81 thoughts on “Meme, Meme Against the Dying of the Light!”

      1. I got the system restore disk almost at once and groaned. Beloved actually took longer, which surprised me, but the wincing and groaning when he did were worth it.

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    2. How about a system restore disk pinned to a bulletin board? With an actual pin stuck through the disk! 😲

      Somebody I went to electronics school with was a field service tech for DEC. The office got a call from a naval comm station about a DEC computer, a CP/M system with two 8″ floppy disk drives. They couldn’t make a backup system disk. He talked them through the whole process step by step and they said, “Yeah did all that, exactly, and the disk never works.”

      He made the service call. Booted the computer, tested everything, with particular emphasis on the disk drives, found nothing wrong. Handed the Radioman Chief a new 8″ floppy disk “Use this to make a backup system disk.”

      Chief formatted the disk, ran SYS.EXE, copied the other necessary files to it.

      Tech says, “Stop.” Took the disk, stuck it in drive A:, booted the system from it. Everything worked normally. Pulled the disk out, put it in the sleeve and said, “I don’t know what was wrong before, but everything is working now. This is a good backup system disk.”

      Chief said, “Great!” Took the disk, stuck a label on it, walked across the room…

      …cranked it into a typewriter and hammered BACKUP SYSTEM DISK on the label… 😁

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      2. Reminds me of some of my early adventures….. like getting the customer to understand that I can’t connect to his computer to fix a problem if he’s running a coin counter next to the acoustic modem…….

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      3. I remember 8-inch floppies.

        And never underestimate the ability of uniformed personnel to break things. Thinking of the sergeant who was annoyed I hadn’t come to his unit to verify a manual for a cable reel extender (yes, there was a very skinny tech manual for a cable reel mounted between two wheels with a handle, a bit like an old-fashioned lawn mower.). I had missed him when I arrived, or he missed me, and by the time he found me two days later I was finished. But I went with him anyway, because he was insistent I had to at least look at the unit. They had painted it for me and everything….by dunking the whole thing in a big container of olive drab paint. Yep, it was now a solid, unmoveable olive drab lump. Sort of defeated the purpose of the reel.

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        1. Manufacturer: “It’s soldier-proof!”

          E4-Mafia: “Challenge accepted.”

          Grizzled old Sarge: “No sh!t, there I was….”

          😏😏😏🙄🙄🙄

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  3. Shaved beard dad and child.

    🤣

    We ran into that. We even knew it would be a problem. So what can go wrong when dad takes toddler into the bathroom for toddler to watch and observe each step? I mean really, what could go wrong? ??????

    🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Oh wait!

    Blood curdling scream is heard from the back of the house where the small main bedroom bathroom is located.

    Go running. Thought? Toddler fell off where sitting or standing (counter or toilet). Toddler grabbed something sharp, the scissors or hand razor (not the final step electric one)? ?????

    Scream. Garbled words. Scream.

    Dad: “Go away. I’ve got this!”

    Toddler: (Finally make out words …) “Daddy broke his face.”

    Mom: “Oh. Um. Okay.” Who then runs outside so the laughter can come.

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    1. We have a beard story too. Our third was a baby at the time. Put him down for the night. My husband shaved. Baby woke up crying for middle of night feed. Husband said he’d get him for me. Cry turned into trauma cry almost immediately. I went in to get him. Seeing daddy’s bare face instead of the bearded one sent him into a panic. In the morning, our son eventually decided it was okay. But for years afterwards, he preferred my husband with a beard and kept trying to get him to keep it.

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      1. Parallel; I have a beard. Where my wife worked, all the math professors had beards. We took our son in a backpack carrier to a casual function that included our new college president. Son reached out and stroked his shaved cheeks, wondering what was wrong.

        Good tranche of memes.

        My favorite is the Therapist/expectations one, very scary. IYKYK

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        1. Variation on the theme was our son’s first SCA event, at around three months. While I was in the bathroom my beloved presented the baby to Her Majesty, a very…buxom…monarch wearing a low-cut Tudor gown. Yep, the kid made a dive for the faucets.

          Her courtiers were appalled, but took it in stride. “What did you expect? He’s not a bottle baby.” (He wasn’t). Then she stared my beloved square in the eye and added, “It must be something in the genes.”

          Ahem. (And for the record, they did not have “a history”.)

          Liked by 1 person

      2. The sudden change from beard to no beard is a known hazard. We were trying to prevent that little surprise. It did not go well … Even afterwards there was a lot of toddler hands patting dad’s broken face. Hubby has not grown a beard since (in 35 years!). Dad was traumatized too.

        Our other story has to do with the traditional “taking a bite out of the moon” during part phase. I’ll save that story, other than “not my fault, again.”

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      1. When my wife and I brought our daughter home to visit my family for the first time (she was at least a year old, if I recall correctly), my youngest brother met us at the airport. It was funny to see her stare at him for a bit, then stare at me, and then stare at him again … trying to figure out how someone could look like her Dad!

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    3. Bearded men who have held littl’uns on their laps understand, on a level unavailable to others, why bearded women had so few grandchildren.

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      1. A surprising number of small children are terrified of Santa. Sometimes they’ll come to Mrs. Santa and tolerate the scary bearded guy long enough for the photo.

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        1. We had one of those. We did not get a picture on Santa’s lap until he was 4 or 5. One with Santa with one of us holding him next to Santa. But no way was Santa going to hold him and not have an obviously terrified infant/toddler. The pictures do indicate this. In the eyes of that toddler, that red suited person is clearly suspect.

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        2. When I was two, I announced, with great glee, that Santa didn’t bring the presents, Mommy and Daddy did. No strange man barging into MY home in the middle of the night!

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        3. My uncle use to do Santa photos for his brother in law’s studio, and they solved it by having Santa hats, and my aunt being a proto-grandma from about 35 on, and letting the kids play with the big fluffy photo-beard (wearing it with the Santa hat and such) so they got really nice family photos with Santa.

          But they could not have Santa take off his hat, because my uncle has a decent real beard, and is bald as a billiard ball.

          The little kids would look at him and start to scream. Finally, one was old enough to have the words for it and yell that.

          HIS HEAD IS UPSIDE DOWN! HIS HEAD IS UPSIDE DOWN!

          My poor uncle nearly died of laughter.

          Liked by 1 person

  4. Seriously impressed, yes.

    Husky is almost explanation enough.

    Dwarven breakfast rocks!

    Impressive point of view, there….

    Bigfoot rental… *Cackles*

    That cat is out of darns, indeed.

    Outside is Not Fun lately, no.

    …Now there’s a box company that knows their customers!

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      1. She was hired based on merit … the merit of making the right “decisions” on the Court, for which she excels. The explanation of those decisions, however … is where the DEI shines through …

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    2. Unfortunately, her role is likely to provide minority opinions that will be used by a future communist-dominated court to overturn current rulings that said future court doesn’t like.

      Of course, her going silent for the rest of her time on the court wouldn’t actually change the outcome of those hypothetical future cases because when all is said and done the outcome matters more than the process for the left.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. They will need to creatively edit as she often rants about unrelated things. In the recent sole dissent that got her smacked by her “allies” she was arguing about unrelated issues to the decision.
        Then again, a few more of her and they’ll make anything up. I doubt it gets there without . . . issues.

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  7. Here in the South we know the chicken crosses the road to show the possum it can be done.

    Housecleaning and the couch…I feel seen.

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    1. “Here in the South we know the chicken crosses the road to show the possum it can be done.”

      Meanwhile, the armadillos’ brains have completely blue-screened.

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  10. The package delivery, the delivery box for the cat, and “I asked my nurodivergent friends.” I was politely corrected by someone at Day Job for five minutes about something WWI related, until I pointed out that we were discussing the Kriegsmarine, NOT the US Navy yet. (It was not class time, so the best thing was to let the talker talk.)

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  11. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE MEME POST IS UP:  Meme, Meme Against the Dying of the Light!

  12. That last one is just beautiful.

    On the cars: Holland doesn’t have vanity plates (or didn’t, I think still not). But instead, VW owners would often decorate the rear engine hatch covers with large black dots, to make it look like a ladybug.

    Antitheft — I though the standard antitheft notice sign is an icon showing a stick shift. (For extra credit, consider a “three on the tree” column shift. Or worse, the umbrella handle sticking out of the dashboard stick shift of the Citroën 2CV — which in Holland was nicknamed “ugly duckling”.)

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    2. The AC went out on one of our vehicles this morning, when it was a mere 108° out. But that car already has three pedals, so it’s somewhat safe.

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  15. To whom it may concern:

    In years it’s AD [#years] or [#years] BC because AD is short for the Latin phrase meaning year of the Lord (anno Domini) while BC means before Christ. BTW, there was no year zero thus the twentieth century ended on December 31, 2000 for exact pedants.

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    1. Right. The educated people got to party ‘like it’s 1999’ and sneer, and party again in 2000 and smirk.

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    2. Stolen from I-don’t-remember-where:

      “Using BCE and CE is like having your pronouns in your bio”

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  19. Someone is illiterate. That is not a new “rock, paper, scissors.”

    That is The House That Jack Built. Criminy.

    1. This is the house that Jack built.
    2. This is the malt
      That lay in the house that Jack built.
    3. This is the rat,
      That ate the malt
      That lay in the house that Jack built.
    4. This is the cat,
      That kill’d the rat,
      That ate the malt
      That lay in the house that Jack built.
    5. This is the dog,
      That worried the cat,
      That kill’d the rat,
      That ate the malt
      That lay in the house that Jack built…..

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  20. Regarding the chicken thing and LotR, someone hasn’t played any of the Legend of Zelda games, apparently.

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      1. The most terrifying enemy in the game and one that wise players avoid like the plague.

        Unless you need to glide across a gap. Then you pick one up and jump off someplace high ^_^

        And I have a great image for that, if only I knew how to post it.

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        1. Experienced players, of course, when playing the newest game, immediately find the nearest cucco and smack it around to see if they still mob you to death.

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        2. I have had some success posting an image in the Open Thread at Instapundit, clicking on the image to open it in a separate tab, and then capturing the link from there to share here.

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    2. When it comes to chickens in particular, and birds in general, people forget (or refuse to understand) that birds are dinosaurs. They may not be the giant species that used to roam the Earth, but they are nonetheless creatures that learned to survive, and have been doing so for hundreds of millions of years!

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  21. Dik Dik pik? Carp out!

    The Infantry Oboes and Violin amuse greatly. (Looking to add a folding “spike” bayonet to a cane, because)

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    1. ”…For Brutus is an honorable man!”

      “At least I am not a slacker like Pontus Gero, that ‘oh, I left my knife at home’ rat bastard!”

      “Stop shouting, Brutus, we need to go right now!”

      Liked by 1 person

  24. About Frodo’s chicken: I suspect the One Ring’s corrupting influence is an area effect. Most concentrated on the person (or chicken) holding it, but still insidiously pulling at everyone nearby. Within a couple of weeks, Frodo would wind up serving grilled chicken for supper and be left carrying the One Ring anyway. 😛

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  25. I’mma gonna let you finish, but if the evils of socialized medicine were justly distributed, people who go communist and stay communist would go on records as being developmentally disabled, and communists alone would be targeted for euthanasia.

    It goes without saying that socialized medicine is evil, and cannot actually be just.

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