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The "(Fill in the Blank) Has Died" Thread


John

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57 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Anyone who cares, even remotely, about the kind of freedoms that we currently enjoy, should be extremely afraid about what will happen, once Charlie boy has his feet under the table.

 

Knowing almost nothing about the English monarchy but having an understanding that it's a mostly ceremonial position (with a few significant left overs) what exactly will he do / be able to do?

 

Also: He already has his feet under the table, right? (We are talking about Charles III, right?)

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6 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

 

I was away when the news broke and I don't watch terrestrial TV (or very rarely) so I was out and about for the initial parts of the mourning period, and the mass comedy cancellations don't really bother me. I live on YouTube and Spotify these days.

 

I fall into the 'it's sad, but life goes on' category. It's the end of an era, and someone has died, but... it was going to happen one day and we all get on with our lives. In a sense I'm neutral on the monarchy - they bring economical benefits from tourism, etc, but I don't really care about them beyond that.


Yeah ... I neither hate or love them, they're just ... sort of THERE. 

I get how the Queen's passing is sad for the family, and a big change generally due to the length of her reign ... but at the end of the day, she was 96 and died in a comfortable-as-possible situation with her family by her bedside. Something denied to many families during Covid. 

Suspect we're in for the dullest Bank Holiday ever on the funeral day next Monday, seeing as pretty much everything seems to be closing for it.         

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It feels like only a couple of months since I saw this online conversation with Godard, but apparently it was over a year ago. In any case, it was good to know he was still around and still working, even though I'm not a huge fan of his films in general. It's quite a shock to learn that he's dead, and that, as a result, none of the major directors of the French New Wave are around any more. I think my feelings are similar to those that a lot of other people have been reporting in response to the death of Elizabeth Windsor.

 

Coincidentally, Alain Tanner (another Swiss film-maker of the same generation) died a couple of days ago.

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49 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

 

I wonder if Sunday will be like Christmas Eve where everyone panics and decides they need 50 pints of milk because the supermarkets will be closed an entire day.

And loo roll. Everyone will worry about needing a poo mid funeral and not having enough with which to wipe…

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3 hours ago, Sweeping Strings said:

Suspect we're in for the dullest Bank Holiday ever on the funeral day next Monday, seeing as pretty much everything seems to be closing for it.  

I, for one, will be watching the funeral. It seems the right thing to do. I am not a staunch royalist, but Liz's death has affected me in ways that I didn't think it would. I just seems proper to pay last respects to the monarch who has been there throughout my entire life...even if it is over the ether.

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11 hours ago, Bespin said:

It's not so about Monarchy, it's about a respectful political figure of the past 70 years. We'll never see that again.

Now, there's an irony for ya.

Because she was the Queen, she had to be apolitical. Despite that (or maybe even because of it), she played a great part in shaping the political landscape of the UK and overseas nations.

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19 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

They've announced the route for queuing along the Thames to see her coffin over the next few days. The logistics look an absolute nightmare for all involved.


The queue is now reckoned to be 10 miles long. People will be waiting for many, many hours to file past.  

Unfathomable to me, but each to their own. 

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12 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

There are vast swaths of weirdos that have like a queue fetish or something.  They just love to freakin' queue up!

 

 

We do love a good queue do us Brits.  In fact we invented the queue, refined and perfected it over many centuries and still lead the world in this ancient and noble art.  Most of the people in the queue to file past HM The Queen probably do not even know what they are queueing up for, but considered it too good an opportunity to miss when they spied a column of people snaking through central London.

 

Queue jumping in the United Kingdom remains one of the few offences for which capital punishment is the ultimate sanction available (used only when loud tutting and eye rolling does not have the desired effect).

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For most of the differences between British and American English, I'm perfectly fine with which word we ended up with (I'm happy to not use the word 'lorry' in daily conversation), but I've always regretted that generally we use the word "line" instead of the much more satisfying "queue" here.

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Family or friends, yes, I would stand in line, and have done so. 

 

But this is the most famous death in England since Diana. Most are probably just standing in line so they can say they were part of it. 

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3 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

There is a live stream of those coming to pay their respects. It's actually quite mesmerising in its way, plus you get a 20 minutely changing of the guards type ceremony.

 

Totally unrelated, my partner and I used to have a running joke about setting up a theme park called Queuing World. No rides, just queues. If you paid extra, they'd move you to the back of the queue so you get to wait even longer. I think it would make a fortune...

That reminds me of a cartoon I saw recently. Two queues, one very long and one very short one, in front of two counters. The sign above the counter with the short queue said "For those who have time" and the sign above the counter with the very very long queue said, "For those, who don't have time".

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33 minutes ago, Demodex said:

It sounds ridiculous to me to stand in line to see a coffin. Is it at least open casket?

 

Why people are intrigued by this family I'll never understand. 

Well agreed on the latter but guess some people like the distraction or corgis. Alas not an open coffin. Definitely think they should have gone full Lenin. I want to be in a glass box but with my hands and face pressed up against the glass so it looks like I’m trying to escape while I’m lying in state. 

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2 minutes ago, Positivatee said:

 

And most are silent. QUEUEING = Q-ING

We like to build redundancy into our words, just in case some of the letters go missing or fail to operate, the word can still be used... ;-)

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I see Late Night Mash is not due to go out on Dave tonight. Doesn't bode well for tomorrow night's HIGNFY (for the second week in a row) or (also tomorrow night) the return of Mock The Week for its final series :sarcasm:

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On 14/09/2022 at 11:57 PM, Naïve Old Fart said:

Fun fact: the word "queueing" contains the most consecutive vowels, in a single English-language word.

 

Likewise, "queue" is I suppose the longest single-syllable word? Certainly the longest one that could just as well be spelled with a single letter.

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1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Likewise, "queue" is I suppose the longest single-syllable word?


Nah, I can think of lots with six letters and some with seven; e.g., “through” and “drought”. Oh, “droughts” gets us to eight. Anyone have a nine?

 

Edit: Perhaps one could rightly say that, of all single-syllable words, “queue” has the longest string of consecutive vowels?

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