My family thought that apart from say a bunch of buttercups or pussy willow, cut flowers were a bad idea; flowers ought to be left to grow. My wife not only has no qualms about cutting anything down, she likes to leave it in the vase until completely dead in order to watch the decay. I’m with her on this; I love vases of flowers, big or small, alive or dead. She recently inherited her mother’s collection of glass and here she’s put some moss in one of the little vases. I encourage all kinds of moss to grow. After the wet summer we’ve had it’s flourishing in the garden; it’s all over the huge boulders at the bottom of the hill too. Well, it’s always been there; I think moss ought to be the Norwegian national plant.
Here’s some moss on the rubble wall behind Vesla, taken today. The rocks came from the forest, but the moss seems to be doing well here:
I have to remove it from in between the cobbles; the moss gets overgrown with grass, and pretty soon the cobbles have disappeared altogether.
A Bad Guide 
These pictures you make of flowers in the house really depress me. As I have already mentioned, I just don’t have the ability to select colors and flowers so they look purty. I explain this to myself, if you can call it an explanation, by thinking “there must be something I can’t see, because it’s so simple after all”.
There are also situations where I think: “there must be something I can’t see, because it seems so hard”. That happens when I see those animal documentaries with fish spawning in whirling water, or rhinoceri just barely managing to copulate by climbing on each other. It seems so unlikely to succeed, yet it does, so I must be missing something.
It’s not as if I imagined I should be able to do anything I want just by applying will power. But surely I should at least be able to do those things that apparently don’t require technical practice, like selecting and arranging flowers, as opposed to playing the harp, say. Did you say once that even flower arranging has to be learned, and can be learned? Is that true? I still suspect I’m missing a gene or two.
Crown, when you say “I encourage all kinds of moss to grow”, what kinds of encouragement are you referring to? There’s a reason why I am asking.
The nice thing about putting moss in a vase or similar container is that if you forget to water it, it will dry but when you remember, it will just revive, unlike cut flowers.
Grumbly, you sound like someone who says they could never be an artist because they can’t draw a straight line. It’s not relevant. I can’t arrange flowers, either. It has to be learnt: practise, practise, practise. It’s not the right season, but buy a vase, go out and pick twigs in the park, trim them so the autumn leaves aren’t going to sit in the water and start arranging. You’ve got all weekend, but I expect to see the results on your blog next week.
Emp, At the moment, my encouragement consists of just not taking it away, as many people do, they think there’s something wrong with it. I brought a lot of moss into the garden a long time ago, attached to rocks, and that has flourished. I first tried bringing just the moss and putting it on my own rocks, but it wouldn’t attach itself; it looked like a fat bald man in a wig. At other times I’ve tried mixing yoghurt with moss in the food blender and then smearing it on concrete and rocks, but I couldn’t get that to work even though it’s suppose to.
m-l, that’s good to know. I’ve been wondering what’s going to happen to this bowl of moss.
I always thought moss needed soil to grow, and shade. Lichen is for rocks. And tree trunks.
It doesn’t seem to need soil, it grows on rocks and the railroad ties we’ve used to make steps. I’m sure it prefers shade, but it still seems to thrive in places that get quite a lot of sun.
There is a very informative article on moss in Wikipedia. You can learn a lot of Latin from it (Mr. Moss and Mrs. Moss are archegonium and antheridium). It contains examples of how mosses can be used by the general public:
and also tips for the experts:
The acticle says you may have to pee, purée and pray to get them to grow, but gently:
A Japanese person of your acquaintance may be able to tell you more:
We have had it all over our lawn for years. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s like walking on velvet.
Peeing is also supposed to help copper turn green, but I’ve never seen evidence that it works.
From Wikipedia
Moss is considered a weed in grass lawns, but is deliberately encouraged to grow under aesthetic principles exemplified by Japanese gardening. In old temple gardens, moss can carpet a forest scene. Moss is thought to add a sense of calm, age, and stillness to a garden scene. Rules of cultivation are not widely established. Moss collections are quite often begun using samples transplanted from the wild in a water-retaining bag. However, specific species of moss can be extremely difficult to maintain away from their natural sites with their unique combinations of light, humidity, shelter from wind, etc.
Growing moss from spores is even less controlled. Moss spores fall in a constant rain on exposed surfaces; those surfaces which are hospitable to a certain species of moss will typically be colonised by that moss within a few years of exposure to wind and rain. Materials which are porous and moisture retentive, such as brick, wood, and certain coarse concrete mixtures are hospitable to moss. Surfaces can also be prepared with acidic substances, including buttermilk, yogurt, urine, and gently puréed mixtures of moss samples, water and ericaceous compost.
Oh, Stu got there ahead of me.
The “sphagnum” article is maddening with its emphasis on the distinction between peat moss and moss peat and its apparent failure to support that distinction by a consistent choice of words.
We have bricks instead of grass in part of our yard; the previous inhabitants gave up on ever getting grass to grow properly under the big trees — all that shade (and perhaps unsuitable soil?). We find that if you leave the bricks alone they grow beautiful moss. Once some workmen killed a big circle of moss by spilling something. It’s grown back nicely. I was told that I could help it along by peeing, but I never gave that much of a try.
We get different greens at different times, according to the weather and the season. The moss covers the bricks and the cracks between them, but you can make out the pattern of cracks.
I got the genders crossed: Mrs. Moss is archegonium.
Here’s my favorite thing about moss:
Recall that the genetic material in your cells (and this applies whether you are a human or a goat or a fish or a spider or an octopus or an oak tree) is a sort of double set — your cels are “diploid” — and that when your body creates a gamete or germ cell — a sperm or an ovum (though I’m not sure the term “sperm” is used for oak trees) — this new cell is haploid: it has one chromosome from each pair that was present in the diploid cell. The union of a sperm and an ovum gives rise to a new diploid cell, whose genetic material is a new “full deck” created by shuffling together halves of two parent decks.
In contrast, a moss, in its familiar visible form, is all haploid cells. When it’s time to reproduce, some kind of sperm and egg thing happens and from the union of these comes a sporophyte, which is diploid. After months of maturing, this produces haploid spores, which are released into the air. If one of them comes to rest in a suitable place — maybe a rock that Crown has prepared with yogurt and urine — it may grow into a new moss plant.
So we (by which I now mean the genetic material of the fish and their kin) are diploid except for the sperm or egg phase, whereas they (the genetic material of the mosses) are haploid except when they are being sporophytes.
How frightfully yin & yang of them.
I now remember it was buttermilk I used. My wife had to stop me from buying all this buttermilk that we never drank or ate or whatever it is you do with buttermilk.
Clearly Crown was not brought up on the range. There are all kinds of things you can make with buttermilk: buttermilk bread (available in Germany) , buttermilk cornbread (available in Texas), buttermilk pancakes (think blintzes, with jam, fruit or caviar added), buttermilk strawberry milkshakes, …
Around here, buttermilk pancakes are commonplace and it is not an unusual baking ingredient. My grandfather reportedly liked to drink the stuff straight, but I don’t think grandma bought it regularly. He had grown up in an extremely German part of Pennsylvania.
Really refreshing in the summer is a glass of buttermilk with a bit of salt added. It’s like the Turkish Ayran, which is diluted yoghurt with a bit of salt.
Or lassi, for that matter.
But then Grandpa also liked shoo-fly pie, which I believe is a lot like pecan pie but without the pecans.
Says here that shoo-fly pie is a “molasses pie”. Montgomery pie “is similar to a shoofly pie, except lemon juice is usually added to the bottom layer and buttermilk to the topping”. My mother sometimes made chess pie:
I liked it then, but I think it would disgust me now.
It’s great that she’s using those things. I was always taught to keep nice things put away so they would stay nice, but when I got married, my husband, who was of the live-fast-die-young philosophy, insisted on using them for everyday. So the octogenarians in the family gave him some fragile porcelain espresso cups that I thought you could break if you squeezed just a little, and here we were actually drinking espresso from them. Ah, how I remember that little one room apartment with the sun coming in and the murphy bed that folded up into the wall and the little drip espresso maker that you had to unscrew to put the espresso in a little compartment.
As far as Stu’s lament, if he knows how to identify something that “looks purty”, he already has the seed of how to arrange things. Nature grows things in ways you could never dream up by yourself. All you have to do is identify them. When I do plantings outdoors, I am trying to make an outdoor room, so I suppose when you take things in, you are trying to make a little bit of the forest inside. I do read a lot of gardening books (I like Gertrude Jekyll), and especially look at the pictures, to see what works and what I think is absolutely hideous, but the important thing is to find something you enjoy and put it where you can see it often.
Here’s one website with lots of pictures.
http://www.thegardener.btinternet.co.uk/flowerarranging.html
Personally I don’t like them all that much, too anal and not foresty enough, but you can get the idea of how different shapes feel. Look at pictures of the most expensive stuff you can find, even if you get your materials from a second hand shop. I will be very interested to see how Stu handles his homework.
Hmmm, perhaps I will look for moss when I walk today….might be interesting to see who comes up with the best one first.
I see there is a difference between “natural” and “cultured” buttermilk, or Buttermilch. The natural kind is the liquid that is left over after butter is churned. As I remember, it was the thick cultured stuff that I knew as a kid. I remember the yellow bits in it.
There’s also the German Molke, which is the liquid that is left over from the making of cheese. I think that’s called whey in English. Molke has been on the market in Germany for decades now, primarily as one of the Müllermilch products of the Müller Group. The group has been involved in various court cases and political rows. Greenpeace sued them successfully for misleading advertising. The group attempted to manipulate prices by terminating delivery contracts with dairies unwilling to leave the Organisation of Milk Producers, a kind of union.
Crown, Molke is used to make that Norwegian brown cheese of which there is a photograph somewhere on your site:
Until only a few years ago, you couldn’t get cultured buttermilk here. Now you can, but it’s rather a a health-freak thing. When I was in Texas once in the 90s, the only kind of “buttermilk” I found in any store was “100% fat-free”. I didn’t buy it because I figured it wouldn’t taste like much of anything.
Personally I don’t like them all that much, too anal and not foresty enough
I don’t think even a real forest of easy-going assholes would teach me much about flower arranging. But after looking at some of the photos, I see what you mean, Nijma. “Nature grows things in ways you could never dream up by yourself”. I should take that to heart.
Actually it’s not the arranging part that is problematic – I think I could pick up the basics – but rather choosing colors that don’t clash like groups of football hooligans. This is a general problem I have that’s not restricted to flowers. Whenever I have to choose matching colors, such as for ties, shirts and trousers, I can only manage a sort of chain effect – each thing matches only one other thing, like adjoining pieces in a puzzle. The big picture is a Pollock splatter.
At Nijma’s link, I found this under “The Language of Flowers”:
Buttercup – Cheerfulness; ingratitude; childishness; desire for riches
I actually know a buttercup!
Color, yes, this is from Christopher Lloyd’s “The Adventurous Gardener” (1921):
Miss Jekyll’s main border was 200 ft. long by 14 ft. side. It had full stops at the ends and two-third the way along (where it divided by a cross-path) made with big yuccas, bergenias, …..The border had a colour scheme (not lavishly adhered to) : cool at the ends, building up to hot in the middle. Thus at the west end it starts with blues and greys merging into pale yellows, then brighter yellows, orange, and red. From there it cools off again in the same order except that at the east end there were mauves, pinks, and purples rather than pure blues…..On the whole she preferred colour harmonies to colour contrasts. I think most of us come to that preference as we get older. but her exception to this rule was blue. ‘Pure blues always seem to demand peculiar and very careful treatment.’ thus she liked a full blue, as she called it, with a pole yellow but couldn’t bear blue with mauve or purple. for this reason ;she had the mauves and purple at one end of the border and the blues at the other, that is delphiniums, …etc. [four paragraphs of flower lists follow, none of which are winter hardy in my zone.]
I don’t have Jekyll’s book on color in the garden, but I understand she didn’t approve at all of maroon flowers, although her nephew used them. I don’t approve of them either, as they are not complimentary to my complexion, being somewhat blonde and fair–when I can wear red at all it has to be a brick or cinnamon shade. Also, if you have even one zit, the burgundy color will make it stand out. Why not make your surroundings complement you as well, so you look your most flattering sitting in the midst of them.
It sounds to me Grumbly like people have been telling you you’re ‘bad at colors’. Well don’t listen to them, they’re probably very conservative. There’s nothing wrong with Jackson Pollock; they’ll be doing it too in ten years time, you just have to stand up to them.
If you think something is “a Pollock splatter” you are already on your way to knowing what you like.
More snippets about color:
~With distance, yellows are easy to see but reds disappear, so if you want showy flowers, the yellows should go in the back of the property; any hard to see colors, red, pink, salmon go near the entrances.
~Cool colors (blue, green) help you relax and be calm. Reds, yellows, and oranges are high energy, but maybe not so good for concentration. There is plenty of stuff written about how to use color in different rooms for different emotional effect.
~Colors look more intense and pure with a black background. This optical principle was used in TV sets with the pixels surrounded by a black screen to give higher color definition. But of course the electronics was the same, it was only a trick of the human eye that made it appear brighter.
~ Use of complementary colors: ever stare at one of those optical illusions with the flag or a yellow dot, then look at a blank page and see the opposite colors on the color wheel? That’s because the cells in the retina fire when you see a particular color, but they get tired after a while, the same as when you smell an odor walking into a building but after a little time you don’t smell it anymore even though someone walking in with a new nose will smell it. You can put a complementary color (opposite on the color wheel) next to the color to make it appear sharper. That’s why blue and purple look good next to yellow, etc. But if you use the same value of the color, very bright primary purple with bright primary yellow, it won’t look right. With a bright hue you have to use a pale one next to it, for example bright yellow with pale lavender.
~With choosing a clothing, of course you are trying to match your own hair, skin, eye colors and bring out your best features. Since I have blue eyes, wearing blue or gray will reflect and magnify the blue color, where another stronger color might make the blue eyes fade into the background. Someone with ruddy skin probably doesn’t want to wear something that makes the skin color jump out more, but would choose another feature to emphasize. Again there is a bunch of stuff written on this, but even if you have no talent whatsoever, you can still learn to do a passable job that you will like, especially if you don’t have money for designers. (Not everyone can be like Kron’s wife–our talents are not all grouped the same.)
More snippets about color:
Holy shit! Did you just type all that from your head straight into the keyboard?? For now I’m going to stick with shades of black and gray (I have one red shirt for special occasions). There are only two things I know about colors: 1) A guy once told me I should wear earthy browns and blues. But I don’t like those colors! <* whines *>. I just remembered someone told me 20 years later that he was one of the first people in Austin to die of AIDS. 2) I love orange, but can’t wear it because it makes my face light up like Jack Pumpkinhead.
Christopher Lloyd was born in 1921, so that’s an early work of his, Nij.
Although I’ve got some of Gertrude Jekyell’s books I can’t get on with them. Her gardens are amazing though, especially the ones she did with Lutyens.
One of the best gardens in the spirit of G.J. is Hidcote Manor, after which the lavender is named, which was done* by an American called Lawrence.
*What is the verb for making a garden? ‘Designed’ is too hands-off. ‘Dug’ is too much the opposite.
I see Kron beat me to the comment about Pollock, but there is a place for everything and it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Pollack spatters might look good in one context, and artist’s tie, but not in another, a banker’s tie. I’ve noticed that dark skinned people can get away with much brighter colors, and Pollack splatters would probably set off their good features rather than overwhelm them, but sorry, I can’t wear anything like that or have it in my house. I already have enough C.H.A.O.S.
You could always wear orange shoes.
Funny you should mention orange shoes. An IT colleague of mine is getting on in years, and though I believe he used to rather fancy himself as a youthful and dynamic go-getter, age is taking its toll. But with age comes the long-term girlfriend. The last time I saw him, he was wearing a sporty expensive red après-ski sweatshirt and orange shoes with his crow’s-feet. In response to my raised eyebrows and pursed lips, he explained shamefacedly that his girlfriend was encouraging him to buy youthful clothes. “Nothing wrong with being bold”, he added.
I was ashamed for him, of course. Not much longer, and he will be an old fart decked out in a Hawaiian shirt, slipping and sliding over the disco floor.
Okay, the Lloyd, now I see the dash after the 1921-
The original publication date was 1983, but Jekyll was 1843-1932, so wouldn’t that make her Victorian, but obviously she was past the point where they were “bedding out”, that is moving huge numbers of pots with annuals outside as they started to bloom, a practice that is hugely labor intensive and requires a staff of gardeners. Still, she talks about the different chores of different seasons and how to keep the chores going through the winter so people will have some occupation during the slow season. I guess back then they didn’t have transient armies of Mexicans mowing lawns who go back home at the sign of the first snowflake and stay there until lawnmowing season starts up again.
You would say garden design or landscaping (sounds like bulldozers) or once there was even the wife of some famous architect here that took some title like “landscape architect”. I usually say I “put in” a garden, it can also mean just to plant an existing garden with flowers or vegetables in the spring.
Holy shit, yes it’s all in my head. I’ve done televisions and gardens too, and I try to do some composition with photos (it’s about light), but those are only guidelines. You have to look at it and play with it and move the elements around until it looks right. A horizontal line is for stability, a vertical line is for motion. Diagonals are for movement. A vertical line at the left of a horizontal line will anchor that line. Those are just words though and only good for making you think about what you are seeing.
In response to my raised eyebrows and pursed lips, he explained shamefacedly …
And all this from a man who wore a miniskirt, on a Harley, in Texas.
If you don’t wear the orange next to your face it might be okay. I have some orange silk pants I am always looking for an occasion to wear, although they always seem to need ironing. I think they will go with navy, although they are next to the ironing board and just accidentally on the same hanger with a dark silver shirt, which looks okay. That brilliant shade of green the color of squashed caterpillars that was all the rage for a while back there looks good with navy and with small amount of orange too. It is Halloween season after all. You might also look for a different shade of orange, with more red or brown in it. Brown, oh, no, I look good in brown but I refuse to wear it since all the dress-for-success books came out against it years ago, also I wouldn’t want to get aids, those cautionary tales are always useful.
Was it a Harley? I remember the miniskirt, the wig, and especially the purple fuzzy sweater from the Salvation Army store, that was especially poignant.
It may not have been a Harley.
It may not have been the Salvation army.
Not a Harley, just a 205 cc (?) Honda. Not the Salvation Army, just St. Vincent de Paul’s. Texas is different in that way.
We have St. Vincent de Paul’s, also Unique Thrift stores, often shortened to “Unique Boutique”. My best Halloweens have always come from the Salvation Army, although I don’t approve their recent hiring policies. Well I remember my university days when I was a very convincing (and thin) H.P. Lovecraft style ghoul with a navy leotard and white and blue makeup, or later as a killer bee and a pregnant girl scout. *sigh* These days though I just walk into the classroom with a pointy hat, and my students are so comfortable with it they run to borrow a broom from security. Then we conjugate “fly”.
I remember the 205 cc Honda, I almost bought one, but it was more fun to ride behind Boyfriend. After he totaled his Harley (750?) he used the insurance money to get a Norton. He always laughed at my brother’s Kawasakis (“cows”) because they had a two stroke engine and made more noise.
My, you have all been busy.
Nature as flower-arranger: Why does she have to put clashing shade of blue/purple on the same hydrangea plant?
Colors: I am not at all gifted at clothing coordination, but then I generally dress so casually that it hardly matters. When it does matter, I ask for help. There is a rumor that I have a slight color-blindness, which, if true, is a pretty good excuse.
Halloween costumes: Some years ago I hosted a party clad as Neptune, King o’ the Deep. The key element of the costume was a mass of seaweed that I obtained at a fish store, loosely fastened together just enough to form a sort of sleeveless upper-body garment. It started off damp, but in the course of the evening it dried out steadily from body heat, initially giving off quite an aroma and eventually crumbling and falling on the floor in little bits.
I will close with a quotation from, once again, Jane Austen: When Darcy is teased for not having danced at Bingley’s ball, then teased for offering the excuse that he didn’t know all those people:
“Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers.”
“Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?”
“I can answer your question,” said Fitzwilliam, “without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”
“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”
“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”
(I’m not saying I agree. Surely some people are just not cut out to play the piano.)
I always found Darcy a selfish prig. How insufferably pretentious to say: I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.
I hear you, but I am not be quite so hard on him. He is selfish in some ways and not in others. He learns, painfully, to be less selfish.
That he “cannot catch their tone of conversation” may be an accurate piece of self-knowledge. For some people, that skill does require work.
That he “cannot […] appear interested […]” looks more damning (although “pretentious” misses the mark for me), but here’s an alternative take: Some young people of an intelligent, honest, and serious nature have no interest in small talk, because they can’t imagine what it is good for. They often ease up later; as life goes along, they find out that small talk can lead to bigger talk. and that feigned interest can lead to communication and thus to real interest .
am not quite
“Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers.”
There is a joke about two people of some nationality stranded on a desert island; after they are rescued years later they are asked why they never spoke to each other. It was because they couldn’t find anyone to introduce them. I think Emerson told that one on the Swedes, but I think I heard it told on the British too.
But what if it is not a joke? What if they genuinely do need an introduction, just as some might need an introduction to flower arranging?
to form a sort of sleeveless upper-body garment
A question about the lower body garment comes to mind, but I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
I haven’t got my moss or sticks or whatever together yet for my arrangement yet, maybe tomorrow after class…also I need to look for a vahz.
Also wondering about the voidplay style of flower/plant arrangement.
Is empty in on the competition? And who is the judge?
Yes of course, everyone is in on it. It will be its own reward.
I have always known that joke in the form: There was a Dane, a Norwegian and a Swede who were all stranded on a desert island … and the Swede was still waiting to be introduced. I don’t even know if there is a middle bit, perhaps Sili or Trond knows.
Ø: no interest in small talk, because they can’t imagine what it is good for. They often ease up later
Not that I’m Mr Darcy or anything, but I would have benefited from small-talk practice. I’m going to suggest it to my daughter, we can do it while we’re flower arranging.
I hear a surreptitious suggestion that Darcy had some variant of Asperger’s syndrome. Well, that idea may give rise to interesting takes on P&P. But it’s also possible to see Darcy simply as proud and selfish, then growing out of it, just like “some young people” – the standard take on P&P. I myself see no advantage in speculating whether Darcy’s well-phrased but supercilious remark would be likely to fall from the lips of someone with a “personality disorder”. The novel is entitled Pride and Prejudice, not Pathology and Prejudice.
In any case, it’s not “damning” to call someone pretentious. What Darcy says in the conversation we’re discussing is pretentious, because he presents himself as lacking the “common” touch: I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done. Darcy’s social background, however, explains the general expectation that he should be able to conduct conversations with anyone at his social level. This is unmistakably implied by Fitzwilliam, who speaks immediately before Darcy, saying: I can answer your question … without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble. As Austen presents him, Darcy is quite capable of being agreeable, but he thinks that agreeableness is beneath him.
In particular, many men neither proud nor selfish, often seem to be just that, because they “have no interest” in smalltalk and can’t imagine what it is good for. Womenfolk complain bitterly about it, as is well-known.
There is a disgusting habit some Germans have. If you start talking about something they may be unfamiliar to them, they actually cut you off by saying das interessiert mich nicht (I’m not interested in that). I find this unbelievably rude, but what can you say?
That’s appallingly rude, Grumbly. But to make sure you could try doing it to them and see how they respond.
I thought Darcy sounded pretentious. I don’t believe he’s a candidate for Asperger’s, he’s too cross.
they actually cut you off by saying das interessiert mich nicht
Great heavens. I hope if I was ever interrupted in this way I would have the presence of mind to lift my hat and walk away without another word.
the lower body garment
I was properly covered up down there. It just came back to me: sweatpants. Possibly I took some pale green sweatpants and dyed them blue; or vice versa.
suggestion that Darcy had some variant of Asperger’s syndrome
No. Such syndromes were in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t really thinking that Darcy was anywhere near diagnosable. Just that he could use some small-talk practice. And his cousin nailed it: he just doesn’t bother to try.
When Language lifts his hat you know you’re in trouble.
Ø, I admire you for the s4aweed, but I can’t see Neptune wearing sweatpants. Are you sure it wasn’t bathing trunks with golden pointed slippers?
The trouble with das interessiert mich nicht is that you must be prepared for anyone to say it, unexpectedly. Not ruffians, but otherwise respectable people will pull this on you in the middle of a smalltalkative conversation. It has chapped my ass for lo! these 40 years in this country. It may be abating, though.
Of course, since most people quickly learn of my affiliation with SHATMONO (School of Holding Forth on Any Topic at a Moment’s Notice), the idea will arise that that is the only way people know to shut me up. Well, that would be wrong for two reasons: 1) it’s said when I haven’t even really gotten into my stride, and 2) I hear people say it to each other.
bathing trunks with golden pointed slippers
Damn! That’s a much better idea.
1) it’s said when I haven’t even really gotten into my stride, and 2) I hear people say it to each other
Does anyone ever reply “hang on, I was just getting to the good part”?
No, Germans themselves don’t think it rude to say that to each other. The person charged with being uninteresting just moves on to some other topic.
Yes, exactly. How do they know they aren’t interested when you haven’t got to the punchline? I think you ought to ask them how they know they won’t be interested.
I’ve tried that, of course. The answer was usually along the lines of davon verstehe ich nichts, und ich will es auch nicht (I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t want to). Someone obsessed with finding a bright side of things might imagine that das interessiert mich nicht is merely a way of asking “can’t we talk about something that I know something about, so I can make a contribution?”. After all, it’s only me who takes offence. I would never say something like that, but I’ve learned to live with it, because the people who say it don’t really mean to be rude. It’s as if the word interessieren had a special meaning in this context.
On the analogy of saying “You’re a really mean bastard, you know that?” in a tone of grudging admiration.
What do they use, a tone of resignation?
No, definitely not resignation. What I am trying to say is that maybe the expression isn’t really rude – since nobody except me takes offence. Maybe this is a German expression that means something quite different from what it “seems to mean”. There are expressions like that in every language, I expect.
A Calvinist might never understand how people can say “Have a nice day” to each other all the time. It wouldn’t seem rude, but blasphemous.
It’s good to have in the back of my mind that if ever a German starts talking about football I can just say das interessiert mich nicht and he’ll just shut up.
I don’t suppose you can say it to a group of people. They’ll just say bugger off, then.
That’s an interesting point. You can’t say it to a group of people unless you’re their boss. Otherwise, they say “Oh yeah, you and who else, creep?”
I found this online, 6 people not 3:
There’s one about the desert island inhabited by two Danes, two Norwegians and two Swedes. After a year, the Danes had a thriving farm together, the Norwegians were always bickering, and the Swedes were still waiting to be introduced.
I’ve seen that joke two or three times now, and I still don’t get it. What’s this about “bickering”? Are Norwegians supposed to be lower-class types, the Swedish to be cultivated and reserved, while the practical Danes just get on with business?
I think the main point is about the Swedes, but extreme social shyness or being overly formal aren’t characteristic of the Swedes I’ve met.
It will be its own reward.
Sort of like Virtue or Chastity.
sweatpants
Yes, I can see Neptune in sweat pants as long as he has the trident. The symbolism behind that is…well, never mind.
das interessiert mich nicht
Could this be a form of “TMI”? The topic of conversation wasn’t something like emesis, or the reproductive lives of nematodes, was it?
Just that he could use some small-talk practice.
You often see this in engineers (I come from a family of engineers plus I’ve worked in labs, and for what it’s worth I know what an oscilloscope is and how to use it). Very often they can’t spell either, even if they can do differential calculus in their sleep. It’s just a matter of being “results oriented” instead of “process oriented”.
I’m sure I had a trident, and probably a crown, too.
It’s just a matter of being “results oriented” instead of “process oriented”.
Methinks you oversimplify greatly. Anyway, I repeat that I am not suggesting that Darcy is “on the spectrum”. His aversion to small talk has other causes.
[…] October 24, 2009 — Nijma Inspired by AJP, who posted a photo of moss in a windowsill, here is what is in my windowsill at the moment: mint cuttings with roots. […]
Okay, here’s my first entry. This mint has been rooting in my windowsill for a while. It’s purely functional, but I like the way the sunlight goes through the leaves and the contrast of pure light and color with the dismal urban “architecture” in the background.
http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/windowsill/
I have obviously been away from Germany for too long – I would be extremely offended if somebody just cut me off saying “Das interessiert mich nicht.” I’m happy to report that’s not what the German expats hereabouts do (at least not the ones I know).
perhaps Sili or Trond knows.
Not me. Never heard it.
There’s one about the desert island inhabited by two Danes, two Norwegians and two Swedes. After a year, the Danes had a thriving farm together, the Norwegians were always bickering, and the Swedes were still waiting to be introduced.
What’s this about “bickering”? Are Norwegians supposed to be lower-class types, the Swedish to be cultivated and reserved, while the practical Danes just get on with business?
It’s seems to have been told by Swedes as a joke on themselves. A Norwegian version might have had the Danes farming and setting up a brewery, the Swedes setting up a bank and a factory, and the Norwegians arguing over the spelling on the signpost (or where to place it).
I have to remove it from in between the cobbles; the moss gets overgrown with grass, and pretty soon the cobbles have disappeared altogether.
They say if you keep picking out the blades of grass, eventually the moss will establish itself and be thick enough to keep the grass out.
Grumbly and empty have been awfully quiet. I wonder how they are doing with their nature arrangements.
I can’t get this squirrel to stand still in the vase, and I’ll never do it with you looking over my shoulder!
They’re working very late.
I generally use a stuffed squirrel. Good taxidermists stock sets of variously colored glass eyes, from which you select those which match the flowers in the given arrangement.
“They say if you keep picking out the blades of grass, eventually the moss will establish itself and be thick enough to keep the grass out.”
My cobbles get totally subsumed under moss and then, the next year, grass. I like moss, but I paid too much in both money and digging to let those cobbles disappear. My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Your metrical sense is crumbling as well. It sez here:
This sonnet is often incorrectly quoted or reproduced[9]. The most common misquotation – “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” – replaces the correct “on” with “upon”, thus turning the regular decasyllabic (iambic pentameter) verse into an 11-syllable line.
I generally use a stuffed squirrel.
I just remembered plastic flowers. Now, don’t knock ’em. A fantastic woman I know in Germany who works for ZDF, she bought a collection of plastic tulips at an antique shop, and she’s got huge bunches of them in glass vases all long a row of windows in her apartment. It looks so good. I’ve been wanting to get some plastic flowers for the garden. Not everything looks convincing; tulips may be the best.
I used to have a big vase of gaudy plastic flowers in the bathroom. It looked good, and it was easy to clean them when dusty – I just held them under the shower.
thus turning the regular decasyllabic (iambic pentameter) verse into an 11-syllable line
Well okay, but that depends on pronouncing Ozzzy with only four syllables, whereas we did it at school with five (ozzy mandy ass).
You mean as in those other immortal lines?
Said King Ozymandias:
“Pigeons on the grass, alas”.
Dammit, I can’t find that on google. Did you make it up?,
The second line is Gertrude Stein, from Four Saints in Three Acts. I just added the first line because, according to your school pronunciation of Ozymandias, it should scan in conjunction with the second line.
Here is something about the pigeons:
Muchos grassy-ass.
It would be Moo-chass grassy-ass.
I’m with Kron on the pronunciation of Ozymandias. There’s a reason everyone wants to say “upon’.
Maybe the grass plucking theory only works in the shade.
The arrangements sound like they’re coming along quite nicely. I have a squirrel here you can stuff if you can catch it. I keep trying to plant grass over the areas where tree stumps have been removed and the squirrel digs the sod up as fast as I can put it down. Yesterday I chased it up a tree while making Donald Duck noises — I hope no one was watching.
Plastic flowers though, that’s soooo 50’s. These days it’s silk flowers and they can look quite realistic. You just can’t watch them metamorphasize in the vase. The Jordanians are very much into scents and like to spray their artificial flowers with perfumes. That’s not the point of arrangements though. If someone else makes a plastic flower, that’s their arrangement, not yours. The whole point is to go out into nature and discern the harmonies (and perhaps even dissonances) of nature for yourselves.
Moo-chass grassy-ass.
gracia (grace) is feminine:
and the second bootleg verse:
[to rise up to heaven you need a very large ladder, a very large ladder and another smaller one (for the back door)]
Do you think squirrels are really afraid of Donald Duck, Nij?
That squirrel was laughing at me, I tell you, laughing. It’s probably rabid, who knows. Next time I bring the shovel. Er, peppermint.
Una poca de gracia
This looks like non-standard Mexican Spanish. Standard would be un poco de regardless of the gender of the noun that follows, same as in un pedazo de ‘a piece of’, and conversely una taza de ‘a cup of’.
Una poca
I originally learned the La Bamba song from a Chilean, but I’ll ask my students Friday, or maybe LH will cruise by and give teh Argentinian take. I added accents on seré, but I was also thinking mi and ti should have accents over the i’s.
I was also thinking mi and ti should have accents over the i’s.
Right. Without the accents they mean “my” and “your”.
“My” is mi but “your” is tu without the accent. (“You” is tú with the accent.)
I wish they would bother to write it correctly in the first place. You can only spend so much time with cut and paste.
Yeah, wrote too fast.
[…] Days Night October 31, 2009 — Nijma Today after work, I finally finished AJP’s moss challenge to arrange some artifacts from outdoors. Not bad. At the same time, I slipped out of my little […]
Nij, you have won. You’re the only one with the necessary endurance, obviously. You win whatever it was; a trip round the universe at empty’s expense, I think.
Oh, I haven’t given up on the others just quite yet. I was hoping when they saw how low the bar was, they would try for themselves. Of course it’s much easier to moan “Oh, I just don’t have the ability…”
Now that the Goblins of Halloween, (a significant holiday for some) have passed by and we’re now in the jurisdiction of All the Saints, perhaps they will have more time on their hands.
May I also suggest music as an adjunct to creativity? I once listened to Holst’s Planets while creating something and the Mars item turned out to be very interesting .
Una poca de gracia
This looks like non-standard Mexican Spanish.
Students are telling me “es unisex”, and they remind me of “la mano”, “una mano” for “the hand”, “a hand” , a word with a masculine ending ( -o not -a) that takes a feminine article (la, not el), (una, not un). One student whipped out his cellphone with La Bamba video on it and played it for the class to demonstrate that “una poca de gracia” is the standard lyric. They tell me you can say either “un poco de gracia” or “una poca de gracia”, either is correct, and they mean the same thing. I was surprised to find out that gracia in this case means humor or comicness, I always thought it meant grace or gracefulness.
Maybe the difference is that un pedazo de and una taza de are always nouns and don’t change their endings, but poco/poca can be an adjective: poca ropa, poca gente, poco dinero, poco tiempo.
Oh, and I asked them about the accents over “para mi para ti”, and they threw up their hands, saying accents were difficult.
“la mano”, “una mano” for “the hand”, “a hand” , a word with a masculine ending ( -o not -a) that takes a feminine article (la, not el), (una, not un).
This is because in the Latin ancestor, manus ‘hand’ was not in the declension class that had all masculine nouns, such as dominus ‘lord’, but in another, archaic declension class which had the vowel “u” in most forms (unlike the dominus class). This class had few members but they were of both genders, and manus was feminine. As time went on the -us endings became just -o in Spanish, and the other endings which differenciated the two -us classes disappeared, but the words kept their original gender, hence the present la mano which looks like a contradiction in gender. Exactly the same thing happened in the transformation from Latin to Italian, as in “La ci darem la mano” (the beginning of an aria in Don Giovanni, meaning “let’s hold hands”).
“La ci darem la mano” (the beginning of an aria in Don Giovanni, meaning “let’s hold hands”).
But if I remember my Beatles from German class, “Komm, gib mir deine Hand”, (and my German is almost totally lost) the word “hand” must have become feminine in German, otherwise the objective form would be “deiner Hand.”
Um, no, it would be “deinen” if masculine and “dein” if neuter.
They actually recorded a German version of “I want to hold your hand”. Funny!
I was the first person in my school to take two languages, and had to get all kinds of signatures to take that many courses. I took German instead of the 4th year of English–I had already satisfied the English requirement by taking debate, which is how I became an on-and-off political junkie. First year German was right before 4th year Spanish, so it sort of got crowded out in my brain.
Here’s the wiki about “I wanna hold your hand”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_to_Hold_Your_Hand
From 1960 to 1962, the Beatles did gigs primarily at strip clubs in Hamburg. Even the haircut is of German origin:
Kirchherr took the first professional photos of the group and cut Sutcliffe’s hair in the German “exi” (existentialist) style of the time, a look later adopted by the other Beatles.
That’s interesting about the hair-do.
For some reason Monty Python did some shows in German. I don’t think they’d ever played Grosse Freiheit, though.
m-l, thanks for the “la mano” explanation. I shared it with the students this morning and they enjoyed the explanation very much. In exchange they tell me a bathrobe in Mexico is “una bata de baño” — I’m sure I will find an appropriate LH thread to share this on.
[…] go out with different objectives in mind. A few months ago, inspired by the moss arrangement done by AJP’s wife, and some links to scholar’s stones, I was looking for both moss and a scholar’s stone. […]