I’ve just been reading that a survey by Oxford University Press of British children’s writing habits has found an increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling.

American vocabulary and spelling with words such as garbage, candy, sneakers, trash can, sidewalk, and soda featuring in much of the children’s written school work.

Now I’m not too bothered by this as the British have always enriched their language by adopting ‘foreign’ words. Just think of how many words we use today which originated in places such as India and other parts of the good old ‘Empire’.

I know that English is a contrary language, but what I do find slightly annoying and often very amusing at the same time is the American ‘corruption’ of English regular verbs in their past tense. The obvious ones being .. “dove” .. instead of dived .. “pled” instead of pleaded .. and of course .. “snuck” instead of sneaked. A new one on me, which I came across recently is … “drug” instead of dragged; as in .. “being drug back to the dark ages“.

I don’t think that we will be .. “Two nations separated by a common language” .. for much longer, for we British are being drug by our children towards …

…   the language of the future.

Many times I have ranted about crap (sometimes literally “crap“) art exhibitions and competitions such as shows at the ‘Tate Modern’ and the ‘Turner Prize’, and the gobbledygook spouted by curators and art critics when describing the rubbish on display, but I have to say that The Hayward Gallery’s director, Ralph Ripoff Rugoff, won the top prize for taking the piss when he announced …

…”From the amusing to the philosophical, you will be able to explore an invisible labyrinth that only materialises as you move around it, see an artwork that has been created by the artist staring at it for 1000 hours, walk through an installation designed to evoke the afterlife, and be in the presence of Andy Warhol’s celebrity aura”.

“Invisible” ! … Yes, that’s right. We are being asked to pay £8 ($12.50) to marvel at … ‘Nothing‘ ! … and the cheeky bastard even has the nerve to bill the show as … “the best exhibition you’ll never see” !

I do hope that they are playing John Cage’s 4’33” as background music, and that the ‘artist’ who reported to the police that his invisible sculpture had been stolen from his car soon has his insurance claim settled.

I wonder if you can pay that £8 entrance fee …

… with invisible money ?

I know that I keep ranting on about the bloody Olympics, but it’s hard not to when you see just how ridiculous the whole event is becoming.

The latest in this obscene Olympic circus involved Seb Coe, Mayor ‘BoJo’, ‘ex-pat’ Beckham and ‘er Maj’s dreary daughter in another dubious ancient Greek ceremony, where Seb told the world that the arrival of the flame on British shores will be a “resounding clarion call” to the world’s top athletes and that “millions (millions ? .. who writes this crap ?) of Britons have been working hard to create a great welcome”. Of course he didn’t mention all the other “millions” who don’t give a shit, or all those who are taking part in the great Olympic ‘rip-off’ and making an extra few ‘bob’ whenever they can. Blimey ! One of the torches has already appeared on ebay !

Somehow the flame stayed alight this time despite the heavy rain and was transferred from it’s ‘cheese grater’ to a miner’s lamp in which it has been flown (A flame on a plane ! … Is that allowed ?) to Britain on board a yellow golden ‘Firefly’ aircraft, and it’s now being carried in a relay by an odd assortment of ‘athletes’ most of whom look ‘knackered’ after the first hundred yards. The pace is so slow that faster moving spectators are being pushed into the roadside hedges by the escorting ‘plods’.

I wonder when …

… Sacha Baron Cohen will appear ?

Can you believe that some genius ‘geek’ has invented a ‘sat nav’ device to guide us around the local shopping mall ?

What next ? … Will they be fitting the bloody things to baby buggies and mobility scooters ?

As one who has never used a ‘sat nav’, does not own a ‘BlackBerry’, has never ‘tweeted’ and does not know his ‘apps’ from his elbow, I have to wonder where all this ‘smartphone’ technology will end and do we really need it ?

Well if my observations are correct, many people can’t live without it. In fact there are some of us who are completely obsessed with it, for it seems that everywhere you look fingers are jabbing at, or flicking across small screens searching for Gawd knows what. Take a look at the crowd at a concert, a play, a movie, even a funeral and you are likely see several ‘addicts’ sneaking prolonged peeks at their smartphones. It seems that these sad specimens just can’t help themselves.

Perhaps someone can please tell me, can these poor sods find help at  … 

…  ‘Apps Addicts Anonymous’  ?

Oh Dear ! I feel that the omens are bad, although I have not as yet sacrificed a chicken and poked around in it’s giblets for a sign of disaster, but could anything be more alarming than the Olympic flame being blown out at the very start of it’s journey ?

Perhaps those ancient Greek gods sent an invisable Hermes to extinguish the flame as a sign that they are upset about the state of their old country’s economy. Pity they didn’t let Zeus zap Seb Coe with one of his lightening bolts while they were at it.

Let’s hope that the residents of Mount Olympus are not too pissed off, or as in Homer’s ‘Iliad’, Apollo might shoot a few “arrows of plague” causing mayhem in the toilets at every ‘McDonald’s’ in the Olympic Park; or Poseidon might make it piss down on the pentathlon. Don’t forget that Ares was let loose in Europe not long after the Nazis hijacked the Games in 1936, when they also introduced the ‘cheese grater’ torch relay which had not been part of the original load of old cobblers sacred ceremony.

Now I doubt if there is an oracle around here, and I know for certain that it would be hard to find a ‘virgin’ priestess, so I will have to look to Spiros at the local kebab shop for a prophetic prediction about further intervention by those meddlesome deities from ancient times. I just hope that he doesn’t turn my souvlaki into …

… a burnt offering !