In the mess we call home, there was an iphone and a starbucks cup and a beanbag with a tired bloodhound pup and there was one teen girl, with wavy curls and two preteens making scenes and a daddy on the computer, a champion “tooter’ and a fight with food – what manners.. how rude! […]
By: Lauren,
on 4/22/2011
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I went to the MoMA and…”saw a coat closet trash and two water fouintains I’m very disapointed I did not see a dinosaur you call your self a museum!” [MoMA]
Cute alert: Goose looks after blind dog [Metro]
Apparently, James Frey will be a guest on the final Oprah [NYPost]
Most Americans can’t name a GOP presidential candidate [CBS]
CHART: Gay marriage opponents now in minority [FiveThirtyEight]
Curious what $110 of Lucky Charms marshmallows looks like? [Reddit]
Some fascinating facts about Mr. Rogers [Tumblr]
This is a video of little boys with incredible dance skills [YouTube]
Last Friday, I challenged all of our readers to write a sestina. I expect many of you discovered just how difficult this form can be. I’d like to highlight the poem I received from Paul Gallear of Wolverhampton, UK. Paul is one of the voices behind the Artsy Does It blog and you can follow him @paulgallear.
I’m a dirty-shirted mess.
My eyes are heavy and thick
With fatigue; I’ve not slept for days
And I’ve never been so tired.
All I need to do is sleep,
Long and deep and numb.
My thoughts are thoughtless, numb;
My skin, greasy; my hair, a mess.
Things change without sleep:
I’ve become listless, thick
And stupid – I’m idiot tired,
Living in a stunned daze.
Time moves from hours to days
And perspective becomes numb.
Beyond tired.
My mind begins to mess
Around. There’s a kind of thick
Which only comes from lack of sleep.
I daydream of sleep.
Waiting – the hours the days
Crawl as though caught in thick
Honey, drowsy, lethargic and numb.
While they are mired in that mess,
I grow more weary, more tired.
One day, I won’t be tired.
The time will come for sleep.
When I am enough of a mess,
And my dignity went days
Ago, I won’t care. I’ll be numb
And sleep will be long and thick.
I hope the night is black and thick
And that even the moon and the stars are tired.
They can make their lights numb
And pale to help me sleep.
The sun will shorten the days
To help me out of this mess
If the night is thick, I’ll sleep.
I’m so tired, it’ll be for days.
Until then, I’m one numb mess.
By: Charles Hodgson,
on 8/21/2008
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If you remember that slapstick comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, you may remember Ollie’s standard line
“another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”
Stan Laurel was the thin one and Oliver Hardy was the fat one.
This might bespeak a larger appetite on the part of Oliver Hardy and if so there might be an etymological explanation for Ollie’s quote.
Around the year 1300 the word mess made its first appearance in writing in English. This date points to a possible source of the word from French since it’s within a few hundred years of the Norman Conquest and it would have taken a few centuries for a French word to have been first picked up and adopted into English, and then eventually to find its way onto paper.
Sure enough the Oxford English Dictionary traces mess back to Anglo-Norman and Old French before that.
But what a hungry Oliver Hardy might have found interesting about a mess of 700 years ago is that it didn’t mean “a spot of trouble” as he might have meant in reprimanding Stanley, at first a mess was a serving of food, a meal.
This connection between the word mess and food is preserved for us in the military where soldiers, sailors and pilots eat in the mess.
As with most French words mess actually goes back to Latin and the OED even takes it back further to Indo-European.
Back those five thousand years or more the Indo-European root mittere meant “to send” and the idea here is that the food was sent to the table. So from Indo-European to Latin the meaning was “to send” but while in Latin a meaning of “food” evolved that was carried into languages including French and Italian.
English adopted the “food” meaning but English was the only language to mutate the meaning again into our current meaning of “disorderly,” “untidy,” “cluttered” or “dirty.”
Here’s how that worked:
After that first appearance in 1300 the word mess changed its meanings in English a little bit. In one case it went from meaning “a meal” to meaning “a single portion.”
In another case it went from meaning “a meal” to meaning a specific kind of meal, something soft, liquid or goopy; porridge or soup would have been called mess by some people as early as 1330.
This is the meaning that matters to us because it is this mixed-up-stew kind of meal that gave rise to a meaning of mess by 1738 as feed for an animal and by 1828 as an unappetizing mixture of foods. Somewhere about this time the undesirable state of “things mixed together” lent the word mess to applications outside of the world of food.
The OED’s first citation for mess meaning “a predicament” or “troubling state of affairs” is from 1812. So by the time Stan and Ollie were getting into messes in the 1930s the principal meaning of “food” had been somewhat obsolete for a century or so.
By: Julie Fortenberry,
on 10/26/2007
By: Paintgranny,
on 4/19/2007
By: stacy,
on 2/24/2007
I tried something new. I set out to watercolor a complete disasterous mess. And it worked.
I piled paint layer on top of paint layer until I had muddy chaos and if that wasn't enough, I crosshatched the smithereens out of the drawing.
Since I didn't care how it turned out, I was able to try new things without worry.
It's pretty fun making a mess.
7" x 10.25"
Watercolor and India Ink on Aqvarelle Arches, Rough, 100% Cotton
Donna,
Thanks for opening up your home to us. It was real and humorous too. It was also comforting to see that you made time for prayer. I enjoyed it and I think Margaret Wise Brown would have too.
Love it! I hope you slept we’ll sweetheart and I love you!
I’m offended.
heehee! Thank you, Mama. I love you, too!
Love you, Pookie Bear!
Thank you, Linda!
cute and very visual!
You always make me smile! And it’s from ear to ear today! Love you!