BigBlog

Who gave Brendan Nelson a dictionary of phrases for his new office as standby leader of the Opposition? Suddenly we have had a rash of all puff and no smell; of all swing but no substance; of all cream but no water. Next we will get extended metaphors that go on for pages comparing Kevin to the farm yard rooster who crows at every hour except dawn and dusk; who arrives after the egg has been laid; who hasn't noticed his feathers being pulled; who scratches a lot but never gets to ease the itch of leadership. (OZ, SMH)

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I am weak because I am strong: my name is Kevin. Should you not like me, it's because I have made a world where we can all have different opinions: my name is Kevin. When the bell tolls, it will toll somewhat like a cracked egg to those who want to hear cracked eggs: my name is Kevin. (OZ)

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Mugabe and Neal - what is the connection? One is a pathetic bully who has been elevated to the status of devil; the other is evil and has been reprimanded like a silly woman who can't keep his trap shut. (OZ, SMH)

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The people who went on SBS's Insight program, to defend art and Henson's art in particular, were a bunch of old stinkers. Once they were free to congregate in their galleries for whatever delectation took their fancies; now they are being observed, on the Internet. What a shame their farmlets of naked, elfin-like children have been opened up to public inspection. The photos are good and bad, as photos. What is wrong is the uninspected practice of "artists" evoking emotions in children so photos can be made that gratify the photographers. "Smile, Johnny, so mummy can remember you smiling." "Be naked and innocent, Wendy, so daddy can remember you naked and innocent." "Get transitional and adolescent and naked and vulnerable, so Bill can eat bread." (SMH, OZ)

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Forget Neal, I'm far more interested in what the former PM's wife did and didn't hear of her husband's phone calls but then she was never silly enough to make a Stat Dec about what she said she heard and did not hear. What a childish nation we have when people think truth is either that important or worse, that it comes on official bits of paper. Life is not a court of law and what happens of Friday night is not of interest on Monday, no matter what Brendan the scrub turkey thinks. (OZ)

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My mobile phone says "unlock" (action) when it is locked (state) and shows a key symbol which means, I suppose, that the phone is locked, but why should a key mean it is locked when a key is used, mostly, to unlock things? Just what is the grammar of my phone? Is it a thing or is it a state-of-mind? Of course, I could take classes to learn this most unnatural language. (OZ)

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It is silly, in the extreme, for the Australian to persist with its
trivialisation of grammar. Having met professors in journalism who are
convinced that "affect" is always a verb and "effect" always a noun, I
am more concerned that those who get paid to use language are often
dumb to not only what they do, but what language itself does. Equally,
I grow weary of the pretence that the ability to parse indicates
anything beyond the ability to parse. Just as there are poets who hear
too many sounds to give simple scansion accounts of their own work, so
there are authors who understand too much of the complexity to give
back noun/verb twaddle.  Such authors are the ones who change our
understanding of grammar through their syntactical games. The wantabes
talk preposterously about prepositions.