It seems to me that it goes back to Tom Sawyer--by Mark Twain/Samuel Clemons--talking Huck into white-warshin' a picket fence, and way, way before that. Humans are foolish, generally.
I would agree with that premise. But Twain was using that as an example of the rascally nature of Tom Sawyer, not as a trait to be emulated and admired. They We are indeed.
But in the whole, ain't We for the most part willing to white-wash our own beliefs? One example: the pre and post Civil War slavery South...and now what the Hell is a gonin' on? I believe you need to look deeper into Twain's meaning. Y.M.O.S. Worfie
First world problem of the day. Verizon’s streaming has made a chance so the button on the remote that looks like it returns to the previous screen now rewinds the stream ten minutes. ...With no button that does the reverse. Why? Who thought the button that looks just like Internet back buttons should take two minutes at max fast forward to reverse?
Twain isn't doing that at all. He just using whitewashing as an odious chore inflicted as a punishment on a Saturday. The entire incident is about a straight up con in which Sawyer trades baubles for the "privilege" of doing the whitewashing and then later using those baubles to earn a Bible handed out for memorizing passages (which Sawyer never memorized.) It isn't about covering up, it's about Sawyer being rascally enough to cheat to win. Or as Freud might say, "Sometimes a whitewashed fence is just a whitewashed fence." And FWIW, the metaphor of whitewashing being a coverup 1) predates Twain and 2) comes from the activity itself.
With respect, I believe you should look deeper into Twain/Clemons personal Civil War era history, his overall writing and innuendo/metaphors. As to Freud, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
With respect, perhaps you should try reading the book. (Since The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is in the public domain, you can read the relevant chapter here.) Oh, and it's Clemens not Clemons. Meaning that sometimes there is no deeper symbolic meaning to an object in a story. But I suspect you know that...
There are differing interpretations of that chapter as well you may know. My fat fingers sometimes mess up. There many times are, but I suspect you know that.
Prove it. Link to a scholarly one that claims that Twain is using "whitewash" to mean covering something up in that book.
I respectfully suggest that this discussion does not belong here. I was not looking to pick a fight, but If you wish to go further pm me.
Kind of like "If it goes wrong we stop responding to your emails so we can tell our bosses that we haven't heard any complaints." I've even had vendors emailing me and saying "hey I got your email with the invite, but I already submitted my request to join up a week ago, I don't know what the problem is." Yeah, I know what the problem is...
Was supposed to get a package yesterday. Tracking said it was out for delivery but it never arrived. Then tracking had a big red warning about INSUFFICIENT ADDRESS. I tried calling the local post office yesterday and today to intercept the package before they returned it but no one ever answered the phone. And then it gets delivered today. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the address label from Target. So what happened? Were they just too lazy yesterday? Did they forget about it? Did it end up on the wrong truck?
I've had Amazon packages say it's been delivered (well left behind x) checked x not there. Only delivered to the wrong house, which could be perhaps be understandable if the house was a number and they transposed the numbers when reading it but with a house name it's a part harder. Then another time with another Amazon package couldn't find house, if only the driver had asked at the Post Office which at the time was like 4 house down (perhaps 50 yards away) so it would have the same postcode .
More likely a certain former administration's appointed, Post Master General throwing more sand into the "gears".
My frustration of the weekend (very much a first world problem though) is that on Friday night, itunes/ipod decided no longer to sync It ended up wiping my ipod, so uninstalled and reinstalled everything, but the sync still ain't working. Tried Mediamonkey instead, but that goes to an exception error half way through (Puts stuff on the ipod - but not in a readable manner in the meantime). Haven't added up how many hours have been wasted so far. Might try foobar, but it's been a longtime since I used that and went back to itunes for some reason
I've already told this story in a couple of threads, so if you've already read it, feel free to skip this first paragraph. Over the last month or so I've started going on bike rides, and one neighborhood I go through has a lot of horses, this is the west after all, so that's not uncommon, and I've had a couple run in with a couple of ladies riding horses, and both times one of them started yelling at me not to go behind the horses the moment I got near them. The second time was especially annoying, since I was about 20 feet behind them, on the other side of the street, and in the process of slowing down. So this got me wondering, has anybody else around here had run ins with unpleasant people like her?
^Perhaps she is traumatized by having gotten thrown before? The prob with coming from behind a horse is that instinct tells them that anything approaching noislessly from behind is a predator. Understandably, that makes them nervous. Perhaps you could meet the lady off her horse and ask her for recommendations. I suspect she's only rude because she's scared. And her nervousness feeds back to the horse so that both get all the more insecure. Perfect conditions for the next accident. @Random_Spock : try user forums for that particular brand of phone. They often offer very good advice and know tricks not given away in the manual. @auntiehill : I had a similar prob with my computer glasses and it turned out that the frame had accidentially gotten slightly bent when they inserted the lenses. A hot flame and 2 seconds work and my vision was perfect No nausea anymore. My argh of the day: the water in my town is undrinkable once again. For the last 2 years they've been trying to locate the source of the nasty bacteria that keep settling in the water supply. Every time they give the all clear it takes only a week or two until the re-infection starts. There appear to be multiple leaks in the system. It's getting really annoying as unfortunately my guts react faster than any bacteria test.
Nah, at this point I just go around outside the neighborhood and go back into it once I'm past them. I'm sorry, but if her and/or the horse can't handle people going past them, then they shouldn't be riding out on a public street. They're luck I at least try to be careful and polite, there are a lot of assholes who would just fly by with no warning. I talked to another horseback rider on Saturday, and she said she's had that problem. Pretty much everybody else I've talked to about it seems to agree that she's probably just an unpleasant person. I asked the other horseback rider about how to pass riders, and she said all I have to do is let them know I'm going. I went past a bigger group of riders the after that and asked to pass, and they let go by with no problem. A few years back we got some nasty brain effecting amoeba that you usually only see in deep wells in Africa in our water. Our water comes from a small, private company, so luckily it didn't affect to many people. We showered carefully, and drank bottled water until they got it out.
eeks, those are nasty. We occasionally have them in our streams and springs but fortunately they are rather rare and none are in our ground water. Argh today: the janitor of the office next door got a new lawn mower truck which apparently has an aeroplane motor. I just took a reading: at a distance of 60 yards and with closed windows the noise level at my desk is 76 db. My industrial-strength ear protectors reduce that to 40 db but it's still extremely annoying. Particularly since he perfected his method to take more than 2 hours to cut down 200 square yards of grass. I am soooo tempted to sabotage the vehicle.