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2004-08-27 13:53
I mean,
really:
For travellers heading abroad, British Airways - which had to cancel
six domestic flights on Friday - said it was impossible to predict
what would happen over the weekend.
Has Easyjet infiltrated the board of BA and set in motion a plan to
discredit the idea that non-budget carriers actually have a legitimate
business model?
We hereby introduce, in BA's honour, Desbladet Mystery Theatre:
Q: Any chance of a flight somewhere, BA, would you think?
A: Not a Scooby*, mate, sorry.
Q: Splendid! Do have some money. Have lots of money - I
don't like to skimp!
FIN
* Scooby (n.) Clue, rhyming slang from "Scooby Doo", a cartoon dog.
[Permalink]
2004-08-27 morning (utc+1)
- Pick up drying laundry from launderette
- Arrange to move flat
- Get work done
- Meet friend at station, with which fly to Berlin tomorrow
- Meet other friend, back on flying visit from Japan, in pub
- Trinke viel bier
- Pack
- Sort out accommodation in Dresden
- Home->Bristle Slightly International Aerodrome->Berlin!
- Trinke viel bier
Travelbloguing as circumstances permit, starting now, GO!
[Permalink]
2004-08-26 16:00
Are stadiums cold for the icestickfoopball? We assume so.
Anyway:
Kronprinsessan Victoria lurade pappa kungen.
Inf�r 10 316 personer i Globen visade hon officiellt f�r f�rsta g�ngen
upp pojkv�nnen Daniel Westling.
- Det h�r var en demonstration fr�n hennes sida. Hon har best�mt sig
f�r Daniel, ber�ttar en i hennes v�nkrets.
Kronprinsess Victoria fooled her daddy - who is the king!
In front of 10,316 persons in the Globe she showed herself officially
for the forst time with boyfriend Daniel Westling.
"She was making a statement with this. She's set her heart on
Daniel," said a person in her circle of friends.
Even foopball spectatorship is semiotically overdetermined for those
who happen to be prinsessor. Which can't be easy.
[Permalink]
2004-08-26 12:36
I know I do:
Gr�ce au baron Pierre de Coubertin, le fran�ais est une langue
olympique depuis 1896. Le retour des Jeux sur leur terre de
renaissance est donc l'occasion r�v�e pour la Gr�ce
d'int�grer l'alliance des pays francophones. Les r�actions de la
presse sont mitig�es.
Thanks to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, French has been an official
language of the Olympics since 1896. The games's return to the land
of their rebirth is thus a dream opportunity for the Greece to join
the alliance of Francophone countries.
It is? Well, the Greek press seem less baffled than me, for sure:
"Pourquoi est-ce l'anglais qui domine ?" s'interroge Ta Nea, qui
reprend l'interrogation du grand t�moin francophone, Herv�
Bourges. Apr�s tout, "entre le grec et le fran�ais, c'est une longue
histoire d'amiti�", souligne le quotidien, pour qui "il est naturel
que la Gr�ce entre dans la Francophonie. Tous les artistes et hommes
politiques Grecs ma�trisent le fran�ais et les Grecs sont
francophiles".
"Why should the [silly] English dominate?" Ta Nea asks or
enquires of itself, taking up the question of the stalwart francophone
Herv� Bourges. After all, "there's a long history of friendship
between the Greek and French," insists the paper, for whom "it is
natural that Greece should enter La Francophonie. All Greek
artistes and politicians speak French and the Greeks are
Francophiles."
Enough! You are making no sense whatever, persons, and I can take no
more!
Meanwhile, I am on holiday from Saturday, and in order to get a full
five day's paid leave I included next Monday, since this Monday is a
Bank ("Public") Holiday. I failed, however, to account for the
university's own (quite gratuitous) extension of that holiday to
include also Tuesday. I now feel vaguely thwarted...
[Permalink]
2004-08-26 morning (utc+1)
�1. The zeit has got his geist on,
Hip hip hip hooray!
The zeit has got his geist on
And he's coming out to play!
The link
will age, but frustrum will not veil its income disparity, for sure,
and we note that as of now on today the umptieth of Umptember,
Umpty-umpty-ump A.D. (amen), that three (3) of the top five (5)
"popular athletes" on Mr Google's are foopballers (Ronaldo, Beckham
and Ronaldinho), and the other two (2) are a lady tennis player and
Anna Kournikova. (Note if you must, but note quietly, that if they'd
classified Lance Armstrong under "athlete" he'd 've walked it. Since
the Tour de France is obviously far beyond what humans are capable of,
we firmly approve of his admittedly anthropocentrique exclusion.)
Where's your hegemony now, "America"?
�2. Oh.
If you want coverage of the League of Champions that makes an early
commitment to the Internation in its work product, your best bet is
ESPN
(despite its web designers, of course). Its compiled from the news
wires, but it is even-handed in its treatment.
�3. A quandary resolved
Q: Who would win if Noam "Chomp Chomp" Chomsky got stuck in a lift
("elevator") with Christopher "Hatchet" Hitchens?
A: Everyone else!
[Permalink]
2004-08-25 mornin' (utc+1)
Hamball, as everyone knows, was invented at the stupifyingly posh
public school Hamble in Hampshire ("Hamball" being a hilarious pun)
when the unusually recessive Wichard Won Wallis picked up the ball
and flung it into the net during a game against arch-rivals Fleet.
"Hamball!" Fleet's finest yelled in unison, "Hamball, ref!" But the
referee also was from Hamble and allowed the goal to stand, and the
name stuck. The headmaster, being made of sterner stuff, subsequently
had the games master dismissed and Won Wallis flogged to death, and
the game of Hamball has not been played in Eng-er-lund since that
day.
Not so on the Continent, however:
Anf�rt af Kronprinsparret og assisteret af masser af de mange
danskere, som har fundet vej til h�ndboldhallen i Faliro i Athen, fik
de danske h�ndboldkvinder en st�tte, som kan vise sig at blive guld
v�rd.
The lead of the Kronprinscouple and the assistence of masses of
Danishes, who found their way to the hamball in Faliro in Athens in
Greece in Southern Yoorp in the World, c/o The Sun in the Outer Edge
of an Unfashionable Spiral of the Milky Way in the Universe, gave the
Danish hamball wimmins a support which may turn out to be worth gold.
Did you know, by the way, that there is wimmin's wrestling for the
first time at this Olympics? Even if they aren't as nekkid or as
covered in oil as we Olympic puristes might prefer, my question is not
why there has not been more coverage of this but rather why there has
been so much coverage of anything else.
Irini Merleni, winner of the first ever gold, was too
overcome to comment:
So it fell upon Merleni's masseuse, a friendly, strapping lass, to
make a point in broken English that brooked no argument. "Wrestling
now for woman. Ukraine women. Ukraine women very beautiful."
Life finally gets around to imitating Love and Rockets, and
not a moment too soon.
(Needless to say the headlines in the FDRUSA read
"The first medal ever awarded in women's Olympic wrestling was claimed
Monday night by American Patricia Miranda." Technically the bronze is
decided first, yes.)
[Permalink]
2004-08-25 morning (utc+1)
Jos� "His Way" Mourinho, manager of
Челсий, has
been piqued by the English media's complaints about his new teams
stodgy play.
"I think you football people in England should stop
and ask yourselves, for which reason is English football not
successful abroad?" he said.
"For which reason are Spanish teams, Italian teams, Portuguese teams
winning the Uefa competitions? Why is the English national team, with
a top manager and top players, going to European championships and
World Cups and not winning them?" he added ahead of tonight's game at
Crystal Palace.
(The Portuguese team FC Porto won everything there was to win under
Mourinho's management, including the Champions League, Yoorp's top
prize. He is exceptionally fond of pointing this out, and it only
makes it the more irritating, to many of the sillier Engleesh, that it
is simply true.)
A brief overview, then, for our silly Engleesh readers and any others
struggling with the many admittedly subtle issues of foopball
tactiques.
- Foopball games are won by scoring more "goals" than the other team.
- This divides into two (2) parts:
- Scoring "goals"
- Stopping the other team scoring "goals"
- Running up and down is not, in itself, a winning tactique
(This last part is the most controversial in Eng-er-lund, which tends
to see the running up and down as the main event and the scoring of
goals as a Frenchified affectation, and likewise treats preventing the
other team from scoring goals as essentially a by-product of the noble
and manly art of assaulting any of their players who come within
range.)
Mourinho is already certainly the most widely hated manager in
Engleesh foopball, but this is nothing - nothing! - compared to the
loathing he will inspire if his arrogance is vindicated by success.
[Permalink]
2004-08-24 tea (utc+1)
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
Tuesdays, Mondays, we all scream for sundaes,
Sis-boom-bah!
Boola-boola, sarsaparoolla,
If you got chocolate, we'll take vanoola!
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
[src]
Mr Munch's psychedelic hissy fit may have been somewhat swiped, but
VG's readership is more than ready to take
up the slack:
Munch var som kjent veldig glad i Giraffen, Verdens Vakreste Dyr,
skriver Bolleh.
"Munch was, as everyone knows, very fond of giraffes, the world's most
beautiful animal," writes Bolleh.
Us too!
[via Margaret von
Transblawg, private communication]
[Permalink]
2004-08-24 samwidge (utc+1)
Sci.lang has lately been hosting some cross-posting
ultra-nationaliste nutjobs from the heart of the Hellenic
h�las. Specifically, they maintain that the country everyone
but them calls "Macedonia" is infringing on their Glorious History and
Cultual. This is a documented
issue, for sure:
The collapse of the former Yugoslavia and the creation of the state of
Macedonia (dubbed FYROM or Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in
deference to acute Greek sensitivities) triggered a major upsurge in
Greek nationalism. This nationalism was underpinned by a fear that
separatist movements might develop in northern Greece, a nervousness
that was strongly exploited by Greek conservative forces, primarily in
the case of Macedonia, but also in the case of its Aromanian/Vlach
minority.
The question duly arises: is Greek nationalisme is really the most
toxique of more-or-less stable Western democracies? My gut feeling is
that it is, but to be sure I would probably need to Learn Greek, and even this
excellent audio/net course isn't carrotty enough for that.
I did, however, enter the BBC languages' site's Olympic-themed
quizz, which is trivial once you learn to decode the URLs that
each link goes to next, and if I win (as I invariably don't) the
language-learning goodies on offer, I will put them to the intended
use, for sure.
[Permalink]
2004-08-24 morning (utc+1)
�1. A world of their own
"World lobster eating contest", snarast ett amerikanskt m�sterskap,
�gde rum i staden Kennebunk i hummerdelstaten Maine i g�r.
The "World Lobster-Eating Contest", or rather an American
championship, took place in the town of Kennebunk in the
lobster-fishing region of Maine yesterday.
Gluttony and parochialisme? In the FDRUSA? Say it ain't so!
�2. They say the funniest things!
Who do? Law-yers do,
in the good old FDR:
Before turning in a draft, check your work carefully. "It is important
to make an early commitment to excellence in the technical aspects of
your work product," says John (Sean) Coffey, a partner at Bernstein
Litowitz Berger & Grossmann.
John (Sean) Coffey, this bladet salutes you and the language by means of
which we are blissfully divided from you.
[via]
�3. Bulgarian batting debacles
Played five, won none
in the European Representation Championship of glorious cricket in
sunny Ljubljana, hurrah!
Against the Switzyland they scored fewer runs all out than they
conceded in extras, which has got to hurt. Croatia won the event with
a clean sweep, and well done them.
[Permalink]
2004-08-23 16:49
We'll get to the Olympics, for sure, but first some belated
Euro hilarity:
In its babel of languages, the Olympics are Euro 2004
cubed. What made the Euro so interesting was that it was the European
Union at play. And it strongly suggested that the European nations
will never be able to talk clearly to each other (and that most do not
care). The agreed common language of press conferences was English, as
it is in Athens. The French, of course, turned up without an
interpreter and were fined. They borrowed a UEFA official who
bewildered journalists by translating the word d�chets correctly but
unintelligibly. So Jacques Santini, the coach, reportedly said his
team's bad passing was "leftovers." He meant that it was a waste.
There are quite many languages at the Olympics,
but you'd think someone should have anticipated that a bit, really:
[T]he press was told Japanese judoka Masato Uchishiba had fought his
last bout after winning gold on Sunday.
"I wanted this so badly I wouldn't have cared if it was my last fight
ever," the 26-year-old actually said, though his comments were
officially translated as: "It is probably my last Olympics, that is
why I am proud of my medal."
Oh, and how's yer patrimony, Zelmir Obradovic?
Frustration boiled over for the coach of the Serbia and Montenegro
basketball team at the weekend when he stormed out of a news
conference in protest at the quality of interpreting.
"The translation is ridiculous," fumed Zelmir Obradovic. "It's my
right to speak in my native language at the Olympics."
Pretty glorious, huh?
[Permalink]
2004-08-23 samwidge (utc+1)
�1. Basketfoopball
Basketfoopball is the big sport in Lithuania, of course, and
since I am, of course, taking a cosmopolitan approach to the Olympic
Foopball, I am certainly cheering them on to an extent limited only by
the non-existence of coverage of any sport in which Blighty is not
competitive.
So hurrah!
The US men's basketball team lost for the second time in Athens when
European champions Lithuania came from behind in the last quarter to
beat them 94-90.
Lithania qualify unbeaten, the FDRUSA qualifies with two (2) losses.
�2. Cheap city breaks, Norwegish style
That's 'Wegish
touristes,
not 'Wegish cities.
�3. Pointing and laughing
More than slightly necessary:
Speaking of a unified world, one of my American students confided in
me after a trip abroad "they don't seem to have a cafe culture in
Italy, do they?" 'What?," I stammered. 'Well, I didn't see a single
Starbucks all the time I was there."
[via]
[Permalink]
2004-08-23 09:50
First, a vanity
link.
4.12pm Many of you have written in to explain why the Great Britain
team is so called rather than the United Kingdom. Des Vonbladet's
response was the most eloquent and straightforward: "Athletes from
Northern Ireland are eligible to compete for either Great Britain or
the Republic of Ireland at their own discretion. This is a
historically established skirting of the political minefield; it can't
therefore be Team UK, since some competitors may well be UK citizens
and not be in it." Makes sense I suppose.
Can I list this as a publication on my r�sum� as a scholar of
nationalismes? As of now, our blurb definitely reads, "Eloquent and
straightforward" - The Guardian.
Anyway, like the rest of the Proud Island Race I tuned in to listen to
Paula "Sadcliffe" Radcliffe attempt a record third consecutive
non-medal finish in an Olympic race - the ultra-long distance
foopball-free foopball, this time - she had been hotly tipped to win,
and was duly gutted when her dream was cruelly shattered by an unfortunately-timed
attack of unwillingness to be bothered anymore.
Special bonus bigotry points to the indefatigably tiresome Alison
Kirbishly of Radio Foopball for advancing the theory before the race that the
Japanese runners revere Sadcliffe like unto a godess and would not be
able to conceive of beating her. Needless to say, a Japanese wimmin
won it, and quite right too.
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