Phil pointed out a poster in a shop this morning that read:
"PUNCTUATION:
KNOW YOUR SHIT
OR
KNOW YOU'RE SHIT."
Tickled the hell out of me.
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Webster Goes Bust
"Boobleage."
"Boobelage."
"Boobage."
There it is, up at the top of the post.
All of the relevant comments came from the flower of American womanhood and made me wonder if American women think about boobs as much as English men do.
We on the civilised side of the Pond use "cleavage" for the amount of boob on display, but I must confess a sneaking admiration for this Colonial neologism, particularly that "L" in the middle that hints at the word "wobble."
Strangely, my spellchecker (regrettably based on Webster's gibberish rather than the English language as she is spoke) only picks up the middle one as a misspelling.
So, laydees … tell me more about boobs.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Let's Go Play In The Dictionary
Start each day with a poo and a poem and you won't go far wrong.
As a general Rule For Living I suppose that ranks alongside my 'Always live east of where you work.'
Half a century of learning from my own dumb mistakes has given me my own set of rules. As for those two: living east of where I work saves me getting blinded by sun-glare off wet roads on my way to and from the office and starting each day with a poo and a poem clears both body and mind ready for whatever horrors the day might throw at me.
Not groundbreaking, I know, but an accumulation of such nuggets helps me stumble along without bumping into too many sharp things.
This morning's poem (I'll spare you this morning's poo) turned out to be Mandrakes For Supper, by James K. Baxter (am I alone in ascribing ludicrous names to people who insert intrusive initials in their signatures? James Baxter has this morning been variously called Kleptomania, Kniphofia, Kimberley and Knickers and it's his own fault).
Anyhoo … His poem:
Mandrakes For Supper
Memory feeds us on a prison diet
Of bits and scraps. 'Remember Mr. X-,
That simple solemn man, so deathly quiet;
'And Sally Z-, compounded of raw sex
And circumstance' - 'Ah yes, her corn-gold hair …'
A land where roams Tyrannosaurus Rex,
The giant lizard, calloused by despair -
In Nowhere I received my education
(If memory can be trusted) mooching there
Like Dante's ghost, among a faceless nation.
The white antarctic Gorgon was my mentor:
Her cloudy arms, her eyes of desolation
Sisterly gazing from the whirlwind's centre,
Received, embraced my naked intuition.
The town of Nilburg too I shrank to enter
(If memory serves me right) and wept contrition
For indistinct all-but-committed crimes
In gelding-rooms and caves of parturition.
Yet undeniably I laughed at times
With those who shared my headless hullaballoo:
Fogeaters, Dwarfs, Green Quims and Paradigms.
Cellars of Nilburg! how I hated you,
Your Ixion wheels, hot frogs and icy toads,
Your existential climate where I grew
Into an adult Mandrake. (Memory loads
My plate with mushrooms.) But I woke at length
And left you, travelling light by mountain roads
To elsewhere; drank at desert wells; gained strength.
I don't know why I like that quite as much as I do. Perhaps the quirky rhyming rhythm, perhaps the freewheeling imagery or the playfully obsessive gallimaufry of punctuation, but more likely my childish word-glee, born of a love for Anglo-Saxon poetry that revels in such words as 'Fogeaters' and capers with the joy of 'hot frogs and icy toads.'
I do love to play with words and this poem set me up rather nicely for the day.
For the year, in fact as I am (according to my calendar and birth certificate) fifty-two today.
Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Or perhaps that should be: 'Oh, bugger! I've wasted another smegging year.'
Either way, I'm off for a swim in the River Lexicon with Fogeaters, hot frogs and icy toads.
Care to join me?
As a general Rule For Living I suppose that ranks alongside my 'Always live east of where you work.'
Half a century of learning from my own dumb mistakes has given me my own set of rules. As for those two: living east of where I work saves me getting blinded by sun-glare off wet roads on my way to and from the office and starting each day with a poo and a poem clears both body and mind ready for whatever horrors the day might throw at me.
Not groundbreaking, I know, but an accumulation of such nuggets helps me stumble along without bumping into too many sharp things.
This morning's poem (I'll spare you this morning's poo) turned out to be Mandrakes For Supper, by James K. Baxter (am I alone in ascribing ludicrous names to people who insert intrusive initials in their signatures? James Baxter has this morning been variously called Kleptomania, Kniphofia, Kimberley and Knickers and it's his own fault).
Anyhoo … His poem:
Mandrakes For Supper
Memory feeds us on a prison diet
Of bits and scraps. 'Remember Mr. X-,
That simple solemn man, so deathly quiet;
'And Sally Z-, compounded of raw sex
And circumstance' - 'Ah yes, her corn-gold hair …'
A land where roams Tyrannosaurus Rex,
The giant lizard, calloused by despair -
In Nowhere I received my education
(If memory can be trusted) mooching there
Like Dante's ghost, among a faceless nation.
The white antarctic Gorgon was my mentor:
Her cloudy arms, her eyes of desolation
Sisterly gazing from the whirlwind's centre,
Received, embraced my naked intuition.
The town of Nilburg too I shrank to enter
(If memory serves me right) and wept contrition
For indistinct all-but-committed crimes
In gelding-rooms and caves of parturition.
Yet undeniably I laughed at times
With those who shared my headless hullaballoo:
Fogeaters, Dwarfs, Green Quims and Paradigms.
Cellars of Nilburg! how I hated you,
Your Ixion wheels, hot frogs and icy toads,
Your existential climate where I grew
Into an adult Mandrake. (Memory loads
My plate with mushrooms.) But I woke at length
And left you, travelling light by mountain roads
To elsewhere; drank at desert wells; gained strength.
I don't know why I like that quite as much as I do. Perhaps the quirky rhyming rhythm, perhaps the freewheeling imagery or the playfully obsessive gallimaufry of punctuation, but more likely my childish word-glee, born of a love for Anglo-Saxon poetry that revels in such words as 'Fogeaters' and capers with the joy of 'hot frogs and icy toads.'
I do love to play with words and this poem set me up rather nicely for the day.
For the year, in fact as I am (according to my calendar and birth certificate) fifty-two today.
Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Or perhaps that should be: 'Oh, bugger! I've wasted another smegging year.'
Either way, I'm off for a swim in the River Lexicon with Fogeaters, hot frogs and icy toads.
Care to join me?
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.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
You Live Where?
The Noo Yoik Times has been quite considerate these past fifty years in that it has left me alone to get on with fucking up my life unassisted.
This week, however, it has thrust itself most intrusively into my world and both times it has made me giggle.
First up was of course the sexual survey that - amongst such delights as the plethysmograph - revealed that most women are physically turned on by watching dubbed chimpanzee porn but will not admit to it.
And now the lovely Petrea has pointed me at a delightfully chortlesome Noo Yoik Times article raising a somewhat startled eyebrow at our quaint English place names.
Those fun-loving Colonials have been chuckling into their non-fat vanilla lattes at the prospect of living in such places as Crapstone, Peniston, Ugley (which could only be in Essex), East Breast, North Piddle, Spanker Lane, Crotch Crescent, Butt Hole Road, the splendid Titty Ho and the unfortunate Sluts' Hole Lane.
Sluts' Hole Lane is actually in Attleborough, home to my brother Phil, although he lives at the "nicer" end of the village, where such a place would be euphemistically renamed "Escort Companion's Lady-Parts Lane."
I have great affection for rude historical place names ever since my old mate Babs, up in the Shetland Islands, pointed out a standing stone to me, in front of which a small sign read (in a splendid attempt at the local vernacular) "The White Stane Of Willie."
Old Dive (who lives not far from the village of Six Mile Bottom; surely a place many US citizens would feel at home visiting) has actually posted on this subject before, when pot-holers in Derbyshire confirmed that Britain's biggest cave had been discovered hidden below a fissure known for centuries as the Devil's Arsehole.
The most splendid example of vernacular profanity in English place names is a street I pass along every working day.
For centuries, fragrant ladies have plied their venerable trade there, offering such exotic delights as "penny up the wall" knee-tremblers, as a result of which, the place was officially known by the delightful soubriquet of (brace yourselves) "Gropecunte Lane".
Unfortunately, when the Bank of England was located there, they renamed it Threadneedle Street (still a lingering trace of the old profession in the new name).
I must say that the moral standards of Gropecunte Lane's working population have declined catastrophically since the bank moved in; they are still screwing people and taking their money but the amount of pleasure per penny available there now is nothing like it was in the old days.
The "C" word was of course happily used by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Pepys and has only recently become the great taboo.
It was for many a century merely a jolly and far from offensive euphemism for a lady's furry front-bottom and its diminutive derivative "cunny" was still in everyday use when I was a kid, producing no more shock value (and about an equal amount of sniggering behind the hand) as the word "bum."
Times change and prudery increasingly bowdlerises our lives, which is a great pity as it deprives us of much that was once colourful and richly evocative in our wonderful vernacular history.
Long may such names avoid the censor's shameful attentions.
This week, however, it has thrust itself most intrusively into my world and both times it has made me giggle.
First up was of course the sexual survey that - amongst such delights as the plethysmograph - revealed that most women are physically turned on by watching dubbed chimpanzee porn but will not admit to it.
And now the lovely Petrea has pointed me at a delightfully chortlesome Noo Yoik Times article raising a somewhat startled eyebrow at our quaint English place names.
Those fun-loving Colonials have been chuckling into their non-fat vanilla lattes at the prospect of living in such places as Crapstone, Peniston, Ugley (which could only be in Essex), East Breast, North Piddle, Spanker Lane, Crotch Crescent, Butt Hole Road, the splendid Titty Ho and the unfortunate Sluts' Hole Lane.
Sluts' Hole Lane is actually in Attleborough, home to my brother Phil, although he lives at the "nicer" end of the village, where such a place would be euphemistically renamed "Escort Companion's Lady-Parts Lane."
I have great affection for rude historical place names ever since my old mate Babs, up in the Shetland Islands, pointed out a standing stone to me, in front of which a small sign read (in a splendid attempt at the local vernacular) "The White Stane Of Willie."
Old Dive (who lives not far from the village of Six Mile Bottom; surely a place many US citizens would feel at home visiting) has actually posted on this subject before, when pot-holers in Derbyshire confirmed that Britain's biggest cave had been discovered hidden below a fissure known for centuries as the Devil's Arsehole.
The most splendid example of vernacular profanity in English place names is a street I pass along every working day.
For centuries, fragrant ladies have plied their venerable trade there, offering such exotic delights as "penny up the wall" knee-tremblers, as a result of which, the place was officially known by the delightful soubriquet of (brace yourselves) "Gropecunte Lane".
Unfortunately, when the Bank of England was located there, they renamed it Threadneedle Street (still a lingering trace of the old profession in the new name).
I must say that the moral standards of Gropecunte Lane's working population have declined catastrophically since the bank moved in; they are still screwing people and taking their money but the amount of pleasure per penny available there now is nothing like it was in the old days.
The "C" word was of course happily used by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Pepys and has only recently become the great taboo.
It was for many a century merely a jolly and far from offensive euphemism for a lady's furry front-bottom and its diminutive derivative "cunny" was still in everyday use when I was a kid, producing no more shock value (and about an equal amount of sniggering behind the hand) as the word "bum."
Times change and prudery increasingly bowdlerises our lives, which is a great pity as it deprives us of much that was once colourful and richly evocative in our wonderful vernacular history.
Long may such names avoid the censor's shameful attentions.
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.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Hfuhruhurr And Uumellmahaye
Hoorah once again for Colonial mispronunciation!
No, I'm not going to start insulting my friends from across the water again (ha! That took you by surprise, didn't it?); instead I intend to provide help with pronouncing some English place names that are frankly illogical and at best silly, but are part and parcel of the charm of English vernacular that has built up since Saxon times.
I bring up the subject in response to Maria's comment yesterday in which she relates :
"I had a delightful talk today with a physician from Hartfordshire (sp?...he pronounced it something like Herfersheer) who charmed me by telling me that "for a yank" I seemed to have quite a "smarty" brain …"
This reminded me of the sharp pains in the head I experience when a Colonial opens his or her mouth and out of it tumbles:
"War - sesster-shy're sauce".
For your information, it is pronounced "Wooster sauce".
That is "Woo" as in "Wood", not as in "Food".
The Shires (The English "Home Counties" within easy reach of London) are pronounced "Shyre", but as soon as you say the full word, such as Worcestershire it becomes "Sheer".
Worcestershire is pronounced "Woostersheer", with the same "Woo" as above.
Leicestershire is pronounced "Lestersheer".
Similarly, Gloucestershire is "Glostersheer".
Maria's Hertfordshire becomes "Hartfudsheer".
And Katie ("Kaydee" in Californian) lives in Berkeley … Berkeley Square in London (where the nightingale allegedly sang) is pronounced Barkly; in the States they use "Berk", which to the English reveals a lot about our lost Colonies.
Individual towns can also be a nightmare for tourists.
Here are three within a ten minute drive from my house:
Lynn's parents live in Wymondham. It is pronounced "Wind'um", with the "Wind" as in "Windmill".
Costessey is "Cossy"
And Happisburgh is "Hays'bru".
This is from the language that pronounces the name Featherstonehaugh "Fanshaw".
I had written a big rant to go with this but I'll save that for another day. I'll restrict myself to being helpful for once.
No, I'm not going to start insulting my friends from across the water again (ha! That took you by surprise, didn't it?); instead I intend to provide help with pronouncing some English place names that are frankly illogical and at best silly, but are part and parcel of the charm of English vernacular that has built up since Saxon times.
I bring up the subject in response to Maria's comment yesterday in which she relates :
"I had a delightful talk today with a physician from Hartfordshire (sp?...he pronounced it something like Herfersheer) who charmed me by telling me that "for a yank" I seemed to have quite a "smarty" brain …"
This reminded me of the sharp pains in the head I experience when a Colonial opens his or her mouth and out of it tumbles:
"War - sesster-shy're sauce".
For your information, it is pronounced "Wooster sauce".
That is "Woo" as in "Wood", not as in "Food".
The Shires (The English "Home Counties" within easy reach of London) are pronounced "Shyre", but as soon as you say the full word, such as Worcestershire it becomes "Sheer".
Worcestershire is pronounced "Woostersheer", with the same "Woo" as above.
Leicestershire is pronounced "Lestersheer".
Similarly, Gloucestershire is "Glostersheer".
Maria's Hertfordshire becomes "Hartfudsheer".
And Katie ("Kaydee" in Californian) lives in Berkeley … Berkeley Square in London (where the nightingale allegedly sang) is pronounced Barkly; in the States they use "Berk", which to the English reveals a lot about our lost Colonies.
Individual towns can also be a nightmare for tourists.
Here are three within a ten minute drive from my house:
Lynn's parents live in Wymondham. It is pronounced "Wind'um", with the "Wind" as in "Windmill".
Costessey is "Cossy"
And Happisburgh is "Hays'bru".
This is from the language that pronounces the name Featherstonehaugh "Fanshaw".
I had written a big rant to go with this but I'll save that for another day. I'll restrict myself to being helpful for once.
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.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Defining Deliciary
In the comments to yesterday's post Shan reveals that she also uses the Dive neologism "deliciary" and ponders whether I use it in noun form.
Indeed I do.
To define "deliciary", kindly take my arm (don crinolines if you must) and let us meander through the serpentine mediæval streets to the quaint Edwardian portal of Digby's Of Holt.
Digby's is a hand-made confectionary emporium nestled within the Royal Arcade in Norwich. It is where I go to purchase my regular fix of their frankly astonishing under-the-counter liquorice fudge (they don't have it on display as the place would get mobbed).
It is the kind of place where people walk in and stand gazing, open-mouthed with wonder at the cornucopia of delights set before them; where beautiful girls in black with little white bibs and white cotton gloves minister to one's most sensual, chocolatey desires; their snake-like eyes and flickering smiles betraying an inner gloating at their power over us mere mortals.
It is a place where whatever fevered imaginings haunt your weirdest dreams you are bound to find them lovingly recreated in chocolate.
A place redolent of dark magic, where a tiny, child-size spiral staircase in the corner leads one's eye down into a stygian gloom, wherein one imagines enslaved children in rags working the dark seams of a chocolate mine and wyrd sisters cackling over cauldrons of bubbling, sugary opiates, more addictive than crack.
A place of sinuous, sensual allure.
Temptation in solid form.
Digby's of Holt is for me the definitive deliciary; a glittering cornucopia of delicious desires, such that the senses are overwhelmed; The Verb (see yesterday's post) is its linguistic equivalent.
Dammit!
Now I fancy chocolate.
Indeed I do.
To define "deliciary", kindly take my arm (don crinolines if you must) and let us meander through the serpentine mediæval streets to the quaint Edwardian portal of Digby's Of Holt.
Digby's is a hand-made confectionary emporium nestled within the Royal Arcade in Norwich. It is where I go to purchase my regular fix of their frankly astonishing under-the-counter liquorice fudge (they don't have it on display as the place would get mobbed).
It is the kind of place where people walk in and stand gazing, open-mouthed with wonder at the cornucopia of delights set before them; where beautiful girls in black with little white bibs and white cotton gloves minister to one's most sensual, chocolatey desires; their snake-like eyes and flickering smiles betraying an inner gloating at their power over us mere mortals.
It is a place where whatever fevered imaginings haunt your weirdest dreams you are bound to find them lovingly recreated in chocolate.
A place redolent of dark magic, where a tiny, child-size spiral staircase in the corner leads one's eye down into a stygian gloom, wherein one imagines enslaved children in rags working the dark seams of a chocolate mine and wyrd sisters cackling over cauldrons of bubbling, sugary opiates, more addictive than crack.
A place of sinuous, sensual allure.
Temptation in solid form.
Digby's of Holt is for me the definitive deliciary; a glittering cornucopia of delicious desires, such that the senses are overwhelmed; The Verb (see yesterday's post) is its linguistic equivalent.
Dammit!
Now I fancy chocolate.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
A Deliciary Of Verbiage
We interrupt this blog to bring you an advertising feature.
Old Dive lives in the age of radio.
Fuck TV. The pictures are invariably superior on the wireless.
I listen mainly to good old highbrow BBC Radio 3 (the REAL classical, contemporary, jazz and world music channel, as opposed to the likes of Classic FM … "your favourite music from the adverts" and "elevator music to dribble to"), with forays into Radio 4 for news and comedy.
Saturday nights these days no longer see Old Dive gigging, but listening first to live opera from the NY MET, and then to Radio Three's glorious ego-trip for linguistic pedants such as myself: The Verb.
Unfortunately it's not available as a podcast, but follow the link and listen to the show.
The Verb is a veritable logophilic deliciary* of slippery, sensual language; a word-lovers' wet-patch of cunning linguistics.
The Beeb describes it as presenter Ian Mc.Millan's "cabaret of language", which is pretty accurate.
Amongst a myriad of linguistic miscellany this week: three new poems from Will Eaves;
an utterly glorious "eartoon" from Peter Blegvad (one of his regular aural cartoons made for the programme) about a cryogenic trombone that simply must be listened to;
two live songs from my beloved Joan Wasser (Joan As Police Woman) from her forthcoming album.
Anyone fool enough not to have bought Joan's debut album, "Real Life" should summon the Amazonians and order a copy right now.
Here's a particularly lovely extract from the title track:
"I watch the numbers register
on the postal scale.
I think of your hands and calculate
how a man,
desired,
feels the weight of a letter.
It's true what they say about me
that I'm out of my mind
but I think that you like it
so take the chance,
be reckless
with
me."
So … Dive's advice for Sunday:
Brew up a nice, strong, black coffee.
Make some toast and bitter orange marmalade.
Join me listening to this week's Verb.
Buy Joan's last album.
Enjoy.
* "Deliciary" is yet another attempt to get one of my words into the OED. Use it as often as you can on blogs and in print please.
Old Dive lives in the age of radio.
Fuck TV. The pictures are invariably superior on the wireless.
I listen mainly to good old highbrow BBC Radio 3 (the REAL classical, contemporary, jazz and world music channel, as opposed to the likes of Classic FM … "your favourite music from the adverts" and "elevator music to dribble to"), with forays into Radio 4 for news and comedy.
Saturday nights these days no longer see Old Dive gigging, but listening first to live opera from the NY MET, and then to Radio Three's glorious ego-trip for linguistic pedants such as myself: The Verb.
Unfortunately it's not available as a podcast, but follow the link and listen to the show.
The Verb is a veritable logophilic deliciary* of slippery, sensual language; a word-lovers' wet-patch of cunning linguistics.
The Beeb describes it as presenter Ian Mc.Millan's "cabaret of language", which is pretty accurate.
Amongst a myriad of linguistic miscellany this week: three new poems from Will Eaves;
an utterly glorious "eartoon" from Peter Blegvad (one of his regular aural cartoons made for the programme) about a cryogenic trombone that simply must be listened to;
two live songs from my beloved Joan Wasser (Joan As Police Woman) from her forthcoming album.
Anyone fool enough not to have bought Joan's debut album, "Real Life" should summon the Amazonians and order a copy right now.
Here's a particularly lovely extract from the title track:
"I watch the numbers register
on the postal scale.
I think of your hands and calculate
how a man,
desired,
feels the weight of a letter.
It's true what they say about me
that I'm out of my mind
but I think that you like it
so take the chance,
be reckless
with
me."
So … Dive's advice for Sunday:
Brew up a nice, strong, black coffee.
Make some toast and bitter orange marmalade.
Join me listening to this week's Verb.
Buy Joan's last album.
Enjoy.
* "Deliciary" is yet another attempt to get one of my words into the OED. Use it as often as you can on blogs and in print please.
Monday, May 05, 2008
A Wordy Fucker Writes
Hokay …
So I was chatting away yesterday and the subject of Scrabble came up.
Now you all know I'm a mild-mannered and uncompetitive sort of guy (alright … Fess up; who said "HA!"?), but put me in front of a Scrabble board and I morph into a complete and utter bastard; a twisted, cruel and evil torturer of the haplessly ill-educated.
I've even been known to cackle.
Being a black belt, fifth dan pedant, the complete Oxford English Dictionary is LAW!
We'll have none of that "Official Scrabble Words Dictionary" crap! That's just a gimmicky tie-in for ignorant twats with no vocabulary.
I am a Jedi master of OED arcania and in particular, that Scrabble-winning endgame coup-de-grace, the high-scoring two or three letter word that nobody's ever heard of.
I revel (indeed I wriggle and writhe with sensual glee) in such words as "fid" (a conical hardwood pin used by sailors to splice rope), "dzo" (a hybrid cattle from the Himalayas), "xi" (fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet), "ewt" (a kind of newt; I kid you not), "ax" for axe, of course, "od" as Reichenbach's arbitrary name for a force, and many other splendid words guaranteed to cause a fight over the Scrabble board.
Complain that it's not in the so-called "official" non-dictionary and I'll beat you to a pulp with the OED and I'll be sure and use every single volume in amusingly painful ways.
And don't even THINK about using a non-word from that cretinous charlatan Noah Fucking Webster. Try "color" and I'll kill you without further warning.
So …
That leads me to what popped back into my mind yesterday from the dank cellars of what remains of my memory; a competitive game a couple of decades back.
This was a local BBC radio organised thing. The prize was a trip to Moscow, which - being of the Anarcho-Syndicalist persuasion I was eager to win.
I didn't win, by the way. Some bastard ringer from London beat me by two points and I had to go home with £250 to spend in Jarrolds, the local department store.
My little tale today comes from the semi-final, where I was paired with an evil and bitter, calculating hag in the disguise of a nice little old lady.
We were up against a time limit and getting toward the last play and it was neck and neck.
Playing with an audience and a panel of judges (A fester of judges? A midden of judges? What is the word?) seemed to bring out the nasty in people and this nice little old lady was being a real bitch.
We were desperately blocking any high-scoring squares and frustrating one another at every move; jaws set into grimaces and steely glares flashing murderous hate across the table.
Last move …
The hag-lady laid first and was suddenly twenty-nine points up.
BASTARD!
But in her greedy haste she had left an opening. Had she gone for a lesser score somewhere else on the board she may well have beaten me, but her overconfidence left a tantalising triple-word score square naked and vulnerable.
My only problem was that the perfect word was not … er … the perfect word to use in front of a little old lady and a family audience.
Fortunately I am an evil, twisted bastard with no morals …
I called a judge over and he concurred - somewhat blushingly - and I laid my tiles.
V - 4 (triple-word score)
U - 1
L - 1
V - 4 (double-letter score)
A - 1
on a triple word score to give me forty-five and the match!
Bwahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!
Her face was a picture.
I love being a bastard.
Hee hee hee hee hee.
Anyone for Scrabble?
So I was chatting away yesterday and the subject of Scrabble came up.
Now you all know I'm a mild-mannered and uncompetitive sort of guy (alright … Fess up; who said "HA!"?), but put me in front of a Scrabble board and I morph into a complete and utter bastard; a twisted, cruel and evil torturer of the haplessly ill-educated.
I've even been known to cackle.
Being a black belt, fifth dan pedant, the complete Oxford English Dictionary is LAW!
We'll have none of that "Official Scrabble Words Dictionary" crap! That's just a gimmicky tie-in for ignorant twats with no vocabulary.
I am a Jedi master of OED arcania and in particular, that Scrabble-winning endgame coup-de-grace, the high-scoring two or three letter word that nobody's ever heard of.
I revel (indeed I wriggle and writhe with sensual glee) in such words as "fid" (a conical hardwood pin used by sailors to splice rope), "dzo" (a hybrid cattle from the Himalayas), "xi" (fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet), "ewt" (a kind of newt; I kid you not), "ax" for axe, of course, "od" as Reichenbach's arbitrary name for a force, and many other splendid words guaranteed to cause a fight over the Scrabble board.
Complain that it's not in the so-called "official" non-dictionary and I'll beat you to a pulp with the OED and I'll be sure and use every single volume in amusingly painful ways.
And don't even THINK about using a non-word from that cretinous charlatan Noah Fucking Webster. Try "color" and I'll kill you without further warning.
So …
That leads me to what popped back into my mind yesterday from the dank cellars of what remains of my memory; a competitive game a couple of decades back.
This was a local BBC radio organised thing. The prize was a trip to Moscow, which - being of the Anarcho-Syndicalist persuasion I was eager to win.
I didn't win, by the way. Some bastard ringer from London beat me by two points and I had to go home with £250 to spend in Jarrolds, the local department store.
My little tale today comes from the semi-final, where I was paired with an evil and bitter, calculating hag in the disguise of a nice little old lady.
We were up against a time limit and getting toward the last play and it was neck and neck.
Playing with an audience and a panel of judges (A fester of judges? A midden of judges? What is the word?) seemed to bring out the nasty in people and this nice little old lady was being a real bitch.
We were desperately blocking any high-scoring squares and frustrating one another at every move; jaws set into grimaces and steely glares flashing murderous hate across the table.
Last move …
The hag-lady laid first and was suddenly twenty-nine points up.
BASTARD!
But in her greedy haste she had left an opening. Had she gone for a lesser score somewhere else on the board she may well have beaten me, but her overconfidence left a tantalising triple-word score square naked and vulnerable.
My only problem was that the perfect word was not … er … the perfect word to use in front of a little old lady and a family audience.
Fortunately I am an evil, twisted bastard with no morals …
I called a judge over and he concurred - somewhat blushingly - and I laid my tiles.
V - 4 (triple-word score)
U - 1
L - 1
V - 4 (double-letter score)
A - 1
on a triple word score to give me forty-five and the match!
Bwahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!
Her face was a picture.
I love being a bastard.
Hee hee hee hee hee.
Anyone for Scrabble?
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Yes, It's Long But I've Kept The Paragraphs Short So Fetch Yourself A Coffee And Stick With It
Hoorah for Maria!
And not just because she's Maria.
Whenever I am feeling like crap or have lost the will to blog she rides to my rescue with a meme.
This one's a book meme, and as I am addicted to books way beyond all reason (my house is merely a vast book repository with a bed squeezed in there somewhere), I will inevitably expand it exponentially and take this post to previously unheralded levels of tedium and pretentiousness.
I may swear from time to time, too.
Just so you know.
Right!
Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin … (Ten credibility points for anyone spotting where that comes from and it's not a book).
1) Books That Changed Your Life.
I've read a lot of great books but as for books that have actually opened my eyes to something and turned my whole life around? Those are a rarer species.
I mean The Bible and The Qur'an are great books and I still read them both but I was brought up on one and the other hardly came as a surprise. As I don't believe in any God or Gods or in any deluded concept of "afterlife" (as if this life weren't draggy enough) they don't really have much influence on me except for their merits as historical and literary texts. They rank alongside the Mahabarata, the Epic of Gilgamesh (great chunks of which have been copied straight into the Old Testament much as a really bad student would steal stuff for homework assignments) and the Gnostic Gospels; fascinating, poetic, beautiful and occasionally unintentionally hilarious but hardly life-changing.
As an outspoken Marxist I would have to cite Book 1 of Karl Marx's "Capital" as a life-changer; in fact a life-definer.
I'll allow criticism of it only from those who have read and absorbed it and are therefore entitled to an opinion.
Any book that takes "The Wealth Of Nations" (I have that, too, but I keep it in the bathroom, where it belongs), shoves the splintered gatepost of righteousness straight up Adam Smith's pimply arse and makes him spin around gets my vote.
People who criticise Marx or The Qur'an or "The Six Bunny-Wunnies And Their Layover In Anderson, Indiana" or indeed any other book without having read it can frankly go fuck themselves.
I've said this so many times but it is crucially important and it bears repeating here: "Read the source material and make up your own mind. It's what your brain is for. Don't simply believe what somebody else tells you about it." … (least of all, me).
Another biggie in the life-changing stakes was Dostoyevsky's "Crime And Punishment", the book that first started the rabid biblio-fetish which long ago engulfed my life and spat out the sad pedant you see before you.
On my last day of school I cleared out my locker and wandered off into the great wide world thinking "So … That was school. Other than some maths and physics and how to screw girls it's taught me fuck all about life so if I'm going to live it I'd better head to the bookshop and start reading."
On my way home I bought cheery old Fyodor's Bumper Book of Guilt and Responsibility and immediately identified with Raskolnikov's plight.
Quite apart from my own personal issues at the time it taught me that books need not be the joyless exercises in lit crit we had been taught; indeed they could be enormously enjoyable and that the best of them could guide and enrich my life.
These days, every year come October I hit my Dickens and The Major Russians hard. Right through the dark winter months the glorious triumvirate of Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky sustains me as much as food and drink. Rather pretentiously I love to sit in my big wingback chair, reading them by candle-light.
They are not mere stories; they are life and they are truth and they contain far more of both than can be found in the Old Testament and can and should be read at least once a year by everybody on this benighted planet.
Borders now sells ALL of them at two pounds a pop (yes, £2) so you've no excuses. You can work your way up to the fine, tooled leather and Venetian handmade paper editions when you become an addict like me.
On a lighter note I discovered Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" when I was thirteen and carried the damned thing around in my back pocket for years. Appalling tosh as it was, it taught me to enjoy poetry and to enjoy reading aloud (something I'm particularly fond of and good at) and it helped me to the remarkable and life-changing discovery that being mysterious to the point of bafflement can get girls naked (thanks, Bob).
2) Books That You Have Read More Than Once.
Most of my books I read over and over. Which is why I don't tend to read disposable "airport" books or "bestsellers" (non-books - life's too short).
This is where we come to the difference between a "book" and a "non-book".
A "non-book" is something from the bestseller lists, churned out for a particular market; a page-turner written to a formula, be it a thriller, a romance, a celebrity or TV tie-in; whatever. No bad thing in themselves, as they keep the publishing industry afloat, yet soul-destroying to read. I try to give them a chance on occasion, but no matter how well crafted the storyline might be they are inevitably written by people with no conception of how to write beautiful prose. I'll happily watch the movie but I usually throw the books down in disgust after a few pages with a cry of "Yes, it's a good story, but learn to write, you ignorant fucker!"
The modern novel doesn't have to be a lazy piece of hackwork but most are and it seems to me that the kind of people who buy bestsellers aren't that interested in reading, just in passing the time.
The last "bestseller" I found readable was Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"; it was an enchanting story but more importantly it was beautifully written. Sadly it was published fifteen years ago. Come on, people. Write me something worth reading!
The very best modern novels are - like Dickens or Tolstoy - true works of art that can be read and enjoyed time after time. You are not merely turning the page to "see what happens next" (for fuck's sake, leave that to Grisham); you are lost in a whole new world.
A "book" is pure joy; something that enhances your life every time you read it. Just because you know Jesus makes the ultimate sacrifice and allows himself to be crucified doesn't stop you reading The Gospels (Awww! You spoiled it now!); similarly, knowing the ending of Bleak House (which you certainly won't get from the BBC adaptation - or more accurately, the TV soap loosely based on a few of the characters from Bleak House) takes away not one iota of the pleasure of reading Dickens' prose; that marvellous first section (where most people tend to give up because they have no soul) brilliantly written in such a deliberately dense and obfuscatory manner to conjure and echo the miasmic London fog and the eternally turgid case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. There's a sentence in there that's almost a page long; the most breathtakingly masterful use of the semicolon I have ever found. I love reading that aloud. I can picture old Boz setting aside his quill after writing it, then jiggling his legs up and down under the table and giggling with unalloyed glee at his own incomparable cleverness.
More real "books":
J.D. Salinger, "The Catcher In The Rye";
Jose Saramago, "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis";
Mario Vargas Llosa, "The War Of The End Of The World";
Yukio Mishima, "Spring Snow";
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick";
John Steinbeck: "The Grapes Of Wrath";
George Orwell, "Animal Farm";
Harper Lee, "To Kill A Mockingbird";
all books that everybody should have read and should treasure and each one worth far more than a hundred years worth of throwaway trash Grishams or Cooksons.
As for books that I read every single year: most of these will be (with the exception of the Greek and Roman classics - I always have one of those on the go) non-fiction - Goldsmith, Pepys, Mommsen, Gibbon, Hodgkin, Russell, Descartes, Churchill, plus a bunch of quantum physics stuff that's mostly numbers (each to their own); but as most people seem to read fiction, let's start with my annual re-reading fiction list: Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Dante's "Divine Comedy", Shakespeare's tragedies, Milton's Paradise Lost, Gœthe's Faust, the big Russians, Dickens, the list in the paragraph above and lots more.
Remember that I spend probably seven hours a day reading on the train and in bed, so I don't expect you to keep up that kind of rate yourselves, but if you're going to read, for Pete's sake read something worthwhile.
Every couple of years I'll also try to fit in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books (the first two, anyway) and some Tolkein, just to recapture a little of the wonder of my youth.
Pretentious twat that I am I do confess to a liking for one particular genre of non-book: classic American pulp fiction. Long time blogpals may remember my old Edward Hopper post and my quoting that marvellous Raymond Chandler line so evocative of Hopper interiors: "A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet."
Chandler is wonderful with "American English" and the master of its use in the modern pulp is surely James Ellroy (if you've seen the movie L.A. Confidential you'll know who I mean); his Pete Bondurant novels especially; his use of dialogue in "The Cold Six Thousand" is as near as pulp fiction gets to true literary art.
3) One Book You Would Want On A Desert Island.
Hmm … I suppose one of Ray Mears' survivalist handbooks would be practical, but possibly not a literary orgasm to be enjoyed time and again.
I used to think my original Mrs. Beeton's Household Management would be an excellent choice for a desert island castaway. For starters (under "Colonial Cuisine") she has no qualms about giving instructions as to the best way to slaughter terrapins (be sure to break their legs before boiling them alive to prevent them clambering up in a heap and allowing some to escape - See? You've learned something new today) and how many parakeets per person to put in your pie (three), but she also goes on to explain the duties of butlers, housemaids and kitchen staff. I think that life on my desert island would be made immeasurably richer for knowing the most appropriate form of neatly folded origami linen napkin to use when serving broiled lizards. If I am to be driven mad with the torment of loneliness I want to be sure to use the correct cutlery. A very English insanity.
However, I am a creature of habit and for decades have always carried precisely the same books with me on holidays abroad (don't ask me why; I have no idea).
These are: William Burroughs' "The Place Of Dead Roads", Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities", Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and Swift's "Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World, In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First A Surgeon, And Then A Captain Of Several Ships", better known in these unenlightened times as "Gulliver's Travels". I try to add one classic novel by an author from the country I'm visiting, to help understand the culture a little better, and a Langenscheidt dictionary for any local words that I come unstuck on (the Langenscheidts are those lovely little yellow rubber dictionaries that are virtually indestructible - the Germans do compound nouns, blitzkrieg, genocide, denial and yellow rubber books so well - mine are full of hastily scribbled notes jotted down during conversations in marketplaces and bars).
4) Two Books That Made You Laugh.
Ah, Douglas Adams, bless him.
The first two Arthur Dent books ("The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy" and "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe") are without doubt the funniest and silliest things ever written in any language.
And for light, throwaway "non-book" funnies to read on the train, I confess to having the complete Pratchett hidden away in the third bedroom; not so much books as "episodes" in a very silly comedy series. I think the current running total is thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the little buggers; I'll have to count 'em when I remember.
5) One Book That Made You Cry.
Shit, I cry at just about any book or old movie. Kleenex should give me a medal for years of sterling service … okay, so not just for crying.
Right. Guaranteed Dive tearjerkers: Poor old Sidney Carton doing a Jesus in "A Tale Of Two Cities" always leaves me blubbing like a baby. Henchard's grave in "The Mayor Of Casterbridge", ditto. Rose of Sharon's heartbreaking final paragraph in "The Grapes Of Wrath", tritto.
I don't cry at melodrama; for instance Little Nell's fate leaves me shrugging with indifference, but generally at sacrifice and suffering (I'm an Atheist but I cried at the reading of John-19 in church on Good Friday - I still go to the big days for a sermon and a sing-along). Non-fiction, too: Solzhenitsyn's multi-volume "The Gulag Archipelago" leaves me totally wrecked, as do the First World War poets and Primo Levi's accounts of the Holocaust.
6) One Book You Wish You'd Written.
I wish I'd written the Harry Potter books; not for any literary reason (though I've not read them so I cannot comment on that) but the idea of having a pile of cash bigger than the world to disburse in whatever contrary fashion I please is not unappealing.
From a literary standpoint it could be any of those above, but I'll choose a different one and go for Saramago's "Histório Do Circo De Lisboa", because it is so unutterably lovely (in the English translation by the incomparable Giovanni Ponteiro - "The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon" - as well as in the original Portuguese).
7) One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written.
Not so much never written as left alone and not fucked with: The New Testament.
Several generations after Jesus' death, the Christian church was still a loose collection of bickering Jewish sects, persecuted by Roman and Jew alike, yet in possession of a large body of eyewitness accounts and commentaries of the life and teachings of Jesus himself.
It was in the last years of Emperor Constantine's life that he decided to cover all his bases with regard to an afterlife and convert to Christianity and what's more, to make it the official Roman State Religion.
To the disparate Christian sect leaders this was too great a prize to refuse, even though it came at a price. And that price was deciding which of the many conflicting accounts - the Gospels - written by Jesus' disciples and friends would constitute the official canon.
Most of the Gospels; notably those accounts of Peter, Mary, Thomas, Philip and Judas himself were rejected, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was what Constantine thought would "sell". If he were to introduce this religion all across the known world he wanted it to be consistent and acceptable to Roman citizens.
The rejected texts were not - unlike Marcion's "unofficial" canon - rejected as heresy, they were simply no longer taught and disappeared into obscurity, only to come to light again in Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.
In accordance with my mantra of "read the source material and make up your own mind" I feel that all Christians should have a look at these rejected works, keeping in mind that what we now know as the New Testament was a drastically abridged version of the witness statements of Jesus' friends and followers specifically designed to "sell" to the Roman citizenry.
It's not heresy; it's merely akin to looking at the "extras" on a "special edition" DVD, but it puts a lot of things into much needed perspective.
Oh, and I really wish that good old Mervyn Peake had stopped after the first two Gormenghast books, so perfect in themselves with their glorious use of English and the heartrending tragedy of Steerpike, and not gone mad in his dotage and written the complete abomination of arse-gravy that is Titus Alone.
8) Books That You Are Currently Reading.
Right:
On my bedside table (that's "nightstand" for the Colonials):
The Bible (currently reading Daniel);
Virgil's Æneid;
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations;
Maya Angelou: "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings"(as Robyn pointed out to me that it's her birthday this week);
Downstairs, on the coffee table by the reading chair:
The Canterbury Tales;
Volume eight of Pepys' Diaries;
Albert Hourani's "Arabic Thought In The Liberal Age, 1798 - 1939";
Volume eight (1965-1966) of Fantagraphics' glorious twenty-four volume hardback series "The Complete Peanuts".
Beside the computer:
Japanese For College Students: Vol 1.
Basic Kanji: Vol 2.
The Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations;
Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary;
The Oxford Book Of Japanese Grammar;
In my bookbag for train journeys:
Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism" in both Japanese and English;
Langenscheidt Japanese Dictionary;
Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
9) One Book That You Have Been Meaning To Read.
I love to read books in their original language, for the same reason that subtitled movies are infinitely superior to dubbed.
The classics merely highlight the crappiness of my schoolboy Latin and the virtual non-existence of my Greek; Camõens' "Os Lusiades" and some of Saramago's books I can manage in Portuguese, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is not much of a problem in my strangled Franglais; Dante I struggle pathetically with in mediæval Italian, although I love reading it aloud; "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain" I adore in Anglo Saxon (again to read aloud, stalking around the room, gesticulating wildly; the alliteration gives me a stiffy); Chaucer in Middle English, of course; and Mishima uses such archaic Japanese that he is a real pain in the ass to read, but I hope to improve enough to appreciate him without Mayuko's help.
In English I suppose the fact that I have yet to get round to reading The Great Gatsby would appall any Americans, but I'll get there eventually.
Finally - and closer to home - in blogs we increasingly find criminally unpublished writers of far greater ability than most of the authors staining the "bestseller" lists.
We have some even here in our little community whose works I would proudly display on my shelves if only publishers weren't so blindly obsessed with celebrity "autobiographies" and TV tie-ins and would actually publish them.
At the very heart of Blogville, Maria writes so perfectly that she regularly has this forty-nine year old man in floods of tears, or indeed laughing fit to bust.
But she does not write fiction; she writes of her life and she writes so well that it often overwhelms me. Blogville's closest thing to Pepys; a perfect diarist.
As well as being a fellow guitar player and an all round cool guy, Utsav is a poet of quite breathtaking delicacy and beauty and his pieces invariably leave me awed (and extremely jealous of such talent).
And the same goes for painter, political polemicist and poet, Katherine.
We do, however, have a pair of first class fiction writers among us; Robyn and Lynn.
Lynn writes (as well as a novel and her journalism) gripping and occasionally erotic short stories with all too real heroines.
I first encountered her when she appeared in my comments box with an acute observation. Following her profile link I came across what seemed to be a terrifying suicide note from a woman on the edge.
It turned out I had stumbled upon the first chapter of her novel, "Under A Train" which she had posted without any indication that it was a work of fiction. Her writing had shaken me pretty badly (how do you reply to someone about to kill themselves?) and - after laughing at my unfounded concern and altering the blog to make it clear that this was an example of her creative writing - her wonderful stories have ensnared me ever since. Whether it's the feel of paint on canvas or of silk on skin there is a palpable sexual tension to her writing, and her dialogue - especially the underlying suspicion between lovers - is so real (and at times so funny) that it hurts.
In complete contrast, the deceptively gentle slow-burn of Robyn's writing reminds me of the feeling I got on first reading Richard Russo's "Mohawk" and that tranche of new American writers who, at the end of the last century unleashed "dirty realism" on a helpless world.
In the beautifully written prose of her novella "Mrs. Branch", events of shattering, life-changing enormity tear the small town heroine's life apart yet Robyn writes in exquisite, almost painful detail of the everyday things we need to survive the unstoppable tsunami of devastation about to overwhelm us; of quiet heroine Maryann emerging from denial into a world gone mad, clinging stoically to physical and emotional minutiæ so sharply observed that they catch the edge of your heart and unravel it.
The publishing industry needs a shake-up; it needs to ease up on greedily churning out formulaic crap for short-term profit and to concentrate at least some of its effort on nurturing good new writing. The music industry's collapse gets blamed on "home piracy", yet the real reason is that for the past thirty years they have ceased to invest in talent and instead marketed "product" to an increasingly disillusioned public who inevitably said "enough is enough" and stopped buying.
There is good writing out there; it just isn't getting published.
Thank goodness for the internet.
Just reading through that pretentious pile of twaddle I realise how the books I mention above only just start to scratch the surface of "what you should all go out and read right now", so I may well do a series of posts on one book or one author, to give any "non-book" readers a taster of what they're missing.
You have been warned.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Mikey! Yaaaaay!!!!!
And not just because she's Maria.
Whenever I am feeling like crap or have lost the will to blog she rides to my rescue with a meme.
This one's a book meme, and as I am addicted to books way beyond all reason (my house is merely a vast book repository with a bed squeezed in there somewhere), I will inevitably expand it exponentially and take this post to previously unheralded levels of tedium and pretentiousness.
I may swear from time to time, too.
Just so you know.
Right!
Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin … (Ten credibility points for anyone spotting where that comes from and it's not a book).
1) Books That Changed Your Life.
I've read a lot of great books but as for books that have actually opened my eyes to something and turned my whole life around? Those are a rarer species.
I mean The Bible and The Qur'an are great books and I still read them both but I was brought up on one and the other hardly came as a surprise. As I don't believe in any God or Gods or in any deluded concept of "afterlife" (as if this life weren't draggy enough) they don't really have much influence on me except for their merits as historical and literary texts. They rank alongside the Mahabarata, the Epic of Gilgamesh (great chunks of which have been copied straight into the Old Testament much as a really bad student would steal stuff for homework assignments) and the Gnostic Gospels; fascinating, poetic, beautiful and occasionally unintentionally hilarious but hardly life-changing.
As an outspoken Marxist I would have to cite Book 1 of Karl Marx's "Capital" as a life-changer; in fact a life-definer.
I'll allow criticism of it only from those who have read and absorbed it and are therefore entitled to an opinion.
Any book that takes "The Wealth Of Nations" (I have that, too, but I keep it in the bathroom, where it belongs), shoves the splintered gatepost of righteousness straight up Adam Smith's pimply arse and makes him spin around gets my vote.
People who criticise Marx or The Qur'an or "The Six Bunny-Wunnies And Their Layover In Anderson, Indiana" or indeed any other book without having read it can frankly go fuck themselves.
I've said this so many times but it is crucially important and it bears repeating here: "Read the source material and make up your own mind. It's what your brain is for. Don't simply believe what somebody else tells you about it." … (least of all, me).
Another biggie in the life-changing stakes was Dostoyevsky's "Crime And Punishment", the book that first started the rabid biblio-fetish which long ago engulfed my life and spat out the sad pedant you see before you.
On my last day of school I cleared out my locker and wandered off into the great wide world thinking "So … That was school. Other than some maths and physics and how to screw girls it's taught me fuck all about life so if I'm going to live it I'd better head to the bookshop and start reading."
On my way home I bought cheery old Fyodor's Bumper Book of Guilt and Responsibility and immediately identified with Raskolnikov's plight.
Quite apart from my own personal issues at the time it taught me that books need not be the joyless exercises in lit crit we had been taught; indeed they could be enormously enjoyable and that the best of them could guide and enrich my life.
These days, every year come October I hit my Dickens and The Major Russians hard. Right through the dark winter months the glorious triumvirate of Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky sustains me as much as food and drink. Rather pretentiously I love to sit in my big wingback chair, reading them by candle-light.
They are not mere stories; they are life and they are truth and they contain far more of both than can be found in the Old Testament and can and should be read at least once a year by everybody on this benighted planet.
Borders now sells ALL of them at two pounds a pop (yes, £2) so you've no excuses. You can work your way up to the fine, tooled leather and Venetian handmade paper editions when you become an addict like me.
On a lighter note I discovered Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" when I was thirteen and carried the damned thing around in my back pocket for years. Appalling tosh as it was, it taught me to enjoy poetry and to enjoy reading aloud (something I'm particularly fond of and good at) and it helped me to the remarkable and life-changing discovery that being mysterious to the point of bafflement can get girls naked (thanks, Bob).
2) Books That You Have Read More Than Once.
Most of my books I read over and over. Which is why I don't tend to read disposable "airport" books or "bestsellers" (non-books - life's too short).
This is where we come to the difference between a "book" and a "non-book".
A "non-book" is something from the bestseller lists, churned out for a particular market; a page-turner written to a formula, be it a thriller, a romance, a celebrity or TV tie-in; whatever. No bad thing in themselves, as they keep the publishing industry afloat, yet soul-destroying to read. I try to give them a chance on occasion, but no matter how well crafted the storyline might be they are inevitably written by people with no conception of how to write beautiful prose. I'll happily watch the movie but I usually throw the books down in disgust after a few pages with a cry of "Yes, it's a good story, but learn to write, you ignorant fucker!"
The modern novel doesn't have to be a lazy piece of hackwork but most are and it seems to me that the kind of people who buy bestsellers aren't that interested in reading, just in passing the time.
The last "bestseller" I found readable was Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"; it was an enchanting story but more importantly it was beautifully written. Sadly it was published fifteen years ago. Come on, people. Write me something worth reading!
The very best modern novels are - like Dickens or Tolstoy - true works of art that can be read and enjoyed time after time. You are not merely turning the page to "see what happens next" (for fuck's sake, leave that to Grisham); you are lost in a whole new world.
A "book" is pure joy; something that enhances your life every time you read it. Just because you know Jesus makes the ultimate sacrifice and allows himself to be crucified doesn't stop you reading The Gospels (Awww! You spoiled it now!); similarly, knowing the ending of Bleak House (which you certainly won't get from the BBC adaptation - or more accurately, the TV soap loosely based on a few of the characters from Bleak House) takes away not one iota of the pleasure of reading Dickens' prose; that marvellous first section (where most people tend to give up because they have no soul) brilliantly written in such a deliberately dense and obfuscatory manner to conjure and echo the miasmic London fog and the eternally turgid case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. There's a sentence in there that's almost a page long; the most breathtakingly masterful use of the semicolon I have ever found. I love reading that aloud. I can picture old Boz setting aside his quill after writing it, then jiggling his legs up and down under the table and giggling with unalloyed glee at his own incomparable cleverness.
More real "books":
J.D. Salinger, "The Catcher In The Rye";
Jose Saramago, "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis";
Mario Vargas Llosa, "The War Of The End Of The World";
Yukio Mishima, "Spring Snow";
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick";
John Steinbeck: "The Grapes Of Wrath";
George Orwell, "Animal Farm";
Harper Lee, "To Kill A Mockingbird";
all books that everybody should have read and should treasure and each one worth far more than a hundred years worth of throwaway trash Grishams or Cooksons.
As for books that I read every single year: most of these will be (with the exception of the Greek and Roman classics - I always have one of those on the go) non-fiction - Goldsmith, Pepys, Mommsen, Gibbon, Hodgkin, Russell, Descartes, Churchill, plus a bunch of quantum physics stuff that's mostly numbers (each to their own); but as most people seem to read fiction, let's start with my annual re-reading fiction list: Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Dante's "Divine Comedy", Shakespeare's tragedies, Milton's Paradise Lost, Gœthe's Faust, the big Russians, Dickens, the list in the paragraph above and lots more.
Remember that I spend probably seven hours a day reading on the train and in bed, so I don't expect you to keep up that kind of rate yourselves, but if you're going to read, for Pete's sake read something worthwhile.
Every couple of years I'll also try to fit in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books (the first two, anyway) and some Tolkein, just to recapture a little of the wonder of my youth.
Pretentious twat that I am I do confess to a liking for one particular genre of non-book: classic American pulp fiction. Long time blogpals may remember my old Edward Hopper post and my quoting that marvellous Raymond Chandler line so evocative of Hopper interiors: "A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet."
Chandler is wonderful with "American English" and the master of its use in the modern pulp is surely James Ellroy (if you've seen the movie L.A. Confidential you'll know who I mean); his Pete Bondurant novels especially; his use of dialogue in "The Cold Six Thousand" is as near as pulp fiction gets to true literary art.
3) One Book You Would Want On A Desert Island.
Hmm … I suppose one of Ray Mears' survivalist handbooks would be practical, but possibly not a literary orgasm to be enjoyed time and again.
I used to think my original Mrs. Beeton's Household Management would be an excellent choice for a desert island castaway. For starters (under "Colonial Cuisine") she has no qualms about giving instructions as to the best way to slaughter terrapins (be sure to break their legs before boiling them alive to prevent them clambering up in a heap and allowing some to escape - See? You've learned something new today) and how many parakeets per person to put in your pie (three), but she also goes on to explain the duties of butlers, housemaids and kitchen staff. I think that life on my desert island would be made immeasurably richer for knowing the most appropriate form of neatly folded origami linen napkin to use when serving broiled lizards. If I am to be driven mad with the torment of loneliness I want to be sure to use the correct cutlery. A very English insanity.
However, I am a creature of habit and for decades have always carried precisely the same books with me on holidays abroad (don't ask me why; I have no idea).
These are: William Burroughs' "The Place Of Dead Roads", Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities", Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and Swift's "Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World, In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First A Surgeon, And Then A Captain Of Several Ships", better known in these unenlightened times as "Gulliver's Travels". I try to add one classic novel by an author from the country I'm visiting, to help understand the culture a little better, and a Langenscheidt dictionary for any local words that I come unstuck on (the Langenscheidts are those lovely little yellow rubber dictionaries that are virtually indestructible - the Germans do compound nouns, blitzkrieg, genocide, denial and yellow rubber books so well - mine are full of hastily scribbled notes jotted down during conversations in marketplaces and bars).
4) Two Books That Made You Laugh.
Ah, Douglas Adams, bless him.
The first two Arthur Dent books ("The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy" and "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe") are without doubt the funniest and silliest things ever written in any language.
And for light, throwaway "non-book" funnies to read on the train, I confess to having the complete Pratchett hidden away in the third bedroom; not so much books as "episodes" in a very silly comedy series. I think the current running total is thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the little buggers; I'll have to count 'em when I remember.
5) One Book That Made You Cry.
Shit, I cry at just about any book or old movie. Kleenex should give me a medal for years of sterling service … okay, so not just for crying.
Right. Guaranteed Dive tearjerkers: Poor old Sidney Carton doing a Jesus in "A Tale Of Two Cities" always leaves me blubbing like a baby. Henchard's grave in "The Mayor Of Casterbridge", ditto. Rose of Sharon's heartbreaking final paragraph in "The Grapes Of Wrath", tritto.
I don't cry at melodrama; for instance Little Nell's fate leaves me shrugging with indifference, but generally at sacrifice and suffering (I'm an Atheist but I cried at the reading of John-19 in church on Good Friday - I still go to the big days for a sermon and a sing-along). Non-fiction, too: Solzhenitsyn's multi-volume "The Gulag Archipelago" leaves me totally wrecked, as do the First World War poets and Primo Levi's accounts of the Holocaust.
6) One Book You Wish You'd Written.
I wish I'd written the Harry Potter books; not for any literary reason (though I've not read them so I cannot comment on that) but the idea of having a pile of cash bigger than the world to disburse in whatever contrary fashion I please is not unappealing.
From a literary standpoint it could be any of those above, but I'll choose a different one and go for Saramago's "Histório Do Circo De Lisboa", because it is so unutterably lovely (in the English translation by the incomparable Giovanni Ponteiro - "The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon" - as well as in the original Portuguese).
7) One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written.
Not so much never written as left alone and not fucked with: The New Testament.
Several generations after Jesus' death, the Christian church was still a loose collection of bickering Jewish sects, persecuted by Roman and Jew alike, yet in possession of a large body of eyewitness accounts and commentaries of the life and teachings of Jesus himself.
It was in the last years of Emperor Constantine's life that he decided to cover all his bases with regard to an afterlife and convert to Christianity and what's more, to make it the official Roman State Religion.
To the disparate Christian sect leaders this was too great a prize to refuse, even though it came at a price. And that price was deciding which of the many conflicting accounts - the Gospels - written by Jesus' disciples and friends would constitute the official canon.
Most of the Gospels; notably those accounts of Peter, Mary, Thomas, Philip and Judas himself were rejected, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was what Constantine thought would "sell". If he were to introduce this religion all across the known world he wanted it to be consistent and acceptable to Roman citizens.
The rejected texts were not - unlike Marcion's "unofficial" canon - rejected as heresy, they were simply no longer taught and disappeared into obscurity, only to come to light again in Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.
In accordance with my mantra of "read the source material and make up your own mind" I feel that all Christians should have a look at these rejected works, keeping in mind that what we now know as the New Testament was a drastically abridged version of the witness statements of Jesus' friends and followers specifically designed to "sell" to the Roman citizenry.
It's not heresy; it's merely akin to looking at the "extras" on a "special edition" DVD, but it puts a lot of things into much needed perspective.
Oh, and I really wish that good old Mervyn Peake had stopped after the first two Gormenghast books, so perfect in themselves with their glorious use of English and the heartrending tragedy of Steerpike, and not gone mad in his dotage and written the complete abomination of arse-gravy that is Titus Alone.
8) Books That You Are Currently Reading.
Right:
On my bedside table (that's "nightstand" for the Colonials):
The Bible (currently reading Daniel);
Virgil's Æneid;
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations;
Maya Angelou: "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings"(as Robyn pointed out to me that it's her birthday this week);
Downstairs, on the coffee table by the reading chair:
The Canterbury Tales;
Volume eight of Pepys' Diaries;
Albert Hourani's "Arabic Thought In The Liberal Age, 1798 - 1939";
Volume eight (1965-1966) of Fantagraphics' glorious twenty-four volume hardback series "The Complete Peanuts".
Beside the computer:
Japanese For College Students: Vol 1.
Basic Kanji: Vol 2.
The Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations;
Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary;
The Oxford Book Of Japanese Grammar;
In my bookbag for train journeys:
Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism" in both Japanese and English;
Langenscheidt Japanese Dictionary;
Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
9) One Book That You Have Been Meaning To Read.
I love to read books in their original language, for the same reason that subtitled movies are infinitely superior to dubbed.
The classics merely highlight the crappiness of my schoolboy Latin and the virtual non-existence of my Greek; Camõens' "Os Lusiades" and some of Saramago's books I can manage in Portuguese, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is not much of a problem in my strangled Franglais; Dante I struggle pathetically with in mediæval Italian, although I love reading it aloud; "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain" I adore in Anglo Saxon (again to read aloud, stalking around the room, gesticulating wildly; the alliteration gives me a stiffy); Chaucer in Middle English, of course; and Mishima uses such archaic Japanese that he is a real pain in the ass to read, but I hope to improve enough to appreciate him without Mayuko's help.
In English I suppose the fact that I have yet to get round to reading The Great Gatsby would appall any Americans, but I'll get there eventually.
Finally - and closer to home - in blogs we increasingly find criminally unpublished writers of far greater ability than most of the authors staining the "bestseller" lists.
We have some even here in our little community whose works I would proudly display on my shelves if only publishers weren't so blindly obsessed with celebrity "autobiographies" and TV tie-ins and would actually publish them.
At the very heart of Blogville, Maria writes so perfectly that she regularly has this forty-nine year old man in floods of tears, or indeed laughing fit to bust.
But she does not write fiction; she writes of her life and she writes so well that it often overwhelms me. Blogville's closest thing to Pepys; a perfect diarist.
As well as being a fellow guitar player and an all round cool guy, Utsav is a poet of quite breathtaking delicacy and beauty and his pieces invariably leave me awed (and extremely jealous of such talent).
And the same goes for painter, political polemicist and poet, Katherine.
We do, however, have a pair of first class fiction writers among us; Robyn and Lynn.
Lynn writes (as well as a novel and her journalism) gripping and occasionally erotic short stories with all too real heroines.
I first encountered her when she appeared in my comments box with an acute observation. Following her profile link I came across what seemed to be a terrifying suicide note from a woman on the edge.
It turned out I had stumbled upon the first chapter of her novel, "Under A Train" which she had posted without any indication that it was a work of fiction. Her writing had shaken me pretty badly (how do you reply to someone about to kill themselves?) and - after laughing at my unfounded concern and altering the blog to make it clear that this was an example of her creative writing - her wonderful stories have ensnared me ever since. Whether it's the feel of paint on canvas or of silk on skin there is a palpable sexual tension to her writing, and her dialogue - especially the underlying suspicion between lovers - is so real (and at times so funny) that it hurts.
In complete contrast, the deceptively gentle slow-burn of Robyn's writing reminds me of the feeling I got on first reading Richard Russo's "Mohawk" and that tranche of new American writers who, at the end of the last century unleashed "dirty realism" on a helpless world.
In the beautifully written prose of her novella "Mrs. Branch", events of shattering, life-changing enormity tear the small town heroine's life apart yet Robyn writes in exquisite, almost painful detail of the everyday things we need to survive the unstoppable tsunami of devastation about to overwhelm us; of quiet heroine Maryann emerging from denial into a world gone mad, clinging stoically to physical and emotional minutiæ so sharply observed that they catch the edge of your heart and unravel it.
The publishing industry needs a shake-up; it needs to ease up on greedily churning out formulaic crap for short-term profit and to concentrate at least some of its effort on nurturing good new writing. The music industry's collapse gets blamed on "home piracy", yet the real reason is that for the past thirty years they have ceased to invest in talent and instead marketed "product" to an increasingly disillusioned public who inevitably said "enough is enough" and stopped buying.
There is good writing out there; it just isn't getting published.
Thank goodness for the internet.
Just reading through that pretentious pile of twaddle I realise how the books I mention above only just start to scratch the surface of "what you should all go out and read right now", so I may well do a series of posts on one book or one author, to give any "non-book" readers a taster of what they're missing.
You have been warned.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Mikey! Yaaaaay!!!!!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Oh, Crap. He's Off Again …
And so the Atheist sallies forth to Saint Larry's to check out the Good Friday morning service.
Don't laugh. I was brought up a good Christian; it was only when my brain had developed sufficiently to form the word "Huh?" that I kinda fell off the God-wagon.
And Easter is, after all, a cracking story.
You don't need to believe in the resurrection to enjoy it.
For a heathen like me it's like any other good story; f'rinstance I don't believe everything that nice Mister Clemens tells me ol' Huck Finn got up to but I still love reading about it.
The Good Book is a good book. Even for an Atheist …
Especially for an Atheist!
Sheesh! You should see some of the stuff in there! I was reading Ezekiel the other day and that bloke was off his trolley! You remember the bizarre, ranty prophet in Life of Brian? Worse … Much worse! And funnier.
So anyhoo; your correspondent got well wrapped up and walked into the village through the teeth of an arctic gale (snow heralded for tomorrow) and sat in the back pew (reserved for the village's token anarcho-syndicalist) to enjoy the show.
And enjoy it I did, even though most of the hymns were of the happy-clappy-crappy modern variety, except for Walton's wonderful setting of Fletcher's "A Litany" ("Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet …").
Linnet (yes, it's what his parents called him) read from John 19 and gave a goodish sermon but he somehow got all entangled with the war in Iraq, bless him.
I even - in that strange way that we feel it is somehow right to endure a bit of suffering on Good Friday - rather enjoyed the sensation of sitting on a hard wooden pew in a thirteenth century stone building equipped with a very few Victorian heating pipes (to describe the efficacy of which the phrase "wholly inadequate" is … er … wholly inadequate), on a freezing cold morning; my poor old legs will take days to recover from the bone-chilling ordeal.
But here we come to the part that set my teeth on edge and kinda spoiled things for me (as I knew it would; it always does) … The appalling desecration that is the "Good News Bible"; like flares and tank tops in fetching shades of brown, this abomination encapsulates all that is shameful about the 1970s, and its introduction has driven multitudes of Christians away from their churches.
Listen up:
I'm old.
I was brought up with the King James Version, that paragon of linguistic and poetic beauty that has given our language more wonderful phrases than Shakespeare.
I agree that - for those whose Latin and Greek are even more rusty than mine - we need a version of the Bible that ordinary folk can read and understand, but to me the KJV is "it".
Don't mess with perfection.
A bit of background:
Poor old John Wycliffe was the first to have a real go at the job, translating the Vulgate into English in 1380, but he was promptly throttled into unconsciousness and then burned for his trouble.
William Tyndale had a crack at it, eventually coming up with the translation used by Henry VIII (and look at the trouble he caused with it), only for this and all other English translations to be burned when Mary and the Catholics got back in power.
Next up came the "Geneva" Bible - Elizabeth's Bible - the translation used by Shakespeare and John Bunyan, the pilgrim fathers and good old Ollie Cromwell.
But these were simple and literal transliterations of the Latin translation of Saint Jerome. The theological conference of 1604 called for a new translation, "as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek", but written specifically to be read aloud, in the glorious "high" English of the day.
This became the KJV and to this old and bitter pedant, as beautiful and unsurpassed a work of literature as anything Shakespeare and Chaucer produced, using the same rich cadences and powerful poetic majesty of the English language at its zenith.
In this vulgar modern world where grunting chavs binge-drink in front of the telly rather than read books, a rift is developing in the English language between the spoken and the written word and every few decades some misguided idiot decides that the Bible needs a new translation to enable an increasingly illiterate and ignorant population to understand it.
The "thing" currently being used in my lovely little village church can most generously be described as a paraphrasing of the events in the Bible. Much like a bloke down the pub describing what he saw on telly last night. The beauty and the poetry and the power have been lost from the language and replaced with the dull and plodding descriptive prose of a TV guide.
And it's not just the Bible; Chaucer has suffered a similar fate.
Dryden first tried "updating" him, to appalling effect, but I'll use Wright's rather better Oxford University Press verse translation to demonstrate what I'm trying to get across here:
When an unsuspecting member of the public buys Chaucer's Canterbury Tales these days, here's what they get (from the description of the Knight in the prologue):
There was a KNIGHT, a reputable man,
Who, from the moment that he first began
Campaigning, had cherished the profession
Of arms, he also prized trustworthiness,
Liberality, fame and courteousness.
So far, so hoopy …
But compare that to what Chaucer actually wrote:
A KNYGHT ther was & that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouth and honour, fredom and curtesie.
Wow!
Chaucer doesn't need translation.
He is perfectly readable in Early English.
And his language is wonderfully rich and expressive.
Contrast those two passages again (read them aloud) and you'll see just how much the modern reader loses out. And it is the same with the KJV.
Fortunately Shakespeare has not (yet) suffered this treatment, otherwise we might be seeing poor Hamlet soliloquize:
To live or to die.
That's the question.
Whether it's best to put up with all the shit that happens
Or to just say "Fuck it." and top meself …
It can't be long …
I'm glad I'll be dead soon.
Church congregations have plummeted in England since the seventies.
And for me and millions like me the main reason for this has been the introduction of the Bible in modern colloquial English.
It has lost its poetry, its beauty, its power.
It is no substitute for the real thing.
Sorry, Linnet, but other than on special occasions like today when I'll pop along for a sing-song and a sermon, I'll read my KJV at home.
And don't get me started on modern hymns!
Don't laugh. I was brought up a good Christian; it was only when my brain had developed sufficiently to form the word "Huh?" that I kinda fell off the God-wagon.
And Easter is, after all, a cracking story.
You don't need to believe in the resurrection to enjoy it.
For a heathen like me it's like any other good story; f'rinstance I don't believe everything that nice Mister Clemens tells me ol' Huck Finn got up to but I still love reading about it.
The Good Book is a good book. Even for an Atheist …
Especially for an Atheist!
Sheesh! You should see some of the stuff in there! I was reading Ezekiel the other day and that bloke was off his trolley! You remember the bizarre, ranty prophet in Life of Brian? Worse … Much worse! And funnier.
So anyhoo; your correspondent got well wrapped up and walked into the village through the teeth of an arctic gale (snow heralded for tomorrow) and sat in the back pew (reserved for the village's token anarcho-syndicalist) to enjoy the show.
And enjoy it I did, even though most of the hymns were of the happy-clappy-crappy modern variety, except for Walton's wonderful setting of Fletcher's "A Litany" ("Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet …").
Linnet (yes, it's what his parents called him) read from John 19 and gave a goodish sermon but he somehow got all entangled with the war in Iraq, bless him.
I even - in that strange way that we feel it is somehow right to endure a bit of suffering on Good Friday - rather enjoyed the sensation of sitting on a hard wooden pew in a thirteenth century stone building equipped with a very few Victorian heating pipes (to describe the efficacy of which the phrase "wholly inadequate" is … er … wholly inadequate), on a freezing cold morning; my poor old legs will take days to recover from the bone-chilling ordeal.
But here we come to the part that set my teeth on edge and kinda spoiled things for me (as I knew it would; it always does) … The appalling desecration that is the "Good News Bible"; like flares and tank tops in fetching shades of brown, this abomination encapsulates all that is shameful about the 1970s, and its introduction has driven multitudes of Christians away from their churches.
Listen up:
I'm old.
I was brought up with the King James Version, that paragon of linguistic and poetic beauty that has given our language more wonderful phrases than Shakespeare.
I agree that - for those whose Latin and Greek are even more rusty than mine - we need a version of the Bible that ordinary folk can read and understand, but to me the KJV is "it".
Don't mess with perfection.
A bit of background:
Poor old John Wycliffe was the first to have a real go at the job, translating the Vulgate into English in 1380, but he was promptly throttled into unconsciousness and then burned for his trouble.
William Tyndale had a crack at it, eventually coming up with the translation used by Henry VIII (and look at the trouble he caused with it), only for this and all other English translations to be burned when Mary and the Catholics got back in power.
Next up came the "Geneva" Bible - Elizabeth's Bible - the translation used by Shakespeare and John Bunyan, the pilgrim fathers and good old Ollie Cromwell.
But these were simple and literal transliterations of the Latin translation of Saint Jerome. The theological conference of 1604 called for a new translation, "as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek", but written specifically to be read aloud, in the glorious "high" English of the day.
This became the KJV and to this old and bitter pedant, as beautiful and unsurpassed a work of literature as anything Shakespeare and Chaucer produced, using the same rich cadences and powerful poetic majesty of the English language at its zenith.
In this vulgar modern world where grunting chavs binge-drink in front of the telly rather than read books, a rift is developing in the English language between the spoken and the written word and every few decades some misguided idiot decides that the Bible needs a new translation to enable an increasingly illiterate and ignorant population to understand it.
The "thing" currently being used in my lovely little village church can most generously be described as a paraphrasing of the events in the Bible. Much like a bloke down the pub describing what he saw on telly last night. The beauty and the poetry and the power have been lost from the language and replaced with the dull and plodding descriptive prose of a TV guide.
And it's not just the Bible; Chaucer has suffered a similar fate.
Dryden first tried "updating" him, to appalling effect, but I'll use Wright's rather better Oxford University Press verse translation to demonstrate what I'm trying to get across here:
When an unsuspecting member of the public buys Chaucer's Canterbury Tales these days, here's what they get (from the description of the Knight in the prologue):
There was a KNIGHT, a reputable man,
Who, from the moment that he first began
Campaigning, had cherished the profession
Of arms, he also prized trustworthiness,
Liberality, fame and courteousness.
So far, so hoopy …
But compare that to what Chaucer actually wrote:
A KNYGHT ther was & that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouth and honour, fredom and curtesie.
Wow!
Chaucer doesn't need translation.
He is perfectly readable in Early English.
And his language is wonderfully rich and expressive.
Contrast those two passages again (read them aloud) and you'll see just how much the modern reader loses out. And it is the same with the KJV.
Fortunately Shakespeare has not (yet) suffered this treatment, otherwise we might be seeing poor Hamlet soliloquize:
To live or to die.
That's the question.
Whether it's best to put up with all the shit that happens
Or to just say "Fuck it." and top meself …
It can't be long …
I'm glad I'll be dead soon.
Church congregations have plummeted in England since the seventies.
And for me and millions like me the main reason for this has been the introduction of the Bible in modern colloquial English.
It has lost its poetry, its beauty, its power.
It is no substitute for the real thing.
Sorry, Linnet, but other than on special occasions like today when I'll pop along for a sing-song and a sermon, I'll read my KJV at home.
And don't get me started on modern hymns!
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
It's In The Attic
Hokay.
Enough already with the Latin.
Mea culpa … I acknowledge that you're all girly swots.
So …
Which of you überbrains can tell me (WITHOUT pasting it into a search engine or translator), what the Greek phrase means that I put under my well-earned Whore Church blessing logo down in my sidebar?
If you can't be arsed looking, it's "εδακρυσεν ο ιησους"
By the way, I just pasted it into Google myself to see what would happen and my own stupid blog came up on the first page, after some Greek sites, which is gonna freak out some poor, unsuspecting religious folk if they click on it when I'm having a sweary day.
Big hint: It's in Ancient Greek and it's from the New Testament, so if any of you have a copy of the New Testament in the original Ancient Greek, get searching!
There's a cookie for the right answer.
But you have to come get it.
Enough already with the Latin.
Mea culpa … I acknowledge that you're all girly swots.
So …
Which of you überbrains can tell me (WITHOUT pasting it into a search engine or translator), what the Greek phrase means that I put under my well-earned Whore Church blessing logo down in my sidebar?
If you can't be arsed looking, it's "εδακρυσεν ο ιησους"
By the way, I just pasted it into Google myself to see what would happen and my own stupid blog came up on the first page, after some Greek sites, which is gonna freak out some poor, unsuspecting religious folk if they click on it when I'm having a sweary day.
Big hint: It's in Ancient Greek and it's from the New Testament, so if any of you have a copy of the New Testament in the original Ancient Greek, get searching!
There's a cookie for the right answer.
But you have to come get it.
Groucho, Ergo Sum Redux
Dammit!
Or perhaps that should be "Vae!"
There I was, giggling away at my last post title and nobody even asked me what it meant.
Is there not a Latin scholar or a Cartesian amongst you?
Where's the fun in being a pretentious twat if nobody gets it?
Well actually, I'm pretty certain Peanhen would get it but then she'd moan that I'm being "Too Radio 4".
Hey ho.
In case you were wondering (and I know you weren't), it doesn't mean "I am Groucho" … That would be "Ego sum Groucho", not "Groucho, Ergo Sum" and wouldn't be funny in the least.
It's from Descartes: "Cogito, Ergo Sum".
"I think, therefore I am."
Duh!
Anyhoo; since my Latin dictionary doesn't have a translation for "grouchy", I used the same route, from Latin via French that "cogito/cogitate - from the plain verb form cogitum" took and made up the new regular Latin verb: "grouchum" - to grouch/to be grouchy.
Ergo: First person singular, present tense: "Groucho".
See? Latin is not a dead language; it's still evolving. "Grouchum" is now in the public domain.
"Groucho, Ergo Sum" - "I grouch, therefore I am".
Well, I thought it was pretty funny for a grouchy post title.
I blame the dumbing down of television.
Throw that fucker out of the window and go buy a book.
Vae, vae, vae!
Or perhaps that should be "Vae!"
There I was, giggling away at my last post title and nobody even asked me what it meant.
Is there not a Latin scholar or a Cartesian amongst you?
Where's the fun in being a pretentious twat if nobody gets it?
Well actually, I'm pretty certain Peanhen would get it but then she'd moan that I'm being "Too Radio 4".
Hey ho.
In case you were wondering (and I know you weren't), it doesn't mean "I am Groucho" … That would be "Ego sum Groucho", not "Groucho, Ergo Sum" and wouldn't be funny in the least.
It's from Descartes: "Cogito, Ergo Sum".
"I think, therefore I am."
Duh!
Anyhoo; since my Latin dictionary doesn't have a translation for "grouchy", I used the same route, from Latin via French that "cogito/cogitate - from the plain verb form cogitum" took and made up the new regular Latin verb: "grouchum" - to grouch/to be grouchy.
Ergo: First person singular, present tense: "Groucho".
See? Latin is not a dead language; it's still evolving. "Grouchum" is now in the public domain.
"Groucho, Ergo Sum" - "I grouch, therefore I am".
Well, I thought it was pretty funny for a grouchy post title.
I blame the dumbing down of television.
Throw that fucker out of the window and go buy a book.
Vae, vae, vae!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Snog This Bloke (Form An Orderly Queue)
We interrupt the monstrously self-indulgent Dive retrospective to respond to a comment from Maria that almost made me miss my train this morning.
After yesterday's bout of splattery logorrhoea, Maria wrote:
"I love your blog because I always come away with new little phrases to shock my family.
And, since you are going on about words, I have run across a few in my Harry Potter readings to my daughter that I find interesting and maybe you could enlighten me?
The term "bloke" for a man? Where does that come from?
A queue? That is a line?
Snogging? Is that like what we Amuricans call "sucking face"? Because I think snogging sounds just a little more risque and sloppy.
Harry and his bloke friends (when they aren't snogging or in a queue) often use the word "reckon" when they speak to each other. As in "I reckon we should tell them we are running late..."
Now, reckon, as Americans use it is kind of a redneck slang....
So, care to enlighten this wee widget of a woman? Or we could just go right to the snogging...
But..even the word "snogging" just comes out of me with a raised eyebrow. Makes me feel so royally and haughtily naughty.
As if I were not feeling a sense of normalcy and calm....
(Sorry, it just slipped...I HAD to say it.)"
Hee hee. I can forgive "normalcy" when used with such delicious sarcasm, Maria.
Hokay …
So at ten to five this morning when I checked my comments, this one sent me hurtling downstairs (still moist from the shower, ladies … ick!) to rifle my OED for the derivation of the word "bloke".
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 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 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).
An unfortunate consequence of US "Websterisms" (Websterizmz?") is the natural tendency of the English to speak slowly and clearly to those who use the simplified spellings, and sometimes to draw them little pictures, too.
Sassy's going to slap me around the head with her Masters Degree for that one but regrettably it is true; we do tend to equate simplified spelling with simple minds.
Getting back to Maria's comment, I am so glad she reads Harry Potter with Liv; introducing children to books is probably the best thing anyone could possibly do for them.
And whilst I've never read the Potter books I confess to enjoying the movies, if only for the delicious sight of so many Brit thesps gleefully hamming it up.
Rowling is smart enough to use subliminal linguistic messages in the naming of her characters, such as Draco Malfoy … "Draco" being Greek for "dragon" and also having the meaning "harsh and cruel" from the "draconian" laws laid down by the aptly named Draco in Greece around 620BC, and "Mal" from the French for "bad".
Tolkien was the master of this, being a professor of Middle English and a scholar of Middle and Old English, Saxon, Norse and Icelandic, enabling him to use the same subliminal messages in a far more complex and subtle way.
Of course, subsequent "fantasy" writers, lacking his linguistic facility have made a mockery of this art. Thankfully we have Douglas Adams to deflate them and he parodied their ignorance so brilliantly in the Hitch-hiker books where we discover that the Earth was created by an old bearded man with the splendid monicker of Slartibartfast.
So …
"Bloke"
Originally from the "Shelta", which the OED tells me is an ancient and secret language used by Irish and Welsh tinkers and Gypsies, based on altered Irish and Gaelic words.
Basically it has come to mean an ordinary, decent working man.
If you're not working class, you're not a "proper bloke"; you're a git and a tosser (excuse me, I'm a proudly proletarian Marxist and class warrior).
"Blokey" and "bloke-ish" are also used to describe typically working class behaviour, such as watching football and drinking beer and swearing.
"Snogging" is indeed "sucking face" as you so piquantly put it, Maria.
Considered slightly derogatory: nice people kiss; slags and teenagers snog.
It is very much Harry Potter's age group - the chlamydia generation - who use the word, binge-drinking themselves into a stupor before glomming on to one another's faces and jamming tongues down throats with all the subtlety of the "face hugger" out of the Alien movies.
People our age (yikes) should stick to kissing.
I was raised in a more innocent age of crap sci-fi movies like "Amazon Women On The Moon" where a crew of middle-aged men would land on a planet populated solely by unfeasibly pretty nineteen-year-old girls with huge blonde hair, silver micro-skirts and boobs like Sabrina (you remember her? The fifties starlet who looked like she'd been shot in the back with a couple of guided missiles), who said such things as "Tell me more about this Earth custom you call "kissing"" … So much nicer than snogging.
"Reckon" is from tallying up; deducing numbers, and has come to mean roughly the same as "estimate" or "guess", I reckon.
And "Queue" is indeed a line, Maria.
From the Latin "cauda" (tail), via the French usage as a plait of hair.
Queueing is an essentially English pastime. If we're not queueing for something, then we are moaning about the weather or taking tea with the Queen.
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of patronising Brits.
After yesterday's bout of splattery logorrhoea, Maria wrote:
"I love your blog because I always come away with new little phrases to shock my family.
And, since you are going on about words, I have run across a few in my Harry Potter readings to my daughter that I find interesting and maybe you could enlighten me?
The term "bloke" for a man? Where does that come from?
A queue? That is a line?
Snogging? Is that like what we Amuricans call "sucking face"? Because I think snogging sounds just a little more risque and sloppy.
Harry and his bloke friends (when they aren't snogging or in a queue) often use the word "reckon" when they speak to each other. As in "I reckon we should tell them we are running late..."
Now, reckon, as Americans use it is kind of a redneck slang....
So, care to enlighten this wee widget of a woman? Or we could just go right to the snogging...
But..even the word "snogging" just comes out of me with a raised eyebrow. Makes me feel so royally and haughtily naughty.
As if I were not feeling a sense of normalcy and calm....
(Sorry, it just slipped...I HAD to say it.)"
Hee hee. I can forgive "normalcy" when used with such delicious sarcasm, Maria.
Hokay …
So at ten to five this morning when I checked my comments, this one sent me hurtling downstairs (still moist from the shower, ladies … ick!) to rifle my OED for the derivation of the word "bloke".
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 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 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).
An unfortunate consequence of US "Websterisms" (Websterizmz?") is the natural tendency of the English to speak slowly and clearly to those who use the simplified spellings, and sometimes to draw them little pictures, too.
Sassy's going to slap me around the head with her Masters Degree for that one but regrettably it is true; we do tend to equate simplified spelling with simple minds.
Getting back to Maria's comment, I am so glad she reads Harry Potter with Liv; introducing children to books is probably the best thing anyone could possibly do for them.
And whilst I've never read the Potter books I confess to enjoying the movies, if only for the delicious sight of so many Brit thesps gleefully hamming it up.
Rowling is smart enough to use subliminal linguistic messages in the naming of her characters, such as Draco Malfoy … "Draco" being Greek for "dragon" and also having the meaning "harsh and cruel" from the "draconian" laws laid down by the aptly named Draco in Greece around 620BC, and "Mal" from the French for "bad".
Tolkien was the master of this, being a professor of Middle English and a scholar of Middle and Old English, Saxon, Norse and Icelandic, enabling him to use the same subliminal messages in a far more complex and subtle way.
Of course, subsequent "fantasy" writers, lacking his linguistic facility have made a mockery of this art. Thankfully we have Douglas Adams to deflate them and he parodied their ignorance so brilliantly in the Hitch-hiker books where we discover that the Earth was created by an old bearded man with the splendid monicker of Slartibartfast.
So …
"Bloke"
Originally from the "Shelta", which the OED tells me is an ancient and secret language used by Irish and Welsh tinkers and Gypsies, based on altered Irish and Gaelic words.
Basically it has come to mean an ordinary, decent working man.
If you're not working class, you're not a "proper bloke"; you're a git and a tosser (excuse me, I'm a proudly proletarian Marxist and class warrior).
"Blokey" and "bloke-ish" are also used to describe typically working class behaviour, such as watching football and drinking beer and swearing.
"Snogging" is indeed "sucking face" as you so piquantly put it, Maria.
Considered slightly derogatory: nice people kiss; slags and teenagers snog.
It is very much Harry Potter's age group - the chlamydia generation - who use the word, binge-drinking themselves into a stupor before glomming on to one another's faces and jamming tongues down throats with all the subtlety of the "face hugger" out of the Alien movies.
People our age (yikes) should stick to kissing.
I was raised in a more innocent age of crap sci-fi movies like "Amazon Women On The Moon" where a crew of middle-aged men would land on a planet populated solely by unfeasibly pretty nineteen-year-old girls with huge blonde hair, silver micro-skirts and boobs like Sabrina (you remember her? The fifties starlet who looked like she'd been shot in the back with a couple of guided missiles), who said such things as "Tell me more about this Earth custom you call "kissing"" … So much nicer than snogging.
"Reckon" is from tallying up; deducing numbers, and has come to mean roughly the same as "estimate" or "guess", I reckon.
And "Queue" is indeed a line, Maria.
From the Latin "cauda" (tail), via the French usage as a plait of hair.
Queueing is an essentially English pastime. If we're not queueing for something, then we are moaning about the weather or taking tea with the Queen.
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of patronising Brits.
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