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2004-03-26 13:29

Prinsessgossip, deeply profound

The kronprins Vickan of Sverige is very much thought to be in the process of up-shacking with her steady boyfriend of two years, Daniel Wassname. Aftonbladet has thoughtfully rounded up some random rentagobs to pontificate on the nature of upshacking itself and its effects on relationships:

- Att bo ihop med sin partner ger en vilsam plats att vara p�, i motsats till alla andra kravfyllda relationer i samh�llet, s�ger psykologen Ulf �kerstr�m.

Men att ta steget och bli sambo inneb�r ocks� att man uts�tter sitt f�rh�llande f�r helt nya p�frestningar. Slarvet man f�rut bara tyckte var gulligt kan pl�tsligt bli fruktansv�rt irriterande.

"To live together with one's partner provide an oasis of calm in a world of often stressful social relationships", says psychologiste Ulf Travelstream.

"But to take the step of up-shacking also means that exposing the relationship to a whole new level of strain. Slovenliness that one previously thought was cute can suddenly become fearsomely annoying."

Ulf Travelstream, this bladet is not afraid to say that there, you have told it like it very most definitely is, although I can't imagine many persons would take my habitual standards of slovenliness for "cute" from even the safest of distances.

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2004-03-26 samwidge (utc)

Shiny shiny want want!

There are of course those who say global capitalisme is a bad thing, but I am not by any means such a person as that. Capitalisme is our friend! Capitalisme makes shinies! We want shinies!

Sony, Philips and digital paper pioneer E-Ink have announced an electronic book reader that is due to go on sale in Japan in late April for $375 (�204).

[...]

The display has a resolution of 170 pixels per inch, which E-Ink says is comparable to the print quality of newspaper.

Unlike more familiar LCD displays, the screen can be read at almost any angle and in bright sunlight as it uses tiny charged beads to form letters and images.

White beads! Black beads!
High class screen reads!

The Libri� will weigh just over 300g including batteries and front cover and will run off four AAA batteries.

E-Ink said the display only draws on battery power when text is refreshed which means it will be able to display about 10,000 pages before the batteries need changing.

The device is 13mm thick and its screen measures 15cm diagonally.

You can keep your many admittedly fine iPods, Varied Reader; this is the gadget of my dreams - just imagine how much fun it will be when MouseCo et al. confiscate the concept of owning a book and replace it by a license which by no means allows or permits any of the rampant thievery you know as "Fair" Use!

(Capitalisme may be your friend, Varied Reader, but it has its price.)

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2004-03-26 morning (utc)

Insolites

�1. A Remark

Whenever somebody tells you the facts speak for themselves, they are sure to go on to tell you what they say.

�2. I never did get the hang of Thursdays

Erik XIV of Sweden was killed on a Thursday by means of poisoned �rtesoppa (pea soup). This, if you trust folk traditions, is why pea soup is established in Sweden as Torsdagsmat ("Thursday food").

�3. An observation

The Swedish word gift means both "married" and "poison". Apparently there were people in my (advanced) Swedish class who didn't know this as recently as last night (a Thursday, incidentally), but you may rest assured that none of them was me.

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2004-03-25 hmmm (utc)

Who Will Publish the Publisheurs?

I'm planning to write a short story this weekend as part of the splurge of gibberish I've been spouting since Cornwall, and just for a laugh I am thinking that I could use it as a way to earn myself some rejection slips of my very own. Reading Making Light has made me quite jealous of all the aspiring writers there and their extensive collections of rejections, even though I by no means especially aspire to be a writer. (I am far too good-natured to inflict my verse on anyone who hasn't explicitly volunteered to read it, and if you check the small print you will find that in fact you did.)

But then it occured to me that I know of no one daft enough to publish literary short stories, and I see no challenge in getting rejection slips from someone who wasn't going to accept even a masterpiece. I want only the finest dead tree rejections from actual dead tree publishers who actually pay for accepted stories. I'm going to have to do some research on this, clearly, but any suggestions are more than welcome. It's going to be vair vair short and as Borgesian as I can make it, and it will of course appear here when I have enough slippy goodness to support my grudge against the universe for failing to perceive my manifest genius. (I'm going to insist on a minimum of three.)

(It's a disadvantage in thinking of possible outlets that I dislike short fiction and go out of my way not to read it, but I don't see that this hinders my chances of rejection, especially.)

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2004-03-25 12:19

You need this

You need this bad. How bad, you ask or enquire? This bad:

A being that dwells in the upper reaches of the empyrean such as the Medium Lobster can only chuckle at the naivete Mr DeLong displays here in his misunderstanding of "Old Europe" and "New Europe." You see, Mr DeLong, the dark and corrupt countries of "Old Europe" - France, Germany, Belgium, Massachusetts - are rotted with decadence and waste away with every passing moment. But the youth and purity of "New Europe" - Poland, Slovakia, Atlantis - keeps it timeless, atemporal, existing outside of the flow of your "linear perception." Hence, a Polish president who once supported the noble and just cause of supporting George Bush is still, in that timeless land, eternally and forever standing beside America. The Medium Lobster does not expect you to understand the particulars, of course.

Of course, should Poland slip far enough into corruption, and Vote For Terror as Spain did this week, it would join the ranks of Old Europe, and re-enter the stream of what you call "the timestream" with a rude and brutal jolt. It was only Sunday afternoon that Spanish Prime Minister-elect Rodriguez Zapatero found himself and his entire country suddenly aged fifty years in an instant, their buildings crumbling, their crops dry and withered, their people old and infirm, moaning and stumbling from the fairy-tale bliss of eternal youth, blinking into a harsh and decrepit dark age. A terrifying and tragic tale, indeed... and one to give pause to even one as illuminated as the Medium Lobster.

The Medium Lobster, you should know,

is a higher being with superior knowledge from beyond space and time. To your limited perception, he appears to be just another medium lobster. To your limited perception.

His colleagues Fafnir and Giblets are also most very excellent and incisive commentators on current events, with a twist of geopolitical.

[via Mrs Tilton]

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2004-03-25 10:06

'Eessecleeff! 'Eessecleeff!

Don't dip too many lawyers in your gravy, Varied Reader - they'll soak it all up and leave none for you:

Translation cases only rarely go to court, and when they do, the judgment is usually financial, rather than literary. In combing French journals of intellectual property rights, I've found a very few cases where a court of law makes an esthetic judgment for or against a translator. I'll outline two of these briefly:

In 1950, the Gibert Jeune Bookstore used the title Les Hauts du Hurle-Vent on a poster they hung over a table covered with sale copies of a translation of Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights, for mysterious reasons, has been translated and retranslated countless times into French, and there have been just as many French attempts to translate the title alone: Les Hauts des Quatre-Vents (1935); Le Domaine des temp�tes (1959); Les Hautes des temp�tes (1950) ; Haute Plainte (1937); Les Hauteurs battues des vents (1950); Les Hauteurs tourment�es (1949); Heurtebise (1947); La Maison des vents (1942); La Maison maudite (1948); Les orages du coeur (1950); Le Ch�teau des temp�tes (1951). A number of French translators have simply used the original title, Wuthering Heights: Louise Servicen in 1947; Henri Picard in 1948; Albert Glorget in 1949; Gaston Bacarra in 1950 (about whom more below); Jean Talva in 1955; Genevi�ve Mecker in 1959; Henriette Guex-Rolle in 1968; Catherine and Georges Vertut in 1969.

The problem in the case that went to court was that the translation Gibert Jeune was selling was not Fr�d�ric Delebecque's 1925 Les Hauts du Hurle-Vent: it was Gaston Bacarra's translation, which used the original English language title, Wuthering Heights. The bookstore was exploiting the fact that most French people had come to identify the Emily Bront� novel by the title Les Hauts du Hurle-Vent. With all the titles that existed in France for Emily Bront�'s novel, Les Hauts du Hurle-Vent had stuck.

In deciding against the bookstore and in favor of the Editions Payot, who had published Fr�d�ric Delebecque's translation and owned the title Les Hauts du Hurle-Vent, the courts extended the protection of a translation to its very title. They recognized the fact that there is creativity in the translation of a single phrase, or a title -- as well as in the translation of a whole work

And to think no one used the simple, and quite natural, Les Hauts wutherantes! You just can't get the staff, can you, Varied Reader?

[via Transblawg more up which's street than this can there be few things]

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2004-03-24 bah! (utc)

Villanelle in protest at the imminent change to British Summer Time

("Since 1981 EC Directives have prescribed the start and end dates of summer time in all Member States.")

Noon occurs in all well-ordered times
- We're in one now but not, alas, for long -
As the sun up to its zenith climbs.

Appollo peaks - in cool or sunny climes -
And at his cue (I hope you'll join my song)
Noon occurs in all well-ordered times.

I go to lunch on hearing noon's twelve chimes
(All other times of course are plainly wrong)
As the sun up to its zenith climbs.

I would by no means disagree that I'm
Somewhat more put out than than is the throng
Of folk whose body-clocks can turn on dimes.

(A stanza miscount's left me short of rhymes
- A suit in which the Engleesh isn't strong -
But not yet down not to gestures or to mimes.)

On Sunday, though, in one of Yoorp's worst crimes,
They're moving noon where it does not belong:
Noon occurs in all well-ordered times
As the sun up to its zenith climbs.

(I loathe and despise BST. Could you tell?)

UPDATE: Those of you who came in late - I really did miscount the stanzas and have had to come back and add two more, so now you have a unique and unsavoury mix of petulance and desparation, but it is at least a proper villanelle, and I demand that "I'm / somewhat" enjambs, albeit somewhat hubibrastically, into the rhyme scheme, and I am in no mood to tolerate dissent...

UPDATE 2: Now the second stanza actually makes sense, dammit.

UPDATE 3: Suppose this is a translation from the "Slovenian", and I am its translator. Do repeated lines go for one euro per occurrence or does each line get paid for only once, regardless of how often it's used? If the former, I can see myself inventing some very traditional "Slovenian" lyrical forms, for sure. ("In the drvojna two out of every three lines are always 'With a hey nonny nonny / And a hey nonny no!'")

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2004-03-24 postsamwidge (utc)

Essens of Systembolaget, Yum Yum (*Falls Down*)

Giornale Nuovo definitively clears up the question of the mysterious (non-alcoholic) Swedish bottles of whiskey (etc) essens:

They are miniature bottles conatining flavoured syrups, which, when combined with unflavoured br�nnvin (a neutral spirit), presumably transforms it into what I can only imagine would be travesties of the liquors in question...

I flatter myself that I am by no means a connaisseur of the gin (and I can produce witnesses if necessary) and I am quite keen to see how essenserad br�nvinn would turn out.

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2004-03-24 morning (utc)

Sm�rg�spost

�1. "The heritage of past centuries will enchant even the most demanding visitor to Ptuj"

�a fait combien, la traduction?
La traduction est dans l'arbre!

The [Translator's Association] recommends minimum rates of remuneration.

These are currently:
�70 per 1,000 words for prose
�0.75 per line for poetry.

A euro a line for poetry? Have all the "Slovenian" epics been done, I wonder?

("I sing of a nation that I didn't just make up / Any sucka says I did gonna get a rude wake up." Two (2) euros to you, Sir or Madam!)

�2. Rodung Sinmun speaks!

The Democratic Republic of Korea is totally Old Skool:

The high-handed and arbitrary acts of the imperialists have now reached their height and the anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. confrontation is getting fiercer in the international arena. This reality requires all the people to struggle with deep self-respect of the working class. Rodong Sinmun [for it is he!] says this in a signed article today.

It goes on: The self-respect of the working class serves as a powerful spiritual weapon in the struggle to realize independence of the popular masses. The people with strong self-respect of the working class can emerge victorious in the present struggle against imperialists.

The Korean people's self-respect of the working class represents the do-or-die spirit that no force on earth can defeat a people ready to die.

Yow! Does Red China throw in a sweetener of Rhetorical Thunder Fist training with every purchase of missile technology, 'cos there aren't many who've mastered the powerful spiritual weapons of the Shaolin Maoist school.

[via yami, tack]

�3. Oi!

Patent a chant? Whirled's gorn mad, agen, init?

Greg Davies fra Melbourne har netop taget patent p� r�bet �Aussie, aussie, aussie! Oi, oi, oi!� for at forhindre, at en udenlandsk virksomhed vil �udnytte det australske r�b�.

Some Bruce from Melbourne reckons he's gone and patented the chant "Aussie, aussie, aussi! Oi, oi, oi!" so that that the foreign companies can't "get their thieving hands on our culture."

You might be wondering what on earth that's all about, but I'm not:

It turns out this chant is one of the many antipodean traditions, like public drunkenness and lawyers wearing wigs, that derives from Britain. According to one story, long ago, wives in Cornwall would call "Oggie, oggie, oggie!" down to their husbands in the tin mines, to let them know they'd arrived with their oggies, or Cornish pasties (meat pies).

This past century, a Welsh folk singer named Max Boyce began using the call at his concerts. Boyce was also a big rugby fan, and through him the chant went on to become a Welsh rugby club cheer. The English later picked it up, changing it from "oggie" to "Ozzie," in honor of a soccer player named Peter Osgood.

The Australians picked it up either when their sporting teams visited Britain, or when the Brits toured Australia. Either way, down here, it's only recently gained popularity. Maybe that's why some instigators actually manage to confuse the sequence, and stop midway through.

Folk etymologies aren't worth the paper they're written on, for sure, (and folk traditions involving Cornish pasties are worth about half their paper value) and I thought Ozzie Ardilles (Angentina and Spurs) was the canonical football ("soccer") Ozzie, but there's no doubt about Max Boyce using it - life as a child in Thatcher's Britain had many hardships[1], and Mr Boyce's television appearances were not the least of them.

�4. Footnotes.

[1] Although I'll always be grateful to the Iron Lady for ending school milk during her stint as education minister. There's nothing like a small bottle of milk that's sat out in the sun until mid-morning break, and if you ever want to acquire a taste for portions of yummy nothing try a blindfold test comparing the two. To this day I have trouble with neat milk.

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2004-03-23 post-samwidge (utc)

Sing a song of Slovenes!

The Slovenian national anthem is a drinking song!

Preseren's "Zdravljica" ("A Toast"), more than 150 years old, technically a drinking-song, that is to say an easygoing, merry poem - and since the declaration of independence and sovereignty in the 1990's also the Slovenian national anthem - already contains allusions to the notion of the Slovenians united as a nation equal to other European nations, integrated in a community nowadays known as the European Union. Soon, presumably in two years' time, Slovenia will join the Union as a full member, as well as the defence formation NATO.

The verses from the anthem:

Let's drink that every nation
Will live to see that bright day's birth
When 'neath the sun's rotation
Dissent is banished from the earth,
All will be
Kinfolk free
With neighbours none in enmity*

were in the first half of the 19th century above all utopian, but at the same time also politically provocative enough to be censored and banned in the Austro-Hungarian empire. That the vision has nevertheless come true is above all due to the belief of the most far-sighted thinkers of all the generations since then.

*(translated from the Slovenian by Tom Priestly and Henry Cooper).

I think you will find on further investigation that a drinking-song, technically or otherwise, is not only to say an easygoing, merry poem. Slovenia may well not actually exist, but you have to admire it's style. While I am also posting this so that I'm not the only person to have used 'neath as a word in an easygoing, merry poem on this page, I do happen think it would rock very hard if this caught on. Imagine:

God bless the Queen and keep her merry
Let's all have a glass of sherry,
Keep her hearty, keep her hale -
Let's all have a glass of ale!

Let light from Crown on Empire shine
Let's all have a glass of wine!
If God can keep her far from trouble,
Of vodka, neat, make ours a double!

Have hearts of gladness, not of glum
Lets have a hearty shot of rum!
To toast the finest Queen we've got,
We'd better have another shot!

- Blind Spacefish Crustington-Snotte, QC (Ret.)

As easygoing and merry a poem as anyone could hope for, surely?

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2004-03-23 12:17

Prinsessgossiproundup

�1. Hail Mary, Full of Bookings!

A woman called "Mary", mother of a future king (or queen of course). And a great movement of persons, which in turn has left no room at the inns:

�Alt udsolgt� er den besked, man oftest f�r, hvis man lige nu fors�ger at f� et hotelv�relse i K�benhavn omkring den 14. maj. N�r Kronprinsen og Mary endelig siger ja til hinanden i Vor Frue Kirke, vil mange danskere nemlig ikke n�jes med at opleve begivenheden fra sofaen.

"No room at the inn" is the message you're likely to get if you look for accommodation in Shoppingharbour around the third of May. When the Kronprinsfred and Knudella (n�e Mary) actually say yes to one another in Our Lady's Church, will many Danishes not be pleased to experience the begivingness from the sofa.

Try a manger, Danishes, and then tell me you have it rough!

�2. Frocks

The two important things about prinsessor, I am reliably informed, is that they marry handsome prinser, and they wear beautiful frocks. Here's Knudella modelling a striking purple creation - and I don't mean the Kronprinsfred! And here she is in her little gold number.

And what's this shiny but superfluous use of money? Now, now, citoyen(ne)s, I speak of the bryllupsm�nt ("weddingcoin") - a piece of metal in Knudella's fair likeness.

�3. Fiskekutter!

Fiskekutter, indeed, Knudella, because tonight you're lending your name to an unmanoeuvrable manifestation of a by-gone era. That's right - a cruise ship!

Mary har �jensynligt en svaghed for danske skibe. �Fiskekutter� var et af de f�rste ord, pressen h�rte hende sige p� en mole i Skagen, og nu l�gger hun navn til Royal Artic Lines nyeste skib.

Knudella apparently has a weakness for Danish boats. "Fiskekutter" was one of the first words the press heard her say on a jetty in Skagen, and now she's lend her name to Royal Artic Line's newest ship.

Birgitte points out that it's actually a container ship. Oh well.

�4. Tat's for the memories.

Of bodyguarding goons,
And undernourished swoons,
Of motorcades
And big parades
And patriotic loons...

Patriotic loons and enthusiasts for the kitsch for that link, Varied Reader, I'm warning you and don't say I haven't.

�2. Pollyticks, pollyticks oh polly polly polly

Read all about it in the quality press (prolly) Mary skaber debat p� venstrefl�jen ("Knudella's name dropped in tiresome political wrangle") or in BT (which uses smaller words, hurrah!):

At kronprinsens forlovede, Mary Donaldson, springer uden om det s�dvanlige sagsbehandlersystem for at opn� dansk statsborgerskab, har skabt furore p� venstrefl�jen i Folketinget.

That the Kronprinsfred's intended, Knudella ("Mary") Donaldsen, skipped the usual matter-behandlingsystem to gain Danish citizenship, has caused a storm in the Danish Teacup ("Left") Party in parliament.

Danish has some impressively lamentable immigration rules, for sure, and it is perhaps clever of the leftistes to pretend to be bothered that the fair Knudella is being special-cased, but I defy them to claim they thought there was any chance of it being otherwise with a straight face.

[Links via Citoyenne B and David TEFLsmiler, encouragement from Anna Louise, tack alla]

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2004-03-23 morning (utc)

A Nuclear-Armed Newspaper, How Exciting!

Feel the fairness , Fox "News":

Moscow has placed much of the blame for the outburst in violence on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population, a view echoed by the Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda.

According to the paper, "the Albanians' sword of genocide has not been sheathed yet", and Nato's last five years of peacekeeping "have turned to ashes."

Who'd'you reckon would win in a propaganda competition between Fox "News", al-Qaeda's PR team and Krasnaya Zvezda, huh, Varied Reader?

In the spirit of scientific enquiry, I think the 'bladet is going to have to run a propaganda competition for the year - reader contributions, as always, are very welcome.

(Turkmenistan, as a Hall-of-Fame inductee, is sadly no longer eligible. Entries must be submitted in a language the editorial committee can read, and should preferably have been picked up by at least one reputable news outlet in the civilised world or the USA.)

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2004-03-22 18:17

Not by me, honest

"Been out in the life-boat often enough?"
"Aye, aye, Sir, often enough."
"When it's rougher than this?"
"Why, bless you, Sir, this ain't what we calls rough. It's when there's a gale a-blowing
And the white seas roll in and break
On the shore with a roar like thunder
And the tall cliffs seem to shake
When the sea is a hell of waters
And the bravest holds his breath
As he hears the cry for the lifeboat
His summons may be to his death.
That's when we call it rough, Sir,
But if we can get her afloat,
There's always enough brave fellows
Ready to man the boat."

- "The Lifeboat", by "Dragonet", 1882

That's what I calls rough, for sure.

[Update: There's much, much more.]

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2004-03-22 post-samwidge (utc)

An endorsement

Al-Qaeda backs Bush:

Nous avons besoin de ta stupidit� et ton chauvinisme religieux pour que notre nation se r�veille.

We need your stupidity and your religious chauvinism to awaken our [i.e., the Arab] nation.

(For some reason I can't find a report of this in the Anglosphere.)

While I've been away a great many Merkins have taken it upon themselves to reproach Spain for administering a richly deserved kick up the arse to an autocratic president who took his country into a war that 90% of his electorate opposed.

So remember, Merkins: a vote for Bush is a vote for al-Qaeda.

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2004-03-22 back! (utc)

St Ives Sm�rg�spost

�1. Seagulls

It would be most appreciated if you could refrain from feeding the seagulls, as they are becoming a nuisance. Thank you for your co-operation
D H Hosken
Clerk of the council

�2. Shanty

I'll sing you a song of Cornish folk,
I'll sing you of breakfast and bed -
Of plates piled high with products of pork,
And racks of toasted bread!

When I was a youth - a mere slip of a lad -
I succeded in stowing away
On a clean and comf'table boarding-house
With a view of Corbis bay.

With a heave and a haul and a yo ho ho! -
Words that have not ceased to thrill -
I'd wake each morning at dawn's first crack
And tend sausages 'neath the grill

Oh sing Ho! for a life of adventures wild,
A life of storm and sea!
Of plunder and wenches and apricot jam,
A landlord's life for me!

- "Bed & breakfast shanty", Blind Spacefish Trescothick

�3. Science

On the nestling of houses in Cornish coastal towns

It has long been accepted that the nestling of domestic residences ("houses", including the class of boarding house known as a "bed and breakfast") can be characterised as higgledy-piggledy (the account by Johnson, 1965 of this phenomenon has become classical). More recently, some workers (Higgs, 1998, Piggs, 1999, Higgs and Piggs, 2002) have proposed that the h-p symmetry implied in the classical account may be violated under some conditions even in the macroscopic limit, and have demonstrated experimentally that in some cases the distribution can be as much as 5% more higgledy than piggledy. In this paper we review recent theoretical and experimental work on this problem, and propose a synthesis in terms of a numerical model with a low-dimensional parameter space which naturally accounts for the h-p anisotropy in terms of an single-term anisotropic perturbation to the clustering field.

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