Bitte Gib Mir Nur Ein Uh-Oh

Thursday, July 7, 2005

One thing to get out of the way: Mr. Bush, please listen to how Tony Blair uses the word “resolve.” You resolve to do something. One resolves to build a bridge or one resolves to eat dinner. One doesn’t just “resolve.” That sounds idiotic. Stop saying it. Please send me a private e-mail when you get this. Let me know if you have any questions. And send my best to Laura and the twins, Babs and Tubby.

That aside…

So. I woke up to the London mass transit attacks on CNN. I wonder if any of the anchors have considered just allowing images and sound from the scene without additional ramlbing commentary? Anyway. Blair comes on and makes a clear, reassuring statement. Later Bush comes on and sets a record for repeated use of the word “resolve” and seems bugged and only vaguely aware of where this “London” might be located. Canada, possibly. Some of the Berlin U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains have video screens that normally display news bites, lame celebrity gossip, and sleazy ads for mobile phone contests. These now have in rotation several screens letting people know about the increased security on the Berlin metros and what to do — who to call — if something seems suspcious. Even the Potsdamer Platz video screen devoted about 1/16th of its area to a soundless BBC feed with news. Picture in picture. The other 15/16ths went to Sony adverts and Tour de France highlights of a bike crash and Lance Armstrong looking pissed off. And of some Tour de France spectator waving a huge Texas flag with the stripes the wrong way (red on top instead of the proper white on top). Where does one get a screwed up Texas flag? France, I guess. Texans are “nationalistic” enough, I think, to know where the colors go on their flag…

Oh, I’ve also got a couple hundred new photos up for my website stalker to look at when he tires of looking at the same old shots from Lovejoy’s over and over. All of Warsaw’s up and some of Krakow. And plenty more on their way, shortly. Here.

Note added Monday, July 11: For those of you surprised at my bit of trivia that the Pyramids bump right up against dense urban Giza, check this out. Pretty cool. Make sure to zoom in — you can see the Sphinx sitting near where the black road hits the city on the right. And for those of you playing the home game, I’ll be staying here, right at the major, oddly-angled four-way intersection. Seems to be a good spot… Relatively inexpensive and quite central (though “central” in a city like Cairo appears to have several different meanings). Anyway. I’m waiting for my flight in Milan right now and this note has gone on much too long…

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Posted Thu, July 7, 2005, 7:49pm EST by Anonymous

where do you find all these hideous chicks. dude you befriend some winches.

So quick!

Posted Thu, July 7, 2005, 8:18pm EST by Josh

Awww! See? He has a little crush on me.

The photos are up for less than a day and he's already looked through them all. Faster than my parents, even!

So cute! Like a jealous little squirrel.

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Posted Fri, July 8, 2005, 10:03am EST by Lee

Not only jealous, but blind and illiterate as well.

Who is the idiot?

Posted Mon, July 11, 2005, 11:21am EST by Anonymous

Resolve - decide, determine OR tenacity, steadfastness.

Resolvent

Posted Mon, July 11, 2005, 11:44am EST by Josh

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's grammatically correct. But when people fling about this word "resolve" without the "to do [blank]," do you think it's kind of meaningless? I mean, I hope the President of the US has "resolve" to do whatever he plans to do. It's what, specifically, he plans to do that concerns me...

Anyway, according to this, a good 14-out-of-22 uses of "resolve" are transitive (requiring a direct object). And the only intransitive example that Bush would use (#1) uses an indirect object in the example.

Feel free to correct my grammar. I'm hardly a high school English teacher.

And I'm mostly just firing semi-random complaints about our Goofus-in-Chief.

Where be da sphinx on da U-Bahn?

Posted Sun, April 9, 2006, 10:13am EST by Steve Nordquist

We are resolved to winch!
I mean, that's the default meaning, if no object is given; I mean, at the very minimum we would expand as normal:
Hey! (,to mean:)
Hey you, I see you're nearby doing what you do. (, ergo:)
Resolve! (means, I wank thee not:)
I resolve your nearby doings will do!
...of course it's awkward, but it's better than thinking blind people read your blog after searching for 'Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /raid/home/chasing/auscillate.com/index.php' and reckoning all the images, even in google maps, are pr0n, and then reply as if to deprecate senses until some black victory is won.

Well that'd be new, I guess.


correction

Posted Sun, April 9, 2006, 10:36am EST by Steve Nordquist

Hey! >> Hey you, I see you're nearby doing what you do and I mean to winch you in. (i.e. archaically, to bring you to heel, only less strict!)
Winch! >> I see you're nearby doing what you do and I mean to to simply say 'Winch!' in the way that 'Heel!' works for dogs trained for Command Response to that cue.
Resolve! >> [o dark spirits, bound away from animistic pain beyond life to the pact between us,] I see you're nearby resolving what you do and mean to winch you in.
So 'We resolve' or whatever, is...clearly some kind of segmentation fault.
Within the neuron.
This is -my- second most important result in quantum linguistics this year.