Have fun knitting, Robyn. I expect photos.
Showing posts with label Insulting My Friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insulting My Friends. Show all posts
Monday, April 08, 2013
One For Robyn
Have fun knitting, Robyn. I expect photos.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Turkey, Schmurkey
Yay for Natalie Dee for my regular morning giggle.
And here's my own take on Thanksgiving (or at least what I took it to be back in 2006).
Have a spiffy week (unless you're a turkey).
Sunday, May 15, 2011
California Tumbles Into The Sea
Apologies for the title, but ever since Petrea posted a glorious mural of … er … California having tumbled into the sea, that particular line from Steely Dan's "My Old School" has been going round and round in my head. Not that I mind; I've been a Dan fan for forty years (scary).
Anyhoo … in the comments box for the last post I happened to mention California (the real one, not the awful American copy) and Petrea wondered just where that might be, living as she does in the American version (which is not all awful of course; the Bay area and Pasadena are unconscionably spiffy, the bits with big redwoods are boffo, and I shall probably be told in no uncertain terms that other parts are quite nice, too).
So here it is (the real one):
Nestling on the Norfolk coast just past the middle of nowhere, the real California is a teeny tiny mediæval fishing village of about a dozen cute cottages clustered around a gap in the cliffs. Regrettably, in modern times it has been ruined by having a great big holiday park dumped right next to it. In the winter, however, when all the holidaymakers go home, it is enchanting.
And here (I hope Katie doesn't mind) is a resident of the American California in the real California.
I've never really believed that anything in America is real … too many Hollywood movies as a kid.
This has been a Public Service Announcement.
Anyhoo … in the comments box for the last post I happened to mention California (the real one, not the awful American copy) and Petrea wondered just where that might be, living as she does in the American version (which is not all awful of course; the Bay area and Pasadena are unconscionably spiffy, the bits with big redwoods are boffo, and I shall probably be told in no uncertain terms that other parts are quite nice, too).
So here it is (the real one):
Nestling on the Norfolk coast just past the middle of nowhere, the real California is a teeny tiny mediæval fishing village of about a dozen cute cottages clustered around a gap in the cliffs. Regrettably, in modern times it has been ruined by having a great big holiday park dumped right next to it. In the winter, however, when all the holidaymakers go home, it is enchanting.
And here (I hope Katie doesn't mind) is a resident of the American California in the real California.
I've never really believed that anything in America is real … too many Hollywood movies as a kid.
This has been a Public Service Announcement.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Deliverance Boy
Odd cove, my baby brother …
Usually, musicians start at the bottom and work their way up, but I fear something has gone awry with Phil. Pray allow me to explain, and be sure not to read this in the dark as it is a tale of descent into madness.
Many an age ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and Raquel Welch ran around in a fur bikini, Phil was that rarest of rare gems, a world class rhythm guitarist. I've never found another one even close to being on the same planet.
Unlike 100% of other guitarists (and especially me), he was not interested in strutting around at the front of the stage, throwing dumb poses and trying to see how many notes can be stuffed painfully into a solo (older blog readers will know about my problem from bitter experience). Oh, no. Instead he realised the basic truth that eludes the rest of us: that a rhythm guitar player should only be noticed when he's not playing. And when he's not playing the music sounds WRONG.
It was great being on stage with Phil because I could play as many dumb widdly notes as possible and know that behind me the music would sound right.
And then something weird happened: he decided to take up bass.
Bass players are usually frustrated lead guitarists and it is very rare for a guitar player to "go the other way," down into the darkness of the lower registers.
But that's where Phil went and bloody good he was, too. I missed his rhythm playing but he was a great bassist.
This is where it gets creepy …
Drummers - as opposed to musicians - tend to drool a lot and sniff one another's bottoms whenever they meet up. They are not as other folk.
Usually, musicians start at the bottom and work their way up, but I fear something has gone awry with Phil. Pray allow me to explain, and be sure not to read this in the dark as it is a tale of descent into madness.
Many an age ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and Raquel Welch ran around in a fur bikini, Phil was that rarest of rare gems, a world class rhythm guitarist. I've never found another one even close to being on the same planet.
Unlike 100% of other guitarists (and especially me), he was not interested in strutting around at the front of the stage, throwing dumb poses and trying to see how many notes can be stuffed painfully into a solo (older blog readers will know about my problem from bitter experience). Oh, no. Instead he realised the basic truth that eludes the rest of us: that a rhythm guitar player should only be noticed when he's not playing. And when he's not playing the music sounds WRONG.
It was great being on stage with Phil because I could play as many dumb widdly notes as possible and know that behind me the music would sound right.
And then something weird happened: he decided to take up bass.
Bass players are usually frustrated lead guitarists and it is very rare for a guitar player to "go the other way," down into the darkness of the lower registers.
But that's where Phil went and bloody good he was, too. I missed his rhythm playing but he was a great bassist.
This is where it gets creepy …
Drummers - as opposed to musicians - tend to drool a lot and sniff one another's bottoms whenever they meet up. They are not as other folk.
And yes, The Dark Side took my baby brother and made him hit things.
Hokay, I confess, the boy doesn't do things by halves; he's what's known in the trade as "a fucking good drummer," a treasure rarer than rocking-horse shit.
But a drummer?
Drummers are forever cursed by the stigma of Ringo.
In the pit of Musical Hell there is only one circle lower than that haunted by the screaming souls of drummers …
A short while back Phil took that final step and slid down the greasy slope into the last and deepest festering pismire of musical insanity.
He bought a banjo …
He has a book that teaches you how to say "Yee" and "Haw."
He has started creeping round woods and telling people, "You sure got a purrty mouth, city boy."
In short, he's gone Deliverance.
We spent yesterday playing "Duelling Banjos."
If there are any support groups out there, please contact me.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Life With The Children
As those of you who have been subjected to my rants on the antisocial network will know, one of the side-effects of my move from Metropolis to Smallville has been that I have inherited three young and unruly children. Jason, Matt and Craig are 23, 24 and 25 years old, though I can never remember who is which age as they all behave like hyperactive two-year-olds. If nothing else, sharing an office with them has reinforced my belief in the wisdom of not breeding.
I am used to a spacious and quiet office (or working from home with classical music playing softly in the background) but now find myself crammed into a room the size of my former workstation with three idiot children and a ramshackle tangle of prehistoric alleged ‘computers’ that sound like vacuum cleaners and are about as useful for my 3D work.
Over the past half-century I have managed with some difficulty to rid my life of the sheer fuck-awfulness of four particular circles of Hell, namely: football, television, ‘popular’ music and junk food. Inevitably these are the four main topics of conversation with the Office Children. Oh, and boobs. A good half of each day finds them ‘perving’ (their term) photographs of women on Facebook for ‘boob action.’ The rest of the day is taken up with arguing about football, raving about crap celebrity television and singing (ear-buggeringly badly) along to execrable chart hits.
Today (and bear in mind that the morning is only half over) we have had football, moaning about the shit office heating, eBay crap and the idiot family who turned up last night to collect Matt’s old sofa in a compact car full of kids and let their screaming brats run riot in Matt’s flat while they discovered the sofa would not fit in their car before asking him to deliver it for free, last night’s celebrity TV, Craig’s’ lucky’ shin-pads, who in the office is the biggest bell-end (Nick from the back room), strippers, football, video games, the ’shaggability’ or otherwise of the women in the local shop, burgers, last weekend’s binge-drinking sessions and just how much Matt vomited, football, boob-perving, football, Craig’s sister, what they would do if they won the lottery, why the only piece of classical music Jason knows is the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and what that tells us about him, bad pizzas, moaning about the office computers, arguing about the smegging X Factor, bitching about old girlfriends, a waste-paper fight, hobbit jokes (Craig is a hobbit; honestly, he could pass for Frodo in an identity parade), football (I hate fucking football), Parisian hookers, the worst kebabs available locally and football.
All of this has been accompanied by the most excruciating, out of tune falsetto singing by the tone-deaf trio to a selection of shit-awful chart crap, rap songs, bad Elvis film songs, thrash metal and farmyard noises from iPods and YouTube. Add to that a bout of belch-tennis (thank God they’ve not yet started their regular rounds of ‘fart-tennis’ that would gag a rat) and the usual graphic descriptions, comparison and rating of their most recent poos.
Only one of them has ever read a book (Craig, who managed to struggle through the first Harry Potter tome but got no further). Matt does appear to follow the celebrity scandal magazines but he’s probably just looking at the pictures. Jason plays bass in a thrash-punk band but is the first to admit he only knows three notes.
There’s an old Larson cartoon depicting Satan leading an elderly man into a room filled with banjo players, saying ‘and this is your room, maestro.’ I am beginning to wonder whether I dropped dead of a heart attack running for my last London train and have found my eternal resting place here in this cramped and freezing room filled with shrieking idiot children (currently belting out Queen songs and revealing their opinion that fat-bottomed girls make the rocking world go round).
And it’s only Tuesday.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Loving The Ligature
Katie raised an interesting point in yesterday's comments box.
Well, interesting to me, though very probably mind-numbingly boring to the rest of you.
She said, 'I can't get over the British spelling of haemorrhoids though. Do you pronounce it haymer-hoids?'
Now, putting aside my unjustifiably piqued curiosity about (Heaven forfend!) any possible hæmorrhoidal fascination on Katie's part (OW! I felt that all the way from Berkeley), it has been a goodly long while since I last spuffled and blathered rantily about language and the abomination of Websterism, but it's a new year so let's start it as I mean to go on by offending people (well, Americans anyway, in revenge for Katie's translation of IBS as Irritable British Syndrome … hee hee) in my usual patronising and pedantic fashion.
Listen up: it's time to talk ligatures and diphthongs.
Quite apart from the fact that I have never been able to say the deliciously lippy and tongue-tastic word 'diphthong' without grinning, diphtongs (grin) and more specifically the lovely ligatures have long held a perverse and needlessly pedantic fascination for me.
If anyone's unsure, a diphthong is what happens when vowels cuddle up next to one another and a ligature occurs when things get out of hand and they fetch the bondage ropes and get a serious snuggle on.
Anyhoo … Ligatures:
For a start, I've always thought they look beautiful. Derived from Latin calligraphy the Æ and Œ ligatures are exceedingly sexy, especially when written in the late Roman uncial form.
But mostly it was the Cæsar/Kaiser thang that first grabbed my attention and made me aware of the ligature, way back in the mists of time when I was but a swotty little pimple-faced grammar school boy sitting in Latin class.
Such was the power of the ligature that it startled me into paying attention in class, wresting my adolescent mind - albeit temporarily - away from its musings on the strangely swelling bumps lately adorning the chest of the girl who lived down the road.
It was old Mr. Abbot, the fusty Latin Master who, during our very first Latin lesson invited guffaws of ridicule by declaring that Julius Cæsar should probably more correctly be pronounced Youlius Keezar.
Okay, so he backed it up with enough hard evidence to convince us that the Roman 'C' was a 'hard C' and that 'J' only came along much later and wasn't fully accepted until the 18th Century, but it still left poor Goldsmith, our token Jewish kid with several weeks of You-ish jokes to contend with.
Yet it was not the 'J' and the 'C' that lodged themselves in my brain and set me along the road to linguistic insanity, but the Æ ligature itself.
In defence of my pedantry please take into account that an upper-sixth former in the school I attended attained quite correctly the rank of 'Præfect' as opposed to 'Prefect' which was a type of Ford car.
I remember discussing the ligature thing with old Abbot a few years later - after I had discovered what ladybumps were and had endured five years of compulsory Latin - such were the diverse joys of English puberty in my day.
It seems that over a few hundred years, during the successive waves of Visigothic, Hunnish, Vandal, Ostrogothic, Teutonic, Lombard and Frankish invasions of the wretched corpse of the Roman Empire the ligature and the hard 'C' went their separate ways: the Hunnish and Teutonic languages of the Eastern half of Europe carried off the hard 'C' and the Frankish and Romance languages of Western Europe got custody of the ligature.
The result being the German 'Kaiser' (Roman hard 'C' and phonetically mispronounced digraph replacing the ligature) and the English 'Cæsar' (incorrect Romance soft 'C' and classically pronounced ligature) for the same word, neither of which Cæsar (Keezar) himself would have recognised unless he was very drunk.
Things stayed pretty much that way in the tiny and esoteric world of the ligature for over a thousand years (except in Scandinavia, where they have their own highly idiosyncratic set of rules for ligatures, along with everything else in life); English and German speakers knew where they stood, and as long as there were no Norwegians in the room everybody could pretty much guess what was being said.
Then - inevitably - some idiot sailed across the Atlantic, along came the US of A and it all ended in tears.
Millions of Europeans, with their wildly different pronunciations of the same letters, joined Russians, Africans and Asians in a race to empty the New World of its rightful peoples and replace them with what turned out to be a complete linguistic fuck-up unparalleled in history.
And into this mess rode my arch nemesis, Noah smegging Webster.
Yes, I'll admit that when you have a nation of several million illiterates from dozens of different countries and decide upon one official language it is a good idea to get them started speaking that language with some simplified spellings, especially with a language as rich and complex as English.
But for fuck's sake, as soon as they have a basic grasp of the language, teach it properly!
These days there is no excuse whatsoever (I don't count wilful ignorance as an excuse) for using Webster's simplified spellings.
'Pedophile'? What the fuck's that? Break the Webster version of the word down into its Classical roots and it means someone who likes feet!
Which is wrong to a quite hideous degree.
The word is 'pædophile.' Simplify it and the meaning is lost.
Use the ligature! Same goes for hæmorrhoids and diarrhœa, encyclopædia and œstrogen, æsthetics and œuvre.
Simplified spelling robs words of their meanings, reducing them to little more than random abstract symbols.
When it comes to ligatures, if you're too lazy to hit the 'alt' button on your Mac, at least use the ae and oe digraphs instead (as did the morons who made the signs for Boots the Chemist in yesterday's post). But never dispense with them altogether: 'encyclopedia' is ugly and horribly wrong, 'encyclopaedia' is inelegant and lazy, but 'encyclopædia' is sexy and cool.
And correct.
I know I keep harping on about Webster, but there are far more English speakers in the British Commonwealth and the world at large than there are in the USA and if we can spell correctly then people in the US can learn, too. Simplified spelling is for simpletons. Stop it. Now!
Websterism served its purpose 150 years ago but it is now as obsolete and worthless as the muzzle-loading flintlocks and wagon trains and smallpox-infected blankets that were its contemporaries.
I know it would cost money to change it after all this time and I know you really can't be bothered but mule-headedly sticking to a simplified and dumbed-down version of one of the world's richest and most eloquently expressive languages not only debases English but it makes Americans look lazy and dim. Sticking stubbornly with simplistic and inarticulate Websterism smacks of the thuggish, redneck, Joe Sixpack attitude that says intelligence is BAD (duh) and ignorance bliss, that showing culture and sophistication means you're unAmerican. It smacks frankly of dumb fucks with guns, scared shitless of being thought smart. Sorry, guys, but that's the view from the outside world.
If you can't give up your precious Webster at least make a start in the right direction and use the ligatures. Please. If you don't wish to adhere to historical precedence then use them because they are beautiful (æsthetically pleasing, if you will).
Do try to pronounce them correctly, too (a stressed and elongated 'ee'). If you're going to profess to speak and write in English, learning the language would be a good place to start.
Toodle Pip!
Your Pedantic Pal,
D.
Well, interesting to me, though very probably mind-numbingly boring to the rest of you.
She said, 'I can't get over the British spelling of haemorrhoids though. Do you pronounce it haymer-hoids?'
Now, putting aside my unjustifiably piqued curiosity about (Heaven forfend!) any possible hæmorrhoidal fascination on Katie's part (OW! I felt that all the way from Berkeley), it has been a goodly long while since I last spuffled and blathered rantily about language and the abomination of Websterism, but it's a new year so let's start it as I mean to go on by offending people (well, Americans anyway, in revenge for Katie's translation of IBS as Irritable British Syndrome … hee hee) in my usual patronising and pedantic fashion.
Listen up: it's time to talk ligatures and diphthongs.
Quite apart from the fact that I have never been able to say the deliciously lippy and tongue-tastic word 'diphthong' without grinning, diphtongs (grin) and more specifically the lovely ligatures have long held a perverse and needlessly pedantic fascination for me.
If anyone's unsure, a diphthong is what happens when vowels cuddle up next to one another and a ligature occurs when things get out of hand and they fetch the bondage ropes and get a serious snuggle on.
Anyhoo … Ligatures:
For a start, I've always thought they look beautiful. Derived from Latin calligraphy the Æ and Œ ligatures are exceedingly sexy, especially when written in the late Roman uncial form.
But mostly it was the Cæsar/Kaiser thang that first grabbed my attention and made me aware of the ligature, way back in the mists of time when I was but a swotty little pimple-faced grammar school boy sitting in Latin class.
Such was the power of the ligature that it startled me into paying attention in class, wresting my adolescent mind - albeit temporarily - away from its musings on the strangely swelling bumps lately adorning the chest of the girl who lived down the road.
It was old Mr. Abbot, the fusty Latin Master who, during our very first Latin lesson invited guffaws of ridicule by declaring that Julius Cæsar should probably more correctly be pronounced Youlius Keezar.
Okay, so he backed it up with enough hard evidence to convince us that the Roman 'C' was a 'hard C' and that 'J' only came along much later and wasn't fully accepted until the 18th Century, but it still left poor Goldsmith, our token Jewish kid with several weeks of You-ish jokes to contend with.
Yet it was not the 'J' and the 'C' that lodged themselves in my brain and set me along the road to linguistic insanity, but the Æ ligature itself.
In defence of my pedantry please take into account that an upper-sixth former in the school I attended attained quite correctly the rank of 'Præfect' as opposed to 'Prefect' which was a type of Ford car.
I remember discussing the ligature thing with old Abbot a few years later - after I had discovered what ladybumps were and had endured five years of compulsory Latin - such were the diverse joys of English puberty in my day.
It seems that over a few hundred years, during the successive waves of Visigothic, Hunnish, Vandal, Ostrogothic, Teutonic, Lombard and Frankish invasions of the wretched corpse of the Roman Empire the ligature and the hard 'C' went their separate ways: the Hunnish and Teutonic languages of the Eastern half of Europe carried off the hard 'C' and the Frankish and Romance languages of Western Europe got custody of the ligature.
The result being the German 'Kaiser' (Roman hard 'C' and phonetically mispronounced digraph replacing the ligature) and the English 'Cæsar' (incorrect Romance soft 'C' and classically pronounced ligature) for the same word, neither of which Cæsar (Keezar) himself would have recognised unless he was very drunk.
Things stayed pretty much that way in the tiny and esoteric world of the ligature for over a thousand years (except in Scandinavia, where they have their own highly idiosyncratic set of rules for ligatures, along with everything else in life); English and German speakers knew where they stood, and as long as there were no Norwegians in the room everybody could pretty much guess what was being said.
Then - inevitably - some idiot sailed across the Atlantic, along came the US of A and it all ended in tears.
Millions of Europeans, with their wildly different pronunciations of the same letters, joined Russians, Africans and Asians in a race to empty the New World of its rightful peoples and replace them with what turned out to be a complete linguistic fuck-up unparalleled in history.
And into this mess rode my arch nemesis, Noah smegging Webster.
Yes, I'll admit that when you have a nation of several million illiterates from dozens of different countries and decide upon one official language it is a good idea to get them started speaking that language with some simplified spellings, especially with a language as rich and complex as English.
But for fuck's sake, as soon as they have a basic grasp of the language, teach it properly!
These days there is no excuse whatsoever (I don't count wilful ignorance as an excuse) for using Webster's simplified spellings.
'Pedophile'? What the fuck's that? Break the Webster version of the word down into its Classical roots and it means someone who likes feet!
Which is wrong to a quite hideous degree.
The word is 'pædophile.' Simplify it and the meaning is lost.
Use the ligature! Same goes for hæmorrhoids and diarrhœa, encyclopædia and œstrogen, æsthetics and œuvre.
Simplified spelling robs words of their meanings, reducing them to little more than random abstract symbols.
When it comes to ligatures, if you're too lazy to hit the 'alt' button on your Mac, at least use the ae and oe digraphs instead (as did the morons who made the signs for Boots the Chemist in yesterday's post). But never dispense with them altogether: 'encyclopedia' is ugly and horribly wrong, 'encyclopaedia' is inelegant and lazy, but 'encyclopædia' is sexy and cool.
And correct.
I know I keep harping on about Webster, but there are far more English speakers in the British Commonwealth and the world at large than there are in the USA and if we can spell correctly then people in the US can learn, too. Simplified spelling is for simpletons. Stop it. Now!
Websterism served its purpose 150 years ago but it is now as obsolete and worthless as the muzzle-loading flintlocks and wagon trains and smallpox-infected blankets that were its contemporaries.
I know it would cost money to change it after all this time and I know you really can't be bothered but mule-headedly sticking to a simplified and dumbed-down version of one of the world's richest and most eloquently expressive languages not only debases English but it makes Americans look lazy and dim. Sticking stubbornly with simplistic and inarticulate Websterism smacks of the thuggish, redneck, Joe Sixpack attitude that says intelligence is BAD (duh) and ignorance bliss, that showing culture and sophistication means you're unAmerican. It smacks frankly of dumb fucks with guns, scared shitless of being thought smart. Sorry, guys, but that's the view from the outside world.
If you can't give up your precious Webster at least make a start in the right direction and use the ligatures. Please. If you don't wish to adhere to historical precedence then use them because they are beautiful (æsthetically pleasing, if you will).
Do try to pronounce them correctly, too (a stressed and elongated 'ee'). If you're going to profess to speak and write in English, learning the language would be a good place to start.
Toodle Pip!
Your Pedantic Pal,
D.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Unlistenable Cacophony
In a few weeks I shall be standing in for a vacationing John in Tony's band (four retired headmasters who gig as "The Four Heads" … Yay!) at Neil's daughter's wedding.
The band decided a rehearsal was in order.
I've no idea why; they are truly ireedeemably shambolic (in the best possible way) and rehearsal seems to have done them no good in the past, but hey, let's go with the flow.
So this morning we turned up at the studio and … er … "rehearsed" (has anybody noticed that the word "rehearse" has "arse" in it?).
This (the little video at the bottom of the post) was the full extent of the rehearsal for an old blues number.
Neil suggested let's try "Walking By Myself."
I asked "What key?"
He said "E." to which I said "E? I've only ever played it in G; oh, well, let's give it a go", and turned on the video camera.
Sheesh! What a shambles. Hee hee.
Luckily the camera is tilted at such an angle that you cannot see much except the ceiling and occasionally my ass (easily my best feature), and - thanks to it being propped between my amp and Tony's drums, the sound is so bad that Neil's vocals are lost in the cacophony … which is probably just as well … he'll do much better on the night.
This is Tony (yes, Phil; he's on one of the studio's kits).
And this is my guitar with Rob and Neil in the background.
We make the Rolling Stones look like a bunch of teenagers.
I just love the band's verdict at the end of this unlistenable mess:
"S'alright, innit?"
God help the poor wedding guests!
Hee hee.
Kids, be warned … This is what old people do when you let them off the leash. If you have old people in your family be sure and keep them locked up and sedated.
The band decided a rehearsal was in order.
I've no idea why; they are truly ireedeemably shambolic (in the best possible way) and rehearsal seems to have done them no good in the past, but hey, let's go with the flow.
So this morning we turned up at the studio and … er … "rehearsed" (has anybody noticed that the word "rehearse" has "arse" in it?).
This (the little video at the bottom of the post) was the full extent of the rehearsal for an old blues number.
Neil suggested let's try "Walking By Myself."
I asked "What key?"
He said "E." to which I said "E? I've only ever played it in G; oh, well, let's give it a go", and turned on the video camera.
Sheesh! What a shambles. Hee hee.
Luckily the camera is tilted at such an angle that you cannot see much except the ceiling and occasionally my ass (easily my best feature), and - thanks to it being propped between my amp and Tony's drums, the sound is so bad that Neil's vocals are lost in the cacophony … which is probably just as well … he'll do much better on the night.
This is Tony (yes, Phil; he's on one of the studio's kits).
And this is my guitar with Rob and Neil in the background.We make the Rolling Stones look like a bunch of teenagers.
I just love the band's verdict at the end of this unlistenable mess:
"S'alright, innit?"
God help the poor wedding guests!
Hee hee.
Kids, be warned … This is what old people do when you let them off the leash. If you have old people in your family be sure and keep them locked up and sedated.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Musings From The Naughty-Cupboard
Well, I'm still locked in this fucking cupboard.
He says he'll let me out when I show some sign of sanity.
Sheesh!
At least he left me the laptop and a stack of movies, though it's getting pretty unpleasant in here what with the constant fights with Stouffer over who gets to use the litter tray.
And talking of catshit, my comment box seems to be full of weiners.
Katie writes (rather scarily):
"I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
That is what I truly wish to be
cause if i were a Oscar Mayer Weiner
everyone would be in love
oh everyone would be in love
everyone would be in love with me"
And Maria:
"Oscar Meyer has a way with B O L O G N A."
I have spent fifty years blissfully unaware of the existence of Oscar Meyer weiners - or indeed any other brand - but now you've gone and spoiled that and introduced me to a new horror of US "cuisine" to add to the supersized burger, "freedom" fries, alleged pizza with macaroni cheese on top and greasy bits of deep-fried gristle served up in a bucket.
Now I have to add to that list of shame classic Italian dishes with the meat replaced by pink plastic hot-dog "sausages"?
Holy crap!
This from a country that - since 1492 - has to date signally failed to produce a single edible cheese.
Shit! The stuff comes in spray cans over there … or in thin, shitty-smelling sheets of sweaty rubber that look, feel and taste almost exactly unlike cheese of any description … except perhaps knob-cheese.
We had a flirtation with US "cuisine" over here when I was a kid in the sixties.
We poor urchins, dressed in rags and scratching for turnips amidst the bombed-out cities of post-war austerity Britain, assumed that as you Colonials all appeared to be filthy rich and to drive flying cars (or at least cars shaped like "weiners" as this lovely photo from Lulu shows) and live in Disney castles that you must have been doing something right and that maybe it was your diet …
Er …
Okay, so now we know that a diet based on saturated fat, sugar, salt and chemical additives produces a nation of grossly obese, hyper-aggressive morons (present company excepted, of course) with the attention span of a bored gnat, but back then we thought you were really on to something.
The result was truly dreadful, a "food" product the memory of which still produces creeping horrors in my scarred soul:
"Heinz Baked Beans With Pork Sausages".
A can of orange goo with some stale borlotti beans floating in it in amongst some weird, squishy, pink, poo-like tubes of mystery "meat" of a consistency to suggest that maybe you guys farmed earthworms.
"Weiners".
When I was a nipper these were the very pinnacle of "luxury international cuisine".
Together with SPAM®, of course.
Fortunately for us those things were indeed "luxury" items and for special occasions only, so the chemical damage to my child's body was limited.
So anyhoo: back to the weiners.
I checked on YouTube and it appears that I must now add the word "weiner" to "risotto" and "basil" and all the other words our errant Colonials have yet to learn how to pronounce correctly.
It's as if you guys look at a written word and take a wild, flying guess as to its pronunciation without bothering to consult an actual alphabet or indeed any form of language, let alone the language whence the word originated.
"Weiner" - for your information - has the soft German "V" at the start and is not pronounced "whiner" or even "weener", at least not in any civilised part of the world.
Of course, being an Englishman it is my natural genetic birthright to blame absolutely everything on the Irish and this case is no exception.
Back in the good old days of the potato famine, millions of starving, illiterate and uneducated Irish peasants washed up on the shores of Noo Yoik City, their brains addled with poteen.
Too dumb to realise they could choose anywhere on that enormous continent to live, they huddled together in Noo Yoik's seething tenements and quickly took over and monopolised those bastions of the establishment where spectacular, mule-headed stupidity was not an impediment but was indeed a guarantee of career advancement: politics, the police and the immigration authorities.
As the wars, pogroms and other horrors of late nineteenth century Europe and Russia raged, they produced the biggest human migration ever seen and countless millions of poor and uneducated Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Czechs, Russians and folk from all points unpronounceable descended on the illiterate Irish immigration officials who now ran Ellis Island.
Here, they found that they would lose their ancient and beloved family names and be given instead a piece of official stamped paper with a new and usually very stupid word scrawled on it.
This was the inevitable result of some dumb Oirish schmuck-o asking the poor immigrant's name and then wrestling incompetently with the alphabet (and usually losing badly) in a deranged attempt at phonetic spelling.
The Irish - whom most people in the US assume are charming romantic poets - cannot even spell their OWN names, let alone anyone else's.
An Irishman at a spelling bee is a sight to behold.
They launch into spelling with more enthusiasm than is probably wise in a people for whom the alphabet is an alien concept, adding endless "g"s and "h"s and cramming consonants in where no consonant has any business being crammed.
They spell "Neve" "Naimh", for fuck's sake!
The current fad for giving kids Irish names makes junior school roll-call sound like a spectacularly phlegmy coughing fit.
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth (not, by the way, available in a spray can)!
These are the people who gave us the hilarious misnames that make the credits the funniest part of any US movie or TV show (my personal favourite being Lolita Fatjo from one of the Star Trek spin-offs … Lolita's bad enough but where the fuck did she get "Fatjo" from? Shamus in immigration; that's where).
Of course, I know that at least three of my very favourite blogpals are of Irish descent but being locked in a cupboard with a sweary blue rubber cat gives rise to odd thoughts and being soundly beaten by angry weemen becomes a strangely attractive notion.
Anyhoo … I shall conclude this stream-of-semi-consciousness drivel-fest with the observation that a similar admixture of enthusiasm and complete ignorance gave rise to what has become that most fearsome weapon of mass destruction: US "cuisine".
The confused, illiterate peasants from various parts of Europe found themselves hunkered down with their new, incomprehensible names, in little turf houses miles from anywhere in the howling snowstorms of the prairie.
Some tattered remnant of folk-memory still lingered in the names and vague notions of the noble cuisines of their home nations but with none of the correct ingredients to hand and struggling with the weird pronunciations of Noah Webster's twisted English they did the best they could.
Occasionally they came up with something wonderful, such as gumbo, chowder or indeed the original Boston baked beans; sometimes they almost produced something edible, like hominy grits; but mostly they came up with deep fried varieties of saturated fats, sugar, salt and gristle - usually coated liberally with maple syrup - and with increasing industrialisation unnatural chemicals were added to mask the appalling taste and texture.
And of course they came up with the "weiner".
If the Germans know nothing else they know how to invade a country and how to make a good sausage.
Just as the French and the English know how to make great cheese ("blessed are the cheesemakers").
A true weiner schnitzel is a joy to behold and delicious to eat.
The thing that passes for a "weiner" in the States deserves its very own circle of Hell.
Though I still want one of those weiner cars!
So that's all the news that's fit to print from the naughty-cupboard.
It's back to scrapping over the litter tray.
Hey ho.
He says he'll let me out when I show some sign of sanity.
Sheesh!
At least he left me the laptop and a stack of movies, though it's getting pretty unpleasant in here what with the constant fights with Stouffer over who gets to use the litter tray.
And talking of catshit, my comment box seems to be full of weiners.
Katie writes (rather scarily):
"I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
That is what I truly wish to be
cause if i were a Oscar Mayer Weiner
everyone would be in love
oh everyone would be in love
everyone would be in love with me"
And Maria:
"Oscar Meyer has a way with B O L O G N A."
I have spent fifty years blissfully unaware of the existence of Oscar Meyer weiners - or indeed any other brand - but now you've gone and spoiled that and introduced me to a new horror of US "cuisine" to add to the supersized burger, "freedom" fries, alleged pizza with macaroni cheese on top and greasy bits of deep-fried gristle served up in a bucket.
Now I have to add to that list of shame classic Italian dishes with the meat replaced by pink plastic hot-dog "sausages"?
Holy crap!
This from a country that - since 1492 - has to date signally failed to produce a single edible cheese.
Shit! The stuff comes in spray cans over there … or in thin, shitty-smelling sheets of sweaty rubber that look, feel and taste almost exactly unlike cheese of any description … except perhaps knob-cheese.
We had a flirtation with US "cuisine" over here when I was a kid in the sixties.
We poor urchins, dressed in rags and scratching for turnips amidst the bombed-out cities of post-war austerity Britain, assumed that as you Colonials all appeared to be filthy rich and to drive flying cars (or at least cars shaped like "weiners" as this lovely photo from Lulu shows) and live in Disney castles that you must have been doing something right and that maybe it was your diet …
Er …
Okay, so now we know that a diet based on saturated fat, sugar, salt and chemical additives produces a nation of grossly obese, hyper-aggressive morons (present company excepted, of course) with the attention span of a bored gnat, but back then we thought you were really on to something.
The result was truly dreadful, a "food" product the memory of which still produces creeping horrors in my scarred soul:
"Heinz Baked Beans With Pork Sausages".
A can of orange goo with some stale borlotti beans floating in it in amongst some weird, squishy, pink, poo-like tubes of mystery "meat" of a consistency to suggest that maybe you guys farmed earthworms.
"Weiners".
When I was a nipper these were the very pinnacle of "luxury international cuisine".
Together with SPAM®, of course.
Fortunately for us those things were indeed "luxury" items and for special occasions only, so the chemical damage to my child's body was limited.
So anyhoo: back to the weiners.
I checked on YouTube and it appears that I must now add the word "weiner" to "risotto" and "basil" and all the other words our errant Colonials have yet to learn how to pronounce correctly.
It's as if you guys look at a written word and take a wild, flying guess as to its pronunciation without bothering to consult an actual alphabet or indeed any form of language, let alone the language whence the word originated.
"Weiner" - for your information - has the soft German "V" at the start and is not pronounced "whiner" or even "weener", at least not in any civilised part of the world.
Of course, being an Englishman it is my natural genetic birthright to blame absolutely everything on the Irish and this case is no exception.
Back in the good old days of the potato famine, millions of starving, illiterate and uneducated Irish peasants washed up on the shores of Noo Yoik City, their brains addled with poteen.
Too dumb to realise they could choose anywhere on that enormous continent to live, they huddled together in Noo Yoik's seething tenements and quickly took over and monopolised those bastions of the establishment where spectacular, mule-headed stupidity was not an impediment but was indeed a guarantee of career advancement: politics, the police and the immigration authorities.
As the wars, pogroms and other horrors of late nineteenth century Europe and Russia raged, they produced the biggest human migration ever seen and countless millions of poor and uneducated Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Czechs, Russians and folk from all points unpronounceable descended on the illiterate Irish immigration officials who now ran Ellis Island.
Here, they found that they would lose their ancient and beloved family names and be given instead a piece of official stamped paper with a new and usually very stupid word scrawled on it.
This was the inevitable result of some dumb Oirish schmuck-o asking the poor immigrant's name and then wrestling incompetently with the alphabet (and usually losing badly) in a deranged attempt at phonetic spelling.
The Irish - whom most people in the US assume are charming romantic poets - cannot even spell their OWN names, let alone anyone else's.
An Irishman at a spelling bee is a sight to behold.
They launch into spelling with more enthusiasm than is probably wise in a people for whom the alphabet is an alien concept, adding endless "g"s and "h"s and cramming consonants in where no consonant has any business being crammed.
They spell "Neve" "Naimh", for fuck's sake!
The current fad for giving kids Irish names makes junior school roll-call sound like a spectacularly phlegmy coughing fit.
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth (not, by the way, available in a spray can)!
These are the people who gave us the hilarious misnames that make the credits the funniest part of any US movie or TV show (my personal favourite being Lolita Fatjo from one of the Star Trek spin-offs … Lolita's bad enough but where the fuck did she get "Fatjo" from? Shamus in immigration; that's where).
Of course, I know that at least three of my very favourite blogpals are of Irish descent but being locked in a cupboard with a sweary blue rubber cat gives rise to odd thoughts and being soundly beaten by angry weemen becomes a strangely attractive notion.
Anyhoo … I shall conclude this stream-of-semi-consciousness drivel-fest with the observation that a similar admixture of enthusiasm and complete ignorance gave rise to what has become that most fearsome weapon of mass destruction: US "cuisine".
The confused, illiterate peasants from various parts of Europe found themselves hunkered down with their new, incomprehensible names, in little turf houses miles from anywhere in the howling snowstorms of the prairie.
Some tattered remnant of folk-memory still lingered in the names and vague notions of the noble cuisines of their home nations but with none of the correct ingredients to hand and struggling with the weird pronunciations of Noah Webster's twisted English they did the best they could.
Occasionally they came up with something wonderful, such as gumbo, chowder or indeed the original Boston baked beans; sometimes they almost produced something edible, like hominy grits; but mostly they came up with deep fried varieties of saturated fats, sugar, salt and gristle - usually coated liberally with maple syrup - and with increasing industrialisation unnatural chemicals were added to mask the appalling taste and texture.
And of course they came up with the "weiner".
If the Germans know nothing else they know how to invade a country and how to make a good sausage.
Just as the French and the English know how to make great cheese ("blessed are the cheesemakers").
A true weiner schnitzel is a joy to behold and delicious to eat.
The thing that passes for a "weiner" in the States deserves its very own circle of Hell.
Though I still want one of those weiner cars!
So that's all the news that's fit to print from the naughty-cupboard.
It's back to scrapping over the litter tray.
Hey ho.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Cruising For A Bruising
I better watch myself here.
I've been getting perilously close (see yesterday's comments) to open warfare with the Yanquis over language (again).
Not that there's anything wrong with that; arrogant and pedantic insult-mongery is one of my few remaining pleasures in life (that and the over-use of hyphens, adjectives and parentheses … oh, and those three little dots … er … and starting sentences with "and") …
It's just that blogs will collide again soon (hopefully in early October for the Rothko show at Tate Modern) and the next Blogville resident to hit London is a US citizen, and a formidably intelligent and well-read one at that.
But most worryingly of all she is a swim team girl and swim team girls punch hard!
Let's just sit back with a coffee and take five while we clear the air and try to reduce things from a boiling, seething, transatlantic rage to a gentle simmer with no punching involved.
First up: please don't think from yesterday's post that I am ridiculing American accents; I am not. I love them; the Boston accent so close to my own, the Noo Yoik and Noo Joisey twang, the lazy Californian consonants, the hilarious yet strangely beautiful Minnesota Nice, the glorious deep south drawl and all points between, including such delightful mixtures as our Robyn's lovely accent, born in the deep south, raised around Chicago and slipping into a local Ohio cadence when she gets angry with me (not uncommon).
Also, please don't think I am one of those idiots who insist language must stand still. I gleefully enjoy a varied and kinky sex life with the English language and acknowledge that it is a living thing and should move - enticingly slinkily - with the times.
But …
Here are a couple of archive snippets from the early part of this debate that might make my feelings a little clearer:
"… to etymology. To the derivations of words. And way back in time to the first person who pointed to a hippopotamus after a long night's drinking and named it.
As my long term blog-sufferers know, I have a real bug up my ass about the use of language.
This resulted - some years ago - in the only letter of protest I have ever written to the BBC.
I was watching the news one night and the BBC's Washington correspondent (at that time the windmill-armed, jug-eared buffoon Andrew Marr) uttered the non-word "normalcy".
NOT IN THE CONTEXT OF A QUOTE!
I recall leaping off the sofa, spuffling and sputtering with indignant rage.
This was the BBC for goodness sake! We expect standards! We expect BBC English! What we do NOT expect is a BBC news correspondent speaking gibberish! The BBC's motto is NOT "Nation Shall Speak Gibberish Unto Nation".
At least it wasn't the last time I looked …
And so I rattled off a furious epistle to the Beeb, explaining the derivation of this obscenity and demanding summary execution for Marr (a course of action regrettably not followed).
This linguistic excresence had first tumbled clumsily out of the mouth of one Warren Gamaliel Harding, twenty-ninth President of our lamentably lost colonies and the man who started the appalling avalanche of ignorance that has culminated in the present incumbent of that office being unable even to pronounce his middle initial: namely the monumentally incompetent George Walker Bush.
Even in Harding's own day his call for a "return to normalcy" was derided; not for its intent, but for its linguistic gaucherie.
Here is e.e.cummings on Harding's passing in 1923:
"The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."
And H.L Mencken:
"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
Splendid!
The thing that most bugs me about "normalcy" however, is that the word itself encourages ignorance; it actually forces human intelligence to take a step backward.
"Normality" - the word Harding's floundering mind must have been groping for - is of course derived from the French "normalité". Not much of a leap there.
After the Norman conquest, a vast word-hoard of French was absorbed into the English language; already a melting pot of Celtic, Breton, Saxon and many others, with Latin as the written norm.
Language is a living thing and it evolves with usage, but the basic meaning of any word is revealed through its etymology. You can trace its roots back through English, French, Latin, Greek, whatever; eventually - in our case - to Indo-Aryan.
When a word such as "normality/normalité" is altered - whether through ignorance or design - it loses part of its meaning. It has taken a step toward becoming a mere abstract symbol; an arbitrary amalgam of sounds to which nobody other than the person who produced it can attach any meaning.
This is the road to chaos. And it would render the Times Crossword even more mind-buggeringly difficult than it is.
The first words were felt as much as spoken. Burroughs posits that the first words were "sex" words and he could well be right. Some were undoubtedly onomatopœic; hunter-gatherer words echoing the sounds of the world around them. The Indo-Aryan word "Ma" for mother occurs in almost all languages, whether they are connected or not. What I'm trying to put across here is that words that have evolved and adapted naturally still retain their essential meanings.
Neologisms: new words for new concepts are continually being brought into existence; the common example being John Logie Baird's coining of the term "television", from the Greek "tele" for "distant, and the Latin "visio" for "seeing". Some people even more pedantic than me insist that neologisms should only be formed from the same language roots, but even - like television - if they are not, then, like all naturally evolved words, some idea of their meaning can be still gauged from their roots.
The French suffixes "…ité" and "…cy" have historially derived and separate usages. Confusing them merely creates confusion and the nuance of meaning is lost.
Having said that, dicking around with language is great fun. It is what writers and poets do. It is what the kid down the street does.
Language moves forward; meaning is refined and even redefined. This is a good thing. I myself have even been party to linguistic debauchery, having once been caught using the word "party" as a verb (yikes)!
"Normalcy" when used by a bumbling President is funny; when used by the BBC - arbiters of the English Language - it is a crime against reason. An irrevocable step down the path to ignorance. They now use it with alarming frequency; proof positive that accusations of their "dumbing down" are well founded.
Twats.
Okay. Mister Pedantic can go back in his box now. Just don't use "normalcy" around me unless you want a slap."
Hokay. So while I am happy with neologisms per se, I deplore the corruption of words through ignorance to form twisted neologisms with no trace of meaning. Admittedly not something that most Americans do but a disturbingly high proportion of their politicians are guilty of it.
Next up, we come to the real bug up my ass: Noah Webster and the dumbing down of language, literature and culture.
Back to the archives:
"The OED, by the way (for the benefit of my dear readers in the colonies) is the Oxford English Dictionary; the definitive repository of English (as opposed to American English, for which you have the esteemed Mister Noah Webster).
Digression time:
I have a great deal of respect for old Noah. He made an admirable attempt to render the horrifically complex and arcane juggernaut that is the English language more easily comprehensible to children and - necessary in a growing, multicultural nation - to the huddled masses of non-English speaking immigrants yearning to be free.
Inevitably he was forced to simplify spellings and - here's the bit that always makes me shudder - to standardise (or standardize as he would have it) suffixes.
It is this last which has just obliged Blogger to put a red line under the correct spelling and to leave Webster's abomination unscathed and my teeth gnashing.
This simplification and standardisation of suffixes - as ranted about in yesterday's polemic - has deprived Americans of a great part of the essential beauty and poetry of the English language as well as the ability to look at a word and to surmise from its Greek, Latin, French, Norse or Germanic - or other - structure, its underlying meaning.
And "color" (sorry, I had to shudder again) is not a word; it is a spelling mistake.
While I hate to appear pompous and patronising (HA! You know I LOVE IT! … and that's "patronising", NOT "patronizing", he patronised), I feel that these days, Webster's simplified spellings should be confined to teaching young children and non-English speaking immigrants, and that - once they have achieved a decent grasp of the basics - they should then advance to the correct spellings and meanings (much as Japanese children - and Japanese students such as myself - are first taught using the phonetic alphabets of ひらがな and カタカナ before moving on to the complex and beautiful Kanji which show the true meanings and concepts of what is being written)."
"American English", i.e. Noah Webster's simplified version of the language is fine as long as it is confined within the borders of the USA (although these days it really should only be used to help non-English speakers get a grasp).
What irks the many billions of English speakers (and spellers) outside those borders is the assumption by US citizens that their simplified version of the language is the standard version.
US citizens are only a small proportion of the English speakers in the world and yet we buy a computer in England, India or Australia only to find that it is set to Websterisms by default and - what is even more insulting - when you go to correct the settings you find American Simplified English is actually referred to as "English" while English itself is called "International English"!
Were Microsoft, Apple, et al to take the simple step of calling English "English" and American Simplified English "American Simplified English" (or even just "US English"), at a stroke, billions of people all around the planet would hate and resent America just a little bit less.
Oh, before I go …
National personal pronouns:
I am English.
Mme and MB are Australian.
I have never been quite sure what to call you colonials living in the States. I mean I know you are technically "Americans", but …
Check the BBC website (outside of the USA) and US news can be found under "Americas" as America stretches from the north of Alaska to the southern tip of Patagonia.
Mexicans, Canadians, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Brazilians, Chileans, Bolivians, the whole damned crew are "Americans", including US citizens, in the same way that English, French and German folk are "European".
"I am a citizen of the United States of America" is a little long winded, so why don't you guys sort yourselves out a national personal pronoun?
Something nice and snappy.
Historically, the only one I have been able to find is "Yanqui", which led to the European term for USA citizens - "Yanks" (and the current British Army rhyming slang for US soldiers of "Septics" … derived from "Septic Tank = Yank").
I can see that calling you Yanquis all the time might irk just a tad, so would one of you please clear up this glaring omission and decide upon a pronoun so that we know what to call you guys?
Right … Air cleared?
If I've calculated correctly, that rational, inoffensive and totally non-confrontational little speech should calm the Yanqui bloggers down and get them off my back.
And save me a punching come October.
I've been getting perilously close (see yesterday's comments) to open warfare with the Yanquis over language (again).
Not that there's anything wrong with that; arrogant and pedantic insult-mongery is one of my few remaining pleasures in life (that and the over-use of hyphens, adjectives and parentheses … oh, and those three little dots … er … and starting sentences with "and") …
It's just that blogs will collide again soon (hopefully in early October for the Rothko show at Tate Modern) and the next Blogville resident to hit London is a US citizen, and a formidably intelligent and well-read one at that.
But most worryingly of all she is a swim team girl and swim team girls punch hard!
Let's just sit back with a coffee and take five while we clear the air and try to reduce things from a boiling, seething, transatlantic rage to a gentle simmer with no punching involved.
First up: please don't think from yesterday's post that I am ridiculing American accents; I am not. I love them; the Boston accent so close to my own, the Noo Yoik and Noo Joisey twang, the lazy Californian consonants, the hilarious yet strangely beautiful Minnesota Nice, the glorious deep south drawl and all points between, including such delightful mixtures as our Robyn's lovely accent, born in the deep south, raised around Chicago and slipping into a local Ohio cadence when she gets angry with me (not uncommon).
Also, please don't think I am one of those idiots who insist language must stand still. I gleefully enjoy a varied and kinky sex life with the English language and acknowledge that it is a living thing and should move - enticingly slinkily - with the times.
But …
Here are a couple of archive snippets from the early part of this debate that might make my feelings a little clearer:
"… to etymology. To the derivations of words. And way back in time to the first person who pointed to a hippopotamus after a long night's drinking and named it.
As my long term blog-sufferers know, I have a real bug up my ass about the use of language.
This resulted - some years ago - in the only letter of protest I have ever written to the BBC.
I was watching the news one night and the BBC's Washington correspondent (at that time the windmill-armed, jug-eared buffoon Andrew Marr) uttered the non-word "normalcy".
NOT IN THE CONTEXT OF A QUOTE!
I recall leaping off the sofa, spuffling and sputtering with indignant rage.
This was the BBC for goodness sake! We expect standards! We expect BBC English! What we do NOT expect is a BBC news correspondent speaking gibberish! The BBC's motto is NOT "Nation Shall Speak Gibberish Unto Nation".
At least it wasn't the last time I looked …
And so I rattled off a furious epistle to the Beeb, explaining the derivation of this obscenity and demanding summary execution for Marr (a course of action regrettably not followed).
This linguistic excresence had first tumbled clumsily out of the mouth of one Warren Gamaliel Harding, twenty-ninth President of our lamentably lost colonies and the man who started the appalling avalanche of ignorance that has culminated in the present incumbent of that office being unable even to pronounce his middle initial: namely the monumentally incompetent George Walker Bush.
Even in Harding's own day his call for a "return to normalcy" was derided; not for its intent, but for its linguistic gaucherie.
Here is e.e.cummings on Harding's passing in 1923:
"The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."
And H.L Mencken:
"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
Splendid!
The thing that most bugs me about "normalcy" however, is that the word itself encourages ignorance; it actually forces human intelligence to take a step backward.
"Normality" - the word Harding's floundering mind must have been groping for - is of course derived from the French "normalité". Not much of a leap there.
After the Norman conquest, a vast word-hoard of French was absorbed into the English language; already a melting pot of Celtic, Breton, Saxon and many others, with Latin as the written norm.
Language is a living thing and it evolves with usage, but the basic meaning of any word is revealed through its etymology. You can trace its roots back through English, French, Latin, Greek, whatever; eventually - in our case - to Indo-Aryan.
When a word such as "normality/normalité" is altered - whether through ignorance or design - it loses part of its meaning. It has taken a step toward becoming a mere abstract symbol; an arbitrary amalgam of sounds to which nobody other than the person who produced it can attach any meaning.
This is the road to chaos. And it would render the Times Crossword even more mind-buggeringly difficult than it is.
The first words were felt as much as spoken. Burroughs posits that the first words were "sex" words and he could well be right. Some were undoubtedly onomatopœic; hunter-gatherer words echoing the sounds of the world around them. The Indo-Aryan word "Ma" for mother occurs in almost all languages, whether they are connected or not. What I'm trying to put across here is that words that have evolved and adapted naturally still retain their essential meanings.
Neologisms: new words for new concepts are continually being brought into existence; the common example being John Logie Baird's coining of the term "television", from the Greek "tele" for "distant, and the Latin "visio" for "seeing". Some people even more pedantic than me insist that neologisms should only be formed from the same language roots, but even - like television - if they are not, then, like all naturally evolved words, some idea of their meaning can be still gauged from their roots.
The French suffixes "…ité" and "…cy" have historially derived and separate usages. Confusing them merely creates confusion and the nuance of meaning is lost.
Having said that, dicking around with language is great fun. It is what writers and poets do. It is what the kid down the street does.
Language moves forward; meaning is refined and even redefined. This is a good thing. I myself have even been party to linguistic debauchery, having once been caught using the word "party" as a verb (yikes)!
"Normalcy" when used by a bumbling President is funny; when used by the BBC - arbiters of the English Language - it is a crime against reason. An irrevocable step down the path to ignorance. They now use it with alarming frequency; proof positive that accusations of their "dumbing down" are well founded.
Twats.
Okay. Mister Pedantic can go back in his box now. Just don't use "normalcy" around me unless you want a slap."
Hokay. So while I am happy with neologisms per se, I deplore the corruption of words through ignorance to form twisted neologisms with no trace of meaning. Admittedly not something that most Americans do but a disturbingly high proportion of their politicians are guilty of it.
Next up, we come to the real bug up my ass: Noah Webster and the dumbing down of language, literature and culture.
Back to the archives:
"The OED, by the way (for the benefit of my dear readers in the colonies) is the Oxford English Dictionary; the definitive repository of English (as opposed to American English, for which you have the esteemed Mister Noah Webster).
Digression time:
I have a great deal of respect for old Noah. He made an admirable attempt to render the horrifically complex and arcane juggernaut that is the English language more easily comprehensible to children and - necessary in a growing, multicultural nation - to the huddled masses of non-English speaking immigrants yearning to be free.
Inevitably he was forced to simplify spellings and - here's the bit that always makes me shudder - to standardise (or standardize as he would have it) suffixes.
It is this last which has just obliged Blogger to put a red line under the correct spelling and to leave Webster's abomination unscathed and my teeth gnashing.
This simplification and standardisation of suffixes - as ranted about in yesterday's polemic - has deprived Americans of a great part of the essential beauty and poetry of the English language as well as the ability to look at a word and to surmise from its Greek, Latin, French, Norse or Germanic - or other - structure, its underlying meaning.
And "color" (sorry, I had to shudder again) is not a word; it is a spelling mistake.
While I hate to appear pompous and patronising (HA! You know I LOVE IT! … and that's "patronising", NOT "patronizing", he patronised), I feel that these days, Webster's simplified spellings should be confined to teaching young children and non-English speaking immigrants, and that - once they have achieved a decent grasp of the basics - they should then advance to the correct spellings and meanings (much as Japanese children - and Japanese students such as myself - are first taught using the phonetic alphabets of ひらがな and カタカナ before moving on to the complex and beautiful Kanji which show the true meanings and concepts of what is being written)."
"American English", i.e. Noah Webster's simplified version of the language is fine as long as it is confined within the borders of the USA (although these days it really should only be used to help non-English speakers get a grasp).
What irks the many billions of English speakers (and spellers) outside those borders is the assumption by US citizens that their simplified version of the language is the standard version.
US citizens are only a small proportion of the English speakers in the world and yet we buy a computer in England, India or Australia only to find that it is set to Websterisms by default and - what is even more insulting - when you go to correct the settings you find American Simplified English is actually referred to as "English" while English itself is called "International English"!
Were Microsoft, Apple, et al to take the simple step of calling English "English" and American Simplified English "American Simplified English" (or even just "US English"), at a stroke, billions of people all around the planet would hate and resent America just a little bit less.
Oh, before I go …
National personal pronouns:
I am English.
Mme and MB are Australian.
I have never been quite sure what to call you colonials living in the States. I mean I know you are technically "Americans", but …
Check the BBC website (outside of the USA) and US news can be found under "Americas" as America stretches from the north of Alaska to the southern tip of Patagonia.
Mexicans, Canadians, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Brazilians, Chileans, Bolivians, the whole damned crew are "Americans", including US citizens, in the same way that English, French and German folk are "European".
"I am a citizen of the United States of America" is a little long winded, so why don't you guys sort yourselves out a national personal pronoun?
Something nice and snappy.
Historically, the only one I have been able to find is "Yanqui", which led to the European term for USA citizens - "Yanks" (and the current British Army rhyming slang for US soldiers of "Septics" … derived from "Septic Tank = Yank").
I can see that calling you Yanquis all the time might irk just a tad, so would one of you please clear up this glaring omission and decide upon a pronoun so that we know what to call you guys?
Right … Air cleared?
If I've calculated correctly, that rational, inoffensive and totally non-confrontational little speech should calm the Yanqui bloggers down and get them off my back.
And save me a punching come October.
Monday, September 01, 2008
What's Cooking With Dive? Comfort Food
Taking a little break from Pinoy cuisine I have to confess that the meal I cook probably more than any other is risotto.
I'll take a few seconds here for Robyn to punch me hard and yell at me to "Cut it out! Enough already of your stupid English mockery of our accent!" as she knows full well what's coming …
The word is "risotto" and it is pronounced "risotto".
It is NOT pronounced "riz-oh-doh". I mean where the fuck in that collection of letters do you find a "d"? Sheesh! Anyone using that mispronunciation deserves to get a good slapping from a big ol' Italian mama.
Take a look … You'll find there are two (count 'em) "T"s in there.
The "s" is soft, but not as soft as a "z" and as for the rest, just try saying "Otto" in an thick Italian accent, taking your time over that big old double "T" and you've got some idea of how stupid Americans sound ordering European food in Europe.
Riz-oh-doh my fat hairy arse!
Also "basil" is pronounced "basil". NOT "bay-zil".
Just go watch an episode of Fawlty Towers if you need help with that.
Hokay. Now we've cleared that up, let's get pinnied up and head for the kitchen.
Here's some stuff that might come in handy when making risotto:
GOOD white wine (some people use a fino sherry or other stuff like that but I love inhaling that glorious chardonnay steam).
DAMNED GOOD olive oil. For this I use my favourite single quinta (estate) Portuguese azeite (cold pressed by foot in big old wooden lagares). This stuff's good enough to drink. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …
Organic Parmesan.
Organic Arborio or Carnorolo rice.
Organic onion and garlic (for crap about which please see the first "What's Cooking With Dive" post).
Basil (that's BASIL) and coriander leaf (the American for which is apparently "cilantro" according to the Transatlantic Dictionary that Robyn and I have been compiling these past two years) from my patio.
So far, so hoopy.
Now everyone makes their own versions of risotto, even those colonial people who can't say it properly. This is one of mine, but feel free to make it however you like.
I make lots of different sorts, my all-time favourite being a mutant autumn risotto with local wild mushrooms and tree fungi, chestnuts and flageolet beans. Woohoo! I'll probably post that when the season comes around.
I also love making artichoke risotto, pumpkin or squash, pea and peapod, beetroot (the pinkest, gayest-looking risotto of them all) and many, many others.
Basically, I can't go a week without risotto. I'm an addict.
Today is seafood risotto as I've been down to the place on the coast where I get my sashimi-quality tuna and picked up a few bags of assorted crustacea, bivalves and things with tentacles for this risotto and a bunch of heads, shells and body parts for my next stock-fest.
Before we start I'm going to go off on one about stock.
I know I had a sweary-Mary about this subject last week but since then I checked out a cookery blog that had been featured on Blogger Dashboard and to my utter horror the woman making risotto (at least she pronounced it right) on the video clip said "I can never be bothered making stock; I use this …" and held up one of those cartons of "bouillon powder" (ingredients: salt, salt, salt, acidity regulator, acid, salt, preservative, e-numbers, flavourings and salt).
I am just glad that none of you were in earshot. Words were shrieked that will never appear on this polite and profanity-free blog.
Let's just get this straight before we go any further:
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A GOOD HOME-MADE STOCK.
Have that tattooed somewhere you can see it.
Your fishmonger or butcher will give (or if he's mean, sell cheaply) you all the crap you need to make pints of stock for freezing, and making stock is a pleasure far greater than sitting in front of a fucking television going "duuuuur".
So … Let's heat the oil in the pan (or in today's case an old, heavy-bottomed non-stick wok which I find is unbeatable for risotto) and toss in the onion and garlic.
Stir it around and turn down the heat and just let those suckers soften and inhale that glorious aroma.
One of the most comforting things in life is filling your lungs with that marvellous, mellifluous mélange of oil, garlic and onion.
Next, whack the flame back up and toss in the rice (one cup or so per person, depending on how greedy you're feeling) and make sure each and every yummy grain is coated with fragrant oil.
Once it's all coated and hot, rip up some basil (OW! Robyn, stop hitting me and learn to pronounce it correctly) and gently trickle in a good glassful of that boffo chardonnay (don't skimp; use the pricey stuff, not the plonk. It DOES make a difference).
Stir it all in together, turn down the flame and just float blissfully up to the ceiling on those fumes.
WOW!
If anyone thinks cooking is less of a pleasure than eating, you need to get in here and breathe deeply.
Now we come to that pan of yummy fish stock you've got simmering away on the back burner. This one I made using various fish heads and "bits", the parts of prawns the English usually waste and the remains of a couple of fabulous fresh Cromer crabs I'd devoured. I also threw in a load of mussels and baby clams when I was making the stock, which I munched there and then. Whenever you make a fish dish, don't throw anything away; bag it up in the freezer for your next stock-making Sunday afternoon.
Anyhoo, this is the bit where I get to use my ladle as a verb.
Lovingly ladle that stock into the pan. Just one ladle to start with and stir it gently, watching the rice eagerly devour that fishy goodness. It doesn't take long to absorb the first ladle and for things start to get gloopy.
Now all you have to do is chill out and ladle and stir …
Wait for each ladle of lovely stock to be fully absorbed into those fattening rice grains and for the whole mess to achieve gloop heaven before adding the next ladle …
Of course, this is the part that makes most people whine "I don't have the time to make risotto."
MAKE the time!
For fuck's sake, I work full time, commute seven hours a day and have a life and I can still manage to find the time to cook properly; so can you!
Depending on how many you're cooking for it only takes between twenty and forty-five minutes to absorb all that stock (I usually use a little over a pint for this amount) and believe me when I say that it is pure quality time.
Time to reflect and to think.
Time to relax and to bask in that glorious aroma.
Time to get some seriously sensuous stirring going.
Have patience … What is happening in that pan is something magical.
When it is just about ready, throw in your seafood … in this case a mixture of prawns, mussels and squid but use whatever you fancy. Stir it in for a minute or two and then …
You'll know when it's perfect.
It mustn't be wet and sloppy.
It mustn't be drying out or sticky.
It must be soft, smooth, gloopy and wonderful.
As soon as that moment comes around you've got to strike!
Turn off the heat, grate in a generous whack of delicious organic parmesan and give everything one last good stir, then quickly cover the pan.
This is easy if you're cooking it in a saucepan, but with the wok all I have to do is slap a piece of baking foil over there and crimp it down.
Now grab a tea-towel and get those warmed plates out of the oven. You've got around two minutes to get 'em ready, to pour yourself a nice glass of that chardonnay, to pick some more basil and coriander leaf and to see if there are any prawns left in that bowl that you've been dipping into while you've been cooking.
Those two magical minutes are when your risotto gets seriously creamy and has sex with the parmesan.
Now just plonk the whole damned mess on a plate and there you have it:
"Old Dive's assorted crustacea, bivalve and things with tentacles risotto".
Now eat the sucker.
Risotto. One of the greatest pleasures on earth both to make and to eat.
Go to it and enjoy.
I'll take a few seconds here for Robyn to punch me hard and yell at me to "Cut it out! Enough already of your stupid English mockery of our accent!" as she knows full well what's coming …
The word is "risotto" and it is pronounced "risotto".
It is NOT pronounced "riz-oh-doh". I mean where the fuck in that collection of letters do you find a "d"? Sheesh! Anyone using that mispronunciation deserves to get a good slapping from a big ol' Italian mama.
Take a look … You'll find there are two (count 'em) "T"s in there.
The "s" is soft, but not as soft as a "z" and as for the rest, just try saying "Otto" in an thick Italian accent, taking your time over that big old double "T" and you've got some idea of how stupid Americans sound ordering European food in Europe.
Riz-oh-doh my fat hairy arse!
Also "basil" is pronounced "basil". NOT "bay-zil".
Just go watch an episode of Fawlty Towers if you need help with that.
Hokay. Now we've cleared that up, let's get pinnied up and head for the kitchen.
Here's some stuff that might come in handy when making risotto:GOOD white wine (some people use a fino sherry or other stuff like that but I love inhaling that glorious chardonnay steam).
DAMNED GOOD olive oil. For this I use my favourite single quinta (estate) Portuguese azeite (cold pressed by foot in big old wooden lagares). This stuff's good enough to drink. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …
Organic Parmesan.
Organic Arborio or Carnorolo rice.
Organic onion and garlic (for crap about which please see the first "What's Cooking With Dive" post).
Basil (that's BASIL) and coriander leaf (the American for which is apparently "cilantro" according to the Transatlantic Dictionary that Robyn and I have been compiling these past two years) from my patio.
So far, so hoopy.
Now everyone makes their own versions of risotto, even those colonial people who can't say it properly. This is one of mine, but feel free to make it however you like.
I make lots of different sorts, my all-time favourite being a mutant autumn risotto with local wild mushrooms and tree fungi, chestnuts and flageolet beans. Woohoo! I'll probably post that when the season comes around.
I also love making artichoke risotto, pumpkin or squash, pea and peapod, beetroot (the pinkest, gayest-looking risotto of them all) and many, many others.
Basically, I can't go a week without risotto. I'm an addict.
Today is seafood risotto as I've been down to the place on the coast where I get my sashimi-quality tuna and picked up a few bags of assorted crustacea, bivalves and things with tentacles for this risotto and a bunch of heads, shells and body parts for my next stock-fest.
Before we start I'm going to go off on one about stock.
I know I had a sweary-Mary about this subject last week but since then I checked out a cookery blog that had been featured on Blogger Dashboard and to my utter horror the woman making risotto (at least she pronounced it right) on the video clip said "I can never be bothered making stock; I use this …" and held up one of those cartons of "bouillon powder" (ingredients: salt, salt, salt, acidity regulator, acid, salt, preservative, e-numbers, flavourings and salt).
I am just glad that none of you were in earshot. Words were shrieked that will never appear on this polite and profanity-free blog.
Let's just get this straight before we go any further:
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A GOOD HOME-MADE STOCK.
Have that tattooed somewhere you can see it.
Your fishmonger or butcher will give (or if he's mean, sell cheaply) you all the crap you need to make pints of stock for freezing, and making stock is a pleasure far greater than sitting in front of a fucking television going "duuuuur".
So … Let's heat the oil in the pan (or in today's case an old, heavy-bottomed non-stick wok which I find is unbeatable for risotto) and toss in the onion and garlic.Stir it around and turn down the heat and just let those suckers soften and inhale that glorious aroma.
One of the most comforting things in life is filling your lungs with that marvellous, mellifluous mélange of oil, garlic and onion.
Next, whack the flame back up and toss in the rice (one cup or so per person, depending on how greedy you're feeling) and make sure each and every yummy grain is coated with fragrant oil.
Once it's all coated and hot, rip up some basil (OW! Robyn, stop hitting me and learn to pronounce it correctly) and gently trickle in a good glassful of that boffo chardonnay (don't skimp; use the pricey stuff, not the plonk. It DOES make a difference).Stir it all in together, turn down the flame and just float blissfully up to the ceiling on those fumes.
WOW!
If anyone thinks cooking is less of a pleasure than eating, you need to get in here and breathe deeply.
Now we come to that pan of yummy fish stock you've got simmering away on the back burner. This one I made using various fish heads and "bits", the parts of prawns the English usually waste and the remains of a couple of fabulous fresh Cromer crabs I'd devoured. I also threw in a load of mussels and baby clams when I was making the stock, which I munched there and then. Whenever you make a fish dish, don't throw anything away; bag it up in the freezer for your next stock-making Sunday afternoon.
Anyhoo, this is the bit where I get to use my ladle as a verb.Lovingly ladle that stock into the pan. Just one ladle to start with and stir it gently, watching the rice eagerly devour that fishy goodness. It doesn't take long to absorb the first ladle and for things start to get gloopy.
Now all you have to do is chill out and ladle and stir …
Wait for each ladle of lovely stock to be fully absorbed into those fattening rice grains and for the whole mess to achieve gloop heaven before adding the next ladle …
Of course, this is the part that makes most people whine "I don't have the time to make risotto."
MAKE the time!
For fuck's sake, I work full time, commute seven hours a day and have a life and I can still manage to find the time to cook properly; so can you!
Depending on how many you're cooking for it only takes between twenty and forty-five minutes to absorb all that stock (I usually use a little over a pint for this amount) and believe me when I say that it is pure quality time.
Time to reflect and to think.
Time to relax and to bask in that glorious aroma.
Time to get some seriously sensuous stirring going.
Have patience … What is happening in that pan is something magical.
When it is just about ready, throw in your seafood … in this case a mixture of prawns, mussels and squid but use whatever you fancy. Stir it in for a minute or two and then …
You'll know when it's perfect.
It mustn't be wet and sloppy.
It mustn't be drying out or sticky.
It must be soft, smooth, gloopy and wonderful.
As soon as that moment comes around you've got to strike!
Turn off the heat, grate in a generous whack of delicious organic parmesan and give everything one last good stir, then quickly cover the pan.
This is easy if you're cooking it in a saucepan, but with the wok all I have to do is slap a piece of baking foil over there and crimp it down.
Now grab a tea-towel and get those warmed plates out of the oven. You've got around two minutes to get 'em ready, to pour yourself a nice glass of that chardonnay, to pick some more basil and coriander leaf and to see if there are any prawns left in that bowl that you've been dipping into while you've been cooking.
Those two magical minutes are when your risotto gets seriously creamy and has sex with the parmesan.
Now just plonk the whole damned mess on a plate and there you have it:"Old Dive's assorted crustacea, bivalve and things with tentacles risotto".
Now eat the sucker.
Risotto. One of the greatest pleasures on earth both to make and to eat.
Go to it and enjoy.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Not As Crazy As It Sounds
Hoorah for the Chinese!
I love the fact that they faked some of the Olympic opening ceremony.
We're so used to buying Chinese fakes we shouldn't be bothered in the least.
Crawling past it on the train this morning I gazed forlornly at the trashed wasteland that is the 2012 London Olympics building site when a thought occurred.
This thing is going so far over budget that to pay for it we'll have to endure rationing for decades and a return to the joys of postwar austerity Britain (yay for powdered egg, Spam and coffee made from acorns).
Why the hell not just fake the whole fucking thing?
The opening ceremony, the closing ceremony and everything in between.
Make it like one big video game.
After all, we're never gonna manage to stage it for real …
We've got no money to build it.
We've got crap athletes and no money to train them.
What we have got is four years and a decent CGI industry.
Shit, we could even fake it so our athletes actually WON things!
Mind you, we'd have to be careful not to go too far …
However tempting it may be I can't see the Yanks being too happy at watching the CGI opening ceremony and the waddling entrance of their "super-sized" lardy-assed flag-bearer, followed by a horde of morbidly obese rednecks in Mc.D teeshirts and baseball caps, toting Bibles and guns.
Similarly the Frogs wobbling on their bicycles in Breton stripy teeshirts and berets, festooned with garlic.
The Aussies may not be entirely convinced by a lycra-clad Dame Edna and a drooling Sir Les Patterson.
Though of course, the Brits would be totally believable, represented by clones of James Bond and Lara Croft.
Actually, I think I'm on to something here … I'll send this post to the British Olympic Committee.
Be sure and watch in 2012.
I love the fact that they faked some of the Olympic opening ceremony.
We're so used to buying Chinese fakes we shouldn't be bothered in the least.
Crawling past it on the train this morning I gazed forlornly at the trashed wasteland that is the 2012 London Olympics building site when a thought occurred.
This thing is going so far over budget that to pay for it we'll have to endure rationing for decades and a return to the joys of postwar austerity Britain (yay for powdered egg, Spam and coffee made from acorns).
Why the hell not just fake the whole fucking thing?
The opening ceremony, the closing ceremony and everything in between.
Make it like one big video game.
After all, we're never gonna manage to stage it for real …
We've got no money to build it.
We've got crap athletes and no money to train them.
What we have got is four years and a decent CGI industry.
Shit, we could even fake it so our athletes actually WON things!
Mind you, we'd have to be careful not to go too far …
However tempting it may be I can't see the Yanks being too happy at watching the CGI opening ceremony and the waddling entrance of their "super-sized" lardy-assed flag-bearer, followed by a horde of morbidly obese rednecks in Mc.D teeshirts and baseball caps, toting Bibles and guns.
Similarly the Frogs wobbling on their bicycles in Breton stripy teeshirts and berets, festooned with garlic.
The Aussies may not be entirely convinced by a lycra-clad Dame Edna and a drooling Sir Les Patterson.
Though of course, the Brits would be totally believable, represented by clones of James Bond and Lara Croft.
Actually, I think I'm on to something here … I'll send this post to the British Olympic Committee.
Be sure and watch in 2012.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Machiavelli In A Dress
Meanwhile, back in the real world (outside Blogville city limits) I've been having an ongoing argument with a friend about the necessity or otherwise of leaders.
Feel free to join in.
It all stemmed from my admittedly facetious assertion (based on long experience of such creatures) that sacking every person in the country who has "manager" in their job title or has attended (or taught) a management training course would be hugely beneficial both to the economy and to the sanity of the nation.
Of course, my friend just happens to be in a management position and - much to my delight - took the bait and we have been arguing about it ever since.
I do love a good rhubarb!
She posits (and despite possessing one of the most formidable intellects I know of, she appears to have learned this from The Niccolò Machiavelli Management Handbook) that human beings are essentially sheep and need herding (yes, she would include herself as a shepherd); whereas I contend that humans are individuals and are created - or at least squirted out of the womb - equal and that no one person has the right to power over another.
Sure, there are submissive and dominant personalities and as long as both parties agree the limits of domination they are quite within their rights to enjoy their own little consensual hierarchy inside a relationship/family; but leadership should never be imposed upon one person/people by another.
My friend contends that people need leadership "for their own good".
Juvenal's phrase "Quid custodiet ipsos custodes?" springs to mind, becoming in this case - in Old Dive's admittedly appalling schoolboy Latin - "Quid ducavi ipsos ducendi?" (Sorry, my textbooks are at home so that's off the top of my head) …
"Who leads the leaders themselves?"
Who guides/constrains them?
Who determines what is for "the common good"?
The leader's conscience?
His or her life experience?
We all have a conscience; we all have life experience.
If somebody aspires to lead others or declares themselves a leader, what - other than their own ego and opinion - makes their conscience superior to the next person's?
Surely the ultimate authority must be God, but …
(a) A leader who states that God has personally guided them has no proof but their own word and if history is to judge is invariably delusional; just look at George W. Bush; and besides,
(b) God is only an authority for those that profess belief in Him. The religious have no right whatsoever to judge or lead those who know there is no God (and vice versa).
So that leaves us with the self-proclaimed leader's own conscience …
This way lies dictatorship.
History (a wonderful teacher from whom we never seem to learn) shows that, however benevolent the motives of a dictator (or even a democracy) might be to start with, those in power - once they achieve "leadership" - will be reluctant to relinquish their position (they are, after all, only human, with all the venality, corruption, paranoia and lust for power that the term "human" infers) and will cling to power using increasingly oppressive measures against the very people they purport to lead.
Power corrupts … Absolute power corrupts absolutely …
However, no leader can lead for long without the consent of the led.
Even discounting legitimate revolution by the people, the human apparatus a leader has to put in place to maintain a position of power will inevitably attempt to topple them and to take that power for itself.
Supporting any leader, from Stalin down to the manager of the local McD is a seething pool of corrupt wannabes and greedy back-stabbers (humanity in all its glory), just waiting for the opportunity to kick off a feeding frenzy and assume power themselves.
Human beings are essentially selfish and power-hungry.
Put any two people in a room together and sooner or later one will attempt in some way - either physically or intellectually - to dominate the other.
Ergo: one person becomes better off and one worse off; the led technically "oppressed" by the leader, who - when let out of the room - will of course attempt to dominate yet more people rather than be led him/herself.
As for democracy, that attempts to prevent one person/faction from assuming dictatorship by applying the division of executive power between divers entities, each of whom strives to prevent ultimate power falling into the hands of the others whilst retaining its own share.
Better than a dictatorship, admittedly, but still - as we see today - ultimately self-serving rather than at the service of the people it rules; each part of it rife with paranoia and the lust to retain power, democracy falls prey to commercial interests and becomes stained by corporate lobbyists and self-interested groups exerting undue and corrupt influence on what are supposedly impartial elected bodies; all to the detriment of the led.
My friend states that Jesus, Gandhi and the Buddha (excellent choices) are her rôle models as leaders to which I can only counter that none of them were leaders in the dominant/submissive sense; none of them sought to dominate and "herd" us; they were all three servants and teachers who only "led" by example.
If people follow their teachings it is because those people freely CHOOSE to do so as individuals.
If somebody chooses NOT to do so they are perfectly within their rights and should not be coerced into accepting the views of others over their own (evangelists take note).
We are not simply arguing semantics as to whether the word "leader" means to lead by example/teaching (which I wholeheartedly approve of) or to lead by domination/subjugation (which I do not - however much it is claimed to be "for our own good").
My friend asserts that people (that's you and me) need to be actively led, to be "herded" in her words; to be directed from above by others who consider themselves our betters.
In the office environment, this means people so ignorant that they would consciously use the words "impact" and "leverage" as verbs (she would not use those herself, but admits to the criminal misuse of "strategic").
She is wrong (OW! … DAMN, you hit hard).
None of us needs to lead or be led by any other person.
It is a self evident truth that any person aspiring to lead others is by definition not suited to do so.
The only morally acceptable form of leadership is that of not seeking to lead but of teaching by example - like Jesus, Gandhi and the Buddha, serving the people; allowing us free choice … not herding us.
Boy, am I going to get slapped down when Ms. Machiavelli reads this! Hee hee.
Sorry for being so boring. My mind wanders like this when I spend too much time sitting on trains.
Feel free to join in.
It all stemmed from my admittedly facetious assertion (based on long experience of such creatures) that sacking every person in the country who has "manager" in their job title or has attended (or taught) a management training course would be hugely beneficial both to the economy and to the sanity of the nation.
Of course, my friend just happens to be in a management position and - much to my delight - took the bait and we have been arguing about it ever since.
I do love a good rhubarb!
She posits (and despite possessing one of the most formidable intellects I know of, she appears to have learned this from The Niccolò Machiavelli Management Handbook) that human beings are essentially sheep and need herding (yes, she would include herself as a shepherd); whereas I contend that humans are individuals and are created - or at least squirted out of the womb - equal and that no one person has the right to power over another.
Sure, there are submissive and dominant personalities and as long as both parties agree the limits of domination they are quite within their rights to enjoy their own little consensual hierarchy inside a relationship/family; but leadership should never be imposed upon one person/people by another.
My friend contends that people need leadership "for their own good".
Juvenal's phrase "Quid custodiet ipsos custodes?" springs to mind, becoming in this case - in Old Dive's admittedly appalling schoolboy Latin - "Quid ducavi ipsos ducendi?" (Sorry, my textbooks are at home so that's off the top of my head) …
"Who leads the leaders themselves?"
Who guides/constrains them?
Who determines what is for "the common good"?
The leader's conscience?
His or her life experience?
We all have a conscience; we all have life experience.
If somebody aspires to lead others or declares themselves a leader, what - other than their own ego and opinion - makes their conscience superior to the next person's?
Surely the ultimate authority must be God, but …
(a) A leader who states that God has personally guided them has no proof but their own word and if history is to judge is invariably delusional; just look at George W. Bush; and besides,
(b) God is only an authority for those that profess belief in Him. The religious have no right whatsoever to judge or lead those who know there is no God (and vice versa).
So that leaves us with the self-proclaimed leader's own conscience …
This way lies dictatorship.
History (a wonderful teacher from whom we never seem to learn) shows that, however benevolent the motives of a dictator (or even a democracy) might be to start with, those in power - once they achieve "leadership" - will be reluctant to relinquish their position (they are, after all, only human, with all the venality, corruption, paranoia and lust for power that the term "human" infers) and will cling to power using increasingly oppressive measures against the very people they purport to lead.
Power corrupts … Absolute power corrupts absolutely …
However, no leader can lead for long without the consent of the led.
Even discounting legitimate revolution by the people, the human apparatus a leader has to put in place to maintain a position of power will inevitably attempt to topple them and to take that power for itself.
Supporting any leader, from Stalin down to the manager of the local McD is a seething pool of corrupt wannabes and greedy back-stabbers (humanity in all its glory), just waiting for the opportunity to kick off a feeding frenzy and assume power themselves.
Human beings are essentially selfish and power-hungry.
Put any two people in a room together and sooner or later one will attempt in some way - either physically or intellectually - to dominate the other.
Ergo: one person becomes better off and one worse off; the led technically "oppressed" by the leader, who - when let out of the room - will of course attempt to dominate yet more people rather than be led him/herself.
As for democracy, that attempts to prevent one person/faction from assuming dictatorship by applying the division of executive power between divers entities, each of whom strives to prevent ultimate power falling into the hands of the others whilst retaining its own share.
Better than a dictatorship, admittedly, but still - as we see today - ultimately self-serving rather than at the service of the people it rules; each part of it rife with paranoia and the lust to retain power, democracy falls prey to commercial interests and becomes stained by corporate lobbyists and self-interested groups exerting undue and corrupt influence on what are supposedly impartial elected bodies; all to the detriment of the led.
My friend states that Jesus, Gandhi and the Buddha (excellent choices) are her rôle models as leaders to which I can only counter that none of them were leaders in the dominant/submissive sense; none of them sought to dominate and "herd" us; they were all three servants and teachers who only "led" by example.
If people follow their teachings it is because those people freely CHOOSE to do so as individuals.
If somebody chooses NOT to do so they are perfectly within their rights and should not be coerced into accepting the views of others over their own (evangelists take note).
We are not simply arguing semantics as to whether the word "leader" means to lead by example/teaching (which I wholeheartedly approve of) or to lead by domination/subjugation (which I do not - however much it is claimed to be "for our own good").
My friend asserts that people (that's you and me) need to be actively led, to be "herded" in her words; to be directed from above by others who consider themselves our betters.
In the office environment, this means people so ignorant that they would consciously use the words "impact" and "leverage" as verbs (she would not use those herself, but admits to the criminal misuse of "strategic").
She is wrong (OW! … DAMN, you hit hard).
None of us needs to lead or be led by any other person.
It is a self evident truth that any person aspiring to lead others is by definition not suited to do so.
The only morally acceptable form of leadership is that of not seeking to lead but of teaching by example - like Jesus, Gandhi and the Buddha, serving the people; allowing us free choice … not herding us.
Boy, am I going to get slapped down when Ms. Machiavelli reads this! Hee hee.
Sorry for being so boring. My mind wanders like this when I spend too much time sitting on trains.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Karaoke Friday
Hey ho. It's the fourth of July and the Colonials are revolting.
Not being in the least bit resentful, curmudgeonly or wishing to offend in any way, this grumpy old man from the Mother Country will join in the celebrations with a little sing-song to remind me of the consequences of said Colonial revolt.
Happy Fourth of July to any damned Yanquis out there!
Not being in the least bit resentful, curmudgeonly or wishing to offend in any way, this grumpy old man from the Mother Country will join in the celebrations with a little sing-song to remind me of the consequences of said Colonial revolt.
Happy Fourth of July to any damned Yanquis out there!
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Dance, You Fuckers! It's Saturday
Just a quickie as I'm about to drive into the city for breakfast and shopping (it's not just a girly thang; some guys are born to shop and I'm one of 'em).
I went to see Tony's joyously disgraceful excuse for a band play last night (you remember? The worst and most shambolic band in the world?) and was totally disappointed to find them sounding tight, together and professional.
"What the hell's wrong with you guys" I protested.
Turns out that they have relatives over from Australia and they've been practicing hard for a month to "get good" for them.
I'm not quite sure how long I could handle them being listenable but they assure me that next month they will return to the stumbling, out-of tune, shambolic cacophony that I love.
And talk of cacophony brings me to one of my favourite bands and a song that is definitely "shaping my summer": the monstrously splendid My Bloody Valentine playing "Only Shallow".
Rumour has it that they're having a reunion this year. I can't wait!
Anybody who loves "Lost In Translation" will recognise this sound as their frontman Kevin Shields provided the soundtrack and sprinkled some MBV all over it.
Delicious, trance-like, dreamy Heaven.
Dance away your heartache …
I went to see Tony's joyously disgraceful excuse for a band play last night (you remember? The worst and most shambolic band in the world?) and was totally disappointed to find them sounding tight, together and professional.
"What the hell's wrong with you guys" I protested.
Turns out that they have relatives over from Australia and they've been practicing hard for a month to "get good" for them.
I'm not quite sure how long I could handle them being listenable but they assure me that next month they will return to the stumbling, out-of tune, shambolic cacophony that I love.
And talk of cacophony brings me to one of my favourite bands and a song that is definitely "shaping my summer": the monstrously splendid My Bloody Valentine playing "Only Shallow".
Rumour has it that they're having a reunion this year. I can't wait!
Anybody who loves "Lost In Translation" will recognise this sound as their frontman Kevin Shields provided the soundtrack and sprinkled some MBV all over it.
Delicious, trance-like, dreamy Heaven.
Dance away your heartache …
Sunday, June 08, 2008
The Devastating Man
Laydees and gentlemen … I give you:
The Devastating Man that is my baby brother Phil - aka Full, The Monkey God.
He has a birthday today!
Yaaaay!
And probably Woohoo, too!
To celebrate this momentous occasion, I will risk his eternal wrath and present you with a pictorial snapshot of the evolution of The Monkey God, from small animal sacrifice to full blown simian deity.
Big Pants!
One day I woke up to find this strange, frog-like balloon alien in the pram.
In olden days, nappies were lead-lined and got changed once a month.
There's about a fortnight's worth in there.
Don't fuck with me!
Not long after the end of rationing, in post-war austerity Britain, iced lollies were made from offal, putty and grit.
Phil's admirable food-snobbery started here.
Those gloves again.
Back then, masturbation deterrence started early.
That was a seriously great trike, though.
And then it all went wrong …
How did that cute little boy grow up to become the founder member of splendid rhythm and blues combo The Dubious Brothers?
And skinny, too!
What a bastard!
Phil is a drummer.
But he's also an excellent bassist - as seen here … if a little studious-looking - and a totally awesome guitar player.
Anyhoo …
Happy Birthday, Phil!
My baby brother.
You know I hate YouTube, but I couldn't resist this.
Skip the first minute or so (unless you're a gay man in which case simply revel in the fabness of Babs).
It's around a minute and a half in that this gets very wrong indeed and veers off into pædo-pervy territory in a quite hilariously inappropriate manner.
So to honour Phil's birthday, sing along with Babs as she belts out one of my favourite songs of all time:
"I'm five,
I'm five,
I'm a big girl now,
I'm five,
etc …"
Then pop on over to Phil's blog and wish him a happy birthday.
The Devastating Man that is my baby brother Phil - aka Full, The Monkey God.He has a birthday today!
Yaaaay!
And probably Woohoo, too!
To celebrate this momentous occasion, I will risk his eternal wrath and present you with a pictorial snapshot of the evolution of The Monkey God, from small animal sacrifice to full blown simian deity.
Big Pants!One day I woke up to find this strange, frog-like balloon alien in the pram.
In olden days, nappies were lead-lined and got changed once a month.
There's about a fortnight's worth in there.
Don't fuck with me!
Not long after the end of rationing, in post-war austerity Britain, iced lollies were made from offal, putty and grit.Phil's admirable food-snobbery started here.
Those gloves again.Back then, masturbation deterrence started early.
That was a seriously great trike, though.
And then it all went wrong …
How did that cute little boy grow up to become the founder member of splendid rhythm and blues combo The Dubious Brothers?
And skinny, too!What a bastard!
Phil is a drummer.But he's also an excellent bassist - as seen here … if a little studious-looking - and a totally awesome guitar player.
Anyhoo …Happy Birthday, Phil!
My baby brother.
You know I hate YouTube, but I couldn't resist this.
Skip the first minute or so (unless you're a gay man in which case simply revel in the fabness of Babs).
It's around a minute and a half in that this gets very wrong indeed and veers off into pædo-pervy territory in a quite hilariously inappropriate manner.
So to honour Phil's birthday, sing along with Babs as she belts out one of my favourite songs of all time:
"I'm five,
I'm five,
I'm a big girl now,
I'm five,
etc …"
Then pop on over to Phil's blog and wish him a happy birthday.
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