English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

3:07 AM

@Færd Better would be "You're the prettiest girl I liked but did not have." It's smoother without both and did.

Of you could use do in a parallel construction for emphasis: "You're the prettiest girl I did like but didn't have."

But the use of both did like the way you did makes it sounds like you're trying to pad out a line of verse in order to make the syllables scan.

She was a girl I both did like
But did not ever have.
I put her head upon a pike
Then fixed it with some salve.

That's "common verse" for those of you playing along at home.

Common verse rhymes abab and has four beats in the odd lines and three (with a pause) in the evens.

That's called common meter. Like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" ...

Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

Which rhymes abcb (also possible).

I think the only highly-regarded poet who used the style was Emily Dickinson.

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

... etc ...

Now that I'm looking at it, abcb is more common (no pun intended) than abab.

Here's another example of a poetess who wrote in the style:

How many million Aprils came
   Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
   A bed of squills, how blue.

And many a dancing April
   When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
   And the white flame of the tree.

Oh, burn me with your beauty, then,
   Oh, hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
   Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
   O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I through endless sleep
   May bear the scar of you.

She was no Emily Dickinson. I remember trashing this very poem as a sophomore in high school. Really ripping Teasdale a new one, and figuring I'd get pilloried for my efforts. I was actually shocked when my critique came back with an A+ on it and a note that said "You're the first student I've taught who had the courage to give this horrible bit of trash the treatment it deserved."

And the scales fell from my eyes ...

Well, I've written more than I expected. That will do nicely for the night. [Exeunt omnes]

3:36 AM

@Robusto Fire and Blood = Centaur + ITC Ballerino + P22 Declaration Script Alternate

The colophon inexcusably mentioned only the first of the three typefaces used throughout.

And I'm not counting the dust jacket.

I imagine most people won't realize that the last two aren't the same, but Declaration is a connected script face while Ballerino is an unconnected italic. Both are quite swashy.

The thing is that the latter two are based on Enlightenment calligraphic book and script hands, the first on a Renaissance typeface for moveable type. It's not too terrible a mix, but there's a two-century gap there.

The real issue is that Centaur roman is SUPPOSED to be paired with Arrighi italic. The problem is that there is no digitized version of Arrighi of professional craftsmanship. The metal cuts work together but the digital ones do not.

11:52 AM

@Robusto where the f does she put the stresses?

And MAny A danCING apRIL?

What is this English.

Frankly your A+ was well deserved, if she can't even find a bunch of simple words that fit the simplest of metres.

1:36 PM

@RegDwigнt Like this:

And Many a dancing Ap [ə] ril

Yeah, it's that bad.

Goddamn Windows keyboard. Can't type a goddamn schwa.

Every fucking time I need to type a schwa I have to go to the Wikipedia entry and do the copypasta dance.

Supposed to be ALT+601, but that never ever works.

And I can't even find the schwa in the hopelessly pathetic Windows Character Map.

3:07 PM

@Robusto that is, like, even worse than what I had.

inorite

@Robusto last night I "fixed" my Windows and then all my Russian just stopped working.

The language switch was gone from the taskbar completely even though all the correct boxes were all correctly ticked.

Spent like half a day fixing it right back.

It works now but there's no visual indication of it anywhere. So basically I need to start typing to see what I'm currently at.

Windows just had a huge update to all the language keyboards, so of course they fucked shit up.

Well I also lost my Russian at work, after the latest Linux update.

I always position my selector tab on my off-monitor, and it used to stay there. Now whenever I choose a different language it goes right back to the main monitor.

3:11 PM

I think this is a conspiracy. They want to ban all the Russian everywhere.

Maybe it's like the flu. It's going around and nothing to be done.

If it's Russian it's more like pox.

Mind you, banning all the Russian everywhere isn't such a bad idea when you think about it.

@RegDwigнt Pox Russiana?

Well it's not like it really exists anyway. Just a hundred million speakers or whatever.

Pfft. I think there are more Eskimo words for snow than that.

3:13 PM

Yeah.

And in Russian "Eskimo" means ice cream.

That can't be a coincidence, either.

That's only one of their terms for ice cream.

My back yard this morning.

I need a single word for "my back yard this morning".

Record snowfall for this time of year. Up to 1 cm in places.

I was expecting snow today. But it's gotten a bit warmer actually.

But it will be coming I guess. This year so far has been looking like we'd be getting all four seasons.

Like, the last two weeks of Summer it was 40 degrees Celcius and not a cloud in sight. On September 1st, on the hour, the temperature dropped 20 degrees and we had heavy rain for three weeks and not a ray of sunshine.

Winter is coming, at least according to G. R. R. Martin.

3:17 PM

Like someone had flipped a switch.

The colours of Christmas!

@RegDwigнt We had the drop on Nov 1, but similar guillotine effect.

It's 13 degrees here.

@Cerberus Said the Orangeman.

They say it may be the warmest second day of December since 1901.

3:18 PM

Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clemens.

@Cerberus That's a lot warmer than when it's 13 degrees here, btw.

Undoubtedly.

@RegDwigнt No 1984 references in chat.

Must run!

Bai!

3:19 PM

Pfft. He was allowed to reference 1901. And what kind of year is that.

CU

I hope your cats have fun with the snow.

They are mesmerized.

What is this white.

@RegDwigнt I want to get on Jeopardy so when the "answer" is "He wrote 1984 I can say "Eric Blair" and then they'll say it's wrong and then after the commercial break Alex Trebek will come back having to eat humble pie because his research team discovered that was Orwell's real name.

I didn't even know it was a pseudonym.

I only know of Samuel Clemens and Charles Dodgson. That's pretty much it.

Or Mary Anne Evans.

Or, for that matter, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin.

These do nothing for me.

3:25 PM

Well, they do very little for anyone else except lit majors.

And even those pretty much have abandoned them.

I used to know a whole bunch of all the Russian ones, because basically all Russian writers of the 20th century were pseudonyms, because basically all of them were Jews and that was uncool.

But now I can't think of a single one.

Mary Anne Evans wrote as George Eliot, with such tomes as Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss. Really heady stuff.

I'll leave you to Google Dupin for yourself.

Oh is that George Sand.

Because I was about to mention George Sand the whole time.

Uh-huh.

How I didn't remember her real name.

Well then.

3:28 PM

You probably were thinking of this guy:

Another mystery of the week, resolved.

George Sanders

George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was an English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author. His career as an actor spanned over forty years. His upper-class English accent and bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters. He is perhaps best known as Jack Favell in Rebecca (1940), Scott ffolliott in Foreign Correspondent (1940) (a rare heroic part), Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950), for which he won an Academy Award, Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe (1952), King Richard the Lionheart in King Richard and...

Hm.

In many many old movies.

Dunno he looks like the TV show host from PT Anderson's Magnolia.

Philip Baker Hall.

3:29 PM

Are you mad? He was Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe.

Never watched that.

Or Cleopatra or Laurence of Arabia.

And he died gloriously (or ignominiously, depending on your politics) in a battle with Robert Taylor (a/k/a Ivanhoe).

Ivanhoe is the gayest name ever. I was never interested for that reason alone.

Ivanhoe sounds like a Russian prostitute.

Word.

Also yes I am mad, but I thought that was understood and implied and inferred.

And also comprised.

3:32 PM

Don't get mad, get even.

You misspelled kompromat.

So you're the one secretly starring people.

No lurking in this chat.

No chatting in this lurk.

> × teneble → tenebres
‖ Tenebrae [n.]
† ˈtenebrate [ppl. adj.]
teneˈbration ← ˈtenebrate
› tenebre candle, lesson, matins, service, Tenebre Wednesday ← ˈtenebres
† ˈtenebres [n.]
teneˈbresce [v.] ← tenebrescence
tenebrescence [n.]
teneˈbrescent [adj.] ← tenebrescence
teˈnebricose [adj.]
tenebrific [adj.]
teneˈbrificate [v.] ← tenebrific
† teneˈbrificous [adj.] ← tenebrific
› tenebrific stars, constellations ← tenebrific
‖ tenebrio [n.]
tenebrionid [n.]
tenebrious [adj.]
teˈnebriously [adv.] ← tenebrious

3:50 PM

It's getting dark in here.

Tavener: Village Wedding

I have a mondegreen on the refrain.

"Though I say I'll dance for joy" instead of the real "O Isaiah dance for joy".

That's what I thought.

You heard what I heard, or the real lyric?

Except I didn't get the though but heard it as "Oh I say I'll dance"

yeah

"O Isaiah dance" and "Oh I say I'll dance" are damned close.

3:54 PM

Ayup.

And given the "Oh I say" it suggests some portly Englishman chortling his accord: "Oh, I say!"

I heard them live singing that one in a hall with good acoustics. It was a delight.

Good group.

I'm pretty sure that that was a piece they commissioned Taverner to write specifically for their vocal mix.

Not often you hear a counter tenor these days.

Well, not often that I do.

Heh, a "counter tenor" should be a singing bartender, no?

It's a rare voice in the wild, especially done well.

The only male voice rarer is the adult male soprano, which is NOT the same thing.

There are a few out there, who without being castrati, had an anatomical anomaly causing their voice box not to develop the normal male range.

The name of their group they took from the name of Chaucer's rooster.

4:01 PM

Of course.

They have a bass who's as impressive as their countertenors.

Shakespeare used it too. In college I played Prospero in The Tempest, believe it or not, and I remember well these lines by Ariel:

    Hark, hark! I hear
   The strain of strutting chanticleer
    Cry “Cock-a-diddle-dow.”

Eric Alatorre & Chanticleer - Ring of Fire

I can't even think that low.

Basso profundo?

Yes.

4:07 PM

What is that, E-flat?

I start going into duck bass around the G.

I'm not sure what his final note was. I'd have to have a keyboard next to me to plunk it out.

I'm not much good below C.

I'm more of a tenitone.

Sometimes B♭ in the morning.

It's in D.

I can sing along comfortably three octaves higher.

Was his last note a D then?

4:10 PM

@RegDwigнt I just checked and it is in E♭ on my digital piano.

I didn't pay attention. But the harmony was C-D.

A = 440

I should be at 439.

It's not an exact match to their tuning, I can hear that.

Yes. But for me the roulette ball falls into the E♭ slot.

I'm like halfway between a D and an E flat yeah.

4:14 PM

It's funny, I don't have perfect pitch, but if I imagine myself playing a given melody on the flute, nine times out of ten I can come up with the notes as they would correspond to my fingerings.

Anyway, "I can't think that low" is a perfect way to express this. I'm stealing that.

@Robusto it seems to be very similar on the violin.

On the piano, all bets are off basically.

4:28 PM

Same.

I had a pianist roommate at the conservatory who had perfect pitch. He used to actually get angry with me when I would be transcribing some music in, say, F# while listening to a piece in, say, G. He said it gave him a headache. I told him not to read over my shoulder in that case.

That's how perfect pitch gets in the way of things.

Exactly.

Today your concert master tunes to 443, tomorrow to 415. Now what.

Eat it up, that's what.

No hay rosa sin espina. I think that's how it goes.

@RegDwigнt This is why they have oboes give the pitch. Concertmasters can't be trusted. If they had their way it would be 448 and full speed ahead.

As soon as I had figured out where the first three fingers go on the violin roughly, which was like after two or three days, I could play any tune I could think of and my hand would automatically start it on a certain finger such that the entire rest of the melody would lay down very naturally for all the other fingers throughout.

A: Is it possible to output multidimensional data from linear table without iteration?

4:34 PM

1

I think you just need include the month in the GROUP BY: SELECT m.riderUid, w.firstName, w.lastName, w.isMale, MONTH(m.rideDate) as monthNumber, SUM(mileage) as miles, COUNT(*) as cnt FROM `mileage` m INNER JOIN `members` w ON (w.uid = m.riderUid) WHERE (m.rideDate >= '$startDate' ...

Does this guy's MySQL work for anybody else?

I can try at work but not here. Not equipped at all.

It keeps giving me syntax errors. All over the place.

That is par for the course. I think the manual for SQL says to always ignore them on page one.

At least that's how it works on the Web I think.

See, this is why I always valued have DB guys to rely on. Cuz that way lies madness.

Talk about clockwork oranges.

I was going to ask WTF you were doing on DBA then noticed it was your own stupid question.

I think the accepted answer is "you're retired mate".

4:37 PM

Heh.

I built my cycling club's website.

Yeah I remember you mentioning something to that extent.

That's a retirement job, for you. I get less money (i.e., 0 dollars) and about the same levels of gratitude.

I think you need to upgrade your SQL from 105 to Ultegra, that'll fix it.

Fuck. I used to have Dura-Ace DBAs.

I don't even remember what my currently installed setup is on the Bianchi in the cellar.

4:39 PM

When I took over the site they were still using HTML 3.2, fer chrissakes.

And lots and lots of FONT tags.

I am very font of those.

In my CSS master sheet at work I actually went and specified default styles for all the <font> and <i> and <s> nonsense, so when people would inevitably still use them in 20fucking16 they'd get nothing in return.

So I made the site responsive, everything updated and looking fine, working great, with lots of data for ride metrics. And all I get are requests for idiotic features. Like "Why can't every page have a home button to take you to the front?" And I point out that all you have to do is click the logo and it takes you there.

Are you shitting me.

SHTAP! You wanna me have a Caesar or somethun?

I wish I were.

4:42 PM

That's been like the accepted standard since the Space Jam website launched in 1843.

I wonder if there's a place where they serve seizure salad.

Some hospitals have them.

I myself get a petit mal seizure every time I even see Jell-O salad.

What is jello salad.

No don't tell. I changed my mind.

itisakeeper.com/19167/jello-salad-recipes

Enter at your own risk.

I just googled.

@RegDwigнt Too late. You can't unring that bell.

4:45 PM

The first picture alone gave me the shivers.

That does look like something they'd serve in the hospital.

I sure hope that's raspberry.

@Robusto It's from childhood, those bizarre things they used to make us using cucumber and avocado and lime jello.

@tchrist Yes.

My mom made that with carrots and raisins.

Yes.

Those go in there, too.

It's kind of like Looney Tunes scrapple, I guess.

Cottage cheese or cream cheese or something.

In a mould.

mayo

sour cream?

4:49 PM

Please, I just had a really good omelette.

I dunno, it's in the family recipe book somewhere up on my shelves down in the stacks.

Snow here means no riding today, so I made myself a lavish breakfast for a change. I mean, what else ya gonna do?

I don't know why, but it keeps missing us.

Up-county they got 20 inches and we got nothin.

Frankenstein "It's Alive" Scene

@tchrist Don't give up hope. I bet you beat us by two orders of magnitude this winter.

It's been warm enough for shorts and sweaters almost every day for the past week.

4:53 PM

My fingers are freezing right now. And I'm inside.

@Færd Also, you see that kind of construction in folks songs: "Froggie went a-courtin' he did ride" ... etc.

@RegDwigнt Your bad for living in Europe, where they don't really believe in comfortable temps indoors.

Oh they do. I don't.

Also I need a stable climate for the instruments. So once 16 degrees, always 16 degrees.

You always hear how the Brits drink their beer at room temperature, but what you don't realize is they're talking 55 degrees F, or around 14 C.

That's correct.

@RegDwigнt Why I have a digital piano. ^_^

4:55 PM

Nah, you have twenty other reasons as well. Don't forget the twenty other reasons as well.

Also my piano doesn't really give a fuck. It sounds different every day anyway, climate or no climate.

@RegDwigнt Actually, only about four other reasons. Including harpsichord and organ patches.

But I'm a bit worried about the violin cuz I've only had it for a short time and have zero idea how sensitive it really is.-

You have one of those teething-ring-lookin' moisturizers in the case, right?

Tu casa?

4:57 PM

Yes.

But not today.

@Robusto Yeah. I've not used it in like 8 months though. Last winter I did a lot.

Couple weeks ago. Melted in a day.

So that's probably coming this year as well.

@tchrist that is beautiful. I rather miss that.

There's half a snowstorm in Massachusetts. I don't miss that shit at all.

@RegDwigнt What, did you move to Libya or something?

4:59 PM

That is a very tiny trekker. Or a very huge LEGO Technic one.

@tchrist that's what I used to wonder. Europe is like all Mediterranean climate everywhere.

Summer, 17 degrees and rain. Winter, 17 degrees and rain.

Autumn and spring are basically nonexistent.

That's the full amount.

@Robusto good on you for volunteering to store all the excess water in your backyard that otherwise would be flooding the oil refineries on your shores.

inorite

Like you didn't already know:

Jun 26 '13 at 20:43, by RegDwighт

@Robusto hey cool, I could use a gigantic fridge. Please stand by as I find my way from your backyard to your house.

5:05 PM

I've not been in years.

Ever since that tree fell down.

It tied the whole yard together.

Well, I abandoned that one nearly three years back. So if you were still there you'd be haunting someone else by now.

See. You couldn't stand it without the tree, either. QED.

Q: the meaning of extol the myth

@RegDwigнt You still can see the tree in that latter picture. See if you can guess where it is.

0

what is the meaning of extol the myth in this paragraph One of London Zoo’s recent advertisements caused me some irritation, so patently did it distort reality. Headlined “Without zoos you might as well tell these animals to get stuffed”, it was bordered with illustrations of several endangered ...

meaning

Mods take note: ^^ GAFTAD question

It's like tol, but in the past. It's an extol.

Which is only fitting seeing how myths are all bearded as well.

Well, a coma is a comma in some cases.

They're both bearded.

5:19 PM

Now I have to think of that bass's epic moustache again.

Is that the key? BRB growing hair.

Well, there's nothing to do now but head off to a champagne brunch. I'd rather be riding, but we do what we can.

Latezr y'all.

Enjoy your Moet and Chandon.

Queen - Killer Queen (Top Of The Pops, 1974)

You too.

SmokeDetector

7:06 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (248): When someone has great influence within a group, what do you call his situation? by Hannah on english.SE

39 - O gloriosa domina (Venantius Fortunatus)

10:14 PM

Today must be my day for mondegreens. I heard "farta est" here:

19 - Nova nova (Medieval carol)

For English instead of Latin, I really like their period pronunciation of Late Middle English in:

At least, I think it's Late Middle English.

ab2

10:38 PM

Has anyone yet read "The Prodigal Tongue" by Lynne Murphy? Kirkus says "she explains the phenomenon she calls amerilexicosis, “a pathologically unhinged reaction to American English'". The Economist says it is scholarly and funny. Seems worth buying, particularly given how awful the weather is here.