Blogging the Fringe

Friday 24 August 2007

Tina Turner and Turnips








I was at the Big Value Comedy I was at the Big Value Comedy Show last night and during the intermission, the audience was asked to write down their impromptu answers to the question:

“What is the difference between Tina Turner and a Turnip?”

The funniest answer would win the coveted prize: a free beer.

Here were the ones that were read out loud:

“Tina Turner has breasts.” (Submitted by the 12 year old in the front row)

“One looks like they’ve just been dug up from the ground, and the other is a turnip.”

“I don’t know, but I wiped my cock on this paper.”

“I would pay more money for a turnip.”

Mine was hilarious, but like many other misunderstood jokes that were made a little “too soon”, this one was also loudly booed:

“A turnip never refuses a good ‘beet’ing.”

eh? eh? ::nudge, nudge::

Maybe they just didn’t get it?

Here was the champion answer:

“The turnip is a tuber grown in temperate climates, 1-6 cm in length, and is often mistaken for a vegetable. And by the way, Tina Turner is a singer.”

How very droll.

After returning home bitter and 3 pounds poorer (having paid for my own beer), I spent more time than I would care to admit online researching tubers, turnips and generally trying to invalidate the winning joke.

My every day is a learning experience.

How is your internship?


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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I don't claim to have captured the "essence" of Edinburgh, but I did take a bunch of low-quality digital photographs.

I will keep adding more albums to this site regularly, so if you’re interested (why wouldn't you be?), definitely check back.


Let me know if you have any requests for seeing specific pictures (cobbled streets, Scottish dogs, dark beers, broken bikes) while I'm here!


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Local Lingo

Some colorful useful phrases I am trying to pick up on....

Suspenders: women’s pantyhose garters
Garters: men’s sock garters
Braces: suspenders
Nobs: twats, idiots
Total Tip: Utter mess
Chatting up: Flirting (I figured out this one all by myself)
Chuffed: Pleasantly surprised, pleased
Major Session: Drinking...a lot
Pissed: Drunk
Pulling: Hooking up

Pulling (being pulled, having pulled) can range the spectrum from a simple kiss to the kind of poetry they make explicit movies about. The word itself, pulled, implies a pre-existing resistance, which of course the young Don Juan or Siren must overcome through the sheer force of their sexual magnetism. It is a deliciously ambiguous notion, which connotes either triumphant conquest or false modesty.

The American version, hooking-up, is culturally speaking a more neutral concept. It is an activity people do together (hook-up), without the necessary designation of one of the individuals having been “hooked”. Nobody loses the struggle and still, everybody wins.



Sometimes I have nothing more to write, but want to get you into the habbit of checking by actually clicking "Continue Reading"

Pretty sneaky, huh?


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Typecast

While out of the country, try to avoid:

Self-righteous ex-patriots:

These are typically University students who think that they’ve somehow managed to solve all of the world’s ills by studying abroad, shopping at thrift stores, and figuring out how many generations they have to trace their family lineage back to count themselves European.

Self-loathing Americans:

American tourists with maple leaf luggage patches.

(I think they're afraid of what the BBC calls anti-American racism)

People who have actually bought the “Bush is Wanker” t-shirts:

Proceeds go straight toward Al-Qaeda training camps.

Anyone who has ever seen “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?”

Despite its completely representative sample size population and scientifically valid testing, it is not an undercover exposé on American retardation. These “jokesters” will mock you with brain-twister questions like, “Do you even know where Mexico is?” The only defense is to grin and bear it, “No idea, but the giant turd I left in your bathroom looks a little bit like Chile.”

Bathroom Humor is soooooo international.


Football Fans

No, you stupid ugly American! NOT the kind where boys throw an oddly shaped pig and hide their homoerotic tendencies, but REAL football. It is the great, elegant, all-consuming ballet of spirit, passion, and testosterone-induced head butting. While you only figure out how to pat ass, we give head! And now you have adopted washed-out pretty-boy David Beckham. Bah and good riddance. We needed him almost as a spice rack needs Posh.





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Politics: War by other means


Discussing politics in the United States is dangerous enough. Exchanges are often peppered with the equivalents of conversation landmines like:

“Yes, but what about the rights of the fetus?” or
“Everything will be better once Obama is elected” or
“I always say: ‘give unto Caesar.’”

You’re either dealing with:

a one-issue-voter,
the man Obama brought back from the dead or
a Jehovah’s Witness.

I don't actually know which one of these is worst.


Mine dodging depends on early detection of the warning signs, look for:

pieces of debris or blood stains (not exactly the ‘red badge of courage’)
a clammy color with residues of dirt (dead giveaway),
or showing up at your door with a Bible (why is never a pizza?).

It’s difficult, but there are at least techniques, methods of quick extraction, and those sporadic moments of intelligent insights that make the effort of engagement worthwhile. Ironically clarity usually comes at 3 am, with your new best friends, half-a-wine-bottle-in, day of exams; however you prove too radical for your obtuse Physics professor who does not appreciate the slightly slurred perspective on the inevitable tragedy of the two-party system (“They respond with an equal but opposite reaction!”)

I had to go abroad to discover my appreciation for red-blooded-blue-collared-white-America political discourse, because being reasonable about politics in the UK has thus far been mission impossible.

People hear the American accent and they immediately assume that you want to play devil’s advocate to their good-guy appeals to stop the Iraq war (two words: cheap gas), torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (everyone needs a hobby), and eating all those hamburgers (I can taste the cow’s soul). They wonder out loud if everyone you know is obese, afraid of gay marriage, and the proud owner of an SUV with a Jesus-fish label. When will they realize that those particular groups of individuals don’t own passports? They’re smart enough to know that Europe is too thin, gay, and secular to warrant a visit.

All of a sudden complete moderates find themselves getting defensive and despite my best attempts at self-control, I assume a thick-skinned fourth-of-July patriotism. Being American is like having a little brother that is, admittedly, an occasional screw-up, but one that nevertheless only the immediate family should have the right to abuse.


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All Downhill From Here--- Overheard in Edinburgh, Part 3

Taking Precautions

Two teenage friends are crossing the pedestrian crosswalk on a red light.

Guy 1: Hey mate, let’s hurry it up…

Guy 2: Relax, don’t worry.

He gestures to the woman in front of them, also crossing the street in a wheelchair.

Guy 2: They won’t run us over if we’re with a chair!

Guy 1: I guess that makes sense.

Woman in Wheelchair: (under her breath) Really? How do you think I got the chair in the first place?

The two guys jog the rest of the way across.



There’s no place like home

Performer male: Three weeks of non-stop mania…I’m so fucking tired.

Performer female: I know what you mean.

Performer male: I just want…well, I want to go home and wank-off in my own bed again.

Performer female: Excuse me?

Performer male: Or your bed. I mean, I don’t care.


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