Nominitive undeterminism on the high street

Yesterday sitting in the Sundered Land shopping mall with a chai latte, I found myself musing on something my eye fell upon nearby. Just across from where we were sitting a clothes shop, "Bank" by name. I took to musing further -there are a number of shops whose names imply different sorts of products to what is actually being sold.
Currys don't sell Indian food.
Superdry certainly don't do duvets -or any kind of dry cleaning.
River Island have nothing to do with real estate.
Clarks aren't an agency for deploying clerical workers or clergy.
Boots might sell you a cream to ease a blister but not the footwear that rubbed it sore.
Waterstones on the whole don't sell rocks, polished or otherwise.
PC World seems not to be into security or crime detection -nor is it doing consultancy on protected characteristics in the workplace.
Caffe Nero do more than black coffees, I notice.
The Works seems a misnomer in whatever dimension you might understand the term: who'd have thought they'd sell you stationery or books but so little else?
I was surprised not to get a drink and a sit down in a plush leather armchair but rather clothes at the Officers Club (surprised too that they let me in).
Top Man is not an escort agency and Top Shop is usually found on the ground floor.

On the other hand Schuh is rightly named. And Brighthouse seem to live up to the name -though rumours say the effects of their hire-purchase agreements my be less than brightening.

Outragelicals

Yes you read it right: "outragelicals". Great word; describes well something I've noted before about how there are many Evangelicals who enjoy trying to find things to be offended by, even better if it can give apparent support to the idea that Christians are being persecuted or treated less civilly than others. Come to think of it, the Daily Mail seems to assume its readers have a lot of outragelicals among their number.

Why Google’s “War on Easter” is offensively Christlike - Red Letter Christians:

The feral rich: tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime

This month's New Internationalist has a good set of articles on the theme of the feral rich. Obviously referencing some politicians' rightist-press rhetoric about the 'feral poor'. There's a great set of cartoons under the title: "The Feral Rich, How Can We Help Them?" and it's a '10-point action plan for policymakers'.
These are witty. Some of them are quite worth considering (I nominate 2, 4, 6, 10).
1. Gang Culture. Break up their vicious, criminal gangs by arresting the ringleaders and locking them up. (The cartoon has the police turning up at the World Economic Forum)
2. Parenting. Provide parenting classes to teach social values and respect for others that they can pass on to their children.
3. Housing. Move them out of overvalued ghettos in the centres of the world's capitals. Turn over the properties that they own but rarely occupy to public use and social housing.
4. Crime and Rehab. Crack down on repeat climate-crime offenders by confiscating their luxury cars and private jets. Rehabilitate persistent offenders by teaching them how to walk and use public transport.
5. Wean the work-shy off the benefits of unearned profit. Break trust-fund dependence. Get undeserving recipients on to work experience schemes.
6. Anti-social behaviour. Use 'tough love' to deal with those who engage in risky behaviour, who gamble, cheat and deceive and then expect the public to bail them out of trouble. Ground them, tag them and ban them from using the internet to vandalize the global economy.
7. Profligacy. Target contraception towards problem families with morbidly obese carbon footprints fuelled by irresponsible lifestyles.
8. Vandalism. Get them to clear up after themselves (the cartoon has a reference to BP chief being made to help clear up an oil spill.)
9. Social Conscience. Teach them to start paying their own way. Lesson no.1 Pay your tax.
10. Restorative Justice.  Get overpaid execs who helped themselves to bonuses from bailed-out banks and businesses to face the victims of their crime and repay the money they owe.

The feral rich -- New Internationalist

Avoiding tyrrany

Good point.
Motivational Monday � Cheese-Wearing Theology

Language Log � Translated phrase-list jokes

Some of you have no doubt seen the chart of English phrases and how they are heard by Europeans and what is really meant. Well, there's a short one with a handful of French phrases, the same treatment.

French Phrase	Literal Translation	Idiomatic Translation
"je serai clair"	"I will be clear"	"I will be rude"
"Il faut la visibilité Européenne"	"We need European visibility"	"The EU must indulge in some pointless, annoying and, with luck, damaging international grand-standing."
"Il faut trouver une solution pragmatique"	"We must find a pragmatic solution"	"Warning: I am about to propose a highly complex, theoretical, legalistic and unworkable way forward."

Language Log � Translated phrase-list jokes:

The bug fix

This blog is worth subscribing to; every so often there is a rather lovely, or insightful or just downright witty 'definition'. So check this out: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows — the bug fix. I reckon this fits in the category of 'interesting and possibly insightful':

"the bug fix
n. the satisfaction of updating software, which gains effortless new features inside the cocoon of the progress bar, whereas your personality—a beta version with compatibility issues, unstable memory and a quirky interface—is open source, trusting peers to collaboratively debug your emotional source code until it’s stable enough for official release into adulthood."

I like the recognition that personality has a component that is socially-formed. It would be worth exploring the metaphor further: are we prepared to 'open source' ourselves? That's the big challenge of Christian community. And is there a way that the mention of adulthood should be interrogated? I'm mindful of Steve Taylor's poem (can't recall which just now) where there is the line: "When I grow up I want to be a child".

Ice-cream van music used to calm Belfast riot

This sounded to me like a nice use of initiative, not least because it appears to have been a non-violent solution which would change the mood of a crowd: "'An officer used the vehicle's tannoy system to play music to the youths in an effort to use humour to defuse the situation. The youths stopped throwing the bottles." sounds brilliant to me and the kind of action that we could do with training officers in! But not everyone thinks so: "However, police accept that this was not an appropriate action."
Why not? Readers of this blog are invited to explore further or share any further info. However, the reason for the reprimand don't appear to be good to me: a Sinn Fein official is reported to have commented: ""The PSNI are put on the streets to do a serious job and that is to keep order on the streets and face down antisocial elements. This is like a sick joke."
Iow: only violent or aggressive or 'serious' methods are allowed. Things that might defuse the situation are not serious. I think the official should remember who picks up the bill; community policing with the grain of the culture seems like a good idea to me. Since when did aggression and facing down do anything but ramp up the temperature and breed resentment and very likely add to the bill through continued vandalism and hospital bills?
The officer deserves a medal and commendation for quick strategic thinking.
Of course the main downside is that they probably can't repeat it. It's the creativity of it that worked.
WWJD?

Hope And History: Making Peace in Ireland
The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland

So that's what they're called: Mondegreens

Misheard -or rather misanalysed- lyrics to songs are called mondegreens. This article gives the etymology. snopes.com: Christmas Carol Mondegreens
My favourite is probably "the hot dogs go on" for "the heart does go on" in 'I will always love you'.
Oh and Desmond Dekker's 'the Israelites' turns out to be the most prolific producer of mondegreens.

How about you?

Ouch!

Chrisendom: The New Church of England Logo

Comedy and intelligence

I remember at a school I was working in, there was a drive to identify the gifted and talented. One of the tasks involved was for each subject area's teaching staff to draw up a list of characteristics that might indicate high intelligence or giftedness. One colleague raised an eyebrow at the inclusion, by the RE department, of humour as a potential marker of gifted ness. For me there was no raised eyebrow, in fact I was a little concerned that the person concerned hadn't realised what goes on in good comedy. So it is to that unknown teacher I dedicate this quote from Scott Brown on Stand-Up Comedy, Lingua Franca of the Wired World And here's the quote: "... a successful joke implies insight, and insight, especially if it's pithy and self-explanatory, is the basic currency of a high-speed information economy. Second, the fundamental tools and techniques of that economy—memory, annotation, contrast, collage—are also the fundamental tools of comedy. They facilitate ironic linkages, unexpected resonances across genres and media, and anarchic twists on established, institutional forms."

Not quite baptised

I have read recently of how it was reported that there had been cases in the church of the late Roman period where men being baptised did so with their right hands raised out of the water so that their sword hand would remain unbaptised, allowing them (by some twisted logic) to continue as soldiers. Well, I wonder whether there is a lot of truth in this late capitalist version (save that it should perhaps be a credit card)?

Of course, if we held that as some kind of doctrine, what would it say about baptism by aspersion?
Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

The honest truth about Christmas card sending

Dave Walker anatomises the dilemmas of Christmas card sending very neatly in his latest cartoon:
Cutting down the Christmas card list

E-mail error ends up on road sign

My Welsh in rudimentary (I started to learn a number of years back but wasn't able to continue), but what I do know does indeed support this. BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | E-mail error ends up on road sign:

"When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.
Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: 'I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated'."

12 Funniest Wedding Names

Amazing. At least these are somewhat accidental (unlike naming a child with a first name that really has unfortunate linkage with a surname; eg Annette Kirtan). Still, quite a giggle, go see the photos of the newspaper announcements. 12 Funniest Wedding Names

Meet meat

YouTube - Film School NYFA - They're Made Out Of Meat

Leaked document on ID cards

THIS is, as it is claimed, the scan of an internal document of the Identity and Passport Service. It’s about the plans for the UK’s identity card scheme…

A Worship/ministry 'ouch!'

Thanks Jon. A picture really does paint a thousand words...

333 � The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus

Conversion: to what

Oh yes. Redemption and lift.
306 � The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus

12 Days ... messed about a bit

I'm a sucker for singing comedy: and this is a nice exemplar for the run up to Christmas.
Enjoy.

YouTube - Straight No Chaser - 12 Days

What a difference a /d/ makes

My suspicion is that this gaffe is partly down to the propensity for Brits to adopt Americanisms into their singing accents. As is well-known, many north Americans do not phonetically distinguish post (or inter?)-vocalic /t/ and /d/ -turning them both into a flapped 'r'. This gave rise to difficulties in the recent England match against Croatia where a Brit sang the croatian national anthem and made a pronunciation error.

According to the lyrics posted here, the second quatrain of the Croatian national anthem should go as follows:
Mila kano si nam slavna,
Mila si nam ti jedina,
Mila kuda si nam ravna,
Mila kuda si planina!
Dear, you are our only glory,
Dear, you are our only one,
Dear, we love your plains,
Dear, we love your mountains.

However, Mr. Henry rendered two repetitions of 'kuda' in the last two lines as 'kura'. ... he instead sang 'Mila kura si planina' which can be interpreted as 'My dear, my penis is a mountain'.

Apparently, the chuckle that gave the Croatian players has been given as one reason for their winning the game.

Language Log: What a difference a /d/ makes: