The single strangest reaction I’ve seen thus far to the devastation of Sandy comes from Laura Wood, the genteel bigot and feminism-hater who blogs as The Thinking Housewife. After looking through a gallery of photos on the Daily Mail showing some of the damage in New York city, Wood suggested that the real problem is that New Yorkers aren’t wearing cheerful enough clothing:
THESE Daily Mail photos of New York City after the hurricane remind me of just how ugly the streets of Manhattan are, with almost everyone dressed in drab, uninteresting clothes that rival the uniforms of Maoist China for their homogeneity and lifelessness. America is one of the most aesthetically impoverished nations in history. I wonder how many thousands of people are on medication because they are depressed by their own clothes and their ugly, hostile environments, surrounded as they are by impersonal denim, sneakers with tire treads, plastic-covered down jackets, billboards with oppressive smiles, and the austere, chilling cliffs of modern skyscrapers. This is the environment of a people that idolizes equality and sameness. The only way to survive amid such poverty is to possess an interior castle, a place of tapestries and mahogany where denim and sweat jackets are nowhere to be seen.
Just make sure this castle of yours isn’t reduced to rubble by 85 mile-an-hour winds and flying debris.
Speaking of New York, here’s an interesting (if a bit shaky) video of a walk through that city’s dark streets after the hurricane hit.
No eating dormice! No! .
I was taught that Marco Polo invented ravioli and that “fuck” is an acronym.
snoring dormouse 4eva!!!!!!!!!!
Princess BonBon: I have a very good translation of Apicius, done by a Swiss latin scholar, who was also a cook; ca 1920s. If you can’t cook already, it’s hard to use, as it’s more cheats and reminders than recipes.
By cook I mean he was a professionally trained chef.
So, The “Thinking” Housewife hates New York? Quelle fucking surprise. I’m gonna look out the window and check if Manhattan has fallen into the sea yet from her lack of approval.
Also, I shudder to imagine what ThinkingHousewife’s conception of “good taste” is. In the fundamentalist circles, the ideal appearance for a woman is an outfit suitable for a funeral director, accompanied by a frozen smile and hair that looks like a plastic helmet — a professional overconscientious enough to try to look like the prepped cadavers in her care. No thanks. I don’t want to look like that until my own funeral.
You mean it does not mean for unlawful carnal knowledge? My childhood is ruined!
As far as goofy fictional acronym etymologies for swear words go, “shit” has a way better one anyway.
@princessbonbon: No, as I understand it, fuck is from the Dutch.
Where it enters English is an interesting question. It was well established by not later than the 1780s. Holland is not bad, though there are other Germanic places from whence it might have come. It may even be native, coming out of the underlying roots of English in the Anglo-Saxon dialects, or the “Danish” overlaps.
I also learned it was appended to marriage documents, as a license to “Fornicate Under Consent of the King”
No one ever cared enough to miseducate me about what shit stood for. ::sniff:: ;__;