Friday: Hili dialogue (with Leon and Mietek)

December 20, 2019 • 6:30 am

Well, the Christmas holidays start in earnest at the end of today: it’s Friday, December 20, and few people will be going to work next week. Although the temperature in Chicago is cold today (29° F, -2° C), the weather is predicted to be extraordinarily warm early next week, with highs of almost 50° F (10° C)! We will not have a white Christmas, that’s for sure.

It’s National Sangria Day, an odd time of year to celebrate a chilled wine beverage, as well as National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day (I own none), Dot Your i’s Day (I’m not sure if that apostrophe should be in there, but I am punctilious about dotting that letter), Sacagawea Day (she is reported to have died on this day in 1812; see below), and International Human Solidarity Day.

Stuff that happened on December 20 includes the following:

  • 1606 – The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
  • 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.
  • 1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to attempt to secede from the United States.
  • 1924 – Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison.
  • 1946 – The popular Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life is first released in New York City.

Have a look at Mental Floss’s article, “25 Wonderful Facts about It’s a Wonderful Life“, which include the report that Cary Grant was originally set to star as George Bailey.  And here’s the very famous ending, beginning with George’s return to his “real” life. I defy you not to tear up, even if, like me, you’ve seen this a gazillion times:

  • 1955 – Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom.
  • 1987 – In the worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).
  • 1989 – The United States invasion of Panama deposes Manuel Noriega.
  • 2007 – Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, seven months and 29 days.

She’s now 93, and still rules the UK (and New Zealand!).

Notables born on this day were few, and include:

  • 1629 – Pieter de Hooch, Dutch painter (d. 1684)
  • 1881 – Branch Rickey, American baseball player and manager (d. 1965)
  • 1901 – Robert J. Van de Graaff, American physicist and academic, invented the Van de Graaff generator (d. 1967)
  • 1946 – Uri Geller, Israeli-English magician and psychic [JAC: “Faker” is more appropriate than “psychic”]

Those who bought the farm on December 20 include:

  • 1812 – Sacagawea, American explorer (b. 1788)

The Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark was reported to have died in 1812 of a fever, but also in 1884.

  • 1968 – John Steinbeck, American novelist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
  • 1971 – Roy O. Disney, American banker and businessman, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (b. 1893)
  • 1976 – Richard J. Daley, American lawyer and politician, 48th Mayor of Chicago (b. 1902)
  • 1996 – Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and cosmologist (b. 1934)
  • 2009 – Brittany Murphy, American actress (b. 1977)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is trying to be clever:

Hili: Life is a riddle.
A: What riddle?
Hili: I’ll give you three guesses.
In Polish:
Hili: Życie jest zagadką.
Ja: Jaką zagadką?
Hili: Zgadnij trzy razy.

Yesterday we learned that little Mietek broke his patella, and is in a cat cast. Today we have a picture sent in and captioned by Elzbieta. It shows Leon taking care of the injured kitten (nobody knows how he broke his patella; his staff noticed he was walking funny). The caption:

“The best nurse”:

In Polish: Najlepszy pielęgniarz.

Speaking of ugly Christmas sweaters, here are two doozies, especially the one on the right (from Jesus of the Day):

From the Cole and Marmalade cat site:

Matthew found this New Yorker cartoon:

And go see the header cartoon on today’s Far Side site. Flies!

Two tweets from reader Barry. Firsts, a guy playing fetch with a beluga whale. This is amazing!

A nice man helps a beaver carry an unwieldy stick across the road. This reaffirms my faith in humanity.

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. LaserCat doesn’t want his sleep interrupted:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1206211099802185731

This is the cutest cat picture of the month:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1206573238102433793

And four tweets from Dr. Cobb, beginning with the daily egress of fowl from Marsh Farm barn. The ducks and chickens are flying as Cuthbert, the dominant goose, presides.

LOOK AT THESE MONSTERS! Males can weigh between 1000 and 2500 pounds.

Only in Japan would somebody create this awesome room.

The automatic translator says this: “When you open the outlet … ? A small friend lives in my room. The third dwarf series. “Kubito’s secret base” All handmade miniature works. The production period is about 4 months. The making will continue to the comments section! ↓”

But a better translation is needed.

When you open the outlet … ? A small friend lives in my room. The third dwarf series. “Kubito’s secret base” All handmade miniature works. The production period is about 4 months. The making will continue to the comments section! ↓

 

This is what our “President” said two days ago in Michigan. Sound up to hear the inanity!

 

103 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue (with Leon and Mietek)”

  1. “Dot Your i’s Day (I’m not sure if that apostrophe should be in there, but I am punctilious about dotting that letter)”

    Ooooo, it is a delicious dilemma!…is there a “dot your j’s” day?

    Reply

  2. “She’s now 93, and still rules the UK (and New Zealand!).”

    She reigns but it’s centuries since British monarchs have “ruled”. 🙂

    Reply

  3. Branch Rickey, American baseball player and manager (d. 1965)

    Mr. Rickey was a marginal ballplayer and field manager at best. He made his mark in baseball’s front office, particularly as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, where he broke the Major League Baseball color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson, who made his big-league debut on opening day 1947.

    Reply

    1. I suspect it’s AwwwCats that is suspended. Probably re-posted someone’s copyrighted content and has been DCMA’d.

      Reply

  5. “Now you press it twelve times – the women tell me – again, you know – they give you four drops of water “

    … this would be OK for a character played by Dennis Hopper (RIP), in a film from the sixties, a la Easy Rider…

    Reply

    1. However, if one considers this seriously, he’s referring to consumption of water resources. This is not a trivial topic. People’s water shouldn’t get shut off for essential uses. There’s one use of water that is easily overused – lawns, landscaping, etc. Fortunately, there are hardy species that can do well in dry conditions. But these ideas seem to have slipped his mouth.

      Reply

      1. Indeed. He’s bitching about water-conserving appliances, etc.

        Trump’s basic message?:

        Fuck it. Only pointy-headed liberals think we need to conserve natural resources! Just drive your Hummer and don’t insulate your house and throw potable water on your lawn. No problem! Geeze! Like the good old days!

        Reply

        1. Also

          Just because the dishwasher advertisement shows a picture of the baked-on sludge coming off like magic doesn’t mean that it is plausible. There are fundamental limits to what this type of machine can do. Spoiler alert : rinsing by hand before loading will always help.

          Reply

          1. Or, train your spouse to hand wash (at least small loads). Less water, less energy, less noise, cleaner dishes, cleaner hands, less guilt, faster too.

  6. In Manhattan, that place behind the outlet would be described as a “cozy” studio apartment and rent for at least $2,500 a month.

    Reply

  7. “1606 – The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.”

    I’m picking this up as a theme of the recent Hili Dialogues – this will be interesting to get an intuitive idea of how long the project took…

    Reply

  8. On the Stellar’s Sea Lion:

    I’ve mentioned this here before; but this seems like a good place to say it again.

    A good friend of mine went to a museum in Telegraph Cove, BC (not too many people make it that far north on Vancouver Island). They had a display of a skull of a Grizzly Bear sitting side by side with a skull of a Stellar’s Sea Lion. My friend said you basically couldn’t tell them apart.

    A Stellar’s Sea Lion is a sea-going Grizzly Bear, pretty much.

    I’ve never kayaked near them (only near California Sea Lions, and they can be pretty intimidating too); but friends have; and they report that the Stellar’s Sea Lions swim up close to you, “yelling” at you, and rear up out of the water, above your head (your head height as sitting in your kayak). They said it was very intimidating.

    Reply

      1. Yes, lots of people confuse [or mis-correct] the spelling. It probably should by “Steller’s sea lion” as in Sleller’s jay” or the extinct Steller’s sea cow.

        Reply

    3. I think that he is *both* a dotard and a narcissist, and likely also a psychopath. He likely also wasn’t so bright to begin with, but I think he shows evidence of some form of geriatric dementia.

      Reply

  10. Why hasn’t “It’s A Wonderful Life” been re-done to modern standards… unless….[Google time]…? I can appreciate the filmmaking of it – everything, really- but it’s a sad truth that for a film back then to gain a new audience, there’s no way around a reboot.

    Reply

          1. They identify the old man in a wheelchair who stole $2000 and beat the crap out of him while singing Christmas carols. Satire on Copra’s saccharin style.

    2. To me, those who can’t get their head around a black-&-white film … are going to miss a lot of great films. Their loss.

      Reply

      1. A quote from a favourite B&W film.

        “ Pooka — from old Celtic mythology — a fairy spirit in animal form — always very large. The pooka appears here and there — now and then — to this one — and that one — a benign but mischievous creature — very fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?”

        Reply

        1. Hmmm, “Pooka” rings a bell. A bell of deep inauthenticity, which is not helped by getting hung up on Mr Wilson being Sgt Wilson’s daytime alter ego

          Reply

        2. Harvey’s a favorite of mine, too!

          One of my other favorites is what follows after “Get a grip on reality, man!”

          Reply

    1. “ Because the movie is no longer under copyright, any television station that can get its hands on a print of the movie can show it, at no cost, as often as it wants to. And that has led in the last decade to the rediscovery of Frank Capra’s once-forgotten film, and its elevation into a Christmas tradition. PBS stations were the first to jump on the bandwagon in the early 1970s, […]”

      -Roger Ebert (link above, published January 1, 1999)

      Reply

      1. Didn’t Disney (other media megacorps are available) get that copyright deadline extended for a century or three? Something to do with a mouse going out of copyright?

        Reply

  13. I could be the only person in the world who has not seen “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I’ve seen a few scenes here and there over the years, but never the whole thing. I often see Jimmy Stewart overacting. It always looked like a cheap B movie to me, even though I now know they spent a lot of money on sets. I now see it was released in 1946, the date of my birth (I can see you doing the quick math. Yes, that makes me nearly 40 now. Me and Jack Benny). So, maybe that’s the excuse I need to sit patiently through it.

    Reply

        2. Since Mr. Stempels beat me to the punch, cross my 3 out out and insert 4; but by the time I post this, my ranking may have been bumped to 6 or 7.

          Reply

          3. Well played. If it gets any more crowded in here we’ll have to move out of the closet. 😎

  15. Random thoughts on today’s post:

    An apostrophe is used when pluralizing a lower case letter of the alphabet or a typographic symbol, or an abbreviation that combines upper and lower case letters. As far as I know, these are the only exceptions. So mind your p’s & q’s, remember to use @’s in email address, and if you need something to do when you retire, go back to school and get a couple more PhD’s.

    There’s an English band named Van der Graaf Generator who formed the year the man died; unfortunately, they misspelled his name, but they’re still around.

    Sm I the only person in the world who dislikes It’s A Wonderful Life?

    Reply

    2. EA: Re. It’s a Wonderful Life, for you there is Rare Exports. Here’s the prequel. You can find plenty of trailers on YT, as well as the whole film. Nobody does dark and sweet like the Finns.

      Reply

      3. Thank you. I found a copy online that I’ve already downloaded and will probably watch tomorrow (Sunday). I think one of the reasons I don’t like IAWL is that of all the religious constructs, I find angels the most absurd.

        Reply

  19. What the heck are the menacing growls in the video of the man helping the beaver carry the branch? Beavers don’t make vocalizations like that. Sounds like the growls angry lions — or Steller sea lions.

    As for the Steller sea lions on the boat, I’ll call them Captain and Tennille.

    Reply

    1. Beaver, stick & man helper ‘growls’. It’s the audio buggered up, [perhaps by the conversion to a Twitter-suitable format] – in the below video you can hear what is going on: “19-year old Bavarian good Samaritan Alex Oswald helping a beaver carry a large branch across the road because he was worried the animal might get run over while struggling to relocate the branch itself” – meanwhile Alex’ two friends in the car wind the window down, comment in German & cackle merrily:

      https://youtu.be/wPzmCQkFbEE

      Reply

  22. In respect to Carl Sagan, a timeless quote that is nevertheless timely (from Wikipedia):

    “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

    Sagan, Carl. Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Balantine Books (1996) p. 25.

    Reply

    1. That’s very depressing to read. We are entering an era of authoritarianism and plutocracy. I only hope people have sense enough to recognize it.

      Reply

          2. I once helped transport a HUGE Great Dane puppy named Marmaduke ( with his mother, Margaret) when I was volunteering with a dog rescue. Marmaduke tried to get in the front seat while I was driving on the highway. A very sweet boy, but BIG.

          3. Should have had him in harness – save fuel & no sloppy face licks [wipers on & wear goggles against flying drool though]. Did you get the Marmaduke cartoon in the Americas?

          4. Oh, yes. I loved the cartoon! I actually had a pooch fence across the back of my CRV (for my Currie). Marmaduke started off back there and Margaret in the back seat. (Currie wasleft home). Marmaduke somehow breached the fence and ended up in the back seat with his mom. All ended well. I would have loved to have kept the pair, but it might all have been a bit much🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾+ 2😻

  23. The machine translation’s pretty accurate for the Japanese tweet, except for the kubito part.

    It should read kobito (same word translated as “dwarf” earlier). It’s in kana here, but in kanji it’s written with “small” and “person” 小人, and can mean a literally small person (like a child) or a figuratively small person (the opposite of ‘being the bigger man’). More relevant to the topic, it is also the term used to describe Issun Boushi　一寸法師 (roughly, “1 inch boy”), a fairy tale character very similar to Tom Thumb.

    Open the outlet and there…

    A small friend lives in my room.

    Third in the kobito series.

    「Kobito’s secret base.」

    All the miniatures are handmade.
    It took about 4 months to make.

    I’ll describe the making in the comments.

    The immediately subsequent comment:

    「If I’m small, couldn’t I make a secret base in the wall~」 from that crazy idea this work was born. With a glowing television and blinking wifi router, everything is a handmade miniature.

    Ahh, to live in such a secret hideout~

    Incidentally, I made the wall, too.

    (Looking at the pictures, he means the wall/floor are part of the model — it’s not actually installed in a real wall.)

    Reply

  24. There are reports that the Beluga whale escaped from a Russian compound. The Russians were training it to do something
    — probably to spy. That’s why it’s habituated to humans.

    Reply

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