I have nothing to say about the goats, gangnam style. Unlike Madonna, Eton and the US navy academy the goats don’t need this kind of media promotion.
Yesterday it was very gloomy; it rained the whole day. This picture taken outside the front door is nothing like what seemed to be happening. It was a continuous flow, I thought; but apparently not if you take a quick-enough snap: rectangular drops of water, reflecting the hillside upside-down. In the first drop, at its top right, I think I can see Topsy who was standing next to me while I was snapping away.
This is the top of the pear tree in the garden, in the middle of the afternoon:
Everything conspires to make foggy sunless days like this even darker,
especially the damp earth
and the leafless branches.
Topsy still wants to go for a brief walk on days like this. We usually just go down to the post box, which is about three hundred yards (or metres) in each direction.
Autumn is the busy season at the waterfall on the other side of the lake. I’m worried the footbridge is going to be washed away. I daren’t go over there.
And yet there are small compensations. The view through this rose bush was one for me yesterday. I’m not really sure why.
A Bad Guide 
Dark days — and darker days ahead perhaps.
The photo of the white house against the backdrop of the tenebrous woods is great (and would be greater if there wasn’t that sign encroaching on the picture). It tells a whole story in itself. Hansel & Gretel, or Agatha Christie, or Stephen King.
the post box, which is about three hundred yards (or metres)
Not quite the same. In secondary schools we had to swim 50 m. The thing, though, was that we swam in a swimming pool belonging to the Martian army, which inherited it from the British, and the pool was 25 yards long only. We had to swim two lengths, and then make second U-turn in order to do three of four additional strokes. Surely we lost time in so doing, compared to those swimming in a 25-m pool.
I’m sure you Martians didn’t need swimming practice at school, but I agree it would have been nice to know your proper times. I remember the same thing with running; that 100 metres seems a hell of a lot longer than 100 yards while you’re having to run the difference.
Tenebrous, eh? – my spellchecker doesn’t like it – dark, shadowy or obscure. I took a similar picture without the sign. Perhaps I’ll swap them…
Tenebrous –
“Dark and gloomy” says the AHD.
“Full of darkness, dark. b. fig. Obscure, gloomy 1599” says my copy of the SOED.
“Gloomy, shadowy, or dark” says the Collins English Dictionary (unabridged).
Maybe you spellchecker’s vision is obscured by the weather?
My spellchecker is always dark and gloomy.
I’ve fixed the photo.
My wife says you’re a real artist.
Wow. Thank her very much! That means a lot to me. I only wish I were as well read as her husband.
You are indeed an artist, AJP.
A cheerer-upper.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/cheeky-monkeys-hitch-a-ride-on-giant-rodent.html
Thanks, m-l. How kind of you.
Dearie, if those capybaras are four feet long (1200mm), the monkeys must be tiny.
Surely this entry should be tagged “Almost entirely not about goats”?
AJP: four feet long (1200mm)
Is it common to use millimeters as the units when measuring lengths of several feet? you don’t even say “48 inches” for four feet, and centimeters as the units in “120 cm” would be quite small already, but millimeters?
Marie-Lucie, in the construction industry the British use millimetres while the French and Germans use centimetres. Sometimes reading drawing becomes bit baffling if one is used to one system and has to deal with another, but in the end the consequences are rarely as dire as what happened to that space probe NASA sent to Mars in 1998.
AJP, did you ever build a capybara?
Here in the construction we had always used the square meter but after some years ago we are measuring in thousands of euro. Anyway I don’t understand why we don’t use m, or better, km to measure the radius of our property bubble:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_property_bubble
Catanea, I think you’re exaggerating. This is a piece with two subjects: goats in the media and the current rainy weather. The title and first paragraph are about goats.
Sig, if I were to build a rodent it would be a capybara, with working drawings in millimetres (I’m very nouveau metric, I think I started writing dimensions in millimetres in Norway, I can’t remember how we wrote them in Germany), but where’s the money in it?
Jesús, don’t Spaniards measure property prices in euros per square metre? Then I can just divide by ten-ish (10.9) to get euros per sq. ft.
10.764 to be nearly exact. Anyway, we have to use compulsorily the S.I. after 1880. Here ft and inch are used only by plumbers, tv shop assistants…and by a lot of authors of scientific books :- ) .
Aggg! “…since 1880.”
Aggg!
I would say “Aaaag!”, but that’s just me.
I’ll write “aaarrggghhhhh” instead of “aggg”.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=aaarrggghhhhh
What a difficult words!
“Aaarrggghhhhh: What you scream when something inconceivably horrible happens to you.”
Lucky old Jesús has led a very protected life.
I agree on the artist thing.
Also, your last post made me very nostalgic; forty years ago, give or take, I myself went to the British Museum and stood in awe before the Rosetta Stone.
Did the girl’s name “Rosetta” come from the stone?
Thank you Language. It takes one to know one. I should say that to all you guys.
In another part of the museum they display a copy of the Rosetta Stone and you can get up close without a crowd of people breathing down your neck. It looks exactly the same as the original to me. They ought to make some more copies and mail them to different parts of the world.
Thanks, dearie. I’m going to make a copy of that to play in the car.
It tells a whole story in itself. Hansel & Gretel, or Agatha Christie, or Stephen King.
Not to take anything from the artistic qualities (which I wouldn’t recognize since it takes one to know one), but extracting the exotism (as this Norwegian would) it’s an average 100-year-old rural house Now, this on the other hand, is a horror story all by itself, taken by my son on a scout hike the very same Saturday.
I just remembered this. (I meant to link to it last week, but I was busy and forgot.)
Now, this on the other hand, is a horror story all by itself, taken by my son on a scout hike the very same Saturday.
Trond, that one looks as if it came from a book by Arnaldur Indriðason.
Yes, it’s dark and entrenched, but the forest makes the darkness un-Icelandic to me.
I happen to be re-reading Harðskafi (Hypothermia, Fjellet) now — or at least that’s what I’m currently carrying around in my pocket in case I’ll need something to read on the bus. But it’s not adviseable to take it out. I had a very good German detective novel that I bought in Stuttgart this summer, but I forgot it on a stupid bus-for-train connection a couple of weeks ago. Nowadays it’s ridiculously simple to have another copy sent from Germany, but it feels like cheating. Which is also how I justify to myself that I haven’t tried reading Arnaldur in the original language.
(I tried to reply to this from my phone, but it can’t have worked).
“Takes one to know one” is something children in England say when they get called names by other children. It’s very easy to refute, you don’t need to be a crocodile to say someone else is a crocodile, but for some reason children don’t work that way.
I just remembered this. – Hahaha!
it’s an average 100-year-old rural house
That’s what you think. But it’s not, it’s a jordstampet hus, designed by a Swedish engineer called Ellington. He later designed a jordstamphus for Knut Hamsun that promptly collapsed. Knut was pretty cross. (I can’t find any links to this & I can’t remember where I read it.) Ours has been standing for 90 years without a problem. Because the walls were subsequently insulated and covered with wood paneling it’s no longer obvious that it’s made of compressed earth, I’m sorry to say. One day, I’ll replace the metal roofing.
He later designed a jordstamphus for Knut Hamsun
Actually, I think it was a stable or barn, not a house for people.
– Hahaha!
I hope you got the mouseover caption too.
it’s a jordstampet hus, designed by a Swedish engineer called Ellington. He later designed a jordstamphus for Knut Hamsun
Yes, I should have remembered that. Must have been a barn rather than stable, though, or it wouldn’t have collapsed.
the forest makes the darkness un-Icelandic to me
Quite right, Trond. It reminds me of joke told by a fellow Icelandic student in Scotland. She asked how one should do when one was lost in a forest in Iceland. The answer was simple: stand up.
I read only one book from Arnaldur Indrida(s)son — I think his patronymic was written with two -s in the French translation my sister gave me as a gift —, and it was quite gloomy. It dealt with the issues of immigrants and xenophobia in Iceland and, somehow, it didn’t look plausible.
Breaking news on the BBC:
25 November 2012
Gangnam Style becomes YouTube’s most-viewed video
Gangnam Style, the dance track by South Korean pop phenomenon Psy, has become YouTube’s most-watched video of all time.
It has notched up more than 808m views since it was posted in July.
[…]
The dance has sparked numerous copycat versions, being performed by a diverse fan-base including Filipino prison inmates, prominent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a Chinese robot.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20483087
… a Chinese robot as well as Norwegian goats?
It’s funny how they can use it to promote such very different things: consumer goods and freedom of speech in China; pr for Ban Ki Moon and the US navy’s academy (“Yes, we’re human”).
What won’t the British army do nowadays…
British troops in Afghanistan raise money Gangnam Style
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20753515
I like the idea of them raising money. Perhaps if they really got into entertainment they could become self-supporting.