Because it's easier to come up with a poll than it is write fully coherent paragraphs:

[capri0mni]

[Poll #1195381]

Comments

[jekesta]

Are matchmakers people who make things out of matches? Not annoying people who try to set people up? Or are they just the chocolate things that NEVER went out of style? (If they are chocolate I obviously think they should be revived if they ever die.) I had to look street trolleys up to make sure I wasn't ENTIRELY wrong and about to vote for something horrific, but I wasn't, that's good. Also I would like to vote for sweet trolleys while I am here.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was thinking that matchmakers are the people who set people up, yes...

But only if you ask them to: people who know all the other people in town who are looking for a partner, and interview them for you, so you don't have to have awkward dates...

There are chocolate things I don't know about! Yum! I can has?

Maybe we can serve them on the sweet trolleys....

[pedanther]

"Hey! Matchmaker! You told me this girl was as pretty as a picture!"

"What's the matter? You don't like Picasso?"

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

"And have you ever met anyone with such a colorful personality?"

[jekesta]

Oh, I hadn't really thought of sort of proper matchmakers that people liked and went to for help as being a something that existed and stopped, I don't know. I like that no one is voting for match making all the same. Making things out of matches is better.

Matchmakers! Long sticks of chocolate in mint and orange and sometimes coffee flavour. Matchmakers are GREAT and you forget about them for LONG YEARS and then remember them and they are one of the best chocolate things.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Matchmakers are GREAT and you forget about them for LONG YEARS

O, woe to a poor benighted Colonial, who has never seen such a thing!

Matchmakers were, once, an important class of people (usually old women) in Jewish communities in Europe and, later, in America. They eventually fell out of favor as things like telephones happened.

There's a song to one in the musical "fiddler on the roof."

But yes, making things out of matches is eveen better....

[pedanther]

I remember reading somewhere that the death of the T-V distinction in English was caused (indirectly and unintentionally) by the Quakers. People who felt entitled to be addressed as "you" got annoyed by the Quakers' habit of addressing everybody indiscriminately as "thee", and in retaliation refused to use anything except "you". Supposedly.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, what was really annoying about the Quakers (especially the 19th C. ones [imnsho]) is not just that they used "thee" for everyone, but they threw out proper grammar while they were at it -- using "thee" when they should've used "thou," and using it with "is" as the verb...

Of course, it also probably annoyed people who thought they were worth at least two of everyone else being addressed in the singular.

(And now, to make up for the lack of the sing./pl. distinction, we've got "y'all." But in some places in the South, even that's not enough... so there, we've got "all y'all")