2002-05-17 10:05

I also shall turn middle-aged

I also shall turn middle-aged

I have now been Plurped on two consecutive days. It is a fun game. Nonetheless I feel unequal to this challenge:

Does "semiotics" actually mean anything? It's not clear to us. It does seem awfully easy to use it to obscure meaning, though.

When I was doing my master's degree we had to do a ten-minute presentation in front of half the faculty on a subject of our own choosing. Other people did the history of snooker, or just told jokes; I did an overview of semiotics from Saussure to Barthes, precisely because of attitudes like the above. But I no longer have those notes, and these days I have other herring to smoke.

Sjuttonde maj!

Yesterday I knew that: the seventeenth of May is Norway's national day; the date was the sixteenth of May; Aftonbladet had a "travel to Oslo" feature, and people were ignoring my warnings and speculating about whether Mette-Marit was likely to be well enough to wave from a balcony.

You don't want to know how long it took me to join those dots. My excuse it that here in England we celebrate St. George's day (he's our patron saint, so that makes it our national day) by, firstly, not remembering when it is, including on the day itself, and secondly, by going in to work and behaving as if nothing unusual were happening (which in fact it isn't).

Still, happy sjuttonde maj to any Norwegianist readers. For less Norwegianist readers here are some photos from the celebrations last year. There are people! With flags!

I suspect that all the good photos of the subsequent wild parties are locked away and only accessible to people who can remember how to spell sjuttonde in Norwegish.