I bet if we all agreed to it, it could be Friday right now.
So, I'm currently inching through Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson. I'm learning lots of interesting stuff. Like, you know the phrase "stiff upper lip?" Of course you do. Guess what- Americanism, coined in 1815. Earlier I read Bryson's Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way where I learned why the word "colonel" is the way it is (we use the French-ish spelling, but the Italian-ish pronunciation- neato!). I really do love English linguistics. Every word is... well, kind of like a person, with a whole geneology of other words that it came from, and words it's related to. The English language is very much like the American people... if you want to get super sappy about it. *winces*
Anyway, that's not even what I wanted to talk about! See, I'm inching through Made in America because it is a huge thick hardback. And since I really don't like carrying those around wherever I go, instead I've been carrying around the nice portable paperback Discworld book The Last Continent. And today the IT guy installed something on my computer he then had to spend over an hour trying to uninstall, so I had time to dip into it, and I came across this:
[T]here's something comforting in knowing that some of the best brains in the University... were spending all night in the High Energy Magic Building, trying to teach Hex to sing "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," exulting at getting a machine to do after six hours' work something that any human off the street would do for tuppence...
Hmm, I knew a tattooed lady named Lydia... Heroes, did you.. did you make a very obscure Discworld reference that last season? If so, I would feel the tiniest bit better about that whole hot mess.
So, something to ponder. I'm off to watch Breakfast on Pluto.
Anyway, that's not even what I wanted to talk about! See, I'm inching through Made in America because it is a huge thick hardback. And since I really don't like carrying those around wherever I go, instead I've been carrying around the nice portable paperback Discworld book The Last Continent. And today the IT guy installed something on my computer he then had to spend over an hour trying to uninstall, so I had time to dip into it, and I came across this:
[T]here's something comforting in knowing that some of the best brains in the University... were spending all night in the High Energy Magic Building, trying to teach Hex to sing "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," exulting at getting a machine to do after six hours' work something that any human off the street would do for tuppence...
Hmm, I knew a tattooed lady named Lydia... Heroes, did you.. did you make a very obscure Discworld reference that last season? If so, I would feel the tiniest bit better about that whole hot mess.
So, something to ponder. I'm off to watch Breakfast on Pluto.