Darn, scooped! ;-)
And on "other authors", I've started "Asterix an' Ra Pechts", in the original Scots*.
* Well sort of; it's actually a curious mixture of Scots, standard English and Glesca.
Which reminds me that I have to find out if I can get James Robertson's* Scots version of "Winnie the Pooh" in the States. Along with the first SF novel in Gàidhlig; "Air Cuan Dubh Drilseach" by Tim Armstrong --not that I'll be able to read it. One of these days I may attempt reading "But'n'Ben A-Go-go".
*No relation. Nor, thankfully, to Pat Robertson or those "Duck Dynasty" shites.
]]>E.g., "We can't go downtown, because the traffic is screwed up due to stupidsports."
]]>Stop doing it, please, at least unless and until Charlie says I am a stick-in-the-mud Colonial who ought to know real humour from the slapstick Three Stooges that is our highest form of literary critique.
]]>You may think it's funny, but I think "greasy dago" is a term of racist abuse and utterly unacceptable hereabouts unless it's used specifically in context as an example of unacceptable racist abuse. It's as unacceptable and insulting as referring to the Israeli national football team as "yids" or the Nigerian national team as "niggers" would be. So don't do it.
]]>Incidentally, this shows the impossibility of ever making the project two (?) threads back ever work. Detection of sarcasm? Fail.
Never mind, we can all breathe easier, now that "England" have been kicked out of the international exercise in corrupt moronic fascist thuggery.
]]>It's not the worst. Standards change and, while "Have Some Madeira M'Dear, is a darkly comic song by Flanders and Swann. It is a song about seduction and alcohol, containing complex and witty wordplay." remains a reasonable description, the audience is laughing at a case of date-rape. Listen to the ending: she doesn't escape. Our definitions have shifted.
Here's my alternative ending.
Until the next morning, she woke up in bed, With a smile on her lips, and an buzz in her head...
For a knee to the balls had cut short what he said: "Have some Madeira-aaaaarrrggh!"
(I'll note that I do see some distinction, but a disturbing one, between the old idea of rape and the new. It's a little like the difference between robbery and fraud. The use of violence is pretty clear to everyone, but it can be shockingly easy to get away with the crimes by use of deception. In both robbery and rape, many will see the victim as complicit in the crime when the method is deception.)
If OGH wants to start something, fine. But Woody Guthrie can give us a good quote to think about while we wait for any go-ahead on this topic.
Yes, as through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won't never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home.
]]>Take the S Lawrence case: MetPlod PREFERRED to be thought racist to the revealation that they were totally bent & in the pockets of the local hoodlums. That they were, actually racists, as well, didn't help, of course. Then there are people like the unbelievably dubious Lutfur Rahman (I'm trying to be careful - libel laws - here) His little splinter party in Tower Hamlest has one woman & she & everyone else in it belongs to a very small "racial" ( & - I think religious) group. If this was anyone else, especially if they were pink, the racial segregation alleagtions would be coming thick & fast, wouldn't they? The alleagations of corruption & smell of electoral fraud are strong ... how has he got away with it (assuming, of course that he HAS got away with something)? Because he shouts "racist" at every accusation & no-one has the bottle to reply "tu quoque" as well as "crook", of course. The same reverse-snobbery(?) / slant on attitudes has another, much more evil face too: FGM. Need I say more?
]]>There's certainly a lot of evidence of something dodgy in Tower Hamlets. That story sounds a little dubious: what would you be doing with a box of postal ballots so long after the election? It's too late to use them. But it's the sort of stupid thing that catches out crooks.
]]>I'm not sure why nobody mentioned this already, but it's been experimentally proven that elephants can be taught to roller skate. (Yes, really.) Back in the 1980s in Ojai California a local eccentric took her pet elephant out roller skating, which is not something you see in every town. This may say more about the creativity of bored humans than about the abilities of elephants.
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