Bock The Robber

Midweek Break — Off To Krakow

2 December, 2008
| 15 Comments

I’m off Krakow, but I’m going with a crowd this time.  A crowd of wasters, drunkards, goose-milkers and heron-stranglers.

I was never in Poland and I have no idea what to expect but everyone who’s been there tells me Krakow is a great city.  I’ll bring back some pictures for you and some of the stories but maybe not all.  We’ll see.

Now, here’s the problem.  We’re not going there for very long — just three nights and two days, but really, you know, I’ll probably have to use one of the days to visit Auschwitz.  It’s only thirty miles away and after all these years of reading, thinking and talking about the place, I don’t think I could go so near to it without visiting.  Again, I’ll bring you pictures, but you might not like them much.

Apart from that, I suppose we’ll just wander around like any crowd of foreign idiots, looking up in the air and walking really slowly with a sour look on our faces, the way all tourists do.  That sounds like fun.  Then, after at least a half hour of that touristing stuff, we’ll all head straight for the pub.  I’ll bring you pictures of the insides of many pubs, but again, you might not like them much.

Some of us have a hotel in the old part of town, and they tell me it was used to shoot a scene from Schindler’s List.  I’ll bring you pictures.

That’s that for the moment.  Not much more to say about it now.

I’ll try and get to an internet café occasionally and send out a few brief words if I can. We’ll be back in a few days.


2 December, 2008
| 15 Comments

How Do You Pronounce Feng Shui?

2 December, 2008
| 5 Comments

It really annoys me when somebody corrects my pronunciation of Feng Shooey.

- Oh, it’s pronounced Fung Shway, you know.

- By who? I ask.

- By the Chinese.

- Oh really?  And do they spell it Feng Shui?

- Eh, no.

- That’s right, you condescending git.  The Chinese don’t write Feng Shui.  They write this:

風水. 

OK?

You’re the one who writes it as Feng Shui, not the fucking Chinese, and Feng Shui spells Feng Shooey!  Can’t you fucking read?  If you mean to say Fung Shway, don’t write Feng Shui.  It’s very simple.

And what’s more, Feng Shooey is a load of fucking bullshit.  It’s just the Chinese for tidying up.


2 December, 2008
| 5 Comments

Is it Mumbai, Bombay or मुंबई?

1 December, 2008
| 31 Comments

On a lighter note, what’s all this Mumbai stuff?

Why can’t we say Bombay if we want to?  Why can’t we call it whatever we feel like?  Why do English speakers suddenly have to change the word they always used and adopt the Marathi version of the name instead?

Sorry now, but I just don’t get this. 

Of course the Indians can call it whatever they want, in however many of their languages.  That’s their right and their entitlement.  English-speaking Indians can call it Mumbai or Mambai or whatever variation of the name they choose, and nobody will try to stop them, but I grew up saying Bombay, and I’m not going to change now.

It was the same with Beijing.  Why did we have to change from Peking?  After all, the way we say Beijing is no closer to the correct pronunciation than Peking was, so what’s the fucking problem?  And it isn’t a spelling problem either, is it? 

The Chinese don’t write B-E-I-J-I-N-G.  No.  They write 北京, which is a slightly different spelling to Beijing, you might have noticed.

They even tried to stop us saying Burma, and use Myanmar instead, until someone pointed out that the genocidal crooks who run that country made up the name.  Phew.  Close one.

Now, what I wonder is this: why do the PC brigade only do this with Asian place-names?  After all, nobody is going to tell you not to say Moscow.  Is not how we say name.  Correct name is Moskva!

That won’t happen. 

Nobody will tell you to pronounce Paris as Paree or Rome as Roma. No Dutchman will force you to say den Haag.  The Finns don’t give a shit if you say Helsinki instead of Helsingfors.  The Poles won’t kill you for failing to say Warszawa, nor the Czechs Praha.  Did you ever go to København?  No.  You didn’t, and you never will.  And you won’t go to Lisboa or Beograd either.

No.  It just seems to be Mumbai and Beijing, so in future I’m going to call them मुंबई and  北京.

That should sort it out.

Funnily enough, they didn’t change the name of the film industry to Mollywood.

___________________

PS.  This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned that sort of thing:

Placenames and the Thought Police


1 December, 2008
| 31 Comments

Balls, Guts and Bones

30 November, 2008
| 10 Comments

Isn’t language a strange thing?

You know the way people say things like That car cost the guts of fifty grand.  And then someone else will tell you, No.  It cost the bones of seventy.

Guts or bones.  What’s the difference?  They’ll never tell you it cost the lungs of fifty grand.  See that fuckin house?  Worked all my life for it, and it set me back the arse of a million.  Cost me the liver of ten grand just to paint it.

Then you’ll hear people talking about the guy who tackled the bank robbers.  Jesus, that took some guts. 

Yeah.  He had real balls.

Guts and balls, but not ankles.  Not kidneys. 

It took real eyebrows to fight Mike Tyson. 

Balls equals guts, and guts equals bones, and therefore you’d imagine that balls equals bones, but no.  Not at all.

Did you ever hear anyone saying That car cost the balls of fifty grand. 

Bones or balls.  Why not?

Isn’t language strange?


30 November, 2008
| 10 Comments

Limerick Photos

29 November, 2008
| 7 Comments

If Winter Comes …

Continued below the fold

Read more


29 November, 2008
| 7 Comments

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