The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 03: Come On In

[TxRad]

The only cougars around here, hang out at the bar about a mile down the road. Usually on Tuesday nights for some reason. Maybe the steak dinner special that night.

Got a little writing done and a little research on an upcoming project.

 

[NotWise]

The only cougars around here, hang out at the bar about a mile down the road. Usually on Tuesday nights for some reason. Maybe the steak dinner special that night.

Tube steak?

 

[Handley_Page]

It's turned damned cold.
Any coffee available please ?

 

[NotWise]

Our evening last night was entertaining and educational. My wife and I went out to dinner and then to a performance of the Ailey II dance company.

The first piece of the program was danced to several very energetic songs by one group. I didn't recognize the language, but the music was European and possibly folk or folk-like. I thought I caught some Spanish vocabulary, but the intonation often sounded French. The style sometimes reminded me of the Gypsy Kings, who sung in Catalan, so I guessed it might be Catalan.

We checked the program during intermission and my wife looked up the recording. The group was from Marseilles and the songs were sung in Occitan. I was close. I'm not sure I'd ever heard of Occitan before, and now it's nearly extinct.

The show was great, and I wasn't the most eccentric looking man in the theater. I felt like there should have been more young bun-heads attending -- they need role models -- but my wife pointed out that the tickets were a little expensive.

 

[Handley_Page]

We checked the program during intermission and my wife looked up the recording. The group was from Marseilles and the songs were sung in Occitan. I was close. I'm not sure I'd ever heard of Occitan before, and now it's nearly extinct.

Apparently, it's the official language of Catalonia.
And that's far enough for me.

But it's late (and quite cool), so I'll have a last cup of Tea, please

 

[NotWise]

Apparently, it's the official language of Catalonia.
And that's far enough for me.

Catalonia has three official languages: Spanish, Catalan (which is similar to Occitan), and a dialect of Occitan.

Occitan was once commonly spoken in southern France, but is no longer common.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Apparently, it's the official language of Catalonia.
And that's far enough for me.

But it's late (and quite cool), so I'll have a last cup of Tea, please

The lenge d’oc as opposed to the langue d’oui. Catalan is an Occitan dialect. Occitan is spoken across Catalonia, Gascony, southern France and parts of northern Italy. I learnt that from a Louis L’amour historical novel!

 

[TxRad]

For some reason, dialects of Southern France and northern Italy were never high on my must know list.

Fresh coffee for the evening crew. I'm having pizza for supper.

Heartburn later but I have that covered.

 

[ChloeTzang]

For some reason, dialects of Southern France and northern Italy were never high on my must know list. .

Mais non! Tres impossible! Tell me zis is not so, Tex! But I know, I know. When you’re faced with chupacabras coming north across the border, and ancient Aztec bat-people vampires, Southern European dialects somehow take on a lesser level of importance.

 

[oggbashan]

Mais non! Tres impossible! Tell me zis is not so, Tex! But I know, I know. When you’re faced with chupacabras coming north across the border, and ancient Aztec bat-people vampires, Southern European dialects somehow take on a lesser level of importance.

When I was young I lived for a time in Gibraltar. I picked up the colloquial language from my school mates and dockyard workers.

I thought I was learning Spanish. What I was actually speaking was not Spanish but Llanito:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanito

A few years later, back in the UK, one of my friends was half-Spanish with a Spanish noblewoman as his mother. My friend took me home to tea, announcing that I spoke Spanish. His mother spoke pure aristocratic Castilian. We agreed that what I spoke, after she had covered her ears in mock-horror, was NOT any Spanish that she recognised. I could understand her; she couldn't understand me or preferred not to.

I'm not surprised. What I had learned from the dockyard workers was not just Llanito, but dockyard workers' Llanito in which many words were swearwords in a melange of Mediterranean languages including Genoese, Occitan and North African dialects of Arabic.

 

[sharingfantasies]

When I was young I lived for a time in Gibraltar. I picked up the colloquial language from my school mates and dockyard workers.

I thought I was learning Spanish. What I was actually speaking was not Spanish but Llanito:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanito

A few years later, back in the UK, one of my friends was half-Spanish with a Spanish noblewoman as his mother. My friend took me home to tea, announcing that I spoke Spanish. His mother spoke pure aristocratic Castilian. We agreed that what I spoke, after she had covered her ears in mock-horror, was NOT any Spanish that she recognised. I could understand her; she couldn't understand me or preferred not to.

I'm not surprised. What I had learned from the dockyard workers was not just Llanito, but dockyard workers' Llanito in which many words were swearwords in a melange of Mediterranean languages including Genoese, Occitan and North African dialects of Arabic.

My aunt was in college at the same time I was in high school. We both lived in San Diego, California. We were both taking Spanish but kept arguing over the pronunciation of some words. Turns out she was learning Castilian and I was learning Mexican.

 

[Hypoxia]

My aunt was in college at the same time I was in high school. We both lived in San Diego, California. We were both taking Spanish but kept arguing over the pronunciation of some words. Turns out she was learning Castilian and I was learning Mexican.

My southern California junior college Spanish teacher was Cuban -- she and her doctor husband had fled Castro. I learned that quirky dialect. Mexicans looked at me funny. Decades later I attended Spanish academy in Antigua Guatemala and gained a softer accent. Mexicans still looked at me funny. Ya can't win.

My long-ago flatmates in Mexico City were two Celtic expats dubbing network telenovelas. The Irishwoman dubbed in Venezuelan accent, the Scotswoman in Argentinian. And I learned that most Central Americans see Hondurans as pussies because they don't have enough revolutions. But that's another story.

I just swallowed a cuppa my partner's coconut coffee. Ahhh...

 

[TxRad]

The question has to be asked. Small cuppa or large mouth?

We fight the Mexican or Spanish question all over Texas these days.

 

[NotWise]

We fight the Mexican or Spanish question all over Texas these days.

The local newspaper runs a comic (Baldo) about an Hispanic family in the US (Texas, I suspect. Maybe not). I don't know how widely distributed it is, but I like it.

In at least one episode the family played the game of watching the news and trying to guess the origin of the speaker based on their Spanish dialect. As near as I can tell, that's a common exercise among Spanish speakers. The language is spoken in a large part of the world and there are many, many dialects.

Some of the dialects verge on being mutually unintelligible, or at least intelligible with difficulty. I have a friend who is indigenous Bolivian (but raised in San Francisco with Spanish as his first language) and he doesn't think Argentine Spanish is really Spanish at all. I know Argentine Spanish speakers who say it's just their lisp, but my employer disagrees. He can understand and speak several Spanish dialects, and Argentine has him baffled.

 

[sharingfantasies]

We had a young boy come into the school one year and no one could understand him. We even had some parents from different areas of Mexico try to talk to him. We finally decided he must have some kind of language disorder that was causing speech difficulties but we couldn't figure out which type of disorder. Finally a relative came to visit and told us that he was speaking a mountain dialect spoken only by a few hundred people in his mountain village area. So we added one more to the number of languages spoken by students in the district. I don't remember how many that was back then, but I know that there are over 90 different languages in the district today.

 

[Hypoxia]

The question has to be asked. Small cuppa or large mouth?

Just enough from a 10-oz cup painted with penguins.

We fight the Mexican or Spanish question all over Texas these days.

We knew a guy in Taxco, Guerrero, west of Mexico City, who inherited a family property there. He was a tapatio (born in Guadalajara) but raised in San Antonio TX. He said learning central Mexican Spanish was tough because he grew up with Spanglish. He let his local wife do most talking with non-gringos.

We also knew old-line families in New Mexico who were proud of speaking and being Spanish, not Mexican -- their forebears were there since colonial times. Santa Fe is as old as St Augustine, half a millennium. Like Appalachian dwellers speaking ancient Anglish, old Spanish holds in the upper Rio Grande valley.

 

[beachbum1958]

Good news. Pray pass on our best. Any idea of how long before she can return to work. (No doubt she’s ask you that once or a thousand times.)

Re ‘WTF’ in ER, the legendary Coke bottle aside, what’s been the most WTF problem you had to deal with in the ER?

Where do I start? It seemed like every night was an adventure in weirdness, and usually ended in sillies. The one that still makes me laugh, though, was a guy who used a brass curtain-ring as a cock-ring; of course once fully tumescent it trapped all the blood and he couldn't get it off, so he came hobbling into A&E at UCH, London, where I was a houseman (equivalent today to 'intern') stuck on the A&E on a 96-hour standing shift.

I couldn't figure out how to get it off from a member that was slowly going deep purple, KY lube, manual compression (not one of my 'Hallmark moments' believe me) and good old fashioned vegetable oil were having no effect, asking the night maintenance guys to hacksaw it off failed because "they don't pay me enough to touch that thing...", and calling a senior registrar at 2AM was guaranteed to get you on his shit-list forever, so I called my father, a cardiovascular surgeon at another hospital.

He suggested I whack it with an orthopaedic mallet, the theory being the sudden mechanical shock to the soft tissue would make it lose tension and allow the veins to contract and his organ would then deflate.

So I bashed it with a mallet, which had no effect except to catapult the poor bastard onto the ceiling. I called my father and told him it hadn't worked, he replied "I didn't think it would, but it was worth a try..." Thanks dad.

Eventually an anaesthetist came wandering by, and he gave him a shot of immobilin or tizanidine which dropped him like a rock and we could ease the thing off him. I saw him the following day, someone had strapped an ice-pack to his groin and erected a tent frame over the area, because apparently he was feeling a little sore.
For months afterwards, everyone called me 'The Mighty Thor' because I solved problems with a great big hammer...

 

[NotWise]

For months afterwards, everyone called me 'The Mighty Thor' because I solved problems with a great big hammer...

That would probably be Chloe's predecessor laughing at the Mighty Thor. Too bad that didn't solve any problems.

 

[srosa]

I used to drink evening coffee. And stay up all night, making mischief, usually with no arrests and few worries, but with no boats or gyroplanes. Infrared cameras, maybe. Those are fun at night when one's blood is boiling with caffeine and trace elements.

"The evening bunch" -- that's mostly artists and musicians and critics, right? Or kids keyboarding all night in mom's basement. Or Denny's swing shift, and cops. How many here drink evening coffee, and why?

* Because you can.
* Because you must.
* Because you're pervo.
* Because you're a vamp.
* Because you're a student.
* To make the heroin wear off.
* To sober-up before driving home.
* Because sleep is for the weak.
* Because you misread labels.
* Because Satan so ordered.
* To maintain homeostatis.
* To survive until Lent.
* For a piss contest.
* Because you do.

Should this be a poll?

(Trying the multi-quote feature)

I admire your parenthetical and pyramidal prowess!

 

[srosa]

(Failed at the multi-quote feature)

 

[srosa]

Where do I start? It seemed like every night was an adventure in weirdness, and usually ended in sillies. The one that still makes me laugh, though, was a guy who used a brass curtain-ring as a cock-ring; of course once fully tumescent it trapped all the blood and he couldn't get it off, so he came hobbling into A&E at UCH, London, where I was a houseman (equivalent today to 'intern') stuck on the A&E on a 96-hour standing shift.

I couldn't figure out how to get it off from a member that was slowly going deep purple, KY lube, manual compression (not one of my 'Hallmark moments' believe me) and good old fashioned vegetable oil were having no effect, asking the night maintenance guys to hacksaw it off failed because "they don't pay me enough to touch that thing...", and calling a senior registrar at 2AM was guaranteed to get you on his shit-list forever, so I called my father, a cardiovascular surgeon at another hospital.

He suggested I whack it with an orthopaedic mallet, the theory being the sudden mechanical shock to the soft tissue would make it lose tension and allow the veins to contract and his organ would then deflate.

So I bashed it with a mallet, which had no effect except to catapult the poor bastard onto the ceiling. I called my father and told him it hadn't worked, he replied "I didn't think it would, but it was worth a try..." Thanks dad.

Eventually an anaesthetist came wandering by, and he gave him a shot of immobilin or tizanidine which dropped him like a rock and we could ease the thing off him. I saw him the following day, someone had strapped an ice-pack to his groin and erected a tent frame over the area, because apparently he was feeling a little sore.
For months afterwards, everyone called me 'The Mighty Thor' because I solved problems with a great big hammer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp8-k3KWF9E

 

[Hypoxia]

(Trying the multi-quote feature)

I admire your parenthetical and pyramidal prowess!

Thank you. I have practiced. I used to write code in geometrical form. It mostly worked.

(Failed at the multi-quote feature)

Yeah, sometime's it's flaky. Like now. I won't blame the Opera browser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp8-k3KWF9E

Simply dead brilliant. Now try that on a penis.
_____

Snow: We are encased and will drive nowhere for a few days.
Deer: They looked at our snowpacked meadow and went away.
Power: Still on, and fewer outages shown at pge.com. Whew.
Coffee: Not desperate yet, but espresso grind is running low.
_____

PS: Musya and the luge

 

[Handley_Page]

Well that was pleasant. Up at stupid o'clock and snooze in front of the TV.
Breakfast and then Coffee

And it's not too cold this morning, either !

 

[oggbashan]

My aunt was in college at the same time I was in high school. We both lived in San Diego, California. We were both taking Spanish but kept arguing over the pronunciation of some words. Turns out she was learning Castilian and I was learning Mexican.

My wife studied French at University. During the holidays she went to Paris as an au pair helping to look after an elderly man who was blind. He had been a professor of Literature at the Sorbonne (University of Paris). What he wanted her to do was read the French Classics to him (this was long before cassette books or CDs).

He insisted that she spoke pure classical Parisian French. She still does.

I studied French at school in Gibraltar, then London with a Yorkshireman, then Australia. French was a very minor subject in Australia at the time and there weren't many native Francophones. My teachers (and examiners) were Australian and spoke French with an Aussie accent. I still do, with elements of Yorkshire "Ca Va, thart's it!"

When in France my wife's French makes locals in Nord Pas De Calais think she is upper-class Parisian speaking the elegant French that radio announcers used to use in the 1930s. They can understand her perfectly.

But they think she's married to an Australian hick who cannot speak proper French. My accent is so bad they sometimes are shocked. More than 50 years after leaving Australia I still have the Aussie twang when speaking French.

For both of us, our understanding of spoken French, and the Nord Pas De Calais accent, is very good. But only my wife is understood by the locals.

 

[TxRad]

I was trying to think of a group that murders languages worst than the Australians. Hell, they've almost killed English.

Fresh coffee for those in need. Raisin cinnamon toast is also available for a short time.

50 degrees outside with rain and the occasional thunder boomer. High today of 52, more or less.