English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

MετάEd

12:10 AM

Nov 6 '12 at 22:56, by MετάEd

Nov 1 at 18:03, by MετάEd

Oct 5 at 16:14, by MετάEd

Dammit. I killed the room again.

@tchrist Only in Dallas.

tchrist

12:43 AM

> But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?

And so we are come to it: the bitter watches of the night.

When all is still.

Heading down to 0 tonight. Wind. Light snow.

@MετάEd Here I thought you were talking about a gay truck party in Dallas.

Hm, well this answer didn’t survive long. Wonder what he’s thinking.

KitFox

@MετάEd Can't go wrong with Amber Lynn.

Matt Эллен

1:22 AM

g.night

KitFox

Hiya!

Oh rats.

simchona

Did I miss a Pantone memo?

MετάEd

1:58 AM

This is not a Pantone color. But I could be talked into it.

@KitFox You're looking very pink.

I'm experiencing fuchsia shock.

"although my name's not Bamber"

tchrist

> For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. 1 Peter 3:37

Not often that you see a modal anteposed before will. It is somewhat . . . outmoded.

Or perhaps, overmoded.

cornbread ninja

@MετάEd !

MετάEd

@cornbreadninja Howdy :-)

cornbread ninja

Howdy!

Oh, it is time to make cookies.

I would like to be a colored square, but @Jasper already has the best color.

MετάEd

@cornbreadninja What's the best color?

cornbread ninja

2:08 AM

@MετάEd Blue.

invalid flag. ten yard penalty, loss of first down.

MετάEd

@cornbreadninja We could do cutouts.

cornbread ninja

@MετάEd I like it.

MετάEd

But not now. It is time for a movie with the family. AFK :-)

cornbread ninja

Okay. Parting thought:

I just watched a program where two towns attempted to carve 32,000+ pumpkins apiece to win the Guiness Record.

As my bf said, what a massive waste of human effort.

tchrist

What a massive waste of pumpkins.

cornbread ninja

2:13 AM

That too.

tchrist

I am guessing the Comms Room must be under a blue haze by now.

Maybe even a flashing blue-light special.

cornbread ninja

@mah'x!

Mahnax

wakes up

Hi!

I wasn't even asleep.

cornbread ninja

poke

tchrist

tuna poke

Mahnax

2:19 AM

How's it going, then?

cornbread ninja

hokey poke

tchrist

Looks like the Comms Room has been blessed with a supermod’s presence.

cornbread ninja

@Mahnax just pokin' around.

tchrist

That should calm them. Right.

Mahnax

@cornbreadninja Yes, so it would seem, heh.

cornbread ninja

2:23 AM

@Mahnax how ewe?

tchrist

awaits flags

cornbread ninja

@tchrist :D

Mahnax

@cornbreadninja Pretty good. I've got a beverage, so I'm happy.

tchrist

Beah?

Mahnax

A little nippy out though. -20˚C or so.

tchrist

2:24 AM

Whatever.

cornbread ninja

@Mahnax an adult beverage? I have raspberry wine.

tchrist

It’s 0 here.

That or thereabouts.

Mahnax

@cornbreadninja No no no. Quad-shot venti vanilla latte!

cornbread ninja

@Mahnax 0_0

tchrist

So you are colder. Somewhat.

tosses Bailey’s in the mix

cornbread ninja

2:25 AM

peel you from the ceiling, we must.

Mahnax

@cornbreadninja Nah, I'm alright.

Building up a tolerance and all that.

cornbread ninja

I had a Bailey's milkshake earlier.

tchrist

How ’bout that 120 wpm typing speed?

cornbread ninja

Whom?

oh, derp.

tchrist

Flyboy.

The one on the ceiling.

Mahnax

2:27 AM

I am firmly planted on the sofa, thanks very much.

tchrist

Grow lamps will do that to you.

Bet you anything that that won’t last long.

Not with a quad-shot.

Unless you have one of those stadium attachments.

cornbread ninja

Fasten yer seatbelt.

Mahnax

Bah, you kids are silly sometimes.

cornbread ninja

It's the wine.

tchrist

It’s the senility. Fourth childhood and all.

cornbread ninja

2:32 AM

Fourth!

tchrist

One per decade. Keeps it fresh.

This shows a certain naïveté about the Internet being the Answer to All Man’s Problems, don’t you think?

No – there are other occurrences "v. a. an astrologer", "v. a. malum absit", the verb active qualifier just doesn't make sense. Given the style of the book I'm fairly certain it's a Latin(ate) abbreviation, but the fact that there's no answer on the internet is puzzling. — glts 5 hours ago

Not that I plan to rub it in to his face.

cornbread ninja

Aw, c'mon.

tchrist

He’s got all these 19th century books he’s trying to decode.

Pretty sure there was no Internet back then. :)

“The fact that there’s no answer on the Internet is puzzling” is just plain silly.

It is not a fact.

The situation that someone has been unable to discover what they were looking for on the Internet is anything but puzzling.

That does not mean it is not there.

That does not mean that it is.

Send a man to fish for a day. If he comes back without supper, do not assume the lake is barren.

cornbread ninja

Truth.

Dare.

tchrist

I dare you to tell me why that word has two r's in it.

Stoopid marquedoughn.

cornbread ninja

2:43 AM

@tchrist which?

tchrist

barren

cornbread ninja

Oh.

tchrist

I wonder why it is not *baren, or some such.

cornbread ninja

baron

tchrist

Seems to be the Frenchies’ fault.

They don’t seemed to have spelled very well way back then either.

cornbread ninja

2:45 AM

Or Snoopy's.

tchrist

> Þe wimman was barrage [? barraigne], swo þat heo ne mihte for unkinde hauen no child. [1200]

> Al were he, þuruh miracle, of barain iboren. [1230]

> Sare..sayde til abraham.. I am baren [1340]

Ahah! So they once sayde that kind of thing.

> Fenenna scorned..Anna and called her berhayn. [1483]

So much for the Renaissance making things better.

> In shady Cloister mew'd, To liue a barren sister all your life. [Billy the Bard, 1590]

Strange that the first to spell it as we now do should have been Shakespeer, considering how he couldn’t spell a word the same way twice in a row.

Mahnax

So what's up with the solid colour gravatars?

tchrist

Color blindness tests.

cornbread ninja

Ooh.

May anyone play?

tchrist

Well, can you see the dragonfly in @MετάEd’s gravistar?

cornbread ninja

2:54 AM

Ummm no.

tchrist

Best get that checked out. It means you have a Y chromosome that’s colonized your mosaic.

Mechanical snail

@tchrist There is no dragonfly; it's a solid color.

tchrist

Have you been fraternizing outside your sororal cloister?

cornbread ninja

@tchrist I always figured I had a Y chromosome.

Mechanical snail

tchrist

2:56 AM

@Mechanicalsnail One plays by the numbers, or not at all. Never trust your eyes. Write a program that compares all RGB/HSV values, and make sure they are invariant.

Funny how that used to be red before las naranjas.

Mechanical snail

@tchrist I did. I tried filling with 0 tolerance.

tchrist

Zero tolerance is the way to go.

I am so glad we are a mellow room.

cornbread ninja

Quite rightly.

Cerberus

4:27 AM

@tchrist Huh wha—?

I was Away.

Where are you, peoplez?

MετάEd

4:52 AM

Hiding in the pumpkin patch.

Cerberus

Yo.

Does any kind of orange count as such?

MετάEd

@Cerberus Blood orange maybe.

Cerberus

But blood oranges are reddisher...

Nay, more reddish.

I'm not sober, so don't play your sophisticated tricks on me!

tchrist

Just redder, thank you very much.

Cerberus

hands on hips

tchrist

4:56 AM

Thumbs in or thumbs out?

Cerberus

But they're not quite red.

tchrist

So?

Cerberus

@tchrist Ahhh don't make me think!

@tchrist Just so.

tchrist

Just because you’re readier than you were, doesn’t mean you’re quite ready yet.

Cerberus

I suppose not.

tchrist

4:58 AM

So it had been redder than it is yellow without being a carmine delight.

Cerberus

But who expects an orange to be yellow?

tchrist

Eärendil.

There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.

Cerberus

So the verb is PERfumed too.

tchrist

If it please you.

Cerberus

How can it be otherwise?

If Tolkien says so...

tchrist

5:00 AM

Other verses might go the other way.

Cerberus

If you say so...

I wouldn't have known.

tchrist

The noun is stressed at the end.

At least, on these hither shores.

Cerberus

> "p3;fju;m, p@"fju;m

tchrist

Can’t read.

Cerberus

On our shores, apparently it can be either.

The " indicate stress.

tchrist

5:03 AM

The OED seems to disagree.

Cerberus

This is from the OED.

tchrist

I was reading the wrong line.

  <IPH>&sm.p&revope.&lm.&revr.fju&lm.m</IPH>,
  <IPH>p&schwa.&revr.&sm.fju&lm.m</IPH>

They’ve got some other crud in the file called MPH. I think it is the OED1 system.

Cerberus

And you were calling me illegible!

tchrist

I thought your country considers you eligible once you hit sixteen.

Cerberus

Not quite. One can only be elected starting at 18.

tchrist

5:05 AM

I didn’t say eligible for what.

Cerberus

Neither did I.

Ugh, I don't feel so good.

tchrist

Bad thing.

Cerberus

Why am I eating?

tchrist

Porcelain worshipping time?

Cerberus

Naaah.

That's really bad.

Somehow I always crave food when I get home.

You know the feeling?

tchrist

5:09 AM

Hunting always makes you hungry.

Cerberus

Naaah.

There was no hunt.

No gun, no shots.

tchrist

Tell that to the Erlkönig.

Just the wind, I’m sure.

Cerberus

Who is that? Eärendil?

Théoden?

tchrist

Der Erlkönig

"" (also called "") is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It depicts the death of a child assailed by a supernatural being, the Erlking or "" (suggesting the literal translation "alder king", but see below). It was originally composed by Goethe as part of a 1782 Singspiel entitled '. The poem has been used as the text for Lieder (art songs for voice and piano) by many classical composers, with Franz Schubert's rendition, his Opus 1 (D. 328), being the best-known one. Many other settings survive. Other notable settings are by members of Goethe's circle, including the actress ...

Cerberus

I only know the eorlingas.

@tchrist Sounds unpleasant.

tchrist

5:12 AM

> An anxious young boy is being carried home at night by his father on horseback. As the poem unfolds, the son seems to see and hear beings his father does not; the father asserts reassuringly naturalistic explanations for what the child sees – a wisp of fog, rustling leaves, shimmering willows. Finally the child shrieks that he has been attacked. The father makes faster for the Hof. There he recognizes that the boy is dead.

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,
 Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht?" –
 "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;
 In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind." –

Cerberus

My father is not here, and I am alive.

tchrist

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort
 Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort?" –
 "Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh es genau:
 Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau. –"

Beware the King of Elfland’s daughter.

Cerberus

No daughter can defeat me.

tchrist

Then you are invincible.

Cerberus

Indeed.

Now if he had a son...

tchrist

5:14 AM

For many a merry lad was spirited away by those beckoning sirens’ call, ne’er to walk again the fields that we know.

Cerberus

He's probably in a better place now.

Elfland.

tchrist

And a changeling in his stead. You?

Cerberus

A changeling I am not.

Tricephalic dogs are hard to switch.

tchrist

> And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happening that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills.

> And she would not hold back his limbs when his heart was gone to the woods, for it is ever the way of witches with any two things to care for the more mysterious of the two. For she had a charm for brightening the morning, and a charm for cheering the day.

> What could she do who would not cast away magic and leave the home that an ageless day had endeared to her while centuries were withering like leaves upon earthly shores, whose heart was yet held by those little tendrils of Earth, which are strong enough, strong enough?

> And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.

> So he sat and listened to pigeons talking, till it seemed to him they were trying to lull the restlessness of Earth, and thought that they might by drowsy incantation be putting some spell against time, through which it could not come to harm their nests; for the power of time was not made clear to him yet and he knew not yet that nothing in our fields has the strength to hold out against time.

> She sang of old Summer noons in the time of harebells: she sang on that high dark heath a song that seemed so full of mornings and evenings preserved with all their dews by her magical craft from days that had else been lost, that Alveric wondered of each small wandering wing, that her fire had lured from the dusk, if this were the ghost of some day lost to man, called up by the force of her song from times that were fairer.

> What could she do who would not cast away magic and leave the home that an ageless day had endeared to her while centuries were withering like leaves upon earthly shores, whose heart was yet held by those little tendrils of Earth, which are strong enough, strong enough?

Cerberus

Alveric? Alberic?

Harebells...a kind of flower?

tchrist

5:21 AM

Yes, they are Campanula grandifolia.

Bellflower.

Cerberus

Right.

Plants are the hardest to know in any language.

tchrist

Save Latin. :)

Cerberus

Nah-uh.

tchrist

At least I can tell you what they are that way.

Cerberus

The name campanula is very familiar. And yet I wouldn't know what it looked like off hand.

tchrist

5:23 AM

The quotes are from Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter.

Cerberus

I see.

Lords good. Commoners bad.

tchrist

The etymological connect between Alveric and Elfland cannot be coïncidental.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

People crafted longer sentences back then, filling our minds with illusive reverie.

Some sentences were too long for me to copy.

Cerberus

So be it.

tchrist

5:26 AM

The witch approached it and pared its edges with a sword that she drew from her thigh. Then she sat down beside it on the earth and sang to it while it cooled.
Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of som…

Cerberus

BRB need to remove contacts.

tchrist

Like that last one.

> Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is travelling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked ‘Progress’. —Lord Dunsany

> All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships. When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else. —Lord Dunsany

> I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it. —Lord Dunsany

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957) was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, rece...

> Dunsany almost never rewrote anything; everything he ever published was a first draft. Much of his work was penned with quill pens, which he made himself; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings, and would help type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany would sometimes conceive stories while hunting, and would return to the Castle and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper.

Drax. His name was Drax!

Cerberus

Good.

The 18th Baron, that is a respectable lineage.

I cannot but approve.

His rafts appear to have withstood the storms of time rather well, I must say.

tchrist

> Dunsany studied Greek and Latin, particularly Greek drama and Herodotus, the "Father of History". Dunsany wrote in a letter: "When I learned Greek at Cheam and heard of other gods a great pity came on me for those beautiful marble people that had become forsaken and this mood has never quite left me."

Cerberus

Of course.

But his religious thing seems rather...bourgeois.

tchrist

5:37 AM

Writers influenced by Dunsany: J.R.R.Tolkien, according to John D. Rateliff's report,[22] presented Clyde S. Kilby with a copy of The Book of Wonder as kind of a preparation to his auxiliary role in The Silmarillion's compilation and development during the Sixties.[23] Tolkien's letters and divulged notes made allusions to two of the stories found in this volume, Chu-Bu and Sheemish and The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller [24]
Dale J. Nelson has argued persuasively in Tolkien studies 01 that Tolkien may have been inspired by another of the Book of Wonder's tales, The Hoard of t…

In fact, there is a specific nod to Dunsany in the Lord of the Rings.

> Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

That refrain is heard 100 times in The King of Elfland’s Daughter.

I am not resorting to hyperbole. You would agree if you read it.

> Writers influenced by Dunsany: Neil Gaiman has expressed admiration for Dunsany and has written an introduction to a collection of his stories. Some commentators have posited links between The King of Elfland's Daughter and Gaiman's Stardust (book and film), a connection seemingly supported by a comment of Gaiman's quoted in The Neil Gaiman Reader.

> Writers influenced by Dunsany: Jorge Luis Borges included Dunsany's short story "Idle Days on the Yann" as the twenty-seventh title in The Library of Babel, a series of works Borges selected and provided forewords for (not to be confused with his short story of the same name, "The Library of Babel"). Borges also, in his essay "Kafka and His Precursors," included Dunsany's story "Carcassonne" as one of the texts that presaged, or paralleled, Kafka's themes.

Cerberus

Thangobrind...now what does that bring to mind?

Did you like the adventures of Bombadil?

I never liked them as a child.

tchrist

> Dunsany's primary home, over 820 years old, can be visited at certain times of year, and tours usually include the Library, but not the tower room he often liked to work in.

No, I did not enjoy them.

Cerberus

What is his house called?

Or his hall.

tchrist

Um, Dunsany Castle. Of course.

That is why it was capitalized earlier.

Cerberus

I see.

We have no equivalent of hall.

Everything must be a house.

tchrist

5:44 AM

Thereupon Elrond paused a while and sighed. `I remember well the splendour of their banners,' he said. `It recalled to me
the glory of the Elder Days and the hosts of Beleriand, so many great princes and captains were assembled.
And yet not so many, nor so fair, as when Thangorodrim was broken, and the Elves deemed that evil was ended for ever, and
it was not so.' `You remember?' said Frodo, speaking his thought aloud in his astonishment. `But I thought,' he stammered
as Elrond turned towards him, 'I thought that the fall of Gil-galad was a long age ago.'

That is the answer to what Thangobrind brings to mind: Thangorodrim!

Cerberus

D'oh.

It was a rhetorical question.

And I know this passage.

tchrist

Alas, I have little rhetoric.

There he delved anew his vast vaults and dungeons, and above their gates he reared the threefold peaks of Thangorodrim, and a great reek of dark smoke was ever wreathed about them.
There countless became the hosts of his beasts and his demons, and the race of the Orcs, bred long before, grew and multiplied in the bowels of the earth. Dark now fell the shadow on Beleriand, as is told hereafter, but in Angband Morgoth forged for himself a great crown of iron, and he called himself King of the World. In token of this he set the Silmarils in his crown.

Cerberus

I still wonder about the Valar just as about the Christian God.

Why not interfere sooner?

user19161

I see @MετάEd is an orange square.

Cerberus

Hi.

tchrist

5:47 AM

Therefore Morgoth took Maedhros and hung him from the face of a precipice upon Thangorodrim, and he was caught to the rock by the wrist of his right hand in a band of steel.
Now rumour came to the camp in Hithlum of the march of Fingolfin and those that followed him, who had crossed the Grinding Ice; and all the world lay then in wonder at the coming of the Moon. But as the host of Fingolfin marched into Mithrim the Sun rose flaming in the West; and Fingolfin unfurled his blue and silver banners, and blew his horns, and flowers sprang beneath his marching feet, and the ages of the stars wer…

@Cerberus It is the hardest question of all and any theology.

Cerberus

@tchrist On the contrary.

It proves that such theology is moot, and definitively so.

God must be either evil or powerless.

tchrist

I am no lawyer.

Cerberus

No need.

What does Maedhros have to do with Fingolfin anyway? I thought Maedhros had betrayed the elves?

tchrist

No.

They are cousins.

Cerberus

Oh wait.

That was Maeglin.

tchrist

5:51 AM

And Fingolfin rescued Maedros.

Cerberus

I see.

tchrist

Maeglin was the child of rape, by Eöl and the White Lady of the Noldor.

Cerberus

That's not good...who was this lady?

tchrist

And Maeglin sought the hand of the King’s daughter, Idril Celebrimbor, but that hand was given over to Tuor, who was like unto a son to the King.

This lady was the King’s sister.

Cerberus

Right.

tchrist

5:53 AM

Idril had the most Vanyar blood of any of the Eldar who returned to Middle Earth.

And she eventually returned to Eldamar, to follow Tuor, who was joined to her spirit and became as one of the Eldar. It was a trade for Lúthien, in a way.

They were Eärendil’s parents. And are.

Cerberus

God, I'm falling asleep sitting. Not your fault.

tchrist

> Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin. Then the sun rose, and the host of the Valar prevailed, and well-nigh all the dragons were destroyed; and all the pits of Morgoth were broken and unroofed, and the might of the Valar descended into the deeps of the earth. There Morgoth stood at last at bay, and yet unvaliant.

Good night, then.

Cerberus

It is not yet bed time.

tchrist

It was Eärendil who broke Thangorodrim.

When Alcalagon fell.

Cerberus

Why didn't they root out evil once and for all? Were they not smart enough to see that letting Sauron live would spell doom?

tchrist

5:56 AM

He feigned repentance.

Cerberus