Hmm. Cyclists.

It's winter, it's New Zealand, my daughter is past 12 and so it follows, we have netball at the AMI Centre in Takapuna on a Saturday morning.
If I ever find myself somehow holding the responsibility of building a netball centre, there are a few things I will focus on.
Enough space between courts for anyone over the size of a bulemic dormouse to make their way courtside and back.
Time displays that do not ensure emergency calls to another generation of Auckland neck massage therapists.
Weather protection.
Parking that actually takes into account the possible numbers of netballers wanting to be in the same space at the same time.
So. The parking is diabolical, and I don't even contemplate it; I pull into the convenient layby, drop my daughter, and go and park in Australia and walk back.
Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.
Walking back this last week, I looked over my right shoulder and mouthed astonishment at the carpark madness. As I did, a lady exited the carpark and aimed for the entrance of the Poenamo Hotel, directly over the road, where a few parking spaces might still exist. She had to dart pretty smartly over the west-bound bit of road, because the lights had changed; she did that and then braked sharply because a couple of cyclists were east-bound and crossing the entrance of the Poenamo. No biggie, they were the only traffic.
Except they obviously were startled, and swerved, though they didn't need to.
She (as it turns out) carried on cycling. He did not.
The motorist pulled into the entrance of the Poe, stopped, wound down her window and started to apologise. Which is as far as she got.
All I could think was - you kiss your mother with that mouth?
He unleashed the most foul-mouthed diatribe on her I have ever heard; and I've been to Wembley, people.
At a point he had his hands inside her window, threatening to 'f***ing smash you, you f***ing b**ch, you cow, you ..."
I had my camera and my phone in my pocket (I'm such a netball mum) so I pulled them out, pointed out I could use them both at once (they're SO clever, these Japanese!) and also told him that (a) he and his partner were never in danger and he was overreacting (b) he was using language highly inappropriate for a venue hosting sporting events for children anywhere between 5 and 18 and (c) he was a total douche. He informed me that his partner was f***ing pregnant; so I suggested he ride after her and guard her. Luckily, we both saw the wisdom of this course of action.
Poor lady was shaking like a leaf; but was planning to park up anyway, so she did not accept my suggestion of me driving her anywhere, or getting a sugary drink of some sort, which I think is what you do for people in shock.
Way to garner motorist sympathy, Mr Cyclist.

And on a hilarious footnote : http://shelleytherepublican.com/2007/06/21/cyclists-the-two-wheeled-menace.aspx

So, on the theme of Annoying Things that Annoy me

..here is one of my favourites.

Given the two facts that motorists are meant to be keeping their eyes on the road ahead and that the Western mind is inclined to read down from the top of the page, I do not know WHO came up with the notion that the word order in road markings should be reversed, so that you end up blinking stupidly over the bonnet and wondering where the "Give" is in "Give Way". The answer is : under your tyres.
Why do they bother doing an eye test for a New Zealand road licence, when clearly the common condition is supposed to be shortsightedness?
Or do they assume, in these days of the Nanny State where Big Brother wil do your thinking for you, that we only have enough mental capacity to process the meaning of one word at a time?
In which case the road marking outside the Corelli School says it all.

Child

That

Mind

Class, brains and charm

She's a real keeper, Richie!

Things that annoy me about the All Black rugby jersey fruckus

OK, let me start by saying that the MOST annoying thing about the news articles following the matter is the continuing pandering to the insistence of A Certain Sports Brand that their name is not capitalised. Adidas (see, I can do it, it follows a fullstop) have a permanent ban on following the common dictates of grammar.Sigh.
"In English, we capitalise words that are proper nouns—that is, they describe a specific thing or entity. They could be a title, a name, or a specific place such as the president's residence: [THEE] White House.
We lowercase words that are considered common nouns—that is, they can be used to describe many things, such as any one of the multitude of white colored houses in the world."
Adidas, that non-specific and common sports brand, are at the centre of a controversy caused by the fact that they are charging residents of New Zealand (that country where the Rugby World Cup is being held) close to 57% more for a jersey, replica of those worn by the All Blacks (the national team of New Zealand) than they are charging anyone else in the world. Adidas New Zealand manager Dave Huggett describes this as 'fair and reasonable' because if they don't do that, they won't be able to 'invest anything in this country for the next 12 months'.
Is it just me, or does that mean New Zealanders who buy the All Black jersey will be the ones paying for all investment in New Zealand rugby for the next 12 months? We will effectively become the sponsors of the All Blacks?
Does that mean we may once again see grammatically correct sports advertising? Because if so, bring it on!
The second most annoying thing about the whole debacle is the addition of the acronym WAG to the New Zealand vernacular. WAG was first used to describe the filthy-rich, spoiled and attention-seeking coterie of football Wives And Girlfriends that did not so much follow the England football team around as try to lead it by  the - well, you know. The term has now been applied to one Nicola Grigg, girlfriend of Al Black captain Richie McCaw, who is weighing in with an opinion on the jersey debate. What does she have to say? This, on Twitter.
"Why the hell shd @adidas change it's prices?? It's like me telling Louis V I won't buy their bags anymore bcos they're too $$$."
Two salient facts.
Louis Vuitton bags cost anywhere between $570 and $5802.
Louis Vuitton had not, last time I checked, established an international reputation for rugby.
I would have called this next statement a fact except it's an opinion : the fashion industry is the worst waste of space in the world and its immediate demise would affect few people per capita, and just possibly would lead to luvvies everywhere raising their eyes from their swollen egos and noticing that many people in the world have Real Problems Not Of Their Own Doing. Death, disease, daily terror, deprivation and despair just for instance.
The notion of Ms Grigg righteously refusing to pay for an overpriced piece of baggage makes me chortle; because trust me, if she won't pay for it, some other fool will only be too happy to be parted from their money. At least, I hope it's her money she is notionally going to retain. After all if the only money That Sporting Company can spare to invest in New Zealand in the next year is the profit it is making off New Zealand rugby supporters, I'd prefer to see it funnelled into rugby than overpriced toys for overgrown spoilt teenage girls.

FACEPALM

From the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang:

phenom

 Home > Library > Literature & Language > Oxford Slang

noun, US

Something remarkable or 'phenomenal', esp. an unusually gifted person, prodigy. (1881 —) .

New Yorker : He has a series of run-ins with a militant black rookie phenom (1986).

[Shortened from phenomenon.]

Please note that last sentence. There was already a perfectly good word to describe this sportsman, but Americans have chosen to shorten it and as always, the rest of the English-speaking world is following like wiggly puppies.

Dansk (Danish) n. - fænomen

Nederlands (Dutch) zeer begaafd en veelbelovend iemand, fenomeen

Français (French) n. - phénomène

Deutsch (German) n. - (ugs.) sehr begabte Person

Italiano (Italian) fenomeno

Português (Portuguese) n. - fenômeno (m)

Nobody else feels the need to shorten the word. What, does it concentrate the meaning? Are celebrities more famous because they’re celebs, and can you fit more into 24/7 than you can into all the time?

And this brings me to the shoe-in.

It’s a SHOO-IN, dammit!

Michael Quinione puts this much better and more politely than I can.

“SHOO-IN

This one is spelled wrongly so often that it’s likely it will eventually end up that way. The correct form is shoo-in, usually with a hyphen. It has been known in that spelling and with the meaning of a certain winner from the 1930s. It came from horse racing, where a shoo-in was the winner of a rigged race.

In turn that seems to have come from the verb shoo, meaning to drive a person or an animal in a given direction by making noises or gestures, which in turn comes from the noise people often make when they do it.”

THANK YOU!

Common Sense and Spell Checks

                Back when I was looking for the sort of career I could combine with childcare (this was before I had children, which is hands-down the best time to have theories about combining careers with childcare) I did a copy-editing course and applied to several publishers. One of them wrote back to say that they already had a full complement of excellent copy-editing staff and doubted the ability of a computer nerd to find any errors in one of their books. As it happened, they were the publishers of “The Witches’ Hammer” so I wrote back to them pointing out the scene in which the heroine is in bed with one of the red shirts strong male characters, where they are sharing a glass of red wine and smoking. The heroine crushes out her cigarette in the wineglass EEW EEW EEW EEW!!!!. Two paragraphs later she raises the wine glass to her mouth and takes a deep drink. Now personally I really hope she got a bad dose of nicotine poisoning and spent the afternoon talking to God on the great white china telephone, and the author merely covered for her by saying she travelled back home with a new awareness of the vulnerability of trusting humans; but on a less personal  level  there’s a copy editor there who needs to have their knuckles rapped and a motivational SPELL CHECKS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR COMMON SENSE sign nailed to their forehead.

I still didn’t get the job.

I’m probably getting old and crabby – oh, scratch the probably. But I am intensely irritated by sloppiness in writing. I’m reading True Evil now, and the engaging story is starting to suffer severe interruption from the careless errors. Our heroine recalls her father, a police detective, whose two unforgettable characteristics are his impeccable police work and his habit of saying exactly what he thinks to whoever is listening. A page later she compares him to the hero doctor, because apparently they are both quiet men. And a few pages later she recalls the amount of time he spent with his only grandson; more than he had spent with herself and her sister, because back then when they were young he was building a business. Honey, these three men you call Daddy may well be admirable characters, but only one of them is biological. And all this was before a species of cobra was described as one of the ‘shiest’ of his genus. Maybe use the spell check and the common sense?

And that applies to the papers in double measure. Although  maybe common sense is unto paparazzi as Pluto is to an ant. Take this lovely statement from the Daily Mail regarding Emma Watson modelling some improbably expensive stuff:

“The 21-year-old is dripping in the latest designer creations from the likes of Yves Saint Laurent to Emilio Pucci in the new issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.”

Well, is she dripping, or is she wearing?

Wearing.       Dripping.    Which is it?

And then there’s this faithfully reported gem from none other than that modest humanitarian, Paris Hilton :  'All girls worry about their weight and I’m no different, except for the fact that when I gain a pound the whole world thinks I’m fat.'

Cheer up. I can assure you that the families of 11000 dead and missing Japanese tsunami victims, 147 Christchurch earthquake victims and 35 victims of the Afghanistan suicide bomb attack are not glued to their televisions and radios waiting with bated breath for the Paris Hilton Weight Gain Report.

Perhaps common sense is not as common as one would assume

False Alarm

                                                                Worried Citizen
        Panic Station
        At My Wits End
        1 July 2011

Miller PR
(Publicist for Paris Hilton)
8322 Beverly Blvd.
Suite 201
Los Angeles, CA 90048
USA

Dear Miller PR

I have just been reading the UK Daily Mail and was devastated when I saw the following statement by Miss Hilton:

"She added: 'All girls worry about their weight and I’m no different, except for the fact that when I gain a pound the whole world thinks I’m fat.'"

I immediately let the paper fly  into the morning breeze, ran to the nearest Internet café and flung the incumbent teenager off his chair so that I could locate your address and urge you to communicate to Miss Hilton that she is mistaken.

I personally never think of Miss Hilton, except when such attention-grabbing nuggets of her wisdom quoted by the press impel me to open the associated article in the full expectation that she had suddenly discovered the link between proper nutrition and the ability to make two brain cells communicate with each other :

Disappointed as I was to conclude that this was not in fact the case, I nonetheless urge you to reassure Miss Hilton that when she gains a pound it is in fact the whole world – 1 that thinks she is fat.

Yours sincerely

Gobsmacked.