Things you were shockingly old when you learned

see, the thing about words is what you mean to convey and what you actually convey depends on the audience's reception, context, etc.

and everyone else on the thread is like "whoa, why did that guy jump on Old Lunch's humorous musings about whether something was 'deliberate'" because in context we know he's jokey and implying a conspiracy is the type of joke

so that's the context you kind of jumped into, literally disputing something that -- at least to me -- was an ambiguous statement meant in jest

my dad has worked for a long time at a business called "ralph lastname, inc."

people call and ask for ralph. now, in this case, there was a ralph. he died over 45 years ago. but people make assumptions

i can state almost without a doubt that a band called "ask rufus" was in fact asked "which one of you is rufus?" at some point in their career and by changing their name to "rufus" they knew this would continue, and was in fact very funny

When I was a kid, other kids in the playground snottily insisted the song "Howzat" by Sherbert was about cricket. When I told them it was about a guy accusing his lady of cheating they all jeered at me like I was an idiot.

I bloody wasnt, grump.

^ I bet I wasn’t the only person itt who argued fruitlessly in the playground that the baddie in Star Wars was called Darth Vader, not Dark Fader

“darth vader? those aren’t even WORDS”

LOL

cricket is kind of like cheating on wife. both end in ashes, right

Think of your cheating self as a batsman and your wife as a wicketeeper standing up at the wicket to a slow bowler - she'll whip your bails off if she catches you.

this is classic ilx

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 19 February 2019 21:16 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its classic ilm and fuck it

So I took a joke post by Old Lunch at face value? An Original Sin if there ever was one.

As to what happened after: sic quoted my “at the time” out of the context of my post and then transplanted it to their own context, thereby implying I said something I never said, and then doubled down and all-capsed on it, even after I had already acknowledged their point.

Then mh jumped in to do some ILXplaining while making assumptions about me based on the thing I never said that sic claimed I said.

I like a nice forest, but not when it consists of shifting goalposts. But that’s classic ILX for ya, I guess.

FWIW mine was actually not a joke post in this particular instance but I'm aware of the part I've played in muddying those waters so I understand the confusion.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGA1_pou1fk/Vb5b7YXP0YI/AAAAAAAAYL8/5crK_E73pDw/s1600/S66-05120.jpg

i've been seeing images of the saturn/apollo rocket since i was born, and i never never considered ~where~ in the assembly the actual personnel module/capsule (ahem, "command module") was positioned, or what its actual parts scale looked like. and like, i've seen the usual movies and stuff. i can't believe how small the capsule is.

i'm more disappointed by my lack of curiosity to know than my actual ignorance.

iirc you can climb into (a facsimile of?) the command module at the air and space museum in DC

is it cool?

I'm haunted by the memory of how I was incredibly jealous that other kids had been to this astronaut exhibit at our local science museum when I was a kid but I hadn't. I'd heard about how field trips would do activities showing what it's like to be on a space station, and it sounded so cool.

I wasn't shockingly old, but I finally made it through there in middle school and it was at that point I realized the whole thing was for ten year olds and it was mostly painted plywood and sheets of plastic that approximated an airlock. It was not, in fact, that cool.

I was a huge airplane nerd when I was a kid and didn't get to the air and space museum until I was like 30 and it was still the best thing ever.

speaking of apollo missions i only learned like yesterday that "the eagle has landed" wasn't like a cool secret codephrase, the lander was literally named Eagle and it had landed

Reading this thread it always surprises me what ilxors think they ought to have known at a much younger age, presumably because they believe such items were common knowledge to the great majority of their contemporaries.

I just heard somebody sing the chorus to My Old Man clearly so have heard the last line about the police which I don't think I heard before.
You can't trust a special like an old time copper when you can't find your way home.
Special is special constable which I think is a part time police officer.
Think I just never heard the line clearly but it just about makes sense now. Though might have thought even a part time pc might have some knowledge of the area. Or were they notoriously poorly informed cos they came from elsewhere or something.

My Old Man is far more complicated than that.

The husband has organised a midnight flit because of rent arrears, compounded because his wife is an alcoholic. He contrives for her not to be able to travel with him but to make her own way to the new house, knowing she will pass too many pubs to resist, and end up drunk on the streets. She then does what she normally does, and relies on the police to deliver her home but when they try the house is empty.

She says you can't trust a special is because they haven't been able to return her to her husband, or home, because they have no way of knowing how to do so either through their own knowledge or hers and the 'normal' policeman can. Her claim, then, is that it must be their fault and not hers, the husbands it the booze.

(Potentially also she has made it to the right area of the new tenancy but because neither she of the police recognise her they can't help her, and because they're not the ones she knows they must be specials and not the real police.)

Took me a while to realise this wasn’t a very deep reading of the Joni Mitchell song.

welcome breastcrawl

it’s a pleasure darraghmac

Thanks aldo.
Must need to hear the verses now.
& I assume the couple will either remain separated or have to find another new home now taht the cops have been brought down on their new one.
She's a liability innit?
I thought people tended to scarper in the dead of night, so what were the licensing hours? Were places open 24 hours pre WWI

Took me a while to realise this wasn’t a very deep reading of the Joni Mitchell song.

Deeper than any Joni Mitchell song.

Haha my mind went to Ian Dury.

Anyway I agree with Aldo's reading but the boozing is subtext rather than text, at least in this version of the lyric:

http://ingeb.org/songs/myoldman.html

Ian Dury, same here. Or even that silly Lou Reed song.

Wasn't sure what a cock linnet was either. & in the version the lyrics were linked to the narrator was going to pinch his bird seed.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/nature-studies-you-ve-heard-the-song-that-features-the-linnet-but-have-you-heard-the-linnet-sing-9356456.html

"The Green Linnet", now there's a song to be reckoned with.

Boozing is subtext for sure, but songs are intrinsically linked to Marie Lloyd's life at the time - having gone from the romantic (The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery), through her divorce into morally lax or even vulgar (She Sits Among The Cabbages And Peas) to easily confused (Oh! Mr Porter!) - and by the time we get to My Old Man she's frequently unable to finish shows due to 'tiredness'.

To my mind the verses make it more explicit that the husband is contriving a scheme to be rid of her.

We had to move away
'Cos the rent we couldn't pay.

Which we'd often done before, let me remark

This suggests it's far more serious than him perpetually losing the jobs he had, which would be the most common reason for running away from rent arrears - there is an ongoing drain on finances that supports the subtext.

Then we packed all we could pack
On the tailboard at the back,
Till there wasn't any room for me to ride.

Suggesting it's deliberate to overfill, or to lie about how full it is to create the circumstances. How did they manage to accumulate so much stuff if they have no money, or misjudge the size of the van if they move frequently?

I gave a helping hand

All at once, the car-man bloke
Had an accident and broke

I was cross about the loss

What with "two out" and a chat

This is the enactment of the plot. She is part of the process then the distraction happens. China is broken, there is a fight,and she doesn't see the loading while she calms down. Given this happens while the kitchen is being packed it's unlikely they do spend the time making a cup of tea and the scarequotes in this version indicate it's a euphemism for having a drink which is the start of the descent into a stupor.

Oh! I'm in such a mess.
I don't know the new address -
Don't even know the blessed neighbourhood

These three lines all have double meanings. Is she in a mess because of the confusion or the drink? (See also dillied and dallied describing both multiple stops and a staggering motion of walking.)Does she not know the address because she can't remember or because she wasn't told it? Does she literally not know what district they were moving to (adding to the deliberate act narrative) or does she just mean she can't navigate the area?

The version on youtube has "I stopped along the way to have the old half-quart, and I can't find my way home" - without it I think you're stretching there.

(I assumed the Lonnie Donegan to start with)

Yeah the wiki page gives various alternate versions, several of which are explicitly about boozing (which kind of underlines the fact that it's subtextual at most in the original).

What's 'a "two-out"'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5hWWe-ts2s

xp

iirc it inspired Paul Simon's '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover' with an early draft lyric being "Pretend to move home, Jerome"

(i took it to be two cups of tea, like in Tea For Two)

Two out of three - cup of tee in yer cockernee

The riffing on 'Shaft' in the US politics thread just reminded me that I was well into adulthood before I realized that the lyric was not

He's a complicated man
No one understands him but his woman
(Joan Shaft)

I guess I figured it was only fair that his woman would get a shout-out by name.

I just wondered why his woman was called John!

He's called John isn't he? Are we sure about this Joan thing?

He is called John, there is no Joan or Mrs John. I remain confused as to why the backing singers chose that moment to mention his name.

they're just still excited about john shaft, wouldn't you be

kinda surprised and bummed there was never a cash-in "Ms. Shaft" film tbh

She has to accompany John everywhere and serve as his translator, because no one else can understand him.

Dr. C., there still could be. Start a Kickstarter.

Mrs Shaft Among The Jews

The riffing on 'Shaft' in the US politics thread just reminded me that I was well into adulthood before I realized that the lyric was not

He's a complicated man
No one understands him but his woman
(Joan Shaft)

I guess I figured it was only fair that his woman would get a shout-out by name.

― St. Boniface, patron saint of boner faces (Old Lunch)

I always thought it was funny that that's how they show how well she understands him, she knows his first name too!

When you find out exactly where the krayt dragon skeleton in #starwars came from ... #filmaking #disney pic.twitter.com/MB41TKYy48

— Paul Dolan (@PaulDolanArt) February 21, 2019

(I saw "One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing" in theaters in 1975. I did not see "Star Wars" until 1981.)

Yeah I remember that film, not very PC about Asians though I think.
Anti-ageist though I guess.

to stop dough sticking to your hands/the counter when making bread you don't add flour you add water

didn't realize until last week that the Mercury missions were flown with one astronaut, the Gemini with two astronauts and the Apollo with three