This Japanese TV commercial is quite funny. The cultural issues surrounding English education mean that the scenario applies equally well in Korea. Even the students who learn almost zero English nevertheless know how to answer, "Fine, thank you. And you?"
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
This video (in the embedded tweet, below) is interesting to me, not because I necessarily would want to make any kind of linguistic prescription vis-a-vis the Spanish language, but rather because it represents a spontaneous, "folk-linguistic" solution to the the perceived need for truly gender-neutral language in Spanish, which makes the non-gender-neutral aspects of English look pretty minor by comparison.
This young girl uses "los," "las" and the gender-neutral "les" — watch her explain why. pic.twitter.com/gBCalPxpuY
— REMEZCLA (@REMEZCLA) June 12, 2018
I think the substitution of "-e" for "-o/a" is perfect, and much more natural than the annoying, text-based substitutions I've seen before, like -@ or -x, which are unpronounceable and unnatural.
As a linguist, I retain my skepticism about the need for these kinds of solutions, but I nevertheless understand why people want them. I would only point out, by way of semantic counter-example, that the Korean language has a complete lack of gender markers (nouns, pronouns, etc.): it is literally impossible to know the gender of someone out of context, on linguistic cues alone. Yet this fact has hardly managed to create or support a gender-neutral culture. The belief that such is true (or necessary) is just a sort of naive and unscientific Sapirwhorfism.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
This comic seemed relevant, given my past day's activities.
So I get one day of rest and recuperation, and return to work Monday.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
This is really true.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
What I'm listening to right now.
Heilung, "Krigsgaldr." This looks like part of some weird Scandinavian neo-Paganist thing. But it is interesting. I find these "back-to-roots" European nativist movements culturally intriguing, but feel it's regrettable the way they get coopted by various racist and authoritarianist ideologues. I have no idea what specific ideologies are associated with this Danish group, but if they turn out to be offensive, I offer my apologies in advance. I mostly just find it linguistically and culturally interesting, and would remark on the interesting coincidences with ancient cultures all over the world – these performers are not that different from e.g. efforts to recover or reconstruct Native American pre-contact cultures. I think the non-English parts, below, are no variety of modern Scandinavian, but rather intended to be some kind of "proto-Nordic" as recovered from some ancient runic inscriptions – that's what is linguistically interesting to me.
Lyrics.
Min Warb Naseu
Wilr Made Thaim
I Bormotha Hauni
Hu War
Hu War Opkam Har a Hit Lot
Got Nafiskr Orf
Auim Suimade
Foki Afa Galande
What am I supposed to do
If I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of the sword
What if I want to make you understand that the path you chose leads to downfall
But you only understand the language of the sword
What if I want to tell you to leave me and my beloved ones in peace
But you only understand the language of the sword
I let the blade do the talking…
So my tongue shall become iron
And my words the mighty roar of war
Revealing my divine anger´s arrow shall strike
All action for the good of all
I see my reflection in your eyes
But my new age has just begun
The sword is soft
In the fire of the furnace
It hungers to be hit
And wants to have a hundred sisters
In the coldest state of their existence
They may dance the maddest
In the morass of the red rain
Beloved brother enemy
I sing my sword song for you
The lullaby of obliteration
So I can wake up with a smile
And bliss in my heart
And bliss in my heart
And bliss in my heart
Coexistence, Conflict, combat
Devastation, regeneration, transformation
That is the best I can do for you
I see a grey gloom on the horizon
That promises a powerful sun to rise
To melt away all moons
It will make the old fires of purification
Look like dying embers
Look like dying embers
Look like dying embers
Min Warb Naseu
Wilr Made Thaim
I Bormotha Hauni
Hu War
Hu War Opkam Har a Hit Lot
Got Nafiskr Orf
Auim Suimade
Foki Afa Galande
Hu War
Hu War Opkam Har a Hit Lot
Ylir Men Aero Their
Era Mela Os
I found some vague gestures at translation, and will only offer that the part I used as this blog post's title, "Foki Afa Galande", seems to correspond to a meaning "land of shining meadows".
The official video of the same song released by the group is interesting, too.
Heilung, "Krigsgaldr."
[daily log: walking, 7km; children herded, ~∞]
It almost makes me wish I was living in Saint Paul again.
I have high hopes for Melvin Carter in the realm of Minnesota Politics.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
I recently learned that the famous classic rock song, "Smoke On The Water," by British rockers Deep Purple, was written about events at Montreux, Switzerland, which took place there in 1971 at the same time that the famous Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov was resident there. It's interesting to imagine Nabokov and the members of Deep Purple interacting in a small French-Swiss town. Nabokov was of a different generation, but he might have been interested in rock music, given his fascination with other aspects of emergent pop culture.
What I'm listening to right now.
Deep Purple, "Smoke On The Water."
We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky
Smoke on the water
They burned down the gambling house
It died with an awful sound
Funky Claude was running in and out
Pulling kids out the ground
When it all was over
We had to find another place
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky
Smoke on the water
We ended up at the Grand Hotel
It was empty cold and bare
But with the Rolling truck Stones thing just outside
Making our music there
With a few red lights and a few old beds
We make a place to sweat
No matter what we get out of this
I know, I know we'll never forget
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky
Smoke on the water
[daily log: walking, 7km]
More busy days. So here's something I saw: a guy who makes videos of his Rube Goldberg machines.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
This is kind of interesting. It's about black holes.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
This movie is 107 years old. It is a self-depiction one of the inventors of animation, in the process of doing his inventing.
[daily log: not feeling well at all]
There is a website that generates artificial cat purrs. Just what any normal person needs. Actually, it's pretty well done. But of what use is it? Entertaining, I guess, like most cat-related things online.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
The Speculative Grammarian site has this very clever and utterly wrathful satire of the crypto-creationists' "Intelligent Design theory", here. Given the site it's on, bear in mind that it's a rewrite of the ID theory transferred from biology to linguistics, and called "Wrathful Dispersion" theory, alluding to the Tower of Babel tale in Genesis.
I particularly liked:
One cynical observer has likened WD ["Wrathful Dispersion" theory] to Scientology, which “is a religion for purposes of tax assessment, a science for purposes of propaganda, and a work of fiction for purposes of copyright.”
And:
In particular, a satirical Web-based grassroots pseudo-cult has grown up around the theory that all modern languages were in fact “shat out of the arse of the Flying Stratificational Grammar Monster,” with adherents claiming to have achieved enlightenment upon being “touched by His Boolean Appendage” or “washed in the blood of Sydney Lamb.”
[daily log: walking, 7km]
What I'm listening to right now.
Samarth Swarup and Asa Singh, "Siri answers."
Lyrics
[Musician: ]
What is ten trillion raised to the power of ten?
[Siri: ]
The answer is… one,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
[daily log: walking, 7km]
There once was Moby, a white whale and some narrator named Ishmael and these guys on a boat that soon failed to float with digressions, and prose that was stale.
– this is my own “retelling in limerick form” of a well-known work of literature, quite inspired by this post on the languagehat blog, in turn inspired by some discussion on a site called wordorigins. I spent a good hour browsing the comments and links for these two sites. Entertaining. My favorites, seen at those links:
There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says “Nevermore”
… and:
“Utnapishtim,” cried Gilgamesh, “Why
Do you get to live, while I die?”
“I can see that you’re vexed,”
[There’s a gap in the text]
The walls of Uruk are quite high!
I also enjoyed this observation, by a commenter named Trond Engen:
“A limerick needs a dose of offbeacity or else it will often sound flat.”
That comment, in turn, inspired another work of my own:
If you want limericks to have a capacity to show anything more than verbosity and to thusly afford some readers unbored Then they'll need to include some offbeacity
Nerds from many countries bring us the future, one step at a time.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
I don't have much to offer today. I was being obsessive with a computer thing, and didn't give myself time to think of a post for blogland. So here's this.
"When all you have is a database, everything looks like a segmentation problem."
I have not idea how to attribute this quote. It circulates online.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km]
I found myself distracted by this amazing animated tool called EarthWindMap, by something (someone?) called Nullschool, that allows you to surf the global climate, including temperature, winds, pressure, humidity, precipitation, and other factors. Here is a view with my current location in a small green circle.
It's worth seeing.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Currently I am a long-term expat. I observe my home country, the US, from a distance both psychological and physical. The whole "gun thing" seems both tragic and absurd, from my perspective. I currently live in a country with one of the lowest incidences of gun violence in the world – a cursory examination of a list of countries by incidence of gun deaths shows South Korea as being the 3rd lowest, only after Hong Kong and Japan.
Anyway, it's pretty safe here, from gun violence. I have sometimes wondered if there exists any kind of "gun culture" in South Korea. Actually, I speculate that there does, in fact, exist such a culture – but it would be inextricably linked up with the military. Since military service for males is obligatory, that means that, in theory, at least, every Korean adult male in the entire country has fired a gun at some point in his life, and the vast majority have probably qualified with a rifle. That's interesting, vis-a-vis the non-military culture, right? It makes it a far different situation than either Hong Kong or Japan, where military service is, in the former instance non-existent, and in the latter instance, extremely rare and utterly voluntary (given Japan's relatively small military, in per capita terms, compared to South Korea). What it means is that any Korean man who wants to "play" with guns in a safe and responsible manner has an easy way to do so: he can continue to serve as a "reservist" – which many Korean men do. Then he can go out on the range and shoot as much as he wants, several times a year, I can imagine.
My own experience with guns is broader than you might expect, given my liberal white privilege. I qualified with a rifle during my Army service – as an expert, even – though I sometimes felt I had simply had some very lucky days on my qualifying days. I had even gone on to take the first steps on qualifying with a pistol, as well, before I mustered out.
Further, despite having avoided seeing any actual action in the first Iraq war (1991) – which took place during my military service, and which I watched on the barracks televisions while stationed here in South Korea at that time – I have nevertheless had the experience of having been shot at, directly. I was lucky, in that the man shooting at me was too drunk to aim well. I was not hurt. There is no doubt I might have died – I consider it one of the several times in my life when I have had to look death right in the eye.
Additionally, I once witnessed a man being shot dead. This was during my time traveling in El Salvador, in 1986 – which was during the civil war. It was not clear to me if I witnessing a crime or an act of "enforcement" – there were plenty of uniforms present but it wasn't clear to me if the uniforms were military or rebel forces, and how it all worked. I suspect that during the Salvadorean civil war of that era, the line between crime and military enforcement was pretty blurry. My main reaction was to get away from the situation as quickly and as unobstrusively as I could manage. I boarded a bus and let it take me away.
In the end, my view of guns and gun violence is complicated. I think I have no issue with the type of allegedly draconian gun laws as exist in Japan or South Korea. I think it hardly makes these societies "less free" – there may in fact be ways that these societies are "less free" than in the US, but I don't think the relaxing of gun controls would impact that in any positive way. My libertarian tendencies are undeniable, however. In principle, I have strong sympathies with the "2nd ammendment types" who will brook no infringement of individual rights. My biggest concern with those people is that they are, almost without exception, utter hypocrites – they are libertarians on gun control, but if you ask them to opine on issues like women's rights or immigration, they are all about control and restrictions. This is "libertarianism for me but not for thee." It makes me much less sympathetic to their position – when I find mostly hypocrites holding a given political position, my gut-level response is to assume this is strong evidence of some kind of flaw in that political position.
I will conclude with a humorous video I ran across – a tongue-in-cheek "European perspective" on the American gun problem, which could probably just as easily represent the typical (informed) Korean position.
"A small country on the coast of North America."
[daily log: walking, 7km]
I bought 2 goldfish and named them 1 and 2.
… So if 1 dies I'll still have 2.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
There is an immense epic poetic tradition in Tibet and Central Asia about a mythical King Gesar. There are thousands of variants in dozens of diverse languages and cultures, and the King seems to not really have been a specific historical person, although the name, at least, has been linked to the adoption among some Turkic peoples of the steppes of the title "Keser" or "Gesar" from the Byzantines, who continued using the title "Caesar" until their downfall, and who had many contacts with Mongols, Turks, and other Central Asian peoples through their long history. This has parallel in the Slavs' adoption of the same title from the same source, which became the modern word 'czar.'
I found an interesting translation-in-progress on this website, of the Gesar epic, by a scholar of Buryat shamanism. Buryat is an ethnic group from northern Mongolia and the Baikal region of Siberia. As far as I can figure out, the scholar, Sarangerel Odigon, is working directly from some oral source – that is, the English translation is just a running translation of the oral tradition. That seems pretty cool, in itself.
In case you haven't noticed, I've been quite 'into' Central Asian cultures, lately, especially their literary production. So here is a tiny sample of this fascinating epic poem, one of the few which still has an active performative tradition in multiple cultures. For reference, I found a Russian translation of some version of it, here. I'm sure there are interesting original-language versions out there on the web, somewhere, but my google-fu is not strong enough to find it.
From the beginning of the section entitled "Abai Geser: The First Branch":
In the earliest of early times,
In the most ancient of periods,
In the first of first times,
In the time of the beginning;
When the highest bright heaven
Was swirling with fog,
When the earth below
Was covered with dirt and dust;
When the grass had not yet begun to grow,
When the broad long rivers had not begun to flow,
When the great Milk Sea was but a small puddle,
When the world mountain Humber Ula was a hillock,
When the sandalwood tree at the forest's edge
Had not yet put out branches,
When the greyish deer was but a fawn;
When the giant yellow snake was but a little worm,
When the giant fish were only little minnows;
When the earth did not have any continents,
When the center of the universe was not yet finished;
When the great giant bird was small as a crow,
When the first horse was the size of a foal;
When the khan's many roads were not built,
When the people's many roads were not laid out;
This was a good age,
This was a beautiful time
It has been said!..
When the many gods of the heaven did not compete with each other,
When the many tenger of the skies did not quarrel with each other;
When the many tenger of the west were not arrogant,
When black and white were not different from each other;
When the many tenger of the east did not argue,
When appearance and color were not differentiated;
When Esege Malaan Tenger was not an old man,
When Ekhe Yuuren Ibii was not an old woman;
When Han Hormasta Tengeri did not brag of his strength,
When black and white were not estranged;
When Atai Ulaan Tengeri did not boast of his greatness,
When hatred and jealousy did not sow discord;
When those of Oyodol Sagaan Tengeri had not yet gathered,
When those of Oyor Sagaan Tengeri had not yet flowed over;
It was a time of beautiful things!
So it is written on the thin paper!
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
I like how these robots ski. It’s the best event from these Olympics at Pyeongchang, so far.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
OK funny.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
What I'm listening to right now.
Adriano Celentano, "Prisencolinensinainciusol." This song is nonsense. Literally. It's an Italian comedian's effort, in 1972, to sing in English without using English – he said he wanted to make a song about the failure to communicate. Which makes sense – more than the song does, right? Anyway, the melody and beat are quite earwormy, actually.
Lyrics
Prisencolinensinainciusol
In de col men seivuan
prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Uis de seim cius nau op de seim
Ol uait men in de colobos dai
Trrr – ciak is e maind beghin de col
Bebi stei ye push yo oh
Uis de seim cius nau op de seim
Ol uoit men in de colobos dai
Not s de seim laikiu de promisdin
Iu nau in trabol lovgiai ciu gen
In do camo not cius no bai for lov so
Op op giast cam lau ue cam lov ai
Oping tu stei laik cius go mo men
Iu bicos tue men cold dobrei goris
Oh sandei
Ai ai smai sesler
Eni els so co uil piso ai
In de col men seivuan
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Ai ai smai senflecs
Eni go for doing peso ai
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Uel ai sint no ai giv de sint
Laik de cius nobodi oh gud taim lev feis go
Uis de seim et seim cius go no ben
Let de cius end kai for not de gai giast stei
Ai ai smai senflecs
Eni go for doing peso ai
In de col mein seivuan
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Lu nei si not sicidor
Ah es la bebi la dai big iour
Ai aismai senflecs
Eni go for doing peso ai
In de col mein seivuan
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Lu nei si not sicodor
Ah es la bebi la dai big iour
[dialy log: walking, 7.5km]
What I'm listening to right now.
Pointer Sisters, "You Gotta Believe." The remarkable video is by Nina Paley, who has been blogged here before.
Lyrics.
[Intro]
Doodle wop a-rat-a-tat boom
I'll make the sound of a jet plane zoom
Doodle wop a-rat-a-tat boom
I'll make the sound of a fire
[Hook]
You got to believe in somethin'
Why not believe in me?
You got to believe in somethin'
Why not believe in me?
[Verse One]
What have I, I done to you
To make you mean
And treat me the way you do?
Go on and wave your flag, brother
Start your revolution
I'm willin' to let you do your thing
Tell me why are you plannin' a compromise?
[Hook]
Take the chain off your brain
Take the chain off your brain
Stop, take a look at yourself
Stop ridiculin' everybody else
[Hook x2]
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
I don’t have much to say today.
So I will share this fine musical interlude – who knew that “Soviet Electronic Music” was even a genre? Personally, I feel it’s aged pretty well.
What I’m listening to right now.
Зодиак & Эдуард Артемьев, compilation of various tracks.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
The internet wins the day. It turns out that H.P. Lovecraft's apocalyptically-themed poem "Nemesis" is a perfect metrical fit for Billy Joel's "Piano Man."
And then someone made it happen.
What I'm listening to right now.
Julian Velard, "Nemesis" – lyrics by H.P. Lovecraft, melody by Billy Joel.
Lyrics – "Nemesis."
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.
I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.
I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.
I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.
I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.
I have peer’d from the casement in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof’d village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.
I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.
I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.
Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
Here is another version – nicer implementation (more true to the darker spirit of Lovecraft), but incomplete.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Not much going on. Just work.
Meanwhile, I offer this.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
"A shutdown falls on the President's lack of leadership. He can't even control his party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the President is weak." – DJT, 2013.
[daily log: walking, 7.6km]
I just learned that South Korea has a horrible "kimchi deficit," in an article here.
The same article points out, however, that overall, Korea runs a major trade surplus. And they make plenty of money on that surplus, which, apparently, they spend importing cheap Chinese-made kimchi.
The irony is that "cabbage" (배추) is a slang word for money, in Korean, as well as being a main ingredient in most varieties of kimchi. So they make their "cabbage" selling the world smartphones and memory chips, and then spend that "cabbage" for real cabbage from China.
Personally, I'm going to have to look more closely at the labels on my pre-made, store-bought kimchi, because I prefer to avoid food imported from China – the quality issues in the past have seemed quite notable. I do marvel, however, at the fact that China has become such a dominant food exporter in so many product domains: a country with so many people, where people were dying in famine half a century ago, still manages to export vast quantities of food.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
On Monday, the US commemorated Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. Dr King's memorial has become the somewhat anodyne fillip to an annual dialogue about race and civil rights, couched in terms guaranteed to offend no one. But he was pretty offensive to those aligned against him, in his era – and those people were offensive right back at him. Not least, consider this bit, written shortly after his assassination:
Those who mourn Dr. King because they were his closest followers should meditate the implications of the deed of the wildman who killed him. That deed should bring to mind not (for God's sake) the irrelevance of non-violence, but the sternest necessity of reaffirming non-violence. An aspect of non-violence is submission to the law.
The last public speech of Martin Luther King described his intention of violating the law in Memphis, where an injunction had been handed down against the resumption of a march which only a week ago had resulted in the death of one human being and the wounding of fifty others.
Dr. King's flouting of the law does not justify the the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle at the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his troubled soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, indulged in. – William F. Buckley, April 9, 1968.
Buckley, in essence, blames the actions of Dr King's murderer on the message he advocated and preached. It is deeply disturbing that in Buckley's view, "submission to the law" is a component of non-violence. This confuses the admonition to "render unto Caesar" for a quite different notion: "submit to Caesar." This is definitely not what any notable advocate of nonviolence has ever had in mind, including Jesus himself.
In light of this, please don't believe that dogwghistle racism and "blaming the victim" are in any way new to the right's discourses contra civil rights. I once thought rather highly of Buckley, but over the years I have seen more and more evidence to support the idea that he was, behind his high rhetoric, yet another defender of the Jim Crow status quo ante.
The only thing actually new in our current Emperor is a certain incisive vulgarity – the content of the message is little changed. Yet it is the content of the message we need to be concerned about, not the manner of presentation.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Word
Twinkle, twinkle, little word,
How I wonder what I heard.
Native speakers talk so fast!
Will I learn to speak at last?
Twinkle, twinkle, little word,
How I wonder what I heard.
– found at linguistics satire blog "Speculative Grammarian."
[daily log: walking, 1km]
The phrase “jump the shark” is a contemporary idiom that means that moment when something that was for a long time a serious artistic undertaking is transformed into a kind of parody of itself, as the work’s creators pursue novelty. Originally it was applied to TV shows and other works of a serial or episodic nature – e.g. book series, etc. Nowadays, the idiom seems applicable to anything where an initially earnest project becomes self-parody. I believe the expression arose in a critical discussion of a certain episode of the TV series “Happy Days.”
So this happened to that project called “United States of America.” The USA has jumped the shark. I have evidence.
Exhibit A:
It doesn’t even matter if this is intentional satire or if it “real.” It is out there.
Some points to consider:
Slightly related:
Perhaps Obama’s biggest mistake: the blogger “Atrios” at Eschaton blog speculates that Obama should bear some of the blame for the current mess in the White House: “Do not sanction powers you do not want your successor to have.”
[daily log: walking, 8km]
지금 듣고있는 것.
레드벨벳, “피카부.” 이MV가 조금 이상합니다.
가사
Uhm yeah yah
Oh gosh 난리야 Oh gosh
맞아 난 좀 기분파
헤 금방 또 사랑에 빠져
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
새것만 좋아해요 반짝거리죠
다들 그렇잖아요 맞죠
Peek A Boo 설렐 때만 사랑이니까
La la la la la
내 친구 모두 소리쳐
넌 정말 문제야
I’m fine fine fine fine fine fine
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
흥이 난 여우 그런 나라구
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
I said 1 2 3
Play the game again
버튼을 눌러보자 쿵푸만큼 빨리
중간에 내 맘 변해도 놀라지 말기
혹시 끌리지 않니 그럼 Excuse me
자 전화해요 밤새 또 놀러 가요 함께
Restart a game
돌진해 롤링해 블랑카
오늘 저녁도 Let’s go
놀이터는 붐비고
지루해질 틈조차 없죠
Yeah yeah yeah
빙글빙글 돌아요 다들 똑같죠
오 마침내 마주친 눈빛
Peek A Boo
새로워요 사랑인가요
La la la la la
내 친구 모두 소리쳐
넌 정말 문제야
I’m fine fine fine fine fine fine
Ma Boo Boo Boo
Peek A Boo Boo Boo Boo
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
술래는 너로 정해졌어
재밌을 거야 끼워 줄게
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
저 달이 정글짐에 걸릴
시간까지 노는 거야
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
Peek A Boo 이상해 어라 넌 좀 달라
이런 게임 멈추고 너를 다시 보게 돼
무섭지 않아 난 새로운 얘기가
펼쳐질 거라는 걸 방금 느꼈으니까
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
흥이 난 여우 그런 나라구
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
술래는 너로 정해졌어
재밌을 거야 끼워 줄게
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
저 달이 정글짐에 걸릴
시간까지 노는 거야
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
술래는 너로 정해졌어
재밌을 거야 네가 좋아
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
저 달이 정글짐에
걸릴 시간이지만 더 놀자
Peek Peek A Peek A Boo
Peek A Boo
Peek A Boo
Peek A Boo
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
