The Name Game

I recently was forwarded a mail by a zealous pastor commenting on the US elections. Whilst I fully agree that everyone is entitled to their own opinions I was disturbed by the playground politics angle, where he chose to associate the name McCain as "son of Cain" and place it into a biblical context to denigrate the Republican candidate. Now, I do not suport McCain even in he slightest, but it makes me angry when people in positions of influence (like the pastor) try to whip up a frenzy of fear over NOTHING!!! Good Lord, there is enough legitimate shit to bash McCain and the Republicans over, why be so pathetic as to choose his name? It just makes you look as damn stupid as those who point out Obama's middle name is "Hussein".

Anyway... you know me, I couldn't resist... here is my reply:

Dear Sir,

I was forwarded this mail by an ex-colleague and was intrigued. Whilst being from the UK I am not a registered US voter, and despite the fact that I personally would like to see Obama become President, I find your analysis of John McCain's name not only gob-smackingly ludicrous in it's assumption that a name from a non-English background would have a literal English meaning without tracing the translations, but also borderline superstitious in the assumption that the name we are born with will dictate who we are.

The commonly accepted history of the name McCain is that it is the Scots equivalent of the Irish McKean, which is itself an anglicisation of Mac Iain, or "son of Iain" - not "son of Cain"!. With Iain / Ian being a variation of John the surname McCain is essentially the same as the surname Johnson. Another less likely origin is that it is a contraction of "McCathan", meaning "son of a warrior" which, whilst perhaps ironic in this case, certainly does not make all McCains violent!

But if you are going to judge a man on his name have you considered where the name Obama comes from? The surname Obama appears when the Europeans colonised Africa and enforced family names on tribes who had, until then, only had first names. What most did was (as in our own cultures) take their fathers name as a surname (I believe the word "surname" derives from the idea that it was your "sire's name" anyway), which in this case was first bestowed on Barack Obama's grandfather. The name is taken from the Luo verb meaning "to be twisted" or "to be slightly bent", probably relating to a deformity that B.O.'s great-grandfather may have been born with. In any case "twisted" and "bent" are two connotations with which the Senator probably would rather not be associated!

Please, please... vote Obama. But do not be so childish as to take McCain to task over his name! It just makes the whole thing petty.

Cheers m'dears!

Tony Stark's a girlie!

If we consider that, in scientific terms, iron can be designated by the symbol "Fe" and a man is "male" are we suggesting that the superhero Ironman is a woman?

Hmmm...

Why, when describing something that has proved unpopular, do people use the phrase "That went down like a lead balloon"?

If you hold them a a little way off the floor most balloons, the plastic/rubber/whatever-it-is-kind, will drop down fairly slowly and gently. If filled with helium or some other lighter-than-air gas, the won't go down at all - at least not straight away. However, if you take a balloon made of lead and let it go it's a fairly safe bet that it would plummet pretty decently... or in other words, go down very well.

English - it's a funny old language.

Cheers m'dears!

Lost in Translation #03

Acronym-onious

In Sinless City they just love acronyms. You leave your HDB, drive down the PIE (or take the MRT), get cash from the ATM at the DBS or the POSB, use your HP to send an SMS and tell your friends to meet you in the CBD for a G'n'T before heading off to MOS to pick up an SPG*. It's ridiculously baffling, but I think I'm getting to grips with it. At least, I did until today...

Having spoken to my HOD, who wanted to report to the VP about my progress on the MT side of the IP here at [acronym removed so I don't get fired] I went for a coffee at the SAC and ended up chatting with some RBC's**. Mid-tedium one of my colleagues suddenly jumped up and announced that she had to rush because the P was expecting her. "That's a rather unusual way of excusing yourself to go to the bathroom" I said, gathering the finest set of blank stares ever assembled as a result. It took amoment to register but it eventually dawned that she was referring to the Principal... I mean, if the Vice Principal is the VP it stands to reason, right?

But really... how fucking lazy do you want to get?

Incidentally, you may have noticed the location of my morning coffee, the Student Activity Centre (fancy name for the school canteen). They are having a major drive at the moment to get the kids to clear up after themselves, something I fully support but doubt will catch on as adults in this country are just as bad in food courts. What caught my attention, however, was the way in which they decided to get this across to the students... a nice big sign bearing the legend "KEEP YOUR SAC CLEAN".

...and no-one had a clue why I was stifling that snigger!

Cheers m'dears!

*That's: "Housing Development Board" (state built flats); "Pan-Island Expressway"; "Mass Rapid Transportation"; "Automated Teller Machine"; DBS I'm not sure of... but it's a bank!; "Post Office Services Bank"; "Hand Phone"; again, not sure of the actual words but it's a text message...; "Central Business District"; "Gin 'n' Tonic"; "Ministry of Sound"; "Sarong Party Girl" (essentially a loose young woman)

**This lot are: "Head of Department"; "Vice Principal"; "Music Technology"; "Integrated Programme"; "Student Activity Centre"; "Ridiculously Boring Colleagues"

Lost in Translation #02

No Common Censor

Censorship in Sinless City takes a bit of getting used to. This is a country where cigarette packets bear pictorial health warnings with such graphic images as rotted feet and a dead foetus yet the London Financial Times has to place a little black square over the naughty bits on a photograph... of a statue. This is also a country where mindless violence is the order of the day on TV but they get scissor happy when BBC sitcom 'My Family' shows a husband cuddling his wife on a bed. Of course, I would opine that 'My Family' would benefit from several other cuts, but that's by the by.

Language, though - that's a whole other thing. Despite my initial shock at the word 'shit' being bandied around all over the place in a stage play for primary school kids I soon accepted that this word was not considered offensive here. It is, instead, purely descriptive, and the play was talking about bird faeces. On the other hand I will never, ever understand why the TV company decided it needs to bleep the word penis, a legitimate name of a body part... or (and I shit you not here) why they bleeped the first half of the accessory item "bum-bag" (that's a 'fanny-pack' in the States).

But these all register only mild surprise next to what I witnessed last night. Watching 'The Sopranos' on local TV is a very musical experience, with every other word bleeped. But you get used to it... it goes something like -

"Paulie, don't be a ****ing mother****er and pass me the ****ing gun before I **** **** you with my **** and pull your **** off. You ****!"

So you can imagine my disbelief when Tony uttered the phrase "She's a cunt"... completely uncensored.

Now, leaving aside the mirth that State-siders using that word always induces in me (I'm sorry, but there is something about US accents that just causes that word to lose some punch!), I was completely floored! Did I hear that correctly? Gosh-darn it, I think I did!

After an evening spent wondering how THAT word could have slipped past the censors and creating conspiracy theories in my head about some rebellious TV censor starting a cultural revolution I came in to work today and mentioned it to a colleague. "Oh, yeah" she said, with an air of disinterest. "That never gets censored. Pretty much no-one understands what that word means".

Cue me calling everyone a cunt all day...

Cheers m'cunts!

Are ad-men simply basket-cases?

The current advert for televised basketball in Sinless City has the suitably gravelly voice-over solemnly declaring that "Success awaits those who get up one more time than they fall". Sounds good... sounds inspiring... sounds butch... sounds - wait a minute! That's fucking impossible!!

Go on, try it. Fall down a few times, counting them, and also count how many times that you get back up again. I guarrantee it will be the same number. Unless you remain prone on your last fall, which will be the opposite of what the advertisement is trying to say. It is physically impossible to get up twice when you only fell once... and so on.

Stupid cunts.

Cheers m'dears!

You say potato, I say cauliflower...

I know Katrina was a long time ago, but I just got sent this as a teaching aid and thought it was worth sharing.

It appears that black folk 'loot', but us whiteys merely 'find'.

Cheers m'dears!

Aholic-gate!

In today's society of addiction and greed we regularly hear about shopaholics, chocaholics, workaholics, sexaholics and any other type of "-aholic" you care to invent. But this randomly adding "-aholic" onto the end of a word has a tiny little flaw. IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!

Okay, this all derives from the term 'alcoholic', as in someone who is addicted to alcohol. So it's alcohol - ic. So why the hell is someone who is addicted to shopping called a shopaholic when the should be called a shoppingic? I mean, an alcoholic isn't someone addicted to alc's, are they? Why create the addiction suffix by culling a large portion of a word that itself has fuck all to do with the addiction? And even if you do, why is it "-aholic" and not "-oholic"? Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol, not alcahol. They're alcoholics, not alcaholics.

I cannot quite explain why, but this blatant disregard for the way in which words are built annoys the living crap out of me. If I was an alcoholic I would turn around to all those other cunts and give them a piece of my drunken mind... "Oi! You there, fatso! Yes, you with the brown sticky stuff oozing down your fingers. You are not a chocoholic. Leave my addiction-title alone and get your own. From now on you are a chocolatic. Don't argue, bollock-face! Just admit it - it makes much more sense. I am reclaiming the 'hol' to reunite it with it's 'alco', and don't you dare try to stop me!"

And while I'm on the subject, why is every political incident now labelled something-gate? All this butchery of words must be part of a conspiracy by fuckwits to overthrow the English language and replace it with gobbledygook! Let's call it "fuck-wit-gate", that'll be nice and snappy...

... hey! Could the people who insist on putting 'gate' at the end of every singly political story be refferred to as "gateaholics"? Or should we keep it snappy and just continue to use "cunts"?

Cheers m'dears!

Irony, Schmirony!

Sitting in the boozer and a female friend (let's call her Flo, just for the hell of it) ambles in, plonks herself down on the stool next to me and then sighs loudly... I know I'm just asking for it, but...

"What's up, hen?"

Now, I'm not going to give you the full drawn out ramblings of what, indeed, was up - I like most of the people who read this blog too much to inflict that - so here is the edit...

"I met the love of my life. Turns out he's married. It's just like in that Alanis song, innit? Y'know, 'Ironic'"

Okay... red rag to a bull time. Ironic? Is it fuck! That's life, for fuck's sake! Of course I don't put it quite like that... instead I try to find out more about the situation, maybe to put Flo at ease. And the first thing I ask is "What is this wife like, exactly?"

"Oh, y'know... typical tall, slim beautiful blonde."

Now, I'm not a cruel man but I feel obliged to point out that this 'love of her life' being already married to a virtual supermodel, whilst obviously upsetting, hardly counts as 'ironic'. If this wife had been roughly 5'6", a little more curvacious, with short dark hair and a slighly wonky nose... now that might have been bordering on ironic purely by virtue of the wife then being a clone of Flo herself.

This observation doesn't go down incredibly well, so when Flo tells me the story of how 'dream-hubby' and his wife met at some event in Monte Carlo I opt for another approach...

Let's imagine for a second, going back say 4 years... a friend invites Flo to a dinner party where everyone will be in couples, but knowing Flo to be single she invites another gentleman to act as her blind date. This is a good friend, who manages to choose the perfect match for Flo, but unfortunately Flo (in the midst of her depression about being single) decides to drop out at the last minute. In desperation her friend, the host, calls up another girl to take her place... another girl with looks and interests very similar to Flo. The two strangers hit it off straight away and are married within a couple of years. Then, further down the line, Flo meets the 'love of her life'... who just happens to be the man she stood up four years ago and who has, in the meantime, married her doppelganger....

Now THAT's fucking ironic!

Flo chewed on this for a while before turning to me, her eyes curiously blazing.

"Do me a favour, Binty. Never take a job in Counselling."

Cheers m'dears!

What? Eh? Say again, Mr Hynes?

Before we move on to todays posting-proper please allow me to append on the last two posts by drawing your attention to "We Are Sorry" . Please note, it is genuine. Thanks to the inapproriately named (in this case) Department of Hate for the link. And now, let's move on...


There is a gentleman who goes by the name of Arlington Hynes (aka Bogol; aka Ha Ha Ha) whose peculiar written dialect gives me such a fingernails-down-the-blackboard feeling that I can barely visit his site but once a week. Which is a shame because it's a very entertaining blog, and it is entirely my own problem if I cannot deal with his style. I recommend anyone unfamiliar with his garbled musings should check them out...

Anyway, my reason for mentioning him is that he has noted that "...the English language will be welcoming its millionth word some time this summer. Break out the party hats!" (quoted from the Language Log). Naturally, given his penchant for 're-inventing' the English language, Arlington is hoping that it's one of his...

I do not wish to cause any offence, dear fellow, but as your words are not, in the truest sense, 'new' I would like to suggest an alternative:-

glark n 1 the onomatopaeic sound of an individuals head being removed by a sharp object. 2 coarse used in a derisory manner to describe anonymous blog posters and / or their comments i.e. glarking ; glark off ; glarked

(if you have no idea what the hell I'm going on about you obviously have never bothered with Blunt Cogs - I suggest you go there and revise!)

Cheers m'dears!

Update! - Unfortunately, since concocting this post, I have discovered that this word is also already spoken for - check it out here.