Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sun May 08, 2011 6:13 am

AhabsOtherLeg wrote:Gouda, even though I've never seen a Wendy's, that story depresses and scares me. I don't know anybody who has access to affordable real food, and never have done. There is a deeper class distinction now in terms of diet than there was when the Norman conquerors ate veal and the peasantry chewed beef. At least, back then, they were both eating meat from the same kind of animal.


Beef is a French word, because the frogs were the ones eating the boef while the poor were lefting tending the cows.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Stephen Morgan » Thu May 12, 2011 8:03 am

"The grannies lose their blouses. It's the American investors we have to worry about."
-- Shriti Vadera
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Sat May 14, 2011 7:01 pm

Stephen Morgan wrote:
AhabsOtherLeg wrote:Gouda, even though I've never seen a Wendy's, that story depresses and scares me. I don't know anybody who has access to affordable real food, and never have done. There is a deeper class distinction now in terms of diet than there was when the Norman conquerors ate veal and the peasantry chewed beef. At least, back then, they were both eating meat from the same kind of animal.


Beef is a French word, because the frogs were the ones eating the boef while the poor were lefting tending the cows.


That's right, I had it mixed up. The distinction was between the names for livestock (pig, sheep, cow ) which only the conquered people interacted with, and the slightily posher Frenchified names for the meat once it reached the noblemen's tables (bacon, mutton, boef, etc.)

I first read about it in Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue (good book), but the Straight Dope has an entry on it too:

This differentiation goes back to the Norman Conquest of England. The names of the domestic animals are all of Anglo-Saxon origin, while the names of the meats derived from them come from Norman French and ultimately Latin. The common explanation for this is that after the conquest, Anglo-Saxons were often restricted to menial roles such as cowherd, swineherd, etc. Their Norman masters were the ones who actually got to eat the viands (Middle French viande). This is a plausible argument. But proven? No.

Cow: Old English cu; akin to Old High German kuo
Beef: Old French buef, ox, from Latin bouv-, bos, head of cattle
Calf: Old English cealf; akin to Old High German kalb, calf
Veal: from Middle French veel, from Latin vitellus, small calf, diminutive of vitulus, calf
Pig: Middle English pigge
Hog: from Old English hogg
Swine: Old English swIn; akin to Old High German swIn swine
Pork: Old French porc, pig, from Latin porcus
Sheep: from Old English scEap; akin to Old High German scAf,

Mutton: from Old French moton, ram

Some think the servant talk/gentry talk argument is a little too pat. In The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way, Bill Bryson gives the explanation above but in a footnote says:

It should be noted that [Robert] Burchfield, in The English Language, calls this distinction between field names and food names "an enduring myth" on the grounds that the French terms were using for living animals as well (he cites Samuel Johnson referring to a cow as "a beef"), but even so I think the statement above is a reasonable generalization.

For what it's worth, German makes no field/food distinction: the neuter singular for cattle is Rind, beef is Rindfleisch; pork is Schwein and pork is Schweinefleisch. I'd say the same is true of Spanish but things aren't quite so clear-cut. Carne means meat generically, but is usually understood to mean beef. If you want to specify beef, you say carne de res, res simply meaning beast or animal. A cow is vaca. Oddly enough, rosbif (roast beef) and bistec (beefsteak) derive from English--although bistec often just refers to the cut, and I have seen restaurants offering bistec de puerco. Puerco can mean either pig or pork, but pigs are often called cerdo and cochino. Cordero means lamb in both senses, and ternera means both calf and veal.


In other news, Mark Britnell, one of KPMG's head honcho's, has been acting like an insufferable asshole and coining contemptible quotes:

One of David Cameron’s most senior health advisers told a conference of health executives that the NHS will be privatised, advising representatives from healthcare companies of an impending goldrush in the wake of Andrew Lansley’s health reforms.

Mark Britnell was NHS director general for commissioning and system management before joining the private sector as global head of health at KPMG. He was recently appointed to a new panel of senior health policy experts by David Cameron, attending their first meeting last week.

According to the public relations industry monitoring site Spinwatch Britnell did not mince his words on privatisation when addressing a seminar called “Reform Revolution” at a conference for healthcare corporations:

“In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer.”

Delegates had been told the conference, run by $20 billion private equity firm Apax Partners, would cover ”business opportunities post global healthcare reform.” Britnell delivered the goods, offering this deliciously off-message sound bite:

“The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years.”

Despite their focus on health reform, Cameron’s new panel of advisers will not contribute to the announced process in which stakeholders can suggest ”improvements” to Andrew Lansley’s proposals.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/05/m ... -no-mercy/


"NHS director general for commissioning and system management"? So, was he in charge of the £12.4 billion IT overhaul, which is still limping along, having cost a fortune and produced nowt but disaster? No wonder he sees the NHS as a potential goldrush for the private sector. To him and his, that's probably all it is.

BONUS ASSHOLE: Here's Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's former Press Secretary, explaining why a country which wishes to benefit from the production of it's oil fields is inherently greedy and evil, whilst another country wanting to take that same revenue for it's own uses only does so from the noblest of motives. His attitude just about sums up the maniacal hubris and victim-blaming of UK and American "oil policy" over the last century, I reckon.

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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Gouda » Mon May 16, 2011 4:34 pm

"Every little boy has got a SEAL in them."
-- Joe Stumpf, 54-year-old business coach for real estate agents and mortgage brokers.

"When it absolutely, positively must be destroyed overnight! Call in the US Navy SEALs."
-- T-shirt

"Everyone these days seems to be dreaming of what it's like to be a SEAL, know a SEAL or at least look like one."
-- AP hack JULIE WATSON in her article, "SEAL-mania grips nation in wake of bin Laden raid"
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby vanlose kid » Sat May 21, 2011 1:18 pm

lupercal wrote:fixed your pic:

Image


*
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 21, 2011 1:39 pm

.

loopy seems to have ass on his mind.

.
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Nordic » Sun May 22, 2011 2:20 pm

Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis.

"He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."

"Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee.

"OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first.

The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.

"If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?" an Enron worker is heard saying.

"Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way," another says.

"Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down."

Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle received the tapes from the Justice Department.

"This is the evidence we've all been waiting for. This proves they manipulated the market," said Eric Christensen, a spokesman for the utility.

That utility, like many others, is trying to get its money back from Enron.

"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"

"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"

"Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."

And the tapes appear to link top Enron officials Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to schemes that fueled the crisis.

"Government Affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling," says one trader.

"Ok."

"Do you know when you started over-scheduling load and making buckets of money on that?

Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win.

"It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one Enron worker.

That didn't happen, but they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices.

"When this election comes Bush will f------g whack this s--t, man. He won't play this price-cap b------t."


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/ ... 0626.shtml
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Feilan » Sun May 29, 2011 12:29 pm

wikipedia wrote:In 1984, Baron Moran, the British High Commissioner to Canada, stated that, in his opinion, Canadians have limited talents and are "deeply unimpressive." Said Moran, "Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do - in literature, the theater, skiing or whatever - tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once... :uncertain:"


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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon May 30, 2011 3:05 am

there was hardly the slightest pretension to being gentlemen or civilised. Their faces were coarse and hard bitten. .....the Australian manner..... was blatant and self-assertive and the Australian voice likewise. I am afraid I never wish to meet any more Australians- there seems to much of the Botany Bay strain in them! My servant too complains that they are a rough lot.


Dunno who said that but they're obviously a pompous wanker.
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Nordic » Tue May 31, 2011 1:45 am

Joe Hillshoist wrote:
there was hardly the slightest pretension to being gentlemen or civilised. Their faces were coarse and hard bitten. .....the Australian manner..... was blatant and self-assertive and the Australian voice likewise. I am afraid I never wish to meet any more Australians- there seems to much of the Botany Bay strain in them! My servant too complains that they are a rough lot.


Dunno who said that but they're obviously a pompous wanker.



Yeah, after reading that, if you asked me who I'd want to hang out with, the guy who wrote it or "the Australians" he's referring to? I'd take the Australians.
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby 82_28 » Tue May 31, 2011 1:56 am

Nordic wrote:
Joe Hillshoist wrote:
there was hardly the slightest pretension to being gentlemen or civilised. Their faces were coarse and hard bitten. .....the Australian manner..... was blatant and self-assertive and the Australian voice likewise. I am afraid I never wish to meet any more Australians- there seems to much of the Botany Bay strain in them! My servant too complains that they are a rough lot.


Dunno who said that but they're obviously a pompous wanker.



Yeah, after reading that, if you asked me who I'd want to hang out with, the guy who wrote it or "the Australians" he's referring to? I'd take the Australians.


The amount of provincial, asshatted, hateful bullshit is fucking more abundant than one human can absorb when you delve into the news archives and try to cross reference. There simply wasn't any news, just propaganda on the "big things". The "big things" that have melted back into history. Like Kurt said, "and so it goes". . .
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Jun 03, 2011 4:28 am

Joe Hillshoist wrote:
there was hardly the slightest pretension to being gentlemen or civilised. Their faces were coarse and hard bitten. .....the Australian manner..... was blatant and self-assertive and the Australian voice likewise. I am afraid I never wish to meet any more Australians- there seems to much of the Botany Bay strain in them! My servant too complains that they are a rough lot.


Sorry. That was me that wrote that, after watching a game of Australian footie out at Chinaman's Knob during a fly-over to Hong Kong. Don't take it personal, or national. I was writing for The London Telegraph at the time, on secondment from the Foreign Office, and you have to play to your audience, don't you?

To be fair, my servant was rather harshly treated by a possel of local convicts, who ganged up on him behind the pavillion during the games as he was returning with my iced tea. Some members of the gang even gave the appearance of being female, and as he was torn from the scrum it almost seemed as though he was fighting against us to return to it.

Afterward, his Ayers Rock was red raw and swollen, but being a brave lad he spoke of his willingness to return to the fray, and made a show of being most unwilling to leave that blighted country without having regained his honour.
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby barracuda » Sat Jun 04, 2011 4:04 am

The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sat Jun 11, 2011 3:03 pm

"If nature didn't intend boys to be seduced by older men and women, why did it make them so damnably fetching, so downy-cheeked, rangy-limbed and pert-buttocked?"
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Contemptible quotes from insufferable assholes

Postby barracuda » Sun Jul 03, 2011 1:21 pm

The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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