Browsing through this summer’s posts, I came across a blurry picture of Holly’s lower teeth:
So yes, they do indeed have lower teeth. Even Misty must have teeth in there somewhere:
Where are they, though? I think Holly’s teeth look a bit stained. According to my daughter, our dog Topsy ought to get her teeth straightened. Dogs can have braces, she says.
It’s not going to happen.
A Bad Guide 
If dogs could have braces they wouldn’t need belts. But they don’t wear trousers, so they don’t need their teeth straightened.
How very wise, Grumbly.
Well, no need to be sniffy about it. It’s true. Have you ever seen a brace of dogs belting up? Of course not.
And what would become of the old saying: “as crooked as a dog’s tooth”?
Clarification: you never see them belting up, they always keep barking at each other.
Had an unsuccessful job interview today. Anybody want to mess with me better put warm clothes on (Ger. loc.)
Ah, I wasn’t aware of that saying. One of our dogs (the sixteen-year-old, needless to say) is toothless. Yet he manages very well as long as his food is chopped up for him.
I wasn’t being sniffy. Actually, our dogs do have snow suits, but what they really need is wellingtons.
Aha, it’s November and the German internet police can’t touch you. Welcome back to the land of wide-screen color blogging!
I got it wrong, dammit. It’s “as crooked as a dog’s hind legs”.
Maybe “dress for winter” would be better. Wer sich mit mir heute anlegen will, muß sich warm anziehen”.
I’m sorry about the interview. You see, if you get a job in Köln you can have a small dog and small ones really don’t need as much exercise.
Oh dear, I’m being summoned to watch a programme on television, we’ll have to continue this tomorrow (refusal is not an option).
I thought you’d never ask! What happened was this: this was a small project, only 20 person-days, to do some apparently trivial stuff. However, the customer had talked up the project requirements in advance to make it seem as if all kind of high-tech abilities might be required. The sales rep who was trying to place me did the same.
The interview in Frankfurt went swimmingly. After a short presentation, I was asked if I had any questions, so I asked a few of the kind that show I’m thinking and interested. Not too much, just a bit. The project lead asked me a few questions, essentially about my attitude towards working under pressure, coming to work on time etc. This was because they’d had problems with external people who would skip days, claiming that their “stepmother was ill”. I said work was no problem, that’s what you get paid for.
At the end of this 20-minute interview, everyone was wreathed in smiles. They said there was one other candidate who had been there in the morning, so they had to give both of us formal consideration etc., and the rep and I left. It seemed the cat was in the bag. 2 hours later, the rep called to say the other person had got the job. He had called the lead and found out what the problem was. The lead was looking for someone to knuckle down and not ask questions. He liked me, but THOUGHT I WAS TOO COMMUNICATIVE FOR THE JOB.
In Germany, the IT folks I know joke about being “industrial whores”, i.e. doing all kinds of nasty work for money. It’s true, too. I have embellished on that, in that I say I’m a Geisha – I do the same stuff as the street girls, but take more money for it. When I told someone today about the interview, he said that apparently the lead wanted someone to whom he could say Halt’s Maul, und mach’! (Just shut up, and do it!) This is what one can say to whores, according to my etiquette book. So, what happened in this interview is that a Geisha unsuccessfully applied for a job in an Eros Center.
What pisses me off even more is this: the project lead now acts as if he really only wanted a bit of silent pussy, but then he head-fucked me in the interview, and didn’t even pay.
Grumbly, aren’t you lucky that you didn’t get sucked into such a lousy workplace, even temporarily. You will get another chance with a place better suited to your talents and personality.
Dogs do not often wear trousers, but they often pant.
I’m sorry to report that if you google “dogs in suspenders image”, you will find images of dogs in suspenders.
My nomination for best phrase in the thread: “wreathed in smiles”.
They didn’t deserve you, Grumbly. Pearls before swine.
OK, that was suspenders for a dog. Suspenders on a dog.
Maybe Grumbly is more of a cat person, you never know. Some people also do well with snakes. But I would second the dog recommendation, along with experimenting with the calming effects of moss arrangements.
On other fronts I just found my landlady has left the premises, like a week ago already, along with her newborn. The baby-daddy is her old boyfriend who used to live in my present apartment. Last week some neighbors told me about how she used to turn up with her face purple with bruises until she learned how to call the police. The domestic violence aspect was making me really nervous, I mean you can’t live in a place where that is going on without knowing something. Maybe things will be quieter now.
Sorry, Crown, for using your blog as a landlady.
The customer was Deutsche Bahn, the German train operator. It’s a standard complaint here that when a train stops in the middle of nowhere for 30 minutes, there are seldom any announcements telling the passengers what went wrong, and how long it should take until the train move on. Now I know why.
empty, that’s actually just a hackneyed expression: “their faces were wreathed in smiles”
Yes, but it’s the perfect, sarcastic one, in the circumstances.
Actually… where is it… Halt’s Maul, und mach’! would be a good recording for them to have on trains, to be triggered every time someone asks why we’re waiting in the tunnel.
Two cats is certainly a possibility. I wouldn’t want to sleep with snakes, myself. Dogs are my choice.
Pearls before swine.
The mini pig is an excellent pet, I’ve seen several around her (six, in all). My daughter has pig flu at the moment.
For $44.99, I want to see a photograph of the Yorkshire terrier actually wearing the trousers.
The trouble with dogs, as far as I’m concerned, is that they’re so loyal and devoted, no matter what you do to them. That makes me suspicious. Cats, by contrast, don’t take no shit. They do exactly what they want, no matter what you want. I find that reassuring – no surprises.
You never know what evil a dog might be meditating behind that facade of loyalty. One day they might rear up and bite you. Cats just strike you out of their will, and move to Miami.
I forgot to ask about your daughters’s the swine flu. Is she doing allright, all things considered?
Grumbly, you ought to try and get a job working on the Sloterdijk & Rüdi Safranski tv show. It’s probably not that well-paid, by business standards, but I bet you’d enjoy it.
That would be a tall order. I’d have to sharpen up my repartee something fierce. Just imagine: no more facile generalizations, just difficult ones!
She’s doing all right; it’s no fun lying around when you want to be out riding. I had the first half of the vaccination, but too late, so I’m slightly ill too.
Has anyone heard an explanation of why the infection is called swine flu? There haven’t been mass slaughterings of pigs, unlike the case with the birds. I think I read somewhere that swine flu is a misnomer, but everyone keeps saying it.
Crown, when one gets a fever from this flu, does one perhaps have hallucinations of little flying pigs? What could it mean to see the skies over Frankfurt black with flying wart-hogs? Perhaps I should consult one of those porctologists that Germany has so many of.
From the CDC:
Why is 2009 H1N1 virus sometimes called “swine flu”?
This virus was originally referred to as “swine flu” because laboratory testing showed that many of the genes in this new virus were very similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs (swine) in North America. But further study has shown that this new virus is very different from what normally circulates in North American pigs. It has two genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia and bird (avian) genes and human genes. Scientists call this a “quadruple reassortant” virus.
That would make “chimera flu” a more apposite designation.
That’s a curious expression: flu viruses “circulate”. I wonder what it means?
Yes, I know ‘wreathed in smiles’. I enjoyed your use of it. Maybe the wreath in the original hackneyed expression is meant to be creases all around one person’s face, but in your scene it was more like cigarette smoke encircling you all.
Oops, I was reading that as if it were the genes that circulated.
Actually, genes must circulate as well: on the backs (in the bellies?) of viruses.
Aren’t viruses just little gene machines?
In the German equivalent of the Scientific American (the old one, that had some Niveau), I’ve read speculation that these little gene-splicers that we now call viruses may have been essential factors in the origins of cellular life.
The old “one”, for Chrissake
There is no such thing as flying pigs, Grumbly. My hallucinations are realist, no flying things.
Now I have to go back and keep my daughter company.
Damn, what a wretched way to lose a job (even if it probably would have been a crappy one). I hereby place the feared Languagehat Monkey’s Armpit Curse on Deutsche Bahn.
There haven’t been mass slaughterings of pigs, unlike the case with the birds.
Actually, there was mass slaughtering of pigs in Cairo. Now garbage is piling up and causing all sorts of problems, because the pigs were the neighborhood garbage disposal. Oh, humanity, what can’t you screw up with your irrational fears and impulsive actions?
AJP: Maybe the goat’s teeth are stained because he smokes too much ?
One advantage of being of, erm, “mature” years – you don’t seem to get swine flu. Presumably because of having had so many other types over the decades. A niece went down with it two days after she had dinner with us, and it didn’t hit us.
The goats are all non-smokers; it’s much too dangerous with all that straw & hay around. More likely, it’s from drinking tea.
Actually, there was mass slaughtering of pigs in Cairo. Now garbage is piling up and causing all sorts of problems, because the pigs were the neighborhood garbage disposal. Oh, humanity, what can’t you screw up with your irrational fears and impulsive actions?
I had been given to understand that killing all the pigs was just to piss off the remaining Christians, rather than as an actual health care measure. (Although it is always nice to have a pretext.)
Meanwhile, in .nl it is firmly the mexikaanse griep, while the French had something pseudotechnical (grippe a?).
Meanerwhile still, the Countess is a trimester short of a shot, it turns out.
Grumbly: did you see the story about the (entirely domestic) British train fare of over a thousand quid? If you can program a computer to ask that with a straight face, maybe you could get a telecommuting gig?
Des: I found the story. With such fares, I wish I had trained as a train. But since I never had any training, I just take the trains.
In the run-up to Y2K, I heard rumors about Cobol programmers being raised from the grave, to deal with the stuff they wrote back in the 70s that no one understood any more – and getting 400 quid per hour.
IT will someday collapse under the weight of its own self-complexifying unwieldiness. I just hope the crisis comes along soon for all that Smalltalk stuff I wrote in the 90s. It was very fashionable in banks and insurance companies here, though very few people learned Smalltalk. Consequently, the hourly rates were DM 200 and more. Unless enterprise Smalltalk is revived (improbable), at some point all those applications are going to have to be migrated to Java (or .Net ??). I’m one of the few people who can do that. For years I’ve been imagining what it sounds like when a red carpet is rolled out up to your door – sometimes I awake in the early morning thinking I’ve finally heard that soft swoosh of luxury.
Maybe it’s high time we mentioned the goat mouth in this post?
https://abadguide.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/goat-mouth-continued/
Im (nearly) ‘av goat mout.
Siganus K. Sutor, labouce cabri
Thank you. What’s labouce? Cabri is kid, n’est-ce pas?
In Norway it’s svineinfluensa. Open the window and in flu ensa.
I think it is mentioned here:
https://abadguide.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/im-av-goat-mout/
“Lagrip koson” (swine flu) is somewhere else on the net.
Ah ha, labouce = la bouche. Silly moi.
Sleeping with snakes is actually not all that bad. I used to have one in my room as a child and always found the rustling sounds to be comforting. Not to mention the thought of protection it afforded against any hypothetical boogieman.
No, but it sounds like it would be dangerous unless you knew what you were doing. I wouldn’t want to be strangled by a python.
i’ve suggested once to name it porcine flu, but nobody listens to me
There are no lethal snakes here at all (but probably the boogieman doesn’t know that). The closest thing is the rattlesnake, but their territory is waaay far away. Also it’s pretty easy to identify a snake that is rattling its tail. The local snakes both here and near Wobegon are the little green and yellow striped garter snakes that feel like leather to the touch and have a nice disposition, except when they are getting ready to shed their skin and can’t see very well. But you know when that is because their eyes turn cloudy.
This summer I found three different snake skins in the garden, including one that was really huge, probably from a pregnant snake. (Garter snakes are the only ones that have live births instead of laying eggs.) Then when I was digging daylilies to bring across the street, I accidentally dug up a tiny little garter snake about two or three inches long. It was so adorable. But of course I had left my camera in the storage room and by the time I went to get it the little snake was gone.