you can't do that

What I can't do is cut or copy 'n paste. Still. I google the problem and get 367 gazillion hits, all of which may as well be written in Korean for the sense I can make of them.

What I wanted to copy 'n paste was the comment by bro2uncle about how the video "co-insides" with the lyrics. I cannot but agree. I note I can copy 'n paste the URL. But not the words.

And I am fed up to the back teeth with things being "rolled out". Can we possibly just occasionally implement or introduce? Because they're, like, words too? Like, English words with meaning?

i got rhythm

Quite some years ago I read The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux after seeing a review in the newspaper, and through it became quite a fan.

For some time I was mesmerised by the flow of his words. He would insert some speech which often seemed at odds with the narrative; an invitation to meander even while engrossed in the story.

Principally he aroused in me a seemingly pointless ambition to insert colons and semi-colons anywhere and everywhere. Even today I will write some piece of officialese and find I have dropped a semi-colon or two therein: the conundrum then is whether they should remain. Bureaucratese is not an habitual resting place for these undervalued grammatical oddities.

So it was predictable tonight that I would be interested when I came across this Theroux piece. I had to read it, not least because I am sick of reading bitter polemic everywhere else.

The article is all in that familiar, lolloping rhythm that I first noticed all those years ago; his style hasn't changed at all. His insights may be a little more stilted now, I much preferred his reflection of the UK at the time (The Kingdom by the Sea). This one is full of points being made, rather portentously. Results of fame, I guess.

And I still have in my head the observation he made about Australians - specifically Australian backpackers - in The Great Railway Bazaar. Travelling third class across pre-Islamic Revolution Iran, he noted that when travelling in the lowest class possible, there would inevitably be Australians there. It seemed intended as an insult but probably more accurately reflected a national pragmatism; less spent on train tickets, more to spend on booze.

how bizarre how bizarre

Bizzare? You bet.

I apologise for this link. I originally clicked on the story in the SMH but then this incredible, irresistible force made me......yes your Honour, it made me.

So onlookers applauded? Presumably because she breathed, or walked, or possibly did both simultaneously.

Celebrities, they are a different race.

Mainly because when they get their pictures taken, their mouths are always wide open.

Presumably aids in doing that breathing thing.

Best not to look at the knuckles, then.

However, as for onlookers and their behaviour...my mind has boggled.

all the young dudes

Look, regardless of the legalities or the rights and wrongs and even of the role of wikileaks within an MSM-dominated world, Julian Assange is a dude. A fucking dude, man. He oozes cool.

I'd love to have Geoffrey Robertson QC declaiming from the computer while I was at work. I would be so empowered! Bring back Hypotheticals!

Also, I was privately (well actually not, now that I've written it, I guess) appalled that Bianca Jagger was not allowed to jump the queue.

Also, I wonder at the wisdom of supporters turning up in Guantanamo-style boiler suits. With friends like these, as the saying goes.

cat empire

Just as well you get to read the headline first. If you looked at the picture and read its caption first, it would indeed be a "wtf?" moment.

Back in tha day, which back in tha day used to be rendered as "back in my day", a wtf moment would have been described differently, perhaps as "bizarre".

However, we can thank modern technology for giving us wtf, which is so much more expressive.

Actually, on reflection we can thank modern teaching methods.

But if we were given to reflecting deeply, and with prejudice, we would have substituted "blame" for "thank."

Meanwhile, I was immensely reassured to learn that the 1968 Theft Act applies to kittens.

Does it, however, we must ask ourselves, apply equally to kittehs?

Modern life, it poses so many conununundrums.

i get a round

I've whinged previously about the word "around" colonising the pseudo-policy space, as in "we need to have some responses around that issue."

I work with some people who seem to use it every 5th word.

However today's effort by Ian Thorpe, announcing his insert verb here to competitive swimming, takes the cake. Unfortunately the clip is not verbatim, but Thorpe said he would focus "around" the 100m and 200m lengths.

By which I took him to mean 99m, 101m, 199m and 201m.

Only time will tell.

In the meantime, all good thoughts for our coastal - and indeed not coastal - neighbours to the north of Capricornia.