mutantghostgirl

[mutantghostgirl]

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David Lynch on directing with kindness. 

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David Lynch on directing with kindness. 

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Magneto was Right, X-Men: The Last Stand

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Just your local dice goblin

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Wolf pup howling for the first time

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Fourth in a series I of comics about protesting safety tips I made with @this.is.ysabel . This one is about the dangers of police surveillance and how to avoid it if possible. Keep being safe when you go out. Don’t get snatched!

[mutantghostgirl]

Wet book rescue

Valuable information if some of your prized books were affected by recent flooding. The video even shows you what to do if you can’t dry the book out right away. 

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Women are meant to be surrounded in flowers and soft fabrics

[mutantghostgirl]

I always see the dog choking info on here, so here’s what to do if a kitty is choking

Save your kitties, we all know they eat everything anyway. 

http://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Choking-Cat

http://www.wikihow.com/Perform-CPR-on-a-Cat

[mutantghostgirl]

dead metaphors are really interesting honestly and specifically i’m interested in when they become malapropisms

like, the concept being, people are familiar with the phrase and what people use it to mean metaphorically, but it’s not common knowledge anymore what the metaphor was in literal reference to. people still say “toe the line” but don’t necessarily conjure up the image of people standing at the starting line of a race, forbidden from crossing over it. people still say “the cat is out of the bag” without necessarily knowing it’s a sailors’ expression referring to a whip being brought out for punishment. some metaphors are so dead we don’t even know where they come from; like, there are ideas about what “by hook or by crook” references, but no one is entirely sure. nobody knows what the whole nine yards are.

and then you throw in a malaprop or a mondegreen or two, where because people don’t know what the actual words of the expression refer to, they’re liable to replace them with similar sounding words (see “lack toast and tolerant”). so we can literally go from a phrase referencing a common, everyday part of life to a set of unfixed, contextless sounds with a completely different meaning. that’s fascinating. what an interesting piece of the way language and culture are living, changing, coevolving things.

maybe part of the reason we can’t figure out where some phrases come from is that over time the words themselves have changed! one of the theories about “the whole nine yards” is that it’s a variant of “the whole ball of wax,” which some people further theorize was originally “the whole bailiwick,” meaning just “the whole area”! the addition of “nine yards” might be related to “dressed to the nines,” which might reference the fucking Greek muses! language is so weird and cool! (and I only know any idioms in two languages!)

the point is. I just came across the words “nip it in the butt” in a piece of published, professional fiction, and now I can’t stop giggling.