Monday, March 09, 2009

dudes, saying, stars

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Dudes of the bird world - handsome but rather frightening, if you happen to be a law abiding couple of birds trying bring up a young family. It's true about magpies' nasty habits. Last year, we witnessed a magpie sitting in our bay tree eating a blackbird nestling.

The French expression "métro-bulot-dodo" meaning metro, work, sleep", has always appealed to me for its succinct description of a pointless existence. I have only just learnt that it comes from a poem by Pierre Béarn called Couleurs d'usine. The original line is "Métro boulot bistrots mégot, dodo zéro", which means "metro work bars fags sleep nothing".

Nowadays newspapers have the habit of prefacing reviews of films, plays, exhibitions, and the like to indicate at a glance, where they are on the spectrum - outstanding to worthless For those who, like me, increasingly resent time spent reading newspapers,this has the merit if making irrelevant the majority of reviews because anything with less than four stars is not going to be of interest.

3 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

Oh but I always read the one-star reviews.

Zhoen said...

Nasty by our standards. By theirs, yummy.

Lucy said...

I use the Radio Times film guide in this way, and often wonder if I am being too receptive of others' opinions, but the rating's are usually accurate, or even over-generous. Like BB, I always read the one-star reviews, though don't watch the films, figuring that to be that bad they must be worthy of note. Never read the two star ones though.