Perhaps they all eat Plumber’s Tape (aka Thread Seal Tape)?

I think you’re going to need some Blackadder to go along with your Monty Python.

Start with the second series though, as the first series is a little weaker (the characters and style are a bit different), and might put you off.

I’m under the impression that pretty much all railway maps are based on, or developed from, the style of London Underground (also known as “The Tube”) maps from the 1930s onwards - so they all look kind of similar, because the designs all grew and developed from the same starting point.

Okay, this pretty much helps, but now I don’t know what a VMA or an SNL is.

I’m going to go with “Viking Marauder Awards”, a yearly event where people re-enact the sacking of the Lindesfarne Monastery etc, via the medium of song and dance (and pyrotechnics).

and “Sitting Near Larry”, a weekly TV programme where a bloke called Larry sits down somewhere, and then semi-famous people come and sit near him and perform things. Larry has never heard of any of them, so gives them well-meaning but slightly patronising advice. Larry is just off-screen in the image shown above.

I suddenly picked up “allergies*” in my late 30s - couldn’t work out what they were, other than antihistamines (cetirizine or loratidine) made them “not as bad”, and I also needed to avoid certain things in particular (breathing in dust, aerosols, perfumes, other chemical fumes, car fumes, cigarette fumes, wood dust and drinking alcohol).

Turned out to be Nasal Polyps. I was due for surgery to remove them in 2020, but then Covid happened and I’ve been on a waiting list since. Surgery may completely remove the problem, or at least lessen it - but they could grow back within five years.

Basically every day is like I’ve got cold or sometimes flu. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in phlegm. If I take antihistamines, it’s pretty mild or controllable, as long as I can reasonably avoid those triggers. Sometimes I have to drink lemsip in the morning (powdered hot drink of paracetamol, lemon flavour & decongestant). It’s there every day, permanently, but how severe it is varies between “slightly inconvenient” and “too unwell to work”.

Antihistamines are essential for me to function at all, and make a huge difference - though I feel they’ve become less effective in the last year or so. Thankfully they’re very cheap over the counter (~£1.30 for 30 days’ worth). I also use a saltwater nasal spray sometimes, and I sometimes eat a lot of menthol sweets. I have to be careful with decongestants to avoid “rebound congestion” where your nose adjusts to life with decongestants, then becomes twice as blocked up if you stop.

If I drink alcohol or breathe perfume etc, my sinuses block up within half an hour, I can get an asthmatic response, and I get crippling arthritic pain in my hands and joints. Sometimes perfume and other sprays can cause severe, possibly dangerous breathing problems. I have an asthma inhaler for these emergencies, and always have to carry it with me, in case someone sprays perfume in an enclosed space (which might cause me to die).

If I keep reasonable control over these things, I can live pretty “normally”. If I actually get a cold, it’s like I’ve got a “double cold”, and it can make me too ill to go to work.

When it’s bad, it’s a pretty miserable existence to be honest, but in the larger scale of things it’s not a serious or life-threatening illness, so you feel guilty for complaining.

When it’s not so bad, I can normally ignore it for most of the day - and I have a pretty active job and am otherwise fairly healthy. It’s worst in the morning/night when I’m horizontal.

Your case outlined in the original post sounds particularly upsetting and you have my sympathies. You’re not being a baby.

*technically it’s an intolerance or hypersensitivity, and not truly an allergy, though it behaves in much the same way, and symptoms can be controlled in much the same way.

Here they still exist - they just make you pay if you want a new one. I (and seemingly most people) use them all the time still, but I guess more people reuse them more times now. I’m quite happy to pay 30p for one when the old ones get used up. I think they’re a bit sturdier than they used to be too - so less likely for the handles to snap when you’ve still got a mile to walk home.

I guess it mostly cut down on unwanted ones getting littered etc. Now they’re valuable, all the more reason to hoard them in a cupboard in the kitchen.

Where you are it sounds like they stopped existing - what do you put your food shopping in? Do you still have a thousand left that you previously hoarded?

I think technically it’s both, but it’s mainly focused on the former - the shop and supermarket ones. You now pay 20 or 30p for them - previously when they were free, they would sometimes force a bag on you, even if you didn’t want one (I guess to walk around advertising their shop).

Throwing pretend milkshakes at a pretend Nigel Farridge is disrespectful.

We should be burning effigies of him on bonfires.

As far as I’m aware, in English, the punctuation goes outside the quotes, unless it’s part of the original quote.

In American, the punctuation goes inside the quotes, even if it’s not part of the sentence being quoted.

I’m unsure of the habits of other English-speaking countries.

It’s fine, you’re doing well. You just need a few comments back and forth, then you start your fourth comment with “well, actually I think you’ll find…”.

On the fifth comment, you need to attack a minor spelling or grammatical error they have made.

Sixth comment, try and sound like you’re reasonable, and they’re obviously not… then it’s a race!

First person to compare their opponent to “basically Hitler” wins!

You should receive between 100 and 1000 argument XP, depending on the level of your opponent (you get about 10% more for a victory, but you can still level up if you lose every time).

It’s pretty mainstream in Lemmy Terms. On Lemmy, to be a niche computer user, you need to be running FreeBSD, Gnu/Hurd, TempleOS or still be running AmigaOS :)

MY MIDDLE NAME IS LOOT PACKS MCGEE

No it isn’t.

Ah man, looking at those bullet points I realize I’ve got the first two down pat

No you haven’t.

Looks great, thanks! :)

Looking at some of the Excerpts from “I could pee on this and other poems by cats”, I think ours are actually very well behaved (so far!).

They’re all boys (and twin brothers) and they’re all equally adorable, although maybe that one’s a little more equal than the others :)

They actually all lie about different things.

Grey cat likes to lie to get into the room you’re in, if the door is closed, by pretending there’s a horrific emergency on the other side of the door. “Help! Help! Let me into the bathroom with you! My agony shall not subside until I have access to this room! I am ill! I am dying!”

Stripey cat likes to open cupboard doors, cardboard boxes and then hunt, kill and eat pouches of wet cat food, then pretend it wasn’t him at all, and he is hungry and hasn’t eaten for days.

Black cat likes a more traditional “I’ve not been fed yet, I am starving”, and also “I have no idea how the water bowl ended up upside down, but it looks like we’re out of water again”.

Thankfully, none of them will scratch or bite (at least not me or my partner). Black and stripey will both gently push your hand away when they’ve had enough tummy-tickle-time. Grey cat can be tickled for at least ten minutes. He just waits for you to get bored.

I love that someone wrote a poem about our cats. Thank you.

I think they’ll like it too - I fear they’re growing tired of me singing “Who’s a little black/stripey/silver cat with a fluffy little nosey-wose, who is a cat with a fluffity tail” to the tune of “Ride a White Swan” by T-Rex.

Three little posers.

Reminds me of the two explorers from That Mitchell & Webb Look (youtube link)

“Of course not! Not North Wales! That’s ridiculous! It’s nothing like North Wales. No, South Wales of course. The resemblance is uncanny”

Before everyone gets in a panic from reading the headline, the bug is from ~2014 - 2015ish, so it’s almost 10 years ago now.