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Showing posts from November 7, 2004

I’d Love to be a Fairy’s Child

CHILDREN born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart’s desire: Jingle pockets full of gold, Marry when they’re seven years old. Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild— I’d love to be a Fairy’s child. Robert Graves (1895–1985). Fairies and Fusiliers. 1918. [found via the totally rocking Robert Graves Trust website. Graves is pretty unknown as a poet these days, sadly. I read one of his poems at my fathers funeral so you will probably understand that we were both fans. Graves reputation nowadays rests almost entirely on the Claudius books (which he regarded as potboilers) and The White Goddess - a very odd attempt to come up with a kind of grand synthesis of myth, poetry and the psychological impulses behind all forms of creativity. He described it himself as being "a histor

A Metric for the Bad English Accent - an Interim Report

The derived SI unit for bad English accents is the Van Dyke and was introduced in 1981 when it became clear it was required in the film casting industry. Its definition in terms of base units is complex, but it was constructed such that 1 vD should be equivalent to an objective measurement of the accent of Dick Van Dyke in the movie Mary Poppins ("Gor bloimey Mairry Poppins!"). For all practical purposes 1 vD is vastly too large for general usage. More usually, English Accent Awfulness (EAA) is measured in milli Van Dykes ("Paltrow got her EAA down to 6 mvD in that take") or micro van Dykes ("Zellweger is easily in the micro vD range"). Unconfirmed reports do suggest of localised readings of up to 5 GvD at the Texas RenFaire.