YALP!

[gnomi]

[Poll #923380]

Comments

[saraphina-marie.livejournal.com]

Read (suggest a book in comments, if you wish)

MINE! ^_^

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Heee! It's in my queue. In fact, I think it's next in the stack.

[saraphina-marie.livejournal.com]

wooohooo!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I do know both usages of "table an issue", which is why I never use the term.

I've also seen the usage, "damn' sure", but that apostrophe simply means it's actually "damned sure" with the end clipped off.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

First question: I vacillate, but usually go with D---d.

As for the second question, you didn't follow it up with your usual choices of geography: isn't this another classic American vs. British usage? (And where do the Canadians stand?)

And, third, narf!

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

By now, I know where most of y'all are from. :-)

Narf!

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

And I'm not sure where the Canadians stand on that one; I've got Canadians on my friends list, so I'm waiting to see if any of them come in on the British side with that one.

[byrne.livejournal.com]

I did. And then I changed my vote. I'm about to change it back. When one tables a motion, it gets dealt with, pronto. It can then be moved to the agenda of the next meeting.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Weird. Facing the choice, I would say that damned sure is the correct choice, yet I think if I were creating a sentence myself I'd actually have gone the other way.

I can't say as I've ever seen damn' sure.

I've read of the oceanic split on the table question, but the only tabling that occurs in my life is cleaning the kitten pawprints off my kitchen table. Bit different, that.

[cellio]

I had the same quandry. I think I actually don't say either "d- sure" variant; I do sometimes say "damn right", but "right" and "sure" are different. I think I also say "damn" and might write "damned", just to complicate things...

[docorion.livejournal.com]

The canonical *American* Robert's Rules of Order version of 'tabling' is, of course, to postpone. Not necessarily indefinitely-there's a motion specifically for that-but until "Taken from the table" by a subsequent motion. My feeling was that it was like a computer popping things onto a stack; you could always take it off later.

In practice, of course, no one ever takes anything off the table. All those bills just...go to limbo. Seems sad, to me :-)

(Why are you looking at me like that? I was a parliamentarian in high school!)

I understand some People Across The Water have a different meaning of 'tabling', but of course, ours is superior and therefore correct.

[tober.livejournal.com]

I was fully aware of the American parliamentary meaning of "to table" but not that the English meaning was essentially the opposite. There might be an interesting (but perhaps now lost in the sands of time) explanation for how this came to be - since, in general, American parliamentary procedure is derived from English parliamentary procedure just as American law and legal practice is largely derived from English common law. That being said, I can see the inherent ambiguity in "to lay on the table" - either as "to lay on the table [before oneself] in order to consider" or as "to lay [aside] on the table."

[zsero.livejournal.com]

I think the difference arises from the fact that the USA Houses of Congress don't have an actual table at which the leaders of both sides sit. When a minister or an opposition leader in a Windsor-style parliament tables something, he puts a copy, or a stack of copies, on the actual table in front of him, where his colleagues on his side, and his opponents sitting opposite him, can pick it up and read it. The Standing Orders say he can't talk about it until he does that, so that the other people can know what he's talking about.

And he generally needs unanimous consent to table it. So the normal procedure if, say, he's talking about the economy and wants to introduce a graph illustrating something, he will say "I seek leave to table this document". The Speaker will say "Is there any objection? There being no objection, leave is granted." The speaker (as opposed to the Speaker) will then put it on the table, and proceed to talk about how it demonstrates what a good (if he's a minister) or bad (if he's a shadow minister) job the government is doing. And his opposite number, who's never seen this graph before now, has picked it up off the table and is frantically studying it, so that he can rebut what the speaker is saying.

In the USAn Congress, there aren't any ministers or shadow ministers, and there isn't a table at which they sit glaring at each other. The table on which measures are laid is, I imagine, a side table, like one where you put unopened junk mail; once something is laid there it will get buried under the strata that get laid on top of it, until you do a cleaning and chuck the entire pile out unread.

[eal.livejournal.com]

Like you would expect me to say anything other than write? :)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

::snerk::

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

...wait.

What is "spare time"??

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

That's the time that you have in the trunk of your car, in case your regular time gets a nail in it or something. Some people have only doughnut-time, but I'm a major proponent of full-size time if you have the trunk space available.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

Oh. I only have doughnut (donut!) time. That explains the confusion.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

If you like fantasy, you should read "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch or some of the stuff by Matt Ruff, which should get more attention than it seems to within the genre. If you like science fiction, I suspect your husband can help you more than I can.

[half-double.livejournal.com]

If you like fantasy, you should read "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch....

Hah hah! I met Scott Lynch once, many a year before the book got published. It's strange to me to see people I don't know recommending it.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Heh. He's quite a good writerm ti turns out. :-) He's a little too in love with his world-building, but overall, the book's a real pleasure.

[perpet.livejournal.com]

"The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay"
"Summerland"
"The Final Solution"

All by Michael Chabon

"The Poisonwood Bible" By Barbara Kingsolver

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

perhaps you could kill two birds with one stone: come up with the story, and then use contrasting colors of thread to knit the words in a sweater.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Like Madame Defarge!

[42itous.livejournal.com]

You should read The Rabbi's Cat, and look forward to next week's (Feb 17th's) This American Life podcast, in which the MIT Mystery Hunt will be mentioned.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

I didn't pick either choice for "table" because those are two extremes, and I've always thought of the word as being somewhere between the two -- there's a stage between postponing indefinitely and doing it next, and that's the realm I've always thought of "tabled" being in.

If I was forced to pick one, it'd be the first.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I had trouble with #2; to me, "table" means "put aside to discuss later."

[jencallisto]

for the first question, i picked "damned" but i most think either is probably acceptable. it's funny, i almost think of them as having slightly different contexts, but when i tried to articulate the difference it kept slipping away...

[madfilkentist]

"Indefinitely" doesn't mean "forever"; it means "till an unspecified time." So I chose that meaning.

While "damned sure" sounds more grammatical to me, I don't have grammar on my mind if I'm being that emphatic. I would say "damn sure."

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

"Indefinitely" doesn't mean "forever"; it means "till an unspecified time." So I chose that meaning.

Which is exactly how I'd meant it. I'm not sure where this interpretation of "indefinitely" as "forever" came from.

[half-double.livejournal.com]

I second scarlettina's recommendation of Matt Ruff. Set This House in Order is one of the most amazing books I've ever read.

I also enjoyed saying that you should spend your free time narfing. I imagine you sitting on your couch saying "Narf narf narf!" all evening.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I imagine you sitting on your couch saying "Narf narf narf!" all evening.

This describes our life exactly. It's uncanny.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Narf!

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

Pnaurgh!

how about 'the rise of theodore rosenfelt', you know, he was in league with the jewish (west) bankers