Talking about Cheese

Okay, so I needed some help with spelling "Jarlsberg" for the last post...

I managed to find my way to this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cheeses

I now have a strange desire to undertake some sort of "tour of the world" via cheese. Is it completely ridiculous to want to try all of the regional cheeses in the world?

Just a typical Jarlesburg Afternoon

Kirsty: "So, when will you be back?"
Helen: "I should be here on Tuesday."
Kirsty: "Feta!"
Sharon: "No, I'm reasonably sure she said 'Tuesday'..."
Kirsty: "Feta!"
Sharon: "Well, now that you mention it, that is more interesting. We should rename all the days of the week after cheese. Monday can be 'Colby', Tuesday is 'Feta'. Is Winchester a type of cheese?"
Helen: "Friday should be Halloumi."
Andrew: "Something should be Camembert. Or Brie."
Stephen: "What planet are you from?!?"

Celery

I knew I was going to be staying at work late tonight, and then heading straight out to a movie, so I decided to pack myself dinner as well as lunch today.

It had to be something I could eat with my hands in my office, so I packed a "picnic" for dinner: cold chicken drumsticks, cheese, pineapple slices and a couple of pieces of celery with peanut butter.

It seems a bit sad, but I've been hanging out all day for those sticks of celery with peanut butter. Every time I started to feel the slightest bit peckish today, my mind has been going "hmmm, celery sticks with peanut butter..."

I happen to believe that the best way to eat celery is raw and with peanut butter spread down the middle. If you've never tried it you should give it a go.

Anyway, I've eaten them now, and they were very nice, but I could do with one more...

Fury VS Phoenix 17th October 2009

Quite possibly the worst game I have ever watched.

I have to say, it's a good thing I'm already invested in the damn game, or this match would have sent me packing.

It was really, really boring - and the few bits that weren't boring were largely annoying. I can usually tell when a show is bad when I find myself paying more attention to the sets and rigging than the actors. This game I was reading the ads and looking at the speaker set up while the ball was still "in play" (if you could call it that).

For those of you who didn't watch it (and, I imagine, you number in the billions), it went a little something like this:

Kick, kick, kick the ball off the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Kick, kick, kick the ball of the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Wellington scores in the first eight minutes with a really boring goal. Kick, kick, kick the ball off the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Kick, kick, kick the ball to the goalkeeper who, for some unfathomable reason, kicks the ball to the other team - who then kick it off the field.

And so it went on for the next eighty minutes - nothing happened, and it didn't happen very often, either. A few times the Fury pretended to kick the ball towards the Phoenix's goal, but they either weren't really trying, or they really suck at this. At one point the little kid sitting near me cried out, "oh, they were so close!", and I just had to say: "No, no they weren't."

Once in a while something interesting would almost happen, but then someone on the opposite side of the field would fall down and clutch their knee or their side, and the referee would have to stop the game to go and see why the poor dear had fallen down. Then the boringness would resume.

At half time the reserves started warming up, and during the second half a few of them would try to keep themselves limber by doing some funny little dance down my end of the field. That was more interesting than what their team-mates were doing on the field.

Oh, and then Robby Fowler scored a goal and the entire crowd erupted. Not because it was a particularly brilliant goal or was particularly well executed, just because someone finally did something. Then things went back to being boring, until the penalty time started.

Finally, in the last four minutes of the match, they actually played like they cared if they won or not. People tried to keep the ball on the field. They tried to get it from one end of the field to the other. They tried to get a goal. There was a sense, in the air, that someone might actually score something and win this thing. Then the time ran out and it was just another draw.

In the end, it was all just frustrating and horrible. It was as though two teams who didn't have a hope of winning were playing each other because they had to, and not because they wanted to.

Honestly, I don't mind backing a losing team. I don't really care if the Fury are at the bottom of the league and keep getting put down match after match. The way I see it, the longer the fall, the sweeter the climb. When they finally win something - when they finally move just one rung up that latter, it will just make it all the more interesting.

However, it has to be said:

If you can't give us a win, at least give us a show.

We humans are fickle that way - we'll forgive you for being losers, but not for being boring.

Sonnets

A couple of years back I had this scathingly brilliant idea.

I was going to write a love story about these two people who met, went their separate ways, bumped into each other a few times over the years and ended up together.

Yeah, I know, we've all seen When Harry Met Sally - but this was going to be different.

This was going to be about two people who were interested in each other from the start, but life got in the way and they followed their heads instead of their hearts.

Okay, we've probably seen a few films (not to mention read our fair share of books) with the exact same concept. But this was going to be different.

This was going to be in verse. Not only in verse, but in too-clever-by-half verse - the girl's side of the story was going to be told in sonnets, while the guy's side of the story was to be told in haikus.

Bet you haven't seen that one before, eh? Probably because it's daft.

Sonnets and haikus are lousy ways to tell stories. They are not designed for exposition. The few sonnets I wrote to actually convey the story line sucked. The haikus were slightly less terrible, but they also weren't really haikus. Oh, sure, they had the structure of a haiku, but not the soul of one.

I quickly abandoned the idea as being "stupid".

However, every now and then I suddenly feel the urge to write something that might fit. One day, some day, I just might find I've written the thing after all - one sonnet at a time.

Sonnets are one of those things that just draw me in. I just love the form. I'm particularly attached to the Shakespearean style, but I have been known to accidentally produce an Italian Sonnet (it's probably best if you don't ask how someone can accidentally write an Italian Sonnet). I haven't written a Spencerian Sonnet yet, but I'm sure it's bound to happen one day.

Anyway, the other day (yes, it was another one of those middle of the night things) I felt compelled to write a couple of sonnets. I had meant to write one Shakespearean Sonnet, but I accidentally wrote an Italian one instead, so I tried again. The second time I got the structure I was after, but the direction of the poem shifted from the original.

You can read them here if you want.

Oh, and I should probably take the opportunity to warn you: sonnets are one of those things about which you shouldn't let me start talking. They sit in the same category as Superman and the history of bicycles as "things Sharon knows too much about, and insists on sharing..."

Matthew Reilly

At lunch today I was reading an article on Matthew Reilly in an old newspaper magazine.

I wasn't really reading it, though, just flicking through to pass the time, then I stumbled across a picture on the last page of the article. He was wearing a Flash T-Shirt. As in, The Flash - The Fastest Man Alive.

Now that caught my eye, it must be said. So much so, that it took me a second to notice that he was sitting on a DeLorean.

A DeLorean, people! The guy is a prolific writer, not bad looking at all, and he wears a Flash T-Shirt and drives a DeLorean.

I think that covers everything I'm looking for in a man...

Potatoes

There comes a point
In every research project
When the very mention
Of Springerlink
Or Science Direct
Or Proquest
Just makes me want to turn the computer off
Move to some obscure European town
And grow potatoes for a living.

Semilingualism

"Semilingualism" is a word I've learnt recently thanks to my research into library support for language learning.

"How's that going?" you may ask, to which I would have to reply:
"Eh. I'm learning lots of things, but I don't know if they'll actually help with my thesis."

At the moment, I have a research project in search of a thesis to prove. I know what my field is, and I'm learning more about that all the time, but I don't know what I want to say.

Attempted thesis statement no. 85:

There are a number of different methods language learners use to acquire a second language, and academic and public libraries need to consider not only the support that each learner nominally needs, but also the support they are getting from other sources and the inherent challenges that come with each method.

I'm not sure if that actually said anything. I could probably argue it for 14,000 words, but I think that says more about my ability to produce drivel than it does about the actual merits of that statement.

I'm trying to capture the concept that a student in a language course will be getting support and guidance from his/her/ta teacher that a student trying to teach themselves French using the books in the local library won't be getting. The librarians can't be expected to fill up that gap, but could we give some help and guidance to make their efforts a bit more effective? Are there generic "this is what you need if you're going to learn a language" considerations that could be applied to our collection policies and library guides? Can we be proactive in suggesting to language teachers what they can recommend their students do in a library? Things like that.

Anyway, in following a tangent which is quite possibly a complete waste of time, I've been looking a little bit at bilingualism - which is how I've come across the term "semilingualism".

"Semilingualism" is a term that can be seen as somewhat insulting and many teachers advise avoiding it. Basically, it means you can kind of speak the language, but not well. Your speech is halting, you take some time trying to work out how to say what you want to say (and even then you probably pick the wrong words), you read slowly and without full comprehension, your grasp of the spelling and grammar of the language is limited and flawed and - above all - you have a limited vocabulary.

"Double-semilingualism" is the term used for people who speak two languages poorly. That is, neither their home language nor their second language is fluent.

Now, this concept has always intrigued me. I have no problems at all with accepting the fact that a person may not be fluent in a second language. That makes perfect sense. I can understand how people might lose a grip on their home language when they move to another country where it isn't spoken and therefore struggle with both languages. What I've never been able to work out is why people aren't fluent in their home language if their home language is the lingua franca of the place where they live. This is your mother tongue, you speak it every day (and twice on Sundays) why are you struggling so much to say what you want to say?

I've particularly noticed it with certain socio-economic groups. English is their only language - they have no other language to struggle with - and yet they still have great difficulty thinking of the word they want to use. When they finally choose what they want to say, the words are either incredibly basic, used incorrectly, or largely supplemented by expletives.

I can't get over the number of people who seem to think that every adjective can be replaced by f--ing and every noun can be replaced by s--t. What amazes me even more is how the people they talk to actually understand what they're saying. Personally, if someone came up to me and said "I got the f--ing s--t from that place, yeah, but I seen there was some other s--t there and now I dunno what to do with this f--ing s--t, eh?", I would struggle with understanding what they wanted from me. Yet their peers not only understand, but respond in kind.

I think their entire mode of communication must depend on the fact that the person they are talking to is aware of the context. Once they have to speak to someone who has never seen them before, they really struggle to say what they want to say.

Okay, let's say reading was never a big part of their upbringing and they've therefore missed out on a lot of opportunities to learn vocabulary. They still watch TV, right? Days of Our Lives uses a wider vocabulary than they seem to have at their disposal. Heck, Funniest Home Videos uses a wider vocabulary than they seem to have at their disposal. And it's not like they never read - yet even New Weekly and Boar it Up Ya also use wider vocabularies than their readers use to communicate. So why can't they say what they want to say using real words? Words that might actually mean something and have a standard dictionary definition that makes sense in the context?

What I want to know (and there's probably research papers on this out there if I ever get serious about finding out) is how someone can be semilingual when they only have one language?

I also want to know if it's possible to get a list of everyone who buys Boar it Up Ya so I can avoid being in the same room as them.

You should always listen to the fish

I'd forgotten about the fishes! Man, I remembered it was a bit odd, but I'd forgotten about the fishes.

I found the Acapulco poem.

I've put it up on one of me other blogs. Click the link above, if you can be bothered wasting whole minutes of your life on a rambling conversation with no one in particular - with a fish chorus...

Pin-up

I think it's safe to say that every woman in the Western World had a “pin-up boy” when she was *ahem* younger. Someone whose talent may have been dubious, but whose “prettiness” was beyond question. Someone whose face adorned a wall, a spot near the mirror, the inside of a locker or the back of a bedroom door – somewhere it could be seen on a regular basis everyday because, for some reason she will never be able to fully account for, seeing that face just made the day seem somehow brighter.

For a brief and shining moment, this “pin-up boy” can do no wrong. If they are a terrible singer or an average-at-best actor, these things go unnoticed, forgiven and vehemently denied for several years. If they are actually half-way decent at what they do, than the devotion is all the more justified and sweet.

Over the years, the pictures/posters may get covered up by others, moved, folded up and placed in a scrapbook of memories or thrown in the trash like so much old paper, but deep down every woman caries a soft-spot for her pin-up boy. She will still forgive him his terrible singing and bad acting. She will still pause for a moment whenever she sees a picture of him and savour the old, familiar lines of his face. She will still feel sorely tempted to see his latest movie, buy his come-back album, watch a TV show just because he's in it or go to see his concert if he's in the country.

This is the reason why otherwise sane, sensible, middle-aged women leave their teenagers to fend for themselves while they drive half-way across the country to go to a concert by someone their kids have never heard of, act like teenage girls and throw their underwear at (let's face it) old men who haven't been able to hit the old high notes for years. It's all for the sake of that boy whose face adorned the back of their bedroom door and made the day seem brighter.

My pin-up boy was a Superboy.

No, I mean that, literally: Gerard Christopher, the second actor to play the role of Superboy in the TV series from the late 80s/early 90s. I first watched the show when I was ten, and didn't quite register just how spunky this guy was until it was repeated a few years later.

Sure, the first actor to play the role (John Haymes Newton) was actually a better actor. To be honest, Gerard's acting ability is about on-par with most actors who have worn the “S” - that is to say, roughly on par with the marionettes in the Thunderbirds. But the guy was definitely pretty:



Okay, for those strange people out there who can't take a man seriously when he's wearing tights, here's a picture of him wearing a T-Shirt:



And here's a picture of him not wearing a T-Shirt (isn't the 'Net grand?):



Are we on the same page now? Good.

Now, there is a good chance you've probably never heard of this guy before, and there are a few good reason for that:

• His “hit” TV series (which should have launched him to fame and fortune) was more or less boxed up and hidden in an attic by Warner Brothers in order to protect their new “hit” series, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and thus it was never syndicated and only repeated in a small number of countries outside the US.


• He immediately followed up this role with a part in a very, very bad Western TV miniseries (actually a couple of telemovies based on two different books by the same author, but screened as a miniseries). How bad? Well, so bad they include lines like “I've got things to do, places to be,” spouted by cowboys just before they ride into the sunset. All the actors are horrible and wooden – even the ones who shouldn't be, like Martin Sheen. Oh, and they're R rated because they include a couple of completely pointless scenes with bare breasts – without which they could probably be screened on a Saturday afternoon without trouble.


• The only movie he's starred in that was actually half-decent was independently funded and took five years to get out of the festival circuit and onto the Hallmark channel.


• His agent clearly sucks. I mean, seriously, the guy is damn pretty and there are hundreds of crappy TV shows being filmed in the US every day – you couldn't get him a decent range of guest-star spots, or a pilot here and there? He's perfect for playing a “token hot guy” or a man in uniform or something.

Anyway, it has to be said that, I'm still likely to see anything he's in – no matter how terrible it is. And, if I ever get to become a Jerry Bruckheimer or something, there's going to be a role for Gerard Christopher in every thing I do.

Sad, but true.