An Elephant of One's Own

There ought to be a cartoon to go with this title, but I'm buggered if I'm going to play with Paintbrush for an hour (urgent translation waiting in Inbox). So you'll have to make do with a description. From toes to neck, shadow stretches about four feet. From neck to cheekbones, another foot. From cheekbones to top of head, ooh, I dunno, about another five feet, let's live a little. In short (and he wasn't), Burrhus Skinner had a very, very tall forehead indeed. But don't take my word for it. I feel for this guy. I really do. To start with, having a name like Burrhus can't be an easy slog - obviously, like my former schoolmate Andrew de Jode, you would want to keep away from Spanish speaking countries for a kickoff. Not only that, but he had the misfortune to have an Arts degree hanging round his neck like a scarlet letter his whole life (plus a secret ambition to be a writer: again, check). All right, lately I'm rethinking this one, and there may...

LONG POV SHOT of BEAUTIFUL WOMAN in sexy dress, smiling. ZOOM in quickly on face. SLOW PAN downwards, taking in whole body, ending at feet (impossible heels), pausing slightly at ample cleavage. Saxophone music. POV PULLS BACK quickly, then moves in as BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, still smiling fixedly, holds out hand to greet HELPLACE-ZUCKER. BEAUTIFUL WOMAN: Hello. Mr Helplace-Zucker? Nice to meet you. OK, I think we can all see this for what it is, a trope, that is, a locution or idiom, visual shorthand, unoriginal but serviceable, intended to save time. As with most tropes, individual tastes will vary on just how irritating it is found to be. Me, I always found that tenor sax mildly exasperating, since I do not experience lust as a saxophone playing slow jazz, never have. More as a woodwind section, clarinets and oboes and cor anglais. (Make that corblimey anglais, if it's Joan Sims.) The feminists are right about one thing: the eye behind the camera is like...

OK, OK. When I wrote in the previous post that "embracing is something only orthodontists do", it was actually intended as a joke. Not a very good joke, but a joke, i.e., not serious. I have no desire to rewrite the dictionary definition for that particular entry. Or any entry at all, for that matter. Not even those entries, like the one for "feminism" in some popular dictionaries, that appear to me to be at odds with contemporary usage, and therefore, I suppose you could say, "wrong", or at least misleading (I'm referring to the fact that many dictionaries define feminism in terms of a belief in gender equality, a perception which becomes pretty difficult to defend when you look at what the most vociferous Western feminists actually say and do). And yes, my lack of any desire to rewrite any dictionaries can safely be attributed to the fact that I am not employed as a lexicographer. If you paid me to edit dictionaries, then OK, I'd edit them. And i...