Quote:
Originally Posted by Asila
True despair is knowing that I'm... Seth.
|
Text omitted to reflect a similar sentiment from my own perspective.
Hey guys, remember when my shtick was self-deprecation that made people uncomfortable because of how it was brutally severe it was while patently obvious that it wasn't really much of an exaggeration? Yeah, those were the days. [/carnivore]
I was actually not named after the Seth Thomas of chronometric fame, as I would guess the street you pass was. As best my parents can remember, they saw a place called "Seth's Bakery" on Thomas Street, and since my father's middle name is Thomas they put the two together. It's hard to believe now, but Seth was once an uncommon name in my area. In any given one-month period of my early life in Central Indiana I'd meet just as many people who couldn't pronounce it properly as in the one month I spent in Spain (where the ž sound is used but short e's are very difficult for them*) and the one month in France (where short e's are common but most speakers find the ž sound nigh impossible unless it's used by Arab expats in the phrase "thé ą la menthe").
Most anyone can wear a bowtie, but that requires that you include the people who buy pre-tied ones because they can't learn to make a rather elementary knot. It's that arcane skill that gives me power over the common run of man. [/Euthyphro complex]
When I was working on, I think, my Tenderfoot rank in Boy Scouts I forgot pretty much every knot I was required to know once I had demonstrated them. They never tell you that two of those are actually useful in scenarios where I've found myself, and the implication they instill is that the requirement to use them is an intelligence test to keep out the mentally challenged (a less PC group to discriminate against than the gays and atheists). I've honestly wasted a great number of hours of my life having to either teach myself to tie a timber half-hitch or figure out a functioning (and usually less efficient) alternative to it using nothing but rope. I'd talk about the other knot that haunted me, but I can't even remember what it's called and a two-cent piece of aluminum, attached to ropes where that knot would be necessary, makes life much easier. I just didn't always have such a piece of aluminum on hand.
Knowing how to tie a bow around my neck is atonement for these failings. If you knew that I've forgotten the two alternative necktie knots my father taught me over the conventional one most men can do and reminded me, I'd tell you to do something crass.
Oh, and pipes are for smoking, not for wearing. Assuming you mean a tobacco pipe. I've seen a form of textile adornment called "piping", but I don't wear it all that often because Elizabethan doublets are pretty expensive.
*My flatmates in Madrid suggested that I call myself Tomįs locally because it was the closest philological equivalent to Seth, not even knowing that Thomas is my middle name. Instead I acquiesced to being called "Saate", and I felt really stupid when I figured out on the train leaving the city that I would have at least been "Saathe" if I told them to pretend it's spelled "Sez". That's a dialectal thing that for Spanish only works in central Spain, but shit, that's where I was. In France, the whopping four people who learned my name called me "Set".
Linear Mode
