Handy tips to keep around within the boundaries of your awareness. I remember I first saw this book Steal Like an Artist in Evripidis in Halandri. Should have got it.
I should have got a book to tell me how to remember to be creative. *sigh*
Category: Links to stuff I like
External links to pages and media I like that I post about on Cubimension.
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?
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.
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.
EUROGAMER HAS DROPPED REVIEW SCORES
Here’s the article. I’m posting it here because it’s a spot-on write-up on the ways the industry is changing, that is slowly, imperceptibly to the unaware, but no less fundamentally. On top of that, it’s a decent rating system they’ve changed to: recommended, essential, nothing, or avoid. I like that the default is no rating at all.
Things have come a long way. I’m glad to see developments in how we look at games, criticism, journalism and game development itself, but also what new kinds of synergy and interaction have emerged between the audience, developers and reviewers.
REVIEW: TALK TO THE HAND
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.
REVIEW: LEXICON
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Words are weapons” is this book’s tagline. It’s true. Think about it: by speaking you can guide another person’s train of thought. The limits to the destination of the other person’s train of thought is only a matter of how well you speak.
Machine Man sealed Max Barry’s greatness as a science fiction author so I knew I had to come back for more. Enter Lexicon.
Have you ever met a person who can charm you with their words? You don’t know how or why, you only know that this person, either consciously or unconsciously, presses all the right buttons to make you succumb to their will. It’s a force above and beyond what you would normally call your typical, apparently rational decision-making process; it’s a pair of hands that hacks into your brain and into your program, the one you have meticulously created for yourself, making you gladly and willingly do things you would have “normally” scoffed at. Note: I’d like to use many more quotation marks on that “normally” if I could avoid looking like a post-modern “everything goes” pseudo-academic douchebag while doing so. I’m not sure it’s possible so let’s leave it at that.
What if there was a secret organisation that was not only aware of this weakness of the human mind to appropriate persuasion methods, but had turned the whole thing into a science, an art form, something to be studied at a Hogwarts-like institution for teens with a natural talent in manipulation?
Max Barry took this idea and ran with it past the horizon. Lexicon welcomes and incorporates aspects of sociology, neurology, linguistics and the history of language, psychology and personality types, in that you have to know one’s personality type out of 200 or so, also known as “segments”, before you can most effectively persuade them. It’s smart by implying a lot that it doesn’t say, saying a lot that is interesting and makes sense, and connecting it all together by making it fast-paced and suspenseful with just the right amount of horror. Max Barry isn’t just intelligent, he can write a damn good story and believable characters I want to see walk out of all the mess alive and well.
Another thing I liked was the interjection of online articles and snips of online conversations between chapters, hinting at the possibility of the book’s reality existing in our universe too, behind the huge system of control and profiling that the internet and the web are (also) shaping up to be. Each chapter made me think, and each snip between the chapters made me think some more. The fact that I have no idea whether the articles and conversations are real or not, even though I would put money on their genuineness, is referring to what I said the book saying a lot just by implication, or even by implication of implication.
I would have given it five stars if it wasn’t for some action-packed scenes that left me wondering what had happened. Sometimes I find it hard to follow such parts in general, and I don’t think it’s my difficulty with very specific action-oriented words and use of language when it comes to reading in English, since I have the same problem when reading in Greek. It’s the same with movies when there is a rapid procession of shots in a scene, like in the duel in SW: Episode III or in any recent disaster or superhero movie. I just don’t bother to visualise the setting and follow the action. I suppose it’s a matter of how much the book has inspired my engagement. Most action scenes in books as well as movies fail to hold my interest sufficiently, or I don’t bother with the specific details of the environment etc. Hard to say why, but the effect is there. Also on why four stars and not five: the bareword. I felt it was awkward and easier to see through for being a plot device. But I won’t say more.
If nothing else I wrote above made you warmer towards the book, at least have a look at this, the Lexicon Quiz, from Max Barry’s website. It’s a variation of the quiz used in the book for determining one’s personality segment and/or if they have the talent for becoming a poet (a member of the aforementioned secret organisation). It’s remarkably clever, cross-disciplinary just the way I like them, aware of the cultural context in which it exists and… well… placing fundamental importance on the personality type distinction between cat people and dog people. It’s a very good representation of the general feel the book gives off.
REVIEW: FINDING THE FOX
Finding the Fox by Ali Sparkes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Yet another special-boy/girl-gets-picked-up-by-special-school story in the vain of Harry Potter. With Lexicon and Idlewild, I feel like I’ve been reading loads of these lately, yet I have strangely forgotten to grow tired of them. However, it has to be said that Finding the Fox was different from these books: it was simple. Easy to follow, easy to visualize, but beautiful nonetheless. I have a soft spot for beautiful simplicity as a concept, what can I do. And I also have a soft spot for people turning into animals and very detailed descriptions of what it feels like it to be a fox.
I don’t even have to tell you the story: Finding the Fox is almost exactly like Harry Potter, the protagonist himself even more so (quasi-orphan, living with his step-parents and calling a glorified cupboard his room, special powers suddenly emerging, special school comes a-looking, special school is awesome, best part of book is exploring wonders of special school and its students). It doesn’t matter that it’s a book for preteens or early teens, I enjoyed it just the same, similarly, I expect, to how I would’ve enjoyed Harry Potter if I read it for the first time at 26.
Did I mention it’s all just so English, in the same way Harry Potter is just so sine qua non English? It couldn’t be any other way, either, similarly to when Spaced tried to be American and it realised it couldn’t bring itself to ever passably drive on the right, or say “like, like, like…” nearly annoyingly enough.
ΤΑ ΝOU-POU ΤΟΥ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΗ
Η συνέντευξη μου στο nou-dpou.gr, all for being a mere inhabitant of the glorious South. {:}
Ο Δημήτρης Χωλλ, 25, μεγάλωσε στη Νέα Σμύρνη και είναι spotter στο site Spotted by Locals (spottedbylocals.com).
Ποιο είναι το καλύτερο πράγμα στο να ζεις στα Νότια, αυτό που σε κάνει να νιώθεις προνομιούχος; Έχουμε ανοιχτούς χώρους και περισσότερο πράσινο και μπορούμε να πάμε στο κέντρο εύκολα. Επίσης ακόμα η άναρχη δόμηση δεν μας έχει νικήσει τελείως και έχουμε περισσότερη ησυχία.
Ποια είναι η μεγαλύτερη προκατάληψη/αστικός μύθος που έχει ο κόσμος για τα νότια προάστια; Ότι “κολλάμε” στις περιοχές μας, δίπλα στο γνωστό ότι “είμαστε όλοι πλούσιοι”.
Τι είναι αυτό που σε ξενερώνει περισσότερο στα Νότια; Τα ακριβά νοίκια και οι περιορισμένοι χώροι στάθμευσης.
Από πού θα φας burger και ποιο burger συγκεκριμένα; Είμαι vegetarian, οπότε…
Πού μας προτείνεις να πάμε για cocktail; Στο pop-up στην Πλατεία Νέας Σμύρνης και λίγο πιο δίπλα στο Μουσικό Καφενείο.
Σουβλάκια από πού θα παραγγείλουμε; Απ’το Λιθάρι κι απ’την Ιωνία. Όπως λέω και πιο πάνω, είμαι vegetarian, oπότε η τελευταία μου ανακάλυψη είναι το Smile που κάνει σουβλάκια με σόγια και είναι άψογα. Αυτό όμως είναι ψιλά στη Συγγρού οπότε μάλλον δεν μετράει, ε;
Έχεις κάποια άλλη πολύ καλή πρόταση για φαγητό; Κεραμιδόγατος στην Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου για μεζεδάκια.
Σε ποια καφετέρια είναι πιο πιθανό να σε πετύχουμε ένα Σάββατο πρωί; Πιθανότατα στο Άρωμα ή στις Σαΐτες.
Ποια είναι η αγαπημένη σου γλυκιά αμαρτία στα Νότια; Κρέπα ή βάφλα στο Ciao στη Συγγρού. Όσο πιο κοντά στην ανατολή, τόσο το καλύτερο.
Ποιο είναι το καλύτερο σημείο στα νότια, για να απολαύσεις το καλύτερο ηλιοβασίλεμα ή μια ανατολή ηλίου; Στον Φλοίσβο για δύση. Για ανατολή δεν παίζει ρόλο πού είσαι αλλά με ποιον είσαι.
Για παγωτό, πού θα πας; Στο Zuccherino.
Ποιος φτιάχνει τον καλύτερο καφέ στα Νότια Προάστια; Δύσκολη ερώτηση! Μάλλον το Μουσικό Καφενείο.
Ποιο μαγαζί, από αυτά που έχουν κλείσει, θυμάσαι με νοσταλγία; Το Ethnique στη Νέα Σμύρνη.
Ποιο club της παραλιακής έχεις πάντα στην καρδιά; …επόμενη ερώτηση παρακαλώ!
Ποια είναι η αγαπημένη σου παραλία στα νότια και γιατί; Τα λιμανάκια, γιατί είναι δωρεάν όπως πρέπει, χωρίς άπειρο κόσμο και είναι πιο όμορφα.
Ποιος είναι εκείνος ο κάτοικος Νοτίων Προαστίων που θεωρείς local hero; Την κυρία Φρειδερίκη. Όταν πήγαινα σχολείο είχε το ψιλικατζίδικο της γειτονιάς. Τόσα χρόνια μετά, κι αφού το ψιλικατζίδικο έκλεισε, επέστρεψε σχεδόν στο ίδιο σημείο με φούρνο/καφετέρια και με έμφαση στην ποιότητα.
Ποια είναι η καλύτερη περιοχή στα Νότια; Απ’την Νέα Σμύρνη λείπει η θάλασσα, γι’αυτό θα πω Παλιό Φάληρο που είναι η πιο κοντινή περιοχή με θάλασσα. Επίσης η Γλυφάδα είναι ωραία, έχει ακόμα πολλές μονοκατοικίες.
Ποια ήταν η καλύτερη νύχτα της ζωής σου που θυμάσαι να έχεις ζήσει στα νότια προάστια; Όταν περπάτησα απ’τη Γλυφάδα μέχρι τη Νέα Σμύρνη. Δεν παίρνει τόση ώρα και είναι ωραία ευκαιρία για περισυλλογή και ένα μικρό τουρ στην παραλιακή.
Τι θέλεις να φτιαχτεί στο πρώην αεροδρόμιο του Ελληνικού; Οτιδήποτε που θα είναι στραμμένο στην ποιότητα ζωής κι όχι στο κέρδος. Κοινώς, πράσινο, όχι υπερκαταστήματα και ξενοδοχεία.
Τι είναι αυτό που θα ήθελες να έχεις στα νότια ώστε να μην χρειάζεται να πας αλλού; Κέντρο αναρρίχησης!
Αν ήσουν δήμαρχος για μια μέρα τι θα ήταν αυτό που θα έκανες για να βελτιώσεις την ποιότητα ζωής σου; Μόνο της δικής μου ή όλων των συμπολιτών μου; Θα έκανα δημοτικό λαχανόκηπο, θα έφτιαχνα την Εστία και θα έκανα κάτι για το πάρκινγκ στην Πλατεία Καρύλλου.
Ποιος φίλος ή ποια φίλη σου από τα Νότια πρέπει να απαντήσει αυτό το ερωτηματολόγιο; O Σαβέριος Τέλιος.
Ο ΧΛΕΜΠΟΝΙΑΡΗΣ ΠΑΡΓΑΛΑΤΣΟΣ ΚΙ ΑΛΛΕΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΕΣ | 116+ ΚΑΜΠΟΣΕΣ ΛΕΞΕΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΦΡΑΣΕΙΣ ΓΙΑ ΑΣΤΕΙΕΜΠΟΡΕΣ
- τσουμπλέκια
- χαμούρα
- κλανιόλα
- καβαλίνα
- γκαιφές
- πιρούνι
- χλαμπούκιασμα (ευγενική λεξιπλαστική χορηγία της Ιωάννας)
- κιλότα
- τσιμπιρδόνια
- χλιμίτζουρας
- κασίδα
- σπαζοκλαμπάνιας
- τσιρλιπιπί
- μαρκαλεύω νταγλαράδες
- κατάκολο
- ραμολιμέντο
- γαμώ της γης τον άξονα
- καβλιτζέκι
- βερβελιές
- 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;
LAST STAR TO THE RIGHT, AND STRAIGHT ON ‘TIL MORNING
Last star to the right, and straight on ’til morning from Les Zooms Verts on Vimeo.
In August 2013 I was in France. I wrote a post about it, too, and made a video quite different from the one above.
Last star to the right, and straight on ’til morning, or Dernière étoile à droite, tout droit jusqu’au matin as is its original title, is an iteration of what took place there.
I randomly appear a number of times on the film but my best contribution are the final words in it. If you don’t want to watch the rest of it (I suggest you do) and would rather just listen to my silky voice full of ums talking about our creating today the civilization of tomorrow, go to 40:43.