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Harl’s Thought For The
Week:
SEPTEMBER 24
At
the risk of sounding insidiously nerdy, let it be said right here and right now:
collective nouns rock my world. A gaggle of geese … a pride of lions … a sleuth
of bears … a school of fish … a pod of dolphins … where would be possibly be
without the lateral beauty of one of our languages finest grammatical
inclusions? I tell you where, in fact, bugger it, I’ll show you: A group of
lions … a bunch of bears … a whole lotta’ fish … hardly inspiring on any front
are they, eh? But upon closer inspection of the literary phenomenon of
collective nouns, a couple of things occurred to me. Firstly, there is no
collective noun for collective nouns, themselves. Curious, don’t you think? In
my mind this is like Apple launching iPods worldwide but calling them ‘portable
MP3 players’ in their ads. Stupid. So what, then, would be an apt collective
noun for collective nouns? A ‘description’ of collective nouns, perhaps?
Or maybe even: a ‘smart ass’ of collective nouns? The second thing that
struck me about collective nouns (or ‘noun du collective’ en France) was that,
as per usual, dance music culture has yet again been neglected by a highly
important function of English literature – bugger. Sure, we could dwell on this
and get horribly forlorn (maybe even slightly drunk and belligerent) but that’s
not really in the spirit of our collective Gen X ‘can do’ attitude, is it? Nope
…So instead, and in the spirit of rectifying, rather than dwelling, on the
situation, here’s a couple of collective nouns for our beloved culture and
lifestyle that I think should be adopted and woven into everyday vernacular … A
crate of DJ’s … a deck of DJ’s … a clench of gurners … a line of clubbers … a
knob of producers … a flare of bar staff … a hanger of cloakroom attendants … a
headlock of bouncers … a magnum of hosts … a group text of promoters … a strobe
of lighting operators … a balance of audio engineers … a mop of cleaners … a
stampede of Red Bulls … and finally, of course: a spectacled geek of writers!
OCTOBER 1
I’m not a
negative person - indeed anyone who knows me is aware that my glass is
perennially half full, I wear rose coloured glasses 24/7, and I’ve chosen ‘it’s
all good’ as the epitaph on my (inevitable) cemetery headstone. But, despite my
keen ability (for example) to remain chipper in the face of adversity, to be
supportive in the face of treachery, and to pour fear a drink, give it a ciggie
and tell it to ‘chill’ in the grips of dark times; there is one thing that I
simply cannot be positive about - and quite frankly, it’s doing my nut in. Is
it the war in Iraq? Nope. Is it the new fascist-style anti-terrorism search and
detention laws? Nuh uh. Is it the tragic manner in which 2005’s ‘30-something
parents’ are dressing their kids in tacky designer labels and raising a
generation of thankless mini-Brads and mini-Britneys that will one day run the
country? No siree. It’s the Commonwealth Games, people … they haven’t even hit
town and I wish they’d farque (French) off already. Why am I so down on the poor
man’s Olympics? Here’s five reasons that spring to my NQR mind immediately, and
will hopefully stay in yours for the next six months of pre-Games media
masturbation and political opportunism:
1. Justin ‘I’m so thick that my Carlton teammates used to
call be Harry – after the big dumb dinosaur in that 80’s movie’ Madden is the
Minister for The Commonwealth Games … 2. Canada, England and Trinidad are
Australia’s biggest rivals in the Commonwealth Games … gee, how exciting … 3.
Bore Me Bracks and his team get another chance to open a bunch of venues and
launch a range of developments that they had absolutely nothing to do with, as
per usual … 3. No Two Tribes at Melbourne Park in March … Canada and Fiji will
be playing table tennis, instead … 4. The Melbourne City Council are removing
every piece of graffiti and stencil art from the CBD’s walls so that Games
tourists won’t get the wrong impression … instead, they’ll leave thinking we’re
all as exciting as Victorian Minister for Transport, Peter ‘Basil Brush’
Batchelor … zzzzzz-snore-zzzzzz … 5. The AIS have already started making excuses
for why our Australian squad won’t do very well … aren’t you glad that you and I
personally fund the illustrious dreams of teenage jocks with pushy parents
through taxes, only to find out that the media and communications team that
looks after them (that we also pay for) is being paid to publicly denigrate and
belittle them?
OCTOBER 8
After a monster night on
Saturday night, it’s fair to say that I have done too much thinking, as it were,
so far this week. However, despite my grey matter’s sluggish start to the
illustrious second week of the tenth month in our universal calendar, I did
still manage to pluck the odd gem from it – albeit fleetingly and with a
considerable amount of effort and application. So, folks, here they are … you
have been warned … which is highly pertinent, because this week’s banter centres
around the colostomy of warnings and advice that our elders have passed down for
generations: 1. Your mum and prep teacher with the lovely eyes were both right,
you should NEVER run with scissors: unless you are representing your state or
country in a ‘running with sharp pointy objects’ race or the like – but even
then, demonstrate extreme caution and ensure that your shoe laces are tied
correctly; 2. When the hot chicks wouldn’t pay you any attention at school, your
dad was 100% right: the best looking ones turn out to be the fat and ugly ones
(and vice versa) in less than five years of finishing school: amazing and
amusing, but true; 3. You should never put off tomorrow what you can do today,
unless of course, what you have to do tomorrow must indeed be done tomorrow and
can’t be done any sooner: in this case, you’re in the clear, so have a fag and a
coffee to celebrate; 4. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, unless of
course the bush in question has been purpose-built to trap and incarcerate
birds: in this case, the solitary bird in your hand may be grossly inadequate
compared to the potential dozens caught in the cleverly designed (and
tri-colour, mock foliage finished) ‘Bird-O-Matic Bush’; 5. Your grandma was spot
on when she told you that a stitch in time would save you nine, unless of course
the garment in question has been torn to shreds by your housemate’s new terrier
and requires at least 900 stitches to mend sufficiently: in this case, you can
spend your time singularly ‘stitching in time’ without in fact saving anything
at all …
OCTOBER 15
I think my thoughts have
been way too long in recent times. That’s not to say that they won’t be lengthy
again in future, however, in lieu of every man and his hamster running low on
time and energy this week for various reasons (exams, hangovers, post-raceday
sunburns … the list goes on) I thought it best to throw a few quickies at one
and all … so here goes:
1. Rad is a great word
that isn’t used enough in 2005. It makes no sense, really. ‘Dude’ made it
through the 80’s okay. So did ‘stoked’. But unfortunately for lovers and users
of ‘rad’ everywhere, the likes of ‘wicked’, ‘ill’, ‘phat’, ‘dope’, ‘fly’,
‘awesome’, ‘brilliant’, and ‘fuck off’ destroyed its vernacular credibility,
somewhere in between 1991 and 1994. 2. Gnarly is another rad word that’s not
used enough these days. Originally a skate term (like ‘rad’), gnarly was cast
into the nether regions of the linguistic and grammatical wasteland with more
force than that employed to abandon ‘rad’, but at about the same time. It’s
believed that the first generations of rollerbladers weren’t ‘down’ with the
term and were instrumental in replacing it with ‘sweet’. 3. Bodacious is not a
gnarly word, nor indeed is it in any way rad, so any attempts to revive its use
in modern Australian vernacular should be thwarted with swift precision. No,
seriously. Unless you’re a pizza eating turtle who takes orders from a 7-ft rat
wearing a kimono, you have no business uttering its shameful tones.
OCTOBER 22
As I left a great little
Chinese place in the city during the week, I was inexplicably struck betwixt the
synapses with a remarkably under whelming, yet suitably startling thought:
Fortune cookies, I thought, are grossly disappointing things in the main … you
know, a bit of a let down, an anti-climax if you will. So with the Walkman now
the Ipod’s bitch, the 3.5 floppy now the 200GB USB zip’s belly button lint, and
the VCR now the DVD player’s gimp, why have we not updated and revamped the
highly enjoyable and popular fortune cookie? “The river is deep, but the forest
is wide”. Whatever. “He who seeks never finds. But he who finds, has always
sought”. Lame. Why not give us something useful, eh? I mean, it’s not like the
cookies themselves are the world’s finest culinary offering, is it? You hardly
give them the nod at Chinese restaurants or pluck them from the supermarket
shelves because they’re a terrific snack, do you? So the least one can expect is
that the ‘fortune’ (i.e. ‘cryptic message printed on plastic paper and inserted
into the cookie’) is at the very least, helpful. So, after a few lagers with
Volume’s legendary ‘Promoter’s Promoter’, Monsieur Roberto, we came with a
highly creative (if not slightly silly) thought for how fortune cookies could be
more helpful in 2005 … Indeed, we introduce … drum roll … the ‘four-choon
cookie’. The concept is simple. Instead of containing mindless cryptic drivel,
the four-choon cookie would instead contain something brilliantly useful to any
discerning clubber: a list of four ‘must have’ choons! Brilliant! Finish your
Chinese meal, wipe the Peking sauce from your cheeks, the cookies arrive and -
ding! You’ve got a handy list of four wicked tracks to download from geek land
or buy from the corner vinyl slinger! Ideal for DJ’s … perfect for trainspotters
… and above all else, too clever a piss-take name not too use.
OCTOBER 29
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