An act of love and kindness

I believe that it is incumbent on all of us web diarists to help our fellow writers by constructive and loving criticism. This is particularly true of those younger and less able contributors who would most benefit from our help. Many of my readers (a Mrs Trellis of North Wales) will have visited the site of young Adam, if only to see how computers are being used in the less developed areas of the world, and will have become fond of his witty, erudite and absorbing prose. This week he has been playing with his Meccano.


Hello Adam, you silly tart, here are the suggested corrections to your latest work of mediocrity. Please call upon my services if you wish to graduate from the Governor George Wallace College. I would be only too pleased to help:

Visting relatives
1) Vesting relatives? Some ancient southern ritual which involves removing the undergarments of uncles and aunts without disturbing their outer clothes – people in your part of the world have taken to wearing clothes, haven’t they? But surely that would be ‘devesting’.
2) Misting relatives? Providing a cooling spray, the origin of which is an entirely personal matter, for your grandparents in the long, hot southern summers.
3) Visiting relatives? Unlikely. Were I related to you, I would hesitate to visit until you learned to spell.

See pervious post:
1) While it is not entirely impossible that you have some sort of pole that allows access, it is of little interest and has no meaning in the context in which you have used it.
2) Perverted post? You southerners, honestly.
3) See previous post. Unlikely. Were I a visitor to your site, I would be unlikely to go to another article until you learned to spell.

Fire-breating dinosaur
1) Barbara Bush.

Definetly
1) Folks in the UK definitely have difficulty with that word too, although most of the incorrect versions use ‘definately’. In the wonderful world of the web, you can share your ignorance with others.
2) I would definitely be unlikely to visit your site until you learned to spell.

Toliet
1) I can forgive you this, as such items are a luxury south of the Mason Dixon Line.

Audence
1) Or dense. As in “Adam’s readers are either drunk or dense.”
2) WHAuden. A purveyor of second rate verse, noted for his wrinkled appearance.
3) Audience. Unlikely. I would hesitate to come to see you until you learned to spell.

Talke
1) Talke. A town of great natural beauty, and some fame. Home of the Talke Pits Development Company.
2) Talc. Sure is sweaty down south.
3) Talk. Good idea. Better than writing until you learn to spell.

Cosists
1) Cosines. A mathematical term used in the 5th grade and above in the northern USA, but not in Southern schools who use the term ‘ciphering’ for all complex calculations.
2) Cousins. You sure have plenty of these. Some of them are also your brothers, grandparents, nephews and aunts.
3) Consists. Unlikely. Your prose is not going to display the attributes of consistency or cohesion until you learn to spell.

Countdown to the royal divorce - part 4

I have been requested by a reader – a Mrs Trellis of North Island – for more up to date news of our favourite family.

Much of what I hear and see must remain confidential, even on so private a medium as the internet, and I am sure that no one would like me to be indiscrete or display evidence that I am incapable of keeping a secret.

Philip was on television this weekend, being interviewed by that prize wally Mark Nicholas, and managed to keep a straight face while saying nothing of any interest for 10 minutes, during which he managed to give the most boring and evasive answers to all of the questions. A remarkable achievement for someone who is well over 80, and is often accused of being neither use nor ornament. Phil is patron of the Lords Taverners, and shows a passing interest in cricket, but I fell about when he said, deadpan, that he was unable to play cricket because polo was his summer sport. “You old bugger,” I joshed, when I tracked him down at Winston’s Reggae Club in Willesden, “I bet that Nicholas chap hasn’t the slightest idea what you really got up to in the summer”. “Well, I mentioned show business enough times to give the soft sod a clue”, he chortled, “you can take a horse to water, but you can’t let it chase foxes”. I think he had been inhaling a bit too deeply at said establishment.

I can reveal here, for those who had not yet been made aware, that between 1956 and 1974 Phil would sneak off for 4 or 6 weeks, and appear in the chorus line at Butlin’s holiday camp in Prestatyn. He used the stage name Phyllis Edinburgh, but to the best of my knowledge his real identity was never discovered. He was a particular favourite, with his silky thighs and curvy abdomen, but one would have thought that the polo neck sweater that he habitually wore on stage to conceal the prominent Adam’s apple would have given the game away.

Since you ask

Congratulations, Watski, on setting the tone for this week’s postings. None of this maudlin stuff about politics and the like, but a serious debate about sex in outer space.

The whole purpose of this internet thingy is to publicise the pointless, glory in the absurd and debunk those who think that they understand anything about human existence.

We idiots must band together to try to use up all of the world’s available disk space in pursuit of the bizarre.

A regular reader, a Mr Trellis of North Epsom, commented to me today that my contributions of late have been somewhat sparse. Well, Mr T, put your keyboard where your mouth is, and add a comment or two here, or are you concerned that Form 4a in the school where you teach will track you down here, and have concrete proof that you have crossed the boundaries of appropriate behaviour?

I am regularly asked, usually by people with nothing better to do, whether I have nothing better to do than ponce around on the internet. Up to this point, my answer has been an indignant “NO”. Henceforth, I shall strive to be more belligerent in my response. “Sod off you pompous prat”, or something equally reminiscent of Byron, shall be my reply.

Another new friend, a Mr Trellis of North Accra, who does not have regular access to the internet, asked me today what I put on my website. “Nonsense”, was my proud response.

So, dear friends, remember that I care nothing for your religion, politics, opinions, views, beliefs or your favourite member of the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra. I do, however, deeply appreciate your support in helping to maintain these outcrops of sanity in a universe filled with confusion.

Hats off to Boris (bearing in mind that he is a professional buffoon), who has decorated his photograph on his web log with an enormous phallus, upon which he has tattooed his name, lest those fortunate enough to receive his sexual attention should be in any doubt by whom they are being shafted.
* My campaign seems to have resulted in Bozza changing his website to something less phallic. I offer my deepest apologies.

I am very easily pleased

The only event that I shall be watching at the 2012 Olympics is the "Wipe the smile off of the face of that smug twat Coe".
Unless I am asked to collect the congestion charge from the marathon runners.

And another thing

Either my pals at the BBC need to pay closer attention to sentence construction, or the Teutonic law enforcement authorities need to address issues of security.

A German youth has admitted to creating the Sasser virus during the first day of his trial in Germany.

Avuncular advice to the young student

Thanks again to TCM at livescience.com for informing us that there is no danger from sharks.

"There are millions of people in the water at any given moment of the day," said John McEachran of Texas A&M University. "When you consider all of the people in the water at the same time, the number of shark attacks is very, very remote."

It is at times such as these that I begin to regret my lack of enthusiasm during science lessons. I do not understand how a number can be remote. I am sure that Mrs Dean covered it during 2^nd form Biology, along with the study of fungi and whatever, but it is not a concept that I can readily grasp. Although I suspect that I would have to travel some distance to reach 743 or 15189. Who knows? Alternatively, TCM at livescience may have misquoted Mr McEachran, and he actually said that “the chance of a shark attack is very, very remote.”

Although I would still query his lack of precision. What is the measure of remoteness, and how remote does something have to be in order to be classified as very, very remote?

"Shark attacks are like airplane crashes," said McEachran.

Yes, indeed.

Even peanuts, McEachran says, are a greater threat to humans than sharks.

Pause for man eating peanut joke.

"If you use some good common sense in the water, you should be fine," said McEachran. "To put your mind at ease, go to a beach that has lifeguards. They should be looking for possible sharks."

What is a ‘possible’ shark?

After all this nonsense, I was wondering who this McEachran chap is. I found that he is not the assistant under janitor, as I suspected, but actually a professor of wildlife and fishery sciences. I searched for him and found entries in google for him banging on about the same topic last year. This time he said “the number of shark attacks is very rare.” A rare number now.

I have no evidence, but suspect that the prof said all this from his desk, not waist deep in the Gulf of Mexico with a paper cut on his leg.

My advice to young people thinking about a career in science is very simple. Forget it. It is much safer to swim in shark infested waters, taunting sharks with witty slogans about them being thick, than it is to believe in the prognostications and lamentations of TCM. Forget your Faradays and Darwins, and embrace Jane Austen. She may have been an uptight bitch who only wrote trite advice about social matters, but she did not, unless it is in the pages of ‘Northanger Abbey’ that I skimmed, ever advise anyone that sharks were safe.