So upon finding out that the pedestrian Pride crosswalk was in Spokane, I really had to facepalm. Most of Spokane is some variant of Not Flat, especially most of the public areas. There’s a neighborhood north of GU with extraordinarily wide streets, and apparently this is because the Jesuits laid out the streets with the notion that horse-drawn wagons needed to be able to turn around easily because of the river, but otherwise, the roadways are largely 19th-century style and narrow.
So when they placed the crosswalk, they placed it next to Riverfront Park (center of tourism), and in one of the few places in the entire city where donuts are likely. (At least, intentional donuts. I remember one icy road 360º drift…) And got surprised? Whee.
(I can also personally verify that they had Pride parades 25 years ago, FWIW.)
“Margaret! I finally figured out why June truly has to be Pride Month.”
“Um, Isabel, I thought you weren’t into that whole LGBTQ-phabet thing?”
“No, really, there’s only one way it could work.” Isabel was one of those compulsively, almost mathematically, logical types of person. So, once she’d ever got properly started, there was rarely any stopping her… “A simple, clear existence-and-uniqueness proof, in the grand old classic style.”
“Okay, just tell me.” (“Hit me” she carefully did not say, ever again.)
And Isabel started ticking things off with her fingers. “So, now, June is Pride Month, July is Greed Month, August is Wrath Month, September is Envy Month, October is Lust Month, November is Gluttony Month, and December is Sloth Month. And there you have it, running out of Deadly Sins and months and calendar year all at once — but it works if and only if you let June be Pride Month. Anything else winds you up out of sync; pick June as your origin point and Bob’s your uncle.
“And, just about all the markers are spot-on; Christmas/Solstice holidays are in Sloth Month, Thankgiving dinners in Gluttony Month, both atomic bomb attacks were in Wrath Month… it just goes on and on. The people who set this up were really on the ball. Even if they weren’t doing it consciously at all, still it works. E pure, si muove, just like Galileo said, or else maybe didn’t say. A fine little festival of archetypical synchronicity.”
She’d not been this visibly happy since she’d worked through Nonstandard Analysis for the first time ever, late sophomore year.
“So, what about January through May? How do they fit in? Or do they?”
Isabel merrily popped a chocolate into her mouth from Margaret’s private but friend-accessible stash. “Still not sure about that. It’d be nice if there were Five Venial Sins or something, sort of like the Major and Minor Arcana of the Tarot; but there doesn’t seem to be anything of the sort.” She swallowed. “Guess that’s still an unsolved research problem, so far.”
“Um, Isabel? You know lots of people would get really upset at you if you simply said this right out loud, don’t you?” She had to work to keep her voice serious and level, not bursting like fizzy bubbles out into raw crow-raucous laughter.
“Sure. Election analysis. Fedcensorship. Covid contagion, and treatment. Mis dis mal your information, gently down the stream. Protest is insurrection and riot is protest, fair is foul and foul is fair. Now it’s ‘cheap fakes’ to convince you to disbelieve your own lying eyes and ears. So what, my dear Margaret? Pearls before swine might be fine if you’re Millei far away in glitzy Davos; but I’m no such luminary, just a mousy littl’ol math geek from the misty hollers.”
But the smile on her face, could’ve lit all the darknesses of ignorance.
“I’m still not sure about the other six cutesy little flags, though. Do we put up a picture of a cooked turkey on a field of red-checked tablecloth for Gluttony Month, for instance? Still lots of work left for me to do.” And she winked, broadly. “Oh, and Lust Month, I fairly blush to think…”
Margaret shook her head. “Don’t ever change, Isabel. Never, ever lose that light.”
(It’s Sunday, so there ought to be vignettes, or vignette)
Since the transported character can end up in a game world in this subgenre, I would love to see a character transported to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.
So the anime/Manga version of John Carter on Mars or Narnia type setups. Or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and the like if you want to count the historical past as another world.
The chief Japanese contribution seems to have been to coin a catchy name for that type of story setup.
(Or is “isekai” defined as being limited to portal fiction with a anime/Manga flavor, thus excluding the many many western examples from over the decades.)
It is largely agreed, even in Japan, that “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court” is the first Isekai. and Isekai includes people stuck in video games as well as people transported in time or to another universe.
Pretty sure Oz counts in the books; Dorothy’s repeat visits notwithstanding, any mundane who visits more often than not ultimately ends up settling there.
Transported to or reincarnated in another world. Being run over by a truck, often while saving somebody else, is a common enough triggering event that Truck-Kun is its own trope. Reverse isekai is when somebody from another world winds up in our world.
Usually it’s an ordinary person from our world winding up in a fantasy world with elves, magic, dragons, etc. Generally with some advantages, anything from familiarity with advanced science and engineering to being granted huge magical power. Which is referred to as being OPAF — OverPowered As F*k.
Like everything else, there are good isekai and bad isekai, everything from Arifureta, InuYasha, Gate and Handyman Saito In Another World to The Saga Of Tanya The Evil. ‘How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom’ is rather unique; the summoned hero uses his knowledge of politics and economics, guided by Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, to address the kingdom’s economic and political woes.
Less adventure-y, but they’re around– Angel Included, Salad Bowl of Eccentrics, Dragon Maid, even Ya Boi Kon Ming is basically a reverse-isekai. He’s from the past, that’s a different world…..
True some of the stuff comes with him, but I particularly like how the transported character marvels at what we can accomplish without levels, let alone classes.
Leo Frankowski’s ‘Cross-Time Engineer’ series is isekai, about a modern-day mechanical engineer transported to 13th century Poland after stumbling into a time machine while drunk.
I’m writing a reverse isekai story about an elite super-soldier from a technologically advanced civilization mysteriously sent to our world.
That’s a fun and popular isekai trope: the character is reborn into a romance game — as the villainess! Now she must forge her way to victory despite the entire set-up being against her except for her knowledge from our world!
Even though very few romance sims have villainesses, and most have a path that will let the game heroine befriend her. It’s a much more useful trope in an isekai, which can cause some meditations on story telling and genres.
I also like My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s which is a lot less comic than you may think from the title.
Then there’s Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, which is quite possibly outside the genre. The heroine ends up in the spirit world, but it’s a closely intertwined other world.
Isekai basically means “Another world.” Although American anime fans have turned it into a verb, because that’s what English does to foreign words.Other terms to be familiar with are “Truck-kun” or “Mr. Truck” because so many people find themselves waking up in another world after getting hit by a truck. And “Cheat Skill” because a lot of these alternate worlds work like a computer game with levels and status screens and crap, and those transported from other worlds and expected to be heroes are granted some game breaking special skill by the goddess that oversaw their reincarnation.
Reading a book on the British Commonwealth, which essentially gives short histories of Canada, South Africa, India, Australia, etc, written by an Anglophile American. What struck me was the matter of fact way the author says the Canadians deliberately decided they didn’t need a Bill of Rights, with the implication they felt the Americans were being silly to worry about it. (OTOH, I hadn’t realized just how often various groups of Americans wanted to invade Canada).
You mean from successful revolutionary to successful revolutionary? It <i>appears</i> they diverge more after their respective revolutions, but we really don’t see Everdeen decades after the new order takes over, while Ned’s books are all about the later fallout of his.
And then ‘choosing’ Dale, a guy who mostly whines about the system he’s ensconced within. Is the point that Dale’s an ineffectual wiener, and so are we, or is it trying to frame him as some sort of effective revolutionary figure?
And if the point of the opening question is that Ned trusts government… well, he doesn’t. He trusts <i>people</i>. He doesn’t trust the king’s spymaster, master of coin, nor his grand maester, all high government positions; he trusts his wife and the childhood friend she vouched for.
Am I thinking about this too much? Did the memester not think enough? Or did I just miss the point entirely?
At first I laughed. Then, I have to admit, I went through the exact same thought process as Boobah, with one crucial difference at the end: after reflecting on my long and checkered career of internet commenting, I decided I’d better not say anything. 😀
I would not trust a government with a clothespin and a pack of ketchup. There’s nothing those do-gooders won’t screw up. They’re best kept on a tight leash and knowing they’re watched, else they’ll come up with some new (old) way to deviate from the founding document.
You know the one: it has all those “Thou shalt NOT” things innit that restrain governmental peoples from enslaving, raping, and thieving from their constituents.
“Uh, this song is literally making fun of you, why are you enjoying it?”
“We are the Americans. You will be assimilated. Even your jibes and taunts will become an integral part of our ever-expanding cultural diversity and identity.
“And we’re merely the paleo-Deplorables, we’re just gettin’ started, you ought to look back in on us in two or three centuries…”
NOTE: the quarter-millenial anniversary of July 4, 1776 will be on July 4, 2026. Please celebrate this occasion reverently, merrily, responsibly, with enthusiasm and excellent fire discipline, and above all, effectively.
And English does / has done the same Borg-esque thing; so it was probably fated to be the common American language from the start.
The quote runs something like, “English does not borrow from other languages. It knocks them senseless in a cold dark alley, nicks their wallets and purses, then rifles slowly through their pockets in hopes of loose change.” Thus the, um, challenge of spelling in English.
The way I heard it: English doesn’t ‘borrow’ from other languages. It stalks them down dark alleys and goes through their pockets looking for loose grammar.
Dearest creature in Creation, Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear; So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word. Sword and sward, retain and Britain (Mind the latter, how it’s written!) Made has not the sound of bade, Say-said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid. Now I surely will not plague you With such words as vague and ague, But be careful how you speak, Say break, steak, but bleak and streak. Previous, precious, fuchsia, via; Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir, Cloven, oven; how and low; Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery: Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore, Typhoid; measles, topsails, aisles; Exiles, similes, reviles; Wholly, holly; signal, signing; Thames; examining, combining; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war, and far. From “desire”: desirable–admirable from “admire”; Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier; Chatham, brougham; renown but known, Knowledge; done, but gone and tone, One, anemone; Balmoral; Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German; wind and mind; Scene, Melpomene, mankind; Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather, Reading, Reading, heathen, heather. This phonetic labyrinth Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth. Billet does not end like ballet; Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet; Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Banquet is not nearly parquet, Which is said to rhyme with “darky.” Viscous, viscount; load and broad; Toward, to forward, to reward, And your pronunciation’s OK. Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve; Friend and fiend; alive and live. Liberty, library; heave and heaven; Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven, We say hallowed, but allowed; People, leopard; towed, but vowed. Mark the difference, moreover, Between mover, plover, Dover, Leeches, breeches; wise, precise; Chalice but police and lice. Camel, constable, unstable; Principle, disciple; label; Petal, penal, and canal; Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal. Suit, suite, ruin; circuit, conduit Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it.” But it is not hard to tell Why it’s pall, mall, but Pall Mall. Muscle, muscular; gaol, iron; Timber, climber; bullion, lion, Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair; Senator, spectator, mayor. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rime with “hammer.” Pussy, hussy, and possess, Desert, but desert, address. Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants. Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb, Cow, but Cowper, some, and home. “Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker,” Quoth he, “than liqueur or liquor,” Making, it is sad but true, In bravado, much ado. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant. Arsenic, specific, scenic, Relic, rhetoric, hygienic. Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close, Paradise, rise, rose, and dose. Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle, Make the latter rhyme with eagle. Mind! Meandering but mean, Valentine and magazine. And I bet you, dear, a penny, You say mani-(fold) like many, Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier, Tier (one who ties), but tier. Arch, archangel; pray, does erring Rhyme with herring or with stirring? Prison, bison, treasure trove, Treason, hover, cover, cove, Perseverance, severance. Ribald Rhymes (but piebald doesn’t) with nibbled. Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw, Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw. Don’t be down, my own, but rough it, And distinguish buffet, buffet; Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon, Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn. Say in sounds correct and sterling Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling. Evil, devil, mezzotint, Mind the Z! (A gentle hint.) Now you need not pay attention To such sounds as I don’t mention, Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws, Rhyming with the pronoun yours; Nor are proper names included, Though I often heard, as you did, Funny rhymes to unicorn, Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan. No, my maiden, coy and comely, I don’t want to speak of Cholmondeley. No. Yet Froude compared with proud Is no better than McLeod. But mind trivial and vial, Tripod, menial, denial, Troll and trolley, realm and ream, Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme. Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely May be made to rhyme with Raleigh, But you’re not supposed to say Piquet rhymes with sobriquet. Had this invalid invalid Worthless documents? How pallid, How uncouth he, couchant, looked, When for Portsmouth I had booked! Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite, Paramour, enamoured, flighty, Episodes, antipodes, Acquiesce, and obsequies. Please don’t monkey with the geyser, Don’t peel ‘taters with my razor, Rather say in accents pure: Nature, stature and mature. Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly, Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly, Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan, Wan, sedan and artisan. The TH will surely trouble you More than R, CH or W. Say then these phonetic gems: Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames. Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham, There are more but I forget ’em- Wait! I’ve got it: Anthony, Lighten your anxiety. The archaic word albeit Does not rhyme with eight-you see it; With and forthwith, one has voice, One has not, you make your choice. Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger; Then say: singer, ginger, linger. Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, age, Hero, heron, query, very, Parry, tarry fury, bury, Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth, Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath. Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners, Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners Holm you know, but noes, canoes, Puisne, truism, use, to use? Though the difference seems little, We say actual, but victual, Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height, Put, nut, granite, and unite. Reefer does not rhyme with deafer, Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late, Hint, pint, senate, but sedate. Gaelic, Arabic, pacific, Science, conscience, scientific; Tour, but our, dour, succour, four, Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit, Next omit, which differs from it Bona fide, alibi Gyrate, dowry and awry. Sea, idea, guinea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean, Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion with battalion, Rally with ally; yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay! Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, receiver. Never guess–it is not safe, We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf. Starry, granary, canary, Crevice, but device, and eyrie, Face, but preface, then grimace, Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging, Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging; Ear, but earn; and ere and tear Do not rhyme with here but heir. Mind the O of off and often Which may be pronounced as orphan, With the sound of saw and sauce; Also soft, lost, cloth and cross. Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting? Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting. Respite, spite, consent, resent. Liable, but Parliament. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen, Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk, Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work. A of valour, vapid vapour, S of news (compare newspaper), G of gibbet, gibbon, gist, I of antichrist and grist, Differ like diverse and divers, Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers. Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll, Polish, Polish, poll and poll. Pronunciation–think of Psyche!- Is a paling, stout and spiky. Won’t it make you lose your wits Writing groats and saying ‘grits’? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale, Islington, and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Don’t you think so, reader, rather, Saying lather, bather, father? Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough? Hiccough has the sound of ‘cup’ . . . My advice is: give it up!
No it’s not true that Grizzly bears use Bear Spray on their eggs in the morning. Grizzly bears don’t eat breakfast unless it is made by others. Then they will eat everything, including the others who made breakfast.
Yes. There have been a few articles posted on FB private group “Yellowstone National Park Invasion of the Idiots”.
Ironically one of the most recent pictures was someone taking a nap on the bench of a picnic table with a grizzly well within the 100 yards safety distance. More than a few comments against the poster. Should people whose campgrounds are tramped through by grizzlies be shammed? Couldn’t tell if location was a picnic area or campground (both can be found in meadow areas). Not a place I’d choose for a nap. My back would kill me. But still not an idiot. Also the postings where people are stuck on boardwalks and bears, bison, elk, etc., walk through too close on the thermal areas. Not safe to stay. Only retreat is off the boardwalk which is also unsafe.
I’d have one that says “Go ahead and run. Uh Bear? I’m not running anywhere. Get them first.” That way the bear would just forget about me. Worth a try.
From what I have been reading it seems Boeing has screwed the pooch totally. If I were an astronaut I would be very concerned with flying anything made by Boeing. I would also keep a very close eye on any stock I won.
I’m inclined to agree. Much like most of the crap in Northrup Grumman came from Grumman. (I had first-hand, if very minor, experience with both. In NG’s case, I saw the Northrup guys were interested in doing the work; the Grumman guys in working the system. Guess which company’s guys wound up on top?)
A minor correction to the Tom Petty meme: I don’t believe that he had any opinion on whether you should stand him up at the gates of hell or not. He just said that, if you do, he won’t back down.
Something’s weird about the Martini meme’s display on both my laptop and my phone. It neither displays fully nor presents the options to preview or download it.
According To Hoyt 
Of course, the memes are better here.
Lefties can’t meme. 🤣
I want that world as well, but it does give me the excuse to cuss a lot, I mean a real lot.
So upon finding out that the pedestrian Pride crosswalk was in Spokane, I really had to facepalm. Most of Spokane is some variant of Not Flat, especially most of the public areas. There’s a neighborhood north of GU with extraordinarily wide streets, and apparently this is because the Jesuits laid out the streets with the notion that horse-drawn wagons needed to be able to turn around easily because of the river, but otherwise, the roadways are largely 19th-century style and narrow.
So when they placed the crosswalk, they placed it next to Riverfront Park (center of tourism), and in one of the few places in the entire city where donuts are likely. (At least, intentional donuts. I remember one icy road 360º drift…) And got surprised? Whee.
(I can also personally verify that they had Pride parades 25 years ago, FWIW.)
“Margaret! I finally figured out why June truly has to be Pride Month.”
“Um, Isabel, I thought you weren’t into that whole LGBTQ-phabet thing?”
“No, really, there’s only one way it could work.” Isabel was one of those compulsively, almost mathematically, logical types of person. So, once she’d ever got properly started, there was rarely any stopping her… “A simple, clear existence-and-uniqueness proof, in the grand old classic style.”
“Okay, just tell me.” (“Hit me” she carefully did not say, ever again.)
And Isabel started ticking things off with her fingers. “So, now, June is Pride Month, July is Greed Month, August is Wrath Month, September is Envy Month, October is Lust Month, November is Gluttony Month, and December is Sloth Month. And there you have it, running out of Deadly Sins and months and calendar year all at once — but it works if and only if you let June be Pride Month. Anything else winds you up out of sync; pick June as your origin point and Bob’s your uncle.
“And, just about all the markers are spot-on; Christmas/Solstice holidays are in Sloth Month, Thankgiving dinners in Gluttony Month, both atomic bomb attacks were in Wrath Month… it just goes on and on. The people who set this up were really on the ball. Even if they weren’t doing it consciously at all, still it works. E pure, si muove, just like Galileo said, or else maybe didn’t say. A fine little festival of archetypical synchronicity.”
She’d not been this visibly happy since she’d worked through Nonstandard Analysis for the first time ever, late sophomore year.
“So, what about January through May? How do they fit in? Or do they?”
Isabel merrily popped a chocolate into her mouth from Margaret’s private but friend-accessible stash. “Still not sure about that. It’d be nice if there were Five Venial Sins or something, sort of like the Major and Minor Arcana of the Tarot; but there doesn’t seem to be anything of the sort.” She swallowed. “Guess that’s still an unsolved research problem, so far.”
“Um, Isabel? You know lots of people would get really upset at you if you simply said this right out loud, don’t you?” She had to work to keep her voice serious and level, not bursting like fizzy bubbles out into raw crow-raucous laughter.
“Sure. Election analysis. Fedcensorship. Covid contagion, and treatment. Mis dis mal your information, gently down the stream. Protest is insurrection and riot is protest, fair is foul and foul is fair. Now it’s ‘cheap fakes’ to convince you to disbelieve your own lying eyes and ears. So what, my dear Margaret? Pearls before swine might be fine if you’re Millei far away in glitzy Davos; but I’m no such luminary, just a mousy littl’ol math geek from the misty hollers.”
But the smile on her face, could’ve lit all the darknesses of ignorance.
“I’m still not sure about the other six cutesy little flags, though. Do we put up a picture of a cooked turkey on a field of red-checked tablecloth for Gluttony Month, for instance? Still lots of work left for me to do.” And she winked, broadly. “Oh, and Lust Month, I fairly blush to think…”
Margaret shook her head. “Don’t ever change, Isabel. Never, ever lose that light.”
(It’s Sunday, so there ought to be vignettes, or vignette)
I remember that Dr. Who and I completely sympathize with the Brigadier.
…and he did find an alien menace vulnerable to bullets.
Well, silver ones at least.
https://youtu.be/tP6T1wcFwms?si=E9obK9iLf92hCdhf
BTW, as someone who isn’t doing anime/Manga, what the hey does, “isekai,” mean?
Isekai – Wikipedia
Quote From Link
Isekai (Japanese: 異世界 transl. ’different world’, ‘another world’, or ‘other world’) is a subgenre of portal fantasy. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, anime, and video games that revolve around a displaced person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, game world, or parallel universe without the possibility of returning to their original world.
End Quote
Since the transported character can end up in a game world in this subgenre, I would love to see a character transported to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.
I know, w…pedia, but this definition is fair:
Missed it by That Much…
Number Four, referred to by the other Doctors as all hair and teeth.
Portal fiction. Somebody transfers from one world to another and the story is mostly about their interaction with the new world.
So the anime/Manga version of John Carter on Mars or Narnia type setups. Or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and the like if you want to count the historical past as another world.
The chief Japanese contribution seems to have been to coin a catchy name for that type of story setup.
(Or is “isekai” defined as being limited to portal fiction with a anime/Manga flavor, thus excluding the many many western examples from over the decades.)
It is largely agreed, even in Japan, that “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court” is the first Isekai. and Isekai includes people stuck in video games as well as people transported in time or to another universe.
Not having read it, I couldn’t say for sure, but I would think that the Divine Comedy would fit that description…
Dante the character knows he will be returned to his “first life.” (He’s commanded several times to report what he’s seen on earth).
Flint and Co’s 1630 series seems like a good example.
Would Gullivers Travels count?
Gulliver’s Travels is IMO within the “Travelers Tales” genre with a dose of satire
Ironically, in that book, Japan is a listed as just as a ridiculous made up wacky-land as Brobdingnag.
I wouldn’t count it: It’s in the “Lost City/Nation/Location On This World” genre.
A more interesting edge case question is “Would Pellucidar count?” Another might be “Would Oz count?”
Pretty sure Oz counts in the books; Dorothy’s repeat visits notwithstanding, any mundane who visits more often than not ultimately ends up settling there.
I did that one. Alice Haddison in a Mobile Infantry jump suit, and a friend. And a -lot- of lippy robot spiders.
Most of the story was the new world getting the f- out of their way.
Transported to or reincarnated in another world. Being run over by a truck, often while saving somebody else, is a common enough triggering event that Truck-Kun is its own trope. Reverse isekai is when somebody from another world winds up in our world.
Usually it’s an ordinary person from our world winding up in a fantasy world with elves, magic, dragons, etc. Generally with some advantages, anything from familiarity with advanced science and engineering to being granted huge magical power. Which is referred to as being OPAF — OverPowered As F*k.
Like everything else, there are good isekai and bad isekai, everything from Arifureta, InuYasha, Gate and Handyman Saito In Another World to The Saga Of Tanya The Evil. ‘How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom’ is rather unique; the summoned hero uses his knowledge of politics and economics, guided by Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, to address the kingdom’s economic and political woes.
That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Slime.
Personally, I want to see more reverse Isiaky anime. The only one I can really think of is “uncle from another world”
”My Favorite Martian”?
Less adventure-y, but they’re around– Angel Included, Salad Bowl of Eccentrics, Dragon Maid, even Ya Boi Kon Ming is basically a reverse-isekai. He’s from the past, that’s a different world…..
In Another World, I Must Defeat the Demon King
True some of the stuff comes with him, but I particularly like how the transported character marvels at what we can accomplish without levels, let alone classes.
‘Thor’ is reverse isekai.
Leo Frankowski’s ‘Cross-Time Engineer’ series is isekai, about a modern-day mechanical engineer transported to 13th century Poland after stumbling into a time machine while drunk.
I’m writing a reverse isekai story about an elite super-soldier from a technologically advanced civilization mysteriously sent to our world.
Oh! ‘The Devil Is A Part-Timer’ is reverse isekai.
Villains Are Destined To Die.
That’s a fun and popular isekai trope: the character is reborn into a romance game — as the villainess! Now she must forge her way to victory despite the entire set-up being against her except for her knowledge from our world!
Even though very few romance sims have villainesses, and most have a path that will let the game heroine befriend her. It’s a much more useful trope in an isekai, which can cause some meditations on story telling and genres.
I also like My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s which is a lot less comic than you may think from the title.
Then there’s Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, which is quite possibly outside the genre. The heroine ends up in the spirit world, but it’s a closely intertwined other world.
Isekai basically means “Another world.” Although American anime fans have turned it into a verb, because that’s what English does to foreign words.Other terms to be familiar with are “Truck-kun” or “Mr. Truck” because so many people find themselves waking up in another world after getting hit by a truck. And “Cheat Skill” because a lot of these alternate worlds work like a computer game with levels and status screens and crap, and those transported from other worlds and expected to be heroes are granted some game breaking special skill by the goddess that oversaw their reincarnation.
verbing
Reading a book on the British Commonwealth, which essentially gives short histories of Canada, South Africa, India, Australia, etc, written by an Anglophile American. What struck me was the matter of fact way the author says the Canadians deliberately decided they didn’t need a Bill of Rights, with the implication they felt the Americans were being silly to worry about it. (OTOH, I hadn’t realized just how often various groups of Americans wanted to invade Canada).
I’m still freaking out about the whole “fraternal organization that was actually Canadians trying to get Americans to support their coup attempt”.
Revenge of the Jedi meme: If Only.
Yes, Disney destroyed it, but that only means someone else can write the next great space opera movie. Opportunity knocking.
There’s always fanfiction .
Oh, there’s lots and lots and lots of that out there and some of it is actually worse than what we are currently running from.
Well, of course. That’s just Sturgeon’s Law at work. 90% of everything is crap.
But some of it is good to amazing 🤩
the lightsaber should have cut it half
I prefer that third eye in the middle of its forehead.
Re: Government trust from Katniss to Ned.
You mean from successful revolutionary to successful revolutionary? It <i>appears</i> they diverge more after their respective revolutions, but we really don’t see Everdeen decades after the new order takes over, while Ned’s books are all about the later fallout of his.
And then ‘choosing’ Dale, a guy who mostly whines about the system he’s ensconced within. Is the point that Dale’s an ineffectual wiener, and so are we, or is it trying to frame him as some sort of effective revolutionary figure?
And if the point of the opening question is that Ned trusts government… well, he doesn’t. He trusts <i>people</i>. He doesn’t trust the king’s spymaster, master of coin, nor his grand maester, all high government positions; he trusts his wife and the childhood friend she vouched for.
Am I thinking about this too much? Did the memester not think enough? Or did I just miss the point entirely?
Yes? 🙂
I find your assessment…correct.
At first I laughed. Then, I have to admit, I went through the exact same thought process as Boobah, with one crucial difference at the end: after reflecting on my long and checkered career of internet commenting, I decided I’d better not say anything. 😀
I have one “advantage”. I’m not familiar with any of them, though I have seen a few seconds of the show that Dribble was on.
Have a somewhat checkered past on InterTubes commenting, so agreed. Still, it was too hard to pass up.
“Are you saying you don’t trust the government with this advanced technology?”
“Hell, I don’t trust the government with anything!”
I would not trust a government with a clothespin and a pack of ketchup. There’s nothing those do-gooders won’t screw up. They’re best kept on a tight leash and knowing they’re watched, else they’ll come up with some new (old) way to deviate from the founding document.
You know the one: it has all those “Thou shalt NOT” things innit that restrain governmental peoples from enslaving, raping, and thieving from their constituents.
Isn’t BBQ sauce a vegetable?
Beer is a vegetable. So is chocolate. 😛
Hey, they’re made out of plants!
I think that makes me semi-vegan. I only eat meat a couple times a day.
“Whisky is made from corn. Corn is a plant. Therefore, whiskey is a salad.”
Maybe more like a distilled vegan smoothie?
Infantry Juice Drink
Maybe more like a distilled vegan smoothie?
…the hell? I only replied once
once…
once…
once…
echo…
Beer is liquid bread.
The beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert.
*singing* rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, whiskey makes my baby feel a little frisky-rain is a goooood thing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VKy69sE4VY
”Hey, they’re made out of plants!”
So are cows.
technically, chocolate is a tree fruit. the sugar, OTOH …
The sugar comes from grass. Really BIG grass but, grass.
Why doesn’t that use for WD-40 ever appear when I get sucked into the “One Simple Trick” lists? More useful than any of those!
2024?
LMFTFY!
“Star Wars” 1977-1983
Jar Jar Binks must die.
Well, he’s a Sith, so, yeah…
“Yankee Doodle went to London
Riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni!”
“Uh, this song is literally making fun of you, why are you enjoying it?”
“We are the Americans. You will be assimilated. Even your jibes and taunts will become an integral part of our ever-expanding cultural diversity and identity.
“And we’re merely the paleo-Deplorables, we’re just gettin’ started, you ought to look back in on us in two or three centuries…”
NOTE: the quarter-millenial anniversary of July 4, 1776 will be on July 4, 2026. Please celebrate this occasion reverently, merrily, responsibly, with enthusiasm and excellent fire discipline, and above all, effectively.
Americans are the Borg….
Yup. And we’ll do it with anything. Language, food, fashion, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvdoKvHYxcA
And English does / has done the same Borg-esque thing; so it was probably fated to be the common American language from the start.
The quote runs something like, “English does not borrow from other languages. It knocks them senseless in a cold dark alley, nicks their wallets and purses, then rifles slowly through their pockets in hopes of loose change.” Thus the, um, challenge of spelling in English.
The way I heard it: English doesn’t ‘borrow’ from other languages. It stalks them down dark alleys and goes through their pockets looking for loose grammar.
The Chaos
by Charivarius (Gerard Nolst Trenité)
Dearest creature in Creation,
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter, how it’s written!)
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say-said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via;
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
Cloven, oven; how and low;
Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Typhoid; measles, topsails, aisles;
Exiles, similes, reviles;
Wholly, holly; signal, signing;
Thames; examining, combining;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.
From “desire”: desirable–admirable from “admire”;
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier;
Chatham, brougham; renown but known,
Knowledge; done, but gone and tone,
One, anemone; Balmoral;
Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German; wind and mind;
Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rhyme with “darky.”
Viscous, viscount; load and broad;
Toward, to forward, to reward,
And your pronunciation’s OK.
Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve;
Friend and fiend; alive and live.
Liberty, library; heave and heaven;
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,
We say hallowed, but allowed;
People, leopard; towed, but vowed.
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,
Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;
Chalice but police and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable;
Principle, disciple; label;
Petal, penal, and canal;
Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.
Suit, suite, ruin; circuit, conduit
Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it.”
But it is not hard to tell
Why it’s pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular; gaol, iron;
Timber, climber; bullion, lion,
Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair;
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rime with “hammer.”
Pussy, hussy, and possess,
Desert, but desert, address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some, and home.
“Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker,”
Quoth he, “than liqueur or liquor,”
Making, it is sad but true,
In bravado, much ado.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant.
Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.
Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.
And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.
Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove,
Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn’t) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.
Don’t be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.
Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,
Mind the Z! (A gentle hint.)
Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don’t mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
Rhyming with the pronoun yours;
Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did,
Funny rhymes to unicorn,
Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.
No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don’t want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud
Is no better than McLeod.
But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.
Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you’re not supposed to say
Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.
Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
When for Portsmouth I had booked!
Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
Episodes, antipodes,
Acquiesce, and obsequies.
Please don’t monkey with the geyser,
Don’t peel ‘taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.
Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.
The TH will surely trouble you
More than R, CH or W.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget ’em-
Wait! I’ve got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.
The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,
Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite.
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.
Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess–it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.
Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.
Mind the O of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.
Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.
A of valour, vapid vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,
Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll.
Pronunciation–think of Psyche!-
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won’t it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying ‘grits’?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Don’t you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough,
sough, tough?
Hiccough has the sound of ‘cup’ . . .
My advice is: give it up!
Seems like just yesterday that we had the Bicentennial.
National Park meme.
100%
Although with me, alone or not, I am the slowest. Now if the bears are set to ambush (leaders), I’m golden.
In addition.
No it’s not true that Grizzly bears use Bear Spray on their eggs in the morning. Grizzly bears don’t eat breakfast unless it is made by others. Then they will eat everything, including the others who made breakfast.
Genius thought bear spray worked like “Off!” bug spray.
Wrong.
Yes. There have been a few articles posted on FB private group “Yellowstone National Park Invasion of the Idiots”.
Ironically one of the most recent pictures was someone taking a nap on the bench of a picnic table with a grizzly well within the 100 yards safety distance. More than a few comments against the poster. Should people whose campgrounds are tramped through by grizzlies be shammed? Couldn’t tell if location was a picnic area or campground (both can be found in meadow areas). Not a place I’d choose for a nap. My back would kill me. But still not an idiot. Also the postings where people are stuck on boardwalks and bears, bison, elk, etc., walk through too close on the thermal areas. Not safe to stay. Only retreat is off the boardwalk which is also unsafe.
I’ve seen t-shirts that say “Always hike with someone you can outrun”.
I’ve seen those too.
I’d have one that says “Go ahead and run. Uh Bear? I’m not running anywhere. Get them first.” That way the bear would just forget about me. Worth a try.
From what I have been reading it seems Boeing has screwed the pooch totally. If I were an astronaut I would be very concerned with flying anything made by Boeing. I would also keep a very close eye on any stock I won.
At this point if one acquired Boeing stock in a contest, I wouldn’t call it “won”.
First prize is a share of Boeing stock. Second prize is two shares….
The Reader is waiting to see if Space X has to give the astronauts who rode that thing to the ISS a ride home. He wonders how long ‘indefinitely’ is. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-indefinitely-delays-return-of-starliner-to-review-propulsion-data/
A week for Elon to get a Crew Dragon on top of a rocket and launch? Most of that being paperwork and waiting on .gov?
It is the tragedy of Boeing’s takeover of McDonnell-Douglas that the resulting entity is much less than the sum of its parts.
Talk to Boeing people who were there at the time and they will tell you McD used Boeings money to acquire Boeing.
The viewpoint within old-Boeing is pretty much that all the bad stuff came from McD.
I’m inclined to agree. Much like most of the crap in Northrup Grumman came from Grumman. (I had first-hand, if very minor, experience with both. In NG’s case, I saw the Northrup guys were interested in doing the work; the Grumman guys in working the system. Guess which company’s guys wound up on top?)
A minor correction to the Tom Petty meme: I don’t believe that he had any opinion on whether you should stand him up at the gates of hell or not. He just said that, if you do, he won’t back down.
Similarly, he expresses indifference to your living like a refugee. He simply points out that you have other options.
Still you shouldn’t do him like that.
Something’s weird about the Martini meme’s display on both my laptop and my phone. It neither displays fully nor presents the options to preview or download it.
Me too.
I’m with the “Same, plant, same” meme.
“That time I died and was reincarnated as a cowboy.”
…Would read, would so read!
A bishonen cowboy, from the picture… 😀
I see no problem with this…. 😉
Seconded.
that “cowboy” must only ride at night….
and only an idiot wears a gunbelt like that “for reals”…
the ladies might have enough anatomy to wear a droopy, but snakehips boy would need suspenders to avoid conversion to an ankle holster.
I’m just starting using a new acronym in my reply to the Saturday Meme posts: SFBS – meaning Saturday Fan Boi Squee
If the coffee maker changes quantum states but the coffee is not visible so cannot be observed, does it entangle?
Maybe!
The coffee maker is both full and empty, until you open it and look inside. 😛
The charger is plugged in correctly. “iSmart” is upside down.