One of My Ears Is Higher Than The Other

unrelated snippets and links

2006-03-24

I watched the Kenneth Branagh version of Love's Labour's Lost the other day and ever since, I've had the song "There's No Business Like Show Business" stuck in my head. It probably doesn't help that I've got the Little Voice soundtrack in my car CD player and have been listening obsessively to the Ethel Merman version of the song.

There's NO business like SHOW business
Like NO business I KNOW
Everything about it is apPEALing
Everything the traffic will alLOW

I love it, but it's an earworm, for sure.

The other day, one of my ESL students was wearing a sweatshirt with these English words printed on the back:

The company who looks during the night traffic
CAMPAIGN
Like lost child's kitten.

I love Engrish!

Here's a beautiful, melancholy, slightly sinister homage to Jim Henson, done as a student animation project. I highly recommend it, especially if you like elegiac trumpet music. Thanks to P for the link.

The other day, Metafilter had an interesting discussion on the linguistic phenomenon of HRT (high rise terminals), more commonly known as "uptalking".

Posted by polarcanuck at 11:17 a.m.

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Comments:

Lambert - 2006-03-24 14:39:14
"The company who looks during the/night traffic/CAMPAIGN/Like lost child's kitten." (What is that supposed to be.. a haiku sort of phrase, or) do you figure that it might have had a more logical sound to it in Japanese?
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polarcanuck - 2006-03-24 19:25:25
You know, I was going to say it reminded me of a haiku! But I realized the word count wasn't right. I remember reading somewhere that the use of English on clothing, signs, etc. in Asia is usually for decorative purposes and it doesn't really matter what the words mean. Kind of like the gratuitous use of Chinese characters/Japanese kanji to decorate things in North America, I guess.
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