tingilinde

language changes

And American English is changing right now.  

snip

...

I know some find it wearying. Why does language have to change all the time with all we have to think about? But we are not unique: There are times when the language firmament shifts under people’s feet, and they get through it. In the 1700s, English speakers had to get used to a new idea that double and triple negatives were “wrong.” Shakespeare could write, “There’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof” for Falstaff in “Henry IV, Part II,” but now we had to deal with the idea that two negatives signify a positive, despite no one being taught this aboutFrench and countless other languages.

In standard English, “thou” as the singular second-person pronoun fell away and one used “you” in both singular and plural. For a while, people used singular verb forms with “you.” John and Abigail Adams did it all the time. “I wish you was nearer to us,” wrote Abigail — these days embodied in our minds as, say, Laura Linney’s prim portrayal — in 1775. But grammarians didn’t like it, so people had to shape up and start saying even to one person “you were.”

...

 

 

good omens 2

Probably great news for fans of Good Omens.  Probably in the sense that Sir Terry is gone, but sketches were made ..  

 

pi day

At least in the US..  the rest of the world is on the more accurate 22/7..

Pi
by Wisława Szymborska

The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief — a mouse tail, a pigtail — is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star’s ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.

 

BEATles

The connection between the Beats and the Beatles.

 

on yesterday

 

"A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.

 

the christmas carol

Read by Neil Gaiman in the NY Public Library.

 

New York Public Library · Neil Gaiman Reads "A Christmas Carol"

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neil gaiman accepting the hugo for good omens

He recorded this thinking it wouldn't win .. it did and his speech is remarkable.

 

 

a look back to what might be now

Lionel Trilling's 1949 book review of George Orwell's 1984.  (in The New Yorker .. hopefully outside their paywall)

 

 

yum

one of those classic old New Yorker Articles (1999)  Anthony Bourdain on secrets of cheffing 

snip

...

Generally speaking, the good stuff comes in on Tuesday: the seafood is fresh, the supply of prepared food is new, and the chef, presumably, is relaxed after his day off. (Most chefs don’t work on Monday.) Chefs prefer to cook for weekday customers rather than for weekenders, and they like to start the new week with their most creative dishes. In New York, locals dine during the week. Weekends are considered amateur nights—for tourists, rubes, and the well-done-ordering pretheatre hordes. The fish may be just as fresh on Friday, but it’s on Tuesday that you’ve got the good will of the kitchen on your side.

People who order their meat well-done perform a valuable service for those of us in the business who are cost-conscious: they pay for the privilege of eating our garbage. In many kitchens, there’s a time-honored practice called “save for well-done.” When one of the cooks finds a particularly unlovely piece of steak—tough, riddled with nerve and connective tissue, off the hip end of the loin, and maybe a little stinky from age—he’ll dangle it in the air and say, “Hey, Chef, whaddya want me to do with this?” Now, the chef has three options. He can tell the cook to throw the offending item into the trash, but that means a total loss, and in the restaurant business every item of cut, fabricated, or prepared food should earn at least three times the amount it originally cost if the chef is to make his correct food-cost percentage. Or he can decide to serve that steak to “the family”—that is, the floor staff—though that, economically, is the same as throwing it out. But no. What he’s going to do is repeat the mantra of cost-conscious chefs everywhere: “Save for well-done.” The way he figures it, the philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam.

...

 

 

one of the classics

James Thurber channels Ernest Hemingway on the night before Christmas.