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If you weigh yourself in stone . . .

ritaxis: (hat)
Wednesday, February 26th, 2014 09:53 am
Do people who reckon their weight in stone have scales that report in stone? Or do they do the kind of strange arithmetic to convert to stone from pounds or kilograms?

I shouldn't be bothered by stone because I'm stuck with pounds, which is almost as ridiculous. I mean, everybody uses pounds here except when they don't, so I have to go out of my way to think about things in metric. I do, actually, play a sort of game with myself where I convert things when I don't need to, but it's not enough to make it easy when the world around me is stuck in a pre-revolutionary (French) mode.
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A note to the Russians

ritaxis: (Default)
Saturday, October 15th, 2011 02:04 pm
If you are one of the two or three or four Russians who have lately friended my journal though we appear to have no interests or friends in common, would you mind commenting here or sending me a private message explaining why?

Clearly, the internet is a free country, and there's no harm in friending someone randomly, but it piques my interest and I would loive to know what's up.
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I just seem to be thickheaded these days.

ritaxis: (Default)
Saturday, June 18th, 2011 02:59 am
Reading an old thread at Digital Tradition, I stumbled across the claim that the following lyrics are racist:

COTTON-EYED JOE

Way back yonder a long time ago
Daddy had a man called cotton-eyed joe
Blew into town on a travelin' show
Nobody danced like the Cotton eyed Joe.

CHORUS:
Cotton-eyed Joe, Cotton-eyed Joe
where did you come from?
Where did you go?
Where did you come from?
Where did you go?
Where did you come from Cotton-eyed Joe?

Mama's at the window
Mama's at the door
She can't see nothin' but the Cotton-eyed Joe

Daddy held the fiddle,
held the bow
He beat the hell out of Cotton-eyed Joe

Made himself a fiddle,
Made himself a bow
Made a little tune called the Cotton-Eyed Joe

Hadn't oughta been
For Cotton-eyed Joe
I'da been married some forty years ago.

Whenever there's a dance
All the women want to go
And they all want to dance with Cotton-Eyed Joe

Daddy won't say
But I think he know
Whatever happened to Cotton-eyed Joe !


I don't see it.  Nobody in the thread challenged this claim, and nowit is two years old so I'm certainly not going to.  The lyrics "hadn't oughta been" are certainly wrong, by the way: they ought to be "[If it]had not been for Cotton-eyed Joe" which is how they're sung and written elsewhere.  This version is a bit different from whichever version lives so deep in my memory that I don't remember where it came from, and also a bit different from the three or so other versions I've noticed in my life: I'm not complaining about that.  It is interesting that some versions seem to be the voice of a woman wronged by Cotton-Eyed Joe and some seem to be the voice of a man whose sweetie dumped him for Cotton-Eyed Joe.  That point of view switch happens sometimes in these songs.

Anyway, if you can tell me what's racist about this version f this song, I'd be grateful.  Of maybe just more uncomfortable.  I don't know.




 
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