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Saturday: June 14, 2008

Unidiomatic Spam

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:49 PM GMT-0500

When I see the subject-line “How to handle wild babies?”, I can’t help thinking of feral infants: an interesting concept for a horror movie, if it hasn’t already been done. (I’m not much interested in horror movies, so I wouldn’t know.) Presumably the spammers mean ‘wild babes’ and are just too incompetent to get even so simple a phrase as that right. The inappropriate question mark is another sign of generalized ineptitude.

Aphorism of the Day

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:37 PM GMT-0500

He sido para mí, discípulo y maestro. Y he sido un buen discípulo, pero un mal maestro.

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

(Antonio Porchia, Voices, tr. W. S. Merwin, 2003, pp. 86-7)

Oddly, though he provides the Spanish text on the left-hand pages and mentions the Buenos Aires editions of 1943 and 1966, Merwin never gives the Spanish title of the book. Was it perhaps Voces? Thanks to the web, that’s now an easy question to answer, and the answer is yes. There is a whole website devoted to Porchia’s work, with pictures of various editions and numerous quotations, apparently English only. Is the 3rd edition of Voces missing because a copy could not be located?