The Befouled Weakly News

25 January 2009


Good morning to you all on this miserably grey morning. We are a bit rushed this morning – we are about to go off to the gym (me to ride a stationary bike for a bit and Pen to jump up and down a lot. Don’t worry though, my stationary bike is always set in downhill mode). As a consequence, this edition may fail to plumb the depressingly deplorable depths we rarely fail to achieve.

We’ve had just about everything on the weather front this week apart from the long, hot, balmy days of summer. It’s been cold and wet much of the week and the River Cherwell, which we cross twice on one of our favourite walks at Chipping Warden, is full to bursting and flowing like a runaway train. In the mornings the frozen tundra keeps the boots from becoming clogged with mud but in the afternoon, once the frost has thawed, the saturated ground means that you are caked with mud as you squelch your way across the fields. Not only does Molly get a thorough hosing down when we return but so too do we (well, our boots at least).

So, no American football this weekend which has meant that I have had to make do with watching a handful of matches from the Heineken Cup rugby competition. This is an annual competition with the top “club” teams from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France. While the rugby is not as consistently as high a standard as the international matches, it is still compelling viewing. One question which I hope Sandy will answer for me: blocking as in American football is, of course, not allowed in rugby – essentially, obstructing a player from the opposing team is against the rules. So, how come players are allowed to barge over when a player goes to ground, knocking the opposing players out of the way – why isn’t that obstruction?

As to the American football playoffs – all I can say is that we should have backed Ms Playchute’s instincts from the outset. She has picked the Arizona Cardinals to win on each occasion and now, of course, with everyone talking up the Cardinal’s changes against the Steelers, she is feeling fairly confident about her gambling prowess. Since I have picked against the Cardinals on each occasion, I am beginning to feel a bit vulnerable. We’ll see.

Like most of the rest of the World, we had a great day on Tuesday. Not so much to do with Obama’s inauguration, however, but rather because it was Nick’s birthday and we were able to offer him a few celebratory good wishes. Pen and I made our way across to Leamington after work to share a few drinks and nibbles with Lucy and the birthday boy before the real party with a selection of his friends began. Don’t worry, we were well gone and probably tucked up in bed before the real fun kicked off.

Since we all enjoyed having a somewhat distinctive nickname whilst young (and, indeed, I am still “Strags” to all my Webb and Yale friends), I thought the following from the BBC site was interesting. The discussion has been quite topical in recent days as Prince Harry was found to have called a fellow soldier a “Paki”, an insulting and derogatory term, on a video tape which somehow reached the media. Similarly, Prince Charles was reported to have called an Asian acquaintance “Sooty” although this was deemed to be a term of affection.

What's in a nickname?
By Oliver Brett
BBC News

Sting

The Asian polo player Prince Charles calls Sooty has defended the prince against accusations of racism. But the big problem with most nicknames is that those who they apply to don't get to choose them.

"I have to say," said Kolin Dillon, responding to the allegation that he had become a target of a racist slur, "that you know you have arrived when you acquire a nickname."

Mr Dillon, who it emerged is widely known by the sobriquet Sooty by his polo-playing friends, among them the future British monarch, said he had never taken any offence from the name.

It was a "term of affection with no offence meant or felt," he said.

The comment appears to have swiftly dampened the flames of what threatened to be another royalty racism inferno - just days after footage came out of Prince Harry using the word Paki.

But the clarification at least answers one question that can be asked of all nicknames - is it affectionate or abusive?

"No one really chooses their own nickname, even royals," says Robert Easton, author of The Good, the Bad and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames.

The Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund is one of a handful of exceptions. His self-conferred appellation The Light of the World "sort of stuck" says Mr Easton. It's certainly more deferential than that given to the Byzantine emperor, Justinian II, otherwise known as "the slit-nosed one".

Egyptian names like Baldy, Lazy, Nosy, and Big Head have been recorded. And the third Roman Emperor, born Gaius Julius Caesar, like his famous adoptive great-great grandfather, would forever be known as Caligula ("Little Boot") on account of being brought up in a military camp and wearing miniature military footwear as a child. Andrew Delahunty, author of several books on the subject including the Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames, cites various reasons why the culture of nicknames is in such rude health today.

Punter, Gringo, Tarzan
"Among work colleagues and close-knit teams, nicknames - even uncomplimentary ones - can help to cultivate a sense of belonging and camaraderie," he says. "Some are purely descriptive, drawing attention to some physical characteristic, others pick up on some personal quality or attribute or pay tribute to an achievement or an amusing incident."
           
Coining a nickname for a boss or a celebrity "closes the gap between them and us" and can be a "way of poking a little fun at them and cutting them down to size.

"And it's difficult to shed them once they've stuck."

With the Sooty story in mind, some cultures are notably less sensitive about drawing on a person's race or appearance as inspiration for a nickname. In South America, a white ex-patriot will invariably be known as "Gringo" - but it would not be considered a term of abuse - while a thin person is "Flaco".

In some sports nicknames are a way of life. No member of the Australian cricket team is worth his salt until he has a pithy pet name - the captain Ricky Ponting, for example, is "Punter" due to his love of placing a bet.

Politics is no stranger to the spectacle, either. Think Tarzan (Michael Heseltine) and Bambi (Tony Blair). In this context, nicknames have no greater friend than the newspaper headline writer, for whom brevity is all. Hence Iain Duncan-Smith's diminishment to simple old IDS.

Margaret Thatcher's standing was never harmed by her epithet The Iron Lady. But history, at least, shows that deeper motives are often at play when it comes to flattering nicknames of those in power.

Good was bad
"John the Good [John II of France] was a horrible piece of work," says Mr Easton. "Either the name came from a historian because he wanted to stay in his good books or maybe he once did something good and that just stuck.
           
"Actually I think in this case it was the French being sarcastic - they love calling something something that it's not."

Conversely, William the Bad of 12th Century Sicily "was really good".

"He did lots of good things, like founding hospitals and being nice to his subjects. But the name was probably the handiwork of a historian who was trying to endear himself to William's successor," says Mr Easton.

It seems that both Madonna and Bruce Springsteen could empathise with the more prosaically named William I of Sicily. Neither is enamoured with their nickname, says Mr Delahunty.

"After Madonna married British film director Guy Ritchie, the British tabloid press started referring to her as Madge, jokily casting her as a suburban housewife," he says. "But it's been reported she doesn't like the nickname. In 2002 a front-page story in the Daily Star newspaper had the headline Don't Call Me Madge."

The defiantly blue-collar Springsteen, meanwhile, dislikes his moniker, The Boss.

"In the early days when he and the E-Street Band played gigs in small venues, it was Bruce's job to collect the money and pay the rest of the band," says Mr Delahunty. "This led them to start calling him The Boss, a nickname which has stuck."

Brian and Cheryl
"I hate bosses," Springsteen has complained since. "I hate being called the Boss."

Yet as any boss knows, when you contract out a job to someone else, you lose a crumb of control.

Witness Princess Diana's desire to be known as the Queen of Hearts. The name never really stuck and it's Tony Blair's posthumous christening of her as the People's Princess which has more traction with today's public.

So what of Prince Charles himself - a man who satirists and caricaturists haven't shied from drawing inspiration from?

"Private Eye always calls him Brian and Diana was Cheryl. But I think he will come to be known as Charles the Green, for his environmental concern," says Mr Easton.

Of all these nicknamed individuals, some would never have been addressed as such to their face, and others only by a close circle of friends.

However, few can have embraced their nickname as readily as Sting. When addressed by a journalist as Gordon, he replied: "My children call me Sting, my mother calls me Sting. Who is this Gordon character?"

So, your bonus question of the week – how did Sting acquire his nickname?

Love to you all,

Greg


The first carload of Boy Scouts had left my house minutes earlier, bound for our three-day wilderness trip. As I backed my own van load of Scouts out of my garage, I noticed a pair of hiking boots on the back steps, so I stopped to retrieve them.

An hour later, we caught up with the first car, which was parked at a highway rest stop. Seeing me pull up, my assistant Scout leader rolled down his window. "Your wife just called on my cell phone," he said. "She asked if you knew anything about the plumber's boots that were on your back steps."


A magician calls a man up on stage, hands him a mallet and instructs the guy to hit him as hard as possible on the head.

The magician then proceeds to put his head down on a wooden block.

The man shrugs his shoulders and takes a mighty swing.

Three years later, the magician wakes up from a coma in the hospital and goes.... "Taa-Daa!"


From a series entitled, “And that’s when the fight started....”

I heard my wife crying in the bathroom. "Honey? What's wrong" I asked.

"Oh, George! Just look at me: I'm getting so old! I have more gray in my hair than blonde, I have varicose veins on both of my legs, and I'm just fat and wrinkled all over! I really need someone to say something positive about me right now!"

I looked deeply into her eyes and said softly: "Your vision's real good, honey. That's something, isn't it?"

And that's when the fight started....

- - -

When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace expensive.

So I took her to a gas station.

And that's when the fight started....

- - -

My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.

My wife asked, "Do you know her?"

"Yes," I sighed, "She was my senior year girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since."

"My God!" says my wife. "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"

And that's when the fight started....

- - -

I asked my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary?"

It warmed my heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said.

So I suggested, "How about the kitchen?"

And that's when the fight started....

- - -

My wife and I are watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?"

"No," she answered.

I then said, "Is that your final answer?"

She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying "Yes."

So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."

And that's when the fight started....


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