VOICE RECOGNITION

I don't often smile these days but this Scottish skit stretched my mouth.

Clever clogs 'Baddie' Del boy knew about these all along and shares the Scary Real Thing.

WAZZUP CORFU?

Wa-a-zzup!

Nice polite informative e-mail slithered onto the mat the other day.

I'm such a nasty anti-social dog-in-the-manger type that I thought I'd stun everyone by giving it a megawatt blast of publicity ... for free.

Loipon. Le Voici Verbatim.

"Dear friend, Corfu resident, or regular visitor,

Any initiative taken on the isle of Corfu encounters a major challenge in communication.

People may have something really interesting to offer, but how do they let everybody know?

How often do we hear about a very interesting event ~ only after it has ended?

Which services and products can make life on Corfu easier, if only we knew of their existence?

There are websites with useful information but often in Greek only, which makes it less accessible to many of us.

Besides, we would need to search frequently to stay properly informed.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could get such useful information delivered via email?

The above summarises a discussion we (Dick Mulder & Daniel Blom) had when looking for ways to help promote an art exhibition that includes work from our respective spouses, and five other artists.

So we decided to set up a new information service, which will be sending emails from WhatsUp-Corfu@live.com

Our first challenge, of course, is communication! How do we make people aware of the new service? We face the very same communication problem we're trying to address.

In view of this, we would like to ask your permission for WhatsUp-Corfu to send information on events, services, and products, to your email address.

No action is required if you agree.

If you do not want to receive such information, kindly forward this email to WhatsUp-Corfu@live.com with subject UNSUBSCRIBE.

Privacy Statement: WhatsUp-Corfu will not provide email addresses or other personal information to any other party.

Emails from WhatsUp-Corfu@live.com are always sent as blank carbon copy (invisible BCC addressing).

WhatsUp-Corfu only provides information that is particularly interesting to people that either live on, or regularly visit Corfu.

There are no costs or obligations for the receiver.

Commercial advertising is not facilitated, but objective information on services and products from commercial organisations may be included, providing it is directly or indirectly related to living on or visiting Corfu.

Please contact us if you wish to republish the information we provide.

Organisations and individuals that want to use WhatsUp-Corfu@live.com to share information, can send this via email to the same address.

We reserve the right to edit or refuse information provided, and will confirm motives for such decision to the originator.

Please make other people aware. They can request to receive information from WhatsUp-Corfu@live.com by sending an empty email with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject box.

Kind regards,

The WhatsUp-Corfu Team

Dick Mulder, Daniel Blom"

There you go. Can't get politer than that. And they know about the bcc trick. For that alone they deserve your custom. Blimey, the reams of addresses I've managed to sell to Nigerian widows just by clicking on the 'detail' bouton of local spammers and other animal lovers.

Give 'em a chance, I say.

BONKERS BANKORRUPT

Athens News' always expertly edited 'Letters to the Editor' is astonishingly generous to one Gordon Monaghan ('Sage of the Peloponnese') by printing his twerpish correction to an understandable cleaning up of the ugly misprint, 'bankorrupt'.

Except, as the buffoonish Monaghan points out, it was not a misprint.

It was

"meant to be a deliberate play of words, ie that Greece is both bankrupt and corrupt. Hence the particular spelling of the word.

I suppose it serves me right for being a little too smart with my wordplay."

The vanity of the man. The sheer ignorant vanity.

There is not a trace of smartness or sprightly wordplay to that grotesque concoction with which only someone cloth-eared and word-blind could have decided to proceed.

Daily, all of us come up with puns and variations, some of which are worth sharing but the majority embarrassingly lame and best forgotten. Our feel for the look and music of words allows us to filter, edit or reject.

From the consistently high quality of the letters page, the editor is gifted in this area and understandably identified 'bankorrupt' as a particularly clunky error that would reflect badly on Monaghan if it went through.

In truth, the printed 'clarification' was an even more disastrous own goal.

While on the subject of goofs, Alexandra Smithies in her letter preceding GM's, seems to think that 'decadent' means thousands of years old. What I didn't know - and do now, thanks to this page - is that the word

"has long been around in culinary lingo to denote a taste or quality of a dish or ingredient hard to resist."

RUMBLED

Curses foiled.

Had a nice little number going there

"Hello? Have I correctly dialled 'Hot, Lathered 'n' Leathered Bored Pussycat Housewife"?

"You have indeed, Minister. Mistress Trowel here, how may I mulch you?"

"I think you just did."

Baddeley Comment link for Sotirios Hatzigakis

Kinsman Badass on anti-kinship. Speaking of which, I'm sure that in days of yore, Philhellene Paters knew exactly their 'your' from their 'you're'. Hrrmph.

MOAT SELF-CROAK'D

SEVUN DAYS this man eluded the Law

That is field-craft.

Rogue Male territoire.

I really really want him winged and brought in to tell his story.

I fear he will be sharply shooted.

"A tent in a secluded spot" ~ Reminds me of the story of a radio newsreader who had to read a line about bankrobbers fleeing the scene "in a fast car."

The mute button did not work so listeners heard him comment drily that, "You'd hardly expect them to use a slow one."

Striding ~ every Checkpoint Charlie Chav I've known, every Dark Side dancer, has always said they got thru either by shuffling with village idiot bloodhound droopy gait, or striding intolerant into the steel of their scrutiny.

In today's case, into the rabid-dog tasers of what passes as The Filth

Only the furtives or hesitant were bagsed.

Last stand - or do I mean kneel?

Qu'est-ce que c'est ce Poincaré?

Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman turned down $1 million for proving the Poincaré conjecture. What's that?

I'm so good to you. Now you can sound brainy.

ESPIONEUSE CHAPMAN

Two hot red-heads in one week.

I gaze on the glass while it is amber.

Lucky for me, my heart belongs to Madame Gillardine.

Ravissante en rouge, indeed.

FIRST 'BLOKE' OF OZ

I am agog with captivation over Australia's new prime minister.

What a tough honey - shades of Jodie Foster as well as Tilda Swinton ... phwoar!

And that divine straight nose ~ I'm a nose man and Julia's conk sends shivers down me.

Can you imagine the straight-razored ruthlessness and canny footwork it must have taken for Gwyn Gillard to have made her way up the greasy Oz pol pole?

Oh poh poh the gonads she must have left scattered en route.

I'm hearing from my Cozzes and Kin Down Under that she's a street-fighter straight from The Valleys, so that explains a bit.

The rest will be her looks and feline ways.

Opah! She's already got a ton of photos in Google (suspicious, that) and that'll rocket now she's combining power with sex appeal - the ultimate aphro, as Kissinger had it.

Dai Cobber ~ And that beefy grinning geezer to the right is the lucky bastard who's the First Bloke's first bloke.

A hair-dresser johnny he may be, but to pass muster with La Gillardine, you can bet he's got the cojones that count.

Rudd Mud

Good on the eye; g'day for investors

Doncha love that smile-on-face-of the-tiger portrait.

'Struth I fancy her more each time I read about her.

Facebook: Gillers' Mad Max Eccent

In re Sassy Sinbad's comment, le lowdown on Antoine Abbott.