I know the answer. But this is too soon.
2,3: Sidebar/comment thread order reversal.
I believe the first time I encountered "clear as mud" was in A Wrinkle in Time. I found it discombobulating.
If Winona Ryder is somehow involved, please provide more information.
I get no love regarding the update to my crazy uncle's escapades in the Whitney Houston thread.
The Russian Society for the Appreciation of Pogo and Butt Vodka.
I guess my guesses are going to be automatic false ones. Dammit!
14: It is a little early to just give away the answer.
16 would have been better if it were 15.
Federal Reserve Board TARP allocation meetings.
The Bingo Long Travelling Mercenaries and Torture Kings.
The story I heard about this today included the first use of the word "buttcracks" I've ever heard on NPR.
22: Just one, but that fucking promo is on constantly.
The cast of The Fresh Beat Band.
Apparently, they had a great day and will rock it their way. I'm scared, apo.
Stomp the House is notable for when Twist starts droppin' science in the middle.
Wait, you mean the answer to the question in the post.
THE CHIMPEROR AND HIS VIRILE LACKEYS
32, 33: Strong opinions on Corn Flakes?
27: So I guess children's music is better than when I was wee (Hi, Raffi*!), but wow, so peppy. That girl mimicking playing drums does appear to be using natural sticking techniques (meaning, she's alternating hands in a way that's roughly how you'd do it), so that's something.
No correct answer yet, people!
*Actually, I was Raffi-protected, but I was aware.
Stomping the yard was bad enough. The house? There's breakable stuff in there.
Wasn't it some weird British civil service / regulatory / child care agency or something like that? I'd swear this is something dsquared posted about a year ago.
Went and looked. Nope. Although there may have been another such incident that I'm confusing with this.
Did you guys go and hold UnfoggeDCon III without telling me? Is that what the quote is about?
After feeling like I was being bludgeoned with them (as MH says, the promos are on about every fifteen minutes on Noggin and nickelodeon), they've kinda earwormed themselves into my good graces
That girl mimicking playing drums
Her Wikipedia page says she turned down a scholarship to Berklee College of Music to go be an actress. She might actually be a drummer.
Hey apo, I put something meaty in your inbox.
It was the Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Really, look it up.
41: I suppose they are better than Moose A. Moose as filler between Diego and Backyardigans.
Yeah, I saw that, thanks. It arrived right at the beginning of my fantasy football draft.
She might actually be a drummer.
I'd believe it. She was using the right sticking. I just don't think the sounds came from that plastic junk she was hitting.
I loved the Frazetti contest entrys. We should do that among the Unfoggedetariat.
How's the Mustard Truck looking these days?
43 is my favorite wrong answer so far. But it's still wrong.
better than Moose A. Moose
Berries are the fruitiest
Shoes are the bootiest
Puppies are the cutiest
Treasure is the lootiest
Teams are the rootiest
Horns are the tootiest
EVERYWHERE I GO
23: Yeah, that was amusing. But later in the day they were playing recordings of wackos at town hall meetings, which would have been amusing in another context. It's bad when ya can't remember them talking points...
Those aren't the words to "Everywhere I Go".
The drinking-vodka-from-the-buttcrack thing disturbs me. Ethanol is a solvent, people. Ick.
47: Good feeling about this team.
49: And the animation is of such high quality.
By the way, Ramil Guliyev is the only white athlete among finalists of 200-meter race.
I tried my best, but I just couldn't run any faster.
53: At least it's antiseptic.
56: Azerbaijanis aren't white, they're Mexican.
Ethanol is a solvent, people.
Oh god, I hadn't quite put that together. Ick is right.
58.2: But, if the keep working hard, they might be promoted to Greek.
58.2: You wouldn't believe how fast Freddy Mercury was.
You don't often see a sentence like that in a news article. And by "a sentence like that" I mean a sentence starting with "By the way". Who's doing the copy editing at Today.Az anyway? This article is highly confusing.
And I think the opposition party is showing its hand a little bit here. You can't announce a bloc before it's fully formed, man. A block's just gotta come together on its own. Don't rush things.
ack. 65 was me, an anonymous almost-exclusively lurker.
Um. I'm known IRL to at least, and I believe exactly, one semi-regular.
65: Well, crap. I deleted your comment out of haste. Re-post it? I was delete-happy.
I'm sure someone can even turn up a fruitbasket for you.
The C Street house?
This in response to 66 which was in response to 65 which was in response to the original 65 which was in response to this.
Don't tell me we've lost the fruit basket. I can't find it.
I believe the first time I encountered "clear as mud" was in A Wrinkle in Time. I found it discombobulating.
In a book about tesseracts and the physical manifestation of evil, "clear as mud" was the thing that threw you off?
Can I ask a totally OT question about something that confuses me?
BBC headlines often include single quotation marks, like "Somali camps 'unfit for humans.'" I understand this to mean that some report has been done in which the phrase "unfit for humans" appears in relation to Somali camps. Fine.
Next is "Galaxy 'cannibalism' revealed." Here, "cannibalism" is scare-quoted because, you know, galaxies aren't animals consuming one of their own species. It's imagery. Fine.
Then: "Garrido's wife 'misses children.'" Maybe a quotation, but in context sounds unfortunately sarcastic? Oh, I "miss" my "children."
Then, consecutively, "Child obesity drug use 'soaring'" and "Downturn in US economy 'ending.'" Later, "Phones of Princes 'hacked into.'"
Am I the only American reader who finds this constant use of quotation marks confusing or a bit dulling to the idea of quotation marks? I always look in the article to see if it's a direct quotation from someone, but usually it's not, and not just when it's a scare quote.
72:Oh thank god. Now, pm, just pick a pseud that won't bother LB and we're all golden.
Or maybe it's all scare quotes and the BBC is easily frightened of words?
You know in Britain they use single quotation marks where we use double quotation marks, right?
No one would ever say or write, I think, in this case, "Oh, you know Garrido's wife misses children." She misses *her* children. It's not a quotation.
IOW, aside perhaps from "cannibalism", they're probably all quotations inserted into the headlines.
74: I think the Beeb is more circumspect in announcing things like the end of an economic downturn than, say, the U.S. media, so they make it clear that they're quoting someone's opinion. I quite like it.
78: quotations modified for headline style, perhaps.
77: Of course. I'm asking what quotation marks are for when it's not a direct quotation or signaling a non-standard use of words.
I read the misses children bit the same way nosflow did. Also, if you say it aloud in a fake British accent, it seems to fit better than misses her children.
80: Yet they have the most dipshit science reports known to humankind. The headline might be circumspect, but the article itself often isn't.
No scare quotes in "We are all mutants, scientists find."
85: Well, of course. It's like people don't realize that X-Men is a documentary.
'We' are all mutants, scientists 'find'.
Why are we discussing the BBC rather than Today.Az? :-(
Also, if you say it aloud in a fake British accent, it seems to fit better
I find this is true of many things.
72, 75: Um. I liked the fruit basket teo offered me more. Take your pick, I guess, pm.
pm, did you use to be ptm? Until, I guess, a tragic accident cost you the "t"? But you've recovered enough to comment again?
Or maybe you're someone different.
The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crack Game in New York?
I don't think I even got a fruit basket.
87.2: OK. I like this headline: "Armenian diaspora in UAE is dead: head of Azerbaijani diaspora organization "
And from the article, the spirit of Serdar Argic lives on:
Only then Armenians, taking advantage of the opportunity, were able to print in a newspaper that allegedly with the support of Turkey Azerbaijan has imposed a blockade on Karabakh and wanted to occupy it. After reading this article, I decided to force the newspaper to correct the errors and punish them for their lies. I succeeded to do it in a month . It took a lot of efforts. All the authorities were informed in a written form that the paper was engaged in anti-Emirate propaganda.
As a result, after a great pressure from local authorities, the newspaper published a new article, which included the following: "Karabakh is historical Azerbaijani land occupied by Armenian extremists, thus killing thousands of innocent people." We must always be alert and monitor the press, both Arab and English speaking.
89: That is not the canonical fruit basket.
I don't think I ever got a fruitbasket either. My delurking process was long and tentative.
Check it out: Japan's Dennis Kucinich just became prime minister.
92, 96: It probably helped that I delurked by defending New Mexico in a thread teo was reading.
94: I was afraid of that.
93: Also "Armenian expert: Armenia has a role of ball in football diplomacy".
I never got a fruit basket, either.
AWB sprang forth, fully delurked, from Labs's head.
I was trying to shift the fruit basket thing in a more dignified direction.
so the answer is middle school, isn't it?
The answer is the reason, and the reason is because.
Back when I was reading lots and lots of headlines, I wondered the same thing about the BBC. Why use the marks if the quote's not in the article? I've wondered if maybe there was an audio/video version of the story with the quote, but never looked one up.
There's probably a really geeky joke about Cecil Woodham-Smith waiting to be made here.
Maybe it's a marker of indirect discourse.
The presence of quotations in BBC headlines is an indicator that the BBC itself is not reporting the claim, it is merely reporting that someone else is making the claim.
So, the headline "Somali camps unfit for humans" would indicate that the BBC are making this claim themselves. But the headline "Somali camps 'unfit for humans'" is the BBC reporting that some other person or organization (in this case, Oxfam) has made this claim. It's headline shorthand for "[Someone says that] Somali camps [are] unfit for humans".
The use of quotes does not mean that someone has actually said these exact words: usually they are a paraphrase of something someone has said. In this case the claim was originally "barely fit for humans" but this was too long for the headline.
This form of headline-ese is ugly and often misleading, but it's standard in UK media.
What 110 said - this is the standard British headline idiom. My guess (and it is a total guess) is that it originated from court reporting. Basically, fair and accurate reports of court proceedings are exempt from libel - which otherwise is an everpresent danger for British newspapers. So it would make sense when reporting some potentially defamatory claim made in court (X killed Y, say), to make it very clear that the claim is a reported one, not the newspaper making it itself.
Alternatively, it's possible it originated in the tabloids. The red tops are notorious for putting really punchy, totally made up "quotes" in their headlines, that ostensibly convey the gist of the story. "My drug hell", that sort of thing.
102: I was trying to shift the fruit basket thing in a more dignified direction.
Or it could be shifted in this direction (entitled "Fruit Basket"). But that would be *WRONG*.
Somali humans 'unfit for camps'
Meanwhile from Today.AZ, " Iran sets record for number of simultanmeously hung prisoners".
So single quotes in British media == the word "alleged" or "allegedly" in American media? I think I'll take the former.
Doesn't matter if it's single or double. What matters is whether it's in a headline. Basically, if something is in quotes in a headline, don't assume it's actually a quote. If something's in quotes in the body of an article, it's supposed to be a direct quote. Of course, it's far from unheard of for the tabs to just fabricate quotes.
Also, allegedly doesn't have quite the right connotation, although it's often what it means. The connotation is that someone other than the newspaper has described the story's subject in that way (but not necessarily with those precise words). It could be an official report, a witness, the subject, whatever. It's (usually) a distancing device.
90: yes. And that tragic accident was me forgetting exactly which unimaginative letter combination I had chosen.
119. Well, if you hang around, LB will start bullying you to adopt something more memorable anyway, like Pip Emma or something.
Póg Mo Thóin is available and an excellent choice.
Silvio Berlusconi, at it again.
126: Assolutamente. I hope you like pasta. And espresso. And that other thing.
And the BBC news website is clearly written by blithering idiots anyway, so don't fret over any of it.
I read the story that Stanley's post is about today in the paper, and wondered whether it would be commented on here. The Guardian article included the quote "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one)". The [buttock]'s cracked me up.
Today's follow-up world-in-brief-type story in the Washington Post print edition (can't find the blurb online) had the unfortunate headline "Probe Underway of Embassy Guards".
They should probably just write "[gluteal clefts]".
Pm is a nice pseud, I'd love to adopt it if pm abandons it and one can change it according to the mood pm/am
A headline with single quotes that achieves wankerdom in a different way: "GOP calls VA pamphlet a 'death book.' Experts say it isn't." From the (usually better than this) folks at McClatchy.
115 is a masterpiece of sublimated journalism major frustration (I hope).
I think you should stick with 'read', read.
