This will hurt me...

Words on a page. Battery Point (walking to work). June 2013. The best thing about reading books while walking is reading books. And walking. The Wombat , Ogden Nash The wombat lives across the seas, Among the far Antipodes. He may exist on nuts and berries, Or then again, on missionaries; His distant habitat precludes Conclusive knowledge of his moods, But I would not engage the wombat In any form of mortal combat.

Just how many tigers are too many tigers? Melbourne Zoo, April 2011. I expect that three or four tigers probably constitutes too many tigers. Once you get beyond a couple, they start to bicker and argue, and the food they require to keep that healthy sheen and lustre to their coat becomes quite expensive. In fact, I’m just about ready to rule out those eight tigers I’ve been bidding for on E-Bay…. Sunday Top Five. Already? I’ve got it! Today’s top five is Five Words That I Commit To Using In Everyday Conversation In The Course Of The Next Week (And That You Should Too)! Anencephalous : “You see, the fundamental problem with that guy is that he is anencephalous. That’s the long and the short of it. Bloviate : “Her tendency to bloviate in times of crisis makes her completely unsuitable for leadership. Gobemouche : “His capacity to immediately identify and bring round every gobemouche in the room makes him a man worth knowing.” Ornery : “Yeah, I know him. He’s a particularly ornery fello...

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A kayaker checks out the competition down at Hinsby Beach, May 2010. Theme Thursday delivers yet another tricky one this week for us Antipodeans . CANDY. In Australia, CANDY is a stripper . CANDY is a working girl . CANDY is a woman of ill repute . CANDY is not lollies . CANDY is not sweets , nor is it sweeties . CANDY is not toffee , loll-loll or ket . In Australia, CANDY is most certainly not confectionery . The man in the kayak may well be eye CANDY (for some), or arm CANDY (for others), but I would advise against eating him (there are laws about that). I'm glad that we got that sorted...

Here is an old building down here in Salamanca that now houses luxury apartments, an art gallery, a gym and a hair salon. I'm not sure that the old crowd of convicts, prostitutes, drunken sailors, scallywags, scoundrels, reprobates, degenerates, ne'er-do-wells, rouges and rotters would be welcome around these parts any more. It’s all three hundred dollar sunglasses and designer pooches these days. I have been looking at a report that I am currently working on, and pleasantly note that I am trying to do my best to keep the use of lovely words alive and well in the sterile, mundane and (frankly) pitifully constructed word of public policy. That said, I’m not sure what the insipid automatons of the field make of me talking about ameliorating harm, adroit policy shifts, a conflation of interests, diffuse reasoning, ephemeral outcomes, eschewing simplistic solutions or indeed the preponderance of nebulous ideas set before us. I have a propinquity for beautiful words but t...

There is a word that I like very much, but have thus far found impossible to fit into a spoken sentence with a straight face. I have long wanted to slip it in casually, but my nerve hasn’t held. It is almost like I am scared of it. I’m not worried about misusing it, you understand, as its meaning is clear. It’s a word regularly see in literature. Over the years I’ve seen it in print, and even in the odd quasi-religious text, which may have contributed to keeping me away. The only person that I’ve personally seen slip it in to casual conversation is the formidable VINCE, whose personality really does demand Caps Lock, and is the sort of person happy to use such a word. Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps I need to work up a more imposing presence, and then whack it on the table. It is a difficult decision. I don’t seem to struggle with others, but I’ve built up a reverence for this one. All right then, the word: crepuscular It’s a doozy, isn’t it? So here are my questions for the world: Do you ...

Be warned, this cartoon has a touch of 'blue' language. That said, I heartily endorse this message. If you like the 'toons, check out The Rut . It's packed full of them!

The title is a continuation of the George Carlin tribute. As is today's photograph. I can think of nothing more that he would like than a picture of two rubbish bins (that's correct, the old brain is struggling today). So what I will do is post one last George Carlin quote for the day. This one is about 'irony'. Like George, I am continually frustrated by the misuse of the word itself. Not a day goes by when somebody fails to say to me "how ironic" and I think about directing them to Carlin's rant from Brain Droppings : Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in moc...

I found yesterday a very nifty little application – Wordle – that lets you generate ‘word clouds’ for just about anything you like. For the uninitiated, word clouds are simply groupings of words with the most-frequently-used words in the larger, bolder font. The visual effect of the grouping is that of a cloud. Now, I decided to whack in all of the words that I have posted on this blog over the past couple of months and see what shows up. In my defence, each post has “posted by Kris McCracken”, so I am not SO vain as to refer to myself quite as frequently as the word cloud suggests. [I have had a little trouble with the HTML on this, so have posted the cloud as a JPG file for the moment. Hopefully I can get it sorted at some point.]

Inspired by a discussion on the high-brow clusterflock group, and frustrated by technical issues with a post that I have had to put in cold storage this morning, I have been thinking about plurals and animals. For example, there exists no universally agreed upon plural of “platypus” in the English language. The egg-headed among us generally use “platypuses” or simply “platypus”. Colloquially (and in some dictionaries), “platypi” is also used, although this really is cod-Latin. The Greek plural would be “platypodes”, but only a nob would go around saying that. In the spirit of the English language’s lack of rigidity in relation to hard ‘n fast rules, I myself have been endeavouring to get “platypussies” up and running, but have had little success thus far. In this manner, I am beginning to use “fishies” instead of “fish”, “sheepies” instead of “sheep” and “deeries” instead of “deer”.

The US are celebrating National Grammar Day today, and I'm sure that the parties will be numerous and exciting. Having spent seven tortuous years marking thousands of undergraduate essays at UTas, the dire state of proper English is something far dearer to my heart than the odd murdered whale or a smidgen of global warming ! But now you can help . Visit the website for more info. The good folks at Mental Floss are doing their bit , encouraging readers to make personal National Grammar Day resolutions , applying the logic that innumerable micro actions yield impressive macro results. After thinking long and hard about it (fnarr, fnarr), my own personal resolution will be to pay more attention to the compounded hyphen. I know, I know, it's a big call, but we all have to do our bit. Thus from this day forth, I vow to use a hyphen when joining two or more words to serve as a single adjective before a noun. However (and this is the tricky part), when compound modifiers come afte...

Father Noun Singular = father Plural = fathers 1. A male parent. My father was a cold, hard man . 2. A term of address for an elderly man. Come, father; please sit beside me. 3. A term of address for a Christian priest. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. 4. A person who plays the role of a father in some way. The child is father to the man. 5. The founder of a discipline or science. Many claim that Albert Einstein is the father of modern physics.

frustration Noun Plural : frustrations 1. The act of frustrating , or the state, or an instance of being frustrated 2. A thing that frustrates 3. The feeling of annoyance when one's actions are criticised or hindered 4. Anger not directed at anything or anyone in particular