pennie_dreadful | a cute/funny story to liven up your wednesday

A lot of the agents at work send out newsletters to the people they've sold houses to, and word's gotten around that there's a friendly switchboard operator at the front desk who would be perfectly willing to proof them (and they pretty nearly always need proofing, believe me). Well, one of them came up to me yesterday, a real sweet lady, and we were chatting and she said, well, I don't know if you can help me anymore, aren't you going to cooking school?, to which I replied, well, I may be a Facetious Ex-English Major but I can still spot a comma splice from a hundred yards off. Everyone thought that was funny. Especially after I told them what facetious meant. (Ahem, from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, fa*ce"tious: 1) given to wit or good humor; merry; sportive; jocular; as, a facetious companion; 2) characterized by wit and pleasantry; exciting laughter; as, a facetious story or reply--just you know, in case.)

Oh, and I will have you know Shannon, that that movie-tie in I bought of the Narnia series? It hasn't been Americanized. I got to page nine I think, and noticed the word "colour". Huh, what do you make of that? Go HarperCollins.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Facetious is one of only two words in the English language to feature all of the vowels once in the correct order.

As such, it's way up my favourite word list :)

Although I got to use "ululating" in casual conversation the other day, which totally made my day.

That's very cool trivia (and a helpful way of remembering how to spell it!)! What's the second word?

"ululating" is very cool.

Abstemious

Wow, that's one I've only ever seen in print; I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was in Middlesex.

Doesn't facetious also have the nuance of being a smart-arse? kind of. Ugh, can't find the right word. But that was a pretty good come-back to a condescending comment!

Fancy that, about Narnia. I quite like HarperCollins, actually - mostly because their Australian fantasy imprint, Voyager, is so good. Their covers are often very beautiful.

I have the Anniversay, all-in-one coloured-illustration version, but I bought it here and I didn't even think about Americanisation. *shudder* now I'm worried! Unless it's HarperCollins again... I mean, how off would it be to read a classic British book/series only to snag on something like "color"? It'd be all wrong. Books like those sound British, in tone and style as well as setting etc. Besides, they shouldn't mess with classics!

Precisely! The main gripe I have with that (besides it being a foregone fact that I'm an idiot) is that it's hard to get the setting right in my mind if the spellings and phrases and things are different.

And, well, it sort of does have that connotation, which is why I used it to describe myself. It's more polite (they were sort of older, you know, and I have to watch my language sometimes) and it sounds like I'm a whole lot smarter than I actually am. :D But you knew that.

Ah well, I think you sell yourself short, but being able to take the piss out of yourself is highly valued back home, as is being self-deprecating. We're not big fans of people who boast/love themselves etc. Americans aren't the only ones to suffer from the stereotype of taking themselves seriously, but it is certainly the impression we get :)

Interestingly enough, for all their "stiff upper lip" nonesense - or perhaps because of it - the British are also very good at taking the piss. Though they sometimes take it to extremes and get a bit mean. But still, makes you laugh!

I never noticed too much of that puffed up, taking yourself very seriously malarkey until I began working for the local "upper crust". The brokers at the realty office I work at are real movers and shakers in the community. I mean, up till then I'd only been around academic types and people nearer my own income level. We all drove crappy cars and didn't wear designer labels. And we didn't especially want to. It's still a mystery to me why anyone would. But even some of the people who just work in the office and aren't realtors, you know, secretaries and the like, seem to be all self important. This one girl I swear has a different designer bag every week. I just keep wondering, okay, we make the same money, how the hell are you affording this stuff?

They're probably fake ;)

Would it be fair to say that there's an infestation of people like that in every country? And they don't realise how truly sad they are?

Yeah I can be snarky :)

Well, I don't know enough about it to be able to tell. I try not to let myself start to feel superior for not caring about things like that, because, well, that really would defeat the purpose. It's just, even paying less for fake labels, they're still kinda expensive. And please don't even get me started on the whole "Mortgage Mess" the country is in right now. Just because some people wanted to move in a "nice" house in a "nice" subdivision, and took out an adjustable rate mortgage that they can no longer afford now that the lenders have jacked up interest rates, the rest of us are having to pay for it. I mean, you'll notice (I'm sure you haven't been keeping up with it, why would you) that all of the houses that are being forclosed on are well, not cheap. The least expensive has to be worth at least $500,000, and that's the price in my part of the country, in someplace like New England or California, that would be more like $1,000,000. So now those of us who aren't homeowners, or didn't take out a mortgage on our house to pay of credit card debt (STUPID!), are going to be taxed so that these irresponsible idiots who wanted to live beyond their means can be bailed out and keep their houses.

Of course, that doesn't apply to everyone who's lost their home, but mostly, yeah, that's the problem.

I did hear about it, and they keep going on about how they think it'll affect Canada's economy and make prices go up. Not sure how that works.

When I was at uni they introduced this grant thing for first-time home owners. You got $14,000 from the government to put towards buying your first house. After about 6 months they reduced it to $7000 but as far as I know it still applies. Almost everyone I know went out and bought a house, including my 20-year-old friends who were working. I hope it's still available when we're ready to buy a house! Anyway, it really helped except for people who rent - landlords decided to sell, so there weren't many houses for rent anymore. I think it's settled down now though.

a cute/funny story to liven up your wednesday

trivia

Re: trivia

Re: trivia

Re: trivia

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject