BOB BLUSTER INTRODUCES HIMSELF

I've decided to spring for a nifty Wacom drawing tablet, so I've been messing around in Illustrator/Photoshop (and Sketchbook Pro and Manga Studio and and and). Can't wait to have a pen AND all this functionality. Still haven't decided precisely how and what I want to use. For this bit I did all the line drawing in Illustrator, then all the coloring in Photoshop. It's a lot easier to get a curve with a mouse in Illustrator, but getting a pen may change that.

Anyway, meet Bob. My human guinea pig. Which phrase behooves me to draw an actual guinea pig from now on.

Needuh work on my coloring...

POT SHOTS PAR CONRAD

Conrad indulges in some delightfully direct potshots:

"They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sound of a word belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very human." — Joseph Conrad, Nostromo.

OUR MAN IN COSTAGUANA: AN ESSAY ON CONRADIAN DUPLICITY

I started Conrad's Nostromo a few days ago. Besides the predictably beautiful prose (e.g. first page: "Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse."), the text is chock full of linguistic curiosities. 

The title, for instance, is an Italian term for boatswain, but it's also a corruption of "nostro uomo," i.e. "our man."

Other proper names I've run across so far (roughly 50 pages in) share a similar trans-, inter- and intra- linguistic ambiguity. Two of the more obvious are Costaguana (guana refers to a palm tree, palmera, but also strongly suggests guano), and Viola. There's also the obvious Gould=gold connection and the San Tomé mine (tomb).

WALDSTEIN: I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT

Off to work. Here's Richard Goode playing the rather eery introduzione/adagio middle movement of the Waldstein sonata. Listening to said sonata in the dark and total stillness of 1:30 a.m. (as I did last night) is one bejesus of an experience. More on this later.

THERE IS SUCH A THING

...As an Australian hard-metal band named "DZ Death Ray."

This amazing revelation was brought to me by NPR this evening as I drove home from work. The accompanying song displayed an equally insuperable capacity for self-parody. Their webpage, according to whoever the heck that DJ is after 11:00 p.m., states that "They started out playing at house parties, and they will likely end at one."

Of course, this demands a recognition of Bill the Cat's one and only Deathtöngue. Behold:

THE ANT & THE GRASSHOPPER: LA BISE

Can't. Get. No...

The set-up: Trying to find short texts for language-maintenance since my brain's a little less inclined to read these days. I'm tackling two established masterpieces that've been on my long-list for quite a while: the Grimm bro's Kinder- und Hausmärchen and La Fontaine's Fables choisies. I'll probs just read a story from each every day or so, just to keep a foot in each of the respective Gallic-Teutonic linguistic doors.

So anyway: I'm floating through La cigale et la fourmi ("the ant and the grasshopper" but flipped), when I am greeted with the word "la bise" (= kiss): quand la bise fut venue. This is, of course, rather odd. So I look it up and discover this is in fact a good ol' Alpine nor'-nor'easter. I like it.

Here's the whole bit for the sake of getting it in my head:

        La cigale ayant chanté

               tout l'été,

        se trouva fort dépourvue

        quand la bise fut venue.

        Pas un seul petit morceau

        de mouche ou de vermisseau.

        Ella alla crier famine

        chez la fourmi sa voisine,

        la priant de lui preter

        quelque grain pour subsister

        jusqu'a la saison nouvelle.

        "Je vous pairai," dit elle,

        "avant l'Out*, foi d'animal,   //*= Aout adjusted for the meter

        interet & principal."

        La fourmi n'est pas preteuse

        c'est-la son moindre defaut.

        "Que faisez-vous au temps chaud?"

        dit elle a cette emprunteuse.

        "Nuit & jour, a tout venant

        je chantois, ne vous deplaise."

        "Vous chantiez? J'en suis fort aise;

        et bien, dansez maintenant."

EARLIEST KNOWN POLYPHONIC MUSIC DISCOVERED

Cool.