Threadjacking!

[Dandontdare]

Interesting looking exhibition at the British Library on all things Gothic: Terror & Wonder

I was impressed with the comics one recently, so if I get a chance to be in London before this ends I'll give it a go.

[Spikes]

Mean Angel had clones?

On a training course last year, I came across a nice little crop of Brainblooms..

[Hawkmumbler]

Discovered today that their is indeed a word that can best describe non-autistic people. Allistic. This actually makes me really happy because it devalues the "label" that is given to people diagnosed on the spectrum.

[The Legendary Shark]

Whenever I hear or read a label (autistic, disabled, Jewish, militant, immigrant, criminal, hero, legend, celebrity, tramp, woman, man, black, French, etc., etc.) I try always to replace it with "human".  Works wonders on my perception of the world and its problems and, crucially, on the solutions to those problems.

[Hawkmumbler]

I'd still suggest we retain "Irish". Need something slightly more gentle than "silly sod". 

[TordelBack]

I'd still suggest we retain "Irish". Need something slightly more gentle than "silly sod". 

Heh!

[Frank]

Could probably have done with working from reference for Death, but look at it ... if you could paint like that, you'd do so all day. (via facebook)

[Grugz]

my wife keeps asking what I want for Christmas ,I want a black series biker scout and speeder bike an xbox one or just a newer 360 and several books but if I tell her she'll just say "I'm not getting you that" what to do? 

we also bumped into my mother in asda and as I was no where near the garlic couldn't escape, she asked what the daughter would like but again if we give her a list of stuff you can guarantee it will be nothing remotely close on the day!

[DaveGYNWA]

Could probably have done with working from reference for Death, but look at it ... if you could paint like that, you'd do so all day. (via facebook)

I can't un-see Jar Jar Binks when looking at Death's head.

[Frank]

I can't un-see Jar Jar Binks when looking at Death's head.

It's not as if Fabry can't draw Death et al:

[TordelBack]

Very last straggly strung-out added-on day of my current main contract, and I happen to discover that my standard hourly charge-out rate is the lowest in the entire €400,000,000 project - the self-employed equivalent of a fourth-year apprentice, to be precise.  Imagine how I laughed, especially when I remembered that my next decent contract (if it ever bloody starts) is charged at the same rate!  The things we do for Prog money.   

[Hawkmumbler]

Screw that Tordels, if your earning roughly as much as I am then I shudder what some people are earning.

[TordelBack]

At least in my case it's my own desperation for work at any price that's screwing me, and as was pointed out to me rather forcefully yesterday, screwing everyone else too. 

The world of low-wage work is scary, but even at these amusingly low rates, there's far worse. My Dad's been in and out of hospital lately, most seriously with a very resistant wound infection he picked up the previous time he was in... Simultaneously I read that the average hospital cleaner in Ireland earns just 50c an hour over minimum wage.  You might think that cleaning hospitals was a pretty important job, but you might also wonder how motivated you might be to put in the maximum effort and attention to detail if they couldn't legally pay you any less to do it.  Speaking as a former cleaner of shopping centre and university toilets, I confess to a hope-no-one-notices approach.

NB: not automatically suggesting cleaners are at fault here - anecdotal evidence favours consultants who are too important to wash their hands between patients, and it certainly isn't their wages levels to blame.

[The Legendary Shark]

No better than slavery, is it? In modern slavery, you keep your chains in your bank account and pay for your own room and board.
.
It's about time some MPs, bankers or corporatists started catching nasty diseases from poorly cleaned toilets - cleaners' rates might go up then.
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Makes me fume that the most important jobs are paid very poorly and the most irrelevant jobs pull in millions.

[TordelBack]

As usual I question your definition of slavery, which while historically is a very diverse state, I generally view as a far worse condition, but I endorse your hopes for bacteriologically-mandated social change - but maybe I've now dragged a story of stupidity told against myself into the rightful balliwick of the Political Thread!