I haven’t the faintest idea whether “nitty gritty” originated in the slaveships (“no te grites”, stop moaning? Nope) and thus should be avoided by good folks or whether it’s an American Indian training service, but I did like the following gangster talk: “Noo, man! Mi an di man fos taak boo dat, man, aa sins…
The right is perturbed because men are getting married on Los Lunnis. Their objections are historical rather than theological–no one’s suggesting we respect Genesis 24:3 and 38:6 and allow fathers to select girlies for their sons–and their problem is that the world has moved on. I’d regard myself as a natural PP voter (although that…
I haven’t seen cockfighting in Spain, but to judge by this report there’s still a fair amount of it about. Here, however, the authorities are trying to stamp it out, while in Cuba they’re running the show: Police operation in the farming district of Las Mercedes SANTIAGO DE CUBA, February 12 (Antonio Alonso, in collaboration…
The French are going to reject the Euroconstitution, and for some reason this is worrying some Brits. There’s some interesting anthropology in this post by Jon Henley, and here‘s a contrasting piece from a couple of years ago. (There’s a much more exciting effort from Boris Johnston here (free reg), which includes the following: The…
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…