It's a day off & I'm at the beginnings of SO many library books. There is By Hook or By Crook, which teaches me a bit of Welsh in the first chapter: "There are lots of places called Llanfair. Llan in Welsh means 'church'; fair is a form of Mair, 'Mary'...Mary's Church was located by a hollow (pwll). In fact, by a hollow near a white hazel (pwll - gwyn - gyll)...A cobbler from the nearby town of Menai Bridge came up with the fifty-eight letter name:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch
The town council adopted it. It was one of the most successful travel marketing ploys ever."
Speaking of marketing ploys, there's also the French Women... book, with this anecdote at the beginning of the second chapter : "after a few seconds that seemed endless, there in front of my brother and my American shipmate, all he could manage to say to his cherished little girl come home was, 'Tu ressembles a un sac de patates.' ('You look like a sac of potatoes'). Some things don't sound any prettier in French."
And, already liking the introduction of Red, White... wherein the author describes coming back to Southern California to be told by her uncle that the women at her grandmother's funeral have to stand at the back because they get too emotional and might fall or leap into the grave. "I had to resist telling him that we were not in a Bollywood movie from one hundred years ago...I just said quietly and apologetically, because I did sympathize with how the mosque folk would hold him responsible for my insubordination: 'I'm sorry. I can't do that. I am going to stand wherever I want.' She was my grandmother, after all...she would have done the same herself..."
Also had to watch Devo's Whip It (for the first time!)
Because I recently saw the movie Whip It.
Which also included What's the Altitude
Which makes performing certain household chores just a little more entertaining...
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