Dreamer Easy

Some phrases I think the Web might be better off without. Like junk food, they're easy and popular, but they don't have any real content.

1. "Wow. Just... wow."
2. "There are no words".

If you haven't got anything to say, it may be better not to say anything!

3. "Fail".

This is now used so often, and so broadly, that it's become meaningless. It might be better to say explicitly what's wrong with the statement or action in question.

4. "Your ass is showing."

This is sometimes used as a gentle or humorous alternative to railing at someone, demanding they apologise, etc, with the hope of avoiding a defensive response. That's an excellent motive, but I think the expression has its drawbacks. Even when it's well-meant, the implication is not "I (and others) strongly object to what you said", but "You're obviously an idiot and everyone is laughing at you". Not only is that likely to prompt a defensive response rather than a constructive one, but it also leaves no room for alternative viewpoints.

5. "You just don't get it."

Sometimes said in understandable frustration. But at other times, used as a Get Out Of Jail Free card when the discussion becomes too challenging. Beware the latter use.

1. feisty

Currently missing the last Sumerian class due to utter exhaustion. (I'm so buggered I'm even having trouble making this posting.) Now I'll never find out what happened when Irra-malik divorced Estar-ummi! But I have enough to go back to the texts about Inanna with lots of fresh insight.

ETA: Holy cow, I just found out. ouch

"Nilpferdhinterteil"

"arse end of a hippo"

Discovered the term "woo" at a particularly smug militant atheist blog this morning. Can't quite work out if it refers to falsifiable superstition and/or divisive OTWism, or to all forms of spirituality. These things are always confusing when you're a naturalist freethinker up to your elbows in gods. Require advice.

(Also need advice on an alternative term for "militant atheists" so as not to piss off majority of atheists who are not ignorant evangelising twerps. In the meantime here's something we can both enjoy: Fred Nile nosedives after distributing Islamophobic "survey". OWAG.)

ETA: By a circuitous route, however, that annoying blog did lead me to Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers About the Heathen.

Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

Letting Words Do Their Work: Why the care of language is more important than ever.

WORDCOUNT

The other writing secrets. If nothing else, read James Moran's four words of crucial advice.

Ben Aaronovitch quotes a terribly funny effort by Robert Sheckley to covercome writer's block.

No two days in Smallville are alike. :)

You know all of these words. Can you recognise them? (They're all things you might find in your house.)

al-khol
jarrah
laymun
leemah
naranj
qutun
riz
suffah
sukkar
talq

I need the Canadian equivalent of Britpicking! :D

Would a Canadian say "skint" when they mean "broke, penniless, lacking in funds?"

One of the many things I adore about books written in dialect (if that's the right word) are the bits where you suddenly encounter a "standard" English accent, also written out phonetically - because, after all, it's just another dialect too. After a lifetime of seeing and hearing English comedians taking the piss out of Scottish etc accents, it gives me the lols to encounter something like this exchange in Anne Donovan's Buddha Da:

(She says:) "Ah don't even talk like masel when ah'm at work."

(He jokes:) "Good morning, Miss Bools in the mooth speaking, how may I help you?"


There's a cracker of one of these in one of Niall Griffiths' books - I'll have to try to find it again. While I'm on the subject, v. interesting to learn from one of the docos on the Full Circle DVD that Bernard Padden, who plays Tylos, came close to being cast as Adric but lost out in the end because of his Northern accent. People from space don't have Northern accents. (Cut immediately to the bit from Rose you're thinking of.)

Oh, for heaven's sake. I was so not going to do the Macquarie Ancient Languages thing this year. Save the cash, save the time. Do I really need to be able to read Akkadian? Or Egyptian hieroglyphs? It's all very tempting, but I know I can resist the WTF BEGINNER'S SUMERIAN WTF WTF WTF!!!!

Bastards!!!