Ruize-rijmen/De Chaos

14. DE CHAOS.

De schrijver van het werkje over de uitspraak van het Engelsch "Drop your foreign Accent", droeg mij op, aangezien ik nogal makkelijk rijm—meende hij—voor zijn boek een gedicht te vervaardigen, waarin al de gewone struikelblokken van de Engelsche uitspraak verwerkt moesten worden. Ik kreeg een lijst van ongeveer 450 woorden, alfabetisch gerangschikt, en daarmee moest ik maar aan den gang gaan—asjeblieft! Hier is het. Met toestemming van den schrijver van "Drop" bied ik het alvast mijn velen vloeiend Engelsch sprekenden landgenooten aan, om er zich op een regenachtigen Zondagmiddag mee onledig te houden. Zij zullen merken, dat elk paar regels volkomen zuiver rijm geeft, en dat de klemtoon duidelijk door het rhythme aangegeven wordt. Moge het alom schrik en ontsteltenis verspreiden.

Dearest creature in Creation,
Studying English pronunciation,
⁠I will teach you in my verse
⁠Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
It will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
⁠Tear in eye your dress you'll tear.
⁠So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it?
⁠Just compare heart, beard and heard,
⁠Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain,
(Mind the latter, how it's written!)
⁠Made has not the sound of bade,
⁠Say—said, pay—paid, laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
⁠But be careful how you speak,
⁠Say break, steak, but bleak and streak,
Previous, precious; fuchsia, via;
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
⁠Cloven, oven; how and low;
⁠Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe,
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
⁠Typhoid; measles, topsails, aisles;
⁠Exiles, similes, reviles;
Wholly, holly; signal, signing;
Thames; examining, combining;
⁠Scholar, vicar and cigar,
⁠Solar, mica, war and far.
From "desire": desirable—admirable from "admire";
Lumber, plumber; bier but brier;
⁠Chatham, brougham; renown but known,
⁠Knowledge; done, but gone and tone,
One, anemone; Balmoral;
Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
⁠Gertrude, German; wind and mind;
⁠Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
⁠This phonetic labyrinth
⁠Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
⁠Blood and flood are not like food,
⁠Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rime with "darky".
⁠Viscous, viscount; load and broad;
⁠Toward, to forward, to reward,
And your pronunciation's O.K.
When you say correctly croquet;
⁠Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve;
⁠Friend and fiend; alive and live;
Liberty, library; heave and heaven;
Rachel, ache, moustache; eleven.
⁠We say hallowed, but allowed;
⁠People, leopard; towed, but vowed
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,
⁠Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;
⁠Chalice but police and lice.
Camel; constable, unstable;
Principle, disciple; label;
⁠Petal, penal and canal;
⁠Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.
Suit, suite, run, circuit, conduit
Rime with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
⁠But it is not hard to tell,
⁠Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular; gaol; iron;
Timber, climber; bullion, lion,
⁠Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair;
⁠Senator, spectator, mayor.
Ivy, privy; famous, clamour
And enamour rime with "hammer."
⁠Pussy, hussy and possess.
⁠Desert, but dessert, address.
Golf, wolf; countenance; lieutenants
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.
⁠River, rival; tomb, bomb, comb;
⁠Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rime with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
⁠Soul, but foul and gaunt, but aunt;
⁠Font, front, wont; want, grand, and, grant,
Shoes, goes, does.^[1]) Now first say: finger,
And then: singer, ginger, linger.
⁠Real, zeal; mauve, gauze and gauge;
⁠Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rime with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
⁠Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth;
⁠Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
⁠Seat, sweat, chaste, caste; Leigh, eight, height;
⁠Put, nut; granite, but unite.
Reefer does not rime with "deafer,"
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
⁠Dull, bull; Geoffrey, George; ate, late;
⁠Hint, pint; senate, but sedate;
Scenic, Arabic, pacific;
Science, conscience, scientific;
⁠Tour, but our, and succour, four;
⁠Gas, alas and Arkansas!
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm; Maria, but malaria;
⁠Youth, south, southern; cleanse and clean;
⁠Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
⁠Sally with ally; yea, ye,
⁠Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
⁠Never guess—it is not safe;
⁠We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf!
Heron; granary, canary;
Crevice, and device, and eyrie;
⁠Face but preface, but efface,
⁠Phlegm, phlegmatic; ass, glass, bass;
Large, but target, gin, give, verging;
Ought, out, joust and scour, but scourging;
⁠Ear, but earn; and wear and tear
⁠Do not rime with "here", but "ere".
Seven is right, but so is even;
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen;
⁠Monkey, donkey; clerk and jerk;
⁠Asp, grasp, wasp; and cork and work.
Pronunciation—think of psyche!—
Is a paling, stout and spikey;
⁠Won't it make you lose your wits,
⁠Writing "groats" and saying groats?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel,
Strewn with stones, like rowlock, gunwale,
⁠Islington and Isle of Wight,
⁠Housewife, verdict and indict!
Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
⁠Finally: which rimes with "enough,"
⁠Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of "cup"......
My advice is—give it up!

__________

1. ↑ No, you are wrong. This is the plural of "doe".

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,

The earl and countess lie in stone,

Their proper habits vaguely shown

As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,

And that faint hint of the absurd—

The little dogs under their feet.



Such plainness of the pre-baroque

Hardly involves the eye, until

It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still

Clasped empty in the other; and

One sees, with a sharp tender shock,

His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.



They would not think to lie so long.

Such faithfulness in effigy

Was just a detail friends would see:

A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace

Thrown off in helping to prolong

The Latin names around the base.



They would not guess how early in

Their supine stationary voyage

The air would change to soundless damage,

Turn the old tenantry away;

How soon succeeding eyes begin

To look, not read. Rigidly they



Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

Each summer thronged the glass. A bright

Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

The endless altered people came,



Washing at their identity.

Now, helpless in the hollow of

An unarmorial age, a trough

Of smoke in slow suspended skeins

Above their scrap of history,

Only an attitude remains:



Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.

Women, Fire and Dangerous Things

Negative Probability

Lorem Ipsum

https://www.lipsum.com/




What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

Where can I get some?

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.


The standard Lorem Ipsum passage, used since the 1500s

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."
Section 1.10.32 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", written by Cicero in 45 BC

"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"
1914 translation by H. Rackham

"But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?"
Section 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", written by Cicero in 45 BC

"At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio cumque nihil impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat."
1914 translation by H. Rackham

"On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains."

Japan, Ghosts

https://k-punk.org/

The Metaphysics of Morrowind

https://fallingawkwardly.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-metaphysics-of-morrowind-part-1/

Part 1: Introduction

When we talk about the world we live in, we can talk about physical laws, like gravity and the rules of thermodynamics. We can also talk about metaphysics: meta being Greek for “beyond”. This is where science meets philosophy, where we might try to identify underlying principles of reality that go beyondstandard physics. Theories of time and space, of causality and determinism, of the nature of existence itself.

When we talk about the games we play, we can talk about game mechanics, how the game engine controls and defines space and time, perhaps how the physics engine governs the interactions of objects within the virtual space. The rules of the gameworld; the rules of the game. Such rules, of course, are generally dictated by the needs and demands of gameplay rather than nature. If games were realistic, you’d only ever get one life. So, thought experiment: how might it feel to actually be a character in a game, and to exist according to the rules of a game engine? How might you formulate theories about the metaphysics of your world?

Some games attempt to mask the differences between our world and the game world by creating elaborate justifications for the existence of obvious game mechanics. You’re not saving the game at a savepoint, Jade is saving onto her data disc at the MDisc reader machine. Or it’s a mystical memory-crystal, or the protagonist is recording their progress in their journal, or some other protestation of realism. Nels Anderson calls this “the Disguise”.


Mr. Resetti is not happy with you.

Alternatively, metaphysics are sometimes included in games purely as a joke, when self-aware characters break the fourth wall to refer to the mechanics of their own game – TVTropes.org has a huge list. A good one related to time and save-mechanics is in the Animal Crossing games. If you reset the game without saving, be warned. The next time you load it, Resetti the Angry Mole will endlessly berate you for your attempt to warp the fabric of time, which has not only caused him enormous personal inconvenience, but also provoked vast moral outrage.

The Elder Scrolls series doesn’t really do either of these things – and yet, in a way, it does both. In the process, it does very strange things to the fourth wall, not so much breaking it as morphing it, moving it, twisting it, painting it purple and sitting on top of it laughing.

The lore of the Elder Scrolls is so beautiful and complicated that some people have spent nearly a decade unravelling it, and there are still vast areas of mystery and debate. While I’d call myself fairly knowledgeable, I’m by no means expert on the higher level metaphysics, which can get horribly eldritch and render certain discussions in the Bethesda Lore forums virtually unintelligible to the casual reader. This is an attempt to clarify some of the more interesting meta-gaming* issues. Mistakes are possible, and corrections welcomed. In order to keep this manageable, some detail has to be omitted, but I’ll provide links to further reading for interested lunatics.

I should mention at this point that many Elder Scrolls loremasters frown upon the practice of pointing out the meta/fourth-wall-breaking aspects of ES lore. While they don’t deny their existence, discussing them is considered to be somewhat infra dig, spoiling the fun, not playing along. Not only that, to focus on the meta aspects as the “ultimate” truth, is to miss that they are hardly the final layer of the onion skin that is ES lore. They are one of many interpretations, and hardly the deepest, or the most interesting. So say the hardcore loremasters. They’re right.


“The world is understood through metaphors. Language is a metaphor-system. Mathematics is a metaphor-system. All real-world schools of magic and religion revolve around the understanding of vast metaphor-systems, symbols as they relate to concepts. The Elder Scrolls games feature a really vast and rich series of thoughtful metaphors regarding life, the universe, and the place of ‘us’ in the grand scheme of things – with an obscured emphasis on themes of ascension – so there can be a lot of reward in the gleaning and contemplation of them.”

– LDones, Bethesda forums, 03/25/04

Nevertheless, these posts will focus on the meta-gaming aspects. Forgive me, loremasters, I shall submit an earnest analysis of the deeper mystical implications of the Pomegranate Banquet to The Whirling School any century now.

Meteorite in Qingyang in 1490

The March-April 1490 event is well attested. The standard source for information on meteor sightings and other celestial phenomena in China is Zhongguo gudai tianxiang jilu zongji, (Complete collection of records of celestial phenomena in ancient China), published under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 1988. 

One section of this book is devoted to meteor falls. The March-April 1490 event is covered on pgs 73-74. Ten works mention the event. Of these, the most important is the official History of the Ming Dynasty. The other works are local gazettes, histories, etc. The record of the event in the official History of the Ming Dynasty is terse. It says only that there was a rain of innumerable stones of various sizes. The big ones were as large as a goose egg, and the small ones were the size of the fruit of an aquatic plant. The date given is the third (lunar) month of 1490 (21 Mar-19 Apr 1490). The location was Qingyang in Shaanxi Province. 

In other words, the official history does not mention the deaths. Perhaps there was a political reason not to mention them. However, many sources mention the deaths. One semi-official source says the official in charge of Shaanxi Province sent in a report to the central government stating there had been a rain of stones in Qingyang County of Shaanxi. The large ones weighed 4-5 jin and the small ones weighed 2-3 jin (a modern jin is about 605 grams; offhand, I don't know the weight of the jin at that time). The number of people who were struck and died from the stones was several ten-thousands. 

A separate source mentions that all the residents of one city fled elsewhere under the rain of stones. The semi-official report above and two others date the fall in the second lunar month. One source dates the fall on 4 Apr 1490 (in the 3rd lunar month). And the rest of the sources date the fall in the 3rd lunar month. Incidentally, nowadays Qingyang is in China's Gansu Province. Just input Qingyang into Google Earth and select the Qingyang in Gansu.

can't unsee

cantunsee.space

Dylan C Moore

In Alien, when the cameraman is backing away he bumps into chimes in the next room and Ian Holm looks at the camera (55 sec)

Untitled (Li Shangyin)

无题 (李商隐)

相见时难别亦难，东风无力百花残。
春蚕到死丝方尽，蜡炬成灰泪始干。
晓镜但愁云鬓改，夜吟应觉月光寒。
蓬山此去无多路，青鸟殷勤为探看。

Port Huron Statement - First Draft

Ieoh Ming Pei

Bob

Carrier chatter

Culture-specific items in Japanese-English literary translation: comparing two translations of Kawabata's 'Izu no Odoriko'

Savage EDC One

Night Train to Scotland

London, 1802

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Moscow Tram Stop

Casualties in Hoplite Battles

The “Zéró” London Underground Diagram, 1938

I have just happened to see a proof of a new Underground folder. The “H.C. Beck” diagram has been used, but with considerable and, I suggest, undesirable, alternations by another artist – one not on the staff – without reference to me.

The idea of redesigning the old geographical Underground map in diagram form was conceived by me in 1931; the original diagram, published in 1932 [sic: 1933] was of my own invention and design. Every variation of it since has been either made by me or by the lithographer under my supervision.

When I recently signed a form assigning the copyright of this design to the Board, it was not merely understood, but was promised, that I should continue to make, or edit and direct, any alterations that might have to be made to the design. This practice has been followed without exception since 1932.

I wish therefore to place on record my protest against the action taken in the present instance

Sententiae Antiquae

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/

Rackstraw Downes

Near and Far

Ice Cream Sandwich

Waterscapes by Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)

In Search of Sadakichi Hartmann

Ardbeg Drum

Der Mönch am Meer