While telling a story, how many times can someone say "to cut a long story short" before it becomes redundant?
Yesterday, I counted four.
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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test
Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
....or 'basically' before you're bored, bamboozled and completely disinterested?
ReplyDeleteI would say the phrase becomes redundant when you say it the second time, because if you've said it twice then obviously your story is still too long and hasn't been cut short at all.
ReplyDeleteKath - And don't even get me started on "at the end of the day". When I am elected, uttering this phrase outside of a poetry reading will be punishable by DEATH.
ReplyDeleteRiver - The weird thing was that each time she said it, she was telling a different story and indeed cutting it short. But the point of the whole exercise was me saying "You don't need an appointment".
The end.
(Our reference: OE2BU6_024.03)
ReplyDeleteHi Sam,
I'm writing on behalf of an educational publisher in Hong Kong. We would like to request permission to reproduce a photo from your blog (Captioned ‘Messy room’, URL: http://franzy.tblog.com/archive/2007/01/). Could you please get in touch with me so that we can discuss the matter in detail? My e-mail address is maggie.pak@oup.com. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
Maggie
As far as phrases go we have a number that go around my office and a couple of us have started making fun at them:
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day
Basically
I think you'll find
are three of the main ones.
Let alone the use of the made up word "incidenceses" for the people that are amazingly confused at trying to make a plural of "incidents".
Question though: was it you that was telling the story? Or was it you that was listening?
Red - Hooray!
ReplyDeleteShippy - It was me listening and trying to sneak a word into the foreshortened life story.