Wed - October 27, 2004
Finally!
In which Mike is relieved
You know, as a homosexualist, I have often heard the
term "Homosexual Agenda" bandied about (rather like "Activist Judges", which
always made me think of be-wigged and -robed Misters Justice playing leapfrog in
Oxford Street -- I know it's not grammatical, but it's
Pythonesque...)
Nevertheless, I was distressed; because I did not know what the Homosexual Agenda was, so I had no idea how I was supposed to be furthering the cause.
Thanks to some nice Americans who investigated homosexuals, I have finally been able to find out what the homosexual agenda is.
Nevertheless, I was distressed; because I did not know what the Homosexual Agenda was, so I had no idea how I was supposed to be furthering the cause.
Thanks to some nice Americans who investigated homosexuals, I have finally been able to find out what the homosexual agenda is.
Posted at 07:30 PM Read More
Sat
- March 20, 2004
The Evils of Drink
In which Mike faces a linguistic
challenge
So. When a mate says unto you, "We must meet,
verily; for I am in London for two days and not Mainz" and you think to
yourself, well, that's handier for just an evening, what do you expect? Do you
expect maybe a meal, a few glasses of wine, and perhaps light conversation in
Italian? Or do you expect
this?
Ich hatte kein Deutsch seit mindestens zwei Jahren gesprochen. Ich kann mich nur an drei oder vielleicht vier Sätze errinnern. Ich errinnere mich sogar nicht an wie man "errinern" buchstabiert. Und ich habe auch mein Wörterbuch verloren. Lieber Christoph, zum nächsten Mal, dimmi in anticipo che l'italiano non mi basterà! Comunque mi sono divertito un sacco.
-- Professors Rummel Senior, should you see this, rest assured that he was really terribly well behaved.
Ich hatte kein Deutsch seit mindestens zwei Jahren gesprochen. Ich kann mich nur an drei oder vielleicht vier Sätze errinnern. Ich errinnere mich sogar nicht an wie man "errinern" buchstabiert. Und ich habe auch mein Wörterbuch verloren. Lieber Christoph, zum nächsten Mal, dimmi in anticipo che l'italiano non mi basterà! Comunque mi sono divertito un sacco.
-- Professors Rummel Senior, should you see this, rest assured that he was really terribly well behaved.
Posted at 02:07 PM Read More
Sun - November 23, 2003
Sat
- November 22, 2003
Comparison
In which Mike runs alongside a bandwagon, without
actively jumping on it
I give in, surrender and generally crumple in the
face of overwhelming evidence: I am the kind of scarily anal person I have come
to fear.
I'm sure you can think of many things which may have occasioned this. In the ranks of the World's Most Relaxed People, acquaintances tend to give me, generally speaking, a low rating, somewhere alongside Mr. Richard Prior, Mr. Elton John, and other notable nose-powderers.
But in fact, you're all wrong (and very smutty and bad to boot: I know how your minds work). Two tiny words have caused this, it's not the fault of either of them individually, and it's a Sin! I am coming to loathe every bit as much as I loathe Mr. Jim Davidson.
Are you there yet? No? Then -- much as it hurts -- I'm going to have to say it out loud. Are you ready? (PG: children should definitely not be reading this --) "equally as".
Ouch. "One was bad; the second, equally so," yes. "One was every bit as bad as another," by all means. "One was equally as bad as the other," no. Please don't. It grates, it jars, it's redundant and obfuscates and is the kind of thing that gives English a bad name. (NB that here, I start to improvise my own grammatical language, since I never learnt a satisfactory formal one -- and that's a reflection upon my learning, not upon the satisfactoriness or otherwise of formal grammars.)
'As' and 'equally' are both (to me, remember) comparators, meaning that they serve to compare. "Equally as" seeks to use "equally" to qualify "as". In point of fact, this is not wholly so strange as it sounds; we qualify comparison all the time in such phrases as "nearly as bad," "almost as silly", "every bit as incomprehensible" and "just as parakeet". What we don't tend to do, though, is to use a comparator to do it.
Now, let's not get all frowny about qualifying a comparison. Adverbs (like, but not including, 'equally') can fit in: "He was, stupidly, as nice as me" is fine -- 'stupidly' is used in parenthesis and applies to 'to be' in the third person imperfect (well, it's imperfect in German "war" and Italian "era" - in English that's what we call an educated guess, save that it's not) past form, "was". "He was stupidly as nice as me" is something you'd probably parse unconsciously to have the same meaning as the first example -- that is, you'd automatically read in a parenthesis that's not actually in the text. Now try this with "equally". What's the problem?
Well, if I'm not talking complete nonsense, the problem is that you thought to yourself "He was, equally, as nice as me" and immediately thought "equally to what?" Now, if it had been preceded by a short sentence, to form, for example, "John was foolish. He was, equally, as nice as me," you could get some sense out of it: you'd think "Yes! I see a reason for the inclusion of the word, 'equally'! So far as John was foolish, to that same extent was he as pleasant as the speaker! Huzzah! Reginam nostram Elizabetam benedicat! and similarly mangled bits of SJC grace!"
But when you say "equally as", you imply two comparisons. And two comparisons between two things is kind of the ultimate definition of redundancy. "Not only am I mowing the lawn, I am also mowing the lawn!" you might excitedly cry on the occasion of your first guest slot in a suburban American situation comedy, only to see many very intense and highly-paid people looking your way, as though judging you harshly for being so very... repetitive. I am one of them.
Life is, if not nearly as short as generally advertised, at least currently something of fixed term, in which we should, according to my own ill-evolved ethics, spend as much time (not, note, "equally as much") doing things like "valuing our friendships", "talking late into the night", "loving imprudently" and so on, as is possible. The phrase "equally as" tries to achieve the debatably virtuous goal of saying the same thing twice and fails even at that; it adds nothing to a sentence except duration and confusion. Over the course of years "equally as" and phrases like it (note: not "equally as like it") have probably wasted whole minutes of my life (unlike this little rant, which has naturally taken me no time at all).
In summation: I like you. Please don't say "equally as" because it makes two things: 1) no sense, and 2) me mad. (Ah! Zeugma!, or Oh! Ovary! as someone famouser than me putted it.)
I'm sure you can think of many things which may have occasioned this. In the ranks of the World's Most Relaxed People, acquaintances tend to give me, generally speaking, a low rating, somewhere alongside Mr. Richard Prior, Mr. Elton John, and other notable nose-powderers.
But in fact, you're all wrong (and very smutty and bad to boot: I know how your minds work). Two tiny words have caused this, it's not the fault of either of them individually, and it's a Sin! I am coming to loathe every bit as much as I loathe Mr. Jim Davidson.
Are you there yet? No? Then -- much as it hurts -- I'm going to have to say it out loud. Are you ready? (PG: children should definitely not be reading this --) "equally as".
Ouch. "One was bad; the second, equally so," yes. "One was every bit as bad as another," by all means. "One was equally as bad as the other," no. Please don't. It grates, it jars, it's redundant and obfuscates and is the kind of thing that gives English a bad name. (NB that here, I start to improvise my own grammatical language, since I never learnt a satisfactory formal one -- and that's a reflection upon my learning, not upon the satisfactoriness or otherwise of formal grammars.)
'As' and 'equally' are both (to me, remember) comparators, meaning that they serve to compare. "Equally as" seeks to use "equally" to qualify "as". In point of fact, this is not wholly so strange as it sounds; we qualify comparison all the time in such phrases as "nearly as bad," "almost as silly", "every bit as incomprehensible" and "just as parakeet". What we don't tend to do, though, is to use a comparator to do it.
Now, let's not get all frowny about qualifying a comparison. Adverbs (like, but not including, 'equally') can fit in: "He was, stupidly, as nice as me" is fine -- 'stupidly' is used in parenthesis and applies to 'to be' in the third person imperfect (well, it's imperfect in German "war" and Italian "era" - in English that's what we call an educated guess, save that it's not) past form, "was". "He was stupidly as nice as me" is something you'd probably parse unconsciously to have the same meaning as the first example -- that is, you'd automatically read in a parenthesis that's not actually in the text. Now try this with "equally". What's the problem?
Well, if I'm not talking complete nonsense, the problem is that you thought to yourself "He was, equally, as nice as me" and immediately thought "equally to what?" Now, if it had been preceded by a short sentence, to form, for example, "John was foolish. He was, equally, as nice as me," you could get some sense out of it: you'd think "Yes! I see a reason for the inclusion of the word, 'equally'! So far as John was foolish, to that same extent was he as pleasant as the speaker! Huzzah! Reginam nostram Elizabetam benedicat! and similarly mangled bits of SJC grace!"
But when you say "equally as", you imply two comparisons. And two comparisons between two things is kind of the ultimate definition of redundancy. "Not only am I mowing the lawn, I am also mowing the lawn!" you might excitedly cry on the occasion of your first guest slot in a suburban American situation comedy, only to see many very intense and highly-paid people looking your way, as though judging you harshly for being so very... repetitive. I am one of them.
Life is, if not nearly as short as generally advertised, at least currently something of fixed term, in which we should, according to my own ill-evolved ethics, spend as much time (not, note, "equally as much") doing things like "valuing our friendships", "talking late into the night", "loving imprudently" and so on, as is possible. The phrase "equally as" tries to achieve the debatably virtuous goal of saying the same thing twice and fails even at that; it adds nothing to a sentence except duration and confusion. Over the course of years "equally as" and phrases like it (note: not "equally as like it") have probably wasted whole minutes of my life (unlike this little rant, which has naturally taken me no time at all).
In summation: I like you. Please don't say "equally as" because it makes two things: 1) no sense, and 2) me mad. (Ah! Zeugma!, or Oh! Ovary! as someone famouser than me putted it.)
Posted at 12:41 AM Read More
Wed - November 19, 2003
Indulgence
In which Mike goes, "eep"
Eep. I, Ticket 59, otherwise known as Mike Daley,
last night occupied Seat C24 at the Shaw Theatre, Novotel St. Pancras (just
outside the British Library) and saw and watched and listened to and just
generally experienced Tori Amos "In Conversation" with Lucy O'Brien, and
coincidentally knocking a few numbers off on the piano -- nothing much, just,
let's think, "Silent All These Years", "Winter", "Cooling", "Jackie's Strength"
and a couple more for good measure which were so good they're burned irreparably
onto a little retina-sized bit of brain
somwhere.
I'm not saying I was impressed but Tom's colleague Alan thought I'd stopped breathing.
Funnily enough, someone called Ronnie thought that the other night when I went to see Round the Horne Revisited at the White Bear (?) in Kennington, for which Douglas Smith was played by Charlie, the brother of Emma, the girlfriend of the Paul of the housewarming of Saturday night (this begins to sound more like AppleScript than English....), which was terribly amusing and made me remember much misspent youth listening to the wireless when I should have been out smoking acid or "doing" opium or whatever it is these days. Fogeys R us, apparently.
Bedbedbedbedbed. Spent three hours rewriting XSLT today. Some things are best simply not done, ever.
I'm not saying I was impressed but Tom's colleague Alan thought I'd stopped breathing.
Funnily enough, someone called Ronnie thought that the other night when I went to see Round the Horne Revisited at the White Bear (?) in Kennington, for which Douglas Smith was played by Charlie, the brother of Emma, the girlfriend of the Paul of the housewarming of Saturday night (this begins to sound more like AppleScript than English....), which was terribly amusing and made me remember much misspent youth listening to the wireless when I should have been out smoking acid or "doing" opium or whatever it is these days. Fogeys R us, apparently.
Bedbedbedbedbed. Spent three hours rewriting XSLT today. Some things are best simply not done, ever.
Posted at 11:36 PM Read More
Wed - November 12, 2003
DEATH!
In which Mike watches his first ever (ahhh...)
Quentin Tarantino film
This evening I watched Kill Bill Vol. 1. (What's
with the Volume bit anyway? "Part" was good enough for Shakespeare, and he was
hardly shy of making up new words if he felt they were necessary.... I suppose
it makes a Point and I'm just too lazy to try and understand it... which is a
shame, because)
It's brilliant! Tragedy, sped up, is comedy; and Mr. T. (as I take the liberty of calling him) seems to be fully aware both of that and of the way Titus Andronicus ends. No blood goes a foot when it could go six. No one bleeds when they might... spurt. Probably the goriest film I've ever seen (let's not count Bad Taste here, a line must be drawn under things I've never seen sober) and yet the most aware of that goriness, (ah, stuff your Exorcist, I've been more scared of my own underwear) aware of its physicality... (ladidaaaaah...) but there was proper movement in bits of that, stuff with rhythm and tempo and flow, point and counterpoint. A very well-read film, filmically speaking. Daring to do things like "make reference" and "echo" instead of the rather lumpen "quotation" we're supposed to swallow under the rubric of profundity so often. Rather like a very old fluorescent light bulb, I'm having the thought flicker into my mind irregularly that maybe this is what Mike Leigh would produce if Brenda Blethyn were handier with a sword and Alan Bennett had never written Talking Heads but had instead gone into samurai films. Like most of those thoughts (and bulbs) I'm sure it will blessedly soon subside into consistent darkness.
Talking of which I spent five minutes apologising to a blind chap I walked bang into in Kingston the other day. Felt dreadful for not watching where I was going, &c.... saw him five minutes later and noticed his guide was his wife and his white stick was actually a striplight bulb, so no wonder he gave me a funny look as I grovelled. Right on? Right off.
I am worried now because "Irons" (q.v.) has convinced the deeply perfect Mrs. B. that I and irons have some kind of opposition established betweens us, or, more specifically, that I, who taught her that Men Love To Iron Really, They Just Don't Know It Yet (Mostly), don't, and thus condemned the esteemed Mr. B to a lifetime of doing the ironing knowing that he would secretly loathe it.
Let me be crystal clear. Perfectly perspicuous.
I like ironing. That to which I object is the tool itself, the iron, a prime example of a Thing Designed By Non-Ironing Men For... Well, Someone Else To Use. Note that irons increasingly make use of a) the button, b) the flashing light, c) the needless control (variable steam?) and d) the Go-Faster Stripe (the Rowenta Capri?), all of which indicate that irons themselves are designed by and for men. Men are meant to buy them. This bemuses me, because ironing I would have thought is a gender-neutral activity. Surely we've buried "Women's Work" by now, n'est-çe pas? So why the bells and whistles, and yet.... have you tried buying an ironing board which will be usefully tall for a 6'2" frame? (I have. I found exactly one. In a week of looking.) Have you ever found an iron (which, let's face it, is basically a hot, heavy lump of metal with a flat bit) which lasts eight or nine years? Je crois pas! Have you found an iron labelled, "Gets rid of creases permanently, really easily, without much fuss"? Or are you still struggling with shirts which are crumpled no matter how smooooooothly your HyperTeflon Ultra-Base glides over split yokes, whilst puzzling over a mysterious and wholly unused "Vertical PowerJet of Steam!!" feature which has yet to revolutionise your long-term plans for curtain care? The prosecution is getting toward the point where making its case seems superfluous.
It strikes me that it's now the best part of midnight. This seems to me to be a reliable indication that I should now surrender my consciousness to the inevitable and retire for the evening. Until my next report, I wish you all a bon soir.....
It's brilliant! Tragedy, sped up, is comedy; and Mr. T. (as I take the liberty of calling him) seems to be fully aware both of that and of the way Titus Andronicus ends. No blood goes a foot when it could go six. No one bleeds when they might... spurt. Probably the goriest film I've ever seen (let's not count Bad Taste here, a line must be drawn under things I've never seen sober) and yet the most aware of that goriness, (ah, stuff your Exorcist, I've been more scared of my own underwear) aware of its physicality... (ladidaaaaah...) but there was proper movement in bits of that, stuff with rhythm and tempo and flow, point and counterpoint. A very well-read film, filmically speaking. Daring to do things like "make reference" and "echo" instead of the rather lumpen "quotation" we're supposed to swallow under the rubric of profundity so often. Rather like a very old fluorescent light bulb, I'm having the thought flicker into my mind irregularly that maybe this is what Mike Leigh would produce if Brenda Blethyn were handier with a sword and Alan Bennett had never written Talking Heads but had instead gone into samurai films. Like most of those thoughts (and bulbs) I'm sure it will blessedly soon subside into consistent darkness.
Talking of which I spent five minutes apologising to a blind chap I walked bang into in Kingston the other day. Felt dreadful for not watching where I was going, &c.... saw him five minutes later and noticed his guide was his wife and his white stick was actually a striplight bulb, so no wonder he gave me a funny look as I grovelled. Right on? Right off.
I am worried now because "Irons" (q.v.) has convinced the deeply perfect Mrs. B. that I and irons have some kind of opposition established betweens us, or, more specifically, that I, who taught her that Men Love To Iron Really, They Just Don't Know It Yet (Mostly), don't, and thus condemned the esteemed Mr. B to a lifetime of doing the ironing knowing that he would secretly loathe it.
Let me be crystal clear. Perfectly perspicuous.
I like ironing. That to which I object is the tool itself, the iron, a prime example of a Thing Designed By Non-Ironing Men For... Well, Someone Else To Use. Note that irons increasingly make use of a) the button, b) the flashing light, c) the needless control (variable steam?) and d) the Go-Faster Stripe (the Rowenta Capri?), all of which indicate that irons themselves are designed by and for men. Men are meant to buy them. This bemuses me, because ironing I would have thought is a gender-neutral activity. Surely we've buried "Women's Work" by now, n'est-çe pas? So why the bells and whistles, and yet.... have you tried buying an ironing board which will be usefully tall for a 6'2" frame? (I have. I found exactly one. In a week of looking.) Have you ever found an iron (which, let's face it, is basically a hot, heavy lump of metal with a flat bit) which lasts eight or nine years? Je crois pas! Have you found an iron labelled, "Gets rid of creases permanently, really easily, without much fuss"? Or are you still struggling with shirts which are crumpled no matter how smooooooothly your HyperTeflon Ultra-Base glides over split yokes, whilst puzzling over a mysterious and wholly unused "Vertical PowerJet of Steam!!" feature which has yet to revolutionise your long-term plans for curtain care? The prosecution is getting toward the point where making its case seems superfluous.
It strikes me that it's now the best part of midnight. This seems to me to be a reliable indication that I should now surrender my consciousness to the inevitable and retire for the evening. Until my next report, I wish you all a bon soir.....
Posted at 11:58 PM Read More
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Published On: Oct 27, 2004 07:30 PM
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Published On: Oct 27, 2004 07:30 PM