Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)’s Comments (group member since Sep 20, 2013)

Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)’s comments from the Net Work Book Club group.

You need David Tennant's Hamlet!! Modern dress, full text, and excellent performances! Somehow getting it out of period costume helps. I bought it on DVD a week or two ago...delicious!

I've been tutoring Eng Lit on and off for the past 10 years or so. Today my student asked me the same old question I have heard from so many, in these exact words: "How do you know all this stuff?" My answer remains the same: "I can read, and I do!" Also she is 21 and I am 56 and I fell in love with Shakespeare and those of his ilk at age 8 or so. I tell her I'm not smarter than she is, I'm just older and have had more time to read!

One of my students called me "an intellectual." Laugh? I thought they'd never dry!

Emma wrote: "Ah that's my bad, no more specific word talk here promise :)

But yay thanks Ori, that's a welcome and a half! I always intend to log on but things kept cropping up over the last few months.

How ..."
Naah, the thread got away from us a few posts back, before you resurfaced.

It's supposed to be Fair week here and I planned to sew but instead I have to read 17th century plays. Ah well, it's work, innit? I complain when I haven't got students so...LOL

It is true, however, that the last few posts of this and the "words you hate/love" threads should be switched. Somehow those threads have become general chat and now we're on about "confusticate" over here.

Which is a perfectly lovely word I had forgotten, btw.

Emma wrote: "Blunt always makes me think of a thug's weapon, easy whack and job done, whereas sharp needs to be prodded somewhere relatively specific. What I want to see is really weird instruments like 'suffoc..."

Emma, we have missed you something fierce!! Welcome, welcome, welcome back!

Oh but there it is! A saw isn't blunt!

Oh, classic detective fiction. Why do they never assault anyone with a sharp instrument? It happens every day in London, and often enough in my own city. But noooo, it has to be a blunt instrument.


Like what? a tuba?

Nationalised healthcare. It's here, and it works. But if you want extras, you pay upfront. Actually, it doesn't stop people running the TV till 2 AM so they can see their favorite reality tv slop. And that's in a shared room!

To me, it means hurry up and finish your question so I can talk.
You know, Groovy, too many people think "conversation" means "waiting for the other person to shut up so I can talk again."

You make a statement and they reply, "So what you're saying is..."
What? You didn't listen when I said it the first time?

Groovy wrote: "I know it sounds weird, but I remember the neighbors had a color film to put over the tv and that gave it color."

I've heard of that. Also, in hospitals here the TVs in patient's rooms are still coin-operated!!

I remember it well. My dad was always dragging home a TV that someone had left at the repair shop rather than pay for the repair, so after everyone else had decent colour sets, we still had b/w or "green and red" TV. At one point we even had a b/w set with sound and a "colour" set for the picture, he set them side by side and blacked out the b/w picture. Had to remembe to turn them both on as the colour set had no sound!!

Groovy wrote: "That's Ori:)"

I am indeed a contradiction in terms. ;)

He's in the UK. They have something similar but I can't remember what it's called.

Groovy wrote: "Which brings to mind another word I like: oxymoron"

And there are a lot of oxidated morons about these days!

Which reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with my husband's nephew, then studying physics. We were talking about why herbal teas darken when they get cold. He thought for a moment and said, "Oh, they oxidate and precipitate!" This became the standard explanation for just about any cooking that didn't turn out well. "It oxidated and precipitated!"

mrbooks wrote: "I like Diabolical, it just sounds so bad..."

Well yes, it's meant to, lol...Cracks me up the way older Brits use it, too. I heard a man once say his wife had "just had a diabolical operation!"

Groovy wrote: "When someone lambastes us, we channel our inner selves and say, "May you be blessed."

**laughing out** good one, mrbooks."

As a Pentecostal pastor I used to know says, "God bless you...with repentance!"

When someone lambastes a review because I dislike a book or movie they love, or like one they don't (isn't lambaste a nice word?), I just remember to channel my inner Noel Coward and reply: "How nice for you."

It's classier than the old Cardiff comeback: "There's you lucky."

Another lovely Biblical word for gossip is "backbiter." Yeah because they bite you when your back is turned.

I love that line from "Steel Magnolias": "Now M'Lynn, you know I'd rather walk on my lips than criticise anybody, but..."

"Scuttlebutt." Isn't that a lovely word? It means gossip. It sounds like someone scuttling around, busting their butt to spread the latest rumour! I think it originally comes from ships but I'm not sure.

Hubby asked me for English words to do with gossiping, and my first response was to look at him and say, "Now, you didn't get this from me, but..." LOL

Apparently in French one word for gossip is "le can-can." Nothing to do with the dance, I guess it has to do with the noise chickens make when they foregather.

You're teasing me now...LOL