But that's not how I want it to be

[austin_dern]

Two workers are dead and 29 injured at another major construction collapse. This one, at the Fusionpolis site along the bus line between my office and the nearest MRT station, was caused by reinforced steel bar structure giving way at the sixth basement level. This is one of the deepest basements in Singapore; it's intended to be the site of two 26-storey towers. While it is intended to connect to the Circle Line MRT the collapse isn't related to the Nicoll Highway collapse last week; digging for this part of the line won't begin for years.

Work on the site had been delayed last year when a cache of 834 bombs left from World War II were discovered. The building is meant to be a media and telecommunication/Internet complex.

I actually got one question about how the grades meeting went. It was just about what I expected: A bit over an hour long, consisting mostly of people presenting grades for courses I don't know anything about to verify that students I don't know are doing about as well as we might expect. Not much material to make jokes about, I'm afraid.

And last night FurryMuck brought up again one of my least favorite repeated conversations. When I want to look at someone, I first smell and then look at them. This is so ingrained in me if somebody just morphs and mentions not changing scent I can't avoid smelling and then looking at them. Austin Dern is a coati; every language that has a name for coatis derives the name from ``nose''. It'd be grossly out of character not to sniff people. Most folks don't mind or are too busy posing dramatically once the cursed look-notify tells them someone's looked to worry about it.

But now and then someone demands I stop smelling them. I know; they imagine I have to jam my face up their rear ends. So I explain that it is remotely possible a creature which, in real life, has an astoundingly skilled sense of smell might just be able to smell a person in the room with him. This person griped even after I pointed out Bil Gilbert's observation of a coati possibly smelling humans approaching from a mile away.

I love talking about myself; but these conversations start on the wrong leg and don't get pleasant. So far everyone's conceded victory to me. I've wondered if someone would ever take my determination to smell people just as often as I look at them to the wizards. I imagine they'd tell the complainer to stop whining and come back when they have a real problem. (Have I got it about right, chipuni?) But it's the sort of win that spoils the whole night.

Trivia: The word ``pea'' was a folk-etymological formation, truncating the word ``pease'' which was originally singular and plural (like ``sheep'') to fill in a ``missing'' singular form. Source: The Origins and Development of the English Language, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo.

Currently Reading: The Second World War, John Keegan.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Well, most people tend to view the 'smell' command as more... intimate? than the look command. They're visually oriented. I tend to only give a sniff to people that interest me somehow. I can completely understand it's in a coati's perspetive to go nose-first, though.

I've noticed a big dropp-off in use of the command since 'smell here' was banished from WCotP; Before then it was a lot more prevalent. I still use it far more than most, but usually, it's look, smell coming later on. Most of my morphs have different scents, except for outfit-changes within my normal 'look'.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Smell is the really poor cousin of look; that's part of the reason I smell first. Unfortunately almost nobody has scents that make it much worth the effort -- usually it's on the order of ``You smell a fox'' which suggests the writer has never stopped to pay attention to what real people smell like.

Trying to come up with scents is one of the things that always bogs me down writing new guest descriptions for Spindizzy, but I carry on and put something there. It is harder than description writing, probably because there isn't the same range of general and specific words to use.

But I'm guilty of something like that sin myself on mucks like Spindizzy and FurToonia that support ``feel'' and ``taste'' commands... I can't bring myself to use orv's joke of ``he's completely tasteless. Ask anyone.''

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

That's idiotic. If people don't want to be smelled, they shouldn't have a scent (and especially not smell-notify). And I agree, a coati should sniff first, and ask questions later.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'd like the notify messages to be wiped out altogether, since too many idiots use them as chances to make embarrassing scenes out of ordinary encounters. (``Voluptua poses for an ogling Austin! ``See anything that you like, deary?'''') As noted it gets even worse with smell-notify. (``Vixenlicious wonders what Austin finds so enchanting about her nether regions, and can offer him a tour if he wants -- and promises to be naughty!'') It encourages people to stop looking or smelling people at all, which results in plainly absurd things like people not seeing my rabbit-ears and tail (on Spindizzy) or my mint fur makeover (on FurryMuck).

But then the people who tend to use notify messages as tactical weapons tend to be the sort who'd write their own code for it if the macros were removed from the mucks altogether. At least this way many will thoughtlessly use the ordinary one and I can mess some of them up by setting my %N nickname to another pronoun-substitution key.