Snf, snf…you smell something?
Aw, did you see this? Dear Leader may not get the waxwork embalming treatment. Apparently, it costs about $300,000 to fly in the Soviets for the full plastination dealio, so they might bury him like a common mortal. The Norks are a bit skint at the moment.
Oh, but hey — good news! I got to use the Photoshop “plastic wrap” filter for the first (and undoubtedly last) time.
Speaking of Photoshop, Adobe is turning the crank something fierce. For several years now, they’ve been overpricing individual software products (~$600 each), hoping to force users into “suites” of programs (to the tune of about $1,500 a suite).
Now, they’ve changed their upgrade policy, just in time for Christmas. Used to be, you were allowed to upgrade at a discount for three releases. Now, they’ve announced you have to buy every release or fall off the upgrade ladder. Because what they’re really trying to do is get everyone on a subscription, so we pay every month for the privilege of using their software.
However you slice it, it’ll be a steady $600 a year or so to have the latest and greatest Photoshop. Weasel, out 🙁
Posted: December 20th, 2011 under international, personal, politics.
Comments: 32
Comments
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:35 pm
Has anyone else seen Lenin in his digs at Red Square? I did in the 70’s and I have to say I wasn’t all that impressed with the look. While I have no doubt that there’ve been improvements in the technology since 1924, if I was running the show, I’d just put in another $650K or so order for some Hennessey cognac – and maybe if I were feeling pleasantly drunk and generous, spare enough gallons to float a turd, so to speak.
By the way, I never understood the whole “Deer Leader” bit. I always thought that the real “Deer Leader” was named Rudolph.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:37 pm
Am I banned yet? 🙂
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:41 pm
If only I knew how…
Comment from Redd
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:43 pm
Are commies the only ones into that wax ’em up put ’em on display shite?
Lenin
Stalin
Mao
Ho Chi Minh
Who else?????
[My favorite Alan B’Stard episode was the one with his tryst in Lenin’s Tomb.]
Comment from Redd
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:45 pm
Wow, my post got eaten and it had no links!
Anyway, I asked if anybody but commies do this wax ’em and put them on display nonsense?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:45 pm
Huh. Sorry for the trip to the spam filter, Redd. Don’t know what it didn’t like about that message.
Maybe the spam filter is a pinko.
Comment from Oceania
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:49 pm
I hear that there is going to be Polonium in the Food at several Democratic Fund Raisers this New Years!
Comment from Redd
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:49 pm
Maybe the spam filter is a pinko.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit! 🙂
Lenin has to stink to high heaven which makes me wonder how much of him is real and how much is artificial.
I also have problems with the Egyptians. Did they really want to be all shriveled up, contracted, and ugly as shite in their afterlife?
Comment from MIke C.
Time: December 20, 2011, 10:50 pm
Just shellac him, and go over him once a month with Pledge and a rag.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 20, 2011, 11:00 pm
Apparently, the Egyptian embalming process did that to them rapidly, Redd. Some of them were quite fat at the outset.
They embalmed some poor English slob who donated his body to science a few years ago and televised bits of it. After a month, he looked a thousand years old.
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: December 20, 2011, 11:10 pm
They actually have a new method where they soak your body in an acrylic resin for about a month, so that it can displace all of the water in the body.
You then become one solid piece of dried superglue…….
Comment from Oceania
Time: December 20, 2011, 11:11 pm
It is all to do with cross linking proteins, and how ‘reversible’ the process is. Gluteraldehyde is better than formalin, however there are other processes involving traditional embalming techniques.
Ethanol works a treat also … but you are best to avoid propylene oxide.
However, if you are a real expert – you will work out how to preserve proteoglycans and glycoaminoglycans – even humble old collagens …
Comment from Redd
Time: December 20, 2011, 11:22 pm
They embalmed some poor English slob who donated his body to science a few years ago and televised bits of it. After a month, he looked a thousand years old.
Is this really science or just fodder for another weird UK documentary? (And I watch most of them :))
Last night I watched something on the Shakespeare controversy. There isn’t one. But I was creeped out by them digging up Walsingham’s grave looking for original manuscripts.
Same in Italy. A guy wanted to dig up some woman’s grave to see if she was the model for Mona Lisa. Why?
Comment from Oldcat
Time: December 21, 2011, 12:01 am
Redd said:
Same in Italy. A guy wanted to dig up some woman’s grave to see if she was the model for Mona Lisa. Why?
And how would it help – she was unlikely to be buried with an affadavit saying she was Mona Lisa anyway.
Comment from Spad13
Time: December 21, 2011, 12:09 am
Oldcat, she’s probably not smiling anymore either.
Comment from Mike James
Time: December 21, 2011, 12:26 am
Soooo…they’re making Kim Chi?
Comment from Sven in Colorado
Time: December 21, 2011, 1:27 am
Wease…totally off topic, and it is what I imagine you to be:
Bright eyed, well groomed, and ready for battle in the snow.
I had to wash the Kim Bleh Yurg, anna Barn-yard frank Massex-chutt-shites images out my head.
Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: December 21, 2011, 1:49 am
Yeah that’s why I use Gimp. These companies complain about pirating all the time but they basically encourage and pressure people into it by their gouging and prices. Photoshop is outrageous.
Comment from Oh Hell
Time: December 21, 2011, 1:58 am
I will never think of Kim-Chi in the same way ever again….
Comment from NancyB
Time: December 21, 2011, 2:26 am
Read Dr. Li’s account in The Private Life of Chairman Mao of his attempt to embalm the Chairman. Things got frantic, with powerful people in the government issuing contradictory orders and the poor doctor trying to tell them he was a doctor, not an undertaker. Too much formadehyde was pumped in; the head swelled up like a basketball. The nurses were trying to massage it out. The swollen body would be covered by the suit so was not a problem.
Comment from Redd
Time: December 21, 2011, 2:31 am
I’m still trying to find out how this fad of waxing and displaying dead commies started. I found this:
http://cogitz.com/2009/09/10/incorruptible-corpses/
I forgot that a sign of sainthood was the “incorruptibility of the corpse” – though a lot of them – maybe all, had a little help with wax coatings.
I looked up St. Bernadette in wiki (I don’t want to get spam blocked so you’ll have to find it yourself) and she got her first coating and glass coffin in 1925. So, maybe, that’s where Lenin’s evil minions got the idea?
Comment from Oceania
Time: December 21, 2011, 5:29 am
Maybe you can Embalm your Constitution before it Decays?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z8bbuMQLlqs#!
Comment from mojo
Time: December 21, 2011, 4:33 pm
What kind of license checking is it doing? Might be worth a look.
Comment from Redd
Time: December 21, 2011, 4:55 pm
Stoaty: The link in your original post answered my question:
The practice of embalming Communist leaders began with Lenin in 1924, entombed in a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square, and joined by Stalin in 1953.
I do still wonder if they weren’t trying to equate commie leaders [spit] with saints.
Comment from mojo
Time: December 21, 2011, 6:09 pm
Old Dictators never die – they just smell that way.
Comment from Randy Rager
Time: December 21, 2011, 9:32 pm
Really makes ya wanna switch over to Corel’s products, y’know?
Comment from Deborah
Time: December 21, 2011, 9:48 pm
Historic Eastern Christianity (which would include Russia and the neighboring countries) were big on relics and icons—artwork that represented Christ and the saints, et cetera. I suspect that making such highly visible “icons” out of Lenin and Stalin were a pointed message by the Communists to the “Church.”
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 21, 2011, 9:49 pm
I used to be a beta tester for Corel, back in the day. (How long ago? The last version I tested was on 22 floppy disks. And I had to upgrade to Windows 95 to run it).
Sadly, it’s no substitute for Photoshop. Although I’d really like a copy of Painter 12 – it does some cool, painterly things.
Comment from Gromulin
Time: December 22, 2011, 12:10 am
…was on 22 floppy disks
Say that to anyone under 25 and they tilt their head at you like the Victrola Dog.
I remember pirating all of MS Office suite on floppies from the office…must have taken 3 hours just to copy the (20? 30?) damned disks!
Then, of course, you had to go out and buy the 3″ thick books that went with every application.
And we wore onions on our belts, ’cause that was the style at the time.
Comment from Alice
Time: December 22, 2011, 1:16 am
LOL, Gromulin.
Have to admit, I really miss the user manuals. I used to READ those things to sort of map out the whole software architecture in my head. The current method of a post-it note sized microscopically printed ‘quickstart’ guide coupled with non-contextual (but searchable!) online help irritates me to no end. I’m reduced to brute force ‘well, I’ll just try THIS then!’ keyboard thwacking.
Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: December 22, 2011, 2:02 am
*What Alice said!*
I was trained by my mother to read all instruction manuals for household equipment cover to cover. As I matured, of course, I learned what I could safely skim, but the habit endured. When I started having to learn new software, I solemnly read my way through the User Manual for each new application (even those manuals that were, um, difficult to follow–well, so were some of the home appliance ones, come to that, because writing manuals is an art, and not everyone masters it) and came away with an awareness of how the program organized its work, and of features that I might not use right away. . .but was happy to find lurking in the back of my mind when needed.
I /abominate/ most online help sites, although I will say in fairness that the online help for Acrobat Pro is. . .not bad. It actually gives you an expandable TOC in a sidebar that makes sense and can help get you where you want to go, in addition to the search box.
I wonder, though, how much of my perception that TOCs and Indexes and alphabetical lists are valuable ways to find information is a function of my having been trained to use the TOC and index and alphabetical list as research tools. My sister, who was for many years an indexer with the Library of Congress, used to say that indexing was a political activity–meaning, the indexers got to impose their collective (and, to a degree, their individual) biases and opinions on the user by their definition of and assignment to index entries.
But, yeah–with respect to software, I’ve essentially reverted to the “let’s push this button and see what happens” that the Owner’s Manuals for home appliances were designed to avert. That can be a /really/ bad idea with anything plugged into an electrical outlet. . .
Comment from Ric Locke
Time: December 22, 2011, 2:40 pm
Pray for me: I’ve just bought CS 5.5, Design Standard. It’s not yet loaded, as I think my present computer would squeal like a girl [misogynist alert!] if required to accommodate it. I’m sort of looking forward to a new computer, but the prospect of learning InDesign by the Nintendo method (press the button and see what it does) does not appeal.
Regards,
Ric
Write a comment
Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.<< carry me back to ol' virginny