In a history-making triumph for its Canadian author and publisher, A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society has won the 42nd annual The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. Dr Forth's book is one of thefirst comprehensive studies of animal metaphors in a non-Western society, focusing on how the Nage indigenous peoples who primarily live on the islands of Flores and Timor understand metaphor and use their knowledge of animals to shape specific expressions. The title is an idiom which refers to someone who begins a task but is regularly distracted by other matters, like a dog which has the habit of frequently stopping to urinate while on a walk. The English phrase to piss about has a similar origin. Other contenders include, Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music, Lawnmowers: An Illustrated History and Introducing the Medieval Ass.
Test comes back clean
"My daughter in law had a baby recently," writes a reader. "One of her visitors commented that someone had left their urine sample at the wash basin. Turned out it was DETERGENT. Didn't help that it was yellow."
Steve Jones of New Plymouth writes: "I reel at 'the [US boat] sunk', common in America's Cup coverage and elsewhere, just as I reel at a brother for decades saying someone 'rung me'. Sank, rang, surely, otherwise we'd be saying 'I drunka beer', 'he stunk', etc. Is there no literacy decency anymore?"
