Overheard conversations

[auto-da-fey]

He's got this dedicated cadre of (arguably) brainwashed college students who set up tables and, yeah, pretty much harangue people. I'm not sure how widespread they are--I seem them everywhere in L.A., and I've seen them in New York City subways stations too--but they can get really aggressive. You're right, it's totally Pynchonesque. Although I'm not sure even Pynchon himself could come up with some of their crazy literature:



You should totally read LaRouche's Wikipedia page--it's really quite fascinating.

[slow west vultures]

thanks adf.  i read the first part of it, but it will probably take me awhile to comprehend it.  can you bring me up to speed on his relevant cultural attitudes vis a vis this weird shit he puts out.  the wikipedia article just covered his labor group involvements (well the part that i read so far) 

[DCDave]

Lyndon H. LaRouche is batshit.

[C of heartbreak]

Man, LaRouchies. They pull you in with what appear to be sound ideas, but once they actually start talking to you, you can tell they're part of some weird cult. When I was a freshman in school I was dumb enough to give them my name and phone number for their list, which resulted in them constantly calling me to come distribute literature or sing cumbaya or drink blood or whatever it is they do.

[DCDave]

One kid I knew actually got mixed up with some LaRouchies and his dorm had to intervene and decult him.

[auto-da-fey]

Lyndon H. LaRouche is batshit.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Joe, regarding cultural issues, he tends to privilege the economic--I've actually asked his cult members about his stance on gay marriage, and all they'd say was that there are more important issues. But he's certainly a reactionary homophobe--in the 80s he sponsored a measure to quarantine AIDS patients in California (IIRC it actually went to ballot and drew a scary amount of support). The evidence of antisemitism necessitates a bit more interpretation, but Dennis King makes a pretty compelling case in his book Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. 

But I suspect all of this is covered more effectively on the Wikipedia page anyway.

[slow west vultures]

okay another dumb question

what does IIRC stand for?  i've never been able to figure it out.

i don't think i want to read much more about the guy.  hopefully i'll never cross paths with any of his followers.  i mean what i was reading didn't sound crazy, but his life certainly did. (i think i'm someone who could probably be interested enough to read more about his economic theories and see if i agree with them, but i don't think i want to go down that path)  he kind of sounded like a cross between alfred chandler (the management theorist) and some roustabout of the political left wing.  it sounded like he went to some pretty great lengths to disrupt any kind of socialist/communist/labor group he was affiliated with. 

if you had asked me yesterday who i thought lyndon larouche was i probably would have said a novelist of some stripe.  i think i have him confused with some author who writes cold war/action thrillers.  who am i thinking of?

[Good Intentions]

IIRC - if I recall correctly.
urbandictionary is good for things like this.

[morgan]

Maybe people should just stop using internet acronyms.

[RavingLunatic]

Seriously.

[milesofsparks]

I like it when people use them, though I constantly have to look them up.  my friend and I spent much of the summer speaking in ridiculous acronyms, to the point that we couldn't stop.  we pretty much said "omgwtf" all the time.  but we also use lots of other fake, secret, and made up words.

[RavingLunatic]

I had to look up two words GI used in a post earlier today. Turns out neither of them are in my large 1600-page Mirriam Webster Dictionary. The words were "posho" and "partician." I'm guessing the former is a slang term and the latter some kind of specialized philosophy term.

[edison]

I had to look up two words GI used in a post earlier today. Turns out neither of them are in my large 1600-page Mirriam Webster Dictionary. The words were "posho" and "partician." I'm guessing the former is a slang term and the latter some kind of specialized philosophy term.

Haha, I had to look up these exact same terms. No luck either.

The acronyms I'm not so fond of.

[Nick Ink]

Was it 'patrician'?

[edison]

Ahh, that very well might have been. Damn GI and his sloppy language!

[RavingLunatic]

THat could've been what GI meant.

EDIT: Ah yes, that's almost certainly what he meant.

[Swimmy]

In real life (IRL lololz) I say "oh em bezoar" very often. Nobody gets it, but nobody ever asks.

[aftm]

i'm pretty sure i get it. Oh my bezoar? is that it? there's a bezoar in the bottom of my glass as we speak. i'm lying.

[Good Intentions]

Yeah, I meant patrician. 'posho' is Brit slang for a dyed-in-the-wool rick kid, and Lord Russell was certainly one of those, with the life of privilege and class sensibilities to match.

The guy was a pretty fantastic philosopher, but no matter how good you are at logic, it does not make you an insightful social commentator.

[slow west vultures]

if you had asked me yesterday who i thought lyndon larouche was i probably would have said a novelist of some stripe.  i think i have him confused with some author who writes cold war/action thrillers.  who am i thinking of?

to answer my own question, i believe i was thinking of nelson demille.  although i'm sure lyndon larouche could write a damn fine cold war action thriller if he tried.  they're both vaguely french sounding names, but that's where i got confused.  although now that i know lyndon larouche's middle name is hermyle there will be less chance of confusion. 

[Andrew_TSKS]

In real life (IRL lololz) I say "oh em bezoar" very often. Nobody gets it, but nobody ever asks.

i totally thought this is something that was made up for harry potter. i had no idea bezoars actually existed until now, when i looked it up on wikipedia.

[YojimboMonkey]

Come on Andrew, you read Sandman, you know they preexisted Harry Freaking Potter

[Andrew_TSKS]

nah dude, i have only read volume one, and there aren't any bezoars in that one.

[YojimboMonkey]

Basically a joke post anyway positing the superiority of my "learning about things from a comic book" against your "learning about things from a children's book."  But I had no idea you hadn't read the whole series.  Seems like the kind of thing you'd have read.

[jebreject]

I meant to post this a couple weeks ago, but one day I was captioning a call and the doc (that's the person we hear, as opposed to the client, who we do not) began to spell something: "Now that's Z? Z as in xylophone?"