The Atheist Blogger

Absolutely nothing to do with atheism, but I had this idea after watching a clip of Hugh Laurie on the Ellen DeGeneres show, and after finding the “List of British words not widely used in the United States” article on Wikipedia. Basically this is for my US readers, can you match up the British slang to the meanings? After you’ve attempted to match them all up, click the “Show Answers” button (JavaScript needed) and see how you did!

The Slang

manky
minger
chav
pear-shaped
bugger all
argy-bargy
throw a wobbly
higgledy-piggledy
take the piss
knackered
spot on
chuffed
jammy git
footie
fringe
boffin
rat-arsed
bob’s your uncle
witter
gobsmacked

The Meanings

to go drastically or dramatically wrong
it’s that simple
exhausted
in disarray
utterly astonished
scientist or engineer, geek, nerd
proud, satisfied, pleased
exactly
to make fun of somebody
to continue to talk trivially about a subject long after the audience’s interest has gone
to lose one’s temper
little or nothing at all
slob, someone who is unattractive
extremely drunk
typically a working class person of lowish intelligence who wears designer label copies and is a trouble-maker
football (soccer)
bangs, as in describing collective strands of hair covering part or all of the forehead
pushing-and-shoving or outright fighting
feeling ill, rough, out of sorts; filthy, dirty, rotten.
lucky person

Decisions, decisions: Christian Gay-Bashing Lecture or a Snowball fight in Windsor Great Park?

…

Hey guys! Wait up…I need gloves!!!

This quick quiz will tell you. I got the obvious result:

"Today is a fine day for reality..."

I am fast approaching the end of term, and there is a massive coursework writeup due so I won’t be posting many things for the next few days. After that however I will be starting my Linux tutorials (for those who follow my full feed or personal feed), and I’m also thinking about getting back into the world of vlogging.

I recently entered the Friendly Atheist “motivational poster” competition and came 10th. It might be last place, but at least it’s at the top of the page! My submission was one that only made sense with the picture so in some ways it was quite deep. It was inspired by one of my favourite atheist quotes:

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

Anyway, here is my submission:

I’ve entered the latest competition as well, because I really want a Friendly Atheist wristband, and I encourage anyone else to do the same.

A Division by Zer0 found a useful website called Wordle that reads a webpage or feed and arranges the most popular words into patterns. Here is the one for my current feed (click to enlarge):

I like how the words “atheists” and “people” are stuck out, reminding those pesky fundamentalists that we really are people too…