Six things make an LJ post and a bit.
Mar. 14th, 2009 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe celebrated ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler's birthday with lunch at Zen, as recommended by our friendly neighbourhood professor of mathematics. He raved over the green curry, which we found a bit bland - we being durham_rambler and me, helenraven and desperance. (desperance's readers will know that of course he thought it bland; but he was not alone). On the other hanmd, the starters were fun, and the papaya salad was fresh and sharp and zingy. The deep fried ice cream in peanut crust was proportioned rather like a scotch egg, a scoop of ice cream buried within a flapjack - a thinner crust served hotter would have had more drama. But the garnish of caramelised cashew nuts was yummy. So was the Argentine chardonnay: it tasted of cloves, which was unexpected, but not disagreeable (and it was fair trade, too).
Later, some of us watched Little Miss Sunshine, supplied byhelenraven. It was very sweet, and good fun: although situations and events were rigged to manipulate the comic effects into position, it was entertaining enough that it was only afterwards I realised just how much this had been done. I loved the finale, where Olive does her dance, though for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen it, I won't say why. Michael Ritchie's Smile remains my favourite beauty contest movie, but I liked Little Miss Sunshine.
I have Chatted! Dropped in ondesperance's Author Chat at Flycon, and had no technical problems at all. Etiquette problems, maybe: a tendency to jump in and try to steer the conversation (She Who Must, you know...). But generally I feel pleased at having done a New Thing.
A news item about a Roman joke book is vague about the extent to which this is actually a new discovery. If, as the Guardian story says, it's a Roman joke book written in Greek, it can't be the one that cropped up forty years ago in my A-level Latin exam. The Unseen paper regularly consisted of three passages, a piece of poetry, a piece of Golden Age prose and Something Else. And in our case the Something Else was three jokes, of which I can remember two. One was I say, I say, I say, my wife's just hanged herself from the fig tree! / Really? You must give me a cutting! and the other What do you call a man who gets caught in adultery? / Slow! My Latin teacher told us she would complain to the examining board. (More jokes on the Todayprogramme).
Today's Saturday Poem in the Guardian is Fin by the wonderful Michael Donaghy.
Heard on the radio: "The duck-billed platypus gets more REM sleep than any other creature."
durham_rambler's birthday with lunch at Zen, as recommended by our friendly neighbourhood professor of mathematics. He raved over the green curry, which we found a bit bland - we being durham_rambler and me, helenraven and desperance. (desperance's readers will know that of course he thought it bland; but he was not alone). On the other hanmd, the starters were fun, and the papaya salad was fresh and sharp and zingy. The deep fried ice cream in peanut crust was proportioned rather like a scotch egg, a scoop of ice cream buried within a flapjack - a thinner crust served hotter would have had more drama. But the garnish of caramelised cashew nuts was yummy. So was the Argentine chardonnay: it tasted of cloves, which was unexpected, but not disagreeable (and it was fair trade, too).Later, some of us watched Little Miss Sunshine, supplied by
helenraven. It was very sweet, and good fun: although situations and events were rigged to manipulate the comic effects into position, it was entertaining enough that it was only afterwards I realised just how much this had been done. I loved the finale, where Olive does her dance, though for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen it, I won't say why. Michael Ritchie's Smile remains my favourite beauty contest movie, but I liked Little Miss Sunshine.I have Chatted! Dropped in on
desperance's Author Chat at Flycon, and had no technical problems at all. Etiquette problems, maybe: a tendency to jump in and try to steer the conversation (She Who Must, you know...). But generally I feel pleased at having done a New Thing.A news item about a Roman joke book is vague about the extent to which this is actually a new discovery. If, as the Guardian story says, it's a Roman joke book written in Greek, it can't be the one that cropped up forty years ago in my A-level Latin exam. The Unseen paper regularly consisted of three passages, a piece of poetry, a piece of Golden Age prose and Something Else. And in our case the Something Else was three jokes, of which I can remember two. One was I say, I say, I say, my wife's just hanged herself from the fig tree! / Really? You must give me a cutting! and the other What do you call a man who gets caught in adultery? / Slow! My Latin teacher told us she would complain to the examining board. (More jokes on the Todayprogramme).
Today's Saturday Poem in the Guardian is Fin by the wonderful Michael Donaghy.
Heard on the radio: "The duck-billed platypus gets more REM sleep than any other creature."
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 10:10 pm (UTC)The steerage was very welcome, if perhaps only partly successful; I kinda felt like the conversation had seven independently-steerable wheels, y'know? But thank you for coming by. And yes, I too am pleased with the New Thinginess of it all.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 10:27 am (UTC)Quomodo sentit?
Horribile!
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Date: 2009-03-15 06:19 pm (UTC)http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2009/03/the-laughter-lo.html
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Date: 2009-03-15 07:30 pm (UTC)I hadn't known she was speaking in Newcastle...
no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 09:21 pm (UTC)(Was born silly therefore get too little REM due to laughing too much. This is fatal.)
I wonder which roman jokes transport best through history and if humour really can do that, at length? Some say it is not possible to translate, at least.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-16 10:05 am (UTC)In the radio clip (if that's still working), she suggests that we can understand classical hunour because so much of our humour is rooted in the classics - so it's not a fair test of its ability to cross those boundaries.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-16 11:41 am (UTC)