24 Aug 2010

Hestia and....the metrification of life

http://www.biggestloser.com
As a 'sorry' to Sonshine for his dad going back to work/hiding the remote control helicopter, I agreed that he could watch The Biggest Loser until 9pm with me last night.

We quite enjoy this weekly foray into the mad ranch where unfortunate overweight Americans are subjected to the neo-Nazi tendancies of Gillian and the Man. The Man seems quite nice, but Gillian has got the dead eyes of a shark.  Or worse, the dead eyes of a TV presenter Who Will Get Her Team to Weep on Telly At Any Cost.



I'm scared of Gillian.  She's the sort of dame that would flush your head down the toilet for looking at her the wrong way.  Plus she's got Madonna arms and buns of steel.

Anyhoo, in my bid to educate Sonshine in the ways of the world, we were chatting about how pretty the girls were - even though they were kinda heavy.  He said that they were pretty and that weight didn't really matter to him - he liked people for how they were, not how they looked.

Admirable.  But remmber, he's a lying little toad.  Anyhoo, I'll overlook that fact and we'll stick with faintly saintly thoughts about Sonshine.

He pointed to the heaviest girl: 'She's got a nice face and she weighs in at 400 lilibites.'he said.

'Hmmm - come again? I'm a bit hard of hearing on that side.  I thought you said she was 400 lilibites.'

'Yeah, I did.  Look.'

I glanced up at the screen and there it was, the girl's weight in POUNDS or LBs to you and me.

Stuffing my hankie in my mouth to stop a massively offensive guffaw of laughter (Look, I cry when Fuhrer Gillian makes her team cry, cos some of them have heart-breaking stories) and it all became clear.

Sonshine is a scion of the digital age - so, when he sees kb, it equals kilobytes, mb equals megabytes....so it seemed entirely logical that when he saw 400 lb, it stood for 400 lilibytes.

And so it came to pass that 'pounds' died a death in our house last night, silent and unmourned....and, in its place, the lilibite rules supreme.

The pound is dead, long live the lilibyte.

13 comments:

  1. Love it! Also, lilibites sounds faintly charming and sweet, so saying "I weigh 300 lilibites" almost sounds like a good thing...

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  2. That is so sweet, I kind of remember something similar here ... but as my memory is shit.. I cant xx

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  3. 'I love lilibites'. What a wonderful advertizing slogan. Ali, the kid's got talent, sign him up for an advertizing agency pronto. You'll make your fortune.

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  4. Oh, and another thing...I keep looking at Santa (who wouldn't). My God, how he's changed since I was a kid.

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  5. John B - it's a different Santa entirely. I think. Also, I fear that my son is rather savvy when it comes to cash, so any advertising slogan will simply finance more games for his Nintendo, rather than my dotage...

    Wildernesschic - You should write them all down when you remember them! Cos once you forget, that's them GONE...

    Santa - I'll be lillibiting from here on in. It may lead to confusion, but what the hell.

    Ali x

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  6. I've always wondered why they measure in lbs.Means nothing to me unless its converted to Stones and lbs.But maybe that's the point,keep the truth well hidden.

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  7. Far more logical than us calling them 'ulbs' :-)

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  8. According to Wikianswers:

    The letters Lb for pound come from a Latin word for an ancient Roman unit of weight, librae, which was equivalent to 327.45 grams.

    So, now we know!

    BTW - according to wikipedia, we should only ever use lb, never lbs - it's not grammatically correct.

    Amazing. I am educational twice in one day.

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  9. I love it! I have no idea how many lilibytes I weigh today. I won't be submitting myself to the Fuhrer either, she is scary. I was interested in the 30 day shred till I realised it was her regime. It would surely make me cry. She certainly knows how to press the right buttons to make them weep.

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  10. Lilibyte sounds less large and scary. I'll go with that word, too.

    Love,

    SB

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  11. Well that's agreed then - we shall just weigh ourselves in stones and lillibytes :-)

    LM - he takes things so literally I'm starting to wonder whether there is some kind of synapse thing misfiring in there somewhere...

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  12. Dear Ali, I think I'm going to weigh myself in lillibites only from now on. Not that I actually own any scales. I think it's for the best! I love his comment though... Bless him.

    I think John B thinks that's Santa in her profile picture of Joan Collins. And of course both Joan and Santa are wonderful xx

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