oh, the irony …
13 Thursday Sep 2007
Category Archives: culture
good book/bad book
07 Friday Sep 2007
Posted in books & writing, culture
So like, what’s the criteria?
Earlier today I was having a bit of a debate about the merits of The Catcher in The Rye over at Ration Reality and it got me thinking about how we personally judge the books we read. And also how we justify our opinions if someone else disagrees with them.
You see, I started thinking that it requires more of a reason – or at least a debatable reason – to explain why you dislike a book, especially if you really hate it, than if you simply like and enjoy a book. Like me and The Da Vinci Code, for example. I mean, I know I could write a seriously critical review of that piece of shit without resorting to simply bad-mouthing it and saying it sucks. 😉
But it seems much more difficult to explain why you like a book and get that sense of it across to others … especially if they hold negative opinions about it. I’m not sure how you can debate that.
What are your thoughts on this?
in ur reality
05 Wednesday Sep 2007
Posted in animals & pets, art, culture, geekiness, humour
what? no virgin chicken?
01 Saturday Sep 2007
Posted in culture, food & drink, humour, language, politics
Whadda bunch of spoil sports!
I can’t tell you how many times a perfectly normal evening out for a couple of tapas has turned into a total knee-slapping giggle fest when some well-meaning waiter provides us with a menu in English. I half suspect they do these wonky translations on purpose, but it’s great fun and always adds to our enjoyment. But apparently the Chinese think differently …
China dishes up menu translations
China is taking action on the English translations of its restaurant menus in its campaign to brush up the country’s image for next year’s Olympics.
The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of 2,753 dishes and drinks it thinks could do with a wording rethink.
Translations such as “virgin chicken” for a young chicken dish and “burnt lion’s head” for pork meatballs are confusing for foreigners, it says.
This is so totally wrong!!! In fact, people would end up ordering all those weirdly named things just so they could tell people ‘back home’ that they’d tried them. And anyhow, there is something rather charming about not being overly slick and being seen as having taken a stab at writing an English menu but not giving it too much importance. Because the important thing should be the food and the ‘ambientation’ (one of my favourite Spanglish words, found on a humourously mistranslated sign).
I feel quite sorry for all those visitors who are going to miss out on this simple pleasure by receiving only government approved menus.
You can click on the Belching 
menu to get a better look at it.
bullfighting
29 Wednesday Aug 2007
Posted in animals & pets, culture, television
No death in the afternoon: state TV axes bullfights
I have very mixed feelings about bullfighting. I’ve never gone to one, though part of me is tempted by the traditional ‘ambientation’. But I don’t think I’d do well watching the ritual slaying because the only time I ever saw one on television I burst into tears.
On the other hand, I would feel hypocritical denouncing bullfighting since I eat meat. And although I try to buy free range as much as possible I know that animals raised on factory farms suffer much worse and much longer than the bull in the ring. The basic life story of a fighting toro is that it is lives like a king for 3-5 years with plenty of fresh air, good food and exercise, then puts up a fifteen-minute fight for its life and is killed relatively quickly. And as far as I know, afterwards the meat is usually sold to be eaten.
I think not showing the fights on TV in the afternoons is probably a good thing, though as the article says, it’s only being banned by the state television – the regional public broadcasters will continue showing them. But although I personally find bullfighting distasteful I can’t bring myself to say it should be banned altogether.
What do you think?
