A long long way from Home

 goodness me, words  Comments Off
Mar 182012
 

This just struck me as mildly interesting. Look at the relative distance between the ‘Home’ and ‘World’ tabs on the BBC News & Fox News websites. First BBC:

Right next door. Even before ‘UK’ and ‘England’. Top billing.

Now Fox:

Whoa, that’s a good old gap. On Fox, ‘World News’ is even further away than ‘Leisure’. It’s the “and finally” tucked away at the end, just before the Sports. It’s the crazy stuff that happens off the edge of the map. Don’t worry too much about it. Just some people in silly hats shouting “wakalakalaka”.

I’ve forgotten the statistic about the number of Americans who don’t have passports. I’m going to look it up. [Looks it up]. January 2012 figures: roughly 62% of Americans don’t have a passport. Just under two thirds. The ones that do? Mainly soldiers.

 

Libya: UK ‘should not interfere’ in Gaddafi trial

 bad things, cartoons, words  Comments Off
Nov 202011
 

report on the BBC website:

The UK government should not interfere in the trial of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt has said.

Sorry, did I shout that?

I meant – WHAT??? – we don’t want to get involved, really, in the internal affairs of Libya. That’s very much something for the Libyans themselves to sort out. We’ll just hang back on that one.

The very idea of ‘interfering’ in Libya. Not really the sort of thing the UK would ever do.

I just despair.

Sad day, bad metaphor

 words  Comments Off
Jun 272011
 

Cameron’s remark on the death of top Tory, David Shale, at the Glastonbury festival:

David Cameron said that a “big rock in my life has suddenly been rolled away” after a senior Conservative was found dead at the Glastonbury Festival.

Now, this image of the big rock having “been rolled away” – that’s the image of the rock being rolled away from in front of Jesus’ tomb. It’s from Luke chapter 24, verses 2-3:

But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

So it’s sort of a resurrection image, except that the police (unlike the women with the spices in Luke) did find a dead body. Also, in Cameron’s reworking, Shale isn’t the body, he’s the rock. So who is the body-that-wasn’t-there? Cameron describes Shale as the “big rock in my life” – so the only person who is “living” within the metaphor is Cameron himself: is the implication that Cameron is, at some level, the resurrected Christ?

But to return to Shale: “shale” is, of course, a sort of rock – namely “a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock”, but it’s silt-like. You couldn’t roll it, even if you wanted to. The successful rolling of shale would indeed be a miracle.

One last thing. Like the police at Glastonbury, the women at the tomb “were greatly perplexed”, but the event is transformed when the angels arrive to explain what’s happening, from being a source of perplexity it becomes a source of joy & triumph: “He is not here, but is risen!” And later in the chapter, Peter ‘marvels’ at the empty tomb. It is, after all, first proof of the resurrection. So there is a deeper, more disturbing suggestion that the death of this inner-circle Cameronite, whose leaked memo describes his fellow Tories as “graceless, voracious and crass”, is a source of not of confusion & grief, but of joy…

Thoughts on the G-word, the N-word and the R-word.

 bad things, words  Comments Off
Jul 032010
 

The G-word has been at it again. Mel Gibson has been letting off a bit of racist steam near a tape recorder. This is from Huff Post (quoting an article on radaronline):

His abusive and disgusting rant was caught on audio tape and includes a wish that the mother of his infant daughter be “raped by a pack of [N-words]”

– now is it just me or does that seem an impossible muddle of language. Do “N-words” travel in packs? Can an N-word rape? Raped by a word. Mel Gibson didn’t say “N-word”. (Imagine if he did: it would be a kind of PC-racism). What I find strange (from my sofa in the UK) is that they can’t simply star the offending word, like they do c*nt (sorry, c**t) in the very next sentence:

Mel also calls Oksana a whore and a c**t while their baby screams in the background…

What about “n*****”? Which is at least closer, typographically, to what Mel yelled. Or “N*****” if you want to serious-up the insult with a capital. (Did Mel yell it with a capital? He seems to have, judging from “N-words”. But is the capitalization paying too much respect to the insult? Does it make it more insulting…?)

Also, “whore” is neither given an asterisk or the ultimate honour of a W-word contraction. Same with “rape”. Is rape not offensive? Why not R-worded by a pack of N-words? Or raped by an N-bomb. Mel didn’t said “N-bomb” as much as he said “N-word”. And being raped by a bomb seems somehow nastier, and truer to the nastiness of the original yelling.

Obama on the Recession

 words  Comments Off
Aug 012009
 

Interesting use of tenses here from the President:

“As I’ve said before, it took us many more months to fully dig ourselves out of a recession that we now know was even deeper than anyone thought. But I will continue to work every single day and take every step that’s necessary to make sure that happens.”

In other words: thanks heavens it’s all fully over now soon we hope.

Joe the Whapsnatcher (part 2)

 bad things, words  Comments Off
May 052009
 

The headline reads: Joe The Plumber Slurs Gay People: I Would Never Let “Queers” Near My Children.
Never. Obviously. He’s not an idiot. He knows how that stuff can spread.

It’s an interview with ‘Christianity Today’ (an oxymoron?), in which he says: “You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do–what man and woman are for.” Such a delightfully old school belief (barely registered as a belief) in the bible as a transparent & perfect conduit of the word of God. On which matter: “People don’t understand the dictionary–it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual.” His use of the word “dictionary” in that sentence is remarkable. It is functions in exactly the same UNTHINKING way as the words “the bible” do when used to mean the infallible and perfect transcription of God’s revelation … “the dictionary” is a thing which exists for Joe, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a particular thing, an AUTHORITY in a perfect unchanging (really) form, a taken-for-granted touchstone. A bible of words. You know… the dictionary. The dictionary says.

“Queer means strange and unusual.” Yes, and for a time it meant “drunk”. Likewise, the word “plumber” means someone who “plumbs the depths”. A bit like a whapsnatcher, but with smoother balls.

kissme.jpg

Joe the Whapsnatcher

 words  Comments Off
Oct 162008
 

Joe the Plumber… is he a character in Sarah Palin’s new porn film?

(And does his cousin from overseas, Joe le Taxi, get a go?)

I watched the debates last night, nervously, and am still clinging onto the £50 I’ve got riding on McCain. Joe the Plumber was a brilliant hook – not a “game-changer” exactly, more a “chapter-changer”. I wonder what they call these things? Tight, distracting, refocusing soundbites. Whapsnatchers, I think it might be… I’ll have to ask Steve Schmidt what they’re called.

ME: Steve.

STEVE SCHMIDT: Hi Charlie.

ME: These things…

STEVE SCHMIDT: Whapsnatchers?

ME: Yes, what’s the name for them?

STEVE SCHMIDT: Generally we call them “whapsnatchers”.

ME: Cool. Thanks Steve.

STEVE SCHMIDT: Not a problem.

So there we have it. I’m sure the Republicans are going to fire out a few more whapsnatchers like Joe before the lights finally come on at the Looney Toons disco. They’re going to have to, if I’m going to keep my McGarret.

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