schlep

my current get rich quick scheme has led me to start compiling a glossary of french terms relating to corruption.

subvention
ingérence
concussion

there are certain unique plays on words that make the technical literature pretentious or eloquent, depending on your point of view

D'où la tentative et la tentation ...

perhaps a close translation to English would be "Which explains the allure of, and the attempts made towards..."

surya will like this one

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translation exercise

from Seneca Minor, De Ira III.40

...'uide ne inimicis iracundia tua uoluptati sit', alteri 'uide ne magnitudo animi tui creditumque apud plerosque robur cadat. . . Fregerat unus ex seruis eius crustallinum; rapi eum Vedius iussit ne uulgari quidem more periturum: murenis obici iubebatur, quas ingentis in piscina continebat. Quis non hoc illum putaret luxuriae causa facere? saeuitia erat. . . Euasit e manibus puer et confugit ad Caesaris pedes, nihil aliud petiturus quam ut aliter periret, ne esca fieret. Motus est nouitate crudelitatis Caesar et illum quidem mitti, crustallina autem omnia coram se frangi iussit conplerique piscinam. Fuit Caesari sic castigandus amicus; bene usus est uiribus suis: 'e conuiuio rapi homines imperas et noui generis poenis lancinari? Si calix tuus fractus est, uiscera himinis distrahentur? Tantum tibi placebis ut ibi aliquem duci iubeas ubi Caesar est?' . . .

[you say to some] 'Let not your wrath become a cause for your enemies' delight,' to others you say 'Let not the greatness of your oaken spirit, and your good name in public tumble.' . . . One of [Vedium Pollionis'] slaves had broken a crystal goblet; Vedius ordered that he be seized, and that he be slain in a way never seen before: he ordered that he be cast to the lampreys, which oversized things did contain his fish pond. Who could think that the man didn't do this because of his great luxury? Savageness. The boy fled the hands of his captors and threw himself at [Augustus] Caesar's feet, so that he might beg for nothing else than to die in a different manner, only that he shouldn't serve as bait. Caesar was indeed moved by this strange display of cruelty and ordered that the servant be released, and that all of the remaining goblets be broken before Vedius' very eyes, and that his pool be filled in. Thus Caesar, who used his power wisely, was to scold a friend of his: 'You order men to be seized from your banquet hall and to be torn apart by your perverse new punishments? If your chalice is broken, must a man's viscera be ripped out? Are you so proud that you order someone carried away in Caesar's presence? ...

but i don't feed 'em

italian palindromes:

accocca
apocopa
ereggere
esose
ingegni
issassi
onorarono
ovattavo
raccoccar
ricucir

false cognates: despoil - spogliare

light cut out for you

The New York Times has published a report that confirms what many have suspected about the media's hateful role in creating the Iraq war. (link)

Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon?s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" who could be counted on to deliver administration "themes and messages" to millions of Americans "in the form of their own opinions."

the faculty of reason

i was a vegetarian for the whole week.

quiche
bagels & cream cheese
salad rolls
macaroni and cheese
potato leek soup

upon reflexion, we hadn't gone to the grocery store yet. duylinh came back on friday with two crispy-roasted turning-pig foot&shanks from the chinese place. they were $3 for both and came with a dipping sauce.

on command, cha cha produced these dicta:

"Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself." -Plutarch

"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." -Heraclites

that languid odalisque

do not be afraid to make a guess.

Heraclitus supposed that the size of the sun was equal to the width of a human foot. Nobody laughs at Heraclitus, in spite of this.

en cuyo caso

a woman was staring at me. it was my boss.
i raised my head from the bubbler.
"good morning, jesse. thirsty?"
i nodded and smiled.
there were men arguing in a room. i was walking by the doorway. they didn't know that anyone could hear them.
"all i'm saying is! i've got this problem on my plate! and i've gotta deal with it! because it needs to be fixed!"
yesterday the room was too hot, and today it was too cold. but no one spends time in that room. they only go there to take a nap or use the bathroom. that's the problem that is on that man's plate. a man who was old, wearing a hardhat and well-worn denim pants, was the alone in the conference room, staring out the seven glass doors as he spoke on his cell phone. he was also involved with the problem. it was on his plate too.
a woman was staring at me. it was my other boss.
i said, "now press equals."
the student says, "that's it! i forgot to press equals!"
the boss could see how effectively i was mentoring these students.

i found the perfect epigraph to hang above a bathroom door, from Cortázar:
"Interregno del baño, paréntesis de la seca y vestida existencia."

.

rainwater makes the tarred surfaces slick
ça glisse!
you shouldn't make your usual strident gait
especially if you are wearing sandals
you can lose your grip,
and your forestretched foot will slide out further than you like
and your leg tendons get strained
you will probably regain your balance
then think how close you came
to knocking your knee
and muddying your blouse

but this would only happen on a tarred surface
sidewalks usually don't have this problem
but since it's raining
and you have the chance to drive
you wouldn't prefer the sidewalk
unless it's a light storm
and you carry an umbrella

i haven't seen this word in print since I read Candide.

Even though Democratic elders worry that the two candidates will terminally bloody each other, they each seem to be lighting their own autos-da-fé. (Maureen Dowd)

a pretty, but useless column. let's make the editorial page argue with itself:

Whose brilliant idea was it to leave six weeks open before the Pennsylvania primary? . . . A few more days of these Punch and Judy shows and even we will be tempted to tune out. (NYTimes Editors)

bumper stickers

archaeologists one day uncover this film as the only relic of a forgotten culture, and decide that all myths from this culture have the following structure.

1. gathering in the great hall
2. decision to go to war
3. arming scene
4. leaving home
5. moving with speed and fighting
6. winning against all odds
7. joyous return
8. idyll

humor

at the brewery the deal was that you showed them your driver's license, then they put a wristband on your body and gave you four blue tickets. each ticket could be exchanged for a beer, and food items cost zero tickets. so we stood in a circle and got sunburned and argued about things until we were satisfied. here is my report:

in the bodies dyscratic people, one humor prevails over the other, provoking a constitution that in correspondence with the humor in surplus:

AN EXCESS OF.....PRODUCES A CONSTITUTION THAT IS
-------------------------------------------------
blood..........sanguine (passionate)
phlegm.........phlegmatic (stolid)
black bile........melancholic (depressive)
yellow bile.........choleric (angry)

riled

after my session of annotating "children of deaf adults" bingo game was through, i hit the sidewalk. that same kid with blackened aviator glasses that cover the sheen of his pimply cheek ridges, the trucker hat, skateboarding in the middle of the road. when a car comes, he casually weaves into the other lane, into the shoulder maybe. i heard my kuduro gay club ringtone for the first time since i installed it on saturday.

entra na roda
vem dançar
o boom boom boom

marcus and i agreed to meet at six. i spent an hour calling people from the silver springs, MD, telephone directory and stalking people on facebook because they had a certain last name. you don't feel like a stalker as long as you have a good reason. everyone has a good reason.

i was hoping they would give me a hard time at the grocery store so i could tell my story loudly and in public, but they agreed that these things happen, if the customer doesn't feel satisfied...the brewery is at fault. the thing was that only experienced people know how to handle these claims, so the manager on duty handled my request and reassured me that i wasn't crazy, that if i didn't feel comfortable, any time.

my ringtone came on again while i was with the customer servants. this meant that marcus came early and he was sitting in a camping chair on this beautiful spring afternoon in my front lawn. we argued about who owed money to who and used our fiancées as witnesses, his less willing to back up his story since he was at my house and not home from work, and only then he accepted a premium exchanged against faulty merchandise beer as we went through the ritual of appraisal.

this meant that i wouldn't go to the knife sharpening store a day early. it was like this: "Knife Sharp. This is Grandpa." "Hi Grandpa do you sharpen kitchen knives?" "That's how we make a living! Come see us tomorrow our hours are 9-4pm saturdays."

the restaurant was crowded. very crowded. the system they have is presenting yourself at the counter to order your food and pay for it, then receiving your food when the waiter recognizes your colored numbered token. i wrangled a table and sat inter turba, families with both parents working too hard so that they can live yuppy lifestyles, the father sweating wearing a baseball cap, thin and a baby's hand or a bassinet's handle gripped in his palm as they stare at the horizon to dissimulate their feeling of eyeballs on the back. my eyeballs. the mothers are comfortable and talk primness to each other. there are also many young couples on a first or second date who don't know where to put their hands. the male stood up to get a second plate of olive oil, and the female said that it wouldn't do any good, him three strides out of the table, and this only magnifies the anxiety. i'm sitting at a table my myself, one with only chair. the table is naked and i'm looking at people's reflections in the dark window panes. i would be more self-conscious in other circumstances.

duylinh had been left to her own devices and decided on a pizza margherita with pepperoni, anchovies and arrugula. we ate the whole thing then went home and fell asleep, by degrees.

ms. gladys

i have to keep track of three registers of teenagers' slang where i work: basketball, baseball and track.

flippin' the bird could mean two different things.

morelliana

a common reproach towards a failed moralizer is that "he expects them to hold to a standard of conduct that himself cannot maintain." does this mean that it is right to expect everyone to exercise a given level of self-discipline, so long as you yourself have always done so, or so long as some exemplary person you know has done so?

two discussions during the weekend are relevant.

1. "they are content to sit there on public assistance and never aspire to anything higher. my father had nothing but a suitcase with one change of clothing and thirteen dollars, coming off the plane in memphis, tennessee, and he lost that money on a slice of pizza he spit out and a cab fare to a house whose owner wasn't there to answer the door. he became a millionaire."
2. a) "i've heard that you are better off refusing the sobriety test."
b) "let me explain how simple it is to you people! it's the easiest thing in the world. do whatever the hell you want. just don't drink and drive! when are people going to start taking responsibility for themselves and not just trying to use a lawyer to help them get away with doing ce qui leur bon semble. you people, this country, nobody wants to take responsibility. you get fat and you sue mcdonald's for crying out loud."

responsibility is a great virtue, and people should be expected to act responsibly, but to what extent is it right to compel them to be responsible? expectation can be done by everybody, but compulsion can only be done by those with power over others. it is commonly held that freedom compels responsibility, and those who wish for freedom should accept the responsibility that comes with it. likewise, it is held that those who cannot act responsibly can have their freedom restricted. i think the matter is not so simple. freedom and responsibility are related, of course, but levels of personal freedom and responsibly can be optimized through governance. a government that does not carry out this optimization ably limits freedom while increasing responsibility, and one that does it well maximizes freedom while minimizing responsibility.

i see features of american society where freedom is sold to people too dearly.

guns: we have the right to own and carry a gun. the freedom that comes with having a gun, as best i can figure, is being able to enforce the peace on your own property, to defend yourself through gunfighting, and to supplement your and your beloveds' diets with game meat. the responsibility of having a gun is, of course, to not endanger peoples' lives with it. many foolish people get jailed when they use a gun to settle a personal dispute, to facilitate a robbery or to provide security for an illegal business. irresponsible people lose their freedom because they abuse their right. but is it worth vomiting out some of the lower elements of society so that the responsible majority can enjoy this freedom? how much do we really gain from being able to defend our person and our property with a gun? why should we have to do this ourselves? isn't security one of the most basic services that is required of the government? as individuals, we might have guns, but the government still claims and almost complete monopoly on violence.

cars: cars are the only thing to which americans believe they are more entitled than to guns. the benefit of the car is that it lets you transport yourself and your cargo great distances in a short amount of time at low cost. you can go anywhere you want for whatever reason. the responsibility is identical to that for guns: that you don't endanger others' lives with your car. and so you can lose your freedom if you do not respect your car's power and you operate it recklessly, especially if you kill someone else with your car. much like guns, i notice that many people do not derive much enjoyment from cars, though they still bear all the responsibility of using them. you do not feel a sense of freedom in using your car if you have to use it in order to hold a job, to buy food, or to meet with your friends. in this circumstance, the car becomes more of a burden than a freedom when you consider the costs of maintenance, insurance and fuel. wouldn't it be more just to offer city dwellers a form of transport which has a predictable cost, which is reliable and convenient, which you can ride even if you are asleep, drunk or distracted?

as i said, responsibility is something to admire and to aspire to, but the more responsibility you demand, the more you risk oppressing irresponsible people.

in re

the state of affairs are such that the only people with whom I can practice my letter-writing skills are bureaucrats ...

7 April 2008
Re: Cause #75730
Kind Reader:
This letter is to inform you that I have, on 6 April 2008, completed a driving safety course so that the referenced charge against me may be dropped. I am also writing to request that the court deign to grant me an extension of twenty-one (21) days in furnishing them a copy of my driving safety course completion certificate, for my completion date (sc. 7 April) will have passed by the time I receive it in the mail. As a show of good faith, I am including the receipt I received from the driving safety academy.
Please accept, dear reader, the expression of the most respectful sentiments of one (for he is confident that you will accede to his humble request) who is glad to call himself

yours,

you mouth do what you legs should do

two fautes d'Anglais in this byline on the New York Times web page.

Success Breeds Problems for Microfinancing
By ELISABETH MALKIN 4:09 PM ET

Critics say the benefits of microfinance in Latin America is threatened by institution?s market-oriented model focused on investor returns.