Offsite Comments

Jus' wanted to say...

Seamus Muldoon, last thread: ...psychopaths, sociopaths, homeopaths...

I laughed.

Obnoxious A-Hole: ...you might want to click on the Pay Pal link and buy a membership upgrade before you use up all your free introductory posts.

Ha. Good one. Not quite the stratospheric level of AlextheChick's suggestion last thread to make sure to search on anything you don't recognize, but good.

There I am, commenting away on the previous thread, when I decide to check for noodness, and I find not only is there noodart, it's 120+ comments in already.

I feel virtually orphinked!

Don't cry for me, Venezuela.

Polliwog #228: Lol, I expected to hear from you about that actually....

Sigh! I love being predictable. But, always nice to be thought of at all.

...It is a trait so rare as to be nearly unique (but I can't be positive it *is* unique), thus I stand by my construction.

As I said, I don't care. Just that voice is my head. I got on OregonMuse the other day about it, just because it was in a litrachure post. Commenters can mush language any old way with impunity.

I might suggest something akin to "may be unique."

If I cared.

BackwardsBoy: ...an Aussie...

What happened to Aussie? Said xe was going to be commenting regularly again, did for a while, then seemed to vanish after that night the partiers were still going 'til 3am or something Aussietime.

Bitter Clinger: Always paste into notepad and then copy that.

(and even that doesn't work sometimes lately. Something to do with the text encoding but I haven't figured it out yet exactly what)

I've never understood who pasting to then copying from Notepad is supposed to work.

If you paste to Notepad and try to save in ANSI format and it tells you to use Unicode, that at least tells you that the text has characters that will choke Pixy, but it won't change them in the text - unless you save the file in ANSI and re-open it, AfAIK, and even then, you'll lose the characters, not fix them.

Best to run it through the Unicode repair site
http://bit.ly/pixyize
but if your browser won't let you do ampersands, even that won't work.

All this and more moronsplained in the survival guide.
http://bit.ly/aoshq-csg

Discussion of the Iraq war and justifications therefor recall to me a couple of things.

If memory serves, and I believe it does...

One, he tried to hit Kuwait with a missle and just barely overshot.

Two, he did hit Israel with a missle, but it was a dud. (Perhaps it proved what some have said, his scientists told Saddam they had WMD, but they didn't or more exactly didn't have them all working.)

Three, the Iraqi air force buried their planes because we phoned and told them if they tried to fight they'd not have an air force afterward, one of the most brilliant and hilarious war moves I ever heard of.

Four, when we marched into Iraq, the people were throwing flowers and holding up babies for our soldiers to kiss they were so grateful; you don't see that footage re-run on the Laughingstock Media, ever again!

Five, most infuriating about Trump in the debate, it wasn't Bush who lost Iraq to ISIS, bumbling as the after-invasion might have been, but Obama who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

If memory serves.

Polliwog: It's an almost unique trait.

The 8th Grade English schoolmarm who lives inside my head vehemently screams, something is unique or it is not. There is no almost or other shade of uniqueness.

Me, I don't care and would never gripe about it pedantically.

Lizzy: Could be charitable and provide link to MWW AoSHQ tips page, but can't find the link, though...

You mean, the unofficial, unauthorized, needs-some-updating "Ace of Spades Blog Commenters Survival Guide"?

http://bit.ly/aoshq-csg

Mixed metaphor alert?

Shoot from the hip, see what sticks

Good gaw many, see what sticks? What is he shooting?

MTF: No issues at all, except for maybe the third hamster on the left- I think he loafs.

Loafs... ungratefully.

JJ here? Left you a pedantry on possessive form on previous th'ead before I realized this was up.

DANG it... NOOD awreddy?

Anyway...!

J.J. Sefton: It's Davis' birthday, not Davis's.

Um, officially...

Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend
Burns's poems
the witch's malice

This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press.

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Achilles' heel, Moses' laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by

the heel of Achilles
the laws of Moses
the temple of Isis

Strunk, Elements of Style
http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html

Got to thinking... (always dangerous...)

I expect Ruth Buzzard Ginsberg to be the next to go.

If we hold out 'til then, just let it be.

Who needs nine judges? Seven will do as well.

Doncha think?

Morning, Glorious Children of the Ultimate Creator!

What have y'all been thinking this fine morning?

Just dropped in, scanned the post, made sure I wasn't on the wall of shame, and dropped to the bottom of comments. What's the first thing I see?

...Trump would be a good President wimply...

Well, then! I see the ONT is in good hands, by which I mean out of control as usual, so I'll just say hello hello I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello and sign off.

One more time, ICYMI:
"Donald Trump is a Class Act" - 20sec video webwork
http://bit.ly/trump-classy
Be sure to listen all the way to the end for full effect.

Good night, gobbledygookers.

I don't often get to the food thread, much as I'd like to. I've been meaning to mention this since I saw it back on the Jan 6 Morning Thread.

I had posted a question on the previous food thread about a cast-iron pan we had, and it was identified as an ebelskiver pan (with which Milady made delicious little treats from a recipe on the food thread).

So, I was amused to read this comment, as I said, on a subsequent Morning Thread:

Lizzy: OK, now I'm getting ebelskiver ads from Williams-Sonoma...Thanks, food thread!

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?blog=86&post=360903#c24629255

New thread up and over 200 comments. I hope it's okay, then, for me to post this Valentine's Day oddity.

♥

The Urantia Book (what, that again? yes) helped me resolve several fundamental theological conflicts I had developed in reading from various religions including and beyond my native Christianity. It gave me an appreciation of the Trinity, about which I had been taught next to nothing when young and which concept meant nothing to me when I began my spiritual searching. The "Life and Teachings of Jesus" part reinforced my love for Jesus of the Gospels, and inspired me greatly to a life of spiritual service (poor as I have been at it). The book is not a science or history text, but it even gave me a great framework for appreciation of all knowledge, cosmology, anthropology, and the development of civilization.

That said, the part which has been especially valuable to me was the three "Marriage and Family Life" papers. Like the rest of the book, they can't be fully appreciated outside the whole teaching, but they stand out for me because, I really needed to learn the place of marriage and family in my own life.

Milady and I read the UB, and those three papers in particular, with great interest when we first got together. Our having done so has helped two young wild idiots of the 1960s to sustain our union for over forty years, and, I'd like to think, gave us good guidance on the basics of family life. I don't claim to be good at any of that, but I would have been much worse without the saving grace of those papers describing the historic development, valuable ideals, and practical aspects of making a home.

"Mars/Venus" was mentioned above. The marriage papers might even go farther than that book:

Male and female are, practically regarded, two distinct varieties of the same species living in close and intimate association. Their viewpoints and entire life reactions are essentially different; they are wholly incapable of full and real comprehension of each other. Complete understanding between the sexes is not attainable.
http://bit.ly/UP84-6-3
(Links go to the Urantia Foundation website)

Not attainable. Just accept that, and it becomes easier, guys!

Romance is fine, but the romantic relationship is a means to the greater purpose, not the end. True love for a lifetime is hard work for both parties to a marriage. (Hums "Do You Love Me?" from Fiddler.) This passage is more true today than when it was written in 1935:

The real test of marriage, all down through the ages, has been that continuous intimacy which is inescapable in all family life. Two pampered and spoiled youths, educated to expect every indulgence and full gratification of vanity and ego, can hardly hope to make a great success of marriage and home building - a lifelong partnership of self-effacement, compromise, devotion, and unselfish dedication to child culture.
http://bit.ly/UP83-7-6

That "unselfish dedication to child culture" was one of the great lessons for me.

♥

Finally, the last paragraph of the three marriage papers should resonate with most folks here:

Let man enjoy himself; let the human race find pleasure in a thousand and one ways; let evolutionary mankind explore all forms of legitimate self-gratification, the fruits of the long upward biologic struggle. Man has well earned some of his present-day joys and pleasures. But look you well to the goal of destiny! Pleasures are indeed suicidal if they succeed in destroying property, which has become the institution of self-maintenance; and self-gratifications have indeed cost a fatal price if they bring about the collapse of marriage, the decadence of family life, and the destruction of the home - man's supreme evolutionary acquirement and civilization's only hope of survival.
http://bit.ly/UP84-8-6

Pets fed. Also myself.

After I read old HG Wells Moon Men, then new The Time Traveler's Wife, so I was looking for something old again. Picked up The Sketch Book, by Washington Irving. A "Merrill's English Texts" study edition, 1911. Charles Addison Dawson, Ph.D, Head of the Dept of English, Central High School, Syracuse, NY, editor.

Inside the front cover is penciled a name and address here in town, the note "Junior High," and the days and times of English and "Anc History" classes. I wonder what year she was studying with this volume. I find the "study edition" notes and footnotes sometimes distracting as I keep flipping to the back, but more frequently informative and helpful with old usage and references and unfamiliar scenes. My distaste for "study volumes" is from my 1960s and 1970s studies, not this learned text from over a century ago.

I thought I was familiar with Irving pretty much only by name, although when I finished the sixth "sketch," Rip Van Winkle, I realized I had read that before, maybe a half-century ago. Fresh and amusing.

I quoted from the opening chapter, "The Author's Account of Himself" in the Art Thread a couple of days ago, regarding his choice of topics to "sketch."
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?blog=86&post=361493#c24825015

My follow-up comment will quote a St. Valentine's Day-appropriate selection, from "The Wife." The editor notes that "This sketch of pathetic sentiment, in its forms of expression and figures of speech, will seem to many trite and out of date." Really? I read the whole thing aloud to Milady and we both wept freely.

I HAVE often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it approaches to sublimity. Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness, while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and support of her husband under misfortune, and abiding, with unshrinking firmness, the bitterest blasts of adversity.

As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so is it beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.

I was once congratulating a friend, who had around him a blooming family, knit together in the strongest affection. "I can wish you no better lot," said he, with enthusiasm, "than to have a wife and children. If you are prosperous, there they are to share your prosperity; if otherwise, there they are to comfort you." And, indeed, I have observed that a married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one; partly because he is more stimulated to exertion by the necessities of the helpless and beloved beings who depend upon him for subsistence; but chiefly because his spirits are soothed and relieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that though all abroad is darkness and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love at home, of which he is the monarch. Whereas a single man is apt to run to waste and self-neglect; to fancy himself lonely and abandoned, and his heart to fall to ruin like some deserted mansion, for want of an inhabitant.

-Washington Irving, "The Wife"

In the post...

...The story centers on a rebellious cat with a protective owner, who sneaks out at night...

The cat is rebellious but the owner sneaks out at night? (Okay, the "with" clause makes that not entirely a construction error, but I had to say it anyway.)

...1990s slang in the mouths of 1940s characters...

Can't think of any examples offhand, but that is one that has bothered me sometimes, when I am pretty sure some usage was developed later.

Thinking of just having seen a trailer for "Risen" - even in ancient historical settings where they're all speaking "English" so you have to allow some leeway, use of some modern phrase will be jarring.

Of course, one man's plain modern jargon is another man's inappropriate hip lingo.

And in the comments:

Seamus Muldoon: I've said it before and I'll undoubtedly say it again....

It's sad how Muldoon has run out of new material. May have to change his name to Seamus Rubio.

I'll tell you what I've been reading, but, have to go feed the pets first. BBiaM.

Oooh! Morning, glorious fellow sapients! I see I got here early for the book thread. Yay!

You know, if the dream I was just having is any indication, the future may not be as fearsome as we thought.

I was being arrested for borrowing a couple of small pieces of paper to write a note. But apparently the special snowflakes were unable to hold me. A display of anger sent the officer to her safe space, and the fellow who tried to help her was reduced to tears when I threatened him with something in the shape of a gun.

Now to see what the O'Muse has brought us today....