Poor Man’s “Bad Babies”


Production date: July 2006
Playout date: 9/7/2006
Camera: Logitech webcam
Post Production: Small amount of WMM
Location: Living room at home.
Soundtrack info: At the beginning you hear some of DavideoDesign’s film “Bad Babies” of which this is a spoof.
Languages used: Northern English
Animals featured: None

This one was an impromptu spoof after Sophie and I had been enjoying the video by DavideoDesign (who wrote in the comments that they liked our version) called “Bad Babies”.

In the original bad babies video, there’s a simple dialogue going on between two dolls using the insertion of human facial parts in the way used nowadays probably most commonly by “The Annoying Orange”. It’s not a technique I have access to in my post production software. I believe it’s in the Adobe suite (please spill the beans in comments if you know). It’s possible I could do something a bit similar in the stuff I have but it would probably be a bit fiddly, and so I never really tried it, although I’d be up to give it a go one day.

The simple dialogue becomes humorous because of the repetition of ‘very’ in a northern accent by one of the dolls, and the eventual loss of patience on the part of the child they are talking to, as well as the degeneration of the “I’m very well thanks” nice bland start into complaining about feeling very, very unwell. We still do this sketch in the car a bit.

I was impressed at how Sophie caught the Northern accent although she had not heard much of it.

A tribute to me by Amiduffer

Many thanks to Drew for this amazing remix.

Eurovision 2010 Armenia – Eva Rivas – Apricot Stone


This is our prediction for the winner of this year’s Eurovision in Oslo. Let’s see later on whether the pick is accurate or not – in any event we can’t forge the date this is put up in WordPress!

A great plug from Laoshu


I get a great plug from a fine linguist on YT, Laoshu, who enjoys the Huliganov videos.

If you haven’t seen this gentleman’s work and you are interested in languages, click through and sub to him. Not only does he make fascinating videos, he’s also a very modest and friendly, helpful and active of the YouTube community.

Endorsement of Gold Listing from the banks of the Hudson River

One YouTube user who came across my Gold List method for the long term memorisation of vocabulary was kind enough to go for provide his feedback in a video on YT today.

The prophet Joel states “I’m taking a greyhound on the Hudson River line” – and this YT colleague takes his dog Frodo Baggins, which is not exactly a greyhound, but looks like a find companion anyway, out onto the banks of the beautiful Hudson river about 35 miles north of NYC. Let’s hope this beautiful and informative video about the Gold List method puts you too into a “New Work State of Mind” – or gives you a readiness to try out this new way of working with your language learning!

My heartfelt thanks to Syzygycc for giving feedback. All feedback is welcome, but such positive feedback is especially pleasurable. Negative feedback usually means that the person trying hasn’t been able to get their head around the counter-intuitive nature of gold-listing, but Syzygycc explains how he decided to give it an open-minded attempt even though he found what I was saying counter-intuitive, and was surprised at the result. This reaction occurs quite commonly. There’s also a film on my channel showing how the Australian user Lord Moggy was astounded by the results of applying the method.

There is not 100% success – because some people understand what I say in an opposite way to what I mean because a little filter in their head says – “he can’t possibly be saying that I don’t need to put effort into learning these words, just write them out the once and then don’t look for two weeks – and just treat the whole thing as a pleasurable activity in itself”? Well, I am. You don’t drill, you don’t try to learn. Ebbinghaus, the father of memory, discovered 85 years ago that you will learn 30% anyway, and then you can go ahead and learn the next 30% by doing it again. That’s what I found, that’s what this YT friend Syzygycc has now found, and that’s what hundreds more who have written comments on videos, written to me privately, or been to see me, have also said.

And, like this man says, it doesn’t cost you anything. I’m not even asking for voluntary donations – you can’t give me money even if you want to! (If you want to give something to for example an autism or a MS charity in Huliganov’s name, or to some disaster relief like Haiti, I can’t stop you, in my name, I can’t stop you there either, but that’s the only way you can pay for it.) I don’t have a paypal button up anywhere and I don’t have a price tag on it, and nobody else is allowed to either – so there’s nothing to stop you using it. All the relevant films are on the Gold List section of this blog, and you can click through on them to YouTube and get an extra portion of information from the comments written by other people.