Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

I’ve long been a fan of the Swedish chef school of linguistics, but since I leave for Sweden on Tuesday it may just be time to gather my Swedish language emergency kit.

Those who remember my
quest for instant Czech won’t be surprise to hear that–thanks to the LCS Hockey Association’s website–I now can say things in Swedish that would surprise you:

Han finns de action? – Where is the action?

Har du sedd min kaslonger? – Have you seen my pants?

Langa de vin. – Pass the wine.

Jag var i Cleveland den vecka, officer. – I was in Cleveland that week, officer.

Du ar a illa skona kvinnor. – You are a very beautiful woman.

Skulle du lik att se de hem av a ensam, ensam man? – Would you like to see the home of a lonely, lonely man?

Nej, nej, ej de paprika sprej! – No, no, not the pepper spray!

At least I don’t have to learn Viking-coping phrases like “What a big ax!” and “I have no gold coins, but may I offer you this fine Timex watch?”

…on July 3, 1973, I was a kid in my twenties about to get married for the second time, and boy was I nervous. Just about everything went wrong that day.

• Because we “eloped” with just 4 grad student pals as our witnesses, our families assumed a baby was coming. In fact, we were just too impatient with all the postponements due to “Aunt Agatha can’t come June 7, how about the next weekend–no, Uncle Ed can’t make the next weekend…” Well, a baby did come, about 15 months later.
• I baked us a chocolate wedding cake from a mix, but assumed I wouldn’t have to grease and flour my brand-new miracle cake pans lined with Teflon. Wrong! Our guests ate bowls of ice cream with huge hunks of scraped-from-the-pan cake on top.
• We got lost driving to Dutch Neck traffic court, so we missed the time of appointment with the judge. We and our pals had to sit through an hour of testimony about stop-sign violations and DUI before being called into the back room for our “ceremony.”

One thing went right–I married a wonderful man, who hasn’t once stopped surprising me in all the 30 years afterward.

Feel free to throw rice anytime.

“Ansible,” a crazy Brit sci-fi email newsletter, is one of very few I subscribe to. Today’s issue says that the incomplete biog of sci-fi great Robert L. Forward is now online. Forward is perhaps best known for Dragon’s Egg.

Forward’s neutron star physics and exo-biology are spot-on–he’s a hard-sci-fi master–and _Dragon’s Egg_ also has some of the wackiest, most convincing alien sex scenes ever.

Want more alien sex? You may get a bang out of the species with 3 genders in _The Gods Themselves_ by Asimov.

I met a bunch of great Boston-area bloggers Thursday at Dave Winer’s Harvard blog meeting:

http://www.scripting.com/ “Scripting News: Dave Winer’s weblog about scripting and stuff like that”

Dave was there fixing our blogs and having fun with subjects from Chinese households to NH primaries.

http://radio.weblogs.com/0120875/ “Shiny Glass Beads: Shiny Glass Beads:
Pay it forward: Got a penny? Leave a penny. Need a penny? Take a penny.”

Critt Jarvis blogs about politics, collaborations, and of course blogging. Lots of good snips and links.

http://critt.weblogger.com “One Co-Intelligence Avenue/
Exploring wholeness, interconnectedness, and co-creativity”

A new group blog where Critt Jarvis will be a contributing writer.

http://www.castleblack.net/mikeb/ “Castle Black: It Made Sense at the Time”

Michael Booth’s blog–here is just one insightful quote:

“It is okay, within limits, to talk about an absent person, but when someone is in the room you are supposed to either invite them into the conversation or leave them out of it. The problem with the Web is that the whole world is in the room, so you can’t really talk behind anyone’s back.”

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/stanleyc/“Stanley’s Weblog: Technology investing is my thing”

Stanley Cohen’s new blog invites comments on micro-cap stocks and broadband strategies.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/natureisprofligate/“Nature is Profligate or so it seems… “

Amity Wilczek is a Harvard biology grad student, who blogs about some wide-ranging bio interests with wit and a lot of fun pictures. Disclosure: I do aleady know her, because she’s my daughter.

Jamie, Mike, and some others whose names I don’t know

Start up your weblogs soon!

p.s. Most blogs link to the Daily Show’s own Bush versus Bush debate; I couldn’t get their plug-in to work. That’s why I linked yesterday to a different 12.4 M mov. version