The Write Way

3 August 2007

Two Men and a Television

Greetings,

This is the story of two men and a television ... not just any television, but a huge, flat-screen telly that would be (and is) the envy of all their mates.

When we meet our heroes, they're seated in the living room, their eyes transfixed by the glorious sight of the aforementioned television, taking pride of place (and everyone else's place) at the far end of the room and covering, incidentally, most of the wall and the entire window that previously looked out onto the back garden. A quiet word with their wives confirms they've been in this state since unpacking the box two days ago. Perfection cannot be rushed ... they intend to savour the moment ... After all, Life is all about the journey, not just the destination.

The men are best mates and neighbours; they share each other's lawn-mowers, electric drills and ladders; they escape to the safety of their backyard sheds when the women start talking babies and operations, and they watch the footy together on TV when their wives have things to do and they have to mind their kids and can't get away to the game.

Or they used to only watch the footy at home when circumstances required it, but now, they choose to stay home, because they have a new toy, and what a toy it is! Big, bold and beautiful, it sits quietly dominating the room, the men and the house ... quietly, because they haven't yet worked out what to do with the myriad cables, plugs and bits hanging from its rear.

So they sit, their attention focussed on the object of their desire, each one nursing a beer and quietly turning the stubby, stroking its cool perfection as if they hoped a teenager would suddenly appear in a froth of beer to plug in all the cables and have their baby operational at last.

Now, those of us with no dangly bits to plug in may be wondering why they don't simply pick up the Instruction Book and follow the directions, but of course, I've already given you the answer to that, haven't I, girls? It's because no man will ever admit he doesn't instinctively know how machines of any description work. 

Meanwhile, our lads will continue to sit and contemplate the challenge ahead of them until they're joined by Johnno and Simmo and Spider and the rest of the lads who will then collectively nurse their beers until Davo, who works for the electrical store in town and is generally acknowledged to be a bit of a whizz with TVs, knocks off and drops by to hook it up for them. 

Meanwhile, they're enjoying the antici ... pation of finally being able to enjoy the Big Screen.

Yes, I admit this was rather a long introduction so you could meet some clever nicknames ... Spider, of course, is the nickname given to anyone whose surname is Webb.

Then there's the Aussie Rules footballer, born without one lower arm (his hand is attached to where his elbow would be). And what do his football mates affectionately call him? Why Clock, of course. 

I've told you before about the brothers at one of the schools I taught at ... their surname was Rockwell, so the first boy through the school was Rocky, and when his younger brother started, he was called Pebbles. And the boy everyone called Legs, because his name was Garth Hopper ...

Here are some more sporting nicknames I came across:

Martin Offiah, nicknamed Chariots 

Ian Herron, called Chook

Eric Lamb became Baa

Andrew Embley is The Stadium

Phil Sigsworth known as What's-a-packet-a

Matt Hilder is called Waltzing

Neil Pointon was known as Dissa Pointon

Fitz Hall called (naturally) One Size

Finally, some nameless players (for obvious reasons): one was called Showbag because he was so full of garbage; a player known to his team-mates as Beer Bottle because he was empty form the neck up; and the jockey called Autumn Leaves because he was always falling on the ground.

This word nickname comes from the Middle English ekename. The phrase an ekename changed over time to become a nekename.

This week's quiz:

Do what you must with these: contemn, evince, stentorian, arduous, vitiate, suppliant, staunch, encomium, imperiousness, tautology

1. warm or glowing praise; eulogy, panegyric

2. steep, difficult ascent; laborious

3. a repetition, a redundancy

4. asking humbly, beseeching

5. arrogance, commanding presence

6. to show clearly, to indicate

7. to stop the flow of a fluid

8. to pervert, debase, make ineffective

9. to scorn or despise

10.extremely loud and powerful

And a word of warning to those of you still single ...

We were helping customers when the store optometrist walked by and flirted with a co-worker. Of course, we all had to stop what we were doing to tease her. But she quickly dismissed the notion of a budding romance. "Can you imagine making out with an optometrist? she asked. "It would always be, 'Better like this or like this'?"

Last week's quiz:

Here are some neologisms -- some of them are about celebrities ... Match 'em up:

euronating, bollotics, uptitling, helicoptering, chuggers, post-ironic, blingtastic, deskfast, popbitch, snoutcasts

1. anything so obviously pretentious and really rubbish that the only thing to commend it is how pretentious it is - POST-IRONIC

2. what "spending a penny" will become in the new world of Euro-dollars - EURONATING

3. people who are banished from their workplace because of their smoking habit and huddle around outside doorways - SNOUTCASTS

4. very flash - BLINGTASTIC (From bling bling, for extravagantly flashy, particularly diamond-encrusted, as favoured by rap stars)

5. a rumour surrounding a celebrity which may or may not be true - POPBITCH

6. breakfast designed to be eaten conveniently at one's workstation; a nice clean clinical muesli bar, not a greasy cooked breakfast - DESKFAST

7. a combination of nonsense and political correctness that annoys and amuses in equal measure - BOLLOTICS

8. charity muggers, attractive young men and women who wear branded tabards and repeatedly stop passers-by in the street, asking them if they can spare two minutes for the homeless/environment/third world/elephants - CHUGGERS

9. tendency for employers to give workers grander-sounding job titles in lieu of pay rises, eg technical horticultural maintenance officers (gardeners) - UPTITLING

10. to rise above an issue and take a look at it from a business wide perspective; trying to see the whole picture - HELICOPTERING

The engineer of a train passing through Poland could see no lights because the power had been knocked out by a severe ice storm. 

"We're running out of coal," he said to his trainman, "but I think we're coming to Gdansk or Danzig, or whatever they call it now. Let's stop and send the porter out to buy some more fuel."

The train stops and the trainman gets out to investigate.

"Can you see a sign on the depot that says Gdansk in this dim light?" calls the engineer.

The trainman replied, "It appears to be Danzig in the dark." 

And the engineer shouted, "Buy coal, Porter!"

Yes, you can groan now ...

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An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot!  Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them).

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A Little Something Extra

Here's some timely advice from children's writer, Laura Backes ... all about the importance of proof-reading everything you write:

"Once you've plotted out your book, developed the characters and written the last word of text, the real work begins. As busy editors are bombarded with hundreds or even thousands of submissions a year, it's more important than ever that authors apply their own editing skills to their manuscripts before putting them in the mail. Checking your basic grammar and spelling are of course important, but authors need to go beyond surface editing if their work has a chance of catching an editor's eye."

Read Laura's tips on how to get your work seriously considered 

Word of the week: Hypocorostic (adj) endearing, as a pet name, diminutive or euphemism

This word comes from the Greek hypokoristikós hypokor(ízesthai) to play the child, call by endearing names. 

This is the way many Australian nicknames are formed -- we shorten the word and then add a suffix like -O or -IE, -Y or even just -S.

So John becomes Johnno, William becomes Billy, Deborah becomes Debs. Or we remove most of the name and add -AZZA. So Sharon becomes Shazza, Warwick becomes Wazza.

No, don't ask why ...

Oxymoron of the week: sporting personality

A nifty Latin phrase that could apply to many of our sporting stars ...

Hodie adsit, cras absit. 

[HOH-dee-ay AD-seet, KRAHS AB-seet.]

(Here today, gone tomorrow.)