On the dreaded facebook, I have just stirred up a shitstorm.
I think I will coin a new word - Megativity. That means mega amounts of negativity.
Here is what happened:
Someone (a well-known singer) posted a reference to a controlled woman who went out and 'enjoyed' herself when the controlling husband died.
I found the report funny, because of one sentence in the middle of it which said:
Quote (my italics): "“It was a life-defining step for me,” she said last September. “I always wanted tattoos. My husband, who was deceased at the time, forbade me from having tattoos"
So I posted that I found that sentence funny.
... ... ...
Well when I posted that I had to laugh about that, I had umpteen replies trying to explain to me that the point of the story was that the woman had been controlled but wasn't anymore once he had died.
Oh Really?
Yes, dear people, I fully understand that, but that sentence there is a nonsense.
... ... ...
Here is a bit more of the main story ...
Charlotte Guttenberg’s husband made up his mind about what a woman should look like. To be a good wife, she obliged her husband’s wishes until the day he died.
Soon after his death, Charlotte found herself in a tattoo parlor. For her birthday, she was getting her body inked for the very first time.
“It was a life-defining step for me,” she said last September. “I always wanted tattoos. My husband, who was deceased at the time, forbade me from having tattoos. His whole concept was that no lady would have a tattoo. But it didn’t stop me wanting one.”
Now at 67 years old, Charlotte holds the Guinness World Record for female senior citizen with the most tattoos. Over 90 percent of her body is covered in ink, and she considers herself a “walking art gallery.”
“Every tattoo I have has a meaning to me,” she said. “They all flow into a story.”
It took 10 years to accumulate the tattoos, and in the process she met a new love of her life. Her current husband, 75-year-old Charles Helmke, holds the Guinness World Record for most tattooed male senior citizen.
... ... ...
You should see some of the screenshots I have taken of the comments!
Apparently, reading comprehension is something I am not good at!
LMAO
Comments
Facebook? Why bother?
When you get responses like this.
Has Social Media has turned into Anti-social Media. There has to come a point where doing anything on ASM is more trouble than its worth.
Personal Thoughts
I'm delibertely not on Facebook, SnapChat or any other ASM site/service. I made a decision after the daughter of a former colleague was bullied to within an inch of her life on Twitter. Up to then I was ambivalent but so it seems that these sites have become the cesspit of modern life. I don't know if someone has setup a site in my name. I don't honestly care. The lack of ASM Stress I have is important to me. I just say to people, 'will thr world come to an end if you don't visit Facebook/Twitter etc for a Day, a week, a year? Does it improve your life? Or is it the opposite?
having
Previously seen pictures of said tattooed woman - it's a very twisted story!
The problem is Julia, you prefer to read English, errors jump out at you and sentences like the one in the article make you chuckle.
However the vast majority of readers wouldn't / can't see the humour even when it's explained to them, they only see what they want, your comment didn't tick the 'girl power' box that they think the article is about. That to them means you are attacking their obviously superior moral ground, you are a bad person!
Madeline Anafrid Bell
I understand what she meant
Clearly, what she was saying was that he was "finally dead" or "was dead by the time of the tattoo". It's still crap grammar, though. It reminds me of the current American "I could care less" which should either be "I couldn't care less" or "I could care less?" with a sarcastic intonation. As a statement it is meaningless.
Sarcasm
I've never heard it used except sarcastically. You don't have to make it a question to be sarcastic. <-- Note. :P
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
most
Of the bad spelling/grammar can be traced back to mishearing/reading at some point and the solid belief that it must be correct because 'X' said it.
That particular one is used in a lot of American 21stC literature. But it cover all sorts of stuff pon pons for pom poms for example - i've even seen that on supposedly knowledgeable websites selling the things!
It's not just the 'mericans though, Kebabs are kebabs right? Wrong, in Germany i've seen Kebap, Kebob and more. And we aren't exempt in the UK, the good old Bhaji has recently spawned several new spellings which when pronounced phonetically you can see where they've arisen. My local Sainsburys has changed the spelling to Bhajeous although their own web site uses the correct spelling (they've flattened them too which is ridiculous.
Some of these are funny, some are lazy and some completely change the meaning altogether.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Interestingly
I was brought up with the ERB books, my uncle having a complete collection of paperbacks with luridly-illustrated covers, right up until he came home to find them gone. My aunt had thrown them all out as they were 'untidy'...
I am finding a lot of the less common ones on Kindle, and while the suck fairy hasn't been kind to all of them I did find an incredibly cheap set of the 'Carson of Venus' stories. Written in the 30s, it has a lot of ERB's slightly clumsy satire of then-modern times, including nasty fascists called Zanis led by a dictator called Muso. What is more interesting, though, is the use of language. One item in particular leapt out at me. That was his use of the word 'momentarily'. Now, when I dine out I don't want the waitron to be there 'momentarily', I want them there long enough to take down the order correctly. What I do want is them there 'shortly' or 'soon'. Over the water, the usage is different. What surprised me in ERB's 1937 book was that his usage was the same as mine. That fits in with Maddy's point above. Rather like the incorrect but almost universal use of the word 'cohorts'.
Despite what some dictionaries indicate
Momentarily is pretty much understood in both meanings on both sides of the Atlantic and has been for centuries. Context is king and it's actually less likely to confuse (though it may amuse more and frustrate less) than the two meanings of the word cleave.
As for cohort vs cohorts, English and other languages are chockfull of such changes in meaning and usage. After all, kine was once the plural of cow, whereas cattle could mean moveable wealth. No one uses kine anymore except in poetry, and cattle no longer is used to include horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and geese, as well as cows, all in one term. And childer was already a plural when someone decided it wasn't plural enough making it children. And in some modern usage, childrens.
Linguistics and etymologies are things I study for fun and the more I study, the more I find that there just is no such thing as a single correct meaning or usage.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
What do you mean
"No-one uses kine anymore"? I will have you know, lol, that it ( along with 'kie') is standard usage in Northumbria, along with 'coos' when referring only to female bovines. There is a similar use in Welsh, where the word 'da' can mean both 'good' and 'goods', with a specific meaning of 'stock' in the sense of cattle. In fact, look at the link in English between 'cattle' and 'chattel'.
I do so love linguistics and etymology!
Long words when a simple word would do
Why use 'momentarily' when 'shortly' would do?
How long is a moment?
Why use 'co-workers' when colleague would do? Colleague is not sexist.
Is it PC gone bonkers.
Oh, I used a long word when Mad would do.
I got a written warning from one former employer for refusing to use the company preferred words including co-worker.
They couldn't explain why colleague was not allowed.
I carried on anyway. It just didn't make sense. The company got so far up its backside that it got taken over by a competitor.
The company dictionary went out the window as did the whole group I worked in. Still, the redundancy allowed me to pay off the Mortgage.
I still rankle at 'Have a nice day' and 'your're welcome'. Today they mean nothing real.
Rant over. I hear the men in white coats coming for me.:)
Gripes
I rankled at "your're welcome", too. :-P
"Why use 'co-workers' when colleague would do?" My impression was that one in a profession, industry, or academic field can have colleagues across the nation and across the ocean. Those aren't necessarily one's coworkers.
Everyone has his own pet peeves, and everyone violates someone else's pet peeves at one time or another. I'm not going to please everyone.
"Is it PC gone bonkers." Could it be anti-PC gone bonkers? After all, political correctness hasn't been considered PC for a long time.
One the one hand, people routinely use "velocity" to mean "speed". On the other hand, I suspect that what I call the freshman physics definitions of "speed" and "velocity" (and the distinction between the two) were artificially created to exploit the existence of two distinct words. The correct answer to this physics question may or may not be obvious: "What is the average velocity of the gas molecules in a stationary gas?"
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
Depends On The Temperature
And the pressure, presuming that the gas is stationary because it is in a closed vessel.
Average velocity
..as worked out using vector diagrams, etc, would be zero. Average speed, however, would depend on the factors Jo mentions. Speed is scalar, velocity vector.
As for "coworkers", how exactly do you ork a cow?
Re: Average velocity
Very carefully. First, have an orker on hand, then be sure to avoid horns or hooves while using it! *runs away and hides*
As for whatever an "orker" might be, you could use your imagination, I'm sure plenty of ideas would turn up.
Precisely
Average velocity is zero, which is what I asked about.
The thing usually called the "thermal velocity" is the RMS velocity (or RMS speed -- they're the same in this case), and would be sqrt(3kT/m). If all the molecules have the same mass, m is the molecular mass. One can talk about the thermal velocity of each type of particle (such as thermal neutrons). Or one can talk about an overall RMS speed, in which case m = n1m1 + n2m2 + ..., where n1 is the mole fraction (or molecule fraction) of particles with mass m1.
How does one ork a cow? Presumably the same way one works a co.
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
Pom-pom vs pon-pon
Since the original French word is pompon both of the alternatives above are probably based on mishearings. Since pom-poms are also slang for breasts, I've even heard of organizations that prefer the spelling pon-pon to avoid that connotation.
As for kebab (or sometimes kabob in America), the Latinised spelling (anyone see what I did there?) is an approximation since the original word was probably written in a script where the indication of vowels was optional. Persian was probably the immediate source for the English derivation and may have been derived more than once from possibly different traditions.
Not every variation is an error, sometimes they are just variations.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Anti-aircraft Language
This reminded me of a particular sort of fast-firing anti-aircraft gun on U.S. ships in WW2, having paired barrels that fired alternately. Due to the sound of the gun firing it was commonly referred to as a "pom-pom" gun. I think.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
There you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QF_2-pounder_naval_gun
Accuracy
British Navy only? Teach me to rely on war movies for my information.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
This all comes down to the well known quote
attributed to George Bernard Shaw that "America and England are two great countries separated by a common language". Vive la difference!
Research
Doing research for one of my stories I read that pom pom is a word for intercourse in the far east. Never did check it for accuracy.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Over My Dead Body
There's a joke in there somewhere, but probably not a very good one.
I won't know until I dash off this little drabbliod:
.
OVER MY DEAD BODY
Laika Pupkino ~ 2017
"So how do I look?"
"Gorgeous! And totally passable..."
"You really think so? Hey, it that a real tattoo?"
"Yeah, I got it a couple of weeks ago."
"It's so cute, a little fairy! I love the colors in her wings?"
"You should get one just like it, then we could be sisters..."
"I'd love to, but I'd never get away with getting a tattoo, especially not such a cute, girly one."
"What's to stop you? You're almost 18."
"My Dad wouldn't stand for it. He's the reason I have to keep all my girl clothes and stuff at your place and come here to change into them."
"Um.... isn't your father deceased at this time?"
"He is, but somehow that never stops him from telling me what to do. He's a real man's man, and expects me to be like him. When he says 'over my dead body' he means it. I wish he was cool like your Mom and Dad..."
"Speaking of my Dad... You know he's a judge, right? Maybe he could help keep your dead and rabidly cisgender father from running your life the way he does."
"What could he do?"
"He could issue a Cis and Deceased Order..."
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
*grins*
enormously
Ta.
You
...never fail us.
you, my dear
made my night!
Love, Andrea Lena
I Thought It Was Going To Be
My little dead pony! Of course I should have known better. I actually thought "etymological" was something to do with insects too but it took Ronni to enlighten me.
Very Punny!
Erm
Maybe the zombie apocalypse is upon us?
Legal Briefs
There was an assemblage of quotes from various court proceedings some years back that had a number statements similiar to this. I believe Readers Digest printed one version. So you aren't alone, those people are just humor-impaired.
Wish I'd saved a copy of it, some were really funny!
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
The sentence that popped out to me
was the last one of the article: "Her current husband, 75-year-old Charles Helmke, holds the Guinness World Record for most tattooed male senior citizen."
Two thoughts that popped into my head:
- Were tattoos recently invented - i.e., have none of the heavily tatted young guys aged into senior citizenship yet?
or
- Does this mean that heavily tatted men die young - and never reach senior citizenship?
Then I Googled Mr Helmke and found a recent (Sept '16) article in The Sun that had color pictures of the couple with all (actually most of) their tats in plain view. Wow! Not my cup of tea (or coffee), but if it works for them...
*wince*
Ugly as sin. Whatever floats your boat but don't expect me to not give you an honest answer if a tatted up person asks.
A single tasteful *small* tat here or there, sure, but my sense of aesthetics is severely offended when it looks like there is no rhyme or reason to what gets tatted on.
Tattoing goes back hundreds if not thousands of years.
Some civilisations used it to mark status within the tribe etc.
In more recent times Sailors were the most likely to have tattoos. Often an Anchor. Popeye has one!
Personally, most tattoo's are just plain Fugly. There are exceptions so I suppose that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It can become addictive but in the end you run out of space on your canvas.
Allegedly
It came from contact with Polynesians, who have practised it for centuries. In Maori culture in particular, tattoos have a very specific status-related code. My own view is that I would have to be absolutely certain I would never cease liking whatever it was they inked into my skin, and as I can't guarantee that I have no tats. That and my fear of needles!
Deceased at the Time
Does anyone have contact information for Shirley Maclaine?
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)