Monday Rejoicing

I heart Overheard in New York. Especially this one:

Conductor: Attention, passengers, this J Train is now going express to Myrtle. You hear me? Express. Express! There is a local train right behind this one. This train is going express! [Mob of angry passengers exits train.] Psych! This is a local J Train to Manhattan. Next stop: Chauncey. Please enjoy the leg room brought to you by the New York City MTA.

--Broadway Junction Station, Brooklyn

Overheard by: JRider

I might almost believe that would happen in New York, though otherwise I go for the 'last line of Hedda Gabler' response: Good God!--people don't do things like that!

( Otherwise, I wish I didn't insist that all books come to me virgins )

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy reconsidered

          In speculation
          I would not willingly acquire a name
                For ill-digested thought;
                But after pondering much
          To this conclusion I at last have come:
                PEOPLE ARE STUPID.
                This truth I have written deep
                In my reflective midriff
                On tablets not of wax,
          Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there,
          For many reasons:  PEOPLE, I say, ARE NOT
                STRANGERS TO STUPIDITY.
          Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
                This fact did I discover,
          Nor did the Delphine tripod bark it out,
                Nor yet Dodona.
          Its native ingenuity sufficed
                My self-taught diaphragm.

Housman's original is here. It's much funnier if you've read Aeschylus in Greek: about the only funny thing to reading Aeschylus in Greek, come to that.

I return to my newest discovered love (c.10 am this morning):  Singlish

This partly because when you spell Hokkien words out in romaji and say what they mean, their relation to Japanese on-yomi hits you between the eyes. This doesn't happen with mandarin. Stupid Manchu.