I’ve got a new post up on Living In Europe. It’s about mobile phones, and my shame disgust at discovering my new phone was being marketed to Americans. Go read….
Incidentally, I wrote the first draft of this post on said phone. Unfortunately, it appears not to support text boxes longer than one paragraph (which is probably good for my ‘talking to people’ versus ‘posting crap on the Internet’ ratio).
It disturbs me that there actually are people around who would score less than five on this incredibly easy homophone quiz. I guess my job and background give me a false perspective on quite how illiterate the average member of the public is…
President Bush was visiting a primary school. One of the classes was in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.
The teacher asked the president if he would like to lead the discussion on the word “tragedy.” So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a “tragedy.”
One little boy stood up and offered, “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs him over and kills him, that would be a tragedy.”
“No,” said Bush, “that would be an accident.”
A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.”
“I’m afraid not.” explained the president. “That’s what we would call a great loss.”
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Bush searched the room.
“Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of tragedy?”
Finally at the back of the room a small boy raised his hand. In a quiet voice he said: “If Air Force One carrying Mr and Mrs Bush was struck by a “friendly fire” missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.
“Fantastic!” exclaimed Bush. “That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”
“Well,” says the boy, “it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”
From the department of funny-because-true.
(by Matt Groening, via Kevin Drum, via a Google search for Scott Martens – sometimes it’s strange the way things work out…)
Virtual Tophet Josephine has created a (nominally) Anglocentric version of the near-infinite list. It still uses the word “fall” to mean “autumn”, although this may just be a nod towards medieval usage. My answers are very much as below…
1. Cats or Dogs Cats
2. Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton Burton
3. Royal Opera or ENO Eno and Ferry, early 1970s
4. Ancient or Medieval Ancient
5. Titian or Caravaggio Titian
6. Yeats or Eliot Yeats
7. Bruce Forsyth or Larry Grayson Eek.
8. George or Ringo George
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca Casablanca
10. Tracey Emin or Rachel Whiteread Whiteread
11. The Who or the Stones Still Who’s Best
12. Dylan Thomas or Ted Hughes Thomas, obviously
13. Robinson Crusoe or King Solomon’s Mines Mines.
14. Fellini or Begnini Fellini.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy Tolstoy
16. Oxford or Cambridge Duh.
17. The sixties or the seventies To be culturally elite in: 60s; to be ordinary in: 70s
18. Burger King or MacDonalds BK got it.
19. Jonathan Ross or Angus Deayton Deayton.
20. Peter Mandelson or Alastair Campbell Ugh. Mandy.
21. Verdi or Wagner Verdi
22. Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet Duran.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash Cash
24. The Iliad or the Odyssey Odyssey, by a wide margin.
25. Hello or Heat Ugh, by a wide margin.
26. London or Paris London, by a near-infinite margin
27. Moscow or California Moscow.
28. Athens or Rome Rome.
29. Red wine or white Still red.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde Coward.
31. Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench Dench.
32. Brown or Blair Brown.
33. British Museum or Natural History Museum Nat Hist every time.
34. More museums: Louvre or Pergamon Louvre
35. Pubs or bars Pubs, a thousand times pubs.
36. Comedy or tragedy Tragicomedy.
37. Fall or spring I though this was supposed to be an Anglicised quiz?
38. Coffee or tea Coffee
39. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf Woolf.
40. Bull-fighters or gladiators Gladiators; you can’t beat a good Atlas-sphere.
41. Renaissance or Enlightenment Enlightenment.
42. Sunset or sunrise Sunset.
43. Town or Country Town.
44. Mac or PC Symbian
45. Charles or Diana To be alive: Charles
46. Tuscany or Provence Provence.
47. Email or Telephone Email
48. Fruit or Cake Cake.
49. Football or Rugby Football. In the true sense of rugby football, obviously.
50. Dolphins or Tuna To eat: dolphins. To frolic with: tuna
The puritans would declare war on pornography. Fortunately, the puritans are idiots, and will lose the war on pornography.
This is good. I approve of pornography. And not of puritans.
Blood & Treasure has some musings on the unfortunate scally from Stoke who was hanged in Malaysia a few years ago.
I vaguely remember the case. At the time, it seemed like a good argument for bombing the crap out of these animal scum and returning them to some semblance of a justice system (I was a fairly fanatical liberal imperialist in my youth).
Of course, what I didn’t realise at the time was that the only reason most southeast Asian countries have insane and barbaric drugs laws is because the ‘civilised world’ led by America demanded that they Do Something about the Evil Plague they were unleashing on Western Youth. Absent that pressure, the Malays and the Thais really don’t give a fuck if we buy copious quantities of heroin off them and then sell it in Brixton (I suspect they think it’s funny, in fact. I would if I were them…)
The exception is Singapore, which is merely a vile place full of vile facists (in a purely literal, rather than perjorative, sense). The Japanese did a wide variety of terrible things in WWII, but flattening Singapore was one of their more redeeming moves.
…to Air France pilot Philippe Riviere, who reacted to airport security stupidity last August in the way that everyone *wants* to [1]. Good on him, and bollocks to the security staff. Particularly since he’s a fucking airline pilot, and therefore is presumably reasonably au fait with what are and are not signs of a would-be terrorist [2].
[1] This is strictly untrue; however, hammering nails through people’s eyes is generally considered a little uncivilised.
[2] Are signs: travelling on your own, wild staring eyes, being a male under 30, carrying a Qu’ran. Are not signs: being a sarky French get, telling the ground security staff you’ve got a bomb, being the FUCKING PILOT.
Via everyone in blogland, but especially Chris Brooke, I’ve answered a gigantic list of cultural questions. I think it’s aimed at Americans who are about a generation older than me, but I may just be ignorant. Anyway, view the full post for my full answers
1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Kelly
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Gatsby
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Basie
4. Cats or dogs? Cats
5. Matisse or Picasso? Picasso
6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Keaton
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? O’Connor
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Casablanca
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? Kooning
11. The Who or the Stones? Who
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? Larkin
13. Trollope or Dickens? Trollope (preferably neither)
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Holiday
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? Tolstoy
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? End of the Affair
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Who?
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Hamburgers
19. Letterman or Leno? For execution, both. For watching, neither. If suicide is the alternative, Letterman.
20. Wilco or Cat Power? Wilco.
21. Verdi or Wagner? Verdi, not from a position of great knowledge.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Kelly.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? Cash.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? Equal, but in both cases only books written before they turned 40.
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Brando
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? I’ve always liked the Bluetones, so Mark Morris.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Van Meegeren.
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Tchaikovsky.
29. Red wine or white? Red, unless it’s below £4, in which case white.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Coward.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? Blank.
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Shostakovich.
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? I’m guessing the first one is some kind of ballerino, not a gay Russian people-drowning game show host. So Rudolf it is.
34. Constable or Turner? Constable.
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Say what?
36. Comedy or tragedy? Comedy.
37. Fall or spring? If we’re talking verbs, definitely spring. Seasons, I’d say autumn.
38. Manet or Monet? Manet.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? The latter. If you pick the former over it, you entirely deserve to be wacked.
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? The Gershwen.
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Conrad. James is unreadable.
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunset.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Porter.
44. Mac or PC? RiscOS
45. New York or Los Angeles? NY, unless we’re talking “to remove from the earth”.
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? The former, if only for the “Marshall Tito: 8/10” connotations.
47. Stax or Motown? Stax a million times over.
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Close, but the alcoholic wins over the paedophile.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Elvis. Also wins over other Elvis.
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Content: blog. Format: magazine.
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Gielgud.
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? OTL.
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown.
54. Ghost World or Election? Ghost World.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Minimalism.
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? Duck.
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Modernism.
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Batman.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? See “Letterman vs Leno”, with “Williams” substituted for “Letterman”.
60. Johnson or Boswell? Boswell.
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Woolf.
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? See “Harris vs Williams”, with “suicide” substituted for “Williams”.
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? An Ames room.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Are these films?
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? The Don.
66. Blue or green? Blue.
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? As you like it, so do I.
68. Ballet or opera? Ballet, just.
69. Film or live theater? Film.
70. Acoustic or electric? Electric.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? Vertigo.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Whistler.
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Kundera, times a million.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? Are these musicals or something?
75. Sushi, yes or no? Yes.
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? No.
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? I feel somehow guided to Tennessee.
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Wings.
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Who?
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Frank Lloyd Wright, and not just for his length.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Watching paint dry.
82. Watercolor or pastel? Not really bothered, either would be more exciting than Krall or Jones.
83. Bus or subway? Bus. However, I’d pick an underground railway over either.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Stravinsky.
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? No.
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Sometimes I feel ignorant.
87. Schubert or Mozart? The former, mostly due to my pathological dislike of the latter.
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? See 87, but with order reversed.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Whale fish, whale fish.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Mann for readability, Joyce for lastability.
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? See 86.
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Dickinson. I think you need to be USAn to appreciate Whitman.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Churchill, although Lincoln’s hat/beard combo deserves respect.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? Phair.
95. Italian or French cooking? Wop.
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Sure.
97. Anchovies, yes or no? Yes.
98. Short novels or long ones? Depends entirely on the quality.
99. Swing or bebop? Bebop.
100. “The Last Judgment” or “The Last Supper”? The Final Countdown.
Today my ambition is to find the cocklord from Redmond who decided not to equip Excel with a reliable “undo” function, and insert skewers into their body until the mass of the skewers is greater than or equal to the mass of their body.