Thursday 20 May 2010

The Horse's Mouth


Though I know nothing about horses, I know that you can check their health by inspecting their teeth. This is why you should always look a gift horse in the mouth, a lesson the Trojans learnt to their cost. The horse's mouth, though, is merely a particularly good source for a racing tip. He heard it from the stable-boy, you heard it from the trainer, I heard it straight from the horse's mouth.

I know I am a lone voice crying aloud in the wilderness on this subject, but that paragraph was merely a lead-up to pointing out that you can only truly understand international affairs and the glories of English prose if you read the official news website of the North Korean government. The guy who writes it has clearly just learnt the word bedevilled and this account of the sinking of that South Korean ship is fantastic. Here is an unedited paragraph:

Branding the south Korean puppet conservative group as one of most wicked traitors who bedeviled the north-south relations to serve outsiders, a gang of vicious anti-reunification elements who dampened the nation's desire for reunification, a diehard traitorous clique who scuttled the inter-Korean cooperation and dangerous warmongers keen to bring nuclear war disasters to the Koreans, the indictment cites facts to prove its crimes.


Scuttled is a beautiful, beautiful word. Full article here.

Clearly the North has better curtains

4 comments:

  1. How on earth do you do this?? Your mind is clearly in a different league than the rest of us. Especially the N. Korean guy.

    Laughed out loud at the photo caption.

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  2. Clearly the South has spilt more Tippex.

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  3. The Antipodean21 May 2010 at 07:08

    It does sound a little like the indictment is in fact a self-indictment. Someone does need to introduce the North Korean to semi-colons. I think he would enjoy them.

    Deborah, what I really want to know is how he finds the time?? Dogberry, that is, not the North Korean.

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  4. I know the horse's mouth was only a lead up to your N. Korean report but it is usually to see what age a horse is that its mouth is examined-hence "long in the tooth".As a horse ages its teeth wear down but the tooth continues to erupt from the jaw at the rate of about an eighth of an inch per annum. So by examining the number and condition of its teeth you can see whether you are being 'sold a pup' or an old nag.

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