|
2004-03-26 13:29
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.
[Permalink]
2004-03-26 samwidge (utc)
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.)
[Permalink]
2004-03-26 morning (utc)
�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.
[Permalink]
2004-03-25 hmmm (utc)
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.)
[Permalink]
2004-03-25 12:19
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]
[Permalink]
2004-03-25 10:06
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]
[Permalink]
2004-03-24 bah! (utc)
("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!'")
[Permalink]
2004-03-24 postsamwidge (utc)
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.
[Permalink]
2004-03-24 morning (utc)
�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.
[Permalink]
2004-03-23 post-samwidge (utc)
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?
[Permalink]
2004-03-23 12:17
�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]
[Permalink]
2004-03-23 morning (utc)
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.)
[Permalink]
2004-03-22 18:17
"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.]
[Permalink]
2004-03-22 post-samwidge (utc)
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.
[Permalink]
2004-03-22 back! (utc)
�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.
[Permalink]
previous,
next, latest
|
|
|