What Canadians Mean When We Say…

besidealife

… Sorry*

 

• Excuse my behaviour and/or poor judgment.
• Say that again, please. I require clarification.
• I didn’t hear you. Please repeat.
• I do not mean to offend.
• My fault!
• Please like me.
• I want to made amends.
• I’m reluctant.
• I disagree.
• You are out of line.
• What is happening?
• I don’t like this.
• No.
• Let me mull this over a while.
• Are we still friends?
• I’m leaving.
• Over here!
• I hate myself.YOU
• Respectfully, no.
• Seriously, make me.
• Bored now.
• Hello.
• I should, but I won’t.
• No fair!
• I am out of line.
• Whatever! Maybe.
• I’m exhausted.
• Mic check, mic check.
• Welcome!
• I’m uncomfortable.
• Motherfucker.
• I do mean to offend.
• You caught me.
• This is happening??
• Goodbye.
• I don’t know.
• That’s perverse.
• Please stop.
• End. Of. Discussion.
• Oh, hell no!
• I want to, but I can’t.
• Shit.
• OK. But what now?
• There was a pause in the conversation.
• I…

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Clarification on the Events of September 20th, 2012.

Eunoia Review

Fact: Cats do not like fire.

Fiction: It is appropriate to call the local fire department if a cat is stuck in a tree.

Fact: Burning a cat while it is alive constitutes cruelty against a companion animal and is punishable by up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Fiction: Good intentions and ignorance are applicable excuses for burning a cat while it is alive. Possessing either of these will allow a person to avoid prosecution for burning said animal.

Fact: A cat would rather burn to death in a tree than jump down.

Fiction: Cats always land on their feet. They do if they jump, I guess, but the cat in question did not jump.

Fact: Droughts are becoming more frequent with the increased impact of humanity on the world’s climate.

Fiction: It had gone a year without raining.

Fact: A late summer shower occurred three…

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On the 99 between Whistler and Lilooet

http://invisiblesource.com/fuckdamnshitthatsshitidontlike/

cruising canuckistan

There weren’t many photo opportunities as we drove back up to Quesnel from Vancouver yesterday morning. But the snow did clear long enough for us to stop and for me to grab a few photos.

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Getting Personal: Hitting the Highlights.

Remembering Congressional Medal of Honor Winners On Veterans Day

Webner House

Today is Veterans Day, when every American should be grateful for the sacrifices of all of those who have served in the military.  What better way to appreciate the true meaning of their service than to recall those whose service was so extraordinary — so conspicuous for its courage, gallantry, and selflessness — that they received the Congressional Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military award?

The Congressional Medal of Honor was established in 1862, during the early days of the Civil War.  Its first recipient was Private Jacob Parrott, who penetrated deep into Confederate territory to destroy railroad tracks and seize a train.  The Civil War also saw the first award of the Medal of Honor to an African-American — Sergeant William Carney of the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry, who participated in the assault on Fort Wagner, planted the flag on the parapet, and kept the flag from…

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Honouring the dead

Druid Life

Today is the anniversary of the end of the First World War. Here in the UK we will be honouring the soldiers killed in armed conflicts. I’ll be very clear up front: I take no issue with people who are soldiers as a general premise. Individual conduct is a different thing. I am not questioning honouring the war dead in any way (emotive topic after all) but I am questioning the things we don’t do alongside that.

The desire to serve and protect has always brought people to armies. Propaganda and tales of glory, cultural pressure and politically nurtured fear: Honest reasons to defend hearth and home that no individual should be blamed for responding to. Formal drafts and recruitment by force mean that many who have fought and died were not there by choice. Poverty and lack of other opportunities has always been a great army recruiting officer, too…

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Catholic Scholars Blast Common Core

Diane Ravitch's blog

In an unusual statement, 132 Catholic scholars wrote a statement highly critical of the Common Core, which they sent to every bishop in the nation. They urged the bishops not to adopt Common Core in Catholic schools and to withdraw it where it had been adopted. They conclude that the Common Core standards are designed as standardized workforce training, doing nothing to shape and inspire the hearts and minds of children.

 

 

Their statement says:

Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law
c/o University of Notre Dame, The Law School
3156 Eck Hall of Law, PO Box 780
Notre Dame, IN 46556

 

October 16, 2013
This letter was sent individually to each Catholic bishop in the United States. 132 Catholic professors signed the letter.

 

Your Excellency:

We are Catholic scholars who have taught for years in America’s colleges and universities. Most of us have done so for decades…

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The Writers Circle: Kickstarter

Today's Author

One of our goals here at Today’s Author is to help all of the writers among us to do what we love to do: write. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by talking to each other and learning from each other.  Our Writers Circle series is designed to do just that – provide a chance for us to discuss writing, editing and publishing questions.

This week’s topic is:

An increasing number of authors are turning to Kickstarter to fund their own publishing efforts.  Would you support a Kickstarter book?  What would you expect in return? Would you consider using Kickstarter to fund your own book? What would you consider offering as an incentive to potential supporters?

Let’s discuss this in the comments and see what our community thinks.

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Write it now: getting the twist to that story structure

Matthew Wright

One of the most amazing things ever found by archaeologists is a 40,000 year old flute made of vulture bone.

Here’s discoverer Wulf Hein playing the Star Spangled Banner on it. The point being that the US national anthem relies on a modern scale. The Ice Age dude who made the instrument nonetheless drilled the holes for stopping it in the right places to make it possible to play the notes and intervals required.

The flute is pentatonic, which is the basis of a lot of ethnic music – and of jazz music. So what is a flute doing, 40,000 years ago, that seems to work by the same principle? And not another scale like, for instance, Balinese slendro.

One possibility is that the tones we regard as pleasing – epitomised by the ‘well tempered’ scale introduced just before Bach’s time – are hard-wired. A mathematical study corroborates it – if you plot…

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Grammar Basics: What Is Grammar?

Needs to be broken

Caxton

Previous post in this series

If you are a native speaker of English, you will already know a vast amount of the language’s grammar. You will know how to use a finite number of grammatical resources to express an infinite number of thoughts and feelings in an infinite number of ways. What you may not know is how it all works. These posts may just give you enough of an idea to want to pursue the subject.

For many people grammar seems to be anything at all to do with language. That isn’t very helpful. Among professional linguists, there is broad agreement about what grammar is, as the following quotations show:

Grammar is concerned with the structure of words (morphology) and of phrases and clauses (syntax). (Bas Aarts, ‘Oxford Modern English Grammar’,)

The rules for constructing words and sentences in a particular language, or the…

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