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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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2:48 pm - Ostensible...
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Hi --Blame DQ and Ishmael et al. Short on words today, as usual. Back still hurts me from sciatica--back and leg pain, a BUMMER--and today is my 73rd bday, so be good to yourself :-)
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| Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
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2:47 pm - From a friend on Fbk :-)
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Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass but about learning to dance in the rain. save the Earth... it's the only planet with chocolate.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 5th, 2009
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2:46 pm - At long last,
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I turned in my passport application yesterday. Hooray for me :-) Thank god :-) All I need now is air fare to Zagreb, Croatia. Don't know how long I've wanted this--at least since Shrub got elected :-) Have to go see what my grandfather left behind in the old country :-) Of course I know a little bit about what I'm looking for--people who behaved like my dad did at times when I was a kid, people who approached life with a gusto I just don't find in Amerika. I feel there is too much fear here--this is a Protestant nation, a Puritan nation bound up in guilt and shame, fear and anguish, trying to do the "right" thing. Bother :-( It'll take a while I know--I've been a vitamin freak for like 50 years, trying this and then that "for my health" and it costs me like $300 a month. Bother. You live until you die, and nobody knows what's next, but it's a big universe :-)
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| Monday, May 25th, 2009
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9:18 am - Writer's Block: In Memoriam
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My uncle, Wilmer Lee Hardy. He was in the Philipines when the japanese attacked and survived the
Bataan-Corregidor march, only to die after evacuation when a US bomb/torpedo sank the submarine he was on. Bummer!
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7:05 am - Happy birthday, Alobar :-)
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Happy birthday, old bean :-) Many happy returns of the day :-)
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| Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
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6:03 am - Happy birthday :-)
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I found this in my mail this morning. Surprise :-)
eman_p's birthday is coming up!
Saturday, May 2, 2009 1:45 AM
From:
"LiveJournal" <lj_notify@livejournal.com>
Add sender to Contacts
To:
humnhumr@yahoo.com
Hi humrhums,
eman_p's birthday is coming up on May 04!
You can:
Post to wish them a happy birthday
Send them a virtual gift
Gift them with a paid account
HAPPY NUMBER 32, E :-)
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| Saturday, April 18th, 2009
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2:44 pm - In and among
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In between the "maybe"s
and "can't"s and "should"s
there is hope and
satisfaction.
We go from hilltop
to valley and
back, again
and again.
Makes life interesting :-)
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| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
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3:33 pm - Susan Boyle--remember that name!
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| Friday, March 13th, 2009
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10:44 am - "Because I have nothing to say,
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I must say sometning."
Seems to me that the desire==the need to communicate is built into the human phenomenon/process, the body and mind and spirit. Lord knows I try but I tend to get hung up in "what to say". Bummer! Or in spelling and my dyslexia, my mistyping as fingers hit the wrong key. I'm trying to ignore that right now, altho I'll probably go back and catch as many of my goofs as possible :-)
Yeah, I just proofread that first paragraph. My parents and my teachers could be pretty harsh about spelling and penmansship, drat it.
Things are pretty quiet for me these days, but I am striving to keep my involvement in rescuing Wall Street--and Main Street--low. Don't spend much on anything except food and other necessities. Thank Providence and the FDR administration for social security and the cost-of-living adjustment :-)
Peace and love and perseverance :-) Go on :-) O.K., I'm smiling :-)
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| Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
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7:33 am - The family secret?
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What family secret? Who doesn't know that we are all incomplete, dogged by fears that they will find out we are less than perfect? We learn these supposed secrets from our families, mostly nonverbal, altho some are whispered to us at the damnedest times. Little sister tells big brother and big brother gets back at her by telling her what she does that is not up to snuff for mommy or daddy. Bother.
And so starts another day. Gotta start speaking my mind some day and if my audience isn't here I'll have to send it to where you are.
As Gene Autry used to sing, "May your days be merry and bright." Or not :-)
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| Monday, March 9th, 2009
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3:47 pm - Bah Humbug :-(
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| Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
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2:07 pm - From adayinthelife :-) trippy :-)
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open source funk OR when youtube meets mashups
http://thru-you.com/#/videos/
holy crap. this guy has taken about 15 different youtube videos of instrumentalists doing different songs. he's taken the clips and mixed them together into some pretty phat conglomerations.
Kutiman, the masterful Israeli funk musician and producer, outdoes himself by creating Thru-You: Multiple YouTube clips (mostly instructional and performance videos) edited into slick mega-mashups. They're not just patchwork assemblages, they're sample-based original creations that coud hold their own on anyone's album... Plus they're 100% audiovisual! It's a work of next-level genius.
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| Monday, February 16th, 2009
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3:50 pm - I?
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I?
Who dat?
Not-you?
The Great Division?
Why?
Grown-up talk?
Survival strategy?
But what if you and I are One?
Would people be different?
Could people be different?
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| Saturday, January 31st, 2009
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6:08 am - A short poem with a long title :-)
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| Friday, January 30th, 2009
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10:46 am - Go, go, go.
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Go go go.
Go shit, go shave.
Smoke. Get ready :-)
Do. Do this, do that.
Do. Do. Do.
with a side of be-ing?
Act and react,
create and destroy.
Again. From the top--
or side or bottom.
Go on :-)
Time? No time.
Gotta go,
gotta do.
Or not.
Be :-)
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| Sunday, January 25th, 2009
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2:40 pm - New lingua franca (Globish) upsets French (from BBC)
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I ran into this earlier, thought it might interest some of you :-) Will post a Wikipedia link at the end.
New lingua franca upsets French (from BBC)
That the French resent the global supremacy of the English language is nothing new, but as Hugh Schofield finds out, a newly evolved business-speak version is taking over.
They were giving out the annual Prix de la Carpette Anglaise the other day. Literally it means the English Rug Prize, but doormat would be the better translation.
Quel horreur! Lord Nelson is the inspiration for a French rock band
As the citation explains, the award goes to the French person or institution who has given the best display of "fawning servility" to further the insinuation into France of the accursed English language.
Among the runners-up this year: the supermarket company Carrefour which changed the name of its Champion chain of stores to Carrefour Market, not using the French word "marche".
Also the provocatively-named Paris band Nelson (it is the Admiral, not Mr Mandela, that they have in mind) whose frontman J.B. sings in English because, he says, French does not have the right cadences for true rock.
Worst offender
But topping the poll for grave disservices to the mother tongue is France's higher education minister, Valerie Pecresse.
Valerie Pecresse has decided if you cannot beat then, join them
Her crime: proclaiming to the press that she had no intention of speaking French when attending European meetings in Brussels, because, she said, it was quite obvious that English was now the easiest mode of communication.
The rise and rise of the English language is a sensitive subject for many here in France, who believe that French has every bit as much right to be considered a global tongue.
Even conceding to English victory in the war for linguistic supremacy, the French believe that the least they can do is defend their own territory and keep the ghastly invader at a decent remove.
Personally, I sympathise greatly with defenders of the French language
The same group that sponsors the Prix de la Carpette also brings legal actions against companies that, it says, breach the law, for example, by not issuing French language versions of instructions to staff.
Personally, I sympathise greatly with defenders of the French language. I think it is true that culturally the world will be diminished if one monolithic form of discourse squashes the rest. But then I am also a realist.
Recently I have spent a lot of time in French multinational companies, and what is inescapable is the stranglehold that English already has on the world of business here.
French executives draft reports, send e-mails, converse with their international colleagues - and increasingly even amongst themselves - in English.
It is of course a kind of bastardised, runty form of business-speak full of words like "drivers" and "deliverables" and "outcomes" to be "valorised", but is nonetheless quite definitely not French.
New language
This brings me to Jean-Paul Nerriere.
Monsieur Nerriere is a retired French businessman who one day in the course of his work made a fascinating observation.
In a meeting with colleagues from around the world, including an Englishman, a Korean and a Brazilian, he noticed that he and the other non-native English speakers were communicating in a form of English that was completely comprehensible to them, but which left the Englishman nonplussed.
He, Jean-Paul Nerriere, could talk to the Korean and the Brazilian in this neo-language, and they could understand each other perfectly.
But the Englishman was left out because his language was too subtle, too full of meaning that could not be grasped by the others.
In other words, Monsieur Nerriere concluded, a new form of English is developing around the world, used by people for whom it is their second language.
It may not be the most beautiful of tongues, but in this day and age he says it is indispensible. He calls the language Globish and urges everyone - above all the French - to learn it tout de suite.
In his book Don't Speak English, Parlez Globish, Monsieur Nerriere sets out the rules.
Yasser Arafat, an 'excellent exponent' of 'Globish'
Globish has only 1,500 words and users must avoid humour, metaphor, abbreviation and anything else that can cause cross-cultural confusion.
They must speak slowly and in short sentences. Funnily enough, he holds up the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as an excellent exponent.
Many in France consider Monsieur Nerriere a traitor for promoting the dreaded Anglais, but he insists he is not.
He says the French have to recognise that the language war is lost.
"We're just urinating on the ashes of the fire," he says. We should look on Globish not as a triumphant cultural vehicle for les Anglo-Saxons, but as a tool, he says: essential but purely utilitarian.
For lovers of English there is another consideration, only half-serious I admit. But what if this were all a devious Gallic plot?
After all, if Globish really does take over the planet with its stunted business-speak, its bland insignificance, its cultureless access-for-all availability, then where does that leave the real English?
Will the language of Shakespeare suffer by association, leaving the field open one day for the resurgence of the other great tongues of the world ? Like French?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish
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| Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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11:27 am - We did it :-)
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We got another southpaw as President :-)
I watched almost 3 1/2 hours of TV--a miracle for me :-)
Barack Hussein Obama is now the 44th (or 43rd) President of the United States of America :-)
My thanks to the Ancestors. Fifty one years ago I took part in a sit-in in Maryland, in a bowling alley lunch counter, The times they are a-changin' :-) Thank god :-)
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| Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
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3:31 pm - From LJ's A day in the life
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Your Friendly Neighbourhood Heresiarch (adayinthelife) wrote,
@ 2009-01-06 12:17:00
Entry tags: anarchy, economic democracy
seizing the means of information for the end users
http://community.livejournal.com/ljuser_buyout/
Once upon a time, Brad Fitz sold LJ to SixApart, which then promptly sold it again to Sup for $30 million.
Sup, in the meantime, has had difficulty making a profit on LJ and now seems to think the whole deal was a loser. They recently fired 20 of LJ's 28 employees, leaving only a caretaker financial staff with little or no technical expertise. It turns out to be very difficult to make money on a network and blog site like LJ.
Which means LJ will languish and wither for lack of support, or be sold off to somebody else to see if they can make a go of it.
But what if a million or two LJ users got together and pitched in to create a not-for-profit foundation to buy LJ back and run it for the benefit of its users?
This community now exists as a rallying point for the organization of exactly such an effort.
Welcome. If you are interested in joining us in planning, organizing, and effecting a user buyout of LiveJournal, please join us.
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| Friday, January 2nd, 2009
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1:58 pm - Write first :-)
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Yeah. No ifs, ands, or buts--yeah :-)
I'm not down so I must be up :-)
Been thru heaven--born there:-)
Been thru hell, moved away :-(
Always seem to pause somewhere in the middle :-)
Been silly, stupid, pigheaded etc.
Keep on truckin' :-)
So I do. Again:-)
The grass has always proved to be greener
on the other side of the fence, somewhere :-)
Way to go :-) Thank god :-)
I'm sorry; I forgive you; I thank you; I love you :-)
Ho'oponopono.org
Me, I'm Hummer, what's your excuse?
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| Friday, December 26th, 2008
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5:53 pm - Don't beat around the bush in Germany.
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From Der Spiegel. Way to go Deutschlanders :_)
"Have You Gained Weight?"
Don't beat around the bush in Germany. If someone asks a question, answer it honestly and expect the same in return. "Yes I have put on a few pounds," is the correct answer.
DPA
"Have you gained weight?" A perfectly normal question in Germany.
You've been invited over to a friend's house, and his grandmother serves you a cake she has labored over for hours.
Granny: I had to go all over town to get the ingredients. It's my own grandmother's fruitcake recipe, but you can't get pickled figs and horseradish syrup at the shops anymore!
You have three responses to choose from:
a) Oh, thank you so much. It looks lovely.
b) Oh, thank you, but I'm dieting. I can't eat cake.
c) I don't like fruitcake at all and figs make me swell up and break into a hideous, oozing rash.
If you picked a, you are probably English or American. And even if you can't stand fruitcake, you'll shovel it in to make granny happy. Many well-mannered (or quick-thinking) Americans may also have chosen b.
The third answer, though, is reserved exclusively for Germans. How, after all, can honesty be rude? Why on earth would you lie, say the Germans? You don't like fruitcake, why pretend that you do? And those figs could kill you!
In England or the US, of course, answer c could very well result in a rolling pin upside the head. In Germany, however, it's merely a standard form that human interaction takes. You say what you have to say and that's that. You meet up with a German friend you haven't seen for awhile and chances are he might ask, "Have you gained weight?" It's not meant as an insult, merely a polite inquery.
The bottom line is that the rules of human interaction are different in Germany. Here are a few of them:
Personal invitations of all kinds are to be taken at face value. "We're having a party, please do come," means "We're having a party, please do come," and not "We feel rude not inviting you in front of these other people, but surely you'll have the grace not to show up." Similarly, "Come over to my house and we'll have tea," means that you should start planning a date and time for that pleasant event. It is not to be confused with the Anglo-American "We should get together sometime," which means "I hope I never see you again."
WE NEED YOU
Help us write the Germany Survival Bible
DDP
SPIEGEL ONLINE is putting together a cheat sheet for visitors to this summer's World Cup soccer championships to help them better understand the quirky Germans and their sometimes peculiar ways. If you're an expat or someone who has spent time in Germany, we want your help. Please send your stories and questions to spon_feedback@spiegel.de or post your anecdotes on our Germany Survival Bible forum.
Please include your name and your city and country of residence.
Yes means yes and no means no. If you ask whether you can share someone's table (or borrow a pen, or get a ride) and that person says yes, that's the end of it. Even if the person does not smile or tell you to go right ahead, you do not have to ask again. Germans will be perplexed when you insist: "Are you sure? I won't be bothering you, will I? I'll just take this little corner and be done in a minute." For heavens sakes, they said yes already, and it's not like you're asking them to donate a kidney. Just sit down.
Preferences are expressed directly. If someone offers you tickets to the opera "Siegfried," don't put them off vaguely: "If only it lasted just a tiny bit less than six hours, I'd love to go, but my schedule is jam-packed." If you don't like Wagner, or opera, just say so. Germans will not be offended that you have an opinion that differs from theirs. But . . .
You may have to talk about it. There are consequences for all this directness, and this is one. You may be asked why you don't want to come to someone's party or why you don't like Wagner, and then you must explain. You may even have to have a discussion about it, or possible a debate. But perhaps you can do that over tea. Would you like to come over some time?
Contributed by Maria Snyder, now living in Chicago, USA.
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