I know that I’m a little prone to ranting about Edexcel and the dumbing of standards in GCSEs and so on. But something that really worries me is the header on their Scheme of Work for Year 10 GCSE Japanese. It’s says “Japanese Language” in Japanese. But it’s only sodding well upside down, isn’t it?

A t-shirt manufacturer, I can just about forgive for getting Kanji upside down, but a booklet intended to help teachers guiding our young and impressionable future citizens? Not really on.

The other day, I exclaimed SPORTYSOFT at H, who chuckled because that was supposedly the name of a type of hat as sold by the Toraya Hat Shop in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. We couldn’t for the life of us remember the names of the other types of hats. “BASEBALL CAP”? No. “TOP HAT”? Hmm… maybe, but I don’t think so.

Below, I have pictured the shop’s sign with all four types of hat shown. If you can name the other three types of hat correctly, you will win fame and glory for yourself. Good luck!

What’s worse?

1. The fact that a primary school has banned pupils from sending valentine’s cards due to the possibility of ‘rejection trauma’.

or

2. The fact that today’s instant media can turn a tiny little incident in a corner of Somerset into a national scandal?

It seems there’s a little row going on over the McDonald’s McItaly burger mainly due to its endorsement from the Italian agriculture minister. The food critics are not particularly happy due to the affront to their national food traditions.

There’s a video here.

You know my thoughts? The whole world should be up in arms. McItaly? McItaly? McItaly. That is a rubbish name for a burger. Seriously. I would not be able to hold my head up with pride and order a chuffing McItaly.

Following on the heels of #1 comes the strangest job advert I think I’ve ever seen. Looks ok(ish) to start with…

[Name Deleted] Photography ltd. is offering full time holiday work. Half term, summer holidays and weekends. We are looking for career minded hard working people to join us&any age can apply&. but we do need you to drive to the venues. You will have to be confident and great with people. The right person will earn around £1000min p/m. We offer all the training you need to be relaxed and confident about the photo sessions. All equipement is supplied. Please have a look at our website and see if this is for you. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you in your new career with [Name Deleted] in 2010.

So you follow the link to the website and reach:

Um… so you can work for them as an assistant for four hours and you only have to pay £75.

Once you’ve done that, you can then work for them during holidays and weekends (which I think is what this job advert is suggesting) for only £495.

Level 3 seems to actually be a job, but might not be.

And yes, if you click “Click Here To Pay” on Level 4, it really will transfer you to PayPal with an invoice of £9,995 before you’ve actually had any contact with the company (Incidentally, I wonder what the PayPal charges are on a sum like that!)

Doesn’t look dodgy at all… no no no!

What do you get if you cross sub-zero temperatures with a burst water main?

Very very very localised snow…

Scene 1…

Scene 2 (90 degrees to the right of Scene 1)…

Fantastic stuff! We passed this on Saturday afternoon and had to turn back to check we’d actually seen what we thought we’d seen!

Time for another rant about Edexcel. Have I ranted about them here before, or just in my head?

Anyway… I’m currently trying to get the Japanese GCSE vocab into a usable state. I’ve found their core vocab lists – in two different formats and with different lists of words – not very useful. But what I’ve found now is the “Japanese Vocabulary Book” which separates words into categories such as “Out & About”, “Locations”, “Directions” and so on. As you can imagine, the overlap between these examples (and many other examples) is massive. I think I’ve seen the word for bread appear about five times so far (Foundation, Out & About, Restaurants, Food & Drink, Lifestyle). Not good for sorting unique, tagged entries.

Anyway… the latest section I reached made me chuckle…

Fashion/celebrities/religion- Foundation

WTF? Must be a misprint in the title. Let’s have a look at an excerpt of the list…

Easter イースター
famous 有名な
fashion りゅう行/ファッション
glove 手ぶくろ
God 神
handbag ハンドバック
hat ぼうし

Ok. Good. I wonder if Edexcel is actually staffed by aliens?

I know it’s old news, but isn’t the London 2012 logo just attrocious?

Fortunately, after widespread public criticism in 2007 including a 25,000 signature petition and other cries for it to be changed, a London 2012 spokesman allayed our fears, saying “The emblem is flexible and will evolve over the next five years.”

So… how’s it doing after three?

It’s lost the yellow and the shade of pink has changed slightly. Granted that’s an improvement, but I still think that pretty much anyone armed with a pack of crayola could do better.

Sorry… I was just looking at a 2012 site and reminded how completely awful the thing is!

Gah! There’s this SEO company whose name I won’t mention because I don’t want them getting any advertising but if you fill in the missing words before those in the title you’ll be there… anyway, they phoned again today. I started off politely…

Them: Hello, this is A.Twunt from There’s No Kind of Atmosphere Ltd and I’m phoning you today to ask…
Me: Ah… sorry, you’re talking to the wrong person. Your company phones me about once a week, and I’m not interested thanks.
Them: Oh… erm, ok… do you know what we do? Have we explained our service to you?
Me: Yes, you have, and I’m really not interested. Thanks anyway, bye.
Them: But can I just ask you what…
Me: Um… it’s time to put the phone down now, ok?
Them: STUART… YOU ARE REALLY NOT…
*slam*

I would normally put the phone down gently, and I gave him several opportunities to say “Well, thanks for your time, goodbye.” But this time a *slam* was definitely called for.

I’ve asked to be put on their no-call list before, but they say they don’t have one. Silly billies.

Ever wondered why you pay so much for Spray Mount? As part of my S’ralan Sugar “Keep Costs Down” exercise, I thought – let’s go with the £2.99 stuff from The Works. I hadn’t gone there especially to buy it, but when I saw it I thought “Why not?”

I shall now explain, pictorially why not:

And if the picture isn’t enough, my fingers are currently very gummy, and the aerosol is now sitting in the back garden gently hissing to itself as the remainder of the contents leak out.

FAIL!