An interesting article on deliberately saying the wrong words. I’ve heard some people do it in print as well. Freaks.

Radio 2’s record of the week is ‘Stay the night from ghosts’. I thought this was a pleasing phrase and a great title, then later found out it’s actually ‘Stay the night’ from ‘Ghosts’, which isn’t anything like so poetic. Still, I can now steal it without feeling guilty.

I had a conversation this evening that, somehow, ended up describing the word ‘testicle’ as an ‘onomatopoeic metaphor’. I’m pretty sure that phrase covers all words, doesn’t it?

(It’s just occurred to me that ‘no, you’re just talking bollocks’ might be an appropriate answer)

I have a feeling most people know this one, but it was new for me:

portmanteau - A word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words, as chortle, from chuckle and snort (e.g. cephalopodufascist)

Taken from the oasis that is the “Good grammar is hot” Facebook group, which you can’t access without logging in. I think they all work very well when read aloud, particularly the poem.

Q: What’s another name for Santa’s elves?
A: Subordinate Clauses

–

A Texan professor and an Oxford professor are chilling at a conference bar. The Texan professor, bored, looks to the Oxford professor and strikes up a conversation.
“So there partner, where y’all from?”
Oxford prof. replies, pushing his glasses to his nose: “Well, in reply to your query, I hail from Oxford. In addition, where I come from, we never end our sentences in a preposition.”
The Texan prof. blinks once, shrugs his shoulders and drawls, “My apologies! What I mean to say is ‘where y’all from, asshole?’”

–

What’s the difference between a cat and a comma?
One has claws at the end of its paws and one is a pause at the end of a clause.

–

HINTS ON PRONUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS
*~by T.S.W.~*¹

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough², and through -
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird
And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness’ sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and strait and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear
And then there’s dose and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!

1. or George Bernard Shaw, nobody’s quite sure [↩]
2. didn’t know this one - it’s pronounced ‘lock’, and is an Irish word for a lake [↩]

Word of the day is ‘gallimaufry’, which apparently means a jumble, or hodgepodge. I’m determined to say ‘Herbert slipped in the gallimaufry of body parts’ in the next week. Originally seen here.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. It’s somewhat turbulent around here atm and my head’s been elsewhere. It’s also been too bloody hot.

Via Jo I discover that ‘Andrew’ will be defined in the dictionary as:

Andrew –[noun]: A lewd street performer

I always wanted to be a street entertainer, but never had the force of personality to pull it off. I like this idea, though. Thing is, if it applies to all Andrews it’ll be me, Skuds and B4L working together on some kind of lewd performance…

Hmmm.

My favourite word today is ‘fruitless’. After all, what good is anything if you don’t end up with fruit?

Is it ironic that I have to look up the word ‘esoteric’ every single time I read it, or am I remembering wrongly?

I was just browsing through a book on AJAX, since I figure it might be a useful thing to learn properly. The first page contained a description of the author:

…and has vast experience in the Internet paradigm.

It doesn’t make sense, but I can see what it’s intended to mean, and it’s officially added to the list of Dumb Wanky Phrases.

There is a special type of swearing that gets used in some situations. Let’s say, for example, that you sit down on the sofa, place your evening meal next to you, and reach for a remote control. Out of the corner of your eye you notice the (stupid, useless, redundant) lap tray on which your food rests sliding from the seat. You make a grab for it, but fail and the plate shatters while food ends up upside down all over the floor. This, by itself, would not warrant any particularly special expletives. When, however, you didn’t even notice the ensuing mess due to having just plunged your hand into the centre of a very deep, fresh-from-the-oven pizza, new words practically spring into being of their own accord. Trust me on this.

Are. Are are are. Not is. Are.

This doesn’t bother anybody else, does it.

I just read Anna’s most recent post, in which she used the word ‘frotting’. Not knowing what this meant, and being an inquisitive sort of fellow, I looked it up.

Had I used Wikipedia, all would have been well. But, no, I used answers.com. Which has a picture. A picture that I couldn’t figure out for a bit, but then I did. NSFW and all that.

Now, it’s not that I’ve been examining that picture in great detail, but I can’t help noticing what appears to be a bubble. A bubble? Really? How exactly does that work? I’m confused, and I wish not to have this question floating around my head. I’m concerned I may be broken in some way, as, quite frankly, I’ve never seen anything vaguely close to bubbles. But then I guess I have my eyes shut¹.

You may be wondering why I don’t just copy and paste the definition of ‘frotting’ into this blog post. Well, there are two reasons.

Firstly, I went to the definition page, so other people should too. It’s like karma for evil people, or korma for short. Secondly, it’s because whenever I put anything like that onto my blog things like this happen:

This weekend, Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten was forced to resign over revelations he’d had an affair. I read online that the News of the World had published details of his sexual encounters, including three-in-a-bed romps and ’sexual acts too revolting for print’. Much as this last phrase sent the mind boggling, that was really as much information as I needed to know. Then, while browsing my website stats, I saw various google searches from the phrase ‘mark oaten coprophilia’. I have indeed mentioned both him and coprophilia on my website before. Gross. If you were a purveyor of gross - a grosser, presumably - this would undoubtedly be one of your top items. The images that popped into my head…there are just no words.

This whole post was such a bad idea. I can imagine the conversations now…

Grandparents: Is it true you were using our internet connection to look at hardcore gay images?
Me: No!
Me: Well, yes.
Grandparents: Explain yourself!
Me: I was just looking up frotting when it kinda happened.
Grandparents: Frotting? What’s that?
Me: It’s a male-homosexual technique. I wanted to know what it was, you see. And then there were bubbles, and I couldn’t understand it.
Grandparents: You’re out of the will².

If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to flush my mind’s eye with unicorns, ducklings and puppies.

1. not while engaged in frotting, you understand - nothing like that, I’m on my own! No…wait…There’s no dignified way out of this footnote, is there. [↩]
2. I should point out here that my grandparents are not actually homophobic in any way [↩]

Dinosaur Comic from 5th Jan just made me laugh out loud. What do you mean, it reminds you of someone? Shut up.

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I’ve decided to stay with my parents for the week, as I’m here dog-sitting for a couple of days anyway, and the rest of the week I’d only get lonely in Stratford and come back. I don’t think this is a fun week to be on your own. I’m only checking my emails a few times per day, which is quite a change from normal! I did manage to upload a fair few christmassy photos yesterday, with the help of Picasa. Since Jo’s had so little trouble, I might brave a Wordpress upgrade tomorrow without all of my normal programs.

I went and checked on the flat earlier today, and discovered I’d left a window open. Dumbass. It was out onto the walkway at the back of the building so in theory wasn’t publicly accessible. Still, there are only four windows in the flat, so it was a pretty stupid thing to do! It was very cold in there, too. Still, no harm done. Thankfully everything else was fine. I picked up a couple of plectrums, which work far better than the Pointy Piece of Plastic I ripped from some packaging, as well as a couple of other bits and pieces I’ll need to last until the weekend.

I’m currently a few chapters into Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, which was a present. I don’t know whether it’s the content, the writing style, or a mixture of both, but I’m finding it absolutely fascinating. I guess I was also looking for an excuse to ditch Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I’d been struggling with. Maybe it gets better, but the endlessly florid dialogue of turn of the century academics drove me to distraction! Maybe I’ll come back to that at some point. Although my to-read pile now contains a couple of Richard Dawkins books, as well as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, so it may be quite a long wait.

I was in Comet this morning, and all over the floor were large arrows, underneath which was:

I-Pod’s ??

I frame no hypothesis.

There’s apparently heavy snowfall expected tonight…Wonder how much we’ll see here.