TITTWIS 43 - Sandbox Edition

Drop J. off at preschool, take nap, study some, pick J. up, lunch, study more. Tonight a college friend is coming to stay over night; I haven't seen her in 8 years! She will be giving a reading from her new book at St. Olaf and then tomorrow night another one at the U of M.

(ex-smokers often become fervently anti; maybe it's the same with internet hardmen)

Bullying is a pain. do you mean enough of ILE? I just ignore the bullying (or try) I've enjoyed ILx as a time-wasting tool for far too long to abandon it.

grout, this is just idle, topicless talk. great for time-wasting!

what dvd?

I ignore any silliness on ILX; I just enjoy the parts that I enjoy and leave the rest. Perhaps it won't last, though.

I think I will take my nap now. And dream of cupcakes!

shame we lost our steam.

I'm still f*cking around with MS Sharepoint. hating it! (Also my therapist has instructed me to curse less. this is hard. I listen to too much rap music.)

Why ever the fuck would you want to fuckin' do that?

Michael, it kind of encourages negativity in me I think. I easily prone to anger and a good fit of cursing serves to make me more surly and just, grrr. Also she has asked that I try to live my life now in the manner of the type of mother I hope to be. (e.g. not sailor-mouthed and beer swilling) Which is an interesting and worthy challenge.

I fully support encouraging you to be CREATIVELY foul mouthed, however. Most people are too lazy and too predictable when they swear.

check out my brother's new custom shoe biz:

http://myspace.com/soleglowcustoms

He's really gotten rolling with this lately and has asked for my help. (Going to start by building a decent web site.) He's displaying them at a fashion/craft fair in Houston in a few weeks. Mostly the hip-hop/extreme crowd are into them. I'm excited for him, love the DIY, garage biz stuff.

That sounds like some weird 'ish' to me.

I intend to only teach my kids how to swear in French but I'm going to teach them the WORST curses. I think my favorite swearing language is Spanish, though. It just sounds right to me.

i always liked "scheisse" too.

A few French terms of abuse
'Le' is pronounced like if you started to say "look" but were quickly cut off.
I've marked the 'u's as being like 'oo' in 'toot' but to be exact, it's prononced by pursing the lips and saying 'ee'. Try it.

Le salaud (le sah-low)- Bastard, asshole, fucker. It's derived from the word 'sale' which means dirty.

La salope (la sah-lope)- Bitch, slut. The female version also has the connotation of easy sexual mores. Literally, 'bitch' is 'la chienne' (la she-en) but it's less prevalent than in English.

Le con (le con, the 'o' as in mow but the 'n' is that weird nasally 'n' of French) - Literally 'cunt', it means both stupid and malicious. It's used like dick/prick in English.

La conne (la cunn) - Female version of 'con'. 'Cunt' but not nearly as offensive as that word is in American English.

Le connard (le co-nar) - With suffixes to exagerate them, 'connard' and 'connasse' are essentially like 'con'. English has borrowed diminutive suffixes ('ette', for example) but no suffixes to denote that something is larger so we use auxilliaries; something like 'big fat prick' or 'fucking cunt'.

La connasse (la co-nass)- see previous

La pouffiasse (la poof-yass) Cunt, slag. If you call a girl this to her face, you'll likely get slapped.

La putain (la poot-a-as-in-'mad' and the French nasal thing)- Whore. It is also, with 'merde' (mared), the most common vulgar exclamation in French so, when said without the article ("Putain!"), it's equivalent to 'fuck!' 'Fils de pute' (feess de poot)is 'sonofabitch'.

L'enculé (lon-queue-lay)- Literally 'buggered' or 'sodomised', it's something like 'fucking asshole' in English.

Le trou du cul (le true doo queue) - Literally 'asshole'.

"Putain de merde! T'es un vrai enculé, tu sais?" could be translated as "Motherfucking shit! You're a real fucking asshole, you know?"

"C'est une poufiasse, celle-là." - "That one's a bitch."

"Ça t'amuse d'être si con tout le temps" - "Do you have fun being such a dick all the time?"

"Ve te faire enculer, connasse!" - Would be literally, "Go get yourself fucked in the ass, bitch."

It sounds too much like sneezing, which seems too twee to be effectively sweary.

Kids do learn the swear words that you spout out. When 4l3x was about 3 he started saying, "Shit! I mean 'shoot,'" because I kept trying to modify my swearing in front of him. I've given up and gone back to just plain swearing.

Maybe I should consider some of these other languages, though. Hmmmm.

I was taught salaud, saloppe, con (though interestingly not conne), putain and enculé at a young age by a frenchman who thought it was hilarious to hear little English girls being pottymouthed in furren. He also taught me bordelle*, in the bedroom = pigsty sense. I uttered a few of these mots during a French lesson once and got into all kinds of trouble with Mrs Willis. I just had no idea of their strength. I think it's funny now, but teenage Madchen was mortified.

*we should translate this expression into English. The Italians have che casino, after all.

What I should do is record me reading those so you have an idea of how to say them, Sam.

Quel bordel! Che casino! What a brothel! I just don't think it would work, Madchen. Maybe 'what a cathouse!'

this is the classic czech insult (jdi do prdel). the polish version is very similar.

Haha, there is a popular Glasgow nightclub called "the cathouse". Madchen has been known to frequent it.

And in Italian.

The English accent is kind of funny in French, though.

I remember my parents swearing at each other for nearly as long as I can remember, and they used to say words such as "damn" to me (i.e. mild expletives) starting from when I hit adolescence. But I was not allowed to swear, not even "damn", not even when I was 18 and accidentally said the word "damn" to my parents, which caused my mom to slap me hard. I didn't start getting away with swearing in front of my parents until I was 21, and even then it took a few years for me to stop flinching and apologizing after saying it. So French swear words could've been useful. And children who hear their parents swearing aren't necessarily likely to repeat it, at least not in front of their parents. (Especially if it'd been insinuated that that thing was not acceptable were the child to value his/her life.)

I'm starting to use moisturizers on a regular basis now, finally getting on board with that whole thing, and it's remarkable how I can actually FEEL the difference radiating from the inside of me. I had no idea my skin was that much in discomfort. I suppose that before my skin felt uneasy, uncomfortable, overly sensitive to things touching it. But now it feels like it's finally at rest. And it looks better too, less ashen and more like I suppose the way it's supposed to look after all my efforts to avoid the sun as much as I reasonably can.

Am kinda wary of hitting that Submit button, but oh well.

I kind of felt like all this effort paid off a bit at my last high school reunion when a friend's husband met both me and my sister (who is younger than me but married a classmate). He told me that I looked younger than her. So I say moisturize away!

But I don't want to give a negative response since you've told me not to.

I don't moisturise because I can't be arsed. I'm sure it'd probably help somehow if I did, but I'm managing just fine without.

Last night we finally removed our wall cabinets in prepreation for the new ones arriving on Friday. Oh my god the evidence of past termite damage was terrifying. . . Also having your food and dishes spread around the house is not fun. It's likely to be that way for weeks. :(

I need to upload some of the pics. I think I have about a month's worth of photos languishing on my camera!

Sam the termite thing sounds awful. The whole idea of termites freaks me out!

G. banished me and my asthmatic ways to the bedroom as he cleaned it all up but we will probably end up having to re-sheetrock that whole wall.

Our house is old by the way. This is what you get with old houses.

Also, I love the idea of a "termite dude."

Paying to join a public library Tep? Sacre bleu! (But I'm spoiled with a good public library system, plus the two college libraries right in town.)

xp; yeah, you only have to pay if you aren't a resident. When I was a kid, we joined the Nashua Library (the town I live in now, but not then) because it was so much bigger that it was worthwhile. But that was $60 or so in 1980s dollars, so I guess the $100 for the smaller library now is cheaper, in constant $.

The show is Hipbilly Jamboree. You can stream it from there if you like. The sound is a bit whack, but I hope you can hear the joke where he claims to be Anna Nicole's baby daddy. I think it starts around 8:34 in.

I have an 8:30 mtg, at my place. that's far, far too early.

So you're a writer? How cool and interesting! I have a couple of published writer friends (Maryjanice Davidson and Emily Rapp), and I am so amazed by their careers. Actually, I'm even just amazed at the idea that - at least in MJ's case - she has to motivate herself to get her job done.

Motivation can be tricky. I'm currently working on an "easy 100,000 word novel" (that's standard length) as a break from my giant 250K-300K novel that I spent all last year working on, because spending that long on something without finishing was giving me a weird remix of cabin fever. It's exactly the kind of thing that would normally be a terrible idea -- usually that's how people wind up with eleven first chapters and no final chapters -- but I think in this case it's the way to go.

Tep - wow, a 250K novel?! I can barely motivate myself to read 10 pages to study for a quiz lately. Your motivation is impressive and terrifying!

i've had some articles and stuff published before but I'm aiming for a book, preferably fiction. Not an easy or short term task but I think it's doable before I die. Not like wanting to be a rock star or model or something.

Yeah, it's big. Starts in the 50s when the protagonist is 13, goes up to the 2010s or so when he has grandkids. I'm 80K or so in right now, in the mid-1960s. Multiple viewpoints, the works. This is my big one.

I've just been doing this so long now, though, and made it such a focus, that I don't really know how to not write. Anything's easy/easier if you do it all the time.

81?! It is in the high 30s and low 40s in Minnesota and honestly, after that last couple of weeks, it feels tropical. I'd take 81 for a day, though.

Poems are hard to me! Fewer words are harder to write since you have to be so much more careful with them.

The only thing I wrote yesterday was answers to a physiology quiz. Answers I did not know, btw. (Thankfully, the prof drops our two lowest quiz scores. But I'd better improve by next week.)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002U45.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

And then he told me blonde jokes. Charlie Louvin is a CARD!

I'm clueless about Charlie Louvin (and country music in general), but he sounds pretty fun!

I just got my hair cut and spent way too much money on product. Having curly hair is a bitch.

Vienna

Prague

My upcoming trip is looking kinda rough.

ahh, duh. I knew the name was familiar. I actually used to date a guy whose brother duo patterened themselves largely on the louvin bros. eons ago.

I once created a file for one of the biggest Bollywood film stars. He had great press shots of himself. I wanted to keep them and hang them all over my cube.

(Kids are a huge, relentless job and don't let anyone tell you any different!)

Sam, we should trade for a day! (Today would be good; it's even 45 degrees out here, so the weather wouldn't scare you off in 5 minutes.)