4 posts tagged “vox hunt”
Audio: Share a song you can't help but sing along to.
Its so easy to sing to! Additionally, I love the little girl in the original video. She reminds me of my little niece.
Show us the one thing that unfailingly makes you smile, no matter what. (Submitted by Sourire)
One of the many things that make me smile, no matter what,
has to be Indian English. The corruptions in the language are either the result
of a literal translation from the native Indian language, or of
mispronunciation/ mishearing. I recently read a book called The Calcutta Cookbook, which reproduced this priceless menu from the days of the East India
Company, as recorded by a Bengali cook on the payroll of a memsahib. I quote:
- Salary Soup
- Fis
- Heels Fis Fry
- Madish
- Russel Pups.................................................................... (LOL!)
- Wormsil Mole
- Joint
- Rost Bastard.................................................................... (ROTFL!)
- Puddin
- Toast Anchovy
- Poshteg
- Billimunj
- Ispunj Roli
We have been able to decipher most of Domingo’s (the
cook’s) esoteric menu except for Russel Pups- dogs were not eaten. Someone
suggested Brussels sprouts. So be it.
For those who are still left guessing here is a translation- celery soup, fish, hilsa (shad) fish fry, main dish, vermicelli mould, joint, roast bustard,pudding, anchovy toast, poached egg, blancmange, sponge roll.
Book: Show us a book that made you laugh out loud. (Submitted by Red Pen.)
I have lost count of how many times I have read this book. I can narrate entire passages from it from memory. I sometimes think it has affected the way I think. It has definitely affected the way I write.
Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book...
"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British
Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which
I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned
the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful,
devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list
of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got
it. I sat for awhile, frozen with
horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the
pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I
had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St.Vitus's Dance - found, as I
expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and
determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up
ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage
would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I
had only in a modified form, and, so far as
that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe
complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the
twenty-six letters, and the only malady I
could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at
first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while,
however, less grasping feelings prevailed.
I reflected that I had every other
known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and
determined to do without housemaid's knee.
Gout, in its most malignant stage, it
would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I
had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis,
so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with
me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma."
Book: Show us a book you started reading but never finished.
I bought Joseph Heller's Something Happened sometime during my college days (1994-1997). I have still not finished reading the book; in fact, I don't even know where it is. It could be with my brother, it could be with my parents, it could be with any of our friends- it could even be lost. I don't care. The book is too close to the truth; every time I started reading it I felt like I was reading the story of my own dysfunctional family, down to the young, epileptic son. And clearly the family was sliding down and down a vortex of depression, and clearly the end of the book would mean the end of the family. It was too scary. I started reading the book at least four or five times, but I did not have the courage to finish it. Who wants to read about the end of their family anyway?
