It's time for another lazy round-up, so normally I'd be warning you to brace yourselves for a volley of jaw-droppingly seamless links between each day's topic. Alas, whichever way I look at it, I am burdened with three pieces of information that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on - so brace yourselves for a volley of jaw-droppingly clunky and ineffective links...
First up it's Wednesday, worst of all days, carrying within its cloud of midweek drudgery a point of minor interest - the word 'zebra' comes from the portugese 'zevra', which means wild ass (as in a feral donkey, not as in 'that was a wild ass party' - although if a feral donkey was involved, it probably was). Now (here comes the first clanger) if you were walking towards, oh, let's say, Big Ben, you might cross a zebra crossing to get there. When you get there, if you happen to be carrying a transistor radio and tune into the news, you'll hear the chimes on the radio before you hear them in real life. This may well be because the bongs are pre-recorded, but whatever, that's the fact and I'm sticking to it.
You may have noticed that the end of the last paragraph was pretty decisive - in fact, you might say I nailed my colours to the mast (here we go again). During a chat tonight with actual real people, this phrase came up and I promptly scurried back into my Wikipedia lair to find out where it came from. I know you're dying to find out. It's a nautical term (isn't everything?) which relates to ships refusing to take down their flag. Taking down the ship's flag was a sign that you were surrendering, and if you felt particularly strongly about not doing so, or were concerned that once you ran out of fags you might be tempted, a couple of nails was guaranteed to keep that baby flyin' high. As for a link from such triumph and defiance back down to the seedy shame of this blog, I'm stumped.
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