Here is a Picture of a Dog

Before talking about pictures of dogs, it’s time to pay attention to some important points of English grammar, before the responsibility for the whole thing is given to the Americans.

Already my spellchecker corrects my spelling into American English. This has been going on in the office for years, but for it to take hold of my Thalwil laptop is too much. England has become the grammatical and spelling 51^st State of America.

The particular last straw (and point in question) was pointed out by my Norwich next door neighbour, in Rose Valley. He is a solicitor and as such is in “Practice”. It has always been a mystery why solicitors need to practise for so long, but there it is. The spelling point of this statement is that up to twelve weeks ago, I would have written “…need to practice for so long.”

For the slow of sight, like me, this was spelled with a “c”, instead of an “s” and upon such trivia, empires rise and fall.

How many of you knew that? No one, except my neighbour. I didn’t know it. My straw poll of six people showed that no one, including me, realised that the verb is “practise”. It took a Yahoo search (not Google, the wicked immoral devious tax avoider) of an online dictionary to point out that it is that it is Americans again who have changed the spelling to “I practice the piano.”

We’ve been taken over. The cause is hopeless. It is too late to stop the rot, even with my Norwich neighbour, struggling bravely at the linguistic barricades.

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Changing the subject entirely, one of the few plus points of my latest treatment is that in times of extreme tiredness, I can watch junk movies that I have seen at least five times already. “Die Hard” is the favourite, with Harrison Ford and Star Wars not far behind. For something really long, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s people can take up three entire days.

The latest film that I watched was “Armageddon”, accidently lifted by me from my niece’s library and which I failed to return. Anyway, on returning to Thalwil, and trying to watch this on my PC, the DVD decided to play the film in German.

I don’t know whether this is some kind of conspiracy between the DVD, my laptop and local authorities, but I do know that it is very irritating. The wicked immoral devious tax avoider, Google, is always trying to switch me into German or divert my searches to www.google.ch (the Swiss site).

Back to Armageddon, I managed to find the option to have English (or American?) sub-titles without a problem, and I am disappointed to report that after the pressing of only a couple of random keys, I managed to change the language. A small step for man, but a giant step for a Hawker.

Anyway, Bruce Willis saved the Earth and we can all sleep happily ever after. (…and now my iTunes has decided to double up most of my tracks. I think that this is called a feature upgrade or enhancement). As it is Apple, it must be my fault.

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In case you are wondering about the title to this blog, a headline on the BBC news website caught my eye last week for no particular reason. “India dog steals 400,000 rupees”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21076712  At the time, I didn’t know what particular aspect of this caught my eye. I think my instinct was to ask whether 400,000 rupees is a lot of money, or whether it was a case of a large number of digits, with only enough value to buy a Mars Bar. (Is this product placement? Am I allowed to do this? Can I charge Mars for this mention?).

Anyway, it seems that 400,000 rupees is nearly £4,500, so it was worth something of a fuss.

What caught my eye later was the photograph. I wondered whether there was a connection between the dog in the story and the dogs in the photo. There must have been. Why else would you have the photo? “Here is picture of Fido / Rover - or the Indian equivalent - resting after lifting £4,500”.

The caption is “Stray dogs are a common sight on India’s streets”…..and here is a random photo, which we found in the archives, of a couple of dogs, who could have come from anywhere, even Streatham High Street and will remind you what dogs look like, in case you have forgotten…..and anyway, we always like to put photos in our articles, however irrelevant, as it reduces the amount that we have to write and you have to read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confession Time:

Blogspot, on which this piece of nonsense is published, is operated by Google, the wicked immoral devious tax avoider. Oh no. What am I to do?

Suggestions required. In the meantime, I am self-righteously marching off to Starbucks for a hot chocolate and to read the paper.

Various Annoying Animals

It is time for some random grumps, some moans and groans that don’t use up a column of 800 words on their own, but are worth a mention in Grumpy’s list of annoying stuff. As the Donkey in Shrek 2 (voice of Eddie Murphy) said to Puss in Boots, “I’m sorry, the position of annoying talking animal has already been taken” or something like that.

We should start with annoying and unfunny puns, which fill newspapers and football commentaries. These are now obligatory. Presumably Sky Sports and the newspapers have departments whose sole job is to think these up and the more obvious the better. I’m looking for examples, as I think that this could be worth a blog on its own.

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Moving away from News for a change, Apple has set up an “Annoying Apps” department. The latest is the very poor imitation of a three octave piano, on which you can play chopsticks with one finger. They have even spent money on TV advertising for this, without pointing out that if Chopsticks is played several times on this App, on a train, it can successfully drive over half the other travellers mad. I think that this is a seriously overlooked selling point.

(Is “Chopsticks” a singular or plural noun?”).

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Rushing back to the News and the BBC News in particular, did you know that the newscasters have a competition which is based on three criteria. Firstly, how many times can the newscasters say “Er”. This used to be the domain of Tony Blackburn, if you can remember that far back. Now it is the preserve of mainly female newsreaders, who presumably cannot read the autocue fast enough or simply don’t have anything else to say. And if you think that this is a sexist comment, you should try listening to Jane Hill reading “Breaking News”.

The second criteria is the ratio of the time in an interview that the newsreader takes to ask the question in relation to the answer itself. The target is 100%. I mean, who really wants to hear what non-journalists have to say. The purpose of the news is to promote the Newsreaders and journalism. It’s a pretty competitive business, so the more you are heard the better. At least that’s the logic. I am waiting for the 2 minute question, followed by “I’m sorry that’s all we have time for.” They have already nearly reached that point on several occasions.

Additional points are awarded in this category for the amount of contempt for the interviewee that the presenter can put into his / her voice.

Third criteria also in relation to interviewing, is the hand-waving category. I am not sure why this is important, although it might be a variation of a language for deaf viewers. To fully appreciate this, you have to turn the volume off and watch the newsreader ask his (or her) two minute question, accompanied by hand gestures which would do justice to a premier league footballer in the penalty area, pleading to the referee for a penalty. Actually the hand waving is more interesting than some of the questions.

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On a completely different topic from the news (but don’t worry, I’ll be back), I was interested in the connection made in a television advert between the adjective “Intuitive” and “Coffee Machine”. Now I always thought that (i) put coffee in cup / cafetiere (ii) put in hot water, was about as intuitive as it gets. No instruction manual here. No Chf 200 half day training course is involved in making a cup of Nescafe, although I recollect that making Red Mountain coffee involved making a sound like a coffee percolator.

Previously you might have done a Google search on “Intuitive Coffee …..” However, I know that you won’t be using Google anymore as you will be boycotting them, along with Starbucks and Amazon, as being immoral wicked tax avoiders. So if you do a Yahoo search on “Intuitive Coffee …..” you will get a number of hits. My assumption is that if anyone needs to market a coffee making machine on the basis that it is intuitive, then there is a problem with complexity here, and you better be ready with those £150 cheques and book yourself on a course, because it’s going to be complicated.

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Lastly for this session (hurrah, you say), have you noticed that hotels still place telephones right by the bed?  If you stay in hotels, when was the last time that you used the hotel telephone? (I can’t believe that you ordered room service.) First action on arrival is to place the latest Jack Reacher thriller by the bed and to move the telephone, which then gets moved back the next day.

This is a pretty pointless Grump, just put in to fill out the blog. I’ll try to do better next time, at the expense of a hotel.