As turkey day approaches in the United States, here is a different kind of oven bird. At Meliora Latent Julia has posted a video of the nest it builds. It’s called los horneros and one of them, rufous hornero, the red oven bird, is the national bird of Argentina. Horneros, according to Wikipedia, are known for building mud nests that resemble old wood-fired ovens (the Spanish word “hornero” comes from horno, meaning “oven”). I think the nests are extraordinary, how do they know how to build them? Look at the tiny curved entry to the nest in Julia’s video, it’s like a door that’s half ajar: it probably stops the wind and rain from getting in, and being the same colour as the nest the birds can peek outside without being observed. As you will also see from Julia’s post the oven bird is keen on expressionism.
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A Bad Guide 
I love your connection with turkeys.
As you can see here, our mud ovens (hornos de barro) are very similar to the hornero’s nest. Do you have similar ovens in the “first world”?
Spoon. Jar. Spoon. Spoon. Jar.
“Do you have similar ovens in the “first world”?” Only swallows’ nests occur to me, and the resemblance isn’t very close.
P.S. A friend set a rat-trap the other day, and caught one of these.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=polecat&hl=en&rlz=1I7SNYK_en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jSfETrraDc3n8QPuksW1Cw&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1003&bih=651&sei=lSfETrS_BtD88QOGjYWrCw
Oh, no… is it ok now? I dare the answer is “no”.
I’d love to have a polecat, all these type of animals seems to me a perfect mix of cat and dog (but I only see them on tv or in the zoo)
The RSPCA was astonished at her catch (so was she) and recommended that she take it well away from the village and release it.
swallows’ nests
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=swallows+nests&hl=en&rlz=1I7SNYK_en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=c_7ETsjRJMjV8gOr9Jn3Cg&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=986&bih=645&sei=e_7ETsCbE8yP8gPmytSECw
I’m glad to hear the polecat survived.
I love swallows, specially when a group of them stand on electric cables and look like musical notes on a pentagram.
But when I asked if you have something similar I was referring to mud ovens (perhaps they’re very common in Europe, but I truly don’t know)
I can’t think of anything like them here in the British Isles. What can our Continental chums suggest? Crown?
No, I think the designer must have copied the bird’s nest. Or vice versa, which came first (the chicken or the egg)? I suppose the Italians might have something similar, pizza ovens or something like that. I’ve seen ovens for ceramics in England that are quite similar, except they had a chimney. Glad to hear about the polecat. I didn’t realise they lived in England, let alone East Anglia.
Sili, is that a reference to Winnie The Pooh?
No, I see it’s Tommy Cooper. I used to love him. I think he’s dead.
The nest is like one of those pre-animal-rights meat pies baked in a shell of dough. “Four-and-twenty blackbirds backed in a pie”. This one is sagging, though. I suppose it was made by an apprentice.
Yes, I found Sili’s reference was to Tommy Cooper, but I don’t quite understand it (you know I’m just a visitor of your language)
Here, and in other countries on South America, there’s a lot of bread and foods cooked in “hornos de barro”, from pizza to different kinds of meat.
Grumbly, do you remember Babette’s Feast?
It’s a pity I don’t have the time to translate it to you now, but I wanted to share with you this commercial, the hornero’s nest and the Pachamama (Mother Nature for Andeane cultures) are its protagonist. It’s funny. Although, as our host will immediately notice, the model’s entrance is not ok…
Julia – I remember the title Babette’s Feast. I haven’t seen the film, but I think I read the story along with other things by Blixen, starting with Out of Africa.
>Julia
Our “avión”, the Comon House Martin, also builds it nest from mud and it’s very similar to a reversed oven. Every year they make some nests in my window office.
Obviously, here ( x World) there are mud ovens as well.
“Common”
Hahaha. That’s great, Julia.
Babette’s Feast is very well-known here, of course. I can’t remember it in much detail, but I know I liked it (I could say that about a lot of films and it’s not as bad as it sounds, it means I can watch the good ones over and over).
Poor Tommy Cooper, it turns out that he died performing his act on national television. (I wouldn’t watch it, it’s depressing.)
I knew the story “Babette’s Feast” before the film came out: it’s in one of the collections of short fiction by Karen Blixen a.k.a. Isak Dinesen. Julia, is it related to something else in this thread?
By the way, since there are no communist countries anymore, doesn’t ‘the third world’ move up a level and become ‘the second world’?
Yes, you’re may be right… And beware in what we might become nowadays!
It happens the same to me with books and films: I can only remember if I like them or not, but I could never remember their plot (which is not a good thing with my profession, or may be it is…)
I thought of Babette’s Feast when Grumbly mentioned old pre-ecologist era dishes. I remember she serves some pigeon-pie dish (that astonished me).
Jesus, the hornero’s nestisn’t like a reversed oven but exactly like a mud oven
>Julia
Yes, I said the reversed oven is the “nido de avión”
What is a reversed oven?
My wife was talking to an acquaintance today who said he went out into his back garden to chase a way what seemed to be an Alsatian and, lo, it was the biggest bloody fox he’d ever seen. Ginormous. But, he added, it hadn’t caught the village chicken. “?” said my wife. Yes, there’s this chicken that lives wild, pecking about at the roadside, but no-one can catch it because it’s not clipped and it avoids huimans by flying away. “But how about the monster fox?” “Oh its friend the dog defends it from that.” “?” “Yes, it and a dog have become an item. They often sit next to each other and take comfort in each other’s company. If you approach the chicken the dog raises merry hell.”
¡¡¡That’s a fantastic story, dearie!!!
Can’t you get us a picture of the chicken and its friend?
dearieme, this reminds me of that wildlife paragraph about Edinburgh’s Goldenacre district. I think you should write a wildlife paragraph for your own neighborhood. We all should.
>Empty
I mean the nest of a Common House Martin is like a mud oven whose base is now the top. It’s glued to the ceiling:
http://www.foro-ciudad.com/almeria/beninar/fotos/241109-nido-de-avion.html
http://www.pereruela.net/hornos.asp
ah! Gracias, Jesús, now I understand.
Please thank your wife from us, Dearie. And thank you, for telling it so well. When our next-to-last hen died our last hen, Cloudy, left the hen house and moved in with Vesla. At night they would cuddle up together on Vesla’s perch. Cloudy may have liked the straw that the goats lie on, but I think they were friends. Vesla, having previously been the smallest, seemed fond of her too; they were two loners who found each other. Unfortunately Cloudy caught a cold and died shortly afterwards, but they had a happy couple of weeks. Later I thought we ought to get Vesla a couple of hens of her own, but my wife won’t allow us any more pets (she’s right).
I bet that’s more than one badger, it’s just that they all look the same in uniform.
Julia, in English “pentagram” means this.
Thank you for teaching me the Spanish word for (musical) staff!
Ahh! I had really no idea! ¿Staff? that’s a funny name to name “el pentagrama”! Thank you, Ø !
In Spanish we have the same word for “pitagoric star”, but we usually refer to it as “pentáculo”, because for us the first meaning of “pentagrama” is musical staff.
And the plural of staff is staves, isn’t it?
Pentáculos are harmless, but one wants to avoid pinta-culos.
English has the word “pentacle”, too, meaning either a pentagram (magical star) inscribed in a circle, or also one of the suits in a deck of tarot cards (another name for it is discs).
I’m always afraid to say the word “staves”, because I have a sneaking fear that it’s pronounced “staffs”.
“pitagoric” took me a minute, because (1) it looks so different from “Pythagoric”, (2) we say “Pythagorean”, anyway, and (3) I never knew that Pythagoras had anything symmetrically five-pointed named after him. (It makes sense, though. It’s just the sort of thing he and his followers would have liked: it’s related to the golden ratio.)
You’re thinking German again, Ø. When I was in the boy scouts, some 45 years ago, we carried ash (the wood) staves. I can’t remember why, probably something about not twisting one’s ankle climbing muddy hillsides (we were in asphalted central London so I never got to try mine out), anyway we pronounced it to rhyme with waves. At school we were taught one stave, two staves in music, but that can’t be right. Our music teacher was Mr Crap.
With pinta-culos I get up all sorts of rude pictures on google. It says ‘pint-ass’, but there must be a better translation.
Cooking bird…
This isn’t a merle cuisinier* as far as one can see, but it does seem to love petits fours**. For its tandoori chicks maybe…
* cuisinier = cook
** four = oven
Boy, I’d no idea petit four was a type of oven. How incurious of me.
Have you seen them, Sig?
Yes, I was thinking about German Stab, but I don’t know what if any effect that was having.
Having now dipped into the OED, I can say that “staves” is the old plural of “staff”, no longer used much except in some special senses (and is pronounced the way it looks). Also that the singular “stave”, which replaced “staff” in some senses, is a back-formation from the plural, so it’s basically all one word.
I hadn’t been sure of that, because there is such a variety of meanings. Apparently it all starts with staff as a word for a stick or a pole, and then through figurative uses it ends up also meaning things like the musical thingy or the general staff of an army.
I was aware of German Wanderstab ( a stout walking stick such as you mention), Generalstab (military), and Buchstab (letter of the alphabet. That last one puzzles me. Now I’ve learned that the word “staff” in English can also mean a letter. It still puzzles me.
I sometimes forget that petit fours are not the same as plus fours.
As in “eat my shorts”.
It’s bokstave in Norwegian too.
And “book” and its cognates are related to “beech”, right? Which adds to more than subtracts from the confusion for me. Where’s Trond when we need him?
Yeah, beech is bøk in Norwegian and Buche in German. And then there’s German Bach, which is brook (stream). Bjørk, like the Icelandic singer, is birch (tree) in Norwegian and doubtless in Icelandic too. I’m sure Trond could tie the whole lot together.
Buchstab
It’s (der) Buchstabe. According to Duden (ahd. buohstap, urspr. wohl = Stab mit Runenzeichen) the word from which is derives probably meant “stick/staff marked with runes”..
It says ‘pint-ass’, but there must be a better translation.
pintaculos, if I’ve constructed the word properly, means someone who paints butts. It is not clear whether he/she does this professionally or as a side-line. I formed the word along the lines of chupacabras.
Since a butt is constructed from staves, we’re getting a bit circular here.
Well, butts are circular, after all – the right sort, that is. I wouldn’t stave off an invasion of them.
Then there’s Butthole Surfers. Kurt Cobain first met Courtney Love (of the band Hole) at Butthole Surfers concert.
I see a newspaper article with the sentence: “General Butthead was Chief of Staff of the armed forces”.
There’s a “General Butt, head of intelligence”, in the Pakistani armed forces. Sadly, he retired before he made Chief of Staff.
The adult male mandrill offers perhaps the most spectacular example of a naturally occurring culo pintado.
So “blue, white and red all over” is not a newspaper after all.
Google Translate renders Spanish pentagrama as German Personal.
I forgot to mention that one of the many senses given for staff in the OED is “A bunch of fifty bunches of the head of the teasel (Dipsacus fallonum) used for teasing cloth”.
I’m too lazy to check facts again, but if I remember correctly, it’s not clear whether bokstav originally meant beech staff . Apparently the beech tree had magical powers assigned to it, and some speculate that beech staffs were used by soothsayers and that the word by semantic extension came to be used first of a text, then of a single element of the text. Another possibility is that the cognate of bók came to be used to mean “religious text” somewhere in Germany when Christianity was Germanicized. More of that later.
Stafr is also used to mean “metric unit” in old texts describing Skaldic poetry. Thus, a reasonable semantic root would have been “metric unit” -> “syllable” -> “sign in syllabic script” -> “any letter”. Sadly, there’s no evidence of a syllabic script anywhere around. But the route -> “unit of spoken language” -> “phone” -> “alphabetic letter” isn’t too long either. Bók early means Latin. So I think the compound bókstafr meant “Latin letter” as opposed to rune. As it happens. in the Germanic languages that use the word bokstafr, i.e. every one but English, one also came to use different words for reading and witing the two scripts: The calque lésa “collect” -> “read” and the loan skrífa “write” for Latin letters and the old ríta and ráða for runes.
I think the “Beach Staff” was appointed by the Allied forces before the D-day, so that the operation wouldn’t end in runes.
semantic root route
I’ll call that a native speaker error and be proud of it. It’ my new all-purpose strategy.
Doesn’t work for missing letters, though.
Or bad attempts at html.
Thanks, Trond. All very interesting. I’d love to know the Norwegian history behind having different words. Something to do with the church, no doubt.
Words about reading and writing: I’m struck by the fact that in the old days most people using these words didn’t read or write, so that in effect they were largely words about mysterious incomprehensible marks.
D-day
You’re using the word “beach” littorally now.
empty: Google Translate renders Spanish pentagrama as German Personal.
I wonder if GooT works with some kind of lexical proximity metric (with pathologic boundary behavior). There is a connection between Pentagramm and Personal, as appears in this diagram in a book on business economics.
The boundary in question is the edge of the page …
(I read all yesterday’s comments right now. It’s very funny how the thread circulates and colour its many subjects)
You’re using the word “beach” littorally now.
I don’t want to follow that strand.
My wife just pointed me to this starling video.
Amusing, but not quite a sterling video, unfortunately.
Have you seen them
Yes, I think I have, once.
“The bird’s local name comes from the unproved belief that it stores insects by sticking them on thorns.” (Birds of the Mascarenes and Saint Brandon.)
Ø, what are “plus fours”?
¡¡Fabuloso, Trond!!
Thank your wife for me. It’s a fantastic video, not only what it shows is great but how it shows it.
plus fours
I don’t want to follow that strand.
Shore you do!
So what is the German for a musical staff?
That’s called a Notensystem.
Shore you do!
Not at any coast, no.
“what are “plus fours”?”: when my father was a boy, Scottish schoolboys referred to them rudely as “shit keppers”.
Funny thing: the Germans very sensibly call written-down music Noten, while we Anglophone long ago slid into using “notes” to mean the sounds themselves: what Germans call Töne.
Damn good painter, Töne*.
I know “shit”, what means “keppers”?
*Sorry, I’m on my second glass of wine.
catchers
P.S. My father told me this with some gleeful shaking of the head, even though he sometimes wore plus fours himself when assaulting the links.
wildlife paragraph: “Come immediately” cried Dearieshe. I strode into the kitchen. “Top of the yew.” And standing there – how can a twig support such a large bird? – was a heron, facing south-east. Past the neighbour’s neighbour’s neighbour’s poplars he stared: are there fish somewhere in that direction; a new backgarden pond, perhaps? After five minutes, he briefly looked west and then north. Pigeons and a magpie flew past, thirty feet beneath him. My wife fetched her camera, opened the back door, got a couple of snaps – and then off he flew, northwards. We hadn’t got the close-ups we’d have liked.
Can we see the snaps?(I’d love to, even though they are not close ups…)
Me too!
I saw a heron during the summer perching on a post in the pond near my mother’s new house . I didn’t have a camera.
Julia, I shall pass your request on.
Supposing we do get the snaps from the camera onto the computer, how do we get them into here?
Thanks!
Maybe you can e-mail them to Crown’s…
dsanne@broadpark.no
Speaking of birds, today is the first time in this autumn I’ve seen cranes here.
Are they migrating?
Sorry about the election, Jesús.
>A. J. P. Crown
Yes, they come from the north of Europe to winter here, like some retired people of Germany to Balearic Islands for example.
As regards our election, I intone the “kyrie eleison”. I’ve told that Franco died the 20th of November 1975 and the political party established by his followers has won the same day.
Some Norwegians retire to Spain and the Balearic islands. I think it’s possible that if you live in the far north, above the Arctic circle, you can get the state to pay for you to spend the winter in the sun. I could be wrong about this. I intend to find out before I’m 65.
Interesting about Franco.
>A. J. P. Crown
Of course, I didn’t want to write anything with pejorative sense. Sometimes I doubt if my texts are a bit intelligible. They pay here very well and a lot of Spaniards make a good use of their money. In some sense tourism is our first industry. I only wanted to speak about our good weather; this morning at 12, when I saw these birds, the temperature was 15 º C.
Besides, although someone say that the crones eat “our” acorns I claim these fruits belong to them as well.
If you want to come here I’ll welcome you with open arms.
Thank you, I’ll book my ticket. See you tomorrow, then.
Sometimes I doubt if my texts are a bit intelligible.
I wonder the same about my own.
I don’t think it’s fair to invoke Franco with the modern Partido Popular any more than it’s fair to invoke Communism with the Italian opposition (to Berlusconi’s government(s)). They’re democratic, secular and internationally minded. Wrong on how to handle the crisis, but so is just about everybody else, so being right wouldn’t make much dfference. Might as well elect somebody who believes the things they’re told to do.
In the US some people are called snowbirds.
There I was expecting snowbirds to be a political group, like the Tea Party.
Ø has the good sense not to follow up on my rant against the hawks and instead redirect us to the much more worthwhile subject of socio-ornitology. I’ve heard trekkfugl used in the same sense here. An obvious metaphor.
not to follow up
I had nothing to say, being even more ignorant of European politics than American. And it did not feel right to follow your serious post with another pun about where the land meets the water. So I wrote whatever came to mind.
I didn’t know trekkfugl and standfugl for migratory & non-migratory birds, though my daughter now tells me she’s known it since she was about five. I also didn’t know woodpeckers were standfugls.
I’d love to know the Norwegian history behind having different words.
They tried having just the one for everything, but it got confusing.
A bunch of fifty bunches
Correction: Of course the OED didn’t say that. Excuse my careless copying. It said “A bundle of fifty bunches”, or “a bunch of fifty bundles” or something. I forget.
>Trond Engen
I only said this party was established by “franquistas” but I add there are still lots of them on the inside. Anyway, its voters are normally more democrat than some of its members and leaders; these ones obey too much the employers and the church like under the “nacionalcatolicismo”. I claim this party is far from European conservative parties. They have to lose this burden. In spite of instructions we could see “franquistas” flags* the night of election in front of headquarters such as you can watch in this video (03:40) made by a right-tv:
http://www.antena3.com/neox/programas/otra-movida/secciones/cristina-pedroche/cristina-pedroche-fiesta_2011112100399.html
* The eagle in the coat is colloquially called the chicken but I always call it the pterodactyl.
Jesús, ¿la reportera es del PP? Porque parece burlarse mucho de ellos…
Are the reporter or the tv-channel PP followers? She seems to be laughing a lot at the PP followers…
Thanks Jesús, a very interesting video, even if I don’t understand all the words. From what I understand, the pterodactyl came to Spain on the flag of Carlos I, alias Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. I was surprised to see how many countries have used this double-headed chicken symbol; it predates the Habsburgs by many centuries.
>Julia
Actually I’ve never watched this programme and I’ve only listen to some seconds of this video. It’s a humour programme so it’s obvious they are free enough to do that. I suspected that I could find something about that on the internet according to my memory relied whit other old elections.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otra_movida
Thank you, Jesús, I see.
I understood it was from a right-winged tv programe.
chicken symbol jajaja/hahaha
(millions of heraldists are writhing in agony….)
Yes, I had understood the same as Julia.
Some of those heraldic drawings, like this one “the emblem of the Seljuk dynasty and the Great Seljuk Empire”, are like cartoons.
>A. J. P. Crown
The s. John’s eagle was first used by Isabel I, called Catholic Queen, who was grandmother of Charles V. As regards the coat of arms of this Emperor, there are a lot. Near my father’s village, in Gata, there is a spectacular coat:
http://www.villadegata.es/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55:escudo-gata&catid=40:monumentos-historicos&Itemid=64
Also, in the tower of my father’s village, San Martín de Trevejo, you can see an odd coat with the eagles’ heads in the opposite way. I’ve never seen other like that although I’ve heard there are (see the picture after the text “TORRE CAMPANARIO”
: http://www.bmarmar.jazztel.es/san%20martin%20de%20trevejo/sanmartindetrevejo1.htm
>Julia and A. J. P. Crown
Yes, this channel, “antena 3”, is right-winger but they allow a bit of humor, why not? The humor shells very well. The channel “Nitro” belongs to the same company.
That’s a lovely one in Gata! There isn’t much of that sort of thing in English villages, and none at all in Norway (everything in Norway was carved from wood and there’s not much of it left).
The symbols on the Australian coat of arms are referred to popularly as The Rat and The Chook.
We’re having some pleasant hours of sunshine at the mo’.
I think saw a naughty dog…!
>Julia
Have you seen a youtube video where you can see how some sheepdog “work” with sheeps that have leds in its backs? It’s called “arte con ovejas”.
That’s a big herd. My mother, who now lives right next to Richmond Park, says she can’t go in because they’re shooting the deer.
Jesús, I think we’ve seen that video here before. It’s Welsh.
Crown, believe it or not, it was not until today that I caught on to who that painter Töne is. I suppose it comes of being a visually-oriented person and non-rhotic to boot.
Oh, hell: forgot a tag.
(And visually oriented, not in the sense of paying attention to visual arts such as painting, but in the sense of getting too stuck on the spelling of the name.)
Yes, it’s the R. I thought I was the non-rhotic one, but maybe I’m mixed up. No one but my lot – non-rhotics or rhotics, whichever it is – would ever consider that an -e ending might sound similar to an -er, so it’s not surprising you didn’t catch on. I’ve found that distinguishing the two when I’m speaking German or Norwegian is very difficult.
Yes, of course I meant non-non-rhotic. Forget my own name next. For perfectly understandable reasons which I need not go into, I have been terribly prone to errors of absent-mindedness over the last few days.
But there were two of them there hiding from me, you know: the -e that sounds (or doesn’t) like an -er, and also the ön that sounds (or doesn’t) like an urn.
I hope it clears up soon. Talking of your name, did you see the trouble Rootless Cosmo went to to get it right here (near the end of the comments)?
I appreciate the effort, but I confess that I am not as sensitive as some to the distinctions between the various versions of “circle with diagonal line through it”.
This one is useful to distinguish. Here are all of them.
I always wonder if this one has something to do with sunbathing ahead. (I couldn’t find a larger example.)
“Danger ahead: masturbation”
I saw on TV that feminists are raising serious objections to this bicycle.
Strange. I used to think they were opposed to this.
That’s Crown’s “sunbathing ahead” sign, see above. Although my anatomical knowledge is limited, it looks to me like a mild case of pectus excavatum.
Ah, that’s for not opening what I thought was a list of mathematical symbols, and for not going back and reading the thread when I decided to join in. (I read absent-mindedly from my mobile while waiting for my wife this morning, and in such cases I’m picky with links.)
I was going to tell that in Norway there’s a warning about bikini bottoms as well, but it appears to be about low hats:
That pectus excavatum reminds me of the oddly shaped small spaces inside my car that the manufacturer has turned into so-called “storage”, they’re ideal for anyone with a lot of small V-shaped items that they don’t know what to do with. If I were the patient in the photograph, I’d keep my house keys in that cavity.
Trond, remember there an exam before Christmas. It will be covering the whole year’s comments*.
* (and links)
Oh, no!
Please, be indulgent with those of us who doesn’t speak English?
Can I do my exam in Spanish?
Just this once, you and Jesús can do it in Spanish.
Speaking of V-shaped cavities:
… “Miss Farkis,” Shrike said, “Miss Farkis works in a book store and writes on the side.” He patted her rump.
“What were you talking about so excitedly?” she asked. “Religion.”
“Get me a drink and please continue. I’m very much interested in the new thomistic synthesis.”
This was just the kind of remark for which Shrike was waiting. “St. Thomas!” he shouted. “What do you take us for–stinking intellectuals? We’re not fake Europeans. We were discussing Christ, the Miss Lonelyhearts of Miss Lonelyhearts. America has her own religions. If you need a synthesis, here is the kind of material to use.” He took a clipping from his wallet and slapped it on the bar.
“ADDING MACHINE USED IN RITUAL OF WESTERN SECT…Figures Will be Used for Prayers for Condemned Slayer of Aged Recluse…DENVER, COLO., Feb. 2 ( A. P.) Frank H. Rice, Supreme Pontiff of the Liberal Church of America has announced he will carry out his plan for a ‘goat and adding machine’ ritual for William Moya, condemned slayer, despite objection to his program by a Cardinal of the sect. Rice declared the goat would be used as part of a ‘sack cloth and ashes’ service shortly before and after Moya’s execution, set for the week of June 20. Prayers for the condemned man’s soul will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers, he explained, constitute the only universal language. Moya killed Joseph Zemp, an aged recluse, in an argument over a small amount of money.”
Miss Farkis laughed and Shrike raised his fist as though to strike her. His actions shocked the bartender, who hurriedly asked them to go into the back room. Miss Lonelyhearts did not want to go along, but Shrike insisted and he was too tired to argue.
They seated themselves at a table inside one of the booths. Shrike again raised his fist, but when Miss Farkis drew back, he changed the gesture to a caress. The trick worked. She gave in to his hand until he became too daring, then pushed him away.
Shrike again began to shout and this time Miss Lonelyhearts understood that he was making a seduction speech.
“I am a great saint,” Shrike cried, “I can walk on my own water. Haven’t you ever heard of Shrike’s Passion in the Luncheonette, or the Agony in the Soda Fountain? Then I compared the wounds in Christ’s body to the mouths of a miraculous purse in which we deposit the small change of our sins. It is indeed an excellent conceit. But now let us consider the holes in our own bodies and into what these congenital wounds open. Under the skin of man is a wondrous jungle where veins like lush tropical growths hang along overripe organs and weed-like entrails writhe in squirming tangles of red and yellow. In this jungle, flitting from rock-gray lungs to golden intestines, from liver to lights and back to liver again, lives a bird called the soul. The Catholic hunts this bird with bread and wine, the Hebrew with a golden ruler, the Protestant on leaden feet with leaden words, the Buddhist with gestures, the Negro with blood. I spit on them all. Phoohl And I call upon you to spit. Phoohl Do you stuff birds? No, my dears, taxidermy is not religion. No! A thousand times no. Better, I say unto you, better a live bird in the jungle of the body than two stuffed birds on the library table.”
His caresses kept pace with the sermon. When he had reached the end, he buried his triangular face like the blade of a hatchet in her neck.
Why is the server removing the space between paragraphs ??
Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathaniel West.
(I googled it.)
Is it right now, Stu?
Sorry about the long quote, it’s not like me. But that last paragraph has stuck in my memory since I read it at age 15, I just had to “share”.
Yes, it’s right now – thanks !
that last paragraph has stuck in my memory since I read it at age 15
Yes, I can see that it would.
Thanks for “sharing”!
Local wildlife: dead creature edition.
We bought a pheasant at the village market on Saturday: someone had shot, plucked, drawn and hung it, then wrapped it in bacon and again in clingfilm. We roasted it to yield a large dinner for two on Sunday. Cold it provided a large lunch for two on Wednesday. Today it provided two large bowls of pheasant-a-leekie soup, with one-and-a-bit left over for tomorrow. I reckon that quite good for 4 GBP (approx 6 USD).
Government Health Warning: remove the clingfilm before roasting.
Why roast the clingfilm, is it some sort of Thanksgiving dessert? I bet all that pheasant was good, though.
Nah, we anticipated the government health warning.
It was very good – it would have been even better if it had been hung a little longer, but if you hang the bird too long it becomes vile, so I understand someone’s caution.
Anyway, I thought it was time to get this thread back to the point: “oven bird”. Ho, ho, ho.
Ho, ho, ho isn’t for another month. I’d forgotten all the hanging stuff. I haven’t had a proper pheasant like that since I was a wee bairn. Or at least a young grown up.
I once bought a large hare at a butcher’s in Cologne, and hung it up in the window for a week. Then I skinned the stinking carcass without the proper tools, i.e.not with wall hook and pliers, but manually. How tenacious is the skin of a hare !
I tried to get it covered in flour per recipe, but most of that fell off later in the oven, which was too small for the hare. What ended up on the table looked like it had died of leprosy, rather than by the butcher’s hand.
No more Christmas hare for me.
>Grumbly Stu
Your vicissitude whit the hare has reminded me this superb painting drawn by Eduardo Naranjo, an excellent painter who was born in Extremadura: http://nobodysdirtybusiness.tumblr.com/post/2611759226/eduardo-naranjo-conejo-a-medio
Really it’s a rabbit.
>A. J. P. Crown
Off-board.-
I’ve just read this new:
http://www.uclm.es/gabinete/ver_noticias.asp?id_noticia=8552
died of leprosy
a leprous leporid
Jesús: superb painting drawn by Eduardo Naranjo
Yes, it shows just how my hands felt after trying to pull the hide off without having nailed one end of it to the table (bedstead ?).
Interesting. Norway doesn’t get much press (publicity). “Norway: Mellom himmel of jord” – that should be “Norway: Mellom himmel og jord”. I don’t suppose it matters much.
That bird isn’t cooked yet?
Yes, it’s time to do a post. Right after I’ve finished with my Christmas cards.
Christmas cards!!
You sound like an old lady…
I used to despise a certain American tradition of families updating each other about family doings in Christmas cards. But a) the subject doesn’t have to be family life only or at all, and b) so what if it is. Nowadays I think the tradition is rather charming.
Thanks. We always make Christmas cards, I didn’t know it was peculiar – in fact, we get lots of them too, so it can’t be that weird. But it’s not so common in South America (except from old ladies, of course)? I don’t write much inside, only names & max. 1 sentence.
There is a tradition of laughing at those family updates. They lend themselves to parody: they can easily sound like parodies. It’s about the tendency of people to boast about their children, and about the degree to which they may suppress difficult realities when trying to write something suitable for a wide circle of acquaintances.
It’s like when you run into somebody, maybe a friend but not a close friend, whom you haven’t seen in months. “How ya doin’?” You can give a quick breezy positive answer, or you can tell the true unvarnished story of your life. When you’re trying to do an annual one-size-fits-all version of this answer, in writing, it tends to be neither of the above but rather a two-page single-spaced breezy highly varnished story of your life.
No, it’s not very common nowadays here. I think I’ve never received one as a married woman. When I was a child I remember we complete some Christmas decoration with the cards my parents received… The last period of my adolescent years, I believe the only cards our family did receive weren’t hand signed but print (from some company, bank, etc. I mean no personal Christmas cards)
Anyway I was just joking, as I’m sure you knew, I actually love old fashion traditions.
Empty, here in Buenos Aires we have a very known one line joke:
“How do you do?” / ¿Cómo andás?
“Good!… Or you want me to tell you? / Bien!… ¿o te cuento?
Julia: ¿Cómo andás?
¿¡ Is the stress really on the second syllable of andás ?! ¿ Does that have the force of a polite plural ?
By the way, the “¿” and “¡” marks are the ones you provided for me in this post here last year. I saved the link for just such occasions.
=) it’s nice you keep them, Stu!
In fact “andás” (stressing the last syllable) is the particular verb conjugation we use in Argentina and Uruguay, called “voseo” (see here). And no, it’s not polite, it’s informal.
>Julia
In my parents’ villages we use a odd « voseo »; instead of “usted” we say “vos” but using the 2nd person of plural!. So, we’d say “¿Cómu andéis vos?” In a sense it’s similar to French.
Julia, there was a question for you to answer at LanguageHat, I don’t know whether you saw it. Maybe Jesús has something to say about it too:
It’s here (near the bottom).
No; I haven’t seen it.
(And I don’t think I have anything to say… I can only think of words finished with -ON as augmentatives… But I’ll what they have to say there, thank you, Mr. Crown)
You’re welcome!
“A male jaguar dubbed Macho B was the last known jaguar in the U.S. when it died after being trapped by a conservationist in 2009.”
A good laugh, eh? But it’s from an article saying that two have recently been seen, also in Arizona. Were I an Arizonan, I might take comfort from “The only cat native to North America that roars…”.
I thought it was mice that roared ?!
Anent the story about the polecat: I forgot to say that if youcatch a quite large polecat in a trap designed for distinctly smaller rats, the aforesaid, above-mentioned polecat will, when eventually discovered, be livid.
Does a livid polecat ever bite?
@ Julia – Too late to say how much I enjoyed the 42″ plasma screen in the ovenbird’s loft-to-be…
I have a friend who collects “42”s, but I can’t think of a way for him to collect that one. And really, in that tiny loft, it must’ve been 42mm? Diagonals.
@catannea – In fact what intrigues me more, is what TV show would enjoy the oven bird. Will it be about sports, wildlife or great works of architecture?
It would be a show about expelling the oven bird from its nest if its antics didn’t please enough viewers.
You mean like the French “Loft”? No, no! It would be a cooking programme about baking, surely. With separate features about adobe construction…
Maybe as I have no television, I have no idea what the possibilities are.
Yes, I’m sure he’s a viewer of channels like “Travel & Living”, or “National Geographic” or “The History Channel”… I bet he’s very practical and interested in great deeds of history and big works of art.
But maybe dearieme is right and he likes goofy tv programs…
I’ll ask him the next time I come across him.
More on our heron: he/she was back at breakfast time, standing on our garage roof. Enquiry reveals that a near neightbour has a pond, with a fake heron stood by it, on the theory that it would repel real herons. P’raps not.
Why the hell would your neighbour want to repel real herons? Goldfish? I’d rather have a heron than a bunch of goldfish. They should keep fake goldfish, not fake herons.
I’ve seen a fake heron on a dock. I imagined that it was meant to repel gulls (you don’t want them hanging out on your dock, leaving their clamshells, crabshells, and excretions behind), but I don’t know if it did. It’s more common to use fake owls for the purpose.
Yes…some houses near my mother-in-law’s have fake owls. And it is near the docks, so maybe to repel gulls…but I cannot think why one would want to repel herons?
Yes, it seems that fake herons are sold to deter herons. If you have a pond with ornamental fish, you don’t want herons hanging about.
This method relies on the territorial habits of great blue herons. Too bad if some other kind of heron comes along, such as an American egret: my experience is that they travel in great flocks and coexist peacefully with the great blues.
I like the advice not to use the decoy during mating season.
We all need another heron.
There are fake owls on century-old buildings in my town. They’re meant to repel pigeons. Or that’s what people say. Maybe rather swallows nesting under the roof, come to think of it.
I like the advice not to use the decoy during mating season.
Haha. Inflatable herons.
I think our parrot, Kiri, was eaten by an owl.
That oven surely is a wattle and daub house.
I thought Tom Clark left an interesting comment about the birds, under Julia’s post.
My, there are a lot of words wattle.
I enjoy very much all your last comments, but I can’t take me out of my mind dearieme’s neighbourhood heron… what if he/she falls in love with the fake/statue one?
Mythological problems ahead.
On another subject: Are you all aware of the fantastic job our friend catannea did with a Lady-dog? It is the story of the year! You can read it
here, some of us followed the saga day by day with anguish via facebook.
My, there are a lot of words wattle.
I stumbled upon the multiple meanings a few days ago, and I knew there was somewhere I needed that, but I couldn’t remember where.
Oh, poor parrot.
I knew there was somewhere I needed that
It’s no substitute for reinforced concrete, you know.
poor parrot.
Yes. Our parrot Kiri flew up in a tree, one Christmas Day in the evening, and was swooped down on and carried off. She made loud cawing noises like a crow to frighten the owl. Quick thinking, she’d never done it before. That was the last thing we heard. We put her cage outside and searched for several days. I’m glad your stray dog story has a happier ending.
She made loud cawing noises like a crow to frighten the owl. Quick thinking, she’d never done it before.
And an instinct for picking the right noise? Fooling predators sounds to me like a reason for evolution of mimicking. But, yes, poor parrot.
Vaguely related, here’s Ed Yong on empathic rats.
I’d rather have an otter than goldfish, too. But we have friends who tried and tried to keep an otter away from their koi pond (I’m sure the koi were expensive; but served little purpose in rural Wales), and finally they rejoiced when the otter was killed by a car.
It seemed to us such a privilege to be visited by an otter, I’d’ve stocked my pond with trout for it.
But then, we suspect the snare was set for the Lady by the caçadors who feared she might lower the numbers of their specially introduced partridges.
Some people’s preferences seem inexplicable.
Yes, quick thinking has a reputation for coming too late. Remember Johnson’s remark: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Also, the trope about your whole life passing before your eyes as you are swept over the edge of a waterfall.
catannea forgot to close her italics, so now everybody is cursive.
Why did my end italic tag not work? Sorry.
Wow, look at that!
I’ll see if I can stop it…
Eek! What do I do..?
I’m going to try to solve this problem by adding a single </i>. If this sentence is still cursive, I have failed.
I’d rather be bold.
You have failed.
Rats.Just added four end-italic marks.
Testing etc.
Crown, try adding a </i> at the end of catannea’s post.
No, she’d added one. It wasn’t her mistake.
You’ll have to seek out the Proto-Italic.
Then you may have to excise her post and all the following ones, then restore them cautiously one by one, after inspecting for unbalanced italics tags. I presume you had no other plans for this afternoon !?
Well done, without my advice ! What exactly did you do ?
Fixed! Cat must have accidentally reversed the slash and the i at the end, after “caçadors” in her first comment, so I just fixed that.
Italics are the new regular.
Let’s embrace it!
oh, no. I was excited by the new fashion…
I can always start it over at your blog, if you like… Heh, heh, heh.
Karl Lagerfeld presents his new collection for the mobile woman: not casual, but cursive wear.
For the heady woman, there is also discursive wear.
I can always start it over at your blog, if you like… Heh, heh, heh.
What a dreadful threat! This is the dark side of Mr. Crown…
I’m still processing your suggestion of starting Big Band in my night class
cursive wear! This sounds very feminine and provocative, Stu. You should really work for the fashion industry!
My God, has it come to this ? Will I end my days as an aesthetician, arranging feathers and shortening hims ?
Artur,
Thanks for the kindness. And for the good words… for the birds.
We have been envisioning you curled up, of a long winter’s night, beside the fire, with Thomas Hardy.
With perhaps (also) the occasional apparition, in the hoarfrost-pixillated panes, of the ghost of Parson Thirdly.
I swear I did it, it just didn’t “take” – Well…I do teach italic….
Thomas Hardy? The horror, the horror.
He was urged on me at school but I was made of tougher stuff.
Catannea, no blame can be attached to you and it was the most fun I had all weekend.
My daughter just inherited nine Hardy novels. If you look at Tom’s site you’ll find some Thos Hardy poems that even you will like, dearie. I promise. Especially the WW1 one he’s linking to. Tom’s accompanying text and photographs alone are well worth the journey. Incidentally, I hear Scotland’s applying to join Scandinavia. I welcome this.
Well, I suppose he’s not as overrated as Dickens. Perhaps Hardy isn’t overrated at all; more likely he simply wrote stuff that I don’t want to read. Which is no crime.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude The Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge – these are novels for folks with strong nerves, and thus for you, dearie.
One of my husband’s Oxford Chinese professors professed that studying Chinese had been a mistake and he ought to have devoted his life to reading Hardy. I don’t know what to make of that, but it was a very impressive remark.
“he ought to have devoted his life to reading Hardy”:it takes all sorts, I suppose. I’d rather spend a life doing things.
Anyway, if I wanted to engage with someone with a stark view of human nature, I’d listen to Gilbert and Sullivan. The jokes are better too.
I too would rather read Hardy than study Chinese; but if I were to spend my life doing things, it would be doing gardening.
Quick, quick, look at the photo. The first comment is brilliant too.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/links-121311.html?replytocom=566695#respond
I suppose if they brought in a piglet it would be asking for trouble.
I fear they’re now sad and feeling guilty because piglet WAS there, but they were hungry… and the rest is history
They ate piglet? That would be a good twist for Book III. It would also mean no Book IV.
They’re all vegetarians, aren’t they. All they eat is honey and extract of malt.
Yes, OF COURSE they are all vegetarians…
Pooh eats honey, Piglet “haycorns”, Eeyore thistles. Of course they all eat cake (with pink sugar icing on it) on special occasions.
Off topic, but I’d like to do my best to get the word assholocracy out there on the net. Geoff Pullum has made a convincing case for it, I think.
I’m happy to help get assholocracy (and assholeocracy) out there. Britain’s currently an assholocracy – in fact right now Norway is the only country that I can think of that isn’t an assholocracy.
I’d forgotten that Eeyore eats thistles, I was only thinking about
RooTigger, who doesn’t. We have to rent a donkey or two next summer, there are so many growing up in the pasture by our house (thistles, not donkeys).Off topic, but
Hahaha.
Assholocracy… great concept
Assholocracy? Hum, it’s already written: if shit was gold the Poor wouldn’t have assholes, so, in this case, assholocracy = plutocracy.
Anagrams for assholocracy:
A solo cash cry. Lo! Scary chaos (chaos also cry). Cool say crash. Horsy cloacas. Oh, cosy rascal. “Say car” school. Lacy across ho. So scaly roach, or ‘scaly chaos’. Choosy rascal. A scary school. Char* says loco / char says cool (char’s also coy). Achy ass color. Scary ho’s cola. Cola’s coy rash. Cry chaos, sola! Oh, so scaly car. And for our Scottish listeners: Across ya loch.
*(British cleaning lady)
‘Assholeocracy’ gives: accessory halo; cosy as cholora; coarsely chaos; sore cloaca, shy …and many more.
Anagrams for assholocracy
Did you use an anagram-producing program ? Where can I get one ?
Aw come off it, Crown. At worst Britain would be an Arseholeocracy. No donkeys ruling us! Hm; pauses for thought.
We do have our filthily rich wannabee kingmakers here too. Assholes enough, but still not turned completely cracy, maybe.
Grumbly, yes, they’re available at Amazon. I think mine was around $500 a couple of months ago.
Oh all right they’re free, and here’s one, but you can get one any time just by googling ‘anagram’.
I bet there are yet more anagrams for arseholocracy.
Dearie & Trond, are you in favour of the Common Market? I never quite know if I am, because I loathe the bureaucracy of it and their silly rules for everything. On the other hand, the removal of the boundaries and customs barriers is an improvement, and easier if you need to transport goats or want to import English apple trees or something like that. But on the other other hand it’s fortress Europe and keep-the-poor-out. And then again there’s safety in numbers. So I never know what to think.
I feel that anagram-producing programs are unfair, or an abomination, or take all the fun out of it, or something. On the other hand, some of their output is making me think of the wonderful I Ching calculator in Douglas Adams’s second Dirk Gently book.
I’ve got no patience, I just want the answers. Douglas Adams is just above my head, but I can’t reach it without standing on a chair.
I approve of a Common Market. I’m dead agin’ the EU. I won’t elaborate because, please don’t take offence, it would be a shame to sully your forum with political spats. And such spats would be completely pointless anyway, since I am right.
I love your anagrams, Crown. Or “your” anagrams, I should have said, now your revealed the trick. ¡Fascinante!
Although not as fabulous as dearie’s line “such spats would be completely pointless anyway, since I am right.
I’d love to use it every time in my political arguments with my countrymen! (You can’t imagine how many are around here, nowadays)
What is an anagram anway ? Is ‘assholeocracy’ an anagram, and ‘sore cloaca’ a solution ? Or are both anagrams ? Do the programs produce anagrams, or analyze them, or what ?
This is a real conundrum, whereas the one with the chicken and the egg is boringly easy. As Aristotle (?) said: actuality precedes potentiality in being, time and dignity. So the chicken was there first. .
From this we may conclude that Aristotle was probably a vegetarian. To eat a chicken would consume basic ontological resources, and be passé and undignified – as seen from the egg’s point of view.
I’ll never be a professor, but at least I have a donnish sense of humor.
I quoted the example wrong, that should be ‘sore cloaca, shy’
Is ‘sore cloaca’ a solution ?…at least I have a donnish sense of humor.
Boy, you said it, G. (and it’s a good thing).
Dearie, at least you’ve told me which side you’re on. That’s really what I’m after.
Julia, I thought everyone except Grumbly knew about those anagram sites, but I was wrong. Do they have them in Spanish?
I have long been a little bit fixated on the fact that ANAGRAMS backwards is SMARGANA, which is a great word even if it’s not a word.
I’ve forgotten what backwards words are called that aren’t palindromes, but I had a German partner who was obsessed with them. I soon found myself looking for them too (though not obsessively).
Is a “backward word” that is a word not also a palindrome ? Or do palindromes have to be phrases ? “Backward words” -> “Bawd draws cork”.
It’s a pity that “palindrome” isn’t a palindrome.
A palindrome is a word or phrase that is the same backwards:
“Able was I ere I saw Elba” and “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama” are the best-known examples, but “I”, “aa”, “dad”, “poop”, “refer”, and “Retter” certainly qualify.
Someone coined the word “semordnilap” for a word or phrase that spells something else when reversed.
“palindrome” -> “mailed porn”.
Sarah Palindrome would be a good Alaskan airport name.
An anaconder is someone who
has the symptoms in the wrong order.
I’m for the EU, though admittedly more for what it could be than what it is right now. And I won’t argue it either, since I’m wrong.
I don’t get it, is it an anagram? – Actually that’s a useful reply to many statements, now I come to think of it.
I’ve decided that I agree with dearie: free trade only. Scotland’s nuts to want to join Scandinavia without withdrawing from the UK and EC, they’ll be regulated by three foreign groups.
An anaconder is someone who has the symptoms in the wrong order…. I don’t get it, is it an anagram?
It helps to know that the German word for a hypochondriac is Hypochonder. Etymologically, an “anagram” is a word/phrase whose letters have been transposed, i.e. are out of order. So an Anaconder would be a hypochondriac whose symptoms are out of order.
Or a snake that crushes confused hypochrondriacs.
Boy, that’s pretty complicated. No wonder I didn’t get it. It’s hypokonder in Norwegian too.
Anakonder, hypokonder. It’s straightforward in Norwegian, but I forgot it’s -chondriac in English.
That’s ok, you can’t be expected to take account of my stupidity.
Stupidity? It was me ruining my own joke by not spelling it anachondriac. Which shows that it hardly works in English at all.
So what is a mitogram? Or a telechondriac?
Then there are those Spanish pentagrams. It turns out that Pentachondra is a genus of prostrate shrubs.
Do they have them in Spanish?
(I’m answering about Anagram generators, not “prostrate shrubs”)
I found this http://freespace.virgin.net/martin.mamo/spanish.html
But I’m not sure is as good as the English ones.
I’m not sure is as good as the English ones.
Neither am I. I couldn’t get it to do any anagram making at all. It may be that I don’t understand the directions. But I like the idea of making Spanish anagrams from English words. I’d look really smart.
Or you might just look smargana.
Smargana sounds to me like a brand of fake butter, though that could just be because we’re surrounded by fake butter in Norway at the moment. (Yesterday evening, Alma & I found a display case at the supermarket that was full of real French butter, both salted & and unsalted. We didn’t want to look like hoarders, so we grabbed as much as we considered was possible while still looking respectable. Alma needs it to make a cake for her class.)
To me smargana sounds like the stuff of fairy tales: It could be the name of the princess – her eyes are the color of emeralds, or the shape of almonds — or it could be the name of the kingdom, or of the dragon.
I vote for the dragon.
But I still like “I can’t believe it’s Smargana!”
Smargana sounds like the bad queen (a witch when nobody sees her)
But in fact this too easy: it resembles “Morgana”…
Let’s go for the fake butter, then.
Here you can read some anagrams in French that my talented friend Wanatoctoumi made himself and wrote in his blog: http://wanagramme.blog.lemonde.fr/category/13-wanagraphies/
An idle boast: at the village market this morning one of the beekeepers was selling some of his remaining stock of last year’s honeydew honey, which was the first he’d had in 20 years. We were there in time to buy four jars. We tried some at lunch: that’s one, we decided, that we’ll give as a Christmas present, and three to see us through the winter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Honeydew_honey
That’s very interesting, I hadn’t heard of honeydew honey. Whoever you give the present to, if I were you I’d edit out the bit about bee dysentery from the Wiki explanation, it’s not a nice image.
I will read anagrams in French later, when I’m feeling up to it.
My wife says she likes getting emails from Jesús at this time of the year, even if it is his busy season.
jajajaja/hahaha
(Jesus is waiting to be born now, Easter must be a really stressing time)
Stressful, but there’s a lot of chocolate at Easter.
It’s a good thing chocolate was unknown in the Middle East when the Baby Jesus was born. Otherwise festive Easter consumption patterns would have ruined his teeth, and his later arguments would have had no bite.
God forbade pictorial representations of himself. That might have been because he was past his prime, carious and ugly. This is a concern of ageing actresses too.
On the Sistine Chapel ceiling God is depicted as being pretty old-looking when he created Adam. I suppose Michelangelo figured it took a long time to become that godlike. Others had young gods, but they weren’t as wise.
I was busier last weekend than now because I was put on our nativity scene at home: real grass, a river with running water, lights that change doing effects day/night, etc.
It sounds wonderful. I believe in you Jesús, I don’t care what people say. I hope you can put your feet up and have a nice rest after your big day.
>A. J. P. Crown
Thanks! Now I’m quiet with my “job” finally well done.
The nativity scenes are an old tradition here. I sometimes say the most ones are made by atheists, like a lot of famous paintings, for example. Anyway, your text seems a profession of faith! (LOL) I’m Jesús, not Jesus; besides, my first daughter is María, my son Pablo (Paul) and my little daughter Eva (the first woman, although Lucy…) And I don’t forget my wife, Ana, as María’s mother (that’s a funny coincidence).
As for the ages of God and/or Jesus, a subject about you and Grumbly have written, obviously it depends. Here is common to say, when a person tells:
-I am 33 years old
-Oh! You are as old as Christ.
However, it’s clear he also was 32, 31, 30…
As you know, the Latin Credo said: “[Jesus] Filium Dei unigenitum et ex Patre natum ante omnia secula”, but then “consusbtantialem Patrem” and “et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine et homo factum est”. Who understands that?
In this regard, I remembered that S. Augustine had an odd experience about the Trinity according to his writings.
Finally we must remember that the representation of Holy Spirit is the oddest: a cock* pigeon without a clear age.
*The idea of virility, according to masculine gender of spirit, hides sexism in my opinion. If the pigeon is only a symbol, why do they need to add sometimes this unnecessary precision?
Smargana reminds me of Morgana as well. Is anybody watching the BBC’s Merlin?
Bogus creature alert!
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/markets-in-everything-the-culture-that-is-china.html#comments
Talking about pets, I’ve just seen this incredible video. It reminds me some cases of humans in some countries, like Spain in the past. Fortunately, the leopard doesn’t do it intentionally: http://useloos.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=16369met%2a
I don’t know what the leopard does, but I am afraid to watch it.
Smargana reminds me of Morgana, smarald or smaragd, amygdala, and of course smorgasbord.
Smargana sounds like one of those indecipherable commands that sarnt-majors bark out to the rankers in old comedy films. “Smarg – wait for it, you ‘orrible lot – ana.”
… and, I should have said, the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit.
>Empty
In a nutshell, the leopard, although kills the mother monkey, seems to adopt its baby after that.
A clear case of monkeying with Mother Nature.
Have you seen this?
I just saw the leopard and the baby monkey video… What happened with the baby after that?
The baby monkey probably died, being too young to fend for itself. I couldn’t get that out of my mind while watching the video. Where there is cute, lovey-dovey animal behavior, something is bound to go wrong.
Yes, I thought the same, Stu, But couldn’t the camera crew rescue him? I know they don’t suppose to intervene but if the baby monkey is dying alone, can’t they help him?
If they helped him, there must be another video documenting their charitableness.
Oh, Stu, how down to earth and grumbly you are!
Pero tenés razón, pobre monito…
Pobre monito indeed. I would have helped him, after setting the leopard on the cameramen.
¡jajaja!
Pobre leopardo, also… And the cameramen… well it’s their job.
OFF topic… (which was the topic??)
I’d like to share with you this story
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/87912/trade-undersecretary-iv%C3%A1n-heyn-found-dead-in-montevideo
A young official died two days ago during a Mercosur meeting. They thought of a suicide first (some of us thought of a mob killing…)
But apparently, David Carradine had the answer… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_asphyxiation
Isn’t that very stupid?
Had that film been on the Beeb, one would enquire “In which zoo did they fake that?”
That’s a brilliant idea, dearie ! It hadn’t even occurred to me.
Thank you all very much for your interesting and diverting links.
I’m sure they didn’t let the baby ape die, Stu. Like dearie, I felt there was something too directly descriptive of the story in Jesús’s video, but at the same time I didn’t think it looked faked. If they were actors I’d say it was a ‘re-creation’, but I don’t think you can get cats and apes to re-create such an event, so I really don’t know what’s going on. Glad to have seen it, though.
I love the jazz cows video. I think dearie showed it once before – unless it was Ø.
As for the erotic asphyxiation, I think I first heard about it in the British papers when pop-singer Michael Hutchence died a few years ago. All I can say is some people are never satisfied. Sex, death & celebrity all in one story is always wonderful, all that’s missing is royalty and maybe religion – Princess Di’s car-crash death in 1997 is a story that’s hard to beat.
I think that, probably for my fault, some people have only watched this video but they didn’t understand my text where I referred to children whose parents were killed in the dictatorships (Spain, Argentina, etc.) but then they were adopted by theirs assassins. The video can be fake but I know a leopard never would do that intentionally.
I’m sorry Jesús, I didn’t comment your point, but I did understand what you meant.
How are the girls, Mr. Crown? Does your camera still broken?
Our goose was delivered this afternoon. Any suggestions of what we might drink with goose? (We’ll be having it with spicy apple sauce, pigs in blankets, red cabbage, bread sauce, roast potatoes, roast parsnips……)
I’ve found out that for Christmas Eve my wife plans a re-creation of a French custom called “treize desserts”. I’d think we’d drink a sweet white wine with that.
People may speak disparagingly of British cooking, but I think that you are ahead of the USA in regard to both applesauce and pigs in blankets.
In a perfect world we’d have bought Ayrshire bacon for our pigs in blankets but we’ve settled for what was available locally. On a perfect Christmas morning we’d have Aberdeen butteries at breakfast but we can’t get them here so we’ve settled for croissants. Maybe we should try ordering online. Lunch is always Scottish smoked salmon – that is non-negotiable. We took to eating our Christmas dinner in the evening because when we had it as lunch we would have no afternoon available for a stroll.
How is Ayrshire bacon different?
And what are caleños (on the Fr. Wiki 13 desserts page)?
Don’t forget to save the Gänseschmalz to spread on bread, dearie.
I’m sorry Jesús, I didn’t comment your point, but I did understand what you meant.
Me too, Jes.
How are the girls, Mr. Crown? Does your camera still broken?
Girls staying indoors a lot while it’s been snowing, but I got them a very fine sort of hay that they seem to enjoy eating, so they’re ok. I thought my camera had recovered. We took it to the camera shop, where it worked fine, so we thought it was just us, but yesterday I tried it and it’s still broken.
A Canadian declares “Ayrshire bacon is made by the wet cure method much the same as Wiltshire Bacon a cure developed in the 1840s, the main difference being the specially fed somewhat fatter Scottish Large White pigs are completely boned before being immersed in the cure.”
A Scottish company observes “Ayrshire is the traditional Scottish cure that takes skinless and boneless sides of outdoor-reared pork and slowly cures them in a vat to give it an exceptional flavour. …Ramsay’s Ayrshire bacon is matured slowly to let the natural flavours develop, and because they don’t add water or additives, their bacon won’t shrink away in the pan and will crisp up beautifully.”
Pork plays a smaller part in the Scottish diet than in the English
I cut myself short: I meant “traditionally, pork played a smaller part in the Scottish diet than in the English”. The point was to hint that, even so, the bacon can be very fine.
>Julia, A. J. P. Crown
Thanks! It’s comforting to know that everybody has understood my com.
> A. J. P. Crown
About “calenos” I found “calena” is related by Christmas in Nissard (language of Nice). It seems that came from “calendas”: http://www.lexilogos.com/etymologie_noel.htm
In today’s front page of our main paper: “Why Norway is the best place to live”
(Do you think the girls would lend me a little spot in their house?)
Thank you for that link, Jesús. Very interesting – though it also says norvégien God Jul ! se prononce comme l’anglais good + [yul], which is not quite right (you don’t pronounce the d in Norwegian god, but you do in English good).
Yes of course you can come and spend summers with the goats, Julia! Bring something warm if you’re planning to spend the winter there, though.
I’m not sure what those indexes of “best country” are trying to show, but what they certainly don’t show is the place where anyone will be their happiest.
A yuletide safety tip for animal lovers: watch where you put your candles.
Last night we were sitting around all cozy after dinner, the immediate family plus my sister and her husband, who arrived the night before with their three big dogs. I caught a strange odor, as of something burning. Then everybody smelled it, and people rushed around sniffing high and low, debating about where it was coming from, checking the oven and the basement gas burner, and also intermittently saying “it smells like burning hair, doesn’t it?”. We finally found the poor cat Nika sitting by herself in the next room, looking sad and disturbed, and with a sort of crusty patch of scorched fur on one side of her torso. She must have been strolling along on the shelf behind me and walked too close to the candle. With our eyes on the television we missed the fireworks: we assume there was a brief but dramatic puff of flame and smoke. I suppose it could have been worse.
But, really, first we bring these huge dogs into the place and then we light her on fire: we’ll have to make it up to her somehow.
Wow, awful. Poor Nika. A very good tip for everyone. Cats can jump up where candles are, I suppose. I think all our dogs could do is knock over the tree if they’re feeling dissatisfied in some way.
Poor Nika!
A big bowl of milk and a cozy quiet room for her, now.
Thanks for the advise. We don’t really use candles for Christmas around here (we have hot and sunny Christmas)
Julia: over Christmas in El Paso, when I was a kid – it’s not exactly hot and sunny there, but cold, dry and sunny – people set out luminarias on window ledges and along the tops of walls. They are one of my treasured memories of Navidad in the desert.
(Short break between cleaning the table after the turkey and serving the kransekake.)
One Christmas my mother inlaw lit a candle on a table behind me. She seemed surprisingly surprised when my jacket caught fire.
And merry Christmas to all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Here’s your present.
http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/virtual-tour/index.html
Muy lindo recuerdo, Stu.
Accidents happens, Trond ;-)
Your gift is wonderful, dearie, I’ve been lost in the chapel for a while. Thank you!
You were at King’s, dearie ?
Nope. But I was a Senior Member there for a while. I got to walk on the lawns: oh yes!
I was a student at King’s for a short while, one of those Americans who come and go. On arrival a small group of us were treated to three tours by three proud guides. One showed us the chapel. One walked us around the grounds and said things about the buildings. One showed us some cherished silver: articulated wine trolleys and so on. This last felt like a parody of Englishness: shades of Bertie Wooster’s uncle.
But I did go and listen to the magnificent choir sing in the magnificent chapel from time to time.
Was there a cow creamer?
When I was young we always listened to the King’s College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the wireless at 3 pm on Christmas eve, while my mother made the mince pies. Thanks for the present, dearie. After I looked at the chapel I read a very articulate student’s summary of what it’s like there (his name is Juan). Now I’m thinking of renting King’s for a party: “King’s has a reputation for the fine food.”
Wonderful tour, Dearie.
Norwegian Christmas is initiated by Sølvguttene on Christmas eve.