Notebook -01 Pg 16

-The Notes-

• Marinate in the lachrymose.
• Semantically freighted.
• Part teacher, part talent scout, part lion tamer.
• Given enough brains all problems can be rendered minor.
• Cartoon of a fox addressing chickens 'I have gathered you all here to deliberate upon the sauce in which you will be served'.
• No one loves armed missionaries'.
• Designosaurs.

-The Commentary-

Marinate in the lachrymose.

Think I must have been wearing my pants of fancy when I wrote some of these. Marinate in the lachrymose is just a way of saying drowning in your own tears. A phrase that is all but guaranteed (if addressed to the tearful) to stop someone crying, if only whilst they consider what an absolute twazzock you are managing to be in their hour of distress.

Semantically freighted.

This phrase has some great application which I can't for the life of me remember - I believe it has  something to do with words moving to meaning something other than that which they were originally used.
No doubt I  snatched it without a 'by your leave Stephen' from Mr Fry's lexicographical oesophagus.

Part teacher, part talent scout, part lion tamer.

I know what I was thinking here, a rarity I know. This is part of a long long series of thoughts upon education which as this entry is being written early on a Sunday morning I have absolutely no intention of boring you with. Maybe one day I will at which I bet you are sitting there squirming like a birthday eve child in anticipation.

Given enough brains all problems can be rendered minor.

A simple rewrite of the brilliant Linux open source maxim for writing computer code that 'given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.'

Cartoon of a fox addressing chickens 'I have gathered you all in here to deliberate upon the sauce in which you will be served.

This was a cartoon published during the French revolution when the parliament was being asked to vote itself out of existence. Useful as a reminder as I have often found myself in meetings of when we are being asked to do something that is going to make more (and usually more unpleasant) work for everyone involved.

No one loves armed missionaries.

I just remember a commentator making this to salient observation round about the beginning of operations in Iraq

Designosaurs.

Don't know who exactly this was aimed at - unimaginative public housing architects probably.