The Pageant of Letters was a Greek comedy about the alphabet from about 400 BCE. The premise of the play was that four new letters (eta, xi, psi, and omega) were being added to the Greek alphabet, and some folks were resistant to the change, others embraced it with varying degrees of success, and some were just totally confused. In other words, it was a slapstick comedy of errors.
One particular gag from the comedy survives and seems to come from the rapid-fire episodes ( similar to our “black-out sketches”) that came near the end of these comedies. A woman (character name unknown) is pregnant and about to deliver. She is using the new letters in her words and is trying to convey to a second figure (name and occupation unknown) that she is in labor. The second figure is failing to understand what she is saying because they haven’t mastered the new letters yet. ( Obviously the situation is just a wild exaggeration for comic effect) The second figure eventually thinks the woman is trying to convey the information that she is about to express flatulence instead and immediately flees the scene. Ah, fart jokes! No matter what the time period they appeal to the ten year old child in all of us!
Read more about this ancient comedy at Balladeer's Blog. Link
Comments (1)
"holding people to their obligations" is exactly the same thing a loan shark, drug dealer, pimp or many other nefarious professionals would say to sound just. Though the obligations may not have been justly accrued in the first place.
Not that the phrase itself is toxic. But the indiscriminate use of it is more like propaganda than a belief.
Here in Australia you borrow from the bank an amount of money that covers the cost of the house (minus any deposit you have up front) - the contract between you and the bank is that amount of money. If you can't pay the bank seeks to recover the remainder of that loaned money through such things as sale of assets (the house is first of course), re-arranged payment plan, or seeking out the person that guaranteed your loan if the bank thought the risk was too high and asked for a guarantor. The loan is purely over money which the borrower is obliged to repay.
I don't see how walking away form a loan and a house can legally work? Is the agreement different to a loan of money?
Hello USA, welcome to the rest of the world.
Typically, though not always, your primary loan is a secured loan - it's secured with the title of the house you bought. So if you walk away from that loan, your bank gets the house (but nothing else - even if that house is worth less than the loan).
Secondary loans are almost always recourse loans - so your bank will go after you for every penny of their money.