Sunday: Hili dialogue (and lagniappe)

September 13, 2015 • 6:30 am

It’s another cool day here, with a predicted high of only 72°F (I seem to recall that 70°F is optimal for human mental performance), though it will get hotter later in the week. On this day in history, Michelangelo began work on his statue of David (1501), Phineas Gage got a 1.1-meter-long crowbar blasted through his skull in a railroad accident (leading to early realization that brain damage affects personality), and Nikita Krushchev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR. Also, Ray Charles was born in 1918, the same year as my late dad. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making a pun:

Hili: I was always fascinated by the Fall.
A: The fall of what?
Hili: Whatever.

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In Polish:
Hili: Zawsze mnie fascynował upadek.
Ja: Upadek czego?
Hili: Czegokolwiek.
Malgorzata also sent a bonus picture of Hili and Cyrus racing each other in the orchard:
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And, as a further bonus we also have a Leon monologue; here he is with his staff Elzbieta:

Leon:  I’m acquiring curves.

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When I asked Malgorzata what that meant, she explained that “curves” is a Polish idiom that she had translated from Elsbieta’s Polish. Malgorzata:

When a girl grows into a woman you can say “She is getting curves”. When a woman (or a man) is getting too fat, you can say: “Oh, you are getting curves!” Here, Leon is getting rectangular, so he is getting a shape of the basket. In Polish we have the same word for “shape” and “curves” (but only in this meaning, otherwise we have a separate word for “curves”)

10 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue (and lagniappe)”

  5. Yes, I think then, I am getting curves… but I never did grow into a woman and I am long past puberty.
    A friend of mine who is seriously overweight told how the vet insisted he put his overweight dog on a diet.
    “But he was always hungry” he explained. We do often give in to our compulsions.
    Discipline Leon!

  6. I’m currently reading Jerry Coyne’s excellent book Why Evolution Is True. I know I’m kind of late to the party with this, but I hadn’t read the book yet so I’m finally reading it. I haven’t been able to put it down, and I recommend the book to anyone who has relatives or friends who might be skeptical of evolution, so far it’s the best book I’ve read on the subject.

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