I STILL WANT A tiny Norwich or cairn terrier, but I don't know when it's ever going to happen...
I'm trying to get my life in focus by brushing up these languages to university-entrance standard.
I tell myself that if I don't do it the weeks will fly past anyhow and nothing will be done.
The trick is to use the time wisely and constructively. So I've had to construct a course of my own where I find Youtube reports in German and French, watch through them. Usually I have a good gist of what was said. I listen again, sentence by sentence, word by word. Every word I am not 100% sure of ~ or that I understand (passive vocabulary) yet would not think of using (active vocabulary) I add it to my list... Next I have to watch the video through once more, the new words fall in place. Ideally I would compose some sort of essay using this new vocabulary. This is how most language courses work. I'm just going to have to be disciplined enough to push myself through.
I've been floating over French and German blogs, but, in German especially, haven't the confidence to comment...
It's a shame the "civilized" regulations of modern society mean it would be difficult to take a doggie to college ... I thin I'm going to have to sacrifice the furry swine ~ not an OSPCA-type animal sacrifice... well y'know what I mean.
As it is I'm depressed. I'm tired. It's dark already. The day has flown past. Close to midnight already. I have learning to do...
NORWICH TERRIER CARE: Look at the poor little swine enduring all this:
It's their favourite word ~ most doggies insist on yapping it out at least 25 times a day (or more) ~ it's what we used to call the little furries when I was little: ro-ros...
All these trotterdonkey little mop-heads are cairns or cairn crosses... third from bottom I suspect the lighter one to be a West Highland cross... (West Highland terriers were originally white cairns; now of course a separate breed...)
Earlier this evening I heard a manic yapping and forgot myself and thought "that's my cairn terrorizer... I will have to go out and grab it by the ears drag it indoors and make it shut up!" Look at this tiny terrier trotting down the road for a yap. He is so furry I just want to pick 'im up, stash 'im under my arm and dash off:
I love the scruffy look of cairnies... If you put round glasses on this one, he would look like a furry mad professor!
"Grrrgh!"
This is a cairn and a cairmal (cairn/Maltese terrier cross) having a savage on the rug:
Conversation between old furry married couple: "Ro" "Ro!" "Ro-ro ~" "Ro-ro-ro-ro-ro!"
THIS clip is so hilarious I laughed out loud for the first time in ages... it's not the dog who's funny, it's Paul O'Grady reading out viewers' letters... Paul O'Grady, used to do the best teatime show on TV... until Channel 4 inexplicably axed it... now we have to put up with ITV1's dreadful Alan Titmarch Show on ITV1, which Alan Titmarch seems to think is amazing.... The best thing about Paul O'Grady's show was his dogs, Buster the shitzu cross (too posh for me) and Olga the cairn terrier, who sat on the desk like weary balls of fur, oblivious to most goings-on... Here we see Olga sniffing a knitted poo as Mr O'Grady reads out letters from the viewers to the audience's uproarious giggles and guffaws...
MARIANNE FAITHFULL, interviewed in 1978 when she was still bang-on drugs of many descriptions, talks to a British TV interviewer about her wayward existence, "low boredom threshold and dilettanteism" and admits her life had been (to that point at least) a disaster:
MARIANNE FAITHFULL, ANITA PALLENBERG ON ROBERT FRASER Famous art dealer to the "smart set"who lived in the fast lane and died when "only" 49..! And doesn't former 1960s "actress-model" Anita Pallenberg (whose career highlight was a longrunning affair with Keith Richards) look rough!?!..
I MET some Scottish people I know today and they said if I get a doggie I should go for a tiny terrier... like this golden cairn terrier pictured.
I know it's really sad but I still want a dog. Even though I shouldn't really keep one.
My only problem with a small dog would be, I would want to take it walkies everywhere I go, but would be compelled to leave it tied up outside supermarkets, druggieservice appointments etc... where I would be absolutely terrified the poor thing might get STOLEN. Doggieknapping is increasingly common these days. If I could, I would like to train the tiny trotter to curl up contentedly in a backpack with the zip half drawn... but knowing my luck, right in the middle of Morrisons the little swine would get the scent of freshly roast chicken, do a bound over the glass counter and start savaging the legs of the poor Indian gentleman who works there... Ooer!
The other sort of tiny terrier I like, in fact as small dogs go this these, in looks at least, are exactly what I think is cutest, are GLEN OF IMAAL terriers. Look at these tiny trotterdonkies here!
Bear in mind, before y'all accuse me of fickleness, that I said there are THREE types of doggies I like best. 1: large wolf-like dogs (Akitas) 2: medium-sized mop-head dogs (some water dogs, Disney-style mutt dogs) and 3: tiny terriers esp. Glen of Imaal or Cairn type. So there you have it.
And now we're on to the pesky Icelandic volcano that has brought flight chaos to the entire continent of Europe. Today the Royal Navy are cruising to Calais, northern France which if you're from faraway shores I suppose you wouldn't know is the traditional sea-gateway to Britain (via Dover)... where THOUSANDS of British businessmen, tourists, hen-and-stag partiers... etc etc have trekked by hire car, train (the trains are doing great business ~ you cannot get a Eurostar seat Paris-London till Thursday earliest)... one woman on the news even claimed to have spent 2500 Euros to travel in style from southern Spain to Northern France, where she is still stuck for lack of boat space...
This is all due to an enormous, mostly invisible (by the time it gets to British airspace) cloud of volcanic dust. Civil aviation authorities insist this dust could melt inside jet engines causing jumbo jets to fail and crash... and yet British Airways' chief exec, to name just one, claims to have been on an explorotary flight two hours into the Atlantic from London Heathrow in a jumbo jet... and NO DAMAGE AT ALL... which makes me wonder what's ACTUALLY happening.
All I do know is literally 100s of 1000s of people of all nationalities are stuck all over the globe unable to return home. Weddings are having to be cancelled... exams missed. Utter chaos. Not nice.
And all down to one irritable mountain over a thousand miles away!!
Here's some lovely close-ups of the eminently pronouncable Eyjafjallajökull spewing luminous tomato soup everywhere:
This report from Russian State television (in English)
And last but not least, in the current yawnsome general election SOMETHING INTERESTING appears to be happening at last...
Over the decades, British politics has transformed from a staunch class war, with hard left/hard right at it undoing years of one another's work in successive governments to a much more American-style system where the parties vary less on a communist-capitalist basis than a newer (to us) liberal-illiberal axis... People are totally and utterly fed up with New Labour, who amongst other things actually had the cheek to pass laws allowing motorists to be fined for parking violations weeks afterwards, if local councils happen to film the unauthorized parking on CCTV. I don't know why, because I don't even drive, but this really takes the biscuit for me. The relentless harrowing away at civil liberties. The sheer ignorance and folly. I think the librarians at the local library could do a better job of running the exchequer than that lot... Then there's ~ o man I can't even remember the smarmy git's name. Him. Posh Boy's conservative mob. Nobody really likes them. Their popularity was mostly an illusion inspired by protest against the status quo... Now something amazing is happening ... the THIRD PARTY, polyglot Nick Clegg's LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE IN THE LEAD! If this happens it will produce the biggest change in the political landscape for generations. It will all be for the worse, of course. But hey, at least it will be DIFFERENT for a CHANGE!
I have to say I do like Nick Clegg far more than Toryboy Smarmypants (still can't remember his name... o yeah DAVID CAMERON, that's him. Gordon Brown I cannot stand, as much because he cannot bear ever to be seen to be wrong, admit a fault or say he is sorry ~ and boy does that man have a lot to apologize for ~ and even though I disagree with many of his policies ~ e.g. "tax the rich". I want to be rich, and I don't wanna pay high taxes! I do hope in a way that they get in (it will have to be a multiparty alliance type govt anyway ~ Britain's first past the post election system, where the party is divided into constituencies, you vote for your local MP (never the leader) ~ the party with the most seats rules... all this will have to change in favour of proportional representation, which leaves the former top two sweating and weak at the knees...
WOW I can't wait for election day. I know the country's going to the dogs, at least it might go to Akitas and Glen of Imaal terriers now rather than pitbulls and staffs... know what I mean..??!?
I STILL WANT A tiny Norwich or cairn terrier, but I don't know when it's ever going to happen...
I've been floating over French and German blogs, but, in German especially, haven't the confidence to comment...
