OMG girl

I don't know places

I went to get a train one day and they were doing work on the lines, so they had shuttle buses instead. Having got on one, I had a look around at who I was sharing with. There was a girl in her late teens on one seat and a lad of a similar age on another and he turned to talk to her. As they were young, the ice was soon broken and the bloke started asking her things along the lines of have you been to such-and-such place and do you know where somewhere-or-other is. Each time she responded that she didn't but the chap carried on and then the girl said "Sorry, I don't know places" - now it wasn't a don't-talk-to-me-anymore line, it was her response to not really knowing the places he mentioned. I just like that line - though it was a sad line too. If he'd asked her if she heard musician a or musician b, would her response be, "sorry, I don't know people"? I don't know - I just liked the line she used - such a grand comment for such a little topic.

Foreign Language Syndrome

I have been known to tell some pointless stories, so I thought I'd document this one. I was chatting to a couple of people in a cafe and they asked me which part of the UK I was from and I told them that I wasn't English but my accent sounds English due to an accident I had when I was 22. I told them that I had been rehearsing for a play and that I was playing an Englishman and therefore was practicing the accent. After rehearsal one day, I was knocked over by a car and had no real injuries other than I hit my head and since then have only been able to talk in the English accent I had made up whilst rehearsing. I told them that apparently it isn't an accent that fits with a specific area - it is just a generic accent. The condition I have is rare and is called Foreign Language Syndrome. I think that might be a believable story until I realised that I'd never believe it either - but it was fun telling it.

Clichéd people who don't realise

I was walking along Chapel Street a couple of weeks ago and was passed by a couple of chaps in a car with the windows open, the music very loud. The chaps had sun glasses on, were smoking and looking like they thought they looked really cool. However, they looked like the clichéd version of people who drive down Chapel Street playing loud music. What intrigued me was that they didn't realise that. If they had been walking along the street and seen the same as I had, would they have thought that the car contained cool people or wankers? I don't think that we should necessarily dress or behave with other people in mind - but we should be capable of seeing ourselves as we may be viewed. We can all think back to occasions when we must have looked ridiculous and cringe at the memory - and we must all hope that it doesn't happen again. But rather than worry about looking unflattering, I think that I would rather that than being seen as a cliché.

Taste

I was passing a restaurant the other day and it advertised Australian food - not surprising as I live in Australia - but one of the items on the menu was crocodile. I wasn't aware that this was a delicacy and I wondered why there isn't more of it around the place. I wonder what crocodile tastes of - it probably tastes the same as alligator - but I don't know what that tastes like either. Based on the various documentaries and stories I've read, just about every living thing has been eaten by some tribe or civilisation over time. I wonder what delights I have missed out on - I think that the taste test to discover the answer to that question would not be worth discovering. It is strange how the mind allows us to eat some things and not others - yet if we knew the real content of some of the things that we readily eat, then it might make monkey-brains not as strange.

What is funny?

I stumbled upon a tennis match on TV the other day and it reminded me of the strangeness of crowds - tennis crowds in particular. The thing that stands out so much to me is their laughter. In the bit I saw, a player was about to serve and threw the ball up, but miscalculated and the ball went backwards. For some reason, the crowd found this funny and there was much laughter generated by this action. I have struggled to find where the humour was in this. Is tennis that boring that miscalculating a throw is a light relief? And when this player shortly afterwards kicked a rogue ball to a ball-person, a snigger in the crowd was followed with applause. Who are these people who go to tennis matches and where do they come from? I don't think that there are any in my department at work as I dropped my pencil the other day and there was no laughter at all. Strange.

Commercials

I think that I would like to go to an advertising meeting where they plan TV commercials. What is the thinking behind the campaigns selected. I saw one yesterday where the product was something to make the home smell of something or other. The commercial was basically a cartoon of a butterfly cleaning her home talking about how she likes her house to smell good and then a cow knocks on the door with a bucket and asks to borrow some milk - this is supposed to indicate that the cow would come up with any excuse to come and smell the home. So who is that the commercial for? Is it directed at butterflies or cows? Is it supposed to be funny. Are we supposed to think that if a butterfly thinks it smells good, then it must be? Or the fact that a cow likes the smell, that should mean that it really is good and we should buy it. I assume that the commercial is a success otherwise it wouldn't still be on TV, but how is that judged? I want to know who has chosen that product and what it was that made them. This is just one example, but there are so many others.

When people design/develop TV commercials, do they forget that people are going to see them several times? If they remembered, then surely they wouldn't attempt a really lame joke in there. Jokes tend to work once and if you're lucky, then twice. After that it is tedious and definitely not funny. So the commercial will become annoying and that is to the detriment of the product. With that in mind, it is a risk to use even very funny humour, so why do these people use weak comedy. I don’t claim to know about advertising, but I know what doesn’t work for me. Cartoon animals designed to be people seems like something strange to get the public to associate with the product. It encourages me to tape more programs and then watch them back so that I can skip the advertisements. Maybe I’m not the usual public

Fashion

Sun glasses on heads - in all weather - when did that become a fashion? Today was a very miserable day weatherwise. It was gloomy and forecast is for showers all day. One of the girls came into the office and settled in and as part of that, after she had combed her hair, she took out her sunglasses and slipped them on to the top of her head. I know this girl - she doesn't wear glasses - these aren't there in case her eyes get tired or in case the screen starts emitting very bright light - this is part of her fashion. I know a lot of people do that nowadays, but I can't pinpoint when it started or how. Maybe I will start wearing ski-boots in the office as my fashion influence from a different season.

Why do people sabotage words?

I was in a meeting the other day and a chap used the word meemo rather than memo. Why? When did memorandum become meemorandum? I remember many years ago (probably in the 1970s) on an episode of The Young Ones, Rik Mayal played a scene as an American and said meemo but as a joke. Maybe Americans were using the word back then, but how or why has that made it into real language? Whatever the answer, I'd like the word removed now please. Can anyone arrange for that to happen? Whilst you're at it, can you go to the US and make them articulate the H at the beginning of the word 'herb' as well? Thanks - I appreciate your assistance. I'll get back to you with many more of the adjustments that I require.

Actually, while on the subject, let's get onto the word 'scone'. I am person who pronounces it to rhyme with stone, bone, cone, lone, phone, tone and zone. Others rhyme it with gone for some reason. I notice that neither camp rhyme 'scone' with 'none' (nun) though. I was just pondering on where pronunciation starts from. Nowadays I guess that commercials and TV label things and we adopt the same words, but scone is from long ago, so how did that happen? A weird one is the word yoghurt which is pronounced 'yog-hurt' or 'yo-gurt' - as it isn't like other words we know, then how do we know which it should be? Or is it as simple as the 'pro-ject', 'prod-ject' issue. Or the 'date-er' 'dart-er' choiced for the word data? You say one and I'll say the other, let's call the whole thing off.

By the way, what other word changes it's spelling in the way that fire turns into fiery? Why do the e and r swap places? I need to know.

Lines

Here are some lines that I said or heard that I liked:

Read in a Jeremy Clarkson article: When talking about 'when I die' he said, "before I'm on the wrong side of the flowerbed". I like that.

Said by me: "When you're with all your mates, what do the two of you talk about?"

Asked by me: "If a deaf person breaks a finger, is that a speech impediment"

Used by me: "He was as fast as a speeding snail"

Asked by me: I was chatting with a waitress and she was telling me about a chap who had earlier done a runner. There was a chap in a wheelchair at one of the tables and I asked whether, if he left without paying, he'd be "doing a roller?"

Thought by me whilst listening to a self-promoting chap in the office: "I wasn't feeling good about myself and then I met you and realised how much worse I could have been"

Used whilst writing an email to a mate: "It's only 20 years since it was 20 years before I wrote this"

Heard a musician say: "If I was doing any better, I'd have to apologise"

Used by me during a conversation about fitness: "A design flaw of weights is that they're too heavy".

Lines not to use

I hope that I never describe an event as "high octane"

On TV, there is a chap who, upon completing his rundown of the weekend's football results, ends with "I hope that your team won". Who is he talking to? And why say that, as it can't be true? I think that it is a strange thing to say.

I had just paid for a coffee and the waiter said "Thank-you kindly". That is weird. When I had asked how much for the coffee, I hadn't said "How much inquisitively?".

Arriving at work on a Monday, and encoutering people in the office, I am tired of hearing (in response to 'how are you?') "Not bad for a Monday" - too many people say that and many of them laugh afterwards like it's never been said before and they just came up with a funny line. The same goes for, when the same question is asked on a Friday, "Good because it's Friday". Too many people and too much laughter for overused expressions. I will tolerate it, but I don't like it.

How we relate

Whilst in the recent course, I was interested to watch how the facilitator got people to participate and I was thinking about how it works in life. Do we coax people towards something or do we go there and lure them towards it? To make an example, let's consider that we have a friend with us and we are standing before three restaurants that they've never been to before. If we have a preference towards one, then what are our options in regards to influencing the friend to go to that one?\

- We can tell them that we are going and invite ask them if they'd like to come along too
- We can go to the restaurant and call them over
- We can tell them that they are going to go to that place (unlikely option, but a possible one)
- We could ask them to choose and if they select the same one, then agree to go with them
- We could ask them to choose and if they select a different one, try and put them off their choice

But the other person is affected by other factors such as .....
- preferring the look of a particular place
- preferring the smell from a particular place
- having heard a good or bad thing about one or another place
- preferring a particular menu over the others

So with those as some of the influences at play, we have to adopt a strategy to get our way. A lot of the success of strategy is down to our relationship with the friend and what they are most likely to react (either for or against) the strategy chosen.

As Jeeves would say, it is down to the psychology of the individual. A good facilitator will be able to read the person and their actions/responses and coerce the individual. The really good ones would ensure that the other person didn't realise what the strategy was or that one had been employed at all.