Handwriting

If indeed, as Auden claimed, a poet's own handwriting is enjoyed 'like smelling your own farts' then a brief inspection of my notebooks would suggest that I have followed through a little.

Highly (if grimly) amusing

Just found, down the back of my blogger facts and figures:

http://www.google.com.ng/search?hl=en&gl=gb&client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-unknown&action=devloc&q=The+wordsmythe&sky=mrdr

Only in English - 10

'Intuition' is what you have before the 'tuition' goes 'in'.

Only in English - 9

could 'prosody' not be the art of writing in prose. (Or even assonant with the word.)

InDefinition - 43

poetry, n. that anecdote I told you in the pub / only with line breaks

Shelley - in context

If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
If you live in Norway - yes, it can.

Kafka - in context (again)

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he discovered that someone had roofied his Isla Negra and he'd been made to sit through the entire final of Strictly Come Dancing.

InDefinition - 42

écoutrements, n. pl. posh headphones

Overheard in a coffee shop

They got pregnant - not 'accidentally', but... unexpectedly.

- anon.

Words I had to look up recently

veridical
esemplastically

Splendid

If you liked incorrects, perhaps you'll also like

Damn You, Auto Correct!

InDefinition - GUEST ENTRY

lives, n. pl. 'the V is silent.'

- William Boyd, Any Human Heart

Keystroke twins - 11

farmed
earned

InDefinition - 41

prescience, n. hunch that cannot yet be 'proven', as such (but is nonetheless obviously right)

Keystroke twins - 10

chap
bias

Sebald summarises the human condition

Acts of negligence in accordance
with relative beauty
strength or wit

- WG Sebald, 'Festifal', Across the Land and the Water

Query

Do the French say 'cool comme un concombre'?

That would be... cool.

InDefinition - 40

forebearance, n. putting up with one's elderly relatives

[With thanks to AC.]

Sean Hill (@sean_hill) says

Author Margaret Atwood says Twitter, internet boost literacy

Peerless.

Adventures with Mother

Toward the end of one lesson for example, [Maxim] told me that he had to leave ten minutes early - and then proceeded to spend the entire ten minutes unravelling the tortuous logic of how his early departure wasn't actually depriving me of any violin instruction.

- Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventure with Russian Books

Last night I had a similar experience with my mother, who told me that I didn't have time to go for a run because dinner was 'very nearly ready'. We debated the matter for at least ten minutes, and then I went out anyway and ran very fast. Dinner was served 30 minutes after I got out of the shower.

'Don't think!'

Instruction given by those who don't dare to those who couldn't anyway.

Literary maxim

Write about what you know.

And then lie.

Touching bottom

Those lucky enough to get a ticket for A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose in Kingston last year will have been treated to his Bottom...

- Helen Hawkins, in The Sunday Times Culture

Hyphens: 2

1) Contrary to appearances, the actual title of this book is Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine. I can live without the second hyphen (third, actually); but the first is kind of critical. Of course, you might well argue that a) there is a fun ambiguity at work here, and b) the hyphens are somehow cunningly implied by the variable fonts deployed (you would get extra points for attempting b); but, a)i) the tiger in question is evidently not white and ii) anyway the title on the inside cover makes it clear the hyphens are necessary, and b)i) no they're not and ii) even if they were basically nobody would get that. Also,

2) Given that I have heard Nagra quizzed - albeit very stupidly - as to the grammatical felicity of the title of his first collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover!, you'd think he (or his publishers) might have been a bit more careful this time round.

Hyphens: 1

Murakami's works have been dismissed by critics as apolitical and a-historical...

- Jay Rubin, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

Book of the year?

I am indebted to what appears to be a blooper in the Times Christmas Books round-up for pointing me in the direction of something I feel I ought to have read. Joe Dunthorne's 'book of the year' is Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist. Alas for quality journalism, this book - I now discover - did not come out this year, or even last - not in hardback, anyway. And there was not legitimate reason for the plug to be in the middle of the 'sports' section. Still, it looks, as Dunthorne avers, like a cracker.

[On a doubly-related note, time was if you looked up either of my articles on the Spectator website you got a note saying 'No further articles by Joe Dunthorne.' This unexplained mystery has since been rectified.]

Inquiry

When an American writes

a dispute played out between American and British researchers in the pages of the London Journal of Scientific Inquiry* 

how can we be certain he does not think this is pronounced 'ink-wirry'?

[cf. Médecins Sans Frontieres; Unter den Linden; Afrikaner Werstandsbeweging.]

--
* fictional. Ben Greenman, Superworse

Really (really) good-looking

When people say 'She's a good-looking woman,' they usually mean 'She used to be a good-looking woman.'

- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Keystroke twins - 9

cup-cake
cup-able

Overheard

from the fitting rooms at Bluewater:

Careful with Humpty Dumpty. You don't want to break him!

'Of course...'

In the following example(s)

You're right, of course, about the Socratic method/the price of fuel/the fact that wanking does not in fact cause blindness in teenage boys.

does the additional 'of course' make one's concurrence more or less patronising?

Too far

I woke up this morning wondering if an alembic was really what I thought it was.

(It is.)

Not-so-slowly downward

Perhaps the grimmest three lines I have read recently:

Careers at Faber:

There are no job vacancies at the moment.
We do occasionally have openings for work experience...

From the personals

Slender, dark eyed woman, 40s, optimistic and affectionate with an opinion or two, would love to meet a kind, witty man (45-55) who lives in London and doesn't write poetry.

- London Review of Books

Optimistic indeed.

Crit.

Not hopeless if you are less than 21.

- Ezra Pound, to poet ASJ Tessimond (age 23)

Roan words: part 2

1) Murakami's Dance Dance Dance was, in the original, dansu dansu dansu. Do the Japanese have no native word for 'dance'? Or is this a particular (non-native) type of dancing?

2) But Norwegian Wood was Norowei no mori. Even though it's not about some wood from Norway, or a wood in Norway - but, tangentially at least, about 'Norwegian Wood', the song by the Beatles.

Roan words

You know that scene in Crocodile Dundee where Mick knocks out some muggers, stands on them in victorious pose, and has his picture taken by shutter-happy Japanese tourists, one of whom says: 'Iss, ah, Krrrint Eastwood'?

Well, er, it's true. I am indebted to Jay Rubin, oftentimes translator of Haruki Murakami, for the information that the original Japanese title of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is, no kidding, Sekai no owari to hadoboirudo wandarando.

Though why the title is backwards, I can't tell you.

Unfamous Last Words - 2

I liked things better the way they were before.

- Melekh Gaystick, suicidal (fictional) chess champion, in Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union

No, thank you!

Amazon's checkout page now has a little button to Facebook [sic.] news of your recent purchases. Oy!

Don't get me wrong. I quite understand what's in it for them. Unfortunately, I also know what's in it for me if significant others were to find out what I really spend on books.

Not that it's much. Obviously. Or that I've bought anything very expensive. Not recently.

[UPDATE The significant other, shopping for shoes just now on Amazon, also declined the offer. Same shit, different product (higher price-tag).]

Clas[sic.]

WORDS FOR LIFE
SAT 3 DECEMBER 2011
10.00 - 18.00
Pens at the ready. It time to re-think everyday prose.

- The School of Life

Bad Murakami!

The Little People came suddenly. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what it means. I was a prisoner of the story. I had no choice. They came, and I described it. That is my work.

- Haruki Murakami, in the New York Times Magazine (in the New York Review of Books)

Avast!

I am grateful to today's Times2 crossword for the (safely verified) knowledge that 'avast!' was not just some crazy shit that pirates used to say - or Captain Haddock when he got battered [does that joke work in French?] - but is in fact a legitimate nautical term, the equivalent of 'halt!'

From the Dutch, houd vast/hold fast. A complicated language, the Dutch.

Facebook thinks I should be Friends with Duncan Fallowell.

Facebook is wrong.

Question

Can you have a common-or-garden garden?

chagrin (e.g.)

If a word has long-since been adopted into English - to the point that it is not even written in italics any more - (why) must we still conform to the original pronunciation?

InDefinition - 39

je ne say quoi, n. thing for which we have no decent English word

Words meaning not what they mean

1) Classicfm are pimping holidays which, they promise, will be 'special in every sense'.

2) Brad Pitt says

We all have a shelf life. Mine is coming.

Was Hammurabi a Commie?

... and other questions that enthuse the New York Review of Books.

[Clue: No.]

What's wrong with this picture?

That's correct: it's a fashion company's inability to spell the word 'fashion' correctly.

Barth time

John Barth... Is that like how I would pronounce 'bath' [cf. the correct way to pronounce 'bath'] or how clever-clever types would say (Roland) 'Barthes'?

Literary realities: 2

Why are American novelist-academics who write themselves into novels as American novelist-academics always from small New England humanities colleges? Why do they never say, 'I'm Professor of English Literature at Harvard, I've written 11 highly acclaimed novels, won the Booker, the James Tait Black and the Nobel, had a film made about me and am generally a big swinging dick, so the rest of you can all just fuck off.'?

Literary realities: 1

[We are a] couple of long-time English profs, both of whom routinely included bits of the Bard in their undergrad lit-survey courses (George mainly the plays, Amanda the sonnets, neither of us with scholarly authority, but both with the appreciative awe of fellow language-fiddlers).

- John Barth, Every Third Thought

Books which exist

Beautiful Chickens
Best In Show: knit your own dog
The Sexual Politics of Meat (20th anniversary edition)

Found in books - 2

In a charity-shop copy of Michel Houllebecq's Atomised, a torn-off Hugo Boss label, advertising a fragrance called Deep Red, with a picture of a somewhat ambiguous model (pretty sure it's a boy) on the reverse.

There's nothing of any great significance on either page - except for a quoted passage regarding Heisenberg's 'first encounter with atomic theory'

The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into a great turmoil.

and that only because atomic life is ostensibly what the novel is about (but isn't, because it's French and therefore Very Clever, despite being actually just about sex).

Manspray-purchasing Hugo Boss patrons do not strike me as the target market for this type of book, in England anyway (though I suppose the cover photo of a young woman in nothing but her pants might have something to do with it.) Rank snobbery, perhaps; but our invisible reader evidently agreed - giving up, as he apparently did, on page 22.

Only in English - 8

The word 'godown' - notwithstanding its origin in the Malay 'godong', and its usually being found only in colonial novels about sweaty white men prowling around the docks of SE Asia - does not have anything to do with what you might think.

It simply means 'warehouse'.

(Which is also pretty close... but not the same.)

Adam vs God

Craig Thompson (habibi) informs me that my name, in Arabic, is rendered to illustrate man's prostratration before God.

All I can say is, it's as well I was born under the Roman alphabet.

Not special

You must surely concede that at a certain level we speak, and therefore write, like everyone else.

- JM Coetzee,* Elizabeth Costello
--
* who can afford to say shit like that.

IS/SI

If one can be an idiot savant, why not also a savant idiot? I'm sure I know more of the latter.

InDefinition - 38

dessert, v. to abandon one's pudding [esp. in Colombo]

Only in English - 7

'Plate' and 'flat' owe everything to each other; but 'urgency' and 'emergency' have nothing in common.

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 6

BLAGX - American/Persian(?), vomit (projection of)

[With thanks to Craig Thompson's astonishing 700-page graphic novel habibi.]

More Balangoda than Ballard

[With thanks to David Blacker and friends at my new favourite blog, TypoInColombo.]

Who'd be a writer?

Another egregious incorrect, this time at the expense of Geoff Dyer, in a newspaper article in which he talks about the life of the writer (without reference to having your prose screwed over by ham-fisted subs).

To wit:

1) In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked". To see how Styron got away with it is the more interesting question in my and Martin Amis's view. (Styron's novel was, for Amis, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) [submitted copy]

2) In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked" (Styron's novel was, for him, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) [edit published]

In fairness, the Guardian editors admit to this shocker at the bottom of the piece (online edition). To their detriment, though, it looks suspiciously like the missing sentence was removed a) in accordance with a widespread editorial hatred of italics, and b) by someone who hasn't heard of Martin Amis.

A brief history of Czechoslovakia

The First World War had ended and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafés and manufactured handsome light machine guns.

- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Only in English - 6

Curious - isn't it? - that when we accuse someone of 'seeing things' we in fact mean the complete opposite.

Witt

The problem is not that I am speaking from a position of ignorance. I am speaking from a position of knowledge to people who don't know what knowledge would look like.

- Helen DeWitt, 'Cormac McCarthy & the semi-colon'

Writing job advertised [not a joke]

We require two writers to join our small team of experienced freelance writers and journalists.
Highly experienced article writers only.
Article lengths are in the region of 700 words
£8 - £10 per article. (Depending on experience)
Work from home
NOTE: Your written skill should be exceptional, our editorial standards are high and we are seeking professional people that are experienced and talented.

Found in books - 1

In my charity-shop copy of The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut, pages 27/28 and 59/60 bear evidence of having been turned down. Both pages (27 and 59, anyway) have to do with paying for sex.

Books begun - quarter ending October 16th

The Fermata - Nicholson Baker
Samuel Johnson - Walter Jackson Bate
Post Office - Charles Bukowski
The Emperor of Scent - Chandler Burr
The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon
The Last Samurai* - Helen DeWitt
The Inheritors - William Golding
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms - Stephen Jay Gould
The Love-Adept - LP Hartley
I Am Not Jackson Pollock - John Haskell
The Gift - Lewis Hyde
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
The Interrogation - JMG le Clézio
The Washing of the Spears - Donald R Morris
The Blind Eye - Don Paterson
Timoleon Vieta Come Home - Dan Rhodes
A Book of Liszts - John Spurling
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
The Village in the Jungle - Leonard Woolf

* already read

Books finished - quarter ending October 16th

Maps & Legends - Michael Chabon
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - Will Eisner
Leonard Woolf: a life - Victoria Glendinning
Unrecounted - WG Sebald
The Rings of Saturn - WG Sebald
Austerlitz - WG Sebald

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 5

Eichhörnchen - German, squirrel ([actually derives from 'oak' (and 'acorn'?), but] tell me that's not also the noise they make!)

InDefinition - 37

contradiction, n. excessive zeal regarding foreign rebel groups and funding of same (cf. Ollie North)

Norwegian Wood

I have just bought a copy of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. The cover spiel tells me that

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko...

but does he - and already this is the only question on my mind - does he, when thinking about her, get Norwegian wood? And would that pun work in Japan (where the novel's title must have been the same?) - or is it not close enough to the bone?

I shall read, and find out.

The truth about notebooks

by Charles Simic, of the New York Review (of Books) blog.

Except for the bit about Moleskines. Still with that shit? You know you can buy a book with words in for less than a Moleskine?!

Also in The Times (and speaking of stars)...

Kate Muir kicks seven shades out of Paul WS Anderson's not-even-laughable Three Musketeers remake. Gallingly, she - or her sub - came up with the title I'd sort of wanted for my own review

All for one and one for awful

except I wasn't prepared to concede one for anything. (My second choice was 'All for nothing', but theartsdesk's platform, tragically, wouldn't allow me to award no stars.)

Less wittily, The Times goes on to award the film not one but TWO stars, and begins its subheading: 'Lots of stars, lots of effects...' Double-clannnnggg.

Signs of The Times

In today's Times2, Richard Morrison reports on Maurice Sendak calling 'the novelist Salman Rushdie' (not the Salman Rushdie who stacks shelves down the ASDA) a 'flaccid fuckhead'.

At least, I assume that's what Sendak called him. What it says in the Times is 'f***head'. Which is only right and proper, because one wouldn't want decent Times-reading folk coughing up their porridge because someone called someone else a fuckhead. Perish the thought.

Morrison's own headline, though, reads: 'I can take criticism, but not from a flaccid $*!?%*&# like you.' Which mal mot is he talking about now? And do the two asterisks stand for the same letter?

Why (do) we do it

For days and weeks on end one racks one's brains to no avail, and, if asked, one could not say whether one goes on writing purely out of habit, or a craving for admiration, or because one knows not how to do anything other, or out of sheer wonderment, despair or outrage, any more than one could say whether writing renders one more perceptive or more insane. Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work...

- WG Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

21st-century risk assessment

Your computer is at risk! FIX NOW!!
Threats detected: none

Authors whose works I have read (almost) all of (almost) by accident

Bruce Chatwin
Geoff Dyer
WG Sebald

Quality journalism (fictional)

We bring you breaking news. Once again, Leo McGarry is dead.

- The West Wing

Tough crit

On the train, last night, a garbage man tried to throw away my notebook.

Non-non-domiciled?

A group of homeless men have set up home on a golf-course in East Sussex...

- BBC South East Today

Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy

Contains strong sex, violence, nudity and sexual violence.

Well, point made! (again, and again...)

Horrible truths

Sam Harris, right as usual, but this time about the writing 'business'.

Ouch.

Keystroke twins - 8

kids
lies

To cut a short story short

The Sunday Times is running a £30,000 short story competition. This is good.

But you have to be a published (fiction) author to enter. This is not so good.*

--
* Unless you're one of the judges, in which case one sees their point.

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 4

Tsik! – Wauja (Brazil), arrow impact (cf. tssigke! [sp.?])

[With thanks to Fry's Planet Word.]

'Prepare to die!'

I always wondered about that line in movies. What does it mean? 'Wet yourself'?

A new acutection?

Crazy auto-thesaurus James Joyces my interview with Sir John Tomlinson:

Original: A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works. Throughout his career he has worked regularly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where in 2008 he created the title role in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur. (Read on.)

Now: A fable on the operatic date, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has articulate with all the above British opera atoneanies, fabricated calculationbeneath rebondings, and for sixboyhood yaerial was a accoutrement at Bayreuth, wactuality he peranatomyed leaadvise roles in anniversary of Wagners ballsy plans. Thasperousout his afflictioner he has planed approvedly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Coaperture Garden, wactuality in 2008 he actualized the appellation role in Harrison Biraberrationles The Minotaur. (Read on.)

How many cooks?

Roald Dahl's
MATILDA: the musical
Book Dennis Kelly
Music & lyrics Tim Minchin

Classic English understatement

As you probably gathered, the whole film is not high art.

- Rowan Atkinson, on Johnny English Reborn, in The Times

InDefinition - 36

punnet, n. container for wordplays (holds approx. 1 dozen)

Oh.

Speaking from experience, he had the strongest possible opinion on the deleterious effect of regular journalism on a writer's work.

- Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: a biography

Keystroke twins - 7

hotel
hovel

Baroness Orczy - in context [GUEST ENTRY]

They seek him here, / they seek him there; / but he's not there, he's blowing up your slag sister!

- Four Lions

InDefinition - 35

amenable, adj. of things that warrant a legitimate 'amen'

Say hello to Posterity

I very rarely think either of my past or of my future.

- Leonard Woolf, opening line of autobiography (vol. 1 of 5)

The two types of editor

Leonard met at that first lunch Clifford Sharp, the surly and, as it turned out, alcoholic editor, and the literary editor, Jack Squire...

- Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: a biography

The leaker, leaked

Julian Assange's first-draft memoir to be published, contrary to its author's wishes.

Ouch.

Palahniuk - in context

You wake up at Meigs Field. You wake up at SeaTac. You wake up at O'Hare. You are Chuck's Exhausted Location Scout.

Philosophy

Is it too much to ask if it's too much to ask?

Info ex machina

The Greeks had a chorus, which was a sort of mythic Google.

- AA Gill, The Sunday Times

Inbox

You are entertained by kangaroos to an extent yes?

[With thanks to Monoganon, Scottish band]

Bloody liar

What's wrong with this picture?

Proverbs - in context

In the house of the righteous is much treasure - so wait 'til the righteous is out and you could really clean up.

Confession!

mea culpa from the Times' literary editors for a classic incorrect:

Correction
An error was introduced last week into Ian Brunskill's review of Anna Funder's novel All That I Am, erroneously describing her first book, Stasiland, as a novel: it is not, as Brunskill originally stated. 

The mother of all spoilers

Jane Eyre is still a tale of its time... it is moving, at the film's end, to see Jane reunited with the blinded Rochester.

- Erica Wagner, The Times

Like every other literary critic, Ms Wagner assumes that everyone has read Jane Eyre. I find this curious. Still, she's saved me a tenner down the Odeon. 

Keystroke twins - 6

mums
nuns

Nonsense

Saying I don't like women would be like saying I don't like giraffes. Which is nonsense. 

- Lars von Trier, The Sunday Times

Words you don't want to hear from Geoff Dyer

Joking aside, though...

- Sunday sermon On Americans, School of Life

Matthew Parris enters the 5th dementia

The crushing gloom startled me because if bipolar disorder is at one end of a scale, I'm at the other.

- The Times

Spellcheque?

Landsman is at the wheel of a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport, which he bought ten years ago in an access of nostalgic optimism...

- Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

The Microsoft doctors break the news to a 5-year-old

Your internet connection went away, but we'll keep trying until we get it back!

Radiohead - in context

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon but lost my fone n cudnt post LOL!!!

The Sony Ericsson table of verbs (singular, present indicative active)

boat
coat
amat

Tobias Zachary Ziegler, speech writer

You wanna tempt the wrath of the... whatever, from high atop the... thing?!

- The West Wing

Grace

We should not be dismayed... by the elusive, flickering, on-off quality of our contact with the numinous. Rather, we should learn to wait with equanimity—as poet or as believer—for the next flash of grace.

- JM Coetzee (see below)

Conclusion

There's no point reading poetry without a pencil.

Press release on behalf of the Pikey Laureate

It’s my mission to irritate the hell out of the eloquent... by being a paradox that their categories can’t assimilate: the Subhuman Redneck who writes poems.

- Les Murray, Australian poet

[With thanks to JM Coetzee for the heads-up.]

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 3

iKlwa - Zulu, thrusting assegai (being withdrawn from flesh)

InDefinition - 34

prolix, n. Keith Richards' guitar playing

Keystroke twins - 5

efficient/efficiency
deficient/deficiency

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 2

pétanque - French, boules/bowls (hitting gravel courtyard?)

Kafka - in context

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself slightly put out as those dreams, though not easy, had been mostly about Natalie Portman. 

Political correctness gone full retard

On Gary Oldman's career playing wackos:

He never quite went the "full retard", as the film Tropic Thunder describes performances too horrifying to win awards.

- Camilla Long, Sunday Times Magazine

Er, no. They're talking about actual retards.

Famous plays in space

Theatrical classics via McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Only on Twitter

realrobbrydon Not Rob Brydon

InDefinition - 33

badvertising, n. 1) terrible adverts, adverts for rubbish, erroneous/distateful application of ads to programmes (Hugo Boss during Schindler's List, e.g.), and all possible variations thereon. 2) Purposefully 'bad' adverts, effectively designed to lodge product in viewer's mind forever (cf. Meerkat)

Last night's TV (2) - Cooking is hell

Also, did anyone else feel it was bordering on distasteful to have 'My hands are shaking!' high-adrenaline cooking-show ads in the middle of an award-winning war documentary?

Last night's TV (1) / Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 1

From last night's More4 screening of Armadillo, I learnt that the Danish for 'editor' is 'klipper' (a much more honest designation, if you ask me), that they have no native words for 'debriefing', 'associate producer' or 'jackpot', and that they use the word 'cojones' - or one which sounds very much like it and is equally unlikely to be Danish.

Also, their gunshot onomatopoeia - transl. as 'POW!' in the subtitles - is 'tssigke!' [sp.?] A significantly more accurate reflection of being on the wrong end of small-arms fire.

End of a cliché

The interminable task of painting the Forth Bridge will end in December, thanks to a coating that is expected to last for 25 years.

- Financial Times

InDefinition - 32

Tannhäuser, n. German beauty salon (Hauptstraße, Bayreuth)

And vice versa!

These fragments I have shored against my own ruins.

- TS Eliot, The Waste Land

Thought for the day

There are very few books you could actually use as a door-stop.

(Suggestion box below.)

Classic graffito

Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.

[With thanks to JS, editor (not mine) and gent.]

Crap Canadian Poetry

Asked, the other night, for a hit-list of contemporary Canadian writers, Michael Ondaatje struggled for several minutes before coming up with... ONE novelist.

For why, please see the Oxford Cheese Ode by James McIntyre.

[NB the Ode apparently comes in at #577. Out of 500.]

Banking bullshit

barclaycard's
0% for
22 months
(2.9% fee applies)*

* and even that's barely true

?!!

Apparently, Ballard fantasised about having sex with Margaret Thatcher in the back of the prime ministerial Daimler V8. Is that so odd?

- Ian Thomson, The Sunday Times

InDefinition - 31

Wikipede, n. creature with a great many legs, most of them unreliable

Medical text

[With thanks to CE, Silliness-Smeller General]

InDefinition - GUEST ENTRY (DUD)

Twitter for i·Pad, n. the official Twitter app for iPad

Keystroke twins - 4

damaged
fancied

Seen (on front of T-shirt)

Don't follow me... I'm lost

Groan...!

[A.S.] Byatt's younger sister is the write Margaret Drabble (who is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd).

- The Times

InDefinition - 30

amusing, adj. - of them as can't carry a tune in a bucket

Self-flagellation (by someone else)

I tried writing, but could barely get beyond the first sentence. Or, at least, I wrote and rewrote the first sentence a few thousand times, before deleting it. Frustration is piling upon frustration. I don't know whether to call on Smyth for inspiration or to blame him for wrecking my writing.

- DS Hilton, Esq. Diary, 23.2.2010

Truth

Any literary work made anywhere is a request from writer to reader: Do you recognise anything? Are we both human beings.

- Julian Evans, Making the World Legible

(Oftentimes, of course, the answer is No.)

Keystroke twins - 3

pervert
request

You're a writer? I'm a writer.

NASA spokesman: Look, I don't want to step on your toes, you don't want to step on mine. We're both writers.

Sam Seaborn: Yes, I suppose, if we broaden the definition to 'those who can spell'.

- The West Wing

[It has to be admitted that, later in this episode, Sam begins a sentence with 'me' when he quite clearly means 'I'. What can you do.]

Through gritted teeth

People impersonate writers all the time. That's why we have to have editors.

- Malcolm Gladwell

Personally, I'd have changed 'have to have'. But whatever.

[Thanks to DS Hilton, Esq.]

Discuss

The feminist messages offered, explicitly and implicitly, stimulate impotent rage against men and society with no realistic alternative to heterosexuality except for celibacy and lesbianism.

- Dr. Catherine Hakim, Honey Money: the Power of Erotic Capital

Monty Python's guide to child-rearing

I regret not being abused as a child by poor, nasty parents. Having a wonderful childhood made it much more painful and difficult to become an artist.

- Terry Gilliam, The Times

Ancient wisdom

Red sky at night: shepherds' delight.
Green ammonia-filled acrid smoke-piss in the morning: asparagus for dinner.

Keystroke twins - 2

sacred
scared

Seen - job advert

We are looking for the successful individual to have:

• Creative

• Good command of the English Language

[With thanks to DS Hilton, Esq.]

What are keystroke twins?

Keystroke twins are black cats in the C.21st linguistic Matrix, arising from whatever you call that system of putting letters on phone-keys ('buttons') and from the iniquities of predictive text.

Classic results might include missives like: 'I watched your mother last night. (Hard going, man!)' - when for 'mother' read 'movies'.

I prefer examples where the irony is less circumstantial ('cock'/'anal', infamously), but still. If you find cool ones, please let me know - due credits will be accorded, naturally. Clangers in foreign languages get extra cookies. Unless your phone has disabled them, of course.

[What are cookies?]

Keystroke twins - 1

decree
feared

[What are keystroke twins?]

Is this a test?

The Transglobe Expedition Trust have sent me two copies of an invitation to some adventurer-type lectures: one addressed to (my famous C.18th philosopher-economist alter ego) Adam Smith, the other looking for me at 'Code House'.

Timing

... you know, is the secret of comedy. That, and not giving away the punchline at the beginning of the joke.

- AA Gill, The Sunday Times

InDefinition - 29

Angleterra firma, n. Blighty (cf. no place like home)

Bowling, Gil-O!

If you are (or were) Kevin Pietersen, then by all means slog-sweep Murali inside out with a left-handed grip for six, and if you're not, then just try to get to the pitch of the ball and drop a straight bat on it like a normal man.

- Giles Coren, The Times

(It's all in the brackets.)

WTF?

The position of Oxford poetry professor... comes with a miserable £6,901. [Ruth] Padel would have done better to get a job flipping burgers at McDonald's.

- Giles Coren, Anger Management for Beginners

Is that true?! (The salary part, not the career-choice part.)

InDefinition - 28

all-for-naught, n. Indian test innings

Classic line concerning asparagus

Impromptu, from Geoff Dyer (reading from his Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), at Shoreditch House.

[All good, but if pressed for time start from about the three-minute mark.]

Politics, decontructed

Nice bit by Anne Treneman in her Times Parliamentary Sketch:

The public disorder debate disorder wasn't a riot so much as a defy-it (for Labour) and a deny-it (for Tories). The Lib-Dems just sat there, wringing their hands and worrying about how to analyse the phenomenon that is social media.

Economics (of) humour

Price: £2.25

:)

I was on at least my fourth Sony Ericsson phone before I noticed that the default text settings start again in lower-case after a colon.

Can I assume that American handsets do differently?

It's National Book Week

... and - as far as Facebook is concerned, anyway - the rules of the game are as follows:

1) Pick up the book closest to you.
2) Turn to page 56.
3) Copy the fifth sentence as your status (without mentioning the book [which raises some context-based questions about the whole point of NBW, surely?] and also appending the above rules).

A dilemma. Page 56 of the book I am currently reading (The Summer Without Men, by Siri Hustvedt) begins with 'Boris wrote back:' followed by a lengthy - and indented - quotation.

Under normal circumstances, of course, I would not consider a colon an impediment to the accurate enumeration of whole sentences. But here, somehow, it seems to upset the applecart.

Worse still, if I count the colon-ised pre-sentence, the fifth (full) sentence on that page comes out as 'There was no love to my love' - and I ain't having that.

If I don't, it is, simply, 'Boris.'

Solutions sought.

Mate's gf on Geoff Boycott

Who is this fucking moron Yorkshire twat?!

InDefinition - 27

queens' Singlish, n. lingua franca of Colombo chat-shows

Curiouser

The magic of authority, money, penises.

- Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men

(Still, one-and-a-half out of three ain't bad.)

Snodland

Anyone know why?

Not porn (alas)

Earn Fist Million Quickly
futuremillionaire.ijts.org
How nice if some one can earn the first million before the age of 22 starting from the beginning. Read many stories about such youth.

How nice indeed. Ijts.

[With thanks to Googleads.]

C'est ma vie

This morning I got myself out of a French accent error... with another French accent error. (It was a grave one.)

Nobel-winner can't punctuate for shit

It came from nowhere like the river, and like the river it would not be denied.

- William Golding, The Inheritors

Change ‘Holloway Road’ of North London to ‘Chuck Norris Road’

And other public petitions rightly rejected by 10 Downing St.

Also seen, last afternoon

AMBULANCE - patient transport service

Well... yes.

Seen, on a pub toilet wall

It hurts because you love her, no that's gonorreagh

For the record, gonorreagh [sic.] is not a town near Belfast. I checked.

The Facebook comment I SO wanted to Like

Surely "Pak 'n Save" should be "Pa'k 'n' Save"? Or do they do that so they can pass the savings from the two dropped apostrophes onto we canny consumers?

[With thanks to AH, who didn't give his permission for this in any way.]

Gardeners - question time

It would be an anomaly to find a student of nature addicted to the vices that cast so many dark shadows on our social life; nor do I remember among the sad annals of criminal history, one instance of a naturalist who became a criminal, or of a single gardener who has ever been hanged.

- Shirley 'a man' Hibberd, Rustic Adornments

To which I can only think to ask: 'What about Fred West?'

Ed Miliband clumsily allows himself [sic.] to be snapped with a copy of Leadership on the Line by Ronald A Heifetz and Marty Linksy

I like to think this is because he is actually reading The Game, by Neil Strauss.

Personalised message to the board and players of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.

- William Faulkner

What to do, eh?

'Royd rage

And what am I most proud of having achieved in these eight years? I am proud never to have used the word 'movie', and of never having had a quotation from one of my reviews used to adorn a cinema advertisement. Goodbye.

- Peter Ackroyd signs off as film critic of the Spectator, 1987

Hemingways: 4

My ex-girlfriend is just over there.

On the German

It sounds like typewriters eating tinfoil being kicked down the stairs.

- Dylan Moran

Why, I write

To be a writer - to really be a writer - you need people to think of you as a writer, and talk about you as a writer, and introduce you to their friends (and preferably a couple of editors and publishers) as a writer.

Or if you don't, I do. And since I'm the writer here...

It is written

He is one of the wrecks of civilisation - ruined by education, poisoned by knowledge... unhinged by books, art and music.

- Leonard Woolf, on BJ Dutton

InDefinition - 26

nyetwork, n. circle of jobless acquaintances

The case for/of procrastination

The longing for success, the doubt of ever being able to achieve the kinds of success which have to be earned, and the certainty of being able to have at this moment a kind which does not, play dangerously into each other's hands.

- WH Auden, The Age of Anxiety

Literally (lit.)

A web-page devoted to Jamie Redknapp's illiteralisms.

Splendid.

[Thanks to SL]

non sequitur

Me: It's freezing in here.
Mother: It's the month of July!

Slow books, slow irony

Only on the internet (and/or, indeed, on guardian.co.uk) could a panegyric to the Book Barge and the whole concept of independent bookshops come with adverts for ABE Books and The Book Depository as standard.

InDefinition - 25

sarchasm, n. gap between 1) what is literally said and what is actually meant, and 2) what is actually meant and what is understood by recipient/victim.

At the car wash

Geek moment

The great thing about the phrase 'at arm's length' is that it doesn't logically matter where you put the apostrophe.