Republished from the original Sydney Media Jam blog.

This isn’t the BBC.

It should be, but you’re luckier than you think.

The English language has many uses, not least of which is as a food. It can be spread on almost any topic, or even used in monologues for sexual gratification.

As a food, English can be used as a generative source of energy for action, snivelling, opinions, and even actual thought, in some rare but apparently unavoidable cases.

In recent times it has been reluctantly noticed that there may be other uses for this language. It has also been noted that many groups seem to lack adequate forms of expression, particularly those who are supposedly reduced to practicing management science, becoming thought leaders, or entering politics, as their sole form of interaction with language and other people.

That may not be the case. It’s quite possible that some people are latent managers, undiagnosed thought leaders, or have mutated from human beings in to politicians. It may be that these alleged people have been unfairly singled out from the mass of humanity for simply following evolution’s little practical jokes a bit too far.

The following program explains the English language, its uses, and why so many people who speak English have no idea what they’re talking about and are so happy about it. It also, reassuringly vaguely, demonstrates the fact that those whose native language is English have no idea how to use the language for any purpose whatsoever.

We hope this introductory information will be of use to you in your commendably desperate attempts to avoid relevance of any kind. Remember that you have the right to choose to have no relevance whatsoever to anything, and your understanding of the English language will sail majestically in accordance with your noble aspirations. 

A few basic concepts regarding the origins of English, before we start:

England: A place where Attenboroughs swarm in herds.

The Queen of England: The nice lady who kindly rented us the English language.

Britain: A geographically enforced irony of associations with the Scots, Welsh, and Irish to which the English are hopelessly addicted.

The English people: An assortment of cultures, history, dialects, perversions, and Catford, comprised of 70 million people selflessly determined to avoid each other at all costs.

Europe: An unsubstantiated rumour which persists throughout history and which the English would rather ignore, but from which many words have been swiped and conscientiously distorted, mispronounced and misspelled.

France: Yes. We’re sorry about that. It just seems to be there. Perhaps it will go away.  

We move on, erratically if sadistically, to basic English. Each word is given in a social context. Linguistics experts believe that this is a true social dynamic, based on the ability to inflict others with information, however useless or idiotically expressed.

This observation, ironically, has led to another – There usually is more than one actual meaning in any statement when speaking English, for however little reason. This is based on the “Unstated Theory”, the belief that only a tiny percentage of actual meaning is deliberately conveyed by talking to anyone about anything. Accidentally useful information may ooze out of a statement, but it’s certainly not a conscious process.

Basic English phrases

The following is a useful collection of English phrases with colloquial meanings and variations according to conversational context. We’ve chosen a few in context with England itself, to add local reference points, but mainly because it’s much more annoying that way.

Words in bold are actual statements, with their meanings below:

Hello.

• Your parents weren’t thinking, were they?
• Darwin really was an optimist, wasn’t he?

(This word may also be pronounced as though giving birth to a Mack truck, as required by law in certain social environments.)

Terrible weather.

• I’m really a mass murderer, killing people with small talk, and selling subscriptions.
• I have a bet with the coroner whether you can form sentences.

I went down the off-license.

• My relationship with buildings is ambiguous.
• I went to visit my liver.

I want to drink your blood

• You look like a teabag, what if I just add some boiling water…?
• I’m too cheap to buy a beer.

I’m a house brick

• I am now an autonomous structure, hoping to attract others.
• I earn a living being inserted in to the heads of other citizens to block drafts.

They’re an interesting couple

• I’m an entomologist with time on my hands
• We ran out of agar plates, and there they were!

The bus is coming

• Our journey to the underworld has begun!
• …And why shouldn’t vehicles have orgasms?

I’m going to …. (location)

• I feel the need to reproduce and mate with retail outlets.
• I was going to go mad, but it’s far too crowded these days.

Yes, I’m a plumber

• You probably don’t recognize me without my orchestra and choir.
• My god, you’re observant.

It made Britain what she is today

• …And someone will scoop it up, eventually. (This expression is generally accepted to refer to any form of mediocrity, however self-important.)

Welcome to Britain!

• We really needed another vacuous bastard, we were running out.
• We’re motivated sellers.
• Take it home and try it on.

“For psychopaths” …

Let’s not be too lazy about the word “psychopath” at this point. The definition of a psychopath is “a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviour.”, according to Google. They’d know.

The obvious problem with this definition is that it refers to everybody, in some form. If this ridiculous pseudo-society doesn’t fit the bill as a chronic mental disorder, what does? Yet just about everyone pretends it actually exists, and, bizarrely, has a reason to exist, and behaves accordingly. It’s almost as if they expect this “society” to do something, or mean something.

“Abnormal or violent behavior”, in turn, could also describe the whole of human history, even the interesting bits. A species so obviously determined to be as idiotic as possible as often as possible hardly needs to qualify its terminology specifically “for psychopaths”.

Therefore, English is now the international language of psychopaths, by psychopaths, for psychopaths, to facilitate communications in abnormal behaviour. It’s for everyone. It now facilitates more fraud, crime, wars, ineptitude and insanity than any language before it.

So there.

Paul Wallis note: You’ll be pleased to know that there is also now a cure for the English language – My books. Read a few of these murderous tomes and revel in the total lack of frames of reference, syntax, logic, and useful information of any kind.

Simply buying a few of these books with real money will qualify you for all sorts of pensions, government grants, and other compensations and benefits from terrified professionals in many different academic disciplines. It will also qualify you for heartfelt disbelief from your friends and total strangers alike.

The cure was quite simple – Invent new words and new contexts. Ultimately, that will turn any language, however useful or facile, in to a sort of self-pitying mush. According to Word, my books contain something like 300 completely unprovoked new words.

Yes, if you’re trying to escape from the English language, just read me and it’ll never bother you again.

…Now all I have to do is figure out why I charged myself $200 for adding those last few paragraphs….