Wales Shark 003

In it I discuss the phrase 'There's No 'I' in Team'.

Learn Welsh immaturely.  In years to come I will be viewed as the re-populariser of Welsh.  Definitely.

Lingua Intrigue

To me, the more interesting clashes of culture are linguistic. That is to say, the nuances of regional differences of dialect are more intriguing to me than prominent differences such as used-panty vending machines and a tedious fascination with boing.

These differences turned up a lot in University, as it was the time where I met a group of people from varying locations, but generally within the English speaking world. It’s just that the English we spoke often differentiated oddly.

There is a “game” where someone is lying on the floor, and another person shouts something, and a group of people jump onto the person on the floor. Where I’m from, this “game” (it hurts) is called ‘Pile On!’ (with an exclamation mark). This is the name, what the person shouts, and it is also an explicit instruction to join in. It is forceful, commanding, assured. It is the sort of command you can imagine coming from the mouth of Leonidas, and I know that despite never having seen 300.

Elsewhere in the UK, this game is called ‘Bundle’. Now, I am about to use the word ‘gay’ and I would like to preface that by saying I am not using it in a derogatory way. ‘Bundle’ is the name of the game, it is what the person shouts, and it is pretty gay. As I stated before, my aim isn’t to use that term derogatorily, I don’t think gayness is bad, in this instance it is simply a misplaced gayness. There is nothing gay about a group of young boys jumping on top of…

Damn you, context.

‘Pile on’ is also a homophone for ‘Pylon’ which is a strong, firm, jutting, phallic... huff sake (my childhood snuck in some homoeroticism and I wasn’t even aware of it).

Carbonated beverages; around here they are ‘pop’. Elsewhere, they are ‘fizz’. As much as that pains me, having strong, illogical emotional attachment to it being called pop, I must admit that makes more sense. You open a bottle or a can, it fizzes. It does not pop, unless somewhere in our past we mistook liquidised Pringles for a fizzy drink.

There is a renovated music venue local to me called ‘The Pop Factory’. It is called that because it used to be the factory where they bottled pop. +10 Imagination EXP. Similarly, a restaurant opened up in the building which used to be the old post office. It is now called ‘The Old Post Office’. The mind boggles as to how any new build gets a name.

Builder 1: That’s a nice new building we’ve made here, what do you think we should call it?

Builder 2: What was here before?

Builder 1: Just an empty space.

Builder 2: Then this building shall be henceforth known as ‘The Empty Space”.

Builder 1: What’s it going to be?

Builder 2: A planetarium.

In that example, they luck out.

But if pop was called fizz around here, the music venue would become The Fizz Factory. Which is monumentally naff. Even more so than The Pop Factory. And because of rules of rhyming nicknames, it’s naffness would get it dubbed The Jizz Factory, which, well, is gay. And again, that would be inappropriate because it’s not a gay bar, it’s a non-sexuality-specific naff music venue.

Actually it’s mostly frequented by excitable teenagers, so calling it the Jizz Factory would be inappropriate for another set of reasons.

Where was I going with this?

I am going to call it The Jizz Factory from now on.

…

I think this blog entry is done now, I can’t be certain.

Like Hammerton Pobst always said; “if you can’t guarantee the safety of your soufflé, stop cooking.”

My Life in Car Journeys (Little Ones)

I got in my car, pulled out of my parking spot and I was instantly stuck behind a sheep.

Now, I am a firm believer that the road is not a suitable location for a sheep, I would argue that the mountain or, ideally, a field would be a nonpareil setting for them. But contrary to popular belief, they won't listen. Sheep are the go-to animal when attempting to characterise someone as a mindless follower through the specific use of animal comparison. This sheep was indeed an idiot, and was very slow in yielding right of way to me, daredevilishly slow when considering I had the whirring engine of my fierce Fiesta to assert my dominance with.

I think we should fit cars in rural areas with huge chomping maws with which to butcher wandering animals. I feel this will eventually breed a mistrust of cars in the beasts, and they'll stay out of my way. It would be useful to create a device which can convert lamb into power, as this will offer yet another cheaper and greener alternative to traditional fossil fuel.

More flashing light antics on the way home again, this time a police car had pulled over a large white transit van. This had helpfully played out in a stretch of road where two lanes merge into one, causing confusion and brouhaha. As I drove past my head was filled with the voices of The Trap, cacophonously shrieking "fooching ewwh, ichs thuh fooching filfth!" in grotesquely over-egged Liverpudlian accents. And I was amused.

I also came level with a learner driver at a roundabout, he/she was going straight on, whilst I was turning right. It was a short lived romance however, as I pulled assuredly and safely onto the roundabout, and he/she floundered nervously at the junction. I swelled with a bloated sense of my own road competence, but I have since come to rue the loss of a romance that could have been.

I also saw girls (ACTUAL ONES!) in long socks and short skirts on my drive home, and that really hammered home quiet how much of a lecherous oik I am/can be. I then came home and had a jam sandwich. Mmmm. On both counts.

*****

P.S. TextEdit repeatedly replaced 'oik' with 'irk', which is ironic as I was indeed irked by the end of it, and I feel that automatic correction is an oik, and incredibly detrimental to creative writing. Such as the bit where I phonetically attempted 'Fucking hell, it's the fucking filth!'.

Creative, odd and/or archaic language is hugely important to me. The ladies love archaic language as well. At least those were the particulars bequothed unto mineself.

A Document Regarding Frivolous Patois

"Don't people in Roath have the same right to a decent night's sleep as everybody else?"

This is the only line from a news article that I have discovered today that I found noteworthy. I reproduce it here, out of context, in the hope that the vagaries surrounding the quotation will add to its oddness.

I am unsure what to write about today, so I will allow myself what I originally believed this blog would not become, and write an entry specifically about myself. Oh dear me indeed.

I have been surrounded by children recently, due to the nature of my job, and I have discovered that the youth of today has adopted a number of odd colloquialisms that I find jarring. This is hardly surprising, and indeed is one of the things to be expected from generation to generation, but as I am only 21, I am slightly flummoxed to note the difference in language use already present in people 7-8 years my junior. I appreciate that I may not be a legitimate bastion of current slang, as evidenced by my use of terms such as “flummoxed”, “legitimate” and “bastion”. However, some of the language used without even the thinnest veneer of irony or self-awareness is flabbergasting.

I am no stranger to the concept of “ownage”, though it is feasible to assume that I would not use it straight-faced even in its original definition. What is most surprising to me is the new usage that has cropped up where kids, referring to their armour on an online game, inquire hubristically: “Do I look ownage?” Despite being employed as a glorified child-behaviour paladin, my degree in, and passion about, the English language lead me to view this use of language with an air of haughty distaste.

Another example of ludicrous patois is the decision of the children to actually declare, out loud, with their voices, out of their own mouths, into the air, where you are HEAR it: “OMG!”. Actually spelling out the letters instead of saying the words these letters have come to represent. I have come to the point where I allot myself 15 lashes if I ever use the actual phrase “oh my god”, and to hear little human whelps using the bowdlerised phrase with no sense of how idiotic they sound leaves me chilled. I think it all comes down to the fact that I hate children, and in this sense I am both not suited and perfectly suited to being in charge of them. They also say “noob”. I am agèd beyond my days.

In a jarring change of topic, I will now stop talking about something that frustrates me and begin discussing things I enjoy. I was let loose into a radio studio recently, along with my future co-presenter, to “get a feel of the room”. What we achieved in the hour or so we were allowed in there was, though it is swell-headed of me to say so, beautiful. We quickly came to grips with the technology and the software by ourselves, since we are such tech-savvy clever Richards, we then proceeded to ‘practice’ and prepare an off the cuff non-recorded pilot of what we think our show should be. It essentially comprised of songs we don’t like being seamlessly faded in and out of each other to an accompaniment of us cachinnating cacophonously. In the heightened oddness of the studio, which I am going to refer to as The Atelier, even the most spurious joke or funny story became hilarious, sending us into rapturous bellowing laughter. We gleaned far too much enjoyment from being ‘naughty’ and pronouncing Foo Fighters as though it was a naughty word (which of course we cannot do on air due to the Don’t Say The Naughty Words! Act 1914), and also from a frighteningly accurate impression of Sarah Millican, which no Rhondda-born man has any right to be able to do, and also a very poor John Lennon. We toyed with the idea of pretending to be from other community radio stations located around the country, welcoming imaginary listeners in a heavy faux-cockney accent to Pearly Kings FM, and topping this off with a gravitas laden “Have a banana”. It was all scuppered however as the manager of the station walked in on us raging through an angry dialogue pretending to be from a Liverpudlian station. I think we scared her quite a lot, and perhaps made her question her own judgement in terms of letting us in. Regardless, we had a swell time (I am very much on board in the attempt to re-popularise this term).

As well as our being-silly centric live shows which we will be broadcasting on the weekend when the radio gets started (if all goes well), we are also planning on doing a number of pre-records using a format I dreamt up last year, and that we have been meddling with in order to amuse ourselves. I am very excited to be planning and preparing for the Cultural Exchange Program, the premise of which is very simple indeed. We will be picking a genre (of Jean Reno as we will be attempt to rebrand them) each, amassing a selection of songs from the genre, playing them to each other and discussing them, in the hopes that The Exchange will make us better, more rounded individuals, and failing that, that some laughter will have been created. Despite having prepared fastidiously for the first show, I won’t put details here as it is still far enough away that I feel I must keep as much information to myself in order for it to remain fresh on the day.

Suffice to say, preparations for the show have been engrossing and enjoyable, even when certain songs cannot be chosen due to the often colourful language my preferred genres contain. I take these instances to be a challenge, and tracks that are unsuitable for broadcast have already forced me to seek out other tracks, which have often proved better. Hopefully we will be able to incorporate a “Tracks We Couldn’t Play” section, in order to explain the reasons they couldn’t be used, which I have already discovered often have quite amusing reasons.

To close up, here is a track that I most certainly couldn’t play, and is a chirpy, although somewhat abrasive, piece. See if you can spot why it’s inappropriate.

Answers on a postcard please.

Linguistic Musings

It has occurred to me recently that I am not really giving enough exercise to the super-duper specialist skills I developed during my time in University. This is particularly surprising due to my own pedantry on the subject, which is: words.

Clearly I am aware that I have used words in previous entries, and I believe that if I chose to communicate through a more pictographic medium my blog would become significantly less understandable. Of course, having a blog made completely of pictures would, at least, keep trifling ‘Anonymous’-types away, although, arguably, pretty colours may attract more of them.

I have, therefore, decided to outline some of my more recent explorations into lexical nit-picking.

I live in an area that is largely populated by a certain type of person, namely ‘fighters’, or to allot them a title which sounds less dignified ‘people who want a fight’. I don’t really have a problem with people involved in either boxing or ultimate fighting which, while I do think it is stupid, at least takes place between people who are both willing, nay eager, to do injury to one another. My problem lies with people who want a fight. In an environment not cordoned off specifically, even a ramshackle arrangement by two willing individuals is highly likely to encroach upon bystanders, either dragging in further participants, or causing annoyance to the disinterested. This is a pastime enjoyed by absolute bell-ends, and I am also aware of the needless provocation of labelling people in this way. Essentially if you are offended by the last sentence I imagine you’ll want a fight, which is not going to happen.

I will never ever be in a ‘fight’. Should such an occasion arise, I will almost certainly be ‘attacked’, and should I have need to ‘defend myself’, I would still protest vehemently at the resulting fracas being described as a ‘fight’. I am just finicky about distinctions that way, though that will be of little consequence to my bloodied face.

Having made myself a target for aggressive drunkards, I feel I should probably lighten the tone a bit, which I will attempt to do with a short anecdote set in a Bureau de change.

I was in one such establishment, changing British pounds into Canadian dollars, though that is extraneous information, when a woman standing nearby was asked to give her name in order to complete a transaction. Upon readying herself, she declared herself as: Mrs. B. Strange. I was caught short for a moment as I pondered whether this was a joke on her part. It wasn’t. I think if I had such a name, I would give it in full to avoid giggling. I am glad that she is not such a person however, as it caused me a small amount of glee in what was an otherwise glum and rainy day.

Alternatively, if I were the owner/operator of such a name, I would play heavily on the eccentricity, and introduce myself at parties with:

“Yes, I’m Strange, my husband’s Strange, his parents were Strange, and of course, our children are Strange. Apart from my daughter, she married into an Odd family. You should meet her husband, Jonathan Odd, he is very strange.”

I just wish she was an old fashioned news anchor and could finish all her news broadcasts with:

“And remember, be strange.”

I can only hope that her name is Beatrice or Beatrix so that her eventually tedious pun of a name is unavoidable. It is also possible that her husband purposefully only dated people called Beatrice in order to assure the pun would come to pass. If so, he is my hero.

I have recently been noting the practical naming of protective clothing. A fire retardant outfit will protect you from fire, a bulletproof vest protects you from bullets, and a space suit protects you from space. Similarly, fluorescent clothing can protect you from the flu, which is an important thing to bear in mind in the current climate (please note; bearing this in mind will not protect you from bears).

In more serious, yes similarly tedious, observations, I have been taking perverse pleasure in tut-tutting English-Welsh translations. Signs often fail to be accurate, even when they do avoid the mesmerising huff-ups found in Swansea. I find amusement in huge mistakes, immense interest in slightly differing translations.

A sign on a train going into Cardiff reads in English: “Smile! You’re on camera.” It’s Welsh counterpart declares: “Gwenwch! Mae camera yn eich gwylio”. Translated into English, the Welsh phrase literally reads: “Smile! A camera is watching you”. It would be impossible to translate the ‘on camera’ phrase into Welsh directly, as it is an idiom that is not present in the language, and would sound clunky and unnatural, however, the actual Welsh translation is incredibly sinister. The English phrase manages to extract all responsibility from the situation – it is no one’s responsibility that you are on camera, you just are. In the Welsh sign, the camera is personified, and given an eerie sentience, as though your actions on the train are being mechanically followed by a recording gargoyle on a dark purpose.

This cross-language gap is also present in other phrases. In English, the term ‘scarecrow’ is completely functional, what does a scarecrow do? It scares crows. Dissimilarly, the Welsh term for the scarecrow is ‘bwgan brain’. ‘Bwgan’ is a childish term, probably comparable to the English, ‘ghoulie’ or ‘ghostie’, whilst ‘brain’ (which isn’t pronounced like that) means ‘crows’. So essentially it means ‘Crow Monster’. Crow monster, what does it do? Not really sure, I imagine it creeps around at night and kidnaps your children. Welsh is a sinister language.

Despite its flexibility, and vast incorporation of words from other languages, English can, at times, be incredibly unimaginative and uncreative in its implementation. One example of this becomes apparent in contrast to the Welsh term ‘cyfansoddair’. This term is made up on two words: ‘cyfansodd’ (compound) and ‘gair’ (word), which means that not only does the term stand for the creation of one word out of many, it is an example of it. In contrast, English takes the words ‘compound’ and ‘word’ and creates the phrase ‘compound word’. How very boring Mr English Language, I think I will be cancelling my subscription to your magazine.

Although that will render the years I spent studying English Language fair redundant.

Harrumph.

Re-inventing the Vagina

I encountered a study in University today which looked at the social construction of genitalia through the amount of synonyms that people could produce for them.

 

The actual study focused on terms for the penis, of which there many.  The set up of the study had 4 white, middle-class, American males, aged 18-21, situated in their living room attempting to generate as many of these as possible.  Similarly a group of 8 mostly white, middle-class, American females, also aged 18-21, situated in their own living room attempted the same.

 

Though I am tempted to be churlish and say that the male participants ‘won’, that’s not how research works, and the four contesta—sorry, subjects received no prize for their commendable 144 terms that they generated in only half an hour (a rate of almost 5 terms-per-minute).

 

On the other side of the cock-spectrum, the eight female contesta-subjects only managed a pathetic 50 terms.  They just weren’t trying.

 

I won’t provide the list of terms, but a few select extracts are: ‘Carnal King’, ‘The Purple Avenger’ (though I’ve heard it as Crimson), ‘Kimosabe’, ‘The Commisioner’, ‘rectum wrecker’, ‘visions of horses’ and ‘the leaning tower of please-her’.

 

The overall conclusion of the piece, such as it is, is that male invented terms for the penis are often very violent or war-related (meat spear, pink torpedo, heat-seeking moisture-missile) or personify the penis in such a way as to allow the actual man from being responsible for its actions (the persuader, the initiator, the Chief).  This was seen as being indicative of an unhealthy male attitude to women, with which I can only partly concur, as I would certainly be tempted to sideline that argument on the grounds of the general silliness of the majority of the terms, in my mind the synonyms are creations of humour overall.

 

However a disparity seemed to surface as the seminar progressed, and we were invited to consider whether it would be possible to generate 144 terms for the female genitalia (don’t panic, I won’t attempt it here).

 

This peaked my interest as I am fully confident that I could produce humorous synonyms for the penis ad infinitum, and would feel creatively bereft if I could not manage a vast amount for the vagina as well.  As the seminar progressed however, it became apparent that I wasn’t being invited to douse my fellow students in my pubic-based linguistic flexings, and so I saved it until I was by myself in my room (stop looking for innuendo).

 

The main problem with the terms I had heard or had concocted were that they were all fairly negatively charged, which, in was in stark comparison with terms for the penis.  ‘Muff’ really doesn’t stand up to ‘Hammer of the Gods’, even if it does have delicious aural connotations through sounding like the word ‘muffin’ (muff-in, get it?)(Grow up if that’s what you thought).

 

So in order to restore a sort of balance to the, quite unequal, mismatch of terms, I strove to create positively-charged terms for the vagina.  See, my reasoning and justification for this pastime is completely justified, I am not childish or churlish or any other kind of –ish.  Though I am slightly peckish (Peckish – pecker – peckerish, like a cock)(Grow up again).

 

I thought that the best way to concoct these terms would be to generate a fictitious dialogue between Man X and Woman X.  In order for these characters to fully come to life, I will need to fill you in on some background.

 

Man X and Woman X are two heterosexual human beings who have been dating for a number of years, around five or six.  They are aged 18-21 (like the original subjects) and are in a relationship that is serious, though not sanctified by any of the world’s major doctrinal faiths or governments.  Neither Man X nor Woman X believe in marriage.  I know you are thinking, surely they must be married they have the same surname.  X is not their real surname, they have been anonymised in order to protect their identities, even though they are hypothetical and fictitious.  They are in no way related to Malcolm X.

 

In this conversation, Man X is fulfilling my role of attempting to generate non-offensive or positively charged terms for the female genitalia.  I don’t know why he is doing it, I hope he has the flawless justification that I have.

Here is a basic blow-by-blow (grow up) account of their, fictitious, conversation:

 

Man:    How is ‘muff’ not a positively charged term?  It has connections with the term ‘muffin’, which is a delicious thing to be connected to.  Everyone loves a muffin (grow up).

 

Woman:           It isn’t a positive term as it reduces the vagina to a foodstuff, a snack to be consumed on the move or after a meal, as a dessert.  The positive terms for the penis are often categorised by weaponry or war metaphors…

 

Man:    ‘Love trench’ then, that’s got a war reference in there.

 

Woman:           Are you suggesting that the term ‘trench’ has positive connotations?  This is the very same term which described the arid, dank, fetid landscape of World War I battlefields.  The trenches were plague ridden wastelands, that were also the site of the death of almost half of the world’s population.

 

Man:    Point taken.

 

Woman:           Stay away from war terminology anyway, that only promotes ‘sex as war’ which isn’t a healthy attitude to be promoting, try creating a term in the field of mythical creatures, as many penis terms are based on myth and legend.

 

Man:    Okay, erm, ‘Gorgon hole’, no… sorry.  ‘Pink Pompeii’ because every now and then it… no…sorry.  ‘Fleshy Cthulhu’?

 

Woman:           I think you should deconstruct that in order for you to find out yourself whether the term ‘Fleshy Cthulhu’ is a good terms with which to refer to a vagina.

 

Man:    Well, Cthulhu is an alien from the Sci-Fi series of novels by H. P. Lovecraft.  Bear with me.  Cthulhu as a creature is ascetically aquatic, which conforms with other manifestations of vagina-terminology which sees the vagina as a sea-related beast.  It is positively charged as Cthulhu is a popular, underground cult figure, immortalised in literature and game.

 

Woman:           Of course, Cthulhu is also however, an immense Octopus-monster of horror-fiction, it is essentially the harbinger of death and destruction, effectively the bringer of the apocalypse.

 

Man:    It is also sometimes called ‘The Lurker in the Shadows’.

 

Woman:           That sounds more like a cock.

 

In the end, the only term I have thus far concocted whose positive affiliation overrides the negative is ‘Garden of Eden’.  However, this also raises problems, as that is the location that humanity was denied because of the greed of a woman, and so it is a term filled with poignancy and irony.

 

My tentative conclusion then is thus:

 

If Eve hadn’t taken the fruit that she’d been told not to eat, she had been told, then maybe God wouldn’t have cursed womankind with a sexual organ that resisted any form of positive terminology.

 

Of course, my conclusion does have some shortcomings, namely 1) there is no God and as such 2) nothing in the Bible ever happened and as such 3) it is my inability that informs a lack of positive terminology, rather than any “evidence” taken from Judeo-Christian scripture.

 

This was supposed to be about willies and foofies and it ended up about religion.  Thus I falsely syllogise that everyone who is religious is either a cock or a cunt.

 

I am grown up, I am.

 

References

 

Cameron, D. (1992) Naming of Parts: Gender, culture and terms for the penis among American college students American Speech 67 (3): 364-79.