Found Objects

My ex-employer deigned to pay me about half the travel allowance they still owed me (the other half is being taken care of) so I could afford to shop for boots. I love boots; I never buy any, because (a) they tend to be above my budget (it does make a difference that I’ve taken to wearing skirts more; that makes it less wasteful) and (b) I have difficult shaped feet, narrow heels and broad toes and muscular calves. But boots are in fashion so there are lots of them.

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I don’t want to buy software, not even at reduced price. I don’t use Windows. I use Linux; there’s no need for me to buy software.

Not being in the possession of a penis, a dick or a cock, I’m not interested in ways to enlarge it. Nor am I interested in ways to make or keep it as hard as a rock. Quite apart from the question whether that would be painful. Oh, and SS. Peter and Paul aren’t interested either, thank you very much.

Also, I’m not a customer of the Bank of America, or of any other bank in America. And if my own bank has anything to tell me, they do it by snail-mail and spell my name right.

And I’m against gambling on principle. There’s no need to offer me bigger and bigger bonuses in your online casinos.

Last but not least, the real-world pharmacy I use serves all my needs and I don’t need an online one in Canada.

Wow, that was powerful. I was getting a bit impatient with Athal because he was reluctant to use his abilities, but I think he’s over that now.

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Behind a cut as an afterthought to accommodate people who don’t like game writeups and read my blog for the other stuff. I promise to write some other stuff as well in the next few days!

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A tiny one-paragraph bit in our paper, but here’s a more elaborate article from the International Herald Tribune: Sweden is about to outlaw the teaching of religion outside religious-education lessons in private schools. In public schools there’s already no teaching of religion, I suppose.

It sounds like a refreshing change from the school my kids are in, where lots of things are taught in religious-education lessons, very few of them having much to do with religion. But that’s not the point: the point is, apparently, to protect students from fundamentalism. Christian fundamentalism, as the larger article makes clear and the tiny bit in the paper didn’t. Keeping people ignorant keeps them innocent? That’s never worked before. In fact, fundamentalism often springs from ignorance.

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Well, I hope. It’s too little to deconstruct, being only Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe from, I think, Mozart’s Krönungsmesse. Either the alto part or the first part that starts the fugue-like object (or perhaps they’re the same; I haven’t sung it for, count on fingers, about thirty years). I don’t know how it goes on. Well, obviously I do know the words, it’s the Gloria, but the tune escapes me.

I earwormed myself with it when the thirteen-year-old was doing vocatives in Latin. I wrote “Dominus Filius unigenitus Jesus Christus” on a piece of paper, with the vocatives under it: it’s got two different forms for the second declension (Domine/unigenite/Christe versus Fili) and also Jesu, which I thought was fourth declension but seems to be a straightforward borrowing from Greek.

I realise now that “Deus” doesn’t seem to have a separate vocative, but uses the nominative instead like other declensions.

And, apropos of the classics, I can’t help liking the vocative of “Master” in Greek: despota.

One of the most effective ways to get rid of an earworm is to analyse it to death. Here goes.

I’ve known this song for ages, from an obscure folk record, and I like to sing it because it does interesting things with tune and rhythm; I’ve always been slightly uneasy about the lyrics, especially the last verse.

First, I looked up the lyrics on the web to see if anybody else had already done it and found to my astonishment that it’s in (or perhaps from) Wim Sonneveld’s repertoire. Wim Sonneveld is, or rather was as he died in 1974, a famous Dutch entertainer, cabaret artist, singer, songwriter; not someone I’d associate with a song that sounds so much like a traditional folk song. But I read somewhere that it was first attested in 1730, so perhaps he didn’t write it but only sang it (in 1968).

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This cost me one euro in the market. Small price for an educational experience.

I asked “what is it?” and the woman behind the stall said “well, a sort of pumpkin, only it’s Asian, they use it for soup.” Curious, I bought it, and as I was making leftover-rabbit soup anyway I thought I’d try it.

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On my way to go grocery shopping, I was waylaid by a very small knight in shining plastic armour. And an even smaller squire in a crenellated red doublet and an incongruous headscarf.

“Password”, they demanded. When I said “sorry, I don’t know it” the squire came up and whispered something in my ear, which I repeated, and they let me pass.

Only then did I notice that the knight was also wearing a headscarf, under her helmet.

I don’t know what these girls will be like in ten years, whether they’ll be wearing headscarves or wildly flowing hair or neat coiffured heads, but I hope that whatever it is, they’ll be doing it proudly and of their own free will. That they’ll be themselves, as they were when I met them today.

(On the way back I was waylaid by a tabby cat in almost the same spot. Cats are uncomplicated: they don’t want passwords, they want to be scritched behind the ears. And they don’t grow up to make choices.)