The abbreviated versions

Picked up in part from my lustrious career with the Norfolke Trayned Bandes, here is an incomplete list of some songs that are perhaps shorter than anticipated...

Red, Red Robin

When the red, red robin

Comes bob-bob-bobbin' along,

Shoot the bastard!

Shoot the bastard!

Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!

Widecombe Fair

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce,

Lend me you grey mare.

All along, down along, out along lea.

For I want to go to Widecombe Fair

With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer,

Peter Gurney, Peter Davey,

Daniel Whitton, Harry Hawke,

And Uncle Tom Cobbley and all,

And Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.

"No!"

Green Grow The Rushes, O

I'll sing you one, oh!

Oh, no you won't, you know!

Exodus

There are some things

Man was not meant to know,

And songs man was not meant to sing,

And this is one of them.

]}:-{>

A flush beats a full house

It's a trap!

It was Eid Al-Fitr, and a long weekend. The Goat had agreed with Beloved Wife that, because of the ridiculous costs associated with going away anywhere nice, the Goat would come home to the Crumbling Villa. The plan involved a quiet long weekend away from work, but turned out to be a fairly busy and productive one.

The Goat actually couldn't get a sensible flight to Dubai and had to fly at 0100 on Friday. He eventually fell into bed at 0400, but not before being upgraded to First Class, which was very pleasant indeed, so full marks to Qatar Airways for that.

Beloved Wife had honestly not assigned the Goat a list of tasks, other than to help M to move house. Fundamentally this consisted of taking away some old shelf units that M had no space for. The Goat had use for them, though. Old IKEA stuff is better quality than the more modern; these shelves were made of actual blockboard and not chipboard or, O horror, MDF. Fun and games getting all this into Rio, but it did all fit despite the uprights each being 2.5m long, or is that high?

Beloved Wife had paid someone to tidy the shed. Dive Central was indeed tidy and fully devoid of sand, dust, and dead rodents, but was by no stretch of the imagination a workspace, workshop, shed, or Goat Cave. Hence the interest in the shelves. Several hours later, and the Goat had put everything away, eventually found some of his ingeniously-concealed tools (why were the spanners all in a tent bag with some tent pegs?), and the Goat Cave was clean, tidy, and a usable space. Huzzah!

There was obviously a need to go out to dinner, so Beloved Wife and the Goat treated themselves to a slap-up steak dinner or three over at Hunters Room in the Westin Hotel. The Beef Wellington was allegedly for two. As this turned out to be two anorexic sparrows, a very hungry Goat had both.

Further tasks included getting the Goat's car into the shop to fix where some incompetent parallel parker had evidently backed one of those unfeasibly long towbars into Rio's front bumper. The Goat was going to get this fixed back in April, but as he feared possible offroad damage at the Desert Challenge, he'd deferred the task.

Next problem: Beloved Wife's car wouldn't start until Dial-A-Battery showed up with some monstrous jump leads. Now with a new battery and thus a working VW, Beloved Wife could put Rio into Terios Hospital until Thursday.

Getting the battery took longer than expected, and so while the Goat tinkered in his Cave, Beloved Wife made lasagne. Plans for a Game of Thrones marathon went all horribly wrong when the sink refused to drain.

It seems clear that the problem has been building, with reports of a 'sluggish' dishwasher. The Goat attacked the sink with various caustic substances, boiling water, and a sink plunger, but the archaic plumbing in the Crumbling Villa really didn't want to play. The Goat did manage to cause a fetid dribble of brown liquid to creep from beneath the dishwasher. Investigation revealed that because the dishwasher waste pipe was lower than the sink, plunging the former was pushing wastewater out of the latter. So, dear reader, imagine the scene: Beloved Wife with one hand blocking one plughole and furiously plunging the other, while the Goat had one hand over the dishwasher waste pipe and a thumb in the sink overflow pipe like some little Dutch boy.

Still nothing would shift, except all over the floor. The Goat now found himself sliding on his hind legs, burning his true knees with caustic soda, and using a garden hose to try to push the blockage upstream. Beloved Wife was all for shutting the door on it and calling a plumber, but Goats are very determined. Eventually, at about 11pm, it came free. Massive clods of 20-year-old chip fat dropped into the floor gully and blocked that, but as this was a four-inch pipe the Goat could reach in and retrieve the great globs of grease.

Now the cleanup, with antiseptic chemicals and furious mopping of the entire kitchen. What a team the Goat and Beloved Wife make! Incidentally, the Goat wonders for what possible reason anyone would willingly choose carpet for kitchen flooring. Tiles are surely the only way to go, especially where antiquated plumbing is involved.

After cleaning the kitchen, the Goat and Beloved Wife cleaned themselves and, in the Goat's case, applied antiseptic on some minor cuts and grazes. One cannot be too careful.

And the weekend was still not over. The following day, the Goat fitted a cat flap and tried to teach the cats how to use it, with around 50% success.

By the end of this long weekend, the Goat Cave was tidy and usable, the dishwasher was no longer sluggish but working properly (the Goat suspects if it can't empty, the machine simply refuses to fill), One car is fixed, the other is being repaired, the cats have access and egress, and the Goat's motorbike received a small farkle. M has had her shelving recycled, and the Goat is heading back to Doha for three days.

Then it's time for a proper holiday!

]}:-{>

Fluffy

In my defence, I should first note that there are a couple of reasons for not hanging the clean laundry outside to dry. The first is that it makes the towels all rough and scratchy which annoys Beloved Wife. The second is that nobody likes having their freshly washed linen befouled with guano. It's bad enough that a freshly laundered motor vehicle is immediately spotted with pigeon poo and cat pawprints, but at least these wipe off.

Most of our laundry therefore comes out of the spin dryer and goes straight into a tumble dryer for a couple of hours of treatment. The faster the spin, the less tumbling is required.

There's a lint catcher so that fluff, lint, dirham coins and keys that come out of the laundry don't go into the works of the drying machine, nor down the exhaust pipe. And the lint is always the same colour as the majority of the most recent load. Obviously the drying process removes some of the fabric from the clothes that are being dried.

My question is this: does line-drying the laundry produce the same amount of lint? You can't tell, because it would blow away never to be seen again. Is it wearing clothes that causes them to wear out, or washing them?

One for the long winter evenings: it is theoretically possible to gather up all the lint and fluff from the dryer, spin it into yarn, and knit some socks or a sweater.

]}:-{>

Prosopagnosia

Back in Doha, I find that I keep running into people from my previous life in Qatar. Surprisingly, I get recognised in the street and in shops by apparent strangers. Perhaps the weirdest example was when I walked into a car accessories shop where I’d not been for about eight years, and the proprietor recognised me, instantly remembering that I used to be involved with the Doha Players. It wasn’t as if he’d used any clues either. For the first time, I’d rolled up at the shop on a motorbike rather than in a Nissan Patrol, and the shopkeeper recognised me despite my bike gear and helmet.

A total stranger recognised me in the Kawasaki showroom. He correctly identified me as the Goat who’d bought the aforementioned Nissan Patrol off him in 1999.

And then last Saturday it happened again.

I was hailed by a complete stranger in the Harley-Davidson shop in Wakrah, who had instantly recognised me as the scuba diver who bought loads of stuff from his shop between 1996 and 2002. (I’d only dropped in, on my way back from taking Rio for a dance across the sand, to see if they had any motorbike boots that I might like; I’m not about to spend QAR97,000 on a Fat Boy.) Actually, the last time I saw him wasn’t 2002; I ran into him on a flight back from the Philippines in early 2006. Nevertheless, he instantly recognised me out of context after six years.

Is this uncanny ability to recognise people by face alone a normal skill possessed by almost everyone on the planet, or a special ability possessed only by politicians, policemen and proprietors in the retail trade? I can’t do it at all. I have an atrocious memory for faces, or so it seems. I can remember other stuff in immense detail, such as the above flight from the Philippines where Beloved Wife and Goat paid for Business Class, the in-flight entertainment didn’t work in our seats, the food was inedible, the Doha to Dubai flight was delayed and we were bumped, and I totally failed to recognise Samir who was on the same flight.

So I was fascinated to learn that there’s actually a name for it. Prosopagnosia (from the Classical Greek πρόσωπον and αγνωσία, meaning “face” and “non-knowledge”) is the inability to see faces. If I have this, it’s very mild because I don’t see a blank where a face should be, and a possibly more likely condition is the related neuropsychological deficit prosopamnesia, in which the sufferer sees faces OK but can’t remember them.

I’ve always had it. A great terror at school was being handed a pile of exercise books by the teacher to distribute around the class. Two years in the same class of over thirty teenagers, and I couldn’t hand the books to the correct people. Much hilarity and ridicule always followed. Teenagers are merciless.

Similarly television and films. I seldom find myself thinking that Kunta Kinte and Geordi LaForge are the same person. I completely failed to recognise Patrick Stewart in I, CLAVDIVS, because he was wearing a wig, and drama with large casts I find immensely confusing. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? I don’t have the first idea what’s going on.

I deal with it by using clues that aren’t face-related. On a desert drive, I use the car as the identifier: Prasad is in that white Land Cruiser with two spare wheels on the roof. At the dinner dance, Steve is the one in the loudest waistcoat. In the office, I depend on people being in their allocated cubicles, until I can sneak a look at their ID cards. Please don’t be surprised if I don’t recognise you if you change your hairstyle, grow a beard, switch from glasses to contacts, or have your wonky teeth fixed.

Trouble is, being recognised is such an important social ability. According to a news article I was reading on the subject, people generally expect to be recognised in about 0.2 seconds, and if they’re not they feel insulted and I feel acutely embarrassed. So I cheat, pretending to know who I’m talking to until they let slip some clue: that they were in such-and-such a play, or they have a daughter who plays the violin, or they bought a boat off my friend.

And please, don’t ever ask me to pick a villain out of a line-up or a page of mug shots.

]}:-{>

Kitsch tchotchkes

We’ve all seen them. Some have even purchased them. Most of them are brass and glass, and there are even battery-operated ones that flash in various colours. Nanny Goat bought one as a joke last year. Because the title plaque said “Burj Dubai” instead of “Burj Khalifa”, she negotiated a discount. Mazel Tov.

They are all, of course, kitsch tchotchkes. What a fantastic name for a pub quiz team. Or a blog. Not a bad tongue-twister either.

Because these little things please little minds, I am also amused by the snow globe. Not only do we see the two traditional figures caught in an unlikely blizzard, but selected Dubai landmarks adorn the base in front of an incongruous Alpine backdrop.

It is, however, possible to buy rather more up-market twee trinkets. Click on this link and feast your eyes.

Top kwolli’y.

]}:-{>

May Day m'aidez!

The plan was to live relatively modestly, build up some savings, and then retire in about 2018 to 2020 to the dream house in Cyprus. The best-laid plans of goats and men, together with a load of half-baked fantasy ideas, are now thrown into disarray following an unexpected meeting in the boss’ office on Thursday afternoon.

The Goat has been in continuous employment since January 1986. He spent three years in Guildfordshire, seven years in t’English midlands where he survived a major company buy-out, and then in 1996 he jumped on to an aircraft. Six years in Qatar and nearly eight more in the Emirates. That’s a total of just over 24 years working in the construction industry and only four different employers. Three, if working in the English midlands and in Qatar are recognised as being for the same company. This is a level of company loyalty that might be considered rare in this day and age. The Goat must presumably have been doing something right.

What happened last Thursday?

Owing to the global downturn, UAE governments cancelling any and all projects at a whim, and bills not being paid, the Goat’s job is now redundant. Rather urinating on the Goat’s pyrotechnics, this is the third wielding of the scythe across the office. It is for the Goat a new and not altogether pleasant experience, and follows a statement from the CEO that the company had cut deep and hard, was now out of the woods, and sought to start building business up again.

Unfortunately, it appears that the engineering company wishes to eliminate engineering and technical staff and build up numbers with accountants. Not that the Goat has anything against accountants, who deserve a career as much as everyone else. But the company seems to be viewed from the stratospheric heights of the executive office as some kind of sausage machine. Payroll is dropped into the top, someone winds a handle, and fee income comes out. There are also by-products that are emitted somewhere out the back. These are engineering designs for roads, bridges, tunnels, sewers, buildings, marinas, but these by-products simply happen automatically. It appears that the really important stuff is comparing what goes in the top with forecasts of what is coming out of the front, and the accounts executives can spend their days gleefully comparing financial forecasts.

A practical experiment is also under way: How may parts of the sausage machine can be removed whilst allowing it to continue to function?

Yes, the Goat does realise that salaries and rent are paid for with money, not engineering designs. He also notes what a design consultant actually produces, and wishes that the people who asked for this stuff would now pay for it.

Evidently, the Goat is currently feeling rather bitter, twisted and worthless. He was concerned that a late return to work last week would result in a termination of employment, but has been assured that his unexpected extra week in the UK had nothing to do with the redundancy decision. However, the ultimate effect remains much the same. Redundancy payment is a month’s salary plus what the Ministry of Labour decrees is the level of End of Service benefit. Not a lot, then.

Job seeking will commence in earnest early next week with an up-to-date curriculum vitae. Preference is for the Goat to remain in the same country as his Beloved Wife, but que sera sera. There are presumably other options.

]}:-{>

No kidding

Gleaned from all over the internet, here is some helpful guidance for anyone considering the middle east as a destination...





























]}:-{>

Bargain basement

Why does the nonsensical phrase “until stocks last” keep popping up where special offers are advertised? The phrase has amused and bemused me ever since I first encountered it in about 1996. I think I understand what the message seeks to convey: that the ‘two-for-the-price-of-one’, or ‘half-price with this coupon’ offer is only valid provided that the shop has still got supplies of the relevant items. According to Wikipedia, ‘...every reasonable person knows that goods advertised or displayed and [sic] shops are implicitly available “while stocks last”.’ The implication of actually writing it on the advert is that the offer is such a bargain that if you don’t drop everything and head for the mall this minute, it’ll all be gone.

But “until stocks last”? What on earth does this mean?

My understanding of the word ‘Until’, which is shared by Messrs Webster, Collins and others is that it indicates continuance up to a specified time or event. The word might also mean ‘before(a specified time)’.

And “Last”? Ignoring sillies such as the metal thing that cordwainers use, ‘last’ as a verb means ‘to continue in existence or in force’, or ‘to be enough for the needs of’, or ‘to keep adequately supplied.’

So according to the advert, the offer is valid up to the point when the stocks exist? Eh? So the ‘Buy One Get One Free’ (with the wonderful acronym BOGOF, but I digress) offer only applies if the shop has none in stock. Then, when new supplies arrive, the BOGOF is no longer available.

In the words of Inigo Montoya: “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

How about rewording the disclaimer to read “while stocks last”, “limited supplies”, or even “until we run out”?

On the subject of things that do not mean what they say, there was recently Sharaf DG’s paradoxical offer: “If we don’t have it, you get it free!”

I see. You will give me - for nuppence - the item I request, provided that you haven’t got one. In that case, I’ll have my free Princess 46 motor yacht.

Of course, the offer only applied to items normally held in stock, there were time limits on how long Sharaf DG would be allowed to obtain the requested item, and there was a comprehensive list of rules in the small print explaining how there was, in practice, almost no way to get something for nothing. This was no surprise. As Marvin the Paranoid Android quipped: “What does it remind me of? Ah, I remember: life.”

Beloved Wife and I are pleased to note that some of these special offers have been good for a long time and show little sign of abating. For this reason, we regularly BOGOF to Billy Blues on Sunday evenings for steak dinners.

]}:-{>

What happens in Jumeirah

This sounds like me, doesn't it?

Getting my self-defence in first, please be aware that I know nothing of these diamante ear-rings...

]}:-{>

Nostalgia ain't what it used to was

When I were a lad all this were fields / forest / sand dunes / open ocean (delete as applicable). Doesn’t everyone above a Certain Age remember going out riding bikes all day, building dens on waste ground, and nobody ever needed to phone their parents? Most parents didn’t have a telephone anyway, nor a telly.

And we all lived in t’shoe-box in t’middle o’t’road…etc. Hark! The strains of Sousa.

And what of the kids today? They spend all their time sndg txt msjs 2 thr frnds, or on those interwebs. Hours and hours on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or World of Warcraft. And when they’re not chatting on line to that 13-year-old girls-school athletics champion (who’s actually 47 and called Clive), it’s out with the Wii or the PlayStation.

Is it possible that this ‘deplorable’ state of affairs is a direct consequence of over-protective upbringing?

The kids of today aren’t allowed to go and kick a ball around in the street for fear of being run down by a motorist. They can’t go and play in the park either: “No Ball Games”, “Keep Off The Grass”. And anyway, how to get to the park? Ride bikes? What, on the road? Of course not. Some adult will have to helicopter the children to and from the park, and keep a close eye on them. It’s far too dangerous to leave youngsters to their own devices. A lot of playground equipment was torn down in the late seventies after it was deemed unsafe. Adieu to the witch’s hat; farewell to the giant Wicksteed cast-iron slide with a wooden cage at the top and the slippery surface polishable with a Mother’s Pride wrapper. Nowadays everybody knows that playgrounds and parks are hunting grounds for predatory paedophiles.

So what do we find? An entire generation of children who aren’t allowed out unsupervised and whose only connections with the outside world are the telephone and internet. That’s healthy and character-building, I’m sure, as well as waistline-building. Video games also corrupt the yoof, don’t they? Clearly if some adolescent spends all of his on-line time dressed up as a minotaur* and duffing up the Undead Lord of Khazi-Lid, he will surely re-enact these violent fantasies when he goes out and gets a Real Life.

Banished outside, with no money and not allowed to play footie or go bike riding, teenagers congregate beneath the only available shelter. And then get ASBOs for loitering at bus stops.

“But my teenage son/daughter/other is permitted to come and go as he/she/it pleases.” Really? How many youngsters nowadays are allowed out without a mobile phone? And without strict instructions that it is to be switched on at all times, and to phone home regularly? Not very many, I reckon. Far from being an emancipation contraption, the mobile phone is actually an apron-string.

Being able to communicate with friends across the planet, to be able to interact with those friends in real time (instead of the ritual annual exchange of Christmas cards in which everyone says that they really ought to stay more in touch and then don’t) is probably a good thing. It must surely be an improvement over the criticism levelled a few years ago at my generation: that we wasted our childhood sat inertly in front of the magic idiot-box.

* In World of Warcraft they’re called Tauren, and my understanding, as a non-WoW player, is that they’re Good Guys.

]}:-{>

Chocolate teapot

Everyone carries around odd facts that are of no use. Please feel free to share some real gem that is impossible to forget, but is of no use whatsoever.

Mnemonics such as "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain^[1]", or "Many Velvet Elephants Munching Jam Sandwiches Under News[p]aper^[2]", or even "Rifles Are Mainly Manufactured In Old And Mucky Towns^[3]" might have some practical benefit. Yet I have one that is completely and totally 100% useless:

"All Hairy Gorillas Have Big Feet. Good For Climbing."

I encountered it during a Maths A-level class nearly thirty years ago. The teacher, one Mr P. J. Otto, assured the class that we'd remember the mnemonic long after forgetting what it was for, or how to use it. And he was completely correct. For the benefit of any mathematicians who might have accidentally blundered across this blog, the third page of this pdf reveals all. And no, I never could do that level of algebra. It's filed under 'Too Difficult' along with partial fractions and skateboarding.

Let's not limit this to mnemonics. How about:-

• The word "trivia" derives from Latin for "three roads" and means "crossroads". Two minor roads meet a major road at the same spot, where people would meet and talk testicular tosh.
  
• The word "tragedy" comes from "tragoidia", Greek for "goat song" and refers to the ghastly wailing in some melodrama by some histrionic harridan.
  
• George Washington^[4] invented instant coffee.
  
• Margaret Thatcher^[5] sort of co-invented Mr Whippy ice cream.

I'm not looking for urban legends such as the allegedly non-echoing quack, nor anything involving a JATO booster, a car and a cliff-face. I'm looking only for items of true - but completely useless - information.

[1] Colours of the rainbow.
[2] Planets. Pluto may or may not be included.
[3] Rivers of the Mississippi basin, reading clockwise.
[4] No, not that George Washington.
[5] Yes, that Margaret Thatcher.

]}:-{>

Forty shillings

Le Bouc Bougon vient d’entendre que Monsieur Miles Kington, allegedement l’inventeur de la langue Franglais, est mort. Est-ce qu’anyone remember le magazine Punch, où le column 'Lets Parler Franglais' était printé? C’ était très amusant.

Tout le monde peut learn à parler Franglais. C’est facile! Vous parlez seulement en anglais, et inserter les mots françaises que vous can remember from l’école.

C’est seulement difficile si vous n’avez aucun de francais, où vous don’t know vôtre derrière from vôtre coude.

Note pour les vrai Francophones: Ce blog-ci est un petit peu de fun. J’éspère que mes mots ne sont pas offensives.

(Le Bouc Bougon a travaillé très hard to avoid too many mistakes. Quelle horreur!)

The doors in the mall go ding-a-ding-a-ding

I was amused to find this scrap of paper blowing around in the Mall of the Emirates car park. I guess someone was displeased about the number of parking spaces that someone else had occupied. Any guesses as to the nationalities of the protagonists?

Unlucky for some

Did anyone catch up with the story about the drunken yahoos in Brisbane? According to the newspapers, as a prank they took a pet goat out of a field, dragged this pet to a church that was under construction and then beheaded the animal in a mock satanic ritual.

I know I'm a bit biased, but if the goat had been my family pet, I would have been extremely upset. We learn that Tracey Lee Arnold has been put on probation and has to undergo psychiatric treatment. And for some bizarre reason gets banned from driving.

To add insult to injury the goat, it seems, is worth $64 to its owner. That's around Dh240. Damage to the church is apparently $1417, Dh5200. It's good to see that the judiciary has its priorities right. The prosecutor reckoned that the prank '...would have caused serious offence, particularly to the church community.' And to the pet's owner???

Question: if someone broke into your back yard one night and stole and killed your pet labrador, how would you feel about it? I would hazard a guess that you'd be demanding a lot more than an apology and Dh240.

I can see my house from here

Since 1805, when Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort came up with a scale of wind speeds that included laymen's descriptions ("Force 6: Strong Breeze. Difficulty with umbrellas"), there has been an agreed scale that's rather more meaningful than "A bit breezy." For any scientists who might have accidentally blundered upon this post, the empirical formula is:

v = 0.836B^1.5

where v is wind speed in metres per second and B is the Beaufort Scale number.

Similar empirical scales might be applied to other well-known but hitherto unquantified phenomena. Such as:-

The Beaufort Scale of Domestic Cleanliness

Force 0
Clinically spotless. Gleaming. The clean room of a biological weapons research laboratory.

Force 1
Recently dusted show house. Only ever seen in computer simulations of proposed real estate.

Force 2
As featured in 'House Beautiful' magazine, the place is immaculate except for copies of 'Horse and Hound' or 'Country Life' strategically placed in the vain hope of giving it a 'lived in' look.

Force 3
This is about as clean and tidy as a real residence can ever achieve. Some dust on inaccessible horizontal surfaces and the occasional fallen leaf from potted plants.

Force 4
Dusty surfaces, occasional coffee cups, cans and crockery on tables. Toys and games stuffed under furniture.

Force 5
DVDs, books and magazines on many horizontal surfaces. Empty beer cans, crockery and pizza boxes near armchairs. Unused toys scattered around the floor.

Force 6
Minimum achievable in undergraduate accommodation.

Force 7
Crockery, Chinese takeaway cartons and pizza boxes contain the putrefying remains of long-forgotten food. Spilled drinks have dried into carpets, and uncarpeted floor areas are sticky.

Force 8
Difficult to walk around the rooms without impaling oneself on toys, cutlery or motorcycle parts.

Force 9
All horizontal surfaces covered with tools, papers, cans and packets. Real floor is invisible, and walls largely obscured by boxes, boards, piles of books, CDs and engine parts.

Force 10
Dog, cat and toddler mess remains insitu until it has dried and turned into dust. Moribund consumer electronics serve as storage areas and furniture.

Force 11
Pathogens multiply uncontrollably. Anyone entering this place without full biochemical protection risks contracting diseases.

Force 12
Dead bodies left putrefying where they expired. New invertebrate species evolve spontaneously from the feet-deep miasma coating all surfaces.

This blog post was inspired in part by this piece of inanity.

You never heard it here

Lightening the tone somewhat, and with my tongue firmly in my cheek, here are a few suggestions of things you're never likely to hear.

On a Club 18-30 holiday:

"05:30 alarm call please."
"Not for me, thanks. I neither drink nor smoke."
"I'm saving myself for marriage."
"Let's go on the archaeology trip."

In the Deep South:

"Boy, the tires on your truck are too big."
"We lost, fair and square."
"Sure Tyrone. Of course y'all can marry my sister."
"Just because I could've shot three deer didn't mean I had to."
"...and a white wine spritzer for my husband."
"Lentils please. I detest grits and gravy."

In Dubai:

"There was no traffic on SZR and it was really easy to park."
"Isn't the summer humidity wonderful?"
"Jeez, petrol's expensive."
"Dealing with the official paperwork was a breeze."
"Yes madam. It is indeed coming in Dubai."
"That black-windowed Mercedes is being driven with skill and courtesy."
"Please. After you."
"Salik is such a brilliantly conceived system."

On planet Earth:

"On reflection, sir, you couldn't have been speeding. I'll tear up this ticket."
"It's a fair cop, guv. You've got me bang to rights."
"Hi. I'm returning your call."
"My husband always puts the new toilet roll on the holder."

Any others?