S e n t e n t i o l a

doriominous:

rabbithugs:

i love how vague this is because it implies that what the pigeons do is too scary to write down

“we cannot bear to tell you what horrors the pigeons have wrought”

[image: a simple sign, black text on white paper. “PLEASE Do Not Feed The Pigeons. THEY DO THINGS”]

(Source: hereincoherent, via portmanteaurian)

voraciousfruits:

synecdoche:

lifeonfiction:

face-down-asgard-up:

copshredder:OMG THIS IS SO FUCKING FUNNY

cutest acid trip ever

“I went into a convenience store to wash my hands but the slushy machine was making a terrifying noise. lesson learned. let’s stay outside.”

“limousines have to be the funniest looking cars they must be very secure and emotionally confident to go out every day looking like that”

“sharing the ice cream with that old homeless man made me feel really buoyant like I took some of the glowing outside world into my heart”

“I wonder if they just think I’m full of childlike wonder and easygoing optimism or if they figured out I’m on acid yet”

(Source: st0ner-c0mics)

booditea:

i got a letter to my house that has my address but not my name or postal code & the return address is not anything i recognise & i don’t think i know anyone in saskatoon

so i looked the name up on facebook and there is one person by that name in this city, so i just sent them a message being like “this is a bit weird but i think i have some of your mail”

i hope they’re not like my freaking neighbour or it might be sort of r00d that i didn’t know their name, but my dad didn’t recognise it either, so they’re probably not

assuming they wouldn’t want to give their address to a random facebook person, i suggested we meet in a public place so i can hand it over

imagine if i make a friend off of this freaking random-ass thing IMAGINE i probably won’t but wouldn’t that be a neat origin story WOW i’m gonna write a ROMCOM about it

A couple of months ago I was helping out at a kind of careers thing telling people about my job and one person wanted to get in touch and ask me more stuff so I started wrote down my e-mail address for them.  I started writing my work e-mail, which is [first name].[surname]@[governmentdepartment], but when I got to the @-sign someone else asked me something and I got distracted, and when I went back to writing I thought I was writing my personal e-mail address, which is [first name].[middle initial].[surname]@[popular webmail provider].  And it was only a few hours later I suddenly realized that I’d given this person a monstrous hybrid e-mail address that isn’t mine.

I felt really bad because they’d think I’d deliberately given them a dud address or they’d write and no one would reply and it might even change their decisions about their career, but I couldn’t think what to do.  Eventually I just had to e-mail [my first name].[my surname]@[popular webmail provider] and really awkwardly explain what had happened and that they might get an e-mail from someone wanting to know about legal careers and could they please forward it to me.  Which must have sounded like some very strange kind of scam.

Anyway the point of the story is that I never heard anything from anybody else concerned, and nothing was resolved, and sometimes the truth is a lot more boring than fiction.

(Source: nuditea)

[Image is a film poster for The hobbit showing the thirteen dwarves, variously sporting big hair, big beards, big moustaches, plaits, bushy eyebrows, bulbous noses, silly facial expressions, &c…. except Aidan Turner as Kili, who looks exactly like he usually does, with attractive stubble, slightly untidy hair, and smouldering eyes.]

the-hobbit:

Via Peter Jackson’s official Facebook

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that when Peter Jackson’s memo went out saying ‘All dwarves to have epic Viking hair and prosthetic noses’, the make-up department immediately formed a protective ring around Aidan Turner shouting ‘Not Aidan! He’s too beautiful! Take the others, but spare him!’

[Image is a screen-shot of the home-page of the website OpenShakespeare, tastefully designed with serif fonts and a grey-and-white colour-scheme.  The page bears such noble sentiments as ‘Open Shakespeare combines literary criticism and the internet to produce a set of tools for appreciating the national poet’, and mentions various useful study tools to be found there, including a tool for making annotations on the text.  On the right-hand side is a box headed ‘Recent Annotations’, which I’ve crudely circled in blue.  The annotations displayed are as follows:  

• Hamlet: bnbnbnnbn
• Hamlet: this
• Hamlet: uuu
• Hamlet: dfgsfdgsdfg ]

stayinbedgrowyourhair:

nuditea:

stayinbedgrowyourhair:

“WHAT IF THE WHITE HOUSE WAS LIKE THE PRAIRIE”

you guys i’m sending drunk-style messages and i’m not even drunk

which begs the question: why am i not drunk? it’s 5:45 and i’ve got tomorrow off. what a waste of sobriety. 

if anyone was curious as to why i was reading the wikipedia article on canada-united states relations, it was because of minor shots fired in this conversation

EVERYONE

WHAT IF THE WHITE HOUSE HAD TO BE BURNED DOWN BY CANADIANS EVERY FEW YEARS SO IT COULD GROW BACK STRONGER AND HEALTHIER

WOULDN’T THAT BE SO WEIRD

‘I doubt whether even our public edifices—our capitols, state-houses, court-houses, city-hall, and churches,—ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years, or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the institutions which they symbolize.’  (Holgrave in The house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.)

David Lowenthal’s book The past is a foreign country has some fascinating stuff on how many of the founding generation of the United States strongly rejected the idea that the past should have any influence over the future and thought that every generation should junk everything the previous one had done and start again.  Jefferson wrote that the constitution and all other statutes should expire automatically every nineteen years.  Which, as Lowenthal explores, created the paradox of later generations admiring and heroizing ‘founding fathers’ who deeply objected to the idea of admiring and heroizing ‘founding fathers’.

So Canada could quite reasonably argue that periodically demolishing the White House is a valuable contribution to the American dream.

(via nuditea)

sistermagpie:

peanutbutterandjamzee:

sententiola:

What puzzles me about the phrase ‘have you ever seen them in the same room together?’ is the ‘in the same room’ bit.

Does it add evidential value? If someone has seen two people together outdoors, is that insufficient proof that they aren’t the same…

I do use it to mean something different? I thought I used to to mean the same thing—a joking suggestion that two people might be the same person? Like you’re referring to Superman and Clark Kent never being in the same room together at the same time—more likely Clark Kent would show up just after Superman left?

Yes, but I thought you’d said earlier that you use it a different way, the same way you might say ‘have you ever seen them eat a hamburger?’ when trying to help someone work out whether someone else is vegetarian.  In other words, ‘in the same room’ is not the crucial location that clinches the argument (which is how I think most people use it, in which case it doesn’t strictly make any sense), but is just the first and most obvious in what could be an almost infinite series of places where they might have been seen together.

If that’s how you use it, then you are literally asking whether the two people in question were in a room when they were sighted together.  Whereas Alex is suggesting that most people who use the phrase are not actually enquiring about whether the two people were literally in a room.

sistermagpie:

sententiola:

sistermagpie:

sententiola:

What puzzles me about the phrase ‘have you ever seen them in the same room together?’ is the ‘in the same room’ bit.

Does it add evidential value? If someone has seen two people together outdoors, is that insufficient proof that they aren’t the same person? What if they were together in a car?

…

I don’t think it’s nonsensical, though? Because seeing two people in the same room together at the same time would actually be good evidence that they are not the same person. 

Absolutely, but so would seeing them having a picnic in the park together or riding a tandem together.  The fact that they’re in a room when you see them together adds nothing to the evidential value of the fact that you’ve seen them together.

Whereas the implication of the question ‘have you ever seen them in the same room together?’ is that if you haven’t, you can’t be completely sure that they aren’t the same person.  Meaning that if you have seen them together but they were navigating a hot-air balloon across the Alps at the time, there would still be some doubt about whether they’re separate people: because you haven’t actually seen them in the same room together.

Maybe I’m explaining this badly?

Right, but maybe I was explaining it badly. The “in the same room” is arbitrary, but it doesn’t imply that they must be in the same room, it’s just a starting place. Like, if someone was wondering if someone was a vegetarian I might say, “Well, have you ever seen them eating a hamburger?” Obviously it could be any kind of meat, but I made it specific because that’s a common type of meat to eat. Like being the same room is a common place to see people together, plus it’s a confined space. If they were just in the same house they could be switching costumes between rooms, which often happens.

So the added detail of it being a room is arbitrary, but since it doesn’t imply it has to be a room so I wouldn’t say nonsensical. It’s intentionally using a specific example to underline how ham-handed the secret identities are usually handled. 

Apparently I have thoughts about this phrase. I think I just like it!

I’m not saying you shouldn’t like it!  And if that’s how you use it then I guess it isn’t nonsensical when you use it, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t how most people use or understand it.  If you google the phrase (and similar phrases like ‘have you ever seen them in the same room’ and ‘have you ever seen them in a room together’) you don’t find people who seem to be trying to start a conversation with the sincere goal of ascertaining whether X and Y are the same person by eliminating various locations they may have shared, starting with ‘a room’ as the most likely candidate.  They’re generally saying it with the clear (though tongue-in-cheek) implication that, if the answer to the question is ‘no’, this alone means that their interlocutor cannot be sure that X and Y are not the same person.

sistermagpie:

sententiola:

What puzzles me about the phrase ‘have you ever seen them in the same room together?’ is the ‘in the same room’ bit.

Does it add evidential value? If someone has seen two people together outdoors, is that insufficient proof that they aren’t the same person? What if they were together in a car?

…

I don’t think it’s nonsensical, though? Because seeing two people in the same room together at the same time would actually be good evidence that they are not the same person. 

Absolutely, but so would seeing them having a picnic in the park together or riding a tandem together.  The fact that they’re in a room when you see them together adds nothing to the evidential value of the fact that you’ve seen them together.

Whereas the implication of the question ‘have you ever seen them in the same room together?’ is that if you haven’t, you can’t be completely sure that they aren’t the same person.  Meaning that if you have seen them together but they were navigating a hot-air balloon across the Alps at the time, there would still be some doubt about whether they’re separate people: because you haven’t actually seen them in the same room together.

Maybe I’m explaining this badly?

What puzzles me about the phrase ‘have you ever seen them in the same room together?’ is the ‘in the same room’ bit.

Does it add evidential value?  If someone has seen two people together outdoors, is that insufficient proof that they aren’t the same person?  What if they were together in a car?

Hmm.

—·—

(NB:  This isn’t, and shouldn’t be used as, a criticism of people who use that phrase.  There are expressions people use because they’re already well established as having a particular meaning and particular implications, and the actual combination of words doesn’t really matter because the point is that I say it and you know what I mean by it and stuff.  It’s just funny how sometimes arbitrary and slightly nonsensical assumptions seem to get embedded in these expressions.  And stuff.)

nuditea:

i hear some people don’t create and abandon blogs on the flightiest of whims but i’m not sure i’m convinced they exist

I have a main tumblr and then a tumblr that I created so I could try to figure out how to solve a Tumblr-theme problem Ashe was having.

I’m not sure why I haven’t deleted that one.

… I’m not sure I’m convinced I exist either.

Suddenly the plot of “The Producers” has entered this episode

hypotheticalthalamus:

Ie overselling the show to backers so that if it’s a flop the producer can pocket the difference

It is literally
Just

The plot of the producers

And now I find myself devising a new murder mystery series in which the plots are all just old comedy films but with added murder.

When the silent movie he’s working on is turned into a talkie mid-way through filming, the star and his old pal team up with a young undiscovered singer to make it into a musical, but then — MURDER!

A paleontologist meets a young woman on a golf course and they soon find themselves trying to look after a tiger named Baby, but then — MURDER!

An awkward Englishman steadily falls in love with an American woman whom he meets at a series of friends’ weddings, but then — MURDER!

Brian of Nazareth is mistaken for the messiah and and becomes involved with a shambolic Judaean independence movement, but then — MURDER!  (Oh no, wait, that’s actually pretty much what happens already…)

Alex submitted:

Q: Why did the bike store raise the price of their tires?

A: Inflation.

Q:  Why did the finance minister’s hair start getting thin at the front?

A:  Recession.

At work at the moment I’m doing an urgent but unfortunately pretty boring project that involves searching through lots of legislation.  Occasionally the boredom is alleviated by the discovery of some entertainingly old Acts of Parliament that are still in force as part of UK law.

You can go back a century or so and the legislation is still fairly comprehensible, although sometimes the sentences get quite long and full of sub-clauses.  Here’s section 16 of the Commons Act 1899, for example:

Any provisions with respect to allotments for recreation grounds, field gardens, or other public or parochial purposes contained in any Act relating to inclosure or in any award or order made in pursuance thereof, and any provisions with respect to the management of any such allotments contained in any such Act, order, or award, may, on the application of any district or parish council interested in any such allotment, be dealt with by a scheme of the Charity Commissioners in the exercise of their ordinary jurisdiction, as if those provisions had been established by the founder in the case of a charity having a founder. 

Back in the earlier part of the nineteenth century it can get a bit tricky to follow:

In every case where any tithes or rent-charge shall have been or shall hereafter be released, assigned, or otherwise conveyed or disposed of under the provisions of the said Acts, or any of them, or of this Act, for merging or extinguishing the same, the lands in which such merger or extinguishment shall take effect shall be subject to any charge, incumbrance, or liability which lawfully existed on such tithes or rent-charge, previous to such merger to, the extent of the value of such tithes or rent-charge; and any such charge, incumbrance, or liability shall have priority over any charge or incumbrance existing on such lands at the time of such merger taking effect; and such lands, and the owners thereof for the time being, shall be liable to the same remedies for the recovery of any payment and the performance of any duty in respect of such charge, incumbrance, or liability, or of any penalty or damages for nonpayment or non performance thereof respectively, as the said tithes or rent-charge, or the owner thereof for the time being, were or was liable to previous to such merger.

(That’s section 1 of the Tithe Act 1839.)

By the time you reach, say, section 2 of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, the prose is becoming rather epic:

And for the continuing and preserving the calendar or method of reckoning, and computing the days of the year in the same regular course, as near as may be, in all times coming, the several years of our Lord one thousand eight hundred, one thousand nine hundred, two thousand one hundred, two thousand two hundred, two thousand three hundred, or any other hundredth years of our Lord which shall happen in time to come, except only every fourth hundredth year of our Lord, whereof the year of our Lord two thousand shall be the first, shall not be esteemed or taken to be bissextile or leap years, but shall be taken to be common years consisting of three hundred and sixty-five days, and no more; and that the years of our Lord two thousand, two thousand four hundred, two thousand eight hundred, and every other fourth hundredth year of our Lord from the said year of our Lord two thousand inclusive, and also all other years of our Lord which by the present supputation are esteemed to be bissextile or leap years, shall for the future and in all times to come be esteemed and taken to be bissextile or leap years, consisting of three hundred and sixty-six days, in the same sort and manner as is now used with respect to every fourth year of our Lord.

(Also how weird is it to think that in 1750 there were people not only thinking about but actually passing legislation about what’s going to happen in the year 2800?)

By the Cestui que Vie Act 1707 they seem to have developed a love of capital letters and a terror of punctuation:

And if it shall appear to the said Court by Affidavit that such Minor Married Woman or other Person for such Life such Estate is holden is or lately was at some certain Place beyond the Seas in the said Affidavit to be mentioned it shall and may be lawful for the Party or Parties prosecuting such Order as aforesaid at his her or their Costs and Charges to send over one or both the said Persons appointed by the said Order to view such Minor Married woman or other Person for whose Life any such Estate is holden and in case such Guardian Trustee Husband or other Person concealing or suspected to conceal such Persons as aforesaid shall refuse or neglect to produce or procure to be produced to such Person or Persons a personal View of such Infant Married Woman or other Person for whose Life any such Estate is holden that then and in such Case such Person or Persons are hereby required to make a true Return of such Refusal or Neglect to the Court of Chancery which Return shall be filed in the Petty Bag Office and thereupon such Minor Married Woman or other Person for whose Life any such Estate is holden shall be taken to be dead and it shall be lawful for any Person claiming any Right Title or Interest in Remainder Reversion or otherwise after the Death of such Infant Married Woman or other Person for whose Life any such Estate is holden to enter upon such Lands Tenements and Hereditaments as if such Infant Married Woman or other Person for whose Life any such Estate is holden were actually dead.

That was section 2, or section II as they called it back then.  And here’s section I of another Cestui que Vie Act: this one’s from 1666, where the spelling is starting to get kinda funky:

If such person or persons for whose life or lives such Estates have beene or shall be granted as aforesaid shall remaine beyond the Seas or elsewhere absent themselves in this Realme by the space of seaven yeares together and noe sufficient and evident proofe be made of the lives of such person or persons respectively in any Action commenced for recovery of such Tenements by the Lessors or Reversioners in every such case the person or persons upon whose life or lives such Estate depended shall be accounted as naturally dead, And in every Action brought for the recovery of the said Tenements by the Lessors or Reversioners their Heires or Assignes, the Judges before whom such Action shall be brought shall direct the Jury to give their Verdict as if the person soe remaining beyond the Seas or otherwise absenting himselfe were dead.

Funky spelling abounds in section XIV of the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 (which is also so old that there are variant texts of it and it has textual annotations like you get in fancy editions of Shakespeare):

Provyded alway that the seid Archebisshopp of Canterburye or any other person or persons shall have noo power or auctoritie by reason of this acte to vysite or vexe any Monasteries Abbeys Priories Colleges Hospitallis Houses or other places religious whiche be or were exempte before the makyng of this acte, any thynge in this acte to the contrary therof not withstondyng; but that redresse vicitacion and confirmacion shalbe had by the Kynges Highnes hys heires and successours by commission under the greate seale to be directed to suche persones as shalbe appoynted requysite for the same, in such monasteries colleges Hospitals Priories Houses and Places religious exempt; So that noo visitacion [X36 nor confirmacion] shall frome hensforth be had nor made in or at any suche Monasteries Colleges Hospitallis Priories Houses and Places religious exempt by the sayd Bysshop of Rome nor by any of his auctoryte nor by any out of the Kynges Domynyons; Nor that any person religious or other resiant in any the Kynges Dominyons shall fromhensforth departe out of the Kynges Domynyons to or for any visitacion congregacion or assemble for Religeon, but that all suche visytacyons congregatyons & assembles shalbe within the Kynges Domynyons.

I’d like to also give a special shout-out here to the Scottish Parliament, which around this time was producing some pretty radical spelling of its own, like the short and sweet Reversion Act 1469:

Item As tuiching the new Inuentionis of selling of landis be chartir and sesing and takin again of Reuersionis And It happin the byare to sell again the samyn land to ane vthir persone It is now sene expedient in this present parliament and according to law and conscience that the sellare sall haue Recourse to the samyn landis sauld be him vnder lettre of Reuersione to quhatsumeuir handis the said lettre cummys payand the mone and schawand the Reuersione and haue sic priuelege and fredome aganis the personis that haldis the said landis as he suld haue again the principale first byare … 

Folks, to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure whether that’s in English or in Scots.  But I’ll tell you what definitely is not in English, and that’s any Act of the English Parliament before the mid-fifteenth century.  Check out the Confirmation of Liberties Act 1423:

Et primes q~ Seinte Esglise & toutz les f^rs esp~uelx & temporelx & toutz les autres lieges du Roy aiantz liƀtees & fraunchises & auxi toutz les Citees & Burgħs aient & enjoient toutz lour liƀtees & fraunchises bien usez & nient repellez ne p_ la cõe ley repellablez,

And, well, it can’t really get much more funky than that, but can we just finish by appreciating that the Statute of Marlborough 1267 — **1267** — is still valid law in this country.

I mean what.

irasciblecoxswain:

sometimes i like stuff you post just because i like you…………………..

This is very true for me.  If I ‘like’ some trivial little text post you’ve made about how you’re eating pizza or whatever, it isn’t necessarily because I’m especially enthusiastic about your pizza-eating.  It’s probably because what you’ve posted or the way you’ve expressed yourself is very youish and I like that it conveys the youishness of you because I enjoy the youishness of you.

(Source: genebeanbelcher, via ladysaviours)