Wardrobe Malfunctions

 Humour  No Responses »
Oct 162009
 

For some reason the term ‘wardrobe malfunction’ has come to be used in reference to those little ‘accidents’ that happen to people when their clothing slips to reveal a little more than is conventional. For some peculiar reason this seems to happen more frequently with famous people and even more frequently when cameras are rolling.

However that’s not the reason I’m writing this. Who first coined the phrase ‘wardrobe malfunction’ in reference to incidents of this kind ? Said person needs to be gently informed that a more correct phrase would be ‘clothing malfunction’ seeing as it is the clothes that are causing the problem.

A wardrobe malfunction relates to those tall cupboards that store clothes. A malfunction of one could be one of the following :-

Whilst opening the door, you trip and fall into the wardrobe and get tangled up in the clothes and have to call for your partner to help you get released. Who is out in the garden at the time and doesn’t hear your calls until they come in a few hours later.

Or you pull open the door and the door falls off, lands on your foot to cause you to jump about in pain and to fall backwards down the stairs.

Of course there are those who will say that one of the meanings of “wardrobe” is clothes themselves. Maybe so, but that refers to a collection of clothes. You do not wear a collection unless you want to get hot and sweaty to the point of unconsciousness.

Toilet Seats: Up or Down ?

 Humour  No Responses »
Sep 042009
 

Just for the record, I leave toilet seats in the position I found them in after I’ve used them and this is intended to be humorous.

One of the most common complaints women have about men is that we leave the toilet seats up which when you think about it is more than a little ridiculous. After all it takes perhaps 5 seconds to put the seat down, which is hardly enough work to complain about is it ?

The funny thing is when men gather in secretive enclaves to complain about women (which we have to do to avoid being accused of sexism), nobody ever complains about women leaving the toilet seat down. Why is that ? After all, men are hardly any less ridiculous than women are, and putting the toilet seat up is just as much work as putting it down.

I guess this is one of life’s great unanswerable questions.

Of course if you were to do an efficiency study of how much work in a mixed household results from moving the toilet seat, you will probably find that less work results from leaving the seat up than leaving it down. Of course then all the work will be done by women, which may be why they complain about the seat being left up.

Handbags and Manbags

 Humour  No Responses »
Aug 102009
 

Actually we don’t normally call them manbags. We normally call them after what the main contents are :-

  • A camera bag
  • A tripod bag (you might guess at this point that I spend a considerable amount of time carrying around optical equipment)
  • Laptop bags
  • Book bags
  • Lunch bags.

So when we stop to think about women’s handbags, it starts to get a little freaky. By the convention of what men name their bags, perhaps women keep hands in their bags ? Perhaps that’s a second reason why no man looks in a woman’s handbag – we really don’t want to know what’s in them!

Most Ridiculous Product Ever: Camera Armour for a Canon 1Ds

 Humour, Photography  No Responses »
Jul 272009
 

Sometime you look at a product when trying to find something on Amazon (or elsewhere), and think what were they thinking of ? And a set of “camera armour” for a Canon 1DS (probably mkI and mkII) certainly fits the bill. It smacks of corporate stupidity – we make camera armour for Canon cameras, so we’ll make armour for all Canon cameras whether they need it or not.

If you have never encountered a 1Ds, you make well be wondering what I am on about, and that camera armour in certain situations is a good idea. Well, the Canon 1Ds is a tank. If you need to drive nails, and there is no hammer handy, the 1DS will do quite nicely. If you drop it, the pavement will break before it does (the lens attached might suffer though).

Seeing as so many people are reading this, I’d better point out that it is intended as humorous!

The River Avon – Where The Name Comes From

 History, Humour  No Responses »
Jun 222008
 

I’ve always been interested in the origins of landscape words … Rithe, Bourne, etc. In Britain, there are a fair number of rivers called the “Avon” and I used to idly spend some time wondering where that name came from. The origins are quite amusing for someone like me.

It so happens that the Welsh word for river is “Afon” and I used to wonder if the similarity to “Avon” was due to some sort of miscommunication between the native Brythonic population and incoming Saxons. It turns out that I was not the only one to think so.

So all the rivers called Avon are really named “River River”. One can imaging how this might occur :-

Saxon: “So, native what is this river called ?” (in Old English)

Native: “It’s a river you dumb Saxon ox” (in proto-Welsh)

Saxon: “Avon? That’s a funny name, but I guess I can remember it” (OE)

Native: “Yes, a river with water in it”

Of course the real reason may have been that the Brythonic population didn’t want to give too much information away that would help the Saxons militarily. And of course the misunderstanding (or misleading answers) means we have lost the original names for the rivers in question.

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