MAD COWS

Photographic documentation of the mad cow invasion is an ongoing process, so check out the VACAS LOCAS link (in the column on the right) from time to time to be sure to see the most current version.

Have a cupcake

If anyone is wondering why text entries are relatively scarce on the blog at the moment, it's partly because my friend Brad arrived from San Francisco yesterday, so I will be busy playing tour guide this weekend and for much of next week. Also because school takes 7 hours a day, and because I am a lazy blogger, to boot. I promise to try harder at the weekend.

But, for right now, it's time to head out to see "Atrapados en el Hielo" (Trapped in the Ice), the exposition about the Shackleton expedition. And maybe catch the exhibition of photos by Weejee (sp?) in the Telefónica Building down the street.

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE Madrid?

Pegacow

In the apartment

Here is a picture of the apartment. Although it is pretty IKEA-ish, it's not quite as bleakly sterile as the photo might suggest. I just uploaded a bunch of other photos of the apartment, the street of hideous lamp shops, and two new cows (yea!!) to Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelstat/

I don't know who either of the people in the apartment pictures are, or if indeed they are supposed to represent actual persons.

Book Review : A Melon for Ecstasy

A MELON FOR ECSTASY

by John Fortune and John Wells


Quite simply the funniest book I have ever read in my life. Written as a series of letters; as the correspondence mounts, the overall message becomes hilariously clear. Never get between a man and his trees.

Starring Humphrey Mackevoy, a man who loves trees, maybe a little too much. The sudden epidemic of holes bored into local trees, all 33 inches from the ground at an angle of 15 degrees to the horizontal, has everyone in town buzzing. The authorities are outraged at such wanton vandalism, the police are on high alert, the ornithological society is ecstatic, believing that the fabulously rare crested woodpecker has returned to the British Isles. Humphrey is more concerned with occupational hazards like splinter wounds and the toxic effects of the new pesticide being sprayed on the trees.

What with the prison chaplain dedicated to making the Gospel more relevant by rewriting it as a Western (Posse from Galilee), assorted power-crazed local councillors, a sex-crazed sixteen-year-old girl desperate to get laid, and the ever-present Humphrey's Mummy, there is never a dull moment.

Given the spicy gumbo that the authors have concocted, rich with every hilarious village archetype you've ever come across, the tree-porn sections are lagniappe. A certain bewitching laburnum stirs Humphrey to flights of soft-porn eloquence:

"Lasciviously I turned my face, brushing the cold bark with my lips, and began to explore its texture with my tongue. And you couldn't stop me, my laburnum, you with your branches pinioned in the air, leaving your trunk so bare, so bare, so unprotected, so vulnerable..."

Possibly the finest epistolary novel ever written.

(Fiesta de) Despedida de Soltera

Spanish for "hen party", and extremely popular on Saturday nights in Madrid. Last night, during my random wanderings, I encountered three, and had some drunken señorita flash me her boobies from a limousine.

By reputation, hen parties are now more boisterous than stag parties, throughout Europe. I am reliably informed that the town of Kilkenny has banned hen parties in perpetuity, after a particularly notorious night of debauchery some years back, in which squads of Gárdaí had to be summoned in from neighboring towns to quell the ongoing raucousness.

Rumor has it that the republic of Slovenia is also plagued by overly rowdy prenuptial public oestrogen-fests.

More ruthless rhymes

Little Willie, mean as hell
Drowned his sister in the well.
Mother said, while drawing water,
"Gee, it's hard to raise a daughter."

Little Willie found a mirror,
Went and sucked the mercury off,
Thinking in his childish error,
It would cure his whooping cough.
At the funeral, Willie's mother
Sadly said to Mrs. Brown,
"'Twas a chilly day for Willie
When the mercury went down."

(from "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes" by Harry Graham, 1902)

Book Review -- Limits of Language

Another one of our occasional MOTP reviews (a positive one, this time). Obviously, it was written some time ago. But my delight in this book remains unabated:

Limits of Language

by Mikael Parkvall

"Limits of Language" arrived today from Amazon. I've never smoked crack, but reading this book approximates what I imagine it would feel like -- an initial rush of pure pleasure, followed by the irresistible craving for just one more bump, yielding to that craving over and over until - six hours later - you find yourself surrounded by cats not fed, laundry not done, unwashed dishes, unpaid bills, and yet you still can't stop yourself. You want more. You want it to last forever. Damn you, Mikael Parkvall! How could you write a book that caters so brilliantly to my utter fascination with words and all things language-related? And be so smart and funny too?

I just tore myself away to feed the cats and pass this message along to goodreads members. There are still three shopping weeks until Christmas. Nobody else appears to be listing this book. So - if you know anyone with an interest in words or language - buy them a copy. Their puppy-like gratitude will last all year. Heck, now that it's out in paperback, you can get your own copy for less than twenty bucks.

A pdf preview of the detailed table of contents and the first 19 pages is here:

http://www.wmjasco.com/limits/LLPreview.pdf

The table of contents at the link above is very detailed, but fails to capture the author's wit, and the sheer geekish zaniness of some of the topics. Some highlights -

A 30-page "linguist's calendar", marking the anniversary of various linguistic milestones (e.g. 'birth of Kanzi, the most talking ape there is';'the Dalmatian language becomes extinct, when the last surviving speaker accidentally steps on a landmine') giving linguists an excuse to celebrate throughout the year.

Habla Usted Phrase-Bookish? A side-splitting selection of useless phrases culled from phrasebooks around the world. For instance -

"At what time were these branches eaten by the rhinoceros?"
"I have my own syringe".
"The beast had a human body, the feet of a buck, and a horn on its head".
"I don't play the violin, but I love cheese".

Untranslatable Words: e.g. the Kuot word aFone "to drink from a bottle in such a fashion that drool trickles from the mouth back into the bottle", the Czech umudrovat se "to philosophize oneself into the madhouse", or the Ciluba word ilunga "a person who is willing to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to reading about the word's most dadaistic verb morphology*.

I don't play the violin, but I LOVE this book!


* Oh, OK. Here is the paragraph in question:

Linguists are supposed to take languages seriously. We are not supposed to laugh at them. So, apologies to all Kobon speakers out there, but I just can't help it. The prize for the language with the verb morphology most looking like it had been thought up by Tristan Tzara must go to Kobon. If there are any sceptics among the readers, here follows the suffixal paradigm for the counterfactual mood in Kobon:

1sg -- bnep 1du -- blop 1pl -- bnop
2sg -- bnap 2du -- blep 2pl -- bep
3sg -- böp 3du -- blep 3pl -- blap

The Quiet Man

It may look inviting, and I'm sure those 5€ mojitos are delicious. But, lemme tell you, the ambience can only be described as distinctly creepy. Not in a good way, either. More in a transvestite hooker kind of way. A pity, since it would be a good candidate for my local hangout, being right next door to the building my apartment's in.

Varmint Cuisine

Ever since I was bitten by an American gray squirrel (right), for a crime no worse than feeding it peanuts, it's no secret that I have not been a fan of this particular form of vermin. They are just rats with bushy tails, and don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

Thus, the news that Great Britain has instituted a campaign to save the native red squirrel population by encouraging the hunting and eating of the varmints on the right in the picture can only be considered a step forward for mankind. So, to my British readers out there, what are you waiting for? Shouldn't you be out there hunting to feed your family?

As the slogan puts it, "Eat a squirrel! Save a squirrel!"

Source: New York Times, January 7th, 2009

The Abstinence Teacher

Here at MOTP, we run occasional book reviews. Filtering out the dreck so that you don't have to.

WARNING: may not be entirely suitable for maiden aunts.

THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER
by Tom Perrotta.


JESUS WANTS YOU ........ TO GROW A PAIR.

Tommy, Tommy, Tommy! How did such a promising young literary stud like yourself turn out to be such an emasculated whore? When did things start to go so horribly, horribly wrong?

Let me be clear. When I picked you up at the airport in San Francisco, it was with entirely clear-eyed, realistic expectations. Let's face it. I wasn't looking for the literary love of my life. Just a two-plane romance - enough to while away the time it takes to get from SFO to Madrid. Maybe a little bathroom nookie during my stopover in Dulles. And believe me - I'm no snob about this s**t. I think there's everything to be said for the fleeting joy of airplane lit. Done right, it can be one of life's great pleasures. And the possibility can never be ruled out that it may lead to a deeper and more passionate commitment. I mean, look at Nate and Brenda in "Six Feet Under", and how well it worked out for them. Even the briefest of airport bathroom encounters is pregnant with possibility.

So I'll admit to a certain nervous excitement as I boarded the plane at SFO, your manly bulk in my pocket, pressing against my crotch in mute promise of pleasures yet to come. And for the first 20 pages or so, you didn't disappoint. There was wit, a sense of direction, a certain ability to nail characters with brisk efficiency within a couple of snappy paragraphs.

But I should have heeded the warning signs that were obvious right there in the book store. Even if the appalling cutesy biographical sketch could be excused as a horrendous contrivance foisted upon you by your publicist, there was that truly worrisome 'author portrait', which presumably you had to have approved at the very least. You know the one I'm talking about. The one where your desperate need to be liked permeates every line of the simpering come-hither rictus of a wistful little-lost-geisha-boy pout that you project to your potential johns. It might as well have been subtitled "me make you happy long time".

Did they teach you that at geisha school, Tommy? To try to be all things to all men? Because, here's the thing, eunuchboy. Let me let you in on a little secret. Nowadays even the sweatiest of Japanese salarymen no longer finds the response "Who would you like me to be?" even faintly arousing in answer to the question "Who are you?".

So that, when your thin excuse for a bold courageous novel touching on polemic issues related to sex education degenerated into an incoherent mess of not wanting to offend anybody under any circumstances, frankly my frustration increased in direct proportion to the flaccidity of your prose. What was particularly weird was that you were hardly fooling anyone with your lethally boring 150 pages of padding trying to cover up the moral vacuum at the heart of your cardboard ex-stoner Jesus freak.

And what about plot, Tommy? Do castrati get a pass?

WARNING....... POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD .... BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE REALLY, REALLY STUPID ... AS STUPID AS THE AUTHOR ... WHICH SEEMS UNLIKELY ...

Or is that what passes for resolution these days? Fading to black as hormonal Barbie and stoner Ken get it on. Despite the well-documented lack of genitalia of said eponymous action figurines.

And apparently of the author of this excessively wordy piece of trash of a book, devoid of almost any smidgen of intellectual content. Guaranteed to offend nobody. Unless, of course, you have a brain.

A ruthless rhyme

L'Enfant Glacé

When Baby's cries grew hard to bear,
I popped him in the Frigidaire.
I never would have done so if,
I'd known that he'd be frozen stiff.
My wife said: 'George, I'm so unhappé!
Our darling's now completely frappé!

(from "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes", 1902, by Harry Graham)

Serendipity

I hadn't intended to see "My Name is Harvey Milk" tonight. But I had a hard time finding the movie theatre, so that by the time I got there, the film I'd intended to see was already 15 minutes underway, so I chose Harvey Milk instead. It just blew me away - extraordinarily moving, and Sean Penn's performance has to be among the top five performances I've seen by any actor or actress. In anything. Ever.

I'm still so jazzed by the film it's hard to consider going to bed. But it's midnight, so I'd best call it a day for now.

A truly wonderful movie, all the better for having stumbled across it serendipitously.

Some cows are scarier than others

En la Escuela

So, classes started yesterday, and once again I am left to ponder the eternal question - what is it about studying advanced Spanish that makes it a virtually exclusively female pursuit? I am the only guy in a class of 8. It's odd, because there are plenty of male students in the school - they just apparently never make it through to the most advanced levels.

I'm also the oldest, though not egregiously so - the age mix is definitely better than in Buenos Aires. Once again, my classmates make the mistake of underestimating me, presumably on the entirely erroneous assumption that anyone over 50 must essentially be some kind of doddering escapee from the senior citizens' center. Why then, was I the only one to know that the Smurfs are called "los pitufos" en español (a term also used as a synonym for the English phrase "rug rats")?
Or that this gentleman:



is called "Bob Esponja".

I also know the names of the seven dwarves in Thpanish, but I didn't want to show off. (OK, just a little: "Grumpy" is "Gruñon" and "Sleepy" is "Dormilón").

In other news, all of Madrid is bery bery happy that Penelope won the Oscar. This was the first thing I learned when I showed up for class yesterday morning, even before taking the placement test. El País ran a whole special on her, including the most hilarious picture of her first communion class, wherein she can already be seen preening in ostentatiously diva-like fashion. My sources here inform me reliably that she and Javier Bardem are an item. Also that the Bardem family run a restaurant right in the neighborhood. Which, believe me, I fully intend to track down.

My readers deserve nothing less.

Saturday afternoon stroll

Just being out and about in Madrid is enough to cheer a body up. Check it out for yourself:

Saturday afternoon pictures

Vacas Locas

Mad Cow Pictures

Settling in

I'd forgotten just how completely crazy Madrid can be -- people out and about at all hours of the day and night. Yesterday was a terrific day -- got some necessary chores taken care of in the morning. Then, as if to make me feel at home, when I went out to get some lunch (around 2pm or so), in quick succession, a few random occurrences helped dispel that "alone in the big city" feeling.

The first was, just as I was leaving the building, I bumped into the mailman who was vainly scanning the mailboxes for a "David Giltinan". It seemed impossible, as I hadn't remembered giving the address to anyone. But no, when I talked to my Scottish friend Yvonne on Saturday before leaving S.F. I had given her the address, and sure enough - he had a welcoming letter from Yvonne to brighten my day. Then, when I reached ROOT, one of my favorite restaurants from when I was here last time, the hostess greeted me, all smiles - and remembered me, even to the point of asking after my cats "with the Russian names". Now, granted, this was just professional hospitality on her part, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel nice to be remembered and welcomed. Later on in the afternoon, just wandering along, I spied a familiar face - someone waving at me from one of the little cafes - it was Pedro, director of the DonQuijote school. So that, all of a sudden, I didn't feel quite so far from home.

All in all, an afternoon that made me feel welcome to be back in Madrid, and not quite so anonymous. I'm really psyched about starting classes again on Monday morning. It'll be interesting to see how much of my Spanish I remember, and whether I picked up any really bad linguistic habits down in Buenos Aires.

The key to happiness

Well, I'm not claiming to have any definitive answers. But I think it must have something to do with being able to stick the right kind of plug in the right kind of hole and have it fit.

And although I did arrive at this conclusion after an hour and a half searching through Chueca, Madrid's ultra-chic gay ghetto, you can all get your collective mind out of the gutter and rest assured that my search was through various hardware stores. Looking for just the right adapter that would allow me to use the expensive battery charger I bought in Buenos Aires for my camera battery here in Madrid.

So when I found just the right adapter in the fourth store I tried, for only 2€, I was one happy customer indeed. Equally cheering was the sheer helpfulness of the guys in each of the first three stores I tried. In that totally straight middle-aged helpful hardware store guy kind of way, not at all like the cruisy gay hardware store guy kind of way one encounters at Cliff's Hardware on Castro Street. Not that I spend much time hanging out at Cliff's, or any other hardware stores. As those of you who know me hardly need to be reminded.

But anyway, for this morning, it's mission accomplished. The battery she is charging. So that later on I can go out and get appropriate photographic documentation of the cows that seem to have taken over the streets of Madrid.

Watch this space.

The Barren Nihilistic Wasteland

Spanish TV. I'd forgotten just how appallingly dreadful it is. I lose IQ points just thinking about it. Dear God.