Category: learning curve

The Three Helens

Posted on

When Helen Zille announced recently that she was not going to stand for the DA Leadership again this year, the reactions were many and varied. Colleagues used the opportunity to praise her good work for the party, opponents (generally quietly) celebrated and thinkpiece writers fell over themselves to write thinkpieces, having been starved of opportunities for years hours since the statue debacle and not knowing that the lucrative magic porridge pot of xenophobic attacks were just around the corner.
Very few people turned to the medium of poetry. And that, dear readers, was a shame.

Surely someone must have gone down the versificational route to express their feelings on this momentous event. Yeah, there was plenty of interpretive dance, but I was after metrical composition, and I could find none. In fact, it was only on page 2 of the esteemed Southern Suburbs Tatler that I found appropriate balladry documenting Zille’s decision. Only right, then, that having found Charlotte Caine of Claremont’s The Three Helens that I share it with you.
I’m on it. Doing it right now.

hz

The Three Helens

Charming and friendly
Yet firm when she needs
With vision, courage and purpose
Is how this first lady leads

Voted “The Best Mayor in the World” [Is this going to scan? – Ed.]
Always giving her extraordinary all [No. No, it’s not. – Ed.]
She has always steered the way forward [Double use of ‘always’. – Ed.]
In showing us how to stand tall [Utterly dreadful. – Ed.]

She’s a person who knows how to plan
She’s a woman who knows how to work
No matter how arduous the task may be
She’ll face it; she will never shirk [Semi-colon = extra points. – Ed.]

She has gone from strength to strength
She stands above the crowd
She always goes the extra length [It’s ‘goes the extra mile’, ne? – Ed.]
She has made this country proud [Double rhyming couplet special bonus. – Ed.]

Completing an industrious trio of Helens
Helen Suzman, Helen Joseph, Helen Zille [Keller? Mirren? No? – Ed.]
With dedication, intelligence and determination
Each one a warrior; each one a winner [This doesn’t rhyme. Just saying. – Ed]

Helen Zille is a phenomenal woman
She has earned her place in history
She personifies an invincible spirit
And leaves an indomitable legacy

 

[Rather awkward and stumbled a bit towards the end. A bit like her, I suppose. – Ed.]

 

A couple of points here. Firstly, that since (I’m assuming) the Southern Suburbs Tatler must have been near inundated with several (or more) poems saying how great Helen Zille was, this is ever so slightly disappointing on the quality front. How poor were the others? Were the rest of them just racist outbursts from angry, privileged, Southern Suburbs, white-bearded men? Well, yes. Yes, they were.
This is surely the only reason for fielding these six stanzae.
And then secondly, that in this isibongo, there is no mention of Helen’s continual Twitter meltdowns. And yet this makes up at least [a lot] of her legacy, indomitable or otherwise. So here you go:

Of course she has her dark side too
Like when she rants on twitter
And calls Simphiwe Dana
An ill-informed, arrogant critter

Yeah, I know. It was rushed, inaccurate, it doesn’t scan, it’s rather forced and poorly laid out. Fits right on the end of Charlotte’s work perfectly then. Hashtag seamless.

I’m almost (almost) tempted to write a whole Helen Zille poem, but right now I have to go home and build a flat pack table (uThug Life) so that’ll just have to wait.

Enjoy your long weekend, SA. We’ll be back with more tomorrow. And the day after. And on Monday. No rest for the well wicked, innit?

Two Pics

Posted on

Here are two amazing pics from opposite ends of the world, neither of which are mine (the pics or the ends of the world):

Firstly a clever composite image of the recent total solar eclipse taken in Svalbard by Thanakrit Santikunaporn (not even joking).

EclipseSvalbard_Santikunaporn_960

Here’s a quick explanation of what was done and what it saw. Amazing.

And then this of the eruption of Calbuco, everyone’s favourite Chilean volcano, from Marcelo Utreras:

volc

Here are some details (and more, less good, photos) about that. Your carbon footprint offsetting for the next two hundred years is now rendered utterly pointless, right there.

But on a more positive note: well done, great photo takers. We are impressed.

What do you think?

Posted on

This arrived on my timeline this morning:

What do I think?

I think that the student should have said “please” in his/her request, the teacher should know what his/her grammar are a bit better that what he/she did, and then that the student should show a great deal more respect in his/her reply.

It’s a pretty shoddy show all round. That’s what I think.

Tuesday Ephemera

Posted on

Apparently, this is the third Tuesday ephemera post I’ve done, as you may have noticed from the URL above. Evidently, after the chaos and panic of Mondays (they always seem to surprise people, don’t they?), Tuesdays and Fridays are the days when I unbundle all of the links I’ve collected and collated in my Pocket. Today is no different, as thus, without further ado… Stuff, but with more additional comments than usual:

3 month YouGov polls show folly of campaigning:

ge15

At least, it shows the folly of competitive campaigning. I’m sure that if one party didn’t campaign while the others did, that would make a difference, but given that no-one’s percentages have really done anything very much since mid-January, think of the money, effort and tedium that could have been saved by everyone just not doing anything to woo voters.
Also, it shows the danger of having (really) crap policies – support for UKIP and the Greens having actually dropped as they revealed their plans should they score an unlikely victory.

Local beach clean up yields skull 

The skull is hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years old – the remains of a young adult probably part of a hunter-gatherer community.

Yes. The real surprise was that it wasn’t a more recent murder victim.

This Xilent remix of Ellie Goulding’s Figure 8 is very pretty:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/71479604″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

 

A nice piece on the memories recalled when your childhood home is sold. My parents still live in the same house that I grew up in, so I’ve never really experienced this. Also, it isn’t a massive seven bedroom Yorkshire farmhouse and we didn’t have our wedding reception there, so this is a bit foreign to me as well:

Thirty people slept in the house, with 20 more in tents in the field. Many never made it to a bed, and Mum and Dad reckon that’s the highest number of overnight visitors they have ever had.

How could there actually be any doubt? Were there other occasions when there were “ooh, maybe 49 or 51 – I can’t quite recall”? Or did they previously also own a hotel with 26 double rooms, which may once have been very nearly at full capacity?
But look, this rather bizarre statement shouldn’t detract from what is an otherwise lovely, heartfelt piece.

Finally: Sheffield now and then. Or then and now, depending on how you poke the pictures.

For me, this was interesting not just because I come from Sheffield, but also because firstly, it’s really well done and secondly, just the way that some photos showed massive differences between the old and the new, and some where there were still elements that had been preserved. Sadly, I can’t link to individual photos, but if you have the time and/or inclination the 1945 VE Day crowd outside the City Hall (about a third of the way down) is especially interesting, showing the shrapnel holes from German bombs in the columns, and the patching work still visible today.

On the downside, many of the older photos were taken in the heyday of the city’s industrial past. That’s because that was the thing that made Sheffield special then. That was what was happening, that was the interest. Essentially, that was why the photo was taken – to show that industry, not the green spaces and parks, which didn’t exist back then. The modern day equivalents of those industrial scenes are fairly depressing, in that much of that industry has gone and has been replaced by soulless office buildings or (only arguably worse), nothing at all. It doesn’t help that the present-day photographer seems to have successfully avoided getting any sunshine in any of the photos.

Historical interest 10/10.
Accurate portrayal of modern-day Sheffield: 2/10.

Still. At least it’s not Luton.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

Posted on

In the modern, connected world, there’s simply too much information out there for each of us to take in and process individually. Fortunately, there are some people who refuse to take things at face value, and thus take on the task of analysing some of that information for others. It’s a role that I sometimes find myself taking. I’ll now disseminate some of that analysis, with a view to (further) enriching your life. Sadly, it appears that I haven’t been analysing anything very important recently, but you still never know when what you’re about to ignore read might come in handy.

It happened while I was at my daughter’s singing lesson last night. I was listening to the teacher running through the words to a new song for Scoop.
Hang on, I thought as I listened. u wot m8? I’m not about to take that at face value, I thought.

Thus, herewith my analysis of the lyrics to a song from Disney’s 1950 film Cinderella.
Yep, it’s Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, and here it is for those of you at home:

The lyrics are quite difficult for a six year old to grasp, given that they aren’t made up of real words. Of course, any six year old can sing nonsense words, but these ones have to be specific nonsense words and that’s rather more problematic. But also, it really doesn’t help when the nonsense words used in context don’t make any sense either:

Salagadoola, mechicka boola, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ’em together and what have you got?
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

Really? This seems like an awfully poor return on Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo to me.

Basically, you’ve not just put Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo in, you’ve had to add Salagadoola and Mechicka boola to the list as well, and for what? What have you got once you’ve put them together? Yep: Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.
Where do the Salagadoola and Mechicka boola go to?

Look, we’re told later in the song that Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is the key requirement for in the job doing process:

The thingmabob that does the job is bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

And so, yes, I suppose we can deduce that Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is what we’re after, but looking at the top end of the equation, it seems that we had it already, so where does the need for Salagadoola and Mechicka boola come in?
Do they perhaps act as some sort of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo catalyst? It’s seems unlikely, because if that were the case, Salagadoola and Mechicka boola would also be present at the end of the process as well, by definition.

I’m only asking because a) if they aren’t needed, then we’re obviously wasting a lot of time and effort by putting them into the mixing pot, and b) Mechicka boola is seriously hard to get hold of – Constantia Pick n Pay haven’t had any in for ages now. Gary, the manager, told me that it’s seasonal, and the crops have been decimated by Panama Disease. Or was that bananas?
Either way, it’s a schlep to source, especially if you don’t really need it. Not cheap either, hey?

The other thing about the Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo manufacturing process is the variants you can get if you don’t stop the Salagadoola, Mechicka boola, Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo reaction at the right point. Check out the last line:

Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ’em together and what have you got?
Bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-boo?

That’s polymerisation, that is. And while Bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is far more durable than your ordinary monomeric Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, it’s also far less reactive, presumably meaning that it won’t work anywhere near as well in turning mice into horses, pumpkins into carriages etc. Given that the effects of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo are already time-sensitive, often wearing off at the stroke of midnight (except of course for the infamous, contradictory glass slipper, which remains unaffected and magical even into the next day), this simply isn’t going to work.

So, you know, be careful not to over do it.

Listen, I hope that I haven’t put you off. It may be expensive and difficult to make, it may have a ludicrously foolish recipe, it may just be absolute nonsense from a successful commercial exploitation of a fairytale some 65 years ago, shared in song format, but if you can get it right, Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is the bomb.
[Not literally, obviously. I’m certainly not condoning making any of that sort of thing in your kitchen.]

But it worked for old Cinders, didn’t it? Look at her now: killed in a 1997 Paris road accident married to Prince Chaming and living, we’re told, Happily Ever After.
I can’t promise that it’ll do the same for you, but if you do have time this weekend, ifyou can find some Mechicka boola and especially if you can rope in some help from your fairy godmother, it’s surely got to be worth a shot.