If I were to become picky: If the G stands for graphics, then shouldn't it be the hard guh sound as in graphics? Insisting that the only right way is the inventor's preference is like people who insist you say VEE-gun; when the V in stands for vegetables, it's VEJ-un, and a VEE-gun Vegan would be a person from the star Vega (pronounced VEE-guh), and a fan of the Chevy Vega would be a VAY-gun. And if people want to say a thing their own stupid way --vegetable VEE-gun-- that's fine, too as long as we're all just playing, or just eating, or just flying one of the crappiest cars ever into interstellar space. (Their aluminum engine blocks tended to crack.) (Or al-yoo-MIN-yum in the UK.)
When I was in third grade I had to do a report on a country and include a map. I never had a problem writing, but writing about a specific real thing has never been my forte. I did nothing on the project until the night before it was due, then panicked. My mother said, "What country?" I said, "/I/ don't know." She opened a box of old books --there were always boxes because we were always moving-- she pulled out a book about Asia, opened it, said, "How about Burma?", tore out a few brightly-colored maps and said, "There." I said, "You-- you can't-- That's-- You tore a /book/! [sputter, so on]." She said, "It's /our/ book. We can do what we want with it," in the same tone of voice as when I was horrified about going up into the choir loft to sit with the choir because all the pews were full in church and she pulled me by the hand and said for everyone to hear, "We're just as good as they are and we'll sit where we please." And in ten minutes I'd pasted the maps to big sheets of brown paper and made up a bunch of nonsense about Burma around them. Done. And later when the teacher said, "You were supposed to draw the map yourself," I said, "Oh. But did you ever say that? You just said it had to have a map," and I pointed and said, "Map." And she said, "I want to talk to your mother." Fine. My mother ate teachers and officials for breakfast, as did my grandmother, who two years before that had got a judge fired for sting-closing her restaurant because of a bogus liquor license offense. (A detective had sent his date, a slightly under-age girl, to pick up their drinks.) If it's a magazine or a newspaper I tear out what I want or take a picture of it. With a borrowed book I'm careful how I even hold it; I say the page number aloud and shut the book and so just remember the number. If it's my book and it's complicated, with a lot of stories or places I want to remember later, to use on the radio, or if it's a play script, I scribble notes all over it in pen and tear the corners of pages and twist them sticking out in special directions to indicate the use order. And I enjoy defiling it, and enjoy seeing it later and remembering all the fun work. It was a book but it's also art now, and personal history.
Whenever someone uses forms of the word /gift/ instead of forms of the word /give/ my fingers tend to tense into a claw shape. Paul /gifted/ Erma a punch in the nose. /Gift/ me one a' dem Polish-dogs. Etc. "What you should /gift/" is all wrong. But you go ahead and live the way you like and say what you say. I know there are other people in the world besides myself, and nobody died and made me king.
No. I would be surprised if there are five people in all the world who read the Princess Bride first and /then/ saw the movie and didn't go /Oh, my God, that was horrible, they ruined it./ Mandy Patinkin is engaging and sympathetic, whoever he plays, but that isn't enough. Billy Crystal is a delightful individual, sure. But that film is an abomination. Wally What's-his-name as the Sicilian, with that stupid crackly whiny voice? Jesus, och, feh. Cary Elwes? What! *breathe* *peace* *breathe* When they go to make movies out of Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury books it's very hard, for obvious reasons, and you can give them a pass because they tried and you can manage to enjoy it. But The Princess Bride was a brilliant book practically written for film by a pro screenplay writer who also wrote the screenplay; it's impossible to screw it up, so of course they did. Rob Reiner made some very good movies in his time, Bert Rigby, You're A Fool, for example. I don't know what happened with Princess Bride; everyone involved in the movie seemed to think things went well. Maybe it's time to try again --except now they'd probably use uncanny-valley CGI puppet people and put all the money into rendering the characters' hair.
In the Swiss police van one, what is the copper-colored arrangement to the left, under the pet fence? Is that a hillbilly still to make alcohol, or a shop-vac, or what? And I think it's sweet that the shoulders-tense cop is holding hands with the guy in the Hamburglar mask and bleach-distressed jeans. The van itself would never do in America. It's too flimsy; it looks like it's made out of a sodapop can. The first night, the first coffee-crazed teenager they arrested for skateboarding would kick all the doors and windows out and ruin it.
When I was in college in Iowa in the late-middle 1970s, the library had chairs that were a vertical white fiberglass egg with the front cut off and a regular soft chair-shape inside. You sit in it with your legs sticking out. It's quiet; you're alone. You can read or sleep. Best chairs ever.
Or you could save the $500 and just teach your cat to use the toilet. Here's jazz legend Charles Mingus' method:http://mingusmingusmingus.com/mingus/cat-traning-program
I can't make that rolling-R sound in speech, that every language has uses for. I developed a trick to fake it, that I call /The Technique/, involving shaking my head quickly and hard to flabble the lips and tongue just on the R part of a word, which /almost/ sounds right, but it looks funny and makes my brain hurt. I've tried everything. A video titled /How to roll your R's/ turned out to be just a woman facing away from the camera, bending over and rolling her arse, all /ha ha/. So cruel. This has been a source of shame all my life. Why can't I? I don't ever even bring it up anymore, because the other person always goes, "It's easy. You just do /this/," and then they explain how to hold the inside of your mouth and what to do with your tongue and so on, always the same, the thing I've tried and tried and can't do, and then of course they do it to demonstrate, as if. NNnngh!
My thoughts? Since they're all face-down, it might be a cool project to roll everywhere with some sort of deep-seeing device --sonar, maybe; radio; I dunno; doesn't the military have something that blurrily sees through a few inches of stone?-- and map it all and let a computer reassemble the bits into a gallery of the original complete stones, sharpen the edges, apply appropriate mineral texture.
My problem with the situation is, I don't like when knowledge is destroyed. Library of Alexandria, pre-Colombian Central American cultures; Flowers for Algernon, that sort of thing. I don't care about the part where cemeteries eventually vanish, nor that cut materials are reused when they're essentially abandoned. The big offense was killing off and/or driving off all the people in the first place. Leave the stones doing the useful work they're doing now, retrieve the information to keep the full story available, and get on with life.
Same principle as used when blue eye shadow makes off-blue eyes look true blue by association. They do this in grocery stores with orange mesh bags for oranges. Oranges sold this way look ripe and sweet and good through the mesh, when they're not; they're dull and yellow and bitter, you wouldn't buy those otherwise. And you get used to it, so that one day you get a /real/ orange and you're stunned by how good it is. That's not the only trick there. For example, next time you're in the produce section pick up anything of any color and watch it while you move it away from the bin; the color changes, becomes dull. They use special lighting to make fruit and vegetables look attractive. They can't afford to light the whole store with glamorous lights like that, but they don't have to; packages of things can be any color manufacturers choose.
Next, reduce the cheese in cheese to nonaddictive levels. When you buy a pound of cheese, you'd get a rectangular package of water with a single cubic centimeter of cheese bobbing around in it. Whatever kind of cheese you like, so you still have the choice.
If it's a magazine or a newspaper I tear out what I want or take a picture of it. With a borrowed book I'm careful how I even hold it; I say the page number aloud and shut the book and so just remember the number. If it's my book and it's complicated, with a lot of stories or places I want to remember later, to use on the radio, or if it's a play script, I scribble notes all over it in pen and tear the corners of pages and twist them sticking out in special directions to indicate the use order. And I enjoy defiling it, and enjoy seeing it later and remembering all the fun work. It was a book but it's also art now, and personal history.
When they go to make movies out of Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury books it's very hard, for obvious reasons, and you can give them a pass because they tried and you can manage to enjoy it. But The Princess Bride was a brilliant book practically written for film by a pro screenplay writer who also wrote the screenplay; it's impossible to screw it up, so of course they did.
Rob Reiner made some very good movies in his time, Bert Rigby, You're A Fool, for example. I don't know what happened with Princess Bride; everyone involved in the movie seemed to think things went well. Maybe it's time to try again --except now they'd probably use uncanny-valley CGI puppet people and put all the money into rendering the characters' hair.
My problem with the situation is, I don't like when knowledge is destroyed. Library of Alexandria, pre-Colombian Central American cultures; Flowers for Algernon, that sort of thing. I don't care about the part where cemeteries eventually vanish, nor that cut materials are reused when they're essentially abandoned. The big offense was killing off and/or driving off all the people in the first place. Leave the stones doing the useful work they're doing now, retrieve the information to keep the full story available, and get on with life.
They do this in grocery stores with orange mesh bags for oranges. Oranges sold this way look ripe and sweet and good through the mesh, when they're not; they're dull and yellow and bitter, you wouldn't buy those otherwise. And you get used to it, so that one day you get a /real/ orange and you're stunned by how good it is.
That's not the only trick there. For example, next time you're in the produce section pick up anything of any color and watch it while you move it away from the bin; the color changes, becomes dull. They use special lighting to make fruit and vegetables look attractive. They can't afford to light the whole store with glamorous lights like that, but they don't have to; packages of things can be any color manufacturers choose.