|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
I can clean a room.
I can pick up a room.
But the two tasks are different. And both are perpetually needed around here.
The only other phrase which occurs to me is "my sisyphusian torture."
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
>the two tasks are different
prezactly, S'eye -- picking up is a quick method of removing the big, obvious bits; and doesn't get the room clean at all, unless you've very recently cleaned it!
-ron o.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
dodyskin: binbageta: that's a new one for me...So, what do you call bin bags then (black plastic bags to line dustbins/trashcans)?well, usually I would say gargage bag, or, as WW mentions, trash bag. only rarely would I call it a liner, though that's what the manufacturers call them...  I know that I never use dustbin which is why I'm always picking up my room, usually trash can, or simply "trash." as in, "throw it in the trash." oh, there's always "wastebasket", too. I probably use that most often, come to think of it.
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
what ete! you just throw stuff in the waste can or trash? you don't stop and think, does this go in the blue can? or the green one? can i trash this, or do i need to recycle it? and into which pile does it go?
we don't have dust bins (we have bins, but they are for storing good stuff.. Costco might have a bin of X, at some sort of wonderful costco price)and since coal is hardly used for residential heating any more, we also, for the most part don't have ash cans (think, correctly ashcans)-
i remember as a child, in ireland, my grandparents 'recycled' too, and had one can for ashes, (they heated with coal) one for trash and one for 'food waste' (that was collected by the pig man)
when my mom was on a rage, and having a general clean up, she threated (not idly!) to put stuff into (or out with) the garbage.
i would call binbags, garbage bags.. the big black ones are 'leaf bags' (you can't burn fallen foliage in most of US)--Leaf bags had special pick ups-they got recylced by the parks department.
for a big clean up, some rent a dumpster (a skip) and some apartments (like mine) have a 'trash chute' that loads the garbage into small dumpsters (on wheels) that are rolled in and out as they fill up.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
what ete! you just throw stuff in the waste can or trash?heh. for that I just say, "throw it in recycling." or "recycling's over there, under the overhead." my recycling bin(!), is under my overhead projector...
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475 |
Oh, I know, we have a bottles bag, a tins bag, a newspaper bag, they all sit in the kerbit. Then there's the small slopbox, with which I feed the worm farm, which is really just a big bin with a tap on it, then there is the Wesley box for clothes and hardware. The swingbin really just has dust in it these days, and the dustbin has been retired in favour of the wheeliebin. Sometimes I think that the whole house has been taken over by rubbish receptacles, when it's meant to be a dody receptacle. 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
What's a kerbit? Why a worm farm? What's a Wesley box (I think I can suss out this last one...)?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
Why a worm farm?--that's one i can answer...a worm farm is an apartment dwellers answer to a compost heap. (unfortunately, it gets too cold in NYC for the worms to winter over) you put your food garbage in, and get worm casting and compost out...
the composted soil+ worm castings is the best stuff you find for your potted plants (so you contain grown tomatoes are rich red and delicous!)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear of troy: You mentioned a chute for trash. One big problem with chutes. The VA hospital where I worked had
chutes for linen to go to laundry. Some asshole efficiency idiot put a stop to washing fecally soiled sheets on the
wards, claiming it could be done more efficiently at the
laundry. A couple years later it was discovered that the
chutes were heavily coated with feces, and emitting huge
clouds of bacteria into the wards every time the chute doors
were opened.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180
member
|
|
member
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180 |
"What's a kerbit?"
Something you put out at the kerb/curb, I bet. With rubbish/garbage/trash in it.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661 |
'Kerbit' is a frog with a stuffy nose.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180
member
|
|
member
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180 |
"The only other phrase which occurs to me is "my sisyphusian torture."
I think Sisyphus must have been a housewife (isn't that "Sisyphean"?)
As for picking up your room, or the impossibility thereof, I remember reading once in a comic strip someone remarking that the local bank had been held up by four armed men. To which his friend replied, "Well, if they all had four arms, I guess it was easy for them to hold up a whole building."
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
And four armed is four warned, so an octopus must be twice as well off.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Yes, of course, it's Sisyphean, but what I like about Sparteye's Sisyphusian is there's the soundof 'effusion' in it, which is a word I would easily relate to the family's things spread about that must disappear in twenty minutes before company arrives.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
The cops shouldn't have any trouble finding the four-armed
men who robbed the bank.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
... a Polish joke, but not a cruel one: Polish guy goes to an English optician. The optician says "Read the top line of the chart to me." Polish guy says "Read it? I know him!" 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475 |
why a worm farm? It's all cobbles and urban deprivation where I live so no grass allowed, it might threaten the integrity of the squalor  . I'm building beds in my yard, when it stops raining/snowing/sleeting/hailing so I'll need compost and fertiliser. Hence worm farm, oh and also all that least possible footprint gubbins Kerbits been covered. Wesley box is for the community furniture warehouse on the end of my street. You can get furniture, books, and clothes there from about 20 pence. They also build basic computers ( I mean really basic) out of junked hardware. Most of the people who work there are unemployed volunteers. I dunno why it's called the Wesley though, most of the staff are punks, not methodists.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
In reply to:
I'll need compost and fertiliser.
of troy nailed that one! Way to go, Ms. Troy!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
> a locally based private company who specialise in waste and recycling.
If they are so wasteful it's hard to see why they got the contract.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Here we have a garbage collection company whose slogan is "Satisfaction guaranteed or double your trash back!"
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
If they are so wasteful
It's not unlike someone spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get a four year contract on a job that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and claiming to be a fiscal conservative.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230 |
But, Fong, if that someone is forbidden by law from spending his own hundreds of millions, and must instead spend other people's money, isn't that true fiscal conservatism?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Are they forbidden from using their own? Seems like Ahnie contributed quite a tidy sum to himself. And is conning others the mark of a fiscal conservative?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230 |
In another forum, someone said, speaking of of The Governator, "Contributions made to an individual's campaign are hard money. A person's campaign is not the same as the person. If he's using his own money he has contributed to his campaign. There's federal limits to how much money one person can donate to any given campaign."
That's what I was basing my assumption on. That, and the fact if someone conserves his own fiscal resources by using those of other people, he is, at least on a personal level, being fiscally conservative. Maybe it should be a matter for a procurator fiscal.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Wbooooooa, boy! He's Austrian, not Scottisch!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
>Here we have a garbage collection company whose slogan is "Satisfaction guaranteed or double your trash back!"
I HAVE heard better pickup lines.
TEd
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
>And four armed is four warned
Nah. Four-armed is malformed.
TEd
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 322
enthusiast
|
|
enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 322 |
I've never heard of picking up a room, but a lesbian couple I know (one of whom hasn't come out to her parents) always talk of having to straighten up the apartment whenever the parents come to visit.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 11
stranger
|
|
stranger
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 11 |
I tidy rooms (up). Spruce them up. Spring clean them, even. Pick up clutter, yes, but pick rooms up? No. Physical impossibility.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
binbags, garbage bags.. the big black ones are 'leaf bags' (you can't burn fallen foliage in most of US
---------------------------------------
You can use the plastic bags for leaves? Heavens! Here they sell huge, heavy paper, biodegradable bags in supermarkets for the autumnal cleanups. If you put leaves out in plastic bags the Public Works men will not take them away.
Haven't smelled that wonderful autumn smell of burning leaves for many years. Ah, memories conjured.......
On another note - is the phrase "picking up" a person a US thing?
If a boy talks to a girl without being introduced in an effort to have her make a date with him or go for a cup of something he is trying to "pick her up."
In my day it was frowned on and telling your Mom a boy tried to "pick you up" was cause for concern! How times change!
Same thing in other places?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
The term may of course have originated in the US, but it's common enough in the UK. I don't think I've heard it described as an Americanism.
On a related note: surely only a fallen woman would need picking up?
Bingley
Bingley
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
One of the greatest lines I ever heard in a bar:
"No, I'm not picking you up, I'm picking you out."
TEd
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 619
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 619 |
Re: Greatest line ever: "I'm not picking you up, I'm picking you out."
In this case, you would say "I've very picky about whom I choose."
|
|
|
|
|
