Tired of monkeying around －もうサルみたいにふざけた暮らしには飽き飽きしたのさ－

Recently I listened again to the songs from the Disney animated film, “The Jungle Book”.  It reminded me how great the music and the film are.  The song, “I wanna be like you”, is a particularly good one, and contains some interesting ideas and English phrases.

In the Jungle Book, a human child called Mowgli is raised by animals in the jungle.  One of his friends who appears in this scene and sings in the song is Baloo the bear.

At this point in the story, however, Mowgli the human child has been kidnapped by the apes and their king, Louis the orangutan, is talking to him.  Louis wants to become as smart as a human.  He wants to learn the secret of how to make fire, and tries to make Mowgli teach him.  He tries to charm and befriend Mowgli, calling him “cousin”.  Then Baloo the bear appears in disguise to rescue the boy.

What a marvellous story!  So many children’s stories are just about a prince saving a princess, or a simple tale of good versus evil.  This Disney movie, based on the book by Rudyard Kipling, teaches children about evolution, about humans’ relationship to apes.  It examines the use of technology in separating man from animals and asks whether we should accept that there are natural limits to our achievements or always push to know more like Louis the king of the apes, who says, “I’ve reached the top and had to stop.  And that’s what’s bothering me.”

The song is also brilliant musically.  Louis is played by the great jazz singer, Louis Prima.  I hope you like it as much as I do.

 

I wanna be like you (From the Disney film The Jungle Book, 1967)

{Louis, the king of the apes}

Now, I’m the king of the swingers,

Oh, the jungle VIP.
I’ve reached the top, and had to stop,
And that’s what’s bothering me.

I wanna be a man, man-cub, And stroll right into town
And be just like the other men.
I’m tired of monkeying around.

I wanna be like you
I wanna walk like you,
Talk like you.
You see it’s true.
An ape like me can learn to be human too.

{Mowgli the human child} Gee, cousin Louis!  You’re doing real good!
{Louis}
Now here’s your part of the deal, cous’:
Lay the secret on me,
Of man’s red fire.

{Mowgli} But I don’t know how to make fire.
{Louis}
Now don’t try to kid me, man-cub.
I made a deal with you.
What I desire is man’s red fire
To make my dream come true.

Now give me the secret, man-cub.
Come on, clue me what to do.
Give me the power of man’s red flower,
So I can be like you.

{Baloo the bear and Louis together} {animal noises}
You, I wanna be like you.
I wanna walk like you, talk like you too.
{etc.}

 

Vocabulary:

to monkey around – To behave in a foolish, joking way that is not at all serious.  For example, a teacher might say to his students who are playing in class, “Hey!  Stop monkeying around and get back to work!”

particularly good – especially good

an ape – A group of animals, including monkeys, gorillas and orangutans.

to be smart – To be intelligent

to charm someone – To make someone like you.

to be marvellous – To be wonderful; amazing.

versus – Against.

evolution – The slow process of change over time.

“the king of the swingers” – Apes swing from tree to tree.  But in the 1960s, swinger was used to describe a cool person.  The 1960s are sometimes called the “Swinging Sixties”.  So Louis is both the king of the apes and very cool.

a cub – The young of many animals are called cubs.  For example, a young bear is called a bear cub.  It is not, of course, usually used to describe human children.

to stroll – To walk slowly or casually.

cous’ – This is short for “cousin”.

“Lay the secret on me” – “Tell me the secret”.  This is slang.

to kid someone – To lie to someone, especially as a joke.

“Clue me what to do” – “Tell me what to do.”  This is quite unusual slang.

You’ll never guess what has happened to me! －ちょっと、聞いてちょうだいよ！－

In a conversation with my wife recently, I used the expression “a drama queen”.  She didn’t know what it meant, and incorrectly guessed that it meant someone who was an expert on dramas, someone who watched a lot of movies etc.  I can see the logic in her guess but it was wrong, so I thought I would explain the term, as it is a useful informal English expression which you probably won’t find in your textbooks. 

Do you have any friends who always seem to be in the middle of some kind of crisis?  Every time you meet them, they tell you some over the top story about a problem that they are having.  Well, they may be an extremely unlucky person, regularly experiencing extraordinary difficulties that the rest of us don’t.  But probably they are a drama queen.

Despite the word “queen” usually referring to a female, a drama queen can be a man or a woman.  It means someone who exaggerates their stories and makes ordinary situations sound like melodrama.

For example:

A:  I can’t believe she hasn’t called me back.  She hates me.  She’s doing it on purpose to hurt me.

B: Oh, stop being such a drama queen.  She is probably just busy.

Vocabulary:

a term – An expression; word; phrase etc.

to be informal – To be casual.  If a word is informal, it is used in daily conversation but not in newspapers etc.

a crisis – An immediate and very difficult problem.

to be over the top – To be exaggerated; for some action, response etc. to be too much or too strong for the situation.

to be extraordinary – To be very unusual; more than ordinary.

melodrama – A kind of drama that is very exaggerated, emotional, or unrealistic.  Television soap operas are usually melodramas,.

 

10 Rules for Life from a master writer (no, not me) －文壇の巨匠が贈る人生の10のルール （いいえ、僕ではありません）－

Last week I wrote about my own resolution for this year.  It is a very modest resolution.  But perhaps it is better to go the other way, and set very high or stringent goals for yourself.  I found a great figure in history who did that when he was only 18.

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or the writer Leo Tolstoy, had a very interesting life.  He wrote some of the best known and best regarded works of literature in history, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  He served as an officer in the Crimean War.  He was a Russian aristocrat, who lived in relative luxury and with wild abandon, fathering a child with one of the peasants on his estate in his youth.  He then had a moral crisis and came to see the aristocracy as a burden on the poor.  He tried to live simply, working as a farmer, dressing as a peasant and becoming a vegetarian.  He became a pacifist and anarchist, inspiring Mohandas Ghandi with his ideals of passive resistance to evil.  He fathered a further 13 children with his wife and died at the age of 82 in 1910.

Can you see any hint of the life he had to come in these rules for life, or resolutions, that he wrote when he was just 18? 

Extract from Tolstoy’s Rules for Life:

-Get up early (five o’clock)
-Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock)
-Eat little and avoid sweets
-Try to do everything by yourself
-Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater
-Keep away from women
-Kill desire by work
-Be good, but try to let no one know it
-Always live less expensively than you might
-Change nothing in your style of living even if you become ten times richer

Vocabulary:

to be stringent – To be strict, without giving much room for compromise or leniency.  We often use this word with rules or requirements.

to be well regarded – To be well thought of.  To be praised by others.

an aristocrat – A nobleman or noblewoman.  Someone born into an elite position in society.

to live with wild abandon – To live without regard to rules or moral restrictions.

a peasant – The lowest class of people who lived in the countryside in old Europe.  Peasants in Russia were owned by the aristocracy until the 19^th Century.

to be a burden on someone – To make life more difficult for someone; to require them to support you with money or other help.

a pacifist – Someone who believes that violence is unacceptable in any circumstances; someone who opposes all wars.

an anarchist – Someone who opposes all forms of government; someone who believes that people should exist without an organised government.

passive resistance – Ghandi in India and later Martin Luther King in America used passive resistance to make changes in their societies.  Passive resistance means using non-violent methods to protest.

an extract – A short piece of a longer work

 

 

 

Resolutions －決意－

A resolution is a firm decision to take action.  It is a statement of your intention to do or change something.

If the United Nations decides to take some action, then they also call their decision a resolution.  For example, they may pass a resolution promising to cut the amount of CO2 that they release into the atmosphere, or set a target to reduce child poverty in the world.

In a similar way, individuals can make a resolution.  This is traditionally done at New Year.  People make a firm decision to lose weight, to save money, to stop drinking so much...  And, like the United Nations resolutions, these promises of positive action sound good but are rarely achieved.

My resolution for 2014 was to spend two hours every day studying Japanese, writing fiction or practicing the guitar.  Basically, I wanted to use my time more effectively.  Unfortunately, I was only successful in doing this for about five months and I spent the rest of the year feeling guilty about not sticking to my resolution.

This year my resolution is to increase the number of my students.  Perhaps you can help me.  If you have any friends who are interested in studying English, pass them my email address and perhaps we can arrange lessons via Skype or in person.

Otherwise, after five months I will have to spend the rest of this year feeling guilty again...

Vocabulary:

CO2 – Carbon dioxide, a gas.

the atmosphere – the air around the Earth

To stick to something – to continue doing something.  For example, I stuck to my diet for two months before I quit.

 

A year like no other for Scotland －スコットランドにとって、唯一無二の一年－

At New Year it is customary to look back over the year which has just passed.  People remind themselves of the good things and the bad things which have happened, perhaps try to learn from their mistakes or just make sense of the year gone by so that they can fix it in their memory.

And how will most Scots like me remember 2014?

I listen to BBC Radio Scotland through the internet.  They often use an audio clip before the news which says, “In a year like no other, a station like no other.”  Thinking about 2014, I remembered this audio clip.

So why was 2014 a year like no other for Scotland?

I am sure that you will all remember the independence referendum held in Scotland in 2014.  It dominated the news in Scotland for almost the entire year.  Every week there were fresh stories and controversies.  Could Scotland use the pound after independence?  Could it join the European Union automatically?  Had the amount of oil around Scotland been under-estimated or over-estimated?  Every week another politician or public figure stepped forward to give their opinions, for others to argue over.  The Scottish people felt very powerful.  People often say that elections aren’t important.  No matter how you vote, nothing really changes.  But in 2014, especially because the opinion polls were so tight, the voters in Scotland had the chance to make a real difference, and this is how a great many Scots will remember the year.

But 2014 was a year like no other for more than just the referendum.  There were also two great sporting events held in Scotland.  These were the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup.

For readers in Japan and other countries without a connection to Britain, the Commonwealth Games may be something you have never heard of.  Basically, it is like the Olympic Games but it is only for countries in the Commonwealth.  That is a collection of most of the countries which used to be in the British Empire.  So this includes countries like India and Pakistan, Australia and Canada.  Supporters from many parts of the world – from Africa and Asia, from North America and tiny island nations – came to Glasgow to celebrate the event.  And you know we Scots like a party...

If you like golf, I’m sure you know what the Ryder Cup is.  It is an event held every two years, with the best golfers from America playing against the best golfers from all over Europe.  The event was held in Gleneagles, which is in the north-east of Scotland, in Perthshire.  Golf was first played in Scotland so, in a way, the sport was coming home.  I am pleased to say that Europe beat the Americans by 16.5 to 11.5 points.

So if 2014 was a special year for Scotland, perhaps this year, 2015, will seem quiet and boring by comparison.  I don’t mind.  After the party, the plates have to be cleared away.  The empty cans and bottles are put in the recycling bin.  We vacuum the floor and open the windows to let in a little air.

And after sighing in relief and relaxing on the couch for a moment, we will get up refreshed and ready to carry on into 2015.

Happy New Year.

 

Vocabulary:

to be customary – To be something done by many people in society; to be done as a tradition or habit.

an opinion poll – In an opinion poll, many people (usually around 1,000) are asked what they think, how they will vote etc. in order to judge the general or average opinions of a group.

to be tight – If an opinion poll or result is tight, it means that both sides are close.

a recycling bin – a place to put things which will be recycled.

a couch – a sofa

to sigh – to take and then let out a long deep breath that can be heard, to show that you are sad, tired, etc.