Insightful comments from a Youtube patron:

"I love this song; I think any person in the world can relate to this...

It personally helps me to think that the Bible says that nothing will be thrown your way that you can't deal with and overcome. I think that's a really hopeful thought even if you aren't Christian. That's what this song makes me think of. ;D"

Carrie Underwood's song personally helps me to think that the bible says that

"And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not." (2Pet 2:3)

What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?

Iesus dicens quid tibi videtur Simon reges terrae a quibus accipiunt tributum vel censum a filiis suis an ab alienis?

Ite lo walelitalona ala molagali li saiala sakenala bata faasida? Wela gera 'i talada gi, 'o ma faasia ioli mamata gi?

Mt 17:24/25

things to do when you are driving on a long featureless route.

trucks can have five or six digit number on the back as their id or

something. take 53395 now what are the prime factors? it took

me a good hundred miles to realize thats 5 x 59 x 181. like

that time passes but its not that fun for sport.

restaurants on the road, all burgers.

1. larkburger, boulder, co.

spartan decor inside and they serve you in brown paper cartons, standing

the burger upright. they have two trashcans, one for aluminum and glass,

and one for compostable things, viz the paper cartons and food scraps,

then a small metal bin where nonreclycable empty mustard packets go.

beef is organic, local, etc. typical boulder. they cooked the burger med rare

like i ask, and it looks handsome half covered upright. looks good on paper,

but it is not good. mince is more like a pulp, no texture. i know because

the first time i grinded beef myself i didnt correctly trim and the visceral

films pinched the grinding plate issue, and it was pulped, ended up

insipid and no texture, just like this. the bun tastes like a pastry

dough, not yeasty enough. just their off day?

2. blue sky, amarillo, tx. fast food style patty, thin and charred enough,

cooked well, not dry though. bun is just like i like, buttery very resilient.

good bed of shredded lettuce, third lb patty overhangs, one of the best

fast food style burgers

3. stockyard cafe, ibidem

shares the building w the livestock auction office, maybe their beef

is fresh? the owner, named youngblood, very tall with a chef proprietors

firm handshake and gray hair and a chefs belly, he is trained at cia

experience in manhattan chop houses, saw our plates and came to greet.

i had half lb med rare bacon cheeseburger w grilled jalapeños, a real

twohander and the bun starts to herniate from the tallow, good beef,

good grind, cooked by an inveterate beef specialist, they do chicken

fried steak, steaks, and daily special dishes as well. it just edges

out maple and motors, though admittedly they must have an easier time

sourcing their beef. a+

A hierarchical ethic means that one finds it normal to be at either side of a culturally sanctioned hierarchical relationship. Behaviorally, it means that whether one is subordinate or in command is accepted as being a matter of circumstance, maneuver, and optimizing strategy. Psychologicaly, it means that one is both comfortable about exercising authority and not discomfitted by subordination to authority. In the realm of values, it means that one prizes both one's standing over others and one's being attached to a superior power--hence, the inherent value that was usually granted to chieftainship and kingship in Africa. To be under no one at all, and dependent on no one, was to be utterly without status, in effect, to be like a "slave" (In sharp contrast to the Western idea of "slavery" as a denial of autonomy). The Suku of Zaire, who had a king, would taunt their Mbala neighbors, whose largest sovereign unit was the independent community, that they were "like slaves because they had no king"

--Kopytoff "The Internal African Frontier"

We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

Programming Perl, 3rd ed. (xix)

i have spent much time studying the bible recently. one is when i am doing a friday lecture about the history of an english word, and going back to old english or middle scots examples, there are always parts of the bible. for another, i have a project of learning an unknown language only by its bible translation. i was having a meeting with my group members and in the course of the meeting we were reading aloud from the king james version and the wala version. by coincidence, at the next table over there was an actual bible study group.

Matthew 5:37 "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."

Ala koe alafafi, 'o ilia mola, `'Eo.' 'O ma ala iko 'ali 'o alafafi, 'o ilia mola `Iko.' Ma ala koe ilia lou ta me 'are, me 'are la 'e la lo mae faasia Saetan.

[literally, "When you consent, you say but "Yes." And when you will not consent, you say but "No." And when you say any other thing, this thing is coming from Satan." ]

...cultural processes had first to be translated into political forces before they could bring about death penalty change. Civilizing and humanizing pressures were most effective when they promised to help officials improve their control. The power of refinement was greatest when it led to the refinement of power.

Garland, Peculiar Institution (2010:143)

interesting use of a full NP as an adverbial quantifier in the bourne identity:

I've gotta stand before an oversight committee. What am I gonna tell 'em about Treadstone?

You're worried about a budget meeting?

We don't take care of this, we don't make it to the men's room.

Is that clear enough for you?

We will burn for this.

We will both of us burn.

I would like to review two films. I think that these films can be helpful for someone who wants to understand the great international contest between Japan and Korea which comprises three specific areas: (1) automobile manufacture, (2) baseball, and (3) inscrutability. each of these films is bizarre in its own way, and i intend to confront my japanese and korean colleagues when i get back to school and inform them that i hold them personally responsible for the content of these films. SPOILER ALERT: i don't know how to review films, so i am just going to summarize the plots.

1. man, woman and the wall: this story is a romance. i have the feeling that the intended audience is teenage boys, especially those who are shy about asking a woman for a date. my brother-in-law, who is 18, watched the film then watched it again the next night with all of his friends and they all loved it because of the number and duration of sex scenes, for which reason i suppose that the film's promoters did not even bother to apply for a rating when distributing it in america. but i think the film is very refreshing for me because you could never make a film in america where the protagonist spends all of his time listening through a wall and masturbating thinking about his neighbor. what makes the movie magical and not at all realistic is that the guy actually has very good social skills, and when he manages to bump into his neighbor he can very easily chat her up and she feels comfortable with him and has dinner with him a few times. i think this is why you like the main guy even though he would be considered a felon sex offender in florida. the guy is able to leverage his networker of allies in various stalking-related professions to destroy his rival, who is also a stalker, but the creepy kind, who only knows how to talk to women whispering over the phone and hanging up and then masturbating by listening to the woman's angry voice. because it is a love story and a romantic comedy, we learn all along that the woman was hoping that the good stalker would be stalking her, and became delighted and very enamored when she learned that this was the case.

2. woman is the future of man. this movie has no stalking in it. i feel like a stalking movie would not be successful in korea like in japan. but this kind of movie i also think could not be successful in japan. the japanese wouldn't understand it. i don't understand it either. it is not quite one of those films that artistically rejects having a plot, but the plot is rather minimal; not least because you cannot be sure whether the scenes actually happen in chronological order. i think they are going for a slaughterhouse five kind of use of time, where the episodes are out of joint with each other, but it is not immediately apparent how they fit together or if they are supposed to. there are two men and they know had both dated the same woman at some time in the past. it is snowing in all of the movie. one man shouts at a woman and tells her to get into a cab. the woman gets into the cab instead of walking away, then in the next scene she is telling her boyfriend that she was kidnapped and raped. the boyfriend is the guy with the mustache. now i don't know if the abductor and rapist is the other guy, the guy with the forehead. but that could possibly explain a lot. the guys are at a restaurant together and talking about their professional lives, and the forehead guy says that in his marriage, in order to preserve harmony, he should think of his wife as another person and let her do what she wants. for example, if he catches he smoking in the bathroom, he should pretend not to see it so as not to embarrass her. then the mustache guy is getting drunk and crying and he is hung over the next morning. then the woman in the future gives the forehead guy a blowjob while her friend the yoga teacher is cooking something and the other guy is hung over. there is another scene with some students, and the movie is over, and i think you are supposed to feel sad.

there are many kinds of calculations that you can make and once you make it you are committed to the result. so let's say that you have a 9am flight, and that you are either a student or on holiday, so you are not accustomed to waking at 7am. instead you are accustomed to waking up at 11am. it means you probably would get 5 hours of sleep instead of nine. that is an uncomfortable prospect but it is not so bad that you would take drastic measures to avoid it. but let's say it's a 6am flight. this happens to be my situation right now. i'm on holiday, or at least i don't report to the office and i am working on my paper whatever hours i like, which will usually mean that i wake up between 11 and 12, drink coffee, maybe exercise, cook a meal, eat the meal around 3, then start working, maybe have tea and biscuits and leftover food around 10, and work until 3 and sleep, on like that. so you see if this was me, which it is, then it's no problem to just stay up a bit later than usual. by 3 i am no longer feeling like working, but it is so painful to wake up with only two hours of sleep. it really is traumatic for me. i hear sounds and i don't know whether it is a sound stuck in my head, or the sound from a dream (these are actually two different kinds of sounds), or it is an alarm, and i feel leaden and sick and just angry. better to have not gone to bed at all. but let's say it's the same me as it is now, and the flight was really 9am. now for me, it wouldn't be too big of an issue, because i have discipline: i could just go to bed at 2 instead of 3 and sleep five hours: not all that bad; i feel tired but do not get tormented by sounds and i am still able to understand what is happening, and i don't feel angry because it is a small adjustment, adjusting to understanding what is happening, that it is a flight; there is no snooze bar for a flight. i have inferred that older people and people with young children can handle this thing no problem. but there is a type of flight, and a type of sleeping schedule, really a rare combination, but i have seen it happen, where it is really difficult to decide whether to get only a little bit of sleep, and then have to wake up, or to stay up far beyond your usual time, even on a moderate stretch. if sleep can overpower you in the way that waking up having slept only 3 hours is slightly worse than cutting the web of skin between two finger when you reach into hot dishwater and find a broken glass, but not as bad as wilfully cutting yourself in such a way, then it could be that staying up past a certain time can also be painful. this can be like being in prison. there is really no freedom for you. you cannot control your destiny, and all authorities are indifferent to your pain.

really, you could have it worse. but you could also be even less deserving of sympathy.

i hope to have good luck all my life.

From Sarah Palin's America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag:

"As always, I thank my family, my inspiration. Thank you for circling the wagons and providing generous support. I love you. May God keep shining on you all!

To those who are true friends--you know who you are because you're still here--plus our good helpers for the kids and tasks at hand, we can't do anything without you. Thank You!

I could not have written this book were it not for our veterans, our past and present patriots in uniform who are our true heroes. Your protection of our freedom to embrace faith and family under the flag allows America to be exceptional.

Huge apreciation goes to those who tell the truth in the media arena. Those willing to seek and report truth encourage us to keep our heads up and forge ahead. You Commonsense Constitutionalists who take the shots every day (and have been doing it a lot longer than I have) yet you never retreat--keep it up. Freedom depends on you. The same goes for Prayer Warriors lifting up our country. Keep the faith."

From Bird, Stewart & Lightfoot's Transport Phenomena:

"Each new book depends for its success on many more individuals than those whose names appear on the title page. The most obvious debt is certainly to the hard-working and gifted students who have collectively taught us much more than we have taught them. In addition, the professors who reviewed the manuscript deserve special thanks for their numerous corrections and insightful comments ... However, at a deeper level, we have benefited from the departmental structure and traditions provided by our elders here in Madison. Foremost among these was Olaf Andreas Hougen, and it is to his memory that this edition is dedicated."

...the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceding States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction. (link)

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"Nobody talks about Euripides with a dying person they're just met!"

"Well, nobody sits in front of her father's memorial portrait with her legs spread, either!"

--Murakami, Norwegian Wood

my japanese friend says that murakami is just pulp fiction for the vulgus, and scoffs at it though he's read most of the books. i still want to see the film said to be released this month.

In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races. (John Paul Stevens in opinion on Citizens United v. FEC)

"Is it true that the earth is all breaking up?" the Lion asked.

"Yes, O Lion, it is," said the Rabbit. "I was asleep under a palm-tree. I woke up and thought, 'What would become of me if the earth should all break up?' At that very moment, I heard the sound of the earth breaking up, and I ran away." (Jataka tales)

this excerpt from proust hints at some ideas which would appear later in goffman's essay on facework, though without the surrealist imagery:

Même au point de vue des plus insignifiantes choses de la vie, nous ne sommes pas un tout matériellement constitué, identique pour tout le monde et dont chacun n’a qu’à aller prendre connaissance comme d’un cahier des charges ou d’un testament; notre personnalité sociale est une création de la pensée des autres. Même l'acte si simple que nous appelons "voir une personne que nous connaissons" est en partie un acte intellectuel. Nous remplissons l'apparence physique de l'être que nous voyons, de toutes les notions que nous avons sur lui et dans l'aspect total que nous nous représentons, ces notions ont certainement la plus grande part. Elles finissent par gonfler si parfaitement les joues, par suivre en un adhérence si exacte la ligne du nez, elles se mêlent si bien de nuancer la sonorité de la voix comme si celle-ci n'était qu'une transparente enveloppe, que chaque fois que nous voyons ce visage et que nous entendons cette voix, ce sont ces notions que nous retrouvons, que nous écoutons.

we got to the palace in bidjun and we met the chief and his sons. one of the daughters of the chief had died. they were setting up fluorescent lights wired to a generator, having borrowed a cable from somewhere else. this was so that they could sit in the palace all night that night with the light on. i gave the chief his wine and he immediately opened it and began to drink. we saw them carrying a rat mole into one of the kitchens, then we saw a girl catch a fowl. was either for us? towards sunset MO said we should go into the palace to eat. there was kati kati fowl with rice. we ate with MO and then went to bed. the bed was very hard and i was cold. there was no matress and i had forgotten a blanket. i used a pair of dirty trousers to keep my legs warm.

in the morning i got up once the sun had come up fully. GG had been awake at first light, studying his religious books, as he usually does on these occasions. MO came in around eight and said he had been doing some work hauling sand, then he had our breakfast brought out, which was fufu and more fowl meat. one man, having heard of GG being around, came to talk to him. GG told him to eat with us before telling the story, since it was surely a long story. he sat down to eat with us. he had been married to one of GG's nieces, and the woman had run away. GG said he wanted to hear his side of the story. the man was a bit nervous but he told the full story of how the thing had caught him totally by surprise, and that he had taken every humanly possible measure to offer presents to the girl and his father in law that she should return back to the house and live with him again. afterwards GG said that ok now i know both sides of the story, and the man left. JS2 came and asked us whether we were leaving soon, because he wanted us to eat with him. i said we'd wait before leaving so that his wife'd have time to make the meal. he disappeared and we milled around the palace for close to two hours, before JS2 reappeared and we moved down together to his compound. there was smoked antelope and fufu corn. while coming back from the construction site whither he was hauling sand he spied an antelope in the bush and brought it down (he always carries his gun when traveling). the three of us and MO ate, then drank a pitcher of palm wine. there was word that some honey mimbo leftover from uba market was being sold at a good price nearby, then GG told MO to have two liters brought and gave him some coins. MO sent a boy with the two hundred francs. a bikosen man, a retired soldier, came into JS2's den and had a cup with us. MO mentioned a story of a man who had stolen a gun from the gendarmes and got injured when he was confronted, eventually dying of the injuries. GG told the other side of the story. the man was a shopkeeper. two gendarmes stationed near him were always looking for beer money and got frustrated that this shopkeeper kept refusing to give them beer money. they hid a gun in his shop, then came back the next day and discovered it. they arrested him and tortured him and he died the next day. the gendarmes were transferred and later brought up under inquiry, serving prison terms of a few years each. one of them became a brigade comander on kpacha side. when GG went for the spanish work, he made protocol with the gendarmes. this same man, having tortured and killed someone for want of beer money, was moving around with a bible in his hand, and refused any offer of drinks. GG offered him food and he sent his refusal, saying if there was anything, they could deliver it at his home. they sent some rice and frozen fish. on this topic of gendarmes, JS2 told the story of how he was coming from the bush, carrying three cutting grass and one porcupine, and leading a goat along. the gendarmes stopped him and inspected his bags. they asked him whether he had trapped or shot the animals. he said he had shot them, and they asked him who he bought the bullets from. he said it was one boy from isu, whose name he couldn't remember. they informed them that the game would be seized and shared between them. he convinced them that he would go to the market and sell them, then share the money with them, because after all don't we all have children whose school fees need paying? they agreed and he went and sold the animals and then dodged and left and didn't give them anything. people laughed at this story, then GG had his own story, which was that one time he was coming back from nigeria with a bag full of drugs and he got stopped by the gendarmes. they inspected his bag and asked him whether they had anything for their various pains. he gave them four valium each and left them at the river bank as they fell asleep and laid there for twelve hours.

we said goodbye to everyone and made our trip to munken. MO and the bikosen man, who happened to be the father of one of my informants, escorted us to the branch that would take us on the shortcut to ntsoa. MO had given me a fowl and i was carring it in my hand. we walked and eventually took a wrong branch and ended up on the main road. we followed the main road into ntsoa. the climb up the hill was a bit difficult, but i had no reason to feel as if i could complain, knowing about the upcoming road to biya.

we passed by two houses and they showed us the road towards mbu quarter. a man holding a jug of honey mimbo saw us and shouted a greeting to us. he used bantsoa language to ask whether we would come with him and taste the honey. i agreed and we got onto the veranda of one of the two houses in ntsoa that is plastered with concrete. this was pa ugeh's house. he is the father of two of my bantsoa workers. an old woman took the fowl and kept it in the kitchen where it would be fed and watered and kept safe until we left. we drank a cup of honey mimbo each, then pa ugeh and the other man excused themselves, that they had a meeting to go to, and we set off on the path towards the mayor's house. they told us that the chief was there drinking in the mayor's house, so no need stopping by the palace.

i bought butter from the aku people today. it is the best butter i've had before. it tastes like yogurt.

(evil forest, pt.1)

======================================

lin and i were eating yogurt in the kitchen when GG came in to say that sunday's moto was at the roadside. the old aku woman came and wanted to sell me about a kilo of fresh butter. i asked her whether the butter slept fine. she said she didn't understand. when i got here in february on my first day they told me i spoke pidgin like an aku. aku people's pidgin isn't quite up to snuff, but at least they get their point across. i told her to come back on sunday, by which time i would have returned.

the truck made its way up the hill and the road that degrades each time. two children in the back of the cab were shouting indiscriminately; it's because they don't know how to talk yet. the driver futilely complained to the women holding them. GG told him that this would have to do since he didn't have a tape deck. as he stopped the truck to decide how to move around broken truck sitting in the middle of the rut with two boys sleeping in it to protect it from being stripped, the driver told us how four million francs had been budgeted for the road. the relevant government official, known to be a champion of the people, took the money and put it in his pocket, him and a shadow contractor or two, then paid some boys 25,000 francs to do a little bit of straightening up with pickaxes and shovels, falsely promising to give them more money later. he then went on to tell the populace that he had personally financed the small work, the government having neglected the region as usual. when GG told one small politician in the area how their big man had chopped 159 out of 160 francs and then sold himself as a hero, he was confused but had a look on his face like the information could be useful at some point.

the truck got into AB market and we came down where there were people swirling around to receive the truck. a handful of people one or the other of us knew came to greet. JS1 was there pulling bags down and collecting money for the return trip as usual. we took the bags into the market and left them at GG's brother's stand. he was selling rubber sandals and track suits. we went to the palace to ask about RE, conspicuously not bringing any gifts, not a drop of whisky. the chief said that his health was getting bad, and that a child had stolen 24,000 francs from his room. i told him that we were still waiting on the pig. he said he really felt bad about the situation, and why did the boy have to do like that. the compound was empty except for him and the small dusty parlor with a small bamboo bench and his chair. the chief talks in a funny way because he had a stroke not too long ago. we walked back towards the market. they had cut down a tree and were sawing it into planks. it was a huge tree, a fragrant hardwood, and there was sawdust all over the ground.

as we came back into the market area we were met by the JS2, who was drunk and extremely happy to see us. he invited us into one of the two bars, which had some very loud music playing. when villages without electricity fire up the generator to play some music at a club it goes too loud. it is as if they want to get their money's worth out of the petrol. JS2 said what would we drink, we said two beers. he said better a carton of wine (this would be cheaper for him). we poured some glasses and sipped. JS2 wandered away and GG and i were left alone with an associate of JS2 who was with him. GG said that the bar looked empty and pathetic, in fact the whole market; in the good old days, before the school fee problem, people would come to the market and have money to spend, and feel free to spend it all. in the rainy season a man could come with his two wives and pay 20,000 francs for a crate of beer (the price being quadrupled on account of the road) and he'd rest his feet on it and they'd drink and dance; he was happy to be tasting a foreign beverage and happy to pay the premium. in those times the same amount of money could have bought about a hundred gallons of palm wine or corn beer. it is school fees and hospital fees which drive people into debt and anxiety these days, so that most bars will be nearly empty on a market day. shah house and honey mimbo tree are still doing good business.

no sign of JS2, we left and went for the market. GG paid for the wine, as i think he suspected that JS2 forgot about the bill. as we were leaving we saw CT's wife coming in and i rememberd that i had two bags of maggi cubes to give her as a gift. i asked what she was doing in the market and she said she was selling shah. i said let's go to your shack, but first follow us to where our bags are kept. i bought a cube of savon and gave it to her together with the 200 maggi cubes. we followed her to the shack, passing KZ who was selling okra. CT's wife said that it was almost finished, there was just head shah, which i happen to prefer to regular shah. she gave us two cups for free and then we bought three liters (she charged us 200 francs; mind you 65cl of beer is 500 francs) she was also selling beans and rice, but we didn't eat, figuring we'd be entertained in bidjun. two andyan men were there. one older guy who was a bit drunk and perhaps a bit mentally unstable. GG gave them a brief sermon about how everyone eventually accounts for their wrongs. the story was about how a catholic church clerk was wrongfully accused of stealing a gas bottle, beaten and tortured by gendarmes, and then he died in the evening before being charged. everything stayed quiet for a while, so you thought, but eventually the pope and bill clinton found out, and there was a flood of letters into the presidency. the gendarmes were transferred out of the area, then brought back and imprisoned. as he was telling this story a fowl ran in under the wall (this was simple structure of sticks and raphia weaving) and ran into GG and made him spill his drink. he exclaimed that this must be a highly auspicious sign. he said the same about a drowning bee in his cup of honey mimbo, and didn't let me pick it out. NJ came into the house then and greeted us. he said he had been under the tree drinking honey and that we should go with him. he said that he had been looking into the pig issue and had visited RN and a litter of piglets he had, and had picked out one which he would be raising as compensation for the incident.

we went under the tree and they gave me one of the most comfortable roots to sit on. there were some bidjun women around and they asked me in their language if i was really coming that day, and why hadn't i given them any honey mimbo yet. we got two pitchers full and shared them and drank our fill. GG went out and bought paracetamol and gave it out to people and to me, for there was a good chance we could wake up with body aches, as successful as this market day was being. NJ came back and brought a visibly nervous RN. he had trouble speaking and his eyes were bulging and wild. GG and i told him that there was a mistake, that we had full confidence in him, that he would be raising the piglet for us, that we would even think of making him the main contractor for pigs, that any stories of him having done any wrong were surely reported out of context. the sun was getting low and it would be good to get to bidjun soon. we left the drinking tree and passed by the hospital. NJ showed GG some of the areas where the building would need repairs, and they asked me to take some pictures. the director came out, showed us some other buildings and how they were in need of repairs. i took pictures. we signed the guestbook. i some say the hospital was in this condition because of the director's way of managing money; what do i know.

we got on to the road to bidjun and made the hour walk without getting too tired. there were some secondary school students moving along the road as well, boys and girls, laughing and arguing.

====================================

on sunday i wrote a blog entry. the entry got up to nearly six thousand words. now i am too busy to edit it and remove the part that the lawyer from Chillingworth's company told me that i had to remove because of the agreement i had already signed after our falling out in early 2007. but i don't want my blog to stay too long without an update. i'll just update briefly.

i went out and drank some drinks and ate some food and then i came back.

there was traditional day where we were to remain in a dirt-floor shack overnight and eat pork and drink honey wine and not go out under penalty of death unless you needed to urinate just ask permission first. the juju that was unleashed was said to be a dangerous one. but that story isn't as good as whenever i have to travel into the city.

in this case i had to go to the capitol to participate in a workshop hosted at the university. important people threw money and we went in a private car. i bought what the children were calling pjong, il y a le pjong mon pere, voici le pjong, bien cuit, bien pimenté. it was termites stir-fried with pepper and garnished with onion, sold in bags for a hundred francs. i thought i would have to get to the péage on mbalmayo road to get something exotic.

we got into the town and in emaná quartier there was a traffic jam. we were on a hill and started to smell the clutch burning. pp said that's the clutch isn't it. i said yeah it's the clutch. the driver kept riding the clutch. we told him about three times to stop riding the clutch, but he denied and said it was someone else's clutch burning. against all logic i had to assume he knew what he was doing.

on the official opening day of the workshop we got there thirty minutes early and the projector was not brought, so i was volunteered to go back and get it. this was a ninety minute round trip by cab but at least sitting in a cab i can watch things outside the window instead of sitting in a classroom, where there is only the same thing to look at.

i got back with the projector and was told that the projector had caused a delay of three minutes, and it was the dean, or the dean's envoy, who had to be there before anything could start, who was an hour late. the dean's envoy gave a speech and asked us to please be present at the opening ceremony of another international colloquium, also on the university campus, to be held in one hour's time. this was very curious because we had our own colloquium which was being held. the department chair assured us that we had to swallow the bitter pill.

the minister of higher education was to be present at this other colloquium, and it is customary for all activity at the university to stop anytime the minister is on campus for an official visit. in fact it is customary for all activity of any sort to stop at any place where a government official is making a visit. the dean had thought up the idea of inviting us to the opening cermony so that we wouldn't simply be told to stop holding our presentations.

i sat through two hours of people giving speeches in french about the significance of the life and works of aimé césaire, martinican poet and politician, prominent denouncer of the french colonial regime in his time and intellectual father of a sort of black power movement called in french nègritude. of course i learned his name and all these facts about his life more or less by force. throughout the ceremony when i got distracted i thought about how, having been in a linguistics colloquium, i had suddenly been issued a convocation to attend a literature colloquium. the situation became even more bizarre when the dean told us that we were expected to attend a formal dinner in homage of the life and works of aimé césaire that evening. the evening was supposed to be used to prepare my presentation.

i consoled myself that at least it was better than being detained for no reason by gendarmes. the dinner turned out to be good, with an open bar and a buffet with, among others, boeuf bourgignon.

on the final day i had to get some photographs printed. i eventually found the place and took in the usb stick. most of the photos had been erased, maybe a virus. they printed some for me then i took the stick to go replace the photos. the digital photo printers were in a sort of loft and the first floor was empty save some guys selling counterfeit leather shoes. walking back to hail a cab i turned down a street where people were grabbing me and urging me to buy football jerseys. that was the football jersey street.

i got a cab and we went about halfway then the driver announced that the road had been blocked and there was no use for us to remain as his fares. we all got out and i walked until i found a bar that had a view of traffic so i could know when it was moving again. i sat down at a table where two other men were sitting and i showed them the six photos i had managed to print. one of them bought me a beer. ambulatory vendors came through selling socks, padlocks, handkerchiefs, football cleats, rat poison and fried plantain crisps. two mechanics were eating fish stew with boiled plantains. the guy bought them beers too. maybe he was a rich guy or a bush falla or just was in a good mood.

i replaced most of the pictures on the stick and went back and got them all printed. as i crossed onto the round point that meets avenue kennedy the streets suddenly emptied and pedestrians were moving freely. then suv's started driving down the streets as fast as they could go, honking their horns and scaring everyone off the street. one of them said UN. i would learn that this was ban ki moon. this was the second time i had to walk because of him. i walked and saw a man selling bags and i started bargaining with him, not so successfully, then a young woman came and wanted to buy a bag and the man was in a pinch because she wouldn't be cheated easily. i latched onto her quotes and got a bag for near market equillibrium price.

i walked through the crowded and dusty marché mvog mbi. people kept asking me what was happening in the world that now whites are poor and have to travel by foot. both times i said that the road was blocked so everyone was walking. i walked to the exact spot where i had stopped at the bar to wait out the first road block. a man shouted to me from across the street and pointed to a beer bottle. he was sitting on a folding chair on the street next to some diesel generators and many oily rags and tools. i gave him a puzzled look like you're offering me a beer, and not begging for one? he nodded and i went over and drank my second beer of the day. this guy was a mechanic, and the boss of the two mechanics who had profited from the earlier round of free beers. traffic eventually started moving and i went back.

as my luck had it the private car was going back the same day so i took advantage of the free ride back. in bafoussam i bought a live turkey. let's sketch the pidgin folk taxonomy of galliform birds:

fowl: chicken, gallus gallus

agri fowl: farm-raised chicken

country fowl: free range chicken

duck fowl: duck

kobákobá fowl: turkey

kobákobá duck fowl: goose

i am guessing that kobákobá is derived from the majestic sound of the turkey.

the turkey survived the ride home in the trunk of the car and is moving around frightening the fowls. it likes corn. i was interviewing a girl this morning and it was making noise and i went to drive it away and she said please don't drive, i want to admire it.

lastly i will point out the fox-and-the-grapes-style pessimism that many people in this country seem to avail themselves of. two examples:

1. a man i know only by acquaintance greets me and we are talking about how i want to buy a small jar of honey from him. he gets a phone call and says into the phone the pikin don die? then hangs up. i was feeling that i would be in the awkward position of being alone with someone i don't really know when they receive bad news and have to offer soulagement. he said that it was all for the better because they hadn't yet done the naming ceremony and a lot of money would have been wasted if this wicked child had decided to hang around and worry its mother for even longer before dying, but still it was inconsiderate of the child to lead people on for ten days and finally decide not to stay, the polite thing to do is to be a stillborn if it's going to be one of those problem children. this is a typical attitude to insulate one's self from sadness when a baby dies.

2. i ended an interview early to watch the rest of the football game. by this time japan had scored the goal, but there was still more than 50 minutes left. one of the viewers told me that i shouldn't have interrupted my work for this team which only knew how to disappoint. when cameroon finally lost everyone dispersed laughing and went off to play drafts. no one seemed disappointed at all.

i am dedicating this blog post to na.

William Safire wrote in an article reprinted in his 1980 book 'On Language' (p.205) about the curious word "pettifogging," having noted it in the translation of some remarks made Kruschev at a conference. I am now suggesting that the translator may have been inspired by Constance Garrett's translation of 'Crime and Punishment,' where such word appears:

You are an idiot yourself, pettifogging lawyer, base man!

What I would want to know is whether the same russian word in Kruschev's speech and in the Russian edition of Crime and Punishment is used.

i like to imagine that i am retracing a long process of scientific discovery as i work. this can reassure me if i feel that progess is slow or if i think what i understand of things is crude and perverted. consider the case o benzene. says wikipedia: as from the 15th century an aromatic resin was known to European perfumers, brought by Arab traders from Java, called in arabic "Java frankincense." 19th century chemists managed to isolate a chemical called benzene or phène from illuminating gas, benzoic acid, and coal tar. In 1865 Kekulé presented convincing arguments for the structure of the molecule, which was verifeid experimentally in 1929. The chemical has since become a crucial precursor in the manufacture of various plastic, drugs, and synthetic rubber. A procedure for synthesizing it rather than extracting it directly from petroleum has been discovered. It has been discovered to cause cancer.

consider an arbitrary word in the language. one day about six weeks ago i showed to a boy a video of a still living fish being cleaned and its gills and viscera removed. at one point it seems sure the fish is dead. then it makes a little flop. the boy said something, which i assumed to mean "it's not dead yet," and forgot it. two days later I played the audio description to someone else, who said it means "it is watching." the verb meaning "to watch" shows up two weeks later in a sentence meaning "the father waited for long without seeing them." a grammatical way of marking that an action has taken place in vain shows up in all five dialects, each using the verb meaning "to watch." five days ago it was determined that this verb does indeed behave exactly as a verb when used to mean that something was done in vain. so when i meet someone and they give me unclear information or mutter the words in boredom, i can get discouraged, but imagine that each word matters to the language like benzene matters to our modern society.

i brought back a big bag of avocados and four mangoes from missong. this was the second time i went. in the morning before i left wum i went to collect money at the moneygram office. it was 7:30am. a khaki shirt guy was handing out pink slips to a few women gathered around a wooden table. i took one, then changed it for the red one which is for international transfers. we filled out our forms and he put them in a stack. i saw a man with a tie and two women dressed in business attire. the man was walking back and forth and the women were mopping the floor of the exchange office. finally the security guard said that it was now open, that we could go in. i sat in one of the three chairs against the wall next to a pregnant woman and watched a crowd three people deep huddling against the counter. most of them had no important information to give the people behind the counter, they just wanted to watch, like schoolchildren clustering up somewhere just looking. when somebody did have a form to pass over or a signature to append he'd have to wade through and reach his hand up through the bars. i heard a man behind the telephone counter speaking in french, spelling out names and confirmation codes,

``Monseur Anchuo, A-ananas N-ndolé..."

i waited two hours and thought how the car was claimed to leave half an hour ago. i went to te car park and got my change from the chargeur, a Kom man or at least a man who could speak Kom. he told me that one of the tires had burst and the truck was getting patched up at the garage, where i took Pa's car once to get the air topped off in the tires. I went back to the agency and now I had to stand because my chair was filled, and i couldn't help but getting on my tip toes to see what they were doing back there, how could they so conspicuously fail to make their business move. One of the people in the chairs got frustrated and left, and I took the chair. I sat and watched the road for the truck to come out of the garage. When I saw this I would cancel my request and come back on Friday for the money. By and by I saw the red truck pull up and the motoboys went to the cold store and started loading cartons of cigarettes, whisky sachets, glucose biscuits and boxed wine. I went to the counter and said

``give me my ID. i'll collect the money a different day.''

a short man with a red tie rushed out and showed me my form, clipped onto some printouts, and said ``no, it's complete! see, just please.'' ten minutes later I had my money. i took a motorcycle to the house, had the driver wait at the gate, threw some things into a nigerian shopping bag and rode back to the park. the truck still was there and wouldn't leave for another 20 minutes. one of the motoboys, who knew me from last time, offered me a battered up computer case to sit on, the old kind with a good galvanized steel frame. a Kom woman came up with a huge calabash on her head. Kom women are tall and skinny and have lighter skin, more braids, more babies on their backs, and a goofy smile on their face like that. the man registering passengers said something to her in the language and so did the motoboy who gave me the computer to sit on. She brought down her calabash and there was yogurt inside. The ticket man said to give him for 150 francs. I asked for a taste and it tasted good so I said to make me one just like his. She put a few ladelfuls (a small calabash ladel) into a straight-sided metal bowl, took four sugar cubes and briefly dunked them in a can of water, dropped them in the yogurt, then topped it with a spoonful of a type of roasted cornmeal they called Djereké, or something like that. Another Kom woman was in Abar so I knew what she was doing when she walked by with the container on her head and I got to eat yogurt the next day too. Kom (or Aku) people are herders so they have fresh milk to sell.

The 4x4 toyota with very high axles jostled us on into Abar just as the sky was turning gray. The guy there, I'll call him Jules, who is a hustler and a politician and nominally a friend to all, who has his hand or snout in just about every matter of interest in the town, came up and started pulling cargo off of the truck and collecting money and making change for passengers who were riding on the way down. He said he'd take me to the palace, where I needed to make a courtesy call. Rene met us halfway on the road and we went into a house that had a bed where I could stay to arrange, and the storm came. I opened one of the packs of cigarettes I bought to use as street grease and gave them one each. I smoked one to fit in.

After the rain passed Rene and I went to the palace to greet the chief. I bowed and clapped like you're supposed to do, and set four sachets of whisky and 100 cubes of beef bouillon powder, divided into four baggies, on his stool. Rene went and distributed the MSG to the chief's three wives and his own wife. The chief had a stroke recently and his speech is a bit slurred, but he's a nice guy. He kept the whisky in his cabinet and watched as I interviewed Rene. Then we went to different smoke-blackened kitchens to find old woman who could tell folk tales for me to record. One was an old woman who was stirring fufu corn with a long wooden pole. She told a long story that had a recurrent song in it, and made Rene feed firewood into the fire so she could sit still while telling.

The next day we worked about 4 hours translating, then went to go eat lunch and have a drink. Everyone was in the farm so no one was in any kitchen selling food. I had a bowl of yogurt that the Kom woman was selling (we coincided with the primary school teachers' lunch break, so she had come to sell to them) and three pieces of fried dough. Rene and the barman started working on two broken generators, taking apart the carburetors and washing all the parts with kerosene. I bought a round of beers. When one of the generators started working the barman got happy and turned on the music very loud and bought another round to celebrate. A man who everyone called "Pastor" rode up on a motorcycle with Jules and they asked for beer on credit and gasoline which they had money to pay for, and one or two cigarettes, which they also had money to pay for, and Pastor snuck a few sips out of Rene's beer while he was blowing dust out of one of the carburetors.

I hiked up to Missong and they had gotten the message I sent, because the bedroom in the palace had been cleared out for me and they had fished or bought a fresh mudfish, which they served to me with rice in the evening braised with palm oil and salt. I gave the chief whisky and MSG and a pack of cigarettes to my handler and translator, Marcos. We got some historical tales from the chief and one fairy tale told by an old woman about a fowl outsmarting an elephant in winning a shit-scattering contest. It rained all night and all morning until I was about to leave.

A Missong person had died in Banso', and the truck had been commissioned to carry the corpse in from Wum. There are two other trucks, but one was in Bamenda for repairs and the other was parked on the road near the Nyos junction with a burned out clutch. Marcos knew about the corpse, that it would get into Abar around 5pm, that he and about 30 other Missong people would be there in Abar waiting for it to carry the body back on their heads, singing, and Jules and Rene knew about the condition of the other two trucks. I took a motorcycle back into Wum from Abar.

That was my second trip into the country of the palm people. I am told by palm people that the higher elevation people are called the raphia people.

I have been in Cameroon since february for research. I am putting some things here where i describe what has happened and how i live so that my family can be amused by it.

it is because of drafts that people will suffer and they will not be eating the best

cocoyams from weh market. we are staying with the family in Wum, the family is headed by Pa, and is kept running by Ma. Pa is a semi-retired businessman who owns a car and spends the evenings with two other pensioners from the neighborhood playing drafts. the local version of drafts is not the same as american drafts (or checkers). there are two main differences. or three main differences. first, the board is 10 x 10. second, an uncrowned piece may jump backwards. third, a kung piece may move any number of spaces. so it may

jump any piece that enters its diagonal. I think it's going at a faster pace and requires a bit more strategy than american drafts.

this particular morning pa had a visitor and he brought a brand new drafts board with fresh green and white paint and they began playing at around 8am. pa's driver came at noon so that they could go to weh, because today is weh market day and they were going to buy cocoyams. i have seven different words for cocoyams in my database for one of the dialects. there is a fat kind of cocoyam which is purple inside and suitable mostly for making achu, there is one

that is yellow inside and creamy, there is a kind that has much bindable starch and is therefore suitable mostly for ekpang. there is a kind which comes from the aku people, though it is known in english as igbo coco. then there is a kind which comes from kumba people, but in munken dialect is called country coco. here you see igbo coco, which is the most versatile and can be eaten just boiled. pa played drafts for six hours so that meant that they got to weh market around 3:00 and by then all of the best igbo coco was bought up and the buckets they brought

back weren't the best.

PP and i were also planning to go to weh today, but changed our minds. PP and george discovered that there was a daughter of lung people, now an old woman, still alive and living in weh. lung people are extinct now. they died of genocide. their language is extinct. their children were killed like animals and the adults were enslaved. we wanted to check if this woman remembered any of the language. it is about 60 years ago that they were displaced and killed. at the very end of the tour in lower fungom we passed near the former lung site. i visited four villages.

missong is a village very dense with oracles and lyceums, which do not get as much use as they did before. we sat in a room in the palace to do interviews. there was a bat that came out at night if you turned on a flashlight. the chief's son took charge of our keeping and he brought us a smoked cutting grass, then the next day a fresh catfish from the river and a jug of honey beer. they thatch their roofs with straw rather than palm fronds, and it is said to be more durable and better at keeping the house cool. they have a special hill where they go and collect the straw. some time they can have a war over the hill if someone else wants that hill for its thatching grass. but the only war that has happened here recently has involved one combat death so they aren't wars like you think. on the first day of interviewing not all the elders came because an infant child had died of sickness. on the second day the interview got interrupted when our two consultants had to grab their machetes and run to the bush to fight a fire. they saved the coco farm and we went back to translating the war songs. fire is a problem in the area and many houses get burned down. two buildings with ceremonial and traditional value in the palace quarter were burned and hadn't been rebuilt. that morning i went to the bush with two of the guys and one of them climbed this mango tree that was probably about a hundred years ago and he was in there for a good half hour, shaking down mangos. we gathered them in a pile, threw out the rotten ones and ate the best ones, then brought the rest back to the palace. the tree, they say, was planted by the grandfathers who founded the village. two people were passing to go to their farms and we gave them some mangoes. the first was a sister-in-law of the mango shaker, the second was also a relation, and as usual he wore shiny leather shoes and was carrying a rifle and a machete. the rifle is to bag any game that he might find while in the bush.

in munken: blasius came with a boy in the morning and they began cleaning the floors of the house. he also brought a pitcher of raphia wine and we sat in front of the house and drank while they were cleaning the house. i saw a hawk take a chick away. the chickens were all behind a thicket of plantain trees and i saw the hawk swoop down and the chickens were in uproar and the hawk took off into the fog. i went towards kelvin's quarter to begin an interview and we first stopped at the palace to greet. the chief was not well, later we would learn the problem was a hangover from the bottle we gave him on arriving. the sky, all the three days, was grey, there were only clouds and it was not possible to see the sun. this is to tell you, says everyone, that rain is not coming. now it is about two weeks later and people are telling me, by looking at the horizon, by noting the posture of the tall trees in the distance, by tasting the water from the tap, that rain was coming in 2 or 3 days. today it really feels like rain will come because the air smells fresh and there is a cool breeze. maybe it will fall in the night. some people who planted too early will have to go

back and buy new seed because the corn they planted will be dying by now. after the interview we went down into a lower quarter. on the way there was a place where they were making palm oil. i asked to see it. it was a stone-lined pit with two chambers. in the smaller part they pound the mature palm nuts. in the larger part they add water and wash the grease off of the chaffs. a small girl was standing in the pit of water with yellow grease on the surface squeezing water out of the chaffs and setting them aside. in a small shed on the side a man was heating the grease in a metal drum to render the oil. he dipped into the drum with a calabash and brought up hot oil. a woman held out a woven basket and he poured it through into

a bowl where it would cool. on reaching i went into a house which kelvin said was a bank and people were sitting there quietly. there were two large alluminum pots, about 30L each full of corn beer. a woman was dipping a calabash pitcher into the big pots and going around to fill people's cups, which were also made of calabashes. there were puppies sleeping in the doorway and a monkey skull hanging on one of the woodsmoke-blackened walls. people went up one at a time and brought up money and put it in a tray, also a calabash, and the secretary took down notes in his ledger. outside people were loitering because it was a meeting day.

a woman was selling beef bouillon cubes and whiskey sachets. some people asked her for some but she kept refusing because she knew that they didn't have any money in their pockets, or at least they didn't intend to pay right then and there. on the way back the head of the quarter stopped us and made us sit and an old woman, said to be kelvin's mother, brought us a pan of roasted bambara groundnuts, and the old man took blasius inside of the law house and he made a blessing and gave PP a red cock. in the morning kelvin didn't come to our appointment, as we found out he had to rush to the village of ngun to attend to the convalescence after

a ten-year-old child, his wife's brother, had died of sickness.

in biya: an enthusiastic welcome. the road there was very steep and narrow and we reached panting and slicked with sweat. the village was on the top of the hill. there are many mechanical grinding machines, from the john holt company, liverpool, probably about 50 years old, that are no longer in use but are everywhere about the town. they are very sturdy and made of good cast iron that is not rusted. now there is a diesel engine that grinds corn. a few compounds of missing walls and are abandoned, others are completely demolished and

mostly covered by bush, only the foundations extant. these are compounds formerly controlled by people who have left the village to go to wum, bamenda, douala, kumba or even abroad to nigeria or america. they say some years ago the chief was murdered; he was strangled with a rope, and since then no one has agreed to replace him. people who are familiar with the incident say that there were a few conspirators, and one of the killers is still there, living in the village. i forgot about the story but PP set to figuring out who. the chief's son, who is a drunkard, gave us a cock when we arrived. so we were off to a good start wit him.

the next day he started causing trouble, asking for money for cigarettes, money for diesel fuel, asking us to chew up and swallow a double-edged razorblade wrapped in okongobong leaves, or a similar looking leaf. george, who has more tact than i do, chewed it up and discreetly spit it out. PP claimed that this might be a sacred tradition to him, but that it was specifically forbidden by his own tradition. on my part i claimed that if i'm going to chew up a razorblade then it will be officiated by a real chief who has not just drunk half

a bottle of cheap whisky, and that i would soon turn vexed if he wanted to insist on it. pa moses, for his part, said that the razorblade is for shaving the hairs that show up on his chin so let him have a razorblade for that.

robert, for his part, joined the man and they both chewed up the razorblades and swallowed them. brigid later said that there was no such tradition outside of nyongo house and witchcraft societies. when we arrived all sweating like that, after having drinking water, a quart-sized calabash each, and setting our bags down we got whisked around to different houses and in every house there was a pot of corn beer or raphia wine.

i was tired and had a bad stomach the day of leaving because they were serving us so much wine.

one morning the pig got out. there are two pigs and also fowls. the fowls always ruin my recordings. the small ones go cheep cheep. the cheep sound makes a 200-ms long blot on the spectrogram, about 400Hz thick, starting at 4400Hz and tapering down to 2400Hz. the crow of the rooster is much longer and at lower frequencies. neither sound has a periodic source. a white cock had been visiting the compound every day but after the chicks hatched it has been scarce. the chicks are nine and they are all white. also visitors come in and they greet

with their loud voices and that can disturb the recording. there are also songbirds, there are motorcycle engines, there are chainsaws, there is running water whenever they fill a basin to carry to wash dishes, and there is the scraping of the grater or of a pan being scrubbed of stuck on food. then of course the delightful baby. one of the visitors with the loudest voice, who comes almost every day, has agreed to help source for me a honey tapper. the plan is that the tapper will bring for me a honey comb and a jug of raphia wine and will show

me how to make honey beer. honey beer is the best tasting of the alcohols. another good one is the head of the corn beer, which you can only get by special arrangement. the most fruitful arrangement has been na's tutelage under brigid for cooking. there are now about a dozen recipes that she can execute in the traditional way. i would like to publish some of them when i can manage.

"And even Brute Animals make use of this artificial way of making divers motions to have several significations, to Call, Warne, Chide, Cherish, Threaten, &c. especially within their own kinds. But of all other, there is none for this use comparable to the variety of instructive Expressions by Speech, wherewith Man alone is endowed, as with an Instrument suitable to the Excellency of his Soul, for the most easie, speedy, certain, full communication of the Infinite variety of his Thoughts, by the ready Commerce between the Tongue and the Ear. And if some Animals, as Parrots, Magpies, &c. may seem to be capable of the same discriminations, yet we see, that their souls are too narrow to use so great an Engine."

Holder (1665) Elements of Speech

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Originally uploaded by uylin22na and i checked into a guesthouse in saigon's red light district to stop off after depositing fang at the airport. there are slick types that have their motorcycles parked on the sidewalks and when you walk by they say "cocaine marijuana." na thought that they were joking around but i told her that it is probably not a joke, and that you should not talk to them because they are indecorous types.

but she is the kind that likes to learn things the hard way, so she bought 100,000 dongs worth of cocaine and marrijuana, just to prove to me that it was all a joke and that it wasn't real cocaine or marijuana. it looked real to me, but she said "just wait, you'll see that it's all a joke."

we looked around for a portable cafe, the kind that have plastic tables, double stacked, and four plastic stools, the kind of dining set that will be used by a seven-year old girl and her stuffed rabbit, francine, her stuffed puppy, roenicker, and her raggedy ann doll, named myranda. then she offers them tea but it's really water, and they don't really sip it.

i ordered a can of heineken and na had an iced tea. i didn't offer a sip to anyone. a man came by walking a bicycle along. the bike had a pvc pipe frame attached to it, and on top of the frame there was a fluorescent tube, a t-8, and two sheets of clear pvc that were shiny and reflected the street lights in a swirl. inside were dried and salted squids. we considered buying and refused.

then na smoked all of the marijuana and snorted all of the cocaine, then she went to bed and fell asleep, she said that since it was a joke she could prove it to me by sleeping normally. she didn't sleep all night and in the morning she went downstairs for a cup of coffee and a bowl of pho and made a big scene, yelling at the girl working at the hotel, who until then had been on friendly terms with her, accusing her of bringing her a bowl of soup that was different from mine, different and inferior. i said that i'd be happy to switch and then the girl from the hotel blushed and na flipped out and threw her coffee cup off the table. it spilled and bounced once but didn't break, and then she started crying and said she was sorry and hoped we were still her friends, then she went upstairs and curled up in the bed like a cat and slept and slept and slept. then she woke up at 7pm fresh as a daisy .

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Originally uploaded by uylin22this photo depicts the cleaning of the skin of a slaughtered pig in preparation for roasting.

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Originally uploaded by uylin22this photo depicts the collecting of blood for preparing pudding.

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Originally uploaded by uylin22we went into hanoi by train train. the line is long and runs the north and south of the country. the express line makes it from saigon to ha noi in about 30 hours. some of the stops, then, are at odd hours. the ha noi bound train from saigon, express line, stops in nha trang at 05h38. at the ga an old woman asked us three times if we wanted bread or coffee. we shook our heads and ignored her and said no each time.

by and by they announced the imminent arrival of the train originating in saigon arriving on track 1. i imagined if i might get hungry in the next 24 hours and asked na if she also had a good kind of imagination about whether or not one could get hungry, so she called the woman over and bought two banh mi with terrine and herbs. not very good but we soon learned that they would be better than the meals sold on the train. we had a sleeper car with long beds that you could stretch out on. the car was otherwise shabby. everything was in steel and painted beige, and faded, maybe there was an olive green color in there. i didn't pay attention to colors in a way that i would remember what to write. but let's say that everything was painted beige, and the floors were painted olive green. the room was clean, in theory, but the way the beds were made of steel and the lights were flickered and dusty made it seem that it could never be clean. there was one table in the middle of the room that was of solid wood and fixed to the wall under the window with a steel corbel, no legs. it could support the weight of people stepping on it to climb to the

upper beds. there were four beds.

at first there was a man in one of the beds and the other one was empty. we slept and when it got light we woke up and the man came down and na chatted with him a bit. she said that until he talked, he assumed that he was a murderer, a through and through psychopath, but quickly learned that he was a nice respectable guy. this is why i think it is important to introduce yourself to strangers. for most people the default assumption is that someone they don't know is a murderer, or a pervert, or at the very least a fool and a philistine. this particular man gave me some fruit that was crunchy and juicy like an apple but very small, and with a stone pit and a floral taste. i ate two of them. the man got off at the first stop and we were alone. they came and sold food and i had

a rice plate, which i chose not to finish, and a beer.

in da nang two other people got on: there was a woman who climbed straight up to her bunk and went to sleep and never spoke to us, and a man with a leather jacket in sunglasses.

he came on just as the train was about to leave, with one of the attendants helping him to carry a heavy package of 18" sesame wafers for frying. these same kinds of wafers you see for sale on the streets sold as snacks already fried. if you are lazy or health conscious, you can just microwave them or heat them over a gas flame to make them soft. he had two briefcases also, and a plastic bag with two cans of red bull, a bottle of vitamin shake, a bottle of tiger balm mentholated rubbing oil, and two oily packages full of small banana leaf parcels, called banh it. he had two ear piercings which weren't rings or studs, but were rather small loops of thick-gauge wire embedded in the lobes. being on the topic of studs, i should note that the wall did not have any masonry, but was pure stud. maybe that is why i felt it was dirty.

this man had a stout face and short pure black hair, combed forward. he was sweating. he took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, put his sunglasses back on, then started devising how to arrange his luggage. first he hung his bag of red bull and banh it on the hook next to his bunk, but then he was holding the sesame wafer package and realized that the hook would be better used on them, so he hung the sesame wafers there and put the red bull on the table. he put his two briefcases on the bed, away from the door, then sat down and took his shoes off. na asked him if he was going all the way to

ha noi. he said yes and introduced himself. he pulled a card out of his wallet and showed it to us.

if we want to read something, i sound the words out for na, then she determines whether they match words from her dialect, then we can usually interpolate the meaning. so we found that we had in our hands a badge serving as press credentials for a newspaper based in a large city in vietnam. the man had a raspy voice when he spoke, and he jerked his head from side to side, nervously. you probably think that he is a murderer, but the way he jerked his head nervously it wasn't like he was planning to kill us.

he told na that we were brave to travel to ha noi by ourselves, because ha noi is full of thieves and tricksters and in general there is wickedness in the streets, not kindness as we might have grown used to in the south. that is why he puts his briefcases on the bed away from the door, because people are quick and they can snatch and run away. also ha noi is cold, and make sure you have a jacket, he said.

after they were done with the pleasantries he pulled out a laptop and carefully set it on the table, then he moved and sat on my bed, then he moved back to his bed, then he went back to my bed, and plugged his laptop into the electrical outlet on the wall. he inserted a disc and started playing electronic music with the computer's speakers. i went up to na's bed and took a nap.

i woke up and went out to pace around in the hallway. my knees got tired so i went back into the room and sat on my bed, so that it was all three of us there, and i started to look at his laptop, which was playing music videos. maybe i saw about 20 of them. a typical one would be showing voluptuous women in hotpants dancing on rooftops and men with aquiline noses, bleached hair and vinyl robes shouting things, shouting in a way like you imagine hitler to shout at rallies, like:

you've got to!

got to!

got to!

feel the rhythm!

and you!

and you!

move your!

move your!

make love with you!

(etc.)

that was just one of the videos, but just imagine that they are all like that.

the man, who eventually introduced himself as (paternal) uncle XXXX, saw that i was paying attention to the video and he became happy and he said we should have a little to eat, and he took out the banh it. he ate one, then offered the bag to us. he told me that i had to finish all of the bag, that it was for me. it was very delicious and i quite easily finished the whole bag. banh it each have a small shrimp with a thin edible shell and the outside is a starchy steamed dough and smeared in a savory oil. he also took out two cans of red bull, opened one for himself and gave me the other. he went into the bathroom and he came back smelling like marihuana. he gave na his business card and wrote his cell phone number on it, and told her that we should call him when we were in ha noi if we ever needed anything. his wife was a paramedic and his son, who had recently failed college entrance exams, would also be going to trade school to become a paramedic. the name we could use to address him, he also wrote that on his business card. that is how we learned what to call him.

we watched his videos i don't know how many hours. he went to the bathroom every now and then to smoke marijuana. when they came around for dinner i didn't buy any but i bought two cans of beer and gave him one. it became dark and he said that now he was going to sleep and that i should also rest. he kept the computer on and turned it so that it could be seen from both beds. i studied my grammar a bit and then fell asleep. na said she kept getting woken up

because chu XXXX several times opened his tiger balm and inhaled of it deeply and rubbed it inside his nostrils, either to improve his breathing or to improve the sensation of having smoked marijuaha in the dirty bathroom, which was the only room where the window could open.

we got into ha noi very early. just before 5am.

IMG_3792

Originally uploaded by uylin22this is a picture of my cat.

ha noi is a city in the north where the people make use of voiced fricatives. today i came back from a tour to beautiful scenic ha long bay. on paper, it was a good tour and the operators served decent food, but i became grumpy at the end because i didn't like having a leader.

this evening i walked over to the french district with na to eat shellfish because as we remembered, quite clearly, there was an alleyway that we passed that had a huge neon sign advertising every kind of seafood, fresh and at good prices with diverse preparations. we went to that alley, the very same alley, and it turned out that in real life there was no neon sign, and the restaurants along the alleyway specialized in sea snails, eels and pigeon. na had a banh thang and i settled for pigeon porridge. the place we went to had a sign naming the types of porridges it made, with a picture of a snow white pigeon, a fish and a shrimp. it read, in vietnamese, more or less "RICE PORRIDGE: CHICKEN, FISH, SHRIMP, PIGEON, NUMBER 1 CANNOT BE BEATEN!"

a short interaction at the food stall gives a lesson on vietnamese pronouns. na says to the lady "(paternal) auntie you have porridge, auntie, do you have, auntie?" "yes, [yelling to the back] bring him (nephew) his pigeon!"

for pigeon there is not much meat except the breast, which is dark, tender if cooked properly, and not so gamey as duck. but it is a bit expensive. we went to a cafe and had iced coffee and decided that i should have a beer before we went back to the hotel.

the place where we went for beer has grown to be my number one restaurant in ha noi. there was a place with high reviews in lonely planet and also on the internet called quán an ngon, but i don't think it was so amazing, just had good solid chairs and tables but not otherwise special. this other place, which doesn't have a name as far as i know, just says outside "FRESH BEER - BEEF - FISH - HOT POT - FROG - TURTLE - NUMBER 2 xxx STREET"

the waitresses there do not wear makeup and they never smile, and they wear plain clothes, like sweaters and jeans. they are very quick with service and every table has a clipboard with a running tally of what has been ordered and how much it will cost. this is a good way to run the place because it is mostly full of young and middle-aged men who are drinking bia hoi and local vodka and smoking cigarettes and talking loudly and laughing. beer is served in tall water glasses, 6000 dongs per glass. a bottle of vodka is 80,000 dongs. (~$4.50) we had the applebee's sizzler of veal with lemongrass and sesame seed with chili and fermented shrimp dipping sauce.

if you are in ha noi old quarter, the way to remember your way around is by what is sold on each street. because each block seems to have its own industry and most of the businesses on a given block are selling the same thing. to get to the crab soup restaurant, for example, i go out and walk past stainless steel railings, turn, get to stir fry noodles corner, go down the lane of coats and pants and fried terrine, turn left and pass caged birds, fighting cocks, puppies, kittens, soft shelled sea turtles for eating and tiny hard shelled turtles for pets, pork and beef and vegetables, then i keep going and there are funerary flower arrangements and coffins, then comes electronic appliances and hot pot, then coming to the corner you have imported whisky and cognac, finally you come to crab soup just before pigeon lane. you can buy pigeons already smoked, packed inside of coke cans.

the city is dirty and cold and slightly expensive so we are going back down to the village for a break.

co 5 told us that in case we start to suffer from hunger she was packing us a box full of stir fried chicken pieces and sliced liver and hearts, and oranges, and how many baguettes? 20? 30? also if we should become tired we must come over to vi thanh to stay with her one or two more days. co 8 said that it had been thirty years since anyone could see na in person and now after such a short period she was leaving, and who knows when she would come back again, anyone could die in the intervening period. everyone was sitting on the floor crying or about to cry.

the benefit of saigon is that no one is doting on us, but the downside is that no one is doting on us. let me summarize the plot of three films that i have seen or have at least seen parts of. two are korean, one is japanese.

1. there are four sisters: sakiko, takiko, makiko, and another whose name i don't know. they are all adults. they discover that their father is having an affair with a young lady. though they haven't spoken for a long time, they begin to meet regularly to devise a scheme to stop the illicit affair and also to prevent their mother from finding out. in the process they discover that none of them has an unblemished personal life. makiko, for example, has a husband who appears to be sleeping with his secretary, but she pretends not to notice to avoid dishonor. sakiko enters into concubinage with a man who is a prizefighter. takiko falls in love with the detective she hires to investigate her father's affair. the one with no name, a widow, has been having an affair with a married man. in the end, their mother dies, and they discover that she did know about the affair, but pretended not to, because in her wisdom she knew that the coverup would bring the four of them closer together as sisters.

2. two women. one is beautiful. the other is also beautiful. two men. both are kind at heart but they talk loudly and drink beer. a mother who only wants the best for her son. it is discovered that one of the women previously was in the state of concubinage, and failed to marry the man, now she is about to get married to the brother of her ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend, or something like that. the woman is outraged because of the potential dishonor her brother might suffer if it is revealed that he married a woman who is not a virgin. her boyfriend notes that she is a good wife and kind to her mother in law, and she should not go around causing a scandal by denouncing the marriage. there is a memorable exchange:

"in america, the priest says that if anyone objects to the marriage, they should speak up, and i feel it is right, for the sake of my brother, that i should speak up."

"yes, but the priest continues to say that if you do not speak at that time, you must forever hold your peace. you must not question the marriage once it is made law."

3. one woman. she is also beautiful. a man who has a good heart and cares about the welfare of the people who buy the products that his company sells. the woman is his coworker. she is evil, at first. because she convinces the vice president to expand sales. but as she digs deeper, she uncovers a story that chills her to the very bone. what will she do?

when i was a peace corps volunteer, i didn't shave very often, because only diplomats and ngo workers were clean and walked around like they were better than me, so i wouldn't condescend to shave regularly, since i was after all a peace corps volunteer and had to show loyalty to my caste. last night i went out in saigon in the district where so many tourists go, and i saw all of the foreigners walking around in shorts, sandals, unshaven, wearing backpacks. technically i am a backpacker, but i have two kinds of aunties, four kinds of uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, together numbering in the dozens, all back in the provinces, which means that i have more honor than a backpacker. therefore i will shave every day and wear clean trousers and make them clear away the empty cans if i drink more than one beer.

WIDOWER: a seven letter word, which makes use of three vowel graphemes; i used it in scrabble. scrabble is a good board game. it is not purely technique, because you also have to memorize many tricks and special types of words. it is the kind of game where a computer can always win, if you program the computer.

SLIGHTED: another seven letter word. if you have the chance to catch, but you bobble instead, this is like having the chance to greet, but instead you SLIGHT, though not exactly. CATCH:BOBBLE::GREET:SLIGHT. i also used this one in scrabble. two of my uncles, i have heard, one a WIDOWER and the other a fan of the new orleans saints. one is watching the game and he is going to eat white beans. the other guy comes over and says they should have fried shrimp, he happens to have five pounds of shrimp, it just needs peeling, deveining, butterflying, egg-bathing, breading and frying, then there could be fried shrimp. both of them are assumed to be drunk, at least that is most consistent with what is usual if any story is to come out of it. they started disputing because one of them hastily breaded the shrimp in a slipshod way. because he was impatient. even if you are impatient, you cannot inappropriately rush things; qui cito dat, bis dat.

myself and my own immediate family, we attempted to reenact the incident, exact same recipe, with less drama. shrimp diplomacy. first recipe:

===============================================

"SHRIMP" (scale down if it is not a family)

1. peel, devein, butterfly, rinse clean 5lbs. shrimp, large caliber.

2. bathe in eggs and milk, with a bit of salt and black pepper. 30-60 minutes.

3. get yourself a full box of premium saltine crackers. put them in a bag and crush them very well. add a cup or so of flour, mix with the cracker crumbs and spread a thick layer on a broad platter.

3a. heat the oven to a low 200F. prepare a large baking sheet and line it with paper towels.

4. warm your oil (corn or peanut, which has a low smokepoint) in a cast iron pot, by and by it should reach 365-375F

5. for each prawn, take it out, press it gently in the breading.

6. meanwhile, someone else, because you are doing the breading, is frying each batch of these for 2 minutes and then pulling them out of the oil and putting them in the warmed pan in the oven. let the oil recover to its temperature before adding another batch.

7. when i did it it turned out to be a good idea to have two skillets going at once, because once the oil starts to darken from the breading in one, then you can let it rest and go to the other.

8. dipping sauce: (you could do this beforehand). whisk together quite well, 2c of ketchup, 1/4c worcestershire sauce, juice of 1 lemon, 1/2c minced horseradish. taste and adjust.

==================================================

my father in law says that he is too busy, because he is always working, and that children (anyone under 30) are foolish and they will forget to eat so you have to always be cooking food so that they will eat and not suddenly get hungry and suffer. my mother has the same attitude. if you are going to run errands for an hour, maybe better you wait and don't go, but first prepare a sandwich and pack it so in case hunger strikes you while you are out in the car, you eat your sandwich. you will also have packed some fruit for a balanced meal. but he is too busy, so he doesn't cook every day, he cooks every other day but makes a double ration:

second recipe:

canh chua( sour soup )

make a broth of water and tamarind paste. prepare bac ha (taro stalk), bean sprouts, tomato quarters. get a large fresh catfish, whole fish, cut into steaks with bone-in. put the head into a dish for hot pot, pour in the broth and start heating. once it begins to simmer, you start adding the vegetables and pieces of fish. pull them out when they are ready to eat. and eat them. a dipping sauce of nuoc mam with fresh whole thai chili. also eat it with rice. at the end of the meal drink a cup of the broth with a little rice as a digestif. by then it will be very fragrant with fish, vegetables and tamarind.

with leftover pieces of fish, you make cá kho (braised fish), but i don't know how to make that one yet.

third recipe:

vit náo chao. (duck cooked with chao) get a duck and cut it with a cleaver into boiling pieces. take a jar of chao (pickled tofu). add it to the duck. add 2-3 pounds of whole peeled cocoyams, small taro. add rock sugar and mix it well, ferment an hour outside or overnight in the fridge. now begin boiling a large kettle of water. set the duck mixture over fire in a large pot. let it start to heat until the bottom smells like it's cooking. now pour a can of beer in there. now pour in the boiling water. enough to cover the meat. boil it softly for 10 minutes. if you taste it and it's not sweet enough, add rock sugar. if you taste it and it's not salty enough, add more chao. don't add salt. make a dipping sauce of chao, crushed roasted groundnuts, minced lemongrass and minced fresh thai chili. transfer some of the soup to a hotpot and set on the portable burner on the table. then you have two types of fresh greens. one could be rau muong but that type didn't get used when i watched. it was two other things and i don't know what they are. i can't find a picture of them anywhere. you put greens in the boiling pot and pull them out. then you start pulling out pieces of duck, of cocoyam, of greens, dip them in dipping sauce and eat them. you should be drinking beer because when the dish starts to boil down you pour some beer in it.

ah manozo xitechalmomachiti,

xitechalmolnamiquilili in tocnoyo, in iuhqui tiquitta, in iuhqui

tictzacua in nican tlalticpac: ca nelli mach in totech cehui in

tonalli, auh in ehecatl, in itztic, in cecec: . concern thyself

with us, remember us in our misery -- how we seek, how we are

imprisoned here on earth, for verily the sun, and the wind, the

cold, the freezing tire us.

-Florentine Codex

soon i will start traveling and maybe i will put travel updates on this blog if i can have something noteworthy to write about. tomorrow i will go to germany. i have to carry things on the plane to work on because i am an important person who is always doing things, important things that nobody can understand.

i remembered a certain word or phrase and then i remembered some time about eight years ago and a college apartment and ruth's description, something like: "he sits, he generates garbage, like a machine, he is disgusting, he is disgusting, because i took the ketchup bottle, the one with the benzocaine in it (because everyone took home the benzocaine that they synthesized in class, and i put mine in a bottle o ketchup), and he just kept eating his tater tots, and he was drooling a lot, and he didn't care, even when i told him he didn't care, he kept eating, he just ate it even more." now i don't remember what phrase. it is even a phrase that i use to this day, and that phrase is the only useful thing that survives from that time, eight years ago, in base circumstances, because everything that you are no longer is base.

but the real reason i am writing is to be able to publish two quotations, some might say taken out of context, which help to explain why the government only wants to manipulate you. the second one really made me recall a tour we got of a castle in Czesky Krumlov, and this situation was only two years ago, and so not nearly as base, but the tour guide showed us a dusty green glass container, like something you put cut tulips in with water, and it must have held a good liter, maybe two liters, and he said when there were guests for the king, the first thing they had to do was to fill that container with wine, and they had to drink it all without stopping, or else they would be thrown out of the palace. these things are coming from the famous florentine codex:

120. ihuan oc no ce tlacatl tlamacazqui, conitqui, cuappiaztli, ielpan contilquetza in malli, in oncan ocatca iyollo, conezzotia, huel eztitlan compolactia: and another man, and offering priest, carried the [hollow] eagle cane, set it standing in the captive's breast [cavity,] there where the heart had been, stained it with blood, indeed submerged it in blood.

637. ca ayac nicnocahuia ayac nicquixtia in macamo nicmaca in octli, in nictlahuantia, in niquihuintia, . no one do i except, no one do i release, whom i do not give pulque, make drunk, make besotted.

2. in cuauhtli: aixmauhqui, amixmauhtiani: huel quixnamiqui, huel quitztimoquetza in tonitiuh: . the eagle is fearless, a brave one; it can gaze into, it can face the sun.

i was driving, must have been today, turned on the radio and they played tom petty's breakdown. it was stuck in my head so i listened to it at home, and found that he seemed to have a strange accent in the first verse.

to wit,

-he syllabifies so as to avoid coda /z/ in is and it's, pronouncing it as [s] in the next onset.

-/o/ is usually lowered

-/schwa/ in away is hypercorrected to [e]

-some diphthongs in stress position have their first portion significantly lengthened, and the second part is pronounced weekly, to give the impression of a monophthong. most notably in like i do, where both diphthongs are simplified to [a].

the net effect is that he sounds partly mexican.

at one point i intended to toil the summer away like the animals of a particular fable that i saw in cartoon form. the lazy animals are bailed out because the hard-working animals hold a monopoly on virtue and they are also charitable. still there are books on my shelf, some of which are my sick idea of pleasure reading, some are generally known as pleasure reading in some circles, and one or two would be considered by all to be pleasure reading.

i just finished one of the first column, which led me to make a series of interlibrary loan requests which, if fulfilled, will have a very long shot at being honored by my reading the whole thing or even any significant part thereof.

i got armagnac for my birthday. since i am not quite the lazy animal but only the animal who just manages answer to the consequences of his idleness without a bailout, for unmerited occasions i only drink the cognac that we got for deglazing, which is still a highly respectable and often rapped about mark because everything had to be perfect.

which shows that if i am to use time less than optimally, i want to at least be somewhere on the target, which is why i read the neglected books whose reading would be wreckless indulgence during the proper work season, but whose reading in the aorist sense is considered to be an enrichment.

i mean to confess that i shot and posted on youtube a cat video and played grand theft auto in two fruitless hours of trying to shoot down the helicopter of the woman who betrayed me, catalina.

2666 by Roberto Bola?o:==================after this novelist's death and the heavily publicized release of the english translation of his posthumous novel, i wanted to read the spanish edition (which did not enjoy the wide distribution and publicity of the english translation) and ended up recalling it from a fellow library patron who, i calculated, is also a graduate student. this person never counter-recalled it, so maybe it was just sitting on their shelf and they didn't want to call my bluff. i read 100 pages or so then put it down for a few months, then this week read another 100 pages until i got to a section break.

there are some literary critics who are all single and who have flexible work schedules and ample savings. this is why they freely travel within europe. they are all interested in the same novelist, and three of them have a menage a trois. there is one part where two of them (at this point everyone had travelled to mexico on a whim) decide to stop waking up early and stop eating breakfast in their hotel and they go to breakfast on chilaquiles and beer.

although i have never participated in a menage a trois with literary critics, i did have the good fortune to find at the grocery store the kind of sale where you know that it is so below cost that someone is intentionally losing money, and you wonder why. a brand of beer normally retailing for $7 the six-pack was going for $1.50 the six pack. i brought home ten, and after learning about the characters' breakfast, even though i intentionally kept the beers at room temperature to prevent myself from drinking them, i could not stop myself from obeying product placement, even if it meant drinking beer with ice cubes.

by strange coincidence, while at the store i also bought ingredients to make chilaquiles, all this well before having read about the critics' breakfast.

i read a collection of stories by the same author and the characters of these stories always visited prostitutes and their real problem was not knowing how to pass the time, because they never had a job. i think it is important to represent this kind of challenge in literature, so that when i have a vacation i can be informed of real or imaginary techniques for passing time when no one will notice if you're not working.

also the characters, in 2666 and the short stories, face opaque personal crises. the author only portrays the outward symptoms of their personal crises, as if he were reporting on these imaginary people scientifically and wanted to only report the facts and leave out all speculation. we only know that fulano ate chilaquiles and woke up late and seduced a working class woman and promised to mary her and one time felt tired, and previously felt sick. there is no indication of what causes him to behave this way. other writers might instead spend the whole time writing about the thousand natural shocks and how they jostled their protagonist's thinking, and what he was thinking and how his feelings caused him to eat chilaquiles, etc. i can't say which style i prefer, but i find that bola?o handles this technique with skill. i the reader feel like a voyeur and i don't feel omniscient like readers of other works of fiction might.

the narrator of the bola?o stories is above it all. in the works of onetti i have read the narrator is more or less ignorant of the contents of the characters' minds, but still has some kind of opinion about them, though he bases it on things he has fabricated.

some practice translating from Walsingham's Historia Anglicana (vol.I p.450 of Riley's 1864 ed.)

The Derangement of John Wycliff

At the same time, that old hypocrite, the angel of Satan, harbinger of the Antichrist, not to be called "John Wycliff," but rather "Wykbeleve" (wicked belief), the heretic, his derangement continuing, has seemed to devour Jordan, and plunge all Christians into hell: reconsidering even the wretched opiniones of Berengari and Oakleaf, has worked to build upon them: after having been consecrated in Mass by a priest, the true bread and wine, as they were before, become at that instant Christ, as it has always been. But more specifically, this bread is worth no more than any other unless it is given the true blessing of a priest. Yet if this were the body of christ, he has professed, the neck of his God could be broken into pieces. He has additionally confirmed that Christians are mistaken in venerating that Sacrament, saying that bread is an inanimate thing, and one would rather venerate a toad, or whatever living thing, rather than that, because it is much better to praise an animate thing than something lacking a soul: and with such ravings he has seduced many into the same error.

NYTimes' Judith Warner is a columnist for the New York times who writes about the issues of mothers. In her most recent column, she talks about a woman who was charged with crimes for having left some children, the oldest of which were 12, at a shopping mall. In another, she talks about how mothers are the subject of unsolicited criticism about their parenting by strangers.

Her theory is that mothers and professional women are under attack by the population in the US. I have noted that in the anecdotes she reports, it is usually women who are the aggressors. In the shopping mall story, the police were called after children 8, 7 and 3 years were left at a perfume counter while the 12 year olds were trying on clothing. I am imagining that the attendant at the perfume counter is the one who called the police, and I would even go out on a limb and guess that the perfume salesperson was a woman.

Warner suspects that the aggression against mothers is part of backlash against improved rights for women in the US. It is important to note that in earlier times it was a good and reasonable thing to do to allow children, even very young children, to go into public by themselves and to run errands for their parents. Now this is not so. It is a great scandal to leave a child alone, and I think that the scandal mongers are conservative women and insurance underwriters. They are the great criars of kidnapping and accidental injury.

I am saying all of this because as a gentleman and the ambassador of men, I would like to make sure that I am not getting caught up in Warners indictments. I am blaming women and insurance underwriters.

here is the specimen:

"...niquintlalia itzintla in itlathocachicahualitzin inthohuei tlathocatzin in icaamoaquiqui ynhuayolqui..."

the first six words follow from standard forms found in dictionaries and come out as "I seat them at the feet of his eminence our great lord". "his eminence" is not ideal but is at this point OK for "i-tlathoca-chicahuali-tzin", where the root is chicahualiztli (the essence or abstract property of strengthening, in one dictionary "force du courage"), modified by tlathoca (ruler, lord), then i- is a possessive prefix and -tzin is an honorific suffix, so the closest thing to the actual meaning of itlathocachicahualitzin, i am guessing, is "his esteemed lordly eminence", which should be an appositive epithet for inthohuei tlathocatzin (our great lord).

the trouble comes with icaamoaquiqui. i have to wander in the dark and make a few educated guesses. my first guess is that it should be broken up as ica-ahmo-aquiqui. ica (with) and ahmo(not) are no problem, but aquiqui does not appear in any dictionary. however, google reveals that it is found in one Spanish-Nahuatl entry in Molina's 16th century dictionary, i.e.

Enriscado. ... mouican aquiqui motexcalhuiqui

enriscado (risky, one who takes risks). ... he takes himself aquiqui he throws himself from a steep precipice.

now it becomes very likely that aquiqui is a spelling-variant of aquihqueh (who, whoever), so Molina gave as one of his definitions of enriscado as "whoever goes and jumps off of a high cliff". this kind of definition is very common when you ask someone randomly to explain a foreign word to you. they'll give you a highly specific example of what sort of situation would apply to that word.

now it is coming together. ynhuayolqui should mean "their parents, their relations"

the final product is:

"I will seat them at the foot of his eminence our great tlatoani, though not along with their escorts."

"...Soto allows that lucrum cessans can be asked in delay, theft, or compulsory loans; in all these cases an external force prevents the victim from the opportunity of laboring with his money. It is remarkable that in none of these arguments does Soto attempt to answer Summenhart's contention that one is held to compensate a man voluntarily ceasing from work if the paying of such compensation is the condition under which he forgoes his work . . . His stubborn denial of the right to compensation for damage voluntarily occurred . . . must be ascribed to a fear that to admit lucrum cessans was to abandon the usury prohibition. As he believes, "this ghost of lucrum cessans not many years ago opened that chasm and whirlpool of usury."

Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury

lucrum cessans = foregone profit

here is the phrase:

...inozequin intechmonequiz, ipan Incahuitl chicohuazen mextli...

the first four words should mean "additionally thereupon is needed a period of time"

chicohuazen does not appear in any dictionary nor in any google book

chico- according to one dictionary is a prefix usually meaning "to one side, perversely"

chicohuia according to another, means "to do things unfairly, to favor one side", but the form we have doesn't exactly match any inflection of chicohuia

cem means "one," and at the end of the word [m] becomes [n], but this particular scribe we have noted that sometimes he leaves off written 'n' at the end of a word, and -cen normally doesn't appear as a suffix, if i remember correctly

mextli, according to the first dictionary, is a variant of mixtli, which all sources agree to mean "cloud." additionally the second dictionary includes this example phrase from the florentine codex "intlâcahmo tleh mixtli," (if there aren't any clouds => provided that the weather is favorable)

so we'll just have to guess and say

"additionally thereupon is needed a period of time to allow for inclemencies"

and the record does not indicate whether this is a guess or a certainty, when all is done.

to waste time but not prodigally i like to read things in middle english. what i was supposed to be doing instead of reading middle english was translating from nahuatl a document that is nothing but variations on scamel. here is a passage from Langland's Piers Plowman (14th century), where he explains the meaning of Job 15:34 in the vulgate bible:

ignis devorabit tabernacula eorum qui libentur accipiunt munera, &c.

Amonge this lettered ledes, this Latyn is to mene

That fyre shal falle, and brenne al to blo askes

The houses and the homes of hem that desireth

Yiftes or Yeres-yyves bicause of here offices.

the trusty oxford english dictionary says:

lede = race, group of people

brenne = burn

blo = a dark-blue color, like a bruise, or lead

askes = ashes

yifte = gift

Yeres-yyve = a new year's gift

the latin is, more or less, "fire shall devour the tabernacle of those who please to take gifts"

munera is usually translated as bribes in english language bibles

Langland's elaboration is from having to write in a type of alliterative verse, and his description of munera (Yiftes or Yeres-yyves) is a more accurate description of the concept than "bribe" is.

whoever has tried to translate Piers Plowman to modern english and keep the alliterative verse must struggle, since lede, blo and yeresyeve are extinct as english words. even if yeresyeve were revived, it would no longer start with the same sound as gift. one would have to set out looking for new pairs.

now we have a kitten, because i am a pragmatic person.

a controversial claim from Chomsky and Halle's Sound Pattern of English:

"There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English..."

i also have a playstation 2 controller that plugs into the computer.

these are things that i can do in the summertime.

in texas it was warm, over 100 degrees every day. there were many people there, all familiar with each other. at spiderhouse coffee shop, they now offer table service, which makes it difficult if you intend to go there and buy nothing. as i understand it opened in 1995. in the year 2000 i used to go next door to sell plasma and the homeless teenagers were one time lying there talking about how with these fifteen dollars apiece, and the thirty dollars we can borrow from X, and Y, who can front it to us at the lowest quality, we can rent a motel room of the seediest variety, far from the shelter where they don't allow alcohol, and we each have a seven dollar 175mL bottle of jack daniels. i think the plasma place is shut down now. i best remember that i was taking physics 2 and it was difficult. and this very skinny girl told me that i should join her to study at spiderhouse coffee shop, where you don't have to buy anything. this was the year 2000 and i decided to not go to spiderhouse, but only to stay at the plasma center, because at this time i had it calculated to where i would get one hamburger ($2.50), one order of french fries ($1.25), one glass of ice water (free), four times a week at either 1am or 1:30am, which would be $15, then i'd have $20 left for the weekend, and buying a cup of coffee would throw everything off in multiple ways that are so distant from important now in 2009. when i went i ordered a coffee. the oldest man at the table paid for everything, because he is powerful. you might think that i now regret it, because i could have ordered a cucumber margarita or anything else to BEAT THE HEAT, but in fact i was hung over.

i brought that coffee with me. it was cold, but i was even able to take a sip from it ten hours later. this was after i had finished overseeing the grill.

Shakespeare in the park is a feature of summers in Buffalo, NY. residents bring camping chairs and sip wine from their coolers and give out one dollars to the poor players who strut and ask for donations to keep our beloved festival free. the time that i went we saw the Tempest. the tempest contains the word

scamel

which i think is a very nice word, with a delicate nuance of a meaning that helps people to share their feelings. scamel will cause you to have feelings you never had before. the Oxford English Dictionary defines scamel as follows:

Meaning uncertain: the statement in quot. 1866 is of doubtful value. Some have proposed to read staniel.

below are two quotations of the only attested uses (outside of metalinguistic or lexicographical discussion) of scamel. the first quote is from the Tempest,

"And sometimes I'le get thee young Scamels from the Rocke."

the second quote, as we are told, is of doubtful value.

i started to feel a bit dizzy when i was reading the Tempest, and came across a word i didn't know, and looked it up in the dictionary, and the dictionary told me it didn't know what the word meant. we only know that a scamel is a living thing that is edible and found among rocks on beaches. a staniel, which "some have proposed" as the reading for scamel, is a type of falcon, e.g.

i digress. sometimes, even the dictionary doesn't know. one theorem of classical logic is known as ex falso, quodlibet which means "if shit's fucked up, fuck it."

the kitten is always sleeping. if the kitten were grown, it might be able to go hunting for young scamels. perhaps scamels became extinct due to overharvesting before anyone could write down what exactly they were.

this summer i liken my job to the mystery of the scamel. i have to determine something that nobody, at the moment knows yet. and the things that i determine through careful investigation and long hours of study, will be of such interest to the general public as scamels are.

addendum:

From the London Daily News, printed in New York Times, 25 June 1892: A Norfolk man observes that "young bartailed godwits are in Autumn called scamels on the north coast of Norfolk."

"The verbs to mother and to father mean very roughly 'to act as a mother/father toward someone', but are entirely different in the exact actions that count as relevant."

Jackendoff, Foundations of Language

...money rented ad pompam. In such a contract, ... money was transferred to a bailee for the specific purpose of display so that he might impress others with his wealth. The money was not consumed, but used, and the charge was for its use. The Gloss's treatment here seems to assume that the fundamental distinction between this contract and a loan is the incidence of risk.

Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury