But why would that be so salacious that it couldn't be named?
I could see "Those two watermelons look like a butt, and those two pumpkins look like SOMETHING-ELSES!"
But it doesn't seem right to stop short of naming pumpkins.
I don't think there's a missing noun implied: I think King's narrator is looking at Carrie, and saying that if you look at her from the front, you see two big watermelons, and if you look at her from behind, you see two big, um, buttocks and I'm too inarticulate to come up with a metaphor here.
4: I assume it was just that the narrator doesn't want to say "watermelons" twice and can't think of another simile that's as good.
Twin pumpkins? Twin seals?
More seriously, I'd bet it's just deliberately prosaic. King didn't want to use the same simile top and bottom because that would imply symmetry, but either he couldn't think of anything better to compare the other body part with, or he didn't want to use two different similes because that would get the reader hung up on the mental image, or he deliberately used a lack of parallelism to evoke the awkwardness of being an ugly adolescent.
You all are all probably right. I got very hung up on "what could be so dirty that it couldn't be named?" A butt that looks like A BIG DIRTY BUTT?
I'm pretty sure it's one of these:
Harps
Lions
Lakes
Wrestlers
Who's the narrator? I never read the book.
If Sissy Spacek were committed to her craft, she would have put on 200 pounds for the part.
8: not "fawns that feed among the lilies" then.
"fawns that feed among the lilies"
Or that. That's another possibility.
A butt that looks like ATWIN BIG DIRTY BUTTS?
Can someone dig up the actual text? I tried Amazon search-inside, but didn't find anything using the various keywords. All I found on Google was an inadequate quote using the word "bust" rather than "breasts", which I can't find again now.
Come on, heebie, we need you to find the full paragraph. Clearly there's some narrator or focalizer here whose identity is important.
IIRC, she wasn't supposed to be fat exactly. A little chubby in a way that a pariah would get abused for, but that actually looked great when she was dressed well for the prom.
1: Casabas was the prevalent term in my high-school back in the day close to when Carrie was written. N idea how widespread the term was (I know it is one of the generic melon/boob terms but for some reason it was *the* go-to melon). Nothing to do with the sentence, but thought I'd share.
There was a line from some stupid sitcom I saw once that cracked me up hard -- a bunch of characters were handing around a girlie magazine for some reason, and a dopey handyman-type passed it along saying "Look at that pair of Winnebagoes!" [pause] "The one on the left has real wood panelling!"
I just found that passage in a book other than Carrie: Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan, page 8.
Lois Duncan, the poor man's Stephen King. "Hotel For Dogs" was the basis for "Pet Sematary".
20: Well searched.
If she did she might see her as she was: a massive lump with boobs that looked like twin watermelons and a butt that looked like twin something-elses.
Well shoot. I was just coming to post that very discovery.
Does this mean the original Carrie wasn't fat?sa
She's described in the opening (shower) scene as "a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks".
See my 17. I haven't read the book in twenty years or more, but as I recall it part of what happens is that without much of an actual change in her appearance, she goes from awful-looking in the beginning to great-looking at the prom, just by dressing better (and maybe her skin cleared up).
Presumably she took her glasses off and let her hair down.
No kidding! My memory is so faulty. I did love Lois Duncan, though.
This was great, what a denoument. At least it wasn't in Fifty Shades of Grey. I also like this new technique of asking the Mineshaft to serve as Memory 2.0 and answer random things I've forgotten. Where are my keys, Mineshaft? WHERE ARE MY KEYS?
A psychologist hid them to see how long it took you to find them.
A psychologist and team are performing the parts of everyone on the blog who isn't you*, dear reader.
*Or your spouse.
30: yes. One of my favorite moments on the internet was when foolishmortal identified Otis Spofford from my sparse bit of remembered information.
33: Aw. The redacted comments in that thread made me a little ToStalgic.
Our experiment's funding has not been renewed.
I also like this new technique of asking the Mineshaft to serve as Memory 2.0 and answer random things I've forgotten. Where are my keys, Mineshaft? WHERE ARE MY KEYS?
I think you want to go here.
In related news, I've always been fond the French expression il y a du monde au balcon. So playful.
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It turns out I knew one of these two women in college.
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27 - Right, she makes her own dress (which is flattering) and gets her hair done. And... cracks a Beatles joke, I think? I remember being puzzled by the joke she makes when people are saying how good she looks and that they don't recognize her.
37: I like "Noel au balcon -- Pāques au tisons," because I'm not so naughty as you.
38: Oh dear.
Huh -- is that a tilde on the a? Circonflexe! The French may have ditched them, but some of us try to maintain standards.
The musical of Carrie, probably the second most famous flop in Broadway history, was just revived. I got the feeling they were making a mistake in that, over the intervening years, it's been turned into an icon of camp, whereas when you actually produce the thing it's probably just bad.
In Russian there is a little pun (or once I was so told)
на балконе ходят (someone is walking on the balcony)
sounds like
на бал кони ходят (the horses are going to a ball!)
I can't imagine this comes up frequently. Also this seemed relevant when I started typing it.
If that isn't relevant, then who wants to be relevant?
40: They're both fine, apparently. I found out about it from her fb post.
The other one, who kicked her way out of the car, is some kind of real-life epic hero.
Just realized I was unclear - the ones I know were involved in this part:
Less than a half hour before the attack on Hawthorne Street, two women were sitting on the front porch when they noticed a man walking back and forth. Suddenly, he ran up onto their porch and grabbed one of the women by the arm. He indicated he had a gun and then managed to drag her up the street into the trunk of his car.As the car sped down the road, she destroyed part of the interior of the trunk in order to be able to open the latch. She then leapt from the car running for her life. She suffered only a few cuts and bruises.
Help me Mineshaft yeah get her outta my heart!
All day I've been resisting the urge to do that. I can, or rather could, resist no more!
Does "[Phrase A] sounds very much like [phrase B]!" even rise to the level of a pun?
I assumed the pun part comes from comparing the sound of the footsteps of the people on the balcony to the sound horses might make when dancing.
I wasn't even intending to pun. I just couldn't stop thinking of the song whenever I saw the post title.
Huh -- is that a tilde on the a?
Seems to render as a macron for me, actually.
Circonflexe! The French may have ditched them, but some of us try to maintain standards.
Sacre bleur! I had no idea.
46,53: For me it was Brad in Rocky Horror. "It's beyond me, Help! me, Mineshaft ..."
Help me, Mineshaft, understand why whenever I press crtl+f to search for something in Microsoft Word, the program insists on opening a giant mostly empty gray box covering a big chunk of my screen. Which I then have to fight with in order to read the text in the document I'm trying to search through. WHY? The gray box is mostly empty! It's doing nothing other than obscuring my view!
It's hands down the most infuriating design decision of the last 30 years.
(a) When there are many results, the sidebar lets you scan through them quickly - is I think the rationale, which is weak. However:
(b) I don't think it's that bad in practice because it does get the "find" box entirely out of the way of the text, so it's less of an annoyance if you use "find" a lot to skip through sections, as I do.
It occurs to me my work computer has a pretty wide screen, so the sidebar doesn't obscure my text at all.
"Oh, were you trying to read that text under there? Sorry!"
Oh, I assumed you were talking about a relatively new feature in Word. Yes, the box has always been crappy.
It's hands down the most infuriating design decision of the last 30 years.
The most infuriating design decision is that there is no way to set default settings to be fixed whenever to begin a new document. You MUST start with their stupid factory settings. And this includes "Line jump with hard return!"
I'm very rarely sitting down to write prose in Word! It's all assignments and organizational lists and I don't want your fucking skipped line just because you think it's helpful.
I assumed the pun part comes from comparing the sound of the footsteps of the people on the balcony to the sound horses might make when dancing.
I think this is right. The putative pun was made in an apartment as someone walked by outside.
The horsey version gets 7,500 hits on google so at least I know I'm not making it up. Or else Russian horses are crazy mad for dancing.
Yet another reason for me not to have Word.
60: Word for Mac (or maybe it's just the nouveau Word; I switched around the same time) just flips you up into a little search thing in the toolbar. I'd forgotten how fucking annoying that is.
My mother (Russian-English translator) hadn't heard of this pun, but did some googling, and it seems it's part of a child's wordplay game, vaguely like knock-knock jokes:
Kid A: Dohorsesgototheball? (saying it very rapidly so it's easily confused with "Do people walk on the balcony"?)
Kid B: Um, yes.
Kid A: You think horses go to the ball? What an idiot!
Orange you glad I didn't say horse.
there is no way to set default settings to be fixed whenever to begin a new document
Are you sure? I've always been able to change it. It seems absurd that they would remove this capability, but this is Microsoft.
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Leslie Feinberg is dedicating the new edition of Stone Butch Blues to CeCe McDonald!
Cops are using their impairment-testing program to harass Occupy Minneapolis:
http://www.occupymn.org/2012/05/minnesota-state-patrol-dre-program-targets-occupy-minneapolis/
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I am normally someone who uses the default program for everything instead of seeking out free versions and open versions and efficiency-management life hacks, but instead of Word I usually use Jarte. This is a program that only works with .rtf files, which can really do most of what .doc files do.
Maybe we like to put on a tux once in a while and cut a rug, ever think of that?
Are you sure? I've always been able to change it. It seems absurd that they would remove this capability, but this is Microsoft.
I am sure of nothing.
That impressed us once but now everybody tries it.
Cops are using their impairment-testing program to harass Occupy Minneapolis:
Yeah, but people are saying the cops are giving them free drugs*. And people are complaining? Fucking ingrates.
*I doubt that's happening.
73: Depending on which version of Word you're using, it's relatively simple to (a) set everything (typeface, spacing, margins, etc.) as you like it and then (b) make those settings the new "Normal" style, that is, the default settings Word will always open to evermore*.
*or until your computer dies and you lose your personalized Normal.dotm file.
76: I think if your employer is an asshole or has had 800 virus infections caused by stupid employees downloading screensavers from "KittyPictureswtrojans.com", your sysadmin can block you from changing those.
