I have a confession to make. I watched Good News Week tonight. I'm not actually sure if this is a bad thing or not, but I felt like it was safest to just confess up front.
The reason I mention Good News Week is that it had an American on it. Not one I'd ever heard of, nor particularly wanted to hear of, but an American nonetheless. And based on his experiences on the show, I just wanted to point out that this is a Very Useful Blog. He clearly was not a dedicated reader, for, if he were, he would have avoided pitfalls, got more jokes and generally disgraced himself less. So, in case you should ever find yourself thrust in front of a live viewing audience, I'll give a quick summary of what would have helped him:
--an inkling of Australian politics. Chiefly that the current debate is raging between Tony Abbott and Julia Guillard.
--the Big Pineapple is simply that. A giant fiberglass pineapple.
--drop bears are purely fictional.
--root is slang for sex.
--heaps is utterly overused here. (And also as an adjective.)
--newspapers are physically somewhat bigger here. (Wider spreads.)
Okay, so I might have forgotten to address that last concern, but most of the rest (barring possibly the Pineapple, though he could have got that from Bill Bryson) would have been supremely helpful to him, had he been reading. Which you, most thankfully, are. I told you this was a Very Useful Blog!
Monday, July 26, 2010
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4 comments:
If you thought Australian newspapers were somewhat larger than American ones before you moved there, you will really notice the size difference when you come home. Our papers have shrunken considerably in the last year or so, and seem to continue to get smaller. You will be amazed that the daily Cincinnati Enquirer is possibly even smaller than the Pulse Journal now.
Are we talking tabloids or broadsheets?
You mean you haven't seen the drop bears.
Broadsheets, though we don't call them that as far as I know (possibly in the publishing business they might?). We don't consider tabloids newspapers per se -- ours are so out there, we don't put them in the same category!
Broadsheet newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald are generally twice the size of tabloids such as The Daily Telegraph. Tabloids are easier to read on crowded public transport - at least that was one justification that The Courier Mail gave when it converted from broadsheet to tabloid.
Unfortunately, the association of "tabloid" with trashy paper only good for an outhouse stems from "Page 3 girls" and "I'm having an alien's baby" stories in UK & USA variants.
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