:: The Wendy House ::

Wendy House service will be temporarily sub-sub-standard while flagrant‘ Happy Birthday to us’*  activities are conducted in Italy accompanied by this years soundtrack courtesy of Eyan …

* us = people I know (Eyan, Jenn, Angela, Dr. Phil, Prof. Dave) and pobably quite a few people that I don’t know…

Its my birthday.

It’s Eyan & Phil’s birthday.

It’s international Jennifer day

I’m 44 (and British)

The wikipedia entry for 44 points out that despite not being a prime number it is one of an elite 12% of numbers that can be described as a ‘Happy Number’.

44 trivia:

• Its the international dialing number for the UK and that’s where I am today,  in Reading, in the UK, and that’s where I come from and I’m a citizen not an alien.   
• A bus, big caravan, production company in Germany.  I like buses.
• 44 was a leap year starting on Wednesday.  During this year Emporer Claudius returned from a campaign in,  yes you’ve guessed it, Britain!
• Psalm 44 is powerfully emotive,  excerts of the language within the psalm:  ‘crushing people’,  ‘trampling our foes’, ’scorn and derision’, ‘reproach and revile me’, ‘crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals’.  It is a bid to the christian God for support in torrid times.  Probably a bit more torrid than my current repatriation expereince* but in that sort of direction on the scale that ranges from comatosed to extreme torridity.

* I did phone someone up yesterday to tell them I was frustrated,  so that is pretty torrid on the Wendy torridity scales.  I used the word frustrated 4 times,  then had a cup of tea to calm down.  I feel a bit bad now about that impulsive outburst of saying I’m frustrated.  

born badly (Catalan.  An insult)

provided translation note: Very used when people gets hungry whith others

(this post was bought to you by Eyan,  our Barcelonian correspondent.  I suspect Eyan saw through the provided translation note….)

Our Barcelonean correspondent is a bit miffed. Eyan writes:

Am translating the most tedious web page ever, which makes Madrid look as exciting as a wet weekend in Middlesborough without a DVD or laptop. It’s probably written by some pijo (read posh kid or Ivy leaguer) who has connections to the Partido Popular (read Tory or Republican party), not unikely to have connections with Opus Dei and is bound to be somebody’s cousin, niece, or nephew. Meritocracy is not the word for Spanish society. Most overused words - offer ( used 27 times as a verb and noun in about 2,000 words), enjoy, importante, (which is often translated into English as significant).

My guide also describes the main gay area, Chueca, without actually saying it is a gay area. It only refers to “subcultures” ( there are also a lot of trendy places nearby, but not actually really in Chueca). Gays offend Catholic fundamentalist sensibilities, along with poor people, socialists and immigrants.

While Eyan was tackling turgid sleep-inducing web-page prose,  I was tackling crossing the vast open plains of Spokane roads…  …how wide?

Our Barcelonean correspondent, Eyan, wants to know about the Microsoft Word selection of Synonyms for that naughty word:

Why isn’t toilet in the Word synonyms dictionary for British English? Are we being coy? Sweeping things under the carpet again?

I think it’s outrageous Toilet water and toilet block are there, but no toilet. What is a guy to do ? It’s there for US English, but not for British English.

I’m baffled,  I’ll have to rest in a room for a while to wonder whether the water closet (WC) should come out of the closet and declare itself a toilet 

The question from the man with the essential questions ‘what does chilling injury mean’? 

1. putting a bag of birdseye frozen peas on damaged muscle?
2. a wound that sends shivers up your spine because its sooooo icky?
3. other?

what?

our Barcelonean correspondent, Eyan, writes:

Sometimes I think my spelling skills may rival yours. After numerous attempts I had to look up archaeological. Yesterday I couldn’t pronounce clandestine correctly. My students said they would continue to use secret instead (similar words exist for both in Spanish).

remember,  tripple vowels are tricky for the spellingly challenged…

Eyan asks the essential questions:

Can you explain to me how come I managed to do 18 pages of translation last night (I stayed up most of it) and today I have only done four ?

In Spain, is translation a nocturnally inspired process?

Our Barcelonean correspondent,  Eyan, asks the essential questions:

What is a butt joint ?

a - a curious sexual position

b - a way of joining two pieces of wood together

c - a cigarette containing illegal substances smoked through the anus

Guest entry from Barcelonean WhitePrince.

I’ve taken minor editorial liberties.  This is risky given Eyan’s profession and my punctuatory skills.  I love the way Eyan captures frustrations of his everyday work, translating, and side-benefits:

It’s easy to get distracted when researching technogyl terminolgy and follow links to something totally unrelated. Today I have read about:

1. Queen Victoria and her offspring
2. London City Airport
3. Luxair (and edited some rather dodgy English in the Wikipedia entry)
4. Tony Blair’s woes in the Scottish by-election
5. A 19th century train crash in Northern Ireland
6. Stairway design get the work done. It takes longer than it should. I could bspoke German until she w

This week I’m eating Salemville Amish Blue cheese from Wisconsin.  It is moist, flavourful, crumbly and tongue-slitheringly creamy….

 Eyan reports that Microsoft Word losing 2 hours of his intellectual effort and a Gouda supper prefaced this rocky dream:

I was with my mother on the coast somewhere - the coasts were rather open and vast, somewhat influenced by photos I saw on Flickr.com. I climbed down a rocky ravine to get down to the beach (this is more influenced by the upper Algarve) My mother was urging me on. But, true to style, I got stuck and was in grave danger of falling off and breaking a good few bones.

After an evening scoffing meowmix; Matrix leapt out of a seamingly deep coma with this dramtically delivered dream report:

Meow meow meow MEOW meow MEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOW

Eyan’s kitty-stories,  to be taken daily with a large mug of tea for a sense of proportion….  

“Cats are watching tv.Cat tv emits a warm, orange-reddy light and it is viewed as closely as possible. “

“Woke with my ususal splutter.  Cats took this as a cue for an early morning feeding. We tried mutual underblanket comforting for an hour,  but it didn’t work. Couldn’t get back to sleep. They had a five am feeding instead. “

“Was gang-busted by intruders the other night. They persistently banged against my bedroom door until I let them in. They then forced me to share my bed with them. One was small, light-footed and purred quite a lot. The other was rather heavy and leaden-like on  your legs. “

“Any idea where my cats stand on the Wendy bounce scale ? There was serious activity this morning, especially after my “trance” alarm went off.”

“This morning’s bouncing activity involved pushing open the door which was ajar, walking round the bed with heavy footage, climbing along the pillow and sniffing hair, investigating a device on the floor which lit up and emitted sounds equivalent to a small discotheque playing illicit-substance-influenced sounds and general hyperactive mayhem (because we are HUNGRY)”

W

Surreal?

• Investigating eating Danish Blue cheese, while
• Reading about the WhitePrince’s Kitty’s orange-reddy TV watching habits, and
• Listening to his 2005 club mix, after having 
• Removed Kitty fur from keyboard spacebar

Laptop as food-tray, music system, communications device and kitty-fur magnets  …so versataile…

If life is surreal what’s the (space)bar for normality?

A special guest entry written, edited and coloured by language specialist Eyan (aka WhitePrince):

Now time to tell you my Gouda with Cumin seed dream before I go to bed:

It starts off with a Japanese boy being interviewed in a tv programme about a plane crash he was involved in. For the sake of clarity I think the Japanese boy is the author’s alter ego. He couldn’t be much further removed from the author’s ethnic profile, but there you go. As the interview progressed, images from the plane crash were shown, which, of course, then became a reality, or a dream reality let’s say. The Japanese boy was pinned to the back of his seat terrified as the plane was losing height very quickly. He was aware he was about to die. At this point the author chose to terminate the performance as he knows plane crashes are rather distasteful. He woke up breathless, but this was probably more due to dust mite allergy than anything  else.

From a scientific point of view - to what extent did the cheese have an effect on the subjects dreams ?

Things to be taken into consideration -

a - The subject is a regular air traveller. He has experienced some very intricate flying manoeuvres, especially in Iberia planes over the sea whilst coming in to land at Barcelona airport. Some pilots should understand that planes do not make u-turns like a stolen car would do when driven by tearaway teenagers.

b - He is a fan of Johan Grimonprez’s “Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/dial-history/, a art video film mainly about hijackings. He has seen it again twice recently at the Caixa Forum art centre http://portal1.lacaixa.es/Channel/Ch_Redirect_Tx?dest=1-38-00-00000. In the film there are interviews with hijack hostages. There are also Japanese in the film, both hostages and Red Army hijackers. For American sensibilities this is probably not a recommended film.

c- He suffers from allergies and asthma, so any dreams involving frightening, breath-taking situations may be attributable to this.

Hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you and goodnight.

Eyan wisely outlines a clear impact of waking life events and interests in dreams.  Waking life events have lead to my own investigations this week going awry heavily due to more

• fish-eating
• cheescake eating
• varied cheese intake.  (Roquefort bread, Brie, Cream cheese, Edam BabyBel).  Yummy!
• Abnormal alocohol consumption (mulled wine,  mud slides etc)

Wendy free-form-dream-diary-till-January

Third report of my cheese-dream intestigation. 

Eating phase (Cream cheese supper):

3/6 nights produced dreams.  Nothing vivid, lucid, outrageous.  Nothing where the content is even worth reporting or ‘unpubishable-ing’.

3/6 nights.  No dreams.  Pah!

WonderWoman had a similar experience with ‘Laughing Cow’ cream cheese:

“Despite slavering Laughing cow onto several begals, I have no dreams to report whatsoever. <unpublishable caveat>”

Decontamination phase (no cream cheese supper):  1 night. 1 forgettable dream.

Conclusion?

Rather like not eating a cheese supper at all. Pah!

Recommended for the unadventuous.  I’m beginning to suspect that soft cheeses are just not dream-tastic.

This week I’ll be eating Edam.

The WhitePrince, who is experimenting with coloured emails, reported yesterday that after eating Edam:

I dreamt we were in your kitchen, each making his or her own breakfast and talking about <unpublishable>. You filled your French-style coffee bowl with frothy hot milk and I ate my weetabix from a large white cutlery tray. You were displeased when I accidently put sugar on top of your frothy milk.

PRESSIES

I lurffff pressies

Today IS posty-present-prince-parent-parcel-’preciation day. Two parcels!!!

1)  The WhitePrince of Barcelona (aka Eyan girl-sort-your-’postrophes) mixed some Club-bub-bub-bub-bubbing CDs of ‘Pyjama non-classics’ that I’m listening to now.  NAUGHTY Lyrics.  UNPUBLISHABLE. 

D-D-D-Dancing

in the Wendy House toooooooonight!

2)  Christmas present with STRICT instructions not to open before December 25th.  Mumzie KNOWS how to taunt me!   

I’m way behind on making packages for the last Christmas post to Europe.  Planning for a creativity weekend followed by parcels to posty…  FUN!

Wendy D-D-D–Dancing-B-B-B-Bouncing