‘“Bush is worse than Stalin” -Hitler’ gets 30 ghits while ‘“Bush is worse than Hitler” -Stalin’ gets 822. Is this because the people who make this kind of comparison (a) haven’t heard of Stalin; (b) think Stalin was uniquely awful, an ÃœberBusch; or (c) think Stalin was actually a nice guy with some bad press?…
Re shepherds, Pío Baroja says that in the Navarre village inhabited by Silvester Paradox, hero of The adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvester Paradox (Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox, 1901) that the local guardians of public order were called ministers (ministros). (Silvestre Paradox is very strange and very funny. It’s a disgrace that…
Amando de Miguel says that Aura Grandal says that people in Ferrol, Galicia call policemen “chepas”, and that this derives from “shepherds”, which is what British engineers called the watchmen in the naval arsenals. I’m going to believe it, whether I do or not.
One dreadful consequence of writing this blog has been a realisation that ideas whose sublimity none has dared impute in the bar down the alley, Sally, are regularly rubbished by those too distant to receive the hair-mussing they so richly deserve. Here, for example, barrett writes “Ghits”, by the way, is an abomination and reminiscent…
European acceptance of Michael Moore’s new anti-Americanism has been greatly assisted by the loving detail with which he depicts the country he has invented, bursting with gun- and God-happy fatties and ruled over by a Semitic mafia. Here, from El Semanario Curioso, Histórico, Erudito, Comercial, Público y Económico, El Blasón de Cataluña (1842; cited in…
… used to be one of the terms used to designate a boy on apprenticeship with a shepherd. Now it sometimes refers to the (electric) fencing that, to some extent, replaced such boys.
“The whole municipal district of Fuentes de Ebro found itself invaded by a terrible plague of locusts which covered all the irrigated and dry fields so that as far as the eye could see appeared to be dyed brown, since you couldn’t see the earth”
