Sez Florica from Pitesti:
You cannot pretend you are a real witch if you cannot help a businessman get the European Union funds he wants. For example, only the other day I had a young businessman who came to me with his papers applying for European funds. I spread the cards on his documents, said my [...]

Whoever runs Fabirol’s website tells us on a page re a museum near Zaragoza called La casa del gaitero, Bagpiper House in corporate speak, that in Aragon gaitero can be used to describe any popular musician. What would an equivalent lowest-common-denominator term be in the English-speaking world? “Artiste” misses the instrument component and, frequently, the [...]

One, two, just made it thru, with thanks to Mr Belanger. Now desperately trying to build up a little more condition for March 1, in between watching replays of Barça losing to Liverpool.

Hope to be in them next time with a suitable weapon.

Here, via Carlos Ferrero, thanks to MM. (Is paint-bombing and slogan-daubing terrorism? Yes, when it’s part of the systematic campaign of violence and intimidation being conducted by regional nationalists in Spain with the goal of disenfranchising other shades of opinion.)

Someone asked me the other day whether agricultural subsidies had gone the same way as in the UK, and I gave a lousy answer. Charles Butler over at IBEX Salad has a partial account, in the course of which he uses the words “very simple”. Right…

Check out these Russian scrapers. (Via BB; more Agbar here.)

I wonder if this isn’t an under-estimate–everyone I know in Barcelona who takes the government-subsidised software skills courses does so not because they expect to learn anything useful from the course leader but because they know they will receive a pirate copy of the software involved, be it Photoshop, Cubase or whatever.

Does the principle that “If it’s too important to you, then you’ll mess it up” mean that enthusiastic believers should be advised to refrain from Bible translation? If not, would it be cool to have them translate your wife’s diary? Since when have Irishmen taken beatings from mullet?

Mmax says that, on February 14 1929, his great-uncle, Ralph Forte, was listening to Chicago police radio from the offices of AP when he heard some slightly unusual news from North Clark Street.
Apparently Mr Forte had just fled Italy after writing an article entitled “Everyone obeys Mussolini except the cats”. Can his welcome in [...]

Some great location- and Catalan actor-spotting fun at Méliès last night, where we saw Tom Tykwer’s version of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume (buy the novel in the USA or the UK). Easy enough: the torture-turned-orgy scene in El Pueblo Español; the various use of Girona’s Pujada Sant Domènec, with the palace arch and the view up [...]

Being a naive progressive, my opposition to the illegal policy of compulsory Catalan language immersion has always been based on appeals to the old liberal idea that we should be free to use whichever language we choose, with the odd reference to “rights” enshrined in international conventions and publicised via absurd junkets like UNESCO’s International [...]

A 76-year-old Malay Muslim woman from southern Thailand who got on the wrong bus 25 years ago and ended up living at the other end of the country has been reunited with her family, officials and domestic media said on Tuesday.

Re this post at Transblawg: nugatorio is most rare in Spanish, but here’s some Ramón López Velarde (via Corde; poetry and bio):
Se me destina, en la casona, la sala de la derecha. Fantasmas, fantasmas, fantasmas. A las diez de la noche, logro escaparme. En un cielo turquí, el relámpago flagela edredones de nube. La ciudad [...]