little bits of everything

I was reading a book recently set in the world of the Arthurian legend. It described a cross as a "crog". That reminded me that as a child when we crossed our fingers to get away with lying we called it "crogs". So after you tricked someone you brought out your crossed fingers, said "crogs" and they couldn't complain that you were lying. We had other dialect words that I haven't hear much elsewhere. I was visiting some people in Derbyshire as an adult and a mother called her child "mardy", which means in a cross mood. Down in Surrey where I lived by then I came across the word "strop" as in "to be in a strop" or "being stroppy". Sweets were "goodies". If you had a ball bearing when you were playing marbles they were "bollies". When you greeted someone you'd say "n'en" which was short for "now then". Today I just came across this map of words from the BBC...

One of the interesting things about having children is the way that you see cultural artefacts coming out in their speech. One example is the word "pwned" or "pwnage" from the verb "to pwn ". I've been aware of this for a while from the geeky world and then one of my children started using it. Just this evening I heard it on the News Quiz on Radio 4. Many years ago I first heard the word "internet" on the same programme, and I knew that yet another geeky thing was beginning to come into public consciousness.

I went to our local John Lewis a couple of days with a couple of the boys on our bikes. The bike rack is outside the staffroom and I could see the following written on the whiteboard: Hope more Chew more Breathe more Say more Love more The internets tell me this is half of a Swedish proverb: Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.

Various thoughts that rattle around in my head and in my draft posts list have coalesced as I've come across a new online magazine. (Did I manage to sidestep Rule 1 ? You judge.) I clearly remember the first time that the word content made me mentally shudder. I was listening to Scot Mills who was doing a prank call to some of his colleagues in BBC Radio 1. The woman who answered the phone said to one of her colleagues when she'd worked out what was going on, "It's probably Scott because he needs more content for his show". What?  I thought. All that stuff he does with interviews on Stupid Street and Becky's contest with that other guy and "What's Becky's forte", all that is just "content". The trouble with hearing it described like that is that it made me think about how Scott, and Chris Moyles too, come up with all that, er, content.  So they probably sit around in meetings and come up with ideas and send people off with tape...

We borrowed Kirby's Epic Yarn for Wii over half-term. It's a delightfully inventive game and I'd recommend it for children of all ages. It's quite forgiving, but that doesn't make it easy. One of the things that struck me was the variety of music on the soundtrack. Before I cover that though, some thoughts on computer games music generally. Because gaming doesn't occupy a high place in popular culture compared with its turnover, and because it's mostly background, I think it doesn't generally get thought about. Recently, though, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra  played a concert to mark 25 years of Legend of Zelda. Mostly it seems like it's pretty generic stuff, see Exhibit A - the music to Da Blob. However even the music on that is cleverer than it appears as the melody only plays while you're painting, but cuts in and out at the right moments. The World of Goo music is quite distinctive and I think it sounds like a film soundtrack. Yo...

When I started riding a scooter 11 years ago I looked at a few scooter forums to see what people were talking about. Some of the people there looked down on those with "plastics" as they called the modern scooters that have become so popular. Then a bit later I got a motorbike and hung around on the Usenet group uk.rec.motorcycles. There everyone looks down on scooters, but the proper bikers look down on "power rangers" as they call those who wear one piece coloured suits and ride when the weather is nice. So we've got a hierarchy growing here. Anyone with a motor powering their two wheels looks down on those who have unpowered two wheels. So I wonder what hierarchies there are amongst cyclists. I don't know  but I imagine people with  fixies  look down on other cyclists as theirs is a purer form of cycling. Maybe the shiny road cyclists look down on the muddy mountain bikers. Or maybe the world of cyclists is tribe-free. Maybe not. Who's at the bo...

My money tree photo got included in an article on thisiscolossal.com .