2013 — 20 July: Saturday
Somehow1 the first hour of Brian Matthew has just ended. Still, I'm now enjoying breakfast in the relative cool that is 25.4C hereabouts. Not too unbearable, and I've just been promised some clouds.
I missed this...
... on its first appearance, but always enjoy such items. Christa and I often exchanged words, as it were, on the topic. Source and snippet:
And Russian (more than most languages) forces a bunch of other distinctions on English speakers. The average verb of motion requires you to express whether you're going by vehicle or foot, one-direction or multidirectionally, and in the past tense, makes you include an ending for your own gender. So "I went" would, in one Russian word (khodila, say), express "I [a female] went [by foot] [and I came back]." If you don't want to express all of that, tough luck. You have to. Jakobson himself was Russian. Perhaps his native language led him to the insight above; learning the English verb go might have had the Russian wondering "that's it? By what means? There and back, or what? We would never put up with this in Russian."
Recall Bozman?
No one can read Russian. That is why their books must be translated. The Russian language is very queer. It is very much like English in many ways, but it has not the jollity of George Gissing or AE Houseman. Go, little translator, and render the big Russian books into your little-mother-tongue.
I think I'll give up...
... banging on about the sad, self-deluding science that is psychiatry...
Psychiatry is the tool used to diagnose depression (I dimly recall). I had a good laugh when I looked back precisely three years and saw a snide comment I'd made about that thorny topic. If you check back, don't forget to catch up on Zeno's ever-growing collection of KAP pics while you're there.
Really?
Despite my fierce prejudices against the damnable things, I have to admit I was very impressed by Len's new toy yesterday, and have been reading reviews of it. Perhaps it really is almost time I dragged myself into the new millennium? After all, making voice phone calls is almost the most minor of its abilities, and it would be nice to have such very mobile computing power at my avaricious fingertips. All the capability of one of the Dell or HP PDAs I could never quite bring myself to decide on, plus full compatibility with my Android Tablet PC and quite happy to pick up my Google-based email as I trot around. Where's the harm in that?
Oh, the Object of my Current Interest? An HTC One smartphone, of all things. We shall see, as dear ol' Dad used to say... (But 182 pages of user manual? For a phone?? Blimey.)
While I'll admit...
... to occasional, very mild, squirrel-like, hoarding tendencies, I was genuinely surprised to discover2 that I've somehow managed to accumulate over 103GB of spoken word material in MP3 format.
I confess I'd never heard of Ruth Theodore until moments ago. I was catching up on the "Late Junction" programme that was transmitted on 22nd June — an episode I snaffled before the chap and his BBC radio programme downloader was told to "cease and desist" (or however the BBC put it) — and just heard Fiona Talkington tell us that Ms Theodore says she "was born in a nowhere place between Winchester and Southampton"! Putting that canard to one side, I've just paid her slightly over the odds (all of £8-00) for ...
... a Bandcamp-mediated lossless FLAC download of her album "Dear Lamp Love Moth". (Excellent title.)
Guess which...
... particularly crappy piece of rubbish software, written by which crappy over-priced crash-lemon-producing so-called I.T. company, was driving BlackBeast at 15% cpu until I put a 'stop' to the process?
Why, say hello (and goodbye) to Apple's charming little...
AppleMobileDeviceService.exe
... injected into my system, I don't doubt, by the iTunes I foolishly allowed back on, and that is about to be expunged yet again. Mutter, mutter. I gave my iPod away. Hell, I gave my iMac away, too. What more do I have to do?
Those promised clouds have finally started drifted across the face of a nearly full moon. About time too, since the twilight is now kicking in as well. It's 21:20 and a positively chilly, erm, 25.6C down here.