His poetry is better than yours, Ogged.
But not as good at basketball. Also, less rich and less married.
But not as good at basketball.
I'd like to see the half-breed throw one down.
Maureen Dowd cannot be allowed to write about these, but I suspect it is inevitable.
I'd like to see the half-breed throw one down.
I gotta say...I don't think he can dunk. And he's taller than ogged.
5: Rich, married, *and* he has children. Adorable ones.
Being married with kids is what they call "footloose and fancy free," right?
So I'll see you in Vancouver?
What does "throw one down" mean?
I recognize that this must be an ignorant question, but really I'm curious.
You should be able to figure this out from context, parsimon.
Parsimon's career as a pop culturist seems destined for shortness.
9: No, it means my life is fuller and more meaningful than yours. Plus, my mother has grandchildren.
I though AWB and Ogged had agreed to breed two grandchildren and divide them between the grannies.
12: Indeed. I take it that in this context it means to dunk a basketball. I just thought it had a broader application, as a phrase. Okay, okay. I imagine one can also throw one down in, say, football: throw the football down in the endzone, triumphantly!
Don't tempt me, Emerson. I don't speak sports.
Jock culture is complex and subtle, P. Ladies can't understand it. Furthermore, elements of unbelievable stupidity are situated at key areas just to confuse them.
my life is fuller and more meaningful than yours
Hey, Hitler was somebody's kid. Let's not count your chickens while they're chicks.
I like Stormcrow's explanation in 16.
What are the odds on AWB + Ogged = baby Hitler?
20: Like you, however, Hitler never married or had a child.
But I'm not a vegetarian, so the world is probably safe...until your kid grows up.
Hitler both married and (likely) had a child.
We should bet on whether PK gives up meat before you have a child of your own, or die, whichever comes first.
Nobody's going to take that bet; look at the progress they're making on cloning these days.
I don't think a clone would count. Plus, can you imagine Ogged being willing to share the spotlight with an exact copy of himself? No way.
23, 28: Hey, B., this seems kind of harsh.
In any case, I was only on about the "throwing down" thing for my interest in metaphor. Generally speaking, "up" words are positive, "down" words are negative. "Forward" is good, "back" is bad. In the English language. So "throw down" was curious to me, on the face of it.
I was thinking more of the potential for one's parents to steal a DNA sample from the cutlery after Sunday dinner. I know mine would have tried something like that, if I wasn't a normal human being with two lovely chilter who are the joy of my life. And frankly, if they achieve as much as Hitler did, I'll be happy for them and won't judge them.
No one will take the bet because you have one of the subjects in a little Skinner box, and as for my early demise, I wouldn't put anything past Hillary Clinton some people.
Hey, B., this seems kind of harsh.
Sexist. He started it.
Generally speaking, "up" words are positive, "down" words are negative
Is this true? Getting down. Going down (on). The downing of the Hindenburg.
you have one of the subjects in a little Skinner box
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I can't even talk the little brat into putting on his fucking shoes, are you kidding me?
I can actually see that conversation.
"Dad, I've got something to tell you"
"I know, son, I read the papers"
"So you know about the ..."
"Well, I know what they said, but I want to hear your side of it"
"Thanks dad"
"Now you might have gone a bit over the top and you've probably broken the law, but that's in the past. First thing we've got to do is, get rid of any written orders connecting you to any of this"
"Thanks dad"
"By the way, when are you and Eva going to start thinking about getting me some grandchildren?"
"Aww dad ..."
It's so hard to stay mad at little Adolph.
what they call "footloose and fancy free,"
I thought that was "Cry, cry, masturbate, cry."
It's either that or cry, cry, wipe ungrateful child's bottom, cry.
Is this true?
Yeah. Actually. There's some great work, probably 15 years old now, but so what. By George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, on metaphor. You'll forgive me if I don't hike upstairs to find it. But pretty convincingly working their way through standard English metaphorical patterns (e.g. things are looking up, I've been feeling down; it goes much further than that, not just the up/down thing) to demonstrate that our linguistic usage is very definitely and recognizably shaped.
It's obviously not universal. "I'm down with that" doesn't necessarily constitute a counterexample. It's pretty deeply embedded in our linguistic structures.
Ah, but the children grow up and wipe their own butts, you see. Whereas the lonely sobbing never really stops, now, does it?
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
I thought they were considered hucksters nowadays. Or is it just that their new work is considered hucksterism?
but the children grow up and wipe their own butts, you see.
Last I heard that was still an issue round your way.
Last you heard was a long time ago, then.
wipe ungrateful child's bottom
To the contrary, between the ages of 1 and 8 months, when I was wiping his bottom my son would manifest a smile that was not only grateful but positively indecent.
Started pushing your luck after 8 months, hey gonerill?
I seem to have underestimated the joys of parenthood.
I am unaccountably amused by the article's lead-in:
The journal is no longer published, according to a college spokesman.
Nothing personal, BHO! It wasn't your poetry that torpedoed it.
49: Maybe its iconoclasm became too chic.
The editors couldn't find the fucking grapefruit.
43: I thought they were considered hucksters nowadays.
I have no idea what Johnson is doing now. Lakoff is off on the "framing" thing, which, you know, has some value. But seems to be considered old hat. The guy seems very frustrated.
Their collaborative work on metaphor was excellent, and isn't minimized by whatever they're doing now.
I thought they were considered hucksters nowadays. Or is it just that their new work is considered hucksterism?
Not exactly. Their stuff just never really caught on among other linguists.
42. But it does, it does! Turns to dust.
An odd read against the poetry here:
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/a_final_nra_salvo_at_obama_men.php
Under the hotel, a ballroom
Filled with nuts
That love guns.
Howling to stop the
Democrats
who hate their American guns.
No matter
what
those liars say.
Applauding
Huckabee's jokes.
Bitter
bitter is the love of guns.
53: I've never been a linguist. Were they attempting to appeal to the linguistics crowd, as it were? (I'm actually surprised you've heard of them.)
I should say, maybe, that I read Lakoff and Johnson in the context of a course, in a philosophy department, on conceptual frameworks -- the gist of which was nothing more or less than that the notion is fraught.
Teo, it's nice to see you around sometimes.
I remember reading a pretty convincing refutation of the Lakoff/Johnson work a long time ago in a book called Understanding Figurative Language. The metaphorical thing that on their theory informs all of our concepts is so pervasive that it doesn't leave any room for deciding in a particular situation which metaphor is apt.
Conceptual schemes??? The very idea!
Ogged, if you go to Vancouver Island and you're attacked by a grizzly, do like this guy did and play dead.
I've never been a linguist. Were they attempting to appeal to the linguistics crowd, as it were?
I don't know much about Johnson, but Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at Berkeley and a former disciple of Chomsky (one of the ones who broke with him in the '70s). His theories have never been very popular with linguists in the US, partly because he began developing them in direct opposition to Chomsky but also because of criticisms like the one in 57. The theoretical framework that has developed out of his work, cognitive linguistics, has, however, become pretty popular in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands.
Conceptual schemes???
I see you've heard of them.
57: I chiefly remember the Lakoff/Johnson for what it pointed out about metaphorical patterns in our language-use. I found that fascinating. I must have wandered off before noticing that they argued in any sustained way for a theory of total linguistic determination of concepts.
60: teo, thanks. I'll be more attentive to what the hell I'm talking about in the future.
Ogged, if you go to Vancouver Island and you're attacked by a grizzly, do like this guy did and play dead.
Spend a few bucks on bear spray, and carry it on your backpack in one of your water bottle holders or scuh where you can get it out quick.
http://www.wildlifejournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.2193%2F2006-452
Wow, much more effective than I would have guessed.
63--I notice there's no data for grizzly bears. That must be because they eat the can of bear spray as a condiment.
Why does anybody think that ogged would be attacked by grizzlies on Vancouver Island? ogged should move to Victoria, actually. He'd probably like it.
Grizzlies are ursus horribilis or something like that, right?
Ursus arctos are browns. Grizzly is just a type of brown. Alaskan browns are basically grizzlies
The grizzlies aren't the problem on Vancouver Island; the cougars are. And no amount of spray will save Ogged, because those cats are stealthy. They'll gobble him up before he has a chance to wonder what will become of his stand mixer.
The Alaskans have probably seen this joke.
http://www.mvermeulen.com/dalton/big/overview_04.jpg
Okay, one last, since this has occurred to me more than once: ogged, if you're thinking of moving up there, and you have some mobility job-wise, you really might like Victoria. You don't like the horrid urban thing (and I think Vancouver can be that way), you do like the genteel; I've only been to Victoria once, but it's smallish and civilized.
So if you make a road trip up there, hop on a plane up to Victoria for a day.
Don't take a plane; take a ferry. It's not a long ride. And it's incredibly beautiful.
my 73: hop on a plane.
Or ferry, that is.
I prefer to think of it as collaboration, parsimon.
If ogged doesn't go to Victoria at this point, he has some explaining to do.
Well, there is the issue of the cougars. But they're not usually on the ferry or in Victoria. For Ogged, though, they might make an exception.
No, seriously. (Well, not really, but still...)
Probably not a lot of that dark Iranian meat in Victoria. The cougars would be nuts to pass that up.
I wonder how long before Vancouver and CA re-think those hunting bans.
Re 10:
Subject's previous exposure to this usage has been limited to the following context:
Tell your brother, your sister and your mamma too
Cause they're about to throw down and you'll know just what to do
-- Cameo - "Word Up"
Subject presumes, for no very good reason, that to 'throw down' is to challenge, as in "throw down the gauntlet". Subject tests hypothesis against Urban Dictionary. Result:
1. fight
"some boys were all up in our ish so we hadta throw down ta represent."
2. to street fight - comes from throwing down the gauntlet
"you need to throw down when he's being an asshole"
3. To contribute money to marijuana.
"I'll throw down $5 for that sack"
Probably not a lot of that dark Iranian meat in Victoria
There's a sizable Iranian population in Vancouver. They'll be in Victoria if there's shopping and/or dancing in Victoria. And I am, indeed, setting aside a day to visit Victoria when I'm up there. (Also Whistler, not that that's relevant.)
the pizzlies are who you have to watch for -- they want yr meat AND they're in a rage abt their stupid recent name
Generally speaking, "up" words are positive, "down" words are negative. "Forward" is good, "back" is bad. In the English language. So "throw down" was curious to me, on the face of it.
"Throw up" was taken.
Grizzlies are ursus horribilis or something like that
Ursus arctos horribilis. They're a type of brown bear; grizzly just refers to their coat having silvery-grey tipped hairs (like a grizzled old man.) They're also aggressive.
I will fill in for McManus, although I cannot come close to equalling him.
Did you know that the young Joseph Stalin was apparently a very fine poet? These versions are hard to judge because they are translated, but historians agree that in the original Georgian they are very fine work, by a young poet with the potential for greatness. (The young Stalin also seemed to be irresistible to women, probably because he was one of history's biggest assholes).
Mao, of course, was also quite a good poet .
Hitler had serious artistic ambitions as well, although he was not very talented as a painter.
So I think history shows that the combination of artistic tastes and the lust for power, while it is irresistible to the embittered, alienated young urban intellectuals who are the typical cadres of totalitarian parties, leads uniformly to disaster.
About all we can say in this context is that Obama's poetry really stinks, and is far inferior to that of Stalin and Mao. His first book, however, is very well written. Perhaps that is why alienated urban cosmopolites have flocked so eagerly to his cult.
(The young Stalin also seemed to be irresistible to women, probably because he was one of history's biggest assholes)
Well girls would turn the color of avocado
When he would drive down the street in his El Dorado
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare
Joseph Dzhugashvili was never called an asshole
Not like you
More likely, lots of people called him an asshole, but all of them ended up *really regretting it*. Which would maybe be even sweeter than never being called an asshole.
He was a killer from an early age too. I recommend Montefiore's recent book, "Young Stalin". Reads like a great adventure story.
They're also aggressive.
Yes. But what makes them less terrifying than cougars is that they don't really think of humans as food, and they won't go out of their way to attack you. Whereas a cougar will stalk you.
I recommend Montefiore's recent book, "Young Stalin". Reads like a great adventure story.
The milieu out of which he arises is also discussed in the excellent The Orientalist, about the Azeri novelist Kurban Said (a Jew from oil money who reinvented himself as a Turkish fascist after the revolution and wrote an early and nasty biography of Stalin, whom his sister may have slept with when he was a burning-eyed hottness revolutionary).
92: Don't criticize bears in front of Canadians. They think of it as a veiled personal attack.
"The Orientalist" is wonderful, but apparently is filled with small errors of detail where the biographer was describing the historical background. It didn't help that the sibject of the biographer was a big fat liar himself.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Stalin_1902.jpg/446px-Stalin_1902.jpg
Natty scarf, too.
such a waste of such nice eyes
i like this song
prostit'sya
nice lyrics
BK's eyes i imagine look like ogged's, no?
my ex looked like him just a bit, just in eyes
Radovan Karadzic: poet, psychiatrist, war criminal
I have heard that the English-style boarding schools in Victoria continued caning students long after the practice had ceased in England.
I had a friend who was caned, ca. 1962.
re: 100
The practice continued into the 1980s here. So, 1962 isn't much of a data point.
In Scotland, teachers in ordinary state schools were still belting kids with the tawse when I was at school. They stopped about 2 years after I started high school.
98: Should we be surprised? What, after all, is the Song of Roland about? Not to mention half the Old Testament.
"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel" and all that.
It's all just people. People who do violence and write poems and plant flowers and build brick walls at their country estate. If anything, we should be surprised that those people who stand out as authors of the most brutal crimes in history are not better represented in creating works of beauty.
95: Natty scarf, too.
From Pilate to Pilates
How urban coastal elite communities keep us safe by providing self-actualization outlets for otherwise murderous authoritarians.
Minneapolitan is objectively anti-poetry. Or maybe a bloody-minded anarchist.
89: Hitler had serious artistic ambitions as well, although he was not very talented as a painter.
My understanding (and Wikipedia agrees) is that he was actually more drawn to architecture (which he got to indirectly practice later). He basically could not pursue it because he had slacked off in school. .To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this.
New goad for unmotivated students. Study or it's Hitler for you!
I don't believe there are griz on Vancouver Island.
If we're sending O over the water, we ought to send him someplace he can entertain himself by looking down his nose. I'm thinking Tofino. He can take a float plane up to the hot springs.
I saw a thing about Hitler's drawings that made a big thing about how inhuman they were. But I think that it was just the same strict functionalism as Bauhaus, etc. -- the drawings were urban landscapes.
Austria was going through severe, almost puritanical straight-edge period during that period, which you can also see in Wittgenstein and in the ugly house he designed for his sister (now the Bulgarian embassy or something).
W. and H. attended the same school a year or two apart, and there's a ridiculous book out speculating about their relationship. Karl Popper was also Viennese but of a much lower class than W. , and there's an amusing and apparently factual book out about their relationship.
The north end of Vancouver Island is pretty wild. (Note: Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island). I'm pretty sure there are brown bears, who also occasionally eat you no matter what MC says.
All of the "official" wildlife sites agree with Carp that grizzlies/brown bears do not inhabit Vancouver Island. There seem to be a ton of "grizzly viewing" tours out of the island, but on examination most seem to take you over to Knight Inlet and other places on the mainland which are known grizzly hangouts. Vancouver Island does purportedly have some of the largest Black Bears to be found anywhere.
JP, they're just denying the existence of grizzlies to protect themselves from lawsuits from the families of people who are eaten. As I've noted, Canadians are weirdly defensive about bears.
When I first started with the Forest Service, they showed us an educational filmstrip about griz -- does and don'ts -- made by Canadian officials. Narrated by Chief Dan George.
They also gave us a pamphlet, and you could tell it was written by and for Americans from this line: Physical resistance is, of course, useless.
Bare-handed attacks on grizzlies by untrained people are not to be encouraged. It has to be done right.
Karl XII of Sweden hunted bears with a sharp stick. He felt that guns were unsporting.
Queen Christina also hunted bears.
Not to downplay the danger of griz, but in the nearly 100 years since the creation of Glacier National Park, have there been 10 bear caused fatalities? (I think nos. 7 and 8 were in 1980/81). Minnesotans may well be more dangerous.
113: Minnesotans may well be more dangerous.
Not to mention the Welsh.
maybe i said this before but i 'd like to point out that the bears called mazaalai which could be found the most southernmostly inhabit the world's northernmost desert which is in our country iirc
pandas are a different kind of bears i suppose coz they are not brown
but i'm not sure whether Africa or Australia have bears or not
We defeated the Confederacy singlehanded at Gettysburg, you know. The Virginians went whining to Jesse Ventura to get their battle flag back, and he responded appropriately. He was the right guy to have in office then.
AKA Gobi bear.
Mongolia has a lot of interesting wildlife, and neighboring Lake Baikal is a unique ecosystem.
yeah, Ursus arctos they say, its whole population is left only 50, the wild camel we call khavtgai, the wild horse khulan takhi, they are left only in our country and are strictly protected, it's fascinating
my deceased cousin used to work on the projects involving the national wildlife parks
ursus arctos distribution
i was wrong, the Himalayas are the southernmost
but mazaalai are of course unique and not ursus arctos maybe
mazaalai - ursus arctos
well, enough bears for today
My son's cousin brought back photos of the Gobi desert in springtime. It's not really barren at all -- it's classified as semi-desert.
The Taklamakan in Xinjiang is one of the world's most desolate deserts. The name means somethng like "Place of no return".
John Emerson, there are no brown bears on Vancouver Island, though you're right about it being pretty wild. There are plenty of black bears though, and cougar. Both of which occasionally get down into the city(ies), and both of which have attacked humans. There are other isolation effects --- The deer population is different than the mainland, there are no skunks, etc.
You've all bought the hype, folks. A lot of the crimes blamed on Vancouver Island drug addicts and winos really were committed by brown bears. It's just prohibitionist scare tactics.
Ogged probably would like Victoria actually. It's a little pricy house-wise (but not compared to the bay area) and a little twee, but beautiful a quiet. I second the endorsement of the ferry ride from Vancouver, the inner passage is very beautiful;
I guess I'm saying that Victoria is SWPL.
123: John, I've walked a lot of that island (including the norther n tip) and while I've seen a bunch of black bears there, never a brown. Just saying.
True. They could be hiding there somewhere, just for you.
In which case, you might want to avoid the place.
should add as you said gobiensis
i was like why it's distributed that wide and going extinct under the same name
128: Per 109, the tours start on Vancouver and cross the inner passage. Knight Inlet mentioned in your link (once again per 109) is on the mainland.
Quibble all you want, JP. You won't change my mind.
"John Emerson" is actually the online identity of a Knight Inlet grizzly who devotes most of his time to trolling BC Fish & Wildlife types in order to establish a claim to Vancouver Island, because he can't swim there himself. Just throw a salmon at him if you want him to shut up.
First the Sasquatch, then the Vancouver Island grizzly. The relentless advance of procedural liberalism and one-dimensional technocracy impoverishes the world by the day.
When I was in northern BC on a bike trip, I met a young, outdoorsy woman at a truck stop who was extremely attractive in a Rebecca De Mornay-ish way. It turned out that she knew the guy in Fort Nelson that my friend and I were going to be stopping in on, and she said, "tell him Trapper Deb said hi." We learned from our friend that his brother had a huge crush on her; he ran into her out in the middle of nowhere in the bush once, and when he asked what she was doing out there, she said, "huntin' griz." I'd have been head over heels myself.
Just throw a salmon carp at him if you want him to shut up.
MC John E is the inventor, and world's sole practitioner of a new genre of trolling: trolling about trivia. We were there for the birth, people. We should feel privileged.
world's sole practitioner of a new genre of trolling: trolling about trivia
You should see some of the arguments I have with w-lfs-n. He loses his temper every time.
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat
Pop does have good taste in gin.
