Has any sentence or phrase turned you off a book?


pippi

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Hint: the use of meaningless terms like "twee" will get you nowhere.

What's "twee"? Who said "twee"?

I think the verdict is in on chuckle. No character over the age of four should be allowed to do it.

kekeke

How about cackle? Is that ok? You know what I don't like? Cockle. As in "warmed the cockle's of my heart". Mine has no cockles.

Ninth,

Cackling is certainly ok and should be more widespread. Of course you don't like cockles if you don't have any in your heart, you enervated postmodernist, you. Abandon your evil ways and learn to like cockles, which will warm the places that axioms don't.

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I whole-heartedly detest snickering. It reminds me of those Snickers commercials where the dude eats the candybar sideways! Who does that??

~ Shane

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you enervated postmodernist, you.

Ad Hominem!! Unprovoked insults!!

20.gif

Time for me to write an essay with bullet points and a bolded title all about "the decline of the list". Hmm, what a Spenglerian title.

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you enervated postmodernist, you.

Ad Hominem!! Unprovoked insults!!

20.gif

Time for me to write an essay with bullet points and a bolded title all about "the decline of the list". Hmm, what a Spenglerian title.

kekeke

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Hint: the use of meaningless terms like "twee" will get you nowhere.

What's "twee"? Who said "twee"?

Some self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

JR

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Hint: the use of meaningless terms like "twee" will get you nowhere.

What's "twee"? Who said "twee"?

Some self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

JR

Check your premises. My real name and a ton of personal information as well as my real views on various topics are all over this forum.

Carol Jane Elizabeth Stuart Lynam

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Hint: the use of meaningless terms like "twee" will get you nowhere.

What's "twee"? Who said "twee"?

Some self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

JR

Check your premises. My real name and a ton of personal information as well as my real views on various topics are all over this forum.

Carol Jane Elizabeth Stuart Lynam

You need to team up with Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia.

--Brant

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Hint: the use of meaningless terms like "twee" will get you nowhere.

What's "twee"? Who said "twee"?

Some self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

JR

Check your premises. My real name and a ton of personal information as well as my real views on various topics are all over this forum.

Carol Jane Elizabeth Stuart Lynam

You need to team up with Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia.

--Brant

If I but could! I know he wasn't strictly Spanish, but sometime I'll tell you about Majorca where xxxxxxxxxxthe weather was very nice and I learned the language quite well. Since Spanish children add the names of their mothers to those of their fathers, plus the usual family and baptismal names, it is perhaps as well that the time is past for a little

Juan Rubia Aycaramba Andres Sebastian d'Anconia y Stuart Lynam Multicultura

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How about cackle? Is that ok? You know what I don't like? Cockle. As in "warmed the cockle's of my heart". Mine has no cockles.

I LOVE the word cackle especially here:

"“Stop cackling, Marion, I've been waiting ten years for you to lay that egg!”

I Love Lucy

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[JR decried s]ome self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

Well, then, I hope you're not divining my thus being "terrified." "Greybird" is closer to being unique, it has personal resonance (I'll explain if anybody gives a damn), and my real name (a boring one, unlike yours) is on my profile page anyway.

Other O-sites use my real name, and the same avatar picture, but I don't use them any more. I might have changed it here, but all of the hard-coded quotations of what I've said would remain the same anyway. My Facebook page shows it.

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[JR decried s]ome self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

Well, then, I hope you're not divining my thus being "terrified." "Greybird" is closer to being unique, it has personal resonance (I'll explain if anybody gives a damn), and my real name (a boring one, unlike yours) is on my profile page anyway.

Other O-sites use my real name, and the same avatar picture, but I don't use them any more. I might have changed it here, but all of the hard-coded quotations of what I've said would remain the same anyway. My Facebook page shows it.

Relax, Steve. I didn't have you in mind. And I shouldn't have taken out after "Daunce" the way I did, either. Her name is on her profile page, too. I was, as I do so often, shooting from the lip. This is a pet peeve of mine, I'm afraid. One of our number here on OL, a lawyer who recently let us all know he wouldn't be around much in the near future because he had to prepare for a trial, is one of the few posters I've ever seen post a completely satisfactory explanation of why one might seek anonymity in an environment like this. Almost all the rest of those who do so are, as far as I can see, cowering behind a nom de screene for no apparent reason.

JR

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[JR decried s]ome self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

Well, then, I hope you're not divining my thus being "terrified." "Greybird" is closer to being unique, it has personal resonance (I'll explain if anybody gives a damn), and my real name (a boring one, unlike yours) is on my profile page anyway.

I do not think he was referring to you mr Bird. Maybe he was but either way this thread has gotten unfun

-------------------------------------------

How about trying to make these BAD sentences at least readable?

"The week tiptoed by." should at the very LEAST have been "An uneventful week tiptoed by and then we realized..."

I don't think "John Galt laughed" is as bad phrase as the one I quoted. UGH!

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[JR decried s]ome self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

Well, then, I hope you're not divining my thus being "terrified." "Greybird" is closer to being unique, it has personal resonance (I'll explain if anybody gives a damn), and my real name (a boring one, unlike yours) is on my profile page anyway.

Other O-sites use my real name, and the same avatar picture, but I don't use them any more. I might have changed it here, but all of the hard-coded quotations of what I've said would remain the same anyway. My Facebook page shows it.

Relax, Steve. I didn't have you in mind. And I shouldn't have taken out after "Daunce" the way I did, either. Her name is on her profile page, too. I was, as I do so often, shooting from the lip. This is a pet peeve of mine, I'm afraid. One of our number here on OL, a lawyer who recently let us all know he wouldn't be around much in the near future because he had to prepare for a trial, is one of the few posters I've ever seen post a completely satisfactory explanation of why one might seek anonymity in an environment like this. Almost all the rest of those who do so are, as far as I can see, cowering behind a nom de screene for no apparent reason.

JR

Nefarious and not nefarious people cross-reference posters through their Internet postings for purposes nefarious and not nefarious. I effectively came on the Internet in 1988 using a dial-up modem on my friend Petr Beckmann's Fort Freedom using my own name. Fort Freedom has been archived and there I am in all my old pre-Internet now old Internet glory. Because of my almost unique name, this might have had professional repercussions. If I were starting my Internet posting career today, nothing I put on the Internet would be traceable back to my name and, I hope, me. You never know. Someday the Feds might come for me, say in ten years. I'll be holding a "Dead Man's Switch" and they'll be standing on top of 1,000 pounds of TNT. I'm not young enough for this country to hit bottom and rebound in glorious, rationality and freedom and generalized benevolence. I won't see it. Just more war and stupidity. What I do know is this country has to and will hit bottom. The repercussions will be world-wide because of--not globalization generally speaking--globalization of fiat money and central banking. Humanity will continue to progress until that asteroid or comet hits, in blood if not disease, and even with this current acceleration of history I'll never live to see the rebound for people are not as smart as they should be as technology and hubris, power-mongering, outpaces their brainpower and moral, conceptual and cognitive ability. Human beings are cowards! Not physical cowards--go save the drowning lady!--they are moral cowards.

--Brant

don't fuck with old men

I have something serious in reserve--we'll see

Edited by Brant Gaede
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[JR decried s]ome self-proclaimed Canadian socialist who's so terrified that someone she knows might find out what her views are that she hides behind a screen name online.

Well, then, I hope you're not divining my thus being "terrified." "Greybird" is closer to being unique, it has personal resonance (I'll explain if anybody gives a damn), and my real name (a boring one, unlike yours) is on my profile page anyway.

Other O-sites use my real name, and the same avatar picture, but I don't use them any more. I might have changed it here, but all of the hard-coded quotations of what I've said would remain the same anyway. My Facebook page shows it.

Relax, Steve. I didn't have you in mind. And I shouldn't have taken out after "Daunce" the way I did, either. Her name is on her profile page, too. I was, as I do so often, shooting from the lip. This is a pet peeve of mine, I'm afraid. One of our number here on OL, a lawyer who recently let us all know he wouldn't be around much in the near future because he had to prepare for a trial, is one of the few posters I've ever seen post a completely satisfactory explanation of why one might seek anonymity in an environment like this. Almost all the rest of those who do so are, as far as I can see, cowering behind a nom de screene for no apparent reason.

JR

It seems to me that it's the screen itself we can cower behind, whatever name we use. This is a written medium. Words on the page, or the screen, just cannot have the same personal impact as words heard in real life conversation.

My screen name is an anagram, as I've mentioned before. "Daunce" is made up and Lynam is my married name.

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people are not as smart as they should be as technology and hubris, power-mongering, outpaces their brainpower and moral, conceptual and cognitive ability. Human beings are cowards! Not physical cowards--go save the drowning lady!--they are moral cowards.

It's not human ability that's being outpaced, it's baggage they're carrying around from history that's shackled them. It is not their fault and it is their fault, at the same time and in different respects.

Shayne

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-------------------------------------------

How about trying to make these BAD sentences at least readable?

"The week tiptoed by." should at the very LEAST have been "An uneventful week tiptoed by and then we realized..."

I don't think "John Galt laughed" is as bad phrase as the one I quoted. UGH!

I don't think anything could make that sentence readable. And the tiptoeing could mean that the week was so eventful that nobody noticed the week passing. More fun to make it worse--

"The week slouched its way to Friday"

"The week sulked and pouted in its corner of the calendar"

"The week dawdled along like city workers paid by the hour"

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There is no way to criticize the sentence without knowing the wider context. It might be meant to convey that the week passed slowly and uneventfully. The concrete verb tiptoed says that concisely with an evocative image, rather than with vague polysyllabic latinisms.

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There is no way to criticize the sentence without knowing the wider context. It might be meant to convey that the week passed slowly and uneventfully. The concrete verb tiptoed says that concisely with an evocative image, rather than with vague polysyllabic latinisms.

"Polysllabic latinisms" - how cute.

Of course the word tiptoed implied an uneventful week, the phrase was just icky to me, it just was too tritely convenient and awkwardly clever, if the wider context redeemed it I would never have posted this.

I read the context up to this sentence and felt it wasn't worth going on.

In other words - see thread title and take it from there. Thank you

Edited by pippi
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From The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics:

Ayn Rand, the greatest iconoclast of the Twentieth Century, has herself become a cultural icon.

Michael responded:

How's that for syrup?

That is genuine Log Cabin.

I have never heard *kekeke,* Ted, but that is also terrible. *Hehehe.*

*Cockles* is an idiotic word, he *chuckled*.

I don’t like it when an author describes one of the characters as being brilliant, wonderful, intelligent, brave, having piercing blue eyes, and the hero is also a world traveling bon vivant, who collects classic cars and works for a secret government bureau. The descriptions can go on for several pages.

Clive Cussler does that though his books can be entertaining. I am reading one of his *potboilers* now that jumps back and forth in time, quite successfully and reminds me of movies like “National Treasure.”

In this book, “The Navigator,” I learned that Thomas Jefferson sent his dispatches and sensitive private letters encrypted.

How did he do it? He would write a long description of something like growing potatoes. The recipient of his letters would first already have or get in the mail separately, a piece of card board with letter sized holes in it. When you place the card board over the newly arrived description for growing potatoes, the individual letters showing will assemble into words and the words, into sentences. It sounds tedious but is nearly *full proof,* if the cardboard decoder is not discovered.

Peter Taylor

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quote:

My screen name is an anagram, as I've mentioned before. "Daunce" is made up and Lynam is my married name.

If it is just made up maybe you should drop the letter "u." It looks too much like "dunce," or a man's name, though the movie line, 'a girls gotta dance," pronounced daunce, was cute.

Peter

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quote:

My screen name is an anagram, as I've mentioned before. "Daunce" is made up and Lynam is my married name.

If it is just made up maybe you should drop the letter "u." It looks too much like "dunce," or a man's name, though the movie line, 'a girls gotta dance," pronounced daunce, was cute.

Peter

I can't take it out, it would ruin the anagram. The opportunity to call me a dunce has been taken by my fellow members here, many times, so I am fairly inured to it. I thought of Daunce as a sort of unisex name like Ashley or Sydney are now (or Chris or Lee for that matter) but it does seem to have a masculine sound. Maybe I am getting in touch with my inner male under cover of the internet! (My inner child escaped and invaded my whole persona years ago so I am all too closely in touch with it).

I hate those guys with the "steely blue (or grey) eyes" too. We get enough of them in real life. Even steely brown.

Cenuda Lynam? Nah, too girly for a woman of my mature years.

Edited by daunce lynam
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people are not as smart as they should be as technology and hubris, power-mongering, outpaces their brainpower and moral, conceptual and cognitive ability. Human beings are cowards! Not physical cowards--go save the drowning lady!--they are moral cowards.

It's not human ability that's being outpaced, it's baggage they're carrying around from history that's shackled them. It is not their fault and it is their fault, at the same time and in different respects.

Shayne

I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive.

--Brant

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I can't take it out, it would ruin the anagram. The opportunity to call me a dunce has been taken by my fellow members here, many times, so I am fairly inured to it.

Yes, Daunce Lynam's a manly dunce.

A wall of calumny has been Erekted against me!

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