Oops! I left my brain on the train!

Tomorrow: "How Conniptions Will Save the Global Economy" but for tonight, just this my friends (from here via Ampersand Duck):

Dear Ms/Mr Dictionary Writer

Is it just me or does this Shakespeare look like he needs a cigarette?

After considerable thought, I have decided that life would be better if I was Shakespeare. Sure, there was probably a little more scarlet fever and smallpox in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries than I'd like, and definitely a little less sanitation than I'm into, but what would you give to have created thousands of words, at least 1,700 of which are still in use today?

Since there are many reasons why I will never be Shakespeare, including that he lived and died several centuries before I was even a twinkle in my parents' eyes, and that he had a gargantuan brain while I am, well, a kettle, in my quiet moments I like to think on what small amendments I could make to the rolling stone that is the English language. They are thus, and I humbly submit them to you:

1. 'sea-hice' as a plural of 'sea-horse'. I always find it rather awkward saying 'sea-horses', so many esses. I believe the substitution of 'hice' for 'horses' would allow discussion of herds of sea-horses (sea-hice) to be more easily enunciated. After all, we say 'mice' rather than 'mouses'.

2. When 'so' is used to indicate a great amount of something, it should have an additional 'o'. Thus, to indicate cause and effect it need only have one 'o': "Snow White ate the poisoned apple so that she'd pass out then get a snog from a dashing prince with great hair"; while to indicate a great deal of something, the extra 'o' should be added: "Snow White was soo pissed off that the prince was into that totally hot guy from Silent Witness".

3. 'boilt' as an alternative to 'boiled'. No reason, just sounds funny.

My goal for Monday is to use each of these little enlargements to the English language, and to use them more than once if I can bring up sea-hice twice in one day without sounding like a cream-faced loon. I would be delighted to do my bit to advance any suggested enlargements you have; just say the word.

To tweet or not to tweet

I've been thinking a lot about Twitter over the last few weeks, partly because it's been in the news (apparently Demi Moore twittered heavily from a post-Oscars shindig, keeping the peeps up to date with celebrity fro-ing and to-ing), partly because 140 characters feels like a haiku challenge, but mostly because of their curly, birdy logo:

Nice.

But what Twitter has really got me thinking about is how accessing information about an event or thing before it happens changes my experience of it.

I read a post the other day on the digihub blog about Twitter and the earthquake in Melbourne. Apparently someone had tweeted about the quake within 20 seconds of it starting ("um earthquake?"), while it took 20 minutes more for info to start appearing on mainstream media websites, and over an hour to make it onto telly.

So We the People can use Twitter and other online outlets to pass information between ourselves at a cracking pace, which is all well and good and would certainly be beneficial if one or many of us were sitting on the loo when the quake started ("um earthquake?", "no! beans!").

On the other hand, my compulsion to ferret through the whole silly list of online things I've signed up to means that I often preemptively deflate the things I plan to do. For example, last night I went to see Coldplay, which, I'd read from online reviews, tweets from people who had seen the Perth show, comments on blogs etc, was meant to be pretty great. Someone in all that ether mentioned a particular effect the band used during the song 'Yellow' so of course I had to check it out on YouTube.

The end result was that they played the song, the thing I'd read about and seen on YouTube happened, my inside voice muttered "yeah, yeah, seen it," and I felt a little stupid for paying $140 for a great seat then ruining it for myself.

Am I doing myself out of great experiences by reading about them first, or have I just shifted that thrilling moment of discovery and newness back from the event itself to the reading about it? Would you pay $140 for a ticket then watch a clip on YouTube?

Great lines put to good use

You know how you sometimes hear a great line that you just know is the most perfect thing you could possibly say in a given situation? The kind of line you make yourself memorise in the hope that one day, somehow, you'll find yourself in a situation where you can use it? I did this a lot with Top Gun through the '90s, despite my complete lack of contact with fighter pilots and/or the aviation industry.

Now, 15 years after the episode was first screened I finally have occasion to use one of my favourite lines from The Simpsons:

"Discount lion safari!"

Oh lordy who ever heard of such a thing? Imagine! A discount lion safari!

Happily for me the global crisis thingy has finally led to lion safaris being discounted to never seen before prices:

African safaris on sale now Save Big $$$ [sic!]

So not only am I able to use one of my all-time favourite lines but I can also Save Big $$$ on my next African safari. This global financial crisis just keeps on giving.

If I was in charge

Last week I read a book on Australia's system of government (mercy me it made those long hours on the plane fly by), so this week I've been noticing constitutional thing-bits everywhere (I did a similar thing with Hobbits after The Lord of the Rings and animals with revolutionary tendencies after Animal Farm).

From the rousing description of the constitutional provisions of the Executive Government in the opening pages all the way through to the definition of 'voting' at the end of the glossary, this book had me hooked and ready to buy a cheap island to set up my own democratic wonderland.

And in my small republic (since this is a wishful thinking, imaginary island), the Prime Minister's primary duty would be to go around ceremonially warning people of approaching 'political shit storms', just like this one:



Next week's exciting reading: All About Ships: A Book For Boys by Lieutenant Taprell Dorling, R.N. I'll let you know if the lieutenant has any insights on the constitution or how to spot a shit storm from out at sea.

A holiday is a very good thing

A confused sailor/diver mistakenly hitting on a dugong that he/she thinks is a mermaid.

I've had a marvellous few travelly days and have now added 'pilot' to the list of things I want to be when I grow up since, as the pilot chirped happily at the start of my first flight, all we have to do to get between Sydney and Brisbane is "make a few right turns".

During my time away I learnt that working in an un-airconditioned room during summer helps you acclimatise to tropical heat, and that while your freshly minted acclimatisation might make you feel smug as you watch friends and loved ones sweat around you, no-one will think jokes about turning on the heater are funny (even though they are).

So in true cheesy holiday-maker style my time off has included a trip to an aquarium.

I'm a big fan of aquariums; what's not to love about the "If the fall doesn't kill you, the crocodile will" sign above the croc enclosure and the discretely positioned snack and gift stores amongst the tanks? "Ooh, look at that Southern Purple Spotted Gudgeon. Ooh, look at that chip and drink combo."

But my favourite part of my latest trip to the aquarium was the dugongs, those lovable cows of the briny deep.

While the dugongs themselves were great, the aquarium's advertising campaign that dugongs are just like mermaids was snort-worthy: tell a small child to expect mermaids and they're thinking Disney hair and shell bikinis when what they get when they walk up to the glass is stubby snouts and dugong pink bits. Next they'll be trying to tell us the giant Wobbegong is in fact Santa Claus and that the Southern Purple Spotted Gudgeon is actually the toothfairy. Way to kill the dream.

The only thing worse than trying to convince kids that dugongs are mermaids is trying to convince adults that lusty sailors confused dugongs for, ahem, very lovely ladies.

Anyhoo, a fine holiday, Dungongidae-human confusion aside, and I can't wait to see what sort of tourist-based anthropomorphism they've got going on at the zoo on my next holiday.

Can't see the wood for the... State?

A map of Australia with the 'remote' island of Tasmania pictured bottom right. The miniscule island is only 90,758 square kms and sparsely populated by half a million people, who are hard to see amongst the old-growth forest trees.

I spent some time on the weekend reading a thorough yet accessible book on environmental science. As it's a 'self-teaching' book it's full of little self-teaching quizzes, my favourite so far containing this question:

12. IOTPF is an acronym that stands for
(a) Indoor Outdoor Tennis Players Federation
(b) International Octopus, Turtle, and Piranha Foundation
(c) International Oil Tanker Owners' Pollution Federation
(d) Indigenous Owls of Temperate Pine Forests

I don't know the answer, I must have skipped the IOTPF page, but I'm happy to live in a world where any of these four are a possibility (provided (c) is anti rather than pro).

Anyhoo, reading through the chapter on 'Ecosystems and Biodiversity' I came across this delightful little sentence:

"Old-growth forests are found primarily in northern climates, although there are small caches of untouched trees in remote locations like Tasmania."

I don't actually live in Tasmania but I live in the country of which it's a State, and I'm pretty sure Tasmania itself isn't, you know, 'remote' in the whole 'forget electricity, McDonalds and the wheel, all they have in Tasmania is old-growth forests' kind of way. I'm pretty sure it's, oops, got a State Parliament and a postal service, and even its own floral and mineral emblems.

I thought perhaps the book had been written many years ago, before the mythical Great Southern Land had been discovered? But no, it was published in 2005. Then I thought perhaps the author him or herself may have been living under a rock? But no, he or she appears to be connected to one of those big, Western university-type places (which, on reflection, doesn't exclude living under a rock).

But no matter. I will have to leave Tasmania to its bi-cameral parliamentary system as I've got a week of travelling and bits and bobs ahead of me so see you back on Saturday.