Quinn O'Hara

            On Wednesday morning I published on my Christian's Translations blog my translation of "En rire de peur d'être obligée d'en pleurer" (No Good Crying it's Best to Choose Laughter Always) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I'll start learning his song "Rupture au miroir" (Crack in the Mirror).

            When I went into the bedroom to get my guitar I killed a bedbug that was crawling towards the crack at the upper right corner of the old exit door at the head of my bed. When school is over in December I'm going to buy some poly-fila and refill all the cracks in that door. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had to ride to English in the World class in the rain and arrived there with a wet ass. 

            Frank Cui was the MC. 

            His panel's theme was Europe's expanding circles. 

            In Frank's presentation he claimed that the way the European Union speaks English is partially responsible for Brexit. 

            The standard language for the EU is British English. But the speech contains different loan words, new definitions, and suffixations. "Comitology" is a word used to mean committee procedure. Uncountable nouns like "precisions" and verbs like "to precise". EU English is not a good tool for communication with English speakers. The EU are meddling bureaucrats. This is horrible to the Brits. 

            I asked if there are actual British reactions that he could quote but he just said that he'd read about a general reaction. He admitted that he was exaggerating. 

            Chuanqi asked why the Irish don't mind. Frank says they are not as attached. 

            I doubt very much if the English really care about a few words of EU committee jargon that it has developed for practical purposes and I certainly don't think it contributed to Brexit. Even within Britain there are wider divergences from standard English than in the tiny EU English vocabulary. The French are actually more offended by EU English than the English. 

            Gianpaolo presented on English in Italian soccer. Modern vs folk football. It's called calcio in Italy and it has been around from medieval times. English replaces Italian in the press. Italian soccer is battling with English infrastructure. Cristiano Rinaldo going Hollywood. Equating calcio with English.

            The Earth Sciences building has bad internet at the moment. It causes the presentations to stall because we were required to upload them to the internet first. 

            Emily's presentation was on Saving the Icelandic language from Digital extinction. Icelandic is a minority language in the digital world. Immigrants now make up 10% of the population. People are not reading the old texts. The government should require that immigrants learn Icelandic and help them do so. 

            I said I read about this problem twenty years ago and remember hearing that Iceland was imposing Icelandic words on outside products like Microsoft's Windows using a name based on a word for a transparent fish skin. I think that this is more of a fear than a reality. Icelandic is not really an endangered language because it continues to be the first language from childhood of most members of every generation. Most immigrants want to learn the language but some find the instruction inadequate. A significant percentage of immigrants do speak Icelandic adequately. The number of speakers is not shrinking. 

            Sviatoslav's presentation was on Ukrainians studying online since the Russian invasion. English serves as a mediator between teachers and children. Higher education too. There is a global network for study while Russia is invading. English is helpful. There are special programs for Ukrainians but in English. Not knowing English is an obstacle. 

            Yana's presentation was on the main challenge of English in the Eurovision contest when Ukrainian contestants compete. The Ukraine is an expanding circle country with an expanding circle accent. The lyrics of the songs when using English uses specificity of rhyme with simple construction of stable expressions. She clicked around and showed YouTube videos to illustrate her point but even her recorded voice was not very loud and it was hard to follow her argument. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I've been at that time in eight days. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 16:30. 

            I wrote the exit slip survey for today's class. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45. 

            I copied and pasted the material from the English in the World Week 2 slides into my lecture notes. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 25 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Both Jethro and Granny are obsessed with watching "The Weather Miss" on television. Jethro hurries to watch because he has a crush on her and Granny is glued to her broadcast because she likes to yell at her for being wrong. Granny thinks she can hear her because the TV is always asking her if she's tired and run down. Jed suggests that they call up the Weather Miss to let her know she's wrong when she says the weather will be fine tonight. 

            Meanwhile Granny starts teaching Elly May the art of predicting the weather. She shows her that her pet bobcat's fur is sticking up bushy and that he's been licking against the grain. Also if a rooster crows before he goes to bed he'll wake up with a soggy head. Cat's sneezing, dogs eating grass, sheep turning their backs to the wind, wolves howling before sundown, ants banking up the dirt around their holes, tree leaves turned to show their underside, bullfrogs turn dark ten or twelve hours before it rains, but the surest sign it's going to rain is when she opens her weather beetle's matchbox to the air and he turns on his back to kick up his legs. 

            Jed finds out that the Weather Miss doesn't predict the weather but he got the number of the head of the weather bureau. Jed calls him and he says, "I am Justin Addison". Jed says, "Don't feel bad about that. I'm just a Clampett." Granny argues with Addison until he hangs up on her. 

            Jed talks to Drysdale about Addison and Drysdale knows him. He says his father was a pioneer meteorologist and Justin has always lived in his shadow. He takes him to see him. Jed persuades Addison to come to the house with a movie about weather prediction. But afterwards Granny still says it's going to rain. It suddenly does, and after that Addison starts using Granny's weather beetle. In the end he looks at the portrait of his father and suddenly notices in his hand that he had a weather beetle too. 

            The Weather Miss was played by Quinn O'Hara, who was born in Scotland and moved to Quebec as a teenager. She was crowned Miss Scotland in 1960. In 1963 she began dating teen idol Fabian. In 1969 she was on The Dating Game and won a trip to Nepal. She co-starred in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and appeared in several beach party movies. She became a real estate agent and then a nurse working with senior citizens. 

           

            

           I searched for bedbugs and found none.