Trashed elbow

...And back to the usual flippancy here on Trashed Elbow.

Every time I go in a bookshop these days, I find myself irritated by the Stieg Larsson novels. I should be clear that I haven't read any of them - my dad read one once and told me it was naff; that was good enough for me.

What irritates me is the off-the-shelf, formulaic titles: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.

It did give me pause to wonder: which potential titles did he consider before discarding? Which ones didn't make the final cut?

Here are some of my ideas:

• The Girl with the Pencil Moustache


• The Girl Who Talked to Strangers


• The Girl Who Ran with Scissors


• The Girl Who Shared Needles


• The Girl with the Adam's Apple

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, BUNKA

Adam Curtis did a brilliant piece on Charlie Brooker's Newswipe on BBC4 last week about "Oh Dearism", the trend for television news to show shocking events about which we can do nothing but feel helpless and sad, and to which the only possible reaction is "Oh dear".

I wonder if anybody in BBC Sport saw it. I only ask because Saturday's Football Focus and Match Of The Day used the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster to indulge in the kind of crass grief tourism that has become a media staple since Princess Diana's death. "A football match seems so unimportant in these situations," intoned a sombre Ray Stubbs on Match Of The Day. Had he followed his remark by saying, "So here instead is a short film," the cliché might have made some sense. But obviously we did not want to miss Torres's brilliant strike against Blackburn, or the seven-goal thriller at Stamford Bridge, so the show continued, but sans the theme tune at the end, and with the requisite Hillsborough chit chat between Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson after the Liverpool highlights.

Mix and Match of the Day turns tragedy to cliche
The Grauniad, April 13th

***


From the comments on above post:


johnnygoodyear
13 Apr 09, 11:57am (about 4 hours ago)

It was mawkish in some aspects, but you have to give Hansen his obviously sincere and heartfelt due.

Recommend? (1)


danmckeown
13 Apr 09, 12:05pm (about 4 hours ago)

I found Alan Hansen's bit on Football Focus the most fulsome of the lot: artistic, looping camera pan round him in the cathedral before he delivers sententious punchline. I thought it was gratuitously over-engineered and lacking in humility.

Most worthwhile comment came from Steve Claridge on final score, along the lines of "Yes, we got all-seater stadia, but we'd rather not have paid such a high price for them," which added a bit of perspective to the bon Motson on the subject.

Additional kudos to Claridge for managing to fit a word in edgewise while Garth Crooks's big self-important mouth is flapping like a barn door in a gale.

Recommend? (3)

***


I was quite pleased with "bon Motson" (derived from a bon mot delivered by ubiquitous football commentator John Motson) although a search on Google informed me that I can't claim to be the inventor of the term.

I was also happy to seize my opportunity to have a dig at Garth Crooks, a man who, I am confident, has never carried an argument by any means other than talking louder than everyone else.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

To commemorate Superbowl weekend, two of the finest touchdowns to be found on youtube. If anyone's got any better, send me a link!

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, U-TUBE

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you...

***


The above was filling a break in the pub quiz for the second time, when Leon announced that he had a funny story about it.

You see, he explained, one of my friends at university fell off the roof of a building and died...

I agreed that it was pretty funny.

That wasn't the funny part, he said. We had the funeral, and his girlfriend stood up and said "I'd like to play this song to remind us of him", and she played this...

...the Puff Daddy version.

I would imagine that, in Leon's shoes, I would have had the devil of a time keeping a straight face. Apparently, he didn't find it easy.

***


My current favourite is Songbird by Fleetwood Mac, just in case the unthinkable happens.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, REDUX, SELF IMPROVEMENT

I was explaining the term "one-eyed jack" to a student yesterday, and I did a quick web search for some suitable images. In the course of this, I came across the term "the suicide king", which was new to me. I wikied it and got the following:

The king of hearts is sometimes referred to as the "suicide king" due to the fact that he appears to be sticking his sword into his head.

Why did I never hear this before?

Is there anything else you lot aren't telling me?

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, SELF IMPROVEMENT

Otherwise, for anyone else who has travelled through LA International airport at some point: do the guards really have the words LAX SECURITY on their ID tags?

Because if so, I think it's the best thing ever.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

It happened in karaoke. Someone was giving "Wonderwall" a whirl when a comrade's visiting sister started blubbing hot, wet tears all into her boyfriend's t shirt. Apparently, the song had been played at her friend's funeral, which prompted me to ask if he'd died of solvent abuse. Alcohol flowed, songs were sung; I woke up the following afternoon as handsome as ever.

A few years ago, I gave Lewis a cassette of contenders for my funeral song. Rather than just choose one, I listed a number of potential death scenarios and the corresponding song to be played. The most obscene / shocking song out of the lot was reserved for the contingency that I predecease my grandfather.

Last word on the subject- songs not to be played at my funeral:

Wonderwall by Oasis, Orinoco flow by Enya.

Daniel by Elton John.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, SELF IMPROVEMENT

Truth better than fiction, 26 Jan 2008
By Daniel Mckeown (Japan) - See all my reviews

Despite the title, nothing whatsoever to do with Arsenal FC, but rather an autobiography which covers the author's upbringing and war service, documenting some truly remarkable incidents.

To give some idea of what the reader has in store for them, by the time the author leaves school he has survived a near-death experience, been witness to an actual-death experience involving one of his classmates, his mother has been set upon by rioters and his brother has been run over by a Rolls Royce.

After all this, we still have his war service to look forward to: war service which includes being hauled out of the water at Dunkirk only to hear on the radio that the ship he has been rescued by has been sunk by the enemy (and for the third time this week, to boot.)

Those with an interest in military history will find themselves well rewarded by this book: the author chronicles the British and Allied movements throughout the war, spanning a number of campaigns, and includes detailed description of some of the equipment involved. For others, there is a wealth of incident drawn from the author's experiences, relayed in dry, unsensationalised fashion, which, intentionally or otherwise, invites us to consider on a wider scale the challenges faced by the war generation.

***


I neglected to mention that I have, at one time or another, heard pretty much all of the stories straight from the horse's mouth, the horse in question happening to be my grandfather.

Still highly recommend this book, so click here and broaden your horizons.

(Admirably broadened though said horizons already be by dint of reading these: my words.)

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, BUNKA, CLAN

"If Switzerland's neutral, why does it need an army? And why do they need such a good knife?"
-Adam

"...and at this point, I thought I was never going to stop laughing..."
-Joe

***


Right after Adam had said his piece regarding the insidious Swiss, the image of The Swiss Army Gun appeared in my head.

The Swiss Army Gun would be capable of firing:

Shuriken

Those flimsy metal chairs that are always conveniently lying around ringside at pro wrestling bouts

Bengal Tigers

Argumentative lawyers in cheap suits

Hand grenades

Linebackers

Horses with no stones stuck in their hooves

Hydrochloric acid

Fundamentalists

Mentalists

Hot gravel

Sleepy wasps

Boar spears

WMDs

Former leaders of the Conservative Party

Expensive cars with drunk eight-year olds at the wheel

Two bowling balls, joined with an eight-foot length of piano wire

***

Adam's idea: it would also have The Flag That Says "Bang!" for people who are surrendering.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, WORDS

The man in the high castle was waxing murderous about the girl in his local supermarket. Misanthrope that he is, he's not fond of people trying out their English on him when he's not on the clock. (For those of you back home, a lot of English teachers in Japan get this way after a while.)

Anywhoops, when comrade goes to pay, the girl in the supermarket will always ask him if he wants his parking validated. This not only stinks of smart-aleckry, but is made doubly fatuous, he claims, by the fact that she always sees him arrive on his beaten-up bike.

Therefore, readers, let's have some suggestions for suitably caustic responses that'll put the fun back in grocery shopping for homeboy, and put Doris Day in her place.

Here's mine:

SHE: Would you like to have your parking validated?

HE: No, I'd like to have my visa revoked.

SHE: ?

***


Wes's suggestion!

SHE: Would you like to have your parking validated?

HE: No, I"d like to have my groceries bagged.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, COMRADES, DULLARDS

...Likewise for risutora kaiko (layoff or dismissal due to corporate restructuring). Then there's sexual harassment or sekuhara. In official documents, the native term (seiteki iyagarase) is generally used; but in the mass media and common speech, the abbreviated English term has taken firm root.

Still, Japanese seem to favor English these days for new types of crimes, both sex-related and the everyday garden variety.

Take stalking. I doubt if even five out of 100 Japanese can come up with their native term for this, which is defined in the statute of May 24, 2000, which finally made it illegal, as tsukimatoi nado, meaning to follow in a persistent manner. (I would tend agree that, given such a mouthful, stalking was the more practical way to go.)

Putting in a bad word for Japanese
Are loan words doing Japanese's dirty work?

The Japan Times

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I'm personally dead set against bastardized loan words which pop up in Japanese all the time, requiring us to butcher our pronunciation in order to communicate. The one exception to this is that they do give me a couple of easy marks in Japanese tests.

However, if this is the direction that Japanese is going in I guess it's time to jump on the bandwagon. I hereby invite all readers of this page to submit any words which they feel should be assimilated.

Let's get the ball rolling: dandruff.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, BUNKA, WORDS

...Dan's "Are you a Barbarian Warrior" quiz

1. By which of the following do your enemies know you:

a- The Crimson Blade
b- The silent killer
c- The twat in accounts


2. A horse is:

a- a man's best friend
b- a man's best lover
c- a man's best way of getting from A to B and, thereafter, an inexpensive alternative to kindling


3. Your hobbies are:

a- crosswords, reading and golfing
b- burning, looting and pillaging
c- ballet, pornography and cottaging


4. Conan The Barbarian was:

a- ground-breaking
b- abysmal
c- a romantic comedy


5. Your greatest fear is:

a- being dishonoured before the warriors of your tribe
b- soap
c- both of the above


6. You have a mysterious birthmark shaped like:

a- a strawberry
b- a crown
c- a vase, or maybe two people facing each other; it's very difficult to tell.


7. You are plagued by：

a-　a strange feeling, which could even be guilt for your bloodthirsty actions (but probably not.)
b- fleas
c- the plague


8. How many times does the letter "X" appear in your name?

a- 2 or more
b- once
c- none whatsoever


9. Your mother was

a- the slave girl of a nomad chieftain
b- the mistress of an Ealing banker
c- mostly drunk


10. You cannot:

a- roll your "r"s
b- recite your alphabet
c- rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time

ANSWERS:
1.	a- 3 points	b- 2 points	c- 0 points
2.	a- 1 point	b- 2 point	c- 3 points
3.	a- 0 points	b- 3 points	c- 1 point
4.	a- 2 points	b- 1 point	c- 3 points
5.	a- 1 point	b- 2 points	c- 3 points
6.	a- 0 points	b- 3 points	c- 0 points
7.	a- 2 points	b- 3 points	c- 3 points
8.	a- 3 points	b- 2 point	c- lose a point for using the word "whatsoever"
9.	a- 3 points	b- 0 points	c- 2 points
10.	a- 0 points	b- 3 point	c- 2 points

Scores:

0-10 points: Ealing banker! The last thing you pillaged was your little sister`s piggy bank, you pitiful suburban weed.

11-20 points: Nova Teacher! Definite barbarian potential, but let down by your tendency to use the word "whatsoever."

21-30 points: Barbarian warrior! You are bathing in the tears of your enemies' widows and orphans.

31 or more points: Uber barbarian warrior! So barbaric that you cannot even do the most basic mathematics and you are NOT bathing in the tears of your enemies' widows, as you have a marked aversion to bathing. As do I.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION