Hi, everyone.
With the release of the ATARs, the anxiety of high school is officially over and I'm still not getting around to doing those last Disney reviews. Consider the next bit of them to be a "season two" for 2015.
But speaking of seasons, Merry Yuletide and Happy Saturnalia! My gift to the internet this year is my short story for Extension 2 English, which got a band E4 and made the NSW honours roll. All's well that ends well, so I'm now less embarrassed to share it with the world after so many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to move the plot forward. You can access the PDF in Google Drive with this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxCSozSsVZukd1pKXzZWN2U2dEE/view?usp=sharing. Please let me know if the link fails.
As well as hopelessly trying to find a job this summer, I've been doing a lot of storyboarding and writing, so expect a couple of little excerpts to be posted in the next few weeks. Also expect a brief explanation of Ara, an imaginary continent with its own languages, cultures and religions that has been evolving in my imagination for many years and which might finally find a place in a narrative.
I hope you all stay safe, happy and healthy this Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever the hell you want to call it.
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Monday, 24 March 2014
REVIEWS!
I've started a second blog, just for reviewing things like books and movies that I have loved in the past or will see in the future. I've started with a countdown of the 15 best Disney movies of my childhood. Please check it out at benjaminromeclarkereviews.blogspot.com.au, and have a great day!
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
It's called a hamburger.
Not a burger. A hamburger. And this is the only thing I care about today, apart from the usual nonsense.
"But why's it called a hamburger if it hasn't got ham in it?"
You suck. That's why.
Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and the second largest port in Europe, known for its extreme wealth from trade, its environmental consciousness and its lovely position on the River Elbe. In the 19th century there was an influx of immigrants from Germany to the United States (among whom, it may interest you to know, were my ancestors), who, by the 20th century, were clearly hankering for a tasty and easy savoury snack with a name that reminded them of the good old fatherland. Enter the hamburger. This origin story explains why the hamburger didn't exist in Germany until Americanisation; it doesn't necessarily come from Hamburg. Some German-American chef was probably just feeling a little nostalgic that day and named it after the big riverside city he had been born in.
As their English was probably not the most proficient, early hamburgermakers probably didn't see the confusion they would cause among people who weren't very well versed in European geography and would coin abbreviations like "burger" and the most linguistically dreaded "beefburger" and "cheeseburger". As I myself am guilty of saying these words, I shall now shake my fist at the sky and curse the infernal idiocracy that conditioned me to do so.
I'll take the analogical route of talking about the Frankfurter. The Frankfurter is also a three-syllabled food that involves processed meat and is named after a populous German city. Frankfurters can be made from beef, or chicken, or pork, yet we don't ever call it a "furter" or a "beeffurter". Why? Because it makes no sense. If we follow this logic, then "beefburger" should also be rendered nonsensical.
And now I come specifically to "burger". Why do you call it a burger? Is it because you're afraid someone will put ham in it? Then you need a little bit of education. Is it because you're too lazy to say that extra syllable? Then you're probably too lazy to do absolutely anything at all. Is it because you say it impulsively because that's how you've learned words? Then run to your parents and scream, "WHY DID YOU MAKE ME THIS WAY???!!!"
There are many different "burgs", of which Hamburg is just one. Call it a burger, and for all we know it could be a Luxemburger, a Van Der Burger or a St Petersburger. (A St Petersburger, I've decided, is just a hamburger with a patty made of vodka rather than meat.)
It all comes down to people being too lazy to know things, really. And it also comes down to the English language being screwed up. Whenever we get words from other languages, we're like a newborn with a gun. We don't know what to do with it, and people get hurt. Well, figuratively. In fact, of all the things I hate, this is probably the most trivial and unharmful. It still pisses me off, though.
I mean, honestly, why don't we just call pizza "za" and pasta "sta"? It sounds like the sort of thing a twelvie would say. Why don't I just start calling myself Jamin? Your friend Alicia? Yeah, she's just Licia now because the English-speaking world is too damn lazy to maintain the integrity of its language. It's crap like this that makes our language so hard to learn ...
Not that anyone can, you know, do anything about this. The sad thing about language is that it's absolutely insane, we're stuck with it and it can't stop, sort of like Miley Cyrus.
Pedantic rant over. I'd say sorry for wasting your time. But this is actually important. For me. Needless to say, I'm pretty bored.
"But why's it called a hamburger if it hasn't got ham in it?"
You suck. That's why.
Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and the second largest port in Europe, known for its extreme wealth from trade, its environmental consciousness and its lovely position on the River Elbe. In the 19th century there was an influx of immigrants from Germany to the United States (among whom, it may interest you to know, were my ancestors), who, by the 20th century, were clearly hankering for a tasty and easy savoury snack with a name that reminded them of the good old fatherland. Enter the hamburger. This origin story explains why the hamburger didn't exist in Germany until Americanisation; it doesn't necessarily come from Hamburg. Some German-American chef was probably just feeling a little nostalgic that day and named it after the big riverside city he had been born in.
As their English was probably not the most proficient, early hamburgermakers probably didn't see the confusion they would cause among people who weren't very well versed in European geography and would coin abbreviations like "burger" and the most linguistically dreaded "beefburger" and "cheeseburger". As I myself am guilty of saying these words, I shall now shake my fist at the sky and curse the infernal idiocracy that conditioned me to do so.
I'll take the analogical route of talking about the Frankfurter. The Frankfurter is also a three-syllabled food that involves processed meat and is named after a populous German city. Frankfurters can be made from beef, or chicken, or pork, yet we don't ever call it a "furter" or a "beeffurter". Why? Because it makes no sense. If we follow this logic, then "beefburger" should also be rendered nonsensical.
And now I come specifically to "burger". Why do you call it a burger? Is it because you're afraid someone will put ham in it? Then you need a little bit of education. Is it because you're too lazy to say that extra syllable? Then you're probably too lazy to do absolutely anything at all. Is it because you say it impulsively because that's how you've learned words? Then run to your parents and scream, "WHY DID YOU MAKE ME THIS WAY???!!!"
There are many different "burgs", of which Hamburg is just one. Call it a burger, and for all we know it could be a Luxemburger, a Van Der Burger or a St Petersburger. (A St Petersburger, I've decided, is just a hamburger with a patty made of vodka rather than meat.)
It all comes down to people being too lazy to know things, really. And it also comes down to the English language being screwed up. Whenever we get words from other languages, we're like a newborn with a gun. We don't know what to do with it, and people get hurt. Well, figuratively. In fact, of all the things I hate, this is probably the most trivial and unharmful. It still pisses me off, though.
I mean, honestly, why don't we just call pizza "za" and pasta "sta"? It sounds like the sort of thing a twelvie would say. Why don't I just start calling myself Jamin? Your friend Alicia? Yeah, she's just Licia now because the English-speaking world is too damn lazy to maintain the integrity of its language. It's crap like this that makes our language so hard to learn ...
Not that anyone can, you know, do anything about this. The sad thing about language is that it's absolutely insane, we're stuck with it and it can't stop, sort of like Miley Cyrus.
Pedantic rant over. I'd say sorry for wasting your time. But this is actually important. For me. Needless to say, I'm pretty bored.
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