Tapas bars, a British invention?

This isn’t about who invented bar snacks, or about why one particular gibber of Catalan nationalism should want to deny having invented them. Someone speculated drunkenly last night that, since tapas appears in English from the 1950s (C Salter in OED, “In Spain, when you order a drink in a bar.., you will always be…

Wesley Willis

Has got to be in there somewhere: Lyrics: Suck a polar bear’s funky ass! Suck a racehorse’s cock with Heinz Tomato Ketchup! Suck a donkey’s shitty ass! Suck a male camel’s dick with Hoisin sauce! Suck a cheetah’s dick Suck a cheetah’s dick Suck a cheetah’s dick Suck a cheetah’s dick Suck a European bison’s…

Generic description of pipes

The tubular and conical wooden pipes are made on a lathe and tuned with stopped plugs. Larger (lath) pipes are long rectangular tubes made by sticking four thin slats of wood together with glue and carving a whistle for the end. Wooden tubes that can be seen are layered with gold or aluminium paint before…

No dog launching in Algorfa, Alicante

The chief of police of this small tourist town has apparently published an English version of the municipal bylaws. Among other things he wants you to do is to “Alter public order and tranquillity with scandals, disturbances, brawls and noise.” Will fucked translation constitute an adequate defence for British hooligans? Is the council–whose income from…

Kalebeul’s one and only reference to the US presidential elections

A little thing by Orson Scott Card, via Kalebeul’s DJ-guru, Irwin Chusid. Apparently I’m about to become a multiple uncle AND bring down capitalism, seriously, so don’t worry too much about this kind of detail. (FYI: kalebeul’s proprietor has voted once in public elections–green/neighbourhoodist in The Hague, has worked for two centre-left parties, once defeated…

Chest problems?

Take Goig Heroin Elixir: From La Vanguardia anno 1912. Their current principal source of immoral earnings, apart from editorial-related state subsidy and tax-(ahem-)efficient paid-for journalism, is, of course, brothel advertising. I seem to recall it worked out at around €1M pa, but now most things do. The first ever front page of this then conservative,…

Peasants who don’t know how to cross themselves

Apparently we anglocabrones used to think that crossing oneself was prerequisite to being Spanish. Here’s Juan Goytisolo in La Guardia, a short story written in the early 1950s, partly available in GBS: From the window I saw a group of conscripts in parade dress. It was Sunday and the officers’ room was deserted. Its furniture…