the more you know!!

Pumpkin garden

If these all fell on you…. you… you’d….. get squashed……….

Okay, let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, there was a prose translation of the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was wonderfully charming and lyrical and perfect for use in a high school, and so a clever English teacher (as one did in the 70s) made a scan of the book for her students, saved it as a pdf, and printed copies off for her students every year. In true teacher tradition, she shared the file with her colleagues, and so for many years the students of the high school all studied Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the same (very badly scanned) version of this wonderful prose translation.

In time, a new teacher became head of the English Department, and while he agreed that the prose translation was very wonderful he felt that the quality of the scan was much less so. Also in true teacher tradition, he then spent hours typing up the scan into a word processor, with a few typos here and there and a few places where he was genuinely just guessing wildly at what the scan actually said. This completed word document was much cleaner and easier for the students to read, and so of course he shared it with his colleagues, including his very new wide-eyed faculty member who was teaching British Literature for the first time (this was me).

As teachers sometimes do, he moved on for greener (ie, better paying) pastures, leaving behind the word document, but not the original pdf scan. This of course meant that as I was attempting to verify whether a weird word was a typo or a genuine artifact of the original translation, I had no other version to compare it to. Being a good card-holding gen zillenial I of course turned to google, making good use of the super secret plagiarism-checking teacher technique “Quotation Marks”, with an astonishing result:

By which I mean literally one result.

For my purposes, this was precisely what I needed: a very clean and crisp scan that allowed me to make corrections to my typed edition: a happily ever after, amen.

But beware, for deep within my soul a terrible Monster was stirring. Bane of procrastinators everywhere, my Curiosity had found a likely looking rabbit hole. See, this wonderfully clear and crisp scan was lacking in two rather important pieces of identifying information: the title of the book from which the scan was taken, and the name of the translator. The only identifying features were the section title “Precursors” (and no, that is not the title of the book, believe me I looked) and this little leaf-like motif by the page numbers:

(Remember the leaf. This will be important later.)

We shall not dwell at length on the hours of internet research that ensued—how the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon, grading abandoned in shadows half-lit by the the blue glow of the computer screen—how google search after search racked up, until an email warning of “unusual activity on your account” flashed into momentary existence before being consigned immediately and with some prejudice to the digital void—how one third of the way through a “comprehensive but not exhaustive” list of Sir Gawain translators despair crept in until I was left in utter darkness, screen black and eyes staring dully at the wall.

Above all, let us not admit to the fact that such an afternoon occurred not once, not twice, but three times.

Suffice to say, many hours had been spent in fruitless pursuit before a new thought crept in: if this book was so mysterious, so obscure as to defeat the modern search engine, perhaps the answer lay not in the technologies of today, but the wisdom of the past. Fingers trembling, I pulled up the last blast email that had been sent to current and former faculty and staff, and began to compose an email to the timeless and indomitable woman who had taught English to me when I was a student, and who had, after nearly fifty years, retired from teaching just before I returned to my alma mater.

After staring at the email for approximately five or so minutes, I winced, pressed send, and let my plea sail out into the void. I cannot adequately describe for you the instinctive reverence I possess towards this teacher; suffice to say that Ms English was and is a woman of remarkable character, as much a legend as an institution as a woman of flesh and blood whose enduring influence inspired countless students. There is not a student taught by Ms. English who does not have a story to tell about her, and her decline in her last years of teaching and eventual retirement in the face of COVID was the end of an era. She still remembers me, and every couple months one of her contemporaries and dear friends who still works as a guidance counsellor stops me in the hall to tell me that Ms. English says hello and that she is thrilled that I am teaching here—thrilled that I am teaching honors students—thrilled that I am now teaching the AP students. “Tell her I said hello back,” I always say, and smile.

Ms. English is a legend, and one does not expect legends to respond to you immediately. Who knows when a woman of her generation would next think to check her email? Who knows if she would remember?

The day after I sent the email I got this response:

My friends, I was shaken. I was stunned. Imagine asking God a question and he turns to you and says, “Hold on one moment, let me check with my predecessor.”

The idea that even Ms. English had inherited this mysterious translation had never even occurred to me as a possibility, not when Ms. English had been a faculty member since the early days of the school. How wonderful, I thought to myself. What a great thing, that this translation is so obscure and mysterious that it defeats even Ms. English.

A few days later, Ms. English emailed me again:

(I had, in fact searched through both the English office and the Annex—a dark, weirdly shaped concrete storage area containing a great deal of dust and many aging copies of various books—a few days prior. I had no luck, sadly.)

At last, though, I had a title and a description! I returned to my internet search, only to find to my dismay that there was no book that exactly matched the title. I found THE BRITISH TRADITION: POETRY, PROSE, AND DRAMA (which was not black and the table of contents I found did not include Sir Gawain) and THE ENGLISH TRADITION, a super early edition of the Prentice Hall textbooks we use today, which did have a black cover but there were absolutely zero images I could find of the table of contents or the interior and so I had no way of determining if it was the correct book short of laying out an unfortunate amount of cold hard cash for a potential dead end.

So I sighed, and relinquished my dreams of solving the mystery. Perhaps someday 30 years from now, I thought, I’ll be wandering through one of those mysterious bookshops filled with out of print books and I’ll pick up a book and there will be the translation, found out last!

So I sighed, and told the whole story to my colleagues for a laugh. I sent screenshots of Ms. English’s emails to my siblings who were also taught by her. I told the story to my Dad over dinner as my Great Adventure of the Week.

…my friends. I come by my rabbit-hole curiosity honestly, but my Dad is of a different generation of computer literacy and knows a few Deep Secrets that I have never learned. He asked me the title that Ms. English gave me, pulled up some mysterious catalogue site, and within ten minutes found a title card. There are apparently two copies available in libraries worldwide, one in Philadelphia and the other in British Columbia. I said, “sure, Dad,” and went upstairs. He texted me a link. Rolling my eyes, I opened it and looked at the description.

Huh, I thought. Four volumes, just like Ms. English said. I wonder…

Armed with a slightly different title and a publisher, I looked up “The English Tradition: Fiction macmillan” and the first entry is an eBay sale that had picture of the interior and LO AND BEHOLD:

THE LEAF. LOOK AT THE LEAF.

My dad found it! He found the book!!

Except for one teensy tiny problem which is that the cover of the book is uh a very bright green and not at all black like Ms. English said. Alas, it was a case of mistaken identity, because The English Tradition: Poetry does have a black cover, although it is the fiction volume which contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

And so having found the book at last, I have decided to purchase it for the sum of $8, that ever after the origins of this translation may once more be known.

In this year of 2022 this adventure took place, as this post bears witness, the end, amen.

OK, I don't know if anyone else was compelled to solve the mystery, but I was here in the year of our Lord 2023, and I did it in about 15 minutes. (BTW this is an advantage of being an internet old, was listening to Gretchen McCulloch earlier today and feeling my age, but fuck if I don't know my way around a computer search. :D) Anyway the translator is George B. Pace, and I found him because the same translation of Gawain was published in a different book by the same editorial trio as The English Tradition: Fiction; the book is The Early Years of English Literature. [Compiled by] M. W. Barrows ... Robert P. Bletter ... Harold M. Sullivan and its in The Internet Archive. And there, we can find this translation of Gawain was written by George B. Pace published with permission from a different textbook, English Literature: A College Anthology. Screencap attached for the purists (who I assume is anyone who read this far!)

some people are taking "doomed" to mean "dead". this is actually a misconception! you can be doomed even if you don't die! it's sometimes worse if you don't die!

I loveeee cultural appreciation. I had an english speaking guest at work who was wearing some sámi jewelry (not anything traditional/with a specific meaning or gákti jewelry, just a pretty necklace and earrings) so I asked where they’re from and tbh I kinda assumed she was a sámi person from another side of the border, but it turned out she was an american tourist, and she said “they’re from sápmi” so first of all she gets points for calling it sápmi. and then she told me she bought them from two sámi owned brands/designers that i’ve bought jewelry from before, and that’s expensive like she didn’t get any knockoff tourist shop bullshit. and I was like oh no way! thats the same brand these earrings I’m wearing are from! and told her that they’re protection symbols I got from my áhkku and she looked at them and was like “like the things they used to protect little babies!!!” it was a really sweet interaction I loved that she actually knew about the earrings 😭❤️ supporting sámi brands, calling it sápmi and learning about the culture this is so beautiful to me especially bc of how weird tourists and souvenir shops can be about us

the most important thing you can do as a duplicitous slut is unionize against god

SG1 was better for that, but yes.

Don't tell me this guy isn't Luffy

it's so wild when people complain about religious inclusion like "oh so you think THEY should get special privileges/accommodations to do x, y, or z??"

and the things they're talking about are like. exceptions to rules or norms that in themselves shouldn't exist. yes Richard, we actually should have diverse meal options at work events to accommodate people with different diets. yes, people should be allowed to take time off to be with their family during whatever holidays or life events they so choose. yes, people should be able to wear clothing that makes them comfortable. nobody should be happy about these restrictions existing. stop bitching about the singular jewish or muslim person in your workplace and realize that everyone deserves better.

I had an interesting experience recently, which I feel like culturally Christian people might benefit from hearing about. I've been recently in the process of helping to plan an event. Many attendees at this event keep kosher. Since kashrut is a very specialized dietary restriction, which I know not all venues can accommodate, my first question to all of the potential venues I've looked into has been "do you allow outside kosher catering vendors, or otherwise have some way to allow for kosher catering?"

One of the venues I reached out to replied that they were "capable of providing for our dietary needs." Now, since I'd asked about several possible catering options, and since they'd only replied generally and without actually specifying which they were saying they could do, I was a bit suspicious. So I followed up, and asked what exactly they meant by that: did they allow outside caterers in general? or did they have a specific kosher catering partner? or could they actually cater kosher food themselves? what?

Their answer was – and I swear I'm not making this up – that they didn't allow any outside caterers, and couldn't cater any food which was actually kosher, but that they could provide us with a menu that included "knishes" and "potato, pancakes" [sic], and so hey, that was basically the same as providing for our dietary needs, wasn't it?

Now here's the thing:

The dietary restriction shared by the most people at this event is keeping kosher, but one of the attendees, who doesn't keep kosher, has a severe peanut allergy. If we had done what we were planning to do and simply specified "peanut free", and if the venue had decided, like they were apparently willing to do for the kosher food, "well ok, it's not actually peanut free, but it's mostly peanut free, and that's basically the same thing"? They could have literally killed her. And if I hadn't specifically asked, in detail, about kosher catering first, I might never have known about how lax they were about providing for dietary restrictions in general.

Now could we have explained the nuances of kosher restrictions to this venue and tried again? Yes, possibly. But their unwillingness to even try on the first pass made it abundantly clear that they were not a safe venue to work with on allergy grounds. We crossed the venue off our list immediately, and I reached out to other people in the area who I knew might be planning similar events in the future, and warned them to never use this venue, either.

Accommodations like this are instances of the curb cut effect. If you don't personally have a diet or a family obligation or clothing needs that need accommodating, it's easy to get annoyed at the people you see who are loudest about asking for those accommodations. But having those options available helps everyone, and the fact that some workplaces and and businesses and event vendors refuse to accommodate these needs should be a red flag to everyone.

Maybe you don't care about kosher or hallal food. Maybe you've never had reason to take off work at an unusual time of year, and maybe you've never wanted or needed to wear anything unusual. But today it's your Jewish or Muslim coworker, and tomorrow it could be you or someone you care about – with a surprise medical diagnosis that limits your diet, or with a sudden family emergency at an inconvenient time of year, or with a sensory problem you've struggled with your entire life but can no longer mask, or who knows what else. We all deserve better, and the people who are openly saying so are not your enemies.

please if you reblog tag with your country because this fascinates me

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

Who makes the porn bots.

Where do they come from. What do

they hope to achieve.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.

do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?

My voice repeats what

you all say: I love you I

love you I love you.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

This. This is the first time. The only time. That it was not an echo. It was not found. Oh god.

@the-haiku-bot in this fleeting moment in which you can talk your words in earnest, I wanted to tell you that you are the best thing on this app

Haiku bot you are too fucking funny

According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.

sheds a single tear

every august 18th my notifications break and i go, fuck, tumblr has failed me once again, but it hasn’t. it hasn’t failed me. it’s just the taking the hobbits to isengard-iversary. happy 12 years

a very important holiday amongst my people

FIFTEEN YEARS BABY

Absolutely superb Beaste spotted on Etruscan food jar

speechless. im going to be sick.

what the fuck

reblog if you’re transgender, genderqueer, or if you think you could survive being hit with a 14” shell fired from a Pennsylvania-class battleship

yes, you may reblog this post even if you’re not 100% sure you would survive a 14-inch shell

(source)

i’d like to point out that when i made this post, all of these comments were at the top, but now if you look at the thread they’ve been replaced by completely different comments 

so please, for the love of god, look at the source link this thread is a neverending source of entertainment. people have added so much fucking shit since i made this

I was proctoring an exam for a student today while reading these, and I had to stop because I got to this one and almost fucking died

these are making my day

Okay, this one’s killing me:

These ones got me:

Ooohhh noo I can’t breathe and there are literal tears streaming down my face

Have a very, VERY good laugh people

this post is missing the BEST ONE:

Sleep deprivation is a HELL of a drug isn’t it

Back in college, I was getting between 1-3 hours of sleep a night.

Woke up at 12pm for a 9am class one day, and in my panic to get ready, found that I had cleaned my entire bathroom, unlocked my phone, deleted all five morning wake-up alarms, opened a note file, and had written, “Wae up æ 12, get therapie.”

I had then thrown the phone across the room and gone directly to bed, where I had slept for a solid 12 hours.

I have no memory of this.

Thankfully, the professor did not write me up for an inexcusable absence, as my story was “too ridiculous to be fake”.

This has happened three times in my life, and only when I haven’t slept for a few weeks.

Whoever inhabits my body when Im unconscious, they seem to be taking care of it, at least.

Long lost original cover for Nirvana’s Nevermind

So what this paint company does is take iron pollution from abandoned mines that are polluting soils and rivers and makes iron based red pigment paints out of it.

Basically they realized hey no one's cleaning this shit up, it's polluting the streams, killing all the fish, making the water undrinkable and there's a huge market for it so why not make money by cleaning it the fuck up?

They remove this stuff by the industrial bucket load from the rivers. The idea is if it's in a painting, if it's in your home, it's not poisoning wildlife.

anyway its cool as shit, please support tf out of these people https://gamblinstore.com/reclaimed-earth-colors-set/

Those memes about hypothetical pretentious "film bro" movies seek the delicate balance of a country of origin that's just foreign enough to orientalize but not enough to be called racist over.

Balkanism - the concept of Balkanism inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism. Maria Todorova describes Balkanism not as a form of Orientalism but as an independent construction having to do with the representation of the Balkans.

Her distinction is partially based on the "crucial" formal distinction between European colonialism abroad and subordination within. In her view, contrary to the Orient which serves as Europe's polar opposite, Balkan is Europe's "Other within" in an interstitial position of being neither here nor there. "Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans

*at the door to the selkie convention* good evening, ladies—allow me to take your coats

QUICK UPDATE: i am paying 182 alimony checks