mike carey

Only half a pound(ing)?

@youngboldone, find an escort you like, book a time, go and see him and let him pound you into oblivion (or vice versa). Stop beating about the bush. Once you've been there once, refine your approach. I have met several well regarded escorts who are on here and didn't discuss things in excruciating detail. Guess what, it worked each time.

Nope, why do you ask? I have interacted with him on Twitter and periscope, but I don't 'know' him.

I guess it's a fine line between being hired from Twitter and being discovered on Twitter and then hired. Some people, I'm sure, find escorts on Twitter and elsewhere at roughly the same time, chat and perhaps hire. Social media is everywhere and sometimes it's hard to know which it the 'first contact' medium.

The ad expired (during a period that was before it had stated that he would be back in NYC) and then was gone (error code 404, not found, as opposed to expired) for a time. Killian posted a comment (#64) here that he understood why people would be sceptical as to whether it was he who had posted a new ad with his pics. As you noted, the ad is back and current.

(Source) 'I swore this was a flying carpet at first glance.'

It does, a few minutes' worth of lightning can do that!

I mentioned that it was 36 degrees in Canberra yesterday, but it rained over night and it was pleasant today. The rain came with a lightshow as seen here (long exposure, obviously) [ATTACH=full]15021[/ATTACH]

Nice bit of shade!

That was as I thought I remember too, but I cited Shakespeare as I was sure of his (their?) use of it. This (which I could have found quickly yesterday but didn't) is the Economist's Prospero column's Jan 2016 take on the issue. Why 2015’s word of the year is rather singular Singular "they" has been used since Chaucer. Why is it still controversial? AT THE turn of each year, several dictionary publishers and language groups choose Words of the Year. How did everyone do for 2015? If you’re a traditionalist, whether on language or culture more broadly, they did terribly. If you think change is more good than bad, it’s an interesting crop. The Oxford Dictionaries went far afield, choosing something even most linguists wouldn’t consider a “word”: http://emoji.fileformat.info/gemoji/joy.png In case that didn’t render properly on your screen, it is an emoji, one of those adorable or maddening (depending on your view) faces that convey a sort of metamessage in online communication. So what does it mean? “Tears of Joy”, according to the keepers of Unicode. A debate rages about whether emoji are language. (In your columnist’s view, they are best considered “paralinguistic”, the written equivalent of body language or tone of voice.) In any case, emoji go beyond pure signs, like a picture of a dog meaning “dog”: plenty of emoji, and this is one, take acquired knowledge to understand. A bit like Saussure's arbitrary signifier. A word, no, but Oxford’s choice of an emoji was certainly very 2015. The next WOTY choice wins Johnson’s award for “most baffling”. When you think “Word of 2015”, did you think of “-ism”? Merriam-Webster’s lexicographers did. Peter Sokolowski, one of Merriam-Webster’s editors, gamely explains that Merriam-Webster does not go for a top-down choice, but makes its selection based on the words most looked up on Merriam-Webster’s excellent free online dictionary, and which ones climbed the most, year-on-year. “Socialism”, “communism”, “fascism”, “terrorism” and “racism” all saw big spikes in lookup traffic. (Some year.) So did, more happily, “feminism” and “capitalism”. How to crown a single word? Slice off that “-ism” and present it to the world. It was a Solo monic choice: about as satisfying as winning half a baby in a custody dispute. Dictionary.com is one of the newest WOTY purveyors. They, at least, got a word that feels intimately connected to this year’s news, despite not being a terribly interesting word in itself: “identity”. America’s college campuses have been rocked by racist incidents on one hand, and rowdy protests over careless use of language—taken to be grossly offensive by a minority—on the other. “Cultural appropriation” was also a hot topic, self-evidently insulting to some, robustly defended as cultural exchange by others. So there was plenty of heated talk about "identity" and its uses in 2015. Finally, the American Dialect Society, meeting last week, made in a way the most unusual choice. To capture 2015, members tapped a word almost a millennium old, a borrowing from Old Norse that improbably became part of the English pronoun system. Languages typically don’t borrow pronouns, but the Old English nicked “they” from their Viking foes. What made the third-person plural noteworthy in 2015? The fact that it is not always plural at all: the ADS specified “singular ‘they’” as the word of the year. In casual running speech, nearly everyone says things like “find a good teacher and take their advice.” But some conservatives insist that “a good teacher” is singular and therefore it must be his advice, or his or her advice, or making it find good teachers and take their advice, an unsatisfying change to the sentence. Linguists and historians (and Johnson) point out that singular they has deep historical roots: in the King James Bible, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and beyond. English has a gap in its pronoun system (other languages have an impeccable singular gender-neutral pronoun, but we do not). “His or her” is clumsy, especially upon repetition, and “his” is as inaccurate with respect to grammatical gender as “they” is to number. Invented alternatives never take hold. Singular “they” already exists; it has the advantage that most people already use it. If it is as old as Chaucer, what's new? The Washington Post’s style editor, Bill Walsh, has called it “the only sensible solution” to the gap in English’s pronouns, changing his newspaper's style book in 2015. But it was also the rise in the use of they as a pronoun for someone who does not want to use “he” or “she”. Facebook began already in 2014 allowing people to choose “they” as their preferred pronoun (“Wish them a happy birthday!”). Transgender stories, from “The Danish Girl”, a hit movie, to Caitlyn Jenner, an Olympic athlete who has become the world’s most famous trans woman, were big in 2015. But such people prefer their post-transition pronouns: “he” or “she” as desired. “They” is for a smaller minority who prefer neither. But the very idea of "non-binary" language with regard to gender annoys and even angers many people. In other words, as transgender people gain acceptance, “non-binary” folks are the next frontier, like it or not. Who knew a thousand-year-old pronoun could be so controversial?

Technically correct, of course, but languages don't follow grammar rules (much as the Académie française might wish), and what is accepted usage changes over time. You moved from being plural to covering the singular as well so there's no reason that they won't also do that transition. I doubt it will, because it's been an accepted usage at least as far back as Shakespeare without the 'rule' changing. (Of course there already is a non-gendered third person singular pronoun that is in universal use, but for some reason people are reluctant to use it to refer to a person.)

The debate about whether to use they and them rather than he/she and his/hers is interesting. It's been done in standard English for hundreds of year when the gender of the person being spoken about is not known or is not relevant so it's not a new fad. But that's not what the OP was asking. Rather, he was talking about the various made up pronouns like ze and hr, and some other naming systems. I don't like them and can't see myself using them. Languages make up new words when there is a recognised need for them. Words won't catch on if no one sees the need for them, and one or two people (or even a couple of hundred) deciding that the words are needed won't cut it.

Well, a statue with an actor acting as the same statue next to in would constitute a performance art installation. Put up one of those rope barriers around them, and a sign, and Voilà!

Put some clothes on the statue?

Chain fish and chip shops have never taken off here, they are universally just local independent shops. (There are chain coffee shops here but cafes are mainly local operations too.)

As you suggest, it falls somewhere between the US and UK views of their national tennis tournaments. If they were all on at the same time it would fall a long way behind the most significant sporting events, the AFL and national rugby league grand finals, the 'state of origin' rugby league games, the Boxing Day cricket test, but they are all at different times so they don't actually compete. At this time of year, I prefer to watch cricket, but I have been switching back and forward between that and the tennis on TV. (We have a relatively new domestic short-form cricket league that is on television every night and it has taken some of the audience the tennis previously had for the last two weeks of January.) The tennis is on from midday to about 1am each day, and it is summer holidays so total viewership is high, although not constant. (And at 4pm I am watching Dimitrov in the quarters. It's 36 degrees outside in Canberra, so screw that!)

Oh, it's only three dozen eggs!!

You forget, I have already seen you in such a setting. The picture of decorum.

I like Novak and Roger, and have a possibly irrational distaste for Rafa. I missed most of Novak's game because the cricket was on at the same time.

@youngboldone, devilled eggs, made by @Epigonos are one of the features of the buffet at the pool party. The social functions are not sexually charged, although there is the opportunity to pursue such interests at them. The shyest person can fit in easily, there is no pressure. (That was me last year.)

Understood, I didn't expect it, but was suggesting that planning and details should not retreat into emails between those who say they will attend. I wasn't saying I expected that to happen.

Like hotels and airlines, car hire company rates are impenetrable. Decide the band of what you are prepared to pay, if you find a rate at the bottom of your range, buy it, if it's at the top of your range consider buying or waiting for a better deal. Once you have bought, only look at the rates to assess whether you made the right decision for future reference, DON'T worry about the decision itself. You won't outsmart their algorithms, accept the decision you made. I've tracked airfares for a trip I was planning to take and seen the fares track above and below what I eventually paid. I curse that I missed the best rate but never regret not taking it. Life is too short.

I'm only a one-time attendee, but I would second Epi's comments. The weekend is fun, and in no way confronting.

Indeed, now to see how Chung goes.

Agree, @TruthBTold, for me it was a pleasant blast of summer before winter set in (Jun-Aug = winter, to be clear). There was no unpleasantness much less acrimony. The nastier forum participants on line are the ones unlikely to attend. No one starts out on line as a respected commenter, that comes with time. I remember posting a comment that I was worried about posting a review before establishing my credibility, and someone I had hardly spoken to posted that I had already done that. I was gobsmacked.