Wednesday, February 18, 2009

moans and groans

hey everyone

this is one of those "me, me, me" posts that blogger types are apparently guilty of on a frequent basis, so feel free to skip over if you are not interested!

first off, yet again a victory in the war against the English language by a certain radio station. there's a link there, but i am not naming them. you see, in recent times, despite the fact that they like to think they are the bastion of free speech, open-mindedness and consider themselves to be "independent", they are not half getting their knickers in a twist about a certain site that no one takes too seriously anyway publishing things about them. it's not that there is any malice or harm intended by what is posted, it's just that the darling, sensitive hosts of the station don't like it when they are the subject of conversation. as far as i can work out one of these immensely talented and gifted radio presenters got all upset when it was mentioned, as simply as this, that at one stage she worked as a waitress. go figure.

moving back to the point of the moan and groan, on a Wednesday between 3:30pm - 4:00pm this station hosts a "review" of sorts of advertising from the last week or so. the specialist brought in speaks with a terribly posh voice (think Henry Blofeld)and uses many elongated, interesting sounding words. he sounds rather good when he uses them; oh if only he used them correctly.

today he delivered a masterpiece. on air, presumably with a straight face, he delivered the sentence "the two protagonists of the conversation". dear me! never mind the fact that using the term "protagonist" to describe anyone in a conversation is somewhat dodgy ground, it's fairly early on in your studies of the English Language that you learn that any story or scenario can only have one protagonist. the only time one could use the plural "protagonists" would be if the protagonist of the story was a group or collective, such as in the novel Lord Of The Flies.

whilst it's astonishing that the gentleman concerned seems oblivious to the possibility that a large number of his listeners (presumably like me hearing him by accident whilst awaiting often incorrect traffic information) are well aware of the folly of his flashy flexing of words incorrectly, it shouldn't really be that surprising. the host of the show on which he appears revels in telling all her listeners just how many books she has read, but kindly doesn't show off how much intellectual capacity she has gained from digesting so much literature by making presumably deliberate errors with the English language, using terms like "revert back" and bewildering degrees of "unique" such as "quite unique", "very unique" and so forth.


otherwise, it seems that the ever popular and reliable South African Post Office just might be reading my site or at least have sections being sent to them. a mere two days after commenting that they appeared not to have bothered to deliver the latest edition of my magazine subscription, whoomp! there it is in my post! if they are reading this, thank you, and do you think you could now deliver the one or two birthday cards i was expecting?

if you read this, thanks for sticking with me!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No comments: