I have noticed that slipping naughty words into media meant for children is Britain’s national pastime. I work at a school that teaches British English and the other day my co-worker Neil noticed something in the one of storybooks.
Read the blocks from left to right.
I worked at EG Language School in Daechi-dong, Seoul, South Korea for two years. What does the EG stand for? English General Hospital of course! Duh!
In between enlighting young minds and being weirded out by children drawing pictures of poo, I found the time to make these two incredibly amatuer miniature documentaries. It was a long time ago and I can’t bring myself to watch them now, but I can still post them here.
Part 1
Part 2
I just read this article in the BBC, in which a British guy expatiates on the ways in which American English has polluted and is continuing to pollute the purity of the original, mother tongue. Okay, I’m paraphrasing and exaggerating a bit, but you can read it for yourself. On one hand, the writer argues that neither the U.S. nor Britain are better than the other, just different. On the other hand, he laments “ugly and pointless new usages” which are popping up in everyday conversation in Britain, which are ugly because Mr. Matthew Engel doesn’t like them, I guess. And if that isn’t enough, the banner at the top of the article shows two images: one of stereotypical American rednecks with a crude, hand-painted American flag below which reads “These colors don’t run” contrasted with a dignified-looking, smartly dressed Brit carrying a huge fucking Union Jack down the sidewalk, er…pavement, er… who gives a fuck? Anyways, it’s hardly subtle.
But the most annoying thing is that some of what he writes is just factually wrong. “Talented” is not an Americanism. Bill Bryson points this out in the The Mother Tongue (which unfortunately falsely perpetuates the myth about Eskimo/Inuit words for snow, but that’s another story). Either Matthew Engel or dictionary.com is wrong, as the latter has “talented” originating in the late Middle English period, before the European discovery of the new continent. Dr. Samuel Johnson also had it out for “talented” for some reason. I wonder if he’d have felt the same way if he knew it came from his own country. I challenge anyone to look up all of these alleged Americanisms in Oxford English Dictionary. It’s not that hard, and it’s surprising that some writing for some a widely read publication can just make shit up without checking the facts. I doubt Rudyard Kipling got the word “rookie” from the American sports pages, as Mr. Engel would suggest. As if this ignorance isn’t enough, he also perpetuates the myth that British English is closer to the “original” English (whatever that is, as people speak English differently all over Britain). As many linguists know, emigrant communities are typically more linguistically conservative. This was true for the early American settlers who retained many of the older features of English which were lost in Britain. Yet Mr. Engel nevertheless refers to British English as “the original version of English” as if it has never changed.
Look, I don’t begrudge his, or anyone’s, annoyance with the ubiquity of American culture. But one who writes for the BBC ought to be a little more precise with the facts.
Torment
Klaus Kinski
Tommy Wiseau
Wit
The Marx Brothers
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Surprise
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves
So I was peeing, and I thought how weird it would be to post, “My urine is my property!” as a status update on facebook. Soon after, I was talking to some friends about cryptic status updates that would weird out your friends. It reminded my friend Eli of the genre of google suggestions. He and Saul came up with some good ones. Feel free to comment with your own.
Mine:
My urine is my property!
I thought it would be slimier.
It’s not too pointy. You’re too soft.
It’s been twisting for 45 minutes already. Let it go!
Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have used such sharp instruments.
It was like that time I stepped on the caterpillar and all the goo came out.
It’s got a good texture, but it won’t bend how I like it.
I fused them together, but now I can’t separate them.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s not supposed to still be moving.
Courtesy of Saul:
Three times the normal amount wasn’t for me.
Now I know why they call it eugenics.
You should probably listen when your doctor says to just wash it down.
Seizing more than just the day.
They said it couldn’t be done. Turns out they were mostly right.
In perpetuity throughout the universe didn’t mean what I thought it meant.
Courtesy of Eli:
Need list of safe-to-swallow ointments.
Figured out how to make an animal love me, without using food.
Finally ready to make the big sacrifice.
Really shouldn’t have bought used.
Turns out she was hired by a P.I.
Any lawyers know the definition of consent?
Some smells just never wash out.
The Marx Brothers are often celebrated for the way they deflate and mock pompous, pretentious, big shots. Long before the slobs versus snobs movie became a predictable formula featuring the likes of Adam Sandler, the Marx Brothers earned their laughs with dense, witty scripts, and physical comedy honed in vaudeville. In real life, we don’t talk back to our bosses, but we can live vicariously through Chico and Harpo as they distract and pester theirs. I’ll take that any day over farting animals, fat suits, and cheap pop culture references.
As an addendum to this post. Here are some claw games with impossible prizes (Miaoli, Taiwan):
No problem, I’ll grab that remote controlled truck as soon as I move the hair crimper out of the way.
How can one be asked to choose between sexy playing cards and a giant Transformer-like toy?
1. grip the stereo
2. lift it and carry it to the drop point
3. drop it without causing damage
Sounds easy enough.
In this scene from Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night, Ringo, the “middle-aged boy wonder” goes parading – with mixed results. The initial abandonment of responsibility strikes a chord, because who wouldn’t love to fuck off from work for a while, take a few photographs, walk along the canal and pop into a pub for a game of darts? Ringo becomes a flâneur, a detached city stroller. But Henry Miller he ain’t. His attempt to seize the day is a little bit pathetic and a little bit sweet. He loses his camera to the river and gets thrown out of the pub, not for being too rowdy, but too clumsy. Still, in spite of these pitfalls, the afternoon jaunt refreshes rather than oppresses him. The joy of his newfound anonymity leads to a rediscovery of simple pleasures, like strolling aimlessly when you have nowhere to go and nowhere to be, and tossing bricks in the water to make a big splash. It’s a welcome break from “a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room.” It takes Paul’s crafty grandfather to stir Ringo up and set him off, but it’s just what he needs.
You successfully grasp the novelty lighter, Teddy bear, stuffed dice, etc, and before it even gets halfway to the drop point it slips out.
Claw machine games. The scam that keeps on scamming.
When I lived in Korea, my friends and I would drop by the claw machine game in front of the Buy The Way corner store on the way back home from The Owl, a local Hof that wouldn’t close until we left, sometimes at 5 a.m. We were enticed by the machine’s siren call, its ringtone-like simple repeating melody. Emboldened by cheap beer and even cheaper sweet potato liquor, we were each of us convinced we could get the most out of the change in our pocket, that this time the house wouldn’t win.
We should’ve known better. Whoever filled these boxes was clearly taking the piss. How is one supposed to grab hold of a remote control car the size of a loaf of bread, packaged in a cardboard box?
Nevertheless, it was our friend Simon, a Northern Irishman from the formerly most-bombed town in Europe who had what it took to conquer the robotic trickster-god. When he took the controls, we knew that no gaudy schlock was safe. He did the most with the least powerful metal claws in the eastern hemisphere.
Now I’m living in Taiwan, which it turns out is the mecca of claw machine games. There are machines on the sidewalk, outside of supermarkets, apartment buildings, and tea shops. There are arcades filled with only these claw games. I often think of Simon when I pass these boxes on the way to work, and think, “If only he were here, that ugly rubber toy could be mine.”
