Homophonic offences

This morning – still in bed – we heard the BBC radio announcer say something like this:

Police investigating allegations of racist and homophobic offences have raided about 150 addresses across London.*

But the announcer stumbled over one of the words and said “homophonic offense”.

Homophonic offense! I howled. About damn time they went after that – all those extra apostrophes – it’s is just not the same as its – and for far, far too long people have been using them interchangeably with impunity.

I mentioned this at work – and one of my colleagues said “This has come not a moment too soon.” We laughed all day about this.

Of course, though I try my best, I too am guilty of the occasional homophonic slip. Most of us in our team admitted to having difficulty choosing between bear and bare in certain circumstances. I urge forgiveness and understanding, but not silence, when it comes to the homophonic offense.

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* yes, yes perhaps I should be more concerned with the fact that police powers are being used against people who’ve committed thought or speech crime (at worst) or that real crimes (vandalism, harrassment, actual but small-scale violence) are being prioritised over other similar real crimes because they’ve come under some kind of “hate crime” category – but you have to admit that homophonic offense is pretty darn funny.

Jim Webb?

Democrat Jim Webb sounds like my kind of politician:
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_12_04/mcconnell.html
Anyone know anything about him?

parti-colored

The Vol-in-Law isn’t much of a one for buying flowers. He once found a fresh-ish bouquet of mums in the gutter of a windy Preston Road in North West London and gave those to me. He was very proud of himself for that – and to be fair he did change the water every day so it lasted a long time.

I do drag him to the garden centre several times a year, but he gets antsy like a little kid. He can only look at the garden statuary for so long.

But last year we saw a most beautiful, but over priced pot of fancy chrystanthemums last year. It was £10 – but the complex blooms were fluffy and butter yellow. We looked at it for some time before buying it. This is not the kind of purchase we usually make. I have never seen the Vol-in-Law willingly spend money on any kind of flowers and certainly not ten whole pounds. (With current sliding dollar values – almost 20 bucks).

It survived the winter, and I cut it back in Spring and dutifully pinched the growing tips over the Spring (with the last pinch on the Fourth of July as a garden centre co-worker Ty Justice advised me to do) – so there would be one set of fabulous blooms in the fall. But I’d never overwintered chrysanthemums before, and I didn’t cut it back hard enough in the Spring – so the plant is all floppy and mis-shapen.

The blossoms are still that beautiful yellow – but they’re droopy. And one or two of the blossoms have reverted to a purple color and one blossom is fully half-and-half.

more on the effin PCC

Shamelessly ripped from Open, but it just made me laugh too hard not to use it.

Apparently, I’m not alone with a Press Complaints Commission go screw yourselves message – after they suggested that there be a “voluntary” “code of practice” for blogs. Self-regulation? This blog is already self-regulated.

• Antony Mayfield says: You can’t prescribe self-regulation for blogs – they do it themselves as far as they are interested. You didn’t regulate newspapers effectively. Go away.
• The Devil says: Go fuck yourself. But in the true spirit of things establishes his own code of conduct. (Hmmm….it’s actually pretty well considered.)
• The Select Society has some actual analysis as to why it’s a stupid idea.
• And Disillusioned and Bored has even developed an anti-code logo – pretty cool:

kids these days

The Vol-in-Law told me last night that one of his students told him she wasn’t too sure about this free speech thing – after all she’d “never heard of it until the Mohammed cartoon thing.”

“What are they teaching kids these days?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”

My friend bought that

My friend Vol K works for a multi-national corporation that you’ve heard of. She’s a procurement executive or some such. I think what she does is make strategic procurement decisions (?) and set up and negotiate the contracts and other people make the decisions about buying off from those agreements. But whenever she’s here on business, I always ask her “What did you buy today?”

This company has a store on a famous London shopping street – one of the streets with wow-y Christmas lights and city sidewalks, busy sidewalks dressed in holiday styles. She took me there one time and showed me the promotional banners and other items that she had set up the procurement contract for.

I pass that store at least once a week and sometimes I say to my husband “See that banner? Vol K bought that.”

Not feeling Christmassy

I know that it will be December in a couple of days, but I’ve done no Christmas shopping (but I have an idea) and I haven’t even thought about trying to drag my Christmas decorations down from storage. I turn my head from the Christmas displays in stores or the lights on Oxford Street.

It’s hard to feel in the holiday mood when you still have this in bloom in the garden:

I promise to be good

The UK Press Complaints Commission [PCC] has called for a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers. Since self-regulation is a lot like putting several 10 year olds in charge of themselves*, I’m all for it. I’m now self-regulated. No change there then.

“On the internet “there are no professional standards, there is no means of redress”, Mr Toulmin [of the PCC] said.

He added: “If you want to see how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked, then look at the internet.”

He said a voluntary code of practice would allow content to be checked without government involvement, stressing: “We’re not in favour of regulating the internet. The flow of information should not by regulated by any government.”

Hmmm – exactly who is doing the checking. The PCC? And who pays for it? The individual Brit blogger by paying a membership fee to the PCC?

Here’s what I have to say to the PCC. Go screw yourself. I’m not paying you busybodies any money.

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*at least the 10 year olds I liked when I was 10 – I’m not talking about that goody-goody girl with the gleaming straight hair, unwrinkled clothes and the tendency to tell on others to teacher

Creationism on the rise

For all the Brits who like to sneer at the Bible-thumping Americans denying evolution:

Creationism is on the rise in UK schools.

successful dressing

Thanks to my helpful contributors Newscoma and Genderist (recipes here in the comments) I managed to make the best cornbread dressing of my life. And I’ve just come back from a lovely Thanksgiving meal at my friend’s house. It may have been in London and on a Sunday, but one thing was certainly traditional. I’m feeling uncomfortably full. Like really uncomfortable.

Using Nana’s recipe list (that’s what I already had) – plus Newscoma’s mother’s use of many, many eggs – I managed to get a dressing the way I liked it. Unlike the Newscoma recipe, mine was an all cornbread affair – but I may try to half cornbread/ half biscuit thing next time round.

But being me I couldn’t follow a recipe straight up. Here were my alterations:

I added herbes de Provence – I know it sounds French (and I guess it is) but it’s parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme and bay leaf. I also used leek – a very popular vegetable here in the UK as well as onion.

I still don’t know what a fluted mushroom is – so I didn’t use any of those. I was a bit doubtful about the sliced almonds, but that worked out really well.

sauteeing veggies: celery, leek, onion and mushrooms – plus those herbes de Provence

et voila – the finished product

I also made some pies (pumpkin and pecan) – and they were really tasty – but weren’t quite as pretty. There was an incident – a slight mishap – in the making of the pumpkin pie. Something akin to this holiday disaster and cover up. I’m not really ready to reveal exactly what I did, but you know, no one noticed, and I ate it myself.