This short scene is a very well-known one from the cult film PULP FICTION. Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta want the suitcase of their boss back from those guys. But as it’s a Quentin Tarantino movie it’s very special one and the dialogues are just really crazy sometimes.

“Hamburgers, the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast”

The mention what a quarter-pounder cheese is called in France and he says it’s called a Royal with cheese. The reason is the metric system which has not quarters or inches or anything like that everything is decimalised.

In the U.S. there are pounds as a measure for weight or inch for 2.54 centimetres of the metric system. Today we still use inches to describe the size of screens for example. A 42 inch LCD.

By the way, the word “fuck” is used 271 times in that movie.

Vocabulary:
smart = intelligent
beverage = something to drink

Hello, hello my dear reader….

Science is an amazing thing, isn’t it? Ancient cultures have discovered and worked out the basics of what we call today science. It is amazing what discoveries the old Greeks made for instance Aristotle thought of the world as a spherical globe. And since then it was a known fact that our earth is a globe and not flat. Some people think that during the dark ages the earth was considered to be flat but this mistake origins from Washington Irving’s fictional tale A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

Later however people like Galilei had to justify for their non-sense in front of the inquisition court. Science was not popular in the church. Therefore a lot of scientists couldn’t work freely in public and publish their discoveries. If there wouldn’t have been the dark ages I could tell that a lot of scientific achievements would have been made much earlier.

Let’s get a little bit further and to a specific subject: chemistry. What wonderful subject it is. Began as alchemy when people first tried to make Gold. During 250 years people found ways to create almost anything but Gold, what they were originally looking for.

This brings us right to the present and again a very entertaining and gripping show. It’s called Breaking Bad which means that you for one or more times just won’t do what law tells you. And this is indeed a good title for this TV production. A high school teacher starts cooking Meth to earn money.

Meth is one of the most dangerous and damaging drugs in the world. It damages your organs and makes you look much older than you are because of a ingredient (I just can’t come up with the name but it doesn’t really matter) which interferes with your skin regeneration and that could make a 23 years old addict look like a 40 years old wasted man.

Vocabulary:
spherical = like a ball
dark ages = time between the end of the roman empire and start of the renaissance also middle age

Hello…

Let me show you a fantastically, gripping and humorous TV series. The series is called Chuck and he’s the main character of the series. Its plot is set in California where Zachary Levi is starring Chuck, a guy kicked from Stanford and currently working in the Buy More. One day he receives an e-mail from his old friend which contents highly confidential data. When he opens it Chuck loads a whole bunch of government secrets in his brain and needs by then protection and supervision by the CIA and NSA. The reason is that he is now a kind of computer that keeps secrets and flashes on things he sees. This might be a terrorist or something related to a secret of the government.

Variety describes it as:
Chuck possesses modest charm, impressive stunt work and another mildly appealing reluctant hero.

I love the series, it’s so entertaining and funny but see for yourself. Here’s the promo.

Vocabulary:
gripping = very interesting
confidential = secret
a whole bunch = a lot
supervision = to be observed, to be watched, to be looked after
reluctant = not voluntarily, not like to be but has to

Today, we’ll watch a excerpt of the David Letterman Show. The show is a typical late night show, late night shows are quite popular in the U.S.. David Letterman is just one of those guys who invite stars to their show and talk with them about recent films, books or anything else that interests the audience in the states.

So, here we go with tonight’s guest whose name is Sacha Baron Cohen. A well-educated Cambridge graduate of history and entertainer best known as Ali G. and Borat. He’s introducing his movie Brüno which is coming into cinemas.

Reviews of Brüno idicate that the movie is a has-to-be-seen one for people who can neglect the immorality and disgust of the film itself and see its message behind showing that a lot of people are just pretending to treat all others equal.

USA Today wrote:
Brüno offers more shock value for your moviegoing dollar than any other movie this year.

LA Time wrote:
Brüno is an idiot savant of penetration — breaking through borders, boundaries and anything that resembles good taste on his way to whipping up as much cultural anarchy as he can[...]

Vocabulary:
excerpt = one part of the whole
recent = quite now, not long ago

Hello, dear reader.

It must have seemed that I’ve been six feet under not posting for a while. I hope I’ll be able to publish posts regularly from now on but don’t expect too much because it’s holiday time.

Let’s see….what about the idiom I used at the beginning of the post six feet under.

It means that someone is dead and buried. To bury is a verb which describes the act of putting a lifeless human body in the ground and cover him with soil.This act is usually accompanied by a ceremony with close friends and members of the family. This ceremony is a funeral.

There’s a series running on HBO a private TV network in the U.S. called: Six feet under.

Vocabulary:
soil = the surface and material of the ground

Let’s talk about beautiful women walking on runways. The runway or it may be more common to say the catwalk is a platform on which models walk and show latest fashion.

The young woman in the video below falls off her platform shoes which have a very high sole and make you look taller. These are especially worn by women with a good sense of balance.

The man in the TV-show says that it was embarrassing. This means that something makes you feel very uncomfortable.

Well, see it for yourself. If I were that model I’d be embarrassed as one can be.

Vocabulary:
models = often good-looking women posing for something
latest fashion = newest stuff designer have created
catwalk = a place where cats walk on  a cats here means hot women

A very often used term in English is “As a matter of fact” or in chatroom-slang AAMOF. It means pretty much the same as “in fact”, “actually“, “to be precise“

Here are some examples when and how it’s used:
“As a matter of fact, people dislike saints on earth: perfection is for those in heaven.”
See the rest of the article

“Yeah, I do want a medal as a matter of fact!”
See the rest of the article

You see, it’s a nice sounding expression which isn’t difficult to apply.

Have a nice day.

Vocabulary:
to apply = to use, to put on
saints = people who are mentioned as holy (churches or cathedrals are sometimes called after them)
For example THIS one.

SARCASM:

When you something in such a way that it intones the opposite. That is sarcasm.

Best explained with examples:

This little excerpt from the US series “The Big Bang Theory” shows sarcasm. I think there’s nothing more to explain about it, is it?

But, if you need some further explanation…here we go:

“The use of remarks which clearly mean the opposite of what they say, and which are made in order to hurt someone’s feelings or to criticize something in an amusing way.” (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary)

It is amusing indeed. I love sarcasm.

Barack Obama has killed a fly. Oh, for heavens sake, how could he just do that? It’s on all news:  TV, radio and newspaper. It’s like this would be the most important piece of news I have to hear about today. God, that man is the most powerful man in world but killing a fly doesn’t make him something better or worse than us and it’s not in any way more interesting than when I kill a fly.

Some people do even read too much into it and judge the whole foreign policy on this deed.

For example:

Examiner.com writes:
“He is not interested in alleviating the suffering of all beings.”
“He’s behaving just like he did with the fly, acting without considering the consequences of his actions.”

See the entire article

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) thinks he should have “exercised more restraint”.

All those people are just exaggerating.

Let’s imagine a different situation. Let’s say hypothetically that this fly -- rest in peace you little insect -- wouldn’t have been killed by Obama.  Killed is such a strong word, isn’t it? Anyway, I think that newspapers would have written about how the most powerful man in the world could not do anything against it or that he is a sissy not being able to kill a small even a small fly. This sounds like non-sense but what we watched, heard or read actually is non-sense too.

There’s a very suitable saying in German for such things: “Aus einer Mücke einen Elefanten machen” It is quite funny because in this context it fits even more than usual. Which in English would be: “Make an elephant out of a fly”. Mücke means fly. An English idiom which means the same like the German one is: “to make mountains out of molehills“.

So much for today. Thank you.

Just if someone’s interested, the brutal and vicious kill of Obama -- Ninja Style:

Vocabulary:
kill = make stop living
read into = interpret
exaggerating = to make something seem more than it actually is

The expression makeover is often used when something is made looking better than before. Today we usually hear the word in context with image-editing.

Photoshop or GIMP, but especially Photoshop are well-known applications which enable us to edit something or someone the way we want.

Sometimes people even use Photoshop as a verb.

For example:
“I photoshopped her spots away.”

People today think too much about beauty and unreachable idols who are (more or less) just like ordinary people. There’s nothing different, they have eyes, legs and so on. So do we. What we think to be seeing when we’re looking at a poster or commercial in TV is not real. It’s fake. Deliberately fake. Because big companies want to sell all their products to make you think that you need it. Actually, we don’t need most of it. When you think, and I hope you don’t but just in case you do, that if you look into your own mirror at home you have to look like a model in commercials I have to say: “You don’t and never will do!” It’s simply not possible. You need a dozen people to do the makeover and look like a model. Nothing you see in all those tabloids is real nature.

Morpheus: Welcome to the real world.

Don’t reach for stars which don’t exist. Reach for stars which are worth to be reached.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone out there and if I have I’m sorry but I have just written the plain truth.

Vocabulary:
well-known = famous, a lot of people know about it
to enable = make possible
spots = those hated red dots in one’s face
ordinary = not special, like everyone
commercial = advertisement, ad, method to sell a product
fake = not real, not truth