They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.
So we get gems like
The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)
The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)
The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)
The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)
The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)
We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)
truly a strange language
Thanks I hate it
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana :v
Nerd: Not long. Just one quick query and I’ll be
gone before they know I’m here
Nerd: *regular voice* What the…?
Team leader:
Problems?
Nerd: *hacker voice* No. No. I got this
Nerd: *mutters under breath* What do you mean the
credentials aren’t… Why are you showing me the tables if I don’t have the
credentials to see them?
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: *mutters under breath* You’re an unrecognized column name
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: String fields can only be joined to other
string fields? It is a string field!
What else would it …. SERIAL NUMBERS ARE NOT INTEGERS!
Nerd: *typing* *muttering*
Nerd: OK, got the joins. Now just select the…
where’s the… why is this column not here?? Where else would it be?
Team leader:
Problems??
Nerd: It’s not here. The data’s not here!
Team leader:
OK, calm down. They need that information to run the company, right?
Nerd: Yes. Absolutely
Team leader: So
it has to be there somewhere. We just have to figure out where. Is there
anything you can get into that will tell you where stuff is?
Nerd: Well, I have full access to their shared
drive, which should have process documentation… let’s just… OK… here, and
… WHY DO YOU HAVE TWO SEPARATE DATABASES?
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: Unexpected character at or near… what are
you….
Nerd: *typing* WHY WOULD YOU RUN ONE DATABASE IN
ORACLE AND ONE IN MYSQL??
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: *mutters* Oh of course that’s in a third database. Because why wouldn’t it be?
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: Why would the same company store data in Oracle, MySQL AND Postgres???
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: *mutters* Back to the process doc…. What do
you mean “open Oracle”? Which Oracle? You have, like 7 different
Oracle databases!
Nerd: *typing*
Nerd: Oh, sure. Let’s store financial and timecard
information in the same database, but
inventory in a different database.
Because that makes sense.
My boyfriend just woke up, mostly still asleep and told me “don’t worry, it’s getting better” in a heavy, American accent, which is unusual for an Australian man.
“Why are you American?” I asked, to which I got:
“Sorry, it’s getting better” in a stereotypical posh English accent.
“Why are you English?” I asked, amused.
“What is he normally?” He managed to ask.
“He? You’re not anyone else, you’re you.”
“Ugh, me” was the last thing he said, in a right proper Aussie accent before he fell back into proper sleep.
Bitch just thwarted a ghost possession by judging his accents
My boyfriend would be gettin’ hit with the baseball bat beside our bed if he ever woke up and said, “What is he normally?” about himself.
Then you would NOT have liked the time he pointed to a corner of our room while he was sleeping and said “they share a dimension with Earth and they take cats to eat them”.
I’d like to thank you for the kind things you said, and I want to help you deal with two issues I struggle with: how do you get more knowledgeable, and how do you keep a handle on the need to fidget and click around?
To be more knowledgeable, it’s important to understand the difference between facts and knowledge. Facts are unrelated data points, like “Elmo Lincoln was the first screen Tarzan in 1919.” Knowledge is the broader context, the frame, the sweep of people, events, and others you contextualize and put facts into. If you have knowledge, you can put facts into context. If you hear a new fact, you remember it because you understand “where it goes,” it’s place in the bigger “story.” If you have knowledge, even if you don’t have a specific fact, you can talk about the topic intelligently since you know a lot of things “around” that fact.
If you want to become more knowledgeable about classic scifi (for example), the best way is to start with broader overviews first, and then you read individual works that you can slip into that mental framework. Get that? Start broad then zoom in.
A few places to start:
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is ultra-newbie friendly, with illustrations, broader overviews, definitions of terms, and a key look at the major works and authors. It turns all of scifi into one big story.
Seekers of Tomorrow by Sam Moskowitz is a great overview of the history of early scifi up until the 1970s by the people who were there. It’s worth it because it’s very close up.
Finally, I recommend David Kyle’s A Pictorial History of Science Fiction because it is more on the fandom side of things as opposed to the writing side of things.
Also, you have to read, which is non-negotiable. Basically, by their very nature, computers and phones give you a kind of artificial ADHD. I love my phone a lot, it’s a wonder gadget cooler than anything Star Trek characters have, but it is impossible to focus on any one task at a computer. I love reading – if I was bored at a bus stop, I could read the back of a candy bar wrapper – but I find it impossible to do at a computer. Because reading requires absolute concentration…and at my computer or phone, I start clicking away and getting antsy and checking my email again or tumblr blog or something.
So, there’s my solution: take some time and go to a coffee place or a bar (if you’re old enough to drink) or a library without your phone, and bring a book and spend a few hours there. Don’t worry about looking like a hipster, because nobody is looking at you and nobody gives a damn. Also, if you’re old enough to do this and mature enough to enjoy this activity responsibly, being in a bar late at night where people are has the added bonus of helping get you laid…this could be an article onto itself, but 90% of life is really just getting out of the house.
I know what you mean when you say it’s hard to watch an episode through at a computer. The solution is obvious: don’t watch anything at a computer. If you have a dedicated streaming or smart TV in the living room or something, watch it on that. Or, better yet, watch it with a friend, appointment viewing: “hey Bob, let’s have a Babylon 5 night, what do you think?” You can watch movies, drink Scotch (or whatever you like), smoke some weed, and play two-player Spelunky. Other people keep you sane. I don’t know how young you are, but this appointment visiting is harder to do if you are too young to drive and live somewhere spread out…but there are ways around that.
The key thing to understand when watching TV is to have your mind be active at all times. You have to keep the analytical portion of your brain active. Consider: brainwaves are slower when watching TV than asleep. So, here’s what I do: I keep a pad by my couch at all times I write my thoughts into about what I’m watching. Once, when watching Avatar: the Last Airbender, I had a thought I wrote down, “what if one of the Avatars was responsible for a murder, and Aang was held responsible by the legal system for it?” Oddly enough, that was the plot of the very next episode I saw!
