I have no idea why these pop in to my head, but they do. Many of them have bounced round my brain for decades. I had ones for most of the Notable presidents (ie, the ones I can remember, which is basically WW2 on plus Lincoln and Washington), and I thought it might be diverting to produce a complete set, to date ( Read more... )

English is full of prefixes. A fun game is to remove a negative prefix, or letters that are the same as a negative prefix, to give you a humorous new word that means the opposite of the original. This has been going on since at least the C19th, and probably before. So you could describe a surprisingly well-mannered and cultured provincial person as ( Read more... )

In Another Place,
( Read more... )

It's been more than six months since the last, so it's well past time for oh-ghods-not-another one of my Stupid Lists.

I briefly caught a programme on Radio 4 calling itself ‘Pick of the Weak-minded’, in the style of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. What could be more British than self-deprecating titles for Radio 4 programmes? Some of them are that way ( Read more... )

This has been doing the rounds on social media and in my festively-addled brain:

Sir Mix-a-lot likes big butts and cannot lie. His twin brother does not and cannot tell the truth. You may ask one question.

The question you should ask, of course, depends on what you want to find out.

Possible candidate questions:

• Does my butt look big in this?
  
• ( Read more... )

Ok, so all that thinking about monkeys and apes and Simiiformes has got me thinking sillier thoughts. So here is a stupid lists of songs that are not about such creatures but should be ( Read more... )

I've got a bit obsessed about the Co-op's yes/no question at the tills thing. (Update: It asked me the blank question again on Saturday, I chose YES, and got a £3-off-if-you-spend-£30 voucher ( Read more... )

At my birthday party, I had a couple of silly lists of things printed out on the tables. Here's the first one: 40 Facts.*

( Forties, Tyne, Dogger, German Bight ... )

While a draft is printing out, have a quick hit-and-run pair of things ( Read more... )

Oh no, another stupid list post. Actually, looking back, it seems it's been six months since my last so I'm hardly flooding you with them. And it's Friday, which is a good time for such silliness ( Read more... )