A couple of weeks ago I told my team that it was my resolution to be more plodding -- not thoughtful or careful or exact or any of those words of 'precision'. And not devious or conniving or Iago-esque or those words of a 'plot behind your back' nature.
No-no, just more plodding.
But now that I think of it, I'd rather be known as this...
The Prince Regent of Pithiness.
No-no-no, not moaning, complaining, whining or general 'pissiness'.
PITHY as in straight to the point, brief, succinct, not needing three or more attempts at a definition or explanation in order to clarify a point.
But not so arrogant to claim the title of King, Emperor, Heir Apparent or Supreme Ruling Dictator for All Life Eternal.
Oh how I would so like this to be my title...
THE PRINCE REGENT OF PITHINESS.
People would smile and nod in my direction as I walked by. They would offer shy, funny grins of amusement and acknowledgment as we crossed paths, and occasionally I'd stop to tell them a quick story...
Such as the time when my son was 10 years old and we were on holidays and he was asked by a Mexican dressed up as a native warrior if he'd like a picture of a snake around his neck and my son agreed and he then had a huge thick scary snake placed around his neck and I took the photo because I thought it was the man's pet and the snake hissed and I thought "Wow, it's cool how the guy must have de-fanged his snaked because otherwise it would be scary" cuz it was one huge snake and the man lifted the snake off from around my son's neck and he set the snake down and it slithered away towards the jungle and I then realized that the snake was way too big to have fit in the guy's backpack and holy shit that wasn't his pet and I just let this guy put a wild huge thick scary snake around my son's neck!
... and we'd laugh at the quick story and the man on the street would wave and I'd wave and we'd walk off in different directions, both of us feeling enriched by the encounter.
If I was the Prince Regent of Pithiness.
Oh how that would rock my little world.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
The Gift that is Toronto Star Headlines
I taught two classes this week, both fairly advanced ESL adult students. It was supply teaching both times, which can sometimes be a wee bit of a challenge because the students are always wondering, "Where's our teacher. And who is this guy?"
So I find it often helps to have an ice-breaker before getting into the assigned work.
And it is at times like these that I just want to kiss the people who do the headlines at the Toronto Star. Because one of the headlines of the print version of the newspaper on Wednesday was this...
Low Blow From Loblaw
Boss Gets Farmers' Goat
First I have the class try to figure out and explain what the headline means. They try to grapple with it and sometimes there are some very interesting answers. One student thought it had to do with low prices because of the supermarket reference of "Loblaw".
And then, as I explain it to them, we're going to translate its meaning because, while it is English, its meaning isn't clear unless you know a lot of idioms.
Idiom 1: a "low blow", which I explained to the class comes from boxing and it's a sports-based idiom. To demonstrate, I have one of the male students come up to the front of the class and we put our hands up, as if we were boxing, and then I jab at his nether regions with a low blow. We then discuss the meaning as an idiom when someone says something unexpected, cruel, nasty and/or unnecessary.
(Oh and as a side note: "necessary" and "occasion" are the two toughest words in the world for me to spell. Big blank spots with both of them. Typing them is fine because spell check will do the voodoo that I can't do, but when I have to write them on the board in front of class, I'm always thinking "sunuvabich you have got to be kidding me".)
After we get the explanation for a "low blow" established, we move to
Idiom 2: which the headline re-words as "gets farmers' goat".
I have the students scour the article to see if there is any mention of a goat in the story (thankfully, there isn't). We then read the first five paragraphs of the article to see if we can ascertain the meaning from what's been written. And the meaning is kind of there, but it's difficult to get past the idea of a *goat* (because the goat has become the elephant in the room) and where is the goat and, if there is in fact no goat, why is it being
mentioned?
Finally we get to the idiom and the notion of "getting someone's goat" and, at the time, I couldn't explain the origin of the phrase but I told them it's when someone does something to anger or bother or unexpectedly irritate someone else. As for the definition itself, I was surprised to find this at the website "Idiom and Expressions"...
"The most likely explanation for the origin of this slang has to do with horse racing. It had been a common practice to put a companion animal, mostly a goat, in the stall with a restless racehorse, which was meant to help calm the horse. Obviously, if someone managed to steal the goat before the race, it irritated the owner because it could result in the horse losing the race."
... so now I know (although, that's a more difficult origin to describe to students compared to just having someone come up and then proceed to shadow box them "below the belt").
And then we deal with the pun (although it's probably just a playful juxtaposition rather than a pun) of putting "Low Blow" and "Loblaw" side by side, and then the second pun that turns that second idiom into "Gets Farmers' Goat".
All of this, as an ice breaker with the class, from the front page headline of a newspaper. Eight words turned into a half hour lesson and discussion.
And the fact that the first paragraph of the article starts with "An off-the-cuff remark by Galen Weston..." was just the icing on the cake. Oh, and get this, yesterday's lesson plan supplied by the absent teacher: a worksheet on idioms including "big headed", "pig headed" and "hen pecked" plus so much more.
Low blow, big headed, pig headed, hen pecked, get someone's goat...
It doesn't get much better than that.
So I find it often helps to have an ice-breaker before getting into the assigned work.
And it is at times like these that I just want to kiss the people who do the headlines at the Toronto Star. Because one of the headlines of the print version of the newspaper on Wednesday was this...
Low Blow From Loblaw
Boss Gets Farmers' Goat
First I have the class try to figure out and explain what the headline means. They try to grapple with it and sometimes there are some very interesting answers. One student thought it had to do with low prices because of the supermarket reference of "Loblaw".
And then, as I explain it to them, we're going to translate its meaning because, while it is English, its meaning isn't clear unless you know a lot of idioms.
Idiom 1: a "low blow", which I explained to the class comes from boxing and it's a sports-based idiom. To demonstrate, I have one of the male students come up to the front of the class and we put our hands up, as if we were boxing, and then I jab at his nether regions with a low blow. We then discuss the meaning as an idiom when someone says something unexpected, cruel, nasty and/or unnecessary.(Oh and as a side note: "necessary" and "occasion" are the two toughest words in the world for me to spell. Big blank spots with both of them. Typing them is fine because spell check will do the voodoo that I can't do, but when I have to write them on the board in front of class, I'm always thinking "sunuvabich you have got to be kidding me".)
After we get the explanation for a "low blow" established, we move to
Idiom 2: which the headline re-words as "gets farmers' goat".
I have the students scour the article to see if there is any mention of a goat in the story (thankfully, there isn't). We then read the first five paragraphs of the article to see if we can ascertain the meaning from what's been written. And the meaning is kind of there, but it's difficult to get past the idea of a *goat* (because the goat has become the elephant in the room) and where is the goat and, if there is in fact no goat, why is it being
mentioned?Finally we get to the idiom and the notion of "getting someone's goat" and, at the time, I couldn't explain the origin of the phrase but I told them it's when someone does something to anger or bother or unexpectedly irritate someone else. As for the definition itself, I was surprised to find this at the website "Idiom and Expressions"...
"The most likely explanation for the origin of this slang has to do with horse racing. It had been a common practice to put a companion animal, mostly a goat, in the stall with a restless racehorse, which was meant to help calm the horse. Obviously, if someone managed to steal the goat before the race, it irritated the owner because it could result in the horse losing the race."
... so now I know (although, that's a more difficult origin to describe to students compared to just having someone come up and then proceed to shadow box them "below the belt").
And then we deal with the pun (although it's probably just a playful juxtaposition rather than a pun) of putting "Low Blow" and "Loblaw" side by side, and then the second pun that turns that second idiom into "Gets Farmers' Goat".
All of this, as an ice breaker with the class, from the front page headline of a newspaper. Eight words turned into a half hour lesson and discussion.
And the fact that the first paragraph of the article starts with "An off-the-cuff remark by Galen Weston..." was just the icing on the cake. Oh, and get this, yesterday's lesson plan supplied by the absent teacher: a worksheet on idioms including "big headed", "pig headed" and "hen pecked" plus so much more.
Low blow, big headed, pig headed, hen pecked, get someone's goat...
It doesn't get much better than that.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
When Hockey is More Important than Football?
(When is hockey more important than football? -- When you're playing it, not just watching it! Team reminder...)
(Please note: there is an important contest near the bottom. Oh sure, you could skip to the bottom, but what about Paul Anka and Gordie Howe? Think about them!)
Hockey!! This Sunday!!! At a perfectly suitable afternoon start time that will allow you to play our game and then watch the other game. The Halloween start time of years past has now been karmacally balanced by the start time of this Sunday's Super Bowl weekend hockey game.
So your "yes" or "no" to a summer of magnificent hockey will allow you to vote and perhaps win an evening with Rosario Dawson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Betty White or Carol Pope. (Contest rules to be cooked up later.)
My fellow Dragons:
(Please note: there is an important contest near the bottom. Oh sure, you could skip to the bottom, but what about Paul Anka and Gordie Howe? Think about them!)No comfy chair this week. No Starbucks. No non-existent bespectacled French librarian to be tempted by and then ultimately resisted.
Instead it's an evening of Doctor Who, some gargling and it's "Not Penicillin!" medicine, all because of a dry cough that's trying to loosen up some not-quite-green awful stuff and a sore throat that occasionally feels like razor blades when I swallow.
In other words, an evening of rumpy-pumpy with the missus is probably not in the offering.
Be that as it may, the Dragons *will* take to the ice on Sunday.
And yesyesyes the Super Bowl is this weekend and if I was feeling better I'm sure I would have started with a message about Canada's national sport and the importance of hockey over football and the start time of OUR game versus the start time of THEIR game and how after OUR game you can still manage to have wings and beer in a post-victory celebration and how it's your giant, patriotic duty to play hockey this weekend, and I would have had an attachment of many, many photos of Rosario Dawson to weaken your resolve, coupled with an mp3 attachment that would have had Paul Anka, Gordon Lightfoot and Gordie Howe singing "O Canada" in a powerful and moving Bee Gees-like falsetto.
It would have been an email of such wondrous magnificence that you would have swelled up with manly tears of empathetic hockey-loving astonishment and it would have made the siren call of the Dragons impossible to resist.
Instead it was an "oh poor, poor me, I've got a sore throat and ear infection" egocentric introduction followed by...
Gentlemen!!!
Hockey!! This Sunday!!! At a perfectly suitable afternoon start time that will allow you to play our game and then watch the other game. The Halloween start time of years past has now been karmacally balanced by the start time of this Sunday's Super Bowl weekend hockey game. Dragons! 4:40!!! Dragons versus Black Dragons!!!!! More exclamation marks than ever before!!!!!!
And don't forget about our first ever, never-before-mentioned, probably never to be mentioned again contest as our "yes or no" summer Dragons get to vote and then potentially win a date with their choice of the sexiest woman in the world.
So far the votes for the Dragons' unofficial mascot Rosario Dawson are astonishingly low, with the surprise front runner being German Chancellor Angela Merkel, closely followed by Betty White and then a feisty third place position for Canadian chanteuse Carole Pope.
Get your votes in! But remember, your vote will be counted only when you accept (or pass) on your place in the summer 2012 Dragons roster.
Yes, the Super Bowl is this weekend and, yes, I am finding it difficult to talk, but wouldn't it be simply wonderful to play a game where there's the potential that I might not be able to speak louder than a sultry Jessica Rabbit-like whisper? Damn, since I've put it that way, I'd sign up myself. Pasquino quieter than usual? That would be friggin' Christmas, Hanukkah and a decade's worth of birthdays rolled together.
And there you are. The aardvark is fine, the meat was not spoiled and it was the taste of a Kit Kat that proved her salvation. So, it's all come together, hasn't it?
Enter the contest! I sincerely hope you didn't skip to the end. Start at the top if you have to.
Sunday afternoon! I'm hoping to see you there.
And apologies for the short message. I'm not feeling quite myself. All the best,
Kevin
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