Archive for August, 2007

I’ve been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my dad’s lap as he held the newspaper out in front of us both and got me to read sections out loud. Then he asked how my whistling practice was going as I...
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A friend of mine showed me this over the weekend. It looks, at first glance, just like a regular NSW parking ticket. These were on a bunch of cars near where my friend parked apparently. On closer inspection, after the outrage has subsided, the victim realises that it’s actually a glossy flyer for a...
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Ambrose Bierce. What a guy. Born Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce on the 24th June, 1842. There’s a name we don’t see enough of any more – Gwinnet. I must have a chat with my wife and see if we can name our first born son Gwinnet. It’ll toughen him up in school if nothing else....
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Personalised licence plates on cars are things that usually really annoy me. You often have these souped up cars driven by boy racers that still live at home with their mum. They’re about nineteen years old, still on their P-plates and driving forty thousand dollars worth of car. Just one example of today’s easy...
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You have to respect a good name. John Shelby Spong is a good name. Mr Spong is a retired Episcopal bishop and has recently written a book that should have all free thinking folk dancing for joy. The book is called Jesus for the Non-Religious. The publishers originally wanted to call it Freeing Jesus...
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British film goers have voted It’s A Wonderful Life as their favourite happy ending. I can live with that. It’s one of those all time classics and regularly screened at Xmas time in the UK and most other English speaking nations. I was rather disappointed at the second placing though. Pretty Woman, that hideous...
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If you were doing a bit of work experience at the Oxford University Press, you might think you were onto something pretty special. If you actually had a job there, you might be patting yourself on the back on a regular basis. But in further proof that no job is completely exempt from mind-numbing...
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The English language has often been condemned for its incredibly nonsensical grammar rules, along with all the exceptions to the rules and so on. I speak a couple of other languages as well as English (though none of them very well) and I have the utmost respect for anyone that learns English when it’s...
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It came to my attention recently that the email subscription service for The Word, supplied through Feedburner, wasn’t working properly. There was a problem from when I migrated this site from Blogger to Word Press. The problem has now been fixed and you should have received a mass update of posts in your email...
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Just a quick one, but I had to pass it on. Sometimes the simplest graffiti is the most effective. I can’t stand these mindless vandals that go around tagging their lame street name across everything. However, some good quality graffiti is to be lauded. What’s good quality graffiti? Well, anything that has genuine artistic...
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