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August 2002 Archives
Meanwhile, sounds like Jonathan's party was fun. One reveller writes:
The diet of G&Ts and champagne for 4 days is now telling on me.
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Some moments this week:
- family card games going on until way past bedtime. One night, Kiloh ended the game asleep on my leg under the table. Apoa and Kiloh both seem to have inherited Ohna's card sharp gene, btw.
- had my mobile ring on the beach with a message confirming some work. Always wanted to have that happen to me.
- found some interesting data about the English of seven year olds. I was reading Kiloh's copy of Girl Talk where a letter from a reader raved about how much she enjoyed it by saying 'Girl Talk is the bomb'
- found a 'snake' in the garden but it turned out to be a slow worm. Yes, it was slow.
- went round the neighbours to say 'can we have our ball back?' Haven't done that for a few decades. I think the last time I did it old mannie Peerie came chasing after us with a stick.
- the downside. Of course, we've had messages and phone calls about various kinds of building works (supposedly) going on at home.
- oh, and we graduated from crazy golf to 'proper putting'. Highlight of this was watching Apoa carefully, and balletically, lining up every shot.
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Read here about the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and find out about the etymology of 'haggis' among other things.
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I am in Budleigh Salterton, living without broadband, finding out what my pages look like on different systems and browsers, and missing Jonathan's 40th birthday party, where the guests included Jennifer's famous Cullen Skink. B-(
Still, there are compensations, which include: croquet, football, whist, dozing by the riverbank after a wade, and Otter Ale.
It's also the cat's first holiday and we are relieved to find that she enjoys travelling and thinks of her box as a cosy home rather than a prison. Now we'll have to see what she thinks of the local wildlife.
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We were discussing the Joy Division influence on Moby, especially in Extreme Ways when Ohna pointed out that the tune is mainly based on Sorry I'm A Lady by Baccara Remember?
Ooh here comes that man again
Something in the way he moves makes me sorry I'm a lady
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Point your eyes at it here
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This has a comment from Xan Brooks who says that:
If the figures are to be believed, we are currently luxuriating in middle of the best year for movies since 1971. Cinema attendance in Britain currently stands at its highest level for more than three decades, with some 174m tickets expected to be sold by December 31. All of which is surely cause for celebration. The economy may be slumping, consumer spending wobbling and the house price bubble about to pop, but at least we've all been to see Scooby Doo and Men in Black II.
The trouble with statistics, of course, is that they only tell half the story
I wonder how robust this statistic is? And does this one only tell half of its own story?
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ps This sentence is not true
Damn, once again I was too disorganised to get myself ready in time for National Slacker Day
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Here is an extract from Tim Connell's talk about this.
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Ohna just put me out of my misery. I've been listening to The Flaming Lips and trying to work out which song Fight Test, the first track on Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, sounds like. Ohna just walked in and joined in with them, but the words she sang were:
It's not time to make a change, just relax, take it easy, you're still young, that's your fault, there's so much you have to know
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I wonder what Terry Gilliam would make of this site about the role of the prostate?
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I wonder what the society for the advancement of formal structures would make of this siteabout natural language parsing?
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It's Hornsey Journal day, and Kiloh's on page 4. You can read all about it (and about her canny mum) here
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How did Lamb Chop produce her labial consonants? Find out here
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The 'language gene' research is obviously really interesting and exciting but it strikes me that the phrase 'language gene' causes a bit of a problem, since people discussing it have to spend a lot of time explaining that there isn't really one single gene that gives us language, etc. etc.
The gene we're talking about is called FOXP2. An error on FOXP2 causes a disorder which involves severe language problems. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute compared this gene in humans, chimps, gorillas, orang-utans, rhesus macaque monkeys and mice. They found slight changes in the gene which happened over time. So the assumption is that mutations in the human FOXP2 gene were important in the development of language.
Here are some links:
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You can read here about the plan to recognise Cornish as an official protected language. You can hear examples of Cornish, follow links to other sites and speculate about the mental state of the person who chose the pictures and captions.
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Do you believe this account of Portuguese sexual practices? The enigmatic mermaid (who is Brasileira) seems to buy it.
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This article has got people really interested in Verlan. Even Caterina is intrigued.
No-one so far seems to have mentioned the film with a Verlan title. Les Ripoux is the Verlan way of saying 'Les Pourris' which means something like 'the rotten ones'.
It's also a blooming good film.
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Last summer I went camping in Sherwood Forest with 4,000 kids. I wasn't responsible for all of them, but it was quite an experience.
At the camp, the kids organised Earth Summit meetings to discuss sustainability and other issues. At the end of the camp, they produced a declaration which is being presented at the World Summit in Johannesburg. If you fancy signing it, you can find it here
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Went to see Lantana last night, which was excellent. I can't post links to an official site as all the ones I visited were broken, but here's part of a reviewI found on imdb:
In Hollywood the man is a limited creature, and this tendency limits the potential for the movies of America. Let us give thanks that producers in other countries may still find funding for movies not crafted shallowly for the American main-stream!
Lantana is a brilliant movie. Lantana is not a Hollywood movie, nor an American movie.
I'd agree. My opinion is that it's a French movie (it's literally Australian, of course). It's got real people with real personalities who reveal themselves through a combination of what they say and what they do. It isn't just reality, though (e.g. we find the main characters linked by amazing coincidences) but the departures from reality are part of the game and so they don't ruin things in a 24 kind of way.
The non-broken bit of the Australian site describes it as a 'mystery for grown-ups' so I'm wondering whether it works for younger audiences, given part of the interest is about how marriages work (or don't work). I remember how bemused our 19-year-old au pair was by In The Mood For Love which Ohna and I had raved about. She reminded me of my bemusement when I was 14 and went to see Death In Venice knowing only that it had death in the title and a double A (a now extinct category, for people over 14) certificate (I thought that told me all I needed to know).
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Had a great day out with O yesterday.
They wouldn't let me in to Matisse-Picasso even though I'm a member. Well, not without joining the colossal queue for a ticket. So I bought the catalogue and decided to go to Paris and see it there. What are the odds that I actually do it?
We went to see Ansel Adams and William Egglestone at the Hayward instead. Two great shows and really good computer resources on Ansel Adams.
We followed that up with Lost in La Mancha, a tragic disaster and not really the thing for a producer to watch on her day off.
The highlight was that we followed this with a glass of wine and a deep conversation about scriptwriting, partly informed by William Goldman's ideas on 'Hollywood horseshit' and the difference between Hollywood films and independent films (Hollywood films reassure you, independent films challenge you).
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Robbie has been to Cyprus and done some amazing work there, which he's put on show for you here.
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Robbie wants to know which came first, the name of the colour or the name of the fruit. My guess is the colour came first, but does anyone know?
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Why do both of the spellings tying and tieing look weird?
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dug is still disappointed with 24. I agree with him. I also thought the last episode was ruined by the commentators who led me to expect some amazing revelation/really shocking final episode. I thought it was a fairly predictable ending. And not letting us see at first whether Nina had killed Teri seemed a bit childish to me. The tension it raised for us was at a meta level and mainly about how much cheek we thought the makers would have. ('There's no way she wouldn't just kill her. If she hasn't killed her, that's a really big cheat...') But even tying her up was weird. We'd just seen her charge around killing everyone she met as soon as she saw them, but Teri gets tied up and a bit of a reassuring chat?
I still might want to borrow Chris's dvd box set, though.
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Watched that 23rd episode again last night. Enjoyed it more the second time around. I think the irritating things don't have as much of a negative effect when you've seen them once. Also, I was surprised that I interpreted the reactions of our little mole differently now that I knew what was about to be revealed at the end of the episode. There's something satisfying about that, like when you solve a puzzle that seemed impossible and then you find the solution was staring you in the face.
Anyway, all the commentators who've seen the 24th episode seem to think it's the best thing since sliced loaf, so looking forward to tonight, and I can't stop speculating about what the big twist at the end will be. Maybe it's all been a dream in the shower...
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Kiloh didn't enjoy the Fun Run. She fell and hurt her knee and then finished the race with a stitch. Her friend Martha won the race, though, which was very exciting. If I wasn't still in the stone age (film age?) I'd have posted a photo of her coming home in despair by now.
Anyway, we've just found out that Kiloh came first in the fundraising part of the competition. She's off being photographed by the Hornsey Journal as I type. Not only that, there's a prize. A family ticket to Alton Towers plus three nights in a farm nearby. I hope this didn't cost more than Kiloh raised.
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From the Flaming Lips email list:
Beck recently did an interview with MTV news where he officially announced the badly kept secret that the backing band on his October tour would be none other than everyone's favorite Oklahomans.
Yes, the Flaming Lips will be going out with Beck in support of his acoustic-based record 'Sea Change.' The Lips will open up with their own set, before playing with the man himself on his set. No further details are available yet, but we'll let you know as they come. Meantime, check out the MTV interview:
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Prentiss thought Richard Dawkins's comment (see earlier post) sounded 'nastily apt' and went off to find out what 'spiv' meant. His comment in turn made me realise that Dawkins is wrong. The absolute stereotype of a 'spiv' is, of course, Private Walker from Dad's Army, closely followed by Arthur Daley. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen (anyone remember?) dubya 'is no Private Walker'
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....is good fun.
dug has been having a discussion with Chris about 24. Chris defends 24 as something that knows it's preposterous and 'knows what it is and sticks with it'. I can't agree. I think it's got some good points, notably that most people find it quite compulsive, but I think it's poorly (and unevenly) written and directed, and that it 'cheats' in that it wants to be taken as having something to say about the real world (e.g. with the Clinton-Monica-alike subplot) but lets itself down with the preposterousness. I also find that my attention flags after about 20 minutes so that I often miss the sledgehammer-cracking-a-nut that is the hook at the end.
The latest shocking twist reminded me of the scene that, I thought, ruined Gosford Park (can't believe that screenplay won an oscar) when Emily Watson's character gives the audience a jaws-hit- the-floor shock by doing something that character would absolutely never do. I think writers should try to amaze their audiences but if you have to resort to out-of-character behaviour or suchlike implausibilities, then you've bought the amazement at the expense of the movie. The shock at the end of the 23rd 'hour' was a double failure in that it was something that could not be the case given the rules of the show, and it was something a lot of members of the audience kind of expected, given that they knew this is a programme that cheats.
Anyway, returning to my point, if you want to see something that's knowingly preposterous and 'knows what it is and sticks with it', go and see Spy Kids 2
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ps. Sorry, of course I can believe that screenplay won, but the main thing that struck me about it was that it had some serious flaws. I'll be surprised if it ends up alongside 'Chinatown', 'Witness' and all in the 'how to write a screenplay' books.
Larry Trask is a top linguist and a great communicator, in books and in person. His book Language: The Basics has a really good section on prescriptivism.
Well, now he's followed his (Penguin) Guide To Punctuation with a book that gives some prescriptions and proscriptions about grammar: Mind The Gaffe. There's a review here
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You can't argue with this
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Here is a really good website about Gilbert and George.
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