Long day, not necessarily productive...

I opened a jury summons thinking it was old, and it isn't. I'm on the hook for next Monday. I have no objection to serving on a jury, except that like most things in life, the system is rigged in favor of employees, about which I have nothing more to say right now.

The "bag" for the day stands at just over 2,000 target words. This is not exactly awful, but given the State of the Plate, I'm thinking I should probably do some more work tonight.

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In theory, I ought to be able to, say, connect to the Verizon network as usual on an XP machine and then share the connection with a LAN through the machine's LAN port. In practice, it ain't happening that way, so unless I drag my hardware down to, like, the Higher Grounds coffee shop and use their wifi setup, it would appear that my Linux partitions will remain un-updated.

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I've been listening to the French Pod Class for over a year and decided it might be worth finally subscribing to the thing, but upon clicking on the requisite link, Google Desktop sticks its nose in and tells me, and I quote:

Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!

Wow! That kind of got my attention.

Exactly what kind of bad juju is involved deponent saieth not, but frankly, this kind of thing is what got me thinking of visiting the site from a browser running under Linux, just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, it's time to turn away from work for a little while.

Cheers...

The drawback of the well-known punchline...

Sometimes, a joke becomes so well known that it becomes one of those stories that's known only by its punch line, making it difficult for one not versed in this aspect of the language to understand the context of the punch line.

So it happened with me and one of the folks who has friended me on LJ, one apollo14, whose lead item (dated 2010) starts with:

1. Чукча не писатель, чукча читатель. [Chukcha is not a writer, Chukcha is a reader.]

I knew enough to recall that this was, or was close to, the punch line of one of a mass of ethnic jokes in Russia, the butt of which are an indigenous people of Siberia called the Chukcha, who, like the Beverly Hillbillies invariably (but not always) end up grasping the fat end of the stick.

Although I'm sure I've heard the story, I could not, for the life of me, recall any details. Google was of no help, since very nearly every hit was of the form "as in the old chestnut, ...." followed by the punch line. After some digging, however, I got to what appears to be an abridged version of the joke:

Поступающий был на экзаменах, ему задали вопрос, а читали ли вы то, читали ли вы другое, читали ли вы третье, после чего он сказал: «Чукча не читатель, чукча писатель».

A newly enrolled student was sitting for an examination. He was asked "Have you read so-and-so?", "Have your read this other work?", "Have you read this third item?" To which came the answer "Chukcha is not a reader, Chukcha is a writer."

Okay, so it's not exactly Letterman - or, heck, maybe it is? - but the fact is that the punch line has become, in effect, part of the culture, and knowledge of that punch line, a part of cultural literacy.

I note as well that the line is reversed in LJ friend's apollo14's lead item, an apparent reference to the fact that he she reads more than he she writes.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any punch lines in English that have the same... "status," can you?

Cheers...

UPDATE: An alternative version of the joke:

Once upon a time. a Chukcha brought his novel to an editor. The editor read the novel and said: "You know, it is too weak. You should read the classic literature. Have you read Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Pushkin? "
"No, however, I have not," came the reply. "Chukcha is not a reader, Chukcha is a writer."

UPDATE: LJ friend apollo14 is not a guy. Apologies all around. :^)

Cyd Charisse and my stepdad...

It was always difficult to get my stepdad to open up about his life, which I am finding has far-reaching effects after his demise. However, he did let on that one of his favorite films of all time was Silk Stockings, with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.

I mention this, of course, because of the news that Cyd Charisse died yesterday, at the age of - maybe - 86.

I remember how my dad, not long before my mom died, shared his love of this film with me, with the two of us watching it until way beyond his (and, frankly, my) bedtimes.

Fortunately, however, through the media available today, I can continue to enjoy such performances.

Cheers...