From David Byrne's
jorunalThere are 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in the human body. That means we are basically a means for bacteria to become mobile, to complete their life cycles and to procreate. We think they are living off us, but it is we who are living for them.
Uff da! There I said it. I got it out of my system. I am moving to Minneapolis and starting a new job.
Uff da! I am packing my house and cleaning it.
Uff da! I am selling the house and winding down at work.
Uff da!What is surprising is how this little word expresses annoyance, joy, excitement, wonder. English has some equivalents, but I don't know if they are all rolled into a single expression. It would be interesting in trying to discover them.
"Wow" doesn't seem to express the annoyance except in a sarcastic tone. "Ahh!" and "Oy!" don't seem to do it either. The ubiquitous and extremely versatile "Fuck!" isn't socially acceptable; "Uff da!" is.
I am searching. Hm... um... er... I will keep you posted.
Uff da!Labels: Uff da
Know Your Onion!
How the Hell did I know about a diet fad from
Horace "The Great Masticator" Fletcher, a guy responsible for a craze of eating food by chewing ot 32 times, including liquids? I didn't realize that he became a millionaire with an eventual palazio in Venice.
I also knew that graham crackers were suppose to reduce carnal urges. I did not know that the some guy that created it also thought that ketchup and mustard induced insanity or that most modern "graham crackers" are instead made mostly of the refined, bleached white flour to which the Rev. Graham was implacably opposed. At least so says the wikipedia.
On the other hand, I was also dead wrong about Fugue being a German word. I should have known better : [Origin: 1590–1600; < F < It fuga < L: flight]
Weather in Minneapolis today was listed as the worst in the country. wow.
While watching television this afternoon I watched a special on Dragons on
the [H]itler channel. An
anthopologist on the show postilutes that dragons are universal to human cultures. The large number of Google hits for the term "dragon" is given as proof. This seemed ridiculous as proof to universalism, especially since their search was limited to matches in English. Nonetheless, I thought to compare to a few other words :
So, a large number of hits indicates that these are cultural universals?
Oh, I'm not sure what this means, if anything but it seemed strange, there were more hits for holocaust than for Nazis....
Anyways, the write up of the show had this synopsis:
A spirited exploration of the history, science, and legend of the world's most notorious beast--the dragon, the best-known creature that never was. Throughout history, dragons influenced wars, science, art, and religion. They appear in almost every culture and many still believe in dragons. How could different cultures, isolated by geology and millennia, all invent the same creature? If the dragon is simply the product of our imagination, how could distant peoples, with no knowledge of each other, all invent the same beast? One of the reasons dragons are a perennial favorite is that even though they are the ultimate predator and antagonist, it's also fun to identify with them. In the end, we want to be the dragon as much as we may want to slay the dragon.
The science of something that doesn't exist? You'd think a show like this would have some quotes by Joseph Campbell.... sadly, you'd be wrong.
