Knights, turtles, my ancestry (of sorts)

I was looking up the definition of "vambrance" to make sure it meant what I thought it meant (I was right and yes, I am a great big nerd, how ever did you guess?), and I came across a webpage--British, of course--that had listed the different parts of plate armour and where they were meant to go. And I sort of felt a small amount of glee when I realized that I knew some of these already. And no, I'm not getting excited over the fact that I know what "helmet" means. But anyways, mostly I just wanted to share some of my favorites. Like besagew. Which, and I quote, "block blows to the vulnerable armpit area". Or sabaton, which is a "foot protector" (read: pointy metal shoes).

Also, I think I reached new, dog-whistle pitches today when I discovered that my favorite cop show once mentioned one of the Bollywood movies I love to hate. This. It just pushes all the buttons of win and fail to make me spontaneously combust and at the same time wake all the little yippers in the neighborhood.

Which we have a lot of. Though really, it seems on Mercer you can categorize people by what kind of dog they have. There are the people with yappy, obnoxious little rats--they're older folks, and they simper and coo a lot. There are people with labradors or Golden Retrievers. These are the people who jog, walk the trails, and bike (they're not the Hardcore Bikers, though--that's an entirely different subgroup). And then there are the people with mutts and ridiculously rare dogs. I actually knew a guy who had a dog from Africa. These people...are the weirdos, but they're also the folks who will smile and not cross the road to save poor Fluffy-kins a heart attack.

Or maybe I'm just wrong. Still, I remain convinced that there are totally weird people on Mercer, and it's not just because we're all senior citizens and ex-Microsoft and send-their-kids-to-Kumon-Asians.

No, wait. That's exactly why.

That's sort of why if I come back after college, I'm not living here. You don't find hobos on Mercer, but neither is it the sort of place that produces intelligent, moderate, social human beings. It produces people like me. And I'm a hermit. And a turtle. And possibly just a distant relative of Hugh Laurie, waiting to blossom.

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Or at least, a distant relative assuming all turtles are descended from a single African man-turtle:

See? Case in point.