Four Pics One Word

Quite a few of my friends have been playing a little game on their smartphones lately called ‘Four Pics, One Word’ (which brings up immediate and somewhat alarming correlations with the ‘Two Girls, One Cup’ thing, which is no doubt deliberate, but I digress!) and I know this to be true… because when they run out of coins they are posting their harder puzzles to Facebook and asking the hive mind for assistance!  🙂

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Four Pics, One Word is essentially word puzzle game – you are provided with four images that are connected in some way, along with twelve letters that create a word which relates to all four images.  Some of the visual clues are very straight forward and the answer will leap out at you straight away.

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And then others tend towards the somewhat obscure and require a bit of lateral or abstract thinking to figure out the correct word.  That, or putting it aside and looking at it with fresh eyes later and you can usually figure them out as they don’t seem to get more difficult as you go along.

So you sail through a few and then actually have to look at the puzzle for a few seconds.  Personally, I find this game fairly straightforward and haven’t used the ‘coins’ you get for getting the words correct (they can be used to delete letters from the options or to purchase a letter in the word I believe).   This is probably because many moons ago I did a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree where they inflicted things like ‘Reading the Visual’ and ‘Visual Perception’ and ‘Communicating using Images’ onto us, so dissecting art, symobls or visual imagery and relating to them as concepts and words has become second natur over the years.

But what I really love about this little game is the beautiful quality the game has about it.  It’s very polished looking, the images are all professional stock photography, the letter tiles are very smooth and easy to read, and it’s a simple design and layout… it’s really just a rather pretty meadow, I guess.

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But, (and y’all knew there was a big old ‘but’ coming!) there is something that is driving me absolutely nuts about this game.  And it’s the advertisements.  They pop up about every half dozen words guessed, probably more frequently than that in all honesty and given the little word puzzle game is free, the ads are inevitable yes?  However, it’s not the actual presence of the ads that is annoying me… it’s the visual presentation of them!  Here the developers are having spending considerable time and energy creating a game that is visually quite stunning on a little handheld device only to turn around and have it frequently polluted for their users by throwing in ugly looking advertisements for other cheap and nasty looking games.  WHY?  Surely they could be putting up more targeted advertising than this?  Why something that is so incongruous with the quality of the game in which they are putting them?

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Urgh… the ugly keeps interrupting my little game, setting off my OCD, and making me twitch like mad!  I just know I’m going to cave and buy the Premium version of the game for the grand total of USD$1.99 just so I won’t be visually assaulted with these horrid cheap looking ads!



Two cow economics… E-cow-nomics!

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then
throws the milk away

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy
grows.
You sell them and retire on the income

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by
your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption
for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to
produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why
the cow has dropped dead.

A GREEK CORPORATION
You have two cows. You borrow lots of euros to build barns, milking sheds, hay stores, feed sheds,
dairies, cold stores, abattoir, cheese unit and packing sheds.
You still only have two cows.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three
cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce
twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and
market it worldwide.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows,
but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the ** out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive…

two cow economics e-cow-nomics

From My Favourite Cantankerous Range Officer.

I just got an email from one of the Range Officer/Firearms instructors down at the Pistol Club I belong to… with the following note:  ‘Just for you Borys!’

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One day, a blonde went to the doctor’s office.
She went into the examination room and said, “Doctor, I have a bullet hole in my hand and I don’t know where it came from!”
The doctor asked, “Have you had any personal experience with a gun recently?”
The blonde replied, “Well, yesterday I was going to commit suicide. At first I was going to hold my breath till I died. I couldn’t do it though. Then I was going to shoot myself in the stomach. That was too bloody. So I decided to shoot myself in the head. So I put the gun up to my ear and I put my other hand on my other ear because I knew gunshots were loud, you know?”
The doctor nodded.
“Well, then I pulled the trigger and the next thing I knew there was a hole in my hand!”

It’s so nice to know that I’m not being stereotyped by the boys down at the Pistol club.  My reply: ‘I noticed you decided to send me a blonde joke via email rather than in person… wise move!’  😉

This will be me someday…

Four Husbands

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The local news station was interviewing an 80-year-old lady because she had just gotten married for the fourth time. The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 80, and then about her new husband’s occupation. “He’s a funeral director,” she answered.

“Interesting,” the newsman thought.

He then asked her if she wouldn’t mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living. She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect on all those years. After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she had first married a banker when she was in her 20’s, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40’s, and a preacher when in her 60’s, and now – in her 80’s – a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.

(Wait for it)

She smiled and explained,

“I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go.”

G’Day Mate!

I inadvertently (and very oddly for me) used the word ‘mate’ in an email to a friend yesterday. As in, ‘Why don’t you ask your mate Charlie to do blah for you?’

‘So what?’, you might be thinking.

Well, this is really out of character for me and I have no earthly idea why I wrote it.  ‘Mate’ doesn’t figure largely in my vocabulary, in fact I rarely say it at all.  Correction… I NEVER say ‘mate’!  I don’t call people ‘mate’ and even find it somewhat grating when other people call me ‘mate’ (depending on who it is).  And this in spite of my being Australian, and the inherent cultural expectation that tends to infer – ie:  Aussies are presumed to call everyone ‘mate’ after five minutes acquaintance or even less if engaged in a customer service encounters involving cars, carpentry, bricklaying, plumbing, electrical work, hardware and/or yard or home maintenance.

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If I do inadvertently call someone ‘mate’, it’s usually in response to someone who has called me ‘mate’, and even then it come off the tongue in an uneasy and unfamiliar manner so as to feel forced and false.  I’m also not one to say ‘fair dinkum’ or ‘strewth’ or ‘you bewdy’ or ‘goodonya’ with any regularity.  It alarms me somewhat that the stereotypical Aussie is anticipated and expected to speak thus.

For the record, I don’t care if all this makes me sound like a the most dreadful snob.  I have a decent vocabulary and I regularly put it to gainful employment.  It’s probably why, when I travel overseas, no one ever takes me for Australian … except on one rare occasion in Tijuana, Mexico, when the roadside spruikers kept calling me ‘Hey Aussie, hey Aussie! Mate, come over here!’  Took me a little while to figure out that my Billabong backpack and my Mr Zogs Sex Wax t-shirt were probably giving me away… they were so annoying even for just that one day, that I ended up responding with, ‘Pardon monsieur, je ne vous comprends pas!’ and they eventually left me alone with rather confused looks on their faces.

But most of the time when I travel I get taken for English… I’ve sat in a Kensington High Street coffee shop and been asked if I lived locally…  I’ve been in Italy and asked where in the UK I am from… I have been in Turkey and been asked if I’m German – okay that one was more based on the blonde hair blue eyed appearance and my inability to speak Turkish, rather than my speech patterns and accent, but the point stands.  No one ever takes me for an Aussie.  And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Because while I am proud to be Australian and feel eternally grateful for having been born in such a wonderful country… I just don’t identify with the cultural stereotypes that we’ve been lumped with.  You know the ones… they’re the stereotypes that Paul Hogan, Pauline Hanson Steve Irwin and Kath & Kim et al., have been solidifying for decades. God, even our current Prime Minister the Honourable Ms Gillard has a terrible speaking voice!

aussie sheila slang jargon g'day mateaussie man lingo jargon slangI can’t tell you how much this shit irks me and how I find it really embarrassing even.

It doesn’t help that many Aussies play it up when they’re overseas thinking it’s cute or amusing and enjoy the attention they get from bunging on the slang when they choose to further cement the idea that all ‘Stralyans (Note: ‘Stralyans not Australians) speak like this!

To my mind the only genuine and valid reason for hamming up how Australian you are while overseas, is in to ensure you’re not mistaken for an American!  Because as we all know… they’re not as globally popular as they’d like to think they are.  Even travelling Americans have been known to attempt to deploy this technique by claiming to be Canadian!

No. I make no apologies for my vocabulary and it’s decided lack of Aussie flavour.  It was many years ago that I decided I could live with being called a ‘walking dictionary’ (a frequent taunt since primary school for crying out loud) which I endured simply because I was a strong reader and therefore capable of stringing together coherent and cogent sentences from an unusually young age.  I am so unapologetic for my propensity towards using the most appropriate language I am capable of employing in any given situation, that I’ve been working hard to instill the same in my son since he too, was quite young.

So yes.  I’m a language snob. Sue me.  On this count, I’m totally prepared to own it and totally proud to wear it and don’t give a fats rats that people don’t immediate pick me for an Australian when I travel!