The isleños (islanders), the Canarian-based dialect speakers based in St Bernard parish near New Orleans, are some of the less-publicised victims of the floods. Their victory against age-old enemies in the interests of yet more Anglo hegemony is commemorated in this 1970s song (more links; Mississippi song project): Setecientos setentaisiete, varias familias dejaron las Islas…
I used to know a Dutch cyclist who, as he got older, would take the train for the outward leg and return with the wind, and I was aware that the French army used to teach conscripts to ski by giving them post-season seconds and leaving them up an Alp, but the following approach had…
Margaret Marks says that the Marxist-Leninists are not giving away balloons in the German elections. I hope this is because they can’t afford them rather than for ideological reasons. While it is true that Jimmy Connolly saw in them the nemesis of the working classes, a progressive balloon vendor appears in one of my favourite…
Where arse turns up regularly in jokes, proverbs and stories, bollocks–cojones–in CORDE’s version of sixteenth century Spain seem to be confined to medical treatises and to a verse novel of quite extraordinary and possibly unsurpassed filth. The anonymous Carajicomedia (1519) consists of the adventures of the noble Diego Fajardo’s one-eyed trouser snake, which is said…
I blog pseudonymously in a couple of other places in order to be able to write with more freedom. The other day I was about to start a blog about litigious sheep when I suddenly realised that it ain’t what you sue but the way that you suet. So I melted them down and started…
Check out Jayne over at Pyrenean Notes, who’s plugging the fiesta in Plan, up in the Huescan Pyrenees, and writing about other interesting stuff like mountain walking.
The Dallas Morning News ($$$) has an interesting variation on the “Franco banned the sardana” urban legend: “In fact, during the tightest days of his rule, the Sardana dance was still performed here (but with a different name) …”
El País this morning seems still to be backing the “It wos Bush wot dunnit” hypothesis. This is because they are being paid to do so by the Russians–although they still haven’t managed to get the hammers and sickles up there in the clouds. (Thanks Dave)
Someone who thinks I was born yesterday tells me this word is applied to policemen who shoot street children. (BTW: The Guttersniper has frenemies, an updating of the good/bad cop routine.)