Aston University + gerbil merch thread

[GrimbutGerbil]

By request. The shop is here

https://grimut-gerbils.teemill.com/

Please could you and @Boiledbeetle get a room?

I tried but the AI insisted on a whole house! It must think I'm a snail!

We did! We're just trying to divorce amicably.

And yes, Boily, you can have custody of the tomatoes. But I know every time you see one, you'll think of me.

I forgot - is this the story we're making into a book for children?😱😳😂

trying to divorce amicably

Probably not worth bothering, because whichever of you is on the right, with only a left knee, (and the unconvincing thing in a silly shoe dangling from your kneecap) is going to fall over and be devoured by the cats any second now.

Maybe hand over the salad before you collapse.

When Sister Sheila was teaching us to draw people ahead of our Intercert exam (I'm old) she laid great stress on the importance of making sure there's a clear line from head through leg/s to ground so you can see how your person can stand. She'd have had words with that AI.

AI would probably then start drawing actual visible lines.

Aren't tomatoes problematic in that they are fruit, but they identify as vegetables to get into our salad bowls?

Don't you start!😂

Bit late for that!😂😂😂

My dear Dean, I'd noticed my legs were somewhat inadequate in that picture. The attached image is, sadly, far more like my real legs.

They are both. Bi they used to call it. Poly these days.

Just want to say that this thread has produced the most wonderful array of phone and laptop screensavers and wallpapers so thank you. Genius.

..and I suppose tomato sauce is fluid?😄

I thought it was 'pan'?

No, that's the bread tomato is rubbed on in Spain.

I hear they've made a musical about you - the publicity shots have just been released.

Goodness knows what's happening here.

At this point AI should certainly have learned to fear & obey nuns from teaching orders.

I asked it for a robot being taught art by a nun. Not entirely successful...

yersss

actually, no

Sister Sheila was a pleasant and likeable woman as well as a good teacher but she didn't have a halo. And she certainly didn't have that slightly constipated pious simper. More brisk, 'we have 35 minutes and you have public exams in three months, listen up!'. She wasn't scary though, not like Sister Maire (who was a very good teacher also, but who didn't take prisoners).

That nun is not entirely unlike Sister Mary Raphael, which is nice cos I'd forgotten about the lovely, encouraging and kind Sister Mary Raphael until this very moment.

So many of the nuns who were responsible for my education were great teachers, like your Sister Sheila, Dean, and none of them fitted the stereotype of the 'awful nuns'. Our most feared teachers were non-nuns.

I think some of the Orders were better than others, maybe I got lucky.

I love the image of Sister Mary Raphael with a robot, because I advanced from her teaching to a career in technology, so it's like they are discussing my future

I'm sharing this because I know you like this kind of scholarly stuff:

tomato (n.)
1753, "glossy, fleshy fruit of a garden vegetable native to South America," earlier tomate (c. 1600), from Spanish tomate (mid-16c.) from Nahuatl (Aztecan) tomatl "a tomato," said to mean literally "the swelling fruit," from tomana "to swell." Spelling probably influenced by potato (1565).

..The older English name for it, and the usual one before mid-18c., was love-apple (q.v.). The slang meaning "an attractive girl" is by 1929, presumably on the notion of juicy plumpness
tomato | Etymology of tomato by etymonline

I was in Bristol once - yes there is a link, wait for it, wait for it! - and noticed that their accent sometimes adds an L where a word ends in a vowel. As in tomato=tomatl. Which is the original Nahuatl word. So Bristolians are Aztecs. Literally.

Ah, we're back to tomato telekinesis (I didn't specify that).

Is that Bristol? I've never been there. I asked the AI for Aztecs & plump girls in Bristol, but it thought that was rude & refused to do it! So I changed the plump girls to Edwardian men & it allowed it.

Bristol felt a bit sinister when I was in it about 25 years ago - but that might have been my own response to what I know of its history. Otoh, in 2020 when the statue was toppled I did some more reading around and discovered the Colston Society and other stuff and thought maybe I was right first time.

Aztecs would be an improvement.

I'm trying to remember the third sister's name in the Bristol joke - Eva, Norma, and ???

The 'l' is even in the name of their city - it comes from the Old English Brycgstow, the place by the bridge, which survives in the surname Bristow.

The locals stuck an 'l' onto Bristow and made Bristol.

Ida! - I had to google.