World Cup Characters

Last night, for reasons irrelevant to England's embarrassing abasement before the world cup football mafia, I happened to be reading a 2300-year-old book called Characters.

The author, Theophrastus, a student of Plato and Aristotle who influenced British writers for centuries until we thought we knew better, lists thirty types of humanity to avoid, every one of them, as far as I can gather, on parade in Zurich yesterday, including: 

The Dissembler:  the FIFA man 'more dangerous than vipers' who 'pretends not to have heard, claims not to have seen, says that he does not remember agreeing' and then votes for the bid that has made it most worth his while..

The Toady: one who takes part in a 'degrading association' of the sort that Prince William should not be asked to have with international shysters.

The Chatterbox: one who 'describes in every detail what he had for dinner' in between telling listeners to BBC Radio 5 Live how well everything is going in Zurich and how brilliantly our three graces, Beckham, Cameron and Windsor, were toadying on the national behalf.

The Rumour Monger: see above: but note rare and special praise for Radio Five's Zurich presenter, Peter Allen (ok, I was stuck in snow in a car at the time) who was reporting bravely on the simple fact that every excited commentator on his show was basing their optimism on each other or nothing or both.

The Man who has Lost all Sense: see above, and in the plural. Or for man read  'country' with the occasional rare citizen exceptions like Simon Jenkins and the investigators for Panorama and The Sunday Times.

The Superstitious Man: one who 'avoids weasels', quite hard in Zurich it seems, and when he sees Vladimir Putin staying at home knows exactly what that must mean 

The Obtuse Man, the Self-centred Man, the Arrogant Man, the Late Learner, the Friend of Villains, the Shabby Profiteer.

Need I go on?

Another good reason for stopping the cuts in humanities and starting some elsewhere.

 

Comments

[Clayton Burns]

If 2011 were to be declared the year of the viper/reptile/weasel, would that cover it? Probably not.

An excellent comment at Language Log on the subject (wisely, comments denied):

"(Comments are closed, because if you imagine I am going to risk the violence of a discussion involving plural inflection, linguistic variation, the Wall Street Journal, corpus linguistics, Latin, Eton, snobbery, soccer, Davids Beckham and Cameron, Prince William, FIFA, corruption, bribery, the BBC, Vladimir Putin, Wikileaks, the Russian mafia, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, you must be absolutely out of your tiny mind. I will be spending the weekend hunkered down in hiding with Julian Assange at a secret location outside London, avoiding the many forces around the world who would like to hunt down Language Log writers and kill them for daring to speak out on irregular plurals and other morphological and syntactic controversies.)"

December 3, 2010 @ 4:08 am · Filed by Geoffrey K. Pullum under Inflection, Morphology

As for cuts, the humanities must be ground up into fine powder so that business may prevail. When it gets too dicey even for a radiation poisoner, you know the end is near.

[angry new yorker]

there is not a copy of the tls to be had in new york and it's been that way for weeks. st. marks bookshop said it had something to do with switching from speedymax to a distributor much less inclined to distribute. there are going to be riots in the streets soon. :-/

[peter stothard]

dear angry new yorker. . . i'm sorry you are having trouble finding the tls. . .the editor in snowbound britain will try to investigate the problem. . . meanwhile, can he recommend one of our very generously priced subscriptions . . perhaps as a holiday present . . all best . . peter stothard

[Clayton Burns]

Where some see naturally occurring events (such as snow), I see conspiracy:

Putinium... An alternative name for the compound Polonium-210... The Bear is not buried at all; it lays silent in the shadows, wounded, angry, and above all, dangerous.

Can it be just coincidence that just before Sir Peter's insinuations about the bear, the TLS distribution system in New York goes distinctly strange? A premonitory and prophylactic measure.

You can't mess with a man's balls.

[Shelley]

May Dickens fans be allowed to add The Man Who, Two Weeks Before Christmas, Votes Against Unemployment Benefits But In Favor Of Tax Cuts For Millionaires?