Behind: Ahead

[peterbirks]

Well, I'm behind with work, so I really don't have time to post this, but, hell, live dangerously, huh?

My Citibank dollar savings a/c details arrived today and, crucuially, it appears to be a UK sort code.

This should be enough to fool the donks at that well-known money service that is doing its level best to stop me getting dollars out of a dollar account.

Nothing would surprise me less than to see me set up the account okay for electronic transfers, make a withdrawal, and then to see that it has been converted to sterling and then back to dollars en route, costing me 10% of my money. Certainly it appears as if nowhere in the US poker land wants to send a dollar cheque to the UK, even if your account is in US dollars. Fuck ths sytem, eh?


I'm also behind because I'm funkin' for Wardacre, who is chip leader at the WSOP Sit n'go championships (also known as the Limit Hold'em shootout) with five players left. Ram Vaswami is also in the last five.

Andy has been in this situation thousands of times online, so he knows what to do.

I recall some donktwat on Gutshot's forums about 18 months ago posting "what has Andy done?" and mocking Andy's style of play in tournaments. I wonder where that poster is now? Probably back at his desk job, doing his cash at the Gutshot tenner donkaments every week.

Speaking of the word "forums" (preferable to the hideous "fora"), Ian Hislop made a bit of a dick of himself on Radio Five a few days ago when a political correspondent referred to "referendums" (the R5 presenter clearly had no idea what the correct word was and kind of mumbled it). Hislop, pissing around in silly hat at Wimbledon, pointedly referred to "referen-DA", as if the political correspondent was a non-public schoolboy fool with no knowledge of the classics. Non-public schoolboy the journalist might have been, but his use of the plural referendums was by no means wrong. The use of "referenda", contrariwise, should have as its postscript in Chambers "pomp.") that being short for "pompous".


Fuck it. Work calls.

PJ

Comments

[danmonkey.livejournal.com]

Great to see Andy get heads up. Secrets of the Amateurs is long overdue a name change.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I was eagerly awaiting for someone who had the word "Gutshot" on Google alerts to bite on the above (no names, no packdrill) but, no such luck. Perhaps I should have mentioned West Lothian instead.

PJ

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

And wasn't it a pleasant change to see a non-sponsored player in the last two?

PJ

[danmonkey.livejournal.com]

That may be a (semi)rhetorical question, but I do agree. It would have been superb if Andy had got the bracelet but I hope he is pleased with the result.

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

Definitely pleased. Delighted, in fact. If you always want more then you'll never be satisfied. I could think "I wish I had won the bracelet" but then what if I had, I'd be thinking "I wish I'd won a bigger event or a televised event or a second event". It never ends.

Linking the two themes, I am told that the news back home on a certain site is that "Gutshotter Andy Ward finished 2nd in the Limit Hold-em Shootout". I'm not bothered enough to take issue with it. Never heard of him though :-)

Andy.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

That was just what I was thinking, Andy. You win it, you spend your life trying for another one. You come second, you spend your life trying for another one. Or you wish that you'd won a bigger one.

BTW, speaking of "bigger ones", how do you want that $200? Transfer, or cash when you come back?

As for "Gutshot writer Andy Ward" (which I believe was the phrasing used). Well, it was terminologically just about accurate. I shall say no more, partly because no more needs to be said.

PJ

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, then you have to keep going until maybe once in 100 lifetimes you win the biggest one. And where do you go from there ?

Up to you on the transfer. However, in my experience, it is less embarrassing for all concerned if the player doesn't have to ask for the % money after he's lost the tournament :-). I don't start till Monday in any case.

Andy.

Cnuts and halfacnuts

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, that was a different post.

Far be it from me to defend my old college chum Hislop, a man who like William Hague has brought a new and shining lustre to the phrase "making the best you can of limited resources," but it's a bit much to rail at him for correcting the hideous "referendums" whilst using a word such as "contrariwise," which belongs only within the pages of a single book, and that book a nineteenth-century one to boot.

I see that the Firefox spell-checker, which I did not ask for, do not want, and would prefer in a more literate language, were it to be forced on me in any case, is prompting me to reformulate "lustre." Well, fuck them. Like the average Yank programmer would understand joined-up writing, let alone be able to spell properly in it.

I don't like "referendums," simply put, because it sounds ugly. I would, with a degree of regret, apply the same basic qualification to the word "fora." Which of the three (acceptable) plurals would you use for "octopus," and why? And don't tell me you've never felt the need. The Octopus And Y is a very well respected Greek-Laotian Turf'n'Surf in one of the more reputable parts of Leicester Square, so I know you've been there ...

... Where was I? Oh yes. Sorry, but "referendums" is just plain(ly) wrong. Not only is it a cacophony, but it is also a specific technical term, and the misuse of technical terms (as with anyone bar a Nuclear Physicist bandying "relativity" or "quantum shift" around, apart from me, obviously, because otherwise I would never have been able to make that point) raises the hackle.

"Fora," on the other hand, not only sounds wrong, but in fact has no basis in etymology other than a strict construction of the Latin first declension. You talk about forums, you're not talking about big wide spaces in the centre (there goes Firefox again) of town where chaps wearing togas meet to chat with, bribe, or stab other chaps wearing togas in the back. You are in fact talking about ... well, I'm not really sure what you're talking about, but whatever it is, it is sufficiently vague and non-technical to have become an English word in its own right, with no redolence of its origins. My contention would be that a proper English word deserves a proper English declension (God knows, we have so few of them), whereas a loan- or borrow-word should be loaned or borrowed right(ly).

Any thoughts on "data" as a(n egregious) singular? Or the annoying habit of people sneeringly saying "it's a plural noun in the Greek first declension. It therefore takes the plural form of the verb," when in fact this is precisely why it takes the singular form of the verb? An act of self-willed intellectual inferiority that is only matched by the persistent American desire to spell "analyse" (hello Firefox, what a surprise) as "analyze" because "it's Greek, innit?"

Well, yes. It is. A spot of analyzis required there.

Re: Cnuts and halfacnuts

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

... and before anybody complains about "Turf'n'Surf," I will agree that it might have been better had the Greek side of the operation dealt with the octopodes (Bing from Firefox again) and the Laotian with the water buffaloes. But then, in the restaurant business, it's all about location, location, location ...

... except in Leicester Square.

Re: Cnuts and halfacnuts

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Missing, of course, one last chance to be a "pomp." (are you sure that's in Chamber's?) or a "pric."

I do genuinely believe that a gerund* should be treated with more respect than yer average neuter noun. (Basically, it has more inherent content/complexity.) This might sound like an ex post facto justification, but to me it just looks like working a gut feeling out -- otherwise known as peritonitis, I suppose.

* This is of course going to get me into hot water of my own devising. "Referendum" looks like the supine form of "referendere," which I believe would make it a gerund in my book (thirty years old and consigned to the dustbin of Latin O-Level history), but, unfortunately, its meaning of "that which is to be decided/referred" is a nasty little future passive participle, which would make it a gerundive. In this case, I suspect that it is a gerund being used in a gerundival context. However, I am not prepared to take the Latin primer out the dustbin, that being four houses, fifteen miles, and a dozen lifetimes away, and I'm even less inclined to go downstairs and consult my "Vox Graeca" to reassure myself that a gerundive is part of a Greek conjunction -- I seem to recall there are five -- as opposed to the place of the gerund in the Latin conjunction -- for which there are four parts.

It is possible, though nauseating, that Professors Cameron (Eton, retd. rich) and Willetts (my school, retd. haploid) are in fact correct. But I stand by my judgement on "referenda."

Referendere

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I think that the key here, Pete, is the extent to which the word has been subsumed into modern English. (And, by reference to another post, "Octopuses" - although it would be nice if Octopussy were the modern form)

I say "modern English", of course, because if it were proper pre-fucking Norman English we could have referenden.

This is where Hislop was being pompous (and, yes, of course Chambers has "pomp." :-) ) in assuming that the correspondent was unaware of the possible "-a" plural ending. No-one in the media worth his or her salt isn't aware of the two choices, and all dictionaries offer both. In that sense, which you choose is a matter of preference, not correctness or not. I use "media", "data" and "referendums". The "technical correctness" for me is less important than the extent to which the word has become "English" but the plural has not become established one way or the other. The standard plural for an English word is today (thanks to the fucking Normans) to add an "-s". If the word remains "borrowed" then the foreign plural can be used. Alternatively, if the non-English plural has wormed its way into standard English usage, then that's fine as well (media, data, bureaux).

But, as I say, I have no beef with someone using "referenda". My argument is with those who look down on those who do not, because "they know better". In fact, they don't know better; they just assume that they do.

Analyze That. (Hah! Cinematic references and misspellings in a two-word phrase. God I'm good.)

PJ

Re: Referendere

[(Anonymous)]

Dictionaries commonly give 'referenda' and 'referendums' equal status, and I'm OK with that.

It bothers me, though, when people use 'media' or 'data' as if they were singular words. This is surely just ignorance. Both words are not only plural originally, but they have a singular form that is used in English, so they can't be singular themselves. One doesn't see 'datum' very often, but it exists.

I sometimes even find people in HP writing 'medias' (because they like to write 'media' instead of 'paper'), which makes as much sense as 'mices'.

-- Jonathan