-It is I, Arthur..-Pull the other one!

29th January


There is no need to introduce Monty Python!
I decided to watch their movie - Monty Pyhton and the Holly Grail. Got much into British humour. Here are the examples. 

Scene 1 

GUARD #1 Halt!  Who goes there?

  ARTHUR:  It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle

      of Camelot.  King of the Britons, defeator of the Saxons, sovereign –KING - of all England!

GUARD #1:  Pull the other one! 

ARTHUR:  I am.  And this my trusty servant Patsy.

      We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights

      who will join me in my court of Camelot.  I must speak with your lord

      and master.

GUARD #1:  What, ridden on a horse?

  ARTHUR:  Yes!

  GUARD #1:  You're using coconuts!

  ARTHUR:  What?

  GUARD #1:  You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin'

      'em together.

  ARTHUR:  So?  We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this

      land, through the kingdom of Mercea, through--

  GUARD #1:  Where'd you get the coconut?

  ARTHUR:  We found them.

  GUARD #1:  Found them?  In Mercea?  The coconut's tropical!

  ARTHUR:  What do you mean?

  GUARD #1:  Well, this is a temperate zone.

  ARTHUR:  The swallow – ласточка - may fly south with the sun or the house martin

      or the plumber may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not

      strangers to our land.

  GUARD #1:  Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

  ARTHUR:  Not at all, they could be carried.

  GUARD #1:  What -- a swallow carrying a coconut?

  ARTHUR:  It could grip it by the husk – shells- !

  GUARD #1:  It's not a question of where he grips it!  It's a simple

      question of weight ratios!  A five ounce bird could not carry a 1 pound

      coconut.

  ARTHUR:  Well, it doesn't matter.  Will you go and tell your master

      that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here.

  GUARD #1:  Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow

      needs to beat its wings 43 times every second, right?

  ARTHUR:  Please!

  GUARD #1:  Am I right?

  ARTHUR:  I'm not interested!

  GUARD #2:  It could be carried by an African swallow!

  GUARD #1:  Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European

      swallow, that's my point.

  GUARD #2:  Oh, yeah, I agree with that...

  ARTHUR:  Will you ask your master if he wants to join my court

      at Camelot?!

  GUARD #1:  But then of course African swallows are not migratory.

  GUARD #2:  Oh, yeah...

  GUARD #1:  So they couldn't bring a coconut back anyway...

      [clop clop]

  GUARD #2:  Wait a minute -- supposing two swallows carried it together?

  GUARD #1:  No, they'd have to have it on a line.

  GUARD #2:  Well, simple!  They'd just use a standard creeper!

  GUARD #1:  What, held under the dorsal – back - guiding feathers?

  GUARD #2:  Well, why not?

Be against regulations  - against rules

Scene 3

  ARTHUR:  Old woman!

  DENNIS:  Man!

  ARTHUR: Old Man, sorry.  What knight live in that castle over there?

  DENNIS:  I'm thirty seven.

  ARTHUR:  What?

  DENNIS:  I'm thirty seven -- I'm not old!

  ARTHUR:  Well, I can't just call you `Man'.

  DENNIS:  Well, you could say `Dennis'.

  ARTHUR:  Well, I didn't know you were called `Dennis.'

  DENNIS:  Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you?

  ARTHUR:  I did say sorry about the `old woman,' but from the behind

      you looked--

  DENNIS:  What I object to – oppose/disapprove - is you automatically treat me like an inferior – подчинённый -!

  ARTHUR:  Well, I AM king...

  DENNIS:  Oh king, eh, very nice.  An' how'd you get that, eh?  By

      exploitin' the workers -- by 'angin' on to outdated imperialist dogma

      which perpetuates – leave for a long time - the economic an' social differences in our society!

      If there's ever going to be any progress--

  WOMAN:  Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here.  Oh -- how d'you do?

  ARTHUR:  How do you do, good lady.  I am Arthur, King of the Britons.

      Who's castle is that?

  WOMAN:  King of the who?

  ARTHUR:  The Britons.

  WOMAN:  Who are the Britons?

  ARTHUR:  Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king.

  WOMAN:  I didn't know we had a king.  I thought we were an autonomous

      collective.

  DENNIS:  You're fooling yourself.  We're living in a dictatorship.

      A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--

  WOMAN:  Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.

  DENNIS:  That's what it's all about if only people would--

  ARTHUR:  Please, please good people.  I am in haste.  Who lives

      in that castle?

  WOMAN:  No one live there.

  ARTHUR:  Then who is your lord?

  WOMAN:  We don't have a lord.

  ARTHUR:  What?

  DENNIS:  I told you.  We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune.  We take

      it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

  ARTHUR:  Yes.

  DENNIS:  But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified

      at a special biweekly meeting.

  ARTHUR:  Yes, I see.

  DENNIS:  By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--

  ARTHUR:  Be quiet!

  DENNIS:  --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--

  ARTHUR:  Be quiet!  I order you to be quiet!

  WOMAN:  Order, eh -- who does he think he is?

  ARTHUR:  I am your king!

  WOMAN:  Well, I didn't vote for you.

  ARTHUR:  You don't vote for kings.

  WOMAN:  Well, 'ow did you become king then?

  ARTHUR:  The Lady of the Lake,

      [angels sing]

      her arm clad in the purest shimmering – сиять - samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,

      Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.

      [singing stops]

      That is why I am your king!

  DENNIS:  Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords

      is no basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power

      derives – come from - from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

  ARTHUR:  Be quiet!

  DENNIS:  Well you can't expect to wield – have - supreme executive power

      just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

  ARTHUR:  Shut up!

  DENNIS:  I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just

      because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd

      put me away!

  ARTHUR:  Shut up!  Will you shut up!

  DENNIS:  Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.

  ARTHUR:  Shut up!

  DENNIS:  Oh!  Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

      HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!

  ARTHUR:  Bloody peasant!

  DENNIS:  Oh, what a give away.  Did you here that, did you here that,

      eh?  That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me,

      you saw it didn't you?

Give away – tell 

An invincible belief, attitude etc is extremely strong and cannot be changed

—invincibility - [uncountable]

Mentality

16th January


As I got the first step of applying to a university over and passed my German exam, something is lacking. The shortage of something has taken over. Fear of somthing I can't explain to myself.
I watched "Donnie Darko" today. I had better not done it. This strange and popular Hollywood movie is remarkable for its absurd story. You hope until the end that the story will start at last, but it seems it wallows and remains at the outset.
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a high-school boy, who is believed has a mental desease. Sometimes it becomes apparent that he is, but then in one minute he turnes out to be a resonable person.

Grandma Death, floods, picturesque siteseeings, visits to a psychiatris...,and a banal, ordinary American life on the other hand. The film contains philosophical questions and answers, which is an advantage, but they aren't obvious...I read a script afterwards to understand some parts, because Donnie Darko doesn't say everything clearly.

  DR. THURMAN

       Do you feel alone right now?

 DONNIE

       I'd like to believe that I'm not...but

       I've just never seen any proof. So I just

       choose not to bother with it. It's, like,

       I could spend my whole life thinking

       about it... debating it in my head.

       Weighing the pros and cons. And in the

       end, I still wouldn't have any proof. So...I don't even debate it any more. Because it's absurd. I don't want to be alone.

         So, does that make me, like, an atheist?

        DR. THURMAN

       No. That makes you keep searching.

Donnie isn't a boy to forget! He makes this film memorable. And life around us - scary...

LARS! LARS! LARS!

October 15th – October 27th

For several weeks I was short of time to write on my blog. I summarise everything in one post now.

It is Reading I start with.

I quit reading The Forsyte Saga on the page 250. Despite the fact that the book isn’t boring, I got fed up with it. Not only one cause is to mention. I find almost everyday the new stuff to read: merely up-to-date information or which I consider essential for my mental development. This book isn't modern, so there was only one reason to read left. I started to read it, because I wanted to undertand another nation. I have some vision of it now. Eagerness for something more modern has come.
 The famous Saga exhausts with its formal old-fashioned language. Try to perceive useful vocabulary from dozens of unknown words isn’t a good perspective to a person who wants to learn fast.
I had come across a film on television, which had been based on this book, recently. I have been aware of plot since that, so reading became not as adventurous as it had been before.

I don’t regret reading this book, nevertheless.

Fellini – never expect him to be loud and clear.

Make a difference! – was my motto. I watched Fellini’s “8 ½” in Italian for not to spoil the right atmosphere, submitting the film with English subtitles. The Italians are used to speaking fast, and I didn’t manage to read and understand everything. The text was metaphorical too. While it has been a memorable experience, I will watch in English in future.

W-A-R-H-O-L

Andy’s book “Philosophy of Andy Warhol” has different chapters named Work, Time, Love, Fame, Atmosphere, Success and etc. These are the extracts from Beauty.

When you’re interested in somebody, and you think they might be interested in you, you should point out all your beauty problems and defects right away, rather than take a chance they won’t notice them. Maybe, say, you have a permanent beauty problem you can’t change, such as short legs. Just say it. “My legs, as you have probably noticed, are much too short in proportion to the rest of my body.” Why give the other person the satisfaction of discovering it for themselves? Once it’s out in the open, at least you know it will never become an issue later on in the relationship, and if it does, you can always say, “Well I told you that in the beginning.”

On the other hand, say you have a purely temporary beauty problem. < …> If you don’t point out these things they might think that your temporary beauty problem is a permanent beauty problem. Why should they think otherwise if you’ve just met them? <…> So it’s up to you to set them straight and get them to use their imagination about what your hair must look like when it’s shiny, and what your body must look like when it’s not overweight, and your dress would look like without the grease spot on it. Even explain that you have much better clothes hanging in your closet than the ones you’re wearing. If they really do like you for yourself, they’ll be willing to use their imagination to think of what you must look like without your temporary beauty problem.


If you’re naturally pale, you should put on a lot of blush to compensate. But if you’ve got a big nose, just play it up, and if you have a pimple, put on the pimple cream in a way that will make it really stand out- “There! I use pimple cream!” There’s a difference.

I am on the page 189 now. A great book! Perfect for reading in a lounge. Emotional and represents Andy from the several sights.

Listening

It happened that I watched the HARD TALK on the BBC with a lawyer, Michael Mansfield.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/8280547.stm

It isn’t bad to watch with a dictionary in hands.
• Legislation
• Oblige
• Oppose
• And my favourite one: “I talk facts, you talk emotions.” – Stephen Sackur.

The Antichrist

I had gone to the cinema due to the director and had found the film very original…until the moment when a wife attempted to kill his husband.

You still can watch till that moment and thank yourself for not being a fool and staying at home.

Grammar

I completed 2 tasks on re-writing a formal text into an informal one, did the tasks on reading with filling the gaps with the missing pieces.

I learnt the Quoting rules.

In addition to this, I went into vocabulary of rise and fall, go up and drop and reduction, decline, lows and highs, pie charts, bar charts, flowcharts and segments, etc. to prepare for IELTS. Also I went thought the IELTS task “Business and Industry” filling in the gaps with a suitable words – antonyms. I’ve got 11 out of 19 correct.

Vocabulary I got out of it:

• Revenue - money that a business or organization receives over a period of time, especially from selling goods or services.
• Shortage - situation in which there is not enough of something that people need. (A shortage of skilled labour. Water/food/housing shortage. Acute/chronic/severe shortage.)
• White- and blue-collar jobs. 1.) In banks, offices…2.) Factories, building sites…
• Lay off – stop employing people, because there is no work to do.

On the other hand, the passage, called “Visit London's Science Museum” from IELTS was completed perfectly.

A bit more vocabulary:

• Newspapers are frequently accused of invasion of privacy by celebrities and other media stars.
• The government was trying to suppress freedom of speech.
• Upbeat – (adj.) making you feel that good things will happen. Opposed to - downbeat.
• Media/property/business/newspaper tycoon.

I am sure, I have forgot something, which I don't remember now. Let it be.

British Classics

October 1st

After a little break I’m coming back.
I thought about a new structure a bit, so from now you can find the divisions into Sport, Photography, Reading, Dictionary Work, Academic Work, Listening, Watching and Supplement.

Watching and Sport come together. The Hancock’s Half Hour is an influential British comedy of the 50s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQcZLDGqcN4&feature=related

When a national newspaper asked for its definition of 'Britishness', the most quoted reply was this: "Being British is about driving in a German car, wearing Italian clothes, heading to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer and some Greek olives, then going for an Indian curry washed down with some Australian beer before going home to collapse on your Swedish furniture to watch American shows on a Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Being suspicious of anything foreign."