I’ve a little bottle in my brisses pocket, which I call Icum Spicome, Spinto of Spain Which brings dead men to life again Here Jack take a sup out of my little bottle And let it run down thy throttle Arise and fight for ten thousand.
An El Punt hack (900€/month, I’m told) has noticed that, with Atlantic Basin hurricane namers almost through their standard list, the Greek reserves may be required, leaving Spain open to a storm named for the 7th letter of their alphabet. (The Mediterranean is part of the Atlantic Basin, in case you wondered.)
The only useful feature of the new local search tool Noxtrum is the free SMS feature. Unfortunately the enterprise belongs to Spain’s disastrous, dominant phone company, Telefónica, so the service is of course unavailable.
“Spain (from the Latin term for Ass Pain) is a small, mountainous country in southern Yurp ruled by a gigantic animated marble statue of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and populated by dwarves, halflings and tunos.”/ “Polaquia is currently ruled by a moustache called Carod Rovira, with support from Pasqual Maragall and Malonda, the town drunk.” Check…
Des von Bladet links to the story of Anna and Ulf Ström, who have cycled all the way from sunny Sweden to snappy Spain and say that poor Spanish road-planning has sometimes forced them to cycle on motorways. Contractors are actually obliged to build service roads along at least one side of motorways if there…
Apparently (via Onze Taal) a Serbian village is changing its name from Smrdić (“old and dirty”) to Izvor (“spring”). Said Smilja Kostic: “All the young people used to leave the village because they were ashamed to live in a place with such a name.” This seems to me dubious reasoning: despite its tempting name, there…
The failure on the part of Romance lexicographers to include common words and meanings (eg bragueta = codpiece) in their bibles forms a formidable obstacle for those who would better understand their societies. Stanley Brandes published a really cool book 25 years ago–ie before the advent of easily searchable corpses–called Metaphors of Masculinity: Sex and…
Meteoclimatic.com is a brilliant site which provides real-time data from amateur weather stations across Spain and its various dangly bits. I particularly like the historic feature (hit Estaciones then a province, and you’ll see a calendar below the fold; navigate back in time using the arrows on the right). Compare it with the miserable crap…
(Sad hippy post.) Everyone gets prizes here, and they’ve given sociolinguist Irene Lozano one for lamenting in Lenguas en guerra (Languages at war), as reported in ABC, that languages are used for political ends, when their purpose is to serve and human communication and knowledge. Languages don’t take notice of borders, because borders hinder and…