English Recordings

Native Son (1940) is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s. Bigger was always getting into trouble as a youth, but upon receiving a job at the home of the Daltons, a rich, white family, he experienced a realization of his identity. He thinks he accidentally killed a white woman, runs from the police, rapes and kills his girlfriend and is then caught and tried. "I didn't want to kill", Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill."

Wright gets inside the head of "brute Negro" Bigger, revealing his feelings, thoughts and point of view as he commits crimes and is confronted with racism, violence and debasement. The novel's treatment of Bigger and his motivations conforms to the conventions of literary naturalism.

While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright is sympathetic to the systemic inevitability behind them. The novel is a powerful statement about racial inequality and social injustices so deep that it becomes nearly impossible to determine where societal expectations/conditioning end and free will begins. As Bigger's lawyer points out, there is no escape from this destiny for his client or any other black American, since they are the necessary product of the society that formed them and told them since birth who exactly they were supposed to be. "No American Negro exists," Wright once wrote "who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull." Frantz Fanon discusses this feeling in his 1952 essay L'Experience Vecue du Noir, or "The Fact of Blackness". "In the end," writes Fanon, "Bigger Thomas acts. To put an end to his tension, he acts, he responds to the world's anticipation."

The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline so he could pay off gambling debts.

While I personally hate those loathsome, internet "chic" words like "defriend" or "frenemy", I adhere to the philosophy of descriptivism and cannot demand that words that do not live up to my lofty heights be banished from the tongue.

These words are used by someone, and in the end it doesn't matter who they are. Indeed for the most part they are the psychological plebs and those disposed towards the unwholesome, individualistic demagogy propagated by these new tools of populist furore that are social networking sites. What is the most vomit-inducing however is the shameless fashion in which these words are encouraged and propped up by the media. The dictionaries may be objective in their simple description of the objective reality of what people really say.

However, the slime of the corrupt and putrefacient mass media loves to inundate our minds with these incredibly repetitive and rehashed tripe pieces about these boring, unimaginative and indeed repugnant linguistic abominations. I can't tell you how many times I've read a horridly demagogic piece on some once-substantial-now-inane website like the BBC or the NYT. Alas, such are the methods of linguistic sabotage. But words are words, forced upon you or not, and they should be included in the dictionary, though in my opinion they should under no circumstances be encouraged by grimy demagogues with secret designs hidden under a veneer of populism and inanity.

2049 I'll have a bite to eat now and be back soon.
2050 Why don't you have a bite to eat now - I'll wait for you.
2052 He is on the gravy train.
2053 She is on the gravy train.
2059 He drinks like a fish.
2060 He is a fish out of water.
2061 This case has got me completely baffled.
2062 We need it like a hole in the head.
2065 You can go to town on it.　
2066 What you are saying to me doesn't hold water.
2067 It's water tight.　/　What you are saying is water tight.　
2071 Don't fiddle around.　
2072 Don't fiddle with it.　　
2073 I don't want to play second fiddle.
2075 You'd better not agree with him right away - its too good to be true, I smell a rat.　

2025 Although he worked his ass off, I hear he was fired - I don't know why.
2026 I'll take care of the nitty-gritty for you-don't worry.
2027 The nitty-gritty　of this problem is to take over that company.
2028 Although we had a couple of hiccups, everything went okay.
2029 Oh, I had a hiccup, that's all.　
2030 Be careful, I was once double-crossed by him.　　
2031 He is very naive and often double-crossed by his crooked friends.
2033 You guys are all cut from the same cloth.
2034 Japanese are cut from the same cloth. They lack individuality.
2035 This project must be jinxed - nothing seems to go right.　
2036 That jinxed his company.　
2043 This time, there will be no hitch, I hope.
2047 I'll have a go anyway.　　
2048 No, we wouldn't know until we tackle it-so let's have a go.

2005 You are just a kid. Don't be fresh.
2006 As he has so many kids, he is moonlighting to support them.　
2007 Since he lost his job, he has been working here and there. I hear he is moonlighting also.
2009 He does it in a beautiful fashion.
2010 I don't think he will be popular because he is a fuddy-duddy.
2011 He is not with it.　
2012 According to the scuttlebutt, he is the only one who will be promoted this year.
2017 Don't you know he has quit here for good?
2018 I think I am going to quit this work for good.
2019 I am here for good.
2020 That company is not well known, it's just a run-of-the-mill outfit.
2021 You can't have your cake and eat it too. / What do you want? An egg in your beer?
2022 This type of a job will not be suitable for him because he is a bull in a china shop.　
2023 I am completely at sea when it comes to computers. 　
2024 I haven't told him about this at all, so you caught him cold, didn't you?

1976 You've got to be on the dot.　　
1977 It's 7 o'clock on the dot.
1982 Don't beat around the bush.
1984 I am between the devil and the deep blue sea.　
1986 Umm, it's yummy, I feel like more.
1987 His lecture was boring and I was just doodling to amuse myself.　
1996 That sort of idea isn't my cup of tea.　
1997 Golf isn't my cup of tea.　
1998 You are on the ball.
1999 I told him a white lie.　
2000 Let's play it by ear.
2001 You'd better not dig into this problem further, you might just open up a can of worms.　　
2002 He has ants in his pants.　
2003 If you don't stop it now, it will snowball.

1931 She was caught red-handed while stealing a hand bag at Harrods.　
1932 What I've said is strictly kosher.　
1933 Believe you me, it's strictly kosher.　
1940 It's hard to shake off a summer cold.　
1941 It's very hard for him to shake it off, as he is an alcoholic.　
1943 I got to go to the loo. /　I got to go to the　ｊohn.
1953 He has a lot of dough.　
1954 Keep your nose clean.
1955 Don't get in trouble again, keep your nose clean.　
1963 I was just taking a catnap.
1966 It's a rip-off.　
1972 I want you to put your thinking caps on.　
1974 It's right on the dot.
1975 At 6 o'clock on the dot.　Larry arrived at 6:00 on the dot.

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”

4. Al Gore has always been animated.

5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.

10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.

14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.

15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.

17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.

18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.

21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.

22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.

23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.

24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.

25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.

30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.

31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.

32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.

33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.

35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.

36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.

37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”

38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.

40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.

41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.

43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.

44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.

45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.

46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.

48. Someone has always gotten married in space.

49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.

50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

51. Food has always been irradiated.

52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.

53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?

54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.

55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.

57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.

58. Beethoven has always been a dog.

59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.

60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.

61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.

62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.

63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.

64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.

67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.

68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.

69. The Post Office has always been going broke.

70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.

71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.

74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel.

75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.

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