FreeThinker
-
Posts
805 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by FreeThinker
-
-
I discovered this story under Dude's Picks and it is a treasure. I know it's been here for a while, but if you've not read it, please do. It is a delightful story! I love historical fiction and this story combines several of my favorite genres- gay, historical, theatre... Please read it.
-
I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn't educate America if they started at 6:30.
Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/groucho_marx_2.html#1sd8lvyzGxMYUYLi.99
I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.
Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/groucho_marx.html#R1GpseSaQ5vEH584.99
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/groucho_marx.html#R1GpseSaQ5vEH584.99
-
-
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. -Groucho Marx
-
Well, in that case, I don't mean to brag, but... just call me Your Majesty.Er... a common spelling of Wang, written in Chinese, means King.
-
It works the other way, too. The Swedes were confused why "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux" didn't go over in America.
-
An article in the Huffington Post lists several unfortunate product names and advertising slogans that don't quite translate the way they were intended, including:
The American Dairy Association's "Got milk?" slogan in Spanish is "Are you lactating?"
IKEA's children's bed, the Gutvik, is German slang for "Good f**k,"
Coca-Cola translates into Madarin as "Bite the wax tadpole,"
And, my favorite, the old Ford Pinto in Spanish meant "Little d*ck."
Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/10/lost-in-translation-brands_n_1765812.html
-
Oh, yes. I've downloaded The First Family from my Russian mp3 site and it is a scream, even if you don't understand the cultural references to 1961 TV commercials! "Yes, we shall pursue that with great viguh!"
"Yes, we found that 34% of our family had fewer cavities when they brushed with Crest."
-
This isn't really funny, just something I found interesting. This is a video from American Bandstand on ABC in 1967, still in black and white, showing teens dancing to The Letter, by the Box Tops. What struck me is that every boy in this video is wearing a coat and tie and except for a couple of rebels, who are still in coat and tie, every guy has perfectly cut and combed hair. But, these boys are getting down! Especially the boy in the cardigan at 00:33 in the video.
Dear God, these kids are retiring now!
And I was only 9 when this was first broadcast. -
Back in the winter of 1967, our family was an a shopping trip in Kansas City and we were zooming along on I-35 when WHB played this hilarious recording of the Hardly-Worthit Players doing a spoof of Bobby Kennedy singing "Wild Thing", the original of which was also big back then. My father, at 65 mph in a 65 Impala with no seat belts, lost it. I just found this on You Tube and even 45 years later, it's hilarious if you remember the Kennedys back in the day. "A little bit more of a 'liberal' interpretation, Senator."
-
I remember a bio of Eudora Welty on PBS a number of years ago describing the struggle she had to be taken seriously when she went to college in the North because of her Southern accent-- and she became one of the greatest of Southern writers.
I grew up in Oklahoma with brief stints in Texas and Kansas, with a mother from Georgia and a father whose family was from northern California and New England, so my speech patterns were interesting. I never thought I had a strong Okie accent as most people in our social level in Tulsa had moved here from the northeast during the oil boom of the twenties. However, when I went away to college at a rather nice Midwestern liberal arts school, I was mercilessly teased for saying "y'all" when I wasn't paying attention. I rationalized it by explaining that English doesn't have a good plural pronoun, (you and you) like better organized languages with rules the speakers actually follow. It didn't help. My nickname was still "Tom Joad."
I also want to compliment the many British and Australian actors who appear on American TV or in American movies and speak American English so well (my hero Hugh Laurie comes to mind or the hot and sexy Jessie Spencer!- though Jessie's character on House is Aussie). They do so much better than the typical American actor trying to sound British or Aussie.
-
I've not read the The Color Purple, but the movie with Whoopi and Oprah was one of the best I've ever seen. It is wonderful and inspirational. The scene when she gets to see her children at the end is very moving. Its one of my favorite movies.
-
Yes, the book is superior to the movie, which itself was great. The book is even better.
-
Don't forget the Britishization of American English! And the Australianizing of both!
Colin
That's true! Before the Internet, I had never heard of "wanking!" In fact, "wanker" is now favorite insult.
-
I can't imagine how difficult it must be for non-English speakers to learn the language, with all the contradictions and exceptions, the attempts to conform to Latin grammar in some situations, the influences of Old English and Anglo-Saxon in others, the rapid changes of slang, the Americanization of British English, and the fact that English spoken around the world is evolving into what may soon be a dozen or so different languages.
This is off topic, but I remember an episode of The West Wing in which the subject of English as the Official Language came up and one of the characters said she hardly believed the language of Shakespeare needed legal protections. I thought that was cool.
-
I am quite enjoying this work and the amount of effort that has gone into it is astonishing. I love Nineteenth-Century English literature and my love for it was born in junior high school when I read David Copperfield and when I watched Tom Brown's Schooldays on PBS. I have a special interest in this story because of my love for the original. When I was a teenager, decades before the cliche of Internet stories about gay boys in boarding schools, I dreamed of being a student with Tom Brown and Harry East, vanquishing Flashman at Rugby, and befriending George Arthur. I must have read Thomas Hughes' novel and the sequel Tom Brown at Oxford dozens of times. So I am thrilled with Joel's effort and I applaud the scholarship.
One response to comments in previous posts, the narrator is a teenager boy, so I wouldn't expect the more complex sentence structure common in Victorian literature. I find the dialogue realistic from my limited knowledge based on the authors I've read and the attention to detail about everyday aspects of life in the 1840's is incredible. This is a tremendous project done with great skill. Thank you, Joel!
-
Of course! I'm surprised I didn't think of these examples. Cole and Merkin have two perfect examples of this. The Help is a book Cole gave me about "colored" housekeepers in Jackson, Mississippi during the sixties with flashbacks to earlier times. Exactly what my character is. And, To Kill A Mockingbird,even though it takes place forty years before my story does, is really the textbook on integrity and character, as well as on the ignorance of racists. Thank you both. And, thanks Chris for your advice. I hadn't considered the education level of my character and in 1970 that would have affected the way she spoke. My English teachers in 7th and 8th grades, from 1970 to 1972 were both black and both spoke perfect English and were the best English teachers I had (except for one in high school who seriously opened my eyes to many aspects of life). Thank you everyone. Insight from others is still welcome, though, if anyone else has a comment or suggestion.
-
The story I am writing takes place in 1970, a time when America was just emerging from the Jim Crow era of legal racial discrimination in the South, when African-Americans had just gained their civil rights and were becoming integrated into American society. I have an African-American character in the story, an elderly housekeeper, who is one of the heroes of the story. She is one of the great positive influences on my protagonist's life. One of the messages of the story is that individuals should be judged by what's in their heart and not by the color of their skin or whom they love. I want to present the housekeeper in a realistic way, however, I am afraid of my description coming across as racist or stereotypical.
How do you handle, for example, a black accent, particularly from an previous era, without it coming off as racist? In writing dialogue for a white southerner, or a German, say, or an English character in the United States, I would have no trouble spelling certain words phonetically to better describe to a middle-American ear what was being said. I wouldn't hesitate to show that the person wasn't speaking Standard Grammatical American English. Yet, I am afraid to do so with an African-American character for fear of it coming across as stereotypical or racist.
And, it's not just accent. There are just certain patterns and ways of thinking that an older black woman in 1970 would exhibit that an older black woman in 2012 would never think of doing or saying. Do I write it straight as it would have been, do I edit it, soften it, make it less than realistic?
One of the points of the story is to fight prejudice. It would be a painful irony if some readers took my efforts to be realistic as evidence of prejudice. Thoughts?
-
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was already in orbit around Mars and relaying information from Curiosity to Earth during the rover's descent, took this picture of the vehicle as it was descending by parachute a minute before the engine's fired for the final landing procedure. Isn't cool what geeks can do when you give them the chance?
-
I guess that not every geek in Pasadena looks like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.
-
The new Mars Rover Curiosity survived the seven minutes of terror and successfully landed in Gale Crater on Mars! Almost immediately, it sent back a photo of one of its wheels on the Martian surface. It was the most complicated landing ever attempted and went perfectly. Let's hope this encourages more interest among the public in space exploration.
-
I'm so envious of anyone who's seen Pink Floyd live, especially back in the day... I was 16 when my English teacher turned me on to Dark Side of the Moon and its never been the same...
-
One of the greatest rock anthems of all time... this version is effing incredible.... if only I was 23 again and passing the bong...
-
is there anybody out there...
Just wondering... for the last six hours I have been all by myself (I almost did Eric Carmen for you)
(Pink Floyd for all you Greatest Generation Pre-Boomers)
And I was only 9 when this was first broadcast.
Scan to donate
Your Mother Was a Hamster....
in Laughs & Limericks
Posted
The 100 Greatest Movie Insults... and by the way, your father smelt of elderberries