I do like the Dutch foreign ministry desk diary, although more for its furry cover than the tired and overwhelmingly western images reproduced. One exception: Co Westerik’s Snijden aan gras (Westerik’s site -> enter -> Schilderijen -> scroll down or Ctrl-F to Snijden aan gras I). Fingers that are cut in Spanish culture tend to…
If the council can deal with the Ukrainian prostitution mafia, why can’t they cope with Peruvian panpipe terror? This is not, by any means, to say that we should imitate the Californians and execute guys who dress up as Indians. We are Europeans! We will do nothing!
Good to see civic leaders lining up to praise local rag, La Vanguardia, on its 125th, particularly since the former have just pushed through a crackdown on prostitution, while the latter derives a substantial proportion of its revenues from prostitution- and sex-related advertising and services.
OK, Jordanian Starbucks customers (via Taccuino di Traduzione). More on Arabizi and language death from Jordanian blogger Lina. I know an Itsi-Bitsi-Teeny-Weeny-Honolulu-Strandbikini bit about East African Arabic creoles, but this is new to me. I guess that there must have also existed Romance-Arabic creoles at some stage (Mozarabic was, of course, not one), but I’m…
The other day I was having a beer with Simon Hughes when he suddenly said, “Trevor, I want you to know that I’m gay,” and then tried to cover it up by asking the barman for yet another Freudian Pils. (Thanks Paul. Furt is appearing April 3rd in Norwich and April 22nd in Leeds.)
I went through a phase in which I agreed (although slightly less volubly) with R Hughes re R Rauschenberg, but then I found WS Burroughs playing with similar ideas with more aggression and originality (although with less skill) and I changed sides. Further, Rauschenberg couldn’t write, while Burroughs’ Tangier stuff is better even than that…