Grizzly English Questions (English Questions Part 2)

[jebreject]

chow some nom noms hurrrrr

[hannah]

A Yiddish Q—

what does the letter say, if anything, at the 1:49 mark in this Merrie Melodies cartoon? 

Here is a screen grab of the missive in question:

[coldforge]

'Shabes, nayntsnter may

shik mir [fenf] kinder
[mrm] gintsberg'

[fenf] is my best guess. Properly it would be written פֿענף, but it's more likely than the actual transliteration of פענפ, 'fenp', which is definitely not a word. 'fenf' isn't a word either, but it's much more likely a mispelled rendition of 'finf', 'five'. [mrm] is also a guess—it's definitely loshn koydesh, that is, of hebrew/aramaic origin, because it's got no vowels in it. But I don't recognize the word [mrm]. The first מ is kind of ugly and could be a בז or גז, but I'm gonna guess it's a mispelling of מירם, 'Miryem'. Best guess is whoever wrote that was not fully literate in either Yiddish or Hebrew—possibly they learned Yiddish in the Soviet Union, whose official orthography dispensed with final characters, but in proper Soviet orthography the first word on the last line would be spelled with vowels—מיריעמ, in the case of 'Miryem'.

'Saturday, 19th May
Send me five children
Miriam Ginsberg'

[coldforge]

Watching the cartoon now. For curiosity's sake, the dialogue between the Jewish baby and the old man is thus:
'How are you?'
'Eh, I make a living.'

[hannah]

Excellent, thank you! My curiosity has been satisfied and no cats were harmed in the process.

[Ignatius]

Should we harm some cats to compensate?

[hannah]

With kindness you may kill them only.

I really want to answer you with a cartoon, too, so here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82PAev6UeOI

Relevant portion a little over two minutes in. But start from the beginning and marvel at the Fleischer stereo-optical tabletop process in action.

[G.C.R]

I'm having trouble with a description, every way I do it comes out vaguely disparaging, and I am meaning it as praise.

Context: I am writing programme notes for an exhibition my friend is curating of self-published comics and zines, all by Wellington children and teenagers. One girl has done several zines that feel like they are designed to appeal to a certain sort of internet/nerd community, in that they are all either fan art, descriptions and drawings of fictional animals (my favourite, a tall creature in a little hat that is "Good at: Falling over, and Art."), or stats about cats she knows.
My problem is that I'm not sure how to say her work feels tumblr-y or memetacular without using those sorts of terms. For a start they sound stupid, and secondly, I think this kid's awareness of what appeals to those sorts of community interests is really awesome in its precociousness. What do you call that sort of savviness to what nerds like?

[Ignatius]

I know it's not helpful, but I don't think you'll be able to sum it up in a word.

[G.C.R]

No, I didn't think I could. I'll find something that works, it was just driving me crazy earlier.

[fishjim]

Iggy's right, you'll probably need a sentence or two. It's hard to describe that world without using jargon.

Reminds me of a classic piece from the early web days, "Sex and the Single URL". Curious if anyone thinks it's still funny, because so much of it depends on the techno jargon of the mid-to-late 90s.

[G.C.R]

That is pretty hilarious. I especially like the conversation tips, they make it sound like you can just yell out "uh... Heinlein!" and you're like, so laid.

[alistarr*]

Tell her she's writing the paper internet and she should keep it up.