Friday 29 December 2006

"AH DUNNO!"

Apologies for late opening of the gossip-shop this morning. anticant decided to get himself some breakfast, which he usually can't be bothered to do. ben and the Beadle overslept. Sorry, folks!

29 comments:

anticant said...

Zola, this blowing cover business is the problem with Google. You don't have to be much of a sleuth to make connections [if not attachments!].

When I set up my hotmail and Gmail addresses for the burrow, I took the precaution of anonymising the sender's address.

I'm glad I did, as I hadn't realised that half the contents of the burrow would be scattered around Google, like a cosy living room shattered by a bomb.

I don't think you need worry too much. Just keep on being the delightfully engaging and whimsical Zola that you are, and no-one will bother about the rest of you.

zola a social thing said...

Antirant : Please keep that Beadle of the Parish where he belongs. That is under the guiding influence of that old Morpheus.

Thanks for your concern too Anti.
No fear.
I could as easily write under my own name as far as i am concerned.
problems do come, however, with other work and connections and family and the poor cat.
But for myself I have no fears at all.
I can also say that i do not even bother to seek out identities.

zola a social thing said...

So Anticant : I might forgive you if you keep that f....in Beadle off me back.
Had enough of them before.

Anonymous said...

[opening one eye] Ho! Ho! Ho!

zola a social thing said...

Go to sleep

Anonymous said...

Anticant!
Message from Ray G.
Sends his love to you and says 'the poppet' is still popping up everywhere......
Has asked me to pass on his new Address and phone number, which I will email later on today...........xx

Anonymous said...

How about using non-English swearwords, as a compromise? People aren't generally as put-off by swearing in a foreign language - even if they understand the words they don't have the same emotional force.

Apart from Nell, I'm the only here, as far as I know, who speaks Polish, kurwa, and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind. zola can perkele all over the place without me, for one, batting an eyelid.

anticant said...

szwagier: It's not the swearing - it's the misuse [and therefore abuse] of sexual words in a non-sexual, and usually aggressive, context that I object to. Same applies whatever language they are in.

lavenderblue: Many thanks. I look forward to the info. A sudden thought has struck me! Are you the purveyor of blue stockings to Suzon?

Anonymous said...

That puts zola and I on safe ground then. Neither kurwa or perkele are sexual in nature, although they may (emphasise may) be used with aggressive intent.

Not that I swear a lot, but I'm always curious as to what the problem is because it's not something that bothers me at all.

Intemperacy and intolerance bother me much more, however flowerily they may be expressed...

Anonymous said...

Apologies, I've just noticed a horrendous grammatical faux pas which I can't leave untouched. "That puts zola and I"? Naughty, NAUGHTY Szwagier.

Let it be corrected to "zola and me" and I'll spend the next 15 minutes in the sin bin.

anticant said...

IMHO sexual words should only be used warmly and joyously - never aggressively in a self-[or other-] hating way.

Into the sin-bin with you and Zola. The mind boggles at what you'll get up to there. Maybe give lavenderblue a tinkle?.....

Anonymous said...

As Basil Fawlty once very nearly exclaimed, "I'm off to have some fun with a Finn!"

I'm not entirely averse to your strictures regarding sexual words, anticant, but I do see a real-world problem, noted by many over the years. What is the non-sexual equivalent of 'f*** off!', 's** off!' and 'b***** off!'? 'Go away!' doesn't nearly achieve the degree of emphasis and command in those expressions.

To take a hypothetical example, if Tony Blair himself were to come up to me and ask me to vote for him, give him the benefit of the doubt on some important matter of the day, or indeed try to convince me to breathe out after breathing in, I would feel impelled to ask him to remove himself from my presence in the briefest, most pugnacious way possible. That would require me to use one of the three expressions mentioned above. More than likely the first one. Would I be wrong to do so?

anticant said...

What's wrong with BUZZ OFF! [you pestilent blowfly].

Anonymous said...

Well there you go. My curse-addled brain didn't even think of that.

To me, 'buzz off' sounds like a euphemism... And I'm not like those people, Americans usually, who go to the 'restroom', or people who talk about their deceased relatives 'resting' instead of being, well, dead.

Euphemisms are the linguistic version of the mythical Victorian skirts covering piano legs, and I'll have nothing to do with them.

As I said, though, I don't swear a lot because I am rarely roused to it.

anticant said...

BUZZ OFF!!

Anonymous said...

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zola a social thing said...

allo I'm back
buzzing around again

zola a social thing said...

BTW : Got me Dickshunairy wid me too.

Anonymous said...

On no you're not! No dirty books in 'ere.

By Order.

Anonymous said...

Don't linguists prefer 'Lost in translation' over 'resting,' Swzag?

Thing is, AC, maybe we need to keep some of the hard words in play, or else the euphemism will take on that character. If you don't have f*** off, say, then one day 'buzz off' could become just as offensive. Just like the way 'toilet' itself was once a euphemism.

zola a social thing said...

Butwhatif : I might add with you here the official title of a book :-
" How To Shit In The Woods"
No joke here. It was a useful book by 2 American authors.

Or :-
Teacher says to school boy in UK : "Are you chewing gum?"
Boy back to teacher : " No Sir I am Roger Brown"!!!!
teacher replies : "Out of this class and report for 6 of the best from the beak.

anticant said...

Zola: ben trovato is busy. anticant is busier [see over on Big Pike's site]. The Beadle is asleep.

Anonymous said...

I have a very useful book on 'the F word', published by Random House. And it leads me to another question. Are acronyms containing the distateful monosyllable also to be avoided? Things like ASAFP, FUBAR, NMFP, and SNAFU?

There once was a fellow named Chuck
Who offered a hooker a buck
She turned him down flat
Explaining that that
Would be almost like giving a f... never mind.

Anonymous said...

The first citation for that usage in writing appears to come from the end of the 18th century... I can give references if anyone's interested :)

Anonymous said...

Tinkling over me is definitely an extra............

anticant said...

Szwagier, I think you are being deliberately obtuse. That kind of language doesn't 'offend' me. I simply dislike it, and ask people, as a matter of courtesy, to refrain from using it in my burrow.

Also, I have young relatives who may occasionally look in, and they could get the wrong idea that if I tolerate it on my blogsite they are free to use it to my face, which they are not.

I am really getting rather bored with this. Can we please drop it?

Anonymous said...

Definitely no golden showers in the burrow! Havelock Ellis does NOT live here.

By Order.

The Beadle.

Anonymous said...

Just obtuse, not deliberately. Anyway, consider it dropped.

Anonymous said...

Anticant..
email sent to you.................
xx