Category: I think it’s funny!

TWO FALSE FRIENDS IN GREEK AND ENGLISH THAT ARE ANTONYMS

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Greek: εκλεκτικός/eklektikós

someone who is strict in their choices; picky.

English: eclectic

deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.

Greek: εμπάθεια/empáthia

intense negative emotions towards somebody; enmity.

English: empathy

the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective.

I’ve been using both of these words incorrectly, the one in English, the other in Greek (like a true bilingual, yay) and I only found out recently. Who can blame me?!

REVIEW: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S STAR WARS

 

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope (William Shakespeare's Star Wars, #4)William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

HAN: —Nay, not that:
The day when Jabba taketh my dear ship
Shall be the day you find me a grave man.

GREEDO: Nay oo’chlay nooma. Chespeka noofa
Na cringko kaynko, a nachoskanya!

HAN: Aye, true, I’ll warrant thou has wish’d this day.
[They shoot, Greedo dies.]
[To bartender:] Pray, goodly Sir, forgive me for the mess.
[Aside:] And whether I shot first, I’ll ne’er confess!

 

I’m not a fan of Shakespeare. I don’t think I’ve never seen or read any of his plays. Since forever I’d thought that I would find the language or the story boring or something. You know how it is with some things; they rub you the wrong way once and you keep having an unexplainable prejudice against them for years thereafter.

Verily, I stumbled across this work while looking for Expanded Universe publications. At first I was skeptical for the reasons above but it didn’t take me long to discover the brilliance of this here tome. By the way, I read/listened to it in audiobook form, which felt much more like watching the play with the script at hand.

I shall try to be brief. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars not only is a masterpiece of genre mash-up, being something more than the sum of its parts. It made me laugh out loud (for real) with its deliciously tongue-in-cheek yet very serious and perfectly executed Shakespearean interpretation of the story we know and love: for instance, it’s written exactly like the script for something that would be put up in the Globe Theatre, with acts, scenes, entrances, exits, monologues — even Chewbacca and R2-D2 get a few [!!], plus it’s completely written in iamblic pentameter — quite an achievement in itself — and follows various classical drama tropes sublimely. It gave me new insight to the motivations of Han, Luke or Darth Vader; it even made me stop and think why I haven’t read Shakespeare before. In fact, the epilogue by writer Ian Doescher made me realise just to what extent good story-telling has been based on what Joseph Campbell’s introduced and explained in his work
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and how a cross between Star Wars and Shakespeare ultimately makes a lot of sense and can prove thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating.

If you like Star Wars, the English language or simply seeing how far-fetched yet creative ideas can strike gold when done right, I cannot recommend this audiobook enough, although apparently the printed edition comes with some clever and beautiful illustrations (check the cover).

Here’s a little snippet I’m posting here I couldn’t post on Goodreads. Just listen to Vader sharing his inner thoughts and motivations with the audience.


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QB’S “THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS BATSHIT CRAZY” MEGAMIX

English. It’s a bastard language.

~Wayne Hall

Introductory comment number one: judging by how many millions of Speakers of English as a Second or Third Language are mispronouncing these words, including TESOL teachers, I have no idea to what extent their original, correct pronunciation will be relevant, say, 20 years from now. The evolution of the language will be highly unpredictable (not that anything in this world is so predictable, ahem) because it has the largest speakers as a foreign language/natives speakers ratio in the world: for every native speaker there are at least two who speak it at or above a conversational level, and many more the lower you set the bar. Source for the above.

Introductory comment number two: English, for all intents and purposes and despite its foundational inconsistencies, the current world language. Need more proof that people don’t work as rational actors and the world isn’t a product thereof?

english_is_a_crazy_language-1509490

Crazy-English

The kind lady who recited the poem below, originally found here, requests that people not “hotlink to them or steal them for their own website”. Well, I don’t if this counts as stealing, but if it does… This is the web, dear Ms. English Teacher.

The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
At the army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
A buck does funny things when does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

Anonymous (unless you know better)

A rough coated, dough faced, thoughtful poughman, strode through the streets of Scarborough. After falling into a Sloug, he coughed and hiccoughed.

Last but not least: follow this, if you’ve got what it takes. Use this video as a guide and see how well you fare.

Click, if you dare

Gerard Nolst Trenité – The Chaos (1922)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.

Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.

Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?

It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Just as an aside, there is a slightly different version of this poem right here, and here’s a link to a .pdf of it in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

REVIEW: TALK TO THE HAND

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door)Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life by Lynne Truss

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Got this one in 2010 in Dundee, Scotland for £1.99 from a shop called The Works. Why can’t there be such massive book sales in Greece? For all the uncouthness Talk to the Hand wants to subscribe them to, the Brits seem to know perfectly well the importance of a cheap book.

The following two excerpts are two of the parts I thought were interesting in this otherwise unmemorable book:

…meanwhile the choice impulse is being exploited to the utmost degree. “More choice than ever before!” say the advertisers. “Click and find anything in the world!” says the internet. “What people want is more choice,” say the politicians. “Eight thousand things to do before you die!” offer the magazines. No wonder we are in a permanent state of agitation, thinking of all the unpicked choices and whether we’ve missed something. Every day, you get home from the shops with a bag of catfood and bin-liners and realise that, yet again, you failed to have cosmetic surgery, book a cheap weekend in Paris, change your name to something more galmorous, buy the fifth series of The Sopranos, divorce your spouse, sell up and move to Devon, or adopt a child from Guatemala. Personally, I’m worn down by it. And I am sure that it isn’t good for us. I mean, did you know there is a website for people with internet addiction. I will repeat that. There is a WEBSITE for people with INTERNET ADDICTION. Meanwhile, a friend of mine once told me in all seriousness that having children was definitely “on the shopping list”; another recently defined her religious beliefs as “pick and mix”. The idea of the world’s religions forming a kind of candy display, down which you are free to wander with a paper bag and a plastic shovel, struck me as worryingly accurate about the state of confusion and decadence we’ve reached. Soon they’ll have signs outside the churches. “Forget make-your-own pizza. Come inside for make-your-own Sermon on the Mount!” The mystery of voter apathy is explained at a stroke here, by the way. How can I vote for all the policies of either the government or the opposition? How can I give them a “mandate”? I like some of their policies, but I don’t like others, and in any case I’d like to chuck in some mint creams and pineapple chunks. I insist on my right to mix and match.

…

Finally, in the Guardian in April 2005, came the story of research conducted by a psychiatrist from King’s College London, which proved that the distractions of constant e-mails, text and phone messages were a greater threat to concentration and IQ than smoking cannabis. “Respondents’ minds were all over the place as they faced new questions and challenges every time an e-mail dropped into their inbox,” wrote Martin Wainwright. “Manners are also going by the board, with one in five of the respondents breaking off from meals or social engagements to receive and deal with messages. Although nine out of ten agreed that answering messages during face-to-face meetings or office conferences was rude, a third nonetheless felt that this had become ‘acceptable and seen as a sign of diligence and efficiency’.”

There was another good one about how everyday courtesy is becoming more and more similar to the kind of interaction you would expect from people behind steering wheels being angry at each other for one reason or another. This part in particular stayed with me because it reminded me of my dad. It was something he would say.

Now that I think about it, this whole book reminds me of my dad. It could have been written by him, in fact, only in that case it would have been a lot funnier.

I should just give him this book and see what happens.

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Ο ΧΛΕΜΠΟΝΙΑΡΗΣ ΠΑΡΓΑΛΑΤΣΟΣ ΚΙ ΑΛΛΕΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΕΣ | 116+ ΚΑΜΠΟΣΕΣ ΛΕΞΕΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΦΡΑΣΕΙΣ ΓΙΑ ΑΣΤΕΙΕΜΠΟΡΕΣ

  1. τσουμπλέκια
  2. χαμούρα
  3. κλανιόλα
  4. καβαλίνα
  5. γκαιφές
  6. πιρούνι
  7. χλαμπούκιασμα (ευγενική λεξιπλαστική χορηγία της Ιωάννας)
  8. κιλότα
  9. τσιμπιρδόνια
  10. χλιμίτζουρας
  11. κασίδα
  12. σπαζοκλαμπάνιας
  13. τσιρλιπιπί
  14. μαρκαλεύω νταγλαράδες
  15. κατάκολο
  16. ραμολιμέντο
  17. γαμώ της γης τον άξονα
  18. καβλιτζέκι
  19. βερβελιές
  20. παπαρδέλα

Για τις υπόλοιπες 96 λέξεις, πηγαίντε στο πρωτότυπο άρθρο στο μπλογκ της Δάφνης.

Επίσης:

Αστείες Λέξεις #1
Αστείες Λέξεις #2
Αστείες Λέξεις #3

Γιατί σταμάτησα να γράφω για αστείες λέξεις; Σοβάρεψα λέτε;

 

BRENÉ BROWN ON EMPATHY

Somehow I was sure while watching this that it was animated by a woman. It touched something soft inside me; something soft because it is rarely ever touched.

Thanks go to Mich and Antonia for showing it to me.

Wait, what happened? Did I just restart posting links to stuff I like?

 

REVIEW: FISH WHO ANSWER THE TELEPHONE AND OTHER BIZARRE BOOKS

Fish Who Answer the Telephone and Other Bizarre BooksFish Who Answer the Telephone and Other Bizarre Books by Brian Lake

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a blithe and glorious (yes) collection of such amazing, curious and sidesplitting book titles as:

(double entendres)
Drummer Dick’s Discharge, Beatrix M. De Burgh, Ernest Nister, 1902
Penetrating Wagner’s Ring, John Louis DiGaetani, Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978
Boobs as Seen by John Henry, George Vere Hobart, New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1914
Memorable Balls, James Laver, Derek Verschoyle, 1954
Invisible Dick, Frank Topham, D. C. Thomson & Co., 1926

“Jeehosophat! What a disgraceful scene!” said Dick Brett, doing a series of physical jerks behind a bush, as he began to grow into visibility.”

(authors–right or wrong)
The Ethics of Peace and War, I. Atack, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005
Motorcycling for Beginners, Geoff Carless, East Ardsley: EP Publishing, 1980
Industrial Social Security in the South, Robin Hood, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1936
Obesity: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment, Louis Lasagna, New York: Medcom Press, 1974
Metabolic Changes Induced by Alcohol, G. A. Martini, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1971
Frozen Future: The Arctic, the Antarctic and the Survival of the Planet, Daniel Snowman, Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993
There Are No Problem Horses, Only Problem Riders, Mary Twelveponies, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1982

etc etc, going through a wealth of subjects and book types. I feel weirdly proud of owning this book. Apart from being a little treasure all of its own, it reminds me how anybody can publish a book and indeed how many different tiles have been published through the centuries, that we’ll never know about no less. Time to start writing now then!

BTW: I’m not including this to the 2015 reading challenge because I read 95% of it in 2014. In fact it was a gift from my mother. Spot-on, wasn’t it?

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ME, MYSELF AND FULFILLMENT // CUBILONIA

Thought you knew the real origin of the name Cubilone? Well, you thought wrong, because in the following video I reveal all for the first time.

Jokes aside, I prepared this video as part of the online preparation for the upcoming training in Olde Vechte in the Netherlands, the same place I did I SEE GREEN in February-March 2013 and REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE in November of the same year, for which I never wrote anything of note as far as I can recall, so clicking on the words will do nothing particularly significant.

Supposedly, this video is for presenting myself to the rest of the international group and what fulfills me in life. That was the mission. Do you think I managed to do it? I set off with high expectations but the impressions I’ve got from other people (apart from you Daphne and Mario!) have left me wondering. I can certainly say I had high expectations from the idea, and still do (the things I can write about Cubilonia! I could fill books with interesting things about that place) but I’m disappointed in, you know… why should I do it?

Looking for inspiration; maybe find it, proceed to let other people influence outcome too much; idea that felt awesome looks ridiculous in the space of a single hour when faced with awkward reception and blank stares. Artists shouldn’t listen to what other people think. Right? Artists and creatives don’t create for anyone but themselves. Right? Self-expression is of top importance. Right?