Local term for a digital counter with a green readout submerged in the River Liffey immediately upstream of O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, Ireland some time in the mid-1990s and intended to count away the remaining seconds to the start of the year 2000 CE. Within a matter of weeks it was clogged up with scum and dirt, broke down and had to be removed.
by Fearman December 10, 2007
Get the chime in the slimemug. 1. A particularly enjoyable or important occasion.
2. The day a woman menstruates.
3. In the Harry Potter series, the day one of the students receives a howler, typically in the Main Hall in front of everyone else.
2. The day a woman menstruates.
3. In the Harry Potter series, the day one of the students receives a howler, typically in the Main Hall in front of everyone else.
The launch of one's first novel is a red letter day in any novelist's life.
She had her first red letter day last week. She spent all day sulking in her bedroom.
Another red letter day for poor old Ronald.
She had her first red letter day last week. She spent all day sulking in her bedroom.
Another red letter day for poor old Ronald.
by Fearman November 11, 2007
Get the red letter daymug. Advice invariably found in the literature handed out by purveyors of so-called "alternative" or "complementary" medicine, in which customers intending to buy quackery are advised to check with their GPs first to find what "mainstream medicine" has to say.
The venomous diatribes against real medicine, and science and rationality in general, behind the closed doors of the "alternative" movement should tell you all you need to know about the sincerity of the quack-my-ass clause. On the face of it, it sounds obvious, egalitiarian and big-hearted. However, the real intention of the advice is to ensure that if anyone dies or is incapacitated by taking the quack's advice or products (or by swearing off real medicine, which may not be advised on the packaging but is a stock in trade in the "alternative" industry), if the matter comes to court the quack's lawyer can claim that the product or the service was misused; obviously, they didn't check with their GP, how unfortunate, it's not our fault.
Besides, the quack knows perfectly well their client is unlikely to see their GP or specialist about whatever the problem is, or if they do they won't pay much attention to their advice. If they did, they wouldn't be coming to the quack in the first place.
The venomous diatribes against real medicine, and science and rationality in general, behind the closed doors of the "alternative" movement should tell you all you need to know about the sincerity of the quack-my-ass clause. On the face of it, it sounds obvious, egalitiarian and big-hearted. However, the real intention of the advice is to ensure that if anyone dies or is incapacitated by taking the quack's advice or products (or by swearing off real medicine, which may not be advised on the packaging but is a stock in trade in the "alternative" industry), if the matter comes to court the quack's lawyer can claim that the product or the service was misused; obviously, they didn't check with their GP, how unfortunate, it's not our fault.
Besides, the quack knows perfectly well their client is unlikely to see their GP or specialist about whatever the problem is, or if they do they won't pay much attention to their advice. If they did, they wouldn't be coming to the quack in the first place.
Ah, here's the booklet; 123 symptoms this product may be able to cure, 256 further lists of types of people the product may be able to help, 25 more natural products from the same factory that might be able to balance your energies and so on, and, oh yes, the quack-my-ass clause.
by Fearman September 10, 2007
Get the quack-my-ass clausemug. Someone who says we should stop watching so much TV and get out into the wilds, and talks of wind farms as the next big thing in Green, Earth-friendly energy generation, until those techie eggheads actually build wind farms, at which point the environmentalist starts talking about how all those whirling blades pose a threat to bird life and interfere with the energies in a little old lady's television. They used to do everyone a favour trying to save whales and reminding the public of the evils of pollution and tropical deforestation. Now they prefer to chow down on maize that has been so mutated it needs human farmers to help it reproduce, and milk from cows with huge swaying udders who wouldn't last a tap on the savannahs of Africa, often themselves dressed in wool stolen from similarly unnatural sheep, while getting everyone riled up about the alleged satanic evil of genetic engineering. Gimme the old days when Greenpeace were risking their lives before the harpoons of Russian and Japanese whalers, rather than risking the sanity of Western civilisation.
by Fearman August 04, 2007
Get the environmentalistmug. 1. Generally a deeply dysfunctional state of mind in which one is in love with oneself, often at a rather superficial level. From the Greek myth of Narcissus, who wasted away out of unrequited love for his own reflection in a pool.
2. More specifically described at its worst as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. NPD is characterised by the following:
Refusal to admit that one is narcissistic. The horror author Stephen King once wrote that alcoholics build defence mechanisms like the Dutch build dykes. Narcissists are kind of the same, except that compared to your average narcissist, your average alcoholic is a rank amateur.
An exaggerated sense of self-importance, with the narcissist often talking about private, professional or other interpersonal relationships in which they are involved as though nobody else really existed.
A preoccupation with fantasies of pure or unlimited power, beauty, "authenticity", intelligence, love and so on. Has an urgent need for praise.
A tendency to read what people say out of context, or more likely without any context, and a disability to spot when they are being taken for a ride.
Belief on the narcissist's part that people vastly more gifted than they are (in whatever respect) are their natural equals, and a snobbish contempt for anything less.
A sense of entitlement; narcissists are typically manipulative, haughty, arrogant and generally destructive in their relationships with others.
A narcissist may appear overly anxious to show respect for the property and privacy of those they cannot profitably step on. Towards those under them in any social hierarchy (employees, offspring, subservient spouses, etc.,), they are shamelessly controlling, frequently treating such other peoples' property as their own to use or discard, on a more trivial level barging intrusively into their conversations, and so on. Narcissists treat those below them, or loyal to them, as extentions of their own egos.
Lack empathy and tends to treat other people like dirt, when they can get away with it.
Project a sense of immense effort, as though eternally hoping that some teacher will award them an A for it; at the same time their work is frequently slipshod and they secretly delegate to social subordinates.
Narcissists show no need to take any responsibility for the untoward results of their own actions, frequently going to ingenious extremes to weasel their way out of anything of the sort. After all, anything else would first require them to admit, as more than some petty platitude, that they aren't perfect.
Frequently project their own shortcomings onto others, especially whose whom they can control or of whom they are envious.
2. More specifically described at its worst as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. NPD is characterised by the following:
Refusal to admit that one is narcissistic. The horror author Stephen King once wrote that alcoholics build defence mechanisms like the Dutch build dykes. Narcissists are kind of the same, except that compared to your average narcissist, your average alcoholic is a rank amateur.
An exaggerated sense of self-importance, with the narcissist often talking about private, professional or other interpersonal relationships in which they are involved as though nobody else really existed.
A preoccupation with fantasies of pure or unlimited power, beauty, "authenticity", intelligence, love and so on. Has an urgent need for praise.
A tendency to read what people say out of context, or more likely without any context, and a disability to spot when they are being taken for a ride.
Belief on the narcissist's part that people vastly more gifted than they are (in whatever respect) are their natural equals, and a snobbish contempt for anything less.
A sense of entitlement; narcissists are typically manipulative, haughty, arrogant and generally destructive in their relationships with others.
A narcissist may appear overly anxious to show respect for the property and privacy of those they cannot profitably step on. Towards those under them in any social hierarchy (employees, offspring, subservient spouses, etc.,), they are shamelessly controlling, frequently treating such other peoples' property as their own to use or discard, on a more trivial level barging intrusively into their conversations, and so on. Narcissists treat those below them, or loyal to them, as extentions of their own egos.
Lack empathy and tends to treat other people like dirt, when they can get away with it.
Project a sense of immense effort, as though eternally hoping that some teacher will award them an A for it; at the same time their work is frequently slipshod and they secretly delegate to social subordinates.
Narcissists show no need to take any responsibility for the untoward results of their own actions, frequently going to ingenious extremes to weasel their way out of anything of the sort. After all, anything else would first require them to admit, as more than some petty platitude, that they aren't perfect.
Frequently project their own shortcomings onto others, especially whose whom they can control or of whom they are envious.
Carol's narcissism inspired her first husband to leave everything to her in his will. Some say she drove him into an early grave. She enjoys the money, but now nobody with a brain cell will touch her and her kids don't want to know her.
by Fearman March 28, 2008
Get the narcissismmug. Pseudoscientific diagnosis most often made of people by their narcissistic parents, in conjunction with airheaded social workers, so that the parents don't have to accept personal responsibility for ten to twenty years of filling the kid's head full of dysfunctional bullshit. Also useful, in our age of postmodernist relativism where science is seen as at once useful and deeply suspect, for purposes of claiming financial aid. The kids could probably do with the aid, but society doesn't need the quackery. Those who make a mint out of selling the notion of this condition often rope in a few undeniable autistic savants to their argument so as to confer a thin veneer of respectability on the whole enterprise.
Incidentally, the very use of the word syndrome is pseudoscientific when used in the field of psychiatry. In medicine or any real science, a syndrome is defined as a wide range of symptoms, not all of which may be present in any one patient, which can be proven to link back to a common cause. To take two examples: Down's Syndrome results from a doubling of the sex-linked X chromosome in a person's genotype. It manifests in a range of symptoms including a flattened facial structure, a slant to the eyes, above average muscular development and below average intelligence, not all of which will necessarily manifest in any one person with the syndrome. Likewise, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, manifests in any of a large number of otherwise usually rare opportunistic infections once the body's immune system has been disabled by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Again, not all of these show up in any one case; again, there is a common underlying cause.
After decades of research, psychiatrists remain divided on how the human mind works. There are various conflicting schools of thought (Freudians, Jungians, Adlerians, gestalt therapists, a plethora of others); beyond some empirical research on brain chemistry, neural functioning and other areas related to hard science, the teaching on the workings of the mind get rather hazy rather fast. In other words, we don't really know for certain how the mind works in the sort of detail that would enable us to talk about "common origins" for the extremely wide range of symptoms allegedly linked to this so-called syndrome. The word "syndrome" is simply used in this case because the naive and misguided think it sounds impressively scientific. The very fact that the parameters of Asperger's are so broad and vague pretty much tells you what this whole racket is really about; selling people a bill of goods. However, in the majority of cases, given the plasticity of the human mind in early development and the lack of any explanation of how this "syndrome" is supposed to arise, the above definition is, I would offer, likely to be at least as good as any.
Incidentally, the very use of the word syndrome is pseudoscientific when used in the field of psychiatry. In medicine or any real science, a syndrome is defined as a wide range of symptoms, not all of which may be present in any one patient, which can be proven to link back to a common cause. To take two examples: Down's Syndrome results from a doubling of the sex-linked X chromosome in a person's genotype. It manifests in a range of symptoms including a flattened facial structure, a slant to the eyes, above average muscular development and below average intelligence, not all of which will necessarily manifest in any one person with the syndrome. Likewise, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, manifests in any of a large number of otherwise usually rare opportunistic infections once the body's immune system has been disabled by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Again, not all of these show up in any one case; again, there is a common underlying cause.
After decades of research, psychiatrists remain divided on how the human mind works. There are various conflicting schools of thought (Freudians, Jungians, Adlerians, gestalt therapists, a plethora of others); beyond some empirical research on brain chemistry, neural functioning and other areas related to hard science, the teaching on the workings of the mind get rather hazy rather fast. In other words, we don't really know for certain how the mind works in the sort of detail that would enable us to talk about "common origins" for the extremely wide range of symptoms allegedly linked to this so-called syndrome. The word "syndrome" is simply used in this case because the naive and misguided think it sounds impressively scientific. The very fact that the parameters of Asperger's are so broad and vague pretty much tells you what this whole racket is really about; selling people a bill of goods. However, in the majority of cases, given the plasticity of the human mind in early development and the lack of any explanation of how this "syndrome" is supposed to arise, the above definition is, I would offer, likely to be at least as good as any.
Johnny and Mary Stewart could never get their asses out of bed in the morning and Mary filled little Billy's head with nonsense about how the world is full of people out to get him. When he was bullied in school she told him to ignore it. Now she's gadding about telling everyone he has Asperger's Syndrome. Surprise surprise.
by Fearman July 29, 2007
Get the asperger'smug. 1. Movie directed by Alan Parker in 1978, loosely speaking about the real-life experiences of young American hashish smuggler Billy Hayes in a Turkish prison. Starring Brad Davis and John Hurt. Script by Oliver Stone.
2. To escape from prison or some other aversive situation. Reference taken from Parker's movie.
2. To escape from prison or some other aversive situation. Reference taken from Parker's movie.
Midnight Express had six nominations for Academy Awards and won two of them.
I had to catch the midnight express out of boarding school.
I had to catch the midnight express out of boarding school.
by Fearman May 24, 2008
Get the Midnight Expressmug.