Sexual organs are not supposed to hold negative connotations...
The Random Crap Thread 2: It Hits the Fan.
- Thread starter North_Ranger
- Start date
My friend Meagan does a charity drive twice a year - The Causeplay Shop.
I just wanted to give it a quick plug here, so if any of you are interested in prints of cosplayers (a lot of them are now 'exclusive' and you cannot buy them elsewhere), one of a kind props, art, other bits and bobs, please go check it out. Or tell your friends, other people you think might be interested.
http://causeplayshop.storenvy.com/?page=1
All proceeds go to the Nepal Youth Foundation.
Thank you!
I just wanted to give it a quick plug here, so if any of you are interested in prints of cosplayers (a lot of them are now 'exclusive' and you cannot buy them elsewhere), one of a kind props, art, other bits and bobs, please go check it out. Or tell your friends, other people you think might be interested.
http://causeplayshop.storenvy.com/?page=1
All proceeds go to the Nepal Youth Foundation.
Thank you!
I'm trying to get my bearings using the NYC I used to know, but other than the Hello Deli, everything is either gone or moved. The Times Square USO is now in the Port Authority building, but it used to be in a small office just off of Times Square on one of the quieter cross streets. I think it was 47th, 48th, or 49th. Google is no help. It keeps pointing me to the Port Authority. Short of asking a USO staffer when I get there, does anyone remember where their offices were in the 90's?
GasBandit
Staff member
Not Always Right usually barely elicits any reaction from me at all, but this one today got me to actually laugh.
The quarter in question
Do you know how many orphans Helen "Killer" Keller murdered?
I'm guessing she probably doesn't...
Heh, now you won't have to once again prowl the streets looking for pusHEY okay I won't tell that joke again, all right? Sheesh.
I had a German Shepherd that refused to go outside in the mornings if it was already over 80 degrees at sunrise.
NOPE!
GasBandit
Staff member
GSDs are usually pretty intelligent like that. I wish I had the same option!
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, that comes with its OWN bag of issues
I'd call Colorado a comfortable compromise. Or even New Mexico - it gets hot in the summer, but it's a nice dry heat, and the winters are generally very mild.
fade
Staff member
Did you ever really like something, only to sour on it and eventually start being irritated by it? That's Questionable Content for me. It started out great, but then everyone became a cartoon, extreme version of Oh-Look-We're-So-Different, and it became untethered to reality.
Yeah, in fact, exactly this, but that happened to me years ago with it.
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, not to beat the dead horse even further, but yeah, when Sinfest flipped to being All-Social-Justice-All-The-Time, pretty much most of us experienced the same.
And don't even get us started on what brought us all together in the first place - PVP online. Heh.
Hell, there's parallels all over the place in real life, too. Every kid who's eaten too much Halloween candy. The examples are limitless.
But I feel ya on QC. It used to be wacky entertainment, now everything's always "This week, on a very special Questionable Content..."
QC is so ingrained in my daily site rotation that every time I think "this is getting dumb I should stop reading" I'm already there anyway.[DOUBLEPOST=1434147449,1434147218][/DOUBLEPOST]"Hi, I'm Dave Grohl, and I'm the most metal rock star on the planet right now."
Broke his foot about 10-15 minutes into a show, came back out to keep playing while they applied the cast.
Broke his foot about 10-15 minutes into a show, came back out to keep playing while they applied the cast.
GasBandit
Staff member
I've easily got 70 comics in my feedly RSS reader, but I'd be hard pressed to name one off the top of my head that I always look foward to reading, or that if I lost my feedly feeds tomorrow, which ones I'd make sure to add back in.
But I can name a number of Youtube channels I'd re-add right off the bat.
But I can name a number of Youtube channels I'd re-add right off the bat.
I used to have a lot in my site rotation, cut down when it dawned on me checking them cost me too much time and I wouldn't miss most of them.
Xkcd, Skin Horse, OotS, SMBC, Camp Weedonwantcha...and when I can be bothered/am reminded on here, CAD, PVP and Penny Arcade.
Hey, @GasBandit, you've got a version of your "it's FRIDAY!" post that rises to the level of "IT'S VACAAAAATION!!!"?
(T-minus 5 1/2 hours to go...)
(T-minus 5 1/2 hours to go...)
GasBandit
Staff member
Aw shit.... I forgot to post the Friday flash yesterday! How will people know it's the weekend?!
Well, try this one for starting a vacation.
also suitable for, "It's Steam Saaaaaaaale!"
Just wanting some information/being curious, @Terrik and @bhamv3 : is this article correct?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/thank-you-chinese/395660/
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/thank-you-chinese/395660/
Hmm... okay, a response to this article needs to be from two perspectives, a linguistics perspective and a cultural perspective. Of course, there will be some overlap between them, due to the nature of how language affects society and culture.
First, language. Chinese is a language that likes to squeeze as much information into as few characters as possible. This is exemplified by the Chinese phenomenon of 成語 (chengyu), which are basically short phrases, usually of four characters, that represent a complex concept. Usually they reference historical or mythological origins. For example, there's a chengyu 守株待兔 (shou zhu dai tu), which literally translates as "guard a tree to wait for a rabbit". Its origin comes from the story of a farmer who was toiling in his field one day when he saw a rabbit run into a tree and die. He gathered up the carcass of the rabbit and had an easy dinner that night. Thinking to himself, "Oh, so all I have to do is wait by the tree for more rabbits to come and die," the farmer abandoned his crops and spent all of his days by the tree, fruitlessly waiting for more rabbits to come throw themselves at it. Nowdays, shou zhu dai tu basically means "to sit back and wait", but it also has a slightly negative connotation, as if to suggest that the person doing the waiting will probably be waiting for a long, long time.
The article also mentions the phrase 慢走 (man zou), which literally means "slow walk". Translated more freely, it means "take your time departing", that is to say, "I hope you can stay a bit longer." In other words, it is a way for people, such as shopkeepers or hosts, to say "your patronage/company was appreciated, so much so that I regret seeing you leave." A lot of information is packed into just two characters.
So, from this perspective, adding "please" (請 qing) and "thank you" (謝謝 xie xie) to everyday conversation can actually be a bit extraneous, because the "please" and "thank you" ideas can be integrated into the phrase being used. The article uses the many Chinese versions of "no" as an example, which is a good one. The most simple and direct translation for "no" would be 不 (bu), but in everyday conversation you hardly ever just say bu by itself. You usually add another character to it, which can change its meaning or tone dramatically. 不要 (bu yao) would be a very direct and blunt way of saying no. It is literally translated as "do not want", and is in fact the source of the famous "do not want" meme. So, for example, if you were at a restaurant and someone asked you if you want another spring roll, saying bu yao would be considered a blunt and rather impolite way of declining. An alternative would be 不用 (bu yong), which literally translates as "do not need". This would be considered a more polite way of declining, as if to say "I do want more, but actually I have had enough."
Pragmatically speaking, then, bu yong serves the same purpose as the English phrase "no, thank you" in this situation. So, instead of saying 不，謝謝 (bu, xie xie, or "no, thank you"), you can shave off a character and just say bu yong. In other words, it's not that the Chinese do not say please and thank you, it's just that the concepts of "please" and "thank you" tend to be integrated into other parts of the Chinese speech, instead of being stated separately.
Now, from a cultural perspective, I'd say the phenomena the article mentions can be separated into two parts: interactions with friends or those close to you, and interactions with strangers. Yelling "getting off" on a subway, screaming "wei" into a phone in a public place, and hollering for a waitress in a restaurant all fall under interactions with strangers. The Chinese tend to be rather brusque when it comes to dealing with people they don't know. A very popular explanation for this is that the Cultural Revolution got rid of the bourgeois aspects of society, which led to a general trend towards being discourteous. This may or may not be why there's a negative perception towards Chinese tourists. It also may or may not be why the Taiwanese aren't painted with the same brush; we didn't go through the Cultural Revolution, so we're generally more polite.
With friends, on the other hand, the article is correct in saying Chinese speakers like to shorten the distance between people through informal language. It's sort of like in English you might say to someone, "Yo, pass the salt!" On the surface, this looks like you're giving someone an order, with the imperative structure and the lack of any pleases or thank yous. But it's easily recognizable as you talking to a pal or a friend, someone who wouldn't mind such a sentence being thrown at them. On the other hand, if you were talking in Chinese to an elder or your boss, you'd probably want to add some qing and xie xie to your sentences, because usually you can't talk to them like they're your drinking buddies.
First, language. Chinese is a language that likes to squeeze as much information into as few characters as possible. This is exemplified by the Chinese phenomenon of 成語 (chengyu), which are basically short phrases, usually of four characters, that represent a complex concept. Usually they reference historical or mythological origins. For example, there's a chengyu 守株待兔 (shou zhu dai tu), which literally translates as "guard a tree to wait for a rabbit". Its origin comes from the story of a farmer who was toiling in his field one day when he saw a rabbit run into a tree and die. He gathered up the carcass of the rabbit and had an easy dinner that night. Thinking to himself, "Oh, so all I have to do is wait by the tree for more rabbits to come and die," the farmer abandoned his crops and spent all of his days by the tree, fruitlessly waiting for more rabbits to come throw themselves at it. Nowdays, shou zhu dai tu basically means "to sit back and wait", but it also has a slightly negative connotation, as if to suggest that the person doing the waiting will probably be waiting for a long, long time.
The article also mentions the phrase 慢走 (man zou), which literally means "slow walk". Translated more freely, it means "take your time departing", that is to say, "I hope you can stay a bit longer." In other words, it is a way for people, such as shopkeepers or hosts, to say "your patronage/company was appreciated, so much so that I regret seeing you leave." A lot of information is packed into just two characters.
So, from this perspective, adding "please" (請 qing) and "thank you" (謝謝 xie xie) to everyday conversation can actually be a bit extraneous, because the "please" and "thank you" ideas can be integrated into the phrase being used. The article uses the many Chinese versions of "no" as an example, which is a good one. The most simple and direct translation for "no" would be 不 (bu), but in everyday conversation you hardly ever just say bu by itself. You usually add another character to it, which can change its meaning or tone dramatically. 不要 (bu yao) would be a very direct and blunt way of saying no. It is literally translated as "do not want", and is in fact the source of the famous "do not want" meme. So, for example, if you were at a restaurant and someone asked you if you want another spring roll, saying bu yao would be considered a blunt and rather impolite way of declining. An alternative would be 不用 (bu yong), which literally translates as "do not need". This would be considered a more polite way of declining, as if to say "I do want more, but actually I have had enough."
Pragmatically speaking, then, bu yong serves the same purpose as the English phrase "no, thank you" in this situation. So, instead of saying 不，謝謝 (bu, xie xie, or "no, thank you"), you can shave off a character and just say bu yong. In other words, it's not that the Chinese do not say please and thank you, it's just that the concepts of "please" and "thank you" tend to be integrated into other parts of the Chinese speech, instead of being stated separately.
Now, from a cultural perspective, I'd say the phenomena the article mentions can be separated into two parts: interactions with friends or those close to you, and interactions with strangers. Yelling "getting off" on a subway, screaming "wei" into a phone in a public place, and hollering for a waitress in a restaurant all fall under interactions with strangers. The Chinese tend to be rather brusque when it comes to dealing with people they don't know. A very popular explanation for this is that the Cultural Revolution got rid of the bourgeois aspects of society, which led to a general trend towards being discourteous. This may or may not be why there's a negative perception towards Chinese tourists. It also may or may not be why the Taiwanese aren't painted with the same brush; we didn't go through the Cultural Revolution, so we're generally more polite.
With friends, on the other hand, the article is correct in saying Chinese speakers like to shorten the distance between people through informal language. It's sort of like in English you might say to someone, "Yo, pass the salt!" On the surface, this looks like you're giving someone an order, with the imperative structure and the lack of any pleases or thank yous. But it's easily recognizable as you talking to a pal or a friend, someone who wouldn't mind such a sentence being thrown at them. On the other hand, if you were talking in Chinese to an elder or your boss, you'd probably want to add some qing and xie xie to your sentences, because usually you can't talk to them like they're your drinking buddies.