Local television standards

Is it my imagination, or are ads on TV just getting better and better? First there was the one about the falling sofa (“Did you leave food for the dog...?”) More recently, we saw what was arguably the most effective health promo campaign to date – especially the anti-speeding clip, featuring the man on the life-support system (“I’ve got another machine now...”) The question is: if we are so clearly capable of producing good ads, why are our standards so low when it comes to presenting the news? Still, at the rate we’re improving, you never know. One day, someone might even start producing a single, solitary half-decent news bulletin... one which preferably isn’t intended to simply ram a political party’s agenda down our throats, whether we like it or not. One day...

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The saliva incident

It is estimated that in the course of a 90-minute football game, the average player’s salivary glands will produce approximately eight litres of saliva. Under hot and humid conditions such as (say) Portugal in June, saliva production of the average football player rises to around 10.5 litres. In the case of non-average fuori-classe such as, for instance, Francesco Totti, that figure could even reach 13 litres in a game. How silly, then, of Danish defender Poulsen to step into Totti’s path at the precise instant he chose to discharge some excess spit...

Bad losers

On the subject of excess spit, I felt I had to wipe some off my face after reading the papers last Sunday. Honestly, I never thought I’d live to see our self-proclaimed intellectual and cultural gurus do nothing but whinge, moan and sulk like a bunch of cry-babies. My advice is: grow up. (Was that “loud and clear enough”, everyone? Or do I have to start shouting, too?)

David Beckham

I hear bookies are now taking bets on what part of Beckham’s anatomy will be tattooed next. My guess is the words “I CAN’T TAKE PENALTIES” written in large letters right across his forehead...

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby call upon the Finance Minister (Oops! Sorry, the “parliamentary secretary of something-or-other within the OPM”) to introduce without delay an “Ego-tax”... whereby members of the population will no longer be taxed according to their income, or their spending, or (as in the case of the ill-fated eco-contribution) for no particular reason whatsoever... Instead, they would be taxed according to the size of their egos.

Personally, I envisage huge improvements to practically every sphere of life in the Maltese islands as a result of this new tax. Not only will the Government of Malta rake in unfeasibly large amounts of money from the contributions of its own ministers – not to mention numerous public personalities, among them talk-show presenters, architects, DJs, opinionists, doctors, lawyers, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies – but, in a nationwide bid to avoid tax by pretending not to have an enormously inflated ego, most of the egomaniacs who have to date trumpeted their own brilliance at every given opportunity will now try to keep as low a profile as possible. Consequently: no more pointedly useless (and sometimes ghastly) monuments erected in public places as an excuse for a lapida to commemorate a Minister’s speech; no more gushing interviews with personalities who really have nothing to say whatsoever; no more television shows which claim to be Malta’s answer to Tim Sebastian... And who knows? Maybe we’ll even solve the deficit in a few years’ time...

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Big fish sightings

Shock! Horror! Panic! I saw “a big fish” last week in the vicinity of Marsaxlokk.... call the Marines!

Actually, I won’t bother, because the “big fish” in question happened to be dead and on the back of a truck at the Marsaxlokk Sunday morning market when I saw it. It was a rather large specimen of Blue Fin Tuna, and someone was patiently sawing it up into large and appetising steaks at the time.

Still, it seems that some people do think these sightings are worth reporting. There have been three warnings in the papers over the past two weeks alone, all of which saying the same thing: “The general public is advised to take all the necessary precautions.” Naturally, I heeded this advice to the letter, and took the all precautions I deemed necessary... by making some room for a couple of tuna steaks in the deep freeze...Yesterday, one of our more vocal defenders of the English language - a certain IMB (aka ABC) - upbraided the L.O.O. (Leader Of Opposition) for indulging in a little B.E. (Bad English.): “What Doctor Alfred Sant does not know, it is clear, is that you should never stick an adverb between a verb and the ‘to’ that precedes it, as in ‘to strongly criticise’. This is a barbarism on the lines of ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’, which is forgivable because it used to come at the beginning of Star Trek, which in due course will rival (not) Shakespeare as a defining parameter of the English language.”

Well, this is just one of those grammatical opinions to regularly incur debate. For instance, The American Heritage Book of English Usage – A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English (1996) had to say on the subject: “To boldly go where no one has gone before. This phrase, so familiar to Star Trek fans, presents us with the dilemma of the split infinitive - an infinitive that has an adverb between the to and the verb. Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years, but it is hard to see what exactly is wrong with saying to boldly go. Its meaning is clear. It has a strong rhythm that reinforces the meaning. And rearranging the phrase only makes it less effective. We may also want to go boldly where no one has gone before, but it doesn’t sound as exciting. And certainly no one wants to go where no one has gone before boldly. That is a different voyage entirely.”

Meanwhile, although it is true that Shakespeare avoided splitting his infinitives, a great many well-known writers did so on a regular basis. These include John Donne, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot and Henry James.

Fortunately, however, we now have it from the most authoritative source possible that they were all, um, “barbaric”….

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Dead fish

After reports of hundreds of dead fish seen floating outside St Thomas Bay this week, I felt I had to ask an environmentalist what he thought of our national policy for the conservation of coastal and marine environment.

Without hesitation he replied: “It stinks.”