Blogger and Faucet

Just had a check to see if there have been any comments about problems with Blogger, and had it confirmed that they've changed the format of the posting page. Though they'd done this a month or two ago, so it's a puzzle why it's suddenly affecting things now.

You can opt into the new format, although I'm not aware that I had done this, and it's interesting that when I checked the various Blogger blogs, only one of them was actually listed as using the new format. Admittedly it was the one I was having most trouble with.

So that's kind of good news. Now, just a totally random and unrelated question, where does the word faucet come from? It occurred to me to ask after seeing an intriguing blog post in which someone talked about LED faucets (!). The LED shows blue if the water is cold, and (naturally) red if it's hot. Why you should need this, I'm not sure. Perhaps if you're a person who doesn't have nerve endings (as a friend of mine doesn't) you might find this handy - it would help you not to burn yourself. Still, in general it seems like an innovation that wouldn't really come that much in handy, except as a curiosity.

Well, looking up dictionary.com, we find that faucet comes from an old French word, fausset. It'd been taken over into English, but for some reason died out in common usage pretty much in the UK (and other places where English is spoken - tap is so much more basic). Yet the Americans use it (along with spigot, another word that's hardly common elsewhere). Perhaps it was taken to the US when the word was still common in the UK, like a few other words that have 'split' the language.

The interesting thing is that the common English word 'tap' is not only utterly simple with its three letters and short, sharp sound, but it's used for umpteen different things, both nouns and verbs. There are some twenty meanings listed - certainly some of them are close, but still, what a more useful word it is than that boring old French import...

Chicago

Chicago the movie disappointed me on a number of counts. Never having seen the musical on stage I don’t have any idea how it’s performed there (though I believe the original version was quite different in approach to the later revival in the 90s) so I can’t tell whether it’s the film’s tone or what that didn’t appeal.

The characters are very hard to warm to. Even the cuckolded husband, living as he does in the middle of a bunch of rogues and self-seekers, doesn’t quite call for our empathy, although he’s the only who might. Renee Zellweger loses our sympathy from round about her third scene, and never regains it; Catherine Zeta-Jones doesn’t fare much better, and Richard Gere’s character never comes close to getting it.

And the story seems something of a mish-mash, at least in this version. I’m told that younger cinemagoers don’t like people suddenly bursting into song. I find this hard to believe. Even if The Sound of Music wasn’t still one of the most popular movies in the world, Grease must still be counted amongst younger people as a movie they love. In both of these people burst into song without so much as a by-your-leave, and no one flees the theatre. And MTV is so popular it has its own channel.

Supposedly Moulin Rouge revived audience’s interest in film musicals. If it did, I’d be surprised: I still find it one of the most annoying movies ever made. The constant cutting from shot to shot as though the editor (or the director) was on speed, becomes so irritating that the film is almost impossible to watch.

Chicago, at least in that respect, is better. The fast cutting is there, but not quite on the same manic level as Moulin Rouge. Here at least you can usually get an idea of what the choreography is about; in Moulin Rouge you had no means of doing so.

But to get back to the story: to me there didn’t seem to be a connection between the songs and the story, except insofar as the songs merely restated what the story had already told us, or only added another dimension. They never carried the thing forward in any way.

Some reviewers suggest that the musical side is seen through Zellweger’s eyes, with her imagining her life as a stage presentation. But if that’s the case, how is it that Zeta-Jones begins the film with All That Jazz, a song that has nothing to do with anything else? Furthermore, at that point, Zeta-Jones is supposed to be in jail for having murdered her sister and husband. Why would she be doing a song in a nightclub?

The opening scenes (apart from All That Jazz itself) have a realistic element to them. But after Zellweger has shot her boyfriend, they go off into this half-story, half-musical hybrid that to me never coalesces. Certainly in movie terms the two intertwine very nicely, but it’s a kind of so what?

Zellweger (apart from her perennial pout) is great in the movie, and does the singing and dancing with great skill. Likewise Zeta-Jones. Gere never seems quite as much at home here as he is in Shall We Dance? where his dancing works. He’s no singer, and sounds thin, and the tapdancing scene is dire. (And again, means nothing.)

The costumes go from skimpy to less-than-skimpy. Maybe that’s meant to distract us from the fact that the rest of it is pretty skimpy too.

More on the subject of luggage

We arrived at the house we’re due to babysit on Wednesday to find the family just about to set off to Cromer for a few days’ camping. We were due to head back there ourselves because we’d left all our own luggage at my brother-in-law’s while we attended to a minor medical matter.
Anyway, the family’s car was full – and the daughter’s bag hadn’t even been put in. In a last minute plea, my niece asked if we could possibly deliver the daughter’s bag to Cromer for them. Of course we could. And then we saw the bag. It was virtually as big as the daughter herself, and may possibly have contained everything she possessed. We should have realized that you don’t go camping without all the things you might possibly need.
Whether she had the kitchen sink in there or not, I don’t know – she may have had two kitchen sinks, since the case was very heavy.
And talking of kitchen sinks, I’ve noticed something odd about the taps (faucets, if you’re in the US) leading into them. When I go to fill a kettle (jug, if you’re in NZ) from the taps, the cold water seems to be on the wrong side altogether. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m partly ambidextrous and do some things around the wrong way, but I have to reach over the top of the kettle to fill it, rather than being able to turn on the tap on my left, as I would at home. Maybe I need to try doing it round the other way – if I can. Although it feels a bit like trying to play golf right-handed to do that.