Sticks and stones

I asked my older Bavarian co-worker about the German word dammich and I thought she was going to herniate herself. She misheard it as dammisch, which is Bavarian for "crazy". "I haven't heard that word in years!" she exclaimed. I asked her how to use it in a sentence and she taught me, "Sei do net dammisch!"

I had a similar experience once when I lived in Germany. I was visiting Berlin with a multinational student group (at the German taxpayers' expense) and my friend Jen and I were out shopping. At one point, I dashed across traffic and when she caught up with me she said, "Da, you buttlick, what were you DOING?!" I was doubled over with hilarity--and it wasn't diminished by her admission that she had deliberately sought out a half-forgotten, puerile insult in order to see what my reaction would be.

WotD: gull

1. die Möwe
2. de meeuw
3. la gaviota
4. la gavina
5. le goéland (CF pigeon de mar)
6. yr wylan
7. an faoileán
8. 갈매기
9. (海)鷗 (hǎi)ōu

Notes: 5. "En réalité, il n'y a guère que la langue française à faire cette distinction de nomenclature entre mouettes et goélands : pour simplifier, un goéland est une grosse mouette, et inversement."--Wikipédia.

Never enough

Whenever I strike out for lunch in town, I always tell myself Don't fixate on anything, because that's how you end up making bad decisions. I started with visions of a caesar salad pita, but awoke to the tempting possibility of chapchae once I realised I'd be passing less than a block from Joy Yee. However, when I got there, not only was the place closed, but it had been since early December! Shows how often I break routine. (They claim a "Spring 2008" reopening after "expansion", but I don't see a lot of activity going on behind those papered up windows.) So it was a pita after all, with a side of Here Come the Warm Jets. Not half bad.

I stopped by Amaranth in search of novels by Brian Moore and Seán Ó Faoláin, but returned to work with nothing more than a copy of The complete stories of Flannery O'Connor. Shiny as a new penny and only $8! Last week, I bought The collected stories of Katherine Anne Porter and last year I picked up Collected stories of Katherine Mansfield on the mistaken assumption that she was Katherine Anne Porter. (I realised my mistake when I failed to uncover Noon Wine in the table of contents.) In total, that's about 1,800 pages of short fiction. When do I think I'm going to read all these? I sent Ponder Heart to my sister a little while ago in the vain hope of getting her hooked on some other writer than Jane Austen. (Nothing wrong with Miss Jane, of course, but she's been very derelict in producing new works and I feel compelled to do all I can to keep my sister from falling prey to any fanfic.) No word on whether sees even received it, much less cracked the cover.

WotD: Jerusalem artichoke

1. die Topinambur
2. de aardpeer, de topinamboer
3. el tupinambo
4. la nyàmera
5. le topinambour
6. yr artisiog Jerwsalem
7. an bliosán gréine
8. 뚱단지
9. 洋薑 yángjiāng

Notes: 1. South Baden, also Ross-Erdäpfel, lit. "horse potato" ("horse earth apple").

Hoakum overload!

Finally got Trouble in the Glen to play (turned out to be just a few skips during the prologue) and, jaysus, if it wasn't everything I was promised and more. After about the fourth groan from monshu, I told him, "We don't have to watch this." But more than anything on screen, he was enjoying my reactions to every clanking cliché and predictable twist. I can't summarise the film better than danbearnyc already has, so I'll just hit a few points that especially amused me.

• If putzmeisterbear is on the money about Forrest Tucker's anatomy, then it well explains possibly the most ridiculous pair of undershorts I've ever seen. To his knees, Steve!
• Real Gaelic! Early on, there's a sign that reads "Tha an rathad so dùinte le òrdugh an uachdarain" (only in upper case without sràcan). Never mind that (a) if this were a Gaelic-speaking area, all the locals would have completely different accents (not that the dialect situation wasn't a free-for-all anyway) and (b) even if they spoke Gaelic they wouldn't be literate in it.
• The name of the manor house was homophonous with "Tie More", which I eventually figured out must be a horrible mispronunciation of "Tigh Mòr", which simply means "Big House".
• danbearnyc said that black and white can't do justice to Welles' tartan at the end, and he's correct, but he said nothing about the "yellow corduroys" Tucker is forced to wear. I don't think that there's any film stock yet known that could do justice to them.

Sorry to say, but that's all I have. Would've had more if I hadn't gotten sucked into listening to Dara Ó Briain blethering away. Curse you, YouTube!