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Archive for the ‘word ways’ Category

Evidently Christmas Town

Posted in word ways, tagged on 01/01/2026| Leave a Comment » 

The jolly postman's jolly cold.
With snowy beard, he's jolly old:
Delivering jolly Christmas post,
While dreaming jolly turkey roast.
A jolly man with ne're a frown
Doing the rounds of Christmas Town.

The jolly farmer's jolly pig
Is jolly muddy, jolly big.
The jolly church has jolly mice.
The jolly vicar's jolly nice.
The jolly organ's jolly sound
Is heard through all of Christmas Town.

The jolly pub has jolly beer:
A jolly cup of Christmas cheer.
The jolly kids with candy canes
Have jolly fun, play jolly games
As jolly snow drifts gently down.
Merry Christmas, Christmas Town.

(With apologies to John Cooper Clarke, and to the late Janet and Allan Ahlberg.)

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Abusive language

Posted in theory, word ways, tagged , , , , , , on 13/06/2013| 1 Comment »

One criticism of contemporary life is the tendency to treat everything, and everyone, as a resource to be optimized and exploited. This was part of the idea behind Ian Bogost’s satire on Zynga-style social games, Cow Clicker:

In social games, friends aren’t really friends; they are mere resources. And not just resources for the player, but also for the game developer, who relies on insipid, “viral” aspects of a design to make a system replicate.

Now, it’s one thing to treat someone like a resource, but it’s something else to use that sort of language about someone with their knowledge, even to their face. Yet it happens. It really is quite bizarre.
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Feedback

Posted in word ways, tagged , , on 26/04/2013| Leave a Comment »

Complaining about corporate jargon is almost too easy to be worth the effort. But I did want to have a little whinge about my own pet peeve: the misuse of the terms “positive feedback” and “negative feedback”.
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