Archive for August 19th, 2008
Good evening Stuart,
I could be mistaken because there appear to be satellite issues tonight causing parts of words to be replaced with blips and blops, but did I hear you refer to "talkbock radio" at the top of the show? Could this be related to the "Bock of the 90s" from one of your previous haunts?
In regards to tennis at the Olympics…I can't stand tennis! Golf and Lawn Bowls need to be added to the Olympics, shall I leave it in your capable hands to organise that? I can see it now, Stuart Bocking, Australia's first golfing gold medallist.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
August 19th, 2008 at 08:30pm
Caltex successfully convinced me yesterday that they do not use logic when deciding on petrol prices. I was fairly convinced of that already, but they made sure of it yesterday.
According to 2UE’s Tim Webster, all the Caltex stations he passed in Sydney were selling unleaded petrol for 146.9 cents per litre. In Weston yesterday the Caltex Woolworths petrol station were selling unleaded petrol for 139.9 cents per litre, a price which was repeated at another Caltex just off Drakeford Drive. Oddly though, another Caltex near Drakeford Drive was selling it for 143.9 cents per litre.
As for today’s prices…I don’t want to know, as it would only make me try to find logic where this is none.
If only I had a recording of that conversation Glenn Wheeler had with a petrol company spokesperson just before Easter (at least I think it was just before Easter). That was one of the most amusing and confusing conversations I’ve heard and I think Glenn was right when he summed up the petrol company’s explanation as something along the lines of “take a number, divide it by five, add a couple tomatoes, a pineapple, a coconut, and an onion, and hey presto! It’s a perfect petrol price”.
I wonder if it would be more cost effective to buy crude oil and refine it myself?
Samuel
August 19th, 2008 at 01:12pm
All of the swimming in Beijing has reminded me of the day that I came to the conclusion that swimming just wasn’t for me.
I was in primary school and was reluctantly taking part in the weekly school swimming trip to the AIS pool in Bruce. For one reason or another I was relegated to the half-length pool and the supervising teacher encouraged me to swim from one end to the other and back again. I’m not entirely sure why, but I decided to try to swim that distance as quickly as possible…perhaps I thought that the quicker I did that, the sooner the torment would be over.
Anyway, swimming as fast as I could, I managed to swim the entire 50 metres in just over five minutes, which means that I had reached the incredible speed of just under 10 metres per minute. It may have only been five and a bit minutes, but it felt like half an hour.
Not surprisingly, the teacher also agreed that swimming wasn’t my forte. I still had to go on the weekly swimming trips, but I didn’t have to enter a pool again.
Incidentally, whilst reading that, did you read “forte” as “for-tay” or “fort”? You may be interested to learn that technically, the correct pronunciation is “fort”. Answers.com explains with help from the American Heritage Dictionary:
USAGE NOTE: The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage, however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, (fôr’tā’), which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners.
Samuel
August 19th, 2008 at 11:53am
I’m confused and I have been for some time. Endeavour carpets in Fyshwick have a radio advertisement featuring a jingle for “Independent Carpets”.
What I can’t work out is why Endeavour Carpets would want to pay for an advertisement claiming that “Independent Carpets is the only place to go”. The only possibilities that springs to mind are:
1. Nobody noticed the error
2. It’s a deliberate tactic to confuse the listener and get the store’s name firmly implanted in the listener’s head.
Can anybody shine some light on this?
Samuel
August 19th, 2008 at 08:42am
Today is not a good day for me to have a headache which is gradually getting worse, and what feels like the start of a cold. If anybody wants to buy them from me, let me know…you can have them.
“Buy” might be the wrong word as I don’t intend on charging the recipient.
Samuel
August 19th, 2008 at 06:52am