Scots for Dummies

As a kid I liked the book 'The Twits', so I was impressed when I recently stumbled across 'The Eejits', which is 'The Twits' translated into Scots.

As it says on the publisher's site, more or less, it's the same Roald Dahl story about the world's most revolting couple - Mr Twit was horrible and hairy and his wife Mrs Twit was just plain ugly, in The Eejits they are honkin, mawkit, bowfin and clarty and Mrs Eejit's hackitness is revealed in all its manky glory.

What a great idea. I wander if it ever went under the working title 'The Numpties'. Wouldn't it be great if other publishers took it upon themselves to branch into the Scots domain?

As it happens, now we can almost bring this into reality:



Alright, so this website allows you to mock up a would be 'for Dummies' book cover, and this may turn into a kind of caption competition for anyone that can be humped, but it made me chuckle. Even this mob will host your generated images for nowt.

I may have made a rookie mistake of assuming that people are familiar with the 'for Dummies' book series, which is maybe something I should keep quiet about, as it's not so much going over folks heads as under, though we are talking about books here.

This has also been the longest setup, without a punchline right enough, since I spent a few years of my life in the '90s pretending to study Electrical and Electronic Engineering, with the sole purpose of answering the lecturer's question 'What is a transformer?'.

This is my first post since leaving Japan. I'm really busy training to become a teacher just now and shouldn't be mucking around with this. I get a few weeks break at Christmas when I hope to upload our last pictures of Japan, some since (which should be interesting), some writing about goings on and a formal closing ceremony on the blog, Japanese style.

Until December!

How to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations

A lovely stuffed tanuki on a safe

A lovely stuffed tanuki on top of a safe, in the office of one of my JHS Principals. I flipping love that stuffed tanuki.

In other news, at the start of this year Ban Ki-moon replaced Kofi Annan as the Secretary-General of the United Nations. I did a bit of research and it turns out that Kofi Annan replaced Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Some even further research revealed that the only credentials necessary to become the Secretary -General of the United Nations is a Jedi name, which can only be approved by Mark Hamill or George Lucas. It makes sense when you think about it. Gives them a certain gravitas supposedly.

Oh aye, we felt a bit of an earthquake on Sunday. Everything's tickety boo, but the Vice Principal (or Principal of Vice as I prefer it) in my main JHS, had to go and sort his house out in Kashiwazaki. This was the town that was worst hit. Check out the pictures, it was a big deal.

Angels with dirty faces?

I never speak to anyone in certain parts of Scotland about 'Britain'. Yes, I'm Scottish and from the land of hope and glory. After all of the Catholic church scandals that have emanated from, amongst every good nation on the planet including Ireland, I've always thought that the Emerald Isle should sing about being the land of grope and holy. In a tongue in cheek manner of course, as long as the tongue belongs to the same owner as the cheek, and both remain attached to the person. You can't be too contractually careful with religious perverts.

Another Catholic child abuse scandal has emerged, this time in LA, the city of Angels. As if times weren't bad enough with the Bloods,the Crips and the Osbournes, some of the Christians have turned against them too.

It's the usual story of the church being rumbled for years of child abuse which is ultimately sad and terrible for all of the poor victims involved.

This story triggered an alarm bell with me however, when I heard, on the BBC news, the local Cardinal making a statement on behalf of the Catholic church. The local Cardinal's name is 'Roger Mahony'. Jesus H. Corbett, couldn't they have found someone else with a better name? I can just imagine the Pope sitting down to his tea of egg 'n' chips, being hit by this story on the TV, and then seeing the banner with 'Cardinal Roger Mahony'. "Roger? Mahony? Aw for fecks sake!", he'd quibble in Latin. Who else was available to make a statement? Bishop Phil McCracken? It really made me cringe when I heard 'Roger' talking about their 'innocence' being taken away. Man, to believe in a religion that has a reset button on their conscience must be sweet. The other thing that made my mind spin faster than a priest's cassock, is that the victims are to be given a joint lump sum of $660 million compensation. I have no problem with that but what happens now? Do they have to fight it out and prove how much they were abused? That is going to be one dark day in court that will essentially put the price on buggery with a choir boy. What a menu that would make. I can just see it now displayed on the wall of a church on a hymn board.

I'm not religious one way or the other and would just as happily write about any other religious mob that partook in such hypocritically despicable behaviour. I know there are a lot of good Catholic Christians out there, some of which are my friends.

Probably the best name for an off license... ever!

Self explanatory

The Japanese habit of mistranslating English into Japanese is well documented as Engrish.

Now and again they hit the nail right on the head however and I think this is a prime example. The above picture is of our local off license, brilliantly titled 'Self'. Even the logo is a beauty, that S isn't someone giving the thumbs up but rather a punter happily getting a punch in the chops. I'm tempted to photoshop the logo out of the picture and use it when I start a typically self indulgent blog called 'Self', when I get home. It's either going to be 'Self' or 'I really love me!'.

Another random bit of knowledge that I have picked up about off licenses around the world, is that in Australia, they call them 'bottle shops'. Makes sense I suppose, as if you've ever know an Australian with a bottle of 'grog' it's not long before it's just a bottle. A bit rich coming from a Scotchlander some may think. Taking it one step further for us, maybe we should name our 'bottle shops', 'broken glass shops' as we tend to demolish the contents of the bottle, go mental and then proceed to demolish someone with the bottle, usually starting with the heed, resulting in a demolished bottle too.

Wouldn't it be cool if the Australians applied this bottle shop logic to every type of Australian shop. Supermarkets would be 'shite stores', as that's just the next step after the shelf and frying pan.

I wander where Australians buy bottles?

We are the champeens my friend!

The 2007 Sado Soccer League champeens

We played the final game of the season on July 8th against the team that we were joint top with, the evil black stripped 'Shoot Club', which is obviously an anagram of Succubus. It was winner takes all and the biggest game of the season.

Two things were significant in this game. First, Matt and I had been out the entire night before with the Niigata ALT football lads for a farewell do, getting no sleep other than two and half hours on the ferry home, which seemed like a time machine. We were still a bit reeking from a very late but great karaoke performance. Both Matt and I had differing orifices sending very threatening neural messages to our soused brains, that if we put on a pair of shorts and kicked a ball, they'd unleash their payload with as much fury as they could. The other point to note was that I have recently introduced one of the new young PE teachers from one of my schools to the team, and it was his first game. This new player turned out to be the best player I have ever played with. He was awesome! It turns out that he's played to a very high level in Niigata.

Having said that, we were down 0 - 1 at half time though we'd had the majority of possession in a pretty physical game. I was a bit shaky to say the least and I was actually booked, for the first time in my puff, for wellying some poor Shoot Clubber. I chopped him with an uncharacteristic flailing right foot though I wasn't the only guilty one, as every Destroyer seemed to hack this poor wee mite at some point in the match. The referee was bloody awful, but doing his best and I deserved the yellow card. At half time, I knew we were going to win. I couldn't put my finger on it, due to said orifice threats, but I knew we were going to do it. I was moved from midfield to attack in the second half and the change helped I think. Not because of my performance but because the guy they moved into my position played well. I managed to do a job and header the odd ball. Not long into the second half, good old Matt scored the first goal after a header was saved from a corner but not cleared. Matt punted the ball into the back of the net, making no mistake, and set us up for glory. We were all over them and Shoot Club should have been renamed Shat Club, as they were on the defensive big time. It wasn't long before we had another chance and Matt laid off a ball to another good player, Machan, who finished the move expertly. The crowd went bananas. From then on we were cruising and there was only the odd moment when we were under any pressure. The final whistle blew to conclude a great closing game to the 2007 Sado League. To be fair to Shoot Club they put in a typically brave Japanese performance though the score flattered them, in my opinion.

Our captain, Tsuyoshi, a very nice chap, was awarded the cup and the job was a good 'un. He even got the ice water box over the head a la NFL culture. After the disappointingly early exit from Nagano with the ALT team, this made it up for Matt and I, who have been enjoying playing with this nice bunch of Japanese lads. I'll be sorry to leave them.