From Twitter 01-19-2010

• 18:28:14: @GaySkyHooker You may say OINK. Impressive. I think I'll go lie down now...
  
• 19:06:20: @texasnate no problem. the pictures were quite good, if a bit darkly-lit...
  
• 21:20:49: @GaySkyHooker nah, just fanned meself for a while and now I'm ok...@GaySkyHooker
  
• 21:22:56: @jonk that's like Mother Superior, who said "I like my coffee like I like my men, strong, hot, and black."
  
• 21:31:12: @therealgokwan absolutely. i've been teary through the whole program.
  

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Annoyances

First, that Massachusetts elected a Republican to the Senate seat held by John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. Enough said about that: I'm not close enough to Massachusetts politics to be able to complain intelligently about it. But, in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a very large margin, isn't it natural to expect that Democrats will, all things being equal, put up competent candidates, run competent campaigns, and more often than not, be elected to office? And why haven't they learned the lessons taught by the succession of Republican governors the Commonwealth has elected?

Second, the BBC's pronunciation rules. The British pronounce the name of the Dutch artist Van Gogh as "van goch" with the "ch" being a slightly less emphatic form of the Scots "ch" in "loch". There is a Van Gogh exhibition here in London at the moment, and it's been in the news daily, and every time I hear them pronounce his name I wince. Americans pronounce it "van go", of course.

But what really irks me is that, while in this case the BBC bends over backwards to pronounce the name as the Dutch do, when they pronounce American words, especially place names, they take no account of American pronunciations. BBC announcers pronounce the name of the state in which Baltimore is located as "MAY-ree-land", not "MEH-rih-l'nd". I have heard them pronounce the name of the state in which Detroit is located as "MITCH-i-gan", rather than "MISH-i-gan". There are other instances of this which I can't remember now (no coffee yet).

I should found a Facebook group: Get the BBC to pronounce American place names correctly.

I need to go and forage for breakfast.

Today's Translation from the Chinese

Sometimes certain blogs I subscribe to either have Chinese entries or Chinese comments. If I think the comment might be interesting I will use Babelfish to translate it. A comment on an old blog entry about Hainanese Chicken Rice came through today, so I translated it. This is what I got:

Lubricant underwear's sexy underwear's self-consolation gasification baby's AV appeal clothes butterfly's massage stick's electrically operated massage stick's airplane cup's self-consolation set of self-consolation set of appeal underwear G spot sexy T-shaped trousers' suspenders sock's T-shaped trousers jump wireless the egg sexy night clothes The roll play jumps the egg appeal to jump egg smoke and fire wholesale smoke and fire appeal thing SM

On a closer examination of the original I find that there are multiple links to a site in Taiwan, and when I follow one of the links and click that I am 18 (I know enough Chinese to figure out which link to click), I get a page devoted to vibrators. So the mystery is solved.

I suppose this is a Chinese blog spammer. I wonder what "wholesale smoke and fire appeal thing SM" might be...

Crumbs!

I got a call while I was out buying rice (something that we have to do regularly in this household). When I got back I listened to the message but it didn't make much sense—it said that it was about my recent order, and I haven't ordered from them in a long while. So, I called the number and it turns out that an order was placed for a Sony Vaio netbook using my debit card details, including the security number on the back. I never let my card out of my sight, so I am presuming that some online merchant has skimmed my card details and has either used them or sold them along. The merchant cancelled the order and, I think, will give back the money.

So I called my bank, got right through (oddly enough; usually it takes quite a while to get to talk to a person), and had a bit of trouble making myself understood to the nice lady in India. There were two held transactions on the account, one for £999, and one for around £550, with a few other small ones that were probably the thieves making themselves certain that the numbers they had were good. The debit card's been cancelled and I'll get another one in a few days. I will need to fill out a form they send me and the money will be credited back to our account. But, we will probably have to transfer money from our savings account temporarily in order to cover our household expenses for February, like the rent and such.

I'm always careful about using my card in person, but have never had problems using it online. So, hopefully, we'll get all the money back. But, what a pain.