I won! I won the Olympics!
That’s right! I got me a free Co’Cola, suckas!
The bus behind the Coke bus was a Lloyd’s Bank bus, but sadly they were not giving out free money samples. I did ask.
There was a great rolling parade of corporate sponsors driving slowly ahead of the torch making a helluva racket. Dozens of coppers on motorbikes rolling around sealing off roads as the procession lumbered down the A259. I had a tame bobby with an earbutton radio next to me, so I knew what was coming.
The torch bearer himself was toward the end, a chubby gentleman of mature years. Bit of an anticlimax. Then they relit a lantern from the flame, blew out the torch, trundled the lantern onto a bus and off to the next town.
Not exactly a day at the circus, but above average for a Wednesday morning. Plus, free Coke!
July 18, 2012 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 17
Run, it’s a cyclops!
Yeah, these two butt-ugly abominations are the Olympics mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville.
Wenlock was named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock. It is thought that the Wenlock Games, founded around the mid 19th Century acted as a catalyst to the modern Olympic Games that we all know (and love?)
Mandeville is named after the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire where in the 1940s, Dr Ludwig Guttmann established the Stoke Mandeville games at his Spinal unit at the hospital. From here it is said the foundations were laid for the modern Paralympic games.
Now don’t you like them better? No? Me neither.
The Olympic torch is in Sussex at the moment, passing through into Kent tomorrow. I couldn’t give the proverbial at a rolling doughnut about the Olympics, but when Stuff happens near me, I have to be there in the front row waving a flag, yelling, “yay whatever!” It’s an American thing.
It’s trudging through Hastings before nine in the morning, so I have to be up bright and early to catch it. A friend is driving me in. Uncle B would rather floss with rusty barbed wire than turn up and wave a flag.
Nighty night!
July 17, 2012 — 8:50 pm
Comments: 45
So…
Greece is going for the popular “tear the bandaid off slowly” gambit. And for “popular” read “psychotic” throughout.
I’m not sure how clearly this is coming across to you over there, but the troubled economies of Europe are insane. I can’t say it more succinctly than that. I am only just realizing how deeply, irredeemably insane.
Greece believes it can say no to cuts and it will stay in the Euro anyway, no matter how many times they’re told otherwise. The new Socialist government of France is limbering up its taxation muscles, ready to drive more prosperity out of France at the worst possible moment.
At the G20 summit, when a Canadian reporter asked European Commission President José Manuel Barroso why North American should bail out Europe, he answered
“We are not coming here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to manage our economy…”
“This crisis was not originated in Europe,” Mr. Barroso said. “This crisis was originated in North America. Many in our financial sector were contaminated by unorthodox practices from some sectors of the financial market.”
Which sounds an awful lot like the popular “fuck you, give me a bunch of money” gambit. And you already know what I mean by popular.
Honestly, you have no idea the deep and irrational belief the peoples of Europe have in the power of the EU — a union that is neither particularly old nor conspicuously successful.
Greece is thumbing its nose at Brussels and the demands of Germans not because they don’t care about the euro project. Quite the reverse. They don’t believe they can be kicked out for their shenanigans any more than California will be kicked out of the USA.
I wish they’d tear the damn thing off and get it over with.
June 19, 2012 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 35
Happy Walpurgisnacht, we-yotches!
Happy Walpurgis Night! It’s exactly six months from Hallowe’en, and you know what that means — Witches’ Sabbath!
It’s a Northern European thing. Bonfires. Witches. The usual.
It’s named after Saint Walpurga (or Walburga), who wasn’t a witch or on fire or anything (and she sure isn’t the lady in the middle of that picture — what is that woman doing to that poor goat?). Pure coincidence Walpurga was canonized on May 1.
So it’s another one of those, “witches? wait, what? Oh, nonono, Father, you misunderstand. We aren’t celebrating our ancient pagan customs. We’re piously observing…ummm…Saint Whatsername’s Day. Um, Walburga — yeah, that’s it!”
Unrelated things that happened today which amused me: Lefties ganging up on Righties, reporting them as spammers to get their feelthy ‘winger accounts auto-blocked on Twitter.
Pasty blond blue-eyed Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was listed as a minority faculty member at Harvard in the Nineties, based on undocumented family legends she had Native American ancestors (the Boston Herald helpfully describes them as her “maternal parents”). Dear Miz Warren: EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA TELLS THIS STORY ABOUT ITSELF.
And the Obama campaign released a new video today and announced its 2012 slogan. Are you ready? Forward.
No, that’s it: Forward. I don’t even think they sprang for the exclamation point.
Forward.
Mmmm mmmm — can you smell the t-shirts?
April 30, 2012 — 7:06 pm
Comments: 56
No. No, I don’t see any problem
Okay, so there’s this skinny white woman dressed all in yellow — even her little sneakers are yellow — walking alone through an abandoned warehouse.
All of a sudden — kee-YIII — out hops this Oriental dude doing all these Kung Fu moves. Okay?
Okay, then this Asian-looking guy with the beard and the turban and the robes and the the curved sword comes in. Only he’s barefoot and he’s levitating. And he’s all waving the sword and zooming around six inches off the floor.
–when this big, scary black guy with dreads busts the door down and starts doing all this kickboxing shit.
So the yellow lady does this yoga breathing thing and splits into twelve yellow ladies, who sit down in the lotus position. This makes the scary men disappear, and the yellow ladies turn into the yellow stars on the EU flag.
THE END.
Ummmm…yeah. The EU really made that movie. And were shocked that people thought it was racist. And sexist. And generally gob-smackingly idiotic.
It’s like that nice Mr bin Laden used to say: when you have a weak horse and a strong horse, they both come together to laugh at the retarded horse.
March 7, 2012 — 6:11 pm
Comments: 41
This’ll keep you busy for a couple of days
So this Dutch dude wrote a poem called The Chaos, about what an utter pain in the ass English is for the non-native speaker. It’s 270-something lines documenting 800 or so spelling/pronunciation anomalies. (You can learn more about the history of it here).
Aw, c’mon…it’s kind of fun. Dip in anywhere and sample a couple of verses. Works best read aloud. Remember — English spellings and pronunciations.
Great weekend and thanks for all the ghoti!
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it’s written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say – said, pay – paid, laid but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining,
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.
From “desire”: desirable – admirable from “admire”,
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
Peter, petrol and patrol?
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,
Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation’s OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Is your R correct in higher?
Keats asserts it rhymes with Thalia.
Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
Buoyant, minute, but minute.
Say abscission with precision,
Now: position and transition;
Would it tally with my rhyme
If I mentioned paradigm?
Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
But cease, crease, grease and greasy?
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
Rabies, but lullabies.
Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
You’ll envelop lists, I hope,
In a linen envelope.
Would you like some more? You’ll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.
To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
Does not sound like Czech but ache.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed but vowed.
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover.
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice,
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,
Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it”,
But it is not hard to tell
Why it’s pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
Has the A of drachm and hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but desert, address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some and home.
“Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker“,
Quoth he, “than liqueur or liquor“,
Making, it is sad but true,
In bravado, much ado.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.
Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.
Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.
And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.
Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove,
Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn’t) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.
Don’t be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.
Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,
Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)
Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don’t mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
Rhyming with the pronoun yours;
Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did,
Funny rhymes to unicorn,
Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.
No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don’t want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud
Is no better than McLeod.
But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.
Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you’re not supposed to say
Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.
Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
When for Portsmouth I had booked!
Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
Episodes, antipodes,
Acquiesce, and obsequies.
Please don’t monkey with the geyser,
Don’t peel ‘taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.
Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.
The TH will surely trouble you
More than R, CH or W.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget ’em –
Wait! I’ve got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.
The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight – you see it;
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,
Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry, fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.
Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess – it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.
Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.
Mind the O of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.
Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.
A of valour, vapid, vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,
Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll.
Pronunciation – think of Psyche! –
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won’t it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying ‘grits’?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Don’t you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??
Hiccough has the sound of sup…
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!
February 10, 2012 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 32
Dutch lady shoots herself annually
This Dutch lady is Ria van Dijk. When she was 16, she went to the shooting gallery at an amusement park in Tilburg, Holland. When she hit the target, the booth automagically took a picture. That was her prize.
So — what the hey — she went back every year. Well, excepting 1939 to 1945.
She’s still doing it. She’s 88. And she’s put them all together in a book.
That sort of thing totally warms my cockles.
Good weekend, everyone!
February 3, 2012 — 10:07 pm
Comments: 23
Your mom would be so proud
Okay, so this private detective firm in Sydney, Oz advertised in a career magazine for a “Brothel Buster Investigator”. Must have private investigator’s license, good command of written and spoken English, be willing to have protected sex with prostitutes. Seventy grand a year.
Because, apparently, having actual sex with prostitutes is “really good evidence” of prostitution. Much better than getting close and then bottling out, like those stupid cops.
The company works on contract for local Councils, ten to twenty investigations a year. Not only do they bust unregistered brothels, but they often find improper fire exits and waste disposal issues at the same time. So, you know, important.
Sorry, gents…the job has been filled.
Let the private dick jokes begin…
February 1, 2012 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 20
Mall cop Tarzan
Meet DeWet du Toit. His name means “de wet of the roof” but his friends call him Wet Twat. I’m just sure they do.
Psych! He doesn’t have any friends. He’s a South African bodybuilder and mall cop who love-love-LOVES him some Tarzan. And, um, Hollywood film contracts.
Three days a week, he lives in the jungle, just like Tarzan, plus a cameraman (the other four, he lives with his mom and dad). The plan is to win a Hollywood movie deal by filming himself, mostly splashing barefoot through puddles of muddy water, from what I saw.
I kept thinking, “dude, you are so going to get worms or cut yourself really badly.” If that’s the kind of excitement they’re looking for in a Tarzan movie, he’s got a shot.
Otherwise…hopeless.
He says his best friend is an elephant called Shaka, and he’s been photographed with lots of other African exotics, so somebody lets this young man hang out in a petting zoo.
That doesn’t strike me as a great idea.
January 30, 2012 — 9:05 pm
Comments: 26
Can’t they both lose?
I’m really torn on this one. On the one hand, the US government is stomping around the internet playing freestyle HULK SMASH in the name of intellectual property owners. That’s going bad places, fast.
On the other hand, this needledick had his name legally changed to Dotcom.
Don’t like this whole Megaupload business one bit. As far as I can tell, the site functioned purely as a free storage and retrieval service. Made its money on banner ads. Inevitably, it became storage and retrieval for a whole lot of bad and stolen content, but Megaupload itself was just a digital U-Stor-It. It had 180 million registered users chewing up 4% of global internet traffic…and then the US reached over and casually pulled the plug. Didn’t need SOPA at all.
What happened to everybody else’s data? The non-pirates, I mean. What does this mean for the future of cloud computing? Who the hell would trust stuff in the cloud if huge sites could be wiped out any time at the pleasure of the US government?
And this kind of thing will surely not win friends. (It’s Megaupload’s current front page — but don’t worry, the image is hosted locally on this blog. You’re not clicking a bad thing).
On the other hand, this Dotcom weenus is a piece of work (if you don’t like Dotcom, his other alias is Kim Tim Jim Vestor). He started as a teenager, hacking into sites and stealing credit card numbers, and he got cuddlier from there. He’s been convicted of embezzlement, insider trading. Personally? Don’t get me started. The guy needs to go down.
So here you have a man who richly deserves a bloody nose, and there you have a ham-fisted bully who won’t stop with the richly deserving.
Ugh.
January 24, 2012 — 11:16 pm
Comments: 43