Glasgow Renovations

[Righ]

Terror in Glasgow is going in the wrong gate for an old firm match.

[Endie]

Hadrian's wall was built for a reason. To keep you motherf*ckers contained. Some of you did manage to escape to America, where you quickly reverted to slightly modified habits, such as road-kill cuisine, moonshine distilleries and the WWF.  :-D

Yes, but remember that our genius was to regulate and systematize the whole thing by inventing the KKK.  But then we invented everything.

And while we're at it.

[DraconianOne]

I await Draconian's rebuttal.  Maybe in his weird moon-language.

Eich mam yn arogleuo fel elderberries ac eich tad yn hamster!

[Righ]

But then we invented everything.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609606352

[Lantyssa]

be interested to know if any of our american friends can understand a word he says :)

A few words were hard to make out, but I had more difficulty with my normal hearing issues than the accent.

[Yegolev]

be interested to know if any of our american friends can understand a word he says :)

I got about 90% of it, actually, but I'm from one of those places in America that Engels alluded to.  And Armstrong as well.

[Endie]

But then we invented everything.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609606352

I own not one but two copies of that.  Each given to me by the same person on succeeding birthdays.  I guess he really thought I should read it.

[Righ]

Either that or he inhales.

[Strazos]

I'll agree with Ironwood's email. When your Tube got bombed, people just went about their business.

Though having to traverse a huge chunk of Greater London and such on foot can be a bit tiring.

[Righ]

When I used to commute to London from Portsmouth, I found it more tiring to use the tube. I regularly got off at Waterloo and walked into the city. Took longer, but I arrived less stressed. Also, its quite a nice walk, just 1-2 miles depending on where the particular gig was.

[Strazos]

Oh yes, it's definitely nice to walk around. The loss of Tourism Time, spent just walking from place to place, was the most annoying part.

[Endie]

Does anyone seriously believe that John Smeaton's single-handed dismantling of the terrorist threat to the UK is unrelated to the release, three days later, of Scottish BBC journalist Alan Johnston in Gaza?  I think somebody worked out that they had a tiger by the tail: "In the name of Allah the Merciful, the Just, the Vaguely Inclined Towards Suicide Bombings, why did nobody tell us he was a Scot?"

I imagine that they filed sheepishly into his room, shuffled a bit, declared their surprise that Alan had somehow caught his wrist on the radiator-handcuff while constantly referring to him as "Mr MacJohnston Sir", muttered that their only demand had been that England hand back the 1966 world cup and immediately release all Scottish jakeys arrested for begging at Kings Cross, then gave him a big present and sent him on his way.


Edit... Exercise: conjugate the third person imperfect tense of the transitive verb "To give".

[Ironwood]

 :-D

[Righ]

Does anyone seriously believe that John Smeaton's single-handed dismantling of the terrorist threat to the UK is unrelated to the release, three days later, of Scottish BBC journalist Alan Johnston in Gaza?  I think somebody worked out that they had a tiger by the tail: "In the name of Allah the Merciful, the Just, the Vaguely Inclined Towards Suicide Bombings, why did nobody tell us he was a Scot?"

I imagine that they filed sheepishly into his room, shuffled a bit, declared their surprise that Alan had somehow caught his wrist on the radiator-handcuff while constantly referring to him as "Mr MacJohnston Sir", muttered that their only demand had been that England hand back the 1966 world cup and immediately release all Scottish jakeys arrested for begging at Kings Cross, then gave him a big present and sent him on his way.

Too good for here. Send that to Private Eye.

[Ironwood]

Agreed.  It's already doing the rounds of some of the finest minds in Scotland via the magic of SMTP.

[Endie]

God, and I used "given" when I should have used "gave".

I'll post it on my blog.  Saves me writing any new stuff today.  Fuck knows why I blog when I hate, you know, blogging.

[Ironwood]

You have a blog ?

[Endie]

That little picture of a world under my avatar picture.  I should do what Haemish does and put it in my sig: why indulge in the narcissism of blogging and hide the resulting light under a 4-by-4 pixel bushel?

[Ironwood]

God, and I used "given" when I should have used "gave".

I'll post it on my blog.  Saves me writing any new stuff today.  Fuck knows why I blog when I hate, you know, blogging.

I can now answer this question :  It would appear to be due to EVE.

[Endie]

Yeah, that's unrepresentative, though: but I was getting 4000 hits per posting so i thought I should give 'em what they want    I'm pretty much through that phase.

[Yegolev]

Do you hate blogging due to the horrible spelling often found in them?

[Endie]

Is my spelling horrible on there right now?  I tend to type more quickly than I am capable of, and am guilty of reversing or omitting characters, especially when tired.  I tend to go back later and fix all the typos, too.

[Yegolev]

I can't be sure, I stopped reading at "beaurocracy".

[Daeven]

Just imagine Groundskeeper Willie saying it.

Groundskeeper Willie is - and I am pretty serious here - a brilliant character to have as our representative in popular culture.  He saves classes of schoolchildren by ripping off his top and wrestling lions into submission.  He doesn't wander round in a methadone haze (for all that the drug thing did no harm to Ewan MacGregor) nor is he often seen drunk and begging for change in Kings Cross station.  We should be paying Matt Groening a stipend from the tourist board.

And in comedy-pronounced-by-foreigners place names we are small-fry compared with Wales.  Machrihanish is as a mere bagatelle to a people who call their towns Llanymddyfri and Ystradgynlais.  That's why Wales has never been, nor will it ever be, attacked by Al Quaida.  They would never be able to agree on where the left the cache of arms.  Which is a shame, as it would finally garner them some mainstream popularity in middle-classed England.  Boom-tish.

I await Draconian's rebuttal.  Maybe in his weird moon-language.

Hell. People replace Oregon with Or-e-GONE all the damn time. I can't imagine what they'd do with that Welsh gibberish.

[Endie]

I can't be sure, I stopped reading at "beaurocracy".

I don't know what it is about that bloody word.  When not betrayed by my keyboard and haste, I can spell at spelling-bee-champion level in English and French, and I'm not bad in German or Latin, either.  But I keep wanting to put a "beau" prefix in bureaucracy.  I remember thinking "check it" as I wrote that sentence.  But laziness got the better of me.  Restaurant used to trouble me, too.  Damnable French vowel forms.

If, however, someone doesn't read what I've written because of one spelling error, I'll hardly miss their pedantry.  English has always been a fluid language, with standardised spelling a product largely of the last couple of centuries, and still prone to shifts.  Americans can't spell honour, colour or rigour.  But I often enjoy reading what they write, anyway.

[Lantyssa]

lern 2 writ noob!

[Sky]

AO taught me how to spell bureaucrat correctly. Too bad that actual class implementation sucked. Lumcorp ftw!

[Yegolev]

If, however, someone doesn't read what I've written because of one spelling error, I'll hardly miss their pedantry.  English has always been a fluid language, with standardised spelling a product largely of the last couple of centuries, and still prone to shifts.  Americans can't spell honour, colour or rigour.  But I often enjoy reading what they write, anyway.

I believe it was President Andrew Jackson that said something about it being a poor man that cannot spell a word multiple ways.  In reality, as long as I know what you are talking about then I'm cool, but it is a lot of fun to pester people about spelling and grammar.  It means I have to be very careful, though, and it's even worse since I have a terrible time communicating properly in spoken English.

[Endie]

I believe it was President Andrew Jackson that said something about it being a poor man that cannot spell a word multiple ways.  In reality, as long as I know what you are talking about then I'm cool, but it is a lot of fun to pester people about spelling and grammar.  It means I have to be very careful, though, and it's even worse since I have a terrible time communicating properly in spoken English.

Oh, believe me, my first response was to start analysing your post-history for spelling issues and dangling participles.  Then I remembered what my old grandmother always said to me:  "Keith, stop being such a dick."

[Ironwood]

If only she'd ever met Mr Chegwin.

[Yegolev]

My use of commas is shaky, and my understanding of phrases is limited.  Use that as you will.

[Endie]

If only she'd ever met Mr Chegwin.

Or Mr Harris and his homunculus, Orville.  The late 70s were a bad time to be a Keith in Britain.