The best things since sliced bread

Some suggestions via Google:

1. President Bush
2. Furry pornographic art
3. Being able to book hotel reservations online
4. Aspartame
5. Orange chicken
6. Corduroy
7. Tax-deferred investing
8. Guantanamo
9. Tiger Woods
10. Jesus
11. The lettuce leaf
12. Bob Dylan

Now you can pick up anything!

I picked up some disposable chopsticks in Las Vegas; the instructions brought a smile to my face.

Cat’s In The Well

Honestly, sometimes it is like trying to teach a ferret to read Latin. Talk is cheap, but you can’t eat a conversation. I am not a vegetarian, nor am I physically disabled. I said I liked disabled people. I have a lot of time for disabled people. “All disabled people?” she asked, “or just those without any ligaments?” She meant limbs, I think. I didn’t know how to answer.

Then it began to snow and her tattoos fell off. I had to cry. The world’s being slaughtered and it’s such a bloody disgrace.

Redundancy in Bob Dylan lyrics?

I was taught to always avoid and eschew pleonastic redundancy in writing. Redundancy is, however, acceptable in the writing of songs. Bob Dylan has written about 89 of my all time top 100 favourite songs. He has written hundreds of songs with various types of lyrics: surreal, silly, wounded, hallucinatory, political, historical, bitter, sad, happy, and so on. I love the lyrics he writes, but more importantly I love how he performs the songs – both in the recording studio and in concert. So here are a few Dylan lines that may contain redundant words or phrases:

Her mouth was watery and wet

He unleashed His power at an unknown hour that no one knew

Many times I’ve often prayed

Come over here from over there, girl

I’m here to create the new imperial empire

I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot

In a basement down the stairs (I suppose a basement could be down the escalator or the elevator)

Talking to myself in a monologue (I think this is ok because you could talk to yourself in a dialogue. Are you sure? Yeah, I reckon so.)

Referring to prime ministers

There is no Prime Minister Blair.
Tony Blair holds the office of prime minister, but his title is not “Prime Minister Blair”.
I have heard this solecism repeated frequently and it really gets my goat. Please could radio and television presenters differentiate between job titles and personal titles?
And why does President Bush refer to his friend as Prime Minister Blair? Hasn’t the prime minister ever corrected him?

I remember, when growing up, referring to the prime minister at all times as Mrs Thatcher. How reverent. Knowing what I know now, the politest form of address I can muster is Thatcher.

(Pun)chlines

If I remember the punchline, I remember the joke. Some truly terrible puns that I have retold in earnest over the years:

“He was arrested for driving under-age gulls across the staid lion for immortal porpoises.”

“He was arrested for making an obscene clone fall.”

“All of Hing’s courses and all of Ming’s kin couldn’t get gum tea to feather a hen.”

“No, I’m a frayed knot.”

“The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.”

 

Take the Shaggy Pun Test.

10 Points

From The Fall’s live album The “Twenty-Seven” Points:

1. It’s up to you [...]
Right Rex, you’d better get it sorted out
……and nobody likes you. Why don’t you do us all a favour and bog off back to Xanadu in Ireland.

2. You hang around with camera crews in shell suits. You lecture on sweets and propose salad. You are coming round to Viz comic. You also make all history and related topics thematic.

3. You are operation mindfuck on the children of this land.

4, You are a slowcoach of the first water.

5. You will probably cut my income by one third.

6. You are working now researching a video project.

7. You, in a flash of intuitive brilliance, have garnered that many people are unemployed.

8. You hog the bathroom and never put your hand in your pocket.

9, You post out sixty page computer printouts on the end of the earth’s days and forests.

10. All the above will come back to you in purgatory and confirm you as a damn pest.

Me. Dictum. He focus.. he focuses his clever dick mentality on himself.

A. He looks at July roses yet does not have the mentality to cut them himself.

B. He was stuck like a little pig on castle lawns and said “look at what’s happened to my leg”.

C. He has thoughts, crap, Blake-like, like “while they sleep I’ll plot to shaft the bastards in their cot through gradualment and C bit by bit”

Palindromes

Some time ago Stephen Fry set a competition in the Daily Telegraph for readers to come up with some original palindromes. (Of course, I do not read that paper – the article is included in his Paperweight book.)

He announced the winner as Mr V. Miles of Bracknell who wrote this one:

It’s Ade, Cilla, Sue, Dame Vita, Edna, Nino, Emo! Come on in and eat; I’ve made us all iced asti.

This palindrome of unknown origin remains one of my favourites:

Doctor Reubenstein was shocked and dismayed when he answered the ringing telephone, only to hear a strange, metallic, alien voice say, “Yasec iovn eilacilla temeg! Nartsa raehoty lnoenoh pelet gnig, nirehtde rewsnaehn ehw. Deya! Msid! Dnadek cohssaw nietsne buerro, tcod?”

Acronyms in Education

I have just arrived home after a school governors’ meeting. It struck me just how many acronyms we use. Here are some we talked about or referred to today:

• TLR – teaching and learning responsibility
• MA – management allowance
• UPS – upper pay scale
• PPA – planning, preparation and assessment
• PDR – professional development review
• IIP – investors in people
• SEF – self-evaluation form
• LGS – local government scale
• SDA – school development adviser
• AOTT – adults other than teachers
• H&S – health and safety
• QTS – qualified teacher status
• NQT – newly qualified teacher
• DFES – department for education and skills
• CRB – criminal records bureau
• LEA – local education authority
• LSA – learning support assistant
• HLTA – higher level teaching assistant
• ICT – information communication technology

Oops, I nearly forgot OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) which has such an important place in English schools that it is mentioned in reference to nearly everything else. It is occasionally said that schools would run better if there were no F in OFSTED.

School Poetry

When I was 14 we had a poetry festival at school. I was surprised to learn that I had won the poetry writing competition. I was surprised because I had not entered – my cheeky English teacher found the following poem in one of my notebooks and submitted it on my behalf. What a cheerful lad I was back then.

The Dead District

Here I stand in this desolate land,
With bloodshed all around.
Never has so much fighting taken place.
Broken glass under foot,
And faces covered in soot, dirty soot, filthy, ugly soot.
Which are my friends here,
And which are my foes?
Nobody answers because nobody knows.
Everyone fought everyone,
Anyone fought anyone.
Turmoil struck the land,
And every woman, every child and every man
Raised up a sword and struck.
I have no choice but to listen to bawling -
And banging and bombing.
This district is dead,
And this voice in my head
Tells me that we could have stopped it.

I just found another poem that I wrote the same year. I also have scribbles of the thought process involved in creating the poem. The following shows how I, as a fourteen-year-old, approached the composition of a poem.
First I commented on the subject, in this case: jelly.

1. A Jelly. feels like.
2. A half inflated beachball.
3. you slide it in and out of your teeth until it is a mushy liquid.

Then I wrote a narrative (crossings out are in the original notes).

The ball of jelly was thrown onto the plate in such a way that one half fell into the plate. It had one flat side the plate consumed half of it. The ball of jelly was more or less dead.

Finally the poem arrived, fully formed.

The Plate Consumed The Ball Of Jelly

The plate was licking her lips and waiting,
she hadn’t eaten for days.
The ball of jelly was ready,
he had not been looked at before.
The plate consumed the ball of jelly;
She licked her lips and smiled,
They needed each other.