"To express one's thoughts / in seventeen syllables / is very diffic"

A bit of linkage to some of my own work. A task I had to do for the creative writing part of my PGCE course was to create a series of haikus about something that has a definite sequence. Being an English geek, I chose to do mine about Shakespeare's Hamlet, attempting to summarise each of the five acts of the play as a haiku. I have to say, I'm very pleased with what I've managed to create. I've uploaded it to my FanFiction page (which, incidentally, I haven't touched for a couple of years until now) and have had a couple of positive reviews already which is always good to see. Here's a direct link to the actual piece. I'll post more links to any creative writing I do here, either stuff from my course that I like or enjoyed, or when I get the chance to do any of my own accord.

By the way, the title of this blog entry is a haiku, called "Haiku", by John Cooper Clarke. I think it's ace.

They flash upon that inward eye

This is a complementary entry to my previous entry. Firstly, after reading back what I wrote last night, the post makes me seem a lot more depressed than I actually was. I said I was "melancholy", which was in hindsight too strong a word to use, but in my defense I was incredibly tired when I wrote the last entry. More accurate a word would probably be "deflated". In all honesty, I don't know the word for how I felt. When I read about the death of the second person, I was shocked. And a couple of seconds later I recalled vividly my meeting with the two people who were close to the first person who died. My emotions entered my stomach which then turned into the drum of a washing machine. It was all so mixed up that a particularly emotional state of shock is probably the best way I can describe it, but as I read that back it doesn't sound very accurate.

Moving on. I also didn't mention that both people died a recently, but not very recently. I don't know how long ago the first person died, but the second person died around a month ago. I just happened to hear about them both on the same day. And that was what took me aback about how I felt. I had heard about two people dying and I was feeling like this? But I hear about people dying on the news all the time, and I don't feel like this every day. If I had a point in the last post, it was something to do with that. Obviously one of the people I had known some time ago, but the other person I had never met. I had never met the two people who had know that person until yesterday. And yet I was affected by it. It just surprised me. I wasn't depressed last night, I'm not now, but I was definitely feeling something I didn't expect. Emotions are strange. Human beings are even stranger.

I doubt this entry has cleared much up. But I read back last night's entry and it seemed alarmingly dour, so I just wanted to clear that up if nothing else. And I'll try to make sure whatever I post about next is a little more upbeat, in tone at least.

In vacant or in pensive mood

I should be going to bed, but I wanted to write something here, however briefly, to attempt to capture some of my feelings at the current moment. Today I have experienced death on two occasions.

The first occasion happened to me this morning. I didn't know the person who died and had never met them. I interacted with two people who were close to the person who died. The person died in a way that, from what I was briefly told, in a way that was not pleasant and was self-inflicted.

The second occasion happened about fifteen minutes ago. I did know this person, although I had not seen him for years. Any direct interaction I had with this person was scarce (although as I type this I have just remembered a specific shared experience between us that stands out in my mind). That said, there was a period in my life when this person was regularly around me and I knew who they were. This person also had interaction with people with whom I am friends, and I have no doubt that they were fairly close to him and were shocked to hear of his passing. I don't know how this person died.

I don't really have a point, other than neither of these people were people that I really knew - in one case not at all, in the other not well - but hearing about their deaths affected me a lot more than I would have expected. I feel somewhat subdued, almost melancholy, after hearing about them. These two experiences together just brought home to me in a way that has never happened before how curious a thing death can be. Probably the most incomprehensible thing life has to offer.

I think this may be why I'm single.

That is, I think this may be one of the huge number of reasons that I am single.

Picture the scene: I'm walking home from work, happily minding my own business, when I receive a text from Attractive Single Girl (ASG). The text reads:

'Hey. Have you seen [film]? x.'

Where [film] is a current release, and not just the word film encased by square brackets. What follows is my internal monologue, as I remember it:

"Oh, cool, a text from [ASG]. Ah, a film. I would like to go see a film with her. Hm. I wonder if she wants to go on a date. No. Don't think like that. That's just setting yourself up to be disappointed. Assume she doesn't want to go on a date. No, don't assume anything. Hm, I've already seen that film. Damn. I wonder if I should suggest an alternative. Hmm. That seems a bit presumptive. Hm. I wonder what the difference between 'assume' and 'presume' is. I dunno. Gah! Don't think about that. Think about [ASG]. She may not actually want to go see a film with me, but be organising a general cinema trip, in which case suggesting an alternative would seem a bit weird. Maybe I should say no and ask whether she's seen it. No, that's stupid too. She's not carrying out a survey, she must be intending to go and see it. Gah! I'm overthinking it, aren't I. Even if she isn't organising a general trip, she may just want to go and see the film with me as a friend. Why should I assume she wants to go out on a date? Hmm. I can't think of a way of saying no and suggesting an alternative without knowing whether she wants to go on a date, just go and see a film as friends, or invite me to a group viewing of a film. I also can't think of a constructive response that would cover more than two of those possibilities, leaving the option that I'll be sending an inappropriately presumptive reply, and making me look like an idiot... Damn... Well I have to send something, I can't just ignore it. Maybe if I just keep it simple she'll ask a follow up question and I can take it from there. Sending anything more complex now is just too risky. Ok. Just answer the question. Have I seen it? Yes. Well that's silly. I can't just say 'yes'. I need to send a full sentence at least. Hmm. I could ask how her day was, but that's a bit of a non-sequitur after her question. Maybe I should say something about the film. Hm..."

... ... ...

"There. That's a good text length. Ok. Review. Is there a situation in which this could be taken the wrong way? No, looks pretty clean. Ok, good. Send. Awesome. Job done."

So that's what I ended up sending:

'Yes I have'. Followed by a short review of the film in question. Gah!

Looking back, I can think of many better ways I could have answered the text, but in the heat of the moment, my mind just did not perform well. I've written this post, partly as a way of showing the bizarre and embarrassing way that my mind works, and partly as a comparison. If this is what is going on in my head when I'm replying to a text message from an ASG, what the hell is going on when I'm talking face to face? What actually happens is that my brain tries to process too many possibilities, overthinks to a point several factors higher than my mind can handle and then shuts down. With embarrassing results.

Sorry for the angsty post, I don't really want to do too many of the teenage 'omg i'm nevvar guna get a gurlfrend. zomg the world hatez me. :'(' posts, but I thought that I could pull this one off and still make it externally interesting. I hope that I succeeded. If not, then I won't broach the subject again.

Locked up

All the way back at the end of August I wrote this post. In some senses this is a follow up.

I was having a discussion about politics with a couple of friends in Nando's this evening, when the guy at the next table decided to join in. He was nice enough, and there with his wife, so we were quite happy to chat to him, even if he'd had enough to drink that he didn't make a huge amount of sense. Anyway, he told a story about his childhood that I thought was quite interesting:

He said that when he was eleven, he'd seen some older kids steal a car and go for a joy ride. He and a friend of his had taken a screwdriver and tried to do the same. They got the car started, but had no idea what to do to actually drive it, and were caught by a policeman, who arrested them. They went to court and were sent to borstal for two months. He described crying for most of his time there, and showed us a tattoo on his hand that some of the older boys had given him (against his will, he implied). He said it was a 'reminder not to fuck up', and said from then on he'd never done anything else that would get him into trouble.

The implication of this story was clearly that he believed a spell in a youth correction facility would help to teach modern teenagers/youths some respect for authority, and help them get back on the right track. He also suggested a mandatory five year stretch in the army for anyone who doesn't have a job or apprenticeship to go into when they leave education. I think the latter suggestion is a bad idea, because a huge influx of bored, angry young men who have been forced into the army against their will seems like a recipe for disaster. Ultimately, if they're not going to form an effective part of the armed services (which they won't if they don't want to), it's no different from keeping them in a highly regimented part-time prison for five years.

His point about the youth detention or borstal system is, I think, also misguided, though clearly driven by the constructive effect it had on his life. I really wanted to ask him some follow up questions about his story, but he was switching topics quite quickly, and it was difficult to get a word in. I'd have been interested to know what his parents thought, firstly about him going to borstal, and secondly about him being tattooed while there. I can just imagine the media circus today about a young child who was forcibly tatooed by other inmates in a young offenders institution. I certainly imagine that there would be lawyers involved.

It's quite possible that for some of the 'problem' youths currently growing up in council estates (and, I'm sure, more affluent areas), a stint of hard dicipline with a threat of more would have an effect, possibly for the better. In general, though, it seems to me that treating kids like criminals would not help them to become productive members of society. A kid with a tattoo reminding him of a terrible experience that he doesn't want to repeat is going to behave out of fear, not because he understands why behaving well is desirable. Perhaps it is wooly liberal thinking, but it seems to me that someone who understands why not stealing a car, why not taking drugs, why not acting in an aggressive and confrontational manner, is desirable by thinking about the sociological consequences of these actions is going to be able to apply those rules to other aspects of life more readily and more accurately than someone who unhappily obeys the rules they are given by people in authority because they don't want to be punished.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe some people would not be able to grasp the reasoning behind laws and social responsibility, or maybe they wouldn't care. Maybe some people are too far gone down their own path to be shown the way back, and maybe some people were never going to be able to follow the path society wants them to in the first place. Whatever the reality of it, it makes me happy that we live in a society when political discussions can break out randomly between strangers in the middle of a restaurant, even if not regularly.

If you consider silhouettes to be NSFW, then NSFW.

I don't really believe that this is to do with left or right side brain activity, it seems to depend more on when you start looking at the animation. Interesting nonetheless. After a few minutes I could get it to reliably change direction at will.

Also good to see Bambi posting again. I was starting to worry that I'd had a schizophrenic episode, registered lots of imaginary Blogger accounts and forgotten about it.

An Inconvenient Profession?

Apologies for my lack of input to this blog lately. I have recently started a teacher training course, and the work and preparation for that has taken up a large amount of my time. There have been one or two things I've wanted to write entries on though, so hopefully I'll be able to get them up here over the weekend.

One thing I wanted to comment on is this story.

I was going to write something about this when I first read about the issue, but as it turns out it may work out better now that a follow-up story has been written.

For starters, I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, but I would like to see it to form my own opinion on it. I also didn't really think of the story with respect to how important the film was in telling schoolchildren about climate change and protecting the environment. What I see is yet another distrust of teachers, the authority they have potentially and that they are rarely allowed to use.

Stewart Dimmock didn't want the film to be shown in school because it contains "partisan political views" and "sentimental mush". If that is indeed the case, and if I was going to use that film as a teaching tool, those are two of the main things I'd try to get pupils to draw out of it. Not to just take it as 100% truth, but to interrogate the film they're watching. If the politics and sentiment are that overt then I'm sure many GCSE level pupils, maybe even those at the top end of Key Stage 3, would be able to work that out, perhaps with a little prompting to question.

To me, Mr. Dimmock is doing one of two things:

1. Not wanting teachers to teach children these kinds of skills, instead getting them to simply take everything they are exposed to at face value.
2. Not trusting teachers to be able to teach these kinds of skills, therefore calling for the removal of texts he deems unable to be taught in English schools.

Either way, he seems like the kind of ignorant person I'm likely to meet more often than I'd like throughout my potential career.

Bible Fight!

Less painful than the real deal (those things are heavy, man) but still Bible Fight!

The loading times are pretty excessive and the controls sometimes annoyingly unresponsive, but a fun distraction for a few minutes.

Also, I downloaded the demo of Peggle (see a couple of posts back) and yes, addictive. Like to the point of "I need to go out and buy more heroin, but I really just want to play this next level. Just one more. My dealer will totally still be there in 10 minutes." Lucky the demo's only 15 levels or so. I think I can resist buying the real thing. I think...

Webcomic Links

A list from FullyRamblomatic (the guy who creates the reviews in the previous post) of his favourite webcomics. And a link to a blog that ridicules poor webcomics.

It Lives!

I keep trying to set aside some time to write something interesting and well argued, but keep failing, so as an apology, I'm going to give you a ton more links.

I've been reading Charlie Brooker's writing for a fairly long time now (I started reading PC Zone just as he was finishing writing for it), including his columns in the Guardian and a couple of his books. His humour is prurient, irreverent and pretty abstract. It's kinda hit and miss too, but generally moves between topics quickly enough that it stays funny.

I was worried about whether it would translate to the screen, and so didn't see the first series of Screen Wipe - his BBC4 show where he provides kind of a commentary on current news in the television industry, kind of an analysis of recent programmes, and kind of a slightly surreal sketch show. Having seen the start of the fourth season, however, I really want to go back and re-watch the previous ones. The vast majority of the show is brilliantly observed criticism of the tv industry and reviews of shows. Brooker is refreshingly honest, and embodies everything modern 'family' television attempts to hide in presenters. He's quick to get to the point, cynically dismissive about anything that he feels doesn't matter and quite willing to attack people personally when he feels that they deserve it. Some of the best moments come from the fact that it is very aware that it is a TV program commenting on TV programs, and the self-referential lines and in jokes are really entertaining.

The occasional miss is generally in a sketch that goes on too long, or a personal insult against someone undeserving, and Brooker's delivery sometimes appears as though he's simply reading from a script, but in general Screen Wipe is fanstastically witty, honest and uncompromising. I keep wanting to call the show original, but really it's not original, it's a show commenting on the TV industry. Surely that can't be an original idea. It feels original because the quick delivery and all too rare bordering-on-the-rude-honesty that is constantly on display is something that I don't think I've ever really seen in the sanitised modern television industry. Anyway, well worth a look.

I was reminded of Brooker's presentational style (and hence encouraged to write a long, rambling post) by a link on KTR* to this review of Peggle. Which led me to these other reviews by the same guy, which led to me laughing a lot. He has the same fast, no nonsense, semi-obscene delivery that Brooker has (although with fewer references to pushing pine cones up people's arses, a staple of Brooker's Guardian column), with the same witty and uncompromising put downs for anything that doesn't make the grade. Which in turn reminds me of RiffTrax. I've never listened to one, but it's a great idea (spawned from MST3000) and one that I may investigate at some point in the future...

One of my friends told me recently that they had trouple reading a previous link from KTR* because it required too much knowledge of gamer history/culture/slang. I hope this isn't the case (because if it is, I apparantly have no way of telling the difference between an article that does and an article that doesn't), as I hope that the reviews above aren't inaccessible to non gamers, as they really are very funny indeed.

Also I'll try and post more often. Even just links. There's nothing more depressing than seeing days and days with nothing written on a blog the express purpose of which was to try and encourage regular content.

* I realise that I'm a horrible link-whore and anyone who reads KTR and Jabberwock (listed helpfully on the sidebar over there) could pre-empt 90% of my posts. But I like to think I provide some small level of commentary too. Or at least aggregation. Or at least text.

I have no idea what this is. Seriously.

Imagine if a 5 year old was forced to translate a philosophy textbook while on acid.

I have no idea what this is. But it's pretty compelling.

Found via Play This Thing!, which is a really good resource for those of a gaming nature.

Quotable.

I have wasted many hours of my life (particularly at work) reading the bash.org archives. For anyone unfamiliar with them, they are a general repository of funny quotations from IRC logs (though I think they accept quotes from any instant messaging service). Either way, some are clearly faked, some are boring, some make no sense, but the vast majority have some element of humour in them and there are many absolute comedic gems.

The humour is generally computer-centric, but there's enough there even if you're not that technically minded for it to be worth a look. Browse the top rated ones for an idea of what kind of humour is there. They're good work material because they're in chunks, so you can do the old work-nonwork-work-nonwork cycle quite efficiently.

This is probably the one that put me most in danger of actively falling off my chair at work today: #572066

All a little phishy

I meant to post this back when it happened a couple of weeks ago, but kept forgetting. Strange and slightly worrying phone conversation:

Me: Hello?
Switchboard: Hi, got a call for you from Alpha Deliveries
Me: Ok. Thanks.

Them: Hi this is Pete from Alpha Deliveries, and we've got a parcel here for you that's due to be delivered on Monday. It's registered post and weighs more than 4 kg, so we're going to need a signature.
Me: Ok...
Them: Can you confirm that you'll be in between 7am and 7pm?
Me: At work?
Them: Yes... your office is on Upper Richmond Road -
Me: Yeah. I won't be here all that time, no.
Them: Well, could you give us the name of someone else that'll be there so that we can make sure someone named signs for it. Otherwise we'll have to bring it back here.
Me: [name of co-worker]
Them: And is there another name, just to make sure that we can get it delivered?
Me: [name of another co-worker]
Them: And can you give me another name, just so we can definately make sure it gets signed for.
Me: (suspecting something is wrong and panicking slightly) Um, no, I don't think there's anyone else that'll be here.
Them: Ok, thank you.
Me: Ok...
Them: Bye.

I was concerned by the slightly strange request for so many names, and the fact that I hadn't ordered anything. Needless to say, nothing arrived on the Monday. So either it's the world's slowest delivery company, they got the name on the parcel wrong (possible, since there's another person in my office with my initials, and people have called the wrong one of us before), or it was someone trying to fish for information.

Had I been a little more awake (it was a Friday afternoon when they rang) and not trying to do two things at once (I was showing someone where something was on my computer at the same time), I hope I would have been a bit more guarded with what I told them. I hope also that I would have asked for the guy's name and the company name again. And possibly a contact number or order number.

As it is, I have no idea how they got my name and work number, since I don't even know my work number and certainly haven't written it down anywhere. The only place where my name and the name of the company I work for are together is on Facebook, which seems an unlikely source of information for whatever scam they're trying to pull.

I also don't know what they could do with the information they got from the call, the names of two other people who work for the company I work for. I don't really know what other information they might have hoped to get out of me, over the phone, either. Altogether, I don't think I gave much away, and if it was a scam attempt, I don't really see what they got out of it.

Lol, RL n00b.

Finally, someone talking in a language I can understand. I found these a while back, and I've definitely posted these somewhere before, but I can't remember where. Certainly not here, though.

Part 1: Preparation
Part 2: Conning
Part 3: Spawn Points

UPDATE: As promised in the comments thread -
Part 4: Chat

Yay! :D

Strange fruit

I've got a couple of things I want to do entries on, but my brain is so frazzled from the whole working week thing, that I'm going to leave that till tomorrow at the earliest. So just a couple of links for now:

Via Enter the Jabberwock, this story that has apparently been quite big in America, but which appears to have escaped all coverage here in the UK. No particular reason why it would be covered over here, but it's interesting to think of all the hugely important stories that just don't make it through national news filters.

It's also the first time I've noticed the international blogging community exerting a pretty serious self examination in response to a percieved lack of coverage of a particular story. I'm not qualified or knowledgeable to draw conclusions about whether it's new or notable, but I thought it was interesting.

Even if you don't read the whole discussion of the reaction here, read Joe Solmonese's words at the march - they're pretty powerful.

Clearly the reaction and coverage linked to above are pretty one sided, and it would be interesting to read a piece taking the other side of the story, but whatever the details of the situation, it seems pretty clear that there are double standards being imposed.

fryPhone

I don't give a shit about smartphones, but the fact that Stephen Fry has a blog makes me very excited.

His server seems a bit dodgy atm, so you may have to try a couple of times.

UPDATE: Yep, his server appears to have gone down. I assume it's being fixed.

UPDATE 2: Seems to be working again now.

Evening all.

Now that's policework

Found via The Policeman's Blog, as featured on the BBC.

"Gate"-aholics II

This is not going to be a long post (and there are the famous last words) because it doesn't need to be and I've already made a substantial entry today. Plus I'm tired, so this is bound to not be as good as I want it to be anyway.

I agree that the use of -gate as a suffix should be avoided in general, and I believe that it largely is apart from by those in the press. I believe that it's functional more than patronising to the reader however, being as it is a catch-all phrase which is useful in headlines and summaries. I do however see the constant stream of -gate's in the media as lazy (and not in the good language evolution way, in the uncreative I-can't-be-bothered-to-think-of-anything-else way).

I think I know what you mean about -gate being more specific than the other neologisms I mentioned, and that whereas something like "workaholic" is instantly understandable, as long as you know what "work" and -holism both mean, "spygate" isn't. I don't think that's necessarily a problem. We've already agreed that "spygate" is rubbish in the story it's been used in, but also pretty much in any context as it is so vague. Let's take another fairly recent example instead: Lewinskygate. I'd say that anyone with a general knowledge of recent history would know that Lewinskygate refers to the Monica Lewinsky scandal of the mid to late '90s. When more carefully formed, -gate constructions can work as a useful summarising of something that would otherwise be a little wordy. In the Lewinskygate example, you'd have to instead say "The Monica Lewinsky scandal" or "the Clinton-Lewinsky affair". I personally prefer the more wordy descriptions as they seem more elegant (as elegant as a presidential sex scandal can be, anyway), but I'd have no problem with anyone using Lewinskygate either.

Insofar as being understood in general conversation, I'd also say that both the -gate construction and a more traditional description are on a par. With either, you'd have to have at least some knowledge of the event to know what it referred to. Using "the Monica Lewinsky scandal" and "Lewinskygate" again, I think that with both you'd have to have some background knowledge of the event; in both cases, if you knew nothing about it you'd have to ask for further clarification. And again, putting "spygate" into this example against something like "the F1 McLaren scandal" shows how terrible that particular -gate really is.

I hope all that's made sense. I agree with you on most of your points, and pretty much everything you've said about the way a lot of the media write, but I'm still willing to not close the gate on -gate, if you get my meaning.

Suffixgate part deux

Thanks to Bambi for the swift response - I feel that I agree with many of your points, but, much as my sense of self-preservation is screaming at me not to get involved in a debate on grammatical necessity with an English graduate, I do want to post some follow up thoughts.

I totally accept the points you make about the evolution of language being both necessary and out of our control. I'm not attempting to suggest that there is anything that can be done about be-gated words in general, but perhaps to suggest that these are words that we should try to avoid bringing into the language intentionally.

I also accept the point you make about laziness in writing. My point was not that the contraction or creation of words was lazy, but that the (journalistic) writing style that coined 'tag' terms like 'spygate' was lazy in style, because of the assumed need to simplify and condense everything for the reader.

I'd also like to suggest that there are a couple of differences between the words that you suggested were introduced similarly, and -gate words. The first is that while all of the words you suggest have general meaning (anyone in any country in any time period could be hospitalised, or use a spork), the -gate words have very specific meaning, generally referring to a single event. I can't think of an analogous concept to this one really - a set of words that describe instances rather than abstract concepts - unless you could make comparisons with people's names, which are not general concepts, but refer to specific instances (of people).

The second is that I would contest that words with the suffixes -ise or -oholic (or -aholic) are instantly understandable. They can be applied to other words in the english language, and provided you understand that word, you will understand the new word. With -gate, on the other hand, there is no frame of reference. I know what 'spy' means, but that does not help me if someone refers to 'spygate' in a conversation. Whereas, although I've never heard anyone use the word 'sproutaholic', I would know what it meant (assuming context), because it is a word describing a concept, rather than one describing an instance (of an event).

These differences, I feel, are the crux of why I take more issue with -gate suffixes than other (equally nonsensical) ones. But, my problem is less with the words themselves, but with those who create and use them without thinking about what they are doing and why.

As far as pissing on people's posts, as long as a point is well argued, it's never pissing. Plus I'm sure I have done worse to other people in the past and so probably deserved it.

N.B. Were I to use a '-gate' word on this blog any time in the future, it would, of course, be an ironic reference to this post. Ahem.

"Gate"-aholics

Having read my partner-in-blog's most recent entry, I felt it necessary to respond. I don't agree with everything he said. But first, the parts that I do agree with, so I don't get bogged down in them:

1. The suffix -gate is definitely being overused.
2. The vast majority of the media love anything that helps them sensationalise a story or make it soundbite-worthy. For example, if suspicion of the parents in the Madeleine McCann case continues to mount and they end up going on trial, I am fairly certain we'll start hearing about "Maddygate".
3. The F1 investigation Telf linked to is not worthy of being a "gate", and the moniker it has been given ("spygate") appears slapdash and badly thought out.

However, when it comes to the emergence of the -gate suffix in general, although I'm not particularly fond of it, I have no problem with it whatsoever. When used effectively (i.e. not "spygate") and not in excess, it can effectively and concisely encapsulate the general feel of a scandal by juxtaposing it with the sleaze and underhandedness of the Watergate scandal. Admittedly, most will not seem to be of as great a magnitude as Watergate, but if that had not been one of the biggest scandals of the 20th Century, if not the biggest, the -gate suffix would most likely have never come to be in the first place.

The fact that as a grammatical construction it doesn't make sense is not really an issue. If "spygate" is out then so are "telethon" and "workaholic", which take their prefixes from "marathon" and "alcoholic" respectively. The suffix -thon has nothing etymologically to do with doing something for a long time, nor does -holic (although almost always -aholic, despite the fact that the original word ends with -oholic) have its root in having an addiction to something. You could argue that these two, along with -gate, are only colloquialisms at the moment, but their widespread usage and understanding surely means that they are destined to be part of some future generation's technical terminology.

The formation of the term through laziness is also something that I take issue with; not because I disagree with that fact, but because a significant amount of words used every day in English were formed simply through laziness. Why else would we have "don't" and "can't"? If it wasn't for laziness we wouldn't be able to say "goodbye" (originally a contraction of "God be with you"), or go scuba-diving without saying we're going self-contained-underwater-breathing-apparatus-diving (possibly stretching the point a bit, but scuba is now an acceptable word and not an abbreviation). By the same token, laziness has given us the "spork" (a portmanteau of "spoon" and "fork") as an easy-to-remember name rather than inventing a completely new one. Biro and hoover, both originally brand names, are now synonyms for ball-point pen and vacuum cleaner respectively through laziness. Even "today" and "tomorrow" used to be "to-day" and "to-morrow", with the hyphen dropped simply for ease. The list goes on, and there are I'm fairly certain examples of laziness forming words back through the centuries even though most of the ones I've mentioned here are mostly from this Century and the last. Laziness is one of the key ways that English grows and changes as a language, and on the whole I embrace that, -gate's and all.

That's not to say I don't see where Telf is coming from. One of the overused suffixes of modern times I dislike is -ise - quite often exclusively -ize, as many of the versions I dislike come from American English. Two such examples are "hospitalize" (to put into hospital) and "novelize" (to turn into a novel). There's no grammatical or etymological reason I dislike these -ize's; I just find them over-sanitary and, on the whole, ugly words to use. But I accept that they are here to stay, as English has to continue developing, and will go in whichever direction it chooses whether I like it or not.

Apologies if you feel I've pissed all over your entry, Telf. That was not and is not my intention. Essentially, I agree with most of what you said about the media, but just felt a need to clarify how I feel about suffixes such as -gate and the other linguistic devices I mentioned, and show that hostility towards them is generally not necessary, but more importantly on the whole pointless. If history chooses to retain the -gate suffix there isn't a huge amount that can be done to stop it.