The Sniffle
In spite of her sniffle,
Isabel's chiffle.
Some girls with a sniffle
Would be weepy and tiffle;
They would look awful,
Like a rained-on waffle,
But Isabel's chiffle
In spite of her sniffle.
Her nose is more red
With a cold in her head,
But then, to be sure,
Her eyes are bluer.
Some girls with a snuffle,
Their tempers are uffle,
But when Isabel's snivelly
She's snivelly civilly,
And when she's snuffly
She's perfectly luffly.
--Ogden Nash
Start spreading the news. I’m leaving today.
I want to be a part of it, Newford! Newford!
These hob-enspelled shoes are longing to stray
Right to the faerie heart of it, Newford! Newford!
I want to wake up in the city where boggans creep
And find the pook of the hill! The Gruagagh’s keep!
Ankh-Morpork, tis of thee
Sweet land of…let me see…
Of thee I sing.
Land where the kings all died!
Land of Patrician’s pride!
(We sure hope he’s on our side!)
Let Old Tom Ring.
Thomas @132
Thanks so much. I think that may well solve the problem for me!
An open thread at this particular site seems like the perfect place to ask if anyone can give me a reliable bibliographical reference for the Asimov essay titled, "What Is Intelligence Anyway?" I've seen it attributed to his book _It's Been a Good Life_ but a thorough re-read of that work assures me that it's not in there.
My permissions editor is going nuts looking for this. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
You know, these puns take work. It's not like I just come in here and toss one off whenever I feel like it.
Eirin and Erik @ 24 and 25
You guys have me awfully tempted to take a whack at a pun.
I've been giggling helplessly over this story all day. But I just went and read the article that Teresa linked to, and I have been driven absolutely over the edge of hysteria by the beautiful missing antecedent problem in this sentence....
"if boys know pornography will make them gay, they'll never touch it"
John Donne wrote about it way before bio-ports.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/ecstacy.htm
Pendrift
Fixing dropped stitches without ripping your knitting is easy and deeply satisfying.
You need a crochet hook, but in times of direst need, I've used a DPN, a toothpick, or a ballpoint pen.
Good video of instructions is here.
Pendrift-
What's the trouble?
Diatryma @#81
You'll learn nothing (other than patience) from making a scarf that you won't learn from making the same stitch pattern into a pot holder sized square.
If you don't want a scarf and aren't giddy with pleasure at the thought of wearing the one that you're going to produce, I'd highly recommend casting off and starting something in a lace pattern, since what you want to do is knit lace.
As a crocheter, you already know how to boss your yarn around. And if you're doing a scarf, you can knit, purl, and cast on and off. Additional lace knitting skills are trivially easy to pick up.
And if you want suggestions for patterns, I've got a million!
Quilts. Art. Use.
Everyday Use by Alice Walker, for those who might not know it.
Oh, lovely quilt abi!
I've just finished an enormous (6x6) lace shawl. I love the feeling of finishing up a big project, standing back, saying "Wow!" and "What next?"
Have you tried Half.com?
It's pretty good for textbooks.
Open-threadiness. Knitting. Things for giggling about. And, thanks to Fragano Ledgister for the topical segue...a hat.
It's familiar indeed. I find myself on pins and needles waiting for the next pun, as it's been a lawn while since I satin on a session like this.
In the play Wit, the dying English professor says that the reason she studies and writes about John Donne is because he's difficult.
She's right. He is.
The play then goes on to expose the ways in which her intellectualization of her world has left her dehumanized. We are meant to find the visit from her former student who reads her the children's tale "The Runaway Bunny" a consoling return to humanity for her--particularly since she declines with a whimper when her student offers to read her some Donne instead.
And okay, in the world of the play, I can take that.
But as someone who also specializes in Donne and other 17th century metaphysical writers, I can say that those of us who choose them don't, on the whole, choose them because they're difficult. And we certainly don't choose them because they are overly intellectual and unemotional. We choose them because they leave us breathless, ecstatic, enraptured. And one of the tools they use in order to produce that effect is their difficulty.
They aren't good *because* they are difficult. They're good. They are also difficult. They work at the height of their intellectual and emotional powers and they demand the same from their readers.
About guilt and reading--
I think that a lot of people who call science fiction or fantasy or murder mysteries or romance novels or *whatever* their "guilty pleasures" do it not because they actually feel guilty, but because they think they should feel guilty.
They are aware that the way they are perceived by others makes their affection for sf/f/mm/rn/or whatever seem a bit...out of place. So they claim to feel "guilty" about reading them, just to make their persona appear to make sense. I know a lot of people who eat dessert with great pleasure and no guilty, but who still say that dessert is a guilty pleasure because they know they are perceived as being fitness freaks. So it may be like that.
It may also be quiet defiance.
I have an academic type job. When colleagues find me reading sf/f/mm/rn/or whatever I am inclined to make quiet remarks about my "low tastes" as a way of precluding smart ass remarks from them, but also as ironic praise of the very thing I'm reading, particularly as contrasted with what I "should" be reading.
"Yep, you caught me reading Louise Penny instead of Grun Von Prinsterer. Ah well. We've always known I have low tastes."
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 82 |
| 2008 | 87 |
| 2007 | 135 |
| 2006 | 134 |
| 2005 | 9 |
| 2004 | 5 |
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