The mayor of Icononzo, Colombia says (via Puerta del Sol) that he’s more frightened of gossip than of guerrillas or paramilitaries and has acquired powers to fine tabbies almost four million pesos (that’s roughly 4,100 Belarussian roubles). However, gossips aren’t only dangerous in war zones: A large part of our middle class not only lives…
Here‘s a note (in Catalan) on the fest in Barceloneta where I took down Sale el sol por la mañana last year. The first fruits function of the Judaic Pentecost explains why the locals dress up in food on their return from their trip out to the country, but I guess this relationship was lost…
Oh dear, more kerfuffle about official European languages. It seems clear to me that until the Common Agricultural Policy is abolished we should be condemned to Pig Latin.
I have just been released from hospital after wading across the river Besòs in full, pink, evening dress (with knickers, ladies) playing Arthur Pryor’s variations on The Blue Bells of Scotland on a Conn 8H tenor trombone. Having almost drowned in midstream after being hit by a large patch of floating sewage, I am most…
What has driven Margaret Marks to cook and, presumably, eat Indians? Since Ms Marks has quite clearly gone native, I suspect this of being some bizarre offshoot of Central Europe’s Orientalist anti-Tarzan industry: In Germany after World War I, Tarzan’s sales were so vast that a disgruntled local publisher printed a counter-Tarzan tract called Tarzan…
One of Karim’s commenters is under the impression that Karim is a bad speller. Orthographic genius, I’d say: bussaharain clearly refers to that portion of the African continent that still depends on public transport. (Give or take a few prickles, we are, of course, all African hedgehogs.)
Since the publication of Memories of Hell in 1978, radical trade union leader Enric Marco has represented for many the suffering Spanish prisoners underwent in Nazi camps. Now it turns out (via Teresa Amat) that, like “Binjamin Wilkomirski” (although he lacks Bruno Grossjean’s research skills and literary bent), he made up the concentration camp experiences…
There is the weeniest bit of potential to frustrate the knavish tricks of those bad, bad Greeks and “their” precious feta: the Italianism feta is used in Argentina and Uruguay to mean a slice of cheese or cold cut, so all the Danes and the Germans need to do is slice up their product and…
Towards the end of part 2 of Quixote, Sancho Panza is hailed by a German pilgrim who turns out to be Ricote, a Morisco from Sancho’s village. Ricote was driven out of Spain by religious persecution and has spent his exile in France, Italy, and Germany, near Augsburg, where I found we might live with…
There’s a rather silly suggestion here (via Onze Taal) to the effect that, with English reasonably close to becoming the only EU working language, it’s about time the UK started paying for everyone else to learn English. I find this a weak argument: with the French Eurocracy converted to the delights of English, it will…
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