'GET A LIFE'

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 12:36 AM

That sounds like poetic license to me, Spaw.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Sourdough
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 12:39 AM

Catspaw49 TBCOMN!!! (The Beer came out my nose!!)

You could say you were stalking the deer.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From:
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 12:40 AM

Well, 'spaw, it's definitely a better idea than trying to go the other way 'round and use buckshot on trout.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 02:21 AM

The line "fishing for the whale" can be found in the song "The Bonny Ship The Diamond." If the line's in a song, why should those people in that folk club get away with "correcting" the singer? Hey, if that line's good enough for Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, ("Whaling Ballads" recording) it should be good enough for the folk clubbers.

But on the question of the 'Cat, I concur with Melani. It's part of my life, a great resource, and a great place to be.

-chanteyranger

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Roughyed
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 03:49 AM

How about "while the Bonny Ship the Diamond goes a-fishing for the whale...."

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 03:50 AM

Sourdough, I hate to say what happened to me when I read your "TBCOMN." I've been eating Polish Easter borscht.
Hey, how much would it cost for us to buy Spaw a poetic license? Would it help?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Gervase
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 06:24 AM

Pat, that's not so wide of the mark!
In my misspent youth, I went poaching with my uncle, using fishing line, a few No16 hooks and some raisins soaked in brandy. You'd flick 'em out into the coverts, wait for the birdies to peck at the raisin and then reel 'em in.
in hindsight it was hideously cruel to the birds (as well as highly illegal), but to an eight-year-old a sackful of free pheasants garnered in almost total silence was an awesome night's work.
And I did catch a sheep last year on a March Brown - the back-cast dropped low enough to snag the fleece of a sheep behind me and the bugger took off, stripping the line down to the backing. Oh, the shame!

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: GUEST,Do you mean that in the Midwest sense? if so
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 06:50 AM

..on. I used live in a small town, short way from a big city here in the USA where at the time, the term was very popular. Now this was several years ago so I hesitate to claim that is where it came from, 'but hey' from the same locale - it could!

Typicaly used among certain late teen girls who had already or were in the process of moving out from the parents home. The path at the time was to get pregnant, did not matter how or by who. From this lofty Life they would get Welfare and most important an apartment of their own.

These young ladies then would be described as 'Bimbos', smoking, overweight, unwashed and scantily clad foul mouthed young ladies. Ahem.

If that is what you meant - then it does not apply here!

So what the H****L are you on about?

Hunting the Whale is the correct English.

Nobody uses correct English - that I know or read. Ahem.

You mention some person, any person, heck a Nonperson would have been fine, why mention it at all?

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: kendall
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 07:07 AM

Peg, you also described me, but, it is from choice, so, I dont feel odd at all. So, when did the Ichthyologists decide that whales are not fish? Surely those who went after them probably didnt know the difference? Or, care, even.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Gervase
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 07:11 AM

...and there's Jonah, who lived in a whale, and made his home in that fish's abdomen...
God save us from proseletysing pedants (meself excluded!)

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: JeZeBeL
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 07:29 AM

PEG- goin back to what you said earlier bout people not avin a life if they stay in ont computer altime, I know u didn't say it personally, but it's my only link to the outside world. Fort u wo describin me!! I'm a student and find it good to sit on the net n 6talk to me mates, cos tis the onli thing i can do when I'm bored o doin me work!! :) We do have lives though us students, tis just we're different to students a few years ago. We are the cyber generation.....god how sad!! Tis only cos we ave to do all our work ont computer...."evrithin must b typed or it won't b graded" etc...........

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Peg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 11:04 AM

Jezebel...yes you are right and it is amazing to me that in a few short years students are practically glued to their computers (not to mention their cell phones, etc.)

A few years ago (1988 in fact) I spent a summer studying at Oxford in a summer study-abroad program. We usually had to write at least one paper for our three week seminars. Typewriters were available for our use, or we could hand-write them (neatly!) This was weird but we dealt with it. There was one guy in my T.S. Eliot seminar who could not write his paper without a computer. Just could not do it.

And it was not about needing the Internet for research etc. (which sadly is the trend now; I teach at Emerson College and my students hardly know what the library is). He had learned how to write an essay with a word processor and its cut and paste features and a fast keyboard...but a pen and paper were useless to him. I don't know if he had some sort of learning disorder or cognitive disorder which made him unable to write without a keyboard, but then you'd think he'd be able to use a typewriter...

Sad, really.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Amos
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 11:12 AM

For all you Pedants out there is Pedantville, the use of the word "fish" is not 'correctly' constrained to the class Pisces. From the Am Heritage:

"4. Any of various unrelated aquatic animals, such as a jellyfish, cuttlefish, or crayfish."

And that includes Whalefish, an honorable term with more honest traditions than pedantry by a long shot!!!

"There's a whale fish!" he cred,
"And she blows at every span, brave boys!"

As for the verb, the Am H provides plenty of justification to go fishing for whale:

1. To catch or try to catch fish. 2. To look for something by feeling one's way; grope: fished in both pockets for a coin. 3. To seek something in a sly or indirect way: fish for compliments. v. tr. 1. a. To catch or try to catch (fish). b. To catch or try to catch fish in: fish mountain streams. 2. To catch or pull as if fishing: deftly fished the corn out of the boiling water.

A

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: flattop
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 11:57 AM

Didn't Old Sam Adams slip anything into the constitution about the right to defend yourself from deer using tackle boxes? Or perhaps about eating fellow Americans rather than wasting all that fresh meat?

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Bernard
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 11:58 AM

So....

Is 'whalefish' an oxymoron?

Is the instigator of this thread a moron?

Does anyone really give a monkeys?

And what does that mean, anyway?!

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: reggie miles
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 12:08 PM

Joe, I think you can get that poetic license at the DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles). I believe the endorsement is a special stamp that goes on your regular driver's license. Spaw may have to fill out an additional form and answer a few extra test questions. I don't think there's an eye exam required for the endorsement. I understand there is an extra fee for the second photo. That camera angle is a bit tricky too.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Amos
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 01:25 PM

LOL! Innuendo at its best, reggie.

A

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Morticia
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 02:19 PM

There's a photo I never want to see!

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: GUEST,Crazy Eddie
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 07:39 AM

Flattop: <<Didn't Old Sam Adams slip anything into the constitution about the right to defend yourself from deer using tackle boxes? >>

Deer using tackle Boxes? Next thing we know, you guys will want the right to arm bears!

---

Crazy Eddie, part of your post was hidden. To display:
< type &lt;
> type &gt;
- JoeClone.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: flattop
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 09:20 AM

See Spaw's post above, Crazy Eddie, for the reference on tackle boxes.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: late 'n short 2
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 10:06 AM

Going back to the original group of protestors, I hope they weren't English teachers. Or should I say "teachers of English" ?

Dan

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Bert
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:07 PM

BUT - there's a song that goes.. "Ye shall get a fishy on a little dishy"

Now there's no way you're going to get a whale on a 'little' dishy. So therefore a whale can't be a fish and neither can a barracuda or a shark. So there, put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Bert

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:09 PM

No, Bert, you have made a mistake, albeit a very understandable one.

The song doesn't say "Fish" it says "fishy."

The whale and the barracuda and the shark are FISH; they just aren't fishies.

Alex

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: Bert
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:22 PM

AaaaH of course, I was overlooking that. You are right, 'Folk Songs' never lie.

Subject: RE: 'GET A LIFE'
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:28 PM

I don't know if I'd go THAT far......