I hate it when people ask me to smile.
If you wore an iron mask, as I suggested yesterday, people probably wouldn't ask.
Quite right about the iron mask. Also I could pin notes to myself with refrigerator magnets. What's not to like, really.
I think of SB as a Tiresias. I could see an iron mask going with this.
I think of SB as a Tiresias.
The question is, is SB Tiresias as a man, or Tiresias as a woman? Can we keep a pair of coupling snakes around, just in case?
Why use a refrigerator magnet when for ~$10 you can get a rare-earth magnet with greater than 100 pounds of pull?
Ben, stop interrupting our flights of fancy with practical details.
Paul Theroux she* ain't, thank God. Note the Rasta-themed T-shirt -- no wonder they're so nice over there.
*Susan, the ostensible topic of this thread. Let's have a little thread-discipline here, guys.
Sufficiently creative persons would have seen both 8 and 9 as fanciful flight furtherances.
Sufficiently sharp persons would have seen 10 as ironic.
Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers pwned joo.
That was a very lovely post. It reminds me of some of the stories about the depression when there was a distinction between a hobo and a bum.
I'm talking to Susan right now—she says Tom Hilde's an Aggie? Is that so?
That's not right. He's an adjunct at Maryland or something IIRC.
(Uh, I shouldn't be the one guiding this post off the rails. Back to Susan! Lovely writing indeed.)
You're annoyed that he might be disgracing your alma mater?
there was a distinction between a hobo and a bum
A hobo is a migratory worker; a tramp is a migratory non-worker; a bum is a non-migratory non-worker. These are technical terms of hobology. If you don't believe me you can look it up.
But didn't hoboes go 'on the bum'? I mean, not just when they were being tossed off trains.
slolerner,
I believe you. I even said there was a distinction. Nowadays everythings seems to fall under "homeless."
Uh, maybe? I think you've just shot past the limits on my knowledge of hobological terminology.
I gotcha, Tripp; I was just supplying some unneeded erudition where none was requested.
A structure-preserving map on itinerant laborers is thus a hobomorphism.
Although the OED includes an entry for "homeless" as a class of person in 1809, the OED entry for homeless as a class of person dates only from 2004, which leads me to believe that "homeless" is almost certainly a recent neologism intended to thwart the casting of such aspersions as "bum" would imply. Like how "jungles" are now all "rain forests" and "jungle gyms," "play structures."
19: Something like that, something like that. Aren't you aligned with one of those season spoilers?
We're all spoilers, saith Easterbrook (scroll way, way down to "Texas: Land of Poor Sportsmanship"). Gig 'em!
About Susan's post - I think there's an inverse relationship between charm and efficiency. Charm is what you use to get things done instead of well-run government, or businesslike, rationalized procedures. Charm and/or bribes.
I regret rehashing an old discussion, but I'm intensely curious: Ogged, in what way was this post not earnest? Or is earnest self-expression not in itself a sufficient condition for indicating personal earnestness?
Well, it's funny, which I don't associate with earnest, and it doesn't seem to reach for more or greater meaning than is there in the story itself.
