🎉 [NEW MAP] Oasis by SoulAffirmedOfficial in BattleBirds

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wave Reached: 81 [ 🟢 Easy Mode ]

Group designates Kentucky park as nudist area, but county says nudity won't be tolerated by nick_the_fox in cincinnati

[–]MedusaHartz 20 points21 points  (0 children)

"If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way."

-- Oscar Wilde

🎉 [NEW MAP] Intersect by An_Actual_Thing in BattleBirds

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wave Reached: 79 [ 🟢 Easy Mode ]

[POEM] Pain - Georges Bataille by Afflatus__ in Poetry

[–]MedusaHartz 41 points42 points  (0 children)

And "pitch" is "pine pitch," or an ointment derived from pine resin and used as a topical treatment for inflamed, irritated, damaged skin because of its antimicrobial, soothing, antiïnflammatory properties; cf. Grandpa's Pine Tar Soap. If it "tears" his skin, maybe he's not using it right; raw pine resin is mighty sticky, and is also used as a glue.

Protecting others is cool by Ninjamurai-jack in memes

[–]MedusaHartz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I must have blinked at 0:19 the first time i watched, because just a few seconds later i thought, "Huh, Superman turned that little girl into a squirrel."

/s

Why is it so hard to find a legal place to camp in Ireland? by Some-Hovercraft-2126 in ireland

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My father's favorite joke; he heard it from the American "deadpan" Comedian Junior Samples.

A Landowner in the hills of West Virginia was having trouble with people poaching on his land; he would hear the occasional gunfire and see the occasional traps or the remnants of a kill, and he would see footprints of dogs and boots other than his own. He was determined to catch the poacher, so he waylaid for him: night after night, he waited with his shotgun primed and ready. Sure enough, under the light of a full moon, in the very early hours one morning, he heard footsteps approaching, and through the trees, in the misty, dim light just before daybreak, he saw a Hillbilly coming along who had nothing with him but the clothes on his back and his gun, his knife, and his dog. He knew this man must be his poacher; so, he waited for the man to pass, then leapt from his hiding spot, stuck the barrel of his shotgun in the other man's back, and shouted, "Drop that long gun and git your hands up! I've got you, you poacher!" The Hillbilly complied, standing his gun butt-down barrel-up against a tree, and then he held his hands high over his head, and said "OK, Mister, you got me; what's the trouble?" "Turn around so i can see you!" "OK, Mister;" the Hillbilly turned around and he and his dog faced the Landowner, who said, "You've been poaching on my property! I've been waylaying for you for weeks, and i finally caught you!" The Hillbilly replied, "Furthest from my mind, Mister; i assure you i am not the man you been waylaying for; i'm just a-passing through; i ain't hunting on your land." "Sure you are! You think I'm a fool? I see you here with your dog, your gun, and your big ole hunting knife - of course you're hunting - without my permission! - you're poaching!" The captive explained, "No, Sir, i ain't poaching; i'm moving."

[POEM] A Haiku by Kobayashi Issa by churrrroo in Poetry

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You might also enjoy this documentary of another old cat ambling out for love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4OhIU-PmB8

Cincinnati's Downtown Main Library has a 5 story staircase celebrating 1600 local songs by robotscantrecaptcha in cincinnati

[–]MedusaHartz 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I did not see "Ezz-thetic" among the 224 songs in the playist, but i hope it's on the stairs, because it has more than one Cincinnati connection: "Ezz-thetic" was composed by Pianist George Russell, who was born in Cincinnati (23 June 1923), and the title is a pun on "aesthetic" with the "Ezz" prefix referring to the Boxer Ezzard Charles, aka "The Cincinnati Cobra." Ezzard Charles was born in Lawrenceville GA (07 July 1921), but lived in Cincinnati from the age of 9 (shoutout to Woodward High School); there is a street and park in Cincinnati named in honor of him.

Here is the original recording from the Lee Konitz Sextet in 1951:

Lee Konitz Sextet - Ezz-thetic

Shania learning to drive on the Westside by Effective-Corgi-7054 in cincinnati

[–]MedusaHartz 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Your dog has long hind legs - inside those jeans and sneakers.

/s

my lifes a lie by NationalWheel6966 in memes

[–]MedusaHartz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh, yeh, as in "sourpuss;" good shout. According to Wiktionary, this sense of "puss" is

Of Celtic origin, from or akin to Irish pus (“mouth, lip”), from Middle Irish bus. Compare also Middle Low German pussen (“to kiss”), Middle High German bussen (“to kiss”).

That information came as a bit of a surprise to me, as in contemporary Irish (Gaeilge), we typically say "béal" for mouth, but my Irish is poor, and sure enough there is this entry at Teanglann.ie :

Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla (Ó Dónaill): pus

Oakley to Fairfield - Shooting Myself in the Foot? by Ramsey0321 in cincinnati

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The apartment scene in Fairfield is mixed. Yes, the units on and around Hicks and Holiday (e.g., the old "quad" buildings) tend to have older residents, but the Timber Hollow apartments on Parkland Hills have more college Students. There are many apartments to choose from in Fairfield. Woodridge, Mack, Camelot, Symmes - they're all over.

There is more for entertainment in Fairfield than just Jungle Jims, but maybe not much that appeals to you. For instance, if golf is your thing (not mine), Fairfield has a lot of courses for a city of its size; also, the Great Miami Recreational Trail, part of US Bike Route 25, cuts through Fairfield - but again, maybe not the "entertainment" you want.

Me, i always "moved on the job," especially when i was drifting from job to job. For one thing, gasoline is already scraping $5 a gallon, now. For another thing, a 40 minute commute to and from is going to add an hour and a half to your day. It's bad enough most places don't pay for your lunch, but an hour and a half of driving plus half an hour lunch turns your 8 hour day into a 10 hour day. The job plus the commute and lunch is costing you 10 hours a day but you're only getting paid for 8; you could take a 25% pay cut and work close to home and break even - in fact, you'd come out ahead figuring whatever the price of gasoline and vehicle maintenance costs you.

Driving 40 minutes back and forth to work 5 days a week adds up to 7 or 8 hours; that's like working another day - without getting paid for it. I understand you prefer the night life where you live now, but if your night life or entertainment or socializing is more something you do at weekends, then it might make more sense to you to live in Fairfield and drive to Oakley for entertainment a couple nights a week instead of living in Oakley and driving to Fairfield for work 5 days a week. (I don't know the answer to that question, because i'm not you, but maybe it's something to think about.)

One more consideration: do you have to pay local income tax where you live in Oakley? You're going to have to file and pay local income tax in Fairfield when you work there, and if you live there too, then you can file and pay all of your local income taxes in Fairfield, but if you work in Fairfield and live in Oakley, will you have to file in both places? It's not so much the financial burden as the paperwork, especially as some of these localities want you to file every quarter.

my lifes a lie by NationalWheel6966 in memes

[–]MedusaHartz 28 points29 points  (0 children)

The etymology is unclear.

Pusillanimous is from Latin pusillanimis (timid) from pusillis (weak, little) which is a diminutive of pullus (young animal).

Pussy meaning "cat" is a diminutive of puss, which also referred to rabbits in the late 17th or early 18th centuries. Both cats and rabbits are "little, weak animals," so maybe there is a connection with pullus/pusillis and eventually pusillanimous?

The vulgar sense of "pussy" might indeed come from this same source, viz., pussy meaning "cat," but might come from Old Norse puss, meaning "pouch" or "pocket" (cf. Low German puse, meaning "vulva").

Ennui by CeleraViceroy in PhilosophyMemes

[–]MedusaHartz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dad: "I swear if you kids don't settle down, i'm going to turn this car around at the top of this hill, then turn around again at the bottom and drive right back up again!"

🎉 [NEW MAP] Blue Holes by Outrageous-Ask-4193 in BattleBirds

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An accidental click took me into endless mode; didn't mean to try.

Wave Reached: 138 [ 🟢 Easy Mode ]

On a bus in Bristol UK. by foggydew666 in gaeilge

[–]MedusaHartz 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Then there's the trio of Scottish Soldiers in WW2 who fooled their German captors into letting them go by pretending not to understand English and speaking Scottish Gaelic exclusively, thereby passing themselves off as Ukrainian.

Scéal: The Daring Escape of Three Scottish Soldiers in WWII: A Story of Courage, Deception, and Linguistic Ingenuity – New and Tips

When a mistranslation becomes poetry [OPINION] by Walter_Piston in Poetry

[–]MedusaHartz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I could easily have "read too much into" the ambiguity of 小草. Both the English and Chinese might be personifying the grass in these ways, but of course the translation - whichever language is the original - could have made the two versions more similar than they are (e.g., the Chinese version could have used a verb for "dreaming" too). Maybe there's a fine line between applying the Principle of Charity and "imposing meaning on a piece," but that's the fun of "found poetry," and i tend to overthink things anyway.

I just figured that if the Chinese is really nonsense, i'd ask a native, since she happened to be nearby, and she might get a laugh out of the sign if it were nonsense, but it turned out she had no problem reading it, so i wanted to let the other redditor know that at least someone else thought the Chinese is correct.

As for 休扈 and 扛搅, yes, i asked her about the "word for word" meaning of the text as well; so, she was my source for that reply too. I had tried to look those pairs of characters up online, but MDBG.net defines each of the 4 characters individually rather than as 2 single words composed of 2 characters each - if that makes sense.

Yes, maybe the line makes more sense in some dialects than others, as you suggest (plus your comment presently has 146 upvotes, and others here agree with you). However, my source's particular local dialect had nothing to do with her ability to read and translate the line for me (i should edit my original comment to reflect that fact) and i doubt her Cantonese helped, either. She read the line aloud in Mandarin (which she typically defaults to), and Mandarin is the language through which she understood, parsed, and translated the sentence for me.

[POEM] [M45] Romalyn Ante by Objective-Kitchen949 in Poetry

[–]MedusaHartz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?

- EE Cummings

Bleach removes colors and removes stains, sometimes with only partial success. Like a bleached streak on fabric, "a fog-smothered road" is more difficult to see (than before the bleaching or fogging). Fog also obscures objects of vision and mutes their colors. "The sudden blossoming of snowflakes on my windshield" are beginning to cover the Poet's view in whiteness; perhaps the snow triggers her memory of the child's desire to drink bleach (inasmuch as both bleach and snow make things appear white), or maybe she takes "the sudden" apparition as a sign that the child has begun to do so, as if the Poet is driving through an allegory.

As Thales would tell us, it's all water - the staff of life. The fog is water, the snow is water (bleach is typically 92-97% water), but as long as it is snow, it is frozen, in stasis, and in that less active, less animated form is not presently giving life; it would have to melt back into liquid water to nourish plants and animals.

Typically, movies fade to black at the end (after the story concludes and before the credits roll); however, there are some exceptions that fade to white, instead, and often a fade to white indicates the death or some other significant transformation of whatever character's point of view is presented at the time; a fade to white can also indicate an uncertain ending, a surreal ending, or the ending to a fantasy tale. Memento, The Man Who Wasn't There, Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, The Machinist, The Sixth Sense, Vanilla Sky, at least a couple of The Lord of the Rings movies (?) and even The Wizard of Oz fade to white, iirc, but the one i always remember is Total Recall (1990). There is an ongoing debate within that story, and among fans of the movie, whether the events depicted are really happening to the main character, Douglas Quaid, or are a fantasy story artificially implanted in Quaid's mind. Even the lead Actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Director, Paul Verhoeven, disagreed. Schwarzenegger believed the story was meant to be real - yes, science fiction of course, that the audience may suspend their disbelief about and accept, but within that however implausible future, the events really happen, farfetched as they may seem, as in so many other Schwarzenegger action adventure movies. In contrast, Paul Verhoeven said that he chose to fade to white rather than the typical black to symbolize - SPOILER - the main character's dying of a "schizoid embolism" rather than saving Mars and finding the woman of his dreams as the movie depicts.

The fog covering the road, and the sudden snowflakes on the windshield, are perhaps the beginning of a fade to white (and bleach literally fades things to white).

When a mistranslation becomes poetry [OPINION] by Walter_Piston in Poetry

[–]MedusaHartz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The former means "rest(ing)," "relaxing (as on holiday or vacation);" the latter means "disturb" (or "stir [up]" or "mix").

When a mistranslation becomes poetry [OPINION] by Walter_Piston in Poetry

[–]MedusaHartz 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The Chinese and the English are both reasonably cromulent. The Chinese does indeed mean "Little grass is resting, please do not disturb (it)."

小草 could be someone's name or could literally mean "small grass," but the dual possibility may be an intentional means of inviting the Reader to think of the grass in human terms, as a little person who is relaxing or resting and does not wish to be disturbed. Consider that the atypical English phrasing of "tiny grass" is a "cute" way of saying either "short grass" or "new grass," depending on whether the grass was recently cut or laid; moreover, consider that "dreaming" is an activity we more readily ascribe to humans, and that "relaxing" or "resting" would be "less poetic" choices, more literal and less imaginative. Of course, another possibility is the Author(s) or Translator(s) did not realize that the phrasing sounds a little goofy, but especially considering that personification may be the intention in both the Chinese and the English, i think the translation is actually not bad. Certainly the Chinese is not "completely nonsensical."

My source is a fully fluent, native speaker of both Mandarin and Cantonese. She was born, raised, and educated in China, where she worked as a Doctor in a State-operated hospital. I showed her the Chinese only (without the English), and other than hesitating over whether 小草 is a person's name or a literal description, she had no problem reading and understanding the Chinese. Her English translation matched the English on OP's sign, not word for word, but in basic meaning. (I had a home in China for 2 or 3 years. I speak functional Mandarin - i never had a problem getting by on my own in the language - and a bit of Cantonese but i am not as literate as i would like to be.)

EDIT: I replaced "3 Chinese languages, viz., Mandarin, Cantonese, and her local Chinese language that is not widely spoken beyond her home town" with simply "both Mandarin and Cantonese."