Monday, March 13, 2006
Groinish beans
I've heard the term a man of simple pleasures but I've never been sure whether I could describe myself as such. I suppose when a man has to tie his tie one-handed and needs must enlist the help of his groin when opening a tin of beans, convoluted pleasures are probably out of the question.
A lie I intermittently give to my students is that my injury was caused by Wes when we argued over the meaning of a word and he, looking up the word and finding himself to be foolish and false, hit me on the hand with the Oxford English dictionary, causing the rending of my bone. To cast the good-natured and popular Wes as some sort of psychotic hand-whamming ogre is churlish even by my standards but it is as well to spread the infamy around a little.
A lady in the last lesson asks me to define maniac: I tell her that a maniac is a crazy person who always asks strange questions and abuses the privilege of an electronic dictionary. She double-checks this in her electronic dictionary and, somehow not finding my truth too aberrant from the truth enjoyed by the rest of creation, gives me a bear.
The bear troubles me: it is a little over 2 cm tall and made of yellow plastic. It does not have a face which makes it the stuff of an abused child's nightmare.
Besides, the legend on the bears chest identifies it as the mascot of JEF United. I do not particularly like JEF United.
A lie I intermittently give to my students is that my injury was caused by Wes when we argued over the meaning of a word and he, looking up the word and finding himself to be foolish and false, hit me on the hand with the Oxford English dictionary, causing the rending of my bone. To cast the good-natured and popular Wes as some sort of psychotic hand-whamming ogre is churlish even by my standards but it is as well to spread the infamy around a little.
A lady in the last lesson asks me to define maniac: I tell her that a maniac is a crazy person who always asks strange questions and abuses the privilege of an electronic dictionary. She double-checks this in her electronic dictionary and, somehow not finding my truth too aberrant from the truth enjoyed by the rest of creation, gives me a bear.
The bear troubles me: it is a little over 2 cm tall and made of yellow plastic. It does not have a face which makes it the stuff of an abused child's nightmare.
Besides, the legend on the bears chest identifies it as the mascot of JEF United. I do not particularly like JEF United.
