Are you quite sure it's not Ionesco?
Well, even with my extremely primitive level of Spanish, I think I'd have noticed if it were dialog. And the author is some guy called Scott Alexander. Come to think of it, with a name like that it's probably a Spanish translation of an English book.
1 is funny.
Does it really say "me deseo" and "to consorte"?
Finally, it reminds me of Mempo's Giardinelli's Imposible equilibrio, which is about this town in Argentina that imports two Hippos to deal with some scourge in their water supply. Might be a bit much for Newt, but maybe not. In any case it's very, very silly.
3: No, those are my typos transcribing. I'll go fix them now.
The book you're recommending is actually a children's book? The school claims he's reading at a third-grade level in Spanish, so he should be able to handle it.
I want! Just think, all my problems could be solved. I've already got the lumbering down.
The book you're recommending is actually a children's book?
No, actually. I remembered it as being lighter than it is. I just went and picked it up, and it's 233 pages and actually kind of colloquial Argentine Spanish. But silly. I did remember the silly correctly.
Some of the bits of advice do look appealing:
¡Eres un rinoceronte! ¡No hay nada que no puedas acometer!
And of course:
¡Maldito los torpedos!
Come to think of it though, if anyone has a beloved Spanish language children's book to recommend, at about an eight year old level, I'm all ears.
... Really, how could I have known?
The store could have told you.
10: Can you get your hands on any of these? Absolutely adorable little stories. Maybe do-able for an eight-year-old? (Problem here: I have absolutely no idea what eight-year-olds can read.)
¿Crees que los empleados de la librería está riendo sobre tú?
(Wow, my Spanish sucks now.)
11: Yeah, I'm a little cross about that. This wasn't a miscommunication about what I was looking for -- Newt was there, chatted a bit in Spanish, got cooed over for his accent and general charmingness, and then the guy (who spoke perfectly decent English) rummaged through a shelf and brought this out. He couldn't have misunderstood me -- he either had weird ideas about what eight-year-olds read, had the book on the wrong shelf because of the title and cover art, or was being a jerk. And of course Newt could have caught it -- he was flipping through it looking a bit baffled, but didn't pipe up until we were sitting on a park bench.
Is the rhinoceros a particularly successful animal? Ionesco aside, one would think that being hunted for the purposes of traditional Asian medicines is not a desirable life goal for children or adults (Spanish-speaking or otherwise).
The logical conclusion is that the only thing separating the popular business press from children's literature is a dab of whimsy, which bridge this book crosses.
15: I think you haven't really internalized the truth of the quote in comment 8.
16: Hey, are you new, or a name change?
Is there a reason that "sitting on a park bench" has cropped up twice?
The bookstore employee is, alas, called upon to be a reference librarian as well as a mere retail clerk. It sucks to buy a book you don't like.
17: Name change. I bet you can get it without too much trouble.
LB, look in the LA thread if you're not getting it yet.
The bookstore employee is, alas, called upon to be a reference librarian as well as a mere retail clerk. It sucks to buy a book you don't like.
Okay, in general, sure. In practice, asking for a children's book shouldn't be putting undue stress on a bookstore clerk, and being handed an adult self-help book instead is unreasonably poor service. I'm sure it was an innocent mistake, and the cover and title make it a perfectly plausible one, but I'm not bitching that I didn't like the children's book I bought, I'm bitching that the clerk sold me something in a completely different category than what I asked for.
20: If you must, you must, but I wish people wouldn't change their names. You actually hit something that's sort of within the ToS's universe of possible names -- I did a doubletake when your first comment was coherent and reasonable.
23: from what I gather h- has a good reason for it.
I have begun to blog under my own name (or under a pretty obvious pseud), and after considering the archives, I preferred not to connect said name too directly to some of the old pseud's personal revelations.
It's foolish to actually count on privacy -- and I'm fond of the old name -- but this seemed more prudent. I beg the forgiveness of the local nomenklatura.
More to the point, does Newt like the book? And is he demonstrably more successful since reading it?
Wow, I screwed up that link something good. Sorry. This was the thread at my new blog that I thought you would enjoy, even though I didn't start it.
Not Found
The requested URL /archives/would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion was not found on this server.
How long has that been up? Hilarious!
I think that if you were a six thousand pound rhino, you would likely break your bed long before your consorte found you there.
25: It's all right -- I'm just required by my contract to gripe about these things.
26: I passed it on to Sally, who's older and reads better, and told her to tell me if there was any useful advice in it. If I notice her stampeding more frequently, I suppose I'll attribute it to the book.
I didn't think first of Ionesco with respect to rhinocerni, actually. Instead, The Rhinocerus Horn, early buddhist poem.
Available via Google books, but Drat! "Page 10 is not part of this book preview." That's what I wanted, page 10. There, we might read, in conclusion, as it were:
75. (People) associate with and resort to (others) for some motive; nowadays friends without a motive are hard to find. Wise as to their own advantage, men are impure. One should wander solitary as a rhinoceros horn.
Page 9 is not as good, but is a lead-in. I can't figure out how to link properly to a specific page in a google books thingum, but here's a try
24: Who's h-? I may have k-sky's identity all wrong. It'll iron itself out, though, I'm sure.
32: I'm seeing page 9 along with page 10 and the section you quote.
33: The antecedent of "h-" is m-., k-sky.
34: Oh. They will not show me page 10 somehow. Well, I have it it print.
But yes, the link worked out.
35: No, I'm really lost now. I thought k-sky was [somebody]. Having followed some links, I'm confused. Sorry.
I have begun to blog under my own name (or under a pretty obvious pseud), and after considering the archives, I preferred not to connect said name too directly to some of the old pseud's personal revelations.
I'm really confused. You're trying to tie your current identity here to your new blog with your real name, and not to your old identity here? Why not keep the old identity here, unrelated to your new blog?
Unrelatedly, I spent a big chunk of the weekend reading Gaudy Night and being impressed. Is there other stuff by Sayers of the same caliber?
[somebody] is MB irl, that i deduced from the Ebert post
k-sky i think is ToS when he's reasonable
The deadpan humor works well with adults (who don't read Spanish all that well), and might well do so for a bright 8-year old: the comic strip MAFALDA, from Argentina originally. I bought all the collected volumes available in the 1970s, haven't looked for them since.
Unrelatedly, I spent a big chunk of the weekend reading Gaudy Night and being impressed. Is there other stuff by Sayers of the same caliber?
Try Murder Must Advertise next! No Harriet, but lots of great detail about newspaper advertising of the era.
44: Indeed.
(Though I confess to being confused as well.)
44: You can clarify that any time you like.
Uh, there was a comment 44 that I was responding to. But I rather like it the way it is now, all enigmatic.
Feel free to redact my 39, along with this, if that helps maintain k-sky's anonymity, though presumably one would have to do further redacting upthread.
Oh, I didn't mean to be rude. There was a comment in 44, but it was deleted by the author, I presume, so I also presume that they'd prefer it not get repeated. It wasn't really important.
I thought maybe I was contributing in the wrong way to the problem, so deleted my comment. Not quickly enough, I see. If K-sky would like any of the above comments selectively anonymized, you can say so.
And everybody can pretend my comment 50 is grammatically sound.
Right, I must not have been clear enough. Originally my #44 was comment #45. And I apologize, apo, apparently I'm really good at catching the comments right before they're deleted.
40: Sadly, Gaudy Night is probably the richest of the Wimsey novels -- the rest are more mysteries than novels, if you know what I mean. But if you liked GN, really any of the rest are pretty good: I'd skip the first, Whose Body?, as the weakest, and probably the last, Busman's Honeymoon, unless you'd really gotten attached to the characters. The Documents In The Case is non-Wimsey Sayers, and I like it as well.
I love Busman's Honeymoon, but indeed it really is best saved until you're good and thoroughly attached.
12: Thanks, Stanley! I ordered the first one off abebooks.
If K-sky could in some way make it clearer who she or he is, we could all just carry on. There's no problem, just confusion. Or, really, it doesn't matter that much.
43: IIRC, there's one sentence of Harriet in Murder Must Advertise -- as the drug-addled Bright Young Thing and the victim's sister are contemplating a catfight over Wimsey, he goes off to have dinner with "the one woman who has shown no interest in laying claim to him" or something along those lines.
56: The problem is that his real name is easy to connect to his current pseud, k-sky. He'd like it to be difficult to go from there to his prior pseud, because he's said stuff under his prior pseud he'd prefer not to be connected to his real name. So making it clear what his prior pseud was would be counterproductive, and speculating about it would be rude, particularly if you guessed right.
Everyone up to speed?
59: I'm extremely bad at anagrams and word scrambles and the like, so no worries about me figuring it out. Although I did figure out soup biscuit.
58: Indeed. NY's went away sometime in the last ten years or so -- I thought I was stuck with no way to buy wine on Sunday and none in the house a while back, and then realized that it was no longer a problem, and my heart was filled with a sanctified gladness. So the blue laws were really counterproductive.
60: Don't worry about it -- there's no puzzle-type relationship between old and new pseud.
And I thought what parsimon thought.
She was correct. Whatever "h-" was, I took it to be an attempt at a gender-neutral pronoun, for some reason.
Speaking of reading-before-grade-level, have I already mentioned The Works by Kate Ascher? Search function says no.
Anyhow, it's an amazing 2005 book about the infrastructure of New York City -- sort of like David Macaulay, except with more text and no fiction and more realistic drawings. I think it is mostly intended for a 12-and-up audience, but it is exactly the kind of book I would have totally grokked when I was 8 or so. I highly recommend it for all children everywhere. The descriptions are detailed without being too technical and the graphic presentation is superb. It's like a book version of a really intricate SimCity 3000 run.
63: Um, yes, a quick Google search made that clear, but I was trying not to directly say so. Shouldn't some of this thread be redacted?
43: IIRC, there's one sentence of Harriet in Murder Must Advertise -- as the drug-addled Bright Young Thing and the victim's sister are contemplating a catfight over Wimsey, he goes off to have dinner with "the one woman who has shown no interest in laying claim to him" or something along those lines.
You recall entirely correctly! I was thinking when I wrote 43 that the line served largely to underline that there's no Harriet in the book, rather than to be Harriet in the book, but that's a little elaborate of me.
37 is correct and would please be redacted?
38 is well answered by 59. Add the desire to establish a unitary blogospheric persona. The current pseud and the blogging are both easily linkable to my full real name, I just don't want them to come up in google searches of my real name. For the nonce.
Murder Must Adverstise is definitely the second best Wimsey novel (after Gaudy Night). I sometimes wonder if MMA is really the best one and my love for GN is a product of my vast (and ultimately unrepentant) sappitude.
47 is bizarre.
I've only ever read "Greedy Night", but I think I got the general Wimsey idea.
59: Everyone up to speed?
No.
But I have no need to explore off-blog identities. So yes, certainly, I understand.
I don't see how you can still not be up to speed, parsley, since your guess was confirmed as correct.
I also don't see why we can't make plain who k-sky is via clever use of letter deletion.
Hi parsimon! I hope you like me in my new identity, we got along well in the old one.
Thanks for the redaction, blog overlords.
71: How about if you're very curious, email me and I'll tell you who I used to be.
67.1: Oh! Thank you, and 37 has, I see, been redacted. I'm sorry to have fussed so much about this.
64: You interest me strangely. I must go find a copy.
Add the desire to establish a unitary blogospheric persona.
Interesting. I've been pretty happy with splitting into multiple internet personas.
I'm embarrassed that I doubted myself. I knew it. I blame Sifu.
Although I did figure out soup biscuit.
There's something to figure out with soup?
(Really don't answer this. I just felt like adding to the confusion.)
78: He's actually a rhinoceros in real life. Blog overlords, feel free to redact this indiscretion.
59: I'm extremely bad at anagrams and word scrambles and the like, so no worries about me figuring it out. Although I did figure out soup biscuit.
Huh. Yeah, I never would have guessed his real name was "Coitus Pubis", but since you mention anagrams, it must be true.
78: how did he get such a sweet postdoc?
||
Fresh cranberry beans. OMG so delicious. Probably my reaction is helped by the fact that I haven't eaten anything all day, but went on a 13-mile(ish) walk.
|>
75: Do. I can't imagine growing up in NYC today and not having a copy of this book. You could take it everywhere with you and figure stuff out! Wouldn't that be fun? Parts of it might be a tiny bit opaque for kids under 12 or so, but hell, if you've already got 'em on the foreign-language self-help books, this should be no problem. And you could constantly return to it as a reference! So much fun!
I have to get a present for a 5-year-old by next Saturday. I'm thinking The Works would be too mature. Maybe some LEGO and a fairy tale book. Hmmm.
75: Do. I can't imagine growing up in NYC today and not having a copy of this book. You could take it everywhere with you and figure stuff out!
If Amazon's "search inside this book" feature is to be believed, it doesn't discuss either standpipes or bridgeplates. This disappoints me.
61: In Texas you can buy beer and wine after 10 AM on sundays, but no liquor.
84: Well, if you want to quibble, there's lots of stuff that could be included that wasn't. The book takes a very common-sense, instrumental view of infrastructure and the politics around it, mostly for concision's sake, I would imagine. And yes, some of the micro-infrastructure is glossed over. But quite a bit of it isn't.
Thanks, rfts, LB, and oudemia, for the book recommendations. I'll look for Murder Must Advertise. (Neither my university library nor the local bookstore have it, if I believe their online search pages, which is kind of shocking. I suppose I'll order it.)
86: I wasn't entirely serious. It does look like a nice book.
I'm about 80% of the way through "Gaudy Night" and nothing sappy has happened yet, so I think Oudemia just let fly with a spoiler.
89: I thought the bit where Harriet gets the letter from Peter and is surprised that he doesn't warn her away from danger, but instead says that it should not turn her back and wishes her well, was touching, although not, I would say, sappy.
Also, what an odd coincidence that two of us here would have been reading the book simultaneously.
Thanks, Stanley!
You're welcome! They were recommended to me the summer before college by my Québécoise roommate in Madrid as "light reading that will help you pick um a bit of Spain-centered slang and culture while entertaining". I read the whole series in the month I was there. I'm curious to hear Newt's (and your?) reaction(s).
Are the BBC adaptations of the Wimsey mysteries available on DVD?
I'm really not literate in Spanish -- looking at a page of it, I can read one sentence in four or so (like, the two bits I quoted in the thread I understand, but while I have a general idea of the paragraph in the post, I couldn't actually translate it). I keep on meaning to get back to working at it, but then I don't.
93: Yes, they are. Two different serieses, so if you're looking on Netflix, and you want a particular one, make sure that's what you're looking at.
The proper plural of "series" is "clitorides", LB.
Yes, 90 gets it right. But I know oudemia is implying a happy ending, luv-wise.
I'm kind of sad that unfogged has died.
98: It's not dead, parsey. Everyone's probably just off watching this very exciting American football game between the Titans and the Bills. I mean, seriously, a punter scored a touchdown? That's unusual!
99: Stanley, you're the man. I imagine that's exactly it.
It's due to an an imbalance in the trolling: once, you could get good, quality trolling here, which would would sustain a healthy thread. But now Emerson's gone, Ogged's gone, and Shearer's been assimilated.
104: Trolling, even in its mildest form, has become noticeably deprecated: bad, bad, bad on you, annoying person!
But I mean, I could do ogged, and Shearer's still around. I imagine everyone misses Emerson. Oh, crap, I'll not get into the rest of the list of the lost. I will say: Stras.
i thought stras is iirr, but i coiuld be wrong
and he visits Tw weekly if you miss him
sorry like to expose of course, maybe it's that, against manners
Oooh, yeah, I'd completely forgotten about Stras.
Also:
The least of the last of the rest of the list of the lost ..
Catchy.
Alligator tastes fishy. It's not entirely pleasant.
This comment should use pause/play symbols, but apparently I can't do those on my phone.
I ate horse about a month ago, in Italy, and couldn't help having really weird guilt feelings - thought I would throw up but determinedly finished the meal.
I imagine everyone misses Emerson.
Emerson is coming back someday, right? (Or so the prophecies say...)
111: With a pet dog for apo, which pet dog craps marijuana. OSTMWHYB.
107: read, yes, I know that Stras comments at Kotsko's Weblog. I see him, and you, there.
there commenting is like easier for some reason, hates and confessions, pretty meditatively helpful
wouldn't you comment there too, it's interesting to read people's confessions, funny sometimes, the host is a bit irritable, though he's getting mellower, now, the cause is unknown (TGF)
he reminds me O/d sometimes
but i sensed somehow O never liked me :(
let me guess again, the commenter-in-exile is JE
i'm like an extrasense or something
Further to 113: I mean that it's not against manners for you to mention that Stras comments there.
I understand that read is leaving the country shortly also; hence the party she mentioned that was in her honor. I think she'll be returning, though, although that's not clear to me. In any case, enjoy your trip home, read.
thanks, i will
i feel sorry perhaps J left due to my too strong support i guess, otherwise she perhaps would have continued cheerfully her B scolding
well, i should stop, maybe iirr and Cie won't show up again now i exposed them, not good
but i could be wrong in both interpretations, it's just that, wild wild guess
Travel safely, read.
::joke about not hiking near the Iranian border redacted for lack of funniness::
116: I think you're wrong about iir, and I don't know who Cie is, but honestly, read, I don't think you've exposed anyone, so you shouldn't worry about anyone being driven away on your account.
118: I don't know, I'm sure Michael Bay is very upset about having his anonymity disturbed. (I'm kidding, read. Have a nice trip.)
Maybe if you think you're exposing someone, don't do that. As a general guideline.
as russians say schastlivo ostavat'sya all
it means 'stay happy/ily' , something like be well
118 now i feel like you doubt my insight and intuition / kidding
120 so i was right, wow, how intuitive me
but, sorry sorry, i stop being like this nosy, sure i too miss them
123: No worries, and I didn't really mean that comment directly at you. Probably just good life advice.
Maybe I've become a little skittish, but can I really be the only one who upon hearing of the hikers in Kurdish Iran thought "hikers", yeah, suuure they were just "hikers"?
can I really be the only one who upon hearing of the hikers in Kurdish Iran thought "hikers", yeah, suuure they were just "hikers"?
This was about 20% of my reaction. The other 80% was a judgmental "How self-centered is it to be that careless, given that the region is unstable, the countries are in a state of high diplomatic tension, and it's going to take a boatload of cash* and US government people-time to disentangle any mess that might occur?"
This attitude is why I could never work for a US embassy.
*Not a boatload of cash by US govt standards, but a boatload by any reasonable person's. Like climbing a mountain in a snowstorm and having search and rescue spend $50K getting you down.
125: No, you're not the only one. I figured Special Forces or CIA.
In light of 124 and previous, regarding exposure, I apologize for my rather clueless remarks upthread probing certain identities. I just didn't register that it was a delicate thing; it's happened before that we think this place is more private than it is. Thankfully, it's been redacted.
In almost every news report about the hikers, the journalist is at great pains to mention that the region is totally beautiful and that people do travel out of their way to go hiking and climbing there, really!
127: definitely CIA. Only CIA would be stupid enough to get caught there and have no better cover story than "we're on a hiking holiday!"
Only CIA would be stupid enough to get caught there and have no better cover story than "we're on a h- h-!"
I note with the good humor that comes from time having healed a few wounds that Rhinoceros Success was the book being pushed hard by the small CLEC for which I went to work in early 2000 only to have its entire data services division collapse by early December of that same year.
Upper management of that company were of the Incompetent Enthusiasm school of leadership and remain locked in my mind as everything wrong with 2000. The fact that management gave every new hire their own copy of this book triggered alarms for a co-worker because, she said, "My ex was big into Amway and they about worship from that book." Later we learned that the management team was so obsessed with the Rhino as their patron icon that they had pulled strings and blown cash to win a sports franchise so that there could be a local team with the rhinoceros. They flew rhino flags and had rhino t-shirts for sale. They were so over the top in their obsession with rhinoceros iconography and that sports franchise that I later wrote a homebrew gaming module about a pack of vampires who fed exclusively on attendees of that team's home games.
I tell all of this to say that I have met some people who were genuinely obsessed with that book and therefore I advise that (a) you keep an eye on Sally and Newt to see if either of them starts carrying a little briefcase and talking about people being "upline" or "downline" and (b) it's probably safest, if one is going to have that book around, that it be in a language one doesn't easily comprehend.
You wouldn't happen to know the Spanish for up/down-line, would you?
Tangentially to the OP, here's a not-so-great photo taken just last weekend of me standing in proximity to a rhino.
133: Oh, I wouldn't have the faintest clue. I understand just enough Spanish, after years of no classes and little use, to have recognized the book when reading the original post but that's it. My understanding from my old co-worker was that the book isn't Amway-specific, anyway, just that it's much loved by Amway types. I probably have my copy around somewhere if you want it.
134: Knecht!
132: I am always intrigued when management suddenly discovers a new *BOOK*. We've run through a number in my years (fortunately not fatal yet). I fondly recall an encounter with one outwardly ambitious co-worker who spotted the unopened volume (forget which) on my desk that had been passed out to all of us some time previously. "That's out-of-date", he said with concern in his voice, "now we're using Five Frogs on a Log*." Who knows, maybe they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Although the Amway "philosophy" is pretty pure evil, no surprise some Amway heir money is smack in the middle of funding the teabag/birther/healthcare crazies.)
*There are five frogs on a log, one decides to jump off. How many frogs are on the log? Answer: 5. See doing is different than deciding. You all now owe me a shitpot full of money.
One of my workplaces did the animal=success thing with the raptor. They meant it as bird of prey, but my own mind drifted constantly to Jurassic Park.
See doing is different than deciding
Different from, and you forget that the conclusion of a practical syllogism is an action!
In the frog kingdom I believe "than" is the correct word choice.
138: Yes, thank you neb, my relatively unschooled vernacular is surely grating, and your selfless, tireless efforts to correct do not go unnoticed. As for the latter part of your correction however, one cannot forget what one never knew!
139: In the frog kingdom business world I believe "than" is the correct word choice. Sadly.
Babelfish is great.
"Imagínate la mirada de tu consorte por la mañana, cuando te halle en la cama!" gets rendered into this: "Imagínate the glance of your consorte in the morning, it finds when you in the bed. "
A "consorte" -- y'mean like Prince Philip? I don't WANT to imaginate the Duke of Edinburgh finding me in bed.
143: My understanding of the word is that it's roughly the equivalent of the English word "spouse", and the Oxford Spanish Dictionary seems to agree.