Torn and frayed in Manila

The five most obviously drug-fuelled appearances ever

Now that is a promising headline. It comes from "Cracked" magazine and the article below it contains links to all five wonderfully crazed efforts from our stars. Alas the quality of the Richard Prior interview is so poor that you can't make out a word he is saying, but it is definitely worth checking out Crispin Glover on Letterman (picture) and the mighty James Brown. Here's what the folk at Cracked had to say about the insightful consultation with the Godfather of Soul:

His sobriety can be brought into question right off the bat when he answers one of her questions with, “living in America!” When pop stars sing choruses from their own songs completely out of context, they might as well be wearing a sombrero with the words “I’m high” written on it.

Thanks for the link Butch.

Spurious Burke quotation

There is an interesting discussion here about the origin of the quotation from Edmund Burke in the post above.

Bugger off!

The BBC has published a beautiful guide to “The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words”. It contains much valuable information that you can use in your everyday life.

For example, I’ve always wondered about the cockney phrase, “watcher cock”. Does it really mean “hello penis”? Apparently not:

'Wotcher cock' … comes from the term 'cock sparrow' (pronounced 'sparrah'). It is a general term for a man, although 'cock sparrow' was usually saved for small boys. It has been used for about 300 years.

The inventive cockneys also came up with “berk”:

The abusive term 'Berk' also derives from [cunt], being cockney rhyming slang, short for 'Berkshire Hunt'.

The explanation of “fuck” is too long to quote at length, but the fact that it hints at a Scandinavian origin does put the road signs in Sweden in a new light:

Bizarrely, 'fukt' means humidity in mainstream Swedish. There is a sign 20k from Stockholm's main airport which says 'tid 13.25' or whatever time it is that you drive past, 'temp -10°' or however cold it is, and 'fukt 76%', which is a useful statistic to know about the people in the country you are visiting. You can also buy 'Fukt Creme' in some shops in Sweden, although (disappointingly) this is a hand cream and not a lubricant.

The origin of “git” is was another new one to me:

The word 'git' is connected with 'get' but in the sense of spawn or offspring, as in the old verb to beget, so your 'get' are your (probably illegitimate) offspring.

Finally, I do want a copy of this record:

In 1987, the American soul group The Tams had a Top 30 UK hit with a song called There Ain't Nothing Like Shaggin'. They were probably rather puzzled to hear that what they regarded as an innocent little ditty about a dance craze was having trouble getting airplay in Britain.

I have a few disagreements with the guide though. With regard to the term “sweet FA”, the explanation related to the murder of a child called Fanny Adams is one possible explanation, but I always thought it was just short for “sweet fuck all”.

Some of the origins seem to beg a further explanation:

A phrase that, until recently, was almost exclusively American, is 'mother-f****r'. Despite sounding very Oedipal, this does not have Freudian derivations. The word was apparently coined by African slaves to describe the slave owners who had raped the slave's mothers. Simple as that.

But is it? Why has has this word remained so popular in America? Is there any other slang where this rather objectionable word is as common as in American?

Still, despite these quibbles, them geezers at the Beeb done an effing good job, the flash buggers.

Thanks Butch!

The death of reading

Last month it was announced that examiners of Britain’s national English test for 14-year-olds had been “ordered not to penalize incorrect spelling in a key writing paper.” On a related theme, in his column today Randy David, sociology professor at UP, explained that the generally positive response to an introductory course on sociology included a request for “more visual aids”. Coincidentally, Belinda Aquino, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, touched on a similar theme in her column on the same page:

One of my complaints as a teacher all these years is that students don't read anymore, generally speaking. If they do … the material they are asked to read is "too difficult." Or they cannot fully comprehend what they are reading. When I ask for some feedback about a particular reading, they can barely articulate an adequate response. The paradox is, most core textbooks being used in today's colleges and universities are illustrated with colorful pictures and study guides to improve students' understanding of their reading assignments… Since students don't read as much anymore, they also don't write well. The two go together. Students in this generation tend to talk or write in fragments, not complete sentences. Have reading and writing gone out of style? Or is this a reflection of the wider world's declining ability to read and write?

Anyone who knows what an old fogey I am will appreciate the profound depression that descended on me when I read these comments. During a lonely childhood in Africa and a Scottish boarding school only marginally less oppressive than the Soviet gulag, books (as in no pictures) have always been absolutely central to my life. It makes me sad that kids of today are being brought up in a world where looking at “visual aids” and “colourful pictures” is considered as valid as figuring out a textual argument.

I do have plenty of friends who don’t read much of course, and I have to admit they don’t seem too damaged by the lack of books in their lives. Many of them are way smarter than I am. Still although I accept Steven Johnson’s argument that some of the more sophisticated computer games sharpen certain cognitive skills, I don't see how it can be denied that the written word is still the most effective way of conveying conceptual ideas and nuances of meaning. A world reliant on “visual aids” is a world of crude and dangerous inductive thinking. To find out just where that can lead us, here is a scary observation by Richard Clarke:

From the interactions I did have with Bush it was clear that the critique of him as a dumb, lazy rich kid was somewhat off the mark. When he focused, he asked the kind of questions that revealed a results-oriented mind, but he looked for the simple solution, the bumper sticker description of the problem. Once he had that, he could put energy behind a drive to achieve his goal. The problem was that many of the important issues, like terrorism, like Iraq, were laced with important subtlety and nuance. These issues need analysis and Bush and his inner circle had no real interest in complicated analyses; on the issues that they cared about, they already knew the answers. Bush was informed by talking with a small set of senior advisors. Early on we were told that “the President is not a big reader” and goes to bed by 10:00. Richard A. Clarke, Against all Enemies (p. 243), emphasis added

Postscript: Though I like Professor Aquino's columns a lot, I have to say she did come up with the fogeyest comment of the week: "This is another thing with students these days-they never read newspapers, even their own college newspapers or newsletters, which their classmates edit or write for. Their ears are plugged to some video device undoubtedly listening to some rap or rock music. And, of course, the ubiquitous cell phone has become some kind of oversized metal earring. The young are so self-absorbed." Yeah! Go Belinda!

British English through Philippine eyes

A very funny article written by a Filipina living in the UK has been circulating by e-mail. It came anonymously, but I’ve since discovered that the author’s name is Carla Montemayor and her article was originally published in News Break. I hope she won’t mind me including some of the passages that particularly tickled me.

For starters, there's the verbose politesse. The British will not just say "thanks," they will invariably say, "Thank you very much indeed," or "Thank you ever so much." Ever so much na, indeed pa. How does one reply adequately to that? "You are profoundly welcome from the deepest recesses of my heart"? Sometimes I feel like bowing.

Then there are the dramatic exclamations. Things are never just "okay" or "nice" or even "great"; they are "splendid," "fantastic," and "brilliant." It's overwhelming and somewhat suspicious for someone whose own language is restrained in the deployment of superlatives. Maganda (beautiful), magaling (good), and ang galing-galing (really good) are about all we can bring ourselves to describe anything we're impressed with, although we do make up for it with emphatic gestures and lively vocal tones.

The British, when pronouncing something as being "superb," will make the most frugal of lip movements and the slightest of eyebrow lifts. Requests are bound to be long-winded. "You don't suppose you could turn the light on, do you, that is if you don't mind and if it's not too much trouble, of course?" I'm tempted to reply with a similar treatise, but I just say, yes, I suppose the Filipino CAN!

…

I've seen menus featuring "spotted dick," but I'm too embarrassed to order it. I searched for BISCUITS, ignoring large packages of DIGESTIVES, which I thought were for septuagenarians who had to put all solid food through a blender.

And because this is the north of England, I've been invited to TEA in the evening in which no tea was served it was actually DINNER. Then I was asked to DINNER, which turned out to be LUNCH. So now when they ask what I'm having for "tea," I say "rice." And when someone invites me to "dinner," I no longer plan to wear a shiny dress.

I have also ceased to recoil upon hearing the various endearments with which total strangers address me: "luv" (fairly common), "flower," , "angel," and get this "duck." Why the name of a domestic fowl is considered a fond nickname, I have no idea. If someone called me "bibe" (duck) back home, I would surely be livid and yell back, "Itik" (skinny Philippine fowl)!

Blog: the year's most popular word

The term "blog" has been chosen as the top word of 2004 by a US dictionary publisher.

According to US research firm Pew Internet & American Life a blog is created every 5.8 seconds. As a friend pointed out, that’s higher than the birth rate in some countries. 

Writer's block

It’s worth checking out the advice on how to clear writer’s block here. 

I remember reading about a couple of handy techniques from Graham Greene. First, he always counted the number of words he had written that day, his manuscripts are full of numbers in his spidery handwriting tracking his progress.  Second, he would always leave the last sentence of the day unfinished.   This meant that when he started the next morning he could finish the sentence and the tap was turned on from that point.  Ingenious.

Anyway, here are some tips from the site:

• Do something important that’s very easy - Is there a small part of your project you could finish quickly that would move things forward?
• Try freewriting - Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you're typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?
• Write from a persona - Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.

Cool – the next post is written from the perspective of a 95-year-old Bolivian sheep-herder, see if you can tell. 

There ought to be a word for it ...

... I suggest 'patriaennui' (L. patria, native country, F., ennui, a contraction of L. mihi in odio est, meaning 'it is hateful to me'.

What am I rambling on about? That vague feeling of dread that seeps into my bones before I am 10 miles from Heathrow. There's much to admire in Britain, and of course seeing family and friends is a joy, but I just have an emotional reaction to the place and a sense of guilt for not feeling more at home here.

Eats, shoots and makes a lot of mistakes

There is nothing more enjoyable that tripping up a pedant and Louis Menand has a lot of fun ripping to shreds Lynne Truss's best selling "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" in The New Yorker. A sample:

"I am not a grammarian,” Truss says. No quarrel there… Why would a person who is not just vague about the rules but disinclined to follow them bother to produce a guide to punctuation?

Menand seems cross not just at Truss, but at all sloppy British writers:

"An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces. Some of Truss’s departures from punctuation norms are just British laxness."

There is something in that. Forty years of tabloid journalism have so degraded British English that standards are now much higher in leading American periodicals such as The New Yorker than in their British equivalents.

English collective nouns

A pomp of Pekingese, a surfeit of skunks, a mob of wombats, a disguising of tailors … hundreds and hundreds of collective nouns can be found here.

What you won’t find though is a “blockage of bureaucrats” – that’s because Peter made it up this morning. Got a feeling it’s going to catch on though…