bear - ingn.1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4pl. comprehension of one's position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
I was talking with a friend about a Twitter-based fiction contest that he’d seen, and he mentioned that this contest had stipulated genre requirements. So, of course, the conversation turned to how short a story could possibly be and still have some recognizable genre. I postulated that it wouldn’t take much at all:
“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Cancer! On our wedding day!” [Drama/romance]
“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Tuberculosis! On our wedding day!” [Period romance]
“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Nanobots! On our wedding day!” [Sci-fi]
... Following several more examples in the same vein, the blogger challenges his commenters to write their own, and hilarity ensues.
As far as I'm concerned, Commenter Yeah No wins the thread. I also liked the all-caps one, kind of comes full circle in a nice historical way, don't you think?
For no particular reason, I suggest you kill half an hour reading this website. I stumbled upon it a couple of years ago. I still think it's one of the funniest bits of the Internet.
Every once in a while I send the link to someone, who either loves it or hates it. I guess it's a kind of litmus test. If you think it's funny, well, you and I would probably get along.
To my surprise, there is no international body responsible for upholding simple standards of vexillilic aesthetics. Nor do the UN or Interpol have the power to call in and punish those responsible for such atrocities as the Brazilian or Cypriot flags. I suppose there is probably a conspiracy of rich western nations (those with permanent seats on the UN security council, no doubt) to prevent such crimes from being brought to justice; however, in the meantime I am giving letter grades to the existing flags of the world.
From the "Methodology" section:
To receive an F, a flag had to be so awful that its level of badness was clearly qualitatively different from that of any flag receiving a D. I had to feel that a country receiving an F had really set out to create a genuinely horrible flag, or didn't really know what a flag was. One prominent vexillologist I consulted put it thus: "Some countries' flags look like tea towels. If you'd rather be using the flag as a tea towel, and your tea towel as the flag, give it an F."
In the end, only three countries received such a distinction, all U.S. territories (hence my suspicions about the US using its security council veto to block the bringing of bad flag designers to justice). Of these, I wouldn't even trust the Northern Mariana Islands flag to clean my cutlery - it's probably not colourfast.
Some of the criteria:
Rule 1b: Do not write some stupid slogan on your flag.
British colonies and former colonies love putting widdly little coats of arms on their flags with Latin slogans like 'et cetera' and 'Caecilius est in horto' on them (e.g. Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands). This is because junior civil servants in the Crown Office of Naming Other People's Countries want to show off how valuable their Etonian education is.
...
Rule 3: Do not use a tricolour unless you are in Europe.
...The real problem with tricolours is not that they are bad flags - some are quite good - it's just that they are a hang over from a time when fewer countries had flags and tricolour space wasn't so crowded. These days no-one should be using a tricolour if they can avoid it. It's not that tricolours are bad per se; people should just know better than to start using one after say, 1900.
Africa is particularly full of awful tricolours. What makes them particularly bad is that they are all the same colours: that red yellow green thing. Why aren't countries just embarrassed by the fact that their flag is the same as their neighbours, except backwards, upside down, or with a big green star on it? Rwanda deserves special mention for unbelievable unoriginality in this field.
And then you get to the letter grades, with commentary (my favorites include the flags for Central African Republic, that of Uruguay, and yes, the good old starts and stripes). Read it and let me know if I like you or not. Hm, come to think of it I've never tried this test on my husband.
From John Scalzi's Whatever, recently added to my LBILTRTKMHOOTEC* collection. "Just sent to me, the result of the most important election last night."
Now there's a result I can get behind.
*lefty blogs I like to read to keep my head out of the echo chamber
I really owe the blog Shell Speed a link, if for no other reason than because it feels weird to be listed on somebody's blogroll with exactly three other mommyblogs... Dooce, Finslippy, and breed 'em and weep.
That is beyond being a compliment and I only wish I could deserve it...
