Nigel Quinlan's Blog, page 18

I’ll have you know I’ve suddenly become very popular with lots of Tumblrs that have zero posts.

I’ll have you know I’ve suddenly become very popular with lots of Tumblrs that have zero posts.

trickstertime:sirjuggles:trickstertime:trickstertime:This is...

trickstertime:

sirjuggles:

trickstertime:

trickstertime:

This is so fucking funny

For non Irish speakers when translated it says “make a movie about black people they said” but in Irish putting a colour modifier when talking about a person/group of people it has a cultural meaning, some colours even have different words when talking about hair colour (like red). So in that vein, the word black (‘dubh’ pronounced ‘duv’) is associated with the devil and/or evil things and naturally it’s quite rude to describe someone as black in Irish so we call black people ’gorm’ (pronounced gurrum) which is actually blue. Frequently people claiming Irish heritage mess this up, most notably and hilariously is that cop who tried to make a ‘blue lives matter’ t-shirt and messed up every word single word in the translation except for the ‘blue’ modifier which made his stupid t-shirt actually say ‘black lives matter’.

All that to say that it translates as “make a movie about black people, they said” but directly translated it says “make a movie about blue people, they said”.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

Give me more jokes requiring deep cultural knowledge!

OK, so in Irish there’s an old saying “Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin” (it sort of sounds like: ‘kneel ain tin-tawn mar duh tin-tawn fain’). It translates as “there’s no fireplace like your own fireplace”, as in ‘there’s no place like home’.

However the word for fireplace, thinteán (tin-tawn), is very similar in pronunciation to the words tinn tón (teen tone) and they sometimes get swapped out for comedic value or to low key make fun of someone complaining.

See, tinn tón means sore butt.

Which changes it from ’there’s no fireplace like your own fireplace’, a nice, relatable phrase that old people would smile at and agree with you about, to ‘there’s no sore arse like your own sore arse’, which, when deployed correctly, can be either a solemn commiseration with how it’s difficult for people to understand the deeper levels of the pain a person is feeling (you would have said it to the person who’s suffering in a sort of ‘here’s a silly joke to make you smile but also show I understand how little I understand of your pain. Plus we’re Irish and find it hard to show emotion without slagging so I’m pretending to make fun of you complaining but, really, we both know that the fact that I’m doing it in this way shows I care a lot), OR a jab at someone who’s going on and on complaining about some minor shit and you say it quietly to someone beside you who’s also been listening to this gobshite prattering on in the hopes that you can make them burst out laughing.

neil-gaiman:There were three men came out of the WestThr...

neil-gaiman:

There were three men came out of the West
Three kings both great and high
And they have sworn a solemn oath
John Mastodon must die.

They took a tank and ran him down
With bullets in his head
And they have sworn a solemn oath
John Mastodon was dead

But when the Spring came kindly on
And showers began to fall
John Mastodon got up again
And did surprise them all…

dragonfire814:desert-palm:Give it up for a real hero o...

dragonfire814:

desert-palm:

Give it up for a real hero of our times

findingfeather:orwellsunderpants:macmanx:crawlingrat...

findingfeather:

orwellsunderpants:

macmanx:

crawlingrats:

Please please PLEASE watch this Christmas spot we got in Spain

😍

[video description:

View of a town skyline at dusk in the winter, with the J&B Blended Scotch Whiskey logo superimposed on the picture. A flock of sheep walks from left to right, making baaa sounds, their bells jangling. Some Christmas lights with a star are strung along some telephone poles on the left side of the frame.

Cut to the inside of a house where an older man with white hair is sitting in an armchair reading a paper. His wife comes in and puts her handbag on the side table. She’s on the phone, and quickly moves into another room. A lipstick rolls out of the bag. The older man surreptitiously picks up the lipstick, then sneaks into the bathroom, locks the door, and attempts to apply the lipstick. He is not pleased with the results. He wipes off the lipstick and hides it in a small makeup bag on top of the bathroom mirror cabinet.

Elvis Costello’s song “She” begins to play when the wife walks in, and it plays throughout the video. The first line of the song is “She may be the face I can’t forget,” and as the video goes on we learn why this song is significant to the story being told by the ad.

The older man goes to a small store and buys more makeup. The female shopkeeper gives him an unfriendly glare when he pays for his purchase.

The old man looks at a magazine in his home. He tears out a page about makeup and goes back into the bathroom to experiment with the eyeshadow he bought earlier. He tries the lipstick again and adds some rouge. The result is better, but he’s not quite satisfied.

The man goes to a bus stop. Inside the bus shelter, he minutely examines the eye makeup on the model in an ad on the shelter wall. He jumps away from the ad when another man enters the shelter and sits down. The other man doesn’t seem to have noticed what the older man was doing.

Back in the bathroom, the man experiments with mascara. He likes the result. He puts the lipstick on again, and likes this too. Someone knocks on the door, so he hurriedly wipes off the makeup and hides the makeup bag again.

Scene cuts to the living room, where the man sits in his chair reading the newspaper. He looks over at some family photos. One of them shows the man with his arm around a teenager with short, dark hair.

Scene then cuts to the man’s bedroom. It’s nighttime, and he’s in bed with his sleeping wife. The man sneaks out of bed and back into the bathroom. He puts on all the kinds of makeup he bought: lipstick, rouge, mascara, eyeshadow. He looks at himself in the mirror, all made up, and smiles. Now he’s got it right.

The next day, the man is in his living room, where he hears a car honk outside. He goes and looks out the window. Outside is a group of people greeting each other in the driveway; they are an extended family, and apparently have just arrived at the older man’s house. One of the family members is a young man with short, dark hair. Text superimposed on the screen reads “Alvaro, 26 años,” indicating the name and age of the young man. The scene cuts back inside, where the older man comes away from the window, looking thoughtful.

The family sets the table for Christmas dinner, putting out plates and silverware and lighting candles. The older man goes to Alvaro and gestures with his head. “Come with me.” They go into the bathroom. The older man locks the door, then proceeds to put the makeup on Alvaro with much love and tenderness. The older man is happy with the way Alvaro looks. Alvaro is pleased, too.

Cut back to the dining room, where the rest of the family is laughing and talking together. Conversation suddenly stops and people look up, surprised. The grandfather ushers his grandchild out of the bathroom. She stands nervously in front of her family, her face beautifully done. The family pause, then start to smile. The camera goes close on a man with greying hair and beard. He seems overcome with happy emotion, and seems to be the grandchild’s father.

The camera goes back close on the grandchild, who looks shyly at her family. The name and age superimposed now read “Ana, 26 años.”

A woman with greying short hair stands up and goes to Ana. This apparently is Ana’s mom. She gives Ana a big hug. The mom is crying with happiness and love, and smiles at the grandfather through her tears. The grandfather blinks and seems shy but pleased.

The camera pulls back to show everyone at the table again. The grandfather is standing and leading a toast. Superimposed text reads “La magia no solo está en la Navidad. También está en nosotros.” (The magic isn’t only in Christmas. It’s also in us.)

A series of short close shots. Ana happily raises her glass with everyone else. The grandfather takes his wife’s hand and kisses it. Ana’s dad takes a sip of his whiskey, then Ana’s grandmother goes over and gives Ana a big hug.

There’s a brief shot of a bottle of J&B whiskey, which is on the table with the other dinner things, then the scene cuts to show the grandfather looking at Ana and raising his glass to her, smiling. Ana raises her glass to her grandfather and smiles at him.

Final shot is the J&B logo on a black background with the text “de celebrarnos” (to celebrate us).

/end description]

I cannot actually believe we now live in a world where a whisky company thinks it’s commercially viable to make this ad, and to make it about a grandfather who makes Christmas dinner with a family of very “ordinary looking people into a happy, loving affair, by doing this. 

I do not know how to explain how fucking impossible that would have seemed to me twenty years ago when I just realized that possibly, maybe, I wasn’t straight. I cannot explain to you how amazing this is, and how beautiful it is. 

This did not just happen, and yes there are people everywhere fighting to take it away but I cannot explain you the change in the overall culture of everything, everywhere that makes this possible. 

myjetpack:Because it’s Tom Waits’s birthday

myjetpack:

Because it’s Tom Waits’s birthday

smallgodseries:[image description: A blue woman (or is it simply...

smallgodseries:

[image description: A blue woman (or is it simply a blue morning?) crouches atop an ancient tombstone. She holds a couple huge books in her arms. Around her there are both grave markers and piles of books. Text reads, “#241, Jñānī, the small god of standing on the shoulders of giants”]

• • • • •

There will always be things we have to learn for ourselves.  Fire has been hot since before humans had nerves to tell them what pain was, and still, every child learns anew that fire burns.  The process is part of the nature of humanity; we learn what we need to know, and we continue onward into our lives with that knowledge, hot and visceral, nestled next to our hearts.

But some lessons are nestled next to others, things that were learned for us and then passed along in their more advanced form, whether those things be “the existence of zero” or “the nature of gravity” or “the best way to make chocolate chip cookies.”  Someone who doesn’t intend to become a doctor may not need to know the exact mechanisms of viral reproduction, while the technique to making the perfect meringue may be the most essential of understandings.

She was born the first time someone passed along knowledge to someone who needed to have it, the first time someone was allowed to skip the “fuck around” part of the cycle and move straight to finding out.  She is not, in her own right, a particularly wise god.  That isn’t why she’s here.  She’s here to remind the rest of us that while we all stand alone before the fire, we have people to fall back on almost everywhere else.  They teach and support and nurture us, these old masters of our chosen fields, these wise elders of humanity, and it is because of them that we don’t have to begin again, over and over again, forever.

She’s here to help us hold their hands, and we should listen, for while she isn’t much wiser than we are, she leads us to those who are.  She leads us, one step at a time, to the giants.

• • • • •

Please join Lee Moyer (Icon) and Seanan McGuire (Story) each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a guide to the many tiny divinities:

WordPress: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/smallgodseries/

Homepage: http://smallgodseries.com

Mastodon: @SmallGods@mastodon.world

atomic-chronoscaph:The Hobbit (1977)

atomic-chronoscaph:

The Hobbit (1977)

dduane:sunshinemoonrx:Old Welsh lit: Dave punched Steve. This incurred a fine of twelve cattle and...

dduane:

sunshinemoonrx:

Old Welsh lit: Dave punched Steve. This incurred a fine of twelve cattle and a nine-inch rod of silver and is known as one of the Three Midly Annoying Blows of the Isle of Britain

Old Irish lit: Dave punched Steve so that the top of his skull came out of his chin, and gore flooded the house, and he drove his fists down the street performing his battle-feats so that the corpses were so numerous there was no room for them to fall down. It was like “the fox among the hens” and “the oncoming tide” and “that time Emily had eight drinks when we all know she should stop at six”

Old English lit: Dave, the hard man, the fierce man, the fist-man, gave Steve such a blow the like has not been seen since the feud between the Hylfings and the Wends. Thus it is rightly said that violence only begets more violence, unless of course it is particularly sicknasty. Amen.

(snicker) (thanks to @petermorwood)

headspace-hotel:rongzhi:English added by me :)I’m in H...

headspace-hotel:

rongzhi:

English added by me :)

I’m in HYSTERICS