Reading the Roons

Tuesday, 8th Feb, 2022 by Krilling for Company in Art, English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Language, Literature, Politics, Psychology and tagged Alan Moore, bad English, Daily Mail, deplorable delinquency, gay genius, Guardian, Guardian-readers, Guardian-reading community, in terms of, interview, irony, John Coulthart, Mail on Sunday, psychotherapy, shame, Stewart Home, therapy, Wayne Rooney | 2 Comments

In terms of core issues around maximal engagement with keyly committed core components of the counter-cultural community, one of the saddest, sorriest and sighfullest sights among them is that of the talented lad from the wrong side of the tracks who betrays his class by turning himself into a Guardian-reader, in terms of core cultural assumptions and behaviour.

Northampton’s Alan Moore has done it.

London’s Stewart Home has done it.

Huddersfield’s John Coulthart has done it.

How do I know?

[Readers’ Advisory: If you are easily disturbed, distressed and/or disgusted, please stop reading NOW.]

I know because

[I mean it. Stop reading or you may well regret it.]

I know because each of these talented lads from the wrong side of the tracks now bears the Mark of the Beast, metaphorically speaking.

[Last chance.]

Each of them has, on multiple occasions and without the minimalest micro-metric of shame or irony, deployed the key Guardianista phrase “in terms of”.

• For proof of Alan Moore’s deplorable delinquency, please see here.
• For proof of Stewart Home’s dep-del, please see here.
• For proof of John Coulthart’s dep-del, please see in the same place as you possibly saw or are-about-to-see Stewart Home’s, i.e. here.

So. After seeing and lamenting those horrific examples of class-betrayal, I thought I was hermeneutically hardened and would never again experience sadness, sorrow or sighfullness at the sight of a talented lad etc.

I was wrong.

As I learned when I read this interview in The Mail on Sunday:

There was a lot of negativity in terms of my mum getting frustrated with us as kids, messing around all the time, smashing things in the house and my nan lived in the same road, a few houses down. […] In terms of therapy, I have spoken to a few different people. I have never done a period of time where I have done two years with someone and it has been ongoing. […] Everything I am asking of those players in terms of hard work, honesty, trust, commitment…if I was just to turn round and say “I have had an offer, I’m off”, I honestly couldn’t do that to the players and the staff. — Wayne Rooney reveals his secret two-day drinking binges etc

Oh, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. How could you do it? But I think we can easily guess where he was infected: it was during his therapy-sessions.

Elsewhere other-accessible

• Ex-Term-In-Ate! — interrogating issues around why “in terms of” is so teratographically toxic…
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates…

Wolfwords

Wednesday, 19th Jan, 2022 by Krilling for Company in Georgia / საქართველო, Language, Linguistics, Quotations, Translation and tagged მგელი, მელია, უმი ხორცი, ქართველი, ქართველი ანდაზები, ქართველი ენა, ხორცი, fox, Georgian, Georgian culture, Georgian language, Georgian proverbs, meat, pot calling the kettle black, proverbs, raw meat, Translation, wolf | Leave a comment

• მელიამ მგელს შესძახა: შე უმი ხორცის ჭამიაო!
•• Meliam mgels šesdzakha: še umi khortsis ch’amiao!
••• FOX-agentive WOLF-dative called: thou raw MEAT-genitive EATER-vocative
•••• The fox called to the wolf: “Thou eater of raw meat!”
••••• The pot called the kettle black.

Core War…

Friday, 7th Jan, 2022 by Krilling for Company in English Usage, In Terms Of, Language, Literature and tagged 2022, core, English Usage, Guardian-readers, Guardianistas, hive mind, in terms of, New Year, Samuel Johnson, The Guardian, toxic, trailing dots | Leave a comment

In terms of my core ambitions for 2022, I hope to continue the fight against such things as the reprehensible and repulsive phrase “in terms of”, the pretentious and throbbingly urgent adjective “core”, and the cheap trick of trailing dots… I know that I won’t win and that the Hive-Mind will continue to buzz deafeningly at core venues like The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Shropshire Advertiser, but so what? In the core words of Samuel in terms of Johnson:

[I]t remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. — Samuel Johnson, Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Elsewhere Other-Accessible

• Ex-term-in-ate! — core interrogation of why “in terms of” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting…
• Don’t Do Dot — core interrogation of why “…” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting dot dot dot

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

How should the first line of this incendiary intervention begin? I suggest: “In terms of my core ambitions for 2022…” → “Among my main ambitions…”

XXXI-Word

Friday, 31st Dec, 2021 by Krilling for Company in Language, Linguistics and tagged connected words, crosswords, hobbies, spot the link, word connections, word-games | Leave a comment

I enjoy doing crosswords occasionally, but I’m not very good at them. Even so, I’m still surprised at how hard I can find a kind of crossword where you look at three words and have to find another word that links them. Some of the answers can be very simple, but it sometimes takes me a long time to get them. Here’s an example with an attractively symmetric grids:

Across

1. Band, Farthing, Top
2. Jobs, Less, While
5. Bullet, Money, Surgeon
7. Back, Bank, Over
8. Half, Hiker, Up
9. Golden, Maple, Rosehip
11. Razor, Shooter, Tongue
13. Lunar, Solar, Total
14. Break, Buckets, Shirt
15. Angle, Away, Down

Down

1. Board, Roll, Sweet
2. Alec, Out, Phone
3. Night, Tower, Wrist
4. Cross, Loft, Serving
5. Dog, Oyster, Wolf
6. Cheese, Industry, Pie
9. Gum, Platform, Snow
10. Light, Test, Whale
11. Market, Power, Sonic
12. Ball, Stripper, Wet

Gleet the Beatles

Sunday, 5th Dec, 2021 by Krilling for Company in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Language and tagged bad English, bad prose, bad writing, BTS, Guardianese, in terms of, The Beatles, The Guardian | Leave a comment

The Guardian incisively interrogates issues around the Scouse Superstars:

Just in terms of pure sales they still dominate. In the first half of the year in the US – half a century on from Ed Sullivan, screaming fans, the olds just not getting it – they sold more albums than anyone else; the only group that came close over that period were BTS, a group who are regularly compared to the Beatles in terms of their planet-straddling massiveness. — The Guide #10: the enduring appeal of the Beatles, The Guardian, 26xi21

Elsewhere other-accessible

The Whisper of the Stars

Monday, 29th Nov, 2021 by Krilling for Company in French, Language, Post-Weird, Quotations, Translation and tagged chuchotement des étoiles, cold, freezing, French language, froid, Russian winter, whisper of the stars, winter, Yakoutes | Leave a comment

• Le record de froid peut atteindre -77°C, alors que l’été le thermomètre peut monter jusqu’à 30°C. Les températures hivernales causent des phénomènes étonnants. Par exemple, ce que les Yakoutes appellent « le chuchotement des étoiles » : lorsqu’il gèle, l’homme entend en permanence le doux bruissement de sa respiration qui gèle dès qu’il expire.

• At its worst the cold can reach -77°C, while in summer the thermometer can climb to 30°C. Winter temperatures cause some astonishing phenomena. For example, there is what the Yakuts call “the whisper of the stars”: when it’s freezing, you constantly hear the soft rustle of your own breath, which is turning into ice-crystals even as you exhale.

Elsewhere other-engageable

• Cry’ Me A Shiver — an interview with French avant-gardistes Cryogénie, les Rois du Froid and Kings of Cold…

Flaubert le Flaubard du Flaubeau

Friday, 19th Nov, 2021 by Krilling for Company in Language, Literature, Quotations, Translation and tagged 19th century, basking in the sun, beauty, correspondence, decadence, French literature, Grand Époque, Gustave Flaubert, letters, literature, nineteenth century, quotations about beauty, soleil, sun, sun-bathing | Leave a comment

«Je ne suis rien qu’un lézard littéraire qui se chauffe toute la journée au grand soleil du beau» — Gustave Flaubert, Croisset, 17 octobre 1846

• “I am nothing but a literary lizard basking all day in the great sun of beauty.”

Maximal Mensual Metrics

Wednesday, 3rd Nov, 2021 by Krilling for Company in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Language, Politics and tagged anti-racism, BHM, Black British, Black Britons, Black history, Black History Month, Guardian, Guardian-readers, Guardian-reading community, Guardianistas, in terms of, politics, racism, racist, racists | Leave a comment

Like all minimally decent and politically aware people, I am keyly — and corely — committed to anti-racism on a maximal basis by any means necessary. Monkey-funker.

This is also why I am a corely — and keyly — committed member of the Guardian-reading community. If I am ever tempted to relent a micrometre in terms of the maximality of the metrics of my core commitment to anti-racism, the Guardian is there to remind me of what anti-racism is corely committed to achieving…

• It’s been a turbulent year for race in Britain. So what next? — At the end of Black History Month, we ask prominent Black British figures to assess where the UK stands in terms of equality and cohesion, The Guardian, 30×21

Ciss Bliss

Wednesday, 29th Sep, 2021 by Krilling for Company in Flowers, Latin, Literature, Quotations, Translation, Wise Sayings and tagged ancient Rome, books, Cicero, Flowers, gardening, gardens, Latin, Latin language, Latin literature, libraries, plants, quotes about gardens, quotes about libraries, reading, Roman literature | Leave a comment

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil. – Cicero (106-43 BC), Epistulae ad Familiares, Liber IX, Epistula IV

• “If you have a garden and a library, you lack for nothing.” — Cicero, Letters to Friends, Book 9, Letter 4

Verbol

Wednesday, 11th Aug, 2021 by Krilling for Company in Language, Literature, Poetry, Tolkien, Translation and tagged Bárbol, chestnut, chestnut-tree, green, green light, J.R.R. Tolkien, leaf, leaf-layers, leaves, Lord of the Rings, poem, Poetry, Spanish, Spanish language, the sun, Tolkien, Treebeard, Trees | Leave a comment

Green on green on green
The light befalls me clean,
Beneath the birds.

And how I can capture
This mute green rapture
In blinded words? (7viii21)

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

This poem is an attempt to describe the impossibility of describing the green light I saw falling through the leaf-layers of a chestnut-tree a few days ago. I wanted a title that compressed the most important images in the poem — trees and greenness — and I remembered a clever portmanteau I’d seen in a Spanish translation of Lord of the Rings. In the translation, the Ent Treebeard, a walking-and-talking tree, was called Bárbol, which is a blend of the Spanish words barba, “beard”, and árbol, “tree”. I’ve tried to blend Spanish verde, “green”, and arbol. The resulting portmanteau contained more than I planned: it’s also got ver, Spanish for “to see”, and vēr, Latin for “spring, youth”. And it’s almost “verbal”, but with the “a” replaced by an “o”, representing the sun and its indescribable light. And come to think of it, there’s an important chestnut-tree in Lord of the Rings:

A little way beyond the battle-field they made their camp under a spreading tree: it looked like a chestnut, and yet it still bore many broad brown leaves of a former year, like dry hands with long splayed fingers; they rattled mournfully in the night-breeze. — The Two Towers, ch. 11

That’s when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are camping on the edge of Fangorn, the ancient forest where Treebeard dwells. The broadness of chestnut-leaves is why the light that falls through them is greened and cleaned in a special way.

Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral

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