Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.02.11
Dear friends,
February is the awkward adolescent of months. Everything is the wrong shape; it has holidays that are too important (Valentine's Day) and weirdly banal (Presidents' Day); winter has overstayed its welcome and spring hasn't even left yet (although it keeps sending you text messages: omw, really, just heading out the door now). And just when you get the knack of February, it ends (unless an extra day is tacked on, like some kind of calendrical lagniappe). In short: I'm not a fan. Bring on March!
However, the magazine The Idler (the original, not the revival) started in February, which I suppose is one point in the month's favor. (It looks like the full run is available in the Internet Archive, although the scans are not great.) Here's The Idler on valentines. Also from The Idler: "A last advantage of not labelling things 'comic' is that if you fail to be funny you have a chance of being taken seriously."
Escher sentences "initially seem acceptable but upon further reflection have no well-formed meaning." From Language Log: "[Y]ou need to pay attention and think about them a bit before you notice that something is going seriously wrong."
"[T]he snub monarchical, the snub political, the snub social, the snub religious, and the snub domestic" as outlined by George Eliot. (Snubbers may have some overlap with kategelasticists, those who excessively enjoy laughing at others.)
Karl Marx once listed his favorite occupation as 'bookworming'.
Dental or alveolar non-sibilant fricatives are among the least perceptually salient of consonants.
This was published in August, but it has a very February feel: "there is no Species of Scriblers more offensive, and more incurable, than your Periodical Writers, whose Works return upon the Publick on certain Days and at stated Times. We have not the Consolation in the Perusal of these Authors, which we find at the Reading of all others, (namely) that we are sure, if we have but Patience, we may come to the End of their Labours. I have often admired a humorous Saying of Diogenes, who reading a dull Author to several of his Friends, when every one began to be tired, finding he was almost come to a Blank Leaf at the End of it, cried, Courage, Lads, I see Land."
Your friend,
Erin
February is the awkward adolescent of months. Everything is the wrong shape; it has holidays that are too important (Valentine's Day) and weirdly banal (Presidents' Day); winter has overstayed its welcome and spring hasn't even left yet (although it keeps sending you text messages: omw, really, just heading out the door now). And just when you get the knack of February, it ends (unless an extra day is tacked on, like some kind of calendrical lagniappe). In short: I'm not a fan. Bring on March!
However, the magazine The Idler (the original, not the revival) started in February, which I suppose is one point in the month's favor. (It looks like the full run is available in the Internet Archive, although the scans are not great.) Here's The Idler on valentines. Also from The Idler: "A last advantage of not labelling things 'comic' is that if you fail to be funny you have a chance of being taken seriously."
Escher sentences "initially seem acceptable but upon further reflection have no well-formed meaning." From Language Log: "[Y]ou need to pay attention and think about them a bit before you notice that something is going seriously wrong."
"[T]he snub monarchical, the snub political, the snub social, the snub religious, and the snub domestic" as outlined by George Eliot. (Snubbers may have some overlap with kategelasticists, those who excessively enjoy laughing at others.)
Karl Marx once listed his favorite occupation as 'bookworming'.
Dental or alveolar non-sibilant fricatives are among the least perceptually salient of consonants.
This was published in August, but it has a very February feel: "there is no Species of Scriblers more offensive, and more incurable, than your Periodical Writers, whose Works return upon the Publick on certain Days and at stated Times. We have not the Consolation in the Perusal of these Authors, which we find at the Reading of all others, (namely) that we are sure, if we have but Patience, we may come to the End of their Labours. I have often admired a humorous Saying of Diogenes, who reading a dull Author to several of his Friends, when every one began to be tired, finding he was almost come to a Blank Leaf at the End of it, cried, Courage, Lads, I see Land."
Your friend,
Erin
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