Category: Splog

RIP Iñaki Cabo

I don’t normally do births, marriages and such, but Iñaki was rather special. I knew him from Saravillo, and a nicer person you could not meet. (Update)

Water crisis

But not in Pedralbes: If only shots were that cheap at my local.

A heathen named Guiri

“The Mahávansa and the Rájaratnákari state, that the king Walakanabhaya, or according to the latter work, Deveny Paetissa, caused the temple of a heathen named Girrie (doubtless Giri) to be destroyed, and caused to be constructed upon its site twelve temples consecrated to Sákya, which communicated with each other; and in the midst of which…

Bar Morryssom

This example of hostelries unable to spell their own name is rather interesting because of the two signs Bar Morrisson is clearly older than Bar Morryssom. Does this mark a decline in Spanish literacy–they used to be able to spell it–or are they merely trying to please various orthographical markets? (Background: Spanish speakers find it…

Apparent gender confusion in French “native-speakers”

It is slightly strange that this should surprise anyone, since Romance languages are notorious for their variation in the attribution of gender to nouns (Latin neuter -> almost universally Romance masculine, but you then get swaps, and doubling ups, and all kinds of mayhem in the various modern languages/dialects). One wonders whether the regional background…

Haute cuisine

Some British pubs take their French rather literally: Fellow hippies will know that if you stack your chips right on the day of the winter solstice and then chant a magic spell, the sun’s rays will fall in such a way as to create a shadow image of pretty much whichever megalithic construction you fancy.

Airport shuttle (2)

[Mr Driver reminded me of the Canadian Hell’s Angel I once met in the back row of a BA flight from Heathrow to Vancouver. The hostesses made us drink all the whisky on the plane, and he ended up having some kind of reclining-seat-based scuffle with the guy in front. As we approached immigration, he…