Messages

No, but Suu did. 

Damn, beaten to the punch

Most kids under 15 probably think Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the President of Iran, Gadaffi, Stalin and Hitler are all the same person.

This is why we dont allow them to drink, drive cars or vote.

I still suspect that in 50 yrs time these same kids will be reminiscing about Obama Van Leyden and how he drew anti-christian cartoons in Holland.

And I just SANK a jar of Hellman's. 

Happy Sink-o de Mayo fuckers!!!

You know yesterday I could have said
May the fourth be with you.







But I didn't

I think the word "madness" doesn't always have to be synonymous with "mental illness".

Of course not. I partake in incredibly obnoxious, delightfully healthy, flushed-and-sweaty, eyes gleaming, ripped-stockings, lost shoe and where-the-fuck-did-I-park-my-car madness all the time.

OP referred to it in the depraved, reduced cognitive functioning due to a clinical disorder sense.

Oi, I take exception to that. I'm perfectly comfortable with my madness, always have been, [/irony] but depravity is something entirely other.

I think I've already noted that when I started hearing the chanting of "USA! USA!", I got this sinking feeling in my stomach.

Sometimes, I hate being right.

I have been trying assiduously to avoid the coverage. Not actually hard but I accidentaly saw a bit on a web site yesterday. The thing which struck me forcibly was that the whoop de doop /ding dong the witch is dead crowd were almost uniformly too young to have been out of grade school when 9/11 happened. I wonder what effect this vicarious victory is going to have on their "americanness". Luckily I will be long dead by then but I should be very interested to see what that impact is longterm on American policy and pride in say, 50 yrs. For what its worth I don't anticipate it will be  a terribly good thing in the long term.

Why do i know this, and none of you anglophones?

**shame on your british ancestors**

It is a well known fact, so well known that it is stereotypical, that the British are pretty naff at languages. This merely compounds our linguistic incompetence and indicates that it isn't just foreign langauges that we are shit at, but our own dear mother tongue as well.

My personal excuse is that I could never afford to buy an anglophone. I have to make do with two tin cans and a ball of string.

* A man came up to me in a pub and whispered "D'ya wanna buy some pornography?" "Nah," I whispered back "I haven't got a pornograph to play it on"
/excuse for very old very crap joke

Hmm, I've never heard of either of those and they aren't bringing anything up on Google.  Interesting though.

Queen Anne's fan

Ever wondered what you call the gesture of putting your thumb to your nose and wiggling your fingers in an insulting manner? It's called Queen Anne's fan (or "cocking a snook", or "the five-fingered-salute", or the "coffee-mill" or "pull-bacon"). A study showed it to be Europe's best-known gesture. It is first recorded under this name when Anne reigned – 1714.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/qi/7880123/QI-Quite-Interesting-facts-about-queens.html

Got to be honest, though, I've never heard the expression before. But I think I might start using it now. ALSO how do you get "pull-bacon" from the gesture . . .

Eris give me it for being pretty.

(Next homewares )

The reflection is fantastic

[...]Getting old is neither easy nor avoidable. [...]

Bullshit, getting old is the easiest thing around. You wake up in the morning, you're another day older. You just deal with it. Its your life, live the fucking thing. A wise friend once commented to me - "Its not that I feel any older its just that people treat me as though I was". Everything else is just BS and practicalities. So my hair is gray and my tits are heading down to my knees - so fucking what? If I don't take the tablets I will die, well everyone has their problems, don't they? But I don't feel like wasting my time getting maudlin about some rosy dozy past. If I'm alive tomorrow that is my future, my life, and I'm just going to keep living it until I don't.

MMIX
Crone to the Bone

Just for the hell of it :-

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32633/32633-h/32633-h.htm


The original short story.

[record]

What about made up but widely used words. Are they words if used often enough?

Thing-a-ma-bob for example.

By the American definition yes they are.  Words are "official" if they are widely used by English Speaking Americans.

By British and Commonwealth definition only if they are included by Oxford College, so British English has an Ecole.

You may be fight about American English but your ideas on British English are a bit shite, really.

"Oxford College"

Oxford College is one of the leading distance education providers in the United Kingdom and internationally, and along with our partners in education, promotes quality home study education world wide.
[snip]
Your qualification from Oxford College will show your respected and exceptional level of education.

If that is a good example of their grasp of syntax and punctuation they are hardly fit to be held up as examplars of English usage. 

@ CB Thingumbob / thingumabob, was not a very good example because when I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary the first recorded usage they give is Smollett 1751, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle "in a laced doublet and thingumbobs at the wrist" but Smollett was Scots so maybe its not a real English word anyway.
I use the 3 volume microtype version that you have to read with a magnifying glass [supplied in the box case] The OED (which has many different versions) modestly describes itself as

the definitive record of the English language.

my emphasis

This doesn't actually mean that a word has to be in the OED to be an "official" English word. Nor does it have to be pronounced in 'Oxford English'  aka Received Pronunciation, BBC English, or 'talking posh', to be a valid form of communication. And what does the Commonwealth have to do with it . . . ?

Its 11/1/11 in the UK so I guess that makes our dates cooler?

I'm rather disappointed no-one looked at the ice city.

Well nobody commented but a lot of us are probably like the guys walking past that monumental head in the gloriously labelled "Random snow Communist", we don't seem to be looking but we probably had a quick peek. 

I just want to put in a good word for Yoko Ono. Back in 1966, which I think just squeaks this work into the Modern period if not the Modern style she produced the Blue Room Event.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yokoonoofficial/2891958083/in/set-72157607534446622/#/

Looks like even old Yoko is a good, right thinking discordian, she was Gasming before Cram was even born . . .

Couldn't disagree with that