Anything And Everything @kellyjeanbean - Tumblr Blog

I somehow hit the jackpot and grew up being raised by a mother who was actually good and liked me (while she was poor and disabled nonetheless! Big Fascism is always saying poor and disabled single mothers who aren't evil can't exist, get #owned lol), and that actually made me extremely anti-adult from a very young age. every single friend I ever made from ages seven to nineteen would constantly tell me crazy stories about what regularly went down in the penal institutions that passed for their homes, and that was all considered normal and fine and the gold standard for what nice suburban families were meant to be, meanwhile if I said something like "my mum lets me read any book I want and all movies and tv are allowed as long as we watch them together" then I'd get un-invited from every birthday party because I was deemed a corrupting influence (which, to be fair, I was, because I would spend a lot of time convincing my friends that if their parents' rules sucked and were unfair then it was okay to lie to get around them). and whaddya know I'm twenty-four and still get on really well with my mother and talk to her as much as I can and this is the case for literally no one else I know.

caecilius-est-pater

I was searching the Latin/Greek section of a used bookstore for some ~aesthetic~ antique Latin books, and I came across this beautiful 1889 tome:

This is going to look great on my “look at me I’m a pretentious twat” bookshelf.

But then… the first few sentences read:

“In 1875 delegates of the Oxford University Press proposed to me that I should undertake the compilation of a new Latin-English Lexicon, of something the same compass as the Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott. I acceded to the proposal in the expectation, for which I had at the time what appeared to be good grounds, that I should obtain adequate assistance in the work. My hopes were, however, disappointed.”

Ouch.

He goes on to detail how he spent 12 years working on A all by himself. Then the university asked him to publish what he had, so he threw together the rest of the book, clearly caring less and less the further he got in the alphabet - the entire Q section has four entries - and published… this.

Obviously this is going straight onto my pretentious twat shelf as a goofy conversation starter, but it is interesting and potentially useful if obscure Latin words are your thing. (Did you know “ramen” is a hapax legomenon meaning “a small chip or shaving”?)

So if you ever come across a really obscure Latin word or name that you can’t find anywhere, hmu… but only if it starts with A.

caecilius-est-pater

idk who’s responsible for this suddenly getting hundreds of notes overnight months after it was posted, but I’m glad you guys are enjoying it. Makes me feel less like my dad was right to go “you’re spending 25 quid on that?”

Anyway, who wants to see a photo of the place I bought it, which is pretty much the most perfect bookstore on the planet?

Spiral staircase? Book loft? Stained glass windows? Obviously a repurposed church? Book stacks like a set out of Harry Potter? A pile of actual literal scrolls? A wood-burning stove? OK, that one is maybe not so great since it’s in Inverness aka the cold-ass Scottish highlands, but lack of central heating is a sacrifice I’m very willing to make.

caecilius-est-pater

Since so many people in the comments and tags are asking:

1. The book is Contributions to Latin Lexicography by Henry Nettleship. I don’t know where you can get a physical copy, but if you just want to read it there’s a scan available online.

2. The four words starting with Q are quaestuarius, qualitas, qualitativus, and quattuorvir.

momentarymood

charlesdclimer

Telephoto Magic!

misterlemonztenth

Misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive

dreamstars

pi-slices

Inconvenient.

r04ches

am i even mentally ill or am i just living in some kind of infinite torture chamber that would make anyone like this

stuckinapril

I think part of getting better is complete ego death. Like you’re not above setting a timer for 5 minutes and focusing on a task. You’re not above doing a very simple 3 minute workout to start. You’re not above reading for 10 minutes a day when you first get out of your reading slump, even if you used to read for hours. You’re not above starting slow and then building up to where you want to be/where you once were. What you are above is total inertia. Doing something really is better than doing nothing. Radically accept where you are, radically accept your limits, and go from there. Don’t let your ego get in the way.

trashcangimmick

cinnamnt

i can’t stop thinking about this soulless husk i saw at a thrift market today. like okay um Hi

3000s

imo in the attempt to like normalize being an adult with "childish" hobbies a lot of people went backwards by making it into a more socially acceptable "inner child healing" thing to justify it rather than just acknowledging that its not that weird for adults to play with toys or collect plushies or whatever

3000s

i'm a 27 year old man and my room looks like this, don't even worry about it

theonion

karcatgirl-vantas

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

skluug

this is what ancient greek philosophy is like

ace-disgrace-on-the-case

False! “Sightly” is a positive word, so the default way for things to work is good as well.

The true most ordinary object is beautiful, horrible sounding, very smelly, intangible, and delicious.

I still don’t think it matches anything in existence but to truly understand a thing one must know its true nature.

professionalchaoticdumbass

"touchy" is also a word! however it's mostly used for things that aren't objects, like subjects of conversation. it either means "oversensitive and irritable" or "requires careful handling/wording, delicate"

i think the second one works well for our hypothetical object. so we can use that.

therefore, the Default Object is:

beautiful

makes a horrendous sound

smells absolutely awful

is very fragile

tastes delicious

and i still cannot think of anything that matches this