NZ kids, Jean Auel, memes, piracy, Morten

[Tabouli]

Aberforth's Goat:
> A friend of mine teaches English in a local middle school. Recently, two
children moved back to Switzerland after having grown up in New Zealand.
Apparently, their English-language skills are on par with children of their
age back in New Zealand - but they've ended up in a school for educationally
challenged kids. That makes sense in most of their other classes, but not in
English.

As a Hermione-clone at middle school age, I would have been mortified to find myself in a school for educationally challenged kids for any reason.  How about social issues?  If they're bright kids academically but just struggling because of language issues, wouldn't it be kinder to bung 'em in an international school for English speakers and tutor them up intensively in German or whatever the primary language is in that part of Switzerland?  (though I suppose those are likely to be extortionately expensive)  What part of Switzerland are you in?  I have a friend in Geneva who might have some ideas for you.

heathernmoore:
> I can barely tolerate Jean Auel's novels because she increasingly loads them up with repetitive sex scenes between Ayla and Jondalar

Hear hear.  Jean Auel has a lot of interesting and well-thought-out ideas, but she seems to feel compelled to mix them with enough sex scenes to fill your average Cleo magazine.  And they all seem to be more or less the same sex scene!  Can't she give Jondalar a taste for variety or a bit of kinkiness or something to liven things up, if she really must put ten sex scenes in every book?  Perhaps the one she repeats over and over reflects her own preferences in yon sack...

more heathernmoore:
> I'm sure everyone's familiar with the experience of - uhm, I guess "memetic infection," you could call it. You know the drill: you get just so taken with a particular story element that you find parallels to it in things which have no connection. Mostly this happens with songs, where you'll assign an unrelated "theme" to a character.

Whoever once said that 'Drops of Jupiter' instantly reminded her of Harry (with his permanent scar) was onto something - that was my first thought too when I heard it!

The elusive David (who never seems to be online when I seek him in social goodwill):
> But I will stay out to sea for the time being - as an intermittent 
Battleships player I understand the whole point of going to sea is 
not the company of your shipmates, its the war, the fighting, the 
blood running in the scuppers, the feel of your cutlass in your mouth 
as you swing aboard the enemy's vessel, the roar of cannon, the 
squawk of the parrots, the thump of the wooden leg (yes, it's that 
Moody ship again), the bad imitations of a Devonian accent, and the 
glug glug glug of rum drunk straight from the bottle.<

Aye aye, me hearties.  Is pirate-speak a pseudo-*Devon* accent, is it?  Most interesting.  I'd never even thought about this.  Hey, here's a new one for the X is a Y types... maybe Moody was a pirate!  Perhaps his magical eye is the soul of his sadly departed Lesser Blue Parakeet shoulder buddy, and his seven key chest is a relic from his treasure hunting days...  (doubloooons, anyone?)

more David:
> So, I suggest: Voldemort = Violent Morten.
>A-ha! Are we onto something here?

A-ha indeed!  So *that's* the secret of A-ha's success!  We swooning 13 year olds didn't realise it at the time, but that Take On Me video was a subliminal message to the Death Eaters telling them that Voldemort would soon rise from the pages of HP and take on the world...

Tabouli.


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