Posts by JackElder
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And when people complain about "gay" being a perfectly good word ruined by the Sodomites and Sapphists
...they don't know what they're talking about. "Gay" was in common usage in London in the 19th century to refer to prostitutes. There's an old cartoon in Punch from the time, showing two miserable-looking streetwalkers, soaking wet and shivering in a doorway in the middle of a storm, with one saying to the other "So, Mary, 'ow long you been gay?" It's also apparently a theatrical term dating back to at least the 17th century for a cross-dressed male. Vada the dolly old eek on that.
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... what "decimate" ... means
Decimate's a good one. It's normally used to imply extreme attrition, which greatly annoys people who know that it comes from the Roman practice of killing 10% of mutinous sections, pour encourager les autres and all that, innit. So some people get very annoyed about it being used to mean higher losses than 10%. Here, the point to consider is that etymology is not meaning, and that most dictionaries are on the side of the common usage in this case.
But I'm well down with the bile heaped on people who misuse "literally". I think the time is ripe for a counter-revolution: start using "figuratively" in hyperbolic situations where people would tend to drop the l-bomb. "Figuratively" has had so little traffic in the last few years that it'll sound erudite and ting.
My pet hate: people who try to pronounce non-English words "properly" to show how they're sensitive to other cultures, but get the pronunciation wrong. That was a big bugbear of mine during the Olympics.
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Is there another language in the universe with so few moods and tenses, and so modular?
Mandarin Chinese. The pronunciation takes a little getting used to, but the writing isn't as bad as you'd think (you can get around knowing only about 2,000 characters), and the grammar is very simple and modular (and very similar to English).
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I was asked this month by two separate and equally intelligent persons whether in NZ we called the northern winter months "winter" or "summer".
I was asked the same thing when I was living in the UK. By my manager at the time. He'd been wondering for ages whether we called it winter when it was hot, and summer when it was cold, but discretion had prevented him from asking until the company Xmas party - at which point inebriation trumped discretion.
So it's not just Americans. Though I did hear an American friend of mine (recently arrived in NZ) say proudly the other day that he was nearly able to distinguish between the New Zealand and English accents...
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I find I don't lose a huge amount of weight when I'm off the booze, as I suddenly get really, really massive sugar cravings in the evenings. I suppose I could try to fight through those, but if I'm not having a beer with dinner I'm damn well going to have some ice cream when I'm starving at 10pm.
I do have a lot more cash in hand, though. -
I normally take two months off the booze each year, because one month is for wooftahs. See? All you have to do is recast not drinking as macho and you're halfway there.
More seriously: I started this shortly before the birth of our first child, because of the prospect of possibly having to drive to hospital at any time of the day or night. It worked well enough that I've now incorporated it into my yearly routine; Feb/March are off the sauce. It's a good reality check. The way I explain it to people (and you're right, the peer pressure can be pretty intense) is: if you give up drinking for a bit, and it's not a problem for you... then it's not a problem (by definition). But if you give up drinking and it is a problem, then you it's probably a good thing that you're not drinking for a bit.
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I have heard the the term "chainring tattoo" used to refer to a particular kind of cycling injury, where little dots of scar tissue are left after your leg impacts the chainwheel teeth...
It's more commonly just used to refer to a greasy mark on the inside of your right calf from accidentally brushing your outer chainring. There's usually no injury involved. And yes, it's normally seen as a sign of mild muppetry, though it happens to us all... though I've seen a few inked on permanently as well.
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Roger - love that page, you may notice that my avatar is a clipped piece of the Sturmey Archer sprocket. That page seems to have inspired a couple of other cyclists to get similar tats; see this Sturmey Archer arm piece or this variant on the Rudge.
A plethora of cycling tats available at Squirrels Cycling Tattoo Collection (sic).
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When people ask me how many tattoos I have, I just say "One. But it's taking a while to join all the bits up."
Excellent text tattoo - you have to have a good look at his hands to get it.
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I'd always heard not to drink before ink 'cos you bled like a stuck pig, and that ain't good for ink retention.
I like the idea of a text tattoo, but I'd probably want it in Latin. The only English phrase I'd want on me is "This too shall pass", which is either inspiring or depressing depending on how you look at it.
That said, I quite fancy the idea of having "LEFT" tattooed across the knuckles on my left hand. And "HAND" on the right, naturally.
I also quite like the ones I saw a while ago - classic "heart with scroll", with the scroll containing either "YOUR NAME HERE" or the word 'narcissism' in mirror writing...
And finally, my favourite quote ever about tattooing, from a British army officer around the time of the Boer War:
Every officer in the British Army should be tattooed with his regimental crest. Not only does this encourage esprit de corps but also assists in the identification of casualties.
--Field Marshal Earl Roberts