Gimme a girl and hold the dog

I’ve just been reading a fantastic selection (La fiera corrupia, ed JM Rexach) of ballads and the like printed by Coromines of Lleida/Lerida in the mid-nineteenth century. As well as classics like The Beast of Jerusalem, sundry executions, famines, hail storms, and the obligatory poop-piece, it includes a very cute lovesong by F(r)ederico Logroño, First…

Fixing post-colonial Spain

Here’s another nugget from that dark and dirty vein, Spain’s colonial adventures. It’s from Vital Fité’s Las desdichas de la patria (The misfortunes of the motherland; 1899), in which he reflects on national destiny following the disastrous loss to the US of Cuba and the Philippines: If others’ troubles could console us, a brief examination…

Bad shit

Akiane’s poem no 1 (via Stefan@MemeFirst), with a couple of small changes, brings to mind a story someone else tells about when the municipal cops rushed into a building, truncheons at the ready, to arrest a notorious heroin junk, only to discover, slipping and sliding, that he’d had a little accident: I slipped on the…

Perverts of the world

Comment spam has dried up over the last couple of months (along with comments), but I do get the occasional strange message from nutters who want to correspond with me or mow my lawn or whatever. One such writes every now and again in Spanish to suggest meeting up so that she (lots of allegedlies…