h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Traveller in Time puzzled on his head
"That can be the object referred to by the other researcher indeed, it does not require electricity but it is an object indeed."

Botox - botulinus toxin. Causes muscle paralysis & can therefore be fatal (e.g. stops breathing) but does have medical uses (eye muscles, to treat squints) & fashionable uses (facial muscles to smooth the furrowed brow!)

Botox (a contraction of botulism toxin, I think) is the stuff that makes your forehead rigid so it doesn't show wrinkles, a la Cliff Richard and Anne Robinson. The stuff you inject in your lips is collagen.

A corroborration of some of the postings on codswallop can be found here:

http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-cod1.htm

Incidentally, Davy's wine bar sell "Old Wallop". This may just be them being pretentious, though.

Reagarding "common or garden"...I always understood that this related to wildlife, and that it should contain a pair of commas, viz: "The common, or garden, sparrow is commonly found in gardens".

They do botox injections for the lips and round the corners of the mouth as well as the forehead to remove wrinkles. Collagen is used to pump the lips up a bit and look like a guppy fish.

Or Mick Jagger.

RF

Collagen abuse - Leslie Ash

I think she was unlucky (well, foolish to do it in the first place) & suffered an adverse reaction.

Yeah, that's what I heard. Stuck with it now, though. What did they used to say about the wind changing...?

Apparently Mick Jagger used to inject salt water (this way before collagen injections were heard of) to get that famous look.

RF

>> What did they used to say about the wind changing...? <<

"The wind she blows and blows. And then, she blows some more."
- old French fisherfolk saying.

or

"It's an ill wind that blows no one some good."
- which just sounds like a bad French translation.

or

"If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

or

"Go whistle." - sailor talk


~jwf~

What they used to say about the wind changing was that if you did something stupid with your face (such as crossing your eyes) and the wind changed, you'd be stuck like that for the rest of your life.

Thanks, Gnomon!

Your post inspired me to hunt around for the origins of that saying. No real success, but I did find this: http://www.dreampower.com/Kirk_WBW/pg_102.htm

A poster of the illustration (plus caption!) will shortly take pride of place on my livingroom wall.

on to the subtle art of Gurning.
Pulling silly faces for fun through a horse collar.

Ictoan,

"the whole nine yards is from the ww2 pilots. I think. The aeroplanes carried the machine gun ammo in a total of 9yards of ammo strips. If you emptied your guns you had given it the full nine yards, everything you had in other words. "

Sorry to return to this, but our 'phone lines have been burned up.
Initially Spitfires had ammunition for about 15 seconds worth of firing (Hurricanes started out the same but became more complicated more quickly) from 8 Browning .303 Browning machine guns ~ 300 rounds each. The blunt end of the bullet being about twice the diameter of the projectile, added to link of the belt could well have amounted to one round per inch although I've been unable to find any information on this from the web nor from acquaintances who actually armed the machines. Anyhow that gets us to eight and a bit yards, which is close. However:

http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/meanings/411150.html

suggests that there is no recorded use of the phrase within 20 years of such activity.

#Thanks plaguesville, have just been on a search myself and it appears there are a number of plausible, and implausible, sources for this phrase but no one actually knows its origin. As you state, none of the likely aircraft had 27ft long ammo belts.
About all that does seem certain is that it is an americanism and is not definitly military related.
Suggestions about cement lorry capacity, american football field lengths and yard arms on sailing ships have all been made but none exactly fit.

Interesting And bad me for just trusting a TV History programme without checking the facts!

Ictoan,

How about a "crazy golf" afficianado boasting about putting the ball in the cup with a single shot:
"The hole - nine yards!"

Maybe it's a nautical reference.
Yards being the cross arms on the mast which hold the sails.
A typical three masted ship might have three yards on each mast for a total of nine yards. In ideal sailing conditions, with all sails set, it might be said to be running the whole nine yards.


~jwf~

Oh No-o-o-o-o,

I should have left well alone (as Pussy said to Little Tommy Stout).

ps
Afficionado.

~jwf~ that is one of the options mentioned but, apparently, most ships of this type have more than 9 yard arms so it still doesn't quite fit.
I quite liked the cement mixer one for originality (that a cement mixer holds 9 square yards of concrete and tipping the lot is giving it the 'whole 9 yards'. Except US cement lorries hold variously between 8 and 10 or so, so it isn;t a defined measure.)

Maybe it was originated by a particularly gifted fella? or maybe only in his dreams!

Oh, and I meant to ask the following as well.
Just creating a new document at work and I need to say that in stage 1 we generate some docs and then get them signed off. Once signed off we can move to the next stage.
However, due to set formats and so forth, I was wondering which is best:
"Exit this stage once the approach document is approved and the plan is approved."
or
"Exit this stage once the approach document has been approved and the plan has been approved approved."

or even just 'Once both the plan and approach documents have been / are approved'.

Undecided whether it should be 'have/has been' or 'is'?