There are a lot of so called ‘bad words’ in this world, bad in the sense that they are looked upon as unacceptable in polite company. Farting, pissing, shitting and fucking are good examples yet each is as normal a human activity as eating and drinking and nobody minds about the latter. My headmaster at grammar school (didn’t like him) told us that in general conversation or in writing that the Anglo-Saxon was preferable to the Latin i.e. it is better to say start than commence. His argument was that the Anglo-Saxon was generally shorter. I agree with him but I doubt if he would have approved of me using the word ‘shit’ in any essay.
So why is this? Is it that their very brevity makes them sort of shout whereas a word with a few more vowels would make them softer? Then we have to think of usage. These words are frequently used in other contexts like ‘Oh shit,’ or ‘Piss off.’ Somehow ‘Oh defecate,’ of ‘go away and urinate,’ would not contain the same degree of emotion or venom. It is their very simplicity that makes them powerful.
As Billy Connolly once said, regarding the Falklands War, ‘I hear that Margaret Thatcher has told General Galtieri to ‘Fuck off’. I agree with the woman, there are times when ‘go away’ is simply not good enough.’ Pity is that she didn’t use the expression. Maybe if she did, we would not have had a war.
And that’s the point really. I have sworn all my life and the use of swear words convey a meaning quite unmatched by perfect English Grammar.
Same goes for ‘No.’ If you just say it and do not explain, it saves hours of discussion.
Monday, 21 December 2009
Airports and testicles
Now your average bloke would consider that having testicles is a sign of manhood. It’s no different for cities or towns either; they seem to need an airport to prove they are manly or important or whatever. And what is more, these airports need international destinations just to show that they are really important and big boys.
The really important airports of the world just have prosaic names like Amsterdam Schiphol or London Heathrow. It’s the Mickey Mouse ones that have to insert the word ‘International’ into their names – you know Newcastle International Airport or Cardiff-Wales International Airport. You see the word ‘International’ just raises the testosterone level. Yet you know that the former are truly international airports with flights travelling the globe every 5 or 10 minutes. Meanwhile the latter are dining out on charter flights and the occasional scheduled flight to a foreign country. I suspect that half of British airports would lose the ‘International’ appellation if KLM Cityhopper collapsed. But then maybe not, for a weekly charter flight to Alicante would give them just reason to keep the title.
Bristol airport isn’t bad; in fact I quite like it. Apart from all the usual domestic/charter flights, it has a regular flight to Newark in New Jersey, by Continental – I’ve used it much. But Newark is not good enough for Bristol Airport cus let’s face it, many have never heard of Newark. No, it is promoted as a flight to New York for that sounds far more important and gives the airport real balls. The fact that it is across the Hudson River and in New Jersey is ignored.
A sign of the way that Bristol feels about this flight comes at check in. They ask you so many questions; they look at every page of your passport. I guess it’s a special event for them; for me it’s just tedious. None of their frigging business if I have been to Uzbekistan.
Newark Liberty is a fine airport with better connections to Manhattan than JFK or La Guardia. Why not promote it as the gateway to New York? Tell them about the Olympia bus service or the Amtrak to Penn Central. Or indeed a gateway to the whole of the USA with a decent monorail connection between terminals? So none of that walking/taking the bus crap we get at Heathrow.
These regional airports need to grow up. The ones I have used, even Exeter, have no need to say ‘International.’
The really important airports of the world just have prosaic names like Amsterdam Schiphol or London Heathrow. It’s the Mickey Mouse ones that have to insert the word ‘International’ into their names – you know Newcastle International Airport or Cardiff-Wales International Airport. You see the word ‘International’ just raises the testosterone level. Yet you know that the former are truly international airports with flights travelling the globe every 5 or 10 minutes. Meanwhile the latter are dining out on charter flights and the occasional scheduled flight to a foreign country. I suspect that half of British airports would lose the ‘International’ appellation if KLM Cityhopper collapsed. But then maybe not, for a weekly charter flight to Alicante would give them just reason to keep the title.
Bristol airport isn’t bad; in fact I quite like it. Apart from all the usual domestic/charter flights, it has a regular flight to Newark in New Jersey, by Continental – I’ve used it much. But Newark is not good enough for Bristol Airport cus let’s face it, many have never heard of Newark. No, it is promoted as a flight to New York for that sounds far more important and gives the airport real balls. The fact that it is across the Hudson River and in New Jersey is ignored.
A sign of the way that Bristol feels about this flight comes at check in. They ask you so many questions; they look at every page of your passport. I guess it’s a special event for them; for me it’s just tedious. None of their frigging business if I have been to Uzbekistan.
Newark Liberty is a fine airport with better connections to Manhattan than JFK or La Guardia. Why not promote it as the gateway to New York? Tell them about the Olympia bus service or the Amtrak to Penn Central. Or indeed a gateway to the whole of the USA with a decent monorail connection between terminals? So none of that walking/taking the bus crap we get at Heathrow.
These regional airports need to grow up. The ones I have used, even Exeter, have no need to say ‘International.’
Saturday, 19 December 2009
John Paul II
I read that Pope Benedict XVI is progressing his predecessor John Paul II towards making him a saint. I got no problem with that and since I don't believe in any God, they can do what they bloody well like. It makes no difference to what they did on Earth.
BUT and it is a big but, JP2 always seemed to be a saintly man with a warmth for people sadly lacking in most popes. I remember that night in Rome as he passed by on his Popemobile just a few feet away from me.You could feel the love that the crowd bore for him. It was overwhelming.
Benedict is said to be looking to canonize Pius XII as well. The Jews ain't happy saying that he was a Nazi collaborator - well, who wasn't in Italy in WWII? No, my objection is that he was cold and austere and lacked empathy. Same goes for Paul VI.
Although I do not believe, I expect Popes to capture hearts. JP2 did. If that makes him a saint, then I should be one as well.
BUT and it is a big but, JP2 always seemed to be a saintly man with a warmth for people sadly lacking in most popes. I remember that night in Rome as he passed by on his Popemobile just a few feet away from me.You could feel the love that the crowd bore for him. It was overwhelming.
Benedict is said to be looking to canonize Pius XII as well. The Jews ain't happy saying that he was a Nazi collaborator - well, who wasn't in Italy in WWII? No, my objection is that he was cold and austere and lacked empathy. Same goes for Paul VI.
Although I do not believe, I expect Popes to capture hearts. JP2 did. If that makes him a saint, then I should be one as well.
Friday, 18 December 2009
Changing People
I seem to change many that I meet. I have no reason why: it just happens. I don’t set out to do this and a few are resentful.
I’d like to think that I inadvertently expose people to the reality of their abilities and show them a path by which they can fulfil them. I am not always nice about it. I use words like ‘grow up’, ‘piss off’ and the rest. However, it is important that people understand what they can achieve and be told so, for many are far better than they think they are.
Why oh why do they underestimate themselves? What is it in their upbringing that leads them to this? I have been seriously trying to think of a single instance when either of my parents told me something was impossible. Haven’t come up with one. And equally, I have no need of others to spell out my limitations. I am very much aware of them but I don’t mind you telling me if you have spotted another.
Nonetheless, most people that I have met have changed me; sometimes a little, sometimes a lot and almost always for the better. They have shaped me and I am glad of that.
My dad did sit me down one day when I was 11 and had won a place at grammar school. He cautioned me. He said something like that while I had been very successful at primary school, I must not necessarily expect to do the same at grammar school because all the kids there have been successful. He did it gently. The rest is history.
I’d like to think that I inadvertently expose people to the reality of their abilities and show them a path by which they can fulfil them. I am not always nice about it. I use words like ‘grow up’, ‘piss off’ and the rest. However, it is important that people understand what they can achieve and be told so, for many are far better than they think they are.
Why oh why do they underestimate themselves? What is it in their upbringing that leads them to this? I have been seriously trying to think of a single instance when either of my parents told me something was impossible. Haven’t come up with one. And equally, I have no need of others to spell out my limitations. I am very much aware of them but I don’t mind you telling me if you have spotted another.
Nonetheless, most people that I have met have changed me; sometimes a little, sometimes a lot and almost always for the better. They have shaped me and I am glad of that.
My dad did sit me down one day when I was 11 and had won a place at grammar school. He cautioned me. He said something like that while I had been very successful at primary school, I must not necessarily expect to do the same at grammar school because all the kids there have been successful. He did it gently. The rest is history.
Revenge movies
In my experience, the French make the best revenge movies for the simple reason that someone eventually gets revenge and better still gets away with it. The best I ever saw (and I wish I could remember the name of it) related to a drunk (or maybe he was fondling his girlfriend) driver who killed a man’s son. The start was full of tension. Child fishing on the beach at dawn. Car driving fast in the countryside. Kid leaves the beach and goes back through the streets. Car comes racing through the streets. They meet at a fork and the child is killed.
Can’t remember how the father tracks down the driver but he does. He befriends him and then on the killer’s yacht, the father kills him. Moralise as you will but I see that as justice.
‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ someone said once and that is the way the French do it. There is another one at the back of my mind about an unfaithful wife but my memory is hazy.
In contrast, Hollywood once eschewed revenge movies and brought the culprit to trial. You know all that anti-lynching stuff and telling the Indians that the culprit must suffer ‘white man’s justice.’ It changed but it was never cold which revenge ought to be. Instead we got spectacles like Maximus v. Commodus in Gladiator, Kill Bill (which is entertaining but is insufficiently cold and lacks calculation) and Ben-Hur (another spectacle).
I don’t feel revengeful in any way but if I was, I’d do it quietly. I’d make sure my victim was fully aware of what I was doing and I’d make him/her suffer.
Does that make me bad? I guess so but you have to be highly motivated to want to take revenge anyway and so far, I have never been so motivated.
Can’t remember how the father tracks down the driver but he does. He befriends him and then on the killer’s yacht, the father kills him. Moralise as you will but I see that as justice.
‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ someone said once and that is the way the French do it. There is another one at the back of my mind about an unfaithful wife but my memory is hazy.
In contrast, Hollywood once eschewed revenge movies and brought the culprit to trial. You know all that anti-lynching stuff and telling the Indians that the culprit must suffer ‘white man’s justice.’ It changed but it was never cold which revenge ought to be. Instead we got spectacles like Maximus v. Commodus in Gladiator, Kill Bill (which is entertaining but is insufficiently cold and lacks calculation) and Ben-Hur (another spectacle).
I don’t feel revengeful in any way but if I was, I’d do it quietly. I’d make sure my victim was fully aware of what I was doing and I’d make him/her suffer.
Does that make me bad? I guess so but you have to be highly motivated to want to take revenge anyway and so far, I have never been so motivated.
One day strikes
Wars are not won by skirmishes; they are won by prolonged campaigns. People do not always get it right. Napoleon didn’t and neither did Hitler but both of them recognised the value of strategy. I have studied Hannibal a lot; he won several battles but I never figured out what his overall objective was. It may have been the conquest of Rome but if that’s the case, why bugger off after Cannae?
So what’s the point of a one-day strike? Yes, they grab the headlines but what else? If it’s a private company, there is a day’s loss of output and the public at large don’t give a toss. If it’s a public service organisation, then you will usually piss off the majority of customers (consumers). The consumers have lives too and they are not always happy with them so why should they have any sympathy with these arseholes who have just, albeit temporarily, made their lives worse.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Human rights
We hear a lot of talk about rights, most frequently from people who don't think they are getting what they want from life. Sometimes, they are correct but often they are not. Let's go back to basics.
Fundamentally, we have no rights and neither do whales nor amoeba. Go back to the Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of mankind. Did the Australopithecines of 4 million years ago have rights to clean water or Homo Habilis of 2 million years ago have rights to courts of justice? Plainly no. Mankind has evolved much since then and has established, in many countries at least, basic rights for its citizens. And much of that is for the good - free speech, democracy, police protection from crime, ownership of property - the list is endless. All this is fine.
BUT and this is important to remember, the rights we enjoy are by the grace of the society in which we live: they are not innate nor fundamental and we must all constantly strive to preserve them and improve them.
Fundamentally, we have no rights and neither do whales nor amoeba. Go back to the Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of mankind. Did the Australopithecines of 4 million years ago have rights to clean water or Homo Habilis of 2 million years ago have rights to courts of justice? Plainly no. Mankind has evolved much since then and has established, in many countries at least, basic rights for its citizens. And much of that is for the good - free speech, democracy, police protection from crime, ownership of property - the list is endless. All this is fine.
BUT and this is important to remember, the rights we enjoy are by the grace of the society in which we live: they are not innate nor fundamental and we must all constantly strive to preserve them and improve them.
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