July 2007
→ Gloom
(28th July 2007)
So I am reading through hundreds of pages of NGO and UN do-gooding development reports, that uniformly decry the lack of sanitation in the world, and the toll that this takes on millions of lives. 4500 deaths from diarrhoea daily, cholera, dysentery. And I am struck by how much of these reports are about preserving human life, without questioning whether the preservation of human life ...
(22nd July 2007)
After a day reading documents on my computer and feeling eye-fatigued to the power of three million, I went and sat outside on my bench and drank a beer. First, neighbour Mimi came past and we conversed. She said she was going to shut up her chickens. OK. Then the professor of Occitan with his little black dog came past. He ...
(19th July 2007)
I used to collect book jacket outrageousness. Partly dedications, whose total mendacity was revealed to me when an author, having just divorced his wife - and being in the midst of several other relationships - still dedicated his book to his wife, with undying love. But I prefer to collect examples of the formula "X divides his time between..." All decent authors divide their time ...
(17th July 2007)
From The Health Hazards of Excreta: Theory and Control:Many species of parasitic worms, or helminths, have human hosts. Helminths do not multiply within the human host and this is of great importance in understanding their transmission. Helminthic disease is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. In infections due to viruses, bacteria and protozoa, where massive asexual reproduction occurs within the host, once infection ...
→ Poetry
(16th July 2007)
Years ago, in my first year at university studying French and Italian, we had some set texts. One of them was Paul Éluard. I had no patience for surrealist poetry then - and not much now - and one of my most hated lines was "La terre est bleue comme une orange," or "The earth is blue like an orange." Obviously. At the time, ...
(6th July 2007)
A list of words used to describe the widespread phenomenon of there always being more mens' toilets than women's, and therefore there is always a queue at the women's, because women take longer:
urinequity
sheturnity
pee-gatory
herturnity
peenury
pees and queues
men-no-pause
girliqueue
cannery row
sitscrepancy
stalltification
canaraderie
loodicracy
incontinental divide
whoa de toilette
impeetience
fillybuster
lass rites
stand-up commodey
male pee-rogative
loonacy
women's sufferage
sit down's syndrome
no stallgia
waterwait
express male
menvy
male chauvi-whizm
short seatedness
stall waiting
assault and bladdery
underprivyleged.