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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Now I wish I had known today. I would have had a ball with that at work.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
Favorite authors: Poe, Kafka, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Kosinski, Faulkner, Crane, Fitzgerald, Cervantes, Joyce, Dickens
We talked about something like this in my psychology class just a little while ago, except we weren't allowed to think about a white bear. Pretty aggrivating.
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"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
Damn, I just lost the Game.
Have been playing it for about five damn years and only won twice, I think.
If you believe even a half of this post, you are severely mistaken.
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Btw, the white bear thing has its origins in this Dostoyevsky quote "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute."
Genius.
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite — to tell —
-Emily Dickinson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4
Last night's Jeopardy! question was a good one; the topic was "The 1960s":
In 1962 the people of Perth, Australia saluted this American by turning their lights on & off at the same time.
Anybody care to take a guess?
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"If it is honorable for you to disturb the dead, I shall consider it an honor and will make it my ambition to disturb your living." - Captain Miles Hazzard
Hey, that is interesting!Last night's Jeopardy! question was a good one; the topic was "The 1960s":
In 1962 the people of Perth, Australia saluted this American by turning their lights on & off at the same time.
Anybody care to take a guess?
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
..
The English language is much harder than we first thought!
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10 ) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row ..
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
P.S. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP..
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP!
Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?
Oh . . . one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P
WOT NOT:
Here are a few of my favourite linguistic oddities; many people think that "presently" means the same thing as "currently," but they actually have two entirely different meanings. "currently" means "now," while "presently" means "soon."
A good example of the correct usage of "presently"; a young man arrives at his girlfriend's house to pick her up for a date. As her mother shows him into the living room, she says, "Cynthia will be down presently."
One thing that drives me "right 'round the twist" (as we say in Ireland) is people who insist that "irregardless" is a real word. For the record, it can't be a "real word," for the following three reasons;
-First and foremost; there's no such word as "irregard," which means there can't possibly be any such word as "irregardless."
-Secondly; it already has a "less" at the end, so you can't put an "ir" at the front; it's redundant, and entirely meaningless.
-Finally, and most importantly; if it were a word, "irregardless" would be self-contradictory, and thus an oxymoron, but a single word simply can't be an oxymoron.
It takes a minimum of two words to form an oxymoron, as is clearly demonstrated in the following classic examples; "military intelligence," "new and improved," (by definition, a thing is either "new" as in "there's never been anything like it before," or it's "improved," but it can't possibly be both!) or "Progressive Conservative Party."
(The latter is the name of an Canadian political party, and one which is the source of much levity among Canadians. Sadly, the oxymoronic name is the only thing that is funny about the Progressive Conservative Party.)
Regardless of how many people choose to believe that "irregardless" is a "real word," they're just plain wrong.
Unfortunately, many people these days don't seem to understand or appreciate the differences between "there/their/they're," between "are/our/hour," between "your/you're," or between "were/we're." Any attempt at correction, however well-intentioned it may be, will only get you... "Whatever!"
Ignorance, apathy and disrespect...all just a sign of the times, I'm afraid, and proof positive that our education tax dollars have been largely wasted over the last couple of decades.' But then you have to admit, text English is busy paving the way to a new future, so "Wot r u up 2 now?"
COS:
The reason that English spelling and grammar are so inconsistent is that it is an assimilated language. The vocabulary has layers of words and multiple words that mean the same thing. Thus, English is tough for foreigners to learn to write, but capable of producing very rich literature and poetry.
At the base is Archaic Saxon from north central Germany. On top of that was added Anglish from the coast of German, Jutelandish from Denmark, Celtic from Wales and the Scottish Highlands, Norse from Norway, Latin from monks, Norman French from Vikings in Normandy speaking a dialect of French, proper French from the Royal Court of England, who couldn't speak Medieval English, Spanish when Spain was numero uno, several Native American languages, and finally Greek from scientists.
Most Americans are aware that several names we have for animals and foods came from the American Indians, but most are not aware that some very basic words came directly from Native vocabularies. Okay is a Choctaw Indian word which means the same in the Choctaw language. Hut is a Creek Indian word meaning a small building. Yahoo is the Creek Indian verb, meaning "to shout out." Chobe (chobby) means "big" in the Creek language, from whence we probably get the word, chubby.
Get's confusing doesn't it?
Last edited by dizzydoll; 04-15-2010 at 04:31 AM.
This is really a very interesting post for it reflects some of the problems nonnative writers face. I had always problems when it came to use appropriate prepositions appropriately and articles. I can express basic thoughts in simple sentences but at times as a writer I have to express complex thoughts too and suddenly the problem of articles come in. I know simple grammar but that does not suffice all the time and I have to internalize so many words and sentence structures and I find them very cumbersome and taxing me.
The examples given in the post are really interesting
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
i certainly agree, the english language is incredibly complex and you would think such diversity would make it easier for writters to write. however to rhyme in poetry you are better off using the italian language - who knew?
Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.
s2tephanson
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