Found Objects

Here is a very good blog post about the Liturgy of the Presanctified.

First Friday. I read the story of the Fall, one of my favourite bits of Genesis:

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(A blog-as-I-go spree)

Wednesday night: There’s a snow front coming. The Dutch Railways decide to preventively cancel some trains, especially in the West. We snigger at them being fazed by a little normal winter weather.

Thursday morning: Foggy. Temperature around zero Celsius. I go to work. Trains completely normal, but they still say they’re going to cancel some after 9:00. We’re still laughing at the so-called weather alarm.

9:45 The radio says that there’s heavy snow in the south already. I look up a news site and find that it’s worse in Belgium. Professor comes in and says he’s leaving early because otherwise he may not get home (he lives in Belgium). We advise him to leave right away and I hurriedly finish a letter he wants to sign before he does. My colleague (who has to cross a steepish bridge in a car) and I decide to leave as soon as there’s substantial snow. Other people, who live in town, stay.

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… but it’s now explicitly so. I found this on Rafa Minuesa’s blog.

By using this icon on my website I am stating…

1. That I am opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.

2. That I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.

3. That I do not accept money in return for advertising space on my blog.

signed,

Irina

The wackiest translation job I ever had was to translate user manuals for consumer goods into Dutch. It was wacky because the originals were in Engrish. I went to my employer and asked “do you want a faithful translation or working instructions?” and he wanted working instructions, of course. I was glad that it wasn’t an engineering manual and I knew how all those things actually worked; what I did was write the whole thing myself.

One thing I remember word for word is a line from the instructions for a toaster: “You can now set the knob according to your flavour.” That means, probably, that if you taste like strawberry you should set it to 1, but if you happen to taste like vanilla you should set it to 2.

And recently I read Language Log and found a pointer to this: (the picture is a link; the rest of that site is hilarious too)

The first-years volunteered to show the prospective first-years around on the school Open Day, so they had to be at school at 4:30 having already eaten. And what’s the proper meal to have in the afternoon? Tea.

All that and a huge pot of Darjeeling.

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