Reading etc.

Valentine

14 February, 2005
Posted in: Reading etc.

What kind of girl would be pleased to have dedicated to her a song with the following lines:

I don’t want clever conversation,
I never want to work that hard.
I just want someone that I can talk to, I want you just the way you are.”

Dump Mr. Joel, he’s no good for you.

Comments

poggle on 15 February 2005 at 11:24

Yup – I always thought that too. Besides, it’s Billy Joel – who looks like a toad.

Floatykatja on 15 February 2005 at 16:50

Although originally it was the walrus of love himself – Mr Barry White.
Somehow I find that song less offensive when Barry sings it. Why is that?

poggle on 15 February 2005 at 16:51

Because it’s Billy Joel … Katja. Ol’ toad-face. The walrus beats the toad every time …

Floatykatja on 15 February 2005 at 17:35

I don’t think I actually know what Billy Joel looks like. Sounds like that’s probably just as well.
The Walrus of Love beats pretty much everyone every time though. He is a luurve god.

belgianwaffle on 16 February 2005 at 21:32

Yes, Mike, it is distinctly odd. Floaty, did you invent the Walrus of Love, if so you deserve a medal and, funnily enough, I see what you mean. Pog, I agree, Billy Joel is a bit toad faced and of course he is very short as well.

Floatykatja on 16 February 2005 at 21:35

Waffle, I wish I had invented it, but unfortunately I cannot claim ownership. It is quite fantastically descriptive, though, isn’t it?!

Oliver James in the Observer

13 February, 2005
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Reading etc.

Mr. Waffle says he will write to him and ask him to stop torturing me. Otherwise Mr. Waffle will horsewhip him.Â My hero.

Comments

jackdalton

on 13 February 2005 at 15:40

If you had a dog this sort of thing wouldn’t happen….

Friar Tuck

on 14 February 2005 at 05:13

He’s obviously a momma’s boy.
BTW, great two-liner.

belgianwaffle

on 16 February 2005 at 21:35

Mr. Waffle still hasn’t written to Mr. James. But I have bought him a horsewhip. And maybe we should get a dog..

Bookclub book

8 February, 2005
Posted in: Reading etc.

” Thank you for the messages! I just wanted to let you know that I will probably have to skip this book. Unfortunately my English is not so good to cope with a “fake 18th century slang”. There are too many words that are not even in a dictionary and the whole exercise, given the size of the book, becomes extremely difficult for me.”

Email from existing founder member (TM)Â to new member “Here’s the info. It’s a v.long book, by the way.”

On the plus side, the publishing exec has sent me an exclusive article on how the author gets his ideas, so not all bad. I just wish he
had fewer of them.

A small prize will be available, if you correctly guess the book we have chosen to read.

Comments

Friar Tuck

on 10 February 2005 at 21:28

I’ll take a stab at it…
Is it The Oxford English Dictionary?

belgianwaffle

on 12 February 2005 at 15:39

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Pshaw. It was David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas”

Sarcophagic sonnet

5 February, 2005
Posted in: Reading etc.

“I gaze upon thy paled face
Soon to be entombed in somnolence divine,
O that the knobbed fingers of Death did ever embrace thy soule
And caress thy beauteous form to nature!
I cannot strew thy grave with fragrant petals,
O my love.
For thou encoffin’d and embalmed
In satin shrouds are not to me beloved”

If you’re good, I’ll give you another verse next week. Or would you prefer a couple of lines from “I breathe Byron”?

Comments

Friar Tuck

on 05 February 2005 at 17:46

That’s very, ummm, sonnetty.

belgianwaffle

on 06 February 2005 at 20:26

ChaOtic, too much effort…
FT, um, yes.

poggle

on 07 February 2005 at 16:21

I especially like the ‘knobbed fingers of death’.
And ‘thy paled face’- oooh – new word!
The sentiment is wonderful – ‘I don’t love you now you’re dead’.
More, please.

belgianwaffle

on 12 February 2005 at 15:42

Well, we’ll see…

Belgian colour supplements

1 February, 2005
Posted in: Belgium, Reading etc.

Le Soir had a sex supplement on Saturday. I ask you. In colour.

I was perusing an article and asked my loving spouse “What does “partouze” mean?

An orgy. I actually had to look it up.

You mean you didn’t know?

No.

And you are talking to our daughter in French, how will she ever learn proper French, if you don’t know the word for orgy?

(Pause) I’ll leave that for you to decide.

And then there was an interview with Claire, parisienne, who throws orgies. She is described as being, and I quote “adepte du ‘night fucking at home'”.

Me: Isn’t it odd given the variety of French vocabulary in relation to sex that they use an English expression?

Comments

Bobble

on 01 February 2005 at 23:47

I am sure they are Mr & Mrs Waffle. After all the dreaded e-word had to be got rid of (email).

dmts

on 02 February 2005 at 08:44

I love that.

poggle

on 02 February 2005 at 11:25

Well, farque me!

Friar Tuck

on 02 February 2005 at 17:47

Gaaa! My eyes, my eyes!
But seriously, in Italy I saw a whole section of jeans labeled “F**king Jeans”. I wondered why you need special jeans for that activity?

lauren35

on 02 February 2005 at 21:31

as opposed to ‘day f***ing’ then?

Bobble

on 02 February 2005 at 23:25

Italians unlike the dear French are lazy buggers (speaking as one myself). We just add an Italian article and you have a suitable word. Lo Shopping, Il Weekend, Lo Sport, Il Cinema, Il Bar. Easy.

belgianwaffle

on 05 February 2005 at 14:53

Beth, you are so right, there’s a reason why you Americans rule the world.
Bobble, you have to admire the Italians delightful indifference to this kind of thing.
HJB, we aim to please.
Pog, I doubt that’s what the academie will go for.
Lauren, you have this in Paris also?
FT, sorry…

Sick again, eh?

30 January, 2005
Posted in: Princess, Reading etc.

Herself has a cough. We were all up all night. She is very sorry for herself and keeps saying “poor me, poor mite, cough, cough”. She has also observed “Mummy sick, Daddy sick”. Yes, we’re all coughing. This morning while I had my shower, Mr. Waffle minded her. I came out to find him curled up in a ball on the floor beside the playpen wherein the Princess sat poking him and saying imperiously “plasticene”. We’re all tired too.Nothing daunted, the Princess and I went off to mass (“church ‘n Jesus ‘n Mary ‘n Joseph”). On our way there, we passed the synagogue. There is always a policeman with a machine gun across the road from the synagogue but today, the place was crawling with police and plain clothes types with things stuck in their ears. I asked a policewoman who was fiddling with the strap on her submachine gun what was going on. Apparently there was a special service for the 60th anniversary of the holocaust. Is it not a bit depressing that 60 years after the holocaust the Jewish community in Belgium needs half the Brussels police force out to protect them when going to the synagogue?

And while we’re on the subject, I note that the Irish President said something spectacularly stupid when speaking of the holocaust (which is not all like her). I quote from that organ of record, the Irish Examiner “Speaking on RTÃ‰Â’s Morning Ireland programme on Thursday, ahead of attending the Auschwitz remembrance ceremony in Poland, Mrs McAleese said Â“They [the Nazis] gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational and outrageous hatred, for example, of Catholics.Â” ”

Oh good grief. She has at least had the good sense to abjectly apologise.

Comments

poggleon 31 January 2005 at 11:46

I must add that, in my view extremely rarely for a politician, she did sound genuinely contrite.