Clifton Royston wrote: Now that I think about it, I have heard UK accents where as a consonant shift a t gets replaced by '. What cities or regions does this accent come from?
It appears everywhere in Britain, as far as I can tell, although I suppose the stereotypical glo'al-stopper would be a cheery cockney chap.
Here in Manxland I remember that glottal stops were so common at my primary school that one teacher started a bit of a crusade against them. We weren't allowed to go to the toilet unless we pronounced the 't' at the end of the word when we asked permission. And you couldn't get round it by saying "loo" instead. It was "toileT" or nothing.
PJ Evans: Gaylords' has "Bookkeeper Deacidification Sprays"
Larry Brennan: I read that as "Bookkeeper Deadification Sprays"
And I have twice mis-read it as "Bookkeeper Deification Sprays". There should definitely be a spray for that.
candle said: Someone mentioned (British) cryptic crosswords earlier, and it reminded me to look this up. It was a clue from a Guardian crossword by Paul on Sat 8th Feb 1997:
Here 'n' there in the heaven's watery mire are tiny slits, so the harsh weather is slight, not bulky, perhaps (poem by Spike Milligan)
(5, 3, 5, 2, 3, 3, 5, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3, 4'2, 4, 2, 5, 4'1, 3, 4, 2, 4)
I remember this! It was one of the few Paul crosswords I ever managed to complete. I was lucky, though, because that's the only Spike Milligan poem I know. (I'm ashamed to say that I didn't even bother working out the anagram.)
Faren Miller said: P.S. British-style cryptic crosswords rock, and I adore my book featuring Araucaria's best from The Guardian.
Most memorable Araucaria crossword was the double one where none of the clues were numbered, and most of the answers turned out to be items from the poem, "Cargoes".
William Lexner said: Mistakes do happen in life, and they are lamentable.
I would suggest that the state-sanctioned execution of a potentially innocent person needs a bigger word than 'mistake'.
which museum exhibit could you imagine calling home?
It has to be the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford: http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/
It's just cluttered enough to feel like home. I've visited it more times than any other museum (except the Manx Museum, but that's only because of where I live). And I've grown very attached to the collection there: a witch-in-a-bottle; dolls stuck full of great big nails; miniature huskie team; earliest example of a gun; currency as big as a table; a bracelet made of beetles' legs. If my house was big enough, that's the kind of junk I'd fill it with.
Jules, I look forward to seeing how they stop migrating birds from crossing country borders.
Thanks for the particle on flu. The BBC was going on and on and on about the bird flu a few months ago -- to the extent that I began to feel worried. Since then I've come up with a simple way to avoid catching the virus: chop raw chillies without wearing gloves.
Just once I'd like to see a troll being rendered inconsonant. It was so entertaining when E.Nesbit made the Ugly-Wuglies speak.
PiscusFiche said: Mice can be pretty scary, particularly if they are thirsty or hungry mice. Cannibalistic too.
If Hell is full of cannibalistic mice then there's nothing to worry about, since they'll only be eating each other.
Randolph Fritz said: And go where, Ajay?
Come to the Isle of Man! Our government is so small that corruption is of the pettiest kind. Plus we have no army so we won't feel let down if there's a disaster and the army doesn't turn up to help. And, even better, almost all the important stuff (power stations, hospitals, supermarkets, government offices, people) is on the coast so the whole country would effectively be destroyed if there was a flood. And, even better than that, being an island we don't even have the choice of evacuating on foot.
I've been thinking, ever since Katrina, how I'm kind of glad to have such limited options of survival over here. I'd rather face a storm, flood, tornado, hurricane, etc on my own than see my government and emergency services failing to do the human thing.
Lenora Rose said: This is also regarding Madeline Kelly's example of racism (Sorry to keep using you Madeline when you're here to speak for yourself).
You carry on, Lenora. I've lost all heart for this debate. After reading a complete stranger discount my own experience of my own life I'm not really sure what else I could say.
Oh, except that my list of school texts (which should have included "Animal Farm") was obviously chosen not just for entertainment value, and not for pure literary value, but because most of those stories had something to teach us about the world. And they did.
It's depressing how often Poor Man's Copyright turns up in on-line writers' discussion groups. It beats me how people who apparently know how to use the internet can still be so clueless.
Lenora Rose: I was just reading up the thread a little and I see you had already made the point about Jesus teaching through parables, so I needn't have bothered. This will teach me to read the comments more thoroughly before posting. Hey-ho.
As for school texts -- I can't remember when exactly we studied them, but here's the list: "The Merchant of Venice", "King Lear", "Pride and Prejudice", "Far From the Madding Crowd", "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry", "To Kill A Mocking-Bird", "Walkabout", "Carrie's War", "The Machine-Gunners", poetry of John Donne, poetry of Ted Hughes, and probably some other things that I've forgotten.
Dave Luckett said: But suppose you had read Edgar Wallace's "Sanders of the River". That book series assumes that racism (with the usual overtones of paternalism, white man's burden and it's all for their own good) is right and natural. Would you have become a racist because of it?
It's entirely possible, yes. A lot of my family turn out to be quietly racist, and we never dealt with race issues at school. That Dorothy Sterling book opened my eyes to ideas of prejudice and injustice that I had never come across before. I read it over and over again, thinking about what happened to the protagonist, and formulating (still very strongly-held) assumptions about the way the world should be.
And you would have been cruel to animals but for that? Surely not.
Again, it's entirely possible, knowing the rest of my family. But what I meant (and stupidly didn't say) was that Colin Dann made me see animals as being equal. It wasn't a world made of people with animals trotting along in the background; it was a world where animals had as much as right as people to get on with their lives unmolested.
Oh, dear, I hope not. Lewis would have been the last person on Earth to endorse the value of good intentions. He knew where they led.
It doesn't matter what Lewis would have wanted. He failed dismally to turn me into a Christian with the Narnia books -- but I still learnt something from "The Last Battle", whether or not it was the lesson he was trying to teach.
This is an interesting, if futile, discussion. I'll try for an angle that's less personal. What do you think about Jesus using parables to teach his followers? Was he wasting his time? Have all the Christians since then learnt nothing from his stories? (I ask this as an atheist, with no intention of knocking anyone's religion. Blame C.S.Lewis for putting Christianity in my head just now.)
Three significant childhood lessons -- definitely not learnt from parents or teachers:
"Mary Jane" by Dorothy Sterling -- taught me that racism was bad.
"The Way to White Deer Park" by Colin Dann -- taught me to be kind to animals.
"The Last Battle" by C.S.Lewis -- taught me that it doesn't matter what your religion is if your intentions are good.
and so on.
That's not just a distinction in emphasis! It's a distinction; it's just not a distinction in emphasis.
Xopher: I think I love you.
Barbara Gordon wrote: What I wish, is that Tor editors, when rejecting manuscripts, would note the Slushkiller category number somewhere on the form letter.
It could become standardised throughout the publishing world -- in simplified form, of course. Rejection letters could be stamped with an appropriate grade:
A for 'Almost there! Keep trying!'
B for 'Back to the drawing board. You've got a little way to go yet.'
C for 'Come on now -- this is nowhere near ready, is it?'
D for 'Dear oh dear oh dear. Please stop.'
E for 'Ever heard of PublishAmerica? They might take you.'
tom p: you just gave me a horrible flashback of standing in the dinner queue at primary school and being REALLY ANGRY with the people who were pushing in. Maybe it's that anger that made the empire -- a feeling of huge affront when people don't play by the rules, dammit.
The simple fact is that unknown authors are being taken on every day, and frankly, publishers and established authors suffer because of it.
I do see his point, but it's not going to stop me from trying to get published. I don't think there's anything that anyone could say that would stop me. Of course my book will be The Best Book Ever In The History Of Books Ever. It will confound the publishing industry and break all the records. My second book will be even better. I have foreseen it.*
*I'm joking (alright, half-joking). But since wanting to be published requires a lot of self-belief, there's not a lot that anyone can do to stem the flow of manuscripts. How do you argue against belief?
TexAnne: Don't they get divorced? I last read "Fire and Hemlock" a couple of hundred books ago, so my memory is a little hazy.
With the Narnia books, I did notice, when I was a child, that Aslan was supposed to be God. But I fairly quickly decided that Aslan was much better and more interesting than the God who appeared in my Children's Illustrated Bible (he was a talking lion, and a lamb too! he did magic! they could see him! he was fun! he was a talking lion! he was a talking lion!) and continued to read the series as if there was no subtext at all. The allegory aspect of it neither enhanced nor detracted from my enjoyment of the books: that's one of the reasons why they're so good.
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