I scored a miserly 14 which I’m blaming on being British (why is arse not acceptable but ass is?) and not terribly imaginative in the cussing department.

The top score currently 140 – go see if you can beat it ‘cos I sure as shit can’t.

** MetaFilter discussion here.

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
14. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
15. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
16. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
17. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
18. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
19. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
20. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
21. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
22. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
23. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
24. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Ever wanted to politely tell someone to mind their own business without offending them? Try this:

Wind it in, trunky.

I laughed solidly for three days the first time I heard that. Yes, I know, get thyself a life.

In other news…

It’s time to get glasses when you’re searching for contact details for a fishing magazine and start wondering what on earth “shocking embroidery” could be about…

Any editor or translator will tell you that the sensation of dread that descends when faced (once again) with having to proof someone else’s work, will be lightened immeasurably when the text on the dull topic of telecoms begins like this:

Penetration in the Belgium is one of the deepest and hardest in Europe.

You’ll get the most out of your phone if you read each section. However, if you’d like to get right to a specific feature, simply locate that section in the Table of Contents and go directly to that page. Follow the instructions in that section, and you’ll be ready to use your phone in no time.

We end up with:

_ majority of ricev of You_ll its telephone, if you legg each section_ nevertheless if you_d with a specific unit for divent like exact, you the simple fact of trov that the section when satisfer and entr you dirigem this pagination _ obbed the section done of the instruction, and you_ll to wait for the use for utilizz its telephone between anything _

Not a fair test? Well there’s a rather good Wired article by Steve Silberman about the history and far distant future of accurate machine translation.

Anyway, I logged on to finish a post about favourite forrun words and ask about yours but this story from the BBC caught my eye and raised a quiet chuckle:

Bladder alert lost in translation

Cyclists were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an inflamed bladder.

The “cyclists dismount” sign between Penarth and Cardiff became “llid y bledren dymchwelyd” in Welsh – literally “bladder inflammation upset” (or tip or overturn).

It is possible that an online translation led to confusion between cyclists and cystisis.

Which led me to dig up some other stories in the pending to blog folder (Gordon will be so proud of me!).

OAP pays for op with fake cheque

A penniless pensioner from west London paid for a life-saving heart operation with a fake cheque.

Retired painter and decorator Roy Thayers was facing a nine-month wait on the NHS to get an angioplasty.

Instead, the 77-year-old wrote out a cheque for almost £9,000 for a private operation at Hammersmith Hospital – despite only having £10 in the bank.

He is now paying back the remaining amount of £6,481 in £25 instalments. He will be 99 by the time it is repaid.

Do go and read the rest of the story while I save the rant about how much this country is spending on “war” and sucking up to that bloody lot in the White House.

Abandoned mountain village found

The ruins of an extensive mountain village have been found on the slopes of the Sugar Loaf, near Abergavenny.

Can’t wait to have a look next time I’m home.

I can’t remember where I saw the link to Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names but what a source for blog names! For example:

Fireside Schedule
Vagina Pageant (A sassy, feminist blog or…, well I don’t want to think about the alternatives.)
Mossy Puss
Mnemonic Slugs
Locust Salvation
Iodine Workstation
These Bullish Years
Temperamental Beavers (oh Manly!)
Ambuscade Countryman
Penniless Photographer
Thankless Reporter
Blabbermouth
Figs Flushing
Buttercup Revenger
Frantic Smoker
Riverfront Tapings

This domain is due to expire soon, I am so very tempted to go get one of these instead…

And finally

A couple of quickies:

• If your (grand)kids have had enough of computers, tv, bike riding and colouring in, why not follow this handy tutorial, How to teach your children to do laundry.
• Alex P’s wonderful Web2.0 logo Creator lets you create some bling for your Web 2.0 site.


It’s even better if it ends in -r

I guess those favourite words will have to wait for the morrow – night, night!

I do love the word Dorking. It conjures up memories of Enid Blyton tales, cream teas and village post offices run by kindly old ladies ready to gossip at the drop of a hat.

I put this to himself but he thinks that the word is more suited to something that should have a section of its own in the Sexual Offences Act.

Thank you M’lud. Mr Smith, you are charged in that you did, wilfully and maliciously dork in a public place to the annoyance of residents and passengers, including the disruption of the Annual General Meeting of the Godalming Women’s Insitute.

Oh blame it on the heat. The temperature is set to reach 28 ºC today, 33 ºC by Tuesday (that’s 82 ºF and 91 ºF in old money). Bleugh.

Whence comes the phrase on tenterhooks, which means in a state of uneasy suspense or anxiety?

• USA, 20th Century. In meat packing, beef is aged (tenderized) by hanging on extremely sharp, large steel hooks.
• USA, 19th Century. On the Chautauqua speakers circuit, the tent canvasses were raised using large hooks called tenter hooks.
• An English adulteration of the French, tendre, to touch. In needlework, if a stitcher frequently pricked her finger, she was said to be using tendre hooks, rather than straight needles.
• English. From clothweaving. The first few strands used to start a new fabric bolt are stretched precariously on small hooks or bent nails, called tenter hooks.

Failing that, you could learn to write your name in Elvish in ten minutes.

Finally, I’ve a suspicion that this is a setup but it does make me thank the good Lord that we were too poor to afford video cameras when I was a child.

1 down, 6 gazillion to go.

If only we could fix the output of BBC Radio 4 so easily.

Photo by Denzzani at Stock Xchng

If you’ve ever put a message in a bottle you’ll appreciate this story:

ANTIGO, Wis. (AP) _ Years after casting a bottled-up note into a lake for a class project and just one year after his death, a man’s childhood message has been found and returned to his mother.

Eleven years ago, a then 10-year-old Joshua Baker wrote the message nestled in an empty vanilla container, his mother, Maggie Holbrook said. He died last February following a motor vehicle accident in California. He had recently returned home after serving in the Middle East as a U.S. Marine.

Why we split up

…She told me we couldn’t afford beer anymore and I’d have to quit.
…Then I caught her spending $65.00 on make-up.
…And I asked how come I had to give up stuff and not her.
…She said she needed the make-up to look pretty for me.
…I told her that was what the beer was for.

I don’t think she’s coming back…

A whole glossary for the IT-generation of Welsh-speakers has been incorporated in a new database launched by the Welsh Language Board (WLB).

Technological advances are reflected in laptop (coliadur), download (llwytho i lawr) or even cookies (briwsion) being included in the online dictionary.

For those still stuck, there is also “Ydach chi wedi ceisio troi’r cyfrifiadur ymlaen ac i ffwrdd?”, which is Welsh for “Have you tried turning it off and on?”

Nos da.

[tags]Welsh, language, new, words, technology[/tags]

I really wish I’d kept up with Spanish. I took daily lunchtime classes while working at Big Multinational Company in Belgium with an excellent tutor with an almost hypnotic voice that forced even the English (yes, I mean the English not the British ) to speak with a perfect accent. Trouble is, I’d leave every lesson speaking with a lithp lisp.

¡Hasta luego, mis amigos!