Salt and corrosion

Is 'Everybody Hurts' really the most appropriate song they could think of as something to sing for Haiti? Chin up, Haiti, everybody hurts sometimes. Well done, Simon Cowell! (Of course, my feelings could be tainted because I'm not all that keen on the REM original. And by 'not all that keen on', I mean I hate it.)

Today I read an academic journal article that used the word 'quadrilemma'. As in, a four-pronged dilemma. That is beautiful and I am going to attempt to work increasing -lemmas into my conversation. 'I just don't know what to do, I have such a heptilemma.'

I read this today, which says that women are more likely to remember the first pair of shoes they bought with their own money than the name of the first person they kissed. Let's see... no and Benjamin. Take that, surveyors.

Angela went Christmas shopping at lunchtime and came back with something for her teenage son: a box set of Man vs Wild DVDs, which made me laugh because... well, because what else is Bear Grylls good for? Our other colleagues had never heard of him, so Angela and I explained Bear and his oeuvre by showing them the moment when he drank the liquid out of elephant poo. What I particularly like about that is that every other time I've seen him, he's been at pains not to drink contaminated water, but this time he's happy to hoe in.

Also, is 'splore' (as in,'don't put your big splore feet on my clean floor!') a word that other people use? Or just my grandmother?

Do you know what's terrible? When you're sure you're dying or, at the very least, a bit feverish, and you take your temperature and it's disgustingly, disappointingly normal. I had some sort of tummy bug (doesn't that sound like it should be a rather sweet little insect?) on the weekend, which involved being sick enough for nausea and sleeping and feeling chilled to the marrow, but not enough to have a temperature higher than 36.1. Perhaps the thermometer is broken. But I'm better now, so it doesn't matter.

My mother hates people saying 'on the weekend'. Particularly newsreaders and me. She thinks it should be 'at the weekend'. But I say that if I was talking about the individual days of the weekend, I'd say 'on Saturday' and not 'at Saturday', so she is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. (Wrong is one of those words that looks, well, wrong, the more I look at it.)

Also, whenever someone says something is as cheap as chips, I always think of wood shavings. You can pick them up by the bagful on a building site; that's pretty cheap. But someone told me, no, it means hot chips (or fries). What do you think?

[Poll #1476343]

I get the weekly newsletter from WordSpy, which records new words as they develop. It's interesting, but I think there's a difference between new words that may actually be useful and new words for completely made up things. Viz. yesterday's new word, which was 'carrotmob': n. An event where people support an environmentally-friendly store by gathering en masse to purchase the store's products. I can't tell you how unlikely I find (a) the event, (b) the word and (c) the possibility that I would use it.

It has been freakishly non-windy here this past week. Leaves aren't rustling, clothes are hanging straight down on the washing line, dropped papers are staying exactly where they fall... it just isn't right, I tell you. The worst part is that there's no wind to dry the frost off the footpaths, so they stay slimy and slippery all day. Ick.

So to end my week of Sights in the City by the Sea, here's a photo of the sea in question: the unusually flat (but usually cold) Southern Ocean and two optimistic surfers in it. They're not going to get far on that wind-less breaker.

What is the point of David Blaine, exactly? I'm not a fan of magicians in general, but he seems to be a particularly useless example. How is hanging upside down for three days an illusion, or entertaining, or, you know, in any way interesting or valuable to the ongoing benefit of society? Gah.

But I shouldn't be all bah humbug, because I'm on holidays. Whoo! Except I'm not really; I've taken a week off work to put the finishing touches on my research essay about the national anthem. As Simon the New Chap pointed out, it's like I'm being paid to write it.* So I'll be busy, but I'm still glad to get away from work. This week has been filled with all sorts of irritating minor issues. Some completely my fault, some caused by Leeanne and her apparent inability to take a phone message, and none at all caused by Angela, which may come as something of a surprise to regular readers; she's been on her best behaviour (and in another state for half the week, which may also have something to do with it).

I read an article today about a technology-filled house that has lights that automatically turn on and off as people go in and out of a room, which sounds good to me in a 'yeah, why not?' sort of way. Frank, the guy whose house it was, though, seemed to think he was leading the way into a brave new world. 'I love the fact that the house anticipates my needs,' he says, 'I've forgotten what it's like to have to switch lights on and off.' Because that's such a burden for the rest of us. He has also programmed the lights in the laundry to turn off automatically after 15 minutes, even if someone is in there, despite his wife requesting him not to, which makes me think that (a) Frank doesn't do a lot of laundry and (b) he's a bit of a tool.

What else? Oh, my mother saw one of her cousins somewhere and the cousin asked how her brother was. Er, well, he was fine as far as my mother knew. No, said the cousin, last I heard he was in hospital to have his foot cut off. My mother couldn't get to a phone fast enough to call her eccentric and reclusive younger brother who lives interstate. And the foot?
It's still attached; he was bitten by a spider and the foot turned black and he had several days in hospital and the doctor may have mentioned amputating it but it's all right now. And why tell some random farmer-cousin about it rather than my mother, who is both his sister and a nurse? 'Aw, I didn't want to worry you.' Which is nice.




* Simon the New Chap seems to be all right, as you may be able to tell from the lack of complaining about him. I did hear him call Brian 'tiger' the other day, though, in a completely unironic way, which is a bit of a concern. It's worryingly reminiscent of my former colleague, Craig, a singularly infuriating man.