ODD ONE OUT Part One

12 odd words found in the lyrics of Number One hits. Can you identify the songs (clues in brackets)?

1 mothballs (CLUE: yellow cook)
2 eskimo (an Irish one)
3 sangria (before watching a film)
4 fireplace* (also a play title)
5 fuzzy (scratch that itch)
6 yoghurt* (and other dairy products)
7 buster (don't get the brush out)
8 huff* (emerald she-wolves)
9 towel (soul man)
10 Glasgow* (bright lights)
11 broncin (and for dessert...)
12 combie (antipodean)

* means 'may not be a hit outside UK'

Source: RcL in The Rock Era. Want the answers? They are at the very end of the archive.

 
FOR THOSE ABOUT TO RALPH, WE SALUTE YOU

22 answers to ' the worst thing I ever tasted' on a heavy rock chat site:

1 live salamanders
2 crayons
3 raw eggs
4 5g piece of limestone
5 cat food
6 roast guinea pigs
7 peppermint schnapps
8 kimchi
9 Oprah Winfrey's whisker biscuit*
10 tobacco juice
11 shaving cream
12 celery
13 bongwater
14 raw calf's fry
15 kangaroo on a stick
16 chocolate liver sushi
17 shit sandwich
18 octopus
19 pig brains
20 cobra's blood
21 lentils
22 pheasant sweat

*not sure whether this is a new product in Oprah's merchandising range or, um, something else.

Source: knac.com

 
WHAT TO WEAR

The 'proper' dressings for 12 salad vegetables:

1 rocket - bacon fat
2 kohl-rabi - mayonnaise
3 purslane - vinaigrette
4 beansprouts - mustard
5 celeriac - mustard cream
6 dandelion - bacon fat
7 fennel - bagnacaude
8 samphire - vinaigrette
9 chicory - rémoulade
10 romaine lettuce - cream

Source: Larousse

 
CRUSHED TO DEATH

The 10 degrees of intensity of passion for another man's wife:

1 love of the eye
2 attachment of the mind
3 constant reflection
4 destruction of sleep
5 emaciation of the body
6 turning away from objects of enjoyment
7 removal of shame
8 madness
9 fainting
10 death

Source: The Kama Sutra

Roddy's tip - avoid the inevitability of number 10 by skipping number 5! It works for me!

 
MIRACLE ON ANNANDALE STREET

The only two jokes in The Chambers Dictionary:

1 middle-aged - between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner.
2 eclair - a cake, long in shape, but short in duration, with cream filling and usu chocolate icing

Source: Chambers (both these irreverences were once removed but were restored due to demand)

 
A NATION AGAIN

2 words the Scots gave the world:

1 galore*
2 glamour**

*originally meaning 'too much'
**originally meaning 'witchcraft'

What are we to make of this?

Source: not Chambers which disagrees and says 'galore' is from Irish Gaelic.

 
SENIOR CITATIONS

6 things granny has given her name to:

1 granny flat - originally, a nice little pad within the house for gran to live in; now, every flat in Aberdeen for rent at £900 a month.
2 granny glasses - little metal-rimmed glasses as worn by elderly cookie dispensers and 'working class heroes'.
3 Granny Smiths - pasty green apples good only for being shot off the heads of Swiss children.
4 granny dumping - the process of offloading old folks into homes by those sick of hearing soup-slurps and Ivor Novello being hummed constantly.
5 granny knot - technically, an 'unsymmetrical reef knot', untechnically, any knot which cannot be undone.
6 granny bonds - National Savings certificates. From old oak tress, little acorns grow.

Source: various

 
HOW THE POETS GOT THEIR NAMES

Three famous British poets of recent times have had very unusual first names:

1 Wystan (AUDEN) was named after a Mercian princeling killed by his uncle Bertulph during a power struggle in 849 AD. He was buried in Repton Abbey, Derbyshire according to de Marleberge's Chronica Abbatiae de Evesham.

2 Dylan (THOMAS) was named after a very minor figure in the Mabinogion, the classic collection of Welsh folklore. Dylan is a yellow haired child born when his supposedly virginal mother Arianrhod steps over a magic wand. The child immediately heads for the sea. The name probably means 'ocean' or 'wave'. It is properly pronounced dullan, not dillan, though Thomas' family mispronounced it. It was a very rare name at the time.

3 Rudyard (KIPLING) was named after the place, Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, where his parents met. The name means either 'place where rudd are kept' or 'garden where rue is planted'.

Source: various.

 
FIZZ PUFF

12 slogans for Coca-Cola:

1 The Ideal Beverage For Discriminating People
2 The Only Thing Like Coca-Cola Is Coca-Cola Itself
3 Thirst Knows No Season
4 The Pause That Refreshes
5 It's The Refreshing Thing To Do
6 Things Go Better With Coke
7 It's the Real Thing
8 I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke
9 Put A Smile On Your Face
10 Coke Adds Life
11 Have A Coke And A Smile
12 Coke Is It!

Source: Dictionary of Slogans (HarperCollins)

 
MUTUAL FRIENDS

The 30 most Dickensian Dickensians:

1 Nicodemus Dumps
2 Augustus Moddle
3 Wackford Squeers
4 Hannibal Chollop
5 Fanny Cleaver
6 Minerva Pott
7 Phil Squod
8 Sampson Brass
9 Nathaniel Pipkin
10 Montague Tigg
11 Affery Flintwinch
12 Cecilia Bobster
13 Jarvis Lorry
14 Caddy Jellyby
15 Rev Septimus Crisparkle
16 Anastasia Veneering
17 Toby Crackit
18 Henrietta Boffin
19 Simon Tappertit
20 Volumnia Dedlock
21 Sir Barnet Skittles
22 Noah Claypole
23 Zephaniah Scadder
24 Abel Magwitch
25 Ned Cheeryble
26 Mercy Pecksniff
27 Diggory Chuzzlewit
28 Newman Noggs
29 Pleasant Riderhood
30 Quebec Badger

 
TARTAN FIRSTS

One last Scotophile list - 28 things the Scots 'invented':

1 reaping machine
2 percussion cap
3 Bash Street Kids
4 fax machine
5 kaleidoscope
6 iron plough
7 hollow pipe drainage
8 reflecting telescope
9 Bovril
10 blackboard
11 bicycle
12 breech loading rifle
13 Bananaman
14 threshing machine
15 decimal point
16 coal gas lighting
17 telephone
18 thumbscrew
19 hot blast oven
20 marmalade
21 vacuum flask
22 adhesive postage stamp
23 Bakelite
24 television
25 microwave oven
26 steamboat
27 pneumatic tyre
28 suspenders

Note: the word scotophilia means 'loving Scotland' with a capital S, and 'loving darkness' without one. Hmm.

Source: various (don't blame me if some of these are debatable - only the Canadians like to boast more about their dubious roll call of inventors)

 
SPANGLE MAKERS

The 10 strangest song titles by the Cocteau Twins:

1 Mizake the Mizan
2 It's All But an Ark Lark
3 The Itchy Glowbo Glow
4 Great Spangled Fritillary
5 Ella Megablast Burls Forever
6 Calfskin Smack
7 Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires
8 Spooning Good Singing Gum
9 Sultitan Itan
10 The High-Monkey Monk

Something in the air down Grangemouth way.

 
PLAYGROUND TWISTS

In 1978, the folklorist Iona Opie started to visit a Hampshire primary school once a week, to record the children's games, jokes and rhymes. In the wonderful resulting book The People in the Playground (OUP 1993), Opie begins her weekly reports with a pithy introductory sentence about the weather to set the scene. Here are some of my favourites:

Thursday 9 March: A nasty grudging day with a lid of grey cloud and a sneaking wind.

Tuesday 9 May: A caressing summer's day; a day to envy the swallows their habitancy of the sky.

Wednesday 11 October: A soft hazy day - warm for the time of year... I walked to the school slowly, taking the short cut behind the inn, watching the young mothers wheeling their babies in baby-buggies through the pools of Spanish wine spilt by the delivery man.

Thursday 26 October: Low scudding clouds. Sparrows flying their jerky, hurried flight, as if trying to escape through the sleeve-end of the world before the clouds caught them.

Wednesday 2 May*: The day before the General Election. Big unruly cumulus clouds in a blue sky. The wind icy.

Wednesday 20 June**: A classic summer day: limitless blue sky, hot sun, and the village butcher looking doubtful when I asked for a joint of pork.

Tuesday 26 June: The village was sodden and defeated after hours of rain. The long grasses in the waste patch behind the pub lay pell-mell, like spears abandoned on a battlefield.

Tuesday 26 February: A sharp frost still melting on the grass; and the sun shining through the fog like an outsize silver penny. The gang of workmen on the railway showed up as shadow puppets, and the villagers, though not actually groping, seemed bemused. At the corner by the school, council workmen in orange waistcoats had removed a manhole cover and were stirring evil black sludge with iron staves, laughing as they did so.

*the 1979 election!
**oh poet hang your head that you cannot surpass

 
OLD FIRM OFF DAYS

The 10 post-war Scottish cup finals without Celtic or Rangers:

1947 Aberdeen beat Hibs
1952 Motherwell beat Dundee
1957 Falkirk beat Kilmarnock
1958 Clyde beat Hibs
1959 St Mirren beat Aberdeen
1968 Dunfermline beat Hearts
1986 Aberdeen beat Hearts
1987 St Mirren beat Dundee United
1991 Motherwell beat Dundee United
1997 Kilmarnock beat Falkirk

 
MONICKER TIME

10 nicknames I have laboured under:

1 Baby Seven - a childhood nickname which was due to a white number 7, stitched onto the back of a football strip, which shrunk in the wash
2 Lusty - name given to me by an English teacher, due to my supposed sheep's eye and silver tongue among the young ladies. The pot verily was calling the kettle black - he was sacked soon after for squiring a sixth year girl.
3 Werty / Werts - ubiquitous nickname in St Andrews from age 15 on, which arose bizarrely due to a verruca. The name stuck - I hated it at first but like so many nicknames, it grew to mean nothing pejorative. My Mum even called me it sometimes.
4 Uncle Frank - nickname from flatmates c 1989/90, due to my habit of saying things like, 'we'd better keep that music down', 'make sure that candle doesn't fall over' and (ahem) 'isn't she a bit young for you?'
5 Stumpy - short-lived school nickname, part of ongoing argument about whether Angus Roger was taller than me or not. You had to be there.
6 Hamble - c late 80s, my girlfriend Becky used to call me this due to my supposed likeness to the Play School doll of the same name.
7 The Guru - short-lived university nickname, due to my demeanour in student poetry workshops. May or may not have been ironic.
8 Rocket Rod - from my 'lost years' aka 'The St James Years'. Rocket Roddy is, apparently, a famous film stunt man. May very well have been ironic.
9 SB - being the baby of the family, I was inevitably dubbed the Spoilt Brat by my elder brothers. Unfairly of course.
10 Fatboy - Nickname used by my dapper theatre critic mate Neil Cooper. Yes, it's cruel, but let's face it, I've called him a few things in my time.

Source: my sordid past. I am sure there are more I have forgotten and a few I don't know.

 
DON'T SHILLY SHALLY

The many names of the yellowhammer in Scotland:

1 yaldie
2 yaldran
3 yaldrin
4 yallackie
5 yalliackie
6 yallock
7 yarlin
8 yawkie
9 yeldrick
10 yeldrin
11 yeldrock
12 yellow-yarlin
13 yellow-yerlin
14 yellow-yeldering
15 yellow-yeldrick
16 yellow-yeldrin
17 yellow-yite
18 yellow-yoit
19 yellow-yoldrin
20 yellow-yorlin
21 yellow-yout
22 yellow-yowley
23 yeorling
24 yerlin
25 yirlin
26 yite
27 yoit
28 yoldrin
29 yolling
30 yorlin
31 yorlyn
32 youldrin
33 youlring
34 yyte

Eat your heart out, snowy Inuits!

Source: Warrack (qv)

 
SPIRITS OF THE ARCHIPELAGO

A not-so-brief introduction to Filipino folklore:

1 Kapre - tree demon with glowing eyes who smokes a leg-sized cigar
2 Malakat - false beast in Visayan folklore, literally 'the walker'
3 Mangaring - a cannibal spirit in Palawan
4 Umalgo - Ifugao sun god
5 Lam-ang - Ilocano superhero
6 kirtti mukha - an aquatic mammal ('glory face') in Maranao myth
7 Mandurugo - a bloodsucker in Tagalog folklore
8 Wigan - Ifugao sky god
9 mameleu - malevolent serpents believed in by Hiligaynons
10 Ikapati - kind-hearted goddess of cultivated land
11 muntianak - underground dwellers belied to exist by Bagobos
12 Kalag - corpse-eater in Sugbuhanon folklore
13 Mannamay - hexer in Iloko myth
14 Manama - creator of many things in Manuvu mythology
15 wakwak - Visayan self-segmenter
16 Mangalok - a self-segmenter in Cuyonon folklore
17 minokawa - fierce birdlike false reptiles believed in by Bagobos
18 patiyanak - ground dwellers believed to exist by Tagalogs
19 Maknongan - Ifugao supreme being
20 mambubuno - fishlike female in Sambal folklore
21 ragit-ragit - tree-dwelling false Caucasoids
22 Mayari - goddess of the moon in the court of Bathala
23 Hanan - charming sister of Mayari, a morning goddess
24 Ugkoy - fishlike male in Visayan myth
25 engkantos - invisible rice-field dwellers who inflict suffering on humans
26 kutong lupa - underground dwellers ('earth lice') believed in by Tagalogs
27 Tagamaling - Manobo god who watches over crops
28 Mariang Makiling - legendary lovely maiden of Los Banos
29 Amkolyog - Ifugao earthquake god
30 Lumauig - high deity invoked to bless gathered grain
31 Omacaan / Tarabusao / Ta-awi - huge cannibals in Maranao folkore
32 Angngalo / Aran - harmless husband and wife giants in Iloco folklore
33 Sumurutan - captain of the ship of the dead in Tagbanwa belief
34 Tafangan - Manobo harvest god
35 Sitan - the evil-minded god, chief deity of Kasanaan
36 Magreked - warmth-giving deity, prayed to when ill
37 lagtaw - nightmare-inducing creatures among the Tausug
38 Kalasokus - god whose task is to turn rice yellow
39 sinan pado - nightmare-inducing Ilocano creature in priest form
40 Kakadian - Manobo rice goddess
41 Anitun tabu - fickle-minded wind and rain goddess
42 Talahiang - nightmare-inducing creature among the Yakan
43 Kabunyan - sky gods from whom the Ifugaos are descended
44 Gungay - harmless giant of Apayao folklore
45 busao - corpse-thieves among the T'boli
46 Barangan - a male sorcerer in Bicol folklore
47 Mangindusa / Bugawasin - high-ranking husband and wife deities
48 aswang - vampire-style creature, often accompanied by black herons
49 Mangkukulam - hexer in Pampanga folklore
50 Iki - self-segmenting Isavian scout whose call is a one second crescendo 'krrrr'

Source: Dictionary of Filipino Culture and Values (TD Andres, Giraffe Books)

 
CINEMAPERISCOPE

The 10 best submarine films:

1 Das Boot (Director's Cut!)
2 49th Parallel
3 Enemy Below
4 Run Silent, Run Deep
5 Destination Tokyo
6 Les Maudits
7 Morning Departure
8 We Dive At Dawn
9 Torpedo Run
10 Crimson Tide

Source: thank you Mr Timothy Wells of N16