Random Thought Thread

I'm at the high school garden and the parking lot is full of cars for the youth football game. I just noticed that with the first dozen cars I can see, everything is either, white, grey, black or tan. Well, there's one in the distance that I can't tell if it's light blue or grey. But no bright colors whatsoever.

It's like "You can have any color as long as it's black" philosophy is still strong in the auto industry.

 

I see they had the road blocked off in the background so credit to the farmer for making sure every precaution was taken.

And yes, that's a heck of a mess to have to put away. Curious how long it took.

 

On my walk yesterday I saw that the thistles had moved beyond the flowering stage and had begun spreading seed via tufts of downy cotton. Reminded me of the line from A Visit From St. Nicholas: "And away they all flew like the down of a thistle." I realized I'd never seen the actual source of that simile, I'd heard it so often it had acquired meaning devoid of its source. I wonder how much else is rattling around in my brain disconnected from the real world.

 

This video showed up in my recommended and I really liked it.

 

She reads those in the perfect voice for them. Very soothing. It would be nice if she read an entire collection sometime.

 

Born to act. Even when reading a poem she can't help but take on an imagined persona of the author

And that poor interviewer... You know this one? Nope. You must have heard of this one? Uum, nope.

 

Who wins the historical crown of pettiness?

Thutmose III of Egypt who literally had the mummy of his grandfather removed from his current tomb to one nearby Thutmose’s own tomb in construction, leaving the mummy of Hatshepsut (his aunt) by her lonesome

Or Pope Stephen VI who dug up the corpse of Pope Formosus to hold a synod where he ranted and screamed at said corpse for hours.

I mean, damn. It’d be like you finding out your childhood bully was buried near your grandma, so you had the funeral director exhume the corpse of the bully and bury him elsewhere, or you yourself exhume him, haul his corpse to your house and you scream at him for hours.

Just the amount of pettiness...

 

I like this reading (and the poem). Although listening to it again I suspect most of the non-Brits here may need subtitles. Borderline Scouser - difficult to understand

 

I know I probably shouldn't be using Friends as an example of NY language, but can any of you overseas chaps clarify a couple of things. Is it normal for Americans to use 'bring' where the Brits use 'take'? For example "She forgot her passport so now I have to bring it to her." I hear this a lot, especially in Friends. Is it a NY thing?

Also the word 'defended'. We would say, "He attacked me so I defended myself the best I could." But in Friends (again) one of the characters uses it almost as a bastardisation of defensive and offended, as in "Look, you know how sometimes I can get a little defended?" Can't say I've ever heard this word used in this context before.

 

Yeah that sounds fine to my (western) American ears, because the passport is neither moving from or towards the speaker (I think that's the reason).

Are you sure it wasn't "offended"?

 

No, definitely defended. Maybe a blooper they just went with then.

No, it was Chandler.

 

Are you sure it wasn't "defensive?" That makes perfect sense in general American English.

 

That's the way we use it Texas too: to convey. One of the definitions of "bring" is to take to a place, so it's in yon dictionary that way.

 

I think it's general AmE, doesn't sound strange to Chicago ears.

 

Yeah I've got my fingers crossed.

 

I’ve never heard a single Brit use ‘bring’ this way. Not a one. I’d also argue it’s not correct at all. You don’t bring something to another person or place, you take it. Well you do bring it in a literal sense but you don’t say it that way.

If you’re coming round here tonight will you remember to bring my toothbrush? I left it there last night.

Oh, no! You’re not taking that ugly old suitcase all the way to Blackpool. Find a nicer one to take.

The person requesting the thing asks for it to be brought. The person granting the request takes it.

 

I think this is just one of those national differences, like the way Americans don't carry these in our pockets:



The first time I saw the words "pocket torch" (I believe I was reading The Last Battle, from The Chronicles of Narnia) I assumed they were talking about some sort of cigarette lighter.

 

A random thought sparked from a random conversation during one of my breaks today:


one worker I interact with occasionally on lunch at the smoker's hut shared a personal gem. Today (09/24) would be their 46th anniversary with their spouse; they're dead. They recollected how they are haunted by this. They asked me in an uncharacteristic sense of apathy if I have ever experienced a similar feeling before.

My answer was mediocre. I mentioned my uncommon spider dreams, how a few times I wake up in a warm sweat and hallucinate seeing a spider on the walls. This turned into an empathic sharing of tidbits, her on the spouse and I on Freudian dream interpretation of spiders and its non-relation to my own spousal situation.

She left briefly afterward. I thought to myself: why did I go on about spiders? Here is someone pouring out about their significant other and the importance of this day in a very timid way, reaching for a less-than-stranger understanding of their plight and I go to crap about something as silly and stupid as spiders?

Then again, spiders. They are creepy. Hate them, really. At five, one bit me on the toe when I was playing outside at the ol' duplex. Several days later, a nice red line was running up my leg. Use of antibiotics kept it from reaching my heart. Since then, I have avoided spiders like, well, spiders. Every night terror I have now--being in my thirties--always involve a spider jumping out of nowhere and eating me.

Is this what it feels like to be haunted? Helpless in sleep, stuck down in the webbing of the mind, screaming stupidly to no answer, to embrace the eventual, hairy mouth-claws of a hungry, incomprehensible bugger?

Eh, probs not.

 

Remember Franklin Dixon’s The Hardy Boys? It was a series spanning 190 books and it ran from 1927 to 2005. There are spin-offs of it, naturally but this was the official original series.

Just...wow...

 

what about it?