Author Archive

Arne

June 20, 2014

WHRB (Harvard’s student radio station) came along with a piece of pleasant Baroque music (for organ and strings) that was entirely unfamiliar to me, so I looked up at the identifying tag in iTunes. Which told me it was by Arne. Not my friend Arne Adolfsen (with his Norwegian-derived disyllabic personal name), but Thomas Arne (with his British, but presumably ultimately Scandinavian-derived, monosyllabic family name). I had just heard one of his six Concerti for Organ and Strings, probably #2 in G major.

A fascinating but little-known figure, who suffered musically by being overshadowed by Handel and personally by being Catholic (so he was barred from the usual sources of patronage) and also a renowned lecher.

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Karenispam

June 20, 2014

A moment out from posting more or less serious things to note this entertaining comment, which was snagged by my WordPress spam filter and turned up at the top of the queue (so I noticed it):

[N N fountain pens] On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and [N N] hid her face in her fan. Alexei Alexandrovich saw that she was weeping, and could not contro [N N Fountain Pens] l her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her bosom. Alexei Alexandrovich stood so as to screen her, giving her time to recover herself…

A brief digression with Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin and Anna Karenina. And their damn N N fountain pens.

More on the emoticon watch

June 20, 2014

In the wake of rage against emoticons, Beckettian bafflement from cartoonist Benjamin Schwartz in the latest (June 23rd) New Yorker:

 

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More octothorpe wrangling

June 20, 2014

In the previous round, this Mother Goose and Grimm (#4 here) on pound sign, hashtag, etc. And now a Zits on the subject, with a family argument, lined up by generation:

On the foodmanteau front

June 20, 2014

Now from Taco Bell, a hybrid food with a hybrid (portmanteau) name. You can critique the food — a double-Mexican combo, of quesadilla and burrito — or the name (Quesarito, which strikes me as reasonably euphonious, unlike cronut or Flatizza), or both. (Links to foodmanteau postings, up to mid-2013, here.)

Not everyone has found the Quesarito tasty, however.

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Nineveh

June 19, 2014

It started fairly simply, with a BBC radio news report from Iraq (heard from I don’t know which source; BBC news comes to me from several places, including BBC3 more or less directly): a bulletin from the Assyrian city of Nineveh, which the news reader pronounced as

(1) /ˈnajn@vˌe/

instead of what I expected to be

 (2) /ˈnɪn@və/

(where @ in the middle syllable represents a neutral unaccented vowel, ɪ or ə — usually transcribed ɪ, as in Wikipedia, though I sometimes hear ə).

I was, in fact, so astounded by the /aj/ in the first syllable of (1) that I failed to take notes on its source; I’d never heard anything but /ɪ/ in this syllable, and /aj/ is not even remotely like the vowel in the Assyrian pronunciation of the place name. Where would it come from?

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MUFFIN SAUSAGES WITH EGGS

June 18, 2014

That’s what was on the diner’s board giving the day’s breakfast specials a few days ago. How to interpret it?

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Rage against the emoticon

June 17, 2014

Today’s Bizarro:

Sometimes your patience just wears out.

Lateral flash thong

June 16, 2014

(Mostly, but not entirely, about men’s underwear.)

On Facebook, a link passed on by Matthew Melmon  to a June 13th posting on the Metro (U.K.) website, “Amazing news! Now you too can own this delightful swimming ‘sock’ “, showing a lateral flash thong on the ITV2 reality tv show TOWIE (The Only Way Is Essex):

(#1)

A remarkable garment indeed: how does it stay up? And who wears something like this in public (outside of outrageous precincts like TOWIE)?

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Chuck Jones

June 15, 2014

On Facebook, this Looney Tune pair offered by Roy Calfas:

(#1)

The War Between Bugs and Daffy. The creations of animator Chuck Jones.

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