The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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Thank you, sir. I live but to surf. Bringing enlightenment to the masses (as well as to the select few) since 1822.

Ah yes, 1822, the year they lifted the coffee ban in Sweden. Much joy and merriment and a hellava party.

wish you well !

Hello just lurking in the murk...

Sleepy, hope you feel better soon!

I've had a long, miserable day. And I'm with Hartz and Nannarob in the fatigue department.

Holiday - Green Day

I am now drugged, from caffeine and chocolate. Since I've been abstaining from refined sugar and dairy products, I feel like I have taken a massive tranquilizer. It's been a long, gray, rainy day.

HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:

• #15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
• #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of you.
• #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.

H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.

• handshaking protocol, n: A process employed by hostile hardware devices to initate a terse but civil dialogue, which, in turn, is characterized by occasional misunderstanding, sulking, and name-calling.
• hangover, n: The burden of proof.
• hangover, n: The wrath of grapes.
• Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
• Hanson's Treatment of Time: There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days before Saturday.
• hard, adj: The quality of your own data; also how it is to believe those of other people.
• hardware, n: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
• Harriet's Dining Observation: In every restaurant, the hardness of the butter pats increases in direct proportion to the softness of the bread.
• Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
• Harrison's Postulate: For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
• Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something.
• Hawkeye's Conclusion: It's not easy to play the clown when you've got to run the whole circus.
• heavy, adj: Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
• Hempstone's Question: If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first class?
• Herth's Law: He who turns the other cheek too far gets it in the neck.
• Hildebrant's Principle: If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
• Hitchcock's Staple Principle: The stapler runs out of staples only while you are trying to staple something.
• Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they will find an easier way to do it.
• Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
• Hoffer's Discovery: The grand act of a dying institution is to issue a newly revised, enlarged edition of the policies and procedures manual.
• Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
• Hollerith, v: What thou doest when thy phone is on the fritzeth.
• Horner's Five Thumb Postulate: Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
• Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
• Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
• Hubbard's Law: Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
• Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to... to... uh.....

Heavy metal

Meaning

Hard rock music, usually electric guitar-based and always loud.

Origin

Heavy metal seems at first a strange label to apply to a form of music. A little investigation into the symbolism behind makes it seem a rather obvious choice though.

'Heavy' was coined in the beatnik area of the 1950s to mean serious or profound. The term 'heavy music' was then and later applied to music that was in that vein. Of course it's clear to see that meaning of heavy is derived from the usual meaning, i.e. weighty or massive.

Okay, that's heavy but why should a form of music be called metal? Well, metal is heavy, especially the metals favoured by the bands who played that genre, e.g. Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly and Quicksilver Messenger Service (quicksilver is mercury). Also, the term 'heavy metals' in the chemical sense include mercury, lead and cadmium, which have just the right image of toxicity to suit the musical style. It's interesting, although probably just co-incidence, that many of the British heavy metal bands came from the two principal centres of metal manufacturing in the UK, namely Birmingham (e.g. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne) and Sheffield (Def Leppard). With the decline of that manufacturing tradition, most of the 'metal bashing', as it was known, is now done by these bands rather than by men with big hammers.

So, heavy and metal are ideal candidate words for this genre. Add that to the fact that heavy metal had already been widely used as a military term for heavily fortified tanks/guns etc. and it starts to look like an ideal choice as a label.

The expression first appears in print in William Burroughs' 1962 novel The Soft Machine. His character Uranian Willy is described as "the Heavy Metal Kid". Burroughs later re-used the term in his 1964 novel Nova Express:

"With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms - Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes - And the Insect People of Minraud with metal music."

It isn't clear who first appropriated the term to refer to loud rock music, although several lay claim to it. The widely quoted description of Jimi Hendrix's music as 'like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky', while being a fairly accurate assessment, isn't the earliest.

Some claim that the US rock music critic Lester Bangs, while working for Creem magazine, used the expression in 1968 to describe a performance of the band MC5 (Motor City Five) from Detroit. Creem magazine themselves attribute the term to Mike Saunders, in an article about the 'Kingdom Come' album, by Sir Lord Baltimore, in the May 1971 edition of the magazine:

"This album is a far cry from the currently prevalent Grand Funk sludge, because Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book. Precisely, they sound like a mix between the uptempo noiseblasts of Led Zeppelin (instrumentally) and singing that’s like an unending Johnny Winter shriek: they have it all down cold, including medium or uptempo blasts a la LZ, a perfect carbon of early cataclysmic MC5."

This has the benefit of being a traceable citation, as copies of the edition are still extant. So, until other hard evidence is found, that has to be the current strongest claim. It would be surprising if the term had never been used in the musical context before 1971 though - after all Steppenwolf used it in the lyric of their 1968 song Born to be Wild:

"I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under"

The musical style remains popular, although less so than in its heyday - the 1980s, and has spawned sub-genres. These include 'death metal', 'thrash metal', 'grindcore' and even 'folk metal' (aka 'heavy wood').



PS If you get a Spinal Tap, the dials on the machines better go all the way to 11

Merle

hangover, n: The burden of proof.
hangover, n: The wrath of grapes.
hardware, n: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.-----Amen! (or have a wireless mouse thrown at it)
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
Douglas R. Hofstadter himself wrote this one in OMNI back in the
day...


Still lurking in the murk....

shared blessedmom's kind of day.

just woke up, read this

Thanks, Lau! That's a great way to start the day!

(blessedmom sits in her tree with her morning cup of tea and thinks there is no better place to hide from RL than in the cafe)

Where else can you find anatomically correct canes and heavy metal on the same page? ((sigh)) There's no place like home.

Gromit, you are amazing! You managed to scare Postie! Here's one for you:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFUe4tBL8IM[/youtube]

thank you, Lauri. That was a heart lifting trip in to the Mystic River.

Merlin

Luv ya, Merle.

Oh my! Does that mean whenever someone wants to intimidate Postie, they're going to call on me?

[A scream fades and dopplers away, as a dust cloud speeds over the horizon.]

Thanks Lauri... you started me on another tack...

The current location of Bluenose II[/b] (The ship in the video).

I learn a thing a day (at least!).

You're very welcome, Lau! I wouldn't want you to be bored, you know!