ranch house is used for parking, sports, and an area where one's many dogs and children can run wild and wreck havoc.
♦ Areas idealized by people like Frank Lloyd Wright and Joel Garreau (writer of Edge Cities).
♦ Areas reviled by people such as Paolo Soleri and James Howard Kunstler.
Land in exurban areas is used in the most wasteful, unsustainable and impractical ways. It's not at all uncommon for property owners to have a half acre of their spread paved over. I've even heard of aviation enthusiasts
by Miskatonic Jack 2 November 23, 2010
Get the exurbanmug. An omnipresent force in suburbia, or at least in most of it's residential neighborhoods.
A quasi-fascist governing board, often set up by a subdivision's real-estate developer, who strictly enforce such rules and building codes as...
-Grass must be kept watered, golf course green and closely manicured, even during times of drought and water shortages
-No one uses their yard to grow their own food
-No patch of land may be permitted to return to it's natural state
-No rooms or other additions may be permitted above or in front of the existing home
-No potter's shed or tool shed may be allowed anywhere on the property
-No yard ornaments
-No rain barrels
and so on.
A quasi-fascist governing board, often set up by a subdivision's real-estate developer, who strictly enforce such rules and building codes as...
-Grass must be kept watered, golf course green and closely manicured, even during times of drought and water shortages
-No one uses their yard to grow their own food
-No patch of land may be permitted to return to it's natural state
-No rooms or other additions may be permitted above or in front of the existing home
-No potter's shed or tool shed may be allowed anywhere on the property
-No yard ornaments
-No rain barrels
and so on.
The homeowners association says you can't put an addition onto the front of the house. They also said you couldn't add a 2nd level (which would keep any additional property from being paved over.) They said that the only place you could add on was the back (which paradoxically is the only yard anyone ever actually uses.)
To get another idea of what a homeowner's association is like, watch the 1999 episode of the X-Files by the name of "Arcadia."
To get another idea of what a homeowner's association is like, watch the 1999 episode of the X-Files by the name of "Arcadia."
by Miskatonic Jack 2 January 11, 2011
Get the Homeowners Associationmug. Whenever a house is built in a subdivision for the momentary gain of the evil developers and "home builders", this is what the landscaping is refered to.
Often in place of a wooded area that contains irreplacable diversity in it's flora and fauna, The builder will select a generic assortment of bushes, trees, and other plants. These will typically include the short lived Bradford Pear, Red Maple, Pin oak (both native to marshy areas), Burning Bush, Japanese Barberry (both considered invasive), various Junipers & arborvites, Korean Boxwood, and whatever other generic plants they have to choose from at places like WAL-MART, Lowes, Home Depot, K Mart and Target.
This is even the case around 2 million dollar McMansions.
This is one of the reasons why suburban sprawl is so damaging and why it disrupts the delicate ecological balance.
The builders special can also be seen around commercial development.
Often in place of a wooded area that contains irreplacable diversity in it's flora and fauna, The builder will select a generic assortment of bushes, trees, and other plants. These will typically include the short lived Bradford Pear, Red Maple, Pin oak (both native to marshy areas), Burning Bush, Japanese Barberry (both considered invasive), various Junipers & arborvites, Korean Boxwood, and whatever other generic plants they have to choose from at places like WAL-MART, Lowes, Home Depot, K Mart and Target.
This is even the case around 2 million dollar McMansions.
This is one of the reasons why suburban sprawl is so damaging and why it disrupts the delicate ecological balance.
The builders special can also be seen around commercial development.
What a waste of land, this was 100 acres of farmland plus another 50 acres that was forested, and now we have a generic sudivision with 2 acre lots, McManions and ranch houses set all the way to the back of their lots. And whatever varity of plants that was found in the wooded portion will be lost forever to be replaced by the builder's special.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 November 6, 2008
Get the builder's specialmug. smaller than a village - larger than a wide spot in the road, a hamlet usually has considerably less than 200 people and is usually tied to agriculture (although many housing subdivisions could loosely be described as hamlets, especially when incorpirated and containing a minimal number of people).
A hamlet can either be dispersed (particularly in the USA), or clustered (see urban).
It is often located at the crossing of two minor thouroughfares (at a crossroads). Most intentional communities, if not a village and and not tied into the fabric of a larger entity, could be described as hamlets.
A hamlet can either be dispersed (particularly in the USA), or clustered (see urban).
It is often located at the crossing of two minor thouroughfares (at a crossroads). Most intentional communities, if not a village and and not tied into the fabric of a larger entity, could be described as hamlets.
The documentary film "Rabbit Hash - Center of the Universe" was about an old and remote river hamlet which contains a small art colony on the western end of the Kentucky portion of the Cincinnati Ohio metropolitan area (near another hamlet called Big Bone) that elected a dog for mayor, not once, but twice! The First dog was named Goofy.
Eucla is a hamlet of around 50 people that serves as a regional centre for the Nullarbor Plain of Australia.
Eucla is a hamlet of around 50 people that serves as a regional centre for the Nullarbor Plain of Australia.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 December 9, 2008
Get the hamletmug. Gun fu is the style of sophisticated close-quarters gunplay seen in Hong Kong action cinema and in Western films influenced by it. It often resembles a martial arts battle played out with firearms instead of traditional weapons.
The focus of gun fu is style, and the usage of firearms in ways that they were not designed to be used. Shooting a gun from each hand, shots from behind the back, as well as the use of guns as melee weapons are all common. Other moves can involve shotguns, Uzis, rocket launchers, and just about anything else that can be worked into a cinematic shot. It is often mixed with hand-to-hand combat maneuvers.
"Gun fu" has become a staple factor in modern action films due to its visually appealing nature (regardless of its actual practicality in a real-life combat situation). This is a contrast to American action movies of the 1980s which focused more on heavy weaponry and outright brute-force in firearm-based combat.
The focus of gun fu is style, and the usage of firearms in ways that they were not designed to be used. Shooting a gun from each hand, shots from behind the back, as well as the use of guns as melee weapons are all common. Other moves can involve shotguns, Uzis, rocket launchers, and just about anything else that can be worked into a cinematic shot. It is often mixed with hand-to-hand combat maneuvers.
"Gun fu" has become a staple factor in modern action films due to its visually appealing nature (regardless of its actual practicality in a real-life combat situation). This is a contrast to American action movies of the 1980s which focused more on heavy weaponry and outright brute-force in firearm-based combat.
Before 1986, Hong Kong cinema was firmly rooted in two genres: the martial arts film and the comedy. Gunplay was not terribly popular because audiences had considered it boring, compared to fancy kung-fu moves or graceful swordplay of the wu shu epics. What moviegoers needed was a new way to present gunplay-- to show it as a skill that could be honed, integrating the acrobatics and grace of the traditional martial arts. And that's exactly what John Woo did. Using all of the visual techniques available to him (tracking shots, dolly-ins, slo-mo), Woo created beautifully surrealistic action sequences that were a 'guilty pleasure' to watch. There is also intimacy found in the gunplay-- typically, his protagonists and antagonists will have a profound understanding of one another and will meet face-to-face, in a tense Mexican standoff where they each point their weapons at one another and trade words.
The popularity of John Woo's films, and the heroic bloodshed genre in general, in the West helped give the gun fu style greater visibility. Film-makers like Robert Rodriguez were inspired to create action sequences modelled on the Hong Kong style. One of the first to demonstrate this was Rodriguez's Desperado (1995). The Matrix (1999) played a part in making "gun fu" the most popular form of firearm-based combat in cinema worldwide; since then, the style has become a staple of modern Western action films.
The popularity of John Woo's films, and the heroic bloodshed genre in general, in the West helped give the gun fu style greater visibility. Film-makers like Robert Rodriguez were inspired to create action sequences modelled on the Hong Kong style. One of the first to demonstrate this was Rodriguez's Desperado (1995). The Matrix (1999) played a part in making "gun fu" the most popular form of firearm-based combat in cinema worldwide; since then, the style has become a staple of modern Western action films.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 September 2, 2010
Get the Gun Fumug.