Thursday: Hili dialogue

December 14, 2017 • 6:30 am

Good morning: it’s a cold Thursday, December 14 (2017) in Chicago (18°F, -8°C), and it’s National Bouillabaisse Day, celebrating a dish I’ve never had. It’s also World Monkey Day (a holiday previously unknown to me), which, according to Wikipedia, “celebrates monkeys and all things simian, including other non-human primates such as apes, tarsiers, and lemurs.” But they’re gonna throw in tarsiers and lemurs, they should have called it World Primate Day.

On this day in 1542, Princess Mary Stuart became Mary, Queen of Scots, executed at age 44. On December 14, 1782, the Montgolfier brothers of France launched their first test flight of an unmanned hot air balloon, which rose nearly 2 km. A manned flight with brother Étienne was to come a year later. On this day in 1900, Max Planck presented his theoretical derivation of the law of black body radiation; this marked the beginning of quantum mechanics.  In 1911, Roald Amundsen’s team of four became the first humans to reach the South Pole. On December 14, 1940, plutonium (isotope P-238) was first isolated at Berkeley, California.  And on this day in 1964, in the case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States,  the Supreme Court ruled that congress could overturn racial segregation on the basis of the the Constitution’s “commerce clause.” Finally it was on this day five years ago that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred in Newtown, Connecticut; 27 people died, not including gunman Adam Lanza. These included 20 students, six teachers, and Lanza’s mother. Lanza killed himself when police arrived.

Notables born on this day include Tycho Brahe (1546), Jimmy Doolittle (1896), Spike Jones (1911), Don Hewitt (1922, founder of 60 Minutes), Lee Remick (1935), and Vanessa Hudgens (1988). Those whose metabolisms ceased on this day include George Washington (1799), Louis Agassiz (1873), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1953, read her novel The Yearling, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939), Walter Lippmann (1974), Roger Maris (1985), Myrna Loy (1993), Orval Faubus (1994), W. G. Sebald (2001) and Peter O’Toole (2013).

If you don’t know Spike Jones, he’s shown than explained, so here he is with “Cocktails for Two.” Jones is the guy wearing the straw boater. Be sure to watch most of it: the vocal bit starting at 1:38 is great.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s dialogue is a bit arcane again, so I asked Malgorzata to explain:

Cyrus heard us talking about the division of labour and became interested what it was, so he asked Hili what was meant by the term. Hili, who cannot admit that there is anything she doesn’t know, came up with the answer from her own experience: she is thinking (or pretending to) while Cyrus is growling (the only labour he is capable of).

That said, here’s the dialogue:

Cyrus: What is the social division of labor?
Hili: Some are thinking and some are growling.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Co to jest społeczny podział pracy?
Hili: Jedni myślą, drudzy warczą.

Out in Winnipeg, we have a new photo of Gus with his staff’s caption:

The self satisfied look of someone who has done all his Christmas shopping….

From reader Barry. This is, of course, my Big Dream. He even kisses the lion cub!

From Matthew:

https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/940603589571039233

Grania found these tweets:

And the original tweet:

Here’s a great cat tweet:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/940915747576078341

And another: a demanding cat who needs a human hand to drink water:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/940095108656939008

21 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. According to the food website you linked to it is also the birthday of Nostradamus –
    “he also published ‘Excellent er Moult Utile Opuscule a tous necessaire qui desirent avoir connaissance de plusieurs exq uises recettes’ (‘An excellent and most useful little work essential to all who wish to become acquainted with some exquisite recipes’).”

  2. That was a striking paragraph of events – with Planck and them – with a terrible ending…

    2. The thing about terrible endings is that there will always be a worse one coming own the line – human competitiveness bing what it is.
      In fact, hasn’t the Sandy Hook body count been topped at least twice since?
      I’m not going to waste my breath on incredible dreams like there being meaningful gun control. Hell, there will be enough “one good guy with a gun” before that happens!

  4. Hard to believe Roy Moore lost with such talented people. These people think they know the constitution? Guess he missed that part about no religious test.

    Cyrus and Hili discussing division of labor. Now that would be science fiction.

  5. Sir, you are in error! In the photo clip of Spike Jones’ Band, Spike is clearly the gentleman in the right foreground with the viola, not the mad in the boater.

    We must not mis-educate the new generations.

  8. And on this day in 1964, in the case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that congress could overturn racial segregation on the basis of the the Constitution’s “commerce clause.”

    Thus initiating the line of cases that includes the one argued last week involving the homophobic wedding-cake baker.

  9. While this version of Cocktails for Two is quite faithful to the standard recorded version, the interjection of “giggity giggity” around :52 was changed to “yakkity yakkity.” I bring this up only because Seth Macfarlane of Family Guy adopted the original “giggity giggity” as the catchphrase for Quagmire, the character who is Peter Griffin’s neighbor and unrelenting horndog on that show.

  10. Thanks for that last cat video. One of our cats, Brio, is fascinated by water running in the bathroom sink but just stares at it. I am going to try the “helping hand” trick and see if he gets it. Perhaps he has just been waiting for me to “get it” all along!

  11. Human finger: The Flavor Enhancer!

    That snippet of Jake Tapper’s interview was hilarious. I can’t remember ever seeing anyone so perplexed and humiliated.

  12. The “Real Men are Kind to Animals” melted my heart.

    Roy Moore’s campaign spokesman: holy crap! How is he an “elected official”?!

Comments are closed.