by Fern Shaw | Aug 24, 2015 | Uncategorized
Last week, we sent a mailer to all you wonderful people with 4 different articles, one of which was a quick quiz. Gauging the response to these articles, it seems the quiz came up trumps. I found this very interesting. Humanoids like to engage, one and two, like to be asked their opinion. Hm.
With this in mind I’ve devoted this week to preparing blogs that mystify, question and challenge (okay, perhaps that’s a little strong, but then you know me – all about the drama). In this blog we look at facts that have been around for yoinks, except, as it turns out, they aren’t actually facts.
Frankenstein was the name of the monster in Mary Shelley’s book.
Frankenstein is actually the name of the monster’s creator.
Coffee is made from beans.
A coffee bean is a seed of the coffee plant, and is the source for coffee. It is the pit inside the red or purple fruit often referred to as a cherry. Even though they are seeds, they are referred to as ‘beans’ because of their resemblance to true beans.
Chameleons change colour to match their surroundings.
They change as a response to mood, temperature, communication and light, not the object they are touching.
Peanuts are a type of nut.
This is incorrect. They belong to the plant family, Leguminosae.
Your blood is blue before it’s oxygenated.
Not true – human blood is always red.
When in London, you are merely 6ft away from a rat.
This is just a rough estimate as rodents are not evenly spread.
Tomatoes are a vegetable.
While the Supreme Court of the United States did rule that tomatoes are vegetables in the legal sense for the purpose of taxation (Nix vs Hedden), they did not claim they are vegetables in any botanical sense. They are still fruits.
Now you know. Amaze your friends and colleagues around the water cooler station. Your street cred will increase exponentially. (Unless, of course, people will think you’re just showing off. Can’t help you with that, sorry!).
by Fern Shaw | Jul 31, 2015 | water cooler
Caught me by surprise too – smoaster – what the hey does that mean, I asked myself? Being all things food and drink, I though perhaps it was something to do with s’mores or boasting at the water cooler, but it isn’t. Apparently, it’s unnecessary boasting on social media, which begs the question – is there any boasting on social media that is necessary? Probably not, I suppose.
Examples of smoasting would be something like:
* Having a great day! Not vs. having had a bad day previously, but just trumpeting for no rhyme or reason that you’re having a great day. Necessary? Not likely.
*Smoasting repeatedly about your session at the gym, ’Did abs today!’ or ‘Shoo, some workout’ – again, probably unnecessary.
*Boasting about your child’s achievements, no matter how mundane or insignificant to others. Your 19 month old just counted to 10. Something to be proud of? Absolutely! Necessary to smoast about? Again, unlikely.
Consistent self-congratulatory smoasting is bad enough, but smoasting about your children could be potentially dangerous.
I wonder whether our need to feel liked and accepted overcomes our common sense in such instances. If you’re posting endlessly about your new born; toddler or worse, setting them up with their own social media account, is this akin to displaying your child on a huge billboard in Hyde Park? And if it is, would you do so?
Perhaps I’m being a little serious and Mother Grundy about this, but perhaps, also, this is something to consider when you’re next tempted to smoast about every single minutia in not only, your own life, but that of your kids.
As for me, I’m heading up to the water cooler to smoast about how I learnt a new word today. Trendy, me!
by Fern Shaw | Jul 31, 2015 | water cooler
Having a great love of all things English – the language itself, the gram-mar, pronunciation, etc. – I’m always interested in the foibles and eccentricities that I hear about or read. In particular, I often wonder where certain expressions originate from and how they are propagated.
Like how did counting sheep become synonymous with falling asleep? And who coined the expression, ‘I should cocoa’?
According to Wiki, using sheep as a method of counting originates from ‘a story of counting sheep in the early twelfth-century Spanish work Disciplina Clericalis. The section – The King and his Story-teller – uses the idea of counting sheep humorously.’ Many centuries later this morphed into the repetitiveness of counting sheep as an idea to lull one into sleep.
‘I should cocoa’ – Two trains of thought (see? there’s another one!) here:
- Some believe this idiom comes from ‘I should think so’, but is normally used sarcastically to mean the opposite.
- This earnest if baffling expression of agreement comes from cockney rhyming slang. The phrase when used in full is “I should coffee and cocoa”, meaning “I should say so”.
(Know your) onions – An early editor of The Oxford English Dictionary was Charles Onions, and it became a compliment to say that someone knew as much as Onions. However, there is a rival belief that the expression derives from cockney rhyming slang, where instead of saying a person knew a lot of things, they’d say he knew “a lot of onion rings”.
Vent your spleen – Before modern medicine, it was held that particular organs were the ‘seat’ of certain emotions. The spleen was thought to be the origin of a person’s ill-humour, bad temper and mirth. Over the centuries, the mirth somehow became forgotten and only outbursts of bad temper are now blamed upon the spleen.
Then, there’s one of my favourites:
Bob’s your uncle – In 1885, Prime Minister Robert Cecil appointed Arthur Balfour as President of the Local Government Board and, the following year, Secretary for Scotland with a seat in the cabinet. In 1887, Balfour was given the highly prestigious post of Chief Secretary of Ireland. Did this effortless rise owe something to the fact that Robert Cecil was Balfour’s uncle? Many people thought so, and we acquired today’s handy expression for cause and effect.
Would be especially fun if I did have an Uncle Bob, but sadly I don’t. (I did, however, for years, say that the actor, Robert Shaw, was my uncle, but that’s a whole other story).
So here’s some fodder for you to share on your water cooler runs. People will think you’re all that with this knowledge tucked under your elbow. See? There’s three more, right there! Gosh, you’re clever!
by Fern Shaw | Jun 19, 2015 | water cooler
The Summer Holidays will soon be upon us and for many parents this can be more a cause for concern than a reason to celebrate – namely, what are the kidlets going to doooo all summer?
Stroll-surfing along the internet, I happened upon this rather lovely article:
*‘An Italian teacher has decided to forgo setting the usual holiday homework for his students and has instead given them a list of life advice.
Most schoolchildren in Italy are given school work to complete over the three-month summer holidays, which stretch from mid-June to mid-September. But Cesare Cata, who teaches at a secondary school in the central Le Marche region, wants his students to use their time off for less academic pursuits. “At least once, go and watch the sunrise”, he writes in the 15-point ‘homework’ list, which has since gone viral. Students are also told to wander beside the sea in the morning “thinking of the things you love in life”, and to dance shamelessly when the mood strikes, because “summer is a dance, and it is foolish not to take part”.
Students are told to dream of what they want their lives to be.
Mr Cata doesn’t want students to forget school completely, though, and urges them to read widely and use all of the new terms they learned in the past year. “The more things you can say, the more things you can think; and the more things you can think, the freer you are,” he says.
More than 3,000 people have shared the teacher’s Facebook post, and hundreds have left positive comments. “I wish I’d had a teacher like you who encourages reflection and introspection,” one person writes. The list seems to have struck a chord with many parents, who say they have shared it with their children. “Homework for life, not just for a season,” one Facebook user says, while another declares: “With a teacher like you, I would go back to school tomorrow!”
For your inspiration and reading pleasure, I’m including an extract of Cesare’s ‘homework’ – you’re to keep in mind that this is a very rough translation!
“1. In the morning, sometimes go to walk by the sea in total solitude: look how the sun is reflected and, thinking about the things you love most in life, feel happier.”
- Try to use all the new terms learned together this year: more things you can say, the more things you can think of; and more things you can think of, most are free.
- Read as much as you can. But not because you have to. Read why summer inspires dreams and adventures, and reading you feel like swallows in flight. Read why it is the best form of revolt to have (for suggested reading, ask me).
- Avoid all things, situations and people that make you negative or empty: Look for challenging situations and the company of friends that will enrich you, understand and appreciate you for who you are.
- If you feel sad or scared, do not worry: the summer, as with all the wonderful things, tries to make trouble the soul. Try to write a diary to tell your state (in September, if you like, we will read together).
- Dance. Shameless. On the track under the box, or in your room. Summer is a dance, and it is foolish not to take part.
- At least once, go see the sunrise. Remain silent and breathe. Close your eyes, grateful.”
When I think of all my homespun philosophies I bandy about at the water cooler, I admit to being a little embarrassed – this advice is really inspirational. Never mind the school children, I think I’ll be practising some of these ideas myself.
*from an article at the BBC – News from Elsewhere
by Fern Shaw | Jun 8, 2015 | Water, water cooler, Water Coolers
Last week I blogged about memes (see image above); the word itself always makes me a little uncomfortable – memes … Manitou’s …mammaries – but then that’s how my brain processes word association – it may not be how yours does. (Aren’t you lucky?!)
With memes in mind, I got to thinking about what it is that makes people associate water coolers (or more correctly – areas where water coolers are) with humour?
It’s pretty simple if you think about it – when people head off to replenish their daily H20 quota (and another Blogista aside – isn’t it nice to know that nowadays you have a plethora of water cooler machines to choose from – even ones to fit on your desktop – aha – like your desktop does) – it’s usually their downtime; take a break time; time to walk off work related stress; so ostensibly when they reach the water cooler and they see a colleague (or two or five), they remember that they haven’t shot the breeze; told the latest joke; compared footie scores; swapped a bit of skinny – so they break into full splab.
Of course this sharing can often have pretty dodgy and potentially disastrous results – perhaps *Tim in HR doesn’t appreciate Maggie from Sales telling off-colour jokes and Pandora from Filing is ready to throttle Syd from Social Media because he keeps on winding her up about his team’s great results versus hers.
I think that pretty much explains the humour at the water cooler connection. If you don’t believe me, then take a stroll down to your water cooler – I guarantee you’ll see my hypothesis in action. If there’s no humorous activity, create your own. Remember though – directing the water from the water spout to squirt at colleagues probably won’t be perceived as funny.
*names and characters in this blog are all fictional.
