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If you're wanting to get something off your chest, make general comments about the server, or post lonely hearts ads, then this is the place for you.
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Who doesn't want to be a spammer . . .
None of that makes any sense to me . . . I'm just sad that no more people seem to be playing my Literary Rhyme Time quiz (or rating or nominating it . . . hint, hint). I took my time thinking of clever clues for that quiz! See? http://www.sporcle.com/games/kagomeshuko/literaryrhymetime Er, does HTML work . . . Quiz is here
Quiz site
I did look, and got about a third, (and saved a cached copy of the quiz) but I'm not really interested in registering. So I'm an invisible quiz-taker, and I suspect I'm not alone in this. The other thing is, as you said earlier, all the quizzes are mostly US-centric and yes, while it would be nice to make it more international, I feel rather too outnumbered by all the US guys to make any perceptible difference. Sorry.

Haven't got 'John's Stinky White Vegetables', because I can't think of a suitable literary surname, but I suspect you should be ashamed of yourself for that one.

Somewhere on my hard disk I've got a punny work-in-progress quiz a bit like this one of yours. Mine contains entries such as 'many-sized virtue' - 'paragon'. 'King's son publishes' - 'prints'. Some need more work, like that 'paragon' one. The clue doesn't fit the answer very closely.

[SM]
Hidden textBunyan
[K] I enjoyed the quiz, and got 15, which I thought was not too bad for the time limit
Hidden textwould have been 16 if I had been able to spell 'Malory' correctly; *hangs head in shame*
.
GQfQKSGtdcrLDjEcxtc
1EEjv2 hi all ?heey ? messus mangle
I think Simons Mith is the one to answer you there, sHEvKENZEyy. I believe he studied that very subject at university.
Have we all been shamed into silence?
[pen] Excellent! I don't have any good pics of myself to hand to try, but here's something appropriate.
who is thoroughly confused by pen's link
What's going on there?
[KS] I believe that is penelope herself in the picture (and a rather good picture it is too).
Another picture, that is, not another picture of penelope.
Posters
[aak] Thangyew. A friend of mine took it, insiting that it was homework for a portrait photography course she was doing. I was leaning inside her old garden shed holding two foil reflectors in outstretched arms. The wonders of photography, eh? But it'll do for my next book jacket, heheh!
Posters
Interesting in that Raak's is actually Raak.
[ISP] Well spotted! I am in fact a 28-year-old woman with a shaved head except for a tightly woven topknot and massively muscled shoulders and arms. Beware my biceps, for they can crack walnuts.
[Raak] I'd always thought you were in your 30s. Strange how things get confused :)
[Phil] It's a hard life as a Balkan mercenary.
This weekend, I am mostly...
catching up with a schoolfriend who is making the trip from Galway. I still find it staggering that I have had some friends for more than 30 years. Tomorrow, I have earmarked picking sloes and making sloe gin as one of our principal activities, and I notice that it's going to piss it down with rain. *rse. On Sunday (when it will also piss it down with rain), we will make an early start to the Vogelmaarkt in Antwerp so we can breakfast on pieces of fried fish known as kibbeling (yum) and waffles as big as our heads covered in chocolate and whipped cream, before watching the live kitchen gadget demonstrations, marvelling at the Moroccan spice stalls and buying trinkets and savouries according to our whim. (Is 'whim' like 'sheep' in that the plural is the same as the singular?)
Colloquial inconsistency
(pen) Shurely if you can say "piss" you can say "arse"? I know I can, and in style. I think the plural of "whim" is boring old "whims" and of "sheep", "sheeps". Just ask a Frenchman.
Old mate
(pen) I have a friend (whom I have seen recently) of 57 years' acquaintance. Is this a greater proportion of my life than 30 years is of yours? Come on, have to hurry you.
Quite so
Like Rosie I have a friend that I first met at primary school, so that is also 57 years, and I am younger than Rosie.
old acquaintance
I am 44 and married the person I sat next to in Infant School.
posters
I seem to have missed the boat a bit, but I've stil created an advert
Fail
[FGZ] Hmm. well done on the typography etc, but really, swearing? Do you really need to?
FGZStar's Poster
That went over my head I'm afraid.
The plurals of words . . .
are sheep for sheep and fish or fishes for fish. Sheeps is only a form of a verb. Sheeps means grazes. Yes, the plural of "whim" is boring old "whims." However,there is "cacti" and "cactuses." Even more fun is that there is "octopi," "octopuses," and "octopodes." More plurals fun: rhinoceroses, rhinoceri, rhinocerotes.
Yes, I'm afraid I also fond FGZstar's poster both meaningless and mildly offensive.
[Plural] I still occasionally come across people who insist "data" can only be a plural. Funny that they don't make the same fuss about "agenda".
[INJ/SM] I presume it was intended as the opposite of the magnificent "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters of the Second World War.
Kornfläken
(ISP) I think "data" can be both but I agree that to insist that it is always plural is pretentious and a bit annoying, a bit like government propagandums.
(Phil) Don't quite remember 'em, but if you say so. :-)
[Phil] Thanks. I'm not overly conversant with WWII UK memes unfortunately. In fact, Mr. Chad (known elsewhere as Kilroy) is the sum total of my knowledge of the matter. Or was, since I now know something else thanks to you and FGZStar.
I recognised the reference to 'Keep Calm and Carry On' - available on mugs near you - but still don't see what FGZstar means. I'm happy to accept that it's just a generational thing.
About datum and agendum
Datum and agendum are singular. One singular piece of data and one singular thing to do, rather than a list. The minute it is two (or more) they become data and agenda. So, "What's on the agenda?" is correct being people are going to expect more than one item. If I say the only thing on the agenda is the meeting, that's wrong, it's the agendum. Yes, I am just being a grammar nazi. I don't really care that much about those words.
To more interesting topics, like how this forum works
I'm trying to do the hidden words thing.
Hidden textIs this how I hide words?
Wow! I must be smart!
I figured that out!
Hidden textI must be smart!
At least, that is not when trying to make text small.
[INJ} I am given to understand by today's youth that "to bail" would indicate giving up in a dramatic way. It would appear to come from "bailing out (of an aeroplane)". Incidentally, "Keep Calm and Carry On" is available on a mug in my own kitchen.
agendum?
[Kagome...] If you have a lst of things to be done (from the latin gerundive), or an agenda, and it only contains one item, it is still a list of things to be done. So I disagree, and would say that an agenda for a meeting is always an agenda, regardless of how many items are on it. More specifically, each item on an agenda would be an agendum.
[Kag] And you got the singular of Nazi wrong too; it's Nazus. :-)
[Phil] I have it on very good authority that each thing on an agenda is an itum.
with an upside-down crown
[Phil] I have a "Keep Calm and Carry On" t-shirt. frogstar has one that says "Now Panic and Freak Out". To date I don't think we've worn them at the same time.
[KS] A datum is a data point and so is a count noun with a plural of data. However data meaning information is a mass noun and takes a singular agreement.
Everybody Keep Calm
The whole 'Just Bail' Idea related to something one of the guys I know from my accommodation, who once said 'let's just bail' at a party, and so it stuck, and got written on a large board and put in the window. It was then at a recent poster sale that we saw a 'keep calm' poster, and decided to change it. It was initially going to be 'Just Bail', but this would not fit with the whole idea of an odd number of lines, so the expletive got added. We are now planning on getting the poster printed up at A2 or A1 size, and put on the kitchen wall.
Now Carry On...
I have now had a tinker with the old photoshop, and have made something else. Hopefully you'll all find this one more to your liking.
Whoops!
Ignore the above. This is actually the link.
[FGZ] You want to put up that helpful new tube map you've been working on...
bailing
And I thought that bailing, or bailing out, was a nautical term . . .
US Politics
So if Obama bailed out the banks, does that mean he dumped all the water out of them?
Damn Yankees
I believe that in the form stated it is more a metaphor for removing someone from the tender mercies of the law by posting a bond so that they don't have to sit in a cell until they are called to answer for their deeds. Of course, the financial "experts" behind the whole meltdown will never be called to answer for their deeds, so it all metaphorically falls apart. Rather like The Bailout.
Baling out
This is enlightening: bale or bail
Wouldn't "Bale Out" be some sort of harvest-related activity, possibly taking place in WWII and involving steam tractors and Land Girls?
Bale Out
And I thought it would be taking blocks of hay out of the barn.
The Phrase Finder
The phrase finder site is great! It is often a start for my research on the origins of phrases when I write that type of article, and often quoted as the source as many sources are mentioned on the pages.
Keep calm and swear your head off
I was at Liverpool Street station at the weekend, and was mildly shocked (although not, being me, actually offended) to walk past a (shut) kiosk proudly displaying a greetings card with the message "KEEP CALM AND FUCK OFF" to any and all passers by. I suspect that Mary Whitehouse would not have approved...
[jim] I suspect you are right. Nothing good ever came of telling that lady to keep calm.
Acronym
Yes, I believe she formed a campaign originally entitled Clean Up National Television.
Acronyms
TLA has just been closed. Any ideas for a new game?
Anything like a poetry parody game?
I think that I shall never see
A purple cow that looks like thee
This poem is a pure mess
With lots of apologies to Gilet Burgess.
*controversial* a game of Mornington Crescent perhaps?
MC game
Well, we could... Could someone just go over the rules quickly? It's been so long.
Tongue in Cheek
[KagomeShuko] See: The Obligatory Limericks Game Reincarnated

Though to be fair I saw no problem with your mother's snoring since it followed the same beat as my favourite limerick by Spike Milligan:
Things that go bump in the night
Should really not give one a fright
It's the hole in each ear
Which lets in the fear
That, and the absence of light


If we've got to the point where people would object to Spike if he were to post that, we are in trouble.
If we've got to the point where Spike posts that, then the dead are walking the earth and we have greater worries than scansion.
True. :/
Post-Hallowe'en
Is it just me who uses the apostrophe there?
[Pen] Surely it should be 'Hallow'e'en'
erm...
Missing S & missing V? Perhaps. But it's deffo not the way Hallmark spell it.
[Pen] I was starting from 'All Hallows Eve' but then had to account for the final 'n' so I've taken Halloween to be an abbreviated form of 'All Hallows Eventide'.
[penelope] You've missed the apostrophe from penelop'
[Phil] I've missed a lot of things in my time. *sigh*
I'd be grateful for more movers and shakers in the limericks game please - to set good examples of rhyming and scansion to those perhaps less accustomed to the sound and feel of a good limerick, and perhaps also to show Marc that there are other subjects apart from sex to be limericked, and repeated references tend to make people drift away from the game.
[Pen] That's unfair to Marc. You have to go back over 20 screens and 50-100 moves to see the last time he tried anything even remotely naughty. And he got told off last time as well. By you...
hmmm
Really? Apologies if it seemed unjust - but I have that impression. I will try to adjust my stance.
I'm with Pen
Though not, perhaps, in singling out Marc. I think there have a few too many somewhat coarse limericks across all the servers recently. We need a few rules of thumb here like:
- First lines ending 'Phuket' (or Nantucket, etc.) are never going to be funny
- Filth is always funnier if it's not signalled in advance.
Add your own.
(INJ) I agree more or less with your filth stance though if someone puts up an obviously dirty first line there is a strong temptation to carry on with the bawdiness. Unexpected filth is much funnier; years ago on PantsMC I put up the innocent first line:
"There was a young fellow from Streatham strettum", which was followed by
"Who chewed off his bollocks and ate 'em"
Aha, I thought, this is good.
The worst thing about too many of the current limericks is the lack of rhythm. I look at them and groan and think "Why bother?"
Da diddly diddly dum
(INJ, Rosie et al.) Agreeing with the aforementioned points of lax scansion and over-active glands; but I would add that limericks which start with an obvious hope that they'll end up coarsely can be funny when subsequent moves elegantly sidestep it.
However, everything in moderation...
sidestepping
I like the sidestepping thing. It seems particularly English and I find I use it a lot here - especially as I'm in the lavisicous hotbed of the Netherlands and sometimes pretending to be more archetypally (sp?) English than I actually am seems to be the only way to avoid lowering myself to their standards. Oh. That means I am very English after all, doesn't it?
(And that rumour about the Dutch being liberal and easy-going? Don't believe a word of it. Most of them are Calvinists. It's a more conservative and male-dominated business and academic environment than any I have encountered before.
*waves from Leipzig*
With regards to Nantucket
I do have to say that there is a funny and not at all dirty limerick. If you'll take a look here. (Yes, I know there is a misspelled word. It was posted more than two years ago.
I always want to rhyme bucket and Nantucket with Kirby Puckett.
Guess who's back...
In response to Simon's Mith, who asked for the tube map a while back, It will be posted when I can find that pesky link (I think it's down the back of the sofa somewhere). I am also now working at an anagram Europe map, which may be posted soon.
Jellied Eel
Does anybody eat that? One time I thought I saw somebody write "Jelly Diel." I don't know if they were ignorant or joking.
[KS] I've eaten it - nice taste, slightly odd texture. Eels used to be a very important part of people's diet in the South and East of England. Like oysters it's had a bit of an up and down ride in terms of prestige.
Eels are now endangered in the UK. There's a big tradition of eating them here in the Netherlands too ('paling'), especially smoked, but the flavour is a bit too strong for me. I suppose I'd eat them if I was absolutely starving and there was nothing else.
The Eastenders used to love their jellied eels and mash in the old days. I have eaten it down Petticoat Lane back in the '60s.
My dad loves jellied eels, still eats them. In fact, only last week on the Hairy Bikers show they had jellied eels.
I've had smoked eel, thinly sliced on canapés at a provincial art gallery (which I've just realised sounds a bit like the start of an Alan Bennett monologue). Very nice, IMHO. Also, I seem to remember smoked eel paté, but I can't remember when or where. I don't remember disliking it though.
Never tried 'em
Jellied Eels
They don't sound appetizing to me (of course, I don't/can't eat seafood - most of it, just the smell of it cooking, makes me sick to my stomach). I think the person who used "Jelly diel" thought it was some sort of pastry come to think of it.
Deels
Had eel for lunch today (in Bruges and in a virulent green sauce), partly prompted by this discussion. I enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed Bruges, which I was visiting for the first time - what a gorgeous town!
Kicking up my eels
Best eel I ever had was in Tokyo, many years ago now, at a dedicated unagi restaurant. Very good indeed. (Also, I fell instantly in love with my server, who looked like a young Susan Sarandon.)
*eels over*
I have not tried eel, as far as I know, but given my general dislike of eating animals aquatic, there is a good chance I would not like it. That said, it would very much depend on how it is done.
Eelsprit d'elverscalier
I should have said "Ead over eels" rather than "Kicking up my eels".
Jampanese Language
I am wondering if jellied eels would be "Unagi Zerī" in Japanese, or perhaps they use "Jam" and it'd be "Unagi Jamu." Just don't get in a jam confusing unagi and usagi. Two very different animals!
Prezzies
I didn't get any eels for my birthday, thankfully!
*wears 'igh 'eels*
So has anyone got snow yet?
A few flurries in Leeds yesterday - just cold (about -2) & sunny at the moment.
big fat raindrops though
[penelope] Not here, alas.
Roll on global warming!
Snow yesterday evening and thick snow this morning, but not enough to lie.
[Raak] Oh I dunno. I'll lie at the drop of a hat.
'igh 'eels
Come on pen, you are a girl, you can always wear high heels whether or not there is snow.
It's snowing in Edinburgh! And just in time, as they've just finished building Christmas!
[FGZ] Shedding it down now.
Sunday lunchtime in Zuid Holland
Still below zero, still sunny, still no snow...
Parky
(pen) Same as here. The weather newsgroup are absolutely out of their prams because it's cold and there's NO SNOW. I sometime wonder about the company I keep. There's at least another week of this Siberian NW Russian stuff.
We woke up to an inch or so of snow on Friday morning. A lot of it is still around. Our little back roads are like ice rinks :-(
We must have had about 6-8 inches since last night. The buses continue to run (albeit stopping short of some of the further-flung places). I look forward to one flake falling within the M25 later in the week and the end of the universe being declared by the media, again.
State of Emergency
(rab) Not a whole flake, shurely? We had a little here tonight, well within the noisy racetrack/car park, and I have had a level 16" (39 cm) in the back garden (14 Jan 1987). Your point is well made, though.
*sigh*
Minus 3, overcast, dry. Still no snow in Zuid Holland.
The walk to work was a bit treacherous, mostly cos the road in runs east-west with a hill to the south, so when it snows it doesn't melt. Poor motorist being dug out of a turning into it. Heavy dumpage as we speak.
Unseasonal snow
We even had snow here on the island which caused the usual chaos. I understand that the Isle of Donkies had it worst (being so much further north) and its airport remains closed again today because of frozen snow. We had to do without UK papers this weekend because of the weather. No crossword - bah!
Where are you, Softers? I forget - sorry
[Software] *taps the internet*
Where am I?
A familiar question, especially after a night on the tiles. In the deep south, Jersey.
Mass panic alert
There were 7 inches of Snow in Edinburgh. The capital city of Scotland went completely to shit today because of a little bit of snow. Schools closed, traffic halted, train service gone haywire. Oh, but on a happy note, the deadline for my Art and Design portfolio got moved back a day! Happy times!
There seems to be this curious attitude in Britain that everywhere else handles an unexpected dump of snow better. It's simply not true. Stevie might like to inform you about how badly they seem to handle it in the US and from experience, they don't handle it at all well in Russia. People are just generally less inclined to whine about it in other places, or you just don't hear about it in the UK. It's like me being asked by my family and friends how I handle the heat in Australia. The answer - same as the Aussies: I close the curtains and stay inside with the air-conditioning running full bore.
[FGZ] Respectfully, I beg to differ. This is the most snow I've seen in a major UK urban area, and people seem to be handling it pretty well as far as I can tell. Driving is extremely difficult. A colleague of mine who lives in a cul-de-sac in Newington said that someone drove into it by accident on Sunday, and it took them 45 minutes to get out again (with help from the local residents). Another was unable to drive her car into her garage and has had to abandon it in front of a "Do not park in front of this notice" notice at work, because the car parks on campus are inaccessible. The fact that buses are running at all - albeit sporadically and with some diversions - is pretty impressive in my opinion.

Closing schools seems like a ludicrous overreaction, but actually it's pretty sensible. On the one hand it reduces pressure on the buses and the roads in general. On the other there is also the chance (admittedly more so in rural areas) that conditions could worsen and the kids wouldn't be able to get home and would have to stay at school overnight. This happened at my old school (albeit after I left) and it sounded like a bloody nightmare for all concerned. And, of course, teachers don't always live in the catchment areas of the school (can't afford to if it's a good one) so they'd be short-staffed as well.

But, hey, ho, as long as it allows you to hand in something late without incurring a penalty, then that's ok.

Snow point in whining
[nfras] In the U.S., the degree of coping-with-winter is highly variable. As you'd expect, it depends on what the particular place is used to. I've lived in Michigan, where they handle (normal) snowfall easily and as a matter of course. The salt trucks are out, the plows are out, and the roads are generally cleared pretty easily and efficiently. I've also lived in Virginia, which was a very different story. And of course that makes sense -- a city in Virginia, which gets one major snowfall every couple of years, is not going to have an army of snowplows on hand to cope with that. And neither they should. Same goes for Edinburgh.
Leeds, which is where I'm working at the moment, has about 3cms of snow in the centre and maybe up to 10 in higher, outlying areas. I lived here in the 70s and 80s and this is well within the norms for the city of those days at least. There are a few individual cases of people having problems, but basically the city is coping fine with all public transport running as normal.
Turns out that the Embra experience depends on where you are in the city. I swung into town earlier and was surprised at how little snow there was. You need to head south beyond the railway line to see the real stuff. A colleague who lives a few hundred yards south of me showed me a picture of his house taken earlier today, with about a foot (or more) of snow on his wheelie bin. I guess the closer you get to the sea, the less snow there will be. Take a trip down to Blackford or the Braids if you can as it's really spectacular. A very impressive igloo has been built by the campus bus stop. I've got pictures which I'll share next time I'm near my USB cable.
What campus? I know there's a half finished igloo by the ECA, because it was the architecture students that built it.
KB
Here's an igloo, agnother igloo
Here's what it looks like in the Deep South if you can't get there.
Tierra Nevada del Sur
(rab) Too right. Ten inches level depth in my back garden. Nothing moves, especially me, except to measure the bloody stuff. I've no tea and I bet the Co-op hasn't got any either
[Rosie] Given your inordinate mastery of all things meteorological, why didn't you stock up?
(Phil) Your commendation is noted and appreciated but it should not be assumed that such sagacity extends to other areas of life. Actually, I didn't believe it would be anything like as bad because the Met Office has cried wolf on numerous occasions. In this case, they were right but a slight change in the wind direction would have meant the snow would have either landed somewhere else or hardly anywhere. As it turned out it was just right for this area to get a dumping. There's very little in the west of Surrey or north of the Thames. I won't be going out tonight; too many steep hills between here and the pub and I'm far too old for heroics.
tea-mergency
[Rosie] I have stock! There are three boxes of proper English tea in the cellar. I can post one over...
[Rosie] I have friends in Chaldon who will have plenty in store. Do you have a team of trained homing huskies?
(pen) The Co-op had oodles of their routine non-posh tea. All is well.
(INJ) This road, the quickest route, would probably be closed even to huskies.
The photo in the above link doesn't do justice to the steepness of the hill. To the left of the camera the road is essentially level and the part of the hill shown is about 1 in 5, steepening further down. Approaching it in a car the road seems to go over the edge of a cliff. I think the reason is due to the use of a fairly wide-angle lens, which always has this effect. Using a long lens you can make even a railway gradient look insurmountable.
royal tea
[Rosie] Thanks goodness. I love the Co-op, especially since they revamped themselves. Their 'Indian Prince' tea makes a wonderful, ordinary cuppa and is as good as anything Twinings makes.
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