Active voice: I have a question
Passive voice: A question was raised
Passive-aggressive voice: It’s more of a comment than a question
Category: we are amused
georgiansuggestion:IT IS BEWILDERING INDEED when One considers that, at this Time Some Years Ago, it…
IT IS BEWILDERING INDEED when One considers that, at this Time Some Years Ago, it was Only the Year Prior to This. Yet I do believe that Day was Yesterday, no? Perhaps it will All be Clearer To-morrow, when the Clarity of a Surfeit hangs Heavy Over my Person.
Your Literary Dinner Party Experience:
Wuthering Heights: The food is as unappealing as the host’s personality. You find yourself fleeing the estate and taking refuge in the surrounding moorlands before the second course is served.
Great Expectations: The host wears a mildewed wedding dress as she cuts what looks to be a thirty-year-old piece of vanilla cake. You sit quietly and try to fake a smile.
Northanger Abbey: You think your host is the type of person who might have murdered his wife and hid her body in a dusty old dresser. As you take a bite of the pot roast it doesn’t even occur to you that he might just be a dick.
Jane Eyre: The fare is far better than the stale bread and bitter tea provided at your boarding school, but that’s little comfort when the host’s wife keeps setting the table linens on fire.
Dracula: You know that you are sipping on a fine Cabernet, but what is he drinking?
Pride and Prejudice: Over dessert, one of your guests confesses that he has fallen in love with you in spite of your family’s terrible table manners. You stab your pudding with your spoon and tell him he’s the last man you could ever be prevailed upon to marry.
perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin:Good morning to those who wish people a good morning, those who mean…
perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin:
Good morning to those who wish people a good morning, those who mean that it is a good morning whether anyone wants it or not, those who feel good this morning, those who feel it is a morning to be good on, those who suppose they mean all of these at once when they say good morning, those smoking a pipe of tobacco out of doors in the morning, and those who never thought they’d see the day they’d be good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s son.
Career talk with my mother
Mum: You know what you need? A bit of tuberculosis.
Me: ... why do I need a bit of tuberculosis?
Mum: You could finish your book then.
Me: I don't think that finishing a book is one of the symptoms of tuberculosis.
Mum: Well, it worked for the Brontës, didn't it? They all had tuberculosis and they all finished their books.
Me: Yeah, and then they all died before the age of 40!
Mum: But they died having finished their books. I'm just saying. You should consider getting tuberculosis. Just a bit of it.
Me: ...
Mum: You'd have to be authentic, though. Call it consumption. Else it might not work.
Me: I'll bear that in mind.
Me: ... why do I need a bit of tuberculosis?
Mum: You could finish your book then.
Me: I don't think that finishing a book is one of the symptoms of tuberculosis.
Mum: Well, it worked for the Brontës, didn't it? They all had tuberculosis and they all finished their books.
Me: Yeah, and then they all died before the age of 40!
Mum: But they died having finished their books. I'm just saying. You should consider getting tuberculosis. Just a bit of it.
Me: ...
Mum: You'd have to be authentic, though. Call it consumption. Else it might not work.
Me: I'll bear that in mind.
Career talk with my mother
Mum: You know what you need? A bit of tuberculosis.
Me: ... why do I need a bit of tuberculosis?
Mum: You could finish your book then.
Me: I don't think that finishing a book is one of the symptoms of tuberculosis.
Mum: Well, it worked for the Brontës, didn't it? They all had tuberculosis and they all finished their books.
Me: Yeah, and then they all died before the age of 40!
Mum: But they died having finished their books. I'm just saying. You should consider getting tuberculosis. Just a bit of it.
Me: ...
Mum: You'd have to be authentic, though. Call it consumption. Else it might not work.
Me: I'll bear that in mind.
Me: ... why do I need a bit of tuberculosis?
Mum: You could finish your book then.
Me: I don't think that finishing a book is one of the symptoms of tuberculosis.
Mum: Well, it worked for the Brontës, didn't it? They all had tuberculosis and they all finished their books.
Me: Yeah, and then they all died before the age of 40!
Mum: But they died having finished their books. I'm just saying. You should consider getting tuberculosis. Just a bit of it.
Me: ...
Mum: You'd have to be authentic, though. Call it consumption. Else it might not work.
Me: I'll bear that in mind.
sandersstudies: Me, realizing I let cups pile up on my dresser again: my dearest princess is so…
Me, realizing I let cups pile up on my dresser again: my dearest princess is so frequently desirous of water in the late eve that she hath permitted her goblets to accumulate… dear me, I must have these cleared before the duchess arrives for tea.
Sometimes I really beat myself up for having a messy room/house and I get too upset to actually clean because what’s the point, I’ll just make it messy again?
Anyway, I’ve started countering this by pretending I’m a long-suffering maid for a sweet yet untidy princess, tasked with preparing her royal quarters for visitors. It is difficult work but the thought that she loves me and soon we will flee into the forest in disguise before her upcoming wedding (to a wealthy but unloving duke) keeps me motivated.
Redwall, as narrated by Lemony Snicket
It was the start of the Summer of the Late Rose. Mossflower country shimmered gently in a peaceful haze. Peaceful is a word which here means calm, tranquil, and highly unlikely to disturbed by violent events that would culminate in the dropping of a large bell from a very high place onto someone who would rather not have a large bell dropped upon them.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
Othello: Jealousy.
Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
Hamlet: That is not the question.
Donne: It crosseth for thee.
Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
Constable: To get a better view.
Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.
Poe: The fowl was driven to utter, fervent madness-- it lept 'cross the path in the hopes that sweet death might take his wanton body- by the lead foot of a passerby, the barreling coach of a postman!- and put an end to the mania which had puzzled and tormented him ever since That Day.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
Othello: Jealousy.
Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
Hamlet: That is not the question.
Donne: It crosseth for thee.
Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
Constable: To get a better view.
Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.
Poe: The fowl was driven to utter, fervent madness-- it lept 'cross the path in the hopes that sweet death might take his wanton body- by the lead foot of a passerby, the barreling coach of a postman!- and put an end to the mania which had puzzled and tormented him ever since That Day.
I liked the Harry Potter books and movies but…
I just feel like the character Nearly Headless Nick was a bit poorly executed.
[the crowd boos]
Someone in the back: GET OFF THE STAGE