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)
Even if you stay clear of the Russian gun smugglers in the port, it’s still often very difficult to follow Antwerp dialect, with its Anglicisms (makkadam, “asphalt”), Gallicisms (memmaure, “memory”), games (‘t Chingchangsplein for Sint Jansplein, “St John’s Square”) and surreal inventions (I get halfway through melkkaarenoungdenaar, “lousy haircut”, and then lose track of what…
… was one of the comparatively few in which I never sat, hoping that one day things would get better. Anyway, it’s gone. Here’s a memory from someone else, which I hope he won’t mind me quoting: That’s sad – it was quite a place. Full of the strangest people. There used to be a…
Here’s another daisy for my chain of Spain-goes-south posts, unlikely to be of interest to anyone at all, although the ads may amuse. Vital Fité’s Las desdichas de la patria viewed China as an imperial basket case. Ricardo Beltrán y Rózpide in La geografía en 1898 (1899) explains why it was to remain so: The…
Here’s another nugget from that dark and dirty vein, Spain’s colonial adventures. It’s from Vital Fité’s Las desdichas de la patria (The misfortunes of the motherland; 1899), in which he reflects on national destiny following the disastrous loss to the US of Cuba and the Philippines: If others’ troubles could console us, a brief examination…
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…
From Popbitch: Abu al-Zarqawi is the mastermind behind this week’s gruesome hostage beheadings in Iraq. By filming himself doing the beheadings and then selling the resulting snuff movies as DVDs all over the Middle East, al-Zarqawi has turned himself into radical Islam’s hottest celebrity. What nobody has pointed out is how influenced by hip hop…
From an AP report: A passenger, identified only as A. Chernopup, was aboard a recent flight from Moscow to the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk. Seeing that the crew were intoxicated and were not fulfilling their duties, Chernopup asked to be served by a sober and competent flight attendant. He was then beaten up by two…
Sez Rob (via Memepool). There’s a generation-by-generation analysis of the techniques buried somewhere around here, but it has got slightly less amusing recently: early last month I was getting up to 200/hr – not good, even if they do go straight to trash – and, though that problem has been killed, new contact emails receive…