Belated - Shropshire - Norwegian Mistakes - Puttytat - Cross-Cultural - Bad Movies

[Rita Winston]

AMBER: Have had a Happy Birthday!

SCOTT: Welcome back! I doubt that ANYONE has forgotten you!!!

Al wrote:
> A.E Hausman (sp?) who penned 'A Shropshire Lad'
> and other Vogon-esque poetry. 

I seem to recall having liked some verses from Shropshire Lad...
"With rue my heart is laden /  For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden / And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping / The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping / In fields where roses fade."

Don't you just hear that as Remus's song during those twelve years?

I believe Houseman also is the poet who replied to the questionnaire
from America that he cannot define poetry, but he can always recognize
it because it makes his hairs stand on end, /"/ so that I must take
care, while shaving in the mirror, lest a line of poetry wander into my
thoughts /"/ and make his beard hairs stand up and fight the razor.

Christian Stubo wrote:
> The same mistakes seem to be appearing all over
> the world, although the Norwegian online newspaper
> Nettavisen seems intent to beat them all

LMAO at that article. And welcome back from your holiday. You have been
missed.

rainy_lilac wrote of her wandering Parvati:
> How did she become such a handful?????
She's a cat. QED.

> Well, my little wild girl got out on the ledge 
> and step by step made  it to one of the balconies,
> but was too scared to make the trip back. (snip)
> I think it is time for a little collar with a 
> bell or something.

When I was a child, one of the mean old ladies in the neighborhood
forced us to put a bell on Smokey's collar because she had some stupid
objection to him eating birds (she sneered at me and said it was an
urban legend that there are flocks of feral parrots in the area, which
shows how much SHE knew about birds -- one of those flocks sleeps at
night in the palm trees edging the street that I have an excellent view
of from my back door). Smokey simply learned to walk, and stalk, and
pounce, and eat birds, without ringing the bell At All.

When I lived in NYC and my dear (late) Nan was about 4 months old, my
roommate locked all the cats in the bathroom while she and I were at
work, but left the bathroom window open so they wouldn't get heatstroke.
We came home and found Nan wandering free in the living room. The next
time, we very Very Careful that Nan didn't sneak out the bathroom door
after we put her in, but she was roaming loose anyway. It became obvious
that she had jumped OUT the bathroom window and IN the kitchen window,
which was some ten or fifteen feet away, in terms of the hypotenuse of a
right triangle because the windows were in walls that were at a right
angle. We lived on the fourth floor! I was terrified! I didn't let Robyn
lock the cats in the bathroom any more. 

Tabouli wrote:
> Anyone on the list who has interesting observations 
> or comments about the differences between people in 
> different English speaking regions, 

I don't have anything NEW, but one thing that amused me at the time:
when I lived in NYC, the clique I hung out with consisted largely of
ethnically Jewish women and their Anglo boyfriends/husbands (mine was
from London, Miriam's from upstate, Judy's from Ohio). In conflicts, the
men would clam up and refuse to speak, while the women would more and
more passionately demand that they Say Something Already! at which point
the man would usually retreat into the bedroom, slamming the door behind
him. Following him into the bedroom to continue the conversation was a
good way to get punched in the head (mine) or pulled off one's feet by
the hair (Judy's).

David Frankis wrote:
> I felt this did illustrate a cultural issue that
> (generalising dangerously) Americans think in 
> terms of individuals when it comes to politics,

I got the impression that your anecdote illustrated a different clich:
that Americans' idea of thinking in the long term is TWO quarters. Your
guy (not all New Yorkers are that bad!) probably couldn't have predicted
the foreign policy more than a year ahead even if it were the same
president.

Angela Boyko wrote:
> One movie I wish I could have walked out of
> was "The Scarlet Letter". I couldn't stand
> Demi Moore showing the Puritans the benefits
> of feminism. I was with a group of students 
> and had to be there,

What were they students of? I HOPE not Literature!

I can't remember that I EVER walked out of a movie, but I SHOULD have
walked out of "The Towering Inferno", "our Christmas special" that a
group of friends in college dragged me along to. It was a bad and stupid
movie, but the problem was all the scenes of people on fire: they made
me sick at the time and gave me nightmares of being burnt for weeks
afterwards.

------------------------------------------------------------------
R ighteous
A ttractive
V ictorious
E ager
N atural
C lassy
L echerous
A mazing
W ise
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