Show threadSam 2h ago
@alice Back in the >koff< 90s I was staying with friends in Bristol. We went out to buy ingredients for dinner, which included a whole salmon. Crossing the Bearpit, a stranger called out to me by my then nickname. No idea who he was. Later, I was cornered in the Brewhouse by a chap describing himself as a "Jewish prophet" who said comet Shoemaker Levy 9 fortetold armageddon. Later still, I was barred for making, "lewd and obscene gestures at the barman with a 10lb salmon." #TellAlice
Show threadHein Ragas3h ago

@alice My birthday is on our national liberation day. This is one of the days that people fly the national flag.
When I was little, a neighbour from across the street told me she was going to fly the flag on my birthday, specifically _because_ it was my birthday. And she did! She made my day.

#TellAlice

Show threadAdrianna Tan4h ago

@alice I once drove an auto rickshaw 2000 miles around India.

It’s on https://rickrollshaw.tumblr.com

#TellAlice

Rickrollshaw

A writer, a hippie, and a neuro-engineer walked into a bar. And started to drive an autorickshaw....

Tumblr
Show threadCassander4h ago

@alice In 2011, I spent two weeks painstakingly syncing the frames and audio for an English dub of a Polish DVD about Tibetan singing bowls. We didn’t have the original audio tracks, but we did have an English narrator and a few hours of singing bowl samples.

#TellAlice

Show threadEcho (&)6h ago

@alice For about two years, both my mom and I believed that our house might be haunted. We could faintly hear children's music in the kitchen at night- a music box, specifically. There were no obvious sources for the sound. It is a WW2 era house, so ghosts seemed plausible in lieu of better explanations.

One night, I took out the trash and heard the ice cream truck: a music box playing children's tunes at the same time we always heard it. The house was not haunted.

#TellAlice

Universal Basic Friend6h ago

#TellAlice When I was a child my family (through nepobaby connections) had access to a machine that could change the speed and pitch of a recording independently. It was a black box that looked very similar to a CD or dvd player of the time.

It was mind blowing to other theatre kiddies. I could take an existing piece of music and make it any key I liked. Giving me a pretty much endless supply of backing tracks that other singers didn't have access to. I could make a backing track in my chosen key and tempo from an instrumental track. This was unheard of.

But this is just what the 2x button on a streaming service does? Absolutely. It's now something we do every day without thinking.

Universal Basic Friend6h ago

#TellAlice I can gently and confidently hold the following species for you while you do veterinary stuff:

-goose
-alpaca
-llama
-mouse
-sheep

I'm also willing to negotiate with a goat on your behalf, but I want to be clear up front that I am representing the goat.

Show threadToast, Anonymous Fedi Fungus8h ago
@alice When I was a kid I used to sneak out of my house in the middle of the night to buy cigarettes at a gas station. A couple of times I got a ride from some older kids and played scrabble in someone’s basement. I have no idea who they were or where their house was, but they dropped me off at home between when my dad left for work at 5:30 and my mom woke up at ten.
#TellAlice
Show threadacb9h ago

@alice In the 90s, I played around with making fonts. I never got seriously good at it (it turns out that making a few characters is easy but soon you’re stumped by how you’re going to make a S or & that looks OK), though made a few simple geometric fonts, one of which was an adaptation of the characters on European Teletext displays.

Some time later, I received in the mail a DVD of the UK comedy series Look Around You, sent by the producers because they used my font in subtitles.

#TellAlice

Show threadBernard Sheppard10h ago

@azonenberg @alice I have read snippets; look something up, and keep going. Can't spell, mind you, but can define.

Latin at school helped me understand the anatomical terms of the uni degree that I dropped out of.

#TellAlice