Month: September 2010

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Ameliorate

(Tweeting as @TSupercargo) ———————————————— Ameliorate : To make or become better; to improve; to heal; to solve a problem ———————————————— Today @artwiculate gave us a way to ameliorate our lives, and many of us took the chance, some more successfully, perhaps, than others. Our doyenne (dare I call her that?) @SJHatzi Had some suggestions about how to play the game: RT @SJHatzi How to ameliorate Artwiculate? Play. W/ joyful abandon! W/ camaraderie & goodwill! W/ charm & good-natured mischief! Allons-y! (@SJHatzi I mean “doyenne” only in the sense “most respected, prominent woman” and not in any other!!) On the other hand, @hollyrocket exhibited a reaction to the game I recognise from personal experience. RT @hollyrocket i just told a client … More…

One fine day at Kew

The 12th September there were clouds in the sky and sometimes the weather seemed threatening, but mostly the sun shone. In London for my sister’s wedding and to house-sit, my wife and I took this opportunity to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Here are some of the photos I took that day – and one of me that Agneta took, standing up on Kew’s treetop walkway.

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Objurgate

(Tweeting as @TSupercargo) ———————————————— Objurgate: To scold, reprimand or rebuke ———————————————— Greetings from the computer of @TheSupercargo. His doppelganger typing. Disregarding all the objurgation I had to put up with last time. (I was NOT drunk!) I’m back with a new RT round-up. (And stone-cold – or rather luke-warm-tea – sober. Yuk.) As ever, some people were less than happy with the WOTD, but, like @kado56 I rate it pretty highly (and that DOES mean I’m RTing another one of Katie’s later). The word has a nice mouth-filling quality about it – as indeed it should considering it’s sense: RT @JonPowles “Objurgate” is just a bollocking, but with extra Latin. RT @osmarjardim Tsk tsk! Objurgate is a verb: reprehend, scold, … More…

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Confabulate

(Tweeting as @TSupercargo) ———————————————— Confabulate: To talk together, converse, chat; in Psychiatry also means: to replace the gaps left by a disorder of the memory with imaginary remembered experiences consistently believed to be true. ———————————————— This isn’t a real RT round-up, just a sketch of what might have been for today’s WOTD if I wasn’t too taken up with our election wake. Not a particularly inspiring word, today’s WOTD (and yes, that IS sour grapes because got the form of the word wrong in my Artwicutweets from my non-Internet connected mobile phone). But here are a few favourites I think particularly deserve my RT vote and a bit of extra exposure. RT @TidKid @artwiculate “The word for today is confabulate” … More…

Confusing words!

Words of Confusion

The daily word game I play on Twitter, Artwiculate, messed up today – or mussed up if you prefer. Muss was the word they gave us to play with. In British English, muss is a rarely used verb with an old fashioned, American quality about it. It is a variant of the word “mess” and means to make untidy, crumple, ruffle, smear, mess, entangle, confuse. Unfortunately for our game, it is also the German word for “must”. Unfortunately, because the software that underpins Artwiculate picks up any uses of the Word of the Day on Twitter and assumes they were composed for the game. So today we were swamped with imperative German tweets. It got me wondering if there were … More…

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Bellwether

(Tweeting as @TSupercargo) ———————————————— Bellwether: The (usually castrated) male sheep (a wether) that leads the flock and is belled by the shepherd so he can be found; A leader (derogative); Something indicative of future trends. ———————————————— Greetings Artwiculati! Neither I nor @TheSupercargo really aspire to being your bellwether, howsomever, here we are again. Not the most inspirational of words, today’s WOTD, I thought, and indeed my short list strains to the score, but still there was SOME fun to be had from the collective Artwicu-tweets. Like this “conversation”: RT @helacious You don’t need a bellwether to know for whom the bell tolls. RT @ultracutebot so wait, a male sheep has to get his balls chopped off to be a bellwether … More…

Jonathan

Disparate days in Leeds with Jonathan Kershaw

My plans for today were sidetracked by the Word for Today on Artwiculate.com: Disparate. Disparate means various, utterly different, unlike. Long ago I started writing a book with the working title Disparate Days. It was a memoir of the year and a half I spent as a student in Leeds, where my housemate was Jonathan Kershaw. Disparate days with Jonathan Jon was a manic-depressive (what is now called bi-polar), and in his manic phase he was amazingly good fun to be with. His humour and charisma were not self-centred, either, but acted as a catalyst so people around him also became funny and witty, or at least imagined themselves to be so. Sharing a house with Jon when he was … More…

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Iconoclast

(Tweeting as @TSupercargo) ———————————————— Iconoclast: One who attacks established or traditional concepts; a destroyer of religious images; adherant of 8th & 9th century heretical movement in Greek Orthodox Church, which aimed at the destruction of icons and religious images. ———————————————— Greetings Artwiculati! Here comes an ever so slightly iconoclastic RT round-up from him (@TheSupercargo) and me. Good Word Of The Day today, I thought. I ended up with a long-list of 70-odd tweets and a short-list of 28-odd, some very odd indeed! 🙂 Commendations in particular to @lawyergirl3 for her attempts to “ar-tweak-ulate” the game. I voted for them all Janise – I liked this best: RT @lawyergirl3 [AFY Artwiculate for You @mazpowles]~ silver hummingbirds ~ with iconoclast wings ~ … More…

Getting ready for the carnival

Getting ready for the carnival

I just got back from London where my wife and I spent two very full weeks. This was the first photo I took while I was there. The idea of a pigeon dressing up as a parrot for the carnival tickled my fancy — and I thought of a couple of Twitter friends (tWordBird and Squawkingalah). The poster was still up on the wall on several Underground stations, though we’d just missed the reason for it. The caption read: Get ready for the Notting Hill Carnival. 29-30 August. We arrived on 1st September. More from London is likely over the next few days … 🙂