+ Reply to Thread
Page 3 of 3
FirstFirst 1 2 3
Results 21 to 28 of 28

Thread: Mr. Oobir's Vocab Word, History Text, or Royalty-Free Music Track of the Day

  1. #21
    Horripilation (n.): a bristling of the hair on the skin from cold, fear, etc.; gooseflesh.

    "Roger experienced horripilation while standing in a back alley on a cold winter night."

  2. #22
    Today's royalty-free music track: Walkabout

    http://www.audionetwork.com/browse/m...alkabout_54917

    Composer: Terry Devine-King

    Search words used to discover this track: quirky jazz vocals
    Other notable tracks discovered with these key words include Crazy Like Me, mid-tempo Louis Jordan swing by way of Looney Tunes, and Funk Factor, an odd Muzak funk track that sounds like it would play in the background of a Duck Dynasty/Pawn Stars-type show.

    My comments: When I think of royalty-free music, tracks like this are what come to mind. Its tone is set immediately and is maintained throughout, but it never demands your attention in the way of the previous RFMTofD, Lock Down. This is made to play in the background while someone is speaking, and that's fine. It's pleasingly melodramatic, which is sold well by the "whistling in the graveyard" hook.

    Possible uses: background of a humorous podcast ad reading; a scene in a TV show in which a character is going over the litany of pranks they have set up for their Halloween party; montage of people in poorly-made costumes.

    Other links/videos:
    This track is not available on a compilation album, as far as I can tell.

  3. #23
    Glenn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    The Buxtons are not thieves.
    Posts
    2,895
    Blog Entries
    2
    These are always so entertaining. You've got a gift.
    Find a new slant.

  4. #24
    Glenn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    The Buxtons are not thieves.
    Posts
    2,895
    Blog Entries
    2
    Just saw the new avatar. Oh my!
    Find a new slant.

  5. #25
    A Great Name Timone's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Pescara, Italy
    Posts
    66,240
    Blog Entries
    19
    So ballin, that av.

  6. #26
    Confession: I've never actually used Uber

  7. #27
    ON THIS DAY IN- okay, this one doesn't have a date attached to it. This comes from volume 4 of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki. Published between 1918 and 1920, this five-volume work is one of the cornerstone texts of sociology and immigration studies. It is notable for its use hundreds of newspaper articles and personal letters in showing how Polish society was constructed, destroyed, and rebuilt, such as these excerpts from a letter written by an anonymous Galician priest. (pages 103-111)

    * * *

    The Catholic confession, according to the intention of the Church, is not only a disclosure of sins for the sake of remittance, but also a means of directing the believers, regulating their everyday life according to the Christian principles as they are exposed by the Catholic Church. … The activity of the confessor concerns: sensual life, family [and community] life (relation of husband and wife, education of children), economic life (questions of expenses, wages paid to servants, conditions of work, etc.), … [etc.]

    Sensual life. Sexual questions are indubitably those most frequently raised during confession. … The regulation of sexual relations between husband and wife is a field of enormous influence of the priest. … The problem of avoiding a new increase of the family steps more and more frequently over the peasants' thresholds. And the priest must more and more frequently answer the questions of women, more scrupulous than men, whether washing the vagina after coitus or using medicines is a sin or not. He must teach that conjugal onanism, use of pills, condoms, washing of the vagina are immoral, sinful, contrary to nature. In more serious cases, he must teach further what can be done with pure conscience (have relations only at a determined time).

    Let us take some examples (I take them here merely from the standpoint of the church).

    1. A woman complains that children emaciate her and that a physician told her that one more childbirth will kill her. But the husband does not even want to listen about stopping the sexual relation and orders her to take some pills into the vagina before the coitus. She had doubts for a long time and finally went to the priest for advice. … She does not want to die, but she neither can nor will refuse her husband. The priest stands before an alternative. If he says that it is a sin, the woman in spite of all will continue to act in this way and if he says that it is not a sin, he will act against the moral law and his duties.

    First of all, the priest should question the decision of the physician and send her to another. … Then–whether her husband considers it sinless. If he does, then the priest must tell the woman not to touch this question with her husband from the moral viewpoint, but to try to influence him so as to make him perform their relation in a natural way. … Then he must tell the woman to reject all fears, to try to strengthen herself as much as possible, and to have the conjugal relation only at the time when the possibility of fecundation is the smallest (that is, during the period of 10-14 days between one menstruation and another, avoiding sexual relation a week before and a week after the menses), although even this is not an absolute security. … The result is a normal life of husband and wife and more children. The physicians exaggerate very frequently or follow the wish of the woman in their decisions. The influence of religion, the belief in Providence often plays a great rôle in dispelling the fear of childbirth. …

    Sometime the man has scruples as to whether he can have relations during pregnancy. Particularly among the peasants there is a very strong sexual respect for a pregnant woman. The priest must teach him that it is better to abstain, particularly during the first two months, but if for the man there is periculum incontinentiæ he can, but carefully. …

    [My notes: Wow, birth control really sucked in early-20th-century Poland. About what you would expect from a rural Catholic society at the time, though.]

    * * *

    System of treatment of sexual deviations. … As far as my personal experience in the confessional has taught me, masturbation is a very rare kind of sexual deviation among peasants, particularly in the country. In towns it happens more frequently. … There is a greater tendency to a normal satisfaction of the sexual instinct, particularly among boys, or to bestialism. The sexual intercourse of animals is usually a stimulus to analogous plays of boys in the period of puberty with girls below ten years of age. These offences are habitual in the poorer class of peasants, daily workers, servants, shepherds (mainly), youth as well as older people. Bestialism is relatively rather frequent among the country population. … Bestialism happens more frequently in the period of puberty (2%-3%) and then again toward the end of sexual life (1%) than in the period of maturity and happens almost exclusively among men, very seldom among women. … Pederasty is very rare among our peasants; it happens almost only among young people of small towns and only in the form of experiments. As least I have never observed it as a habitual vice. Relatively more frequent is Lesbian love among girls, but also only in towns and between servants living together. This manifestation is connected very frequently with a false devotion … and limits itself to very unelaborate means. …

    Examples: Masturbation. A boy, son of a poor farmer, 14 years old, low mental and physical development, father a drunkard. The boy pastures the cattle of the priest. He masturbates when he is in the forest or the field, also in the stables, sometimes as much as three times a day. He thinks continually about it; it is his only amusement and distraction during the long hours of solitude. The priest wants to save him, for this state is even physically dangerous. He orders him to search for other work to learn a handicraft [Ed.: lol], and helps him to get an apprenticeship with a carpenter, in order … to take him from the sphere of dreams into that of activity. The boy scarcely knows how to read, so the priest teaches him, gives him books with description of the world. He recommends also frequent confession with the same priest, the rosary, and company of strong and merry boys. The boy had a weak will but was easily influenced. He was frightened by the physical consequences of his vice and reformed. In the beginning he relapsed, but more and more seldom. Gradually there began to awaken in him some interest in nature, astronomy, finally in girls, which was at first rater ideal. [Ed.: Why only at first?] Within two years the boy was reformed thanks to the continual ethical and intellectual leadership of the priest. He began to grow to be a healthy and strong boy. …

    A woman, married, over 40 years old. Her husband travelled, trading in pigs, and she could not hold out and satisfied herself, sometimes more than once during the night. She knew that it was bad but could not control herself. The priest ordered her to take her grown-up daughter to bed with her these nights to make her control herself. This helped almost always.

    Lesbian love. A girl about 35 years old lives with her younger sister, a widow who cannot cease mourning about her dead husband. Both are very religious, belong to church-fraternities and do much good, although they are poor themselves (they have a shop in the village and 2 morgs [Ed.: approximately 3-5 acres of land]); they sew dresses for poorer people and for children, etc. The sisters love each other very much and for nothing in the world would they part. They have lived so together for four years. There is only one “but”; they love each other so much that they kiss each other and touch each other everywhere, from time to time even very much, “as it ought not to be.” A severe reprimand by the confessor and an explanation provoke only spasmodic crying. … When one tries to keep far, the other approaches. Formerly they did not think that it was a sin. One of them scarcely knows how to write and count, the other 9the widows] has not even this learning. They are a farmer's [peasant's] daughters. Later the maid went to a convent, the widow married for the second time and their relation was interrupted. …

    [My notes: TMI, anonymous priest.]

    * * *

    The most frequent cases which the confessor must decide are various familial affairs which are either too small or too intimate to carry to the court–“ordinary peasant sins,” as once a witty peasant defined them. …

    A profound mistrust and searching for secret motives of behavior of another person, often ascribing this behavior to “hidden forces,” characterize our peasant. Moreover, the lack of wider horizons of interest directs his mind to occultism on the one hand, to an excessive interest in the affairs of neighbors on the other hand. Country gossip, which all the peasant women without exception confess and to which even children show a marked tendency, is precisely a mixture of occultisic beliefs and of criticism of the behavior of neighbors and relatives. Gossip gives birth to slandering, usually called “blackening,” that is, spreading of invidious news about neighbors. The background of blackening is either envy … or hate, frequently caused by trifling incidents–a petty vanity concerning claims on a church-bench, priority in a fraternity or in the community; quarrels of children; refusal to unite two families by wedlock–in a word, hate brought about by considerations of social position.

    The use of occult forces is frequently given as a reason of success. There is not any lack either of associations with the devil, charms, etc. A peasant who has given offence to another family must be beforehand prepared for this kind of accusations. In the larger family they are particularly frequent. The motive is very frequently familial diplomacy whose end is material profit–a succession, etc. So again and always–material profit. … By what means profits can be reached seems to be an indifferent matter. It is always possible to confess, but it is not always possible to profit–this is the life-theory of the peasant, half-cynic (unconsciously), half Christian, … full of generous impulses but also of cold calcuation. …

    [My notes: If you told me this was written about 16th-century Germany or Italy I'd believe you. These folk attitudes concerning religious magic were one factor among many that gave rise to the witch hunts in early modern Europe. It took a long time for learned and popular Christianity to start resembling one another, and even then old folk beliefs lived on in remote rural locales.]

  8. #28
    A Great Name Timone's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Pescara, Italy
    Posts
    66,240
    Blog Entries
    19
    Bump!

+ Reply to Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts