Posts by Tom Beard
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Muse: Linky Love, in reply to artig,
But since getting an ereader almost 6 months ago I haven't bought a single paper book. So far there is a collection of about 50 ebooks instead. Some of them were free, but most were paid for from local and overseas suppliers.
Which suppliers? I had a serious think about buying an e-reader, but then I thought of a random selection of books I'd read recently and looked them up on four major ebook stores (Whitcoulls, Kindle, Nook and Sony). The first two only stocked 3/10, and the others 4/10. If I had an iPad with ebook reader software for all of them, I could get 5 out of the 10.
Now, I'm not exactly a reader of airport blockbusters, but to my mind my selection wasn't wildly obscure either. Granted, not everyone's into Iain Sinclair or W.G. Sebald, but when a store omits major works by some of the greatest writers of the last century (e.g. Waugh, Ballard and Nabokov) it won't me much use to me. And quite frankly, any bookshop that doesn't stock Calvino is not a bookshop.
-
It looks like the Aussies have been coffee snobs for years.
-
Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Although I'd still have to say I don't really like the sweetened milk thing
Call it cortado condensada or leche y leche and you'll have a new craze in no time. But give me a caffè corretto any day.
-
I'm all for that. Must try some of those next time I'm down.
It's good. The gentler methods really bring out all the fruity esters in the coffee, bringing a mellowness that's refreshing after some of the bitter, burnt, over-extracted stuff that you can sometimes get even in good places. Robyn covered Customs nicely just a year ago.
-
For me, it's not about the coffee. I didn't drink the stuff until I was in late twenties (shiftwork forced me to acquire the taste), and even now my standard drink is a trim latte with too much sugar, so you couldn't call me a coffee snob by any stretch of the imagination. But I am a café snob, and proud of it.
It's not just about feeling edgy and looking down on corporate drones (though there is that): it's about preferring to spend one's time in a place that the owners actually care about. It's not just the tattooed and pierced Cuba/K-Road vibe: we have suburban cafés and suity coffeeshops that also manage to be individual, lively, personal and unique. Great customer service doesn't come from a manual: it comes from knowing your customers and loving the hospitality life.
So, Mr Field, do you feel that "tattooed hipsters and surly short-film actresses" are judging you for your Dido and golf-casual wardrobe? Do you think that based upon external appearances, they take you for a bland, insecure, boring, humdrum suburbanite? Based upon this rant, they would be right to.
-
Denis Welch, discussing words of the year on Nine to Noon, finds that the PA Word of the Year can't be repeated on polite radio.
So, "twatcock" is officially NSFRNZ?
-
I'm curious, is there a received actual definition of twatcock?
The @twatcock twitter user (not me, honest!) defines it as "the members of the sets Twat, Cock and the intersection Twatcock". The background image gives some good hints.
Genrally, it seems useful as a way of insulting anyone that one might normally describe as a twat, cock, cunt, wanker or prick, but without wanting to cast aspersions upon any particular set of genitalia. The general dictionary definition for such words is "an objectionable person", but the "twat" part always connotes a certain level of twittishness for me, so I'd define a twatcock as an objectionable fool.
Not that I get to define the word, of course, since the death of the author applies here. Especially after all that whisky. The language shall use it as it will.
-
Given their natural habitat, I'd suggest "a talkback of twatcocks".
-
I would suggest uber twatcock or massive twatcock
I quite like the sound of "steaming great twatcock" and "egregious twatcockery".
-
I do believe this to be the original pronunciation.
Robert Browning rhymed it with "bat". Then again, he thought it meant a piece of nun's clothing, so he may not be the best source.
Wiktionary suggest a "bat" sound for UK English and a "swat" sound for Australasia, but then it also associated the UK slang with the "contemptible and stupid person" meaning rather than the vulval one. That accords with my experience that NZers generally only use the "twot" version to refer to female genitalia, and that fairly rarely: they're more likely to either use something milder or go all the way and say "cunt". I've only ever heard the insult form pronounced with a "hat" sound, and that's probably from people who have either spent a lot of time in the UK or (like me) watched too much Red Dwarf and Men Behaving Badly.
Bonus puerility points: Hit the audio file on the Wiktionary page repeatedly. Especially when the boss is walking past.