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2004-05-07 fika (utc+1)

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Deplorable Roma opportunisme

Never fear, stout yeopersons - Denis "Denis" MacShane is on the case:

In Bratislava the airlines and bus companies reported no extra passengers. Why should they? Slovakia has attracted three massive car plant investments - from Kia, Peugeot and VW - and has the cheapest opera in Europe. To be sure, wages in Britain are better but the cost of living chez nous is prohibitive for many east and central Europeans. The Roma Press Agency in Slovakia has complained about British tabloid journalists arriving and paying Roma to pose with suitcases and a Union Jack. The Roma take the money and stay in their own country and communities.

�2. Sn�kaos, somewhat fatal

Tre holl�ndska turister har omkommit under en utflykt i Sierra Nevada i s�dra Spanien, meddelades det p� torsdagen. De dukade under f�r en sn�storm. I Alperna �r det ocks� vinter igen.

Three Dutch touristes have died during an excursion in Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, it was announced on Thursday. They were sn�ed under during a sn�storm. It's also winter again in the alps.

For the record, we prefer sn�kaos when it is funny, which this isn't.

�3. �l

Come on Carlsberg!

Danish brewer Carlsberg has reported lower than expected first-quarter profits, but insists it is still on schedule to hit its full year target.

For the first three months of 2004, its pre-tax earnings rose to 154m Danish crowns [krone] (�14m; 20.7m euros), below the market expectation of 186m crowns [krone]

(What is with all this "crowns" malarkey? There are 509,000 ghits for Danish krone, compared to 18,300 for Danish crowns, and the later is heavily populated with stuff about the company of that name and Daneglish overtranslation. The Engleesh word is "krone", dammit!)

Anyway, I'm sure that the impending nuptuations are worth a chunky spike in �l consumption, so I wouldn't worry about this.

[Birgitte has brought us some spicy brains, too, which are a-marinading for consumption next week. Don't miss it!]

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2004-05-07 regal (utc+1)

Prinsessgossipsuperspecial!

�1. Top Tucker!

Knudella is lined up for a square banquet at last, and it's going to be a proper Strayan nosh up:

[Governor General of Straya] Major General Michael Jeffery will make the presentation when he and his wife Marlena host the Danish royal family to a dinner of the finest Australian produce to honour next Friday's marriage of former Hobart lawyer Mary Donaldson [Knudella] to Crown Prince Frederik [the Kronprinsfred].

Coconut broths and raw fishies and so on feature, but also:

Tender Australian lamb will round off the main course, with the meal to be completed with [Chef] Mangan's signature desert from his Salt restaurant in Sydney, licorice parfait.

Is that salty liquorice, Mr Mangan? We like our liquorices salty, up hear in the frozen wastelands...

�2. Bonnet or Bucket?

Kundella's lovely hat looks a bit like a bucket, if you look at it upside down like the Strayans do.

And in a sign she is warming to her new persona, Mary smiled broadly and waved to the crowd of about 4000 who had come to see their future queen.

Smiling, tick! Waving, tick! By Jove, I think she's got it!

�3. Enigmatic Mette-Marit Keeps Mum

Not a sausage, not a dicky bird:

Kronprinsessen ble sittende smilende, men taus p� f�rste rad.

The kronprinsess sat smiling, but silent, in the first row.

At the opening of an architecture something. If it is to be argued that they didn't get their money's worth, the lack of any mention of waving strikes me as more to the point.

�4. It is summer!

And thus a time for borrowing of things from neighbours, such as lawn movers or perhaps royal families:

Tyskland saknar ett eget kungahus. S� n�rmast till hands �r d� kung Carl Gustaf, drottning Silvia, kronprinsessan Victoria och prins Carl Philip n�r det sprids kunglig glans.

Germany lacks its own royal house. So the next best thing for spreading a kingly gloss is king Carl Gustaf [of Sweden], queen Sylvia [of Sweden], kronprinsess Victoria [of Sweden] and prins Carl Philip [?].

You'd better return them in good time, Germany - we know what you're like!

�5. All work and no play makes for a plausible excuse (to Germans)

Sweden wisely thought better of lending out its luscious beige partyprinsess Madeleine, but I think the excuse needs a little work:

Men prinsessan Madeleine m�ste stanna hemma f�r att plugga.
- Ja, hon �r oerh�rt upptagen av studierna nu, s�ger prinsessans mentor Lena Ramel.

But prinsess Madeleine has to stay home to study.
"Yes, she is incredibly busy with her studies now", said prinsess-sitter Lena Ramel.

Come on, Lena Ramel, she's studying art history - even the Germans aren't going to fall for that!

[Much linkages from prodigal but prodigious prinsess propaganda propagater, Anna Louise, tack.]

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2004-05-07 sunny! (utc+1)

This morning

The third time of asking I stopped and took the proffered pouch of tobacco. There were no skins ("papers"), and I had to ask for them, which was further evidence that the person who had stopped me to roll a cigarette for him wasn't playing with a full deck.

While I worked he told me something about a watch that I was briefly worried he was going to try and sell me, but rolling a cigarette requires enough concentration that I didn't feel obliged to do more than grunt. (I gave up smoking a couple of years ago, and I stopped smoking rollies a couple of years before that.)

He didn't say thank you.

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2004-05-06 samwidge (utc+1)

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Leende och vinkande

With more lines I'd surely write a sonnet
On Knudella's head, and perched upon it -
Like an eager lookout in the crows' nest -
A consummately retro bonnet

Was it wise, we ask and enquire, to send Knudella off to the Liberation Day parade wearing a coat that was ergonomically unsuited to the waving that is a key part of this and so many other royal duties?

The bonnet, though! Remiscent, perhaps, of a look once affected by the UK's own Elizabeth, Queen Dowager and Queen Mother, Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Lady of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Lady of the Imperial Order of the Crown of India, Grand Master and Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order upon whom had been conferred the Royal Victorian Chain, Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Dame Grand Cross of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John.

�2. Marx was right!

So says Aftonbladet, which is justly concerned about the concentration of ownership in the hands of short-termiste pension fund managers:

"De borgerliga f�rh�llandena har blivit f�r tr�nga f�r att kunna innefatta den av dem framalstrade rikedomen", skrev Marx f�r drygt 150 �r sedan. �stling uttrycker sig annorlunda, men menar n�got liknande.

"The bourgeois relationships have become too narrow to be able to understand the basis of future wealth production.[?]", Marx wrote a good 150 years ago. [Scania boss] �stling expresses himself differently, but means something similar.

Aftonbladet, I do love it so. If I ever I emigrate to the Sweden it will not be nearly so much for its many nubile blonde wimmins, as for its popular press, although if there are any nubile blonde wimmins going spare I'll do my level best to help out.

�3. A pocketful of pirate rye!

Every UKish child knows the song:

Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie

When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing
Was that not a tasty dish
To set before a king?

But it turns out (and Snopes is set up to debunk urban myths, so if it's good enough for them...) that this is an encoded pirate recruitment advert, arrrrrrrr!

Rye is whiskey, a pocket is a container, about a litre in size, and this is a daily ration, and frankly it's a pirate's life for me from now on. I'm going to be a Marxiste pirate - avast ye bourgeois landlubbers; I'll be hoisting the Jolly Rodger on yer means of production ere long!

[Birgitte points out that this is in the very instructive "hoax" section of Snopes, ho ho. They mean to sow distrust and suspicion - I urge you to retaliate by believing it anyway, as I do.]

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2004-05-06 mrning (utc+1)

Why I am so very oceanographic

The sea is loveliest far in the abstract when the imagination can feed upon the idea of it. The thing itself is dirty, wobbly and wet.

-- Wallace "Chopper" Stevens

I like the swirly bits, myself:

Olaus Magnus, an exiled Swedish priest living in Italy, was known to dislike blank canvas and covered every available space with ink. But Professor Tom Rossby, from the University of Rhode Island, US, believes not every elaborate quill stroke was artistic licence.

Most of the northeast Atlantic is drawn using more-or-less straight lines. However, things change off the east coast of Iceland, where the lines suddenly morph into a large group of whorls.

"Their location, size and spacing seem too deliberate to be purely artistic expression," Tom Rossby told BBC News Online. "Nowhere else on the chart do these whorls appear in such a systematic fashion."

Tom Rossby is certainly a distinguished oceanographer, and the foremost authority on the north Atlantic. Also, he grew up in Sweden (son of the even famouser Rossby who has a number - the Rossby number - named after him) and speaks fluent Swedish. I know this to be the case, since I sat next to him at the conference dinner at the oceanographic meeting I went to in Florida. (This remains the only time I have spoken Swedish outside a classroom setting.)

Also, Storsj�odjuret ("The Big Lake Monster"):

THE placing of a mythical monster on Sweden's endangered species list, in an apparent fit of bureaucratic zeal, has caused an administrative problem for the country's authorities.
[...]
Legend has it that the giant serpent, similar to the Loch Ness Monster has lived for centuries in Jaemtland's Lake Storsjoen, Sweden's fifth-largest lake.

(Also available in Swedish)

[Scotsman link via B&W, against whose Rationalisme such things are a sore affront, and quite right too.]

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2004-05-05 14:06

Slavonic Slovenia

If to Slovenia you should g� -
In search of sun or in search of sn� -
It isn't so much the English tongue
That you will want to kn�

(We're in quatraining!)

What then? Aftonbladet knows:

Spr�k: Slovenska, sydslaviskt spr�k, vissa likheter med tjeckiska och kroatiska. Italienska och tyska �r andra g�ngbara spr�k. �ven engelska p� hotell, restauranger och i aff�rer.

Langwidge: Slovene, a southern Slavonic language, with some similarities with Czech and Croatian. You can also get by with Italian or German. Also English in hotels, restaurants and shops.

The article further claims, as its fun fact, that Slovenia (which it still feels strange to be typing without its quotes) publishes more books per head than anywhere else in Yoorp, which is a claim more often made for Iceland (in the EEA, so don't start). So, a source:

The 16th annual Book Fair was held this week in Ljubljana. More than six million individual books were published in Slovenia last year, for a population of just under two million, making the per capita rate among the highest in the world. Slovene publishers released more than 4000 new titles last year, of which 3000 were written in Slovene and 1000 were translations. The print run of the average book was 1500 copies.

That's cheating, for sure, counting "individual books" like that.

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2004-05-05 espressodags (utc+1)

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Fikaf�rklaring, Italian style

Aftonbladet has gone to Italy to find out all about Italian coffee rituals, for the benefit of the many Swedishes who are not in Italy and therefore have pressing need to be told such things. In particular they emphasise in many places that it is not OK to be all asking for cappuccinos after 1000 hours in the morning (which is when it is, at least in the Northern Hemisphere):

CAFF� LATTE Inneh�ller mer mj�lk �n cappuccinon. Dricks ocks� f�re kl 10 p� morgonen. Best�ll inte som i Sverige med ett enkelt "Latte", utan s�g just "un caff� latte", annars f�r du mj�lk.

CAFF� LATTE Contains more milk than the cappuccino. [Like the cappuccino] Drunk also before 10 am. Don't just ask for a "Latte" like in Sweden, but say precisely "un caff� latte [por favore]", otherwise you'll get milk.

I mocked my Merkin colleagues derisively in Venice for their habit of ordering cappuccinos after 10 am, and don't think I didn't.

�2. Wave of Nuptuation

Have you kissed mermaids, ridden the El Nino, walked the sand with the crustaceans? Or are you just - like the Shoppingharbour - drunk with happiness at the impending nuptuations?

De vanligtvis mycket rojalistiska danskarna �vertr�ffar sig sj�lva de h�r dagarna. Br�llopet �r inte f�rr�n n�sta fredag den 14 maj, men redan nu sjuder K�penhamn av br�llopsyra.

The always very royaliste Danes are surpassing themselves these days. The wedding isn't till next Friday the 14th of May, but already Shoppingharbour is bubbling with wedding oxygen.

Bubbling, we tell you!

Det danska br�llopsfirandet startar redan i dag, �rsdagen f�r Danmarks befrielse fr�n tyska ockupationen 1945, med en f�rsvarsparad till lands, sj�ss och i luften p� Lange- 0liniekajen.

The Danish wedding celebrations start today, the memorial day of Denmark's liberation from the Nazi ("German") occupation in 1945, with a defence parade on land, sea and air at Lange- 0liniekajen.

The inattentive reader may be wondering what exactly connects this with the nuptuations, but we know from elsewhere that the Kronprinsfred and his Knudella are to be wavers and smilers of honour at these stirring scenes.

�3. Four lines?!

It remains to be seen, not least by me, whether my muse will be moved to celebrate Knudella's big day, but four lines of the Danish is a something you would be well-advised to bet against being upwithcome.

Herunder kan du skrive et vers til Frederik & Mary, der �nsker tillykke. De bedste vers bliver vist her p� siden, og de rigtig gode bliver vist p� tekst-tv p� bryllupsdagen. Eneste krav til dit vers er, at det skal holde sig p� fire linier.

Under here [there's a comments thing] you can write a verse to the Kronprinsfred and Knudella to wish them happiness. The bestest verses will be published on this page, and the rilly rilly good ones will be shown on text-tv on the wedding day. The only requirement is that you keep your verse to four lines.

Danish Text-tv, though. Hmmm...

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2004-05-05 morning (utc+1)

On Macedonia, at Bengt's suggestion

When the weather is wet and your clothes are wetter
And you're thinking of a place where life is better
(It seems so far away)
The ex-Yugoslav republic of Macedonia -
Wherever you are, you know it's only a
Daydream away
(It's not so far away)
And some day you'll be coming back to stay

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2004-05-04 13:31

Grindleford!

I'll be on Grindleford in Derbyshire on the 5th of June, and knowing that this is the case frees me at last to make arrangements to pursue summery holidation on dates with are other than this.

And my Slovene grammar has turned up, after the three weeks it was prophecied that it would take. (This will be a something to read during the longueurs that will in any case not occur in the afternoon session.)

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2004-05-04 wet (utc+1)

It is the linguistic structure which renders possible the fixity of the fixation

At last, scholars are waking up to the challenge of the serious questions posed by the forthcoming Danish royal wedding:

Hvilket sprog taler kronprins Frederik og Mary Donaldson sammen? Hvordan vil Kronprinsen blive beskrevet i fremtidige historieb�ger? Og hvorfor er vores appetit p� artikler og TV-indslag om de kongelige n�rmest um�ttelig?

Forskere p� Aarhus Universitet springer nu med p� den royale b�lge og byder sig til med intet mindre end �ekspert-vinkler� p� det kongelige bryllup.

Which language do Kronprinsfred and Knudella speak together? How will the Kronprinsfred be described in future history b��ks? And why is our appetite for articles and on the royal family insatiable?

Researchers at Aarhus University are now catching the royal wave and are offering to provide "expert angles" on the royal wedding.

We like, of course, a bit of scholarship at this 'bladet. Let's go with the languagey goodness, since we are also very linguistique:

�N�r tosprogede par v�lger sprog, vil de ofte tale det sprog, de brugte f�rste gang, de m�dtes. Men det er faktisk meget almindeligt, at tosprogede par taler hver sit sprog til hinanden,� siger lektor i sprogvidenskab Peter Bakker.

"When bilingual couples choose a langwidge, they often want to talk the language they first used together, when they met. But it actually happens quite often that each member of a bilingual couple uses their own langwidge to the other," says lektor in linguistics Peter Bakker.

Bilingual, you ask or enquire? Bilingual, for sure:

Siden forlovelsen i oktober har Mary Donaldson dagligt terpet dansk i to-tre timer med to s�rligt uddannede sprogl�rere, der er eksperter i at undervise engelsksprogede i dansk og g�re dem fortrolige med de specielle danske bogastaver som �, � og � - og ikke mindst udtalen af dem.

Since the engagement in Oktober Knudella has been having daily Danish lessons for two or three hours a day with two specially educated language teachers who are experts in teaching Danish to Engleesh-speakers and making them confident with the special Danish letters �, � and � - and not least their pronunciation.

(That's not one of the Aalhus experts, you'll be relieved to hear.)

But the Kronprinsfred also speaks the Frenchy-French, isn't it, like his dad the Prinshenrik. If Knudella can French it up also (and they have hung out there enough to always-have-Paris) then they could adopt a Neutral Third Language, which would be my preferred model.

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2004-05-03 late (utc+1)

Hello, Slovenia

Yes, the quotes are off now, as this 'bladet confers its official recognition on the country formerly known as "Slovenia". And we're not the only ones marking historic Slovene-flavoured occasions:

President of Republic Slovenia Janez Drvnosek decorated Bogic Bogicevic with the "Silver Honourable Mark of Freedom" for his historic role in the process of establishing the independence of Slovenia and his personal contribution to development of friendly relations between BiH and Slovenia.

(BiH turns out to be Bosnia and Herzogovina.) We join with President Drnosek in saying "Well done, Bogic Bogicevic!", although it's only fair to acknowledge that it wasn't the "Well done" bit we most enjoyed saying.

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2004-05-03 samwidge (utc+1)

Patrimony, Patrimony, Ra Ra Ra!

�1. Mote

[Anderson, op. cit., p.72:]

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the prodigious labors of German, French and English scholars [...] were re-creating a glittering, and firmly pagan, ancient Hellenic civilisation.

Which led to Adamantios Koraes, addressing a French audience in Paris in 1803 thuswisely:

For the first time the nation surveys the hideous spectacle of its ignorance and trembles in measuring with the eye the distance separating it from its ancestors' glory. This painful discovery, however, does not precipitate the Greeks into despair: We are the descendents of Greeks, they implicitly told themselves, we must either try to become again worthy of their name, or we must not bear it.

This is a very early example of the "Our Glorious Ancestors!" manoeuvre, for sure. And full credit to successive generations of Greek nationalistes for turning ancestor worship into the official state religion instead of, say, doing something else.

�2. Beam

"The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna", Charles Wolfe

Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,--
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring:
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But left him alone with his glory.

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2004-05-03 morning (utc+1)

Now 67% more Yoorpean!

It is a public ("bank") holiday, and I am not here.

Except I am, because we've got visitors and a meeting tomorrow and the PUBLIC SECTOR WAITS FOR NO PERSON, OK?

Still, while I'm slaving my fingery appendages to their inner cores of calciated hardnesses, why not to enjoy nice article by Julian Evans (again!) on the literature of our New Yoorpean Comrades:

It is almost impossible to find work by Lithuanian writers in English, apart from extracts and poems published on the net - a strange state of affairs for the oldest living Indo-European language. Look in future, as translation funds become available, for the novelist Jurga Ivanauskaite, playwright and poet Sigitas Parulskis, and Saulius Tomas Kondrotas.

"Oldest living Indo-European language", h�las, means absolutely nothing - it is of the category "Not even wrong". When I am King of Yoorp, all such claims will be forbidden, and foreign policy will be hawkish in the face of preposterous claims about Sanskrit from Hindu nationalists.

Bonus points, though, to Mr Evans for including the Roma ("Gypsies") in his survey.

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