Tag: english

Take it from Snee: Cleaning out the language gutters, part II

It was brought to my attention that there are a few words that I left out of my last purge of the English language.  Of course, that was not a definitive list-merely the beginning of an ongoing renovation project.

The criteria is simple: once a word has been abused, sullied and tarred-and-feathered to the point that it is rendered meaningless, I will take it to the shed and put it out of its misery with a bullet between the eyes.  It’s all done humanely, and I always gather the torn out dictionary pages with some friends for a good cry.  Afterwards, we get drunk and mangle the rest of the language.

Continue reading Take it from Snee: Cleaning out the language gutters, part II

How To: Be well-travelled

In this day and age, book knowledge isn’t enough to win an argument. To be a successful pundit, you must have firsthand knowledge of your subject. Since nothing ever happens in your hometown, the first step to universal credibility is to build a “seen it all, been everywhere” appearance.

Unfortunately, travel costs time and money: taking time off from work, learning a language, buying and packing climate- and culturally-appropriate clothing and recovering from exotic microbial infections. But don’t you fret now, sugar dumplin’; The Guys got your back. We’ve put together a bunch of shortcuts so that you can learn how to be well-travelled.

Continue reading How To: Be well-travelled

Tony Blair: Educator of the obese

As if it weren’t hard enough to understand English accents, problems continue with the dialog of 2006’s The Queen. As we reported over a year ago, an airline version of the movie had some excessing bleeping when the word “god” was censored, regardless of the context.

But this time, there was no singing of “Bleep Save the Queen,” instead subtitles to an outdoor screening of the movie in Australia were written by someone who appeared to have the English comprehension of an Asian electronics manual. The drama ended up being more of a comedy after the subtitles stole the show.

“When a character spoke about Mr Blair being ‘educated at Fettes’, it appeared on screen as ‘educated the fattest’. ‘Did you vote?’ flashed up as ‘Dead in a boat?’. The observation that ‘every newspaper proprietor has blood on his hands today’ became ‘every newspaper proprietor has blown in his hands today’.

Yuck.

No word yet on whether the DVD box set will include these two alternate versions SG has discussed. Stay tuned to MasterChugs Theater for updates.